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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years ago

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Vivant, il a manqué le monde ; mort, il le possède.

- François René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848), Vie de Napoléon, livres XIX à XXIV des Mémoires d’outre-tombe (posthume)

Of course we don’t have any photograph or film of Napoleon’s death on 5 May 1821 on Saint Hélène. But we do have the next best thing: a painting. Charles de Steuben depiction of Napoleon's deathbed and his faithful entourage that served as witnesses to his dying moments became the one of the most important paintings of the post-Napoleonic era but then faded from modern memory.

I first came across it by accident when I was in my teens at my Swiss boarding school. There were times I found myself with school friends going away on hiking trips around the high Alpine chain of the Allgäu Alps and we would drive through Lake Constance to get there, or we would hike around the Lake itself through the Bodensee-Rundwanderweg.

Perched high above Lake Constance and nestled in large parklands, stood Schloss Arenenberg which overlooks the lower part of Lake Constance. At first, it appears a relatively modest country house. But this was no usual pretty looking house. Arenenberg was owned by well-heeled families before it was sold to Hortense de Beauharnais, the adopted daughter and sister-in-law of the French Emperor himself, Napoleon Bonaparte. She had it rebuilt in the French Empire style and lived there from 1817 with her son Louis Napoleon, later Emperor Napoleon III, who is said to have spoken the Thurgau dialect in addition to French. This elegantly furnished castle then was once the residence of the last emperor of France.

The alterations made first by Queen Hortense and later by Empress Eugénie have been carefully preserved and the house still bears the marks of both women. Queen Hortense's drawing room is perfectly preserved and visitors can still admire her magnificent library (all marked with the Empress' cipher) containing over one thousand books. Likewise, in the room where the queen died, every object has been maintained in its original condition: pieces of furniture and personal belongings are gathered here to evoke her memory in a very touching manner. As for Empress Eugénie's rooms, they too have been very carefully preserved. Her private drawing room is a perfect illustration of the Second Empire style with sculptures by Carpeaux and portraits of the imperial family by Winterhalter.

After 1873, the Empress and the Imperial Prince brought the palace back to life by making regular summer visits, which they continued until 1878. However, on the tragic death of her son in 1879, Eugénie found it difficult to return to a place so full of painful memories. And so in 1906 she donated the estate to the canton of Thurgovie as a testimony of her gratitude for the region's faithful hospitality towards the Napoleon family. And in accordance with the Empress' wishes, the residence was turned into a museum devoted to Napoleon.

In what is now the Napoleonic Museum, the original furnishings have been preserved, and the palace gardens had been fully restored. This in itself might be worth a visit for the view over Lake Constance which is stunning. For Napoleonic era buffs though its the incredible art collection which is its real treasure. It houses an important art collection including works by the First-Empire artists Chinard Canova, Gros, Robert Lefèvre, Gérard, Isabey and Girodet-Trioson, and by the Second-Empire painters and sculptors Alfred de Dreux, Winterhalter, Carpeaux, Meissonier, Hébert, Flandrin, Detaille, Nieuwerkerke and Giraud.

But what caught my eye was this painting, ‘La Mort de Napoléon’ by Charles de Steuben. I didn’t know anything about it or the artist for that matter, but one of my more erudite school friends who, being French, was into Napoleonic stuff in a huge way, and she explained it all to me. Of course I knew a fair bit about Napoleon growing up because my grandfather and father, being military men themselves, were Napoleonic warfare buffs and it rubbed off onto me. I just knew about Napoleon the military genius. I never thought about him once he was beaten at Waterloo in 1815. So I never really engaged with Napoleon the man. And yet here I was staring at his last breath of mortality caught forever in time through art. Not for the first time I had mixed feelings about Napoleon Bonaparte, both the man and the myth (built up around him since his death).

On 5 May, 1821, at 5.49pm in Longwood House on the remote island of St Helena, in the words of the famed French man of letters, François-René de Chateaubriand, ‘the mightiest breath of life which ever animated human clay’ came no more. To the British, Dutch, and Prussian coalition who had exiled Naopleon Bonaparte there in 1815, he was a despot, but to France, he was seen as a devotee of the Enlightenment.

In the decade following his demise, Napoleon’s image underwent a transformation in France. The monarchy had been restored, but by the late 1820s, it was growing unpopular. King Charles X was seen as a threat to the civil liberties established during the Napoleonic era. This mistrust revived Napoleon’s reputation and put him in a more heroic light.

Fascination with the French leader’s death led Charles de Steuben, a German-born Romantic painter living in Paris, to immortalise the momentous event. Steuben’s painting depicts the moment of Napoleon’s death and seeks to capture the sense of awe in the room at the death of a man whose legendary career had begun in the French Revolution. It was this, ultimate moment that Steuben wished to immortalise in a painting which has since become what could almost be described as the official version of the scene.

There is no question that Steuben’s painting became the most famous and most iconic depiction of Napoleon’s death in art history. In another painting, executed during the years 1825-1830, Steuben was to give a realistic view of the emperor dictating his memoirs to general Gourgaud. This same realism also pervades his version of Napoleon’s death, and it is totally unlike Horace Vernet’s, Le songe de Bertrand ou L’Apothéose de Napoléon (Bertrand’s Dream or the apotheosis of Napoleon) which, although painted in the same year, is an allegorical celebration of the emperor’s martyrdom and as such the first stone in the edifice of the Napoleonic legend.

And what a legend Napoleon’s life was turned into for time immemorial. Napoleon declared himself France’s First Consul in 1799 and then emperor in 1804. For the next decade, he led France against a series of European coalitions during the Napoleonic Wars and expanded his empire throughout much of continental Europe before his defeat in 1814. He was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba, but he escaped and briefly reasserted control over France before a crushing final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

Napoleon’s military prowess earned him the fear of his enemies, but his civil reforms in France brought him the respect of his people. The Napoleonic Code, introduced in 1804, replaced the existing patchwork of French laws with a unified national system built on the principles of the Enlightenment: universal male suffrage, property rights, equality (for men), and religious freedom. Even in his final exile on St. Helena, Napoleon proved a magnetic presence. Passengers of ships docked to resupply would hurry to meet the great general. He developed strong personal bonds with the coterie who had accompanied him into exile. Although some speculate that he was murdered, most agree that Napoleon’s death in 1821, at the age of 51, was the result of stomach cancer.

By contrast, Charles de Steuben was born in 1788, his youth and artistic training coinciding with Napoleon’s rise to power. He was the son of the Duke of Württemberg officer Carl Hans Ernst von Steuben. At the age of twelve he moved with his father, who entered Russian service as a captain, to Saint Petersburg, where he studied drawing at the Art Academy classes as a guest student. Thanks his father's social contacts in the court of the Tsar, in the summer of 1802 he accompanied the young Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia (1786–1859) and granddaughter of Frederick II Eugene, Duke of Württemberg, to the Thuringian cultural city of Weimar, where the Tsar's daughter two years later married Charles Frederick, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1783–1853). Steuben, then fourteen years old, was a Page at the ducal court, a position for which the career prospects would be in the military or administration. The poet Friedrich Schiller was a family friend who at once recognised De Steuben's artistic talent and instilled in him his political ideal of free self-determination regardless of courtly constraints.

At the behest of Pierre Fontaine in 1828 de Steuben painted La Clémence de Henri IV après la Bataille d'Ivry, depicting a victorious Henry IV of France at the Battle of Ivry. De Steuben's Bataille de Poitiers, en octobre 732, painted between 1834 and 1837, shows the triumphant Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours, also known as the Battle of Poitiers. He painted Jeanne la folle around the same time and he was commissioned by Louis Philippe to paint a series of portraits of past Kings of France.

Life in the French capital was a repeated source of internal conflict for Steuben. The allure of bohemian Paris and his military-dominated upbringing made him a wanderer between worlds. As an official commitment to his adopted country he became a French citizen in 1823. However, the irregularity of his income as a freelance artist was in contrast to his sense of duty and social responsibility. To secure his family financially, he took a job as an art teacher at École Polytechnique, where he briefly trained Gustave Courbet. In 1840 he was awarded a gold medal at the Salon de Paris for his highly acclaimed paintings.

The love of classical painting was a lifelong passion of Steuben. He was a close friend to Eugène Delacroix, the leader of the French Romantic school of painting, whom he portrayed several times. Steuben was also part of this artistic movement, which replaced classicism in French painting. "The painter of the Revolution," as Jacques-Louis David was called by his students, joined art with politics in his works. The subjects of his historical paintings supported historical change. He painted mainly in sharp colour contrasts, heavy solid contours and clear outlines. The severity of this style led many contemporary artists - including Prud'hon - to a romanticised counter movement. They preferred the shadowy softness and gentle colour gradations of Italian Renaissance painters such as Leonardo da Vinci and Antonio da Correggio, whose works they studied intensively. Steuben, who had begun his training with David, felt the school was becoming increasingly rigid and dogmatic. Critics praised his deliberate compositions, excellent brush stroke and impressive colour effects. But some of his critics felt that his pursuit of dramatic design of rich people also showed, at times, a pronounced tendency toward the histrionic.

The portrayal of key moments in Napoleon’s dramatic military career would feature among some of Steuben’s best known works. But it is this death scene that Steuben is most remembered for.

Using his high-level contacts among figures in Napoleon’s circle, Steuben interviewed and sketched many of the people who had been present when Napoleon died at Longwood House on St. Helena. He wanted to attempt o give the most accurate representation of the scene possible. Indeed, the painter interviewed the companions of Napoleon’s captivity on their return to France and had them pose for their portraits. Only the Abbé Vignali, captain Crokat and the doctor Arnott were painted from memory. The Grand maréchal Bertrand made sketches of the plan of the room, noting the positions of the different pieces of furniture and people in the room. All the protagonists within the painting brought together some of their souvenirs and in posing for the painter, each person can be seen contributing to a work of collective memory, very much with posterity in mind.

Painstakingly researched, Steuben painted a carefully composed scene of hushed grief. Notable among the figures are Gen. Henri Bertrand, who loyally followed Napoleon into exile; Bertrand’s wife, Fanny; and their children, of whom Napoleon had become very fond.

The best known version of “La Mort de Napoléon” was completed in 1828. French writer Stendhal considered it “a masterpiece of expression.” In 1830 the installation of a more liberal monarchy in France further boosted admiration of Napoleon, who suddenly became a wildly popular figure in theatre, art, and music. This fervour led to the diffusion of Steuben’s deathbed scene in the form of engravings throughout Europe in the 1830s. As Napoleon’s stock arose within French culture and arts, so did Steuben’s depiction of Napoleon’s death. It became a grandeur of vision that permeated Steuben’s masterpiece of historical reconstruction.

Initially forming part of the collection of the Colonel de Chambrure, the painting was put up for auction in Paris, on 9 March 1830, with other Napoleonic works, notably Horace Vernet’s Les Adieux de Fontainebleau (The Fontainebleau adieux) and Steuben’s Retour de l’île d’Elbe (The return from the island of Elba). The catalogue noted that the painting had already been viewed in the colonel’s collection by “three thousand connoisseurs” – which alone would have made it a success -, but its renown was to be further amplified by the production of the famous engraving. The diffusion of this engraving by Jean-Pierre-Marie Jazet (1830-1831, held at the Musée de Malmaison), reprinted and copied countless times throughout the 19th century, made the scene a classic in popular imagery, on a level of popularity with paintings such as Millet’s Angelus.

A / Grand Marshal Henri-Gatien Bertrand. Utterly loyal servant of Napoleon’s to the last. His memoirs of the exile on St Helena were not published until 1849. Only the year 1821 has ever been translated into English.

B / General Charles Tristan de Montholon. Courtier and companion of Napoleon’s exile. Montholon managed to ease Bertrand out and become Napoleon’s closest companion at the end, highly rewarded in Napoleon’s will, which Montholon helped write. Montholon’s untrustworthy memoirs were published in 1846/47.

C / Doctor Francesco Antommarchi. Corsican anatomy specialist. Sent by Napoleon’s mother from Rome to St Helena to be Napoleon’s personal physician on the expulsion of Barry O’Meara. Napoleon disliked and distrusted Antommarchi. Antommarchi’s untrustworthy memoirs were very influential and published in 1825.

D / Angelo Paolo Vignali, Abbé. Corsican assistant-chaplain, sent by Madame Mère from Rome to St Helena in 1819.

E / Countess Françoise Elisabeth “Fanny” Bertrand and her children: Napoléon (F), who carried the censer at Napoleon’s funeral; Hortense (G); Henry (H); and Arthur (I), youngest by six years of all the Bertrand children and born on the island. She was wife of the Grand Marshal, very unwilling participant in the exile on St Helena. Her relations with Napoleon were difficult since she refused to live at Longwood. She spoke fluent English. Was however very loyal to Napoleon.

J / Louis Marchand. Napoleon’s valet from 1814 on and one of his closest servants. As Napoleon noted in his will, “The service he [Marchand] rendered were those of a friend”.

K / “Ali”, Louis Étienne Saint-Denis. Known as “the Mamluk Ali”, one of Napoleon’s longest-serving and intimate servants; He became Librarian at Longwood and was an indefatigable copyist of imperial manuscripts.

L / Ali’s English (Catholic) wife, Mary ‘Betsy’ Hall. She was sent out from England by UK relatives of the Countess Bertrand to be governess/nursemaid to the Bertrand children. Married Ali aged 23 in October 1819.

M / Jean Abra(ha)m Noverraz. From the Vaud region in Switzerland. Very tall and imposing figure that Napoleon called his “Helvetic bear”. He was himself ill during Napoleon’s illness.

N / Noverraz’s wife, Joséphine née Brulé. They married in married in July 1819, and she was the Countess Montholon’s lady’s maid. Noverraz and Saint-Denis had a fist fight for the hand of Joséphine.

O / Jean Baptiste Alexandre Pierron. The cook, dessert specialist, long in Napoleon’s service and who had accompanied Napoleon to Elba.

P /Jacques Chandelier. Iincorrectly identified on the picture as Santini who had left the island in 1817. A cook, from the service of Pauline Bonaparte, Napoleon’s sister, who arrived on St Helena with the group from Rome in 1819.

Q /Jacques Coursot. Butler, from the service of Madame Mère, Napoleon’s mother, he arrived on St Helena with the group from Rome in 1819.

R / Doctor Francis Burton. Irish surgeon in the 66th regiment who had arrived on St Helena only on 31st March 1821. He is renowned for having made Napoleon’s death mask (with ensign John Ward and Antommarchi).

S/ Doctor Archibald Arnott. Surgeon in the 20th regiment. Brought in to tend to Napoleon in extremis on 1 April 1821.

T/ Captain William Crokat. A Scot, orderly officer at Longwood for less than a month, having replaced Engelbert Lutyens on 15 April. He received the honour of carrying the news of Napoleon’s death back to London and also the reward, namely, a promotion and £500, privileges of which Lutyens was deliberately deprived by the governor.

#charles de steuben #art #painting #napoleon #bonaparte #st helena #life #death #chateaubriand #french #france #emperor #artist #aesthetics #war #politics #society #culture #arts #personal

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 4 years ago

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 21, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

As we enter the home stretch to this election, we are bombarded with so much news the only way to make sense of it is to divide it into categories.

The president is angry and self-pitying while campaign officials are trying to tip the election with the dubious laptop story. Administration officials are also working as quickly as they can to push through whatever they can while they are still in power, hoping what they are doing flies under the radar with so much going on. And this flurry of activity means there are bad slips.

At the same time, Democratic candidate Joe Biden is trying to get elected, but in such a storm of crazy that his actual policies, which are quite developed, are simply not getting much airtime. Instead, people have begun to look to him as a return to an America in which strength was measured not by dominance but by caring.

The president began the day by tweeting about Biden’s proposed tax plan, which he calls “the Radical Biden-Harris Agenda.” He claims that the plan will “slash the typical American’s income by $6,500 per year. They will raise TAXES by $4 TRILLION DOLLARS – triggering a mass exodus of jobs out of America and into foreign countries…. Your 401k’s will crash with Biden. Massive Biden Tax and Regulation increases will destroy all that you have built! Additionally, 180 Million People will lose their Private Healthcare Plans.”

In fact, though, it is the administration that is talking about slashing things, including millions of dollars from Democratic-led cities that Trump and Barr have labeled “anarchist jurisdictions”: New York City; Portland, Oregon; Washington, D.C.; and Seattle, Washington. That money would cut federal grants for coronavirus relief, HIV treatment, newborn screening, and so on. Officials from the affected cities, as well as the U.S. Conference of Mayors, say they will sue if the administration tries to follow this through.

In a move that threatens to destroy our nonpartisan civil service, Trump today signed an Executive Order creating a new category of public servant who is not covered by normal rules. These employees can be hired by agency heads without having to go through the merit-based system in place since 1883, and can be fired at will. This new “Schedule F” will once again allow presidents to appoint cronies to office, while firing those insufficiently loyal. It also appears to shield political appointees from an incoming administration by protecting them from firing because of political affiliation.

Yesterday, an inspector general for the United States Postal Service issued a report requested by Congress examining the effects of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s changes to the postal service. The report concluded that the changes resulted in “significant negative service impacts across the country.” DeJoy is a Trump loyalist. The USPS Board of Governors, made up of Trump appointees, rejects the report’s conclusions.

Meanwhile, a number of senior administration officials and lawmakers from both parties are worried that the White House is fast-tracking a business deal worth billions of dollars in what is essentially a no-bid contract to a company associated with Republican operatives, including Karl Rove. The company, Rivada, wants to lease the Department of Defense’s mid-band spectrum. This spectrum is wildly valuable for the 5G market, the next-generation mobile network. Pentagon leaders are opposed to the deal since the military uses that spectrum, and they say they have not been able to study the effect of commercial use of the spectrum on military readiness. Pentagon lawyers say the White House has no authority to sell or lease its spectrum. Lawmakers of both parties oppose the deal. One senior official told CNN, “Something is really fishy about this.”

Today, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe blamed Iran for hacked emails purporting to come from the alt-right Proud Boys warning Democrats to vote for Trump. Ratcliffe said “we have identified that two foreign actors, Iran and Russia, have taken specific actions” relating to the election. He said the emails were designed to hurt Trump. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told Rachel Maddow that intelligence officers in a classified briefing about the matter did not, in fact, say that there was any attempt to hurt Trump. “I’m surprised that Ratcliffe would say that to the public…. I had the strong impression it was much rather to undermine confidence in elections….”

Meanwhile, Trump continues to push the laptop story. He is reportedly considering firing FBI director Christopher Wray after the election because Wray has refused to announce an investigation into Biden, his son Hunter Biden, or other Biden associates. After Wray’s refusal to back up Trump’s insistence that this summer’s violence was from “Antifa,” the FBI director’s unwillingness to announce a Biden investigation is apparently infuriating the president. In 2016, then FBI director James Comey announced a new investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails just 11 days before the election, an announcement political scientists say helped to swing victory to Trump. While the president can, in fact, fire an FBI director, it is unusual, and certainly should not happen because the director refuses to attack the president’s political rival. The term of the FBI director is set at 10 years so the director serves at least two presidents, and is not bound to the political cycle.

Trump is railing not just at Wray, but also at Attorney General William Barr. Trump was counting on Barr’s probe of the Russia investigation to implicate high-ranking members of the Obama administration just before the election, but Barr has backed off on delivering the report. Trump is frustrated, recently retweeting a photo of Barr with the caption “for the love of GOD ARREST SOMEBODY.” Barr has been staying out of the news lately, although he was in Memphis, Tennessee, today, announcing arrests made there under his Operation Legend, the name for the police crackdown in a number of cities announced in July.

Pushing the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop got a lot more difficult today when Sacha Baron Cohen revealed that his new Borat film shows Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani—the source of the laptop-- in a compromising position with a young woman. Giuliani insists the scene is a “complete fabrication,” but the stills I saw (and I was trying really hard not to see any of this) indicate that this explanation will convince only those determined to be convinced. As many observers have pointed out, if Baron Cohen could prank Giuliani so easily, what does that say about how well Giuliani could identify foreign influence operations?

For his part, Biden is acting like a normal presidential candidate, which just doesn’t grab the headlines the way Trump’s actions do. After Trump attacked Biden’s tax policy, though, a number of stories noted the actual terms of the plan.

Biden proposes to raise taxes on the wealthy. He would get rid of some of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, including the cut in the income tax rate for people making more than $400,000 a year. Trump cut that rate from 39.6% to 37%. Biden would put it back where it was. This change would affect fewer than 10% of taxpayers. People would also pay into the Social Security payroll tax for incomes over $400,000. That tax is currently collected only on $137,700 of earnings. Under this plan, the nation’s top 1% of earners would bring home about 15.9% less money after taxes than they do now.

Biden also proposes to raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, and establish a 15% minimum tax on the so-called “book income” of a corporation, that is, the amount its directors report to shareholders, which often makes a corporation look quite profitable while it pays little or no tax. He would also increase taxes on international profits. These proposed taxes would make up more than half of the revenue the Treasury would see from the new measures.

The Biden proposals would raise between $2.4 and $4 trillion over a decade. The Penn Wharton Budget Model concludes that the top 1% of earners would pay about 80% of the tax increases. Its report continues: “All groups outside of the top 5%... see their after-tax incomes fall by less than 1 percent.” The Washington Post awarded four Pinocchios to Trump’s attacks on Biden’s tax plan. The Tax Foundation could not score Trump’s own plan because he has made no actual proposals.

Biden had powerful help today getting out his message. Former President Barack Obama, who has largely stayed out of the political fray, has reentered it powerfully. In a speech in Philadelphia, Obama directly attacked Trump, tearing apart his successor’s response to the coronavirus and his administration in general. No one gets under Trump’s skin like Obama does, and the former president seemed to be deliberately needling the president, perhaps to prod him to more self-destruction at tomorrow’s debate.

His appearances were not just attacks on Trump, though. They were reminders of what the presidency looked like just four years ago, and they were designed to make sure people get to the polls. “We’ve got to turn out like never before,” President Obama said. “We cannot leave any doubt in this election…. A whole bunch of people stayed at home and got lazy and complacent. Not this time,” he said. “Not in this election.”

Still, what made most news for Biden today was an old video of the former vice president at a memorial service for Chris Hixon, the athletic director at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who died when he tried to disarm the killer. In the clip, which circulated widely on social media, Biden expresses his sympathy to Hixon’s parents and is walking away when Hixon’s son Corey, who has Kabuki Syndrome, runs up and, as Biden turns to see what’s happening, throws himself into Biden’s embrace. Biden spontaneously kisses the young man’s forehead and asks if he’s okay. When he shakes his head no, Biden hugs him, cradling his head, and reassures him, “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to be okay, I promise.”

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Heather Cox Richardson

#quotes #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #politics #political #election 2020 #corrupt GOP

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theliberaltony · 5 years ago

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Dr. Royal S. Copeland, the field marshal in New York City’s battle against the 1918 influenza epidemic, knew his enemy was more than just a virus. As health commissioner, he oversaw a medical crisis that would eventually kill some 30,000 New Yorkers over three waves of the disease. In Copeland’s estimation, the problem was not only influenza but also the city’s crowded tenements and endemic poverty.

To modern eyes, the measures he took to stymie the spread might seem strange. In an extensive interview with The New York Times after the first wave of influenza had passed, Copeland touted the decision not to close New York’s public schools. It was, he reasoned, best to keep them open to give the city’s children respite from crowded apartments and, if need be, a point of access to the medical system. “We have practically 1,000,000 children in the public schools, about 750,000 of them from tenement homes. These homes are frequently unsanitary and crowded,” he said. “The children’s parents are occupied with the manifold duties involved in keeping the wolf from the door. No matter how loving they may be — and, of course, they are just as loving as any parents anywhere — they simply have not the time to give the necessary attention to the initial symptoms of disease.”

Even under normal circumstances, living in New York City requires a certain surrender of personal space: Subways are packed, apartments are small and bodegas get cramped with after-work shoppers. But not all New Yorkers have to live in a stressful crowd all the time, a fact the COVID-19 pandemic has laid all too bare. The city’s wealth inequality has always been apparent: financial safety nets, Whole Foods delivery and routine access to health care. But the pandemic has added a new layer to what affluence can afford some New Yorkers, including routine access to personal space and the flexibility that white-collar work allows. While over 100 years have gone by since the 1918 pandemic, some of Copeland’s worries about the difficult nature of city life — and the inequities of who lives the most comfortably — remain chillingly relevant.

We know already that the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting people of color more than white Americans. While the virus stalks the rich and poor — leading some to call it “the great equalizer” — those with lesser means have fewer places to hide from it. Dr. Andrew Goodman, a professor of public health at New York University who used to work for the city’s Health Promotion and Disease Prevention unit, pointed to the pandemic as “a more dramatic example of the health-inequity side of income inequality and racial inequality in the U.S.” Deaths from diseases that disproportionately affect minority communities, like diabetes and hypertension, “usually get spread out over time, and it doesn’t seem as dramatic,” Goodman said. “This is a more accelerated version.”

While there is a lot of uncertainty about the actual numbers of those infected — only a fraction of people who show symptoms are tested, so the rate of infection is almost certainly higher than what’s being reported — life in two New York City ZIP codes, one working class and one wealthy, gives us a glimpse into different ways of city living that might mean life or death in today’s New York.

Densely populated and working-class, East Elmhurst, Queens, has one of the highest rates of COVID-19 in New York City.

STEPHANIE KEITH / GETTY IMAGES

According to a running ProPublica tally of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases, the ZIP codes with the highest rate of infection are in a certain corner of Queens: East Elmhurst. One East Elmhurst ZIP code, 11370, is home to the notorious Rikers Island correctional facility, and has the highest recorded positive test rate in New York City — 127 percent worse than the city’s average. Jails like Rikers have become hotbeds for spreading the disease given their space constraints — well over 600 inmates and workers are infected with the virus at Rikers. East Elmhurst’s other, non-Rikers ZIP code, 11369, is a residential neighborhood and has the second worst positive test rate in the city, 121 percent greater than the average.

East Elmhurst has seen a high rate of individuals tested, and that might be in part because Elmhurst Hospital in neighboring Elmhurst, Queens — “the epicenter within the epicenter,” in the words of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio — has set up a testing tent outside the hospital. According to 2018 data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 34,118 people live in the 1.1 square miles of East Elmhurst’s 11369 ZIP code. Sixty-four percent of its residents are Latino, and the median household income is $54,121, three-quarters of the median income in New York’s greater metro area. On the neighborhood’s northern border is LaGuardia Airport, and south of that are mosques and diners, a baseball field and blocks and blocks of houses cramped together. On those cramped blocks, the average household size is 3.2 people, 20 percent above the city average.

Nearly 11 percent of all households in ZIP code 11369 are also multigenerational, with three or more generations living under the same roof. It’s possible that the grouping of young and old together in one house could have something to do with higher infection rates. Researchers are still unclear about how many others a person infects when they have the virus, but early estimates were around 2 to 2.5 people. The elderly are more susceptible, and in Italy, doctors believe that the country’s culture of intergenerational living and familial closeness has had disastrous effects during the pandemic; Italy’s rate of death from COVID-19 is among the highest in the world.

Underlying conditions like asthma tend to be more prevalent in crowded environments, according to Dr. Y. Claire Wang, who specializes in public health and chronic disease prevention at the New York Academy of Medicine. The respiratory condition puts individuals at greater risk for COVID-19 complications, and households in city apartments with pests or mold, common problems in public housing units, often have higher rates of asthma, she said.

Things look different on the other side of the positive test rate list. ZIP code 11215 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, has among the city’s lowest rates of COVID-19, at 56 percent below average.1 Park Slope is a different New York from East Elmhurst in many ways. Two-thirds of its population is white, and at $123,583, the median household income is one and a half times greater than that of the average in New York’s greater metropolitan area. The neighborhood is named for its proximity to one of the city’s largest green spaces, Prospect Park, and it’s known for its gracious brownstones and tree-lined streets. The average household size in Park Slope is 2.4 people, and only 1.8 percent of households are multigenerational.

Residents of Park Slope, Brooklyn, tend to be affluent, with white-collar jobs easily adaptable to working from home.

ROY ROCHLIN / GETTY IMAGES

The racial and ethnic differences between Park Slope and East Elmhurst might prove particularly important as both neighborhoods weather the pandemic. Early statistical reports on the disease are already painting a picture of racial inequity. Earlier this week New York State released preliminary numbers that showed Latinos have the highest rate of COVID-19 fatality in New York City.

A Kaiser Family Foundation report on initial pandemic data reveals that minorities are bearing the brunt of infection and death from the virus in many places. Higher rates of chronic conditions in minorities put them at greater risk for serious complications from COVID-19. In Washington, D.C., where black residents make up 45 percent of the total population, they account for 29 percent of confirmed cases and 59 percent of deaths. In Michigan, black residents are 14 percent of the population, but represent 33 percent of confirmed cases and 41 percent of deaths.

“We say something as simple as ‘your ZIP code should not define your health’ — [but] in New York City, that’s often the story,” said Dr. Torian Easterling, the deputy commissioner of the Center for Health Equity and Community Wellness, a city agency that addresses racial and social inequities in health. He pointed to high rates of chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension and a lack of access to healthy foods in minority communities as long-standing public health problems that have only been exacerbated by the onset of COVID-19.

During the 1918 pandemic, the white population had a higher rate of infection, according to a 2007 study of the outbreak by Thomas A. Garrett, then an economist at the St. Louis Federal Reserve. But that, Garrett surmised, had to do with the fact that the black population in the U.S. was still largely rural; the pandemic was a particular menace to cities. “[T]he nonwhite population in the United States has become much more urban. … A modern-day pandemic may result in greater nonwhite mortality rates because a greater percentage of the nonwhite population in the United States lives in urban areas,” he wrote. Census estimates from 2019 show that the majority of New York City residents are people of color.

Across New York, communities of color have long been more subject to chronic ailments like diabetes and hypertension. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated these trends.

JOHN NACION / NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES / ANGELA WEISS / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Park Slope and the East Elmhurst ZIP code of 11369 are similarly dense, with roughly 32,000 and 31,000 people per square mile, respectively. But life in the neighborhoods is different in other ways that might contribute to their divergent rates of apparent COVID-19 infection. According to the latest Census Bureau count, the most prevalent jobs in East Elmhurst are clerical work, food service and construction. In Park Slope, management, entertainment, education and business are the most common professions. The typical East Elmhurst worker is required to leave home to perform their job, while the lines of work most common in Park Slope are adaptable to teleworking. And Latinos — East Elmhurst’s dominant ethnic group — are more likely than all other Americans to consider COVID-19 a threat to their financial stability, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

We’ve already seen how socioeconomic circumstances can correlate with Americans’ ability to stay at home. A recent New York Times analysis of anonymized cellphone data tracked the movements of Americans and found that those in the top 10 percent income bracket have limited their movements more than those in the bottom 10 percent. What Copeland said in 1918 could very likely still hold true: “I have no doubt that the most dangerous means of transmitting disease was the subway. … Many a man who was sick must have felt that he had to go to work.”

Copeland’s struggle against the currents of poverty and influenza would continue into 1920. Updating the public on the state of the epidemic, which had reemerged, Copeland told The New York Times that the health department was working to stop the eviction of tenants during the outbreak and described the struggle to attract nurses to the city’s hospitals, since wealthy individuals were offering them higher pay to work in private homes. He pleaded for better ventilation on subways and buses and criticized coffin-makers who were price-gouging the city’s residents. Even in death, New York was unrelenting.

And so it remains today. Early this week, the city announced that hospital morgues around New York were overflowing with the dead. An Associated Press report painted a grim picture of one Brooklyn hospital. Even with an infection rate much lower than those in Queens, “mounds of corpses” had become so difficult to navigate that hospital staff were stepping over them.

The great equalizer isn’t COVID-19 — it’s death. But in New York’s epidemic, death attends to the haves and have-nots differently: For the city’s poor, it hovers closely, and when it comes, it leaves them as crowded as ever.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Clare Malone

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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

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https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/wayne-barrett-donald-trump-rudy-giuliani-peas-pod-article-1.2776357?outputType=amp&__twitter_impression=true

REMINDER: Trump has relied on Rudy Giuliani as a "fixer" ever since Trump bribed Rudy to kill a mob-related money laundering investigation into him 30 years ago.

The late Wayne Barrett wrote about their corrupt 30-year relationship in 2016:

Peas in a pod: The long and twisted relationship between Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani

By WAYNE Barrett | Published SEP 04, 2016 5:00 AM ET | NEW YORK DAILY News | Posted September 25, 2019 |

Let's start with the fact that Donald Trump's top surrogate, Rudy Giuliani, is on the payroll. In January, he joined a law firm, Greenberg Traurig, that represents Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Last year, the firm handled Trump's suit against the Florida city of Doral so his golf course could override noise regulations that barred him from bulldozing before sunrise. More recently, it handled Kushner's $340-million acquisition of the Watchtower properties in downtown Brooklyn.

When Trump paid a $250,000 fine in 2000 for secretly funding a million-dollar lobbying campaign against an Indian casino in upstate New York, he was represented by Greenberg.

Giuliani brought Marc Mukasey, the stepson of ex-U.S. Attorney General and lifelong Giuliani friend Michael Mukasey, with him to Greenberg; Mukasey is now representing legendary leg man Roger Ailes. Mukasey launched into a tirade recently against New York Magazine reporter Gabriel Sherman, calling the Ailes biographer "a virus" willing to "use any woman" to Weinerize the Trump debate adviser. His dad, who once branded Trump a "peril" to national security, delivered a Republican Convention speech the night after Rudy's screed.

This intertwine may or may not have something to do with why the Greenberg firm lets Rudy, one of its newest partners, hired early this year ostensibly to run a cybersecurity unit, travel the country with Trump, introducing him at rallies and fundraisers, challenging Hillary Clinton's health based on stuff he finds in corners of the internet, declaring her Clinton Foundation troubles worse than Watergate, wearing a "Make Mexico Great Again Also" cap, and helping draft policy speeches diagnosing African Americans for white audiences.

I even watched Rudy on TV, before one joint trip to Ohio, loading suitcases into the back of a Trump SUV in front of Trump Tower, the only baggage that slows him down.

Rudy has actually been more visible in his buddy's campaign than he was at times in his own $50 million presidential attempt in 2008, when he managed to convert the months-long top ranking in the polls into a single delegate. The imperial 2016 candidate who hates losers, especially ones who wind up in Vietnamese prisons, has instead embraced an epic dud, his solitary act of empathy in a campaign of callousness. He could've trashed Rudy like he did John McCain: "I like people who weren't caught with their command center down."

But the onetime comb-over twins just had too much in common. Though bombs-away hawks today, they got multiple draft deferments during the Vietnam War, with athlete Donald citing bad feet as his excuse and Rudy using an ear defect to sidestep his ROTC obligations.

Trump is now warning of a rigged election, invoking the image of Philadelphia blacks cheating at the ballot box and calling for voter suppression squads to "monitor" suspect precincts. Rudy said the 1989 mayoral election he lost was stolen and spent millions on suppression squads, dispatching off-duty white cops and firefighters to minority districts, when he won in 1993.

The two amigos also spark similar antipathy in Mexico, their latest joint destination — Donald for a mantra of insults, and Rudy for a multi-million-dollar anti-crime contract his consulting company won in Mexico City that flopped so badly the police chief declared he was "no fan" of Giuliani's. Rudy even tried to lend credence to the Trumpian fantasy that "thousands" of Muslims in Jersey City celebrated 9/11, quibbling only with the number.

Then there's the wife trifecta. No one in American public life, other than perhaps their kindred spirit Newt Gingrich, has ever mastered the art of a bad divorce like Rudy and Donald, carrying on as if spousal humiliation was the point.

Ask the kids. When Trump married mistress Marla Maples nearly four years after he walked out on Ivana, the three convention stars, Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric, didn't show up. Andrew and Caroline Giuliani made strained appearances at Rudy's 2003 wedding to Judi Nathan, but in 2007, both distanced themselves from their father's presidential pursuit, with Caroline Facebooking her preference for Obama, as close to the ex-mayor's heart as she could plunge the dagger.

Rudy's wife Donna found out he wanted a divorce when he announced it on TV, just as Marla had a couple of years before. Rudy then chose Mother's Day to alert the press that he would be having dinner with his new love and led the cameras on a 10-block walk with her after dinner, kissing her goodbye while his wife and kids simmered. His divorce lawyer declared "we're going to have to pry her off the chandeliers to get her out of" Gracie Mansion. Even Donald Trump was offended, writing an open letter to New York Magazine and urging Donna and Rudy "to sit down with each other in a room, without your lawyer, and see if you can settle this."

But Rudy was only following in the divorce-as-spectacle footsteps of Donald, who'd used the New York Post as his personal hammer a decade before, relishing in Marla's "best sex I ever had" headlines even as they horrified young Ivanka and Don. Trump told Newsweek the scandal was "great for business," and pushed Marla to seize on the opportunities it presented, including half a million to pose in "No Excuses" jeans.

He'd brought his mistress to the same Atlantic City boxing matches he brought his wife to, aboard the same helicopter, just as he'd set up Marla in a sparkling suite on the Aspen slopes while he was vacationing with his family. Young Don told his father then "you just love your money," a line he did not revive in his convention script. Ivanka, shocked by headlines on newsstands during her walk to school, just wept.

Rudy and Donald first got together in the late 1980s shortly before Donald became a co-chair of Giuliani's first fundraiser for his 1989 mayoral campaign, sitting on the Waldorf dais and steering $41,000 to the campaign. A year earlier, Tony Lombardi, the federal agent closest to then-U.S. Attorney Giuliani, opened a probe of Trump's role in the suspect sale of two Trump Tower apartments to Robert Hopkins, the mob-connected head of the city's largest gambling ring.

Trump attended the closing himself and Hopkins arrived with a briefcase loaded with up to $200,000 in cash, a deposit the soon-to-felon counted at the table. Despite Hopkins' wholesale lack of verifiable income or assets, he got a loan from a Jersey bank that did business with Trump's casino. A Trump limo delivered the cash to the bank.

The government subsequently nailed Hopkins' mortgage broker, Frank LaMagra, on an unrelated charge and he offered to give up Donald, claiming Trump "participated" in the money-laundering — and volunteering to wear a wire on him.

Instead, Lombardi, who discussed the case with Giuliani personally (and with me for a 1993 Village Voice piece called "The Case of the Missing Case"), went straight to Donald for two hour-long interviews with him. Within weeks of the interviews, Donald announced he'd raise $2 million in a half hour if Rudy ran for mayor. Lamagra got no deal and was convicted, as was his mob associate, Louis (Louie HaHa) Attanasio, who was later also nailed for seven underworld murders. Hopkins was convicted of running his gambling operation partly out of the Trump Tower apartment, where he was arrested.

Lombardi — who expected a top appointment in a Giuliani mayoralty, conducted several other probes directly tied to Giuliani political opponents, and testified later that "every day I came to work I went to Mr. Giuliani to seek out what duties I needed to perform" — closed the Trump investigation without even giving it a case number. That meant that New Jersey gaming authorities would never know it existed.

It's hard to watch Giuliani invoke his 14-year history as a federal prosecutor when he calls for Clinton's prosecution and square it with the seedy launch of his own relationship with Trump.

When Rudy was mayor, Trump hired the lobbying firm that included name partner Ray Harding, the head of the state's Liberal Party, whose ballot line had provided the margin of difference in Giuliani's 1993 election. Harding's firm quickly went from three lobbying clients to 92, and it steered the controversial, 90-story Trump World Tower, the tallest residential tower in city history, through three levels of Giuliani administration approvals despite loud opposition from community groups led by Walter Cronkite.

Both Harding and his son, a top Giuliani official, wound up felons. His other son, Robert Harding, a Giuliani deputy mayor, has long been a lobbyist at Rudy's current employer, Greenberg.

The Giuliani administration also wrote a 1995 letter of support to HUD for $365 million in mortgage insurance for Trump's Riverside South project, affirming that the Westside Yards site was in a blighted neighborhood, a contention so ludicrous that Donald had to eventually withdraw the application. A board of Giuliani appointees, pushed by Harding's firm, also approved renovations at Trump's 100 Central Park South, where Eric Trump now lives.

Rudy wound up a friend, speaking at Fred Trump's 1999 funeral, doing a grope scene with Donald in a 2000 Inner Circle skit, inviting Donald and Melania to his Gracie Mansion wedding and attending Trump's 2005 Mar-A-Lago wedding.

As aligned as Trump and Rudy appear, there are enough stark differences to make the embrace uncomfortable, at least if the blank-slate broadcast interviewers would do a search or two. When Mitt Romney ran against Giuliani, he said Rudy made New York a "sanctuary city," based on Giuliani's urging undocumented people to settle in the city. PoliFact found the assertion "true."

As mayor, Giuliani was the top Republican champion of the assault-weapons ban, sued the gun industry and called for "uniform licensing" of all guns, contending that the free flow of firearms into the city from unregulated states was killing New Yorkers.

Rudy was also one of the only elected pro-choice Republicans who even supported partial birth abortion. He's recently begun to perform same-sex marriages. He is, in all of these respects, an anti-Trump surrogate.

Yet Trump has said he might name Rudy to chair an immigration commission or to head homeland security. Trump apparently forgets that Rudy already gave us one homeland security secretary, his business partner and former correction and police commissioner Bernie Kerik, who blew up like a land mine before he could take office and wound up sentenced to four years in federal prison, partly for lying to the White House.

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ftjonghyuns-blog · 6 years ago

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hello once again everyone ! it is your problematic unfave storm poppin’ up on your dash in the form of my ugly son jonghyun ! i’m really excited to play him ( probably a little more excited than i was to play vivienne ), but let’s be real -- that’s only because i truly dragged him through the ringer ! i won’t keep my own intro long because i know i’m about to type a whole novella, so without further ado, here’s my baby boy jonghyun !

“who are you & what is one thing that people would know you for ?”

‘ jonghyun kwon, one of the best male models out there. i’m not that conceited, but you can thank miss wintour for that title. one thing people might know me for is the time i was the first model of color on fendi’s runway in a very long time. ’

“if there is one thing you could change about your career, what would it be ?”

‘ the one time i let my stylist put me in prada for a show -- it was the first and last time i was featured on a worst dressed list. i could have cried. ’

“what are you willing to do to be in the top ten ?”

‘ you know that scene from carrie where they dump pig’s blood on carrie when she wins prom queen ? yeah, i’m not the one dumping pig’s blood -- i’m carrie, locking everyone in a burning gymnasium as i terrorize the town until i get what i want. ’

TRIGGER WARNING(s): possessive behavior, very brief mention of domestic violence, and mentions of a toxic relationship.

name : jonghyun kwon.

nickname(s) : j & jong.

age : twenty-seven ( 27 ).

birthday : july 14th, 1992.

zodiac : cancer.

moral alignment : lawful evil.

gender : cismale.

pronouns : he/him.

height : 5′11″ ( five foot eleven inches ).

hometown : busan, south korea.

nationality : korean.

ethnicity : korean.

occupation : model & spokesman.

label(s) : the bellwether, the philophobe & the aesthete.

aesthetics : neon signs, love confessions, long eyelashes, dimples, breathless laughter, flushed cheeks, storm clouds, hands on your thighs, laughing at 2am, whispering secrets, piercings, sexual tension, city skylines, red wine, smashing a window, expensive perfume, biting your lips, making bad decisions, an adrenaline rush, glitter, polaroids, museums, smelling flowers, coffee shops, spicy food, sweet talking your way out of things, lattes, face masks, blankets fresh out of the dryer. hickeys, colored hair, piano musiv, bruised lips, smirking & getting drunk for the first time.

jonghyun is the son of bora & seul-ki kwon, two people who were not at the top of the food chain by any means. the family wasn’t poor, per say, but having one child was difficult for the couple, so jonghyun’s hopes of having a younger sibling was dashed pretty much from the start. he eventually grew accustomed to being an only child & his parents doted on him despite their low income, but they made it through the days thanks to bora’s ramen restaurant. seul-ki brought in some money as well as a police officer, so the family lived comfortably. jonghyun was fine with the drives to the next town over for their vacations & even though he didn’t have the latest gadgets, he was content with that.

his life flipped on its head when jonghyun went to tour what could someday be the college he’d attend. call it wishful thinking, but jonghyun hoped to attend seoul national university -- it’d help with his lack of experience and he’d be able to make a better life for himself & for his parents, but when he went out to explore around seoul with the group of friends he’d made, jonghyun was approached by someone claiming to be a model scout. jonghyun was attractive, sure, but he didn’t ever think he was modeling attractive. so, he talks to his parents about it & after he does some digging ( and finding out that the scout was real ), he decided that he’d give it a try and defer college by one year. if it didn’t take off, he’d go to college & forget about modelling.

after going through the motions & getting a portfolio together, jonghyun was soon going on go-sees & it didn’t take long for him to start booking shows and photo shoots. of course, he started with fashion houses in seoul & after making quite an impression in his home country ( even getting a deal with samsung ), jonghyun’s portfolio was growing more & more. when the year passed & he found himself making good money & the way that his parents were proud of him, jonghyun decided to pursue modeling full time. soon, he found himself leaving korea behind & settled in new york for the time being at the age of 19 to get bigger & better jobs. jonghyun spent about four years ( from 19 to 23 ) living in new york & during this time he became the face of a lot of companies ranging from, but not limited to: saint laurent, gucci, dior homme, louis vuitton & alexander wang.

he was also getting commercials & various endorsements. during this time, he was also participating in fashion week & was one of the few male models that actually had a walk & didn’t look like he was just clunking down the runway. on top of that, we��re all pretty aware of how fashion lacked diversity a few short years ago, so jonghyun was one of the models during the time where diversity started becoming more prominent ( even though there’s still a long way to go ). since he was still something of a ‘fresh face’, jonghyun getting these deals was wild & was soon on covers for gq, w, v, i-d, dazed, l’officiel hommes & he’s one of the few men featured on the cover of american vogue.

during this time, though, while he was on top of the world with his career, jonghyun met & married the worst man to ever exist. jonghyun met his husband at a fashion event & he belonged to a prominent family ( hm, let’s say like the duponts or the rockefellers ). his husband sucks, so we’ll give him a shitty name: allen. allen & jonghyun had something of a whirlwind relationship, secretly getting married after only eight months of dating. jonghyun was roughly 24 at the time & was still pretty wide-eyed to everything that was happening around him. he was still booking shows, photo shoots & everything in between; he had even started becoming a prominent figure on the front row.

now, here’s why his relationship was so bad: allen was not a good man in general. on the outside, he was suave & charismatic, when in reality he was mean & knew how to hide it in public. jonghyun’s attractive, there’s no doubt about it, so whenever they went to events & jonghyun was socializing, allen would get huffy puffy because he’s thinking that jonghyun is flirting with them ( jonghyun is flirtatious as hell so that doesn’t really help ). jonghyun would always brush allen off whenever he’d get huffy puffy because honestly, he was working, but allen liked to blow things out of proportion. it’s safe to say, in light terms, that jonghyun would get an ear full during their drive home, once they were home & sometimes even the next morning.

allen, while accusing jonghyun of being with other people, was actually with other people. jonghyun’s slight naivety when it came to relationships ( considering that allen was his first ‘real’ relationship ), caused him to sometimes turn a blind eye to allen’s cheating & overall mistreatment. i don’t wanna say he was passive, but he had passive tendencies, which allowed allen to continue his mistreatment because when he’d be upset it wouldn’t last long because allen would kiss him just right & he wouldn’t be mad anymore.

anyways, fast forward a year into the marriage & things get worse when allen’s sexual desire towards jonghyun fades into nothing. the marriage is all for show at this point ( so any public displays of affection was fake as hell ) & allen is still going for his jabs at jonghyun whenever they’re out. everything comes to a head one night when they’re stuck in yet another argument about jonghyun’s flirting. jonghyun’s upset & wants to leave, allen has had one too many & the situation ends with jonghyun being treated for a few minor injuries.

now, jonghyun is out of the relationship & made the move to los angeles in an attempt to put space between himself & the tumultuous life he lived in new york. legally speaking, jonghyun & allen are still married, but it’s only because allen ( for whatever reason ) refuses to sign the divorce papers & it’s been a little over three years. he’s started going by his maiden name again & his career has remained on top, but he truly hasn’t let himself fully be released from the clutches of allen.

jonghyun is bisexual as fuck & won’t let you think otherwise. since ending it with allen, he’s been kinda ho’in’ it up around town without so much as a care about who sees him. looks like he might bite you & he probably will if you make him mad enough. this is slightly unnecessary information, but he’s power bottom as hell & it shows :/ but is vers as well & a little kinky boi. he’s really nice though & love to talk fashion when given the chance ! he’s never the type to discourage people so whenever someone tells him they wanna model or work in fashion, he’s always down for it ! he’s very cutthroat, though & just because he could be considered something of a ‘veteran model’ since he’s been in the game for almost ten years, he treats everything like it’s his first time all over again. tl;dr : nice but will kill you if he needs to & prefers to not talk about his ex-husband.

#chart:intro #this shot to sh*t towards the end i'm sorry :/

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helloamhere · 6 years ago

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first line challenge

RULES: List the first lines of the last ten stories you published.* Look to see if there are any patterns that you notice yourself, and see if anyone else notices any! Then tag some friends.

*I’m actually doing a few of the ones I haven’t yet published just because I Am What I Am

I was tagged in this by @phd-mama and this is such a nice idea, thank you! It was really fun to go back and reflect on this. I am a huge fan of cheeky openers AND cheeky closers, so interesting to line them all up.

1. Saving Symphony Hall :

Saturday night dinners were a grand tradition, ever since Louis had first arrived in the city and sent a tentative Facebook message to Niall Horan hoping it was the same Niall Horan he remembered from middle school.

awww I remember writing this beginning. I really like writing beginnings that situate right in the middle of a character’s life, very detailed. I also felt like this kind of opener set the tone for a fic that was all about friendship.

2. The Art of Non-Gift Giving:

Zayn: holiday question time

I LOVED writing this tiny drabble. I was super stuck in SSH and felt like I was losing the character’s voices, so I invented a Christmas romance dilemma for Zayn and it fully worked to get me unstuck.

3. The Haunting of Louis Tomlinson:

The thing about inheriting a giant, ancient country house from a mysterious great aunt along with a mysterious condition that said you have to live alone the house for at least six months before the ownership would be fully turned over was that you had to actually, fucking, do that.

“begin with the problem,” my favorite thing.

4. Believe Me When I Say You Have it All:

Harry fell in love the first moment he saw Louis Tomlinson, holding an ancient bag with broken handles and looking with utter disdain at the cup of tea Harry had forgotten on the lobby desk.

I was reading a lot of PG Wodehouse when I wrote this, and it shows.

5. Make Your Words a Weapon:

Louis’ life is being ruined by Niall Fucking Horan, and it isn’t even over something good this time.

I started writing this story on my phone (a screen cracked iphone, at the time) on a train ride, commuting down south an hour to do some statistics consulting. I was wasting time on tumblr when I saw @nottooldforthisship ‘s awesome post and I just felt so jittery and travel-anxious that words started flooding into my mind so I wrote this entire opener (about 1000 words) on my phone, on the train, balancing a half-eaten croissant on my knee and constantly losing phone service, so I kept thinking I’d probably lost the whole thing. But I’m so glad I didn’t, I still love this story.

6. Alien Roadtrip! :

He’s just another figure in the desert landscape.

Man, I enjoyed writing this opener. The whole thing was a lot of fun.

7. tissue-thin lies :

Louis is trapped and he is, characteristically, quite cranky about it.

I was very sick when I wrote this fluff about being very sick, and I copied some of the texts that I sent off to my partner for Louis’ complaining which maybe does not say anything complimentary about me, lol.

6. Like a Walk in the Park:

The Idea comes at midnight on a Friday, and as such, should have been immediately recognizable as bad.

An obvious pattern for me is that I LOVE starting stories with something going wrong. If I directed movies, they’d probably all begin with an explosion. It’s probably also obvious that I favor a colloquial, “we’re all in on this joke” writing style, which mostly out of satire techniques. Satire for me is often about pulling people in, saying that we’re all together and trying our best in this absurd world, and I often start with a “you know this feeling” kind of description.

7. Incoming Package:

BEGIN TRANSMISSION

I loved starting this fic with a “broadcast.” In general I’m a big fan of science fiction that involves “artifacts” like documents, interrupted messages, code, and other trace measures. I find it super fun to play with the stoic, emotion-stripped formula of a military communication protocol, while obviously filling it up with completely absurd things. And I love putting details in the very beginning of fics that come back as a joke later (e.g., Louis’ height)

8. Your Life Worth Walking on a Bright Morning:

Before the inn, Louis hadn’t had much of a vocabulary for things he wanted.

These stories have a very stream-of-consciousness emphasis. I found this beginning difficult but very cathartic to write, because it pulled on my own real-life experiences with poverty and living in really constrained circumstances. Not having “a vocabulary for things wanted” is a thing I’ve said before in real life.

And a couple of future, but already set first lines:

9. This Multiplicity of Powers (COMING SOON IF I EVER FINISH IT GAH I LOVE THIS ONE I ALSO HOPE I FINISH IT SOON BECAUSE IT IS EATING MY BRAIN):

They call the largest room in the mansion The Danger Room without a shred of irony.

10. Lambing Season fic (coming real soon):

As usual it’s Agnetha who starts all the trouble.

#first line meme #my writing #writing meme #fic meme

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poppo911 · 7 years ago

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You’ve Got Mail! (Chapter 4)

Read it on FFN here

Word count : 1900-ish

Chapter 4 – The Bet

To : All contacts

From : Maes Hughes

Attachment : Elysia_001 .jpeg, Elysia_003 .jpeg, and 54 more attachments

Subject : Your morning dose of happiness

You’re welcome.

Maes Hughes

Teacher, English Literature

East Amestris Senior High School | 75 Sycamore Lane, East City

To : Heymans Breda, Jean Havoc

From : Roy Mustang

Subject : Re: Re: Abort mission (continued)

Before you guys judge me for being ‘ignorant’, yesterday was too hectic for me to check on incoming mails. And yes, Jean, listen what Breda said; you’re still a dumb-ass.

Miles was right though, you were lucky enough. At last I met her yesterday. And who could’ve guessed that that accreditation board member whom you had a rather unpleasant argument with three years ago is an Armstrong? (and the one who got a say in the board, while at it.)

Seems like she still hold grudges on me for a reason I don’t remember. Imagine the awkward silence (or you’re-dead-to-me glares) I have to go through everytime we encountered each others, considering we share an office room from now on.

Let’s just hope Maes won’t be genius enough to even try to push her button during his (suspiciously abundant) free time.

Roy Mustang

Teacher, Chemistry

East Amestris Senior High School | 75 Sycamore Lane, East City

To : Jean Havoc

From : Maria Ross

Subject : How many times do I have to tell you?

I don’t care how and when you do it, Jean, but no way in hell smoking is allowed anywhere inside school. The rooftop included. You’ll set bad examples for the students. Besides, the kids love you—they’re more inclined to justify your actions, and do it by themselves!

This will be my last warning before I write the Principal a formal complain letter on this matter.

Maria Ross

Teacher, School Guidance Counselor

East Amestris Senior High School | 75 Sycamore Lane, East City

To : Maes Hughes

From : Kain Fuery

Subject : Data Usage Notification

Mr. Hughes,

I regret to inform you that you have already used up all your bandwith. Please do take my advice to stop sending everybody gigabytes-worth of photos, and you will be able to enjoy this facility until the last day of every months. Thank you.

I’m not gonna receive your bribery, Sir. Mr. Greed already took suspicion on our internet funds, and had been eyeing me closely ever since. Sorry for that…

Regards,

Kain Fuery

Staff, Department of Information and Technology

East Amestris Senior High School | 75 Sycamore Lane, East City

To : Edward Elric

From : Riza Hawkeye

Subject : See me during lunch break

Dear Edward,

My experiences told me that detention letters have no effect on you. But that doesn’t mean you can get out from the fact that you sent a .docx with the writings ‘MUSTANG SUXX’ as its only content for your chemistry take-home assignment.

Meet me at the teachers’ room right after the bell rings. You know where my desk is.

Fail to do so, and I will pair you up with Ling for the upcoming group project(s).

Thank you.

Riza Hawkeye

Teacher, Biology

East Amestris Senior High School | 75 Sycamore Lane, East City

To : Olivier Mira Armstrong

From : Alex Louis Armstrong

Subject : Re: All those East City chickens are getting under my skin

O, my dearest Sister,

YOU HAVE JUST MISUNDERSTOOD OUR HOSPITALITY, THE PEOPLE FROM THE EASTERN SIDE OF AMESTRIS!

They were just trying to befriend you, Sister. Trust me. Perhaps the norms here are not exactly similar to those of North’s, but please adjust yourself.

Besides, it’s not a secret that Mr. Roy Mustang is the Principal’s favorite negotiator when it suits his needs, second only to himself. Do forgive me, Sister, because I can’t tell you what kind of demands Mr. Eugene Grumman insisted three years ago.

Oh, and I have done setting up your new desk according to your requests. I also added a little touch of fine arts to please your eyes. Worry not, my Sister, for my taste is far better than Kimblee’s.

With the spirits that had been passed down in the Armstrong Family for generations,

Alex Louis Armstrong

Coach, Physical Education

East Amestris Senior High School | 75 Sycamore Lane, East City

To : Kain Fuery

From : Rebecca Catalina

Subject : Is the Principal hiding in your server room again?

I swear to God I was just taking his tea cup back to the pantry and BOOM that old man disappeared like a trickster. He thought it would make me amused? Maybe, when the stars align. But absolutely NOT when we got a lot of works to submit before Tuesday!

Well guess what? Don’t tell him I’m going there. If he decided that the Principal’s Room is too boring that he chose to leave, trust me, his paperworks are more than eager to follow.

Why did I sign up for this shit anyway? Oh, right—Ri will kick me out if she’s the only one paying our room’s rent.

Rebecca Catalina

Staff, Principal’s Secretary

East Amestris Senior High School | 75 Sycamore Lane, East City

To : Christopher Vinther

From : Solf Z. Kimblee

Subject : This budget-efficiency-thingy is getting ridiculous

I’m a simple man; hence next time that old Grumman give me another warning due to unmet curriculum, I will just blame that on your decision to cut my clay-shopping budget.

Solf Z. Kimblee

Teacher, Visual Art

East Amestris Senior High School | 75 Sycamore Lane, East City

To : All contacts

From : Kain Fuery

Subject : Server Maintenance Notification

All students, teachers, and staffs,

Today we will be performing routine server maintenance and upgrading hardware on the server environment for performance and scalability. The maintenance will be performed on March 9th during a three hour window of 12:00 PM - 3:00 PM. We are expecting approximately two hours of down time during the maintenance. If you have any questions please contact our support team by emailing [email protected].

Thank you.

Kain Fuery

Staff, Department of Information and Technology

East Amestris Senior High School | 75 Sycamore Lane, East City

To : Mechanical geek (+xxxxxxxxx947)

From : Edward Elric (+xxxxxxxx311)

Hey Winry?

To : Edward (+xxxxxxxx311)

From : Winry Rockbell (+xxxxxxxxx947)

Yes?

To : Mechanical geek (+xxxxxxxxx947)

From : Edward Elric (+xxxxxxxx311)

Did you have a word with Miss Riza recently?

To : Edward (+xxxxxxxx311)

From : Winry Rockbell (+xxxxxxxxx947)

What do you mean?

To : Mechanical geek (+xxxxxxxxx947)

From : Edward Elric (+xxxxxxxx311)

Well… Did she, like, tell you something? Anything?

To : Edward (+xxxxxxxx311)

From : Winry Rockbell (+xxxxxxxxx947)

Umm.. no, I guess. Why are you asking?

To : Mechanical geek (+xxxxxxxxx947)

From : Edward Elric (+xxxxxxxx311)

Nothing. Really. Okay—one more thing—not even about me? Or something you don’t know??

To : Edward (+xxxxxxxx311)

From : Winry Rockbell (+xxxxxxxxx947)

Okay she did explain me some things about cellular metabolisms because I asked her, and technically that was something I didn’t know by that time. Aside from that, nope? Why so sudden??

To : Mechanical geek (+xxxxxxxxx947)

From : Edward Elric (+xxxxxxxx311)

Great. Well then. Better stop using our phones before Mr. Miles turn around from the whiteboard.

To : Edward (+xxxxxxxx311)

From : Winry Rockbell (+xxxxxxxxx947)

Weirdo.

To : Al (+xxxxxxxx744)

From : Edward Elric (+xxxxxxxx311)

Alphonse.

To : Brother (+xxxxxxxx311)

From : Alphonse Elric (+xxxxxxxx744)

What’s it, brother?

To : Al the TRAITOR (+xxxxxxxx744)

From : Edward Elric (+xxxxxxxx311)

You traitor.

To : Roy boy (+xxxxxxxxx489)