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wesleybates · 4 years ago

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Content Marketing Strategy Is The Secret Sauce For B2B Sales

We see internet disruptions every day. The results of which are obvious in highly visible industries, such as media and publishing, music, consumer products, advertising and more.

It has also affected the way B2B companies go to market. Most notably, on the marketing side where advertising has become more competitive, less effective, and usually reaches a point of diminishing returns.

In fact, it’s become so difficult to figure out where our target audience is consuming information, it’s no wonder why marketers are so frustrated.

From a sales perspective, the internet has put a serious damper on the sales person’s ability to prospect. No one wants to talk to them. Most aren’t equipped to prospect online. After all, that’s not covered in sales training. And because they’re under pressure to make quota, most will give up too early. So they go back to doing what they’ve always done—make calls, send emails and go to networking events and conferences.

What’s Different?

This subtle disruption may be showing up in several ways:

• Your revenue has remained flat, or it has steadily declined, year over year–all despite being in an industry growing up around you, or a growing economy in general. • Or, maybe your company has a revolving door of sales people, who are in and out faster than you get to know their names. • Perhaps you’ve always relied on referrals, and maybe you still get them, but it’s not going to be enough to grow revenue like you want. • And you might have noticed an increased animosity between sales and marketing departments. After all, marketing believes they’re doing great because the web traffic is up. Sales thinks the leads are terrible and marketing isn’t doing enough for them.

The Marketing Shift

Investing in marketing has always been dicey for companies with a complex sale. I’m defining complex here as any company with a product or service that requires a sales person to touch it before it becomes a deal. These products and services are usually costly to purchase, have long sales cycles, require education and consultation, and result in some sort of customized solution.

Many B2B CEOs that I’ve talked to are still hesitant to shift dollars into a demand generation system because they haven’t been able to measure marketing success very well in the past.

And even with internet measurement tools like Google Analytics, the measurement is still at the campaign level. In other words, branding and awareness marketing activities will always be difficult to measure when it comes to the true impact on revenue.

Therefore, simply making a larger investment in marketing and assigning a series of new projects (like starting a blog) won’t get you where you need to go in the digital world. Marketing people of the past are ill-equipped to handle lead generation through content marketing.

And here’s why: Over the last 10 years, the sales model has begun breaking down. A good sales person used to be able to prospect enough with the phone, email, networking and knocking on doors to fill their calendars with appointments.

All they needed from marketing was branding and awareness, which is why most marketing people are trained this way.

In fact, as a B2B marketing director in the late 90s, I remember our sales people telling me: “I just want them to have heard of us when I call them.” And therefore, we focused our marketing efforts on mass media—mostly advertising and public relations to get the word out so that our sales people had some air cover. We also developed brochures, websites and sell sheets to help them close deals.

Today’s Sales Cycle

But today, sales people are finding it more and more difficult to get into enough sales conversations to make quota. Branding simply won’t open enough doors.

It’s not that we ever wanted to talk to a sales person, but it was necessary when it came to getting the information we needed.

Think about even a simple example of how you might buy a TV today as opposed to 10 years ago. Back then, you would go to Best Buy, find a salesperson, and start asking questions so you could make the right purchase.

Today, you’ll most likely do an internet search first, read reviews, shop for best pricing, and so on. Now, when you do show up at Best Buy, you’re armed to the hilt with information. So how likely are you to talk to the sales person?

My response when they ask me if I need help is usually, “Where are the TVs?” Or, “Your website says you have the Samsung model XKY in stock—can I take a look?”

Sales is Struggling

This same buying process is happening today with every B2B company, whether they know it or not. People are starting their searches for answers on the internet first. They will reach out to sales people, but only when they are ready to buy.

And because people are diagnosing their own problems and prescribing their own solutions, they often get it wrong.

Take the marketing automation industry for example. Do you know of a company that has bought Marketo, Pardot, Eloqua, Hubspot and more, just to have it sit on the shelf collecting dust? They grossly underestimated what it would take to operate them effectively, but it was the answer to their marketing problem, right?

If they’d been willing to talk to a sales person first, they would have told them what’s involved, what the team should look like, options for finding the right resources, and an estimate of what it might cost so a strategy could be prepared before spending any money on technology.

This is especially true if your sales people are selling products and services in an emerging industry. Prospects may not even know that they have a problem in the first place.

So if they’re not willing to take your call, and you can’t figure out where to find them at a conference or networking event, what are you supposed to do as a sales person?

Marketing Must do the Heavy Lifting

Don’t get me wrong. Sales people today are still responsible for developing 1 to 1 sales conversations and running the sales process. They’re still responsible for prospecting and getting into sales conversations. No one is saying they should wait around for the Glen Garry leads from Marketing.

And Marketing is still responsible for branding and awareness—the problem is, it’s not enough to drive one-to-one sales conversations.

The problem for both marketing and sales is that we now have a highly fragmented audience where the marketing activities that we’re used to — like advertising, public relations, SEO and social media — are all having diminishing returns.

And this is important for today’s B2B company. The only metric that matters for marketing is lead conversion. For those of you that know the lingo already, that’s Marketing Qualified Leads (in other words, someone that demonstrates digital behavior) and how many of those turned into sales conversations, or Sales Accepted Leads.

Creating Purposeful Content

If content marketing strategy is therefore intended to convert into b2b sales conversations, each piece that we produce must provide some sort of lead intelligence. Sales can then use this intelligence to try and have a conversation that leads down a buying path.

The bottom line is: if your marketing isn’t putting out content for people to find on a regular basis, you’re missing opportunities. Marketing strategy must be aligned with sales in B2B companies with a complex sale if they’re going to grow revenue—period.

This is important, so I’ll say it again, marketing’s new role in B2B is to drive one-to-one sales conversations digitally where salespeople either have difficulty getting their attention or are unaware of opportunities in the first place. It’s lead generation first, branding second. Branding in this case usually comes as a byproduct of this process when done well.

Even more critical, most innovative B2B companies know that it is now marketing’s burden to build as much of that trust online possible by providing thought leadership and lead intelligence in the form of engaging content that creates a unique experience for the consumer. In short, marketing must do the heavy lifting.

Marketing Like a Media Company

Some time in 2011, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City decided that it could not rely on its 150-year history to acquire enough new audiences—they needed to launch a massive digital initiative.

When your mission shifts from selling product and service to building audience and monetizing it later, how does that change the marketing that you would produce?

For the Met, they do creative storytelling in innovative ways. The example I like to point to is their Artist project series where they brought in 100 famous artists to the museum, put them on camera, and had them talk about their favorite piece and why. Then, they launched the series Netflix-style on their website so viewers can binge watch if they want.

Sreenivasan told me in an interview that he believes the future of every business is storytelling and finding the right way to tell the right story at the right time. And one of the biggest things he’s learned in his tenure at the Met is these lessons apply to every business, big and small, B2B and consumer.

That includes the importance of mobile, social, and video. But most importantly, it’s not about thinking of your audience as millions of people, even though that’s what they have at the Met, but rather it’s about thinking about the right people following you for the right reasons.

The point of this is example is that effective content marketing in B2B means thinking about your audience first, and connecting them with the right message, at the right time, and in the right sequence.

The digital experience must be so good that people want to stay connected to your content, and to have your audience participate in the conversation, you have to think like them.

Now, you certainly don’t have to build an entire news room (although that would be awesome!) but I show you this example because engaging an audience requires marketers to think differently. More like the mindset of a publisher.

In other words, think like a magazine and not like its advertisers. When publishing content, it’s all about what the readers want. It takes frequency (publishing at predictable intervals) and it takes database management (collection of digital behavior) to continuously serve up content that gets your prospect to pick up your publication at the newsstand (or read your email or blog post and want to consume more).

Getting to Know Your Audience

So how does content become a sales conversation anyway? It starts with the creation of content that is going to identify some lead intelligence on a prospect when they consume it. This is why the content strategy that maps to the sales process from the get go is so important.

But even Before you start pumping out blogs and buying marketing automation systems, it’s time to get to know your audience.

Doing that requires involving every part of your team that is client facing– from customer service, to account leads, to sales, to executives. They all know something about the customer that you don’t as a marketer.

For example, you might want to Interview your sales team about the types of customers they target. If they’re face-to-face with a prospect, how do they probe for painpoints? What did the sales conversation in a recent win sound like when they identified them as a prospect? In other words, what was the key issue that prompted the client to talk to you in the first place?

After interviewing colleagues, you can dig deeper by calling your customers and prospects and asking them to validate your assumptions.

Chances are, your customers were facing similar issues in their day-to-day lives as your prospects. Identifying those problems will inspire the content you’ll create to help them solve their problem and hopefully use you to do it.

I should also note that content at the top of the funnel cannot and should not focus on the products and services offered by the company. That comes much later in the sales cycle, when a customer is ready to make a purchase decision and you’re down to answering objections and running sales process.

Once you get that strategy in place and start developing content, you can then start to figure out how you’re going to distribute it so that it gets in front of the right audience and generates leads for sales.

Where to Find Content

If there’s any question about where to get content from, I’ll reiterate that sales and other customer facing job functions are a good place to start. They’re on the front lines with customers and prospects daily. They know what problems they typically solve, what common objections they hear, and what trigger events lead to sales conversations. That’s where you get content topics to generate top-of-the-funnel interest—by focusing on pain, pain, and more pain.

You’re going to need an ongoing process for extracting information from your subject matter experts so that you can communicate in mediums that make sense for your consumer. And you want that anyway because you want quality writing. So say hello to journalists, designers, videographers and other media personnel!

If there’s any doubt as to why many large companies are hiring journalists to write for them, it should be apparent now.

The Sales Pyramid

But anyway, let’s get back to sales and what the process now looks like with a demand generation engine providing marketing qualified leads.

Any good sales prospector should be able to use marketing’s support in the digital world to prioritize his or her prospecting efforts.

Jeb Blount, in his book Fanatical Prospecting, talks about a pyramid of prospecting where top sales performers view their prospect database as a pyramid:

At the bottom of the pyramid are the thousands of prospects they know little about other than a company name and perhaps some contact information. These are the coldest of the cold.

The goal with these prospects is always be moving them up the pyramid by gathering information, and qualifying. At the tip-top are highly qualified prospects who are moving into the buying window.

These are the highest-priority prospects and should be on the top of a sales representative’s daily prospecting list.

Once those top priorities have been exhausted, the sales person can move down the pyramid, following up on Marketing Qualified Leads and using lead intelligence to foster sales conversations.

If your sales people are always working at the bottom of the pyramid (the coldest of the cold) they’re probably not going to make quota. And even worse, if you’ve got good sales people who are always working at the bottom of the pyramid, you risk losing them to a competitor who can help them with marketing leads.

Measurement and Analysis

Of course, companies want to know the what content marketing’s return on investment will be, but it depends on several factors.

Let’s start with whether everyone in the organization has bought into the concept of content marketing. If the CEO is going to spend a few dollars to try it out, and 3 months later decide it’s not working and goes back to hiring more sales people, your ROI will be nada. (I’ve met several CEOs that fit this model exactly.)

Another question is, can you accurately measure your sales process now? In other words, where are your deals coming from now, and what percentage of them do you close?

Also, do you have technology in place such as marketing automation and a CRM, and do your sales people actually use it?

If your answer to all of those questions is yes, then it should be relatively easy to track some pretty significant numbers that will tell you exactly where to spend money and what needs to be fixed.

If not, then this is where you start: getting buy-in for content marketing, establishing a baseline for sales and marketing metrics, developing content, putting in the right technology, testing, and measuring.

If you are generating plenty of leads (or MQLs) every month, the statistics should show how many sales conversations that leads to. From those sales conversations, how many turn into opportunities? And of those opportunities, how many are we closing?

Playing around with those numbers will start to give you a sense of where to spend money.

If you’re closing a large majority of leads that come from various sources, but you don’t have enough “at bats” to move the revenue forward, you’ve got a marketing problem and you need to spend money to produce more qualified leads.

If you’re generating plenty of leads, but they aren’t turning into sales conversations, you could have a problem with the quality of content that your producing, or sales could be ill-equipped to nurture leads and run sales process.

Once you have real data, the measurement can even get more granular.

By determining your overall customer acquisition costs — all the money you spend on marketing and sales people for a given time period divided by the total number of customers you got in that time period — you can calculate all the way down to how much one lead was worth to you.

Content marketing done correctly should be completely measureable, giving you the ability to know where you’re going to have the best return on investment.

Finding the Budget

Acquiring new customers is expensive. It always has been.

Content marketing is no different because it’s a long game, and you should expect to make some significant expenditures in the short term to get it moving. It’s like pushing a giant boulder down a hill—it takes an extreme amount of energy to get it moving, and then it should generate momentum on its own.

So where to find the money for content? A lot of times, it’s about shifting available resources. I know—easier said than done. But If you’re currently spending marketing dollars on pay-per-click ads that have shown diminishing returns, of if you’re currently spending dollars to have a “presence at trade shows,” those are some good places to start.

Another place to look is the expenditures within your sales force. Do you have too many expensive sales people? Can any of the business development and nurturing functions be transitioned to an inside sales team?

But most importantly, stop hiring sales people because they promise a large rolodex of industry prospects that they can bring to the table. The only reason to hire more consultative sales people is that marketing and business development are sending over so many qualified leads that the closers can’t keep up.

Re-allocate and invest that money into a marketing front end that leads with great content that is going to add value to your prospects.

They’ll thank you with their business.

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disaffectednotes · 5 years ago

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Corona & culture / cultural studies - Scattergun virus thoughts

Putting some scattered thoughts down, largely inspired by a steady diet of high-fibre podcasts in recent weeks. These notes are fragments, really, and hardly add up to more than passing thoughts, given the unfolding situation and the partiality of any knowledge right now. I’ve noticed in myself the will to “master” the situation by consuming as much information as possible – even as I know this will inevitably fail. Perhaps the following can be read in the same spirit of failed mastery, or to sublimate the anxious energy that’s all around...

“We’re all in this together.” The virus as the “great equaliser.” Such appeals to the common good and common ground have been… common. War mobilisation rhetoric is also doing the same work of unifying the disparate population. At the same time, disgruntled jokes are made about celebrities and royals getting tests when frontline medical staff cannot. It’s also clear that this virus will rip through some communities more than others, as reporting this weekend about effects in black communities in the US has made clear. Arundhati Roy also made this clear too in her excellent piece for the FT this weekend. India is only just at the start of this. The economic crisis has reached many poorer countries before the virus itself hits.

On the cultural level, some of this mobilisation of fellow-feeling and resentment has been played out through celebrity culture (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/arts/virus-celebrities.html). There will be people on this list more expert in celebrity culture than me (paging Celebrity Studies scholars), but commentary is engaging in the cyclical argument about how this will be the end of celebrities. As if seeing in 1080p the smooth interiors behind celebrities cocooning at home will rupture the culture industry and the star system. And yet, the hatred is real. “The film Parasite, in which a poor South Korean family cleverly cons its way into the home of a rich one, has been converted into a well-worn social-media retort whenever celebrities offer glimpses inside their own manses; the reference succeeds partly because so many superrich people have such blandly similar minimalist homes.”

More abstractly – how do the universal and the particular interact in this moment? We seem to have the interaction of universalism in the sense of appeals to and mobilisations of public health (with its birth as a discipline in Soviet healthcare, no less) and the particularity of suffering.

Closer to the question of Cultural Studies as an intellectual formation: what reconfiguration of economy, culture, society etc might follow from this. After the financial crisis a decade ago, there was, no doubt, a new opening onto political economy in cultural studies. As Randy Martin put it in 2015, “the very architecture by which knowledge of the social has been made legible – the grand trinity that partitions economy, polity and culture – has come undone, and from these ruins issue all manner of challenge and possibility.” Of course, this pandemic event adds another dimension to the broken trinity – or, put differently, where do quasi-natural factors like novel viruses fit in the trinity? Chuang and Rob Wallace suggest the historic spread of pandemics cannot be untied from urban development, intensive agriculture and capitalist markets. If there’s no unsullied “nature” outside global capitalism, this also suggests the open question of whether this is an exogenous or endogenous shock to an interlocked world system.

Another plank of this concerns the status of the “economy” as an object, and what its abstract claim is on politics (in our really-existing world of market-dependence, obviously). E.g. the increasing attempts to weigh up the economic cost of lockdowns vs care of population. Already as part of a wide-spread legitimacy crisis post-2007-8, there was a growing sense, I think, that people did not see their lives reflected in GDP figures (see Will Davies on this). Sure, the numbers are going up, people seemed to say en masse, but I’m not seeing that in my life. Wellbeing budgets (e.g. NZ and UK) were one attempt to deliver a fix for this gap between lived experience and economic indicators.

What is being asked for here is an unprecedented global demobilisation and isolation, almost concurrently. There’s anxiety about this. It’s unknown territory. Above all, those clamouring for a return to the Service of Goods right now seem to be desperately ensnared by the oikodicy that Joseph Vogl talks about. “A theodicy of the economic universe: the inner consistency of an economic doctrine that—rightly or wrongly, for good or ill—views contradictions, adverse effects, and breakdowns in the system as eminently compatible with its sound institutional arrangement.” Nothing needs to change; just get the people back to their stations and everything can carry on. The hangover from this governmental largesse will surely come in the form of austerity lashings for many.

On the conjuncture in which this virus appeared – it seems important to remember the crisis of legitimacy that has been underway (at least) since the last financial crisis. This has had several effects, I think, on trust in politicians and trust in experts. Lockdowns have played out in rather draconian ways, I think, because flows of trust between citizenry and state are at low levels. (Equally in those countries that English-language media are lumping together as “Asian” or “East Asian”.) The US and the UK have fumbled their management terribly, and lost a lot of time to quell the virus in the process. Aside from the obvious political disaffection and so on surrounding elected officials, there was already an epistemological crisis surrounding the “expert” and expertise, the media and information sources — and now? It seems to be going in two directions. In some ways, epidemiologists and other public health actors seem to be trusted; in part, they seem to be figures of faith for acting in the best interests of the public / society / everyone. Goodwill seems to be carrying their message through, helped by endless news reports of deaths. And yet conspiracy theories continue to be rife – 40% of US Republicans believe the virus is a Chinese concoction from a lab; on the weekend, we’ve seen 5g mobile towers burned in the UK in some sort of anti-tech connection with China. It will also be interesting to watch the anti-vaxxer groups in the wake of this, themselves one of the chief symptoms of a rear-guard response to the epistemological crisis around science.

At the level of everyday life, it will be interesting to experience the new tempos and rhythms of everyday life that will come out the other side of this. Obviously, people are right now being enlisted in a series of new habits around social distance, but time is also being enlisted too. We check the news to see updates on the length of lockdowns, the next meetings, the rise over the past 24hours. Morbid scoreboards measure out days and deaths, for our fascination and horror. We hear that lockdowns will come ago. Six weeks, two weeks, maybe six months, up to two years, maybe five years. Yet the future as a space of projection feels utterly blank. Who can plan anything, other than as a coping mechanism with an asterisk of a disclaimer (to be confirmed)? Epidemiological metaphors, otherwise describing dynamics visualised on graphs, have slid into the language with almost universal recognition. Flatten the curve (even in German they say this, auf Englisch). Now people speak casually about “the hammer and the dance.”

Another cultural question of everyday life – what will survive of neighbourhood businesses, given the economic ruin that is already evident in unemployment statistics and massive companies going on rent strike. In Berlin, neighbourhood places like cinemas, bars, restaurants and cafes, unable to open for weeks, have taken to asking people to support them by buying vouchers and merchandise online. Cancelled gigs and events ask people who can afford to ignore refund, so that music venues and theatres and promoters and artists can come out the other side. I’m sure similar things are happening elsewhere. But there’s a chance this could alter the face of local communities (in places already changed by gentrification, no doubt, and other processes).

Equally – what will cultural policy and support for cultural industries and artists look like? Responses already seem divergent. Germany has trumpeted a huge package of money for operators at all sizes (https://news.artnet.com/art-world/berlin-senate-bailout-process-1820982 & https://news.artnet.com/art-world/german-bailout-50-billion-1815396). In Berlin, bookshops are essential services and remain open. In Australia, the other case I know something about, anxiety was rising before the lockdown that this could decimate those artists already struggling with high costs of living and piecemeal work (https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/anwen-crawford/2020/19/2020/1584580982/coronavirus-cancelling-culture). I don’t know that any systematic response has emerged to this situation from the Australian government(s). Meanwhile, Jerry Saltz suggests the art world could look different after this – https://www.vulture.com/_pages/ck8ivxorc0000yeyerntsmxxj.html. By that we can also include the mass sackings of culture workers with barely any hope of reinstatement anytime soon – https://hyperallergic.com/551571/moma-educator-contracts/

I wonder if there might be a new “paranoid style” in culture and everyday life. What does life look like after we have been so thoroughly inculcated into logics of the other (and self) as virus vectors? It seems hard to imagine that sociability will not be affected by this sustained mentality. I imagine there could be an ecstatic return of sociability? Matched with paranoid moments? Prevailing at different points? Except, I think we already being prepared for a staged return to normal social mixing. So the ecstatic moment may not come. People wonder out loud too about parallel epidemics of loneliness and mental health from weeks of limited social contacts.

In cultural production, it will be interesting to see how this paranoid style might play out in formal and generic novelties, rather than simply the pandemic *content* that will be pushed through the Netflix pipe. The “bottle episode” format might become even more of a mainstay. And the lockdown nostalgia genre (like the “blitz spirit”) is probably already in the making. Will “flatten the curve” become “keep calm and carry on” kitsch?

It’s interesting to watch what Adam Tooze called a clumsy rewiring of globalisation – where Zoom comes to the fore as platform, where relations to flying around the world become more fraught and second-guessed. This ad hoc reconstitution of institutional and individual practices is obviously apparent at universities. It will be fascinating to see what the afterlife of this moment will be in the sector. Again, like the ecstasy of reunion with friends (and strangers), will the metaphysics of presence reassert itself as a thousand and one postponed conferences are launched onto the market for papers and academic attention? Or will the convenient and environmentally sustainable virtual conference finally become more acceptable? For those at a distance from the conference centres of the northern hemisphere, there’s been a certain obliviousness among, e.g., European academics about the many costs involved in travelling from, e.g., Australia for a conference. The Fridays for Future movement and others had already instilled greater awareness about this; so perhaps this accelerated acquaintance with these technologies will make the option viable. I’ve been part of several online reading groups already in the past fortnight, and their decentralisation has been inspiring. For example, one group hosted in Ireland had its largest number of participants in India and Israel. Obviously cultural, symbolic and financial capital will continue to accrue among the big-name academic cities and campuses, but these initiatives have opened onto new constellations of community, discussion and collective endeavour.

What are the subjective effects of all this? Some psychoanalysts co-wrote a letter a couple of weeks ago about their patients with some striking insights.

“And yet, against the predominant narrative of trauma and the dangers of isolation, we find many patients who are doing fine or even doing better, who like externalized chaos, or whose melancholia is abated by the nearness of death and reproach; those who are used to doing their own thing and who find their anxiety and sadness contained and cohered by the pervasive force of a virus that shuts all down. We hear those who have longed for everything to be cancelled, for life as we know it to be paused, hushed and stopped, even to the point of daring to express their own desire to, in fantasy, be one of the affected, which is to say, infected. Many admit that they are feeling strangely fine—no more FOMO—and even a few are looking forward to enjoying the spiteful reality that the virus effects all, rich and poor. Beyond this, there might seem very little worth saying. Some now don’t talk at all in session, while indicating that they are talking all the time, like the run on social media. Symptoms, despite so many breaks in the fabric of reality, persist, sometimes blindly and deafeningly so; it feels crushing. The continued contact can be important, but perhaps only for that—to know the analyst is still there.”

Other things to say… but I’m running out of steam and you’re probably running out of patience… so now in the form of suggestive promissory notes for further thoughts…

These ideas all came from listening to Adam Tooze talk about the current crisis and how it compares to 2008: Incoherent American power — soft power and culture yet literal bankruptcy of American social model, meanwhile Fed is efficiently fighting spotfires and Trump is a clown show; running 2008 playbook but at high speed; public balance sheet taking over from private again; fiscal conservatism as cross to nail progressive politics to cross for years; expansionary fiscal policy nationally vs contractions and austerity locally; emerging markets pressure (South Africa — immunosuppressed HIV population + downgrade of currency); timing of crisis with oil shock and uncertain global supply chains; car-making is dead right now; VW is worried about liquidity; what might bailout conditions be?; German governments talking about mass buying VW electric cars to ensure work when factories can reopen, while aiding in VW’s need to increase electric sales.

Media companies — some experiencing a massive boost in visitors right now, but with drop off in advertising. Who wants to sell stuff next to death charts? Who is in mood for big spending? Media outlets cutting staff or closing.

Mutual aid groups and solidarity networks have sprung up informally – and been mirrored formally by state calls for volunteers. This puts me in mind of the anarchist / horizontalist moment of Occupy a decade ago. Then, since, the return to state by activists for Corbyn and Sanders. What now?

Also, what do social movements do to respond to what will be inevitably be an uneven roll out of crisis response? Plus, the draconian enrolment of police and military, with powers for six months to two years? How do groups organise against that? What are the forms of creative protest in times of physical distance? Cementing affected and affective communities somehow – maybe seeding these online to go “live” when restrictions are lifted. Thinking also about ACT UP and other social movements – e.g. How to Survive A Plague. Those movements, internationally, put their bodies on the line, staged die ins during AIDS-HIV crisis. Militant disobedience might be demanded to get better crisis response. (Sidebar: Fauci and Birx, both experts on HIV and AIDS; Fauci was targeted by ACT UP but was sympathetic.) Some small protests in Berlin on the streets in recent weeks, using social distancing. Calling on politicians and population not to forget refugees at EU’s borders. Others occupying empty apartments (& Airbnb) to call for homeless relief. Also, what could cultural protest look like right now? (https://hyperallergic.com/550091/illuminator-covid-19/).

What might the crisis do for an ethics of care – and awareness of social reproduction too. Some public health thinkers have talked about “social immunity,” particularly in the US. And the flipside seems to be the social contagion that Chuang invoke. (No doubt here all the biopolitical debates come up again, e.g. Esposito on immunity)

And there’s been interesting work on geographies of movement and exclusion. Various visualisations of how the virus moves around the world and what this illustrates about travel, business, leisure etc today. But also the unevenly distributed luxury of working from home – the NY Times piece about poorer workers in NY moving around the city much more than the knowledge workers who could “shelter in place”. Five bus drivers have died in the UK. Meanwhile, in Germany, the former socialist eastern part of the country has far fewer cases. This once again underlines a deeply sensed feeling of stasis – both a distance from the cosmopolitan cultural power of an EU-level project but also the literal (comparative) lack of infrastructure for things such as fast-speed rail links between cities from eastern German states into western states and beyond into other parts of Europe.

No doubt these reflections are parochial and limited, drawn from what has most captured my attention – selfishly – in a truly global crisis, and one with many months to run….

For rolling lists of good discussions on these topics:

https://the-syllabus.com/coronavirus-readings/

https://yourpart.eu/p/QuarantineSchool_COVID19

#covid_19 #covid-19 #coronavirus #corona

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haughtbreaker · 7 years ago

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Thank you so much for the reviews and comments y’all have been leaving. @jaybear1701 and I appreciate all of them. The posting schedule is going to have to be pushed back starting next chapter. Updates will be made on Mondays now to let y’all process episodes over the weekend. :)

“I was in your arms thinking I belonged there, I figured it made sense, building me a fence, Building me a home, thinking I'd be strong there, But I was a fool, playing by the rules The gods may throw a dice, their minds as cold as ice, And someone way down here loses someone dear The winner takes it all, the loser has to fall, It's simple and it's plain, why should I complain.”

Nicole shook her head as the yellow convertible full of young, boisterous women went screaming down the road, their music turned up so loud that the bass rattled her bones even from a distance. Some things never change, Nicole thought. She couldn’t remember how many times she had stopped a car filled with bored Purgatory teens looking for a little excitement and inevitably finding trouble.

Nicole had half a mind to call dispatch and have them tell whoever was on highway patrol to keep an eye out for the convertible. She doubted the number had changed in the past two decades. But she didn’t. That wasn’t her job anymore. She had left the cop back in Purgatory all those years ago and in its place stood a criminal defense attorney who hoped the young women didn’t end up with a reckless driving charge or worse.

The sound of squealing tires pulled Nicole’s attention away from the disappearing blur. She turned and saw a red SUV peel out of its spot down the street. She thought she caught a glimpse of familiar brown hair and she nearly went into cardiac arrest. But the car and its driver were soon long gone before Nicole could be sure. She inhaled sharply, taking in the familiar scent of dust and gasoline fumes that always seemed to permeate downtown Purgatory, and marveled at how ridiculous she was being.

What were the chances of seeing Waverly Earp the second she set foot in town? Slim to none, she knew. She barely resisted the urge to smack herself upside the head for being so foolish. And yet, for some reason, her chest continued to twinge as she watched the car drive away.

Before she could dwell on it long, the hotel’s bellhop, a young man who barely looked 18, approached. Something about him looked… familiar… but Nicole couldn’t quite place why.

“Welcome to the Wainright,” he said cheerfully, straightening out the ill-fitting red cap that sat crookedly on his shaggy hair. “Can I take your bags, Ms…?”

“Nicole,” Nicole answered, feeling an inexplicable need to keep her identity a secret. Though, she wondered if the kid had even been born when she was last in town. She popped the car’s trunk. “I appreciate it.”

Nodding eagerly, he retrieved her luggage and waited patiently as she checked in. He walked beside her as they moved through the lobby toward the elevator. Nicole had to swallow past a lump in her throat when they came across the grand staircase where Waverly had once taken Nicole’s breath away. In a shimmering seafoam dress, Waverly had looked like a -- what had Nicole written on her blog all those years ago? A mermaid, Nicole remembered. A perfect, radiant mermaid.

She kept her gaze trained straight ahead even as the memory of Waverly’s smile, and the way it had made Nicole’s heart stutter out of rhythm, played crystal clear in her mind’s eye.

“Are you here ‘n Purgatory for business or pleasure?” The bellboy interrupted her reverie when they stopped in front of the elevator.

Torture , Nicole almost said. But she bit her tongue and plastered on a smile instead. “Pleasure.”

“The wedding?” He asked knowingly as he pushed the call button. Off Nicole’s startled look, he added: “Lucky guess. It’s the only big thing happenin’ ‘round these parts, if you don’t count Christmas o’ course.”

“Right.”

“Bride or groom?”

“Bride.” It wasn’t a lie, per se.

They stepped inside the elevator. The boy pressed the number 4 and whistled. “Whitney Earp. I swear she is the prettiest, sweetest girl in the whole town.”

Nicole couldn’t stop herself from smiling at that tidbit. Like mother, like daughter . The bellboy continued rambling when they got off on the fourth floor. “I’ve always had a huge crush on her. Don’t tell her I said that now.” He wagged a finger at her. “She and my big sis used to babysit me.” He eyed Nicole curiously. “How d’ya know the Earps?”

She wanted to tell the kid it wasn’t any of his damn business. But being defensive would just call more attention to herself. And she wanted to keep as low a profile as possible.

“Her mother and Aunt, we go a ways back,” she said. They finally reached her hotel room, and Nicole hoped the kid would drop his small-talk interrogation already.

“Ms. Waverly’s terrific too.” He unlocked the door and led her inside, placing the suitcase on a fold-out luggage rack. “As for the deputy…” He made a face that coaxed a chuckle out of Nicole.

“She’s something else,” Nicole offered along with a couple of dollars.

“That’s one way of puttin’ it.” He gratefully accepted the tip with a nod. “Enjoy your stay, Ms. Nicole. If you’ll be needing anythin’ else, do lemme know. Name’s Nedley. Randolph Nedley. But everyone calls me Randy.”

Nicole did a double take. “I’m sorry, did you say…?” She shook her head. “Are you related to Randall Nedley?”

Randy beamed. “He was my papaw.”

Was.

Guilt surged within Nicole. She had gotten the funeral notice, but hadn’t been able to attend because she had been in the middle of a huge trial. If she was being completely honest, a small part of her had been somewhat relieved. She had wanted to remember Nedley as he had been -- gruff and unpolished and very much alive . She hadn’t wanted to see him lying in a box. Lifeless. A glaring reminder of their mortality. She also hadn’t wanted to see Waverly. There was only so much heartache Nicole could take.

Did that make her a coward? Yeah. It probably did.

“I was sorry to hear about his passing,” Nicole said earnestly. She made a mental note to bring flowers to his grave. “He was a good man. An even better friend. And a terrific sheriff.”

Randy’s smile grew even wider. “You knew him?”

Nicole nodded. “Used to be one of his officers.”

Randy smacked his leg and hooted. “Well I’ll be hot damned. Small world.”

“Who’s the sheriff now, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“My ma, actually, if you can believe that.”

Nicole nearly choked on her own spit. “Chrissy?”

“Yes ma’am.” Randy hooked his thumbs on his belt, now looking so very much like a younger version of Nedley that Nicole mentally kicked herself for not seeing it sooner. “Gonna follow in both their footsteps someday. Hopefully.”

“I have no doubt you will.” Nicole smiled. “It’s in your blood.”

Randy grinned and dipped his head forward. “Remember, if you need anything…”

“I’ll be sure to let you know.”

He nodded one last time, pleased, and left room. When the door clicked shut, Nicole wasted no time. She unzipped her suitcases and meticulously unpacked. She took her time, pulling out her pants and shirts, underwear and socks. She laid them neatly in the hotel’s dresser. She made sure to hang the dress she brought for the wedding in the closet, which smelled like mothballs and must. She placed her toiletries in the bathroom. Grabbed the bucket next to the small coffee pot on the counter and fetched ice from down the hall. She did everything she could to avoid texting Waverly to tell her she was in Purgatory.

Eventually though, Nicole had done everything that needed to be done and she found herself sitting on the edge of the mattress. A dull ache formed in her chest that crept down her arms and numbed her fingers. It was hard not to recall how she used to dream about becoming Purgatory’s sheriff, keeping the town safe with Waverly at her side. But it just… wasn’t meant to be.

She pulled out her cell phone, which notified her that she had several missed calls and emails, most work related, and a couple of unread texts from her sister.

Becky: Where are u????

Becky: It’s almost Christmas Nicole ffs

Nicole rolled her eyes. She didn’t reply. Instead, she input the number Waverly had emailed to Nicole in reply to her wedding RSVP. Slowly. One-by-one. She wasn’t brave enough to call it. She took a deep breath and typed out a quick message:

Hi. I’m here.

Her thumb froze, suspended over the send triangle. She could still turn back. It wasn’t too late. It would be so easy to just pack up her bag and head back to her car. Drive out of town and never look back with no one the wiser. But she couldn’t. She was tired of that. So, so very tired of running and avoiding. It was now or never. Clenching her jaw, she pushed send.

“I’m serious Jenn!” Whitney’s voice could be heard through the thick wooden door as Waverly pulled up to the homestead. She hadn’t expected it to be completely quiet, not with the construction, but she didn’t expect a verbal battleground.

The drive back from town had done little to clear her mind and heart of the lingering ache 20 years of memories had dredged up, even when she’d driven right past the homestead and circled back around once or twice.

“Oh my God!”

Waverly could recognize the sound of her bridezilla daughter easily and she found herself momentarily tempted to dawdle just a bit, maybe drag her heels in the snow. It wasn’t an unfamiliar thought, as she’d done a few times in the past. When she’d hear Gus and her young daughter arguing, she’d always take a minute to check the tires or rearrange the grocery bags, really any menial task she could find before committing to an appearance.

But just the idea of being alone, allowing the unpleasant memories to impregnate her mind… or even worse, the pleasant ones. The ones that engulfed her with the scent of spicy vanilla and the feel of silky smooth skin under her fingertips. The memories that were beyond senses, beyond touch, but the memory of what it was like to be loved.

Not just to be loved, but the love that only came from someone you couldn’t live without. It was looking into those eyes and knowing how desperately Nicole had not only loved her, but needed her.

So no, Waverly decided as she shook her head, she wasn’t going to hang around outside in the cold with phantoms of a life she no longer lived. Besides, she really needed a drink, and to talk to Wynonna.

“They’re ruined.” Whitney could feel her stress level hitting the roof as she fingered one of the carefully crafted pieces of a centerpiece. They had been meticulously wrapping bottles with twine to be used as flower holders for the centerpieces, each one compiled of a bottle, 3 candles, and a small sand filled glass bowl with a succulent in it placed on a natural cut wooden slab.

The already wrapped bottles had been put in a crate which had somehow fallen over. With Jenn being the closest, there was no one else to blame, and with half the bottles shattered, there was definitely a need for blame.

“I didn’t even touch it!” Jenn was helping to pick up the bits of broken glass and twine.

Whitney sighed as the front door opened, letting in her mother who gave her a look that could only be labeled as cautious. “This is why people elope!” She sighed in frustration, dropping the broken pieces and stalking off towards the kitchen.

She was looking through the liquor cabinet when Waverly entered, arms crossed over her chest. “I’m not in the mood for a lecture, Mom.” She liberated a bottle of gin after a bit of digging.

“Well I’m not here to give you one.” Waverly took the bottle from her daughter’s hand. “I’m just here to point out that these damn center pieces need to be finished and I’m not going to let you be drunk all day. It’s bad enough you’ve got those two in there chugging back $5 bottles of wine.”

“I thought you weren’t going to lecture me.” Whitney complained under her voice, almost a whine.

“And I thought you graduated kindergarten years ago.” Waverly narrowed her eyes, daring her daughter to respond.

“Ugh!” Whitney gave up her search for vermouth with a growl. “This is just bullshit! That's a lot of work now in the trash.”

“Hey.” Waverly stepped up to her aggravated daughter, sliding her arms around Whitney’s tense frame and hugging her roughly until she relaxed. “We’ve still got a few days. We’ll do what we need to do to get everything situated.”

Whitney sighed softly, trying to take a calming breath. She knew her mother was right, but her nerves were on high alert. Scheming had been fun until she was faced with having to tell Jesse everything. Why hadn’t she consulted him in the first place? There was no reason for it and she was going to be in for a fight.

Excitement had turned to guilt which then blossomed into anxiety. Adding that to the anticipation of waiting for… the phone on the counter buzzed, catching both her own and Waverly’s attention. Thankfully her mother turned to return the gin to the shelf and grab a bottle of vodka because seeing the name Nicole Haught crossing her screen might have been a little alarming to say the least.

Hi, I’m here, was all the message read. 20 years and all she had to say was Hi I’m here ?

Pursing her lips, Whitney felt her heart skip a beat. She was in the same town as Nicole, the woman who had supplied the egg, her biological mother. She’d been wanting this moment since finding the journal. Maybe her life would make a little more sense after meeting her. The woman who contributed to her DNA. Her tall stature and unforgivingly red hair.

Would Nicole think it was an insult to her? That she dyed her hair?

Whitney shook her head, looking up to see eyes watching her. She couldn’t risk sending a message while her mother was right there. “I’m gonna... go back to Shorty’s… pick up more empty bottles.” Her words were too delayed, dripping with deception and she had been the daughter of the very investigative Waverly Earp for 20 years.

Waverly’s eyes narrowed. “Is that all you’re going to be doing?”

Whitney froze, her blood running cold. She could hear the thud of her heart in her ears and she gave a tight smile. “Of course.” She laughed and she could hear her own guilt. “What else would I be doing?” She begged herself to just shut up, stop talking like a moron.

Waverly crossed her arms over her chest, saying nothing.

“Seriously, Mom. We need bottles.”

A single eyebrow rose. “And you’re not going to say… sneak off and see a certain deputy who’s on duty right now?”

A wave of relief crashed through Whitney and she couldn’t stop the smile from spreading. “Well… I mean I’m going to be in town anyway. It would just be rude to not stop by.”

“I knew it!” Waverly cheered herself, turning back to grab two glasses from the cupboard. “You can’t fool me.” Pouring a small amount into one glass, she paused, unsure if she should be pouring the second. “Where’s your Aunt?”

“Sulking in the barn. I think she’s trying to contact Xavier.” Whitney whispered, passing by her mother so she could get her bag and coat.

Looking at the one shot, Waverly quickly swallowed it with just a slight wince. She noticed even the James family’s whiskey was no longer on the shelf and she sighed, taking the vodka bottle with her as she moved to the front door where Whitney was wrapping up. “Hey… Aren’t you taking the posse?”

“No. They need to keep making centerpieces.”

“Are you ok to drive?”

Whitney nodded. She wasn’t even buzzed anymore, a fact that was almost depressing. “I’m good. Please make sure they don’t destroy everything.”

“Mmmhmmm.” Waverly looked at the two that were drinking more than gluing. Practically nothing was going to be done while Whitney was gone and she knew it. She stood in the door, watching her daughter pull away before she looked to the barn where she saw someone moving inside. With a sigh, she took a pull from the bottle of Vodka before heading out the door towards the barn.

Nicole’s nerves jumbled and jittered with each step she took down Main Street, still waiting for Waverly’s reply. Perhaps chugging down a cappuccino with an extra shot of espresso at the hotel’s cafe hadn’t been the best of ideas. Now her heart wouldn’t stop racing and she felt like she’d pass out from anxiety.

She tried to focus on anything but her still silent phone, taking in the town after two decades away. At first blush, it appeared as if nothing had changed. Purgatory still seemed like the same mundane municipality that time forgot. Every so often, however, Nicole noticed something different. Nothing astonishingly groundbreaking. But small, blink-and-you’ll-miss-them changes that signaled some form of movement, even if only incremental. The ancient laundromat had been rebranded the Sixpence All the Cleaner Coin Laundry, with more modern machinery than the beat-up, ‘70s-era washers and dryers that Nicole had used. The buildings on the block that included the bank, the surplus store, and the antique shop all had their facades brightened with new paint.

Hell, even Nicole’s old apartment building was graced with newish shutters, navy blue popping out against red brick with more vibrancy than the previous faded gray. She paused across the street from it and trailed her eyes up three floors to the second window on the left. The curtains were drawn and she wondered who lived there after she had left and whether they had ever repaired the leaking bathroom faucet that Nicole never fixed.

It was a shitty little place, Nicole recalled. The floors creaked. The rooms were drafty as hell and the radiator heater never seemed to work. She swore she’d seen sheets of paper thicker than the walls. It was nothing like the high-rise condo she now owned in Chicago, with its sleek, modern appliances and pristine views.

And yet… the cramped little apartment in Purgatory had been home. Never more so than when Waverly was there.

Nicole sat on a rickety chair at her equally unsteady kitchen table. Waverly stood in front of her, facing sideways so that Nicole was at eye level with Waverly’s bare hip. It was a sight Nicole would normally welcome with a cheeky come on, if not for her shot nerves. For the past 10 minutes, she had been pressing an ice pack to the muscles just behind the jut of Waverly’s hip. Nicole’s fingers had gone numb from the prolonged cold and she hoped that meant Waverly’s flesh was similarly desensitized.

“You ready?” Nicole asked, reaching up to caress the small of Waverly’s back with her free hand. She heard Waverly take a deep breath before covering Nicole’s freezing hand with a warm palm and squeezing.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Waverly said, glancing down at Nicole.

Nodding, Nicole removed the ice pack from Waverly’s skin and set it down. Working as quickly as possible, she ripped open an alcohol swab and cleaned the rubber stopper of the glass vial on the table. It was filled with a yellowish oil. Next, she picked up and uncapped a syringe with a long, 18-gauge needle.

“Jeez, that thing is huge,” Waverly commented, a slight tremor in her voice.

“Don’t worry, baby,” Nicole reassured her as she pulled back the plunger to the 1cc mark. “This is just to draw out the progesterone, remember?”

“Right.” Waverly bit her lip, eyes still worried.

“It’s gonna be okay.” Nicole gave Waverly what she hoped was a reassuring smile before focusing back on the task at hand. She pierced the rubber stopper of the vial with the needle and injected air into it. Turning the small bottle upside down, she carefully withdrew the correct dosage of progesterone. She triple checked that she had the right amount. Her hands shook as she pulled the needle back out and removed it. She replaced it with a smaller one and flicked the syringe to dislodge any air bubbles. Waverly caressed her shoulder. That fleeting, but reassuring touch was enough to ground Nicole. She pushed up on the plunger until a few drops formed at the needle’s tip.

Nicole looked up once again at Waverly, who watched her with a soft expression on her face.

“Okay?” Nicole asked.

“Okay.”

Nicole wiped the side of Waverly’s left buttocks with another alcohol pad. Once it was dry, she picked up the syringe, holding it like she was about to throw a dart at Shorty’s. She inserted it in one swift jab. Waverly inhaled sharply and Nicole froze.

“Wave?”

“I’m good,” Waverly breathed out. “Keep going.”

Swallowing hard, Nicole pulled back on the plunger to make sure she didn’t hit a blood vessel. No crimson blooms entered the vial. She sighed in relief and slowly injected the progesterone, pushing past the muscle’s resistance. Once she was done, she carefully extracted the needle. Waverly pressed a piece of gauze to her skin while Nicole disposed of the used needles in a sharps container.

“C’mon.” Nicole stood and led Waverly to the couch where a heating pad was ready and waiting. Waverly lowered her good side onto the cushions and Nicole sat next to her, placing the heating pad on the injection site and massaging the area as gently as possible.

“I can’t believe we’re really doing this,” Waverly murmured.

“Yeah, baby, we are,” Nicole said, heart expanding at the unadorned affection in Waverly’s gaze. “You and me. We’re gonna get through this together.”

Smiling, Waverly ran her fingers through Nicole’s hair, lightly grasped the back of her head and leaned forward to place a tender kiss on Nicole’s lips. “Ready for your turn?”

“More than ready.” Nicole nuzzled the tip of Waverly’s nose. “Let’s make a family.”

The buzz from her cellphone broke Nicole out of her reverie and she nearly jumped straight out of her skin. She dug a hand in her pocket to retrieve her phone, shaking so hard that she nearly dropped it once she freed it from her jeans.

Meet me at Shorty’s. 45 minutes.

Heart in her throat, she read the text again. Then re-read it. That was just enough time to get cleaned up at the Wainright before heading to the saloon. Nicole glanced back up one more time at her old apartment before turning on her heel and walking away.

She freshened up quickly in her hotel room. Washed her face and brushed her hair. She debated changing out of her jeans and sweater, before shaking her head at herself for being ridiculous. Nicole didn’t want to look as if she was trying too hard. After one last glance at the mirror, where the few strands of gray in her hair and the slight wrinkles on her face somehow looked more pronounced than ever before, she headed to Shorty’s.

Her heart pounded harder the closer she got to the bar, until the roar of blood in her ears was all she could hear as she pushed past the wooden double doors and stepped inside. It was just as she remembered it, the smell of alcohol sharp in the air and an old country song twanging from the jukebox. She didn’t recognize any of the patrons or the servers behind the bar. And no one paid her any mind as she moved further in and slid onto a barstool in the same spot she used to sit when she visited Waverly all those years ago. She ordered a classic martini.

Just as the bartender set the glass in front of Nicole, someone completely unexpected sidled up to her. The strength of his cologne alone should have given him away.

“Well, well, well, look what the cat drug in,” came the grating voice of a person she hadn’t missed once in 20 years.

Nicole resisted the urge to roll her eyes as she swiveled toward the intruder. “Champ,” she said, terse.

Champ Hardy look like a bloated version of himself from 20 years ago, with his slicked-back hair and a scraggly goatee. The years clearly had not been kind.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve showing your face ‘round these parts, Haught.” He sneered. “And just what the hell do you think you’re doing here, huh?”

Nicole clenched her jaw so hard she thought her teeth might crack. “That’s none of your goddamn business.”

“Oh I beg to differ.” Champ moved into Nicole’s personal space. His breath reeked of stale beer. She resisted the urge to clothesline him again, for old time’s sake. “Because if you so much as upset Waverly…”

“Dad!” A new voice cut in.

They both turned as a young woman approached, long brown hair trailing behind her. There was… something ...about her. Something so unexpected that it made Nicole’s heart clench and she had no idea why. When their eyes met, the woman hesitated, but only briefly. She focused on Champ and clapped him on the shoulder

“What are you doing here?” The young woman -- no, Champ’s daughter -- asked him. “You’re supposed to be trying on your tux. Make sure the alterations are all fine.”

“Right,” Champ nodded, moving away from Nicole. “I didn’t forget,” he said in a way that completely belied his claim.

The daughter’s eyes drifted to Nicole. “Who’s your friend?”

“No one,” Champ said. “She was just about to leave.”

“Actually,” Nicole interrupted. “I’m just getting settled in.” She smiled at the young woman and offered her hand. “I’m Nicole. Nicole Haught.”

“Whitney,” she replied, ignoring her dad and grasping Nicole’s hand with a warm, dimpled smile that felt achingly familiar to Nicole. Her grip was firm, yet gentle. “Whitney Earp.”

It felt like the floor bottomed out from beneath Nicole. A wave of vertigo made her unsteady even though she sat firmly on the barstool. “Whitney Earp,” Nicole repeated, her voice sounding hollowing in her ears.

“That’s right,” Champ butted in proudly, placing an arm around Whitney’s shoulders. “Whitney Earp . My daughter.”

Whitney made a face and wiggled out of Champ’s grip. “You really should get going, Dad. You don’t want to be late…”

They continued talking, but Nicole stopped listening, her stomach sinking with the realization that what she had once feared was true.

“I’m serious, Becky. I’m not cut out for that crap,” Nicole sighed in frustration, pulling the rental car into the parking stall. The town’s parking lot was nearly full as it always was on a weekday in the municipal area. The few stalls along the street had been taken and she cursed the nature of small towns.

“So you’d rather waste your life being a cop in some backwater shithole? You got a damn 178 on the LSAT, for Christ's sake. If I'd gotten that, daddy would have given me a corner office. ”

“You have a corner office…”

“After damn near 10 years!”

Nicole just felt...tired. “I already told mom and dad this. I have a life here. I love Purgatory.”

“No you don’t. You’re just there for her!”

“You don’t know anything about my life.” Nicole rolled the window down a crack just to get some air before turning the car off. She’d been gone for three months. A quarter of a year and she couldn’t stay away anymore. Even if she had to pound down the door, she was going to talk to Waverly. She didn’t care that the youngest Earp had changed her number not long after she had left.

They were only supposed to be on a break, why the hell did she cut off communication? She should have come back then. She shouldn't have let the anger build so much. She had thought the distance would give them a chance to think … absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that bullshit.

“I know that when you got here you were moping around like a baby until we gave you casework to do,” her sister started in again, “and don’t even pretend you didn’t enjoy helping dad with that deposition last week. You were made for this, Nic.”

Nicole sighed in frustration. “I don’t really want to talk about this with you. I have to go.”

“Nic, wait.”

Nicole hung up the phone, looking at herself in the mirror, running her hands through shoulder-length dark brown hair. Hopefully Waverly wouldn’t hate it. She’d allowed her sister to talk her into it, citing a change was necessary, that it would make her feel better. It hadn’t. She felt like she had lost a part of herself, like she was changing who she was. New hair… bullshit paralegal work for her parents�� firm...

Waverly was going to hate it.

Taking a deep breath, she nodded. The thought of entering her apartment after sitting stagnant for 3 months made her cringe so she'd gotten a room at the hotel. She’d check in, shower and head over to Shorty’s. Or maybe the homestead. Maybe that would be better, to be away from the public for whatever could possibly happen. Waverly did have quite a tempter.

“JUST STOP!”

At first she’d thought she’d imagined it, but when she realized it was real, Nicole froze, the familiar voice sounding across the parking lot. She turned to see Waverly’s rigid form walking right past her car, apparently not recognizing her and stopping at the passenger side of a very familiar pick up.

“I really don’t know why you’ve got your panties in a twist.” Champ strolled up beside her, twirling his keys around his finger.

“I’m fucking pregnant, Champ.” The strength of the curse word sounded strange as Waverly crossed her arms over her chest.

The breath was robbed from Nicole’s chest at the words. Pregnant. She looked back and forth between Champ and Waverly, small puzzle pieces clicking together and revealing a very sickening picture.

“Well duh.” Champ gave her a look that was very Champ. “You knew that already. You took like 20 of those stick test things.”

“What the hell am I going to do?” Waverly’s voice wavered. Even from where she was sitting, Nicole could see the tear slipping down a flushed cheek. “I can’t… it’s not…” She shook her head, unable to find the words. “What the hell was I thinking?”

Champ unlocked the door with a roll of his eyes. “So get rid of it. I mean they got doctors for that, don't they?”

His nonchalance was sickening. Nicole felt nausea bubbling up in her stomach, fueled by anger and jealousy with a hint of grief. It was taking everything in her to stay seated, her hands balled into fists, nails biting crescent marks into her palms as she fought the urge to punch his lights out.

Waverly showed no such restraint. “You asshole!” Waverly pushed Champ roughly, knocking him back a few feet. “How can you… how…” She shook her head, ripping open the door. “Take me home.” She growled, slamming the door closed.

Champ looked around to make sure no one was paying any attention before he shook his head. “Chicks,” he complained, jogging around to the other side of the truck and getting in.

Nicole felt herself shaking, unfurling her hands to see tiny wells of blood. She could barely breathe, barely think, barely even make sense of the train of thoughts and images running through her had. Pregnant. After almost a whole year of trying and failing, injections and implantation, all it took was… Champ.

It was like her heart was breaking into a million pieces. She couldn’t bare to talk to Waverly, not now. Waverly got what she wanted and she didn’t need Nicole to get it. With a shaky hand, she picked up her phone, dialing a familiar number.

“Are you going to hang up on me again?”

Nicole watched as the truck pulled out into the street, tires screeching as it headed out of town, tears slipped down her cheeks. There was no way she could stay, but if it meant watching Waverly and Champ raising a kid together…

“I’m coming home.” she decided, feeling a Waverly sized chasm forming inside her. Starting the car, she pointed it in the directing leaving Purgatory. She could hire someone to pack up her apartment. She didn't ever need to come back.

Whitney grimaced as she watched Champ leave. She really hadn’t wanted to talk to Nicole with him there. Slipping behind the bar, she noticed Nicole was sitting there with unseeing eyes, obviously lost in her own thoughts.

Not that she could blame her, Whitney decided as she looked Nicole over. She was… beautiful. Older now, obviously, but she looked… like money. Her clothes, make-up, jewelry… they all spoke of a well-off life, away from towns like Purgatory.

No ring, Whitney noticed with a small smile. Not that she hadn’t known anyway. Thank god for the internet.

“Did you want another drink?”

Nicole jumped, shaking her head to refocus her eyes. “I’m sorry?”

Whitney pointed to the empty martini glass. “Did you want something else?”

“Yeah.” Nicole looked longingly at the empty glass before nodding. “Whiskey.”

With a small chuckle, Whitney grabbed a shot glass, setting it in front of Nicole and grabbing a bottle.

“So… You’re Whitney Earp. Quite a popular girl around here. ” Nicole picked up the glass, licking her lips in a brief pause before drinking.

Whiney nodded, refilling the glass as it was slid forward. She had a million questions. Why did she leave? Didn’t she want a daughter? How could she have left her mother pregnant?

“I hear congratulations are in order. You’re getting married.” Taking another pause, Nicole looked at the shot longingly before shooting it back.

“I am.” Whitney rose an eyebrow, refilling the glass. She hadn’t planned on getting her new-found mother drunk, but maybe she could get more information that way.

“Married… are you even old enough to be getting married?”

Whitney snorted. It was something everyone brought up. She knew she was young, but she loved Jesse. What difference did it make if they got married now instead of dating for years before they were considered old enough to wed. “I’m 20 thank you.”

Nicole paused with the shot halfway to her lips, her brow furrowing. “20? Are you supposed to be working behind a bar?”

With a laugh, Whitney shook her head. “Drinking age is 18, Ms.Haught. This isn’t Chicago.”

The shot pausing once more, Nicole’s brows rose. “How do you know I’m from Chicago?”

Whitney could have smacked herself in the head. Instead she bit her bottom lip. She was such a horrible liar. What the hell did she think she was doing with all this? “I have a confession,” she started. When she got no response, she laughed nervously. “I know exactly who you are.” She admitted, watching as Nicole’s eye… eyes that looked exactly like her own, doubled in size.

Well… she’d committed now. Whitney reached into her back pocket, pulling out the photo and setting it on the bar. “You’re Nicole Haught,” she repeated from their earlier introduction, “and I guess you dated my mom.”

Nicole’s hand shook as she lifted the photo. She didn’t say anything, instead just quickly drank her shot, waiting for Whitney to fill it again.

Filling the glass, Whitney felt a little guilty about what she was about to say. “I sent the invitation.” She winced as the shot almost made it to Nicole’s lips before it froze, eyes locking with her own. “I changed the contact info a little bit on it... I guess what I'm saying is my mother doesn’t know you’re here.”

The shot glass fell from tapered fingers, hitting the bar in a splashing thud.

#wayhaught #memories that remain #wynonna earp #wefanfic #nicole haught #waverly earp

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zakwebbmefan · 5 years ago

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What is Evil Eye?

The Evil Eye has been around given that the start of time. It just suggests sending out a person an idea that seems intrusive or intrusive or has the power to injure him or her. The bad lot of money that results is taken into consideration to have been triggered by envy. The evil eye is not always taken into consideration to be willful or connected with witchcraft or sorcery. Oddly sufficient, this idea type might actually be free in nature. The beginnings of the Wickedness Eye are Middle-Eastern and also Mediterranean. The idea was presented right into the Americas, South Pacific Islands, Asia, Africa as well as Australia by European explorers. Sending out someone the evil eye comes from the idea that we all have a Pineal eye, situated in the facility of our forehead. Blinding, misting or covering the pineal eye is frequently the intent of the power's sender. Most of us have actually experienced the unusual power of the phenomenon. All it takes is a stare that seems to be unfriendly, indifferent or empty and appears to a couple of seconds also long. We think about it for a few minutes after that or possibly a photo of the person staring at us busies our ideas occasionally for the remainder of the day. Maybe that is why the British as well as Scottish term for the "wicked eye" is "overlooking." It implies that a gaze has actually continued to be too long upon the coveted object, individual or pet. The bad eye is also known as the jealous or invidious eye. In Italian it is called the malocchio and in Spanish the malojo (freely converted as the negative eye) The bad eye is referred to as ayin horeh in Hebrew; ayin harsha in Arabic, droch shuil in Scotland, mauvais oeil in France, bösen Blick in Germany, as well as was known as oculus malus among the classic Romans. The initial belief is that anybody can harm your children, livestock, fruit trees or any other evidence of success simply by checking out the spoils of all your goodwill as well as hard work with envy. Actually, the curse of the evil eye is thought to be prompted by unacceptable display screens of spiritual pride or excessive charm. There is a concept that really popular people and celebrities suffer more personal tragedy than others simply due to the fact that they are subjected to more "ignoring" as well as envy than others. This superstition may have some grounding in evolutionary psychology as usually one pet is believed to control or be aggressive to one more simply by staring at it for as well long. Emotionally talking, gazing or blazing at someone is officially taken into consideration an intrusion into your affairs. Apparently, there is a fine line in between casting a look to casting a spell. In these blog post Celestine Prophecy times, this type of gaze might be contrasted to a type of etheric laser beam of light or amoebic arm that rips open your aura. Others would certainly explain the infliction of the evil eye as the forecast of a picture (such as the image of the individual you have actually upset or hurt) so that you see only that to the exclusion of all other view. Simply put, you see that person wherever you go or really feel that your life's events are constantly colored by your taking care of that individual. Another symptom is the inability to proceed with normal, day-to-day occasions without feeling somehow compelled to make points ri! ght with the person you have actually typically unconsciously offended with your grandiosity. It is common folklore that the evil eye has a drying out effect on its target. It is thought to cause vomiting, diarrhea, the drying up of the milk of nursing mommies and animals, issues with the blood, sight absence of rainfall, the running out of wells, the withering of fruit and also impotence in men. Clumsiness, stomachaches, dry coughs, looseness of the bowels, itching, loss of hair, completely dry skin are all believed to be physical signs and symptoms of an evil eye assault e. On the astral level it is believed to cause the running out of prana, chi, vital force and the very easy flow of success in life. Part of this photo may stem from the suggestion also, of sloppy, murky or poisoned vision that is in some way connected to the victim's third eye. Nearly anywhere that the wicked eye idea exists, it is stated to be triggered mistakenly by envy or appreciation. Therefore the expression "Satisfaction Goeth Before a Loss" In particular Mediterranean and also eastern cultures, one bewares not to applaud a child too much, lest it invite the subconscious harmonizing effect of the wicked eye. A timeless circumstance would be the barren female that praises the newborn of a brand-new child. Such praise would certainly be thought about inappropriate as well as thought to bring the bad youngster. One of the solutions for this would certainly be for the mom to spit, to symbolically "rehydrate" the situation. Likewise, she may speak ill of the kid OT counteract the impacts of the praise, which could have fatal results on the child later. The belief that individuals have the power to cast the bad eye purposefully is extra idiosyncratic to Sicily as well as Southern Italy, although the idea has definitely spread out in other places-- to the Southern USA and also the Latin Americas. Such people are called jettatore (projectors). They are not always taken into consideration evil or envious, just birthed with an unfavorable unpleasant talent that creates others to prevent them. In old societies, if you were thought to be the holder of an evil eye, you were frequently negated by the rest of society and went unrecognized on the street without conference anyone's eyes. Possibly among the most familiar preventative procedures against the wicked eye is the hand motion. The Mano Cornufo or "Horned Hand" involves prolonging the initial and also index fingers from a clenched fist. The Mano Fico or "Fig hand" includes placing the thumb in between very first and second fingers. Historically there have been lots of remedies for the evil eye: In Italy, the wicked eye is detected by leaking olive oil right into a vessel filled with water. If the oil conglomerates into the shape of an eye than the sufferer is taken into consideration formally cursed. Prayers are stated till the droplets of oil no longer create an eye form. In Eastern Europe charcoal, coal or scorched match heads are gone down into a frying pan of water/. If the items float after that the person is taken into consideration to be the victim of a curse. In the Ukraine, a kind of ceromancy or candle reading is used to diagnose the curse. Melted wax is leaked from a candle light right into a frying pan of water. If the wax spits, splatters, or stays with the side of the dish after that the "client" is considered to be under the influence of the malefic eye. Usually the patient is cleansed with Divine Water. He or she is noticable treated when the trickled wax sinks the bottom of the bowl in a rounded ball. In Greece Mexico and also other locations, the official cure is to welcome the perpetrator in charge of the bad eye to spew in a vessel of the divine water that is consumed by the target. In Mexico, rolling a raw egg over the body of the victim is the antidote. Afterwards, it is split open and also if the metaphysician or healer divines the form of an eye in the yolks after that the person is thought about to be cursed. A number of eggs may be consistently surrendered the person's body until an egg without an eye if discovered. Occasionally the egg is put underneath the individual's bed over night as well as broken open in the early morning. In China the remedy for the wicked eye is the Kua mirror, a six-sided mirror that is hung on the front door or positioned in the front home window to reverse poor energy back to the sender. A few of these mirrors are convex to show back the bad "toxin darts" or "arrows" of multiple sick wishers and also some are concave to mirror energy in a guaranteed direction back at, for instance, an intrusive neighbor, whose look may have stuck around on your yard of tulips for as well lengthy. In Feng Shui, mirrors are typically made use of as a remedy all to show negative power back at all examples-- people, bad design, web traffic, next-door neighbors, physical obstructions such as trees or rocks or anything else that may taken into consideration to be a conductor of Har Shui (unfavorable resonances). In India the matching rear of the bad eye takes the form of little mirrors that are attached, braided or crocheted right into garments. This mirroring rear of negative power is also acquainted to experts of Wicca and also Lukumi or Santeria. In India, the human eye is also considered to be a mirror of the spirit. Indian ladies use kohl or hefty black make-up to highlight their eyes not just to shield themselves from bad eye yet additionally to avoid themselves from inadvertently inflicting it on others. In India cords strung with blue grains are placed on newborn babies. When the cord breaks and also the beads are shed the youngster is considered to have a solid sufficient aura to safeguard him or herself from the wicked eye. Red cords used upon the wrist or neck are believed to have a powerful result against eye malevolence. A silver beauty called Eye of Buddha which references the Gautama Buddha is also put on versus astral attack. In Italy, gold, silver or treasures sculpted or cast right into the shape of the Mano Fica or Mano Cornufa are used to fend off the wickedness. One of the most sought after ones are constructed from red coral, however lots of versions exist today constructed from gemstones as well as plastic. They are used by males to protect against the withering of the genital areas thought to be triggered by the poor eye. Also Italian in origin is the Corno or horn or devil's horn amulet that is thought to shield versus the very same dysfunction. The women's version is made from a twig of red coral reefs. In Arab societies, superstitious types put on an eye in the kind of a rock cast in the facility of a hand shaped bone or metal appeal A typical Egyptian appeal is the Clasp of Isis which represents the menstruation pad of the Siren Isis who was the Mother of all living points. Packing a little prayer or spell inside a locket that is spent time the neck is the typical European custom-made for protecting oneself against deadly gazes. A light worker such as myself could recommend you to shield on your own in the following contemporary methods: Constantly maintain the belief that no one has the power to harm you with an appearance. This by itself is a very effective idea kind. Prior to you go out, imagine that your third eye is actually covered by something that resembles a little pocket mirror. If you are a psychic or a therapist then merely close your pineal eye as well as don't open it unless you wish to look. If you are really feeling haunted or upset as the outcome of a "look", push your thumb hard into the center of your forehead as well as visualize your pineal eye swiftly flipping. Flick the energy away with your thumb and also snap your fingers. Constantly remember that what you resist often persists. The expression "Oh, so what!" is among one of the most powerful chemicals in deep space that you can use to dissolve negative energy.

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topicprinter · 6 years ago

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This is more for tech entrepreneurs here. However, the core ideas can be taken out for some other businesses. Let me know if it helps.I was answering the question “What are the strategies to convert a free user to a premium user for a SaaS product?” and the answer became an article in itself. At the same time, it’s yet another one of my core fundamentals which I think can impact someone. Below is my answer.It’s all about intent.If your intent is to make as much money as possible as fast as possible (i.e short term), the answer is not for you. You’ll do things that other guys/gurus mention such as “Provide incentive for prospects to sign up for freemium but do not provide too much value so that free version of the product is enough.” — that’s corny, dull and lacking a long-term vision.Here’s something that I’ve noticed within myself. At a point, I’ve realised I love some companies to the point where I feel like they’re my friend. They’ve done so much good to me and they’ve been “by my side” to a point where I don’t have any problem with parting with my money.There’s an emotional connection between me and them. It may sound dramatic but it’s true. When I pay them I do so happily as I support their cause.Here’s the TLDR answerHelp them grow so you can grow together.By that I mean the freemium model should offer the client the chance to grow — equality of opportunity — and if it does happen that they grow and become profitable, the SaaS starts charging based on that. In a sense, value-based pricing, or at least as much as it could get with a scalable model.In other words, open up the doors for a lot of people and then benefit mutually from the winners.Objection 1But I don’t want to have users on the freemium plan leeching my resourcesNow here’s the catch — I’d say charge the winners enough so that it’ll cover the expenses for those who didn’t get it yet (or leeches, because I know that might be going through your mind, especially if you’re a business person).Charge them enough so that you won’t get mad when you find out about that couple of users that just sucked the benefits of your benevolence and never contributed towards your company.Objection 2I can’t afford to offer the free plan to so many peopleHere’s another magnificent thing that happens when you open the doors for everyone — word of mouth is on steroids. You’re on a fast track to word-of-mouth express. It’s possible you might have heard this comparison before — arguably you can reach 1000 people. And one of these people knows 1000 people. That means you’re a person away from a million. And two people away from a billion.If your intent is to do good and give chances to everyone to prove themselves, within that network of a billion some of the engagements will include how nice it is that your SaaS is doing them good — whether they pay or not.Therefore, I’m pretty confident when I say that the ARR you’ll get to in 1–2 years, given the money you’ll be burning initially because of the free plan (it’s not the case all the time though) will be significantly bigger than the ARR you’d have by implementing the shitty tactic of“Provide incentive for prospects to sign up for freemium but do not provide too much value so that free version of the product is enough.”Give them bloody enough if you can. Because you’ll have a customer for life and some of them will become even friends. And then when they win and scale, they’ll be more than happy to pay you. And I’ll state it again: they’ll be happy to pay you amounts of value that will cover for those on a freemium plan.Why? Simple — you see it everywhere. Millionaires who grew up as orphans donate back to orphanages because without these houses, they couldn’t have won. Most of the time it’s more than just THE orphanage they grew up in. We’re humans and once we accumulate resources, if the intent is good in that person, they want to help the cause. Remember what I wrote above that in my case I wanted to contribute to the company’s cause?Objection 3I really can’t afford it because I don’t have the money right now — I’m bootstrapping it, hence no investmentsFair. Charge for what you do, don’t offer a freemium plan or do so but only as a trial. But as soon as you’re able to do what I said above, please do it.The point is this: the more you’re able to give away for free, the more it will come back to you. It won’t make any sense to you unless you’ve experienced it yourself but maybe one single reader will simply trust it by heart and she or he will be taken far.Here’s another choice of words for sceptics: the more you’re able to give to people, the more you’ll be able to ask from them (eventually). Makes sense?Some practical examplesI’ll give some examples below along with a brief description. Cloud services are more prone to do so given the fact that what they offer is more fungible and is easier to be priced in a “pay as you go” model.Dropbox — 2 GB free for anyone. Moreover, get people onboard and we’ll give you more. All for free. Help me, help you.Spotify — free music, no problem. Just ads. If you mind them (i.e. if your time is more valuable than the monthly $10), we’ve got you as well.GitHub — sure, put your beloved code and creations on our platform. Open to anyone. If you’re looking to do more than just a hobby, only then we’ll charge youFirebase — If your database downloads exceed 10 GB/mo, then you’re pretty serious and most probably you can afford to pay for a solution. If not, however, it’s fine, we’ll take the risk with you. Let’s see if your idea works, no problem if it doesn’t. We’ll swallow it.Cloudflare (which I absolutely love by the way, even though I don’t use their service) — You know what guys, we’ll sell you the domains at wholesale price, we won’t get any commission. And if your website is tiny, it’s just a small personal website or a blog that just started, it’s fine. Stay for free. Only later, when you worry about high-performance and security (which is when you’re at a later stage), we’ll start charging you.MailChimpThe bottom lineOpening up the doors for everyone can go this way. One in 10,000 make it through and have a huge impact on the world, which usually is affiliated with resource gathering.If your intent is to create a win-win environment and give equality of opportunity so that eventually the next Leonardo da Vinci will come from under your rooftop (and he won’t forget that), this is a way to solve the freemium-to-premium user conversion problem.——Originally posted here. I run an experiences design agency that helps SaaS CEOs reduce user churn.

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

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the-record-columns · 7 years ago

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July 5, 2017: Columns

Old phone books, old memories...

By KEN WELBORN

Record Publisher

Now and again I will get a visit from an aspiring actor or actress who needs something old for the set of a show they are doing at one of the local high schools.

This always pleases me and I am most often able to be of some assistance, like a few months ago when I filled the simple request for a desk telephone—with a dial.

Quite often the requests for help involve helping do research on one thing or another. This is far more hit and miss, as there is no real focus to the variety of old and eclectic things that decorate our offices here at The Record so neatly—and which are dusted every three years whether they need it or not. Sometimes I am able to help, often not, but when I can't, I do try to put them in touch with the Sandra Watts of the world who know where to find out just about anything about anybody who was ever even seen passing through Wilkes County. Again, I remind you that it is not always what you know, but who, that counts.

And, sometimes it is just plain easy to help. Like the fella who came in looking for some old phone books from the 50s and 60s. I have a great selection of these all courtesy of my friends Walter and Mary McSwain, and I often find myself thumbing through them and reminiscing about my childhood and the North Wilkesboro I grew up in.

Of course, being in the newspaper business, I end up spending a lot of time looking at the advertisements in the phone books—some even before there were “yellow pages” sections in the back of the book. These pages were just yellow with age.

Lots of the ads for automobile dealerships. Many are easily remembered but now gone like Midway Pontiac, B & L Motors, and the Motor Market, Inc. I especially remember the Motor Market and Bob Yale because my dad bought a couple of Studebaker's from Mr. Yale. Among those I had never heard of was the Williams Motor Company, the Kaiser-Willys dealer. I called Eric Williams, who was then at the Williams Motel, and learned that the Williams Motor Company was located on Boone trail, across from what is now Foothills Sanitation and Recycling, and was owned and operated by his great uncle, Tom Williams. That, of course, made him the legendary Ralph Williams uncle. The half-page ad for Williams Motor Company featured a really pretty convertible sports car which I assume to be a Kaiser. I also found out that Eric's great-uncle Tom was to be a dealer for the futuristic (for its time) Tucker automobile in 1949, but the ill-fated company never delivered him a car.

Another fascinating section in the old phone books was advertisements for taxi's, or cabs, if you will. In the 1954 edition there was Blue Ridge Cab's, Busic's Cabs, City Cabs, C. H Elledge Taxi, Eller Cabs, Bill Hayes Taxi, Joe's Cabs, Lowe's Cabs, Roark Dillard Taxi's, Roy's Cabs, Smithey Cabs, and Yellow Cabs. I think every town in the USA had a Yellow Cabs.

An interesting aside—in those days a cab wasn't just for a ride. Not nearly as man folks owned their own car in those days, so cab drivers made a good side income filling orders for local residents for everything from groceries to trips up liquor hill (Hwy 115) to pick up “produce” from the local bootleggers. In addition to his cab stand, Bill Hayes was a bail bondsman—he could get you out of jail and take you home, too.

An ad for Phillips Tire Service advertised their location on C Street and featured McCreary Tires, while another Phillips ad promoted their re-capping service. I will never forget buying my first set of new tires from Howard Phillips, on credit God love him, in 1968. The guys putting the tires on my old '57 Studebaker teased me by saying that, with the addition of that new set of tires, it had doubled the value of my car.

But I guess my favorite ad had to be for the North Wilkesboro Drive In Theatre up on Hwy 18 North. Known to show risque (for the times) movies, their ad touted “The Moon Lite Effect.” There was also an ad for the Star-Lite Drive-In on Hwy 115 South which made me smile, because I was reminded that I was at least 14 years old before I ever went to that theatre without first climbing into the trunk of my brother T. A.'s car.

Page after page brought back memories of one kind or another, memories of a time when our little town seemed so much busier, yet so much simpler.

Stress Management

By LAURA WELBORN

Try this stress management principle –

Raise a glass of water over your head, and think… “How heavy is this glass of water I’m holding?” “From your perspective, the absolute weight of this glass is irrelevant. It all depends on how long you hold it.

If you hold it for a minute or two, it’s fairly light. If you hold it for an hour straight, its weight might make your arm ache. If you hold it for a day straight, your arm will likely cramp up and feel completely numb and paralyzed, forcing you to drop the glass to the floor. In each case, the absolute weight of the glass doesn’t change, but the longer you hold it, the heavier it feels to you”

“Your worries, frustrations, and stressful thoughts are very much like this glass of water. Think about them for a little while and nothing drastic happens. Think about them a bit longer and you begin to feel noticeable pain. Think about them all day long, and you will feel completely numb and paralyzed – incapable of doing anything else until you drop them.”

So how do we take those thoughts, worries and let them go so they don’t hold us back?

· “Be selective in your battles. Peace always feels better than being right. You simply don’t need to attend every conflict you’re invited to.

· Peace is not the absence of pain, but the presence of love.

· Just wish people well. Embracing their negative energy only harms you at the end of the day.

· Happiness and a negative mindset can’t co-exist.

· Truth be told, we either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong.

· When you really pay attention, everyone and everything is your teacher.

· We learn the way on the way.

· Think of all the hundreds of thousands of steps and missteps and chances and coincidences that have brought you here.

· The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you accept that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.

· Letting go isn’t about having the ability to forget the past; it’s about having the wisdom and strength to embrace the present.

· Stepping onto a brand new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation that no longer fits, or no longer exists.

· Sometimes you simply have to stop fretting, wondering, and doubting. Have faith that things will work out, maybe not how you planned, but just how it’s meant to be.” Marc and Angel Hack Life blog

Snake in The Grass: Erdogan’s Sultan Syndrome endangers Jerusalem, Temple Mount

By Earl Cox

Special to The Record

Snake in The Grass: Erdogan’s Sultan Syndrome endangers Jerusalem, Temple Mount

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s unhindered intrusion into east Jerusalem, and his quest for Turkish dominance on the Temple Mount call for a strategic and timely response. The Muslim Brotherhood’s most prominent supporter and one of its self-proclaimed global leaders, Erdogan is spearheading Islamization in the heart of Jerusalem, and funding Temple Mount activities based on the Brotherhood’s philosophy.

The Turkish strongman fancies himself the next Sultan of a revived neo-Ottoman empire. Last year he publicly lamented the foreign powers that forced Turkey in 1923 to “forget our Ottoman and Seljuk history," referring to an era when “Turkey held territory stretching across Central Asia and the Middle East,” said Burak Bekdil, a Middle East Forum Fellow.

His insatiably ambitious schemes have evolved from imposing Muslim Brotherhood dominance on Turkey—once a modern, secular democracy under Kemal Ataturk—to Islamic hegemony over Europe—which last year resulted in fiery showdowns with the Netherlands and Germany after his attempts to sponsor electoral campaign rallies on their soil. Erdogan also craves neo-Ottoman rule over the entire Sunni Middle East—with eastern Jerusalem and the Temple Mount squarely in his equation.

To these ends, and as he has done in Europe, Turkey has funneled tens of millions of dollars a year into east Jerusalem’s social, political, educational and nonprofit associations for Islamist “missionary” outreach to Arab youth, said municipality advisors Dr. David Koren and Ben Avrahami. “The Turks’ public support of the Palestinian cause and adoption of the al-Aksa issue,” plus their opportunistic spending “have won them great sympathy and support.” The authors draw a “direct line” from civic missionary activity in east Jerusalem “to radicalization and active enlistment in the armed struggle against Israel.”

Erogan’s rap sheet strikingly traces his disdain for the rule of law, separation of powers and due process at home, and his contempt for the sovereignty of EU nations abroad. Though Turkey is a NATO member, it is working to undermine the West. In Jerusalem, he has been maneuvering to erode the Jordanian Waqf Authority’s standing as guardian of the holy places. Turkey has been acquiring religious properties in east Jerusalem, possibly aiming for some sort of official status on the Temple Mount, said Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs analyst Pinhas Inbari.

In addition, Turkey is a staunch supporter of Hamas, and has close ties to the northern Islamic Movement in Israel and other radical players who were “the source for the libel that al-Aksa is endangered by the Jews/Zionists, and for …disinformation related to Israeli actions on the Temple Mount,” Koren and Avrahami said.

The Crux of the Matter

Turkey’s encroachment raises crucial questions regarding Israel’s sovereignty over its own capital.

The good news is that Erdogan’s characteristic political stealth has been blindsided by his ambition to be king of the Hill; he has tipped his hand.

This snake in the grass is reminiscent of Eden, where another serpent tried to sabotage G-d’s plan. Erdogan is on the wrong side in this battle. The prophet Micah said: “Many nations are gathered against you. They say, ‘Let her be defiled, let our eyes gloat over Zion!’ But they do not know the thoughts of the LORD, and they do not understand His purpose; for He has gathered them like sheaves to the threshing floor.”

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