#so many words throughout history written and unwritten

[weirddreamsandfish]

I fucking loveeeeee languages and linguistics. Nothing more human than creating a language

[eruanna1875]

“Hope the stories are cool.”

At the half-murmured words, Ben turned to their source in the passenger seat beside him, brow furrowed. “What was that?”

Riley, staring out the window of Patrick’s weird-smelling car at the night around them, seemed surprised at the question. “Hm?” When he looked at Ben, however, it was clear he hadn't realized he'd said anything aloud until that moment. “Oh! Uh—" He shrugged it off with a nonchalant grin, turning away again. “Uh, nothing. Sorry.”

Oh, you’re not getting off that easy, Ben thought. “What’d you say? What stories?”

Riley rolled his eyes. “Ben—”

“No, no,” he interrupted, before a snide remark could be made, “I heard ‘stories’ and ‘cool’. Now, what cool stories were you talking about?”

Riley gave him perhaps half of a death glare, and for a moment, Ben thought he was going to ignore the question. But then he sulked back against his seat, and seemed to give in. “Well—” He scoffed, eyes on the ceiling. “Ours, I guess. I mean, we just stole the Declaration of Independence, Ben! The Declara—do you have any idea what this means?”

Ben frowned: maybe he was avoiding the question after all. “Yes, I think you've given me several ideas of the things this could possibly mean.” Besides, I thought you’d be worried out at this time of night, he added mentally.

“Yeah, but I'm not talking about going to prison, and Ian shooting us, and Abigail doing a lot more than slapping and shouting if we screw it up. She’ll probably… I dunno, impale us with those pointy heels or something.” He picked up an old neck pillow (he’d knocked it off the seat when he first climbed up front), and put it in his lap. “You know, maybe that’s why the spy chicks in the movies wear them all the time—if you can get used to running around and doing all those acrobatics in them, they can double as a lethal weapon.”

“Well, what are you talking about, then?” Ben pressed before the conversation could get too far off base: Riley could easily and resourcefully use the smallest sidetrack to avoid a topic he didn’t want to talk about. Kid was practically an escape artist.

“I’m talking about America. They're not gonna let us off with a simple little life sentence. They're gonna have us pegged even after we're dead.”

Ben bit back a comment about him watching too many ghost hunter shows, opting for the simpler, “How do you mean?”

Riley turned to fix blue eyes firmly on Ben; eyes that, to his surprise, he now saw were grounded in a gravity greater than worry. “Ben… whether we win or not, we’re gonna be locked up for basically the rest of time. Why?”

He leaned in closer, and spoke with such certainty, Ben had to suppress a shiver.

“Because we’re going to be in all the American history books for basically the rest of time. Do you understand that, Mr. History Buff? Kids are gonna be learning our names in the future. Your name, my name, maybe even her name—and unless something crazy happens, like really crazy, then…” He sighed, and plopped back against the seat. “Then even if we keep the Declaration away from Ian, we're gonna be the ones they remember stealing it.” He looked back up. “You know that, Ben?”

It took a moment for Ben to find the voice to reply. When he did, he let it out with a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, blinking a few times. “Huh, yeah.” He sat back, stunned, as the full weight of it befell him. “Yeah...” he whispered again.

The fact was, he had thought of it. From the moment he determined to undertake the task, he’d been aware of it. But throughout their escapades and machinations, he had kept it as just that—a fact—an awareness at the back of his mind. He hadn’t thought about it. Not until that moment, in an empty parking lot in the middle of the night. Not until Riley decided to be seriously, deeply right.

And… he wanted to tell him that. He wanted to tell Riley just how dead-center his aim had been. He wanted to confess to him the sudden fear it had struck in his heart. But somehow, he couldn’t. What somehow it was, he didn’t know. But it kept his voice from him.

He started to tell himself he just didn’t want to worry him further, especially with the way things were now, but he knew that wasn’t it. Riley was the one who started this particular concern anyway. It wasn’t a matter of trust, either. This was his best friend—Riley knew things about him even his father didn’t know, and Ben would have willingly put his life in his hands. There were times when he’d had to. And there were times that Riley’s life had been in his hands, his alone, and they both knew it. And for all he knew, that could’ve been what stopped him from saying those words.

You’re dead right. We’ll never be forgotten. And it terrifies me.

Ben’s highest hope, even beyond the actual finding of the treasure, had always been to become a part of history. Just like his ancestors. Just like the Founders. Just like the men who had been his heroes since he was a boy. And throughout his adventure, there had been many times when he had thought to himself, you’re continuing that story. This is the same old tale Grandpa told you, but it’s not over. It’s going on, in this exact minute, and you’re the one carrying it now.

The thought had given him purpose, over all those years. But now, he could not help but wonder what his part in that history would be. Would he be a hero, like those men of history, the knights (official or not) that he had always looked up to? Or would he be the one to bring it all down when he failed?

But, whatever the reason, he couldn’t say all that to Riley. He couldn’t say anything at the moment. So the moment was filled with silence instead, a weighty, waiting silence, on the precipice of what tomorrow might bring. The burden of history, both written and as yet unwritten, was for him in that moment almost physical.

“That wasn’t the story I was talking about when you heard me, though.”

The breaking of the silence almost startled him. Ben glanced up at Riley, confused and close to bewildered. For a moment, all he could manage was, “Then… what—what were you…?”

Riley also looked up, and seemed to notice something strange in his hushed tone. “Oh. Sorry.” What was there to apologize for? “It’s just, I accidentally had, like, a lot of thoughts, while you and Abigail were talking. That stuff was part of it, but it wasn’t the main thing.”

He fell silent a moment, but Ben gestured him on, almost insistently. If there was more, even if it was worse, he felt he had to hear it. What could Riley have possibly meant?

Riley hesitated, then looked down and began fidgeting with a loose string on the neck pillow in his lap. “You were telling her the story. About the treasure, and how you got all that history from your grandpa.”

Ben’s ears perked up: anybody talking about his grandfather got his full attention.

“And I got thinking about it, and I just…” He shrugged. “I wondered about, y’know, what if that’s us someday? What if… what if we’re the ones some cool old guy tells his grandkids about? I mean, I know he still might think it’s bad, but at least grandpas and textbooks don’t really tell stories the same way. I assume,” he added, with a glance at Ben for confirmation.

To his own surprise, Ben felt a smile tugging at his lips. Something in that homier view of history—despite the continued possibility of failure—put him more at ease, as if he were still listening to old yarns at his grandfather’s house, slowly losing the fear of the storms outside. The cloud of heaviness that had been on him began to dissipate. Even the night around them seemed less dark.

Ben breathed a chuckle. “No, you’re right. They really don’t.”

“Yeah, so he’d be telling like a grandpa, not like some bored guy in Milwaukee having to crank out school material! Right? And then, like, he says,” and at this, Riley briefly put on the persona of an old man, complete with motions and raspy grandpa voice, “‘Come here, m’boy, let me tell you the story of the Templar Treasure,’ and the kids go huddle up in front of him with those ginormous eyes little kids always have, because apparently the smaller you are the bigger your eyes look, and he tells ‘em the whole thing, right up to where your grandpa told it, and then—and then he tells about us.”

There was a noticeable pause, as if it even took a little of Riley’s breath away. He smiled softly, almost in awe himself. “He tells about us.”

A few seconds passed before he noticed the gap of words, which he immediately jumped over to continue his own tale. “And—and maybe there’ll be this one kid who actually thinks about it and is like, ‘man, this Ben guy was nuts! He just goes, oh let’s steal the Declaration of Independence, and expects everybody to be totally fine with it? How could anybody deal with such a crazy guy?’ And the grandpa would be like, ‘Well, shucks, I always knew you were a smart kid.’”

At this, Ben laughed. Really laughed, clear and from the heart. How in the world could Riley complain and fret about their plans so heavily, and yet paint the future with such lightness that you could laugh at it? All the time he’d known this kid, and he still couldn’t quite understand him. But he didn’t mind. And, for the moment, there seemed nothing to fear. The weight was gone.

But Riley wasn’t finished. “Oh, but you know he'd still get pulled into it, the same way your grandpa pulled you in—the same way you pulled me in—and end up thinking it's the coolest thing ever, of course. I mean, who wouldn't, if they tell it like a Gates tells it? You guys don't skimp on the history stuff, especially family history. That’s what bought my ticket for this whole… train of thought... thing... in the first place, you and Abigail and all your history nerd talk the whole way here.”

Ben reeled back, taking false offense. “Oh, nerd talk, is it?”

“One hundred percent, man, and don’t you forget it. And it’ll still be nerd stuff when you’re the subject boring another average guy like me to sleep in the back of the car.” Riley threw his hands in the air with an air of finality. “And, who knows? Maybe one of those cute little grandkids gets all inspired the same way you did, and wants to go find a treasure and fight bad guys and figure all kind of crazy puzzles, and, heck, probably decides to go be a knight and stuff, just like u—”

He bit his lip, checking himself. But Ben took note of his near-words. Riley quickly continued on a corrected course.

“You. Just like you,” and he shoved his arm with a smirk, “Mister Sir Benjamin Franklin knighted-at-age-eleven Gates. You and all your Templars and Crusaders. ‘Cause I mean, what kid wouldn't think a guy smart enough to steal the Declaration of Independence, and crazy enough or brave enough to try to save it from the bad guys, was totally awesome?”

Ben was unvoiced. All his mouth could manage was a speechless smile, as he looked at his young friend. He felt like he’d just heard a little brother tell him he was his hero. And… maybe, in a way, he had.

But it didn’t take long for Riley to notice the smile. The moment he did, he covered his tracks with a roll of the eyes, hoping to pretend he hadn’t said as much as he had. “Except for the kids who actually have the misfortune to know you, I mean.” And on “know”, he chucked the neck pillow at Ben’s face, nailing him squarely.

“Wha—they have the misfortune?”

“Yeah, you know, studies show, the coolness-craziness ratio really gets skewed over time, especially where little kids are involved.”

Snatching the pillow from where it had fallen, Ben grinned and replied, laughter in his voice. “Well, maybe they should ask you to tell the story, then. You seem to have it pretty well mapped out.”

Riley gave him a look. “If I live to have grandkids, I might. And if that pun was actually intended.”

Noticing suddenly how the thought had come out, Ben considered it. “It is now.”

“Thought so.”

As he studied the young snark, another thought lit up Ben’s mind. One that simply could not be left under a bushel. But he did hide a growing grin behind his hand, as he prepared to speak again.

“But you know,” he mused, acting thoughtful, “I’m a little surprised at you, Riley. I mean, you left out one of the key historical figures involved in the story of the Templar Treasure. And he’s not one I thought you’d forget, either, let me tell you.”

“Oh great, here comes the history lecture.” Riley turned to him, eyes firmly planted on the ceiling just above Ben’s head, looking like a teen braced for a parental scolding. “Fine. Who'd I miss?”

“The other knight.”

At his confused look, Ben leaned back, gesturing with a bit of storytelling flair himself. “Riley Poole: computer genius and sole source of common sense, fellow treasure protector against the forces of evil and Ian Howe.” Then, as Riley gaped, Ben launched into a series of smaller voices (although he barely tried to sound like a child, let alone the three to four he seemed to be acting out). “‘Tell me more about him, Grandpa! Oh, he's such a funny guy, I like his jokes! How ever did he put up with that crazy Ben? That guy couldn’t have got anywhere without Riley!’”

Riley stared at him for a few seconds. But then, to Ben’s surprise, his mouth snapped shut, and the jaw behind it seemed, for a second at least, to clench. “Come on, Ben, not cool,” Riley muttered, jerking his face the other way. “I was serious.”

Ben felt a twinge of guilt at the almost angry reaction: Riley thought he was being mocked. But before he could feel so (mistakenly) betrayed he cut himself off from anything Ben had to say—a situation Ben really, really hated—he settled a hand on Riley’s shoulder. This earned him a rather cross glance. But, seeing past the glare, he looked his young friend dead in the eyes, with a small, sincere smile.

“So was I.”

The glance lengthened into a full-on stare. “Wait, you—”

Ben could see the exact moment that the words fully sank in. The irritation became stunned surprise, and that turned to a swelling, glowing pride. It wasn’t a joke. Ben meant every word. A smile twitched at his lips. Then the swell burst, short and sudden, in a laugh like a firework. “Wow.”

And it pleased Ben mightily to see it. The sight of those blue eyes lighting up with real joy, with no hint of sarcasm, was rare. And he was doubly happy, because he was also telling the truth. Truth in every single word. Including one word in particular. One that required a little testing. Ben paused, taking the moment in a bit longer, then lifted his eyebrows, almost humourously. “Unless, of course, you’d prefer to drop the knight part…”

“No!”

Ben nearly laughed again at the eager speed of the answer. But Riley, upon realizing the same, nearly stumbled over himself to cover up with, “Um, no, no, that’s fine. The knight part… the knight part works. D-don’t worry about it.”

“Who’s worrying?” Ben grinned, hopes fulfilled. Ever since he’d told Riley about his boyhood knighthood (and truth be told, he’d never really dropped the title, at least in his own mind), he’d found it easier and easier to think of the two of them as fellow knights. But he never said that. He didn’t want to push a title on someone else if they might think it a little childish. That was why he’d needed a test, which Riley had passed with eagerness.

And yet, pleased as he was by that eagerness, it suddenly hit him how easily it could be snuffed out. The nearer they got to the treasure, the greater the danger would grow. He was sure of that. They’d already been through some real perils, and they’d escaped without injury, but how long would it be before they wound up in front of Ian’s gun again, with ever-dwindling negotiables? The old weight began to creep back over him.

“You are.”

Ben looked back up, confused. “I’m what?”

“Worrying.”

Is it that noticeable? “Oh. Am I?”

At that, something inside Riley seemed to crumble, something he tried very much to hide. “Oh.”

Ben furrowed his brow, definitely worried now. What happened? Did I say something wrong?

He started to open his mouth to ask, but Riley seemed to steel himself, taking a breath and lifting his head. “Yeah, and you know, I totally get it,” he said, quickly and in something of an apologetic tone, “it’s a personal thing from your childhood, it feels weird letting somebody else take over it. I get it. The knight part is your thing. So if you don’t want me tacking it on,” he raised his hands in surrender, “it’s fine, I won’t say anything else about it.”

“What?” This was it? After all the—he still felt out of place in Ben’s life? He still felt like he was being just a burden, a tagalong?

“What?”

Ben sighed and shook his head. “You’re not taking anything over. Knighthood is meant to be passed from one to another. And it’s too important a promise to tack on to just anybody.”

“Tell that to Jagger.”

“Too important for me to just tack on, then.”

Riley seemed reluctant to accept acceptance, no matter how many times he’d received it. “Really?”

“Trust me. You’re good. That wasn’t even close to what I was worrying about.”

He let out a quiet breath of relief. “Okay.” The pause wasn’t long, however, before he glanced back up. “But you were worrying, though. That was definitely the Ben Gates worry face.”

“I have a worry face?”

“Ehh, it’s rare, but I know it when I see it. I mean, it’s you. Worrying.” Ben conceded the point with a shrug. “So why?”

“Why?” Ben hesitated, taking a breath, but his mind made itself up quickly. No more. Riley had opened up to him; it was high time, however his friend reacted, he did the same. He slowly let out his breath. “Because I think we’re gonna need the knight part pretty soon. We’re probably coming up on some… well, some pretty difficult chapters of that story, if you know what I mean. And, if I’m gonna be honest,” and at this, his voice dropped, “I’m a little afraid to know the ending.”

Riley stared at him for a silent moment. Ben wasn’t quite sure what he was hoping for next. Hope I didn’t say too much. But then Riley nodded, slowly at first. “Wow. Yeah, I mean, me too, man.” His nodding sped up. “You know, maybe I will keep the knight part after all.”

Ben smiled, relieved, though he wasn’t sure why. “Sounds like a good idea.”

“Yeah.” Riley was quiet only a moment more before he scoffed. “You know, it’s all fine when you’re just hearing about the dangerous stuff the heroes go through. You don’t really think about how threats to your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness actually feel.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

“But hey,” he shrugged, “at least those future-kids are gonna have a heck of a story. I mean, for them, we’re probably coming up on the best parts!” He laughed at his own words, but still grimaced slightly.

Ben smiled. Again, the complainer held the candle in the dark. And in that moment, Ben knew he was glad to have him on this… adventure, or whatever it could be called, no matter what happened. Riley really had been the common sense, the genius, the light (shaded in sarcasm though it was), throughout the whole thing. And Ben was sure he truly couldn’t have gotten this far without him. But he knew they were about to head off into more trouble when they got to Philadelphia tomorrow, very possibly of the life-threatening type. He had to make sure Riley was okay with facing it down.

“Sure you still wanna be a part of it?” he asked, nodding toward him. “It’s a big responsibility.”

Riley tapped the red, metal, tube-like container hanging on Ben’s seat. “I know.”

Ben nodded. “You’re right. There is a very big responsibility to keep the Declaration safe. We have enough danger just from that. But the duty of the Templars, the Freemasons, and the family Gates, now, that's all on me. Not you or Abigail or anybody else. I know I pretty much dragged you into this from the beginning, and if you’d rather stay out of the line of fire, I… wouldn’t mind letting you—”

“Oh no you don’t, Mr. Gates,” Riley interrupted, grinning widely and pointing threateningly, “you made me a treasure protector, same as all your Templars, Freemasons, and family Gates! And I promise you, I’m not about to let you write me out now!”

That’s a good enough promise for me. Then, attitude restored, Ben responded in a tone of dry humour. “Well, then, in that case, I dub thee Sir Riley.” And he smacked him on the shoulder with the neck pillow.

Sir Riley seemed to take offense to the smacking as a personal challenge, and snatched the pillow away. Ben could see a glint of war fire in his eye. However, before battle could be engaged, his eye caught a sight that was becoming pleasantly familiar, to him at least. He laughingly held up a hand.

“Okay, hold up, hold up, Abigail’s coming back.”

“Oh joy,” Riley deadpanned, a little disappointed in the forced ceasefire. Then, with a thought, he smirked at Ben. “You think even she’d be okay in a story? Like as a character?”

“Abigail?” Ben considered her qualifications for such a role. And he found he couldn’t help but smile; smile at her deep passion for history (close akin to his own), her unflagging determination, and of course, her absolute refusal to ever shut up. “Could be.” He chuckled softly. “Could be…”

He looked up to find Riley giving him a very pointed look, so Ben ignored him and glanced out at her instead. As Abigail crossed the parking lot, he pondered her a little longer. “Wonder if she thinks we're the heroes or the villains.”

By the time he noticed Riley’s movement, the window was already halfway rolled down. “Good question.” Riley stuck his head out the window and yelled across the parking lot, “Hey, Abi, do you think we're the heroes or the villains?”

Still halfway across, she stopped to give him a look and shook her head. “It’s Abigail to you, and for the record, I still think you’re lunatics.”

“Well, I knew that!”

“I mean for yelling across the parking lot.”

“Well, if we're stating things for the record, you're yelling too.”

Abigail simply rolled her eyes and resumed her walk. Riley laughed again. “Guess we’re gonna have to call off the Second Revolutionary War, huh, Ben?”

“Oh, you’ll probably break the truce at some point.”

“Keep on your toes, old man.”

Riley smiled, but fell silent as he did so, staring at the dashboard. In the moment before Abigail came up to the car, his voice returned. “So… just to be clear…” He took a breath before he spoke again, and looked up at Ben hopefully when he did. “Knights?”

Ben practically beamed as he nodded: he could finally say it was true. “Knights.”

Riley held up his fist, and they sealed their eternal covenant of knighthood and brotherhood with a knuckle-bump.

A moment later, the passenger door opened. “Also, you took my seat, Bill.”

“Sir Riley, actually. Nice to meet you, milady.”

---

Well, happy Independence Day, folks! Thanks for reading, and doubly so if you've stuck with me all the way through to the end here!

This is my first National Treasure fic, but my second Lord of the Rings fic (the first is ancient and in hiding somewhere). Since NT is so patriotic and honoring of America's history and forefathers, I figured I'd post this today.

The inspiration came from two things: firstly, that fanfiction I posted about a few weeks ago, and secondly, from the story scene in The Two Towers. The kids had the movie on, and I jumped in right around there. And maybe I just had NT on the brain, but that scene just suddenly struck me as very fitting for Ben and Riley. Who are awesome, by the way.

So I wrote up a (much shorter) first draft that day, and edited it over the next several weeks. And now it's done! And I'm rather pleased with it, for my part.

It's also on fanfiction.net and, for the first time for any of my fics, AO3, if you want to check that out too.

Again, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, and happy Independence Day!

[empirexsin]

retrouvaille / @treebitched​

his life has been a journey that most people would gasp in disbelief, or simply not believe at all. he recalls being a small boy. guessing his age would be pointless, but he knows he still had some sense of innocence, idiocy, and ignorance about the world. the three i’s that seem to be the key to a blissful existence if they can be maintained. he liked pulling things apart - objects, and then, putting them back together again. it had started when he had broken his uncle’s camouflage-designed lighter. his uncle had always lied about how he had been a military man and fought in all kind of wars. the reality was, that he was a bum and had been in so much trouble with the law, that no good place of work would take him. and so, it seemed like being a fabricated veteran was a good enough excuse to tell people as to why he didn’t work. 

but max had known the lighter had meant a lot to him. as if it would continue this image he’d created of himself. and he knew, that if unfixed, his uncle would do what he often did - and often didn’t need an excuse for; violence. max had quite a knack for fixing things. his mother, a mentally ill, abused woman, had doted over max claiming that he’d be a doctor when he was older - a surgeon. but they had such little money for an education that the idea of such a profession seemed laughable. it was only when max got into computers that he’d earned enough money to buy himself into college. to sit among kids from hallmark happy families and middle-class upbringings. for a while, they seemed to look at max as if he were the token poor kid. it was only when he began to use his intelligence, to laugh in their faces at their mistakes, and use manipulation, that he won them over. charm, he’d learned, was a good way to lure people into false security. 

he’d fucked many women throughout college. he’d smile and they’d flock to him like geese after breadcrumbs. and becoming this heartless killing machine, max had learned more things about people. like how plants are more courageous than human beings: an orange tree would rather die than produce lemons whereas instead of dying, the average person would rather be someone they are not. it’s why he finds that when he kills, it’s merciful rather than cruel. people just don’t see it that way. far too weaved into sociological ideas of how society should be. but all of these unwritten rules are written by white men from the 1500s. and max could say a lot about that time in history. 

things had changed when he met willow. simple willow. blonde and stupid. he could have killed her. should have. didn’t. somehow along the way had found himself fascinated and infatuated with her. somewhere along the way, had become distant from her. if only because she had met another man. someone seemingly more trustworthy than max. more truthful in her eyes, but max thinks she only likes the truth when it’s said with flowers and soft-spoken words. not direct, harsh overtones. he hadn’t seen her since. a weird disappearance. nothing in the news. or the papers. no words were spoken about her on the street. just gone like a leaf being blown by the wind. you see it one moment and don’t think about it when it’s out of your eye line. 

but tonight he’d seen her. he was out of town. skipped town. hands in pockets on a cold night, in a big coat. the road is quiet. empty. he waits for the bus that comes every hour thirty. but he sees her, across the street, like some kitten that’s been dumped in a cardboard box by some lousy owner who can’t make a quick purchase on a dumb cat. and joy fills him. and aggression. he wants to hurt her with how overwhelmed he feels with this...happiness. psychologists will call it cute aggression, but they don’t understand how easy it would be for max to actually follow through with killing her right now. “ weepy, ” he calls as if he’s recalling a dog that has fetched a ball. “ don’t tell me this is where mister romantic has left you. this isn’t very paris ” 

[adevotedappraisal]

Magdalene by FKA Twigs, a review.

I’ve been learning some shit from women from as long as I’ve been alive. Always some other shit that I never asked for but I got told it.  I used to treat them things they said as laws as a child, but I never saw them in a book, so then I stopped believing them.  They were always hushed laws though, laws told with squinted eyes and italicized whispers, laws told when no one else was around.

I mean, now of course men make the real laws that we know and live by.  Well come on now, we write them on parchment, and display them on lights, we code them into computers, inscribe them on coins and stone. But these women…man women tell you some other shit, like glue shit, in low, muttered tones in the quiet part of the house.  Like advice on… well not how the world works, but how to deal with the world when it works against you, and how to make it work for you. But you see, I’ve come to believe that the fairer sex tells you different laws than the vaunted laws and advice of our fathers because they all around see the world differently than men do.  They may, in fact, have been harbouring different goals than us all along.  

I mean for christssakes us men have our hero’s journey as clear as day, writ large and indelible across history books and entertainment.  You could take that Joseph Campbell mono-myth theory and see it expressed in Arthurian swash-buckle, the middle earth ring-slaying of Tolkien, or in the recently concluded tri-trilogy of Star Wars galactic clashes.  We’re in the empire business, as Breaking Bad’s Walter White infamously said.  But still, the question always lingered to me: what is the heroine’s journey? Is it really just a lady in a knight’s armour? Or some tough-as-nails spy for some interloping government’s intelligence agency, delivering kidney kicks in a designer pencil skirt?

Well, I’ve come to believe that the heroine’s journey is navigating the waves of history we imperial and trans-national men make from our railroads and pipelines, our satellites and wars, them at once preserving a culture and sparking a path and creating a bond between cultures in order for them and their (il)legitimate brood to survive.  That old chestnut about how behind every successful man is a woman always unnerved me by its easy adoption. I kept thinking ‘bout that woman.  I kept thinking, what the fuck was she thinking?

You see women’s heroes, they ain’t as clear as day to me.  They don’t kill the dragon, they don’t save the townspeople, they don’t shoot the Sherriff, or the deputy, or anyone most times. When I ask people in public at my job what super power they would like, most men go for strength, flight, and regenerative abilities (my pick).  Most women went with mind reading and flight. In late night conversations though, with the moonlight coming through the white blinds and resting soft on us like so, I sometimes manage to hear that women’s heroes heal and clean the sick of the nation, in sneakers with heels as round as a childhood eraser; they feed a family with one fish and five slices of wonder bread; they would run gambling spots in the back of their house, putting the needle back on the Commodores record and patrolling the perimeter of the smoked-out room with a black .45 nested by their love handles; they climb up flag poles and speak out loud in public for the disposed and teach children those unwritten, floating laws while cloistered in the quiet part of the house.  

Although their heroines are sometimes from the top strata of society –a Pharaoh here, an Eleanor Roosevelt there, an Oprah over there—they also name a healthy mix of radicals and weirdos with modest music success, people like Susan B. Anthony, Frida Kahlo, Virginia Woolf, or Nikki Giovanni, I mean did Nina Simone or Janis Joplin even crack the Billboard top ten? Yet there they are, up on the walls of a thousand college dorms across the country.  So even though I couldn’t’ve foreseen it, it makes sense that of all the ultra-natural creatures, of all the great conquering kings and divining prophets of the Holy Bible, Mary Magdalene ends up the spirit animal for the album of the year for 2019.

Mary Magdalene was a follower of Jewish Rabbi Jesus during the first century, according to the four Gospels of the New Testament of the Bible, a figure who was present for his miracles, his crucifixion and was the first to witness him after his resurrection.  From Pope Gregory I in the sixth century to Pope Paul VI in 1969, the Roman Catholic Church portrayed her as a prostitute, a sinful woman who had seven demons exorcised from her.  Medieval legends of the thirteenth century describe her as a wealthy woman who went to France and performed miracles, while in the apocryphal text The Gospel of Mary, translated in the mid-twentieth century, she is Jesus’ most trusted disciple who teaches the other apostles of the savior’s private philosophies.

Due to this range of description from varying figures in society, she gets portrayed in differing ways, by all types of women, each finding a part of Magdalene to explain themselves through.  Barbra Hershey, in the first half of Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) plays her as a firm and mysterious guide, a rebellious older cousin almost, while Yvonne Elliman, in Norman Jewison’s 1973 film adaptation of Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ Superstar is lovelorn and tender throughout, a proud witness of the Word being written for the first time.  In “Mary Magdalene,” FKA Twigs, the Birmingham UK alt-soul singer, describes the woman as a “creature of desire”, and she talks about possessing a “sacred geometry,” and later on in the song she tells us of “a nurturing breath that could stroke you/ divine confidence, a woman’s war, unoccupied history.” Her vocals that sound glassy and spectral in the solemn echoes of the acapella first third, co-produced by Benny Blanco, turn sensual and emotive when the blocky groove kicks in.  That groove comes into its own on the Nicolas Jaar produced back third, and when this all is adorned with plucked arpeggios it sounds like an autumnal sister to the wintry prowl of Bjork’s “Hidden Place” from her still excellent Vespertine (2001). 

This blending of the affairs of the body and of Christian theology is found in the moody “Holy Terrain” as well.  While it is too hermetic and subdued to have been an effective single, it still works really well as an album track.  In this arena, Future is not the hopped up king of the club, but a vulnerable star, with shaded eyes and a heart wrapped up in love and chemicals, sending his girl to church with drug money to pay tithes.  Over a domesticated trap beat he shows a vulnerable bond that can exist, wailing his sins and his devotion like a tipsy boyfriend does in the middle of a party, or perhaps like John the Baptist did, during one of his frenzied sermons, possessed and wailing “if you pray for me I know you play for keeps, calling my name, calling my name/ taking the feeling of promethazine away.”

Magdalene, the singer’s sophomore release, takes the mysterious power and resonance of this biblical anti-heroine, and involves its songs with her, these emotional, multi-textured songs about fame, pain and the break up with movie star boyfriend Robert Pattinson.  With “Sad Day,” Twigs sings with a delicate yet emotional yearning, imbued with a Kate Bush domesticity. The synth pads are a pulsing murmur, and the vocal samples are chopped and rendered into lonely, twisting figures.  The drums crash in only every once in a while, just enough to reset the tension and carve out an electronic groove, while the rest of the thing is an exercise in mood and restraint, the production by twigs, Jaar and Blanco, along with Cashmere Cat and Skrillex, leaves her laments cosseted in a floating sound, distant yet dense and tumultuous, the way approaching storm clouds can feel.   Meanwhile “Thousand Eyes” is a choir of Twigs, some voices cluttered and glittering, some others echoed and filled with dolour. “If you walk away it starts a thousand eyes,” she sings, the line starting off as pleading advice and by the close of the song ending up a warning in reverb, the vintage synths and updated DAWs used to create these sparse, aural haunts where the choral of shes and the digital ghosts of memory can echo around her whispered confessional.

In many of these divorce albums, the other party’s role in the conflict is laid bare in scathing terms: the wife that “didn’t have to use the son of mine, to keep me in line” from Marvin Gaye’s Here My Dear from 1979; the players who “only love you when they’re playin’” as Stevie Nicks sang on Fleetwood Macs Rumours (1977); or as Beyonce’s Lemonade (2017) charges, the husband that needs “to call Becky with the good hair.”   At first though, Twigs is diplomatic, like in “Home with me,” where she lays the conflict on both sides here, expressing the rigours of fame, the miscommunication –accidental or intentional –that fracture relationships, and the violent, tenuous silence of a house where one of the members is in some another country doing god knows what, physically or mentally. “I didn’t know you were lonely, if you’d just told me I’d be home with you,” she sings in the chorus over a lonely piano, while the verse sections have the piano chords flanked by blocks of glitch, and littered with flitched-off synths. Then, the last chorus swirls the words again, along with the strings and horns and everything into a rising crescendo of regret.

Later in the album however, her anger once smoldering is set alight, in the dramatic highlight “Fallen Alien.” Twigs sings with an increasing tension, as her agile voice morphs from confused, pouting girlfriend to towering lady of the manor, launching imprecations towards a past lover and perhaps fame itself. “I was waiting for you, on the outside, don’t tell me what you want ‘cuz I know you lie,” she sings, and, after the tension ratchets up becomes “when the lights are on, I know you, see you’re grey from all the lies you tell,” and then later on we have her sneering out loud “now hold me close, so tender, when you fall asleep I’ll kick you down.”  All while pondering pianos drop like rain from an awning, tick-tocking mini-snares and skittering noises flit across the beat like summer insects, the kicks of which are like an insistent, inquisitive knocking at the door, and then there’s that sample, filtered into an incandescent flame, crackling an  I FEEL THE LIGHTNING BLAST! all over the song like the arc of a Tesla coil. The song is a shocking rebuke, and it becomes apparent upon replays that the songs are sequenced to lead up to and away from it, the gravitational weight giving a shape and pace to the whole album.  Because of this, the other songs on Magdalene have more tempered, subtle electronic hues and tones, as if the seductive future soul of 2013s “Water Me” from EP2, and the inventive, booming experimentation of “Glass & Patron” from 2015s M3LL1SSX, were pursed back and restrained until it was needed most, and this results in an album more accomplished, nuanced and focused than her impressive but inconsistent debut LP1 (reviewed here).  

This technique of electronic restraint has shown up in the most recent albums by experimental pioneers, with the sparse, mournful tension of Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool (2017), it’s cold, analog synths and digital embellishments cresting on the periphery of the song, and with Wilco’s Ode to Joy from last year, an album bereft of their lauded static and electric scrawl, mostly embossed in acoustic solitude and brittle, wintery guitar licks.  Twigs and her co-producers take the same knack for the most part throughout the album, like with closer “Cellophane,” where the dramatic voice and piano are in the forefront, while effects crunch lightly in the background like static electricity in a stretched sweater, and elsewhere, as the synths of “Daybed” slowly intensify into a sparkling soundscape, as if manufacturing an awakening sunrise through a bedroom window.  And it is this seamless melding of organic and electronic instruments, to express these wretched and fleeting emotions of heartbreak that makes this the album of the year.

It makes sense that an artist like FKA Twigs would be drawn to a figure like Mary Magdalene.  Of the many Marys in the New Testament, she stuck out as palpably different, or rather, she depicted a differing part of womanhood than the other two.  She wasn’t the chaste, life-giving mother of Jesus, or the dutiful Mary of Clopas. Instead, Magdalene was this mixture of sexuality and spirituality, one of those figures that managed to know men and women in equal measure, wrapped up with the blood as well as the flesh.  Twigs also played with this enrapturing sexuality in her work, writhing around in bed begging some papi to pacify her and fuck her while she stared at the sun, then making you identify with the lamentations of video girls, and then telling you in two weeks you won’t even recognize who you were seeing before.  There was something mysterious and layered to her millennial art-chick sexpot act though, layers that have begun to be revealed with this album.  

We realise now, that what she was depicting all along was more like the sexual heat that lays underneath devotion, as opposed to fleeting, mayfly lust, and that she now understands the weight and half-life of love.  That is, that beyond the sex and patron and fame there is a near sacred love we build between each other for a while in time, lasting as long as both hands can bear to hold it, and also that the death of a relationship still has the memory of the love created warm within it that then radiates off slow into the air.  A love that then falls into our minds for safekeeping dark and unobstructed now, the way Jesus’ blood fell from his wound into Joseph of Arimathea’s grail held aloft.  

“I never met a hero like me in a sci-fi,” FKA Twigs sings, an evocative line less so for the hegemonic patriarchy of the worldwide movie and comic book industry suggested by ‘the sci-fi’ here, and more for the ‘hero like me’ part, which suggests she had to make her hero origin story all up, without the scaffolding of centuries of relatable mythologies, presenting us with an avatar of millennial love, in all of its tortured luster.  And you hear this type of love in her voice, no longer changed up and ran through a filter for Future Soul sophistication most times, but out in the open now, to express particular emotions, whether it’s in that swooping, falling ‘I’ in the heart-break closer “Cellophane,” or her assured realisation, later on “Home With Me” where she says “But I’d save a life if I thought it belonged to you/ Mary Magdalene would never let her loved ones down.”  

It’s never about how to conquer with these women you see.  In the end of all relationships it’s how they find their way out after us temporarily embarrassed conquerors are about to leave, jacket slung over shoulder, standing by the door. You squint your eyes back at her this time, and you listen this time, while she tells you, or tells the ground in front of you, what parts of love to let go of, and what parts are worth holding on to in this age of Satan, the parts that will help you become yourself. “I wonder if you think that I could never help you fly,” the song tells you then, one of those stinging admissions that only women come up with, and you wisely stay silent, and then the piano chords part, the synths subside. And for a while there as she looks at you, as the breathy sortilege in the song keeps going, it all sounds like something worth believing in again.  And then, the words she says to you start to come across like laws.

[priceofliberty]

in regards to that ask about antitrust laws, and laws in general, what would you have as "laws" in an anarchic society? i dont know much about common law, is that your/a solution?

Anarchist philosophy, in practice, is a society “without rulers” (the literal definition). Many people conflate “anarchy” with “lawlessness”, and the confusion is certainly understandable. However, governance exists with or without the State and it begins with the self, extending into the home, and beyond. Many people struggle because they conflate the concept of governance with the function of a State; I had been guilty of this before I understood anarchy to mean self-governance.

We are self-governing in all of our relationships, whether it’s between a mother and child; between her and her employer; between child and teacher; buyer and supplier; disputing parties and an impartial arbiter, etc.

Mutual assent to the establishment of these relationships (and the countless others I didn’t list) is an inherently regulatory act because people set their terms, expectations, conditions, etc. before committing to them voluntarily with the exception of that between a parent and child (because who can ask you if you want to be born?)

The beauty of a free and open marketplace of ideological exchange is that people have the ability to come together and brainstorm solutions to problems that are impacting their lives. It is a far more direct and sensible approach to delegating those decision-making powers to some bureaucrat 2,000 miles away with absolutely no interest in your interests apart from saying the right combination of words to assure they are reelected for the benefit of legal and economic privileges which invariably manifest when a single, central authority has a monopoly on force and law.

Consider reading up on legal pluralism (I write about it a lot, as well). This is the notion that all people follow multiple codes, bodies of law, or moral guidelines simultaneously, even while some may conflict or overlap. Studying how various cultures throughout history have solved conflict or maintained peace can help people recognize solutions outside of the narrow confines of the State. For example, many individuals conform to social norms within the home that they would not exhibit in the workplace (and vice versa).

Anarchy isn’t the establishment of a DMV to issue you a driver’s license (that’s Statism). Anarchy is the privatization of roads, car insurance, and licensure so that the three can work in tandem to provide and maintain the infrastructure which services us as freely and efficiently as economically possible without coercion. Anarchist society, much like an economy, organizes itself without an arbitrary central authority; what works for some may not work for others. Communities are self-organized, markets are spontaneous. For instance, take this excerpt from Everyday Anarchy on dating, marriage and family:

In any reasonably free society, these activities do not fall in the realm of political coercion. No government agency chooses who you are to marry and have children with, and punishes you with jail for disobeying their rulings. Voluntarism, incentive, mutual advantage – dare we say “advertising”? – all run the free market of love, sex and marriage.

What about your career? Did a government official call you up at the end of high school and inform you that you were to become a doctor, a lawyer, a factory worker, a waiter, an actor, a programmer – or a philosopher? Of course not. You were left free to choose the career that best matched your interests, abilities and initiative.

What about your major financial decisions? Each month, does a government agent come to your house and tell you exactly how much you should save, how much you should spend, whether you can afford that new couch or old painting? Did you have to apply to the government to buy a new car, a new house, a plasma television or a toothbrush?

No, in all the areas mentioned above – love, marriage, family, career, finances – we all make our major decisions in the complete absence of direct political coercion.

When you barge into your friend’s room to ask them if you can borrow their shirt, most people close the door behind them when they leave (especially if the door was closed before you entered). It’s almost an unspoken rule to close the door behind you in such a scenario and adherence to this rule illustrates the concept I mentioned earlier: legal pluralism. This concept reflects the reality that human interaction, left to our own devices, is governed by prevailing social and cultural values and that those values are inherent to our conduct.

Besides what we consider to be “the law,” we also follow an innumerable set of unwritten rules in our day-to-day conduct. You must have noticed at this point in your life, for example, that your behavior alters between spending time among friends and spending time among family. Likewise, in the work place your demeanor shifts to conform to the standards expected of your performance in that setting. In every scenario, the penalty for breaching the terms of these unspoken norms is usually a sanction in some form or another: your parents ground you, your friends ostracize you, your boss docks your pay, etc. They do this because people respond to incentives.

Though you don’t realize it, this is anarchy in action. More examples of this are virtually limitless; the relative silence one finds in theater atmospheres is a result of a mutual, unwritten understanding between all patrons. Commercial businesses regularly agree to third-party arbitration clauses all the time, regulating the conduct of their contractual obligations outside of the confines of the Uniform Commercial Code or Federal government. Even the Juggalos have been known to settle their disputes within the context of their own communities. There are no ‘one size fits all’ answers to “what if?” scenarios.

Anarchy should not be conflated with lawlessness. A great reading recommendation on customary law, culture, and history is short book written by Dorothy Bracey called “Exploring Law and Culture”. I think its perfect introductory material to the principles within legal theory, especially for people unfamiliar with the murky concept known as “the law”. It’s short and written for the average reader rather than legal scholars. 

And finally, here are a few more resources:

Mutualism:

A Mutualist FAQ

The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto (2010) by Kevin Carson

Studies in Mutualist Political Economy (2007) by Kevin Carson

Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective (2008) by Kevin Carson

What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government (1840) by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

The Philosophy of Poverty (1847) by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Individualist anarchism:

The Ego and Its Own (1845) by Max Stirner

Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty (1875) by Lysander Spooner

Individual Liberty (1926) by Benjamin Tucker

Anarchist Individualism and Amorous Comradeship by Émile Armand

The Anarchism of Émile Armand

Agorism

Voluntaryism

[onceuponamirror]

I think Sabrina is a little... questionable. I found the race depictions to be so problematic, in a way that tells me the showrunners thought that by casting a diverse cast they were done, when really they played into so many nasty race stereotypes and tropes that it ended up reading so offensive to me. (1/x)

For example, this show did not issue a trigger warning for an image of a lynched Black woman in 2018; it comes on suddenly and in close-up view. To do so without warning was so tone-deaf: It feels rare to go a day without seeing some news story about brutality against Black people. Showing it on a fictional TV show as one storyline of many felt like needless insult to injury, and it’s a telling marker of whose trauma is considered legitimate, and under what circumstances. (2/x)

It also seemed as if the show’s primary positioning of Prudence as an antagonist plays into a centuries-old myth developed by colonizers to dehumanize Black people for their traditional African spiritual beliefs and practices. The show positions Prudence as the angry Black woman who attacks the misunderstood, small, blonde, white girl. It’s a harmful conflict viewers simply did not need to see, especially when the cards are so clearly stacked in Sabrina’s favor. Prudence never stood a chance (3)

Representation is nice and all, but it should encourage writers to address characters of color like Prudence with dimension — including acknowledgements of how race affects the way they move through the world. Instead they totally ignored her race in some kind of colorblind haze, without acknowledging that even among women, power takes on a completely different meaning when blackness is a part of their identity. That to me is why CAOS is a bit of a failure. What do you think?—–

so, i’m definitely not going to dispute this. i mentioned in a few of my write ups for the show thus far that the treatment of race is never given any consideration the way sexuality and gender are cared for. 

i get this especially in the arc for roz, who essentially functions as a plot device rather than get the same kind of character development that harvey, susie, and sabrina get, for instance. 

as for prudence specifically, yes, the lynching scene has horrible optics and definitely perpetuates traumatic threats that were so unnecessary, in any case. it clearly wasn’t considered and i find it shocking (read: not too shocking) that no one, along the line, said hey, let’s not. you’d think that’d be obvious, but—it is RAS. he’s never been good at positive or equal racial representation, whatsoever, so let’s not beat around that bush.

beyond that, there are certain things that i feel i can’t speak to, but there’s a very good write up here, which i’ll post. 

Prudence is never depicted as an outright villain. The writers behind the series clearly want audiences to like her: She has bombastic entrances, great comebacks, and a stylistic fierceness that honors Gabrielle’s inspiration from the iconic Eartha Kitt. For every scene where she is cruel to Sabrina, there are others meant to highlight her depth beyond that mean-girl archetype, like their thoughtful argument about faith in the “Feast of Feasts” episode. Even as they have wildly different perspectives, they learn to respect each other. For Sabrina, she is willing to disregard the rules in order to get freedom and power; for Prudence, power is enough. In many ways, Prudence reminds me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Cordelia Chase (portrayed with vigor and venom by Charisma Carpenter) — a mean girl who becomes a hero with dimension in her own right.

I will admit whenever Prudence referred to Sabrina as “half-breed” to nod to her half-witch, half-mortal lineage, I winced. Those words coming out of the mouth of a black woman — especially a character who is revealed to be the mixed-race daughter of Father Blackwood (Richard Coyle) — is like stepping into a home with fun house mirrors. It’s a jarring occurence repeated at different points in the series, and it seems born from the same well of ignorance that led to the most prickly moment in the series’ fourth episode, “Witch Academy.”

The most controversial scene in Chilling Adventures, at least in regards to Prudence, comes at the end of that episode, which charts Sabrina’s early days in the Academy of the Unseen Arts as she suffers through a cruel hazing experience known as the Harrowing. The Weird Sisters, with Prudence guiding the way, relish torturing Sabrina — imprisoning her in a narrow chamber, forcing her into the cold night where a demon taunts her by imitating her loved ones being grotesquely tortured — and save their cruelest punishment for last. They take Sabrina to a clearing in the dead of night. A noose festoons her neck, rope binds her wrists. But instead of being strung up and perhaps even killed, Sabrina flips the script: With the help of the ghosts of Academy students killed during their own Harrowings, she flings up the Weird Sisters on invisible nooses, strangling them as she declares there will be no more hazing at the school. In a recent io9 piece, Beth Elderkin and Charles Pulliam-Moore critiqued this scene succinctly: “This should not have to be explained, but it is in extremely bad taste to depict black people being hanged on television without an extraordinary amount of context and care that make it clear that (a) the creators of the television show understand the significance of that imagery, and (b) said hanging serves a narrative point.”

Lynching is not a horror transcribed to history, but a present and vicious act. The goal of those that perform these monstrosities throughout the sickening history of this country is more than just pain or violence, it is to consign black people to utter oblivion. As the marvelous journalist Ida B. Wells said to a Chicago crowd in 1900, “Our country’s national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob. It represents the cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent people who openly avow that there is an ‘unwritten law’ that justifies them in putting human beings to death without complaint under oath, without trial by jury, without opportunity to make defense, and without right of appeal.”

I wasn’t riled by what happens in Chilling Adventures, but I can see how it betrays an ignorance to the optics of the matter, even as the hangings are meant to evoke the history of witch trials leading up to the emergence of the Greendale 13 in the closing episode. Yet to call what happens a lynching is to strip actual lynchings of their tangled complexities and to willfully ignore the context of the scene in the series. Sabrina doesn’t kill Prudence or the other Weird Sisters; she was defending herself in the only way she saw fit to avoid her own demise. (This act also foreshadows the darkness Sabrina is willing to enact by season’s end.) Most importantly, Chilling Adventures from the very beginning treats Prudence as an alluring mean girl, not a villain meant to be punished. If anything, Gabrielle brings her to life with such fierce grace, she becomes more than just a charming supporting character, but an accomplished scene-stealer who at times could be a more engaging anchor for the series than Shipka’s Sabrina.

[…]

Meanwhile, the history of black witches in pop culture is a tangled one defined by exoticization and marginalization. Black witches may be granted style and grace, but rarely are the written with any interiority. In The Craft, Rachel True’s Rochelle is mired in the racist attacks of a peer, but she is hastily drawn in comparison to the other, white members of her coven. In American Horror Story: Coven, Angela Bassett brings a fierce grace to Madame Marie Laveau, one of the most important figures of witchcraft in New Orleans and American history, but that series framed race in a way that betrays a queasy ignorance (and her power often paled to that of the white witches, who seemingly cribbed their skills from black women in the first place). Although Tituba is one of the most iconic black witches, thanks to portrayals in a variety of books, films, and series about the Salem witch trials, historical documents prove she wasn’t black at all but a South American Native. The most successful black witches in all of pop culture, to me, remain Mozelle Batiste Delacroix (Debbi Morgan) and the women of Eve’s Bayou, a gorgeous coming-of-age tale that respects and celebrates the rich culture of rural Louisiana.

Where does Prudence fit within this lineage? Does she mark a fascinating step forward in granting black women (and black audiences by proxy) the delight that comes with being a witch, or is she another example of the ways black witches in pop culture garner little respect and even less interiority by the writers that conjure them? Prudence is a tremendous character — beguiling, sharp-witted, fierce. She’s also something I wish I got to see as a kid: a black witch having fun with her powers and reveling in the world she lives in. If anything, she’s dynamic enough thanks to Gabrielle’s slinky performance that she trumps the show’s nagging issues of colorblind perspective. The creators behind Chilling Adventures would be smart to give her even more focus going forward and define the dynamics of race within their world of witchcraft.The conversation swirling around Chilling Adventures reflects the fascinating, wildly shifting intersections between politics and art that often simplify the former and flatten the latter. 

Representation need not be a mirror for individual members of the audience, but should encourage writers to address characters of color like Prudence with dimension — including acknowledgements of how race affects the way they move through the world. Chilling Adventures seeks to interrogate the ways women yearn for, experience, and at times, are prohibited from power through its clever, rich story about witches. But to give this story justice, the show must acknowledge that even among women, power takes on a completely different meaning when blackness is a part of their identity.

[x] (i think the whole article is really great and worth reading too)

so for me, yes, caos absolutely fails in many regards. it’s very whitefeminism!now! and that’s clear. 

but i do really agree with the last part of this article as well, which highlights that prudence is a very strong character in her own right and her relationship with sabrina very much shifts; before the show aired, i mentioned i was nervous that they made sabrina’s foil a black girl, but as it progressed, i didn’t really feel prudence was an antagonist. at the start, sure, but she feels very much a victim to the same world (for different reasons, obviously) and seemed to realize that towards the end. how she addresses her place in the witch world as a woman of color is something i hope the writers are paying attention to. i hope. 

witches are always going to be fairly fraught in terms of subject matter; caos invokes so much catholic vs satanism that it absolutely stomps all over any other religion, particularly iconography or stereotypes. i have plenty of criticisms in this regard, especially from my own place as a jewish woman. so many western witch stereotypes come from anti-semitism. the pointed hat was a medieval jewish hat and the physical depiction of witches also comes from very aggressive anti-semitic stereotypes, as well as the stories of blood libel (ie, child snatching and eating). it goes on. 

still to this day, most witches in films are portrayed by or described as jewish women. (elphaba, the witches in any oz incarnation, the coding of mother gothel in tangled etc) in caos specifically, they utilize lilith, who was a jewish figure, as the original demon and i could see that upsetting some in the context. it doesn’t for me, as a jewish woman, but i get it. 

and yet, i still enjoy the exploration of the witch, because i think it has the capacity to move or wade more deeply into these historical contexts, and also can be steeped with so much other meaning as well. witches have often been a gendered issue, the vilification of the woman, and how that spills onto the woman’s individual non-christian or non whiteness is a case by case basis. caos definitely, definitely fails in this. 

tl;dr, i do agree. i really do. and these are critiques that make the show worth not watching for some, worth openly pointing out. race is just as wrapped up in witch tales as much as religion or gender is, so to only address two out of those three things felt deliberately “colorblind” in a way that is not effective (and straight out offensive) for where we’re at in society. 

[loyallogic]

Effects of Common Law System in India

This article is written by Madhuri Pilania from Symbiosis Law School, Noida. This article deals with the Effects of the Common Law System in India.

Introduction

The Common Law is a body of law which is derived from judicial decisions also known as case laws. Common Law has been derived from the universal consent and the practice of the people from time immemorial. It is a system of jurisprudence which initially originated in England. It includes those set of rules of law which derive their authority from the statement of principles found in the decisions of Courts. The common law system includes tradition, custom and usage, fundamental principles and modes of reasoning. It is the embodiment of comprehensive unwritten principles, which were derived out of natural reasoning and sense of justice.

This system requires several stages of research and analysis to determine the appropriate law in a given situation. The facts should be ascertained properly and relevant cases and statutes are to be identified. The common law is different from codified law as it follows the judgment while the codified law precedes it. So it can be rightly said that it is a system of rules and declarations of principles from where the judicial ideas and legal definitions are derived.

If a similar dispute has been resolved in the past, the Court is bound to follow the reasoning used in the prior decision. In other words, it is developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals that are also called case laws.

It gives precedent weightage to common law, on the principle that it is unfair to treat similar facts differently on different occasions. The precedent is also known as “common law” and future decisions are bound by it. In future cases, when parties disagree on what the law is, the common law court looks to past decisions of the relevant Courts.

If a similar dispute or case has been resolved in the past, the Court is bound to follow the reasoning used in the prior decision this is also known as the doctrine of stare decisis. If the Court gets to know that the current dispute is different from the previous decisions of the cases, then the judges have the authority and duty to make law by creating a new precedent. The new decision of the Court becomes precedent and it will bind the Courts in future also. But sadly, the development of the common law in many cases is now of historical interest only. However, the basic principle is preserved, statutory changes have been made which modify the effects of many landmark cases.

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History of Common Law

It is a term that was originally used in the 12th century, during the reign of “Henry II” of England. The ruler established tribunals with the goal of establishing a system which is uniform in deciding legal matters. Such decisions created a unified “common” law throughout England. The precedent set by the Courts through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were often based on tradition and custom and was known as a “common law” system.

Common law in the United States dates back to the arrival of the colonists, who brought with them the system of common law with which they were already familiar. They followed the American system and the newly formed states adopted their own forms of common law which were different from the federal law.

The application of common law has been comprehensive in the Indian context. It has been incorporated in the Indian legal system over two centuries by the English to the point that one cannot assign an individual identity to Indian jurisprudence. Therefore, it can be said that common law has been applicable in a different format than that of England as the needs and demands of the Indian society were different from that of the English.

It is found that much of the law compiled in codes that we have today were primarily derived from the Common Law principles.

The basic statutes that govern Civil and Criminal justice are the Indian Penal Code, 1860, Indian Evidence Act, 1872, the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 and the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908.

One thing can be said about these legislations is that they have stood the test of time with minimum amendments. Codification of laws made the law consistent throughout the country and stimulated a kind of legal unity in fundamental laws. The Codes apply uniformly throughout the nation.

Indian legal system by Common Law is another contribution of the adversarial system of trial. In this system, the person who is accused is presumed to be innocent and the burden is on the prosecution to prove reasonable doubt that he is guilty. The accused enjoys the right to silence and cannot be forced to reply. The truth is supposed to come into view from the respective versions of the facts presented by the prosecution and the defence before a neutral judge. Both the parties have a right to question their witnesses and the opposing side has a right to test their testimony by questioning them.  The judge acts like an overseer to see whether the prosecution has been able to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt and gives the benefit of doubt to the accused. His ultimate duty is to pronounce the judgment regarding the matter.

Does Common Law lead to Judicial Overreach and Judicial Activism?

If the Judiciary gets into the creation of laws or steps into the role of the Executive without a strong reason, it leads to the situation of Judicial Overreach. In other words, it occurs when the Court acts beyond its jurisdiction and interferes in making of the laws. Common law system leads to judicial overreach because common laws are judge-made laws.

Judges continuously apply the existing laws to new situations and thus creating new laws. Judges perform the judicial function and go through the historical, social and legal text. It is considered as activism and becomes law themselves. Judicial activism has created the scope for judge-made laws or the common law system and that is an abuse of the constitutional power given to them. Judge’s decision is affected by several social and political factors that lead to judicial activism and judicial overreach.

The Legislative creates laws and the judiciary is supposed to interpret and enable the implementation of laws and not make laws.

Judicial Review and Activism are considered as valid and necessary. Judicial overreach is sometimes considered as an obstruction or undermining the functions of other arms of the Government. Judicial precedents have derived their force from the doctrine of stare decisis.

Common Law is Rigid and Inflexible

The Common Law has a number of defects but it is mainly rigid and inflexible. The inflexibility of the system leads to injustice because matters that were not within the scope of writs recognized by the Common Law are dismissed. Also, the Common Law does not recognize rights in the property other than those of strict legal ownership. The Common Law Courts had no power of enforcement. Also, it does not allow any form of oral evidence.

Clear weakness of the precedent is the inflexible nature of binding precedent. Lower Courts in the hierarchy are bound by existing precedent if they cannot distinguish material facts. Judgements from such previous cases are not taken into consideration. This creates a system of lawmaking that is rigid and not open to change. 

Does Common Law give rise to Jury Trial and Adversarial System?

The adversarial system is a legal system that is used in the Common Law countries where two advocates represent the cases of their parties to a jury or judge. They determine the truth and pass the judgement accordingly. It is a two-sided structure.

A trial without a jury, in which both questions of fact and questions of law are decided by judges is known as a bench trial. The lawyers are given free advice for the issues that they present. The judge presides over the trial and rules on issues of procedure and evidence, asking questions of the witness to clarify evidence. He concludes the trial by summing-up the facts for the jury and advise them about the relevant law. It is not open to the judge in an adversarial system to enquire the facts and evidence beyond that are presented by the opposing lawyers. The role of the judge is largely passive, but the judge can be partial sometimes on giving his views or judgements.

Solutions to the Issues

Judges are required to apply the laws made by the executive and the legislature. In Common Law, judges make the laws that lead to judicial overreach. If the integrity of the judiciary needs to be preserved, it is important that the executive and the legislature acts with accountability and transparency.

To ensure the checks and balances, the Constitution separates the powers between the executive, legislature and the judiciary in a political democracy. Any laws made or any amendment made is the domain of the legislature and not the judiciary.

The judiciary can introduce or enforce policies which are the domain of the executive, it can lay down regulations which are the domain of the legislature and in this way the work and powers divided can reduce the need of judicial overreach.

There should be some mechanism that checks judicial overreach that will make the judiciary accountable to the citizens. Judges need to remember that their work is to interpret law and not make or give laws. 

The jury trial has given rise to a system in which facts are concentrated in a single trial rather than multiple hearings and therefore the trial of Court is greatly limited. Jury cases can be reduced in number to avoid the impartiality in the decision of the cases. A judge in jury should discharge the person who is unsuitable for jury services. There should be a system of alternate juror in England and Wales to take the place of discharged juror.

No external pressures and threats should be allowed and the jury should not be under the influence of the trial judge. Adversarial may lead to injustice thus, to avoid that, fair trials are needed. It should properly observe the rights of the defending and prosecuting rights and prosecution should be allowed to present the facts as they are interpreted. Both the parties should be given a chance to present witnesses and evidence to support their positions.

The only remedy provided by the Common Law was not appropriate and also damaged in certain cases. This led to injustice and the need to remedy the weaknesses in the Common Law system was there. A general rule is less likely to do justice in all the particular cases as the facts of the cases may not be the same each time.

An attempt to construct the qualifications in advance, it is necessary to do justice in all cases.  But it would lead to a system of rules that are too complex, even if all the problems could be foreseen.

The Court of Chancery emerged as a solution to the common problems faced by the Common Law system by the law of equity. Equity of law was derived to balance some fair results because of some strict decisions in the past in Common Law. The decisions in common law were subjected to injustice. The decisions were permanent and rigid as they were made by the judges. Equity came to remedy Common Law as they did not provide a fair result. Equity system is a separate system of law and it moderates the Common Law and also helps to soften the Common Law. Equity provides remedies like injunctions, specific performance, compensation, rectification and many more. Equity can use the common injunction to prevent Common Law judgement being enforced so that there is no injustice in the decision made by the judges. There should be common rules in Common Law so that judges are not liable for the conduct. Judges have to follow the precedent but if they could change it, the rigidity of Common Law can be reduced. It was made so that the errors in Common Law can be minimised.

Conclusion 

Common law has disadvantages for which remedies can be derived. In Common Law, no two cases can be the same, therefore, the laws made by the judges need not be a perfect match with the facts of the case. The Common Law system was originally derived from England. It started because there were different situations for different cases and so the judges made case laws rather than applying the general statements of principle. However, some defects were found in this system.

It is rigid and not flexible since once the case judgements are made, it needs to be followed in the same way and no changes can be made. Lengthy records need to be maintained and to access the previous cases, a uniformity needs to be there. Nothing is codified like the other laws. In other countries, this system is popular along with jury trials. To remedy the defects of the Common Law system, the concept of Equity of law came. Also, Common Law sometimes leads to judicial overreach which can be overcome. The body of past Common Law was made to bind judges to ensure consistency and uniformity in deciding the case judgement but because of this, it became rigid. It can be said that Common Law has been applicable here in a different format than that of England as the needs and demands of the Indian society were different from that of the English.

References

https://www.jstor.org/

https://www.lawteacher.net/free-law-essays/administrative-law/what-is-common-law-administrative-law-essay.php

https://common.laws.com/common-law/common-law-v-statutory-law

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[jacksoncenter]

Meeting of the Mentors

By Andrea Wuerth

There was Earl and Ronny. Miss Frieda, Miss Lily and Miss Gwen. And the Reverend Williams. All sitting in the front room of the Marion Cheeks Jackson Center. Connected to each other through a shared experience: growing up in the 1950s, 60s and 70s surrounded by a network of unofficial mentors in Chapel Hill’s Northside neighborhood. They were gathered recently on a Tuesday night in August, next door to the church many of them grew up in, because they are mentors to a new generation of kids, growing up in very different times without the benefit of the tight-knit community they knew.

The kids they are mentoring live scattered throughout Chapel Hill, often far beyond the borders of the Northside neighborhood. Kids who know very little if anything at all about the history of Northside or about segregation, civil rights activism, and school desegregation in their own backyards. The mentors, armed with their personal histories, are changing that.

They tell kids about their own experiences in segregated schools and neighborhoods, in sit-ins and protest marches, and as some of the first black kids to attend integrated schools. But tonight they are here to share their stories with each other.

Very quickly, the discussion begins to focus on relationships. Relationships in the various Northside neighborhoods (Pottersfield, Sunset, Tin Top, Pine Knolls) between black kids “coming up” and a whole range of adults who all knew who they were and who their parents were. They were teachers, ministers, other people’s parents, extended family members, shopkeepers. And sometimes, as Miss Frieda pointed out, it was an older kid who looked out for you or reminded you how to act. The others nodded and agreed emphatically. The stories just came rolling out, one after the other.

They also talked about relationships with white people in Chapel Hill—bosses, policemen, university students, politicians. And astonishingly, when talking about the people who so often looked down on them, they emphasized the importance of keeping the lines of communication open, of staying focused and developing long-term goals– most often very long-term goals– and of acknowledging the small victories.

According to Reverend Williams, speaking with a knowing smile and slow nod: “Chapel Hill is a unique place. You could talk to the whites. It ‘s unlike any other place.”

In the front room at the Jackson Center, most of those present echoed this sentiment, that relationships between black and white people were what made Chapel Hill such a unique place. And yet, these relationships so often appeared to be a sort of dance. In the early 1960s, when white town leaders anticipated rising discontent with their reluctance to integrate the schools or the police force, they would make a step towards the black community, implementing a change in the right direction. White town leaders were able to give an inch so that they would not have to give a yard. And the town of Chapel Hill was able to maintain its progressive reputation Social justice requires more than a step; it requires that both partners choreograph the dance. And the music has got to be something other than “Dixie.” This hasn’t happened.

Though some of the assembled generously put a positive spin on it, black-white relationships sometimes were based upon mutual acknowledgment and even mutual regard; but the stories they told show they were not based upon equality or upon recognition that both parties’ viewpoints were equally valid or upon the value of different perspectives.

The town’s liberal reputation seems to rest on an unspoken paternalism. The relationships between whites and blacks in Chapel Hill both before and after segregation was officially outlawed, were and still are based upon inequality, held in place partly by friendly gestures, partly by the threat of violence.

Reverend Williams recalled a relationship with a Mr. Pendergraft, the owner of a garage on Franklin Street. His uncle, a black man, had worked for Mr. Pendergraft for decades. Somehow this relationship guaranteed his uncle that no harm would come to him, despite the fact that everyone knew he hosted weekly Klan meetings. In fact, when Reverend Williams was small, he remembers looking for his uncle and instead running in to Mr. Pendergraft dressed in his Klan robes. Robby Bynum tells the story of how he had to be counseled by elders in the Northside community to help him overcome the fear that gripped him whenever he had to leave the safety of his neighborhood and venture into white Chapel Hill.

Violence could be avoided if a person was not perceived as threatening the balance of power in which white people’s freedoms and privileges were accepted and unquestioned. Relationships with whites were possible, even encouraged, so long as everyone understood that the balance of power would remain firmly in the hands of white people. An occasional glimpse of a Klan robe was a clear reminder of how far some whites in town would go to see that the balance wasn’t upset. And so, as some of the mentors mentioned, parents would often tell kids to stay away from Franklin Street when the civil rights marchers came through. Those relationships their parents had established with white people in town could be seriously jeopardized if word got out that a family member was protesting.

The liberal traditions the university town celebrates are understood very differently by those who grew up on the “other side” of Franklin Street. Many black residents talk about surviving and getting by here, living, often fearfully, by a code—written and unwritten– that existed just as it did in the rest of the state. That’s what I hear behind Rodney’s gracious words: “Don’t let your feelings get in the way of your spirit.”

So many liberals live in all-white neighborhoods, unaware of the dwindling supply of affordable housing, well-paid jobs, educational support and business opportunities. But more importantly, what’s missing is a community knit together by lasting, meaningful relationships. Without a neighborhood and a feeling of community, these networks are strained and have to be created deliberately rather than organically.

This group of volunteer-mentors were all in, ready to connect with students, ready to continue the work of mentoring kids they don’t know but want to know. And they have a wealth of experience and wisdom and love to offer.

Every person in the room at the Jackson Center that night had experienced Chapel Hill’s racism. And yet every one committed themselves fully to building bridges and honoring the tradition of building relationships. How long will it take for white people to accept relationships based upon real and true equality? I think it’s clear that it can only happen when the oppressors hear the voices that are speaking truth to power. And to really listen.

If you want to hear history speak its truth, start talking to the mentors of Northside. The Jackson Center is open.

Andrea Wuerth is a volunteer participant in the Center’s Learning Across Generations local history curriculum and our Oral History Archive. She agreed to let us post her blog entry after archiving Hollywood’s oral history interview. Access to Andrea’s full blog can be found here.

[blamingslaveryon]

Slavery: Who is to Blame?

At a recent social event I got the opportunity to chat with a teenager who is taking a US history class. As an ancient historian whose research over the last ten years has mostly focused on slavery, I decided to ask her what she had learned about the topic. Knowing that little effort is made to fit it into the big picture, that is, into the global history of slavery, I shouldn’t have been too surprised to hear her say that the British were unfamiliar with slavery until the time of the American colonies (untrue), that slavery was invented in the 17th century (also untrue), and that there had never been slaves in North America (also untrue; I will get back to all of this later in my blog). I felt it was my duty to enlighten the girl, so I spent some time lecturing her before finally letting her go back to being a teenager and gluing her eyes and fingers to her smartphone. The very next day I got my hands on a high school textbook and read, among other things, that before the trans-Atlantic slave-trade began, Africans practiced slavery but it was a “mild” kind, that it was more like European feudalism, and that all slaves were treated like “family.” I was also able to confirm the source of most of the teenager’s misinformation. All this inspired me to write a blog on the history of the institution of slavery which, although no longer legal in most parts of the modern world, is still practiced. As always, it follows the law of supply and demand. And although exact statistics are hard to come by, estimates made by the Polaris Project indicate there may be 21 million enslaved persons world-wide. But those are just estimates. *************************** Slavery is at least 5,000 years old, or perhaps more than twice that old. According to some scholars, the origins of this institution can be traced back 12,000 years, to the time when (many) humans made the transition from nomadism to sedentism, in other words, when they no longer moved about nearly all the time, hunting and gathering, and settled down, usually to become farmers. That’s when accumulating goods on a larger scale became an option. And it was a small step from being the proud owner of a goat or two, a hut, and a spare pair of sandals, to owning other human beings. Other scholars, such as Gerda Lerner (The Creation of Patriarchy, 1986), tell us that, some 5,000 years ago, women became a sort of slave “prototypes.” It was around this time that many ancient societies created patriarchy, and women became commodities, exchanged or given in marriage to men from other tribes. It was also around this time that it became customary in wars to kill enemy males and enslave their women, that is, to turn them into property (they would include the women’s young children too). Eventually it dawned on those people that males could and should also be enslaved as a source of income and/or free labor. We don’t need to agree one hundred percent with either one of these views. But we have evidence of slavery going back thousands of years and being practiced all over the globe. In trying to organize my thoughts I ran into several difficulties. I could not write about “ancient slavery” and then about “modern slavery” (meaning roughly from the 15th century onward) because the institution has followed an unbroken line. “Ancient slavery” didn’t disappear, only to be replaced by “modern slavery” later on. Also, in an attempt at dealing with, and staying within, geographical regions, I realized that slaves were not always supplied locally. The slave trade network has always had numerous and far-reaching tentacles. But around the 3rd century BC, humans began to be enslaved, owned, and traded in previously unheard-of numbers. With that in mind, I will begin in the “Old World” with the long period that preceded the mid- to late-Roman Republic before writing about the 3rd century changes. Sumer’s Code of Ur-Nammu (22nd century BC) regulates various aspects of slavery. No written code appears out of nowhere and simply “invents” a practice. Rather, a practice (in this case, slavery) can be around for centuries and be regulated by unwritten customs before the need arises to carve them in stone. Exactly how far back it went in the region of Sumer is not clear. And we do not know what percentage of the population was made up of slaves. Babylonia’s Code of Hammurabi (18th century BC) also regulates slavery, as do texts from the nearby Hittites, but again we have no statistics. And the warlike Assyrians left behind reliefs showing them taking slaves, something they did in rather large numbers after their victories. In Ancient Egypt, during the Middle Kingdom (which started in the 21st century BC), Asian slaves were being imported, but slavery was hardly new among the Egyptians of that era. From the New Kingdom on (starting in the 16th century BC) it became widespread, until about 10% of the population consisted of slaves, many of them Africans coming from south of the Sahara through the kingdom of Nubia. And one must not forget the time when the Hebrews (Habiru) were enslaved in Egypt until their departure traditionally thought to have taken place in the 15th century BC. The Hebrews were not only the victims of enslavement at some point, but they also owned both Hebrew and foreign slaves. Some evidence for that is found in the book of Exodus. In the Hellenic world (which we incorrectly refer to as “Greece”) there are records of slavery among the Myceneans of the 12th century BC. And in the city-state of Athens of the 5th century BC, somewhere between 7 and 20% of the population was made up of slaves. Although many of them came from Thrace, Scythia, and Asia Minor, they may have simply been purchased there but had their origins farther away. Ancient African cultures south of the Sahara owned slaves, usually taken as prisoners in war. And while some were kept, others were sold elsewhere, for example, Egypt (see above). Starting in the 5th century BC the Greeks and later the Romans began taking slaves in North Africa. Farther to the east, in ancient China of the Qin and Han dynasties (starting in the 3rd century BC) some men were sentenced to become public slaves, after being castrated, and sometimes their families were also enslaved. In ancient Rome, the second king, Numa Pompilius (8th century BC), regulated what jobs should be performed by slaves. That was three centuries before the Laws of the Twelve Tables (5th century BC) provide us with written evidence about slavery. Although initially the numbers of slaves in Rome were small, they quickly increased with the wars of conquest, beginning in the 3rd century BC. Soon aristocrats were acquiring and using large numbers to work their land. By the 1st century BC, about 30% of the population was made up of slaves, and in the 1st century AD there were perhaps 10 million slaves empire-wide. Although for many reasons the percentages dropped over the next couple of hundred years, in the 5th century AD we still find individuals, such as a noblewoman named Melania, who owned more than 30,000 slaves. *************************** In the 5th century AD, even as the leftovers of the Western Roman Empire fragmented and turned into many Germanic kingdoms, slavery and the far-reaching slave trade continued throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, and even expanded. New land routes were added to previous ones (like the old trans-Saharan route), and ships carried slaves across the Mediterranean, the Aegean, the Black Sea, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean, usually in both directions. In the 8th century AD the Vikings and the Arabs began playing an ever more active role, both in ownership and the trade, and later other Muslims would join them. Some cities and towns became famous for their slave markets: Zawila south of the Sahara in the 8th century, Dublin in the 9th century, Prague in the 10th century, Verdun in the 11th century, Novgorod in the 12th century, Venice and Genoa in the 12th through the 15th centuries, and Lagos in Portugal in the 15th century. It is probably hard for nearly every person living in the 21st century accurately to say: “I know who all my ancestors were” or “I’m Danish or Irish or Spanish or whatever.” Here are a few examples to illustrate that: English slaves went to Italy and Spain, Irish slaves to Iceland and the Islamic empire, African slaves to Arabia and India, Slavic slaves to Byzantium, Korean slaves to China, Chinese slaves to Portugal and India, Portuguese slaves to Muslim Spain, Franks, Anglo-Saxons, and Russians to markets all over Europe and the Near East to be resold elsewhere. (See Note 1 at the end of this blog.) **************************** So far I have focused on the “Old World,” but slavery also existed in the “New World.” Yet, the dynamics changed after Columbus’ voyages. The Maya peoples of Mesoamerica owned slaves, often those who had been captured in war, although we have no statistics about percentages of the entire population. The same can be said about the Aztecs to the north, the Inca, the Tupanimbá (in Brazil), and the Tehuelche (in Patagonia) to the south, and the Caribs (in the Caribbean), among others. And what about the Americas farther north? Slaves were owned by many cultures in what are currently the United States and Canada. A few examples include the Comanche of Texas, the Creek of Georgia, the Yurok that lived along the coast from California to Alaska, the Pawnee, the Klamath, the Haida and the Tlingit of Alaska, and the Nootka of Vancouver Island. It is estimated that among some tribes in the Pacific Northwest, 25% of the population was made up of slaves. When the European voyages of exploration began in the 15th century, the dynamics of the slave trade and slavery itself changed. Not only did Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, and Dutch ships, among others, create new routes, but most of the slaves taken to the “New World” came from the African continent south of the Sahara. But it was not the Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, and Dutch themselves who went into the heart of Africa to take slaves. They merely acquired them at markets along the coast and transported them elsewhere. There were plenty of nations with slaves to sell: 30% of the population of Senegambia was made up of slaves, in the Islamic states of Mali and Ghana also 30%, in Bornu (in central Africa) about 40%, perhaps 90% in Arab Zanzibar (which, due to its location, was a convenient place for the creation of its large slave market; it is estimated that 80,000 Africans died each year before reaching that market). Other peoples with large numbers of slaves were the Ashanti, the Yoruba, and the people of the Kingdom of Kongo. But even those nations that had fewer slaves participated actively in the slave trade. Many of them waged war for the sole purpose of acquiring slaves, or else they organized raids: the Oyo Empire, the Kingdom of Benin, the Imamate of Futa Toro, the Kingdhom of Kaabu, the Ashanti Confederacy, the Kingdom of Dahomey, and many others. Then they sold their slaves to the Europeans, and most of them were taken to the Americas (somewhere between 12 and 20 million). Trading in slaves was not seen as something wrong, and statements have survived, made by African rulers, one of whom said the trade had been ordained by God himself (king of Bonny in present-day Nigeria), while another one said the trade was the source and glory of his people’s wealth (king of Dahomey But while this was going on, the Muslims continued buying slaves and sometimes capturing them themselves, then taking them overland (across the Sahara) or on ships crossing the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Including the ones they sold to Europeans, they benefited from the sale of 25 to 35 million Africans. They also continued enslaving others, including Christians during the Ottoman wars. And Muslim pirates raided coastal cities in addition to taking ships, for the purpose of taking captives and selling them into slavery. In the 19th century, one country after another abolished the slave-trade, and then slavery itself. However, it took some African countries until the 20th century to follow suit. By then, countless individuals had been enslaved and sold, and used and abused, all over the world. Many still are, although outside of the context of legal slavery. **************************** Now I come back to the question which I posed in the title of my blog: Who is to blame for slavery? My readers will probably agree that there is no simple answer. Blame the Sumerians? The Egyptians? Slavery was hardly new when they began leaving evidence of slave-holding and trading more than 4,000 years ago. The Romans bought, sold, and used them on a much larger scale than other peoples, but they did not come up with the institution of slavery. Whether it was a byproduct of private property or of patriarchy, it had been around for a long time. We cannot blame the Mongols, the Arabs, the English, the French, or the Spanish either, despite the changes they made to trade and/or ownership. The same goes for all the individuals all over the globe who have participated in a system that was perceived to be OK. But we can blame those who, despite the fact that they operate outside the law, enslave and sell human beings in the 21st century. And I want to encourage all those who are aware of trafficking to speak up. **************************** Note 1. Being forcefully transported from one’s place of origin is, of course, not the only reason why our ancestors moved. The search for better land or opportunities, as well as the need to escape persecution, religious or of another nature, are a few other reasons that account for that. Note 2. As the reader may have noticed, no attempt has been made to describe the many ways in which a person could become a slave, or about how slaves were treated in different parts of the world at different times, and even in the same part of the world depending on a number of factors. But there are some excellent books that go into a lot of detail, including the following: Five Thousand Years of Slavery (Marjorie Gann and Janet Willen; 2011), and Slavery and Social Death (Orlando Patterson; 1982).

[believermag]

American Afterlife

David Leo Rice On Steve Erickson’s Shadowbahn

Simultaneous Histories

Shadowbahn, Steve Erickson’s 10th novel, opens with the impossible happening in America: the Twin Towers appear in the heart of the Badlands in South Dakota and Jesse Presley, Elvis’s stillborn twin, wakes up on the 93rd floor of the southern one. Much of the “United States of Disunion,” as the nation is known here, flocks in to bear witness, only to fall into intense disagreement about what has happened and what it means.

Long obsessed with the the fault lines running through the American soul, Erickson has now given us the first key novel of the Trump Era. Written before the election but published after, Shadowbahn is hyper-aware of the ways in which America has not only been split into rival factions, but into mutually exclusive realities. If the old wisdom was that “it’s impossible to be in two places at once,” in 2017 it has become impossible to be in one place at once. All places in Trump’s America, which represents both the End Times and the supposed return of a great mythic past, are frighteningly multiple.

After an opening scene in which a trucker whose truck bears the bumper sticker “SAVE AMERICA FROM ITSELF” discovers the “American Stonehenge” in the Badlands, Shadowbahn only gets stranger as it goes along. Jesse Presley works up the nerve to jump out of the South Tower and finds himself flying into a revised 20th century where JFK lost the Democratic nomination to Adlai Stevenson and the Beatles never took off. Making his way as a cantankerous music critic, Presley meets Andy Warhol and falls into a bizarro version of the Factory scene, commenting on the decline of America from within the novel just as Erickson comments from without. Meanwhile, a brother and sister (one born in California, the other in Ethiopia)  drive across near-future America via a series of lost highways and secret tunnels, discussing their fraught relationship with their writer father (a clear Erickson stand-in, carried over from 2012’s These Dreams of You) en route to visit their mother in Michigan. By the time they reach the Badlands and see the Towers for themselves, numerous realities have been born and died and reemerged transfigured, and the map has gotten ever more skewed without quite ceasing to be navigable.

In bringing all these strands together without forcing them to cohere, Shadowbahn marks a culmination of both Erickson’s apocalypticism and his vision of history as a porous entity, full of glitches, wormholes, and “Rupture zones.” Straddling the Millennium, the terms of his ongoing project are most clearly defined by 1989’s Tours of the Black Clock, which charts a simultaneous history in which Hitler far outlives the 1940s, eventually coming to America. That novel—which lent its name to the glorious and now sadly defunct literary journal Black Clock, yet another casualty of 2016—develops the notion of hidden events running parallel to, and occasionally intersecting with, those we’re aware of. The black clock itself is the embodiment of this idea: it’s the “dark back of time” (to borrow a phrase from Javier Marías), ticking with unseen minutes and hours behind those we perceive passing.

Like the black clock, the shadowbahn renders subjective experience objective, making Erickson’s psychic landscape disturbingly physical. Cutting “through the heart of the country from one end to the other with impunity,” it connects disparate times and places the way a jittery radio dial splices together stations.

On the one hand, it’s a dangerous strand of wishful thinking to imagine a simultaneous America in which Donald Trump is not our president, or one in which he turns out to be merely a blowhard and not a tyrant; on the other hand, the election represents a possibly unfixable rift in the fabric of our national consciousness, so that the present we now occupy is both unimaginable and hyperreal—so in-your-face it’s impossible to see.

Not Quite a Surrealist

By charting this process, Erickson’s work bears resemblance to that of sci-fi visionaries like Philip K. Dick, J. G. Ballard, and William Gibson, but he differs from them in that he has a poet’s soul, not a paranoiac’s. Though he makes use of the language and imagery of sci-fi, his simultaneous histories excavate buried layers of how our reality actually is, not alternate paths it could have taken or could one day take.

This is not to say that Erickson’s work isn’t heady, just that its primary theme is heartbreak, not cracks in the matrix. He believes too strongly in the promise of what America could be to give in fully to highbrow cynicism. In this sense, he’s a patriotic writer, one committed to an American promise that’s been broken over and over again without yet ceasing to resonate.

Just as Erickson isn’t exactly a sci-fi writer, he’s not quite a surrealist either. Perhaps in the European surrealism of the early 20th century—Buñuel, Dalí, Magritte—there was a sense that the external world had become too real, and thus that departing from it (or rising above it, in the literal sense of the term sur-real) was a necessary and plausible response. But now, almost a century after Un Chien Andalou, the events around us and their incessant representation online are too bizarre and too ubiquitous to satirize or depart from: everything, in one way or another, is part of the same post-truth morass. If this is the logic that 21st century fascism will exploit, then Erickson’s determination to plunge all the way into the real, deeper than is comfortable, rather than departing from it or offering any reassuring vision of its ultimate unity, has never been more necessary.

Disjunctive Style

Shadowbahn is self-consciously a symptom of the situation it reflects: the style itself (composed of lists, snippets of dialogue, newspaper clippings, and free-floating paragraphs) is as disjointed and hard to navigate as the lost roads its characters drive down. In this regard, Erickson’s authorial logic has a strange resonance with Trump’s: the shared understanding that our American language is one of constant revision and self-contradiction, and that the grotesque distance between the American Dream and its reality only makes that Dream grow stronger. Needless to say, this language holds great potential for both good and evil.

Living in the End Times

Jesse Presley dates America’s lifespan as running from 1776 to 2001, and yet he still exists in America; indeed he exists for the first time long twenty years after the Towers fell. This means that he’s living in an afterlife, along with everyone else in the novel.

Whether one chooses 2001 or 2016 as the year of America’s death, there’s no denying that we’re all sharing that afterlife now. The apocalypse may have come, but here we still are. In this sense, the book's value lies in its exploration of the Times aspect of the End Times. The End, if and when it truly comes, will neither require nor allow for literature (”when you're dead, you're dead,” as they say), but the Times do require interpretation and consideration, more so than ever because their rules are unwritten.

Since life goes on, growing stranger but not yet unlivable, a book like Shadowbahn serves as a bulwark against numbness and the dangerous belief that the only response to incomprehensibility is inaction. Much to the contrary, Erickson argues that even when reality has splintered, it still contains right and wrong and the two remain distinguishable, in art and in life, until enough people stop believing they are.

American Music

Animating these End Times, as in much of Erickson’s work, music is the one source of renewal. Perhaps because it’s an ephemeral, ever-evolving entity, deriving its power from groove and rhythm, not from rhetoric and ideology, music, especially the blues, which was born out of oppression and worked to overcome it, is the one sanctum in which the American Dream can’t be killed. Music streams from the Towers “like the northern lights”—a natural phenomenon that verges on the supernatural—and everyone who flocks to the Badlands hears different songs, from a sheriff nostalgic for the tunes of her youth to an older man hearing Brian Eno for the first time. This too echoes the current multiplicity of news and social media feeds we all curate, plugging into whichever version of reality we find most satisfying or most exciting, and yet, beneath this disjunct, the power of music itself remains singular.

Late in the novel Erickson writes, “At the previous century’s root was a blues sung at the moment when America defiled its own great idea, which was the moment that idea was born.” Throughout Presley’s and the siblings’ long strange trips, blues, rockabilly, and spirituals like “Shenandoah” (which recurs numerous times throughout the book, sometimes with the word “Shadowbahn” set to the same tune) express both yearning for what America could be and outrage at what it’s become.

Further, with many of the novel’s sections organized as annotations to playlists of classic and forgotten songs, and an absent father (the “Supreme Sequencer ensconced on a mountaintop”) communicating with his children through his mp3 collection, Shadowbahn posits music as our only means of straining to hear the voice of God in the new American desert. Maybe, in one simultaneous history, the current moment will revert us not to some whitewashed version of the 1950s, but all the way back to an age of primal wandering among weird monoliths and along unmarked highways, praying for salvation wherever it may be found. And perhaps out of this, a new America, however disfigured and unruly, will begin to grow, one in which we listen not to the punishing voices of the Old Testament patriarchs but to that of Elvis and the blues and whatever musical forms are still to come.

A Future

The possibility of such a regeneration is the only hope Shadowbahn leaves us with. This is a hope for American life going on, and also a hope for Erickson’s continued literary project, which has by now fully processed the psychic fallout of the 20th century and begun in earnest on the 21st, a time when it seems that “wealth and power is the only American idea left.”

Until now, all of Erickson’s novels have been self-referential, a giant interconnected body of work developing alongside the history we all share, deviating from it but always returning to some recognizable baseline of communal fact. Now that history is unraveling, splitting into ever narrower and less internally consistent versions, perhaps a similar unraveling will occur in Erickson’s future work. There’s certainly no American author better suited to embrace the assault on reality we’re now witnessing, and the ways in which history has been jump-started again, after the lull of the Obama years. No longer are we listening to an album we all know; the soundtrack of 2017 is a stranger’s mp3 player set on Shuffle. Given that there’s no longer any stable ground to stand on, the job of serious contemporary fiction is to reflect this instability, not to deny it.

At the very end of the novel, the truck with the “SAVE AMERICA FROM ITSELF” bumper sticker reappears, this time in a ditch beside the highway, its driver having fallen asleep at the wheel. The siblings, after some debate, decide to rescue him. In beginning to consider how such an act of rescue might still be possible on the national scale, one could do far worse than consulting Shadowbahn for inspiration.

David Leo Rice is a writer and animator living in NYC. His stories have appeared in Black Clock, The Collagist, Birkensnake, The Rumpus, Hobart, Volume 1 Brooklyn, and elsewhere. He's online at www.raviddice.com, and his first novel, A Room in Dodge City, is available now.

[kansascityhappenings]

Celebrating 100 years of jazz in Kansas City with a look back at history

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — About 100 year ago, people flocked to Kansas City to listen to a burgeoning new style of music called jazz.

During the 1920s and 1930s, big band music gave way to bebop. The hard-swinging, bluesy sounds ushered in a new era of party and celebration music. Count Basie, Charlie Parker, and Bennie Moten are just some of the names of the people who dominated the jazz movement in Kansas City.

Count Basie Orchestra | Wikipedia

Jazz originated in African-American communities, particularly in New Orleans. It developed from roots in both blues and ragtime. The music genre has several unique features including: swing and bluesy notes, call and response vocals, various rhythms all at once, and improvisation. Jazz is hailed as one of America’s original art forms, and it is still alive in Kansas City today.

The earliest written record of the word is in a 1912 article in the Los Angeles Times. A minor league baseball pitcher described a pitch in a game once as a jazz ball “because it wobbles, and you simply can’t do anything with it.”

Jazz is difficult to define because it encompasses a range of music spanning a period of more than 100 years. Scholars have tried to define it by comparing it to other mediums like opera, classical art, and dance.

Big changes overtime 

A century has passed since jazz took over the clubs in Missouri. Kansas City has gone through a complete landscape change with new big venues, skyscrapers, and shopping malls. The music scene has evolved just as much — if not more so.

Lizzo and Billie Eilish

Today people listen to music whenever they please and through multiple streaming options. Post Malone, Lizzo, and Billie Eilish topped the Billboard 100 Chart in 2019. These musicians and a long list of others on the radio have used their talents to push platforms important to them such as body acceptance, climate change, immigration policy, and ending violence. Performers in the past also used their talents to push the needle on issues big and small.

Music and the arts have the power to bridge cultural gaps, stop prejudices, empower the voiceless, and teach people about perspectives they never considered. Jazz helped change the way people see each other and learn to cut loose and enjoy the moment.

Jazz is an important part of Black History Month. The style of music created a sense of identity, originality, and social cohesion among black musicians — and in a time before the Civil Rights movement kicked off. Sadly, African-Americans have not always received credit where it is due — it took time before they were celebrated for inventing jazz and helping it become popular. Several African-American musicians in the limelight labored for hours at their craft without receiving pay.

Golden Jazz Era in the Paris of the Plains

Kansas City is known as one of the most popular cradles of jazz. Other major jazz cities of the golden age include: New Orleans, Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New York City.

The Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra paved the way for Kansas City’s jazz scene. White musicians made up the first group. Drummer Carleton Coon and pianist Joe Sanders founded the band. The orchestra began broadcasting their tunes in 1922 on clear channel station WDAF. They broadcast their songs at the Muehlebach Hotel. They called themselves the Nighthawks because they played their music late at night — around 11:30pm to 1:00am.

Their fan club swelled by 1924, some 37,000 members joined the club. The band encouraged fans to send in requests for songs by letter, telephone, or telegram. Western Union set up a ticker tape between Sanders’ piano and Coon’s drums that way the telegrams could be acknowledged during the broadcasts.

The Kansas City jazz school was mostly made up of black bands. The original jazz groups played during the 1920s and 1930s. This includes bands led by Bennie Moten, Andy Kirk, Harlan Leonard, and Jay McShann.

Kansas City in the 1930s was a crossroads in the United States where people of different backgrounds and cultures came together. Some referred to the city as the Paris of the Plains. It was the last city before venturing into the wild west, it was the home of immigrants, a thriving barbecue community, and a haven of new technologies.

Tom Pendergast Machine

Transcontinental trips by plane or train often required a stop in the City of Fountains. The jazz era also marked the zenith of political boss Tom Pendergast’s reign. Several pubs and venues in Kansas City ignored prohibition rules and ran flashy speakeasies. Bar owners kept the alcohol coming for patrons; it was a city that never slept.

Most of the jazz musicians associated with Kansas City were born in other places, but they got caught up in the friendly musical competitions among performers in the Midwest. Sometimes a band played a single song with slight variations for an entire night at a club. These songs were often unplanned, unwritten, and carefree.

Big bands would perform at regular venues early in the evening — and then those same musicians went to the jazz clubs later at night to jam into the morning hours.

Jazz pianist Jay McShann told the Associated Press in 2003:

“You’d hear some cat play, and somebody would say ‘This cat, he sounds like he is from Kansas City.’ It was Kansas City Style. They knew it on the East Coast. They knew it on the West Coast. They knew it up North, and they knew it down South.”

The unique Kansas City style

Jazz clubs popped up throughout the city during the 1920s. The most well-known spot was the inner-city neighborhood of 18th Street and Vine. An area that maintained the jazz feel into the present.

Kansas City style jazz has a more relaxed, fluid sound compared to other styles. Solos often broke out over the chaos of the improvised music, and this helped put the spotlight on some of the more well-known virtuosos.

Kansas City big bands usually played by memory, composing and arranging the music collectively. They didn’t rely on sight-reading as other big bands often did. This further contributed to the loose, spontaneous Kansas City sound and vibe.

Different parts of the band would create and elaborate on riffs. Sometimes one whole section would take the lead to create a new riff, other times a soloist took control, or two or more sections would riff in counterpart. This would create an upbeat hard-swinging sound. Count Basie’s “One O’Clock Jump” and “Jumpin’ at the Woodside” are both collections of complex riffs, memorized loosely, and given clarity with solos.

Glenn Miller’s famous swing anthem “In the Mood” closely follows the Kansas City style of riffing sections.

Blues singers of the 1920s and ragtime music greatly influenced the Kansas City music scene. Performers gathered at dance halls, cabarets, and speakeasies. In the early days, many jazz groups were smaller dance bands with three to six pieces. By the mid-1920s, the big band became a tour de force. Musicians traveled up to 1,000 miles to play music with others and to earn money.

Count Basie and the Bennie Moten band

Bennie Moten | Wikipedia

Count Basie | Wikipedia

Kansas City went into the national music scene in 1936 when record producer John H. Hammond cemented his career with pianist Count Basie. The musician first went to Harlem and played with others there; he toured around the country meeting big name celebrities like Louis Armstrong. Before he was 20 years old, Basie toured extensively on the Keith and TOBA vaudeville circuits. He acted as a pianist, accompanist, and music director for blues singers, dancers, and comedians.

In 1929, Basie became the pianist with the Bennie Moten band based in Kansas City. Critics called the band refined, and it was well-respected within the circuit. Basie was co-arranger with Eddie Durham. During a stay in Chicago, Basie recorded with the band. He played four-hand piano and dual pianos with Moten, who also conducted. When the band decided to kick out Moten with a vote, Basie took over leadership responsibilities for several months. He changed the name of the group to Count Basie and his Cherry Blossoms.

To keep things short and sweet, Count Basie later rejoined Moten with a newly re-organized band.

The spotlight on Charlie Park Jr.

Saxophonist Charlie Parker came into fame here in Kansas City in the 1930s.

Born and raised in Kansas City, Charlie Park Jr. lived in Westport near 15th and Olive Street. He left high school in December 1935, just before joining the local musicians’ union to pursue a career in music. His childhood sweetheart and future wife, Rebecca Ruffin, graduated from Lincoln High School in June 1935.

Charlie Park Jr. | Wikipedia

Parker started playing the saxophone at age 11. His father, Charles Sr., had a background in music and dance; he was a singer on the T.O.B.A. circuit. A trombone player named Robert Simpson taught the younger Parker about improvisation.

 In the mid-1930s, Parker practiced improvisation regularly. He developed some of the ideas that led to the later bebop movement. In an interview with American composer Paul Desmond, Parker said that he spent three to four years practicing up to 15 hours a day.

Bands led by Count Basie and Bennie Moten  influenced Parker. He played with local bands in jazz clubs.

In late spring 1936, Parker played at a jam session at the Reno Club in Kansas City. His attempt to improvise failed when he lost track of the chord changes. Jo Jones, the drummer for Count Basie’s Orchestra, threw a cymbal at his feet as a signal to leave the stage. The moment didn’t shake up Parker. He decided to work harder and this propelled him to stardom.

In the fall of 1936, Parker traveled with a band from Kansas City to the Ozarks for the opening of Clarence Musser’s Tavern, just south of Eldon, Missouri. Along the way, there was a car crash and Parker broke three ribs and fractured his spine. The crash led to Parker’s long-term troubles with pain killers and opioids, namely heroin. Parker struggled with drug addiction for the rest of his life.

Despite his near death experience on the way to the Ozarks, Parker returned to the area in 1937. He spent time there seriously developing his sound. In 1938, Parker joined pianist Jay McShann’s territory band. Parker made his professional recording début with McShann’s band.

Parker fervently played with quick speed on the saxophone. He introduced several innovations to the genre. He discovered revolutionary harmonic ideas including rapid passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord substitutions.

He had mastery of his tone on the sax. He could play smooth and clean, bold and crass, sweet and lovely, or somber and subdued. Parker acquired the nickname “Yardbird” early in his career on the road with Jay McShann. The shortened “Bird” stuck with him for life. The name inspired the titles of a number of his compositions, such as “Yardbird Suite”, “Ornithology”, “Bird Gets the Worm”, and “Bird of Paradise.”

The Great Depression and changing times

Throughout the Depression, Kansas City bands continued to play. This wasn’t the case in other cities. Kansas City was shielded from some of the worst outcomes of the Depression. This was in part because of New-Deal style public works projects that provided jobs, particularly profitable jobs in railing and steamships, slaughterhouses, and other developments. The splurge of jobs allowed for a vibrant dance-oriented nightlife. Kansas City thrived during the dry times when other cities struggled to survive in the recession.

At one point, Kansas City had more than 100 night clubs, dance halls, and vaudeville houses.

Kansas City’s 12th Street became nationally known for its jazz clubs, gambling parlors, and brothels. 12th Street alone had more than 50 jazz clubs.

Following the collapse of the Pendergast machine, jobs for musicians dried up and the bands took to the road. During World War II, the United States drafted many of the musicians. By 1944, the great Kansas City jazz era slowed to a crawl, but it didn’t entirely end.

Jazz tries to resurface in the 1970s, but gets thrown off track by mob activity

In the 1970s, Kansas City attempted a jazz comeback. Musicians were encouraged to play at wholesome and family friendly affairs. The city tried to create a jazz hub in the River Quay area along the Missouri River. Three clubs in the area were bombed during a mob war.

The FBI busted the Kansas City bosses for their involvement in the Tropicana Casino, dubbed Operation Strawman. Agents wiretapped phones of reputed mobsters and their associates in Kansas City. From the evidence collected by taps and other eavesdropping in the late 1970s, the FBI discovered a huge conspiracy to skim money from the Tropicana Casino. Several people were indicated in multiple cities. This led to the collapse of the Civella crime family in KC, which started from two Sicilian brothers when they moved to Kansas City in 1912. They had quickly benefited from crime operations, and then their fortunes massively grew during prohibition.

Operation Strawman led to the demise of mob influence on casinos. Some of the events were depicted in the 1995 movie Casino starring Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, and Joe Pesci.

Jazz revival in the present

Music over the past couple of decades has come into a more family friendly sphere.

Each year Kansas City celebrates “Jazzoo” — a charity fundraiser dedicated to area jazz and raising funds for the zoo. The park currently has a giant initiative and dream to create a sizable aquarium. First, we’re getting a new and nicer view of the elephants.

In 2011, Jazzoo was one of the Nation’s largest charity fundraisers, raising over $800,000.

In 2003 the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra formed. Most of their concerts are held at the Kauffman Center of the Performing Arts.

In October 2017, UNESCO designated Kansas City, Missouri as a “Creative City” for its contributions to music.

Today, the 18th and Vine district includes: the Mutual Musicians Foundation, the Gem Theater, the long-time offices of African-American newspaper The Call, the Blue Room jazz club, the American Jazz Museum, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, Smaxx Restaurant, a restaurant inside the Juke House and Blues Club, and several apartments and condos.

The American Jazz Museum hosts events regularly to promote music. It also offers jazz music education to young students.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports http://fox4kc.com/2020/02/06/celebrating-100-years-of-jazz-in-kansas-city-with-a-look-back-at-history/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2020/02/06/celebrating-100-years-of-jazz-in-kansas-city-with-a-look-back-at-history/