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newstfionline · 3 years

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Monday, September 20, 2021

Biden’s Entire Presidential Agenda Rests on Expansive Spending Bill (NYT) Biden’s entire presidential agenda is riding on the reconciliation bill being crafted in Congress right now. No president has ever packed as much of his agenda, domestic and foreign, into a single piece of legislation as President Biden has with the $3.5 trillion spending plan that Democrats are trying to wrangle through Congress over the next six weeks,” Tankersley writes. “It is almost as if President Franklin D. Roosevelt had stuffed his entire New Deal into one piece of legislation, or if President Lyndon B. Johnson had done the same with his Great Society, instead of pushing through individual components over several years. If he succeeds, Biden’s far-reaching attempt could result in a presidency-defining victory that delivers on a decades-long campaign by Democrats to expand the federal government to combat social problems and spread the gains of a growing economy to workers. If he fails, he could end up with nothing. As Democrats are increasingly seeing, the sheer weight of Mr. Biden’s progressive push could cause it to collapse, leaving the party empty-handed, with the president’s top priorities going unfulfilled. … If Mr. Biden’s party cannot find consensus on those issues and the bill dies, the president will have little immediate recourse to advance almost any of those priorities.

Child care in the US is a ‘broken market,’ Treasury report finds (Yahoo Money) A Treasury Department report this week characterized the U.S. child care system as “unworkable” as Democrats push reform that experts say is an “overdue and critical investment.” The average American family with at least one child under age 5 uses 13% of their income to pay for child care, according to the report, nearly double the 7% that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services considers affordable. Additionally, less than 20% of the children eligible for the Child Care and Development Fund—a federal assistance program for low-income families—are getting that funding. “Child care is a textbook example of a broken market, and one reason is that when you pay for it, the price does not account for all the positive things it confers on our society,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement on Wednesday. “When we underinvest in child care, we forgo that; we give up a happier, healthier, more prosperous labor force in the future.”

Inspiration4 Astronauts Beam After Return From 3-Day Journey to Orbit (NYT) After three days in orbit, a physician assistant, a community college professor, a data engineer and the billionaire who financed their trip arrived back on Earth, heralding a new era of space travel with a dramatic and successful Saturday evening landing in the Atlantic Ocean. The mission, which is known as Inspiration4, splashed down off the Florida coast at 7:06 p.m. on Saturday. Each step of the return unfolded on schedule, without problems. Within an hour, all four crew members walked out of the spacecraft, one at a time, each beaming with excitement as recovery crews assisted them.

Haitians on Texas border undeterred by US plan to expel them (AP) Haitian migrants seeking to escape poverty, hunger and a feeling of hopelessness in their home country said they will not be deterred by U.S. plans to speedily send them back, as thousands of people remained encamped on the Texas border Saturday after crossing from Mexico. Scores of people waded back and forth across the Rio Grande on Saturday afternoon, re-entering Mexico to purchase water, food and diapers in Ciudad Acuña before returning to the Texas encampment under and near a bridge in the border city of Del Rio. Junior Jean, a 32-year-old man from Haiti, watched as people cautiously carried cases of water or bags of food through the knee-high river water. Jean said he lived on the streets in Chile the past four years, resigned to searching for food in garbage cans. “We are all looking for a better life,” he said.

Three Weeks After Hurricane Ida, Parts of Southeast Louisiana Are Still Dark (NYT) For Tiffany Brown, the drive home from New Orleans begins as usual: She can see the lights on in the city’s central business district and people gathering in bars and restaurants. But as she drives west along Interstate 10, signs of Hurricane Ida’s destruction emerge. Trees with missing limbs fill the swamp on either side of the highway. With each passing mile, more blue tarps appear on rooftops, and more electric poles lay fallen by the road, some snapped in half. By the time Ms. Brown gets to her exit in Destrehan 30 minutes later, the lights illuminating the highway have disappeared, and another night of total darkness has fallen on her suburban subdivision. For Ms. Brown, who works as an office manager at a pediatric clinic, life at work can feel nearly normal. But at home, with no electricity, it is anything but. “I keep hoping every day that I’m going to go home and it’ll be on,” she said. Three weeks have passed since Hurricane Ida knocked down electric wires, poles and transmission towers serving more than one million people in southeast Louisiana. In New Orleans, power was almost entirely restored by Sept. 10, and businesses and schools have reopened. But outside the city, more than 100,000 customers were without lights through Sept. 13. As of Friday evening there were still about 38,000 customers without power, and many people remained displaced from damaged homes.

Favela centennial shows Brazil communities’ endurance (AP) Dozens of children lined up at a community center in Sao Paulo for a slice of creamy, blue cake. None was celebrating a birthday; their poor neighborhood, the favela of Paraisopolis, was commemorating 100 years of existence. “People started coming (to the city) for construction jobs and settled in,” community leader Gilson Rodrigues said. “There was no planning, not even streets. People started growing crops. It was all disorganized. Authorities didn’t do much, so we learned to organize ourselves.” The favela’s centennial, which was marked on Thursday, underscores the permanence of its roots and of other communities like it, even as Brazilians in wealthier parts of town often view them as temporary and precarious. Favelas struggle to shed that stigma as they defy simple definition, not least because they evolved over decades. Paraisopolis is Sao Paulo’s second-biggest favela, home to 43,000 people, according to the most-recent census, in 2010. Recent, unofficial counts put its population around 100,000.

The barbecue king: British royals praise Philip’s deft touch (AP) When Prince Philip died nearly six months ago at 99, the tributes poured in from far and wide, praising him for his supportive role at the side of Queen Elizabeth II over her near 70-year reign. Now, it has emerged that Philip had another crucial role within the royal family. He was the family’s barbecue king—perhaps testament to his Greek heritage. “He adored barbecuing and he turned that into an interesting art form,” his oldest son Prince Charles said in a BBC tribute program that will be broadcast on Wednesday. “And if I ever tried to do it he ... I could never get the fire to light or something ghastly, so (he’d say): ‘Go away!’” In excerpts of ‘Prince Philip: The Royal Family Remembers’ released late Saturday, members of the royal family spoke admiringly of the late Duke of Edinburgh’s barbecuing skills. “Every barbecue that I’ve ever been on, the Duke of Edinburgh has been there cooking,” said Prince William, Philip’s oldest grandson. “He’s definitely a dab hand at the barbecue ... I can safely say there’s never been a case of food poisoning in the family that’s attributed to the Duke of Edinburgh.” The program, which was filmed before and after Philip’s death on April 9, was originally conceived to mark his 100th birthday in June.

Relations between France and the U.S. have sunk to their lowest level in decades. (NYT) The U.S. and Australia went to extraordinary lengths to keep Paris in the dark as they secretly negotiated a plan to build nuclear submarines, scuttling a defense contract worth at least $60 billion. President Emmanuel Macron of France was so enraged that he recalled the country’s ambassadors to both nations. Australia approached the new administration soon after President Biden’s inauguration. The conventionally powered French subs, the Australians feared, would be obsolete by the time they were delivered. The Biden administration, bent on containing China, saw the deal as a way to cement ties with a Pacific ally. But the unlikely winner is Britain, who played an early role in brokering the alliance. For its prime minister, Boris Johnson, who will meet this coming week with Biden at the White House and speak at the U.N., it is his first tangible victory in a campaign to make post-Brexit Britain a player on the global stage.

Hong Kong’s first ‘patriots-only’ election kicks off (Reuters) Fewer than 5,000 Hong Kong people from mostly pro-establishment circles began voting on Sunday for candidates to an election committee, vetted as loyal to Beijing, who will pick the city’s next China-backed leader and some of its legislature. Pro-democracy candidates are nearly absent from Hong Kong’s first election since Beijing overhauled the city’s electoral system to ensure that “only patriots” rule China’s freest city. The election committee will select 40 seats in the revamped Legislative Council in December, and choose a chief executive in March. Changes to the political system are the latest in a string of moves—including a national security law that punishes anything Beijing deems as subversion, secession, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces—that have placed the international financial hub on an authoritarian path. Most prominent democratic activists and politicians are now in jail or have fled abroad.

The Remote-Control Killing Machine (Politico/NYT) For 14 years, Israel wanted to kill Iran’s top nuclear scientist. Then they came up with a way to do it while using a trained sniper who was more than 1,000 miles away—and fired remotely. It was also the debut test of a high-tech, computerized sharpshooter kitted out with artificial intelligence and multiple-camera eyes, operated via satellite and capable of firing 600 rounds a minute. The souped-up, remote-controlled machine gun now joins the combat drone in the arsenal of high-tech weapons for remote targeted killing. But unlike a drone, the robotic machine gun draws no attention in the sky, where a drone could be shot down, and can be situated anywhere, qualities likely to reshape the worlds of security and espionage.

Israeli army arrests last 2 of 6 Palestinian prison escapees (AP) Israeli forces on Sunday arrested the last two of six Palestinian prisoners who escaped a maximum-security Israeli prison two weeks ago, closing an intense, embarrassing episode that exposed deep security flaws in Israel and turned the fugitives into Palestinian heroes. The Israeli military said the two men surrendered in Jenin, their hometown in the occupied West Bank, after they were surrounded at a hideout that had been located with the help of “accurate intelligence.” The prisoners all managed to tunnel out of a maximum-security prison in northern Israel on Sept. 6. The bold escape dominated newscasts for days and sparked heavy criticism of Israel’s prison service. According to various reports, the men dug a hole in the floor of their shared cell undetected over several months and managed to slip past a sleeping prison guard after emerging through a hole outside the facility. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have celebrated the escape and held demonstrations in support of the prisoners. Taking part in attacks against the Israeli military or even civilians is a source of pride for many Palestinians, who view it as legitimate resistance to military occupation.

Jaw-dropping moments in WSJ's bombshell Facebook investigation (CNN Business) This week the Wall Street Journal released a series of scathing articles about Facebook, citing leaked internal documents that detail in remarkably frank terms how the company is not only well aware of its platforms’ negative effects on users but also how it has repeatedly failed to address them. Here are some of the more jaw-dropping moments from the Journal’s series. In the Journal’s report on Instagram’s impact on teens, it cites Facebook’s own researchers’ slide deck, stating the app harms mental health. “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said one slide from 2019, according to the WSJ. Another reads: “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression ... This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.” In 2018, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said a change in Facebook’s algorithm was intended to improve interactions among friends and family and reduce the amount of professionally produced content in their feeds. But according to the documents published by the Journal, staffers warned the change was having the opposite effect: Facebook was becoming an angrier place. A team of data scientists put it bluntly: “Misinformation, toxicity and violent content are inordinately prevalent among reshares,” they said, according to the Journal’s report.

#headlines #news

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haileygarciasunshine · 4 years

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It only gets Stranger

Stranger things x the Losers Club cross over.

Pairing: Billy Hargrove x Reader

Warning: Swearing, Fighting, Blood

Word Count: 2,743

Summary: The reader moves to Hawkins, IN from Derry, MA. Once a Loser, always a Loser. Her friends from Derry, somehow end up in Hawkins to help defeat the Mind Flayer.

“I can only remember parts,” Beverly said, “I thought I was dead. That’s what it felt like. I saw us, all of us, back together, but we were older like our parents ages.”

“W...W...What were we all doing there?” Bill stuttered.

“I just remember how we felt. How scare we were. I don’t think I can ever forget that.” Beverly said in disbelief.

Bill suddenly, stood up from his spot on the log, “S..S.. Swear it,” He said as he had a shard of glass in his hand, “S...S....Swear if IT isn’t dead, if IT ever comes back, we’ll come back too.”

Silence fell upon your group of friends, casting glances, at the nature scene before them. The rush of the nearby lake along with the chirping of the birds, were the only sounds to be heard.

Beverly, was the first one to stand up, then Richie and Eddie, followed by Stan and Ben. You and Mike were the last two to stand in up in agreement with Bill. Bill then placed the shard of glass at the top of his left hand, dragging it across so that the top flesh would have cut across the palm.

Bill then, went around the group using the same piece of glass, and cut everyone else’s left palm starting with Richie and ending with Beverly. Each of you winced in pain as he cut across your palms. Slowly, everyone in the group reached to the person next to them so that everyone was holding hands, making the pack turn into a blood oath, causing everyone to be bonded for life, and to ensure that everyone kept their promise. A calming silence, fell upon the group. It wasn’t awkward or suffocating, but somehow relaxing, in knowing we would once again ban together as the ‘Losers Club,’ in the future. A certain hope. A certain promise, that we would once again, be together again, no matter where life took us. We were no longer friends.

No longer friends the minute, we had all met and took down IT. From that moment forward we had become family.

“I gotta go.” Stan started, “I hate you.” He said looking directly at Bill.

Bill looked down, with his face full of guilt and sadness.

Stan was the first to giggle, to prove that he wasn’t at all serious about the nature of his insult. Then giggles erupted from everyone in the circle, including yourself.Giggles progressed into full on laughter. A light hearted moment that was much needed in this situation.

“I’ll see you later.”

“Bye, Stan.”

Stan had been the first one to leave the group and most of the group followed. You were the third to last to leave. The group knew that this would be the last moments you had with them in Derry. Your youngest brother, much like Bill, had been a victim of IT. After IT, took your brother, your parents decided that you would finish the semester that you were in, and they would pack you and your oldest brother Milo, up and move to a “safe place,” as your parents had put it.

As you were leaving, you turned around to say the last goodbye to your remaining two best friends, but you were stunned to see that Beverly and Bill were kissing. After the initial shock, of the scene before you, it wasn’t long before you thought, ‘Finally,’ before turning around and walking back to your house, filled with unforgettable memories.

You’ve officially been in Hawkins, Nine months. There was never a day that went by, that the Loser’s club didn’t cross your mind. Everyone, was constantly, writing you and telling how much they missed you. As, far as you could tell, Derry was back to being the safe heaven that you all knew and loved.

After, you moved to Hawkins, it was like you found another Loser’s club. It wasn’t long before you had become friends with them. They called themselves “The Party,” you could never find it in yourself to question why. It didn’t really matter to you anyway.

Milo and you were only a year apart so, there wasn’t that much of an age difference between either of you. There was a gap in your different friends. Milo, had become friends with another newbie, Billy Hargrove. Billy, had a step sister, named Max. Their situation was similar to yours regarding moving and siblings, so it was only fitting that you became friends.

After becoming friends with the party, you had found another person like you. Someone else who had Telekinetic, powers. Back home in Derry, you hadn’t flat out told the others, but when IT was attacking, you and your friends, you were only able to sneakily, use them. You didn’t want to lose your best friends over them thinking you were some sort of freak.

As, soon as the others found out you were like El, they didn’t make you feel weird or freakish. That was something that you were thankful for. That gave you a sense of belonging that you had always longed for. Once, you had opened up about your abilities, they were comfortable letting you know about a thing called the “Upside Down,” and a “Demogorgon,” along with tinier versions of a “Demodog,” as they said. The current enemy, at hand however, was a giant monster called the “Mind Flayer.” At times, you wanted to go up to your parents and tell them that Hawkins was not anymore dangerous than Derry, and that if you packed up right now, you could still go back to school in Derry.

The eldest members of the groups friendships/relationships were enough to confuse you by themselves. You and Steve had developed a larger than life, bond and were very close as friends. He knew about your crush situation. You were crushing on Milo’s friend Billy. He was almost always, over at your house. At times, you thought he might like you too, offering you rides wherever you wanted, purposely calling your house when he knew Milo was at baseball practice, spending as much time as he could with you.

Milo had been acting strange lately, taking off in the middle of the night, an edge to him that wouldn’t go away. Finally, you decided that you were fed up, and wanted to see what he was up to. Rolling over to the other side of the bed, you grabbed your phone, and called Billy.

“Hello.” A husky voice answered.

“Billy? It’s Y/N.”

His laughter sounded through the phone, ”I knew it was you.”

“Is Milo with you?”

“That would be a negative, Princess. Why?”

Suddenly, a bad feeling was in the pit of your stomach.

“Y/N? You okay over there?” Worry was laced in his voice.

Silence. Your head was filled with many crazed thoughts.

“I’m coming over there. Be ready in five.” Once the words came out of his mouth, you were met with the dial tone.

It took less than five minutes for Billy, to pull into your drive way, before you rushed out of the house, and jumped into the front seat of his Camaro. Billy, was able to somehow catch up to your brother. He was driving on the outskirts of town, something he never did with you, since he claimed to not be familiar with Hawkins yet.

Suddenly, Milo had practically vanished from view. Causing both you and Billy to exchange, confused glances. Your heart had leaped into your throat.

“Billy.” Your voice came out panicked, “Billy stop the car.”

Your attention was too focused on something in front of you, missing the worried expression on his face he shot your way. He didn’t question why you wanted him to stop, but he did.

Opening your door, your left arm came up to rest on the top of the car, while your right arm came up to rest on the top of the door. Looking before you, was a business that had a lot of Steel around it. However, looking at the sky above it, made you forget to be bothered with what the, name of the business was.

Clouds were swirling in a circle above it, with what mirrored a thunder storm, without the rain. Both you and Billy were too stunned to say anything, you were only able to give the other a confused look, before looking back at the scene before you. As you left, you were able to get a glimpse at the sign of the business. Brimborn Steel Works.

The next day, everyone had met at the Wheelers, house including Billy. Once, you and Billy finished telling the others, what you had seen, Will was out of his seat, running up the basement steps, two at a time.

“I got it.” You said to the group, all of them nodding in acknowledgment.

Will was pacing on the front lawn, nervously.

“Hey.”

He hadn’t stopped his movements nor looked at you.

“Hey.” You tried again, this time grabbing his shoulders to stop him from pacing.

“He’s here.”

The realization dawned on you, as who Will had meant as “He.” The Mind Flayer was back, and he wasn’t going to stop until he had blood.

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You and Billy, were able to successfully, trap Milo, inside the sauna. Both of you knew that it wouldn’t be able to hold him off for long. But, neither of you expected him, to be back on his feet in a matter of minutes. The lights had begun to flicker throughout the building. Everyone was standing in a circle with their backs to each other. Billy, was trying to put on a strong front. He reached for your hand, with his. Intertwining your fingers, once he was able to grab a hold of your hand, his right arm in front of yours, shoulder touching, while you both glanced at each other with fear.

Milo begun, running into the sauna door. With each hit, the metal pole that the door was chained to, to try and keep him from escaping had become bent. One last hit, was all it took for the door to fly open, for Milo to tumble out of the sauna. Pushing your friends back, you were staring face to face with your brother. He was covered in what looked like black veins. Eleven, had gone to Scoops Ahoy with Dustin. Nancy, was at the hospital with Jonathon. Which left you and Billy with the remaining group members, Max, Lucas, Mike and Will.

Lifting up a near by, bench press, you screamed and used your arm to throw it at Milo to keep him trapped against the gym’s brick wall. He had impossible level strength, causing you to use both arms to try and keep him pinned to the wall. Growls filled the air, as your chest had begun to heave. Your nose had started to bleed using your abilities to keep Milo pinned to the wall. The sounds of your gasps, replaced the growl sounds.

Milo, used both of his hands and pushed the bench press off of him. You screamed in reaction trying to keep it against him. He was able to push it off and throw it back at you, which hit you causing you to hit the floor. Somehow he was right above you, grabbing you by the back of your hair, as you tried to crawl away from him. Your breath was coming out between gasps and heaves, trying to catch your breath. As he grabbed you by your hair, you let out a terrified scream, as he pulled you to your knees in front of you.

With his left hand with a grip of steel on your hair, he turned giving your friends and evil stare. Suddenly, his right hand came up to grip the front of your throat causing you to immediately gasp upon contact, causing your friends to jump back frightened.

Milo, lifted you up by your throat, squeezing tightly as he did. You were gasping, coughing, as your lungs screamed for air that they were denied.

“N...O...” You tried as you weakly tried to pry his grip off of your throat.

Another wave of gasping and coughing for air hit you.

“N...O..” You tried again.

This time you were able to hit his arms and slightly scream, before coughing and gasping again.

Your friends were frozen in place, too stunned to move.

As you could feel yourself feel faint, blood dripped from your nose, as your eyes went crossed. Your face becoming red from the lack of oxygen, as you tried to open your mouth to allow air to flow to your lungs that were on fire.

Billy, was able to get himself unfrozen before it was too late. He was behind Milo, hitting him with a steel beam, which caused him to drop you and fall to the floor.

“Go to hell, you piece of shit!”

Billy yelled at Milo, attempting another swing at him with the beam. Milo, flipped around and caught the beam in his hand mid air. You were laughing face down, as you were trying to breathe and regain your strength. Milo, got up and began towards Billy, whose back had met the brick wall. Getting up in time, you were able to lift Milo off the ground before be could hurt Billy. Making your way to your feet, with both arms in front of you, Milo was suspended into the air. His growls and your gasps were filling the air. Exhaustion had set in, but you were determined to save your friends. Both you and Milo, were face to face screaming at each other. Maneuvering, Milo mid air, your back was met with Billy’s chest, as you threw Milo through the brick wall. Collapsing, onto Billy, he slid down the wall with you in his arms.

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Breaking down the door, the Mind Flayer that seemed to be made of flesh, was on top of Nancy.

“Jesus.” Mike said. At the same time Max said, “What the Fuck.”

The Mind Flayer, had begun screaming at the sight of you, while trying to charge at you. As he was running at you, you raised your arm quickly and threw him to the wall nearest you, while screaming in the process. He wasn’t giving up, so you flung him into the right wall, screaming again. This time he let out a low growl, before you flung him into the ceiling, causing chunks of the ceiling to fall onto the floor. By this time, your nose was bleeding again. Finally, you flung him back onto the floor with all your might screaming as you did so. Standing up straight in the process, putting both of your arms on the door frame trying to protect your friends and stop the Mind Flayer from getting past you. This, time he growled louder, trying to charge you again. Using both of your arms this time, you flung him out of the window, screaming one last time.

“Nancy!” Jonathon yelled in concern as he ran past you.

You and your friends ran as fast as you could to see what happened to the Mind Flayer. As you all ran out of the ER entrance, your body collided with another, causing the arms of the other person to shoot out and grab your forearms in attempt to keep you from falling.

Looking up, you were met with seven familiar faces.

“We figured you might need some help.” Beverly said making her way to you, pulling you into a bone crushing hug.

“Nice move, throwing that monster from the fourth floor.” Ben said as you received another bone crushing hug, whispering in your ear, “We know about your abilities. You saved our asses way much more than we can count with Pennywise.”

The rest of the Losers, greeted you with the same level of enthusiasm.

“Not that i’m not happy to see you, but what’re you guys doing here?” Asking with a smile on your face, your arm was wrapped around Beverly's, shoulders as her arm was wrapped around your waist.

“We figured you might need some help.”

“Yeah.. But how did you-”

Stan spoke up, “Your boyfriend Billy called us.”

Everyone’s gaze turned to look at Billy with wide eyes. Not meeting anyone’s gaze but yours, his hands made their way into his front pockets, while shifting uncomfortably under everyone’s stare.

“Besides, once a Loser always a Loser.”

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ecofinisher · 4 years

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Super Mom! (Miraculous oneshot)

Elliot, Kagami and Adrien's common son is kidnapped and Kagami doesn't hesitate and transforms!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24352594/chapters/63445102

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13679785/1/Super-Mom

Kagami stood on the other side of the road along with her husband Adrien Agreste gazing at the kindergarten, where they saw through the window all the kids cleaning together the classroom.

"12:24 is it now" Adrien pointed out as he checked his smartphone to see the time. "They're usually done at 12,"

"Maybe something took longer or there was a kid's birthday and they brought cake and drinks"

"Could be" Adrien replied with a shrug. "Won't be a problem this evening, as on Friday's and Tuesday's Elliott is off from the kindergarten,"

Adrien glanced back on the road, then unlocked their SUV and climbed into the vehicle.

"I'll replacing it somewhere, there's officer Roger checking the roads," Adrien mentioned closing the door behind him and Kagami stepped aside to see her husband leave with their car and Kagami stood under a light pole to see if her son would finally come.

Moments later Kagami noticed a man enter into the front yard of the kindergarten and stopped there watching the children slowly move out of the classroom to the hall of the school. Another man and a woman appeared on the sidewalk next to the building and stepped up on the garden to wait for the children. A few children ran out of the house, one of the boys ran at the last man to give him a hug and Kagami crossed the road to enter into the garden and saw her son coming out of the building making Kagami smile, which looked around to see Adrien walk down the sidewalk to meet her.

"I've parked on a visitor parking spot from another house. We will be quick" Adrien told, then looked along with Kagami into the garden to see their son look up at the man in the wine read shirt talk to the blonde.

"Who's that guy?" Kagami asked making Adrien shrug his shoulders.

"Maybe someone's dad?" Adrien replied making Kagami shrug her shoulders and watch the man point up at another exit of the front yard and Elliot walked that path and the man observed the other two adults occupied with their children and moved behind Elliot fast.

"Wait, where's he going?" Kagami asked noticing Elliot going the wrong direction.

"Elliot!" Adrien shouted. "Where are you going?" Adrien asked loud seeing Elliot look at his parents getting bewildered and the man packed the boy covering his mouth and ran off.

"He's taking our son!" Kagami exclaimed watching Adrien race behind the man and the other man took his smartphone to inform the police and the third woman ran with her son into the building. Kagami went on off the garden to check if there was any pedestrian and opened her blazer to have her kwami Longg looking up at her.

"I've seen" Longg mentioned. "Quick, every second count"

"Long, break the storm!" The woman shouted out the activation phrase to transform into the superheroine Ryuko. Afterward, she ran across the garden to pursue her husband and at the other side of the road she saw the man was a few meters away from from the blonde, then arrived at a White van, then pushed the kid into the mail delivery van and got to start the vehicles motor turning the reverse lights on and drove fast towards Adrien which jumped aside to avoid landing under the wheels.

Ryuko jumped in front of the man holding out her sword watching the car drive towards them, but it made a U-turn and drove off fast leaving Ryuko angrily back.

"Take the car, I'll be watching over them" Ryuko ordered while helping Adrien up, which ran towards the end of the roadside where he left the SUV and the dragon-themed superheroine observed the vehicle disappear in the far and called upon one of her elemental powers. "Wind Dragon!" She shouted turning into a light-dark fume flying over the road to get closer to the vehicle afterward she went down under the vehicle pulling it up in the air to prevent the vehicle to drive only leaving its wheels spinning around fast due to the lost of contact to the hard ground.

Adrien appeared on his SUV stopping behind the car, then he got out of it and Ryuko in the form of the wind approached the ground and Adrien grabbed on the door handle to open the door and his son Elliot felt down on his arms,

Afterward, Ryuko dropped the vehicle on the ground letting it speed up quickly making it lose its control and crash on a fence near the front yard. Elliot hugged his father hard which patted the boy's back for comfort.

"Elliot, haven't I and mother told you about not talking to strangers?" Adrien asked earning a disappointed facial expression of the boy as he nodded.

"He said he was friends with my dad and you said he would bring me home and he would give us all food, " Elliot told making Adrien shake his head. "I'm so sorry, dad"

"Oh Elliot, please next time run back into the classroom. I wouldn't ask any of my friends to bring you home, mostly if you don't know them, "

"But I found it strange as I saw you there waiting for me" Elliot mentioned. "I'm sorry dad. I didn't want this all to happen"

Ryuko transformed back from Wind into Ryuko again and went down at the two to make sure they're okay.

"Are you two alright?" Ryuko asked earning a nod from the blonde.

"Yes" Adrien answered, then noticed the man escaping, then Adrien got up and pursued the man leaving Elliot back with Ryuko. "Hey, you!"

Ryuko placed her hand on Elliot's face to gaze into his maroon eyes which were a little shiny due to being sad about what had happened.

"Everything is okay, my dear" Ryuko stated patting him with her hand earning a nod from the blonde.

"Mommy won't be mad at me too won't she?"

"Of course not" Ryuko answered pulling the boy up in his arms. "She will be happy to know you're okay. Then only thing she could do is warn you about what happened"

"Why did that man want to take me?" Elliot asked making the heroine shrug her shoulders.

"I don't know it, dear. However, you know certain persons don't always look what they seem to be, so you're better be careful with strangers"

"Thank you" Elliot said, then Adrien appeared exhausted from the run, then held the boy on his shoulders.

"Roger caught him. He'll be sending him for interrogation" Adrien said, then glanced down at his son, which nodded.

"So I can go back without any problems?" Ryuko asked with a wink at her husband which nodded.

"Thanks for the help" Adrien thanked then Ryuko patted the boy on his head.

" See you soon," Ryuko told the boy while she kissed him on his forehead making him turn red on his cheeks at the sense of her lips on him. Ryuko ran away leaving Adrien back which smiled at seeing his wife in the super-suit head away, then Adrien patted his son on the back and accompanied him back to the car, where they encountered a tired Kagami, which came running from the other side of the kindergarten.

"I'm so sorry mom!" Elliot ran towards his mother's legs, making her smile and embrace him while Adrien stood behind the boy and looked at his wife, which gave him an assuring smile and observed him getting back into the car to the driver seat.

"You had bad luck today. Next time you'll know it better" Kagami promised helping the boy enter into the family SUV and got into the front seat to be next to her husband. "Nothing more happened to you, right?"

"No, he just took me into his car" Elliot answered sad.

"That is a relief," Kagami answered looking at Adrien, which smiled and patted his wife on her thigh, seeing her mirror his facial expression back, therefore he placed his hand back on the lever pulling it to D, so they could drive off the parking spot.

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jacks-tracks · 5 years

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Bantayan Biker

Bantayan is a big island, fairly flat, with good cement roads. I’d met a local who drove me about town, and he rents motorcycles. I don’t have a phone, but a nice expat couple waiting for the beauty salon next to my room called him and in rapid fire Tagalog had him deliver a motorcycle in minutes . Another honda 125 automatic in an embarrassing shade of pink, but everything worked. I put in 100pesos of gas and hit the road. Lovely sunny day, dressed in long pants and helmet, I even had my international drivers licence. Water, snacks good to go!

Just out of town I saw a big red sign “Evacuation assembly point” with an arrow pointing into the big graveyard. I kept going, thinking it was probably a dead end. Most of the traffic was motorcycles, a few trucks, one bus, and a handfull of cars, all dawdling along. The mototbike taxis(3 wheelers with a sidecar) were the worst, poking along, often with huge loads, like rebar, hay, lumber, or in one case 10 people. Granted they were little school kids, but it was full! I wanted to see what the bike would do so on an open stretch I twisted the grips and zoomed up to 40 kph(wow),passing the pokeys. As always , it’s the sideroads that have the most appeal, so I took the first left towards the sea. Roadworks, cement slush in loose frames alternated with rocky potholes. Used to that from home, I know that the best ride is right on the edge where trucks have not eroded the surface. There were lots of little houses, most with flowers growing in pots and old oil cans, a few walkers, sleeping dogs, (why do dogs sleep in the road?) and after 10 minutes downhill the sea. Coconut groves, clusters of houses with signs proclaiming a village, scrub jungle, and an empty smooth cement track, Easy riding indeed. I went to a beach where the fishermen had a hundred boats hauled out on logs(to protect their propellors). Some were mending nets in the shade of the boats tarpaulins, most were resting in little hammocks slung beside their beachfront bamboo homes. Fishing here is mostly at night, using battery powered lamps or coleman lanterns to attract fish to the gill nets . The beach was typical, a low sand bank, then a long flat rock bottomed foreshore, often 100 meters before the low tide waters edge. Boats only beach at high tide onto their coconut log rollers. It was hot already, perhaps 30 degrees, but a sea breeze swept the heat inland and the tall palms swayed lazily . I drove slowly, seeing lots of flowers, more sleeping dogs, and the occasional locals, who all responded to my Hellos. People are reserved until I make that first move, then everybody is friendly. English is limited, but I smiled when a toothless old gaffer told me to have a nice day.

Some 10 miles along was the Mangrove walk. A business with bamboo pole walkways out into the mangroves for tourists. I’m just glad to see some mangrove intact. I kept going. There were power lines on cement poles, so houses had electricity, which must make food storage much easier. The usual shoebox stores, selling the usual tiny packages of junk food. One roadside palapa was labelled “Senior citizens Hall” and had a big poster congratulating a woman for being 100. Her picture was posted and she looked all of that. The “Hall was a 10 by 30 foot thatch roofed building made of vertical poles, so had lots of ventilation. Benches inside, no seniors. I enjoyed tooling along the shady road, which eventually lead back to the main road. I got stuck behind the beer truck doing home deliverys, but parked in the shade until the householder came for his case. The shade was from a bush covered in tiny red blossoms, which fell to cover the road.

Back on the “highway, “I soon came to the capitol city, all 6 blocks of it. The center of town was a parklike square block and I paused there to drink water on a shady bench. It’s a feature of our modern age that while once the people in the park would have walked about meeting friends and gossiping on the benches, today everyone is glued to their cell phones, oblivious to the world around them. Having no phone I walked over to admire the central statue, a frock coated man who was pointing either to the future or to the road out of town. I took that road, and could not resist going down a road called “Kabangbang” Sure enough the pavement gave out, coral gravel slushed around my tires, and after a 10 minute uphill climb I settled for a view of the small farm inland hills. I kabanged back to the main road, caught another beachward side road, and found what was probably the original track along the seashore. Many more little houses, clustered in villages, all with elementary schools, crammed with hundreds of kids. When i saw an access to the beach I motored down and parked. A grizzled old timer, maybe as old as me, engaged me in broken conversation about fishing.lots of boats, few fish, crabs were the coming thing, were there fish boats in Canada, really I had been a fishing guide, and was it all big boats now? Being old bums we rested in the shade dreaming of the glorious past. He moved on to yap with another old fart, and I ate my leftover pizza. All this driving (4hours )had been enough and I puttered back to the capitol for a cold drink and a bakery load. As the sun sank low, I cruised home, returned my bike, and felt I’d had a good day.

Bantayan island had some of the nicest sand beaches I’d found, a slow pace, decent food, and a pleasant ambience. Nothing to do but beach walk, swim and eat. My main plan fulfilled! I stayed 3 days, and moved on well satisfied.

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abthepoet · 5 years

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All my friends are dead.

Something strange is trending in my life.

All my friends die.

At the beginning of my sophmore year in college, my roommate from freshman year died tragically in a single vehicle car crash. Her name was Allison Lynam. We called her Blake. She was sassy and funny and I wish I would've taken more time to know her.

The rain was torrential the night she died. I swear I've never seen it rain that hard ever again in my life. She drove to the store along Highway 36 in Long Branch,NJ. She had off campus housing that year and had to use the highway often. The road was terribly flooded the night she died. Im told she hydroplaned, spun, and T-boned the driver side smack into an electrical pole. Her family still decorates it.

At that very same moment, in my dorm room nearby, I was watching TV when the lights suddenly flickered and dimmed. A brown out.

I had no idea but that was my friend crashing into a pole and dying. She was 19 years old.

I know this because that accident happened near the mall. That accident killed the power to nearby businesses.

I later found out that the road she died on was so badly flooded, the police intended to close it. Why they didnt get to it in time, I'll never know. Maybe that's fate.

Then there was Jessica Blain. Jessica Blain was a firecracker of a human being. She was 100% unmistakable. One of the loudest, funniest, most loyal people and friends I have ever met. She was also an incredibly gifted singer and I was lucky enough to have Chorus with her. We, along with a small group of friends, founded a new greek organization on our campus, Alpha Xi Delta. We were paired up as Twins. (you can't have Bigs & Littles when you're just starting the Family Tree). We named the family we formed Fuck Up Your Shit. Because that's what we'd do for a friend. I miss her laugh most of all. It was loud and unapologetic. She was there for me, supportive, and encouraging without me ever having to ask. The night I officially finished college we all went out to the local gay club, The Colosseum. I got wasted, of course. But Jess was the person who when I shouted 'I have to pee' on the ride home, she stopped and knocked on strangers doors and asked to let me use their bathrooms. Nobody said yes so she held my hand while I peed on a fence instead. I remember the last time we spoke. She was at a concert with a mutual friend. We hadn't spoken much since I graduated, she was still in school.

She died in her dorm room bed on Halloween as a result of asphyxiation during an epileptic seizure. She was 20 years old. The news was broken to me that very same Halloween night as I floated along in NY on a concert cruise. The World/Inferno Friendship Society decided to host Hallowmas, their annual event, on a boat this year. Nothing like being trapped on a musical boat while you grieve. I had messaged her AIM late that night to say hi. She had an away message up. I may have sent a message to a dead person. I miss her friendship more than I realize sometimes.

That brings us to James Padden. James was a warm, snuggly bear of a guy who always tried to do the right thing and let me steal his hoodies. He insantly became my best friend in a Stepbrothers-esque manner. I met James working overnights at Wawa in Leonardo, NJ. I forget how it started now, but we were standing in front of the deli and I think I tossed him a broom or he already had one. . . I cant remember now.. . . but he just took one look at me with that mischievous little twinkle that I quickly returned and we instantly began sword fighting with our brooms. Like two little boys playing pretend and having a ball. He was sweet and silly and kind. I needed a ride, and he loved to drive. Our first winter as friends, we went out doing donuts in the snow. I barely knew him, but I felt safe. We smoked a ton of weed and had so many adventures trying to procure more. One time, we got so high driving to a Dropkick Murphys concert in NY we kept going in circles, missed almost the entire show save for the last 3-5 numbers, and had a blast. I can barely remember the night, but I remember laughing hard in that car. No one could talk to me like James. We were both insecure being chubby kids and adults, but so charismatic and grandiose that I sometimes thought we were the only two who would put up with listening to each others wild ideas and ridiculous banter. We would smoke joints and take adderall and talk about everything and anything. I miss the safety and closeness I felt with him. We were always 100% platonic, but we could nap together, I could walk into his house and jump on him in bed and wake him up. Then we would cook ourselves a breakfast feast and hit the beach. He taught me to always take the back roads. I gave him advice on the ladies. He taught me about fixing cars. I helped shave his back. He called his new pick up truck, a pick'um up truck. We could wax philosophical all damn day and not get sick of each other.

It wasnt just driving he loved, it was going fast. Like so many young white men, he had tendency to be a little reckless. The universe gave him a pass only so many times.

I'll never forget when he got his motorcycle. It was the last time I saw him. It was a bright green crotch rocket. He loved lime green. I was doing yoga in the living room when I heard this obnoxious engine rev down my street. I asked myself, who the hell is making this noise?! And it was James, grinning from ear to ear with a matching helmet on his shiny new toy.

before he left I said, 'you die on that thing, I'll bring you back to life and kill you." I remember giving him this very long and intentional hug and not knowing why I felt compelled to hang on.

When he left and hopped back on the bike, I felt compelled again and took a video of him riding away from my driveway until he was entirely out of sight.

That's my very last memory of him alive. James Padden died on Thanksgiving five days after his 25th birthday. He went out for a joyride on his bike before dinner, opened up to 100mph around a curve where he couldn't see a car pulling out around the bend in time. They called a medevac, but he died on scene. I loved James dearly and I regret drifting apart after we both left Wawa and I started a new relationship. He had stuff too, but in hindsight it never seems important.

Then there's JB. I will always remember JB for his kindness and generosity. The very first time I finally worked up the nerve to go to a poetry slam, I was alone and terrified. I had no idea what to expect. JB was the very first person to turn around, introduce himself, and welcome me. He made me feel like I belonged. Years later, when I won the title of Grand Slam Champion, he immediately offered to help coach me for national competition. Except, I didn't see the messages and left them unanswered, which I deeply regret. When I started hosting my own open mic a few years after that, JB would be one of the only people to consistently come support the show both as an audience member and participant. It was at a pizza joint and he would sometimes buy me food when I had no money. He wrote beautiful poems about his two young daughters and how much they inspired him. JB always tried to make people laugh but you could tell he carried a sadness. I did not get details, but from what I have gathered he made a choice to end his life. I wish I would have gotten closer to him and appreciated him more as a friend and person. I wonder if he felt no one cared about him and I feel like I should've let him know more.

Which brings us to Crys. Crystopher Anthony Diaz was a Scorpio with a big heart and a big personality. I met him on Myspace back in the day and started Web camming. We became friends and eventually fell into this gray area of friends, together, but not. It wasn't long before I was spending days at his place, killing hours at a time downloading music, making Wawa runs, and smoking weed with his roommate at the time, Syd. You know, the whole reason I worked at Wawa was Crys suggesting it. And Wawa is the reason I met James. Crys was unlike anyone I'd ever met. He was poetic and artistic and loved animals, especially pit bulls. He loved to draw and write and had this very out loud style that favored Earth tones. He taught me about fashion and insisted on getting dressed even if it was 1am and we were just going to Wawa because you never know who you might see. We would buy new clothes at Walmart and have photo shoots. That boy drank his weight in coffee daily. If it's one thing I'll always remember him for, it's the dancing. Dancing was a passion of his and always used to talk about wanting to form a dance crew. Eventually, we ended up living together for four years. My first apartment was with him in this piece of shit duplex rented to us by a slumlord in Keansburg,NJ. My relationship with him was always defined by our Aries/Scorpio dynamic and he never let me forget it. His birthday was October 30th, mischief night. One time, after we had moved into a new place, we decided to get revenge on our old downstairs neighbor by taking a finished lobster carcass and throwing it on his lawn. . . . . . . Keansburg had a terrible stray cat problem. 😁

I have so many memories with Crystopher. Unfortunately, towards the end of our relationship things became too tumultuous. We had too much unresolved baggage and trauma to find a healthy place emotionally together. We were so financially strained for a time we hardly ate. And then when he met his new girlfriend Laura, she introduced him to her good friend, Roxy. As in Roxcicet. aka Blues. Neither of us knew what that even was at the time. But he sure learned quick. He started using them pretty frequently as time went on, and things only got more complicated. My mental health took a nose dive. By the time I moved out our relationship was trash. I basically left. At the time, I didnt have a choice. things had gotten so bad between us, the money, the using . . . we didn't act like friends anymore.

I saw him a couple times at his new place but that was years ago. Since then, he went through a lot, including homelessness and more struggles with addiction to opiates. He reached out to me and sent me a message apologizing for everything a couple years back. I never responded. I was afraid I would let him back into my life and let the all the problems back in. I didnt trust where he was at in his life. We lost touch and stopped speaking.

His ex, who used to live with us and became my friend, messaged me and told me he died a few days ago. He was 35. I'm still waiting for information, but it may have been drug related. I'm not even sure where I'm at with how I feel. I know why we stopped talking. It was the right thing to do at the time. But he didnt deserve to die so young, having spent the last god knows how many months homeless. It's fucking with me so hard because we never resolved anything. I loved this person so fucking much and we never made peace. Of everyone I've lost, he was the closest to me. I've had a lot of people die on me but none that I lived with and shared a life with. I have more memories with him than I can handle and while I know we hadn't spoken in years and why, I still wish I would've said something. Done something. Yes, i needed healthy boundaries but he needed somebody. when is being firm too firm? If we would've helped, could it have been different? But we didn't want to help at the time, you try to be tough and draw a line. Be firm. Not let yourself be taken advantage of. But is that a defense? Did that defensiveness leave a human being who's head i used to scratch until he fell asleep out in the cold to get sicker and die?

What am I supposed to learn from all this Universe? Why do you take my friends so young and so tragically? I'm only 35, I'm too young to have this much loss.

Because these are just the major players I've lost. It doesnt include my cousin Jared, who died being reckless on a motorcycle at 21 two years ago. I was 15 when he was born. I loved that baby, he used to bite my nose. But his family lived far, so I rarely saw him growing up. Last time I saw him was at my grandfather's funeral. He didn't remember me and the nose biting.

And then there's Marcos who we used to chill with. He worked delivery for our favorite chinese food place. He was a nice kid who lived with his grandparents. We would get food, smoke weed, hang out a little. Even used to buy it off him for a while. Eventually he got into the opiates too, he even wound up being good friends with Crys and being Blue buddies. But eventually Marcos died from an opiate overdose. He was in his mid twenties.

I didnt want to include Ricky because he was more of an acquaintance for me, he was more my partners childhood friend. But god damn, in the time I knew Ricky that kid was a riot. He was loud and funny and definitely marched to the beat of his own drum. Drugs took him too.

Thanks for reading all this if you've made it this far. It's taken me about two hours to type this out on my phone. but i needed to. Thanks for coming to my TedTalk

#death #story #story prompt #grief #friends #loss #love #dying #grieving #sad #lessons #life lessons #writeblr #writing #compose

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hungergames-fanfic · 5 years

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Half Human, Half Squirrel pt.2

“Littleburg used to have another name before the games. Ms. Gullard told us last year. She says it used to be the Capitol of Texas, one of the previous states formin’ the United States of America, which we now call Panem”, I say. Ari stares at me with her mouth open.

“You ever been to actual Littleburg?”, I ask. She shakes her head. I’m not surprised, this is where all the rich folk live and everything is too expensive. “Our school is right outside of Littleburg. This is the only elementary in all of District 10”, I add. Daddy says that’s how the government keeps track of us but I don’t tell Ari this, I aint tryna explain 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵.

“that’s why it’s so big?”, Ari jumps off her seat with her hands in the air. Daddy asks her to sit down. That’s cause peacekeepers are really mean here and will stop anybody. Momma Bilmin calls it abuse of power and to never ask them for help.

Cause the peacekeepers usually pick on people who look poor, to go to Littleburg we have to dress nice. Momma Bilmin combed our hair really tight into a braid and put a cowboy hat on Ari. I think it’s to hide how skinny she really looks with her hair tamed. Momma Bilmin then turned one of my yellow dresses inside out, sew it in a couple of places and made it fit Ari. She looks so pretty and hasn’t stopped smiling since. She says I look pretty in my dress too.

Driving past our school, daddy keeps going until we reach local stores. These are old, small and a lot cheaper than those deeper in Littleburg. Passing these we start to see forests and pretty green trees down the long road. He makes a lot of sharp turns I don’t pay attention to the way Ari does. She sits on her knees, looking out the window in awe. I don’t blame her. Bloques is nothing like this, aunt Lucia calls it “one big shantytown” cause the houses are so close together there aren’t that many trees.

“Look Dora”, daddy points at some ruins.

Behind a chain link fence is a completely destroyed building scattered all over a long road. The engines and wings remind me of a plane I once saw in a book about traveling. There were so many versions of planes that I spent a whole week reading just about them. “Airport?”, I gasp excitedly. I jump off my seat and join Ari at the window. “That one!”, I point at a blue and yellow plane underneath a run down hangar. “That’s a Boeing 757, that was the first largest single isle passenger plane for a very long time. Oh!”, I point at a lost wing with a jet engine holding it off the ground, “that must of been an Airbus, those were made in a country named France” I continue.

“Dora”, daddy interrupts. He says I’m not to talk about what I’ve learned beyond Panem. “Won’t do you any good to get smart, these fields are yours, this’s what you need to focus on”, he said once.

Soon, there’s not that many trees surrounding the road, it’s stores all over the area. “Pocco’s Footwear”, “Family Donuts”, “Brie’s Electronics”, and “DDDD Insurance” are some of the names on them. Behind these are neighborhoods of houses like mine. These are made of red brick with backyards. “They’re connected to the poles, they carry electricity throughout the neighborhood”, I point at the power lines.

In no time, the roads get bigger and everyone is driving faster. “These are highways and they take us to different sections of Littleburg”, I continue. Up on one of the ramps we’re able to see a big pretty building out in the distance. “That’s Spring Hills, middle and high school but you gotta be accepted to it. Momma wants me to go there next year”, I whisper to Ari. She doesn’t say anything back but looks sad. I wish I could read her mind. Maybe I could. Maybe there’s a book on reading minds.

“Daddy will there be a book store where we’re goin’?”, I ask.

“No more books, you got enough at home”, he says.

“Momma Bilmin says there can never be enough books”, I say but nothing more when I catch his eyes on me in the rear view mirror.

Off the highway he drives into a big parking lot, surrounding it are stores scattered all around. A gas station at the entrance corner, an ice cream shop in the middle of the lot, stores connected together but with signs that say what they sell. “PBS Pharmacy”, “Make U Smile Dental”, “Petstore”, a huge one named “Bullseye” and more that are too far away to read.

“Wow, can we go there”, Ari asks pointing at the pet store. We look at daddy, he says “no”, and heads for the pharmacy. He looks tired.

“Why does he sleep on the sofa?”, Ari whispers in my ear so he won’t hear. I look at her confused. Daddy doesn’t sleep on the sofa, he sleeps with momma. If he did, was it cause of what happened last night?

I don’t notice how hot it is outside until we walk into the pharmacy. A blast of cold air hits us when the door opens making Ari scream and laugh. Even though her scream scared me a little, it’s still funny and I laugh with her. Daddy looks back at us with a smile on his face. I don’t have to read his mind to know he found it funny too.

Not wanting to lose daddy I take Ari’s hand and pull her along with me. She holds on tighter. He walks a lot faster than us so we practically jog to him. We pass a couple of isles before Ari stops running and pulls on my arm. Not wanting to lose daddy, “go, I’m gonna see where he goes and come back”, I inform.

Daddy stands in the middle of an isle, on the shelves are a lot of plain gray boxes. “Earwax Remover”, “Eye Drops”, “Antiseptic Cream”.

“Lice Remover?”, I ask scratching my head.

Daddy looks down at me with a weird look on his face. He looks mad, confused, I can’t tell and I really wish I could. In his hand are two rectangular boxes that say just that. Without a word, he pushes me and we walk out the isle in search for Ari. We find her on the floor playing with a rubber chicken, making it scream when she presses on it. She giggles every time.

“Stay here, I’m gonna go talk to the pharmacist”, daddy says just before he walks off like he remembered something he’d forgot.

The chicken continues to squeal and Ari screams in giggles. Can’t forget how loud she is when she’s having fun. To keep her company I look around the toy isle until one catches my eye. It’s not really a toy but a board game, to play you need about three people, that could be Efrain, Ari and me. The instructions say that you are given a word and then you have to act it out. Who ever guesses it wins a point. Or something along those lines. I want it and I’m too excited to wait for daddy to come back to tell him. I tell Ari to wait and run around the store looking for daddy, whom I find at the back talking to an old man.

“Good news, the vaccines you ordered will be here in a couple of days”, says the old man looking at his computer screen.

“That ain’t what I’m here for”, daddy chuckles like he’s nervous. Momma says it’s rude to interrupt people when they’re talking so I run back to Ari to see if there’s a toy she’d want too. I’m sure if we beg him just enough he’d get it for us.

When I return to the isle she’s no longer there. I run to the opposite end and spot her jumping in and out the store, playing with the automatic doors. “I leave for one second”, that’s what I wanna say when I catch her and run after her who takes it like a challenge. She spots me and screams, then proceeds to giggle away. If daddy finds out we left the store he’s not gonna let me see tonight.

Outside she runs giggling her heart out past the store fronts until she suddenly stops. I know what she’s looking at, it’s the pet store. That’s where she wanted to go when we got here. She walks inside with a look of awe in her face. I follow her in and take her hand pulling her closer to me. That’s the last time I let her out of my sight.

“Ari, you can’t do that”, I say out of breath.

“Ari? Ari-elle. It’s like you wanna say my name but some stop you”, she swings our hands. I never noticed how short she is. With the hat she looks a little taller but is still obviously short. I put my hand close to her forehead and measure her. She reaches my chin in height. She giggles to this but says nothing.

“You don’t like it? Been callin’ you that in my head for a minute. Not sure when I started”, I admit.

She giggles and gives me a hug, “no one’s ever given me a nickname before. Well momma calls me chipmunk”, “I knew it!”, I scream in her face. She jumps and opens her eyes wide. I ain’t tryna admit I thought of her as a squirrel, “I knew they called you some cute, it suits you cause you’re... cute too” my lie suddenly feels like it turns true and I freeze hoping she doesn’t say anything.

“You think I’m cute?”, Ari asks. She bats her eyes and smiles but it looks made up, like she’s happy and sad at the same time. She’s turning pink. Still holding on to my hand, she barely pulls on me but I still follow.

The isle she walks to is like a bookshelf for fish tanks. Colorful fish swim around in groups with pretty rocks and castles in their tanks. In one there are about a hundred swimming the same direction until Ari knocks the tank making them swim away. The fun is back on her face. In no time we’ve roamed around the entire pet store. From looking at individual colorful fish swim around in a small container to puppies play fighting with each other in a big glass case. We even get to pet a bunny when Ari opens up a cage that hasn’t been locked. The bunny falls asleep while I pet it. I want it, I want all of the animals in here. Daddy would say we’ve got enough animals at home though. Daddy? I gasp catching Ari’s attention.

“Ari, we gotta go”, I say pulling on her hand. By now I’m sure daddy’s stopped talking to the old man and is waiting for us with an unpleased look on his face. To be in trouble scares me and I’m almost too scared to go back.

Hiding my feelings we return to the pharmacy and walk to the back but daddy ain’t there. Quickly I call out for him and run around the entire place. Ari’s close behind still holding on to my hand really tight. I go back to the toy isle, he’s not here. I go back to the isle he got the lice remover from, he’s not here. I walk up to the counter and ask the cashier, she doesn’t look older than Eduardo, she pops her pink bubble gum and leans closer to us, looking at us back and forth.

“Y’all lookin’ for the tall cowboy with the pretty braids?”, she asks twirling her hair with her finger.

“That’s my daddy, you seen him?”, I ask practically screaming at her. She sneers.

“Yeah, I seen him”, she says. I open my eyes wide and extend my arms in confusion. Is she gonna tell me where he went or not?

“He left lookin’ for y’all, almost walked out of here without payin’”, she smiles smacking her gum. “Too fine to pass the opportunity though, called him back“, she giggles still playing with her hair, “went headed to Bullseye”, she says pointing to said direction with her pinky finger.

“We need to make sure he hasn’t left”, I say to Ari running back to momma’s car. Here it looks like he came back and put his bags on the front seat before going out to find us. This makes me nervous. If daddy is actively searching then that means he’s gonna kill me when he finds us. I ain’t tryna look like a wuss though, so I keep my worries to myself.

“Look”, Ari says pointing at the ice cream shop in the middle of the parking lot. Next to it is a white peacekeeper vehicle. “Wanna ask’em?”, she pulls on my arm.

“No”, I say thinking about what momma Bilmin would do. “We should ask inside”, I add.

We actively ignore the peacekeepers, like they aren’t there but a big boring rock in their place. They notice us though and maybe there’s a look of worry in my face, that would explain why Ari hasn’t acted up in a minute. That or she’s just as scared of daddy.

“Aye kid, what’s up?”, one says. They’re both old but not too old, maybe younger than daddy. They wear their peacekeeper uniforms but have taken their helmets off to enjoy their ice cream.

“Y’all seen Mr. Wyetka? Got a cowboy hat on, really tall, really 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 tall, like this”, Ari says on her tip toes tryna draw a line way above her head. The peacekeepers laugh.

“Even the children?”, one says. “Y’all seen Mr. Doodah”, the other one mocks in a silly version of our accent. “Hey kid, look around, everyone’s got a damn cowboy hat on”, this makes the other one laugh and point at Ari and then his head, “It’s like everyone here is born with one”, he says making themselves laugh even harder. I hope they drop their ice cream.

“C’mon”, Ari says pulling me into the ice cream shop. “Hey mister, you seen-“, she’s interrupted by the man behind the counter.

“Hey kid ya daddy was just in here lookin’ for y’all”, he says.

“You seen where he went?”, Ari asks with excitement. The man shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head. This scares me more. What if daddy gives up and goes home without us? What if he finds us and is super angry? How mad is he gonna be at me?

Back outside I can’t hold it anymore and start to cry so much my body moves like I got hiccups every time I gasp. Ari holds my hand the entire time. She hugs, says she’s sorry and begs me to stop crying. I want to but I can’t stop. I’ve lost daddy and he’s out here looking for me too. He’s gonna be so mad when he finds us. “If he ever does”, I think making myself feel worse.

“Maybe we should try Bullseye”, Ari says.

“That’s a really big store, we’d have better luck waitin’ for him outside”, I say through the sobs. Ari agrees and hugs me again, tells me that we’ll find him and when we do she’ll take the blame. I don’t want her to, even if it was her fault I wouldn’t want daddy to be mad at her.

Holding hands, we walk past store fronts asking for daddy but so far no one’s seen him. Back in the petstore the man behind the counter points to the Bullseye store direction. We automatically head there and plan to wait for him outside. Ari calls the plan a smart one.

“Excuse me mister”, Ari approaches a man sitting outside the store. He’s short, bald, and greasy. He sits in front of a table and looks to be selling watches. He doesn’t look too happy to be talked to.

“Go away!”, he snaps, “If you aint buyin’ get the fuck outta here, scarin’ away my customers”, he waves us off like flies.

Ari looks around, inside the store where people are walking in and out ignoring us and him. She turns to the parking lot where cars drive past not noticing us either. She looks at me and then at him, “what customers?”.

“I said get the fuck outta here you freaky little shit before I drop kick you to the moo-, hey-llo there, you tryna buy a nice watch? One for the wife? Present for momma? Friend?”, he goes from screaming his head off to suddenly being really nice.

Ari and me look at each other wide eyed. Slowly we turn around to see the tall man staring at the short bald man selling watches. Daddy stands outside the doors giving him a cold look. His arms folded. There’s no emotion on his face and he doesn’t say anything. Not to him, not to me. My heart beats fast and for a second I think he’s gonna hit me. He puts his hand on my back and pushes Ari and me towards the direction of the car. None of us says anything on our way and I’m trying my best not to cry anymore.

I look at Ari who looks very sad too. She stares at the floor and barely holds my hand. I know why she’s upset. That man back there called her a freak, she says everyone at school calls her that and she doesn’t like it. I tighten my grip on hers and it catches her attention. “You’re not a freak, Ari you’re just different”, I say leaving myself thoughtful, “in a way.. I’m different too”, I say. She gives me a thin lipped smile that look sadder than before. She wants to cry but doesn’t, instead she hugs me while we walk.

“Hey, y’all want some ice cream?”, daddy asks.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”, Ari screams jumping up and down. She smiles wide and dances in place. This makes me laugh and I look at daddy. He looks worn out but he’s not mad. He gives me a smile and pulls me close giving me a tight hug. I hope this means I’m not in trouble.

#isadora wyetka #age 10 #arielle #polomir wyetka

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acehotel · 7 years

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INTERVIEW: Justin Strauss with Lenny Kaye

Lenny Kaye is a gentle force. One of the most influential people in rock history, he's helped usher punk in as guitarist of Patti Smith Group. He’s been called a punk pioneer and The Godfather of Garage Rock. He’s our heroes’ hero, and he’s an eloquent and brilliant wordsmith, humble and with an intuitive wisdom that manifests in conversation that reads like poetry. Here, Ace friend and DJ legend Justin Strauss sits down with Lenny Kaye to wax poetic on his current projects, the necessity of a future sound and the mystery of the Magic Mushrooms. Follow closely.

Justin Strauss: Lenny Kaye, where did you grow up?

Lenny Kaye: I grew up in New York City. I'm a native-born New Yorker. I was born up by the George Washington Bridge and when I was a year old my folks moved to Jamaica, Queens. When I was eight or nine, we moved to Brooklyn, Flatbush, and then out to New Jersey. Then back to New York as soon as I could.

Justin: When did you realize that music would be something you'd be doing, something you'd want to do for your the rest of your life?

Lenny Kaye: I still don't realize it. It's a miracle and a blessing every day — I wake up and realize that my job is to think about music, play music, find a record in my collection and participate in the wonderful world of music. I didn't really decide. It’s the thing that happens as you get drawn closer to something. I always loved to collect records as a teenager and I had, what would later be known as a garageband, in the 60s. And I just kept being lucky.

Justin: Was there an artist or a record that you heard that made you say, "Oh, wow"?

And I haven’t really looked back since.

Justin: I remember watching The Beatles when I was seven...and that was it. I just knew it.

Lenny Kaye: It was a great role model. In New York, there weren't a lot of bands because it was mostly singing groups. You couldn’t just look and see rockabilly on the corner. It was more like harmony groups. But to see a band playing, especially a band like The Beatles which was really a band of equals — it was really one for all and all for one — it was inspirational and about nine months later (I guess the actual gestation period of a baby) I had my first gig with The Vandals.

Justin: Did that band ever record?

Lenny Kaye: No, no. It was purely a party band. Four sets a night, played for a fraternity. Everything from “What’d I Say” with all the risque lyrics like, "see that girl from Trenton State, that's where they teach you to masturbate. What'd I say?" And covering some of the English Invasion and Four Tops. I don't like to think of it, but when I went to college I actually learned my future.

Justin: You went to Rutgers?

Lenny Kaye: Yeah, Rutgers. I was an American History major so I learned cultural history and that's always helped me in my writing. And I was playing in bands. Those are the two poles in which I function these days.

Justin: Did New York City play a role in your rock n roll foundations?

Lenny Kaye: Yes, it was the capital of the universe, especially at that moment in time. There also was a real explosion of band interest then. At the beginning of the 70s there was no local rock bands at all. It's impossible to imagine this, but really it's true. And until the New York Dolls poster went up on the wall at Village Oldies record store where I was working, there was no local band scene at all. And slowly, slowly it grew. Then out of the New York Dolls and the associated groups like The Harlots of 42nd Street and Street Punk, it took root at CBGB, which became an actual breeding ground for New York rock, and a great moment in time.

Justin: Were you going to clubs and seeing bands in the late 60s before the New York Dolls?

Lenny Kaye: I did.

Justin: The Young Rascals ?

Lenny Kaye: I did see the Rascals at The Telephone Booth on the East Side. They were one of the greatest bands I’d ever seen. I actually placed bass behind a folk singer named John Braden during the summer of 69. We were the house folk singers at Ungano’s, we opened for Junior Wells and the Amboy Dukes. One week the MC5...that's kind of amazing to think of. But it wasn't really. I liked to go see them and, at that time, I just about started writing about rock n roll which gave me another entrance into seeing bands and getting involved in the inner workings of music.

Justin: Did you go to the Electric Circus club on St. Marks Place?

Lenny Kaye: I did. I saw Tim Buckley open The Mothers of Invention at the Electric Circus. I remember that one. I mean, a lot of it I was still driving in from New Jersey, so it wasn't as available as it might have been a year later. And then when I moved to New York, the Fillmore had opened and you could go down there every week and see the most amazing triple bills ever.

Justin: What did you start writing about when you started writing about rock n roll? Where were you writing about it at school?

Lenny Kaye: I did a little bit for the school paper at Rutgers, just trying it out, pretending I was writing for Crawdaddy. But when I got here, my main gig before I knew anybody was at Jazz & Pop — a friend of mine was the boyfriend of the editor there, Patricia Kennealy (later to marry Jim Morrison in a Wicca ceremony. So now she's Patricia Morrison). But yeah, I did my first record reviews there. I think my very first review was a review of The Small Faces’ Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, a great record still.

I'd get free records and maybe $25 and kind of started to see that this would be great. I wrote a review of The Stooges’ first album for Boston's Fusion Magazine and Danny Fields (who signed the Stooges to Elektra Records) called me up out of the blue and he said, "Who are you? Why don't you come to a press party," and literally discovered me — like he has so many others. I went to the press party and I met the circle of rock writers that were in New York at the time.

Justin: Who were the big rock writers of the time in New York?

Lenny Kaye: I would say Richard Meltzer. Lester Bangs was more west coast. It was mostly Richard Meltzer. I was kind of in the wake of Richard, Sandy Pearlman, John Landau and Paul Williams, all the Crawdaddy writers. I was a little bit in the second generation, even though it seems like splitting hairs now.

Justin: I might have seen those reviews as a kid. I don't think you can stress how important magazines were to someone who was interested in music because this was the time of no internet, nothing. And that was the lifeline.

Lenny Kaye: That's how you found out about stuff.

Justin: That and reading liner notes on albums was how I learned everything I know, basically, about music.

Lenny Kaye: You had to dig for it, which is good. By digging for it I remember, especially being a record collector, you had no information on who was in bands. When I put together the first Nuggets album I really had to do a lot of research into who's who. I just couldn't click on something and find out the personnel and where they're from. And I still don't know who The Magic Mushrooms are.

Justin: That was when I first became aware of you, when I got a copy of Nuggets album. And then I got a record by The Sidewinders that you produced. I was obviously a record freak, too.

Lenny Kaye: Power Pop, yeah. It’s all making sense now.

Justin: The Nuggets record didn't leave my turntable when I was a teenager for years and just turned me onto so much music. I guess it opened up a Pandora's box of music.

Lenny Kaye: A Pandora's record 45s box.

Justin: The Nuggets things just went on and on. Many compilations came after.

Lenny Kaye: That's pretty much why I get all the credit for it. But I didn't discover that music, and for me, I think one of the things that made Nuggets so popular is that it's not just about garage rock. It's about great records that are garage rock. Any of those records are just superb pieces of three minute great songs, or six minute, or whatever they were. They were very communicable. It wasn't like you hear something and you have to work to get into it. These were songs, some of them were actually semi-hits. But I never really thought Nuggets would come out.

Justin: What was the story behind it?

Lenny Kaye: I was hired by Elektra Records. Jac Holzman, the president, liked rock critics because he had an intelligent label and he liked when people wrote intelligently about them. He came upon me and he asked if I wanted to be an independent talent scout for Elektra. And I said, "Oh, sure." But I never really found any bands that they appreciated. I know I tried to get them to keep The Stooges on the label for their third album, which didn't happen. But one of the ideas he had was an album called Nuggets which would get the songs off of albums that had one good song. My theory about it is this: he got one of the first cassette players and wanted to clean out his record collection.

But he gave it to me, and in my willfulness and hubris, I got together all my favorite records and presented him with a list and kept asking for the moon. “A double album, let's do a double album” and “You know, I don't like that cover. Let's get this cover.” And the best thing about Jac — he had that mark of being a great record company president — once he trusted you, he’d want to see where you would go with your instincts. He wasn't trying to say, "Well, you know, we need more hits or we need less hits." He just went with it, which actually in retrospect seems unbelievable.

Justin: In this day and age.

Lenny Kaye: I can't believe I got away with it. And I only lasted at Elektra for about three months and I'd given him this list over that time. About six months after I left the company they called me up and they said, "We have all the rights to X number of songs. What are we doing with them?" And I thought, "Wow. This project is still going on. I can't believe it." So it got completed and now it's 45 years later and it's still buying me beers. I'll go to some weird city in the middle of Europe and there'll be a Nuggets fan there who’ll say, "You changed my life," and I say, "No. Nuggets changed my life, really."

Lenny and Patti Smith at CBGB

Justin: Did they get all the songs you wanted?

Lenny Kaye: Oh, no. Some of them have shown up on later projects. Like when Rhino did the box set, they had the list of what I wanted for the second volume...had there been a second volume. But I always wanted “96 Tears” by Question Mark and the Mysterians on it. I thought that should be there. I wanted “I See the Light” by The Five Americans. I couldn't get the rights to that. I couldn't get the rights to “Talk Talk” by The Music Machine, even though I still think it's on there for some reason, on my original one. A lot of weird records. And of course as soon as I did it, people started flooding me with their suggestions. And their suggestions, Blackout of Gretely by the Gonn, I mean that’s an insane, crazy record. Question of Temperature by The Balloon Farm. The Sonics from Washington, great, great records. I knew that was going to happen because as soon as you open a genre, people start digging.

I noticed this with the new series of albums that have just started coming out called Brown Acid. Songs from the American Come Down which gathers early 70s proto prog metal, these weird little singles by groups in the midwest. They all sound somewhat like Grand Funk, somewhat like Deep Purple and somewhat like Black Sabbath, but they were all crazy. And I realized this is a genre I never conceived of. It's what Detroit would have gone to if the MC5 could have stayed together. There's something really elemental about it, and now there's five volumes of it.

Justin: I think the internet has changed the whole way of people finding records.

Lenny Kaye: But a lot of them you can't find and that's what makes people go out and dig. I'm sure you're on Instagram. There's so many crazy vinyl people showing off albums, showing off their equipment, getting out there and digging and keeping everybody in communication.

Justin: I mean, it's a great thing. As great as it was to be digging in a dirty record store and finding that record that no one ever heard of. Nowadays you just type it in and you can pretty much find a lot of stuff.

Lenny Kaye: And you can drunk bid on it on eBay. “Oh, I don't know, what's another few dollars?” And then you wake up the next morning —

Justin: “What did I do?!”

Lenny Kaye: “Oh, my God!”

Justin: How did you go from writing to being in the studio with the Sidewinders and start producing things?

Lenny Kaye: Well, I think when you write about stuff it's kind of like Jean Luc Godard or Francois Truffaut. You want to start trying your hand at it, especially if you have a hand to try it. I always thought about being a producer. You need the opportunities, of course, and my friend Richard Robinson was working at RCA at the time and we found the Sidewinders and gave it a shot. It seems like a natural progression from writing and analyzing and looking at bands from the inside out to seeing what makes them tick and trying to help them make their record by being essentially their best friend in the studio. Sometimes the better you are as a producer, the less people know you're there, which is a tricky balance wheel. But I kind of like it. I always think producing is where the right and left halves of my brain come together. I have the analytical writerly side and then I have the musicianly side, which is pretty much all intuition. I don't read music, I hear it deep in my head and try to feel it. And I think producing is probably the combination of those two worlds.

Justin: I mean, there's producers like Phil Spector.

Lenny Kaye: Who is their artist.

Justin: Right.

Lenny Kaye: I mean, they're the artist and the group is there to serve them. As a producer, I was very lucky that I wasn't the artist. I worked with really quirky, strange, idiosyncratic artists, Suzanne Vega, Soul Asylum, Allen Ginsberg, Pussy Riot. I got to work with people where you're just trying to make sure they can make the best record they can. And whatever their next record will be, you find the groundwork within this record to give them a lot of expansive power, enhance the vibe, let the creativity flow.

Justin: More of the George Martin approach, or Rick Rubin.

Lenny Kaye: Absolutely.

Lenny Kaye: Try to find the right settings and give advice. I always think that if I make a suggestion and we're in the same ballpark, and you don't like it, well you're telling me who you want to be. If you don't like anything I say, I'm going to let you do it yourself, or find someone who's more empathetic.

Justin: When you were doing the first one, did you know your way around the studio?

Lenny Kaye: With the Sidewinders?

Justin: Yeah.

Lenny Kaye: No. I still wish I would have turned the dial on the reverb a little bit more. I was pretty conservative.

Justin: You were working with an engineer, I assume.

Lenny Kaye: Working with an engineer who says, the first time I walk in, "What kind of mic do you want me to put on the bass drum?" I still don't know, to be honest. But that's why I like engineers.

I think when you listen to a record you each have your role. When an engineer listens to a record, he looks at the frequency responses. I don't do that. I listen to the feel, parts and performance, that's my thing. I once went to Greg Calbi, the great mastering engineer at Sterling, with two mixes of a song that I had been going back and forth on. One of the snares was a little louder, I just didn't know which one. So I said, "Greg, what do you think?" And he says, "You know, I don't listen to records like that. I can tell you whether it needs a rounder bottom, but I can't tell you which is the more effective mix as a listening experience." He said, "That's your job." And I thought, "Hmm."

Justin: I've produced stuff too, and people ask me to describe what a record producer does. In some instances I liken it to a director of a movie who sees the big picture and works with other people who are great at their jobs. I mean, some people do it all themselves. Some work with a great team of engineers, editors, programmers or whatever. But the vision at the end of the day is between the artist and the producer.

Lenny Kaye: I think it's like being a mirror. The artist looks at you, at your sense of aesthetic taste, and they want to know if their hair is in the right place. “How do I look? Does that hat make me look better or not? How about if we try this?” It’s the old, "What do you think?"

Sometimes people want you to tell them exactly what you think, if you can be honest. And sometimes a producer has to be a cheerleader. “You're great! Aaaand I think this next take could be a hair greater.”

Justin: It's part psychiatrist.

Lenny Kaye: Oh, yeah.

Justin: There's a lot of psychology involved.

Lenny Kaye: It's a psychodrama in there. Especially younger artists or artists that are making their first or second records. There's a lot of paranoia. I've had so many discussions, "Let's over-dub this part or let's double this." "Well, I don't know if that's taking away from the artistic integrity." But my feeling is that a record is an illusion. It's not live. Groups always come to me and say, "We want to record live and take the best track," and I say, "Well, you can do that and you can sit there and choose the best track. I'm not exactly sure what I would do." Because record making is not like playing something in a club to a number of people who are freaking out in front of you and you're on 10, you got the atmosphere, you got the inebriations. That's not a record you're probably listening to at home far removed from a live show. So you have to create the illusion of live performance.

Justin: I remember when my band Milk 'N' Cookies got signed to Island Records and we were put in the studio with Muff Winwood to produce it, and we were playing him all these records we loved, all the glam records, which had a very specific sound. He kind of took a different approach. As much as we would push him, he kept it more organic and more straightforward. And at the end of the day — although at the time we were very upset about it — he was right, because it's lasted. It wasn't a gimmicky sound or something that was a fad.

Lenny Kaye: Exactly.

Justin: It was something that people, kids today still relate to. I think it was a testament to his no-nonsense approach.

Lenny Kaye: You guys are one of the founders of power pop.

Justin: Sometimes you need to listen to people.

Lenny Kaye: And sometimes you don't need to listen to people.

Justin: We did push him in, "Listen to these drums," or whatever. There were little battles.

Lenny Kaye: Sometimes even in conflict, when people have different ideas, like John Cale...we thought when he came in to do Horses he’d be all about the art and the spontaneity. And no, he was into his Beach Boys period. He wanted to layer this and layer that, and we wanted to go out there and look for improvised, live moments. And betwixt and between, that record got battered out. You're all in the same band. A producer joins the band for that album and he can be the frustrating bass player or he can be the genius orchestrator. Everything is different now.

Justin: Are you still producing?

Lenny Kaye: Very little. Actually I did a beautiful record this year that took me quite a long time to do with Jessi Colter, Waylon Jennings’ wife. It's called The Psalms, and it is what it is. When I was working on Waylon's book, I came into the living room one day and there's Jessi — who is a very spiritual person — with the bible open in front of her, singing away. Just putting her hands on chords, letting the melodies flow where they go. And I just thought, "Man, this is about as beautiful and illuminating experience as I've ever had." And so one day after Waylon's passing I was speaking to her and I said, "You know, Jess, there's a record I would like to hear, which is you singing the Psalms like I did in your living room." She came to New York, just about 10 years ago, and I got a studio with a nice piano and met her up there. We had no rehearsal, no discussion. We chose a psalm, set the bible on the piano, and she would sing it. One take, two takes, sometimes I went out there and we played together. It was very spontaneous. And at the end of the two afternoons, I had seven in the can.

Justin: Wow.

Lenny Kaye: She came a year later and we did another five just like that, no rehearsal or anything, and I had the other five, including the hit psalm, the 23rd. And over the years I tried to differentiate them a little bit texturally. I got Al Kooper to play on a few tracks, Bulgarian singers on another one, Jenni Muldaur, and Bobby Previte drums on a few. I tried to retain the intimacy, but make them a little… In one track she's just warming up, singing, and she plays four minutes of this beautiful thing. I was able to get a double bass on there and a harp. It's just a beautiful, beautiful record and SONY Legacy put it out this past March.

Justin: Congrats.

Lenny Kaye: I got to say, it's one of the most beautiful records I've ever been part of.

Justin: Now I need to listen.

Lenny Kaye: Oh, you really got to, especially during the holidays. Her voice is beautiful. Her interpretations on these sacred poems are so great. I tried to keep it non-denominational, to kind of take away the church part and move it toward the light. And yeah, it’s just a gorgeous record.

So I guess I still produce.

Justin: Good. You mentioned the New York Dolls. For Milk 'N' Cookies, that was the band that made it seem like, "Hey, we can do this."

Lenny Kaye: Totally.

Justin: It always seemed like The Beatles or Rolling Stones was too far away. It didn't seem like it could be possible. When I stumbled upon the New York Dolls my life changed.

Lenny Kaye: Oh my god. That must have been a great moment.

Justin: It was quite something. You were involved with this magazine called Rock Scene. It was like the bible of that whole scene.

Lenny Kaye: I wouldn't call it the bible. I would call it the high school yearbook.

Justin: High school yearbook or bible, it was informing everyone about all the New York bands. We were lucky we lived in New York, but for some kid out in OshKosh or wherever, it was a way for him to find out about things he could never have dreamed.

Lenny Kaye: To see what life was like backstage at CBGB. Now when you look at an issue it's got to seem really weird and historical. I wish we had a Rock Scene for when the bebop scene happened over at 52nd Street. Like Bebop Scene. I would have been great to see Charlie Parker in a rare pensive moment.

Justin: It was very, very candid shots. You did it with Lisa Robinson.

Lenny Kaye: And Richard Robinson.

Justin: What was the inspiration behind it?

Lenny Kaye: It really stemmed from Richard. When I first met him in the 60s, he was doing five magazines. He was doing Hit Parader or he was doing Go Magazine. He was a real media generator and got me and Lisa into that thing where “yeah, we're newspapery. Here's what's happening, let's have some fun with it.” Richard had the contact with this guy who had worked at Hit Parader and spun off and did Rock Scene. And Rock Scene lasted six, seven years. It's amazing. I don't think it ever broke into the black.

Lenny Kaye outside CBGB

Justin: I think there's 50-something issues.

Lenny Kaye: Yeah, it's quite amazing.

Justin: Bowie was on the first one, if I remember.

Lenny Kaye: Yes, that's right. Good memory.

Justin: No one put the New York Dolls on a magazine before you guys did. Do you remember seeing The Dolls the first time?

Lenny Kaye: Yes, I remember going over to the Mercer Street Art Center out of curiosity and seeing The Dolls, just thinking they were so great, and dancing to “Bad Girl” with Miss Elvis and Miss Ohio, wherever they are today. It was a great scene. There couldn't have been more than 20 people there to start, but it grew exponentially because there was a need for it. And then once that grew, there also came places to play, even though there was a real shortage until Max's restarted and CBGB started. I remember Patti Smith and I mostly opened up for weird folk singers in folk clubs on West 4th Street when we could get a gig because we never could break into the Club 82.

Justin: I remember seeing The Dolls at Club 82 and Wayne County and The Fast.

Lenny Kaye: Just Another Pretty Face, I remember them. They were great.

Justin: I saw Iggy and the Stooges do Raw Power at Max’s Kansas City. Mind blowing.

Lenny Kaye: Oh, yes. I remember that's the one where he cut himself.

Justin: That was a life changing experience, being three feet away from that.

Lenny Kaye: It was very small scale.

Justin: Everything was very intimate.

Lenny Kaye: It didn't seem so, but it was very private and I think that allowed all the New York bands enough space and time to get to where they wanted to. I must have seen Television dozens of times and it took them a year or two to play in-tune. Of course, this was before tuners, and I suffered from that, too.

Justin: Was this before CBGB?

Lenny Kaye: No, it was kind of contiguous. I think it was kind of end of 74, so CBGB was definitely happening.

Justin: And Television, were they the first band to play CBGB?

Lenny Kaye: I've heard that Eric Emerson was first. It's a little bit shrouded. Everybody claims to be first, but certainly by spring of 74 it was underway because I remember going with Patti. We went to see the movie Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones up at the Ziegfeld Theater uptown. After that we went down in a cab to CBGB because she had been invited by Richard Hell, and I'd been invited by Richard Lloyd who I knew under the name of Crossfire (that was the name of his earlier band). We went to CBGB and hey, saw the beginnings of what would become the central gathering spot of the New York scene.

Debbie Harry in The Stilettos, 1974.

Justin: And Television was playing that night?

Lenny Kaye: Television was there that night. If there was a Sunday night, they just would play. I think before The Ramones ever played there. Maybe Blondie had played there under the name The Stilettos. It's so nice. It's nice when these little loci become a touchstone for the universe. It's hard to believe, and when they're growing you don't really think of it because it's just your local scene. It's just a place you go to. I spent more time at CBGB out on the sidewalk chatting someone up than watching The Ramones inside.

David Johansen, Lenny Kaye, Dee Dee Ramone & Andy Paley, NYC 1977. Photo by Bob Gruen.

Justin: I remember going to see The Ramones. And when did you and Patti Smith decide to play there as a band?

Lenny Kaye: It just happened organically, we never set out to be a band. What we were doing was out of the mainstream. We didn’t have a drummer.

Justin: Were you already doing things pre-CBGB?

Lenny Kaye: Yeah. We did our little poetry reading in February 71, and then we didn't do anything again because it was meant to be a one night happening. But then we started again. She had a piano player. She was singing standards and she'd do her poems, and I'd come up and play something like “Annie Had A Baby.”

Justin: Was she playing with keyboardist Richard Sohl then?

Lenny Kaye: It was before Richard. There was a guy named Bill and then we had a different piano player every gig until we got Richard. Richard came in March of 74 and we started really cohering as a band. Originally, I would just come up and do things and then she'd do something with the piano, and pretty soon I'd be on the stage the whole time and she'd do a poem. Then we'd segue into a song like “Gloria.” You know, a little poem thing and then we'd go into “Gloria” or “Land of 1,000 Dances.” We improvised and we didn't know quite what we were having. At each show we could feel, "Okay. We've gone as far as we can as this weird little trio. We need another bass/guitar player." And then we got Ivan Kral. When we went to CBGB to play with Television for seven straight weeks, we were just about a band. And that's where we met JD. He became our drummer and the rest is history.

Justin: How did that go from playing in CBGB to getting signed by Clive Davis to Arista Records?

Lenny Kaye: Well, he came down to see us because Patti is an incredible performer and we generated a lot of interest.

Justin: Seymour Stein of Sire Records was signing Ramones, Dead Boys, Talking Heads.

Lenny Kaye: I think this was before. It was really just us and Television as I remember. If we could play for seven straight weeks, four nights a week, it probably meant there were no other bands there.

Justin: Two shows a night?

Lenny Kaye: Two shows a night, and we would switch off with Television Thursday through Sunday. You know, it was pretty great, and then the ball started rolling and it became a scene. I mean, the English Papers and NME and Melody Maker would write about it, and all of a sudden people started coming down to check it out. And Clive came down. I think he might have even known Patti from Blue Oyster Cult...

He signed us and allowed us to do whatever it is we did, which was probably the point. I think we got an offer from him and an offer from ESP-Disk. Sometimes I regret not being on the same label as Albert Ayler or Sun Ra.

Justin: Is she still recording for Arista?

Lenny Kaye: She records for Columbia now. We shifted to Columbia. I don't even know if Arista still exists. I think we're on Columbia at least for the last three records.

Justin: The first album was 1975?

Lenny Kaye: 1975, amazing. Just about this time of year we were on tour with it for the first time.

Justin: And never could you have imagined that you would still be doing it?

Lenny Kaye: I can't imagine that still, you know? It really is remarkable that the work you do keeps on circling around and paying you back. I know a lot of it has to do with the fact that we have a very unique leader. Patti is so frontal on so many different levels, artistically, different mediums, and is such an incredible performer. A lot of that has to do with our longevity and the fact that we're not really pigeonholed as any kind of music. We're associated with the punk scene, but a lot of our stuff has as little to do with punk rock as anything else. We're as much a progressive jazz band sometimes. We have a lot of long songs and a lot of involved poetry. We're all over the place, and sometimes that's good if you can't be classified. I mean, lord I love The Ramones, but they had a very specific one-note sound. I think Patti's always been hard to categorize. It's kept us at a good level in the musical world. We're not playing arenas and we're not playing dumps. We're playing nice theaters, and that's always a good thing.

Justin: Do you think something like that is ever possible again in New York? A scene where something came out of nothing?

Lenny Kaye: Well, I don't know what's happening out in the wiles of Bushwick. I'm sure somewhere there's a collection of people who are doing what they need to do in this universe.

Justin: Because people are always saying, "Oh, New York's dead. It's not like it was.”

Lenny Kaye: Well, it's not like it was, but it wasn't like it was when it was. I mean, I got sheet music from the 1930s that says, "New York's not the place it used to be," bemoaning the fact that the lobster place in Times Square or Rector's isn't there. I mean, things change and I'm all for change.

I don't even think it should be “New York.” In my book I traced the evolution of these scenes, as I call it, from Memphis in 54 through New Orleans in 57, Philly in 59, Liverpool 62, San Francisco 67, New York 75 and on and on. It's interesting to see them all gather the energy. Whether this is possible in the age of instant communication, that's a question I think the 21st century will answer. I know one of my favorite places that I desired to go to see bands was San Francisco in 67. I had that Fillmore poster with The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service on my wall, waiting to get in the car so I could actually hear what they sounded like. I had no idea. I had no idea what Big Brother and The Holding Company sounded like, and I couldn't hit a button and just go.

Justin: There weren't records out?

Lenny Kaye: They hadn't put records out but you were hearing about them in the "underground press" and you just want to hear them.

Justin: Did you take that drive?

Lenny Kaye: Yeah. 1967, me and my buddy Larry got in a 56 Ford with $80 and just kept going. And we arrived there and I got to see The Grateful Dead in Golden Gate Park, Big Brother at The Avalon. They're just amazing.

The desire to be where it's at. Like how a lot of people migrated to New York when they heard about CBGB. Whether they need to do that now, I don't know. I haven't heard of a place that everybody wants to move to all of a sudden. Maybe the internet has made it too easy to get your message to somebody. You form a band and two days later your video is on YouTube, everybody could see it. That's a different path to people's consciousness. I don't know. All I know is that I really like when geography, time and space meet.

Justin: Milk 'N' Cookies was living in LA around 76, 77 when the whole UK punk thing exploded and the Sex Pistols played their last show at Winterland. And we all got in a van from LA with a couple of the Go-Gos and Brett Smiley and Legs McNeil and went to see the Sex Pistols for what turned out to be their last show ever.

Lenny Kaye: That's amazing.

Lenny Kaye: Maybe it's happening somewhere that I don't know about, and more power to it. I'm sure all those bebop jazz guys from 52nd street, when they heard about CBGB, would think, "What are those kids doing? They don't know a Flatted 5th if it fell on them." I like musical progression, and I think we're now getting distant enough from rock n roll that it’s almost like rock n roll is enclosed in its own parentheses. And I'm sure people will be playing guitars from now until kingdom come. But at this point, just about everything that you can do with a guitar has been done and maybe it's time to make room for the next type of music to take over.

Justin: Have you seen any newer bands that you think are exciting or inspiring?

Lenny Kaye: I actually just go see my friends play, I got to say. I'm going back home to continue writing. I'm trying not to do anything because I have a really bad deadline that I've blown already. Just happy to get this interview done with you.

Justin: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Lenny Kaye: Just enjoy it because we've been friends for way too long.

Justin: You were high on my list when I started this thing, and I know between touring and my DJ stuff it's been hard to make it happen.

Lenny Kaye: There's no wine before its time.

Justin: But it's great to sit down with you because, like I said, when Nuggets came out it was one of the records that was so inspiring to me, just finding all those songs. I knew some of them of course...

Lenny Kaye: Some of them were weird. You know what, we love music. I still find myself buying records and adding to my increasing piles.

Justin: You still dig for vinyl?

Lenny Kaye: Yeah! I just got a vintage Marantz receiver so I've been getting my records out and enjoying how great they sound. I just love music. It's really fun to be able to justify being immersed in it. I feel very whole in my consciousness, which is a great blessing in my golden years.

Justin: It's a beautiful thing when you get to do something you love.

Lenny Kaye: And you're able to keep doing it. I'll do anything within the world of it. If I'm not playing and I get a chance to take my records to DJ somewhere — actually enjoy listening to them as well as seeing people get wild out there — that's a great thing. It's great to play the music. It's great to write about it. It's great to look for whatever that next record is going to be. And we don't know yet, do we?

#yes #interview #justin strauss #lenny kaye #patti smith #cbgb #nyc #punk #music #guitar #rock scene #just talk #justtalk #new york #just/talk

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acidcorrodes · 7 years

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Update:

It’s been two weeks. Here’s what I see:

There’s still no electricity pretty much anywhere. Some hospitals have it, but very few of them, and most all in the east, in the metro area. Some areas of the west have it too, but by no means a significant portion of the population. People are dying because there’s no electricity to run medical machinery with. Most hospitals that are working are using diesel-powered generators that were never meant to be running 24/7 so some are starting to break down.

There’s very poor or no cellphone signal. I’m lucky I have some, but it’s slow to the point I can’t actually call anyone most of the time, and text messages take ages to send. People are coming from far away areas of the island to the few places that do have cell signal. People are stopping in the middle of the highways to catch some signal, in an attempt to be able to tell their loved ones that they are okay.*

They say half the people have running water now. I would like to know where the fuck. Most people I’ve asked, most people I’ve heard talking or seen posting habe no running water or- if, like me, they’re lucky- have it at unpredictable moments. We had water in my house last monday, then a couple days later for about 45min, then yesterday for 2 days. Always low pressure, to the point that to do anything with it, you need to wait for a bucket to fill. We have no water right now. Supposedly the interruptions would be scheduled for every 24 hours, but this has not been the case. Right now, I don’t know for how long we’ll have no water. There are entire towns that have not had water service back at all, especially mountain towns (most of our towns, actually) that only just now are beginning to be able to clear out roads leading into and out of town.

People are stealing fuel from cars, power generators… you name it. They don’t care about anything except cash money and fuel. If they find water and food, they’ll take that too. But I’m talking: people have legit left behind iPads in favor of taking with them $20 cash and a tankfull of fuel.

There’s no ice. That’s fine when it’s rainy like the past 2-3 days, but when it isn’t? People can die from heat too, particularly because there’s very little water to hydrate with. Even if there were ice, there’s no power to run a freezer with, so you can’t keep it cold for long.

The governor lifted the prohibition on the sale of alcohol and made it illegal for gas stations to limit how much fuel you buy at once (so that now people have to be allowed to fill their car’s gas tank all the way up if they wanna). This has helped reduce the lines to about 2hr long in some places, when it used to take the entire day. The sale of alcohol helps move the economy and helps people chill out for a bit- literally and metaphorically.

Some schools are opening again, but very few, and I don’t know that attendance will be particularly great nowadays.

The UPR (our public university system) hasn’t given a start date for resuming classes again. At this point, half the campuses have been incommunicated. The ones we do know of aren’t doing very well in terms of damage to property.

We’ve heard very little of the west of the island.

Very few local AM and FM stations work, only one local tv station works (channel 2) as far as I know.

Very few people have wifi. I don’t have wifi; I’m posting this with my phone’s mobile network- hoping it posts at all.

Curfew is 9pm-5am. Anyone outside past then can get arrested. Some exceptions are made, such as emergency personnel, people working in food and water distribution, telecomm, and similarly important tasks.

People are stuck at the airports. The international one that everyone normally leaves and arrives at is handling very few flights per day (dont know how many it is now, but it used to be 10 per day) and many flights are military or relief cargo. Last I heard, no international flights were scheduled. Don’t know if that has changed. Prices for tickets to Florida went up from $300 the round trip to $2000. Many flights are getting cancelled. People want to leave, but we’re pretty much stuck here.

As far as destruction goes: trees are leafless or torn down, to the point where I don’t recognize the landscape anymore. It looks like when trees shed their leaves for winter, coupled with how a fire makes them collapse or break. I don’t know how else to describe it. I can see things now that I have never seen before because trees blocked their view, and it feels so wrong. Many places flooded. The images on tv that I imagine y'all saw (because we’ve had very few pictures from around here, much less video, except on facebook for those who can login and what’s on tv, which isnt much) are of places that have poor construction or built in areas where it is forbidden due to the flood hazard. That’s why you see houses filled all the way with water. But everywhere else, places that have never been flooded did get flooded, and the water has caused giant mudslides in mountain towns, to the point where people have been unable to get out of their houses and help cannot get to them because everything’s blocked. In addition to that, most structures with zinc roof lost their roof in the storm, wooden structures collapsed, but concrete houses held up pretty good as far as I’ve been able to see. (I, thankfully, live in a concrete house.) El Yunque is destroyed. Most mountains are gray and leafless now, but the people near them, like me, are grateful that they blocked the winds some.

Distribution of stuff in the ports is beginning, I think. We’ve seem gas trucks driving around and delivering to gas stations. The aid you’re sending is in Puerto Rico, it’s just not being properly distributed or is hard to distribute due to the state of things.

You can mail stuff to people directly because some post offices are open, but there’s no delivery to houses so the person you mailed to has to go to the post office to pick up the package.

Trump is supposedly gonna come to the island today. Uh…. well then. Dude should know we need the cabotage laws lifted for more than just 10 days for it to be helpful at all, and he should send the help we need rather than send a minimal amount, late, and blaming us for everything. We’re not lazy, man. Everyone I’ve seen or heard of has helped to pick up from the disaster in one way or another. We also have no use for that golf trophy, so keep it.

Seriously, at this point, we don’t care who or where aid comes from. We just need it to come here. We also need help rebuilding the power grid, which is down completely. Like… I’m talking even concrete poles that carry big power lines fell to the ground and broke like they’re made of cookies or something. The 6 months without power estimate is believable. I can see it being longer than that in some places, even.

Editing this in: There's also been a rise in the suicide and murder rates. Additionally, it seems the death toll from the hurricane is being underreported by the government. People are saying hospital morgues are full. People are burying loved ones in their backyards due to lack of resources for proper burials.

We are US citizens. This is US territory. We matter, dammit, please hear us.

*Okay means not dead. For me, because I’m lucky, it means I also have a roof to sleep under and food and water for a couple of days, plus access to supplies when we start running out of them. For many people, it is not so.

#ooc #hurricane maria #puerto rico #psa #update

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intelwwtpuertorico · 7 years

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Submission from: Chandler Heath

We arrived on Thursday November 30th in the afternoon, upon decent in to the San Juan Airport you could see the initial signs of damage on the island. Blue tarps were visible for miles along with debris strewn across the open areas and hung up in trees. After arrival at baggage claim, we were greeted by the whole team from Camera Mundi and introduced to the teams. The drive proceeded to the city of Mayaguez, we took the northern route which took us through Dorado, Camuy and Aguadilla. It was quickly apparent how widespread the damage was. The most obvious signs of damage were the power and communications poles sheared off mid-way and held by still attached wires or felled completely. Many traffic signals were dark as were entire towns along the journey. We stopped in Camuy for coffee and pastry and enjoyed the break. We arrived in Mayaguez and enjoyed a great dinner as an entire team getting to know each other and understanding our week ahead.

The week was filled with visits to schools impacted by the hurricanes. Many of the schools were in hard to reach remote areas where bridges were damaged and impassable as well as downed power poles and lines were strewn everywhere making travel a challenge each day. When we arrived at each of the schools we saw that power and internet were either working or not and when not, the common restoration time would be several months. At each and every school we visited, we were greeted by school teachers and administration staff with smiles and eagerness to help us understand what they needed and where we could help the most. The hospitality of everyone I met was second to none despite what their own situation of loss may have been. I witnessed neighbor helping neighbor and a genuine sense of community and family throughout all of the areas we visited.

Over the weekend we embarked on a service project to remove the asphalt coated steel roof that was peeled off of a building that houses a Head Start program in Lajas. The roof had been picked up by the high winds from the hurricane and placed on the library next door. This was a great opportunity to launch my drone and assess what we could not see from the ground. The pictures and video were incredibly clear allowing us to determine how we would safely bring down the massive roof sections. The team was able to remove the 7000 pounds of roof safely and haul it away. We were also able to involve the Army Corps of Engineers (staying in the same hotel as we were) to add the Head Start building to its list of structures that need temporary coverage.

We were also able to take some time to see the beauty the island of Puerto Rico has to offer. We visited Cabo Rojo which offered stunning views of the Caribbean Sea and land features like the Natural Bridge and landmarks like the Cabo Rojo Lighthouse, a historic monument on the island. I brought out my drone again and took breathtaking video and stills of the rock formations like the natural bridge that we would not have been able to see otherwise.

I am humbled by the resiliency and determination the people of Puerto Rico have to move forward and rebuild, heal and become stronger after the hurricanes. The friendships we made and bonds we forged will be there forever. We are just beginning!

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everunbreakable · 5 years

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Tuesday, May 8, 2012 - Craig Park & School

Hung out with Ronan on Saturday. He watched “The Avengers” with Hunter on Friday. He’d called me after it was over, wondering if I wanted to bother Remus with him. But once we realized the kid was probably already busy with his own plans, Ronan called it off. Asked if he’d be doing anything the next day. He wasn’t sure. Hunter looked bored, according to Ronan, once the latter was almost hanging up.

Come to think of it, I haven’t seen hide or hair of Remus for over a month now. I was in the middle of my report for business communication when Ronan called me on Saturday, asking if I wanted to bother Hunter, who recently got his Internet back. “Or we could go to the park beforehand and then go to his house,” Ronan said, sounding hopeful. I told Ronan I had to marinade the sesame udon I was making. He said he’ll call me back about which park to go to. I finished throwing everything together. Ronan called back and noted that Hunter wasn’t picking up the phone. “He always does this,” Ronan said. “When he gets a new game or something that he’s into…” “Well, that’s mean… and I thought he was supposed to be saving money!” “We could still go to Craig Park in Brea, if you want.” “Okay, then.” “Alright. Get ready, then. Bye…” Threw a jacket in a camping backpack, along with a small tub of the udon I’d just made, a carton of organic soy milk, and my shoulder bag. I called him once I reached his house. Ronan came out with two Styrofoam cups. He nodded at me. “Hey. I brought water.” “Why’d you bring water?” I asked. “Because you forgot to bring it.” His tone was matter-of-fact. I laughed right out loud. Ronan knows me so well. I wheeled my bike in to his yard. “Do you want to bring your bike, or do you just want to walk around the park?” Ronan asked me. “Walking around is fine.” I smiled at him.

I called Hunter in the car, on speaker. He didn’t know my new number yet. To my surprise, he picked up. “Ass,” Ronan immediately said. Hunter had not picked up when Ronan called. “Hello?” came Hunter’s voice. A few more words were exchanged before it was evident that Hunter had no idea he was speaking to. “Why did you pick up if you don’t know who I am?” I asked, amused. “That’s a good question,” Hunter returned. I started to giggle. “Hunter, I just saw you, like, a few weeks ago!” I surmised he was not familiar with my phone voice. He hung up on me, though I continued to talk to the silence, unaware. It was so odd that he picked up when a strange number called, but not when Ronan called. Though it had been an amusing exchange, I still felt bad for Ronan. Walked around the park after I laughingly asked why Ronan’s wheels would need to be turned away from the curb. We spanned several hills, sang a few songs, noted the interesting deviation of ducks and the multiple squirrels. Ronan and I walked to this remote-looking corner in the park where there were some lizard tunnels. One lizard that ogled us moved, while a quick movement at one of the holes indicated that it had an inhabitant. Ronan dared me to poke a stick into the hole, ever so slightly. “A whole swarm of lizards comes out,” he joked. I laughed. I inched it in, my other hand clutching one of the wooden poles. Ronan made a weird noise and touched my hand, causing me to shriek. Ronan immediately clapped his hands, laughing heartily. I was glad to see him so amused and free-spirited, so I laughed along as well. I didn’t often see him so loosened up unless I was around. I didn’t mind that he extracted amusement from teasing me. Once I stopped laughing, I stuck my hand into the hole and swept away the leaves. “Really, Christy?” Ronan said. “What’s the worst that could happen?” I offered him. Ronan’s second laugh made me jump up in fright, which made him laugh even harder. “What happened? I thought you weren’t scared.” He grinned at me, eyes bright. “Of course I’m scared… but I’m still going to do it.” “Oh, my God…” I could hear the admiration in his tone. “Christy Scare Count?” I asked. “I lost track. My right ear is deaf now.” I laughed.

We settled on the grass after a while. It was peaceful to just lay there, staring at the mixture of tree branches, leaves, and clear blue sky above. The best part was having my best friend next to me, talking about anything that came to mind… I told him about how Quyen’s birthday celebration went. I asked about his classes, summer plans…. Ronan reckons he’s going to focus on school during summer. Later he said that he’s considering interning for Disneyland during fall, to get something on his resume. I hope that goes well for him. I suggested that we spend July Fourth at the beach watching the fireworks. “Oh, with your family?” Ronan asked, looking over at me with with one arm braced behind his head as a pillow. “No,” I said. “I get… burned out.” “Yeah… I think we should go with our own group this year.” Ronan doesn’t go down to San Diego with his cousins anymore for Independence Day. Ronan tried my sesame udon before we left the park. “Good job.” Except he only ate the bell pepper, because I’d told him to taste it. Oopsies. Upon the second bite, udon noodles and all, he suggested marinading the noodles a few hours ahead.

Ronan forgot to release the hand brake, and right when he did as he drove, a siren sounded. He looked like his heart stopped, so I rubbed his shoulder. I hope his brakes are alright. I made a note to check with him this Saturday about it. On the freeway, Ronan noted that it would be a full moon tonight. We marveled at how artificial the sun looked.

Ronan and I discussed Hunter, who wants a gamer girl that looks nice. “But what if she asks the same of him?” I blurted out. Anyone else might have deemed my question rude, but Ronan merely laughed, tapping the wheel with his palm. “You should ask him.” I expressed my doubt that Hunter gets the chance to really reflect on these things. “Then this’ll be his opportunity,” Ronan said.

Ronan also suggested I ask Hunter why the latter is nice to me. He started to say it, but stopped. “Nah, it’ll sound weird.” I pinched a part of his shirt from his shoulder, gently nudging him. “Come on, say it… Oh, I think I get it. Does it have to do with my gender?” “Well, no…” Ronan finally relented. “It’s because he has an Asian-girl fetish. Just like Jared. That’s why he’s [Jared] so nice to you guys.” “He’s nice to me? Gosh, I never noticed.” “Well, he’s nicer to you than he is to me.” Ronan’s observation on Jared at the tea house outing last December shed insight on the strangeness of it all. Jared only spoke to Ronan if Ronan was speaking to Monica. “It’s like he’s scared I’ll … do something … I dunno.” Well, Ronan has an eye for these things, certainly more than I do. I used to think that perhaps Jared isn't so open with everyone because of his self-esteem issues.

Got flashed by a kid at Downtown Disney. That was funny. At first I thought he’d been embarrassed by me laughing at his breakdancing, until he raised his shirt to expose his bare chest and stomach without breaking eye contact with me. I felt the heat surge in my cheeks as my jaw dropped. Looking over at Ronan, I emitted a nervous laugh because I didn’t know what else to do. Ronan was chuckling as well, his eyes twinkling in amusement. “He loves you.”

It was quite an experience watching the fireworks with Ronan. The show was longer than I expected. At every shooting star, we were both convinced that it was over… only to realize there were more displays next, each all the more elaborate and vibrant. The finale was breathtaking.

I didn’t want to go home once we were back at Ronan’s driveway, so I just stood there talking to him for a while. He chuckled gently when I said I was reluctant to leave, not unlike how someone reacts to a young, perhaps adorable child. I didn’t want our time together to end, though we’d been out the entire day. He had asked if I wanted him to drive me home, but I said, “Don’t waste your gas.” I almost could not hear his “okay,” so guttural and low it was. He knew that I needed to rely on my own strength sometimes because I feared the thought of overly depending on another person. It wasn’t until later that I realized where this sudden reassurance came from, though. Ronan had wheeled my bike out for me, something Hunter usually did. Ronan showed me the solar-powered lights to the side of his house. He has some in front of his house as well, though of different hue and size. “Well, today was fun,” I said. Ronan nodded at me, his jaw muscles crinkling as his eyes softened. “I’m surprised you asked me to go to the park today,” I said. There was this flash of compassionate affection in Ronan’s eyes that I did not anticipate. It lingered in his eyes as we spoke in the darkness. Talked a bit before Ronan said he’d head in to help his mom cook. He wrapped me up in a hug. “We could go shopping, if you want,” he told me. This was in reference to preparing for the bonfire at Richy’s. “Okay, then.” With the clanging of Ronan’s keys behind me, I trekked off into the night on my bike. I remember something Ronan said to me the previous week. “We’re not going to leave you, Christy. You’re a good person.” And another line, from a separate conversation : “I hate breaking promises, which is why I rarely make them.”

This could be why I ran into Ronan again yesterday, on Monday. Funniest thing. He was next to me for a while, in his cubicle, before I got up and found myself face to face with him. He burst into laughter when our eyes met, of course. He had noticed me way before I detected his presence. I sat with him for a while. I guess he noticed how intent I’d been, to the point of not noticing that there was a person next to me when there were empty seats all around. “What were you doing on your laptop?” he asked, raising his brows. “Writing,” I said truthfully. “I thought you were watching ‘The Room,’ he said, mentioning the title of the movie we’d discussed over the weekend. “By the way, I thought it was called ‘The Door.’ “ I laughed, then asked how he spotted me. “I was about to go to the bathroom,” Ronan said. “But then for some reason, I felt like coming this way.” “You have ESPN or something,” I smiled; he grinned. I got up to leave for accounting class; I hooked an arm around Ronan’s neck and embraced him before I walked off to the stairs. Class, it turned out, was cancelled. I returned to spend the rest of the time with Ronan. “What took you so long?” he asked me, once I told him. “My group mate,” I said, referring to Jennifer, who had called me over. She’d been sitting outside the classroom. “She texted my old phone, and I had to tell her about the stupid story of it getting run over… so embarrassing.” Ronan chuckled. He's been doing a lot more of that lately. I was glad I could make him laugh. Chilled with him; he watched a few scenes from “The Room” on my netbook before he pushed it away. “That was so bad,” he said. “It took… six million dollars to make that. I could have done a better job.” “I know, right?” I laughed. “Now you know what I mean… it’s indescribable.” Ronan gave me his Pottermore username. We continued to talk before he fell asleep – not that I really looked, but I could tell by the change in his breathing. Poor guy also had fatigue and allergies, the former because he’d taken a nap due to a headache and altered his sleeping pattern. “I was going to wake you up in three minutes,.” I said later. I walked with him to his class, where he gave me a tight hug. “You going home now?” “Yes. I’m biking home. Bye.”

#2012 #May #Ronan #Craig Regional Park

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newstfionline · 6 years

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California wildfires rage, killing at least nine and putting tens of thousands at risk

By Joel Achenbach, Katie Mettler, E. Aaron Williams and Lindsey Bever, Washington Post, November 10, 2018

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif.--California is on fire again, north and south, the flames deadly and swift, fanned by ferocious Santa Ana winds and fueled by dry tinder. The fires have killed at least nine people, immolated a mountain town and jangled the nerves of many tens of thousands of residents forced to evacuate their homes.

The fires have thus far proved to be unstoppable, operating at flash-flood velocity. The big wildfire here in Southern California, known as the Woolsey Fire, quadrupled in size Friday, covering more than 22 square miles, with no containment. It easily jumped eight-lane Highway 101 and rambled over the Santa Monica Mountains to posh Malibu, where it torched homes and cars. The wildfire then finally ran into its only match so far: the Pacific Ocean.

The bulletins from the northern part of the state were even worse. At least nine people died in or near their homes or vehicles as they tried to outrace the Camp Fire, which devastated the mountain town of Paradise, about 90 miles north of the state capital, Sacramento.

Paradise was anything but, with block after block of destruction, downed power lines, charred cars in the middle of roads, utility poles still smoldering and spot fires around the town, though there wasn’t much vegetation left to burn. Random buildings still stand in the town of 27,000, but for every edifice that survived, dozens that did not.

Marc Kessler, 55, a science teacher at one of Paradise’s middle schools, said the smoke was rising from the Sierra Nevada foothills when he arrived at work Thursday.

“The sky turned black; you couldn’t tell it was daytime,” he said. “It was raining black pieces of soot, coming down like a black snowstorm and starting fires everywhere. Within minutes, the town was engulfed.”

Kessler said authorities told teachers to forget seat belt laws and start piling the 200 or so students who showed up for class Thursday morning into the teachers’ personal vehicles. Some frantic parents showed up to get their children, he said, and bus drivers drove through flames to help save children’s lives.

Kessler said one of the students in his car said, “Oh, look at the moon!”

“I said, ‘That’s not the moon. That’s the sun,’ “ he recalled, his voice breaking. “There were times when there were flames near the vehicles. There were times when you couldn’t see through the smoke. Some of our teachers didn’t think they’d survive.”

About 23.4 million Californians were under red-flag warnings into Friday, and officials warned that flames could reach the city of Chico, a college town of more than 90,000 about six miles from Paradise. People scrambled to evacuate.

The Camp Fire had covered 110 square miles and was just 5 percent contained as of Friday, state officials said, warning that there might be additional deaths that they cannot confirm until they can safely enter smoldering neighborhoods. It is a terrifying situation for family members of residents who were last heard from when the town and others nearby were ordered evacuated.

“We didn’t have much time; it came too fast,” said Cory Nichols, a barber who fled his home in Paradise. “We were going to sell the house. Don’t have to now.”

California has experienced debilitating fires of unprecedented regularity in the past few years, many of them encroaching on towns and cities built up to the edges of forests in areas prone to wildfires. In August, the Mendocino Complex Fire became the largest wildfire ever recorded in the state, burning more than 400,000 acres. The previous record was set less than a year before, when the Thomas Fire burned through more than 280,000 acres in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. In October 2017, some 21 wildfires burned nearly 95,000 acres and 7,000 buildings in Sonoma and Napa counties in the heart of California’s wine country, killing 40 people.

The California fire season normally begins in late spring and lasts through summer. But hot, dry weather has persisted this year well into autumn, and the winter rains have yet to arrive. The Santa Ana winds, which blow out of the Sierra Nevadas and toward the western coastline, are building into howling gales that dry the vegetation and the soil, creating potentially explosive fire conditions.

In Thousand Oaks, 40 miles from downtown Los Angeles, residents have endured a brutal week.

This city, cherished by its residents for clean air and low crime, already was in mourning after Wednesday night’s mass shooting at a country music bar. At a vigil downtown Thursday night, people had lit candles and pondered an unspeakable crime. Just hours later, the same area was choked in smoke and imperiled by the Woolsey Fire.

In the pre-dawn darkness, a gusty wind whipped American flags flying at half-staff in honor of the shooting victims. An orange glow could be seen throughout the city, sometimes leaping into bright flares along the ridgelines. Emergency bulletins buzzed cellphones in the middle of the night, sometimes urging evacuations.

“It’s dangerous to sleep all night,” said Sergio Figueroa, 34, who was dropping his wife off at a hotel where she works on Friday. Late Thursday and into the early hours Friday, he watched television, knowing his home was in the “voluntary” evacuation zone. He said he allowed himself one hour of shut-eye--but not actual sleep.

“You just close your eyes and stay alert,” he said.

At 3 a.m., streets normally empty at that hour were filled with parents, children and pets evacuating as the orange glow crept closer.

“Don’t wait too long. Get out when they tell you to get out,” said Uber driver Brent Young, 52, who was about to take a client from Thousand Oaks to the Los Angeles International Airport through a roundabout route that would circumvent closed freeways and dangerous conditions.

The problem was figuring out which way to go. There were fires in many places. Even before the Woolsey Fire kicked up, another wildfire, the Hill Fire, threatened homes west of town. Highway 101 was closed in both directions at various times for two different fires. The only thing inhibiting the Hill Fire was that it ran into the footprint of a 2013 fire and lacked fuel, officials said.

Longtime resident Peggy Smith, 64, was filling her gas tank at 4 a.m. Friday at a Mobil station in an area under voluntary evacuation. She said people began flocking to Thousand Oaks in the 1960s after airline pilots on the flight path into Los Angeles noticed that there was no smog here. The pilots moved in, and then police officers, and firefighters.

She was ready for the fire. She needed only 10 minutes to load her car with her favorite family photos, important documents, clothes and food.

“My son’s a fireman. I was married to a fireman. I’m not scared,” Smith said. “I have full faith in our fire departments.”

They were busy. The trucks rolled through neighborhoods and zoomed down Highway 101. People had fled, power was out, and the only light came from the fires.

“This is crazy,” said Paige Gordon, a real estate agent who was checking on a friend’s multimillion-dollar house in Westlake Village as flames devoured the parched brush. “We have all aspects of Ventura County on fire.”

As he turned on sprinklers in his friend’s backyard, an eruption of flame on the hillside caught his attention: “There’s the fire right there!”

Smoke loomed over Thousand Oaks like a thunderhead, the black cloud slowly advancing toward the sea as it crossed hills covered in blackened stubble.

In Malibu, film and television producer Ben Rosenblatt, 35, took one look at the approaching fire and knew he had to get out fast. He had just enough time to walk the dog first. There aren’t many ways in and out of Malibu, with the roads that wind up through the canyons impassable because of fire. That left the Pacific Coast Highway, where traffic moved at a crawl. The drive to Santa Monica should have taken him 35 minutes, but the navigation app on his phone said it would be 2 hours 35 minutes.

“It’s like a slow-motion race with massive fire clouds behind you and bumper-to-bumper traffic in front,” Rosenblatt said. “Think of any disaster movie you’ve seen where you’re trying to outrun the storm but it’s happening so slowly.”

Back in Thousand Oaks, the smoke would recede and then billow up again as a spot fire flared anew. At a teen center, set up as an evacuation site for those fleeing the fires, people became nervous when they saw flames on a nearby hillside.

In the parking lot, people slept in their cars beside their cats and dogs, their belongings packed in the back.

Mary Leighton, 57, of West Lake, had just gone to bed Thursday night when her brother heard on the news that they needed to evacuate.

“You think, ‘What do you take?’ “ She said. “My mind went blank.”

Five minutes later, carrying her husband’s ashes and her cat, Pumpkin, she and her family were gone. They slept in a shelter overnight and woke Friday morning to news that homes in their neighborhood had burned. Leighton didn’t know whether her home survived.

#California #California wildfires #Woolsey Fire #Camp Fire

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randrvstheworld · 7 years

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Welcome to cowboy country

So yesterday involved nought but a dreary & rainy bu trip to Salento, which took not the two hour advertised but SIX GODDAMN HOURS. All these long bus journeys are playing absolute havoc with my messed up knee. I am glad I am the kind of person that can fall asleep on busses BUT the downside of that is I wake up with excruciating leg pain from lack of movement. Gotta just power through & get it all checked out when I’m home. Looking like that might not be too far away as the funds are dwindling rapidly (sadface).

We’ve teamed up with Linzee & Lucy from our hostel in Cali so we went out for dinner with them last night at a place all decorated with cowboy stuff which I assumed was just a gimmick but it seems Salento is fully cowboy countryside, Colombia. It’s a tiny town surrounded by miles & miles of farmland, mountains, & coffee plantations. There are more horses on the roads than cars. The views from our hostel are pretty epic, so much greenery. The weather here is pretty chilly after the sun goes down. Suddenly wish I had a wider selection of warmer clothes but simultaneously chuffed & amazed that I have not needed them until now - it’s OCTOBER!! And it was still so sunny today that I was roasting in a sports bra & leggings!!

We made a mission to an organic coffee farm today for a little tour - much like Sam’s farm, this is a place run by a very small team & everything is done by hand - no chemicals, no industrial machinery, just old-skool coffee making. Very interesting stuff - they use avocado trees to shade the coffee plants & also so the avocados can fertilise the soil which almost made me sob to see all these sad avo’s just rotting away on the ground, never to fulfil their delicious avo toast destinies. Lots of fruits are grown on the coffee farm to distract the birds & insects from eating the coffee beans. Also lots of beautiful flowers so hummingbirds will come & help pollinate stuff. Circle of life & all that.

I tasted a freshly popped coffee bean which is covered in a sweet sticky honey when it comes out of its little shell, & is pale greenish in colour. After that, they’re washed & stirred & stirred & washed in a big tub of water until all the sticky honey comes off. Step 3 is drying them out either on a rooftop (which is a bit risky as they have to be covered instantly at the first drop of rain) or in a greenhouse. When they’re good & dry they get roasted until they turn the beautiful dark brown & shiny colour you are used to seeing. I honestly had no idea that they didn’t pop out of their little pods this way & suddenly realised this is what people mean by ‘medium roast’ etc which made me feel pretty dumb but you just don’t question where your food comes from when you can just buy everything at Sainsburys (also I never drank coffee before this trip so it wasn’t necessarily at the forefront of my mind). THEN the beans get ground to make coffee - I got to grind a batch myself which we then drank, & it was delicious, clearly down to my finesse at grinding up them beans (lol, not).

On our way back from the coffee farm tour we saw a sign advertising delicious Colombian food & free games of Tejo (which we had read about & wanted to try) so we dusted down a little dirt road to a sort-of restaurant/sort-of bar/some peoples’ family home & had what felt like a very authentic local experience; we got yummy home-cooked food (very gratefully received as I’d been kinda sick the night before & then slept super badly because of stomach pain & weird nightmares so I hadn’t eaten breakfast), a couple beers & played Tejo with a super sweet 12 year old kid called Felipe. The game is kiiiiinda like Aunt Sally in that involves throwing this heavy disk thing to but instead of knocking a ball off a pole you’re trying to smash these little ceramic triangles. It was super fun even though we utterly sucked at it - Felipe schooled us so hard. He was literally the cutest little dude ever. The family owned a bunch of horses so after lunch he saddled one of them up & took us for little rides up & down the drive. Then we played the most ridiculous game of pool ever because the table was on a really uneven floor so regardless of our pool skills (which are minimal in the first place) all the balls kept rolling into the corner anyway. It was so fun; it felt like just being at someone’s house as opposed to a restaurant, we were the only people there & the family we so so hospitable it was very sweet.

This evening has been spent watching Colombia qualify for the 2018 world cup, which was actually pretty cool as football is HUGE here & everyone gets really into it. I’m now wrapped in a blanket writing this from our hostel room - the rest of the gals went out for dinner but I’m still feeling a bit ropey so I decided to bow out this evening. Tomorrow we’re off on an all day trek so I’m hoping to catch up on some of the sleep I missed last night so I’m nice & ready to destroy my body all over again… at least in a good way this time.

Only a week left in Colombia which I’m really sad about because this has really been my favourite place so far, helped surely by the fact that we’ve had such a long time here to explore it & travel around. Excited to link up with Gabby again though in Ecuador, & then VERY excited that my oldest & bestest bestie Hannah has just booked a flight to come join us in Brazil in December & January. Woot!

#salento #colombia #cowboy country #travel diary #travelling

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silversilence14 · 8 years

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MCSM: Immortal’s Child

Chapter 8 : Through the Woods

"You didn't exactly explain why you were up in the spider's nest?" Petra asked.

Steve was kneeled at her feet. "Didn't have time I suppose."

True to his words, Steve had led Lukas and Petra out of the spider's lair. It was a relief to be out of the foggy nightmare. Once they broke out of the dead ravine, the forest opened up into large quiet redwoods. There had been a cave on the other side, where the weakening rapids joined the rest of the river down a straight and calm path.

Jesse would have come through here.

Steve made them stop shortly after escaping the nest, despite their objections. He checked to make sure Lukas hadn't been poisoned, but the blonde merely suffered scrapes and bruises. Steve had quickly put some antiseptic on his arrow wound and gave Lukas a bandage to patch with. He now kneeled on mossy ground, reinforcing Petra's wrapped foot with splint.

"I was down here fishing," Steve explained, "When a spider stole my fish and my pole. I chased into the nest, but that big guy back there beat me to it. I was waiting for it to go back into its cave for a nap, when your friend over here came tumbling in."

Petra noticed Lukas flush.

"Did you seriously not know that was a nest? The Perpes River has been their home for centuries."

Petra twisted her fingers into the grass, "We've...never been here before."

"So you said you were from the other side of Adamans?"

Lukas froze, and Petra hesitated.

Clearly suspicious by their lack of answer, but very patient all the same; Steve jabbed his head, "The mountain range?"

"Yes." Petra quickly replied.

"Interesting, what brings you over here?" he finished his work and leaned back on his heels.

"Um-"

"Adventure," Lukas cut in, "To explore the unknown."

Steve let out a soft smile, for a moment there was a longing look in his eyes. "I guess I can't blame you there. But you need to be careful, you're down a person, and you both could have been seriously hurt."

"We got lost," Petra replied, "These woods got us all turned around."

"Well, we'll find your friend; we'll get you all rested and patched up. Then I'll get you in the right direction home."

I wish, Petra thought.

Steve stood, brushing dirt and moss off of his pants. "Ready?"

Petra and Lukas nodded eager to get back on the move in their search for Jesse.

Steve whistled a sharp high pitch note. It echoed through the woods, vibrating off of the tall trees. Just as it faded a large horse trotted into the clearing, followed by a second.

"Up we go!"

Petra stared at the horse. Like the spider from earlier, it was massive compared to the ones Petra was used to seeing.

"I think something ate your horses," Lukas stated equally dumfounded..

Steve snorted, "They're Clydesdales. They're supposed to be big. Meet Gaea and Titan. Gaea will be your ride," He turned to Petra, "Can you get up with your foot?"

Petra stood, "Of course." She hoisted herself up, only to get half way, "Or maybe not."

Lukas shoved her up the rest of the way, before Petra had to pull him up herself. She looked to Steve, the male adjusting the packs on the back of his horse. Clearly the other had been using Titan for the pack horse on his little hunting trip. He moved some bags aside, and tied his fishing bag on.

"Can you get on?" Petra asked.

Steve hooked one foot on the saddle, and easily swung up, "Of course," he replied. He moved Titan in front of Gaea, grabbing her reins and holding them tight.

"Don't trust us with the driving?" Lukas asked.

" We need to go fast, and I know these woods a bit better than you don't you think?" Steve made a funny click with his teeth and the horse immediately broke into a gallop. Steve only held onto Gaea's reins for about a hundred feet, then let go. The female continued following her male partner like a shadow.

The ride was exhilarating and intense. Steve rode the horses through tight curves, high jumps, low trees. The Clydesdales stayed true in all of their footing. Not even pausing or slowing down to turn and adjust. Titan leapt over a creeper at one point, not even alarmed by the creature.

Lukas was holding on tightly to Petra's waste, breath hitching with each dangerous move. Petra herself was gripping Gaea's mane. Only Steve remained calm and sure atop the enormous mounts.

I guess if anyone trusted these horses, he would. Petra concluded.

She felt only felt slightly uncomfortable following Steve through the woods. Something about him put her at relative ease. This was saying a lot, considering Brine had sent them into a death trap. Brine had been old, nothing too intimidating about him, save for his sword. But why had he pointed to the nest?

"Oh sweet creepers tell me we're close," Lukas suddenly, pulling her from her thoughts.

From the corner of her eye she saw a hoard of zombies, the horses bolting by without even the slightest hesitation. One zombie was even unfortunate enough to end up underneath the powerful legs of the beasts, and still they moved on.

"Steve!" Petra called.

He glanced back, the motion making Petra a little uneasy since he no longer was watching where he was going,"What is it?"

"Are we close?!"

Steve ducked a low hanging branch, leaving Petra to wonder how he knew it was coming, "The monsters are getting thicker now."

"Is that a yes?" Lukas called over Petra's shoulder.

Steve nodded, and turned once again forward.

With the fall weather making daytime shorter, sunset was already close, it would soon be dark. Monsters would grow in number in the shadows. The chances of Jesse surviving a second night, much less the rest of the day were slim.

The horses burst into a clearing, and skidded to a stop by the muddy banks of the river. They had lost sight of it shortly after they had taken off, but there is was again. Orange sunlight glittered off the calm waters. Most of the water still moved slowly down the river ways. But a small amount slopped down, making a large pool.

The watering hole.

Steve was already off Titan, walking slowly along the banks.

"I don't see him," Lukas whispered.

Petra didn't reply, just kept her eyes on the waters. There was no Jesse on the banks. But the water was deep and dark at the bottom...

"Steve!"

Steve didn't respond, he kneeled in the mud, inspecting the markings in the ground. "Someone was here." he stated after a moment.

Panic flared in Petra's chest.

"Was?!" Lukas asked, fear dripping in his voice.

Steve nodded, "A few hours ago." he moved farther inland.

Petra was about to get off the horse, "What if he is in the water!"

"He's not," Steve replied, "Just stay on Gaea."

"We're not going to sit on a horse while Jesse is-"

"Jesse isn't here."

"Where is he?!" Lukas panicked.

"Someone else came through here a few hours ago as well," Steve replied, his voice even and calm. "They probably found him."

"Where would they go?! He could be anywhere!"

Steve climbed back on Titan. "There is only one village near here, if anyone took Jesse, they'd take him there." He stirred Titan forward, Gaea following after automatically. "Don't worry we'll find him."

Petra started to say something, but her mouth clamped shut.

"Petra we can't do this," Lukas hissed in her ear, "He's probably leading us on a wild goose chase. If Steve had been truly fishing earlier, like he claimed, he would have seen Jesse don't you think. He's wasting our time. Jesse has to be here somewhere."

"I really think he's trying to help."

"The last guy sent us into spider's nest. Steve's probably some psychopath who lives in his isolated cabin in the middle of nowhere."

Petra frowned, "I don't think so, besides, "She looked down, the horse was already going full gallop, "Do you think jumping off is the smartest thing to do right now?"

Lukas said nothing, and adjusted his grip around Petra's waist.

The village was fairly decent in size. Most of the primitive villages Lukas had seen so far on this never ending journey home had been quaint, if not insecure. The one however was not.

Resting on a rolling hill, the village was built upon layers. All along the town's paths were watchtowers of various height and width. A stone wall circled the village, going not only around the houses themselves, but the multitude of garden's and out building's as well. There was a town hall, a library, blacksmith and what looked like a school. Even at the edge of town there was a race track and a large amphitheater built into the hill-side.

It was one of a kind.

Also the first one Lukas had seen where most of the locals were armed. Most of the men carried swords, and there were archers in the towers as well as guards at the cities gates. To top of security, there were at least a dozen golems within the town, Lukas spotted at least eight or nine more in the farmer's district, the silent stone behemoths walking between rows of corn and wheat.

Secure indeed.

Seeing Steve actually take them to a village and not some desolate cabin in the woods gave Lukas a little relief.

But it was brief.

Steve pulled the horses to a stop in what Lukas assumed - was the blacksmith. "Bach!"

A large thick man exited the building. Easily taller than Steve. He was bald, but sported a thick black beard and mustache, growing all the way down to the middle of his chest. His dark tan face and exposed arms were dirtied with grim and sweat. Burn scars littered his arms, and another on his left jaw, disappearing under his beard. He was different from other blacksmiths Lukas had seen, there was nothing small and humble about this man.

Bach was the definition of scary.

"Steve!" Bach grinned broadly, "Back from the river already? I assumed you'd be up there for a few more days at most. Was the fishing that good?" His smile dropped when he spotted Lukas and Petra, "What happened? Who are they?"

Steve unhook his bag of fish from his saddle and threw it effortlessly towards the blacksmith, who caught it with the same amount of ease, "I'm afraid there was a mishap, has anyone been to the watering hole lately?"

"No why-"

"Our friend fell in the river, he's wounded," Petra blurted, not stopping as Bach looked to her with a hardened stare, "Steve said someone might have found him at the watering hole."

Bach's eyes softened at the explanation, he turned back to Steve, "I'm sorry my friend, but this time of year only you and the Healer go to the pond."

Steve cursed.

Lukas swallowed thickly, his heart pounding hard against his chest. Jesse wasn't here then. He was probably back-

"Bach? Who is that?"

Bach looked back into his shop, "It's Steve luv, he's run into a bit of trouble."

A woman exited the building, cleaner than her male counterpart. Her much paler face was covered in a fine sheen of sweat, a sprig of dill in her dark brown hair. In her hand she carried a large wooden ladle, large enough to bludgeon. She was pregnant, easily five months or so along. But the tender glow of future motherhood did not mask her confident and strong posture.

"Mariah," Bach explained, "His little friend's here lost their mate in the river. Steve thinks he washed up in the pond.

Mariah raised an eyebrow, her cloudy grey eyes immediately filled with worry, "Did they now?" She looked at Steve, "You were wondering if anyone has seen him?"

Steve nodded.

"Aye, I told them no one has been up to the pond for a few weeks now,"

"What does he-" Mariah grabbed her husband's arm, "Bach wait. The Healer."

Steve leaned in, "Was she there?"

"I went to see her early this morning," Mariah replied, "Picking up a potion for my morning sickness. She was very busy cleaning up a young lad. Awful mess he was. Poisoned by an archer she said."

"Jesse!" Lukas and Petra cried.

Steve was already turning the horses, "Bach, Mariah, I owe you."

"You know you owe us nothing!" Bach called as they rode away, "Good luck young ones!"

Petra looked slowly around as the horses came to a stop.

Much to her dismay, this healer, didn't live within the city limits; instead choosing to live about a quarter of a mile out of town. Then to her greater dismay - and her fear - this was the nothing like a hospital.

It was a farmhouse.

Which Steve had the keys too apparently? He was already off the horse and walking up the porch steps.

Petra waited for Lukas to get off their ride- which he almost twisted his own ankle in the process of doing - before she made her descent. Lukas aided her as she moved down the saddle.

Her feet stepped down on mossy, cushy, thick grass, Lukas immediately moved closer to her and there he remained.

"You don't need to stand there like scarecrows you know." the older male called from the wraparound porch.

Lukas had a hand in Petra's, tightening in discomfort. Neither moved.

Steve huffed, "Okay, wait here then." He added, "Can't say I blame you."

Petra watched for a moment as Steve fiddled with the lock, and then slowly looked around the property.

The farm looked harmless enough, large multi-story house. There was a hanging swing on the porch, and multiple cushioned chairs. There was an equally large garden to the left, and blooming flower beds. Animal's pens not far off to the right, each well stocked with feed and barns for the animals. Even sunflowers grew along the vine covered stone wall that lined the property.

Certainly not any obvious sign of danger.

Right?

"Lukas…."

"I'll follow you." The blonde whispered.

Petra nodded and moved forward, her team mate right behind.

They were almost on the porch when Steve finally got the door open, "I really got to fix that lock." He smiled at the pair, "Welcome to my home."

Petra paused, "I thought this was the healer's home."

"It is, and well, it's mine to."

"Does that mean..."

Steve nodded as he walked in; "I am a married ma-" Steve froze.

"Steve?" Lukas asked. "What's wr-"

"ALEX!" The older male's sudden shout startle Petra, confused as he raced into the dim house.

Lukas tapped her shoulder and pointed. Following his finger she spotted the apparent source of Steve's distress. It was shattered glass, glittering in thousands of tiny pieces on the dark oak floor.

"ALEX! Answer me!" To see someone - who had handled a monstrous spider with unnatural calm earlier - look so stressed, was unnerving. Steve was hurrying towards a closed door on the other side of the wide room, "Alex where-" The door opened at that moment.

"Steve what is it-" A carrot top ginger female flew out of the room, oddly enough with a letter opener in hand. She collided with Steve her forehead connecting to his jaw.

Both let out a cry, more from surprise then pain, and tumbled to the floor in a mess of arms and legs.

It was done and over so quickly that Lukas and Petra had barely time to react.

"Um, what just happened?" Lukas said.

The pair quickly began to untangle themselves, grunting and groaning as they went.

"Damn it Steve!"

"Why yell at me? You're the one who didn't answer me! Why in the world are you wielding the letter opener?!"

"You're the one who was screaming for me, I thought you were hurt! I thought something was wrong and I didn't have time to exactly arm myself did I?"

Steve was the first to stand, rubbing his tender jaw, "Understandable, but a letter opener? I mean, really sweetie?"

"Don't sweetie me." Alex stood, dusting herself off, "Who are your friends?"

"Lukas and Petra," Steve said, "I'm gonna cut to the chase here. They got lost in the woods and one of their team mates was hurt and fell in the river. I thought he might have washed up in the watering hole, but there was no one there. Mariah said you had a patient and I was hoping-"

"Alex are you okay?"

Petra's eyes widened. That voice...

Steve made a startled glance towards the door which Alex had exited from moments before, "Who was that?"

"My patient," Alex replied, "His name is-"

"Jesse!" Petra cried.

Lukas and Petra raced by the pair, hardly pausing to squeeze through the door way.

Inside the quaint and well furnished room, Jesse sat propped up in a thick bed. Bandages wrapped the majority of his chest and there were a few scrapes and bruises around his face and arms. But the most important bit, he was alive.

Jesse stared wide eyed, "Guys? How did you-"

"You're okay!" Petra rushed to the bed, "We thought we lost you when you fell in the river!"

"I was poisoned-"

"We know!" Lukas cut in, joining Petra by the bed, "We've been searching all day for you!"

Jesse raised an eyebrow, "How did you find me?"

"Well we followed the river first, and then we ran into -"

" I'm glad this worked out,"

Lukas and Petra turned, to see Steve at the door, one arm wrapped around his wife. He winked at Alex, "Glad you went to the watering hole today,"

Alex shook her head, "I can't imagine how you missed him Steve."

"His friend's say he fell in during the storm," Steve explained, "I wasn't by the river during that." He smiled brightly, "I take it you're Jesse?"

"And you must be Alex's husband, Steve," Jesse replied.

"That I am. Pleased to meet you, shame it was under such stressful times."

"We met Steve by the spider's nest," Lukas started.

"Spider's nest!" Jesse sputtered.

Alex gave Steve a look, "You took them through the crevice?!"

"No, I found them there." Steve replied, "Look, I tell you about it and you tell me about the broken glass." He paused, "And what in Notch's beard happened to your nose." He tapped his wife's nose.

The female exchanged glances with Jesse, who in turn blushed horribly, "It's almost ironic really. But-" She tugged her partner's arm, "I tell you later. Why don't we clean up the kitchen and get dinner for everyone and let these three catch up?"

Steve nodded, "Sounds good, Lukas, Petra," he smiled at the pair, "We'll be out here if you need anything."

And with that, Steve and Alex closed the door behind them.

Petra returned her attention to Jesse, smiling brightly, "I'm just so glad you're okay."

"I'm glad to see you guys," Jesse replied, "But what about you? You look awful, and what's this about a spider's nest?"

Lukas let out a disgusted noise, "Well after we lost you we ran into the woods. Then got attacked by some monster, I was shot- no poison don't worry - and Petra twisted her leg. We followed the river, which led to this gorge between the mountains. It was full of spiders, big ones."

"Okay?"

"No seriously, big ones. We are talking the size of a small house big. One almost ate me."

Jesse's eyes widen slightly.

"Then Steve showed up and just," Petra shrugged, "Killed it."

"Killed it?"

"He didn't even break a sweat Jesse."

Jesse looked towards the door, eyes full of curiosity, "From what I gathered from Alex, Steve is the main hunter for their village; it wouldn't surprise me. But spider's as big as a house? That seems farfetched."

"We're serious; this world is different from the others we've been to." Lukas pressed.

"Speaking of different worlds," Petra said her voice dropping into a whisper. "What have you told Alex?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well Lukas and I haven't told Steve about the portal." Petra explained, " AS fasr as he's concerned, the three of us are from beyond the mountain range."

"The one past the volcano?"

"Yes. What have you told Alex?"

"Nothing so far," Jesse answered. "She's curious but-"

Suddenly the door opened and Steve and Alex walked in. "Who's hungry?" Steve asked, "It's been a long weekend for everyone don't you think?" Alex herself was carrying a large tray filled to the brim of various meats and other delicious food items. It smelled absolutely perfect.

Petra felt her stomach rumble, she glanced at Jesse who gave her an encouraging nod. "Thank you," she said as she took a plate.

"Thank you so much for finding Jesse," Lukas said as he took a plate.

"Gladly," Alex replied, she handed a bowl of stew to Jesse. "Sorry dear, until your stomach settles it's stew for you."

Jesse still took the bowl, "I'm not complaining."

Lukas and Petra remained on the bed as Steve and Alex took the two chairs across the room. Petra hardly paused a second to cool her food she was so hungry. The food tasted as good as it smelled, the meat nearly melting in her mouth.

"So," Steve said as he settled into his chair, he took a small bite of food and smiled at the now complete trio, "What brings you three through the Portal of Worlds?"

#mcsm #mcsm jesse #mcsm lukas #mcsm petra #minecraft story mode #minecraft #Minecraft Steve #minecraft herobrine #minecraft alex #my writing #fanfic #fanfiction #immortal's child au #immortal's child au story

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erinelezabeth920 · 8 years

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#mtnbabes

Something bothered me this week, and I wanted to be able to talk about it. On Friday my friend and I went on a hike, down route 90 out of Seattle. We didn’t have graduate school class that day and it was a sunny day, the last before a long week of rain. I woke up early from my boyfriend’s house, threw on the layers I had in a little backpack, nabbed his rain jacket and first aid kit, because sometimes I’m not very prepared, and got in my car. I drove down the early streets of Seattle as the sun was rising over the eastern Cascades, listening to the country music station. A song came on which I had put on a birthday CD for a friend last summer, who I hadn’t heard from in a while. It made me sad. I sang along anyway. I pulled into my friend’s driveway, banged on her door and told her we had to get going to avoid traffic. She opened the door hurriedly, pulling on a hiking boot, and pointing me toward the fruit and a french press pot. I loaded the snowshoes and poles into her car, and she rushed out a second later, layers and jacket in hand. We were on the road about 7:15am.

Driving down rt. 90, the sun was starting to rise above the mountains. There was mist and some early morning Seattle city traffic commuter, straight faced, sad looking, holding their coffee in one hand, steering wheel in the other. I was so happy to be wearing hiking boots instead. The clouds hung low, but there were hints of blue sky above. The kind of day in February in the Northwest that makes you tingle with the longing of what long days used to be like, an aching in your wet and frozen bones like a reminder of a nice faded dream. I munched on a cliff bar and drank some of my friend’s coffee. We played a CD a guy had made her a while back, when he had come to visit Seattle before he left to travel to Ecuador; sappy sweet acoustic songs of love and leaving. I stuck up my middle finger to the dashboard. “Mountain men.” I scoffed, an angry band aid covering up my own handmade country CDs and heartbreak.

After a stop to a gas station, and up and over Snoqualmie Pass, we made it to exit 63, where the trail report said to park. Just a few other cars, and a line of porta potties shoved into a snow bank six feet high. A fog hung over the valley, but hopefully the sun would burn it off. We grabbed our snowshoes, packed our little packs, and prayed the car would go unnoticed without our parking permit. (I’m sorry Washington State Trails association. I’ll buy a pass soon, I promise.) Crossing the highway, we started up the trial, a series of groomed cross country ski tracks. After about half a mile we saw the sign and right turn off to Amabilis Mountain, a dirt forest access road that’s not maintained in the winter. Strapping on our snowshoes, we headed up.

As we walked, I was ecstatic. The pine trees were tall, draped in snow that was dripping in the warmer air. I had felt cooped up in the city for weeks; a combination of rain, sickness and graduate school exhaustion. This was exactly what I needed. I loved walking next to my friend too, the female energy and a sense of freedom.

After coming to a fork in the road, and heading left as the trail report said, we ended up walking up a small side trail into the trees. According to the WTA website, there was a shortcut through the trees that would cut off about 2/3 of a mile, which seemed okay by me. We started walking, following some tracks. Eventually the tracks thinned to simply a few animal prints, squirrels and maybe a rabbit. The air was silent. Absolutely no wind. There was a steady drip, drip of snow from the trees, falling into the stillness. The sun was warm between the trees, and as the fog began to lift the valley spread, highway and lake far below. As we walked our awkward snowshoe legs up the so-called shortcut, the trees thinned until we came to a kind of wide ledge. Apparently this trail was supposed to connect to the main road at some point; however as we walked it became apparent that it did not, and we had simply gone down a false path. It was beautiful where we were however, completely untouched, smooth wide patches of snow and pine trees. We frolicked for a bit, our snowshoes crunching through the fresh powder. Stopping to take in the view, a wide lake under crisp snowy peaks, my friend looked at me, grinned and said, “You know what we should do? Topless photo.”

I laughed, a little unsure. But subsequently we did, posting the camera on a backpack. Stripping off my layers and finally, in a quick movement, my sports bra, I walked up to the edge. I felt so good. Amazing really. Happy. The sun on my bare skin was warm, in a way I hadn’t felt in months. It felt like years, forever. I felt connected to all the things around me, safe in my body and space. We laughed, as my friend tried to get her phone to stand up and I danced a little to the mountains, alone and free.

Later that day, 10 + sunny miles later, dead legs and exhausted, I looked through our photos in the car on the way back. The topless one was just beautiful; in my mind natural female bodies in the mountains, both strong and powerful. An accomplishment both of what women were capable of. After a while, I decided to post the photo on Instagram. I wanted to show off our accomplishments, and unabashedly share our moment, the ability to feel comfortable in our bodies and to climb mountains.

Soon after, later that night while out with friends, I received a comment on the post from an old co-worker and avid outdoorsman with the hashtag, #mtnbabes. I clicked on it. Soon my phone screen filled with a series of photos similar to ours; women in the outdoors naked or topless in similar forms. It was beautiful, the scenery and the bodies of the women, but immediately I was filled with annoyance, shame and a kind of burning feeling in my stomach. I almost wanted to take the picture down. It still makes me mad or embarrassed writing this, and the worst part is, I can’t entirely articulate why. Maybe it was the fact that it was a male that had posted this, even one who I knew well as a friend, and progressive minded outdoor person. We had even sat together in a staff training once having conversations over privilege and accessibility in the outdoors. So maybe then it was jealousy, seeing all these beautiful competent women, and feeling lesser than.

But I think it was something else. Talking it over with my friend out to dinner over Indian food in Seattle the other night, I was able to rant through my curry and verbally process enough until something kind of coherent came out. “It felt, objectifying, kind of Spring Break-ish” I said. “Like, you know, WOOO TOPLESS, type of short skirt background dancer of a music video, pretty girl by the side of the pool kind of feeling. Like the girls on this feed are doing this for attention from men.” That even as well intended though the audience might be, the fact that they’re spending their free time scrolling through half naked pictures of women leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

And I know that’s not the whole story, of course. I’m sure most or really all of them are bad ass, competent women who want to promote the freedom of their bodies in the outdoors, and the absolute right of women to exist in those spaces, the same as men. That social media is a slim filter to show our whole selves. But it bothered me still, to be associated with that feeling of sexualized inferiority somehow, and that I couldn’t figure out in our world of social media how to portray this feeling of freedom, the sense of womanhood, empowerment and belonging in the mountains because the system was so ingrained in the way that women’s bodies have been objectified. So that’s a simple solution, right? Just don’t post the pictures.

And there is it, the strong part of me that feels as though this whole feeling is completely invalidated. That I’m incredibly wrong here, with no grounds to even stand on. It’s like there’s this voice in head, Erin If you don’t want to cause problems, why even post the picture in the first place? You’re not good enough to say these things, you don’t have the power to think like that. Why do I feel like that? That every time I get angry it’s not a valid thing; that I’m being silly? That it’s just, as my (incredibly wonderful supportive, feminist minded boyfriend), laughed after seeing the picture, calling it another ‘Girls Show Their Tits To The World’ photo. (He later apologized.)

I think it’s confusing moments like these when I listen to Lemonade, cry a lot and then resolve my steel. (Thank you Beyonce, always). And moments where a good friend takes me to an all ladies naked spa day the weekend after I had my IUD procedure, just to thank me for being brave. And moments on Orcas Island, in the clothing optional hot tubs, sitting with friends and laughing in the salty pine air, just like the majority of Europe where bodies are not sexualized in our staunch puritanical bullshit principles, but appreciated as unique, natural and beautiful.

So I WANTED to post the picture. I wanted to try to accurately depict an incredible, powerful moment in the quiet of the mountains and the sheer beauty thereof. And of being women. And not following any man up the mountain, but hiking it ourselves. And how hard, how so fucking hard that is to maintain, promote and demand as equality in this society, simply to be recognized as equals, as equally entitled. I work for a rock climbing gym, and as part of staff training we had to write through safety scenarios. One of the scenarios was a woman following her boyfriend to the gym, and acting unsafe in the environment. It pissed me off so much, and I still haven’t been able to say anything about. That was months ago. Every half hour on shifts we have to tally up the total of men and women in the gym, simply for record keeping purposes. Every time the ratio is always in favor of the men, and every time it digs me, just a little. Yesterday was the first time I had ever seen the number equal. I actually wrote an exclamation point next to the tally.

I was listening to the SheExplores podcast in the kitchen the other night, in which a woman told of a story of going hiking with her boyfriend. He was an ex-marine, and she always felt like she was slowing him down, feeling the need to overcompensate and prove herself. She told a story that one time, he told her that he didn’t want to hike the John Muir Trail with her, even though it was a long term dream of hers, because she would, quote, “slow him down.”

“DUMP HIS ASS” I yelled into the sink of dirty dishes I was washing, splashing water onto myself, knowing full well I had no right to dictate life choices to a woman from a podcast.

The thing that got to me though, was that that wasn’t even the point of the story. The point was her work as a product researcher for an outdoor company or something along those lines. The fact that she felt inferior to her boyfriend in the outdoors was just a small detail. What got to me was the way she spoke of it like it was almost normal, the following of men up mountains and on trails. And the feeling of disempowerment it brings. Like it’s just something that women just have to “deal with” in order to go outside. The podcast producer expressed similar sentiments, and the whole thing just got me so upset that I had to pour a glass of wine to keep listening.

Up on the climbing wall cork board is an article entitled, How to Fight Sexism in the Climbing World. Yesterday I saw a guy read it, scoff “interesting…” like it was a new and foreign concept to him. I stood there quietly, insides burning. So goddamnit, yes I will take my shirt off, and if you want to objectify me, then let’s remember, that mountains are shaped exactly like female tits. So who’s house is this really?

Here’s the photo. I captioned it “Views for days”. I kind of hate myself for it. It sounds objectifying and diminishing.

Here’s what I really wanted to caption it, my favorite U2 quote, and one of my favorite song quotes of all time.

If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel. On your knees boy.

#outdoorwomen #pnw #outdoors #feminism #instagram

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