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decodingellipses · 4 years ago

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Alexis Nikole, The TikTok Forager

This piece is part of the Person of Interest vertical at @bonappetit

Alexis Nikole considers her TikTok fame a fortuitous accident. She knew nothing about the platform until she started an account for her day job as a social media manager. But when the 28-year-old from Columbus, Ohio, began experimenting on her personal page during the pandemic, she got more than she bargained for. Specifically: over 600,000 enthusiastic followers and 10.3 million likes.

Since April of last year, Nikole’s now viral account has been showcasing her immeasurable knowledge of foraging and cooking with wild plants: a sorbet made out of Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica), hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta) turned into lush salads, and common dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) battered and fried like fritters. She studied environmental science and theater at Ohio State University, and often combines her two passions on the platform—where you’ll find her singing original songs about cattails and sassafras.

By sharing excellent foraging tips laced with undiluted humor, Nikole’s intentions were for people to take agency over their meals and make the most of foods that were free and readily available all around; especially after COVID-19 hit American shores and shopping was anxiety inducing. During the early months of the pandemic, Nikole’s TikToks focused on how foraged goods could extend groceries and increase access to fresh ingredients, especially for those living in food deserts. This is precisely why Nikole’s videos are so grounding; in these times, it’s crucial to feel some sense of self-sufficiency and stability.

Amid global adversity, Nikole forages because it reminds her that she’s human—and humans, at their very core, are part of the ecosystem, no matter how much we distance ourselves from that truth. I called up Nikole to learn more about her foraging background, how she practices gratitude for what is all around, and why the world needs more hyper-localized food systems.

Foraging makes me feel I am a part of something bigger… and that feeling is really good at chasing the depression away. Typically I go out between two to five times a week on average. In the dead of winter, I might only go once, and during the dog days of summer, I’m in the woods and nearby parks every single day. I’ll jam to ’80s funk the entire walk to the creek, but the earbuds go away when I get there. I want to hear everything—the crunching leaves under my feet, the babbling brook, and people conversing and laughing in the distance.

I used to dream of being a pop star… by night and a scientist by day. I’ve been surrounded by music for a long time. I was three when I joined the childrens’ choir at my dad’s Baptist church, I started classical piano at age five, I was in choir every year through junior high and high school, I performed a cappella in high school, and was on the e-board of ukulele club in college. I was never a prodigy, but music brings me so much joy, so I love being able to sneak that into my TikTok videos.

The best meal I’ve made using a foraged ingredient is probably… chicken-of-the-woods mushroom (Laetiporus sulphureus) “crab cakes” and an American sea rocket (Cakile edentula) and steamed beach pea (Lathyrus japonicus) salad tossed in olive oil infused with goldenrod (Solidago). Very gourmet!

My curiosity for the outdoors… was nurtured from a very young age by my parents. My two sets of grandparents knew that scouting was good for building connections and recognized the importance of getting outside, and thus got my parents into it early. My mom scouted longer than my dad did and went to sleepaway camp in New Hampshire in the summertime. Eventually, while working at Procter & Gamble, she gardened on the weekends to decompress. I would help her, spreading mulch or digging into the earth with a tiny trowel while she quizzed me on the plants. Unbeknownst to my mom, I was picking up a lot of information. From there it grew into a love of all things growing plants outdoors.

You don't have to go full forager… to reduce your environmental impact. Over the past few decades society has trended away from a localized food system, toward a global one. On the upside, it’s much easier to find ingredients like star anise at the grocery store. However, access to tomatoes year-round means they’ve got a higher carbon footprint because they traveled thousands of miles to get to your plate. Even shopping at your local farmstand helps with lowering your carbon footprint; it’s also a little easier than identifying a plant and bringing it home to eat.

Everyone was afraid of going to the grocery store… when I started my TikTok foraging videos in April 2020. So I thought: Hey! Here are a few plants that are really common and probably growing in your neighborhood that you can gather, and maybe that’ll stretch your groceries a bit.

Poor and POC communities are hit hardest… when major disasters hit. We saw the same thing playing out in Texas with the massive winter storm. So I offer my knowledge to help someone who needs to get some fresh food on their plate.

As a Black, queer female forager on the internet… I’m not the person people expect to see excited about foraging, the outdoors, biology, botany, and history. I have delightful forager friends who are white, and I notice they don’t get questioned nearly as much as I do. That’s heartbreaking. When my dad learned that my account becoming viral also meant me becoming susceptible to online harassment, he got angry and told me, “I’ve been alive for 65 years. It doesn’t feel good that you’re still called into question because of who you are.”

Though, it all feels worth it when… a follower sends me a thank-you message saying, “Because of you, while I was out walking I recognized this plant and it made me feel like my neighborhood was a cooler and happier place.” To be less unacquainted with plants or more connected to surroundings because of me is a huge win. We take better care of the things we know.

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dfroza · 4 years ago

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to Love, or not to Love

and we are encouraged to Love.

we see this illuminated in the closing chapter of the book of Hebrews for Today’s reading of the Scriptures:

Let love continue among you. Don’t forget to extend your hospitality to all—even to strangers—for as you know, some have unknowingly shown kindness to heavenly messengers in this way. Remember those imprisoned for their beliefs as if you were their cellmate; and care for any who suffer harsh treatment, as you are all one body.

Hold marriage in high esteem, all of you, and keep the marriage bed pure because God will judge those who commit sexual sins.

Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have because He has said, “I will never leave you; I will always be by your side.” Because of this promise, we may boldly say,

The Lord is my help—

I won’t be afraid of anything.

How can anyone harm me?

Listen to your leaders, who have spoken God’s word to you. Notice the fruits of their lives and mirror their faith.

Jesus the Anointed One is always the same: yesterday, today, and forever. Do not be carried away by diverse and strange ways of believing or worshiping. It is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by regulations about what you can eat (which do no good even for those who observe them). We approach an altar from which those who stand before the altar in the tent have no right to eat. In the past, the bodies of those animals whose blood was carried into the sanctuary by the high priest to take away sin were all burned outside the camp. (In the same way, Jesus suffered and bled outside the city walls of Jerusalem to sanctify the people.)

Let’s then go out to Him and resolve to bear the insult and abuse that He endured. For as long as we are here, we do not live in any permanent city, but are looking for the city that is to come.

Through Jesus, then, let us keep offering to God our own sacrifice, the praise of lips that confess His name without ceasing. Let’s not neglect what is good and share what we have, for these sacrifices also please God.

Listen to your leaders and submit to their authority over the community, for they are on constant watch to protect your souls and someday they must give account. Give them reason to be joyful and not to regret their duty, for that will be of no good to you.

Pray for us, for we have no doubt that our consciences are clean and that we seek to live honestly in all things. But please pray for me that I may be restored to you even more quickly.

Now may the God of peace, who brought the great Shepherd of the sheep, our Lord Jesus, back from the dead through the blood of the new everlasting covenant, perfect you in every good work as you work God’s will. May God do in you only those things that are pleasing in His sight through Jesus the Anointed, our Liberating King, to whom we give glory always and forever. Amen.

Please, brothers and sisters, pay attention to this word of exhortation, for I have written only a few words to you.

I want to tell you that our brother Timothy has been set free; and if he arrives soon, he will come with me when I see you next.

Give my greetings to your leaders and to all of God’s people. Those of Italy greet you.

May grace always be with you.

The Book of Hebrews, Chapter 13 (The Voice)

and sex is certainly a sacred bond shared between husband & wife that was formed by our Creator. sex is meant for the marital bond where 2 bodies become as “One” thus making it impure outside of this. and the decision to change the temporal physical body won’t matter in the eternal since it is impossible to change the gender that is chosen at the genesis spark of conception. for each child is born as either male or female, and each person will die the same gender as they were conceived and born, as recognized by our Creator. people may disagree with the purity of sexuality in Light of Love’s truth, yet it will never change the truth of the One who made us, and who made the heavens and garden earth.

“Honor marriage, and guard the sacredness of sexual intimacy between wife and husband.”

The Book of Hebrews, Chapter 13:4 (The Message)

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments is the 19th chapter of First Chronicles that documents an ancient battle even though King David had first intended to show kindness:

Some time after this Nahash king of the Ammonites died and his son succeeded him as king. David said, “I’d like to show some kindness to Hanun son of Nahash—treat him as well and as kindly as his father treated me.” So David sent condolences about his father’s death.

But when David’s servants arrived in Ammonite country and came to Hanun to bring condolences, the Ammonite leaders warned Hanun, “Do you for a minute suppose that David is honoring your father by sending you comforters? Don’t you know that he’s sent these men to scout out the city and size it up so that he can capture it?��

So Hanun seized David’s men, shaved them clean, cut off their robes halfway up their buttocks, and sent them packing.

When this was all reported to David, he sent someone to meet them, for they were seriously humiliated. The king told them, “Stay in Jericho until your beards grow out; only then come back.”

When it dawned on the Ammonites that as far as David was concerned, they stank to high heaven, they hired, at a cost of a thousand talents of silver (thirty-seven and a half tons!), chariots and horsemen from the Arameans of Naharaim, Maacah, and Zobah—thirty-two thousand chariots and drivers; plus the king of Maacah with his troops who came and set up camp at Medeba; the Ammonites, too, were mobilized from their cities and got ready for battle.

When David heard this, he dispatched Joab with his strongest fighters in full force.

The Ammonites marched out and spread out in battle formation at the city gate; the kings who had come as allies took up a position in the open fields. When Joab saw that he had two fronts to fight, before and behind, he took his pick of the best of Israel and deployed them to confront the Arameans. The rest of the army he put under the command of Abishai, his brother, and deployed them to deal with the Ammonites. Then he said, “If the Arameans are too much for me, you help me; and if the Ammonites prove too much for you, I’ll come and help you. Courage! We’ll fight might and main for our people and for the cities of our God. And God will do whatever he sees needs doing!”

But when Joab and his soldiers moved in to fight the Arameans, they ran off in full retreat. Then the Ammonites, seeing the Arameans run for dear life, took to their heels and ran from Abishai into the city.

So Joab withdrew from the Ammonites and returned to Jerusalem.

When the Arameans saw how badly they’d been beaten by Israel, they picked up the pieces and regrouped; they sent for the Arameans who were across the river; Shophach, commander of Hadadezer’s army, led them.

When all this was reported to David, he mustered all Israel, crossed the Jordan, advanced, and prepared to fight. The Arameans went into battle formation, ready for David, and the fight was on. But the Arameans again scattered before Israel. David killed seven thousand chariot drivers and forty thousand infantry. He also killed Shophach, the army commander. When all the kings who were vassals of Hadadezer saw that they had been routed by Israel, they made peace with David and served him. The Arameans were afraid to help the Ammonites ever again.

The Book of 1st Chronicles, Chapter 19 (The Message)

my personal reading of the Scriptures for monday, january 18 of 2021 with a paired chapter from each Testament of the Bible, along with Today’s Psalms and Proverbs

A post by John Parsons about this week’s Torah reading:

Shavuah tov, chaverim. Our Torah reading for this week (Exod. 10:1-13:16) begins with God commanding Moses “to go” (i.e., bo: בּא) before the Pharaoh to announce further apocalyptic judgments upon Egypt. The purpose of this power encounter was to vindicate God’s justice and great glory (deliverance/salvation) by overthrowing the tyranny of unjust human oppression. Pharaoh’s nightmare of “one little lamb” outweighing all the firstborn of Egypt was about to be fulfilled....

Recall that last week’s Torah (i.e., parashat Va’era) retold how Pharaoh defiantly refused to listen to Moses’ pleas for Israel’s freedom, despite seven devastating makkot (plagues) that came upon Egypt in God’s Name (יהוה). In this week’s portion (i.e., parashat Bo), the battle between the LORD and Pharaoh comes to a dramatic conclusion. The last three of the ten plagues are unleashed upon Egypt: a swarm of locusts devoured all the crops and greenery; a palpable darkness enveloped the land for three days and nights; and all the firstborn of Egypt were killed precisely at the stroke of midnight of the 15th of the month of Nisan... In this connection note that the word בּא (“go”) and פרעה (“Pharoah”) added together equal the gematria of משׁיח (“mashiach”), providing a hint of the Messianic redemption that was foreshadowed in Egypt. Every jot and tittle, chaverim!

Before the final plague, God instructed the Jewish people to establish a new calendar based on the sighting of the new moon of spring. On the tenth day of that month, God told the people to acquire a “Passover offering” to Him, namely an unblemished lamb (or goat), one for each household. On the 14th of that month (“between the evenings”) the animal would be slaughtered and its blood sprinkled on the doorposts and lintel of every Israelite home, so that God would “pass over” these dwellings when He came to kill the Egyptian firstborn that night. The roasted meat of the offering was to be eaten that night with unleavened bread (matzah) and bitter herbs (maror). God then commanded the Israelites to observe a seven-day “festival of matzah” to commemorate the Exodus for all subsequent generations.

Because of this, our corporate identity begins with a shared consciousness of time from a Divine perspective. The mo’edim (festivals of the LORD) all are reckoned based on the sacred calendar given to the redeemed Israelite nation. As it is also written in the Book of Psalms: “He made the moon for the appointed times” / עָשָׂה יָרֵחַ לְמוֹ��ֲדִים (Psalm 104:19). Undoubtedly Yeshua followed this calendar, as did His first followers (Gal. 4:4).

Just before the dreadful final plague befell, God instructed the Israelites to ask their Egyptian neighbors for gold, silver and jewelry, thereby plundering Egypt of its wealth (this was regarded as “uncollected wages” for hundreds of years of forced labor and bondage - not to mention for the services of Joseph, whose ingenuity brought the world’s wealth to Egypt in the first place). Moses then instructed the people to prepare the Passover sacrifice, that is, the korban Pesach (קָרְבָּן פֶּסַה) - the Passover lamb - and to smear its blood on the two sides and top of the doorway, resembling the shape of the Hebrew letter Chet (ח). This Hebrew letter, signifying the number eight, is connected with the word חי (chai), short for chayim (חַיִּים), "life." The blood of the lamb (דַּם הַשֶּׂה) not only saves from the judgment of death, but also is a symbol of divine life given for our redemption. The “life is in the blood.”

The dreadful final plague - the death of the firstborn - at last broke Pharaoh’s resistance and he not only allowed the Israelites to depart without any conditions, he urged them to go. Because they left in great haste there was no time for their dough to rise. The Torah states that there were 600,000 adult men who left Egypt, along with the women, children, and a “mixed multitude” of other Egyptian slaves who tagged along.

The Israelites were commanded to consecrate all the firstborn to God and to commemorate the anniversary of the Exodus each year by celebrating the LORD’s Passover in conjunction with the Feast of Unleavened Bread. During this time they were to remove all leaven from their homes for seven days, eat matzah, and retell the story of their redemption to their children. The portion ends with the commandment to wear tefillin (phylacteries) on the arm and head as a reminder of how the LORD saved the Israelites from their bondage in Egypt. [Hebrew for Christians]

https://hebrew4christians.com/

1.17.21 • Facebook

From an email sent by Glenn Jackson about rebirth:

January 18th

* Shall this body, this curious workmanship of Heaven, so wonderfully and fearfully made, always lie in ruins and never be repaired. This we know: that it is not a thing impossible with God to raise the dead. He that could first form our bodies out of nothing, is certainly able to form them anew and repair the wastes of time. The Omniscient God knows how to collect, distinguish, and compound all those scattered and mingled seeds of our mortal bodies. Matter we know is capable of prodigious alterations and refinements; and there it will appear in the highest perfection. The bodies of the saints will be formed glorious, incorruptible, without the seeds of sickness or death. The glorified body of Christ, which is undoubtedly matter carried to the highest perfection that matter is capable of, will be the pattern after which they shall be formed. Then will the body be able to bear up under the exceeding great and eternal weight of glory; it will no longer be a clog or encumbrance to the soul, but a proper instrument and assistant in all the exalted services and enjoyments of the heavenly state.

...."But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you".... Romans 8:11 KJV

...."make a decisive dedication of your bodies [presenting all your members and faculties] as a living sacrifice, holy (devoted, consecrated) and well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable (rational, intelligent) service and spiritual worship".... Romans 12:1 The Amplified Translation

Today’s message from the Institute for Creation Research

January 18, 2021

A Better and an Enduring Substance

“For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.” (Hebrews 10:36)

Christians have certain heavenly possessions, and this knowledge helps put our earthly possessions and welfare in proper perspective. Evidently, some to whom this was written had been imprisoned, and others impoverished for their faith. “For ye...took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance” (v. 34). Peter called it “an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:4).

These possessions are attainable; they are not in question; they are ours, given to us by the One whose name is “Truth” (John 14:6) and whose Word is trustworthy. We “know” (Hebrews 10:34) this beyond all doubt.

Furthermore, these possessions are valuable. We must “cast not away therefore [our] confidence, which hath great recompense of reward” (v. 35). With this assurance, we are able to bear up under any suffering or persecution that comes our way (see also Romans 8:18).

Knowledge of these possessions is prescriptive, for it helps us cope with longstanding troubles. In our text, we “have need of patience” to get through them and do “the will of God.” “Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh” (James 5:7-8).

Lastly, realization of these possessions is imminent. “For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry” (Hebrews 10:37). “He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20). JDM

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notsdlifter · 4 years ago

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Middle Children

"A historian who would convey the truth must lie. Often, he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it." -- Mark Twain

It is a philosophical conundrum that I first encountered in college. A professor, looking at stadium seats filled with students nursing hangovers, asks the class “do you want to know where you are going to die?” Someone stifles a yawn. A jock in the back-row T’s off “nah . . . it’d spoil the fun.” A bookish girl in the front row wades in deliberately, “knowing would enable a person to plan and live life to the fullest.” The classroom splinters over the next twenty minutes as students interject answers that are subtle variation of those two camps. This question has troubled scholars and teenage potheads since time immemorial.

I do not know when you are going to die, but I can tell you exactly where the death will originate. The place has produced every near apocalypse in American history. The death toll runs into the hundreds of millions and counting. And it is the very last place that you’d expect to be on the forefront of the next, great American catastrophe.

The place is a sleepy little town in Kansas. The birthplace of madness and the garden of the future apocalypse. Kansas is a paradox, a difficult thing to pin down, a place so backwards that the land itself can’t even make up its mind. Most think that the history of Kansas is all progress propaganda and the pioneer spirit. The iconic image of the brawny settler perched atop a wagon squinting his eyes while he surveyed the “Great American Desert” is the Great Plains’ version of Betty the Riveter. The settlers came, they saw, and they kicked Kansas’ grass covered ass. It is the version that Hollywood portrays in its movies about the Sunflower State. It is a secret history that hides the true excitement behind the Wizard’s purple curtain. For there is another side to the tale that few writers or historians have ever touched.

Kansas prairies were occupied long before the Egyptians built pyramids in the Valley of the Kings. The history is ancient, the mystery is unsolved. The tale that most American’s know is a half-truth; a partial representation that filters the State’s macabre history through the canvas of Norman Rockwell that is closer to cliché than reality. The people that could tell this tale are dead, murdered by white settlers coming to terminate the “great market for bodies and souls” or pursue the dream of free land riches.

But if you listen to Kansas’ history, the real history, you can hear it whispering its enigmatic legacy. An amazing string of evil coincidences defines the region. For Kanas has had its finger on nearly every American war, international disaster, and global pandemic since the human beings crossed the ice bridge. And that evil is still here waiting under an ocean of winter wheat waiting . . .

Brief Revision

For those of you who missed the minute history class devoted to Kansas history let me take you back before human beings. Eons before the Great Plains stretched across the borders of Kansas, the whole place was the Western Interior Sea. Even today, it is not uncommon to find a fossilized tooth shark in the middle of a wheat field. Geology indicates that Kansas was once home to a great mountain range. Once mountains, then ocean, and now the largest tall grass prairie in the world. You might say that confusion is in Kansas’ blood.

There is a wildness to Kansas. A mixture of uncontrolled rage and relentless ambition that have made the state a breeding ground for a special kind of “madness.”

The madness—if it can even be called that—originated in the geographical enter of the United States thousands of years before the signing of the constitution. Resting inside of the rib cage of the burgeoning nation, within the heartbeat of a vast Indian community, was a hidden power that would dictate the outcome of world history.

The madness is ancient, perhaps as old as the land itself. Some say it began after the Indians were forced off their land, taught Christianity and beaten till their tan plains skin bled a socially acceptable brand Uncle Sam blue. An ancestral curse, or some form of national karma for the wrongs done to the Indians.

Various Indian tribes inhabited Kansas throughout the ages, but the dominant tribe was the Osage. A proud people whose Indian name, Ni-U-Kon-Ska, means little children of the middle waters, the Osage inhabited a swath of prairie stretching from the Kansas plains all the way down to the deep canyon cut rocks of the Texas panhandle. The Osage were not specifically a warrior-like tribe, nor where they agrarian. They were a nomadic band of hunters that managed their massive prairie land. For centuries stretching back millenniums before Columbus, the Osage grew into the land. The earth, much like the buffalo they hunted, become an integral part of the tribe. They listened nature, respond to her wisdom, and adapted their lifestyle to suit this knowledge. This connection ran deep, and the prairie flourished.

Then the Spaniard came. He was one of the firsts in a maddening string of Kansas’ firsts. It was the promise of riches that brought Spaniards 5,000 miles across the Atlantic. In 1540, at the height of Spanish power, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado y Luján marched his army right through the center of the Osage country. He brought only 330 armed Spanish soldiers clad in plate metal and morion helmets capped with a steel Mohawk and a single read feather. He had a thousand Indians in tow. Some as scouts, most as slaves, Coronado’s Indians spearheaded north through the center of the Osage country in search of Quivira, the mythical seven cities of gold. Coronado was especially interested in gold bars and rumors of hyper-sensuous virgins. He marched for years and ended up stopping in what is now Token-Oak, Kansas. He set up camp on the top of black hills now known as the Hollows and stopped. After three years marching, Coronado stood on those barren hills and decided to return home.

Shortly thereafter, things went to shit. He never found the gold to fill Spanish coffers, only Indians, buffaloes, and grass as far as the eye could see. When he left the rolling hills of Token-Oak, he walked west back into the prairie. With such flat land, there were no landmarks for the Spanish use for navigation. The ominous prairie sky, unobstructed by trees and mountains, closed in on the party. The elements and the Osage descended.

Then the madness came—as it comes to all people in this narrative—and seized Coronado. As his party began to fracture, he wanted to make an example out of the discontent. In the open prairie, just outside of Token-Oak, he tortured, raped, and dismembered Indian members of his party. And sleeping under the vast sky, surrounded by natives, listening to the strong night winds sweep the ocean of prairie grass across the flat plains, the madness tickled Coronado. The subtle sound of millions of bottlebrush husks floating on top of the wind like barely audible whispers. Underneath the wind, all the time, was the fear.

Coronado left the state forever, but it never left him. The madness walked within the conquistador’s ranks taking the life of his compatriots in an endless series of bizarre accidents. Starving Spaniards stumbled off the edge of cliffs. One soldier cut off his own scrotum. Another got syphilitic dementia so bad that he gorged himself on his own flesh. Of three hundred Spaniards, less than twenty made it home. Coronado lost his considerable fortune and, due to the atrocities that he committed on those Kansas Plains, his respect. Penniless and ostracized from the government, he died in Mexico City.

Only a handful of Coronado’s party made it back to Spain. The Spanish Empire, which crossed oceans with its mighty navy and dominated indigenous people the word over, collapsed. The greatest import—at least in terms of impact on the nation—that the Spaniards ever brought back was not Aztec gold, Chinese silks, or African diamonds. It was Kansas crazy. And that crazy brought the empire to its knees.

The second explorer to visit Token-Oak, Kansas, was the world-renowned Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark Duo. As manifest destiny began to sweep the nation, and the burgeoning country “bought” millions of acres of unexplored territory. Thomas Jefferson commissioned a small band of explorers to chart the newly acquired land. Lewis and Clark shot up the raging waters of the mighty Mississippi river and paddled up its largest tributary, the Missouri River, on their way to the west coast. The two men left the river and explored the Northeastern corner of Kansas for a three -week period.

Lewis and Clark encountered small bands of mounted Osage Indians in the areas surrounding modern day Token-Oak. Meriwether, a man that had a legendary drinking problem and a rapier wit, took things too far and had his way with some of the local. He tasted all the local fare he could wrap his nasty prairie-caked hands around. Allegedly, there were three scourges of the Plains Indians: whiskey, disease, and Meriwether Lewis. Lewis and Clark pushed their way up the Missouri River, all the way to the pacific shores of Oregon leaving Token-Oak and its bizarre black hills behind.

After “conquering” the great unknown, Lewis and Clark returned to their respective homes, Clark to St. Louis and Lewis to Louisiana. Conquering Indians became a passion for Lewis as he became the head of the newly formed Bureau of Indian Affairs and directly assisted in white settling of the plains. For years, Lewis cleared land and managed various tribe’s relocation.

When the madness overcame Lewis, it brought him down in style. Apparently, the old Indian slayer checked himself into a hotel on his way from Louisiana to Washington D.C. He was speaking some crazy shit. He demanded a bowl of soup with three spoons. Hotel proprietors heard him orating to himself as if giving a thunderous closing statement at a trial. He secluded himself in his room. The end came in the predawn hours of October 11th, Lewis pulled a shotgun from his horse saddle next to his bed, stuck the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Now, here is the crazy part. The proprietor noted two clear shots and Lewis had two wounds. Wrap your mind around this thought. Lewis pulled the trigger and probably blew the lower set of teeth and a cheek out of his face. The blast burn alone would be enough to sear exploded flesh. After the first shot, with half his face gone, Lewis picked up his rifle, loaded the gun powder and ball, and fired a second shot into his stomach. That, my friends, is Kansas crazy. The madness in it rawest, physically overcoming, other worldly form.

About fifty years later, the madness went national. The most devastating war ever to strike the United States. A conflict that killed over 600,000 civilians and burned dozens of American cities to the ground . . . yep, that started just outside of Token-Oak, too.

With the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the growing nation decided to allow residents of the new territories to decide if the area would be a slave-bearing state. In that sense, moving out to Kansas was either a noble endeavor or to ensure the furtherance of the slavery establishment. To Kansas went prophets, hermits, abolitionists, fundamentalists, pro-slavery settlers, and profiteers. Kansas was the first “actual” battle ground of the Civil war. The idea of popular sovereignty—the agreement that each new state would decide by popular vote to be anti- or pro-slavery—became a lightning rod. Slave states, especially Missouri, sent thousands of pro-slavery settlers to win a majority in the vote for slavery in Kansas. Conversely, abolitionists from Iowa to New England sent people, too. Two governments sprung up in Kansas each vying for control of the new constitution. Conflicts raged around the newly established territory. Bombs went off. Cannon boomed hot. Years before the War consumed the nation it soaked Kansas soil red. A mere reference to “Bleeding Kansas” had a one southern member of the House of Representatives brandish a walking cane and nearly bludgeon his northern colleague to death on the floor of the United States Senate.

About eighty miles southeast of Token-Oak, a northern abolitionist, John Brown, attacked a gang of slave drivers with a broad sword. Brown had a giant set of testicles and a stare that could burn a hole through steel. He hatched a plan was to drive a small group of followers into the heart of the south, seize the weapons stash, and lead an army of slaves across the southern United States on a veritable romp in the name of the Lord. Brown died in the raid at Harper’s Ferry, but his ideas lived on. The long-held fear that he exposed in Southerners ignited the conflict. Slaves made up nearly half of the Confederate population. The simple thought that a man could run into the South, arm slaves, and lead a rebellion was too much for the slave drivers. The roots of that fear were planted in Kansas soil and sprouted the bloodiest conflict in American history.

And the madness was just getting warmed up.

In 1881, Kansas was the first state to outlaw the sale of alcohol in its state constitution. A fierce lady named Kerry Nation burst into salons with a hatchet and smashed barrels of whiskey and bottles of beer. She described herself as “a bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what He doesn't like.” Arrested some thirty times for her raids on saloons and unabashed temperance, Ms. Nation never backed down from a fight. She personally sowed the seeds of the prohibition movement that led to the birth of organized crime and the development of the drug trade.

Then the madness went global. In 1918, in an army barracks just outside of Token-Oak, a soldier in Fort Riley, Kansas, came down with the flu. A few days later, that soldier was dead, and half the barracks were sick. A global pandemic had ignited outside of an eerie Kansas town that sat on the Smoky River and spread across the world. This flu infected over five hundred million people at its peak. Once the dust settled, estimates state that seventy million people across the world died from H1N1.

About twelve years after the Kansas-based super flu nearly crippled the planet, another sinister disaster sprung from Kansas soil. Just west of Token-Oak, farmers watched two-thousand-foot-tall clouds roll across the ground towards their homes. The low moving blackness sent waves of birds and jackrabbits screaming ahead of the dirt like an army of half a billion Paul Reveres warning of hell. Trillions of dust particles carried static energy so strong that it fried the electrical systems in cars and shorted radios. Waves of grasshoppers descended upon any scraps of plants in an Old Testament style reaping.

Before the Great Depression, people fled to Kansas in droves. Towns sprung up along newly established railway roots. Settlers came to farm the prairie and plant Kansas' biggest cash crop: red winter wheat. A family could cheaply buy a section of land (640 acres) and begin to plant. Brand new Kansans turned millions of acres of centuries old prairie grass upside down in the span of a few months. As the hopeful inhabitants carved up the prairie on the backs of their lumbering John Deere’s, the land struck back. The rains stopped. The winds came. And they blew—and blew—and blew rolling mountains of earth across the plains.

The giant dusters brought a hundred thousand tons of earth in tiny dust particles. Houses in the wake of these black monoliths were stripped of paint and buried in sand-like dunes of dirt that drifted fifteen feet high. Kansas dust filled the lungs of children and the elderly choking their capillaries creating a wheezing cough the produced pitch-black phlegm. As gritty Kansas earth invaded people's lungs, they expelled it with a hacking cough mixed with blood. Every American in those black days swallowed a little piece of the prairie. The dry dirt drowned the oceans of freshly planted wheat and caused entire herds of cattle to go blind. For nearly a decade, these storms romped across the Great Plains at it most vulnerable point in history. It took the French and then the Americans nearly 50 years to dig the Panama Canal. Each dust storm produced three times that much dirt in 5 minutes.

Then the madness began appearing in world events like a drive by shooter. Right at the end of the Dust Bowl, the eyes of the world were fixated on the massive Zeppelin landing in Manchester Township, New Jersey. The Zeppelins were a scientific marvel that would surely soon be frequented by bourgeoisie travels from across the world. Initially, the monstrous blimps were designed to use helium as their lifting agent. Helium, after all, was not nearly as explosive as hydrogen. Ironically, the largest supply of helium in the world rested underneath the prairie grass of Kansas. Poor Kansas had the most bountiful source of rare gas and, due to a trade embargo, was not sharing. A spark of static caused the hydrogen-fill blimp to ignite. Kansas gas claimed the first lives of WWII through the trade embargo that kept its helium locked beneath its soil.

In the mid-1940s, at the beginning of the United States nuclear weapons testing boom in Nevada, scientists began studying nuclear fallout. After the Trinity detonation in July of 1945, the government started receiving complaints across the nation from Kodak about foggy X-ray film. Fact is that film canisters were packed in a corn derivative from Kansas that had become irradiated. Turns out Kansas was especially susceptible as heavy plains storms pulled iodine 131 out of the air and bathed the ocean of buffalo grass in radioactive soup. If someone passed a Geiger counter across the Midwest, Kansas will betray the Chernobyl-like fallout.

Kansas kids were the most affected by this governmental misstep. As cows consumed the contaminated grass; kids drank the milk. Long before the milk industry launched its “got milk” campaign that glorified consuming the opaque cow product by shooting celebrities with yogurt-stained upper lips, there was a twenty-year decline in milk drinking. Why? Because the milk went bad. It picked up radiation and the kids—the poor effin’ kids—drank the shit like it was straight from their momma’s teat. Does a body good my ass! The radiation, though it did not originate craziness in Kansas, certainly compounded the problem. But that was just the beginning of Kansas’ nuclear worries.

Kansas does not just create disasters, wars, and madness; it also creates hall of fame college basketball coaches. It is a virtual mecca of the sport. James A. Naismith, the inventor of the game was the University of Kansas’ first coach. His predecessor, Forrest “Phog” Allen brought accolades galore. The paragon of other tradition powers—North Carolina’s Dean Smith and Kentucky’s Adolph Rupp—both played from the Jayhawks before coaching their teams to multiple titles at their respective schools. Moreover, Wilt “the Stilt” Chamberlain was born and played his college ball in Lawrence. That’s right, the only guy to score 100 points in a game and, I will argue the more astounding accomplishment, is the only man to have slept with 20,000 women.

20,000 women. Imagine that. Essentially, “the Stilt” was able to rise above the limitations that the Lord gave him. He battled through STDs, fatigue, a depleted sperm reserve, and the inevitable road rash to tap twenty . . . thousand . . . women. Mathematically, he had to have a woman a day since he was 15 years old. It sounds impossible, I know, but when you start throwing in the weekend orgies it is totally doable. It took devotion, a high pain threshold, and a hell of sex drive, but the Stilt swung is stick with more consistence than DiMaggio's 56 in 41’. When all is said in done, and centuries pass, and governments rise and fall, the people of the future will look back on Chamberlain’s 20K lay. It is a record that will never be broken.

Kansas’ sports acumen is not limited to the hardwood of the basket basketball court or the bedpost. The madness has created an innate desire to run. The town of Wichita, Kansas is home to some of the best runners in world history. Local Wichita track speedster Jim Ryun was the first human being to break the four-minute mile. The greatest running backs ever to play were born or played their football in Kansas. Jim Thorpe played his college ball at Haskell University. John Riggins, a bruising runner nicknamed “the diesel” nearly two decades before Shaq. The “Kansas Comet” Gale Sayers also came from the city. Perhaps the greatest of them all; the slipperiest small man to ever tote the pigskin, was Barry Sanders. Watching Barry play the game was like watching smoke slide through keyhole. His diminutive frame could devilishly contort through the smallest spaces. He was an ankle breaker, a shake-and-bakester, that could have had all the records but quit after only a decade.

The greatest turnaround in college football history occurred in Manhattan, Kansas. For half a century, the Wildcats where the epitome of suck. There are two eras of football in Manhattan, that before Bill Snyder and that after. Before Snyder, K-State had lost 500 games, by far the most of any division one program. The team had the fewest scholarship players of any program in the country. There was serious talk of demoting the Wildcats to division two. Players on the football team didn’t wear letter jackets out of sheer embarrassment. The school didn’t even have carpet in most of the athletic facilities. After Snyder, the team has two conference championships against schools with quadruple its athletic budget and played in several New Year’s Day bowl games. Bill Snyder, the “Purple Wizard”, used Kansas madness to his advantage. The Wildcats now romp around in a $300 million dollar stadium aptly named after the man who resurrected the team from the dead.

Some of you from bigger states might be saying to yourself that any state could produce a list as astounding. Fact is that Kansas accounts for less than a single percentage of the national population, yet it is involved in over 95% of the shit that goes on in the nation. There is something in the water out here. Something that drives tragedies and fuels success stories. And that something is the madness.

Kansas is the great initiator of events that have shaped national and even world history. It is the place myths and dreams. This fact has not gone unnoticed in popular culture through the years. After all, it is the birthplace of Superman, the home of the man behind the curtain from the Wizard of Oz, and the home at least one blonde haired, squared-jawed soldier in every Hollywood war movie since the development of moving pictures. The poor bastard that got blown to bits attaching sticky bombs to German panzers in the Opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, you know that fucker was from Kansas! Holla! The iconic phrases “WWJD” and the “Great White Hope” originated here in the boyhood home of the man of steel, the place where Dorothy desperately wants to get back to. “I can't see my hand in front of my face” developed in the middle of one of Kansas’ dust storms. It is a land of flying monkeys, town destroying tornadoes, and Governors who campaign on a platform of implanting goat testicles into humans to cure impotence (true story . . . and the bastard almost won the race). If find myself wondering, at least once a day, how it is the nation has missed the enigma is the clipped rectangular state of Kansas.

For those Kansas prairies hold a unique history and a vibrant heritage of conflict, confusion and “madness.” Kansas represents a wide-open frontier that sits between America's two dominant ideologies of rugged western individualism and reserved eastern puritanism. Kansas is the space at the beginning of the sentence. It’s the place that people look down upon from 35,000 feet and see irrigation circles and an ocean of grass and think of nothing at all. What people fail to see from the sky are the roots. The roots of the nation’s deadliest war and the worst modern, global pandemic began a stone’s throw from Token-Oak. The nation's most devastating natural disaster sent suffocating Kansas soil on a ten-year smothering spree. The first legal abortion occurred inside the clipped rectangular borders of Kansas. Electroshock therapy was invented in Kansas. The most psychologically devastating food item, the White Castle tiny, dog-flavored, shit burger, started in Wichita. These little sliders have tortured a billion buttholes across the world. Fact is, whatever you ate today, whatever pissed you off politically last week, and the next time you fucking snap; chances are whateveritis originated in the Sunflower State.

It is not just Kansas, but a sleepy little town in Kansas that sits on the Smokey Hill River and nestled at the edge of the Flint Hills. It is a place that has been the epicenter of the all of the above. It is a place that has taken current events of the day—slavery, poor farming practices and influenza—and magnified them into national and global crises.

Now there are two issues in Token-Oak, both related to drug abuse. It is a town that has long suffered from the methamphetamine epidemic. For decades, the local jail has been full of meth cooks and addicts. In the past few years, a new addiction has hit Token-Oak with a vengeance. Somewhere in the black hills northeast of the Token-Oak, the roots of the next great America apocalypse will spring anew on those Kansas prairies that have long been the garden of the apocalypse.

Per aspera ad astra

It is the State's iconic mea culpa. An admission that the environment is totally fucked, and the expectations of the people are even more out of whack. It is like saying “sure . . . we got problems, but when we get through this shit, we're gonna conquer the fucking world.” That is the driving force inside of us all. It is a great motivator of passions, a destroyer of rational perspectives, and a perfect place to begin this dizzying little jaunt through the craziest thing of all: the story of Token-Oak, Kansas.

Per aspera ad astra

Anytime I come within a few feet of a ledge or drive my car over seventy miles-per-hour or hold a gun; I can feel the “madness” festering inside of me. I tell myself that I have a fear of heights, that there is something about the bird’s eye view that conjures some visceral, subconscious fear. But none of that is true. And somewhere, deep inside me, I know it is not the height that scares me. It’s the all-encompassing, parasitic madness. A stomach-turning, teeth-clenching rage that that takes over a person and destroys them completely. I know I am not the only one that feels this. I believe that anyone with Midwestern roots or even a drop of Indian blood in their genes knows exactly what I am talking about.

#Kansas History

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theagileadmin · 5 years ago

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DoD Organizer Family Tour

DevOpsDays Austin sponsored this great charity this year with our proceeds, and the program is so cool I wanted to do a whole post on it.

Community First! Village “is a 51-acre master planned community that provides affordable, permanent housing and a supportive community for men and women coming out of chronic homelessness.” It consists of 200+ micro-homes and RVs and supporting infrastructure, they’re at 78% of capacity already, and they are planning for another 300 homes to be built. They’re located in southeast Austin out near the Travis County Expo Center.

Aerial View of Village

And it’s really nice! The primary kind of residence are little mini-houses, 180-200 square feet in size, with electricity but no plumbing. There are standalone bathroom buildings with individual lockable rooms. There’s kitchen buildings for more extensive cooking. There’s RVs, more expensive but better for those with medical problems. There’s a community garden (with chickens and bees), a store, a hairdresser, a garage, a forge, and more. Heck, there’s a bus stop and an Amazon dropbox.

Here’s a series of pictures I took on our tour.

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Austin has around 2200 homeless, and the number continues to rise. My parents visited me in Austin a couple months ago, and we went out and ate and they were shocked by how many were on the street, especially as we drove through the “shelter district” downtown. There are many efforts to help, but this is an approach I hadn’t heard of before, and wanted to share with everyone.

How Does It Work?

Donna Emery, the Director of Development for Mobile Loaves & Fishes, gave us a tour and told us all about it. She’d love any of you to come tour the village as well! Mobile Loaves & Fishes as an organization has been serving the homeless for many years, and this is their deeply considered idea at making a permanent difference.

The village isn’t a shelter; it’s intended to be permanent. They identify candidates for the village via social workers and the array of people trying to help the increasing homeless population (there’s a database they all use to track homeless clients and try to get them services and such). The person says they want to get into the Village, and there’s an about 12 month runway program to get them ready and in.

There are three rules to living in the village.

Have to pay rent. Micro-homes rent for $275-$375/month, the RVs more like $435. They work to ensure they have their social services and encourage “dignified income” working in the village or otherwise. 96% of the residents pay their rent on time, which is better than your average apartment building!

Have to follow civil law. This isn’t “anything goes”, and safety is paramount. They don’t turn you away if you have a alcohol or substance abuse problem – you’re only going to get over that if you have housing – but crime isn’t allowed. It isn’t a major problem for them; homeless are generally the victims, not the perpetrators, of crimes (other than the criminalization of being homeless, of course). Applicants do have criminal background checks – they don’t disqualify you out of hand for having a record though, but don’t allow sex offenders and evaluate a past of violent crime carefully.

Have to follow the rules of the community (like a strict HOA) – you have to care for your neighborhood. This isn’t a jungle, it’s a community. The place was very clean and well tended. (Pets are welcome, though! We spoke with a man walking his dog at length on our tour.)

Last year, residents earned $650k in “dignified income” – working in the gardens, crafting, doing maintenance, working in the garage and market… You can make $900/mo from a job cleaning the community bathrooms, for example. Donna stressed that they don’t rely on handouts – it harms the dignity of the people and you don’t take care of things that are free. When a major tech company donated a bunch of tablets, they set up a monthly tablet rental. “But those are free, we’re giving them to you, don’t make money off them,” they initially complained. But MLF explained that handouts are an unhealthy dynamic, and this way the renters respect the tablets – and themselves – more. They’ve put a lot of thought and experience into creating a place where communities and lives can grow for people that have had nothing.

Of course, they provide a lot of help, from social services to things like teaching them to use Netspend for money management.

Blue ribbon Austin business and organizations have donated a lot of the infrastructure to make this work – Alamo Drafthouse, HEB, Charles Maund, the Topfer family, and many more.

Really A Community

But the thing I found the most striking about this is that it’s really a community, and a part of the larger community around it.

40% of the residents are women. There have been two weddings so far among the residents and two residents passed away with their wishes to be interred in the Village. The average age of homeless coming there is around 50 and they’ve been chronically homeless for around 10 years. This isn’t an attempt at “give them a shower and shave and get them a job and send them back out into the wild,” this is a permanent home where they can belong as long as they want. Donna shared with us that what really makes persistent homelessness is some kind of crisis combined with a collapse of a person’s social relationships – no family, no friends to help. Being sent away from a community doesn’t tend to form better social support, does it?

From their FAQ:

It’s all about relationships. Mobile Loaves & Fishes desires to empower the community around us into a lifestyle of service with the homeless. We achieve this vision through Community First! Village by taking a relational approach for connecting with our homeless brothers and sisters, instead of a transactional approach. When we bring an individual into community with others, we truly begin to make a sustainable impact on their lives.

Mobile Loaves & Fishes believes that the single greatest cause of homelessness is a profound, catastrophic loss of family. That’s why our focus at Community First! Village is to do more than just provide adequate housing. We have developed a community with supportive services and amenities to help address an individual’s relational needs at a fraction of the cost of traditional housing initiatives. We seek to empower our residents to build relationships with others, and to experience healing and restoration as part of engaging with a broader community.

The businesses aren’t just for the residents – you can go there to the garage and pay to get your oil changed. You can go attend their movie nights (the Alamo donated a projector) that are open to the public like any movie night in any park. They do things like a trail of lights during the holidays. There’s plenty of reasons for non-residents to go there, it’s not a “camp.” It’s just a subdivision, really, like any other one you’d drive through in Austin.

Heck, you can go live there. 170 of the occupants are former homeless, but there are also many “mission families” living there with them to provide help and more strongly tie them into the social fabric of the Austin community. Or you can rent spare homes on AirBNB! They have a hall (“Unity Hall”) that can accommodate up to 300 and there’s a commercial kitchen attached (also staffed by residents) so you can host events there – we started seriously looking at it for smaller tech events. (More pics are in the slideshow above).

How Can You Help?

Let’s get real. If you’re reading this tech blog you’re probably incredibly well off. Working for a company that’s incredibly well off. We have an embarrassment of riches in the tech scene here in Austin, living next to people with nothing. In DevOps we talk continually about collaboration, sharing, and community – one would think that our appetite for helping the less fortunate would go farther than just making sure you get an underrepresented person on your next tech panel.

You can help with funding. Their Phase II capital campaign is building more homes and supporting buildings, a clinic, and more. Eventually they want things like dental care (an especially hard problem; it’s relatively expensive but dental problems unheeded turn into medical problems quickly). You can give, you can encourage your company to give. DevOpsDays Austin made spare money from sponsors, so we were able to put $25,000 into sponsoring one of the homes in their next phase.

You can help by volunteering. Persons or groups can email them and get set up to come help! Get your church or other organization involved. They’ve had over 100 Eagle Scouts do their projects out there.

You can help by participating in your local government. They had a long battle to be able to start the village and had to locate outside the City of Austin because of the never-ending NIMBY-ism of residents not wanting “those people” anywhere near them. Advocate for compassion and the homeless in your city council and other venues.

You can help even by just going there, using the businesses, interacting with the residents to weave them into the fabric of Austin. Go on a tour to see what they’re doing out there. Bring your kids! We all had a great and deeply moving family outing in our visit to the Village.

Community First! Village DevOpsDays Austin sponsored this great charity this year with our proceeds, and the program is so cool I wanted to do a whole post on it.

#austin #charity #community #devopsdays

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gerrinson · 6 years ago

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The journal of Allinav - part deux

The continuing adventures of the brave group, as told from the viewpoint of the character Allinav. Again, I take no credit for anything but the storyline, this was all written by the player, in character:

Entry Eight.

Where do I even begin. To say that things have taken a turn for the worst would be putting it lightly. I guess I will pick up a few days after where I left off, off in the distance the Worlds End mountain range towers over the landscape, and just a short walk away is the town of Helforth. This town is quite different from any town of which I had the grace to visit before, it's design was that of multiple circles, one nested inside of the other, on the outside were the farms, livestock, gardens, everything you might need to survive out here amongst the forests and the mountains, and as you worked your way in you found your self surrounded by buildings, that while not nearly as impressive as those you would find in Absalon, were still much better then you would expect. As we began our entrance into town, just outside a raised up on spikes, were the heads of two Goblins. It was here that we had the what I initially thought was the pleasure of meeting the Mayors son, as we made our way to the mayor himself, his son told us of the Goblin warparty that he had intercepted, how he and his men had fought off dozens of goblins, and how the heads on the pike where take of their leaders. I've seen the likes of this man before, back home we would hear stories like these in the bars, and someone claimed to have fought off a few goblins, or a couple of orcs. Always a far cry from the truth, but it was no business of mine, or our party to tell the mayors son that he was a liar. Our job was clear, find the source of the missing livestock, and put an end to it.

After a brief discussion with Mayor Havershem, we have determined that these theifs have been stealing in a pattern, that if true, would mean that there are potentially two farms still left to be stolen from, and after deliberation we have decided that the best option is to hide out on the farm of the Egerton family, and hope to catch the thieves in the act. The Egerton's by the way grow turnips. Barrels and barrels of turnips. More turnips then you could possibly imagine. Night fell as we waited, as we spread ourselves out around the main barn, everyone had a job, and an area to watch, and despite my best efforts, nobody was disguised and hiding amongst the juicy bait of the wheel barrow full of turnips. It was shortly after midnight when the thieves arrived in force, It was dark and I could only make out what looked like 4 Goblins, but what they lacked in numbers, they more then made up in both skill, and stealth. Yoshi was knocked unconscious before anyone even knew the Raiding party was on us, And if not for Simon and Drogo on the roof, we may not have ever known they were there.

Both Ilyat and I had been hiding inside of the barn Waiting to jump out as soon as the thieves arrived, and let me just say, from experience, when an Orc charges out of a barn in the middle of the night, the look on a goblins face is quite prices, that is for the split second it takes them to react and unless their arrows. The fight was brief, and only so because as soon as ilyat charged all but one of the goblins was able to flee. And its here that things took a turn for the worse.

After securing the Goblin and setting up sentries to make sure no other Goblins formed a rescue party, and making sure that Yoshi was in fact, not dead, Simon and I attempted to get some rest while Ilyat, Yoshi, and Drogo kept watch. Rest, however was not going to be an option. After a short while I woke to watch sounded like fighting, but it was just Yoshi, full on fur mode standing over a recently smacked, screaming goblin. Despite all our efforts it continued to scream, Ilyat was screaming, the goblin was screaming, Yoshi was just staring, and of course nobody actually even speaks goblin. After some time Simon was able to communicate with it, via writing words into the dirt of the barn. The basic jist of what Simon was able to uncover was that the Goblins were NOT the bad guys, and that the humans had stolen from THEM. After even more discussion, it became clear that as the sun was rising, and with any hope of sleep quickly evaporating, that we would have this goblin lead us to their leader to get to the bottom of the situation. A few knots here and there and we were off. Funny thing about Goblins in a complete panic at the sight of a raging Orc, they make zero attempt at covering their tracks, even without the help of our little tied up friend, we would have been able to follow this path directly to their camp with little trouble... That is of course, if Drogo would stop running directly into any and all traps. As we neared the camp, and started to hear noise, and to a greater extent SMELL the latrines of said camp, Drogo was tasked with scouting ahead to make sure we were not walking into an ambush. A few minutes after he left the first of what I can only imagine were dozens of early warning traps was sprung, and the sounds from before erupted into chaos. With little options, we decided the best thing to do was to release the goblin, as a means of him informing what no doubt was a sizable force, that we were in fact NOT enemies, and that we were just looking for information. This gamble paid off as we were not only unharmed, we were escorted to the goblin camp to meet their leader Karth Boghat, and once again things the story gets worse. The heads on the pike in town, were that of his wife, and another.

The reason for the Livestock theft quickly became apparent in our talk with the Karth Boghat. The Goblins, upon learning of an invading army of the Stone Guard Orc Clan, decided that instead of fighting, it would be best to leave. In order to do so, they sent a party to town to warn the mayor and the people of the incoming army, and to trade with them for the supplies needed to survive a long journey on the road. It this this small party that the mayors son came upon, a part of friendly goblins, none of which were fighters, but in fact traders. The Mayors son murdered them, stole their gold, and put their heads on pikes for all the world to see. It is disgusting to see just how ugly the world can be. After a brief meeting with Old Meklo, our party split up to try and accomplish as much as possible in what little time we had to spare with an army of orcs not more then a couple of days away. Ilyat, Yoshi and I were to go back to town, retrieve the heads of the Goblin traders, inform the mayor of the impending attack, and return to the edge of the forest to regroup with the Drogo and Simon. It was a pretty good plan... all except for the part where halfway back to town we ran into Gronch the mighty, son of Grunch the war leader. I'm still a little hazy about the details of what happened next, but I do know two things, One, I'm pretty sure Ilyat is married now and heir to the Stone Guard Clan, and Two, I finally got my first taste of real battle, that taste was my own blood. I remember seeing Yoshi cause a spray of colors, and I remember thinking that now was the time to attack with my morning star, and i remember waking up and feeling incredibly woozy, so woozy in fact that in my stupor I decided that the recently decapitated head of Gronch might come in handy.

Deciding that now would probably NOT in fact be a good time to split up, we decided to scratch the initial plan and head back for the others, about half way there we heard was sounded like an incoming undetermined amount of horses, it turned out to be young Meklo.

After a brief introduction, he was kind enough to give us a lift, as well as delivered some packages from the Pathfinders guild, mail, mission updates, a giant pile of gems for yoshi.

We met up with the others, while still somewhat dazed, and continued to brandish this horrific head of the Orc warrior, we finally as a group returned to town. and again things got worse. The mayor was dead, If I had to wager a guess i'd say I'd know who did it, however based on what the mayor covered up for his son Randy, the punishment seemed worthy of the crime. As we hurried to make preparations and gather the towns folk, via ringing of the church bell, The mayors Son randy decided that now was the time to turn on the bravado. Incoming Orc army? Impossible! Goblins were just looking to trade goods and warn the humans? Not likely! Not all Orcs smell like Lavender Randy! ok that one seems reasonable. It was becoming very apparent that Randy was not going to listen to reason, and while his murder of the goblins would be reasons to allow ilyat to tear him limb from limb, what we needed right now was a little bravado of our own. The people don't have the time to sit around, they needed to get out of town right now. Luckily, I still happened to have the now rather moist decapitated head of on Gronch the mighty. If you have never seen a 7 foot tall grown man soil himself, just toss him the skull of the warchiefs son, and then confront him with the facts in front of the entire town he was supposed to protect. After proving once and for all that Randy was in fact a coward, we convinced the towns people to grab only what they deemed was essential and leave town at once. After clearing all of the holy relics from the chuch, and retrieving the goblins stolen gold, we decided that it might be best to make it look as if part of the town had been attacked by a Different clan of Orcs, a little blood here, a warchief sons head on a pike there, and a taunt about someone's mother being a light lover, it was time to move on... it was also around this point that I noticed Drogo was carrying a stack of books he had taken from the church. I wasn't aware that he was quite so religious, but the thought that he might be taken a turn for the better made the events of the previous two days seem like a distant memory. There might be hope for Drogo yet.

Entry Nine.

My mother is dead, she had been sold into marriage when I was a child. My emotions are too confusing to properly put down into words.

Entry Ten.

We have received updated orders. We are to rendezvous with Amari Tazen, the woman that had been transporting skulls to the verdun forest shrine. Her convoy was attacked and the skulls and relics stolen. We are to attempt to retrieve said relics and escort her to her final destination.

Entry Eleven.

Drogo received more money juggling, then I did playing my harp, Tiny little evil monster, always stepping on my proverbial toes. On top of that we recovered two Nixie bodies, those same nixie that we had helped before, with tatzle worm size bite marks. Nobody tells the tales of the bad days of an adventurer.

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