#mari found dead in st petersburg

[thepaleys]

I do not remember my mother. She died giving birth to my brother Dmitri, who was born when I was one and a half years old. She was Princess Alexandra of Greece, daughter of King George and Queen Olga, who had been born a Grand Duchess of Russia. (...)

Her death at the age of twenty-one prostrated the family and was mourned throughout Russia. The peasants of the region gathered in crowds; they raised her in her coffin to their shoulders and bore her to the railway station, a distance of some eight miles. It was a funeral march, but it seemed rather such a procession as welcomes to her home a young bride; everywhere she passed were flowers.

My mother was adored by all who knew her. From the photographs that remain of her, I can see that she was beautiful; her features are small and finely wrought; the outline of her face has a softness of contour almost infantile; her eyes are large and a little sad, and the whole of her person reflects a spirit of particular gentleness and charm.

My brother came into the world so small, so feeble, that no one thought he could live. His arrival went almost unnoticed amid the grief and disorder aroused by my mother’s desperate condition. My old English nurse has told me of having found the newborn child bundled haphazardly among some blankets on a chair, as she came running to get news of my mother. It was only after my mother was dead that they began to pay attention to Dmitri.

At that time, baby incubators were rare; they wrapped him in cotton wool and kept him in a cradle heated with hot-water bottles. Uncle Serge, with his own hands, gave him the bouillon baths that the doctors prescribed, and the child gained in strength and began to grow.

He and I were left at Ilinskoie for several months until he was judged strong enough to travel; we were then returned to our home in St. Petersburg, where our father awaited us.

All of this was, of course, in a past beyond my conscious recollection, and has been told to me by other people. Of my own memories, the first, I am certain, goes back to a day in my fourth year when, standing on the seat of a black leather armchair, I was having my picture taken. I recall how the starched pleats of my little white dress scratched my arms and how the silk of my sash creaked. My head was just the same height as the back of the chair on which the photographer had placed me; my feet, clad in pumps with silken pompons, rested on a leopard’s skin.

"Education of a Princess" - Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna Jr.

[elsalouisa]

"As we lay on our respective sofas for the next few days, gradually, as if looking back from afar, Princess Bou’s tales of bygone days became confidences.

I knew she had been orphaned young, inheriting an immense fortune, even by Russian standards. She then became the ward of the Emperor, as was the custom in such cases, to ensure protection from spongeing relations or guardians. She was beautiful and enchanting too; she married for love, and now she told me again that everything she could wish for seemed to fall into her lap. First a lovely little son. She then decided that above all things she wished for a daughter: all the layette was prepared in shades of pink, but to her deep disappointment, it was another boy, Felix! At about this time, she began to suffer from extraordinary dreams linked to her life, but with each episode ending in appalling catastrophe. She took it to be a warning from God not to be deluded by her good fortune. So these awful dreams, seldom as they came, reminded her to be thankful.

... But then they began to come true: first one, then another!’

For instance, she had been staying in the Crimea with the Imperial Family, to whom she was deeply attached, and they then left to return to St. Petersburg. That night she dreamt again.

‘I found myself in some closed place. There was a violent crash and the sound of glass smashing all around me in the darkness, while a voice cried: “Mon Dieu, ou sont mes enfants!”

She awoke in terror, and next morning the papers were full of the story of the attempt made on the Emperor Alexander III’s life: a bomb had exploded in his coach on the train. None of them had been hurt.

She left at once for St. Petersburg and the Empress Marie Feodorovna told her all about it, adding, ‘In my panic I had but one thought and cried: Dear God, where are my children!’

The Emperor, a giant of strength, had supported the roof of the coach on his broad shoulders until help came. thereby acquiring some internal kidney trouble which later caused his premature death.

‘... Then again, my son’s terrible duel!’ . . . but even after so many years, she could not go on, for her eldest son, Nikolai, had become involved in a senseless entanglement with a married woman. According to the current code of honour, the wronged husband’s regiment demanded satisfaction, and the terms were murderous. He was brought in dead on a stretcher one morning after the duel.

‘She wanted him for cheap reasons, his wealth and position,’ Mamma had added. ‘It was never a “grande passion”, not even for her. She forgot him at once. But his mother’s life was broken; she never recovered from his death and their parting in anger.’ It appeared that at their last meeting, she had reproached him bitterly. I now understood why she had tried to dissuade him from ever getting into such a situation again: she had dreamt of the stretcher bringing him home on that fateful morning.

‘Later,’ Princess Bou added, ‘these dreams became worse and worse, but I ceased to believe them, thinking my mind was sick after my son’s death, and such horrors befalling my friends and my country could not come true.’ But alas, they did. After the Revolution, the ‘dreams’ ceased.

‘Never once again in all these years . . . Only now,’ she said musingly, ‘just a few days ago .. . I was a young girl again, walking down the gallery in the Winter Palace of St. Petersburg, towards a high, glass door, which was flung open and the Emperor Alexander II, whom I loved so much and who had been a father to me, came towards me with open arms exclaiming: “Ma chére, enfin! Vous voila!" She smiled at me and said: ‘You see this time, it was a beautiful dream!’

I left next day, never to see her again, for soon after, she died.

Many years later on a visit to Soviet Russia, I made a point of visiting her house, Archangelskoye, near Moscow and the Youssoupoff Palace in Leningrad. Her portrait by Serov still hung in the Michaelovski Gallery next to Felix’s. Flowing pale draperies, her head on one hand, little dogs scattered about her, she smiled out at me again. The guide pattered on: ‘Here we have the prototype of a frivolous and corrupt aristocrat.’

Over the heads of the gaping crowd I exclaimed:

“You are quite mistaken. I knew her well. She was the most charming, kind, good and unspoilt person imaginable. She was like another grandmother to me.’

The word ‘Babouschka’ in conjunction with the lovely ethereal vision on the picture quite floored them".

Princess Tatiana Metternich "Tatiana : five passports in a shifting Europe"

[babillosa-blog]

@zhidd

     ≛ ❝ how do you survive in a place so cold? do you hibernate or what? ❞

[ask-spiderglass]

🕸SPIDER-SONA AU: VILLIANS PART 2/???🕸

Wow more Villains? Yes ma’am! This time we’ll focus on the members of the Sinister Six!

Lizard/Martha Connors: Amari’s AP biology teacher, middle aged Florida Woman, and the widowed mother of her teenage son Billy. In 2005, her late husband, Dr. Curt Connors, had been found suspiciously dead off the side of the Everglades Parkway. Leaving behind his life’s research and work on cryptid magic for a Miami based PLEA, Martha would come across classified documents that he had stolen from his workplace detailing a method of accessing cryptid magic. Believing that her beloved husband was murdered by PLEA officers, she decides to avenge his death by using cryptid magic. However, due to her inexperience with magic and the vengeance in her heart, she was turned into vicious humanoid albino alligator. Going into a rampage at sundown, she would kill a couple PLEA officers, regular law enforcement, and anyone else who got in her way. Upon sunrise the following day, she reverted back into a human woman, though the things she did as a monster haunted her. While she wasn’t deemed a suspect, Martha ultimately decides to leave Florida with Billy, moving to New York to become a mild mannered but strict AP teacher in 2010. While she hasn’t since looked at that document for a decade, the gratifying rage of the Lizard beckons her every night, begging to be released once more...

Sandman aka “Sandy”: The Guardian of Coney Island and the unwanted son of a sand elemental and a boogeyman. Born on the beaches of Coney Island in 1880, Sandman grew up loving his home and due his parents being absent from his life, he ended up seeing the humans who visited Coney Island as his own family. For most of his life, he dedicated his life to making Coney Island a safe place for everyone from the shadows, especially the children, protecting the area and it’s patrons from the unseen and malicious. However as the years go by, Sandman began to feel unappreciated and overlooked by the people who protects. While he doesn’t harbor ill will towards all the humans, he feels incredibly upset with how he’s been treated by the people in power who carelessly polluting his environment. While he hasn’t really tapped into his boogeyman abilities in nearly a century, there are times he feels that it is necessary...

Mysterio/Quinlan Beck: The Lich of Broadway. Once a struggling Hollywood starlet and stage magician’s assistant in the 1920s, Quinlan was often overshadowed by her magician boss on the stage. Always feeling resentment towards him for being cruel towards her, she would end up stumbling upon a secret occult society in the underbelly of the glitzy city. Once she managed to convince a member to let her join, she climbed up the social ladder within the society in order to learn more about their teachings on magic. Upon learning a method of achieving immortality, she would make a plan to “deal with” her boss. On one fateful performance, her and boss were performing the Bullet Catch Trick, with Quinlan holding the gun. Unbeknownst to the magician, Quinlan would end up switching the wax bullet out for a real bullet at the last moment before showtime. She would end up shooting him in the lung, killing him in front of a horrified audience. Using her acting chops to manipulate others into thinking that this was nothing more than a tragic accident, she would manage to convince others that she was devastated by his “untimely” death. Once the press died down, she would fake her death, transform herself into a Lich, and start a new “life” on the east side of the country, taking interest in Broadway as the Lich known as Mysterio....

Kraven the Hunter/Sergi Kravinoff: The Patriarch of the Kravinoff Family, an Ex-PLEA Officer, and current Mercenary. Sergi was the son of Russian Aristocrats who fled from St. Petersburg to London during the Bolshevik Revolution. Born in 1957 and raised within an old family of monster hunters with deeply embedded traditions, Kraven grew up taking great pride in his family’s trade, hoping to one day recapture the wealth and glory his family once had. While he was the favored son of his harshly critical father, Kraven never felt like he quite measured up to his dad’s achievements, and he would overcompensate for this by masking it with vicious machismo. Once turning 18, he would begin traveling abroad to seek out opportunities to get more experience with monster hunting, growing more infamous as a hunter as decades passed. Eventually, he would be contacted by an American based PLEA to serve as an enforcement agent. But, due to multiple workplace disagreements and Kraven’s open disapproval of their “modern methods” he would be dishonorably discharged from his position. Even at the age of 63, Kraven still seeks out glory and riches, coming to reside in NYC for merc reasons and to continue his hunt even in the concrete jungle of the city...

Chameleon/Dmitri Smerdyakov: The Illegitimate Member of the Kravinoff Family, Half-Brother to Kraven, and Double Agent. Dmitri was the illegitimate son of Kraven’s father and a Nopperabō woman, born in London in 1962. Often ignored by his father who preferred “his own son” over him, Dmitri spent most of his time as a child honing his shapeshifting skills he got from from his mother’s side. His older brother Sergi used to bully him, mostly consisting of Sergi mocking him for “acting too much like a girl” and for being “too weak to be a real Kravinoff”. Once Sergi began to travel abroad, the two would go their separate ways and lose contact with each other for years. In the meantime, Dmitry decided to use his talent to become a spy, with his career bringing him to various places worldwide. Eventually he would become a double agent spying on a PLEA known as the Avengers and meet with his brother again, becoming a new resident of the supernaturally criminal underworld of NYC...

Dr. Octopus/Dr. Odyssia Octavius: The Lead Cephalopod Biologist of the New York Aquarium, Visiting Marine Science Scholar of Empire State University, and Vessel of an Ancient God. Odyssia Octavius was born in 1989 as an only child raised in a dysfunctional and emotionally abusive household. As a lonely autistic girl, she often found retreat from daily life in academics and her lifelong main special interest in cephalopods. From the day she first visited an aquarium during a field trip in elementary school, she had her sights firmly set on becoming a marine biologist, seeing the beauty and wonder in discovering new species. Eventually she would reach grad school where she would be involved with a fellow grad student, Mary Alice Anders, whom she would begin dating. However, her parents disapproved of the relationship and forced Odyssia to break up her. Odyssia sadly complies, but would eventually cut herself off from her parents after receiving her doctorate. After getting her job as a cephalopod biologist, she would have a fateful encounter during a research expedition where she and her team would discover a strange cephalopod-like entity in the Atlantic Ocean. While her scientists were deeply disturbed by the creature they saw, Odyssia would become enthralled and fascinated with it, managing to capture it and having it housed in the aquarium research center away from public viewing. While studying it, it began to speak to her. Despite the physical and mental toll it took on her to merely behold it, she was fiercely determined to learn more about it, seeing it was awe inspiring rather than horrifying. The eldritch entity, appeased with her dedication, offers her its power and knowledge in exchange for her service. She, in the name of science, accepts...

[fuckyeahhistory]

On 16th June 1944, fourteen year old George Stinney was executed for the murder of two young girls.  The youngest person executed in US in modern history, George was too small to fit into the electric chair. A bible was stacked onto the seat, so the electrodes could reach his head. Once sat down, his legs dangled from the chair. He couldn’t make out any last words, just cry. And when the guards put a mask over his head, it was too big. Slipping off once the electricity was turned on, to reveal his terrified tear strewn face. He was declared dead after eight minutes and buried in an unmarked grave.

His legacy should have been a footnote in history, only mentioned as ‘the youngest person executed’. But it wasn’t.

Because George Stinney had been innocent. The victim of a state sanctioned lynching.

George grew up in the small town of Alcolu, in South Carolina. The second oldest of five, his dad worked in the local mill. As did most of the town’s residents. Every day white and black workers would head to the mill, the black workers through one entrance, white’s through another. They’d watch the clock and wait for the whistle to blow. Then pack up their stuff and head home to opposite sides of the town’s railroad tracks. The white side and the black side.

Alcolu was segregated, but that wasn’t unusual for the time. South Carolina had long had segregation laws in place, and as recently as 1932 these had been updated to ban a black kid from attending a white school, punish inter race marriages with up to 12 months jail time, and prevent black and white workers from sharing a bathroom, with the threat of 30 days hard labour. For George, this was just how things were. It was life.

So, when on March 23rd 1944, two little white girls rode their bikes over to George and his little sister Aime, to ask where they might find some wild flowers, George knew not to engage too much. Just in case. He just shrugged and said he didn’t know. The girls nodded and went back to their wildflower hunt and George and his sister went back to grazing the family’s cows.

But the girls never came home. Betty Binnicker, 11, and Mary Thames, 7, were missing and soon the whole town was out looking for them.

Betty Binnkicker

Mary Thames

George and his dad joined the search and after talking to other volunteers, it quickly became clear that both George and Aimes must have been the last people to see Betty and Mary. Suspicions were raised, but there was still hope that the girls might have just gotten lost and would turn up.

However, the girl’s bodies were soon found. They’d been beaten to death and left in a shallow ditch. The town was shocked. Things like this didn’t happen in Alcolu. They wanted answers, they wanted a swift end to this; a culprit caught and punished – now.

George, it seemed, was the obvious suspect and so on March 25th, officers came to arrest him, along with his older brother John. The police quickly let John go, but they kept George. They questioned him without the presence of a lawyer, or his parents. Sadly, there are no clear records of what went on in that integration room, we only know that George was in there, alone, for hours. And that when the officers emerged, they had a confession.

According to police, George had caught up with the girls shortly after they’d ridden away, bludgeoned them to death and dragged their bodies to a nearby shallow ditch. That was the confession; although there was one glaring issue – the confession, hadn’t been signed by George.

Still, news that George had confessed got out and a mob formed outside the jail, armed and ready to lynch him. However, they were to be disappointed. He’d already been transferred to Columbia penitentiary, far out of their reach. But that didn’t stop the angry crowd from turning on George’s family, who were forced to flee town in fear for their lives.

Article from St Petersburg Times, Flordia, March 27th, 1944

Despite his young age, George was banned from seeing his family. They were terrified for him – of course they were – but they knew that George had been at home at the time of the murders. He hadn’t followed the girls after they rode away, he’d stayed with his sister, then gone back home. Multiple members of the family could vouch for that – surely that meant something.

Less than a month after George was arrested, the trial began on 25 April 1944. And it was a sham.

There are no transcripts from the three hour long trial, but here is what we do know.

African Americans were banned from entering the court room, even the Stinney family weren’t allowed in. The jury was all white and it’s foreman had actually led the search party who’d found Betty and Mary’s bodies and was related to the family that owned that land.

Then there was George’s state appointed lawyer; who specialised in tax. He’d never been involved in a trial like this and it showed. The lawyer didn’t call any witnesses for the defence, despite knowing that multiple people could offer an alibi. He also didn’t cross examine prosecution witnesses, failed to mention that George hadn’t signed his confession, or that it had been obtained in dubious circumstances.

The states case was equally shaky. There was no physical evidence that could unequivocally link George to the murder. Not to mention that although the medical examination of both girls showed no sign of rape or sexual assault, the prosecution repeatedly stated that George had raped at least one of the girls.

That wasn’t all. The location where the bodies had been found, was relatively free of any blood (which was confirmed by the states witness) making it unlikely that George had murdered the girls close by and then dragged their bodies there. Not only that, but it would have been almost physically impossible for 5”1, 90-pound George, to over power both girls and then drag their bodies.

None of that mattered. The jury took just 10 minutes to announce their verdict. Guilty. Just like that, fourteen year old George Stinney was sentenced to death.

George Stinney, center right, enters the ‘death house’ in Columbia Penatuary, along with a fellow inmate

George’s lawyer didn’t file an appeal, despite the many issues with the trial, which would normally have warranted an appeal, if not a mistrial.

The Stinney family felt helpless, but they prayed for a miracle. The NAACP got involved and they rallied supporters to write to South Carolina Governer, Olin D Johnson, for clemency, for a stay of execution, for a retrial, for anything. But their pleas fell on deaf ears. With Johnson writing back:

‘It may be interesting for you to know that Stinney killed the smaller girl to rape the larger one. Then he killed the larger girl and raped her dead body. Twenty minutes later he returned and attempted to rape her again, but her body was too cold. All of this he admitted himself.’

The writing was on the wall. George Stinney was going to be executed. George himself couldn’t understand how this was happening. Asking his cellmate:

‘Why would they kill me for something I didn’t do?’.

George never stopped protesting his innocence. But just 83 days after his initial arrest, George Stinney was executed.

George Stinney’s mug shot

But George’s family never stopped seeking justice for their son and brother. In the early 2000’s they were joined in their fight by a local historian, George Friarson, as well as several lawyers who offered their help pro-bono. Together they worked to gain evidence which would show how George’s case had been mishandled, the gaping injustices and lack of evidence from his trial and to finally, get the case reopened.

In 2014 George Stinney’s case was in court once more. This time, the trial took two days. Evidence was revaluated, the alibi’s provided by George’s surviving family members included and there was a new witness, Wilfred Hunter, who’d shared a cell with George and stated that George not only professed his innocence, but that his confession had been forced by the officers interrogating him.

Finally, the verdict came in. George Stinney’s conviction was declared legally void. It had taken 70 years, but George Stinney was finally proven innocent.

George Stinney’s grave, recently updated with the 2014 court verdict

This was intersting where can I find out more? Well I would definatley look at the ACLU’s campaign around race and the death penalty. Because sadly, the miscarriage of justice that happened to George Stinney, is far from alone and still prevelant today.

The legalised lynching of George Stinney On 16th June 1944, fourteen year old George Stinney was executed for the murder of two young girls.

[reekierevelator]

The Time Has Come

John Maclean (1879 – 1923) reviews his life as he prepares to address the horde of a hundred thousand people which has gathered on Glasgow Green to hear him speak after his release from Peterhead Prison.

            So here I am again.  Back on the speakers’ platform; fingers twitching and mind racing.

In a few minutes I’m expected to give a rabble-rousing speech to the thousands upon thousands of people staring up at me, despite the fact that until yesterday I was languishing in the sewer called Peterhead Jail, despite the fact I’d been on hunger strike for eight months.  But I’ll manage it.  I will do it, just as I did it after prison the last time, 1916. For even now that the war is over there are still too many who don’t understand, who aren’t yet class conscious, who can’t see through the fog of capitalism. I will do it because however weak I am today, I am no longer being force-fed twice daily through rubber tubes.

I can hardly believe it’s only 1919.  The trial seems such a long time ago.  But it was really only a year ago.  I was fit and robust then.  I conducted my own defence.  I spoke from the dock for an hour and a half, logically rebutting in turn each of the trumped up charges they laid against me. Defence of the Realm Act indeed. Then as now I said I wished no harm to any human being; that all my actions were entirely humanitarian in nature.  But they insisted I was a threat to society, that I should be keen to kill my fellow workers in other countries, that I should be more patriotic. Patriotism - the last refuge of those scoundrels; Dr Johnson was right.  And maybe it’s true that I did try to undermine their war effort, their drive to slaughter millions. I tried, just as my friends Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg did in Germany.  I was convicted of sedition, of trying to bring down the state, and sentenced to five years in the Peterhead hellhole. But now that the war has ended, I’m not such a threat, and in response to public clamour they set me free.     

 Was it all worth it?  I suppose I should be grateful to have avoided the fate of my Edinburgh friend. James wanted to bring trade unionism and socialism to another part of the United Kingdom, the Ireland of his father and forefathers. Connolly was brought up among those Irish immigrants crammed into the caves under the arches of the city’s South Bridge. After fighting for workers’ rights against the Dublin lock-out he founded his Citizens’ Army. And in 1916, for his trouble, he ended up severely wounded, dragged up against a wall in Dublin Castle, and shot dead by soldiers. But I’m sure this country will find that’s not the end of the Irish story. Maybe that’s something Maybe that’s what I should tell them.

I still have my friends in Glasgow - Jimmy Maxton, Guy Aldred, and Willie Gallacher Jimmy’s the clever one.  One day someone will probably write a doctoral thesis on Maxton’s thinking and end up as Prime Minister.  And Guy, like me, he’s seen his fair share of courtrooms.  America saw its way to amend its constitution with a Bill of Rights in 1791. But poor old Britain had to wait for Guy to be repeatedly arrested on this very Glasgow Green, for making speeches and gathering crowds, before the courts eventually agreed that public free speech, public meetings, and public processions really ought to be part of everyone’s civil liberties.  And Willie, he’s seen the inside of prisons too, Willie still guides the unions, leading the Shop Stewards Movement on the Clyde. But he’s left his syndicalism behind, thrown in his lot with Lenin and Trotsky and founded the Communist Party of Great Britain.  One of these days I can see him in Parliament, a Communist MP.

Looking at this huge crowd of people eagerly waiting to hear me speak I know many campaigned relentlessly for my release from prison.  And now they expect a victorious call to arms, a vibrant, revolutionary speech, all fire and brimstone. They want to greet a Scottish Lenin at the Central Station rather than the Finland Station. But the prison regime has exhausted me and destroyed my body.  And it wasn’t as if I hadn’t known hardship before, growing up in the poverty in Pollockshaws where my Gaelic speaking parents had landed up after being forced off their Highland land.  In school they called me a lad o’ pairts, a clever wee boy. The Free Kirk arranged for me to be trained as a teacher.  And after that I went on to Glasgow University and took my MA in Economics. But it was the terrible housing, poverty, and illness I saw all around me that drove me to a proper understanding of economics from a socialist perspective. It’s seventy years since Engels, in Manchester but writing in German, found himself forced to describe the awful condition of the working class. And fifty since Marx wrote about the Highland Clearances.  Yet sometimes it’s hard to see that very much has changed.

Of course, when I started to speak in public about the need for reform, the need to redress the terrible ills of society, I was sacked from my teaching job. Then they barred me from teaching in schools altogether.  Nothing daunted, I founded the Scottish Labour College to teach people about socialist economics. I espoused the co-operative movement. I got the Renfrewshire Co-op to push local school boards into providing facilities for adult education, economics education. During the war I did what I could to support Mary Barbour and the women’s fight against the rent increases, imposed by absentee landlords while their conscripted husbands were away fighting in France.  Aye, one of these days they’ll put up a statue to that wonderful woman.

And now Willie Gallacher and the Clydeside workers have decided they have to strike again. Trying to reduce working hours to a forty hour week.  And it’s not that they want the same pay for fewer hours. They’ll take a bit less pay.  All they want is to make some room in the yards to give jobs to all the unemployed demobbed soldiers. But in Parliament they fear an uprising, a Glasgow Soviet, a Soviet Scotland. Churchill’s tanks are even now being marshalled in the Gallowgate. Thousands of English troops are arriving by train. Meanwhile, the Scottish troops are confined to barracks in Maryhill.  And if Willie speaks to them at Maryhill he knows the troops will come out for him. Revolution is in the air.  But I’ve told him, that kind of battle – workers in khaki killing other workers in khaki – that’s not for me, not what I want to see. If there are to be tanks on Sauchiehall Street they must be faced down without bloodshed. But can I convince this heaving crowd of that?

Like me, most of the people here couldn’t see what the so-called ‘war to end wars’ was all about, why everyone had to starve or die because of it.  Just one imperial power slaughtering the workers of another imperial power as they tried to gain a bigger slice of the cake, the wealth of the exploited colonies, for the benefit of their own capitalist classes.

The Russian workers couldn’t understand it either.  We all cheered when they abandoned the war in 1917 and overthrew their government.  I well remember chairing the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets.  And then Lenin appointed me Bolshevik Consul in Scotland.  I hear they’ve even named a street after me in St Petersburg, or Leningrad as they’re calling it nowadays.  There’s even been talk of carving my name on the Kremlin’s walls. But what do those things matter – his ribbon, star, and a’ that?

I’m thirty-nine and feeling nearer ninety.  The force-feeding when I went on hunger strike in prison didn’t help. Some even say they tried to poison me. Now they tell me pneumonia is setting in – that I’ll probably be dead in a year or two.  People might remember me for a while, before I’m eclipsed by others; Scottish people better able to fight for socialism and independence, people who understand the true nature of Scotland.  If my funeral attracts as big a crowd as the one before me now it will be the biggest funeral Glasgow has ever seen.  Maybe I’ll be a footnote in some socialist history of Scotland, or someone might write a song, a poem, or a play about me.  My dear wee daughter Nan says she’ll write a book about me.  A hundred years from now will anyone read that passionate speech I made from the dock? Will that speech’s prediction – of another world war twenty years from now - prove true or false?  Will the egalitarian principles I've lived and fought for ever really be able to establish themselves in an independent Scotland?  Marx said capitalism forces companies to compete, to exploit resources and labour, and the devil take the hindmost. The losers are taken over, merged, or eliminated altogether, whatever the cost to the workers. Eventually there will be huge companies, but there won’t be many. I suspect, as Marx predicted, that companies will become global, capitalists billionaires, and the gap between rich and poor will only widen. Could an independent socialist Scotland really stand in their way?

Ach, so I lost my safe middle-class teaching career, I lost my health. I gained a prison record. Have all those things really been for nothing? - But good grief, what kind of self-serving question is that for me to be asking myself?

Oh dear, the Convener is nodding towards me now.   It’s time to get up on the old hind legs and give this multitude some eloquent words to chew over.  Maybe their reaction will provide the answer to some of the questions tickling my brain.

[cynocephaliiar-blog]

Wolfin Armasi was born Eva Marie Armasi on June 18th, 1981 at St. John’s Hospital in Springfield, Illinois. Wolfin’s mother, Patricia Armasi (née Kearney) worked at the hospital as an ER nurse. Her father, Giorgi Armasi, owned and operated a small dairy farm in the tiny town of Anderson, Illinois; about an hour from Springfield. Wolfin’s younger brother, Michael, was born at St. John’s Hospital on September 1st, 1986.

For the first fourteen years of her life, Wolfin had a normal, healthy childhood. She attended the local school and assisted her father with milking the cows in the mornings and evenings, or she spent time looking after her younger brother while their mother worked long shifts in the ER. Wolfin was her father’s daughter through and through, and it was rare to see them apart. He taught her everything he knew about the land, the farm, the animals, how to survive in the woods for days on end. Often times he took her hunting or on long hikes through the surrounding forests. But most importantly, he passed on stories of his family’s culture. How they came from a distant country far across the ocean---a land called Georgia---and that they were once said to be the descendants of an ancient god. 

But her world came crashing down around her in late September of 1995. She and her family were on a week long vacation in British Columbia when the small, sightseeing aircraft they were on encountered unexpected bad weather and crashed down in the Campbell River area. Wolfin’s parents and brother died along with seven other people who were on board. Wolfin and one other person survived. After spending two months in a coma, Wolfin woke up in the hospital to the news that her family was dead and she was being sent home. She was forced to sell the entire farm and almost everything she owned, and she dropped out of 10th grade because she couldn’t cope with school and everything she was going through. Knowing full well that the state would put her in foster care and that she only had three years until she would age out, Wolfin went on the run, using the money she’d received in her parents’ will and the liquidation of the farm.

Something had been different about her since she’d woken up from the coma. Her senses were sharper than they ever had been before, and her strength was dramatically increasing. She began experiencing blackouts, lapses in memory, intense fevers, and restlessness. Homeless and struggling just to survive, she dismissed these strange symptoms as brain damage from the crash and didn’t bother to seek any medical help, believing that it would be better if she just died from them instead. In reality, the powers of the ancient god her father’s family was supposedly descended from finally awoke within her blood, emerging from centuries of dormancy that had been passed down from her ancestors. Her body was changing, becoming something more.

In 1996, Wolfin changed her name and slowly made her way to New York City, living on the streets there for a few months before managing to sneak onto a freight ship from New York to St. Petersburg, Russia. Still suicidal and struggling to cope with her newfound strength and instincts, she found an ex-Spetsnaz operative who reluctantly agreed to teach her how to fight. She excelled at it and learned quickly, but the adrenaline it made her feel aggravated her powers until one night she snapped, transforming into a giant, wolf-like monster and killing the operative who trained her. After waking up in an alley, covered in blood with no idea what happened, she was taken in by a man named Boris Kaminski. The two soon became fast friends, and he quickly came to find out that Wolfin wasn’t human. Rather than turn her away, he tried to help her control her powers however he could. In 1998, war broke out in Africa over a border dispute between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Kaminski helped Wolfin secure her first mercenary contract with the Eritreans and she spent two years fighting on the frontlines.

Once the war was ended and a reluctant treaty was set in place, Wolfin returned to St. Petersburg. However, she could not manage to find Kaminski. With her powers more under control, she spent a year living in Russia before moving back to the United States in late 2001. She eventually found Kaminski living in NYC, having immigrated there in the hopes of leaving his own life as a mercenary behind. The two reconnected and worked together on the docks of Brooklyn for a year before Wolfin was unable to handle the city any longer and she moved to a rundown hunting shack in the middle of the Catskill Mountains. She occasionally returns to the city when she’s in need of extra money and works short-term security jobs or looks for more mercenary work.

[delphinidin4]

Gettysburg Dime Museum Part 5: Cool Shit

That’s them in the red circle. Sorry for the photo quality, but they were TEENY!!

“Giant Squid Beak”

These swordfish swords were handmade by Charles F. Ellis, chief engineer on the lightship Hens and Chickens off Nantucket, MA in 1923.

Original Paintings by Cheeta: For those of us old enough to remember the Tarzan movies, Cheeta is the chimp that made everybody want one of their own. Animal trainer Tony Gentry found Cheeta on an animal scouting trip to Africa in the 1930s. Cheeta went on to star in 12 Tarzan films. He retired from films in 1967 at the age of 35.

“Creature from the Abyss.” Anybody know what this thing is?

In 1924, Captain William Drayson was fishing off the coast of Florida with a friend and his fourteen year old son, Billy when their boat was attacked by a sawfish. The massive creature launched itself onto the boat, striking left and right with the serrated edges of the saw. Captain Drayson fell backwards and would have surely been mutilated or killed if not for the quick thinking of his son who leapt at the beast with no regard for his own safety and struck with a hatchet. The sawfish retreated and young Billy was celebrated a hero. Months later, fishermen pulled a sawfish measuring eighteen feet in length from the water. They immediately recognized it from the damaged saw as the fish that attacked Captain Drayson’s boat. Billy was given the saw as a memento of the day that he saved his father’s life. Displayed here is the saw that was presented to Billy, and the hatchet used to thwart the attack.

Naturally mummified cat and squirrel

Tennis ball that became lodged in the pelvis of an alligator after it was swallowed. A calcium shell began to form over the ball.

In the story, (Mark 12:41-44, Luke 21:1-4), a widow donates two small coins to the temple treasury, while wealthy people donate much more. Jesus explains to his disciples that the small sacrifices of the poor mean more to God than the extravagant, but proportionately lesser, donations of the rich. Roman bronze coins, c 50 BC--400 AD. [They were tiny--about as big around as the head of a thumbtack!]

This was about four inches long

Unfortunately, this caption is too blurry to be read, but this is an enormous bezoar stone, bigger than a softball!

Mary Reeser, 1884-1951. In 1951,  the death of Mary Reeser in St. Petersburg, FL [FLORIDA AGAIN!] was suspected to be the result of spontaneous human combustion. Reeser’s landlord came to deliver a telegram and found the doorknob to be incredibly hot and called the police. Reeser’s remains were practically all ashes, except part of her foot in a slipper and her backbone. Also found in the ashes was her skull, and for some reason, [illegible]. 

Ashes and skull of Mary Reeser.

I looked up Mary Reeser, and she was actually buried in Mechanisburg, PA (which is not terribly far from Gettysburg), but I have no idea then how they got the skull of it’s supposed to be a model. Her skull was supposedly shrunken (which, the skull pictured was definitely smaller than normal), but I didn’t see anything on the Wikipedia page about the massive indentations.

Giant Man Eating Clam: This is a specimen of the largest shell in the world... The Giant Clam which lives on the coral reefs of the South Pacific... Pearl divers stepping on the well-camouflaged mollusk have been instantly trapped by the animal snapping shut its great shell, visewise, and held thusly until drowned.

Large Canine Skull: Unearthed in Dartmoor, England in 1913, it is thought to be the skull of a legendary hellhound said to howl at the grave of Richard Cabell. Cabell, a despised, feared, and hated man, supposedly sold his soul to the devil. Upon his death, fearful villagers had his body entombed in a sepulcher to prevent him from rising from the dead. Satan’s hellhounds returned to the grave every night, howling in frustration at being denied access to their soul.

I looked it up, and Richard Cabell and this legend were the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles!

Madagascar fruit bat.

Look out! It’s coming for your... bananas!

From a display of Japanese masks

[historyloversstuff]

July 10, 1899 - death of Grand Duke George Alexandrovich 

“There was someone whom nobody can replace.

There was someone who will not come back again”

“The next morning the news reached Peterhoff of the death of the Czarovitch, George Alexandrovitch. This poor young fellow had suffered from consumption for many years. He had lived for some time in Egypt, and had tried many other climates, but only at Abbas Tuman, in the Caucasus, could he breathe. His life there was lonely and sad. His mother and sisters, the Grand Duchesses Olga and Xenia, with the latter’s children, used to visit him every year, going after Easter and staying until the weather got too hot for them. For the climate is hot, and the journey long and difficult, especially for children. That year, on account of little Marie’s birth [Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, Nicholas II’s daughter], the journey had been postponed till later than usual, and the poor young Grand Duke was awaiting their arrival with impatience. In a letter written just before his death he said he longed for the sound of a woman’s voice, the touch of a woman’s hand, and begged his mother to come as soon as possible after the baptism. He was keenly disappointed that Marie was not a boy, as he felt the burden of his heirship almost intolerable. Through a mistake the Emperor [Nicholas II] had named him Czarovitch, instead of Heir Apparent. In Russia this title can never be withdrawn, excepting when the bearer of it becomes Emperor. After his death the Emperor named his young brother Michael Heir Apparent. He has borne his title with great dignity and honour, but he was very glad to be relieved of it by the birth of the tiny heir, the Grand Duke Alexis, on August 12th, 1904. On the morning following the baptism the Czarovitch had got up earlier than usual. He felt better and brighter, and, notwithstanding the remonstrances of his valet, took a ride on his bicycle. He rode down a hill, and on reaching the bottom of it suddenly fell from his bicycle. An old peasant woman going to his villa with milk, accompanied by her grandson, were the sole witnesses of the accident. She ran to his assistance, and found blood pouring from his mouth. She despatched her grandson to the villa for help, and sitting on the ground took the young Grand Duke’s head in her lap, but in a few minutes he was dead. Thus on the roadside, attended by an old peasant woman, died the heir to the Russian throne. He fulfilled the saying regarding the Romanoffs, that none of them will ever die in their beds. So far as I know Nicholas I. was the only one who did die in his bed. He died of pneumonia, a few days after the fall of Sevastopol. Though Alexander III. died a natural death, he was sitting in a chair in the balcony when it took place. A church has been erected over the spot where George Alexandrovitch breathed his last. The Dowager Empress with all her family went to the Crimea to meet his body, which they conveyed to St. Petersburg and laid in the Fortress Church of St. Peter and St. Paul. His tomb is attended to with loving hands, fresh flowers and plants always appear on it, and every year there is held a memorial service. This service will be held so long as any of the children of his family are alive. Such is the custom of the Russian Church. It has been said that the Grand Duke George was married to a telegraph girl. The story is absolutely untrue. He lived alone in his house in the Caucasus with his servants, except when visited by his mother and family.” - “Six Years at the Russian Court” by Margaret Eager

“Unfortunately I’m no longer fit for any kind of service. I’m no longer able. I’m no longer able to walk” - excerpt from the last letter of Grand Duke George Alexandrovich to his brother, Nicholas II (27 June 1899)

[inspired]

[n3rdlif343va]

💝 yuuri & yuri

Everyone knows I have a thing for the building friendship between Yuuri and Yuri. I HC that once Yuuri is in St. Petersburg, they don’t become best friends, but that Yuuri has the most success in communicating with Yuri and that Yuri tends to be a little less emotionally outrageous when it is just the two of them.

That being said, there would still be times that Yuri would want to to strangle Yuuri. This is definitely one of them… (based on the official art of Otabek, Yuri, Victor and Yuuri in Hasetsu, I can’t find the pillow throwing one, I’m sorry!)

Send Nerd Kisses to Write to Make Her Blush

They had been in Hasetsu for exactly twenty-four hours when Yuri finally snapped. The trip had been a much more pleasant experience than he had expected, Victor and Yuuri being on their best behavior throughout the flight, and Otabek patiently allowing Yuri to drag him all over Hasetsu to show him the sights. His best friend had even let Yuri get away with buying them matching t-shirts, and was currently wearing it under his onsen robes. The first day of the trip had been better than anything Yuri could have imagined and he found himself absolutely giddy as he leaned on Otabek’s shoulder watching his best friend taste his first bite of katsudon.

The evening had been mostly uneventful, although Yuri was a bit weary when Victor had placed the bottles of alcohol on the table between himself and Yuuri. Mari had suggested glasses, Victor had laughed at the idea, and Yuri was suddenly terrified of where their night was headed. Neither Victor nor Yuuri could keep their clothes on while drunk, and Yuri was not looking forward to another round of avoid the naked adults.

Finally taking a seat next to Otabek, Yuri grinned when Otabek complimented the katsudon through a mouthful of food. Yuri loved Hasetsu, and he even loved Yuuri’s crazy family and friends, so it was a sense of pride that he felt as Otabek consumed every bite in his bowl. He began to shovel his own food into his mouth, feeling a sense of comfortable happiness settle around him, which was promptly ruined when the singing began.

At first, Yuri had no idea that it was Victor and Yuuri causing the racket. There were often drunk visitors enjoying dinner at the onsen, a product of their relaxed state and Mr. Katsuki’s heavy-handed pouring of all things liquor. Yuri had once asked Mari how the place didn’t go broke and Mari had laughed, mumbling something about drunk men spending unbelievable amounts of money. Concentrating on his food, Yuri ignored the screeching version of singing until he heard his name.

“YURI, THAT’S WHAT MAKES YOU BEAUTIFUL!” Victor sang, collapsing in giggles onto Yuuri’s back.

Otabek turned bright red, slowly raising his head to look at Yuri. “You didn’t…” he whispered, eyes going wide and worried as he stared at Yuri.

“No!’ Yuri waved a hand, “he is only singing that because you and Yuuri were so competitive during that song in Just Dance.” That might be the truth. Yuri had told Yuuri about Otabek’s obsession with One Direction, but he was almost one hundred percent certain that Yuuri wouldn’t have shared that with Victor. Almost. Twisting in his seat to glare at Victor, Yuri flipped up his middle finger and stuck his tongue out when Yuuri feigned shock. Turning back around, Yuri jolted when a pillow struck him in the back of the head. “HEY!” he yelled, turning around to see Yuuri stumbling toward him.

The box of pillows had been delivered that morning from one of Yuuri’s sponsors and they were laying around the onsen dining room in small piles. It hadn’t hurt when it had hit the back of Yuri’s head, but he was still pissed. Glaring as Yuuri approached, Yuri was caught off guard when Yuuri grabbed his head.

Fighting against Yuuri’s hold on his cheeks, Yuri squawked as Yuuri planted a kiss on the part of his hair. “There all better now,” Yuuri pinched Yuri’s cheek, giggling as he returned to Victor.

Tossing a quick glance at Otabek, Yuri retrieved the pillow from the ground, bouncing it up and down in his hand as he raised an eyebrow in Yuuri’s direction. He heard the soft “uh oh” escape from Victor, as he and Yuuri scrambled to the door of the dining room, exploding in laughter as they fled down the hall.

“You’re dead, Katsudon!” Yuri shouted, springing to his feet, gathering more pillows as he set off at a run.

Shaking his head, Otabek let the small smile twitch at the corners of his mouth as he grabbed an armful of pillows and went to join the fight.

[naturecoaster]

The Story of Citrus County's Oldest House

The John Paul Formy-Duval House (Duval House) is considered to be the oldest remaining and continuously occupied home in Citrus County. John Paul’s journey to the Floral City area began with the story of his father, Jean Gerome Prosper Formy-Duval, who was a physician in the Court of King Louis XVI. (second half of 18th century) Being a “Royalist” might have been trouble enough during the French Revolution, but Formy-Duval made matters worse for himself by using his connections as a doctor to create fake death certificates allowing certain individuals to seek new lives abroad. He then had to escape when one or more of the “dead” individuals were captured, and thus he began an adventure that would carry his family name to an area in Florida now known as Floral City. Before John Paul was born, his father, Dr. Jean Prosper Formy-Duval (1729-1821), had fled to Saint Dominique, today known as Haiti, where he owned land gifted to him by the King. Jean Prosper’s new life as a planter did not last long due to a slave rebellion in 1791 that forced him to take to the sea in an open boat.

Jean Gerome Prosper Formy-Duval. CC license After being rescued by a seaworthy vessel, the group ended up in North Carolina.  Dr. Jean Formy-Duval died there in 1821.  Two of his sons traveled on to Florida where John Paul eventually settled in a thinly populated area in what was then northern Hernando County. John Paul had followed his older half-brother, Alexander, to Tallahassee, where Alexander later was elected to the Territorial Congress.  John Paul moved on to Ocala, where his first wife died. In 1854 he married Elizabeth Ann Trantham and their first child, Mary Ann was born. It is said she was the first white child to be born in Ocala. John Paul Formy-Duval moves to Floral City During The War Between The States, John Paul enlisted at Crystal River and survived, acquiring land in what is today Citrus County. An 1863 deed from Allen Munden to J.P. Duval reflects his ownership of Lot 1 Section 15 T 20 SR 20 E.  J. P. built this house about 1866.  Before the upstairs was completely finished, he learned that his house had been built on Lot 2 of Section 15 instead of Lot 1; this location was just 1,321 feet (¼ mile) to the west of the actual property that he owned on Lot 1 of Section 15.

Samples of paper money, issued by the State of Florida during the Civil War. 1861. Black & white photonegative, 4 x 5 in. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory. Leaving this house unfinished, he built a similar house on his island property now known as Duval Island. That house remained until it was destroyed by a storm in 1913.  The Lot 1 Section 15 land that he did own became the property of his son-in-law, James Baker in 1883, and it was later laid out and surveyed by W. H. Havron, surveyor, and Senator Austin Mann.  This occurred after John Paul’s death.

Hackett. View of Lake Tsala Apopka - Floral City, Florida. 19--. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory. Duval House originally built on High Ground The Duval House sits on one of the highest spots in Floral City, well away from the low-land near the lake.  The land in front of the house and to the east was cleared for the planting of crops. Sugar cane, cotton, corn, etc were grown.  Due to the lack of trees in the area at that time, one could anticipate seeing the Tsala Apopka Lake from the second-story porch.  In the 1860s, it may have been the reason the porch-front of the house faces east, so the lake could be viewed.

Historic Duval House shows period House Design and Accommodations

A large cistern located on the southeast corner of the Duval House was used to catch rainfall and store it for household use. It was typical of the early period of settlement, and up until the second decade of the 1900s, for cisterns to be a common feature of a home.  The large cistern is located at the southeast corner of the Duval house.  Its purpose was to catch the rainfall and store it for household use.  This cistern is unique in that it has a central brick shaft.  It is about 20 feet deep and is lined with cement. Originally the kitchen was not attached to the house - a common home building practice to reduce the potential of a fire hazard.  The north wall of the kitchen was removed and the kitchen building was moved and attached to the south wall of the house.  The original exterior siding on the house can still be seen in the kitchen.  Cooking was done by the Metz family on a wooden stove in the winter months and on a kerosene stove in the summer to reduce the amount of heat generated into the house.

The original kitchen was not attached to the house, as was common in that day. The possibility of fire and the heat generated in a kitchen made the preferred method to construct the kitchen near, but not attached to the house. Image by Diane Bedard. Later Residents of the Duval House W. H. Havron, the surveyor, lived in the Duval house for a time.  As a surveyor, he, also, laid out the southern boundary when Citrus County was formed from Hernando County. Judge Nelson also lived in this house, and it was owned by the prominent Floral City landowner Adolph O.F. Roux and his wife Carrie for an unknown period. The Duval Preservation Trust purchases the house in 2011 In 1935, the Duval House was purchased from the Rouxs by the James Metz family, remaining in the Metz family through four generations.

Lynn Bassett (L), Bob Metz today (C), Marcia Beasley (R) taken at the Duval Donors Dinner held in 2017. Image courtesy of Floral City Heritage Council. It was purchased in 2011 from the great-grandson of the original Metz by the Duval Preservation Trust, Inc., a 501 c 3 non-profit corporations created for the preservation of this historic building. The Metz family lived on the lower floor Three generations of Metz family lived in the two downstairs rooms; one of the upstairs rooms served as a guest room with the remaining upstairs used as an attic for storage and a children’s play area.  Individuals in town have related that they recall roller-skating in the upstairs play area. The first floor South Room was the main living/dining area and it also served as the elder Metz bedroom.  An indoor bathroom was added on to the east side of the fireplace in the 1940s.  Prior to that period, an outhouse had been located a short distance away from the house to the south.

The fireplace had been completely covered on the main floor. Image courtesy of Floral City Heritage Council. When the Trust purchased the property, the fireplace was completely covered-over with paneling and wallboard and the ceiling had been lowered in this room.  In the early years, a wood-burning stove provided heat and smoke was expelled via a flue attached to a cut in the chimney. In later years, the stove was replaced by a propane heater mounted on the wall.  Scorched marks above the heater were prominent on the paneling and wallboard.  It was fortunate that the house never caught on fire. Duval House shows Knob and Tube Electrical Installation When electricity first came to Floral City in 1913, the method of installation was referred to as “knob-and-tube.”  There are numerous places throughout the house where that installation method still remains.  However, it is not in use and only retained for the exhibit. The first floor North Room was the bedroom used by the second and third generations of the Metz family.  When James Metz acquired the house, a closet had already been built in front of the fireplace in that room and it connected with the back wall of the bathroom in the South Room.

There is no inside access to the upstairs of the house. Access to the second floor is solely by entrance up the stairwell from the front porch.  A handrail was added by the Duval Trust for safety. At the top of the stair, looking back to the second-floor porch, one can see the name “HAVRON” above the stairwell, referring to the surveyor of Floral City who once lived in the house.  The second floor was never finished.  Some door and window frames are complete and some are not.  The walls, floors, and ceilings are just as they were when the house was left by John Paul Formy-Duval. Some visible signs of water and termite damage are retained for the exhibit.

The Duval Historic Trust Also retained are the signs of children amusing themselves, even writing on the walls with chalk on the south wall.  “Eula May Stokes” her name was written by someone.  She later became Eula Amay Stokes Murphy when she married Buddy Murphy in 1940. The second or north room upstairs was used as a guest room and for comfort, the walls and ceiling were covered with fiberboard.  There was a factory in St. Petersburg which made a wallboard like the one in this room.  The product was made of palmettos.  The bed shown now in this room was originally found downstairs.  It was made for the senior Mrs. Metz by her son, Jim Metz after she had broken her hip and could no longer use a regular bed. If you want to Visit the Duval House... Since the Duval Preservation Trust has owned the house, it has been opened to the public for the annual Floral City Heritage Days.  The historic Duval House is one of 6-8 historic homes on the Blue Banner Tour of Historic Homes as part of Floral City's annual Heritage Days event, held the first weekend in December. To arrange a special tour of the Historic Duval House for a group, contact Bill Metcalfe, Floral City Heritage Museum Director. Museum phone: 352-419-4257. For information about the Floral City Heritage Days event, call (352) 637-4203, visit www.floralcityhc.com or email the-fchc@hotmail.com Read the full article

[we-are-richmond]

No Rest E3 C4

AHHHHHHH WE CONTINUE

 "You okay Gabe?" Clem looked back at me from her spot in the front of the horse. I held onto her waist as we rode down the dirt road. Glancing back, biting my lip as Liam looked at me. Liam rode besides Jade, staring at me. Shaking my head, I looked ahead. Andy rode ahead of us, looking at a new map. The man grumbled something angrily about losing his other map. I didn't regret taking his map though, in fact it was in my backpack still.  I had been working on it over the night too. Drawing lines from Petersburg to Richmond. The area Javi and Eleanor were from most likely. Or the bridge, to the road where we found dad's dog tags.  Biting my lips, I nervously rubbed my thumb over the dog tags. "Please hold on dad...I know you're alive, I know it." I thought, slowly gripping the tags. "Where to Andy?" Jade called out from the back. Andy looked back at us, waving his map hecticly.  "I'd fuckin' know if I knew where my map was. Lost that shit Jesus. Coulda sworn I had it too." Andy excalimed, rather angrily, "God damnit. You said that the...place was down this road, to the hospital and town and all that shit right Liam?".  "Yeah. We keep going down this road, and we should get there within an hour." Liam explained. "It's also where we found these trouble makers." Jade hissed out. I looked back at her, shaking my head. Liam looked at his wife, sighing heavily. "The hospital will probably have medical supplies, but...it could be absouletely infested. There's also an outdoor mall not far from it, we could scavenge the stores in hopes for finding something." "Like what honey?"  "Anything can be useful. Like, my god. Imagine one of the stories there was like a food store, if they had pudding. Pudding would be amazing right now." I pointed out. Clem looked back at me a tad, giving a soft smile. Her smile worked well with her new hair cut. God, it was so nice.  Some time had passed, and we were slowly making our way into the small town. I looked at the pavement, noting the recent tire tracks on the ground. Andy looked around, observing the buildings. "We should split up, that way we can scout the hospital and stores." Andy informed, stopping his horse. I looked around as well, trying to look for a good area that dad could be. His dogs tags were located down the road we had come from, he'd go towards the town right? Probably be the easiet way to be located. In one of these buildings, waiting to find us.  "I guess me and Andy can go check out the stores." Jade pointed out. "Then me and Clem will go to the hospital. Hopefully find some things there." Liam added. Clem looked at me from behind her.  "Who are you going with?" I looked betweeen her, and the others. Where would dad have gone..? Taking a shuddering breathe, I looked at Andy and Jade. "I'll go with you two." I explained.  "Then we got a plan. Yal get what ya can, and be careful. We gotta stick around four hours maxium. We meet back here when the sun hits just bout noon." Andy explained. We all nodded, and I prepared to walk away. Clem took my wrist, causing me to stop. I looked back concerned, and she looked into my eyes. "Clem..." I stopped, just as her lips pressed against my own.  "You better not die on me you damn dork..." She pulled away, gently kissing the scar over my nose. I could only stare at her wide eyed, gently running my fingers over my scared nose. I shook my head slowly, following Andy and Jade. As we walked awayed, I stared at Clem and Liam leaving. Be careful Clem...  I walked with them, heading down the ruined streets. Very few muertos roamed the roads thankfully, making it easier to weave through the shopping center. Gosh, this reminded me of those times Kate would force me and Mari to go shopping with her. I felt a lump in my throat on thinking of them. Mariana...Kate... God, this was so fucked up.  "There doesn't look like there's many of them dead ones around, this may be a piece of cake." Andy stated, keeping a firm grip on his wrench. Jade scowled, glaring at the man. "Don't be fucking thick St. John. They can be any where, you are never safe." Jade hissed out, waving her hand with her hammer towards us.  "Why are you such a bitch?" I growled out. Jade glared at me, clenching her weapon.  "Shut up you little shit. I am pointing the obvious out to your delusional self. The world, there's no sunshine and rainbows anymore buttercup! Only death and despair. You do whatever the fuck it takes to protect yourself and family." She growled out. I stared at her wide eyed, taken a back by her familiar mannerism. The woman glared, and stomped ahead towards the stores, leaving me there.  Someone had already taught me that exact same lesson.  I rubbed my eyes tiredly, slowly sitting up from the floor of the van. Blinking a bit, I took my surroundings in. Kate was dozing in the passenger seat, while uncle Javi was asleep next to me in the car. Looking behind me, I saw Mari passed out in the back row of seats. We were all accounted for except.... I frowned, looking outside the van, and wasn't suprised to see a set of legs leaning from the roof of the vehicle.  "Dad...your still up..?" I asked. My dad looked down from the van surprised, surprised to see his 10 year old son up past midnight. I backed up, as he hopped off the roof of the car. He landed besides me, and my eyes immediately went to the riffle in his hands. He noticed my gaze. Dad walked towards me, putting his gun on his back again. "Is that for...the dead ones...?" I asked.  "Gabriel, what, what are you doing up at this time?" Dad asked, crouching down to my level. I looked my father in the eyes, frowning a bit. I felt ashamed for some reason, I had no idead why. Dad gently took my shoulders, looking me in the eyes. "I didn't wake you up did I kid?" He asked.  "No you didn't...but dad...why are you up?" I questioned back. Even being only 10, I wasn't dumb. My dad was clearly tired. Dad looked at me rather suprised, before sighing softly.  "I'm up because I have to protect you guys...son, this world...it's changed. I know you know that. Things aren't safe. I have to protect you from the dead and the living." Dad explained, his grip a bit more firm on my shoulder. My small eyes widened a bit at the last part.  "T-The living ones...what d-do you mean dad? Why would we have to fight the living ones too? I thought only the muertos hurt us. Because their dead, and they eat people." I stated, my voice wavering.  Dad frowned me, before standing up. I watched him step towards the van, and sat by the open door. He patted the spot next to him, looking at me seriously. "Come here mijo." He said, in a firm tone. Looking my dad in the eyes, I slowly walked over to him. I sat besides him, confused on all of this. Why did we have to fight people that were alive? Why not fight with them against the muertos?  "Gabe...sometimes I forget your so young, and that it's only been a few months sense this started. Son, when things get bad, people change. But that isn't always the case. Sometimes people are just bad, and they do horrible things. That's why I have to stay up Gabriel. So they don't hurt you, or Mariana, Kate, or Javi. None of you. When you get older you'll understand. You'll understand that you do whatever it takes to keep yourself and your family alive Gabriel."

[droewyn]

Intervention, Part 2

Part 1 here.

Cold.  He was lying on his back.  It was cold and dark and a heavy weight was pinning him to the ground. He tried to groan and wound up with a mouthful of hair, Victor’s favorite styling gel bitter on his tongue. “Vitya?”  No response.  Yuuri forced his eyes open, and found himself staring up into the night sky.  It had been the middle of the afternoon just moments before.  His husband was lying on top of him, unmoving.  “Victor?”

“Tell Yakov I’m dead,” It was a drowsy mumble, and he let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.  Whatever the hell had just happened, Victor was okay and Yuuri wasn’t alone.

“Victor, you’re crushing my kidneys!”  

He felt Victor’s breath hitch an instant before his head snapped up to look at him.  “Yuuri?”  The word was laced with confusion and worry.

He tried for a reassuring smile.  “I’m fine, love.  Just… get off me?”

Victor blinked, then swore and rolled quickly off of Yuuri.  The two men helped one another to their feet, clinging tightly to each other’s hands for comfort as they looked around them.  

They were in an alley somewhere in a city center, though the buildings were all wrong for it to be St. Petersburg.  Skyscrapers that Yuuri recognized as being in the American “art deco” style stood next to shorter, slightly more modern structures of glass and concrete.  The juxtaposition was oddly familiar.  He found himself staring at one building in particular, a rusty brick and sandstone tower.  Spotlights illuminated the upper floors, which were decorated with a mosaic of patterned tiles, and a flag waved from the spire.  

“Yuuri, I think we’re in the past—” “Victor, I think we’re in Detroit—” The words made no sense, all jumbled together as they talked over one another.  The words made no sense, period.  To go from day to night, halfway around the world, in the span of a kiss?  It wasn’t possible.

Victor was staring at his phone as though he expected it to bite him.  Yuuri peered at it and blinked.  The display didn’t change.  Wordlessly, he reached into his back pocket for his own phone, thumbing the home button automatically to wake it up.

Their lock screens were identical.  Twin images of Victor lifting a radiant Yuuri during their Stammi Vicino gala skate. Status bars showing cell reception (LTE? Downtown?  Was America(?!) really so backwards in updating their infrastructure that their metropolitan areas still had 4G?), battery life, and various app notifications.  Clocks showing 9:37 pm.  Dates?

Friday, January 15.

The year wasn’t displayed, and Yuuri bit down on a laugh that would have been more than slightly hysterical if he’d let it escape.  Why would anyone need to know what year it was, it wasn’t like, it wasn’t like people could just--

“Time skips aren’t real,” he whispered, willing the words to be true.

“What else could this be?” came Victor’s hushed reply.

Time skips were an urban legend -- a joke -- and the only people who took the idea at all seriously hung out in the tinfoil-hat parts of the internet that also believed in chemtrails and people with Rh- blood being descended from alien lizard people.  The History Channel ran programs on time skips, for pity’s sake!  Faux documentaries where people with overactive imaginations talked about being instantly transported through space and time in order to meet up with their past selves and prevent them from making some kind of terrible mistake…

But he and Victor were standing in the heart of downtown Detroit.  The air was chill but not quite freezing and carried the normal city smells of food, car exhaust, and garbage.  The sidewalks were clear, with the ghost of an old snowfall in the corners where people didn’t walk.  A half-moon hung low in the west.  The least romantic moon possible for a night like this, he remembered suddenly, the bitter satisfaction of the thought echoing forward through the years, except it wasn’t a memory because it was this moon and it was happening now and Yuuri felt the blood drain from his face because he knew why he needed to be there.  Yuuri knew.

“Fuck.”  He was moving, sprinting, ignoring Victor’s startled cry.  His love was just going to have to catch up and keep up on his own because it was 2016, it was after Vicchan, it was after Sochi, it was after Nationals, it was after setting Celestino loose, and he needed to get to the river right now and there wasn’t enough time.  His phone was still in his hand, and he breathed a prayer to the gods of wireless technology that the network would recognize the same international carrier and the same phone number and that it wouldn’t notice the oddity of two phones with the same credentials and that Phichit would be there and pick up and—

“Yuuri?” Oh, thank you.  Thank you.

“Yes,” he gasped into the phone.  “No! Sort of.” He couldn’t allow himself to slow down for an instant, and his voice was harsh with exertion.  “He needs you.  Yuuri needs you.  At Hart Plaza.  It’s an emergency.”

“Yuuri’s on a date,” Phichit said slowly.  “He met someone and they’re going out to dinner in Royal Oak.”

“And you believed that horseshit?”

There was a pause, and then Phichit swore explosively in Thai.  “Who is this?” he demanded.

“Just hurry,” Yuuri said. “And bring his skates!” He ended the call and kept running.

                                              ~            ~            ~

 Hart Plaza wasn’t much to look at, particularly lying in the shadow of the Renaissance Center’s gleaming silver towers.  It was a park with no green space, a huge concrete and stone terrace designed for hosting outdoor festivals, and judging by the crumbling or outright missing paver bricks it hadn’t been properly maintained in years.  Yuuri ignored scattered works of abstract art and a truly hideous aluminum fountain, intent on not breaking an ankle on the uneven footing.  A cluster of bronze statues with some unknown historical significance guarded the stairs that led down to the riverwalk. Many of the decorative lampposts lining the water were dark, either through neglect or vandalism, but it still only took a glance to spot the lone figure who was staring into the icy water of the Detroit River from the wrong side of the guardrail.

Yuuri knew exactly what worked to pull himself out of various states of mental crisis; after existing in his own head for a lifetime, how could he not?  A physical stimulus could ground his anxiety and help stave off a panic attack, but once an attack happened he could only bear to be touched in certain very specific ways and needed words to focus on.  On days when he lacked the energy to move or care for himself, it was skin-to-skin contact that kept him from spiraling into something darker. When anxiety and depression started tag-teaming him, only solitude allowed him to weep without shame. Thanks to years of therapy and the love of friends, family, and Victor, Yuuri had an arsenal of tried and true coping mechanisms at his disposable.  

Unfortunately, his plan had pretty much evaporated after get there and the frantic half-mile run hadn’t burned off anywhere near enough adrenaline to allow for rationality, much less empathy.  Five years ago, Katsuki Yuuri had done the unthinkable. The unforgiveable.  He’d given up.  And in doing so, he’d apparently fucked up so badly that the gods, or aliens, or the universe itself had needed to rewrite causality just to fix it.  Now, five years later, five years ago, right this minute, Japan’s Ace was within shouting distance of Japan’s Shame.  And now that he was done being scared, Yuuri was pissed.

Unloading on himself like a teenaged Yuri Plisetsky who had just witnessed someone literally pee in his Cheerios was a perfectly reasonable response, given the circumstances.

“You pathetic little coward.”  Rapid-fire Japanese spilled from Yuuri’s mouth almost unbidden as he stormed over to his younger self, who visibly stiffened at the intrusion.  “Phichit and Celestino care about you, not that they don’t deserve better; how do you think they’ll feel when your stinking corpse gets dredged out of the river?”  The other Yuuri’s head snapped up at the familiar names, and he gaped as he met his own eyes and recognized them.  “And don’t forget Kaasan and Tousan; do you think they’ll be pleased when they’re called to pick up their son’s coffin from the airport?  Especially when it’ll be the first time they’ve seen you since you were seventeen. Maybe Minako-sensei will make a special banner for your homecoming.”  He was spitting the words like the poison they were, forcing them past a lump in his throat that was threatening to choke him.

“Yuuri—”

The stupid, selfish boy in front of him was a watery blur now.  “And it’s not like Mari-nee is already blaming herself for letting Vicchan get out into the street, so what’s another layer of guilt?  And, oh god, Yurio, he’ll probably—”  Yuuri’s voice cracked.

“Yuuri!”  Strong arms wrapped around him from behind, steadying him, and Victor’s breath was warm in his ear.  “Enough, lyubov moy.  This isn’t helping.”

“But he’s – I’m – going to ruin everything,” he wailed.  Hot tears spilled down his cheeks, clearing his vision, and he glared at his younger self.  

The other Yuuri was clutching the guardrail as if it was the only thing keeping him standing upright, shocked eyes darting back and forth between his face and Victor’s.  “Y-you,” he stammered.  “V-vi—”  He closed his mouth with a snap, clearly giving up.  

“Nobody’s ruining anything.” Victor’s embrace was tender, but his voice was artificially cheerful.  Yuuri could tell from the tone that if he turned to look at his husband, he’d be flashing one of his celebrity smiles.  “Yuuri-chan isn’t going to be taking a cold bath tonight,” Victor declared brightly, drawing the name out in emphasis, “because he knows that if he does, you won’t be going in after him.”

The younger Yuuri emitted a strangled squeak, whether from the idea of his idol and future self watching him drown in the Detroit River or from being referred to as ‘Yuuri-chan’ by Victor Nikiforov, it was hard to tell. Yuuri would have felt sorry for him in a different circumstance; he’d heard that edge in Victor’s voice before, though it hadn’t been turned on him in a long time.  This was the Victor who’d so innocently wondered how Yuuri could be eating katsudon all the time when he hadn’t stood on a podium in half a year, and who had called Yuri Plisetsky a mediocre kitten shortly before sending him off to be slapped around by a temple priest.  The man who had sweetly ripped a journalist to weeping shreds when she’d tried to manufacture a scandal by suggesting in an interview that Victor’s continued friendship with Christophe Giacometti might be a sign of marital infidelity.

Knowing that his husband was struggling with his own temper was oddly calming.

“No,” Victor continued as though the other Yuuri’s noise had been a polite request for more information, “I’m afraid that I’ll have to jump into that freezing river if Yuuri-chan does.”  One of his arms changed positions against Yuuri’s shoulder, and he imagined Victor bringing his index finger to his lips in studied contemplation.  “Or, if Yuuri-chan already has so little regard for himself, perhaps he is unmoved by the thought of others risking their lives on his behalf.”

Red bloomed across the younger Yuuri’s cheeks, and he shook his head wildly.  “N-no!” he gasped, “I don’t w-want you putting yourself in danger f-for me.”  He glanced at Yuuri.  “Either of you.”

“Excellent.”  Victor clapped his hands together as though the three men had just decided on a restaurant for dinner together.  “Since we’re agreed that no one will be suffering from hypothermia or contracting any diseases from swimming in disgusting water tonight, now it’s time to come back over here where the people belong, yes?”

The other Yuuri – Yuuri-chan?  Might as well use it if Victor was going to, Yuuri decided – hesitated, his gaze flickering between the two time skippers again.  “Please?”  Yuuri found himself begging.  “I’m – I’m really happy.  You have no idea how much.”

After another long moment, Yuuri-chan finally nodded.  Yuuri and Victor helped him climb over the railing, sharing a sigh of relief once he was safely back on the ground.  Yuuri-chan looked at their joined hands, Victor’s in his right and Yuuri’s in his left, making no move to let go.  “This isn’t a dream, is it?” he asked wonderingly.  “You’re really V-Victor, and,” he turned to Yuuri, “you’re me.”

In answer, Yuuri tugged up the sleeve of his sweater.  There was a blue-gray mark on the underside of his forearm, an artifact of a childhood accident that had left a pencil point lodged permanently in his skin.  “Takeshi used to tease me about this all the time,” he said almost fondly.  “Remember? He called it my blue freckle.”

Yuuri-chan looked at the mark – and burst into tears.  Dropping Victor’s hand, he flung himself at Yuuri, who curled his arms protectively around his younger self and let him cry.  Victor moved close behind him, and Yuuri knew that he was rubbing comforting little circles on the small of Yuuri-chan’s back.  It had been a long time since sudden tears had made Victor panic.  “Shh,” Yuuri whispered into thick black hair.  “It’s okay now.  You’re safe, and I’m safe, and everything’s going to be okay.  I promise.”

“I’m sorry!” Yuuri-chan sobbed into Yuuri’s shoulder.  “I’m s-so, so s-sorry!”

“Phichit incoming,” Victor murmured, and Yuuri could hear the stomping footsteps that took the riverwalk stairs two at a time.  Yuuri-chan stiffened, dreading the encounter.  “Go on, solnyshko,” Victor told him, not unkindly.  “You two need each other.”

He looked like he was being sent to face a firing squad, but allowed himself to be peeled off of Yuuri and pushed toward his best friend and roommate, who dropped the skate bag he’d been carrying and shrieked his name, ignoring the two time skippers entirely. Yuuri-chan broke into a run and the two crashed into each other, Yuuri-chan babbling tearful apologies while Phichit alternated cursing him out in a garbled blend of English and Thai and peppering his face with frantic kisses.

Feeling like he was intruding on a private moment, Yuuri looked away from the two oblivious roommates. Victor had turned toward him at the same moment and they shared a small smile, in tune as always.  His husband opened his arms in invitation, and Yuuri sank gratefully into his embrace.

Victor felt like home.

“Are you all right?”

Yuuri huffed a laugh. “I don’t feel like I’m disappearing from reality, if that’s what you mean,” he said.  “Not that I’d know what that would even feel like.  If you’re asking about my emotional state, let’s go with a point somewhere between ‘nope’ and ‘probably going to be’.  What about you?”

He shrugged.  “Slightly less terrified out of my mind than I was. So what happens next?  Are we done here?”

“Hell if I know.  This night is a total blur for me.  I remember looking down into the water, and then I’m waking up tomorrow with Phichit and it’s almost six o’clock at night.  Phichit missed practice and Celestino was livid. I knew I hadn’t gotten drunk, so I always assumed I’d had some kind of breakdown.”

Victor hummed thoughtfully. “That’s a time skip thing, isn’t it? The people who claimed to have done it always said they didn’t remember being there until they were sent back.”

“Those are weird internet people.  Not exactly sources you can cite on Wikipedia.”

“That includes us now,” Victor pointed out.  “Figure skating legends, soon-to-be world’s greatest coaches, and weird internet people.”

Yuuri sniffed.  “Only if we decide to be, and I’m not planning to jump on Reddit with my life story anytime soon.”  He sighed.  “We’re getting off topic, though.  How do we know that we’ve done what we were sent here to do?”  He glanced over at Yuuri-chan.  The other Yuuri and Phichit were laughing more than crying now, Phichit’s kisses were starting to linger, and Yuuri-chan was starting to kiss back.  He found himself smiling wistfully.

“You miss him.”

“Always.  But I’ll get to see him in a couple weeks when he comes to stay with us.  And anyway, that isn’t my Phichit.  He’s Yurio’s age.”

Victor chuckled.  “I’m not suggesting that you drag him off into the nearest bathroom stall,” he teased.  “But no matter how old he is or isn’t at the moment, he’s still your best friend and you don’t spend nearly enough time together in person.  You’ve been given an opportunity; why not make the most of it? Besides, aren’t you just dying to see the look on his face when he realizes who we are?”

“You make a compelling argument,” Yuuri grinned.  Then he turned thoughtful.  “Actually, it might not be a bad idea to show baby-me how great the future is rather than just telling him.  We don’t seem to be going anywhere at the moment, at any rate.  And I do want to make sure.”

“I like it.  I think we have a plan.  Bet you a thousand yen that Chulanont is too shocked to take a picture?”

“You’re on, sucker.”

[melmothblog]

What are the main differences between the Russian Ballet style and that of the Royal Ballet and Paris Opera?

If I had to put it simply, here are the main distinction:

Russian style: lyricism, musicality, crystal clear purity of technique.

English style: lyricism and wit.

French style: speed, precision and absolute clarity of technique (especially footwork).

Russian ballet was formed and nurtured in the environment of extreme opulence. In many ways it became the symbol of Imperial Russia and allowed ballet to thrive there during the periods when it was largely dead everywhere else in the world. Starting from Catherine the Great, the Romanov dynasty threw sacrilegious amounts of money at ballet. The productions were larger than life and the best of the best choreographers, dancers, musicians and artists from all over Europe worked, performed and flourished in St Petersburg. In 1738, Her Majesty’s Dancing School (now VBA) was founded and the great masters like Jean-Baptiste Landé, Marius Petipa and Enrico Cecchetti taught there. I don’t need to tell you of the masterpieces that were created during this time (“La Bayadere”, “The Sleeping Beauty”, “Don Q” to name a few) or the ingenious dancers who were nurtured here (Pavlova, Nijinsky, Kshesinska, Karsavina, Spessivtseva). And that’s what Russian ballet is: opulence, tradition, refinement and - post-revolution - resilience and genius in the face extreme adversity.

The English ballet was born out of the Ballets Russes (Marie Rambert, who taught Fredrick Ashton, and Ninette de Valois, who founded the Royal Ballet, both worked with Diaghilev) and the Russian classical tradition, but was shaped and formed by Ashton. Ashton, inspired by Fonteyn (and, later, Sibley and Dowell) created what is now called the English style. He placed a lot of emphasis on dramatical refinement and technical finesse, while his ballets remained light, humorous, witty and romantic. When MacMillan took over the Royal Ballet from Ashton in the 70s, he brought in a drastically different style: raw, hyper-dramatic and hyper-physical. I have heard it said that this dramatic change brought on a sort of identity crisis for the Royal Ballet, from which it has not yet emerged.

While Renaissance Italy is considered the cradle of ballet, France is where it flourished and was refined as an art form. Ballet, as we know it, was formed here. The first ballet school was opened by Louis XIV in 1671 (I think) and the first major ballet company was established in 1669. France was the birthplace of romantic ballets and the centre of the ballet universe until the 19th century, when the focus shifted to Russia. 

d i s c l a i m e r

[darlenelaure]

Miami’s construction office market ranks 16th nationally over the last decade

No. 1 in the state

In looking at how the office construction market has fared in 50 of the largest U.S. metros, a new study by Commercial Cafe found the Miami metro area; comprised of Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach; to be the 16th fastest-growing market.

Roughly 10 million square feet of office space was constructed in that area from 2007 to 2017. The top three metros by a wide margin were areas encompassing New York (38.2 million square feet), Houston (38.1 million square feet), and Washington D.C (37.2 million square feet).

The Miami metro was Florida’s first entry, followed by Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater (No. 31 at) and Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford (No. 33). Among the bottom ten metros, Jacksonville ranked dead last at just 1.5 million square feet.

An especially hot neighborhood for new office buildings is Coconut Grove, where projects like 3480 Main Highway, Mary Street and 27@Lincoln in the works.

from Curbed Miami - All https://miami.curbed.com/2017/10/11/16454986/miami-construction-office-market

[tabloidtoc]

National Examiner, April 26

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Queen Elizabeth's royal rage

Page 2: Playing House -- famous best buds who shared the rent -- Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman, Ryan Reynolds and Michelle Williams, Robert Downey Jr. and Kiefer Sutherland, Danny DeVito and Michael Douglas

Page 3: Justin Long and Jonah Hill, Ving Rhames and Stanley Tucci, Eddie Redmayne and Jamie Dornan, Jason Priestley and Brad Pitt, Holly Hunter and Frances McDormand, Rob Lowe and Tom Cruise

Page 4: Matt Damon's roles and costumes

Page 6: A Delaware state trooper went above and beyond the call of duty when he surprised a little boy with a brand-new pair of Steph Curry sneakers -- Trooper Joshua Morris and nine-year-old Ra'kir Allen got to be pals when they played basketball together, along with other youths in the area and when the good-hearted cop learned that Ra'kir thought NBA star Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors was his idol, he got an idea, and after running the idea past Ra'kir's mother, the cop presented the aspiring sports star with his own pair of shoes -- Morris says cops should never be strangers to the people they protect, and he lives his belief every day

Page 7: Screen legend Bette Davis believed she had psychic abilities, says her assistant Kathryn Sermak, who met the legend in 1979 and was hired within five minutes of meeting her -- as her personal assistant, she was at Bette's service 24 hours a day, but the star was also very generous like if they were going to a film set, the job was seven days a week, but when it was over, she'd give Kathryn a paid vacation anywhere she wanted for as much as six weeks -- few people know that the screen idol loved to pull practical jokes on people; for instance, at cocktail hour, Bette would serve drinks in gag glasses that dribbled, and then when the liquid would pour onto her guests' expensive dresses or suits, she would innocently ask if they were okay -- the assistant also knew Bette's only child, Barbara Davis Hyman, known as B.D., whose father was Bette's third husband, Grant Sherry. Bette and her next husband, Garry Merrill, her co-star in All About Eve, also adopted two more children, Michael and Margot Merrill, but diagnosed with brain damage at age three, Margot has spent her life in institutions

Page 8: Saving Face -- take years off with simple makeup and skincare tips

Page 9: Vax Reax -- prepare for possible COVID jab side effects

Page 10: Billy Adams really knows how to get his daily steps in as the software exec walks 12 miles around Washington D.C. every day, picking up trash by hand -- during the lockdown, Billy took advantage of working from home to find a daily routine that was good for his physical and mental wellbeing, and helps beautify the city he loves -- starting in June, he began to choose a different 12-mile route every day, no matter the weather, Billy crossed from his Maryland home over into D.C. for a three-hour loop, starting at 8:30 a.m., and he picks up trash along the way and dumps bags of it into garbage cans on his route

Page 11: Tips for getting a restful night -- some tried-and-true tips for getting some rejuvenating rest

Page 12: Olivia Newton-John knows a thing or two about survival: she's had breast cancer three times over the past 28 years and has worked tirelessly to save her own life and the lives of others with her extensive research into natural remedies -- the 72-year-old Grease star says she and her husband John Easterling, who founded the Amazon Herb Company to help the world recognize the benefits of the Amazon Rainforest plants, have developed an approach called integrative medicine. It's a mix of doctor-recommended treatments and those from their own research

Page 14: Dear Tony, America's top psychic healer Tony Leggett -- never too late for romance, it will take work

Page 15: Tom Cornish is 96 years old, but age hasn't slowed him down from knitting up a storm of kindness -- over the past year, the Minnesota World War II veteran has donated nearly 500 winter hats in eye-catching colors to the Salvation Army, where he does volunteer work, and he hand-made each and every one of them

Page 16: Keeping the Peace -- TV has its share of great cops, but here are the ten best TV cops of all time -- T.J. Hooker, "Pepper" Anderson, Joe Friday, Andy Sipowicz, Richard "Hutch" Hutchinson, Kate Beckett, Lennie Briscoe, Olivia Benson, Frank Reagan, Sheriff Andy Taylor

Page 18: When a North Carolina school entered custodian Raymond Brown in the state's School Hero Award, he lost to someone else, so they made their own ceremony and gave him $35,000

Page 19: A group of ATV riders got the scare of their lives when one of their dogs stepped off the edge of a steep cliff and kept going, according to Steven Hawkins, president of the Utah ATV Association, who call themselves The Wild Bunch -- they immediately swung into action action to rescue stranded pooch Summer and got together and each took a hold of a rope with Steven at the end, climbing slowly down the face of the rocks as the others held on while looking on in horror, but in the end, the group found the strength to pull man and dog from the cliff face to safety

Page 20: Cover Story -- Queen Elizabeth is on the warpath -- palace aides are walking on eggshells around Her Majesty ever since Prince Harry and wife Meghan Markle dropped the bombshell on American TV that the royal family is a racist mess who completely ignored Meghan's mental health problems, among other horrifying accusations, and the queen will never get over the fact that Harry, without warning, turned his back on his own country and the people Elizabeth has served every day of her 95 years and she's also terrified the royal family's circus-like antics will bring on the end of the monarchy

Page 22: A California couple who were just about to retire drastically changed their plans when they adopted seven children -- Pam and Gary Willis have five children of their own and have been foster parents to many others and just as their last child was about to leave home, Pam spotted a Facebook advertisement searching for a forever home for seven kids from ages 15 to 4 whose parents had been killed in a tragic car crash -- Pam says she couldn't stop staring at their faces, saying she can't explain it, but she just knew she was supposed to be their mom and when she told Gary, she thought he'd call her a wacko because they were just about to retire, but surprisingly he agreed and they both felt it was what God wanted them to do

Page 24: High school senior Dasia Taylor is only 17, but she's going down in medical history for inventing sutures that detect if a wound is infected -- the brilliant student was named as one of 40 finalists in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, the nation's most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors -- Dasia's sutures, which took a year to perfect, work by changing colors if the patient's PH level alters and the level changes quickly when a wound is healing and goes bad, so she began experimenting with beets, and she found that beets changed color at the perfect PH point and that's perfect for an infected wound -- the color changes from bright red to a dark purple when a wound becomes infected so it's easy to see with the naked eye and Dasia envisions the stitches being used in developing countries, so that infection can be detected with no advanced equipment -- Dasia's goal is to attend Howard University and become a lawyer

Page 25: 4 signs you may have weak bones

Page 26: Sentimental baseball fantasy Field of Dreams hit a home run with its poignant story of second chances, and as the one-of-a-kind movie celebrates its 32nd anniversary, here are some of the secrets behind the classic motion picture

Page 28: Wisdom of the stars -- inspirational quotes to light your way -- Javier Bardem, Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio, Michelle Obama, Brad Pitt, Diana Ross, Justin Timberlake, Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway

Page 29: Beyonce, Barack Obama, George Clooney, Sidney Poitier, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Will Smith, Matt Damon, Ariana Grande

Page 32: Get Insects to Bug Off -- save your picnic and your sanity with DIY tricks

Page 40: Chakras -- Your powers begin within -- what chakras are and what they do

Page 42: 10 facts about Law & Order: SVU

Page 44: Eyes on the Stars -- Blake Shelton says he's hoping for a summer wedding with fiance Gwen Stefani, Sylvester Stallone is writing a potential TV prequel to his Rocky film franchise, Tara Reid recently wiped out on the red carpet in six-inch platform heels, Evelyn Sakash who worked on art direction on Mermaids was recently found dead in her NYC home months after she was reported missing in September 2020, Dancing with the Stars pro Sharna Burgess recently made her red carpet debut in Malibu with beau Brian Austin Green, Jeffrey Dean Morgan admits he's still shocked about The Walking Dead coming to a close later this year, Martha Stewart made waves last summer when she posted a sultry selfie on social media and admits she got so many proposals and so many propositions

Page 45: Rita Moreno attends the SAG Awards via video (picture), Selena Gomez and Martin Short shares some giggles on a NYC set (picture), Mary Steenburgen playfully serenades husband Ted Danson (picture), Helen Mirren (picture), Joe Giudice recently met Luis "Louie" Ruelas who is the current boyfriend of his former wife Teresa Giudice, Salma Hayek has joined the cast of House of Gucci playing clairvoyant Pina Auriemma, Ben Affleck gushed over ex Jennifer Lopez in a recent interview

Page 46: Two best friends are even closer after one rescued the other using CPR, a single day after she completed a course on how to administer the life-saving technique -- Torri'ell Norwood, age 16, was at the wheel when a speeding driver rammed her car, sending it hurtling smack into a tree and the St. Petersburg, Florida teen climbed through the window to safety when her door wouldn't open, and two of her three passengers also managed to get out, but her BFF A'zarria Simmons was still inside the wreck unconscious -- Torri'ell had just completed her CPR training the day before and knew what to do so she pulled her pal from the vehicle and, when she couldn't find a pulse, administered 30 compressions and two rescue breaths until A'zarria regained consciousness and paramedics soon arrived and rushed the girl to a hospital

Page 47: Get out of the wind and rain, or just find some shade, while you wait for the next bus in these quirky, fruit-shaped sculpture bus stops -- the idea began in Japan and is now spreading to other countries, so don't be surprised to see a super-sized piece of fruit at the end of your block in the near future