#when the first note of a house in nebraska played i think we collectively left our bodies for a minute

[cassis2006]

i ascended last night btw

[penninstitute]

Case #0190811

Statement of Jameson Kisler and his writing ability. Statement given on August 11, 2019.

I would like to preface this statement with something very important: I never meant harm to anyone who has read my works. 

I suppose I should start from the beginning. I have been writing for 30 years now and I’ve built up a fanbase with my works. Countless people have come to my book signing and those people have credited my novels to be extraordinary and different from other authors they’ve read. At the time, I’d feel a sort of ego boost and simply thank them for the compliment. 

It is always the silence afterwards that hurts the most, I think. When the person leaves, they walk down the sidewalk and to their life, unsuspected to their nearing doom. A week passes and they’re found dead, run over by a bus or a sudden heart attack or their apartment complex has a gas leak and they’re never able to escape in time. They die and I’m the reason for it. The death toll is different each time, too, but it rises and rises each time someone new reads my books. 

At first, though, my writing was simple. There was a beginning, a middle, and an end. It was just that. I was working as a freelancer writer, too, and I never had a deadline. I could write and not worry as much. There is a certain joy in writing something you can enjoy. I found myself in a zone and sometimes, I would write the whole day. I lost contact with most of my friends as a  result, but I had a job to do, and it was to write. 

Who knew that could change in one day. 

Another thing I find important worth mentioning is I write on a typewriter. It is old, but it gets the work done. Many, many people use laptops, but you can never trust the internet.There are ghosts that live inside of the screens. Loved ones have died, but they’re still online, as if they’re waiting for someone to talk to them. I never want to encounter the ghosts of the past. A typewriter doesn’t have this problem, though. It works just as well as a laptop or phone can, and there is nothing like the feel of paper between your fingertips. The gentle click click of the words as they’re pressed into the paper gives me a sense of purpose when it comes to writing. The shrill sound of when you successfully finish a page, that was it for me. Surely, though, I have to adapt to the continuously changing world that is around us. 

At least, that is what my editor wants me to do. 

I’m not fond of change. As much as I want to accept the change of the days or the passing of the seasons, I can’t bring myself to it. I know by the end of the day, the end draws ever closer and at some point, as a whole, we must accept that. As I write these stories, I write endings for each and every one of them, knowing someone will read it and experience the satisfaction that comes from a complete storyline. To be an author is to be willing to accept that change will not come unless you alter the writing yourself. To be a part of the future is to be a part of the present, knowing and accepting that oftentimes than not, things will happen without your acknowledgement. 

I fear, as mentioned, the same has happened to me. 

This change… first occurred when one Olivia Gracestone had read my first piece in my new series, the ones I’ve been tasked to write by my editor. I remember the event clearly as it was at a book signing and she was very adamant about my works, even going as far as saying she had been a fan for a while. I signed the first page as she began to ramble and, as rude as this sounds, I was hardly paying attention. She left with the book and that was the last I heard from Ms. Gracestone. 

I received a call from her parents a week later. Olivia had died, tragically, in a car crash as she was passing an intersection. A speeding semi, they told me over the phone, was the reason for her death. When I had asked why they decided to call me, they had mentioned my book. Coincidentally, in the same book, the protagonist had been killed by a speeding semi, two, if I remember correctly, and it was the book that Olivia had read before she left that afternoon. She had, as her parents told me, going on about the book, describing how she really began to feel connected to the character and how they shared the same issues. College, I believe, was the main issue in that book. Olivia was going to be a freshman in college, just starting out. At the time, I brushed off these incidents as coincidences. 

The tragic death of Olivia Gracestone plagued my mind for weeks, but I continued to write because my editor was expecting something to be done by the end of that month. It was around May, I believe, I realized my works were becoming more of a problem in reality than actual fiction. As mentioned previously, I’ve grown quite a fanbase with my novels and collections, and because of that, more and more people were ready to buy my books. There were lines outside of the bookshops and talk on the internet about what my next big work would be. I was used to this type of pressure and excitement, as it was the driving force for completing my next work, which featured a small town coming together after an earthquake had occurred. 

A week passes. News coverage of a small town in Nebraska reported to have been hit by a 5.9 magnitude earthquake. Lives were lost and homes were torn apart, rattled from their foundations. Coincidences. It was all coincidences, right? I watched the news with a solemn face and told myself it was a coincidence. The feeling vanished when I saw a face of a family, faces dotted by the small pigments of the TV screen. There was a little girl… with blonde pigtails and she was crying, clutching a stuffed bunny, and her father was speaking to the newscaster with a hand firmly gripped on his daughter’s shoulder. 

I briefly encountered a bit of writer’s deja vu as I continued to watch the scene. It shifts from the little girl and her father, to the entire town, again. The image pans until it settles on a house, amongst the carnage. A female steps out of the house with a book tucked under her arm, her face concealed by the curtain of brown and in that small moment of coverage, I was able to get a good look at the cover. 

It was my newest release. 

My center of gravity had shifted and the sounds hallowed out from around me. My room darkened as thunderclouds formed outside, and at some point, I had dropped the remote. The television continued to play the scene, but my focus was blurring. Tears were falling just as the rain began to cry from the clouds outside. Pent up emotion, I believed, and realization. The thunder shook the house when I went back to my room that night. I didn’t touch my typewriter for a week, I just watched it from my bed. 

Was this my change? 

I have this one piece I’m working on. A longer piece, I’m afraid. It details the life of an older man, unnamed for the time being, and his story is harder to write. I believe it is only because I haven’t found… myself drawn to this project. 

I’m afraid to finish it, I think, because if I finish it, will that be all I’m good for? For now, I’ll continue writing about other people’s lives and ignore the deaths that continue to grow around me.

FOLLOW-UP NOTES

While none of our employees (at least the archival employees) plan on actually reading Mr. Kisler’s works, just for... safety precautions, we do have a few of his books at the institute. We sent them to Artifact Storage for further inspection, but at a glance... they seemed mostly normal. Something about them just felt... off. I don’t really know how to explain it.

They just... looked strange. But none of the others seemed to notice anything, so. I don’t know.

Mr. Kisler wasn’t available to speak to institute staff, but... there wasn’t really anything in this statement we needed further clarification on, so. We’ve looked into the events and deaths detailed here, and confirmed all of them. Whether or not the books had a part to play, it’s unclear, but it isn’t out of the realm of possibility. Reality-altering books are actually a pretty common phenomenon, considering the nature of Leitners and the like.

I think it’s safe to assume that this statement only states the truth.

[eiasuh014]

How to Deal 토토검증업체 -Part 1 Out Of 4

Fundamentally, there are two decisions you have to take when playing the semi-circular poker variant. The first one is whether you should place a progressive site bet. The answer of course requires hardly any thought and is a simply a hard-coated ‘No’. Both hazard and its simpler derivative were unfamiliar to and rejected by Americans of his social class, leading de Marigny to introduce his novelty to the local underclass. Eleven other local lotteries in Nebraska followed suit, until the state banned the devices, effective 1985. A legal game in a licensed casino in the United Kingdom, Australia or New Zealand involves a wheel at least 1.5 metres in diameter divided into 52 segments, each marked with one of seven symbols (referred to as A to G). The table below sets out the frequency of the symbols, their probability, the associated odds specified, and the house advantage or edge.

The table is labelled with the name of the game and the first information you see is that the dealer needs an A and K to qualify and play. The game begins as soon as an ante bet is placed. In the lower-left corner you have a setting button, then you are presented with the option of turning off the sounds. The dealer shall then collect any progressive payout wagers and, on the layout in front of the table inventory container, verify that the number of gaming chips wagered equals the number of progressive payout wagers accepted by the table game progressive payout wager system. If we add the joker to the count, it becomes 365, thereby representing the number of days in a year. *The better paytable is only available on the ‘Without House Edge’ version of the game. It should be noted that at the end of any winning session the casino charge a 10% of win fee when playing Without House Edge games.

For practical purposes, casino gambling encompasses games of chance and skill played at tables and machines. http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/?action=click&contentCollection®ion=TopBar&WT.nav=searchWidget&module=SearchSubmit&pgtype=Homepage#/메이저놀이터추천 A Parisian variant appeared in Bavaria in the mid-18th century where the king of diamonds wore a German-suited Old Bavarian pattern. The expected value of a $1 bet (except for the special case of Top line bets), for American and European roulette, can be calculated as As such, I will explore the historical and cultural contexts surrounding this deck of playing cards and discuss their symbolic, albeit rhetorical, nature.

If no one does, the caller then draws one ball at a time until someone shouts bingo. Caribbean Stud Poker offers the Player the challenge of poker but uses an easier to-play format. In addition, it is the first progressive play jackpot ever offered with a table game. It is played on a special table, similar to blackjack, and is based on five-card stud poker. Craps is among the most social and most superstitious of all gambling games, which leads to an enormous variety of informal rules of etiquette that players may be expected to follow.Thrifty gamblers may spend a small amount on a newly released model in such establishments to get the feel for the machine before going to a real parlor.

In the United States casinos were for many years legal only in Nevada and New Jersey and, by special license, in Puerto Rico, but most other states now allow casino gambling, and betting facilities operate clandestinely throughout the country, often through corruption of political authorities. Each terminal is connected to a centralized computer system that allows the lottery jurisdiction to monitor gameplay and collect its share of revenue. A maximum odds bet on a minimum pass line bet often gives the lowest house edge available in any game in the casino. 몰디브게임사이트 If you see that number 23 has not come up for a long time it may seem logical to think it must come up soon.

A similar game, the "Big Nine" wheel, has five numbers on each segment, and also three special symbols, appearing on three spaces each, which pay 10:1 odds. Tips seem less frequent at the roulette wheel. There are also several methods to determine the payout when a number adjacent to a chosen number is the winner, for example, player bets 40 chips on "23 to the maximum" and number 26 is the winning number.When it travelled over to America, casinos promoted the game by offering additional winnings for any player whose winning hand contained a ‘black jack’.

If all players bust, the dealer wins without further play. he wheel is divided into a number of equal segments separated by spokes or pins. Comparing it with other gambling activities like poker, which has been around for the past 50 years, or slot machines that have existed for a century, blackjack is an old game.If there are several players, the rotation of the player who must cover the shooter may change with the shooter (comparable to a blind in poker).

These requirements are meant to keep the game fair (preventing switching the dice or making a "controlled shot"). Though none of the cards games has a great dedication like blackjack. When shot, the balls drop through an array of pins; some of them will fall into the centre gate and start up the slot machine in the centre screen.casinos are huge, whereas others are small businesses defined more by the types of gambling they offer than by glitz and glamour.

[loudlytransparenttrash]

This Week Within Our Colleges: Part 15

Stockton University has removed a bust of its namesake, Richard Stockton, because the Revolutionary War patriot who was among the signers of the Declaration of Independence owned a slave. The school explained that the statue will eventually return to campus, with an accompanying display discussing his slave owning past. Bryn Mawr College is also separating itself from one of its former presidents, Martha Thomas, a leader of the women’s suffragist movement, because she held racist views. The college will no longer use the names of buildings on campus bearing her name. Meanwhile, University of Maryland’s marching band will no longer play the official state song of Maryland at school sporting events because of its ties to the Confederacy.

Wake Forest University will hold numerous “teach-ins” about race and racism in America, inspired by the creation of a “Charlottesville Syllabus” by a group of University of Virginia graduate students. The group which created the syllabus, sent this sweet offer: “The GSCL welcomes new graduate student members who are committed to prioritizing the needs of students most affected by the terrors of white supremacy.” Wake senior Matthew Connor said the workshops “expose many of the facets of a racist society which fuel and support white nationalism, from the Confederate statues to continued legacies of segregation." Wait, black activists demanding segregated housing, segregated graduations, segregated spaces, segregated meetings, segregated student groups, segregated protests and entire school segregation isn’t continuing legacies of segregation but a statue is? Ooookay. 

We’ve heard of microaggressions, we’ve heard of macroaggressions, we’ve even heard of microassaults, now there’s a new aggression unassuming white people are inflicting on people of color: invisibility microaggression. Two professors, from Bucknell University and the University of Rhode Island, claim they are the first academics to argue that “invisibility” is a “common form of microaggression” experienced by non-whites. The professors made their discovery after interviewing just 13 women of color working at “predominantly white institutions.” From their “research,” they found one of the main examples of invisibility microaggressions is when there’s more white skinned people around them than people with the same skin color as they have... Does this not prove how desperate these people have become to keep themselves feeling oppressed? They know they are all treated equally in society, so they have to come up with new ways of being victims of whites. Imagine the advancements we could make as a country if we just got on with our lives. 

Ole Miss shut down a Greek Life retreat over a discarded banana peel last week. The retreat came to a crashing halt after a student found a “lone, fresh-looking banana peel” up in a tree, thrown there by a student who couldn’t be bothered finding a trashcan. Despite the banana-tosser’s profuse apologies and agreeing to become better educated, students of color interpreted it as a racist insult and “broke into tears.” “The conversation carried on, and tensions continued to rise. White and black members of the Ole Miss Greek community shared their views on the day’s events and race relations in general but the conversation began to move in an unhealthy direction,” one student reported. “The massive discussion session wrapped up as more and more students stood and left the room, some in tears, some in frustration. The remainder of the retreat was canceled later that night.” Alexa Lee Arndt, interim director of Fraternity and Sorority Life, sent a letter to all campus chapter presidents, explaining “many students were hurt, frightened, and upset.”

Staying at Ole Miss, senior Francisco Hernandez bemoans that tailgates at his university are perpetuating racial oppression because of the presence of the Mississippi state flag. Reflecting on the university’s recent home opener, Hernandez says that Ole Miss’s tailgating area is a hostile environment because the state’s flag includes the Confederate battle cross. The flag, Hernandez argues, risks turning the tailgate area “into a giant, live-action Confederate monument.” Despite admitting “scenes of white tailgaters carrying flags and welcoming black tailgaters into their tents being common,” Hernandez says the “environment was unwelcoming to minorities” and “racial tensions” were high because of “the uncomfortable and divisive presence of the Mississippi state flag all over the tailgating grounds.” He warns, “Immediate action is necessary to avoid it turning into a giant, live-action Confederate monument.” 

Fordham University has launched an investigation after students were reduced to tears by the screening of a video that debunks the 1 in 5 myth during a Resident Assistant training on sexual assault. Dean Christopher Rodgers showed two separate videos, the first was a trailer for “The Hunting Ground” which uses the 1 in 5 myth to promote the idea of rape culture on campus while the second was a PragerU video disputing the statistic. The school’s Department of Public Safety Coordinator made a statement on the matter, noting that many students “were in tears” after the PragerU video, upset by its claim that there is “no evidence that rape is a cultural norm” on college campuses. “During this video, many more students left the room, many of them women. They were in tears,” the school’s Coordinator wrote, noting that she herself was “shaking” after the video finished playing. Yes, they’re literally crying over being told they aren’t in imminent, mortal danger on campus.

Beloit College recently published a “#GetWoke” syllabus in an effort to encourage students to familiarize themselves with the anti-Trump resistance. The syllabus was created by the school’s diversity office for its upcoming “#GetWoke lecture series,” providing a “general overview of white supremacy, fascism and racism.” While advocating the benefits of protesting Donald Trump, it encourages students to listen to protest songs such as KRS One’s “Sound of Da Police,” or read texts like “Social Justice Organizing” for inspiration. Among the resources included are a “Syllabus for White People to Educate Themselves,” and another on how “All Monuments Must Fall.” When did universities stop educating and start indoctrinating? 

The University of Wisconsin, La Crosse has been funding an ongoing research project that seeks to "challenge straight white college men" to become "social justice activists.” “Unless challenged effectively during college, heterosexual white men may leave college no more adept at functioning in a diverse world than when they entered,” the professors running the program warn. They encourage other white male professors to intervene in “male spaces” on campus, specifically advising them to target “fraternities” and “athletic teams” and drop the hint about “exploring identity, challenging privilege and developing responsibility for acting in solidarity with marginalized peers.”

The University of Missouri is hosting weekly meetings exclusively for “students, staff, and faculty of color” to discuss “skills for surviving and resisting hate” at the “Predominantly White Institution.” The "Healing from Racial Injustices" group will meet every Friday to share their experiences and talk about ways of overcoming and healing from the whiteness which surrounds them. The purpose of the healing group “is to provide a space to validate and affirm one another while processing macro and microaggressions.” 

A University of Iowa professor claims that "white fragility is a widespread phenomena especially since the 2016 election.” In her article posted under Whiteness and Education, Professor Leslie Ann Locke suggested that “since the 2016 presidential election, it has become almost unbearably clear that white neurosis and white fragility are widespread phenomena. Describing “white neurosis” as a condition in which white people react “defensively” when they’re reprimanded for their privilege, Locke argues that such a “neurosis” corresponds with “white fragility,” a phrase describing the ways in which white people “freak out” when asked to reflect on their privilege. Locke claims that white people who grew up poor “feel a need to compete” for a sense of marginalization with racial minorities when their struggles could never possibly be equivalent. Additionally, she argues that white people allow and protect white supremacy.

The Rochester Institute of Technology recently encouraged its students to masturbate so they will feel less inclined to commit sexual assault during one of its freshman orientation programs. The slide reminded students to "Think of Roo!" - an acronym for "rub one out,” to seemingly help them overcome their urge to rape. It proudly explains “self-gratification can prevent sexual assault.”

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has reassigned a crazed lecturer to non-teaching duties after she harassed and hurled insults at students who were recruiting for the school’s Turning Point USA chapter. Several university employees, including Courtney Lawton, carried signs and called the students Nazis. Yes, college staff were protesting and calling conservative students Nazis. Lawton was recorded on camera yelling “Neo-fascist Becky right here. Wants to destroy public schools. Hates DACA kids. No KKK” while giving the middle finger to the camera.

I wasn’t going to post this next one as I originally didn’t believe it was real. As part of a new “Social Justice Collective Weekly” newsletter at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, an article asks “Should Veterans Be Banned From UCCS?” They explain, “Many veterans openly mock the ideas of diversity and safe spaces for vulnerable members of society - the LGBTQQI2SAA community.” This isn’t a keyboard mashup, it’s a real thing. The article goes on further to make its case for banning veterans, saying the military is a white supremacist organization and veterans are typically right-wing extremists. 

Black and Latino student groups at the University of Florida recently protested a plan to house their organizations in one building, saying it would erase and marginalize their black and brown bodies and their cultures at the predominantly white institution. The university recently published a blueprint to build a U-shaped building that would house both the Institute of Black Culture and the Institute of Hispanic-Latino Culture. The two groups would each get their own wing of the building and simply share a walkway and elevator. But members of the Institute of Black Culture and the Institute of Hispanic-Latino Culture expressed fury at the plan. “Combining IBC and La Casita is not only working to erase the histories of the black and Latinx communities at UF, but also to further disregard the needs and concerns of students of color within a predominantly white institution,” one of the students explained. 

As Stephen King’s ‘It’ gets released today, one Boston University lecturer, Regina Hansen, has suggested a different storyline for the audience to focus on: the dominance of straight, white masculinity that pervades the tale. In her published article, Hansen delves into on-screen depictions of King’s work, as she argues that his “white male underdog characters” achieve their heroic qualities “through the marginalisation of female characters, black characters, gay characters and characters with disabilities.�� She adds the inclusion of mostly Caucasian, heterosexual, and non-physically disabled protagonists “can be vexing, especially for non-white, female or queer people” and it also “fails to challenge traditional concepts of hegemonic masculinity.”

The Society for Social Studies of Science wants English to stop being considered ‘the common language’ as it "send a message of insulation and parochialism to the world" as “xenophobia and nationalism are on the rise.” “While English has become favored in communications and networking across the globe, it is the official language of just a handful of countries, most prominently the United States of America and the United Kingdom, and the current policies of these two countries send a message of explicitly threatening the importance of human difference.”

Students at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst are in an uproar after a previously “gender-inclusive” bathroom was re-designated as female. Director of Residence Education Jean MacKimmie explained in an email prior to the decision that the school was lawfully required to make the change as the state’s plumbing code requires that all multi-stall bathrooms be designated as either male or female. MacKimmie also explained 135 other campus bathrooms and 122 residence hall restrooms have been designated as genderless. Students were still outraged and have launched a campaign to protest the decision, attempting to be relentless against those behind the change. One sassy little trooper, Ethan Gourlay, plans to continue to break the rules and enter the female bathroom. “Having to choose between men’s and women’s rooms is oppressive and uncomfortable. I intend to use both because gender is a lie.”

The Novo Foundation, an organization focused on women, recently awarded the City College of New York $1.2 million for a program to help "women of color" not become engineers, scientists or anything worthy, but to be "activist scholars." The program promises to “train young women of color from both immigrant and U.S. based minority communities” with the goal to “build stronger activist movements.” While organizers of the program insist that it "does not discriminate on race or gender," they struggle to clarify how exactly a program exclusively for "women of color," does not discriminate against race or gender.

Being asked your last name is offensive these days, according to George Mason University. Teachers were told to avoid using the term “last name” along with a slew of other phrases, such as “freshman” and “it is easy to imagine.” The guide also advised to include a diversity statement in their syllabi and ask students for the pronoun that “agrees with their gender identity and expression.” It also urged to ensure their syllabi are “written in non-sexist, gender-inclusive terms,” suggesting to replace ‘mankind’ with ‘humankind’ and ‘freshman’ with ‘first-year student,’ and to avoid Eurocentrism, use ‘family name’ rather than ‘last name.’ Another term deemed as excluding others was “everyone knows,” as it may exclude those who indeed don’t know. 

A University of Tampa professor suggested that Texans deserve the fallout from Hurricane Harvey because of their support for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. “I don’t believe in instant Karma but this kinda feels like it for Texas,” Professor Ken Storey wrote. “Hopefully this will help them realize the GOP doesn’t care about them.” One of Storey’s followers responded to the tweet by noting that there are “lots of good people in Texas,” which he replies “Well, the good people there need to do more to stop the evil their state pushes. I’m only blaming those who support the GOP there.” He later goes on to say Trump voters in Florida deserve the same fate. 

Meanwhile, more than thirty professors from Harvard and other universities were arrested yesterday after blocking traffic during a street protest in support of DACA. 

[aliceviceroy]

There’s a moment I keep returning to, from the first episode of the new season of Fargo. There’s a triple homicide at a 24-hour diner, and Minnesota state trooper Lou Solverson responds to the crime. A truck driver meets him in the parking lot, and they walk toward one of the victims: a waitress who tried to flee the scene only to be gunned down in the cold expanse of a Minnesota night.

“I left my rig there, I hope that’s OK,” the truck driver says, motioning to the 18-wheeler behind him, at the edge of the lot.

Solverson says nothing, but keeps eyeing the victim in the snow.

“I’m the one that called it in, see?” the driver continues. “Stopped for waffles. With the blueberries -- they come frozen this time of year, I know, but…”

Solverson pinches the corner of a large jacket draped over the waitress, picks it up and peeks underneath.

“I put my coat on her. It seemed only right.”

I love this scene because even though it’s meant to drive the narrative ahead, its obsessive attention to the just-right details also works outside the episode, revealing, in just a few words, the very essence of my people: the corn-eating flatlanders of The Great Middle. There’s the deferential greeting (“I left my rig there, I hope that’s OK.”); the need to fill all moments, even grisly ones, with small talk (“Stopped for waffles...”); and at last the embarrassment and shame over anything unseemly and the compulsion to cloak it (“I put my coat on her. It seemed only right.”).

What Fargo nails, in other words, is Midwestern Nice, the idiosyncrasies of a steadfast populace that appear banal and maybe even bovine to the uninitiated, but in truth constitute the most sincere, malicious, enriching, and suffocating set of behaviors found in the English-speaking world. As a good son of the Upper Plains, I’ll tell you what I mean.  

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What is Midwestern Nice?

We should start with what it isn’t. It isn’t the feigned kindness of the South, where people sipping bourbons at cocktail hour reserve the right to boot-heel you when you turn your back. It’s not the abrasive honesty of the Northeast, where everyone speaks, as Don DeLillo once put it, in the same nasally, knowing cynicism. It is genuine, Midwestern Nice.

I grew up in Iowa but I’ve heard the same line repeated of people from Minnesota or Wisconsin or Nebraska, and always with the unfussy grammar of the plain-spoken: “The Midwest is a great place to be from.” It is nurturing and civic-minded, maybe due to the Scandinavian and German Protestants who settled the land, living by the Golden Rule, and its history is a continuity of compassion: the territory of Iowa in the Antebellum Era refusing to segregate schools, an idea that even Ulysses S. Grant called radical; a president from Illinois who ended slavery; Wisconsin laborers, in the early 20th century, receiving workers' compensation and unemployment insurance decades ahead of the New Deal; Iowa, Minnesota, and Illinois, in the modern age, allowing gay marriage years before the progressive movements in New York and California could do the same. The Midwest takes pride in all this; it would just rather not talk about it, you see, because that would be boasting, and boasting is not nice.  

That humility permeates everything, helping to create the most remarkable facet of Midwestern Nice: the restraint from speaking ill of others, even if others should probably be ill-spoken of. I remember sitting at my grandmother’s table, in the hour before supper on a summer afternoon, watching her read the newspaper. I must have been 10 or so, in the last years before I learned to fully appreciate her -- a woman who grew up in the Depression, survived TB, raised six daughters alongside her farming husband, collected eggs from the chicken coop every morning, and read voraciously each night. She was always cheerful, which isn’t remarkable in the Midwest, but it is worth mentioning because reading one article that afternoon, I remember her eyes narrowing and her lips pursing themselves into an ugly knot that I never saw. She was upset, so upset that she soon read aloud that there had been, if memory serves, a murder in a nearby town. Police had arrested a suspect. She walked over to a dining room window and seemed to almost shake; she occasionally shopped in the town. Staring out at the bright afternoon, she looked in a trance, and even I could see the thoughts racing through her mind. But she just turned back to the dining room, and the one thing she said she half-muttered to the floor, in that flattened-vowel lilt of hers:

“And on a day like this.”

I scoffed, and for a while the afternoon stayed with me, as one more example of Grandma’s earnest, almost Old World simplicity. But as I got older I began to see it differently. Her reaction was about mastering fear, about stoicism and restraint, about not saying something caustic simply because you can, even if it’s about a person who has literally just murdered someone. Grandma’s six words, I discovered, were an anthem of sorts for Midwestern Nice.

And yet...

Of course, the duty to be nice and consider the feelings of others has a downside: the whole universe of things we have to repress. As a kid, there was an almost tactile pressure hovering around the Christmases, Thanksgivings, and birthday parties at Grandma’s house -- so much stuff we maybe wanted to say but couldn’t, even though we were family. The tension beneath the vanilla chitchat exhausted me, and I often left her home relieved that I could relax and be myself.

Here again, though, I was wrong, or at least only half right, and as an adult I discovered the fun of old-fashioned Midwestern innuendo: the way my aunts, say, could achieve the perfect degree of half-smile when extending their barely dead-toned goodbyes to my sister’s boyfriend, which told her how very much they disliked him. In fact, people from outside the Plains think they can mimic us by elongating some O's, but in truth we communicate far more in what we half-say, or fail to say entirely. To live in the Midwest is to experience two realities: the first, all sunshine and bland pleasantries among other potluck-suppering churchgoers; the other, a red-lit underworld where people relay vulgarities through the learned second language of euphemism, eye rolls and loaded silence.

We are the alpha and omega of passive-aggressiveness. It is, like the corn we plant, our contribution to society, and our art. In his hilarious book, The Midwest: God’s Gift to Planet Earth!, Mike Draper, a Des Moines-based retailer who writes under his company’s pseudonym, Raygun, shows how no form of passive-aggression is as finely honed as our own:

"The Northeast Jewish mother takes the most direct approach to her passive aggressiveness: 'Oh, you’re going out tonight, even though you’re only home three nights from school? No, I understand, you’re Mr. Popular. So if you want to leave your poor mother, that’s fine…'"

"The Southern Baptist mother brings Jesus in for backup: 'Going out tonight with those boys? Do you really think that’s what an upstanding young Christian man should be seen doing?...'”

"A Midwestern mom plays it very passive: 'Going out? You sure?'”

Every Midwestern mother is like this. During my junior year of college I decided to grow my hair out. When I called my mom with the news, she said, simply, “Oh.” But the word carried a lot of tones, a note of surprise and then a second beat, which sustained the first while she parsed the news, followed at last by a slight dip and then a leveling out in a lower register, so the "Oh" ended in more a statement than a question: Ooouuwwaah. That one word showed how she both processed my decision and rendered her verdict on it. She was not pleased with me. And she didn’t say anything else.

Two things explain that kind of subtlety. The first is a guilt over our lame attempts at bluntness; even our passivity pains us. Midwesterners never want to be malicious, and so we swallow our great loogies of venom, until the whole viscous thing gags us and forces from our lips, like a reflex, tiny spittles of displeasure, whose trajectory we struggle to control. I saw this most recently when Jonathan Franzen, a product of St. Louis’ suburbs, was asked how Midwestern virtues shape his life and writing. Skip ahead to roughly 3:15 and watch till the end:

The dramatic silences, false starts, and in particular the “Midwestern values” repetition: oh my God does Franzen despise these questions. But the good Missouri boy never says that -- can’t bring himself to, even 30 years after he left St. Louis. Instead he sputters through a state of near verbal paralysis until he finally lands on something that seems bland, but is actually loaded: “It’s no different than anywhere else,” he says. “And yet we all feel that there is something there.” And then, mercifully, the video ends.

Which leads us to the terrible beauty of Midwestern Rage

The thoughts about how our thoughts will be perceived lead me to the second point about our repressed anger: the refinement of its eventual expression. Not for us, the gauche heavy-handedness of Long Island mothers. No, our patois is about saying only what is necessary, and actually even less than that. The Midwestern dialect is so subtle that people not immersed in it for decades can’t hear it. I’ve lived outside Iowa for 12 years now, and two weeks ago, though I felt guilty as I said it, I insulted one of my Connecticut neighbors. I got tired of her preening about her oh-so unique life and job, and I told her -- again, against my better judgment -- that not everyone can make it as a snowflake. She thanked me for the kind words.

This happens a lot, which is ironic because the people who miss the subtlety often consider themselves far sharper than big, dull, flown-over pig-eaters like me. In his book, Draper describes how the Midwestern phone etiquette of, “Well, I better let you go,” a euphemism for “Leave me alone now,” is consistently misread by people outside the region as a way to beg more time out of the conversation. David Letterman, a gap-toothed kid from Indiana, dined out for years on a post-modern comedy that mocked comedy itself, but only became famous when East Coasters picked up on the joke.

Hollywood, it almost goes without saying, almost always misses the duplicity built into our pleasantries and the guilt we feel over our ever-so-slight slights. The one movie that captures it all, of course, is Fargo -- and a single scene in particular, with an emotional range so full and yet so very understated that even the late, great Chicagoans Siskel and Ebert questioned why the Coen brothers included it, though they loved it anyway.

I just never get tired of it. The nervous earnestness of “Ya, you know it's a Radisson so it's pretty good.” How Sheriff Gunderson’s brief moment of displeasure -- “Why don’t you sit over there? I'd prefer that” -- is apologized for in code: “Just so I can see ya, ya know. Don't have to turn my neck.” And then as Mike Yanagita begins to atone explicitly, her “Nooo, noo, that’s fine,” shows that it is anything but.

I could go on -- the way Gunderson reveals her shock over Linda’s death and then immediately masks it because the waitress is there; or the breakdown of Mike Yanagita itself, a gross violation of the tenets of Midwestern Nice, which makes the scene both hilarious and mortifyingly hard to watch. But the point is, with that scene, the Coen brothers, products of the Twin Cities, give away the Midwest’s secret -- something President Obama, of Kansas and Chicago, knows, too, and something that Johnny Carson, of Norfolk, Nebraska, knew every night the stage lights shone on him, and what David Foster Wallace, of Urbana, Illinois, knew in each of his “maximalist” stories, capturing all the conflicting truths of any moment, and then the infinite iterations beyond that: we may seem slow, or at least intellectually sated, but we live on a heightened plane of consciousness that few of you can comprehend. To be from here is, quite simply, to read a room better than fucking anyone.  

And also, yes, to be nice.

[joannrochaus]

President to announce $8 billion for border wall

News broke yesterday afternoon that President Trump will sign a border security compromise package that averts another government shutdown. However, this package does not include all the funds Mr. Trump has requested for continued construction of a barrier along our southern border.

ABC News reports that the president plans to announce today his intention to spend about $8 billion on the border wall with a mix of spending from congressional allocations, executive action, and an emergency declaration.

As a nonpartisan ministry, my purpose is not to offer a personal opinion on the political issues involved here. Nor is it to focus on the border wall itself, a subject I addressed recently.

Rather, my goal today is to consider the divisive response to these developments.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders: “The president is once again delivering on his promise to build the wall, protect the border, and secure our great country.”

Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer responded: “Declaring a national emergency would be a lawless act, a gross abuse of the power of the presidency and a desperate attempt to distract from the fact that President Trump broke his core promise to have Mexico pay for his wall.”

Being Baptist and working for IBM

There are clearly significant debates dividing Americans today. Many of us are fundamentally opposed on foundational issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and euthanasia.

As I wrote recently, media bias also plays a part in the escalating divisions of our day. And the deterioration of traditional religious and institutional affiliations has dissolved valuable cords of community.

There was a time when people spent their lives being Baptist or Catholic and working for IBM or General Motors. As denominational commitment and corporate loyalty have declined, a larger sense of community has decayed with them.

But there’s another foundational issue at work, one we don’t recognize as easily but which affects us all.

Tribes and “anti-tribes”

The US Census Bureau reports that in 1910, 28 percent of Americans lived in metropolitan areas; in 2000, 80 percent of us lived in cities. In 1900, the most common American household contained seven or more people; in 2000, it contained two people.

Brown University’s Marc Dunkelman notes that communities and townships have been replaced with networks in which we keep in touch only with our closest friends and families. There was a time when we interacted with our neighbors, whether we agreed with them or not. Now we choose community based on commonality.

Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse agrees. In Them: Why We Hate Each Other–And How to Heal, he notes that “cultural fragmentation, technological developments, and economic upheaval have undermined the feeling of togetherness that Americans shared just a few short decades ago.”

Sasse points to a time when “people walked away from political conversations without thinking ill of each other, because that kind of talk happened in the context of actual relationships centered around local things that were a lot more important” (his emphasis). He believes that the partisan rancor of our day has escalated “because the local, human relationships that anchored political talk have shriveled up. Alienated from each other, and uprooted from places we can call home, we’re reduced to shrieking” (his emphasis).

As a result, “anti-tribes” have risen up to fill the void left by the collapse of “the natural, local, embodied, healthy tribes people have traditionally known.” “Anti-tribes” are united not by their commitment to the common good but by their common enemy.

Sasse calls us to reject “anti-tribes,” elevate civic values above political divisions, and invest in local, diverse community. He concludes: “It’s not legislation we’re lacking; it’s the tight bonds that give our lives meaning, happiness, and hope. It’s the habits of heart and mind that make us neighbors and friends.”

Unity, not uniformity

In such a divided and chaotic day, Christianity offers something unique and vital.

The church is consistently pictured in Scripture as a community–a vine with many branches (John 15:1-8), a body with many members (1 Corinthians 12:27). But our community is based on unity, not uniformity.

Jesus’ first followers were a widely disparate group. They included those who collected taxes for the Roman Empire and zealots committed to its violent overthrow. Women, Gentiles, Samaritans, and former lepers and demoniacs were all part of his movement.

When Peter preached at Pentecost, people from fifteen different language groups heard the gospel (Acts 2:9-11). From its inception, the Christian movement united Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female (Galatians 3:28).

Our unity is found in Christ, not in particular cultures and agendas. The closer we move to Jesus, the closer we move to each other.

“God loves people because of who God is”

The more divisive our secular culture, the more essential our spiritual community. There is room at the cross for those who passionately support President Trump and those who bitterly oppose him. There is room for Democrats, Republicans, and independents. That’s because “God so loved the world” (John 3:16).

Such community starts with us. Do you know that you are welcome in God’s family no matter your past, present, or future? His love for you does not depend on you. There’s nothing you can do to make God love you any more or any less than he already does.

As Philip Yancey notes, “God loves people because of who God is, not because of who we are.”

Now that we know we are loved without condition, we are called to love others the same way. The more we disagree with someone, the more we need to love them. The alternative is a cycle of hatred and retribution that never ends but only escalates.

Mother Teresa: “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” If you love them, you have no desire to judge them.

Who especially needs such inclusive love from you today?

NOTE: In today’s chaotic culture, we are increasingly faced with faith-related questions that can be challenging and impossible to answer. In this week’s video from our YouTube series, “Biblical Insight to Tough Questions,” we tackle the question of whether or not we’re in the end times. Thanks for turning to Denison Forum to discern news differently and build a movement of culture-changing Christians.

The post President to announce $8 billion for border wall appeared first on Denison Forum.

source https://www.denisonforum.org/columns/daily-article/president-announce-8-billion-border-wall/ source https://denisonforum.tumblr.com/post/182823649702

[denisonforum]

President to announce $8 billion for border wall

News broke yesterday afternoon that President Trump will sign a border security compromise package that averts another government shutdown. However, this package does not include all the funds Mr. Trump has requested for continued construction of a barrier along our southern border.

ABC News reports that the president plans to announce today his intention to spend about $8 billion on the border wall with a mix of spending from congressional allocations, executive action, and an emergency declaration.

As a nonpartisan ministry, my purpose is not to offer a personal opinion on the political issues involved here. Nor is it to focus on the border wall itself, a subject I addressed recently.

Rather, my goal today is to consider the divisive response to these developments.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders: “The president is once again delivering on his promise to build the wall, protect the border, and secure our great country.”

Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer responded: “Declaring a national emergency would be a lawless act, a gross abuse of the power of the presidency and a desperate attempt to distract from the fact that President Trump broke his core promise to have Mexico pay for his wall.”

Being Baptist and working for IBM

There are clearly significant debates dividing Americans today. Many of us are fundamentally opposed on foundational issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and euthanasia.

As I wrote recently, media bias also plays a part in the escalating divisions of our day. And the deterioration of traditional religious and institutional affiliations has dissolved valuable cords of community.

There was a time when people spent their lives being Baptist or Catholic and working for IBM or General Motors. As denominational commitment and corporate loyalty have declined, a larger sense of community has decayed with them.

But there’s another foundational issue at work, one we don’t recognize as easily but which affects us all.

Tribes and “anti-tribes”

The US Census Bureau reports that in 1910, 28 percent of Americans lived in metropolitan areas; in 2000, 80 percent of us lived in cities. In 1900, the most common American household contained seven or more people; in 2000, it contained two people.

Brown University’s Marc Dunkelman notes that communities and townships have been replaced with networks in which we keep in touch only with our closest friends and families. There was a time when we interacted with our neighbors, whether we agreed with them or not. Now we choose community based on commonality.

Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse agrees. In Them: Why We Hate Each Other–And How to Heal, he notes that “cultural fragmentation, technological developments, and economic upheaval have undermined the feeling of togetherness that Americans shared just a few short decades ago.”

Sasse points to a time when “people walked away from political conversations without thinking ill of each other, because that kind of talk happened in the context of actual relationships centered around local things that were a lot more important” (his emphasis). He believes that the partisan rancor of our day has escalated “because the local, human relationships that anchored political talk have shriveled up. Alienated from each other, and uprooted from places we can call home, we’re reduced to shrieking” (his emphasis).

As a result, “anti-tribes” have risen up to fill the void left by the collapse of “the natural, local, embodied, healthy tribes people have traditionally known.” “Anti-tribes” are united not by their commitment to the common good but by their common enemy.

Sasse calls us to reject “anti-tribes,” elevate civic values above political divisions, and invest in local, diverse community. He concludes: “It’s not legislation we’re lacking; it’s the tight bonds that give our lives meaning, happiness, and hope. It’s the habits of heart and mind that make us neighbors and friends.”

Unity, not uniformity

In such a divided and chaotic day, Christianity offers something unique and vital.

The church is consistently pictured in Scripture as a community–a vine with many branches (John 15:1-8), a body with many members (1 Corinthians 12:27). But our community is based on unity, not uniformity.

Jesus’ first followers were a widely disparate group. They included those who collected taxes for the Roman Empire and zealots committed to its violent overthrow. Women, Gentiles, Samaritans, and former lepers and demoniacs were all part of his movement.

When Peter preached at Pentecost, people from fifteen different language groups heard the gospel (Acts 2:9-11). From its inception, the Christian movement united Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female (Galatians 3:28).

Our unity is found in Christ, not in particular cultures and agendas. The closer we move to Jesus, the closer we move to each other.

“God loves people because of who God is”

The more divisive our secular culture, the more essential our spiritual community. There is room at the cross for those who passionately support President Trump and those who bitterly oppose him. There is room for Democrats, Republicans, and independents. That’s because “God so loved the world” (John 3:16).

Such community starts with us. Do you know that you are welcome in God’s family no matter your past, present, or future? His love for you does not depend on you. There’s nothing you can do to make God love you any more or any less than he already does.

As Philip Yancey notes, “God loves people because of who God is, not because of who we are.”

Now that we know we are loved without condition, we are called to love others the same way. The more we disagree with someone, the more we need to love them. The alternative is a cycle of hatred and retribution that never ends but only escalates.

Mother Teresa: “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” If you love them, you have no desire to judge them.

Who especially needs such inclusive love from you today?

NOTE: In today’s chaotic culture, we are increasingly faced with faith-related questions that can be challenging and impossible to answer. In this week’s video from our YouTube series, “Biblical Insight to Tough Questions,” we tackle the question of whether or not we’re in the end times. Thanks for turning to Denison Forum to discern news differently and build a movement of culture-changing Christians.

The post President to announce $8 billion for border wall appeared first on Denison Forum.

source https://www.denisonforum.org/columns/daily-article/president-announce-8-billion-border-wall/