#like half the buildings on campus including the one i work (which may have damaged our office and our stuff 😃😃😃😃😃😃) flooded bc of a power o

[pepprs]

awake now. and not to doxx myself but fucking scared shitless my campus will be virtual this spring

[7wanderingpaws]

Captain Bucheon 01

(gif is not mine)

Pairing: Baekhyun x reader (Lee Nari)

Genre: policeman AU; enemies to lovers AU 

Warnings:  langauge

A/N: First chapter! Yay! Super excited! Also, the feedback I got for the prologue - THANK YOU SO MUCH. Im super excited and happy and grateful. Hope you will enjoy this one! ^^

story masterlist masterlist

: prologue

>>>First<<<

Loud screeching was what woke you up. Thundering of footsteps down the corridor made you groan and turn in bed because for god's sake, it was Saturday morning and they just had to be loud at 10am!

Your roommate, lying in the bed just four feet next to yours, stirred awake too, though considering her eyes were fully open, she must have been up for a while now. “I’m glad it’s them waking you up and not me.”

You sighed and managed to smile but you were tired. Life in dormitories sucked, but yours even more so since you were assigned probably the worst dorms in the campus. Having to share bathroom and shower rooms made you leave your comfort zone. But finding toilets in the terrible state you did just purely horrified you. Why weren’t some girls flushing the toilets?!

“You know very well I won’t kill you if you wake me up, Yuyeon-ah,” you mumbled, your voice hoarse. Having Yuyeon as your roommate was the only positive aspect of the dorm life. Some would argue it’s the most important one but you were selfish and you wished you had a private bathroom like the other, more advanced, dorms had. There wasn’t even a kitchen where you could cook your ramyeon deliciously!

“Doubtful,” muttered Yuyeon, amused, and she moved to sit up and start her morning routine while you decided to lie around for just a little bit longer.

Working tirelessly many evenings made you tired and the exhaustion always caught up with you during weekends, where, frankly, you didn't have work. Also, it being the beginning of your second semester, the tension and stress were on but you decided you wouldn't let it affect you too much. You have had enough stress in your entire life and you swore you would become your usual cheerful self.

And you had been, indeed, working on it. But that meant getting over, and hopefully, forgetting everything that happened almost one year ago. Your brother was still in prison and your family, terribly disappointed and in pure shock at what had become of your brother (plus your underage drinking fiasco), you all decided it would be better for you to move to the dorms for the time being. Another story was forgetting about the person who was behind the entire turn-over of your life.

Byun Baekhyun.

You never saw him after that one time he came to your high school. In that moment, you were numb, paralyzed and it hurt to see him. He dared to act like he cared. But over the time, you grew hate towards him. A hate that was weirdly combined with some emotions you really didn't want to pay too much attention to, because they were all based on a fake relationship. A relationship, that was something so beautiful, just for it to end up becoming a complete nightmare. A trauma. A terrible trust issue that you might never be able to get rid of.

It was safe to say that you, Lee Nari, would rather spit at Byun Baekhyun than ever start a conversation with him let alone acknowledge his presence were you to meet him. Not that you were expecting to meet him. After all, you had been incredibly careful - especially around Oh Sehun - in avoiding him by never-ever-ever-ever even coming as much as close to the street where the main Bucheon Police Station was located (but too bad for you; it was literally in downtown Bucheon) and even if you had to cross it, you whined and had to be dragged by your wrist (by Yuyeon). On the good side, there was never a chance for you to cross his apartment building as he lived in a different neighborhood. So that was, thankfully, out of the possible trouble inducing locations’s list.

But still, you couldn't help feeling anxious about spotting him somewhere. The first few months, you might have been looking around with too much hope, wanting to see his real self instead of the ogling at the few photos you had together stored in your phone. Just one glance of his eyes, nose, lips was what you wanted; it was maddening.

Then the flashes of that day came back, ruining every sweet memory, every sweet touch of his engraved into your skin, every stroke of his lips - it all vanished, instead morphing into his stern, burning gaze of which you were on the receiving side. The way he blamed you, the way he wanted to arrest you, and then the way he wouldn't let even your own mother hit you yet he gave you the harshest of punches… The moment of you overhearing his conversation with his tall colleague (you already forgot his name) until your entire world crashed on you. He lied. He never liked you. He never wanted a real relationship with you. He used you to get to you. Byun Baekhyun wanted to arrest you and then he arrested your brother and smashed your heart into tiny pieces. How could you ever recover?

“What, you're not getting up?” shrieked Yuyeon when she came back from the bathrooms, towel hanging around her neck. “The results of the votes are today so you better get up and prepare. You're the school's star, missy,” she grumbled and went over to her table, continuing her complex skin-care routine.

Right.

The way to get over Byun Baekhyun was to live and you could do that thanks to your friends.

Pfft, you had places to be. Forget about Byun Baekhyun.

><

Because of your communications major, you somehow ended up in the university’s student council. You were representing your school year but it was still unclear how the hell you managed to win over more than half of your classmates when all you ever did was hide or be with Yuyeon.

You entered Bucheon University with pretty damaged self-esteem, your cheerful self still recovering from the scandal. However, despite always doing something mischievous with Yuyeon neither of you had a huge circle of friends. It was only natural that the two of you did everything together. Even now, it was mostly you and her, plus Sehun and some other friends.  Unfortunately to you, many males voted because of the nature of your chest. The quiet girl with huuuge boobs, they were saying with hushed voices.

“Don’t pay attention to them, it’s you winning at the end of the day,” advised Yuyeon at the time.

So when the both of you waltzed into the seminar room with a round table in the middle and took seats (Yuyeon was there for your moral support), you could only glare at one senior who was sitting opposite you, his eyebrows wiggling as he  shamelessly drunk in your chest which was, as per usual, hidden under an L-sized hoodie. It seemed you could never escape.

When the president of the student council, Chul, appeared you all stood up and bowed to him respectfully even though he was a student just like you. He was the oldest though.

To your surprise, he walked straight over to your chair, throwing a charming smile at Yuyeon, who let out a quiet scoff in return, before leaning down to whisper in your ear, not forgetting to touch your shoulder gently: “May I have a chat with you? It’s rather private.”

When he leaned away, you blinked twice but nodded and followed him outside for a moment. You could hear whispers erupting after you left though you paid no attention to them.

“What is it, Chul?” you asked, crossing your arms over your chest. Chul was one of the very few who never got distracted by it and you were thankful. He helped you a lot in your first semester, like finding you a job and teaching you how to drive a scooter so that you could easily do the deliveries while introducing you to some other interesting people on the campus.

“So about the spring festival - I have two things,” he started, his gaze set on your eyes, always making sure he reciprocated the eye contact. “First, you are taking part in the relay running for our team with representatives. Second, you have been requested as the MC-“

Before he could finish, you sighed holding out your hand to stop him, feeling the nerves kick in, not even paying attention to the first news. “Those votes aren’t even valid. They are all mocking me, Chul. Besides, I don’t wanna do it.”

Chul let you finish, patiently nodding. “Well, hence me stealing you from the meeting.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been requested,” he repeated, emphasizing the last word, “by our main star.”

“I thought we haven’t heard back from the agencies yet?” you asked. You’d written countless emails to various agencies, asking for special famous idols of theirs. To your utter distaste, it also included Siamsa but you couldn’t tell anyone you knew what an annoying, fake bitch she was.

He shrugged. “Well, we heard back from a couple. Siamsa agreed to be the main star of the festival under one condition,” he murmured, lowering his voice. He pointed his index finger at you. “If you’ll do the MCing for her.”

That left you speechless. That delusional woman wanted what now?! “I don’t want to, Chul,” you shook your head, frowning.

It made you wonder why you were getting nervous in the first place. Was it because of her status and having to stand in front of your entire school or was it because of the connection you both shared and that was Byun Baekhyun? Just the idea of having to face her and having to be reminded that she dated your ex made you weirdly sick in your stomach.

He sighed, scratching his neck. “I’m sorry, Nari, but I’m afraid I’m gonna want you to accept it. She is the hottest idol out there and everyone wants her the most. Imagine the attention our university - and especially us, the school council, could bring in. Don’t let us down,” he added gently, though you could sense authority in his voice. Chul was always fair, you had to admit. He never asked you to do anything that made you uncomfortable, never asked you the reason for your reluctance in the past but now he insisted and it showed in his intense gaze.

“I’ll help you with the preparations,” he added, smiling encouragingly. “You’re much more outspoken and talented than you give yourself credit for, so I’m sure you’ll be a star just like Siamsa.”

Well, he really didn’t have to say that last sentence. If there was someone you wanted to be like, it was your good old self. Of course you had more talent, after all you were the big-mouthed one.

Chul patiently waited, seeing that you were mulling over the options. When you looked up at him, you slowly nodded while hating yourself. “Fine. I’ll do it. But-” you stopped him from smiling widely, “what happened with the original voting? Who won?”

“Obviously, you.”

You shook your head quickly. “But I mean who is the actual winner?”

“Not important,” he muttered, brushing past you. “Let's head back inside. Not everyone has the time to sit around waiting on a Saturday.”

><

Once the meeting was over, you couldn't wait to spill the news to Yuyeon but needed to wait until lunch time, when you would meet Oh Sehun. You had sent him a text earlier asking if he was still grabbing lunch with you and Yuyeon (secretly you were writing these messages for obvious reasons - you couldn't risk he would be with Baekhyun). Since he had agreed, you and Yuyeon were speed-walking to the cafeteria, both of you hungry.

Once sat down and joined by the tall friend, you looked around varily just to make sure he really came alone. 

Sehun sighed, tired with your dramatics. “I'm alone, Nari,” he rolled his eyes as he was mixing his tuna bibimbap. “And now spill. The both of you have been acting like rabbits on energy drinks.”

Shooting him a frown, you still rambled away for ten minutes, telling them what had happened. Yuyeon knew about Siamsa and your past experience with her and Sehun also knew the vital triangle connection of Siamsa, Baekhyun and you. He still seemed shocked and even uncomfortable when he heard your entire story.

“What made her request you?” he asked after he swallowed a big chunk of food. “I mean - does she even know your name? Your university?”

“And you literally met her a year ago,” added fervently Yuyeon, deep frown wrinkling her forehead.

Just like your friends, you also had many questions but no answers. Mulling over various possibilities, Sehun finally spoke up: “Should I ask Baek-”

“No.” Your answer was abrupt, but cold, empty and harsh to which Sehun winced the slightest bit. Even hearing his name made your heart race fast and hence the sudden cold behavior. Sehun knew you as a cheerful, kind girl so seeing you being affected by his friend to this extent made him quite perplexed but nothing he wasn’t used to by now. It was his fault; he should have known better than to bring him up.

Yuyeon shot you an unsure look but this time, you ignored it, focusing on shoving around the rice in the steel bowl with the spoon.

“You should have declined,” tried Yuyeon.

“I did decline,” you answered eagerly. “I feel like that bitch might have something up her sleeve. If she does, I should be ready.”

Sehun was flicking his gaze between you and Yuyeon, thinking over your words. Surely, things you didn't know about could hardly hurt you, right?

After lunch, Sehun bid his goodbyes to you.

“Where are you off to?” you pouted, looking up at him with puppy eyes. “It’s Saturday, let’s do something fun!”

“I’m going to the running tracks today with my friend,” answered Sehun and ruffled your hair in amusement to which you pulled back and away from his sneaky hand. “Maybe later, hm? I bet you’re gonna do something with the student council anyway.”

“You and your running, aish!” grumbled Yuyeon. “Go, go, we don’t need you anyway.”

“Don’t get into trouble!” Shouted Sehun as he turned to walk towards the gymnasium and the track field. He waved one more time before he had his broad back on you.

You scoffed and grabbed Yuyeon’s hand, yanking her towards the dorms. “Well, making trouble has been more challenging since we are old enough to do trouble,” you exclaimed, jumping a few times to make Yuyeon walk faster. She whined and tried to pull away but your grip tightened and you snickered. “But that doesn’t mean we still can’t go and have fun tonight!”

><

“Let’s do one more round.”

“Hyung,” groaned Sehun tiredly, feeling the sweat dripping down the sides of his face. “Enough.”

“One more.” Byun Baekhyun shook his head once before he took off for another round. “Losers will keep losing!” he shouted with a cheeky, handsome smile, running backwards for a bit to check on Sehun and when he saw the tall male run after him in challenge, he snickered and turned back, dashing off into a sprint.

It’d been like this for almost a year. Baekhyun was always a gym buddy with Sehun but in the past eleven months, Sehun became a small, indirect punching back. Whether it was because he suddenly became a mutual friend with a certain someone or whether it was a punishment for being there that night with her, he didn’t know. He didn’t want to know.

One thing he surely did know was that running helped him ease his mind and relax, maybe make him feel a little bit more numb like he so wished to be.

Getting rid of any intruding thoughts of Lee Nari was difficult. He felt sorry for her, the victim of his job. Fooling around with a young girl was not his plan but he knew he did it for the better good. He tried to persuade himself that he did it for the better good while pushing back the need to search for her and make sure she was doing alright. 

As he was nearing the finish line, Sehun caught up with him and they both jogged towards their bags nearby the tracks to freshen up. Sehun was heaving like a parched horse which made Baekhyun chuckle as he reached for two bottles, throwing one to his friend.

“Cheers,” exhaled Sehun harshly and quickly opened the bottle, gulping down the needed liquid.

Baekhyun hummed in reply and waited for his heartbeat to calm down before he would have a sip. “How’s everything?” he decided to ask. “The new semester just started.”

Sehun swallowed and closed the bottle. “It’s just the first week. You know the drill - introductions and boring stuff.”

“Nothing interesting happened then?” Baekhyun was very subtle in hints. Sehun was, thankfully, quick-witted.

“We will have the university festival in May,” he replied with the slightest of smirks on his face. “Siamsa is confirmed to perform.”

Baekhyun wasn’t looking at Sehun and even the information he just heard wasn’t worthy enough to make him pay attention. “Cool. She is an artist after all.” He noticed some girls approaching the track and he felt a small tinge of dissatisfaction. He really liked when the track was only his.

“One of my friends will be the MC. Actually, guess what! Siamsa made a special request. Funny, right? In what universe does a singer of her caliber ask for a mere first year student?”

Baekhyun snapped his head to Sehun. “Why?”

Sehun shrugged. “We don’t know why she wanted her out of everyone... though-“ Sehun pulled a thinking face. “It might have something to do with you.”

Baekhyun sighed, already feeling tired. “I don’t like that one bit. Siamsa is sneaky.”

Sehun nodded. “She didn’t want to do it but her senior kind of ordered her. So I guess she doesn’t have another choice.”

“What kind of senior is that if he makes her do stuff against her will?” huffed Baekhyun, his hands on his hips. “Isn’t he supposed to be there to support her?”

“Well, yeah. He did a lot for her so she feels like she has to do it.” Sehun decided to not share any more than that despite sensing Baekhyun’s questioning stare. He knew Baekhyun wanted to know what that “a lot” meant.

When Baekhyun knew he wouldn’t be getting more out of Sehun, he sighed and tapped his shoulder. “Thanks for telling me.” He moved to grab his bag from the floor when Sehun stopped him.

“Hyung.”

Baekhyun raised his eyebrows in question, waiting.

Sehun opened his mouth but then ended up closing it. Baekhyun was a tough nut to crack. It was obvious he was always interested in Nari’s well-being but him pretending not to do so was frustrating.

“I think-“ he re-started, remembering Nari’s emotionless face when he mentioned Baekhyun earlier that day. He opened his mouth to talk but Baekhyun was faster:

“I think it is better to leave everything up to her, Sehun. She is a smart young woman. If anyone can do well, it is Lee Nari. After all, she is finally able to do everything she was pretending to be doing.”

Sehun snorted a laugh, mockingly rolling his eyes. “And since when did you become so-ugh, respectful about that? Nari is stubborn and doesn't know anything about life.”

“It is none of my concern, Sehun,” replied quietly Baekhyun, looking somewhere off in the distance. “But I know she is stronger than you give her credit for.”

“She might hate you and she might not be over what happened between you two-”

“I locked up her brother,” gritted Baekhyun, “and before that, I wanted to lock her up. What makes you think there is any way for both of us to function normally even if we do meet?”

Sehun sighed. It was difficult to communicate with the both of them. Yes, they were both hurt but goddamn it. Anyone could know they cared for each other.

Baekhyun sensed Sehun's dilemma and so he stepped to the taller male and gave him a curt smile. “Don't push it, Sehun. She will be fine.”

><

Sweat was gradually collecting around your hairline until it turned into one huge tear drop travelling down the side of your face. The text message was as clear as the night sky.

Unknown number

drop it at the 1047 unit

top floor

“It's impossible,” you muttered, feeling yourself becoming nervous. You were standing in front of 1047 and it was definitely not the top floor. It was the first floor, just like the first  number indicated. 

Gnawing at your bottom lip, you raked your head about possible connections you could contact when you couldn't deliver the boxes as you were supposed to. There was never a responsible person, only an unknown number sending you messages with the quest and a requirement to always be careful (you supposed the carefulness was concerning the boxes). You would receive a confirmation message when the box was in safe hands. That was it. No unnecessary contracts; just you and the job at hand.

You tried calling Chul, you senior. After all, he was the one who fetched you the job but even he wasn't available at that moment.

When you were just about to lose your mind, your phone rang making you almost drop the box. Thank god for your reflexes. “H-hello? Chul?”

“Hey, what's up?” he chirped.

You told him quickly your problem but you weren't expecting his light voice to become more serious. “You can't find the place? Are you sure you are in the right building- shit, the time is almost up. I'll be there right now:”

Heaving out a breath, you checked your wrist watch. The box was supposed to be delivered within fifteen minutes. How would Chul make it in time for you, you weren't sure but you soon found out when you heard his rushing steps, his phone's screen lit up with the exact information you were provided with.

“Hey,” he breathed, taking in your worried gaze as you gave him an apologetic smile.

“Sorry for the fuss.”

He shook his head once, muttering a single “no need” before he took the box out of your arms and put it down in front of the door. Grabbing your hand he started pulling you downstairs. “We gotta get out of here.”

“Huh?” you looked back at the box helplessly, before you couldn't look anymore, instead watching out for your step on the stairs. “Wait - Chul, I need to fulfill the task.”

He shushed you and before you knew it, you were outside in the chilly air. Dragging you a few more metres, he heard an approaching car's engine and he was fast to push you into a small alley that was barely lit by any street lamps.

“Chul-” you started, frowning. You didn't like him manhandling you like that.

“Do you trust me?” he whispered as he made you press your back against the wall.

“Yeah,” you breathed, eager to hear any information he could provide you with to explain what the hell was going on.

To your utter horror, a police car drove by, but you weren't terrified about why the police car was there. You were terrified about a certain someone sitting in that car and you possibly having to face that certain someone. Just the thought of having to see his shocked or disappointed face yet again made you inwardly whimper.

When the car was far enough, Chul turned to you. “You are doing a great job, you really are. But you mustn't, by any means, get caught by the police while doing deliveries. Got it?”

Feeling your heart thumping loudly from the adrenaline, you nodded. “What about the box then?”

Chul cursed when he looked at his phone. “Three minutes left. Go in and check the box. If it's still there, take it to the top floor as per request. Sometimes they give misleading information to you in case your phone gets stolen. Next time, make sure to double-check all the information they give you, okay?”

You were nodding eagerly and already started walking back to the small apartment building.

“I have to go but write to me if the mission is successful. Now go, quickly,” he said and without waiting, took off into the opposite direction.

Due to the stress, you didn't even stop to think about the weirdness of the situation. Rushing back in, you went to the first floor where you left the box. You were rendered motionless when the box was no longer there.

Someone took it.

Feeling fear creeping into your system, you took out your phone to call Chul just when you received a confirmation message.

Unknown number

the box has been successfully delivered

[gguksgalaxy]

Lily Luck | MYG | Soulmates

“You get five chances to meet your soulmate. Five opportunities to look them in the eyes and be overwhelmed with the feeling of love. To find a little red line around your pinky finger. Yet, the feeling dwindles with each missed opportunity. Each missed opportunity comes with a scar where that red line should be. It’s a game of fate and luck, and the latter doesn’t seem to be on your side.”

›› AU: Soulmates ›› Genre: Angst / Fluff ... I think? ›› Rating: R (implicit sexual content) ›› Pairing: MYG x Reader, MxM pairings ›› Word Count: 10.7k  ›› Warnings Include: Swearing, alcohol use, romantic angst and anxiety, very slight implicit sexual content, a very drunk Jungkook, soulmate scars. This is not a nsfw 18+ fic! A/N: Hi there again, @spicykoreantatertots. Here it finally is! I hope that you enjoy what I did with the entire story. Thanks for talking to me a bit after I posted the teaser. It's what sparked my idea for the last scene ;) there's some stuff hidden there for you. Please enjoy! Happy late Valentine's day. — Lily, aka Gwaen. 

Soulmates of the first mark are the most devoted. Their love is pure and all-consuming.

You’re late. It’s your first class of the semester and you’re terribly late. The worst part is that you got up at six in the morning to make it and you’re still late. As one of the only fifteen people to make it into this class you consider yourself lucky. But if you’re late you will also be promptly replaced by someone on the waiting list.

So you’re running, darting across campus because your train had been stuck at a red sign and made you just those five minutes late which could cost you your spot in this class. Out of breath, you swerve a corner, nearly tumbling over as the sole of your boot gets caught on the pavement. You shouldn’t have worn platforms.

You’re gonna make it. No matter what. Continuing your sprint towards the building at the south end of campus, you check the time on your phone. Four minutes left. You can d—

Colliding straight into someone’s chest, you topple forward. Your bag skirts over the stones and you curse out loud. The guy does the same, having landed straight on his backside with you sprawled over his lap.

You don’t have time for this. All you see before you scramble up is a messy mop of blonde hair and a very exotic — not messed up — bouquet of lilies.

“I’m sorry!” you rush, grabbing your bag and continuing your race to the classroom. Up the stairs to the building, through the revolving doors and into the elevator which — god bless — is downstairs.

There’s no way you’ll look presentable. Hair a mess, face red and sweaty, breathing ragged. But you’ll make it. You’ve worked yourself to the brim getting an 80% average to qualify for this class. Two years of agonising criminology and law courses, just for this class. The Criminal Law Clinic would give you much of the needed experience for working in the criminal law field once you graduate. That’s why everyone wants to take this class. It’s the only one that lets you tackle actual cases head on.

You walk inside with your water bottle half chugged down and coat slung around your arm. The teacher gives you a suspicious look, but you hold your head high. The man is notorious for being a real drill sergeant when it comes to this class.

There’s one seat left, beside a guy whom you know as Jung Hoseok. Fourth year law student. Took a gap year to be the head of activities at Moop, the criminology and criminal law student association. A terrible name, but a great association with a great team. Hoseok’s parties are still being talked about.

“Okay everyone, please take out the prepared material so we can get started,” the teacher says, standing up from this seat. “Today we’ll be discussing the setup for this clinic, as well as the first case and who will be second chair.”  That’s everyone’s reason to be here. To get to sit next to him at a criminal law case in court and help win it. Hands on experience. “Each of you should’ve prepared a way to tackle this case, the one with the best defense will get the spot.”

You sigh calmly, trying not to freak out about arguing your case while you’re still recovering from your sprint. As you’re scrolling through your laptop to find the material, you notice a burning sensation on your hand. Have you scraped yourself during your fall? You frown, looking down and—

Right there on your pinky finger sits a small white scar. Neatly wrapped around the digit as if you had once worn a thin ring there.

A soulmate scar? No. That can’t be. Right?

Your eyes widen, vision blurring as you stare. A missed opportunity to bond with your soulmate. But why didn’t you notice? Everybody always says that when you pass them you feel a pull. One that makes you look back and lock eyes with them only to feel as if the world explodes into a thousand colours of fireworks and butterflies.

It takes one gaze into your soulmates eyes for you to bond. For a small red line to wrap itself around your pinky finger that will tie you together for all eternity. Yet once the opportunity is missed, and you don’t meet eyes despite being so close, a white scar appears. It signifies the damage upon your connection.

You shake, tears appearing in the corners of your eyes as you stare at the small scar on your finger. There’s a hollow feeling in your chest, like something is missing that was there before. Your gut twists with nausea, hands trembling as you touch the scar. A hiss passes your lips. It stings.

“Hey? Are you okay?” Hoseok asks, placing a hand on your shoulder. He must’ve followed your gaze to where you’re staring at your finger because he curses under his breath. “Okay, come on.” Looking up at the teacher, he speaks again. “Please excuse us.” He helps you stand up on wobbly legs. “She’s not feeling well, I’m just going to help her get some fresh air.”

The teacher calls something after you, but you don’t quite catch it as Hoseok leads you through the hallway to the outside seating area on the third floor.

You missed your soulmate. You had severed the line that was supposed to pull the two of you together and now that scar would be there forever. A painful reminder of the tear. Only four opportunities left to meet them, or you’ll be lonely for the rest of your life. Scolded by society too.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Hoseok whispers, shaking you.

It’s only then that you realise the tears running down your cheeks. You sniffle, wiping them away. “I’m sorry,” you mumble, not even certain what for. Hoseok doesn’t know you, why would he take care of you like this. “Thanks for coming with me. You can go back to class.”

He shakes his head, handing you a water bottle. “I’m not going to leave you here to cry on your own.”

You thank him softly, taking a few sips from the bottle along with some deep breaths. The empty feeling remains, as if your soulmate had ripped your heart straight out of your chest. It still burns, the scar, and it gets worse the more you pay attention to it.

This is not a situation you ever thought you’d be in. You’ve always dreamed of having a first mark soulmate. Someone who would be devoted to you for the rest of your lives. Who would stand by your side and fight for you. An all-consuming love. You’ve seen it first hand — both your parents and your best friend are first mark soulmates. You will never have that. The opportunity has been robbed from you all because your train was late.

“What if I don’t find them?” you ask, completely disregarding that Hoseok shouldn’t have to answer such questions from you.

Hoseok smiles, rubbing a hand up and down your back. “You will. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but you will find them.”

Can you believe that? “Not everyone finds them.”

“There’s no reason to worry about that while you’ve still got four opportunities left.” Hoseok shifts a little closer, showing you his hand with his palm facing upwards.

His skin is tan, long slender fingers seemingly soft even if you haven’t touched them. And there, around his pinky and ring finger, sit two white scars. He missed them twice? Most people meet their soulmate on the first or second encounter. Set up for life with a devoted lover. Yet some take longer to find the bond that by then will have dwindled with each meeting.

“I promise that the pain will go away, and that numb, empty feeling in your chest will too. Just give it some time, they will cross your path once again.” Hoseok’s voice is soothing, and he gives you another hopeful smile as your eyes flicker between your hand and his. “Don’t let people tell you anything different. Fate will bless you on another day.”

You suppose he’s right.

Soulmates of the second mark are the most passionate. Their love is vibrant and fervent.

“I really think you’re going to be fine,” Namjoon says from the other end of the phone. “You’re not the first person to not meet their soulmate on the first encounter, and you’re certainly not the last either.”

Currently you’re sitting on a bench in the train station, waiting for your train home. It’s been over a month since the first encounter you had with your soulmate. The first missed opportunity. Hoseok had been right, the pain and the numbness went away. But it wasn’t easy.

“I think Namjoon is right,” Jungkook, your roommate, says.

You huff. “Easy for the two of you to say. One of you has been with their soulmate for six months now, and the other one hasn’t crossed paths with them yet.”

“Just because Jin and I are first mark lovers doesn’t mean that I can’t give you advice,” Namjoon counters. The two of you have been best friends since high school, went into college together and shared a condo for four years. Until he met his soulmate last May, and decided to immediately move in with him. If Jungkook, your mutual friend, hadn’t offered to move in with you, you would’ve made more of a problem out of Namjoon ditching you. Jungkook may be a bit of a mess, but as far as Namjoon knows Jungkook is a perfect roommate.

The younger lets out an exasperated groan, probably playing a videogame in the background while you’re on group call. “Okay, but I get where she’s coming from.”

“I also don’t want your advice.”

“Excuse me!” Jungkook asserts. “I did nothing wrong!”

You roll your eyes even if he can’t see you. “Why don’t you come back to me once you’ve had your first encounter.” The harsh words roll of your tongue like acid, burning in the back of your mouth. Frankly, you’ve had enough of everyone trying to console you or care for you. Especially when they don’t know what it’s like.

“Hey,” Namjoon interjects as you get up to go to your train that should soon be arriving. “Jungkook took care of you while you were too devastated to eat properly. He deserves a little more credit, don’t you think?”

It’s true. When you’d come home after class — which you sat through with tears brimming your eyes — Jungkook had already been waiting for you with your favourite cup noodles and some good old snuggles. He’d made sure you ate at least twice a day and didn’t lock yourself in your bedroom to wallow in self-pity.

“Sorry,” you mumble. “Okay, hold on.”  The train rushes by, swallowing the sound of your friends’ voices and everything else around you. The wind whips your hair into your face, causing it to stick to the light layer of gloss on your lips.

It stops. Doors opening, people exiting as you wait leaning against the side of the escalator. When you enter, one foot on the steps, you feel it.

It’s like a hand wraps itself around your chest, warm and comforting yet demanding at the same time. You frown for a second, stilling amidst the people trying to get to a seat.

Whipping your head around, you gasp. Frantically you try to push back through the group of people behind you. Heart pounding in your ears, hand burning by your side with the impending tear of your red string of fate. From the stairs you scan the crowd of people on the platform. You don’t even know what they look like, but they must be looking for you too, right?

There’s one person standing too still amongst the mass. He seems to be a young man, black baseball cap covering his eyes, but you catch sight of blonde hair at the nape of his neck when he turns around. In his hand, he holds a single bright pink flower.

A lily. Just like the ones from the bouquet of the man you ran into.

It’s him.

You run. Bumping into bodies as the burning around your ring finger intensifies. If you knew his name, you’d call out for him. All you can do is try to reach where he was standing. You can feel his presence as you reach the exact spot. But he’s not here.

Anxiously you look around, trying to see where he went. There’s less people now, but the black baseball cap is nowhere to be found.

A flash of pink.

You turn around, to catch him jumping into the train right as the doors slide shut with the whistle of the conductor.

Tears in your eyes, you stand defeated while the train departs. Your hand burns, and you look to find the second white line. It doesn’t hurt as bad as the first one, but your heart still claws inside your chest. Hollow, defeated, alone.

That’s when you realise that your phone is still on call with Namjoon and Jungkook. You shakily lift the device to your ear. “Guys?”

“Thank God! I thought you’d died or something!” Jungkook exclaims.

Namjoon chuckles. “What happened? We heard a bunch of bumping and shuffling around you.”

You take a trembling breath. A weak attempt to stop yourself from crying in public as the train has disappeared from your view. “He was here.”

“Wait, what?” Jungkook gasps. “Who? Your soulmate? Did you catch him? Wait, was it even a guy?”

Words lay on your tongue but they’re held back by the lump that sits heavily in your throat.

“Jungkook, calm down,” Namjoon shushes him. “Are you okay?” he asks you.

“He’s gone,” you croak, looking at the timetable of the trains. The one home had now long departed, and the next one wasn’t for another hour.

Namjoon sighs softly. “It’s going to be okay. You’ll find them. Did you see what they looked like?”

“No,” you mumble as you plop down onto the same bench as before. “He was wearing all black, a baseball cap, and I think he had blonde hair but that’s all I caught.”

“It’s a guy?” Jungkook questions again.

“Yeah...I think at least. They looked like a guy from behind. I don’t know what to do guys. I was rushing for my train and he was waiting on the platform for another train and I just completely missed him. When I went looking, he was entering and the doors shut on me. I was so close,” you whimper, hang covering your mouth. “So close.”

Jungkook and Namjoon are both silent for a few seconds, the sound of your roommate’s game suddenly cutting off.

The youngest speaks first. “Did you miss your train?”

“Yeah, th-the next one’s in an hour.”

“I’ll come pick you up,” Namjoon offers. “Jungkook, you order some food. We’ll be there in half an hour. I’m picking you up from the south end, Y/N.”

Jungkook hums an affirmation. “It’s going to be okay Y/N, I promise.”

“Thanks guys,” you say, wiping your tears. The call ends, and you’re left along with the dissipating emptiness in your chest.

You know that you’re supposed to have hope. That fate gives you five opportunities for a reason. But you can’t help it. You curse lady luck for damning you like this. For playing such a cruel game with your heart. Why can’t the two of you just run into each other at the grocery store like your parents did. Or at the park, like Jin and Namjoon.

To pass each other and have the moment of feeling that urge to turn around and look back. Meeting eyes. Falling in love at first sight like the legends say. To be happy forever.

You’re aware of the implications of having a third mark soulmate, or worse. That they won’t love you the same. That they won’t be as devoted. That unlike first and second mark lovers, they won’t just have eyes for you.

All you want is the love you’ve always dreamt of. To have someone to come home to who will love you no matter what. Even with three opportunities still on the horizon, you feel like that has already been robbed from you. Cruelly pulled from your fingers. You know it'll be harder to find him the more opportunities pass. The pull will lessen each time until it fades. The fact that you hadn’t felt it at its strongest, you —

You kiss the new scar on your ring finger, holding back more tears as you go to wait for Namjoon.

Soulmates of the third mark are the most sincere. Their love is playful and profound.

You stare at the marks on your fingers, digits halted on the spines of the books in the library. Hoseok had been right, the pain had again faded. This time though, it had hurt for longer. Or well, that’s what you thought at least. Namjoon’s boyfriend, Seokjin, had told you that it might’ve been because you were so upset.

That was a serious understatement. It’s been about four months since then, a total of nearly six since you first ran into him. You haven’t been okay since. Namjoon and Jungkook have been bending over backward to make sure that you’re okay. Even when the younger himself now had a first scar too.

He’s hopeful though, in a way you wish you could be. Namjoon has always said that Jungkook is a hopeless romantic, and it’s true. Your roommate had seemed a little shaken by the occurrence but had shrugged it off, saying nothing more than “it must’ve not been the right time”.

You sigh, shaking the thought. If anything you could learn something from Jungkook. Even if you have one scar more than him. The timing wasn’t right, but it will be. Eventually.

There’s not much you know now other than the blonde colour of his hair and the lily he’d been holding. After some research you’d found out it had been a Lily of the Incas. Not that that gave you any more information about him. He also hadn’t seemed awfully tall, but that could’ve been deceiving.

You can’t help but wonder if he’s been looking out for you the way you’ve been looking out for him. Does he know what you look like? Does he care as much as you do? Maybe he feels the same amount of distress and pain that you’ve been feeling.

No. You want him to be happy and keep moving. Your heart aches at the thought of him hurting even when you’ve never met. Was that the bond? Or just your mind playing tricks?

Despite the mess in your mind, you manage to find the book you were looking for.

You grab it from the shelf and startle as the sudden sight of someone’s face on the other side of the shelf. Holding the book tightly against your chest as you turn. You hate it when that happens.

That’s when your phone decides to start blaring on it’s loudest setting. You curse under your breath, dropping your book in your haste of trying to turn the device off. With your heart pounding in your ears you catch sight of Jungkook’s name on the screen before it silences.

On the other side of the library the woman behind the desk is shooting you an angry glare, and you notice she’s not the only one staring at you. Your ears burn red along with your cheeks as you grab the book from the floor.

You’re about to move back over to the desk when the phone rings again, seemingly even louder this time. Nearly dropping your stuff again. You’re so rushed that you pick up instead of hang up. With anxiety blazing through your veins you put the book on the shelf and opt for the exit.

Once outside, your heart calms slightly and you finally lift the phone to your ear.

“What the fuck do you want?”

“Don’t swear at me! This is an emergency woman!” Jungkook exclaims loudly.

You roll your eyes, making way for your car. There’s no way you can show yourself there again. At least, not today. You’ll just have to come back tomorrow.

“Hello? Are you listening to me?”

“Yes! I was at the library you fool. Everyone stared at me.”

Jungkook laughs. At least he can see the fun in this. You connect your phone to the car, now hearing his voice through the speakers. “Okay, but is it my fault that you didn’t put your phone on silent?”

Starting the car, you turn off the parking lot. “Tell me what you want or I will hang up on you.”

“As I said, it’s an emergency.” Jungkook’s pause is followed by rustling and crunching. “I have an exam tomorrow and we’re all out of Cheetos and Redbull and like how the fuck am I going to get through the night?”

You snort. “Have you ever thought of starting early so you don’t have to pull an all-nighter?”

“I have. It’s just not my vibe you know?” Jungkook sighs as something falls to the floor. “So can you please help a guy out?”

“On one condition,” you say as you’re already turning into the street towards the grocery store.

He lets out an exasperated sound. “Anything for Cheetos.”

Jungkook’s antics might annoy the living hell out of you from time to time, but you wouldn’t have it any other way. A lightness in your days is what you need the most right now. “Please pick up this book I need for my revisions after your exam.”

“Yeah, okay. I can do that.”

“Have you been to the library before?”

“Yes.”

“Have you been inside the library?”

“Maybe.”

You sigh, parking the car. The second you turn off your engine you feel it. Like the veil gets pulled and all that is left, is the excruciating burning sensation in your middle finger.

No. No. It can’t be. “Jungkook?”

“I promise I will get your book. Don’t worry, I know how libraries work.”

“No, Jungko—“

“I swear! Just get me my Cheetos, please.” The pout in his voice is evident despite your own pain. As is the stress you know he’s trying to cover up. Jungkook’s got enough on his plate tonight.

You mumble a trembling affirmation. “Anything else I can get you?” Squeezing your middle finger, you try to stave off the pain and impending tears as you lean back in your chair.

Jungkook pauses, and you have to cover up your mouth to stifle a sob.

“Spicy noodles, two cups.”

“Okay, I’ll be home soon.” You hang up, tears running down your face and neck. One hard punch delivered to the steering wheel makes the car horn go off. Drawing the attention of people near. You don’t notice with your eyes closing tightly.

You need — Fumbling for your phone, you unlock it and slide over the screen for Namjoon’s number. It rings on speaker, device laying in your lap as you trace the painful scar. Why does it hurt this much?

“Hey, what’s up?” Namjoon answers.

You breathe, trying to catch yourself from falling before you tell him. But nothing coherent comes out. “Joon, ‘t hurts.”

He curses under his breath. “Door’s open.”

Soulmates of the fourth mark are the most compassionate. Their love is secure and easy-going.

Today’s the first time you and Seokjin are hanging out alone. No Namjoon. He’s nice, although you’re a little suspicious as to why he was so keen on taking you out today.

It’s April, seven months since you got your first soulmate scar. At this point it’s kind of settled. The anxiety and the impatience. Namjoon would claim your attitude hasn’t improved though. You’d gone from frantic hopelessness to complete disregard and it was a slippery slope. Or so he said.

“So why are you taking me out to meet your friend?” you ask the man beside you.

Seokjin smiles, running a hand through his nearly-black hair. “You’ll see when we get there. If I tell you, you’re gonna put up a fight. Namjoon mentioned you have a tendency to be quite...uncooperative.”

You snort. “Whatever you say.”

He stops. You have to halt your own movements and turn back to look at him. Seokjin’s got an unreadable expression on his face, staring intently at you as you wait for him to catch back up. “You need to get your head out of your ass.”

“What?”

“You’re acting like the entire world is against you just because you haven’t been able to find your soulmate yet. You’re not the first person to find them at the fourth or fifth mark and you won’t be the last. It’s not going to change anything.” He speaks firmly, walking past you.

You move, opening your mouth to speak but he cuts you off with a sharp look.

“One word about me and Joon being first mark soulmates and I’m leaving you stranded. It’s unfair for you to use that as an argument against him. Every single time you tell him that he wouldn’t understand because he has me, he starts feeling more and more bad about himself and what we have. I get that you’re hurting but it has to stop.”

“Oh,” you mumble, hanging your head as you continue to follow Seokjin down the street. Anxiety flecks in the corners of your vision. You know that your comments have struck a wrong chord with Namjoon. The two of you have gotten into multiple fights over the past months because of it. You didn’t realise that it was weighing so heavily on him that it was affecting his relationship with Jin. “I’m sorry.”

Seokjin nods. “I’m not the one who needs to hear that.”

“Still.”

“I know,” he says, looking at you over his shoulder. “As I said, I understand where you’re coming from. You just need someone to talk some serious sense into you. Jungkook’s too much of a hopeless romantic to give you any real advice and Namjoon is too afraid of hurting you. So now you have me.” He clasps a hand over your shoulder and smiles.

You weakly return it, and stop as he does, in front of a small flower shop on the corner of a busy street. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me just yet. We’re here.”

Jin really cares about Namjoon. You hope that your soulmate will love you the same. Even though a fifth of fourth mark might not be the same as a first.

He leads you inside. The heavy scent of flowers and wet soil hits you. It’s sweet, but overwhelming, making you scrunch up your nose. The inside of the shop is very cosy. Flowers blooming colourfully along the walls in pots set on the table. Organised, in a messy but still somehow coherent way.

“Jin!” a young man calls from behind the counter, black hair falling messily over his eyes in unkempt curls. “I was just about to call you!”

“Hey Tae! Where’s your boyfriend?” Jin looks around while walking over to him.

Tae sighs. “He just left, something came up and he had to go.”

You frown as Jin lets out an annoyed sound. “I said this was important.”

The other just shrugs. “So was this apparently, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine Taehyung.”

Taehyung.

You feel as if you’ve heard Namjoon mention his name before. He smiles at you. There’s dirt staining his hands and a red streak — of what you assume is ink — on his cheek.

“Y/N, this is Taehyung. He’s a family friend of mine and the owner of this store.”

You look around now wide-eyed, glancing over at the roses, peonies and daisies. “You own this place?”

He nods excitedly, moving go wash his hands at the sink in the corner. “Yeah, the shop’s almost a year old now. Business is pretty good. My boyfriend helps me run it where he has time between his uni schedule. He mainly takes care of the boring, administrative stuff.”

You chuckle as he washes his hands while Seokjin moves towards the coffee machine in the back like he owns the place.

“Coffee?” He asks you, turning on the kettle..

“Yeah sure.”

Taehyung calls back that he wants tea. There’s something comfortable and warm about the way he smiles. His presence is a little all over the place though. Currently nudging open a drawer with his elbow to find a towel so he can dry his hands. When he locates the white cloth, you notice the white lines circling his fingers.

And then you see the red mark around his thumb. A fifth mark.

“You and your boyfriend are soulmates?” you blurt out.

He turns to face you, wide grin stretching over his face. Showing white teeth and full cheeks. “Yeah. Seokjin actually came here for him.” He shoots the elder a look over your shoulder. “Apparently I’m not as interesting.”

“You’re not the one who wrote a Bachelor’s thesis on soulmate statistics and the true meaning of the mark order!” Seokjin counters with a pitched voice.

“Wait, what? Why are we here?” you ask, brown furrowing when Seokjin sets a cup of coffee and a cup of tea on the desk. “Jin?”

He rolls his eyes. “I was going to have Taehyung’s boyfriend talk some sense into you. That’s all. Just thought that if you wouldn’t believe us, maybe you’d believe science.”

Taehyung laughs, shaking his head as he grabs his tea with both hands. “Science, science,” he waves Jin off. “We all know science isn’t going to make her feel better.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re even more of a hopeless romantic than Jungkook is. It was worth a try,” Jin shrugs.

“Okay, let’s not talk about me as if I’m not here.” You don’t know whether you’re more confused or upset at this point.

There’s a ding of a bell, and all three of you look up to see a couple walk into the store. Taehyung excuses himself, going up to greet them.

Seokjin gives you a pointed look.

“What?”

“Ask him,” he whisper-yells. “You saw his mark. Ask him whatever you want, he won’t mind.”

You swallow thickly. He is right. You are curious. You want to know whether Taehyung and his boyfriend knew when they met. How in love they are. If it’s different.

Taehyung returns. Startling you by placing a hand on your shoulder.

“Sorry,” he chuckles. “You know that you’re going to be okay, right?”

“Huh?”

He gestures towards your hand where you’re absentmindedly scratching the scars on your fingers. “You’ll find them, and you’ll fall in love and everything will be okay. I know it’s hard, but try not to worry so much.”

You shiver. “What if I don’t, though?”

Taehyung gives you an apologetic look. “I worried about that, when I got my fourth mark. I felt beyond lucky when I finally found him. But it’s not all what society makes it out to be. Fifth mark soulmates shouldn’t be regarded as rare. They’re definitely not as uncommon as people who don’t find their soulmate at all. You still have the odds in your favour.”

“Science?” you question.

He grins. “That. And experience.”

“But—“ you start, cut off by another ring of the doorbell. Taehyung sighs and mumbles something, going to help the man. The couple is still roaming around.

Seokjin gives you a light shove. “See.”

You lean against the counter. “I don’t know, Seokjin. What if it’s not the same?”

“Just because society is hell-bent on making us believe that fifth mark soulmates aren’t worthwhile, doesn’t mean that they’re right. Fourth mark lovers are known for being compassionate, fifth for being patient. Those aren’t bad qualities. The big words attached to the first mark love doesn’t mean that the love is any stronger. Trust me, Taehyung and his boyfriend are way more disgusting than me and Joon.”

“I find that hard to believe,” you retort. “The amount of times I’ve almost wa—“

“Okay, we are in public. Please let me retain some integrity.”

Taehyung leaves the black-haired man who stands by the lilies. His hand reaches out to touch them. They remind you of your soulmate, and you briefly consider getting a few to take home.

There’s a spring in Taehyung’s step. He tilts his head as he eyes you. “What are you most worried about?”

You trace the scar on your middle finger, thinking hard about the right answer. “That they won’t love me?”

The warm smile that he gives you says enough. “This might come as a shock for you to hear, but it takes a while for soulmates to truly fall in love. That goes for all of us.”

Eyes widening, you turn to Seokjin. “He’s right,” he answers.

Taehyung takes another sip of his tea, long fingers curled around the pink mug. “First and second mark soulmates feel as if they’re instantaneously in love because they get overwhelmed with the feeling that comes with finding your soulmate so soon. But that’s excitement. It’s not the kind of love you are worried about.

“The feeling that you’re so worried about takes time to develop. For some longer than others. Just remember that you were meant to be, and that they will love you even if it takes some time. No matter what.” The sweet, gentle smile doesn’t leave his eyes as he speaks. It’s almost as if he’s remembering something.

He seems so in love. So happy. You yearn to have that too. “You really love him, don’t you? Your soulmate?”

He nods, brushing his curls out of his eyes with the back of his hand. “With my entire being.”

Your heart swells at the way his eyes twinkle while thinking of his soulmate. Sure, you’ve been around Namjoon and Seokjin long enough to know they love each other. But it never looked like this. So simple and pure.

“How did you know?” you ask finally.

“That I was in love with him?”

“No,” you shake your head, finishing your coffee as yet another person enters the store.

Taehyung looks up at them. “I’ll be with you in a second!” he calls out to the guy, who waves politely. Then, his eyes fall back on you, waiting for your question.

“How did you know it was him?” you ask, briefly glancing at Seokjin who’s just silently watching you grill Taehyung about his love life. Though, he gives you an affirmative nod. “Because they say that there’s no pull, no fireworks. I barely felt the pull last time, so how will I know who it is?”

“Ah,” Taehyung grins. “You’re sort of right. There were no fireworks. I am no expert on this matter, but I think that the feeling kind of develops more so than dwindles, each time you meet. When we finally bonded, I first and foremost felt the mark. It was like a warm and fuzzy feeling, like tingling. Nothing like the burn of the scars.” He pauses, brushing his fingers over the little red line on his thumb. It stands out against his tan skin, shifting as he sets down the mug.

No fireworks or pain sounds okay. Yet you wonder how he knew who it was if that wasn’t there. “Is it really just...different?”

“Your heart will know,” he continues. “I didn’t know as soon as I locked eyes with him, but when he came over and smiled at me I felt like I was coming home.” He places a hand over yours where you’re gripping the table. “To me that feeling trumps fireworks.”

Seokjin huffs. “You sap.” He turns to you. “I’d like to add that he cried for an hour straight afterward.”

A flush creeps up Taehyung’s neck. “That’s beside the point.”

“Sure,” your friend muses smugly. “Just trying to warn her that it can still be overwhelming even if the world doesn’t erupt in a bunch of glitter.”

You nod, smile stretching at your lips, reassured. Taehyung seems truthful. He seems so in love and content with where he is. Unbothered by what everybody says about fifth mark lovers. His happiness makes you feel a little better about what might be to come.

Even if you find your soulmate late. Even if you have to retrace your steps after the fifth mark —You will find him and he will love you. No matter what.

The bells rings again, three more people filing in and causing Taehyung to groan. “I’m sorry guys, I really have to get back to work.”

“That’s okay,” Jin says. “We have to pick Namjoon up anyway.”

The florist nods, hugging Jin and then — to your surprise — hugging you too. “Stay hopeful,” he whispers.

You shoot him an honest smile, thanking him as you wave him goodbye. Jin and you push past the people standing by the roses, having an avid discussion about whether pink or crimson is a better choice. You chuckle.

Once outside, you breathe in the clear air. “He’s nice,” you say.

Seokjin shakes his head with a laugh. “I can’t believe you’d listen to Taehyung out of all people.”

“He was pretty convincing.”

“Well, I’ll take that as a success. Stop worrying, and look ahead. You have a future full of love waiting for you.” Jin goes to pull you in for a hug, when he stops and stares. “Wait, your hand.”

You look down, eyes nearly falling out of their sockets when you see the fourth scar on your finger. Yet, this time there is no pain or hollowness in your chest. “I...”

“Come,” Seokjin grabs your wrist and pulls you back inside. There, you look at the people you pushed past. Two woman, one man. But the man already has a soulmate mark on his ring finger.

Taehyung looks up and meets your frightened eyes. “Is everything okay?”

You hold up your hand and he gasps.

All you can do is shake your head, looking over to the man in the far corner. Even his soulmate mark is clear from this distance. All of the people inside have soulmate marks, or less scars than you. Then...

“The guy!” You stumble as you turn to look at Jin. “The black haired guy by the lilies! It must’ve been him.”

Taehyung joins you. “The one from earlier? I didn’t catch his name, I’m so sorry.”

You shake your head, taking a deep breath to hold yourself together. “It’s fine.” That’s when you start to feel the slight burn. It rises along with the bile in your throat. Looking at your hand, you know that now everything hangs by a thread.

Only one encounter left

One encounter to find the man with now black hair who seems to love lilies.

Soulmates of the fifth mark are the most patient. Their love is tender and serene.

“I regret my decisions,” you grumble under your breath as Namjoon pulls you along towards where the party is already in full swing.

Apparently Hoseok had pulled a few strings and one of the university dorm buildings now had their courtyard turned into a gigantic club. Music thrums in your ears, lights flashing as you follow your best friend into the crowd.

“You need to get out of the house more often,” Namjoon says close to your ear. “Jungkook should be here somewhere too.”

You whine. This isn’t your scene. Or well — not anymore. It used to be when you were in the first year of university. Your wild phase. But now that you have your thesis looming over your head, you really can’t be bothered to get drunk on a regular basis. Unlike Jungkook, whom you often had to guide to his bed in the middle of the night.

Namjoon is right though. You haven’t really been going out a lot lately and it wasn’t doing you any good. Taehyung’s words have impacted you, you haven’t lost hope. Instead, you just feel incredibly lonely.

Jungkook is seeing this random girl. Seeing meaning fucking. So he’s out of the house quite a lot. Namjoon and Jin too. They’ve been planning to go on a long holiday over the summer, so they’re gathering supplies and getting everything in order. You know they would make time for you. It’s just not that easy to ask.

Even if you’ve never really met your soulmate, you feel like they’re missing. Like you’ve had them and they’re now gone. That strange hollow feeling in your chest is always on the back of your mind. Nagging. Body aching to be held. To be warm. Home.

“Okay, you’re zoning out,” Namjoon gives you a little shove. “Let’s get drinks.”

Soon, you find yourself in the crowd, dancing with a beer in your hand. It’s easier to lose yourself when everyone else is, following the music as it guides you. You laugh at Namjoon. He’s not the most coordinated person, but he’s having fun at least. It makes you smile, to see him smile.

A pair of arm snakes around your waist, body stumbling into yours from behind. Followed by a whiny drawl of your name and a wet brush of lips over your neck.

“Jungkook!” You squeal, pushing him off with a scowl. It takes one look at him to know that he’s already too drunk. “Dude, are you like, okay?”

He nods, smile as bright as ever, but eyes glassy and cheeks red. “M fine. Very fine. Much fine.”

Namjoon grabs him by the arm when he starts swaying on his feet. “How much have you had to drink?”

“Dunno,” he giggles. “Five...teen? Where’s Jin?”

“Not here,” your friend answers, hand firm around Jungkook’s upper arm. “When did you start drinking?”

You feel a little bad for the younger. There’s no way he’s going to make it through the entire night, probably not even another hour. The boy might be able to hold some liquor, but even he has his limits.

“He was here for the set up,” you state.

“Hmm, was fun.”

“Jungkook! Don’t wander off like that.” A voice calls. From the crowd a young man with jet black hair appears. Full lips and a beautiful smile as he hugs Jungkook close to him. “God, you stink,” he grumbles, giving Jungkook a once-over. “You, my man, are cut off for tonight.”

Jungkook whines, pout on his lips but no fight left in his body. He keeps his arms wrapped around Jimin’s neck.

Then, Jimin turns to you. “You must be the infamous roommate? I’m Jimin.” Jimin’s wearing a white t-shirt with a deep cut v-neck where a pendant dangles against his tan skin. The fabric falls past his hips. Just shy of the waistband of his jeans, revealing a sliver of skin.

His smile is friendly — handsome — so you return it as you shake his outstretched hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Namjoon gives him a short wave.

“Say,” Jimin laughs as Jungkook leans into his chest, now just hugging him. “I’m going to get the kid some fresh air, would you mind fetching him some water.”

“I’ll come,” Namjoon says to Jimin, grabbing for Jungkook’s other side. “We’ll be at the south end, where we came in,” he says to you.

You nod, watching them go and quickly turning to head for the bar.

Your entire chest is cold before you realise what happened and you bump into someone.

“Shit,” a deep voice sounds.

Looking down you notice that your light blue shirt is now dark — is that red wine? The stain spreads over your chest and side. You look up to meet eyes with the stranger who is absolutely mortified at the sight of your ruined shirt.

“God, fuck, I’m so sorry.”

You’re uncertain of what to do, looking between him and your top. “I — It’ll be fine I’ll go rinse it in the bathroom or something.” The shirt sticks to your skin. His is stained too, but it’s not as noticeable on the grey fabric that frames his chest.

He shakes his head, black hair falling behind the frame of his round glasses. Eyes brown, warm yet sharp. “No, it won’t be. It’s not just going to come out.”

You let out a dry chuckle. “Thanks. That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“Yeah, uh,” he pauses, rubbing the back of his head. His arm flexes, black leather jacket raising and stretching the tucked-in fabric of his shirt over his frame. He’s attractive, you note. “I’m not trying to be weird but,” he falters, “I live on the third floor, if you want I can give it a quick soak.”

“And go topless?” You deadpan.

“No.” His voice is jolty, eyes widening briefly. Strangely, the leather jacket, messy hair and — is that a choker around his neck? “You could borrow a shirt of mine, really, it’s no big deal. I’m so sorry.”

Is he really offering you to lend you a shirt and clean yours at a college party when you don’t know him? “I —“

“Yoongi! Y/N!” That familiar voice. Hoseok appears from behind you, a drink in his hand and cheeks flushed with the effects of it. “What’s — ew. What happened?” He stares at the stain on your chest. If it wasn’t for that stain you’d have whacked him over the head. “Is that red wine?”

Both you and the guy who’s apparently called Yoongi, nod in unison, causing Hoseok to let out a weird sound.

“Yoongs, I can't believe you brought red wine to my party.”

Yoongi shrugs. “It’s my money.”

Hoseok rolls his eyes, looking at your shirt again. “That’s gonna stain.”

“I know, your friend here offered to lend me a shirt,” you say with a nervous chuckle, giving Yoongi another look. “Can I trust him? Or is he gonna murder me as soon as he gets me alone?” Over the past year, you’ve gotten to know Hoseok well through spending time together studying for Law Clinic. You’ll trust him for this.

He gives you a grin, one that seems to hold implications of a less friendly nature. “Trust Yoongi? I mean, he wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Hoseok pauses with his eyes on his friend, and then he leans into your ear. “Unless you asked him to.”

“Okay!” you yelp, pushing him away from you while Yoongi sends Hoseok a glare. “This thing is starting to stick, and it reeks. I’ll take you up on your offer, let’s go.”

Yoongi smiles, shaking his head. “Come on,” he motions for you to follow. Leaving Hoseok behind in the crowd, he pushes towards the main entrance. Unlocking the door and leading you inside.

“What did Hoseok just say to you?” he questions.

Your cheeks flush as you enter the elevator. “You don’t want to know.”

“If he said something about the incident with the peanut butter, I just want to say that I’m innocent,” he says with horror crossing his expression

“What?”

“What?”

You laugh, exiting the elevator before him. “He didn’t say anything about peanut butter, but now you’ve piqued my interest.”

“Forget I mentioned it,” he says with an awkward smile.

“Maybe,” you hum, letting him struggle with his key at his front door. “Or I’ll bring it up some other time.”

“You don’t even know me!”

“I know Hoseok though. I could ask him.”

Yoongi’s eyes narrow as he blocks the entrance. “You wouldn’t.”

“Give me that shirt you talked about and we will see if I can have mercy on you.”

He gives in and lets you enter. The apartment is small, one of the single studios in the complex. It seems cozy, a little messy but it's nothing you’re used to from being a student yourself. A bed sits in the corner by the window, an electrical piano at the foot of it.

You watch as Yoongi walks towards the dresser, swiftly pulling out a black t-shirt that’s neatly folded. A clothes bag hangs over the side, probably holding a suit. Is he graduating this year?

“Here,” he hands you the shirt.

It’s soft, certainly not cheap by any means. “Thanks, where’s—“

“There,” he says, pointing at the door by the entrance. “There’s washcloths in the cabinet under the sink if you want one.”

You awkwardly stand in the middle of his apartment, uncertain of your actions. Yoongi is nice, attractive, a little hesitant but certainly not shy. Turning to the bathroom, you notice the sheet music sprawled over the bedsheets and the bouquet of flowers on the kitchen counter.

“I’m really sorry, again,” he says sheepishly.

“It happens, don’t worry.” It’s not the first time a piece of your clothing has gotten ruined by a spilled drink. You can’t be bothered to get upset over it.

The bathroom is small, a little cramped even. Nothing more than a curtain to stop the entire place from getting wet when the shower turns on. Student accommodation at its finest. It might be cheap and convenient, but you’re not getting any special treatment. Which is why you were so adamant on moving in with Namjoon when you started your degree.

Under the sink, you find a neat stack of light blue washcloths. To your surprise they’re soft, certainly dried in a dryer and not on a rack. You run it under the tap, squeezing out the excess water before pulling your shirt over your head.

“Yoongi,” you call, creaking open the door a little. “Were you going to soak my top?”

“If you want me to. It’s worth a try to get the stain out.” Like this, with the thumping of the bass merely a background ruffle, you notice the rasp in his voice. Deeper than you’d originally thought.

You hold the shirt out through the door. “Here.”

His hand grazes yours as he takes hold of the soiled fabric. Long fingers grazing yours. Pausing. He holds you and you feel your heart skip. Then, he lets go, not saying another word.

Trying to be quick, as to not inconvenience Yoongi any further, you swipe the washcloth against your red-stained skin. It’s sticky more than anything. The smell of red wine pungent. You’ve never liked it, wondering how he stands it. Rubbing the cloth over the small stain on your jeans is futile. It’ll need a wash.

You rinse the washcloth with warm water, leaving it over the edge to dry. His hand soap smells of vanilla and coconut, and you thoroughly scrub your hands.

No.

With the water still running over your hands, you stare. Blinking. At first you try to rub the little red line on your thumb. Thinking it’s a stain. But it’s not coming off no matter how hard you rub it.

Your soulmate mark.

A fuzzy, warm sensation as you touch it. Heart clenching, thumping loudly and overtaking the buzz of the music.

Who? It happened tonight, after you’d arrived.

Jimin! You gasp at the realisation

Hastily pulling on Yoongi’s shirt, you throw open the bathroom door. “Thank you!” you call, quick to leave. “I gotta go!” You give him no time to reply, darting out the front door.

The music envelops you, and you lean over the railing to look. Where did Namjoon say they would be again? South end, right?

You nod to yourself, chest heavy with anticipation of finally meeting him.

A voice passes you by as you start to run again. You’re startled by a hand clasping around your wrist.

You’re stopped, unceremoniously pulled back into someone’s chest. “No, listen, I—“

“Like hell I’m letting you slip between my fingers again,” Yoongi speaks.

You meet his expectant gaze that lower to where his fingers encase your wrist. His heart is pounding louder than yours, right below where your other hand had landed on his chest. Fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt, you stare.

It’s hard to miss the red line around his thumb where it brushes up to touch your own fingers. Everything suddenly is set ablaze, right at he touches your mark. It’s when you know...

You’ve come home.

Yoongi lets out a deep sigh that resonates within you.

“Finally,” he whispers, suddenly pulling you close to press his nose into your hair.

You hiccup, tears suddenly falling at the disbelief. Yoongi is your soulmate. It’s not even a suspicion. It’s a certainty. A warmth that spreads through your entire being as you let him wrap his arms around your shoulders. Your own hands splayed over his chest, hearts beating in sync.

“It’s okay,” he says with his lips lowered to your temple.

He smells like red wine and cologne, tinged with something that could be coffee, or chocolate. You inhale deeply. This is him, your soulmate. Just that feeling alone comforts the ache you’ve been feeling, dulling it to something that’s still overwhelming.

Yoongi pulls away, cupping your cheeks to have you look up at him. “At university, when you were running to class. At the station. The library. The flower shop?”

You nod, winding your arms around his neck. Fingers brushing through his hair.

His eyes are a deep brown, lashes framing them with what may be a hint of eyeliner or eyeshadow. Does it even matter when looking into his eyes makes you feel like nothing else exists but him?

A strangled sound leaves your throat, unsure of what to say, but knowing all too well what to do. You pull him down. Lips crashing together in the heat of the moment.

Yoongi gasps, but he doesn’t falter. Hands catching your back as he stumbles, pressing you up against the wall. He tastes like red wine too, but you’ll forgive it because it’s him.

His lips are soft, moving over yours as if you’ve had years to practice. Fingers digging into all the right places. Your hips, your waist, the top of your thighs. A grin against your mouth, and a huff against your cheek as you lean in further. You trace the seam of his lips with your tongue, and he lets you in without missing a beat.

Bliss. Euphoria. It overcomes you — grounds you in the way you’ve needed all this time. He grounds you. Holding you against him, fitting precisely like he was made for you. Maybe he was.

He swipes his tongue over yours, tilting your head back just a little further. Cradling you with his hand so you don’t collide with the wall. But it puts you at his mercy, making you keen.

At the sound, he parts, panting and resting his forehead against yours.

“Wow,” you breathe.

He chuckles, cheeky grin pulling at one corner of his mouth. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Oh, now he gets cocky.”

Yoongi leans in again, brushing his lips over yours. “It’s not every day that you get to kiss your soulmate for the first time,” he whispers. “But I can give you a wow too, if you want.”

Your ears heat up along with your already red cheeks. Fingers still holding tightly onto the lapels of his leather jacket, you bite your lip. “What now?”

He thumbs are your bottom lip, pulling it free. A little entranced, eyes zoning in. “I could think of a few things.”

“Hey!” You slap his arm. “We may be bound by fate, but I’m not having sex with you before you take me out on a date.”

He rubs his arm with a scrunched up nose. “That’s not what I meant!”

You sigh, followed by a chuckle, unable to remove the smile that is making your cheeks hurt. His eyes still shine though, even when he gives you a pout.

“Then what?” you ask.

He shrugs, suddenly a little shy in the way he brushes your hair over your shoulder. Hand trailing down your arm to brush the line on your thumb as if his body already knows where it is better than you do.

“Call me cheesy,” he mumbles while taking your hand and brushing your thumb against his lips. Veins line his fingers, and it’s now that you notice how soft his hands are. “But I really just want to hold you and wake up beside you.”

How could you possibly say no to the shy, gummy smile that appears on his face. You know you can trust him, deep within your soul. You know you want him. Your body aches to be near him. So you kiss him again. “I think that can be arranged,” you mumble against his mouth.

But in the end, love is what is at the core of all soulmate relationships.

Yoongi hums against your bare shoulder, one of your legs lifted over his stomach as he trails his fingers over your thigh. Nails slightly scratching, soothingly drawing patterns, up and down, over and under, until you’re shivering and smiling into his hair. He grabs you when you do, fingers digging into your flesh and making you laugh.

Two months have gone by so fast. Fast enough that it still seems as if it was yesterday when you stood in his apartment with your shirt drenched in red wine. A shirt that didn’t survive the encounter.

Now, you lie in his bed. Skin to skin in the warm confined of his sheets. Yoongi’s humming a tune from one of the songs he’s been practicing on the piano the past week. A classical piece. One that’s brought him many frustrated nights. Cracking knuckles sounding through his small studio as he sighed in defeat, bent over the instrument for hours.

You’ve had enough time to study him. Enough time to know how to help him relax. It’s how you ended up in bed, naked and sweaty, breathing each other in until it was all you knew. Until he forgot about those damned black and white keys that had him by the throat most of his days.

Studying music wasn’t easy, but his passion burned brighter than his frustration. It fuels him.

It’s what fuelled him as he drowned himself in you.

“So,” you finally say, “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

Yoongi stops his ministrations, craning his neck to look you in the eyes. “Oh, that’s why you interrupted my practice?” he teases, mischievous glint in his eyes much like that first night you met him.

You raise a single eyebrow. “As if you weren’t three bars away from ripping the keys off your poor piano.” Shifting over, you sit over his stomach with legs braced on either side of his waist.

Naturally, his hands hold you there, fingers fitting perfectly along the curve of your body. You reach down without breaking eye contact, tracing his mark. He shivers at the gesture.

Nobody has ever told you how sensitive soulmate marks were. That having your soulmate touch them felt like an electric current running through your body, setting you alight. Like you connected each time. A warm, simmering feeling that you’d never experienced before. Something you can’t truly describe. So much more than words can define. It runs deep.

Yoongi brushes his hand over your bare chest to twirl a strand of your hair between his fingers. “What is it?”

“Now that we’ve been together for two months, I think it’s time you tell me about the Peanut Butter Incident.”

He groans loudly, hands dropping from your body. “I beg of you, anything but that.” Yoongi is so much more dramatic than he seems at first glance. Shifting between calm and collected to goofy and outgoing when he’s with the right people. Like Hoseok, who you know has been his close friend since they were freshmen.

“Please.” You pout at him, taking his hands and lacing your fingers together.

“Why do you torture me like this?”

“Torture?” you gasp.

He tightens his hold on your hand, and shifts, effectively flipping you over so you’re under him. “Looking at me like that is not fair,” he says while thumbing at your bottom lip that was previously jutted out. One of his legs slides between yours, your hand resting on his bicep.

“If you tell me,” you trail, fingers tracing down his arm to grab his wrist. Lifting his hand to rest over the back of your thigh. “I promise I’ll let you do anything.”

Contemplation crosses his face, making his eyes narrow. He meets your gaze for a mere second, before he grazes your cheek with his fingers. Brushing along your throat, his eyes darken momentarily. A mere flash. “Anything?” he asks, tonguing the corner of his mouth.

“Anything.”

He runs his hand through his own hair, pushing the black strands back to reveal his forehead and furrowed eyebrows. “You can’t judge me.”

“I’m sure it can’t be that bad if it involves peanut butter.”

The story hasn’t even left his mouth and his cheeks are already flushed. He groans. “Fine. Okay.” He takes a minute to gather himself, thinking hard of how to word whatever happened on that cursed day. It makes you worry a little. But it also makes you more curious. “It was my first year in college. Me, Hoseok and a few of our friends had gotten together to get absolutely shit-faced.”

You’re not surprised to hear that this somehow involved alcohol.

“We were playing truth or dare,” he trails off, words getting stuck in his mouth as a flush creeps down his neck.

Then, he sighs, covering his face with his hand. “Do I have to incriminate myself like this?”

You chuckle. “Yes, you must.”

“Why?”

“Because you love me.”

His hand drops down from his face so he can narrow his eyes at you. “Aren’t you lucky.” You laugh at his comment, happiness blooming in your chest at the hidden confirmation. Yoongi has been hesitant to say it, but you know he feels as strongly as you do.

“So, we’re playing truth or dare,” he continues, “and Hoseok puts a target on my back. Sadly, I was too drunk to save myself and I picked dare.”

“No!”

He waves you to silence. “The fucker looks me dead in the eye. Knowing full well that I had a crush on the girl sitting next to me at the time. And he dares to lick peanut butter off her—“

You gasp, clasping a hand over your mouth to stifle the sounds. He glares at you as your apology comes muffled through your fingers. “Off her what?” 

Again, he covers his face. “Off her...chest.”

“Oh.”

Yoongi peaks through his fingers. “What ‘oh’?”

You shrug. “Is that it? You had to lick peanut butter off a girl’s tits when you were a freshman?”

He bites his bottom lip, worrying before he rushes, “Igotturnedon.”

Five seconds pass in which you stare at him with raised eyebrows. “You mean you got a—“

“Yes,” he grits out, not wanting you to say it.

Laughter bubbles up from your lips. You really can’t help it. It’s more so the sight of his flushed ears and grumpy face than the story itself. Through the tears shining at the corners of your eyes, you grab his hands and force them away from his face. “Yoongi,” you whine while still laughing. “Yoongi, look at me.”

“No.” He turns away from you, but not before you catch the shy smile splaying out over his lips.

Pressing yourself against this back, you kiss the spot just behind his ear. Yoongi shivers, going pliant in your hold. “Babe.” The word is a whisper, fanning out over his cheek.

Your soulmate will always pretend to have a strong revolve, and he does. Just not when it comes to you. A deep, dramatic sigh shakes his frame when he finally turns to come nose to nose with you.

“What?”

A giggly kiss to his nose. “You’re a fool.”

He gives you a hard stare, placing a firm hand on your hip. “Am I now?”

You nod, kissing his lips softly until he responds and kisses you back. Groaning as you push him onto his back, tongue slipping past his lips to taste. To kiss him deeply and feel his body slot together with yours until it’s all your senses register.

Fingers digging into your skin. Heaved breaths and hearts that swell with happiness and sink again with relief. Yoongi’s hands both trailing up your back, the feel of them so soft.

Humming against his lips, you break away with another peck. “You’re my fool.”

Special thanks to: @yoongs-jeontae @mygsii @softlyjiminie @jiminsfault​ @justbtses​ @honeymoonjin​ @joonsrack​ @bangtiddies​

@clarissalance @jishookedout134 @leuchtendesstrassenlicht @carolithe @accidentxlly @goldhoneyyy @chimkookie @jksnipslip @ggukiebabes @thinksshesawolf @xiubaek-13​

All rights reserved © GguksGalaxy 2020 

[keltonwrites]

How do I become courageous? How do I stop letting the anxiety over the uncertainty of future, or the fear of other people's judgement, dictate my life's narrative?

Ten years ago, my Zoloft prescription ran out the day I had a tumor sliced out of my neck. The surgery was on a Monday. I woke up with chest pain and nerve damage in my face. They kept me until Wednesday morning. I left the hospital with a drainage bag attached to my neck, pinned to the collar of my shirt. I couldn’t move the right side of my face. I emailed my boss.“The surgery was a little more intense than I anticipated. I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it in this week.”“Please be here on Friday.”I went to work on Friday. I couldn’t brush my hair because the pressure on my neck was too painful. The blood bag seeped occasionally on my shirt. I had the kind of sleep anyone has after their ear is partially sliced off to remove a tumor burrowing beneath it. Don’t worry — they sewed it back on. (The ear, not the tumor.)On Friday, because I didn’t understand how boundaries or rights worked, I walked across the National Institutes of Health campus toward my building looking more like a patient than an employee. My boss stared at me and then didn’t speak to me again. I wrote for four hours before I went into her office.“I need to go home.”“Have a nice weekend!” She beamed, actively looking everywhere that was not my blood bag.I smiled, sort of. The right side of my face was still temporarily paralyzed, so the left side of my mouth hoisted my cursory courtesy smile by itself.“Gonna work on my face,” I said pointing to my partially slack expression.“Sorry?”“Nerve damage. Gonna try to exercise it. Do some heavy lifting while I watch TV,” I said, my face contorting from the kind of stifled laughter usually reserved for broken ribs and strict teachers.“Ok!” She almost yelled, her own face contorting with discomfort.Over the next two weeks—tumor and medication free—I lost my mind. Stop me if you’ve heard this before. I gave away my percocet. I dyed my hair. I adopted a cat. I started a blog. And nine months later, I started a challenge called Bold Moves October. I started it because so much of my day-to-day life felt defined by inaction and complacency. Plus, the October prior is when the doctors had said, “we’re really not sure if it’s cancer or not.” Followed immediately by, “we can schedule you for surgery in three months.”It was a long three months. Death all of a sudden seemed like something that could happen. In my 23-year-old wisdom, this meant I should be more proactive. For better or worse, I primarily applied this proactivity to flirting.

We can’t all learn life’s great lessons on the first go.Anyway, that blog and that mini movement of boldness changed the trajectory of my life. One thing toppled into another. Over the next few years that blog and challenge would (directly and tangentially) get me a book deal, writing contracts, sport sponsorships, job offers, the friendship of my favorite author, the adoration of my husband, and a full-time job as an editor that would be the two best professional years of my life.The period I spent working on that blog was obviously good. It was also the most derided and insulted I would ever be. I lost friendships. I received hate mail and death threats (in 2011 no less, before every Twitter account with too many numbers in the screen name became an amateur fear monger.) I allowed people to send me anonymous messages because it was a way for people to share how they were struggling without revealing their identities. But that meant I couldn’t protect myself from anonymous and un-trackable threats. God only knows what my parents thought. (In this scenario, I am God. I know what they thought.)Courage often doesn’t feel good. The only courage that exists without anxiety is arrogance. There is not a life where you, a person who wrote anonymously to an all-but-dead Tumblr, live without the anxiety of others’ judgment. But there is also not a life where you, who—again—wrote asking for advice anonymously to an all-but-dead Tumblr, aren’t a person defined by desperate chances and hope. I apologize that you sent me that note months ago, but I assure you, it is because I too was flexing courage, letting it coarse through my veins and vanquish months of chronic nausea.Like you, I was fussing about in the woods of my life, looking for something that resembled a path. Not necessarily a path without sinkholes or poison leaves, but rather one worth them.Your path, the one it sounds like you’re trying to find, will be overgrown with the thorns of judgment and anxiety. But they’re just thorns. They’re on every path. They’re hurting you just as much on the wrong path as they will on the right one.Normally I give very ethereal advice that’s difficult to act on. It’s more like a song than an action item, but in this scenario, you don’t need to listen to someone else. You also don’t need to have a tumor spliced from your insides to remind you that at some point, our chances run out. All you need is to develop the skill of listening to yourself. For a couple of months, relax with the courage. Courage is just an instagram word for having a strong inner constitution. And that is something you can develop without framing it in the same terms we use to go to battle. 

To do the work, I recommend a few things. 

If you don’t already, move your body. I know how much people hate this advice. But if you can hike or run or cycle or even just briskly walk (without podcasts) for a minimum of 20 minutes a day, you should. Our gut, our intuition, our inner sense of self or whatever you want to call her, she’s not going to feel safe coming out when you’re in the mental thicket of other people’s narratives. Exercise is the closest humans have to Drano for the mind. 

Find a journaling exercise that feels like maybe it’s a little too much work. If it feels conquerable, it’s too easy. I go back to Susannah Conway’s Unravel Your Year. Doesn’t matter if it’s a new year. Time is a construct. 

Get the book Designing Your Life. You may not design an entirely new one, but it may help in making change feel conquerable, or just possible. If that book feels too “action item” oriented, try The Artist’s Way. It’s much more about knowing yourself than it is about art.

Make a list of the narratives that you feel other people are suffocating you with. Maybe dad wants you to be a doctor. Maybe girlfriend wants you to settle down a little. Maybe boss wants you to focus on the clerical side of your job. Maybe society wants you to buy an apartment you can’t afford. Whatever or whoever it is you feel is pressuring you, write it down. You need to know your demons to exercise them. You might even find, in time, that you even like some of these visions. They’re not the enemy. Pressure is. And pressure is only defeated by self. Isn’t that annoying?

Write to me again. Impress me. Give yourself a few challenges each week. Whether it’s applying for a class, trying something you’re bound to be bad at, getting up half an hour early to dance your heart out before work, I don’t care. Do some things that are for you. Not for others, not for profit, not for your future — just for you right now. And then use me for more than an anonymous submission on the internet. Use me as a deadline. Sometimes all it takes to get over the hurdle of pressure is a little validation. I’m here for that whenever you need me.  

I’m recommending these things because I just did them.

I gave myself a deadline to change my life. Not that it was bad, it just felt… well it felt exactly how it did ten years ago: full of inaction and complacency. I was on cruise control, taking few chances, taking really nothing at all. So the next thing I took was an exit. I wanted to see what life looked like when things weren’t all concrete and white lines. I quit my job. I camped around the west. I picked up a few new hobbies. I journaled more than I did all of 7th grade. My year-long bout of nausea went away. I started to dance again. I wrote songs again. I wrote in general again. And I dug around in my psyche for the truth about what I always liked doing, what the through-lines in all my good jobs have been. Very simply, the strongest through-line was the encouragement and empowerment of others.

Most of the writing I’m doing right now will be private until it isn’t. I’m writing a horror film and still working on my first novel. But I need a weekly way to interact with people via writing lest I lose my lonely mind, so I’m bringing back the one thing got me into writing in the first place: answering people’s questions.

After writing Anonymous Asked, I was too embarrassed to promote the book. I’ve never re-read it. I fell into the spiral of what other people thought: of me, of the work, of my ideas. But I’d rather be fulfilled and insulted than bored out of my mind and forgotten.

So to encourage your courage, I am flexing a little bit of my own. My newsletter (of which this essay is a part) is now called “A Little Bit Better” and the whole point is that it helps you feel a little bit better. You can subscribe to it here. It will include essays like this and other bits of things that made that week a little bit better. I hope you enjoy it. I know I will. See you there.I wrote this while listening to:It’s a Storm - Young & SickSwing - Mahmut Orhan Remix by Soki Tukker and Mahmut OrhanKissing Other People - Lennon StellaScared to Death - Jax AndersonSound of Your Voice - Griff

[theculturedmarxist]

The New York Times is literally a propaganda outlet and Timothy Egan is a deceitful chode. His every word drips with the anxious desperation of the Democrats who know their goose is cooked.

Watching “Succession,” the HBO show about the most despicable plutocrats to seize the public imagination since the Trumps were forced on us, made me want to tax the ultrarich into a homeless shelter. And it almost made a Bernie Bro of me.

That’s the thing about class loathing: It feels good, a moral high with its own endorphins, but is ultimately self-defeating. A Bernie Sanders rally is a hit from the same pipe: Screw those greedy billionaire bastards!

Sanders has passion going for him. He has authenticity. He certainly has consistency: His bumper-sticker sloganeering hasn’t changed for half a century. He was, “even as a young man, an old man,” as Time magazine said.

But he cannot beat Donald Trump, for the same reason people do not translate their hatred of the odious rich into pitchfork brigades against walled estates.

Because powerful oligarchs that own their government murder them with impunity when they do.

>March 7 was a bitterly cold day in Detroit, and a crowd estimated at between 3,000 and 5,000 gathered near the Dearborn city limits, about a mile from the Ford plant. The Detroit Times called it "one of the coldest days of the winter, with a frigid gale whooping out of the northwest". Marchers carried banners reading "Give Us Work, "We Want Bread Not Crumbs", and "Tax the Rich and Feed the Poor". Albert Goetz gave a speech, asking that the marchers avoid violence. The march proceeded peacefully along the streets of Detroit until it reached the Dearborn city limits.

>There, the Dearborn police attempted to stop the march by firing tear gas into the crowd and began hitting marchers with clubs. One officer fired a gun at the marchers. The unarmed crowd scattered into a field covered with stones, picked them up, and began throwing stones at the police. The angry marchers regrouped and advanced nearly a mile toward the plant. There, two fire engines began spraying cold water onto the marchers from an overpass. The police were joined by Ford security guards and began shooting into the crowd. Marchers Joe York, Coleman Leny and Joe DeBlasio were killed, and at least 22 others were wounded by gunfire.

>The leaders decided to call off the march at that point and began an orderly retreat. Harry Bennett, head of Ford security, drove up in a car, opened a window, and fired a pistol into the crowd. Immediately, the car was pelted with rocks, and Bennett was injured. He got out of the car and continued firing at the retreating marchers. Dearborn police and Ford security men opened fire with machine guns on the retreating marchers. Joe Bussell, 16 years old, was killed, and dozens more men were wounded. Bennett was hospitalized for his injury.

> All of the seriously wounded marchers were arrested, and the police chained many to their hospital beds after they were admitted for treatment. A nationwide search was conducted for William Z. Foster, but he was not arrested. No law enforcement or Ford security officer was arrested, although all reliable reports showed that they had engaged in all the gunfire, resulting in deaths, injuries and property damage. The New York Times reported that "Dearborn streets were stained with blood, streets were littered with broken glass and the wreckage of bullet-riddled automobiles, and nearly every window in the Ford plant's employment building had been broken".

The United States has never been a socialist country, even when it most likely should have been one, during the robber baron tyranny of the Gilded Age or the desperation of the Great Depression, and it never will be. Which isn’t to say that American capitalism is working; it needs Teddy Roosevelt-style trustbusting and restructuring. We’re coming for you, Facebook.

Yeah, just look how well that’s worked out, you fucking idiot.

The next month presents the last chance for serious scrutiny of Sanders, who is leading in both Iowa and New Hampshire. After that, Republicans will rip the bark off him. When they’re done, you will not recognize the aging, mouth-frothing, business-destroying commie from Ben and Jerry’s dystopian dairy. Demagogy is what Republicans do best. And Sanders is ripe for caricature. 

The same Republicans that got their breakfast ate by the dottering windbag cheetoman? The same Republicans that are unpopular with over half the fucking country? The same Republicans which have shown majority support for Sanders’s policies in the past? Those are the Republicans you’re talking about, right, Timothy, you fucking asshole?

I’m not worried about the Russian stuff — Bernie’s self-described “very strange honeymoon” to the totalitarian hell of the Soviet Union in 1988, and his kind words for similar regimes. Compared with a president who is a willing stooge for the Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, a little vodka-induced dancing with the red bear is peanuts.

Nor am I worried about the legitimate questions concerning the candidate’s wife, Jane Sanders, who ran a Vermont college into the ground. Again, Trump’s family of grifters — from Ivanka securing her patents from China while Daddy made other promises to Beijing, to Don Jr.’s using the White House to leverage the family brand — give Democrats more than enough ammunition to return the fire.

This is fun. Due to a complete lack of incriminating conduct, little Timmy has to invent wrongdoing to libel Jane Sanders. I suppose he’s relying on his readers being too stupid to read the article that he himself links, another NYT hitpiece that desperately tries to paint Ms Sanders as a shady character without anything in the way of tangible proof.

>Federal prosecutors have not spoken publicly about their investigation, though late last year, Ms. Sanders’s lead lawyer said he had been told it had been closed. And while doubts remain about the contribution pledges claimed by the college, the lawyer has said that neither Ms. Sanders nor her husband was even questioned by investigators, indicating a lack of significant evidence of a crime.

>After Ms. Sanders’s ouster, the college’s troubles worsened. It abandoned a promising effort she had undertaken to sell some of its new land to improve its finances, interviews show. A few years later, when it did begin selling, it was to a consortium that secretly included at least one member of its board, raising conflict-of-interest questions.

>There is little question that the college’s 2016 demise can be traced to Ms. Sanders’s decision to champion an aggressive — critics say reckless — plan to buy the land. But with potential students put off by the lack of a campus, and with many such colleges struggling at the time, her move was the academic equivalent of a Hail Mary. Her allies said she never had a chance to fulfill her vision.

>“Jane made an audacious gambit to save the college,” said Genevieve Jacobs, a former faculty member. “It seemed to be a moment of ‘change or die.’”

>In interviews and emails, Ms. Sanders expressed frustration at her dismissal and the college’s failure to continue her rescue plan.

>“They went a completely different direction in every way than what we had proposed and decided upon as a board — with the bank, with the diocese, the bonding agency,” she said. “They didn’t carry out any of the plan. It was very confusing and upsetting at the time.”

The TL;DR seems to be: Jane Sanders tried to save a struggling school with an audacious but risky plan that ended up being aborted when she was let go by by a board, some of the members of which may have had a stake in seeing it fail. At the very least, a much more complex situation than the aspersion of “running it into the ground.”

Trump bragged about sexual assault, paid off a porn star and ran a fraudulent university. He sucks up to dictators and tells a half-dozen lies before he puts his socks on in the morning. A weird column about a rape fantasy from 1972 is not going to sink Bernie when Trump has debased all public discourse.

No, what will get the Trump demagogue factory working at full throttle is the central message of the Sanders campaign: that the United States needs a political revolution. It may very well need one. But most people don’t think so, as Barack Obama has argued. And getting two million new progressive votes in the usual area codes is not going to change that.

“Ah jeez, ah fuck, he has no sexual indiscretions that I can dredge up and his Feminist polemic against pornography and the rape culture that it engenders is old news, and if I actually reported on it honestly people might actually read it and support his ideas. Oh, well, you see, despite the incredible groundswell of support for just such a thing, Barack Obama, the man that gave the banks trillions of dollars and then allowed the state apparatus to function as their gestapo-cum-storm troopers, says we don’t need one!”

Timothy Egan wants to dismiss “two million new progressive votes” after doing a little gaslighting. His Democrat masters don’t want people to remember that it was Obama’s promises of Hope and Change after 8 years of Republican tyranny that generated a record breaking voter turnout. They would also like you to forget that 2016 was a 20-year low in voter turnout. Do you think those things are related, Mr Egan? Do you think that there might be some connection between Obama taking advantage of the desperation of millions of people, betraying them, and then those people not fucking showing up next time, causing your party to lose to the dimwit that they themselves boosted to the position?

Give Sanders credit for moving public opinion along on a living wage, higher taxes on the rich and the need for immediate action to stem the immolation of the planet. Most great ideas start on the fringe and move to the middle.

But some of his other ideas are stillborn, or never get beyond the fringe. Socialism, despite its flavor-of-the-month appeal to young people, is not popular with the general public. Just 39 percent of Americans view socialism positively, a bare uptick from 2010, compared with 87 percent who have a positive view of free enterprise, Gallup found last fall.

“Just” 39 percent of Americans, up 4% from 2016. This is ignoring for the moment that due to Americans’ piss-poor education system they have no idea what “Socialism” means aside from “more government.” Looking at the breakdown of results, it seems as though they just asked people off the top of their head what they thought about X, no definition or elaboration given. Unsurprisingly, when you look at the actual numbers on specific issues, you can see exactly why Egan has to play this deceptive bullshit: of respondents 18-34, 52% have a favorable view of “Socialism,” as opposed to 47% supporting “Capitalism.” This is in sharp contrast to the 35-54 and 55+ cohorts. 65% of Democrats have a favorable view of “Socialism.” Those with a “Liberal” ideology are even more in favor at 74%, Timothy Egan, you massive shithead.

What’s more, American confidence in the economy is now at the highest level in nearly two decades. That’s hardly the best condition for overthrowing the system.

"The highest level in nearly two decades.” That’s faint fucking praise right there.

You can see the tremendous fucking crater caused by the crash in 2007/8, a reversal of a whopping -81 points from the previous year. With many economists forecasting recession beginning either this year or the next, we’ll see how long the confidence lasts. 

So-called Medicare for all, once people understand that it involves eliminating all private insurance, polls at barely above 40 percent in some surveys, versus the 70 percent who favor the option of Medicare for all who want it. Other polls show majority support. But cost is a huge concern. And even Sanders cannot give a price tag for nationalizing more than one-sixth of the economy.

A ban on fracking is a poison pill in a must-win state like Pennsylvania, which Democrats lost by just over 44,000 votes in 2016. Eliminating Immigration and Customs Enforcement, another Sanders plan, is hugely unpopular with the general public.

“Medicare for all is really unpopular, except when it isn’t.”

Hmm, you know? Hmmm.

As for fracking, from his own link:

>A November poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Cook Political Report found that only 39 percent of Pennsylvania swing voters saw a fracking ban as a good idea, even as nearly 7 in 10 of those same voters said they supported the idea of a “Green New Deal” for the environment.

Democrats are whinging on the jobs “lost” to a fracking ban as though it exists in isolation. 39% might support a fracking ban, but 70% support the GND, which could potentially offset the “job loss” with industry that has the potential not to leave their state as a fucking environmentally ruined horror show. I haven’t run the numbers on this, but not living in a cesspool of polluted air and water tends to be pretty popular, Timbo.

More shellgames from Mr Egan regarding abolishing ICE.

> Only 1 in 4 voters in the poll, 25 percent, believe the federal government should get rid of ICE. The majority, 54 percent, think the government should keep ICE. Twenty-one percent of voters are undecided. 

That sounds bad. Maybe it’s not such a good ide

>But a plurality of Democratic voters do support abolishing ICE, the poll shows. Among Democrats, 43 percent say the government should get rid of ICE, while only 34 percent say it should keep ICE.

Oh.

Sanders is a rigid man, and he projects grumpy-old-man rigidity, with his policy prescriptions frozen in failed Marxist pipe dreams. He’s unlikely to change. I sort of like that about his character, in the same way I like that he didn’t cave to the politically correct bullies who went after him for accepting the support of the influential podcaster Joe Rogan.

Democrats win with broad-vision optimists who still shake up the system — Franklin Roosevelt, of course, but also Obama. The D’s flipped 40 House seats in 2018 without using any of Sanders’s stringent medicine. If they stick to that elixir they’ll oust Trump, the goal of a majority of Americans.

Democrats lose with fire-and-brimstone fundamentalists. Three times, the party nominated William Jennings Bryan, the quirky progressive with great oratorical pipes, and three times they were trounced. Look him up, kids. Your grandchildren will do a similar search for Bernie Sanders when they wonder how Donald Trump won a second term.

“Failed Marxist pipe dreams.” Aaaaay lmao. You should also have an inkling something is wrong when you have to go all the way back to FDR to find someone that supports your point. Talk about “poison pills,” Obama proved himself to be as much of a snake as the rest, and the effects of that resonated in 2016 when the Dems ran on a platform of “that’s a nice country you have there, you wouldn’t want Trump to get elected, would you?” How did that work out? You ran one of the most unpopular politicians in the country—after very blatantly rigging the primaries against Sanders to do so—against one of the most unpopular capitalists in the country, and lost, dipshit!

Ironically, I think Timbob’s closing statement will prove true, though not in the way his clown ass intends. Shills like Egan are doing everything they can to try and poison public perception against Sanders and his policies, who only proves increasingly popular as time goes on, so much so in fact that the DNC is already biting its nails and muttering to itself about ways it can try and cheat his supporters again.

In conversations on the sidelines of a DNC executive committee meeting and in telephone calls and texts in recent days, about a half-dozen members have discussed the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on the first ballot at the party’s national convention. Such a move would increase the influence of DNC members, members of Congress and other top party officials, who now must wait until the second ballot to have their say if the convention is contested.

They deny it in the article, claim that changing the rules would be “bad sportsmanship,” but one would be a fool to believe them. If anything, their ambivalence towards relying on Superdelegates would make me even more nervous at this stage. Politico wants it to seem like the DNC is bent on playing fair, but more likely than not they have no intention of changing the convention rules because they believe there’s no need. With Warren’s flagging support and the luke-warm response to Biden, I doubt they’re overcome with optimism of beating Sanders in an honest primary. With all the shenanigans from last time’s primaries in mind, it’s likely that the machinery to rig the results their way is already in place—the primary could already be over before it even begins.

[blackfreethinkers]

Two kindergartners in Utah told a Latino boy that President Trump would send him back to Mexico, and teenagers in Maine sneered "Ban Muslims" at a classmate wearing a hijab. In Tennessee, a group of middle-schoolers linked arms, imitating the president's proposed border wall as they refused to let nonwhite students pass. In Ohio, another group of middle-schoolers surrounded a mixed-race sixth-grader and, as she confided to her mother, told the girl: "This is Trump country."

Since Trump's rise to the nation’s highest office, his inflammatory language — often condemned as racist and xenophobic — has seeped into schools across America. Many bullies now target other children differently than they used to, with kids as young as 6 mimicking the president’s insults and the cruel way he delivers them.

Trump’s words, those chanted by his followers at campaign rallies and even his last name have been wielded by students and school staff members to harass children more than 300 times since the start of 2016, a Washington Post review of 28,000 news stories found. At least three-quarters of the attacks were directed at kids who are Hispanic, black or Muslim, according to the analysis. Students have also been victimized because they support the president — more than 45 times during the same period.

Although many hateful episodes garnered coverage just after the election, The Post found that Trump-connected persecution of children has never stopped. Even without the huge total from November 2016, an average of nearly two incidents per school week have been publicly reported over the past four years. Still, because so much of the bullying never appears in the news, The Post’s figure represents a small fraction of the actual total. It also doesn’t include the thousands of slurs, swastikas and racial epithets that aren’t directly linked to Trump but that the president’s detractors argue his behavior has exacerbated.

“It’s gotten way worse since Trump got elected,” said Ashanty Bonilla, 17, a Mexican American high school junior in Idaho who faced so much ridicule from classmates last year that she transferred. “They hear it. They think it’s okay. The president says it. . . . Why can’t they?”

Asked about Trump’s effect on student behavior, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham noted that first lady Melania Trump — whose “Be Best” campaign denounces online harassment — had encouraged kids worldwide to treat one another with respect.

First lady Melania Trump speaks at the White House in May 2018 about her “Be Best” campaign, which denounces online harassment. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

“She knows that bullying is a universal problem for children that will be difficult to stop in its entirety,” Grisham wrote in an email, “but Mrs. Trump will continue her work on behalf of the next generation despite the media’s appetite to blame her for actions and situations outside of her control.”

Most schools don’t track the Trump bullying phenomenon, and researchers didn’t ask about it in a federal survey of 6,100 students in 2017, the most recent year with available data. One in five of those children, ages 12 to 18, reported being bullied at school, a rate unchanged since the previous count in 2015.

However, a 2016 online survey of over 10,000 kindergarten through 12th-grade educators by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that more than 2,500 “described specific incidents of bigotry and harassment that can be directly traced to election rhetoric,” although the overwhelming majority never made the news. In 476 cases, offenders used the phrase “build the wall.” In 672, they mentioned deportation.

Withrow University High School

Someone sprayed hateful graffiti across campus, declaring "F- - - N-words and Faggots" and "Trump." The graffiti also threatened gay and black students and featured multiple swastikas -- the latter often painted alongside the president's last name.

Lewiston High School

After Ashanty Bonilla, 17, tweeted criticism of Trump supporters who visit Mexico, a classmate posted her message on Snapchat alongside a racist response and a Confederate flag. The next day, classmates heckled the teen with racist jeers, tied a rope to the back of her car and wrote "Republican Trump 2020" on the back window.

Amon Carter-Riverside High School

Georgia Clark, an English teacher in Fort Worth, tweeted at President Trump asking him to remove undocumented immigrants from her high school. She mistakenly believed her messages were private.

For Cielo Castor, who is Mexican American, the experience at Kamiakin High in Kennewick, Wash., was searing. The day after the election, a friend told Cielo, then a sophomore, that he was glad Trump won because Mexicans were stealing American jobs. A year later, when the president was mentioned during her American literature course, she said she didn't support him and a classmate who did refused to sit next to her. “‘I don’t want to be around her,’ ” Cielo recalled him announcing as he opted for the floor instead. Then, on “America night” at a football game in October 2018 during Cielo’s senior year, schoolmates in the student section unfurled a “Make America Great Again” flag. Led by the boy who wouldn’t sit beside Cielo, the teenagers began to chant: “Build — the — wall!” Horrified, she confronted the instigator. “You can’t be doing that,” Cielo told him. He ignored her, she recalled, and the teenagers around him booed her. A cheerleading coach was the lone adult who tried to make them stop. “I felt like I was personally attacked. And it wasn’t like they were attacking my character. They were attacking my ethnicity, and it’s not like I can do anything about that.”

— Cielo Castor

After a photo of the teenagers with the flag appeared on social media, news about what had happened infuriated many of the school’s Latinos, who made up about a quarter of the 1,700-member student body. Cielo, then 17, hoped school officials would address the tension. When they didn’t, she attended that Wednesday’s school board meeting. “I don’t feel cared for,” she told the members, crying. A day later, the superintendent consoled her and the principal asked how he could help, recalled Cielo, now a college freshman. Afterward, school staff members addressed every class, but Hispanic students were still so angry that they organized a walkout. Some students heckled the protesters, waving MAGA caps at them. At the end of the day, Cielo left the school with a white friend who’d attended the protest; they passed an underclassman she didn’t know. “Look,” the boy said, “it’s one of those f---ing Mexicans.” She heard that school administrators — who declined to be interviewed for this article — suspended the teenager who had led the chant, but she doubts he has changed. Reached on Instagram, the teenager refused to talk about what happened, writing in a message that he didn’t want to discuss the incident “because it is in the past and everyone has moved on from it.” At the end, he added a sign-off: “Trump 2020.”

President Trump’s rhetoric has been condemned as racist and xenophobic since his candidacy began in 2015. Here is what he’s said. (The Washington Post)

Just as the president has repeatedly targeted Latinos, so, too, have school bullies. Of the incidents The Post tallied, half targeted Hispanics.

In one of the most extreme cases of abuse, a 13-year-old in New Jersey told a Mexican American schoolmate, who was 12, that “all Mexicans should go back behind the wall.” A day later, on June 19, 2019, the 13-year-old assaulted the boy and his mother, Beronica Ruiz, punching him and beating her unconscious, said the family’s attorney, Daniel Santiago. He wonders to what extent Trump’s repeated vilification of certain minorities played a role.

More than 300 Trump-inspired harassment incidents reported by news outlets from 2016-2019

Anti-Hispanic: 45%

Anti-black: 23%

Anti-Semitic: 7%

Anti-Muslim: 8%

Anti-LGBT: 4%

Anti-Trump: 14%

Note: Some incidents targeted multiple groups and, in other cases, the ethnicity/gender/religion of the intended target was unclear. Figures may not precisely add up because of rounding.

“When the president goes on TV and is saying things like Mexicans are rapists, Mexicans are criminals — these children don’t have the cognitive ability to say, ‘He’s just playing the role of a politician,’ ” Santiago argued. “The language that he’s using matters.” Ruiz’s son, who is now seeing a therapist, continues to endure nightmares from an experience that may take years to overcome. But experts say that discriminatory language can, on its own, harm children, especially those of color who may already feel marginalized. “It causes grave damage, as much physical as psychological,” said Elsa Barajas, who has counseled more than 1,000 children in her job at the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health. As a result, she has seen Hispanic students suffer from sleeplessness, lose interest in school, and experience inexplicable stomach pain and headaches.

For Ashanty Bonilla, the damage began with the response to a single tweet she shared 10 months ago. “Unpopular opinion,” Ashanty, then 16 and a sophomore at Lewiston High School in rural Idaho, wrote on April 9. “People who support Trump and go to Mexico for vacation really piss me off. Sorry not sorry.” Some of Ashanty Bonilla’s classmates at Lewiston High in rural Idaho harassed her last April after she tweeted a comment critical of Trump supporters. (Rajah Bose/For The Washington Post) A schoolmate, who is white, took a screen shot of her tweet and posted it to Snapchat, along with a Confederate flag. “Unpopular opinion but: people that are from Mexico and come in to America illegally or at all really piss me off,” he added in a message that spread rapidly among students. The next morning, as Ashanty arrived at school, half a dozen boys, including the one who had written the message, stood nearby. “You’re illegal. Go back to Mexico,” she heard one of them say. “F--- Mexicans.” Ashanty, shaken but silent, walked past as a friend yelled at the boys to shut up. In a 33,000-person town that is 94 percent white, Ashanty, whose father is half-black and whose mother is Mexican American, had always worked to fit in. She attended every football game and won a school spirit award as a freshman. She straightened her hair and dyed it blond, hoping to look more like her friends. “It’s gotten way worse since Trump got elected. They hear it. They think it’s okay. The president says it. . . . Why can’t they?”

— Ashanty Bonilla

She had known those boys who’d heckled her since they were little. For her 15th birthday the year before, some had danced at her quinceañera. A friend drove her off campus for lunch, but when they pulled back into the parking lot, Ashanty spotted people standing around her car. A rope had been tied from the back of the Honda Pilot to a pickup truck. “Republican Trump 2020,” someone had written in the dust on her back window. Hands trembling, Ashanty tried to untie the rope but couldn’t. She heard the laughing, sensed the cellphone cameras pointed at her. She began to weep. Lewiston’s principal, Kevin Driskill, said he and his staff met with the boys they knew were involved, making clear that “we have zero tolerance for any kind of actions like that.” The incidents, he suspected, stemmed mostly from ignorance. “Our lack of diversity probably comes with a lack of understanding,” Driskill said, but he added that he’s encouraged by the school district’s recent creation of a community group — following racist incidents on other campuses — meant to address those issues. That effort came too late for Ashanty. Some friends supported her, but others told her the boys were just joking. Don’t ruin their lives. She seldom attended classes the last month of school. That summer, she started having migraines and panic attacks. In August, amid her spiraling despair, Ashanty swallowed 27 pills from a bottle of antidepressants. A helicopter rushed her to a hospital in Spokane, Wash., 100 miles away. After that, she began seeing a therapist and, along with the friend who defended her, transferred to another school. Sometimes, she imagines how different life might be had she never written that tweet, but Ashanty tries not to blame herself and has learned to take more pride in her heritage. She just wishes the president understood the harm his words inflict. Even Trump’s last name has become something of a slur to many children of color, whether they’ve heard it shouted at them in hallways or, in her case, seen it written on the back window of a car. “It means,” she said, “you don’t belong.”

Georgia Clark taught English at Amon Carter-Riverside High School in Fort Worth, where a student accused her of racism. (Allison V. Smith/For The Washington Post) Three weeks into the 2018-19 school year, Miracle Slover's English teacher, she alleges, ordered black and Hispanic students to sit in the back of the classroom at their Fort Worth high school. At the time, Miracle was a junior. Georgia Clark, her teacher at Amon Carter-Riverside, often brought up Trump, Miracle said. He was a good person, she told the class, because he wanted to build a wall. “Every day was something new with immigration,” said Miracle, now 18, who has a black mother and a mixed-race father. “That Trump needs to take [immigrants] away. They do drugs, they bring drugs over here. They cause violence.” Some students tried to film Clark, and others complained to administrators, but none of it made a difference, Miracle said. Clark, an employee of the Fort Worth system since 1998, kept talking. Clark, who denies the teenager’s allegations, is one of more than 30 educators across the country accused of using the president’s name or rhetoric to harass students since he announced his candidacy, the Post analysis found. In Clark’s class, Miracle stayed quiet until late spring 2019. That day, she walked in wearing her hair “puffy,” split into two high buns. Clark, she said, told her it looked “nappy, like Marge off ‘The Simpsons.’ ” Unable to smother an angry reply, Miracle landed in the principal’s office. An administrator asked her to write a witness statement, and in it, she finally let go, scrawling her frustration across seven pages. “I just got tired of it,” she said. “I wrote a ton.” Still, Miracle said, school officials took no action until six weeks later, when Clark, 69, tweeted at Trump — in what she thought were private messages — requesting help deporting undocumented immigrants in Fort Worth schools. The posts went viral, drawing national condemnation. Clark was fired. “Every day was something new with immigration. That Trump needs to take [immigrants] away. They do drugs, they bring drugs over here. They cause violence.”

— Miracle Slover, referring to Georgia Clark, her former English teacher

Not always, though, are offenders removed from the classroom. The day after the 2016 election, Donnie Jones Jr.’s daughter was walking down a hallway at her Florida high school when, she says, a teacher warned her and two friends — all sophomores, all black — that Trump would “send you back to Africa.” The district suspended the teacher for three days and transferred him to another school. Just a few days later in California, a physical education teacher told a student that he would be deported under Trump. Two years ago in Maine, a substitute teacher referenced the president’s wall and promised a Lebanese American student, “You’re getting kicked out of my country.” More than a year later in Texas, a school employee flashed a coin bearing the word “ICE” at a Hispanic student. “Trump,” he said, “is working on a law where he can deport you.” Sometimes, Jones said, he doesn’t recognize America. “People now will say stuff that a couple of years ago they would not dare say,” Jones argued. He fears what his two youngest children, ages 11 and 9, might hear in their school hallways, especially if Trump is reelected. Now a senior, Miracle doesn’t regret what she wrote about Clark. Although the furor that followed forced Miracle to switch schools and quit her beloved dance team, she would do it again, she said. Clark’s punishment, her public disgrace, was worth it. About a week before Miracle’s 18th birthday, her mother checked Facebook to find a flurry of notifications. Friends were messaging to say that Clark had appealed her firing, and that the Texas education commissioner had intervened. Reluctant to spoil the birthday, Jowona Powell waited several days to tell her daughter, who doesn’t use social media. Citing a minor misstep in the school board’s firing process, the commissioner had ordered Carter-Riverside to pay Clark one year’s salary — or give the former teacher her job back.

A snapshot of the harassment in 2019

In the three months after the president tweeted on July 14, 2019, that four minority congresswomen should "go back” to the countries they came from, more than a dozen incidents of Trump-related school bullying — including several that used his exact language — were reported in the press.

Mahtomedi High School & Como Park Senior High School

During a soccer game, students taunted a majority Asian-American team (which also included at least one Hispanic player) by telling them to go back to their countries and calling them "Asian food names."

Baldwin High School & Piper High School

During a volleyball game, students told black players on the court to go back to where they came from and made monkey noises at them.

Barack and Michelle Obama Ninth Grade Center

After a 14-year-old failed to address a staffer with "Yes, sir," the man showed the student a coin with "ICE" written on it and said, "Even though you are a citizen, Trump is working on a law where he can deport you, too, because of your mom’s status." The man later lost his job.

Everett Alvarez High School

In an apparent prank against a schoolmate, students created a fake Twitter account — which praised Adolf Hitler and Trump in its bio — and tweeted out racist remarks against a black high school coach.

Frontier High School

Students waving "Make America Great Again" flags disrupted a meeting of the school's Gay Straight Alliance, breaking up the gathering by shouting slurs before following the group's members to the parking lot.

Edward Little High School

Students yelled "Build the wall!" and "Ban Muslims!" as a 16-year-old Muslim girl walked through the hallways.

A 16-year-old student was arrested after posting on social media -- shortly after the deadly mass shootings in Dayton and El Paso — a photo of a pickup displaying a Trump flag, a Confederate flag and several guns. He captioned the post, "west harrison ain't ready for round 2."

Fans told one Hispanic player on the opposing team to “go back to your country” and called others “f---ing beaner” and "wetback" during a soccer game.

During a game in which a student was accused of using a racial slur againt a black player, fans also waved a Trump sign and chanted "America" when their team scored.

Cheerleaders from a largely white school held up a sign that read "Make America Great Again" and "Trump the Leopards" before a football game against a much more diverse school.

Before a football game, players ran through a banner reading "Make America Great Again Trump Those Patriots," triggering a backlash.

At least two minority students were bullied — in separate incidents — because the district allowed students to display a Trump banner at a high school football game, according to parents and school board members.

After students painted the school rock with rainbows to celebrate National Coming Out Day, someone painted over it with "Trump 2020," "MAGA 2020," "NRA" and an expletive. Later, two students — one black, one white — got into a fight about the issue.

During a soccer game, students taunted a majority Asian-American team (which also included at least one Hispanic player) by telling them to go back to their countries and calling them "Asian food names."

During a volleyball game, students told black players on the court to go back to where they came from and made monkey noises at them.

After a 14-year-old failed to address a staffer with "Yes, sir," the man showed the student a coin with "ICE" written on it and said, "Even though you are a citizen, Trump is working on a law where he can deport you, too, because of your mom’s status." The man later lost his job.

In an apparent prank against a schoolmate, students created a fake Twitter account — which praised Adolf Hitler and Trump in its bio — and tweeted out racist remarks against a black high school coach. Jordyn Covington stood when she heard the jeers. “Monkeys!” “You don’t belong here.” “Go back to where you came from!” From atop the bleachers that day in October, Jordyn, 15, could see her Piper High School volleyball teammates on the court in tears. The sobbing varsity players were all black, all from Kansas City, Kan., like her. Who was yelling? Jordyn wondered. She peered at the students in the opposing section. Most of them were white. “It was just sad,” said Jordyn, who plays for Piper’s junior varsity team. “And why? Why did it have to happen to us? We weren’t doing anything. We were simply playing volleyball.” Go back? To where? Jordyn, her friends and Piper’s nine black players were all born in the United States. “Just like everyone else,” Jordyn said. “Just like white people.” “It was just sad. And why? Why did it have to happen to us? We weren’t doing anything. We were simply playing volleyball.” The game, played at an overwhelmingly white rural high school, came three months after Trump tweeted that four minority congresswomen should “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” It was Jordyn’s first experience with racism, she said. But it was not the first time that fans at a school sports game had used the president to target students of color.

The Post found that players, parents or fans have used his name or words in at least 48 publicly reported cases, hurling hateful slogans at students competing in elementary, middle and high school games in 26 states. The venom has been shouted on football gridirons and soccer fields, on basketball and volleyball courts. Nearly 90 percent of incidents identified by The Post targeted players and fans of color, or teams fielded by schools with large minority populations. More than half focused on Hispanics.

In one of the earliest examples, students at a Wisconsin high school soccer game in April 2016 chanted “Trump, build a wall!” at black and Hispanic players. A few months later, students at a high school basketball game in Missouri turned their backs and hoisted a Trump/Pence campaign sign as the majority-black opposing team walked onto the court. In 2017, two high school girls in Alabama showed up at a football game pep rally with a sign reading “Put the Panic back in Hispanic” and a “Trump Make America Great Again” banner. In late 2017, two radio hosts announcing a high school basketball game in Iowa were caught on a hot mic describing Hispanic players as “español people.” “As Trump would say,” one broadcaster suggested, “go back where they came from.” Both announcers were fired. After the volleyball incident in Kansas, though, the fallout was more muted. The opposing school district, Baldwin City, commissioned an investigation and subsequently asserted that there was “no evidence” of racist jeers. Administrators from Piper’s school system dismissed that claim and countered with a statement supporting their students. An hour after the game, Jordyn fought to keep her eyes dry as she boarded the team bus home. When white players insisted that everything would be okay, she slipped in ear buds and selected “my mood playlist,” a collection of somber nighttime songs. She wiped her cheeks. Jordyn had long ago concluded that Trump didn’t want her — or “anyone who is just not white” — in the United States. But hearing other students shout it was different. Days later, her English teacher assigned an essay asking about “what’s right and what’s wrong.” At first, Jordyn thought she might write about the challenges transgender people face. Then she had another idea. “The students were making fun of us because we were different, like our hair and skin tone,” Jordyn wrote. “How are you gonna be mad at me and my friends for being black. . . . I love myself and so should all of you.” She read it aloud to the class. She finished, then looked up. Everyone began to applaud.

It's not just young Trump supporters who torment classmates because of who they are or what they believe. As one boy in North Carolina has come to understand, kids who oppose the president — kids like him — can be just as vicious. By Gavin Trump’s estimation, nearly everyone at his middle school in Chapel Hill comes from a Democratic family. So when the kids insist on calling him by his last name — even after he demands that they stop — the 13-year-old knows they want to provoke him, by trying to link the boy to the president they despise. In fifth grade, classmates would ask if he was related to the president, knowing he wasn’t. They would insinuate that Gavin agreed with the president on immigration and other polarizing issues. “They saw my last name as Trump, and we all hate Trump, so it was like, ‘We all hate you,’ ” he said. “I was like, ‘Why are you teasing me? I have no relationship to Trump at all. We just ended up with the same last name.’ ” Beyond kids like Gavin, the Post analysis also identified dozens of children across the country who were bullied, or even assaulted, because of their allegiance to the president. School staff members in at least 18 states, from Washington to West Virginia, have picked on students for wearing Trump gear or voicing support for him. Among teenagers, the confrontations have at times turned physical. A high school student in Northern California said that after she celebrated the 2016 election results on social media, a classmate accused her of hating Mexicans and attacked her, leaving the girl with a bloodied nose. Last February, a teenager at an Oklahoma high school was caught on video ripping a Trump sign out of a student’s hands and knocking a red MAGA cap off his head. And in the nation’s capital — where only 4 percent of voters cast ballots for Trump in 2016 — an outspoken conservative teenager said she had to leave her prestigious public school because she felt threatened. In a YouTube video, Jayne Zirkle, a high school senior, said that the trouble started when classmates at the School Without Walls discovered an online photo of her campaigning for Trump. She said students circulated the photo, harassed her online and called her a white supremacist. A D.C. school system official said they investigated the allegations and allowed Jayne to study from home to ensure she felt safe. “A lot of people who I thought were my best friends just all of a sudden totally turned their backs on me,” Jayne said. “People wouldn’t even look at me or talk to me.” For Gavin, the teasing began in fourth grade, soon after Trump announced his candidacy. After more than a year of schoolyard taunts, Gavin decided to go by his mother’s last name, Mather, when he started middle school. The teenager has been proactive, requesting that teachers call him by the new name, but it gets trickier, and more stressful, when substitutes fill in. He didn’t legally change his last name, so “Trump” still appears on the roster. The teasing has subsided, but the switch wasn’t easy. Gavin likes his real last name and feared that changing it would hurt his father’s feelings. His dad understood, but for Gavin, the guilt remains. “This is my name,” he said. “And I am abandoning my name.”

Maritza Avalos knows what's coming. It's 2020. The next presidential election is nine months away. She remembers what happened during the last one, when she was just 11. “Pack your bags,” kids told her. “You get a free trip to Mexico.” She’s now a freshman at Kamiakin High, the same Washington state school where her older sister, Cielo, confronted the teenagers who chanted “Build the wall” at a football game in late 2018. Maritza, 14, assumes the taunts that accompanied Trump’s last campaign will intensify with this one, too. “I try not to think about it,” she said, but for educators nationwide, the ongoing threat of politically charged harassment has been impossible to ignore. In response, schools have canceled mock elections, banned political gear, trained teachers, increased security, formed student-led mediation groups and created committees to develop anti-discrimination policies.

In California, the staff at Riverside Polytechnic High School has been preparing for this year’s presidential election since the day after the last one. On Nov. 9, 2016, counselors held a workshop in the library for students to share their feelings. Trump supporters feared they would be singled out for their beliefs, while girls who had heard the president brag about sexually assaulting women worried that boys would be emboldened to do the same to them. “We treated it almost like a crisis,” said Yuri Nava, a counselor who has since helped expand a student club devoted to improving the school’s culture and climate. Riverside, which is 60 percent Hispanic, also offers three courses — African American, Chicano and ethnic studies — meant to help students better understand one another, Nava said. And instead of punishing students when they use race or politics to bully, counselors first try to bring them together with their victims to talk through what happened. Often, they leave as friends.

In Gambrills, Md., Arundel High School has taken a similar approach. Even before a student was caught scribbling the n-word in his notebook in early 2017, Gina Davenport, the principal, worried about the effect of the election’s rhetoric. At the school, where about half of the 2,200 students are minorities, she heard their concerns every day. But the racist slur, discovered the same month as Trump’s inauguration, led to a concrete response. A “Global Community Citizenship” class, now mandatory for all freshmen in the district, pushes students to explore their differences. A recent lesson delved into Trump’s use of Twitter. “The focus wasn’t Donald Trump, the focus was listening: How do we convey our ideas in order for someone to listen?” Davenport said. “We teach that we can disagree with each other without walking away being enemies — which we don’t see play out in the press, or in today’s political debates.”

Since the class debuted in fall 2017, disciplinary referrals for disruption and disrespect have decreased by 25 percent each school year, Davenport said. Membership in the school’s speech and debate team has doubled. The course has eased Davenport’s anxiety heading into the next election. She doesn’t expect an uptick in racist bullying. “Civil conversation,” she said. “The kids know what that means now.” Many schools haven’t made such progress, and on those campuses, students are bracing for more abuse. Maritza’s sister, Cielo, told her to stand up for herself if classmates use Trump’s words to harass her, but Maritza is quieter than her sibling. The freshman doesn’t like confrontation. She knows, though, that eventually someone will say something — about the wall, maybe, or about how kids who look like her don’t belong in this country — and when that day comes, the girl hopes that she’ll be strong.

[coxroofingsystems]

Slate Roof Installation Mistakes

Top 10 Mistakes Made When Installing

1. Lack of information:

The contractors (and homeowners) have not done their homework. The contractor blindly bullies ahead with the job without making any effort whatsoever to do any research. A simple search on the internet can yield a wealth of information about slate roofs, sources of correct tools, materials, supplies and installation techniques.

2. All slate is not the same:

You wouldn't buy a car without looking at different models and checking their track record and cars only last ten years and are cheaper than slate roofs! A slate roof is an investment in the future of your building. It will reasonably last 150 years if constructed correctly. There are many different types of slate with differing characteristics and longevity. Why buy a foreign slate with no track record? Do the research. [Source list of new roofing slate] [Source list of salvaged roofing slate]

3. The contract documents are deficient:

Every detail about the slate roof installation should be included in the contract documents type, size and origin of the slate; type, length and gauge of the nails; type and installation style of underlayment; type and size of cant strip; headlap; flashing specifications; number of squares to be installed; slate installation style, and many other details. A basic contract (Sample Slate Roof Installation Proposal) is posted here.

4. Lack of headlap:

This fundamental detail of any successful slate roof installation is hard to overlook, but it is ignored by some roofing contractors. Lack of adequate headlap spells disaster for a slate roof. I have seen new roofs with inadequate headlap (i.e. less than 2), no headlap at all, and even negative headlap. Do your homework, contractors, or stay away from slate roof jobs. [An illustration of correct headlap and of incorrect headlap. Another example of incorrect headlap. ] Read an article about headlap.

5. Bad flashing work:

There are two things that keep water from penetrating a slate roof: the slates and the flashings. Not only must the flashing metal be of adequate type and gauge, but it must be installed correctly. This is not rocket science, but it does require some training and/or experience in order to be done correctly and to be leakproof. [Source of good quality flashing material.]

6. No consultant was used on the job:

As a consultant, I am called on after the work has been completed and the roof has failed this is a mistake. Professional advice should be obtained before the roof is installed and even before the structure is built, if possible. However, not all slate roof installations require a consultant. Homeowners can educate themselves for very little money by simply reading a copy of the Slate Roof Bible, reading past Traditional Roofing articles online at traditional roofing.com, and asking questions on the message board at slateroofcentral.com.

7. Contractors walking on the slate:

This is one of the worst problems with new slate roof installations. Roof slate is not to be walked on period. It is not a floor that is being installed it is a roof. The roof must be properly staged so the roofers are working off roof ladders and roof scaffolds. If the contractors are walking all over the slate roof during installation, its because they don't know what the hell they're doing and the property owner will have many headaches later when the slates start falling off. This is a guarantee. Good slaters knows how to install slate, and they wont walk on a slate roof unless its a last resort in an unusual circumstance. Need roof jacks?

8. Poor sheathing materials:

The roof decking must last as long as the slate. A good roof deck should last the life of two slate roofs, or about 200 to 300 years. In any case, a roof decking material under slate must have a known longevity of at least 150 years. Materials that have been tried and proven for this purpose include lumber boards and battens from ¾ to 1.5 thick rough-sawn, planed or tongue-in-grooved from a variety of species of wood. Plywood, laminated woods and particle boards are sub-standard roof decking materials for slate roofs and should be avoided. Yes, you can install slate on laminated or glued decking materials, but a compromise on longevity is likely to be the result. If a slate roof is to be built to last, the roof deck should be solid boards, not glued sheets of wood.

9. Emphasis on underlayment:

This is a red herring. If a slate roof leaks, its because it was installed improperly, not because of underlayment or lack of it. Properly installed slate roofs need no underlayment. The main purpose of the underlayment is to keep the water out of the building until the slate and flashings are installed. After that, if you could magically yank the underlayment out from under the slate, it wouldnt make a bit of difference in the functioning capabilities of the roof. Secondary purposes for underlayment include providing a good surface for chalk lines during installation, providing a minimal layer of insulation, and providing a cushion for when the slates are being slapped down during installation.

Barn slate roofs in the United States and there were thousands and still are quite a few, mostly a century old or older were installed without any underlayment whatsoever. This is true for some institutional buildings as well. Most of the older homes in the U.S. were installed with a standard single layer of 30 lb felt under the slate roofs. These homes are so old now that the felt has deteriorated to dust, but the roofs are fine. If the slates and flashings are intact, the roof will not leak, underlayment or no underlayment, even in a sustained driving rain. This is a proven fact, not a theory.

If a contractor or architect is insisting upon a beefed-up underlayment under a new slate roof installation, it means they believe the new roof will leak and that the underlayment will delay the entry of the water into the building. This is flawed logic and reveals a gross misunderstanding of slate roofs. Architects sometimes confuse slate roofs with ceramic tile roofs. Although tile roofs may require a substantial underlayment, slate roofs, properly installed, do not.

Underlayment does, however, provide a margin of waterproofing in the event a slate roof is damaged by wind, tree-fall, or other unusual circumstance. An acceptable slate roof installation today still typically utilizes a single layer of 30 lb. felt underlayment, doubled (half-lapped) when the need for a heavier underlayment is required (such as when a roof must be left exposed for a period of time before the slates are installed).

image

What about ice-damming? Increase the slate headlap along the eaves to prevent ice-damming, but do not rely on whats underneath the slate to keep the roof from leaking. If the slate and flashings are installed correctly, the roof will not leak. That is the beauty of a stone roof. Ice Dams on Slate Roofs:?How to Avoid Them

10. Inexperienced roofing contractors:

It is an unfortunate fact that many contractors cannot be trusted to give sound and honest advice or information. This issue is exacerbated by property owners who dont get competing bids before initiating a contract; who dont educate themselves about the nature of the work prior to hiring a contractor; and who dont insist upon a detailed, coherent and comprehensive contract document. One major effort that is being made today to try to screen contractors for slate roofing purposes is the Slate Roofing Contractors Association of North America, initiated on March 1, 2005. It lists contractor members at slateroofers.org. Included with the listing is a Contractor Profile which reveals details about the contracting firm that the average consumer would want to know. There is more information about the SRCA here.

Bad slate roof installations are seriously harming the slate roofing industry. One university administrator told me he had slate roofs installed on his dormitories because he wanted the best roofs money could buy. Then, after five large slate roofs had been installed on his campus by the same roofing contractor, it was discovered they had been installed with only 1.5 headlap, or none at all. The discovery of this gross deficiency left the administrator stunned, shocked and disgusted. He never wanted to look at another slate roof again. Who can blame him?

Source: Slate Roof Installation Mistakes first appeared here.

[slavinhomeimprovements]

Slate Roof Installation Mistakes

Top 10 Mistakes Made When Installing 1. Lack of information:

The contractors (and homeowners) have not done their homework. The contractor blindly bullies ahead with the job without making any effort whatsoever to do any research. A simple search on the internet can yield a wealth of information about slate roofs, sources of correct tools, materials, supplies and installation techniques. 2. All slate is not the same:

You wouldnt buy a car without looking at different models and checking their track record  and cars only last ten years and are cheaper than slate roofs! A slate roof is an investment in the future of your building. It will reasonably last 150 years if constructed correctly. There are many different types of slate with differing characteristics and longevities. Why buy a foreign slate with no track record? Do the research. [Source list of new roofing slate] [Source list of salvaged roofing slate] 

3. The contract documents are deficient:

Every detail about the slate roof installation should be included in the contract documents  type, size and origin of the slate; type, length and gauge of the nails; type and installation style of underlayment; type and size of cant strip; headlap; flashing specifications; number of squares to be installed; slate installation style, and many other details. A basic contract (Sample Slate Roof Installation Proposal) is posted here. 4. Lack of headlap:

This fundamental detail of any successful slate roof installation is hard to overlook, but it is ignored by some roofing contractors. Lack of adequate headlap spells disaster for a slate roof. I have seen new roofs with inadequate headlap (i.e. less than 2), no headlap at all, and even negative headlap. Do your homework, contractors, or stay away from slate roof jobs. [An illustration of correct headlap and of incorrect headlap. Another example of incorrect headlap. ] Read an article about headlap. 5. Bad flashing work:

There are two things that keep water from penetrating a slate roof: the slates and the flashings. Not only must the flashing metal be of adequate type and gauge, but it must be installed correctly. This is not rocket science, but it does require some training and/or experience in order to be done correctly and to be leakproof. [Source of good quality flashing material.] 6. No consultant was used on the job:

As a consultant, I am called on after the work has been completed and the roof has failed  this is a mistake. Professional advice should be obtained before the roof is installed and even before the structure is built, if possible. However, not all slate roof installations require a consultant. Homeowners can educate themselves for very little money by simply reading a copy of the Slate Roof Bible, reading past Traditional Roofing articles online at traditionalroofing.com, and asking questions on the message board at slateroofcentral.com. 7. Contractors walking on the slate:

This is one of the worst problems with new slate roof installations. Roof slate is not to be walked on  period. It is not a floor that is being installed  it is a roof. The roof must be properly staged so the roofers are working off roof ladders and roof scaffolds. If the contractors are walking all over the slate roof during installation, its because they dont know what the hell theyre doing and the property owner will have many headaches later when the slates start falling off. This is a guarantee. Good slaters knows how to install slate, and they wont walk on a slate roof unless its a last resort in an unusual circumstance. Need roof jacks? 8. Poor sheathing materials:

The roof decking must last as long as the slate. A good roof deck should last the life of two slate roofs, or about 200 to 300 years. In any case, a roof decking material under slate must have a known longevity of at least 150 years. Materials that have been tried and proven for this purpose include lumber boards and battens from ¾ to 1.5 thick rough-sawn, planed or tongue-in-grooved from a variety of species of wood. Plywood, laminated woods and particle boards are sub-standard roof decking materials for slate roofs and should be avoided. Yes, you can install slate on laminated or glued decking materials, but a compromise on longevity is likely to be the result. If a slate roof is to be built to last, the roof deck should be solid boards, not glued sheets of wood. 9. Emphasis on underlayment:

This is a red herring. If a slate roof leaks, its because it was installed improperly, not because of underlayment or lack of it. Properly installed slate roofs need no underlayment. The main purpose of the underlayment is to keep the water out of the building until the slate and flashings are installed. After that, if you could magically yank the underlayment out from under the slate, it wouldnt make a bit of difference in the functioning capabilities of the roof. Secondary purposes for underlayment include providing a good surface for chalk lines during installation, providing a minimal layer of insulation, and providing a cushion for when the slates are being slapped down during installation. Barn slate roofs in the United States  and there were thousands and still are quite a few, mostly a century old or older  were installed without any underlayment whatsoever. This is true for some institutional buildings as well. Most of the older homes in the U.S. were installed with a standard single layer of 30 lb felt under the slate roofs. These homes are so old now that the felt has deteriorated to dust, but the roofs are fine. If the slates and flashings are intact, the roof will not leak, underlayment or no underlayment, even in a sustained driving rain. This is a proven fact, not a theory. If a contractor or architect is insisting upon a beefed-up underlayment under a new slate roof installation, it means they believe the new roof will leak and that the underlayment will delay the entry of the water into the building. This is flawed logic and reveals a gross misunderstanding of slate roofs. Architects sometimes confuse slate roofs with ceramic tile roofs. Although tile roofs may require a substantial underlayment, slate roofs, properly installed, do not. Underlayment does, however, provide a margin of waterproofing in the event a slate roof is damaged by wind, tree-fall, or other unusual circumstance. An acceptable slate roof installation today still typically utilizes a single layer of 30 lb. felt underlayment, doubled (half-lapped) when the need for a heavier underlayment is required (such as when a roof must be left exposed for a period of time before the slates are installed).

What about ice-damming? Increase the slate headlap along the eaves to prevent ice-damming, but do not rely on whats underneath the slate to keep the roof from leaking. If the slate and flashings are installed correctly, the roof will not leak. That is the beauty of a stone roof. Ice Dams on Slate Roofs:?How to Avoid Them

10. Inexperienced roofing contractors:

It is an unfortunate fact that many contractors cannot be trusted to give sound and honest advice or information. This issue is exacerbated by property owners who dont get competing bids before initiating a contract; who dont educate themselves about the nature of the work prior to hiring a contractor; and who dont insist upon a detailed, coherent and comprehensive contract document. One major effort that is being made today to try to screen contractors for slate roofing purposes is the Slate Roofing Contractors Association of North America, initiated on March 1, 2005. It lists contractor members at slateroofers.org. Included with the listing is a Contractor Profile which reveals details about the contracting firm that the average consumer would want to know. There is more information about the SRCA here.

Bad slate roof installations are seriously harming the slate roofing industry. One university administrator told me he had slate roofs installed on his dormitories because he wanted the best roofs money could buy. Then, after five large slate roofs had been installed on his campus by the same roofing contractor, it was discovered they had been installed with only 1.5 headlap, or none at all. The discovery of this gross deficiency left the administrator stunned, shocked and disgusted. He never wanted to look at another slate roof again. Who can blame him?

Source: Slate Roof Installation Mistakes first appeared here.

[ayellowbirds]

Keshet Rewatches All of Scooby-Doo, Pt. 12: "Scooby Doo and a Mummy, Too"

("Scooby-Doo, Where Are You", Season 1 Episode 12)

AKA "We Forgot One Universal Monster Last Episode"

The episode opens on a view of a university campus, with the usual spooky musical sting in spite of nothing being visibly eerie... until we cut into a building identified “DEPARTMENT OF ARCHEOLOGY” (sic). Inside, a professor is introducing the gang to the mummified remains of Ankha, an ancient Egyptian ruler who was once “the most feared ruler”—though we’re never given a reason why he was feared. What did he do that was so terrible?

I’ll note that the subtitles spell the name as “Anka”, but the Scooby Doo wiki gives the more standard-looking “Ankha”. As is oddly typical of adults who are not the culprit in a given episode, the Professor is never given a name, though he introduces his colleague as Dr. Najib, who helped bring the mummy over for the university’s replica of Ankha’s tomb.

A middle eastern man with narrow eyes and permanently lowered brow, voiced by Vic Perrin in an almost exact duplicate of his portrayal of Jonny Quest villain Doctor Zin, Najib raises the subject of the curse of Ankha, relating his hope that it did not follow them. I’ll say it right here, because it’s not much of a spoiler when so many flags are triggered right away: Najib is the culprit, and it’s another example of casual racism this season. The thieving, scheming Arab was a popular villain trope of the day, and while Najib isn’t quite as overt as some other variations on the trope, he’s far from a deconstruction or a subversion.

As Najib makes his exit, the gang agree to help the Professor, and Shaggy lays his filthy mitts on an ancient golden medallion the entire cast identify as a coin in spite of a lack of any evidence that it is currency. As Shaggy manhandles priceless ancient artifacts, the Professor explains it’s part of an unsolved mystery, and suggests the gang pick up some sandwiches on his dollar in order to satisfy Shaggy’s appetite.

While they’re gone, the Professor hears a crash, and comes out to find the mummy gone and a mummy-shaped hole in the glass doors. Meanwhile, Shaggy receives an order of three burgers and three sandwiches—liverwurst, à la mode. The chef spoons bright pink ice cream onto three open-face sandwiches, and Shaggy hands him a dollar bill and a half-dollar coin... that is actually the ancient Egyptian coin! 

Shaggy has unconsciously pocketed it, demonstrating kleptomaniac tendencies that are never commented upon. The gang pay properly and Fred suggests they grab the sandwiches and get back to the Professor to return the coin. I’ll note that the food is clearly served on dine-in plates, rather than to-go containers, and when the food is taken from the counter off-screen, it makes a plate-rattling sound. Did they just walk out with burgers and open-faced sandwiches in-hand, sans any kind of container or wrapper?

When the gang return, they find the Professor in his office, where he’s been TURNED TO STONE! “14-karat stone”, Shaggy quips. Velma, bastion of rational, scientific skepticism, observes that only one person could be responsible: the mummy.

The gang look outside and find the busted glass, but Velma notes that it’s broken in rather than out, making it clear this wasn’t an exit. Fred orders the gang to split up and search for the mummy, and Shaggy soon accidentally discovers the bandaged terror hiding in the Janitor’s Closet. Locking him in, Shaggy, Velma, and Scooby flee in terror, instead of doing the reasonable thing and making sure the mummy is properly trapped.

Thus ensues the usual hide-and-chase sequence, although the mummy only groans and shambles slowly rather than running. Of course, there’s still extensive damage done to priceless museum artifacts by the B Team’s attempts to hide. Eventually cornered, the mummy begins to demand, “coin... coin!!” and nods and grunts in the affirmative when Velma suggests he means the old Egyptian one, and not the quarter Shaggy offers him.

When Velma insists they don’t give him what he wants, it falls to Scooby to defend them, and he demands a hefty price of Scooby Snacks.

I believe this is the first time we see a box of Scooby Snacks, which are drawn as being about half the size of previous appearances, and the box simply reads “SCOOBY SNACKS”. It’s also the first implication that “Scooby Snacks” is the name of a product on the market, rather than just what the gang call dog treats, or a home-made specialty.

Emboldened, Scooby tries taking a swing at the mummy with his left foreleg, but there’s a sound like a steel drum being struck, and Scooby’s metacarpals collapse and fold inward like a limp accordion tube. This does not deter the carb-loaded canine, who dashes offscreen and returns in a karate gi, and begins to yelp out kiais so badly stereotypical that the captioning refused to display them as he chops at the motionless mummy. It’s no more effective, so Scooby tries one last attack: 

A little of the old razzmatazz.

At first, the soft-shoe routine seems to be Scooby’s attempt at desertion, but in spite of Velma’s shock, the dog sneaks back in behind the advancing mummy and nails his rags to the floor with a hammer.

Once again, the trio flee without making sure that Ankha is captured, even though Velma says they’re going to tell Daphne and Fred that they just did that. Meanwhile, Fred and Daphne are exploring outside, having found what look to be the mummy’s footprints going into a construction area. They discover Dr. Najib’s car, with what appears to be the doctor turned to stone, and wonder if Shaggy and Velma have run into the mummy themselves, not seeming to be concerned that their friends could be turned to stone any moment.

Having returned, Shaggy and Velma find that the mummy has escaped and disappeared, and inspect the piece of bandage left nailed to the floor. They retreat to a laboratory to investigate the new-feeling wrappings and determine its actual age, where an unattended Scooby drinks three large glasses of a chartreuse liquid. There’s an odd screen-filling animation of an explosion that fades in and out, and Scooby’s head has turned into that of a frog!

He lets out a few confused ribbits, and the effect reverses, explosion included—without Shaggy or Velma noticing. Meanwhile, the mummy reappears, demanding the coin before Velma can finish her analysis. While the two humans flee the room in an improvised smokescreen, Scooby is left behind, and the duo only realize as Daphne and Fred rejoin them. The room is empty except for evidence of a struggle, and a window is left open in the back. Fred worries that he’ll end up like the Professor and Dr. Najib...

...and sure enough, the gang discover a stone Scooby back outside. As Shaggy mourns the loss of his friend, the real Scooby digs his way up out of the ground to join him in tearfully weeping over the sad scene.

“Look, Scoob! You’ve been turned to stone!”

Rather than questioning Scooby about what happened to him, the gang decide to backtrack and ignore the great huge clue right in front of them.

Investigating the Professor’s office, Velma learns that Ankha was also the wealthiest ruler of ancient Egypt, and thinks she’s discovered the solution to the mystery of the coin, finding a photo of a statue of a hippo-headed figure that may or may not be a badly rendered representation of the goddess Taweret (understandably lacking the usual large sagging breasts of images of that deity; this is a kids’ show). The likeness of the coin appears with some other symbols on the statue’s belly, but just as the gang realize it, Ankha busts down the office door.

Retreating to the second floor, the gang duck into the wood shop, where—i’m sorry, why is there a WOOD SHOP in a university’s DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY?

Fred tells Daphne to hit the lights so  that they can hide in the darkness of a room full of sharp objects and heavy machinery, but Daphne hits the wrong switch and turns on a handheld, corded buzz saw that spins to life and climbs up the wall by cutting through the surface of it.

Now, in addition to majoring in anthropology and library science, i took an elective class in the extremely well-appointed woodworking facility at SUNY Purchase College, and i have at least a basic sense of shop safety. So i speak from something of a position of experience when i say, WHY WOULD YOU PUT THOSE SWITCHES NEXT TO EACH OTHER?

As the saw cuts across the ceiling, back down the wall, and past the mummy, it moves on to circle the gang, cutting through the floor and sending the gang dropping down to the floor below... where there’s a swimming pool. 

WHAT KIND OF ARCHAEOLOGY DEPARTMENT IS THIS? A WOOD SHOP? A SWIMMING POOL? WHO DESIGNED THIS COLLEGE, MC ESCHER?

The enraged mummy tosses the saw down at the gang, and its improbably long power cord reaches far enough that the saw moves through the water, chasing the gang as they paddle for their lives. Kudos to the saw’s manufacturers for so extensively waterproofing it, but i really don’t think a 100 meter power cord is a necessity.

Continuing to flee the mummy, Shaggy and Scooby enter the construction area from before, stumbling into a work space where Shaggy notices bags of “Quick Drying Mold Cement”, and “spray molds” that actually appear to be just wooden crates with cement poured in around an empty space in the shape of a standing human being.

“Ruh-huh!” Scooby replies. You could’ve told them that, Scooby. It would have been helpful.

I’ll note that the mold is in the shape of someone standing or laying straight, and all the “stone” figures we’ve seen so far were sitting down. This is what happens when you don’t communicate plot details to your art department, people.

The mummy of Ankha catches up, and the boys flee into a groundskeeper’s shack. When Shaggy peeks out to see if the coast is clear, however...

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! Yes, for the love of god.

Ankha continues to demand the coin, but meanwhile, Scooby and Shaggy find the Professor bound, gagged, and stuffed into a bag in the corner. Shaggy pulls down his gag, and asks, “are you alright, Professor?”

“I’m fine!”

“Groovy,” Shaggy replies, putting the gag back in place. “Be back for you later.”

The duo make their escape and the chase scene starts up again, now involving a ride on an improbably speedy lawnmower through an empty gymnasium, and a bit more in the way of trampoline antics. This show loves trampoline antics. Mid-bounce, Scooby, grabs onto a pair of gymnastics rings, and uses his hind legs to kick the mummy across the gym, dunking his bandaged butt into the basketball hoop.

It’s stuff like this that led to the Globetrotters crossovers, i’m sure.

The gang unmask "Ankha”, who, as i’d spoiled ahead of time, is Dr. Najib. He had faked his own petrification as part of a plan to get his hands on the coin—actually the key to the statue in the photo from the book. The gang and the Professor discover that a slot on the back of the statue serves as the keyhole, because apparently no-one was ever diligent enough to examine the back side of this stone figure, and its mouth opens to reveal a “glass beetle”.

Not quite, says the Professor.

There’s no resolution about what happens to this obscenely large “diamond”, identified as such at a glance without any kind of testing of its hardness. Scooby finds the whereabouts of the real mummy of Ankha, and the gang celebrate as Dr. Najib is probably in the midst of arguing his diplomatic immunity somewhere downtown.

And once again, no “meddling kids”, not even a scene of the authorities arriving. All we see of Najib unmasked is the usual silent, glaring fuming, and the explanation falls to the gang and the Professor relaxing calmly in the epilogue.

(like what i’m doing here? It’s not what pays the bills, so i’d really appreciate it if you could send me a bit at my paypal.me or via my ko-fi. Click here to see more entries in this series of posts, or here to go in chronological order)

[proctorcarlsson9-blog]

The Dangers Of Getting Rubella

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[hellforcertain]

i like how one of the few reasons i can pinpoint when about i got sick is that i can use snowmageddon (late 2014/early 2015) as a starting point 

this is really long and i’d appreciate you not reblogging this but i don’t think i’ve ever written any of this out, and i would keep it private somewhere else but i kinda want to feel idk. validated? i never really put it into words like this until now. would also appreciate if you respond to this in some way (either a like or a reply) if you read it.

[cw for suicidal ideation in one part; skip the paragraph that begins “at some point that spring...”, after i talk abt my grandpa, if you don’t want to read it. it’s referenced in the next paragraph too. idk if there’s anything else i really need to warn for, but tell me if i do.]

i injured my knee thanksgiving 2013, when i was a sophomore. i was hiking in the hills around my parents’ house with some of my cousins, and it had snowed recently so everything was slick and slippery, and at one point my feet slid out from under me and i tumbled down an incline until my right knee connected with a tree. that thankfully stopped my fall but like, at what cost.

it was so bad that jo had to half-support me walking the couple blocks from our dorms to tufts to have an x-ray done in december 2013, which had been recommended by emerson’s health center (which was a joke; when i saw... i think an NP, she had to flip through a book until she found the “knee” section before she examined me). i couldn’t attend several classes of one of my courses the rest of that semester bcos it was in the building furthest from my dorm and i could barely walk there; i barely made it to the final. i never heard from the health center about the x-ray, so i figured that at least it wasn’t broken. it still bothered me but it became more manageable than it had been (not entirely tho bcos iirc i failed or didn’t complete two courses spring 2014, but that was also bcos of the undiagnosed adhd).

i moved directly into the studio from my sophomore dorm in may 2014, and lived there until june 2015 (which encompassed my junior year until i dropped out in november 2014).

my parents wanted me to fly down to spend a week in florida with them in august 2014, and i think this is what happened: the morning before i left on that flight i rolled off my futon badly and banged my bad knee against the (hardwood) floor really hard. i was in pain for a lot of that trip -- flying certainly didn’t help matters -- and when i got back it didn’t get better so i bought a cane a couple weeks before classes started back so i could get used to it before i had to use it to get to class.

(at the end of that trip, my mom forced me to let her clean out my ear with a qtip, jabbed it in too far and fucked up my ear, and then the next day i got on a plane back to boston and the issue got so bad i couldn’t walk down the street without holding onto a wall. i don’t think my eardrum burst or anything because it was better by the time i actually got to see a specialist about it and i haven’t suffered any permanent effects from it as far as i can tell, but at times it felt like it.)

i bought a cane in mid august 2014, and i know bcos i ordered it off amazon. the florida trip might have been in mid august, so there’s a possibility i banged my knee on the floor before the florida trip, and bought the cane when i realized i wouldn’t be able to walk in florida without it.

i know i reinjured my knee in august 2014, and i know i bought a cane then, and i know i also damaged my eardrum in august 2014 when i was in florida (well, my mom damaged it). i’m not sure exactly what order those took place in.

it got worse as the semester progressed, and i started doing less and less well in my courses, because not only was i dealing with the still-undiagnosed adhd, i was also in a lot of pain all the time. i remember making the conscious decision to stop going to my spanish class bcos the professor would have us stand up and walk around the class and talk to each other a lot and i couldn’t manage standing up for even that long, and i was so scattered and so fucked up from middle & high school that i couldn’t ask for help and the easier option was just to stop attending. i made the decision to go on medical leave late that semester -- probably in november or december 2014, i can’t remember which. there was the death of a family friend who i had been close to around that time too, and i was in too much pain and too swamped with trying to catch up on all these courses i hadn’t been attending to fly to florida and attend her funeral, which was another stone on top of all the others weighing me down (when i told my parents i had dropped out, i told them that it was her death that sent me into a breakdown, which wasn’t entirely a lie; i just didn’t tell them i’d been having a breakdown for months up until then).

i started getting sick and feeling pain that i couldn’t explain at all -- sure, i knew why my knee hurt, but i didn’t know why my joints were stiff and painful, and why i was hurting randomly separately from the joint pain. it got so bad that some days i had to crawl to get to the bathroom, and it was only a handful of steps away from my bed. i stopped doing my t shots bcos it was too much effort when i hurt so much already -- it got to the point that my periods started back up again, though i only had them very rarely. i think the only thing i managed to do was go to my shifts as desk guy in one of the dorms on campus.

when i went to visit my parents at some point, my mom thought it was just bcos i needed to get in shape and lose some weight to lessen the stress on my bad knee. tbh i don’t know when that happened, i just knew it was when i was still a student bcos i went to the gym once with a friend and it was really fuckin painful and terrible and just made everything worse. she might have said that when we were in florida, actually. idk.

living in the studio meant i lived totally alone, but jo was there a lot bcos i had an extra bed (i’d bought a loft bed bcos i wanted one and had never had one as a kid and this place had high ceilings, but i’d also bought a futon for cheap off a guy who was moving out of the building, which turned out to be a real blessing when i couldn’t make it up the ladder to the loft bed; when jo stayed at the computer labs late working on projects, they’d come crash on my loft bed bcos my building was near campus and by the time the labs closed, the t had stopped running) and i made kinda-friends with the security desk guy

that fall and winter i’d say i saw delivery guys more often than i saw my own friends (bcos i literally couldn’t handle the walking that grocery shopping would have required, and i didn’t know abt grocery delivery services at the time. idk if they were even a thing at the time). all “groceries” were bought at the cvs down the block, bcos they had things like butter and shredded cheese and tortillas (i ate a lot of tortillas that year) and pre-cut fruit, and the walgreens across the street from cvs had frozen burger patties that i think set off the smoke alarm every time i cooked them; anything else i ate was from delivery guys. i dissociated a lot that year, very very badly, and some delusional tendencies i’d had in high school came rearing back up. 

bcos i couldn’t do much else i threw myself into this site (esp on one of my sideblogs), and if you look at the amount of stuff i reblogged/posted then vs now you’d see that i had p much no other life. which was... not good but i also made some really good and valuable friendships then -- including em so like, not everything from then turned out bad. sadly, a lot of irl friendships stagnated, and it wasn’t the other party’s fault. i also played a lot of skyrim bcos it was one of like. two games i owned for my ps3, and even though the rest of me hurt a lot, my hands were surprisingly okay.

(i also went through a series of nb identities and pronouns that never really fit bcos that was the heyday of tumblr’s whole “if ur a trans man ur evil for wanting to be a man, u should be nb instead” phase and i was far too concerned with all that bcos like i said, i didn’t have much of a life outside this site at the time.)

i don’t recall much of thanksgiving or christmas breaks at my parents’, except that i got my name legally changed during i think christmas break 2014. iirc we had to reschedule my flight back to boston bcos i had to wait an extra day to be able to get everything done that i needed to, and bcos we needed to change the name on the flight. i remember crying at some official bcos they said that they couldn’t get me a new... driver’s license maybe? until a couple days down the road, but i had to be back for college by then and i have everything else done please just let me get my license today. and since it’s a small town in the south they totally folded, thankfully. i was just very stressed at that point, i hadn’t even meant to cry at them.

then snowmageddon happened in early 2015, and classes were cancelled and roads were closed and the t like, half shut down until like may. it was especially bad for me because most of my friends were in allston and they couldn’t exactly get downtown to hang out with me much. iirc, my friend who was an RA left college around the same time i did, maybe a few months before? i think i was still working desk shifts when they left, so it had to have been before i did.

march 2015 was good and bad: during jo’s spring break (and what would have been mine if i had still been in college), we escaped the snow and took their car on a roadtrip down the blue ridge parkway (well. that was the plan but it was closed thanks to the snow, so we drove down I-95 and ended up in asheville nc like two days after our leisurely road trip started. i turned 21 on that roadtrip, and so no longer had to rely on my friends to buy me alcohol, which was nice. we celebrated it at this local restaurant in whatever town we’d stopped at that night, and all i remember is that you could buy steaks from a counter at the front, and the drink i ordered for myself was incredibly orange.

my grandpa also died that march; he’d actually been dying since february, but i didn’t go to see him then; jo and i were in knoxville tn at one point, and my parents wanted me to drive up since knoxville is only like three hours from my hometown, but by then he was p much in a coma so it wouldn’t really be visiting, would it, and also it would have been mega unfair to drag jo into that mess. iirc his funeral was that april, bcos there was a funeral service at my parents’ church where he occasionally preached at, and then one at the mennonite church he attended after moving in with us, and then they had to get him to ohio for the big service (which was the one i attended).

(this was the grandpa who thought i was possessed by a demon for being trans so like. lmao. didn’t mourn him much then, and still haven’t.)

at some point that spring, after the spring break roadtrip and grandpa’s funeral, my dysphoria got really really really bad, bad enough to trigger the most suicidal episode i’d had since middle school/high school. it was a culmination of the negative thoughts and feelings i’d been having since i moved into this place (which had only worsened as i got sicker and when winter hit). i didn’t do anything, but i had to call a friend every time i left the building for like a week so that i didn’t walk into traffic. 

i moved out of the studio at the end of april or may of 2015, and went back to live with my parents for a bit because the lease for my text apartment didn’t start until september 2015 (since i was living with friends/former classmates who were still in school and weren’t going to be in boston until classes started back up in september). moving out was an Ordeal bcos my dad came up to help me and brought my sister, who hated boston so much that she was on the edge of a panic attack the whole time, which made her impossible to deal with. at one point we got into a fight over something super minor and it escalated and ended with her screaming at the top of her lungs, in my empty echoey studio that had the door open so god and all my neighbors could hear, that she wished i was dead. this was not the first or last time she expressed this sentiment, and was tame compared to some (like the time she said she’d stab me in my sleep). i told her i’d been suicidal weeks earlier and she left the building to go take something to the car and when i didn’t follow her (bcos i was cooling off), she freaked out and had a panic attack all over our dad. she didn’t tell him why, or that she was at fault, and when i came down a few minutes later he ripped into me until i stopped and told him what she had said. so, yknow. a fun final memory of that apartment.

i think that was when my mom finally acknowledged that my pain wasn’t just a weight thing, and that i should actually see someone when i got back to boston. my symptoms got worse too: i started having horrible pain in my hands, to the point that i couldn’t move them, and none of us really knew what to do. i found some compression gloves online and begged my mom to let me get them but she kept refusing because she was worried i’d mess my hands up worse with them, and i still don’t entirely understand that train of thought, because i was like, screaming crying at them because i was hurting so so much, and some compression gloves couldn’t have been worse than that (and i finally pointed out that they were gloves; i could take them off if they were hurting more than helping). they finally relented, thankfully. 

june 2015 was the first time i met em in person; i decided, almost on impulse, to take a week and drive down to florida and spend the week with them bcos they were living with their grandparents at the time and their grandparents were going to be out of town for like a week. they played a lot of fnv on their ps3 while i played don’t starve on my laptop. the place had a guest bedroom that was technically mine, but i don’t think i ever used it except to get changed; we tended to pass out in weird positions on em’s bed. we didn’t get much else done bcos i discovered that florida weather + my joints wasn’t a great combo, but it was still an amazing week.

that same summer i also got fitted for my knee brace. i think that same summer i got some treatments from a sports medicine doctor my mom is friends with. possibly steroid injections? i’d have to ask her. 

i moved into the medford house with some friends in september 2015, and dear lord was that a mess. the roommates were great, don’t get me wrong, but the house had mice we had to take care of, there was a gas leak at one point bcos the stove’s knobs didn’t work right and didn’t shut off the gas when we turned them off, the boiler was a broken leaky piece of shit that would shut itself off every like two days bcos the water level got so low (contrast the place we’re living in now, where we had to go put more water in the boiler maybe like. three times all winter), the landlord and his wife were total creeps and freaks -- he would only respond to my email even though my roommates tried to open lines of communication at various times, and one time i woke up with her in my bedroom bcos she was checking the radiator (which wasn’t working bcos the boiler wasn’t working and they refused to fix or replace it until winter was over) and she had the audacity to chew me out for my space heater. i was fucking sick, lady. give me a fucking break. the best thing, hands down, about the medford place was there was a corner store with a good deli across the street, so i could go in my pajamas to get a good sandwich and a box of fries. great place, great people.

i got referred to a rheumatologist that fall, and my first appointment with him was in november (i also at some point... i think in spring of 2015 started using testogel, because i wouldn’t have been able to get the stuff for injections refilled while i was in kentucky. i don’t remember when i switched back to injections but i did at some point while living at the medford house, which i once again was terrible at keeping up with).

at the time, my deadname was still on my insurance bcos even tho i’d changed my name earlier that year, i was still on my parents’ insurance and my dad wouldn’t fucking change my name there and wouldn’t give me the information to do it myself. my rheumatologist took one look at me and how i was responding to being called my deadname, and he asked if there was another name i went by that i’d be more comfortable with, and i was rarely called my deadname again after that (and only by a couple nurses until they got to know me better). ofc that stopped being an issue when i switched to my own masshealth plan (in early 2017 i think?).

he listened to the whole mess of a story, felt my joints, and then poked at the middle of my chest (which i now know is a common fibro trigger point). when i recoiled back bcos that hurt far more than it should have, he said “yep that looks fibro-y.” i don’t remember if i suggested fibro and/or rheumatoid arthritis, or if he did. he prescribed me some medications -- including tramadol, my savior that winter. i’d been taking tramadol already bcos i’d had some left over from... i think lasik, and a friend had given me some percocet for very bad days. i was so unused to the tramadol back then that it’d throw me for a loop, occasionally make me nauseated, and also knock me out. it was p great.

back then i’d have to ask my roommate danny to open like, water or pop bottles nine times out of ten bcos i just couldn’t. now, i can’t remember the last time i had a serious problem opening bottles on a consistent basis. there have been some bad days where i couldn’t, but it’s not like that’s all the time.

i improved in fits and starts after that; i can’t remember all the meds i tried with him, but i’m sure they’re in a file somewhere that i could request. i still wasn’t doing anywhere near good, but it was better than before -- if only, maybe, bcos i wasn’t dealing with this totally on my own. but you know what didn’t help? that house’s terrible fucking boiler. we’d wake up some days in the middle of winter and it’d be in the 50s inside the house, and i was the only one who knew how to fix the boiler (i’d taught the roommates, including the subletter we got when danny left for a semester in LA, but apparently the only one who could go down the stairs to take care of it was the fuckin cripple).

spring 2016 was awesome bcos i’d gotten a ps4 and destiny for christmas, and the subletter we got had two cats who i loved and who loved me, and everything was beautiful even tho i definitely still hurt a lot. i can’t remember much of note during this period, health-wise. it was mostly more of the same, but on top of it was trying to balance playing a shooter and having shitty hands that didn’t want me down anything with them.

summer 2016, when i was still in the medford house, em came to visit me (among other people -- they roadtripped up over the course of a couple weeks) and spent several days there. i had plans to take them to do touristy stuff in boston, but that never happened haha. and like we don’t have a solid date on when we got together bcos long-distance stuff can be fuzzy about things like that but that visit was our first kiss.

in september 2016 i moved into the allston apartment, and the less i say about that the better. i started back with a therapist in like february 2017; i hadn’t been to a therapist for years by this time, bcos my previous therapist had moved to a different office in the network and then left the area and i had never gotten back in touch with her after she moved to the other office. i also started on testopel, because injections were once again not working out.

that apartment was p much like living in the studio bcos even tho i had two roommates, it was an apartment i’d found in an emerson group centered on finding roommates, so i hadn’t known either of them beforehand; i wasn’t really living with them; we just happened to share some common spaces. health-wise i improved some as we found medications that worked for me, but i was still not doing even close to good. i had trouble going grocery shopping even though the grocery store was only a handful of blocks away because various parts of me would hurt too much to handle it, and by the time i was halfway home i would be almost dead. so, yknow. not a great time overall.

in september of 2017 i moved into this house with em and jo, and it’s been a fantastic decision bcos im finally living with people who care about me and will kick my ass into shape if i need it. em finally made me go to my rheumatologist and be like “so i know i’ve been saying i’ve been fine but i moved in with my partner recently and they’ve pointed out that im doing less fine than i said bcos i’d brushed off a lot of things as normal that they’ve told me are not, in fact, normal”, which was when he prescribed flexeril, and i think that’s helped me more than almost anything else has. holy shit. im taking a higher dose than my father (who’s like 6′1″ and has at least a hundred pounds on me) can handle but it’s working for me. i also went back to t injections a couple months ago bcos i didn’t enjoy missing everything for a week bcos it took forever for the testopel spot to heal, and i couldn’t sit on the spot until it healed; plus now that i’m living with em, they can remind me when i forget to do my shot. also, after a lot of fits and starts and panic over the last few years, im finally talking with a surgeon about top surgery. 

overall like, i went back and looked at a lot of posts i made several years ago to get dates for this point, and i can barely recognize myself in some of those posts. my illnesses had ground everything else away, until all that was the physical pain and the emotional anguish, and i wish i could tell my past self that it gets better: that he’ll find medications that work for him and he’ll move in with people who he loves and love him back, and that it’s not all sunshine and rainbows here in 2018 but it’s so much better. 2015 me definitely deserved that.

and that’s true: that i’m not cured, and i still have very bad days, but i’m also having more and more good days -- days that were unthinkable back then. i’m on medications that help me physically, and i’ve been diagnosed with adhd and am on a medication that helps me mentally. when i flew down to kentucky earlier this month to attend my sister’s graduation, my dad remarked on how much better i was walking and moving just compared to thanksgiving. i can’t even imagine comparing myself now to myself a few years ago. i think i’m going to save this post so that when i’m feeling down about being sick, i can remind myself how far i’ve come, and how much i’ve weathered so far; whatever storm comes next, i think i’ll be able to handle it.

idk where i was trying to go with this, but it ended up a super overly long chronicle of the last few years. so uh. yeah. like i mentioned before, i’d appreciate if you show that you read all this, either with a like or a reply, esp if you get to the end

[gracespilkerr]

How To Become A Firefighter In Connecticut

Connecticut may only be a small state in size, but how to become a firefighter in Connecticut is a question I’ve received several times.

With just 5,567 square miles of it lying to the south of New England, it is a densely populated state. In fact, it is the 4th most densely populated state in the country.

This means a lot of people and property to protect in a very small space. The amount of fire departments here may not be that big but that doesn’t mean that they don’t encounter plenty of challenges.

Whether you are a student, high school grad or someone in need of a career change, you can see what the fire service has to offer here. So, what does it take to become a firefighter in Connecticut?

How to Become a Firefighter in Connecticut

Generally, 18 years old or older

High school diploma or GED

A valid driver’s license

Good physical and mental health

EMT training advised

The basic requirements in Connecticut aren’t too challenging. The general rules for age, residency, education and physical fitness apply here too.

In fact, there are lots of ways that you can get your foot in the door if you are prepared to be a volunteer firefighter first and study hard.

In this guide, I want to highlight some of the training options and departments in the state. I also want to take a moment to look at the importance of volunteering in smaller communities.

Firefighting in Connecticut

If you want to start out as a firefighter in Connecticut, a volunteer role might be the best option. There are lots of chances to join smaller departments across the state.

Here you can get valuable hands-on experience and learn about the fire service. The “quiet corner” of the north-east of Connecticut has little need for the diverse, extensive service provisions of somewhere like Hartford. But, they still need coverage and community services.

Coventry is a great example of a town with a strong volunteer department. They may only cover 38.4 square miles, but they ensure that personnel have the best training for fire and EMS calls.

One of the perks about Connecticut is that there are Fire Assistance Grants for volunteer departments where they can get more assistance and funding.

The idea is that this will help struggling areas tackle agricultural and woodland fires with greater ease. In order to qualify, the local population must be less than 10,000.

Another way for firefighters to help out in these rural areas is to work alongside the DEEP forestry division.

There is a high risk of forest fires in the state in the spring and it is up to the department and local fire crews to minimize the risks and any damage. DEEP monitor around 1.8 million acres of land for any threats and sent reports on daily risks and danger levels.

They then work with fire departments and other outlets to keep the public away, keep an eye on the situation and handle any fires.

Urban Firefighting in Connecticut

There is a lot more to this state than just its forests, wildland management and volunteer services. Some major towns and cities need skilled, paid firefighters to handle major fires and emergencies.

We also can’t forget that Connecticut and its biggest cities lie very close to New York City. If there was to be another major incident there, there is every chance that Connecticut firefighters would go and help.

Therefore, you need to be ready for the absolute worst-case scenarios even if they are a remote possibility. On-going training in emergency preparations, hazardous materials, crash sites and rescues can help.

Closer to home, those skills will be useful on highways, in airports and in massive structures in the cities. It also helps to update your medical training certificates, so you can provide life-saving help too.

Connecticut is largely well-known as a college state and students need protection too.  The University of Connecticut is an acclaimed institution in its own right and there is also Yale over in New Haven.

This means that there is a large younger population for a large portion of the year. Local fire departments need to be ready to handle their needs in both a fire rescue and a fire prevention capacity. Good communication skills and outreach programs can offer students advice on how to stay safe on campus and in dorms.

In fact, the University of Connecticut has its own fire department that looks after students living and studying between the campuses in Storrs and Farmington.

They claim to provide help for around 5400 emergency calls per year in these areas. They also help fire marshals keep the buildings safe and perform those crucial outreach tasks.

Some students studying in Connecticut may wish to join their local campus team and give something back to their community. This isn’t possible at this department because they don’t offer such a volunteer program.

However, students in the area are encouraged to look into volunteer options in local departments in the area. More details on these options can be found by following this link.

The alternative for those of student age in Connecticut is to enroll in a fire technology or fire science course. You can then use that knowledge to proceed with a career in a department either at the university or elsewhere in the state.

Fire Academies in Connecticut

There are many options where students can get an academic qualification or train at a fire academy. They include the following:

New Haven: Gateway Community College and New Haven Fire Department

Hartford: Capital Community College

West Haven: University of New Haven

Derby: Valley Fire Chief’s Regional Training School

Wolcott: Wolcott Fire Training School

Waterbury: Naugatuck Valley Community College

Norwich: Three Rivers Community College

Windsor Locks: Connecticut Fire Academy

Fairfield: Fairfield Fire Department

Willimantic: Eastern Connecticut Fire School

The University of New Haven offers a Bachelor of Science program in Fire Science. The interesting thing about this course is that it isn’t as broad as some associate degrees or certificates in community colleges.

Students will get to know all the basics under the guidance of a tutor with fire experience. This includes a lot of practical work as well as theory.

From there, students can focus their studies on either Fire Administration of Fire Investigation. The path chosen can help with future career goals. Learn more about this program here.

Of course, there is always the opportunity for recruits to gain most of their basic training while on probation with a department.

Many departments will give conditional offers of employment with the expectation that applicants will pass certain certificates in a given time frame. Firefighter 1 and 2 and an EMT certificate are essential here. You can then go onto colleges or training school courses for advanced learning.

Major Fire Departments in Connecticut

There are two major cities that I want to look at as an alternative to the volunteer and student programs mentioned above. These cities, and others like them, are often the biggest employers of career firefighters and those in more specialty roles.

How to Become a Stamford, CT Firefighter

At time of application, must have graduated from an accredited high school or received an equivalency diploma (G.E.D.) from a recognized authority

By date of written examination, must be at least 18 years of age

Must possess a valid driver’s license

Must have a CPAT Card in date

Stamford is a vibrant city with a large residential population and even larger day-time population. This means a need for a 24/7 department that can look after people in their homes over 39.9 square miles at night and tend to round-the-clock medical emergencies.

It also means a need for skilled personnel that can handle the needs of all the workers commuting in. They have over 230 employees in 6 stations and equipment to handle EMT services, fire suppression, high-angle rope rescue, hazmat incident and more. Find out more here.

How to Become a Hartford, CT Firefighter

Generally, 18 years old or older

High school diploma or GED

A valid driver’s license

Good physical and mental health

EMT training advised

Then there is Hartford. There are fewer people to take care of here in about half the area – around 124,000 people in 18.4 square miles.

However, this ISO 1 station appears to be better funded and better staffed. There are 12 stations housing 17 companies and around 360 career firefighters. The department is home to some important regional equipment, such as the decontamination unit.

Therefore, fire crews here must have all the right training and good communication skills to work with other departments and members of the public. You can find out more here.

Job Prospects for Firefighters in Connecticut

Like the majority of states in New England, Connecticut has a decent rate of employment and demand for firefighters. The average wage is above the national average too.

In 2018, there were 3,140 firefighters employed with a ratio of 1.89 in 1000 jobs.

The mean wage for firefighters in Connecticut is $63,630.

This is more than neighboring Rhode Island, which saw an average yearly salary of $55,240, and the $60,080 in Massachusetts.

https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes332011.htm#st

If you’re interested in how to become a firefighter in Connecticut, I recommend you get started as soon as you can.  Connecticut is big on youth involvement in the fire service. You can become a cadet, learn skills with departments and volunteer at the right age.

You can also take courses to gain all the right certificates to become a career firefighter here. The state has a lot of people to protect in a very small area. With the right training and attitude, you can make sure that you are a great addition to any Connecticut fire department.

The post How To Become A Firefighter In Connecticut appeared first on FirefighterNOW.

from FirefighterNOW https://firefighternow.com/how-to-become-a-firefighter-in-connecticut/

From https://catherinelee4.blogspot.com/2019/10/how-to-become-firefighter-in-connecticut.html

source https://catherinelee4.wordpress.com/2019/10/27/how-to-become-a-firefighter-in-connecticut/

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[vickeyeppunitarj42insurance-blog]

honda element insurance cost

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[itsworn]

Project W-31: A Hands-On Lesson in Drag Racing for a Group of Michigan State University Engineering Students

Americans love to wax poetic about 1969—Woodstock, the moon landing, cool cars—but it also was a tumultuous time to be a young male. Postwar prosperity and optimism gave way to assassinations, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and general cultural confusion. But for a revolving door of Michigan State University (MSU) engineering students, 1969-1973 was a seminal period. Through an interesting sequence of events, they managed to convince Oldsmobile, MSU and its chapter of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), and a host of suppliers to support the preparation of a race car on a shoestring budget.

Paul Aurand, Rick Dolan, Bob Sedlak, and Jim Minneker (later to become a Corvette Hall-of-Famer) knew one another from MSU’s engineering school, but they truly didn’t get together until they joined the student chapter of the SAE. The club met once a month, often spilling over afterward to Monte’s, a watering hole in nearby Okemos.

At Milan in 1972, Project W-31 prepares to go against another W-Machine.

In the fall of 1969, Jim Miller, an Oldsmobile engineer and technical advisor to the SAE chapter, playfully derided the students for not doing more as a group. Rick Dolan responded, “Why don’t you have Oldsmobile give us a car to build?”

Miller’s response surprised them: “If you guys find a place to work on it, I will find you a car.”

Dolan says, “We weren’t sure if it was Jim or the beer talking, but we took him seriously!” Within a week, he secured space in the blacksmith shop with the assistance of thermodynamics professor Frank Roop.

Project W-31 at Tri-City in 1970. Bob Dennis handled the first iteration of the lettering via contact paper. “Everybody agreed that those little 2-inch letters were too small.” He also painted the custom license plate and Dr. Olds trunk lid.

“Now it was getting serious,” says Bob Dennis, who joined the team soon after its inception. “We began looking at national records and what Oldsmobile offered. We decided against a 4-4-2 because they were not competitive, but folks were winning with W-31s. We spec’d out the engine, transmission, and rear axle.”

Several weeks later, Paul Aurand received an evening phone call from Jim Miller. “Be outside in 15 minutes, and be alone.”

They drove to the Oldsmobile Engineering offices, entered a locked facility, and parked next to a red vehicle. Miller handed Aurand the keys and warned, “The title has been sent to Lansing. The VIN has been removed. There’s no registration or insurance, and it has no plates. This car doesn’t exist. Kid, don’t get caught!”

On its first outing, Project W-31 ran G/SS due to wider-than-stock rear tires. Note the air induction system under the bumper.

Aurand continues, “I took the back streets on my way to campus. Several team members who had previously been alerted met me at our ‘garage.’ Nobody saw us come in.”

Hands-on Training What the team received was a 1969 4-4-2 hardtop that had been an Oldsmobile durability test vehicle set to be scrapped. Although the team had determined that the 4-4-2’s 400 was not competitive at the drags, Oldsmobile had followed through by including everything they requested: fresh W-31, four-speed, and 5.00:1 rear.

“Unfortunately it was heavier than it needed to be for the class, but beggars can’t be choosers,” says Fred Bowen.

At Project W-31’s second outing in 1970, the four-speed broke.

The team had varying amounts of automotive experience, but all had a lot to learn. “We studied magazine articles, including one featuring a team connected to Labadie Olds,” says Bob Dennis.

Adds Jim Minneker, “We wanted to race on the G/S national record (12.46). We raced in regional NHRA events, but it never got more competitive than that.”

Thanks to $1,000 in treasury dues that the SAE had collected over the previous 20 years, the team had the funds to buy equipment to make the Olds race-worthy. Yet it was the kindness of sponsors that really made it happen.

The legendary Trailer of Doom, spring 1970.

“We went on a letter-writing campaign,” says Minneker. “We were wholesome college kids racing cars asking, ‘Would you like a place on our car? A donation could give us a whole load of engineering experience!’”

Joe Guzek, engineer at Lansing-based Motor Wheel Corporation and another SAE technical advisor, was able to score Spyder wheels plus Goodyear 7-inch cheater slicks and Frontrunner lightweights.

“It was surprising how many were willing to donate equipment to us,” says Fred Bowen. “ACCEL gave us points, caps, and rotors. Once we were at US-131 and were approached by Calvin DeBruin, a 1950s-era MSU engineering grad and employee of Sealed Power. He provided us the company’s then-new ‘head land’ piston rings.”

Jim Minneker and Rick Dolan show off a trophy in 1970.

“The services we had to pay for were getting the heads cc’d and a three-angle valve job,” says Paul Aurand. “That cost us a couple hundred bucks, but everything else was donated.”

The team tore into preparing the Olds. Removing the sound deadener, melt pads, and undercoating was tedious. Aurand says, “We installed OHC-6 Tempest front springs to improve front-end lift and weight transfer at the starting line. Air Lift airbags were installed in the coils. We also installed the Tempest’s drum brakes, which were marginal.”

Rick Dolan was enthused by the machine shop and made steel bushings for the control arms. The team also modified the transmission into a “slick shift” (with no synchronizers), which enabled faster shifts.

Under no circumstances was Project W-31 to be driven in public.

Initial testing revealed serious rear-wheel hop upon starts, so a pinion snubber was built and installed to control this problem.

Off to the Races The team had a car, but how to get to the dragstrip? Initially the guys borrowed what was soon deemed the Trailer of Doom. Bob Sedlak explains, “I was towing with my 1963 Dodge wagon, and poor Bob Dennis was sitting in the Olds. I was simply trying to find the right speed, but there was no right speed. If you went 20 miles an hour it was marginal, and if you went a little faster or a slower it was wildly out of control.”

The group ended up borrowing a tow bar and using Al Wilson’s 1964 Plymouth for the rest of the year until Cliff Grupke bought his 1969 Cutlass. The pair presented nicely as tow and drag cars.

The W-31 team members, 1971. Back row, left to right: Cliff Grupke, Fred Bowen, Bob Senk, Al Wilson. Front row, left to right: Doug Arden, Jim Grum, Bob Dennis, Curt Dressler.

Project W-31’s first outing was at Onondaga in the spring of 1970. To their dismay, instead of G/S, they were obliged to compete in Super Stock due to wider-than-stock tires (the Goodyear “stockers” had yet to arrive). Jim Minneker and Paul Aurand piloted the Olds at the track. It performed admirably, but at Tri-City (its second outing), the transmission broke.

“We flat-towed the car with the driveshaft in place,” says Fred Bowen. “This caused internal damage to the tranny due to insufficient lubrication. After replacing the tranny, we always removed the driveshaft before towing.”

Few had previous track experience. Cliff Grupke, who joined in 1970, developed his own style. He says, “I usually stabbed the clutch. Thanks to the gearbox mods we made, it shifted nicely. I recall one time we were running well and went up against this Chevelle. I got to the line and used our rule of thumb: activate the Hurst Line Lock, bring yourself up to 6,000 rpm and, when you see the last yellow, go. We never red-lighted! When I saw that yellow, I let go of everything and got a good holeshot, but the Chevy also got out of the hole nicely. I reached for Second gear and missed, then jammed it in and got it going again. I still was ahead because he too missed the shift, but I recovered faster.”

On May 16, 1971, Project W-31 ran H/S instead of G/S at Tri-City. They won their class with an elapsed time of 13.14.

There also were obstacles beyond their control. Bob Dennis explains, “When we raced at Brohman M-37 Dragway, their so-called tech guys made us remove the air induction system, which was regular production equipment for the W-31. We said it’s factory, but they were adamant. They were afraid we were going beat the local guys, I think.”

Throughout the embryonic team’s existence, they also raced at Martin, Milan, and Detroit Dragway.

Uh-Oh To test their handiwork, the team would tow the Olds across campus to the commuter lot, sometimes arousing complaints from the married housing complex a half-mile away. “The first time I did a test burnout was a disaster,” relates Bob Dennis. “It was a late spring night in 1971. I brought up the rpm’s, popped the clutch, and I’m flying along this parking lot.”

After blowing the engine during testing in the summer of 1971, Project W-31 received a new engine.

Dennis Kline continues, “I was in the car and remember the exhilaration of the open-header launch was suddenly replaced by absolute panic when I saw a flash of light in front of us, which was a chain reflecting our headlights.”

Bob hit the brakes, but it was too late. The chain went up over the hood, broke the windshield, and continued over the car.

In a later test run in the summer, there was an enormous explosion, followed by silence. Cliff Grupke tells us, “I remember pulling the spark plugs there in the dark so we could look down into the chambers. John Shook had this little 12-volt light bulb rig that he could clip onto the battery terminals and lower through the spark plug hole. As he was peering down number 7, he uttered, ‘I wonder where the piston went?’ Jim Miller later diagnosed the problem as an over-torqued rod bolt, which I never believed because I know how careful and precise we were in building the engine. Jim was able to secure another engine, which we promptly fitted with our racing bits that had survived.”

Uh-Oh, Part II Aside from wide-open throttle tests in the commuter parking lot, the team never drove the Olds in public. Nonetheless, bringing a tow vehicle and rigging a tow bar were laborious, so Bob Dennis had the idea to obtain a provisionary pass to drive to the lot. “So, dumb me, I called Oldsmobile Public Relations.”

Project W-31 warms up its slicks as it prepares to race a Yenko Deuce Nova in 1972.

The call went nowhere, but eventually Jim Miller caught wind and said, “What in the hell are you doing? You’re getting people in trouble at Oldsmobile!”

Dale Smith, Oldsmobile’s manager of vehicle testing and racing support, wrote about the episode (albeit incorrectly) in his book Racing to the Past: “I did get a car for engineering students at Michigan State. Since they could not afford a trailer, they called Olds Public Relations to attempt to get the car registered so they could drive the car to drag racing events. I then received a call from a dumb $#!+ informing me that I had violated the General Motors racing ban, and that I had better get that car back before I got into deep trouble … I told him the bottom line on why you, me, or anyone else here exists is to sell cars. In my job, I’m trying to improve Olds’ youth image and cultivate new customers.”

The Second Season and Beyond In the spring of 1971, with MSU repurposing its facilities, Project W-31 lost its space in the blacksmith shop. Fred Bowen enlisted the help of Dr. Charles St. Clair, chairman of the mechanical engineering department. “We drove around the area looking for a suitable place to keep the Olds. We had little luck, so he said, ‘For now, you can keep it temporarily in my backyard.’”

MSU’s SAE club recruited new members with the line, “Drag racing is bigger than you think it is, Leroy! Get caught up in it this fall at MSU!”

From there, the Olds ended up in the driveway of Professor Roop. “I think we swapped upper and lower ball joints in his garage one time,” says Cliff Grupke. “We had absolutely no place to work on it, having to beg and borrow everything. I can remember writing letters to our sponsors asking them to renew their enthusiasm for our club.”

In the fall of 1971, Cliff Grupke became president of MSU SAE. “I tried to get everybody else to drive, but nobody seemed interested. I even threatened Al to drive it because he had worked so hard on that car, but I ended up driving quite a bit in 1972.”

Thanks to new member Bob Senk, the team was able to finish rebuilding the engine and putting everything back together at his family’s farm. “We pushed the car under a shade tree, took the hood off, and dropped the engine in with a block and tackle, just like you read about,” says Grupke. “After the summer, we stashed it at my mom’s in Southgate. In the fall of 1972, a local teammate named Jim Mauer had an empty garage at his mom’s.”

The Project W-31 team not only learned how to build a car, but the members also learned how to race. Current evidence of the team’s best shows 13.09 at 108.04 mph.

Where Did Project W-31 Go? All members went on to successful careers in engineering, and none forgot this early experience. They were reunited for the first time in 45-plus years because there’s a story to be told, but the million-dollar question is: What happened to Project W-31?

The trail seems to disappear in 1973. Rick Dolan recalls seeing the Olds at the trailer park next to Tom’s Party Store in Okemos. The car was sitting high in the front, as if the engine had been removed. Paul Aurand says that Doug Arden, a later member, claims the Olds was raced by George Cornell, who may have had a Lunati connection. Arden even thinks he has seen the Olds in more recent years—with lettering intact—in a Lansing lot.

Project W-31 was much more than a cool car story from back in the day. It’s about this great grassroots adventure by a group of engineering students who gained real-world experience through hard work, ingenuity, and initiative. Reminisces Bob Senk, “Absolutely thrilling! I’d go back right now and be glad to do it. As fun as can be. Way better than a rollercoaster!”

“We learned a ton of things in that short time. We also learned to build confidence in ourselves,” adds Bob Dennis. “Everyone was very lucky because we had something on our resumes when we graduated. The hands-on experience allowed us to stand tall and say, ‘This is what we’ve been doing while we were studying engineering.’”

Al Wilson agrees. “I was into it for a learning experience because I’d never done automotive work before. I learned everything I know from those years.”

Editor’s note: Members of MSU’s Project W-31 team will attend the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationas, November 17-18, in conjunction with this year’s W-31 Invitational. Plans include a presentation by the team. Visit mcacn.com for more show info.

The W-31 350 The W-31 Force-Air Induction system had its genesis in 1968 for F-85/Cutlass S/Cutlass Supreme coupes, which included the 325hp Ram Rod 350, special 2-inch intake/1-5¤8-inch exhaust valves, and special high-performance camshaft that Oldsmobile claimed “has very rough idle characteristics that would be objectionable to some owners.” A floor-shifted three-speed manual with 3.91 gears and Anti-Spin axle were standard, but most featured wide- or close-ratio four-speeds. W-31s were easily identified by two scoops under the bumper with tubes to the air cleaner. There were few changes for 1969, but Olds began marketing the ultrahigh-performance models under the W-Machine banner with Dr. Oldsmobile leading the charge.

The Good Guys List Project W-31 Benefactors: AC, ACCEL, Air-Lift, Demmer Corp., Denny’s Sunoco (for alignments and reworking the distributor), GE Silicones, Johnson’s Speed Shop, Kendall racing oil, Kustom Headers, Lakewood Industries, Lowell Automotive, Sealed Power piston rings, Stewart-Warner instruments, and Thrush Performance Products.

A Question of Grilles Project W-31 was a 4-4-2 masquerading as a W-31 Cutlass S. Each model used different grilles. By a stroke of luck, the team was able to score a correct pair. “I was living off campus and didn’t have a car,” says Cliff Grupke. “I used to borrow my buddy’s old Galaxie with rusted-through floorboards to get home to Detroit. During one visit, my mom said, ‘I’m going to get you a car. I don’t want you riding in this deathtrap.’ A mechanic friend who worked at a Dearborn Oldsmobile dealership mentioned there was a nice ’69 Cutlass with low mileage, and when it became mine, we swapped the grilles with the MSU car.”

Other Project W-31 Members Doug Arden, Curt Dressler, Jerry Feikema, Paul Gentilozzi, Jim Grum, Mike Miller, Roland Osborne (later of Chrysler Power fame), Dick Parnell, Rick Sunamoto, Ron Wingara, and several others lost to time.

The post Project W-31: A Hands-On Lesson in Drag Racing for a Group of Michigan State University Engineering Students appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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[todaynewsstories]

Mahathir takes aim at Country Garden’s giant development in southern Malaysia

FOREST CITY/KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (Reuters) – Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Monday declared that foreigners will not be granted visas to live in the giant Forest City real estate project on the country’s southern tip, a major threat to the marketing strategy for the development.

Residential buildings are seen at Forest City in Johor, Malaysia, August 20, 2018. REUTERS/Fathin Ungku

It is not his first broadside against the plan by Chinese developer Country Garden Holdings Co to create a new city that was envisaged to eventually house 700,000 people on reclaimed land near Singapore, but it could be his most damaging. The company has been targeting foreigners more than Malaysians for sales of the apartments.

A top official at the project told Reuters last week that in the weeks immediately after 93-year-old Mahathir came back into power, through a shock election victory in May, demand for the apartments had weakened, and that the uncertainty remained a concern.

His latest comments are likely to exacerbate those concerns.

“One thing is certain, that city that is going to be built cannot be sold to foreigners,” Mahathir said at a news conference on Monday in Kuala Lumpur in response to a question from Reuters. “We are not going to give visas for people to come and live here.”

Mahathir, who was Malaysia’s leader from 1981-2003, said the government’s objection was “because it was built for foreigners, not built for Malaysians. Most Malaysians are unable to buy those flats.”

A Country Garden official said the company didn’t immediately have a response to Mahathir’s attack. Forest City didn’t have an immediate comment.

Country Garden Chinese buyers now make up about two-thirds of the owners of the Forest City apartments that have been sold so far, with 20 percent from Malaysia and the rest from 22 other countries including Indonesia, Vietnam and South Korea.

Mahathir had capitalized on popular disquiet about Chinese investment pouring into Malaysia during his election campaign. He even suggested in a speech last December that he hoped Forest City would become an actual forest with baboons and monkeys as residents, according to local media reports.

Since becoming prime minister he has put the brakes on a number of China-backed projects, including the $20 billion East Coast Rail Link project and a natural gas pipeline project in Sabah. Plans for a high speed rail link from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, which was expected to be a big boost to the Forest City project, have also been suspended.

Residential buildings under construction are seen at Forest City in Johor, Malaysia, August 20, 2018. REUTERS/Fathin Ungku

“GHOST TOWN” QUESTIONS

Forest City’s sales have picked back up in recent weeks, and the developer has been seeking to change the project’s image. Country Garden is trying to make it appear more Malaysian and less Chinese, according to the official, Ng Zhu Hann, who is head of strategy for Country Garden Forest City.

Country Garden is also willing to acknowledge for the first time that if demand does falter it will have to slow down the building of the development. It is eventually intended to be a $100 billion city, with apartment blocks, houses, office towers, hotels and shopping centers on four man-made islands.

“If the demand is there, we will build. If it’s not there, we will slow down,” Ng said in an interview at the gleaming Phoenix Hotel, one of the finished new structures on the first of the reclaimed islands. “So there’s no worry of a ghost town, oversupply – If the demand is not there, we won’t be building.”

Mahathir’s victory is the second big threat that the development – which is a partnership between Country Garden and the Sultan of Johor – has faced in the past couple of years. Beijing’s moves to stem capital outflows imposed after the yuan plummeted in late 2016 hurt mainland Chinese demand for the apartments.

“CHINESE STIGMA”

Ng said what he called the “Chinese Stigma” is the biggest hurdle facing the project.

“What the Malaysian government does not want is a Chinese enterprise coming to Malaysia, taking government contracts, affecting the project opportunities of local developers, making the money and going back,” Ng said.

This has prompted a change in hiring strategy as Forest City seeks to recruit more Malaysians like Ng into senior management positions.

“My predecessor was a Chinese. In the past, our management had only one Malaysian, which was head of legal. This (my) position is usually held by a Chinese, but now I’m here,” said Ng, who is ethnic Chinese but from Malaysia.

Ng said that the political uncertainty had hurt investor sentiment.

The Shattuck-St Mary’s School Forest City campus overlooks ongoing construction and the Port of Tanjung Pelepas in Johor, Malaysia, August 20, 2018. REUTERS/Fathin Ungku

“It’s not that people don’t want to invest, but people are now: ‘Let’s wait and see. What if they change their policy again?’ Political stability is one, policy stability is another.”

SKYSCRAPERS ABOVE MANGROVES

At the end of a thirty-minute drive from the crossing from Singapore through palm oil plantations and jungle, the once sleepy town of Gelang Patah known for its mangroves and fishing villages now has a skyline of skyscrapers.

This futuristic development is only half of the first of four man-made islands envisioned for the development – only 2.7 square kilometers of the planned reclamation of 20 square kilometers.

Work to build more high rise residential towers, town houses and commercial buildings is continuing full steam, with dozens of heavy duty trucks carrying sand and materials while cranes dot a skyline that is growing taller and denser as high-rise apartments rapidly approach completion.

Forest City is barely inhabited, with only a handful of staff living at its service apartments and guests at its hotel.

But earlier this month, an international school opened its doors to the first 60 students – mostly from China and also from South Korea – to its 22-acre campus planted with “vertical gardens,” an Olympic-size pool and three yoga studios.

They will be knocking about the Shattuck St Mary’s school campus designed to accommodate 1,000 students as construction roars on in the backdrop.

Liang Ri Sheng, 44, who runs an electrical services company in Guangzhou, said he hopes Forest City will be the gateway for his son to an international life, riding on the strength of China’s Belt and Road regional infrastructure push.

“It will give both eastern and western exposure for my son. I think it’s good for my son’s growth and development,” Li told Reuters.

His family will be one of the first 482 to get the keys to their new homes by September.

Reporting by Fathin Ungku and Joseph Sipalan; Additional reporting by Aradhana Aravindan and Clare Jim; Editing by Jack Kim and Martin Howell

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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[theconservativebrief]

There’s a fight on inside Microsoft. White-collar tech workers who have traditionally shied away from political activism starting to mobilize in their workplaces.

In the midst of last week’s growing uproar over the Trump administration’s family separation policy, Twitter users began circulating a blog post from earlier this year in which the company proclaimed how “proud” it was to support ICE, the agency responsible for immigration enforcement.

The post described how Microsoft would help ICE to “utilize deep learning capabilities to accelerate facial recognition and identification.” Since ICE is currently consumed with the work of separating children from their families, a practice the UN has condemned as a human rights violation, such facial-recognition software could aid the agency in identifying people for deportation or detainment.

Alerted to the relationship by the blog post, Microsoft workers expressed outrage over the company’s $19.4 million contract with ICE. The company briefly edited the post to remove the glowing language about ICE, according to Gizmodo, then posted a statement describing its “dismay” at the administration’s family-separation policy. Microsoft did not address whether it would cancel the contract.

It wasn’t nearly enough. By Tuesday, an open letter signed by more than 100 Microsoft employees had been posted to company’s internal message board, the New York Times reported. The letter, addressed to CEO Satya Nadella, called for the cancellation of the contract and the creation and enforcement of a “clear policy stating that neither Microsoft nor its contractors will work with clients who violate international human rights law” — as well as greater transparency on contracts the company signs with any government.

The quick response among the company’s employees is indicative of a larger trend across the tech industry. Immediately following Trump’s election, tech workers mobilized, pledging not to build the database for the administration’s proposed “Muslim ban,” and protesting outside of Palantir, the company many saw as the likely candidate for building the database.

While tech workers as a group tend to lean to the left on social issues, they’ve also shied away from workplace organizing and workplace protests, in part due to comfortable salaries. But the Trump administration has ignited a sense of distrust among Silicon Valley’s white-collar workforce.

The relationships built in the first wave of organizing were reactivated during current protests, which have extended beyond concerns about deportation. At Google last month, engineers rose up to express their anger over Project Maven, a contract to provide the US Department of Defense with AI to analyze drone data.

According to several current Microsoft employees who spoke to Vox, employees of Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and other tech giants are in regular contact, sharing strategies and blueprints. “They’re very closely in touch [with each other],” one Microsoft employee, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject, told me.

Another Microsoft senior engineer told me the company’s fumbling attempts at damage control only added to the outrage internally. In a statement sent to Microsoft employees and posted publicly on Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Nadella claimed that the company “is not working with the U.S. government on any projects related to separating children from their families at the border” — which struck many employees as hair-splitting. The statement backfired, leading more of the company’s employees to sign the petition to cancel the contract.

“The way they’ve gone about trying to assuage our fears has only muddied the waters more,” the senior engineer said. Pointing out the disconnect between the company’s numerous public statements in favor of immigration reform and the contract with ICE, she said she expects this flair-up will have long-term consequences. As for herself, she said: “It’s making me ask questions I wouldn’t have asked a week ago.”

And she’s not alone. Some employees have stated that they are considering leaving the company, while other high-profile members of the tech community have backed out of conferences associated with the company in solidarity with those organizing internally. Additionally, more than 200 developers at GitHub, a leading software development platform just acquired by Microsoft, which itself has faced criticism for its relationship with ICE, pledged not to continue working with the platform should the contract stand.

Plus, there’s a revolt happening at LinkedIn, a subsidiary of Microsoft. According to one current employee at the company’s Sunnyvale, California, campus who requested anonymity, LinkedIn workers have been doing their own organizing since news of the ICE contract broke last week.

When asked how broad the support is at LinkedIn for the campaign to cancel the ICE contract, the employee told Vox that he suspects nearly half of the employees are upset about the contract. With LinkedIn’s thousands of employees and position in Silicon Valley, this organizing is significant in its own right.

For one Microsoft worker, it’s a chance to have real impact. “Tech companies provide the machinery for coordinating between ICE agents, for tracking down immigrants,” they said. “If tech workers decide that they’re not going to build that, if they decide that they’re going to put their bodies on the gears, then they can stop it.”

The unfolding story at Microsoft is just one development in a fast-moving revolt by tech workers against the Trump administration. The Google protest over the drone-related Project Maven was another key inflection point. After a months-long campaign that included a work boycott by what Bloomberg described as a group of particularly influential software engineers known as the Group of Nine, the company announced it would not seek another contract when the current one expires next year.

“We owe a huge debt to the Google employees who were able to get Project Maven not renewed by standing up,” said the senior engineer at Microsoft. “I don’t know if this would have happened if they hadn’t acted first, as it provided a very good blueprint for us.”

As the pressure mounts at Microsoft, a parallel campaign has emerged at Amazon. Amazon workers, community organizations, company shareholders, and more than 50,000 members of the public demanded the company stop selling Rekognition, a widely criticized facial-recognition technology, to all governments and government agencies, including ICE.

And coordination is growing: A number of those at the center of these campaigns are active members of cross-company organizations like the Tech Workers Coalition.

Asked what comes next, the Microsoft engineer mentioned an upcoming intern Q&A session with the company’s CEO, where attendees are expected to pressure him to cancel Microsoft’s ICE contract. The LinkedIn employee mentioned efforts to search through Department of Defense press releases and internal company resources to find other, potentially troubling, contracts.

Meanwhile, Science for the People, an activist group primarily made up of science educators and working scientists, will be picketing in solidarity with Microsoft workers outside of Microsoft’s flagship store in New York City Monday night.

This revolt has unfolded at a pace befitting an industry obsessed with speed and disruption. It’s a heartening first step toward increasing the political engagement of tech workers, which will be necessary if they will ever truly reign in these tech behemoths.

It remains to be seen if these workers can build the internal networks and connections to political organizations necessary to sustain their efforts. (In a notable shift from past disdain around using the term, the open letter at Microsoft was signed Microsoft “workers,” not “employees.”) But if — and, hopefully, when — they win the cancellation of the ICE contract, momentum is with them.

I spoke with a financial technology professional and organizer with Tech Action who agreed with the hopeful tone of those involved in the Microsoft campaign. But he also emphasized the potential limitations of tech campaigns that ignore the reasons these companies partner with indefensible agencies in the first place.

The “dirty work” pays very well, he pointed out, via Signal. So “if they lobby to stop the dirty work, they kill their own jobs.” Many white-collar Microsoft workers are angered by the company’s ICE contract, in part because “they or their parents were immigrants, or refugees,” according to one current employee. But every Microsoft employee who spoke with Vox stated that they did not believe there had yet been sustained coordination with the Microsoft workers who are most affected by Trump’s policies — the immigrants who work on Microsoft’s campuses as janitors, cafeteria staff, or security guards.

Pulling hourly, low-wage workers into the campaign wouldn’t only make sense because many of these workers may be directly affected by the administration’s immigration policies; it might also introduce white-collar techies to working-class criticisms of their employers.

Such criticisms include concerns related to pay, benefits, and the effect these companies have on the communities in which they’re located. After all, as the Tech Action organizer told me, at some point the focus of an effective resistance within tech will need to incorporate a view of owners and investors of tech companies themselves as the enemy — not just ICE and Trump.

Whether those at the center of the Microsoft campaign and their counterparts at Google and Amazon can reach these workers remains an open question. However, the growing recognition among white-collar workers that their labor is a precondition to the carrying out of unjust policies — and that if they withhold that labor, they can help bring these policies to a halt — is critical.

For an industry that has seemed almost allergic to the language of class, the current wave of resistance marks an exciting start.

Alex Press is an assistant editor at Jacobin and a PhD student in sociology at Northeastern University. You can follow her on Twitter @alexnpress.

The Big Idea is Vox’s home for smart discussion of the most important issues and ideas in politics, science, and culture — typically by outside contributors. If you have an idea for a piece, pitch us at thebigidea@vox.com.

Original Source -> How Silicon Valley workers are revolting against Trump’s immigration policy

via The Conservative Brief