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The Deeps of the Sky
Stormchases' little skiff skipped and glided across the tropopause, skimming the denser atmosphere of the warm cloud-sea beneath, running before a fierce wind. The skiff's hull was broad and shallow, supported by buoyant pontoons, the whole designed to float atop the heavy, opaque atmosphere beneath. Stormchases had shot the sails high into the stratosphere and good winds blew the skiff onward, against the current of the dark belt beneath.
Ahead, the vast ruddy wall of a Deep Storm loomed, the base wreathed in shreds of tossing white mist: caustic water clouds churned up from deep in the deadly, layered troposphere. The Deep Storm stretched from horizon to horizon, disappearing at either end in a blur of perspective and atmospheric haze. Its breadth was so great as to make even its massive height seem insignificant, though the billowing ammonia cloud wall was smeared flat-topped by stratospheric winds where it broke the tropopause.
The storm glowed with the heat of the deep atmosphere, other skiffs silhouetted cool against it. Their chatter rang over Stormchases' talker. Briefly, he leaned down to the pickup and greeted his colleagues. His competition. Many of them came from the same long lines of miners that he did; many carried the same long-hoarded knowledge.
But Stormchases was determined that, with the addition of his own skill and practice, he would be among the best sky-miners of them all.
Behind and above, clear skies showed a swallowing indigo, speckled with bright stars. The hurtling crescents of a dozen or so of the moons were currently visible, as was the searing pinpoint of the world's primary—so bright it washed out nearby stars. Warmth made the sky glow too, the variegated brightness of the thermosphere far above. Stormchases' thorax squeezed with emotion as he gazed upon the elegant canopies of a group of Drift-Worlds rising in slow sunlit coils along the warm vanguard of the Deep Storm, their colors bright by sunlight, their silhouettes dark by thermal sense.
He should not look; he should not hope. But there—a distance-hazed shape behind her lesser daughters and sisters, her great canopy dappled in sheeny gold and violet—soared the Mothergraves. Stormchases was too far and too low to see the teeming ecosystem she bore on her vast back, up high above the colorful clouds where the sunlight could reach and nurture them. He could just make out the color variations caused by the dripping net-roots of veil trees that draped the Mothergraves' sides, capturing life-giving ammonia from the atmosphere and drawing it in to plump leaves and firm nutritious fruit.
Stormchases arched his face up to her, eyes shivering with longing. His wings hummed against his back. There was no desire like the pain of being separate from the Mothergraves, no need like the need to go to her. But he must resist it. He must brave the Deep Storm and harvest it, and perhaps then she would deem him worthy to be one of hers. He had the provider-status to pay court to one of the younger Drift-Worlds . . . but they could not give his young the safety and stability that a berth on the greatest and oldest of the Mothers would.
In the hot deeps of the sky, too high even for the Mothers and their symbiotic colony-flyers or too low even for the boldest and most intrepid of Stormchases' brethren, other things lived.
Above were other kinds of flyers and the drifters, winged or buoyant or merely infinitesimal things that could not survive even the moderate pressure and chill of the tropopause. Below, swimmers dwelled in the ammoniated thicks of the mid-troposphere that never knew the light of stars or sun. They saw only thermally. They could endure massive pressures, searing temperatures, and the lashings of molten water and even oxygen, the gas so reactive that it could set an exhalation on fire. That environment would crush Stormchases to a pulp, dissolve his delicate wing membranes, burn him from the gills to the bone.
Stormchases' folk were built for more moderate climes—the clear skies and thick, buoying atmosphere of the tropopause, where life flourished and the skies were full of food. But even here, in this temperate part of the sky, survival required a certain element of risk. And there were things that could only be mined where a Deep Storm pulled them up through the layers of atmosphere to an accessible height.
Which was why Stormchases sailed directly into the lowering wings of the Deep Storm, one manipulator on the skiff's controls, the other watching the perspective-shrunken sail shimmering so high above. Flyers would avoid the cable, which was monofilament spun into an intentionally refractive, high-visibility lattice with good tensile properties. But the enormous, translucent-bodied Drift-Worlds were not nimble. Chances were good that the Mother would survive a sail-impact, albeit with some scars—and some damage to the sky-island ecosystems she carried on her backs—and the skiff would likely hold together through such an incident. If he tangled a Mother in the monofilament shroud-lines spun from the same material that reinforced the Drift-World's great canopies . . . it didn't bear thinking of. That was why the lines were so gaily streamered: so anyone could see them from afar.
If Stormchases lost the skiff, it would just be a long flight home and probably a period of indenture to another miner until he could earn another, and begin proving himself again. But injuring a Mother, even a minor one who floated low, would be the end of his hopes to serve the Mothergraves.
So he watched the cable, and the overhead skies. And—of course—the storm.
Stormchases could smell the Deep Storm now, the dank corrosive tang of water vapor stinging his gills. The richly colored billows of the Deep Storm proved it had something to give. The storm's dark-red wall churned, marking the boundary of a nearly-closed atmospheric cell rich with rare elements and compounds pumped up from the deeps. Soon, Stormchases would don his protective suit, seal the skiff, and begin the touchy business—so close to the storm—of hauling in the sail. The prevailing wind broke around the Deep Storm, eddying and compacting as it sped past those towering clouds. The air currents there were even more dangerous and unnavigable than those at the boundary between the world's temperate and subtropical zones, where two counter-rotating bands of wind met and sheared against each other.
And Stormchases was going to pass through it.
Once the sail was stowed, Stormchases would maneuver the skiff closer under engine power—as close as those cool silhouettes ahead—and begin harvesting. But he would not be cowed by the storm wall. Could not be, if he hoped to win a berth on the Mothergraves.
He would brave the outer walls of the storm itself. He had the skill; he had the ancestral knowledge. The reward for his courage would be phosphates, silicates, organic compounds. Iron. Solid things, from which technologies like his skiff were built. Noble gases. And fallers, the tiny creatures that spent their small lives churned in the turbulence of the Deep Storm, and which were loaded with valuable nutrition and trace elements hard to obtain, for the unfledged juveniles who lived amid the roots and foliage and trapped organics of the Drift-World ecosystems.
The Deep Storm was a rich, if deadly, resource. With its treasures, he would purchase his place on the Mothergraves.
Stormchases streamed current weather data, forecasts and predictions. He tuned into the pulsed-light broadcasts of the skiffs already engaged in harvesting, and set about making himself ready.
The good news about Deep Storms was that they were extraordinarily stable, and the new information didn't tell Stormchases much that he could not have anticipated. Still, there was always a thrill of unease as one made ready for a filtering run. A little too far, and—well, everyone knew or knew of somebody who had been careless at the margin of a storm and sucked into the depths of its embrace. A skiff couldn't survive that, and a person definitely couldn't. If the molten water didn't cauterize flesh from carapace, convective torrents would soon drag one down into the red depths of the atmosphere, to be melted and crushed and torn.
It was impossible to be too careful, sky-mining.
Stormchases checked the skiff's edge seals preliminary to locking down. Water could insinuate through a tiny gap and spray under the pressure of winds, costing an unwary or unlucky operator an eye. Too many sky-miners bore the scars of its caustic burns on their carapaces and manipulators.
A careful assessment showed the seals to be intact. Behind the skiff, the long cluster of cargo capsules bumped and swung. Empty, they were buoyant, and tended to drag the skiff upwards, forcing Stormchases to constant adjustments of the trim. He dropped a sky-anchor and owner-beacon to hold the majority of the cargo capsules, loaded one into the skiff's dock with the magnetic claw, and turned the little vessel toward the storm.
Siphons contracted, feeling each heave of the atmosphere, Stormchases slid quickly but cautiously into the turbulent band surrounding the storm. It would be safer to match the wind's velocity before he made the transition to within-the-storm itself, but his little skiff did not have that much power. Instead, it was built to catch the wind and self-orient, using the storm itself for stability rather than being tumbled and tossed like a thrown flyer's egg.
Stormchases fixed his restraint harness to the tightest setting. He brought the skiff alongside the cloud wall, then deflated and retracted the pontoons, leaving the skiff less buoyant but far more streamlined. Holding hope in his mind—hope, because the Mothergraves taught that intention affected outcome—Stormchases took a deep breath, smelled the tang of methane on his exhalation, and slipped the skiff into the storm.
The wind hit the skiff in a torrent. Through long experience, Stormchases' manipulators stayed soft on the controls. He let them vibrate against his skin, but held them steady—gently, gently, without too much pressure but without yielding to the wrath of the storm. The skiff tumbled for a moment as it made the transition; he regained trim and steadied it, bringing its pointed nose around to part the wind that pushed it. It shivered—feeling alive as the sun-warmed hide of the Mother upon whose broad back Stormchases had grown—and steadied. Stormchases guided it with heat-sight only. Here in the massive swirl of the cloud wall, the viewports showed him only the skiff's interior lighting reflecting off the featureless red clouds of the storm, as if he and his rugged little ship were swaddled in an uncle's wings.
A peaceful image, for a thing that would kill him in instants. If he went too far in, the winds would rip his tiny craft apart around him. If he got too close to the wall, turbulence could send him spinning out of control.
When the skiff finally floated serenely amidst the unending gyre, Stormchases opened the siphons. He felt the skiff belly and wallow as the wind filled it, then the increased stability as the filters activated and the capsule filled.
It didn't take long; the storm was pumping a rich mix of resources. When the capsule reached its pressurized capacity, Stormchases sealed the siphons again. Still holding his position against the fury of the winds, he tested the responses of the laden skiff. It was heavier, sluggish—but as responsive as he could have hoped.
He brought her out of the fog of red and gray, under a clear black sky. A bit of turbulence caught his wingtip as he slipped away, and it sent the skiff spinning flat like a spat seed across the tropopause. Other skiffs scattered like a swarm of infant cloud-skaters before a flyer's dive. Shaken, the harness bruising the soft flesh at his joints, Stormchases got control of the skiff and brought her around on a soft loop. His talker exploded with the whoops of other miners; mingled appreciation and teasing.
There was his beacon. He deployed pontoons to save energy and skimmed the atmosphere over to exchange capsules.
Then he turned to the storm, and went back to do it again.
Stormchases had secured his full capsules and was still rechecking the skiff's edge-seals, preliminary to popping the craft open, when he caught sight of a tiny speck of a shadow descending along the margin of the storm. Something sharp-nosed and hot enough to be uncomfortable to look upon . . .
Stormchases scrambled for the telescope as the speck dropped toward the Deep Storm. It locked and tracked; he pressed two eyes to the viewers and found himself regarding a sleek black . . . something, a glossy surface he could not name. Nor could he make out any detail of shape. The autofocus had locked too close, and as he backed it off the object slipped into the edge of the Deep Storm.
Bigger than a flyer—bigger even than folk and nothing with any sense would get that close to the smeary pall of water vapor without protective gear. It looked a little like a flyer, though—a curved, streamlined wing shape with a dartlike nose. But the wings didn't flap as it descended, banking wide on the cushion of air before the storm, curving between the scudding masses of the herd of Drift-Worlds.
It was like nothing Stormchases had ever seen.
Its belly was bright-hot, hot enough to spark open flame if it brushed oxygen, but as it banked Stormchases saw that the back was cold, black-cold against the warmth of the high sky, so dark and chill it seemed a band of brightness delineated it—but that was only the contrast with the soaking heat from the thermosphere. Stormchases had always had an interest in xenophysics. He felt his wings furl with shock as he realised that the object might show that heat-pattern if it had warmed its belly with friction as it entered the atmosphere, but the upper part were still breath-stealing cold with the chill of the deep sky.
Was it a ship, and not an animal? A . . . skiff of some kind?
An alien?
Lightning danced around the object, caught and caressed it like a Mother's feeding tendrils caging a Mate—and then seemed to get caught there, netting and streaking the black hide with rills of savage, glowing vermillion and radiant gold. The wind of the object's passage blew the shimmers off the trailing edge of its wings; shining vapor writhed in curls in the turbulence of its wake.
Stormchases caught his breath. Neon and helium rain, condensing upon the object's hard skin, energized by the lightning, luminesced as the object skimmed the high windswept edge of the clouds.
With the eyes not pressed to the telescope, he watched a luminescent red-gold line draw across the dull-red roiling storm wall. Below, at the tropopause border of the storm, the other filter-miners were pulling back, grouping together and gliding away. They had noticed the phenomenon, and the smart sky-miner didn't approach a storm that was doing something he didn't understand.
Lightning was a constant wreath in the storm's upper regions, and whatever the object or creature was made of, the storm seemed to want to reach out and caress it. Meanwhile, the object played with the wall of the storm, threading it like a needle, as oblivious to those deadly veils of water vapor as it was to the savagery of the lightning strikes. Stormchases had operated a mining skiff—valued work, prestigious work, work he hoped would earn him a place in the Mothergraves' esteem—for his entire fledged life.
He'd seen skiffs go down, seen daring rescues, seen miners saved from impossible situations and miners who were not. He'd seen recklessness, and skill so great its exercise looked like recklessness.
He'd never seen anyone play with a Deep Storm like this.
It couldn't last.
It could have been a crosswind, an eddy, the sheer of turbulence. Stormchases would never know. But one moment the black object, streaming its meteor-tail of noble gases, was stitching the flank of the storm—and the next it was tumbling, knocked end over end like the losing flyer of a mating dogfight. Stormchases pulled back from the telescope, watching as the object rolled in a flat, descending spiral like a coiled tree-frond, pulled long.
The object was built like a flyer. It had no pontoons, no broad hull meant to maximize its buoyancy against the pressure gradient of the tropopause. It would fall through, and keep falling—
Stormchases clenched the gunwale of his skiff in tense manipulators, glad when the alien object fell well inside the boundary of the storm-fronting thermal the Drift-Worlds rode. It seemed so wrong: the Mothers floating lazily with their multicolored sides placid in the sun; the object plunging to destruction amid the hells of the deep sky, trailing streamers of neon light.
It was folly to project his own experiences upon something that was not folk, of course—but he couldn't help it. If the object was a skiff, if the aliens were like folk, he knew they would be at their controls even now. Stormchases felt a great, searing pity.
They were something new, and he didn't want them to die.
Did they need to?
They had a long way to fall, and they were fighting it. The telescope—still locked on the alien object—glided smoothly in its mount. It would be easy to compute the falling ship's trajectory. Other skiffs were doing so in order to clear the crash path. Stormchases—
Stormchases pulled up the navigation console, downloaded other skiffs' telemetry on and calculations of the trajectory of the falling craft, ran his own. The object was slowing, but it was not slowing enough—and he was close enough to the crash path to intercept.
He thought of the Mothergraves. He thought of his rich cargo, the price of acceptance.
He clenched his gills and fired his engines to cross the path of the crash.
Its flat spiral path aided him. He did not need to intercept on this pass, though there would not be too many more opportunities. It was a fortunate thing that the object had a long way to fall. All he had to do was get under it, in front of it, and let the computer and the telescope and the cannon do the rest.
There. Now. Even as he thought it, the skiff's machines made their own decision. The sail-cannon boomed; the first sail itself was a bright streamer climbing the stratosphere. Stormchases checked his restrains with his manipulators and one eye, aware that he'd left it too late. The other three eyes stayed on the alien object, and the ballistic arc of the rising sail.
It snapped to the end of its line—low, too low, so much lower than such things should be deployed. It seemed enormous as it spread. It was enormous, but Stormchases was not used to seeing a sail so close.
He braced himself, one manipulator hovering over the control to depressurize the cargo capsules strung behind him in a long, jostling tail.
The object fell into the sail. Stormchases had a long moment to watch the bright sail—dappled in vermilion and violet—stretch into a trailing comet tail as it caught and wrapped the projectile. He watched the streamers of the shroud-lines buck at impact; the wave traveling their length.
The stretch and yank snapped Stormchases back against his restraints. He felt the shiver through the frame of the skiff as the shroud-motors released, letting the falling object haul line as if it were a flyer running away with the bait. The object's spiraling descent became an elongating pendulum arc, and Stormchases hoped it or they had the sense not to struggle. The shroud-lines and the sail stretched, twanged—
—Held. The Mothergraves wove the sails from her own silk; they were the same stuff as her canopies. There was no stronger fiber.
Then the object swung down into the tropopause and splashed through the sea of ammonia clouds, and kept falling.
The sealed skiff jerked after. Stormchases felt the heavy crack through the hull as the pontoons broke. He lost light-sight of the sky above as the clouds closed over. He felt as if he floated against his restraints, though he knew it was just the acceleration of the fall defying gravity.
He struggled to bring his manipulator down. The deeper the object pulled him, the hotter and more pressurized—and more toxic—the atmosphere became. And he wouldn't trust the skiff's seals after the jar of that impact.
He depressurized and helium-flushed the first cargo capsule.
When it blew, the skiff shuddered again. That capsule was now a balloon filled with gaseous helium, and it snapped upward, slowing Stormchases' descent—and the descent of the sail-wrapped alien object. They were still plunging, but now dragging a buoyant makeshift pontoon.
The cables connecting the capsule twanged and plinked ominously. It had been the flaw in his plan; he hadn't been sure they would hold.
For now, at least, they did.
The pressure outside the hull was growing; not dangerous yet, but creeping upward. Eyes on the display, Stormchases triggered a second capsule. He felt a lighter shudder this time, as the skiff shed a little more velocity. The next question would be if he had enough capsules to stop the fall—and to lift his skiff, and the netted object, back to the tropopause.
His talker babbled at him, his colleagues issuing calls and organizing a party for a rescue to follow his descent. "No rescue," he said. "This is my risk."
Another capsule. Another, slighter shiver through the lines. Another incremental slowing.
By the Mothergraves, he thought. This is actually going to work.
When his skiff bobbed back to the tropopause, dangling helplessly beneath a dozen empty, depressurized capsules, Stormchases was unprepared for the cheer that rang over his talker. Or the bigger one that followed, when he winched the sail containing the netted object up through the cloud-sea, into clear air.
Stormchases had no pontoons; his main sail was fouled. The empty capsules would support him, but he could not maneuver—and, in fact, his skiff swung beneath them hull-to-the-side, needle-tipped nose pointing down. Stormchases dangled, bruised and aching, in his restraints, trying to figure out how to loose the straps and start work on freeing himself.
He still wasn't sure how he'd survived. Or that he'd survived. Maybe this was the last fantasy of a dying mind—
The talker bleated at him.
He jerked against the harness, and moaned. The talker bleated again.
It wasn't words, and whatever it was, it drowned out the voices of the other miners, who were currently arguing over whether his skiff was salvage, and whether they should come to his assistance if it was. He'd been trying to organize his addled thoughts enough to warn them off. Now he vibrated his membranes and managed a croak that sounded fragile even to his own hearing. "Who is it? What do you want?"
That bleat again, or a modestly different one.
"Are you the alien? I can't understand you."
With pained manipulators, Stormchases managed to unfasten his restraints. He dropped from them harder than he had intended; it seemed he couldn't hold onto the rack. As his carapace struck the forward bulkhead, he made a disgruntled noise.
"Speak Language!" he snarled to the talker as he picked himself up. "I can't understand you."
It was mostly an expression of frustration. If they knew Language, they wouldn't be aliens. But he could not hide his sigh of relief when a deep, coveted voice emerged from the talker instead.
"Be strong, Stormchases," the Mothergraves said. "All will soon be well."
He pressed two eyes to the viewport. The clouds around his skiff were bright in the sunlight; he watched the encroaching shadow fall across them like the umbra of an eclipse.
It was the great, welcome shade of the Mothergraves as she drifted out of the sky.
She was coming for them. Coming for him.
It was no small thing, for a Drift-World to drop so much altitude. For a Drift-World the size of the Mothergraves, it was a major undertaking, and not one speedily accomplished. Still, she dropped, flanked by her attendant squadrons of flyers and younger Mothers, tiny shapes flitting between her backs. Any of them could have come for Stormchases more easily, but when they would have moved forward, the Mothergraves gestured them back with her trailing, elegant gestures.
Stormchases occupied the time winching in the sail-net containing the alien object. It was heavy, not buoyant at all. He imagined it must skim through the atmosphere like a dart or a flyer—simply by moving so fast that the aerodynamics of its passage bore it up. He would have liked to disentangle the object from the shroud, but if he did, it would sink like a punctured skiff.
Instead, he amused himself by assessing the damage to his skiff (catastrophic) and answering the alien's bleats on the talker somewhat at random, though he had not given up on trying to understand what it might be saying. Obviously, it had technology—quite possibly it was technology, and the hard carapace might indeed be the equivalent of his own skiff—a craft, meant for entering a hostile environment.
Had it been sampling the storm for useful chemicals and consumables, as well?
He wondered what aliens ate. What they breathed. He wondered if he could teach them Language.
Every time he looked up, the Mothergraves' great keel was lower. Finally, her tendrils encompassed his horizons and when he craned his eyes back, he could make out the double row of Mates fused to and dependent from her bellies like so many additional, vestigial tendrils. There were dozens. The oldest had lost all trace of their origins, and were merely smooth nubs sealed to the Mothergraves' flesh. The newest were still identifiable as the individuals they had been.
Many of the lesser Mothers among her escort dangled Mates from their bellies as well, but none had half so many as the Mothergraves . . . and none were so much as two-thirds of her size.
In frustration, Stormchases squinched himself against the interior of his carapace. So close. He had been so close. And now all he had to show for it was a wrecked skiff and a bleating alien. Now he would have to start over—
He could ask the Mothergraves to release his groom-price to a lesser Mother. He had provided well enough for any of her sisters or daughters to consider him.
But none of them were she.
He only hoped his sacrifice of resources in order to rescue the alien had not angered her. That would be too much to bear—although if she decided to reclaim the loss from his corpse, he supposed at the very least he would die fulfilled . . . if briefly.
The talker squawked again. The alien sounds seemed more familiar; he must be getting used to them.
A few of the Mothergraves' tendrils touched him, as he had so long anticipated. It was bitterest irony now, but the pleasure of the caress almost made it worthwhile. He braced himself for pain and paralysis . . . but she withheld her sting, and the only pain were the bruises left by his restraints and by impact with the bulkheads of the tumbling skiff.
Now her voice came to him directly, rather than by way of the talker. It filled the air around him and vibrated in the hollows of his body like soft thunder. To his shock and disbelief, she said words of ritual to him; words he had hoped and then despaired to hear.
She said, "For the wealth of the whole, what have you brought us, Stormchases?"
Before he could answer, the talker bleated again. This time, in something like Language—bent, barely comprehensible, accented more oddly than any Language Stormchases had ever heard.
It said, "Hello? You us comprehend?"
"I hear you," the Mothergraves said. "What do you want?"
A long silence before the answer came. "This we fix. Trade science. Go. Place you give us for repairs?"
The aliens—the object was a skiff, of sorts, and it had as many crew members as Stormchases had eyes—had a machine that translated their bleaty words into Language, given a wise enough sample of it. As the revolutions went by, the machine became more and more proficient, and Stormchases spent more and more time talking to A'lees, their crew member in charge of talking. Their names were just nonsense sounds, not words, which made him wonder how any of them ever knew who he was. And they divided labor up in strange ways, with roles determined not by instar and inheritance but by individual life-courses. They told him a great deal about themselves and their peculiar biology; he reciprocated with the more mundane details of his own. A'lees seemed particularly interested that he would soon Mate, and wished to know as much about the process as he could tell.
The aliens sealed themselves in small flexible habitats—pressure carapaces—to leave their skiff, and for good reason. They were made mostly of water, and they oozed water from their bodies, and the pressure and temperature of the world's atmosphere would destroy them as surely as the deeps of the sky would crush Stormchases. The atmosphere they breathed was made of inert gases and explosive oxygen, and once their skiff was beached on an open patch of the Mothergraves' back for repairs, just the leakage of oxygen and water vapor from its airlocks soon poisoned a swath of vegetation for a body-length in any direction.
Stormchases stayed well back from the alien skiff while he had these conversations.
Talking to the aliens was a joy and a burden. The Mothergraves insisted he should be the one to serve as an intermediary. He had experience with them, and the aliens valued that kind of experience—and when he was Mated, that experience would be assimilated into the Mothergraves' collective mind. It would become a part of her, and a part of all their progeny to follow.
The Mothergraves had told him—in the ritual words—that knowledge and discovery were great offerings, unique offerings. That the opportunity to interact with beings from another world was of greater import to her and her brood than organics, or metals, or substances that she could machine within her great body into the stuff of skiffs and sails and other technology. That she accepted his suit, and honored the courage with which he had pressed it.
And that was why the duty was a burden. Because to be available for the aliens while they made the repairs—to play liaison (their word)—meant putting off the moment of joyous union again. And again. To have been so close, and then so far, and then so close again—
The agony of anticipation, and the fear that it would be snatched from him again, was a form of torture.
A'lees came outside of the alien skiff in her pressure carapace and sat in its water-poisoned circle with her forelimbs wrapped around her drawn-up knees, talking comfortably to Stormchases. She said she was a female, a Mother. But that Mothers of her kind were not so physically different from the males, and that even after they Mated, males continued to go about in the world as independent entities.
"But how do they pass their experiences on to their offspring?" Stormchases asked.
A'lees paused for a long time.
"We teach them," she said. "Your children inherit your memories?"
"Not memories," he said. "Experiences."
She hesitated again. "So you become a part of the Mother. A kind of . . . symbiote. And your offspring with her will have all of her experiences, and yours? But . . . not the memories? How does that work?"
"Is knowledge a memory?" he asked.
"No," she said confidently. "Memories can be destroyed while skills remain . . . Oh. I think . . . I understand."
They talked for a little while of the structure of the nets and the Mothers' canopies, but Stormchases could tell A'lees was not finished thinking about memories. Finally she made a little deflating hiss sound and brought the subject up again.
"I am sad," A'lees said, "that when we have fixed our sampler and had time to arrange a new mission and come back, you will not be here to talk with us."
"I will be here," said Stormchases, puzzled. "I will be mated to the Mothergraves."
"But it won't be"—whatever A'lees had been about to say, the translator stammered on it; she continued—"the same. You won't remember us."
"The Mothergraves will," Stormchases assured her.
She drew herself in a little smaller. "It will be a long time before we return."
Stormchases patted toward the edge of the burn zone. He did not let his manipulators cross it, though. Though he would soon enough lose the use of his manipulators to atrophy, he didn't feel the need to burn them off prematurely. "It's all right, A'lees," he said. "We will remember you by the scar."
Whatever the sound she made next meant, the translator could not manage it.
Originally published in Edge of Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan.
Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. She is the Hugo, Sturgeon, Locus, and Campbell Award winning author of over 25 novels, most recently The Red-Stained Wings (Tor Books) and over a hundred short stories. She lives in Massachusetts with her partner, writer Scott Lynch, three adventurous cats, and an elderly and opinionated dog.


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MARANA, Ariz. — The stars are gone from the Match Play Championship. Still alive are Ian Poulter and Hunter Mahan, the best in match play over the last few years.
Poulter added to his reputation as one tough customer Saturday when he beat Steve Stricker with one big putt after another, raising his record in this fickle format to 19-3-2 over the last four years.
Mahan outlasted U.S. Open champion Webb Simpson in 18 holes, leaving him two wins away from joining Tiger Woods as the only repeat winners of this World Golf Championship. Mahan hasn't lost a match in two years, and even more impressive than his 11 straight wins is that he has gone 151 holes at Dove Mountain without trailing.
Poulter and Mahan meet Sunday morning in the semifinals.
Matt Kuchar had no trouble against Robert Garrigus, building a 4-up lead through 10 holes and hanging on for a 3-and-2 win to reach the quarterfinals for the third straight year. He faces Jason Day of Australia, who won a tight match against Graeme McDowell in 18 holes.
Along with a perfect singles record in the Ryder Cup, Poulter has won the WGC version of the Match Play Championship and the World Match Play Championship in Spain in 2011. He wasn't aware of his record since 2010, nor did he sound terribly surprised.
"I'm pretty proud of it," he said. "Does it surprise me? I love match play."
That much is becoming abundantly clear. After he pulled away from Tim Clark of South Africa in the third round Saturday morning, he faced his toughest challenge yet in Stricker, who started his 46th birthday celebration by making eight birdies in a brilliantly played match against Scott Piercy in the third round.
Stricker holed a 30-foot putt on the final hole for the win, and then ran into someone who putted even better.
The match effectively turned on the third hole. After they traded birdies, Stricker stuffed his tee shot into 6 feet, while Poulter pulled his shot some 40 feet away above the ridge. Poulter wound up making the putt, and all Stricker could do was laugh. He missed his short birdie, and the momentum shifted for good.
Describing the big moment, it wasn't clear if Poulter was talking about his putt or driving through a roundabout in England.
"It was 40 feet, left-to-right, right-to-left, right-to-left again, hopefully slowing down on the ridge, taking a left-hand turn, down the slope and then chucking a little left to right at the end to drop it," Poulter said. "It was really nice."
Stricker didn't win another hole until he was 3 down at the turn, and while he made birdie on the 10th to pick up a little momentum, he gave it right back with a tee shot into the desert on the par-5 11th, leading to a bogey. Poulter won the next with a 20-foot birdie putt, and from there it was a matter of time.
Even the final hole showed Poulter's putting prowess.
Poulter was 3 up with three holes remaining when he missed the green to the right. Stricker came up short and chipped to about 3 feet. As Poulter was studying his chip, a fan near Poulter said, "Pick it up," and Stricker did just that.
"I think it was close enough, anyway, but for a split second, it was a little off-putting," Poulter said. "And I guess I had to hole a 12-footer to finish the match."
That he did, and now plays the defending champion.
Mahan hasn't lost any match around the world since Martin Kaymer beat him in the third round at Dove Mountain in 2011. He exacted a small piece of revenge by beating Kaymer in the third round. Mahan had to play only 43 holes to reach the quarterfinals.
But his match against Simpson was tough from the start, and it was the first time Mahan played the 18th hole in competition since his opening match a year ago.
Neither player led by more than one hole, and Mahan took the lead for good on the par-3 16th when Simpson missed a 10-foot par putt. Mahan had to make a 7-foot par putt on the 16th for his par and the lead, and the finished with pars.
Before the tournament began, Mahan was asked to pick the best three in match play, and Poulter was on his list. Now he gets to find out.
"I have so much respect for the guy and how he plays," Mahan said. "There's not one part of his game that really shines. He has a great short game and he's a great putter, but to me, his determination and his will is his greatest strength. He's never going to think he's out of a hole."
Day fell two holes behind immediately against McDowell, and the turning point might have been the seventh. McDowell had a tough chip behind the green that he moved only a few inches and wound up making bogey. Day holed a 6-footer for par to square the match, and it was a see-saw match the rest of the way.
In the gallery with McDowell was Shane Lowry, the No. 64 seed to eliminated Rory McIlroy in the opening round. McDowell made three birdies in a five-hole stretch at the turn to build a comfortable lead and went on to win, 3 and 2.
His putter let him down against Day, however. He missed a 10-foot par putt on the 17th that gave Day the lead, and then missed a 15-foot putt from just off the green that would have extended the match.
Day became the first Australian to reach the semifinals since Geoff Ogilvy won in 2009, and it took a lot to get there. He beat the Masters champion (Bubba Watson) and a former U.S. Open champion (McDowell) on the same day.
"It's like playing on Sunday every day here," Day said.
He faces Kuchar, who lost to the eventual champion each of the last two years. Garrigus had said earlier in the week that he looked at his bracket and figured didn't see anyone he couldn't beat. He must have overlooked Kuchar, who birdied the ninth for a 3-up lead and never let Garrigus get close.
Poulter at No. 11 is the highest seed remaining. The other seeds are No. 21 (Kuchar), No. 23 (Mahan) and No. 41 (Day).
"I know it's not the top four in the world, probably what everyone was hoping for," Mahan said. "But there's been a lot of great golf played, a lot of great shot, a lot of great putts. There's a lot of great players."
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Yesterday, I went on a long hike with two of my favorite hiking buddies. It was a nice reminder to slow down, take in the view, and talk. We talked about school, where lightning comes from, Charlie Brown's Christmas (Woodstock is cool, but the rest of those kids are kind of assholes, right?), and the amazing taste of orange Gatorade. My son carried his own CamelBak and snacks that we ate at the top of the climb, overlooking the Olivenhain reservoir and dam. We did about 5 miles of pretty steep hiking, and he only fell six times. I guess I should have bought him the trail-rated Chuck Taylor's. He's a good little hiker, though, strong and deliberate. He would stop every few minutes to point something out to me, he spotted Double Peak Park, the new hospital by Stone Brewery, a hawk circling above us, and he would ask me to be quiet so he could try to hear the stream down below. I run this trail a lot, but I generally don't take the time to look around, and yesterday was a good reminder.
My wife's friend passed away a few days ago. My wife and kids went to the memorial service on Sunday and had an amazing time. Her friend was an artist, so all the guests made a huge splatter painting. My kids came home covered in paint and laughter. I can't think of a better way to celebrate a life.
Thanks for reading. I hope you are all able to slow down over the holidays and enjoy time with friends and family.


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January 2017
An Open Letter to the Theatre Community:
Over the past several years there have been conversations about creating pay guidelines as a requirement for the Helen Hayes Awards. Briefly, the history of the conversation dates back to August of 2013 when after receiving input from some of the larger theatre companies in the area, theatreWashington and its Board of Directors decided to consider changing three things about the Helen Hayes Awards: divide the awards based on the size of the institution; change the process of how judges are elected to serve; and consider compensation in the definition of professional theatre. Two out of three major items involved in the restructure of the awards were initiated in the 2014 calendar year. Splitting the awards into the Helen and the Hayes awards created two categories based on equity and non-equity contracts, which resulted in doubling the number of awards. The second change involved the revision of the judge selection process to empower the artistic directors in the selection of the judges was also implemented in 2014.
The third change, initiated but not completed, was to examine criteria for professional compensation. In December of 2014, a document was distributed that articulated compensation levels based on job titles. It was decided by the Board of Directors and the staff of theatreWashington to delay implementation until the recommendation of how to define professional compensation could be reviewed further.
In the beginning of 2016 the Board of Governors, a committee of theatre Washington composed of seventeen from diverse theatres in the area, and led by Abel Lopez of Gala Hispanic Theatre, took on the work of re-examining the issue. After several meetings, and much discussion, It is was decided by the committee, the staff, and the Board of Directors that to better serve the community of artists and theatres, we state general expectations of professional compensation rather than set specific levels as part of the awards criteria.
The 2017 awards criteria was updated in the 2017 Helen Hayes Awards Policies & Procedures and includes guidelines, for the purpose of the Helen Hayes Awards, to define professional as having appropriate non-profit status, or commercial business licensing, and require payment to all artists. There are other criteria including paying for rights.
We will continue to look at the issue of professional compensation. What the conversations uncovered was having specific levels of compensation as part of the criteria for awards was cumbersome to execute, and may not result in significant changes. In the ongoing efforts to build a strong regional theatre community, we will continue to address compensation without having specific levels of pay tied to the awards.
If you have questions or comments, please email me, Amy Austin, email@example.com, or give me a call at 202-337-4572.


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When I was in grade one, my favourite subject, English had the story of Casabianca as the opening chapter of my English Reader.
Back then, I was pretty amazed by the fact that a ten-year-old child chose to keep standing on the burning deck of a warship because his father had asked him to not move till he told him so.
This story has stayed with me as the ultimate example of a child's obedience to their parent's instruction.
As a six-year-old, I might not have given much thought to this story had it not been repeatedly quoted by my parents every time I tried to do things my way or rather in their words, disobeyed them.
An emotional battle ensued in my mind when I looked up to my parents to follow in their footsteps. I could clearly see my parents never practice what they preached but when I tried to follow suit I was reprimanded for an angry outburst.
The fear instilled in my little heart in those early years made me an obedient child to not only my parents but also to every authoritarian figure who tried to control me using anger or threats of serious punishment.
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum…." ~ Noam Chomsky
In hindsight, I can see how my fear made me a quiet, utterly obedient, introvert, who lacked self-esteem and always waited for instructions before doing anything.
As disturbing it sounds, it felt utterly disgusting to be the one who was caged by her own fears. Be it my tyrant boss at work or the ill-tempered ex-husband, all benefited by controlling me with their anger just as my parents did when I was a child.
The irony of this situation came to fore when each of these people expected me to act a self-reliant, confident individual the minute I stepped out of the premises of their control.
My parents have many times expressed their utter disbelief that a well-educated woman like me could withstand an abusive marriage without raising an alarm.
It is times like these that make me want to yell and tell them that their misguided notion (or rather driven by their motive to control a young life) of obedience ruined my life's prime quarter.
The day I was reborn, on the day of my child's birth, something in me cracked. It was my old weak self.
A face-to-face encounter with death showed me the face of life I wished for my precious child, but to make it happen, I had to wage a war.
I had to fix a lot of issues in my own personality, had to break free from a number of shackles.
And I did succeed on a number of fronts. But, when my child grew up, I was faced with the baffling situation, how to inculcate discipline in her life, without acting like a tyrant.
Besides, I cannot completely deny that I do want her to obey my instructions on many occasions.
This dilemma has been plaguing my mind on and off.
While I try my best to let Pari have free choices in all that we do, I allow her plenty of room to talk freely, brief her about what to expect in situations when we are outside home, but still, there are times when I crave for obedience from my 4-year-old.
It is not triggered by my parents' constant mentioning that I am giving too much freedom to my child given her tender age and the difficult times we live in. But, being a parent I am aware there are times when I don't have all the time in the world to explain every situation to her or let her have things her way when she picks up a Belgian glass vase at a friend's place.
This is why I have worked out a rough draft of the strategy I usually employ to have Pari do things 'as said'.
These could be something as simple as to study for some time on school holidays or to turn off the TV at meal-times or to not throw a tantrum for something she clearly can't have then and there.
Be gentle and control your emotions:
Letting my frustration shine bright in my words is a clear recipe of my instruction falling over deaf ears. Kids have a way of sensing the desperation and are somehow designed to play their mind rather than obliging immediately.
Trying anger to control tantrums is a very bad move.
One, cause it instils fear in the child that is mostly counter-productive in the long run. Secondly, a childlike Pari who has her mind of her own would only throw a tantrum but will not co-operate.
Being gentle and clear about what you're expecting yet firm is the key.
Be consistent:
Being consistent in our instructions is crucial.
What is not acceptable today, should also be unacceptable in the coming week and also in the presence or absence of family or guests.
Bending this rule needs intervention with an explicit explanation in a neutral time. Like I don't allow Pari to drink packaged fruit juices on a daily basis with her snacks, but when it is a party or we visit friends and they offer fruit juice to her, I expect her to accept without waiting for me to nudge and give her a lengthy explanation then. So a bit of open talk on what is not allowed and why helps because kids love pushing boundaries.
Practice what you preach:
This is one rule about which I have been very conscious in my growing up years. The day Pari was born, I knew what all things I wanted different from my own life and to implement this plan I have been working hard in changing my habits tirelessly. Be it reading books or regular exercise, staying away from junk myself or having a disciplined routine every day of the year. I try hard to lead by example.
Stick to your word:
I follow through what I say.
When I tell Pari that if she won't put back her toys in the toy box she won't be getting to see the cartoon that evening. I stick to my word. Pari tries hard to play her cute self to make my heart melt, tries to push boundaries by getting things done her way by influencing her grandparents and the list is pretty long, but I stand a firm ground because if I don't, I'll never be able to discipline her.
Encourage openly:
Every time Pari does as I request her to, I make it a point to mention her good behaviour. Everybody loves to be told that they made the right choice and that's exactly what I tell Pari to reinforce her thinking that how she should learn to choose one thing over the other. I can always see a shine of pride in her eyes that lasts long after I praised the choice she made.
There are occasions when a little reward for good behaviours like an ice-cream, a sticker or a new eraser as a token of appreciation of exceptionally good behaviour doesn't hurt and serves to encourage the child.
Win over the child with positive attention:
This came to me as a rather surprise.
After I started giving Pari defined spells of positive, undivided attention, she has grown utterly responsive to my requests. She fusses less, tries to see where I'm coming from and has become overly forgiving.
This has been a humbling change in my life. I feel tremendously less stressed and am loving basking in the loving obedience of my child.
Nothing is absolute:
A child's obedience can never be absolute, there are bound to be times when the child clearly refuses to listen to what is being said, despite the repetition.
This is when we need to stop for a second, walk up to the child, seek his full attention and find out what is keeping him from listening to you.
I have understood that our kids don't share our priorities. Like for Pari playing dress-up is far more important than keeping the room tidy. But when I need to get her to act otherwise, I need to have a small talk with her when her full attention is on me, telling her why I want her to clean up the room.
The feeling of personal attention and giving due importance to what she holds prime helps her loosen up and listen to me. If I yell the instructions from across the hall, I can be assured that they will never be followed despite the whole neighbourhood having heard it.
Being Human:
We got to bear in mind that we are all humans who resist being pushed around to do things. Our children too.
Teaching a child to be obedient, never questioning what they're being asked to do can raise only submissive adults with no power to stand up for themselves.
On the contrary, creating an open environment that teaches self-discipline helps raise individuals with an open mind, who listen, analyse and freely make constructive choices.
Obedience is best not sought by our children.
Instead of encouraging them to grow into self-disciplined individuals will help them stand their ground, make astute choices in life to grow up into happy, confident individuals who will always stop to listen what we have to say even they don't do it as it is.
Had Casabianca followed his heart instead of being obedient, he would have survived that fateful day.
Have you been an obedient child?
Do your children obey your instructions?
You can find my other parenting posts here.
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United Way SWLA disassociates itself from ACORN
The United Way of Southwest Louisiana is doing everything they can to untangle themselves from associations with ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), according to Denise Durel, president and CEO of United Way SWLA.
Durel spoke to the Sulphur Rotary Club about the United Way of Southwest Louisiana. ACORN and the United Way of SWLA are connected through the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program (VITA), which is a federal program that helps provide free income tax preparations to qualifying families.
For at least the past three years, according to a press release to media from the United Way, the state of Louisiana has funded VITA wth state funds, part of which went to the United Way to host seven VITA sites in the five parish area, including two in Lake Charles.
Four other sites, hosted by McNeese, Care/Help of Sulphur, the Beauregard Christian Academy, as well as ACORN, were also given money in 2008. All sites are partners in the Southwest Louisiana Assest Building Coalition.
In June, the Louisiana Department of Social Services sent a request that, for the 2009 tax season, one agency should manage all sites at a particular region, and the Coalition determined that United Way of SWLA best fit that job. The four independent sites were also included under this proposal.
Then the controversy with ACORN started.
In a sting operation, the website biggovernment.org posing as a pimp and prostitute went to sites in New York, Washington, California and Maryland asking for help in hiding their income from federal tax employees. The interviews were videotaped, and subsequently sent to media outlets around the country, igniting a story featured on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.
ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis offered a statement about the controversy, which was published online at the Christian Science Monitor (www.csmonitor.com): "We have all been deeply disturbed by what we've seen in some of these videos. I must say, on behalf of ACORN's Board and our Advisory Council, that we will go to whatever lengths necessary to reestablish the public trust," Lewis said.
Sen. Mike Johanns (R) of Nebraska has called for the United States Attorney General to investegate ACORN, and the US Senate voted 83-7 to block the Office of Urban Housing and Development from giving grants to the organization. Governor Bobby Jindal has also issued an order to halt state funding to ACORN.
On Sept. 22, Kim Lacour, EITC Program Manager for the Louisiana Department of Social Services Office of Family Support requested that the United Way submit an application with an alternate VITA site to replace the site administered by ACORN.
"The United Way will comply with that," Durel said. "ACORN will not be a part of our efforts."
Durel expressed alarm that the negative assertions at ACORN may extend to those they are even tangentally associated with, such as the United Way of SWLA.
"We were just trying to help people do their income tax," Durel exclaimed.
"We think it's so important that we are putting the applications together, and are going to find an alternate site," she added.
Durel said that VITA is a big help in the five parish area. Last year, at the 11 sites, IRS certified volunteers prepared over 1,000 tax returns, resulting in an impact of $1.5 millioon in returns in Southwest Louisiana.
Southwest Daily News


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Saturday, 18 December 2010
Hotel Lincoln: genial gastropub
I have mostly eaten in the front bar but yesterday we had a three course lunch in the restaurant. I arrived early and was glad to be able to sit and re-group. I had spent the morning with Sylvia and 10 other 2 year olds on an excursion to the Melbourne Museum. I didn't realise just how tiring that was until I sank into my chair at the Hotel Lincoln.
My colleagues arrived soon enough. It was all smoothly organised with dietary requirements sent to the kitchen beforehand and a Kris Kringle (or Secret Santa) present exchange. The presents brought us tears (the Leunig book) and laughter (the sticky notes with a tickbox for "I'd like to talk to you about the crap boss"), and a trip back to the office for a missing present! Fortunately we were able to amuse ourselves as the food was slow to come.
I started with Ricotta Stuffed Zucchini Flowers, Smoky Eggplant, and Olive. This was my favourite dish because the combination of flavours was a triumph. I haven't had zucchini flowers many times before so I was pleased to have the opportunity to try them again. The delicate zucchini and ricotta were nicely contrasted with a smoky eggplant puree, olives, salad leaves and cherry tomatoes.
The main course was a Shallot Tarte Tatin with Goats Curd. Being vegetarian means a lack of choice when it comes to a set menu. Onions and goats cheese are not really my cup of tea. I gave a lot of the goats cheese to my colleagues and found the onion a bit too intense. I've had much worse but I was so full after this that it was difficult to find room for dessert.
However, there was no way I was missing out on my Christmas Pudding with Brandy Butter. E and I spend much time discussing how restaurants and pubs just don't do proper Christmas dinners here like they do in the UK. So I appreciated that the Hotel Lincoln had made an effort to include some festive food in their menu. They didn't go as far as a Christmas tree. This one in the photo was brought along by my colleague, Penny, who loves Christmas!
The pudding was lovely with wonderfully flavoured brandy butter. I didn't even miss the custard that I would traditionally eat with pudding. Unfortunately the food was so slow to come out that about half the table had left by the time dessert arrived. Despite this, I enjoyed the meal and hope I will be back soon.
I will leave you with a photo of giraffes. A couple of years ago I shared my disappointment about the lack of giraffes in the Museum. It seems there are giraffes in the children's area but they are not the same as the stuffed ones that I remember from when I was a child. The museum has improved the taxidermied animal display and now has some fearsome expressions from lions and bears that didn't bother Sylvia at all. She was more interested in the koalas. I still hope for the return of the giraffes.
Hotel Lincoln
91 Cardigan Street (corner of Queensberry Street)
Carlton VIC 3053
Tel: 03 9347 4666
Web: http://www.hotellincoln.com.au/
4 comments:
Oh, I would have happily taken *all* your goats cheese off your hands! The zucchini flower dish truly is gorgeous to look at, too :) So colourful and fresh! You can keep all the Christmas pudding, though... stupid citrus peel...ReplyDelete
A pub with veg friendly food?!?!? Those are hard to find. It all looks so delicious!ReplyDelete
Thanks Hannah - sorry I couldn't just envelope all my goats cheese to send to you but I can tell you it was appreciated by my colleagues. And you should make your own christmas pudding so you can avoid the peel - it is so good it is a shame to avoid just because of a little skin!ReplyDelete
Thanks Joanne - not every pub is veg friendly here but most are - esp in the city - that's a shame they are thin on the ground in your neck of the woods - you always need veg options
I had zucchini flowers years ago when my then-husband had a garden and plucked them for us to eat. . . very delicate flavor, as I recall. Despite the slow pace, your lunch looks lovely!ReplyDelete
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text: Antonio Vitale was born on the 14th of January 1968, in Barletta where he lived until the age of 30. As son of Art Collector, he had the chance not only to visit constantly Galleries, Personal Exhibits and atelier, but also to meet contemporary artists as Ernesto Treccani, G.F. Gonzaga, Visentin, Renato Guttuso, Schifano and many others around Italy; So he begun to feel interested and attracted by Art in all its shapes and soon he started to frequent arts and restoration workshops. Furthermore he enriched himself with philosophy and psychology readings. From now on, Antonio starts his path to Surrealism.In the following years, he feels the need of new stimulating prospective rather than Magritte, and he dedicates his time to experiment new techniques such as the Conceptual art and the drip painting. He applies, in fact, these two last styles combining figurative subjects from the early XXI to glamour subjects of the XXII Century.In the belief of Renaissance Art is still to end, Antonio tries, in early stages of the year 2000, to discover a new style of painting suitable to the present times, regardless of discovering his own Art identity or his own Style.Many works he made, are part of International prestigious collections, not only public (Milan, Turin, Ravenna, Rome, Trieste, Viareggio, Bari, Barletta, Trani, Città di Castello, Arezzo, Melbourne, Sofia, Prague, Marseilles, Cannes and London).In 2003, the Artistic Commission of Philately in Milan, chose one of his paintings,representing chivalry scene, to emit a celebrative stamp for the Five Hundredth Anniversary of "La Disfida di Barletta" (The Challange of Barletta - 13 February 1503). After this, he realizes the cover of "I Premi Nobel" book (Nobel Prizes) edited by Croce Rossa, Bari, and the cover of a poetry book (Dr. Carmen Palmiotta).More info at http://vitaleantonio.wordpress.com/gallery/


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Alex Gibney, director of "Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God" on Pope Benedict XVI's resignation.
Not one news story links this documentary with the Pope's resignation. Really?
CNN welcomes a lively and courteous discussion as long as you follow the Rules of Conduct set forth in our Terms of Service. Comments are not pre-screened before they post. You agree that anything you post may be used, along with your name and profile picture, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and the license you have granted pursuant to our Terms of Service.
Starting Point airs weekdays from 7am to 9am ET on CNN. Check in often to join the daily conversation.


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What is a Steward?
Stewards are volunteers who work to build community for heathens everywhere in conjunction with the Troth. They start by providing a presence and giving information to individuals who are interested in The Troth or in heathenry generally. They may also help heathens find each other, start kindreds if they wish, and create opportunities for local kindreds to get together with each other or organize regional meetings. The work of the Steward in this web is bringing together threads of individuals and kindreds. They are familiar with the Troth members and kindreds in his or her area, and know the other heathen organizations that are willing to work with the Troth. They usually have strong ties to the broader heathen community local to the Steward's territory.
Stewards can be Regional, and work within a state, part of a state, or in several states. A steward can also work in a special interest area, such as with the military or with incarcerated heathens.
A listing of all the current and proposed stewards is inside the back cover of each Idunna and can also be found on our website. Please feel free to contact your regional steward (if there is one for your area) about Asatru, the Troth, and/or heathens in your area. If you receive no reply, please email the High Steward as he or she can answer you as well.
Stewards are usually familiar with the Troth's website operations and are able to assist members who have issues with joining, renewing, or changing their information in the database. Stewards usually have familiarity with Troth operations as a whole, in order to answer more general questions when asked.
Stewards enjoy talking to new heathens, and collect and distribute information about heathens and kindreds in their area. They may also attend or even organize local and regional heathen gatherings to make the Troth more visible to all. Stewards serve both as resources for their local community and as the literal "face" of The Troth in their areas.


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Committee Letter Workshop of 2014
Mandatory committee letter workshop for 2014 cycle.
Jan 22, 2014
from 01:00 pm to 03:00 pm
|Dr. Karen Phillips and Taryn Weinstein
|Speaker Information
|Director of Pre-Health Programs and Pre-Health Director
|405 Hunter West
|Add event to calendar
The first Committee Letter Workshop of 2014 will be held on Wednesday, January 22nd, 2014 from 1-3pm in room 405, Hunter West. In order to submit a Committee Letter Application and receive either a committee letter or letter packet you must attend one of the workshops. This is MANDATORY for all first-time applicants as well as Re-Applicants who would like to have previously submitted Committee Letters updated. Consideration/assignments of committee letters will be completed on a first-come, first-serve basis so please attend the earliest workshop that you can in order to have the assurance of a timely application. The 2014 Committee Letter Application will be open on our pre-health website shortly after the first workshop. You will need a Committee Letter Application Number, which is a unique number for each applicant or re-applicant, that you will acquire at the workshop, in order to submit the application.
Additional dates for workshops will be released soon. The final deadline to submit the Committee Letter Application is March 15, 2014.


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Big Apple Airchecks sent the original of this mono, but high-fidelity (and we refuse to say 'HD') recording of the Adult Contemporary version of WIFI 92! By this time, WIFI had morphed into a more Adult station, but was by no means a sleepy AC. You'll even hear Eddie Money's "Baby Hold On" about halfway through this, but this is SOLID AC, starting with the first song, Barry Manilow's "The Old Songs", and continuing with scoped portions of songs from Sheena Easton, Air Supply and Darryl Hall & John Oates. Man, there was some really GOOD music in 1981! Remember Joey Scarbury's "Believe It Or Not"? Aka, theme from the TV show "The Greatest American Hero" – where the 'hero' puts on a red suit and flies backward… into walls, etc? Yea, memories abound on this aircheck.
Your featured jock is Liz Kiley. Not sure where else she worked, but in this she's holding down Afternoon Drive. Walt McDonald is in the WIFI "Eye In The Sky"… helicopter. And the traffic is horrible as this is the evening before Thanksgiving!
There is a description, written on the History of Philadelphia Radio website, which says that the Adult Contemporary format at WIFI, essentially didn't have a chance. The station had competition in the market from WMGK, WSNI and WWSH. WSNI also had market icon, Hy Lit. Still, this really sounds GOOD, and with a female jock on Afternoon drive, news, information and traffic reports and great music, this format SHOULD have worked. And probably would have just about anywhere else.
Click HERE for more from Big Apple Airchecks.
Click HERE for more airchecks of WIFI 92.
Don't forget to check out the Airchexx Store! We got coffee mugs, hoodies and such… hey, its not much but these things do say AIRCHEXX on them, so support the site anyway you can, either here at the store, or using the donation button above. Me, and Mrs. Webmaster greatly thank you! CLICK HERE for the STORE.


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Ruling on one who says "Harramt (she is haraam to me)" but does not intend to divorce
I know some Sudanese people who say "Harramt (she is haraam to me)", intending divorce thereby. I am not Sudanese, but I live with them and I have picked up some of their culture. One day, I was having anargument with a friend of mine from the Sudan, and he said to me: You will never let any Sudanese ride in your car after today. Without thinking, I said: "Harramt (she is haraam to me)", meaning Yes indeed; I had no intention whatsoever of divorce or anything of that nature – Allah forbid. I did my marriage contract two months ago and have not yet consummated the marriage.
Since that day I have been very worried. I have read some of the fatwas on the Islamweb and Tareeq al-Islam websites, and according to the fatwas, this phrase depends on the intention at the time it was spoken; some of them said that it is regarded as an oath and the expiation for it is the same as the expiation for breaking an oath (kafaarat yameen).
I have asked Allah a great deal for forgiveness and I have promised Allah that I will not do it again. I also fasted for three days as the expiation for breaking an oath. But I wanted to write to you and explain to you what happened so that you could put my mind at rest.
What you have mentioned about uttering the word "Harramt" is subject to further discussion:
1 - If you said this word without thinking and without intending what it means, then you do not have to do anything.
2- If you meant what you said, then there is a difference of opinion among the fuqaha' concerning this word. Some of them regarded it as zihaar (a jaahili form of divorce in which a man said to his wife: You are to me as my mother's back), and some of them regarded it as talaaq.
The most correct opinion concerning this matter is: if he intended it as talaaq, zihaar or an oath, then it is as he intended. If he did not intend anything, then he has to offer expiation for breaking an oath. This is the view of Imam ash-Shaafa'i (may Allah have mercy on him).
See also the answer to question 81984
So long as you did not intend talaaq (divorce) or zihaar, then expiation either is or is not required; as you have offered expiation for your oath, you do not have to do anything else now.
And Allah knows best.


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Remember that whole balloon boy hoax, wherein a terrible man exploited his family to achieve fleeting notoriety through national panic before being fined and jailed? I try not too every day. But Richard Heene is back, scummier than ever.
Go away, Richard Heene! Take your horrible Bear Scratch with you, along with its horrible tagline and horrible bear-baiting logic. I like my crazies wacky-but-harmless, not loud-and-log-brandishing. [CrunchGear]


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Many iconic artists have received worldwide acclaim and fame for their still life paintings. Some people may think that this type of paintings is the simplest type of painting because they depict inanimate subjects. They could depict a vase of flowers sitting on top of a kitchen table or a bowl of fruits, hidden partially in shadow. The idea may sound simple but an artist's work shines through in the style that they paint these subjects. In fact, the mere act of adding light and shadows into a still life painting takes considerable skill and talent. This type of paintings is especially impressive if the painted subjects look almost like the real thing. In other word, an artist who can bring life and zest to a still life painting is truly someone who has great talent.
One of the most popular still life painters is Cezanne. His depiction of bowls of fruits, artfully displayed across a table, shows mastery. The vibrant colours stemming from the oil paintings make the work of art come alive. Colours, forms and lines are prominently drawn in his paintings, prompting experts to state that this is where Cubist paintings jumped off.
Another artist well known for his still life paintings is Henry Matisse. Matisse has a style different from Cezanne's. While Cezanne's work is full-bodied and realistic, Matisse's art is more vibrant – using bright colours filled into figures with bold and flat outlines. His subjects are usually set against vibrantly coloured backgrounds – giving his paintings a surreal zest. Cezanne's and Matisse's works are extremely different, but both are perfect examples of still life paintings.
Still life paintings are popular because they are perfect for homes. One can look at freshly cut flowers all day without having to worry if they will wilt. Depending on the style, a still life painting can bring a certain calm to a room, or add a touch of vibrancy to a room's theme. Since still life paintings are usually quite straight forward, one does not need to be high brow in art and culture to appreciate them. In that sense, most people can appreciate a well-done piece of still life painting and this is why it is the type of art that is most commonly seen in homes, restaurants and even office spaces.


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Submitted by a reader
Just one serious illness away from bankruptcy
The banks don't take every everything; it's the pharmaceuticals, "health providers," and doctors that shake our pockets empty!
This is 21st Century America, where you can have your money OR your "health." Medical bills are responsible for 62 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, U.S. researchers said today. That is an increase of about 50 percent in just over 5 years.
"More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University reported in the American Journal of Medicine." Reuters said.
"Using a conservative definition, 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92 percent of these medical debtors had medical debts over $5,000, or 10 percent of pretax family income," the researchers wrote.
"Most medical debtors were well-educated, owned homes and had middle-class occupations."
The share of bankruptcies caused by medical bills rose by 50 percent between 2001 and 2007, researchers said.
"Unless you're Warren Buffett, your family is just one serious illness away from bankruptcy," Harvard's Dr. David Himmelstein, an advocate for a single-payer health insurance program for the United States, said.
"For middle-class Americans, health insurance offers little protection," he added.
"Nationally, a quarter of firms cancel coverage immediately when an employee suffers a disabling illness; another quarter do so within a year," the report said.
Some 2,134 families, who filed for bankruptcy, were surveyed between January and April in 2007, well before the latest recession began.
"While only 29 percent directly blamed medical bills for their bankruptcy, 62 percent had medical bills that totaled more than 10 percent of family income, said an illness was responsible, had lost income due to illness or some other medical factor." Reuters said.
"Among common diagnoses, nonstroke neurologic illnesses such as multiple sclerosis were associated with the highest out-of-pocket expenditures (mean $34,167), followed by diabetes ($26,971), injuries ($25,096), stroke ($23,380), mental illnesses ($23,178), and heart disease ($21,955)," the researchers reported.
Soon, only bankers, doctors and lawyers could afford to live and have a family!


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Museum scours world for new videos of 9/11 attacks
Museum scours world for new videos of 9/11 attacks
By VERENA DOBNIK (AP) – 11 hours ago
NEW YORK — A camera in Brooklyn points through a chain-link fence at black smoke pouring from one skyscraper, while a plane pierces another. Papers fly through the sky; some of them end up in the filmmakers' hands.
That evening — Sept. 11, 2001 — another camera finds firefighters trudging through dust-caked streets, carrying their helmets or a spare pair of shoes. The spindly facade of the World Trade Center is before them.
The new views of the terrorist attacks — one of the most recorded events of all time — are among hundreds of hours of amateur videos, images and stories gathered by the foundation building the memorial. The National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum is launching a Web site Thursday with its collection of citizen journalism of the tragedy and is appealing for more 9/11 stories from all over the world.
"They say that 9/11 was the most digitally documented event of all time," said Alice Greenwald, director of the planned museum. "There were vigils in Tehran, Berlin, London, Moscow, Tokyo. ... We're asking people everywhere to help us tell the story."
The foundation planned to announce its "Make History" campaign later Thursday. Its Web site includes a collection of dramatic, chaotically shot footage of the attacks.
The site has photographs, video and audio recollections by professional photographers, fleeing trade center workers and witnesses who recorded what they saw with cell phone and digital cameras.
Each photo is juxtaposed against current Google "Street View" photos of various locations. Users can click on locations, themes or time of day to view the footage or images.
The graphic images of hijacked jetliners crashing into the towers are among the accounts that will become an exhibit in the 9/11 museum when it opens in three years.
One victim's family member said the images wouldn't keep him away, saying the story of Sept. 11 must be as realistic and complete as possible.
Charles Wolf was in his Greenwich Village apartment when he saw an American Airlines jetliner pass overhead, then crash into the trade center — and his wife's office.
"I and many family members don't want revisionist history, and we don't want this sanitized," Wolf said. "It is very important that people remember what happened that day: This was civilization, people merely at work, caught up in religious fanaticism."
The foundation has acquired 500 hours of video archives assembled by Camera Planet, a private team of filmmakers who collected professional and amateur videos from the day and its aftermath.
They include a five-minute video shot in the streets of lower Manhattan around the site on the evening of the attacks, with office stairwells filled with reams of paper and half-open offices with family pictures still inside.
A dust-covered Brooks Brothers logo is in one frame under shattered windows. What appears to be an airliner seat is strewn in the street. "God Bless America! Unity!" is scrawled in the dust of one window.
"Got that?" one videographer asks on the video showing the explosion of the second tower when it's hit by the jetliner.
"What kind of crazy person would .... kill themselves?" another asks as the camera points at the two towers.
Some of the submissions already are on display at the 9/11 Memorial Preview Site, opened last month near ground zero as a temporary exhibit until the memorial and museum are completed.
There, visitors can see a film of the attacks, with a live Webcam showing the ongoing construction on the former World Trade Center's 16 acres.
The memorial is expected to open on the 10th anniversary of the attacks in 2011, and the museum a year later. The names of nearly 3,000 victims of the attacks in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, as well as those from the 1993 trade center truck bombing, will be around two waterfall-filled pools.
The 100,000-square-foot museum will reach 70 feet underground, tracing the towers' original footprints. Photographs of thousands of terrorism victims will be flashed on a mammoth wall, with each remembered in movies, photos and narration.
"There are negatives lying in drawers around the world" that have never been seen, said Michael Shulan, the foundation's creative director. "We're inviting the world to really respond."
On the Net:
* "Make History": http://makehistory.national911memorial.org
* National September 11 Memorial & Museum: http://www.national911memorial.org
- simuvac's blog
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- 3 votes
This 9/11 story was also picked up by DFW Fox 4 News
Fox Channel 4 in the Dallas and Fort Worth area also picked up this 9/11 story. Links and photos in the article entitled: "9/11 Captured in Digital Museum"
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- 4 votes
They should ask the Bushman
if he has a copy of the video showing the first plane hitting the WTC which he claims to have watched on the morning of 9/11. This would be a unique video to add to the collection as it is one view of the attack that no one else has ever seen except, apparently, GWB.
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Selling the official conspiracy theory.
This article is selling the meme of suicide bombers and religious fanaticism.
[Charles Wolf was in his Greenwich Village apartment when he saw an American Airlines jetliner pass overhead, then crash into the trade center — and his wife's office.
"I and many family members don't want revisionist history, and we don't want this sanitized," Wolf said. "It is very important that people remember what happened that day: This was civilization, people merely at work, caught up in religious fanaticism."]
Isn't it ironic that the quote of Mr. Wolf speaks of not wanting revisionist history? This is no accident. This is selling the meme.
VERENA DOBNIK is a lap dog puff piece reporter.


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Two fundraisers held last weekend earned money toward the $50,000 challenge match toward the Cedar Springs Library building fund.
The gently used gown sale held at the high school Saturday earned $175 toward the cause. According to Christine Burns, who helped organize the event, the dresses that are left will go to local consignment shops, and will still earn money toward the library.
The Biggest Lozer challenge was a popular event, with 25 people weighing in at Curves Saturday. "We raised $562.50 towards the library $50,000 match challenge," said Alicia Imhoff, organizer. "But more important, we all took a step towards being healthier."
Donna Clark, Mary Osborne and Debra Jo VanderWerff were winners of the Body By Vi giveaways, courtesy of Sally Howland.
Prizes are being given away for the greatest percentage of body weight lost in three categories: women, men and seniors. And it's not too late to join. Just stop into Curves during normal business hours: M-TH 7-11 a.m. and 4-7 p.m., Fri. 7-11a.m. and Sat. 9-11 for their weigh-in, measurements and a $25 entry fee. Weigh out is in March.