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Author St. John's Book Annie has a limp and is confined by her parents in a wheelchair. Her parents do not want anyone to see Annie's deformity and therefore allow Annie no freedom. Annie met Luke when she was 10 and he gave her a ride on his horse. She has loved him and he has loved her. But after the ride, and after her brother busted Luke's lip, Luke was forced to go away. Twenty years later Luke has returned to make something of himself and for Annie.... The Doctor's Wife How could she say yes? People like Ellie Parrish did not get proposals of marriage from someone like Dr. Caleb Chaney. Even if his offer was the answer to her prayers, a man as decent and kind as Caleb didn't deserve a woman whose past was a lie. Caleb Chaney could see that Ellie Parrish was a woman with a troubled soul. But he could also see a woman with a heart big enough to love his infant son as though she were his mother, and big enough to teach... The Tenderfoot Bride Widowed, pregnant and homeless, Linnean McConaughy thought she found happiness in a job as a cook and housekeeper on a Colorado ranch. However, to her employer, Will Tucker, she's simply not suited for the grueling work the job requires, even less so when he discovers she's pregnant. As Linnean proves herself time and time again he realizes he doesn't want to live without her and her child, but can Linnean see past Will's rough exterior and her own fear ... View these reviews in summary mode Cheryl St. John Message Board 6/28/2005 9:05:24 AM Talk about the novels, new and used books that St. John has written!

- Current Issue SIGN IN to access the Harper’s archive ALERT: Usernames and passwords from the old Harpers.org will no longer work. To create a new password and add or verify your email address, please sign in to customer care and select Email/Password Information. (To learn about the change, please read our FAQ.) Car bombs in Damascus killed more than 50 people in advance of nationwide Internet and telecommunications blackouts, attributed by many to President Bashar al-Assad’s administration, that crippled Syrians’ capacity to self-report on the country’s civil war. Hacker collective Anonymous attacked the websites of Syrian embassies, and the Syrian military relocated chemical-weapons stockpiles, prompting the United States to threaten intervention. In Hillah, Iraq, bombings at a roadside campsite for Shia pilgrims left at least 29 dead, and in Bahrain police fired teargas on protesters condemning Kim Kardashian’s visit to promote a new branch of her milkshake franchise. The United Nations held a day of solidarity with Palestinians, on which its general assembly voted 138–9 to recognize the state of Palestine. In response, Israel announced that it would build 3,000 new homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and would withhold more than $100 million in tax revenue raised for the Palestinian government, dealing what U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon called an “almost fatal blow” to the prospect of peace. The U.S. Navy was planning to reduce its reliance on dolphin labor, and an international coalition of researchers concluded that more than 4 trillion tons of ice in Greenland and Antarctica have melted in the past twenty years, causing the world’s sea level to rise by 11 millimeters. Iceland exported over two tons of ram penis to China, and North Korea’s state news agency reported the discovery of a unicorn lair in Pyongyang. President Barack Obama introduced a proposal to prevent the United States from falling over the “fiscal cliff.” The plan, which includes such measures as higher tax rates on wealthy citizens and a $400-billion cut to federal health programs, caused Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) to burst into laughter. “Right now, I would say we’re nowhere, period,” said House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), outside whose office nude activists protested potential cuts to HIV programs. “I think it’s important Congress acts now, I mean right now,” said Vice President Joe Biden at the opening day of the first Costco in Washington, D.C. “I’m looking for pies.” Obama and Mitt Romney met for the first time since the U.S. presidential election, over a luncheon of turkey chili at the White House. eBay pulled a listing for Obama in Pee Pee, an artwork by conservative television host Glenn Beck that features a bobblehead of the president purportedly submerged in Beck’s urine, and Bill Clinton disclosed that during his presidency he sent only two emails, one to troops in the Balkans and the other in response to a message sent from space by astronaut John Glenn. “We have gone almost a third of the way around the world in the time it has taken me to write this letter,” wrote Glenn. “The rest of the crew is waiting.” Scientists determined that lying increases the temperature of one’s nose, that having a lot of Facebook friends leads to anxiety, and that hyperparasitic wasps, which lay eggs in parasitic wasps that lay eggs in caterpillars, are sometimes parasitized by other hyperparasitic wasps. Germany moved to criminalize sex with animals, leading zoophilia lobbyist Michael Kiok, who lives with an Alsatian named Cessie, to threaten legal action. “We see animals as partners and not as a means of gratification,” said Kiok. “We don’t force them to do anything.” A Florida woman was arrested after she assaulted her boyfriend for climaxing first. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge[*] announced that they were expecting a royal baby, and a lexicographer published arguments that Robert Burchfield, a former Oxford English Dictionary editor popularly credited with overcoming the dictionary’s Anglocentrism during the 1970s and 1980s, had actually expunged thousands of English words with foreign origins. “If a word gets into the OED, it never leaves,” said the lexicographer. “If it becomes obsolete, we put a dagger beside it, but it never leaves.” The Associated Press eliminated homophobia from its stylebook, and four gay men filed suit against JONAH, a Jewish conversion-therapy office in Jersey City, New Jersey, for defrauding them of thousands of dollars spent on such allegedly curative techniques as visiting bathhouses and beating effigies of their mothers with a tennis racket. “Our therapy,” said JONAH’s co-director, “is very conventional.” Dear Harper’s Magazine, I am a fervent subscriber (if there can be such a thing) to your excellent magazine: we have nothing equivalent in England, and I am very grateful to you for being so challenging and thought-provoking. However, the English pedant in me is reeling at your otherwise excellent Harper’s Weekly in which you announce that “Prince WIlliam and Princess Kate” are having a baby. Yikes! They’re the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. She’s not Princess Kate, as she’s not a princess in her own right; she’s Princess William of Wales, otherwise known as the Duchess of Cambridge, until the Prince of Wales dies, when she’ll be the Princess of Wales, and not Kate, Princess of Wales. Sigh. I know I am fighting a long and hopeless battle. Even British journalists can’t get it right these days. Yours sincerely, and with much admiration for your continued superlative magazinistic efforts, More from Justin Stone: Years of consideration preceding the inclusion of the word “phat” in Random House’s 1996 Compact Unabridged Dictionary: Scientists created crash helmets that stink when cracked and fruit flies to whom blue light smells delicious. In Belize, a construction company bulldozed a 2,300-year-old Mayan temple to make road fill. Subscribe to the Weekly Review newsletter. Don’t worry, we won’t sell your email address! “This is the heart of the magic factory, the place where medicine is infused with the miracles of science, and I’ve come to see how it’s done.”

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YA COLFER, E. When a twelve-year-old evil genius tries to restore his family fortune by capturing a fairy and demanding a ransom in gold, the fairies fight back with magic, technology, and a particularly nasty troll. YA WOOD, M. On a bike trip in Ireland trying to recover from a broken heart, sixteen-year-old Morgan is transformed, not only by the others on the tour, but by her visits to the past, where she is believed to be the legendary half-goddess Morganne, sent to help end a faery curse. YA FALLON, L. Instantly drawn to a mysterious, alluring boy in her class, teenaged Megan, an American living in Ireland, discovers that they are linked by a supernatural destiny that gives them powers Megan never knew she possessed. YA THOMPSON, K. Bobby lives a reckless life smoking, drinking, and stealing cars in Dublin. So his mother moves the family to the country. But Bobby suspects their cottage might not be as quaint as it seems. And spooky details of the history of their little cottage gradually turn Bobby into a detective of night creatures real and imagined. YA DOWD, S. Coolbar, Ireland, is a village of secrets and Shell, caretaker to her younger brother and sister after the death of their mother and with the absence of their father, is not about to reveal hers until suspicion falls on the wrong person. YA THOMPSON, K. Irish teenager JJ Liddy discovers that time is leaking from his world into Tir na nOg, the land of the fairies, and when he attempts to stop the leak he finds out a lot about his family history, the music that he loves, and a crime his great-grandfather may or may not have committed. YA FOLEY, J. It’s 1993, and Generation X pulses to the beat of Kurt Cobain and the grunge movement. Sixteen-year-old Maggie Lynch is uprooted from big-city Chicago to a windswept town on the Irish Sea. Surviving on care packages of Spin magazine and Twizzlers from her rocker uncle Kevin, she wonders if she’ll ever find her place in this new world. When first love and sudden death simultaneously strike, a naive but determined Maggie embarks on a forbidden pilgrimage that will take her to a seedy part of Dublin and on to a life-altering night in Rome to fulfill a dying wish. Through it all, Maggie discovers an untapped inner strength to do the most difficult but rewarding thing of all– live. YA LENNON, T. Neil Byrne, a teenager in Dublin, Ireland, in the 1990s, comes to terms with the fact that he is gay and seeks acceptance from his friends and family. YA MELLING, O. Two teenage cousins, one Irish, the other from the United States, set out to find a magic doorway to the Faraway Country, where humans must bow to the little people. YA SF MCKINTY, A. Thirteen-year-old Jamie is overjoyed when a bequest sends him and his mother to live on an Irish island, where he and his newfound friend Ramsay travel back in time to help a young girl save her people from certain death. YA DOYLE, R. Mary O’Hara is a sharp and cheeky twelve-year-old Dublin schoolgirl who is bravely facing the fact that her beloved Gran is dying. But Gran can’t let go of life, and when a mysterious young woman turns up in Mary’s street with a message for her Gran, Mary gets pulled into an unlikely adventure. YA NAPOLI, D. Fifteen-year-old Melkorka, an Irish princess, is kidnapped by Russian slave traders and not only learns how to survive but to challenge some of the brutality of her captors, who are fascinated by her apparent muteness and the possibility that she is enchanted. YA KIERNAN, C. After their nan accidentally burns their home down, twin brothers Pat and Dom must move with their parents and baby sister to the seaside cottage they’ve summered in, now made desolate by the winter wind. Itʹs there that the ghost appears, a strange boy who cries black tears and fears a bad man, a soldier, who is chasing him. Soon Dom has become not Dom, and Pat can sense that his brother is going to die while their overwhelmed parents can’t even see whatʹs happening. Isolated and terrified, Pat needs to keep his brother’s cover while figuring out how to save him, drawing clues from his own dreams and Nan’s long ago memories, confronting a mystery that lies between this world and the next, within the Grey. Chloe: If I Stay by Gayle Forman Katie: The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien Movies and TV Reese: Duck Dynasty Chloe: Earth to Echo Matt: Black Ops (XBOX 360) Will: Oblivion (XBOX 360) Reese: The Escapists (PC game) Pick up one of this action-packed novels to get your heart racing again! YA MARSDEN, J. When Ellie and her friends go camping, they have no idea they’re leaving their old lives behind forever. Despite a less-than-tragic food shortage and a secret crush or two, everything goes as planned. But a week later, they return home to find their houses empty and their pets starving. Something has gone wrong–horribly wrong. Before long, they realize the country has been invaded, and the entire town has been captured–including their families and all their friends. Ellie and the other survivors face an impossible decision: They can flee for the mountains or surrender. Or they can fight. YA GEBHART, R. Thirteen-year-old Tyson sneaks off with his roughneck, but ill, grandpa to go on his first elk hunt, amid reports of a stalking man-eating grizzly. YA STIEFVATER, M. Nineteen-year-old returning champion Sean Kendrick competes against Puck Connolly, the first girl ever to ride in the annual Scorpio Races, both trying to keep hold of their dangerous water horses long enough to make it to the finish line. YA LAYBOURNE, E. Trapped inside a chain superstore by an apocalyptic sequence of natural and human disasters, six high school kids from various popular and unpopular social groups struggle for survival while protecting a group of younger children. YA COLFER, E. In Victorian London, Albert Garrick, an assassin-for-hire, and his reluctant young apprentice, Riley, are transported via wormhole to modern London, where Riley teams up with a young FBI agent to stop Garrick from returning to his own time and using his newly acquired scientific knowledge and power to change the world forever. YA MY LANE, A. In 1868, with his army officer father suddenly posted to India, and his mother mysteriously “unwell,” fourteen-year-old Sherlock Holmes is sent to stay with his eccentric uncle and aunt in their vast house in Hampshire, where he uncovers his first murder and a diabolical villain. YA SMITH, R. A fourteen-year-old boy attempts to be the youngest person to reach the top of Mount Everest. YA SF LORE, P. In rural Ohio, friendships and a beautiful girl prove distracting to a fifteen-year-old who has hidden on Earth for ten years waiting to develop the Legacies, or powers, he will need to rejoin the other six surviving Garde members and fight the Mogadorians who destroyed their planet, Lorien. YA PATTERSON, J. After the mutant Erasers abduct the youngest member of their group, the “bird kids,” who are the result of genetic experimentation, take off in pursuit and find themselves struggling to understand their own origins and purpose. YA HOROWITZ, A. After the death of the uncle who had been his guardian, fourteen-year-old Alex Rider is coerced to continue his uncle’s dangerous work for Britain’s intelligence agency, MI6. YA DEUKER, C. Living with his alcoholic father on a broken-down sailboat on Puget Sound has been hard on seventeen-year-old Chance Taylor, but when his love of running leads to a high-paying job, he quickly learns that the money is not worth the risk. YA CARTER, A. A group of teenagers uses their combined talents to re-steal several priceless paintings and save fifteen-year-old Kat Bishop’s father, himself an international art thief, from a vengeful collector. YA SF MULLIN, M After the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano destroys his city and its surroundings, fifteen-year-old Alex must journey from Cedar Falls, Iowa, to Illinois to find his parents and sister, trying to survive in a transformed landscape and a new society in which all the old rules of living have vanished. YA CLINE, E. In the year 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the virtual utopia known as the Oasis. Wade’s devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world’s digital confines – puzzles that are based on their creator’s obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them. But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade’s going to survive, he’ll have to win – and confront the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape. YA MY RITTER, W. Newly arrived in 1892 New England, Abigail Rook becomes assistant to R.F. Jackaby, an investigator of the unexplained with the ability to see supernatural beings, and she helps him delve into a case of serial murder which, Jackaby is convinced, is due to a nonhuman creature. YA SF MORGAN, K. When 100 juvenile delinquents are sent on a mission to recolonize Earth, they get a second chance at freedom, friendship, and love, as they fight to survive in a dangerous new world. YA CARRIGER, G. In an alternate England of 1851, spirited fourteen-year-old Sophronia is enrolled in a finishing school where, she is surprised to learn, lessons include not only the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but also diversion, deceit, and espionage. YA SF SANDERSON, B. At age eight, David watched as his father was killed by an Epic, a human with superhuman powers, and now, ten years later, he joins the Reckoners–the only people who are trying to kill the Epics and end their tyranny. YA SF YANCEY, R. Cassie Sullivan, the survivor of an alien invasion, must rescue her young brother from the enemy with help from a boy who may be one of them. YA SF CHARBONNEAU, J. Sixteen-year-old Malencia (Cia) Vale is chosen to participate in The Testing to attend the University; however, Cia is fearful when she figures out her friends who do not pass The Testing are disappearing. YA SF GRANT, M. In the near future, the conjoined Armstrong twins, under the guise of the Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation, plot to create their own version of utopia using nanobots, while a guerilla group known as BZRK develops a DNA-based biot that can stop bots, but at risk of the host’s brain. Yesterday morning the Youth Media Awards were held at the American Library’s Association’s Midwinter Conference. These awards are held annually and recognize some of the best books written for the year for kids and teens. Check out the recording of the awards ceremony and then take a look at the winning Teen books below! Given for excellence in literature written for young adults. Four Printz Honor Books also were named: This One Summer also was named a Caldecott Honor Book: the Randolph Caldecott Medal is for the most distinguished American picture book for children. Given for a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens. Four other books were finalists for the award: Four other books were finalists for the award: The Family Romanov was also named a Robert F. Sibert Informational Honor Book, for most distinguished informational book for children and teens: These books, recommended for ages 12-18, meet the criteria of both quality literature and appeal to teens, while comprising a wide range of genres, styles and subjects. Click here to find the full list! Top Ten list from the final selections: The Crossover by Kwame Alexander The Carnival at Bray by Jessie Ann Foley Vango by Timothee de Fombelle The Story of Owen Dragonslayer of Trondheim by E.K. Johnston The Gospel of Winter by Brendan Kiely We Were Liars by e. lockhart The Young Elites by Marie Lu I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson Jackaby by William Ritter Noggin by John Corey Whaley Coretta Scott King Honor Book: The Coretta Scott Kind Book Award recognizes an African American author and illustrator of outstanding books for children and young adults: John Steptoe New Talent Author Award: The John Steptoe New Talent Award recognizes new talent and is determined by the Coretta Scott King Task Force: Schneider Family Book Award’s Teen Selection: for books that embody an artistic expression of the disability experience: Stonewall Honor Books: given annually to English-language children’s and young adult books of exceptional merit relating to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender experience: Check out the books, movies, TV shows, and music that come highly recommended by our Teen Advisory Board Members! Will: 1984 by George Orwell Veronika: Empty by Suzanne Weyn Ashley: Insurgent by Veronica Roth Movies & TV Will: Once Upon a Time Julia: Law & Order Chloe: If I Stay Barbara: FourFiveSeconds by Rhianna, Kanye, and Paul McCartney; I Need You by M83 Kelsey: Symphony Soldier by The Cab, Pirates of the Caribbean film scores by Hans Zimmer Julia: The Big Bang by Rock Mafia Katie: The Heart Wants What it Wants and My Dilemma 2.0 by Selena Gomez; Sledgehammer by Fifth Harmony; Cry Me a River by Justin Timberlake; Something Big by Shawn Mendes

Welcome Comrades to the 25th Edition of the ConquerClub Dispatch! Well it's been 1 year since the newsletter started and 25 editions of the newsletter have been pumped out. It's been interesting watching the newsletter evolve as it has, we started with 5 or 6 people, and now we have more than 20 people and going stronger than ever before. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to the newsletter in the past year and thanks to all who will contribute this year, the newsletter would not be where it is today without your commitment and dedication. Also i'd like to thank our readers, you are the reason we keep publishing the newsletter so thanks for your support over the past year. Tell all your friends to subscribe! Editor in Chief Welcome to the 25th edition of this newsletter and it is another jam packed edition for the mess hall. This fortnight we are providing you with have the latest hot topics with ARMY of GOD , an analysis of the assault odds calculator plugin by , more about the nuclear spoils feature by and some valentines day advice, CC style from . If that isn't enough, we also have an interview with everyones favourite off-topic poster , another tale from the elf and a story for all those who have suffered from bad dice by . Hope you enjoy it! Nagerous Hot Topics by ARMY of GOD Hot Topics: 1. Huzzah! The longest thread, thread is FINALLY the longest thread on Conquer Club! 2. Qwert is advertising for some advertising! 3. Hurry! Some people think "New Moon" is the best movie of 2009! 4. Congrats to myself for advertising the General Congratulations thread! 5. Talking about McGill University's social usergroup in the Newsletter was invented by Army of GOD on February 8th, 2010. Plug-ins and Addons: Assault Odds by Minister Masket So you've come round to the fact that you're not being cheated by the dice. Excellent. Now you want to get down to the business of winning all those games you joined. Unfortunately, the luck factor means you can't win every game, but there are things you can do to increase your chances. Take the " Assault Odds" calculator for example. Now before I start (and if you're interested), do open up the link at the bottom in a new tab or window, because - like the Dice Analyser - it's fairly visual based, so you'll understand the description better if you're looking at the thing. Done? Good. For starters, ignore everything but the top three rows. This is the "Quick Calculator" part, and it very handily calculates the odds of success against your opponent(s), as opposed to you doing a quick number-crunch in your head and then subsequentially wondering where it all went wrong. Take the example already there on the calculator. An attacking army of 5 against a defending one of 3 has a 64.2% chance of success. The calculator automatically saves your entries to save you typing them out again, and if you need more, you can click the "Add Calc" button just underneath to add more blank rows. You even get a grand total percentage of winning all the battles you add in. Now what is that comma doing seperating the 8 and the 4 in the second row? Well that's how you add armies from different territories to the calculation, and it works with defenders too. Below this we have the "Pathfinder" section. Whereas the QC works best for single battles, the Pathfinder calculates your odds of successfully attacking a sequence of territories in the same turn. So firstly you choose the territory you're attacking from from the dropdown menu, then add your army number in brackets. Then you choose the valid bordering territory and add it's defenders. This one step will calculate the odds anyway, and you can add your next moves in the rows below. When you're done, you'll be presented with a total percentage of your chance of winning the lot. Finally, at the bottom we have the "Statistics" part. This will use your calculation from the QC part to tell you how many of your attackers are likely to survive, both in "minimum" and "exactly" columns. Don't get too attached to this part though. They are just numbers after all, not real soldiers. And that's it. For tips and the option to download this, here's the link I really hope you clicked on when I told you to: http://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=83451 A word of warning however. At the time of writing you can only use this if you are using either Firefox with Greasemonkey or Google Chrome. So if you use IE or another browser, you're buggered. Next time - Clickable Maps! Valentine's Day Advice CC Style by FoxMists Early last year a.sub started a thread in General Discussion to work on his pick up lines. (Don’t lie, we all know you were really just looking for tips!) I found this to be an interesting idea and delved into what I thought would be moderately amusing and at least give me a heads up for the real desperate sorts that need this sort of help. Well, I was wrong. I was so very wrong. It was not moderately amusing. It was bloody hilarious and as lame as a one legged rabbit (hey! Not that kind of leg, you pervert!). And you know, it’s that time of year! Valentine’s Day! So I now present to you some of the more memorable pickup lines I came across. ( This will also help you avoid certain… people… if you know what I mean) It turned out that some keywords (and names) were practically required usage. "Want to go back to my place and auto-assault?" AndyDufresne “Hi there, I'm KingHerpes Free.” Jpcloet (Honestly “freestyle” was probably the most common. So common that I couldn’t force myself to add them here… Seriously. Painful.) And then there were the creative sorts: “Map Edition Sweetie, I know you are wondering where our relation is headed, and I've had 8 Thoughts about it. I would like to enter your Forbidden City, but don't want to move too fast causing you to Duck and Cover. This may sound like Madness, but please let me Land, and Sea where it takes us. You have shown me a New World of romance, I used to always just Battle for a rack. We've already tried a manage a trois, so maybe we can Conquer 4 and listen to the Wales. And if you were my Spanish buddy, I would want to Rail you, ese. What? I've been too vulgar? Baby don't go! Okay, well I will CCU later...” sully800 (We are now taking donations for the “Hobbies 4 Sully” fund!) Some people were kinda cute with their lameness. This was much appreciated. “How would you like to travel world together? I was thinking maybe E2, S3 or A12, as they are all so beautiful this time of year.” Jpcloet “It'll be worth the 72 hour ban for the things I want to say and do to you.” GENERAL STONEHAM "Babe, I'm not like the other guys. I don't nuke all over myself." AndyDufresne “You're the rainbow in my spoils...” MrBenn “my cards arent the only things that are escalating right now ” a.sub And we can’t forget the ladies! Top two from the girls? “ whoops, sorry baby, was a slip of the finger on the button" clapper011 (We’re guessing she has heard this line before ) AND, “Hey big guy, if you're UP for it, come over here and show me how good you are at Escalating..” Robinette Well. You gotta love a girl that knows what she wants, huh? If y’all are into self-torture, are ridiculously bored, or just plain sadistic, jump over to the thread and share the wealth! Your lameness will be noted and appreciated by others just like you! A Newt's Tale by elfish_lad The Attack of the Clicky-Spiders A couple of months ago I wrote about wanting to expand my horizons from 1v1 Speed Crack (Lions, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My!) to team games and game variants. Some call them mutants. The game variants even. It's been an interesting couple of months. Here is an example: I am 8 unique wins away from my first freestyle medal. Which doesn't sound that hard... except that I really, really suck at freestyle and haven't gotten the hang of clickies. At all. Cause I suck. Especially on my laptop. With the small screen. And the stupid mouse pad. And the adrenaline kicks in and then I attack a neutral by mistake after deploying my troops 450 kilometers from where I intended and then I fort 3 senior citizens to their Retirement Villa on an island on the other side of the world, well away from any possible danger. At least with clickies I suck really, really quickly. The Elf's First Date But there was another interesting development recently - I was invited to join a clan. Here is how I think that transpired: I was in a late night speed dubs game with some random dude (another aspect of expanding my horizons) and we were getting smoked. Badly. You know those games. Nothing goes right. Oh, you can blame the dice or whatever, but you just know, deep down, at the back of your primordial cortex, no matter what you do, the fates are against you and soon that big dinosaur is going to be using your femur as a tooth pick. Or your primordial spouse is going to bash your head in with that special pointy rock you found. Either way. End of story. But then The Elf is smacked with the inspiration stick. It doesn't usually work that way. Usually I'm in charge of the stupid stick. That night, even after my random partner was removed from the field of battle, we hammered the other team back and won. Thrilling. Seriously. Here was the other team's response to our come-from-behind victory: "fuuuu...dge" It was brief but heart felt I'm sure. Right on suckers! Coming out of that game I think my random partner from that night figured I was good. And handed my name over to a clan leader looking for a good player. Instead they got me. The guy with the stupid stick. But since I didn't have any other invites to the prom I said sure. I hope they don't think I'm a cheap lay! 'Cause I'm not cheap. Kindergarten Zombies Now, this is no reflection on my clan-mates. At all. There are some great players in our clan, including our leader, but I would not be surprised if, in my brief tenure with them, I have recorded only a couple of wins in clan games. But as our clan has been rebuilding and adding a number of mid-ranked players like me here is what I think was happening in our first few games together: we were all reliving the first week of Kindergarten. Your mom drops you off. Another woman with those breast things is there but she doesn't even remotely smell like your mom. You cry for 25 minutes. You realize suddenly that you have just peed your pants. You punch another little boy in the head who just peed himself and won't stop crying. You take a nap. Eat some paint. And as Post My-Parents-Are-Never-Coming-Back Syndrome sets in, you sit on the carpet with 22 other traumatized youngsters, as if you are bit players in a "Dawn of the CC Dead" movie. Moaning, gnawing and drooling ensue. Then you break for lunch. I figure our clan will get better. We just need to eat more finger paint together. Not An Intergalactic Kegger?!?! And all of this leads me to my closing observation: there really are no short-cuts here at CC to being a good clan, or a good team, or a well rounded gamer. Just a lot of games and a lot of working things out. This was brought home to be by a partner in a dubs tournament recently. I made some initial moves and my partner sent me a very helpful PM afterward. In the message he/she laid out some different strategies critiquing some of my early moves. Pretty helpful stuff and in hindsight I realized that I should have seen this myself. But more importantly it was his/her closing words that really struck me: Five. Percent. When I first got here I would have figured that was nothing. After being in The Pit for six months now? Five Percent? Man. That is the world. doing it this way could increase your win % on this map by 5%. Huh. Maybe, just maybe, someday The Elf will give up the stupid stick for good! ~sees the skeptical stares~ Well. An Elf and dream can't he?!?! That's it for me. Off to eat some more finger paint! E. More Nukes by stahrgazer About those nukes... I mean, Nuclear Spoils. As players investigate the option, some find the setting disturbingly luck based, some find it requires strategy, and others are still choosing to avoid them as though they're afraid of radioactive fallout. For example, the Conqueror's Cup inter-clan tournament is disallowing nuclear spoils, the same as freestyle and speed settings have been disallowed for previous Clan Ladders. Please do not be confused; the Cup is not part of the Clan Ladder, although there exists a potential that the games will count in the ladder. But back to Nuclear Spoils and a few more facts. With this setting, it becomes more apparent that random deals cards like it does the dice: sometimes a terr comes in batches. Whatever terrs are on the map are part of the entire pool, so it is possible for one terr to show up several times in a game, and even possible for the same terr to show up in several or all players' hands; the odds are the same for any card at any time in the game, although I have yet to hear of one player getting the same card twice in one hand. Another interesting point about Nuclear Spoils is that the in-game statistics reveal more than the log will tell you immediately upon blasting an opponent (or oneself) off the map. The log will merely indicate that a territory was nuked, but the stats display immediately shows the number of territories, now reduced by one because of the nuke. The log will not indicate the terr-count change until the player takes the next turn. There are those who believe this is unfair, or untrue to the intention of the stats, which were placed, prior to the Nuclear Spoils setting, with the intention of revealing no more than the log will indicate. Now, the log may be behind the stats for as much as a full round (if you have unfortunately had to nuke yourself); but eventually the log will catch up to the stats display, indicating that the player who had 12 terrs at the start of his previous turn has 11 terrs at the start of the current turn. Is a one-round (maximum) difference enough to make you wish to change something? If so, you can visit the Nuclear Spoils thread and make your point known. I, on the other hand, believe this to be not much different than the ability to read an "owned" terr being cashed in a fog game; because of the +2 extra deploy, the log reveals information the ?? leaves in..errrr...question: which terrs does an opponent own? While the stats will display the terrcount, the stats do not indicate which terrs, but that bonus recipient lets one say, "Aha! Now I know where you are!" Granted, in that instance, the information is immediate upon the cash but.. well.. the stats info on nuclear spoils is equally immediate upon the cash. The stats were not intended to reveal more than the log; fog setting was intended to make only the number of terrs readable by the log. In both instances, cashing a card can reveal a little more information than was originally intended. And? So? To Nuke or not to Nuke, that is the question. Only you can answer it, for yourself. Bon Bombarding! The Invasion by Deathcomesrippin For those of us who have suffered through bad dice, this one's for you.... The Invasion Day 7, Dakar Blue looked out over the shoreline. For the last two days, he had been camped here, with five other blues, awaiting instructions. Africa had been secured a few days ago, and the borders set. Across the stretch of ocean, an entire army of red sat at Sao Paulo, unaware of the plans of the warlords who ran the Great Blue War Machine. On day 5, Blue had been a part of the final push to move Green out of the African mainland completely, although word was they had secured Australia, which could prove to be a thorn in their side for the rest of this damned war. His commanding officer, Blue, had mentioned something to the effect of Flaming going on in some chat between Red and Green. Blue Command was looking to capitalize on this, and hoped to be able to place small amounts of reinforcements on Dakar until the time was right. Then, if all went according to plan, there would be a large influx of six, possibly SEVEN, reinforcements, and the true assault on the bastion of Red would begin. A squawk came over the loudspeakers set up over camp, informing all of the troops that it was time to change the watch. Blue looked one last time towards the ocean, wondering what was in store for him in the next few days. Day 10, Dakar: invasion of Sao Paulo The rumble of the motor came from all around him, causing Blue to think for a moment he was in some sort of living hell. The sides of the plane reverberated with rattling of the stores of ammo, foodstuffs, and other such items, creating a cacophony of clanging and banging. Blue Sergeant stood tall, and told the men about him that this moment would be the turning point, the first of many defeats for their enemies across the water, Red. All told, there were 14 blues on board, a frightening army considering Red's defences was a paltry 6. They were caught completely off guard by this assault. Whispers ran through the ranks of Red being led by a n00b general, a Cook maybe. Blue Command, of course, would never verify those rumours, but a refusal to answer was good enough for the troops. Blue gathered his gear. The final light went off, and the rear door of the plane opened. Below them, there was a field of green, the jungles of South America flowing past. Sao Paulo was lit up like a gigantic casino, flood lights crowding the air searching for the first signs of the enemy incursion. Then, all of a sudden (or so it seemed to Blue), the city was below them, and the order was given. Without another thought, Blue leapt clear of the plane, and freefell into his glory. Combat Results (14 v 6)- RED VICTORIOUS 4, 3, 3 - 6, 4- 2 Blue losses (The screams of the dying will be a sound Blue always remembers…..) 2, 1, 1 - 4, 4- 2 Blue losses (“Dear god, more of them….WHY WON’T THEY JUST DIE?”) 5, 3, 3 - 3, 3- 1 Blue loss, 1 Red loss (“Finally, the turning point. I hope this is where it ends...”) 1, 1, 1 - 6, 2- 2 Blue losses (“Blue’s dead, and Blue, and I saw Blue go down earlier….”) 6, 6, 5 - 6, 5- 1 Blue loss, 1 Red loss (“FALL BACK!!! FALL BACK TO THE BEACH!!!”) 5, 5, 2 - 6, 6- 2 Blue losses (“Blue and Blue were killed in the retreat, sir. Final casualties are still coming in.”) Blue was covered in blue gore. All about him, the bodies of his comrades, blues he had known for his entire life, were scattered like so many dice across a game board. The few left had been lead back to the shore, where they awaited the rescue ship. The fighting had been fierce, but even with overwhelming numbers, It was a lost cause. Out of the 14 who had travelled with Blue, he saw only three and himself. Red, on the other hand, now had an equal number, having only lost two. The first thought for Blue was frustration. The frustration of knowing you had lost, and also, that it might be a loss that you might not come back from. Blue Command was compromised, their troops for the front and borders spent of this assault. Already Green had been making overtures into Europe, and Red was crawling across North America. A bullet snapped sand into Blues' face, waking him out of his daydreaming. He raised his weapon and returned fire, the small sandbar he was by providing meagre cover. The other blues all had the same forlorn look on their faces, like dogs which had lost their masters. Blue hoped his didn't look like that, too. More bullets flew past, and Blue realized Red was making a push. This was it, his final moment. Blue prepared himself, shook the cobwebs out of his head, and tensed his legs for a spring over the sandbar. As he lifted himself up, a blue grabbed his shoulder and pointed out over the ocean. The rescue ship was approaching, slowly yet surely. Day 14, Nairobi Blue stood aside four other blues, the last of his men. Blue Command had given up long ago, and there was talk from the others about going rogue, or "neutral" as it was called by some. Blue didn't think less of them for this. After the epic failure of the invasion of Sao Paulo, Red followed through with an assault that pushed aside the meagre defences left in place at Dakar. Slowly, Red pushed further into Africa, taking Cape Town and Johannesburg, then Cairo. Now, only one area stood, Nairobi. The last word heard from the Blue General was "Red’s Foed". To the east, in Dubai, a sizable army of Green camped, awaiting orders from their enigmatic leader. To the west, the deadly west, a large force of Red sat at Cairo, looking on with a bit of pity on what was left of the once great Blue Empire. Blue looked back at his men, and at the approaching horde. End game. During the last couple weeks of 2009, collected nominations for the Best Tournament of 2009 . After examining the list, 10 tournaments were chosen for a final vote. The Top 3 winners were all very close in the voting, with each officially 1 vote apart. Each winner has received a Contest Medal. The Winning Tournaments: 1.- (14 votes) Tournament: 2008 College Basketball Season Tournament Organizer: flexmaster33 Nominator: denominator Keywords for nomination: Fun, keeping players involved. 2.- (13 votes) Tournament: Around the World in 80 Days Tournament Organizer: stahrgazer Nominator: Lindax Keywords for nomination: Different concept with unknown team mates. 3.- (12 votes) Tournament: Battle for Supremacy Tournament Organizer: barterer2002 Nominator: amazzony Keywords for nomination: Huge tournament and well run. Congratulations to the winners and everyone who hosted a tournament in 2009. Hopefully there will be many exciting ones during 2010. This issue features a pop-quiz that pulled on 5 tournament organizers along with some of the tournaments currently taking sign-ups. Enjoy! Tournament Pop-Quiz by amazzony They have had their battles in numerous tournaments; now I decided to test their skill in a quiz. We have 5 participants who agreed to be part of the friendly battle: Tournament Legend [OP], unique tournament titan Optimus Prime [Bart], excellent Tournament Director barterer2002 [Lx], top tournament organizers/winners Lindax [HA] and HighlanderAttack [Blitz]. Don't take the results too seriously, it's just a fun quiz where I asked everybody to answer honestly and not use help of forums/friends. If it was done, stays on their conscience and following data is also added just for statistics (which is also considered the biggest lie by some) and not for serious conclusions. What I know is that HA answered me 3 minutes after opening his message, OP Blitzaholic maximum 10 minutes after opening it, Lx took about 25 minutes to answer, Bart maximum 30 minutes and Blitz a bit under 4 hours. These are the questions that I asked and in the brackets is the amount of points received for correct answer(s). Who is the Head Tournament Director? How many different tournament tags are currently used? Name Top 3 of Multiple Tournament Winners! [max. 3 - 1 for each name] Name Top 3 of Most Tournament Games Created! [max. 3 - 1 for each name] Name Top 3 of Most Tournaments Completed! [max. 3 - 1 for each name] Name Top 3 of Most Tournament Games Played! [max. 3 - 1 for each name] What type of tournaments have been organised the most besides Standard? What is the date (month+year) when first 2 tournaments were completed? What is the date (month+year) when most tournaments were completed? What was the number of tournament completed? [2 - 1 for date, 1 for number of tournaments] Here are the correct answers which are taken from Tournament Hall of Fame [HoF], this topic and Blitz's Tourney LOVERS - most games. Maximum points that can be collected is 18. Night Strike 11 or 3 (as I formed the question badly then there can be 2 answers to this questions: either 11 tags from HoF or 3 tags for joining games: to/tot/game) Blitzaholic, HighlanderAttack, killmanic barterer2002, JoJo123, Optimus Prime barterer2002, HighlanderAttack, Blitzaholic HighlanderAttack, acores2005, amazzony Doubles March 2006 November 2009; 99 (December 2009 is also counted correct because it was mentioned in Issue 23 of the Newsletter that most likely December will beat all previous months). Now to the most interesting part - how did the participants answer! Optimus Prime [6 points] Code: Select all (1) Night Strike (2) 11 (3) Blitzaholic... JOHNNYROCKET24... Godd (4) Optimus Prime... amazzony... Gilligan (5) barterer2002... Blitzaholic... (6) Gilligan... Godd... vykingsfan64 (7) 1 vs 1 (8) June 2006 (9) April 2009... 79 HighlanderAttack [9 points] Code: Select all (1) Night Strike (2) I am not sure what this is asking so I will say 2 (3) Blitzaholic, HighlanderAttack and killimanic (4) Gilligan, Barterer, HighlanderAttack (5) HighlanderAttack, acores2005, Gilligan-not sure of third place (6) HighlanderAttack, acores2005, Gilligan-not sure of third place (7) Assassin (8) 12/2006 (9) 12/2009 Lindax [10 points] Code: Select all (1) Night Strike (2) Not sure I understand the question, but I'll say: 6 (3) Blitzaholic, HighlanderAttack, killmanic (4) Barterer2002, HighlanderAttack, Blitzaholic (5) Barterer2002, HighlanderAttack, Blitzaholic (6) HighlanderAttack, Blitzaholic, JOHNNYROCKET (7) Doubles/Team (8) December, 2006 (9) January, 2010, 75 tournaments barterer2002 [13 points] Code: Select all (1) Night Strike (2) 3 (game, to and tot) (3) Blitz, Killmanic, Highlanderattack (4) Bart, OP and HA (5) Bart OP and HA (6) HA, killmanic, and diminjarstef (7) doubles (8) October 06 (9) November 09 99 tournaments Blitzaholic [13 points] Code: Select all (1) Night Strike (2) Not sure, maybe 10? (3) Blitzaholic, Highlanderattack, Killmanic (4) If there was a recent update I would guess Optimus Prime, Amazzony, Barterer2002 (5) If there was a recent update I would guess Highlanderattack, Barterer2002, Blitzaholic (6) Highlanderattack, Acores2005, Amazzony (7) Not sure, I would guess doubles (8) Hmmm, maybe around May 2006 for both. (9) December 2008 and 78 completed, however, I would guess somewhere in 2009, maybe the Fall of 2009 this was broken due to an explosion of tourneys created So, here they are - results! All participants did well and I want to thank everybody so much for being my guinea pigs! Currently Taking Sign-ups by superkeener Currently Taking Sign-ups Here is a list of tournaments that still have open spots. Click on the link to sign up or to find more information on the tournament. Haiti Benefit Tournament viewtopic.php?f=90&t=106575 Coordinator: Industrial Helix This tournament aims to raise awareness for the earthquake disaster in Haiti. All games are played on the Haiti map with 8-players in each match. The 8 winners of the first round will battle for the tournament trophy. European Timeline Bracket viewtopic.php?f=90&t=107850 Coordinator: kawe85 A big Doubles tournament that that includes the maps of: Imperium Romanum, Europe 1914, and WWII Europe Darin’s 30th Tournament viewtopic.php?f=90&t=107706 Coordinator: Darin44 Darin is celebrating his 30th tournament with style - a tournament with 10 terminator games in each round on random maps. Only open to premium players. Indoor Athletics viewtopic.php?f=90&t=108132 Coordinator: Tupence Inspired by the Indoor Athletics International Match, this 125-player tournament is almost full, so go grab your spot now. The tournament will use a variety of maps. Only open to premium players. Horseshoes and Hand Grenades viewtopic.php?f=90&t=107936 Coordinator: YoursFalsey This tournament will focus on the new Nuclear Spoils, but players will be faced with 1v1 matches, Doubles, Terminator, and Assassin. This tournament has many open spots, and is only open to premium players. Family Game Night Tournament viewtopic.php?f=90&t=108780 Coordinator: ask me2 A tournament that stays true to the theme of its name. Maps featured are: Chinese Checkers, Conquer Four, Conquer Man, and Crossword. Circus Maximus Royal Rumble viewtopic.php?f=90&t=107549 Coordinator: kuma32478 Based on the WWE Royal Rumble, this tournament will feature 3-player terminator games on the Circus Maximus map. Doodle Earth Tourny viewtopic.php?f=90&t=108096 Coordinator: iamkoolerthanu This 64-player tournament on Doodle Earth will consist of 4-player games with the winner advancing to the next round. It’s filling up fast, so go and claim your spot now. During the last two weeks there has been much activity in the Foundry, the Germany revamp competition has just ended, but there's already a new competition running. The melting pot seems more active than ever and the first maps begin to advance through the new process. Talking about the process, in this issue, the second part of the Foundry special about the gameplay workshop. Then, we travel again through the History to discover the "hidden story" behind one of the maps on Conquer Club. Finally, as always, the maps currently in development. Vancouver Competition The Winter Olympics come every four years and are a showcase of athleticism. They bring out the best in athletes striving for a bit of gold. In just a few short days, the torch will arrive in Vancouver and the games will begin. From Cyprus mountain to the Pacific Coliseum, the Olympics will also showcase the best of Vancouver, a fine city, worthy of hosting such an event. In order to celebrate this event, the CC foundry is having an contest of its own. Recently, the Vancouver map was put into live play, but now it is having a bit of a revamp. While the original map is a beautiful piece of artwork, the boys in blue thought that it should be spiced up for the games. A contest is being held where mapmakers can take the original Vancouver map, and make it Olympic themed. The winning map will temporarily replace the current Vancouver map in order to coincide with the 2010 Winter Olympics. You can find more information about the contest here. You can find info about the Olympics here. Foundry Twitter feed Are you always seeking the latest news about the foundry? Don't you want to miss anything foundry related? Don't worry the solution is within reach. Start following the Foundry Twitter feed and you will get the scoop on up and coming maps! http://twitter.com/CCFoundry Beta Maps Fractured America by isaiah40 is available for Beta testing. Atlantis by NemesisChild and Premier2k is waiting to be uploaded. Quenched Maps Our dear chief editor has got his first quenched map. , due to its superb gameplay, is already one of the most popular maps on Conquer Club. WWII Poland After a few small tweaks, the map is now perfect. Congratulations to samuelc812 After a long and careful examination, the was quenched. Third Crusade Map The last update was well received by the community and the new bonuses seem well balanced. With already more than 3000 finished games, the map was finally moved into the viewing gallery. Congratulations to Kabanellas and AndrewB Foundry Special - The Gameplay Workshop by natty_dread Introduction In my last article, I went through the Melting Pot forum where maps are born. In this article we will be focusing on the next step of a map's journey from idea to live play, which is the Gameplay Workshop. Gameplay is probably the most important aspect of a map. A map with balanced and interesting gameplay, even if it is not so interesting graphically, can be a success. But a map with stunning graphics and inferior gameplay will probably be a lot less popular. Of course, the Foundry tries to focus on both aspects of every map. How to start When a map moves from the Melting pot into the Gameplay Workshop, the real development of the map begins. In this phase, most maps already have a clear idea of the direction of development the map is going to take, and a version of the map with all major gameplay features included: territories, bonus areas, legend... In the Gameplay workshop, the whole structure of the map may change several times. This is where the details are honed into perfection. For a beginner mapmaker, the concept may seem frustrating, but it is a necessary part of the Foundry process. First things to consider when designing gameplay for a map are: the number of territories, bonus values, size and amount of bonus areas... which all amount to one thing really: balanced gameplay. Balancing gameplay Balanced gameplay means that games should not be decided by the drop. For example, if you have 48 territories on a map and play a 4 player game, the first one to play his turn will have a clear advantage, as everyone starts with 12 territories, and the first to go can knock one or more players below the limit. But there is more to balancing the gameplay than just deciding the amount of territories on a map. The bonus values need to be considered, and for this several bonus calculators have been developed. Of course the bonus calculator does not give you the absolute truth, and common sense should be used. But it gives the mapmaker an idea where to start. The structure of the map also needs to be considered. Too many bottlenecks for example are not good, but neither is a too open playing field. What can I do to help When it comes to leaving feedback to maps in the Gameplay workshop, mapmakers of course appreciate when you keep your comments to the gameplay side, and ignore the graphics for now. It is not exactly wrong to give comments on the graphics, but gameplay feedback will surely be a lot more appreciated at this point. When giving feedback, think of the map as it would already be in live play. Try to imagine how the gameplay would work on the current version of the map. If you can see any flaws, the mapmaker will surely appreciate you pointing them out, as long as it is done in a polite manner. Iancanton, a moderator in charge of the Gameplay Workshop, has the following to say about leaving gameplay feedback: iancanton wrote: All foundrygoers will have noticed that the main foundry has been split into two workshops: gameplay and graphics. There hasn't been much change of policy, since most maps needed to have the gameplay approved already before the graphics evaluations took place. The split simply makes clearer the current focus of the map: if a map's in the gameplay workshop, then comments on gameplay are most helpful. What's good gameplay feedback? If you're unsure, then have a look first at the guide to giving feedback that's in the tutorials and guides section of the foundry. Early feedback is welcomed by every mapmaker, to prevent him from wasting his time developing something along the wrong lines. If something is wrong with the gameplay, then try to be helpful by suggesting a solution, if you can. The earlier this type of comment comes, the better! gameplayfeedback wrote:i live in ruritania. there are no mountains in the western part of the map gameplayfeedback wrote:48 regions is a bad number for 4-player games. can u merge this and that? gameplayfeedback wrote:let the ship bombard all of the ports, which are too powerful gameplayfeedback wrote:make the auto-deploys start neutral gameplayfeedback wrote:the bonuses are unbalanced. there are too many small bonus zones in the north Not so useful in the gameplay workshop are comments on things that don't relate so much to gameplay. It might sound obvious, but graphics adjustments are best made in the graphics workshop, after the mapmaker knows that the gameplay won't be changing much. Graphics ideas are still welcome, but be aware that the mapmaker may choose to do difficult or substantial graphics changes after he has the gameplay stamp, so that he doesn't have to redraw a fantastic work of art several times just because of gameplay fixes. notgameplay wrote:the borders are pixellated notgameplay wrote:try using a font which looks more medieval notgameplay wrote:put the legend in a wooden frame Now, with all this, you should have a pretty good idea how to help mapmakers who are working on the gameplay of their map. I'd like to urge every one of my readers to visit the Gameplay Workshop, and browse the map threads. See maps that you like? See maps that you don't like? Give them feedback! The Foundry needs your help to produce more quality maps for you to play! That's it for this issue. Stay tuned for the next episode, the Graphics Workshop. History 101 - Route 66 by dolomite13 Route 66 - by oaktown Welcome to Route 66, America's Main Street. This fun map by veteran mapmaker oaktown utilizes an alternate bonus structure of 1 army for every 2 territories held as well as the ability to score a victory by holding the eleven cities along Route 66, from L.A. to Chicago. The visual style of the map takes you back in time to the golden days of Route 66 and makes you feel like your sitting at a diner along that famous road. Be sure to check out this map and get your kicks on Route 66. ROUTE 66 - ROLLING STONES LYRICS wrote:e Well if you ever plan to motor west Just take my way that's the highway that's the best Get your kicks on Route 66 U.S. Route 66 (also known as the Will Rogers Highway, and as "Main Street of America" or the "Mother Road") was one of the original U.S. highways, Route 66, US Highway 66, was established on November 11, 1926. The famous highway originally ran from Chicago, Illinois, through Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, before ending at Los Angeles, encompassing a total of 2,448 miles. It was recognized in popular culture by both a hit song (written by Bobby Troup and performed by the Nat King Cole Trio and The Rolling Stones, among others) and the Route 66 television show in the 1960s. More recently, the 2006 Disney/Pixar film Cars featured U.S. 66. Route 66 underwent many improvements and realignments over its lifetime, changing its path and overall length. Many of the realignments gave travelers faster or safer routes, or detoured around city congestion. One realignment moved the western endpoint farther west from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica. US 66 was officially removed from the United States Highway System on June 27, 1985 after it was decided the route was no longer relevant and had been replaced by the Interstate Highway System. Portions of the road that passed through Illinois, Missouri, New Mexico, and Arizona have been designated a National Scenic Byway of the name "Historic Route 66". It has begun to return to maps in this form. Some portions of the road in southern California have been re-designated "State Route 66", and others bear "Historic Route 66" signs and relevant historic information. Over the years, U.S. Route 66 received many nicknames. Right after Route 66 was commissioned, it was known as "The Great Diagonal Way" because the Chicago-to-Oklahoma City stretch ran northeast to southwest. Later, Route 66 was advertised by the U.S. Highway 66 Association as "The Main Street of America". The title had also been claimed by supporters of U.S. Route 40, but the Route 66 group was more successful. In the John Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath, the highway is called "The Mother Road", its prevailing title today. Lastly, Route 66 was unofficially named "The Will Rogers Highway" by the U.S. Highway 66 Association in 1952, although a sign along the road with that name appeared in the John Ford film, The Grapes of Wrath, which was released in 1940, twelve years before the association gave the road that name. A plaque dedicating the highway to Will Rogers is still located in Santa Monica, California. Map of Route Route 66 overlaid on Google Maps Route 66 Museum in Clinton, Oklahoma The Birth and Death of Route 66 In 1857, Lt. Edward Fitzgerald Beale, a Naval officer in the service of the U.S. Army Topographical Corps, was ordered by the War Department to build a government-funded wagon road across the 35th Parallel. This road became part of U.S. Route 66. Officially, the numerical designation 66 was assigned to the Chicago-to-Los Angeles route in the summer of 1926. With that designation came its acknowledgment as one of the nation's principal east–west arteries. From the outset, public road planners intended U.S. 66 to connect the main streets of rural and urban communities along its course for the most practical of reasons: most small towns had no prior access to a major national thoroughfare. Wigwam motel #6 in Holbrook, AZ. Championed by Tulsa, Oklahoma businessman Cyrus Avery when the first talks about a national highway system began, US 66 was first signed into law in 1927 as one of the original U.S. Highways, although it was not completely paved until 1938. Avery was adamant that the highway have a round number and had proposed number 60 to identify it. A controversy erupted over the number 60. Ultimately Avery settled on "66" (which was unassigned) because he thought the double-digit number would be easy to remember as well as pleasant to say and hear. After the new federal highway system was officially created, Avery called for the establishment of the U.S. Highway 66 Association to promote the complete paving of the highway from end to end and to promote travel down the highway. Traffic grew on the highway because of the geography through which it passed. Much of the highway was essentially flat and this made the highway a popular truck route. The route passed through numerous small towns, and with the growing traffic on the highway, helped create the rise of mom-and-pop businesses, such as service stations, restaurants, and motor courts, all readily accessible to passing motorists. Due to the efforts of the US Highway 66 Association, Route 66 became the first highway to be completely paved in 1938. Several places were dangerous: more than one part of the highway was nicknamed "Bloody 66" and gradually work was done to realign these segments to remove dangerous curves. However, one section just outside Oatman, Arizona was fraught with hairpin turns and was the steepest along the entire route remained as part of Route 66 until 1953. Despite such hazards in some areas, Route 66 continued to be a popular route. During World War II, Route 66, already popular and fully paved, became one of the main routes and also served for moving military equipment. Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri was located near the highway. During its nearly 60-year existence, Route 66 was under constant change. As highway engineering became more sophisticated, engineers constantly sought more direct routes between cities and towns. Increased traffic led to a number of major and minor realignments of US 66 through the years, particularly in the years immediately following World War II when Illinois began widening US 66 to four lanes through virtually the entire state from Chicago to the Mississippi River just east of St. Louis, Missouri, and included bypasses around virtually all of the towns. By the early-to-mid 1950s, Missouri also upgraded its sections of US 66 to four lanes complete with bypasses. Most of the newer four-lane 66 paving in both states was upgraded to freeway status in later years. In 1953, the first major bypassing of US 66 occurred in Oklahoma with the opening of the Turner Turnpike between Tulsa and Oklahoma City. The new 88-mile toll road paralleled US 66 for its entire length and bypassed each of the towns along 66. In some cases the new interstate highway not only paralleled the old Route 66, it actually incorporated much of it. In New Mexico, as in most other states, rural sections of I-40 were to be constructed first with bypasses around cities to come later. However, some business and civic leaders in cities along US 66 were completely opposed to bypassing fearing loss of business and tax revenues. In 1963, the New Mexico Legislature enacted legislation that banned the construction of interstate bypasses around cities by local request. This legislation was short-lived, however, due to pressures from Washington and threat of loss of federal highway funds so it was rescinded by 1965. Originally, highway officials planned for the last section of US 66 to be bypassed by interstates in Texas, but as was the case in many places, lawsuits held up construction of the new interstates. The state of Missouri officially requesting the designation "Interstate 66" for the St. Louis to Oklahoma City section of the route, but it was denied. In 1984, Arizona also saw its final stretch of highway decommissioned with the completion of Interstate 40 just north of Williams, Arizona. Finally, with desertification of the highway by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials the following year, U.S. Route 66 officially ceased to exist. Delgadillo's Snow Cap Drive-In Life After Death Some states have kept the 66 designation for parts of the highway, albeit as state roads. In Missouri, Routes 366, 266, and 66 are all original sections of the highway. State Highway 66 in Oklahoma remains as the alternate "free" route near its turnpikes. "Historic Route 66" runs for a significant distance in and near Flagstaff, Arizona. A surface street stretch between San Bernardino and La Verne to the east of Los Angeles retains its number as State Route 66. The First Route 66 associations were founded in Arizona in 1987 and Missouri in 1989. Other groups in the other Route 66 states soon followed. In 1990, the state of Missouri declared Route 66 in that state a "State Historic Route". The first "Historic Route 66" marker in Missouri was erected on Kearney Street at Glenstone Avenue in Springfield, Missouri. Other historic markers now line the entire 2,400 mile length of road. Many preservation groups have also tried to save and even tried to landmark the old motels and neon signs along the road in different states. In 1999 the National Route 66 Preservation Bill was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, which provided for $10 mln in matching fund grants for preserving and restoring the historic features along the route. In 2008, The World Monuments Fund added Route 66 to its World Monuments Watch list of 100 Most Endangered Sites. Sites along the route, such as gas stations, motels, cafes, trading posts, and drive-in movie theaters are threatened by development in urban areas, and by abandonment and decay in rural areas. As the popularity and mythical stature of Route 66 has continued to grow, demands have begun to mount to improve signage, return Route 66 to road atlases and revive its status as a continuous routing. Along these lines Route 66 has been established as a National Scenic Byway in Illinois, Arizona and New Mexico with National Scenic Byway status pending in Oklahoma and Missouri as of 2007. More Information Wikipedia.org Route 66 Video 4 Minute Tour of Route 66 Maps in Development To see the full sized preview of the following maps just click on the title of the map, to visit the map development thread Melting Pot Recently Design Brief Submissions: Gameplay Workshop Research & Conquer Mapmakers: OliverFA Maybe the most innovative map currently in development. The map premise revolves about adding the Research concept to "normal" CC gameplay. Some initial discussion about the gameplay, but for now is a rather quiet thread. Macedonia Mapmaker: n.n. Description: 42 regions and a standard gameplay for this representation of the small Republic of Macedonia. First Nations of South America Mapmaker: Tisha Description: After the great success of First Nations of North America, tisha is back with the same graphics to represent the southern part of Americas. The discussion is about the regions number. Graphics Workshop Flanders 1302 Mapmaker: DubWarrior Description: Set in the year 1302, when an army of Flemish peasants defeated the knights of the french army, this map has a standard gameplay and a nice graphics. Few nitpicks for the legend and the signature and the map is ready for the Final Forge CRICKET: Silly Mid On Mapmaker: cairnswk Description: A map about cricket, the first map about a sport which is going through the foundry. Recently stamped for gameplay, there's still some discussion about it. German/Italian Unification Mapmaker: Industrial Helix Description: Two maps about the wars of unification that took place int the last half of the 19th century and saw the rise of the united kingdoms of Italy and Germany. Working on mountains Final Forge Monsters! Mapmaker: dolomite13 Description: As a honored wizard you have volunteered to explore the Caverns of Power and retrieve the Powerstones. Recently stamped for graphics. Xml not yet checked. Japan Mapmaker: RedBaron0 Description: Modern Japan with an ancient graphics styleand a standard gameplay. A nice addition for ConquerClub, when quenched. It looks ready. Germany Revamp Mapmaker: WidowMakers Description: The winner map of the germany revamp competition is now in the final forge. The old Germany map with a new look. Power Rankings: Top 10 Clans by Georgerx7di (TSM) Top Clans on CC By Georgerx7di (TSM) In lieu of the up coming Conqueror’s Cup and the controversy over the ladders, I have decided to do a opinion piece on the top clans on CC and personally rank them. As I write about clan wars, I find myself spending more and more time in the “completed challenges” forum, where I have learned a good deal about our clans. In preparing my rankings, I found that the first two spots were easy to fill based on available information. Spots 3-7 seemed to meld together at first and so I had to add more criteria to help me order them. Spots 8-10 were the hardest to fill, there were at least two or three clans that I had to leave off, who perhaps should have made it. So here are the criteria I used to decide who the best clans on CC are: 1. Clan war record. This gives a good indication of how good a clan has been over the life of the clan. 2. Current CLA Season 2 record for the league. This is a good indicator of how good a clan is at the moment, albeit not a perfect indicator. Most of my top 10 list was derived from these two factors and from my own experiences playing these clans. 3. Who the clans won or lost to in clan challenges. 4. Input from experienced clan players. This is important because there are things that I will not have gotten around to looking at, for example people leaving or joining a clan. 5. Win percentage in clan wars. This becomes important when you have two clans who seem very equal. AOD for example lost a clan war to IA by a score of 11-9, that is a lot different then loosing 16-4 and so should not count so strongly against them. Now without further ado, here is (in my opinion) the top ten clans on CC. Top 10 Clans on CC: 1. THOTA THOTA has a 7-0 record in clan wars, by far the best of anyone. Three of their wins were against top ranked opponents. 32-28 over LOW, 53-47 over Imperial Dragoons and 41-19 over Generation 1. The rest are lesser known clans, but its worth noting that their victory over Death by committee was by a score of 35-5. THOTA is also the champion in the first season of the CLA League. 2. TSM The Spanking Monkeys have a 3-0 record, all against top clans. They have defeated The Legion 25-15, Immortal Assassins 22-18 and LOW 34-26. LOW has kind of been the gateway to the top spots, if one could defeat them, then that clan would be ranked in the top 2 or 3 spots. All three of these have been traditionally considered top 10 clans, although The Legion has lost some good players very recently and will not make this top 10 list. The Spanking Monkeys are also leading division 1B in CLA Season 2 at the time of printing. 3. The Odd Fellows Union TOFU has a 3-0 record over some very good clans. They have defeated The Imperial Dragoons 24-16 and Generation 1 25-15. Their third win came over Mythology by a margin of 30-10. I was hesitant to place TOFU so high on the list however because of the fact that they were placed in Division 2 in CLA League. However they have absolutely dominated division 2A (winning 83% of their games!), in a division that includes O&H, EE, and Divine Domination (more on DD below). 4. Immortal Assassins The Immortal Assassins have a 3-1 record in clan wars, including defeats over AOD and BPB. Their only loss is to TSM (above). IA is also in second place in division 1A in this season’s CLA League, ahead of THOTA who is in third place and behind KORT. 5. Legends of War Their 5 wins are pretty impressive. They won a 36-24 match over Empire (ranked 6th on this list) and a 16-8 win over The Untouchables, who would have been considered for the top 10 if the clan were still in existence. LOW also defeated G1 28-12, and crushed PE 25-5. LOW had a record of 5-2 up till recently. Their only losses had come at the hands of the top 2 clans on this list; THOTA 32-28 and TSM 34-26 and are in second place in division 1B, only a half game behind TSM. With all this they might have been 3rd or 4th out of the top 10, however they were recently defeated, and quite soundly, by O&H (see issue 24 of The CC dispatch). With this 3rd loss, many no longer consider LOW to be at the very top. However, as their defeat of Empire, and their cla performance shows, LOW is still a clan to be taken seriously and that is why they earned my number 5 spot. 6. Empire Empire has an impressive 7-1 record including wins over The Legion, The Imperial Dragoons, Nemesis, BSS and a somewhat underrated Agents of Chaos. Empire blasted Nemesis 41-23 handing them their first loss. There are a few other blowout wins, AOC 38-22, The Worlds of the Wort 15-5, however other wins were not so impressive. Empire defeated Black Sheep Squadron 21-19 and The Legion by an even smaller margin 16-15. None the less, had it not been for their loss to LOW, Empire might be ranked in the top 3. Empire has also not been that impressive in CLA League, they currently have a 34-35 record and are 4th place in division 1A. Not an embarrassment by any means, considering that the clan above them in 3rd place is THOTA. Divisions 1A and 1B are filled with most of the best clans on CC, however to be ranked in the top 5 a clan has to be able to shine against this top competition. Empire gets 6th place for me. 7. Knights of the Round Table The Knights of the Round Table seemed to be an all-star team in the making. They recruited many top players and were expected to take the clan world by storm (much in the way that TOFU has). They are leading division 1A, an impressive feat, above IA, THOTA and Empire, however their clan wars have not been as impressive. KORT has a record of 1-0-1. Their first clan war ended in a 15-15 tie against Generation 1, a 3-5-1 clan with most of its losses coming to top clans. KORT came back to win their next clan war over The Brethren of the Fat Mermaid, (see issue 23 of The CC Dispatch) with a score that is currently listed at 38-17 with 5 games still not recorded. The Brethren are a good clan, with players like BoganGod and Draq, however with an 0-3 record it is hard to gauge the value of KORT’s victory over them. For these reasons KORT gets 7th place. Cla aside, they still have not proven themselves to be top 5 quality. 8. Nemesis After jotting down my top 7 clans, it became more difficult to decide who would get the last three spots. So I made a spreadsheet with a few columns. I put a check in one column for every clan that had a winning record in clan wars. Next I put a check next to every clan that had a winning record in CLA. One thing jumped out at me. There were only two clans who were not already on my top 10 list, who had both winning clan records and winning records in the current season of CLA. One was Nemesis, the other was Agents of Chaos (more on them below). Nemesis has a 3-1 record with wins over Mythology, Imperial Britain and Left4Dead; their only loss coming to Empire (above). They also have a 36-28 record in CLA League, good for 4th place in division 1B. 9. Angels of Death Angels of Death (formerly LOD) has an 9-4 record. Their 9 wins are all over mid-level clans, The Brethren or Mythology perhaps being the best of the bunch. Their losses however are mostly to good clans. They were beaten handily 37-23 by The Imperial Dragoons, however their other losses were all nail biters. They lost 23-22 against G1 and 11-9 against IA! Not a bad showing. Their other loss was a 5-4 loss to Freemium Forces in a 9 game clan war which probably should not count. AOD clearly deserves a spot in the top 10 with this record. However their CLA League performance has been less than stellar, 31-33 in division 1A. For this reason, and the absence of any victories over top ranked clans, AOD gets a 9th place rank from me. 10. Imperial Dragoons This was the toughest clan to place on this list. The Imperial Dragoons have a 3-3 record, the only clan on this list that isn't over .500. Surely I couldn’t put ID above Empire (6-1) who defeated ID. Perhaps I could have put them above AOD, who ID had defeated. ID’s losses were all to top clans, THOTA, TOFU and Empire. Their wins were over AOD, Skyforce and a 13 game win over Murder Inc. Overall not bad, and they beat AOD by a margin of 37-23. They also lost to THOTA 53-47, a pretty good showing. However to be considered a top clan one has to win. It’s hard to put a 3-3 clan above a 9-4 clan. Also, ID has a 32-37 record in CLA division 1A, good for 5th place in that division. This tells me that perhaps ID is not as good as they have been in the past. However should they win their current challenge against IA (it's tied at 15-15), I would have to bump them up a couple of spots on the list, perhaps even above KORT. Honorable Mentions: BPB The Bullet Proof Bandits have had an impressive showing in the CLA League, currently 39-25 and in 3rd place in division 1B. On the other hand, their clan war record is a pedestrian 1-1. They have a win over BSS, nothing to sneeze at, but only by a margin of 21-19. Their loss came at the hands of IA, a clan that I think very highly of. In the end two clan challenges just weren't enough to put them above AOD or ID. O&H The Outlaws and Highwaymen officially show a record of 2-2, however their two most recent victories have not been recorded. They will be at 4-2 when their two clan wars finish, including an impressive win over LOW (see issue 24). On the other hand their CLA League performance is a poultry 16-24 in division 2B. Another problem is their two losses. They lost to BSS (a good clan, but not in my top 10) and Divine Domination, a clan playing in their first clan war. O&H would have to be ranked around 11 or 12 at the moment for me. On the other hand, should they win their next clan war against G1 (they currently lead 5-4), this could solidify them as a top 10 contender. AOC I actually consulted some experts on this one. My final two spots had come down to AOD, ID, BPB, O&H, and AOC, and I was seriously considering putting Agents of Chaos in the 9 or 10 spot on the list. They have a 3-1-1 record and are leading their division in CLA League. So why didn’t they make the top 10. For one thing, their three wins all came against very low ranked clans. They had a tie against Mythology, not bad, but Mythology didn’t make the top 10 either. The only top clan that they played was Empire, and they lost that war 38-22. Finally, although they are crushing their division in CLA League (27-13), it is division 2B. For AOC to move up to the top 10, they have to beat a top clan and/or win in division 1 CLA. So although they are a good clan, they still have not proven themselves to be at the very to of CC clan competition. A win against an AOD or Nemesis is probably what it would take to vault them up to the top 10. Rising Star Divine Domination I will end with an up and coming clan to watch for in the future. Divine domination has completed 1 clan war, defeating O&H by a score of 33-27, not bad for a clan’s first challenge. Don’t forget that O&H is the clan that just defeated LOW by a good margin. DD is also in second place in division 2A, with a loosing record albeit (19-21), but every clan in that division has a losing record. TOFU is rolling 2A with an 83% win percentage. However, to be in second place behind TOFU is not a bad spot for a new clan, and they are just a few games shy of being over .500. I suspect that this will be a clan to keep an eye on. Final comments It’s unlikely that anyone will agree on the exact ranking of every clan. Some will place more value on players they know in the clan, or how they think the clan will perform in the future. I went with a system that weighed more on the past and more on winning and loosing clan wars because I felt that one cannot guess how a clan will do in the future. A record on the other hand is something that a clan has proven. And after all, winning clan wars is what we all strive for, not winning percentage. I personally would much rather my clan win 3 wars 21-19 then win 1 war 34-16 and loose 2 wars 19-21. So this is how I graded clans, how many wars did they win and how many they lost. As Bill Belichick, coach of the New England Patriots once said, “Stats are for losers, final scores are for winners”. Conqueror's Cup by laughingcavalier (AoD) COME SHOW WHAT YOUR CLAN IS REALLY MADE OF!! demanded Chuuuuck as he launched the first annual Conqueror's Cup, and within hours he had been joined by CC’s finest, keen to take part in the first knockout inter-clan competition. The contest is on an epic scale with 19 clans competing in a bracket competition. Each contest will constitute a clan war in itself, with 48 games played between clans in the early rounds, and 68 games in each semi and the finals – not to mention games to be played in pre-season qualifiers. Adding all that up, you see the size of Chuuuuck’s vision, and what has got so many clans excited. If all goes to plan, by December over 800 games will have been played. The winners might enjoy a similar status to those who take home the much-coveted title of winner of the only comparable competition, the Clan League. Chuuuuck wrote:One thing is constant in the clan forums, people are arguing over the rankings, who is better than who, and how "Clan A" hasn't really played anyone. Everyone seems to agree that the bigger clan wars that most clans participate in are a good way of judging who is better. So I decided a bracket style tournament where clans don't get to choose who they play, and they play each other in larger clans wars might be the best way to settle "who is the best". Chuuuuck’s own Empire were the first clan in, soon joined by all but a handful of the top clans. The Cup thread quickly made its’ way to the top of the clan forum, as CC heavyweights, notably Incandenza and Foxglove, helped out with planning, and others (you know who you are) began the all-important trash talk. Chuuuuck appreciates the enthusiasm and the help he has received from those in his own clan and beyond, especially TheSpaceCowboy who came up with the name the "Conqueror's Cup" and will be helping with the admin once the tourney gets going. Seeding was decided by vote. Clan leaders ranked the participants, with the results counted together to give each clan their position in the draw. THOTA sit at the top, followed by TOFU, Empire and Immortal Assassins. There were enough surprises to launch a heated debate on where each clan will finish ( Conqueror's Cup Predictions), but all agree they will prove their case where it counts, on the field of battle. Chuuuuck himself is quietly confident about the strengths of his own clan: Chuuuuck wrote:Obviously, I am biased. I think some players feel we are over-rated, but I feel Empire has gotten a lot better over the past year and I personally believe we are under-rated. I feel we will make a strong showing and at least make it to the semi-finals. The first round offers some great match-ups. Legends of War are looking to avenge their recent defeat at the hands of the Outlaws and Highwaymen, while Knights of the Round Table and Generation 1 will play it out for a win after their draw last time up. The pre-season qualifiers kick off on February 17th, as the lower ranked teams duke it out to make the first round proper which is scheduled to start in March. We will be covering the games here. A final comment from the tourney organiser: Chuuuuck wrote: A very big thanks to for everything they do for the clan scene, and a big thanks to the clan community as a whole. Their participation and excitement is what makes this tournament truly exciting. show: Interrogation of pimpdave Q. Hey there Pimpdave A. Hey, thanks for doing this, nagerous. You're one of the coolest people here. Also, thanks for all the work you newsletter folks do. It's a real testament to the strength of the community we've all come to value that this thing happens. Q. What's your favourite colour? A. Green Q. Is your first name Dave or Pimp? A. It is actually neither. My first name is Dr. Octavious Pimpdave McAwesomeFace Q. What does Dave think about you pimping him? A. He actually thinks I've done a really good job. Q. What is the best book you have ever read, and why? A. Catch-22. It breaks my heart and fills it back up. Human nature on parade. Q. Did you manage to get Sergei hooked up? A. Fortunately for you, I'm pretty sure Sergei is still single, so you should drop him a line. I'll tell him you are in love with him for you. Because I'm a good friend like that. You can call him at 867-5309. He'd love to hear from you. Q. How many accounts have you had on Conquer Club? A. Current estimates place the number over 9000. Q. By what was your tenure at McGill University marked? A. Inventions, primarily. Q. Why is it the most powerful Uni ever? A. Because power was invented there in 1863. Q.When did McGill University invent you? A. Immediately after inventing the concept of being completely awesome which then was transmuted to me because it had to manifest as something. Q. What is your favourite song? You can tell a suprising amount about a person with just that one question! A. Well, if that's the case, you'll have to let me throw down like, 5, if you're going to read into it so much. That sort of thing changes often, but I can list 5 songs that have resonated with me over the years and that I can sing along to flawlessly. Let Down- Radiohead Big Time- Peter Gabriel Eulogy- tool Geek U.S.A.- Smashing Pumpkins The First Time- U2 Q. What year(s) did you attend McGill? A. Yes Q. In what faculty? A. Executive Vice President of Determining Inventions Q. How many babes did you make while there? A. What does make "babes mean"? Is that illegal? How did you hear about that? I mean, I'm not at liberty to discuss any top secret synthetic babe manufacturing that may or may not have been invented at McGill University during my tenure. Q. Is Canadian beer as good as they say it is? A. It's okay. Q. Who invented hockey? A. Some dudes on Long Island. SUCKERS. Q. Did you know that everything was invented at McGill University, including McGill University? A. Except for hockey and football, you jackasses, yes. Q. Do you think the space-time continuum would be torn asunder because everything was invented at McGill University? A. No, why would it be? Q. Where's Waldo? A. http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&sll=5 ... 0000000024 Q. You're a GH member now, so I must ask: do you feel lucky punk? A. Not in general. Q. Do you have any diseases or physical traits that hinder you in any way? A. Yes, I suffer from the condition known as "the much too sexy". This presents many beautiful women hindering my path with their pleas for my attention. Q. What are your favorite parts of your body and personality? What are your least favorites? A. All of them. Q. If you HAD to commit suicide, how would you do it? A. If I HAD to commit suicide, it would be because I am a spy who has been captured, so I'd pop a cyanide pill to prevent my breaking under interrogation (everybody breaks). Q. Do you have any deeply disturbing memories? A. Everyone does. Q. What is the purpose/meaning of your life? A. … Q. Have you ever had any thoughts about being a woman? A. Not really. Not like I ever wanted to be one, but I've tried to put myself in their shoes on occasion. Q. What is your favorite song? Band? Singer/songwriter? A. The Roots Q.What is your favorite fast food? Favorite item? A. In N' Out Burger, but that might just be because I only have it when I go out to the West Coast, so it seems more special. As for stuff near me, I like Wendy's, if I have to have fast food, because of the (probably incorrect) perception that it's the most healthful one. I like California style burgers. Q. What is your favorite sit-in restaurant, and item? A. It's not a chain. I eat too much red meat, but my favorite is buffalo, be it burgers, steak or whatever. Buffalo meat is so good and lean. I'm also a big fan of any kind of food I've never tried before. I like trying food from all different cultures and locations. Q. What is your favorite movie? Genre? Director? Actor? A. Heat, Gone Baby Gone, Yojimbo, Three Kings, The Departed. Director: Michael Mann; Actor: They're all cattle, but I have a huge crush Christina Hendricks Q. What is your favorite TV show? Writer? Actor? A. The Wire; David Simon and Ed Burns, especially when Dennis Lehane does an episode. Q. What is your favorite book? Writer? A. Catch-22, as I said. Favorite writer right now is Dennis Lehane. Q. What is your favorite game? Format? A. Memoir '44. Q. If you could choose, what would be your last words? A. I'm going home. Q. If you have one, who is/was your favorite American president? A. Abraham Lincoln. For reasons too personal to post here. Q. What is your favorite war of all time? A. Star Wars. Q. Do you think that you enjoy answering questions more, less, or about as much as Juan_Bottom or Snorri1234? A. Caring about this question was invented at McGill University in the year shut up. Q. Would you trade a blastoise for a pikachu? A. WAT. Would this be before or after I gave you a super-mega-nuclear noogie for being such a huge dork? J/K LOL! SAX ATTAK! Q. What is the average wing-speed velocity of a swallow, either African or European? A. Depends on whether that swallow is above, below, or at the equator, but it's at least 9,000 miles per second. Q. What is your favorite past time altogether? A. Informing the world of all the glorious achievements of McGill University. Q. If you were able to choose exactly, how would you prefer to die? A. Saving someone else's life. And yes, there is someone in particular I wish I could go back and save in my place. Q. If you had to part with a piece of your body, what would it be? A. Wisdom teeth. Oops too late. Q. If you had to live out the plot of a horror movie, what would it be? A. 28 Days Later Q. What is your favorite car? Make, model, and/or year? A. '68 Mustang Boss in Bullitt Green. Since those are hard to come by, I'll settle for a BMW 5 series in black. Q. Do you think MaleAlphaThree's list of question is the list he submits to babes on dating sites? A. I don't know, but I do think it's copypasta. Q. What is your favorite map and why? A. I like New World because it's a cool concept, and I've never won on it yet. I also like Battle of Actium. I don't know why, I just think it's cool. Oh, and the Prison one is pretty cool too, but that's just because Juan_Bottom is a great teammate to have on that map, and I remember the games I've played with him there very fondly. In conclusion, DBC IS GREATEST CLAN IN ALL OF CONQUER CLUB, ALL OTHER CLANS HAVE INFERIOR FUN. Q. If you got randomly selected to go to Mars would you? A. If it meant my name went down in history as a hero like Neil Armstrong, then absolutely. Otherwise, I'd have to think about it. Q. Will you be attending a Muse show during their current North American tour? A. Not this time, but I've seen them live before, and they are awesome. Q. What level is your Blastoise? A. Seriously, I'm gonna give you a wedgie. Q. How many bitches are you pimping currently? A. None. I don't pimp bitches. That is disrespectful to women and I do not do that. (psst, bitches, get at me if you wanna make some money!) Q. What is the nature of your relationship with #1_stunna? A. He's one of my multis. Along with the other obvious ones, like Snorri, killing.44, saxitoxin, and Twill. Q. What are your complete thoughts on the #1_stunna and Beckytheblondie scandal? A. Teenage angst has paid off well, now I'm bored and old. Q. How many dogs do you own? Cats? Walruses? TVs? Microwaves? Women? J/K LOL! SAX ATTAK! A. One. One. None. One. Nine thousand. Forty two. LOL, I LOVE YOU. Q. Thanks for your time pimpdave! A. Well, I hope I've made you regret spending it reading this! Stay Tuned for the next issue of the ConquerClub Dispatch for an interrogation of . Post any questions you may have for them here --> Interrogation with thegreekdog Submitting Your Own Articles If you have a story you think the ConquerClub Community would find interesting, you can submit your articles to . If the CC Dispatch Team enjoy it than you may just see your article published in the Newsletter! Did you enjoy this Issue? Have you subscribed to the Newsletter yet? If you want each and every issue of the ConquerClub Dispatch delivered right into your Inbox, then Subscibe Here! ConquerClub Dispatch Team

Meeting Mia for her first ever full frontal nude sessions proved to be a happy experience for both model and photographer. At the photo session in Paris, Mia proved herself to be perfect model material. Not only does this playful and sexy young woman have a superb body – with a particularly amazing ass - she also has the brains too. Mia recently moved to Budapest and is studying Public Management. She has plans to open her own model agency and experience in front of the camera is certain to help this ambitious girl on her way. Mia is gorgeous, polite and full of personality. She is the kind of girl you could easily fall in love with. She has the tiniest of appetites... but like many girls Mia just loves chocolate! With brains and beauty this girl is definitely headed for the top!

Well, this weekend ought to be good. Today we’re just going to be relaxing all day, but tomorrow Brian has to work at his part-time job in the evening and I’m going to be going to a free Christian concert with one of my girlfriends from work. I hate to go without my husband, but he said it would be just fine if I went with my friends. Last night we went to Bessie’s house for Friday night movie night and served BBQ spare ribs, bread, chips, cheese, and sushi. It was a great night. Loving on the homeless, prostitutes and gang bangers that we serve. I enjoy my time with my guys and gals, especially when they call me Mama. There’s one young man named Neil, he’s a senior in high school, that I just love to death, he’s like a son to me. Every time he sees me he runs up to me first and just hugs me hard and tells me how much he loves me and misses me, then gives me a kiss on my cheek. Puts a tear in my eye every time. I think he just misses me telling him to pull his pants up. Cause every time I tell him that he pulls them up and laughs. Anyway, we talked to an interesting man last night. His name is Sony and he’s been homeless since he’s been 13 and he’s now 36 years old. He got put in the pen when he was 19 and was in for 10 years, didn’t ask him why it’s not my business. 2 years ago on Independence Avenue at a gas station, he was shot in the face and robbed basically for change. But the coolest part about his story was that he knows Jesus and he finds the joy with his life everyday. He said even though the right side of his face is paralyzed, his right eye is blind, and when he speaks, he drools he can still find joy in the life the God gave him, the second chance that the Lord blessed him with. He speaks with such a passion, it brought goose bumps to my skin listening to him speak about his life and how much he loves Jesus. People like Neil and Sony are who we serve in our Ministry. There are more stories, but those are just 2 from last night that I wanted to share. I love what we do and I wish I could be there full time doing this, but I do work a full-time job. So I help out when I can. Our web page is a little outdated, but you can check it out if you’d like: http://www.hope-outreach.org. Well, I think that’s all for today, I have to go pick up my van and we have to go drop off some food. God bless and take care. How kind the LORD is! How good he is! So merciful, this God of ours! ~ Psalm 116:5, NLT Yep, I have not been around in quite a while. Between work and the ministry, life has been just crazy busy. But last night I did go get my grand-daughter and spend a few hours with her and enjoyed that time. She just makes my heart soar!!! Well, since I’ve been working I’ve been trying to watch what I’ve been eating and not following any diet plan. I feel that if I follow a diet plan and fall off of it, I will fail. So if I just do my own thing, I’ll do just fine and so far it’s working. Brian has jumped on in the last 7 weeks also. So we’ve cut out red meat, pork, and basically anything white. We eat a lot of chicken, turkey, fish, and the nothing white is now whole grain/wheat. I quite drinking milk, mainly because it made too much, not to sound gross, phlegm in my throat. Now I drink Almond Breeze. I’m going to also try Coconut milk. Since I’ve been doing this I’m now down 63 lbs. and in the 7 weeks Brian’s been doing it, he’s down 27 lbs. I still have a lot more to go, but I went to my Drs. about 3 weeks ago, and he said he’s very proud of the way I’ve been doing things. I told him what I’ve been doing and what I’ve been eating and drinking, and he’s just ecstatic about it. Especially since how heavy I was, he’s very proud. I go back in June and I’m hoping to have quite a bit more off and also hoping to have him tell me that I can get off my high blood pressure medication. That would be nice. Today has been a pretty good day so far. I’ve been in my little cubical working on my payables and receivables and while doing that I have all my music I like, mostly worship music, in my computer. So I’ve been listening to it. I enjoy doing that and just praising my Jesus for the glorious day and life that he’s given me. Is my life perfect? Not by a long shot, but I can find the positive in the negatives. Here at work, I’ve had so many people tell me, ” you always have a smile on your face, what’s up with that?” I tell them, “It’s because the Lord let me wake up another day.” Then I just usually get a blank stare and I just smile and tell them to have a great and beautiful day too. Take care everyone and have a great and beautiful day yourselves!! I will be filled with joy because of you. I will sing praises to your name, O Most High. ~ Psalm 9:2, NLT Brian and I have spent quite a bit of time together this weekend and it’s been awesome. I have so much enjoyed going out and being able to serve our brothers and sisters in need on the streets. What a joy that is for me. Actually I think it’s more that the Lord has been letting me know that Brian needs to learn to let go of me a little more each time we go out and let me learn on my own. Brian is very protective of me and I know why. I’m his wife, of course he’s going to be protective of me, I have medical issues, MS with left side weakness, high blood pressure, my eyes go blurry, but when I’m serving and doing the Lords will, I’m strong and HE leads me to where he wants me to go and say what HE wants me to say. So I guess if we’re going to be living in the Northeast area, Brian’s going to have to learn that he can’t be with me 24/7. We’re going to be living in a place where the homeless and prostitutes are going to be able to come in, take a shower, wash their clothes, eat, take a nap, watch TV, etc. and I’ll be there too. He can’t keep me guarded all the time. Now our living quarters will be apart from where they will be able to hang out, but still. I just feel that the Lord is telling me that I need to talk to Brian to let him know that he needs to let go a little more than he normally does. That’s only part of what I have. My son told me last weekend that of course for the Labor Day weekend he’d have a 3 day weekend and come see me. Well, I never heard a word from him. I wound up calling him around 5 in the evening on Monday. He never even thought anything about it. Here’s the thing that bugs me the most. He’s living at his best friends dad’s house in the basement cause Lenny lets him. Fine. Well, he seems to care for Lenny and Melissa more than his own parents. I don’t get phone calls, or text messages. I finally told him last night that if I didn’t get even a text message letting me know that he’s OK, I’m going to go sideways on his ass. He kind of laughed and said, “mom you’re so cute.” I wasn’t trying to be funny or cute, I was letting him know how worried I get when I don’t hear from him for days and days. It breaks my heart and it hurts me terribly. So needless to say while I was trying to eat, I was crying. Well that pissed my husband off so he called Lil’ Brian, our son, and said, “I just want you t0 know that your mother is very hurt that you don’t call or come by and while she’s trying to eat her dinner she’s crying.” LB said, “she was fine while I was talking to her.” BB said, “She doesn’t want you to hear her cry or hear her pain that you put her through, you know how strong of a woman your mother is, but she’s hurt and I just wanted you to know so you have a great night Brian, OK? Good night.” Then he hung up. I haven’t heard from him since. It’ll take him a few days to process. That’s how his brain works. He gets told something, and he doesn’t react right away, he has to process. It drives me nuts. Well, that’s all I have to say for now. Have a great day and God bless everyone!!! I finally told my son that he is selfish and only thinks of himself. He really pissed me off this weekend. Not only was I pissed, but I was just down right hurt. I really wanted to spend time with both my kids this holiday weekend and I asked him a couple of times, are we going to see you at all this holiday weekend? His reply each time was “well, I don’t know.” All I said was, “It’d be nice to spend some time with you since it seems we never get to see you any more.” He said nothing. So last night after he got home, I went to my room and folded the laundry. He followed me and asked me what’s wrong. Well, I let him have it. Everytime he has a new girlfriend, which he’s been dating Kara for about 3 months now, he’s in his own world and has nothing, and I mean nothing to do with any of us, let alone even bring any of his girlfriends around us. Personally I think he’s ashamed of us. That just kills me inside. I told him that when I don’t hear from him it scares me cause he’s so irresponsible. I’m afraid I’m going to get a call or a cop show up at my door and tell me that my son’s dead. I asked him if understood my feelings, he said yes, but I said do you really? All I got was him staring at me. I’m hoping what I said will sink into that thick skull of his. Then he goes and stays with his old best friends parents. I’m glad he likes them, but sorry Bud, I’m not going to allow you to have your girlfriend spend the night in the same bed under my roof and I won’t buy your alcohol. They will. That pisses me off. I’ve asked them not to but why would they listen to me. My son is a 20-year-old man. If they let him drive drunk and get in a wreck, I’ll kill them. Apparently, my son is the only one left of their son’s friends that actually talk to them. Last night before I went to bed, I saw my son laying in the dining room area, in the dark, with his arm over his eyes, sniffing, so I hope what I said got to him. He needs to realize how immature and selfish he’s been. His dad and I have bent over backwards to help him out with letting him live with us in our one bedroom apartment, his dad helping him out with his finances to get him on his feet, helping him look for a new job, which a friend of our told us about a really good company that was hiring and he got a job there, so we’re letting him stay with us till his 60 days is up at his new job and he finds a place of his own. He just doesn’t appreciate what he asked us to help him with and we’ve done. Sorry to rant, but I had to get it off my chest. I know expressing it to him helped out a lot, but I needed to share it with others. I guess my public announcement of how angry I am. Although yesterday evening I did spend with my daughter. We went to go see Eclipse. I really enjoyed it a lot. But then again, I love the Twilight series. I’ve read all the books and now I can’t wait for Breaking Dawn to come out. I wouldn’t mind reading the Short Life of Bree Tanner. But I really wish that Stephenie Meyer would come up with more in the series. She is a good writer and I really like her writing style. Anyway, I better get back to the non-ringing lines here at work. We have about 42 people here at work and there are probably about 15 people here. Have a blessed day. Well, first off of course I had a great day on Saturday with Miss Isabelle. How could I not. She’s the light of my life. I love spending time with her. She’s growing like a weed, and pulling herself up on everything. Now she’s trying to get the whole walking around things down. It’s fun watching her figure it out, but it makes me sad when she bonks her head, or smacks her mouth on the table, but I guess she has to learn some how. Then on Sunday, wow what a day that was. Brian and I headed out to Bessie’s House around 8:30 to be there by 9:00 am. It was so great for me to be there for the first time. Bessie’s is a place for homeless and prostitutes to come in and take a shower, wash clothes, get some food, etc. Anyway, on Sundays they have their own Sunday service outside praising Jesus, they get fed, then Bessie’s House closes down for the day. But I totally enjoyed the day serving and listening to the service and just being welcomed with open arms by everyone that knows Brian and finally got to meet me for the first time they showed me love the way Christ loved the church. It was Amazing. I’m going to go with Brian every Sunday to help serve. I really enjoyed myself and felt at home there. Just seeing a difference from there to where we worship is crazy. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with where we worship, but the difference is in the people and how they see Jesus. People on the streets depend on Him more than people who have safety in their lives of living in homes and always having food in their bellies. They just seem to know Jesus more. So be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid and do not panic before them. For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you. Deuteronomy 31:6 Here recently I’ve been wondering about my weight with my MS. I know that my weight is a big issue, I mean BIG!!! Ge’ez, I’m BIG, B-I-G!!! So anyway, I’m looking into Lap Band Surgery. I’m going to go to a seminar on it in July to see what it’s all about. There’s a possibility that my insurance could cover up to 100%. I mean when you go through the list, I’m pre-diabetic, I have high blood pressure, my BMI is over 35, I’ve been over weight (or should I say obese) for at least 5 years, you have to be at least 18 (well I’m 40 so I think I qualify for that), your series of weight loss attempts have been short-term (yep, I qualify for that too). I have to do something so I’m going to talk to my Dr. about it on Tuesday when I go in. We’ve been talking about my weight anyway so it maybe something he might approve of. Maybe he’d even write a letter of recommendation to the insurance company stating that it’s a necessity for my health with my MS and all. Anyway, that’s the crap going on in my head these last couple days. But my poor husband has had a stupid summer cold. Now my daughter is getting it and if I get it again, I’m really going to be pissed at someone. I can’t afford to be sick again. I don’t take time off work. The only time I do is to leave early for my Dr. appointments. I accrue 2.3 hours each pay period and after next Tuesday I’ll only have 8.7 hours available. I’m not wasting those. So anyway, I have to keep myself healthy. But an update on my MS meds. I did get the authorization from my insurance company to go with the Copaxone, but I haven’t heard from my Neurologists office yet on when I’ll be starting it or what. But I’m feeling fine since I haven’t been taking anything. That Avonex was some Bad A$$ stuff!!! YUCK!!! Well, I better go and sit here at my desk and answer the phones. Take care & God bless. Well, I got a call back from my Neurologists office yesterday about my Avonex. I guess hearing me cry about it and hearing the pain in my voice got them to decide to change my treatment. So anyway they’re getting authorization from my insurance company and then I’ll be starting Copaxone. It’s an everyday shot, but it apparently doesn’t have the side effects that Avonex has. Do I want to do a shot everyday? No, but I will if it will make me feel better. Believe it or not, I think my body knows it’s Friday cause it’s tensing up dreading what normally happens tonight. Well, I’m not going to take my last shot, it’s going in the garbage. BYE, BYE AVONEX!!! Good riddance!!! I went to my regular Dr the other day and my blood pressure was really high for me. I have always ran normal. Always in the 120/80 range. Not Wednesday. It was 168/102. So needless to say they put me on a HCTZ which is also a diuretic. Yea me, I’ll be peeing a lot!!! LOL Anyway, I let him know that I was going to stop my Avonex and he thought it was a smart idea. I just gave him a look and said ‘really’? He said yea. He said he felt that I should know my body and if it made me feel bad and I hurt with it, then it wasn’t the right “treatment” for me. So this weekend will be fun. I have Isabelle tomorrow and she’s going to the dentist with me. The girls there will be enjoying that. They always loved it when the kids were little and they got to play with them at that time, now they get to play with the grand baby. They still can’t believe that Amanda has a baby. Jeez, I can’t believe Amanda has a baby. LOL. But anyway, it’s never too early to take them to the dentist and show them what it’s like. Get them socially involved with them. So, after the dentist, I’m meeting up with a girlfriend and her kids and going to take pictures of the kids for her. I guess it’ll be one way for me to get my name out there and hopefully get some business for photography and make a little cash on the side. :) Well, better get back to work. Take care and God bless y’all!!! Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself ~Ephesians 2:20

NEVER TRUST A SKINNY CUPCAKE BAKER Book 1 of the Death by Cupcake series GENRE: Cozy mystery A cozy mystery with a heap of laughs, a generous portion of romance, and just a smidgen of suspense. Callie’s life is rather awesome. She owns a successful bakery and teaches German literature at the local university. There’s just one tiny problem. She has no self-confidence when it comes to her body. And then there’s the little matter of her being accused of murdering her pole dancing instructor. There’s no way Callie’s going to risk losing her teaching position and thus she embarks, with her best baker bud Anna, on a journey to discover the real killer. Between stripper auditions and a detective who insists Callie is the woman of his dreams, it’s a roller coaster adventure. Cupcakes not included. I set my menu down. “You’ve never had sushi? Why’d you bring us here then?” He shakes his head. “When are you going to get it into your head that I’d do anything for you?” “The Tokyo earthquake of 1923 brought sushi into restaurants. Before that, sushi was just a street food, but the quake destroyed much of the city and that caused real estate prices to drop so that sushi chefs could afford real restaurants.” I clamp my hand over my mouth when I realize that I am once again spouting weird trivia because Ben’s words unnerve me. Ben grins and shakes his head. Then, he surprises the daylights out of me by leaning over and giving me a hard kiss. “You are the sexiest nerd on the entire planet.” He picks up his menu again as if he didn’t just rock my world. “So, what should I order?” I let his ‘sexiest nerd’ comment drop because there is no appropriate response to crazy. “Is there anything you don’t like?” He shakes his head. “Afraid of raw food?” Another shake. “Okay, let’s order a platter with a mixture of everything.” He sets his menu down and nods. “Sounds good. Do you think it will fill me up?” “Well…” I scratch my head and look at Ben’s massive shape. “Maybe we should order some tempura.” The words are barely out of my mouth before I’m taking them back again. “No wait, that’s a bad idea. I shouldn’t be eating that.” “Why not? Are you allergic?” “No, not allergic. Tempura is fried. I should stay away from anything fried.” I fidget in my seat, uncomfortable with my confession. “Why?” He looks genuinely confused. I roll my eyes at him. “Because I can’t afford to gain any weight. It’s bad enough I run a bakery.” Ben captures my hands with one of his enormous hands and grabs my chin with the other one. “I said no more putting yourself down.” I start to protest, but he pinches my chin to quiet me. “You’re gorgeous. I love your curves. You look like a woman should. Man, you’re so sexy, it was all I could do to not drag you into your apartment and have my way with you when I arrived and saw you in that sexy as all get out dress.” Finally, he’s quiet and I think I can get a word in edgewise. Ben’s not that easily deterred, however. He leans forward and stops any response I would have made with his lips. He nibbles on my bottom lip like I’m some kind of delicacy. When he thinks he’s made his point, he leans back and releases my chin although my hands are still encased in one of his over-sized mitts. I hear a sigh behind me and look over to see Mikki. “Oh man, that was hot. Do not let him go, Professor Muller.” She flips open her order pad. “Now, what do you want to eat?” I grew up reading everything I could get my hands on from my mom’s Harlequin romances to Nancy Drew to Little Women. When I wasn’t flipping pages in a library book, I was penning horrendous poems, writing songs no one should ever sing, or drafting stories which have thankfully been destroyed. College and a stint in the U.S. Army came along, robbing me of free time to write and read, although I did manage every once in a while to sneak a book into my rucksack between rolled up socks, MRIs, t-shirts, and cold weather gear. A few years into my legal career, I was exhausted, fed up, and just plain done. I quit my job and sat down to write a manuscript, which I promptly hid in the attic after returning to the law. Another job change, this time from lawyer to B&B owner, and I was again fed up and ready to scream I quit, which is incredibly difficult when you own the business. Thus, I shut the B&B during the week and in the off-season and started writing. Several books later I find myself in Istanbul writing full-time.

The detours it takes you on are many and varied, and not always within your power to control. The death of my father two weeks ago has provided ample opportunity for me to reflect on this and – not surprisingly – where that journey ultimately ends. His was an inauspicious start in life. Born in Dublin in the 1920s, he grew up in what by today’s standards would be regarded as poverty. He was denied educational opportunities, faced many hardships, and never knew his father. At the age of 17 he got on a boat to England, lied about his age and volunteered to fight in the war, joining the RAF. Like many of the 10,000 or so Irishmen who decided their country’s neutral stance in the fight against Hitler was at odds with their own sense of right and wrong, he struggled to settle in Ireland after the war. And so it was he settled in England and embarked on a long career as a manual worker. At the time I was born, he was working in a car factory, liked a drink and the craic, and was still battling with hardship – from workplace racism in the era of IRA terror attacks, to working unsociable shift patterns that kept him permanently exhausted. My earliest memories are of that holiday. Yet it was a never-to-be-repeated event. Perhaps it’s better that way. After working hard to provide for his family, and (much as it pains me to say it) living in a marriage that didn’t always make him or my late mother happy, he retired as a fit and physically robust man looking forward to a long retirement. Which is what he got – around 20 years of it. After my mother’s death in the late 1990s, he sold the family home and eventually found the love and companionship of a woman who made him truly happy. He had money (although not lots of it), love, and a new large extended step-family network. He took holidays, visited interesting places, rediscovered his faith, did the things that made him happy. Truly happy. My own relationship with him had been strained – practically non-existent in fact – for years. Thankfully, I saw him not long before he died. After years of having nothing to do with him, of effectively denying his presence in my life and that of my sons, I felt it was time I took a detour of my own. So in late December I went to see him during one of his increasingly frequent stays in hospital. In many ways he was not a complicated man. Seeing me turn up at his bedside made him delighted – he was overjoyed and seeing that uncomplicated sense of joy moved me. We didn’t make our peace. We didn’t need to. It was unspoken and that was entirely appropriate. Two weeks later, he was gone. I didn’t get there in time to say my final goodbye. The journey was too long. The time, too short.

llaria Turba is a visual artist working mainly with photography, video and animation to create artworks, installations, site specific projects and communication projects. Her works are the result of a personal experience that intertwines visual experimentation with other disciplines: social science, performative art, oral history and very often the result of a collaboration with other artists, artisans and professionals JEST is her first photobook and has been released at the end of 2016 by the Berlin-based publisher Peperoni Books. In January 2018 the first solo exhibition of JEST will open at the Museum l’Atelier in Nantes (FR). JEST originates from Ilaria Turba’s exploration of her own family photo archive: five generations of images dating from 1870 to today are the starting point for a visual search. Photography, manipulated or not, is intertwined with other disciplines like dance, sound and storytelling. The body of work and the exhibition, involving game and action, offers the viewer a new experience of perceiving and seeing. JEST, which means prank, takes shape when, among the many photographs of the family archive, two emerge: the departure of Apollo 11 and a woman carrying a rifle. This combination, born from the case, creates a funny and significant short circuit. Turba takes this accidental invitation to the game, turning it into a pretext to cross the photographic material with a different look and reflect on the meaning of photography today. Looking at the images of JEST is just like riding a roller coaster: as soon as you think you understand where the author wants to lead you, the direction suddenly changes. You just have to do two things: keep asking yourself if what we see is real, and never stop being surprised by the beauty and the magic of what surrounds us.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau, (born June 28, 1712, Geneva, Switzerland—died July 2, 1778, Ermenonville, France), Swiss-born philosopher, writer, and political theorist whose treatises and novels inspired the leaders of the French Revolution and the Romantic generation. Rousseau was the least academic of modern philosophers and in many ways was the most influential. His thought marked the end of the Age of Reason. He propelled political and ethical thinking into new channels. His reforms revolutionized taste, first in music, then in the other arts. He had a profound impact on people’s way of life; he taught parents to take a new interest in their children and to educate them differently; he furthered the expression of emotion rather than polite restraint in friendship and love. He introduced the cult of religious sentiment among people who had discarded religious dogma. He opened people’s eyes to the beauties of nature, and he made liberty an object of almost universal aspiration. Rousseau’s mother died in childbirth, and he was brought up by his father, who taught him to believe that the city of his birth was a republic as splendid as Sparta or ancient Rome. Rousseau senior had an equally glorious image of his own importance; after marrying above his modest station as a watchmaker, he got into trouble with the civil authorities by brandishing the sword that his upper-class pretentions prompted him to wear, and he had to leave Geneva to avoid imprisonment. Rousseau, the son, then lived for six years as a poor relation in his mother’s family, patronized and humiliated, until he, too, at the age of 16, fled from Geneva to live the life of an adventurer and a Roman Catholic convert in the kingdoms of Sardinia and France. Rousseau was fortunate in finding in the province of Savoy a benefactor, the baroness de Warens, who provided him with a refuge in her home and employed him as her steward. She also furthered his education to such a degree that the boy who had arrived on her doorstep as a stammering apprentice who had never been to school developed into a philosopher, a man of letters, and a musician. Mme de Warens, who thus transformed the adventurer into a philosopher, was herself an adventuress—a Swiss convert to Catholicism who had stripped her husband of his money before fleeing to Savoy with the gardener’s son to set herself up as a Catholic missionary specializing in the conversion of young male Protestants. Her morals distressed Rousseau, even when he became her lover. But she was a woman of taste, intelligence, and energy, who brought out in Rousseau just the talents that were needed to conquer Paris at a time when Voltaire had made radical ideas fashionable. Rousseau reached Paris when he was 30 and was lucky enough to meet another young man from the provinces seeking literary fame in the capital, Denis Diderot. The two soon became immensely successful as the centre of a group of intellectuals—or philosophes—who gathered round the great French Encyclopédie, of which Diderot was appointed editor. The Encyclopédie was an important organ of radical and anticlerical opinion, and its contributors were as much reforming and even iconoclastic pamphleteers as they were philosophers. Rousseau, the most original of them all in his thinking and the most forceful and eloquent in his style of writing, was soon also the most conspicuous. He wrote music as well as prose, and one of his operas, Le Devin du village (1752; “The Village Soothsayer”), attracted so much admiration from the king (Louis XV) and the court that he might have enjoyed an easy life as a fashionable composer, but something in his Calvinist blood rejected that type of worldly glory. Indeed, at the age of 37 Rousseau had what he called an “illumination” while walking to Vincennes to visit Diderot, who had been imprisoned there because of his irreligious writings. In the Confessions (1782–89), which he wrote late in life, Rousseau says that it came to him then in a “terrible flash” that modern progress had corrupted people instead of improving them. He went on to write his first important work, a prize essay for the Academy of Dijon entitled Discours sur les sciences et les arts (1750; A Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts), in which he argues that the history of human life on earth has been a history of decay. That work is by no means Rousseau’s best piece of writing, but its central theme was to inform almost everything else he wrote. Throughout his life he kept returning to the thought that people are good by nature but have been corrupted by society and civilization. He did not mean to suggest that society and civilization are inherently bad but rather that both had taken a wrong direction and become more harmful as they became more sophisticated. That idea in itself was not unfamiliar in Rousseau’s time. Many Roman Catholic writers, for example, deplored the direction that European culture had taken since the Middle Ages. They shared the hostility toward progress that Rousseau had expressed. What they did not share was his belief that people are naturally good. It was, however, just that belief that Rousseau made the cornerstone of his argument. Rousseau may well have received the inspiration for that belief from Mme de Warens; for although she had become a communicant of the Roman Catholic Church, she retained—and transmitted to Rousseau—much of the sentimental optimism about human purity that she had herself absorbed as a child from the mystical Protestant Pietists who were her teachers in the canton of Bern. At all events, the idea of human goodness, as Rousseau developed it, set him apart from both conservatives and radicals. Even so, for several years after the publication of his first Discourse, he remained a close collaborator in Diderot’s essentially progressive enterprise, the Encyclopédie, and an active contributor to its pages. His speciality there was music, and it was in this sphere that he first established his influence as a reformer. Controversy With Rameau The arrival of an Italian opera company in Paris in 1752 to perform works of opera buffa (comic opera) by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Alessandro Scarlatti, Leonardo Vinci, and other such composers suddenly divided the French music-loving public into two excited camps, supporters of the new Italian opera and supporters of the traditional French opera. The philosophes of the Encyclopédie—Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, Diderot, and Paul-Henri Dietrich, baron d’Holbach among them—entered the fray as champions of Italian music, but Rousseau, who had arranged for the publication of Pergolesi’s music in Paris and who knew more about the subject than most Frenchmen after the months he had spent visiting the opera houses of Venice during his time as secretary to the French ambassador to the doge in 1743–44, emerged as the most-forceful and effective combatant. He was the only one to direct his fire squarely at the leading living exponent of French operatic music, Jean-Philippe Rameau. Rousseau and Rameau must at that time have seemed unevenly matched in a controversy about music. Rameau, already in his 70th year, was not only a prolific and successful composer but was also, as the author of the celebrated Traité de l’harmonie (1722; Treatise on Harmony) and other technical works, Europe’s leading musicologist. Rousseau, by contrast, was 30 years younger, a newcomer to music, with no professional training and only one successful opera to his credit. His scheme for a new notation for music had been rejected by the Academy of Sciences, and most of his musical entries for Diderot’s Encyclopédie were as yet unpublished. Yet the dispute was not only musical but also philosophical, and Rameau was confronted with a more-formidable adversary than he had realized. Rousseau built his case for the superiority of Italian music over French on the principle that melody must have priority over harmony, whereas Rameau based his on the assertion that harmony must have priority over melody. By pleading for melody, Rousseau introduced what later came to be recognized as a characteristic idea of Romanticism, namely, that in art the free expression of the creative spirit is more important than strict adherence to formal rules and traditional procedures. By pleading for harmony, Rameau reaffirmed the first principle of French Classicism, namely, that conformity to rationally intelligible rules is a necessary condition of art, the aim of which is to impose order on the chaos of human experience. In music, Rousseau was a liberator. He argued for freedom in music, and he pointed to the Italian composers as models to be followed. In doing so he had more success than Rameau; he changed people’s attitudes. Christoph Willibald Gluck, who succeeded Rameau as the most-important operatic composer in France, acknowledged his debt to Rousseau’s teaching, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart based the text for his one-act operetta Bastien und Bastienne (Bastien and Bastienne) on Rousseau’s Le Devin du village. European music had taken a new direction. But Rousseau himself composed no more operas. Despite the success of Le Devin du village, or rather because of its success, Rousseau felt that, as a moralist who had decided to make a break with worldly values, he could not allow himself to go on working for the theatre. He decided to devote his energies henceforth to literature and philosophy. Major Works Of Political Philosophy As part of what Rousseau called his “reform,” or improvement of his own character, he began to look back at some of the austere principles that he had learned as a child in the Calvinist republic of Geneva. Indeed, he decided to return to that city, repudiate his Catholicism, and seek readmission to the Protestant church. He had in the meantime acquired a mistress, an illiterate laundry maid named Thérèse Levasseur. To the surprise of his friends, he took her with him to Geneva, presenting her as a nurse. Although her presence caused some murmurings, Rousseau was readmitted easily to the Calvinist communion, his literary fame having made him very welcome to a city that prided itself as much on its culture as on its morals. Rousseau had by that time completed a second Discourse in response to a question set by the Academy of Dijon: “What is the origin of the inequality among men and is it justified by natural law?” In response to that challenge he produced a masterpiece of speculative anthropology. The argument follows on that of his first Discourse by developing the proposition that people are naturally good and then tracing the successive stages by which they have descended from primitive innocence to corrupt sophistication. Rousseau begins his Discours sur l’origine de l’inegalité (1755; Discourse on the Origin of Inequality) by distinguishing two kinds of inequality, natural and artificial, the first arising from differences in strength, intelligence, and so forth, the second from the conventions that govern societies. It is the inequalities of the latter sort that he set out to explain. Adopting what he thought the properly “scientific” method of investigating origins, he attempts to reconstruct the earliest phases of human life on earth. He suggests that original humans were not social beings but entirely solitary, and to that extent he agrees with Thomas Hobbes’s account of the state of nature. But in contrast to the English pessimist’s view that human life in such a condition must have been “poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” Rousseau claims that original humans, although admittedly solitary, were healthy, happy, good, and free. Human vices, he argued, date from the time when societies were formed. Rousseau thus exonerates nature and blames society. He says that passions that generate vices hardly existed in the state of nature but began to develop as soon as people formed societies. He goes on to suggest that societies started when people built their first huts, a development that facilitated cohabitation of males and females; that in turn produced the habit of living as a family and associating with neighbours. That “nascent society,” as Rousseau calls it, was good while it lasted; it was indeed the “golden age” of human history. Only it did not endure. With the tender passion of love there was also born the destructive passion of jealousy. Neighbours started to compare their abilities and achievements with one another, and that “marked the first step towards inequality and at the same time towards vice.” People started to demand consideration and respect. Their innocent self-love turned into culpable pride, as each person wanted to be better than everyone else. The introduction of property marked a further step toward inequality, since it made law and government necessary as a means of protecting it. Rousseau laments the “fatal” concept of property in one of his more-eloquent passages, describing the “horrors” that have resulted from the departure from a condition in which the earth belonged to no one. Those passages in his second Discourse excited later revolutionaries such as Karl Marx and Vladimir Ilich Lenin, but Rousseau himself did not think that the past could be undone in any way. There was no point in dreaming of a return to the golden age. Civil society, as Rousseau describes it, comes into being to serve two purposes: to provide peace for everyone and to ensure the right to property for anyone lucky enough to have possessions. It is thus of some advantage to everyone, but mostly to the advantage of the rich, since it transforms their de facto ownership into rightful ownership and keeps the poor dispossessed. It is a somewhat fraudulent social contract that introduces government, since the poor get so much less out of it than do the rich. Even so, the rich are no happier in civil society than are the poor because people in society are never satisfied. Society leads people to hate one another to the extent that their interests conflict, and the best they are able to do is to hide their hostility behind a mask of courtesy. Thus, Rousseau regards inequality not as a separate problem but as one of the features of the long process by which men become alienated from nature and from innocence. In the dedication Rousseau wrote for the second Discourse, in order to present it to the republic of Geneva, he nevertheless praised that city-state for having achieved the ideal balance between “the equality which nature established among men and the inequality which they have instituted among themselves.” The arrangement he discerned in Geneva was one in which the best persons were chosen by the citizens and put in the highest positions of authority. Like Plato, Rousseau always believed that a just society was one in which everyone was in his proper place. And having written the second Discourse to explain how people had lost their liberty in the past, he went on to write another book, Du Contrat social (1762; The Social Contract), to suggest how they might recover their liberty in the future. Again Geneva was the model: not Geneva as it had become in 1754 when Rousseau returned there to recover his rights as a citizen, but Geneva as it had once been—i.e., Geneva as Calvin had designed it. The Social Contract begins with the sensational opening sentence: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains,” and proceeds to argue that men need not be in chains. If a civil society, or state, could be based on a genuine social contract, as opposed to the fraudulent social contract depicted in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, people would receive in exchange for their independence a better kind of freedom, namely true political, or republican, liberty. Such liberty is to be found in obedience to a self-imposed law. Rousseau’s definition of political liberty raises an obvious problem. For while it can be readily agreed that an individual is free if he obeys only rules he prescribes for himself, this is so because an individual is a person with a single will. A society, by contrast, is a set of persons with a set of individual wills, and conflict between separate wills is a fact of universal experience. Rousseau’s response to the problem is to define civil society as an artificial person united by a general will, or volonté générale. The social contract that brings society into being is a pledge, and the society remains in being as a pledged group. Rousseau’s republic is a creation of the general will—of a will that never falters in each and every member to further the public, common, or national interest—even though it may conflict at times with personal interest. Rousseau sounds very much like Hobbes when he says that under the pact by which people enter civil society everyone totally alienates himself and all his rights to the whole community. Rousseau, however, represents this act as a form of exchange of rights whereby people give up natural rights in return for civil rights. The bargain is a good one, because what is surrendered are rights of dubious value, whose realization depends solely on an individual’s own might, and what is obtained in return are rights that are both legitimate and enforced by the collective force of the community. There is no more haunting paragraph in The Social Contract than that in which Rousseau speaks of “forcing a man to be free.” But it would be wrong to interpret these words in the manner of those critics who see Rousseau as a prophet of modern totalitarianism. He does not claim that a whole society can be forced to be free but only that an occasional individual, who is enslaved by his passions to the extent of disobeying the law, can be restored by force to obedience to the voice of the general will that exists inside of him. The person who is coerced by society for a breach of the law is, in Rousseau’s view, being brought back to an awareness of his own true interests. For Rousseau there is a radical dichotomy between true law and actual law. Actual law, which he described in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, simply protects the status quo. True law, as described in The Social Contract, is just law, and what ensures its being just is that it is made by the people in their collective capacity as sovereign and obeyed by the same people in their individual capacities as subjects. Rousseau is confident that such laws could not be unjust because it is inconceivable that any people would make unjust laws for itself. Rousseau is, however, troubled by the fact that the majority of a people does not necessarily represent its most-intelligent citizens. Indeed, he agrees with Plato that most people are stupid. Thus, the general will, while always morally sound, is sometimes mistaken. Hence Rousseau suggests the people need a lawgiver—a great mind like Solon or Lycurgus or Calvin—to draw up a constitution and system of laws. He even suggests that such lawgivers need to claim divine inspiration in order to persuade the dim-witted multitude to accept and endorse the laws it is offered. That suggestion echoes a similar proposal by Niccolò Machiavelli, a political theorist whom Rousseau greatly admired and whose love of republican government he shared. An even more conspicuously Machiavellian influence can be discerned in Rousseau’s chapter on civil religion, where he argues that Christianity, despite its truth, is useless as a republican religion on the grounds that it is directed to the unseen world and does nothing to teach citizens the virtues that are needed in the service of the state, namely, courage, virility, and patriotism. Rousseau does not go so far as Machiavelli in proposing a revival of pagan cults, but he does propose a civil religion with minimal theological content designed to fortify and not impede (as Christianity impedes) the cultivation of martial virtues. It is understandable that the authorities of Geneva, profoundly convinced that the national church of their little republic was at the same time a truly Christian church and a nursery of patriotism, reacted angrily against that chapter in Rousseau’s Social Contract. By the year 1762, however, when The Social Contract was published, Rousseau had given up any thought of settling in Geneva. After recovering his citizen’s rights in 1754, he had returned to Paris and the company of his friends around the Encyclopédie. But he became increasingly ill at ease in such worldly society and began to quarrel with his fellow philosophes. An article for the Encyclopédie on the subject of Geneva, written by d’Alembert at Voltaire’s instigation, upset Rousseau partly by suggesting that the pastors of the city had lapsed from Calvinist severity into unitarian laxity and partly by proposing that a theatre should be erected there. Rousseau hastened into print with a defense of the Calvinist orthodoxy of the pastors and with an elaborate attack on the theatre as an institution that could only do harm to an innocent community such as Geneva. Years Of Seclusion And Exile By the time his Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles (1758; Letter to Monsieur d’Alembert on the Theatre) appeared in print, Rousseau had already left Paris to pursue a life closer to nature on the country estate of his friend Mme d’Épinay near Montmorency. When the hospitality of Mme d’Épinay proved to entail much the same social round as that of Paris, Rousseau retreated to a nearby cottage, called Montlouis, under the protection of the Maréchal de Luxembourg. But even that highly placed friend could not save him in 1762 when his treatise Émile; ou, de l’education (Emile; or, On Education), was published and scandalized the pious Jansenists of the French Parlements even as The Social Contract scandalized the Calvinists of Geneva. In Paris, as in Geneva, they ordered the book to be burned and the author arrested; all the Maréchal de Luxembourg could do was to provide a carriage for Rousseau to escape from France. After formally renouncing his Genevan citizenship in 1763, Rousseau became a fugitive, spending the rest of his life moving from one refuge to another. The years at Montmorency had been the most productive of his literary career; The Social Contract, Émile, and Julie; ou, la nouvelle Héloïse (1761; Julie; or, The New Eloise) came out within 12 months, all three works of seminal importance. The New Eloise, being a novel, escaped the censorship to which the other two works were subject; indeed, of all his books it proved to be the most widely read and the most universally praised in his lifetime. It develops the Romanticism that had already informed his writings on music and perhaps did more than any other single work of literature to influence the spirit of its age. It made the author at least as many friends among the reading public—and especially among educated women—as The Social Contract and Émile made enemies among magistrates and priests. If it did not exempt him from persecution, at least it ensured that his persecution was observed, and admiring femmes du monde intervened from time to time to help him so that Rousseau was never, unlike Voltaire and Diderot, actually imprisoned. The theme of The New Eloise provides a striking contrast to that of The Social Contract. It is about people finding happiness in domestic as distinct from public life, in the family as opposed to the state. The central character, Saint-Preux, is a middle-class preceptor who falls in love with his upper-class pupil, Julie. She returns his love and yields to his advances, but the difference between their classes makes marriage between them impossible. Baron d’Étange, Julie’s father, has indeed promised her to a fellow nobleman named Wolmar. As a dutiful daughter, Julie marries Wolmar and Saint-Preux goes off on a voyage around the world with an English aristocrat, Bomston, from whom he acquires a certain stoicism. Julie succeeds in forgetting her feelings for Saint-Preux and finds happiness as wife, mother, and chatelaine. Some six years later Saint-Preux returns from his travels and is engaged as tutor to the Wolmar children. All live together in harmony, and there are only faint echoes of the old affair between Saint-Preux and Julie. The little community, dominated by Julie, illustrates one of Rousseau’s political principles: that while men should rule the world in public life, women should rule men in private life. At the end of The New Eloise, when Julie has made herself ill in an attempt to rescue one of her children from drowning, she comes face-to-face with a truth about herself: that her love for Saint-Preux has never died. The novel was clearly inspired by Rousseau’s own curious relationship—at once passionate and platonic—with Sophie d’Houdetot, a noblewoman who lived near him at Montmorency. He himself asserted in the Confessions that he was led to write the book by “a desire for loving, which I had never been able to satisfy and by which I felt myself devoured.” Saint-Preux’s experience of love forbidden by the laws of class reflects Rousseau’s own experience; and yet it cannot be said that The New Eloise is an attack on those laws, which seem, on the contrary, to be given the status almost of laws of nature. The members of the Wolmar household are depicted as finding happiness in living according to an aristocratic ideal. They appreciate the routines of country life and enjoy the beauties of the Swiss and Savoyard Alps. But despite such an endorsement of the social order, the novel was revolutionary; its very free expression of emotions and its extreme sensibility deeply moved its large readership and profoundly influenced literary developments. Émile is a book that seems to appeal alternately to the republican ethic of The Social Contract and the aristocratic ethic of The New Eloise. It is also halfway between a novel and a didactic essay. Described by the author as a treatise on education, it is not about schooling but about the upbringing of a rich man’s son by a tutor who is given unlimited authority over him. At the same time the book sets out to explore the possibilities of an education for republican citizenship. The basic argument of the book, as Rousseau himself expressed it, is that vice and error, which are alien to a child’s original nature, are introduced by external agencies, so that the work of a tutor must always be directed to counteracting those forces by manipulating pressures that will work with nature and not against it. Rousseau devotes many pages to explaining the methods the tutor must use. Those methods involve a noticeable measure of deceit, and although corporal punishment is forbidden, mental cruelty is not. Whereas The Social Contract is concerned with the problems of achieving freedom, Émile is concerned with achieving happiness and wisdom. In this different context religion plays a different role. Instead of a civil religion, Rousseau here outlines a personal religion, which proves to be a kind of simplified Christianity, involving neither revelation nor the familiar dogmas of the church. In the guise of La Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard (1765; The Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar) Rousseau sets out what may fairly be regarded as his own religious views, since that book confirms what he says on the subject in his private correspondence. Rousseau could never entertain doubts about God’s existence or about the immortality of the soul. He felt, moreover, a strong emotional drive toward the worship of God, whose presence he felt most forcefully in nature, especially in mountains and forests untouched by the hand of man. He also attached great importance to conscience, the “divine voice of the soul in man,” opposing this both to the bloodless categories of rationalistic ethics and to the cold tablets of biblical authority. That minimal creed put Rousseau at odds with the orthodox adherents of the churches and with the openly atheistic philosophes of Paris, so that despite the enthusiasm that some of his writings, and especially The New Eloise, excited in the reading public, he felt himself increasingly isolated, tormented, and pursued. After he had been expelled from France, he was chased from canton to canton in Switzerland. He reacted to the suppression of The Social Contract in Geneva by indicting the regime of that city-state in a pamphlet entitled Lettres écrites de la montagne (1764; Letters Written from the Mountain). No longer, as in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, was Geneva depicted as a model republic but as one that had been taken over by “twenty-five despots”; the subjects of the king of England were said to be free by comparison with the victims of Genevan tyranny. It was in England that Rousseau found refuge after he had been banished from the canton of Bern. The Scottish philosopher David Hume took him there and secured the offer of a pension from King George III; but once in England, Rousseau became aware that certain British intellectuals were making fun of him, and he suspected Hume of participating in the mockery. Various symptoms of paranoia began to manifest themselves in Rousseau, and he returned to France incognito. Believing that Thérèse was the only person he could rely on, he finally married her in 1768, when he was 56 years old. The Last Decade In the remaining 10 years of his life Rousseau produced primarily autobiographical writings, mostly intended to justify himself against the accusations of his adversaries. The most important was his Confessions, modeled on the work of the same title by St. Augustine and achieving something of the same classic status. He also wrote Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques (1780; Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques) to reply to specific charges by his enemies and Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (1782; Reveries of the Solitary Walker), one of the most moving of his books, in which the intense passion of his earlier writings gives way to a gentle lyricism and serenity. And indeed, Rousseau does seem to have recovered his peace of mind in his last years, when he was once again afforded refuge on the estates of great French noblemen, first the Prince de Conti and then the Marquis de Girardin, in whose park at Ermenonville he died. Duignan, B., & Cranston, M. (2018, October 15). Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Retrieved January 10, 2019, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jean-Jacques-Rousseau

I hardly dare admit it but I’d never made chocolate brownies until this weekend so I decided that Halloween was as good as excuse as any to have a go. These are delicious. They contain more chocolate than can possibly be good for anyone but we’re not complaining. And we made them suitably scary with the addition of these ghoulish sticks of decorating joy. by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Fizz Carr 250g good dark chocolate 200g unsalted butter 200g caster sugar 3 free-range eggs 125g plain flour 50g cocoa powder 100g broken walnuts Pre-heat oven to 160C/gas mark 3. Put 3-4cm water into a saucepan and bring it to a simmer. Break chocolate up, cut up the butter, and place both in a mixing bowl. Put it over the pan of simmering water and turn the heat off. Stir until melted together and smooth. In another bowl whisk the sugar with the eggs, using the balloon whisk, until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Add chocolate mixture to the eggs; mix thoroughly with wooden spoon. Sift flour and cocoa powder and mix thoroughly. Stir in walnuts if you have decided to use them. Line the baking tin with a piece of foil and pour in the mixture. Oven gloves on. Place the tin on a shelf in the middle of the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes. Oven gloves back on. Take the tin out of the oven and stand on wire rack. Leave until cool enough to cut into squares. And to accompany my baking we of course had to have a pumpkin who, carved by my husband, looks like he might have overindulged with one too many brownies. Yes, I’ll enjoy doing some needlework in front of the fire during the cold Winter months. I should have this done in time for Christmas if I do a little bit every night. That was 3 years ago and I’ve done a despairing one line of said Emily Peacock Kiss tapestry and it now sits in a bag on a shelf near the sofa laughing at me. But still I’m determined, and strangely convinced, that I will finish it. One day. Just as soon as I work out the instructions and manage to stay awake past 9pm. I like making things but for some reason I still haven’t learned that I’m not nearly as good as I hope I am and that these crafty things take far more patience than I will ever have. I blame Kirsty and Cath Kidston and all those women I hate to like. I don’t want to be one of them, I’m too busy doing other busy, modern woman about the countryside sort of things. So, as I get ready for another episode of Kirsty’s Homemade Britain which I shall watch whilst lounging comfortably on the piles of envelope cushions which litter my sofa (they’re addictively easy to make once you get the hang of it) I’ve found something else I want to have a go at. These advent calendar kits from Cox and Cox not only look lovely in the pictures but I reckon they’ll look even lovelier when hanging on the wall and my children will think I’m the best Christmas Mum in the world. My husband says I’ll never finish them and he’s seen a chocolate Lego calendar which they’ll like much more. He’s probably right but I’m going to give it a go. I’ll just try the one – they can share, they’ll like that. Who’d want a chocolate advent calendar all made and ready to go, when they can have a half-finished, homemade one filled with whatever I can find lying around the house the night before. No contest surely. Absolutely Nothing but COS by Mel Moss Absolutely Nothing To Buy : Blankets and Throws by Samantha Taylor Absolutely Nothing To Wear : Stripes by Mel Moss Absolutely Nothing To Buy : The Perfect Card by Mel Moss Absolutely Nothing To Cook : Pimp Up Your Pies by Cafe Salvation We’re very excited to have the deliciously clever Helen Creese from Cafe Salvation contributing to ANTW. She will be sharing some of her most popular recipes from their wonderful menu and to start we have everyone’s favourite Winter warmer…..PIES! “I may well regret saying this but at last, it’s cold enough to get some winter warmers on the menu! The woodburners arrival in the café is imminent, so to keep us toastie in the run up to its installation, last week we cooked up our tasty Punjabi Pie. This dish reminds me of my childhood. My Dad is a fantastic cook and I spent most evenings as a kid whiling away an evening in the kitchen, chatting to my Pops whilst subconsciously absorbing everything he was doing. Pops is a fan of spice and loves to experiment with food, adapting recipes to better suit his tastes, and this dish is a prime example of that. Based on our British Classic, Cottage Pie, the secret to Punjabi Pie lies in the spice mix added to the onion and garlic during the first stages of cooking. For 500g of beef, start by frying one red onion and 2-3 cloves of garlic (depending on size of cloves and how much you enjoy the flavour). Add one stick of chopped celery and one diced carrot. When the onion and veg are soft, add a healthy palm-full (sorry, I don’t use measured devices, but if you cup your fingers to create a well in your palm, you’ll have the right amount) of ground cumin, coriander and half a palm-full of turmeric. Stir until aromatic, then add your beef to the onion and spice mix. Season well, add some tomato puree and fresh red chilli (quantity dependent on how hot you like it), and once the beef is browned, add a tin of chopped tomatoes. Half-fill your tin with water and add this to your mixture. Taste and alter your seasoning to suit. Wack in the oven for 30-40 minutes and crack on with your mash topping. Pops would use a mixture of potatoes and swede; I opted for pots and sweet potato (mainly because I like the colour and I eat with my eyes). Boil both veg – about 3 good sized potatoes and one sweet potato for 500g beef – in salted water until soft, drain and mash with plenty of salt and pepper and a generous knob of butter. We like to throw in some grated cheddar (again, it gives the mash a glorious golden colour as well as tasting yummy). Take the beef mixture out of the oven and pop in to your serving dish, spread the mash over the top (make it nice and thick, there’s nothing worse than an anorexic pie topping), and sprinkle on a bit more grated cheddar. Pop the dish back in the oven for about 25-30 mins (depending on your oven: I use an Aga, so in a conventional oven I’d have it on 190 for 25-30 mins). Once your topping is golden and smelling amazing, your pie is ready! Why not Pimp Up your Pies?! You can add a twist to most run-of-the-mill recipes, turning wet, weekday suppers in to dramatic delights, just with the addition of a few spices, fresh herbs, lemon or lime juice….it really can be that simple. I’m looking forward to taking the Punjabi Pie in to another realm: Sherpa’s Pie will involve lamb, fresh ginger, chilli, toasted cumin and coriander seeds, maybe some lentils and spinach…I’m undecided on my mash topping – any suggestions? Our lovely customers enjoyed their slices of Punjabi with some Glorious Green Beans (Granny Smith’s runners always have been, and always will be, the sweetest runner beans I’ve ever tasted) and a delicious dollop of spicy red lentils. Hungry, anyone?” Find Salvation here…… Our opening hours are: Thursday: 0930 – 1500 Friday: 0930 – 1700 Saturday: 1000 – 1700 Lower Mitchell Barn, Nr Ledbury, Herefordshire HR8 1EG T: 01531 636380 I must have appeared rather rude as a child. I hardly ever thanked people in writing for any of the gifts received at Christmas or on birthdays. I’m not sure if I just didn’t see the point, or was just a bit too lazy, or had thanked them in my head and so thought that I didn’t need to actually tell them. It’s no wonder relatives got cross. I’d be furious. So now, be it as an act of guilt or a reaction to email over kill, I love nothing better than sending hand written cards. I have a drawer full of postcards and notecards which I can dip in to at any time when a “Thank You” or a “Welcome to the World” or a “Happy Birthday” is required. And I have a couple of favourite places I go to time and time again to find the perfect card. The first is Archivist. A small and perfectly formed printing press based in Oxfordshire who do the most beautiful letterpress cards as well as a Natural History collection (created from exclusive access to the NH archives) and hand printed notelets. You can buy them online or in selected retailers including John Lewis and Paperchase. The second is Nineteen Seventy Three. An online emporium with some of the most fabulous postcards, greeting cards, wrapping paper, invitations, notebooks and all sorts. With collections from various illustrators and artists including The Good Life, Darling Clementine, Belle and Boo and Sukie, there really is something for everyone. You can buy them direct from their online store or from various retailers. I could go on and on and on and there will be probably be many updates to this post. For now though, thank you very much. I was never really in to stripes for myself until quite recently. I have always been in to stripes for my boys. They just seem to suit them from end to end. Stripes have always been notoriously unflattering, they widen everything – I’m talking horizontal here, vertical is a whole different story and needs to be approached with extra caution. My children were both tiny babies and giant toddlers but regardless I wrapped them both in as many straight lines as I could get my hands on. The stripe – for adult or child – has to be right though and it’s worth investing a bit of time and money in to finding the ones which really do work. When it comes to the children I am a Polarn O Pyret addict. They do a stripe better than any other I know. From leggings – which I absolutely swear by for little boys – to long sleeved tees, all in ones, socks, hats and pants, they are the very very best. They have lasted me through two incredibly active boy babies and are still going strong. So, after years of telling me that stripes made his “eyes go funny”, my husband recently came back from New York with bundles of stripey offerings for both me and the children. I hadn’t asked for anything apart from a denim shirt from Levis – which he found and is perfect – but I did mention that J.Crew might be worth a visit if he did feel guilty for leaving me for 10 days that I might need anything else. That was as much direction as he was given and blimey did he do well. I am now the proud owner of 4 of the very best J.Crew stripey tops I never even knew existed. Each one a little bit different in colour or style and very well considered indeed. I would never have been this generous on myself. I’m in stripe heaven and I may be here for some time. So to end this rather self satisfied post about stripes you might be pleased to know that J.Crew have a UK online store now which is very good news for wardrobes everywhere. And there seems to be a bit of a sale on at the moment so definitely worth a look. Central Saint Martins, the best 4 (college) years of my life. Wish I could go back and do it all over again.

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“So, what happened?” I greet Paris eagerly when I get home from work the next day. The reporters have given up on us, so I don’t have to dodge them any more. A pity, really. I had come up with some pretty creative ways to evade them, and I rather enjoyed myself doing so. “Did Inspector Robinson royally ream Max out for withholding information?” I guiltily admit to myself that I am looking forward to hearing the gory details about the dressing down of Max. “She was pretty pissed,” Paris admits. “She got that look in her eye, you know the one that says, ‘I’m disgusted with you.’ I think she cultivated it on purpose to make people talk.” I know the look he is referring to, and it certainly works on me. “Her voice got really low.” Here, he imitates Inspector Robinson. “Ms. Bowers. This is a murder investigation. That means we investigate. In order to do so, we need information. I should think you of all people would want us to be successful.” He reverts to his normal voice. “If she looked at me the way she looked at Max, I would have spilled the beans for sure.” “Did you get to sit in on the interrogation?” I doubt the inspector would allow that, but I can always hope. “No. After Max blurted out the thing about someone coming out of Moira’s room, the inspector took her away. I had to wait nearly an hour for her. I took Max to a diner after so we could talk about it.” They both ordered coffee as it was between mealtimes. The whole time Paris was talking to Max, he had the feeling that something else was going on. There was a subtext that he wasn’t getting, but he didn’t like it whatever it was. Max would say something, then pause and look at Paris significantly, but he didn’t know why. It pisses me off that Max is playing such games with Paris because I hate seeing him upset. After an inordinate amount of lead-in time, Max finally got to the meat of the interrogation. She told the inspector everything she had told Paris, and Inspector Robinson got excited and rushed away, most likely to have another chat with Ms. Fullerton. As Paris is talking, he’s walks into the kitchen to make himself a hero sandwich. I must look woebegone enough because he offers to make one for me as well. I accept with alacrity. In college, Paris was famous for his hoagie sandwiches. I watch, mouth watering, as Paris slathers zesty honey mustard onto a hoagie bun. He starts piling fixings and trimmings as if there is no end to his hunger. He tells me that the inspector let slip that Moira was gagged after she was killed. Paris doesn’t know the significance of this, but I make a guess. I think it means that she was a willing participant in the bondage game because she would have been screaming her head off if someone had tied her up against her will. By this time, Paris is done building up the hoagie. He cuts it in two, plates it and hands it to me. I happily start munching as he prepares another one. As Paris makes a sandwich for himself, he points out that if Moira was drugged, she wouldn’t have made noise. I protest that drugging her didn’t make as much sense as her playing games with someone she trusted, someone who quickly shot, then gagged her. “Why would someone gag her after?” Paris protests, cutting his own sandwich in half. He pours us each a coke. We set our sandwiches on plates and take our food to the living room which is where we do most of our eating. I don’t know why we even bother having a table in the kitchen as we rarely eat there. We are silent for a few minutes as we make serious dents in our food. After we have adequately slaked our appetites, we start tossing out possibilities. I suggest that maybe a lover wanted to make it seem as if it were a nonconsensual scene, but that contradicts my earlier surmising that Moira wouldn’t stand to let a stranger tie her up. I chase it around in my brain for a few minutes and can tell that Paris is doing the same. After thinking about it, Paris offers that perhaps it’s a trick, a red herring. Maybe the killer wants the cops to think it’s supposed to be a lover making it look like an outsider when really, there is no reason for the gag. I call him Machiavellian, but not without admiration. It never ceases to amaze me how someone who looks as innocent as does Paris can think of such devious things. I concede his point which causes his jaw to drop. Fortunately, he isn’t eating. I stick my tongue out at him for pointing out how much I hate to admit I’m not one-hundred percent right. We hash out the gag information, but come up with nothing. “There is one other thing Max told me,” Paris says slowly. He looks as if he doesn’t want to spill it, but I know he will. Paris can’t keep anything to himself without exploding. “The inspector found half a dozen cigarettes shoved up Moira’s vagina, the lighted ends inside. Some kind of Camel. They were just a pile of ashes in there. This was done after she was dead.” Paris’s mouth is puckered up as if he’s eaten a lemon. I set down my sandwich, no longer hungry. Even though Moira hadn’t had to suffer the physical pain of such a heinous action, there’s the indignity of it. The hatred that her killer must have felt for her to do such a cruel thing. I push my sandwich away, saddened by my connection to mankind. “Was she raped?” I whisper, not really wanting to know the answer. “They found her secretions on her genitalia, but no semen,” Paris reports. I exhale loudly. I don’t know why I am so comforted that Moira had been spared that horror when she ended up losing her life, but I am. I ask how Max seemed while telling Paris the information, no longer wanting to be Sharon McCone, but pressing on, anyway. Max didn’t show much emotion according to Paris, but he generously ascribes her numbness to information overload. She told Paris that the inspector had been watching her carefully during the entire interview, but we both know Max has a need to dramatize situations to make herself seem more important. I still don’t trust Max’s motive for dragging Paris further into this thing, but I know better than to voice my concerns. Neither of us eat any more of our sandwiches, our appetites thoroughly dampened from talking over the gristly details of the case. I don’t know how homicide dicks can do it—how they can have any semblance of a normal life when they have to see the worst of what humanity has to offer. I know that gallows humor helps, but it can’t completely keep the nightmares at bay. I guess that’s where alcohol and drugs come in—anything to anesthetize the pain. “Shit, I gotta roll.” Paris glances at the clock hanging on the wall across from the couch. “I have to be at work in half an hour.” I wave at him distractedly as I take our plates to the kitchen. As I run soapy water over them, I let my mind drift. Bits and pieces of information flutter in and out of my mind, but I come up with no new ideas. I remember how furtive Vashti had looked when being questioned about the murder and decide to call her. She picks up on the second ring. “Hello?” The cadence of her voice always puts me in a sexy mood. She could be reading from the phone directory, and it would get me wet. I push those risqué thoughts to the back of my mind as I am calling her for business purposes. “Vashti? It’s Rayne. I was wondering if you had time to talk about Max and Moira?” I cross my fingers, hoping I’ve caught her at a good time. She agrees to talk after she puts something away in the refrigerator; I am delirious with wanting. Every time she speaks, I have to fight the desire to fall into her words and never come out. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to concentrate on what she’s saying because of her voice. I imagine her as a phone-sex operator; she’d be fantastic at it. When she resumes talking, she reiterates that she doesn’t have more to say. Her tone is still pleasant, but firm. I can’t believe she doesn’t know more than she’s telling and try to think of a way to make her talk. I tell her it’s her duty, and she says it’s up to the police. I ask if she doesn’t feel an obligation towards Max, and she says no. Just as I’m running out of ideas, she finally agrees to come over so we can talk in person. As soon as we hang up, I race to the bathroom to take a quick shower. By the time she arrives, I am in clean jeans and a tight, low-cut cerise blouse. I usher her into the living room and soon, we’re sitting on the couch sipping herbal tea. I look at her in pleasure, noting how her luxuriant hair is wound atop her head, how her right nostril is delicately pierced, how her generous breasts strain against her blouse. I patiently wait for her to speak as she struggles with whether to tell me what she knows. I want to push her, but I know that it would only make her clam up. She finally tells me that it’s Dylan’s story, then wrestles with her conscience once more about whether to spill the beans. She asks me if I’ve met the beautiful Moira, knowing full-well I have, and there is a hunger in her voice which I have never heard before. So. Even the unflappable Vashti had been swayed by Moira. I tuck that away to mull on later as I tell her that I met Moira at the party the night she was killed and thought she looked familiar. I still can’t place where I had met Moira before, and it’s starting to bother me. Vashti begins to speak. Moira loved a party and was in her element when she had her adoring fans around her. Vashti’s voice takes on a sing-song quality as she relates her story. Moira went to sex clubs, but they soon began to bore her. Most of them had an S&M flavor to them which did not appeal to Moira at all. At least, that’s what she told Vashti which is why Vashti refuses to believe that Moira allowed herself to be tied up voluntarily. I remain silent, unsure if I should tell her the latest news. After all, Inspector Robinson told Max who told Paris who told me, so it’s not as if the police are keeping it a secret. I decide to sit on it for the moment, however, and focus on Vashti’s story. She tells me how when Dylan first moved to San Francisco, she made the cardinal sin of visiting the Lexington, a famous dyke bar in the Mission District. The only redeeming quality about that hick place is the really hot bartender. Dylan quickly grew bored, even though it was Halloween night. She hadn’t dressed for the event, and the only eye-catching costumes were worn by a couple. One was a dominatrix, and she was holding a leash attached to the collar of the other, her slave. The slave girl was wearing a t-shirt with a hole exposing her right breast. It was the first time Dylan had seen a girl’s naked breast before not in a gym situation, and she wasn’t able to take her eyes off the slave girl whose hands were cuffed in front of her. Other girls kept going over to the couple and patting the slave on the head or caressing her bare breast. Dylan decided to follow suit, so she went over and patted the girl on the head. Vashti continues… “Hey, Sugar. I’ve never seen you here before.” The dominatrix cracked her whip on the slave girl’s ass while slanting her eyes to Dylan. Once Dylan was able to tear her eyes off the slave girl’s perfect breast, she noticed that the dominatrix was breathtaking. She was wearing a black leather corset which allowed her breasts to swell over the cups. She had on fish-net stockings and thigh-high black vinyl boots with three-inch platform heels. She’s wearing a black captain’s hat at a rakish angle over fluffy blond curls. Over the whole ensemble she had thrown a thick, fake-fur cape. She was sporting a whip in one hand and the leash in the other. “I just moved to town from Minnesota,” Dylan stuttered, unable to believe that she was talking to an actual dominatrix. “The Midwest, huh?” The dominatrix ran her tongue over her blood-red lips as she gazed thoughtfully at Dylan. Suddenly, she yanked on the chain, nearly toppling the slave girl who looked absolutely adorable with her butch haircut, ripped white t-shirt and blue jeans. She was wearing clunky black boots. It upset Dylan’s notions of butch and femme to see the power exchange of this couple. “Pet, say hello to our Midwest girl.” Immediately, the slave girl dropped to her knee and pressed her lips to Dylan’s sneaker. When Dylan didn’t move, the slave girl started kissing her way up Dylan’s calf over her jeans. “Would you like the use of my pet for the night?” The dominatrix hadn’t taken her eyes off Dylan the entire time. Dylan could only nod dumbly as the dom transferred the leash to Dylan… “Moira dressed up as a dom for Halloween?” I am incredulous given what Vashti told me earlier about Moira’s reluctance to be bound. “She liked being in control.” Vashti correctly interprets my look. “She is the one doing the tying, not the one being tied down. I am not believing that she willingly allowed someone to tie her to her bed.” “Halloween! Last year!” I snap my fingers. Vashti’s story has triggered a memory of my own. “That’s where I know her from.” I stop, blushing as the full memory flowers in my mind. Vashti looks at me with interest as my cheeks flush red. I don’t blush easily but when I do, I am helpless to stop it. “It is your turn to tell a story,” Vashti says softly with a touch of malice. I shoot her a nasty look, but she ignores it. “It’s nothing much,” I say haltingly. In fact, it’s a memory that I’d rather forget. “Really.” I smile my best smile, but Vashti is not buying it. She glares at me until I relent… Paris and I went to a costume party in Noe Valley. I hadn’t wanted to go, but got tricked into it by Paris who first stated that he wanted to go to the Castro for Halloween, which I flat-out refused to do. He knew how much I detested big, flaming events like Halloween in the Castro and only mentioned it to soften me up for the party in Noe Valley, which was where he really wanted to be. Like an idiot, I fell for it. Even though I know the way Paris’s mind works, I fall for his manipulations every time. Even the protest that I didn’t have a costume didn’t deter him as he had already picked one out for me as well as for himself. In fact, he had foreseen every obstacle before bringing up the Castro, thereby insuring the party as a fait accompli before he even opened his mouth. When I discovered what he was up to, I slapped him a good one upside the head and extracted the promise of breakfast in bed every weekend for a month in exchange. I still felt as if he hoodwinked me, but I wasn’t as bitter about it after he promised me the breakfasts. That is, until I saw the costume he had picked out for me. He could have picked Xena or Buffy or someone like that, but whom did my boy pick? Let me give you a hint. Think red satin halter top, wide gold satin belt, blue satin panties with white stars on it, and a gold lasso. Think golden tiara with a red star right in the middle as well as two gold bracelets. Yes, my boy chose fucking Wonder Woman with an outfit that would make a hooker blush. We had a fierce argument about that because I most emphatically did not want to be the Amazon princes with her cups running over, even if I did have the knee-high red boots to match the costume. Furthermore, I gave Paris the fish-eye for even thinking of me in such a way, but he protested that it was either Wonder Woman or Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, and her damn dog, Toto, too. In the middle of our huge scene, he implored me just to try it, so I reluctantly did. Unfortunately, it fit perfectly as long as I sucked in my stomach and didn’t move too quickly. I didn’t like the way my body curved in the outfit, but at least I had enough chest to fill the top. The discreet yin-yang tattoo I have over my right breast peeked out from beneath the red satin. Fortunately, the ankh on my ass was fully covered—at least as far as I could tell. My belly button ring was covered, but poked out slightly from behind the tight material. The costume molded to my body as if it were made for me. My breasts bulged out as they were supposed to. After I was done donning the costume and the accoutrements, I looked startlingly like Wonder Woman except my hair was shorter and I was Asian. I fiddled with my hair to see if I can make it a little fluffier, but it stayed where it was. The price I paid for thick, glossy hair. Paris loved the outfit. In fact, he loved it so much, we almost didn’t make it out of the apartment. He was in between partners at the time and hadn’t had sex for two weeks. For him, that’s a long time, and I did look pretty damn hot, if I did say so myself. I went into my bedroom to get my boots—knee-high, red, vinyl boots—and pulled them on. While I was in the bedroom, I slapped on some makeup, then went out to the living room to wait for Paris. When he came out of his room, I nearly busted a gut laughing because he was going as Flash Gordon. Now, Flash Gordon was a great character, but Paris didn’t remind me of him in the least. If I remembered correctly, Flash had a thing for Wonder Woman. Maybe there was significance to the outfits, after all. We drove to the party. I was conscious of every extra ounce of fat around my waist as my outfit clung to my body. My tits were jiggling and my ass was bouncing as we were ushered into the party. The guy at the door couldn’t take his eyes off me. Since he was wearing a ninja outfit that covered his face, I couldn’t tell if he was cute or not…

A full-time waitress, part-time entrepreneur with a desire to solve some of the world’s injustices will use the Miss BC Pageant this weekend in Fort Langley as her proverbial soapbox. The Langley City woman is one of 27 contenders vying for the Miss BC crown during the Miss, Miss Teen, Jr. Miss, and Mrs BC Pageant happening Monday, July 2 at the Chief Sepass Theatre in Fort Langley. “I entered this pageant for many reasons. However, the main reason, is so that I can use my voice. I want to share my thoughts,” said the Kelowna-born woman. “By participating in Miss BC, I hope to meet new people, share my passions, obtain leadership skills, inspire people and in turn, be inspired,” she said. “I believe with all my heart that I have something unique to share with the world, and I am ready to do so.” Describing herself as a individualist and a passionate environmentalist, she’s looking for a chance to step out of her comfort zone and speak to the need to care for the planet. “I absolutely love earth. Since a young age I’ve been taught to appreciate the environment and all of its beauty. I truly believe it is our duty to nurture our nature just as she has done for us. This is why I chose to go to school for environmental studies,” Scott said. Moreover, however, she hopes to use the pageant as a platform to speak out about social justice – or lack there of, in her view. Her mother was a recent victim of domestic abuse. “Educating people about the impacts of domestic abuse is a very important to me. Even though it didn’t happen to me directly, I almost lost my mom to it, so it is very real to me,” explained Scott. “Seeing her go through what she did has taught me how important it is to use our voices. I want to share my story in hopes that it will inspire strength in other women.” In fact, believing in the power of speaking out, she wants people to feel comfortable enough to talk about the hardships they are facing, and hopes to inspire such. “Everything happens for a reason. I’d like to believe that is why I’ve stumbled upon this amazing opportunity,” she said of the competition. As one of the late entries, this 25-year-old wilderness lover admitted she never entered the Miss BC pageant to win. “I’m entering to gain experience and prospective. All I can say is that I hope my individuality will be embraced,” she said. The Miss BC pageant also marks what she calls the beginning of her involvement with the community. She settled into Langley City three years ago, after growing up nearby in the Clayton Heights area, and has just recently begun contributing and volunteering. For instance, Scott said, she gives $5 a month to the It Works! Gives Back Foundation and sponsoring a little boy in Africa. But this “adventure” is really her launching pad for engaging in her community. “This is just the beginning of my humanitarian dream,” she said. Each year, the contestants in Miss BC must fundraise for the Cops for Cancer, and in the past decade that has translated to more than $350,000 for the cause. This weekend’s events Scott is looking forward to fostering new friendships with some of the other contestants. There are actually 45 contestants competing this year, including six in the Mrs. category, 12 in the Miss Teen classification, and the 27 (including Scott and fellow Langleyites Alice Kim and Natasha Chadney) vying for the Miss BC crown. Training and workshops run June 30 to July 2, with the crowning ceremonies on Monday evening. It’s not a beauty contest, organizers clarify. It’s a program offering training and workshops aimed at enhancing each contender’s self-esteem and personal development while recognizing their strengths, talents, and accomplishments. “This year, I believe I will bring something different to the stage. Not only as an individual, but as a signal for progressive change,” Scott said. Proudly representing her sponsor, Hempyz, she encouraged others to seek out and participate in this event in future: “This opportunity would be great for any female… I’d say if you feel you have a positive opinion to share then definitely apply next year’s pageant.” For more information, visit their website. Is there more to this story?

An Analysis of All’s Well That Ends Well (Shakespeare) by Joseph Suglia “Die Forderung, geliebt zu werden, ist die grösste aller Anmassungen.” —Friedrich Nietzsche, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Volume One, 525 My argument is that Shakespeare is both the most overestimated and the most underestimated writer in the history of English literature. His most famous plays are stupendously and stupefyingly overrated (e.g. The Tempest), whereas the problematical plays that have been relatively understaged and underread until recently, such as Measure for Measure and Love’s Labour’s Lost, are his masterworks. All’s Well That Ends Well is rightly seen as one of the problematical plays, since it does not exactly follow the contours of the Shakespearean comedy. One could rightly say that all of the Shakespearean comedies are conjugal propaganda. They celebrate marriage, that is to say, and marriage, for Hegel and for many others, is the foundation of civil society. In the Age of Elizabeth, long before and long afterward, the way in which children are expected to have been begotten is with the imprimatur of marriage. But there is no marriage-boosterism in All’s Well That Ends Well, no ra-raing or oohing and aahing over marriage. In All’s Well That Ends Well, a celebration of marriage is absent. Whereas Much Ado about Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream end in anti-orgies, in collectivized, communalized, semi-coerced marriages, the wedding in All’s Well That Ends Well takes place in the second act and is absolutely coerced. The play is about a woman named Helena who forces a man named Bertram to marry her and to have sexual intercourse with her. As blunt as this synopsis might be, it is nonetheless accurate. A psychotic stalker, Helena will stop at nothing and will not take “Yes” for an answer. She pursues Bertram relentlessly. As I shall argue below, Bertram genuinely does not want to be married to Helena, nor does he wish to be physically intimate with her. Not only that: There is absolutely no evidence that he desires Helena at the end of the play. Quite the opposite, as I shall contend. Much like her predecessor, Boccaccio’s Giletta, Helena is a monomaniac whose obsession ends in the achievement of her desire and her scheme: “[M]y intents are fix’d, and will not leave me” [I:i]. And yet, does obsession ever end? When we are first presented with her, Helena remarks, “I do affect a sorrow indeed, but I have it too” [I:i]. She means that she affects a sorrow for her father, who died not more than six months ago, but is genuinely sorrowful over the thought of the impossibility of possessing Bertram: “I think not on my father, / And these great tears grace his remembrance more / Than those I shed for him” [Ibid.]. Her indifference to her father’s death reveals that she is hardly the virtuous innocent that the Countess, Lefew, and (later) the King of France take her to be: “I think not on my father… I have forgot him. My imagination / Carries no favour in’t but Bertram’s” [Ibid.]. All she thinks about is Bertram, whose “relics” she “sanctifies” [Ibid.], much like a dement who collects the socks of her lover which she has pilfered from the laundry machine. Even more revealingly, Helena’s love for Bertram has a social and political valence: “Th’ambition in my love thus plagues itself” [I:i]. Am I alone in hearing in the word ambition an envy for Bertram’s higher social status? I am not suggesting that her love for him is purely socially and politically motivated. I am suggesting rather that her love is inseparable from the desire for social / political advancement. When he takes his leave, Bertram does not propose that Helena visit Paris to win the King’s favor, despite what Helena’s words might suggest: “My lord your son made me to think of this; / Else Paris and the medicine and the king / Had from the conversation of my thoughts / Haply been absent then” [I:iii]. Helena lies to the Countess—and/or lies to herself—when she says that her love “seeks not to find that her search implies, / But riddle-like lives sweetly where she dies” [I:iii]. No, Helena is indefatigable and is hardly the self-abnegating “barefooted” saint [III:iv] that she pretends to be. Furthermore, she is lying to herself and to the Countess of Rossillion when she says that she is not “presumptuous,” as she is lying when she says that she would not “have [Bertram]” until she “deserve[s] him” [I:iii]. Who decides when she should “deserve” Bertram? Apparently, Helena believes that only she is authorized to decide when she is deserving of Bertram. Why is Bertram not permitted to decide when and if she is deserving of him? Helena is sexually aggressive from the beginning unto the sour end. The fundamental challenge of the play is not for Helena to find a way to become married to Bertram. As I wrote above, Bertram is forced to marry Helena in the second act of the play. The fundamental challenge of the play is for Helena to find a way to have sexual intercourse with Bertram—to couple with him, whether he wants to couple with her or not. And Bertram has made it clear that he does not find Helena sexually attractive. And yet Helena refuses to accept his rejection and sexually unifies with Bertram while dissembling herself as another woman, Diana Capilet. Helena is not satisfied merely being married to Bertram. Nor, it seems, would she be satisfied with Bertram’s assent and consent, even if he had assented and consented to the marriage. She wants to possess Bertram against his own will: “[L]ike a timorous thief, most fain would steal / What law does vouch mine own” [II:v]. Why not take Helena at her word? On the one hand, she is saying that she is lawfully entitled to the appropriation of Bertram’s body, but that is not enough for her. She is saying that she has the power to break his life, but she would rather have the power to break his heart. On the other hand, taking Helena at her word, she is the thief who would like to steal what is lawfully her own. She would like to experience the thrill of transgressing the law without ever transgressing the law. All’s well that ends well. She does not want to take the wealth of his body; she wants to steal the wealth of his body. Now, this might seem a curiously literal interpretation of the line, but does Helena not deceive her husband like a thief in the night [III:ii]? She does not cheat on her husband; she cheats with her husband. She is like the banker who steals from her own bank or like the casino owner who gambles at her own casino. It would be a mistake to see Bertram as an erotophobe, since he does attempt to seduce Diana. He is revolted by Helena. The idea of having sex with her suffuses him with nausea. Bertram acknowledges that he is married to a woman whom he does not love, but he swears that he will never be physically intimate with her. In a letter to his mother, Bertram writes: “I have wedded [Helena], not bedded her, and sworn to make the ‘not’ eternal” [II:ii]. He is so disgusted by the idea of having sex with her that he goes to war to escape her: “I’ll to the Tuscan wars and never bed her” [II:iii]. Bertram’s reluctance to be yoked to Helena must be seen within the horizon of the early seventeenth century. Let us not forget that Queen Elizabeth was the monarch at the time of the play’s composition, and within Bertram’s refusal to become the “forehorse to a smock” [II:i] (the leading horse in a train of horses spurred on by a woman) one can hear the resonances of Elizabeth’s reign. However, it would be mistaken to suggest that Bertram does not want to marry Helena merely because she is a woman who has been invested with regal authority or merely because she was once lowborn and poor. Again, he finds her physically repellent. Helena does not stop until she couples with Bertram without his consent. Is this not rape? According to the standards of our day, impersonated sex is indeed sexual violation, but it is unlikely that it would have been considered ravishment in the Age of Elizabeth. And is this not incest, for Helena and Bertram are sister and brother, disregarding the banality of biology? There is a conversation about incest in Act One, Scene Three, the conclusion of which is: Helena would acknowledge the Countess as her mother, on the condition that the world does not recognize Bertram as her brother. But are Helena and Bertram not sister and brother? They grew up together in the same household, and it is possible that Bertram rejects Helena partly out of the fear of incest. The Countess certainly sees Helena as her organic daughter: “If [Helena] had partaken of my flesh and cost me the dearest groans of a mother I could not have owed her a more rooted love” [V:v]. Helena is the replica that is naturalized, much like the artificial fruit in the bowl that lies upon your kitchen table, which you accept as natural. Fortune (what is constituted after birth) and Nature (what is constituted at birth) reverse each other: Bertram becomes the bastard child; the orphan Helena becomes the proper daughter: “Which of them both / Is dearest to me I have no skill in sense / To make distinction” [III:iv]. Much worse: The Countess raises Helena to a status that is higher than that of her own son, who is written off by her as a reprobate. When the Countess intones the opening line of the play, “In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband” [I:i], you do get the impression that her biological son is dead through the act of birth, that her son is a stillborn. Throughout the play, there are posited false equivalences. Convalescence is falsely equated to marriage, as virginity is equated to mortality. Epexegesis: The revival of the King of France is equated to the compulsory marriage of Bertram to Helena (Bertram questions this false economics of equivalence: “But follows it, my lord to bring me down / Must answer for your raising?” [II:iii]), in a Bachelorette-style gameshow that is rigged in advance in which she nominates Bertram without ever taking any of the French lords seriously as his competitors. The death of the King is equated to virginity, as virginity is equated to death in Parolles’ campaign against virginity (“He that hangs himself is a virgin; virginity murthers itself, and should be buried in highways out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature” [I:i]). The King strikes a balance between Bertram’s loss and Helena’s gain: “Take her by the hand / And tell her she is thine; to whom I promise / A counterpoise, if not to thy estate, / A balance more replete” [II:iii]. A fake equivalence, false equation is again posited, between the sacrifice of Bertram’s social status and the elevation of Helena’s status. One thing is taken for another, one person is replaced with another, as we see with the replacement of Diana with Helena. Such is the logic of substitution or the logic of substitutability in All’s Well That Ends Well. Those literary critics who praise Helena as an innocent are wrong (I am looking at you, Harold Bloom), in the same way that the Countess of Rossillion and Lefew are wrong about her “innocence”: Helena is not saintly, she is not simple, she is not unambiguously honest (unless by “honesty” one intends “virginity”), she is not unambiguously good, she is not uncomplicatedly “virtuous” [I:i]. She is not reducible to the role of the innocent that she plays. Shakespeare’s characters are not undifferentiated. His fools tend to be wise, and his characters in general are neither simply good nor simply evil, but rather both good and evil—sometimes, his characters are even good and evil at the same time. This is stated almost aphoristically in the words of the First Lord, a gentleman whose role seems to be to emphasize that #NotAllMenAreSwine: “The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud if our faults whipp’d them not, and our crimes would despair if they were not cherish’d by our virtues” [IV:iii]. The proto-Nietzschean Shakespeare is ventriloquized through the First Lord, I think. Both Nietzsche and Shakespeare admonish us against pouring all of humanity into twin buckets, one marked GOOD and the other marked EVIL. Shakespearean characters are of overwhelming and self-contradicting complexity, assemblages of oxymoronic elements. For this reason, those critics who condemn Bertram as a cad are wrong in the same way that Diana is wrong when she calls him simply “not honest” [III:v]. (Let me remark parenthetically that Parolles is the double of Bertram, as Diana is the double of Helena. Parolles absorbs all of Bertram’s negative traits, particularly the tendency to seduce and impregnate washerwomen.) (And here is a second set of parentheses: Parolles is also the double of Helena. He ignores his social status when he refuses to call his lord Bertram “master” [II:iii].) Those who suggest that Helena shyly longs after a man who is unworthy of her are as wrong as Lefew, who claims that the French lords reject Helena, when it is the other way around. (I’m still looking at you, Harold Bloom.) Bertram is a cad, a seducer, yes, but he is not reducible to his caddishness. Despite her indifference to her father’s death, Helena identifies with her father, Gerard de Narbon, the physician, and uses her father’s recipes to heal the King of France. When Bertram pleads to the Florentine washerwoman, “[G]ive thyself unto my sick desires” [IV:ii], it is apparent that he is conscious of his own sickness, and it is Helena who will wear the quackish mask of the physician once more. The first half of the play folds upon the second half: In the first half, Helena cures the King of his ailment; in the second, Helena cures Bertram of the sickness of his lechery—against his will. When the King’s eyes first alight upon Helena, she seems a radiant presence: “This haste hath wings indeed” [II:i], he says, as if she were a seraphic apparition. It is Helena’s womanly charm, her femaleness, that resurrects him from the dead: “Methinks in thee some blessed spirit doth speak / His powerful sound within an organ weak” [Ibid.]. It is her vixenishness that virilizes him. The King is revived from the dead. Now, Bertram has lost the right to say, “No” to Helena. Love for Helena is now equated to the obedience to the King of France: “Thou wrong’st thyself if thou should’st strive to choose [to love Helena]!” [II:iii], the King screams at Bertram. In other words, “You should not have to choose to love Helena. I have commanded you to love Helena, and therefore you MUST love Helena.” The word of the King is law, and to defy the word of the King is misprision. Behind Helena’s monomaniacal pursuit of Bertram is all of the weight of legal and regal authority. Love of Helena is bound up with love of the King, and an affront to Helena is an affront to the throne. This is to say that Bertram is legally and politically obligated to love Helena, as if love is something that could be compelled, coerced, commanded. Here, the King of France ignores that desire is not logical or causal and is not subject to regal injunction. Desire cannot be systematized. We cannot program our minds to love; we cannot download love applications into the smartphones of our minds. Were she not such a monomaniac, Helena would have let Bertram go after he refuses her, but she does not. Not once does Helena accept Bertram’s rejection. Not once does she turn her attention to another man after Bertram scorns her. Instead, she pretends to relinquish the man she is determined to appropriate: “That you are well restor’d, my lord, I’m glad. / Let the rest go” [II:iii]. When Helena says this, it is accismus, that is, the feigned refusal of that which is earnestly desired. It is not a statement of resignation. Nor should one mistake her demand to marry for a marriage proposal. Helena does not propose marriage; she imposes marriage. It would have been noble had Helena renounced Bertram upon learning that he is a marriage escapee, that he defected to Italy and entered the Tuscan Wars and a likely death to escape her. However, this is not what Helena does: Instead, she pursues him to Italy. Her path of reflection is as follows: “Bertram left France to escape me; therefore, I will leave France, as well—and follow him to Italy.” Whereas Helena wants presence, Bertram wants absence: “Till I have no wife I have nothing in France” [III:ii], he writes to his mother. To say that she wants everything would be a gross understatement. She wants more than everything—she wants to eat her Key Lime Pie and refrigerate it at the same time. Bertram gives away his six-generation family ring to Helena, who is disguised as a Florentine washerwoman, and this is ring will be returned to him. The ring seals not only his marriage to Helena, but also seals his marriage to the community / to the collective. The symbol of the ring is clearly the chief symbol of the play, for treason moves in an annular pattern. Treachery is circular; treason is circular. This is the meaning of the difficult and frequently misinterpreted words of the First Lord: We are, the First Lord says, “[m]erely our own traitors. And as in the common course of all treasons we still see them reveal themselves till they attain to their abhorr’d ends; so he that in this action contrives against his own nobility, in his proper stream o’erflows himself” [IV:iii]. I would translate these lines thus: “We human beings are traitors to ourselves. We betray ourselves in the very act of betrayal. As we betray others, we betray ourselves—that is, we reveal ourselves as traitors and thus we betray our own betrayals.” According to a citation in The Oxford English Dictionary, “till” could mean “while” in 1603. All’s Well That Ends Well is believed to have been written between 1604 and 1605. If “till” meant “while” in 1603 in England, then this is a justifiable reading of the lines. All of the main characters are unrepentant traitors, and traitors always betray themselves. We see treacherous treason in the treacheries of Parolles, of Helena, and of Bertram. Parolles intends to betray the Florentine army, but ends up betraying military secrets to the Florentine army. Helena does, in fact, deceive her husband, but this deception ends in legitimized sexual intercourse. Moreover, she lies when she says that she “embrace[s]” death to “set [Bertram] free” [III:iv], but she does so in order to affirm the sanctity of marriage. She is a liar who feigns her own death—but she does so in order to honor marriage and thus to honor Elizabethan society. In the eyes of the world, she has done nothing wrong. Who could blame her for cozening someone who would unjustly win? Would could blame her for deceiving her husband in order to sanctify conjugality? A Casanova in reverse, she takes a honeymoon to Italy and has sex with her husband—only her husband thinks that he is having sex with someone else. No one is devirginized, except for Bertram’s wife. Bertram would betray Helena by cheating upon her, but he ends up betraying himself. He intends to commit adultery on his own wife, but he ends up committing adultery with his wife. From a purely external / legal / formal point of view, neither sin nor crime has been performed in each case. In each case, the three characters have sinful intentions, and yet commit no sin. All’s well that ends in a socially acceptable manner. It is for this reason that Helena says that the reason within her treasonous marriage plot “[i]s wicked meaning in a lawful deed, / And lawful meaning in a lawful act, / Where both not sin, and yet a sinful fact” [III:vii]. And later in the play: “All’s well that ends well; still the fine’s the crown. / Whatever the course, the end is the renown” [IV:v]. “Fine” here means “ending.” The formal close of the plot sanctifies all of the deception that came before it. The ring turns itself around; the end communes with the beginning. The ring is closed, erasing all of the treachery and deception that was used to forge it. No one is innocent, and no one is guilty. Diana implies the innocent guilt of not only Bertram, but of all traitors, when she says: “Because he’s guilty and he is not guilty” [V:iii]. The traitors of the play (Parolles, Helena, and Bertram) are innocent, though their intentions are treasonous. One character after the other intends to perform a treacherous action, but this action is transmuted into its opposite. Such is the reversal of language: As the First Lord says to the Second Lord (in reference to a secret that will be communicated by the latter to the former): “When you have spoken it, ’tis dead, and I am the grave of it” [IV:iii]. Language kills. That is: Language has the tendency to say the exact opposite of what we mean. When we say or write, “I am lonely,” we cannot be lonely, for we open up the possibility of communication. When we say or write, “I am sad,” we are not sad enough to stop speaking or writing. Concerning the intentional errors of language: The bescarfed fool Patrolles misuses words throughout, and this is always Shakespeare’s way of ridiculing characters he does not respect. For instance, Parolles says “facinerious” instead of “facinorous” [II:iii]. He uses an affected language, such as when he calls Bertram’s defection from marriage a “capriccio” [Ibid.]. He often cannot finish his sentences. Again and again, his sentences are broken off with em-dashes (this is what rhetoricians call aposiopesis). And yet there is some sense in his nonsense. When he intones, “Mort du vinaigre!” [III:iii], this might seem to be mere babble, and yet might it not evoke the crucifixion of Christ, whose broken lips and tongue were said to be moistened by vinegar? When Parolles is accosted by the Florentines, dressed as Muscovites, they utter gibble-gabble, such as “Boskos vauvado” and “Manka revania dulche” [IV:i]. And yet are they gabbling? Dulche might invoke Dolch, a German word that means “dagger” (after all, the Florentines-dressed-as-Muscovites are pointing their poniards at Parolles), and boskos might evoke “bosk” or “boscage,” which makes sense, since the scene takes place in a forest. Even though they are gabbling, there is significance in their gibble-gabble. Shakespeare cannot allow his writing to be meaningless. There is, in his writing, a tyranny of meaning. Even the nonsense in his plays carries sense. At the end of the play, which does not end well, and which therefore belies its own title, Bertram acknowledges that his wife is his wife, but he does so in formalistic and legalistic language: “If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly / I’ll love her dearly, ever, ever dearly” [V:iii]. In other words, “I love you because I am socially, legally, and politically obligated to love you.” He speaks as if the knowledge of information led to desire, as if the confirmation of a legal contract necessarily issued in passion. Indeed, Helena has proven that she has fulfilled both conditions of the contract: that she pull the ring from his finger and that she produce a child of whom he is the father. The ring is given as evidence to Helena’s kangaroo court; the parturition of the child is demonstrated, as if this were the Elizabethan version of a talk-show paternity test. It is probable, however, that Bertram intended “ring” and “child” as metaphors—and yet Helena takes the letter as the law. Helena literalizes what might have been intended metaphorically. Is the social, legal, and political obligation to love another human being not the definition of marriage? Kant defined marriage as the mutual leasing of each other’s genital organs, and philosophers since Hegel have criticized his glacial definition. But was Kant incorrect? All’s Well That Ends Well implies essentially the same thing. It could be said, with only slight exaggeration or overstatement, that this play is a work of misogamy in contrast to the epithalamia Much Ado about Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare’s most problematical comedy would suggest that marriage is the lie of all lies, the hoax of all hoaxes, and should be avoided by anyone who values solitude, privacy, and freedom. When Bertram submits to the will of Helena and the will of the King the first time, it is hardly a profession of love: “I find that she, which late / Was in my nobler thoughts most base, is now / The praised of the king; who, so ennobled, / Is as ’twere born so” [II:iii]. This is the least erotic assent to marry someone that has ever been articulated. “All yet seems well” [V:iii; emphasis mine]. There is the semblance of a happy closure, the simulation of a happy ending. Simply because the circle has closed in a formal sense, this does not mean that anyone is happy. All’s Well That Ends Well does not end well. All is not well in All’s Well That Ends Well. All’s ill that ends well.

Element: Earth Zodiac Sign: Capricorn Planets: Mercury/Saturn Restriction of Movement, Release of energy or power Self inflicted restrictions or decisions Lack of clear thinking Number 8: Some of the positive meanings of the number 8 are; acknowledging error, regeneration, restricted movement, results of victory, conclusion of a cycle. Negative meanings: Lack of persistence, because it is all too hard. Spiritual progress. generosity, expansion. Emotionally: Resigned to the fact, giving up, determined to succeed, enthusiasm The swords on the card: Cutting implement, insight as in getting right to the bottom of something, defensive action, authority, conflict, triumph against the odds. justice and law, natural authority. The blindfold: Unwilling to see the reality of what is right in front of you or a situation Binding: Limitation in current events usually self imposed, not willing to take action or accountability. This card points to being a prisoner of your own making. A woman stands bound and blindfolded; with swords to either side of her. She must navigate a narrow path in front of her. One foot touches the water. That is her left foot and as I have mentioned before the left hand side of the body is ruled by female energy such as intuition emotions etc. The right hand side is male energy, action, earthly, strength and control etc. So in saying this we can deduce that the woman is weighing things up. She must be very careful in this endeavour and would be well advised to remove the blindfold and the body binding in order to see what lies in front of her. Those bindings and blindfold are self inflicted by the way. The restrictions as to what she has done and thus restricting herself to any positive outcomes. She is not willing to face the reality of her own actions. Right behind her is a castle which signifies her power and wealth that she comes from. Signifying, authority, structure, preservation of what was or is. The mountains in the far distance show the long journey that she is on, she cannot turn back either due to her choices or decisions that she made whether for good or bad. Right now she faces major hurdles of her own making and this sums up the world's current situation right now. There does not seem on the surface to be much real authority and structure as things are very much up in the air at present and everyone is feeling defensive and restricted. No clear thinking of what to do to keep things stable. The world is on a precipice right now; one wrong move and boom; things can explode setting in motion a direction that may not be good for humanity and may not be able to be stopped. People are right to be very nervous and cautious. But look behind the scenes of world events right now, there are clear signs of deception and illusion, nothing is by chance. The stage has been set by hidden hands for the chain of events that follow. Things that were set in place many years ago are now “coming home to roost”. Many deals and double deals; lies told to the world. We the people pay the dreadful price. We must tread very carefully right now and actively follow world events because skulduggery is afoot for a long time now and things are about to hit the climax in which the unintended may happen. Petrol is only one of the things to watch right now as well as gas and oil. Don't be surprised if the price is slowed for a short spell especially in Australia due to the federal elections coming up I feel towards the end of May. But as soon as the election is over the price will go back up as expected. Food is the other important thing to watch and many people will not be able to afford basic food items. Because they have to choose between paying a bill or eating this is working people they are the new poor. Now as I look at the card, I see a flash of yellow/golden light cascading down the castle. That can imply happiness and spiritual protection around the home front (family home). The swords stand protectively in front of the castle which is built high up on a rock also implying a fortress and protection. Given that the castle is built on solid rock that gives one a good strong foundation and strength. This all could mean some sort of surprise is instore or financial help for people to stave off deeper financial suffering. My advice is don't play the martyr this month, be very cautious and act wisely. Save what you can and protect what you have. Because it can be gone in an instant as many poor souls have found out already via war, unemployment, floods and natural disasters. Keep realistic in your goals and please heed warnings about travel, money, health and home / family matters. Work out what your priorities are. On a world reading this covers both sides of the Ukraine war. All is not what the public are being told and this is very complex because of other nations actions/ deals and it muddies the water too much. Things have been hidden; that show foreign states hands involved on either sides of the conflict. That information is gradually coming out; however someone will up the stakes to prevent a particular nations involvement being implicated. I will not name this western nation though. This does not look like a good outcome sadly and it is highly distressing, prolonging the suffering of innocent people. I see lots of spring time rain creating a very muddy battle ground in Ukraine over the next few weeks. This may cause a temporary halt to heavy tanks and other heavy equipment being transported. That will slow down a little of the conflict. I see new maps being drawn by Russia. Putin is going after something in particular. If he succeeds this could spell disaster for the Ukrainian people. I feel that this is a particular building of significance, not necessarily the Parliament building, but it will be a big game changer. Europe need to be on their toes and respond quickly but very carefully as they do not want to risk an all out war. Hence the current go slow, which also has a negative effect on the unfortunate civilians. China (CCP) meantime are watching all of this and taking note, rubbing their hands with glee as they have picked up useful information on urban combat etc. But they may just be in for a shock when they go after Taiwan. The have underestimated the people and the counter action. Boy this is a terrible situation and I cannot bear to see people or animals suffering. This is not the way for humanity to behave. The trauma from this will last a very long time and also please give a thought to all animals caught up in the human conflict. I am so glad to see that there has been a new side to humanitarianism; caring for animals is becoming highly important and so it should be. What would a world be without beautiful souls like animals. They give us reason to live and love unconditionally. I am praying for everyone right now. I don't care what side of conflict people are on; through no fault of their own. Sometimes just by being born in a particular place, they pay the most unfortunate price. It is always the ordinary innocent people that suffer. it really upsets me to see people suffering, it is not the way to be. I want people to be safe and protected and I want all animals to be protected. My blessings and warm and fuzzy hugs to all Copyright © Alex Fulford 18 March 2022 Chernobyl radiation ☢️ This may not be the building that I was picking up but if radiation leaks that is a game changer. I just hope they can fix this. https://www.9news.com.au/national/russia-ukraine-updates-besieged-ukrainian-commander-serhiy-volyna-issues-desperate-message-to-the-world/c11422c5-8a7b-49ba-b7a4-c4996594d250 Steel plant, the Russians are seeking control of important industrial plants which are in an area beneficial to them for armament production. Coal and steel are vital resources for Ukraine. https://www.9news.com.au/world/ukrainian-counterattacks-slowing-russian-offensive-in-east/7628c905-5f98-4e06-8395-be0bb3bc1a00 This is the building for sure. My heart goes out to all of the people that are trapped in here. It is a terrifying situation and heaven knows what the outcome will be.

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Jude, Zeta where have you been? We've been looking all over and here we find you at the psychiatrist's office raising awareness about mental health within the community. Well, I personally want to say that "We love it". "Side Effects" is an intriguing film providing a little insight into the world of depression, along with a dash of embellishment clearly for the purposes of making it into a motion picture. Anyone experiencing a mental illness or even treating a mental illness will testify that one's mental health is no laughing matter, by any means. "Side Effects" is a must-see film for the simple fact that it deals with real topics and issues that most have experienced either first hand or indirectly through someone we know. So let's pop open the Xanax and see what this movie is about. Jude Law stars as Dr. Johnathan Banks, a psychiatrist confident in his practice, until he encounters a seemingly harmless client named Emily(Rooney Mara). Emily comes to his attention in a depressed state via recent suicide attempt that lands her in the emergency room. Banks being a doctor overworked and maybe even ready to go home allows Emily to leave with only a script and her word that she would meet with him for outpatient treatment. Now, anyone knowing 2 cents about mental health would know that you don't get to go home after attempting to take your own life in the same night. Anywho, he releases her to her husband, Martin(Tatum) that reassures Banks that his wife will take her medications and attend scheduled appointments. Sounds like an open and shut film huh? Well, it's not. Emily attends the appointments and goes through the normal dialogue of her childhood troubles and sources of stress while experimenting with medications to find something without too many "side-effects". Everything seems to be going along according to plan, until Emily wants to try this new wonder drug called "Ablixa". Ablixa is to be the drug of the century, the cure all, but no drug is without side-effects and this one has some that aren't so easy to eliminate. You ever hear of Ambien and all the sleepwalking that it has caused? Well, multiple the intensity of it's side-effects by 100 and you have your new cure for depression. Emily begins to take this new pill and this is where the movie starts! "Side Effects" puts Banks face to face with either one of the most clever people to walk the planet or the sickest client in mental health cinema history. This movie is guaranteed to have psychiatrists thinking twice before pulling out their blue pads and prescribing the next "It" drug on the market. The obvious question is "Who would prescribe a new drug without doing the proper research"? Any idea, Banks? Catherine Zeta Jones give an eye opening performance in the film as Dr. Seibert, a mature female psychiatrist that becomes interested in the work of Banks and Emily. One has to wonder why she has taken such an interest in the work of Banks, hmm? It's always nice to see Zeta take on a role as she gives it 110 percent every time. I first started following her films after watching her performance in "Traffic", great film by the way if you haven't seen it. I've got to say, her role as Seibert definitely adds some "essence" to the film and I'll leave it at that. Now for the true star of the film, Rooney Mara, she takes on the role of Emily Taylor, a depressed and very suicidal young woman that flips Bank's world upside down. The way in which Mara portrays the character shows that Soderbergh put a lot of effort into researching depression and communicating his needs for the film. I personally have worked in mental health for the past 12yrs and I would say that she gives a convincing performance, but that's just my personal opinion. Mara is going to be someone to look for in future films, but if this is your first introduction to her, it's definitely a treat. To wrap things up, "Side Effects" is a movie about mental illness, but it does not reflect the issues and concerns of everyone experiencing depression. "We don't want anyone making assumptions about themselves or anyone else that they know diagnosed with an mental illness". Unhinged Reviews recommends this film for those curious about the mind and how serious it is for both clients and doctors to do the research on medications before starting treatment. Unhinged Reviews also recommends this film for those in search of a good drama with an unexpected plot twist or two. Enjoy. Click a button to share this review with others Leave a comment to discuss the film or open a dialogue about your experience with mental health.

The February edition of Reason has my column on fan fiction, “The Fan Fiction Phenomena: What Faust, Hamlet, and Xena the Warrior Princess have in common,” in which I discuss fan-written stories based on television, film, and book characters. (As I mention in the column, I myself have been writing Xena: Warrior Princess fanfic for the past six years.) I also discuss some of the critiques directed at fan fiction. One of those critics, writer Lee Goldberg, now argues on his blog that I misrepresented his position. Here’s what I wrote in my column (for context, I give the full paragraph): The concerns that anti-fanfic hard-liners express about the appropriation of their characters are understandable. But Hobb’s idea that readers may mistake Robin Hobb fan fiction for her own work borders on the paranoid, and some arguments advanced by fanfic’s foes make little sense. Thus Hobb exempts from her scorn professionally written Star Trek novels licensed by the copyright owner—even though the license comes from the corporation, not the creators of the characters. (Corporate-licensed works are also hobbled by content restrictions that favor blandness.) The vehemently anti-fanfic writer Lee Goldberg, who blogs at leegoldberg.com, is the author of several authorized novels based on the TV shows Monk and Diagnosis Murder—a contradiction he defends on the grounds that he does it only for the money. I have written extensively on my blog about fanfiction, particularly my view that the practice of publishing it in print and on the Internet infringes on the original author’s creative rights (not to mention the trademark and copyright issues). I’ve argued that fanfiction writers should get the permission of the author or rights holder before distributing their work. If the original author or rights holder has no problem with fanfiction based on their work, then I don’t either. I have also said that licensed tie-in fiction, which I have written, differs significantly on ethical and legal grounds from fanfiction because it is done with the consent, participation and supervision of the original author or rights holder. At no point have I *ever* expressed the views that she incorrectly (and I have to assume deliberately) attributed to me. Now, I assume the views I have allegedly misattritubed to Goldberg are, (1) that he is vehemently anti-fanfic, and (2) that he has defended his authorship of tie-in novels on the grounds that he only writes them for the money. On the first count, I think that a read-through of Goldberg’s blogposts on fanfic will suffice to prove my case. While Goldberg does in fact state in a number of posts that in his opinion, fan fiction violates copyright and intellectual property, he devotes far more space to jeering at the moral degeneracy and weirdness of fanficcers, focusing on such fringe phenomena as kiddie porn fanfic, a fan who surfs the Web searching for masturbation fic, male pregnancy fanfic, one fan’s fantasies about Roy Orbison and cling-wrap, real-person slashfic in which actors, singers, and other celebrities are depicted in homoerotic sexual situations, and the like. (By the way, it’s hard not to notice that Goldberg seems especially incensed by gay-themed fanfiction.) He constantly engages in gross generalization; a post about a self-professed Harry Potter smut aficionada is entitled “The Fanfic Mind.” If Goldberg has ever said anything positive about fanfic writers in fandoms where the copyright holders and creators have explicitly allowed and even encouraged fan fiction — such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Harry Potter — I have found no evidence of that on his blog. I have, however, found such statements as: Money and copyright aside, what an incredible waste of creativity. Why toil on characters you don’t own in a world that’s not your own? It’s not even literary masturbation. It’s more like the literary equivalent of having sex with an inflatable woman who looks like Halle Berry. In another post, mocking an email correspondent who asks him for a link to some fanfic he has mentioned, Goldberg says that it’s “sort of like asking a Jew to direct you to some really rocking anti-Semitic screeds.” Wow, Mr. Goldberg. Tell us how you really feel. It was not my intent in my column to extensively discuss Lee Goldberg’s views on fan fiction, or the debate about fanfic and copyright/intellectual property laws (an issue I briefly mentioned in my discussion of fantasy writer Robin Hobb’s attack on fan fiction). I would say, however, that “vehemently anti-fanfic” sums up Goldberg’s stance pretty well. Now, on to the second part. Did Goldberg ever defend his tie-in novels on the grounds that he only writes them for the money? Sure he did, on the very same blog where he now claims to have been misrepresented. In fact, he devoted an entire post to this point on June 16, 2005: [S]omeone asked what the difference is between someone who writes tie-ins and someone who writes fanfic… beyond the fact that tie-ins are written with the consent of the author/right’s (sic) holder. There’s a big difference. I was hired to write DIAGNOSIS MURDER and MONK novels. It’s something I am being paid to do. It’s not like I woke up one morning with a burning desire to write DIAGNOSIS MURDER novels, wrote one up, and sent it off to a publisher (or, as a fanficcer would do, posted it on the web). The publisher came to me and asked me to write them. I would never write a book using someone else’s characters unless I was hired to do so. It would never even occur to me because the characters aren’t mine. Given a choice, I would only write novels and TV shows of my own creation. But I have to make a living and I take the work that comes my way…and that includes writing-for-hire, whether it’s on someone else’s TV show or original tie-in novels based on characters I didn’t create. Ultimately, however, what motivates me as a writer is to express myself…not the work of someone else. That’s the big difference between me and a fanficcer. Given a choice, fanficcers “write” fanfic. (The numerous italics are all in the original.) More recently, Goldberg returns to this theme in a September 20, 2006 post, “Am I a Fanficcer?” While he does stress that his TV show-based novels are published with the consent and involvement of the owners, the “I’m only in it for the money” defense rears its head again: What I do isn’t comparable to fanfiction — which is using someone else’s work without their consent or involvement and distributing on the Internet. I don’t do it as my personal artistic expression — it’s a job, one that I do to the best of my ability. Like a fanficcer, I am writing about characters I didn’t create and that are not my own. But, as I said before, unless approached to do so, I would have absolutely no interest or desire to write about someone else’s characters. Why? Because…and let me repeat this… the characters aren’t mine. I didn’t create them. They don’t belong to me. I much prefer to write totally original work and if I could make my living only doing that, I would. In fairness to Goldberg, I should have said that he defends his tie-in novels partly on the grounds that he only writes them for the money. I singled out this argument because I found it particularly bizarre — it’s the first time I have seen paid hackwork held up as morally superior to an unpaid labor of love — and because I had already mentioned the “fanfic is intellectual theft” argument in my comments on Robin Hobb. If that gave a misleading impression of Goldberg’s views on fanfic, I will readily offer my apologies. However, I certainly did not put any argument in Goldberg’s mouth that he did not repeatedly make on his blog. Since we’re on the subject, I will answer a question Goldberg poses in his September 20 post: What I have yet to see any fanficcer explain why they won’t to ask the creator or rights holder for permission before posting and distributing their work. Or why fanficcers adamantly refuse to follow the expressed wishes of creator/rights holders (for example, Rowling has approved fanfiction based on Harry Potter as long as it’s not sexually explicit…but that hasn’t stopped thousands of people from writing and posting Potter slash, disrespecting her and her wishes ). I know the answer, of course. Fanficcers are terrified of officially being told NO… and identifying themselves in case they decide to blithely violate the author’s wishes anyway. On the second point: I and most other fanfic writers and readers strongly disapprove of Harry Potter (or any other) fanfic featuring underage characters in sexual situations. I also personally believe that the wishes of any writer who has asked people not to write fan fiction based on his or her work — or has set specific guidelines for such fan fiction, like Rowling or Anne McCaffrey — should be respected. (Since a pro-Goldberg blogger indicts me for “absconding with characters” created by others, I will mention that the producers of Xena actually hired one of my fellow intellectual thieves, fanfic writer Melissa “Missy” Good, to write scripts for the show.) On the first point, I can only say: Is Goldberg kidding? He knows perfectly well that his “ask for permission first” requirement would mean the end of fan fiction, and NOT because copyright owners would say no. Would original fiction writers be willing to spend hours every day answering emails asking them if it’s okay to post a fanfiction based on their work? With movie- and television-based fanfiction, the situation would be far more complicated. Does Goldberg expect studios to hire a staff just to field requests for permission to post a fanfic? And to whom should the request be directed anyway? The corporation? The creator of the characters? What if the characters have multiple creators? (In the case of Xena: Warrior Princess, it was apparently unclear at one point who owned the rights to the characters, holding up a possible big-screen movie project.) Furthermore, both writers and studios or other corporations which have no objection to fanfiction based on their characters and settings may well be skittish about actively granting their permission for the publication of specific stories. “Authorized” stories would appear to have the writer’s or owner’s imprimatur. Moreover, the writers or the studio personnel would have either to read the stories submitted — which would be not only incredibly time-consuming but legally problematic — or to authorize them unread. I do think that it would be an ideal resolution to the legal dilemma of fan-created works if the authors or creators/copyright holders were to state upfront that they do not object to non-commercial fan endeavors — be it fiction, art, or music videos — and, if they wish, to stipulate rules by which they want the writers and artists to abide. (Or, if they do object, to issue a “no fanfic” directive. The vast majority of fans will respect it, for both ethical and legal reasons.) In the absence of such explicit statements, given that the widespread existence of fan fiction is by now no secret to anyone, I think that silence may be presumed to equal consent. Finally, since we’re on the topic of misrepresentation: In a post on October 12, 2006, Goldberg suggests, on the basis of a New York Times profile of fanfic writer-turned-pro Naomi Novik, that Novik has revised her previously “liberal” views on fanfic and copyright now that she is a commercially published author herself. As some of his commenters point out, Novik has in fact specifically said that this is not so. Goldberg has yet to issue a retraction in the body of his post or even to acknowledge his error in the comments, despite having posted in the comments thread several times.

Your web-browser is very outdated, and as such, this website may not display properly. Please consider upgrading to a modern, faster and more secure browser. Click here to do so. i am a woman + i pronounce it "ammo" May 12 '12 Stine Bramsen and drop earrings: a great, all too rarely seen, match. [from left: someone, Anders B, Stine, Reinholdt, someone else] Mar 30 '12 Earlier @khrystalmarie asked what’s my favourite out of all the ways Stine Bramsen from Alphabeat has worn her hair. And here is the answer :) I love the cut and the colour! Mar 25 '12 Look! It’s a crappy screencap of @StineBramsen and some backup dancers on the Danish #XFactor on Saturday night! It’s taken from this video of their performance (they did Vacation and then did The Spell with one of the contestants.) Mar 11 '12 Loving @StineBramsen’s hair atm. Click through to watch the video I capped this from.

Under The Moonlight Summary: This story takes place after Lord Voldemort is conquered. Remus Lupin is left with the tattered remains of his life. Although the world is a better place for wizards, his world is lonelier. He struggles to find himself worthy of accepting love and living his life in the wake of the numerous losses he has suffered. A/N: Many thanks to Zsenya for her wonderful job of beta-reading this piece. Under The Moonlight: Chapter 1 It was a gray and cloudy afternoon as he sat by himself at a corner table in the Leaky Cauldron. He had spent most of the day in Diagon Alley tying up some loose ends and had stopped for a bite to eat before heading home. Rain had started to fall, and in its wake, wizards of all shapes and sizes were scurrying inside. He went back to the Daily Prophet, but there was nothing of interest to him in it. It had been two months since the fall of Voldemort. The Order had suffered heavy casualties. Had the final battle not taken place on a full moon, he might have been one of them. He had received an Order of Merlin First Class for his work; Dumbledore had seen to that. But the Order had since disbanded, Harry had been released from St. Mungo’s, his trio of friends now reduced to two, and life as the wizarding world knew it was returning to normal. For him, though, he couldn’t have felt more alone. Many of his friends had been killed and no one had been left untouched. Sirius was gone, Tonks was gone, Kingsley was gone; the list went on and on. Mad-Eye Moody was still around, but he was so paranoid that no one sought his company. The Weasleys, as well as many other wizarding family, had lost family members. The world was a better place for wizarding folk, but it was a much lonelier place for him now. “Excuse me? May I join you?” A striking woman with dark brown hair stood looking down at him. He glanced around and noticed there were a few open tables scattered throughout “Um… I really don’t think I’d be good company at the moment,” he said with just a hint of regret. “Well, I certainly know how that feels.” She pulled out the chair across from him and sat down. He blinked, taken aback by her brazenness. “Anything interesting in there?” she asked pointing to the Daily “No, nothing new.” He pushed the newspaper towards her. “I’m finished with it.” He watched as she ruffled through the pages, noticing that she stopped to study a photo of the new Headmistress of Hogwarts. It was another reminder that he didn’t need; a reminder of just how small and lonely his world had become. He stared out the window and sipped his Butterbeer. Two more She was thirteen again, attending Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She hadn’t noticed him before––how could she not? His gray eyes glowed behind a seemingly apprehensive, but honest smile. He was slightly taller than her with a thin build. And, of course, he was a year older than her. She was dying to talk to him, but he was always with his friends. Why didn’t he notice her? She perched herself near their little group by the lake in the afternoons, pretending to study while listening in on snatches of their conversation, hoping to learn more about him. Perhaps if she could find something they had in common, she’d be able to find something to talk to him about… A warm hand came to rest upon his shoulder. “Are you okay?” The warmth of her voice beckoned him, concern etched in her eyes. “I’m fine.” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, the grip around his bottle tightening. “It’s just, you look so… tired.” He was tired, tired of life, tired of fighting, tired of being alive. He shrugged and took another swig of his drink, trying to figure out how he could make a graceful exit then suddenly realizing he didn’t much care about being graceful. She extended her hand, a warm smile on her face. “I’m Raiyna Blotts, by the way.” Remus looked at her with a wary expression on his face, his hands never leaving the bottle in his grasp. This woman couldn’t seem to take a She dropped her hand, but persisted undeterred. “You’re Remus Lupin, aren’t you?” He was a bit surprised that she knew his name, and then remembered that his picture had appeared in the Daily Prophet earlier that week for receiving the Order of Merlin. “Ahhh... Well I’m no hero, if that’s what your thinking.” “Hero?” she looked confused. “We went to school together, I think. I was a year behind you, I was in Ravenclaw. I–” She looked as if she were going to say something else, but changed her mind. “Oh. I thought–– well, never mind.” “So what brings you here today?” Her desperate attempts at making conversation made him groan inwardly. “Just running some errands,” he said noncommittally, looking again towards the door. “I see. So, what have you been doing since school?” Remus wondered why in Merlin’s name she had chosen to sit with him of all people. He certainly was not good company and her conversation was both unwarranted and strained. “Oh, odds and ends. I taught at Hogwarts for a year. And, of course, up until two months ago, I was working for the Order.” “I was very sorry to hear that the Order took some pretty heavy losses.” Her voice rang with sincerity. “Yeah, me too,” he said before gritting his teeth at the unwelcome sympathy she’d extended towards him. He had said decidedly more than he’d ever intended to this stranger. She seemed to have an odd way of getting him to talk when no one else could. Granted, there weren’t a whole lot of people left who were interested in trying. “Well, I work at one of the shops in Diagon Alley and I’m looking for some help. Do you know anyone who needs a job?” Remus eyed her carefully. Why was she asking him? As if she picked up on his thoughts she continued, “It’s hard to find good help these days. I’ve been posting signs for the last month, but haven’t gotten any takers. It never hurts to spread the word around, you Remus nodded absently. “You wouldn’t happen to be looking for a job now that the Order is, well, no longer needed I guess, would you?” Remus laughed humorlessly as she looked a mixture of desperate and hopeful. “No. I’ve got a funny schedule. I’m sure it wouldn’t work out.” He finished his Butterbeer one deep swallow. “It’s been nice talking to you, but I have to be on my way.” “Perhaps we’ll meet again sometime.” “Sure,” he said, leaving abruptly. He couldn’t help but think of the strange people he ran into whenever he stopped at the Leaky Cauldron. He also couldn’t help but notice the odd tone of her voice with that last statement; it was if she was hoping she would run into him again. He shook his head. He was tired and restless, just two more days. An owl came to his house a couple of weeks later. He couldn’t fathom who would be calling for him. Dear Mr. Lupin, I have, so far, been unsuccessful in finding a suitable candidate for the job opening I have. I was wondering if you would be so kind as to meet me for dinner next Friday evening. I have spoken to a friend of mine at Hogwarts and she thinks you’d be perfect for the job. The work schedule is quite flexible. If you find that are not interested, perhaps after hearing me out, you could refer me to another suitable candidate. I do look forward to meeting you again. I’ll await your owl. He read the letter twice. After his last chance meeting with her, he couldn’t imagine why she’d want to see him again. He was intrigued, however, by whom she’d spoken with at Hogwarts and why they thought he would be perfect for the job. Although he’d received the letter on Monday, he didn’t respond until late Thursday. He’d gone back and forth in his mind as to whether or not he felt up to having dinner with a friend, much less a complete stranger. The return owl came early Friday morning. I have reservations at the Winging Park Inn in London for 7pm tonight. See you then, Remus had no idea what or where the Winging Park Inn was. Much to his dismay, it turned out to be an upscale restaurant in a hidden wizarding section on the outskirts of London. Although he had selected his best set of robes, they were still tattered on the edges and looked very worn. Raiyna, on the other hand, was wearing crushed velvet burgundy robes and looked absolutely radiant. They were seated immediately, and one look at the menu told him he was in the wrong place. He couldn’t afford to dine here alone, much less with a As if she’d read his mind, she said, “Oh, it’s one of the great things about owning a business, you know. I have the luxury of taking people out to dinner on the shop. So, order whatever you like! I hear the dragon stew with beef medallion is wonderful, although I must admit, I haven’t had the courage to try it yet.” Her ready smile had an uncanny way of making him feel at ease. He still didn’t like the atmosphere; much too rich for his tastes. He’d have much preferred something just slightly above the Leaky “I think I’ll try the duck basted in meddleberry wine with a hint of sage myself.” He checked the menu; the dragon stew was the most expensive item, with the basted duck falling in step right behind it. He had the feeling she was ordering on the high end so that he didn’t pick the cheapest thing on the menu. He settled for a mid-priced item. Remus was relieved to find that Raiyna had a gift for speaking since he tended to be a bit quiet to begin with and in the past weeks, mourning the loss of his friends, he’d become even more reserved. He didn’t feel all that hungry, but when dinner arrived, the aroma of high quality cooking “Would you like to try some of mine?” she offered. “It’s Without waiting for him to answer, she used her wand to transfer a bit of duck to his plate. Covering his surprise, he followed suit. “Wonderful,” she muttered, her mouth still full of food. He had to admit, the food was very good, better than anything he’d had in ages. “This is one of my favorite restaurants,” she added after swallowing her last bite of food. “A bit pricey though, I don’t think I’d eat out here as much if I couldn’t write it off against the business. But it does have great food, don’t you think?” He couldn’t help notice her deep brown eyes. He’d always been attracted to a person’s eyes––windows to their soul. She seemed open, honest, sincere. As much as he tried to find an ulterior motive, he could not. She seemed genuinely interested in getting to know more about him, although he’d hardly told her anything worthwhile. Yet there was an uneasy feeling settling in his stomach that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. “How about we take a walk?” Her voice broke through his He looked at her inquisitively. What was it about women? Why couldn’t they just get to the point? “Well, it just seems a bit stuffy in here, and it’s always good to take a brisk walk after a meal.” Reluctantly, he agreed. As he’d never been to this area of London before, she pointed out many interesting things along the way. Finally, they settled on a bench overlooking a stream. “You know,” Remus observed, “you haven’t yet mentioned a thing about this job you have in mind for me.” She looked over at him. “Yes, of course, but pleasure before business, don’t you think?” He noticed the way her soft brown hair swirled easily over her shoulders, how the shadows bouncing off her high cheekbones made her face look even younger. She was very pretty in the dim light of the lamps along the waterfront. “Perhaps, but I don’t even know what business you work at in Diagon Alley.” “Oh, you don’t? I’m sorry, I assumed it was obvious,” she blushed, laughing at herself. “Flourish and Blotts, the bookstore.” She quickly switched from casual conversation to all business in a fashion that even Remus found impressive. The parts of the job she explained in detail sounded rather mundane; the other parts seemed more intriguing, but she was quite vague about them. When Remus questioned her further, she would only say things like, “Ahh, trade secrets, I can’t tell you more unless you come to work for me,” which was always followed by a wink and a “Here,” she said enthusiastically, “let me show you the schedule.” She pulled out a long scroll that had boxes for each day of the year. She tapped it with her wand and some of the boxes turned yellow. About two consecutive weeks out of every month were highlighted, but the dates shifted slightly depending on the month. What struck him as most odd was that the weeks highlighted were always centered around a new moon. There were no highlighted sections at all one week on either side of a full moon. “This is quite an odd schedule,” he said, looking at her She merely gazed back at him and said, “Yes, well, my brother did keep strange hours come to think of it. Anyway, Emily, as you can see there,” she said, pointing to the name in the squares, “worked opposite my brother, and since you’d be replacing him, those are the time slots I am looking to fill.” Not looking at her, he uttered, “Why does your brother need His voice had come out harsher than he intended. He watched as she bit her lip and looked off into the distance glassy-eyed. “Are you all right?” he asked, feeling oddly concerned over her sudden change of mood. “Oh, yes, sorry,” she replied, looking slightly embarrassed while blinking rapidly. “My brother died about six weeks ago. I still haven’t gotten over it,” she glanced at him for a moment. “I’m sure you understand,” her eyes searched his imploringly. For recognition of the pain and sorrow that losing someone brings, he assumed. He nodding, understanding her feelings perfectly He wanted to know more about her brother, but now was not the time to ask. He looked again at the schedule. In all reality, he was desperate for work. The Order had paid him a stipend to live off of, but it wasn’t much. And, considering his situation, he had a great deal of difficulty “I know it’s not as exciting as teaching, but I really hope you’ll consider it.” When he made no move to accept or deny the position, she added, “Perhaps– perhaps you could just try it, for a couple of months, or until I can find someone else– if you don’t like the job, that is.” He looked into those begging brown eyes and found her hard to refuse. Reluctantly, he agreed. She looked as if she were about to hug him, but refrained herself at the last minute. As he left London that evening, he couldn’t help feeling a sense of foreboding. This had all come on too quickly, and out of nowhere. It made him rather uncomfortable. He didn’t like when he felt like things were out of his control. On the other hand, he laughed at himself; when was that last time he was wined and dined? When was the last time he spent a mostly pleasant evening with a beautiful woman? She was so unlike other women he’d met; she was outgoing, brazen, not afraid to state her opinions. She was unique. Something about her made him feel like he could trust her, but a part of him found her a bit dangerous, a bit too…. He shook his head; he couldn’t put his finger on it. As he drifted off to sleep, he dreamed of a woman with dark brown curly hair. She was sitting across from a dinner companion, laughing. But it wasn’t a jovial laugh, it was high pitched, more like cackling. As she shifted, he saw Severus Snape sitting opposite her. Severus was sneering at Lupin and saying something in his cold, contemptuous voice. The woman pointed maliciously at Lupin, still laughing wickedly, “So that’s him, is it?” He snapped awake. It suddenly occurred to him that he had never asked her whom she had spoken with at Hogwarts. Supposedly, someone thought he’d be perfect for the job. It must have been a professor, and no professor there would reveal his secret. No one, except Snape. A wave of dread passed over him. What if Snape was playing a cruel joke on him? What if this job was in some way meant to make him suffer? He shook his head. This line of thinking was ludicrous. He drifted back to sleep with an uneasy feeling settling heavily on his chest. An owl arrived the next morning with a large package and a Thank you for accompanying me to dinner. I had a thoroughly pleasant evening. I am very excited that you have decided to join Your start date will be two weeks from this Monday. Please return the enclosed forms at your earliest convenience. Remus opened the brown paper package and found two new black robes with the Flourish and Blotts logo embroidered on them. He couldn’t remember the last time he had new robes. He sat down at the table to fill out the forms. The last time he’d filled out an official application was when he taught at Hogwarts. He suddenly realized that things had changed––drastically––thanks to the Dangerous Creatures Act that that evil Umbridge woman had put through. He tore up the application form and shook his head, furious at the injustice of it all. Carefully, he wrapped back up the robes, wrote a short note that he would need to respectfully decline her generous offer, and sent them back. Two days later, the owl was back on his windowsill carrying a very similar package and another note. My owl must have gotten lost, he returned yesterday with the robes I had sent for you. I apologize for the delay. I have taken the liberty of filling out part of your forms for you. I look very forward to seeing you two weeks from today. He set the package aside and looked at the forms. His name had been filled in at the top. About half way down the page, he saw her handwriting again. He looked at it with a mix of shock and horror. The section labeled “Dangerous Creatures,” which had a statement below detailing the new statutes of the Ministry of Magic, was crossed out and instead she had written in “Medical Conditions.” In the box attached, she had Registry #158”. In the “Restrictions” section, she had noted the one week off prior to and one week off following the full moon for rest and Below that was a section with a disclaimer stating, “If the above listed restrictions are strictly followed, this individual is” followed by a SAFE/UNSAFE checkbox and associated statements such as “to be around other people, to be around children, to be around other animals, etc.” Next to all of those statements, she had checked the SAFE box. He placed the application on the table, his hands still shaking. How long had she known? Why hadn’t she told him? He felt anger rising inside of him as if he’d been tricked. But the more rational side of him said, she’s just trying to help. That didn’t feel much better though, he didn’t need her pity. He left the room, ignoring the wrapped parcel. Five more days, he thought He didn’t respond to the application, but he hadn’t sent back the parcel either. He wasn’t sure what he was waiting for. It was Thursday night, the moon was waxing. He was getting restless and edgy. Waiting was the hardest part. He just wanted it to be over with. One more day. Friday night at dusk, he prowled the house. His skin felt like it was crawling. He hated the intense feeling of unease, apprehension, and anxiety that preceded his transformations. He had taken the Wolfsbane Potion and was pacing his living room. He’d put an Imperturbable Charm on the house so no one could hear the wolf. He locked and charmed the doors so that he couldn’t get out, should the urge come over him. As his skin started to prickle more intensely, he took off his robes. Soon, it would all be over and he would be human again for another month. Soon, but not soon enough. Saturday dawned and he was exhausted. The pain in his limbs kept him from sleeping. He knew he should eat, but he couldn’t bring himself to get off the couch. He was feeling sick and shaky. He dozed on and off throughout the day. As evening dawned, he heard a knock at the door. He hesitated, he wasn’t expecting anyone. He couldn’t imagine who it could be. Grudgingly, he dragged his body off the couch, pulled on his robes, and stumbled to the door. He unlocked it, and, taking a deep breath, leaned heavily against the wall as he opened the door. She stood in the bright light of the waning moon. A wave of anger came over him before he knew what hit him. “What are you doing here!” he demanded “This is not a good time!” “I know exactly what time it is,” she said steadily, a mixture of fear and determination resonating in her voice. His legs weakened and he was overcome by exhaustion. “Come now, you need to lie down.” She put her arm around him and helped him to the couch. He lay there and tried to steady his breath and stem the tide of nausea sweeping over him. Even with the Wolfsbane Potion, transformations were not getting any easier with age. He watched wearily as she took off her cloak and opened the brown sack she was carrying. He was too weak and too sick to argue with her. She pulled out a small cauldron full of brown liquid and with a swish of her wand, it was bubbling softly. She propped him up slightly on pillows and, with a spoon full of the bubbling stew, she said encouragingly, “Here, try some, it will make you feel better.” He looked over at her, his eyes half open. She was kneeling next to him. “Go on, you’ll feel better, I promise.” For all he knew, she was poisoning him. Suddenly that didn’t sound so bad. He obliged. It didn’t taste half bad, actually, and after several more spoonfuls, he felt his body regaining some of its strength. She helped him to sit up and then sat on the couch next to him, pouring him a glass of yellow “Here, this will help too.” He swallowed as much of the juice as he dared and leaned back, laying his head against the wall. Gradually, he felt the exhaustion beginning “I’m sorry to come so unexpectedly,” she said. “But, well, I didn’t hear back from you. I thought you might be upset. I was hoping after you saw the schedule that first night you’d just accept my offer.” Averting her eyes, she said with such honesty he thought he sensed regret, “I’d forgotten about the forms.” He followed her gaze to the threadbare rug on the floor which was still littered with gray fur. “How long have you known?” he asked, his voice hoarse, as he sipped some more of the bright yellow liquid. “Since I first saw you in the Leaky Cauldron, but I didn’t realize it at the time.” He practically choked on his drink at her surprising “Something about you reminded me of my brother. It wasn’t until I got home that night that it dawned on me,” she said, offering him a “Your brother?” he inquired. “Ben, yes, of course. He was a werewolf too. That’s how I knew. You reminded me so much of him; that tired look in your eyes, the edginess, the lack of trust for your fellow man.” She sighed, looking away briefly before continuing. “I looked you up on the registry the next morning. You know, not many people would want to work that strange of a schedule. They want more regular hours. Ben was a big help, I was desperate to replace him––with the right person of course. And then I saw you. I knew your admirable work with the Order had finished. I’d read about all you’d done in the Daily Prophet. And Professor McGonagall, well you must know she thinks very highly of you. It seemed like the perfect fit. And there’s more to the job then I’ve told you, as I’m sure you’ve guessed.” Remus looked at her with curiosity but didn’t comment. “I just thought, well, maybe it was presumptuous of me, but I thought you’d feel more comfortable if you thought I didn’t know, if you were the one to tell me. I know about the stupid prejudices people have, they just don’t understand. My brother was a wonderful man, and he suffered because of other peoples’ ignorance.” Remus saw the fear of his reprisal in her eyes as she waited for him to respond. Indeed, he was feeling bitter about being led astray, as if he was too naïve to see she had ulterior motives. Feeling emboldened by this, he watched her intently as he said, “Tell me about your brother.” He sensed her reluctance but he was not willing to relent. She bit her lower lip, dread spreading across her face. She closed her eyes momentarily and swallowed. “Well, I guess I’ll start from the beginning. Ben was six years older than I. After his last year at Hogwarts, we went on a family trip to Brazil. My parents were back at the camp, and Ben and I had ventured off into the rain forest in the late afternoon. My aunt has a knack for making potions and home remedies and we were off searching for unique plants for her. We were pretty deep in the forest when the sun started to set. We headed back for camp, but in the waning sunlight, we got lost. The moon was very bright, though, and as we were nearing the clearing, we heard a strange noise––like a dog growling. I had no idea what it was. Ben saw it first, its golden eyes glowing eerily at us. The next thing I knew, it was lunging at me,” she sighed, “but Ben knew what it was, and he sacrificed himself instead. He dove at it just in time, and knocked it to the ground. He screamed for me to run for help. I didn’t want to leave him, but I didn’t know what else to do.” She paused, shaking her head, remembering. “He got tore up pretty badly. Of course, they patched him up at the wizarding hospital down there, but, as I’m sure you know, the worst was yet to come.” She gazed at a shabby tapestry hanging across the room and noticed the claw marks and the pulled out threads. Tears filled her eyes. “The next several years were very difficult. We had to learn as a family how to help Ben, how to protect him and protect ourselves. Wolfsbane Potion was just coming out then, and my aunt got a hold of it as soon as it was available. She was the most appalled at how Ben was treated by outsiders. The rest of us were all so busy trying to figure out how to live our lives that we hadn’t had much time to notice. Although my brother had always wanted to be a healer, after my aunt in a fashion, his condition made that unattainable, so he started working at the family bookstore. The staff noticed his strange work schedule, but my father and uncle just said he had another job elsewhere. When my father and uncle finally passed away, I took over the management of the business while my brother, and another woman, Emily, who you’ll meet, ran the front end. It worked quite well for several years.” Remus nodded, listening intently. “Then, about two years ago, my brother started getting restless. Physically, he was feeling better than he’d ever felt––with my aunt’s remedies and all. But emotionally, and spiritually, he was feeling rather stuck, I guess. I think deep down he really wanted a family of his own––a wife and kids––but he would never let himself get close to anyone. It broke my heart. Anyway, the last couple of months he seemed to be really down. When I’d ask him about it, he’d say he was tired, or that the transformations were really taxing on his body. I’d told him to talk to Aunt Ameranda about it, and he promised me he would, but I don’t think he ever did.” She barely paused to catch her breath. The worst was yet to come and she wanted to get through it as quickly as possible. She sighed heavily and continued. “I usually made Ben a good dinner the afternoon before a full moon so that he was well nourished for his transformation. But it was end of the month inventory and he told me not to worry about it. I sent food to him by owl instead,” she shook her head, trembling. “He never ate it. The next morning I went early to check on him, but––” Remus watched as the tears in her eyes threatened to spill onto her cheeks. She seemed a million miles away, as if reliving what she was telling him. Remus moved closer to her on the couch and rubbed her shoulder softly. “But he’d already gone,” she stifled a sob, and continued, clearing her throat, her voice creaking. “Everyone thought it was so tragic: his body finally gave out, it just couldn’t take it anymore. But I really don’t think that was it. Not that it’s easy on a body, mind you I know, but I think his spirit is what gave out. I think he mixed something in with the Wolfsbane Potion so that he wouldn’t have to wake up again.” Can’t say as I haven’t thought about doing that myself a time or two, Remus thought to himself. Tears started to trickle down her face. Almost as an afterthought, she added, “I found a note he’d left for me in his writing desk. It was dated two years prior, but I’m not really sure if it was that old, or if he’d just put that date on it so I wouldn’t know he’d had a hand in his own Remus pulled her into his arms. All the anger he’d felt toward her had long since drained away. She sobbed softly into his chest. He held her firmly as her body shook against his. He felt bad for asking her, as if he was intruding in some private place he didn’t belong. When she finally straightened up, she said, “So, that was Ben. Great man, he was. I miss him,” she sniffed, wiping her tears away. She refilled his glass with yellow liquid. “Drink some more, it’s good for you.” After a long pause, Remus asked, “What is it anyway?” “My aunt makes it, it’s called Lemon-AID, get it? Nevermind, it’s a Muggle joke. It’s an energizing drink. The brown stew, that’s called Rejuvenate. It took her many years to perfect the recipe, but now she sells it as the Morning After Rejuvenation Stew. It helps the recovery process after She said this all so matter-of-factly that Remus had to laugh. “You do know your werewolves, don’t you?” “I have one more thing for you,” she said, a little more timidly. “These drops are chocolate flavored. They help balance out your energy and moods throughout the month. My brother swore by them.” Remus could Raiyna struggle to hold back her emotions. “My aunt always gives the first month free so her customers can try them and see what they think.” Her eyes darted around nervously. He could see the worry on her face. He laughed to himself. She’d practically burst into his home uninvited, took care of him, told him her life story, and now she was worried she’d gone too far? Just then, their eyes met. He felt something warm rising inside of him. He hadn’t realized how close she was. He could smell her soft, feminine scent and felt his heart beat a little faster. The mutual gazed lingered awkwardly for a moment longer before she glanced away. “Have you tried on the robes yet?” she said, shifting backwards to put some distance between them. “Ah, no, I–– I haven’t unwrapped them yet.” “Well, I think they will fit okay. They were my brothers. I had them freshly laundered of course before I sent them to you. I thought you could use them while you decided if you liked the job.” He noticed that whenever she mentioned her brother, something dark flickered behind her eyes as she receded into what he could only imagine was a well of loneliness. He knew the feeling. “Listen, you need to get some sleep. Is there anything I can do for you before I go?” Remus studied her closely, intrigued by what he saw. “You’ve been very kind, thank you. I can’t think of anything else.” “Alright, get some rest then?” “And I will see you at work then the Monday after next?” He noticed that she was holding her breath. “I’ll be there.” “Great! Well, I’ll see you soon then.” Remus started to get up, but she put a hand on his shoulder, “Don’t be silly. I can see myself out. Take care of yourself, Remus. Good Her heart was pounding as she ran down the stairs. She was late for class, again. If she hurried, she could make it before the professor finished role call. But she missed the last stair and lunged forward, landing on her hands and knees as her books and parchment scattered across the floor. “Ouch!” she cried, rubbing her painfully throbbing wrist. She shook her head at her own stupidity; the only good thing was that everyone else was in class so no one saw her fall. “Here, let me help you.” The warm voice came out of nowhere. She whipped her head around and saw him hurrying towards her. Her breath caught in her chest––oh no, not him, not now. I look so stupid! But he took her gently by the arm and helped her to her feet. She couldn’t help but notice those eyes; those gray eyes made him look so mysterious, so alluring. She’d never been this close to him before, never felt the warmth of his smile spread over her. She was smiling back like an idiot; she couldn’t help herself. It was as if she was caught in a trance. “I’m Remus, Remus Lupin. It’s nice to meet you.” He offered her his hand, but when she didn’t take it, he said, “Oh, of course,” withdrawing his hand as he looked down at the way she was holding her wrist. “And you are?” “Oh, sorry! I’m Raiyna Blotts.” Blotts, what an awful name. Hi, I’m a big, fat ink blot. But he just smiled and nodded. “It’s nice to meet you Raiyna.” Ooh, his voice made her feel weak in the knees.

Travis Tritt hasn’t released new music in six years. But that doesn’t mean the multiplatinum-selling, GRAMMY-winning country star has been simply taking things easy. In fact, he’s been keeping quite busy. Throughout much of his career, which kicked off in the late 1980s, Tritt has been signed to some of Nashville’s biggest labels, including Warner Brothers and Columbia. But this year he took a different approach to releasing his music–he launched his own record label, Post Oak Recordings. The label is now home to his new album The Calm After…, which dropped July 9. One of the biggest-selling country artists of the 1990s, Tritt these days still spends much of his time on the road. He recently stopped by Radio.com to talk about his new album, how the business of music has changed, writing songs, and the power of music. Eleven of the 13 tracks on The Calm After… initially appeared on Tritt’s 2007 release The Storm, which was released by the independent label Category 5 Records. Due to legal and financial difficulties at Category 5, however, The Storm never received the attention Tritt hoped for. “The album really never got an opportunity to see the light of day,” Tritt told Radio.com in a recent interview (below). “I knew if I could get those masters back and re-release it on my own label that I could do something with it and give it an opportunity to see the light of day that it never had the opportunity to see before.” A dream of his for the past five years, Tritt finally was able to start his own record label, something the “T-R-O-U-B-L-E” and “Ten Feet Tall And Bulletproof” singer never thought would come to fruition when he started his recording career more than 25 years ago. “Things have changed so much in the marketing world that you can actually take the music directly to your audience without having to go through middle men,” he reflected. “It’s really thrilling for me to see how much things have changed just in the last six years since we released the project prior to that.” Once Tritt got the masters from The Storm, he began remastering the songs and added two cuts to the album–a cover of the classic Faces song “Stay With Me” and his current single, “Sometimes Love Just Ain’t Enough,” which features his daughter Tyler Reese Tritt. Tritt is a songwriter as well as a performing artist, and it’s a task he doesn’t take lightly. “Songs are a gift from God, and you just have to be smart enough to write them down when they come your way,” he advised. “Songwriting for me is one of the things that I enjoy probably as much or more than any other part of the business because of the creative side of it. I’ve had people come up to me all the time and say, ‘When you wrote this song or that song, you said all the things that I’ve been trying to say for a long time.’ That’s one of the greatest compliments as a songwriter you can ever possibly be paid.” Tritt has written many songs throughout his career but there’s one song in particular that means more to him than the rest: his 1991 hit “Anymore.” Written by Tritt and Jill Colucci in Nashville, “Anymore” was the second single from his triple-platinum album It’s All About To Change and his second No. 1 hit in the United States. Years later, he heard a story that forever changed the way he would view the song. A mother reached out to Tritt after her daughter was in an accident and was in a coma for nine months. The woman said her daughter was a big fan of Tritt’s prior to her accident, and that they would play his music for her in her hospital room. Every time they played his song “Anymore,” she would turn her head toward the music. “They were playing the song for her and all of a sudden she snapped out of a coma,” said Tritt. “How much my music had to do with that, I don’t know, but I know that all the doctors were saying that music is a very good thing. [It] is especially stimulating to someone who’s in that type of situation. Even in a comatose state they can respond to music like that.” Tritt eventually visited with the young woman in the hospital and said the whole story stunned him. “It really was a wake-up call to make me realize that music is so powerful, so much more powerful than those of us that create it really give credit for,” he said. “When you play a part in writing a song that has that kind of an effect on people it tends to make it become more near and dear to your heart.”

Halloween gives us an opportunity to use makeup to become an entirely new person - a creative expression of the abnormal, bizarre, or even beautiful. M∙A∙C excels when it comes to providing ideas and the theatrical shades you'll need to create your own fantasy. The photo here came from a M∙A∙C look for Halloween, published a few years ago. Becoming Hibiscus Woman is Halloween fun I could enjoy! As I look back, I'm not sure why this week was crazy-busy. There's a lot going on at my house. I still haven't been able to get Charlie's screened porch fixed, so he's become insufferable as he walks around bemoaning the fact that he's grounded to the confines of a house without birds, squirrels, and mice to watch. I'm trying to clean in my spare time, and there's precious little of that. Work has been frantic-busy, distinguished from normal-busy by my Type A desire to have no backlogs. This will be a welcome weekend for rest. I'm looking forward to getting blog photos too, since my daylight hours after work are waning, soon to disappear entirely. It's still Friday, though, so it's time for The Friday Forum. We use the forum to share information and chat. Are you using a fabulous product and want to sing its praises? Did you find a beauty product disappointing? Do you have a question others might be able to answer? Want to talk about skin care? Just use the comments. Don't be shy. Just make sure to ask any question you might have over the weekend. By Monday, most readers have moved on. We have busy weekends and slow ones on the forum. Last week, we had a great exchange. I'm always happy if even one reader stops by. Leave a comment, and say hello - even if you don't want to comment on beauty products. As I always do, I'll leave news of some great beauty offers (great, not just good) in the comments of this post. If you want to know where to find nice gifts with purchase, free shipping, and other deals this weekend, make sure to check the comments. Thanks for reading Best Things in Beauty! Got anything you want to talk about? Are you dressing up for a Halloween party? P.S. I got an unsubscribe notice today - not unusual. I never know why people subscribe or unsubscribe. I'd love to know if I'm doing something that doesn't capture your interest - ever. Fortunately, I get more subscription hello's than bye-bye's. By the way, you have to verify your e-mail subscription with Google. If you sign up, the link Google will send you is legit. Click on it, and you will be verified. Even though it's an extra step, it's for everyone's protection. An amazing number of people subscribe, but never verify (small, but still amazing to me). I assume those subscribers never get my e-mails because they didn't verify.

Dog bites in humans are a public health problem worldwide. The issues of increasing stray dog populations, rabies outbreaks, and the risk of dogs biting humans have been frequently reported by the media in Bhutan. This study aimed to estimate the bite incidence and identify the risk factors for dog bites in humans, and to estimate human deaths from rabies in rabies endemic south Bhutan. A hospital-based questionnaire survey was conducted during 2009–2010 among dog bites victims who visited three hospitals in Bhutan for anti-rabies vaccine injection. Decision tree modeling was used to estimate human deaths from rabies following dog bite injuries in two rabies endemic areas of south Bhutan. Three hundred and twenty four dog bite victims were interviewed. The annual incidence of dog bites differed between the hospital catchment areas: 869.8 (95% CI: 722.8–1022.5), 293.8 (240–358.2) and 284.8 (251.2–323) per 100,000 people in Gelephu, Phuentsholing and Thimphu, respectively. Males (62%) were more at risk than females (P<0.001). Children aged 5–9 years were bitten more than other age groups. The majority of victims (71%) were bitten by stray dogs. No direct fatal injury was reported. In two hospital areas (Gelephu and Phuentsholing) in south Bhutan the annual incidence of death from rabies was 3.14 (95% CI: 1.57–6.29) per 100,000 population. The decision tree model predicted an equivalent annual incidence of 4.67 (95% CI: 2.53–7.53) deaths/100,000 population at risk. In the absence of post exposure prophylaxis, the model predicted 19.24 (95% CI: 13.69–25.14) deaths/year in these two areas. Increased educational awareness of people about the risk of dog bites and rabies is necessary, particularly for children in rabies endemic areas of Bhutan. Dog bites in humans are a public health problem worldwide. We conducted a hospital based questionnaire survey and described the incidence and risk factors for human dog bites in Bhutan. We also estimated the human death rate attributable to rabies in two rabies endemic areas of south Bhutan. Our study shows that dog bites incidents in humans are common in the survey areas. There were significant gender and age differences in bite incidents; males and the children are affected the most. The majority of the victims were bitten by stray dogs, increasing the risk of rabies infection if not treated in time. Our decision tree model predicted 2.23 (95% CI: 1.20–3.59) human deaths from rabies/year, equivalent to an annual incidence of 4.67 (95% CI: 2.53–7.53) deaths/100,000 in the two rabies endemic areas of south Bhutan. In the absence of post exposure prophylaxis, the model predicted 19.24 (95% CI: 13.69–25.14) deaths/year in these two areas. The public should be encouraged to visit hospitals for post exposure prophylaxis following dog bite injury in south Bhutan. Citation: Tenzin, Dhand NK, Gyeltshen T, Firestone S, Zangmo C, Dema C, et al. (2011) Dog Bites in Humans and Estimating Human Rabies Mortality in Rabies Endemic Areas of Bhutan. PLoS Negl Trop Dis 5(11): e1391. doi:10.1371/journal.pntd.0001391 Editor: Jakob Zinsstag, Swiss Tropical Institute, Switzerland Received: May 12, 2011; Accepted: September 26, 2011; Published: November 22, 2011 Copyright: © 2011 Tenzin et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: Mr. Tenzin was supported by a University of Sydney International Research Scholarship. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Dog bites in human are a serious public health problem and have been well documented worldwide , . In the United States, 4.7 million people were estimated to have been bitten by dogs in 1994 (an incidence rate of 16.1/1000 in adults and 24.5/1000 in children), of whom 800,000 required medical treatment . Later, a survey conducted during 2001–2003 in the USA estimated 4.5 million dog bites each year (an incidence rate of 16.6/1000 in adults and 13.1/1000 in children), an increase of 3% in adults and a decrease of 47% in children . There have been similar reports of human dog bites in the United Kingdom , Belgium , Spain , Switzerland , Australia , India , and in the United Republic of Tanzania . There are also several reports of dog bites incidents from other countries – but most cases are believed to be unreported, especially in developing countries. The consequences of dog bites to humans are many. Although the most common issue is the direct physical injury, sometimes the injuries may cause permanent disfigurement of the victims requiring reconstructive surgery , , , psychological trauma and post traumatic stress , , , and rarely attacks can be fatal , –. Dog bites also result in a large monetary expense for treatment, emergency hospitalization and post-exposure treatment for rabies , –. For instance, the annual medical cost and other expenses associated with dog bites in the USA were estimated to be between $235.6 and $ 253.7 million in 1994 while the French Postal Services reported 58,000 days of sick leave resulting from 3,357 bites to postal workers costing about US $ 2.5 million in 1985 . Globally ≥15 million people receive rabies prophylaxis annually, mainly for dog bite injuries . In addition, dog bite incidents also have direct impacts on the dogs involved in the bites, resulting in their relinquishment to shelters and euthanasia , –. Legislative action (e.g. Dangerous Dog Acts) have also been implemented in some developed countries to ban specific breeds of dogs because of the issue of increased bite incidents , ; such legislation does not appear to have been effective in reducing the incidence and severity of the bites. However, the severity of dog bite incidents is striking in developing countries: a vast majority of victims die from rabies infection. There are an estimated 55,000 human deaths annually, particularly in Asia and Africa, due to endemic canine rabies . Like other countries, dog bites are common in Bhutan because of the presence of a large number of stray dogs in the streets , . Although no cases of directly fatal dog attacks on humans have been documented, deaths due to rabies from dog bites have been reported in south Bhutan , . Dog bites and the presence of rabies in the south border areas of Bhutan also results in substantial cost to the government , . For example, approximately Bhutanese ngultrum (Nu.) one million was spent on rabies vaccine from 2002 to 2005 and the expenditure increased to about Nu.5.878 million in 2006 alone (Nu. 45 = 1 US$) , . In addition, rabies outbreaks also cause a substantial cost to farmers from the deaths of farm animals as a result of spill over infection from dogs , . Recently, there has been considerable media coverage on the stray dog population, the risk of dog bites to humans, and public nuisance in Bhutan , –, yet there is no clear information about the epidemiology of human dog bites in Bhutan. Therefore, understanding the epidemiology of dog bites and the number of human deaths caused by rabies is important for public health planning program. One of the approaches to understanding the scale of human deaths due to rabies is the use of decision tree models. This methodology has been developed by Cleaveland et al. using active rabies surveillance data in Tanzania. The model is designed based on a series of probability steps using the distribution of bite injury on different body parts and the probability of developing rabies. More recently this decision tree model has been used by the World Health Organization to estimate human deaths from rabies in Asia and Africa overall. Globally, a total of 55,000 (90% CI: 24,000–93,000) human rabies deaths annually was predicted . Fevre et al. have also used this model to estimate human rabies deaths in Uganda using passive surveillance dog bite data. All these studies have provided clear information about the burden of rabies for proper planning program. In this study, we report the results of a dog bite survey conducted in three hospital areas of Bhutan. The objectives of this study were to: - estimate the incidence of human dog bites, describe characteristics of bites and to identify risk factors for dog bites in some areas of Bhutan; - understand the level of general knowledge and practice about rabies among bite victims; and - estimate the number of human deaths due to rabies in two hospitals areas of south Bhutan (rabies endemic areas) using a decision tree model and compare the estimates to the observed data. The findings from this study are expected to guide dog bite and rabies prevention and control programs in Bhutan. Materials and Methods Study area and conduct of the survey This study was conducted during 2009–2010 at three government medical hospitals in Bhutan – Jigme Dorji Wangchuk National Referral Hospital (JDWNRH), Gelephu Regional Referral Hospital (GRRH) and Phuentsholing General Hospital (PGH). These hospitals were selected because they provided the highest numbers of courses of rabies post exposure prophylaxis (PEP) to people during the preceding four years (2005–2008) . JDWNRH is located in the capital city of Bhutan – Thimphu (interior western Bhutan), whereas GRRH and PGH are located in Bhutan–India border towns in the south-west and the south-central regions, respectively. The catchments of GRRH and PGH hospitals are endemic areas for rabies, whereas rabies has not been reported in dogs or other domestic animals in Thimphu (catchments area for JDWNRH) for at least 18 years . Although rabies is not prevalent in the interior north of Bhutan, anti-rabies vaccination is normally administered to dog bite patients visiting hospitals for treatment due to the presence of rabies in south Bhutan . In this survey, all dog bite victims who visited the injection section of these three hospitals to receive anti-rabies vaccine injections were interviewed using a pre-tested structured questionnaire designed to obtain information about the epidemiology of dog bite and bite-victim's knowledge about rabies. The questionnaire included closed questions about the demographics of the victims, circumstances of bite incidents, body parts injured and the degree of injury, ownership of biting animals, the level of knowledge about rabies, and post bite home treatment (washing of bite wound) prior to visiting the hospital for medical treatment. The interviews were conducted by the staff nurse of the respective hospitals providing PEP rabies vaccination, after the patients were prescribed rabies vaccine by the clinician on duty. The survey was conducted from 18 February 2009 to 8 February 2010 at PGH, 16 February to 20 September 2009 at JDWNRH, and from 11 February to 4 December 2009 at GRRH. The purpose of the study was explained to each individual and they were informed that participation was voluntary and data collected were confidential. The participants who agreed to be interviewed were made to sign a consent form. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Human Research and Epidemiology Unit, Ministry of Health, Bhutan (reference No. RESEARCH/PROPOSAL/08/8636). The questionnaire data were entered into a database (EpiInfo version 3.5.1). Descriptive analyses of the data were performed using a statistical software package (SPSS version 11.5, SPSS Inc, Chicago IL). Bhutan population census data from 2005 were used to determine the population at-risk in the three hospital catchment areas. Dog bite incidence was calculated for each hospital catchment area and was expressed as the number of bite cases per 100,000 population at-risk. The initial plan to conduct the survey in each hospital for one year had to be modified due to logistical reasons. Therefore, because the survey period was variable between the three study areas (<12 months), the annual incidence for each hospital catchment area was estimated and was expressed as number of bite cases per 100,000 population at-risk per year. The relationship between the number of bite cases and population density of the three hospital catchment areas according to age group was examined using the Spearman rank correlation test. Chi-square tests were used to compare the difference in proportions of dog bites between gender, age group and other variables. To make meaningful comparisons between age groups, observed frequencies of bites for various age groups were compared with expected frequencies calculated from the 2005 Bhutan census data . For other variables, equal expected frequencies were assumed between groups. The variables of interest – such as occupation of the victims, ownership of dog involved in the bite incident, circumstances of bite incidents and knowledge about rabies – were compared among the three hospitals using Chi-square tests. A p-value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant. In addition, standardized morbidity ratios (SMRs) were calculated for gender and age categories to examine whether there was any significant difference between the observed and the expected bite incidents in each category. This was expressed as: SMR = observed frequencies÷expected frequencies. The expected frequencies for each category were calculated using the 2005 catchment area census population for each hospital . Modeling human rabies deaths We estimated human rabies deaths in the two hospital areas (Phuentsholing and Gelephu) of south Bhutan by using dog bite data and constructing a decision tree model developed by Cleaveland et al. . Dog bite data from JDWNRH (interior west Bhutan, described in the descriptive analyses in this paper) was excluded from this model to avoid biased estimates since no rabies cases have been reported (either in dogs and humans) in that hospital region for at least 18 years. The decision tree model consists of 10 probability steps (P1 to P10) (Figure 1 and Table 1). The first step P1 is the rabies recognition probability (the proportion of suspected rabid dog bites that are, in fact, rabid) . In our survey dog bite victims had no knowledge about the status of the biting dog (whether rabid or not) and no biting dogs were traced back to observe their rabies status. Therefore, the disease status of the biting dogs was unknown. However, we used the proportion positive to rabies virus (by florescence antibody test) of rabies suspected dogs in these two areas for the period 1996 to May 2011. A total of 46 dog brain samples were collected from these two hospital areas and submitted to the Veterinary Laboratories in Bhutan for rabies virus confirmation. Of these, 33 (72%) samples were positive for rabies virus by FAT. Therefore, the rabies recognition probability (P1) in dogs was estimated to be 72% for this analysis (Table 1). In addition, a sensitivity analysis was conducted on P1 using different rabies recognition probabilities to explore the impact on the final model output (Figure 2). The probability of rabies recognition was 68% (17/25) in Tanzania , 51% (43/85) in Kenya , 42% to 77% in Uganda , and between 38% to 50% in Asia and 64% in Africa . The model is adapted from Cleaveland et al., 2002 (reference number 11). Probabilities (P1–P10) are defined in Table 4 and described in the methods section. The probability calculated represents the probability of death following the bite of a suspect rabid dog. Deaths are predicted in Phuentsholing and Gelephu areas of south Bhutan in relation to rabies recognition probability (P1) and mean number of human rabies deaths reported, adapted from Cleaveland et al., 2002 (reference number 11). For the P2–P5 probability steps, the dog bite injury data were classified according to the distribution of bites on different body parts: head/neck (P2); hand/arms (P3), trunk (P4), and legs/thigh (P5) (Figure 1 and Table 1); and the age group of the victims: 0–4; 5–9; 10–14, and >15 years of age (Table 2). The point estimates (proportion of bites) on each body part and according to each age group were then calculated using the dog bite data (Tables 1 and 2). The probability (P6–P9) of developing rabies following the bite of a rabid dog to the head (P6), arms (P7), trunk (P8) and legs (P9) were 45%, 28%, 5% and 5%, respectively , , (Table 1). The last step, the probability of receiving post exposure treatment (P10) was determined on the basis of previously published data . There is a very high probability of people receiving PEP in these areas of Bhutan due to endemicity of rabies, rabies vaccine being freely available in the hospitals, easy accessibility of these hospitals (centrally located in the towns) and due to free medical services. Our previous study on the use of PEP in Bhutan showed that large doses of anti-rabies vaccination were freely provided to all patients with dog bite injuries (even in the interior of Bhutan where rabies is not present) and also to all the WHO categories of exposure (I, II and III) . To account for this in the model, we used the following as the probability of receiving PEP following a bite from a suspected rabid dog in these two study areas: minimum = 80%, most likely = 90% and maximum = 95% (Table 1). The probability of dying of rabies following a bite from a suspected rabid dog was then calculated from the probability parameters using the formula Pdeath (probability of death) = P1×((P2×P6)+(P3×P7)+(P4×P8)+(P5×P9))×(1−P10). Then the total number of deaths (Tdeath) caused by rabies per year in these two hospital region were calculated using the formula Tdeath = (I×Q×Pdeath/100 000), in which ‘I’ is the incidence of suspected rabid dog bites per 100,000 population at risk per year and ‘Q’ is the total population at-risk (n = 47721) which was based on the 2005 population and housing census data of Bhutan . The confidence limits for the total number of deaths from rabies were calculated by assigning the probability distribution to the inputs parameters and running Monte Carlo simulations for 10,000 iterations using R software (version 2.12.0 (210-10-15), R Development Core Team, http://www.r-project.org). The mean and the 95% confidence interval were estimated. The total number of human deaths due to rabies was also estimated in each age category of dog bite victims on the basis of the bite injury distribution on the body (Table 3). A total of 339 patients were interviewed at the three hospitals. Fifteen questionnaires were excluded from the analyses because two were incomplete and 13 were related to cat (n = 8) and other animal bite (n = 5) injuries. The final analysis was undertaken on 324 dog bite questionnaires, but not all questions were completed and so the sample size differed for each question analyzed. A total of 131, 100 and 93 dog bite victims were reported to JDWNRH, GRRH and PGH, respectively, for post bite rabies vaccination during 2009–2010. The incidence of bites differed significantly (P<0.001) between the hospital areas: 869.8 (95% CI, 722.8–1022.5), 293.8 (240.9–358.2) and 284.8 (251.2–323.0) per 100,000 population per year in Gelephu, Phuentsholing and Thimphu, respectively. Age and gender of the victims There were significantly more bite cases in males (201/324, 62%) than females (123/324, 38%) (χ2 = 18.78; P<0.001). Males were 1.15 times (95% CI 1.00–1.32) more likely to report dog bites than expected, compared to females (P = 0.053) (Table 4). The median age of all bite cases was 17.5 years and the modal age was 6 years (mean 21.2 years; range: <1 to 80 years). There were significant differences in the proportion of bite victims between various age categories (χ2 = 73; P<0.001). Approximately two-thirds of the bite cases were reported in people <25 years of age. However, those in the age groups 5–9 years were the most common victims of dog bites (74/324; 23%) and were 2.3 times (95% CI 1.83–2.88) more likely to report dog bites than expected, compared to adults or other age categories (P<0.001) (Table 4). There was also significant correlation between dog bite incidents and population density in the three hospital catchment areas according to age group (rs = 0.77; P = 0.005). Figure 3 illustrates the age and gender distribution of dog bites and shows that the incidence of dog bites was greater amongst children aged 5–9 years and greater in males than females across all age groups. Data is based on a survey of dog bite victims attending three hospitals (Jigme Dorji Wangchuk National Referral hospital, Phuentsholing General hospital, Gelephu Regional Referral hospital) in Bhutan, 2009–2010. Occupation of the victims A significant difference (χ2 = 138.44; P<0.001) in the proportion of bites was observed between the various occupational groups of the victims. School children were the most common (45%) victims of dog bites. There were also significant differences among the three hospital catchment areas with respect to the number of bite cases among the various occupational groups (χ2 = 39.83; P<0.001), with school children reporting more bites than other occupational groups in JDWNRH, PGH and GRRH (Table 5). Ownership of dogs involved in the bites The victims were predominantly bitten by stray dogs (231/324; 71%), rather than by owned dogs (93/324; 29%) (χ2 = 58.77; P<0.001). Of the owned dogs, 71 cases were bitten by a neighbor's dog. A significant difference among the three hospital catchment areas was observed with respect to the bite incidents by owned and stray dogs (χ2 = 6.124; P = 0.047), with the largest difference (81 versus 19%) occurring in PGH (Table 5). Circumstances of the bite incident Most bites were reported to be unprovoked (240/295, 81%) rather than provoked (55/295, 19%) (χ2 = 116.02; P<0.001). However, there were no significant differences between the circumstances of bites incidents reported in the three hospitals (χ2 = 3.39; P = 0.183) (Table 5). Anatomical site of bite and injury type Most (90%) dog bites were inflicted on the extremities with 73% on the legs and 18% on the hand/arms. There was a significant difference between the bite incidents and the anatomic sites (χ2 = 412.07; P<0.001). However, a majority of the bites were single bite injuries (218/324, 67%). There was also a significant difference between the severity and anatomic locations of bite wounds (χ2 = 15.18; P<0.019) (Figure 4). Figure 5 illustrates the anatomic location of dog bite wounds according to the age group of the victim. The lower extremities (leg/thigh) were the most common site of bite in all age groups and no significant difference was observed between these two age groups (0–24 versus ≥25 years) with respect to different anatomic bite sites (χ2 = 4.05; P = 0.212). However, no case of a fatal dog bite injury was reported during the study period. Data is derived from victims attending three hospitals (Jigme Dorji Wangchuk National Referral hospital, Phuentsholing General hospital, Gelephu Regional Referral hospital) in Bhutan, 2009–2010 (the number in the figure indicates the number of bite victims). Data is derived from victims attending three hospitals (Jigme Dorji Wangchuk National Referral hospital, Phuentsholing General hospital, Gelephu Regional Referral hospital) in Bhutan, 2009–2010 (the number in the figure indicates the number of bite victims). Age was categorized into the two groups indicated. Status of dogs involved in the bite and availability for observation Of the 320 respondents, a majority (189, 59%) of the victims mentioned that the disease (rabies) status of the dogs involved in the bite incidents was unknown, 101 victims (32%) mentioned that the biting dog looked normal, and 30 victims (9%) mentioned that the biting dogs were suspected of rabies. However, a majority of the victims responded that the biting dog was not available for observation (219/318, 69%). Three respondents mentioned that the dog involved in the bite was killed. There was only borderline significant differences among the three hospital catchments areas with respect to the response of the victims that the dog was unavailable for observation (χ2 = 5.911; P = 0.052). Seasonal distribution of bites Dog bite incidents were reported throughout the year with more bite incidents during the spring months (March–May) (129/324; 40%) followed by winter months (December–February) (90/324; 28%) and autumn (September–November) (72/324; 22%). The reported incidents were lowest during the summer months (June–August) (33/324; 10%). There were significant differences in the proportions of bite incidents between the seasons (χ2 = 58.88; P<0.001). Previous history of dog bite A previous history of dog bite was reported by 40 victims: 33 persons were bitten twice, five persons were bitten three times, and two persons were bitten four times. Knowledge about rabies Of the 318 respondents, a majority (263, 83%) of the victims or the guardian/parents of the victims (in minor cases) was aware of and had heard about the fatality of rabies. There was a significant relationship between the hospital catchment areas with respect to knowledge about rabies (χ2 = 34.26; P<0.001). The proportion of bite victims from the rabies endemic areas reported to two hospitals (GRRH and PGH) were more aware of rabies compared to victims reported to JDWNRH. A majority (277/305, 91%) of the victims were also aware that rabies can be prevented and controlled by regular vaccination of dogs (χ2 = 203.28; P<0.001). However, no significant difference was observed among the three hospitals with respect to the dog bite victims' knowledge that rabies can be prevented by vaccination of dogs (χ2 = 1.054; P = 0.590) (Table 6). Bite wound washing at home Of the 313 respondents, 141 victims (45%) had washed their bite wound with soap and water at home before presenting to the hospital. However, there were no significant differences in the proportions of those who washed and those that did not wash the bite wound at home (χ2 = 3.07; P = 0.08) (Table 6). Rabies post exposure prophylaxis All dog bite victims were given rabies post exposure prophylaxis (vaccine) on the first day (day 0) of their visit to the hospital, irrespective of the epidemiological likelihood of the implicated dog being rabid and the local epidemiology of rabies. The patients were believed to have been advised to complete the course (5 doses) since Bhutan follows the 5-dose intramuscular regimen (36) . However, no post exposure vaccine course data (subsequent vaccine series dada) were collected for our analysis since our earlier study on PEP vaccine use had provided important information about the epidemiologic characteristics of rabies post exposure prophylaxis in Bhutan . The prediction of human rabies death From 2006 to April 2011, there were eight reported human deaths due to rabies in Gelephu (n = 4) and Phuentsholing (n = 4) hospital areas, which accounted for a cumulative incidence of 16.76 deaths/100,000 population. The mean annual number of reported human deaths due to rabies (from 2006 to April 2011) in these two areas were 1.5 (95% 0.75–3.00), equivalent to an annual incidence of 3.14 (95% CI: 1.57–6.29) per 100,000 population. Based on our dog bite survey data, the model predicted 2.23 (95% CI: 1.20–3.59) deaths per year, equivalent to an annual incidence of 4.67 (95% CI: 2.53–7.53) deaths/100,000 population in Gelephu and Phuensholing areas of south Bhutan. Table 3 summarizes the predicted death distribution by age group in these two hospital catchment areas (Gelephu and Phuesholing), and shows that annual human predicted deaths from rabies per 100,000 population were greater for ages <15 years. In the absence of any post exposure treatment, the 223 bite incidents would result in a total of 19.24 (95% CI: 13.69–25.14) deaths per year in these two areas of Bhutan, equivalent to an annual incidence of 40.31 (95% CI: 28.70–52.68)/100,000 populations. Figure 3 shows the predicted annual human deaths due to rabies in the two hospital areas (Gelephu and Phuentsholing) of south Bhutan in relation to different rabies recognition probabilities (P1) and the mean number of deaths reported between 2006 and April 2011. The annual incidence of dog bites was higher in the GRRH catchment area than in the other two hospital catchment areas. This difference could be explained by the geographical location of the individual study areas, population density and the local epidemiology of rabies. It is important to note that the GRRH catchment area is located in the south-central area of Bhutan, which includes towns adjacent to Indian towns across the international border, and has experienced frequent rabies outbreaks . It is likely that the dog bite victims (irrespective of the disease status of biting dogs – whether rabies suspect or normal healthy dogs or pet dogs) might have reported to the GRRH for medical treatment because of a fear of rabies. In addition, high dog population density and trans-border movement of dogs (particularly stray dogs in such border towns) could be another reason for the high incidence of dog bites. A recent media report indicates that about 500 people visited GRRH for dog bite injuries treatment during 2010 which greatly exceeds the number we recorded in our study. Reported dog bite incidents have been increasing, as have human deaths from rabies infection , . The risk factors for human dog bites identified in this study are very similar to those of other studies conducted elsewhere, mostly in developed countries . For instance, dog bite injuries were more common in children, particularly those aged 5–9 years, and more common in males than females. A previous study on post exposure rabies events in humans in Bhutan also showed that PEP were provided more often to younger age groups and to males . In general, our results are in agreement with those from several studies conducted both in developed , , , , , – and developing , , , , , countries. Increased dog bite incidents in children is considered a behavioral risk because of their extreme curiosity, lack of inhibition, limited knowledge and experience about dog behavior, and inability to protect themselves from an attack , , , , . It has also been suggested that bites in children are more likely to be reported than in adults because of more parental concern towards children or the severity of their injuries . However, it is also believed that children in developing countries do not report minor bites or scratches to their parents, which increases the risk of rabies infection . Animal bites usually occur as a result of provocation by the victims during play and by abusing/teasing the animal, repeated irritation or as unprovoked bites in which people are attacked , . Our results show that a majority of the dog bites occurred as an unprovoked bite (76%) in which people were attacked and, mostly by stray dogs (68%). This suggests that the presence of a high density of dogs on the street (commonly seen in developing countries, including Bhutan) , , is a risk factor for increased reports of dog bites incidents in Bhutan. It has been suggested that human behaviors not generally regarded as provocative can frighten dogs or may be misinterpreted by some dogs as an invasion of their territory and may incite an attack . It is also important to note that the high number of unprovoked bites in this study may be due to biased opinions given by the victims. However, rabid dogs (in rabies endemic countries) would be aggressive and bite people indiscriminately without any provocation. Dog bite injuries to the lower extremities were more common (72%) than to other body parts, irrespective of the age of the victim in this study. This result is in contrast to some other studies in which more bite injuries were reported to the head, neck and face , , , , , , , . However, this difference may be explained by the ownership of the biting dogs, the physical environment of the bite incidents and the study areas. In the developed world, pet dogs (owned dogs or neighbors' dogs) – which are known to the victim – are most commonly involved in bite incidents to the head, neck and face. This may be due to the short stature of children and playful interaction with pets – kissing, hugging and petting , , , , , . Our study showed that people were more commonly bitten by stray dogs and bites occurred more commonly to the lower extremities. Similarly, some other dog bite studies in developing countries have shown that stray dogs were commonly involved in bites to the extremities , , , which is in agreement with our findings. It is also likely that the victims (e.g. children) would have used a hand or leg to abuse/tease the dogs or to separate fighting dogs or defending dog attacks, resulting in more bites on the extremities , . Rabid dog bites to the upper body and extremities (head, neck, arm, hand) are more dangerous than bites to the lower extremities. The median risk of death following rabid dog bites to the head, hand, trunk and legs have been reported to be 45%, 28%, 5% and 5%, respectively , , . Our study showed that dog bite incidents occurred throughout the year, with increased cases from late winter to mid-spring (February through April). It is difficult to correlate factors that might explain this peak during this period in Bhutan. However, there is a possible bias in estimated annual dog bite incidence in this study because the survey could not be conducted for one full year within two of the survey areas due to logistical constraints, and dogs bites might have seasonal variability. Studies in developed countries have reported that most dog bite incidents occur during the spring and summer months , , , , . Such observations have been explained by behavioral changes: more interaction between pets and children during the warmer months with less parental supervision, thus increasing the risk of bite incidents . In Thailand, reports of dog bite incidents in children increased during the months of March–May and October, the period of school vacation . Understanding people's level of knowledge about dog bites and the risk of potential zoonotic disease transmission – particularly rabies – is important for planning an awareness education program. In this study, the majority (81%) of dog bite victims (or the parents/guardian of minors) were aware of rabies, which is in agreement with the results from some other studies in Asia –. However, the respondents that reported to two hospitals (GRRH and PGH) in south Bhutan were more aware of rabies than respondents who reported to JDWNRH in Thimphu. This difference is expected because the south is an endemic region for rabies with frequent reports of outbreaks; the people might have previously seen rabies cases in dogs and farm animals, or might have heard about rabies from family, friends or the news media . The interior of Bhutan is free of rabies and people may not be aware of the disease. On the contrary, most victims (52%) reportedly did not wash their wound with soap and water at home before visiting the hospital for medical treatment. This finding suggests that a proper health educational program on rabies and wound care at home , is required. Cleaning and flushing of the bite wound with soap and water immediately after being bitten is one of the most important steps recommended by the WHO. This procedure will remove much of the rabies virus from the wound and may considerably reduce the risk of contacting rabies (if the biting dog is infected with rabies) , . Predicted human deaths due to rabies from the decision tree model were almost the same as the annual mean human rabies deaths reported in these two study areas, indicating that there is no serious under-reporting of rabies in Bhutan. The fatal nature of the disease (with classic rabies symptoms), availability of free medical services and accessibility to the hospitals might be the main reasons for good reporting of human rabies deaths in Bhutan, but some extent of under reporting of dog bites may be possible. The model also predicted that in the absence of any post-exposure treatment, the annual dog bite counts of 223 would result in a total of 19.24 (95% CI: 13.69–25.14) deaths per year in these two areas of Bhutan, which is equivalent to an annual incidence of 40.31 (95% CI: 28.70–52.68) deaths per 100,000 population. Therefore, human rabies PEP is important for rabies prevention in Bhutan. On the basis of laboratory examination of submitted samples in these two areas, a rabies recognition rate of 72% was used in this study. However, the proportion of the victims bitten by a confirmed rabid dog is largely unknown since tracing of the source of biting dogs and confirmation of rabies is not usually done. Active surveillance of bite injuries and tracing of the biting dogs would provide clear information about the public health hazard of rabies. Nevertheless, with high recognition probability of rabies in dogs in these areas, it is important to make people aware of the danger of rabies and encourage reporting to hospitals for post bite treatment. It is important to note that we have estimated human deaths from rabies in two areas of south Bhutan that are endemic for rabies. Accordingly, the human population at-risk for canine rabies was also assumed to be the number of people living within these two hospital catchments areas. We did not include the entire population of Bhutan in order to avoid bias estimates, since rabies cases have not been reported in the interior of Bhutan. In conclusion, this study has provided important information about human dog bites, risk factors and the burden of rabies in Bhutan. The presence of large numbers of stray dogs is a public health issue in Bhutan. Intervention measures should include public educational programs on dog behavior, dog-child interaction, and the importance of responsible dog ownership, particularly in children , . Lessons on dog behavior, the risk of dog bites, bite wound management (e.g. washing with soap and water) and rabies can also be integrated into the elementary school curriculum to educate children on the public health hazard of dog bites . In a randomized control trial of an educational intervention for the prevention of dog bites in children in Australia, Chapman et al. demonstrated that children who had been educated and provided information on ways to approach dogs displayed appreciably greater precautionary behaviors than children that did not receive any awareness education on dog behaviors and intervention. Therefore, dog bite preventive education is important in children. Similarly, enforcement of regulations for licensing of dogs and rabies vaccination, stray dog population management and animal birth control programs are important to reduce the bite incidents and post bite treatment cost , . One study in Spain has shown a significant decline in hospitalizations caused by dog bites after enactment of stricter regulations on dog ownership . This suggests that a regulatory approach may also help in reducing dog bite injuries in addition to other educational programs. Continuing surveillance of dog bites is necessary to detect trends and evaluate the effect of prevention efforts. For this, a national dog bite database and reporting system implemented through local primary health care centers may be appropriate for the surveillance and monitoring of dog bite incidents in Bhutan. Conceived and designed the experiments: T NKD TG CZ CD RG MPW. Performed the experiments: TG CZ CD RG. Analyzed the data: T NKD SF MPW. 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Christians differ in their attitudes toward alcohol. Some Christians believe that we have freedom to consume alcohol in moderation. Others hold that the Bible forbids all consumption of alcohol or that, even in the absence of a clear command to abstain, it is so dangerous and so likely to lead to addiction, that it is downright foolish to drink. Regardless, all Christians hold that drunkenness is a sin and that this sin relates to the loss of control. A drunken man loses his sense and his self-control. As Solomon says, “Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise.” On Monday I attempted to anticipate some of the cost to the church if young Christian men continue to spend their youth embroiled in the pursuit of pornography. Solomon warns that pornography is sapping them of their strength. In their strongest and most energetic years, in the years when so many promises and possibilities lie open before them, they are giving it all away to pornography. It saps them of strength and it saps them of life. In that same passage Solomon asks, “Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?” He describes this sexual captivity as a kind of intoxication, a form of drunkenness. Do not give up self-control and throw yourself into the arms of another woman, whether those arms are real or simply pixels on a computer screen. Do not invest your strength where it will be wasted. That is the very height of stupidity. But it is not only illicit sex that is intoxicating. The same Solomon who would forbid getting drunk on wine or strong drink, and the same Solomon who would describe the stupidity of getting drunk on illicit sex, would command a different kind of intoxication. “Rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love (Proverbs 5:19).” He does not criticize or downplay the presence of sexual desire and the longing to find sexual fulfillment. Rather, he admits it, celebrates it, and shows that to direct that energy toward adultery, fornication or pornography is to completely misuse it. His solution is simple: Put your sexual desire to the best use of all. “Rejoice in the wife of your youth…be intoxicated always in her love.” Donald Spence-Jones interprets this way: “The teacher, by a bold figure, describes the entire fascination which the husband is to allow the wife to exercise over him.” Go ahead and lose control. Go ahead and get intoxicated, but get drunk in the love and passionate pursuit of your wife. What wine does to your body, let your wife do to your affections and desires. Let her captivate you. Let her fascinate you. Let her have that kind of power over you, that kind of control, that kind of ownership. Be addicted to her. When you are with her, when you are in her arms, let yourself go and just enjoy God’s good gift of sexual pleasure. Jim Newheiser says it well: “The man who has to look away from all the other female breasts put on display in our culture can freely enjoy his wife’s breasts. The wife may delight in being desired and being overwhelmed by the love of her husband. Their sexual thirst can be quenched in a way that pleases God.” Pornography, adultery, fornication and all other sexual sin is good desire put to bad use and, by its very nature is intoxicating. That intoxication delights God, and is meant to delight us, when it is directed to the pursuit of marital intimacy. So go ahead and drink—drink of the love of your wife. Go ahead and drink to intoxication—get drunk in her love. But do not drink, and do not get drunk, in any other love.

The annual Seattle Interactive Conference is a two-day event celebrating the convergence of online technology, creativity, and emerging trends in one of the world's most innovative cities. SIC brings together entrepreneurs, developers and online business professionals from throughout the US and beyond for a powerful combination of in-depth presentations, networking opportunities, and uniquely Seattle social events. Attendees have the rare opportunity to explore disruptive technologies and business models with visionary thinkers and peers in areas ranging from online commerce and social media to gaming, interactive advertising, entertainment, and much more. Seattle Interactive Team Founder, Director (@rauschenbach) Born as an army brat in the heart of the Steel City of Youngstown, OH, raised in Germany and California. Brian is President at Add3 digital marketing agency, serial entrepreneur, proud dad to two girls, Arsenal FC soccer supporter, and an old school hip-hop DJ who has been an active internet industry leader for 19+ years. He was nominated as one of "The Most Influential People of 2005" by Seattle Magazine's. He's a lefty, prefers Hornitos tequila, air-cooled vintage VWs and has a record collection of 7,000+ pieces. Los Angeles born Rock & Roller turned Seattleite; Gloria Connors has over 25 years of experience in the music business and entrepreneurship. She is a self-made woman, engineer, art collector and a proud mom. Gloria is an expert producer of controlled chaos, on stage and off. Founder of Connors & Co., Gloria toured with various artists until she got tired of being the only woman on the bus. Now, she can be found carving her way down the mountain with her Connors & Co. team debating Yacht Rock vs. Real Rock. She’s a trailblazer & music lover at heart that is still in love with a loud guitar - even if she can’t hear it. Co-Founder, Programming/Sponsorship (@mabes1) 15 year Microsoft veteran, primarily in roles for the Microsoft Advertising and Trade Marketing teams; Spokane native, Ballard local; Board member of the Northwest Internet Advertising Group (NWIAG). Spends time raising money for local fundraising organizations such as The Team Jesse Foundation and The Inbetweener; Enjoys traveling to faraway places, neighborhood art walks, road trips, and polar bear plunges. Art Director (@michiko23) Native to the Seattle startup and art scenes, Zach is passionate about connecting business, technology and design as the CEO of social media agency, Crown Social. Prior to founding Crown in 2011, Zach was a digital strategist at Wunderman, client-side head of marketing, and serial entrepreneur, founding and co-founding startups in the music, marketing and finance verticals. To date, Zach is most proud of his ability to rap in several languages and his impressive collection of fanny packs. Montana native and Syracuse University alum/apologist; Two decades of PR leadership experience for public and privately held technology, commercial, and nonprofit ventures in US and abroad; History buff and outdoorsman who lived in West Berlin at height of Cold War and counts Queen Anne Hill, Mt. Baker Ski Area, Mt. Everest Base Camp and his couch among favorite places; Co-founder of LardButt.com, dedicated to below-average athletes and weekend warriors. Seattle Interactive Advisory Board We are very pleased to introduce SIC’s 2016 Advisory Board: This group brings a comprehensive base of thought-leadership perspectives from the converging areas of major technology corporations, digital and social media organizations, academia, entertainment, and more. We are excited to be working together to help make SIC a compelling and valuable event for everyone involved! Barrie Cohen, Advisor, Everyhome Benjamin Winters, Principal, WINTR Brian Marr, Director of Strategy, Smashing Ideas Chris Carter, Strategy Director, Y&R Group Seattle Dan Sundgren, Senior Director, Merkle Daniella Kim, Principal, HalibutFlats Research and Development, UW David Harris, Startup Advocate, City of Seattle Donte Parks, Vice President, Culture, Substantial Dave Curry, Executive Director of Interactive, POP Eddie Reheldt, Director, Global Campaigns, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Eric Duerr, CMO, Rocket Fuel, Founder Emphatic Gabriel Jones, Senior Producer Gareth Jones, Managing Director, POSSIBLE Jeffrey Chavez, Content Identity Consultant, Tether John SanGiovanni, Co-Founder, Vice President, Product Design, Zumobi Kelly Clay, Columnist, Forbes Kyla Fairchild, Publisher, No Depression Lissa Capps, Senior Vice President, Edelman Matt Ashworth, Leader of Seattle's Technology Public Relations Practice, Porter Novelli Melissa Barden, Tech & Telco Mobile Account Director, AOL Mike Reeder, Director, Global Coffee & Strategic Partnerships, Starbucks Michelle Maggs, Executive Vice President, GM, Weber Shandwick Michelle McRae, CEO, Northbound Brand Matthew Wood, Digital Media Business Development Director, Adsiduous Scilla Andreen, CEO & Co-Founder, IndieFlix Scott Macklin, Associate Director, UW Digital Media Surya Vanka, Founder, Authentic Design Tim Schmuckal, Legal & Operations Executive

By Vella Munn She was a tiny thing, several inches shorter than my 5’2” and maybe one hundred pounds. Her lovely white hair had been professionally styled, she had flawless skin and sparkling eyes, and her pink smock appeared to have just been washed and ironed. In contrast I looked like something the cat had hauled in because I’d been running errands. (My story, my explanation) I was there for my yearly mammogram while this darling 80 year old woman was a clinic volunteer. Her job was to guide me to a changing room. “Are you the writer Vella Munn?” she asked. Surprised and wishing I’d washed my hair, I confessed I was. Turned out she’d read every one of my nine Native American historicals. They’d resonated with her because several were set in California where she’d lived with her husband of 47 years before his recent death. My stories in some small part took her back to their time together. She cried, I got misty eyed, and we hugged. On my way home, I turned on the radio. Neil Diamond, who I would have run away with if he’d known I was alive, was singing. It was a cold afternoon but the sun was shining. Just like that I was transported back to those innocent and heady days when it was all about the writing—when I didn’t concern myself with the business aspect of this career I’ve been addicted to forever. With the music as loud as my ears could handle and the sun on my shoulder, I embraced a raw thrill I haven’t felt for years. I vowed to again get drunk on writing. For years I’ve been telling new writers to treat what they’re doing like a business. We have to. Otherwise we don’t stand a chance. Publishers are there to make money. Much as an editor might love a writer or manuscript, if she doesn’t believe it’ll make a profit for the company she won’t/can’t buy it. The publishing world is constantly changing. Genres move in and out of favor, hot becomes cold, a book no one saw coming breaks all sales records and the charge to duplicate begins. We must be informed, realistic, to shift with the market. I get it. I wouldn’t have sold over fifty books for mumble-mumble publishers if I wasn’t committed to keeping my fingers on the publishing pulse. I also educated myself about self-publishing and hung out my own shingle. I pay the bills with my writing and that’s how the IRS has long classified me. But I’d lost the pure joy of burying myself in a fictional world and suspect I’m not the only one. All this time we spend staying informed takes us far from the stories in our hearts and souls. Even before meeting that 80 year old woman I’d been coming back to my roots, to when everything was about character and emotion. I’d spoken at this year’s RMFW conference and afterward my buddy Lynda Hilburn and I took off for the mountains. (I live in Oregon and had never been to Colorado.) We sat on a patio overlooking a rushing creek drinking wine and watching/feeling a storm come in. Suddenly it was there, maybe blown my way by the fierce wind, the kernels of a four-book romance series about something that has always resonated with me—the wilderness. I came home, cleared the decks of other writing projects (I’ve been doing a lot of erotica) and spent a day sketching out the series and pulling characters out of that place in all writers’ minds where characters wait to be brought to life. Early in November I got started. I didn’t have much of an idea about where story #1 was going, just that life hadn’t been easy for this man and woman and they need each other and the mountains that represent second chances for them. The words have been flowing from me and I’m approaching each writing stint with a joy I’d forgotten was possible for, I believe, one reason. These characters and their stories tap into what’s true about me. What matters to me. Promo time: Touch Of The Wolf, a paranormal romantic suspense with Entangled’s Ignite line releases on Dec. 30. The story is set in Washington state’s Olympic Forest. Hey, you can’t take this gal out of the country. It’s all I know or want to.

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Sort: Category . Published . Updated . Title . Words . Chapters . Reviews . Status . A Brave New World by catchingafallingstar reviews In less than two years a baby came from nothing to be able to talk and interact with the world. Then something strange happens, and you have a 'normal person'. But what if the curiosity and thirsty for knowledge isn't killed so soon, but encouraged? What kind of person you will have, and how far could they go? Let's explore this possibility... Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Adventure/Sci-Fi - Chapters: 16 - Words: 63,948 - Reviews: 28 - Favs: 65 - Follows: 104 - Updated: 7/29 - Published: 2/8 - Harry P. Return of Emerald by Bleu Tsuki reviews Slytherin!Harry. When the BWL is discovered missing, no one thinks twice when Hasan Castell appears at Hogwarts. Abandoned in a muggle orphanage, Harry grows up with a love of magic-in books that is-and thinks sorcery is all in his dreams. He calls himself Hasan to separate his dreams from reality, and is adopted and raised by a man who should be dead.HP/LL mentor!Snape Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Friendship/Drama - Chapters: 44 - Words: 298,080 - Reviews: 990 - Favs: 1,053 - Follows: 1,493 - Updated: 7/29 - Published: 8/18/2013 - [Harry P., Luna L.] Severus S., Lucius M. Further Adventures of the Lone Traveler by dunuelos reviews Harry Potter, Lone Traveler, has accepted his role as the Multiverse's fix-it man. A figure of legend in many universes, he makes his way as directed by Creation to worlds where they could use a nudge here and there. Maybe he can prevent the multiverse from destroying itself in apocalyptic fire. Sequel to Stories of the Lone Traveler. Crossover - X-overs & Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Adventure/Drama - Chapters: 9 - Words: 41,623 - Reviews: 315 - Favs: 724 - Follows: 815 - Updated: 7/29 - Published: 7/14 The Difference One Man Can Make by joen1801 reviews After the Battle of Hogwarts, Harry Potter decided to travel the world. Twelve years later when a new threat attempts to destroy the progress made in Britain he returns home to deal with the situation. During the fight that puts down the small group of upstarts Harry finds himself in a world of ice and fire Crossover - Harry Potter & Game of Thrones - Rated: M - English - Adventure - Chapters: 18 - Words: 240,080 - Reviews: 3324 - Favs: 6,083 - Follows: 7,000 - Updated: 7/28 - Published: 3/22/2015 Fixing Past Mistakes by DebsTheSlytherinSnapefan reviews Harry didn't appear at Hogwarts causing concern. Albus immediately head's out to Privet Drive to find out what was going on, along with Minerva and a reluctant Severus Snape. What they find out changes everything for everyone in the wizarding world. Is there a chance for anyone to go back and fix past mistakes? is there any hope at all for the magical world? cover pic - Harry's cub Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Chapters: 49 - Words: 218,570 - Reviews: 5895 - Favs: 4,387 - Follows: 5,764 - Updated: 7/28 - Published: 2/11/2014 - Harry P., Severus S., Albus D., Minerva M. A Different Professor by AsphodelWolf15 reviews "Her skeleton will lie in the chamber forever." Ginny has been taken to the Chamber of Secrets and Harry may know where that is. How would things have turned out if he had gone to a Different Professor? Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Adventure/Drama - Chapters: 16 - Words: 129,321 - Reviews: 625 - Favs: 1,195 - Follows: 1,889 - Updated: 7/27 - Published: 5/16 - [Harry P., Hermione G.] Harry Potter and the Rune Stone Path by Temporal Knight reviews 10 year old Harry finds a chest left by his mother with books on some of her favorite subjects. Discovering he has a talent for understanding and creating runes sets Harry onto a very different path than anyone had expected. Shortcuts, inventions, and a bit of support go a long way! Pairings: H/Hr/NT/FD/DG. Ron/Molly bashing and GreaterGood!Dumbledore. Harry Potter - Rated: M - English - Fantasy/Adventure - Chapters: 31 - Words: 316,097 - Reviews: 2447 - Favs: 5,214 - Follows: 6,834 - Updated: 7/27 - Published: 4/15 - [Harry P., Hermione G., Fleur D., N. Tonks] Harry Potter & the Game by Concept101 reviews With the powers of Gamer given to him Harry sets out to prove himself to the world of magic by becoming the best he can be despite the impossible odds against him! Watch our hero grow in this action filled adventure full of heart, humour & spectacle. And the occasional swear word. Politics!Action!Drama!Manipulation!OP Harry!Mind Bending Magic! Year 1 Complete! Updates every 4 days! Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Adventure/Humor - Chapters: 24 - Words: 164,024 - Reviews: 1477 - Favs: 2,125 - Follows: 2,887 - Updated: 7/27 - Published: 5/17 - Harry P., Hermione G., Ginny W. The Black Prince by cxjenious reviews He remembers being Harry Potter. He dreams of it. He dreams of the Great Other too, a beast borne of ice and death with eyes red as blood and an army of cold dead things. He is the second son of the king, a spare, but his fortunes change when secrets rather left in the dark come to light, and Westeros is torn asunder by treachery and ambition. Winter is coming, but magic is might. Crossover - Harry Potter & Game of Thrones - Rated: M - English - Fantasy/Drama - Chapters: 20 - Words: 125,705 - Reviews: 2460 - Favs: 6,318 - Follows: 7,320 - Updated: 7/23 - Published: 3/7/2015 A Man of Iron by Mr. Chaos reviews Antony 'Tony' Stark is the arrogant cousin of Ned Stark whose made his fortune crafting fine weapons for the lords of Westeros. Tony leads a joyful life, doing what he pleases and leaving the politics of the realm to others. But when violent attack nearly ends his life, Tony decides to take action and creates a hero for the people to rally around... a knight known as Iron Man. Crossover - Ironman & A song of Ice and Fire - Rated: T - English - Fantasy/Adventure - Chapters: 20 - Words: 79,373 - Reviews: 629 - Favs: 989 - Follows: 1,100 - Updated: 7/21 - Published: 3/2/2014 - A. E. Stark/Tony, J. R. Rhodes/Rhodey, V. Potts/Pepper, Jon S. by Firazh reviews What could be worse than a nightmare? Waking up to discover that it was reality, of course. But after finding out Bellatrix was his mother, discovering that the Death Eater who fathered him was Severus Snape almost came as a relief. Deciding to take up his real identity was easy enough ... actually living it, not so much. AU: After fifth year. Sevitus with a twist. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Angst/Family - Chapters: 34 - Words: 203,874 - Reviews: 910 - Favs: 1,078 - Follows: 1,410 - Updated: 7/18 - Published: 6/23/2014 - Harry P., Remus L., Severus S. by theaceoffire reviews A young boy in a dark cupboard is in great pain. An unusual power will allow him to heal himself, help others, and grow strong in a world of magic. Eventual God-like Harry, Unsure of eventual pairings. Alternate Universe, possible universe/dimension traveling in the future. Harry Potter - Rated: M - English - Adventure/Humor - Chapters: 66 - Words: 290,947 - Reviews: 4086 - Favs: 6,380 - Follows: 6,938 - Updated: 7/14 - Published: 2/22/2014 - Harry P. by Stargon1 reviews The day before Harry Potter was due to go to Hogwarts for the very first time, his aunt and uncle informed him that he wouldn't be going. Instead, he was sent to Stonewall High. Now, three years later, the Goblet of Fire has named him as a TriWizard Champion. What that means is anyone's guess, but to Harry, one thing is clear: he can finally get away from Privet Drive. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Adventure - Chapters: 28 - Words: 106,020 - Reviews: 1327 - Favs: 2,398 - Follows: 3,537 - Updated: 7/13 - Published: 11/11/2015 - Harry P., Daphne G. A Very Different Harry Potter by BarbedCaress reviews AU Harry first meets Draco on the train. Draco realizes how little Harry knows about the Wizarding World and the two boys hatch a plan. Meeting in secret, Draco teaches Harry all he needs to know to survive as Head of House Potter and The Boy Who Lived. No slash. Hufflepuff!Harry Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Adventure/Humor - Chapters: 14 - Words: 56,351 - Reviews: 164 - Favs: 207 - Follows: 347 - Updated: 7/12 - Published: 2/25/2015 - Harry P., Draco M. Not even a first chance! by senawario reviews (alt title: Disproportionate response). Give the death-eaters a second chance? No way, not even a *first* chance! This is a "redo" fic with a twist. The pairing will eventually be Harmony but a good part of the story happens when they are too young so hard-core Harmonians need to be patient. Rated M for possible violence in later chapters. Harry Potter - Rated: M - English - Adventure - Chapters: 28 - Words: 94,094 - Reviews: 192 - Favs: 357 - Follows: 608 - Updated: 7/10 - Published: 2/11 - [Harry P., Hermione G.] Dobby The Adventures Of Harry Potter, the Video Game: Exploited by michaelsuave reviews Harry Potter catches Voldemort's AK to the noggin only to find out that his life is a video game and he forgot to save. So what does he do? Does he return on Hard mode and work for the challenge? Heck No! Harry uses every exploit, grind, or underhanded tactic he can get his hands on. His life may be a video game, but nobody plays Harry Potter; Harry's going to exploit the system. Harry Potter - Rated: M - English - Humor/Adventure - Chapters: 12 - Words: 91,033 - Reviews: 3472 - Favs: 7,803 - Follows: 9,288 - Updated: 7/3 - Published: 9/22/2013 - Harry P. Lone Traveler: The Greatest Minister in History by dunuelos reviews The Lone Traveler arrives on the even of Fudge's election. Instead of pelting Dumbledore for advice, the new Minister listens to a new viewpoint. Much is changed. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Drama - Chapters: 17 - Words: 79,617 - Reviews: 909 - Favs: 1,521 - Follows: 1,342 - Updated: 6/25 - Published: 5/14 - Harry P., Amelia B., Augusta L., C. Fudge - Complete A Marauder's Plan by CatsAreCool reviews Sirius decides to stay in England after escaping Hogwarts and makes protecting Harry his priority. AU GOF. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Family/Drama - Chapters: 87 - Words: 893,787 - Reviews: 9466 - Favs: 9,192 - Follows: 9,590 - Updated: 6/13 - Published: 4/21/2012 - Harry P., Sirius B. - Complete The Hardships of Family by IAreGandalf reviews AU: Harry has a family, parents, a little BWL-brother and an adorable sister. Neglected by his parents and having to survive on his own since he was 4. Luckily he got Sirius. He is a great wizard and sets out to change the Wizard world. How will his life turn out with all the different hardships. Definitely not your usual wrong BWL-story. Takes a turn at chapter 5! Harry Potter - Rated: M - English - Family/Adventure - Chapters: 18 - Words: 76,973 - Reviews: 161 - Favs: 473 - Follows: 659 - Updated: 6/3 - Published: 3/21/2015 - Harry P. Harry Potter: Junior Inquisitor by sprinter1988 reviews Before the start of fifth year Dumbledore changes the plans. Unfortunately he didn't bother to inform Harry. At his trial, Harry realises that it is down to him to save his own skin. To do so his Slytherin side must come out to play, and once it's out it sticks around turning life at Hogwarts on its head. Warnings: EvilDumbles, SheepOrder/Staff, GoodGuysDontGetEverythingTheirWay Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Adventure/Drama - Chapters: 36 - Words: 211,722 - Reviews: 7942 - Favs: 11,277 - Follows: 14,834 - Updated: 5/26 - Published: 1/16/2013 - Harry P., Susan B., Hannah A., Amelia B. The Better Man by Laume reviews Suppose the Marauders torture hadn't driven Snape to Voldemort and he had been the better man. What would the future have looked like? Warning: may now contain DH spoilers. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Drama - Chapters: 22 - Words: 81,568 - Reviews: 1990 - Favs: 3,254 - Follows: 4,108 - Updated: 5/15 - Published: 6/2/2007 - Severus S., Harry P. by pointlessjourney reviews What happens when the Nexus takes Jim Kirk and deposits him on the shores of Westeros? Watch as a powerful new note is added to the song of fire and ice. Completely AU, Featuring all your favorite characters and one character from the 24th century. Game of Thrones - Rated: K+ - English - Drama - Chapters: 12 - Words: 29,697 - Reviews: 122 - Favs: 177 - Follows: 217 - Updated: 4/23 - Published: 2/2 - Jon S., Tyrion L., Eddard S. Black as the Blood In Our Names by TimeAndLife21 reviews Regulus was drowning.Or At Least he thought he was until a woman of light came to him to offer a second chance. Thrown back into the world of the living, He basically plans from thin air to work around the new world he is in now. He will be helping Harry Potter go against the Dark Lord and saves Sirius from dying by Bella's Hand. Looks like Harry has perfect Ally on his side. AU Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Family/Drama - Chapters: 26 - Words: 169,187 - Reviews: 378 - Favs: 531 - Follows: 794 - Updated: 4/22 - Published: 10/29/2014 - Harry P., Sirius B., Severus S., Regulus B. by Quetzalcoatls reviews End of 4th year and Voldemort's back,but Harrys not waiting for him to make the first move SnowPoint Academy,hidden in the frozen reaches of the Antarctic ocean,is nothing like Hogwarts, but to win this war that may be exactly what Harry needs,but darker things are stirring in the shadows, and nothing is sure.fusion with Heralds of Valdemar(fut. AU) Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Adventure/Fantasy - Chapters: 25 - Words: 103,255 - Reviews: 1715 - Favs: 2,266 - Follows: 3,024 - Updated: 3/22 - Published: 9/2/2012 - Harry P., Hermione G. Investigator Harry Steel by TheBlackHand724 reviews The war is over. the dark is defeated. but the government is still corrupt. Harry is exiled to the U.S. where he meets the family he didn't know he had, and takes up the family trade. Multi crossover after chapter 18. and Harry/Multi after chapter 38 T for Language and Violence. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Adventure/Romance - Chapters: 57 - Words: 403,710 - Reviews: 861 - Favs: 851 - Follows: 1,032 - Updated: 3/21 - Published: 3/2/2015 - [Harry P., OC] [Hermione G., Neville L.] Sorcery, UNITed, Independence, Space by Tangerine-Alert reviews Post-OotP, Harry decides to leave his relatives to ready himself for Voldemort, something Dumbledore seems unwilling to do. He meets a Brigadier and quickly finds Earth is not alone. Not Horcrux compliant. (Written Post-OotP) ARCHIVED-Errors/issues won't be fixed. Crossover - Doctor Who & Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Adventure/Drama - Chapters: 57 - Words: 213,846 - Reviews: 942 - Favs: 1,174 - Follows: 551 - Updated: 2/8 - Published: 5/7/2006 - Brigadier, Harry P. - Complete Harry Potter in the Claw of the Raven by BakenandEggs reviews When a more studious Harry Potter entered Gringotts with Hagrid, the Goblins managed to talk to him privately - Dumbledore never saw that one coming. A Ravenclaw Harry story. Warning: child abuse, character bashing, and pureblood society. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Friendship - Chapters: 10 - Words: 56,257 - Reviews: 394 - Favs: 1,747 - Follows: 1,390 - Updated: 12/26/2015 - Published: 9/8/2015 - Harry P., Draco M. - Complete by BloodRedDemon reviews Neglected in favour of his younger brother, Harry Potter always was dissatisfied. His Parents and their friends fawned over Thomas, no matter what the older brother did. Harry upped and left; why would he have stayed? 6 years later, Harry Potter found a new home. The boy is in the middle of it all, though. What will his role be? Where will his allegiance lie? Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Adventure/Romance - Chapters: 30 - Words: 147,789 - Reviews: 1830 - Favs: 4,696 - Follows: 5,779 - Updated: 11/17/2015 - Published: 11/17/2014 - Harry P., Fleur D., Daphne G., Tracey D. Harry the Hufflepuff by Megark reviews There is a single point of divergence from this and canon. See if you can find it. "This is your Epic Fan Fiction. After you have been bathed in its Glory, you will be Changed and Perfected." -My Beta, after 4 hours of talking about this story. Harry Potter - Rated: K+ - English - Humor/Friendship - Chapters: 20 - Words: 64,800 - Reviews: 113 - Favs: 133 - Follows: 180 - Updated: 11/15/2015 - Published: 3/19/2015 - Harry P., Ron W., Hermione G. - Complete Doing it all over again by ultimate emperor reviews Ronald Weasley goes back in time to righten things that had gone wrong. AU universe good/OOC Ron slight Hermione bashing. NOT SLASH Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Adventure/Friendship - Chapters: 13 - Words: 50,488 - Reviews: 49 - Favs: 85 - Follows: 115 - Updated: 11/3/2015 - Published: 6/17/2012 - Ron W., Harry P. by Shikatanai reviews AU: At 5, an abused Harry is taken in by a powerful family. Taking the name Gabriel, he grows up into someone very different. How will Hogwarts and Voldemort react? Soldier!Harry, Neutral!Harry, implied child abuse. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Drama/Family - Chapters: 44 - Words: 160,638 - Reviews: 4053 - Favs: 5,788 - Follows: 6,297 - Updated: 10/28/2015 - Published: 12/9/2005 - Harry P. The Trusted Hero by Blueowl reviews This is a what-if spin-off from the fanfic 'The Hidden Hero' by Evebb, answering the question: What would have happened if Dumbledore had believed and supported Mark (aka Harry) at the end of chapter 19? Mentor!Sensible!Dumbledore Enabled!Light!Harry. Giants, Dark Arts, Ministry takeover, Horcruxes, Undesirables, Harry masquerading as a muggleborn. No Deathly Hallows, MoD, or H/G Harry Potter - Rated: M - English - Adventure - Chapters: 18 - Words: 75,159 - Reviews: 293 - Favs: 334 - Follows: 291 - Updated: 8/3/2015 - Published: 4/1/2015 - Harry P., Albus D. - Complete Time to Put Your Galleons Where Your Mouth Is by Tsume Yuki reviews Harry had never been able to comprehend a sibling relationship before, but he always thought he'd be great at it. Until, as Master of Death, he's reborn one Turais Rigel Black, older brother to Sirius and Regulus. (Rebirth/time travel and Master of Death Harry) Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Family/Adventure - Chapters: 21 - Words: 46,303 - Reviews: 2403 - Favs: 10,381 - Follows: 4,041 - Updated: 1/14/2015 - Published: 8/11/2014 - Harry P., Sirius B., Regulus B., Walburga B. - Complete Where No Wizard has Gone Before by Blueowl reviews Harry has been reborn time and time again after becoming the Master of Death, living through hundreds of lifetimes in dozens of universes, but this rebirth is strange even by his standards—no doubt thanks to how he had died the last time. StarTrek:TNG/HarryPotter Powerful!Harry MoD!Harry, Guinan, Q, Borg, Lwaxana. COMPLETE Crossover - StarTrek: The Next Generation & Harry Potter - Rated: M - English - Sci-Fi - Chapters: 9 - Words: 35,120 - Reviews: 342 - Favs: 1,336 - Follows: 753 - Updated: 12/21/2014 - Published: 11/26/2014 - J. Picard, Q, D. Troi, Harry P. - Complete by ChipmonkOnSpeed reviews AU- Given up after that fateful night, a prodigious Harry Potter ends up in America, working as a Lab Tech/Federal Agent. Now his family wants him back, but can he trust their motives? Can he trust his own? Multi-crossover. Harry Potter - Rated: M - English - Humor - Chapters: 27 - Words: 136,637 - Reviews: 2074 - Favs: 4,358 - Follows: 2,599 - Updated: 8/24/2014 - Published: 2/27/2007 - Harry P., Albus D., OC - Complete Inspected By No 13 by Clell65619 reviews When he learns that flying anywhere near a Dragon is a recipe for suicide, Harry tries a last minute change of tactics, one designed to use the power of the Bureaucracy forcing him to compete against itself. Little does he know that his solution is its own kind of trap. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Humor/Parody - Chapters: 3 - Words: 18,472 - Reviews: 1116 - Favs: 4,660 - Follows: 1,983 - Updated: 8/20/2014 - Published: 6/26/2014 - Complete by DobbyElfLord reviews Dark curses don't play nice- not even with each other. When nine year-old Harry is bitten by a werewolf, the horcrux fights back. The result could only happen to Harry Potter. Canon-ish for the first three years of Hogwarts - AU from that point forward. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Humor/Adventure - Chapters: 23 - Words: 152,524 - Reviews: 3589 - Favs: 7,465 - Follows: 8,381 - Updated: 8/15/2014 - Published: 5/11/2012 - Harry P. Master of Wood, Water and Hill by Karmic Acumen reviews Bilbo Baggins wondered what Gandalf was thinking. Oh well, Bag End would sort him out. His house did NOT approve of vandalism, thank you very much. That rune carved into his door learned it personally. Besides, it served the wizard right for not heeding the rumors about Bilbo and the Old Forest. Hobbit - Rated: T - English - Adventure/Humor - Chapters: 5 - Words: 60,226 - Reviews: 338 - Favs: 1,428 - Follows: 1,431 - Updated: 5/11/2014 - Published: 2/9/2014 - Bilbo B., Thorin, Kíli, Fíli Knives in the Dark by Norrrrrrrrrr reviews When Harry saves a goblin's life from Quirrell before beginning his first year, he sets off a chain of events that brings the war to a head early. With an unstable, intelligent and desperate enemy facing them, how will the Wizarding world react? And how will an amoral mentor and ally affect Harry and his caretakers? This story is dead. Original planned ending included for closure. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Adventure/Drama - Chapters: 61 - Words: 97,025 - Reviews: 950 - Favs: 1,237 - Follows: 1,509 - Updated: 4/12/2014 - Published: 5/4/2013 - Harry P., OC - Complete To Shape and Change by Blueowl reviews AU. Time Travel. Snape goes back in time, holding the knowledge of what is to come if he fails. No longer holding a grudge, he seeks to shape Harry into the greatest wizard of all time, starting on the day Hagrid took Harry to Diagon Alley. No Horcruxes. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Adventure - Chapters: 34 - Words: 232,332 - Reviews: 8535 - Favs: 15,475 - Follows: 10,716 - Updated: 3/16/2014 - Published: 10/20/2010 - Harry P., Severus S. - Complete by Lord Silvere reviews Harry is a prisoner, and Bellatrix has fallen from grace. The accidental activation of Bella's treasured heirloom results in another chance for Harry. It also gives him the opportunity to make the acquaintance of the young and enigmatic Bellatrix Black as they change the course of history. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Chapters: 46 - Words: 392,449 - Reviews: 7090 - Favs: 10,097 - Follows: 7,176 - Updated: 9/21/2013 - Published: 11/14/2009 - Harry P., Bellatrix L. - Complete by Rorschach's Blot reviews It all starts with Hogwarts' Class Reunion. Harry Potter - Rated: M - English - Humor - Chapters: 20 - Words: 61,134 - Reviews: 1742 - Favs: 4,454 - Follows: 3,291 - Updated: 3/2/2013 - Published: 11/14/2008 - Complete Harry Potter and The Phoenix Burning by mini-mid reviews Harry dies at the same time as Voldemort when the killing curse backfires the second time and is sent back to Kings cross station. Now however Fawkes meets him there and sends him somewhere all together different than the Hogwarts he knows. Not Slash Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Adventure - Chapters: 20 - Words: 69,010 - Reviews: 1321 - Favs: 4,023 - Follows: 2,484 - Updated: 2/21/2013 - Published: 3/13/2011 - Harry P., James P. - Complete by loralee1 reviews AU, Post HBP Snape travels back in time to warn pre SSPS Snape about what is to come. No DH Spoilers Harry Potter - Rated: K+ - English - Chapters: 11 - Words: 41,690 - Reviews: 1165 - Favs: 2,455 - Follows: 1,585 - Updated: 11/1/2012 - Published: 9/19/2006 - Severus S., Harry P. - Complete Trust Is A Relative Thing by Silverfawkes reviews What if Petunia put the blame where it belonged instead of on Harry? OOC Petunia Dursley Rating for mild language Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Chapters: 51 - Words: 219,068 - Reviews: 5467 - Favs: 5,967 - Follows: 6,649 - Updated: 10/16/2012 - Published: 12/31/2010 - Harry P. For Whom the Bell Tolls by nefieslab reviews AU fifth year. After saving Dudley from the dementors, the ministry letter arrives to order his wand snapped. Dumbledore's letter doesn't arrive. Harry/Daphne/Susan. Rating may change. Powerful!Happy!Independant!Harry. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Romance/Adventure - Chapters: 17 - Words: 135,554 - Reviews: 1655 - Favs: 4,189 - Follows: 4,900 - Updated: 7/2/2012 - Published: 1/15/2011 - Harry P., Daphne G. A Different Halloween by robst reviews Could a chance meeting change history? What would a different Halloween in 1981 mean for wizarding Britain? Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Chapters: 20 - Words: 124,549 - Reviews: 4011 - Favs: 6,979 - Follows: 4,169 - Updated: 5/26/2012 - Published: 10/31/2010 - [Harry P., Hermione G.] - Complete A New Dawn by AlexanderD reviews SG1, Atlantis, and SGU all work towards a brighter future. Past conflicts heat up more than imagined, and a long wondered question is answered. Ancients, Tauri, Asgard, Furling, and a few others thrown in. This ties up the loose ends the writers left us. Stargate: Universe - Rated: T - English - Sci-Fi/Adventure - Chapters: 74 - Words: 295,200 - Reviews: 1288 - Favs: 602 - Follows: 425 - Updated: 4/16/2012 - Published: 4/29/2011 - Complete Back I Go by DebsTheSlytherinSnapefan reviews Harry ends up back in time twist of the usual sev is harrys father its now harry is sevs father! will Harry give Severus the childhood and future Harry has always wanted watch as severus blooms into the person he could have been. FINISHED Harry Potter - Rated: M - English - Chapters: 38 - Words: 67,877 - Reviews: 705 - Favs: 1,430 - Follows: 695 - Updated: 11/2/2010 - Published: 7/8/2007 - Harry P., Severus S. - Complete When The Future Died by SpikyStar reviews He controlled the elements, it wasn't enough. He was the powerful light wizard, but Voldemort was winning. Fate sent him back. No Slash please read, future Harry going back in time! Slight AU- Retains older body. fifth year Grammer fixed. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Angst/Adventure - Chapters: 43 - Words: 155,275 - Reviews: 1445 - Favs: 1,563 - Follows: 1,652 - Updated: 9/9/2010 - Published: 12/28/2007 - Harry P. by GenkaiFan reviews Harry has had enough of seeing his reputation shredded in the Daily Prophet and decides to do something about it. Only he decides to embrace his Slytherin side to rectify matters. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Drama/Humor - Chapters: 32 - Words: 74,506 - Reviews: 8452 - Favs: 17,618 - Follows: 7,235 - Updated: 6/21/2010 - Published: 12/3/2009 - Harry P. - Complete Wit of the Raven by japanese-jew reviews Highly AU. Mr. Harry Potter is age eleven, and the possibilities for his future are endless. The magic system of Harry Potter has essentially been turned on its head. Harry Potter - Rated: M - English - Chapters: 14 - Words: 101,733 - Reviews: 888 - Favs: 1,417 - Follows: 1,565 - Updated: 5/22/2010 - Published: 1/6/2006 - Harry P. Doctor John Watson, Police Surgeon Scotland Yard 5 by Bartimus Crotchety reviews This is the story of how the bravest and most singular person I have ever met, took down the most dangerous man in London, Colonel Jack Moran. In spite of what you might have heard, that man was not Sherlock Holmes. This is the true Empty House. Sherlock Holmes - Rated: T - English - Mystery/Crime - Chapters: 9 - Words: 32,369 - Reviews: 105 - Favs: 62 - Follows: 23 - Updated: 1/16/2010 - Published: 11/27/2009 - Dr. Watson, Inspector Lestrade - Complete Doctor John Watson, Police Surgeon Scotland Yard 4 by Bartimus Crotchety reviews A year ago a new killer stalked the East End. Baffling the Yard at every turn he left five dead. Shaken by their inability to capture him, the Yard turned to Doctor Watson. A new body turns up with the same trademarks. Can a very ill Watson prevail? Sherlock Holmes - Rated: T - English - Crime/Mystery - Chapters: 10 - Words: 38,336 - Reviews: 90 - Favs: 42 - Follows: 10 - Updated: 10/20/2009 - Published: 9/1/2009 - Inspector Lestrade, Dr. Watson - Complete Harry Potter and the Determinations of Fate by Baronvonblack reviews Like ripples through water, a single event can change the entire course of history. For Harry, all it took was meeting a misty-eyed Ravenclaw a year earlier... Major AU later Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Romance/Fantasy - Chapters: 11 - Words: 41,199 - Reviews: 536 - Favs: 1,284 - Follows: 1,572 - Updated: 10/12/2009 - Published: 8/7/2008 - Harry P., Luna L. Doctor John Watson, Police Surgeon Scotland Yard 3 by Bartimus Crotchety reviews Doctor John Watson has very few things left that he values, his reputation is one. Suddenly, he is being tarnished by an all too familiar face from his past. Someone demanding his help before the fog rolls in and the killer stalking him strikes again. Sherlock Holmes - Rated: T - English - Crime/Mystery - Chapters: 5 - Words: 16,225 - Reviews: 52 - Favs: 42 - Follows: 7 - Updated: 8/4/2009 - Published: 7/17/2009 - Dr. Watson, Inspector Lestrade - Complete Mahou mo Ken by Enterprise1701-d reviews When Harry cries out for help during a nightmare, halfway around the world somebody listens. Somebody that will change the way Harry looks at magic... forever. On hiatus. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Adventure/Romance - Chapters: 10 - Words: 151,685 - Reviews: 719 - Favs: 1,710 - Follows: 1,915 - Updated: 7/6/2009 - Published: 3/15/2007 - Harry P., Luna L. Doctor John Watson, Police Surgeon Scotland Yard 2 by Bartimus Crotchety reviews To save his sanity, John Watson became a Yarder. He is now their top man in autopsy, and has become their chief investigative asset. However, there is a brilliant man posing as Sherlock Holmes in London, and he wants his Boswell at any cost! Sherlock Holmes - Rated: T - English - Mystery/Crime - Chapters: 5 - Words: 19,326 - Reviews: 52 - Favs: 48 - Follows: 8 - Updated: 7/3/2009 - Published: 6/19/2009 - Dr. Watson, Inspector Lestrade - Complete Doctor John Watson, Police Surgeon: Scotland Yard by Bartimus Crotchety reviews Scotland Yard is struggling. They have cases they cannot solve and people are dying as a result...they need help. John Watson is struggling. He lost his best friend, his wife, and his health...he needs a purpose. The criminals have a new force to fear. Sherlock Holmes - Rated: T - English - Crime/Mystery - Chapters: 5 - Words: 15,725 - Reviews: 69 - Favs: 96 - Follows: 26 - Updated: 6/11/2009 - Published: 6/6/2009 - Dr. Watson, Inspector Lestrade - Complete Searching for Disaster by Shadow Rebirth reviews ABANDONED. Owls, cauldrons, and pointed hats? Harry Potter was not amused. And he still wasn't entirely sure that his human trafficking theory had been wrong. Warning! Features a very cynical Harry. [AU, no pairings.] Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Adventure/Humor - Chapters: 10 - Words: 40,849 - Reviews: 1030 - Favs: 2,580 - Follows: 2,830 - Updated: 6/10/2009 - Published: 7/12/2008 - Harry P. The Roaring Snake by maidros78 reviews AU to PS. Starts with Harry's visit to Diagon Alley. Follows the general outline of PS, but diverges from canon. HarryMillicent. proactive Minerva intelligent, observant and socially active Harry manipulation attempts by Dumbledore, Lucius, Voldemort. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Mystery/Adventure - Chapters: 30 - Words: 139,938 - Reviews: 970 - Favs: 1,024 - Follows: 893 - Updated: 5/17/2009 - Published: 8/13/2007 - Harry P., Millicent B. - Complete The Prometheus Encounter by Tangerine-Alert reviews HP/UNIT/SG1 crossover. Testing an Ancient hyperdrive flings the Prometheus and SG1 into another universe where Harry Potter, Night Wolf and magic greet them. ARCHIVED-Errors/issues won't be fixed TV X-overs - Rated: T - English - Drama/Sci-Fi - Chapters: 21 - Words: 110,518 - Reviews: 147 - Favs: 136 - Follows: 157 - Updated: 3/9/2009 - Published: 1/14/2008 - Complete by fake a smile reviews It's the summer before Harry's 6th year, and Harry is wracked with grief. But what happens when Harry makes a vow to himself to take control of his life? Harry's life takes a sharp turn when he gets an unexpected visitor one night. HPGW Independent!Harry Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Adventure - Chapters: 28 - Words: 523,307 - Reviews: 2903 - Favs: 5,932 - Follows: 3,053 - Updated: 11/15/2008 - Published: 5/23/2006 - Harry P., Ginny W. - Complete Harry Potter and the Secret of the Ancients by Towrag reviews What if Harry Potter and Daniel Jackson were the same people just at different times in their lives? Crossover - Stargate: SG-1 & Harry Potter - Rated: M - English - Adventure/Romance - Chapters: 3 - Words: 35,077 - Reviews: 252 - Favs: 533 - Follows: 730 - Updated: 7/7/2008 - Published: 2/16/2008 - Harry P. The Hidden Hero by EveBB reviews AU What if Harry knew he was a wizard and about the prophecy before he went to Hogwarts? What if he was kicked out of the Dursleys and decided to attend Hogwarts disguised as a muggleborn? Harry Ginny Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Chapters: 36 - Words: 181,065 - Reviews: 3074 - Favs: 3,733 - Follows: 1,253 - Updated: 1/28/2008 - Published: 1/6/2008 - Harry P. - Complete by Tangerine-Alert reviews Harry Potter, UNIT, NCIS xover. Harry has completed training with UNIT and been ordered 6 months off duty, he goes on a road trip in America…but is ordered back on duty to deal with an auction…and NCIS ARCHIVED-Errors/issues won't be fixed TV X-overs - Rated: T - English - Drama/Sci-Fi - Chapters: 12 - Words: 46,070 - Reviews: 122 - Favs: 173 - Follows: 88 - Updated: 9/24/2007 - Published: 7/8/2007 - Complete The TriSchool Tournament by DisobedienceWriter reviews One shot, AU of GOF. Here’s the story I wish I had found when I read GoF or GoF fanfiction. New, harder tasks. Observant!Smart!Harry. On the outs with Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore, and Hogwarts in general. No pairings. Harry Potter - Rated: K - English - Adventure/Angst - Chapters: 2 - Words: 31,882 - Reviews: 283 - Favs: 1,881 - Follows: 551 - Updated: 9/3/2007 - Published: 8/31/2007 - Harry P. - Complete A Year with Q by Morena Evensong reviews Q loses a bet with his son. Now he must pretend to be a sixth year student at Hogwarts without using any of his powers. How will Hogwarts react to the new student? Will Q survive the year? x-over with Star Trek: TNG and Voyager. Crossover - StarTrek: The Next Generation & Harry Potter - Rated: K+ - English - Humor/Sci-Fi - Chapters: 43 - Words: 154,373 - Reviews: 696 - Favs: 490 - Follows: 325 - Updated: 8/2/2007 - Published: 6/9/2004 - Q UNIT: Night Wolf – Beginnings by Tangerine-Alert reviews Doctor WhoUNIT crossover Harry Potter. UNIT: Night Wolf, a covert division within UNIT, Night Wolf would explore and research alien technology…and magic… and whatever other threats that come to pass... ARCHIVED-Errors/issues won't be fixed TV X-overs - Rated: T - English - Drama/Sci-Fi - Chapters: 46 - Words: 161,121 - Reviews: 194 - Favs: 90 - Follows: 77 - Updated: 7/5/2007 - Published: 6/27/2006 - Complete Flames of Betrayal by marietsy2 reviews Harry was sent to Azkaban and was later found to be innocent. With the help of Ron, he will find out who his true friends are. Will he forgive those who betrayed him? Will he be able to let the world know what kind of man Dumbledore really is? Who Harry Potter - Rated: M - English - Drama/Humor - Chapters: 36 - Words: 200,869 - Reviews: 1178 - Favs: 1,957 - Follows: 1,783 - Updated: 3/23/2007 - Published: 1/9/2006 - Harry P., Ron W. Time to Live by loralee1 reviews Post OotP No HBP Takes place summer after fifth year. After defeating Voldemort Harrry decides it's time for him to live his own life. No slash. Sequel to follow. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Adventure - Chapters: 31 - Words: 68,807 - Reviews: 1354 - Favs: 2,652 - Follows: 1,234 - Updated: 2/16/2007 - Published: 3/22/2006 - Harry P. - Complete A Better Man by Valandar reviews Vernon changed in the beginning to be a better man, thanks to a wish. How will this affect Harry, and the entire Wizarding World? Now complete! Please R&R. AU, HPGW, RWHG, RLNT Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Drama - Chapters: 54 - Words: 192,896 - Reviews: 1652 - Favs: 2,117 - Follows: 689 - Updated: 9/5/2006 - Published: 8/12/2005 - Ginny W., Harry P. - Complete Make A Wish by Rorschach's Blot reviews Harry has learned the prophesy and he does not believe that a schoolboy can defeat Voldemort, so he decides that if he is going to die then he is first going to live. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Humor/Adventure - Chapters: 50 - Words: 187,589 - Reviews: 10089 - Favs: 14,429 - Follows: 4,306 - Updated: 6/17/2006 - Published: 3/23/2005 - Harry P. - Complete A Parents Secret Gift by EvilDaystar reviews What if Harry's parents had put in place a few contingency plans for Harry's future. How different would his life have been in the magical world then? Harry Potter first year AU story with some Albus Dumbledore perspective every now and again. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Chapters: 30 - Words: 96,943 - Reviews: 602 - Favs: 1,604 - Follows: 493 - Published: 6/5/2006 - Harry P., Albus D. - Complete by old-crow reviews Complete. Harry makes a decision at the train platform at the end of year 5. Two little words change lives forever. Revised 606. Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Romance/Angst - Chapters: 20 - Words: 95,688 - Reviews: 2936 - Favs: 5,424 - Follows: 1,361 - Updated: 5/26/2005 - Published: 2/21/2005 - Harry P., Hermione G. - Complete

Secret Space Program, SSP, Revealed by David Wilcock THE FUTURE IS MORE WONDERFUL THAN WE CAN IMAGINE As one of many examples, California’s water crisis should be solvable within a matter of a few months once we get disclosure. In fact, water could quickly become California’s most profitable export, sending it to parched regions all throughout Middle America and beyond. Multiple technologies already exist that can easily de-salinate ocean water. California is right next to an ocean. There is water everywhere! What is the problem? ”Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink”may have been true in the pirate era, but we do have the means to alleviate those problems today. One of the technologies we are directly aware of will desalinate ocean water, generate free energy and produce any element in the Periodic Table as a by-product. This technology already has the quiet support of one of the most prestigious universities in the country. I have heard about it from more than one independent source. On a personal level, knowing these technologies exist and that they have not been released yet is extremely frustrating. For now, I continue to be almost ridiculously over-conservative with my water usage. Days without showering and the yellow toilet. Good thing I live alone. 🙂 It is interesting to simultaneously reflect on the fact that ”the darkest hour is before the dawn,” and we are far closer to it than most people could ever imagine. THE ”AFTER DISCLOSURE” WORLD WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING We are on the verge of an epic series of disclosures that will make all other information, books, videos and media in the UFO field seem hopelessly outdated. Everyone will be suddenly flooded with a ”learning curve” that will simultaneously be more amazing and more horrifying than they had ever imagined. Never again will we look at the records from our current civilization the same way. In the ”After Disclosure” or AD world, everything will be very different. Yes… we are going to need to learn some pretty upsetting things to get through this transition. However, the positives far outweigh the emotional shock that the negatives will temporarily put us all through, as a planet and a (hybridized) species. There are at least 40 different humanoid extraterrestrial groups that have tinkered around with our DNA — for many thousands of years. We have a much broader spectrum of emotions than most other human species out there. It is both our single greatest weakness and our most powerful strength — once we learn how to harness its power for the positive. Like being surrounded by a drowning ocean of ”useless” sea water, once we learn the command we have over reality, our thirst for the Beyond will be slaked. OK, SO WHAT ARE THE NEGATIVES THEY ARE SO AFRAID OF US FINDING OUT ABOUT? Bottom line: there are good guys and bad guys in the universe. Both are allowed to present their messages to us. The future we experience is the result of the choices we make. Our natural destiny is to go through moments of quantum change — where the ground state of reality itself, and all the assumptions that go along with it, is fundamentally and suddenly altered. We are not protected from negativity any more than our collective free will decides. When we act in selfish, manipulative, controlling and violent ways, that in turn allows elite controllers to do the same things to us on a larger scale. ”You are blaming ME for this problem? F- you, David! I haven’t done anything wrong! I am frickin’ awesome!” Not you per se, my friend. Humanity as a collective has created these problems. Some of them have built up from thousands of years of karmic patterns. MULTI-INCARNATIONAL KARMIC ALLEVIATION As I explained inThe Synchronicity Key,the Edgar Cayce Readings detailed many hundreds of cases where people were suffering debilitating karma from acts they had performed back in ancient Rome. Examples were given including people laughing at a little girl as she got her insides ripped out by a lion in the coliseum. Despite this being a socially-acceptable pastime for the era, any sufficiently negative emotion towards another who is in pain and agony will generate karma. The weirdest and most significant realization to come out ofThe Synchronicity Keyis the fact that history keeps looping around and around, very precisely, like the movie Groundhog Day. The precision with which this happens is utterly astonishing. In some cases, the repetition can be timed almost down to the day in cycles lasting 2,160 years. In the interview transcript you are about to read, I told Jimmy Church I do not consider myself to be a smart person. That being said, figuring out how to properly investigate and write about these cycles of history, making them understandable, is probably my headiest achievement yet. WE KEEP ON REINCARNATING The benevolent ETs I so often talk about inAncient Alienson History Channel (I am a regular, featured in over 35 episodes) seeded the ”cycle numbers” in multiple cultures around the world. This area of study was so arcane that in order to rescue it for our time, it required incredible effort — pulling together tiny threads of data I encountered over 20 years of time. It also is not conducive to a show likeAncient Aliens,due to its complexity, and thus no episodes have been made about this phenomenon at this time. Now we have a solid body of evidence that history is programmed by a greater cosmic intelligence to guide us through an intelligently-defined ”script” for spiritual enlightenment. In order to be a true Christian, it is necessary to understand and accept the reality of reincarnation. According to the direct inheritors of the original teachings, this was the greatest secret of Christ. The term ”burn in hell”(Gehenna)really means to alleviate (burn off) karma. The word we now call ”eternity”(Aion)simply means a cycle of time. The ”eternal hell” we were warned about is not some cosmic purgatory we experience after death. It is happening now — and the flames are hotter than ever. THE PRIME DIRECTIVE MAKES IT TOUGH The ETs, positive or negative, are simply not allowed to make a big showing. They cannot spontaneously decide to drop in and make an appearance on the Tonight Show. The Prime Directive is not just a theme you hear about on Star Trek. It is an absolute law in the universe that all beings, positive and negative, must follow. However, certain individuals can indeed receive contact directly. This is a fundamental part of how we learn the truth, both in the past and present. Corey Goode came forward and began sharing massive amounts of intel with me on the Secret Space Program (SSP) last October, 2014. I wrote everything down as he was telling me. He independently verified hundreds of things I had heard from other insiders. It was only after he decided to officially drop his pseudonym, GoodETxSG, and come forward that he began receiving direct ET contact in the present. It has been truly surreal to hear the new updates from him as he has been pulled into well over a dozen different off-planet meetings since that time. I UNDERSTAND MOST PEOPLE PROBABLY THINK THIS IS B.S. A fundamental part of the ”Prime Directive” istruth without proof. The higher-level beings cannot simply reveal themselves to us. There must be acalling,where a sufficient number of people request their help, before intervention can occur. We are truly blessed to have ongoing ”Divine Intervention” taking place. This is the only thing that has stopped the Cabal from destroying most of our lives. THE ZOMBIE PROGRAM The Cabal has been very innovative in coming up with a multitude of different ways to try to kill the majority of people on earth. One of the more upsetting and shocking ones I learned about, from three different credible insiders, is actually called ”The Zombie Program.” Using advanced cloning techniques, 150 million humans were manufactured in the US, all held in underground bases west of the Rockies, and another 100 million in Europe. They would look more or less like ordinary people — not what you see in the movies. The men might typically be wearing a plaid shirt and blue jeans. However, they are given a strange infectious virus that can make them bleed out of every orifice, including their fingernails. They are programmed to have an insatiable craving to attack and eat other humans who do not have the infection. When normal people come in contact with the pathogens in their blood, they will die a horrible death within 24 hours. Simply being scratched by the fingernails from one of these beings would be enough to cause death. AEROSOL SHUTS IT DOWN ONCE THE JOB IS DONE The Cabal also manufactured an aerosol that could be sprayed over an area where these ”zombies” were released. It would cause their death but leave ordinary folks alone. Otherwise, the only way to effectively kill the zombies would be to separate the brain stem from the neck, such as through beheading. The Cabal’s plan was to release this plague, bring about the deaths of millions to achieve their depopulation goals, and then shut off the plague with the aerosol. At that point, they had intended for us to have descended into mass starvation, rioting, anarchy and chaos, leading to martial law and internment camps (which people would flock to in fear of ”zombies.”) The technology was in place to generate this ”zombie apocalypse” all the way back in the 1960s. The ”Night of the Living Dead” was the first major movie to try to usesocial engineeringto get this apocalypse to be ”authorized” by the benevolent ETs. If enough of us saw these movies andreally believedthat zombies would attack us on a mass level, then thanks to the Prime Directive, the benevolent ETs would be forced to let it happen. THE ENTIRE PROGRAM HAD TO BE SCRAPPED The benevolent ETs have blocked the ”zombie program” so effectively that it has never been allowed to occur. Simply put, not enough peoplegenuinely believethat zombies are real for this to ever be allowed to happen. The Cabal is very well aware of this. They continue to crank out a tremendous amount of zombie apocalypse films and TV shows, hoping to get another chance. Other lifeforms that do not look anywhere near as similar to us have also been engineered with the zombie virus. The preferred design that would currently be used, if ”authorized,” are little beings that look like ”Greys” and are only about two feet tall. The hope was that they could be ”sneaky,” run around quickly, evade capture and scratch people on the legs to cause death. In this sense, the Cabal felt that if enough people believed in negative ”Grey” ETs, the hope was that authorization could then be granted. Again, this will never be allowed to occur. Every attempt to create mass depopulation, both conventional and unconventional, has been thwarted. I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN What you just read is an example of intel I have been aware of for some time, have held on to, and said I did not ever want to release it because it was upsetting and ”fear porn.” However, we are now being asked by the Alliance to release this information in advance of a much greater ”data dump” that will come our way with Disclosure. It is too late for the Cabal to stop Disclosure. It is definitely going to happen. I have been waylaid by a very busy schedule, as we will discuss, but I am definitely continuing the fight to write articles and produce videos about all of this. I discussed the zombie program in my last talk at the recent Contact in the Desert conference, having no idea how a live audience, including one 8-year-old child, would respond. Given that the kid was in the audience, certain details were definitely not shared that I might have done otherwise. Quite to my surprise, everyone seemed perfectly OK with it. They were very grateful to finally hear the truth, and not have me censor things I thought were too intense for us to hear. GETTING THE WORD OUT THROUGH RADIO SHOWS As part of this initiative to ”disclose as much as you can, as fast as you can,” I did two different radio shows to promote the then-upcoming conference. Since the conference, I had an Ancient Aliens taping that required a great deal of study, as always. Since the taping, I have been recovering. So to review, I had the New Living Expo event, hardly any down-time, then a major Gaiam taping of eight episodes, followed days later by the Contact event, followed days later by Ancient Aliens, and then a big recovery period. At the same time, ”negative greeting”, as defined by the Law of One series, has been taking shot after shot after shot at me. It is difficult to keep going amidst all of this. One small but significant part of the negative greeting is that we are getting very blatant death threats from the Cabal — like never before. This has been coupled with a very intense increase in the amount of hatred written about me by paid Cabal bloggers on the Internet. Again, I no longer care about the online hate. Most of the trouble has been in dealing with personal issues and the cleansing and healing of painful life experiences and memories. IT ALL SOUNDS CRAZY…. Yes, it all sounds crazy. However, with the full scope of ET technology available to the Cabal, making programmable clones is not at all difficult. In fact, a similar cloning program began making most of the ”Greys” that were actually doing abductions, beginning in the 1960s. Some abductions are genuinely ET-related. People are being brought into slavery off-planet in large numbers. That is another unpleasant truth we will soon be confronted with. The movie ”Guardians of the Galaxy” was intended to help soften the blow. Supposedly there is more than enough technology and capability in place to recover all surviving captives in the post-Disclosure world. THE NEGATIVE PROGRAMS ARE BEING SHUT DOWN Thankfully these highly negative programs are quickly being shut down. The negative elite have already lost. Now they are just in the final ”limbo” period before it becomes public. Rather than worrying too much about trying to prove all of this data, we have been instructed to simply release as much of the truth as we can. This will help buffer the emotional shock and gravity of people hearing so much of this upsetting material all at once. I have held on to the knowledge of the zombie program for at least two years now — but no more. That is just one of a variety of weird things there are to know. ON TO THE RADIO SHOWS… So with all that said, I am quite pleased with both of the radio shows I did. The first one was transcribed and submitted by an anonymous individual, beginning a half hour after I started speaking — and was discussing my music work. As soon as we ”went deep” and got into the cosmic stuff, the transcript started. The second show was that same Thursday with Richard Garner, entitledWhat in the World!,which airs on SiriusXM with a station out of Canada entitled ”Canada Talks.” This appearance was very highly bizarre for me. Fifteen minutes before airtime, I planned out a whole routine around a particular song —”Wild World”by Cat Stevens. I figured that if I mentioned the song, they would later play it in the show. It was utterly stupefying, and extremely shocking, when that same song started playing as I was live on the air. By the time Richard got me speaking, I had composed myself — but only partly. Every hair on my arms and the back of my neck was standing up. WHAT IN THE WORLD… Here is the brand-new show on Canada Talks / Sirius XM where you can hear my surprise in the aftermath of this highly strange synchronicity: This transcript begins at the 71:56 mark of the show. IS REINCARNATION A SOUL TRAP? Jimmy Church:Did the Annunaki and Dracos trick the Atlanteans into a soul-trap reincarnation cycle here on earth to strand DNA and amnesia? David Wilcock:That is what the Cabal’s disinformation agents are trying to tell us happened. That’s actually not true. Reincarnation is not a trap and the earth is not a prison. The Draco did have an agenda. That is true. And, again, this type of a question requires a lot of filling in of cracks for people who don’t already know what we’re talking about. DW:So I’ll do that because, obviously, these questions are very deep and we’ve got to start somewhere. JC:You know, let’s start there. You know what, there’s so much . . . You and I were talking earlier today about our time constraints and how we were possibly going to try to squeeze everything in tonight. CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE Yeah, so, you know, let’s just go deep now. Let’s just go deep now. DW:Okay. No problem. So let’s just first finish setting out the palette that I was establishing before, which is [this.] THE ONENESS DIVERSIFIED ITSELF You have a universe which started as a oneness. It divided itself into what we think of now as galaxies. The intention behind this was that oneness was originally a singular consciousness. It got bored and lonely. These are the closest emotions that we could think of [in our terms.] It had all of this creative potential, but it had no friends. It had nothing to look at. Nothing changed. It was just always the same. So it decided to create what we think of as the visible universe. THE CONSCIOUS COSMOS What we think of as galaxies are actually intelligent super beings. Stars are intelligent super beings. Planets are intelligent super beings. And as you step down from galaxy to star to planet, you’ve got a hierarchy of beings. These are intelligent beings. They are extremely powerful. They are extremely creative. And then the next stage down from that is sentient beings that live on the planets. So those sentient beings are beings like us. That setup of sentient beings on planets then plays out in a structure that has seven levels – seven grades that we evolve through. THE FIRST SIX DENSITIES And the first grade is mineral life like earth, air, fire and water. It’s not really even microbes. That doesn’t come until the second level, or what in the Law of One is called the second density. That goes all the way up through all the animals, the whales, the dogs and cats and everything except humans. [Third density] is where you now have an individualized sense of self. Then you have fourth density. At that stage you could have positive or negative beings. Fifth density can have positive or negative beings. Then you have sixth and seventh. At the sixth level you have to go positive or else you will dissolve back into the background energy in the universe. You literally cannot survive. So none of these bad guys get to exist past 6D. 7D is a very, very advanced level where all they really do is sort of create a virtual Internet. They kind of go back through all the experiences they’ve had in all the previous levels. They create this living database that 6D beings can analyze to help people. That’s the last gift they have to give before they get to reunify with this oneness that they came from. So with all that being said as back story, the beings that are actually running the show here and making sure that the earth doesn’t blow up, literally, would be sixth density. And as I said, in the Bible those are called seraphim or cherubim. THE DRACO ARE REPTILIAN-DERIVED HUMANS The Draco would be what you’d call probably a fourth density or possibly, but unlikely, possibly fifth-density negative. They may actually be 5D negative. I don’t really know. What we do know about these guys is that they were humans that evolved out of reptilian life. That’s another big, big stage in our learning curve here. HUMAN LIFE IS EVERYWHERE Human life is ubiquitous in our galaxy. About 40% of the universe is populated with human or hominid-type life, meaning it walks on two legs and it’s got two arms, or maybe sometimes more – usually just two. It’s got a head, two eyes and a nose, mouth, ears. The planets that these beings incarnate on are very similar to ours in the vast majority of cases. This means they have microbes. They have algae. They have plants. They have mammals. They have birds. They have reptiles. What we’re seeing here is a very, very commonly used biome. It works really well. Everything is divinely designed to work in harmonious synergy. JC:Breathing oxygen. (DW: Yes.) Carbon dioxide. (Yeah.) Plant life. (Yep.) DIFFERENT TYPES OF PLANETS CREATE DIFFERENT HUMANOID LIFEFORMS DW:There are some variations, of course. You might have a planet that is predominantly ocean. In those cases, sentient hominid life will evolve out of whales or fish or something like that. There are lots of those out there. You might have a planet where the bird actually becomes the prevalent form of life that then becomes human or hominid. And in certain cases, you have reptilians – reptiles – where reptile life becomes human-looking. And so these reptilians – for whatever reason – ended up being racists. [They were only interested in] other reptilians that had evolved independently from reptilian life on other planets – and they were out there looking at a lot of different planets. They wanted to partner up with other reptilians. THE DRACO CONQUERED OTHER RACES So what they’ve done is they’ve gone around in the last 700,000 years or so and found all the other reptilians. They’ve merged their genetic material with them and conquered them. So they have their own little negative group that you could call the Draco, because they apparently originated in the Draco constellation. They are also dragon-like. The word ‘draco’ also means ‘dragon’. When I’m telling you this, I’m combining this from several different highly credible insider sources. I’m seeing commonalities between what different people tell me independently, and were in a position to know this is what is going on. DW:And this is more information than most people have ever been able to get about these guys before. A lot of this stuff is new. What we find out is that they were going around conquering worlds. THE DRACO WERE BEATEN BACK INTO OUR ”CORNER” OF THE GALAXY This pissed off a lot of people and they really got their butts kicked. They got their butts kicked badly enough that most of their attempts have failed. They have been basically beaten back into one little corner of our galaxy. That corner happens to be some of the stars that are near to us, such as the stars in the constellation Orion, the stars in the constellation Draco, and a few other places like that. They also have settled in our solar system in fairly recent terms. Apparently they got to our solar system somewhere in the neighborhood of 375,000 years ago. DW:That’s just the figure that our new insider, Corey Goode, gave. JC:I got ya. DW:Based on what he was given. DW:Wow. I just turned my volume up and your voice exploded in my ears. Hello, Jimmy! (JC: Ha, ha, ha.) I got you back down to a manageable human level again. JC:Yeah. I’m whispering too, by the way. A PLANET DESIGNED FOR FEAR FARMING DW:And when I reel my brains back into my eardrums . . . (JC: Ha, ha, ha.) Okay? (Laughs) So here’s the deal. Here’s the deal. What are they doing? What are they doing out there? What do they want? Right? You’ve got to look at these beings . . . And I’m not saying this to be derogatory. It’s going to sound this way, but…. FEEDING ON FEAR When your dog leaves doggie doo in the forest, it’s not just going to sit there indefinitely. Nature has made certain species, such as little bugs, that will come up – and they love that stuff. That’s like a breakfast banquet for them. DW:Okay. The universe has designed itself so that there are intelligent life forms that absolutely are dependent upon our jealousy, our anger, our sadness and our fear. The more amoral, chaotic, violent, ruthless and selfish they can make us, the more energy they get. LOOSH IT UP That energy is calledloosh. That’s energy they need absolutely. It’s more important to them than what we would think of as money or food or water or any of the basic essentials for life. When you become a being that feeds on loosh, if your loosh supply is interrupted for even one day, you will die. They are that dependent on it. EVEN ONE DAY OF INTERRUPTION WOULD FINISH THEM OFF If we were to have even one day on earth – one single day – where a preponderance of people on earth had something to feel good about, most of these beings would die. In less than 24 hours they would be dead – gone forever. It’s THAT serious. They are THAT dependent on our fear. So what you need to understand then is that these beings deliberately custom-designed a planet they could use for FEAR FARMING. They require fear just like we require money in the bank if we want to go to the grocery store to get something to eat. DW:So they actually did intermingle their genetic material with our own. And this goes back to what Zecharia Sitchin was talking about. Sitchin tried to blame everything on the Annunaki. So you’ve got to look at his material as a suggestion, but not in any way iron-clad truth. There’re a lot of distortions in Sitchin’s stuff. But the basic ideas are correct. GENETIC ENGINEERING OF HUMANS There was a reptilian king called Anu. He did have two sons – Enlil and Enki. Apparently, Enlil was the bad guy and Enki was the good guy. [Enlil would be the] bad guy for us, meaning that Enlil supposedly was the one who genetically engineered humans [and did not want us to be more than a slave race of clones.] Enki was the one who then gave us the ability to reproduce because [the Anunnaki] made us to be sterile. We were supposed to just be [slave] workers. NIBIRU WAS MARS It’s very likely that the planet Nibiru was actually Mars. And it’s very likely that what they were doing was to get us to mine gold. [That way] they could chemtrail Mars’ atmosphere with gold. When you spray that gold in the atmosphere, it helps to keep the atmosphere from escaping. At the time that they were doing this, the earth was really kind of unpleasant. It was swampy. It didn’t have the kinds of oceans that we know now. It was hotter. It wasn’t as nice as it is now. So they didn’t really want to live here as much as they took the indigenous ape man they found and upgraded it. THE ”MISSING LINK” IS THE DRACO DNA UPGRADE Hence, [we see] the missing link in our fossil record where our brain suddenly doubled in size. DW:We have a lot of problems that are because of them tinkering with our DNA. That includes the fact that we have bad backs, the fact that we get sunburns, and the fact that the sun is bad for our eyes. There are lots and lots of strange things that we have that are because our genetics have been tampered with. It turns out that there’s over 40 different ET groups that have spliced their DNA with our own. So it’s a very big, strange situation. THE MARTIAN GEOENGINEERING INVOLVED VERY HIGH TECHNOLOGY JC:Well, the Nibiru-Mars connection makes sense, because, you know, the Martian atmosphere is blown away by solar wind constantly. And there isn’t any atmosphere there or very little atmosphere there. That would make a lot of sense. It would definitely connect those dots. DW:Well, you’ve also got to expand your mind a little bit and realize that these people have extremely highly advanced technology. That would include little nanites that can be spread out. Gold can be spread out to almost one atom of thickness. You get these little nanites that shake hands. When you get enough of them, you can build this virtual skin around the planet’s atmosphere. DW:It’s not just like there are little particles of gold that are floating around, dumb, in the air. This is a very advanced technology we’re talking about. ARCHONS ARE NOT EXTRATERRESTRIALS JC:And you had mentioned earlier the Ancient Aliens [television show] and angels and the non-connecting dots there. Would you also consider this negativity Archons? DW:Actually, if you get into alchemical writings, the word ‘Archon’ refers to “humans on earth who act as agents for these negative extraterrestrials.” DW:That’s a commonly misperceived term, because most people think Archons refer to the extraterrestrials themselves – and it doesn’t. It refers to their ‘people’ on earth – their ground crew. DW:Yeah. And that is a very important element. THE PARENTS OF THE ILLUMINATI In order to successfully fear-farm the earth, they did need to elicit the cooperation of people here on earth. That’s where you get into this very exciting new subject that we only learned about recently: the so-called Parents of the Illuminati. JC:I was going there right now. I don’t mean to cut you off, but that’s exactly where I wanted to take this. In that, the fear, the negativity that they are feeding off of – that very energy. If it is in their DNA, then that is were the lack of morals come from, from the Illuminati and Cabal where we constantly ask ourselves, David, “How can they do this crap?” I mean, where is the moral structure? Where is the moral fiber? How can they do . . . Well, is it because they need it to feed off of? THE COLLECTION OF LOOSH FROM WWE EVENTS AND WAR DW:Let me tell you something very bizarre that I heard from one of the new insiders. He, for a while, worked for the World Wrestling Entertainment – WWE. Every single time they do a major event when there’s a big stadium of people, they have all these big screen TVs at the event. And most, if not all of those big screen TVs, quote-unquote, “Mysteriously go missing after the show.” DW:Doesn’t it sound crazy? Okay? DW:I’m just going to tell you the truth. THE DRACO REALLY LOVE TO WATCH TELEVISION The crystalline structure of these television screens picks up enough of the loosh that the Draco want those TV screens after an event, because it helps keep them going. JC:It’s like vitamin C. DW:Yes! Now see, that’s stuff I would never have thought of. It’s so weird that people are going to laugh at me, but yet this is the stuff that you start to hear from people. This energy that we make actually gets imprinted into the crystals within the monitor – within the LCD, the liquid-crystal display. JC:So they use a new one for every event. DW:Every event. That’s in the budget. They’ve got to buy new monitors. Yep. JC:That’s interesting. Well, that’s some serious Big Brother stuff. You know, when you look at the screens over the crowds and the fear is just pumping and the energy is there and then it’s a sponge. THEY CREATE A MAGIC CIRCLE OF LCD SCREENS TO ENHANCE LOOSH ABSORPTION DW:I’ll give you another secret. They set these monitors up in the shape of, guess what? A pentagram. [A pentagram is a 5-pointed star, usually inside a circle, that is a symbol of mysticism.] JC:Oh, I was going to say an eye. DW:They put them in a pentagonal shape, because that’s the magic circle. I don’t like to talk about this stuff, but it seems like it’s fallen on my shoulders to leak a lot of unpleasant things to people. LET’S NOT GET ENCHANTED BY THE NEGATIVE What I try to do is to not get stuck in the fear porn. Let’s not stay in this place: “Oh, my gosh. The Illuminati are real and they’re just going to wipe us out.” Look, they’ve been trying to ever since they got their hands on the bomb. Back in the Trinity test,[The Trinity Test was the first test of a nuclear bomb on July 16, 1945, as a part of the Manhattan Project]you have Robert Oppenheimer saying, “This is not the first time we have done this.” He had read the Hindu Vedas where they very clearly describe the use of a thermonuclear weapon – all the same stuff. JC:Yeah. What would happen if we created a monitor that didn’t absorb and then they went to . . . (DW: Laughs) You know what I mean? That would certainly shut them down. DW:Well, that’s one of many things that they’ve done. THE DRACO DELIBERATELY CREATE WARS BEHIND THE SCENES, THEN SWOOP IN CLOAKED AND SOAK UP THE LOOSH Another thing, again this is a little disturbing, but what the hell. Remember when there was that genocide in Rwanda?[This was a mass slaughter of around 1 million Tutsis and Hutu moderates by the Hutu majority in 1994.] You’ve got the Hutus and the Tutsis and they’re going around chopping each other up with axes? And it was happening on a massive scale? They will literally cloak their ship, fly into our atmosphere, and park the ship over the battlefield as these people are dying – and just soak it up. That’s what they’ve been doing for thousands and thousands of years. They need to keep creating wars so they can keep soaking it up. JC:Is that what’s going on in Syria and Iraq with ISIS? Are they soaking that up? GENERATING LOOSH FROM CELEBRITY DEATHS DW:Absolutely. They’re doing whatever they can. And they are having a harder and harder time getting loosh. Here’s another thing. Okay? Robin Williams apparently did not commit suicide on his own. He was pushed into it. They tried to get loosh from Paul Walker’s death – the guy that was in Fast and Furious – and it didn’t generate enough. They needed to create a bigger celebrity death to try to get enough. And that worked well for them. They got a lot of loosh off of Robin Williams. The next big thing that they did involving a celebrity on that scale was leaking the Cosby rape allegations. They’ve gotten a lot of loosh off of that. That was something they had saved up for when they needed it. But there are not very many of these left that they can pull. That’s the thing. They’re running out of time. They’re running out of energy. And they are in serious, serious trouble now. PROPHECIES OF A GOLDEN AGE All the great religious prophecies – the Bible is only one example. There are 34 others that all say the same thing – that we go into this glorious golden age. Those prophecies were given to us by the benevolent extraterrestrials. And for those extraterrestrials, these reptilians we’re talking about are literally no bigger than little sand lizards in a sandbox. They can watch what’s going on in the sandbox, but they can’t intervene in our sandbox more than we invite them. [This is] because the universe is governed by the principle of free will. STAR TREK AND OTHER TV SHOWS – DISCLOSURE FROM THE BENEVOLENT ETs And believe it or not, Gene Roddenberry[the creator of the Star Trek movie series]was involved in some of these same channeling groups that were in Joshua Tree. [Joshua Tree monument is a U.S. National Park in the desert about 80 miles east of Los Angeles. It was where the original “Giant Rock” UFO conferences took place in the 1950s.] That’s where the whole story concept and the architecture ofStar Trekcame from. SoStar Trekwas Disclosure from the good guys. The whole prime directive that Capt. Kirk and Spock and they all had to work off of – that is absolutely what is going on. JC:The concept ofStar Trekwas way too ahead of its time. JC:It seems to have come out of nowhere — that and, of course,2001: A Space Odyssey. When we went from just juvenile science fiction and storytelling, we just leapfrogged right into, in the middle of the 60s, into2001andStar Trek. THERE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN DISCLOSURE EFFORTS IN PLACE SINCE THE DAWN OF TV DW:Well, they had been trying before that. Twilight Zone– a lot of Disclosure got pushed out through that show. The Outer Limitsis another show that a lot of Disclosure got pushed out through. There was a little show for a while calledThe Time Tunnelthat had lots of stuff in it. They’ve done a lot of movies:The Day the Earth Stood Still, various other UFO movies. There’s been a very consistent effort to tell us what’s really going on. [They hope] that once we find out that there are thousands of different extraterrestrials that we’ve interacted with, it’s not going to come as a big surprise. SPACE 1999, BUCK ROGERS AND BATTLESTAR GALACTICA JC:You know what I just finished this week? And I was kind of bummed out about it. I finishedSpace 1999 [British-Italian TV series that had two seasons from 1975-77.]Both seasons. JC:Yeah, man, I got to the last episode of season 2 and it was pretty melancholy. You know, I was kind of bummed. What a great series that was too. DW:That was one that had a lot of stuff in it. Buck Rogerswas loaded with Disclosure.Battlestar Galactica [TV series originally in the mid-1970s and launched again between 2004~2009.] The original one was loaded with Disclosure. They never got to finish the thought in the original one. They rebooted it and actually did finish the thought. If you watch all the recentBattlestar Galactica, they end up landing here when their fleet is literally down to the very last limping ship. All they could do is crash land here. And they had no ability to get off the planet once they arrived. THE MOVIE ”THEY LIVE” IS A DOCUMENTARY JC:Do you know where I think a lot of information was? And don’t laugh, man. Just stay with me on this. DW:Okay, I’ll try not to. JC:The movieThey Live. DW:Oh, absolutely! I’m not going to laugh at that at all. JC:Ha, ha, ha. I mean, I watched that now. I remember that the first time I saw it I thought, “You know, this is a pretty cool movie. A nice little B movie under the radar. Pretty cool.” I watch it now and it’s a frickin’ horror flick. It scares the crap out of me. DW:It’s a documentary. JC:Ha, ha, ha. Exactly! A STARGATE IS FEATURED IN THE MOVIE DW:And at the end, when you see that portal open up underground, it literally is a gate into the stars. It is a stargate! They have a stargate in the movie. It’s right there. It’s amazing. That scene is amazing. JC:For everybody listening, if you have not seen They Live, that’s your homework tonight after the show. Just go and peep that out. DW:Totally. It’s an amazing film. JC:Yeah, Ray Ban. DW:I’m not sure how that got made, honestly. JC:Yeah. Right, right, right. DW:That pissed off a lot of people. JC:Unless it was done for a reason. That’s all I’ve got to say. But there are elements of it that just scare the crap out of me. Let’s talk about your current research before, once again, David, we run out of time. OUR PREVIOUS SHOW GOT TAMPERED WITH AND INTERRUPTED JC:You know what’s funny? If you remember back when you were on with us, it was Christmas Eve. We got to the end of the show and, man, if they didn’t shut us down. That was messed up. That was so messed up. DW:Some sort of force majeure[superior force]technological interference with your ability to do the show. JC:Right at the peak. Right at the . . . “Okay, Jimmy, I’m going to drop a bomb.” DW:At the end of my sentence. DW:I wanted to kind of round out this thought, because we were heading somewhere and we never quite got there. JC:Okay, let’s do it. SECRET SPACE PROGRAM – THE PARENTS(95:35) DW:One of the big things we need to talk about is the Secret Space Program. That is where it goes back again to these Draco. And it goes back to where I was discussing the Parents. Now the Parents is something hardly anybody has learned about. This is brand new information, but I believe that it is coming from a highly credible source. I’ve now actually been able to vet out some of it with other sources. A NANOTECHNOLOGY INJECTION The Draco have the ability to give you some kind of nanotechnology injection. What happens is that your flesh becomes essentially robotic. You’re still technically human, but only in the way that you look. Your body works in an entirely different way now. You can take out a pocket knife and slice a big hole in your palm, and the nanites will just close it right back up for you. So they have used this in various things like the television showHeroes, and the character Wolverine inX-Men. It’s rapid healing. DW:There are 21 people on earth that have this. And they are called The Parents. THE OLDEST PARENT IS 13,000 YEARS OLD This goes all the way back to the oldest one of these people. Apparently he’s 13,000 years old. [This] dates back to the time of Atlantis before the big catastrophic event that sank the continent. This person was already given this technology. These 21 Parents are immortal. In practical terms, they can live for thousands of years. They were assigned to find the people who are making the most money and have the most power, and seduce them into their group. That’s where you get your 13 Illuminati bloodlines. THE 13 FAMILIES WERE CHOSEN FOR THEIR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE Those were the people who, simply through a basic Darwinian survival of the fittest mentality, came to the top of the food chain. [They] made the money, got the power, and took over the control of governments and religions. [They] were seduced by these Parents who had all the advanced Draco technology. And part of the deal the Parents had [from the Draco] is working star gates [they could use] this whole time. So they could go out into space. There are plenty of other places they could go. They are not stuck here on earth. That technology was not shared with the Illuminati bloodline families. Now the Illuminati bloodline families have found out the Parents had this the whole time, and they’re really upset about it. THE CABAL IS FRAGMENTING INTO FACTIONS, EVEN AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS And what’s interesting is that the alliance amongst these Illuminati folks is fracturing – and now the Draco have betrayed everybody. The Parents have actually turned against all the 13 bloodlines below them. They now have their own faction. Several of these 21 people apparently are really tired of immortality, and they don’t want to be alive any more. There is a way that they can die, which is to have the brain stem separated from the neck. That also has been depicted in fictional works including the movieHighlander,where you chop off this guy’s head and then you absorb his power. DW:So the Draco agenda led to the Illuminati being constructed. EVERYTHING THEY DO REQUIRES OUR CONSENT Now, people then say, “Well, wait a minute. If they want to screw us over, why are they telling us what they’re doing? Why do they make all these movies about it?” That’s a very important point. The magic requires them to tell us what they are doing. [That way,] the enslaved are actually being enslaved through their own free will. [This is] one of the things that you hear Illuminati people say – and this is more the card-carrying kind, not the kind that has defected. They say, “If people are too afraid to see the obvious when we’re shoving it in their faces, then they deserve to be slaves.” JC:It’s not free will if it’s deception. DW:That’s true. I think what’s happened is that they skewed far from the idea of it truly being free will enslavement. They’ve used trickery more and more. And they’ve lied more and more. And as a result, these governing beings – these seraphim and cherubim, or 6thdensity beings in Law of One terms – the ‘management’, if you will, the good guys – are now able to bring them down, and defeat them. THE ILLUMINATI LEADERS WERE TOTALLY DOMINATED BY THE DRACO So to get back to the Space Program, what’s happened is The Parents knew the Draco existed. The higher level bloodline Illuminati people knew the Draco existed. They basically realized that even though they had this cult that saw them as gods, they’re not in charge. They’re just licking the boot heels of these 12-foot tall, essentially demon-looking beings. [The Draco] literally have vertically-slit pupils, reptile skin and are massively strong. They have a 5-foot-wide shoulder span and weigh three thousand pounds. You can’t shoot them with conventional bullets. They’ll just ping off of them. They’re very, very tough. They’re very strong. They’re telepathic. They’re telekinetic. They can remote-influence people and make you walk around like a robot under their command. They are very frightening villains. THINK ABOUT IT… WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS? [If you think about it,] all the stuff that the Illuminati [is supposedly] doing doesn’t make any sense. You guys are human beings. You live here on earth. Why do you want to kill the planet? See, they don’t. Their bosses do. The people that they are under the control of do. It’s the Draco who have been gaming out our planet as a fear factory. We are generating fear for them. If a whole bunch of us die, that would be like a big prosperity bonus for them. JC:Is that why the Rothschilds bank both sides of every war? DW:Absolutely. It’s all about creating loosh. One of their sayings is,“Give Lucius his Loosh!” This is a Luciferian belief system. And Lucifer, in this term you could think of Lucifer as one of the Draco. JC:Which brings us to the Alliance. DW:Yes. If you’ve got to talk about something that is disturbing, you’ve got to balance it with something positive. And there is a lot of positive stuff going on. MILITARIZATION OF SPACE AND COLONIZATION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM So here’s the deal. [Let’s talk about] the military-industrial-complex. Roswell was not the first UFO crash. They had stuff that they found that went all the way back to the 1890s. Apparently out there in the Southwest they dug up this craft that was very aerodynamic. It was all gold in color. We had one insider that came forward and told us that. So they’ve had the stuff for a long time. There were ancient crashes they were able to go dig up. There’s all kinds of cool stuff they found. [It has] all [been] kept hidden from us. THE GERMANS WERE THE FIRST By the late 1930s, the Germans were the first to develop flying saucer technology. The Vril Society was doing this. It’s called the Hanebu or the Bell craft. Kronos is another secret name for the project. They flew out into space and then that’s where they [made an incredible discovery.] “Wow! There are a lot of people that have colonized the solar system before us. They left some really cool stuff behind. “We can seal it up, pressurize it and live in there.” That’s what they did on the moon and on Mars [as well as in Antarctica.] COLONIZING THE MOON AND MARS So when you get into the history of the space program, you have the Nazis colonizing the moon and Mars. They lost World War 2, but they came back and basically took over the military-industrial-complex through trickery – and through having better technology. They blackmailed the U.S., because the U.S. did not want to kick loose the secrets of Roswell. The Nazis started overflying the U.S. capitol in 1952 with their Bell craft, and essentially forced the U.S. to join them in a partnership. This is where you get the militarization of our space and our solar system. THE BRAIN DRAIN In the 1950s and early 1960s there was something called the brain drain. Approximately 60 million people were recruited from countries all over the world. So you still have to this day plenty of Latinos, plenty of blacks, plenty of people who look like they’re from India or Pakistan, plenty of Asians, and plenty of Caucasians that have lived generations out in space. They’ve never walked on the earth. If you’ve got 60 million people in the 1950s and they are specifically told to have as many children as possible, you’re now dealing with a large population. Plus, they have advanced cloning capabilities. They also continue to recruit people from our planet and bring them up there as much as they can. So this is ongoing. THEY WENT AFTER THE INTELLIGENTSIA — AND DESCRIBED IT IN CERTAIN FILMS JC:Did they recruit brains or did they also recruit brawn? DW:Mostly just the cream of the crop of the intelligentsia. There are various movies that tell this story, such asWhen Worlds Collide. If you want to go back and do research, go watch that film. That’s Disclosure. Only the cream of the crop were picked. It’s like Noah’s Ark all over again. That’s part of what these people are told. Something big and disastrous is going to happen on earth. If you come out with us in space, you’ll be fine. You’re going to get to live in a Jetsons,Star Trek-type reality. It’s going to be amazing. THEY ARE HERDED INTO TOTAL ENSLAVEMENT IN MOST CASES Then when these people actually go out there, many of them are treated like slaves. They have a very deplorably poor existence. They’re totally monitored and they just work their whole life. They’re told who they’re going to marry and they’re told how many kids they can have and all this kind of stuff. It’s really disgusting. JC:If they hit you up, would you go? FIVE FACTIONS OF THE SECRET SPACE PROGRAM DW:I already am in contact with a group that has been part of the space program and has broken away. It’s called the Solar Warden faction. There are five factions of the space program. Solar Warden was the first one. They’re like the planetary police force. Then you have the Interplanetary Corporate Conglomerate, or ICC, that has guys like Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas. They’re out there building all kinds of advanced technology and selling it to various extraterrestrials that come in here to check out what they’ve got. Apparently, their technology is some of the best in our part of the galaxy. This is odd because we are considered very primitive in terms of our spiritual levels of advancement, but we’re really good at building stuff. So you’ve got Solar Warden and ICC. GLOBAL GALACTIC LEAGUE OF NATIONS, MILITARY AND DARK FLEET Then you’ve got the Global Galactic League of Nations, which is sort of a UN in space. Then you have a Military faction. And actually there are several sub-groups in the Global Galactic League of Nations, as we have now found out. The Military faction essentially acts as a police force and logistical support for these other factions. And then last, but not least, you have the Dark Fleet. That is the faction that is run by the Draco, where you can see the Reptilians. You’re going to see mantis-looking people. You’re going to see ant-looking people. You [also] see certain humans who work with them that wear black uniforms that look like Nazi uniforms. They are very, very militant and very arrogant. SOLAR WARDEN BREAKS AWAY AND THE ARRIVAL OF THE SPHERE ALLIANCE The Solar Warden faction was the original faction. Their technology is no newer than what we were building in the early 80s. This is still really frickin’ amazing, but it is way less [advanced] than the other factions. They broke away. They got tired of being treated like the mushroom – kept in the dark and fed a lot of BS. Solar Warden has now sided with new beings that have showed up in our solar system. [These new beings have] technology way in advance of anything they thought was out there. We’re talking about spheres that in some cases are as large as the planet Jupiter. THE FIRST SPHERE ARRIVED DURING THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION One of them came into our solar system in the 1980s, and it was the size of Neptune. My insider Pete Peterson was there working with Ronald Reagan while this was happening. [It] freaked everybody out, because they saw this huge orb coming in. It circled Pluto, circled Neptune, circled Uranus and then came in to Saturn. It was cloaked, but they could very easily detect it with [the technology] they had at the time. They eventually confronted this sphere. The beings inside just said, “We’re peaceful explorers taking a cruise around the galaxy. Then they [the Secret Space Program personnel] said, ‘GTFO’, basically. [Get the f- out of here.] And so the beings left. MANY MORE SPHERES BEGAN APPEARING IN 1998 Then, right around 1999, 1998 or thereabouts, you start to have over a hundred, actually hundreds of spheres like this coming into our solar system. They entered in either through the sun or from the outside. They were all about the size of earth’s moon. ADDITIONAL DISCUSSION (NOT PART OF THE RADIO TRANSCRIPT) [DW: Kent Steadman of cyberspaceorbit.com was the main researcher who tracked this phenomenon for years. On Kent’s site, it appears to have started with his “Sun Cruiser” post, describing an anomalous object that first appeared around the sun on May 3, 1998. Kent interviewed various astronomers and got differing opinions about what this huge, fast-moving object was. Many other similar sightings followed for years to come. I was very captivated by this at the time and consistently checked Kent’s site for the latest updates. None of these attacks killed anyone. They were covered in our “China’s October Surprise” article series, linked in the above article. Interestingly, when I went back to this article to get the link, its hit counter was at 333,088 – another example of “numerical synchronicity,” where repeating digits appear as I am doing this work. There did appear to be a treaty that stopped the EMP attacks in January 2011, but the treaty was violated by the Cabal. This seems to have been what triggered the underground cities being portaled out from August to December of 2011.] THEY WERE USING HAARP TO DEFEND THEIR CITIES DW:Jimmy, you were probably covering this back when it happened. DW:And the fish were all washing up. Hundreds of thousands of dead fish were washing up. JC:Birds falling out of the sky. DW:Just falling out dead. And they were too crushed up by the time they hit the ground. Their bones had already been crushed. That was because [the Cabal was] using HAARP to try to defend against the destruction of these underground facilities – and it wasn’t working. So they apparently made a treaty sometime at the end of 2011, saying, “Please don’t destroy our underground facilities any more. We’ll do what you want.” OVER ONE HUNDRED GIANT SPHERES ARRIVED BEGINNING IN 2012 Then in 2012, you get what ends up becoming approximately 100 gigantic spheres coming into our solar system. When I say ‘gigantic’, I mean that they had three sizes. One of them is around the size of the moon, like the ones from 1999 to 2001 that came in. Then you’ve got another size that’s around (the size) of Neptune. Then you’ve got another one that’s around the size of Jupiter. It turns out that there are a lot more than 100 of them. We could only see 100 with our ability to detect cloaked spheres. There are a lot more than that. SOLAR SYSTEM TRANSITIONING INTO A ZONE OF SUPER STRONG COSMIC ENERGY And why are they here? Everybody in the Space Program on the inside knows this [next data point]. Our solar system is transitioning into a zone of heightened energetic strength in the galaxy. It’s like going into a cosmic storm. If you take a pan and you put it on your stovetop and you don’t put any heat under it, and you drop a drop of water in the middle of the pan, what’s it going to do? DW:It’s just going to sit there. Actually, eventually it will evaporate, but it’s just going to sit there. If you get that pan nice and red hot and you drop that same drop of water in it, what’s going to happen? It’s going to go zig-zig-zig-zig-zig, and zig all over the inside of that pan. A COMPLETE UPGRADE OF THE GROUND STATE OF MATTER, ENERGY AND BIOLOGICAL LIFE DW:Imagine now that the same thing happens to matter, AND to consciousness, AND to the actual signature of biological life that is our DNA. It’s a DNA-activating, consciousness-activating, matter-energy-space-time portal-activating energy force. Ultimately what appears to be coming our way is some sort of decisive shift in the way that matter and energy and consciousness itself functions. It is literally a quantum leap in what it means to be human. Our universe is designed this way. ALL ANCIENT RELIGIOUS PROPHECIES SPEAK OF THIS We have to fight through this incredible time of darkness and tribulation. That’s how they call it in the Bible, but there’s many other prophecies that talk about this. Take your pick. Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Native American, Celtic, Druidic, you name it. It’s all there. We go through this time of extreme suffering where people have fallen from spiritual teachings more than ever before. There’s greater amounts of violence, greater amounts of illicit behaviors, selfishness, jealousy, rage, a great amount of depression and sadness. STORED POTENTIAL ENERGY TURNS INTO RELEASED KINETIC ENERGY That all is part of what you could think of as like kinetic energy. [DW: Here I meant to say “potential” energy, which stores up. Kinetic energy is what happens when the potential is released.] It is as if you are pushing a spring down. Okay? But you can only push the spring down so far. Then what happens when you let go of the pressure? DW:You’ve got a spring-loaded action. DW:That’s what’s happening and the compression of the spring . . . SEEDING ”THE ILLUMINATI” INTO THE PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS I mean, Jimmy. I was out there trying to see any discussion whatsoever of the Illuminati online. I’m talking now back roughly 2003, 2004. It didn’t exist. You didn’t ever see the word. I went and I contacted some of the big names of the time. This included Henry Makow and Greg Szymanski, who was doing a radio show. Henry Makow was a popular guest on these radio shows. I farmed them information about the Illuminati through this whistleblower called Svali, who originally had come out in 2000. I’d been following her work. So I had a lot to do with reintroducing that when it had kind of all died out. Nobody was reading Robert Anton Wilson or any of that old stuff any more. OUR INCREASE OF KNOWLEDGE IS AN ENERGETICALLY-DRIVEN FUNCTION So what’s happened is now it’s common knowledge. You’ve got the Snowden disclosures. People are waking up. What we don’t realize is that the awakening is an energetically driven function. The energy is cranking up. [This affects] our apparent free will decisions of how we live our lives and what we choose to learn about. Are we listening to Fade to Black, and are we reading these books, and are we going to these conferences? We think that this is something like, “Oh, I just stumbled over it on the Internet.” It’s actually part of an energetically-driven process. SYNCHRONICITY IS INTELLIGENTLY DIRECTED Supremely high-level intelligence uses synchronicity to direct us to the sources of information that feed us this awakening. We are all going through this at our own speed, through our own free will. [This way,] we can veto it and take it in digestible chunks at the speed we want to learn. We’re learning what’s really going on here. And it is ultimately a very, very highly positive thing. When we go through this shift, if you have done your homework, [you will be fine.] OVER 160,000 DOCUMENTED CASES OF ASCENSION ARE ALREADY ON RECORD If you have followed the great spiritual teachings that these 35 ancient cultures were all trying to teach us about being a good person, being a loving person – service to others, forgiveness, compassion…. [Then,] you’re right back in to the realm of what happens to these 160,000 people in Tibet where they practiced these spiritual teachings. They don’t die. They transform into a light being. This is the next stage of what human evolution is built to do. We’re built to go in to this super-hero-type of character. It was all laid out for us in the story of Jesus and the resurrection. That is only one of many examples. You have it in other cultures as well. We just happen to have a celebrity worship thing where people get all hung up on Jesus having done it. They don’t realize that many others have accomplished this as well. THE TIBETANS WERE FOLLOWING THE TEACHINGS OF CHRIST That does piss some people off. I understand that. But look. You’ve got these Tibetans who are following exactly what the teachings of Christ are. Their focus is to have every single thought to be a loving thought. And if they can attain that level of self-perfection, then they graduate into this higher level of humanity. What appears to be happening is that the people who are ready for it [will Ascend] when this spring springs. When this energetic springboard takes off, you’ll be able to levitate. You’ll be able to have telekinesis. You’ll have telepathic contact with other people – all the Jesus miracles. Pretty quickly if you start trying, you’ll discover that you’ll be able to do this. A BIFURCATION IN TIMELINES BETWEEN POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE POLARITIES(117:15) This event is also built where there is a bifurcation. That means there are a lot of people who have generated very seriously bad karma for themselves. If you’re sufficiently on that side of the coin, then the way the universe is built is that timelines bifurcate. The people who need that karma go through an Armageddon apocalypse. JC:They go into a dimension of darkness. DW:Well, the earth is basically destroyed. Yes. They experience a pole shift. They experience super-volcanoes which bury everything in about 30 to 100 feet of rocks. DW:And you just die with rocks falling on your head, basically. [DW: Some would experience this. Others would die of a mega-tsunami or massive earthquake damage.] TIME FOR A BREAK JC:That’s a good spot to take a break. Let’s take a break. We’re at the top of the hour. When I come back after the break, David, I’m going to share with you the first time I heard the word ‘Illuminati’. It’s fascinating. I want your comment. This is Fade to Black. Tonight David Wilcock. Bespoke radio for the masses. I’m your host Jimmy Church. INCREASE IN ET CONTACT AND EFFORTS BY CABAL TO CORRUPT STARSEEDS JC:Hey, David. I got a couple of emails during the break. One of them is from Renee. She says, “There appear to be an increasing number of people all around the planet who are channeling ETs. “Do you believe that this is a concerted effort on the part of various ET races to prepare us for their open interaction with humans in the very near future?” DW:Yes. I’ll step in dog doo again and get myself in trouble with the Cabal. And we’ll see if they leave us on the air for me saying this. One of the things that the Cabal apparently believes is that people who are the starseeds, who are getting this ET contact, are going to develop ascended powers before everybody else does. And so they are making a very strong effort now to try to find the people who are getting this ET contact and to corrupt them through their own free will. [This would be done through techniques] such as getting them to think in a more negative mindset, getting them to give messages of doom and fear, getting them to potentially be bought or bribed, that kind of stuff. IF EVEN ONE PERSON ASCENDS IN MODERN TIMES, THE NEGATIVE IS FINISHED JC:Back in February, you were on Coast to Coast, and you said that, and I’m quoting here, “If there is even one person who has ascended, he’s going to be able to drive away all of these bad guys. And they see it coming.” It’s only about a year and a half away for them. They know it’s going to be . . . They know it’s going to hit and there’s nothing they can do about it. And you were saying that there was going to be a small number of people who will have super-human abilities. GUESSTIMATE ON THE DATE OF ASCENSION Well, a year and a half is August 2016. DW:That is a date that is sort of the best guesstimate based on a variety of different factors, none of which totally resolve. It could be anywhere between the end of summer 2016 through 2017 to 2018. So, again, it’s not like you can just pinpoint a window. What you have to do is look at is the current of events that are taking place on earth and how fast are people awakening. This is very important. This quantum leap is not some event that takes place at a pre-described time. It is an event in which the human consciousness, reaching a critical minimum stage of awakening, releases the pressure on the spring. That’s the key. When do we grow up enough that it’s time for the quantum leap? So there’s a window in which this can happen. ”WHAT YOU THINK WILL HAPPEN IN 2012 IS ACTUALLY COMING IN 2017” I was told [about this] all the way back in 2009 by this high-level insider, very high-level insider, who I call Jacob. He told me that the event I thought was going to happen at the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 was actually going to happen in 2017. I hid that data because, unfortunately, part of what happens is that if I say something publicly, many people who are allegedly channeling will very quickly co-opt my information. They trust my sources and they want to be on the right track. And so it then very quickly reaches a point where you can’t tell the difference, or it becomes harder to tell the difference between who’s real and who’s just parroting your information. I sailed right through 2012 and never said anything about 2017. I figured, “Hey, maybe it’s going to happen in 2012 after all.” There was a lot of good [scientific] evidence to point to that [which I extensively detailed in “The Source Field Investigations.”] 2012 came and went, but since that time, man, it is ramping up. You don’t have to be that ignorant. You don’t have to be that intelligent either. It is smack-in-your-face obvious that we are building up to something very, very huge here. OUR ABILITIES AFTER ASCENSION(126:20) JC:What were some of the abilities that you were referring to? DW:Well, if you go back to the Hindu scriptures, they talk about the eight talents of Krishna. [DW: Look up the ”eight superhuman faculties” of Kalki.] You know there are different Messianic stories from religious traditions. We’re talking about really incredible magic powers here. We’re talking about stuff that you would see in some of the best sci-fi and fantasy movies. So we’re talking about one person being able to instantaneously transform a landscape. We’re talking about stuff even at that level of significance. Somebody who would have the power to be able to levitate multiple automobiles at once and throw them in a direction, for example. MOVIES LIKE ”THE LAST AIRBENDER” WILL NOT BE FICTIONAL ANY LONGER Somebody who would be able to create any of the elements, like inThe Last Airbender. I know people said, “Oh, it was a terrible movie,” but it was interesting to see all of the abilities these folks had. Some people can throw water. Some people can throw fire, air, earth, et cetera. I don’t think that necessarily all of us get this kind of large-scale super-duper telekinesis right away. But it is true that if you go back to Tibet, there’s all kinds of reports of these yogis flying around like flocks of birds in the air. They would push their hand or foot into a stone. They could liquefy the stone and leave a very nice footprint or handprint behind. There’s lots of examples of that on my show, Wisdom Teachings. You can go check that out –WisdomTeachings.com. I have a whole 8 episode mini-series just on the Tibetan Rainbow Body, where I show all these pictures of the handprints, the footprints. I give all of the teachings of how they got to this Rainbow Body. And, again, basically, you have to meditate all of the time. You have to have every thought be a loving thought. That does not mean you have to be that good as a meditator. It’s like the Olympics of spirituality to go that far. What it says in the Law of One, which is where I believe the truth can be found, is all you have to be is slightly more than 50% good – Service to Others. [This means being a] positive, loving, forgiving type of person. You can still be 49% selfish, manipulative, jealous, conniving and controlling and you’re still good to go for this ascension. So it’s not something that only the elite are going to go through. It’s not like if you occasionally have marshmallows or a cigarette that you’re not going to ascend. [Nor is it that if] you get drunk once in a while or you do drugs, you’re not going to ascend. It’s not like that. What really counts is character: how you treat people and what kind of thoughts are going through your mind. WHAT ABOUT OUR PETS? JC:This takes us back to Allison’s question at the beginning of the show. What happens to the little ones – the cats and the dogs and the horses? DW:This is something very interesting that I learned through one of the new insiders. If you have human beings and you portal a human being forward in time, we have something called a zero-time reference. THE ZERO-TIME REFERENCE The energetic body is anchored to the moment of conception. If you move that physical body forward in time, it will automatically progress or regress to the appropriate age that it would be at that time in history. So if you’re going to move a human in time, you actually have to change this zero-time reference – to shift it. This requires advanced extraterrestrial technology. You can’t just do it. So for example, [let’s say] you go through a natural stargate. There’s a variety of vortex points on earth where that will happen in the right planetary alignments at the right time of the year. [In such a case,] you can end up portaled 300 years into the future. What will happen is very quickly you’ll become a feeble old man or woman and you’ll die – unless you have the right ZTR (zero-time reference) [shifting] capability. Now, the funny part is, and I only learned this recently, animals do not have a ZTR. You can portal animals forward in time and they’ll live out their lives just fine. DINOSAURS PORTALING INTO OUR TIME AND SPACE So, for example, the Loch Ness Monster was a plesiosaurus. There have been multiple cases of lake monsters and pterodactyls that have flown in or swum in to a portal, and portaled into our time. What we are calling the Cabal or Illuminati, the military-industrial-complex, would [pick them up with] an advanced craft that we would think of as a UFO. I [was told that at] some time in the early 1970s they picked up Nessie. They took Nessie out of Loch Ness. They’ve picked up a bunch of these monsters that come through – dinosaurs that portal through. And they’ve stored them in various facilities. BENEVOLENT ETs TO PORTAL LIFE ON EARTH TO A SAFE TIME So what’s happening now is that in reference to your question, we have a situation where benevolent extraterrestrials will portal the life on earth forward in time to when it is safe again. So nothing dies an unfortunate death. It’s not like some big global catastrophe. That’s a common misperception. It only happens to the people who have invited that type of balancing karma. If you stay on earth and you go through the shift, even if you’re not really a very nice person, you’re [fine.] Only the most evil, negative people are ever going to see this negative timeline. It’s possible that the positive people for a while won’t even realize that this thing has happened. APOCALYPTIC WORLD FOR NEGATIVE PEOPLE Only the most negative people are actually going to see this type of disaster. They [the Cabal] have seen within their time viewing technologies that this is coming. Look at a movie like Interstellar. There are all kinds of movies that [lay out this prophecy.] The newMad Maxmovie that’s out right now [Mad Max: Fury Road] [is another example.] [There are] so many films describing this post-apocalyptic world because they see that it’s coming for them, but not for everybody else. WHAT HAPPENS TO THOSE WHO GO THROUGH THE EVENT BUT ARE NOT READY TO ASCEND?(132:00) So if you are not one of those types of people, you will go through this event. If you’re not actually going to ascend, then probably what will happen is that you live out your normal life. You’ll die normally. And then when you next reincarnate, you’ll just reincarnate on a different planet. CHINA’S PSYCHIC STAR CHILDREN JC:Is this why the Chinese government is trying to crush Tibet? DW:Well, I don’t know if you could boil it down to something that simple. I do think that there are elements of the Chinese government that are controlled by the Cabal. And I think the regional tension with Tibet is multi-generational. But, yeah, the Chinese government did go around [looking for people with advanced abilities.] There’s a really great book calledChina’s Super Psychicsby Paul Dong. Interestingly enough, when you have people that grow up in extreme poverty, in many cases that hardship makes you more apt to develop these types of ascended abilities. So there are these kids in China [with ascended-type abilities already]… and this was documented. HIGH-LEVEL OIL EXECUTIVES WITNESSED FEATS OF CONSCIOUSNESS THAT SEEMED LIKE MIRACLES In fact, US oil executives went to China and witnessed [these types of phenomena.] One of the most stunning ones is a little girl who can wave her hands in front of a whole room full of people holding flowers that haven’t bloomed yet. She time-accelerates the blossoms, and the flower literally opens up right in front of your eyes as you are holding it in your hand. JC:I remember that. DW:Yeah. And there’s kids that can teleport pills out of bottles that are sealed. The seal is still good, but the pills end up outside the bottle. JC:I do that now. But that’s a whole other show. DW:Ha, ha, ha. That’s the late show. UM…. MOVING ON…. JC:Hey, man. Have you picked out your wardrobe for this weekend? I’ve got to get you aFade to Blackshirt. You’ve got to wear it. DW:Ha, ha, ha. Shameless plug from this guy! JC:Oh, no, no, no. I’m just saying . . . I’m just saying that you’ve got to wear aFade to Blackshirt atContact in the Desert. Have your girl call my girl. We’ll get that all set up. ”THE ILLUMINATI ARE RULING THE WORLD” Oh, I meant to tell you before the break. Check this out. You’re going to love this and I want your comments. Back in the early 70s, I suppose . . . Let’s just say I’m 10 years old – 10, 11, right around in that area, 72, 73, I’m like 10 or 11 years old. I’m listening to shows like this on my little AM radio on my nightstand. I would dial in these crazy late-night guys. I would get no sleep, and I would go to school in the morning, you know, transformed. So anyway, late night, you know it’s 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning in the middle of the week. I’m listening to this late-night AM radio guy and he says this. This is what he says. He goes, “Okay, man. You don’t know this, but the Illuminati are running the world.” DW:Ha, ha, ha! HE WROTE IT DOWN AND ASKED EVERYONE HE KNEW JC:You know, this is like 1972, 73. And I guarantee you my eyes popped open. You know my room is dark. The Illuminati? So I roll over and I write it down. I write down ‘The Illuminati.’ I don’t know if I spelled it right, but I wrote it down. He said, “They go back to the cave man days. They were the strongest tribes back then. Ever since back with the Neanderthals. “They were the strongest tribe. They ran governments. They ran Egypt and they ran Greece and they ran Rome and the United Kingdom and China. “You know throughout history the Illuminati has been the strongest tribe. And today they are running the world. It’s a secret government.” And so I wake up in the morning, and I’ve had nightmares now. I wake up and I go to my parents. “You ever heard of the Illuminati?” ‘Nope.’ NOT EVEN MR. MC WILLIAMS KNEW ABOUT THE ILLUMINATI I go to school. I go to my 6thgrade teacher, whatever his name was. It’s escaping me now. I go to him. . . Mr. McWilliams. “Have you ever heard of the Illuminati?” “No, never heard of them.” JC:And it was crazy to me that I got this secret information from AM radio overnight that I never forgot to this day. I never forgot his description, the way that he laid it out there. That was in the early 1970s. I went around and quizzed everybody throughout life after that. I couldn’t get information out of anybody. Nobody had heard of it, which to me confirmed what he was trying to say that night back in 1973. FIRST BATCH OF ”DELETED” AUDIO: POP MUSIC PROPAGANDA (137:30 to 137:47 missing audio) DW:They have gotten so audacious and daring now. And particularly the amount to which they are jamming out propaganda through pop music now is unbelievable. End Restored Audio MADONNA WRITES A SONG OPENLY ENDORSING THE ”ILLUMINATI” DW:My last article, Secret Space Program: Countdown to Exposure, is on my website divinecosmos.com. I encourage everybody to go read that. Madonna has come out and openly admitted“If there is something called the Illuminati, I want to be in it. “And I know who the Illuminati is. The Illuminati are the good guys. And they are all the smartest people throughout history.” JC:Why would she, David, why would she come out when you have everything on the Internet and different fringe shows and websites and so forth that have been talking about this? [It is] not only Madonna, but you know JayZ, Beyonce, what have you, you know, pick a star – Lady Gaga. The finger’s [been] pointed at Madonna like that for so long. Then she turns around and comes out with a song called Illuminati. Why would she do that? DW:Yeah. And she sings, “The ‘all seeing eye’ is watching tonight. That’s what it is, the Truth and the Light.” Unbelievable! THE PEOPLE IN POP MUSIC ARE BEING GREATLY ABUSED AND WE SHOULD HELP FIGHT FOR THEIR FREEDOM JC:Yeah. Why would she do that? Was she told to do it? That’s the only thing I can think of. DW:Yeah. These folks in pop music, they don’t rank very high in the Order. They’re not running the thing. That is why I also pulled Kanye West’s quote where he got all excited about Madonna’s song, ‘Illuminati’. “Yes, yes!” He was jumping up and down on the soundboard. He got so excited about it. And he’s now come out and said, “People think we’re running the world. We’re just hired talent. “They just tell us what to do. And if we don’t go along with it, we don’t have a job.” So you’ve got to realize that the pop music big people are just playing along to a script. You have the artist Kesha who came out and actually had this song called ‘Die Young’ – right before the Sandy Hook school shootings. She’s basically saying, “Let’s just party and die young.” Then in the video she’s dancing in front of an illuminated pentagram. And then she comes out and says that she was raped by this guy that she was working with. She was forced to sing those lyrics and she didn’t want to. THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT SHAPESHIFTERS JC:I think she’s a reptilian anyway. JC:Oh, you laugh. Ha, ha, ha. DW:Look. The shapeshifting reptilians thing is a meme that David Icke introduced – and he since has altered it. He’s said he thinks these people have a spiritual reptilian influence, but are not physically shapeshifting. I don’t believe that there is any such thing as shapeshifting biological material. It just doesn’t work that way. We all have the same basic laws. I really encourage folks to try not to go on a witch hunt here. Madonna is basically doing what she has been told. THE POP STARS ARE BEING HORRIBLY ABUSED IN WAYS WE CANNOT EVEN IMAGINE People like Madonna, JayZ, Beyonce, Nikki Minaj, name ‘em, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry. These people are tortured by the Illuminati so fiercely. Many of them would do anything to get out if they could. They have been electrocuted. They have been raped. They have had to watch violence and death be done in front of them in satanic rituals. It’s horrible. We should not be hating these people. We should be trying to help these people get free. Most of the people who are stuck in this horrible cult do not want to be in it. They would do anything to get out. So let’s not go blaming them. THE HIDDEN CULT OF HOLLYWOOD JC:Well, are they in the cult? And look. Since I arrived in Hollywood in 1983, I’ve heard rumors about this. It’s like ‘urban legend’ in Hollywood. You hear about it everywhere you go in the music business and the movie business. And for those people that are not in Hollywood, that are listening now from another part of the country and are rolling their eyes and going, ‘Oh, come on….’ No. You know what? Live here. Move here and certainly become part of the industry in some way. It doesn’t matter on what level. JC:You’re going to hear these rumors. And this is nothing that David or myself have made up. This is a sub-culture that you kind of learn to accept because you hear it nearly daily. Whether it’s somebody like Corey Haim, God rest his soul. He was great. But you hear about these stories all the time. PEDOPHILE HOLLYWOOD DIRECTORS What was the director that . . . Oh, what’s his name? DW:Bryan Singer? [Who was accused of pedophilia by a boy who worked on one of his projects.] JC:Yeah, Bryan Singer and his family. He’s one of the most . . . Now look, I want to back up and use the word ‘allegedly’. JC:Ha, ha. Let’s just use the word ‘allegedly’. But you hear about guys like him and other directors and producers and influential people throughout the industry. This is stuff that happens on a daily basis out here in Hollywood and it’s crazy. I know it sounds nutty . . . DW:It is horrible. JC:Yeah. You hear about it every single day. There are . . . You know, you hear about…. SECOND DELETED SECTION: TOP CABAL PEOPLE ARE GUILTY AND WILL BE DEFIANT UNTIL THE END (142:55 to 143:30 – missing audio) JC:This thing with Bill Cosby. That’s just the public version of things. JC:What has been going on in this subculture, these rumors, I’ve heard about it since the day I set foot in Hollywood. DW:Well, let’s be clear about one other thing. There are some people who have really plotted for the deaths of millions and millions of people. And those people will be defiant to the end. In fact, they have an inner saying they use. [They say] that they will be defiant until the “quick drop and the sudden stop.” And that’s hanging. The quick drop is… End Restored Audio THE DEFIANCE OF THE CABAL DW: . . . when the ground falls out from under you with a noose on your neck. And the sudden stop is when your neck breaks. So they will be laughing. They will be saying “f- you” and “You’re a bunch of useless eaters” right up to the moment… THIRD DELETED SECTION OF THE ORIGINAL: DIABOLICAL LAUGHTER (143:44 to 144:10 – missing audio) …where the noose is around their neck. They will be cackling with diabolical laughter. (Laughs) That’s how they think. JC:We’re going to be, again, about 2 minutes up against our last break. And then I’m going to ask you, please indulge me and hang out for another 15 minutes. DW:Sure, no problem. JC:And maybe we’ll take a couple of phone calls. I want to throw this out at you. End Restored Audio HOW DID YOU MEET COREY GOODE? JC:. . . and his story and his involvement with you. It is all over the Internet. There’s been a lot of leaks. There’s been a lot of disinfo on both sides of the fence. So I want to talk about Corey when we come back. How did you meet Corey? And how far along are you with your research? I know that you’re going to be doing some additional disclosure. If it’s okay – I don’t know if I’m throwing you under the bus. You guys have shot some video. Are you going to present some of that stuff too? DW:Not at Contact in the Desert. It probably won’t be ready by then, but it’s going to be ready soon afterwards. JC:How did you meet Corey? INSIDER DATA ABOUT A FLYING BLACK TRIANGLE THAT WAS MALFUNCTIONING DW:He emailed me beginning in 2009 and shared some insider data with me. He saw a malfunctioning flying black triangle that was actually like a blimp held on a tether. It hadn’t quite inflated properly. It was a thing like a gigantic triangular blimp. He shared this story with me in confidence, and I said, “Wow, that’s amazing.” We talked off and on. I knew he was a supporter of my work and he’d write me from time to time. JC:When did he see this? DW:He wrote me about this in 2009. I think the event happened in the 1990s. A VERY STRANGE SIGHTING IN THE DESERT JC:Check this out. In the last couple of weeks, I was with somebody that told me this story. And this is somebody I trust like a brother, like a family member. Okay, without going any further. He said that he witnessed up in northern California in 2009 a craft that was being towed across the valley in northern-northern California, in the remote part of northern California, where there is nothing. And he said that it was being pulled at, and it looked like a dragon on the end of a long cable. It was moving like a snake. And the craft at the end was a ball with a long tubular structure with long tubes on the end. He drew it for me, by the way. It was being escorted by a couple of aircraft and helicopters across this large mountain range, where there are no airports. There is no civilization. There are no towns. There is nothing. And there were a few witnesses that saw this. But it was being towed. A TEST OF AN END-TIMES SIMULATION TECHNOLOGY DW:That’s probably a test of one of the types of technologies that they have. They were going to use [these technologies] to try to fake either an alien invasion or a biblical apocalypse. [It would be something like the] rapture, [or] demons in the sky. That kind of thing. JC:He said the ball in the front of the craft that was being towed . . . By the way, it was like . . . It was hundreds of yards long. This wasn’t some small craft. DW:Yes. It’s huge. JC:It’s huge. And he said the ball in the front had a windshield. He said it was so close to them that if there had been somebody standing in windows, he would have been able to see them. JC:But there wasn’t anybody at the front of the craft. He said he didn’t know if it was damaged or it was being tested, but it didn’t have wings. It was metallic. And it was interesting. IT LOOKED LIKE ”BUCK ROGERS” And the drawing that he drew, which I have with me now, it’ll blow your mind. It looks . . . It is Buck Rogers, man. It’s notBattlestar Galactica, Star Wars, no. This is like backwards looking. It’s more Buck Rogers-ish. Let’s take a quick break. When we come back, I want to talk more about Corey and take some phone calls. Let’s do it. This is Fade to Black. Tonight David Wilcock. Always great stuff when David is on with us. This is the Bespoke Radio for the Masses. I’m your host Jimmy Church. WHO’S PROTECTING DAVID WILCOCK? Let’s go straight to the phones. Hi, you’re live on Fade to Black. Say ‘Hi’ to David Wilcock. Who’s calling? Caller:This is Walt. JC:Hey, Walt. How are you man? Are we going to see you in a couple of days? Walt:Oh, no. I got a private invitation, but no. I just don’t have time. But listen. I want to thank you Jim. David, I got your book. I read it. Wow! What a guest tonight and what an interview. DW:Well, thank you. Walt:David, you know so much. And you talk to so many people that are in the know. A lot of them, I guess, keep themselves private to the general public. But for some reason they talk to you. And you’ve been protected, I guess, because you’re a hot item with the people that don’t want you to talk. ARE PEOPLE FROM THE FUTURE PROTECTING YOU? I think I know who’s protecting you. You’re not going to believe this. My guess, okay? Walt:I think it is relatives from your future. I think they’re coming back and they’re going to keep an eye on you and keep you safe. DW:I would actually agree with you. I think that’s exactly correct. So wherever you got that from, a high-five, buddy. You’re right. JC:Okay, thank you for the call, Walt. JC:Thank you. Well, yeah. Wow! I . . . DW:Let me just add one little thing here. These people don’t come to me as much as . . . are we still on? JC:Oh, yeah, we’re live. DW:I’m waiting for it at this point. I’m thinking, “If we get through this, it’s going to be amazing.” I sought these people out. [They didn’t just come to me.] I DO NOT CONSIDER MYSELF TO BE A SMART PERSON I also just want to say something. People say to me, “David, you know so much. You have all this information. You’re so intelligent.” Blah, blah, blah. I don’t think of myself as a smart person. To me, everything I talk about is very basic and very obvious. You know, I’ve been through the wringer. I’ve done the homework. I would not say the things I say unless I absolutely believed with every fiber of my being that I’m telling you the truth. As crazy as some of this stuff sounds, I have gone through and I have vetted it out. I’ve done the scientific research. And I have worked very hard to find these insiders. They don’t just come to me. I have to go seek them out. That’s a big difference from what he was saying. That’s the only thing I wanted to add. IS SCIENTOLOGY PART OF THE CABAL? JC:I’m going to . . . I don’t really want a comment from you on this, because it’s getting into dangerous territory and you’ll understand why after you hear what I have. Cortana says, “Is Scientology all part of this cult of Hollywood’s loosh junkies?” And I’m going to say this. Although Scientology scares the crap out of me, and there’s a lot to be said about it, I’d rather just research and not comment. You know what? They’re too vicious and I don’t want them coming after me, coming after you. They have long tentacles and deep pockets, too, as well. DAVID’S ORTHODONTIST WAS A SCIENTOLOGIST DW:(Laughs) Well, I had a orthodontist in Louisville, Kentucky who was a Scientologist. We got talking about the Illuminati. He definitely knew about it, but in his mind, they were the enemy. TOM CRUISE HAS AT LEAST TWO MOVIES BLASTING THE CABAL And Tom Cruise obviously is known as a Scientologist. And yet, if you look at either of his two most recent movies, which would be theLive, Die, Repeat…. I forget what the rest of it was actually called. [Edge of Tomorrow.] That’s what they ended up using as the main thing on the title. The other one wasOblivion. Holy smokes! I’ve done articles just on those movies. It does appear that at the top levels of Scientology there is some penetration from the Illuminati – but that group, per se, is not an Illuminati group. LET’S LEAVE IT RIGHT THERE…. JC:Interesting. I . . . You know what, I . . . and let it lie right there. I have no issues with Scientology. Ha, ha, ha, ha. JC:None. None. I find it very fascinating, though. I’ll say this. L. Ron Hubbard with all that money, David, all that money, and he never got his teeth fixed. I just don’t get that. I don’t get that. I mean why not get your teeth cleaned? I guess there’s no dentist in Scientology. Well, you just said you had an orthodontist. JC:All right. Moving on. This question just came in. Scientology, we kid. No, we don’t, but we do. WHY AREN’T ALIENS TAKING PEOPLE ONBOARD THEIR CRAFT NOW? “When you started the interview, David stated that the aliens are no longer taking people on board their ships. Please ask why. “Also, has he ever heard of real robots working with the aliens?” Interesting question. And I think he’s referring to robots like Robbie the Robot. DW:Yes, I get it. Okay, so, question number one I already did explain. We’ll probably have this transcribed because I’ve leaked a lot of new stuff. So we’ll get this typed up. I’ve also got to post a transcript of the one I did with George. I’ve been so busy with this video, I haven’t had time to actually post these things. IN-PERSON CONTACTS WERE DISCONTINUED DUE TO THE PROBLEMS IT CAUSED The reason why, as I said, people were not being contacted and actually brought on board the ships [after the early 1960s by the benevolent ETs] was because of two things. Number one, they were being worshipped by fans and followers as if they were different and more special than everyone else. And number two, they started doing things like womanizing, developing egos and doing illicit financial things – [such as] profiting too much off of their services. That kind of stuff. So the ETs are very strict about all this stuff – the good guys at least. They are very strict on that you have to live your life as an ethical person. The way the Illuminati would be able to take down somebody like me is if I actually had a breach in ethics. DAVID TRIES TO DO THE BEST HE CAN Now, people make up stuff about me online all the time. I’m not saying that the average person has to try to live as perfect of a life as I do, in terms of the amount of diet perfection that I try to go for. [Nor is it necessary to do] the jogging, the exercise, [or] the complete lack of any intoxicating substances or drugs whatsoever. I’ve been sober ever since September 21, 1992, and I intend to stay that way. I’m not saying you have to be sober to ascend. If you want to do what I’m doing and not get whacked, you absolutely have to be an Olympic athlete. You’ve got to be in it 100%. JC:Yeah, not only that, David. You’ve got to . . . If anything did happen to you, you’d become a martyr. Let’s knock on wood here. But then that just means everything that you said, now people have to sit up and listen to it. DW:You can pull Obi-Wan’s quote right out of Star Wars: “If you kill me, I’ll become more powerful than you can imagine.” (Laughs) Yeah, exactly. They don’t want that. JC:No, it’s exactly right. There’s . . . THERE IS A GREAT WEALTH OF RECORDED MATERIAL NOW AVAILABLE DW:See, because then . . . I’ve got about 130 episodes I’ve done with Gaiam TV now – onWisdomTeachings.com, as I said. People can go watch that for US$9.95 a month. You get this little Roku stick and you can watch it on your TV. There’s [the] Amazon Fire [stick]. There’s Google Play. Cable is obsolete now. And you can watch whatever you want. They do not want to make me into a martyr, because I’ve been able to release so much of the material that I want to tell the world [on my shows.] It’s [all] going to become far more significant if something happened to me. I know they’ve tried other [ideas.] There are various plans of how they could try to take me down. PLANS TO COOK UP A FAKE AUDIO TRACK One of the plans I’ve heard is they’ve actually cooked up apparently some very fake audio of me, where it appears that I’m saying very disparaging things. So if that ever happens, if people apparently have leaked information where I’m saying something on the phone and it sounds like I’m a Luciferian, or that I’m very disparaging, or I’m saying racist things, or whatever, it’s not true. I really do appreciate all types of people. I have not womanized. I’ve had just five girlfriends in my life. I am not a homosexual. Take your pick. I know they’re going to try a lot of stuff, apparently, as this all goes big. [DW: I am not attacking homosexuals here. I have been told that accusing me of homosexuality is simply another way to try to stigmatize and slander my work.] DISCLOSURE COMING SOON We are going to get Disclosure pretty soon. And that’s the next stage of this. We’re facing [a situation] now [where] Greece is going to default on June 6th. When they do, it very likely could take the euro down. And then when the euro goes down, the dollar’s going to go down. [DW: The payment was not made. Only an IOU that they may pay it later on, even though they have no money. Insiders have told us that this whole sequence of events is being delayed until early autumn.] THE US IS ALREADY BANKRUPT — IT JUST HASN’T BEEN ANNOUNCED YET The US is already functionally bankrupt. They haven’t announced this to the public yet. There are already laws on the books right now that say, “Your money in the bank already belongs to the federal government.” They can use it as needed to bail themselves out. They did the same thing in 1934 when they recalled everybody’s gold in the midst of the Great Depression. JC:Yeah, I’m a firm believer in one thing – a safe in your house. JC:Your grandparents had it right when they were putting everything underneath their mattress. JC:I have no issue with that at all. BAIL-INS COULD BE THE FINAL TRIGGER FOR MASS ARRESTS AND DISCLOSURE DW:Let me just finish that thought really quickly by saying that they apparently are going to try to do these bail-ins. They are expecting that the public is going to get really angry. This is probably going to be the trigger that will lead to this mass arrest scenario I’ve been talking about. When that happens, it’s going to be one of the biggest shocks and surprises. I know there are a lot of people that are pissed off, because I’ve been talking about this since probably 2011. It hasn’t happened yet, but the more I’ve learned, I can tell you that absolutely it is real. THERE IS AN EARTH ALLIANCE AND A SPACE PROGRAM ALLIANCE The Alliance is far more complex than I realized. This includes the fact that there is one type of Alliance that’s here on earth and they have goals. Then there’s another Alliance that’s actually working in the Space Program. Many of the things that the Alliance on earth is trying to do are ultimately going to be relatively obsolete, or only short-term transitional stages. Once the Space Program’s stuff comes into view, we’re going to have technologies that are so far beyond what we have right now. That alone is going to be the biggest quantum leap in society that we have ever had in recorded history. JADE HELM AND U.S. BANKRUPTCY JC:What do you think about Jade Helm? Is that part of what’s going on? DW:What I heard from Pete Peterson, who I trust, and his sources I trust, is that it is largely not true. They have been using that to try to inspire preppers to get more prepared, because they are expecting the U.S. to announce that it’s bankrupt. Congress is not going to approve any more debt ceiling raising. The rest of the world is not going to tolerate it any more. There is all kinds of weird stuff going on. Apparently, since January of this year, Saudi Arabia is not accepting dollars as payment for oil. They are only accepting gold. That has not been publicly reported. That’s one thing that could get me in a lot of trouble for saying, but it is apparently true. BITCOINS CREATED BY NSA GOOD GUYS And we’re in trouble. The U.S. government is bankrupt. As I said in my show that I did in San Mateo, California, the New Living Expo, the NSA good guys [made Bitcoin.] There are good guys in every intelligence agency. [The NSA good guys] did make Bitcoin to have a backup so that if the Federal Reserve tries to crash the dollar, we can reboot our currency off of Bitcoins. And Bitcoins cannot be tampered with. They cannot be hacked. Goldman recently bought a bunch of Bitcoins. They see the writing on the wall. JC:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I found that really interesting. Let’s back up. I have a couple of questions. Now we’re about out of time, so I’ve got to get these in. With your knowledge of DNA manipulation, do you think that all of the critical leaps of knowledge throughout history [were programmed?] I’m referring to mathematics, the chaffing of wheat, the wheel, fire. Were all of these predestined and preprogrammed in our DNA? [Do you think] that knowledge was set to happen on a set date? DW:I think we worship DNA too much. DNA is sort of like the antenna. Then the question is, who is actually making the broadcast? DW:Walt was giving me compliments about the last book I wrote,Synchronicity Key. I think that’s what he was talking about. In the whole second half of that book, I talk about how history is cyclical. The same things keep happening. So it does appear that we are on an intelligently-designed timeline. WE ARE ON AN INTELLIGENTLY-DESIGNED TIMELINE Synchronicity and forces of dreams and visions [drive us along,] and spontaneous inventors come up with things seemingly on their own. There are cases in history where all over the world, simultaneously or almost simultaneously, the same technologies are developed. You mentioned the mill for wheat as one example. It does appear that we are on a very precisely manicured timeline. [It] is steered to make sure that we all go through this collective initiation. We [needed to] have a suitable type of technology to mimic the telepathy that we’re going to have when we go through this quantum leap. Of course, I’m talking about the Internet, where everybody is now connected to everybody with this little gizmo that they carry around in their pocket. That is sort of like the training wheels to get us ready for this telepathic new reality we’re going to be in. This new reality is also not going to have money. And we’re already seeing everything going in that direction. INTERNET RESULTING IN THE INABILITY TO MONETIZE CREATIVE PRODUCTS All these institutions that used to make money are collapsing. Everybody is downloading their music. Everybody is stealing movies. It’s so hard now to monetize any creative work, because piracy is so widespread. Nobody thinks it’s a bad thing any more. This is bad for the artists – guys you and me who are out there trying to play guitar. JC:Right, right. You touch upon something that, I think, is critical. It is music and it is movies, but, you know what, it’s books, it’s photography, it’s illustration, it’s . . . JC:That’s what I’m talking about. Yeah. Newspapers, Time Magazine, pick something. Now that monetization part of our culture is completely gone, completely vaporized. DW:When was the last time that I paid to read something? I don’t even know. JC:I don’t know how they monetize. I don’t. I don’t. HOW CAN ANYONE MONETIZE THEIR WORK THESE DAYS? It’s frightening what the Internet has done. And it also goes to another level, David. I use a simple file share program to move stuff around. And I look at that website when I open up that program, which was given to me free from another company. I didn’t steal it. You know, this is what we use here. You can download it from our site. But there’s no advertising on that program. There’s no payment for it. But, there was a team of engineers somewhere that wrote the code that got it to work flawlessly, by the way. It’s amazing. But where . . . You know, . . . How . . . That entire part because of the Internet . . . That entire part of monetization is gone. How does that company survive? I don’t get it. But yet we want everything for free, for free, for free. It’s a road to nowhere, if we stop and think about it. DW:As many people are now using this term, it’s a race to the bottom. JC:Right. Ha, ha, ha. GIVE US SOMETHING BIG, NEW AND CRAZY! JC:Oh, man. Okay, now, this just came in and we have to leave on this note. “David has to give us a piece of unheard-of information live on the air.” Just like you did last time. Let’s have them shut us down, David. Ha, ha, ha. Ah, let’s see. Give us your best shot there, Tiger. 100 SPHERES COMING INTO OUR SOLAR SYSTEM (167:40) DW:Okay. Okay. I got a good one for you. I talked about these 100 spheres that have come into our solar system. This gets back to the Corey question. I’ll try to integrate some things here because we didn’t really talk about it. JC:No. How do we do that? How did we . . . That was the main part of the show for me tonight. DW:(Laughs) It didn’t happen. JC:It didn’t happen. I love you brother. Ha, ha, ha. DW:I got your back, buddy. Back to back, going down in a hail of gunfire here. JC:Yes, we are. DW:We’ve had 100 [cloaked] spheres show up in the solar system since 2012. They have given the Solar Warden people advanced technology that is allowing them to defeat the Cabal. Some very strange things are going on. ETs IN ”EMBASSIES” ON EARTH AND IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM There’s all of these ETs in what we call embassies somewhere in the earth. Some of them are spread throughout our solar system – Mars, the moon and a variety of other moons and asteroids. THE BLUE AVIANS GAVE SOLAR WARDEN HIGHLY ADVANCED DEFENSIVE TECHNOLOGY As I said, Solar Warden was the breakaway faction amongst these five space program factions. The Blue Avians are apparently one of five types of beings that are in these spheres. We’re talking now [about] humanoids that have bird-like heads. They are sort of a morph between a bird and a human face. They are 8 feet tall. (2.7 meters.) They have indigo-blue feathers mixed with some purple-type feathers, depending on which being you are talking to. These beings have now given Solar Warden the most advanced technology on the block. A NO-FLY ZONE AROUND THE EARTH AND A BARRIER AROUND THE SOLAR SYSTEM Solar Warden is now enforcing a no-fly zone around the earth. Nobody can fly in or out of the earth anymore unless they are permitted to. Something has been put around our solar system [that they] call the Barrier. This means that nobody can get in. Nobody can get out. And communications cannot get in and out. One of the interesting things is that when the Barrier was put up, the vast majority of all the reptilians in their so-called Dark Fleet were outside the solar system. And they cannot get back in. THE DRACO ROYALS BETRAYED EVERYONE BELOW THEIR IMMEDIATE LEVEL Another interesting thing that happened is that the royals of the reptilians, the Dracos that are still here, were willing to betray [everyone.] They asked if they could betray everyone in the Illuminati below their own cadre of royalty, meaning only the top, top level reptilians. They were going to betray everybody else in their order if they were just allowed to get the heck out of here. That’s apparently how real they see this coming Event as being. For them, it’s curtains time. For everybody else, it’s the Cosmic Springboard. EVERYTHING IS BUILDING UP TO MASS ARRESTS AND DISCLOSURE So what’s now happening is that there are all these meetings taking place with people on earth. This gets back to the question of why aren’t they bringing us up into space any more. They stopped doing that in the 1950s and early 1960s, but now it’s happening again. People are being contacted. People are being brought up into space. There are hundreds and hundreds of people, apparently, who are being brought up there in advance of this big mass arrest thing that is going to happen. We’re going to see the Illuminati exposed. We’re going to see their plans exposed. It’s going to be the greatest wake up call [in recorded history.] THE ILLUMINATI TRIBUNALS WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING It’s probably going to end up being called the Illuminati Tribunals. It’s going to be all over TV. It’s going to be what everybody is talking about. Probably once this happens, you’re not going to hear any Lady Gaga or Katy Perry or any of that type of music being played on the radio when you walk into a restaurant or grocery store. People are going to know now what was going on. There’s going to be a huge backlash against this stuff. You’re going to see heads of state, major celebrities, major world leaders, as well as shadowy international bankers being brought out on trial. Many of the top level witnesses, who are the people who can bring down the Cabal, have already been brought off planet. They are in such danger from the Cabal and from the angry public that they are being held off planet. [That way,] when these mass arrests and the tribunals take place, they will be testifying from a secure location – meaning not on earth. THERE IS NOWHERE FOR THE CABAL TO HIDE The Cabal is trying to find a place to hide, but there is nowhere they can go where they are not going to be picked up. Apparently, a lot of them are planning on moving to Brazil. They do have this sort of militarized nation within Brazil. It’s sort of like a separate nation-state. It has a 12-mile perimeter, all militarized perimeter stuff with a little green zone inside where they all have these houses. A lot of them have apparently moved all of their stuff there already. They are expecting this thing to happen any time. IT IS FRUSTRATING THAT WE HAVEN’T HAD RESULTS YET I’ve been hearing this over and over again. It is like “the boy who cried Wolf.” It upsets me because I’m out there defending the Alliance. I don’t get to talk to anybody directly. It’s all on a need to know basis. And I’m not apparently at a level where I need to know who these people are yet. Corey is meeting with them regularly, and so I’m getting a lot more specific details now. I’m able to ask questions. I’m able to interact with them. IT’S ALL COMING TO A HEAD IN THE NEXT SIX MONTHS I ask them something and they give me the information. And what they are telling me is, “For God’s sake, David, get off your ass. Hurry the F___ up. “Do as much as you can to release this stuff as fast as you can, because it’s all coming to a head very, very soon.” Somebody said that they want new information. One of the most juicy things I was just told is that where we are going to be six months from now apparently is very different from where we are right now. Everything is going to accelerate to warp drive over the course of the next six months. That’s what I’m hearing. So I hope it’s true. I’d love to see that it comes true. DREAMS OF BEING FAR MORE PUBLIC IN THE FUTURE You know, I have all of these dreams telling me that I’m going to be extremely public, extremely exposed. Already when I go out in public, people spot me a lot of the time. I still can reasonably go through life without having everybody wanting to talk to me and take a selfie. Apparently in the future it is not going to be like that. I’ll be like a Snowden. Everybody is going to know who I am. I’ll probably have to have security and just, you know, not leave the house – basically just stay home all the time. But I certainly do not live in a militarized compound. (Laughs) THE FAMOUS POP STARS GOT THAT WAY BY BEING TALENTED — IN PART JC:Well, I can live without Lady Gaga, but I kind of like Katy Perry. DW:Yeah. These people earned the right to be famous by being talented. And, again, they are being tortured. They’re victims. DW:They’re being raped. They’re being abused. They are not happy people. That’s why you’ve got guys like Kurt Cobain killing themselves. It’s horrible to have a career [in these industries.] It’s funny, because you’d think, “I want to be famous. I want everybody to know my name.” If you do it through film acting or you do it through being a music star, good God. It’s not the life you thought you were going to have. THOTH WOULD BE AN EXAMPLE OF THE BLUE AVIANS JC:Right. Right. Its sounds like you were describing Thoth [with the Blue Avians] too. Were you? DW:Yeah. Well, that is an earlier example of these same beings, yeah. Absolutely. JC:Very interesting. Very interesting. DW:They came back. They were back there during the time of ancient Egypt. You see cave paintings of these humanoids with bird heads. And they came back. They are here to make sure that this whole thing goes smoothly. They brought in these 100-plus spheres. THE SPHERES ARE HERE TO HELP STABILIZE US THROUGH THE TRANSITION [The spheres are] basically energy balancers. They make sure that our solar system isn’t going to have a catastrophe. It modulates the energy increase as it is happening and keeps everything smooth. They are keeping this thing very carefully balanced. The Cabal is not going to be allowed to do mass depopulation. They’re not going to be allowed to do mass atrocities. They try and try and try. But they’re not going to be allowed to do it. JC:Thank you so much, David. TWO MORE SHOWS TO SCHEDULE JC:We’ve got two shows we’ve got to schedule. We’ve got a full music evening that we’ve got to get to. One thing that we’ve got to put on the front burner over the next couple of months, we’ve got to do a Corey show. And there’s a timing with other stuff that you’re working on that will be a necessity. We’ve got to get that done. And we need to make that commitment to the audience, because we dance . . . I don’t know how we blew past that time, but we did. MORE INFORMATION COMING OUT DW:Well, there’s a lot of stuff that’s coming out. We are going to have Corey do a mini-series on Gaiam TV. Everybody who’s a subscriber is going to be able to watch that. [DW: The first episode of this is going to be released for free, in addition to any in-house videos I make from our original taping.] PUTTING TOGETHER VIDEOS AND A HUGE BOOK OF NOTES I’ve also got six hours of footage in the can. I don’t know how much it’s actually going to turn into when I make it into videos. I may actually do a series instead of just doing all in one, because there is so much stuff now that I’m going through it. It’s so frickin’ good. It’s going to be mind-blowing for people. I’m also putting together a document that was 130 pages [of notes] when it started. I would just type as Corey was telling me all this stuff. I’m trying to arrange it into a linear order so that all the data he told me is in a book. And that’s going to be free. Then that way, nobody can say I’m hiding anything or that I’m sequestering information. It’s full disclosure. It’s all out there. That’s what the Alliance is telling us [they want.] I don’t know why, exactly, because I’m not on that need to know level. They’re saying, “Get out as much of this stuff as you can as fast as you can, because the SHTF.” So there you go. NO ILLUMINATI CUT-OFF THIS TIME! JC:Thank you so much. We’ll see you in about two or three days, man,Contact in the Desertin Joshua Tree. DW:All right, buddy. JC:David Wilcock, everybody. Thank you so much, David. DW:My pleasure. And I’ll . . . JC:Oh, man. I cut him off. That wasn’t the Illuminati. That was me, David. Ha, ha. Thank you so much. We are up against it. I have got to roll credits. Thank you, David. That was not the Cabal. That was my mouse. I don’t want anybody to freak out. Thank you, David. David Wilcock. This weekend we’ll be hanging out at Contact in the Desert – and so should you. (Credits.) MORE ABOUT THE PROGRESS ON THE VIDEO I did see some very, very nasty stuff that people have been writing about me on the internet. Most people’s lives are fairly ”normal,” stable and predictable — which is good. I long for the relative safety and comfort of those days! Each time I do an event, a Gaiam TV taping or an Ancient Aliens taping, I put my all into it. One hundred percent. At the Contact in the Desert (CID) event alone, I had fullyfive different events,four of which were lectures with complex and unique slideshows totaling 100 or more slides each. I have people who go to every single public event I do, so I try to never repeat anything. And somehow I manage to pull it off. After the CID event, I had no time to relax. I immediately had to study for another complex Ancient Aliens taping. Since that time I have been trying to calm down. The night before the Ancient Aliens taping, I unwisely agreed to do a cameo on Coast to Coast with George Noory. As a sign of the trouble I was in, I had the cordless right next to my head in bed. I slept right through them calling me fully seven different times. IT’S NOT AS EASY AS YOU MIGHT THINK Now that we are starting off Season Two of my new show Disclosure by featuring Corey Goode, I can relax with confidence that at least some form of video will get out there. Gaiam did not think I should release the other video at all. The reason for this was that I did a lot of talking, since Corey wasn’t saying much. We have discussed this and he will be a lot more expressive in our next round of tapings. The first episode, at least, will be free for everyone to watch. I do feel that the things I said were very valuable, and Corey agrees with me. I will try to take what we have and make it into something good nonetheless. Bear in mind that the vast majority of all this work is being done all by myself. I have had to learn a staggering amount of new software to do this properly. Furthermore, I have spent at least 45 hours just fixing ambient noise in the audio track due to having a new microphone and not monitoring our audio. The mic was constantly scratching against my shirt. I have fixed almost everything, but it has been toweringly frustrating and difficult. DECIDING TO ”BUILD AS I LEARN” From here on out, now that the audio is almost cleaned up (finally), I have decided that I will ”build as I learn” with the video. That way, all the high-end techniques I’m working on will make their way into the finished product instead of just being stored in my brain and in demo tutorials I have worked on. This feels like the right move. My next course is a five-and-a-half-hour tutorial on integrating Adobe Premiere Pro with After Effects in an editing / FX environment. I have finally been able to get back into productivity in the last week and am excited about all the things I’m learning. In the meantime, Gaiam is planning on having our first episode with Corey out ASAP. It could be some time in July but may take longer. QUITE LONG… AS USUAL… This has grown quite long, as usual, so it’s a good time to end it here. No matter how much time I put into writing an article, any audio of me that gets leaked out there generates at least 10 times more traffic. Any video I release generates at least 25 times more traffic than an article, on average. So, the benefits in doing this on a high-end level (i.e. significantly better than the majority of YouTube videos on the subject) makes very good sense. That goal is finally coming into view. It will be a change in how I do what I do, and I am very much looking forward to it. We are hearing that everything is reaching a grand crescendo, and if I have the time and feel inclined, I may finish and publish what I was already working on to illustrate the clues. It is a wild and wonderful ride right now. The truth comes with pain, but in the aftermath of that moment of suffering we will finally be free — for the first time in thousands of years. That is worth fighting for. That is worth dying for. The time for change is now. Get ready for the Upgrade!

Mark "The Bird" Fidrych Mark "the Bird" Fidrych, the fun-loving pitcher who baffled hitters for one All-Star season and entertained fans with his antics, was found dead Monday April 13th in an apparent accident at his farm. He was 54. Worcester County district attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. said a family friend found Fidrych about 2:30 p.m. Monday beneath a dump truck in Northborough, Mass., about 35 miles west of Boston. He appeared to have been working on the truck, Early said. Joseph Amorello said he had stopped by the farm to chat with Fidrych when he found the body underneath the 10-wheel truck. Amorello owns A.F. Amorello & Sons, a company that does road construction, and said he sometimes hired Fidrych to haul asphalt or gravel in the truck. "We were just, in general, getting started for the [road building] season this week and it seems as though his truck was going to be needed. It looked like he was doing some maintenance on it," Amorello said in a telephone interview. "I found him under the truck. There's not much more I can say. I dialed 911 and that's all I could do." The curly haired right-hander was the American League Rookie of the Year in 1976, when he went 19-9 with a 2.34 ERA and 24 complete games. But injuries cut short his career, and he ended up spending only five seasons in the major leagues, all with the Detroit Tigers. He was 29-19 with a 3.10 ERA. "The entire Detroit Tigers organization was saddened to learn of the passing of former player Mark Fidrych today," the Tigers said in a statement. "Mark was beloved by Tigers fans and he was a special person with a unique personality. The Tigers send our heartfelt condolences to his family and friends." Fidrych attempted a comeback in 1982 and 1983 with the Boston Red Sox organization. He pitched for their Triple-A team in Pawtucket, R.I. But he never pitched in the majors after 1980 and retired in July 1983. The Worcester, Mass., native later owned a trucking business. State police detectives are investigating the circumstances of his death, Early said. "Everybody wanted him on their crew," Amorello said. "He was a hard worker, but, at the same time, he always had a smile on his face." He acquired the nickname "the Bird" because of his resemblance to the Big Bird character on the "Sesame Street" television show. During games, he would bend down and groom the mound with his hands, talk to the baseball and slap high-fives with teammates in the middle of the diamond. "People that didn't know him might say he was weird," Amorello said, "but people who knew him didn't. He was just a big-hearted person. He never even slightly suggested any regrets of his injuries. He was just happy to have the time he had in sports. He considered himself a lucky man. "He bought his farm. He married the woman he was in love with and had a beautiful daughter." Fidrych married his wife, Ann, in 1986 and they had a daughter, Jessica. Knee and shoulder injuries limited him to 58 major league games. "Baseball will miss him. They missed him because he didn't have as long as a career as everybody would have liked in the first place. It's just horrible," former Orioles pitcher and Hall of Famer Jim Palmer said. "He did embrace life. I remember him trying to play golf when he couldn't play golf and enjoying every minute of it. "He was a marvelous pitcher and I just hate to see him go." Fidrych's first major league start was a complete game, two-hitter in which he beat the Cleveland Indians 2-1. He won seven of his first eight decisions and was the AL starter in the All-Star Game. He allowed two runs in the first inning and put runners at second and third in the second, but he got the final two outs and left after two innings trailing 2-0. The NL won 7-1. He tore knee cartilage during spring training the following year and was placed on the disabled list until May 24. He suffered a shoulder injury in July 1977. Fidrych pitched 250 1/3 innings in 1976, but only 162 after that, when he was just 10-10. Chicago Cubs bench coach Alan Trammell was a rookie shortstop with Detroit in 1977 and saw Fidrych's on-field behavior up close. "He was very genuine. It was not an act," Trammell said. "He never changed. He liked to have a good time. You'd go over his house and he'd make dinner. That's the type of guy he was. "My first spring training was 1977. I was an invitee. I remember playing the Red Sox in Winter Haven [Fla.]. The three innings he pitched he broke five bats." After taking 1981 off from pitching, Fidrych went to Pawtucket, where he made his first appearance on July 3, 1982. He finished that season with a 6-8 record and 4.98 ERA in 20 games, 19 of them starts. The next season he was 2-5 with a 9.68 ERA in 12 games, including eight starts, and retired in July of that season. "When he got to us in late June every place he pitched in the league was a sellout. Six years after his great year he was still selling out minor league parks," said Pawtucket team president Mike Tamburro, who was general manager when Fidrych played there. "His baseball career certainly ended far too soon, and now I'm sorry to say we've lost him far too soon. He was a remarkable character. He was like a meteor in the baseball world that one year. He played center stage and the entire game of baseball kind of played around him." One of Fidrych's most memorable minor league games was against Dave Righetti, the AL Rookie of the Year with the New York Yankees in 1981 who was sent to Triple-A Columbus the following season. Fidrych pitched a complete game 7-5 win."He was almost too down to earth," Tamburro said. "He was just a wonderful guy to be around. I think the antics on the field were never an act. I think it was his true feelings. He was just a simple guy, lived a simple lifestyle and just brought that lunch-pail mentality to the pitcher's mound every four or five days." San Francisco Giants hitting coach Carney Lansford's first three seasons, with the California Angels, coincided with Fidrych's last three in the majors. "I don't think you'll ever see someone like that come around again," Lansford said. "He was just great for the game. That's what the game needed, more guys like him -- colorful. He was one of a kind. That's for sure. That year, when you thought about baseball, that's the first name that came to mind. He was a guy at the top of his game. He was the man. That's shocking. It's a shame."

Anthony Weiner admits to more lewd messages Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former congressman who polls suggest is a leading candidate for mayor of New York, admitted Tuesday that he engaged in a series of sexually explicit communications with a young woman on the Internet. The behavior allegedly occurred as recently as last year, long after Weiner was forced to resign from Congress after admitting to similar episodes. But in a news conference that seemed a little like a public therapy session, Weiner stood with his wife, Huma Abedin, and vowed to stay in the race for mayor. According to the gossip website thedirty.com, the Democratic ex-congressman, using the pseudonym "Carlos Danger," exchanged obscene messages and nude pictures and engaged in phone sex with an unidentified woman, then 22. The woman told the website that the relationship began more than a year after Weiner resigned his House seat so that he and his wife, a longtime aide to then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, could "continue to heal from the damage I have caused" by similar previous behavior. If her version is true, it suggests that Weiner was engaging in reckless, lewd behavior at the very time he was launching a public rehabilitation campaign, with a warmly lit photo spread of the couple and their infant son in People magazine. It was accompanied by a story that quoted Abedin as saying her husband was "trying to be the best dad and husband he can be." Weiner's campaign released an ambiguous statement, which he later read at the news conference, that did not dispute the woman's version of events. "I said that other texts and photos were likely to come out, and today they have. As I have said in the past, these things that I did were wrong and hurtful to my wife and caused us to go through challenges in our marriage that extended past my resignation from Congress," Weiner said. Abedin, managing a tight smile, also spoke at the news conference, saying: ""I love him, I have forgiven him, I believe in him and, as we have said from the beginning, we are moving forward." Abedin's stance evoked comparison with that of her mentor, Hillary Clinton, whose steadfastness in her marriage to Bill Clinton and their joint political ambitions helped rescue her husband from the sex scandal involving White House intern Monica Lewinsky that nearly ended his presidency. But unlike Weiner, Bill Clinton would never be on the ballot again. And the office that Weiner is seeking is the biggest prize in New York City politics. While it is true that pretty much anything can happen in an election - especially in New York - the latest revelations have, at a minimum, damaged the remorse-and-redemption theme that fueled Weiner's mayoral bid. That story line, along with his celebrity, propelled him in the polls into a dead heat with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who was long presumed to be the front-runner to win the Sept. 10 Democratic primary. "In many ways, things are not that different than they were yesterday," Weiner said at the news conference. That, however, may be wishful thinking. In today's politics, "the time frame to recuperate, recover and come back is much shorter than it used to be," said Chris Lehane, a former Clinton White House official who now specializes in crisis management communications. "Generally speaking, though, you only get one bite at the apology apple." Adding another challenge to Weiner's plan - and to the capacity of New Yorkers to forgive and move on - is the fact that another politician tarnished by a sex scandal, former governor Eliot Spitzer, is also attempting a comeback in the Democratic primary. Spitzer surprised the political world with an announcement on July 8 that he is running for city comptroller. When the earlier scandal involving Weiner broke in June 2011, Abedin was pregnant. She gave birth to the couple's son in December that year. Last April, The New York Times Magazine profiled the couple in an 8,000-word story. It portrayed Weiner as a homebody and primary caretaker for his son - "going to the park with Jordan; picking up his wife's dry cleaning and doing the grocery shopping; eating at his brother Jason's two restaurants in the neighborhood" - who was also taking a serious look at returning to politics. That article, according to the woman with whom he exchanged lewd messages, coincided with his last contact with her. "He reactivated his Facebook and asked me what I thought of it," she told thedirty.com. Six weeks later, Weiner announced he was running for mayor. He has campaigned vigorously, at times citing his own challenges alongside those of former South African president Nelson Mandela and Franklin D. Roosevelt. But Weiner, in a dozen years in Congress, has a much slimmer record of achievement. He was known mainly as a verbal combatant on the House floor and on cable news channels. At one point during the exchanges that were published by the website, the woman told Weiner that she had noticed him while he was in Congress and been attracted to him long before they met over the Internet: "Specifically your health care rants were a huge turn on." MOST VIEWED MEDIA MOST DISCUSSED STORIES

Bruce Jenner is 10 years old and home alone. He walks into his mother’s bedroom closet, brushing a hand over the cotton dresses. He selects one, careful to mark its exact position with a piece of paper, so no one discovers. He accessorizes with one of Mom’s scarves and with shoes belonging to his sister, Pam, and dabs on some lipstick. After surveying the ensemble in a mirror, the child ventures out of the red brick apartment building in tiny Tarrytown, N.Y., making it around the block. The adventure is both thrilling and painfully alienating: It’s 1959, and Bruce has no idea what’s going on. “Even at the age of ten, my life had become a sealed box, and over time, the sides would become even higher and ultimately impossible to scale,” Jenner writes in the new memoir The Secrets of My Life, in which she refers to herself as Caitlyn after her transition, in the spring of 2015, and Bruce beforehand. Before transitioning publicly, Jenner’s is a lonely life of concealment. Trying to “exorcise what was living inside,” Jenner marries and divorces three women, trying on their clothing, too. The wives are left deeply confused, as are the children. After their makeup starts going missing, young Kylie and Kendall enable a security camera on their computer, only to discover Dad in drag – they are “too young to understand.” In the eighties, the Olympic decathlete crisscrosses America, delivering corporate motivational speeches to stay afloat financially. On these occasions, Jenner dons a suit with a bra and pantyhose underneath. There are strolls in little black dresses through anonymous hotel lobbies, excursions that leave Jenner self-conscious, “a thinner version of Big Bird standing out for the world to see and snicker at after I pass.” Excruciating electrolysis sessions and hormone therapy treatments are conducted in secret throughout the mid-80s. Later, Jenner gets more daring, changing into dresses and wigs in a car near the family home – and lurking paparazzi – in Los Angeles. With a low, masculine voice, Jenner makes sure never to speak out loud, except for one Starbucks run to order a vanilla latte. Applying and removing makeup and false eyelashes, squeezing into undergarments – the daily rituals most women find oppressive, Jenner finds liberating and life-affirming. But Caitlyn’s glamazon femininity has earned her few friends in either the transgender or feminist camps. When she gushed about nail polish in her first revelatory interview with Diane Sawyer, her critics were aghast, noting that the struggles of womankind extend beyond chipped nails. Others took issue with Jenner’s wealth and her politics: She’s a Republican who voted for Donald Trump. Jenner’s memoir presents a person who is deeply conscious of her critics, desperate to avoid confrontation and constantly apologizing – now to her transgender critics, but before that to her three wives and six children for being “consumed and self-absorbed” by a lifelong gender dysphoria. “I am trying to learn as quickly as I can,” writes Jenner, who visits with the families of bullied transgender children lost to suicide. “I am very new to the community and I understand some still perceive me as an outsider. My own story, I believe, is worth telling because the pain and fear I experienced was real.” The Globe and Mail spoke with Caitlyn Jenner from Los Angeles. What does hiding the way you did for five decades do to a person? Everybody has stuff they have to deal with in life. My identity was my stuff for my entire life. In the fifties and sixties, there wasn’t even a word for it. I didn’t know why I felt this way. There was no information. This continued all the way through the eighties, when I was really struggling. I couldn’t even find a therapist. It was a life of hiding and sneaking around and being embarrassed that my identity was such an issue in my life. It’s not like you take two Aspirin and get plenty of sleep and wake up the next morning and you’re fine. It was extremely lonely. After a lifetime of hiding, you are abruptly thrust into the spotlight as a mainstream transgender spokesperson. How was that for you? The public and the press put me in a position where, all of a sudden, I represented this entire community, which is not the case. I’m a representative for my story. Disenfranchised transgender women take issue with you as a spokesperson because of your privilege. You seem acutely aware of your critics, writing out the words “I am white. I am entitled. I have wealth” in a bold font in the book. You face a trans protest at one of your appearances and you distinctly remember the protest signs. “You are an insult to trans people,” one reads. How does it feel to be an outsider all over again? It hurts. If a trans woman writes something [critical of me], I have this terrible problem where I just call ‘em up. I’ve done this on numerous occasions. I tell them, “You don’t know me. You don’t know my intentions.” They don’t know where my heart is. Yes, I’m white – can’t do anything about that. Privileged? My experience being trans is much different than theirs, I will admit to that. But I’ll never apologize for working hard all my life and making a good living. That’s what this country’s all about. We’re all trying to do the same thing: to make it better for our marginalized community and for the next generation. There’s no sense in criticizing anybody. I call my critics and say, “I’d like to get to know you. Tell me your story.” It changes people’s minds. At the same time, you write about taking some of the “sanctimony out of the sails of the trans community.” You make a point of noting that you’re not hung up on pronouns. Pronouns are extremely important, and I get that. I try to do my best to get all the pronouns right but even I’ve messed up. I was six months into my transition, and somebody working in production called and I said, “Hi, it’s Bruce.” My daughters Kendall and Kylie have asked me, “What do we call you?” I said, “‘Dad’ is going to work for me. I’m your dad. I’ll always be your father till the day you or I die.” Sometimes “Dad” and “she,” they kind of get messed up a little bit. But my daughters do a very good job. I spoke to Kendall on the phone today and she goes, “Yes, ma’am.” She’s getting it. But I don’t get hung up on it. I know people are going to make mistakes. You explain that you consider yourself a trans woman, not a woman. What is the distinction to you? My road to womanhood has certainly been different. I will never have a period. I will never bear a child. So I’m very comfortable with the words “trans woman.” It’s the way my life has been. There is clearly division among trans women, but there is also division between feminists about trans women. Some feminists argue that trans women can’t just take on the label of “woman” after enjoying the perks of masculinity all their lives. What’s your feeling about that? People criticize trans women because you go from what society treats as the powerful, masculine role to what society thinks is a weaker, feminine role. From this standpoint I think women underestimate themselves and the amount of power they have. I’ve always been with very strong women. Your first wife, Chrystie Scott, and your second wife, Linda Thompson, did not take the news of your cross-dressing well. Kris Jenner was less stunned by it but still not into it. What was it like for these wives – who clearly wanted their husband Bruce Jenner back? I did open up conversations with them, but it was the last thing they wanted to hear. I can’t blame them for that. I understand that it’s difficult when you transition. I respected if they were not into it. I get it. We’re better friends now with both Chrystie and Linda. In a lot of ways, we’re fine. With Kris, it was a little closer and tougher for her. Plus, we spent 23 years together. You say that your stepdaughter Kim Kardashian was the most sympathetic. As you’re chucking Bruce’s clothes, Kim carts her favourite pieces away. In a clip from Keeping Up With the Kardashians, Kris Jenner smells the suits and cries, mourning that Bruce is gone. Do you empathize with that? [Chuckles] She can be pretty dramatic at times – on the show. I understand that. It’s tough. But we didn’t go our separate directions because I was going to go and transition. It had been 23 years and things had changed. We both mutually decided that it was best for both of us to go in separate directions for many reasons. The book was leaked and tabloids have been obsessing over its final revelation – your gender reassignment surgery. I had “it” done and that already snuck out and it’s been all over the Internet. The tabloids love that, and so does the general public. The book is about honesty, about getting all this weight off my shoulders and getting rid of it. That had to be part of it, but I didn’t want to make it the main part. My reasons for doing something like that are in the book, and then I’m not talking about it any more. I want to protect myself and I want to protect the community. Why is the fixation on surgeries upsetting to transgender people? Gender confirmation surgery is an extraordinarily personal thing. It’s not for public consumption and it’s not something trans people really want to talk about. The general public thinks it’s all about what’s between your legs. It has nothing to do with that. It’s about what’s between your ears. The day after she has that surgery, a trans woman is no more a woman than she was the day before surgery. She is just more comfortable with herself. People are pruriently obsessed with your surgeries but also with your sexuality. They want to know if you’re gay or straight – post-transition. Where do you stand on those questions? I have no idea. I’m not looking to date – men, women, anything. I have no problem being by myself in my home. I’m set in my ways. If I can find a really good friend down the way, I would have a friend. How are the challenges for trans teens different today than what you were facing, completely alone, in the 1960s? My journey is a lot longer than many journeys of people today. Today it’s a different world. The big change for our community was the Internet. It opened the entire community up. Transgender people can now get a lot more information at a very young age, and that’s good. It also hurts. Online bullying is worse than getting bullied in person in high school or grade school. The real critical kids are the ones that suffer from depression combined with trans issues. It is devastating for these children, and a lot of them take their own lives. We have to do a better job of accepting the community. You expressed disappointment after Donald Trump revoked Barack Obama’s federal guidelines for public schools to let transgender students use bathrooms of their choice. You asked Trump to call you about it. Did he? Okay, this is where I’m at. I had talked to Trump during the campaign. We spoke on the phone about a lot of these issues. He seemed to be on our side. I was relatively optimistic at first. When he rescinded the federal guidelines with Jeff Sessions and Betsy Devos, I couldn’t figure out why he would do that. It was the absolute wrong thing to do. Why even go there? We’ve got so many more important issues to deal with in this country. Go deal with those and just leave us alone. When I was at the inauguration, he said he wanted me to come down and play golf with him – I just don’t know if he wants to get beaten by a 67-year-old trans woman. I would love to get four hours out on the golf course with him to be able to talk business. That’s how a lot of things get done. But if I went down now and played golf with him, the transgender community would just destroy me. If I do anything now, it’s got to be behind closed doors. A trans friend of yours talks about the first day she wakes up and goes to bed without thinking once about gender. Have you had that day? I am very pleased at where I’m at in my life. This woman has lived inside of me since I can remember. Maybe it’s time to let her live and give her an opportunity. Bruce pretty much did everything – there was nothing left for him to do. Let’s take little Bruce and put him inside and let her live. It was very liberating to let her go. I always want to wake up in the morning excited about the day. In the old days, when I was training, I would wake up in the morning excited for the day to start. I had weights to lift, I had workouts to do, I had competitions coming up. I lost that in my life for many years. I couldn’t care about the next day. In going through this transition, that excitement for life has returned. I got the old mojo back. This interview has been edited and condensed.

No surprise which side John and Ken are on. The KFI shock jocks have done their best to drum up anger over the lane reductions in Mar Vista and Playa del Rey, coming down squarely on the side of keeping our streets dangerous. Now they’re using the KFI website to support the misguided effort to recall Mike Bonin, one of the city’s best councilmembers. And one of the few with the guts to stand up to bullies like them. Although I have to wonder if the national iHeartRadio chain, which owns KFI, knows what their employees are up to? And what they’d think about using the company website for partisan political purposes? Then again, I also wonder if the people leading the recall effort are aware that anonymous political contributions totaling over $100 in a single calendar year are against the law. And that Los Angeles has a $700 limit on contributions to city council campaigns, which would undoubtedly apply to recall campaigns, as well. Making the nearly $25,000 pledged to the recall so far tainted, and questionable as to whether it can be used for political purposes in the City of Los Angeles. But then, that’s something for the city Ethics Commission to sort out. What is clear is that this recall attempt — and especially John and Ken’s involvement in it — have little to do with Bonin. It’s really about putting a stop to Vision Zero, and maintaining the deadly automotive hegemony on our streets at the expense of everyone else. And sending a message to the rest of the council that they could be next. Which should send a chill up the spine of anyone who cares about traffic safety. Or good government. Note: Just to be clear, the term “bullies” was in regard to John and Ken. I did not refer to anyone opposed to the road projects in Mar Vista and Playa del Rey bullies, nor did I intend to. Photo of Mike Bonin taken from CD11 website. A woman was shot in the upper thigh with a BB gun from a passing car while riding in La Verne on Wednesday. As the Claremont Cyclist commented, attacks like this should be classified as hate crimes. If not terrorist attacks. Update: A comment from Robs Muir indicates that this attack occurred near Benson and 7th Street in Upland, rather than La Verne. Thanks to Erik Griswold for the heads-up. It’s been a bad week in the war on bikes. And yesterday was the worst yet. A Sacramento bicyclist was shot with a stun gun by a teenager in a passing car. A Houston mountain biker was left bloodied and scarred when someone strung a line thorny vines like a clothesline across a popular bike trail. A Vermont man faces charges for running a bike rider off the road, then crashing his truck as he tried to flee, and running away from that crash. A British bicyclist suffered head injuries when he was kicked off his bike by a passing motorcyclist. Another British rider was apparently shot at from a passing car; fortunately, the bullet missed. Of course, it sometimes it goes the other way. Concord CA police are looking for a bike-raging bicyclist who shot a driver with a flare gun following an argument. Yes, a flare gun. David Drexler forwards security video, along with a wanted poster, of “crusty old men” stealing bicycles from a locked garage. Which serves as yet another reminder that locked garages and storage rooms aren’t as secure as they may seem; the isolation gave these thieves over 15 minutes to cut the locks and make off with the bicycles without anyone noticing. Store your bikes inside your home or apartment if you have the room; if not, lock them as securely as possible to an immovable object in a locked garage or storage room. LA Curbed offers a great interview with former LACBC Executive Director Tamika Butler about her efforts to expand the conversation about bicycling beyond just bikes during her time at the coalition. CiclaValley discovers just how hard it is to ride up the third steepest hill in the US. Seventy cyclists raised nearly $15,000 for the Agoura Hills chapter of the ALS Association at the inaugural Ride to Defeat ALS last month. Under proposed regulations to combat racial profiling, police in California would be required to collect data on every traffic stop they make, including bicyclists and pedestrians. As Laguna Beach debates the need for more parking, one councilmember suggests removing parking from PCH to widen sidewalks or install bike lanes. As the story notes, they can’t build enough parking spots to meet the demand from tourists and residents. So the obvious solution is to provide transportation alternatives to reduce the demand for parking. A 60-year old San Diego man was seriously injured when he lost control of his bicycle riding downhill and slid into a retaining wall. Lake Elsinore will begin work on adding sidewalks and bike lanes on some of the city’s older streets. The annual Tour de Big Bear rolls this Saturday with rides ranging from 25 to 100 miles. Now there’s a good cause. Three Texas women stop in Santa Barbara on a 1,700-mile ride down the Left Coast to raise funds to care for young sex trafficking survivors. A writer in San Luis Obispo complains that the bike lobby is forcing crazy ideas for a bicycle boulevard on unwilling residents — never mind that bike boulevards actually benefit the people who live on the street. And says Los Angeles had to “roll back many similar improvements” at great expense to the public. Um, no. LA is undoing a single road diet on Vista del Mar, which simply involves removing a little paint and restriping the roadway. And it’s not like we actually have bike boulevards to roll back. A hairy Santa Rosa mountain biker goes riding in Annadel State Park. Bicyclists are excited about plans to ban private cars from San Francisco’s iconic Market Street, but merchants are worried about the effect it will have on their businesses. It’s not unusual for a blind bicyclist to ride a tandem. But a blind cyclist is riding coast-to-coast on his own bike to raise awareness for people with vision impairments, guided by a riding companion via two-way radio. Oregon dedicates a new bicycle and pedestrian bridge connecting parks in the state capital. Streetsblog Denver reminds the local constabulary that ticketing a man in a wheelchair after he gets hit by a car is not Vision Zero. Colorado officials find a leg bone from a 70 million-year old duck-billed dinosaur while conducting a survey for a new bike trail. Austin TX is installing 12 bicycle traffic lights around the city to give bike riders a few seconds head start at intersections. New York plans to add more bike lanes to meet surging demand. NY Streetsblog says the NYPD continues to slander victims by incorrectly blaming them for causing crashes, inflicting needless pain on their families. An anti-bike Philadelphia columnist says put a referendum on the November ballot about bike lanes, and let the entire city vote on whether it wants them. Which won’t pass if people like this woman have anything to say about it. This is why you always carry ID when you ride. Canadian authorities are still trying to identify a woman who was killed in a crash on Tuesday. The Guardian asks if cyclists and autonomous cars can co-exist by 2035. Or ever. A British bike rider wants to thank the hit-and-run driver who left him lying on the side of the road, because doctors found a brain tumor as they were treating him for head wounds. A motorcyclist in the UK is being called a hero after he ditched his bike to avoid a head-on crash with a group of cyclists, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down. A crowdfunding campaign to buy him a new specialized wheelchair has raised nearly twice the original goal of £15,000, the equivalent of almost $20,000. Bicycling is booming in Israel, as the country encourages riding as an alternative to driving, though not everyone is happy about it. A Malaysian city moves to ban teenage bike riders from certain streets at night, in response to a crash earlier this year that killed eight young riders. No, don’t knock a bike rider off his bicycle and drag him by his dreadlocks, even if you think he’s a snitch. If you’re going to wrestle a bike from its owner, make sure it doesn’t have two flat tires first. And you could buy a new car for the price of some bikes. But then you’d have to drive it.

Originally posted by Reverend J ShaftI just participated in a friend's podcast where they ask people a movie-themed question each time and I thought the one that I was asked was a good one for the Ws here. My answer was "I Wanna Be Like You" from The Jungle Book. The scene where it is sung is one of my favorites and I just love the jazzy, be-bop vibe of it. Louis Prima KILLS as King Louie in the Jungle Book - you have got to love "The Bear Necessities" from the same movie too. And "Kiss the Girl" was played as the backing track to a video of my wife & I at our Rehearsal Dinner so that has a special spot too. We'll be back right after order has been restored here in the Omni Center. That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy - Swift Originally posted by ScottyflamingoGood lord, would you people please go see something that was made before 1990?? The correct answer is "When I See an Elephant Fly" from Dumbo... While I would not use the same tone as you (you did see that some of the choices came from Bambi and Jungle Book right?) , I agree with your choice. Love that song. Honorable mentions to Hakuna Matata and Bear Necessities. "Put on your helmets, we'll be reaching speeds of 3!" "It was nice of you to give that dead woman another chance." "All right, look alive everybody...oh sorry Susan."- MST3K: Space Mutiny Click Here (myspace.com) Dang, I don't know how I managed to mention "The Nutcracker Suite" from Fantasia and didn't mention the iconic "The Sorcerer's Apprentice". There is nothing about that scene that isn't epic and pitch-perfect. "Whoever you are, you stopped being relevant about five minutes after I apparently told you to run." --Shepard, Mass Effect 2 Fan of the Indianapolis Colts (Super Bowl XLI Champions), Indiana Pacers and Washington Nationals Certified RFMC Member-- Ask To See My Credentials! Co-Winner of Time's Person of the Year Award, 2006 Goldfinger is damned close for me, but my favorite's got to be Goldeneye. The combination of hot Russian chick, egomaniacal Russian hacker, Brosno-Bond, Sean Bean, Amke Janssen and "Yo Jimbo!" just make the movie immortal.

The technology now exists that could flag certain buzzwords or phrases in your emails to alert “the authorities” that you might be up to no good. A published report in ITPro describes anti-fraud, language-analyzing software co-developed for Ernst & Young’s anti-fraud unit and the FBI with technology that can uncover 3,000 words and phrases that suggest fraud. Even more remarkable, the software is able to identify changes in tone that “suggest an underlying problem and can be targeted to specific sectors, particularly traders,” looking for “phrases that indicate an employee is nervous of eavesdropping, such as “call my mobile” and “come by office.” Here are the ten most common phrases used by fraudsters: “cover up,” “nobody will find out,” “off the books,” “grey area,” “failed investment,” “write off,” “illegal,” “they owe it to me,” “do not volunteer information” and “not ethical.” This technology is being used to catch crime in the making. Imagine the other applications it could have. Thought police come to mind? Could they also be looking for certain phrases and words like, oh, I don’t know … “gun,” “ammo,” “tea party meeting?” Somewhat amusing was this observation – using the ten watch phrases – left in the comment section at an article about the eavesdropping software at The Blaze: “Cover up Bengazi (sic). Write off the dead Americans. Don’t arrest anyone illegal. Congress is a failed investment. Nobody will find out if we keep our mouths shut. Fast & Furious is a ‘grey’ area. They owe it to me, so I’m raising taxes. Do not volunteer any information on our attempt to confiscate their weapons. I don’t care if it’s not ethical. Our pan (sic) to destroy America must be kept off the books.” Sad end to a bright future REDDIT co-founder Aaron Swartz, 26-year old Internet genius, took his own life last week. Police said Swartz was found in his Brooklyn apartment. When he was just 14, the Internet wizard is credited with drafting an early version of the RSS format, a web-based feed that helps syndicate popular headlines. Swartz was facing charges of hacking. According to the New York Post, “Federal officers arrested him for allegedly downloading academic journals on the subscription-only website JSTOR.com. He pleaded not guilty to fraud in 2012 – but the case remained open at the time of his death. He faced decades in prison and a fortune in fines.” Read more about Swartz and his legal problems here. Dot marks viral spot This app locates you on a map via geo-locator and poses the question, “How are you feeling?” Your answer can range from “awful” to “meh” to “good.” The app then plots your report with others in your area to let you know through color coded dots if the flu epidemic is virulent where you are, and if not, which areas that are and to avoid. Green is good, yellow indicates some outbreak and red means full-blown flu. Germ Tracker app is a Twitter-based algorithm that pinpoints areas hardest hit by also tracking key words on social networking sites. “Headache” and “sick” flag high-risk areas in the city. The info is available on smart phones and computers. Find my phone You’re at a concert, enjoying the music. After a while, you notice your smart phone is gone. You begin searching for it but it’s nowhere to be found. Luckily, you’ve left the geo-locator in the “on” position, so you get to a computer and launch the “Find My iPhone” app that helps you locate your lost device. This situation happened to a construction worker from San Diego. But when he “located” the phone, both he and the thief got more than they bargained for. In a similar story, another guy also lost his phone to a thief. His solution to retrieve his device? He impersonated a woman and using email alerts from a dating site profile set up by the phone’s owner, arranged for a “date” with the thief. The sting worked. Thief was caught with a bottle of wine and the phone in hand. “On one hand, I kind of feel bad for him because he was just looking for a date and it ended up being me and that sucks for anyone. At the same time he was keeping my phone,” the phone’s owner concluded. Bits & Bytes Sex offender in the Lone Star state? Identify yourself online. A hundred bucks to talk to Zuck? Not so much. Nipping the tipper. To catch a thief. Apple call. Russia honors Steve Jobs with iPhone Monument in St. Petersburg that displays slide show of Jobs’ life. Already? Next generation iPad and iPad Mini set for release in March. Clean-up on aisle two – electronics. Walmart deep discount on iPhones and iPads. Google gets off with FTC wrist slap. “We did what the law required.” Yahoo image search. Find and share photos on web with Flickr. Speaking of photos, Zuck’s wedding photog not happy. Free open college course includes video, audio, notes by profs at Harvard, Princeton, MIT and more.

Posted by Peter Rosenberger, Author, Speaker, Radio Host, and 30-year caregiver For every caregiver, guilt remains a seemingly insurmountable obstacle standing between us and a measure of peace in our hearts. In the face of overwhelming odds, we put ourselves in an often impossible situation, and keep doing it armed with little else than love—while spending blood, sweat, and treasure. I wouldn’t hang around somebody who treats me the way I treat myself, and I’ll bet you wouldn’t either. We treat ourselves mercilessly—thinking somehow because of guilt or whatever, we’ve got to push ourselves to the breaking point. “There’s no problem so awful, that you can’t add some guilt to it and make it even worse.” —Bill Waterson, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes We’ve all heard the story of military drill instructors who look at a line of soldiers and ask for a volunteer. Then, everyone steps back—except the one guy who wasn’t in on the planned exit. He didn’t step back. Watch this short clip of Peter addressing caregivers Huntington’s Disease Society of America’s annual conference. [kad_vimeo url=”https://vimeo.com/170849827″ ] As caregivers, WE didn’t step back. We show up every day. Sometimes we do it well—other times, we make mistakes. Either way, our attendance record is perfect even if our service record isn’t. Regardless of what we do or don’t do, we still beat ourselves up because we didn’t do it as well as we think we should—or somebody else thinks we should. As caregivers, we sadly judge ourselves on our service record while completely overlooking our attendance record. There is a word for caregivers to remember: Grace. To me, Grace is the most beautiful word in the English language. I married a woman named Grace. I love saying her name. As caregivers, we rarely give ourselves grace—to our detriment. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers, and we cannot exist in a healthy state when carrying the crushing burden of guilt. This kind of caregiver guilt isn’t about sins that get great press. Those things earn guilt. Rather, this type of guilt stems from a child is born with a disease or disability—or even something as simple as wanting to take a break for a day …or even a few hours. The list of things we mercilessly flog ourselves over stretches beyond the horizon, but none of those things help us live a healthier life. We’re no good to anyone if we stroke out or become impaired ourselves because we push ourselves to the breaking point. Today is a good day to be a healthy caregiver, and that journey starts with extending grace to ourselves. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. —Hebrews 4:16 - Audio Library (Dozens of hours of on-demand super cool stuff for caregivers by topic!) - Enhanced Audio Book with special surprises. Read by the author, and even with some guest appearance from Gracie. - More great stuff/videos, free downloads, etc… Get the book that’s strengthening thousands and THOUSANDS of caregivers …now in an enhanced audio version read by the author!

I am currently hard at work trying to finish the first draft of my next book Forever and a Day. As much as I would love to crank my novels out faster to satisfy the appetite of my voracious readers, I just don’t work like that. I have to take my time so that I can release the best product possible. Yet, I am not insensitive to your pain (lol), and I am ever so grateful that some of you are eagerly anticipating the next novel. I began to seek a way to connect with my friends, readers, and supporters in between novels and decided that a series of short stories would be perfect. I am proud to announce that the Things Every Good Woman Should Know series made it’s eBook debut yesterday. It can be purchased on Kindle and Nook for only .99! Up-and-coming singer, Dawn Williams, finds herself faced with a difficult decision when she is pressured to have breast implants to help enhance her budding career. She begins to question her own definition of beauty and the sincerity of those who are supposed to love her and have her best interests at heart. Dawn embarks on a journey of self-love as she seeks to define true beauty and defy those who use the entertainment industry’s distorted images as a measuring stick for it. Beauty isn’t found in a cup size. Any woman who has ever doubted her own looks should read this. (38 pages) Check out the book Trailer

10 Random Things Fatherhood Taught Me Fatherhood comes at you like a Miley Cyrus Wrecking Ball (minus the odd irrelevant naked woman riding it). It changes you. As more grey hair comes in, I’m starting to realize that sometimes it takes a wrecking ball to make you realize what really matters. Especially as a man. Men are judged on things like strength, tolerance, income, and many other things. That’s not to say that women aren’t… but this isn’t about women. As I understand it groups of women can be the worst circles to be in for other women. But as men we seem to be perceived fundamentally and naturally as animals. That’s just the way it seems to be. Here’s what I’ve learned. - It is actually possible to shed Happy tears. - Unconditional love exists. - It takes just as much strength to punch an asshole who cut you off in traffic in the face as it does to NOT punch the asshole who cut you off in traffic in the face. - Women appreciate a man who is transparent with his feelings. - Children appreciate time over anything. - You don’t know what it is to be a protector until you have a child. - Hard decisions are things like choosing to enroll your child in a sport over spending that money on a new pair of shoes every month. - Bless your parents, but you learned everything not to do from them. - Bless your parents, but you learned everything TO DO from them. - Your child will mimic everything you do as soon as they are able to. This includes anything and everything from profanity to your actions. You realize that throwing your middle finger up might have been cool when you were a 20 something year old punk driving around in a 1989 honda civic, but as a parent you definitely never want to see your child doing the same thing.

I have a few half written posts in the folder here - and clearly my staying power has been compromised along the way because I cannot post half written things, now can I. Nor do I seem to be able to finish them. I start off early in a fit of enthusiasm, and then, as soon as I get up to make more coffee, I get distracted by life outside the study door. Things like washing machines, dishwashers, an annoyingly grubby hob, the sun, a cobweb, a newspaper - they leap up and grab me and then I forget all about the writing and the muse. And that, my friends, is why you seem to get the rest. As in a rundown of events, rather than the content of the brain, and/or heart, as the occasion may warrant. Take for instance right now. The incoming email pinger pinged as I wrote that last line, so I had to check what was there, didn't I? Exactly. There were some Groupon offers, so I wandered off through the merry maze, bought nothing, and then remembered I was trying to sit down and write something worth reading. 30 minutes later and a load of washing rescued. I am doomed. By the way, I am hoping you have all seen that Boomama (Sophie Hudson) has a new book out? But more to the point, her first book is FREE on the Amazon Kindle at the moment, so rush on over and download it. You will not be sorry. I absolutely LOVED it! I, however, bought a real paper book ages ago for money. That didn't stop me downloading the digital copy too, though. One can never have too many copies of good books...... (Washing in drier, and hung up in sun. More cobwebs dispatched. Cobweb catcher bashed about in the sun outside to clean it. Dead leaves removed from plant. Broken terracotta bits of pot hidden from view. Hands washed. Here I am again. Coffee cold. ) (Additional list of post ideas written and mulled over. 15 mins gone.) (Still considering a photo book Groupon.) (Concentration is not one of my talents.) You will remember that I was watching over my friends' home and dog over Christmas...... well, I saw the wedding photos over the weekend. They had gone to Cape Town for a family wedding and holiday, and on Saturday I got to see the photos. Such a beautiful place. Well, you see all the fabulous places when you are on holiday, which is only natural! Anyway. I had never heard of the word Marryoke. Have you? Am I the last person on earth? It was hysterical. Brilliant. Perfect. Hilarious. Fun. What a fantastic idea! For anyone who may not know about Marryoke, it is a video made while members of the wedding party, the friends, guests, family etc all lip-sync to the words of a song. This wedding the song was Summer nights, from Grease. Apparently the photographer took at the footage on his iPhone while playing the music for you to pretend to sing on an iPad. Genius. Then he goes away, slices and dices and voila!! The end result is the best memento of a wonderful day. Try popping over to YouTube and watching some of the hundreds posted there. You will love them. Good grief, when I remember the official formal photos of my wedding - I never look at them. I never really liked them. The best ones have always been the casual ones taken by friends. They are the most natural, the ones which make me grin. The others are the rolling the eyes in the head variety. I do remember the very expensive and utterly useless woman who was my official photographer took ALL the pre wedding photos of me in the garden with a lamp-post emerging from the top of my head. Photoshop was not around back in the time of the dinosaurs. Forget the staged dances. Seriously, getting everyone involved and joining in, unrehearsed, is clearly so much fun. (Three text massages received and answered. Lunch made and half eaten. Chat to daughter re physio report. ) There are signs of life in the garden already. The hellebores are starting to bloom, and the snowdrops and other bully things are growing rapidly. I have no idea why so many bulbs are out of the ground, but it could be the squirrels. The garden needs a great deal of tidying up, because I couldn't do anything after the cataract op at the end of autumn. It can wait. I got out of bed yesterday, to find a large black and white cat sitting on the windowsill looking at me. That was different. He is welcome to loiter, because I am quite sure he will dispatch any wandering rodents emerging from their winter slumber. Right. That cold coffee needs to be tossed out. I will be back. Mission: Take some photos worth looking at.

She was entering Akra. The heap of grain, yet burning, showed a dull black-red mound over which towered a column of strong incense. Here, for the night was cool, lay in circles many of the unhoused Passover guests. Here, also, was wakefulness and the hatchment of evil. The running girl was upon them before she knew it. One of the figures that sat with its back to the dull glow saw her approaching. Instantly he rose upon one knee and snatched her dress as she ran. Jerked from her balance, she screamed and threw out her hands to keep from falling upon the shoulders of her assailant. One or two others with unintelligible sounds struggled up, and as she fell, the Maccabee leaped from the darkness, wrenched her from the grasp of her captor, and warding off attack with his knife, fled with her into the darkness. The transfer of control over her had been made so swiftly that in her stupor of terror she hardly realized it. She was struggling silently and strongly in his hold, when he clasped her to him with a firmer impulsive embrace and whispered to her: "Comfort thee, dear heart! It is I, Hesper!" She ceased to resist so suddenly and was so tensely still that he knew the shock of immense reaction was having its way with her. He knew without asking that she had been forced to leave the shelter of the Greek's roof, and though his rage threatened to rise up and blind him he was not entirely unaware of the benefit the inhospitality of others had given him. At last she was with him; entirely in his care. It was a safe shelter into which she was brought, but no luxurious one. There was light enough from the single torch stuck in a crevice in the ancient rock to show that it was habitable. The immense floor was packed hard by the trampling of many feet; overhead, lost in gloom, there must have been a rocky roof, but it was invisible. On the ledges of rocks were belongings by heaps and collections, showing that this was an abiding-place for great numbers. In the far shadows she distinguished long, silent, mummied windrows of men wrapped in blankets, sleeping. Huge gloomy piles of provisions filled up shadowy corners; about under the light was the litter left in the wake of human counsel; over all was the air of repose and occupancy that made a home out of the burrow. Though the place held a great number of refugees, the footstep of the Maccabee wakened resounding emptiness. At the threshold he slackened his step and looked with pathetic anxiety at whatever light on Laodice's face would show her opinion of her refuge. But the uncertain torch revealed nothing and he led her in and across to a solitary place where rugs from some looted house had been folded up for a pallet and spread about for carpets. She sat down and awaited his speech. He motioned to the spacious barrenness about him. "Canst thou content thyself in this place?" he asked, hesitating. She nodded, but feeling that her reply had not shown all that words might, she lifted her face that he might see therein that which she could not trust her lips to say. It was her undoing. Her weakness overwhelmed her and burying her face in the folds of her mantle, she wept. After a dismayed silence, he bent over her and said with a quiver of distress in his voice: "I—I have work, here, to do, but I shall take thee out of the city for better refuge—" That she should seem to be grieving over the nature of the shelter given her, stirred her deeply. She half rose and with the light shining on her face, filled with gratitude in spite of her tears, took his hand in both of hers and pressed it with pathetic insistence. He understood her. He laid a hand unsteady with its tremor of delight and young eagerness upon the vitta and it slipped off her hair. As it dropped, the subtle warm fragrance of the heavy locks, now braided in maidenly style, reached him; the liveliness of her relaxed young figure communicated itself to him without his touch; all the invitation of her helplessness swept him to the very edge of abandoning his restraint. On his dark face a transformation occurred. All the hardness, even his years and his experience vanished from him and a soft recovering flush faintly colored his cheeks. In that sudden bloom of beauty in his face was stamped a realization of the far progress of his triumph. She was in his house and dependent on him, within the very reach of his arms. When she looked up at him again, she read all this in his face, and instantly there returned to her, with warning intensity, the fear of her love of him. The last obstacle but her own conscience that stood between her and his perfect supremacy over her life had suddenly been swept away. She started away from him, and put up her hands to ward off his touch. "If you do that," she said in a tone sharp with distress, "it is sin and I shall be cursed! I shall have to go back to him!" Then she had voluntarily left Julian, perhaps to seek him! "You shall not go back to him!" he exclaimed. "After I have given up everything but my life to have you for myself!" "You must not think of me in that way!" she commanded him vehemently. "I am a married woman! You shall remember that! If you forget it, I will go out into the streets and ask the Idumeans to kill me!" "Nay, peace, peace! I shall do you no harm! You are frightened! I will do nothing that you would not have me do! Be comforted. Not any one in all the world has your happiness at heart so much as I. Believe me!" "Believe me!" she insisted. "I am weary of doubt and denial. I am only safe if you recognize me as that which I claim to be. Answer me! You do believe I am the wife of Philadelphus?" "I believed it, at once," he said frankly. "Then—then—" but she flung her hands over her face and slipped down on the rugs. For a moment he hesitated, restraining the impulse to break over the limits she had laid down for him. Then he rose and, summoning one of the women who had taken refuge in the crypt, sent her to remain with the girl, and departed, shaken and uncertain, to his own place. IN THE SUNLESS CRYPT The twilight of the cavern rarely revealed enough of the features of her fellows to Laodice for her to identify them or for them to identify her. She lived among them a dusky shadow among shadows. And because of her fear that Philadelphus might be searching for her, she stayed in the sunless crypt day by day until the Maccabee, noting with affectionate distress that she was growing white and weak, bade her take one of the women and venture up to the light. There were, besides the women, two men who took no part in the preparation for war which went on about them in the cavern day and night. While weapons and armor were made and tramping ranks formed and broke before the commands of the lithe dark commander of that fortress and subdued but fierce councils took place around torches—while all this went on, they kept back, even apart from the women, and said nothing. Laodice saw that they were physically unfit; that one was very old and the other very feeble and her heart warmed again to that stern master who saw them fed as abundantly as his most valued men. These, then, were those Christians whom he had taken into his protection because of the Name which had inspired a shepherd boy to save his life. When he commanded Laodice to go up into the sunlight, he approached the corner in which the two useless men hid and bade them, too, to go up into the air. "Let us have no sickness in this place," he said bluntly and turned on his heel and left them to obey. Laodice took one of the older women and timidly climbing the steps from which the rubbish had been pushed away by the climbing hundreds, went through the dusk of the passage that terminated in a brilliancy that dazzled her. And as she walked she heard the footsteps of the two men behind her. Up in the chaos of fallen columns, she stood a moment with her hands pressed over her eyes. Only little by little was she able to permit the full blaze of the Judean sun to reach them. The uproar on Jerusalem after the muffled silence of the underground cavern filled her with terror, and she pressed close to the shelter of the entrance until the woman at her side reassured her. "It is nothing," the woman said, with a dreary patience. "It is as it was yesterday. I come here every day. I know." After a while Laodice looked about her. The entrance to their refuge was about the middle of the ruin and therefore a great many paces back from the streets, so that she did not see Jerusalem's agonies face to face. But she saw enough to make her cold and to turn her shivering and panic-stricken into the darkness of the crypt below. She saw the ascending streets of Zion and the tall fortifications mounting the heights within the city's limits. There she saw the flash of swords, swung afar off, spears brandished and the running hither and thither of defenders on the wall. Below she saw the remote constricted passages between rows of desolate houses, moving with people, sounding with clamor. There she saw combats, terrible scenes of frenzy, deaths and unnamable horrors; starvelings gnawing their nails; shadows of infants pressed to hollow bosoms; old men too weak to walk that went on hands and knees; young men and young women in rags that failed to cover them, and wandering skeletons screaming, "Woe!" Meanwhile huge stones mounted over the walls and fell within the city; three great towers planted beyond the walls, out of range of the Jewish engines and equipped with superior machines, were steadily devastating the entire quarter near which they were erected. Here two-thirds of the forces of Jerusalem were concentrated in a vain effort to resist the dire inroads of these effective engines. Here, the Maccabee and his Gibborim stood shoulder to shoulder with the Idumeans and fanatics of Simon and John, and here the half-mad defenders awakened at last to the fact that only divine interference could save the city against Rome. In the south and the east conflagrations roared and crackled, where burning oil had been scattered over some remaining structures near the walls. When a great ram began its thunder somewhere near the Sheep Gate, there came a hollow booming noise of deafening volume from the charnel pits outside the walls and a black cloud of incredible depth soared up into the skies. Laodice, dumb with horror, looked at the prodigy without understanding, but the woman at her side shuddered. "God help us!" she exclaimed. "They are vultures!" Laodice turned to rush back into the cavern and so faced the two men who stood behind her. One, at sight of her, shrank with a gasp, and, averting his shaggy head till the long white locks covered his face, fled back into the crypt. The other was gazing with unseeing eyes across groaning Jerusalem. "I am the man," he was saying aloud, but to himself, "that hath seen affliction by the rod of His wrath." The sight of him had a paralyzing effect upon Laodice. She saw, before her, Nathan, the Christian, who had buried her father, who had blessed her, who would know and could testify to a surety that she was the wife of Philadelphus! She slipped by him without a sound and hurried down into the darkest corner of the cavern. Circumstance had found her in her refuge and would drive her away from this sweet home back to that hateful house, to the man she did not love! For many days, with increasing distress, Laodice avoided Nathan, the Christian. With that fascinated terror which at times forces human creatures to examine a peril, she felt irresistibly impelled to try his memory of events, that she might know if indeed he would recognize her. Though she turned cold and flashed white when he came upon her one day in the darkness of their shelter, she felt nevertheless the relief of approaching a solution to her perplexity. "They tell me," he said with the deliberate speech of the old, "that Titus is once more permitting citizens to depart from Jerusalem unharmed." "Then," she said, grasping at this hope, "why do you stay here in this peril?" "Why should I leave it? Even with the singers who wept by the waters of Babylon, I prefer Jerusalem above my chief joy. Except for the time when we of the Way were warned to depart, I have been in Jerusalem all my life. Then, though I had gone as far as Caesarea on my way to Antioch to join the brethren there, homesickness overtook me and I turned in my tracks, saying no man farewell, and came back." "A weary journey for one so old," she said gently. Would he remember also that it had been dangerous? "Nay, but a journey full of works and reward. And I discovered at the end of it that I had lived in error forty years; that Christ never ceases to prove Himself." Already the forbidden tenets of the Nazarene faith had entered into his words. But feeling somehow that her deflection from uprightness covered her whole life, there was no reason why she should not hear what these people believed and have done with it. "Art thou a Christian?" she asked timidly. "I am a believer in Christ, but whether I may call myself one of the blessed I do not know, for they have had faith. But I demanded a sign. Behold it! The ruin of the City of David!" Her eyes widened with alarm. "Is there no hope?" she exclaimed. He looked at her, even in his old age impressed with the immense importance life and love must have to so beautiful and beloved a woman. Presently he said, as if to himself: "Yea, be thou blessed, O thou Redeemer, that givest life to them to whom life is dear and death approacheth." Her concern for concealment vanished entirely in her rising terror for the future of the Holy City. "I pray thee, Rabbi," she said in a low voice, drawing close to him, "tell me what thy people believe about the city. I have heard—but it can not be true!" "Do not be troubled about the city," he answered. "Ask me rather how to become safeguarded against any disaster, greater even than the fall of cities." "It is not for myself," she protested earnestly, "but for the world. Is there not a King to come to Israel?" "There is, but not yet, my daughter. Of that day and hour no man knoweth. Now is Daniel's abomination of desolation; the generation passeth and the prophecy is fulfilled. Jerusalem is perishing." Seeing the wave of panic sweep over her, he put out a soothing hand. "Yet, do not fear. For such as you the Redeemer died; for your kind the Kingdom of Heaven is built, and the King whom the earth did not receive is for ever Lord of it." The veiled reference to the tragedy which Philadelphus had recounted stood out with more prominence than the promise in his words. "Whom the earth did not receive?" she repeated. "O prophet, as thou boasteth truthful lips and a hoary head, tell me what hath befallen us." "Hear it not as a calamity," he said reassuringly. "Thou canst make it of all things the most profitable, if thou wilt. Forget the city. I, who would forget it but can not, bid thee do this. Behold, there is another Jerusalem which shall not fall. Look to that and be not afraid." Her lips, parted to protest against the vague answer, closed at the final sentence and the Christian pressed his advantage. "Of that Jerusalem there is no like on earth. Against its walls no enemy ever comes; neither warfare nor hunger nor thirst nor suffering nor death. This which David builded is a poor city, a humble city compared to that New Jerusalem. There the King is already come; there the citizens are at peace and in love with one another. There thou shalt have all that thy heart yearneth after, and all that thy heart yearneth after shall be right." In that city would it be right that she love Hesper instead of Philadelphus, and that she should have her lover instead of her lawful husband? While she turned these things over in her mind, he wisely went on with his story. Shrewdly sensing the young woman's anxiety, the old Christian guessed the interest to her of the Messiah's history before His teaching and began with prophecy to support the authenticity of the wonderful Galilean's claim to divinity. It was no fisherman or weaver of tent-cloth who brought forth the declarations of the comforter of Hezekiah, the captive prophet and the priest in the land of the Chaldeans. His was no barbarous manner or slipshod tongue of the market-place and the wheat-fields, but the polish and the clean-cut flawless language of the synagogues and the colleges. Laodice saw in the gesture and phrase the refinement of her father, Costobarus, of the gentlest Judean blood. "I saw Him," he went on in a low voice. Laodice with her intent gaze on the beatified face put her hand to her heart. "Forty years ago," the old voice continued, "I saw Him first in Galilee. There He was disbelieved and cast out. He came then unto Jerusalem and I saw Him there heal lepers, cast out evil spirits, cure the blind and the sick and the palsied. And in the house of Jairus and at Nain, I saw Him raise the dead. "I saw Him come to Jerusalem. Multitudes followed Him and accompanied Him, casting their mantles and palm-branches in the way that His mule might tread upon them." The old man pointed south toward the single summit from which Christ approaching could overlook Jerusalem. "On that hill," he said, "while the multitudes hailed Him and the sound of Alleluia shook the air, He reined in His meek beast and looked upon this city, and wept over it. When He spoke, He said, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation. "And three days later, I saw the Rock of David and all that multitude follow Him unto the Hill of the Skull and there His enemies crucified Him!" After a paralyzed silence, Laodice whispered with frozen lips, "In God's name, why?" But he wisely did not pause with the calamity. He had the whole of the beginnings of Christianity to tell, a long narrative that contained as yet no dogma. Paul had seen the great light on the road to Damascus, and accepting apostleship to all the world had fought a good fight and had come unto his crown of righteousness; Peter had established the Church and had fed the sheep and had been offered up by the Beast who was Nero; John the Divine was seeing visions of the Apocalypse in the Island of Patmos; Herod Antipas, "that fox," had passed to his own place, prisoner and exile, sacrifice to a mad Caesar's imaginings; Judas had hanged himself; Pilate had drowned himself; thousands of the saints had died for the faith by fire and sword and wild beasts; kings had been converted and of the believers in Rome it was said, Your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. Laodice sat with clasped hands, intent on each word as it fell from the lips of the aged teacher, seeing at one and the same time the Kingdom of Heaven constructed and her dream of an earthly empire falling. "He said," the Christian continued, "They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Repentance was a rite for Laodice, a payment of offering, a process to the righteously inclined, a thing that could in no wise purify the sinner as to make him worthy of association with the upright. The old Christian's use of the word was different; he had said that the Messiah came to the sinner, and not to the righteous. Had the young Jewess been less in need of comfort in her own consciousness of spiritual delinquency she would have set down the old teacher as one of the idlest dealers in contradiction. But now she listened with keener zest; perchance in this doctrine there was balm for her hurt. She made some answer which showed the awakening of this new interest and then with infinite poetry and earnestness he began to unfold the teachings of Christ. A woman came to them with wine and food, for the midday had come, but neither noticed it. In his fervor to enlighten this tender soul, the old man forgot his weariness; in her wonder at the strangely gentle doctrine which had contradicted all the world's previous usage, the girl forgot her prejudice. She listened; and with such signs as change of expression, flushes of emotion, movements of surprise and brightenings of interest to encourage him, the old Christian talked. When he had progressed sufficiently to round out the theory of Christianity, she had grasped a new standard. The contrast between the old and the new made itself instantly felt. On one hand was the simple and logical; on the other the complex and dogmatic. The Christian was able to measure proportionately how much should be laid upon her mind for study at once and while she still waited, he rose from his place. "There is more; yet there are other days," he said. But she caught his hand as he rose and with a sudden yearning in her eyes whispered: "O Rabbi, what said He of love?" "Love?" he repeated, with a softening about his lips. "The Master blessed love between man and woman." "But, but—" she faltered, "if one love another than one's wedded spouse, then what?" His face grew grave. "That is not lawful even among you, who are still of the old faith." He laid a kindly hand on the one that held his. "Suffer but sin not. He that endureth unto the end shall be saved." She was silent while she gazed at him with change showing on her gradually paling face. "Then—then what is in thy faith for the forlorn in love?" she exclaimed. "Peace, and the consciousness of the joy of Christ in your steadfastness," he said. She rose. How much longer had she to live? "And thou sayest we die?" "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul," he said gently. Fear Hesper, then, but not the Roman. While she stood in the immense debate of heart and conscience he laid a tender hand on her head. "Perchance in His mercy thou shalt be welcomed there first by thy father, whom I buried, and by thy mother." The sudden recurrence to that past tragedy and the unfolding of his recognition fairly swept Laodice off her feet with shock and alarm. If he noted her feeling, he was sorry he had not succeeded in comforting her with a promise of reunion with her beloved in that other land. He took away his tremulous hand from her hair. Leaving her transfixed with all he had said, he moved painfully away, stiffened by long sitting while he discoursed. THE FALSE PROPHET It was a different Amaryllis that the pretended Philadelphus faced now, from the one who had welcomed him on his arrival in Jerusalem months ago. Then she had been so cold and self-contained that it would have been effrontery to discuss her hopes with her. Now, with the avarice of love in her eyes, with wishfulness and defeat making their sorry signs on her face, she was a creature that even the humblest would have longed to help. Philadelphus sat opposite her in the ivory chair which was hers by right. She sat in the exedra and listened eagerly to the things he said with her finger-tips on her lips and her eyes gazing from under her brow as her head drooped. She had ceased long ago to debate idly on the actual identity of the man who had called himself Hesper of Ephesus. There was another question that absorbed her. Of late, it had been brought home to her that the charm of Laodice for the stranger from Ephesus, to whom the Greek knew the girl had fled, had been her purity. Why should it matter so much about virtue? she had asked herself. Why should it weigh so immeasurably more than the noble gifts of wit and beauty and strength and charm? Behold, she was wise enough to educate a barbarous nation, beautiful enough to bewitch potentates—for a time—strong enough to take a city; yet Hesper, who best of all could appreciate the value of these things, had turned from her to Laodice, who was merely chaste. The greater part of the jealous and bitter passion that had shaken her then was dumb regret that the measure of charm was so irrational—and that she had not believed in it, in time, in time! Now, however, since she had become convinced that Laodice had gone to Hesper for refuge, hope had awakened in her, but so filled with uncertainty and lack of confidence in another's weakness that it was little more than a torture to her. If Laodice had gone to this winsome stranger, either claiming to be the wife of Philadelphus or acknowledging the imposture, there was now no difference between Laodice and herself! But, she asked herself, was it not possible that this lovely girl who had shown signs of illimitable fortitude, could live in the shelter of the captivating Hesper as uprightly as she had lived under the roof of the man she called her husband? In one exigency, the hopes of Amaryllis budded; in the other, her intuitive belief in the strength of Laodice discouraged her. And while she alternately hoped and doubted, Philadelphus, in the chair opposite her, talked. "It follows that you and I must work together to gain diverse ends. If our fortunes are to be tragic, we are undoing each other in this conjunction. Since I in all frankness prefer it to turn out comedy, let us make no error. Are you weary of John? Do you seek a new diversion?" She looked at him, at first puzzled, then with a frown. It leaped to her lips, grown impatient with suffering, to tell him all that she had evolved of the histories of himself, his lady and of Hesper; but there seemed to be an element of recklessness in that which threatened to do away with a means for her success. He did not wait for her answer. "And I," he said with mock intensity, "am done to death with weariness—with my moneyer, this lady of mine. Let us be diverted while we live, for by the signs we shall all die soon." "Where," he began when her mind wandered entirely from him, "dost thou think the mysterious man hath taken my other wife? "I would I knew," he continued, conducting his inquiry alone. "It will be right simple to have her beauty spoiled in this hungry town, unless he takes tenderest care of her." There was still no comment, but the lively sparkle in the Greek's eye showed that he had touched upon a jealous spot. "And by the by," he pursued, "what does this stranger, whom I can not remember having known, look like? A villain?" She answered now in a voice filled with rancor. "Win away the girl from him and thou wilt know thyself to be the better man; but study how much he hath outstripped thee and thou shalt decide for thyself, then, that he is handsomer, more winsome, stronger and more profitable. Describe him for thyself." "Out upon you! How irritable misfortune makes most of us! Now, here is my lady. She would fail to see the humor in my fetching back this pretty impostor. Alas! Were I Deucalion or Pyrrha or whoever else it was that repeopled the world, I should have left jealousy out of the make-up of wives. It is a needless element. It gives them no pleasure, and Jove! how inconvenient it is for husbands! Now, I am not jealous of my wife. In fact, had any man the hardihood to supplant me, I should not discourage him; I should not, by my soul!" "Why," she burst out again, irritated beyond control at his manner, "do you not leave this place?" He swung his foot idly and smiled. "I shall when I can take with me this dear pretty impostor who is so determined to have me," he answered lightly. "Will you?" she asked eagerly. "Is that why you remain?" "And for my lady's dowry. She keeps the key. But had I the girl cloaked and hooded for flight, I might go, even without the treasure. The times are precarious, you observe." She rose almost precipitately and hurried over to the swaying curtain of some heavy white material like samite, covering that which appeared to be a blind arch in the wall. She drew the hanging aside. It had hidden the black mouth of a tunnel, closed by a brass wicket which was locked. "Here," she said rapidly, "is what strengthens John in his folly. This is a passage that leads under the Temple through Moriah into Tophet. The whole city is underlaid with these galleries, but this is the only one which leads to safety." She dropped the curtain and approached him. "But thou canst not go out of that passage alone!" He smiled, and then with that boyish impulsiveness that he had cultivated to cover the evil in his nature, he thrust out his hand to her. "Here is my hand on it!" he exclaimed. "Go, then, and cease not till you have found her. Then, by any or all the gods, I shall see that you do not go out of that passage empty-handed." He smiled at her radiantly and went at once to his chambers. When he reached the apartments, he found them silent and deserted. He seized upon the opportunity as most propitious for a search for the possible hiding-place of the dowry of two hundred talents. When he opened first the great press in which his lady kept her raiment he was confronted by emptiness. Dismayed, he turned to look into the room and found the chests for the most part open and rifled. On the brazier, now cold, lay a wax tablet. He snatched it up and read: Received of Julian of Ephesus the appended salvage in good repair. Items: One wife, Two hundred talents. JOHN, KING OF JERUSALEM. He went back to the andronitis of Amaryllis. "I have lost interest in the treasure," he said whimsically. "But I'll go out and look for the girl. I—I should like to discover of a truth if the passage leads out of Jerusalem." Amaryllis closed her lips firmly. Philadelphus read in the look that he could not escape without Laodice. Without further speech, he went to the vestibule, took his cloak and kerchief from the porter and went out into the city. It was nearly midnight when he passed into the streets. The tumult of assault on the walls had ceased. The long lines of beacon-fires on the walls showed only a few men in arms posted there. Without there came no sound of activity in the camp of the Roman. The streets below, lighted up by the ever-burning beacons, showed its usual restless tramping of houseless, hungry ones. But there was no talk; each one who walked the passages went wrapped in his own dismal thoughts; the thousands took no notice of one another. Jerusalem was as silent as a city stricken with plague. From the summit of Zion, which Philadelphus mounted, he could see three Roman war-towers, planted along the outer works, dimly lighted, and manned by a vigilant garrison of legionaries. These had been a dread and a destruction which the Jews had been unable to overthrow; coigns of vantage from which the enemy had been able to deal the sturdiest blows of the campaign. They had permitted no rest to the defenders on the wall; they had spread ruin by fire and carnage, by arrow and sling for days. Sorties against them had resulted in the death of their assailants, only. Jewish engines accomplished nothing against them. The three, alone, were taking Jerusalem. Philadelphus looked at their tall shapes, black against the remote illumination of the Roman camp, and inwardly hoped that they would hold off complete destruction of the city, until he had found the desirable woman. No one noticed him; men passed him like shadows with their eyes ever on the ground; no one spoke; nothing disturbed the deadly quiet of the falling city. But the next minute, Philadelphus, who walked alertly, saw people step out into gutters or press against walls, as if to allow some one to pass. Awakening interest ran abroad over the street ahead of him. A lane between the wandering multitude opened almost by magic. Through it, walking swiftly, his head up, his mystic eyes ignited, came Seraiah, soldier of Jehovah. There was no sound of his footfall. His garments flashed in the light of the beacons, but there was not even a whisper of their motion. But he had changed. There was fierce, superhuman intent in the despatch of his gait and in the uplift of his superb head. After him, as he passed, ran whispers. Each one stopped and looked. He went down the uneven slope of Zion as some great shade borne on a swift air. Two or three bold ones began to move after him. Others followed. The little nucleus grew. Philadelphus was caught in it. Numbers were added as courage grew with numbers. From intersecting streets people came. Some, although oppressed by the silence, asked what it was and were silenced quickly. Others began to mutter unintelligible predictions, and their neighbors shook their heads without understanding that which was said. The news of Seraiah's mysterious progress communicated itself to rank and rank and spread abroad. Faces appeared against a background of lights at barred windows, along the balustrades of house-tops, from areas and ruins. Philadelphus, fascinated and astonished at this curious demonstration, was contented to pass with it. Silence, except for the rustling of garments and the multitudinous footfall, fell about the vicinity. Ahead of them, Seraiah moved. His steps, finely balanced, passed over obstructions where most of his followers stumbled, and when he turned across Akra and faced the Old Wall, the excitement became painful. His pace was flying; many of his followers were running. It seemed that he was going against the Wall. Dozens anticipated that course and skirting through short ways clambered up on the fortifications and clung there though menaced by the sentries until Seraiah appeared. At a narrow point in the street that ended against the wall, Seraiah met that Jew who had become a maniac on the day Jerusalem attacked Titus. Without warning the maniac leaped up into an intensely rigid posture; his legs spread, his lean arms upstretched at painful tension, his mouth wide, his eyes dilated immensely in their hollow depths. Seraiah passed him as if no man stood in his way. Instantly the maniac wheeled, as a huge spread-eagle wind-vane on its staff, and stood at gaze, the broad uninterrupted light of the beacon shining down on him and the mysterious man. The street ended short of the wall. About the base of the fortification was an open space, in which was planted a scaling-ladder. Seraiah climbed this, an infinitesimal detail on the great blank of blackened stone. Hundreds, rushing upon the wall, though a goodly distance from the point at which the strange man had mounted, climbed it and beat off the sentries. And the foremost who reached the top saw the Roman Tower directly opposite Seraiah shudder suddenly and sink in a roaring cloud of dust upon itself to the earth. Instantly the maniac below broke the tense silence with a scream that was heard in the paralyzed Roman camp: "It is He, the Deliverer! Come!" Of the thousands of Jews that heard the madman's cry, every heart credited it. Hundreds melted away suddenly, as if stricken with terror at what they might see; other hundreds scrambled down from their places to run purposelessly, crying aimless things to the night over the city; yet others covered their faces with their arms and fell in their places, expecting the end of the world; and of the rest, the less imaginative, the more composed and the more curious, remained on the walls to see enacted a further miracle. Uproar had broken out instantly among the four stolid legions of Titus on the Assyrian bivouac. Lights flashed out everywhere; great running to and fro could be distinguished; rapid trumpet-calls and the prolonged roll of drums from company quarters to quarters were echoed back from Antonia and from Hippicus. The startled shouts of commanders; the nervous dropping of arms; the sharp excited response to roll-call; the sound of sentries challenging, the curt response by countersign, showed everywhere irregularities and the symptoms of panic in the immovable ranks of Titus. Seraiah meanwhile had disappeared from his place as mysteriously as he had come. Many of the Jews who remained on the wall believed that he had passed into the Roman camp and was troubling it. The fall of the tower, and the confusion it had wrought in the Roman camp, never occurred to them to have been fortuitous incidents with which Seraiah had nothing to do. Of the thousands that witnessed that miracle, most of them were convinced that the hour had come. Meanwhile Jerusalem was roaring with excitement. The city was ready for a Messiah. Seraiah had arisen at the psychological moment. Earlier the Jews would have been too critical to accept him readily; later they would have reviled him for coming too late. Whatever his advent lacked in thunders, in darkness, voices, and shaking of the earth, had been passed by his miraculous work against the Romans. Philadelphus, who had seen the fall of the tower, and had dropped down from the wall as soon as he had explained it all to himself, came upon new disorders. Great concourses of awakened Jews were hurrying to the walls to see what had happened, or to behold the Roman army wiped out by the Angel of Death as the army of Sennacherib had perished. Others collected at the end of the Tyropean Bridge and watched the pinnacle of the Temple for the miracle which should restore the city. But the burned ruin where the Herodian palace had stood was the center of the most characteristic frenzy. There thousands were congregated. A great bonfire had been kindled and above the multitude, on a colossal architrave fallen at one end from the giant columns that had supported it, stood a figure, redly illuminated by the fire, tiny as compared to the immense ruin of its high place, but Titan in its control over the wild mob below it. It was a woman, a Jewess, dressed in faithful imitation of the archaic garb of the prophetesses, mantled with a storm of flying black hair, stripped of veil or cloak, and splendidly defiant of the restrictions laid upon woman long after the days of Deborah. Over the heads of the panting multitude she shook a pair of arms that glistened for whiteness, and bewitched by the spell of their motion. From under her half-fallen lids shot gleams of fire that transfixed any upon whom they fell; from her supple body shaken at times with the power of its own dynamic force her hearers caught the grosser infection of physical excitement; they swayed with her as blown by the wind; they ceased to breathe in her periods; they groaned as the intensity of her fervor pressed upon them for response that they could not shape in words; they wept, they shouted, they prophesied, and over them swept ever the witchery of her wonderful voice, preaching impiety—the worship of Seraiah! Philadelphus looked at this frantic work with a creeping chill. He knew the sorceress. Salome of Ephesus, who could send the sated theaters wild with her appeal to their senses, had found enchantment of a half-mad city not hard. Aside from the impiety, in fear of which his own irreligious spirit stood, he saw suddenly opened to him the immense scope of her influence. Not Simon, not John, not Titus, had discovered the logical appeal to the city's unbalanced impulses. But the reckless woman, robing herself in the ancient garb of the days to which the citizens would revert, assuming the pose of a woman they had sanctified, preaching the dogma they would hear, showing them the sign that helped them most, held Jerusalem, at least for that hour, in her hands. He realized at once that to attempt to denounce her would expose him to destruction at the wolfish hands of the frenzied mob. There were not soldiers enough in the city to destroy her influence, for she had achieved in her followers that infatuation that goes down to death before it relinquishes its conviction. Her control was complete. Seraiah was the anointed one, but the prophetess, the instigator, the founder of the worship, as follows in all apostasies, was the final recipient of the benefits of that devotion. Philadelphus walked away from the sight of Salome's triumph. He had surrendered instantly his hope of regaining the treasure. The whole of mad Jerusalem had ranged itself with her to protect it. And Laodice was not yet found. AS THE FOAM UPON WATER The madness on Jerusalem poured like an overwhelming flood into the cavern under the ruin of the Herodian palaces. There was Hesper, with most of his Gibborim gathered, preparing to proceed to the defense of the First Wall in Akra against which the Roman would hurl himself in the morning. For days he had controlled his men only by the force of his fierce will. Restlessness, little short of turbulence, had changed his six hundred from earnest recruits to bright-eyed, contentious, irresponsible enthusiasts whom only intimidation could manage. They seemed to be balanced, prepared, ready at the least whisper in the wind to scatter madly, each in his own direction, after a vagary, albeit the end were destruction. Throughout these latter days the Maccabee had become strained and unnatural in his manner. There was a vehemence in all he did which seemed to be a final resolution against despair. His decisions were arbitrary; his methods extreme. Laodice, sensing something climacteric in his atmosphere, kept aloof from him, and regarded him from the dusk of her corner with wonder and a pity that she could not explain. The Christian on the other hand seemed always in an unobtrusive way to be at the Maccabee's elbow. The apparition with the long white hair, however, ran away and was found on the streets by the Christian and brought back to the cavern, where he hid in a dark shadow in the remote end of the crypt and was not seen. Of late the cavern was always full of suppressed excitement; unpremeditated conferences among the Gibborim, which Hesper harshly forbade; and general sharp resentment against imposed regulations and military drill. On several occasions the six hundred were sent in defense of the walls only by sheer force of their leader's will-power. And there they fell in at once with the irregular methods of the Idumeans and fanatics that fought each after his own liking, and the careful instruction of the Maccabee was disregarded. Only so long as he cowed them, they obeyed him; and he seemed to feel, as they seemed to indicate, that when that thing happened which all Jerusalem indefinitely expected and could not name, his control over them would be lost beyond restoration. On the night of the fall of the Roman tower, the Maccabee's forces had been withdrawn for rest to their retreat and at midnight were formed again for return to the fortifications. By the strange inscrutable spread of rumor, sweeping with the air, the tidings of the miracle and the rise of Seraiah poured in upon the restive hundreds that the Maccabee was attempting to form in his fortress. It came like the gradual velocity of a burning star across the sky. From the ranks nearest the exit from the burrow the murmur issued, growing into intelligible sound, mounting to the wildness of hysteria and prevailing wholly over the Gibborim in the space between heart-beats. Everywhere they cast down their spears and their weapons, everywhere they gazed at him with brilliant threatening eyes and cried in loud voices so that the things each mad mind put into expression were lost in a great unintelligible raving. Laodice, the Christian and that white-haired trembler in his refuge, saw the Maccabee raise himself to his full height and lifting his sword confront in one grand effort at command a mob of six hundred madmen! Perhaps that manifestation of iron courage and strength, which the crazy lot somehow realized, saved him from death. Instead of falling upon him they turned away from the scene of the last vain effort for their own salvation and rushed, trampling one another, into the mad city of Jerusalem. From without, the hoarse uproar of their desertion was heard to merge with the great tumult over the Holy City. Tense silence fell in the crypt. The light of the torch wavered up and down the tall figure of the Maccabee as he stood transfixed in the attitude of command that had achieved nothing. It seemed the final inclination beyond the perpendicular that precedes the fall. The Christian started from his place and hurried toward the tense figure in the torch-light. Laodice, unconscious of what she did, approached him with an agony of distress for him written in her face. The white-haired apparition crept out a little way on his knees and putting aside his tangled locks gazed with burning eyes at the defeated man. Laodice, in her anxiety, moved into the range of the Maccabee's vision. The next instant he had thrown away his sword and had caught her in a crushing embrace to him. His voice, blunted and repressed as if something had him by the throat, was stunning her ear. "And thou!" he was saying. "What from thee, now? Hate! Curses! Ingratitude! Hast thou poison for me, or a knife? Or worse, yet, scorn? Speak! It is a day of enlightenment! I'll brook anything but deceit!" She stopped him in the midst of his vehement despair, by laying her hands on his hair. There surged to her lips all the eloquence of her love and sympathy, but beside her old Nathan stood—an embodiment of her conscience, watching. Twice she essayed to put into words the comfort of her submission to his love. Twice her lips failed her; but the third time she turned to the Christian. "Rabbi, what shall I do?" she implored. "Tell me out of thy wisdom!" "What is it?" he asked, feeling that there was more than sympathy for the defeated man in her heart. "What would thy Christ have me to do?" she insisted. "This stranger, here, is the joy of my heart; I am like to die if I can not give him the love that I feel for him this hour!" The startled Christian looked at her with suspicion growing in his eyes. "Art thou a wife? Wedded to another than this man?" he asked gravely. "Wedded," she whispered, "to one who hath denied me, affronted me and cast me out of his house! In this man I have found favor from the beginning. He has been tender of me, he has sheltered me, and he has strengthened me against himself to this hour. There has been nothing sinful between us!" The old Christian's face grew immeasurably sad. "There is but one thing for you to do," he said. She wrenched herself away from the Maccabee, who had been angrily protesting against her carrying his case to another for decision, and confronted Nathan. "But he rejected me!" she cried with earnestness. "That alone is enough among our people for divorcement!" The Christian shook his head sadly. He was not happy to lay down this prohibition before them who suffered. "There is no help in thy faith for such as I am. In that thy religion fails!" she cried. "Love, now, is all in all to thee, daughter. It is but the speech of thy young blood running through thy veins, the claim of thy youth to thy use upon earth. Resist it; for when thy years are as many as mine thou wilt lose thy rebellious spirit and the fervor will have died out of thy heart. Then, if thou hast fallen in this hour, how vain and worthless it will seem to thee! Divine fires in the heart of men never become changed in value. Love purely and thou wilt never repent; but I say unto thee thou fashionest for thyself humbled and shamed old age if thou transgressest the Law!" "What mercy, then, since thou preachest mercy, in filling me with this weakness if my life must be darkened resisting it, and my future show no relief for it?" she insisted passionately. It was the cry old as the world. He looked at her sadly, hopelessly. "As for God, His way is perfect," he said. "How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! Thou shalt struggle with the truth, my daughter, but without fail and most readily thou shalt know when thou hast sinned!" She was past the influence of argument. Impulse controlled her now entirely. She would see if there were not an intelligence, even a religion which would see her sorrow from her own heart's position. She listened now to the words of her lover. "He is an exclaimer, a prophet of doom!" he was crying. "Love me and let us die!" Without in the entrance of the crypt some great-lunged fanatic was calling the multitude to harken to the prophetess. The Maccabee's lips were against her cheek as he continued to speak. "It is the end! There is no help for us. Love me, and let me be happy an hour before we perish! The Nazarene is right! The city is cursed! God's wrath is upon us. The hour is still ours. Love me and let us die!" Without the great voice, like an unwearying bell, was calling: "A sign! A sign! Behold the Deliverer! Come all ye who would share his triumph and hear! Hear! Come ye and be fed, ye hungry; be drunken, ye thirsty; love and be loved, ye forlorn!" Laodice stiffened in the Maccabee's clasp. "Dost thou hear?" she whispered. "It may be true!" He shook his head that he had bowed upon her shoulder. "Let us go," she urged. "Perchance he has comfort for us. Come, Hesper; let us see what he has for the forlorn." "Who?" he asked dully. "They say the Deliverer has come." He shook his head again, but with her two hands she lifted his face from its refuge, and urging with her eyes and her hands and her lips she led him toward the stairs. The Christian looked after them. "For there shall arise false Christs; and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect," he said sorrowfully. The horror of the city augmented hour by hour. The Jerusalem Laodice locked upon now was infinitely more afflicted than the one she had seen in the daylight days before. The walls were now outlined by fire which illuminated all the city that lay directly beneath the beacons. To the north gnomish outlines by hundreds against the flames showed where the soldiers of the factionists were placing the topmost stones upon an inner wall or curtain erected just within the Old Wall, which was by this time shaking and cracking under the assaults of a great siege-engine without. Titus, awakened by the fall of his tower, had immediately renewed the attack, although the morning was still some hours distant. But the citizens were no longer disinterested, no longer wrapped in hopelessness and dull misery. Hungry, sleepless, houseless, diseased and mad though they were, their hollow eyes gleamed now with hope that was almost defiant. Around the Maccabee and Laodice roared the comment of the multitude. "They say he climbed to the summit of the outer wall overlooking Tophet and remains there a target for the Roman arrows, which rebound from him!" cried one. "One of John's men says that the heads of the arrows are blunted and the most of them snapped in two when they are picked up." "The Romans have ceased to shoot at him!" "They say that his footprints in the dust on the Tyropean Bridge are Hebrew letters writing 'Elia' in gold!" "It is said that the inner Temple is rocking with trumpet blasts and that John is struck dead!" "They say that those who believe in him shall ask for whatever they would have and have it!" "The breaches in the First Wall have been healed; the old rock is back in its place!" "They say that the dead beyond the wall in Tophet are prophesying!" "There is a bolt of lightning fixed in the sky over Titus' camp. We are called to go forth and see it fall!" A voice swept by distantly crying that a woman had eaten her child. Crazed Posthumus, self-elected guardian of the Law, with the sacred roll under his arm, declaimed, without any of his audience attending, that prophecy which this horror fulfilled. All Jerusalem was in the streets; all Jerusalem poured into the immense open space where some palatial ruin stood, and melted in the giant concourse that gathered to hear the prophetess. Laodice and the Maccabee were unable to see the woman; only her voice, mystic, musical, pitched at a singing monotone, intoning rather than speaking, reached them from the distance. The long harangue, delivered as a chant, had long ago had a mesmerizing effect on her audience. Absolutely she controlled them; along the dead level of her preaching they maintained a low continuous murmur, accompanied by a slight slow swaying of the body; in the climaxes of the appeal they responded with cries and wild gestures, flinging themselves about in attitudes characteristic of their frenzy. In their faces was the reflection of a peculiar light that proved that derangement had settled over Jerusalem. It was the end of the reign of reason. "It is the abomination of desolation. Even so, it is finished! It is the time, it is full time, and Michael hath come. There are seventy weeks; behold them. The transgression is finished and the end hereto of all sins. Approacheth the hour for the reconciliation for iniquity and to bring in everlasting righteousness and to seal up the vision and prophecy and to anoint the most Holy! Prepare ye!" Somewhere in the city a voice that was heard even by the fighting-men on the wall in Akra cried: "The Sacrifice has failed! The Oblation is ceased! There is no Offering for the Altar; none is left to offer it!" The vast gathering heard it, and immediately from the high place of the prophetess came back the words, prompt and effective: "And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease!" Posthumus, buried in the midst of the crowd, was shouting, but over him the splendid mesmerism of the prophetess' voice soared. "The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children; they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people ... The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion; ... and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate!" Among the crowd now growing frantic, people began to cry: "A sign! A sign!" "Persecute and destroy them in anger from under the Heaven of the Lord!" "Lead us!" they still shouted. They were hungry; they had been abstinent; they had surrendered their riches and their comforts. It was not independence but necessities that they wanted now. The primal wants were at the surface. "Come up and be filled!" she cried. "Ask and it shall be given unto you! Eat of the grapes and the honey; drink of wine and warm milk; sleep as kings; be housed in mansions; be rulers; command potentates! Let kings bow at your footstools! Be replenished; be great! Suffering hath been your portion since the earth was; but the end is come. Draw nigh and have your recompense. Laugh, you whose eyes have trickled down with the waters of affliction! You in the low dungeon come forth and range all the free boundaries of the world. Whosoever hath gravel between his teeth, let them be grapes! He who sitteth alone, gather company and revel unto him! Feast, ye hungry; be drunken, ye thirsty; love and be loved, ye forlorn!" Laodice leaned forward suddenly and hung on the woman's words. "The time for sacrifice and humiliation is paid out! It was a long time! Now, behold in the generosity of his repentance, ye shall ask and nothing shall be denied. Speak! Ask! The whole world, Heaven and earth and the delights of all the years are yours, now and for all time!" At Laodice's side was Amaryllis. The Greek's face was pale but lighted with a certain enlightenment that was almost threatening. Startled and frightened Laodice moved back from the Greek, who moved with her, without a glance at the Maccabee. The voice of the prophetess swept on: "Ye have bowed to tyrants and bent your necks to murderers; ye have waged wars for pillagers and shared not in the spoils. Why are ye hungry now? Who is full-fed in these days of want, yourselves or your masters? A sword, a sword is drawn; uphold the arm that wields it!" "Sedition!" Amaryllis whispered, as the mob began to murmur and stir at this new doctrine. "For behold, he shall go forth with great fury to destroy and utterly to make away many!" Amaryllis bent so she could whisper in Laodice's ear. "John hath taken him a new woman to keep him cheerful this hour. I was not daring enough. Philadelphus' wife hath supplanted me. Your place with him is vacant. Go back and possess it!" "Why was appetite and desire and thirst of power and the love of riches lighted in you, but to be satisfied?" The prophetess' words swept in after Laodice's sudden fear of returning to Philadelphus. "We have expiated the sin of Adam, the greed of Jacob and the fault of David. The judgment is run out; ye have come to your own! Verily, I say unto you, if ye follow me in the name of him who hath come unto you, the world shall be yours!" Amaryllis still continued to whisper, and Laodice, fearing that the Maccabee might hear, drew farther away. He stood where she had left him, with his head lowered, waiting—at last a creature dependent on another's will. "Listen!" Amaryllis said. "I have been seeking you since midnight! Philadelphus' doubt was awakened in this woman. He questioned her, so minutely that she betrayed ignorance of many things she should have known had she been the real daughter of Costobarus. And when finally he taxed her with imposture, she robbed him of the dowry and fled to John. Convinced that you are his wife, he set forth and hath since searched for you without ceasing! See, over there! He seeks you, now!" Laodice looked the way the Greek pointed and saw Philadelphus, standing with lifted head and stretched to his full height, as if searching over the crowd for her. Panic seized her. She wrenched herself from the Greek's hold and, forgetting even the protection of Hesper who was within touch of her, she threw herself into the crowd behind her and struggled out of the press. Nathan, the Christian, saw her turn and followed instantly in the path she made. Once out, she turned in a bewildered manner this way and that. What refuge, now, for her, indeed, but the cavern under the ruin and the care of Hesper, until the end which should swallow them all! A trembling hand was laid on her arm. She whirled, expecting to find Philadelphus. Beside her, his old face radiant with emotion, stood Momus! THE FAITHFUL SERVANT Within the Roman lines was a bent and deformed figure of an old waif that the soldiers had picked up attempting to run the lines into Jerusalem the second day after the siege had been laid about the Holy City. The old man, though wrinkled and twisted and bowed, had fought with such terrible savagery and had incontinently laid in the dust in succession three of the camp's best fighting-men, that the Roman soldiers, for ever partizan to the strong man, had finally with great difficulty succeeded in trussing the old belligerent and had brought him before Titus. There they laid the twisted old burden before the young general and shamelessly told how he, thrice the age of the vanquished men, had finished them with despatch. It was evident that the old man was a Jew; it became also apparent that he was dumb and partly deaf, and further to their amazement and admiration, they discovered that his right leg and arm were too stiff for ordinary use and that he had done his wonderful execution with terrific left limbs. This saved his life and gave him a partial liberty. Titus, however, admitted to Carus that the old man's distress at being kept out of Jerusalem was pitiable enough to urge the young general to deport him and get him out of sight. For it was manifest that the old minotaur was in deep trouble. But his paralyzed tongue would not serve him, and his menial ignorance had not provided him with the means of telling his desire by writing. Titus was unable to understand from his signs anything further than that he wished to get into the city. The young general in one of his outbursts of generosity would have permitted this, but that Nicanor happened in at an evil moment and drew such pictures of calamitous effect in passing the old servant into Jerusalem that Titus was forced reluctantly and irritably to be convinced of the folly of his kindness. So here, through the terrible days of the siege, old Momus at times desperate and savage, at others piteously suppliant, wore on the sentries' peace of mind and stood like a shadow, for ever watching the white walls of the besieged city. The Romans were now within the city. Only Zion and the Temple held against them. A wall built with the thoroughness of David, the ancient, and solidified by the mortising of Time, ran directly from Hippicus to the Tyropean Valley, joining the tremendous fortifications of Moriah and so cut off Zion from the advance of the army. Securely intrenched within that quarter and the Temple, Simon and John began the last resistance which should tax Roman endurance and Roman patience as it had not been taxed before. Titus no longer lagged. Famine had long since become a powerful ally and the honor of the Flavian house rested upon his immediate subjugation of the rebellious city. He no longer expected capitulation; yet he did not neglect to be prepared for it and to encourage it. Though the heart of the historian Josephus broke, he did not fail to serve his patron as mediator, though without hope. Titus himself, as from time to time the horror of his work impressed itself upon him, made overtures to the factionists, neglecting no art or inducement which should convince the seditious that their resistance was foolhardy, even mad. At such times, Nicanor's face became contemptuous and Carus himself frowned at the young general's attitude. But the spirit of a Roman and the traditions of a soldier even could not prevent the young man from weakening at times before the charnel pit in Tophet where countless thousands of vultures fattened with roaring of wings and hissing of combat. But under an ever-thickening veil of horrid airs, the struggle went on. The Roman Ides of July arrived. Titus had erected banks upon which his engines were raised to batter the walls of the Temple. From Titus' camp, the Romans on sick leave, the commissaries, those attached to the army who were not fighting-men, and old Momus, saw first, before the attack on the Temple began, a soft increasing dun-colored vapor rise between the Temple and Antonia. It issued from the cloister at the northwest which joined the Roman tower. As they watched, they saw that vapor grow into a pale but intensely luminous smoke, as if fine woods and burning metals were consumed together. In a moment the whole north-west section was embraced in a sublime pall of fire. John was burning away the connection between the Temple and the tower and was making the sacred edifice four-square. As soon as it became confirmed, in the minds of the watchers in the Roman camp, that the Temple had been fired, the old mute among them seemed to become wholly unbalanced. Without warning, he leaped upon the nearest sentry who, not expecting the attack, went down with a clatter of armor and a shout of astonishment. The next instant the old man was making across the intervening space between the camp and Jerusalem as fast as his stiff legs could carry him. The purple sentry sprang to his feet and strung an arrow, but before he could send it singing, the old minotaur was mixed with a second soldier in such confusion that the first sentry hesitated to shoot lest he should kill his fellow. Another moment and a second soldier was struggling in the impediment of his armor in the dust and the old mute was again hobbling straight away toward the walls of Jerusalem. He was now a fair mark for the first sentry, but that Roman's rancor died after he had seen his own disgrace covered by the overthrow of his fellow. Two of Titus' scouts next stood in the path of the running old man. One went to the ground so suddenly and so violently that the watchers, now breaking into howls of delight, knew that he had been tripped. The other stood but a moment longer, than he, too, rolled into the dust. The old man might have gone no farther at this juncture, for at every latest triumph he left a crimson soldier murderous with shame. But before the arrow next strung to overtake him could fly, Titus, Carus and Nicanor, accompanied by their escort, rode between the fugitive and the men he had defeated. "There goes our minotaur," Carus said quietly. Titus drew up his horse and looked. Nicanor with a sidelong glance awaited the young Roman's command to his escort to ride down the fugitive. But he waited, and continued to wait, while Titus with lifted head and with indecision in his eyes watched the deformed old shape hobble on toward the Wall of Circumvallation. "Shall we let him go?" Nicanor inquired coldly. "If some of my legionaries or those erratic Jews fail to get him between here and Jerusalem, he shall get into Jerusalem. But by Hector, he will earn his entry!" They saw the old man mount by the causeway of earth which the Romans had built over the siege wall for the passage of the troops, saw him an instant outlined against the sky on the summit, and the next instant he disappeared. Titus touched his horse and rode at a trot toward the causeway himself. He would see the end of this mad venture. In the hour of sunrise the sentinel above the North Gate in the Old Wall saw among the ruins of the houses of Coenopolis a figure dodging painfully hither and thither. It was not habited in the brasses of the Roman armor. Also, it hobbled as if lame and ran toward the gate fast closed below the sentry. The Jew, too intensely interested in the great climax enacting in the city below, ceased to remark on this figure. Presently, however, he looked again into ruined Coenopolis. He saw there this un-uniformed figure wrapped in fierce embrace with a young legionary. Almost before the sentry's astonishment shaped itself into exclamation, the legionary was tumbled aside as if crushed and the old figure hobbled on. Suddenly there appeared in the path of the wayfarer a galloping horseman, who drew his mount back on his haunches, then spurred him to ride down the old man. The sentry on the Old Wall made a choked sound, unslung his bow and sent an arrow singing. There was a shout and the figure of the horseman plunged from his saddle face down on the earth. The wayfarer flung himself away and rushed toward the wall, only a little distance away. But all Coenopolis seemed to swarm now with legionaries, afoot or horseback. The Jewish sentry rushed to the edge of the tower overhanging the gate. "Open!" he shouted below. "One cometh!" With a rattle and clang of falling bars and chains the gate of the Old Wall swung. Disregarding the known wishes of Titus, two of the legionaries simultaneously let fly their javelins. But the mute, hobbling uncertainly, was not a steady mark and under the whistle of arrows received and sent, he blundered up the causeway leading to the Gate of the Old Wall, and the portal slowly and ponderously closed behind him. Wild howls of derision and exultation went up from the Jews. Many of the soldiers clambered down to satisfy their curiosity about the latest addition to the starving garrison. But he proved to be a deformed old man, mute and weary, who was distressed for fear he would be detained by them and who hobbled out into the besieged city and posted as fast as his legs could carry him toward the house of Amaryllis, the Seleucid. But at the edge of a great open space where the Herodian palaces had stood he came upon a concourse which seemed to be all Jerusalem. It was a gaunt horde, shouting, raging, prophesying and drowning the roar of battle at the Temple fortifications with the sound of religious frenzy. Momus, fresh from the orderly camp of Titus, was struck with terror. He would have retreated and followed some side street toward his destination, when he caught sight of a girl on the very outskirts of this mob. Momus laid a trembling hand on her arm. She threw up her head with a start. The tremulous old man, weakened from his long and superhuman struggle to enter the doomed city, held Laodice to his breast while she stroked his rough cheeks and murmured things that he did not hear and which she did not realize in the rush of her helplessness and dismay. At the corner of Moriah and the Old Wall, the tumult was infernal. Out of the suffocating sallow smoke from the tuns of burning tar heaved over the fortification upon the engines and their managers, the stones from the catapults soared into view and fell upon the sun-colored marbles that paved the Court of the Gentiles. Clouded by the vapor, targets for the immense missiles, the Jews heaving and writhing in personal encounters appeared black and inhuman. Every combatant shouted; the great stones screamed; the boiling pitch hissed and roared, and the thunder of the conflict shook the Temple to its very foundations. Without, the Romans planted scaling ladders, mounted them and were pitched backward into the moat regularly. Regularly, the ladders were set up again after struggle, mounted without hesitation and thrown down again, with an inevitability which furnished a grim travesty to the struggle. The two remaining towers were set in position against the base of Moriah and resumed execution. One after another the engines of the Romans were hauled into position, and worked unceasingly until covered with burning oil from the battlements above and consumed. Others were hauled into place; fresh detachments of Romans seized upon the scaling-ladders or mounted to the towers, and the roar of the conflict never abated. Meanwhile on the slopes of Zion the whole of Jerusalem, gaunt, dying and demoniacal, was packed in the ruins of the palace of Herod. Old Momus with triumph and tearful exultation was holding out to Laodice a heavy roll of writings, dangling important seals, ancient papers showing yellow beside the fresh parchment, and an old record dark with long handling. Here were the proofs of her identity! Laodice shrank from him with a gasp that was almost a cry. Behold, the faithful old servant had suffered she knew not what to bring such evidence as would force her to do that which she believed she could not do and survive! Momus sought to put the papers in her hands, but she thrust them away and he stood looking at her in amazement and sorrow. Nathan, the Christian, stood close to her. From the opposite side, Philadelphus rounded the outskirts of the mob, searching. He did not see her. She flung herself between Momus and Nathan and cowered down until Philadelphus had passed from sight. When she lifted her head, Momus was gazing at her with the light of shocked comprehension growing in his eyes. Nathan, the Christian, touched her. "Who was that man?" he asked gravely. She rose and laid her hands on the Christian's shoulders. "My husband," she said. Something had happened at the Temple. She saw the Jews at the wall recoil from the dust of battle, rally, plunge in and disappear. From out that presently shone now and again, then with increasing frequency and finally in great numbers, the brass mail of Roman legionaries. Titus' forces had scaled the wall. From her position, she saw running toward them John of Gischala, with his long garments whipping about him, wrapping his tall figure in live cerements. He was disarmed and bleeding. She saw next Amaryllis, with compassionate uplifted hands stop in his way; saw next the Gischalan thrust her aside with a blow and the next instant disappear as if the earth had swallowed him. Nathan was speaking to her. "How often, O my daughter, we recognize truth and deny it because it does not give us our way! God put a sense of the right in us. We transgress it oftener than we mistake it!" The roar of the turning battle and the mob about her drowned his next words, except, "You can not be happy in iniquity; neither blessed; but you are sure to be afraid. Right has its own terror, but there is at least courage in being right, against your desires." He was talking continuously, but only at times did the wind from the uproar sweep his fervent words to her. "Christ had His own conflict with Himself. What had become of us had He listened to the tempter in the wilderness, or failed to accept the cup in the Garden of Gethsemane! How much we have the happiness of Christ in our hands! Alas! that His should be a sorrowful countenance in Heaven! "The love of a man for a woman was near to the Master's heart! How can you feel that you must love and be loved in spite of Him! Pity yourself all you may you can not then be pitied so much as He pities you! "Love as long and as wilfully as you will, and then it is only a little space. The time of the supremacy of Christ cometh surely, and that is all eternity! Which will you do—please yourself for an hour, or be pleased by the will of God through all time? Love is in the hands of the Lord; you can not consign it longer than the little span of your life to the hands of the devil." Momus, in whose mind had passed an immense surmise, was again at her side. "O daughter of a noble father," his dumb gaze said, "wilt thou put away that virtue which was born in thee and let my labor come to naught?" But the preaching of Nathan and the reproach of Momus were feeble, compared to the great tumult that went on in her soul. She had seen John of Gischala cast Amaryllis aside. Even the Greek's sympathy was hateful to him. Yet when Laodice had first entered the house of Amaryllis, the woman had been obliged to dismiss John from her presence for his own welfare and the welfare of the city. Why this change? Amaryllis was no less beautiful, no less brilliant, no less attractive than she had once been; but the Gischalan had wearied of her. Laodice recalled that she had not been surprised to see the man throw Amaryllis aside. It seemed to be the logical outcome of love such as theirs. How, then, was she to escape that which no other woman escaped who loved without law? In the soul of that stranger who had called himself Hesper, were lofty ideals, which had not been the least charm which had attracted her to him. Was she, then, to dislodge these holy convictions, to take her place in his heart as one falling short of them, or were they still to exist as standards which he loved and which she could not reach? In either event, how long would he love—what was the length of her probation before she, too, would encounter the inevitable weariness? It occurred to her, then, how nearly the natural law of such love paralleled the religious prohibition that the Christian had shown to her. However harsh and unjust the sentence seemed, it was rational. With her own eyes she had seen its predictions borne out. Already the relief of the sorrowing righteous possessed her. She turned to the Christian. "Take me to my husband," she said. "Now! While I have strength." Momus caught the old Christian by the arm and, signing eagerly that he would lead, hurried away in advance of the two down into the ravine and crossed to the house of Amaryllis. There were no soldiers to stop them about the house. When no response was made to her knock, Laodice opened the door and passed in. Her old conductors followed her. Amaryllis sat in her ivory chair; opposite her in the exedra was Philadelphus. At sight of him, the last of the soft color went out of Laodice's face. A curve of despair marked the corners of her mouth and she seemed to grow old before those that looked at her. Philadelphus and the Greek sprang to their feet, the instant the group entered. Laodice waited for no preliminary. Amaryllis' design was patent to her; it was part of her sorrow that now Hesper would be free to the devices of this deceitful woman. So she did not look at the Greek. She addressed Philadelphus in a voice from which all hope and vivacity had gone. "I have brought proofs. Behold them!" Nathan, the Christian, stood forth. "I, Nathan of Jerusalem, met and talked with this Laodice, daughter of Costobarus, in company with Aquila, the Ephesian, three men-servants in all the panoply and state of a coming princess three leagues out of Ascalon, her native city. I buried by the roadside her father, who died of pestilence on their journey hither. I bear witness that she is the daughter of Costobarus and thy wedded wife." A great light sprang into the face of the Greek. Philadelphus, nervous, albeit the news he heard filled him with pleasure, stood and waited. The Christian stepped back and Momus, bowing, approached and handed the leather roll into the none too steady hands of the Ephesian. He opened it and drew forth parchments. Aloud he read a minute description of Laodice from the rabbi of the synagogue in Ascalon; under the great seals of the Roman state, he found and read the oath of the prefect, that such a maiden as the rabbi had described had been married before him to Philadelphus Maccabaeus fourteen years before. Then followed the depositions of forty Jews and Gentiles who were nurses, tradesmen and other people like to have daily contact with the young woman in her house, setting entirely at naught any claim that Laodice was other than the wife who had been supplanted by an adventuress. Philadelphus did not read them all. Before he made an end he dropped the documents and flung wide his arms. But Laodice with a countenance frozen with suffering held him off for a moment. "Go," she said to the old Christian, "unto Hesper and lead him into the belief of the Lord Jesus Christ which is mine." The old Christian approached the fountain in the center of the andronitis and taking up water in his palm sprinkled a few drops on her hair while she knelt. "In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, I baptize thee, Laodice. Amen!" While she knelt, he said: "I shall search for him also. Christ have mercy on thee now and for ever. Farewell." He was gone. When Nathan, the Christian, stepped into the streets once more there was an immense accession of tumult about him. He turned to look toward the corner of the Old Wall in time to behold Jews in armor and Romans in blazing brass rush together in a great cloud of dust as the Old Wall went in and Titus swept down upon Jerusalem. At the same instant from the ruined high place upon Zion came a roar of stupendous menace. The Christian, with sublime indifference to danger, kept his path toward the concourse from which he had taken Laodice. As he ascended the opposite slope of the ravine, he saw, descending toward the battle, the front of a rushing multitude, as irresistible and as destructive as a great sea in a storm. He saw that the mob was turning toward Akra, and to avoid it, the Christian climbed up to the Tyropean Bridge, and from that point viewed the whole of Jerusalem sweeping down upon the heathen. At the head of the inundation passed a melodious voice crying: "An end, an end is come upon the four corners of the land! Draw near every man with his destroying weapon in his hands for the glory of the Lord! For His house is filled with cloud and the Court is full of the brightness of the Lord's glory! A sword! A sword is sharpened! The way is appointed that the sword may come! For the time for favor to Zion is here; yea, the set time is come!" After this poured a gaunt horde numbering tens of thousands. They bore paving-stones, stakes, posts, railings, garden implements, weapons from kitchens, from hardware booths and from armories; anything that one man or a body of men could wield; torches and kettles of tar; chains and ropes; knotted whips, and bundles of fagots; iron spikes, instruments of torture, anything and everything which could be turned as a weapon or to inflict pain upon the Roman, who believed at this moment that Jerusalem was his! The Christian overlooked this ferocious inundation and shook his head. On a mound near him stood the spirit of the mob concentrated and personified. It was crazed Posthumus. He was screaming: "It is finished; the law is run out! All prophecy is fulfilled!" And over his head he was swinging a parchment fiercely burning. It was the Scroll of the Law! After uncounted minutes, vibrating with roar, the terrible flood rushed by. Feeble arms clasped the Christian about the knees and he looked down on the tangled white locks of the palsied man, who had searched for him until he had found him. The Christian laid his hand on the man's head but did not speak. At the breach in the Old Wall, the watchers on that almost deserted street saw the brazen wave of four legions gather and sweep forward to gain ground in the city before the mob swept down on them. Between the two warring bodies, one orderly, prepared but apprehensive, the other mad and perishing, was a considerable space. Fighting still went on at the breach in the walls, but the supreme conflict of a comparatively small body of soldiers and an uncounted horde was not yet precipitated. Ordinarily, the Roman army could have reduced any popular insurrection with half that number of men. But at present the legionaries confronted desperate citizens who were simply choosing their own way to die. Reason and human fear long since had ceased to inspire them. They were believing now and following a prophet because it was the final respite before despair. There was no alternative. It was death whatever they did, unless, in truth, this splendid sorceress was indeed the Voice of the Risen Prince. Force would be of no avail against them. Madness had flung them against Rome; only some other madness would turn them back. The Christian, from his commanding position, expected anything. It was the moment which would show if the false prophet would triumph. If the four legions went down before the multitude, it would mean the ascendancy of a strange woman over Israel, and the obliteration of the faith in Jesus Christ in the Holy Land. It can not be said that the Christian watched the crisis with a calm spirit. He did not wish to see the heathen overthrow the ancient people of God, nor could he behold the triumph of a false Christ. He put his hands together and prayed. A figure appeared between the two bodies of combatants, rushing on intensely, to grapple. It was a tall commanding form, clothed in garments that glittered for whiteness. By the step, by the poise of the head, the Christian recognized Seraiah. The front of the multitude fell on their faces at that moment as if he had struck them down. Out of the forefront, the prophetess appeared. The Christian heard her splendid voice out of the uproar, and while he gazed, he saw mad Seraiah turn away from her, with the front of the mob turning after him, as a needle turns to the pole. In that fatal moment of pause, out of which the warning cry of the prophetess rang wildly, the Roman tribune, in view for a moment under the blowing veils of smoke, flung up his sword, the Roman bugle sang, and the brassy legions of Titus hurled themselves upon the halted mob. The Christian dropped his head into the bend of his elbow and strove to shut out the sound. The nervous arms of the palsied man at his feet gripped him frantically. Up from the corner of the Old Wall, came the prolonged "A-a-a-a!" of dying thousands. Jerusalem had fallen. The foremost of the mob, turning with Seraiah, escaped the onslaught of the Romans, and as the mad Pretender strode toward the broad street from which the Tyropean Bridge crossed to the demesnes of the Temple, they followed him fatuously, blind to the death behind them and the oncoming slaughter in which they might fall. Seraiah passed above the spot where the sorrowful Christian stood, crossed the great causeway leading toward the Royal Portico and after him six thousand blind and insane enthusiasts followed, expecting imminent miracle. Above them towered the heights of Moriah, now veiled in smoke. Up the great white bank of stairs they rushed after him, facing an ordeal which must mean a baptism in fire, and on through a curtain of luminous smoke into a gate pillared in flame, up into the Royal Portico, resounding with the tread of the advancing Destroyer, out into the great Court of Gentiles wrapped in cloud through which the Temple showed, a stupendous cube of heat, through the Gate Beautiful where the Keeper no longer stood, thence into the Women's Court, raftered with red coals, up smoking stones tier upon tier till the roof of the Royal Portico was reached. At the brink of the pinnacle, they saw through tumbling clouds Seraiah towering. He was looking down through masses of smoke upon the City of Delight, perishing. They who had followed watched, uplifted with terror and frenzy, and while they waited for the miracle which should save, the roof crumbled under them and a grave of thrice heated rock received them and covered them up. Below, Nathan, the Christian, seized upon the shoulders of the Maccabee as he was dashing after the thousands. His face was black with terror for Laodice. He struggled to throw off Nathan, crying futilely against the uproar that Laodice was perishing. "Comfort thee!" the Christian shouted in his ear. "She is saved. She sent me to thee." The Maccabee stopped, as if he realized that he need not go on, but had not comprehended what was said to him. Nathan dragged him out of the way, still choked with people struggling to pass on to the Temple or to flee from it. Half-way down the Vale of Gihon, where speech was a little more possible, the Maccabee, who had been crying questions, made the old man hear. "Where is she? Where is she?" "She has returned to her husband. In love with thee, she has done that only which she could do and escape sin. She has gone to shelter with him whom she does not love!" The Maccabee seized his head in his hands. "It is like her—like her!" he groaned. In the Christian's heart he knew how narrowly Laodice had made her lover's mark for her. "It is her wish," Nathan continued, "that I teach thee Christ whom she hath received." "How can I receive Him, when He sent her from me?" the unhappy man groaned, unconscious of his contradictions. "How canst thou reject Him when His teaching led thy love to do that which thine own lips have confessed to be the better thing?" "Then what of myself, when I love where I should not love?" the Maccabee insisted. "You may suffer and sin not," the Christian said kindly. The unhappy man dropped to his knees. "O Christ, why should I resist Thee!" he groaned. "Thou hast stripped me and made me see that my loss is good!" The Christian laid his hands on the Maccabee's head. "Dost thou believe?" he asked. "Will Christ accept me, coming because I must?" "It is not laid down how we shall baptize in the thirst of a famine," Nathan said, "yet He who sees fit to deny water never yet hath denied grace." But the Christian's hand extended over the kneeling man was caught in a grip steadied with intense emotion. The unknown had seized him. But for his feeling that this interruption was necessary to the welfare of another soul, the Christian would not have paused in his ministry. The phantom straightened himself with a superb reinvestment of manhood. "Thou, son of the Maccabee, Philadelphus!" he exclaimed to the kneeling man. The Ephesian's arms sank. "Who art thou that knoweth me?" he asked in a dead voice. "I am all that plague and sin hath left of thy servant Aquila," the phantom declared. The Maccabee lifted his face for what should follow this revelation. It was only a manifestation of his subjection to another will than his own. He was not interested—he who was hoping to die. "Hear me, and curse me!" Aquila went on. "But save thy wife yet. I say unto thee, master, that she whom thou hast sheltered in the cavern is thy wife, Laodice!" The Maccabee struggled up to his feet and gazed with stunned and unbelieving eyes at this wreck of his pagan servant, who went on precipitately. "Her I plotted against at the instigation of Julian of Ephesus. Her, my mistress, Salome the Cyprian, robbed and hath impersonated thus long to her safety in the house of the Greek. This hour, through ignorance of thine own identity, through my fault, she hath gone reluctantly to his arms. Curse me and let me die!" The Maccabee seized the hair at his temples. For a moment the awful gaze he bent upon Aquila seemed to show that the gentler spirit had been dislodged from his heart. Then he cried: "God help us both, Aquila! My fault was greater than thine!" He turned and fled toward the house of the Greek. The four legions of Titus swept after him. Aquila lifted his eyes for the first time and gazed at Nathan. "I cursed thee for sparing me to such an existence as was mine! Behold, father, thou didst bless me, instead. I am ready to die." "Wait," the Christian said peacefully. A moment later, the Maccabee dashed into the andronitis of Amaryllis. After him sprang a terrified servant crying: "The Roman! The Roman is upon us!" A roar of such magnitude that it penetrated the stone walls of Amaryllis' house, swept in after the servant. Quaking menials began to pour into the hall. Among them came the blue-eyed girl, the athlete and Juventius the Swan. These three joined their mistress who stood under a hanging lamp. Into the passage from the court, left open by the frightened servants, swept the prolonged outcry of perishing Jerusalem. Over it all thundered the boom of the siege-engines shaking the earth. The slaves slipped down upon their knees and began to groan together. The silver coins on the lamp began to swing; the brass cyanthus which Amaryllis had recently drained of her last drink of wine moved gradually to the edge of the pedestal upon which she had placed it. The dual nature of the uproar was now distinct; organized warfare and popular disaster at the same time. The Roman was sweeping up the ancient ravine. Jerusalem had fallen. The gradual crescendo now attained deafening proportions; the hanging lamp increased its swing; the silver coins began to strike together with keen and exquisitely fine music. Juventius the Swan, with his dim eyes filled with horror, was looking at them. The peculiar desperate indifference of the wholly hopeless seized him. His long white hands began to move with the motion of the lamp; the music of the meeting coins became regular; he caught the note, and mounting, with a bound, the rostrum that had been his Olympus all his life, began to sing. The melody of his glorious voice struggled only a moment for supremacy with the uproar of imminent death and then his increasing exaltation gave him triumph. The great hall shook with the magnificent power of his only song! The Maccabee confronted Amaryllis, with fierce question in his eyes. She pointed calmly at the heavy white curtain pulled to one side and caught on a bracket. The brass wicket over the black mouth of the tunnel was wide. Without a word, the Maccabee plunged into it and was swallowed up. Amaryllis looked after him. "And no farewell?" she said. The thunder of assault began at her door. Juventius sang it down. The athlete and the girl crept toward the mouth of the black passage, wavered a moment and plunged in. After them tumbled a confusion of artists and servants who were swallowed up, and the hall was filled only with music.

For all intents and purposes, Riverdale is a musical. In big Broadway productions, outsized emotion spills over past the limits of reality to the point that it can only be expressed through performance. That also happens a lot on this television show, which won plenty of fans with an early scene in which Veronica and Cheryl Blossom decide to resolve their rivalry with a dance-off. But the writing is also oriented around the spectacle of pleasure in a more general sense, more than willing to break with plausibility for the sake of indulging its teen hormones. (In this respect, as I have said on numerous occasions in the past, Riverdale has more in common with pornography than any other genre.) So when this show actually starts doing showtunes, it doesn’t feel like a departure, but rather like an attainment of its truest self. The series’ first go at a proper musical episode faltered by resisting its own nature. The writers attempted to plug the high school’s mounting of Carrie into the ongoing thread of the Black Hood, leaving the production itself as an appendage hanging off of the serial killer business. “Chapter Fifty-One” cues itself up for the same issue. It’s another recent stage adaptation of a cult classic film about the carnivorous side of adolescent sociology — and, for this Great White Way purist, likewise hobbled by bland high-polish Pasek-and-Paul-ian songs impossible to recall by the next day. The Broadway purist in me also objects to the choreography that would look more at home on a strip club stage than on 42nd Street. But because they’re not original compositions (probably for the best that the show doesn’t even try), and because this episode marries Heathers and the ongoing threat of The Farm more holistically than its predecessor managed its story elements, a viewer’s inclined to let that much slide. This hour just keeps going, from song to song and outburst to outburst. When an episode is so gratuitously fun — big fun, even! — minor sins are easy to move past. Most of the sins playing out at Riverdale High, however, are decidedly major. Chief among them is wrath; hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and the now-jilted Cheryl Blossom gives the expression new meaning with the depths of her contempt for ex Toni Topaz. Among this episode’s strengths is its decision to foreground the discord flowering in the show’s richest and most diverting relationship dynamic, a melodrama which has an emotional heft befitting a musical even on a normal week. Cheryl Blossom forcibly claimed the role of “mythic bitch” Heather Chandler for herself at the end of the last installment, and that steamroller-style domineering puts her on a collision course with Kevin and Evelyn’s authority as co-directors when Toni Topaz gets involved as dance instructor. Truly, we are in boom times for pleated miniskirts! They resolve their differences, as they must to rebalance the delicate erotic equilibrium of the Riverdale atmosphere, but not before working the usual post-breakup beats for all they’re worth. Toni Topaz would like to be the bigger person and cooperate professionally, but that doesn’t gibe with Cheryl Blossom’s absolute scorched-earth-salted-land policy with former lovers. So begins a rampage of rebounding, as each attempts to prove to both the other and themselves that they’re totally over it and not even mad. This clears the way for plenty of catty bons mots not out of joint with the Heathers homage, and more importantly, the show’s first feint at a threesome. The ménage à trois always been a glaring absence from the show’s litany of provocations, especially considering that the comic book source material was all but built around the notion of two girls being hot for one guy. But it’s Toni Topaz who spearheads the trio effort, before her conscience gets the better of her and she realizes that sex cannot fill the void in her heart left by her one and only. Though this is the latest in a long series of cop-outs dangling a big set piece under the audience’s nose before snatching it away, Toni Topaz is right that it’s not right. Lest we forget that jointly sleeping with Lizzie McGuire tore apart Dan and Vanessa on Gossip Girl. Musicals have a way of thickening the pheromones in the air, and everyone’s susceptible to their influence. Veronica doesn’t take the news of her parents’ long-time-coming divorce kindly, and jumps back under the covers with Reggie to comfort herself. Archie’s got the love bug as well, pushing Josie to get serious about going steady despite her correct assessment of their relationship as not destined to last. But she, too, is helpless against the seductive influence of a good toe-tapper and lets herself give in to Archie’s wooing. Jughead and Betty reignite the spark between them by igniting the spark that will set the trailer on fire. (Is Betty turning firebug? Please, yes.) Still, they are all minor celestial objects orbiting the blinding sun that is the Topaz-Blossom union. This episode works where Carrie didn’t by joining them all within the greater medium of the Heathers production, which fuses with the running menace of The Farm instead of bumping up against it. A brainwashed Kevin cedes control of the annual musical to Evelyn Evernever, who promptly turns the school show into a feeder system for her surrogate family. Veronica puts the joke here in plain language: “Heathers is being used to indoctrinate students into a cult.” Any actor will tell you that the standard experience of joining a theatre troupe is not radically dissimilar. It’s a good gag, and its follow-through proves that the bit has legs. Evelyn follows the teachings of Stanislavski and fosters a Method approach to acting, placing special emphasis on instructor Lee Strasberg’s philosophy of psychological analysis. Under the guise of freeing up the emotional machinery that powers a thespian, Evelyn goes about mentally breaking down each member of her cast — a campy play on the “tyrannical director” archetype. “And that is what we in the theatre call a breakthrough,” she purrs, knowing that she’s got her victims right where she wants them. Two arresting images bring her scheme to a head, each a creepy tableau of sterile, calm evil. In the first, an assembly of spotless white gathers and dons old-fashioned blue-and-red 3D glasses to watch what appears to be a mock marriage ceremony between Kevin and Moose. In the second, which closes out the episode, the members of The Farm rise from their seats in a unison slow clap. Standing out from the hivemind, showing his face at last, is Chad Michael Murray as Edgar Evernever. “Chapter Fifty-One” seamlessly and cleverly melds the seasonlong arc with the self-contained concerns of this episode, earning the genuine eeriness of its final moments. It’s knowing and cohesive and devilishly enjoyable, and Riverdale usually manages two of the three at once. But going musical brings out the best side of Riverdale; it clears new space at the top for a show that keeps innovating ways to go over it. - I knew something was amiss the second that everyone was told to come to the “party” in costume. They don’t even let you eat in those! - What’s great about Riverdale’s third season is that enough has transpired to allow for phrases like “especially after the tragedy of last year’s musical.” - As ever, I wonder to what extent the viewership feels any attachment to the material to which the show alludes. Do today’s teens love Heathers now that it’s been remolded into a Broadway sensation? Are the little theatre nerds logging Spotify plays on the original soundtrack actually watching Daniel Waters’ film? Teens, please, sound off in the comments. Let me be your Margaret Mead. Educate me about your ways. - The Choni fans have lots to squeal over this week, but the dialogue is never better than the following exchange: “Did you have a lobotomy for breakfast? You’re wearing my signature color!” “You don’t own the color red, Cheryl.” - “Just two single straight dudes, doin’ some theater.” God bless us, every one, and Amen.

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Make sure to also check out my Top 10 Male Sex Toys Of 2017. If you have a favorite to add please leave them in the comments below! Beautifully crafted to look just like a real vagina, masturbation will never be the same again. Slide this gorgeous colored masturbator over your member with plenty of water-based lube and enjoy the interior thrilling textures that will send you into ecstasy with each thrust. Supple and realistic material, responsive to temperature play AND open ended for suction control. What Others Have Said: “All can say is unbelievable, it felt pretty good, much to my shock. Could have easily have cum after a few minutes of action but decided my wife was still more fun so we put it to one side.” One of the most realistic dildos you may ever come across, this girthy 7-inch dildo has a lifelike head, raised veins, balls and even a real feel when used internally and externally, if a realistic dildo is something you’re after, this BASICS dildo is for you. Firm yet flexible to bring to you intense, incredible internal stimulation. Other Thoughts From Users: “I’ve now had this dildo for over a year it’s still like brand new. I’ve used it more than a hundred times. It’s great for them lonely nights. I found it easy to rub plenty of lube onto the dildo and slowly insert it inch by inch. Either for vaginal or anal use” If you’re a fan of the renowned pornstar Jenna Jameson you are going to love her amazing vagina fleshlight, made from superskin technology, that makes it look and feel like the real thing you will be lost in her deep, tight and ribbed canal for hours on end. Experience and experiment with temperature play to really heighten the pleasure and make this vagina even more realistic. Easy to use, easy to clean and the outer casing is also discreet to the naked eye so you have nothing to worry about. “I slid my manhood into the inviting opening and forced myself in hard and fast. The suction is excellent. I came in a matter of minutes. So the long and short of it, guys, is you have got to try it.” With a lifelike ass opening, this ass masturbator will send you into to another world of pure pleasure, but the visually pleasing aspect isn’t all, the interior of this ass masturbator is ribbed for your pleasure and with each thrust inside, it only feels better and better. Remember to apply plenty of water based lube to really make the experience even better and to avoid any discomfort. With Mini Andi, you can also slip in a bullet vibrator to the base and send tingles around your manhood just to push you over the edge that bit more. More Customers Thoughts: “The ribbed texture of this toy is incredible and doesn’t feel like it’s too much, providing the right amount of stimulation without giving you friction burn. It feels incredible.” This soft and floppy penis does exactly what it says on the tin, it’s flaccid, squishy and entirely soft even down to its balls. Made from TPE for an authentic texture for you to enjoy, this 8-inch floppy is ideal for anyone who enjoys the feel and the thrill of a flaccid penis, anyone who wants to enjoy some kinky roleplay, however there’s of course a lot more to do with a floppy penis and what you do with it is your choice. More Users Thoughts: “Amazing fun to just squeeze and grab. The realistic feel is amazing and can start off foreplay with your partner easily.” Riley Reid is an infamous star inside the sex industry and she did us a favour by modelling her own vagina on to this incredible fleslight. A 9-inch canal awaits you with a realistic vaginal opening, along with realistic lips and a tight, ribbed textured interior is longing to send you into another dimension of pleasure. Made from SuperSkin technology to really vamp up the realism and pleasure, this fleshlight will go down in history. Other Customer Thoughts: “And to say it felt realistic doesn’t do it justice. For me, the texture, length, grip and whole experience were a 10 out 10 on intensity. It definitely felt realistic and the fact my OH was using it on me was a huge turn on.” The detailing on this dildo is wonderful, it has lifelike veins, ridges, bumps and head. The only thing it’s missing is a pair of balls but instead of this, they have included a suction cup which means it can be attached to any hard and flat surface making it ideal for any man or woman looking for a bit of versatile pleasure. Ideal for beginners and more advanced dildo users, this king cock will satisfy any anus or vagina and is there to meet your needs. More Thoughts From Users: “It looks very realistic with veins and a pink pronounced head. It goes great in a harness. We had no problems with it whatsoever. This is now our number one go to dildo. I love it.” This realistic ‘Holly’ vagina has jaw-dropping outer detailing from the plush pink almost swollen in appearance lips and opening, a soft and smooth texture but the fun doesn’t end here. The real fun starts when you apply water-based lube and slip inside to find tear jerking detailing and even a G-spot for you to pleasure. Add a bullet vibrator to her base for even more pleasure. Easy to use, grip and clean, Holly will never disappoint you. What Others Have Said: “Would very much recommend this product. It feels lovely with the real feel texture and is easy to use and clean. A must-have!” Discreetly stored in a disguised ‘beer can’ this ass fleshlight is hidden away but once open, you can find an extremely tight butt hole with outer detailing that even the most sceptic will raise their eyebrows at, once you plunge inside you are met with SuperSkin technology and a tight ribbed inner canal that will make you weak at the knees with just a few thrusts. Experiment with temperature play, suction, use plenty of water-based lube and enjoy this flexible yet tight realistic ass fleshlight. What More Customers Have Said: “I’d say this feels better than anal sex, especially if you hold your hand around the seal at the top to give you an amazing suction.” I’ve mentioned Ella a few times on my website and there’s a reason for that, she’s fantastic. Her plush lips look inviting and feel inviting, she’s small enough to discreetly store away when she’s not in use, she has an incredible super-tight canal, a hole in her base where you can pop in a vibrator, she’s easy to clean and easy to use. Ella is also an incredible price for something so genuinely good at her job. More Opinions On Ella: “I think this is a fantastic toy and great for someone who is looking for a tight male masturbator with an exciting texture, without having to fork out a lot of money. Also ideal for adding a bit of spice to couple’s play.” Just like the beer can disguised fleshlight above, this mouth sex toy is exactly the same. Nobody will ever know the pleasure of what’s housed inside this discreet and ‘normal’ beer can. Made with SuperSkin material this blowjob simulator features a mini Swallow inner texture that allows your imagination to run wild as this mouth swallows every last drop. Tight, textured and even featuring realistic looking lips and mouth opening, this mouth fleshlight is a masturbation game changer. What Others Have Said: “This was my first venture into the world of Fleshlight, and I definitely made the right choice. The internal canal changes texture every few inches, so you can really find the sweet spot that does it for you. The material is so soft and very realistic” I wanted something a little different to end this list with and the sex toy in question is this male butt masturbator. Easy to take anywhere with you with its discreet storage case and versatile size, the internal textures of this butt masturbator are something I cannot even do justice, super-soft, made of SuperSkin, nodules, bumps and twists and turns to really test how long you can last, that is of course if the tight, realistic opening doesn’t set you off straight away. More Opinions From Customers: “Oh, my god – boys, ya need this. This is my first Fleshlight, and I gotta tell you I would’ve bought sooner if I knew they were this good! I recommend you buy this item. You won’t be disappointed.” How To Care For Your Realistic Male Sex Toy… - Keep it clean! Once you are finished with it clean it out and let it dry properly, this prolongs the sex toy and prevents premature damage. - Store it properly, if it comes with a storage bag keep it in there when not in use and if it doesn’t just keep somewhere cool and dry where it won’t get scratched or harmed. - Wear lube! You may think it’s just for your comfort, but lube actually helps you from tearing your sex toy in some cases. I recommend using this water-based lube, it’s safe with condoms and sex toys and you only need a small drop to get you on your way… Why Buy A Realistic Sex Toy? There are a few reasons why somebody would want to purchase a realistic male sex toy and I’ve listed them below: - The realism of a fleshlight, for example, makes a solo masturbation session much more exciting. - If you’re looking to last longer in bed and increase your stamina, the realism of the outside and inside of each sex toy makes it harder for you not to cum and thus allows you to practice not climaxing prematurely. - Sometimes people can get lonely and realistic sex toys allow you to just feel a little more accompanied. - They feel amazing! Inside a fleshlight, for example, you are met with unique sensations, suction and more. - If you’re a couple looking into buying something realistic it can help you to live out a fantasy, experience a ‘threesome’ and more. - If your partner isn’t up for it or if you just want some alone time, it’s just like the real thing but without the person. - It allows you to explore different shapes and sizes. - The world is to be explored and your plain old hand will get boring at some point, it’s fun to just switch things up a bit and experience new things. Related Posts – - Best Male Sex Toys Of 2017 - Crazy Sex Toys You Can Use In Public - How To Make Your Dick Bigger Naturally - Sex Toys For Long Distance Couples

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Sculptures on campus There are many sculptures and statues on the grounds of the College of William and Mary. - 1 David H Turner's sculptures - 2 James Monroe Statue - 3 King and Queen Gate - 4 Lord Botetourt - 5 Marshall-Wythe School of Law - 6 Muscarelle Museum of Art - 7 Curled Up C - 8 Oliver - 9 Rev. James Blair - 10 Spring - 11 Thomas Jefferson - 12 Tyler Family Garden - 13 References - 14 Materials in the Special Collections Research Center - 15 Need help? David H Turner's sculptures Located in the Crim Dell, the 4 foot sculpture "Great Blue Heron with Marsh Wren and Turtle" was made by College of William and Mary alumnus David H. Turner, class of 1983. It was donated by Ben Field, class of 1957. The statue features cattails and a turtle on the base. The statue went missing in September 2006 after Hurricane Ernesto went through campus and was found at the bottom of the Crim Dell. The Canada Geese sculpture is located next to the Alumni House on Richmond Rd. Soaring Eagle is in the Sadler Center atrium and the Memorial Garden Dove is in the Memorial Garden near Lake Matoaka. James Monroe Statue The James Monroe statue, located outside Tucker Hall just east of the Senior Walk, was dedicated on April 23, 2015. The statue was a gift of William & Mary alumni Carroll and Patty Owen in honor of the class of 1962. The statue is made of bronze and shows Monroe protecting a globe in his right hand, referring to the Monroe Doctrine, and a frieze around its base depicting important moments in his life. Eight panels show scenes from Monroe's life such as his student experience at William & Mary from 1774-1776, Monroe at the Battle of Trenton, his diplomatic experience, as secretary of war, and as president of the United States. The statue was the first in a series of commemorations of the 200th anniversary of James Monroe's inauguration in 1817. The statue was sculpted by Gordon Kray, class of 1973. Kray has created other sculptures on campus including the replica of the Botetourt statue on the Wren Yard, The [Marshall-Wythe statue at the law school, and the Pierre Charles L'Enfant Statue in the atrium of Alan B. Miller Hall. King and Queen Gate Donated in the 1920's by Mary Cooke Branch Munford, first woman member of the Board of Visitors. Women at the College of William and Mary these statues of King William and Queen Mary stand atop brick pillars which flank a driveway behind Tucker Hall off Richmond Rd. The original statue of Lord Botetourt is now located on the ground floor of Swem Library. A reproduction was erected in front of the Wren Building in 1993. Lord Botetourt was so revered by the Virginians that in fact they erected a statue in his memory which stood first at the Old Capitol building and then was purchased by the College of William and Mary in 1801. Barring a brief period during the Civil War when it was moved to the Public Asylum for safety, it stood in the College Yard until 1958 when it was removed for protection from the elements, and then installed in the new Earl Gregg Swem Library in 1966 in the Botetourt Gallery. A replica created in bronze by College of William and Mary alumnus Gordon Kray, class of 1973, was installed in the College Yard in 1993 on Homecoming weekend. It is a College tradition to dress up the statue for the holidays such as hanging a wreath on the statue's outstretched hand. Marshall-Wythe School of Law A statue of John Marshall and George Wythe is located at the main entrance to the Marshall-Wythe School of Law. It was created by Gordon S. Kray, class of 1973, and was a gift of Robert Friend Boyd, class of 1950 and J.D. class of 1952, and Sara Miller Boyd, class of 1954. The statue was dedicated on October 7, 2000. Muscarelle Museum of Art Known for its early American and European portraits and works on paper, the Muscarelle Museum of Art’s treasures span the centuries, and the permanent collection includes more than 3,900 works of art. The Muscarelle is also host to a spectacular variety of traveling shows. Above all, the Muscarelle is a teaching facility, where the academic program is considered when building the collection and planning exhibits. Faculty members are frequent collaborators who give gallery talks or classroom lectures based on the exhibits. Curled Up C This abstract sculpture by Lila Katzen consists of two curving forms, one of light-colored, buffed stainless steel and the other of Corten steel that weathers to a rich textured brown. The two large vertical shapes lean diagonally against one another establishing a single point of contact before curling away, each in its own distinct form. This work was created in 1979 by Lila Katzen, an American artist known for her large-scale, site-specific sculptures. Her works have been exhibited at some of the nation's foremost museums and, in 1981, a duplicate of Curled Up C was installed in the courtyard of the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. Curled Cup C has been on loan to the Museum from the artist since 1983, when it was placed near the Museum entrance at Katzen's instructions. Since the, the sculpture has become an integral part of the visual aesthetics of the Museum and campus. Designed in 1979 by the College's Sculpture-in-Residence, Robert Engman, "Oliver" is named for the artist's father. The sculpture is adjacent to Andrews Hall and Barksdale Field. The dimensions of Oliver are 156 h. x 96 w. x 96. d . ins. (396.5 x 244.0 x 244.0 cm). Rev. James Blair The Reverend James Blair, A.M. (1655-1748) was the founding president of the College of William and Mary. Sculptor: Lewis Cohen, member of the faculty; a tercentenary gift to the college. It was dedicated October 21, 1993, during Homecoming. J. Seward Johnson's sculpture "Spring" was installed at the College of William and Mary in 1979. At some time prior to 1991, the letter held by the figure Tina in the sculpture was broken off. A transcription of the letter from "Spring" at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts in Hamilton, Ohio (June 2008): Hi! you wouldn't believe how much I miss you! I am having a great time here but I do wish you were here. Next month we go on vacation and I will be home to see you and I hope you still Love me. So what's new in town? Last week Bill met a girl and Broke up with Sue. Even if I see a good looking girl I think of you and I will never break up with you. I hope you don't Break up with me for Some one else. The statue of College alumnus Thomas Jefferson was given to the College of William and Mary by the University of Virginia to celebrate the connection of Jefferson between the two institutions. Jefferson went to school at William and Mary from 1760 to 1762 and was a member of the Board of Visitors. He later helped to establish the University of Virginia in 1819. The statue was dedicated on November 11, 1992 as part of the College's Tercentenary Celebration and was placed between Washington Hall and Tercentenary Hall (later renamed McGlothlin-Street Hall). John T. Casteen III, President of the University of Virginia, College President Timothy J. Sullivan, and Hays Watkins, Rector of the Board of Visitors, were in attendance at the dedication. The University of Virginia has a similar statue of Jefferson between their Darden School of Business and the Law School. Both statues were created by Lloyd Lillie, a professor at Boston University. Casteen learned from an article by William and Mary History professor Ludwell Johnson that before Jefferson died, he took out a $17,000 loan from William and Mary to settle his debts, but was unable to pay it back before he died. Even a deed of trust on Shadwell, Jefferson's birth place, in 1876 could not settle the debt owed to the College. As a result, the College was in financial peril and had to close in the 1880s. Therefore, Casteen mentioned that he hoped that the debt would be forgiven with the donation of the statue. The statue is frequently dressed up for holidays and special events as the statue of Lord Botetourt is. The dedication plaque includes a quote by Jefferson. "I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virture and advancing the happiness of man." The plaque goes on to read "This statue is a gift of the University of Virginia to Jefferson's Alma Mater on occasion of its 300th Anniversary, 1993. Dedicated November 11, 1992." Tyler Family Garden In recognition of the Lyon Gardiner Tyler legacy – and a family legacy to the College of William and Mary that spans three centuries – a garden was dedicated at the college April 30, 2004. The Tyler Family Garden includes bronze busts of three members of this extraordinary family – Lyon Gardiner Tyler, the 17th president of William and Mary; his father, the 10th U.S. President, John Tyler, who served as rector and chancellor of the college; and Lyon Gardiner Tyler’s grandfather, John Tyler, Sr. who served as the 18th governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Tyler Family Garden is part of an endowment gift from Mr. and Mrs. Harrison Ruffin Tyler, son of Lyon Gardiner Tyler, to the college’s history department. The garden is located outside James Blair Hall, the building on campus that houses the college’s history department, now named the Lyon Gardiner Tyler Department of History. The Tyler family’s affiliation with William and Mary began in 1704 when the grandfather of U.S. President John Tyler, also named John Tyler, attended the college. His son, the governor of Virginia from 1808 to 1811, and his grandson, the U.S. President, also studied at William and Mary. Harrison Tyler’s father, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, earned degrees from the University of Virginia but was awarded an honorary degree from William and Mary at the end of his 31-year term as the college’s president. In all, about 30 members of the Tyler family have attended William and Mary. - The Flat Hat, 13 November 1992, p. 1-2. - Buildings and Grounds--Sculptures--Statue of Thomas Jefferson, University Archives Subject File Collection, Special Collections Research Center, Earl Gregg Swem Library, The College of William and Mary. - Jefferson Returns to William and Mary, Alumni Gazette, Winter 1993, p. 2. Materials in the Special Collections Research Center The Flat Hat, William & Mary News, and Alumni Gazette: - Blair and Botetourt statues to be dedicated AG, Sept. 1993, pg. 3, 6 (picture). - Statues of College leaders to be dedicated at Homecoming WMN, 9/1/1993, pg. 6. To search for further material, visit the Special Collections Research Center's Search Tool List for an overview of the Special Collections Database, W&M Digital Archive, Flat Hat-William & Mary News-Alumni Gazette index, card catalogs, and other tools available to help you find material of interest in William & Mary Libraries Special Collections Research Center. |A Note About The Contents Of This Wiki| |The information available in this wiki is the best available from known documents and sources at the time it was written. Unfortunately, many of the early original records of William & Mary were destroyed by fires, military occupation, and the normal effects of time. Information in this wiki is not complete as new information continues to be uncovered in Swem Library's Special Collections Research Center and elsewhere. Researchers are strongly encouraged to use the Special Collections search tools for their research as the information contained in this wiki is by no means comprehensive.|

Once upon a time (circa 1928), in a Hollywood of our mythic imagination rather than historic reality, a 21-year-old aspiring actor named Marion Michael Morrison (later to become more well known as John Wayne) met 80-year-old former marshal Wyatt Earp. The aged gunfighter had been hired to appear in one of those newly invented “oaters” that had become a part of popular culture following the cinematic success of The Great Train Robbery (1903). The two met on the set of a Western being directed by genius-in-embryo John Ford and the living legend of the Old West hit it off with the youngster who would come to embody the 20 century’s glorification of that time and place. Between takes, the tall tale goes, Earp recalled his hair-raising exploits as Duke (he’d been called that since childhood owing to his close attachment to a large dog of that name) sat spellbound, admiring and absorbing the old lawman’s personal code of conduct. As a lawman, Earp (unlike some of his trigger-happy contemporaries) believed a gun must only be employed as a last resort. Even at the O.K. Corral shootout, Earp and his brother Virgil attempted to talk the Clantons and McLaurys into handing over their pistols before all hell broke loose on October 26, 1881. Despite the lawman’s misgivings about employing his weapon, three men lay dead on Tombstone, Arizona’s Fremont Street when the incident was over, ensuring Earp’s “reputation” as a fast-gun. Though as Earp later explained: “I don’t think 30 seconds should sum up a man’s whole life.” The iconic Westerner would have preferred to be remembered for his 100-plus earlier gunfights in which only one man died, and this by accident. When Earp passed away on January 16, 1929, Hollywood myth places young Duke as one of his pallbearers. Shortly after, Wayne got his Western movie break. First came the 1930 sound epic The Big Trail, a box-office disaster and potential career-killer. However, Wayne survived by starring in low-budget items for Poverty Row studios, and by the decade’s end, Ford rescued his protégé from B-movie purgatory by casting Wayne in Stagecoach (1939), a critically acclaimed, financially successful big Western. From then on, Duke placed on the A-list. Throughout his career, whether he was working in cheaply produced program-pictures or in Cinemascope extravaganzas, Wayne never forgot what he learned from Earp and insisted on embodying the man’s code of honor on-screen. For example, while filming The Shootist in 1975, Wayne noticed that in the rough cut, his character, dying gunfighter John Book, appeared to shoot an opponent in the back. Wayne requested that the sequence be re-edited. Never before, he explained to director Don Siegel, had Wayne shot a man in the back, this in deference to Earp. Earp’s code influenced Wayne in other roles as well. Even during the deadly gunplay at the O.K. Corral, Earp refused to gun down Ike Clanton when the outlaw leader raised his hands, insisting he was unarmed. And Earp would not fire on that arch-enemy as Clanton ran away. Likewise, in Rio Bravo (1959), Wayne, playing sheriff John T. Chance, says: “Man gets shot and he’s got a gun, there’s room for reasonable doubt. Man gets shot that hasn’t got a gun, what would you call it?” By implication, he answers his own question: Murder. As historian Gary L. Roberts wrote of Earp: “He lived his life according to a code that seemed right to him.” That holds true for Wayne’s characters as well. Here’s where the tall tale ends. After all, the greatest Wayne/Ford Western produced—The Searchers (1956)—contains a sequence in which Duke’s character, Ethan Edwards, does in fact gun down a fleeing would-be robber. All of the above at once becomes an opened can of worms. The reality of Wayne’s relationship with Earp is less romantic—though no less interesting—than the legend. Truth be told, Wayne wasn’t a pallbearer at Earp’s funeral (though two silent stars, Tom Mix and William S. Hart, were). In fact, Earp never even appeared in a movie (though other living remnants of the West—lawman William Tilghman and outlaw Al Jennings—did). Rather, Earp took a side seat on movie sets, recounting old-time incidents for Ford during the shooting of Mother Machree (1928), a non-Western. Wayne, who here made his screen debut in a bit part, wasn’t even present when Earp explained to Ford that the O.K. Corral gunfight hadn’t been the slam-bang bullet-fest popularized by myth and media, but rather an orchestrated battle, executed with military-like strategy. (Nearly two decades later, Ford employed that approach to his staging of the incident in My Darling Clementine (1946). Intriguingly, Ford chose Henry Fonda, not Wayne, to play Earp in the film. Why? We’ll never know, as Ford took that secret with him to the grave, much to Wayne’s consternation.) Bottom line: Earp and Wayne never met. Anything Wayne knew about the real Earp came to him secondhand from Ford during their 25-year working relationship. Their encounter is only a charming Hollywood fable. Nonetheless, Earp and Wayne did share several qualities. Both were, in fact, natives of the North: Earp was born in Illinois, Wayne in Iowa. Each, in his own time, made his way west to California. As well, Wayne—on-screen as John Chance—and Wyatt Earp, Easterners so far as Arizona locals were concerned, found themselves drawn into a deadly conflict with the reigning cattlemen and the cowboys working as their hired hands. Chance, like the man he may have been based on, was dedicated to taming, not enabling, the wildness of the West. In our collective unconscious, fans tend to recall Wayne playing John Law in film after film—testament to how powerfully he resonates in that role. However, before Rio Bravo, Wayne never enacted a lawman in an A-Western (though he did pin on a star in several 1930s grade-Z junk movies). And, however serendipitous, the Earp connection at once emerged. The reasons: In Blue Steel (1934), Duke’s youthful marshal was mentored by an old-timer (George “Gabby” Hayes) while cleaning up a nasty town, just as a young Earp was by Sheriff Whitney in Ellsworth, Kan., circa 1872. The Big Stampede (1932) depicts Wayne’s lawman as recruiting and reforming a bad man who then joins the cause against other outlaws; Earp managed such a trope when he enlisted former enemy Ben Thompson as an uneasy ally. In The Star Packer (1934), Wayne’s lawman insists on hiring a Native American as his full-fledged deputy owing to the man’s tracking abilities; Earp is believed to have been the first marshal to over-ride Anglo prejudices in Wichita and Dodge by doing precisely that. Wayne playing a lawman, however, is the exception in his cinematic career. More often, Wayne was cast as an outlaw or outsider, such as in Somewhere in Sonora (1933), Sagebrush Trail (1933), Paradise Canyon (1935), and almost a dozen others. Even in the triumphant Stagecoach, he’s the righteous outlaw Ringo, on the run from the law. The same holds true for Wayne in Ford’s The Searchers and Hawks’ El Dorado, if in time Duke would return to lawman roles, most notably in True Grit (1969). Initially, Duke’s plethora of bandit roles seemingly severs the Wayne-Earp connection. In truth, it reinforces a parallel between Wayne’s evolving screen persona and the flesh-and-blood man who served as role model. For if their face-to-face meeting is mythic, the truth is that Wayne did have Earp in mind not only when he played roles where he donned the badge, but also in those where he was on the run. In most of the 25-plus movies that depict Earp, the story begins on that day when our hero accepted his first job as a trail town deputy. Only Wyatt Earp (1994), starring Kevin Costner and directed by Lawrence Kasdan, reveals the truth, the whole truth. Earp did not leave his family in Illinois to seek excitement on the fabled frontier. He ran away from home after the sudden passing of his first wife. The self-pitying widower then degenerated into a life of crime. His arrest record includes citations for petty theft and whoremongering. Earp, like so many others, went West in hopes of being born again—discovering the righteous life he had abandoned while temporarily embracing (as George Lucas might put it) The Dark Side. How perfect, then, that John Wayne, as the cinematic stand-in for Earp, likewise portrayed many wandering gunmen, Hondo (1953) prime among them. Almost always, his character would be a seemingly bad man harboring an inner decency just waiting to be rekindled (particularly by some good woman). One film, Angel and the Badman (1947), addresses that process in its narrative. In that film, Wayne as gunfighter Quirt Evans learns from a benign religious leader: “Each human being has an integrity that can be hurt only by the act of that same human being.” The message: Don’t blame others, or circumstances, for your lowly lot in life. Take individual responsibility for your previous actions and your subsequent self-recreation. That’s what Earp believed. Wayne, too. Wayne’s great films, from Stagecoach to Angel and the Badman to The Searchers to Rio Bravo, depict (however unawares filmmakers behind each project may have been) a transition for Wayne’s on-screen icon from wanted man to lawman. And, fittingly, the journey directly parallels Wyatt Earp’s. Respectability didn’t come easily to the saddle tramp. As Wayne’s Tom Dunson in Red River (1948) would say: He earned it. Just as Wayne’s anti-heroes do in their films. However much the old movies may have insisted there were the Good Guys and the Bad Guys, most Westerners, like Earp in history and Wayne in his Hollywood canon, were a bit of both. Johnny Ringo, who had a reputation for violence, briefly served as a lawman. Wild Bill Hickok, town marshal of Abilene, had been pursued by the law after shooting down two members of the Seventh Cavalry in a saloon. One of the strongest recommendations for the job of lawman was a previous reputation as a gun-slick. Would-be troublemakers, hearing such a fellow’s handle, stayed away from any place where that onetime bandit wore a badge. Nowhere is this situation so strikingly depicted than in The Shootist, partly explaining why the film (Wayne’s last) serves as a perfect bookend to his career. In the prologue, a youngster (Ron Howard) sums up the title character’s life. When the boy speaks of the old days, John Book’s early years as an outlaw are depicted via a choice clip from Hondo. As the narrator then recalls Book’s later term as town marshal, we see (not surprisingly) a key moment from Rio Bravo. A landmark film, and not just because it was Wayne’s final Western, The Shootist is the genre-piece that most perfectly captures a paradigm that holds true for both John Wayne’s movie career and Wyatt Earp’s reality: While there were no clear-cut Good Guys and Bad Guys, any one person (or character) may have played either part at certain moments in his journey. In a transitional film—a medium-budget Republic release called The Dark Command (1940)—Wayne portrayed a Kansas lawman who must arrest the young brother of the woman that he loves. In anguish, the young love interest asks how he could do this. Duke drawls: “I took an oath.” That’s that: the Code of the West, pure and simple. Perhaps it was historically true for Wyatt Earp. Clearly, it’s the moral principle on which John Wayne’s mythical lawman hero operates. Douglas Brode is the author of more than 40 books on film including John Wayne’s Way: Life Lessons from the Duke.

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Howdy, y’all! I’ve got another excerpt from Missy Meets the Marshal, which will be released Jan. 7. Enjoy. She shifted her weight to one foot and looked down. “I’ve told you most everything important already. My name is Beth Jones. I’m a poor woman with no kin except for my daughter. My husband was killed last year, and ever since I’ve been struggling to make it on my own.” About half of that was true, and she hoped it would satisfy the marshal. It didn’t. Before Beth knew what was happening, she found herself stripped of the towel and lying naked across his hard thighs. She gasped when she understood his intent. With one hand he held her body against his. His other hand smacked her bare bottom, her skin still soft and damp from the bath. The swat sent a resounding crack into the air, and the force of it took her breath away. She wasn’t able to recover her breath before he landed another. And another. He spanked her ten times before he stopped. She panted when she was finally able to breathe. “What’s your name again, Missy? The truth this time.” If you’re in the mood for a sweet western love story with some old-fashioned discipline, check out my already released book The Unbraiding of Anna Brown. It’s been getting great reviews on Amazon. Now go to The Saturday Spankings Blog to read other authors because I can’t for the life of me figure out how to insert the list of participants here (sowwy).

Boruto is one of the most loved animes. This is a sequel to the best-loved anime series of all time, which is why so many people enjoyed it. The popularity of the anime series meant that some fans were disappointed by the dubbed episodes. They were far less accurate than the original Japanese voiceover. When will English voiceovers be available? And where can we watch them? The English-dubbed version of the series should be out soon. This is despite the fact that the only thing holding it back was the current pandemic. It will also be available on many platforms like Hulu, Vudu, and Funimation. This article will explain why so many anime have remained unvoiced in English for so long. It also provides a summary of the events and offers several options for those who want to retranslate the episodes. What is Boruto? Fans are naturally eager to see the English-dubbed Boruto series because of its immense popularity. Children love Naruto, and for many years Sasuke and Naruto fought it out in the anime series. The first episode of Boruto aired on the 1st of December 2017. Crunchyroll, Hulu, and Funimation offered to stream the anime series for free. The sequel is an anime masterpiece, but it is difficult to find the English dubbed version. Fans were upset and wanted to know if the English dubbed version was available. Why is Boruto so far behind? Boruto: Naruto Next Generations anime series is based on the same manga series. It is the sequel to the Naruto manga and anime series. The series will reveal what happens to Naruto and his beloved characters, as well as their futures. Since Naruto and Sasuke faced Kaguya in anime, it has been years. All is calm now, and there are no other terrible villains. Boruto has only one goal, even though it is a great benefit for him and his friends. It’s not to become Hokage, but to defeat his father. The series’ first episode aired on April 5, 2017, As of writing, the manga and anime are both still being produced. Crunchyroll and Hulu offer free streaming of anime series on Funimation, Hulu, or Crunchyroll. The sequel is just as popular as the original series, but you won’t be able to find the English-dubbed version as easily. Many anime fans prefer to watch dubbed anime so it was a surprise that not all of the series had been dubbed. This question is not as interesting as you might think. Due to a lack of management and involvement by Cartoon Network, as well as licensing issues, the dubbed version is far behind. Boruto was initially dubbed by Cartoon Network, as it also dubbed Naruto Shippuden and Naruto Shippuden. The dubbed versions were released fairly consistently, so it seemed that everything was going well. The episodes were released in smaller parts after the first part was complete. Many fans were understanding and patient as the process of dubbing anime can be tedious and time-consuming, especially if you need higher-quality results. However, CN began dubbing the show and then dropped it in favor of Naruto Shippuden. This was also quite far back. Although the decision was not officially released, it was clear that Naruto Shippuden was released years before Boruto. It chronologically takes place many years before Boruto. Many were unhappy with this decision and the direction CN was going with the series. While Naruto Shippuden was popular at the time, Boruto was more popular and was released far later than Naruto Shippuden. Boruto already began releasing dubbed episodes, making matters worse. This made the series more popular, which led to more people being disappointed by the slow dubbed episodes. Many viewers were frustrated by this and were pleased to hear that Adult Swim would be taking over the dubbing process. The process should be a little faster now than it was in the hands of an independent Cartoon Network program. When will Boruto’s new episodes be dubbed in English? Despite the delay in the release, it appears that this will change soon. AnimeLab has been uploading dubbed episodes very quickly and a few studios have stated that they will release dubbed episodes once working conditions improve after the current pandemic. AnimeLab published Episodes 106 to 119 of Boruto. Naruto Next Generations English dubbed. Just in time for your weekend anime binge. These episodes now have both the original Japanese voiceover as well as the English voiceover, but the premium membership is required for the latter. Boruto: Naruto Next Generations can be accessed in both audio languages. AnimeLab now offers Boruto: Naruto Next Generations 196 episodes. New dubbed episodes are added regularly. You can also catch up on the episodes by buying Madman Entertainment’s home videos, which include the latest (Part 8 Episodes 93-105) released this month. Kakashi and Might Guy go on vacation to the thermal springs for the latest batch of dubbed episodes. Asuma’s daughter Mirai joins them to discover that the spring has been covered in a huge boulder. It’s then time to take on Extreme Ninja Cards! Boruto discovers that there are some notable absences in this game. These are worth fighting over, as it features famous shinobi from the past. Konohamaru then comes to the rescue of a mysterious woman from a hamlet that has a dark secret. Madman Entertainment operates AnimeLab online, which is an anime streaming service. It is only available to New Zealand and Australian residents. Premium subscriptions cost $7.95AUD/month, or $79.50AUD/year. They provide access to full back-catalog access and no simulcast delays. Boruto Dubbed: Where can you watch it? Boruto: Naruto Next Generation contains 196 episodes. The Animelab episodes are updated on a regular basis. Madman Entertainment’s home video releases are available for those who want to keep up-to-date. Part 8: Episodes 93-205 are now available on the site. Boruto-dubbed episodes can be viewed free on Hulu during the first seven days. After that, they will need to pay $5.99 per month or $59.99 per annum to continue their subscription. Vudu offers an alternative to those looking for English-dubbed episodes on different platforms. Boruto 13 episodes are $19.99 when you can see other series and films for free. Boruto can also be viewed on Funimation. You can stream the series in subtitled or dubbed formats. The streaming service offers a 14-day trial that is free to anyone who wants to watch the series. Boruto is available to all members for $5.99 per month. They have access to the Funimation library. Boruto: Naruto Next Generation is a popular anime series with 196 episodes. They are available on AnimeLab in English dubbed versions. Mad Man Entertainment also offers the home video release.

Getting appealing single cougars in Vancouver can be difficult if you don’t know where to spend your time. Even as a neighborhood, it can get tricky. There are too a lot of prospective areas to attempt, and you can effortlessly waste a lot of work into the incorrect spots. Fortunately, you have us, and we can support you out on your cougar adventure! Why not verify Gastown? If you have been living in “yuppie” neighborhoods like Yaletown, it can truly be tough to spot older ladies. Gastown is historic, and it is property to trendy boutiques and restaurants that Vancouver cougars appreciate. You can also try to reschedule your hunt through the day and go to organic shops like Popular Foods. The older ladies appreciate to sustain their hot bodies. If you like to perform out, you can also check yoga studios like Semperviva. Or if you occur to pass by Granville Island, you may possibly want to shop there and do some cougar watching. But there are certain locations exactly where Vancouver cougars hang out far more than other individuals. And naturally, that’s why you are here. Properly, to aid you with your search, we’ve compiled a list of spots and cougar bars in Vancouver. Verify them out beneath, and you will thank us for getting your savior. Exactly where Cougars in Vancouver Like to Hang Out For your convenience, here are the most cougar-populated locations in Vancouver: Seafoodventure with Vancouver cougars at This location was a should-try. The staff is friendly and accommodating, so you’ll be seated swiftly with a swift rundown of their recommendations. Go right here for the duration of their pleased hour and take pleasure in their $1.50 each day oyster special. Or try their bacon-wrapped scallops. They’re effectively-ready and probably the ideal in the city. You’ll certainly order them once more! If you check out this place, take a seat at the mezzanine level. They have a nice, cozy spot there that’s best for conversations with an older lady. Vancouver cougars go here mainly because it’s a strong oyster joint. If you are craving for some scrumptious seafood, no other location compares. The oysters are usually fresh, and that generally bodes nicely for romantic endeavors. It’s a positive way to swim by way of a cougar hunt with no shelling out a lot of money. is our favourite way to get Vancouver cougars into bed () While a lot of cougars want relationships, other folks favor to retain items casual. They do not want commitment, but they do want a hot evening out. If you’re hunting for the very same issue, try . This internet site is, by far, our favourite one for locating casual sex with older women. Most users are in their 30s and 40s, so you are confident to meet your fair share of cougars right here. The very best element? All of them are on Adult FriendFinder because they want sex. Guys who have not had great results elsewhere and in fact want to obtain some results have to have to verify out AFF! If you do not want a connection, we can relate. We normally turn to Adult FriendFinder for a speedy fling with no strings attached. You’ll uncover that a lot of cougars in Vancouver are also searching for that sort of issue. It is just a matter of taking benefit of the site’s sophisticated search feature. Meet older girls based on their place, age, cup size and even kinks! If you haven’t tried prior to, it could be your ticket into a cougar’s bedroom tonight! for the start off of a fiery cougar romance The decor at Blue Martini Cafe & Jazz appears like it is taken straight out of a 1987 establishment. There’s blue lighting enveloping the space which provides it a vibrant yet cool glow. The clientele is mostly older ladies who like the retro ambiance of this spot. Combining excellent meals, fantastic music, and good organization is . If you’re a pasta lover, go right here throughout pasta Tuesdays. Try their spaghetti with meatballs for that nostalgic, homey feeling. Pair that with nightly performances of regional musicians here and you have got a wonderful night out! Jazz nights are also well known among cougars who frequent the spot. The bar also has lots of refreshing drink possibilities, which you can take pleasure in at their outdoor patio. Invite an older lady for some drinks outside and just sit back, loosen up and listen to the great music collectively! We can assure it will be a romantic knowledge at this location. is the easiest way to meet single cougars in Vancouver looking for relationships, specifically for young guys () Did you know that a lot more and a lot more older girls now go on the net to meet YOUNGER men? Back then, on line dating seemed like one thing only an adventurous 20-some thing would do. Today, cougars like the further freedom and judgment-free apps that aid them land a date. Their favourite app for meeting younger males? . Bars and clubs are wonderful and all, but cougars normally lead busy lives. They do not want to devote a lot of time and dollars at a bar where there’s no guarantee that they’ll meet an individual. Even though Cougar Life doesn’t assure something, it positive puts the odds in your favour! In truth, you can search for girls based on your preferences. We love the search function on this app because it has helped us come across specifically what we want. That is what keeps it on our annual list of the . Want a cougar in her late 40s who loves sports? Hunting for a cougar in her 30s who wants a casual fling? Enjoy the company of a 50-some thing cougar who’s got a lot of life practical experience? Meet her on ! You’ll love the view at You’ll love the fantastic view of Granville Island, the waterway and downtown at this Vancouver cougar bar. The window seats are fabulous for the view and cougar watching although the single-pane glass makes it breezy inside. There’s also a varied menu that’s surprisingly affordable. You will not have to break the bank to delight in your cougar hunt at this spot. There’s a superior selection of wines and beers, and the waitstaff knows specifically what to advise. Try your luck in this cougar hotspot. It has a entertaining vibe that the music enhances even additional. Cougars in Vancouver go right here to let their hair down and go wild at the dance floor. If you have some sick dance moves, now’s the time to show them off at this spot. is worth attempting to meet a cougars who ONLY want lengthy-term () Dating in the twenty-very first century can look hectic and overwhelming, particularly when you want to meet eye-catching older females who, at this stage in their lives, ordinarily have a lot going on. In other words, these girls are not normally out and about looking for guys to get into a partnership with. They’re typically browsing on the internet due to the fact it saves so much time, but this brings up yet a further challenge: which web page do you even commence with? When it comes to deciding upon a dating website or app we have had the most effective accomplishment with (), by far. It has been the gold-standard for nearly twenty years and is responsible for 75% of all relationships that started on-line and ended up with marriage. If you happen to be interested in a real relationship nothing else even comes close. No other internet site can claim final results anyplace as fantastic for a regular guy as eHarmony can! The website is identified as the absolute highest high quality dating website out there and their communication method is created to aid you succeed. Not only are user profiles additional detailed than these on other dating websites which helps massively when it comes to matching compatible singles, but communication is guided. This can truly support you get comfortable with the females you’re matching with, and if you’re not fantastic with ladies, this can really help you get previous the nervous stage in the starting. eHarmony even to new members so if you’re still hesitating for any purpose, there’s genuinely no excuse not to sign up. If you do not, you are actually missing out. Why not give them a shot now and start off matching with hot older ladies in your area suitable away. There’s definitely no other site that compares. Locate enjoyable Vancouver cougars at This rock n’ roll-themed nightclub does a fantastic job of luring cougars in Vancouver. Not only are these ladies known for becoming entertaining and outgoing, but for being pretty risqué as nicely. You shouldn’t be alarmed if they strategy you initially nor if they present to acquire you a drink. The nostalgic sounds of rock n’ roll that live bands bring in get them longing for their youth. Or at least, a youthful man such as your self. If you are seeking to do minimal operate for maximum results, do not hesitate to jump in line. The wait will be worth your whilst, trust us. Locate health-conscious cougars in Vancouver at Established in 1930, all the cougars in Vancouver are fans of this organic grocer. It has an substantial inventory that focuses on bulk foods as properly as fresh, regional make. That mentioned, Vancouver cougars who shop here undoubtedly know how to cook. An aisle devoted to gluten-totally free health and beauty products sets this location apart from the rest. Even though the 1st-class consumer service it presents usually gets the buyers in the proper direction. No matter whether you are hunting to stock up on apples or fresh cougar meat, Renowned Foods is there for cubs like you. Like in the sky, you’ll uncover your twinkling cougar star The Diamond is positioned in a charming brick developing overtop of the bustling Powell and Carrall intersection. All of the most sophisticated cougars in Vancouver flock to this place. This pub-style restaurant provides far more than just impeccable drinks and cuisine. The atmosphere is in contrast to any other, as well. Settle oneself at the bar surrounded by cozy Victorian-style décor. Vancouver cougars will shriek at the sight of a young, dapper man in a 1920’s environment. Meet them at the bar just before moving to the window for a breathtaking view of Vancouver. It is the ideal place to make a lasting impression and engage in casual seduction. Vancouver cougars prowl at A casual dining experience, this is the type of location exactly where every person knows cougars prowl. The owners know, the servers know, the bartenders know and the locals particularly know. And now you know as well. It generally begins with an encounter at their island-style bar. From there, either the cougars or the bait will initiate dinner at a nearby table. A seaside walk along the bridge may well take location. And then after? The sky’s the limit. Something is attainable with a little courage to take the 1st step. Even if you do not get lucky (which we doubt), the reside music, views and made-to-order sushi will make the experience worthwhile. The Hottest Cougar Bars in Vancouver If you want to see how the regional older ladies party, check out these best cougar bars in Vancouver. is one of the oldest cougar bars in Vancouver As one of the oldest cougar bars in Vancouver, this place is established amongst all those 35 and older. Located near the Rogers Arena and BC Location, Shark Club Sports Bar draws in the sportiest cougars in Vancouver. With two massive 12’x7’ TVs, absolutely everyone has a fantastic view of the game. And with a fireplace and comfy booths, there’s lots of space to get to know every other better. Verify out their reside music on Fridays, where the drinks are low cost and dancing is cost-free. You’ll leave inebriated and elevated with a regional older lady. is a glamorous Vancouver cougar bar Attached to the prestigious Fairmont Hotel, this cougar bar in Vancouver is full of sophisticated cougars “just passing by way of.” They’re away from almost everything they know and like, and they’re browsing for cubs like you. Warm them up with a cocktail as you converse more than reside music. Then perhaps you can impress them with rolls ready by sushi-master Chef Takayuki Omi himself. After the fine-dining encounter, you may perhaps just finish up in her hotel area for the night. And depending on how lengthy she stays, you could discover yourself there the evening soon after as well. Get on the ship at This higher-end restaurant with gorgeous views of the West Coast will impress even the classiest cougar. In truth, the classiest cougars in Vancouver dine here on the normal. We suggest you come dressed to the nines and start off your search at the bar. If all goes properly there, you can invite them to a romantic dinner of 5-star views and intimacy at one of the nearby tables. The intoxicating mix of wine and romantic gestures is enough to put any older woman in the mood. Let’s just say that pan-seared fish will not be your only catch of the evening. For extra suggestions verify out a lot more wonderful guides to meet cougars:

No woman should ever dread her wedding, but staring into her husband’s eyes, Abby can see the hatred shining back at her. She’s been blackmailed into marriage and now belongs to a man who thinks she’s a gold-digging whore. Not the best circumstances to start a marriage. James has a secret and has been blackmailed into a marriage he doesn’t want in order to keep his private life out of the press. Even as his wife sweetly smiles at him, he can’t allow himself to believe that she’s innocent in all of this. He has a plan to make sure this marriage doesn’t last long, and he’s going through with it! Abby doesn’t trust James, but she doesn’t want to be miserable and wishes there was something she could to do to help him—and herself. What is his secret? Why would he marry her to protect it? And why is James more than happy to have another man join them? Be Warned: menage sex (MMF), anal sex, m/m sex, double penetration Abby stared up at her husband, feeling this overwhelming desire consume her as he teased her clit. He used two fingers, stroking her, making her moan as he got her so close to orgasm but didn’t let her go over the edge. “Lie back,” he said. He moved her up the bed so that she lay against the pillows. “Keep your legs open. I want to see how wet you get.” His wicked words were turning her on. He didn’t follow her up, and she watched as his face came level with her pussy. “You know I couldn’t go another day without having a taste of you.” She watched him slide his tongue along her slit, and she gasped. He swirled his tongue against her clit, and need consumed her unlike anything else. His shoulders were in the way of her closing her thighs, and he held the lips of her sex open. She was completely at his mercy for him to do whatever he wanted to her. She didn’t want to fight him, and as he teased through her slit, she cried his name. She wanted to come so badly, to feel him driving his cock deep within her. She didn’t want him to stop, hated for him to. He didn’t stop though. James kept on teasing her clit, licking at her nub before sucking it inside his mouth. She closed her eyes, arching up to his touch. “So fucking perfect. Such a nice, juicy cunt, and it’s all mine. No other man has known this pussy.” In the back of her mind she thought about Drake. She’d never been with him, but the only other man she’d felt arousal for was him. The man that kept appearing around the house when she felt lonely, his sweet smile touching her heart. Pushing him from her mind, she focused on James, on his tongue, on the feelings he kept inspiring within her. She was falling for him, and she had to protect herself. He wasn’t the kind of man a woman fell for, or at least not her, but she was. His sweetness shone through, smashing their previously bad memories. “Come for me, Abby. Let me hear you scream it.” He teased her clit, and the pleasure built, her orgasm taking her by surprise as it suddenly struck her hard. She couldn’t think as she cried out his name. Arching up off the bed, she quivered beneath his touch, feeling her cream leak to her ass. “So beautiful,” he said, pressing a kiss to her pussy before moving so that he was settled between her thighs and his lips were close to hers. His mouth was slick, covered in her arousal. “You taste so good,” he said. “I could lick your pussy forever.” When he kissed her, she didn’t push him away. She was ready for this. Kissing him back, she felt his cock between her thighs, the head of his shaft sliding between her slit, bumping her clit. She moaned his name, needing him. “This is going to hurt. You know that?” he asked. She nodded her head. His cock was poised at her entrance. He didn’t fill her. He held perfectly still, watching her. She was ready. She wanted to belong to him, to be his in every way that counted. Not because her mother had told her to or ordered it. Not because of the threat of being put away hung over her head. She wanted this because of James. He slammed to the hilt within her. The pain was instant, shocking her in place as he tore through the thin skin of her virginity, claiming her for himself.

by Elaine Hegwood Bowen Film Monthly Home Short Takes (Archived) Small Screen Monthly Behind the Scenes New on DVD Books on Film What's Hot at the Movies This Week Hannah Free echoes one of the latest initiatives by President Barack Obama that allows same-sex couples to make end of life health care decisions for one another. Obama ordered hospitals around the country to honor patients’ wishes about who may visit their sickbeds or risk losing Medicaid and Medicare money. In Hannah Free, Sharon Gless plays a lesbian who has been involved in a lifelong love affair with her childhood friend Rachel, played by Maureen Gallagher. At the end of their lives, Rachel’s family tries to keep Hannah from seeing Rachel as she slumbers on life support in the same nursing home as Hannah. Hannah’s free spirit in their relationship paled next to Rachel’s boring existence. While Hannah traveled all over the world, Rachel was content to remain in Ohio all her life; even marrying at one point and having twins. It seems that Rachel sometimes resented the free life that Hannah was experiencing, but she was too timid to venture out on her own. The movie sweetly details the relationship between the two, even as young girls, with Hannah approaching Rachel in an intimate manner as they played, while Rachel initially resists because she goes to church and is a Christian. Of course, traditional gender expectations eventually challenge their deep love for one another; Hannah becomes outward and unapologetic, while Rachel attempts to raise her children, after her husband passes. Weaving between past and present, Hannah Free reveals how these two passionate women maintain their love affair, despite a marriage, a world war, infidelity and family denial.The movie shows Hannah as a strong woman who doesn’t take much from anyone and who is as persistent in her quest to see Rachel as she’s dying as she was to have a normal relationship with the woman who is her best friend in the world. In the end, Rachel’s great granddaughter helps sneak Hannah into her room late at night to watch her. It’s painful to see Hannah take all the “death” in, as she and Rachel had been so alive in the flashbacks that retell their story. Hannah Free has screened at more than 60 film festivals in North America, including San Francisco’s Frameline Fest and Los Angeles’s OUTFEST, and has won multiple prestigious awards, including Best Feature Film at Philadelphia’s Q-Fest. Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times calls this “A terrific role for Sharon Gless, who runs with it gloriously.” Hannah Free will be available on DVD June 1 and comes loaded with features, including interviews with Gless, writer Claudia Allen, director Wendy Jo Carlton and the cast and crew; bloopers; Behind the Scenes featurette, a WTTW-Television Chicago Tonight segment and more. For more information, visit Web site www.wolfevideo.or or call 1-800-GET-WOLFE. Elaine Hegwood Bowen is an editor, writer and film critic in Chicago. Got a problem? E-mail us at [email protected]

"Is it going to hurt?" the very pregnant young woman at the center of "Motherhood the Musical" asks the trio of older, wiser friends who've popped round for a baby shower and, like you do, to sing a few original musical numbers in the mother-to-be's living room. "The delivery?" comes the dry response, "or the next 18 years?" That genuinely funny line scored a knowing, collective laugh from an audience that only had to read the marquee to know what this show was going to about and for whom it was intended. Produced by the same, savvy folks who helped bring us "Menopause the Musical," "Motherhood the Musical," now at the Royal George Theatre, is one of those shows that aims to profit by giving people in a certain demographic the feeling of a safe place and a shared communal experience. It wants to be the premiere destination for spring baby showers. Such accessible entertainment, to my mind, has value in the wider theatrical ecosystem. Not everyone wants to see "The Iceman Cometh." Some people would rather listen to songs about Costco, or, perchance, enjoy a stage property made entirely of Kirkland bathroom tissue. And the things to like about "Motherhood the Musical" include a willingness to discuss such atypical theatrical matters as, oh, pantyliners and bladder control. "I leak, leak, leak like a Senator in Congress," goes one of my favorite lyrics, closely matched by "I can't do the hustle, because I can't control my muscle." Try finding stuff like that in "Pacific Overtures." Much as we pretend otherwise and declare ourselves unique individuals, our experiences at these big, messy moments in life — and the arrival of a child is one big messy moment — closely mirror those of our fellow humans. And thus many of the lines and lyrics in this show hit home. There's a sequence involving the selection of baby names that anyone who has gone through such a chore, er, delight, will recognize: someone comes up with a name, and you find yourself unable to separate the moniker from the person who has born it. So although the show sometimes has to twist like a pretzel to explain the constant absence of men, even when a kid is on the way, the conceit should be workable for an escapist night out. You just stick a few different kinds of mothers in a room and have them crack jokes and sing to a new mom for 90 minutes about what it's all going to be like for an audience that mostly knows full well what it's like. But a lovable night at the theater requires far more deviation from a formula than this particular show, written by Sue Fabisch, manages to deliver. The central problem is that nothing is at stake. Granted, there's a kid coming, but the show still feels like it resulted from a group of songwriters sitting around and coming up with individual ideas for songs themed around the different issues that potential mothers approach with ambivalence: epidurals, sex after kids, minivans, the inevitable failings of men. Some of the songs are genuinely fun, but the thin connective tissue seems in service of the numbers, when it needs to be the other way around. And when nothing builds to anything in the broader sense, you find yourself counting how many songs are left. The show, which is directed by Lisa Shriver and performed by Melody Betts (the divorced mom), Jen Chada (the stay-at-home mom), Kimberly Vanbiesbrouck (the stressed-out career mom) and Madeline Duffy-Feins (the mom to be), veers between truthful, appealing sequences and overwrought cliches. The honest Chada sings a sweet ballad about the sheer satisfaction of taking care of a kid and Betts, a formidable actress, takes a predictable number about watching your kids leave with your ex and turns it into something that feels intensely personal. When"Motherhood"hovers there, the show works quite well. But many other moments are cliched and overblown — most egregiously a trite and reductive song called "Grannyland" that not only breaks the show's own rules but is singularly unfunny and poorly performed. Live musicians would certainly have helped (the show is sung to tape, which feels cheap). So would more sophistication, nuance and, well, truth. For proof that we're still arguing over what motherhood should mean, you need only note the flap that ignited this week when a clumsy Democratic strategist suggested that Ann Romney, a stay-at-home mom, had "never done a day's work in her life." Had Hilary Rosen shown up at "Motherhood the Musical," I suspect she'd have been shouted down by an entire theater of mothers. Surely there's a musical in that. When: Through June 17 Where: Royal George Theatre, 1641 N. Halsted St. Running time: 1 hour, 30 mins. Tickets: $48-$65 at 800-982-2787 or motherhoodthemusical.com

Treasure Chest Thursday – Cooking for the Heart, Not Just for HealthMay 13, 2010 at 02:08 | Posted in Carnival of Genealogy, memories, Treasure Chest Thursday | 2 Comments Sometimes one has to consider cooking for the heart – for health purposes — but then again, sometimes it’s all about for the heart emotionally. Today’s treasure chest memory is the old yellow plaid cookbook my mother was given as a child in elementary school. She still had that cookbook when she married and it was a staple in our kitchen. I used to love to read the recipes over and over. Most were accompanied by black and white photos and of course there were plenty of hints and tips for successful baking and cooking. Years later my mother would buy big fancy cookbooks such as Time Life and they would showcase beautiful full-page color photographs. Yet something drew my interest back to the old yellow plaid book. In it my mother would make notations in pencil about changes or adaptations she preferred. And the front and back cover pages boasted a few of her own recipes. One was for her amazing Yum Yum Cake – a flavorful fruitcake that I still love. Now as a married woman myself, I often clip recipes from magazines or handwrite copies from friends and family. When I find a cookbook at a garage sale, it is hard to resist buying it. I love to sit in Barnes and Noble and spend a rainy afternoon reading through the newest cookbook offerings. I love the glossy photographs of favorite Italian recipes and have indulged myself with extravagant purchases every now and then. A few Christmases ago I made cookbooks for each of our sons printing out old favorite family recipes of the family from Italy. This past year I drove my mother to distraction as I made another cookbook for everyone with her family recipes. But it is the old yellow plaid cookbook that evokes the fondest memories of my childhood at my mother’s side learning to cook as she taught me to read the recipes and follow the directions.

In order for a society to function, there has to be a certain level of trust. Each day when we leave our homes, we take for granted that most people are not going to attack us for no reason, that there will only be isolated incidents of theft in our community and that rioting and violence are not going to erupt in the streets. Whether we realize it or not, we depend on the fact that the vast majority of the people around us are going to act in a civilized manner. Unfortunately, the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is starting to disappear. When I was growing up, I was taught that challenging times reveal our true character. There are many that believe that the declining economy is causing a lot of the chaos that we are now witnessing, but perhaps what is going on is that these challenging economic times are simply revealing the character that has been there all along. For decades, a “false prosperity” that was fueled by unprecedented amounts of debt has masked a lot of the internal rot that has taken hold in America. But now that our prosperity is crumbling, our lack of values is becoming startlingly clear. Greed, corruption and extreme self-centeredness have deeply infected our society. We see this on Wall Street and in Congress, and we see this among those that are trying to survive on the mean streets of our largest cities. Our nation is breaking down on every level. If by some miracle we were able to fix our economy, that would mask our problems for a while, but it would not solve them. Unfortunately, as I write about nearly every day, there are a whole host of indications that our economy is about to get even worse. When it does, millions of Americans will become even more desperate, and as we are now seeing all over this country, desperate people do desperate things. The following are 22 signs that the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is starting to disappear…. #1 In Detroit, 100 bus drivers recently refused to drive their routes out of fear for their own personal safety. An article posted on the website of the CBS affiliate in Detroit is quoting the head of the bus drivers union, Henry Gaffney, as saying that the drivers are “scared for their lives”…. “Our drivers are scared, they’re scared for their lives. This has been an ongoing situation about security. I think yesterday kind of just topped it off, when one of my drivers was beat up by some teenagers down in the middle of Rosa Parks and it took the police almost 30 minutes to get there, in downtown Detroit,” said Gaffney. #2 In Wilmington, Delaware recently, a man offered to help someone carry a television down the street, but quickly realized that it was his own television which had just been stolen out of his house…. A Wilmington resident who stopped home for lunch about noon today saw a man carrying a flat screen TV down the street and asked the man if he needed help. He then recognized the television as his own, looked up and saw the door to his home ajar, said Master Sgt. Adam Ringle. #3 Shocking video has surfaced of a young thug walking up to a defenseless elderly man in a Chicago subway station and knocking him out cold. In the video, the friends of the young man are cheering him on and laughing at how easy it was to knock the old man out cold. #4 Beating up old people for no reason seems to be catching on all over the country. Just check out the following report from a recent article posted on philly.com…. AN 84-YEAR-OLD ex-university official savagely attacked by four young punks during a walk in Wissahickon Valley Park earlier this week theorizes that the beating he endured was a cruel game of “get the old geezer.” Jim Shea, a former vice president of university relations for Temple, from 1968 to 1983, walks up to five miles on Forbidden Drive, in Fairmount Park, three times a week, but that type of stamina wasn’t enough to stave off the lowlifes who not only beat him bloody, but dealt a blow to one of the things he holds most dear – his pride. #5 All over the United States, police are brutalizing Occupy Wall Street protesters and spraying pepper spray directly in their faces. Whatever you may think of the Occupy Wall Street protests, the reality is that this is not a sign that things are becoming “more stable” in America. You can see video of one very disturbing confrontation right here. #6 Clashes between police and protesters in Oakland, California recently became so violent that at one point the streets of Oakland resembled a war zone. #7 Unfortunately, as the American people become increasingly frustrated with out system many of them are actually starting to consider violence as a solution. According to one recent survey, 31 percent of all Occupy Wall Street protesters “would support violence to advance their agenda”. #8 In New York recently, a confrontation between two female customers and a frustrated cashier ended with the cashier beating the living daylights out of them with a metal rod. The following is how a local CBS affiliate in New York described this incident…. It appeared to have started when two female customers argued and yelled obscenities at the cashier when he questioned a $50 bill they gave him. One of the female customers then slapped the cashier. A woman is then seen jumping over the counter while the other woman goes behind the register. That’s when the cashier can be seen on the video disappearing into the back of the fast-food restaurant. He comes back with a metal rod and begins hitting the women. You can see video of this violent confrontation right here. #9 These days, many Americans are so “on edge” that just about anything will make them snap. For example, a 60-year-old woman in New Mexico recently repeatedly stabbed her boyfriend because she thought that he was cheating during a game of Monopoly. #10 If you thought that the above example was crazy, just check out what one man down in Georgia did recently. He actually firebombed a Taco Bell because they did not put enough meat in his Chalupa. #11 In Cleveland last week, a 49-year-old man was sent to the hospital after a poll monitor working for the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections tried to bite his nose off. #12 Not only do TSA agents make us feel like dehumanized cattle as we go through airport security, some of them are evening making fun of us at the same time. For example, one TSA agent recently scribbled “GET YOUR FREAK ON GIRL” on a TSA inspection notice after discovering a sex toy in the luggage of one female traveler. #13 Identity theft is rising to very alarming levels all over the United States. For example, a recent article in the Palm Beach Post described what has been going on down in Florida this year…. In the first half of this year, the Federal Trade Commission received more than 20,000 complaints from Floridians whose identities had been stolen — nearly as many as in all of 2010. More than half of those reporting their Social Security numbers or other personal information had been ripped off and used to commit fraud or theft were in South Florida, with heavy concentrations in parts of Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach. “That kind of increase is really shocking,” said Vance Luce, deputy special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service in South Florida, which investigates identity theft and financial crimes. “The fact that it’s on the upturn doesn’t surprise me at all, but that’s pretty alarming.” #14 In the Seattle area, an elderly couple in their eighties was recently brutally attacked by a 31-year-old man armed with a crossbow and a hatchet. The following description of this brutal crime comes from King 5 News…. Prosecutors say 31-year-old John Chase was walking down the highway when he saw Ralph Aldrich, 88, in his back yard. Detectives say Chase shot and killed Aldrich with a crossbow and then went inside the home and repeatedly hit 83-year-old June Aldrich with a hatchet. #15 As America falls apart, more of us than ever are taking medication for depression. At this point, more than 1 out of every 10 Americans over the age of 12 is taking prescription antidepressants. #16 In some areas of the country, people have been literally tearing apart their own cities in an attempt to find things to sell. I recently discussed this phenomenon on The American Dream Blog…. In Fresno, California the damage caused by thieves stealing copper wire from city street lights is costing the city about $50,000 a month. So far, about 2,500 street lights have been stripped of their wiring. #17 As people become more desperate, we are starting to see some truly bizarre crimes in many parts of the nation. In northern Alabama, one team of crooks has been using a forklift to pull entire ATM machines out of the ground. #18 Most Americans don’t realize this, but all over the U.S. livestock is being stolen from ranchers in unprecedented numbers. The following is from a recent Associated Press article…. While the brazenness may be unusual, the theft isn’t. High beef prices have made cattle attractive as a quick score for people struggling in the sluggish economy, and other livestock are being taken too. Six thousand lambs were stolen from a feedlot in Texas, and nearly 1,000 hogs have been stolen in recent weeks from farms in Iowa and Minnesota. The thefts add up to millions of dollars in losses for U.S. ranches. Authorities say today’s thieves are sophisticated compared to the horseback bandits of the rugged Old West. They pull up livestock trailers in the middle of the night and know how to coax the animals inside. Investigators suspect it’s then a quick trip across state lines to sell the animals at auction barns. #19 At this point, thieves are becoming so bold that they will steal literally anything that they are able to cart away. For example, in the San Francisco area a while back thieves actually stole a copper bell that weighs 2.7 tons. #20 According to the FBI, the number of gang members in the United States has increased by a staggering 40 percent since 2009. Right now, there are 1.4 million gang members terrorizing citizens on the streets of America. #21 Down in Miami, thieves have become so bold that they have actually been breaking into parked police cruisers and stealing guns and ammo out of them. Many of those guns undoubtedly are ending up in the hands of gangs members. #22 Be careful who you befriend online. They might just hold you captive and use you as part of a Satanic sex ritual. The following description of an incident that recently happened in Milwaukee comes from thesmokinggun.com…. Two young Milwaukee women were arrested this week after an 18-year-old Arizona man–who traveled to Wisconsin by bus after meeting one of the suspects online–told cops that he was held captive in the duo’s apartment for two days and slashed and stabbed more than 300 times as part of an apparent satanic sex ritual. Anger and frustration are growing to unprecedented levels in this country, and all of this anger and frustration is manifesting in thousands of different ways. As I have written about previously, the rioting, the crime and the violence that we are seeing now is only just the beginning of what is coming. Unless a miracle happens, our country is going to keep heading down the road toward societal collapse. For even more examples that show that our country is starting to come apart at the seams, please see the following articles that I have authored previously…. It won’t happen all at once, but unless our nation changes direction dramatically, we will see things get progressively worse and worse. Instead of teaching our children to love and care for one another, we have taught them to be incredibly self-involved. Today, way too many Americans deeply love themselves, deeply love money and are deeply addicted to entertainment. Each new generation seems to be even more prideful, even more arrogant and even more violent. As a nation, we are losing our empathy for others, our compassion for the needy and our respect for the elderly. Our family units are breaking down and thousands of our communities are being transformed into hellholes. What in the world is happening to America? If you have a thought on this topic, please feel free to share your opinion by leaving a comment below….

Bumbershoot (9/1-9/3) announced its 2012 music lineup today, featuring mainstage acts Jane's Addiction, Tony Bennett, Skrillex and more. On the regular lineup are The Vaselines, Blitzen Trapper and, of course, a few local acts, including, Damien Jurado, Sera Cahoone and THEE Satisfaction. And of course, there's also a very long list of groups to discover, if you haven't heard them yet. See the full list below, or watch this cute promo video which spells it all out with an old school flair. Of note this year: certain days of the festival will feature (in addition to lots of other programming) a more specialized focus on blues, jazz or metal, for example, so hardcore fans of those genres can see more of what they want with less time cursing indie rockers. There's also late-night electronic music curated in partnership with the Decibel Festival, a new stage (The Promenade) planned outside McCaw Hall and a stage dedicated almost entirely to Sub Pop acts. More details and tickets at bumbershoot.org. Read the current music lineup from the press release after the jump: Yep, it's time to show mom how much you love her, and everyone and their mom wants to help you do it. Here are a few of the special Mother's Day dining events going around town. Lunchbox Laboratory says, “Hey, Mom. Show us your tats!” Moms willing to reveal some inked skin on Mother's Day get to scarf down their divine burgers, hand-dipped shakes and other goodies at both the Seattle and Bellevue locations for free. lunchboxlaboratory.com Wending through the creaky, unlit passages that served as intermissions during the nearly four-hour long Café Nordo’s Cabinet of Curiosities "show", I couldn’t stop thinking about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. It's been quite a seven years for Michelle Quisenberry and her chef-husband Don Curtiss, and quite a seven years for Old Ballard Ave. When Volterra opened on the historic street in 2005, few of the current businesses had yet to open: no Bastille, Moshi Moshi, no Walrus & Carpentor or any of the slew of new bars and eateries farther south on that narrow road. If this isn’t your first visit to our website, you’ve probably noticed things look a little different. Don’t worry, you aren’t having an episode. We have begun some pretty labor-intensive changes to our online presence. In addition to improving our website’s overall navigation so it’s easier for you to browse the content you are most interested in, we’re working on a pretty thorough overhaul of our online archives and other digital tools. And we will continue to add new content every day. Awesome as it is, most of us usually feel like we need a good reason to have dinner at the Space Needle's restaurant, SkyCity. Your Uncle Bob and Aunt Harriet are visiting from Muskogee. Your boyfriend wants to put a ring on it. Bookstores are perfect spots to visit on bone-chilling days when the kids are jumping off the walls or on hot summer days when you’re searching for some air conditioning to cool down. Plus, you can kiss goodbye the days where book stores merely sold, well, books. It's still a little random that American businesses widely observe Cinco de Mayo (and not actual Mexican Independence day: September 16). On the other hand, who wants to argue with an excuse to celebrate during the sober waking-nightmare we all silently suffer between St. Patrick's Day and the Fourth of July? Here's a few go-to places where you can be sure to observe the beloved tradition of knocking back tequila and tacos, no matter what day it is. Designer Adrienne Antonson is one talented lady. Not only does the Vashon Island-based artist craft supremely weird/awesome bugs out of human hair, she happens to be the creative genius behind Capitol Hill shop NuBe Green’s in-house line, State. Film buffs who can hardly wait for SIFF should head to Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center. For one week, starting Friday (5/4-5/13), Restless City is returning to Seattle (since its debut at Langston Hughes African American Film Festival) for a local theatrical release, thanks to LHPAC's ongoing affiliation with AAFRM (African-American Film Release Movement). When I sat down this afternoon to peruse the runway looks from last Friday's Luly Yang Couture Fashon Show, I was hoping to narrow down my favorites to a neat, tidy top five list. You’ll just have to indulge me with nine. The Bob Rivers Show introduced Seattle to its "new and improved" super villain this morning: Rex Velvet. Sporting a bad English accent and vague inclinations to nurture "evil" in the community, Velvet was soon unmasked and revealed to be a professional wedding photographer by day. That might explain his connections to some talented filmmakers. Here's the video he posted on YouTube yesterday: Remember that scene from Tim Burton’s Batman, in which the Joker orders his bomber-jacket clad henchmen to dump a bunch of money onto the streets of Gotham? Removing all nefarious intentions, and pretending there are well-meaning nonprofit managers on the street below, not greedy movie extras – that crazy money-distributing mad man or woman could be you on May 2, should you choose to participate in Seattle Foundation’s Give Big day.

This has been a beautiful and rewarding meeting. I endorse the counsel provided by President Howard W. Hunter and that given by each of the sisters who has addressed us. As I contemplate the vast audience assembled tonight, I ponder the words of President Heber J. Grant, who declared: “I have often felt that a photograph of our dear sisters, with the intelligent, Godlike faces they possess, would be a testimony to all the world of the integrity of our people.” 1 We would certainly need the widest wide-angle lens to include all of you in one photograph. Such is not available to us, but with God, all things are possible. In His infinite vision, He literally can view all of us and bless all of us. All we need do is to so live that we merit the blessings ever predicated on our faithfulness to His commandments. Said President George Albert Smith: “I desire to impress on you daughters of God … that if this world is to endure, you must keep the faith. If this world is to be happy, you will have to set the pace for that happiness. … If we are to maintain our physical strength and mental power and spiritual joy, it will have to be on the Lord’s terms.” (Relief Society Magazine, Dec. 1945, p. 719.) Perhaps a young lady had this thought in mind when she spoke the feelings of her yearning heart: “What we really and truly need is less criticism and more models to follow.” Frequently we are too quick to criticize, too prone to judge, and too ready to abandon an opportunity to help, to lift, and, yes, even to save. Some point the accusing finger at the wayward or unfortunate and in derision say, “Oh, she will never change. She has always been a bad one.” A few see beyond the outward appearance and recognize the true worth of a human soul. When they do, miracles occur. The downtrodden, the discouraged, the helpless become “no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God.” (Eph. 2:19.) True love can alter human lives and change human nature. This truth was portrayed so beautifully on the stage in My Fair Lady. Eliza Doolittle, the flower girl, spoke to one for whom she cared: “You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up—the dressing and the proper way of speaking—the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins because he always treats me as a flower girl and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you because you always treat me as a lady and always will.” The Apostle Paul wrote an epistle to his beloved companion Timothy in which he provided inspired counsel equally as applicable to you and me today as it was to Timothy. Listen carefully to his words: “Neglect not the gift that is in thee,” “but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.” (1 Tim. 4:14, 12.) We need not wait for a cataclysmic event, a dramatic occurrence in the world in which we live, or a special invitation to be an example—even a model to follow. Our opportunities lie before us here and now. But they are perishable. Likely they will be found in our own homes and in the everyday actions of our lives. Our Lord and Master marked the way: “[He] went about doing good.” (Acts 10:38.) He in very deed was a model to follow—even an example of the believers. Happiness abounds when there is genuine respect one for another. Wives draw closer to their husbands, and husbands are more appreciative of their wives, and children are happy, as children are meant to be. Where there is respect in the home, children do not find themselves in that dreaded “never never land”—never the object of concern, never the recipient of proper parental guidance. To those who are not yet married, I counsel: People who marry in the hope of forming a permanent partnership require certain skills and attitudes of mind. They must be skillful in adapting to each other. They need capacity to work out mutual problems. They need willingness to give and take in the search for harmony. They need unselfishness of the highest sort, with thought for one’s partner taking the place of desire for oneself. Many years ago I had the opportunity to deliver a commencement address to a graduating class. I had gone to the home of President Hugh B. Brown that we might drive together to the university where he was to conduct the exercises and I was to speak. As President Brown entered my car, he said, “Wait a moment.” He looked toward the large bay window of his lovely home, and then I realized what he was looking for. The curtain parted, and I saw Sister Zina Brown, his beloved companion of well over fifty years, at the window, propped up in a wheelchair, waving a little white handkerchief. President Brown took from his inside coat pocket a white handkerchief, which he waved to her in return. Then, with a smile, he said to me, “Let’s go.” As we drove, I asked President Brown to tell me about the sign of the white handkerchiefs. He related to me the following incident: “The first day after Sister Brown and I were married, as I went to work I heard a tap at the window, and there was Zina, waving a white handkerchief. I found mine and waved in reply. From that day until this I have never left my home without that little exchange between my wife and me. It is a symbol of our love one for another. It is an indication to one another that all will be well until we are joined together at eventide.” Yes, a model to follow, “an example of the believers.” To you young women in attendance tonight, you, too, can be a model—even an example. We are all aware that we live in a time when there are those who mock virtue, who peddle pornography under the guise of art or culture, who turn a blind eye, a deaf ear, and a calloused heart to the teachings of Jesus and a code of decency. Many of our young people are tugged in the wrong direction and enticed to partake of the sins of the world. Yearningly such individuals seek for the strength of those who have the ability to stand firm for truth. Through righteous living and by extending the helping hand and the understanding heart, you can rescue, you can save. How great will then be your joy. How eternal will be the blessing you will have conferred. Some women face illness and incapacity, even to the point of being bedfast. Even so, there is the privilege to rise above affliction and to be a true example of faith, of love, and of service. Such was the partnership of Virginia and her husband, Eugene Jelesnik. They for many years worked together in bringing the gift of song and the joy of music to thousands of servicemen and women and to audiences from stages worldwide. Then illness and advancing age forced Virginia to remain within four walls—bedfast. But her spirit could not be held hostage by an impaired body. She continued to encourage her husband and to be his inspiration and constant support. All who are the beneficiaries of Eugene’s community concerts and his civic service marvel at his energy, his enthusiasm, and his kindness. In his many responsibilities, Virginia was ever a source of his strength. While the Apostle Paul urged that we be examples of the believers, he didn’t restrict the boundaries of our service or limit the extent of our influence. In July of this year, my wife and I attended an honor banquet where individuals were recognized for their quiet service, their selfless sacrifice, their untold devotion to lifting others to a higher plane of living with no thought of aggrandizement or personal reward. One Native American lady had literally given much of her life to teaching boys and girls of her native race how to live, how to love, and how to serve. Her response when recognized for her accomplishments bespoke her humility. Quietly and sincerely, she said just two special words: “Thank you.” Another beautiful woman was honored for her caring, her serving, and her leadership. As a nurse she comforted the wounded in World War II. As a wife and partner with her husband, she built a worldwide business which blessed the lives of many. And today she, as a widow, continues daily service to her state and community. She seems to always be smiling. Perhaps this is because she has found the key to happiness. She has always been a missionary. She has ever been there when needed. Yet another, we learned, had quietly yet effectively labored with love to ensure that the rights of abused children should not be neglected or abandoned. There were others. All qualified for the definition of a pioneer—namely, “one who goes before, showing others the way to follow.” During the banquet and program, I sat next to a well-known personality, Flip Harmon, and his wife, Lois. Flip has been involved with the direction of the Days of ’47 celebration for forty-three years, this being an annual July 24th activity in Salt Lake City. Since Flip was up and around the room fulfilling his official duties, I had the privilege of talking with Lois. She mentioned that she and family members were in attendance at every presentation of the famous rodeo which is one of the highlights of the Days of ’47 celebration. Now, a rodeo is nice once in a while—but every night? I asked Lois how she endured the schedule. Her response was from the heart. “This is Flip’s life, and I want to be part of it. He counts on me.” The night I had attended the rodeo with Sister Monson, my Aunt Blanche (age ninety-five), and our grandchildren, Lois was surrounded by children and precious grandchildren. She was the epitome of happiness. Now, during our luncheon conversation, Lois volunteered to me a few details about her husband. She said Flip had an angel mother who prayed fervently for her sons as they served their country during wartime. When Flip returned home, he and Lois were married. A busy life and welcome children followed. Each year as their wedding anniversary approached, Flip would say to Lois, “What gift do you want for our anniversary?” Each year the answer was the same, “A temple sealing.” The gift was not given. Then one year, as the perennial question was asked, “What do you want, Lois, for our anniversary?” and the usual response was given, “To go to the temple of God together,” Flip’s reply was unexpected: “Fine. I’ll prepare for such an event.” They were sealed for time and eternity in the holy house of God on their twenty-ninth anniversary. Later, Flip served as a bishop. Each remains faithful to the other and loyal to the Lord. As Lois continued, I noticed tears brimming in her eyes. She said, “You know Flip always wears cowboy boots. At the end of each day he would sit in the chair before the fireplace, where he would take off his boots and then read the paper. He would never put away the boots, no matter how many times I mentioned the subject. Years ago that would bother me. But not anymore. Today I just love those boots. Tender are my feelings and full is my heart as I willingly and lovingly pick them up and put them away each evening.” Now tears were brimming in my eyes. Unexpectedly, Lois Harmon was asked to come to the podium, where she was given signal honor for her silent service. A beautiful bouquet of red roses was presented to her. Flip was asked to respond. His expression was from his heart. It was as though the two of them were alone in the large hotel dining area. “Lois is the light of my life. She’s my eternal partner.” (The word partner seemed to fit with the cowboy boots.) “We’ll be together forever.” Patience was rewarded. Love was expressed. Heaven was near. My dear sisters, young and those just a bit older, though your circumstances may differ and your opportunities may vary, you can be models to follow, even “examples of the believers.” In the Holy Temple just east of the Tabernacle on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, a beautiful tribute was paid to two of our sisters serving in the nursery. They, of course, were dressed in white, as were the children who had, that evening, been sealed to their parents. As the sisters bade their farewell to the children, one tiny girl, from a faith-filled heart, said to them, “Good night, angels.” May I borrow her words and say to you sisters worldwide, “Good night, angels.” In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

I awoke in the morning in warm sunshine. Audrey was in my arms. I kissed her before slipping away and thought I’d made a clean get away when Audrey said, “Don’t go.” “I have to,” I said. I really did. I had to pee so badly. She got up and took my hand and led me to a door and inside was a urinal and a toilet. I didn’t even wait for her to close the door before I started to drain the dragon. She hadn’t left but was peering over my shoulder. I reached for her hand and let her guide the stream. She laughed but I finished up and she pushed me out of the way and squatted slightly over the urinal. Her hands were on her knees and her breasts swung attractively in the dim light I stooped over and cupped one and kissed her while she pee’d. She squirted a few times then stood up into my arms and we kissed for a long time. She finally pulled back and said, “Oh Josh, you have duty and I have to castrate more goats today.” “I don’t really want to go.” I said. Audrey kissed me and said, “Nevertheless we have duty and I am Bahia now and duty comes first.” She backed up over the urinal and began to pour water on her bush, using her other hand to rinse herself. She smiled at me reached down and I saw her wince and I asked, “What’s wrong,” She smiled and said. “I’m just a little sore.” “Here I’ll check,” She let me fondle her pussy and only winced again as my fingers examined her opening. She was just a little chafed but nothing major. I patted it and kissed her, “You’ll be all right with a few days rest.” I said. She put her hand on mine and pressed it to her. She was giggling and said, “What if I don’t want a few days rest?” I kept my hand on her rubbing her lightly, “I’ll have to rest, I have duty at the bath house tomorrow or the next day and I have to save up a load for then.” I kissed her, “Besides,” I said, “You need to convales and wait your turn.” We made our way out and found our clothes. Audrey asked my help with her dress so I helped her and she buttoned my shirt for me after taking liberties with my chest. Finally dressed, she took up her shawl and we left. Only one woman was at the desk and she just smiled and waved as Audrey and I walked past her. Audrey stopped at the front door and ran her hands through my hair and straightened up my shirt and fixed my collar. Then she reached up and kissed me, “You go on and get to breakfast,” she said with her arms around my neck. “I’m going out the back door and change out of this dress. “I’ll see you later.” I kissed her again and turned to walk out the door. I found that I was lost and asked two girls about 9 or 10 where the mess hall was. They both looked at me and each other and shook their heads. “The Dinning hall?” I asked. They both smiled and pointed down the hill. “We are going to eat, could we walk with you?” one of them said. “Sure, I’m Josh Perkins. What are your names?” “I’m Emily and this is Margret.” We shook hands and the two girls each took one of my hands and led me down to the dining hall. Emily kept up a skipping constant chatter while Margret practiced her proto-go-fer girl marching. The girls didn’t let go of my fingers until we were in the Dinning hall. They made sure that everyone saw them with me and then said good-bye and ran into the rapidly thinning crowd. I Saw Able and Steve setting with a few women and went over and sat down across from them. “Josh, Sarge is looking for you.” Able said as he finished up his eggs and sopped the yoke off his plate with a tortilla. “Did he say why?” I asked suspiciously. “Didn’t say but he looked like he was just making a headcount.” Able said. About this time a motherly type came up to me and said, “Oh Josh, and giggled a little before she continued, “We can only make you some eggs, the corn mush is all gone. You‘ll have to get here earlier next time.” I looked at her, she was smiling and waiting, “Some eggs would be fine, ma’am.” “My name is Winifred Desoto, call me Wini,” she said putting out her hand. “Pleased to meet you.” I said shaking it, “Are you kin to Astral then?” “Josh everybody is kin in Barney, except you all,” she waved off-handedly at Steve and Able but I knew she meant the whole team. “I’ll see if I can find some ham to go with those eggs.” A woman came over and herded the girls that hovered around Steve and Able away saying, “Girls go get to work. These men need their strength and you are just getting in the way.” Able watched the last of them who had kissed him good bye leave and turned back to me and smiled. “Maidens, don’t you just love ‘em.” I said, “I’m surprised at the reception we gotten. I expected everyone to be, well I don’t know not as friendly. But everyone has been mostly smiling.” “I’m not surprised,” Able said. “It seems that there has been a feud going on for the last hundred years between the men and the women here. When we showed up, we broke the log jam and it seems everybody is happy. How long that will last I don’t know.” Steve spoke up, “You can keep everybody happy some of the time and some of them happy all the time but you can’t keep everybody happy all the time.” He grinned as if he had just thought that up. Wini came out and brought my eggs and a small piece of meat. “We only had venison, Josh is that all right?” She said putting the plate in front of me along with a plate of warm tortillas. I looked up at her and said, “Fine Wini I like venison. Thank you.” Able and Steve kept me company telling me about their exploits last night at the bath house. “We got to the Kiva after dinner last night and started to sort out our gear when about an hour later Sarge told us to go down and take a bath. I thought he was commenting on Steve’s hygiene but he said to give out a couple of freebee’s and generally recon the area.” Able began. “You‘d a thought that we had thrown a wild cat into the dressing area when we came in. Women were runnin’ and throwing on their clothes, taken off their clothes and generally screamin’, laughing or squawking like geese. Steve and I got the hell out of the way and waited for it to settle down and let me tell you, it became calm and peaceful, a mandolin started to play and our clothes were off in no time, they plucked us clean and didn’t hardly fondle our privates. Civilized people here.” “The women undressed you?” I asked looking up from my plate. “Oh yeah, they were all so polite and helpful, weren’t they Steve?” “Oh very, very polite people,” Steve said smiling and nodding. “When we came in there were a lot of women and kids and a couple of teenies that strutted around later, but by the time we got into our robes and went into the baths proper, there were ten or so. Well Steve and I didn’t want to start a scene so I sat down on the pedestal and a woman offered me a pipe and another a beer and things settled down. There were a couple of women washing kids in the back and we weren’t there long when a couple of Bahia came in those fancy robes of their’s and everybody got up and welcomed them. They both bowed and opened their robes to expose their breasts. Then everyone, Steve and I included, caressed their breasts gently touched their face and blessed them for their service. Now I understand some more about the Bahia.” Able said. Steve piped up, “yeah we learned that they’re Bahia for a year then they put on the uniform and focus on their jobs. They can have children, it seems, but they leave them in the nursery at six months, and then only see them once in a while after that.” “So it is kind of like joinein’ the Corps?” I said pulling a tortilla over. “Yeah,” he said slowly, “but there’s somethin’ else,” I just can’t see it yet. But anyway, we sat down on the pedestal and the Bahia sat with their breasts exposed, almost posing for the audience, wouldn’t you’d say that Steve?” “Well we passed the pipe again and drank a beer with the women when I stood up and walked into the bath area and took a leak, you know in that urinal thing.” “Well when I got back I noticed that everyone was laughing at me. Not real loud. Well I tried to ignore it and asked a woman what I had done wrong she smiled and said, 'Your Robe.” "I looked down and my dick was sticking out. I tucked it back in and helped her take back the empties and hand out the fresh beers around. When I noticed a little dark woman drying off a girl about 3-4 years old. She was really built. Strong woman about 30 and she had her robe off as she dried her girl. I watched her a second and turned back to watch as Steve discussed the Adoration of the Goddess with some of the women." “Well the Bahia asked me to explain it and everyone was so interested.” Steve said as I smiled at him. “Well I turned around and saw the little girl coming at me. She was dressed in her robe and her mother was just putting her own robe on so I snuck a look at her. When she saw me looking she gave me a wave and closed her robe when I feel the little girls hand reach in and pull out my dick. She gave it a couple of squeezes and turned back to her mother pointed to it and said “See!” Able and Steve both broke up laughing and I was choking on my tortilla. When we stopped laughing Steve said, “Tell him about the Bahia and the girl. Able nodded. “ Anyway, The Mother came over all embarrassed and I told her no problem and I got down and asked the little girl her name, Gloria it was, so I got down on one knee and told her. ‘Gloria it’s not nice to touch someone without asking first.’ She hid in her mothers robe and her mother made her apologize and I patted her on the head. Then her mother told her to go and welcome the Bahia. Gloria got all excited and was looking around for them. I lifted her upon the pedestal and when she saw them she ran over and kissed one of ‘em. And then all serious like touched her breasts and had a little conversation with her. Then she went to the second Bahia,” Able looked at Steve, What was her name?” “Joyce or maybe Joslin,” Steve replied. “So Gloria comes up to Joyce and says something to her and Joyce nodded and little Gloria kissed her tit and then sucked her nipple really hard. It made Joyce wince but Gloria looked over at her mother and clamped her hand on Joyce’s tit and said “Pretty” and then she sat in Joyce’s lap and was rubbing Joyce’s titties all over her face and sucking the nipples. Well Amelia, got up and brought Gloria back and sat Gloria in her lap. “Amelia?” I asked “Yeah she told me her name was Amelia. Gloria, it turns out, is her ‘niece’ and Amelia was just watching her until her mother got off shift at the Dinning hall. Well about that time the Bahia had been adored enough and got up to bathe. All the women went to help and Steve followed and watched so Amelia and I kept Gloria busy and let them go do their thing.” Able smiled, “She was a pretty little thing.” “Gloria?” I asked He looked at me and said,” No, Amelia, Oh Gloria is cute as bug’s ear but Amelia is just plain womanly attractive. She has real dark skin and almost no hair at all. Her skin is smooth and soft...” We lost him as he drifted off to a memory that was sure to be different from reality. “Anyway Amelia is working for the Hydrology Administration so she is coming to pick me up and show me how they level and fill in new pasture areas.” “They are riding out in the country, you see.” Steve said. “Hey I’m a student of Hydrology! And she is doing some interesting work. They level the fields by moving rocks she said. Apparently they have been doing it since they set up here way back when. Anyway they have a lot of improved pasture and, Amelia said she thought that they might have a pasture or two that would be good for the oats.” Wini came out and ask me if I’d had enough. I wiped my mouth and handed her the plate and utensils. “Thank You, it was delicious.” She wasn’t phased a bit but called a girl over to take them into the Kitchen. She smiled at all of us and handed us each a package wrapped in a clean napkin. “I made some biscuits this morning and we had some left over. You boys need to put on some weight after that long ride out here. Oh and I stuffed some bacon in to them so they wouldn’t be too dry. So take them with you and enjoy.” She patted me on the arm and said, “Josh thank you for taking care of Astral the other night. She is so happy, thank you.” She started to bawl then turned and walked quickly back into the kitchen wiping her eyes on her apron. “I better go see what Sarge wanted.” I said and Steve stood up with me but Able stayed in his seat. He waved good bye, waiting for Amelia of the dark smooth skin. Steve was going back to the Kiva, he and Sarge were working the back room at the post today and he told me Bob and Raule were off today. He and Able would be off tomorrow he said. When I got to the Kiva Steve pointed out my alcove, “I put your saddle bags and pack in there. It has a bed and a cupboard thing. I’m on the other side.” He indicated with his thumb. We found Sarge in the back; He had taken the rear most Alcove for himself and designated the two alcoves next to his as stores, leaving only two for visiting elders or poker games. “Perkins, glad to see you’re back. How did it go last night?” Sarge said in seeming sincerity. “Real good Sarge,” I said. “Dinner was real good and the company was very interesting.” “I understand you got to meet Irene Black?” He asked. “I met the woman and she is very interesting, beautiful with the whitest skin I ever saw.” Sarge nodded “Redheads are like that, Like Ginny all freckles in the sun but snow white where they’re covered.” “If you say so Sarge I never even look at Ginny unless I have to.” Steve said. “Anyway you boffed her?” “No it was very nice and polite, she was Audrey’s escort and she had to stay with Audrey I guess, and Audrey talked her into letting her Inner Goddess out.” “Is that when she took off her robe?” Sarge asked intently. “Yeah that was when she said,’ Josh I hope you don’t mind me letting my Goddess out and ...” I stopped and looked at them. Both of them were leaning in to me as I sat in the chair. Sarge stopped me, “She was your escort, or you were hers, I’m not sure how that worked out. Anyway Mercer told me to put you on the detail because Irene wanted to try out the goods.” “You didn’t tell me.” I said Sarge hit Steve on the arm, “See I was right. “We watched with binoculars.” Steve said. “With binoculars?” I was surprised. Binoculars were hard to find and impossible to reproduce yet. Sarge made do with a half a binocular and my dad had given his set to my older brother when he had joined the Corps. Jacob still had the Nikon 8x35’s and might pass them down to one of his sons if he ever stopped running around Socal. Sarge reached into the cupboard and pulled out a worn leather pouch and extracted a pair of Schmitt and Bender 8x50’s I had heard of S&B’s but never thought I’d get a chance to see a pair. “Wow!” I said, understatement being my long suite. Sarge took them from my greedy hands and rewrapped them in a soft Angora wrap saying, “And the compass still works. I think we are on to something here men. Alice tells me that the Administration used to issue them to just about everybody in the Security Administration but there is still a warehouse full of these somewhere.” “Who’s Alice? Anyway how did you guys see us?” I asked. Sarge said,” Well I was talking to Alice about another glass of beer in the dinning hall and she wanted to trade so I talked turkey with her for a while and jollied her around after one of the go-fer girls just went and gave me a beer. Anyway she said that a scout might need a pair of binoculars, she figured and might I be interested in observing the merchandise. So I followed her up to her place with Steve. Well we inspected a pair of Bushnell’s and they were pretty sad, then she brought out the Schmitt and Benders and I almost shit!” “I shouted ‘Holy Mother on a Shining Shingle,’ and she knew she had me.” Sarge was even tempered when he was trading, nothing fazes him and he generally gets a good bargain when he is motivated to trade. For him to do that, and admit it, was only a measure of the respect he had for fine trade goods like the S&B’s. Besides they were doing more good in Sarge’s hands than if they were stored in Alice’s closet. “So you saw us from Alice’s place what did you see?” I asked. “Well everything until you lay the little one down and then I quit looking. I saw every hair on her through the lenses; they have never been touched with anything but a brush.” Sarge said. “Anyway the deal I made was once a month for a year, or as long as I’m here and if I’m on the trail Steve has to stand in. She was trying for twice a month but I said the she deserved a chance to inspect the merchandise and we went up stairs. We were just getting started when Alice looked up and said “The Spider returns to her Web” or something like that and I stopped what I was doing because she was looking out the window.” “Anyway we ended up watching you thru the window in her bedroom. When I started watching, Alice handed me the Schmitt and Benders and pulled out a set of Nikon 8x12 variables and a tripod.” I was aghast, Nikons and Schmitt and Benders too, Wow! “So we watched for a while and she was beautiful but Alice said Irene was only taking her ten percent off the top like the rest of the Bahia.” “Really, she seemed like she just wanted to watch.” I said. “I noticed you watched her really closely. I noticed you sucked the goddess plum out of her too. But that gave Alice an idea and we went back to negotiating the deal after you lay the little one, Audrey, down. So I was able to convince her to part with the Schmitt and Benders for once a month because she said she didn’t think she could take me twice a month and still walk.” Sarge laughed and of course Steve and I laughed along with him. “But she wanted more; she said that she heard we had brought oat seed and wants us to deliver 200 kilos of the oats we grow for the mules to her in the mess hall. She said she wanted to try oat meal, all they get here is cornmeal mush.” “200 kilos,” I said, “that is a lot of oats.” Sarge reached into his cupboard and pulled out a small angora wrapped package. “I got her to sweeten the deal a little,” he said and handed me the package I unwrapped it a saw a set of small binoculars. The finish was hardly worn but was flaking off a little, they were very light but the engraving was still on them and I made out the script “Leica 7x42mm” on the shoulder boss. They still had their spring loaded lens covers on the objectives but the rubber eye cups were long lost and had been replaced with leather cups. I looked up at Sarge and said, “For me?” “He took them from my hands and said, “Only if you can get me 200 Kilos of Oats.” “Next Spring?” I asked. “Done” he said and handed me back the Leica’s. “Now Able found a lady who is going to take him out to look at land for oat fields today. I want you to go with them and pick out your fields. We’ve got ten mule loads of seed and we only need 200 Kilos extra so we should be able to put in a couple of extra meters to do this, right Josh?” I looked up at him and said, “Yes indeed, Can do, Sarge.” “Well Able was going to bring the horses around as soon as his lady friend picked him up at the Mess hall. So go out and get started.” I got up and went for my field coat and hat. I decided not to take my saddle bags along and put the Leica’s in the inside pocket of my field coat. They fit perfectly. When I got outside Able was waiting with the horses. He was talking to a small dark woman and she was laughing. “You must be Amelia,” I said, “I’m Josh Perkins.” She took off her glove and shook my hand saying “Amelia De Soto.” It was a firm handshake; I could tell she wasn’t squeezing as hard as she could. Then she stood on her toes and kissed my cheek, putting one hand around my back then hugging me and sniffed my chest as she patted my back. “That was from Rachel, she said to give you a hug for her.” She said. “Rachael?” I asked. “Rachael De Soto, I haven’t talked to Astral but Rachael is sure that Astral is carrying twins. She is already stared weaving twin blankets for the Nursery. She thinks Astral will surely win the “Black prize.” “Black Prize?” I said as Amelia turned to mount her horse. She swung up on her horse and, Able mounted so I mounted up and rode beside Amelia, Able on her left side. She pointed out the high lights of Barney, which amounted to a paper mill, vegetable plots, the chicken coops and about a hundred goat pens. When we got to the edge of town, I finally was able to ask her, “What is the Black Prize?” She looked at me quizzically for a second then shook her head and said, “Silly me, Of course you don’t know.” She smiled, “Well long ago a Black, I think it was Arnold Black, put up a prize for any woman that could bear twins or triplets. It has never been won and the $10,000 dollars has been in the bank compounding its interest. Last I heard they stopped counting when it got to three million and it has been waiting for twins to be born for, oh, a hundred years. If you did put twins into Astral she will win the prize.” Three million sounded like a lot of money to me even though I didn’t know what a Barney dollar was worth. “How much would say that Abel’s gelding would be worth?” Trying to get a gauge I could really appreciate. She looked at me and then at the flashy black gelding Able was riding. Able led him out and spun him in a circle and got him prancing a little and Amelia laughed. “Oh I’d bet you could get a thousand or twelve hundred for him. He is too light for heavy work and seems a bit flighty for a saddle horse.” Able now had his hands full, the black was eager to run having been cooped up in the corral. He pulled the gelding around beside Amelia and said, “How far are we going?” “About 10 kilometers or so well passed the pasture where all those mules are.” Amelia said. “Well let’s put on some speed then, blackie here is eager.” Able said. Amelia kicked her mount up to an easy canter and Able waved me back and caught up to her. I was low man on the pole, so I rode in their dust, a little up wind and enjoyed the ride. Able had given me the grey, because Able wanted to get Amelia alone the grey was a little too old and a lot too stupid to be a trail horse, the high mountain air was dry and smelled sweetly of spring. The road was very wide and we passed a couple of wagons drawn by two horse teams carrying poles cut for the new mule corrals. Everybody waved and some of the girls had enough energy, after cutting poles, to call out to Amelia. Barney lies at the west end of a broad East-West valley. The sun was high off the horizon and had yet to meet the meridian when we pulled up at the pasture where they had my mules. We led our horses up to where the Sunshine Girls had a camp under the trees along side the pasture. They had a small fire and were heating lunch when we came in. There were three or four of them and when they saw Amelia they all started running around and one jumped on a horse bare backed and rode off shouting. Gloria came up and welcomed Amelia; Able left me to tie the horses so I had to catch up to what Gloria and Amelia were talking about. “…cause we are just about to change shifts and get cleaned up.” Amelia pushed back Gloria’s disheveled hair over her ear and said, “You really need to get cleaned up, dear.” Then she stepped back and said, “Get the girls in here and in formation and we’ll call the roll.” Gloria saluted ran off to the edge of the pasture where the Girls had already started to line up some. Amelia explained as we waited for the girls to get all lined up according to some complex rules that amounted to Tallest first. Amelia said, “Ginny agreed to pay the Sunshine Corps a Dollar a day. All these girls had been goat herders and earned nothing before so it is a big deal to them. Excuse me I’ll be just a few minutes.” I had sympathy for the last one in line; I had been there many times. Amelia placed herself in the middle of the line about five paces from the line of girls and addressed the ten of them. “You members of the Sunshine Corps have done you duty and are entitled to not only your pay but the thanks of our whole community. You may, or may not choose, as I have, to become Bahia, but the understanding of duty and teamwork that you will gain in your service, as an upright and vigilant Sunshine girl will give you an understanding of what we stand for in Bahia.” She looked at Gloria, “Gloria call the roll.” Gloria called each girls name and Amelia wrote it down in a small notebook. And when the girl reached Amelia, Amelia handed her a chit upon which she had filled in an amount with a slim pen she also produced from her pocket. These were simple pink chits of the trading post. Ginny no doubt had provided them. We used them for small transactions and punched the ones redeemed at the Post or took them in as change. Now a pen is a useful item if you have paper. I never carry the stuff except in the few notebooks I carry in my saddle bags. But a pen takes ink and the bottles are too big to carry and they spill, making a mess, so I only keep my pens in my bags. I was interested in the pen Amelia took out of her pocket. Able and I stood at parade rest as the girls came up and Amelia took a look at each them, brushed some hair back to check their temperature and spoke to each of them briefly. Amelia got to the last scrawny girl and put her notebook and pen away as the girl marched back and took her place in line. Gloria called them to Attention and Amelia said, “Girls, Ginny has said that shirts have been tailored to your sizes and will be available to you after lunch. Those of you who have altered your uniform are advised to let out those seams as it is much more comfortable if it is a little loose. I will provide a chit to Gloria for new shirts to be issued to these four,” she said indicating the four smallest girls. You others are advised to see Ms. Trudy at the sewing center this afternoon and have your shirts fitted. Dismissed!” The girls all turned about and ran to get their horses. While the Sunshine Girls cut out ten of the mules and brought them up for my inspection Able and Amelia walked down to the river to water the horses. I checked out the mules as Gloria sat on her horse and watched me. “These mules are different than horses aren’t they.” she said. “Oh yes,’ I said as I waited for the mules to recognize me. “They have a whole different outlook on things. But most of them know me and they are all pretty gentle if you don’t confront them.” I was just checking them for general health and to make a head count so as they meandered around me I watched how they moved and saw that they all had filled their bellies with good grass and were a little sluggish. I waved to the girls and they moved in the next ten. The girls had tried to get the mules to canter around in a circle so I could check for lameness, but the mules were not having any of it and merely singled footed away and came closer to me, who had fed them every day since they had joined the caravan in Bakersfield. The mules watched me carefully and a few came up to see if I had oats or corn but most of them just allowed themselves to be moved around and appeared more interested in the grass. We went through all eighty of the mules then the girls brought up our remaining horses. They all looked pretty scrawny but I didn’t see any problems. I moved among them slowly and they settled down and watched me. Barb, my horse from Davis came over and nuzzled me. I gave her half of the biscuit Ms. Desoto had given me and she followed me around trying to mooch the rest of it. I ignored her and checked a few hooves and patted necks looking into their eyes. They were all pretty thin after the long weeks on the trail but were all alert and rested. I waved away the rest of the horses holding Barb by the forelock and the girls just let them wander off. Gloria called out to a couple of Yellow shirts, “Take Willy and Jane and you two run the mules off the beach. We’ll have mule shit all over if they get down to the beach again. Then you take a swim and come back and I’ll send the rest down.” “Gloria Have you got a rope?” I asked. She dismounted and walked slowly with her lariat in her hand and handed it to me. She moved smoothly so as not to spook Barb who was tugging at my hand and nickered. “She is really pretty, I saw her this morning about dawn. I had ridden down to check the river side when I saw her laying down but her head was up and there was just enough light to see her face well. She watched me ride past She watched me so alert but relaxed. She’s Arab isn’t she?” I put the rope around her neck and folded a loop over into a hackamore and said “Yes, My mom gave her to me when I graduated the Academy. She said I’d need a good horse. She wasn’t wrong. Barb is a little skinny now but she is tough as boot leather and can run with the wind, Can’t you girl?” I swung up on her back, “I’ll go down and find Able and Amelia and let the grey I was riding rest down here ok? I’d rather ride my own horse.” “I don’t blame you,” Gloria said. “I’m going to go check out the canyon before the shift change. It was good to see you again.” I rode Barb slowly down to the river and found Amelia and Able seated on a log in the shade, the Yellow shirts were flying off as the girls shed their clothes for a cool dip in the shallows of the river. Amelia saw me ride up and came to look at Barb. “Now there is a horse I might give you money for.” I swung off her and came up and held her head for Amelia to admire. I said, “I’m going to saddle Barb and let ol’Dobbin get some rest. He doesn’t have 20 clicks in him,” looking at Able. “Don’t blame me he was the last horse left. Mercer and Ginny rode out just before us on the two best ones.” Able said. “Well Barb is rested up and she won’t mind a good ride today.” I said and started to unsaddle Dobbin. Able and Amelia went back to the log and ignored me completely. I got the saddle off him and pulled off the halter and waved him away, but he just stood there in the shade and put his head down and dozed off. I shook my head at him and took the bridal over to Amelia. “Can you take this down and wash off the bit. Barb likes a clean bit. And I don’t want to spook your fillies while they’re naked.” “Sure, Amelia said and walked down to the stream with the halter. Able slapped me and said, “Well what you think of her?” I watched Amelia walk down to the river, thinking that Able was in love. “She is real nice. I like the way she handled the girls.” Able looked over his shoulder at her and turned to me. “Josh let us have some room later, OK?” I patted him on the shoulder and said. “I’ll keep out of your way after we see the pastures. I have to get the oats in the ground or we’ll have a lot of hungry mules.” Able smiled and looked back at Amelia who was talking to one of the older girls who had come over to talk to her at the river. The girl was naked and I guess didn’t realize that she had gone out beyond where the bushes shielded her from our gaze. Amelia stood up shaking her head and the girl turned and looked at us and saw we were looking. The she turned smiling and gave us a look at her just budding breasts and hairless pussy, and then she waved at us, laughed and ran back behind the bushes. Amelia came back up and handed me the bridle, “You fellows are a distraction even to our girls. They wanted me to talk you two into a swim with them but I said no. We need to get on the trail if we are going to see the farthest fields.” I took the bridle and put it on Barb who perked up and so I swung up on her and waited until Amelia and Able mounted up. Amelia led the way and we followed her along the river until we got out of the trees and then we could ride side by side. Barb had no trouble keeping up with them but I pulled her up some and rode drag to look at the country. We passed several smaller pastures where one or two shepardesses were watching flocks of goats. The Goats were in the brush and dogs came out barking as we rode past. After a half hour or so Amelia led us up over a ridge and we saw the pasture she had been talking about. It was about 40-50 hectares and was watered by a small stream that ran down one side of the field where four or five women were working loading rocks onto stone boat pulled by two heavy horses. We rode down to them and they stopped work when we rode up. Amelia got down and started introductions. Able and I dismounted and shook hands all around. These women were all mid twenties or so and wore straw hats with large brims, unlike Amelia’s cloth cap. They were all dressed in twill cargo pants and grey twill shirts. Some of the women had been working with their shirts unbuttoned and I noticed that they wore brassieres as they buttoned up their shirts and wiped the sweat off their faces with kerchiefs. Amelia told us that they had started work on this pasture a couple of years ago but it was just now that they had decided to build a cabin for the Sunshine girls who would be stationed out here to keep the deer and elk out of the oats when they started to grow. They were just going to load one more stone on the boat and have lunch so Able took off his field coat and shirt and helped them maneuver a large stone on to the boat and one of the women drove the team who were straining with the heavy load slowly down to the mouth of the stream and they dumped the stone at the mouth of the creek. We saw how they had diverted the creek causing it to flood out into the field to deposit its silt in the field rather than dumping it in the river. The creek ran under the rocks now but Amelia assured me that when the rains came in winter and early spring the creek would flood the field and deposit its silt on the field. We rode up to the head of the field and found three more women working on a sandstone cabin. They had gotten the walls up to about a meter and a half and were sliding stone up a wooden ramp to place on the wall as a woman mixed concrete for mortar in a shallow tub. We got down and made our introductions. These women were older than the field crew but not much. They said that they would have the cabin ready for a roof in the next couple of days then they would bring in timber for the roof structure and it should be completed before the oats were coming up. They invited us to lunch with them, “Doris knocked over three rabbits this morning and we made a stew, we’ve got enough for everyone.” The field crew came up and started dishing up the stew. But the cabin crew just kept working as we ate the stew and biscuits they had baked in a Dutch oven. Amelia and Able took our bowls down to the stream to rinse them out so that the cabin builders could eat and I sat and talked to the women getting field measurements and making calculations in my head. Able and Amelia came back and handed out the plates and I walked out and paced off the field. A woman, one of the field crew went with me and we talked about crops and grass, but she was eyeing me and smiling all the time. June was her name and she had been Bahia two years ago, she said. “I'm sorry I wasn't picked this year,” she said shaking her head. “Well you are still Bahia aren’t you?” I asked. “Yes, but it’s different now that you all are here.” She said. “I was inseminated, but it didn’t take, and I guess I’m still sorry.” ”Are you on Ginny schedule?” I asked. “Oh yes everybody is, even some of the old grannies.” She said laughing. “Well when your time is right come see me and I’ll try to put twins in you.” I said. “Twins,” she asked. “Yes, I’ve had three sets of twins, all girls.” I said and she brightened up quit a bit. “Oh Josh do you think…” she trailed off looking at me. “Well we can try but the odds are good. Or perhaps you’ll have a boy.” That got her going and she was quiet as we made our way back to the campfire where Amelia and Able were just saying good bye. I said good bye to the women and joined Able and Amelia who were saddling up. I mounted Barb and waved at June, “Come see me when you’re ready.” June just smiled and waved. Amelia took us down river a ways and pointed out another potential field then she said, “It’s hot maybe we should have a swim to cool down before we go back to town?” Able looked at me and I said, “Why don’t you two take a dip, I want to look around some more.” Able smiled at me and said, “Ok but don’t get yourself lost.” I knew he really didn’t mean it. I kicked Barb into a canter and rode down river a way. They rode to the river got lost in the trees along its banks. I crossed the river letting the barb pick her way among the rocks. I saw a few areas where I thought we should plant some alfalfa to draw the deer away from the oats and circled back up river until I saw Amelia and Able. They were just getting undressed when I got in a position where Barb would be hidden from them and I dismounted and tied her to a bush and found a spot where I could watch in the shade of the bushes. Then I took out the Leica’s and found out how good they were. I could see Amelia as she took off her shirt, she still had her hair up and she laughed at Able, or with him I couldn’t tell. Well Amelia left her Bra and panties on and waded out into the shallows while Able finished undressing. He kept on his shorts and went to the stream and joined her. Now the glasses were a little dirty but I wasn’t going to wipe them, not even with the Angora wrapping they came in. No I needed a brush, or a feather. Able tried to kiss Amelia but she ducked out from under his arms and ran through the shallows and turned laughing. He chased after her and Amelia dodged him every time he got close. Finally he grabbed her wrist and she just stopped and looked at him. He tried to pull her closer and she just flipped him over into the shallow water and ran laughing away. Able got up and shook himself off and said something and ran after her again and ended up sprawled on the sand bar again. He came up all covered in sand. He chased her again every time he had a hand on her she would flip him into the river. Finally he gave up and waded deeper in to the stream and took his shorts off to rinse out the sand and wash off his balls. She watched and they talked a while as Able waded out of the river. He didn’t get too close to her but hung his wet shorts on a branch. Amelia looked all around very carefully and then reached up and opened her bra. She had a lovely rack. Able sat on a tree log and watched her as she hung the bra and then her panties on the bushes and joined Able on the log. She stroked his hair and kissed him sweetly then sat back and let the sun dry her. I watched long enough to understand what Able meant about her being down right attractive. Her face was nice but not beautiful, but her body was beautiful. She was strong I could see the muscles working under her skin as she had run Able around but with her being naked now I was able to see what Able had said, she wasn’t too hairy, her legs had some hair on the lower part and her muff was sparse and trimmed. Able leaned over and kissed her and she let him, but she only let him caress her breast for a little while before she reached down and took his penis in her hand. I figured I’d let them have their privacy and rolled over on my back using the Leica’s to survey the country side. I figured that Able needed at least 30 minutes to worship and so I got back on the barb and rode slowly back crossing the river out of their sight. I got to a point where I could see their horses and waited letting Barb graze as I watched an eagle drift high above the peaks with my Leica’s. After a few minutes the black raised his head as Able came into view and I got on Barb and rode down to meet them. “Have a nice swim?” I asked them as they were mounting up. “Water’s a little cold but most refreshing,” Able answered smiling. “Did you see what you wanted to see?” Amelia asked as she adjusted her cap. “Yeah,” I said looking at Able, “there are some places along the river where I thought we could plant alfalfa to lure the deer away from the oats and make the Sunshine Girls jobs a little easier. The field you are clearing should be big enough to take all the oats but I’d like to find another field so if something happens to the crop we wouldn’t loose all our seed.” I said. Amelia said, “We’ve been working another field on the other side of town and it was too small for what Ginny was wanting. If we hurry we can get back with time enough I can show you the maps.”

Paperman is one of the cutest shorts ever and the clear winner from the 2013 nominations. It is a black and white short with little to no dialogue and a love story involving paper airplanes that takes up a whopping seven minutes of time. The story opens in old school New York City on a man and a woman at a train station. The man in his suit and his stack of papers and the woman with red lipstick engage in a tangle with papers blown by wind, and then suddenly the woman boards a train and disappears. A turn of fate finds them just across the street from one another at their end destinations and, convinced that she is The One, the man employs his killer paper airplane skills to try to catch her attention. The story is cute, quirky, and magical. It does not waste its seven minutes and nor does it over pack them. There is just enough repetitive action to create a tension the audience can feel, and then as if in response to the viewers, the man changes course into something unexpected and humorous. Seven minutes of this cute film is certainly not a waste of time. I definitely recommend it, and it is very easily found online. Enjoy!

2 Min Read LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift was named Billboard's woman of the year on Tuesday, becoming the youngest artist ever to receive the honor. The 21-year-old country-pop crossover artist has won four Grammys and her five-time platinum selling album "Speak Now" has been one of 2011's biggest sellers in the United States. Eleven of the 14 tracks made their way onto the Billboard Hot 100 charts in a single week earlier this year. Billboard editorial director Bill Werde said Swift's music and songwriting had transcended all genres of music. "At the young age of 21, Taylor has already made a major impact on music and has been an incredible role model for aspiring singers/songwriters and young women everywhere. I look forward to watching her career continue to flourish in the years to come," Werde said. Swift's 2008 album "Fearless" captured both the heartache and thrills of first love and remains the longest-running No.1 album by a female country artist in the history of the Billboard 200 album charts. Her overall worldwide sales now exceed 20 million albums and 40 million song downloads, Billboard said. Swift will be presented with the award at the 2011 Billboard Women in Music event on December 2 in New York. Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Edited by Bob Tourtellotte

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My body tensed up as I prepared to rescue a woman in distress — yet they were not in danger. Portrait of an elderly Portrait of an elderly papuan woman from the tribe of Asmat. The women came to my shop at Ejifeji, damaged things there, went to my house destroyed my property, took some away and demanded that I must come out and dance round the village as custom demands. Nude hotels near me However, even a simple task can end in a medical emergency. Saved one filter Removed from saved filters. Naked jungle women. Milf thick pussy. Jerry Groves as Gruber's Indian. John Dierkes as Gruber. My body tensed up as I prepared to rescue a woman in distress — yet they were not in danger. The family watched Rochom P'ngieng around the clock to make sure she did not run off back to the jungle, as she tried to do several times. Carlos Rivero as Indian Husband. She has resisted wearing clothes and bathing, fending him off by shouting and screaming. 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Does he want a hookup or more Signs he only wants to hook up that’s a sign that he wants to keep it casual and nothing more 3 he flirts with other girls, even if you’re there. So i met this guy at my school before spring break and then he moved schools he asked about me to my friend sayin i am fly and then we hung out and stuff, and i heard he is a playa and stuff && he trys to hook up w/ other girls when we hang out we have fun conversation && we laugh at each others joke and stories but sometimes i think he. Does he like me or want to just hookup i'm going to take space from him as a precaution but at the end of the day i just want his friendship, it means a lot more. Is it just a hook-up, or more so, you kissed he hasn't officially said he likes you, but you sense something's there take this quiz to find out if your gut's telling you the truth. Do you want more than a hookup since 2006, donna freitas, an assistant professor of religion at boston university, has interviewed thousands of college students about their sex lives, and the result is a book everyone is buzzing about. How to take your hook up to the next level obviously you want to make sure you’re getting your alone time in with it will be a lot more manageable for him. What does hook up really mean defines hooking up as anything more than a kiss if you really want to know the gory details. Regardless of whether you want a relationship and misinterpret you popping up as something to do with more than just you continue to hook up regularly. The long-term hookup: unofficially official or officially but then became more serious “usually a long term hook-up results then be as upset as you want. Does he want a girlfriend, or just a hookup 6 ways you can tell by does he want you to hang out with him and his friends more on dating at glamourcom__. 94 comments on should i let my wife hook up with another guy and a man can’t just hook up with a woman when he feels (or if you do want her to. How do you move from casual dating to serious relationship he is 39 i just don’t want to waste more time i met him online though a non-hookup site and. The emotional costs of hooking up but confesses that she wants to be more than a notch in found that women who hook up get less enjoyment and feel more guilt. What does a hook up mean more than a third of respondents said a hook up means sex or desperately wants the man to express more commitment than he will. The official hook-up handbook if you hook-up more than a dozen times you can possibly consider if he keeps coming back, he probably wants to hook-up more. He’ll want to know more about you it’s a pretty safe bet that he doesn’t like you if you want to know the signs that a guy does like you. Here are 7 things all men need in a relationship female partner that wants more time spent together and the more ready and able he is to be. So what happens when you're in a casual hookup, but it feels like more the friendship doesn't stop even if the sex does casual hookups only want to get. If you want to turn a hookup into a relationship show that you don't want to hook up with anyone else load more today’s top stories. Does he want a hookup or more 10 signs he only wants to ‘hook up so, if you’re wondering what some of the hardcore signs that “he” wants to do nothing more than hook up, please. Continue reading why he won’t kiss you being that he probably wants to hook up the risk you run is that once she does get some, she’s going to want more. How do you define hooking up a recent study of how social networks lead college students to. 5 signs your friends-with-benefits relationship isn’t working you normally do and hook up occasionally to be and that he didn’t want anything more. Will he ever want a committed to dig deeper into his own commitment issues and figure out why he's not able to give you more know that if he does change. I’m starting to worry that he started the hookup with benefits or does he want something more on the mystery of guys’ feelings how do you know. 9 signs he's only interested in sex we asked the women's health guy next door for some crucial intel by clint carter september 12, 2014. What begins as a booty call can sometimes turn into more than a late-night hook-up hook-up is turning into the real want to connect with your teen do. Sex without intimacy: no dating, no relationships hooking up is becoming a in the hookup era if not more, and he says dating had just become too.

After 2 and a half very intense hours of fighting for tickets, 2 months of listening to every track on every album, several visits to You Tube to watch her videos and countless spontaneous squeals of excitement, the time had finally come; I was going to see Beyoncé in the Mrs. Carter World Tour. On entering the arena the first thing that catches your eye is the B stage, oh yes two opportunities to get close enough to grab that mane of delicious caramel hair, (for anyone who is yet to go I recommend getting there early). The support act, Luke James, was horrific – the Pepsi and Chime for Change adverts got more of a cheer than him. Dressed as a stripper priest (who then went on to strip off his top half) made me feel literally sick with cringe! What made Beyoncé pick him I have no idea – maybe he knows one of her darkest secrets or she hoped a crap support would make her look better. Who knows? As the house lights dimmed for a second time I could not contain my excitement, and along with the rest of the audience I went crazy as the opening bars of RUN THE WORLD kicked in. Then, on she came. Queen B was in the same room as me, breathing my air. Dressed in a sparkly, beaded, white one piece, she looked unbelievable, screaming power and femininity. Her voice was amazing, so powerful and so strong. She interacted with the crowd throughout the whole night – a person favorite was her pronunciation of ‘Birmingham’, and she put on a truly great show. Her outfits were exactly what I wanted from her, sexy but not slutty, showing enough skin but not too much that it was tacky, and of course topped off with her signature sky scraper heels. From a flowing red dress, to a black and gold two piece, a skin tight bodice to an animal print dress she looked sensational. The best was the glitter-covered blue, full body cat suit she wore when she zip-lined over the audience to get to her B-stage – yes, she did that. Here she rocked out to IRREPLACEABLE, RESENTMENT, and the classic LOVE ON TOP, whipping her hair all over the place before giving some words of advice and zip-lining back to a burst of Destiny’s Child’s SURVIVOR. Next she was off stage for a quick outfit change as an interlude of Countdown played. As the song counted back to ten, I was ready for her to come back on and jump straight into the lyrics, but boy was I in for a surprise. As the countdown reached one there was a slight pause in the music, then boom straight into the opening chords of CRAZY IN LOVE. Well I nearly burst into tears (FYI this was the song I had been waiting all my life for). I was finally getting to see ‘the strut’ live! It was amazing. The crowd was going just as crazy as me and it was such a great moment to be in. I had no other cares in the world apart from being right there, right then. From CRAZY IN LOVE we went straight into SINGLE LADIES and it was clear that the show was coming to an end. Fitting in another costume change, Beyoncé sang her latest song GROWN WOMAN which included a dance routine with a very strange blind folded moment- this wasn’t really explained so I just went with it. (Weird blind fold bit?) Finally she gave a little rendition of I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU, again slightly strange but I guess a tribute to her many fans, before departing the stage. At this point I realised what her encore would be, and I was right: HALO. Slightly disappointed as it’s not one of my favorite songs of hers, but amazing none the less. This was followed by a massive thank you to everyone involved in the show’s production to the backing track of GREENLIGHT, before the curtains came down on what had been a spectacular night. The night was sensational, not only was there great singing, it was a great show. Well worth the money. The Mrs. Carter World Tour was everything I wanted it to be and more. So much so, as soon as I got home the next day I was looking for more tickets, and really considering buying tickets for V Fest where she is due to headline this summer. Beyoncé is at the height of her game, and I hope she stays there long enough to tour again, as I will definitely be in the queue for her next show!

What follows is a rough account of a presentation I gave at a regional gathering of Lutherans recently. I suspect you will find errors in the text – please forgive them! I have been asked to make this available rather quickly and thus I beg your forgiveness in this area. I have thrown out some challenging questions towards the end. Please engage with the questions I ask. I have no easy answers and I do not hold my life up as an example of what we should be doing. Send reactions and feedback my way. I recommend Dr Jenning’s piece (http://goo.gl/wdErGq) for further reading on issues of finances and Lutheran schooling in Australia. Where love comes to life I would like to tell you the stories of 3 men – Stephen, Duan and Charlie. (All names in this piece have been changed to protect identities) Stephen is Egyptian. His family is Coptic Christian. In 2011, the president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, stepped down in response to the Arab spring uprising in his country. This took place at a place called Tahrir (freedom) square and both Stephen and his brothers participated in the protests against the wishes on their parents. This is the same place that your speaker tonight discovered what tear gas tastes and feels like. There are 87 million people living in Egypt and as my friend Ibrahim said to me, this is the first time in recorded history that the Egyptian people had been free. From the time of the Pharaohs, they had been ruled by dictators. When you apply for a visa in Egypt you have to supply your religion on the official form. So you carry a card as an Egyptian citizen or a visa if you are a foreigner which states your religion. When you greet someone you have the choice ‘Salam alykuem’ (peace be with you) which is considered a Muslim greeting or Sabah alcher (good morning), which is considered Christian (because you aren’t using ‘salam alykuem’!). You proclaim your religion immediately with your greeting. Unlike the west where we consider it impolite to talk about religion, politics or sex – in Egyptian society these are fair topics. One day I was talking to a Taxi driver who had 9 children – he asked why I didn’t have any children. I said in my less than perfect Arabic that my wife and I were not planning to. He then pointed at this crotch and asked sincerely ‘andak mushkilla?’ which translated means ‘do you have a problem?’ Reproductive problems are very much fair game for taxi conversation in Egypt. Stephen went to a government run high school and he told me great stories of the ineptitude of his teachers. Teachers in Egypt are paid less than $100 per month by the government. How do they make a living? Many refuse to teach the content during the day and then run night tutoring sessions at a great profit. Current estimates suggest that following the chaos of the revolution and on the back of years of mismanagement, half the Egyptian population is illiterate. Perhaps only 25% of women are literate in Egypt. Stephen had an interesting time in university. Due to corruption, his professor of English had a PhD but could not read, write or speak English. As a result, the exercises and assignments Stephen had to complete were flawed. Stephen would be required to write incorrect English in order to pass in this professor’s class. Stephen passed with distinction after spending endless hours figuring out exactly what elements of English the professor had incorrect. Stephen then helped his classmates pass by teaching them these skills. In order to make sure he knew English, he watched every English language film he could find and read every book in English he could find. His English is extraordinary. Egyptians are having a very rough time at the moment. The week that my wife and I arrived in Egypt an elderly Egyptian woman died from food poisoning as the hospital refused to admit her because she had no money. Work is scarce – with tourism representing 13% of the country’s GDP. The tourist industry in Aswan, in the deep south of the country, is currently running at 4% of what it once was. Some are trying to use religion to divide the people but as one of my good Egyptian taxi driving friends said: ‘Muslimeen behab allah, messaen behab all. Koolo eizeen schokel, akl, modrassa wa mostespha. Mushkilla eh?.’ (‘Muslims love God, Christians love God. We all want a job, food, schools and hospitals. What is the problem?’) When Stephen learnt that I was lecturing at a Bible college for Sudanese refugees and after hearing their stories, he started volunteering to translate at this college. He heard the need and wanted to help. After I left Egypt I was very happy to hear he became the head administrator of the college and has begun studying alongside the African refugees in order to become a pastor himself. This is truly amazing. The hatred between Egyptians and Sudanese runs very deep. Not that long ago through Facebook I learnt that Stephen’s brother was killed. Stephen’s brother was actively involved with protests against Mubarack and then the Morsi regime. Egyptians fear that their internet is being watched and thus don’t write some things online. But I have a pretty good idea about what happened to Stephen’s brother. Stephen is choosing each day to live a different life. He has given up a good salary teaching Arabic to foreigners in order to teach God’s word to refugee pastors and to train refugee teachers. Duan is Ugandan and has the brightest and most sincere smile I have ever seen. Duan’s story is quite interesting. He speaks 7 languages. When I asked him how he learnt French his answer was. “It wasn’t too hard. I had some friends from Congo who liked soccer and so we played soccer in French”. English is Duan’s sixth language. His schooling took place under a tree. He sat in the dirt with another 50 or so young people and learnt language from an elder. The elder would write a word in the dirt and Duan would copy it in the dirt. The teacher would return after seeing the other 50 students check it and issue another word. He is now the director of African Hope Learning Centre (AHLC), having begun as a technical assistant, becoming a primary school teacher, then primary headmaster and now director. He is assisted by deputy directors Jacques, James and Matthew. Jacques is from Congo and is a political refugee as all of the men in his family has been killed due to his father being involved with an opposing political party. James fled South Sudanese to avoid tribal warfare. Matthew was a Christian born in the Muslim north of Sudan. For a time, Matthew lived naked in the fields as he lost contact with his family. The UN interacts officially with about 250,000 refugees in Egypt. Having worked with NGOs like MSF, refugee researchers, long term missionaries, I know the number of refugees currently living in Egypt is closer to 4 million. There is a major UN processing centre in Cairo which acts as a funnel for those hoping for resettlement elsewhere. However, the Egyptian government bars refugees from accessing healthcare, education and from working. So African Hope offers education to 500 students from grade 1 to grade 11. Staff and students have a basic healthcare program including dental care, vaccinations, health education. The school also provides employment for more than 50 refugee teachers. Over 20 African nations are represented in students and staff. From Sudan into the horn of Africa, Somalia, Ethiopia, through down as far south as Uganda and Burundi, then west to Angola and up to Nigeria. The goal of this illegal school is to provide an education to build the African community which is in sore need of doctors, engineers, teachers and business people. It is hoped that this education will allow students to define and build a positive future for their countries. This of course is difficult. Finding the finances to run the school is very difficult in a very competitive global aid market. AHLC is reliant on volunteers due to the low educational levels of teachers. Our refugee teachers would barely pass Grade 7 in Australia. While staff training can help, volunteers are essential to improve our student outcomes. That was why I was there – to provide staff training. Put simply – you cannot teach what you have not been taught. At one stage we could not teach maths because there was not a single person in the refugee community who knew maths beyond a grade 2 level. I discovered this naively when I set some benchmarking tests for all the students and I discovered that not a single student in the school knew what a rectangle was. I discovered the reason why when I saw the look of confusion in the eyes of my maths teachers when I asked them what a rectangle was. Duan first came to Cairo to work in a call centre on a very good salary. Duan chose to give up this lucrative salary to lead the education of 500 hundred young Africans. We pray that he can lead this school into a positive future that helps to build Africa. Charlie is Australian. Charlie was borne to Deli owning parents in the great wine country of McLaren Vale, South Australia. Charlie’s family are not really religious. He recalls a story of a rather tense moment and vigorous theological argument when Charlie’s mother stared down the priest who took issue with her demand to remove the promise ‘to obey’ from her marriage wows. There is also a rumour that Charlie’s grandfather tried to burn down a church after copping a hiding from the priest for being insolent during Sunday school. Charlie’s parents were told, when he was a grade 1 student, that he would never learn to read and write at an adult level. “He should leave school as early as he can and get a trade”, his parents were told. Charlie was lucky to have parents who knew this was rubbish. He shifted schools but it was at that time that his parents started looking for a suitable high school with great teachers. They did not want this to happen again. As it would happen, a new Lutheran school was opening in McLaren Vale, Tatachilla Lutheran College, the very year in which Charlie would commence high school. Charlie happened to be enrolled number 65 of 67 sof that first intake of students. Charlie became a Christian through seeing the teachers at Tatachilla model a Christian life of service. As Charlie often says, “I can’t pinpoint the moment that I became a Christian – I just felt an increasing belief that this stuff the pastor talked about in chapel was true because the teachers lived it. They didn’t just talk about it.” Charlie found himself the first in his family to attend university. Not long after starting university, Charlie starting attending his local Lutheran church. He was enjoying quite a successful opera singing career (a talent fostered by his teachers) when a vocal injury forced him to take 2 years off of professional singing. He had two options before him. With his passion for God, young people, sharing big ideas and music, he considered becoming a pastor in the Lutheran church or becoming a teacher. He chose the latter, studying education through Flinders University and through Australian Lutheran College. Charlie gained a job at a very prestigious Adelaide Lutheran school and began his teaching career there. Around this time a nice young girl came into his life and it wasn’t too long before friendship turned into marriage. Through the Lutheran Church, Charlie had the opportunity to discover that not all Lutheran schools were as nice and well resourced as his. He travelled to Papua New Guinea and the US on social justice trips. Charlie’s wife had for a long time had a passion to work with African refugees – specifically Sudanese women. A flame burned a little brighter – a flame that was lit at a Lutheran school which emphasised active love for others. Charlie remembers his principal at Tatachilla, Richard Bruss, saying often “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.” So it came to be that Tom (or ‘Charlie’) and his wife left their comfortable lives in Adelaide to serve in Egypt. What would you die for? Working in Egypt caused me to come to terms with a willingness to die for a belief. I will not pretend like Egypt is anything like current situations in the Congo, Afghanistan or Iraq. Rarely did I feel my life was in true danger. However, as foreigners began being killed Robyn and I had to think about what was going to be line where we fled. Robyn spent a week at home at one stage as a public threat was made against foreign white women working for churches. Living with a packed bag and $1000 USD under your pillow to buy your way out of a country changes your perspective. It brings a certain clarity to things. You think “am I willing to die in order to provide a service to those who need it?” How much am I willing to personally suffer so that others don’t? What is God’s will? Few things annoy me more than people who try to give me comfort by saying that I don’t need to worry about those who are still in Egypt working with the refugee community or the refugees themselves. “God will look after them” or “God will rise up those to do what he needs done.” When I was working at African Hope there were more than 10 international volunteers – now there are two. I chose to leave and I left behind work that now goes mostly undone. That is something I need to deal with. We live in a protected bubble here in Australia. Our faith, our worldview, our lives are all symptomatic of a society that lacks suffering. We choose to ignore the great pain and suffering of our brothers and sisters across the world. As Christians in the west we have blindly followed a lie. Many believe that it is enough for us to have our faith in God and just live our lives as best we can. It is shameful that the lives of most Christians look no different to the lives of your average Australian – mortgage, shiny car, shiny kids, overseas holidays. Is that really what Christ taught us? Is that what God sacrificed his son for? So that we could live Christian flavoured lives hidden from seeing the suffering of others? Experiences like mine change your perspective. So much so that I still think of money in different units. When I was working at African Hope, every $50 meant another day that I could afford to feed the 500 students at the school. At my current school, when I buy an iPad, I cannot help but know that for the cost of the iPad I could have fed 500 African refugees for about 2 and half school weeks. I know what it is like to form a contingency plan for running out of money for the food program. You remove the meat from the dish, you remove the vegetable, you half the amount, you feed the youngest only and then as a last resort, you stop the meals. Thank God it didn’t ever get to a point where we had to stop meals. Please don’t put me, or anyone else on a pedestal and say “I could never have done what you did”. It isn’t a case of can’t – what I did was not difficult. Anyone in this room could serve in this way usefully if they wanted to. Robyn and I made a choice to serve in Egypt. To simply say “I couldn’t do what you, Stephen our Duan did” is an excuse. An excuse so often used to justify inaction and to do nothing to help those in need. The world is the way it is because we continually make choices that allow it to be so. It is humanity’s will that is causing the suffering the our world. This is not the will of our loving God who suffers with the oppressed. What motivates you? Why did a teacher and his wife from a nice Lutheran school in Adelaide go to Egypt and spend 35k of his own money and 10k of generous people’s money, to help people? Because there was a need. Robyn has always wanted to work with Sudanese refugees and the largest population of Sudanese outside of Sudan is in Cairo. Faith without works is dead. Nothing more than that. We went because there was a need we could meet. Within each of us, the Holy Spirit is working to bring us to love our neighbours as Christ taught us. We must choose to take this call or ignore it. Moving to Melbourne was not really part of the Brennen’s plan after Egypt. But at the same time a Lutheran school leader with refugee and migrant experience comes home at the exact same time that the only Lutheran school in the country serving a significantly refugee/ new migrant/low income community needs a leader. Sunshine Christian School is a lovely primary school in the western suburbs of Melbourne. Being principal there takes as much passion, perseverance and dedication and fortitude as working in Egypt did. The issues are different but the goal is the same – to nurture young people to serve God and his people. Ask yourself – Would you get up tomorrow and do your job if you were not paid? Do you believe what you do each day is truly serving others as God would have you serve? A great Lutheran social justice heritage Lutherans have a great heritage to offer. I was in demand as a lecturer at a bible college in Egypt because Lutherans are known in Africa for having biblically centred and sound theology. Ask many a Sudanese refugee about Lutherans and they see it as a word that represents comfort and support. This comes from their time in Lutheran run refugee camps. It has been written of our spiritual father, Martin Luther: “[He argued that] God’s justice is a life-giving justice for all persons regardless of gender, race or ethnicity, social or economic status – a justice that should underpin human relationships and the education of future leaders in society. Indeed, he was among the first of his generation to protest business, banking, and religious practices that favoured the wealthy few and impoverished the many. And yet…Lutheran history is marked by the refusal to heed the ancient call to act with justice, exchanging that more difficult task for charitable endeavours or stoic silence in the face of oppression.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote : “We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself” As Lutherans I think we are very good at the loving God bit and feeling saved. What we need to do is to commit more to the mystery and gospel imperative of loving others. There are many choices we make as a church. A choice we make at the moment is to allow our schools to exclude families on the basis of their economic status. I live with the knowledge that if I were born now my parents could not afford to send me to a Lutheran school – not on their income. My family situation is not unique. What might Luther say if he were here today and saw that our schools, that were first set up to serve Lutheran refugees newly arrived to Australia, now exclude refugees through their fee structures? Could our church find new funding strategies to sustain and plant low fee schools in areas of great need in order to provide a Lutheran education to children that need it most? Last year I met with a family who wanted to enrol their daughter at my school. Knowing that they were a practising Buddhist family I asked them why it was that they wanted to send their child to a Lutheran school. They said this: “I don’t want my daughter to go to a public school. I know your school is a good school. You will not ignore her soul. You will teach her about God. You will teach her about duty to others. This will not happen at the other local schools” According to the enrolment policies of most Lutheran schools we are required to give first preference to Lutherans and then practicing Christians. Had there been an abundance of enrolments in the previous categories this child would not be attending a Lutheran school. What do we make of this? As a church we make the choice to pay our school principals an annual salary that alone would be enough to run African Hope Learning Centre for an entire year. My wage alone is more than enough to feed, educate and provide healthcare for more than 500 refugee students while also giving work for another 50 refugees. What does this information mean to us as schools of the church? How do we process it? As we look at approving church budgets, how are we spending our money? Are we investing in supporting the oppressed and needy or perpetuating nice buildings with empty pews? Could the current shortage of Lutheran pastors, teachers and leaders suggest that we have lost a culture of service to others that we once had? Germaine Greer was educated in the Catholic schooling system. She writes: “(The Catholic nuns) brought out the best in me and it needn’t have been brought out – it could have stayed right where it was. I could have married a stockbrocker and settled into a life of three cars and a carport. They made that impossible because I was hungry for something else” This is what the Lutheran church did to me. It made me hunger for justice for all people. Are all of our Lutheran schools and churches encouraging this and making it central to their culture? Our world is full of need and we must respond. A response more than turning away, throwing in a few dollars or praying for someone else to do it for us. I don’t care how much money you make, what country you come from, what your religion is, what your qualifications are, what you have achieved or what others say about you. What I am most interested in, what I want you to show the world, is that you can love others amongst your own struggles, brokenness, grief and despair – because that is where love comes to life.

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Drew had to help her onto his lap as she shuddered with the enormity of her release. When she managed to open her eyes, the golden fire in Russell’s sent all-new pangs of want through her. She’d never seen such feral, undisguised lust in a man’s eyes before—not even at the height of Yoska’s desperation to claim her. And this time, she wanted nothing more than to be the woman Russell ached for. She wanted to give him the unbelievably intense pleasure she’d just experienced. His erection was hot and throbbing between their stomachs as she straddled his lap. They locked eyes and stared for a moment, breathing in tandem. Drew was still behind her, and she knew the knob of flesh she felt rubbing up and down along her back was his cock. “Take her,” Drew said, and a flare of excitement ran along her spine at the insistence in his words. “Take her now, before I do.” “Lift up that luscious ass,” Russell said to her. “That’s right. Just a bit higher.” She took hold of his shoulders and wriggled her hips, feeling both scared and desperate for what was about to happen to her. There would be pain, she knew, since she’d heard talk in the women’s tent. But she was really going to do this. She would give herself to a man who was not only a gadje, but a werewolf. And she couldn’t wait another minute to make it so. The feel of Russell sliding the mushroom head of his dick along her wet slit sent a moan of need from her, and she rose up higher so he could position himself. The moment his cockhead slipped just inside her tight hole, however, she froze. “Slowly now,” he murmured. “Lower that beautiful cunt over my cock nice and easy. Don’t rush it.” “Will that keep it from hurting?” she asked, her voice shaking. “No. I just want to savor every inch of your wet heat.” She sucked in a breath and closed her eyes. Then she did it. She took his cock inside her, marveling at the way his bulk stretched her as she sank down on him. His cry of need set gooseflesh on her arms, and her legs shook with the effort of lowering in a slow, steady descent. Her fingernails dug into his arms, but she couldn’t stop. All she could feel was Russell breaking through the last barrier between her and a woman’s secrets, spearing her virginity with hot, pulsing cock. Halfway in, she couldn’t take it anymore. She dropped her bottom straight down until she was sitting on his thighs. She was full of Russell’s erection now, up to the womb. She sat still, feeling her pussy walls grip his shaft as she wondered what to do next. “Shit, you’re so fuckin’ tight,” Russell said. His eyes were shut, but reopened to burn through her. “Your cunt feels incredible, squeezin’ my cock.” She didn’t answer, and he apparently read the question in her eyes. “Ride me, Tal. Slide your hips and rock on my dick. See how good it feels.” With a nod, she lifted up and sank back down with a sharp hiss of pleasure as he bottomed out again. “You’re right,” she breathed. “It feels incredible. But when is it going to hurt?” “It won’t,” Drew said from behind her. His hands came around again to toy with her nipples, and without even thinking, she responded by rocking her hips back and forth on Russell’s thick, hard cock. “Virgin mates only feel pain when they let the wrong man in, so to speak.” “And you didn’t.” Russell’s tone sounded fevered now, and his hands gripped her hips while he began thrusting his pelvis upward to meet hers. “Not even when your clan tried to marry you off. You waited for this. For me.” He kissed her deeply, desperately, grabbing her hair and pushing his tongue into her mouth. She worked herself against his cock, feeling his tongue plunder in and out much the same way his dick was moving. Drew’s pelvis pressed against her back, which was growing slick with sweat as he ground his rock-hard erection against her. She broke off and tipped her head back against Drew’s belly, rocking her hips back and forth rather than up and down. Her clit rubbed Russell’s pubic hair delightfully this way, and she moaned in pleasure. Drew came around to the side of the chair and bent over her. “Give me that hot mouth,” he said, and without awaiting a response, he crushed his lips over hers. His tongue was forceful, insistent, and she matched him stroke for stroke. Her hand sought and found his stiff cock, and she rubbed it with her palm. What a delicious feeling! Long, hotter than a summer noon, and somehow satiny-soft and iron-hard at the same time. He cried out, and she froze her hand. “Don’t stop,” he said, pushing his cock against her palm. “I want you so bad it hurts.” “Come here,” Russell said. “I’ll help you with that.” Drew straightened up, and his cock stuck out near Russell’s and Talaitha’s faces. He was so erect the head was almost purple, and the shaft pulsed and jerked. To her shock, Russell wet his lips and then took that hard cock right into his mouth. Drew moaned in obvious appreciation, and she felt Russell’s cock throb inside her just like Drew’s was doing.

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I. We Believe in God We believe in the one true, living God (Deut. 6:4; I Co. 8:4,6; I Thess. 1:9; Jer. 10:10) Who is infinite in His being and perfection (Job 11:7-9; 26:14). God is an incorporeal, invisible spirit (Jo. 4:24; I Ti. 1:17; Lu. 24:39). God is unchangeable, eternal, omnipotent, all-knowing, ubiquitous, and holy. God works all things after the counsel of His own will and for His ultimate glory (Ja. 1:17; I Kg. 8:27; Ps. 90:2; 145:3; Ge. 17:1; Rm. 16:27; Is. 6:3; Eph. 1:11; Rm. 11:36). Therefore, since God is holy, He is just in the absolute sense. He hates sin and will not allow any sin to go unpunished (Ne. 9:32-33; Ps. 5:5-6; Na. 1:2-3; Ex. 34:7). God is love and exercises mercy toward all men by being longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth. I believe that He forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin and that He is a rewarder of them that seek Him (I Jo. 4:8,16; Ex. 34:6,7; Hb. 11:6). In the unity of the Godhead there are three Persons that are of the same substance, power and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit (I Jo. 5:7; Mt. 3:16,17; 28:19; II Co. 13:14). A. God The Father We believe in God the Father as having the primacy of the authority in the Godhead. From Him proceed all the divine attributes. God the Father is a spirit and has never been seen by anyone except the Son (John 1:18). The Father proceeds from no one and is not begotten; the Son was eternally begotten of the Father and the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son (Jo 1:14,18; 15:26; Ga. 4:6). B. God The Son We believe in Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, and only mediator between God and men, having taken, when the fullness of time was come, the human nature with all its properties but without sin. (Is. 42:1; I Pe. 1:19,20; Jo. 3:16; I Tim. 2:5; Jo. 1:1,14; I Jo. 5:20; Phil. 2:6; Gal. 4:4; Hb. 2:14,16,17; 4:15). Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in Mary’s womb before she knew a man (Lu. 1:27,31,35; Ga. 4:4). In Jesus were inseparably combined in the same Person, two complete, perfect and distinct natures, without conversion, composition or confusion, for He was complete God, and complete man being, nevertheless, one Christ (Lu. 1:35; Col. 2:9; Rom. 9:5; I Pe. 3:18; I Tim. 3:16; Rom. 1:3,4; I Tim. 2:5). I believe in Jesus Christ as Prophet, Priest, King, Head and Saviour of His church, Heir of all things and Judge of the world (Ac. 3:22; Hb. 5:5,6; Ps. 2:6; Lu. 1:33; Hb. 1:2; Ac. 17:31). The Lord Jesus, in His human nature, was full of the Holy Spirit and of all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Jo. 3:34; Col. 2:3). The Lord Jesus was crucified for the sins of mankind, died, was buried, and resurrected from the dead the third day, ascended unto Heaven where He sits at His Father’s right hand interceding for mankind, from where He shall return, triumphant, first to call to Himself His redeemed and, finally to establish on the earth His millennial kingdom (Phil. 2:8; Ac. 2:23,24,27; 13:37; Rom. 6:9; I Co. 15:3-5; Mk. 16:19; Rom. 8:34; I Thess. 4:16-17; Rev. 20:2-7). The Lord Jesus, with His perfect sacrifice, pleased the Father’s justice, and not only accomplished the reconciliation between the Most Holy God and men, but also an eternal inheritance in heaven for all who will trust in Him (Rom. 5:19; Hb. 9:15). C. God The Holy Spirit We believe in the Holy Spirit, the perfect God and the third Person of the Trinity. To the Holy Spirit are given in the Scriptures many attributes that are also given both to the Father and the Son: Jehovah, Lord of Hosts, Most High, God, Eternal, Omni-present, All-knowing, Omnipotent, Creator (Hb. 3:7-9; Is. 6:3, 8-10; Act. 28:25; Ps. 78:17,21; Act. 7:51; 5:3,4; Hb. 9:14; Ps. 139:7-13; I Co. 2:10; Rom. 15:19; Job 33:4). The Holy Spirit was sent to the world after the ascension of Christ and proceeded from the Father. As such, He gives joy to the saints, edifies the church, witnesses of Christ, gives God’s love and hope to the saints, teaches the saints and lives in them (Jo. 15:26; 16:7; I Thess. 1:6; Act. 9:31; Rom. 5:3-5; Ga. 5:5; Jo. 14:26; 14:17). It is only through His presence that the things of God are revealed to us (I Co. 2:10,13; Jo. 16:14). It is He that calls and enables, through the gifts, workers for the Christian work. That work, spiritual in nature, is spiritually directed by the Holy Spirit of God. (Act. 13:2; 16:6-7; Jo. 16:13; I Co. 12: 7-11). II. The Bible We believe the Bible is the Word of God, the only sufficient, sure and infallible rule of saving knowledge, faith and obedience (II Ti. 3:15-17; Is. 8:20; Lu. 16:29,31; Eph. 2:20). Being the Word of God, the Bible must be always read in its literal sense. If there is not a clear indication that a passage is to be interpreted in a symbolical way, the same should be interpreted literally. While men can obtain a limited knowledge of the nature and power of God through the works of His creation, I believe that salvation comes only through faith and that faith comes through the Word of God (Rm. 1:20; I Co. 1:21). All of the Bible’s books (Old and New Testament) were written by divine inspiration and preserved through time in the original languages (Hebrew and Greek) (Lu. 16:29,31; Eph. 2:20; Re. 22:18,19; II Ti. 3:16). The infallible interpretation of Scripture is to use Scripture to interpret Scripture. The hardest passages to understand are explained through the simpler passages. To understand God’s revealed truth in His Word, personal illumination by the Holy Spirit is required. (II Pe. 1:20,21; Ac. 15:15,16; II Co. 2:10-12). We use the King James Version for all teaching and preaching in English. III. Heaven and Hell We believe the Bible speaks the truth when it speaks of Heaven and Hell as literal places. Heaven is the place created by God, also called Paradise, where His glory resides and where He is forever glorified by the angels, all the other celestial hosts, and the saints of the Old and New Testaments that have placed their hope in God’s provision for their salvation. I believe that Hell exists, a place created by God so that His justice can condemn those, who being part of His creation that were aware of sin, have rejected God’s only plan for their salvation. That condemnation is eternal. I believe these places are part of the invisible creation of God (Col. 1:16). IV. The Spiritual World God is the Creator of both the material and physical world, and of the spiritual and invisible one. The angels, supernatural creatures made by God for the fulfilling of His will, are part of that creation. They are sent by God to protect and help His people; their powers are above human imagination. I believe that in some point in history there was a rebellion among God’s angels. That rebellion was headed by Lucifer, the most perfect angel. He took with him one third of the angels when he rebelled. For them there is no salvation (Is. 14:12-14; I Pe. 2:4; Ez. 28:12-17). Lucifer, Devil, and Satan are several of the names given to the same real and operative being that leads the attacks against God and His creation. Pride, rebellion and deceit are his main features. Satan works non-stop so that God’s glory will not shine. He also keeps men from God’s glory, leading them to hell which they deserve because of their sin. Satan’s end (and his demons’ end) is the never ending flames of hell (Mt. 25:41; Jo. 8:44; Ez. 28:17). VI. The Creation of the World We believe in God as the Creator and Sustainer of all existing things. We believe, therefore, in the biblical account of creation that we find in Genesis that the heavens, the earth, and all life forms were created in six twenty-four hour days. VII. The Human Condition We believe that God created the first man and the first woman in His likeness so that they could enjoy eternal, uninterrupted and perfect fellowship with Him. However, our first fathers, being seduced by Satan’s subtlety and temptation, sinned by eating of the forbidden fruit and fell from their original justice and fellowship with God (Gen. 3:13; II Co. 11:3; Gen. 3:6-8; Ec. 7:29; Rm. 3:23). Hence, man became dead in trespasses, and completely deformed in all his faculties of body and soul (Gen. 2:17; Eph. 2:1; Tit. 1:15; Gen. 6:5; Jer. 17:9; Rom. 3:10-18). Being the root of all humanity, this sin’s guilt was imparted and the same corrupted nature was transmitted to all their posterity (Ps. 51:5; Gen. 5:3; Job 14:4; 15:14). We believe that it is because of this original corruption that we are, in nature, opposed to all good and completely inclined to all that is bad, this nature being the source of all our transgressions (Rom. 8:7; 7:18; Ja. 1:14; Mt. 15:19). We believe that this corruption of nature remains even in the regenerate while they abide in their fleshly bodies (I Jo. 1:8,10; Rom. 7:14,17,18,23; Ja. 3:2; Prov. 20:9; Ec. 7:20). VIII. God’s Plan for Salvation We believe that salvation comes by grace through faith when we accept, receive, and rest only in Christ for justification, sanctification, and eternal life (Jo. 1:12; Ac. 16:31; Ga. 2:20; Ac 15:11; Eph. 2:8,9). We believe that from the time we receive salvation we are positionally justified before God obtaining the forgiveness of our sins, not having any righteousness in ourselves but because it is imparted to us through the obedience and sacrifice of Jesus Christ (Rom. 4:5-8; II Co. 5:19,21; Rom. 3:22,24,25,27,28; Tit. 3:5,7; Eph. 1:7; Jer. 23:6; I Co. 1:30,31; Rom. 5:17-19). We believe that God continues to forgive the sins of those that are justified, and even though they can never depart from their justified position, they can loose fellowship with God and stop receiving His blessings until they humble themselves, confess their sins, ask for forgiveness, and renew their faith and repentance (Hab. 2:4; Gen. 15:6; Ps. 130:3-4; Lu. 22:32; Jo. 10:28; Heb. 10:14; Ps. 89:31-33; 51:7-12; 32:5; Mt. 26:75; I Co. 11:30,32; Lu. 1:20). IX. The Church We believe in the local church, consisting in a company of professing, born-again believers in Jesus Christ, immersed on a credible confession of faith, and associated for worship, work and fellowship. I believe that the saints, united together in love, should congregate in churches that are local, militant, evangelizing, disciple makers, mission oriented and triumphant. The two offices determined by God for His churches are pastors, also called elders and bishops, and deacons. The pastors, whose job is to feed and pray for God’s people have to be well prepared and married. The deacons, whose job is to serve the church, also have to be men whose testimony is acknowledged by the church and married (Act. 20:28; I Tim. 3:1-13; Act. 6:1-7). X. The Ordinances We believe God instituted for His church two ordinances to represent Christ and His benefits and to confirm our interest in Him (I Co. 10:16; Ga. 3:27). These two ordinances are baptism and the Lord’s Supper. They were instituted by Jesus Christ and are only for the saved (Act. 8:12; I Co. 11:27). Baptism is a symbol of the work of regeneration performed by God in the believer’s life and the giving of one’s self to God to live in newness of life (Col. 2:12; Mk. 1:4; Rom. 6:3-4). Baptism should be celebrated in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Jo 1:33; Mat. 28:19,20). The exterior element of this ordinance is the water. Because baptism is to represent the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, only the complete immersion of the body in water can fulfil the God given requirements for this ordinance (Mat. 3:16; Act. 8:39). Our Lord, on the night He was betrayed, instituted the ordinance of His body and blood called the Lord’s Supper to be observed in His church until the end of time. It is a symbol of the sacrifice of Himself in His death (I Co. 11:23-26). The exterior elements used in this ordinance are the bread and the cup and, since they represent the sinless body and blood of Christ being given for all men, these should be free of leaven, the symbol for sin (Lk. 22:19,20; I Co. 5:6-8).

So I finally get to the “Fire and Brimstone” bit! This is because I got into a conversation with a woman recently about what happened after death and that got me thinking. She was not a Christian but seemed to have some belief that there was a life after death, and her view was that if there is a Hell that’s where she wanted to be – as she put it “with all her mates”. That is a statement I have heard many times over the years, but I was probably a bit more surprised to hear it now than I would have been in the past. This is because Hell has had a fairly low profile in recent times, especially from the pulpit, and I think this is one of the factors contributing to the general lack of passion for evangelism in church congregations. It’s all about the nature of God really. A distorted view of the Love of God has resulted many church members being functional universalists i.e. because God is so loving that He lets everybody into heaven. This results from a dumbing down of God’s characteristics of Holiness and Justice. The Holiness of God means that He cannot coexist with sinners like me and His Justice demands that my frequent breaches of His laws requires a penalty. As against this, God’s Love is supremely demonstrated by the sending of Jesus to the Cross where he took sin on himself in an act of excruciating agony thus opening the way for sinners to enter into a relationship with God. In that demonstration of the Love of God Jesus satisfied the Justice of God. That’s where the concept of Hell is relevant. It’s a topic people even many Christians don’t want to talk about. As one commented on radio recently, she “Didn’t like the flavour of the word”. The problem is however that Jesus talked about it many times, either directly or metaphorically by use of expressions such as “The Lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15) and as a place where “men will weep and gnash their teeth”. So if Jesus talked about it, and God inspired writers to put it in the Bible how can we ignore it even though we would prefer to do so? The more so because Jesus made it clear that there is a serious danger involved for all of us if we choose to refuse to repent of our disobedience to God, i.e. our sins. And that takes us back to the Cross and God’s Love. The Bible tells us that if a person receives the benefits of the Cross, that is Jesus takes on himself the punishment they deserve for their sins, then the barrier to walking into God’s presence is removed and their name is written in the ‘Book of Life”. But if someone refuses to accept God’s offer of Love through Jesus then their name is not written in the Book of Life and the “Lake of Fire” is their destiny (Revelation 20:12-15). The lack of passion for evangelism of the majority of Christians is actually breach of the second great commandment (Matthew 19:19) and a lack of ‘love for our neighbour’. For if we truly loved our lost neighbour, work colleague, sport’s partner etc. we would be desperate to ensure that they might learn about God’s love and accept His gift and so avoid the horror of the Hell Jesus warned about. However, the softening of the Biblical teaching on this doctrine means, that Christians don’t take the horror of Hell seriously, for the concept has been so dumbed down. Just think about what is Hell for a moment. Of course we don’t properly know except to say that it is a form of eternal existence experienced by those who refuse God’s offer of Love through Jesus, a horrible self-inflicted existence where ‘God is not’ and ‘His Love is not’. So it’s important to think! Jesus took the plight of those on the “Broad” road that leads to destruction so seriously that he went to the Cross that we might be diverted onto the ‘Narrow Road’ that leads to Life! (Matthew 7:13,14) That’s how seriously! Tragically, large numbers of western Christians, with a Christianity-Lite faith, don’t share Jesus seriousness and correspondingly there is no urgency for evangelistic activity especially where it is costly (which it will increasingly be), for as Tom Frame says- “the culturally compliant strain of Christianity promoted in Australia does not. oblige (people) to embrace lifestyle choices that might involve discomfort.” The concept of Hell as something to be avoided at all costs should not be watered down such that it loses the horror Jesus ascribed to it by a concentration on God’s Love without giving equal weight to God’s Holiness and Justice. So Hell needs to make a comeback in Christian thinking, to be emphasised as the awful destiny of the millions of the lost. This so that more Christians start loving their lost neighbours and get out and make the proclamation of Christ and his saving love their priority, not just the work of the Minister and a few enthusiasts! This so people we are called to love are warned, as Jesus warned, about their peril and change their path to the ‘Narrow’ road that leads to eternal life, to the City of God, to the place of exquisite and eternal Joy where “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain,for the old order of things has passed ‘Hell needs to make a comeback’ in Christian thinking so that we become more passionate about loving the Lost so that they move from the Kingdom of Darkness to the Kingdom of God. May it be so!

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I founded Actorium with the purpose of creating an environment where people can discover and immerse themselves in the art of acting; a place to grow and develop creatively through this beautiful, fun, interesting, and life-changing art form. I think of Actorium as a place for people to inspire and to get inspired and grow, not only as an actor but personally – as I think the two go together. It is not only an actor’s training centre but also a community with a strong culture for daring authenticity, humour, warmth, and openness. What I have learned through acting and have used as a core principle of Actorium is to never lose sight of the truthful basis of your art and the reason you started in the first place. Instructor – Olivia Nelson What draws me to the acting process is the unique opportunity to delve into the vastness of the human experience and express it as authentically as possible. As actors, we practice the opposite of what most people initially think, and that is being real, and lowering the masks we tend to wear in our day-to-day lives. This has been the biggest gift for me personally – to actually stop acting in my own life! The more truthful I can be in front of a camera, the more the audience gets to be up-close and personal with their ‘real’ selves. This process has allowed me to grow as a person in numerous ways, such as feeling more connected and creative in my life. When I’m not acting, I miss the aliveness it brings me and the ability to be of service by stretching the edge of my vulnerability – it really is the craft that keeps on giving. Filming and Editing – Rebecca Dumbrille I’ve always been been drawn to the arts. I studied visual arts in University at Emily Carr and towards the end of my undergrad, I started working at Actorium, an acting school with a strong focus on the art of acting and a culture of diversity and inclusion. When I was younger, I never saw myself reflected in the media and so this was deeply satisfying, and it was there that I really fell in love with film as a format. I have spent the past three years honing my skills on camera, editing and colour grading. My interest is in capturing the human experience through colour and movement, and my goal is to make stories that show the true diversity of our world so that other young people can have the experience of seeing themselves reflected in media. Graphic Designer – Liz Wurzinger Liz Wurzinger BA studied Graphic and Media Design in her homeland Austria before relocating to Vancouver in 2011. She enjoys the brain-wrecking concept and idea-finding process of each project as much as the obsessive crafting of fine layouts. Liz has recently been helping to refine Actorium’s visual language. Advisory Board Members Academy Award-winning Producer Fred Roos (IMDb) has worked with some of Hollywood’s most gifted filmmakers and actors over the last four decades, producing some of the most unique films of our time. Roos’ long-term collaboration with Francis Ford Coppola includes producing the Academy Award-winning Best Picture The Godfather Part II and the Academy Award-nominated Best Pictures Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, Part III, and The Conversation (winner of the Palm D’Or at Cannes). Other films Roos has produced with Coppola include One From the Heart, The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club, Gardens of Stone, New York Stories, Tucker: The Man and His Dream. He has also worked as Executive Producer on Youth Without Youth, Tetro, and Twixt. Among Roos’ other producing credits are… more on Mr. Roos. Illuminating her films with inspired performances from actors is a hallmark of Martha Coolidge’s IMDb work – from her documentaries to her remarkable pioneering achievements in features, television, and the internet. A consummate filmmaker, she is known as an “Actor’s Director”. From Robert Duvall and Halley Berry, to Geena Davis and James Gandolfini, her actors give some of their best performances. Her cornerstone hit comedies Valley Girl and Real Genius put her on the map and launched the careers of Nicholas Cage and Val Kilmer. Coolidge also exceeds genre and is known for her powerful dramas: notably Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, which was nominated for eleven Emmy nominations, winning five, including Halle Berry, who also won a Golden Globe, the SAG Award, and two NAACP Awards; Rambling Rose, nominated for two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes and won three, out of five; and the IFP Spirit Awards for Best Director and Best Picture. Coolidge’s TV movies and episodic include CSI, Sex and the City, The Glades, and If These Walls Could Talk which earned her a second DGA nomination for Best Director. Coolidge continues to serve on the boards of the DGA, the Academy of Motion Pictures, the AFI, and Women in Film, and was elected as the first woman President of the Director’s Guild of America in 2001. Mr. Kemeny (IMDb) is a Vancouver-based businessman who has worked as Executive Producer on several feature films. His credits include Saving Lincoln, Return to Byzantium: The Art and Life of Lilian Broca, and When Do We Eat? Earlier in his career, Horatio was a software development manager and entrepreneur. He is still involved in the industry, directing a number of technology companies. He brings his diverse and substantial business background as as well as a considerable interest and support of the arts to Actorium. When I signed in the Intro class, I had absolutely no idea about what Actorium was. I did not know what to expect, although I had been slightly familiar with the Meisner Technique. All I wanted was to start an acting class as soon as possible after landing in Vancouver. Now, after finishing the class, I can say that I have found the place where I want to work on becoming an actor. Just wanted to thank you and tell you how much I am enjoying your class! I come in usually tired and stressed from my day and feel empowered, enlightened, and invigorated. I am very serious about excelling and being an amazing actor. Last class, I was blown away with the meditation with the belly breathing and baby analogy. It hit me really deep, especially when you said a baby doesn’t laugh or cry from its head! WOW!!! I mean, it all seems common sense but with all my 46 years of emotional bandages and coping mechanisms it has been buried. I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your class and you giving back to the community and being so awesome!! I feel very grateful to be in your class and know I will develop deeply under your guidance. I feel like I am growing daily from your classes. I am a Leader and will definitely keep challenging myself and classmates to be better. Isn’t that what life is about? Thank you for your thoughts, observations, and advice. It is a surreal experience for me being in your acting classes. I have lived my life inside a sort of straight jacket and blindfolded. I have known something was very wrong but I did not know how to help myself. I could not explain how this is working but over the last six months, I have felt a loosening from what binds me, which is such an incredible relief, but with it I feel sadness also. I can not emphasize enough how limited I have been due to my fears and my thought processes. Michelle, I am so deeply thankful for this painful and joyful process. I am sorry so much time has past in my life, but thankful there is some left. I wanted to extend my thanks for facilitating my learning/growing over the past few months. I’ve discovered so many things that have eluded me in my acting process for years. My audition yesterday was kind of like the culmination of what I’ve gone through in your class up to this point. It was nice to go into a very intimidating audition with solid tools and the confidence to know that I can “go there” if I bring in my commitment and focus. I felt so free! As I was moving through the audition, I was keenly aware of the other person and kept my focus on them – it was like I was doing a Meisner exercise right there in the room – it was so cool. I am really liking what I am learning in Intro and want to continue with Foundation. In fact, I went to an open audition and used the grounding and connection with my partner in the cold read scenes I did. Yeah! And I just found out that I got the part! 🙂 Thank you for keeping us on our toes. I really have been learning a lot coming to these classes, about myself and (not just) acting. It really feels so much better being in the actual moment rather than acting it out in a way we think it should be. I have been taking acting classes now for a couple of months and it is changing me. At first when I was up on the stage, I felt rigid and self-conscious, unwilling to share my heart and emotions. Maybe I was willing but afraid. I find now that sharing is coming easier and that everything I share is reflected around me in the other participants. I am finding that the act of getting on stage is so opening and so freeing. I want to go deeper into it. It is just what I need to keep the juice of life going… Face fear… Face myself and share. Thank you to our instructors for embarking on this with your whole heart and taking us with you!! Acting classes are paying off. I’m getting more assertive and witty! Ha ha! Just wanted you to know. I have always been terrified of public speaking and have never even in my dreams wished to be in the limelight on any stage. The thought of taking acting lessons would have never occurred to me. But my instructor introduced this idea in such an intriguing way. She said this class was a safe place for those who wanted a chance to tiptoe out into the spotlight and thus explore hidden facets of their essence and personality. I’ve always been rather inhibited and not-quite-the-real-me in my range of expression in social settings so I thought this would be a potentially fun and cheap way to expand my range, as compared to say, sitting weekly on a therapist’s couch for months on end. Well, it’s only been four classes so far but holy moly! I could not have guessed how eye-opening and personally rewarding this experience would be for my inner development and self-knowledge. The instructor is guiding us starting from scratch using the Meisner training technique. Not only do I feel I have a better window to my authentic self (and what could possibly be more precious than that) but I also feel like I really have an inner eye and empathetic understanding of my fellow classmates which in so few hours with strangers is really incredible. I would urge anyone who resonates with me to try this course. Very highly recommended. I want to express my appreciation for the opportunity to join the Meisner Intro Class. The attention, understanding and encouragement you give is communicated with such compassion and depth that makes one want to incorporate and excel. Even from the first workshop, there has been a shift in my interaction with others and awareness of how and what I communicate. I learn something new with each class and the experience stays alive within me until the next class. The activities/exercises feel like a return to our more natural selves before being told how to be, what to say, how to say it. I am reminded to check in with myself for authentic expression of my experience in the moment. Thank you for your brilliance in presenting this opportunity. She inspires us to leap fully into a given exercise or character by encouraging us to overcome the personal barriers and inhibitions that hold us back. She reaches for real emotions in her students, and encourages us to find our most authentic performances. She strips away the mystique of acting, and provides a great working environment in which we can learn about ourselves, and about the craft of acting. My coach, outside of class, noted a very grounded and open difference in my performance. My advice to anyone who works at Actorium is to listen closely to what is asked, let the ego go, allow the walls to fall, and be willing to grow. Not only has the program allowed me to tap into my childhood bliss that I chose to let go of, but it also helped me look at places I blocked out within myself. I am becoming more whole and my relationships are becoming more authentic and honest. I am finding the program is helping me stay present and be more honest with everyone in my daily interactions. Rather than my habit of keeping my thoughts to myself, I’m able to share those feelings with people I trust and they make room for me. I have richer relationships because I’m able to recognize what I’m feeling and sense what others are feeling. I think the instructors have done a phenomenal job thus far. They do a great job of being inclusive to everyone who is there. I trust they know exactly who needs to work on which area and will tailor each class accordingly. I find they manage to tailor our classes specifically to each person’s unique needs. We all have different areas of strengths and weaknesses, and our instructors recognize what exercises will benefit us most to make a breakthrough.

I completed my first Classic: RABBIT, RUN (Updike). I rated it a 1.5/5. :( I finished my first: The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins.http://superfastreader.wordpress.com/2007/01/07/the-moonstone-by-wilkie-collins/ I actually read one of my challenge books in December, so I added a new one to my list!I read Edith Wharton's, The Age of Innocence in December; and finished Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen in January. Very brief reviews are posted on my blog (caribousmom). What's happened to the dates?! This appears to have been blogged in March 2007 - the Winter Challenge is now officially over :-) I finished my first as well. Isn't it funny that, just like The Superfast Reader, it was Wilkie Collins' Moonstone? See the entry for January 6th.http://individualtake.blogspot.com/ Joy, I'll be over to read your review. Looks like you didn't like it much with only a 1.5 rating. Hope the next one is better.Superfast, I'm still jealous of the spead with which you read. Anxious to read your thoughts about Moonstone.Wendy, I have no problem with you reading one of your classics in Dec and counting it, if you want to. Rajm, the date trick is one I learned from Colleen Gleason. By predating a blog, it will stay at the top of my blog throughout the whole classics challenge, so readers don't have to waste time finding the post. I did the same thing with the one just below it. Jill, I wonder if you and superfast reader will feel similar about that the book. That's a chunkster - you must be a fast reader, too. I've just finished my first classic The Wind in the Willows and I really enjoyed it. I'm back to the Fellowship of the Ring (my second one). I should finish it any time now. Hopefully. :) That's quite a list. No wonder you were always on the computer :) I just finished my first yesterday, Lady Audley's Secret. It was pretty good! I finished A Wrinkle in Time, now I"m passing it on to one of my children to read :)http://womenathome.typepad.com/my_reads/2007/01/a_wrinkle_in_ti.html http://womenathome.typepad.com/my_reads/2007/01/a_wrinkle_in_ti.htmlI don't know what happened to the link... sorry. I finished my first, Casino Royale, awhile back. Here's a link to the review:http://www.stainlesssteeldroppings.com/?p=568 I finished my first book: Madame Bovary Woo hoo, one down, four to go! I just finished "Umrao Jaan Ada", an Urdu classic, written in 1905 about a courtesan in the Royal Courts of Lucknow, India. I finished my first as well: Metamorphosis. Next one coming up soon promise. I finished the Odyssey. I'm not sure I feel any smarter. :) I am struggling to read Catch-22. I am really hating this book (I know many, many people love it...but, it is just torture for me). I want to give up on it (I'm 70 pages into the book). Is it permissible to give up on one of my listed books and substitute another classic in its place? (...please, please say yes!!)Wendy Wow! you guys are doing awesome! I'm going to be starting my first classic today - Woman in White. I feel so far behind, but I had to read a couple books for book groups. Might be quite embarassing if I don't finish my own challenge!Wendy, don't hesitate to change one book on your list for a different one. Thank you, thank you, thank you!I've bagged Catch-22 (I'll be interested to see what other readers think of this book!).I've substituted: Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton. My blog is updated with this new information. Hi! I finished Frankenstein and posted this on it:http://www.sheilaomalley.com/archives/007375.htmlI also finished Tale of 2 Cities:http://www.sheilaomalley.com/archives/007516.htmlI'm reading Gulliver's Travels now - I'll let you know when I finish it! I completed my second Classic: BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S (Capote). I rated it a 3.25/5. OK my first one is up. Jo's Boys by L M Alcott(randomjottings.typepad.com) I finished Silas Marner by George Eliot. My review is here:http://educatingpetunia.blogspot.com/ I've just finished The Fellowship of the Ring and I'm currently reading The Two Towers (my third in the list!) I made a new blog, just for books, and am updating this challenge there. I've finished Robinson Crusoe (in December) and then The Great Gatsby and Treasure Island over the holidays, into January. I'm slogging through On the Road right now; slow going though, because it is not grabbing me. Oh yeah, I'm reading Moby Dick with an online group, a few pages a day. It might take more than until the end of Feb, so it won't count for this challenge but it's pretty awesome. Hi booklogged!Apparently PBS is going to be airing "Jane Eyre" (Masterpiece Theatre) on Jan 21 and 28. Check local listings. I thought fans of the book might like to watch it, I know I will be. Here's the link:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/janeeyre/ I've read two of them so far. Brave New World - Which I felt was ok, but I didn't fall in love with.And The Quiet American, which has turned me into a Greene fan. I've read my first book of the challenge, Miss Marjoribanks by Mrs. Oliphant. A small review is on my blog. Now I'm eager to move on to The Moonstone, thanks to other readers' reviews. I finished book number 2 from my list! Yeah!A Farewell to Arms ... nad I have to say, I did indeed fall in love with the book. Keep up the good work. Everyone is doing fabulous. I'm enjoying reading your reviews and have so many good classics added to my list.Lotus, thanks for the heads up on the Jane Eyre movie. I've never seen the movie and it's been a long, long time since I read the book, so I'm going to be in front of my tv on those two nights. Just finished my first: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. A quick review is on my "Pieces of Me" blog. I'm all done with Anna Karenina, my first for the Winter Classics Challenge. I posted my thoughts on my blog. :-) My first classic was "Atlas Shrugged." It was my third time, but it's still a great book. Here's the site of my reivew: http://framedandbooked.blogspot.com/2007/01/1st-chunkster-and-classics-book.htmlNow I've got to read some of these other reviews. I finished The Color Purple...splendid book!! My review and thoughts are posted to my blog. I started The Grapes of Wrath yesterday and so far am really enjoying it!Wendy I finished my first, also The Moonstone. I gave it 3/5. :) More thoughts on my blog. I surprised myself by jumping into Fahrenheit 451 so quickly and now it's another book I can check off my Classics Challenge list. I really enjoyed it. Now I'm off to read a book for another challenge. :-) I completed by third Classic: ANIMAL FARM (Orwell). I rated it a 3.25/5. Next up is LORD OF THE FLIES (Golding). I've finished reading Mary Poppins, my first book for the Classics Challenge. On to The Railway Children.md I finished classic #1, Lady Chatterley's Lover. My scribbles about this book can be found at My Reading Adventures I have finished Emma and Pride and Prejudice. I'm currently working on Anna Karenina. Good luck with the spread sheet! I finished my first classic: The Awakening by Kate Chopin. I wrote a brief review on my blog. http://www.joyfuljottings-janet.blogspot.com I've finished Kim: http://pussreboots.livejournal.com/186146.html Ok, I can report on two more:Finished :The Good Earth by Pearl Buck (a post on it should be up later today)Finished: Some Prefer Nettles by Junichiro Tanizaki (post later in the week)3 down, 2 to go! :) One down, four to go -Evelina is finished. Can't hold a candle to Jane Austen but fascinating as historical research. Okay I finished my quite a while ago but I read Madame Bovary and hope to fit in another one really soon. lol I managed to finished my third read! The Canterbury Tales! I really did enjoy it ... I read several parts out loud - it is much better spoken than read I thought (or maybe it's easier for me to hear the flow of the poetry when it's spoken than just read!) Two down - three to go - I've completed Three Men in a Boat and The Turn of the Screw - now with the Henry James I start to leave the English Novel in my selections.. Well, I gave up on On the Road by Jack Kerouac.For my penance, I resolve to complete one extra book to make up for the boring, druggie, slacker-hippie fest that was On the RoadThe extra book was Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Much better, albeit, shorter. Next up for the challenge is to read Emma, and for extra credit, there are some childern's classics that I plan to read, just because I never read them. (I think I plan to read a bunch of classics this winter, especially all the short ones I can find. There are some gaping holes in my reading history) I just finished The Brothers Karamazov. I'm heading over to write my review right now. BTW, I'm enjoying going to other blogs to read their reviews on the Classics they have read. What an interesting group of readers. I've written a review for my second book, McTeague. It was a hard one to finish. http://caribousmom.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2007/1/19/2665019.htmlFinished The Grapes of Wrath! And now I'm going to take a break from classics until February. You can read my review on The Grapes of Wrath on my blog (link above).Wendy My Classics Challenge is a trip around the world, with the first book being Rashomon and Other Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, known for his contribution to Japanese short fiction.http://historicalpresent.typepad.com/historical_present/2007/01/classics_challe.html Just finished "Persuasion" by Jane Austen. Loved it! I completed my fourth Classic: LORD OF THE FLIES (Golding). I rated it a 3/5. Last in line is MRS. DALLOWAY (Woolf). Finished my first one - Les Miserables.Took me 2 weeks to read the first half and one week to read the second half :-) I don't even want to think about everything that has been left undone while I read, but the book was worth it!!One down - 4 to go. On to Dracula :-) I finished my first one:Letters from Hawaii, by Mark Twain.My review is up at:http://sharala.blogspot.com/2007/01/finally-tbrclassics-book-one.html Winter Classic Challenge book #2 completed! :) My thoughts about Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl will be posted on my site, My Reading Adventures, soon. Finished challenge book #1 on 1-19.Pride and Prejudice by Jane AustenRated 4/5. I am starting #2, Silas Marner, tomorrow Finished Middlemarch (number two)! It was longer than I thought: 578 pages in the Norton critical edition (translation: tiny, tiny print that normal humans can barely read).I love it though-hopefully I'll have a review up at my site tomorrow. No promises until Thursday, though! I just finished Silas Marner. My review is up at my blog.Just a quick correction to your list of authors, titles, readers; it doesn't show me as one of the folks reading this particular title. I've finished my second Classic read, My Antonia. I'm still going along with The Moonstone but life is annoyingly getting in the way of a nice long read! Review of Willa Cather's novel at http://indextrious.blogspot.com/2007/01/reading-my-antonia.html#links Finished my second book, Agnes Grey. I have a review up at my blog already.http://educatingpetunia.blogspot.com/2007/01/review-agnes-grey.html I've completed my first and second classics. I already have a review for Silas Marner posted, but I just finished Scarlet Pimpernel today, so it may be a few days before I write my review on it. I finished A Tale of Two Cities last week. It's the first time I've read it, to my embarrassment, and I encourage anyone holding off to grab it. What a great story of friendship and character during the French Revolution. Now I'm picking up Stendhal's The Red and The Black which I saw on a blog a few weeks ago. I love Classics, booklogged, and find this Challenge especially thrilling when I can be a "voyeur" on other's classic coices. I have started reading three at once (bad habit I know) and am half way through with those three... I've finished number 2: Eight Cousins. I actually enjoyed it though it was a bit preachy. My full review will eventually be up on my blog. Hopefully sometime today. I've finished book #3, Uncle Tom's Cabin. I read The Moonstone and reviewed it here. Loved it as much as The Woman in White! I've just finished Fathers and Sons. I quite enjoyed it and am now looking forward to reading the next Turgenev on the list. OK, Mrs. Dalloway is finally done; I can't seem to stop using semicolons now; it progressed so slowly and was terrible. Perhaps I'm too post-modern (or old fashioned?) for Virginia Woolfe, but I prefer my novels to have what we in the provinces call a plot I can read stream-of-consciousness drivel anywhere these days--I was expecting more. I give it a few sentences on today's blog post, but it's not much more than what I just posted here LOL Glad to be done with it is my overall review.Vanity Fair OTOH is wrapping up today, and I'm enjoying it much more. Much easier to read, understand, and relate to, even set in Victorian England with 100 pages of footnotes. I've finished book #4: Fighting Angel. I've finished The Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene and The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. I love those snowflakes! I just reviewed my third, "The Hound of the Baskervilles." It was a fun read. Here's the link:http://framedandbooked.blogspot.com/2007/01/3rd-classic-challenge.html I just finished Peter Pan and my review is here I completed my last Classic: MRS. DALLOWAY (Woolf). I rated it a 1/5. :( I've finished my first classic and posted about it here:http://verniciousknids.blogspot.com/2007/01/carbon-betteredge-mere-carbon-my-good.html Thanks for organising this challenge! Congratulations to Joy. She is the first to complete all five of her classics - and in less than a month. Way to go, Joy!Actually, I'm impressed at how well everyone is doing. Only one more month. We can do it, right?! Right! Finished my second classic: Dracula by Bram Stoker.VERY glad I finally got around to reading the original. Finished 2nd: I, Robot by Asimov.Am 20 pages short of my third read which is the poem The Art of Love by Ovid. It should be up in a day or two. Woo-hoo! I have already finished The Woman in White, and am well on the way to finishing Martin Chuzzlewit. I'm going great guns at the moment. Review to follow soon... My second classic was The Railway Children by E Nesbit. It was outstanding, especially since I read the Folio edition, which is beautifully illustrated.md Now finished re-reading Where Angels Fear to Tread, bit of a break to read my Book Group book of the month before I return to the classics! Hi, booklogged!I have finished 3 out 5 books for the classics challenge and I would like to make a change if I may, Instead of "Palace Walk" which I am struggling with at the moment, can I read "Alice in Wonderland"? I see you are reading it, too, so it will be fun to compare notes. Also, if I read "Through the Looking Glass and what Alice Found There" would that be considered a separate read altogether or part of the same one? THanks! Done with number three, Out of Africa. I enjoyed it, and will write up my thoughts tomorrow.http://astripedarmchair.blogspot.com I finished reading Catch-22 last night and will be moving onto Emma the beginning of next month. Lotus, I think we should count Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass as two separate classics. Does that sound okay to you. I'm just about finished with Alice and don't think I care to read the sequel.Everyone is doing marvelous! I hope I do better in Feb than I've done in Feb. Do you realize there are 101 people signed up to read classics?! Is that incredible, or what?! Booklogged, thank you! Sounds great! I finished "Alice in Wonderland" last night and I shouldn't take too long with the "The Looking Glass...". Yes, the nonsense writing, is getting to me, too, lol, but I am curious to find out what happens in the sequel. If I have time I may go back and tackle "Palace Walk".It's great that so many people have signed up for the classics read! Wonderful! I have finished three of my classics: The Awakening, Ethan Frome, and Catch 22. I did not like Catch 22 at all. I would probably have tossed it aside if my student teacher didn't want to teach it so badly. I loved The Awakening and Ethan Frome. Two very different views of women and love. I just finished Beowulf. A pretty good read and the language, to die for.Here's the link to my post about it.http://greatewhitenorth.blogspot.com/ I've finished Liza, and now I've got only about 1 3/4 to go . . . I'm doing somethingahead of schedule for once! Finished my fourth: Lady Audley's Secret I finished Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen last night! Woo hoo! I've got one more to go to complete the challenge. I rated Northanger Abbey a 3.5/5. Not my favorite Austen novel, but worth reading. I finished my fourth, "Candide." I'm thoroughly enjoying reading "The Scarlet Pimpernel," which will be my fifth. Way to go, Joy, for getting all five done so quickly. Book #3 is completed. Hopefully, I'll have time to scribble my thoughts on this book and book #2 on my site, My Reading Adventures, soon. It's going to be a cold,cold weekend, so I plan on reading a lot! Finished my third title, Mary Barton and posted the review to my blog today (Feb 4) I finished my first Pride & Prejudice on 1-19 and forgot to post and should be finishing my second(Silas Marner) today or tomorrow. I have reviewed the first and will be posting the 2nd and my site within the next couple of days. I have now finished four of my classics: 1. Catch 222. The Awakening3. Ethan Frome4. O Pioneers (the most recent)I have one more to read and that is Little Women but I picked up a mystery - Ricochet by Sandra Brown and I can't put this one down. Just finished #3 Little Women this evening. Looking forward to #4 - The Three Musketeers :-)Thanks again for sponsoring this challenge. I'm having a great time reading these. I just finished my second The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. :) I have finished my fifth and final book: A Room With a ViewThank you for sponsoring this challenge! It was a lot of fun =) I've finished two of my classics...I noticed that on your list, I'm just J, no link, so I must have neglected to give you all of my info before. Sorry!Jhttp://jellyjules.comFirst review: East of Eden - http://jellyjules.com/?p=509Second review: Henry and June - http://jellyjules.com/?p=524Thanks! This is fun. Have finished numbers 2 and 3 of the Classics Challenge - Martin Chuzzlewit and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.Reviews on my blog: http://adventuresinbookland.blogspot.com I've finished The Moonstone, finally. I really enjoyed it. Now forward to the last 2 classics... I have completed the challenge! Booklogged thank you so much for initiating it - I have enjoyed this so much. I have now vowed to read a classic atleast once every six months - this challenge was just the motivation I needed to get back into the classics, thanks! I just finished my 5th Classic, "The Scarlet Pimpernel." What a fun book. I had "Wuthering Heights" listed for Classics and Chunksters but I'm passing on it for now. I've read some interesting reviews. Are you doing this Challenge again next year? Just posted my 3rd review ~ Anne's House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery on my Pieces of Me site. Delightful read... I've only read one of my classics, Emma, I'm doing so bad. Oh well, there's still a couple of weeks left :) I'm all done! I've posted my last review for The Sea-Wolf on my blog. I've posted about my second read here:http://verniciousknids.blogspot.com/2007/02/peter-quint-you-devil.htmlI was disappointed in The Turn of the Screw but am already halfway through my third choice! I seem to be super far behind in this! I finished my 1st last week, but I'm almost done with 2 more! The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. Very Good Book! Here's my review: http://stephaniesbooks.blogspot.com/2007/02/classic-tale-by-lesser-known-bronte.html Finished my 2nd Classics book -- Silas Marner. Loved it! My review along with my favorite passages can be found at http://3mreviews.blogspot.com.I'm making steady progress on The Woman in White, and luckily my two other ones are very short: Heart of Darkness and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Finished my first (blushes in shame at being so slow). Posted here on Cheri by Colette: http://booktraveller.blogspot.com/2007/02/classics-challenge-one-down.html Finished my last! Daisy Miller by Henry James; I'm not really sure how I feel about it yet.http://astripedarmchair.blogspot.com Here is my review of my second classic, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.http://sharala.blogspot.com/2007/02/classics-challenge-mrs-dalloway.htmlMy third has been finished but I'm waiting to post my review. I finished the first four of my classics and have comments up at my blog. (Didn't realize I should stop by and post until now. I'm glad I did because it's fun to read everyone else's comments and see their selections.)#1 was the Odyssey and I think I'm happier about having read it than I was about reading it . . . #2, 3, and 4 were Mary Barton (thanks to Jill), The Scarlet Pimpernel (fast and entertaining read, though not what I expected from vague memories of the movie), and Bell for Adano (substitution for Oliver Twist). I completed Jane Austen's Emma in wee hours of the morning. Finished! Wrapped up the challenge by reading Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton. Wow...what a great book. I gave it a 5/5 and posted a review on my blog.THANK YOU, Booklogged, for sponsoring this wonderful challenge. It has refreshed my love of the classics and made me vow to keep reading more of them. Well, I'm not keeping up too well, but I've finished Rebecca and A Wrinkle in Time. Next up - Emma. I've just finished Chesterton's The Man who was Thursday and have posted some thoughts on it. A quick read, if you don't stop to try to figure out the meaning of each page as you go along... Finished my 3rd book--Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Review and favorite passages can be found at http://3mreviews.blogspot.com.Happy Reading! I've finished reading my five. I've finally finished my fifth classic, Mary Barton. I've enjoyed this challenge very much, and been inspired to read some more of my must-reads! Number four down. I really enjoyed Mrs. Mike. A review is up at my blog. Now to get ahold of a Fennimore Cooper book before the end of the month! Finished #4 - The Three Musketeers. What a fun romp.On to #5 - Frankenstein.Thanks again Booklogged - this has been a fun challenge. I have finished all five of my classics. I just completed Little Women. The complete list is on the margin of my blog. Ok what is next? I've just finished my #3, The Two Towers. I've also finished Candide which was in my EXTRA list (hope it counts as a #4) Just posted my 4th Classics review~ Wuthering Heights ~ on my "Pieces of Me" site ~ Have almost finished my 5th classic. Yipee!! My third book is done and reviewed here:http://sharala.blogspot.com/2007/02/walker-in-city-by-alfred-kazin.htmlStruggling through the last two but think I'll make it. Of course plans seemed to change a bit. I've finished at least five classics. Most recent books were: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'engle and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Emma is not calling me, but I might finish Northanger Abby by the end of February. One Austen is as good as another?Thanks for the challenge.I've quite enjoyed it and I'm sure I will be peppering my reading with classics much more often now.my reviews are at http://www.freewebs.com/raidergirl3/ My thoughts on classic #4 can be found at My Reading Adventures What great fun this was! I finished by 5th classic tonight. I really enjoyed doing this. Thank you for inspiring me to open up and read some of the classics that had been lingering on my shelves for awhile. I have finished my last classic ~ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. A delightful read, timeless in it's telling.Thank you, Booklogged, for this fun challenge. I would not have gotten to those classics right away if it hadn't been for this challenge. So glad I did! I think the date is off on your posts. Book 2 down...find my review here http://booktraveller.blogspot.com/2007/02/if-this-is-man.html I've finished Little Women, but I can't get away from Louisa May. I'm on Jo's Boys now and soon it will be Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom.md I've finished #3, Moll Flanders. I'll be reading like crazy trying to finish the other two in time.http://educatingpetunia.blogspot.com/2007/02/review-moll-flanders.html I finished my 5th one - Frankenstein - very good. Comments are on my blog.I'll be posting a Winter Classics Wrap Up post tomorrow.Thank You SO much for doing this!! Hope to do this again so I can read some of those I had on my possibilities list. I've read two of mine. Lord of the Flies by Golding and At the Mountains of Madness by Lovecraft.www.stephenlang.co.uk Finished: Athol Fugard's play _Master Harold and the Boys_.Historical / Present Finished fourth book a while ago and will hopefully finish the fifth one in time... I've finished Little Women and Sense and Sensibility. I also changed my fifth classic to Northanger Abbey. It was available at my library in CD form and it's short enough to finish before the end of February. I might still be able to finish all five!! Finished my 4th--The Woman in White. I was really nervous that I wouldn't be able to finish, but my next book is the fairly (fairlie--ha ha from the Woman in White) short Heart of Darkness. I think I'll make it! I think I can....I think I can.....http://3mreviews.blogspot.com/2007/02/woman-in-white-by-wilkie-collins.html Number four is done at last! Now that I've read it I can't think why I let Tess of the D'Urbervilles languish in my TBR box so long. My review of the final classic should be up in the nick of time tomorrow - as long as my browser doesn't throw a tantrum! Hmm. It looks like my comment did not go through, so here's a second try.Completed: Australian Miles Franklin's All That Swaggers. Also here's the permalink to one already reported, but incorrectly linked: Fugard's 'Master Harold' ... And the Boys. I completed the challenge! :) I finished classic #5, Persuasion, on Feb. 18th. Hopefully, I can get my review done and posted by the end of today. Thanks for hosting this challenge. I had my doubts if I would accomplish it but I did. :D I'm FINISHED! The Canterbury Tales have been read and reviewed, and just in time too - in my time zone it's 11.58pm! Thank you for hosting this challenge! I finished my 5th classic, Heart of Darkness. All five of my reviews can be found at this link:http://3mchallenges.blogspot.com/2007/02/winter-classics-challenge.html Completed the challenge around 11pm last night - Crime and Punishment many thanks for providing the impetus to get me to re-read this! Post a Comment

DALLAS, TX – Dionne Washington claims to have the biggest butt in the world. Dionne Washington can’t imagine anything worse than dieting. Her massive bottom is 5ft 3ins across and weighs a whopping 120 pounds – about the same as Lindsay Lohan holding twenty pounds of coke. Dionne loves her butt. “I am literally sitting on a fortune,” says Dionne, 35. “My butt must be the widest in the world and it already earns me over $180,00 a year. I used to hate it, but now it’s my fave feature.” She’s sitting on a goldmine. She knows how much her bottom weighs because four men lifted her up and flopped it down on a set of industrial scales while holding up the rest of her. At its widest point, it’s 14ft 9ins around, and she’s on a mission to make it even bigger. Dionne’s total weight is 425 lbs and at 5ft 4ins tall her Body Mass Index is 85. That’s four times more than an average woman and it puts her at risk of high cholesterol, diabetes and heart problems. “I’m not concerned,” she insists. “I love my body and wouldn’t change a thing.” However, Amanda Thornton of Atlanta has something to say about Dionne’s claim for biggest butt: And Kim Kardashian – well, she’s not even in the running. Dionne says nearly everything she eats goes to her bottom and to maintain its huge size she consumes a shocking 9,000 calories a day – more than four times the recommended intake for women. “The more I eat the bigger this beauty gets,” says Dionne. She hasn’t always been so proud of her butt, though. Growing up in Texas, she says it was the bane of her life. A skinny child, her weight ballooned when she hit puberty. “Suddenly I went from size 12 jeans to a size 18, then 20 then 22, while on top I remained a size 14. Kids at school can be so cruel, calling me Big Butt Bertha, Butt Head and Bottom Feeder. I’d sit at the back of class and wait until everyone else left the room because my butt often got stuck in the chair. “I could barely run, so PE was a nightmare. I’d get my mother to write notes saying I had cramps or sore knees. I tried wearing Spanx to contain my bottom but they didn’t work. I went to the prom by myself and left school feeling depressed, lacking confidence and hating my body,” she recalls. Dionne tried endless diets, including drinking just diet shakes, the cabbage soup diet and WeightWatchers. But nothing worked. “My mother Carol took me to see the doctor and he said I needed to diet and exercise more. Mom told me some of my cousins had big bottoms and perhaps it was genetic. All I did was hide under big dresses and comfort-eat.” Studying business administration at a local college, Dionne was miserable. “I kept my head down and tried to make myself invisible but that was hard. I was still a virgin and felt I’d never find someone who liked me for being me,” she says. But at 19 one of the guys from class asked her out. “It was the first time anyone had shown real interest. The date was lovely and we ended up having sex. Then I discovered later he’d done it for a bet with the other guys in my class. I was devastated and lost even more confidence.” Dionne started work at a law firm. “It was hard as my behind was getting wider as was my appetite. I couldn’t fit into the office chairs. I hated it. “Then a doctor told me I could diet but the weight probably wouldn’t shift. I could have liposuction but it would take multiple surgeries then I’d need more to fix the hanging skin. It would cost more than $50,000.” Earning just $28,000 a year, Dionne was devastated. “I tried to get new jobs but the prettier, smaller girls always beat me even though I was more qualified. I knew it was because of my size,” she says. Then her second boyfriend, who she met in 2008, made her realize she should love her bottom. After the second date he admitted he was attracted to very large women. “He was throwing all these phrases at me I didn’t understand. He explained he was a ‘fat admirer’ and loved large women and said that in his books I was a BBW – a Big, Beautiful Woman,” she says. “That night he showed me forums on the internet dedicated to big girls. Some weighed up to 400 pounds. There were super-sized girls in lingerie proudly flashing their flab. Suddenly my world changed. I’d discovered a place where women like me were not only accepted, but adored.” She made friends with other big girls who were sure her wide bottom would be a hit. So in February 2008, she decided to take the plunge and post some pictures online. “I weighed 300 pounds and was sick of my boring life. I’d just come out of another failed relationship so I decided to take control,” she says. “I had a girlfriend take some pictures of me and posted them on a forum. Within 48 hours I was inundated with emails from fans around the world wanting to know if they could buy my pictures.” Dionne admits she was scared and thrilled at the same time. “But I decided to go for it. I started selling pictures and videos of me and my butt online. I offered special membership rates of up to $40 a month and would send people two picture sets of up to 30 images. For extra they’d get a video and I charged even more for instant message chats.” Dionne has built up her empire and now has more than 15,000 fans. Her bottom has paid for an apartment, a big car (with extra-large seats), holidays, designer clothes and gifts for her friends. However, having the world’s widest butt doesn’t come without its problems. She can’t sit on normal chairs or stools – she takes up a two-seater sofa – so she does a lot of her computer work in bed. She has a supersized stool, but even with that her bottom sticks out 8ins at the back and 9ins each side. Dionne also requires extra-wide changing rooms in shops. “Sometimes I can’t try on clothes as I literally can’t fit,” she says. “I need toilets with seats for big people and I get stuck in bath tubs. I get a lot of clothes made to order in size 36-40, especially my pants,” she says. “I hate shopping in supermarket aisles that have cans and displays sticking out as I end up knocking them over. At restaurants I have to sit in a booth for three people and push the table to the other side. I don’t use buses – I have to turn sideways just to get through the door.” She has a serious fear of getting stuck in the toilet on a train or plane. “One time I got stuck and the flight attendant had to pull me out. I laugh now but it makes you realize the seats need to be bigger for us large girls.” Dionne’s parents are both dead but she has an aunt who thinks she is nuts. On the other hand, her friends are very supportive. “They tell me I’m amazing and a real inspiration,” she says. Dionne admits she suffers from back pain but claims it’s minimal because the heavier she gets, her body will change to handle the extra pounds. “I am a Jimmy Choo fan but I can’t wear heels. My doctor said my butt wouldn’t allow me to balance properly and sometimes after a long day I lose a little sensation in my feet,” she says. She gets endless marriage proposals from fans but turns them all down. “I have joined a few dating sites and hope to find a guy who likes me for my brains who I can marry and have kids with. “I’ve had some eggs frozen in case I meet Mr Perfect later in life so I can still have a baby.” Dionne doesn’t want to take on Susanne Eman or Donna Simpson for fattest of the world title. She’s happy with the biggest butt. Besides, nobody is going to beat Donna Simpson’s stomach: You can read about Donna… HERE. For now, the woman with the world’s widest butt, has no plans to stop modelling or change her lifestyle. “I earn tens of thousands, I have thousands of fans and those kids at college who teased me are all in dead-end jobs. She says: “I never ask people if my butt looks big in this. I ask them if it’s big enough… the bigger the better.”

I’ll admit, I am biased because I absolutely love chocolates from Bernard Callebaut. If you’re a Calgary resident, you know all about this chocolaterie, along with all of the recent press and drama surrounding the man who founded the company. Well now the company is in the hands of new owners, and I thought I’d pop in to see if any of my long-time favorites have changed with the change of ownership. I popped into their 17th Avenue location not too long ago, and picked up a small bag of two favorites along with a new seasonal treat. I also was brave and asked permission to take photos – so got some decent photos for Happy Sushi Belly instead of my shy-fueled gurrilla-style iPhone photos. For those of you who are new to Bernard Callebaut, you can go in and simply pick up a pre-packaged box (done in their signature copper box, or seasonally wrapped for a slightly higher price) in several sizes – or you can also make up your own box. This is what I almost always do for close friends or relatives, so I can get the chocolates that I know they’ll especially like. (They’ll wrap up the signature box for you as well.) You can also pick out individual, freshly-made chocolates from the display case and have them put together a small bag for you to eat on-the-go if you would prefer. Bernard Callebaut also sells ice cream treats in the summertime, shavings for hot chocolate, baking chocolate, and a few other chocolate-based treats. First up – one of the summertime Fresh Fruit Creams – apparently they have been doing this for a few years now, but I must have missed it! Every few weeks its a new selection – this time around it was a mango – the mango was delicious – fruity but not tart, in a little milk chocolate basket, topped off with white chocolate shavings. It won’t become my next top-five (thank goodness, if it’s only offered for a few weeks a year!) but it was delicious! Next up, one of my all-time favorites – the Leaf – this one is a milk chocolate, filled with milk chocolate ganache, and a black currant. The current is like a little surprise within the chocolate -you never know where it will be hiding! Yummy! And finally I also picked up the Canadienne truffle – a milk chocolate shell filled with white chocolate ganache and maple syrup. Melt-in-your-mouth goodness! I always pick up two (erm.. at least!) of each flavor at a time – that way I can really savor it, and don’t get that “awww, is it all gone” disappointment after tasting one. There were two staff people working while I was in the shop (they have way more during the holidays) and both were extremely helpful and friendly. They gave me the impression of a husband-and-wife shopkeeper pair, though I have no idea if that impression was accurate or not. When I told the woman about our blog (and hence my desire to take photos) we engaged in a lovely conversation about local sushi opportunities too! It would seem as though they’ve kept the recipes and ingredients the same (or at least no noticeable differences) which is fantastic – when the shop was in danger of closing, I know many people were worried about the lack of their favorite go-to gift-giving resource if nothing else! To be a bit self-indulgent – if you’re ever thinking of getting ME some chocolates, here are my favorites, in no particular order - Canadienne truffles - Leaf chocolates - Sambucca chocolates - Manon chocolates - Ginger Milk chocolates - Honey chocolates - Cinnamon Ginger chocolate (which, if I was ordering the list, would come lower down I’ll admit..) - … and I also love the raspberry milk chocolate hearts that come out at Valentines day! If you’re looking for a new favorite, Michael has a chocolate-by-chocolate review of one of the copper boxes in Chocablog. (Though clearly I like the sweet chocolates more than he does!) So, what about you – is Bernard Callebaut your favorite chocolate in Calgary – or do you have a preference for something even better? Let us know in the comments below! You can find Bernard Callebaut stores all over Alberta, with additional stores across Canada and even a few US locations. The shop I visited was at: 847 – 17 Avenue SW

Men of all ages are invited for free vocal lessons for six straight Mondays beginning at 7 p.m. Oct. 31 at St. Luke's Lutheran Church, 6705 Northway, Greendale. The lessons are offered by Midwest Vocal Express, an all-male a cappella chorus. For more information, call Tom Weber at 888-240-4426 or www.MVE.org. The battle lines were uncharacteristically drawn last night on the Muskego Common Council, which narrowly passed a 2012 city budget and a $14.5 million capital borrowing plan. Approvals came on the same 4-3 vote that held unchanged through six failed attempted amendments to the budget, the borrowing and the capital budget. Among other things, the voting block of three - Kert Harenda, Dan Soltysiak and Neil Borgman - didn't think controls will be strong enough on the $14.5 million borrowing package. They also didn't want the $2.5 million Pioneer Drive reconstruction and beautification next year, and preferred a pay freeze for city workers instead of the 2 percent raises budgeted. The three had brought up most of their concerns during the prior weeks of budget discussions, but the four aldermen in the majority - Noah Fiedler, Neome Schaumberg, Keith Werner and Tracy Snead - still weren't buying their viewpoints this week. The 2012 budget calls for no property tax increase. The operating budget will be $14 million, up 1.7 percent from this year's nearly $13.8 million budget. The levy will remain at $11,935,917 with the estimated tax rate dipping slightly to $4.41 per $1,000 of assessed value from $4.43 per $1,000. In the aftermath of last night's Elmbrook School Board decision to close Hillside Elementary next June, the district is inviting public input to help choose between three possible redistricting plans. Community Engagement on Redistricting sessions will be held at 6 and 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 2, at Wisconsin Hills Middle School, 18700 W. Wisconsin Ave. Each scenario will detail population tracts being reassigned to the remaining elementary schools, with varying estimated capacity outcomes for Brookfield Elementary, Burleigh, Dixon, Swanson and Tonawanda. Superintendent Matt Gibson said public input would be an important part of the process as the district makes the transition from six to five elementary schools. Merrick Fruchtman knew he had a challenge ahead of him when he decided to redevelop the blighted building at 65th Street and North Avenue as the new location for his business, Home Solutions USA. "The whole building had been damaged by fire, water and smoke," he said. The roof was falling in, the front half of the building had to be gutted and rebuilt, and after 15 years of vacancy a lot of maintenance issues became evident. "I knew what the community would want is a new structure, an entire new look," Fruchtman said. "I tried to give that to them." The extensive problems with the building itself caused some of the delays for the project that first came before the city more than 15 months ago for financial assistance. A large part of the hold up was an investigation into the land under the building.» Read Full Article A ransom note sent via text message did not work out as planned for three Milwaukee men. The men, one 26 and two 19, were arrested Oct. 16 for receiving a cell phone stolen the day before at iPic, 5750 N. Bayshore Drive. According to the Glendale police report: The owner reported the theft after receiving text messages demanding a "ransom" of $550 to get his phone back. Police had the owner set up a meeting with the men and take along an undercover officer.» Read Full Article The Elmbrook School Board voted, 6-1, tonight to close Hillside Elementary School after this school year ends. Board member Bob Ziegler provided the lone dissenting vote, saying the board should see a redistricting plan before making the decision. A plan for redistricting Elmbrook's remaining elementary schools is expected to be unveiled in November. The decision was greeted with jeers from the crowd of about 150 people who came to witness the vote, most of whom oppose the closing. Glendale - The city and police union have agreed to a three-year contract that includes 2 percent wage increases in 2011 and 2013 with a wage freeze in 2012. Union members will pay 10 percent of their health care premiums in 2012 and 2013. They currently pay 8.5 percent. Although state law exempted public safety employees from mandated pension contributions, beginning in 2012 they agree to pay 2 percent to the Wisconsin Retirement System toward their pensions. In 2013 they will pay 4 percent. City Administrator Richard Maslowski said there will be no layoffs, furloughs or reductions in service in the 2012 city budget as a result of the agreement. A 63-year-old man was arrested for his fifth offense of drunken driving Oct. 19, according to a city of Brookfield police report. An officer clocked the Wauwatosa man driving 40 mph in a 25-mph zone on Greenfield Avenue, east of Sunnyslope Road, just after 10 p.m. Oct. 19, the report states. The man then cut off the officer's squad car and proceeded to turn left from a through-lane before he was stopped on Elm Grove Road, near Cardinal Crest Drive. A blood sample was collected to determine the man's blood-alcohol content. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in jewelry were taken from a home on Bradford Lane on Oct. 21, according to a city of Brookfield police report. Also in the report: A man reported that his wife returned to their home in the 21000 block of Bradford Lane to discover that it had been broken into between 11 a.m. and 2:45 p.m. Oct. 21. It appears the perpetrator gained entry through an unlocked back door and made away with $200,000 in men's and women's jewelry and about $500 in cash. The home is outfitted with a burglary alarm, but it was not activated at the time of the burglary.» Read Full Article While on patrol at 2:30 a.m. Oct. 23, a Brown Deer Officer heard an audible alarm sounding at a nearby business. Officers quickly determined that a burglary had just occurred at Poco Loco, 4134 West River Lane. Entry was gained by smashing a rock though one of the business windows. While investigating and processing the scene further, officers found someone outside Prime Time, 8777 North Deerwood Drive. He was arrested for the burglary. The suspect is a 20-year-old Milwaukee man. Charges are pending at this time. Brown Deer officers have arrested three suspects after an armed robbery in Algonquin Park, 7850 N. 51st St., at 9:30 p.m. Oct. 21. The victims included three to five people from Brown Deer and West Bend ranging in age from 15 to 18 years old. They were robbed by two black males, one armed with an unknown type of handgun. Cash and other personal items were taken in the robbery. The victims were not injured during this incident. Police said the victims left the park before calling police. Algonquin Park is a Milwaukee County Park. Based on information received during the initial interviews of the victims, three arrests have been made. Charges are pending on one of the suspects. This investigation is continuing at this time. A homemade concoction purported to cause "super powers" in the drinker turned out to be a toxic substance mixed together by a student at Glen Hills Middle School and given to another, according to a Glendale police report. A 9-year-old boy became sick Oct. 14 after drinking a liquid given to him by two students at Glen Hills, 2600 W. Mill Road, earlier that day, his mother told police. One of the boys later admitted to authorities that he had mixed Dr. Pepper, rubbing alcohol, Tabasco sauce, Clorox wipes and soap, and then taken it to school and offered it to another student, saying it would give him "super powers," the report states. Paramedics responded to the school and checked the boy out, advising that he should be monitored in case further problems developed. Police confiscated the liquid. The school kept a small sample, but officials there stated they had no plans to have it analyzed, the report said.» Read Full Article The loss of more than 190 pieces of jewelry, a collective value of nearly $189,000, was discovered at Zales, 5720 N. Bayshore Drive, during a store inventory, according to a Glendale police report. Management reported the "internal theft of jewelry" from the store Aug. 30, saying the thefts must have occurred over the past 10 or 11 months. The case is under investigation, the report states. The Franklin Historical Society is holding its fourth annual Oktoberfest fundraiser from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Oct. 27 at Root River Center, 7220 W. Rawson Ave. The event includes a raffle, silent auction, hors d'oeuvres and music. Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 at the door. For information, call Ali Hoffman at (414) 745-5634. Greenfield and its firefighters reached agreement Tuesday on a contract that averted cuts in benefits for other employees and possible service reductions. In the two-year contract, the firefighters agreed to no raises next year. They also agree to pay 5.9 percent toward pensions and 12.6 percent of health insurance premiums as all other employees are, even though the firefighters wouldn't have to make those contributions, under state law. Police have already agreed to the pension and health insurance premium contributions, but other contract elements are still pending. city officials are optimistic that the rest of a police contract will be hammered out in the next few days. The Bay Breeze Condominium owners will not receive the $5,000 grant owners requested from Muskego to help with a $23,619 project that they said would beautify not only the condominium entrance on Janesville Road, but the roadway itself. The problem is that the Community Development Authority doesn't consider Bay Breeze a commercial development so, it doesn't qualify for a commercial grant. And while the city tried to establish a residential grant program along Janesville for property owners who will see landscaping cut down as the road is widened, the program never got Common Council approval. The Bay Breeze Condominium Association plans to plant 39 trees and add landscaping to the entrance. A proposed 2012 Greenfield budget that calls for a 2.15 percent property tax hike, mainly to finance an aggressive road program, received preliminary Greenfield Common Council Committee of the Whole approval Tuesday . The package will be the subject of a public hearing Nov. 15. With a property tax rate of $7.21 per $1,000 of assessed value, 17 cents higher than 2011, the proposed budget would cost about $34 more than this year for the owner of a home assessed at $200,000 both years. Although the new state law keeps the levy at a zero increase unless there is growth, cities can raise their levies to cover debt. That's where the proposed nearly $11 million borrowing for an aggressive road program comes in, an idea that city officials are just starting to consider. Because interest rates are so low and contractors are willing to give buyers a break just to keep crews working, the proposal has been made to lump road spending that is scheduled to be done over the next several years and do it all in two years. Then nothing would be done until 2015, when more would be borrowed for those future projects. If a tornado was spotted near Wauwatosa and the crowds needed to be evacuated quickly from Hart Park, where would attendees go for safety? The Muellner Building likely won't provide enough space to handle a full stadium of spectators during an athletic event or a city celebration. "I'd love to just open the Tosa Room (the space used for curling in the winter and rented for weddings with up to 450 guests the rest of the year) and tell people to come inside, but I don't think they'd all fit," said Mary Clare Shuller, parks department secretary. Fire officials met with the city's Parks and Forestry Board on Tuesday to talk about creating a critical incident management plan. A binder containing such a plan is rumored to exist, but if so, it has disappeared, Fire Chief Rob Ugaste said. Upping the ante citywide» Read Full Article Six sculptures that have adorned the Harwood pedestrian bridge will move to Hart Park by spring. More than 10 years ago, the Village Business Improvement District partnered with Gary Zimmerman, a principal of Zimmerman Design Group, to commission artist Richard Taylor to design public art. The project cost about $50,000 and was donated to the city. When Café Hollander took over the building Zimmerman had occupied, it looked to install a fountain and outdoor seating. A couple of the sculptures had to be removed to make space for the new elements. Those pieces have since been sitting in Public Works storage, while other pieces remained on the bridge. City and BID officials have been working with the artist and donors to find a new spot within the city to display the sculptures. As the playground and site utilities project moved forward near the Rotary Park Pavilion, Mayor Jill Didier saw a place to mix fine art, music and recreation in one area. "The sculpture was such a special donation, so I think it will be a wonderful addition to an area that is becoming such a gathering place for this community," Didier said.» Read Full Article Five food businesses will receive financial assistance to startup or expand in Wauwatosa. However, a city leader has questioned whether one of the grant recipients may be too successful to warrant help. The Wauwatosa Economic Development Corp. met last week to divvy up nearly $262,000 in 2011 Community Development Block Grant funds to businesses that promise to create jobs. Highlands Café, Le Reve Patisserie, Rocket Baby Bakery, Alterra Coffee Roasters and the owners of Cranky Al's will each get 45 percent of the dollars they requested. "It's great that all this is happening in Tosa but there's a $325,000 gap," Paulette Enders, city economic development director said. Mayor Jill Didier, a WEDC member, said she could not deem one business more worthy than the other. Instead, they will each get a share of the pot. "I wouldn't want to see any one project not be funded," she said. "You don't have to pay this back so we will give you what we can proportionately."» Read Full Article A recommendation that Greenfield ban concealed weapons in city-owned buildings is now on its way to the Common Council. The Legislative Committee on Monday recommended the ban unanimously, leading to a council vote on Nov. 1, the day a new state law allowing people with permits to carry concealed weapons goes into effect. As a result of the impending law, many communities are passing bans on weapons in municipal buildings. If the Common Council also approves a ban, signs would be posted at entrances, though there will be no metal detectors. If people are caught with weapons, they will be fined. It was not clear last night how much that fine would be. Greenfield may add to a its list of nuisances trailers or other vehicles that are used for storage and parked out in the open. The city's Greenfield Legislative Committee on Monday recommended approval of an amended list. If the Common Council also approves the addition Nov. 1, the city will be able to force a cleanup at homes where the trailers have become eyesores. Things are often piled around and on top of the trailers or inoperable cars and weeds grow up around them, said Jeff Cavett, fire marshal and code enforcer for the city. But without the addition to the ordinance, the city can't do anything about them. A car or any other vehicle that's full of stuff wouldn't necessarily be deemed a nuisance. It also would have to have two other problems - such as being inoperable, partially dismantled, improperly licensed or parked in an unapproved surface. A major road project anticipated to start in the Village next year has been delayed until 2016. State Street was expected undergo reconstruction, a project that created accessibility concerns for businesses in the Village Business Improvement District. Still after years of construction in the area, BID members wanted the work to just get done. That was until the state Department of Transportation's plans for Zoo Interchange reconstruction overlapped with the city's project. Two major routes to the Village from the west will see road work aimed at making local streets ready to handle more traffic during the interchange project. "Having Glenview and Watertown Plank Road closed at same time (as State Street) would be detrimental to our businesses," BID Director Kathy Ehley said. Keeping State Street open would allow access to the Village from further east, she said.» Read Full Article If it weren't for Hart Park Senior Center, many older adults would find themselves isolated and see a decline in their mental and physical health. "It gives people a place to belong," said Michael Price, president of the center's advisory board, getting choked up. "People leave lunch on Friday and say they won't talk to anyone until Monday. It's sad, but it's true." Between hot lunches and program attendance, the senior center tracked 27,000 visits last year. To continue providing the same level of programs and service, the senior center is seeking $117,500 in Community Development Block Grant funds. For every $1,000 grant dollars reduced, the center loses 100 visits due to cuts in programming, center Director Mary Noel Johnson said. Few people in the community could dispute the benefits the center has for the senior population. Unfortunately, the same could be said about the more than a dozen local food pantries, senior-living facilities and service organizations and agencies seeking CDBG money for 2012.» Read Full Article A 15-year-old girl was mailed a citation for disorderly conduct after she hit a male student in the face after he called her names, causing "a major disruption" in class. According to the Glendale police report: The two students were in class at Nicolet High School, 6701 N. Jean Nicolet Road, on Oct. 12. A teacher reportedly told the girl to put on a jacket because of her wearing revealing clothing. When the girl refused, the boy started calling her names and she threatened to stab him. They began to struggle and she hit him and the fight caused "a major disruption" in the class. The girl said the boy "disrespected her" and that's why the fight started. A man, his wife and son were cited for obstruction for lying to police about an accident the boy had that caused a tree to hit a neighboring house. According to the Glendale police report: The 15-year-old boy lost control of the car while pulling out of his driveway and drove onto a neighbor's yard knocking over two trees, one of them hitting the house, in the 1800 block of West Wayside Drive about 7 p.m. Oct. 9. The woman, 55, said she was in the car with the boy who had a learner's permit. The boy and his father, 53, told the same story. However, the boy did not have a permit and the woman was not in the car.» Read Full Article Matt Schuenke, assistant village manager in Whitefish Bay, announced Tuesday he is resigning from the position, effective Oct. 31. Schuenke has accepted the position of village administrator/clerk-treasurer in the village of Cross Plains, near Madison. "Whitefish Bay is a great community in which to work, and I am very appreciative of the opportunities I have had to work with the residents, Village Board and staff," Schuenke wrote in his resignation letter. "It is truly a remarkable place with the accomplishments we have been able to achieve together." Greenfield officials are thinking about strongly encouraging all gas stations in the city to go to prepay for gas in addition to paying at the pump in hopes of drastically reducing gas driveoffs. Interim Police Chief Bradley Wentlandt told the Greenfield Legislative Committee last night that Green Bay had virtually eliminated gas driveoffs by eliminating investigations at stations that do not have prepay. Instead, the owners must write a report, get the registration information from the state Department of Motor Vehicles based on eye witnesses or surveillance videos, and then give the information to police who take it from there, Wentlandt said. The vast majority of Green Bay gas stations have gone to prepay, he said. He met with Greenfield gas station owners and all were in favor of going prepay except one, Wentlandt said. That one has a competitor nearby in New Berlin and he is afraid of losing business to the New Berlin station because it would not have prepay. The Greenfield Legislative Committee last night recommended sending a resolution of support to State Rep. Peggy Krusick, who is trying to get a state ban on liquors with alcohol above 160 proof, or 80 percent alcohol. The Greenfield Common Council is expected to approve the resolution of support Nov. 1. The council had originally wanted to consider a citywide ban after the death of Jeff Wielichowski, a young Greenfield man who drowned after consuming a punch made with the 190-proof Everclear grain alcohol. But officials found the city doesn't have the power to enact such a ban. The Wielichowski family lives in Krusick's district. Jeff's mother Luanne is spearheading the drive to clear the shelves of such strong liquors. In the resolution, the Legislative Committee noted that Jeff Wielichowski is not the only one to die after drinking high-proof liquors and calls such high-proof liquors a threat to public health, safety and welfare.» Read Full Article A naked and crying toddler wandered into a hotel lobby after his mother left to buy cigarettes and snacks Wednesday night. According to the Wauwatosa police report: The 19-year-old mother, her boyfriend and a friend checked in with the child at the Days Inn, 11811 W. Bluemound Road. A while later, the adults left, a hotel employee told officers. Within 20 minutes of his mother leaving, the 2-year-old boy came into the lobby. Seeing he was naked, employees found towels to wrap him in.» Read Full Article Kristopher Rowe will run for the 10th Assembly District seat in 2012. Rowe, who was a leader of the effort to recall state Sen. Alberta Darling last summer, announced his intentions at a Village Board meeting last night. Rowe is a respiratory therapist. Shorewood is part of the 22nd Assembly District but will become part of the 10th Assembly District in January when the redistricting goes into effect. The 10th Assembly seat is now held by Elizabeth Coggs. City of Brookfield police believe two armed robberies reported a week apart may be connected. Two men wearing dark clothes and black bandannas over their faces used a semi-automatic handgun to rob the Westbrook Beverage Center, 13400 W. Greenfield Ave., at 8:58 p.m. Oct. 16, according to police reports. Police Capt. Jim Adlam said they then ran off with an undisclosed amount of cash. Officers from numerous agencies assisted city of Brookfield officers secure a perimeter, but the robbers were not found. Adlam said investigators believe the Oct. 16 armed robbery may be related to the robbery of Subway, 3960 N. Brookfield Road, before 6:30 a.m. Oct. 10.» Read Full Article A 16-year-old Brookfield boy could face burglary and theft charges for stealing a car, mini bike and all-terrain vehicle from a home in the 13000 block of Hampton Road, according to city of Brookfield police reports. Also from the reports: The vehicles, with a combined value of $3,400, were reported stolen at 5:41 a.m. Oct. 12. The car was found in the backyard of a home in the 3400 block of Fiebrantz Drive just after 11:30 a.m. Oct. 12. A man provided a description of the person who left the car, and it matched a teen who attends Brookfield East High School.» Read Full Article A Brookfield man accidentally fired a shotgun into a neighboring apartment unit while attempting to unload it, according to a city of Brookfield police report. Also from the report: The man called the police to report that he had misfired a round of buckshot into the wall of an apartment in the 18000 block of Lake Drive just before 10 a.m. Oct. 14, because he was unsure if anybody next door had been injured. Paramedics were put on standby while officers called a maintenance man to unlock the apartment. The apartment was found to be empty and nobody was injured.» Read Full Article A man was walking at 61st and Wright streets Tuesday night when a man carrying a gun started chasing him. According to a Wauwatosa Police Department report: The victim had been walking home from a friend's house at 52nd and Center streets in Milwaukee at 10:34 p.m. As he talked on his cell phone, he realized he was being followed. One man followed on his side of the sidewalk, while two more men walked on the opposite side of the street keeping their eyes on him. He saw one of the men across the street pull a mask over his face and a hood over his head before he started jogging over. As the masked man got closer, his hand could be seen in his front sweatshirt pocket. The victim, fearing that the man had a gun and was going to rob or harm him, took off running back to his friend's house.» Read Full Article Alderwoman Linda Nikcevich won't seek re-election to the Wauwatosa Common Council. She filed non-candidacy papers with the city's clerk's office today. Nikcevich will finish out her term, which ends in April. As for future plans, she declined in an interview to say whether she planned to run for another office within the city or another level of government. "I will continue to serve this community long after my term is completed," she wrote in a letter announcing her plans to end her time on the council at the end of her first, four-year term. This is my community where I live, am raising my family and will continue to volunteer and lead in other ways. Aldermen received election paperwork along with their council meeting packets about a week ago, Nikcevich said. She wanted to make her decision promptly "to give others a change to consider running for office," she said. Candidate packets for the April 2012 election - the mayor and one aldermanic seat from each of the city's eight districts will be on the ballot - are now available at the clerk's office and on the city website.» Read Full Article Opponents of a proposed plan to shutter Hillside Elementary School pleaded to the Elmbrook School Board for more than three hours Tuesday to consider everything from multiage classrooms to holding a communitywide referendum to raise taxes as alternatives to the closure. In the end, the majority of board members expressed an overriding concern about "excess capacity" in district classrooms. That factor, they said, would tend to solidify their decision to close Hillside. The matter is set to be decided when the board meets on Oct. 25. The lengthy discussion was a continuation of opposition expressed at two previous public hearings. The multiage classroom proposal came from former Board President Bruce Nattinger, who also urged the current board to consider a referendum and look at selling Swanson Elementary, which he described as having high real estate value.» Read Full Article To protect the most reliable access the public has to Big Muskego Lake, the Muskego Common Council last night gave the go-ahead for an appraisal that would be the first step in the city possibly buying the boat launch located beside the Boxhorn Gun Club, W13960 Boxhorn Drive. For about 10 years, the city has leased the boat launch from the gun club to provide the public access to the lake. But that lease is only good for another 10 years. The gun club owner has said that if the club were to go away, he would like to develop the entire property so the city would lose access to the launch, said Craig Anderson, recreation director. The only other public boat launch on the Big Muskego Lake is at Durham Drive. But for the last two years, boaters have found the channel leading from the launch to the lake blocked by floating islands of cattails, Anderson said. Anyone heading to a hospital emergency room should call 911 for a ride. "Many people are hesitant to call 911 unless they think the situation is life or death," Deputy Fire Chief James Case said. He appreciates that people don't want to abuse the service, but explained that emergency room visits are appropriate reasons to dial those three numbers. What presents as a minor pain or illness could quickly become more severe, perhaps when someone is driving themselves to the ER. Ambulance crews are equipped and skilled to handle such situations, Case said. In this economy, people are putting off calling ambulances because they are afraid of the charges or don't think the severity of their medical situation warrants it.» Read Full Article For locating a handgun that was used in a shooting, Greenfield's police dog and his handler have received a state award. Police Officer Scott Zienkiewicz and his canine partner Badger were awarded the Wisconsin Law Enforcement Canine Handlers Association 2011 award for Meritorious Article Find. In the shooting incident that happened in May in Milwaukee, a suspect fled into Greenfield on foot and was later captured at Clement Manor. Zienkiewicz and Badger were asked to search the area for the gun used in the shooting. The team began where the suspect had discarded a sweatshirt while running. While tracking the suspect's path, Badger located the crucial piece of evidence. City officials hope the Wisconsin Department of Revenue will approve about $2.1 million in refunds from other taxing entities to help cover a portion of the property tax settlement paid to Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare. If the state agrees, Wauwatosa's request would rank as the largest single chargeback issued. In any given year, chargebacks are used to make minor adjustments to the tax roll. The size of this request - it returns money for several subsequent years' property tax payments - sets it apart, City Attorney Alan Kesner said. "They've never had one this large," he told the city's Budget and Finance Committee on Tuesday. The city has provided information to the state indicating it has no choice but to collect refunds from the Wauwatosa School District, Milwaukee County, Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District and Milwaukee Area Technical College for their portions of the taxes levied on the outpatient health care facility property at 201 N. Mayfair Road. The Supreme Court this summer ruled that a large portion of the property qualifies as tax exempt. The chargebacks don't come as a surprise to the other taxing entities. Wauwatosa Finance Director John Ruggini has been in talks with officials from each group so they can find ways to come up with their portion of the money.» Read Full Article An Alterra Café could soon perk up the corner of 68th and Wells streets. A blighted building sits vacant there, and a developers' proposal to tear it down and replace it with Wauwatosa's second Alterra Café has won the support of both the Plan Commission and Community Development Committee. The coffeehouse's preliminary plans call for a 3,200-square-foot building with an outdoor courtyard. "Alterra will own it and they will be the only tenant in this building," developer Sean Phelan said. The Common Council will take action on the matter Tuesday and, if approved, Phelan will get to work finalizing plans. That lot has been a problem for the city in the past.» Read Full Article Public Works employees have finished training the use of automated external defibrillators and CPR. That means just about every city worker now has skills to deal with a life-threatening medical incident. Snowplow drivers, for instance, are in position to see a number of weather-related incidents - such as people collapsing while shoveling their driveways, Deputy Chief James Case said. An AED can be used to a shock a person's heart back into rhythm and keep him or her alive until paramedics arrive. In the future, the Fire Department hopes to extend those life-saving lessons to the public, Case added. In the meantime, the Fire Department is taking donations and seeking grant money to equip more of its vehicles with AEDs, Fire Chief Rob Ugaste said. "We did a great job of getting AEDs in the police patrol cars, but not in our own vehicles," he said.» Read Full Article Two Wauwatosa teens were arrested for mugging a schoolmate Monday. According to the Wauwatosa police report: A 16-year-old boy was walking home from Wauwatosa East High School about 4 p.m., when he noticed two guys seemed to be following him. As he approached 74th Street and Melrose Avenue, one of the guys tapped him on the arm and asked if they knew each other. As the boy started to walk away, he was grabbed by the arm and an object was pushed against the back of his head. The robber told him to give him all his money, so the boy emptied his wallet. The two muggers ran off, and the boy told a woman who was out in her yard that he had just been robbed.» Read Full Article A 43-year-old Franklin man caused a store's computer systems to crash after reportedly watching porn using the Wi-Fi. According to the police report: The man was at Open Pantry, 7610 W. Rawson St., and the store's computer systems crashed while he was reportedly watching porn, so he was asked to leave the premises prior to 6:30 p.m. Oct. 7. Police warned the man that he is no longer welcome at the business and will be cited for trespassing if he returns. A Wauwatosa man was charged Monday with robbing PNC Bank, 6810 W. State St. According to the police report: Matthew McInnis, 21, handed a note demanding $1,000 to a bank teller. The teller handed over cash, and he walked out the door. As soon as McInnis was outside, the teller locked the entrance doors and told the security guard the bank had just been robbed at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday. Discarded clothing was found by the curb and McInnis was detained on Powell Place and 67th Street with cash and a knife in his pockets.» Read Full Article After months of congestion, Watertown Plank Road is open to two-way traffic. Work will continue along the south side of the road for sidewalks, light poles, and driveways for the next couple of weeks. This may require flagmen or temporary barricades during the day. The off-road pathways will be paved later this week along with some of the driveway approaches. The final coat of pavement should be done by the end of this month. Mayor Jill Didier has named her appointments to the city's Community Development Authority. The body, which will have state-approved authority to negotiate privately about developments involving public lands and public funds, was created to promote economic development - especially mixed-use projects - in Wauwatosa. While the city has a Plan Commission and Community Development Committee, those chosen for the CDA have a higher level of expertise in the area of development issues and could provide a more critical review of proposed projects than participants of the existing bodies, city staff said. All appointees live in Wauwatosa. Two are council members and five come from the business community: Scott Bush holds the title of vice president of operations for Greater Milwaukee Association of Realtors.» Read Full Article Two men who were spreading word about a youth group that promotes self-responsibility got an earful from a Brookfield man when they asked to borrow a lighter to light a cigarette, according to a city of Brookfield police report. Also in the report: A 20-year-old man reported that the two men asked him to borrow the lighter after approaching him about a youth group they were promoting near the intersection of Gebhardt and Barker roads at 7:41 p.m. Oct. 7. When responding officers found the men, they said the 20-year-old had screamed obscenities at them and yelled "white power." They also told the officer they were stumping for a youth group that promotes self-responsibility and the notion that the color of one's skin and where they are from have no impact on success - but maintained that they were not accepting donations.» Read Full Article A Brookfield Academy student who sneaked out of his house on Bermuda Boulevard in the early morning hours Friday to serve a detention without his mother finding out created a false panic when he forgot to close the front door, according to a city of Brookfield police report. Also in the report: The 17-year-old boy's mother called the police just before 6 a.m. Friday, when she discovered that the front door of her home was ajar. She told officers that she remembered locking the door the night before and worried that an intruder had entered her house. Officers found the boy serving detention at Brookfield Academy shortly after he was discovered missing from his bedroom.» Read Full Article Two men robbed the Subway restaurant at 3960 N. Brookfield Road at gunpoint early Monday, according to city of Brookfield police. A man wearing a black hood and a black bandanna came into the store and ordered the lone employee on duty to the back of the store just before 6:30 a.m., according to the police report. "All (the employee) could see was eyes and a gun," Brookfield Police Capt. Jim Adlam said. Once in the back of the store, Adlam said, the man ordered the employee to lie on the floor and then let a second man - also cloaked in a black hood and bandanna - into the store through a back door. The two men took cash and fled.» Read Full Article More than $23,000 in jewelry was reported stolen from a village of Elm Grove home, according to an Elm Grove police report. Also in the report: A homeowner reported on Oct. 6 that a gold and diamond engagement-wedding ring set valued at $18,000 and a heart-shaped emerald pendant valued at $2,300 had been taken from the home. The pieces were last seen on a bar in the home in the end of July or beginning of August. Since that time, people hired to clean the property and adult children of the homeowner's acquaintances have been inside the home. The North Shore Fire Department reports progress in a search for the cause of a gasoline odor first reported Oct. 5 in the basement of apartment building near Wilson Avenue and Capitol Drive. According to a department news release, contactors retained by the village of Shorewood have completed initial field tests of soil taken today from the ground in the public right of way in front of 1602 E. Capitol Drive. Those test results show a petroleum-based product in the soil. Test samples are being sent to a laboratory for further analysis. The village of Shorewood has notified the state of Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources of the test results in accordance with state statutes. The DNR is responsible to determine whether a specific person or business is responsible for the spill. Once that determination has been made, the responsible party must begin mitigation of the spill. A contractor hired by the village has installed a vent in the public right of way at 1602 E. Capitol Drive this afternoon to assist in ventilating the area. North Shore Fire/Rescue crews and contractors will continue to perform air testing in the sanitary sewer system throughout the weekend. Tests performed over the last three days have shown that the ventilation practices being used by North Shore Fire/Rescue, the village and its contractors have been successful in limiting vapors and fumes in the sanitary sewer system. At this time, there is no health danger to the general public.» Read Full Article Brown Deer Police officers responded to a report of a suspicious device that was located in vacant residence in the 9000 block of North Brandybrook Trail at 8:17 this morning. According to a news release, a safe perimeter was established by evacuating a limited number of residential homes and condominium units in the immediate area. The Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office Bomb Squad was contacted and rendered the device safe. It appears at this time to be a hoax device. Area residents were allowed to return to their residences once the device was deemed safe. At this time an investigation is ongoing to determine the origin of the device. There were no injuries that occurred as a result of this incident. Americans United for Separation of Church and State today asked a federal appeals court to rule that Elmbrook School District violated students' constitutional rights by holding some past graduation ceremonies in a church. A three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in September issued a 2-1 decision upholding a lower court ruling stating the district did nothing wrong by holding the Brookfield East and Brookfield Central ceremonies at Elmbrook Church. Now, Americans United, which represents anonymous defendants in the case, wants a full-court review. "Public schools should schedule graduation ceremonies at facilities where all families feel welcome," Americans United Senior Litigation Counsel Alex J. Luchenitser said. "Students should not have to be immersed in an intensely religious environment of a faith different from their own in order to attend their graduation. Graduation is too important to leave some families out." The court now has the option of accepting or denying the request. What is left of a factory and a home badly damaged by fire earlier this year will begin to come down today at Loomis Road and Interstate 894, as the city prepares to again market the properties for redevelopment. Greenfield had bought the properties as part of the redevelopment project dubbed Greenfield Crossing. Planners would like to see a mix of residential and commercial, possibly including a hotel, go into the site, Richard Sokol, Greenfield director of neighborhood services. Fire delayed site demolition efforts, and it will take crews the rest of the week to clean up the properties, but the "for sale" signs should be going up in a couple of weeks, Sokol said. Before the economy tanked, several hotels were interested in the site, which is appealing to prospective developers because it is the first place west of the Mitchell Interchange to offer full freeway access, he said. Greenfield and its firefighters have about two weeks to reach an agreement on a health insurance plan before the city has to consider making 2012 budget adjustments that could affect other departments. Greenfield Mayor Michael Neitzke delivered that message to the Common Council on Tuesday night, noting that service reductions, layoffs in all areas including public safety and reductions in benefits for non-emergency employees might be necessary. The Greenfield Firefighters Association had asked Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Maxine White for a 30-day delay in implementation of a change in health insurance. White denied that request Tuesday afternoon, but issued a temporary restraining order until Oct. 20. That was meant to give the two sides more time to reach a new collective bargaining contract. The city wants concessions from the union to help it balance its 2012 budget that is in a vise because of state limits on how much the city can raise property taxes and a loss of state aid. Because the city is up against a deadline to finish its budget, if negotiations don't yield the needed savings and if the restraining order is extended Neitzke said he will submit an alternative budget that cuts expenses. Weapons are prohibited from city buildings, the Tosa Common Council decided Tuesday. There was very little discussion on the topic before votes were cast, 12-4, in favor of the ban that covers guns, knives and electronic weapons. Local law enforcement officers will be the only people allowed to carry such weapons in municipal buildings. A state law that allows people with a license to carry concealed weapons goes into effect Nov. 1. However, municipalities have the power to prohibit concealed and openly carried weapons within their buildings. Arguing against the measure, Alderwoman Jacqueline Jay said the city's ban impinges on residents' rights under state law to protect themselves. In addition, she worried that people looking to cause problems or harm wouldn't adhere to the ban, leaving law-abiding residents vulnerable. She was joined in voting against a ban for city-owned buildings by Aldermen Tim Hanson, Cheryl Berdan and Jill Organ. No one spoke in support of the ban; however, the issue had been discussed at length at the committee level in prior weeks. The city received more than 60 letters from residents supporting the local ban and only a single letter in opposition.» Read Full Article Two years after Mo's Irish Pub received a controversial approval to raze homes to make space for another parking lot on 108th Place, the pavement is still not in place. The delay irked Common Council President Eric Meaux to the extent that he asked that a request by the restaurant owners to open earlier on weekends be contingent on the parking lot project moving forward. "A year is more than an enough time to build a parking lot," he said. "It's been two years." The council agreed Tuesday night and voted unanimously to allow Mo's to open at 8 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays as long as they have a substantially complete parking lot by the end of the year. Mo's received all its permits and construction is expected to start next week, City Attorney Alan Kesner said.» Read Full Article Parking citations in Whitefish Bay are increasing, following action by the Village Board on Monday. Expired meter tickets are increasing from $10 to $15, while overnight parking citations are increasing from $15 to $20. Handicap parking tickets will be increasing by the greatest increment - from $50 to $150 - and all other parking citations increase from $15 to $25. After surveying other Milwaukee communities, village officials learned Whitefish Bay was among the lowest with its fee schedule. The hikes present an additional opportunity for the village to increase revenue intake. While fines are increasing, the village has not announced plans to increase meter prices. Nicolet boys soccer coach Brian Weisse admits that other North Shore Conference coaches with a hope of gaining a slice of the league title were encouraging and pulling for his side when it visited league leader Whitefish Bay in the finale Tuesday night. If the Knights could pull off the upset, the potential of a four-way tie for the championship could still be in the offing depending upon other results this evening. But the host Blue Dukes were having none of that, as on their senior night, the Blue Dukes got a goal out of Max Loebl after a chaotic set of rebounds in the 54th minute and then got an insurance score in the 76th minute on a lovely play by T.J. Schmid to win the title outright with a 2-0 decision. "Yes, some guys talked to me about it and sometimes that stuff works out, but sometimes it doesn't," said Weisse. "Bay just played a bit better than us tonight." With the win, the Blue Dukes finished the regular season at 6-1 in NSC play and 13-5 overall, while Nicolet finished at 3-4 and 6-10-2, respectively.» Read Full Article After deliberation and a rescinded motion, the Whitefish Bay Village Board on Monday voted, 5-2, to hold trick-or-treating from 4 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 30. Staff at Village Hall had recommended the motion. Trustee Kevin Buckley had successfully led a move to change the festive event to the early evening hours on Monday, Oct. 31, on a 4-3 vote. But concerns were subsequently raised about potential conflicts with after-school activities, and the board reconsidered the motion, opting instead to follow through with the original recommendation. The Shorewood Village Board on Monday voted to hold trick-or-treating within the village from 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 30. The board's action follows a similar pattern from years prior, when the time-honored, festive event took place the Sunday preceding Halloween. Wauwatosa has its first candidate for mayor. John Pokrandt today announced his intention to run for election in April. "My family and I have lived in Wauwatosa for the last 11 years and are proud to call this special place home," he said in a statement. "I have decided to run because I believe that Wauwatosa deserves a passionate and engaged leader. I want to return Wauwatosa to its history of sensible, good governance." Pokrandt has never held elected office, but he said he has been involved in the community through the Quarry Heights Neighborhood Association. His campaign slogan is, "Putting Wauwatosa first." "It means working for business investment and standing up for the city in cases such as Waukesha's water return plans," he said. "Putting Wauwatosa first means being active and engaged in the marketing of this community to businesses and potential residents. It also means being out in the community and being visible, open and available to the residents of this city."» Read Full Article Mayor Jill Didier can hardly recall attending a meeting with public officials from other communities in attendance where she didn't field questions about her pay. They wonder why she would work long hours for an annual salary of $22,500. "It comes up pretty much every meeting that I go to," she said. "People are shocked and awed by that." Didier said she's kept quiet during past discussions about the mayoral salary to give the Common Council time for debate. The topic has come up several times in the past three years, but any change would not take affect until the next mayoral term begins in April 2012. She encouraged the Budget Committee last week to determine what level of respect the mayor - and as a result the city - should have among elected peers as well as business contacts such as developers and business owners looking to work with Wauwatosa.» Read Full Article Eleven jobs will be eliminated if the Common Council approves the proposed 2012 city budget. Of those positions, 10 are already vacated or are expected to be vacated due to retirement by the end of the year. A proposal to cut a parking specialist position would result in a layoff or a job shift for one employee. Split into four categories - city hall, public works, police and fire - employee groups were charged with finding cost reductions or revenue increases, City Administrator James Archambo said. In total, departments came up with $1 million in savings, most of which would be achieved by eliminating positions. "A lot of the gap needs to come from position reductions because we're a service organization and we can't up the levy," he said. Using more technology» Read Full Article A 97-year-old man who wanted to watch a Milwaukee Brewers game called 911 to report someone had stolen his remote control. According to the Greenfield police report: The man called 911 to report someone had stolen his remote control from his residence in the 9300 block of West Howard Avenue prior to 8 p.m. Sept. 26. The remote control was found after police responded, so the man was able to watch the Brewers game. A jury trial on homicide charges filed in the death of Brookfield businessman John C. Aegerter has been pushed back to January so attorneys for Tommy V. Douyette and Lynn M. Hajny can review evidence and arrange for any required expert testimony. Douyette, 42, of Milwaukee and Hajny, 48, of New Berlin are charged with first-degree intentional homicide in the June 22 beating and strangulation death of Aegerter in the garage of his home, 14320 Golf Parkway. Waukesha County Court Circuit Judge Patrick Haughney has set a deadline of Nov. 23 for motions to be filed in the case and scheduled a 12-person jury trial to begin Jan. 30. Haughney also scheduled motion hearings Dec. 15 and Jan. 11. Jonathan Smith, attorney for Douyette, indicated that a severance motion that would allow the pair to be tried separately may be forthcoming.» Read Full Article A 31-year-old man says he was beaten and robbed while he was walking his dog Saturday morning, but doctors who treated him say there were no marks or injuries that showed evidence of a beating. According to the Wauwatosa police report: The man told officers he was walking in the 9500 block of West Sarasota Place at 10:30 a.m. when someone struck him on the lower back with a piece of wood, knocked him to the ground and kicked him several times. He never got a look at the attackers except that he saw a tan hand when someone took the watch from his wrist. The victim said he believes there were two attackers and that one demanded his wallet and threatened his dog's life if he didn't get money. Cash was taken from his pockets, and he was struck in the head with the butt of a pistol several times before he blacked out. When he awoke, the robbers were gone and his dog was in the street.» Read Full Article Anybody who wants to know what the Interstate 94 freeway will look like when all the work is completed can see it in 3-D at the Greenfield Public Library. The library, 5310 W. Layton Ave., will display a large scale model of the I-94 North-South Freeway project for public viewing. Viewers can see how the three tunnels will work, how the 27th Street Interchange will be configured, and the changes that are in store at the Mitchell interchange. The library is open from 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fridays; 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays; and 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays. Gateway Plastics will move ahead with the next step in a proposal to bring a railroad spur to the north end of the plant at 5650 W. County Line Road. Company chairman Carl Vogel said the railroad has indicated its support of the plan but he wanted to consult with the city's Plan Commission before proceeding. The spur would branch off from the existing Canadian Pacific Railroad lines just south of a creek crossing and across the Interurban trail from the Elmdale Court area of the city, cross three parcels of property and Riebs Lane before reaching its destination, a proposed 420-square-foot pump house. Materials from the train cars would be pumped into the building. Vogel said the rail siding will eliminate resin delivery now done by truck. Currently resin is delivered at the rate of 20 loads per week or 1,000 trucks annually. The rail deliveries will be once or twice a week, he said. The rail spur would cross the northern end of the Kleen Test property. In return for allowing the spur to cross Kleen Test, Vogel said he has agreed to build Kleen Test a parking lot for its semitrailers that are now parking on Riebs Lane for lack of other space.» Read Full Article A Mequon family is safe after police and firefighters evacuated them from their home after several people fell ill with symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning Monday. According to a news release from Mequon Police, police and firefighter personnel were dispatched to a home in the 11100 block of Lake Shore Lane after a person had fallen in the residence. When they arrived, it was determined that there were four individuals in the residence that were experiencing the symptoms of possible carbon monoxide exposure. The homeowner said the heating system had been turned on earlier in the day for the first time this season. Mequon ambulance along with mutual aid assistance from the North Shore Fire Department and Thiensville ambulance transported five adult patients to Milwaukee area to Milwaukee area hospitals for treatment. The incident is under investigation by the Mequon Police and Fire Departments. A businessman said that a woman he paid for a massage stole cash and his wedding ring from his hotel room after he declined her offer for a "happy ending" Sept. 28, according to a city of Brookfield police report. Also in the report: The 33-year-old man reported at 5:45 p.m. Sept. 28 that a masseuse had taken $50 from his wallet and his wedding ring from the room he rented at the Sheraton Hotel, 375 S. Moorland Road. He requested that a detective - or any officer dressed in street clothes - respond to the hotel because he was there for a business conference and did not want to draw attention to himself. He told responding officers that he paid the woman for a massage, and she took his personal effects and left after he declined her offer for a "happy ending."» Read Full Article An 80-year-old Brookfield man was arrested for drunken driving and hit and run after striking a restaurant, two cars and two trees with his car Sept. 29, according to a city of Brookfield police report. Also in the report: The man was leaving Maxim's Restaurant, 18025 W. Capitol Drive, at 1:54 p.m. Sept. 29 when he struck the building, two cars and two trees, causing minor damage. Restaurant staff got the man's name from a credit card receipt and reported the incident to police. The man was arrested for his third offense of drunken driving when officers went to his home and found his damaged car parked in an open garage.» Read Full Article Fire suppression and detection systems are credited with quelling two fires in the city of Brookfield before major damages were incurred last week. According to Fire Department reports: Firefighters found a light haze of smoke coming from the kitchen when they arrived at Best Western Midway, 1005 S. Moorland Road, at 2:21 a.m. Sept. 30. It was later determined that a pile of rags used for cleaning had somehow ignited. Hotel guests were evacuated. Water from the fire-suppression sprinkler system extinguished the blaze and prevented any damage to the building.» Read Full Article More than $21,000 in jewelry was taken from a home in the 3600 block of Muirwood Drive on Sept. 28, it was reported to city of Brookfield police. According to the police report, the burglary happened between 11:15 a.m. and 2:15 p.m. Sept. 28. The intruder pried open a rear casement window to get into the home after an attempt to pry open a rear patio door failed. The case remains under investigation. A Brookfield man who thought he had negotiated a payment plan for outstanding credit card debt became the victim of fraud, according to a city of Brookfield police report. Also from the report: The 79-year-old man reported that he stopped making payments on a $28,000 credit card balance in December because he could no longer afford to. In a series of phone calls with someone claiming to be a representative of the credit card company, the man agreed to pay $5,800 in 36 monthly payments if the remainder of the balance was forgiven. The unidentified suspect had the man's personal information and details of his credit account.» Read Full Article The 70 percent of Wauwatosa property owners who don't pay their taxes in person at City Hall will need to go to the city's website to print out receipts this year. For the first time, the city won't be mailing property tax payment receipts. The change is meant to save the city time and money, Business Supervisor Derik Summerfield said. The city also will no longer use a courier to take tax payments from City Hall to the bank - that will happen electronically, he said. Even though bank fees will increase because of the electronic submissions, the reduction in paperwork and courier time will result in a $5,000 savings for the Treasurer's Office. Property owners who come to City Hall and pay at the counter will continue to receive a paper receipt. Residents who mail in the payments could submit a self-addressed stamped envelope or come to the Treasurer's Office at any time to get a print out, Summerfield said.» Read Full Article More than 200 students and their loved ones walked, bicycled, scooted or skateboarded to McKinley Elementary School today to celebrate International Walk to School Day. The event helped launch the Walking School Bus Program. Four routes are being offered that will allow children to meet up and walk to school together with one or more adult chaperons. A larger group is easier for drivers to see crossing the street than one or two children, so walking with friends makes the trip to school safer. Plus, children who walk or ride a bike to school get more physical exercise. The school PTA organized the Walk to School Day event. The Children's Theatre of Wauwatosa is celebrating its 75th year of bringing the arts to local youth with a six-show season. The curtain will rise on the first show, "Choose Thine Own Adventure," at 2 p.m. Oct. 29 at Wauwatosa West High School. The introduction to Shakespeare will be presented. Season tickets are on sale online at TosaRec.com or at the Wauwatosa Recreation Department, 11400 W. Center St., for $18. Single admission tickets are sold the day of the each show for $4. The other plays that will be performed are "To Laugh is to Live," "The Crying Princess and the Golden Goose," "The Princess Went Thataway," "The Land of the Dragon" and "Let's Keep the Dream Alive" and "The Musicians."

Disclaimer: I don't own Spider-Man, or any other Marvel Comics characters. I also do not own any DC Comics characters. Chapter 14 - Edge of Midnight The world seemed to go in slow motion as he leaped over the edge of the Daily Planet building, and plunged without thought down toward the scared, and screaming form about to meet her demise on the streets below. Spider-Man streamlined his body to maximize the speed of his decent and began to catch up to the falling woman, who Peter still envisioned to be his long lost love Gwen Stacy. Spider-Man reached out with one hand, inching closer to her by the second as the panicked shouts of pedestrians filled his ears. Peter blocked them out, and grabbed the woman, and placed his body below her, and wrapped his arms around her protectively. "No more webbing...too far to make it to stick to anything...Gwen...I'll protect you!" Peter closed his eyes, and waited for the impact. Peter felt himself, and the woman in his arms floating and opened his eyes to see that Superman caught them a mere six feet from the cleared away street. A crowd was beginning to form around the three, and Spider-Man quickly lowered himself, and Lois onto the street. Peter blinked when he could no longer see Gwen standing there, and in her place their stood a dark haired woman staring at him with a thankful smile. "What was that? Why did I see Gwen? Wait! The Goblin!" Peter's head looked up, and started scanning the skies with urgency, but he saw no sign of his old foe. "NO! You won't get away from me, Norman!" Spider-Man was about to start wall-crawling back up the Daily Planet building to begin his search for the Green Goblin, when Superman placed a hand on Peter's shoulder getting him to turn his masked head. "Spider-Man, thank you for saving Lois. I don't know what I would've done if I lost her." Superman said to his teammate, and saw that Spider-Man's body tensed at his words. "There's no time! I have to stop him!" Superman shook his head with an angry frown. "I saw the Goblin disappearing into a portal of some kind above the city. We need the rest of the team here. It's time you told us everything about you, and the enemies that we could be facing, Spider-Man." Superman stared at Spider-Man intently, and waited for his answer. "The Goblin's appearance here is no coincidence. This is the Beyonder's handiwork, and he could bring just about anyone to this universe if he wanted. If I keep quiet about my identity, and world...it will put innocent lives at risk. I can't do that, and I won't. I'd never forgive myself. There's a quicker way to have the League know everything," Peter has a look of concentration under his mask, and cleared his thoughts like his friend Moondragon taught him. Superman watched Spider-Man's form relax, and he was taking deep breaths. "J'onn...are you there?...J'onn...I need to talk to you." Peter waited for a few minutes, before he felt the familiar sensation of psychic contact being established. "Spider-Man...we are heading for Metropolis now. There was a tremor on the psychic plane when you felt anguish about your lost love. I understand what you are feeling." Peter's brow furrowed under his mask. "I appreciate you keeping my life, and the information about my world to yourself..." The Martian Manhunter flinches in his seat on-board the Javelin, and waited for Spider-Man to continue speaking in his mind. "but, now an old enemy of mine appeared in your world, and almost killed someone!...I want you to use your telepathy and send the team everything. All my memories." There was silence over their psychic link for a few moments, and the Martian Manhunter was the first to break the silence. "I understand, Spider-Man. I will let the others know. There is a one problem...Batman still has the psychic shields on his mind, and I cannot reach him telepathically." Peter frowned under his mask, and his jaw tightened. "I'll have to talk to Bats directly then...not something I'm looking forward to." "I will wait until we arrive in Metropolis before I begin linking our minds for the transfer, Spider-Man." "Good plan. My past isn't all sunshine, and rainbows. Thanks, J'onn." Peter begins to come out of his psychic trance, and Superman was helping Lois over to one of the Ambulance's that were onsite to help with the injured on the street. Spider-Man looked down and moved part of his costume up, and exposed his abdomen where his belt with his extra web cartridges are located. "I have to create more web fluid...who among all the League members has a lab? I've got a feeling only Bats has access to one. Or maybe I could go to that facility called S.T.A.R. Labs that Superman told me about?" Peter was brought out of his thoughts from the sound of the Javelin touching down on the roof of the Daily Planet. Spider-Man glanced over at his teammate Superman, who was hugging Lois to his chest, and running a hand through her hair. He separated, and kissed her forehead. Peter could hear Superman whispering apologies to her, and decided to give them some privacy and jumped up a high as he could, and began wall-crawling up fast to reach the roof. Peter could see Hawkgirl flying from the roof, and descended towards his location on the side of the building. Shayera's wings flapped lightly, as she kept pace with Peter crawling upwards. "Need a lift?" Hawkgirl said getting Spider-Man to stop, and look up at her. "Thanks for the offer, Polly... but I've got lots of practice scaling buildings like this." Hawkgirl frowned slightly when she heard a hitch in his voice. "This isn't open for discussion. Your coming with me." Hawkgirl strapped her mace to her belt around her waist, and surprised Peter when she scooped him up under his costumed arms, and began flying skyward. Peter looked down, and didn't struggle in her grip. "It's a long way down...been there, done that." Peter looked up to see Hawkgirl smirking down at him, and then she started diving right towards the roof at high speed. Peter unconsciously clung onto Shayera, and she blushed a little from their close contact. Shayera's wings expanded, and flapped loudly as she lowered Spider-Man onto the roof with Superman just arriving after they touched down. Everyone, but the Batman was present on the Daily Planet's roof, and Spider-Man cleared his throat to get everyone's attention. "J'onn's probably brought you up to speed on the situation. An old enemy from my world has shown up here, and that means the Beyonder is making his move. You all need the knowledge that I have about myself, and my world to help you if there are more of my rogue's gallery on the way. J'onn's agreed to send you all of my memories telepathically...I don't like it...but the Goblin's arrival has forced my hand." Peter said clenching his gloved fist, and narrowed his eye lenses while staring at his teammates in the League. Flash sent Peter an understanding smile. "It's not fair that your the only one exposing his identity, Webs. Hey, J'onn! Can you send Spidey my memories too? You never know when you could run into one of my baddies like Captain Boomerang, right?" Flash received questioning looks from the other members of the League. "You sure about this, Flash?" Green Lantern asked with his arms folded over his chest, and lantern insignia. "Yep! You guys should too! I mean...if you want to." Flash said looking at the faces of all the other members of the League. Green Lantern huffed, and sighed. "Fine. I'll do it." Flash ran over, and tapped his friend on the back in a friendly manner. "Good man! Anyone else?" Hawkgirl turned her head, and rubbed her upper left arm with her other hand. "Not just yet. I'm sorry, but there are some things I'm not ready to share with you." Hawkgirl gave everyone an apologetic look, as her gaze lingered on Spider-Man longer than the others. Wonder Woman asked J'onn a question. "Do we have to include everything? Mother forbade me from revealing anything that could expose Themiscrya, and I don't want to endanger my Amazonian sisters." Spider-Man wasn't in the mood to deal with their debating, and turned his head to look at J'onn. "Do I have to be here for the transfer?" J'onn shook his head. "Good enough for me. I've got a Goblin to hunt!" Spider-Man ran over to the other side of the roof, and took a mighty leap 20 feet over to the next highrise building, and kept going until he was out of sight. Hawkgirl stared at Spider-Man's retreating form with a forelorn look, and the rest of the League were looking guilty with their heads down. J'onn stepped forward with a serious look on his face. "Spider-Man's memories will overwhelm you, and are not for the faint of heart. Be prepared." J'onn's eyes glowed red, as he entered a psychic trance like state to transfer Spider-Man's memories to Flash, Green Lantern, Superman, and Wonder Woman. The memories of Peter Parker started flooding their minds. His early days of being bullied by Flash Thompson, gaining his Spider powers, and trying to cash in on them. The death of his Uncle Ben that changed his life, and helped shape his future. Faces of all of Spider-Man's enemies flashed across their minds-eye. Super powered men with animal themed costumes, Alien symbiotes, mutants, and sights that even John Stewart, and the more experienced members of the League were astounded at. They watched as Spider-Man faced threats that would've caused even Superman to think twice before challenging. They saw Peter with multiple arms facing off against a living Vampire, getting cosmic powers, and facing down a mad despot standing next to death herself with the power to end his life with a single thought. They saw some of Spider-Man's enemies becoming friends, and allies...a woman in a skin tight leather costume with white hair, and a domino mask on, and a man in a lab coat with one arm that transformed into a lizard man. They witnessed him becoming teammates, and friends with a group of super-humans known as the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and others. The League members saw all of this, and they dropped down to their knees holding their heads with blank looks in their eyes. J'onn cut off his telepathy, and his eyes no longer had a red glow. Superman had haunted eyes, and shook his head to help sort his thoughts. "Great Scott! What he's had to endure...it makes what I went through on Apokolips look pale in comparison." Superman was humbled by Peter's sacrifices and how he faced threats bigger than any he's seen before. Wonder Woman stood up slowly with her slender left hand held over her blue eyes. "Spider-Man is a true hero. If only my mother could see these memories...she would not doubt that man's world can produce true men that have honor, and dignity. I know my mother would welcome him to the shores of Themyscira." Diana walked over to the edge of the building, and stared off in the location Spider-Man left to, and gave an Amazonian salute in that direction. Green Lantern couldn't believe all of the different alien races that existed in Spider-Man's universe, and he remembered the conversation he had with the Guardians after the League's meeting about Spider-Man. "The Guardians said that they had a falling out with being's called the Elders of the Universe, and entities called the Living Tribunal, and Eternity decided to split the Universe into two separate ones, because the Elders threatened to use their Infinity Gems to kill the Guardians. Seeing Spider-Man's memories confirms things. Buried alive...scorched by cosmic flames from a herald called Firelord...I'm going to need to use my ring to sort through everything to get more info on these Elders since the Guardians wouldn't tell me anything else." John looked over at Flash, who was shaking on his hands and knees with a vacant stare. "Flash?" John was getting no response from Wally. "Flash!" Wally still was looking down, and Green Lantern could see sweat dripping down Flash's face from under his cowl. John used his ring to create a green energy hand, and gently lifted Flash onto his feet. John rushed over, and lightly shook Wally by his shoulders. "Wally! Can you hear me!" Flash blinked under the lenses of his mask, and groaned painfully. "What happened? Was...all of that...real? He's got all of these guys wanting to destroy him...my rogues aren't even in the same league as his!" Flash started shaking again, and John shook Wally again, and gave him a stern look. "Flash...Spider-Man's life, and yours are two different things. Don't overlap them, and draw any comparisons! Just be happy that you never had a world eating cosmic being trying to make our world a midnight snack." John tried a joke with his dry sense of humor to get Wally to focus, and it worked when he saw him chuckling a little. "Yeah...can you believe it? That one herald called Nova was super hot, though!" Flash grinned widely. "Yeah, Wally's back to normal." Green Lantern smirked, and pushed Wally with his hands on his back walking over to main group. "We need to compare notes with the others, and then track down Spider-Man before Batman chews us out." On the other side of Metropolis City Spider-Man approached the head of S.T.A.R. Labs, Doctor Emil Hamilton to use one of his labs to make more web fluid for his web-shooters. Professor Hamilton agreed to allow Peter to use their lab, as long as he was being supervised by one of his staff at all times. Peter agreed to this, and began to gather the chemicals for his web fluid. Peter was suspicious of Hamilton when he saw him making mental notes of what chemicals he was using, so Peter made up an excuse that he was needed back at the Watchtower and he needed a container for the necessary components, and will return later to the lab to make it. Professor Hamilton offered to recreate the fluid, if Spider-Man provided the formula. Peter politely refused, and he noticed Hamilton frown slightly before smiling and accepting Peter's reasoning. Spider-Man left the lab quickly with the chemicals in a specially made container that had a strap that was over Peter's right shoulder. Spider-Man arrived at a large harbor that separated Metropolis, and a dark city that looked nothing like the bright city that Superman calls home. Peter looks over at a sign indicating the name of the city across the harbor. "Gotham City...that's Batman's city. Goblin likely doesn't know anything about the world that the Beyonder sent him to. Norman would feel right at home over there. Not to mention telling Bat's about my life the old fashioned way." Peter narrowed his eye lenses when he heard sirens, and the sounds of shouting people in panic. "It's like New York if Dracula was the Mayor! Better see what I can do to help out!" Peter leaps over to the harbor ferry, and saw a large man wearing a blue sailor suit and a brown Gatsby hat with one squinting eye. "Who the?! Your that guy Superman was hanging out with!" Peter gave the man a salute. "I need your help to get me over there to Gotham, can you do it?" The large man pulled up a sleeve of his coat, and gave Peter a grin. "Any friend O' Superman's a friend of mine! Name's Bibbo! I'll get you there in no time flat!" Author's note: Chapter 14 Complete! Thanks for reading, and leave a review to let me know what you thought of the chapter. (^-^)

Today, just in time for the start of the year of the lunar new year, we’re finishing off our two-part roundup of books that we’re looking forward to in 2014. Last week’s post (part 1) focused on recently published titles, while today’s (part 2) focuses on forthcoming books that are due out later this year. Note: the books discussed below are divided by category according to whether they are currently available for pre-order, or whether specific details of their release have, as of this posting, yet to be announced. For each category, books are listed alphabetically by author. * * * Available for Pre-order Split by Cathy Linh Che (forthcoming from Alice James Books in April 2014) Split is the latest winner of the Kundiman Prize (the previous years’ awards having gone to Mezzanines by Matthew Olzmann and Pier by Janine Oshiro). Cathy Linh Che is a poet who writes with clarity and shattering vulnerability. I heard her read from portions of Split, which intertwines histories of personal trauma with the inherited trauma of war and displacement, at last year’s AWP, and watched the crowd be visibly moved as she began to cry on the podium. Che said recently, in a feature on the Blood-Jet Radio Hour’s blog: “at a reading, a young woman called me ‘the crying poet.’ She’d witnessed me bawling my eyes out at not one, but two of my own readings. I was a bit embarrassed by the nickname, but now it is a moniker I am proud of! If a book or reading is moving, I tear up. It is how I determine whether or not a work is good. Does it move me? And after I put down the work, does it endure?” I very much respect this: here is a poet who is willing to own the porousness between her work and herself, who is willing to allow herself to be moved by both the process and the “read” experience of her own writing. I can’t wait to read Split. * * * Turn by Wendy Chin-Tanner (forthcoming from Sibling Rivalry Press in March 2014) This is a special one for us here at LR. Wendy has been our staff interviewer for the past three seasons (she’s the one who’s been responsible for bringing you the insights of everyone from Garrett Hongo to Don Mee Choi), and we are so very ecstatic that she has a book forthcoming! We first got to know Wendy through her sonically rich, smart, politically-attuned poetry—we published a piece of hers in Issue 3 and enjoyed it so much that we made it the “closer” for the main body of the issue. Since joining the blog staff, she’s been a huge asset to the team, contributing colorful and extremely thoughtful interviews each month. We were thrilled when we learned that Sibling Rivalry had picked up her book, and are very much looking forward to reading it in a couple of months’ time. * * * Post Subject by Oliver de la Paz (forthcoming from U of Akron Press in August 2014) This is a project that we’re proud to say we had the opportunity to publish portions of before it became a book. The bones of Post Subject emerged from a series of epistolary poems composed in postcard (or postcard-like) form and addressed to “Empire,” three of which we were privileged to publish in Issue 3. De la Paz’s “Dear Empire” poems are short and notational, but haunting. Their speaker excavates the ruins of imperialism, determinedly wading through to catalog the wreckage. Thus far, I’ve only seen the bits and pieces of the series that have appeared in various literary journals, but I look forward to reading the body of the project as a whole when Post Subject comes out in August. * * * Seam by Tarfia Faizullah (forthcoming from SIU Press in March 2014) Speaking of much-talked-about books and projects that I’ve been waiting to read in book form for years (or so it seems), Tarfia Faizullah’s first book, for which she won the Crab Orchard Review first book prize, is finally coming out this spring, and I am just about dying of anticipation. Tarfia spent a year on a Fulbright scholarship in Bangladesh, where she interviewed women who had been raped by Pakistani soldiers during the 1971 Liberation War. The powerful poems that she wrote in and around the experience of hearing and receiving these women’s stories (see some of them, accompanied by beautiful portraits taken by photographer Elizabeth Herman, here) are woven into the heart of Seam. Tarfia’s poetry is truly gorgeous–tender, full of light, and filled with rich, striking imagery (we published one of her poems in Issue 4). She speaks at length about her work in this interview we did with her last year. * * * Mad Honey Symposium by Sally Wen Mao (forthcoming from Alice James Books in May 2014) We love Sally Wen Mao. We love her poems, of course, of which we published two in Issue 5 (1, 2), but we also love her spunk and quirky creative spirit: she is, after all, the woman who came up with Kundiman’s unofficial mascot, the honey badger (an animal that, according to the poet, is also of central importance in her book). Sally’s poetry waltzes headily with the surreal and at times the grotesque, drawing the reader into its imaginative web of fresh, sublimely strange, song-like voicings. Mad Honey Symposium won the 2012 Kinereth Gensler Award, and it will no doubt be a treat. * * * Forthcoming (Specific Details to Come) Picture Dictionary by Kristen Eliason (forthcoming from Flaming Giblet in 2014) We had the honor of getting to publish an excerpt of Kristen’s Picture Dictionary manuscript in Issue 5. In the project, she writes with exceptionally beautiful transparency of loss and mourning, alienation and exile, of silence and lack thereof—all through the conceit of a Japanese Katakana syllabary table from which the speaker is learning as she grapples with her fresh grief while abroad. Kristen writes with a quiet, but firm, touch that belies, and indeed, makes more poignant, the powerful interior narrative that underscores the project. We are so very excited to hear that Picture Dictionary is going to be published as a full-length book, and are waiting for its release with much anticipation. * * * Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows by Eugenia Leigh (forthcoming from Four Way Books in fall 2014) Eugenia Leigh is a poet whose courage I deeply admire. She writes fearlessly and with finely-tuned grace of family history, of experiences of violence and of joy—all with an eye to the divine and to the fingerprints of a higher force of mercy in this world. Her writing is lush and unabashed, suffused with streaks of light that pierce through histories of trauma and grief: blood against snow. I first became acquainted with her work through Kundiman (where I got to hear her read the title poem from her forthcoming collection), and we have since not only had the opportunity to publish some of her writing (both in Issue 3 of the magazine, and on the blog, to which she contributed a guest review), but also to collaborate with her in her position as poetry editor at Kartika Review. Eugenia and her writing are a force to be reckoned with; no doubt Blood, Sparrows, and Sparrows—her first book—will be, as well. * * * The Dead Wrestler Elegies by W. Todd Kaneko (forthcoming from Curbside Splendor in 2014) We’ve been huge fans of W. Todd Kaneko’s work since we first published his “Northwest Poem” in Issue 2. Perhaps one of the most versatile poets we know (at least, in terms of subject matter), Kaneko has written about dinosaurs and the undead, of witches and of his family’s experience of internment during WWII, and now, his series of poems about dead wrestlers is being published by Curbside Splendor. Todd’s work charms by means of its subject matter, but also (always) by means of its stellar craft, its strong music and beautiful imagery. We look forward to more of the same strong work in his first collection. * * * Reliquaria by R. A. Villanueva (forthcoming from U of Nebraska Press in fall 2014) Ever since I first heard R. A. Villanueva read at AWP in 2009, I’ve been looking forward to the day when his first book would come out. In the interim, we’ve gone on to publish a couple of his poems in Issue 4 of LR, and he’s become the editor of the gorgeous literary journal Tongue. And now his first full-length book is finally on its way! Much like the painters from whose work he frequently draws inspiration, Villanueva writes with searing clarity and with beautifully measured strokes. Reliquaria, which won the 2013 Prairie Schooner Prize, is filled with ekphrastic investigations of art and meditations on the body—as symbol, in life, in death, in afterlife. I particularly look forward to reading the final version of his poem about the controversial “Bodies” exhibit, which he briefly wrote about for us in this blog post. Select poems from the book can be found at Ninth Letter, Diagram, Painted Bride Quarterly (1, 2), and the Collagist (1, 2, 3) * * * A very happy and healthy lunar new year to all! What’s on your reading list for the year of the horse? Editor’s note: an earlier version of this post mistakenly credited this set of portraits to Tarfia Faizullah. The wording above has since been changed to reflect that the photographs in question were actually taken by Elizabeth D. Herman. The editors regret this error and thank Ms. Herman for clarifying! Update (2/23/14): The original version of the post also mistakenly named Eugenia Leigh’s book as Blood, Blood and Sparrows (the correct title is Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows). Our apologies to Eugenia; the title has since been corrected.

Emma Goldman: Don’t Vote. Lew Rockwell, LewRockwell.com Blog (2010-10-20). Writes Liz Roberts: Recently a friend of a friend on Facebook professed his love for the “opportunity to express our greatest blessing as a free society.” That blessing, of course, being the ability to vote. He fervently insisted: “It is the time that “we the people” have the greatest power...(Linked Wednesday 2010-10-20.) "What’s it to you?": Canada Admits its Crime, Again. Larry Gambone, Anarchoblogs in English (2010-10-06). by Kevin D. Annett Thousands of children died in the (residential) schools and their families were not informed of the deaths or the burial sites. - Murray Sinclair, chair, ”Truth and Reconciliation Commission” (TRC), to Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, September 29, 2010 The lingering remnant of my home-bred naivety...(Linked Wednesday 2010-10-20.) Putting a new spin on "bank robbery" Phil Dickens, Anarchoblogs in English (2010-10-11). Via Ann Arky, who tips her own hat to Politics in the Zeros, I today came across this truly astounding story from the States;In yet another sign that the foreclosure crisis in the US may be getting out of hand, a Florida woman has gone to the press about having...(Linked Wednesday 2010-10-20.) i guess i am in heavy blog mode! on evolutionary ethics. i. Captain Capitulation, eye of the storm (2010-10-20). i guess i am in heavy blog mode! on evolutionary ethics. i assume that pretty soon these folks are going to start invoking evolution in detail as a set of moral principles. so if i was a 17-year-old trying to think about whether to go to the party, they'd tell...(Linked Wednesday 2010-10-20.) Emergency Arts gives LVZL a chance to expand! LVZL, LVZINELIBRARY (2010-10-19). It's been a hectic few weeks! Zinebriated was a great end to the month of September! The open mic I've been co-hosting with my good friend Dj miss Joy at the Beat Coffeehouse(Human Experience Mondays 7pm) has been blooming this month with talent and support. The Vegas Valley Book Festival...(Linked Thursday 2010-10-21.) New PCWC downloadable pamphlet thanks to Rise Like Lions! Phoenix Insurgent, Anarchoblogs in English (2010-10-20). Thanks to the new (at least to us) publishing operation Rise Like Lions for putting together a PDF pamphlet version of my recent essay "Union of Arsonists" faster than I could get one done myself. And it looks damn good, too! Cheers to them for a job well done.I also...(Linked Thursday 2010-10-21.) Proudhon's "New Theory" (1 of 3) Shawn P. Wilbur, Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth (2010-10-18). Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, The Theory of Property, Chapter VI: "The New Theory" (1865)New theory: that the motives, and thus the legitimacy of property, must be sought, not in its principle or origin, but in its aims. Presentation of these motives. Philosophy has had, for three centuries, many institutions and many beliefs:...(Linked Thursday 2010-10-21.) Proudhon's "New Theory" (2 of 3) Shawn P. Wilbur, Out of the Libertarian Labyrinth (2010-10-19). Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, The Theory of Property, Chapter VI: "The New Theory" (1865)[continued from section 1]§ 1. —''Necessity, after having organized the State, of creating a counter-weight to the State in the liberty of each citizen. Federalist and republican character of property. Observations on the electoral census and confiscation.'' Considered in...(Linked Thursday 2010-10-21.) December 17th- International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. SWOP-LV's MySpace Blog (2007-11-29). LAS VEGAS, NV This year, SWOP-LV will hold a memorial march down Fremont Street, with a candlelight vigil at the end. We will meet at the Fremont Street Experience Parking Plaza on the top floor. (Se...(Linked Thursday 2010-10-21.) Virginia school AP History class bans curiousity, independent study, Internet. Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom (2010-10-22). Government School AP History Vs. Independent Thought and Research (Linked Friday 2010-10-22.) Save & Restore. Chris Clark, Release Candidate One (2010-10-20). I let out the biggest “finally!” today during the Lion preview event, when Steve Jobs said one of the things Apple has learned from iOS apps that they are intent on bringing to Mac OS X apps is stateful pause and resume. In the Mac environment, with a more specific...(Linked Friday 2010-10-22.) here's a brief illustration of what i mean on environment: Captain Capitulation, eye of the storm (2010-10-22). here's a brief illustration of what i mean on environment: biosphere 2 (earth was supposed to be biosphere 1). the idea was to create a completely enclosed ecosystem, a sort of model for the way they thought about the earth, or perhaps the way they thought about various local ecosystems: as essentially...(Linked Friday 2010-10-22.)

Super sad supercut Jun 06 2016 A collection of super sad moments from movies like The Iron Giant, E.T., Wrath of Khan, Up, and Old Yeller. This'll have you sobbing in 3 minutes or your money back. A collection of super sad moments from movies like The Iron Giant, E.T., Wrath of Khan, Up, and Old Yeller. This'll have you sobbing in 3 minutes or your money back. From The Intercept and director A.J. Schnack, a simple and powerful short film about more than a dozen mass shootings that have occurred in the US since 2011. A scene of tragedy unfolds, accompanied by fear, chaos and disbelief. As Speaking is Difficult rewinds into the past, retracing our memories, it tells a story about a cumulative history that is both unbearable and inevitable. Fuck, that was difficult to watch. When Sandy Hook came up, I just lost it. We should be deeply deeply ashamed that that happened and we did nothing about it. In this story by Rafael Zoehler, a father who dies at 27 wrote his son a series of letters to be opened at several of life's milestones, including WHEN YOU HAVE YOUR FIRST KISS, WHEN YOU BECOME A FATHER, and WHEN YOUR MOTHER IS GONE. This letter was entitled "WHEN I'M GONE": If you're reading this, I'm dead. I'm sorry. I knew I was going to die. I didn't want to tell you what was going to happen, I didn't want to see you crying. Well, it looks like I've made it. I think that a man who's about to die has the right to act a little bit selfish. Well, as you can see, I still have a lot to teach you. After all, you don't know crap about anything. So I wrote these letters for you. You must not open them before the right moment, OK? This is our deal. I love you. Take care of your mom. You're the man of the house now. PS: I didn't write letters to your mom. She's got my car. Oh man, this episode of This American Life on desegregation and the Normandy School District (aka the Missouri district that Michael Brown attended) just totally wrecked me. Tears of sadness and rage. Right now, all sorts of people are trying to rethink and reinvent education, to get poor minority kids performing as well as white kids. But there's one thing nobody tries anymore, despite lots of evidence that it works: desegregation. Nikole Hannah-Jones looks at a district that, not long ago, accidentally launched a desegregation program. America likes to pride itself on its focus on the importance of education and everyone getting a crack at living the American Dream, but as this story makes clear, neither of those things are actually true. See also part two of the series and Hannah-Jones' series on segregation at ProPublica. I don't quite know what I'm doing to myself these days. Last night was an episode of The Americans in which a marriage was ending, another family was trying to keep itself intact, and a young boy struggles to move on after his entire family dies. This morning, I watched an episode of Mad Men in which a mother tries to reconcile her differences with her daughter in the face of impending separation. And then, the absolute cake topper, a story by Matthew Teague that absolutely wrecked me. It's about his cancer-stricken wife and the friend who comes and rescues an entire family, which is perhaps the truest and most direct thing I've ever read about cancer and death and love and friendship. Since we had met, when she was still a teenager, I had loved her with my whole self. Only now can I look back on the fullness of our affection; at the time I could see nothing but one wound at a time, a hole the size of a dime, into which I needed to pack a fistful of material. Love wasn't something I felt anymore. It was just something I did. When I finished, I would lie next to her and use sterile cotton balls to soak up her tears. When she finally slept, I would slip out of bed and go into our closet, the most isolated room in the house. Inside, I would wrap a blanket around my head, stuff it into my mouth, lie down and bury my head in a pile of dirty clothes, and scream. There are very specific parts of all those stories that I identify with. I struggle with friendship. And with family. I worry about my children, about my relationships with them. I worry about being a good parent, about being a good parenting partner with their mom. How much of me do I really want to impart to them? I want them to be better than me, but I can't tell them or show them how to do that because I'm me. I took my best shot at being better and me is all I came up with. What if I'm just giving them the bad parts, without even realizing it? God, this is way too much for a Monday. Kellan Roberts died suddenly at 22. He had decided to be an organ donor and his heart went to a high school student from Minnesota, Connor Rabinowitz. After receiving the heart, Connor visited Kellan's family in Seattle and met Kellan's sister Erin. After a few years, Erin and Connor, well, just watch...this is a wonderful story well told. Cord Jefferson with a beautiful piece about his mother, illness, and the importance and difficulty of being kind. I'd just returned home from a meeting when she called again. It had been only a few hours since we'd last talked and, as she stammered when I picked up, my heart sank with the anticipation of more bad news. "I didn't tell you everything I wanted to earlier," she said after gathering her tongue. "I wanted to say that I'm scared. I know you can't do anything to change this, but it makes me feel better to let you know that I'm afraid." Mat Kirkby's short film, The Phone Call, won the Best Narrative Short prize at the Tribeca Film Festival and is rumored to be in the running for an Oscar nomination. It features a young woman who works in helpline call office (Oscar nominee Sally Hawkins) taking a call from a distraught man (Oscar winner Jim Broadbent). (via slate) Update: The video has been taken down from Vimeo, so I've removed the embed. I think it was something about film festival eligibility? Update: The Phone Call did end up being nominated for an Oscar; here's Kirkby and friends reacting to the nomination. Thirteen Ways of Looking at Greg Maddux is not really a story about Greg Maddux. Or sports. It's about Jeremy Collins' friend Jason Kenney, demons, self-control, determination, friendship, competitiveness, and loss. Jason kept a picture of Maddux above his desk in our dorm room at Young Harris College in the north Georgia mountains. A beautiful athlete, the best on campus, Jason played only intramurals and spent serious time at his desk. A physics workhorse and calculus whiz, he kept Maddux's image at eye-level. Shuffling and pardoning down the aisle to our seats, Jason stopped and squeezed my shoulder. "Look," he said. Maddux strode toward home, hurling the ball through the night. It's 2014. I'm thirty-seven. My wife and daughter are both asleep. I'm a thousand miles from the stadium-turned-parking-lot. On YouTube, Kenny Lofton of the American League Champion Cleveland Indians looks at the first pitch for a ball. Inside, low. I don't remember the call. I remember all of us standing, holding our breath. Then I remember light. Thousands of lights. Waves of tiny diamonds. The whole stadium flashing and Jason, who would die five months later on the side of a south Georgia highway, leaning into my ear and whispering, "Maddux." Great, great story. As Tom Junod remarked on Twitter, "Every once in a while, a writer throws everything he's got into a story. This is one of those stories." In racing video games, a ghost is a car representing your best score that races with you around the track. This story of a son discovering and racing against his deceased father's ghost car in an Xbox racing game will hit you right in the feels. Peter Bach, a cancer doctor, writes about losing his wife to cancer. The streetlights in Buenos Aires are considerably dimmer than they are in New York, one of the many things I learned during my family's six-month stay in Argentina. The front windshield of the rental car, aged and covered in the city's grime, further obscured what little light came through. When we stopped at the first red light after leaving the hospital, I broke two of my most important marital promises. I started acting like my wife's doctor, and I lied to her. I had just taken the PET scan, the diagnostic X-ray test, out of its manila envelope. Raising the films up even to the low light overhead was enough for me to see what was happening inside her body. But when we drove on, I said, "I can't tell; I can't get my orientation. We have to wait to hear from your oncologist back home." I'm a lung doctor, not an expert in these films, I feigned. But I had seen in an instant that the cancer had spread. The last sentence here really got to me: Our life together was gone, and carrying on without her was exactly that, without her. I was reminded of our friend Liz's insight after she lost her husband to melanoma. She told me she had plenty of people to do things with, but nobody to do nothing with. A reader saw my post about UPS drivers seldom taking left turns and sent in this story from 2006. In it, Michael Gartner shares the secret to long life relayed to him by his father: no left turns. Among other things: My mother was a devout Catholic, and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage. (Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.) He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's Church. She would walk down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my mother at the end of the service and walking her home. If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head back to the church. He called the priests "Father Fast" and "Father Slow." When Owen Suskind was three, a switch flipped within him and he went from a typical chatty rambunctious three-year-old to autistic. I had just started a job as The Wall Street Journal's national affairs reporter. My wife, Cornelia, a former journalist, was home with him -- a new story every day, a new horror. He could barely use a sippy cup, though he'd long ago graduated to a big-boy cup. He wove about like someone walking with his eyes shut. "It doesn't make sense," I'd say at night. "You don't grow backward." Had he been injured somehow when he was out of our sight, banged his head, swallowed something poisonous? It was like searching for clues to a kidnapping. After visits to several doctors, we first heard the word "autism." Later, it would be fine-tuned to "regressive autism," now affecting roughly a third of children with the disorder. Unlike the kids born with it, this group seems typical until somewhere between 18 and 36 months -- then they vanish. Some never get their speech back. Families stop watching those early videos, their child waving to the camera. Too painful. That child's gone. But a tenuous connection remained between Owen and his pre-autistic self: Disney movies. And through them, Owen slowly learns how to communicate with the outside world again. So we join him upstairs, all of us, on a cold and rainy Saturday afternoon in November 1994. Owen is already on the bed, oblivious to our arrival, murmuring gibberish.... "Juicervose, juicervose." It is something we've been hearing for the past few weeks. Cornelia thinks maybe he wants more juice; but no, he refuses the sippy cup. "The Little Mermaid" is playing as we settle in, propping up pillows. We've all seen it at least a dozen times, but it's at one of the best parts: where Ursula the sea witch, an acerbic diva, sings her song of villainy, "Poor Unfortunate Souls," to the selfish mermaid, Ariel, setting up the part in which Ursula will turn Ariel into a human, allowing her to seek out the handsome prince, in exchange for her voice. When the song is over, Owen lifts the remote. Hits rewind. "Come on, Owen, just let it play!" Walt moans. But Owen goes back just 20 seconds or so, to the song's next-to-last stanza, with Ursula shouting: Go ahead -- make your choice! I'm a very busy woman, and I haven't got all day. It won't cost much, just your voice! He does it again. Stop. Rewind. Play. And one more time. On the fourth pass, Cornelia whispers, "It's not 'juice.' " I barely hear her. "What?" "It's not 'juice.' It's 'just' ... 'just your voice'!" I grab Owen by the shoulders. "Just your voice! Is that what you're saying?!" He looks right at me, our first real eye contact in a year. "Juicervose! Juicervose! Juicervose!" Walt starts to shout, "Owen's talking again!" A mermaid lost her voice in a moment of transformation. So did this silent boy. "Juicervose! Juicervose! Juicervose!" Owen keeps saying it, watching us shout and cheer. And then we're up, all of us, bouncing on the bed. Owen, too, singing it over and over -- "Juicervose!" -- as Cornelia, tears beginning to fall, whispers softly, "Thank God, he's in there." This is the best thing I've read in a month, so so heartbreaking and amazing. Just pre-ordered the book...can't wait to read the full version. So, there's the famous 1984 Super Bowl commercial for the Macintosh. There was the Think Different campaign. And the Mac vs. PC ads. But I think Apple's newest effort, Misunderstood, is perhaps their best ad ever: Or maybe I'm the biggest sap in the world...either way, I'm totally crying at work. ps. But of course, that can't be the best Apple advertisement ever because that title will always and forever be taken by a drunk Jeff Goldblum extolling the virtues of the iMac's internet capabilities: Great, now I'm crying from laughing at work. Just warning you, this piece by Ariel Levy will wreck you, put you back together, and wreck you again. Damn powerful beautiful writing. My doctor told me that it was fine to fly up until the third trimester, so when I was five months pregnant I decided to take one last big trip. It would be at least a year, maybe two, before I'd be able to leave home for weeks on end and feel the elation of a new place revealing itself. (It's like having a new lover-even the parts you aren't crazy about have the crackling fascination of the unfamiliar.) Just before Thanksgiving, I went to Mongolia. People were alarmed when I told them where I was going, but I was pleased with myself. I liked the idea of being the kind of woman who'd go to the Gobi Desert pregnant, just as, at twenty-two, I'd liked the idea of being the kind of girl who'd go to India by herself. And I liked the idea of telling my kid, "When you were inside me, we went to see the edge of the earth." I wasn't truly scared of anything but the Mongolian winter. The tourist season winds down in October, and by late November, when I got on the plane, the nights drop to twenty degrees below zero. But I was prepared: I'd bought snow pants big enough to fit around my convex gut and long underwear two sizes larger than I usually wear. File this one under crying at work: a man finds a newborn on a subway platform and he and his partner adopt him and then blub blub blub, I'm sorry I have to go there's something in both my eyes and my nose. Three months later, Danny appeared in family court to give an account of finding the baby. Suddenly, the judge asked, "Would you be interested in adopting this baby?" The question stunned everyone in the courtroom, everyone except for Danny, who answered, simply, "Yes." "But I know it's not that easy," he said. "Well, it can be," assured the judge before barking off orders to commence with making him and, by extension, me, parents-to-be. This video shows a fourth grader trying a bigger ski jump for the first time. If you're a parent, I defy you to not tear up at least once while viewing. Oh, and the audio is essential. #cryingatwork (via devour) This photo was taken recently by Sergey Ponomarev in Miyagi Prefecture in northeastern Japan: The line on the wall is the high water mark from the March 11 tsunami and the time on the clock is when the water crested (Wikipedia puts the max readings right around 15:20 local time). Each element alone is documentation of a thing...together they tell a story. I have a soft spot for storytelling clocks in photos. Joseph Koudelka's 1968 photo of the empty streets of Prague before the Soviet crackdown of The Prague Spring is one of my favorite photos. And obviously I love the photo taken by my wife of me holding my son Ollie when he was exactly 20 mintues old. It was the first time I'd held him and oh crap I'm crying at work again... (via in focus) In 1981, Ray Towler was convicted of rape, kidnapping, and felonious assault of two young children and sentenced to life in prison. Twenty-nine years later, in 2010, DNA evidence proves he didn't commit the crime and Towler is released from prison. So many choices. Which car insurance. Which cereal. Which deodorant, toothpaste, toothbrush, soap, shampoo. Rows and rows of products. Varieties, sizes, colors. Which is cheaper? Which is better? What's the best buy? Which gum to chew? When he went into prison there were, like, two kinds of chewing gum. Now there are a zillion. One of the small gifts he gives himself is trying all the gums. "I can spoil myself a little so long as I stay within my means," he says. Papaya juice! Kiwi and strawberry nectar! Green tea! Arnold Palmer -- he was a golfer when Towler went down. Now he is a drink, sweet and so incredibly thirst quenching. He loves work. He got out May 5 and started working June 21. Hell, I've been vacationing for thirty years. He wears a smock and pushes a mail cart. He stops at all the cubicles, greets everyone with his friendly smile. Ray even loves commuting to work, especially now, in his new car, a black Ford Focus. He's like a sixteen-year-old who can finally drive himself to school. It costs almost the same to park as it does to take the train. File this one under "crying at work". Kamikaze pilot Masanobu Kuno wrote a farewell letter to his young son and daughter the day before he flew to his death in the Battle of Okinawa. From the translation: Your father will become a god and watch you two closely. Both of you, study hard and help out your mother with work. I can't be your horse to ride, but you two be good friends. I should have a "crying at work" tag for posts like this.

Top 10 Reasons Why We’re Dumped Ever wondered what the top 10 reasons for getting dumped are? Well, now we know. Survey says… -Piper Weiss, Yahoo! Shine “I’m not ready for a relationship.” If those six words have ever snapped open your rib cage and scooped out your heart like a gut hook, then you might be a woman. The results are based on more than 500 male and female users of Wot Went Wrong, a reverse dating site that allows exes to get and give answers about unsuccessful relationships. In a period of four months, 15 percent of female users got the “not ready” response– the kind of reason that makes you want to ask more questions. But you might not want to dig too deep. Consider the second and third most popular reasons men dumped women on the site: #2 Low sex drive. #3 Bad hygiene. Is “I’m not ready” really just a nice way of saying “you have bad breath?” Not necessarily, says psychologist and member of the male sex, Lee Shapiro, PsyD. “They may be being honest about not being ready for the responsibility of commitment.” Tracy McMillan agrees, sort of. “I think they’re telling the truth,” says the author of the new book, Why You’re Not Married Yet, “but I would add to the end of that sentence ‘with you.’ They’re not ready for a relationship with you. It’s a nice way of saying this isn’t the long-term situation I want, but that’s not because you’re not good enough.” “It’s a social grace,” says McMillan. To be fair, women have their own social graces, if you want to call them that. According to the survey, the most popular excuse women gave when dumping guys on the site was, “There’s someone else.” It’s not exactly gracious, especially if it’s true. But it does get the message across without putting a guy down. “I would think the reason a woman would say that is to finalize the breakup,” suggests McMillan. “It’s a clear-cut way of making him stop the chase in a somewhat diplomatic way.” What’s less diplomatic: Too short (the #7 most popular reason women gave men on the site). Despite our tweaks of language, we’re not so different. Both men and women can be vapid and cruel when it comes to the opposite sex. And if we’re trying to be nice, we both exploit our gender stereotypes and blame “human nature.” Guys’ “not ready” excuse is propped on the assumption that “men can’t commit.” Somehow, it’s supposed to make the dumpee take it less personally. Meanwhile, women’s “someone else” line relies on the stereotype that women crave relationships. If a guy used that line he’d be a cheat; if a woman used “not ready” she’d seem like she were lying, even if she weren’t. Bottom line: there’s no good way to reject someone. There are some really bad ways, though, like “too hairy” and “lack of punctuality”–both popular excuses used on the site. “In the absence of some bigger connection, we come up with little reasons not to like a person,” explains McMillan, generously (seriously, we can be jerks). “If it was the right person you wouldn’t care how they ate or if their fingernails are weird.” Incidentally, weird fingernails didn’t rank on this survey. But someone’s probably heard that line before. Check out the top 10 reasons men were dumped vs. the top 10 reasons women were dumped on the next page:

September 28, 2009 This coming Wednesday, September 30th will be the first occurrence of International Blasphemy Day. This is an event that has been organised to show the importance and altogether relevance of free speech in society. The name obviously invokes the feeling that this is an event designed to ridicule religion and the choice of date will do nothing to relieve these feelings. September 30th was chosen because it is the anniversary of the publication of a cartoon in Denmark depicting the prophet Mohammed that outraged the Muslim world. Muslim protests in Britain But was this date chosen merely to anger the religious world and appear to give licence to the abuse of religions and the faithful? I think not. It was in fact that nearly any anniversary of an event that was shown to stifle free speech would involve religion. It seems that the religious are at the same time the most easily offended and the first to try to dampen free speech. What makes up the basic concept of free speech is to have the ability to say anything that isn’t a threat to violence without the fear of arrest or reprisals. There obviously has to be some restrictions on this in any society but as a whole society censors what is said itself. The people will shout down what is unacceptable and nowadays this will result in a trial by media. This system isn’t fail proof but that is one of the key factors of why it works and also one of the proofs. The idea of having a day to celebrate free speech is a good one but it is open to the possibility of been soiled by personal arguments. The famed evolutionary biologist and atheist PZ Myers has not helped matters by stating on his blog Pharyngula that “the purpose of the day is to jeer at religion”. But at the same time I can also make the prediction that any action taken on the 30th of September will be seen by each of the three major Abrahamic religions as a personal attack on them. Some of these actions will be attacks on one or more religion and a lot of these will in fact be justified. Any people who do attack the religions for their violation of the freedom of speech will however have to be very careful. It could be all too easy for them to begin blocking the very freedom of speech that we must allow for everyone, including but not especially the religious. On the whole I think that the choice of name was a good one for one simple reason. It will bring the event to the fore by stirring very personal feelings. It showed mastery in marketing by causing inevitable debates even before the event. I hold as proof of this the very article that you are reading. If it wasn’t for International Blasphemy Day then this article would never have been written. September 22, 2009 The Virgin Mary with the angel Gabriel Jesus of Nazareth was purported to be the son of God. This obviously meant that his mother Mary had to be a virgin at the time of his birth so that he wasn’t born with original sin. The birth of the son of god also had to be virgin birth due to the fact that it would tarnish the point if a human seed was involved. So basically god decided to impregnate Mary and got the angel Gabriel to let her know. Responsible parenting from the off I see. There are of course some obvious explanations for this so called ‘virgin’ birth but I don’t think that we need to explain them here. What is very interesting and also fairly predictable is the fact that this idea of Immaculate Conception is not unique to Christianity. In Hinduism many of the gods are born in this way and Gautama Buddha’s mother dreamt on the night of his conception that a white elephant with six tusks entered into her right side. After ten lunar months he was born through a slit in his mother’s right side. One can only presume that this was where the elephant had entered. The ancient fathers and modern theologians like the idea of Immaculate Conception because then they can spout rhetoric of purity while at the same time generating fear in the people. How can the flock ever hope to be pure when they are born tainted by the sin of their parents? This also creates a feeling of self loathing at the natural carnal urges of the faithful. In Victorian England sex was one of the biggest taboos. In most forms of art, especially literature the subject was treated as if it didn’t exist. A fact that was on the whole detrimental to the art. This may not just be coincidental with the fact that it was also a deeply religious time. Although it was during this time that Darwin published his Origin of Species and many public figures expressed doubt in the church most people were regular church attendees, going at least once every Sunday. The bible was staple reading throughout all of the classes and as a whole the church was a powerful, fear inducing institution. It would seem from the evidence that the church throughout its history has had a fearful relationship with the female sex. Women have regularly been seen as a corrupting factor and have been suppressed because of this. You only have to look at the abuses of women’s rights that happen regularly in the Islamic Republic of Iran or in Saudi Arabia where, in adherence to the official interpretation of Islamic law women are not permitted to drive. It could be said that the religious have never trusted women since Eve’s betrayal in the Garden of Eden. I think though the main point of having a figure that is divine within a religion born via a virgin birth is simply down to the claim for purity. It lays a much better case for a divine connection when someone, or someone’s followers can claim that they where born without the intervention of a male hand. It leaves the position of father open. A position that the divine would be the most obvious candidate to fill. If someone today claimed that they or anybody else was born via Immaculate Conception then they would be covered in scorn and branded either delusional or a liar. At the very best it would be considered spin for whatever movement that they were leading. I haven’t said a religious movement but I have no doubt that anyone claiming virgin birth would be connected to some form of religious group. If such doubt and ridicule is the treatment towards such a claim made now, why then do supposedly intelligent people still believe that this happened two thousand years ago? It would seem that these people may well be deluded or if not then suffering from a massive case of hypocrisy of beliefs. I wish to make one small final point in the case against God regarding Immaculate Conception and then I will leave the subject for now. Surely if you impregnate a woman and then only tell her after the event this would be considered rape? Just a thought that’s all.

Newspaper Page Text WEDNESDAY, AUG. 28, 1895. Dobson has Jots of cotton open. Watch out for mad dogs and shoot 'em on the spot. Microscopist say the mosquito has Gov. Sheppard is off on a business trip to Boston. . Miss Sadie Duvis is visiting friends among tile mountains in this State. Mr. Alvin Hart left on Monday of this week for New York, Special job lot beautiful hair-pins, hat pins, and side combs at Fox's. "Semphronicus" was in town on The Augusta Evening Xews has sus Mr. J. A. Ti turner man of north Bun combe is the proud father of a lovely You don't have to pay for the store when you deal with Ramsey & Bland. The boll worm is playing havoc in the cotton Ileitis of the Mississippi Ramsey & Uland say they are will ing to part with every chair in the M. P. Wells. Esq., is, we regret to learn, quite sick with fever at the res idenee of Mr. D. R. Durisoe. Don't wait till it rains before you think of those top buggy s at Ramsey Dr. I*. H. Adams of Phoenix has gone to the mountains of this State for his Mr. J. M. Gaines has the contract for building a bridge over Cutfeetown It is a pleasure for Ramsey & Bland to show you their goods, because they know you will get a bargain. The boll worm is doing considera ble damage to the cotton in port;ons of our county. Aud they've quit settin' out sweet potatoes at last-the people is done quit settin' 'em out. Jule Carwile made the Edgelield Chronicle of last week whiz and hum and zoon like a brand new top. Don't exert yourself if the day is very bot but simply step into Ramsey & .Bland's cool store and order a nice bed room suit. John Ware has secured two elegant tonsorial artists in his barber shop who are as anxious to please as are patrons to be pleased. Hold on to a good thing when you lind it. This is why so many of Ram sey and Bland's customers are old Prof. Slaughter has removed from Parksville to McCormick, and taken charge of the high school at that point, the future seat of a new county. Mr. W. T. Hoffman will leave our. town in a few days for Savannah Ga,> where he proposes to enter business*) "We wish him much success. For the best Fire Insurance in old, strong and reliable companies, on town or conntry property, call on or write D. R. Dunisot, Agt. We are in recept of sundry resolu tions of the eounty board of commis sioners for Edgelield county, but they came too late for publication this You know the parable of the foolish virgins-well then don't delay but, give your order to Ramsey and Bland lor beautiful buggys. Mr. R.E. Fox has returned from an extended trip north in the interest of his profession and comes back to Edgelield more skilled in his art than Mr. Bettis Cantelou brought in from his plantation, a mile from town, cu Monday morning ofdthis week, a num ber of grown and nearly grown cotton bolls completely riddled perforated and "defunetuated" by boll worms. \ summery proceeding-going away for vacation with a nice outiit of bug gy and harness from Ramsey and Bland s store. Mr. and Mrs. King, daughter and son-in-law of Dr. E. R..Gwaltney, left for Rome Ga., on Monday of this week. Miss Mamie Gwaltney accompanied Rev. Mr. Boyd, an evangelist preaches every day at 3 p. m., and at 8?30 at night in bur public square, ilr. Boyd is accompanied by his wife J. H. Reel has 17 pigs for sale, Berk shire and Essex. His post office is Cleora in the old Duntonsville sec For the best Fire Insurance in old, strong and reliable Companies, on town or country property, call on or write D. R. DCBISOE, Agt. Mrs. Shaffer, by her untiring ellorts has already raised the money to pur chase a beautiful cornet for the Bap tist choir. Mr. George Mims mani pulates the keys with skill, adding much to the church music. Every merchant in Edgelield is looking forward to a good trade this fall and with good reason, for the pro vision crops being good, the cotton will be nearer a surplus crop t han ever Cotton is trembling in the balance at seven and seven-eights. Will it go up to ten cents or down to live? Op timists say it will go to ten, men of tine judgment limit it to eight, while the pessimist is sure it will soon tum ble to five. \ Since writing the above, good mid. diing cotton has reached the Sc mark in Augusta. The total advance last week was 40 points, nearly Inlf acent We must not bank on 9cts cotton this fall, but we may hope and yearn for ? have been instructed by Mr. R. L. Fox to say to our patrons, that in or der to make room for fall stock which will bf complete in every detail, we will sell anything in our line, except Waterbury Watches, at a discount of 25 per cent. r GEO. F. MIMS. For the best Fire Insurance in uld, strong and reliable Companies, ou Town or country property, call on or write D. R. DuBlsox, Agt. Already Edgefield'* financial arid oor.. uiercial veins are beginning to fill up wit li new blood and to pulsate willi quicker beat because of the bricb-mak ilig anti t ile saw i i; g lumber and I he so fort hs and the mi-forllis for tbe big Farmers in Fairfield county report that cotton ?ti various sections is be ing ruined with the mst caused by poke berry bushes growing in the fields, hence its name, it is bery apt to poke itself in places where it's not D. A. Tompkins vice president ol' The Edgefield Manufacturing Com pany is in Europe, at this writing, for the purpose of buying machinery for the Edgefield Cotton Factory. The ladies of the Presbyterian church propose giving an entertainment in the Opera House on Tuesdi y evening, September the Hrd,to aid them in buy ing a Heater for their church. The en tertainment will consist of a magic lantern exhibition, managed by Prof? A. C. Moore, of Birmingham, Ala. Admission 25cts. Children locts. Re Memory is a little reacherous now and then, and causes one to forget some things worth remembering, un less one has an experience like that which rame to Mr. D.E. East, Mo?a t's Creek, Va., who says "1 had been suf fering for years with a torpid liver and found no relief uni ill I took Simmons Liver Regulator when 1 was entirely relieved ol' my troubles. 1 never in tend being without Simmons Liver Ex-Constable Henry Johnston of our county Hus found distilling much more lucrative than that of huntiug the blind tiger in his lair or of capturing contraband. After leav ing the constabulary force be estab lished a distillery ac Hamburgand is now selling his corn liquor to the State. The Dispensary bought 70U gallons from him. The barbecue and picuic at Lan ham* on last Thursday was a dismal failure on acco'unt of the steady down pour of rain nearly all day. The Hus sars had made abundant preparation for a rare feast and fete and the heavy expense incident thereto has left them in the soup to the amount of eighty five dollars. The many friends of this gallant troup will remember this and come lo their aid when occasion of Wanted, to exchange a clock for a small beef-can out run a skeered dog that is the clock can. Xo boot allowed or to be thought ol'on either side. Ap ply at the ADVERTISER Office, Bud Russell will show you the clock and you can show him the sleer, but don't tote him up stairs in your anus, it might skecr the clock, but take bim over to the ''spense" and tell Johnnie Davis to bold him till some of us ar The presentment of the Edgefield grand jury seems to have created quite a sensation in the county. It appeas to have rattled some members of the county board. Gentlemen, pre serve your equanimity. You havent done anything presentable, so far as we know-so far as the public knows - but if you get rattled you may do something foolish. ;During the war we have known of a regiment stam peded by hearing a loose horse gallop ins: down the road. Don't let that loose horse stampede you. Mr. J. H. Reel living near old Dun tonsville, this county,made this year on half an acre of land 90 bushels of Irish potatoes which he soldat .$1.00 a bushel. We know this to be so for we have seen the potatoes. Tin's yield was made on land of the old Harry Reel place, that literally and truly would'nt sprout cow peas a few years ago. lt was claimed at one time, be fore the war, that it would sprout la dy peas, but it never was proven. Mix brains with your joanne* if you wish Sam Taylor says he has engaged Mr. Jim Paul to make the survey ol' his new county, the Ben Thompson, and that he is "whetting of his in struments now for the work." Sam says he "has made the projected line a very crooked one so as to leave out all the" Vnti's," but Jim wants to crook it so as to leave out all the ramrackers, and that he specs him ai.d Jim will mix on that very pint before the sur veying is done, the pint ol' where to leave out "antis" and where to take McDonald Furnian has found among the records that when South Carolina was a Colony, an annuity of about $500 was granted a negro named Sam son for discovering a cure for the bite of a rattlesnake. Snake root is suppos ed to have been the antidote and this is the derivation of the name Samson Shakespeare In It Too. MR. EDITOR: When they found that monster in "The Tempest" with all the questioning they could not determine what it was. What is this anyway that is fighting me? What offense did I give it? Show mo the least cause in any thing I have written. It is a po litical nondescript existing with out a cause. When a student of Newberry College he was a bitter anti domineering over his fellow students, and when he came to Edgefield be became a bitter Till man ite and acts as il he would ride over the correspondents of the ADVERTISER, but he will find he has "a long, stumpy road to If I had known how to slip on and off political coats like my young friend it is more than like ly that I could have been school commissioner. In politics you will always find me on my platform defending its princip.es. Was it a crime that I was defeated? lam sure I was competent for the of fice, and the school interests of tho county suffered as much by my defeat as I did. There is not one who voted forme, nor any oth er voter fu thc county, but knows I t The One C of farming gradually exhausts the la high percentage of Potash is used larger bank account can only then h Write for our ' ' Farmers' Guide is brim full of useful information for will make and save you money. Ai '-, ?? ?-. GERMAN that w? would now have had a flourishing school system if I had been elected. "S." knows this him self if be will be candid, and it is more than likely that-he would vote for me if he were of age. I assure him I never cried when I Again, if I am euch a pigmy I why are you wasting so much am munition upon me? Your acts be lie your words. You attacked me from the beginning and forced a personal controversy which I tri ed to avoid. Not one argument have you advanced against my position, only dogmatic asser Iustead of fearing the Bible I reverence it, and am not willing it should be made a foot ball to en graft sectarianism on our public schools. I still believe that cler gymen should not engage in sec ular pursuits, but that all their [time should be devoted to their masters work, and a christian people will support them and their There was not the most distant allusion io the ADVERTISER, but to bitter, quarrelling correspondents. Any one could tell that ''S." was a young, inexperienced boy or he would not assert that denom inational colleges were not, secta rian. I have never advocated any bad principle in the papers tb^t I have written, and in the pur suit in which I have been engaged I hope I have doue some good, and I hOjie "S." will never engage in anything less honorable. I have i?i the last twenty years opeued the budding minds of many, and the most of these ad mit they were taught correctly. The story of "Cock Robin" was applied to Saluda, and I feel com plimented that I was her cham pion. Jack Norris can tell you all about it-how all of our repre sentatives except George Turner yielded to the perfume of cologne and musk, Even our handsome doctor fell beneath the seductive smiles of beautiful woman. Diogenes was a patriot and corrected the evils of his day. Who had not rather be he than Alexander? I would rather be the author of his reply, "Stand out of my suushine!" than possess all of Alexander's earthly diadems. I must now bid "S." goodbye. If at any time he has a subject to discuss I will enter the lists pro vided he will argue, not abuse. I will leave )OU aud that "nigger" Johnstone to fight it out. ? I am really sorry the nigger is get'.ing the best of the white man. Be a good boy and mend your ways. A GEORGIA TEACHER GIVES SOME SUGGESTIONS TO THOSE WHO ARE TO MAKE THE NEW MR. EDITOR: Your able delega tion to the Constitutional Conven tion should certainly be a guaran tee that the general welfare of Edgefield County and of your State will be fostered in that con vention. Yet I do not feel at all presumptious in offering a few suggestions for that convention about some minute details of im portance to our farming people that might be overlooked by the delegation, for I am interested in your State and am aware that the most of the delegation move in railroad, mercantile, and newspa pers circles, in which predomi nates the sentiment that the use of money is to loan and bank on for the highest rates of interest; associate with men who would con tinually ask for outside capital regardless of the drain created by the interest to those outsiders, aud ignore the fact that a boom on extravagant credit is a curse to South Carolina has au interest rule that encourages compound in terest, which is contrary to reason, for certainly the Jaws of any State should exhort her people to be satisfied with only simple inter est. I could demonstrate that the present law has compounded in many instances where the lender would have been co?tent with I simple interest had the law not have computed for compouud. Your oflicials in order to avoid compounding sometimes use the Vermont rule which does not give simple interest aB desired. I have a rule which guarantees simple linierest every time in all pay ments, and which no doubt can be adopted by that convention and thus enable South Carolina to en courage simple interest among ber A bonded state debt is a curse, to its people, undoubtedly contra ry to the spirit of a republican form of government, against the judgment of wise men of the past, based upon a false theory und sel fishness of a shortsighted state craft after the manner of the ex treme of corruption, the Radical All State debts should be wiped out of existence in twenty or at most twenty-five years. How to do this iii your State should be ono purpose of the convention. Hero again my new rule for com puting interest with the principle .nd, unless a Fertilizer containing a L Better crops, a better soil, and a ," a 142-page illustrated book. It farmers. It will be sent free, and KALI WORKS, 93 Nassau Street, New York. involved in tho rule will* he a helper. Your 44 per cent bonds can be paid principal and inter est in 26 years by making a six per cent payment each year: Your 5 per cent bonds, in 19-3-7 years by a 1\ per payment each year. That is," on $1,000,000 bonds bearing 4$ per cent interest (by my new rule guaranteeing all the simple interest and principal) by making a payment of $60,000, yearly for 26-2-5 years the whole debt will be canceled. Yes, $1,584,000 pays the debt, whereas calculated and paid by your present rule it will require $2,188,000 to settle at the end of 26-2-5 years. Mnke a payment of $75,000 on one million of 5 per cent bonds yearly and iu 19-3-7 years the whole debt will be paid with $1,457,143, instead of $1,971, 430, the present lawful rule re It is observed in the foregoing figures thai with 5 per cent bonds und.-r presen; rule the one million of debt in twenty years has taxed the people one million by way of interest and still the original debt If we stop and think for a mo ment we must conclude that no such authority perpetuating a debt. thur? upon tax-payers rms ever in tended in any constitution. No moral right, no legal right to curse them thus and hence a fraudulent assumption, and therefore your convention of the people has the reserved right to rid them of the' curse. I will not at present dis cuss the rash assertions made re lative to debt and the authority for making same by a State, for I *ay false theor\r, selfishness, etc., with a knowledge of their import, and with some acquaintance with plausible pleas made for such tiebts (fee. But let the convention consider my interest rule. Give space to this and I would iike to give Pedagogue and Sem phronicus, etc., some dots ou the public school system tor the con sideration of that same conven L. P. ELAM. Leverett, (ia., Aug. 16. Old Co. "B," 14th S. C. V., Holds a Reunion.-A Pleasant De scription of a Very Pleas MR. EDITOR: The old soldiers of Compauy B, 14th regiment of South Carolina, had chosen last Saturday as the date of their re union, and Richland Springs as the appointed place. Having a de sire to see those faithful old he roes meet, and not having a very great expanse of space to overcome, we went down to be a spectator. Where is the youth whose bosom would uot bc overcharged with en thusiasm, and whose very soul would not he animated when be holding the bravest men that ever shouldered arms greeting one n other after thirty years of separa tion? As I saw them shake the hands that never refused to raise arms in defense of what they thought to be their dearest rights. I felt as though I stood upon con secrated soil-yes, consecrated by the blood of those who sleep peacefully beneath the green of that land for which they died. Again, I thought of those old sol diers' experience-the changes the vicissitudes of life had wrought iu the personality of each within the last thirty years: how often they must have thought of one an other; and how their children must have heard the oft-told sto ry of their comrades in arms. Ob, memory! faculty of the human soul, thou alone can in the twiukliug of an eye, link the past with the prespnt and send, thun dering down the ages, that mes sage of heroism from ancestry to posterity-that message, I say, which is wont to kindle in the bosom of every youth a burning love for his race and country. The company met m the school house and arranged th? programme of the day. Hon. W. J. Talbert was elected orator of the occasion. Then the company formed in Hue and marched to the stand, pre ceeded b}' delightful ' straius of music produced by the Palmetto State Brass Band from Summit, S. C. On reaching Ihe stand Capt. Wess, who had been elected chairman, introduced Mr. Tal bert who came forward and deliv ered a good speech. In his speech be commented on the bravery of our Southern sol diers, and he said further that they were never wbipt, but just concluded to quit killing thc Yan kees, and came home. Ho also spoke in warm terms of the en durance and bravery of our wo men, and said that if he wished to find one person more loyal to home and country than another, he would look for that one among the women who stood as living monuments amid tho heat of four years of the most severe warfare that ever devastated a country. On this point Mr. Talbert sure ly met the approbation of every man who hus any conception of tho virtues of our women. You might become a wanderer o'er earth; yea travel o'er mountain and valiey, hill and dale; mingle in' the highest society on this mundane sphere ; plunge into the revelries of Paris or gaze upon the picturesque cataracts of the Rhine ui the search for a nobler Woman hood ; and when, at la^t, overtak en by gray hairs, in despair you could only return like a prodigal son and he laid in your grave iii the land of the most 'amiable, beautiful, and courageous women on earth ; women, without whom no meeting is graceful, and no enterprise successful; women who sit at the fireside and shape the destinies of the country; and women whom we hope never to see pushing their way into poli tics, and thereby forfeiting the grec.t influence for good they now After Mr. Talbert's speech, eve rybody went down to the table and enjoyed a good dinner-cakes and all kinds of nice things served up with some of that same good hash which is characteristic of the ge nius of Capt. E. B. Forrest. Then back to the stand, and we hear from Capt. Waters and Hon. R. B. Watson; the one on the subject of warfare, the other on -the great necessity of general education both good speeches. Next the old roll of company B was called, and about twenty-five were pres The way in which tbs people turned out showed their apprecia t ion of the old heroes in tbe evening of their lives. I*, is toe opinion of many that a thousand people were present. Before we close, honorable men tion is due our fellow countryman, Mr.- Thomas Whittle, in whose mind the plan of reuuion first originated,and by whose uutiriug efforts ii;wa8 brought to a success And now old heroes, we bid you adieu. We hope to meet you a gain and enjoy another happy day with you, but, if it should be our fortune never to see you more, we trust" your last dava will be your happiest, ?and that the rising generation will so conduct them selves as to make you feel proud of the country for winch you J. D. DUNOVANT. Send 4cl8 in stamps to fhe Hay ner Distilling Co., Springfield, Ohio. They will send you an ele gant, leather bound memoranda BEN THOMPSON COUNTY. To AU Whom Tt May Conen;/ OTICE is herewith given that, an application wilt lr: made at the next sitting of the General Assembly of the State of booth Carolina for the cst&b tishment of a new uou.it; to be cut ott* from Edgetield County, to be known as - Ben Thompson County, with the county seat at the town of Thomp sonville-and having the following metes&nd bounds : Beginning at a pine-sapling in the road between Abe Broadwater's and Bud DeLoach's the line will run north east to Harmony church, thence to Frank Warren's, thence to the Poor IIouse,leavingthis institution in Edge field County, thence to Capt. H. B. Gallman's, thence to Simmon's Ridge Good Samaritan Baptist church, thence to Beaver liam, thence down this creek?to the ford near John Walk ers, thence back to the Poor House, crossing tiie old Cambridge road one hundred chains north of the old well in the road, near the old Andrew Ram Chairman for Committee. . OTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that, an application will be made at the next sitting of the Legislature for es tablishing a new County, to be known as Ninety-Six County, with the Coun ty Seat located in the town of Ninety Six, out of portions of Abbeville, Edge field, Newberry, and Laurens Coun ties as follows : ; Corners at or near Boyd's Mill on Saluda river; at or near Whitehall, Abbeville County; at or near Kirk seys; at or near Good Hope, Edgetield County! at or near Vaughville, New berry County;thence back to or near Bo^ds Mill, Laurens County. H. J. KIN ARD, Sec'y. To AH, Wit om It May ('on cern : E the undersigned citizens of Edgetield hereby give notice as re quired by law, that an effort will be made before the next session of the Legislature to obtain Saluda County with the following metes and bounds Commencing at double bridge over Mountain Creek and the Long Cane road, following the northern line of Pinegrove townsnip to the bridge over Half Way Swamp creek on the old Cambridge and Charleston road, thence down said stream to where it emptie? into Saluda river, thence down Saluda river to corner of Edge field and Lexington co inties, thence along the Edgetield and Lexins, on line to corner of Edgefield and Aiken, thence along the Edgetield and Aiken line to the point where the public road crosses Aiken and Edgelield line near Lybrands old mill, thence a straight, line to where the Long Cane .road in tersects the public road from John ston to Wards at Jack Lotts, thence up said Long Cane road to the point of commencement above mentioned. S T Edwards, P B Stevens, B L Caughman, J B Suddath, Zed Crouch, Noah Crouch, Jos II Edwards, A P Coleman, Jas P Bean, J 31 Forrest J J Kirksey, Rev.C P Boozer, W L Cole man, Geo B Lester, Joe M Long. W L Crouch, B W Crouch, W F Huiet. South Carolina Co - - COLUMBIA. I C. SESSION BEGINS SEPT. 24th. Ten Regular Courses with Di plomas. Special Courses, with Certificates. Board $8 a Month. Total necessary expanses for tin1 year (exclusive of Travel ling, Clothing, and Books), from $113 to $153. Women admitted to all ?^F" For further informal iou, address the President. July 30-2m. 1 PATRONS WILL BE PLEASED. To KNOW THAT FOR THE SESSION OF 1S95-6 THE RIDGE SPRING HIGH SCHOOL offers to them greater advantages than ever be fore, advantages tbat are equaled by those of few preparatory Schools in the State, we mention A complete and thoroughly equipped faculty of five teachers; a thorough course of preparation for the best Universities or for practical affairs, including Rhet oric, and English Literary Compo sition. Ancient History, English and.Americau History, Advanced Mathematics, Latin, Greek, French and German, Chemistry, Natural Philosophy, &c, A special course in Book-keeping and Penmanship, a special course in Telegraphy, guaranteed to be unexcelled in any Business College in America, and fitting student for immediate work. A superior Music depart ment. A thorough course in Art, Elocution. Cali8thentics by thor oughly trained teacheis. A system of Discipline, mild and uniform but firm, Low Rates, fine climate and surroundings, and a hand some and well-arranged school building. Can you beat it in the B. F. Martin, B. A. University of Va" Principal. T. W. Lips comb, B. A., Richmond College, First Apsistant. Miss M. Jones,. Graduate Converse College, Prima ry Department. Miss S. S. Bailey, Greenville Female College, Mu sic. M ?ss C^D. Watson. Art. For circular announcements, &c, apply to the principal or lo J. B. Edwards, Secretary Board of The Edgefield Oil Is glad to announce to the public a reduction in their price of Ginning. The more Cotton we have to gin, the less price we can afford to work for; so bring us your Cotton and have the work done in good order and at a low Our charge for Ginning will be 20 cents per ?00 lbs. on all Bales that weigh 400 lbs. or more; on all Bales that weigh less than 400 pounds Hie price of 75 cents a Bale will be charg Mr. John R. Tompkins will be in charge of the office as Cashier, and Mr. George Lewis will have charge of l he Ginnery-they will be glad to have their friends call on them when they want Cotton Ginned or have Cotton Seed to sell. We have Bagging and Ties that we can furnish to those who want it at a low price. Thanking the public for past patronage, we hope by square dealing and fair prices to merit a con tinuance of the same. CHAS. H. FISHER, Pres. TlIE Trustees of the Modoc High School desire the services of a teacher, ma'e or female, for nine months, be ginning 1st September 1895. Applicants will please give prices and terms. Apply to J. W. BROOKS, Chair. Modoc, S. C., The Fall Session of this School will open on Monday, the 2nd of KATES OF TUITION From $1.00 lo $4.00 per month, but no charge whatever during the months of the Public School Term. L. R. GWALTNEY, Aug. 6-lm Principal. LEESVILLE, S. C., CO-EDUCATIONAL Opens Sept. 25th, 1895, with large Faculty and Ten Departments. In the lead for combining Superior Advantages and Low Rates. Spe cial Advantages in Art. Elocu tion, Vocal and Instrumental Mu sic, Gymnastics and Commercial Board and Tuiiiou $80 to $126 per year. Young ladies can re duce expenses by domestic work. For catalogue address L. B. HAYNES, A. M. Aug. 6-m President. means so niucn rn 'fatal diseases re. ul. .i 'trifling ailments nc&l?cl Don't play with Nature's \ greatest gift-health. \ . !' rtfi feeling \ Si t:' vi jnrt?, v.e.'iic J ti'i "rnvr.-.lly i:X- \ i 'J -il! '.-ti. l:e> VOUS, ? i '.;;!.. o no sppst?le 1 3-.iiiil can't work, | begin ::l oncelak I [ig ill? must relia- J' s'..!e stnmgthcnhig ' i mcdiciiicArhichia ^ ?S.owii's Iron Bit- \ c. r?. A few bot- J' ?jilea cure-benefit 1 B.J.? " r 1 cwx :rom thc J fl ? g S-*'S K j v.-iy ?m dr*e-#\ ? I X. t\* i. . **MM your I Dyspepsia, Kidney end Liver Nev i's ? :, Troubles, Ct-MstipaUcz, ?JA-J Elood Mrda: i;:, Nervous ailments < Women's co;v.r-!aint.s. , i'-. - '?? !i i-, rrosscd red t : -.. : ,;i vi tr. All others are sub- v ? ? : : u . .. - . < >. .-1 . - i,i two ?e. stamps we W . ,i..? :. i . ; ".9 . t?eautliel World's \ fcSC vu CMC!51 :.?!_ C.-. BALTIMORE, MD. \ Pure liquors for family use, The Hayner Distilling Co., Springfield, * WARE & STANLEY, * AT SCURRY'S BOARDING ARE MAKING CABINET SIX FOR $1.00. Satisfaction guaranteed. Corre early, rain or shine, and avoid the crowd. We will be here only a few jfMF* Remember $1.50 per dozen for Cabinet Photographs. WARE & STANLEY. OUR SYSTEM COMMENDS To THE JUBGMENT OF CONSERVATIVE BUSINESS MEN. Of whom nearly 6,000 are now our regular SUBSCRIBERS. Write for Particulars. GLOBE COLLECTING and - 65 Fifth Ave., New York. THE MIMS ARTISTS. R. HT?Wims, Miss Eliza M. Mims, Geo. Mr. K. H. Mims, will do all kinds of Photograph work in the Studio. Mak ing a specialty of Children's Photo graphs. Will have Crayon Portraits made any size-1 hat will be sure to please. Just twenty-five years in the Miss Eliza M. Mims will make the finest Portraits in Pastel and Oil, that can be made outside of the largest cities. The very best of references given as to this kind of work. Will re touch Negatives in most artistic style. Will also teach the art of re-touching Negatives, Drawing and Painting in Oil and Water Colors, Coloring Pho Mr. Geo. P. Minis, with new and fin est apparatus, is well prepared to do all kinds of Out-Door Photography, such as family groupes, Schools, Build ings, Animals, Machinery ?c. Solicits orders from the country. Confident that he can give perfect satisfaction. The prices of all the above work will correspond with the present financial condition of the country. Call at the Photograph Gallery and examine the quality and prices cf all the above classes of pictures, and then we think you will-or ought to g&F Patronize Homc,TaIent. fUf-Give us a call before going to the cities. March 1, '95-Qt. Grinds lenses for all defects of sight. If you : eyes trouble you, consult him and he will If you need glasses, medicine, or rest. Fits glasses into old frames while you wait. All Prof. P. M. WHITMAN, 830 Broad St., Augusta, Ga. G. P. COBB, -AND DEALER IN CHEAP AND MEDIUM March 12, '95-3m. I AM prepared at my Shops in rear of the Court-House to do all kinds of Blacksmith work with neatness ana dispatch, and at Hard Time prices. gjgr Give me a Call. JSCS They Must Go ? For the next 30 days we will close out our Clothing Stock at 25 percent, discount. Now for bargains. J. M. Cobb. Will dig, repair, blast, or clean wells upon short notice. Will go to auy point in or out of thu coun ty. Reasonable charges. RAMSOM BYRD, Col. Edgefield, C. H., S. C. P. S : Would like to dig a well and swap the digging of it for a second-hand buggy or a one horse mule without a lien on him. July 39-tf. R. B. 1,000,000 People WV lilli I Ililli 1 W ll MMI Hill ll iWI III lill I I !?**. J IN THE Wear W. Ii. Don?las shoes r.nd save from 81.00 to 83.00 a pair. All .Sirios and Widths. Tho advance in leather has Increased thc price of other makes, but thc quality and prices of ?V. ?.- Doiifrlas Mwc? romain tlic name. Take no substitute ; see that name and priceinstamncd on sole. W. JU Dor. crin*, B??OCHTON, Miss. Sold by J. !MI. COBB f?t?i EDGEFIELC, C. H., S. C. 'Poultry, Farm, Garden, Cemetery, Lawn, Railroad and Babbit Thousands of miles in nao. Catalogne Free. Freight Faid. Fri?os Low. The UcMULLEN WOVEH WIRE FENCE CO. 114,116,118 and 120 H. liarkoi St., CHICAGO. ILL. to thc person submitting tlio most meritorious invention during tho preceding month. WE SECURE PATENTS ~ FOE INVENTORS, and the W object of this offer is to en-1 courago persons of an invent ive turn of mind. At the same time ive wish to impress the fact that :: :: ? It's the Simple, , That Yield Fortunes -such as Bo Lona's Hook and Eye. "Seo that Hump," "Safety Pin." "Pigs in Clo ver," "Air Brake,1' etc. Almost every ono conceives i Q a bright idea at some time or other. Why not put it in prac tical use? YOUR talents may lio in this direction. May make your fortune. Why not try? :: :: :: :: :: . %Sf Write for further information and mention this paper. THE PRESS CLAIMS 60 Philip W. Avirctt, Gen. Mgr., 618 F Street, Northwest, WASHINGTON, D. C. H ?7~The responsibility of this company H may bo ludged by the tact that its W stock is held by over one thousand of the leading newspapers in tho ander reasonable conditions. Do not say it can not be done, till you send for free catalogue of. This College is strongly endorsed by bankers and merchants. FOUR weeks by Draughon's method of teaching bookkeeping is equal to TWELVE weeks by the old plan. Special ad vantages in Shorthand, Penmanship and Teleg raphy. Cheap board. Open to both sexes. No vacation. Enter now. Railroad Faro Paid. ??flMT? CPTTfiV We have reccntlv prepared nUffl?l MULI I. books On ROOKKEEPINC, SHORTHAND AND PENMANSHIP especially adapt ed to '* home study." Write for " Home'Study " circulars at once. $200 Offend Free! Ornez FIRST NATIONAL BA:.--, ?TASUYILLE, TEXX., April6, ; ?-> PROF. J. F. DR Arr. HON. P.I ES.DRAUGBO:;'S PRA : TicAL BUSINESS COLLEGS, N ASHVILI.E,TKI;X. DEAR SIR :-The time for which you deposited $ioo three months ago to-day as a'forfcit under your proposition to Rive $tao to any charitable institution in Nash ville and $roo to any Business College south of the Oh io River, it* you could uot show more written appl ?ca I ions for nookkecpers and Stenographers during the PAST FIVE MONTHS than any other ?us?ness College sou th of the Ohio River could show ill the PAST FIVE YEARS, has t.iis day expired, and, no demand having been made, thc same is now held su'ojixt to your check. Respectfully, V,'. F. BANG, Cashier. N. B.-A certificate of deposit for the above was published in thc daily papers ot" Nashville, the Cincinnatli Enquirer, the Atlanta. Constitu lion, and thirty thousand circulars, giving the colleges three months' time to accept.- .Vasily ville Daily American, April j, ?Sys. Write PROF. J. F. DRAUGHON, Nashville, Tenn., for his free Catalogue. C. F. KOHLRUSS, Iron & Wire Fences Building Stone of Every Description. Cor. WasMng?on and Ellis Streets.. AUGUSTA. GA YOU will have the public roads well worked and in good condition by the first of September next. Have all loose stones removed from rond bed, all overhanding branches cut, and all side ditches opened. July 23-tf County Sup. FREE BOOK Ah m R?CE LIST Subscribe te the Edge field AD Babbit Metal for sale at this olllce.

Title: Your Irresistible Love Release Date: January 15th 2016 Sebastian Bennett is a determined man. It’s the secret behind the business empire he built from scratch. Under his rule, Bennett Enterprises dominates the jewelry industry. Despite being ruthless in his work, family comes first for him, and he’d do anything for his parents and eight siblings—even if they drive him crazy sometimes. . . like when they keep nagging him to get married already. Sebastian doesn’t believe in love, until he brings in external marketing consultant Ava to oversee the next collection launch. She’s beautiful, funny, and just as stubborn as he is. Not only is he obsessed with her delicious curves, but he also finds himself willing to do anything to make her smile. He’s determined to have Ava, even if she’s completely off limits. Ava Lindt has one job to do at Bennett Enterprises: make the next collection launch unforgettable. Daydreaming about the hot CEO is definitely not on her to-do list. Neither is doing said CEO. The consultancy she works for has a strict policy—no fraternizing with clients. She won’t risk her job. Besides, Ava knows better than to trust men with her heart. But their sizzling chemistry spirals into a deep connection that takes both of them by surprise. Sebastian blows through her defenses one sweet kiss and sinful touch at a time. When Ava’s time as a consultant in his company comes to an end, will Sebastian fight for the woman he loves or will he end up losing her? Your Irresistible Love: Amazon US: http://amzn.to/1OsoxV9 Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/1W9Tqmj Amazon AU: http://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B01AL3GQRQ/ Amazon CA: http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01AL3GQRQ/ Title: Your Captivating Love Release Date: April 2016 Description: (Synopsis may change) Logan Bennett knows his priorities. He is loyal to his family and his company. He has no time for love, and no desire for it. Not after a disastrous engagement that left him broken-hearted. When Nadine enters his life, she turns everything upside down. She’s sexy, funny, and utterly captivating. She’s also more stubborn than anyone he’s met. . .including himself. Nadine Hawthorne is finally pursuing her dream: opening her own shop. After working so hard to get here, she needs to concentrate on her new business, and can’t afford distractions. Not even if they come in the form of Logan Bennett. He’s handsome, charming, and doesn’t take no for an answer. It doesn’t help that Logan’s family is scheming to bring them together at every turn Their attraction is sizzling, and their connection—undeniable. Slowly, Logan wins her over. But what starts out as a fling soon spirals into so much more. Will they learn to trust their feelings? Will they have the strength not to let go of each other? Your Captivating Love Amazon US: http://amzn.to/1SjKj3r Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/1UQOuSc Amazon AU: http://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B01AL6WWEY/ Amazon CA: http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01AL6WWEY/ “Save your breath and get going.” I shut my mouth, breathing through my nose as I command my legs not to give up. Jogging is hard. After about a mile, a cramp takes hold of my right thigh. I come to a halt with a shriek and grip my thigh, hoping to relieve the ache. All I manage to do is make the cramp extend to my ankle too. “Fuck,” I groan, collapsing on the sand. In a heartbeat, Sebastian kneels next to me, putting his hands to work on my thigh and ankle. He kneads my flesh expertly. Before long, the cramp subsides, but he doesn’t stop touching me. “You really are in terrible shape.” “I told you to go gentle,” I groan. “Jesus, it hurts everywhere.” “Ava, I don’t do gentle.” His words send a jolt of heat right to my core, his double entendre turning me on instantly. I push myself up on my elbows. “How often do you run?” I ask. “Be honest.” “I go to the gym every morning. Running an hour is part of my routine.” I snort. “I knew it. Why didn’t you mention that when I told you I haven’t been running in over a month?” Sebastian smirks, shrugging. “Well, at least I get the satisfaction that you’re also sweaty.” “Oh, I can think of a much more satisfying way to get sweaty,” he says. Then he does that thing with his eyes again that turns me to mush. His gaze smolders, as if nothing exists except the two of us. “Does it involve any clothes?” I mumble. “No, it doesn’t.” His gaze descends to my chest then lower on my disheveled body. Since he’s not bothering to be discreet, I allow myself to inspect every delicious detail about him. Sweat dots his upper lip, and I imagine what kissing him would taste like. A little like salt, a lot like a man. Oh, God. How am I supposed to resist him when he’s so irresistible? “Have you thought about asking her to stay?” Logan asks. He and Pippa exchange a glance that tells me they’ve talked about this. “I can’t ask her to give up her job. When the project is over, she’ll move to the next one.” My voice is hollow. Why the fuck is this thought so depressing? “Dude, you already sound like a love-sick puppy. No way am I going to listen to your drunk ramblings about your lost love after she’s gone.” Logan hefts the glass in my direction as if he’s toasting me. I stare him down. “When did I ever get drunk and talk about women?” “Oh, that’s right,” he admits. “Never.” He takes a sip from his non-alcoholic cocktail, looking at Pippa with wide eyes. “Oh, Logan, stop the puppy dog eyes. Though you’ll always be known as the family puppy,” Pippa informs us with a lovely grin. “Sebastian’s the family’s lion, nursing his wounds alone and all that shit.” Logan leaps to his feet. “How does Sebastian get to be the lion and I the puppy? Why can’t I be a tiger, or at least some scary dog breed?” Ah, a good old Bennett brawl. Pippa puts a hand on her hip, squinting at Logan as if she’s considering something. “Yeah, you’re right. Not a puppy. I’ll look up the appropriate breed later. Must be one that barks a lot but doesn’t bite.” “Don’t forget it must have an oversized ego,” I supply. Pippa nods. “I’ll keep that in mind.” “I’m very glad the two of you are having fun at my expense.” Logan’s tone clearly indicates he’s not glad at all. Pippa and I grin. “But we were talking about Sebastian, and how the family lion will be stupid enough to let the woman he loves walk away.” My smile drops. “Sebastian, don’t be an idiot,” Pippa begins, now turning to me, placing both hands on her hips. “If you love her—” “I didn’t say that.” “You don’t have to,” she insists, tilting her head. “Oh, you can just see it?” I ask sarcastically. “I can,” Pippa says triumphantly. She glances at Logan, who backs her up with a strong nod. Oh, here they go again. “Yes, yes, Pippa, we all know you’ve been blessed with Mom’s exceptional people-reading skills.” I give them a dismissive hand gesture, but they won’t let me off so easily today. “Except when it comes to the people I date or marry, apparently,” she adds. I pull a face, fully aware of what she’s doing, bringing up her broken marriage so I don’t brush her off. I’d get mad at her for being so manipulative if I didn’t love her so much. Which she knows very well. “How is it that every time we do something together out of the office, you two corner me about my personal life?” I inquire, tapping my fingers on the glass. “You want us to do it at the office too?” Pippa asks with mock surprise. “Why didn’t you say so? Logan, are you up for it? Hey, we could even call in Alice for a Bennett sibling meeting now and again in the CEO’s office. Or in the meeting room.” Groaning, I drag my palm down my face. “Please don’t.” “Let’s get through this step by step,” Pippa says. She sits down on the floor, crossing her legs as if she’s about to do some yoga or shit. Damn it. I know that expression on her face. Lifted eyebrows, lips curled into a half smile. It reminds me of our days as kids, planning our way into or out of a mess. “The point is you can’t let her go.” “You jumped a few steps in the process,” Logan tells her. “What will you do after she leaves?” Pippa continues, and now a shred of seriousness tinges her playful tone. “Get back to your old life? Find a Terence, like I did? You’ve had enough sharks have a go at you over the years, wearing silicone and Botox to mask their teeth. You’re the billionaire CEO of one of the biggest companies in San Francisco, and we’re in a sexy industry. Everyone knows you, and you’re one of the most eligible bachelors around.” Logan and I groan in unison. He gets up. “Okay, it’s time for some adult drinks. Whiskey for everyone?” I nod. After a few seconds, so does Pippa. “Make mine a double,” I instruct. “Go, tiger,” Pippa tells him. We all laugh, but without much humor. The discussion has taken a turn for the serious. Logan shoves the drinks in our hands, and we spend a few minutes in silence, nursing the whiskey. I fell in love with books when I was nine years old, and my love affair with stories continues even now, many years later. I write romantic stories and can’t wait to share them with the world. And I drink coffee. Lots of it

The relationship between the individual and the group is expressed by the sexual metaphor "where two are one". In the Bible this metaphor expands to include the images of the Bride and the Bridegroom where the Bride represents all men and women and the Bridegroom is the King of Israel or Christ. Contains material from Lecture 5 (Part 1) Copyright © 1982, 2013, Victoria University LECTURE TRANSCRIPT: PROGRAM 5 This text is a transcript of the full lecture of Prof. Frye on Oct. 7, 1980. Only the bold parts are used in this version. Download a PDF of the Transcript Please note: This lecture was split in two programs; the second part can be found under program 6 ‘The Great Whore and the Forgiven Harlot’ SEXUAL IMAGERY: THE BRIDE AND THE BRIDEGROOM We've been looking at various categories of Biblical imagery: the paradisal and then, below that, the organization of the animal world. The first gives us the garden of Eden, and the second the pastoral world, more particularly the sheepfold. Of course, pastoral and garden imagery have overlapped, both in Biblical and secular literature, all through the history of human imagination. It's easy to see in such things as the 23rd Psalm, 'The Lord is my shepherd', how the pastoral ideal and the paradisal ideal really blend together and form the same thing.I'll be filling out various stages of this table as we come to them. There is, however, the intervening category of the human world, which is a much more complicated one. Now if we ask what is the ideal human form for existence, we find that there is no simple or single answer, because our answers keep shuttling between a social ideal and an individual one. That is, the human ideal is a paradoxical mixture of a belonging and an escape.According to Jean Paul Sartre, 'hell is other people', but I'm not sure that Sartre wanted to spend the whole of eternity by himself. Similarly, Andrew Marvell can write a poem, 'The Garden', in which he suggests that the fall of man really began when a stupid and blundering God created Eve in order to be a companion for Adam. And as he says, 'Two Paradises 'twere in one/To live in Paradise alone'. But you cannot think of a human ideal consistently either in social terms or in individual ones. So we seem to be in a deadlock, and the only solution is that human life, like Greek nouns, seems to have a dual as well as a singular and a plural.Thus we have the individual life, the sexual, erotic relation between two people, and the social. The sexual relation is given an emphasis in the Bible which, like so many things in the Bible, is unintelligible in anything but metaphorical terms. We are told that in the sexual relation, two people are actually the same person while remaining two people, which is not possible, but is therefore the cornerstone of Biblical imagery. Thus, the ideal of human life becomes an ideal in which the sexual relationship has become the pattern for the identification of the individual and the social.The imagery of a wedding, of the union of the bridegroom and the bride, is one of Jesus' favorite images for the apocalyptic or ideal world. It is essential to realize that in this case, the bride is actually the entire body of Christian followers. In the Book of Revelation, this bride is identified with Jerusalem, or Israel, meaning the people of God.That suggests, first of all, that sexual imagery has relatively little to do with the actual relations of men and women. Thus, in this relationship where Christ is the bridegroom and the bride is the people of Christ, it follows that Christ is symbolically the only male. He is also symbolically the only individual, the only person with a right to say 'I am'. That means that the souls of the people of God, whether they are souls of men or of women, are all symbolically female and make up a single bride figure.Now again, metaphorical thinking is not logical thinking, and we have to proceed to make a series of identifications that we would find it hard to follow in other contexts. The Song of Songs is a series of wedding songs in which both the bridegroom and the bride are presented: they both have their songs. The opening verse says: 'The song of songs, which is Solomon's'. Now there is no more reason for ascribing the authorship of the Song of Songs to Solomon than there is for ascribing it to the Witch of Endor. But the poem is symbolically associated with Solomon because the symbolism expands from songs about a rural wedding where the bride is called 'sister', which is the conventional Oriental term for the loved one, into a symbolic wedding of the king with the land over which he rules.That is why the bride describes herself as 'black but comely': that is, she represents the black fertile soil of the land. We are told that her body is to be compared to various aspects of the country: her nose, for example, is 'as the tower of Lebanon that looketh towards Damascus', which might seem to be a rather doubtful compliment to a bride whose charms were less symbolic. But the wedding of the king and the fertile land is an image for what the word 'testament' itself indicates. The word that we translate as 'testament', which is berith in Hebrew and diatheke in Greek, means a covenant or a contract, specifically the contract between God and his people Israel. So that Solomon and his bride, the Shulamite woman of the Song of Songs, expand by a further range of symbolism into the relationship of God and his people, which is why in Christian typology the Song of Songs was interpreted as a song of the love of Christ for his bride, his people. Of course, Christianity was a big city religion which expanded from one city to another, and consequently the image of the black fertile land is not as immediate in Christianity as it is in Judaism. But the same symbolic shape is nevertheless there.If you look at Isaiah 62:4, you see the same prophecy being applied to the restored Israel: 'Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken, neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah: for the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married'. 'Married' is the meaning of the word 'Beulah'. And the image of the land married to its king expands into the image of the people of God married to its God.In the demonic world, the demonic counterpart of the bride would be the figure described in the Book of Revelation as the Great Whore, and the male figure of whom she is the mistress would be the figure who in the New Testament is described as Antichrist, the figure opposed to Christ. Just as the bride is identified with Jerusalem, so the Whore would be identified with the heathen city of Babylon.In Revelation 17:2, she is the figure, 'With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication'. And then in verse 5: 'And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots'. And later on, in verse 9, she is associated with seven mountains which are clearly the seven hills of Caesarean Rome, so that Babylon and the Rome of the persecuting Caesars are symbolically the same demonic city, where the power opposed to that of Christianity is established.It's important perhaps to realize that the word 'whore' in the Bible almost always refers to a theological and not a sexual irregularity. One person who is associated with whores in the Old Testament is Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, and that is not because she is supposed to have cuckolded King Ahab—the narrator of Kings could hardly have cared whether she did or not—but because she introduced the worship of Baal into Israel.The reason for the epithet, apart from the symbolic contrast to bride, is not just that it's abusive, but that it has a more specific reference to the custom in Canaanite religion of maintaining prostitutes in the temple, which is a practice that the Israelites in Deuteronomy are forbidden to have anything to do with, but which was obviously extremely familiar to them. Tamar, for example, in Genesis, disguises herself as a cult prostitute in order to get back her inheritance as a forsaken wife. The story would be unintelligible if the practice were not familiar to Israel as well as to the surrounding nations.Antichrist in his turn is the secular ruler. And as a society grows from a tribal community into a nation and from a nation into an empire, the ruler of the empire tends to think of himself as the ruler of the world. The Bible does not regard the world ruler as necessarily an evil person, but he rules over the kind of world in which, sooner or later, one of his descendents is going to become so. Jesus' axiom about spiritual and temporal authority, 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's', runs into a difficulty as soon as Caesar begins to claim what is due only to God, that is, divine worship. It's only when he does that that he becomes the Antichrist figure referred to both in one of Paul's letters and in the Book of Revelation itself.In the Book of Revelation, the Antichrist is characterized by a cipher, the number 666. Ciphers of that kind usually turn on the fact that the letters of the alphabet were also used as numbers: and there has never been a cipher in history solved as often as that one has been. It has been solved in Hebrew; it has been solved in Greek; and it's been solved by Robert Graves in Latin. And it always spells out the name of Nero, who is the type of the persecuting emperor. He was the first emperor to institute a persecution of Jews and Christians, according to Tacitus, in order to have somebody to blame for the burning of Rome. And although the author of Revelation probably lived under a later emperor, Nero is still the type. As the type, he is spiritually, that is, metaphorically, identical with other persecuting figures in the bible, such as Antiochus—who is the villain in the Book of Daniel—the Pharaoh of the Exodus, and Nebuchadnezzar.There is a more comprehensive picture of female figures in the Bible that we might look at at this point. I have been dividing images into the apocalyptic, or ideal, and the demonic. Those are a contrast. There are also intermediate figures, who represent human nature in the sense that they are neither wholly evil nor wholly ideal, but are imperfect figures undergoing the process of redemption. You can divide the female figures of the Bible into two groups, the maternal and the marital, that is, the mother figures and the bride figures.The ideal maternal figures include the Virgin Mary and a mysterious woman who appears at the beginning of Revelation 12, and who is said to be a woman 'clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars'. She is a queen of Heaven, like so many maternal goddesses, but she is also described as the mother of the Messiah, like the Virgin Mary. So there are really three accounts of the birth of the Messiah in the New Testament: the one in Matthew, which has the wise men and Jesus born in a house; the one in Luke, the pastoral one, which has the shepherds and Jesus born in a manger; and this account in chapter 12, which is so obviously mythical and metaphorical that it has never succeeded in getting on our Christmas cards.In the intermediate, or analogical, category you have the specifically human mother, who of course is Eve, 'our general mother', as Milton calls her, the representative of humanity going through sin and redemption; and also Rachel, who, though only one of the wives of Jacob or Israel, is symbolically the mother of Israel and is so referred to in Matthew in connection with the Slaughter of the Innocents. Ideal bride figures would then include the bride of the Song of Songs and the Jerusalem bride, who appears at the end of the Book of Revelation, chapter 21, where it is said that she is 'the holy city, the New Jerusalem, descending to earth as a bride adorned for her husband'.Now there doesn't appear to be a demonic maternal figure, but this blackboard demands one. We often find that if the Bible does not supply what is needed diagrammatically, it will invariably be supplied by later legend. So later legend obliged by constructing the figure of Lilith. Lilith is mentioned in Isaiah 34:14—the King James version calls her a 'screech owl', which is one of the bad things that the Authorized Version is continually doing, that is, making rationalized translations. But in later legend, Lilith became the first wife of Adam. There are two accounts of creation in the Book of Genesis, and the effort to reconcile those two accounts wound up by giving Adam two wives, the first one being Lilith and the second Eve. Lilith, we are told, was the mother of all the demons and the fallen angels. Being that, she had a very flourishing career in Romantic literature: she appears in Goethe's Faust, and as the heroine of a romance of George MacDonald, and in many other places.The demonic marital figure is of course the Great Whore of Revelation, identified with Babylon as the other bride is with Jerusalem, and with such Old Testament prototypes as Jezebel introducing the cult of Baal. It follows therefore that there needs to be an intermediate marital figure, and that that intermediate figure would represent the human race going through the process of sin and redemption.We have said that the word we translate 'testament' has the primary meaning of a covenant or contract between God and his people. The contract is represented as something drawn up with Israel by God's initiative. It is also represented as a contract which God could break but won't—because of his nature—but as a contract which man, strictly speaking, cannot break but is forever trying to break. So symbolically, the female figure of this category would be the Forgiven Harlot, the bride figure who is unfaithful to her Lord but who in spite of that is to be forgiven and brought back again. That harlot figure appears in various parts of the Old Testament, in Ezekiel for example, chapter 16, verse 3: 'Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem: Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite . . .' and so on: the whole chapter goes on to describe the unfaithfulness and forgiveness of Jerusalem. The Canadian poet James Reaney has a poem called 'Rachel' which is in effect a very beautiful and very eloquent paraphrase of this chapter in Ezekiel. The same image turns up later in Hosea, where Hosea is ordered by God to marry two harlots, one after the other. These represent the apostasy of both north and south Israel.The same figure turns up in the New Testament as the woman usually identified as Mary Magdalen. There is an anonymous woman in the 7th chapter of Luke described as a sinner whose sins are forgiven because 'she loved much'. Mary Magdalen appears in the next chapter of Luke, and is generally identified with her. A similar female, who has the same symbolic role whether she is the same person or not, has firmly established squatter's rights on the opening of the 8th chapter of John. She is actually a bit of floating folklore associated with Jesus, and in the early manuscripts she appears in various places. The modern translators of the Bible, who are much more distinguished for scholarship than for common sense, try to get her out of John 8 and put her in an appendix, but nevertheless she's still there. She represents perhaps one of the most eloquent and moving episodes of the gospel, the woman who, because she was a harlot, is condemned to be stoned to death. Jesus interferes and suggests that those who have never committed any sins at all might take the lead in throwing the stones. Hence, in paintings of the Crucifixion, you usually see the cross of Christ flanked by two female figures, the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalen, one in blue and the other in red.In a polytheistic mythology, you can have the maternal figure and the bridal figure identified. That is, you can have a female goddess figure who is both the mother of a god and, later on, his mistress. You find that in the cults associated with dying gods in Mediterranean countries. And you have such counterparts as the relations, say, of the Virgin Mary and the Infant Jesus with the relations of Venus and Cupid in Classical mythology, where Venus is the mother of the God of Love and can also be a bride figure. In Christianity, however, the two figures of the mother and the bride obviously have to be separated, although they are still very close together symbolically. The bride of the Song of Songs for example is described as 'a garden inclosed' and 'a fountain sealed'. Or, as the Vulgate says, 'hortus conclusus, fons signatus'. And the 'garden inclosed' and the 'fountain sealed' have always been traditionally identified with the Virgin Mary, who from one symbolic point of view is the bride of the Holy Spirit as well as the mother of the Logos. We are also told that Christ is the Son of a Father who is a spiritual Father, and that his death reconciles man with the Father.Now if you constructed a demonic parody of all that, you would get something very close to the story of Oedipus, who kills his father and makes a wife out of his mother. The status of the Oedipus story as a kind of demonic parody of the Christian story was striking enough for the poet Yeats to construct an elaborate theory of history according to which civilizations of Oedipus and civilizations of a Christ figure alternate all through time, one being tragic and heroic, the other comic and altruistic. But it's perhaps easier to see the Oedipus story as either a demonic parody of the Christian story, as it is in some aspects, or as an intermediate analogy of it, as it is in certain other aspects. In the story of the creation of Adam for example, the older story which begins in the 2nd chapter of Genesis, the Yahwist account as it's called, Adam is made from a female, adamah, or mother earth. And when, after the Fall, he goes back to the ground from which he was taken, he returns to that earth-mother after making the break with his Father. So the Oedipus legend is not quite removed from the story of Adam itself.This account of the human symbolism in the Bible is of course closely linked to the account of city symbolism, because the city is the emblem of the people or the group. So if you go to the urban image, you have Jerusalem on the one side and Babylon on the other. That brings us up again against the question of the ambiguity between the social image and the individual image.Now there's another dimension of this relation of the social to the individual which we've already run into. We saw that the paradisal imagery of the Bible is in the first place a garden and in the second place a single tree, a tree of life. That leads to a general principle of imagery in the Bible, to a special kind of metaphor where the individual is identified with the class or group of things to which it belongs. That is the type of metaphor that I sometimes call a royal metaphor, because it underlies one of the most pervasive of human institutions, the institution of kingship. We've already seen how the king, Solomon, inevitably interposes himself in the symbolic expansion of the Song of Songs. Similarly, Elizabeth II can draw crowds wherever she appears, not because there is anything remarkable about her appearance, but because she dramatizes the metaphor of society as a single body. That has been the function of the king in all ages, to represent in an individual form the unity of his society.The corporate or class image, like the city, would also be, on the principles of this royal metaphor, identified with a single building. That building would most naturally be the house consecrated to the city's god, in other words, the temple. Thus the city is the bride and the Temple is the bridegroom.We are told several times in the Gospels that the Temple is to be identified with the body of Christ. In the Gospels, Jesus is represented as saying 'Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up'. The narrator adds that he was speaking of the temple of his body. The author of Revelation, in describing the New Jerusalem, is very emphatic that there was no Temple therein, because, as he explains, the place of the Temple has been taken by the body of God. There is, consequently, in this metaphorical symbolism, the unity of the bridegroom and the bride in which all the buildings of the city are one building, the house of many mansions. And the corresponding demonic image is of course the Tower of Babel. Northrop Frye and Michael Dolzani Copyright © 1982, 2013, Victoria University TEACHERS GUIDE: PROGRAM 5 Download a PDF of the Teacher's Guide SEXUAL IMAGERY: THE BRIDE AND THE BRIDEGROOM (Note: AV=Authorized Version, OT=Old Testament, NT=New Testament) Apocalyptic or ideal imagery on the human level has three forms—individual, social and sexual. Sexual imagery, in which two become one, resolves the conflict of individual and social ideals of human life. The symbolism of Bridegroom and Bride expands to become the marriage of a king to his land or his people and the relationship of Christ with his Church. The demonic bride figure is the Great Whore, whose spouse is Antichrist.Program Lecture Outline: Key Facts - Apocalyptic (or ideal) imagery on the human level: individual and social ideals of human life inevitably conflict. - This problem is resolved by the sexual imagery of Bridegroom and Bride, in which two become one while remaining two people. - This expands to become the relation of Christ (the symbolic male) to the body of Christians (symbolically female, though including both men and women), the Bride being identified with Jerusalem. - The Song of Songs: symbolism of a rural wedding expands to become the marriage of a king to his land. This wedding expands in Judaism to become the covenant of God and Israel, in Christianity to become the love of Christ for his Bride the Church. - The demonic marital figure: the Great Whore of Revelation. Biblical whoredom is theological (idolatry), not sexual, but does derive in part from the Canaanite practice of temple prostitution. - Antichrist, spouse of the Great Whore. Not necessarily a world ruler, but the world ruler who demands divine worship. Nero, Antiochus, Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar: types of Antichrist. Biblical Passages CitedRevelation 21:2.—Jerusalem 'prepared as a bride adorned for her husband'.Song of Songs 1:5.—'I am black, but comely'.Song of Songs 4:12.—'A garden inclosed is my sister'.Isaiah 62:4.—Beulah, the married land.I Kings 21.—Jezebel.Matthew 22:21.—'Render unto Caesar'.II Thessalonians 2.—The Antichrist.Revelation 13.—The Antichrist.Revelation 13:18—The number of the beast, 666.Revelation 14:8.—'Babylon is fallen'.The Teacher's Perspective DEMONIC APOCALYPTICAntichrist (Nero, Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus) individualsexual social Bridegroom (Christ) Whore (Babylon) Bride(Jerusalem: people)The above chart for this program appears in slightly simpler form in The Great Code, p. 154, and as the 'human' category in the charts on pp. 166-67. The students may be referred to these first, both to place this program in its larger context as an expanded discussion of one category in the total Biblical structure of imagery, and to make clear something that is likely to confuse students about the figure of Antichrist. There are two contexts for the discussion of the Antichrist. As the chart on p. 167 indicates, the figure of Antichrist proper is the form of the parody demonic on the divine level, a demonic parody of divinity itself: as such, it will be discussed again in Program 10. But the image gets imported into our present discussion of the demonic form of human life when the purely human tyrant makes his inevitable bid to become worshipped as a god. When he does so, he puts on the mask of Antichrist, so to speak, and in fact becomes his agent and visible form.The class may go on to examine how the symbol of Antichrist has appeared historically. There are two forms of this, the applied and the assumed. The applied version is what Prof. Frye is referring to when he speaks of its being defined as whatever the interpreter is most afraid of in his time: the students may look at The Divine Comedy's application of the symbol to Philip of France.The assumed version is a rather more interesting category, one which perhaps fully came into its own only in the 19th century. Its traditional root, however, lies in a slightly broader explanation of what the human tyrant is: he is the man who has sold himself to the demonic for the sake of power. Therefore, he is very close to one of the great symbols of Western literature, the figure of Faust. Faust is by no means necessarily an Antichrist figure, but he may in his more unredeemed forms be closely associated with it: in Thomas Mann's Dr. Faustus, for example, he is directly paralleled with the rise of Nazi Germany.Hitler himself, as Prof. Frye notes, played his Antichrist role with great conviction: the swastika is one of the most ancient human symbol, but in this context it becomes a sinister parody of the cross. Christians may wince to note how Nazism also picked up the demonic corruptions within historical Christianity itself, especially anti-Semitism. There is a further link here: the career of Mann's Faustus is modeled on that of Nietzsche, who wrote a book called The Antichrist, from which the teacher may choose excerpts for the class to discuss: Nietzsche called himself an Antichristian because he regarded Christianity as a decadent corruption of the will to live. He would have hated Hitler, and yet it was a perversion of his 'will to power' which was adopted by the Nazis as their 'philosophy'. Hitler failed: but the teacher may well be teaching this class around the year 1984, and Orwell's Big Brother may serve as an example of what Antichrist looks like as the triumph of human tyranny.The images of Bride and Whore in the Bible are sometimes not just allusions, but are the nucleus of extended pieces of writing which the class may look at in more detail, like the Song of Songs or the story of Tamar. But the meaning of the Bride figure can also be illuminated by examples outside the Bible itself. Not only Marvell's 'The Garden', mentioned by Prof. Frye, but Shakespeare's `The Phoenix and the Turtle, and Donne's 'The Extakel elaborate the mystery of the 'two in one' through the use of sexual imagery. The teacher may point out that mysticism has almost always been drawn to the use of sexual imagery to describe the experience of union with God. This is not exclusively a Christian phenomenon: it appears in Muslim mysticism too, for example. But the teacher may show a picture of Bernini's famous sculpture of St. Teresa in ecstasy, along with examining Crashaw's poems, contemporary with the sculpture, on St. Theresa and Mary Magdalen, 'The weeper' and 'Hymne to St. Theresa'.If the seminar questions in the video program are any indication, one thing the students will be very anxious to get clear is the distinction between women as people and women used as symbols. There is no doubt that the distinction exists in the Bible itself: it is not simply antifeminist. On the other hand, there is also no doubt that the beginnings of an historical corruption of the original symbolism also begins already to appear in the text of the Bible: the rationalization of patriarchy is clearly there too, even if it is not all that is there. Consequently, the teacher must tread carefully. One way to distinguish the two is to compare two writers, both of whom drew their symbolism from the Bible, but whose treatments differ greatly. Blake's symbolism of the Female Will (see Prof. Frye's Fearful Symmetry) is clearly the Mystery that enshrouds human tyranny: by contrast D.H. Lawrence in The Plumed Serpent is so remarkably eccentric as to accuse women of having orgasms merely as a manifestation of their wilfulness. One may look also at the figure of the prostitute who gives Thomas Mann's version of Faustus the syphilis which is at once the source of his ability to create and the source of his eventual madness.Supplementary Reading 1. Biblical Passages Revelation 17. —The Great Whore.Genesis 38.—The story of Tamar.Deuteronomy 23:17-18.—Practice of temple prostitution forbidden.I Kings 14:24.—Male temple prostitution among heathen peoples.Psalm 45.—Bride from another land; royal marriage.Book of Ruth.—The story of Ruth.Jeremiah 51:6-9.—'Babylon is fallen': associated with Rev. 14:8. The cup of the Whore. 2. Corresponding Passages in The Great Code Chapter Six. Metaphor II.p. 141. The Great Whore.pp. 154-56. Human imagery: Bridegroom and Bride. Chapter Four. Typology I.pp. 95-96. The Antichrist.p. 99. The Antichrist. II Clement 14:2.—In the 'Apocryphal New Testament (see program 1) 'The male is Christ, the female is the Church'. Essay or Discussion questions - Examine the story of Samson's betrayal by his Philistine wife in Judges 14 and by Delilah in Judges 16. Compare these to Milton's Delilah in Samson Agonistes. Is the figure of the Whore lurking in the background of this symbolism? - Examine Robert Lowell's poem 'As a Plane Tree By the Water' in light of this program. The title is from Ecclesiasticus (the Wisdom of Jesus) in the Apocrypha, 24:14, and was traditionally associated with the Virgin Mary. - Examine the ending of Dickens' David Copperfield (a book full of the imagery of brides, mothers, and harlots), where David's bride Agnes is portrayed as an angelic guide, rather like Dante's Beatrice. What does this rather unconvincing passage suggest about the confusion of human women with symbolic roles? Compare this to the portrait of Estella as a forgiven harlot type (see program 6) in Great Expectations. - Read the section of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity in which he states that wives should be obedient to their husbands. Lewis claims to be expounding ideas held by all Christians, regardless of doctrinal differences. Is this true, or can he have confused symbolic roles with human relations? (This is not a question with a simple yes or no answer).

CONNECT offers women in our church the opportunity to grow in their relationship with Jesus Christ and with others. If you’re a woman in search of a welcoming community, then Connect is the place for you! We have many activities available throughout the year. Our heart for Women’s Ministry as Daughters of “The King”: - EMBRACE – who and where you are, Psalm 139:14-16, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made” - ENCOURAGE – to lean into Christ as your Savior and or continuously grow up in Christ; 1 Thessalonian 5:11, “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. - EXCITE – to be excited in developing and using your God-given gifts, Romans 12:6a “We have different gifts, according to the grace given us.” - ENLIST – to love and serve, their families, their church and in the world. Matthews 5: 14-16, “You are the light of the world…. In the same way, let your light shine before men…” Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. BIBLE STUDIES AND EVENTS Bible Studies offer a wonderful environment for developing friendships, having community (being accepted, valued and loved) as we are learning & growing in our relationship with God! Wednesday Mornings | 10am-12pm Contact Frannie Miller or Nicole Simpson Sunday Mornings | 8:00-9:30am (Starts March 4th) Woman's Bible Study: Discerning the Voice of God This session study is by Priscilla Shirer, Discerning the Voice of God. In this study, they will learn to discover the root to clear and daily communication with God - humble obedience. And to learn how surrender unlocks His many blessings intended for us, centers us in His will, and helps us discern His voice in everyday life. Download Doc Oak Ridge women are authentic. Testimonies shared in studies encourage women to continue on in our walk with God and gives us hope.

Alter Aeon Player Lookup Note - player title and descriptions are settable by the player and probably do not reflect the views of the administration. Proper name: Protoss Ground string: Protoss is here. Created: Wed Dec 6 20:42:05 2017 Protoss is of average height and of light build, with blue eyes. His red hair is long, but unkempt and messy. His skin is dark, and you guess him to be fairly young, perhaps around 18 years Level Mage: 31 Cler: 26 Thie: 6 Warr: 21 Necr: 11 Drui: 16 Total levels in all classes: 111 Clan: enlightened Rank: third rank member Level Feats Performed --------------------------------- 33 Rescued a kidnapped child from the clutches of an insidious oni-baba. 30 Thwarted Falnar the Shadowmancer's plans. 30 Prevented Ralnoth from being devoured by an invasion of giant termites. 24 Defeated the helpless coma patient in mortal combat. 31 Retrieved Jesric's spellbook from the outer planar ice world 34 Rescued a pair of maidens from the clutches of some crazed worshippers. 28 Is the reigning chess grandmaster by defeating Viktor 35 Got a pair of kenderskin gloves 30 Defeated Vesden the Conquerer restoring peace to the city of Linholt. 31 Received the esteem of the people of Ralnoth for reporting bots and leeches! 29 Resurrected the ancient blade of the god of mischief, Coolbeans. 33 Rescued a slave from Castle Radobaj 28 Fed the kitten. 28 Defeated the bear marauding through the forest southwest of Ralnoth 21 Slew Locos, the terror under the well 27 Assisted an angry dwarf in finding out what happened to his missing companions. 33 Tracked down some missing mail intended for Ironbay 27 Tangled with an ancient tangletree and survived! 27 Liberated a special mushroom from the Trogdolytes for an alchemist in Dragon Tooth. 28 Slayer of the innocent dragon known as Graystorm. 27 Captured an escaped tiger and returned it safely to its cage. 27 Captured an escaped Bigfoot and returned it safely to its cage. 27 Captured an escaped pygmy dragon and returned it safely to its cage. 28 Captured an escaped ruby red wyvren and returned it safely to its cage. 27 Captured an escaped zebracorn and returned it safely to its cage. 27 Captured an escaped black bear and returned it safely to its cage. 27 Captured an escaped albino elephant and safely returned it to its cage. 27 Captured an escaped emerald green griffin and returned it safely back to its cage. 27 Captured an escaped monkey and returned it safely to its cage. 27 Captured an escaped alligator and returned it safely to its cage. 28 Proved to be most honorable by even giving a troll a chance. 26 Performed a few random tasks, including washing a noble's nasty panties, how gross! 26 Restored the legendary dwarven bracelet. 27 Looted some ancient drow treasure. 27 Found and returned the svirfneblin king's lost club. 28 Discovered what happen to a missing delivery from the village of Woodhaven. 27 Expunged Kaladun the lich from the world once and for all! 25 Exterminated the queen spider ensuring that their species will surely die. 24 Thrashed Pantrell and gave his tome of secrets to Deeamos. 17 Figured out the mystery of the old mansion and found its hidden treasure. 23 Accepted Odin's quest. 25 Tracked down and returned the stolen crate of repair parts to Dordak. 31 Captured the escaped faerie and sent her back to her cell. 31 Forced entry into the treasury, and took the leprechauns' finest possessions 29 Emerged as the champion of the grand Melee. 28 Regained the armor of a lost and forgotten warrior. 25 Annihilated the shadowy demon and sent him to his final resting place. 24 Used a disguise to join the Ghost-face Orc Clan 20 Freed some slaves from the cruel pain and torture of an orc slavemaster. 24 Searched the swamp for the old historian and then helped him recover his stolen book. 23 Found and retrieved the Staff of Understanding. 23 Found and retrieved the Mace of Knowledge. 22 Found and retrieved the Dagger of Stealth. 23 Found and retrieved the Sword of Strength. 22 Purged the world of Nafien's taint. 24 Recovered a book titled 'Effects of Exposure to Toxic Gases' for Aerlon the librarian. 21 Escorted a metal hunter out of a stinky situation. 24 Recovered an egg from a fantoo for Pyba the alchemist. 20 Found that alligator you flushed, and boy was it big! 23 Accepted quest to free the musicians. 19 Completely destroyed a giant fiery red drake. 19 Completely destroyed a black scaled drake. 19 Completely destroyed a large yellow drake. 20 Completely destroyed a dark brown drake. 19 Completely destroyed a large azure blue drake. 19 Completely destroyed a silvery gray drake. 19 Completely destroyed an emerald green drake. 19 Disposed of Anekam the drake keeper. 20 Piloted a hang glider over the great Archais archipelago. 19 Captured and returned the Wizard brightflame's escaped familiar. 20 Helped the citadel to restock its supply of healing mud. 19 Cured the old mage of the hiccups! 17 Climbed the beanstalk, and retrieved a golden egg. 17 Exterminated the master tonberry saving the moogle village. 14 Freed Ann the banshee from the curse of the vampire. 17 Skillfully obtained a lost book on poisons and sold it to the Thieves Guild. 16 Recovered the legendary Gem of Knowledge. 16 Released a genie from a bottle just to have her vanish and not even get a single wish! 16 Retrieved and returned Russell's golden compass 16 Slaughtered and tore the hide from a stone drake deep in the underwilds. 15 Infiltrated the underground city of Runn-Khal and ransacked their treasure chamber. 9 Squashed a spider and made me some armor! 15 Braved the Haunted Hills to kill a Winter Wolf. 12 Destroyed the bloody curse stone in the haunted hills 12 Destroyed the spirit curse stone in the haunted hills 12 Destroyed the poison curse stone in the haunted hills 6 Returned a lost child to his mother 9 Obtained the title: Mouseslayer, mmk 11 Harvested some honeycomb for the local bakery. 9 Became a hero by making a child smile! 7 Located and returned the key to the lockbox 7 Did not eat the kitten. 7 Defeated a lesser pit fiend 6 Taught some punk kid a lesson he'll never forget. 5 Freed the old wizard from his glass prison! 5 Found Indiana Jones' Legacy 7 Defeated the ferocious mugwump on behalf of a retired hunter. 5 Put down the deadly white wolf. 9 Brought a ray of sunshine to brighten an imp's day! 4 Returned a lost memento to an old man. 8 Collected a bounty for cleaning up some of the nuisances in the Greenwood forest. 5 Found the needle in the haystack! 4 Returned the sacred chalice to the Shrine of the Vemarken Faithful. 4 Translate the strange paper from Uffspigot Level Deeds Accomplished --------------------------------- 32 Crushed the hopes of Durant, the Master Enchanter of creating an army of glass. 31 Eliminated the leader of the mercenaries in Dragnok. 32 Freed the rune spider from the spell that binded her. 36 Retrieved an ancient seeing stone for the Ralnoth Mage's Guild. 26 Discovered the hospitals namesake and put an end to his diabolical plan. 32 Expedited a pistol replica for the Ralnoth Museum of World Wonders 32 Delivered a letter to Bandera Azul 31 Avenged the villagers murdered by their own. 32 Tricked into making the crappiest leggings in the world! 31 Ended all the sacrifices to the dark gods in Dragnok. 31 Put an end to the evil intentions of a drug crazed worshipper. 30 Answered a call for aid from Dragnok. 31 Defeated the void saving the magic of the world. 32 Returned the king's worldly possessions to Queen Calene. 31 Provided a thirsty child with much needed water 30 Helped prevent the Black Rot from swallowing Ralnoth. 30 Wiped out a human supremacist cult for the Ralnoth Clerics' Guild. 32 Recovered a dependent clause for a bookworm 31 Destroyed the Chaos Beholder, disrupting the forces of Chaos in Old Thalos. 31 Won the rat race by eliminating the competition thus winning the coveted green cheese 31 Aided the blue gang in its quest to conquer the North Ralnoth Slums. 30 Rescued the Princess of Radobaj 27 Defeated the mad smith's mechanical monstrosity 28 Helped the villagers of Woodhaven out of a bind. 27 Escorted a shipwrecked sailor back to his captain. 28 Breached the Fetid Caves of Pestilence to rescue a dwarven child. 29 Ruined the plans of Malkon the Plague Vampire and saved Archais from his evil machinations. 29 Hunted down and eliminated Malkon the Plague Vampire in the fetid Caves of Pestilence. 28 Searched the fetid Caves of Pestilence and destroyed the weather machine. 31 Eliminated the source of the hideous mutations in Cranston Hills 31 Helped purify the water supply in Cranston Hills 32 Rescued all the survivors in Cranston Hills 28 Freed Iron Bay of the kobold menace 27 Recaptured a dwarven smith's mightiest weapon 29 Recovered various ingredients to help an alchemist to create a special brew. 29 Defeated the legendary rougarou, while investigating the reports of a missing cleric. 29 Exorcised the evil spirit that possessed the Hedgemaid of the Shadowclaw Swamp. 25 Helped to repair Captain Uro's merchant ship. 28 Freed Reb, Ana and Callie from the nightmares that haunted them. 28 Captured all the escaped animals in turn freeing Ana from her nightmare. 28 Used the legendary Pundora's box to rid the world of a few annoying puns. 26 Constructed a special portal to help free Zeyda the collector of dreams. 26 Helped to make the dream nectar and awaken the sleepers. 26 Risked life and limb to recover a stolen egg and return it to Graystorm the dragon. 27 Sent the undead drow priestess to meet her goddess, allowing the svirfneblin to live in peace. 28 Purged the Amber Forest of all the evil that was corrupting it. 27 Expelled the curse placed on a little girl by Kaladun the lich. 27 Helped a Shaman to further her studies in poisons. 26 Freed a druid from a truly dire predicament. 27 Crafted an item to make the life of a retired ranger a bit easier. 27 Fulfilled the life long dream of a wood carver by helping them to craft a shield of blackwood. 28 Collected a DNA sample from one of the Tyranid warriors for Sh'kar the evil biomancer. 32 Delivered some provisions to the soldiers camped outside the village of Cranston Hills 26 Put an end to Sh'kar the evil biomancer's foul experiments. 27 Harvested some webbing from the spider caves for the cleric Helina in Dragon Tooth. 26 Braved the dark forest to deliver some supplies to a mad hermit. 26 Delivered a bundle of herbs and spices to the monks in the Monastery of Dreams. 27 Cleared the poison from the ancient drow city. 28 Plundered the decimated drow city and uncovered its history. 24 Bested the Norse gods and took their most prized possessions. 24 Bested the flying Valkyrie and took her most prize possession. 24 Bested Thor and took his prize possession. 23 Bested Odin and took his prize possession. 27 Discovered what was causing the patrol soldiers of Fort Magnesia to become ill. 26 Helped the centaurs rid their land of wyvren 26 Collected wyvren scales on behalf of Tarkon the blacksmith 26 Brought Nammen some hides for tanning. 33 Discovered what happened to Azeroth Keep and uncovered drow invasion plans. 27 Aided Fil the Secondboy by assassinating his older brother, thus promoting his status. 26 Tried to negotiate a deal with Azeroth Keep for their fruit, but failed. 26 Travelled all over Archais gathering books for the library in Gad's Landing. 26 Acquired a book titled "The legendary dwarven bracelet" from Glankas in Dragon Tooth. 25 Halted the attempt of the necromancer Darsakius from opening a rift to the demon world. 24 Delivered a broken gadget to the Master Tinker for the cook in the Inn of the Lonely Wanderer. 31 Has been thoroughly manipulated by the fae of Archais. 31 Assassinated Lady Kindri, ending her bid to take over the fae kingdom. 31 Discovered the smuggling ring's purpose and uncovered catastrophic plans. 30 Found, broke up, and looted the elusive smuggling ring's headquarters. 30 Tracked down a leprechaun smuggler. 30 Helped a leprechaun to obtain their missing supplies and make a pair of boots. 30 Quenched the fires of the lava worm. 30 Fought bravely and was victorious over the mist dragon 30 Proved The loch ness monster was real and then killed it. 29 Partied it up in the Magnolia Festival. 29 Invoked the fabled Magnolia Festival. 29 Met the Fairy Queens. 29 Did some hunting on behalf of a werewolf pack. 29 Met the leader of the werewolves and learned about their history. 28 Investigated a diplomatic crisis between the cliff gnomes and the dryads. 28 Disposed of some nuissances bothering the cliff gnomes. 28 Became a friend of the forest by curing a sick unicorn. 28 Did a little dirty work for a "good" cause. 28 Returned Custos' missing key. 26 Extricated Burgundy's pet cloud from a hostile storm elemental 27 Tracked down the research team stranded on the fire world of Khinzhai. 24 Gave that bully a taste of his own medicine! 25 Protected the secrets of Thaumaturgy from undeserving djinni 28 Captured some sunlight for Custos. 24 Destroyed and dismantled the whirling machine of destruction known as the Juggernaut. 24 Broke the ice with the tinker gnomes by helping to thaw out a frozen gnome. 24 Tested a gnomish rocket pack and had a blast! 23 Help the tinker gnomes to solve a crash landing problem with their elevator system. 24 Is the new hobgoblin champion. 26 Valiantly avenged the deaths of several dwarves for one of their kin. 26 Killed the trider. 26 Eliminated the black arachnid. 26 Found the missing dwarf in the Blackwater Hollows. 25 Aided the smith in finishing his greatest creation. 27 Gained access to the land of the fairies 27 Momentarily saw through a powerful illusion, confirming a cartographer's theory. 25 Achieved the rank of journeyman in the Thieves Guild. 25 Achieved the rank of apprentice in the Thieves Guild. 25 Achieved the rank of bandit in the Thieves Guild. 25 Achieved the rank of thug in the Thieves Guild. 24 Received a bounty for taking out a pair of murderous thieves. 24 Made a secret delivery to the Thieves Den. 24 Ambushed some bandits and took back a stolen money sack. 25 Prevented the ghostface orcs from gaining access to Gad's via the sewers. 24 Rescued a group of musicians from the ghostface orcs. 25 Avenged the death of a woman's only child. 24 Freed Curlie the musician from the Skull caverns. 24 Freed Moe the musician from the Skull caverns. 24 Freed Larry the musician from the Skull caverns. 24 Cleansed the Archais swamp of the Great Unclean One. 24 Put an end to the unnatural experiments of the druid Guillermo Dunkelbaum 23 Challenged the six masters of the Lotus Monastery and was victorious. 23 Hired on as a mercenary for a time to prove they were a skilled fighter. 23 Eliminated a threat to the Lotus Monastery and brought them peace at last. 22 Has proven to be worthy of being called a rogue. 23 Became an honorary member of the Planar Research Guild 23 Collected data from the Heavyside Layer 22 Apprenticed to a blacksmith in the Lotus Monastery for a time. 23 Had to do some fishing to trade for a lost book. 23 Got rid of some pesky birds and helped the Lotus Monastery get back to business. 23 Collected data from the elemental plane of earth 23 Collected data from the nomagic biolab 23 Collected data from Valhalla 21 Defeated the guardian serpent to gain access to Asgaard. 23 Collected data from the outer planar ice world 23 Collected data from the fire world of Khinzhai 24 Delivered a small bag of chickory coffee to Hal in the Lotus Monastery. 24 Slayed a chromatic dragon to prevent it from attacking Gad's Landing. 24 Dived into the sewers below Gad's Landing to discover what was causing a blockage. 24 Retrieved some shavings for the Grandmaster Odi from the outer planar ice world. 24 Acquired the tome of Demonic Lore from Cyrilla the Black in the Inn of the Lonely Wanderer. 23 Acquired a book titled "The Lotus Monastery" from the scholar Bruticus. 23 Expunged the taint from a forest and the rogue druid that created it. 23 Ended the evil plans of a rogue druid. 22 Treated the soil in the forest north of Smuggler's in hopes of removing the taint. 22 Gathered various samples throughout the tainted forest for a group of druids. 22 Escorted a druidess through the tainted forest on behalf of Smuggler's Cove. 22 Assassinated some young upstart who was trying to replace the boss in Smuggler's Cove. 22 Disposed of evidence that might have convicted a prisoner in Gad's Landing. 22 Snooped out and eliminated the spy hidden amongst the smugglers. 22 Smuggled a few items to prove they could be trusted. 21 Collected a few debts owed to the villagers of Seaside. 20 Collected a debt owed to Kyna in Kyna's General Store. 20 Collected a debt owed to Nailo in The Golden Phoenix Restaurant. 22 Delivered a message to Smuggler's Cove from the Archipelago. 21 Eradicated the adaro in the atoll so the researchers could complete their work. 21 Lifted the curse cast upon Dentin's temple by Kenai. 21 Became the fabled Black Bandit of Seaside. 21 Sunk Thor's Hammer blocking the Viking raiders from getting their supplies. 21 Plundered the Copper Dragon for the Magistrate's book. 21 Delivered some much needed provisions to the lighthouse. 21 Heisted the fabled blue diamond off the Lady Luck. 21 Swiped a basilisk's egg off the Grumpy Dwarf. 21 Pilfered the chains of true binding off the ship known as the Leviathan. 21 Reclaimed a lost family heirloom. 22 Solved the mystery of the strange noises coming from below Vera's house in Northshore. 21 Acquired a guide to fishing from Gil Dunne in the Archais Archipelago. 21 Helped the mayor of Northshore to clean up his crab problem. 20 Made an old fisherman's day by giving him his favorite food. 20 Made a child happy by returning his ball 21 Made a few deliveries to Northshore from the village of Seaside. 20 Collected a debt owed to Slade the bartender in the Nightshade Tavern. 20 Collected a debt owed to Fargan the butcher. 21 Dealt with the foul stench of Castle Kraftrager. 20 Collected a debt owed to Torba Hammerclaw. 21 Cleared out the castle. 19 Broke the curse afflicting the hero of Seaside. 21 Went fishing without a pole and got me a dragonfish. 20 Acquired a book titled "Quickness of Action" from the Wizard Brightflame in Seaside. 19 Hunted down and exterminated the bugs in the cellar of the Golden Phoenix Inn. 21 Delivered a puppet to a woman in the carnival. 20 Delivered a message from the captain in Naphtali to the Ranger Patch in Gad's. 19 Visited a faerie circle and brought a mushroom back to the ranger. 19 Exterminated the fungus that was animating the dead on the Ancestral Island. 19 Took a dive into Clearwater cove to recover a lost chest. 19 Pounded an ogre into a bloody pulp to recover a lost heirloom. 19 Returned a stolen pendant to its rightful owner. 19 Assisted the villagers of Idlewood to solve their problems and in fulfilling their needs. 19 Gathered some clams, caught a few fish and trapped a lobster for the Deep Sea Delights in Idlewood. 19 Collected the special ingredients needed to save the life of Kolok the mystic. 19 Disbanded the evil sect and released the lifestones of the seven legendary sisters. 19 Prevailed over Durath the Sorcerer, collected and then released the lifestone of Taygete. 19 Tracked down and recovered a missing antique ring. 19 Prevailed over the avatar Uball, collected and then released the lifestone of Sterope. 19 Prevailed over Tegla the temptress, collected and then released the lifestone of Celaeno. 19 Prevailed over Erov the druid, collected and then released the lifestone of Merope. 19 Prevailed over Bledri the necromancer, collected and then released the lifestone of Alcyone. 19 Prevailed over Rataga the assassin, collected and then released the lifestone of Electra. 19 Prevailed over Lilin the warrioress, collected and then released the lifestone of Maia. 19 Showed a devil ray who the true devil was. 19 Beheaded some hornets to collect a bounty on their heads. 18 Delivered a map and accepted the quest to retrieve the seven lifestones. 18 Spoke to the Naphtali commander on behalf of the ranger Taros. 18 Completed a few tasks given by the ranger in Naphtali. 17 Reported to the captain of the Naphtali guard of the defeat of Qoorik. 16 Discovered the fate of a young lady's missing uncle. 17 Found and brought down the demon city of Qoorik. 15 Broke the curse on the Haunted Highway 14 Found new questions to the mystery of what happened to New Thalos. 14 Slew Roch'tar, master of the catacombs 16 Verified the rumors threatening Naphtali 13 Freed the spirit of King Rathborne 16 Hewed the head from the orc chieftain as a warning to the rest of his kind. 16 Brought a farmer's daughter home to rest. 17 Proved to be a real treasure hunter by discovering all the secrets of the minotaurs maze. 16 Informed the proper authorities of the demise of a missing man. 16 Skillfully navigated the maze of the black minotaur and laid claim to his prize possessions. 15 Spent some time as a page to the Earl Montebac. 16 Returned Ardin's remains to his wife, Edna. 15 Soothed a mother's soul by helping cure her sick son. 15 Sought out the barkeep for more information. 15 Freed a druid from imprisonment in the underground city of Runn-Khal. 14 Scouted out the abandoned mines in the Kordwood for a bronzesmith. 14 Secured the master vampire's rule by slaying a would-be vampire lord 14 Investigated the mysterious attack on the gnomes. 15 Made an unexpected profit on some winter wolf hair. 12 Solved the curse of the haunted hills and reported to the Hierophant. 12 Broke the curse on the Haunted Hills 9 Recovered and restored the champion's helm. 16 Collected some black ore for a bronzesmith in Naphtali. 12 Delivered a letter to the bronzesmith. 12 Braved the Forgotten Muskeg to collect a special ingredient for an alchemist. 12 Uncovered the mystery of the Forgotten Muskeg. 9 Snuffed out the mole king and rescued the Mayor's wife. 9 Extricated the Gnomian slaves from the caves of the moles. 9 Delivered a package to the Lady Angelia. 8 Helped to cure a sick child. 11 Routed the necromantic cult from the interior of Ancalador. 9 Reported to Mayor Widgetbottom in Gnomian. 8 Culled the spider infestation in the old Indira forest. 8 Vanquished the rat king and put an end to its machinations. 7 Parlayed a deal between the demons and the gnomes to get the mines operating again. 7 Vanquished the foul Nekker of the Blue Marshes. 7 Delivered an important package from the mayor of Hildabrad to Vemarken. 7 Became an honorary member of the village of Hildabrad. 7 Helped Joann to find her name tag. 7 Helped the town shaman to get rid of a bully. 7 Put a big fat rat on a diet, permanently! 7 Found the key to the donation box. 6 Brought Dinger a bag of goodies. 5 Exposed the cult of Kenai near Vemarken 5 Gathered a few items for an apothecary in Vemarken. 5 Solved the riddle of the foaming fountain. 5 Helped the local merchants of Sloe deliver crucial shipments. 6 "Took care" of Ol' Blue. 6 Helped to make some important deliveries between Vemarken and Indira. 5 Chatted up the Mayor of Vemarken on behalf of the general storekeeper. 4 Made it to Pellam and broke the blockade 3 Freed the graveyard from the Vampiress 2 Brought the sunlight staff back to the encampment. 2 Found some peppergrass leaves. 2 Brought food for the hibernating bear. 0 Defeated the Carver Shaman in mortal combat! 0 Discovered an ambush party! Level Legacy Quests --------------------------------- 35 Reconciled Linlin and Noony's love with their respective villages 33 Smashed the bandit ring terrorizing the Alter Aeon anniversary of 2018. 32 Demonstrated the law of the Wayfarers to a bunch of Combine deserters. 31 Turned the tables on the bandits and raided them for a change. 30 Was awarded a symbol of the Wayfarers' esteem. 30 Failed to ambush the bandits at Red Dell, but triumphed anyway! 30 Almost, but didn't quite, capture the bandit leader! 29 Found correspondence giving clues to who is behind the bandit raids. 29 Became a full member of the Guild of Wayfarers 32 Helped to thwart the bandit raids during the Alter Aeon Anniversary of 2018 36 Successfully faced all the challenges of both Baron brothers. 35 Victoriously faced and defeated all the challenges of the Snow Baron. 35 Slapped around the mighty Harry Flames till he gave up his crown. 34 Helped the elves to collect more items as a favor for the Snow Baron. 34 Boldly faced Kurthag-Zill, the brimstone dwarf chieftain and was victorious. 34 Gathered different items needed to make the winterberry punch. 33 Spanked the Inferno Queen in one on one combat. 32 Helped the elves to collect various items as a favor for the Snow Baron. 31 Bested Mikitarvis the fire king in one on one combat. 28 Chose the way of the Snow Baron. 35 Victoriously faced and defeated all the challenges of the Flame Baron. 34 Slapped around old Jack Frost till he gave up his crown. 34 Helped the elves to collect more items as a favor for the Flame Baron. 31 Helped the elves to restock the EPDS supply of presents. 34 Boldly faced Vazgore, chief of the glacier dwarves and was victorious. 34 Gathered various items needed to make the winterberry punch. 34 Spanked the Snow Queen in one on one combat. 33 Helped the elves to collect various items as a favor for the Flame Baron. 33 Met Kilzann the ice king in one on one combat and was victorious. 30 Helped Frosty with a little cosmetic reconstruction 29 Chose the way of the Flame Baron. 21 Hunted the world for the proper present. 18 I was blessed by an elf during the winter solstice of 2017. 30 While exploring during the winter solstice of 2017, I found a present, and kept it! Time of last save: Mon Aug 6 22:40:00 2018 This page has been referenced 1260 times since last boot.

When I first got my period, I was presented with the two options of how I could “deal with” this: either insert a tampon, or tape a disposable pad into my undies. I remember finding both ideas confronting. The tampons seemed an invasive concept; the disposable pads I could so easily draw a connection between them and a disposable nappy. Neither seemed an attractive option, but given there were no others, I succumbed to using what I could. Sixty years ago, when my grandmother first got her period, she recalls: “…we were to use a bulky cotton pad – wrapped in a netted outer that resembled a potato-sack hessian. The pad was kept in place by threading a belt through two loops at either end, and held up, like a girdle. If you were lucky enough to afford one, you could get one made from elastic that stayed up on its own. But most of us used pinned or hooked ones. Some pads were washable – this was the economical option. There were throw-away ones but during WWII not all of us could afford those. You did what you had to in order to get by…” In contrast, I certainly consider the two options of disposable pads and tampons far more optimal than my grandmother’s. However, today, on the other hand, as we live in a modern society which has overcome most of the stigma associated with women’s menstruation, there are more and more products aimed to serve the purpose. As a globally-conscious society, we have also developed a consideration for ecology, economy and sustainability of our planet. We are aware of the need to reduce landfill and mass-production and the alarming lack of resources the world is facing. As a result, more products are becoming available – and favoured by some women – as an alternative to disposable products. There is a far greater selection available to women today for dealing with their periods than ever! From washable cloth pads and tampons, to cup devices and sponges – all in addition to the disposable options we are used to. The choice to “go green” when it comes to “the red” is a very personal one. What suits some will not necessarily suit others. Here is the reasoning behind why some women choose sustainable menstruation products. It is undeniable that disposable pads and tampons contribute heftily to the planet’s landfill, not to mention that the majority of materials used in producing a disposable pad or tampon is derived from crude oil – a commodity known to be non-sustainable. For the eco-conscious among us, reusable menstruation products can provide an enviro-friendly alternative that resonates with their ethical and moral viewpoints. If we break it down: Women, on average, experience a lifetime menstruation span of 41 years. If a woman is using 4 tampons/pads per day, for 5 days per month, she is using 20 disposable products per cycle. Twelve cycles per year equals 240 tampons or pads per annum. That equates to close to 10,000 tampons or pads you’ll use – and throw away – in a lifetime! Some women prefer the option of reusable menstrual products as the risk of Toxic Shock Syndrome is significantly less than in disposable items. The materials used to make disposable items are a fantastic environment for bacteria: they love synthetics, such as rayon, and dioxins used as a bleaching agent in some disposable products. Furthermore, disposable products are not sterile as many women assume them to be. Some proponents for reusable products suggest they feel they have more control over the cleanliness of their items than their manufactured alternatives. Another health-related aspect is that some women find they become irritated or have more instances of vaginitis, vaginosis or thrush when using synthetic products. Several of the reusable products available promote a “vagina-happy” atmosphere and can reduce or even eliminate these annoying irritations. Truth be told, there is an up-front investment involved in purchasing reusable menstruation products. However, the ongoing cost is negligible compared to the recurring expense of purchasing disposable products. Based on average, if you are to spend around $8.00 per cycle on disposable pads and/or tampons, once a month for approximately 41 years of your life, that’s an expense of close to $4,000 in a lifetime. Compared to an initial outlay of $100-200, and an ongoing laundry expense of approximately $0.75 for a load of washing (in the case of cloth pads/tampons), switching to reusable options can prove to be a financially-conservative option. To some, the idea of using reusable products is foreign, alarming or downright unattractive. To others, the benefits can outweigh the effort and confronting aspects of using reusable options. The choice is of course a highly personal one.

I Tried It: The Mooncup Have you ever tried a menstrual cup? I hadn’t, until recently. This goop article got me thinking about the implications of the cotton, chemicals and bleach in mainstream tampons. How many tampons do you think the average woman uses in a lifetime? Apparently it’s almost 11,000! That’s nearly 22 every menstrual cycle. And what are the implications of all that non-organic cotton going into one of the most absorbent parts of your body? Makes you think, doesn’t it? There are also the effects on the environment to consider. Many women still flush their used tampons down the loo, which puts a lot of pressure on water treatment plants, as tampons do not break down very easily. After a particularly painful period recently that included a few too many tampon mishaps, I decided to search for alternatives. Enter the Mooncup. This is a medical grade silicone cup that gets inserted into the vagina, instead of tampons and is meant to be much cleaner than using pads. When my Mooncup arrived, I looked at it and I figured, I’ve had a baby come out of there, how hard can this little cup be to manoeuvre? Well. It does take a bit of practice to get it in, just like it did when I first started using tampons, a long, long time ago. 🙂 And after a while, it becomes natural and effortless. Once you get the hang of inserting and removing it, the Mooncup can be kept in for up to 8 hours at a time, holding up to 15 mL of fluid at a time. You absolutely need to be comfortable with blood and with emptying and cleaning the cup throughout the day. And that means that menstrual cups just may not be right for some women. Here’s a great primer on how to easily insert and remove menstrual cups (link totally safe for work!). As for me, I love using the Mooncup and plan to continue using it indefinitely. Would you ever try an alternative to tampons and pads? P.S. If you’re not convinced, here’s a great natural tampon alternative.

We won’t give up. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. Ephesians 5:25-27 As husbands and fathers it’s sometimes challenging to lead our families in a godly way where we would demonstrate the love of God which is in us through Jesus-Christ. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, But against evil forces in spiritual sphere You are a spirit, in the Kingdom of God Stand firm against those behind the atmosphere Continue reading “Stand Firm” They are available Then the Lord said to Moses, 2 “See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, 3 and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills— 4 to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, 5 to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts. Exodus 31:1-5 Praise the Lord! I am always amazed to see how the Lord is make us able to do things. Here in this scriptures, the children of Israel had just come out of Egypt after 500 years of slavery and God, the Almighty made them able to create the Tabernacle. Continue reading “Knowledge and skills” Read the Word with willingness To get to know well the Author And From the One who always bless You will receive living water Continue reading “Read, Meditate” Speak in tongues Anyone who speaks in a tongue edifies themselves, but the one who prophesies edifies the church. 1 Corinthians 14:4 I know this subject has created a lot of misunderstanding in the body of Christ but the word of God remains the Truth even if men struggle to understand and apply it correctly. The gift of tongues is given to everyone, just as the gift of salvation. Continue reading “Build yourself up!” We are more Sing, O barren woman, you who never bore a child, burst into song, you who were never in labour, because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband. Isaiah 54:1 Praise the Lord who gives revelation through his word! I join with Isaiah saying “Rejoice my brother! Sing my sister” for we are indeed the children of the desolate woman. Continue reading “More than them” In time of trouble, all around falls apart His voice stands still, bringing peace to my heart My flesh always tries to tear my soul apart But I heard His mumble, my day can start Continue reading “His voice” Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession – to the praise of his glory. Ephesians 1:13-14 Did you read this verse above ? Wowww!!! So powerful if you believe it! Nothing can separate us from our Heavenly Father! Continue reading “With a seal” Bring your selfish desires to the cross So you can enjoy the peace in your heart Obedience not a duty but a choice Submit to Him and you will be smart. Continue reading “Obedience” In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied with action is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds and I will show you my faith by what I do. James 1:17-18 You cannot separate action from faith ! They go together like spirit and body. What you call faith, if it’s really faith, it will ultimately lead you into action. Continue reading “Faith without action ?” But he said so them, “It is I; don’t be afraid”. John 6:20 Praise the Lord! The disciples were in a boat struggling because of a strong wind and rough waters. Jesus was not in the boat, it was dark and they were terrified when they saw someone walking toward them on the water. Continue reading “It is I” Not because of my strength Not because of my wisdom Not because I give a tenth Not because I love freedom Continue reading “I’m Righteous” My son, pay attention to what I say; listen closely to my words. Do not let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart; for they are life to those who find them and health to a man’s whole body. Proverbs 4:20-22 Have you read this verse above ? Wowwww!! Praise the Lord for His words for they are life. The words that come out of the mouth of God are life! So amazing!!!! The purpose of His words is to give life to those who will receive those words. Continue reading “Words of life” I can see it shining in your eyes Like a star it can only amaze You are among those who recognize Continue reading “Eternal Life” After Jesus said this he looked toward heaven and prayed: “Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son that your Son may glorify you.” John 17:1 Jesus came on earth the show the way to God and He himself is the way. His life in the flesh was the perfect example of how a life should be lived on earth. Continue reading “Look toward heaven” Jesus was moved Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way. Matthew 15:32 I am so blessed to see how compassion can move God! This morning, I was praying in the Spirit but also with my understanding. I was asking the Lord to help me to hear from Him clearer. Continue reading “Moved by compassion” Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Matthew 19:14 The promises of our Heavenly Father will never be fulfilled in our lives in we do not receive them with a child like faith. The Lord made it really simple for us to receive, to find and to see opened doors but we often complicate things. Continue reading “Child like faith” You have been made new In the eyes of the Father Even when only few Acknowledge this matter Continue reading “Made New” I urge you sister or brother, In view of God’s loving mercy, By faith to offer your body, Holy, pleasing to the Father. Continue reading “Spiritual Worship” Sacrifice for Him Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:1-2 The purpose of sacrifices in the old testament was to purify. Make the unclean become clean. Jesus’ sacrifice took our sins away from us so we can come to God, receive forgiveness and be purified. Continue reading “At the altar” Seems so far but yet very near We wait for it when it’s already here Seems so complex but yet very simple Listen to His heart and adjust a little. Continue reading “Jesus’ Kingdom” We are his bride For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. Ephesians 5:31-32 Praise the Lord! 2000 years ago, Christ left his Father in heaven to come to the earth for his bride (mankind). But his bride was a slave. The only way he could redeem her was with his own blood. And he did it because he loved his bride so much. Continue reading “He is waiting” We have access At that moment, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. Matthew 27:52 Praise the Lord for his goodness! What a glorious moment for all mankind, that moment when the curtain was torn in two. That curtain had been designed by the Most High himself and first came to the natural through Bezalel and Oholiab’s works. (Exodus 36:1). This curtain was called the shielding curtain (Exodus 39:34) because it was separating the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place (Hebrews 9:2-4). Only the high priest could enter the Most Holy place and only once a year. He would enter the Most Holy place with blood to offer for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance. (Hebrews 9:7). Continue reading “Behind the curtain” Out of your love, you came down to the earth To claim and redeem your fallen creation Close to your heart, we are yours by birth Born in your house, slaves in the nation You did not watch at the price it would cost You closed your eyes on the shame and the pain So determined to get back what was lost As losing your … Continue reading Glorious Inheritance Being washed Husbands love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word […] Ephesians 5:25-26 Praise the Lord for his word! We know that words can destroy us or they can build us, They can make us angry or make us smile, They can make … Continue reading Washing with water

One of my favorite songs is “What You Won’t Do for Love” by Bobby Caldwell. I’ve always found the lyrics inspiring and at the same time horrifying. On one hand, who wouldn’t be inspired by the lyrics of the song? What you won’t do Do for love You tried everything But you don’t give up In my world Only you make me do for love what I would not do On the other hand, clearly the relationship isn’t working out for the woman Bobby is singing about yet she keeps trying. I’m a romantic at heart. I believe in love. If I didn’t, this blog wouldn’t exist. I tried really hard to make things work in my past relationships when it was clear that sheer willpower alone isn’t enough to make love work. Especially when it is one sided. And honestly sometimes the other person tried and I was too self-centered to see that. In the end, I let go of those relationships because it was ultimately more damaging to remain in unhealthy relationships than to simply let go. I’m now at a point in my life where I’m trying to be a lot more discerning about the women I let into my space and the kind of woman I am in relationships. When I’m dating someone, I love to be as supportive, understanding and giving as possible. Some people may call that having borderline save-a-ho complex. But I sometimes need to draw the line between being TOO giving and just letting that person find their own way. Especially in the beginning when you are still trying to figure out if the person is worthy of your heart. Today I’ve decided to draw the line. While there are definitely some things I will do for love there are other things I simply will not do for someone whom I merely like. This distinction is important because I believe not every person you date deserves unfettered access to your time, attention or resources. Today I realized that one of the things I definitely will not do for like OR love is compromise my dreams.

- Editor Rating - Rated 4.5 stars - Affirm-a-Life Masterclass - Reviewed by: - Published on: - Last modified: - User FriendlyEditor: 97% - EffectivenessEditor: 96% - Customer SupportEditor: 98% - PriceEditor: 98% I am a crew at a famous fast food chain I worked there for 5 years. I earned an adequate amount of money that can supply my needs like food, transportation, rent, electricity, and other basic needs. However, I have no extra funds for leisure anymore because the salary that I am receiving is just exactly for my basic need which is very unfortunate. I am also tired of my everyday routine which is going to work and after that go home to my apartment and sleep and woke up the next day doing the same routine. Because of this I am experiencing the feeling of emptiness and identity crisis for the reason that I have this urge to look for a career change. Rejuvenating my Life So I searched the internet for ways on how I can have a career change and at the same time improve my confidence to achieve my goals in life. I have found a lot of products that are available in the internet that is telling me that it can help me achieve those goals however I am afraid that these product might be a scam. Then I came across this product which is called Affirm-A-Life Masterclass which caught my attention because of the wonderful benefits that I might get if I tried this product. Making a Big Decision Upon weighing the options I came up to a decision that I must buy that Affirm-A-Life Masterclass product because I have a strong feeling that it can provide the help that I need. So I bought the product full of positivity and I was really thankful that it was hassle free. After I paid the product using my Paypal account I immediately got the download links. I downloaded the product right away and I was very happy that the download was really quick and I get to have the opportunity to use it as soon as possible. I am confident that everything will go smoothly because they are offering a 100% money back if I am not satisfied with the results. Trying out the Product I listened to the main audiobook of the product and I was impressed to tell you honestly because it was professionally made. I scheduled the whole one day listening to the audio tracks of the product and it really gave me a motivational boost. After several hours of spending my time studying the system that the product is implementing I was able to absorb the system. I immediately made a plan to change my life completely, one of the plans is to pursue my passion which is creating websites. Going out of the Comfort Zone This is the time where I implemented the first step towards reaching my goals. I resigned on my job at the famous fast food chain and started my journey as a freelance web developer. The first year was very tough because I have a hard time finding clients but whenever I am feeling down I just listen to some parts of the audio tracks that are included in the product and I am alright again. I gained loyal clients that gave me ongoing projects because of this my income is getting bigger compared to my previous job. And eventually made a high-paying income that became my primary source of income. Because of this freelancing job I managed to have an income that is more than sufficient because right now I can buy my leisure and can provide a lot of things for my family. I am completely satisfied with the results after I continuously implemented the techniques that the product taught me it renewed my life completely. From a loser, I became a winner with proper execution of the techniques, hard work and dedication. What Other People are Saying About this Product? There are a lot of people all over the world who found success in implementing the techniques that the product is suggesting. One of them is a woman from Scotland and she is listening to the product every day when she is on her way to work. She is energized and motivated to work harder to reach her goals and she always has a positive outlook on whatever she is doing which boosts her performance in everything that she does. Another satisfied customer is a middle-aged man from the USA. He is a business owner and because of the product, his income significantly increased. And he is looking to expand his business to accumulate more wealth for future growth. What he usually listens is the Eyes of Creation audio track which is also included in the package for him to boost his creativity to innovate his business. There are also a lot of other positive reviews about this product all over the internet which you can determine that this product is not a scam. The clients of the products are completely satisfied with the product. I also learned a lot of things from it because of the product they changed their lives for the better. Why Everyone is Trusting this Product? As we all know it is very hard to put our trust on products that are sold on the internet merely because most of them are a scam even if they are not they tend to be just another crappy product on the internet. That is why many people have some sort of hesitation in purchasing online products especially in the form of digital products such as eBooks, audio tracks, video tutorials, and etc. There is really an exception when it comes to this product I did not experience any hesitation simply because the description of the product and the benefits that I can get from it are well explained. And thankfully I did the right decision when I decided to buy the product. I really love the results that I am getting from it. 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It is made of high-quality information and the good thing is the audio is so clear that you can effortlessly hear every word that is why it is surely not a waste of money. I am urging you to buy the product now until the price is low because we do not know until when the creator will issue a price hike. Added the fact that it might not be available in the market for that long because its competitors might shut it down because the product is really in demand right now in the cyberspace. And hopefully you learned a lot on my honest review regarding the product and from this review, you can make the decision if you will buy the product. Thank you for reading my lovely review regarding the product and I wish you good luck on your journey to success. Just be patient and with hard work it is possible. - Very affordable. - Secured payment. - It has a lot of freebies that are included in the package. - Very informative and will surely give a positive mindset to your life. - Clear and high-quality audio. - Has a money back guarantee. - You must listen to the audio carefully for you to absorb the techniques. - It has no pdf copy that is why you must not miss any of the techniques for you to implement the method in a correct way. Summary: This product is composed of a package of audio books that would help you to have a positive outlook on your life that will help you to make your life better financially, spiritually, emotionally and physically. Because it will give you the technique to be motivated and boost your fighting spirit.

I read the papers and stress rises. So much injustice! 21 million people enslaved (14 million of them in India), land-grabbing, starvation, destruction of ecosystems, precious species going extinct, the restavek system in Haiti, slavery in Qatar, and the plight of the Palestinians. My heart sinks. I am just one girl of limited energy. I could push against one or two of these things, but it would take all my life, and I might barely dent it. I do have a handful of causes, which I tweet about and financially support. That’s like returning just one starfish to the sea, but it makes a difference to that starfish as Loren Eiseley wrote. * * * The path of an activist, of a world-changer, is admirable, but it is a calling. If you embark on it without being called to it by God, and being continuously renewed by him, you risk burning out and becoming embittered. I know I would. Fortunately there are other ways of making a difference in the world, which are also callings. Can so pleasant a thing be a calling? I see my calling as “a contemplative in the world” and a writer. When I compare it to real heroes like Simon Guillebaud, this seems like a bit of cop-out call, but it is, none the less, the call to which God has mercifully called me. * * * I am today thinking of a real contemplative, Julian of Norwich, who was an anchorite. Anchorites were, on request, formally bricked into their cells by the ecclesiastical authorities. Once walled in, they were no longer permitted to leave. Julian of Norwich lived bricked into a cell attached to Norwich Cathedral. One window looked onto the Tabernacle of the Cathedral; another window faced the outside world. Through this, servants brought food and removed waste, and people from every level of society, including her fellow mystic Margery Kempe came seeking advice. And that was Julian of Norwich’s way of making a difference in the world. Read, pray, contemplate, write. It was arduous. My head would feel ready to explode if all I did was read, think and write, if I could not go on longish walks, putter around my house and garden, see friends, go to a small group, go to church. I love contemplation and writing—but in the context of community and of physical movement. * * * But Mother Julian, all she did was think and pray and write, think and pray and write. What could this woman who lived for decades in a single room possibly have to say to the world? On the 8th May 1373, Julian of Norwich experienced a series of fifteen visions from four in the morning, till noon, with a further one that night. They were “so compelling and so rich in meaning that Julian understood them to come directly from God and to be messages not just to herself but to all Christians.” She spent the rest of her life writing them, and “conveying her sense of their significance as it was revealed over many years of meditation” (A.C. Spearing). Her book Revelations of Divine Love resonates 600 years later. * * * Here are some of her best-known thoughts, rays of light from a distant past, ancient music which still vibrates. All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. “He showed me a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand. I thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered thus, ‘It is all that is made. It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it.” I saw three properties that God made it, that God loves it, that God keeps it. The Creator, the Keeper, the Lover. For until I am substantially “oned” to him, I may never have full rest nor true bliss. That is to say, until I be so fastened to him that there is nothing that is made between my God and me.” * * * Here are other insights of this woman bricked into her cell who did nothing but think and pray and write. “The greatest honor we can give Almighty God is to live gladly because of the knowledge of his love.” “If there is anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.” “Our Savior is our true Mother in whom we are endlessly born and out of whom we shall never come.” “See that I am God. See that I am in everything. See that I do everything. See that I have never stopped ordering my works, nor ever shall, eternally. See that I lead everything on to the conclusion I ordained for it before time began, by the same power, wisdom and love with which I made it. How can anything be amiss?” “And I saw that truly nothing happens by accident or luck, but everything by God’s wise providence. If it seems to be accident or luck from our point of view, our blindness is the cause; for matters that have been in God’s foreseeing wisdom since before time began befall us suddenly, all unawares; and so in our blindness and ignorance we say that this is accident or luck, but to our Lord God it is not so.” Interestingly, the dry, crusty, cerebral T. S. Eliot was Dame Julian of Norwich’s most famous reader. He quotes her in his mysterious Four Quartets Whatever we inherit from the fortunate We have taken from the defeated And all shall be well and All manner of things shall be well By the purification of the motive In the ground of our beseeching.