#tree preservation during construction

[petermorwood]

How on earth did these goats get there?

*****

In reality the goats are lying on their sides on rocky ground, looking up at a crane-mounted camera. The photograph was taken some years ago, part of a series reconstructing Central European folk customs and traditions which have fallen from favour or are now prohibited.

This old-fashioned rural blood-sport was originally practiced in parts of Anatolia, Turkey, where the game was called keçi fırlatmak, and also in the Carpathian Alps of Romania, possibly imported during the Ottoman conquest. The name there was aruncarea caprei.

*****

The goats would have been coated in a strong adhesive traditionally distilled from pine resin.(represented pictorially here by darker patches of dye on the flanks) and were then thrown upwards towards a cliff or rock-face with makeshift catapults, often a primitive form of counterweight trebuchet assembled from wooden beams and weighted with rocks.

The game ended when the glue dried and lost adhesion, and the goats fell to their deaths. They were then cooked and eaten, their meat being valued like that of Spanish fighting bulls.

The meat of the last goat to fall (başarılı keçi or cea mai durabilă capră) was prized as a special delicacy and selected cuts from the legs of this particular “winner” goat were often smoked and dried into a kind of jerky.

*****

In his “Grandes Histoires Vraies d'un Voyageur le 1er Avril” (pub. Mensonges & Faussetés, Paris, 1871) French folk-historian, anthropologist and retired cavalry general Gilles-Etienne Gérârd wrote about witnessing a festival near Sighișoara, Transylvania, in 1868.

There he claims to have seen catapults improvised from jeunes arbres, très élastiques et souples - “very springy and flexible young trees” - which were drawn back with ropes and then released.

Bets were placed before the throw, and marks given afterwards, according to what way up the goats adhered and for how long. The reconstruction, with both goats upright, facing outward and still in place, shows what would have been a potential high score.

The practice has been officially banned in both countries since the late 1940s, but supposedly still occurred in more isolated areas up to the end of the 20th century. Wooden beams from which the catapults were constructed could easily be disguised as barn-rafters etc., and of course flexible trees were, and are, just trees.

*****

Gérârd’s book incorrectly calls the goat jerky “pastrami”, to which he gives the meaning "meat of preservation".

While pastrami may be a printing error for the Turkish word bastırma or the Romanian pastramă, both meaning “preserved meat”, at least one reviewer claims that Gérârd misunderstood his guide-translator, who would have been working from rural dialect to formal Romanian to scholarly French.

Since this jerky was considered a good-luck food for shepherds, mountaineers, steeplejacks and others whose work involved a risk of falling, Gérârd's assumption seems a reasonable one.

However, several critical comments on that review have dismissed its conclusion, claiming "no translator could be so clumsy", but in its defence, other comments point out confusion between slang usage in the same language.

One cites American and British English, noting that even before differences in spelling (tire / tyre, kerb / curb etc.) "guns" can mean biceps or firearms, "flat" can mean a deflated wheel or a place to live, "ass" can mean buttocks or donkey and adds, with undisguised relish, some of the more embarrassing examples.

This comment concludes that since the errors "usually make sense in context", Gérârd's misapprehension is entitled to the same respect.

*****

The good-luck aspect of the meat apparently extended to work which involved "falling safely", since its last known use was believed to be in ration packs issued to the 1. Hava İndirme Tugayı (1st Airborne Brigade) of the Turkish Army, immediately before the invasion of Cyprus in July 1974.

Nothing more recent has been officially recorded, because the presence of cameras near military bases or possible - and of course illegal - contests is strongly (sometimes forcefully) discouraged, and the sport’s very existence is increasingly dismissed as an urban or more correctly rural legend.

The official line taken by both Anatolian and Carpathian authorities is that it was only ever a joke played on tourists, similar to the Australian “Drop-bear”, the Scottish “Wild Haggis” and the North American “Jackalope”.

They dismiss the evidence of Gérârd’s personal observation as “a wild fable to encourage sales of his book”, “a city-dweller’s misinterpretation of country practices”, or even “the deliberate deception of a gullible foreigner by humorous peasants”.

And as for those paratroop ration packs, Turkish involvement in Cyprus is still such a delicate subject that the standard response remains “no comment”.

[tumbleweed-writes]

Death and the Lady: Chibs Telford X Reader Chapter Two

Chapter one found HERE

CHAPTER TWO: Infatuation

Y/L/N and Sons Funeral Home was located in one of the more affluent neighborhoods of Charming, California. Although, this was more due to it being one of the older homes in town than a sign of the actual wealth of the owners of the property.

A golden placard was proudly displayed by the front door declaring that the property had first opened its doors all the way back in 1910, although Y/N’s father would claim that their ancestors had been undertakers for far longer than that. 

It had been something he was proud of; the history of their family and their profession. It was a respected profession that had been viewed as more of a service by her father. Lloyd Y/L/N’s father had been an undertaker and his father before that and so on. Generations of sons in Y/N’s family had maintained the family business. It was their legacy. It was a family tradition and tradition was to be upheld according to Y/N’s father. 

Now that there were no available sons to take the reins as the town funeral director, Y/N had been left to carry on the family tradition. She was the last undertaker in the Y/L/N line. 

Her father had often boasted about the family history. Photos of Y/N’s ancestors lined the small office that was now her own. They were black and white photos featuring her grandfathers before her alongside undertaker carriages and finally old hearses; the family home and business displayed in the background. As soon as photography had become readily available her ancestors had paid a pretty penny to capture the family legacy. There was even a disturbingly large leather bound photo album featuring some memento mori photography mostly featuring Y/N’s ancestors as well as some of the ancestors of many of Charming’s residents. 

This photo album, of course, was not something that was proudly displayed like the other family photos though. She was quite certain most of Charming’s residents would be displeased to know her family had long held quite a few photographs of their deceased ancestors after they were post mortem. 

The family business had begun during the civil war by one of Y/N’s northern ancestors who took full advantage of the booming business of embalming as dead soldiers needed to be preserved to be sent back home during the war. 

After the war had ended and the popularity of embalming had spread her ancestors had kept up the family business. 

Y/N’s ancestors had traveled out to California and settled in Charming soon after the town began to develop enough of a population to require the services of an undertaker. They’d remained ever since burying generations of Charming residents. Most residents of Charming had passed through the home more than once. It was a place more than one resident of Charming would find themselves eventually at the end of life.

Although the owners of the old home were far from being as wealthy as their neighbors, the appearance of the home hid this fact well.

It was an impressive home and might even be considered beautiful if one didn’t realize just what kind of establishment it was. The lot was quite large compared to the few homes that stood alongside it. It had seemed that not many people had been fond of developing homes alongside Charming’s oldest funeral home.

The home was a massive white Victorian style structure featuring a long red brick driveway. The windows of the home were a fine looking stained glass featuring a rose-design that had been placed way back when the home was originally built. Lovely red and pink rose bushes and large old oak and maple trees lined the property. 

Given that the funeral home served not only as a place of business but a family home, there had even been a glass and iron greenhouse constructed behind the property. The structure that had been built by Y/N’s great great grandmother and was still tended to this day by Y/N herself.

A small pet cemetery sat near the outskirts of the property, another feature that had been added by one of Y/N’s great grandmothers though the small cemetery held mostly family pets; cats, one bloodhound, a few parakeets, even a few goldfish. Y/N could admit that more than one goldfish had been her own childhood pets. When Y/N was a child she’d even been told rumors that there was a horse buried somewhere in the home’s old pet cemetery but she’d not thought that it was likely given her family tended to document every single death both human and pet, and no mention of a horse had ever been recorded. 

Needless to say, generations of Y/N’s family had resided in the home and it held a history far beyond just its purpose to the community. It was an eccentric and morbid history, but it was Y/N’s history all the same.

When she’d been a teenager, she had resented the odd macabre history, but as an adult who had entered the family business she found herself holding the same pride for it her father had always held.

The legacy was uncomfortable to most, but it was hers. 

Due to the more affluent area and the fine looking home, Chibs Telford couldn’t help but to feel out of place as Jax and he pulled Darby’s stolen SUV discreetly into the driveway.

Chibs hated to admit that he felt an odd mixture of both awe and fear as he stared up at the massive home, a chill running down his spine as he spotted the wooden sign displayed in the yard that proudly stated Y/L/N and Sons Funeral Home established 1910.

He suddenly remembered Juice’s words just earlier in the day; Spooky.

He tried to pretend that he didn’t feel a ball of dread developing in his gut as he followed Jax and Juice up the long driveway towards the front door.

He stared at the two panel stained glass front door, his palms growing damp as Jax reached out to ring the doorbell.

The pleasant chime that sounded out didn’t fit what laid inside, in Chibs’ opinion. 

Chibs hated to admit that he felt his heart skip a beat at the thought of facing the fascinating young woman he’d met just earlier that day and would be meeting once again very soon. 

He’d be lying if he tried to pretend that his brain hadn’t been hyperfocused on her all morning. 

She truly did puzzle him. He knew it had to do with more than the fact that Y/N was a gorgeous woman with an odd career. It was the implication of her past and her brazenness when it had come to her establishing that she would be willing to do favors for the SAMCRO in the future for payment of course. He’d been stunned by how willingly she’d been to mouth off to Jax Teller and how comfortable she’d seemed to insist that she would now be the Sons line of contact for future favors regarding anything they may have previously used Skeeter for. 

She was ballsy, he had to admit it. It was an admirable trait. Boldness was a sexy trait in a lass, or so Chibs had always believed.

As hard as Chibs tried to deny it, Y/N was a puzzle he wanted desperately to solve. There was something about her that both excited him and confused the hell out of him.

It was a feeling he’d not had in a long while; being fascinated by a woman. His interactions with women for a little over a decade now had consisted of a quick fuck from the croweaters that hung around both SAMBEL and SAMCRO. 

A woman had not interested him beyond sex since his estranged wife Fiona.

It was a realization that made him feel unsteady and uncertain. He felt so unlike himself and it was terrifying.

As hard as he wanted to deny it he was interested in Y/N as more than just a fun romp in his bed.

He tried to shove thoughts of Y/N in his bed as the front door opened the very woman he’d been entranced with appearing.

She was no longer dressed in the casual blue jeans, tank top, and converse she’d worn in the crematorium earlier.

She wore a black short sleeved sheath dress that could only be described as professional though it did fit against her form well. He suddenly realized her curves were just as lovely as her legs and he couldn’t help but to find it a shame that such a lovely pair of legs were hidden under a pair of black sheer tights. She wore black mary jane style heels on her feet that were just tall enough to look fashionable but not so unreasonable that she didn’t look professional. Her hair had been pulled back into a french twist and Chibs spotted a pair of small pearl studs in her ears. A small golden cross hung from a thin chain around her neck and it glimmered against the otherwise dark fabric. 

She was wearing  makeup this time around though it was soft and subdued making her look elegant. 

Chibs took notice of her hands. Her short nails were painted a soft pink and her hands looked so delicate. He felt a mixture of emotions wash over him at the sight of such delicate looking hands both picturing them caressing his skin but all too aware that they also often touched the dead. He felt both lust and dread at the thought. The thought made him feel dizzy and he had to briefly wonder if there was something quite wrong with him given that the mix of dread and lust seemed more Tig or Happy the Tacoma Killer territory.

Chibs shoved back the thought trying to pretend that he wasn’t studying her so closely.

If Y/N had noticed that she had an admirer in the Scotsman, she gave no indication she rolling her eyes, a soft huff leaving her. “You’re almost ten minutes late.”

Jax gave her an all too flirty smile quick to reply. “Sorry, you know me. Promptness was never one of  my virtues.”

She gave no flirty smile back instead letting out another soft huff. “Hurry up and come in. I don’t need the neighbors gawking.”

Chibs felt a slight frown cross his features both at Jax’s flirty nature and the indication that there were any neighbors close enough to gawk.

The area did seem quite private after all.

He followed his brothers inside Y/N shutting the door behind them.

Chibs studied the large entryway feeling even more out of place. Dark wood floors were covered with fine looking red persian rugs that Chibs was certain must be antiques. He found himself fearing his boots weren’t quite clean enough to cross such fine rugs.

He took notice of a china cabinet against the wall, the antique furniture containing no dishes but a small oil painting featuring lambs, a display of options for funeral pamphlets, and a fake display of garden roses that looked eerily real.

An equally old looking coat rack and soft pink chaise lounge sat near the cabinet. He took notice of the iron light fixtures and tiffany lamps on the ceiling. 

It seemed as though the home was filled with antiques that Chibs had to wonder if they were family heirlooms. This was a family business and it didn’t seem like mass produced items that she’d just acquired to make the home seem sophisticated.

He felt his feet move as he followed his brothers further into the home. He spotted more oil paintings, mostly of generic images; flower fields and hints of religious iconography, more lambs and doves.

He widened his eyes as he spotted an oil painting showing the very home they stood in now. Y/N spoke over her shoulder apparently taking notice of his gaze landing upon it. “An addition added by some grandfather who died long before I was a thought. It’s not the only family painting. The more personal ones are upstairs. My ancestors were obsessed…I am unsure if the portraits were narcissism or just male pride….although I might argue that there is little difference between the two.”

The last comment went over Juice’s head but it did put a small smirk on Jax’s lips and did make Chibs twist his lips somewhat amused that she was willing to make a dig towards the male species in front of men who personified masculinity. 

He was once again reminded that she was courageous. Not many people would make such a dig in front of bikers who prided themselves in being macho. 

“Upstairs?” Juice dared to ask gazing up a grand looking wooden L-shaped stair case it was clear that he felt just as out of place in the home as Chibs though his feelings were more fear filled than his brother’s. 

“Yes, living quarters are upstairs…no access to the public of course.” Y/N remarked, shrugging her shoulders.

“You live here?” Juice spat out his eyes growing wide as saucers, his stomach turning at the thought.

Chibs spotted a hint of a smirk on Y/N’s lips; she clearly accustomed to this reaction and obviously enjoying shocking Juice. “I was born and raised here.”

She cleared her throat dread filling her belly despite her cooler demeanor. She’d debated her choice to go along with this as the morning had worn on.

She’d debated giving Jax Teller the money back and backing out of this. She had a distinct feeling there was no backing out of this now. SAMCRO might not take too kindly to her chickening out now even with her history with them. 

As terrible as she felt, the greed within her heart told her that the envelope of cash that now resided upstairs hidden in a jewelry box in her bedroom was far too precious to part with.

She knew that she’d dug her grave by agreeing to any of this, and now she had no choice but to lie in it.

She ignored the voice that told her that her father would be ashamed. She felt a bitter voice remark that she was in this debt due to him after all. Working with SAMCRO was a means to an end. The money would do her favors and keep the family business her father so prided himself in up and running.

She spoke again, finding it easier to speak about the home than focus on her guilt and fear. “The home has been operational since 1910, though the family has been in the business far longer than that. I’m sure my family has buried members of every resident in Charming’s family. My family has resided here since the home was built. A lot of the town grew around us. Things changed as time wore on but we remained. We’ve always tended to the dead of Charming. Pretty sure a few of my ancestors were born and died upstairs. My father and mother both died in this home and their funerals were held here.”

Juice cleared his throat muttering something similar to the observation he’d made back at the cemetery this morning. “Spooky.”

Chibs found himself hanging on to her words, the statements fascinating him all the more. There was something about her that seemed far more worldly and elegant than the conversations he usually held with the croweaters back at SAMCRO’s clubhouse.

Sure the choice in conversation was morbid, but the calm and collected way she spoke about it showed a level of comfort with the macabre that spiked Chibs’ curiosity.

Juice’s eyes grew all the wider as they rounded the corner passing what was clearly a few viewing rooms, a room featuring casket and urn displays, a chapel-like space, and a lobby area meant for the bereaved to gather. 

They passed her closed office door going down a long hallway that ended with a closed door. The sign outside the door featured a sign with bold letters that stated : ONLY AUTHORIZED PERSONAL PAST THIS POINT.

Y/N spoke over her shoulder a sigh leaving her. “The embalming room is in the basement, body storage is beside it.”

Juice spoke a choked gasp leaving him. “We’re going there?”

She gazed over her shoulder, raising a well manicured brow. “You guys wanted a body…that’s where it is.”

They followed her downstairs, Chibs unable to stop himself from asking. “How do you get the bodies up and down the stairs?”

“The casket lift…it’s essentially an elevator for the dead.” She remarked not bothering to gaze back at him clearly accustomed to the question.

Chibs furrowed his brow both fascinated and disturbed by the concept.

Y/N felt her stomach turn trying to ignore the golden placard her father had installed by the closed door to the embalming room. It clearly stated: REMEMBER, Behind these doors lies the most sacred room in this building. Here loved ones come to be prepared for their final rest. Those who work behind these doors must uphold a commitment to the morals of our profession and a promise to serve the bereaved. Conduct yourself in an appropriate manner consistent with those in this profession. 

She felt that sense of horror bubble up deep within her knowing what she was about to do was far from appropriate and respectful for the sacred profession her father was so proud of.

She spoke as she noticed the men beside her also took notice of the placard. “My father and his rules. To be honest he mostly put this sign up as a reminder to one of his old employees…Richardson had a mouth that would make a saint blush. My father wasn’t fond of the F-bombs while embalming.”

She opened the door, the Sons following along behind her the energy in the air tense.

Chibs studied the room unsure of what he’d been expecting. The area seemed so sanitary. The floors were a shiny clean dark tile. Cabinets lined the walls containing a variety of chemicals: formaldehyde, sodium nitrate, methanol, and a few other complicated sounding chemicals that were unfamiliar to the Scotsman.

He suddenly realized that Y/N must be quite intelligent to know just what to do with all these chemicals. 

He felt his stomach turn as he eyed two stark white embalming tables both thankfully vacant though he spotted an intense looking machine beside them, it hitting him that it was most likely used to pump the deceased full of embalming fluid and other preservative agents.

He spotted upper cabinets with clear glass doors that were filled with more tools of the trade. He was certain there was more to be seen in a few of the closed drawers in the cabinets. 

There was a sink beside one of these cabinets and a few anatomy posters on the wall. He spotted a small radio sitting in the corner of the room as well as a CD player hinting Y/N must listen to music or talk radio while working.

Another thing caught his eye; a heavy looking case sat open on one of the cabinets filled with what seemed to be makeup as well as a few other small devices. 

It wasn’t the makeup nor the tools that caught his attention. It was the stickers. The inside of the case and even the outside were lined with stickers, some cutesy, some downright morbid. There was a peace sign and a cartoony looking strawberry. He also spotted a black sticker featuring a hearse that stated: Last Responder. There was also a sticker featuring a cheerful looking cartoon grim reaper that stated: Spoilers, We All Die. There were a few more that seemed to be from some kind of convention for funeral directors, a concept that struck Chibs as bizarre. 

The stickers lining the case made the otherwise sterile and cold room seem less intimidating. He was tempted to walk over to the case and study it closer hoping it might reveal more about the woman who he’d found himself fascinated by, but he remained locked in place sure she wouldn’t be amused by the snooping.

She spoke not paying mind to the discomfort of her guests. She almost felt comforted that they felt so out of place. It served them right for what they were making her do. She felt comforted that they were in her space and it gave her at least the appearance of having the upper hand here.

“The body is in storage. Give me a moment.” 

Chibs shifted in place his brothers and he silent as Y/N disappeared behind a closed door. He was tempted to follow her; perhaps offer his assistance.

He kept locked in place though almost certain she’d turn down his offer. After all, he was sure she must have gotten the body down here all on her own. So, why would she want his help?

Juice mumbled under his breath. “Fucking hate this.”

Jax shook his head, rolling his eyes slightly. “Just chill. We’re going to be out of here before you know it.”

Chibs smirked, unable to stop himself from prodding Juice. “Ya fraid of the dead lad?...Too many zombie movies? Ya fraid of ghosts or somethin?”

Juice groaned, shaking his head. “This place doesn’t give you the creeps?”

“They’re dead. Don’t think they mean any harm. Y/N seems to be alive an’ well” Chibs remarked, shrugging his shoulders though he did feel a small sense of discomfort.

This entire act was quite blasphemous though he had a feeling this feeling had more to do with his Catholic upbringing than any fear of the dead.

The men didn’t have much longer to discuss the general feeling of discomfort in the room and the act they were engaging in as Y/N reappeared rolling a gurney.

Chibs raised an eyebrow impressed she could manage to roll the heavy looking gurney in heels. He had a feeling it wasn’t an unfamiliar task to her.

She spoke, rolling her eyes not above calling out her companions. “Thanks for the help gentlemen. Such a testament to your gender, making the lady do all the lifting.”

Chibs stepped forward first a small smirk on his lips unable to stop the flirty tone from his voice. “Figured ya had it handled lass. Ya seem the type that doesn’ need a man ta handle yer shite.”

Y/N raised an eyebrow uncertain if he was being sarcastic or if this was a genuine compliment.

The feeling it was the latter did strange things to her heart. She pushed the thought from her mind. Now wasn’t the time to let some biker hit on her no matter how charming the accent might be.

She wasn’t the girl who got weak in the knees over a bad boy in a kutte anymore.

She had to admit that the older Scotsman did hold a certain charm. Sure, the scars along his cheeks were disconcerting. She had a feeling that she should fear the person who might have done this to him though instead of him as the victim of what was clearly a past attack. He seemed somewhat unkempt. His shorter hair could use a good comb and maybe a little wash. He seemed older than her; perhaps in his forties at least. 

She’d spotted an intense pair of dark eyes under his shades though that she found to be a lovely rich dark brown that made her think of bittersweet chocolate. She did spot clear dimples that were a lovely feature in an otherwise intimidating looking man.  She also noticed a pair of plush lips under a neatly trimmed goatee.

He was an attractive man though older and far rougher than most men who she paid much attention to.

She shook the thought from her mind. She was not paying him any attention. She refused to go down that path. 

Jax and Juice took notice of the flirtatious tone to Chibs’ voice but neither man paid too much mind to it. Chibs did have a way of talking to most women like they were a lass after his own heart. He was charming when he really wanted to be.

All three men helped Y/N lift the body, thankfully, contained within a body bag up onto a platform that Chibs realized must be that casket lift Y/N had mentioned earlier.

Y/N spoke a sigh leaving her. “I assume you brought a vehicle to transport this to…whatever the hell it is you want with it.”

Chibs smirked thinking of Darby’s stolen SUV as Jax spoke. “Yep darlin’, we got it covered.”

“Aye, won’t need to borrow a hearse.” Chibs added on.

She rolled her eyes fast to respond, treating the sarcasm as a serious remark on purpose. “I have a body transport van for that…the hearse makes the general public a little queasy.”

Chibs smirked again a bit amused by the quick remark. He had to like this girl the longer he spent around her.

It wasn’t until they were back upstairs at Y/N’s home’s back entrance, it being far more reasonable to sneak the body out this way, that she spoke again. “You swear this shit you guys are about to do won’t lead back to me?”

Jax was fast to reply , reaching out to give Y/N’s hand a squeeze. “I promise you.”

Y/N yanked her hand back, rolling her eyes not interested in accepting any comfort from him especially when her bullshit meter was going off. “I am also assuming you using me to gain access to the crematorium at the cemetery later won’t get me in deep shit?”

Chibs spoke before Jax had a chance to attempt to provide reassurance. “I swear on my ma lass.”

He reached out giving her shoulder a squeeze, almost feeling giddy that she didn’t yank from him the way she did from Jax. “Ya got nothin to worry bout. SAMCRO won’t leave a trace ya had anythin to do with this.”

She raised an eyebrow hesitating moving from his grasp, almost finding it strangely reassuring. She pushed the thought from her mind stepping back from his touch, her voice returning to that calm collected tone she’d taken when she’d first let them in her home. “You guys should go. I am expecting patrons very soon. I highly doubt John Meyer would be too amused to have three members of SAMCRO looming about when he comes to pick out a casket for his grandmother’s funeral.”

Chibs smirked, familiar with the older and snobbish man she was mentioning. He was a well known owner of one of Charming’s more upscale restaurants. She was right he might not be amused to have Charming’s criminal element hanging around in such a situation. 

As the men walked away Chibs found himself taking what he hoped was a casual glance behind him at Y/N as she shut the door behind them.

He hated to see her disappear from his sight and was surprised to admit he felt almost excited at the thought of seeing her again at the crematorium.

—--------------------------------

Chibs took a hefty swig of his beer as he sat in the passenger's seat by Jax in Darby’s SUV as it sped along the highway.

Jax spoke nodding to the two dead bodies in the back end of the SUV. “These guys fuckin stink. Y/N must have an iron stomach to handle the stench.”

Chibs smirked, taking a drag of his lit cigarette, his heart fluttering at the mention of her name. “Aye, she mus’.”

He stared at the amber liquid in the bottle of beer in his hand, his mind a mess of questions about the funeral director.

He shifted in his seat thinking back to her interactions with Jax. He had mixed feelings about whatever had happened there.

He was surprised by the hint of jealousy in his gut. A bitter voice in the back of his mind couldn’t help but to snark that Jax wasn’t entirely capable of appreciating an elegant woman like Y/N.

It was clear by her reaction to him that perhaps he’d not appreciated her in the past.

Chibs knew he couldn’t just grill the Sons VP on his history with the woman without it being obvious Chibs had taken a liking to her.

He spoke his voice tight, trying to sound casual and not at all prying. “Ya seem to know tha lass well.”

Jax shrugged his shoulders taking a drag off his own cigarette. “Her brother was in my grade growing up. He was a pretty cool guy until the accident.”

Chibs raised an eyebrow parroting the words curiosity in his voice. “Accident?”

He suddenly remembered Clay’s comment about Y/N’s brother being in the county nuthouse.

“Not my story to tell. Let’s just say it was some tragic shit…really almost wrecked that family. Y/N is still living with the aftermath.” Jax remarked, taking another drag from the cigarette.

Chibs shifted in his seat the comment only making the mystery surrounding Y/N only grow murkier.

He spoke, clearing his throat. “Aye Clay mentioned a hospitalization…guess the lass is his only family”

Jax nodded his head, his eyes keeping focused on the road. “Yeah, I think it was just her, him and her dad. Pretty sure her mom died when she was a kid. She never said much about it. Now it’s just her…or it may as well be given her brother.”

Chibs furrowed his brow, unable to deny that his heart ached at the concept of it just being her.

Chibs cleared his throat taking another drag of his cigarette, the words leaving his lips before he could stop them. “She mentioned bein a club hangaround?”

Jax chuckled, shaking his head. “Yeah, she might of looked like little Miss Prim and Proper today, but she had a wild streak a mile fucking long. At least she did back when she was like nineteen and twenty. She was a lot of fun.”

Chibs furrowed his brow not quite liking the snark in Jax’s voice at the mention of Y/N being so proper. He wasn’t entirely sure he liked the mention of her being fun either or at least the implication behind it. 

Chibs spoke, clearing his throat voicing a troubling thought. “Lass was a croweater?”

Jax shook his head a snort leaving him. “Not exactly…like I said about her older brother, not my story to tell. Like I said…she hasn’t always been so classy.”

He spoke again gazing at Chibs, a bit surprised the Scot seemed so interested in Y/N. One might think the Scotsman was a little sweet on her.

“She’s a complicated woman.”

Jax noted that the comment earned a raised eyebrow from Chibs it apparently only deepening his apparent interest in Y/N.

The thought puzzled Jax. Chibs didn’t develop schoolboy crushes. After all Chibs had not shown much interest in women other than getting his dick wet with an available croweater. To see him this interested was a foreign concept. 

The man was still married after all, at least legally. His estranged wife had not been stateside in some time and she was tied to the man who had scarred Chibs leaving him for dead and banishing him from the cause. 

Needless to say, Chibs had a lot of reasons to keep romance at arm's length. 

Jax frowned, having to wonder if perhaps Chibs had hopes of getting his dick wet with Y/N. He shook his head, tempted to tell him Y/N would more than likely rid him of his dick if he pulled it with her.

She might look elegant but she didn’t take any bullshit from what Jax remembered. Time may have passed but Jax was certain Y/N was still as prone to calling a guy on his shit as she had been almost ten years prior. 

He bit back the warning, deciding it would be Chibs’ lesson to learn. He smirked, having to wonder if the warning would just present itself as more of a temptation to the older man. Some guys liked the challenge.

He continued to study Chibs, the older man taking another swig of his beer, clearly fighting back the desire to pry further.

It was a strange concept. Chibs had a crush? Or at the very least a clear lust? 

Jax shook his head, having to wonder if Chibs had any clue just what he might be signing up for if he was in fact sweet on Charming’s local undertaker.

[dehautdesert]

This may be a Bad Take but I think a lot less people would have issues with Padmé Amidala's RotS characterization if they realized that her role in that movie is largely symbolic and that Anakin's attitude towards her is meant to represent the inherent tension between liberty and security (which is clearly one of the main themes in a movie that has Anakin quote George W Bush as he falls to the Dark Side).

Padmé represents the best of democratic values: the capability to perceive everyone's inherent worth, the trust in state institutions, the morality, the benefits and drawbacks of resolving issues in a democratic manner and within the system (she often finds herself helpless in the face of corruption, for example). Padmé's ideals are the core of her character, to the point that she basically is her ideals. Basically, Padmé is to the Galactic Republic what Marianne is to the French Republic.

Now, you may have issues with a female character being used as a personification of a state or a political system, but not only is this a millennia-old narrative tradition, I also feel like you're probably barking up the wrong tree, because George Lucas LOVES using characters as symbols for abstract concepts: Luke as the Hero with a Thousand Faces, the Good vs. Bad Father dynamic with Obi-Wan and Vader, etc. This is completely on brand for the way George Lucas in particular constructs characters.

Even Padmé's most famous line, "So this is how Liberty dies," is indicative of this (and I love the concept of a former slave boy falling in love with Liberty herself).

Padmé dies because Liberty dies, not because she's a weak useless woman.

And Anakin's relationship to her potential death is very much... an indictment of reactionary politics and the War on Terror?

Anakin loves Padmé because she is fair-minded and understanding even when he doesn't deserve it, because she is tolerant, because she is kind, because she fights for justice, because she uplifts people. This is what he is in love with and what he is trying to preserve.

But in the face of nebulous threats, some real and some manufactured, he tries to save her by trampling all over what she stands for. And what she stands for is her. Therefore the very act of trying to save her is what ends up killing her, just like trying to keep your democracy safe by increasingly cruel and authoritarian measures inevitably kills it. Anakin claims that he loves her, that he's protecting her, but he is unwilling to listen to anything she has to say about it, just like plenty of people whose mouths are full of freedom but don't want to think about or apply the values that they are supposedly defending. What she believes no longer matters as long as she loves and comforts and uplifts him (and when she doesn't he goes into a rage).

Everything Padmé stands for, her very way of life and her very way of doing things, no longer exist at the end of RotS. She was becoming increasingly static and helpless during the movie because her way of doing things no longer works as the Republic becomes mired in cruelty and corruption, she cannot do anything but set foundations for an eventual rebellion and hope that a spark of hope survives. She can no longer survive in this new system, and it is in her nature to rather die than compromise herself in order to work within it. In a symbolic way, she quite literally cannot survive if she has to exist within it. She IS Liberty, and it would be a paradox if she survived. She dies and their children - another thing Anakin is fighting to protect, like many people who are "defending freedom" "for the children!!1!" - are made orphans, left to their own devices, forced to fight and rebuild things from scratch because she can no longer nurture them or protect them. This is a political metaphor y'all.

And in this reading, even Shmi's death ends up working better if you squint? Because even though Anakin's anger over her death stems from clear injustice and is fundamentally righteous, the fear and rage that this creates in him, and his inability to cope with it, is what directly causes him to both fear for Padmé's safety and to eventually smother her due to that fear. And to eventually become what he fears, killing Liberty, depriving himself of liberty in the process by becoming Sidious's blind slave, and literally destroying the future of an entire generation of (Jedi) children.

Now, I'm not saying that this makes a more psychological analysis of Padmé's character invalid or that this is the only role that she plays (for example, while Obi-Wan is the "good father figure" in ANH, he's clearly many different things across all the movies and clearly has an established characterization beyond that, and so does Padmé), but I think looking at it through this particular lens does make the choices made for her character less baffling and more indicative of the larger themes of the prequels.

[whencyclopedia]

The Sweet Track

The Sweet Track is a Neolithic timber walkway, located in the Somerset Levels, England. It was originally part of a network of tracks built to provide a dry path across the marshy ground. The Sweet Track ran between what was then an island at Westhay to a ridge of high ground, close to the River Bruce. The remains of mounds have also been found at Westhay, indicating the remains of a settlement.

About 1.6 kilometres (1 mile) long, the Sweet Track was discovered in the 1970s CE during a peat excavation by Ray Sweet, (who also gave the track its name). Using dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) the track has been dated 3807/3806 BCE. For many years it was thought to be the oldest trackway in Northern Europe, until 2009 CE when a slightly older one was discovered in Plumstead, London.

The Somerset Levels are an area of wetlands and peats. The conditions of such areas can naturally lead to the preservation of organic materials. Materials become encased in a wet and airless environment, thus preventing, to a degree, decomposition. Wooden artefacts and structures have been recovered from the Levels, as well as the two well-preserved Iron Age villages of Glastonbury and Meare.

The track would have been built by a community of Neolithic farmers living in small settlements. Farming had spread from the Middle East and by this point was firmly established in Britain. According to pollen evidence, the whole of Britain would have been covered in forests at this time. The Neolithic peoples would have burnt and cleared the forests to have the land on which to grow their crops, mostly grains. A fair degree of organization is evident in the stockpiling of wood and construction of the tracks, and some members of the community would have had to have skills in woodworking. Using stone and flint axes, the trees for the track were cut on dry land with different cutting techniques used, depending on their age. Older oaks were cut vertically whilst younger trees tangentially. Modern research has been carried out using replica axes and the cut marks have also been studied to establish the methods of cutting used. The planks of wood were put together in the marsh, the final construction taking about a day to complete. Long poles were driven slantwise into the ground and then planks were laid in between, held in place by vertical pegs. The planks were made of oak, ash and lime. The poles and pegs were made mainly of hazel and alder. There are also remains of another track, known as the “Post Track”, which dates 30 years earlier than the Sweet Track, 3838 BCE. It ran roughly parallel to the Sweet Track, possibly used by the builders of the Sweet Track as an access route.

Artefacts have been found beside the track, among them, pottery and axe heads including one made of jadeite. Whether they had been deliberately buried, perhaps as an offering, or just lost, remains unknown. There have been many Prehistoric trackways found in England, but more than half reside in Somerset. Included in these are the Abbot's Way, Eclipse, Honeygore, Meare Health and Garvins tracks. They were constructed using varying styles, such as corduroy - laying short logs parallel to each other and side by side. The Sweet Track is the most well-known of these. It has been declared a scheduled monument (of national importance). Most of it remains in its original location and requires constant conservation to keep the wood in its damp condition. There are reproductions and a donated section now resides in the British Museum, London.

Continue reading...

[pix4japan]

Kyū-Tōkaidō: A 17th-Century Path Lined with Ancient Giants・旧東海道：江戸時代に植えられた杉並木の道

A preserved section of the ancient Tokaido Highway, lined with towering cedars planted over 300 years ago to provide shade and shelter for travelers journeying between Kyoto and Edo during the Edo Period (1603–1868).

While there were once over 1,000 trees lining the route, modernization in 1904 led to the construction of a new road, which replaced portions of the ancient trail.

Today, approximately 400 trees remain, their towering forms reaching heights of 30 to 40 meters. At roughly 350 years old, these ancient giants stand as living witnesses to history.

Full write-up and links for further reading (1-minute read): https://www.pix4japan.com/blog/20241015-tokaido

Location: Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan Timestamp: 15:34・2024/10/15 Fujifilm X100V with 5% diffusion filter ISO 320 for 1/350 sec. at ƒ/2.5 Astia/Soft film simulation

[thoughtportal]

On the outskirts of Oslo, just beyond the point where the city dissolves into forest, one thousand spruce saplings reach feathery green fingers toward the sky. Just over ten years ago this clearing was just another part of Norway’s vast woodlands. Today these trees are destined to become part of a unique library of texts by beloved authors, a century in the making.

Top: A crowd assembles for Valeria Luiselli’s handover ceremony in a spruce forest in Oslo in 2024. Luiselli was the tenth author to contribute to the Future Library. Bottom: The Silent Room, situated on the top floor of a public library in Oslo, contains one hundred drawers built into the walls where the authors’ manuscripts are preserved. (Credit: Vilma Taubo, Einar Aslaksen)

The spruces were planted in 2014 as part of the Future Library, a one-hundred-year art project by Scottish artist Katie Paterson. Every year a different author is invited to write a new piece that will be held, secret and unread, until 2114, when all the works will be published using paper made from the spruces’ then-mature wood. The inspiration for the piece arrived for Paterson during a train journey when she had a sudden vision of trees whose rings held words. Though the particulars evolved, the original idea remains, she says, of “trees being books, books being trees, and libraries being forests in the making.”

At the first handover ceremony, during which inaugural contributor Margaret Atwood presented her manuscript among the saplings, the trees were so small that staff decorated them with red ribbons to prevent attendees from trampling them. Now the trees are gawky adolescents, their ribbons decorative rather than practical—a testament to the project’s first decade and time’s insistent trudge. The Future Library continues to inspire imagination and instill new ideas in writers and readers alike through its abiding belief in a future full of stories.

Some sixteen thousand pieces of wood from trees cut down to make space for the spruce saplings were incorporated into the Silent Room, a chapel-like venue that opened in 2022 in a public library in Oslo, where all one hundred texts will be entombed until 2114. The chamber was designed with longevity in mind, using ultra-simple construction methods and specialty lighting. It is also beautiful: warm, wooden, and womblike, big enough for a few people at a time to sit in shoeless contemplation, just a few feet from manuscripts they will never read.

The chair of the Future Library Trust, Anne Beate Hovind, helped spearhead construction of the Silent Room; she is also the original commissioner of the work, part of a public art initiative connected to the redevelopment of Oslo’s waterfront. Over the years, she has also identified land for the saplings, overseen their planting, and negotiated a century-long contract that ensures their protection and maintenance by municipal foresters. Thus far ten authors from across the globe, including 2024 Nobel Prize winner Han Kang and Zimbabwean novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga, have deposited manuscripts there. (This year’s contributor, Tommy Orange, will hand over his manuscript in the summer.) They are invited to do so and paid a flat fee, by a surprisingly small team—including Hovind, Paterson, and the leaders of the city library and three publishing houses. The goal is for the collection of works “to be read as a global project,” Hovind says, so the group works together to generate a long list of candidates, incorporating nominations from interested embassies and past contributors, before coming to a consensus.

For the Icelandic writer Sjòn, who goes by a mononym, the project represents an exquisite metaphor for literature itself—a tradition that binds human beings together across generations. Through literature, he says, “I can have a conversation with someone who has left traces of [themself] three thousand years ago in a poem,” and participating would allow him to engage similarly with future readers.

Still, he found deciding what to write almost impossibly daunting, as did 2022 contributor Judith Schalansky. She obsessed over her contribution, reading the requirements over and over—she even considered submitting hardcore textual pornography as a commentary on the immense possibilities of a no-questions-asked publishing guarantee. In the end, both she and Sjòn took inspiration from the way today’s century-old texts illuminate their era to shape their contributions.

Both authors also found the secrecy to be a particular challenge. “I realized how much I write for the present,” Schalansky says. Meanwhile Sjòn, who had previously believed he wrote solely for himself, was surprised to find the process deeply lonely without the possibility of feedback.

The project’s annual handover ceremonies have become important waypoints marking the library’s age and progress. Each ritual is unique and open to the public: Ocean Vuong’s featured chants by Buddhist monks; Karl Ove Knausgård’s, a recitation of an ancient Norwegian poem; Sjòn’s, a song performed by his wife, with harp accompaniment.

Afterward, walking among the spruces, Sjòn was keenly aware that he was following the same path, quite literally, as writers before and after him, shared custodians of a sacred, multi-millennial storytelling tradition. Much of the work of the Future Library engenders this kind of deep mutual trust across time, Hovind says, in the trustees who will come after her; in the longevity of the rituals and mechanisms she and Paterson have spent years putting into place; in the human beings who will receive the books in an unknown world. That means fighting the impulse to solve or predict every technological, societal, or ecological eventuality of the next ninety years. Paterson adds: “I think taking it decade by decade is all we can do.”

It will be up to future trustees to figure out how to make spruce trees into paper or where to print the books. And, Hovind wonders, what if the forest around the library saplings is developed? How will the trees fare as temperatures rise?

At the project’s start the climate crisis was looming, Paterson says, but its rapid intensification has changed how people engage with the library today. In 2014, she and Hovind were frequently asked if they thought there would still be books in one hundred years. Now in contrast, she observes, “It has turned to, ‘Will there be people?’” In the face of the doom and doubt of the contemporary zeitgeist, the project has become a source of optimism that contributing authors cite year after year, moved by its certainty  that we can still build a literary future.

This hope is not without complexity—after all, the Silent Room was built with trees sacrificed to the cause, and more will fall in ninety years—but it sends a powerful message nonetheless. The Future Library prompts its audience to consider the “good ancestor perspective, how to take future generations into consideration now,” Hovind says, while insisting on the immortality and influence of storytelling: “If you can imagine futures, with strong narratives, you can also create them.”       

Alissa Greenberg is an independent journalist based in Boston and Berkeley, California, who reports at the intersection of science, history, and culture. Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, and elsewhere.

[rjzimmerman]

A Development Could Kill One of the Oldest Living Things on the Planet. (Sierra Club)

Jurupa oak. | Photos courtesy of Aaron Echols

Excerpt from this story from the Sierra Club:

Few living organisms can claim to be 1,000 years or older. The ones that can are most likely trees. From Methuselah, the Eastern Sierra’s nearly 5,000-year-old bristlecone pine, to Pando, a clonal colony of quaking aspens in Utah more than 14,000 years old, these ancient beings provide a snapshot of our world.

The US Forest Service rightly protects Methuselah and Pando so travelers far and wide can gain perspective on our brief human lifespan and the mark we leave on Earth. Another of these neolithic wonders is an oak between 13,000 and 18,000 years old in California’s Riverside County, but it’s being denied the protection it desperately needs.

The Jurupa oak, an 80-foot-long Palmer’s oak shrub (Quercus palmeri), is one of the oldest living organisms on Earth. This clonal colony sprouted among saber-toothed cats, giant ground sloths, and mammoths during the Pleistocene era. However, the future of the oak is now in peril thanks to a decision by the Jurupa Valley City Council. In September, it narrowly agreed to approve a sprawling 917-acre development. The council voted 3-2 to allow a massive warehouse complex, chain restaurants, salons, and breweries just 450 feet from the oak. It will increase Jurupa Valley’s population by 6 percent, bulldozing more than 200 acres for homes and 140 acres for industrial and business parks.

Despite the dangers to new residents and the surrounding community, developers are planning to build all of this smack dab in the middle of an area east of Los Angeles that’s designated as a high-risk fire hazard severity zone. So why didn’t the Jurupa Valley City Council protect the ancient and enduring Jurupa oak as the Forest Service did Pando and Methuselah? The simple answers are location and money. The oak’s rocky outcrop is in an area gradually being devoured to accommodate our obsession with online shopping. In its place, the city wants to see a vast landscape of warehouses and roads clogged with trucks going back and forth 24/7. In 1980, the Inland Empire, which encompasses Jurupa Valley, had 234 warehouses. Now, there are more than 4,000, covering nearly 26,000 acres of the region. In the eyes of the warehouse industry and the city, the world’s oldest Palmer’s oak—and the last in its watershed—is disposable.

This enduring oak, with its spindly leaves and ancient roots, shouldn’t be thrown away like packaging from an online purchase. But that’s the kind of casual treatment city officials have provided, feigning certainty that nearby development will not harm the oak while admitting they can’t answer lingering questions.

How far do the Jurupa oak’s roots extend, and where does its water come from? How might increased temperatures from fossil-fuel-driven climate change and the urban heat island effect harm the oak? Could heavy machinery vibrations during construction jar loose the rocks supporting the oak’s roots?

These crucial questions need to be answered to ensure a responsible project that protects the Jurupa oak. Unfortunately, the city approved the massive development without answers to any of them, risking death for the world’s third-oldest organism.

That’s why the Center for Biological Diversity and other environmental groups filed a lawsuit under the California Environmental Quality Act seeking a 100-acre preserve to safeguard the oak. This legal fight should not even be necessary. Anyone who has strolled through the ancient bristlecone forest or stood beneath the 3,000-year-old Grizzly Giant Tree in Sequoia National Park understands that the value of these ancient beings far outweighs another Southern California warehouse.

[lothlorienlover]

In 1902, a remarkable photograph captured men posing atop a massive log raft along the Columbia River in Oregon. The raft was constructed from large, tree-length logs, all meticulously lashed together using enormous chains to create a floating platform. This incredible feat of engineering was typical of the lumber industry at the time, where logs were often transported down rivers for processing. The image showcases the scale and strength required to build such a raft, a testament to the hard work and ingenuity of the era.

According to the description on the back of the photo, the raft contained millions of feet of timber—an enormous amount of wood that represented a full year's worth of labor for the camp workers. The value of the raft, once completed, was estimated at $8,000, highlighting the profitability of the logging industry during this period. The Columbia River, with its swift currents and strategic location, served as a major route for transporting timber, and these massive log rafts were an essential part of the process.

This photograph, preserved by the Multnomah County Library, offers a fascinating glimpse into the early 20th-century logging practices in Oregon. It’s a vivid reminder of the human labor and resourcefulness that drove the lumber industry, and the scale of the operations that transformed the landscape of the Pacific Northwest. The raft, both a product of necessity and a symbol of the era, represents a bygone time when logs were floated across rivers to fuel the growth of America’s industries.

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, January 8, 2025

What’s next for Canada after Trudeau’s resignation (Washington Post) Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation Monday, saying that it’s time for a “reset” and that he is not the best person to lead the country into new elections if he is also fighting “internal battles. Trudeau said Monday that the Liberal Party will hold a nationwide leadership contest to select his successor. In the meantime, Trudeau added, Gov. General Mary Simon—the representative in Canada of King Charles III, Canada’s head of state—granted his request to prorogue or suspend Parliament until March 24. The next leader will inherit a long list of challenges: the high price of goods, a housing shortage, a Canadian public that appears to have soured on the Liberals after nearly a decade in power and a new U.S. president who has promised steep tariffs.

Thousands flee as wildfires burn out of control in and around Los Angeles (AP) California firefighters battled wind-whipped wildfires that tore across the Los Angeles area, destroying homes, clogging roadways as tens of thousands fled and straining resources as officials prepared for the situation to worsen early Wednesday. The flames from a fire that broke out Tuesday evening near a nature preserve in the inland foothills northeast of LA spread so rapidly that staff at a senior living center had to push dozens of residents in wheelchairs and hospital beds down the street to a parking lot. The residents waited there in their bedclothes as embers fell around them until ambulances, buses and even construction vans arrived to take them to safety. Another blaze that started hours earlier ripped through the city’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood. In the frantic haste to get to safety, roadways became impassable when scores of people abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot, some toting suitcases.

The next round of bitter cold and snow will hit the southern US (AP) The next round of bitter cold was set to envelop the southern U.S. on Tuesday, after the first significant winter storm of the year blasted a huge swath of the country with ice, snow and wind. The immense storm system brought disruption even to areas of the country that usually escape winter’s wrath, downing trees in some Southern states, threatening a freeze in Florida and causing people in Dallas to dip deep into their wardrobes for hats and gloves. By early Tuesday, wind chill temperatures could dip into the teens to low-20’s (as low as minus 10.5 C) from Texas across the Gulf Coast, according to the National Weather Service. A low-pressure system is then expected to form as soon as Wednesday near south Texas, bringing the potential of snow to parts of the state that include Dallas, as well as to Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

Trump Raises the Possibility of Using Military or Economic Force to Take Greenland and the Panama Canal (NYT) President-elect Donald J. Trump refused to rule out on Tuesday the use of military or economic coercion to force Panama to give up control of the canal that America built more than a century ago, and to force Denmark to sell Greenland to the United States. In a rambling, hourlong news conference at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump also reiterated his threat that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if the hostages being held by Hamas are not released by Inauguration Day, repeating the threat four times. “If they’re not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East,” he told reporters. “And it will not be good for Hamas, and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out. I don’t have to say anymore, but that’s what it is.” It was not clear how serious the president-elect was about some of his comments during the news conference. At one point, he suggested that his administration will rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

Meta is ending fact-checking and removing restrictions on speech across Facebook and Instagram. (WSJ) CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the change as an attempt to restore free expression on the platforms. He said that starting in the U.S., Meta will have a system, similar to X’s, that lets users flag posts they think need more context. The company will continue to target illegal behavior. Facebook’s content-policing expanded in the wake of Donald Trump’s first presidential election; now Zuckerberg is looking to align himself and Meta with the incoming administration.

Mexico drops migrants in troubled resort as it disperses them far from US border (AP) About 100 migrants from various countries wandered directionless and disoriented through the streets of the troubled Pacific coast resort of Acapulco. After walking for a couple weeks through southern Mexico with hundreds of other migrants, they accepted an offer from immigration officials to come to Acapulco with the idea they could continue their journey north toward the U.S. border. Instead, they found themselves stuck on Monday. Two weeks ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Mexico continues dissolving attention-grabbing migrant caravans and dispersing migrants throughout the country to keep them far from the U.S. border, while simultaneously limiting how many accumulate in any one place. Acapulco would seem to be a strange destination for migrants. Once a crown jewel of Mexico’s tourism industry, the city now suffers under the thumb of organized crime and is still struggling to climb back after taking a direct hit from devastating Hurricane Otis in 2023. “Immigration (officials) told us they were going to give us a permit to transit the country freely for 10, 15 days and it wasn’t like that,” said a 28-year-old Venezuelan, Ender Antonio Castañeda. “They left us dumped here without any way to get out. They won’t sell us (bus) tickets.”

Seventy really may be the new sixty for English baby boomers (Nature) A study examined trends in intrinsic capacity, a comprehensive measure of cognitive, locomotor, psychological and sensory capacities that was recently developed by the World Health Organization. The results indicate that older adults in England today seem to be experiencing far higher levels of physical and mental functioning than did previous generations at the same age.

Ukraine needs ‘realistic’ stance on territorial issues, Macron says (Reuters) French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that Ukraine needs to have a realistic position on territorial issues as part of efforts to bring about a negotiation with Russia. Speaking at an annual conference to French ambassadors to outline their strategy for the year, Macron’s comments were the first time he had suggested that Kyiv should consider a position beyond seeking to regain all territory seized by Russia. Macron reiterated that Ukraine’s allies needed to ensure that Kyiv has enough backing so that it can come enter any negotiations from a position of strength. “There will not be a quick and easy solution,” Macron said, referring to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to end the war quickly.

Emeralds for Sale: The Taliban Look Below Ground to Revive the Economy (NYT) In a chilly auditorium in Afghanistan, heaps of freshly mined green emeralds glowed under bright table lamps as bearded gemstone dealers inspected them for purity and quality. An auctioneer asked for bids on the first lot, which weighed 256 carats. With that, the Taliban’s weekly gemstone auction was underway. These sales, in the emerald-rich Panjshir Province of eastern Afghanistan, are part of an effort by the Taliban government to cash in on the country’s vast mineral and gemstone potential. Since seizing power in August 2021, the Taliban say they have signed deals with scores of investors to mine gemstones, gold, copper, iron and other valuable minerals, like chromite. These buried treasures offer a potentially lucrative lifeline for a feeble economy. China has led the way in investments under its Belt and Road Initiative, an aggressive effort to spread Chinese influence worldwide. Russian and Iranian investors have also signed mining licenses, filling the void left by the chaotic U.S. withdrawal in 2021.

Strong earthquake kills at least 126 people in western China near Mount Everest (AP) A strong earthquake killed at least 126 people in Tibet on Tuesday and left many others trapped as dozens of aftershocks shook the high-altitude region of western China and across the border in Nepal. Officials in the region said at a brief news conference that 130 others were injured, state broadcaster CCTV said. State media reported that about 1,000 houses were damaged and 130 people were injured in addition to the deaths, citing the Tibet earthquake relief headquarters.

U.S. Eases Some Restrictions on Humanitarian Aid to Syria (NYT) The Biden administration on Monday lifted some restrictions on humanitarian aid to Syria but kept sweeping sanctions in place just weeks after rebel forces toppled the Assad family’s 50-year authoritarian grip on the country. The decision by the Treasury, which lasts for six months, allows humanitarian groups to operate more freely without running afoul of U.S. sanctions, including by helping to provide basic services such as electricity, energy, water and sanitation.

West Bank Settlers Hope Trump Will Back Annexation Dreams (NYT) Eliana Passentin delights in her house, which sits nearly 3,000 feet above sea level in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, with a view from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean coast. The dining room looks out over ancient Shiloh, the Israelites’ first capital in ancient times. But Ms. Passentin would feel even better if the area was annexed by Israel. Some of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s staffing choices have raised hopes among settlers that that could happen. Pete Hegseth, Mr. Trump’s contentious choice for defense secretary, went to ancient Shiloh for an episode of his “Battle in the Holy Land” series on Fox Nation. Mike Huckabee, Mr. Trump’s pick as the next ambassador to Jerusalem, has visited several times over the years and has argued that all of the West Bank belongs to Israel. Nearly half a million settlers and roughly 2.7 million Palestinians live in the West Bank. The Palestinians, and much of the world, have long envisioned the territory as part of a future independent Palestinian state, alongside Israel, and consider the Jewish settlements to be illegal. After the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel from Gaza, and with the prospect of a more sympathetic administration in Washington, settler leaders say they are confident that a Palestinian state is off the agenda. They also hope that Israel will extend its sovereignty over parts, or all, of the territory through annexation.

In Africa, Danger Slithers Through Fields (NYT) The snake struck 11-year-old Beatrice Ndanu Munyoki as she sat on a small stone, which lay atop a larger one, watching the family’s eight goats. She was idly running her fingers through the dirt when she saw a red head dart from between the stones and felt a sharp sting on her right index finger. She ran to her father, David Mutunga, who was building a fence. He cut the cloth belt on her dress into strips with a machete, tied her arm in three places and rushed her to a hospital 30 minutes away on a motorcycle taxi. As the day stretched on, her finger grew darker, but the hospital in Mwingi, a small town in Kenya, had no antidote for that kind of venom. Finally that evening in November 2023, she was taken by ambulance to another hospital and injected with antivenom. When the finger blistered, swelled and turned black despite a second dose the next day, “I understood that they will now remove that part,” Mr. Mutunga said with tears in his eyes. Beatrice’s finger was amputated. According to official estimates, about five million people are bitten by snakes each year. About 120,000 die, and some 400,000 lose limbs to amputation.

Antibiotic emergency ‘could claim 40 million lives in next 25 years’ (Guardian) Dame Sally Davies, a former chief medical officer for England, told the Observer that there is a real danger that routine procedures could become life-threatening thanks to the spread of bacteria that possess antimicrobial resistance. Antibiotics prescribed to chickens, cows, and sheep are a large part of the problem. “Winds blow over these patches of contaminated land or water and pick up bacteria and genes with resistance in them, then let them rain down in other places,” Davies explained. “About a million people die every year because of the spread of microbial resistance, and that figure will rise over the next 25 years,” she said. “It is really scary.” When she says “that figure will rise,” she means it—estimates put deaths at almost 40 million people over the next 25 years.

[treeservicesorlando]

Reliable Tree Removal Services Orlando and Storm Debris Cleanup Orlando by Cox Arboriculture Services

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Conclusion

For all your tree services Orlando and land clearing Orlando needs, Cox Arboriculture Services is the trusted name in the industry. With years of experience and a commitment to quality, we offer reliable, safe, and efficient solutions for residential and commercial properties. Whether you're looking to maintain the health of your trees or clear land for a new project, we have the expertise to help you every step of the way. Contact us today to schedule a consultation and take the first step towards a beautiful, well-maintained property.

[multiversetravelingjournalist]

She-Ra: The Princesses of Power Headcanons.

Non-human Scripts

Being a conlanger and having a blooming interest in the story and lore of the SR-PoP series, I have come up with, at most, three writing systems for the Scorpioni (Scorpia's people), Magicats (Catra's People), and Draconids (Rogelio's People). Disclaimer, aside from the Scorpioni script, the other two are based on, hopefully, popular writing systems from other pieces of fiction. Other than that, I will talk about how these scripts work, some cultural head-canon of how each script can be utilized, and where I got the inspiration for each one. With all that said, let's begin.

Scorpioni

The way the Scorpioni script works is that a pincer-bearing individual cuts shapes along the edge of a thin flat surface. Like paper... or sheet metal (we all saw how powerful Scorpia's pinchers were when they cut through that guard rail). Due to the nature of this system, "books" or, more accurately, "scrolls" or, even more accurately, "reels" are the most common form of information keeping among Scorpioni peoples where entire works can be read continuously by unspooling the thin strips. Recently, Scorpioni have taken to laminating these sheets as to preserve the cut-out parts from wear and tear.

Reels are not the only form of medium for "writing" as during special occasions, holidays, weddings, introducing your new best friend(s) to the clan, and so on, will see the exchange of "paper stars." these beautiful fractal crafts are constructed by folding paper and cutting into the folded edge. When unfolded, that message becomes a pattern that varies depending on the types of folds used and the types of "flourishes" a writer implements while cutting. It is considered by many to be the Scorpioni equivalent to calligraphy.

I lied, lol. The basis for the Scorpioni script is based on Trent Pehrson's Krapi Script. However, the idea of a script being cut rather than written by dragging a trail on a medium, I feel, come from me. I might also implement this system for my Splatoon worldbuilding project for the crab people.

Magicat Script

The Magicat script is literally handwritten in that the writer will make swooping patterns with one or more of their claws (or fingers for regular humans). Historians say that this tradition started with the Magicats scratching marks into trees and, later, stone with their claws before transitioning to ink and paper.

Speaking of which, magicat scribes are known as "night-tracers" with how them constantly dipping their claws into ink have stained them and their fingers dark.

This script is inspired by the Hani and their writing system. Which I unashamedly took wholesale. I might modify it if I ever get the interest and drive to develop this and the others.

Draconid Script

I'm going to break structure here by saying that Draconid is literally the Dinotopian Footprint Alphabet. Perhaps the scaly lizard people originally wrote this script by stomping patterns into the soft ground and those patterns got adapted to being written by hand. Maybe there are some cuneiform-style logographs as well.

This is all that I have, for now. Feel free to use any of these head canons in your own works just forward them to me when you do.

Thank you for reading all of this. Take care and I'll see you next time... ;).

[orthodoxydaily]

ICON: Friday, July 5, 2024

The Kursk Root icon of the Mother of God "The Sign"

june 22_july 5

(movable holiday on the 9th Friday of Pascha).

The Wonderworking Kursk Root Icon of the Mother of God

In the 13th century, during the dreadful period of the Tartar invasion of Russia, the devastated province of Kursk was emptied of people and its principal city, Kursk, became a wilderness. Now, the residents of the city of Rylsk, which had been preserved from invasion, often journeyed to the site of Kursk to hunt wild beasts. One of the hunters, going along the bank of the river Skal, which-was not very far from ruined Kursk, noticed an icon lying face down on the ground next to the root of a tree. The hunter picked it up and found that it was an icon of the Sign, such as was enshrined and venerated in the city of Novgorod. At this time, the icon's first miracle was worked, for no sooner had the hunter picked up the sacred image than there immediately gushed forth with great force an abundant spring of pure water. This took place on September 8th in the year 1295.

 The hunter constructed a small wooden chapel and placed the newly manifested image of the Mother of God therein. The residents of Rylsk began to visit the place of the manifestation of this holy object and the icon was glorified by miracles all the more. Prince Vasily Shemyaka of Rylsk ordered that the icon be brought to the city of Rylsk itself and this was done in a solemn manner, for the people of the city went forth to met the icon of the Mother of God; but Shemyaka himself declined to attend the festivities and for this reason was punished with blindness. The prince, however, repented and straightway received healing. Moved by this miracle, Shemyaka constructed a church in the city of Rylsk in honor of the Nativity of the All-Holy Theotokos, and there the miraculous icon was enshrined on September 8th, the day of its manifestation, appointed as the annual feast date.

But the icon vanished in a miraculous manner and returned to the place of its original appearance. The residents of Rylsk continually brought it back, but each time it returned to its former place. Then, understanding that the Mother of God was well pleased to dwell in the place of the manifestation of her image, they eventually left it there in peace. Innumerable pilgrimages streamed to the site and services of supplication were celebrated there by a certain priest whose name was Bogoliub and who dwelt at the site of the wooden chapel and struggled there in asceticism.

In the year 1383, the province of Kursk was subjected to a new invasion of Tartars. They decided to set fire to the chapel, but it refused to burn, even though they piled up fuel all around it, and so the superstitious barbarians fell upon the priest Bogoliub, accusing him of sorcery. The pious priest denounced their foolishness and pointed out the icon of the Mother of God to them. The malicious Tartars laid hold of the holy icon and cut it in two, casting the pieces to either side. The chapeI then caught fire and the priest Bogoliub was carried off a prisoner.

In his captivity, the God-loving elder kept the Faith, placing his hope on the all-holy Mother of God, and his hope did not fail him. Now, one day as he was guarding flocks and passing the time by singing prayers and doxologies in honor of the Mother of God, there passed by some emissaries of the Tsar of Moscow.

They heard this chanting, arranged to ransom the priest from captivity, and Bogoliub returned to the former site of the chapel. There he found the pieces of the miraculous icon which the Tartars had cast away. He picked them up and straightway they grew together, although the signs of the split remained. Learning of this miracle, the residents of Rylsk gave glory to God and to His all-pure Mother. Again they attempted to transfer the holy icon to their city, but once more the miraculous image returned to its former place. A new chapel was then built on the original site of the icon's appearance and here it remained for about 200 years.

The city of Kursk was revived in the year 1597 at the command of Theodore Ivanovich of Moscow. This pious Tsar, who had heard of the miracles of the icon, expressed his desire to behold it, and in Moscow, the icon was greeted with great solemnity. The Tsaritsa, Irene Theodorovna, adorned the holy icon with a precious riza. At the command of the Tsar, the icon was set in a silver-gilt frame upon which were depicted the Lord of Hosts and prophets holding scrolls in their hands. The icon was subsequently returned and, with the close cooperation of the Tsar, a monastery was founded on the site of the chapel. A church, dedicated to the Life-bearing Spring, was built above the same spring that had appeared when the icon was first revealed and the monastery attached to it was called the Kursk Root Herrnitage in honor ofthe manifestation of the icon at the root of the tree.

During an invasion of Crimean Tartars, the icon was transferred to the cathedral church of Kursk, and an exact copy was left at the Hermitage. Tsar Boris Godunov bestowed many precious gifts for the adornment of the icon and even the pretender, the false Dimitry, who desired to call attention to himself and to win the support of those who lived in the vicinity of Kursk, venerated this icon and placed it in the royal mansions where it remained until the year 1615.

While the icon was absent from the city of Kursk, the grace-bearing aid of the Mother of God did not forsake that city, for when in the year 1612 the Poles laid siege to Kursk, certain of the citizens beheld the Mother of God and two radiant monks above the city. Captured Poles related that they, too, had beheld a woman and two radiant men on the city walls, and that this woman made threatening gestures at those who were conducting the siege. The citizens then made a vow to construct a monastery in honor of the all-holy Theotokos and to place the miraculous icon therein. The besiegers were quickly put to flight and in gratitude to their heavenly helper, the people of Kursk built a monastery in honor of the all-holy Theotokos of the Sign.

In 1676, the icon of the Mother of God of the Sign was borne to the Don River to bless the forces of the Don Cossacks. In 1684, a copy of the miraculous icon of the all-holy Theotokos of the Sign was sent to the Monastery of the Root by the sovereigns and great princes Ivan and Peter Alexievich. This copy was set in a silver-gilt frame and a command was made that this copy be borne wherever Orthodox warriors went into battle.

In the year 1812, the Kursk Civic Society sent to General Kutuzov a copy of the miraculous icon of Kursk, setting it in a silver-gilt frame. The commander expressed his gratitude to the citizens of Kursk and his belief that Kursk would remain free, thanks to the protection of the Queen of Heaven.

In March of 1898 a group of anarchists, desiring to undermine the faith of the people in the wonderworking power of the icon, decided to destroy it. They placed a time bomb in the Cathedral of the Sign, and at two o'clock in the morning a horrendous explosion rent the air and all the walls of the monastery were shaken. The frightened monastic brethren rushed immediately to the cathedral, where they beheld a scene of horrible devastation. The force of the blast had shattered the gilded canopy above the icon. The heavy marble base, constructed of several massive steps, had been jolted out of position and split into several pieces. A huge metal candlestick which stood before the icon and been blown to the opposite side of the cathedral. A door of cast iron located near the icon had been torn from its hinges and cast outside, where it smashed against a wall and caused a deep crack. All the windows in the cathedral and even those in the dome above were shattered. Amid the general devastation, the holy icon remained intact and even the glass within the frame remained whole. Thinking to destroy the icon, the anarchists had, on the contrary, become the cause of its greater glorification.

Every year on Friday of the ninth week after Pascha, the icon of the Sign was solemnly borne in procession from the Kursk Cathedral of the Sign to the place of its original manifestation at the Kursk Hermitage, where it remained until September 12. On September 13, it was again solemnly returned to the city of Kursk. This procession was instituted in the year 1618 in memory of the transfer of the icon from Moscow to Kursk and to commemorate its original appearance.

During the Bolshevik revolution, the icon was removed from the Cathedral of the Sign on April 12, 1918. Search was made for the icon but without result. The holy object was discovered under the following circumstances: Not far from the monastery there lived a poor girl and her mother who for three days had not had anything to eat. At that time Kursk was controlled by the Bolshevik regime. On May 3, the girl, a seamstress, went off to the marketplace in search of bread. Returning home at about one o'clock in the morning, she passed by a well which, according to tradition, had been dug by St. Theodosius of the Caves. There, on the edge of the well, she beheld a package wrapped in a sack, and when she opened it, in the package she found the sacred icon, which apparently had been left there by those who had stolen it.

At the end of October 1919, when the White Russian Army was evacuating the city of Kursk, twelve monks of the monastery transferred the icon to the city of Belgorod, from which it was again transferred, first to Taganrog and Ekaterinodar, and then to Novorossiisk. During the evacuation, with the permission of Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky who was then President of the Higher Ecclesiastical Administration in Southern Russia, the icon was taken aboard the steamship St. Nicholas by Bishop Theophan of Kursk on March 1, 1920, and was transported to the city of Thessalonica. On April 3, Bishop Theophan took the icon to the city of Pec, the ancient capital of Serbia. For four months the icon remained in Pec, and in September, at the request of Baron Wrangel, it was returned again to the Crimea. A year after departing from the city of Kursk, on October 29, 1920, the holy image against left its native land during the evacuation of the White Army and those Russian people who refused to submit to the Soviet regime. After arriving again in the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croatians and Slovenes, with the blessing of Patriarch Dimitry, the holy icon remained with Bishop Theophan in the Serbian monastery of Yazak on Frushkaya Mountain. From the end of 1927, the icon was to be found in the Russian church of the Holy Trinity in the city of Belgrade.

With the blessing of the Synod of Bishops, Bishop Theophan bore the icon around to various places where Russians of the diaspora dwelt. During World War II, when Belgrade was subjected to bombardment and other tribulations associated with the war, the miraculous icon became a rampart of hope for all that approached it with sincere prayer.

The steadfast companion of those Russian people who did not accept the satanic authority, this great and ancient holy object, which remained in Moscow during the dreadful turmoil of the 17th century, was removed from Yugoslavia in the autumn of 1944 together with those who again fled the godless regime. From ruined Vienna, the icon was borne to the tranquil city of Carlsbad to which the Synod of Bishops had been evacuated. With the approach of the Bolsheviks it was again transferred to Munich in the spring of 1945. The holy icon proved to be an unending consolation to many thousands of people who were experiencing all the trials and tribulations of the latter years of World War II. From Munich the icon was borne to Switzerland, France, Belgium, England, Austria, and many cities and camps in Germany itself. Subsequently, the icon was transferred to the New World where it had its permanent residence first in the New Kursk Hermitage in Mahopac, N.Y., and then in the Synod's Cathedral Church of the Mother of God of the Sign in New York City, the residence of the First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. At present, by decree of the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, a festival is held in honor of the icon at the New Kursk Hermitage in Mahopac, N.Y., on the Sunday nearest the feast of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos, and in the Synod's Cathedral of the Mother of God of the Sign in New York City on November 27/ December 10.

www.fatheralexander.org

Source: Western American Diocese_ROCOR

[eopederson2]

The Lovely Shape of Spirit Lake

"Spirit Lake is resilient. The lake and once-popular tourist site in south-central Washington was nearly obliterated in May 1980 during the events that unfolded around the cataclysmic eruption of Mount St. Helens. The lake survived, and it took on a lovely new shape.

The OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 acquired these images on April 26, 2023. A white blanket of snow contrasts with the dark-blue water, emphasizing the lake’s heart-like shape when viewed from above.

Prior to the eruption, Spirit Lake had a smaller footprint that consisted of west and east arms connected by a narrow span of water—similar in shape to the top-half of a heart. Then, on May 18, 1980, the volcano’s north flank let loose, producing the largest-known landslide in recorded history, followed by a lateral blast and shock wave as the eruption unfolded. The water in Spirit Lake was temporarily displaced but eventually flowed back into the basin.

A “new” lake reformed atop the debris from the landslide. The fully-heart shaped lake was broader and shallower, and the elevation of its surface higher by nearly 60 meters (200 feet). Some of the landslide debris formed a blockage, or natural dam, on the lake’s southwest side. Without an outlet, water levels continued to rise until engineers constructed a drainage tunnel in 1985.

From the 1920s through the 1970s, Spirit Lake drew tourists to its shores. Cabins and lodges lined the lake, and people could swim, boat, and fish in its waters. Today, those lakeside features are buried in avalanche debris below the modern lake.

Fishing and swimming are prohibited, and access is limited to preserve the site as a natural laboratory for studying the landscape’s recovery. For example, scientists think that the trees uprooted by the volcanic blast and still floating in the lake, visible as the brown line in the detailed image above, have become an important part of the lake’s ecosystem."

NASA Earth Observatory images by Wanmei Liang, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Kathryn Hansen.

[rftwfic]

A sneak peek into my immortal/reincarnation sterek fic, as voted on in the poll I did last week.

-

Stiles starts seeing the wolf out of the corner of his eye, like a hallucination. It’s in the woods at the edge of the school parking lot, in the bushes outside his bedroom window at night, behind every tree in the Preserve. Stiles is positive at least half of the instances are just his mind playing tricks on him, a combination of paranoia, Adderall, and sleepless nights either gaming or studying magic tomes leant to him by Deaton.

Besides, the wolf looks exactly like the drawing Deaton showed them: massive, black, and with glowing red eyes. It’s not worth telling the pack about, so Stiles keeps it to himself. 

-

Stiles goes back to Derek’s house to help him plant aster, lilac, and sage in his backyard with the hopes of attracting local bees. When the sun becomes unbearable they take a break inside the house and Derek makes them a pitcher of lemonade. While he’s puttering around the kitchen Stiles wanders through uninhabited rooms, fingers lightly trailing along desks and bookshelves piled high with treasure. Derek has traveled to more than just Europe, as is evident by the hand-crafted Chinese teapots on his shelves and the Persian rugs on his walls. When Stiles asks him about this he reveals that his main source of income is from writing history books, and he often travels to the places he’s writing about to better understand the cultural context of what he’s writing. When Stiles meanders innocently through his office he finds stacks of hand-written notes on the uses of public fountains in Turkey, as well as a few old books in Turkish and Greek.

Stiles asks him about this when they sit down in the kitchen to drink their lemonade, and finds out that Derek knows an awful lot about ancient ways of staying cool in hot climates, with lots of particular opinions about the proper construction of courtyards. Stiles stops him halfway through his insistence on the importance of purposely directed airflow to say, “you’re a huge nerd.”

Derek freezes, the hands he was using to demonstrate what he means lingering in the air. 

Stiles straightens in his chair, clearing his throat. “Not, um, not that that’s a bad thing. I mean, I spend most of my free time studying the occult, so…”

Derek lowers his hands. He glances out the window, where the afternoon sun is highlighting their newly planted flowers. “I have a book on the history of the occult in France if you’d like to borrow it.”

“Yeah,” Stiles’ smile bunches up his cheeks, still rosy from the sun and the heat. “That would be awesome.” 

-

Stiles is almost positive the wolf isn’t real until it saves him from a harpy. 

A small flock of them had taken residence in the Preserve, no doubt lured in by the beacon of Stiles’ growing power, and the pack had made it their mission to drive them away before anyone got hurt.

Stiles had walked through any and all protests and had joined the pack in the woods armed with his bat and a few handy spells, but sometime during the fight he had gotten separated from the others. He can still hear Isaac’s growls and Erica’s snarls, but they’re too far away to be seen through the trees.

Stiles takes another swing at the harpy, his forearm burning from where it had grabbed him earlier, where its talons had scored into his flesh when he managed to pull away. It dips quickly out of the way, its tawny wing a hair's breadth away from connecting with Stiles’ bat. It flies up again, preparing itself to loop back down with greater momentum.

Stiles readies his bat, shoulders tensed to swing at the monster’s outstretched talons, when he feels a rush of air at the back of his head. He ducks just in time, and another harpy barely misses sinking its claws into Stiles’ scalp. It grabs at his hair instead, wings flapping furiously above him as it yanks him around. He manages to swing blindly up and connect with its chest, knocking it off and loosening its grip so he can pull away.

He ends up crouched on the ground, his free hand clutching his aching head, his weapon hand uselessly hanging at his side. He looks up, and it’s too late to raise his bat to protect himself, to do anything more than flinch back in surprise as the first harpy descends upon him, its human mouth twisted open in a shriek. 

Stiles braces himself for pain, but then a shadow passes over him, something large and snarling leaping at the harpy, plucking it out of the air. When it lands on soft paws it viciously shakes its head back and forth, snapping the harpy’s neck before dropping its mangled body onto the ground. 

For a moment Stiles thinks it must be Scott. What other full-shift werewolf does he know? But then the wolf turns around and he gets a closer look.

Stiles knows the pattern of Scott’s coat, the lighter colored patches around his eyebrows, underbelly, and paws. This wolf is solid black, and much, much larger than Scott. It levels Stiles with glowing red eyes for just a moment before leaping away again, snatching the second harpy out of the air and wringing its neck like the first. By the time it drops to the ground, lifeless, Stiles is back on his feet and has his bat held out in front of him in a defensive position.

The wolf stands a few feet away and doesn’t try to approach. It looks Stiles up and down, assessing, and huffs at whatever conclusion it makes. Clearly Stiles is an idiot. His heart is beating in his throat, his breaths come in ragged pants, and he knows he should be running for his life right now, but he can’t seem to get his feet to move. Instead, he stares death in the face, and death stares back, and seems to find him wanting.

Stiles doesn’t relax his position when the wolf turns and walks away, doesn’t lower his arms until it’s far out of sight. Perhaps it’s waiting for something, as if Stiles’ powers aren’t strong enough for him yet. Either way, it knows where he is now, where to find him when he’s ripe for the picking. Stiles thinks of the legends Deaton told them, of the destruction wrought by the wolf when it arrived only to find the spark already snuffed out, and wonders if this is for the best.

[fursasaida]

[Excerpts from this piece on the particular German psychosis and relationship to an imagined Jewish life that props up the German repression, islamophobia, and racism against Arabs and Palestinians we've seen explode from their previous levels in the last few months]

Since October 7, German politicians have proposed rescinding the nationality of German citizens, restricting the civil rights of non-EU foreign residents, and limiting the number of children with a migration background who can attend any given school, which have been promoted as means for preserving and supporting “Jewish life” in the country. A German politician credibly accused of harboring neo-Nazi sympathies in his youth blamed the country’s antisemitism on immigration. Germany’s largest newspaper published a fifty-point manifesto on what it means to be German; number forty-seven reads, “Germany has a heart for children. They are not beaten but promoted.” A prominent German journalist published an article with the title: “The Jews or Aggro-Arabs: we have to decide who we want to keep.” The Anti-Semitism Commissioner of Baden-Württemberg, who is not Jewish, wrote, “The Nazis were still hiding their mass murders, whereas Hamas celebrated them in the media, like Daesh before them.”

Not everything is as it seems in Germany. That tree? It used to be a Jew. That building was once a Jew. That streetlamp was a Jew. And the Jews? It seems they’re all Germans. [...]

In the eyes of many German critics, Wolff’s greatest sin was to argue, in the guise of a Jewish identity, that supporting a boycott of Israel is not necessarily antisemitic, even though he did not support such a boycott himself. Wolff was subsequently castigated as a costume Jew (Kostümjude) by Germany’s largest Jewish and gentile newspapers. He’s been called an aspiring Kronzeugejude (key witness Jew). Contra Wolff’s complaints about German, this is a language with an astonishingly nimble capacity for creating neologisms on the word Jew:

Alibijude: an alibi Jew, one who provides cover for antisemitic (or anti-Israel) rhetoric

Berufsjude: a professional Jew, a Jew by profession

Faschingsjude: a carnival Jew

Großvaterjude: someone who has one Jewish grandfather

Kostümjude: a costume Jew

Kronzeugejude: a key witness Jew, providing testimony for antisemitic (or anti-Israel) rhetoric

Meinungsjude: An opinion Jew? Or a Jew by opinion??

Modejude: A fashion Jew??? Or fashionably Jewish????

Schmusejude: a cuddly Jew, one who presumably cuddles up with Germans

Vaterjude: someone who has a Jewish father

Vorzeigejude: a model Jew

With the possible exception of Vaterjude, these constructions are pejoratives about giving the appearance of being Jewish or utilizing your Jewish identity for gain. Far from an aberration, the revelation of Wolff’s fabricated Jewish identity turns out to be something of a German tradition. Not a year seems to pass without a scandal involving the identity of a prominent German Jew. [...]

Not everyone assumes a Jewish identity; some are satisfied with appearances.

The television journalist Lea Rosh was the public face and most vocal proponent of the campaign to build Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Rosh has cultivated a Jewish aura—a Scheinbarjüdin, perhaps. “I don’t look so Aryan,” she once enthused during an interview. Rosh changed her name from Edith to Lea, and unsuccessfully sued the (Jewish) author Ruth Gay for writing that she had done so to sound more Jewish. She once fiercely rejected a proposal to place the Holocaust memorial across from the Reichstag: “Did the ‘German people’ murder the Jews? Hardly.”

Then there are the literal costume Jews. I have twice witnessed large groups of Germans wearing kippot. Once at a rally against antisemitism and once marching with a large police escort down Sonnenallee, the hub of Arab life in Berlin, chanting pro-Israel slogans. To hold a sign that said “Stop Genocide” or “From the River to the Sea” on that same street today would invite certain arrest and potentially criminal prosecution. The police violently suppressed demonstrations and even basic symbols of Palestinian identity on Sonnenallee in the weeks following October 7; I had to extricate a friend, a prominent (Jewish) journalist, from one such demonstration after he was pepper-sprayed for filming the brutal arrest of a man whose crime was to hold a Palestinian flag. But few here are trying to co-opt a Palestinian identity.

Some years ago, a friend of mine was invited to a Shabbat dinner. The attendees all gave the appearance of being religiously observant. They knew the hymns, the men wore kippot, one even had payot. The hosts insisted that my friend recite the various blessings. Through a chance comment during dinner, he discovered he was the only Jew in attendance. They were Germans who enjoyed enacting Jewish rituals, and wanted a Jew to unwittingly give his blessing.

Many more Germans than Wolff, Hingst, and Seibert “feel Jewish.” Jewish community archives evidence that many Germans attempted to “discover” their Jewish heritage after the war. Everyone seems to have a Jewish aunt here. Or their grandparents were in the resistance. Or maybe it was their great-aunt. Others have simply converted. [Note from me: obvious parallel to Americans' "Cherokee princess" great-grandmothers here.]

[...] German television recently ran an award-winning talk show called Freitagnacht Jews (Friday Night Jews) that featured a roundtable of Jews talking about what it’s like growing up Jewish in Germany. Vogue Germany once ran a column called “Jewish Today”—subhed: “The everyday life of a German Jewess, who takes us on a journey through a world we hardly know”—where readers could learn about Jewish bodies, Jewish sex, Jewish doubt, Jewish decision-making and why Jewish men can’t come as quickly thanks to circumcision. Germans love the peculiarity of Semitic sorrows, the specificity of Jewish joys. They love klezmer music. They will solemnly nod their head when you tell them, “My grandfather is a tree.”

The great beneficiaries of this funereal interest, assuming they don’t criticize Israel too much, are Israelis. In common perception, Israeli is synonymous with Jewish. The reality is more complicated inside of Israel, but Israelis are nonetheless regarded as the summa of all things Jewish by a German public whose thinking is still fundamentally characterized by a nation-state framework. And the cultural predilections of Israeli society—an obsession with interrogating Israeli identity as a sort of special existential condition, an enormous capacity for self-aggrandizement and self-pity—conveniently align with German expectations of “Jewish culture,” and largely mirror those of German society. Germany is the largest market for translated Israeli literature in the world.

[...] To be German is to be a Täter, a perpetrator. But the crux of Germany’s national identity, its famed memory culture and the “overcoming of the past,” is, paradoxically, its relationships with Jews, the universal victims. Through empathizing with and supporting Jews, conveniently embodied in the state of Israel, Germans can expiate the evil inherent in being German, passed down from generation to generation as though it were in their blood. Jews become the bearers of an inherited virtue as victims.

Yet far from overcoming the past, this dynamic seems to demand its constant reenactment. Non-Germans can only become German by checking their own histories at the door. Minister of Culture Roth recently told the new Cameroonian-born director of a state cultural institution: “You have become part of the Täternation.” Cameroon was formerly a German colony.

These prevailing tendencies have become ever more apparent in the wake of the horrifying violence in Israel and Palestine over the past months. Germany’s political, media, and cultural elites have rushed to demonstrate who can stand closest to Israel. The identification has been so intense and Israel’s security so frequently invoked as a matter of Staatsräson that at times I have wondered if some Germans don’t believe Hamas’s attack wasn’t obliquely directed at Germany. Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck gave a much-lauded speech in which he called on Muslims in Germany to “clearly distance themselves from antisemitism so as not to undermine their own right to tolerance.” No similar imperative was given to Germany’s good Christian citizens. Friedrich Merz, the leader of the CDU (Angela Merkel’s party) who is widely presumed to be the frontrunner to become the next chancellor, proposed mandating recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a condition of acquiring German citizenship. His proposal has become reality in the east German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

This formulation of German identity does not offer an inclusive vision for a diversifying country. A friend’s partner, the descendant of Kurdish “guest workers” who arrived after the war, was so impressed by her vociferous school lessons about the misdeeds of Germany’s prior generations that she briefly believed her own grandfather had likewise slaughtered Jews in Europe during the war. Germanness as such has no aspirational, positive content. It’s not hard to understand why some would want to escape this cycle of pathologized guilt, just as it’s not surprising that some would take identification with Jews a step further.

[...] The “I am Jew in Germany” essays articulate something like the opposite: a brittle, uncertain identity in a country that offers Jews many assurances and no certainty. They mark out “Jewish” and “German” as dichotomy of distinct, irreconcilable identities. These essays celebrate “Jewish humor” and are chronically unfunny. They nod to the profundity and factiousness of Jewish culture and hew to the schema of the local Weltanschauung. Profoundly awkward social mannerisms abound. It is almost as though they were . . . German.

The farce of this situation is readily apparent. But the tragedy has never lingered far from the surface, and that tragedy has come into clearer view since October 7, which occurred a few weeks after I initially turned in a draft of this essay to a different magazine. Since October 7, German politicians have authorized breaches in the country’s constitutional order on the basis of nebulous sensitivities, unwittingly setting a ruinous precedent for when the far-right Alternativ für Deutschland comes into power. Since October 7, German arms shipments to Israel have risen so substantially that the total for 2023 represented a ten-fold increase from the previous year, and now account for 30 percent of Israeli arms imports (another report puts it as high as 47 percent). And since October 7, those munitions have been used by Israeli forces to kill more than fourteen thousand children in Gaza. Germany has a heart for children.