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There’s been some great conversation on the web lately about women and their work. My favourite by far is a two-for-one. Jess Zimmerman asks over at The Toast, “Where’s my Cut?”: On Unpaid Emotional Labor. The article is thought-provoking but the discussion over at Metafilter about it is pretty stunning, if only for the list of emotional labour from various women. And while you’re reading Zimmerman don’t miss her feature about her midlife crisis over at Hazlitt: “I realized that, like many women, I had made all the decisions of my life on someone else’s behalf.” Nick Levine over at Vice’s i-D encourages us (who is us? Nevermind…) to rethink Courtney Love. The point that her behaviour would basically be standard male rock star behaviour is a pretty good one, and now I need to dig out more Riot Grrrl tracks. Maybe rock star men should start speaking more like women, or at least middle management should consider it…please? (Debbie Cameron at her blog language: a feminist guide) Shameless plug: Melanie Nelson is running an online course on how to run better meetings. It’s only $20! What?! The Comic Con Batman vs Superman trailer does indeed have Wonder Woman in it. Briefly. I will scream if she does all the emotional labour. Featured photo: from Pete via Flickr/Creative Commons I’m a weird reader in that sometimes I read just the comments on things like advice columns; the actual advice is that not relevant to me but watching people duke it out over social norms is my reality TV fix. One of the best jobs I’ve had was at the now-something-else 50Plus.com watching retirees chat and post on our forums. (Pro tip: People do not necessarily get wiser, but you can love them anyway.) But how to maintain great online communities can be tricky, even when you invest resources into it–which many sites do not. This post over at Autostraddle about healthy online communities and the struggle to maintain them as we’ve moved from a homepage culture to a Facebook culture is pretty great, outlining top issues and their response to those issues. There have been a lot of analyses of the big Reddit meltdown but I pick Davey Alba’s summary at Wired. I’ll also point you at Gina Bianchini’s piece for Re/code solely for the phrase “control is not an option.” Any brand manager or editor worth his or her salt knows that once you forget about the reader, you’re in hot water. But in online communities it’s your animator/moderators who are your bread and butter. When I was playing PernMUSH lo so many moons ago, I learned this one the hard way. Josh Dzieza’s profile of The Awl at The Verge is a great read but buried in is this important quote which I would summarize as “communities of interest are currently winning, just not your community”: The transition from media hosted on websites to media built around social platforms is more profound than people realize, Herrman says. As more content is published directly onto Facebook, users will gradually lose a sense of who’s producing what. The most consequential journalism becomes just another unit of content in a single stream of music videos, movie trailers, updates from friends and relatives, advertisements, and viral tidbits from sites adept at gaming fast-changing algorithms and behaviors. Readerships that seem large now will turn out to be as ephemeral as Snapchats. And finally, an oldie but a goody…Internet Commenter Business Meeting Here at casa Gruden, I’ve been mired in confronting our family’s stuff; my mother-in-law is moving in with us at the end of August (yay!) and so we are clearing out some rooms, in a house we’ve occupied for 10 years. It’s an amazing gift of time to be able to do it drawer-by-drawer, but it’s also an exercise in meeting my younger self…books that changed my life, books that didn’t; art supplies and home projects; notes for articles that didn’t take off. Maybe that’s why this set of links turned out so airy-fairy. Why Kickstarter is good for you! Over at The Atlantic, Kathy Gilsinan looks at research into compassion and brain chemistry. I linked to this piece on Twitter last week (follow me!) but it’s stayed with me long enough that here it is for posterity: Brett Martin’s The Chef Who Saved My Life. I have been gifted with a few moments like this at terrible times in my life, and I hope you have too. But we can’t all write about food and camraderie and dark times of the spirit this nicely. A hat tip to Cloud at Wandering Scientist for sharing this ThoughtWorks piece by Ted McCarthy on why designing apps to be addictive might be, you know, wrong. However, if you want a little adrenaline spike before your next meeting, try the Great White Shark Circles Around Surfer video below. My parents took me to Jaws at the drive through in 1975, thinking that I would go to sleep in the back seat. I only sat up for the parts with the spooky music, and once the attack was over my parents would realize I was sitting up and tell me to lie back down. As a result, I both have an irrational fear of sharks and I thought for the longest time, well past my teens, that the entire movie was filmed underwater. Which is why I am sucker to click on any link like this one. Fear as a motivator: Check! President of the United States weighs in on peas in guacamole. Internet outrage at its finest! I predict a slew of recipes-with-unusual-things-in-them. Also, yum, guacamole. Op-ed or blog post? I’m still a bit bemused at the variations on this one, sample from The Atlantic: “On Monday evening, President Obama took to the Huffington Post to announce that he would more than double the threshold for what a person can earn and still be eligible for overtime pay.” Reply All’s podcast #25, Favor Atender, is a pretty amazing story of Twitter, a head of state, and how ranting online can get you into trouble. Covers of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is kind of a hobby of mine and so here’s one of the latest. Not related to world leaders but maybe a nice break. If you’re fascinated by how journalists/sites/brands get content online and measure its success, Caitlin Petre’s report The Traffic Factories: Metrics at Chartbeat, Gawker Media, and The New York Times at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism is totally worth a read. A tip of the hat to Jim Romenesko’s blog for that one, lo these months ago. Navel-gazing but still fun: J. Freedom du Lac reports on ‘LOVE SUPREME’: How newspapers played the landmark gay-marriage decision at The Washington Post. It’s a lovely roundup but I found the Facebook rainbow tool and even the WordPress Pride header I’m looking at equally fascinating. It was definitely time. We have a coyote in our neighbourhood; do you? Drew Nelles looks at the issue over at The Walrus. Also spotted at the Walrus: A username “TooManyCrayons.” Love the name but spent way too many seconds figuring out whether you really can have too many. I saw Inside Out and it was really great. After Up I guess we all know Pixar can tell a life story in a short montage. Here’s the little memories clip. Faux dek for this piece: As fresh as a Far Side cartoon. Lots of running around today. There’s a long post brewing but meantime, a few old favourites. I will actually use this batch to highlight that on the web, content can live forever…which is awesome for finding old links. Sometimes it makes it hard to compete with every article/web comic/video out there ever. It’s also Friday, so hey, let’s start with the very funny way to learn customer reviews can far surpass the product: Bic Cristal For Her Pen reviews at Amazon. Don’t miss the customer questions either. The Five Geek Social Fallacies at Plausibly Deniable, circa 2003. Post with legs…it keeps getting quoted and quoted until it becomes as well known a principle as a quote-unquote real self-help system…at least within certain pockets of the Internet. The rise and decline of mommy blogging is a thing, but the classic And that’s why you should learn to pick your battles is always worth a re-read. Total Eclipse of the Heart Literal Video A theme developed for this post, so let’s have at it: stories about adventurous women. The Toughest Woman on Two Wheels by Grayson Schaffer for Outside answers a question I’m sure we’ve all had, which is, once you’ve survived growing up in a cult and written a bestseller about it, what next? Ride around the world, apparently, if you’re Juliana Buhring. If you fall in love with this woman, there’s also the Telegraph‘s profile of her. But the real add-on is to follow the links to the piece Schaffer wrote about Buhring’s boyfrield for Outside in 2011, Consumed, which wins for a fantastic one-word title (that is completely un-web-friendly). The piece follows the career and last days of whitewater kayaker & boyfriend Hendrik Coetzee, who, in the style of The Gashlycrumb Tinies, Hankered To Retire But Was Eaten By A Crocodile. (Boy that doesn’t scan.) Next up is Blair Braverman (name love!)’s Welcome to Dog World! at Atavist Magazine. (There is a paywall but you get three free articles.) Beautifully produced, I keep thinking this piece’s elevator pitch is Clerks meets Never Cry Wolf. And finally, Eva Holland’s Unclimbable at SBNation (oh Vox Media, we love you, with your crazy mix of content) stands out as an adventure story which tackles failure in just about the best possible way. The pictures are stunning. Now Cirque of the Unclimbables is on my bucket list. To stay on theme, here’s a pretty adventurous girl. Featured picture: Cirque of the Unclimbables, Nahanni National Park. Photo: Alison and Fil via Flickr.

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We had finally secured a baby sitter who was prepared to look after a two year old and a pair of four-year old twins, so Sally and I decided to make a night of it. When Sally succumbed to my suggestion that she should go to the fancy dress party as Princes Leia, I nearly came in my pants. "If you're choosing what I have to wear, Harry," she said, then I'm choosing what you have to wear." Why did I feel that victory and suddenly turned in to defeat? So when they day of the party came, and the costumes from the costume supplier arrived, I was somewhat pissed-off at finding a huge 'Chewbacca' suit beneath the wrappers. Of course, Sally found it hugely amusing, as she took her own costume up to the bedroom to change. The furry costume was huge, thick, and I knew straight away that I was going to boil alive. With the head on, I could barely see a thing, and movement of any kind was energy-sapping. Sally emerged from the bedroom, and it was the only time I was glad I had the head on, as my disappointment would have been obvious. Instead of the bikini-clad slave-girl-Leia I had been expecting, Sally wore the white, silky dress that Leia had worn in the first Star Wars film. I removed the Chewbacca head for a better look. "You disappointed?" She could read me like a book. "Well, there was no way I was going to go in that bloody stupid bikini-thing, if that's what you had thought. Not with all your pervy mates there. Besides, don't you think I look sexy?" She gave we a twirl, and the splits in the dress flashed her thighs beautifully. She jiggled about and her breasts bobbled under the material. Sally was only a petite five feet three, and her huge 30EE boobies were always mesmerising. I was about to check with her if she was wearing a bra, but the way her breasts moved and the glimpse of nipple under the thin nearly-translucent material, confirmed she was not. I thought twice about advising her how transparent her dress was in certain light, but decided that if she wasn't going to play fair and wear the bikini-Leia costume, then this was the next best bet. The taxi driver who drove us to the party was most amused, and offered to pick us up. "No, thanks," I said. "We have a minibus collecting us all at the end." We were fashionably late, and the party had already gotten in to full swing. I was only moderately pissed off at the immediate attention Sally received from the men, but it was probably my own fault for not suggesting she go as Queen Victoria or something equally as plain. I plodded myself off to the kitchen to get us some drinks, a task which proved very hot and very hard. When I got back to the living room, Sally had disappeared, and I found myself talking to two guys from work (Dracula, and a Catwoman). I had a few beers with them, and then got caught up with a few people I didn't know, who were debating the correct order in which to watch the Star Wars films. It' amazing just how many opinions there are on this, and even though I didn't give a rats ass, it was intriguing how they formulated their opinions. After an hour or so of this, I drifted away back to the kitchen to top up my drink. Sally was chatting to a guy who had his back to me. He was dressed as a native American Indian, with huge headdress of feathers, leather top, and leather loincloth. He was a little portly, which made him look slightly ridiculous, but as there was nobody at the party who was dressed sensibly, I could see how he fitted in. She was locked in close conversation with him, smiling gently, with her eyes half-closed as she does when she's drunk more than she should. So she didn't see me enter the kitchen. As I came round the side of them, I recognised his face as being that of Dan, an old school friend of years ago. I'd heard that he had moved back into the area, and rumour had it that he had been kicked out of his rented accommodation by his landlord, after having an affair with his landlady. This didn't surprise me, as he'd always had this fantasy thing about married women even when we were at school. He wasn't especially good looking, with scraggy flyaway hair, a weak chin, an a dismal dress sense. Although he had never been married, he had a series of long and short term girlfriends, flings, affairs, and partnerships, usually due to the sob-stories he told women. Women seemed to take pity on him, and wanted to 'fix' him. As I listened, he was telling Sally about how his last relationship had ended, after she had promised to go away with him, get divorced, and buy a flat together in London. Then, suddenly, just as they were about to start a new life together, she changed her mind and dumped him. And now he just didn't know where he was going in his life, what to do, or who to turn to. He'd returned to his mother's house, and although he loved his mother dearly, he felt it was wrong to impose himself on her for too long, as she was getting old. "You poor thing," Sally said as he finished, resting her hand on his arm. "Dan!" I exclaimed, as though I was surprised to see him. "Is that you, Dan? I hardly recognised you." I gave him a playful punch in the belly, that was perhaps a little too hard. "Wha? Who the fuck are you?" I took my Chewy head off. "It's me, Harry, you dickhead." "Ohh, Harry, hi, yes." He took a pace back as I offered my hand. Perhaps he thought I was going to smack him. "What are you doing here?" "Just getting a drink. One for my wife too. Fancy a coke, Sally?" "No, I'll have another gin an tonic." "You sure? You sound a bit slurred?" "I'll get you one, Sally," said Dan, pushing past me to get to the fridge. I didn't like the amount of gin he threw in to her glass, but Sally took it from him, giggling. I tried to prize her away from Dan, as he just made me feel uneasy. The way he stared at her breasts all the time, and the way she was so eager to hear of how down on his his luck he was, about the constant failure of his love life, and how he so wanted to turn over a new leaf but just didn't know where to start. Sally eventually had to pee and so I followed her to the toilet. "Are you going to talk to your husband tonight?" I must have sounded annoyed. "Why should I, when he's being such an asshole?" "To poor Dan. Haven't you heard how he is? He's supposed to be your friend, you know." She closed the bathroom door on me. I suddenly felt the urge to pee too, so I dragged my Chewbacca suit up the stairs to the upstairs bathroom. After ten minutes of getting out of the thing, peeing, throwing cold water over my face and under my arm pits, I dragged the suit back on, silently cursing Sally's choice of evening wear for me. Back down in the kitchen there was no sign of Sally and Dan. I wandered in to the living room, hallway and dining room, but couldn't find either of them. Somebody suggested looking outside in the garden, as they had seen Sally going outside presumably to cool down. I found Sally talking to a group of her girl friends, sitting on a bench in the corner. There was no sign of Dan, and I was relieved she had shaken him off. I chatted some more to the guys about work, football, and fishing, and hadn't noticed that it was dark until somebody turned the outside lights on. We were stood in the garden down the side of the house. The downstairs toilet window was open, and from it came the grunting sound of a man. Like a set of stupid schoolboys, we staggered our way nearer, to see Dan's face in profile. One of the guys, Ray, crept nearer, and spoke a few words. Dan grunted something back before throwing open his mouth and having a huge orgasm. "What the hell was that about," asked Simon, a guy I knew from work. "Dan's gotten himself a blowjob," Ray chuckled. "Who?" asked another guy. Ray shrugged. "He just said she was good. Just some slut." The guys laughed it off and we headed back to the kitchen for more beers. We saw Dan coming out of the downstairs toilet, but had no woman with him. In the kitchen, I was surprised to see Sally, as I thought she was still in the garden. She was standing by the sink drinking a pint of water. "Glad you're trying to sober up," I said. "I washnt drunk. Much," She slurred. "Good. I'm just thinking about your head the next day. I don't want you to be ill, that's all." "God, Harry, you're sush a killjoy. Dun you wan me to ava good time?" "Of course I do, sweetheart." I kissed her on the head. Just after midnight, the minibus arrived, and we said out good-buys to our hosts. I was one of the last on, as, having the monstrous Chewbacca costume, I needed the wider disabled seats at the front. I looked round for Sally and saw she had a place on the back row, next to Dan. The whole minibus was singing, people were standing and swapping seats, shouting directions, and messages about where to drop off the next person. I saw Sally's head on Dan's shoulder, and I fumed at how close they were sitting together. I noticed that there was nobody on the back seat with them. The next time I looked, her head was still on his shoulder, but her eyes were closed, her head had tilted back, and she was biting her lip fiercely. I removed the stupid Chewy head to see better, as it was dark in the minibus and difficult to see clearly. A woman had stood up two rows back, and was singing something to a guy across the isle, so I lost sight of Sally. I wanted to try and get back to her, but the minibus was just too full. So I sat back and fretted to myself. The minibus stopped a few times in quick succession, and soon it was only half full. I looked to the back seat, and Sally was now on her own. I was relieved at this, but bemused as I hadn't seen Dan get off. But there again, I hadn't been watching. As I looked at her, her face turned from a relaxed, far-away drunkeness, to that of sudden pain. She looked downwards, her mouth opened, and then her head went back, eyes closed, gasping. Was she masturbating, here on the coach? If she was as horny as that now, then it bode well for me when we got home. The next stop was ours, and Sally was pushed forward towards me and the door. I grabbed her round the waist and we stepped out of the minibus into the cool of the evening. We waved our goodbyes, and as the minibus pulled away, I thought I glanced Dan's face though the back window. I woke late on Saturday morning, and Sally was still dead to the world. She finally emerged from the bedroom in the evening, and slumped herself on the sofa holding her head. Although she vaguely remembered talking to Dan, she said she couldn't remember anything about the latter half of the night or the ride home. This didn't surprise me, as she'd had amnesia before when she was drunk. Once, before we were married, she'd gotten so plastered that she'd removed her top and bra, dancing topless in a bar in town. Even though there had been plenty of photographs to capture the moment, she refused to admit any recollection of it. I remained uneasy about Dan's presence, and my concerns increased when I came home from work and she let it slip that she'd had lunch with Dan. When I asked her when, she eventually revealed that she'd 'bumped in to him' a few times since the party. I told her I wasn't happy about this, as Dan had a history of being a womaniser. But she just repeated lines from his sob stories. "He's down on his luck, Harry, and he just needs a break. He's looking at living in cheap bed and breakfast places at the moment, so I thought he could come and stay with us for a while." "Just until he gets settled. He's having to impose on his mum. She's such a lovely woman, and Dan loves her so much. But he's having to sleep on the couch. And we have a whole room spare..." "No. Absolutely not. Our place isn't big enough anyway. And we've got three small girls who tear up the place. I don't want him wandering out of the bathroom one morning and...and.." "Oh, Harry, grow up." "He's not staying here, Sally. I haven't seen him in years. I don't really know him any more, and neither do you. I know he's been selling you hard-luck stories, but that's what he does. That's what he always does. It's just his technique." "Technique? For what?" I paused, but I hadn't actually got anything stuck in my throat. "For trying to get inside your knickers." "Oh for God's sake. You really are bloody immature sometimes. Besides, you said yourself, you haven't seen him in years, so you don't really know him. He's not like that."' "I don't care what he's like, he's not staying here!" Our discussion had turned in to a row loud enough to wake the twins, who peered out from their bedroom, wide eyed. Of course I got the cold shoulder from Sally for the next few days, but I just got on planning our summer holiday trip. We were going camping with a large group of friends down to the south coast. The campsite was just off the beech, and if the weather was good, we would have a week of building sand castles, collecting shells, and barbecues. I was excited as we hadn't had a holiday for a few years, and this might just be an opportunity for Sally and I to rekindle our pre-marital sexlife. We were all set on the morning of our departure, with the kids buckled in to our MPV, and the tent and gear stashed in the boot and roof rack, when Sally picked up a call. She spoke for several minutes, laughing with whoever had called. It sounded like she were discussing cooking arrangements. "Who was that?" I asked as we set off down the road. Sally looked a little uncomfortable. "Well, you might as well know now. Dan will be coming on holiday with us." "It's not just me. Some of the others told him to come along too." "Oh, Sally, why did you do that?" "He's on his own. He's lonely. The company will do him good." We argued for an hour before it went silent. And remained silent for the next two hours, when we arrived at the campsite. I busied myself unloading, sorting the kids out, and putting up our huge three-bedroomed tent. I set up the kitchen gear, tables, and chairs in the huge porch, and started inflating the air beds. There was the predicable row between Dee and Indy, the twins, as to who was getting which room. I looked round for Sally to arbitrate while I completed pegging out, but she was nowhere to be seen. I took the three kids up to the campsite shop and bought a few provisions, before heading back down, checking in with all our friends. I asked few if they had seen Sally. "She's over at Dan's tent drinking wine," said one. I dragged the kids over to Dan's tent, with the aim of making Sally feel guilty. But she was already sozzled enough not to notice. "Excuse me," I said eventually to Dan, grabbing Sally be the hand. "My children are in need of their mother." We put the kids to bed and then I put Sally to bed. Dee and Indy had claimed a room each, which left two year old Libbie sleeping between Sally and myself. Any thoughts of this holiday having any romance at all for me were fading rapidly. The next day we all took off for the beach. It was gloriously hot, and we spent all morning jumping in and out of the sea, applying layers of sun lotion, building sandcastles, and playing cricket. Around midday, the mums agreed they would sort out lunch for us all. The yummy mummys, clad in bikinis and bathing costumes, set off back up the beach, whilst us dads continued with the cricket with the kids. When the mums returned, Sally was wearing a new tiny white bikini. So tiny was it that it barely covered her beautifully big boobs, and she looked utterly fuckable. I was walking up to her to say how much I loved the way she looked, when Dan beat me to her. Sidling up to her, he wrapped his arm round her waist. "I knew you'd look good in that," he said. "You're really beautiful, Sally. By far the most beautiful woman here. I so wish I could have someone like you." I was going to launch in to a rant about that being the biggest load of bullshit I'd ever heard, but all the mums were cooing and ahhing over him, saying how sweet he was, that any woman would be lucky to have him, and they were sure he'd find somebody on this holiday. I was flabbergasted. Not only had Sally bought his crap, but so had all the other mums too. One other thing that irked me, was how he had said "I knew you'd look good in that" as if he had been expecting her to put on that skimpy bikini, and like he'd seen it before. That evening, the consensus was that some of the adults would hit some of the bars in town. We drew lots to see who would be baby sitting, and I drew one of the three short straws. I was chatting to Ricky and Paula about how we would watch all the kids in six tents, when the taxis arrived to take the others in to town. Sally popped out of the tent wearing a very sexy pale blue linen dress, with tiny straps, and a matching blue bra that was clearly visible. Her long auburn hair was down her back, and her hips wiggled as she strolled toward the taxi in a pair of killer high heels. She looked good enough to eat, and I tried to get near her to say how good she looked, and how pissed off I was about not being able to go with her. But she had been pushed inside the taxi, which was rammed with other bodies, eager to get into town. The taxi pulled away and to my dismay I saw that Dan had taken a seat right beside Sally. Ricky, Paula, and I placed three deckchairs in the centre of the six tents, where we could keep our eyes on all the doors and openings. We cracked open some wine and began chatting. Every few minutes or so, we'd wander round the tents, peeking in to see little faces asleep, and the occasional grunts and snores. By midnight we'd finished our third bottle, and the first of the taxis had arrived back. "You look shattered," said Ricky. "You hit the sack." I couldn't say no to that, so headed back to our tent. Sally's white bikini was laying on our airbed, and I began to stiffen at the sight of it. It felt so soft and smelt of her. I placed it beside my pillow, moved the sleeping Libbie to one side, and fell asleep. It was some time later that I heard the taxi. It stopped, and the doors opened. There was some commotion and what sounded like an argument developing. Putting on my trousers, I wandered outside. Ricky was paying the taxi driver, and holding on to Sally, who could hardly stand. "No money," said Ricky. "Don't worry, I've got it covered. You get her to bed." "Come on, honey," I said, taking Sally under the arms. "How are you feeling?" She spoke, but it wasn't really English. "Have you come back in the taxi on your own?" I asked, looking round. Again, she mumbled something. I looked over to Dan's tent but there was no sign of life. Eventually I had to carry her to bed. I peeled her out of her dress, unfastening her bra, and helping myself to feel of her melons. Pulling her dress down, I was shocked to find no knickers. The thought of Sally going commando in that dress made my semi into a fullie. She looked utterly fabulous, lying naked on our airbed, with the light from a nearby lamp illumining her bumps and curves. I removed my shorts and lay on top of her. "Sally? Sally?" I whispered. If she could hear me, there was no response, apart from a mostly incoherent groan. I kissed her face, and lips, hair, ears, everywhere. Suddenly I was consumed with lust. I had to have her, now. I knew it was probably wrong of me to take advantage of her in this predicament, but she was my wife after all. I kissed her tits, taking first one and then the other in my mouth. They were always too large to fit inside my mouth, but I always loved seeing if I could take just that little bit more. I feasted on them, suckling her erect nipples, and stimulating a moan from her. My fingers reached for her pussy, smooth and freshly shaved. My God, she was so wet! Utterly soaking. She moaned something that sounded like, "No more" but I wasn't really listening, and continued to finger fuck her, whilst kissing her pelvis and waist. Her breathing had increased, and I could sense her hips moving in rhythm. I could wait no longer, and praying that little Libbie would stay asleep, I pushed my cock home. I slid straight in to her, right to the bottom. Normally, I need to work on her for some time before she can accept my full width. But tonight she was magnificently moist. As I pumped away at her, my mind wondered what it was that had got her so wet. Was it going commando, the alcohol, or had she gotten so sexually aroused at something that her panties had become too sodden to wear? Little moans escaped her lips as I pounded into her, her breasts bouncing with each thrust. Finally I exploded inside her, blacking out for a second with the effort. I rolled over, catching my breath. An urgent need to pee made me leave the tent for the toilet block. On the way back, I could hear Ricky's voice, chatting to some of the others who had been out in town. "So who is Dan's mystery girl," Ricky was asking. "We don't really know," said another voice. "He must have picked her up to to tonight, I guess. Either way, she must be pretty loose as, by all accounts, he had her in the loos twice." "Jeesus. What's her name?" "All I know is that he called her Cunnylips." There were chuckles from the men, and tuts of annoyance from the women. I made my way back to our tent, checked on Dee and Indy who were fast asleep, and then joined Sally and Libbie before falling into a deep, satisfied sleep. It was afternoon down at the beach when Sally finally emerged along with her hangover from hell that she'd brought with her. "Don't ever let me drink that much again," she said. "I would have tried to stop you if I'd been there and not baby sitting." "What? You mean you weren't at that club last night? Didn't we...?" "I drew one of the three short straws if you remember? No?" She looked vague and puzzled, so I handed her a bottle of water. Nobody drank much that night, and we all sat around on deck chairs in small groups, a lighted fire here and there, with blankets around to keep off the night chill. Ricky, Paula, and I had been the only ones without a hangover, but with no alcohol on site, and with nobody willing to go look for any, it was the job of Ricky and I to take a walk to the local off- license. This proved tricker than we thought, and we got lost several times on the dark, unlit backroads than led to the village. The offlicense was closed when we got there, but we managed to scrounge a few bottles of table wine from the local pub just before they were closing. We arrived back at the campsite an hour and a half later. "You go on. Take the wine," I said to Ricky. "I'm going to pee." After I'd relieved myself, I walked down through the campsite. As I passed Dan's tent, I heard noises coming from within. Slurping, kissing, moaning. I'd noticed that I hadn't seen much of him that evening, so I stopped, just for a moment. "Ohhh...fuck..." A loud whisper. It sounded female. "You like that, Cunnylips?" Dan's voice was hushed. "Ohh, God, yesss," she hissed back. There was more slurping, and more moaning. I know it's perverted, but I wanted to see if I could identify her. There was a small open flap near the base of the tent, and I crouched down on hands and knees peering in. Through the insect mesh of the tiny window,I could just see Dan's head between a pair of bare legs. He was working away at her with his mouth and tongue, whilst his hands ran up her sides. I couldn't see what his hands did to her next' but it made her squeal. Dan chuckled to himself, and started kissing her pelvis, moving up to her abdomen, and then I lost site of his face completely. In to view sprang his erect cock, poking out from his flyhole. I saw his hand move down to take hold of his shaft and began to guide himself into her. "Oh, God no, Dan!" she whispered. "Not here. Somebody will hear." "I know you like it. I know you want me. You wanted me last night, didn't you." "Did I? Oh, God..." He pushed himself in to her. She cried out, so loud I thought someone would come. "Shut the fuck up, Cunnylips." He must have stuffed something in her mouth, as her cries became muffled as he pumped her. There was no gentleness about him, no tender seduction, no slow and gentle lovemaking, just a fierce piston designed to make her cum hard and quick. Her knees came up and her legs moved further apart, a foot hitting the mesh on the flap I was staring through. His ass rose and fell rapidly, and her stifled moans became louder and more urgent. I tried to stuff my face closer, to see if I could see any more. I saw her hand reach down his back, caressing his skin, and then digging nails into his back. He began grunting with each thrust, and with a series of much deeper, harder thrusts, she screamed, her knees straightened and his ass went down and stopped. His buttock cheeks clenched as he pushed hard and deep, moving both their bodies headfirst a foot and out of my view. "Are you in their, Dan?" A male voice from the other side of the tent. "No, it's the fucking Smurfs," came Dan's reply. "Whaddyouwant?" "Nothing, nothing. Just sounded like you were in pain. You need help?" "Ha fucking ha. Piss off." I rolled quietly away from the tent, and hid for a few minutes under the hedge that separated the campsite from the road. I was only partially shocked to find I was fully erect and poking out of my shorts. I knew I couldn't exactly go back to camp in this state, so I knelt down, removed myself and began rubbing. There were whispers and rustling coming from Dan's tent. Silence for a few seconds and then the sound of the tent zipper. It took me a little longer before I was able to cum, but it felt empty and unrewarding. A returned to the campsite, and was told Sally had gone back to our tent. She was curled up beside Libbie, so I slipped in beside them and fell asleep. I woke up just before Sally, and told her I was going for a run. There was a wide stretch of beach about two miles away that I was going to make for, and then I'd be back to make breakfast. I love running in the morning. It's a great way to clear your head, and physically set yourself up for the day. I'd planned to run along the wide stretch of beach for a couple of miles, before turning round and coming back. But I hadn't reckoned on the tide being in, and the whole beach was underwater. So instead I jogged up and along a lane that looped up and away from the sea and back to the campsite. Passing the shower block on the side of the campsite furthest from ours, I decided to try it out, to see if it was as good as the facilities at our end of the campsite. The block was in use, and warm steam filled the building. I had to wait a few minutes for one of the six cubicles became free. I had the cubicle second from the end. As I stripped off, there was a huge thud from the wood and plastic partition wall between mine and the end cubicle. Above the noise of running water from all the cubicles, I heard the groan of a woman. Then a slurping sound, followed by a woman's groan and then a little shriek. I dropped to my knees and peered under the narrow gap between the concrete floor and the bottom of the partition. Through the steam I could see a woman's foot and ankle. She appeared to be facing away from me and leaning back on to the partition. A man was on his knees in front of her. I couldn't see the woman's other foot, so I could only guess it was over his shoulder. The partition wall thudded again, and she let out a long steady moan. "Ohhhhhhhhh...Dan..." I could only just hear her over the noise of the showers. Leaning my back up against the partition, I soaped myself down and took hold of my shaft, bringing it to full hardness. The heat of the water made the soap froth, and friction soon disappeared. There were more moans, slurping and thuds on the partition. Then for a few seconds everything appeared to stop. "Oh, God, Dan...don't stop now. I'm nearly there. What...what are you doing?" There was another thud on the partition wall. "Oh, God, no...no, Dan...not there," she whispered."Please no...not in there..." Dropping to my knees to peer under the gap, I could just see the woman's knees. She was facing toward me, presumably with her head and hands pressed up against the partition. Behind her, Dan was knelt, his hands on her hips. She was struggling against him. He reached round her waist and pulled her back on to him. "Aaaasrghhhh..." She screamed. "Shut the fuck up, Cunnylips," he hissed. "You're my bitch. You'll take it in any hole I want." It was brutal and animalistic, whatever it was he did to her. It sounded like she was desparately trying to stay quiet, but was failing miserably. "Eeee...eeeee...eeeee...eeee..." She cried, in unison of a hard thud from the partition. And then, "no...please...no...I can't...aaaarrrrgggghhhhh..." Dan uttered a long, low, gutteral groan. "Yeahhhhssss...Cunnylips...now you've had my seed in every hole." The woman collapsed to the floor, sobbing. I dropped to my knees, my stiff cock in my hands, pumping furiously. The water from the shower in Dan's cubicle stopped. "Clean yourself up," he said. I heard him putting on his clothes. I needed to cum. I grabbed some soap and smoothed it over my cock. The woman whimpered. "You're not wearing those anymore. Not on this holiday, Cunnylips. Your pussy needs to be easily accessible. At all times. Come on." I heard the cubicle door open, and saw their feet walking past my cubicle on their way out of the shower block. I wanted to throw the door open, to see who she was, and who had just been assraped by Dan. But my cock was still hard, and I was still in need of cumming. I closed my eyes and focused on the panic striken noises, yelping, and pleading of desperation made by the woman. My cock exploded, spitting out its contents into the drain of the shower. For the rest of that week, I kept hearing snippets and stories about Cunnylips. Dan had kept her identity a close secret, but during a drunken moment he had let it slip to Ricky, that she was to be the star turn at a Stag party. Apparently he had convinced her to be the waitress at the party, which was to be held in an old barn somewhere at the other side of town. The party was going to be a big deal for the young Stag and about a dozen of his friends. They had chipped in to hire a prostitute, when Dan said they could all borrow Cunnylips. The young lads had been quite pleased, and Dan had pocketed the £200 that the lads had raised. Friday night came, our last nite on the campsite. I was busy packing up the girls stuff, and dismantling all the kitchen equipment. I figured that if I could load most of our gear into the car that evening, then there wouldn't be such a huge rush in the morning. I suddenly realised that Sally still hadn't returned from the beech. I was immediately pissed off that she hadn't been there to help pack everything up. And then doubly pissed off when I saw that the kids had removed all their belongings from the bags I'd carefully packed, and strewn them about the place, looking for something to wear on the last night. Angrily, I called Sally's mobile, and left a message to indicate how pissed off I was at her. By now it was eight o'clock, and I was busily trying to get youngest ready for bed, whilst explaining to the twins that they could stay up for another hour, but no, there wasn't a last-night party, it was just a bit of a get together, and no they could't get all their clothes out of the bag again. By ten o'clock, I'd finished packing, read Libbie a story and got her to sleep, and retrieved the twins who had been busy investigating everybody else's tent. "Bed. Now!" I wasn't taking any prisoners. At eleven, I sufficiently pissed off to call Sally again. I left another message, followed by a one-line, rather blunt text: - WTF are you? A reply came back a minute later. -out? Where? What bout your children? -Party. I told you I was about to send another text, but I get so pissed off with all the texting shit sometimes, so I just called her. It went to answerphone, again. So I hung up. Then I dialled again. "Hi, hunny," she sounded drunk. "Where the hell are you, Sally? I need help packing up you know." "I told you. I'm helping at a party." "No you didn't. What party? Get yourself back here right now." "Oh for fucks sake, Harry. Chill out will you. I'm sure I told you. Dan's asked me to help out at his friend's stag party. They need someone to serve the drinks." I had to check the ground to see how much blood had just run from me. My pulse shot out my head, and the campsite started to revolve. "What?" "Just for a few hours. I'm sure I told you yesterday. Didn't I?" "No. Where are you now?" "Just in the taxi. I don't think I'll be too late." "Taxi? Who with?" "Just with Dan. So don't worry. I'll be quite safe. He told me I'm the star turn," she giggled. Suddenly I saw what had been staring me in the face for the past few weeks. Dan's sob story of heartbrake and sadness, had engineered his pleasure in the downstairs toilet at the party, and Sally's face of pleasure on the back seat of the minibus on the way home. He had fashioned his way into our holiday, had his way in the nightclub, seduced Sally in his tent, and raped her in the shower. And God knows what else and when else. And what now? "Sally, you need to come back now." "You don't understand. I know what's been happening. What he's doing. And you need to come back now?" "I will. I told you I don't think I'll be too late." "Sally, listen. You don't know what Dan's going to do to you. He's been tricking you. Can't you see?" "What? I can't hear you." There was laughter in the background. "I've got to go." "Sally! Listen. Tell the taxi driver to turn round. Tell him to bring you straight back to the campsite. Sally! Sally?" The line had gone dead. I called back, but it went to her answerphone. I hung up, looking around me. I checked my car keys in my pocket. But where was I going? Where was the party? And who would look after the kids? I stumbled around the campsite, re-dialling Sally's number. It never occurred to me to send a text to her, to tell her that I knew what was happening. Eventually I stumbled in to Ricky and Paula. They asked me what was the matter. So I told them. Paula gasped and clamped both hands to her mouth. Ricky just shook his head, looking at the ground and turning away. A few of the others joined us, noticing that something was wrong. Gradually the story spilled out, as the true identity of Cunnylips revealed itself. At first, nobody would believe it. They all though Dan was a nice, regular guy, who'd just fallen on hard times and needed a break. With mums putting their arms around me in comfort, the stories started to come out. It seemed that, individually, Dan had provided some sort of hard-luck story to everyone. But when the pieces started to be put together as they were now, many of the mums commented that he had made advances, or flirted, or dropped hints of a sexual nature to them in the past. More stories of his conquests came out, and we were presented with a picture of a deviant sexual predator. Of course, none of this was any consolation to me. My wife had been multipully unfaithful, God knows how many times. She had allowed herself to be seduced, and had enjoyed the end fruits of her seduction, to the point where her seducer could legitimately claim consensual relations had taken place. Needless to say I didn't sleep that night. Whilst Paula looked after my kids, I drove around the town and surrounding countryside, looking for a barn or any signs of a stag party. But I found nothing, and by 4.00am it was getting light and I arrived back at the campsite. Returning to the tent I found Sally asleep beside Libbie. I carried the sleeping Libbie into Dee's compartment, and left her there, with the intentions of having a very serious few words with my wife. But of course Sally was completely comatosed, and I could get only a small grunt from her. She was dressed as a Cowgirl; but of course, she had been to a barn. I say dressed, but the costume she wore covered very little, being composed of a tiny brown leather miniskirt, and matching crop top. Cheap brown leather thigh high boots and a 10 gallon hat completed the look. She wore no bra, and no panties. I had to look between her legs, but wished I hadn't. Her usually beautiful pussy was red, swollen, and was leaking fluids of all colours and consistencies. Suddenly, I was filled with rage. A kind of murderous rage I'd never felt before. I burst out of the tent, storming over to Dan's, and ripped open his door. He too was comatosed, with drool and vomit clinging to the side of his face. I called his name a few times, and kicked him with reasonable force in his chest and gut. When it was obvious that he wasn't moving, I started searching his tent. I'd no idea for what, but when I stumbled across the Camcorder, I knew I had to play it back. The tape had been made at the Stag party, in a barn somewhere. There were about twenty guys, all pissed, and drinking beer from cardboard crates. There was no bar, or fridge, or glasses, and no need for anyone to serve anything to anyone. Sally appeared in her Cowgirl outfit. "I can't believe I let you talk me in to wearing this," she said to the camera. "You look fit as fuck," came Dan's voice. "Doesn't she, guys?" Hoots and yells of agreement came from all the men there, before Sally was led away by two of the men into the middle of the barn where music was playing. They began to dance, one in front of Sally and one behind. The rest of the men gathered round drinking beer. I pressed fast forward. The next scene made me nearly drop the camera. Sally was on her back on the ground with her tiny skirt around her hips. A man was kneeling between her legs, holding her hips and fucking her furiously. Sally had her hands on his shoulders, as if trying to push him away. The camera moved in closer, and Sally looked toward it. "Dan!" She exclaimed. "Dan! Ohhhhh..." The man had obviously hit a tender spot inside her. With several deeper thrusts, the man let out a huge groan. His cheeks tensed, and then released, before he rolled off her. Sally's knees were drawn up, exposing her pussy, which oozed cum. Suddenly, another man was between her legs. He had already removed his trousers, and was massaging a huge erection. Without any warning he plunged straight in to my wife, and began fucking her just as fast as the previous man. "Ohhhhh!" she cried again. "Dan! Dan, what's happening?" The camera moved in closer to the man's face, which was just a couple of inches above Sally's. "She a great fuck or what, eh Pauly?" came Dan's voice. "Yehhssss," utterd Pauly, as he continued ploughing into my wife. He stared down to Sally's breasts, and pulled down her tiny leather top. Taking one breast in his mouth he began to tease her nipple. "Dan?" Cried Sally. "Dan? Ohhhh...please...Dan!" Her eyes closed slightly and she bit her bottom lip. They took turns with her. I lost count eventually, skipping forward on the video. Near the end she was screaming loudly at something off camera. Two of the men were holding her down, and the camera panned round to show Dan holding a cricket stump. As the men held her with her legs open, he inserted the cricket stump into her slime covered pussy. She cried out a few times, thrusting her hips into the air. "Hold her!" came Dan's voice, and the cricket stump went in further. There were only a few more minutes of this before the tape ended. A ninety minute tape. I sat on the floor of Dan's tend, stunned. It was about six o'clock, and in a couple of hours the campsite would be waking. I stared at him, laying on his front, unconscious. And then, I developed a plan. I went out to my car. The sun was up, but the campers were still slumbering. In the boot I removed the two rolls of Duct Tape, before taking the cricket stump I had seen discarded on the grass just outside Dan's tent. I returned to the tent and began removing Dan's clothes. It was then I spotted his mobile phone. I picked it up, but it was locked. It had one of those fingerprint identity systems, so I grabbed his hand, and after a few seconds, I had unlocked his phone. There were dozens of pictures of Sally, many of them taken in his tent, with her sucking his cock, or riding on top, and being taken from behind. I saw texts from him to her, and her to him. Many times he thanked her for being so understanding, and for being such a good friend when he was so in need. The only other woman who had ever been so good to him was his mother. He mentioned his mother several times in his rambling texts to her. She replied saying that of course he was a lovely man, that it was such a shame he'd had so much bad luck, and that she felt so sorry for him. And of course she would agree to meet up with him. There were scores of texts and e-mails between them, all starting on the night of that party, including one the next day from him: -Thanks for what u did 2 me in the toilet hun. Hope you had a good time on the back seat? It had been his idea to move in to our house, but he had put it so subtly that it sounded like Sally had come up with the idea in the first place. He had even told her that he could look after the girls for us. And it was clearly him who had put the idea in her brain that he should come on holiday to recuperate. As I read, I became more incensed. There were messages to other women too. E-mails, mails, texts, instant messages, Wotsaps, every conceivable form of social media had been used to communicate with other wives and girlfriends. I picked up the Duct Tape and cricket stump. The next ten minutes of his life were probably the most uncomfortable. I zipped up his tent as I left. I watched him enter the fast food restaurant, just after it opened. He was first in there, just as always. So predictable. He ordered the same bacon roll and the same tea with two sugars and sat in the same table, away from the counter and away from the door. That the table was secluded from the rest of the café by a screen, was just perfect. He rose to leave, the moment he saw me. But I just placed his Camcorder on the table, staring him down. "What do you want?" He was hyperventilating. "A chat," I said. "Sit down, Dan." Obediently he sat, eyeing the Camcorder. "So it was you?" I said nothing. "You bastard. Do you know what permanent damage that's caused to me? My doctor says..." "Do you think I give a fuck?" He stood up, and grabbed the Camera. "I'm going to the Police. What you did was assault." I shook my head. "I don't think so." I reached in to my jacket pocket, and pulled out his mobile phone. I placed it on the table. He fell rather than sat back in his seat. "What do you want?" "I want you to leave town." He laughed. "Fuck you. What do you think this is? High fucking noon?" I leaned forward, staring him in his eyes. "I've seen the contents of your phone, as well as the tape." I tapped the Camcorder. He switched it on, but the screen was blank. He stared at me. "What have you done to it." "Wiped it, of course. You don't think I'd let you keep that, do you?" "She loved it!" he sneered at me. "She came begging to me for it. She said you weren't man enough for her. You didn't satisfy her. But I..." "Shut it, you prick. You're in deep shit." "Am I? Am I really?" he sneered. "I don't give a fuck." "No. You don't, do you. You really don't care whose lives you ruin. You don't consider the families you could pull apart." He looked over his shoulder, eyeing the door. "I'm out of here." "No, you're not. Not before you agree to leave town." "Why the hell should I do that?" "Because of the texts and the e-mails on your phone." He grabbed the phone from the table, and flicked through his messages, and texts. "The photos? And videos? What have you done?" "I've deleted them from your phone, of course." He sighed, relieved. "It's a bloody good job that the Chief Exec of that company you're working for, hasn't seen the e-mails between you and his wife." He looked pale. "Or the video of her tied to a hotel bed with something sticking out of her private parts. Did she agree to let you do that?" "Fuck you!" He checked his phone again. "Of course, I've made backups of everything on your phone. Everything. Including your contacts list. All those wives and girlfriends, and their husbands and boyfriends. All their home and work e-mails, mobile numbers. Plus all the dirty pictures and videos. And the ninety minutes of you gangraping my wife." "She agreed to that. She wanted to come. And what are you going to do anyway? You and your whore wife will be a laughing stock if anyone sees any of that!" He sat back in his seat, folding his arms. "No, mate. You're fucked." "The thing is, Dan, what Sally and I have, is called a loving relationship. You see, unlike the sordid little affairs you have, Sally and I have been together a long time. We know and we trust each other. Of course, what she's done has shaken me to the core. It's ripped us apart, made us question our whole lives. But we're turning a corner. That's what the marriage guidance people are telling us. And our friends. You see, they all know. They knew from the night you took her to the barn. From that moment, we all realised what a complete shit you are." He licked his lips, and glanced at door. "Fuck you, Harry." "So. I'm giving you one week. And then, as you say, you're out of here." "You're going to work now, as usual. But not as usual, you will hand in your resignation. You will copy me in to your resignation. Give personal reasons, whatever. You won't be able to work your notice, you'll have to go off sick. And then, once you've packed all your stuff, you will fuck off out of town, and out of the county. And you will never, ever come back. You see, I have a huge online Cloud account set up. In that account is a repository of all your nasty videos, pictures, messages and e-mails. I have a link to that account, which is pasted into an e-mail. That e-mail is set to go out to every contact in your phone. There are quite a lot of contacts. Over five hundred, did you know? Business partners, customers, as well as friends. Can you imagine how they will perceive you, when they see that little lot?" "Fuck you." It was a weak reply. His mouth was as dry as a bone, his face pale, and his hands trembling as he clutched his phone. "And of course, number one in your contact list, is your mother." His lips tried to form a word, but all that cam out was, "Ffff..." "What would she think of her precious little boy? What would she make of his adultery, his lies, his tricks and deceit? Would it sadden her to know that her son targets married women? Would she cry for hours and days at a time? What would she say to you, Dan? Would she even speak to you?" I let this sink in for a minute. "One week. That's all. I give you one week. If you're not gone, then I click send. If you come back, then five hundred people find out the real you." I stood up and made to leave. I had a family to put back together. "Oh, and one more thing," I said, reaching in to the bag I had over my shoulder. "If you ever contact my wife again, this will go in all the way." I placed the cricket stump on the table and walked out the restaurant. Feb 5, 2018 in anal

To be a bit cliché, this shoemaker is a professional Web Developer and her child is this blog, but it was past time to launch what I have of a new design. All the content is still here, everything else is a work in progress (kind of like most of my sewing projects)! This is the last quilt I finished in 2017. Although I didn’t make most of the blocks, I’m counting it as one of “my” quilts for record-keeping purposes, since I came up with the project, managed the block collection, and put it all together. I also quilted it and bound it by hand (the first in a long time). Of course, I couldn’t have done it without all the work my guild members put into the blocks—I’m so thankful for what they gave me to work with! My local MQG is continuing to grow and evolve, and this year we had our first changeover in presidents. We wanted to honor our founding president, and decided to make—what else?—a quilt. We asked members to provide a signature block of their choosing in one of three block sizes. Additional requests were to use a light gray background and only solid fabrics. Beyond that, they were welcome to do any style of block they wanted. I volunteered to head up the project, including the task of piecing everything together. One member spied some modern letter blocks on a Pinterest board curated by the recipient and chose to make those up instead of a single block. Inspired by them and one block that came in with a darker background than all the others, I ended up making two ‘tops’ for a double-sided quilt. The Thank You side has a few other blocks submitted by members that fit especially well on that side, and the other collects the remaining blocks. The result was a quilt that channels both the guild and our president emeritus. We gifted her the quilt at our December meeting. I never did take any good photos, esp. since I finished hand-sewing the binding about 10 hours before our meeting (and slept most of the rest). Adherence to the block rules was mixed, but it all worked out in the end. If I were to run a similar collection in the future, I would change the requests based on what I learned. Here are a few guidelines that worked well or that I wish I’d implemented (hindsight and all that). Tips for block collection: Decide how exacting you need to be. If they don’t follow the rules, will you still use the blocks or will you refuse them? Provide a disclaimer about using/not using a block, cutting blocks apart, restructuring them, etc. Be very, very clear about block size. Give unfinished size for best results. If it matters to you, specify an ink color to use for signing. Be prepared to adjust your vision if you design the quilt before receiving all of the blocks. Set a deadline and be firm. Make sure to publicize the deadline clearly. If people donate materials to finish the quilt and you intend to return anything that is unused, keep track of who sends what. Or, consider passing on the rest to the quilt recipient if she is also a quilter. Provide a visual guide when specifying something like “light gray” or “channel Jane’s style”. Somehow, almost 50 members were able to keep this completely secret from the recipient, and she was completely surprised when we presented it at our December meeting. I call that a success! I finished this in late May 2017, but just got around to taking all the photos! In the fall of 2016, I shared progress on a long term project—a meta quilt, if you will—containing a block for each quilt I’ve finished. At the time, I still had a few blocks to make for older quilts, and have finished another four quilts in the months since. At my guild’s spring retreat in May, I took along scraps I’d pulled out for a few more blocks, and came home with the energy to finish up the final four. That energy extended to putting rows together (quilt-as-you-go style), then finishing the edges with a facing. It ran out right around the time I needed to take photos and blog about it, as seems the norm of late. Each quilt has a nine patch dedicated to it. Each block has at least one square of Cloud9 Cirrus Ash as a cornerstone, and as many 2″ finished squares of the original fabric as I could scrounge up. Some quilts only had a few fabrics in them, and some I only had a few fabric scraps leftover, so extra space is filled in with the grey solid. I had no scraps for a few quilts, so those are represented by a solid block of the right color (or, in one case, an approximation of a logo for my alma mater). Each block is rotated 90° along the row, which means my fussy cutting is sideways or upside down, but that’s okay. I found additional scraps after I’d already finished a few blocks and set them into the quilt, but decided to leave them be. They still capture the spirit of the quilts. I put the rows together in a quilt-as-you-go method, so there’s no true quilting, except for a stitch in the ditch 2″ in from the edge that secured the facing to the back. Here it is, row-by-row, with links to posts about each quilt. All told, there are 48 blocks representing that many quilts from my very first in 2010 to a few baby quilts finished in early 2017. I completed my 49th quilt at the same retreat and completed another three throughout the rest of 2017, so there’s no slowing down yet! Maybe in another seven years or so, I’ll have another 48 blocks to finish a second panel. My goal is to keep making panels, then sew the panels together to form an ever-larger quilt. I may also eventually embroider years in the corner gray patch of the first quilt of the year, and add more info to a label on the back side. For now, I think this is going to hang in my studio if I can ever clean it up enough to have space for it. This is quilt three of four that I’m behind in blogging about from 2017, and was the 5th baby quilt of the year (of seven total quilts)! I threw it together quickly in October, trying to beat his birth. Then it sat around in my house waiting for me to remember to ship it, so was a few months late, just like this post. This has been the year of baby quilts, it seems. Or the year where only baby quilts were prioritized, perhaps. A baby boy is joining a family of three girls who have already received quilts marking their births (Impressions Baby Quilt, Noble Blooms, Jewelry Box), so after finding out, I quickly set out to make one for him, too. I dug into my stash for inspiration, and found a charm pack from the line Apple Hill Farm. It was a small pack though, containing only 23 charms. After wracking my brain for a good, quick design that goes well with 5-inch precut squares, I settled on a disappearing nine-patch layout that needed 36 patterned charms. I dug through my scrap bin and cannibalized a few coordinating charms from other packs, and ended up with enough. I paired the printed charms with two greens from stash (Kona Cactus and Limelight), and one last print—Cotton+Steel blue confetti dots—to tie everything together. I posted about disappearing nine-patch blocks a long while ago. They make a great pattern that is simple to piece, since you start with large pieces and slice the nine-patch blocks apart to create the look of complex, smaller piecing. For this design, the four corners were patterned fabrics, the centers were blue dots, and the solid green filled out the middles. I mixed the greens on a couple of the nine-patch blocks to let me shift between the two colors within the quilt. I didn’t have quite enough of either green to do the whole quilt, so I wanted to get a little creative with using the two. I quilted it with an all-over angular meander using a light blue 40wt Aurifil thread. I don’t know if it was the thread, the unknown high-poly-content, low-loft batting (from the scrap drawer), or my machine, but this was a nightmare to quilt. I started out trying to free-motion quilt it, but after 4 broken needles, skipped stitches, and a few thread breaks, I switched to my walking foot. Jacquie Gering’s Walk (thanks for the b-day present, Mom!) talked about using reverse on sections of designs like this, and that was a brilliant tip. It’s backed with a navy dimple dot cuddle fabric and bound with a red print from a Sock Monkey collection that I’ve been hoarding since the early days of my quilting hobby. It comes in a bit smaller than the three quilts for his sisters, but it’s still a nice play mat size. Alas, the poor guy won’t be getting a hand-made stuffy any time soon like his sisters did. Maybe I’ll get my act together by his first birthday! As well as I can remember, 2017 is the first year that I am incredibly relieved to see in my metaphorical rearview mirror. So long, 2017, and keep your fish next time. My time and motivation for sewing got pushed aside in favor of dealing with life. There were certainly some highs to go along with the lows, don’t get me wrong—we traveled to Alaska for our 10th anniversary, for starters! But overall, the theme of 2017 sewing seemed to be “whip up this gift before a deadline,” and had very little “me time, addicted to this project” sewing. 2017 was all about babies. So many baby quilts. And, a lack of blogging. I still owe you all some words about numbers six, seven, and eight. I also finished a mini, “All the Ys”, that took up a third of my Instagram #2017bestnine slots (of course, then I decided to be lame and not even post the collage to Instagram after it generated). I never quite know how to categorize minis—part of my list of quilts (currently 52 finishes, not including minis)—or part of my list of random small projects every year? Something to think about in the future if I start making more than one or two a year, I suppose. * This isn’t exactly a finished quilt, but is a completed iteration. Semantics. Human hung at the Vermont Quilt Fest and won a second place ribbon on its own merits. Cyclist was also present at VQF, in the “Lobby Lights” exhibit along with many others by my guildmates. Samplers, Meetups, Exchanges With my crafting mojo as limited as it was, I didn’t get involved in much this year. I started participating in my guild’s block of the month, but only finished the first two months. I’m about six behind at this point (we started mid-year). I helped my guild piece #quiltsforqc quilt tops during a sew-in, but that was it for various collaborative projects. I barely touched my existing project backlog this year. I did finish one old project, Sampler On Point, which officially finishes off my old sampler projects from Utica. And, I made the first full panel of my history quilt (48 blocks). But, I started two projects in May that I didn’t touch again after August or so, which means I’m technically net negative on backlog progress. Progress in 2017: Meta history quilt Farmer’s wife / EPP Crosses Witches Bubble Brew Self-portrait of an American Woman Giant Pixelated Churn Dash 2017-8 VTMQG BOM Looking back at my 2016 review, I didn’t do a great job of being on the same playing field as my goals for 2017, let alone accomplishing them. Which, of course, makes me hesitant to make any goals for 2018. That said, I’d like to finish a quilt to enter into VQF this year. I’ve found the feedback from judges very interesting for the previous two years. At the time of writing, I hope to finish up Organic Spins once and for all, and enter it. I started it in September 2011, which makes it my oldest work in progress that I’m still trying to finish as originally envisioned. I’d also like to catch up on posting about my final finishes of 2017 before too late in the year and keep up in 2018. Thanks for sticking around! I hope you’re all having wonderful holidays. I was hoping to get 100% caught up on blogging my 2017 finishes… we’ll see. So far, I’ve done a lot of nothing productive on my days off work. This is another quilt that I finished months ago—September to be precise. I finished everything but the binding at my guild’s fall retreat with the deadline of a baby shower looming the following weekend. Life had other plans, and we had to fly back to MO that weekend due to the funeral of my step-mother. I finished the binding a couple weeks later and still gifted it well before my friend’s baby girl came into the world. My friend seemed a little unwilling to share the quilt with her baby though (at least, when I gifted the quilt)—a true compliment! I really love it when I stumble upon my motivation trifecta: a spark of design inspiration, a stack of fabric that calls to me, and a (somewhat loose, but looming) deadline. That happened here, and sparked off the creation of one of my favorite finishes yet. The design inspiration came from a rug I found online. Something about the triangle designs and arrangement really caught my eye. The fabric inspiration came from a stack of fat quarters of the full range of colors in Cloud9’s Cirrus Solids collection. I think I’ve talked about their solids before, but I love, love, love them. They are yarn dyed (but with the same color weft and warp), and have much more depth than your typical solid. The rainbow of colors kept drawing my eye as it sat on my shelf, and seemed perfect for this project. Finally, the reason to make the quilt: the upcoming birth of a good friend’s first baby, gender unknown. This friend is a constant source of inspiration to me in our quest to get more women involved in tech, and is artistic herself, so I was happy to have everything click in place to come up with a design and finished quilt that I’m proud of and that I think she’ll really dig (and hopefully her small new human will too). At first, I had triangles that were drawn a little more free-form, with varying sizes of stripes, and planned to paper piece them. I was inspired by a trunk show that Amy Friend gave my guild, along with her book Improv Paper Piecing: A Modern Approach to Quilt Design. But, paper piecing—especially at the scale of these triangles—just doesn’t seem to click for me, so I fell back on basic piecing and simplified my triangles into pieces that were straight-forward to calculate (or, in the case of the angles, to put a strip of tape on a ruler for consistency). I paired the Cloud9 solids with about two yards of Essex Yarn Dyed (Indigo, if I remember correctly). For her registry, my friend focused on greens and grays, so paired with the rainbow of solids, this read as a good neutral gray. On the back is a solid swath of green Minky that has a tile texture. I used Quilter’s Dream low-loft cotton batting, and bound it in a rainbow of scraps from the front, plus a little bit of a black and white print to get enough length. I ended up with a spare triangle that I miscut, which inspired me to whip up a gift bag to go along with the quilt (or, as something for mom to carry around?). The lining is pieced of strips of a few of the colored solids, and the straps are also scrappy, making use of the fabric I had left of the fat quarters. I didn’t work from a pattern from the bag, just memory of making similar ones—it finished at around 14x16x2″, and I used Pellon 101 to interface the outer fabric. From a technical standpoint, this isn’t my best quilt—some points are missing due to in-progress design decisions and bad math, and the binding just didn’t want to go on all that well, in part because the Minky had different pile lengths. But, it still ranks high on my list of favorite designs. It’s been some kind of a year. I have four quilts that I’ve finished but not blogged about, starting with this one that was finished back at a quilting retreat in May. I never did get around to getting more photos of it before giving it to my mother-in-law just prior to her starting chemotherapy in July. I’m hoping to catch up on posting the others between now and the end of the year. We’ll see! Once upon a time, I was involved with two different monthly sampler quilts at the same time. Then I moved halfway through the year and this one ended up with five finished blocks in a box, one unfinished block kit, and a no urge to piece them into a top. This one especially didn’t call to me—it’s really not my style at all, and no amount of sketching could change my apathy (to be blunt). But, I’ve been on a mission to clean out my old works in progress, and realized at the guild retreat last fall that I could go super simple with the layout, try a new technique (setting blocks on point), and end up with a reasonably-sized quilt with minimal effort. So, armed with six 12″ squares and three yards of a dark blue tonal fabric, I went to work. Setting blocks on-point isn’t that difficult, it just requires a few 4-letter words—one of which is math. The most important number is the square root of 2 (√2, or 1.414), followed closely by remembering that you add 7/8″ to a square for triangle seam allowances (think half-square triangles). The other thing to consider is your fabric’s grain and bias. The reason we cut corner triangles as half square triangles, but side or setting triangles as quarter-square triangles is so that the outer edge is always on-grain, which makes those edges less likely to warp as we add borders or binding. (A secondary reason is to keep directional prints facing the right way.) A good tip when sewing your setting and corner triangles to your blocks is to always have the bias edge on the bottom, touching the feed dogs. That way the presser foot doesn’t stretch the bias edge (less of an issue for sewing machine brands with even feed feet or if piecing with a walking foot). That said, I broke the rules for a couple setting squares to conserve fabric (quarter-square triangles eat up fabric!) as I feel comfortable working with the bias while piecing borders and my fabric was non-directional. Do what works for you. I talked about four of the blocks back in 2013. The other two are “True Blue” and “The Windmill” (which actually contains five windmills). I added a 6″ border on all sides to bring the size up to 46″x63″. While digging through my reproduction fabrics scrap box for other scraps, I realized I actually had yardage stored in the box! So, the backing of the quilt is made from the remaining blue tonal, a half yard of a Windham repro, and the rest of a dark red solid (also used for binding). I used Quilter’s Dream Wool batting because I had a package on hand and to see how I like it for possible future projects (I was not a fan of quilting it, but it does make for a nice quilt). It’s quilted in a mix of a modified Baptist Fan pattern and echoed scallops using a navy Aurifil 50wt. While I liked how the fans looked, I honestly got really bored quilting them, so switched to the much faster scallops. It’s machine bound in a solid with a little scrap of piecing leftover from a block. I’m happy to have another old work in progress finished! Special thanks to Trista for holding the quilt, and Basin Harbor Club for the awesome location. The view was much better than my photography skills. I’ve thought about making a hexagon quilt for years now. I even bought the Hex-n-More ruler two years ago to get started, but then couldn’t come up with the right project at the right time. However, the arrival of our friends’ twin babies and a stack of fat quarters from Birch Fabric’s Bear Camp (plus a few other fabrics thrown in) gave me the perfect excuse to make two hexie quilts—although I settled on half hexies to take into account faster piecing (the babies came quite early!) and cutting layout efficiency. These 42″ x 54″ quilts use the 8″ half hexie size of the Hex-n-More ruler and were simple to piece row by row. I did a rough layout in Illustrator to try to spread the colors around somewhat evenly (also between the two quilts), although the final products are a little less random than planned—I didn’t do a good job of spreading around the prints, just the colors. I mixed in a glittery gray, magenta shot cotton, and lavender Cotton+Steel polka cats into one quilt, then used the warmer red and orange Bear Camp prints paired with a solid orange (Cloud9?) in the other to make distinct, but similar, quilts for the brother and sister pair. A cluster of three solid hexies was the perfect background for machine embroidering their initials on the quilt. I originally planned to do a three-letter monogram, but couldn’t figure out how to place letters for proper readability in the cluster, so went with just first and last initial in the center. The quilts are both backed with a gray cuddle fabric, and quilted by echoing the hexie outlines. I used coordinating, but not precisely matching thread for the quilting, as it was already on my shelf in the right quantity. The magenta version was a nightmare—I tried three different threads and a variety of needles and still ended up with skipped stitches that I can’t figure out (other projects have gone fine in the mean time). I had to rip out so many lines of stitching. I ended up leaving in a few lines of magenta that had fewer skipped stitches (and sewed a line of pink next to them), because I was at my wits’ end with ripping. Warm & Plush batting is in between (a higher-loft version of Warm & Natural), to make for very cuddly quilts. This is the first time I’ve ever used Birch Fabrics’ fabric. They’re an organic cotton provider, but none of my local shops carry them. I grabbed the bundle from Massdrop (mixed feelings) late last year, knowing that I had a few baby quilts to make in the coming year. Overall, they’re a decent substrate to work with, but fair warning: they have very large (sometimes >1.5″!) selvages. They’re both finished off with a new label style I made. I dropped the QR code, and left room to one side to add a personal note. I took photos prior to writing in a quick note for each baby. I finished these up in April, but just recently had the chance to deliver them. Stay tuned for one more recent finish coming up shortly. Spring has been a whirlwind so far. I am terribly behind on blogging about my finished projects. I have three completed quilts (two that are waiting to be delivered, the other finished this weekend at my guild’s spring retreat). This has been finished for a couple of months! It started with a challenge of colors. Five of them, four greens, one yellow. Of course, none are fashionable; the greens are all slightly different from the famed 2017 Pantone Color of the Year, the yellow a bit too off-trend. Then there’s a challenge of size. 18″ square. Constraints like this are helpful to me when it comes to challenges. The lacking part was inspiration, until I scrolled through Instagram and came upon this lovely bit of mixed-media art by @aykceramics and @aleksandrazee. Which, of course, introduced another challenge as said design doesn’t translate well into squares and blocks. But through y-seams and trial and error, it came together. The fabrics weren’t perfect. If I were making this again, I’d make sure the two lighter greens had slightly more contrast, and the darkest be a little more vibrant. I finally dug out my package of Quilter’s Dream Orient batting (a blend of cotton, bamboo, silk, and tencel) that I’ve had for years, thinking this was the right project to use it for. I quilted it with a perfectly matching Coats & Clark variegated green 30wt that came in a goody bag at some point (kismet). I like how the thread weight helps highlight the design lines, even as it blends in and out. I finished it with facing instead of binding, incorporating a hanging sleeve into the finish. My corners aren’t perfect, but the green and yellow make me dream of daffodils popping up in this very slow-to-start spring we’re having in Vermont. This and those of my guild mates will be on display at VQF in June. It’s a very eclectic mix of minis. Kona Corn Yellow In an effort to create tools for education and promotion of modern quilting, my guild started a challenge series (of sorts) a while back that we call “Make it Modern”. Members are encouraged to take a traditional block, make it up in an 18″ quilted square, then make a second one “modern”. The goal is to explore some of the aesthetic differences that exist between modern and more traditional quilting when it comes to fabric selection, quilting, and styling of a block. We have a collection of the blocks now that we are able to take to demonstrations and talks, as well as providing a quick programming bit at our meetings when a member presents their block pair. After giving and organizing a few talks for local traditional guilds about modern quilting, I noticed that we were missing a good example of pixelation, which has been a trend in modern quilting. Since I’d signed up (many months in advance) to do a Churn Dash block, I decided to play around in Illustrator to see if I could come up with something that evoked the look of the traditional block, but allowed for me to piece ‘pixels’ that weren’t too incredibly small for an 18″ mini. The traditional churn dash is straightforward—four half square triangles, a center square, and side rectangles, made from fabric I purchased early in my quilting journey. The more traditional text print is a great foil to the more modern, low-volume math print used in the other block. I stitched in the ditch to quilt it, because I didn’t feel like FMQ at the time for something more advanced. The super technical details modern details: I drew a vector churn dash, shrank it to 0.15″, rasterized it, then blew it back up to 18″. I played around with different sizes prior to rasterizing, but this was the best combination of “still looks like a churn dash if you squint” and “has big enough pieces (1.5″) that I won’t hate making it” I found. The more quilty modern details: after I had my design, I broke it up into blocks that let me piece as few 1.5″ squares together as possible (but, I was winging it, so there could be even more efficiencies I didn’t think of). I used a low-volume white math/text print from the stash as background, and two greens (Kona Peapod and Kona Limelight) that are just a little different so that you really get the pixelated blend from far away (that is, the farther away you are, the more it looks like it’s a normal (perhaps fuzzy) churn dash). I quilted it in geometric spirals, starting with a churn dash shape as a nod to the original block. And here’s what it looks like once we take photos and drop it in a template to publish on Instagram and Facebook for the guild. I love the way this project has encouraged me to think about the different ways modern quilting can be expressed, and it’s been amazing to see the creativity of my fellow guild members in how they approach their own make it modern blocks. It’s becoming quite the thing for me to start off the year with a baby quilt for friends or family. This year’s is incredibly hard for me to let go of as it’s one of my favorite quilts to date, but alas, it’ll look cuter with a newborn on it. I decided to do a straight-forward representation of the different shapes and their arrangement in the photograph, but wanted to inject color and pattern to make it more kid-friendly. Since the quilt is for the daughter of one of my instructors and his wife (and fellow student), I wanted to incorporate a subtle (or not subtle) nod to our discipline into the design. Thus, the colors of the shapes are the eight colors of belts in our ranking system (in no particular order). The prints are mostly small-scale, pulled from fabric I already had. I can’t get over the cute little pandas in the white stripe. Piecing this really pushed my skills in a way I’ve shied away from in the past. I had a few rough measurements, but did a lot of the piecing improv. The central angle was nerve-wracking, but I managed it with no ripping involved, mostly by using partial seams and a lot of patience. The back of the quilt is pieced from the super cute cat polkadots from Cotton+Steel and a strip of the colors from the front to give me the length needed. The quilt was just narrow enough to use the width of fabric, which limited the piecing I needed to do. The batting is Warm & Natural, as I had a crib-sized package laying around. I also approached the quilting improvisationally, doing each section at a time with whatever spoke to me. Most of it was done with a walking foot, but the green section was free-motion quilted. There’re straight lines, loops, orange peels, zig-zags, serpentine stitches, and more. Each section was done in matching thread. The red binding echoes the belts of our experienced black belts in addition to providing a contrasting frame. I hadn’t yet ordered new labels for the year with the appropriate year and qr code on them, so I used just the logo and name section from an old leftover. I’m beginning to think it’s time for something new, though I haven’t yet decided what I want to do going forward. For now, this one’s got the basics, and has already been delivered when our newest (just a few days-old) white belt made a surprise visit to say hello to last week’s class.

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As we’re halfway through 2019(!!!), it seems like a good place to take stock of the books read so far this year. Books read: 35 audiobooks: 2 (really not getting on with audiobooks – too easily distracted) kindle: 10 (includes NetGalley. DO NOT LOOK AT MY NETGALLEY BACKLOG) Hard copy: 23 (yay for physical books) I’ve read a lot of great books so far this year. In no particular order, here are my favourites. One suicide. One cold-blooded murder. Are they connected? And who’s really pulling the strings in the small Swedish town of Gavrik? Black Grimberg liquorice coins cover the murdered man’s eyes. The hashtag #Ferryman starts to trend as local people stock up on ammunition. Tuva Moodyson, deaf reporter at the local paper, has a fortnight to investigate the deaths before she starts her new job in the south. A blizzard moves in. Residents, already terrified, feel increasingly cut-off. Tuva must go deep inside the Grimberg factory to stop the killer before she leaves town for good. But who’s to say the Ferryman will let her go? Red Snow was one of the first books I read this year. A welcome return for investigative journalist Tuva Moodyson in the small town of Gavrik. A suicide, a murder and a family-owned liquorice factory. Just how are they connected? Deeply creepy. Two brothers meet at the border of their vast cattle properties under the unrelenting sun of outback Queensland, in this stunning new standalone novel from New York Times bestseller Jane Harper They are at the stockman’s grave, a landmark so old, no one can remember who is buried there. But today, the scant shadow it casts was the last hope for their middle brother, Cameron. The Bright family’s quiet existence is thrown into grief and anguish. Something had been troubling Cameron. Did he lose hope and walk to his death? Because if he didn’t, the isolation of the outback leaves few suspects… The Lost Man is a lovely slow burn of a mystery, leaving you with the dust of the Outback under your nails. Jane Harper has a wonderful ability to evoke the essence of a place and here she really shows off that skill to magnificent effect. You really feel the atmosphere here, the dust-soaked landscape, the incessant sun, the constant knife-edge balance between life and death. And the death here is one of those properly splendid whodunnits. A man is found next to a remote grave, a circle etched into the sand as he’s struggled to follow the meagre shade whilst slowly dying of exposure and thirst. Why is he here? Why is a seasoned, experienced farmer, who knows the Outback like the back of his hand, miles from the safety of his car? What has brought him to this place with none of the essential survival equipment that everyone carries by default in this unforgiving environment? Inborn – Thomas Enger When the high school in the small Norwegian village of Fredheim becomes a murder scene, the finger is soon pointed at seventeen-year-old Even. As the investigation closes in, social media is ablaze with accusations, rumours and even threats, and Even finds himself the subject of an online trial as well as being in the dock… for murder? Even pores over his memories of the months leading up to the crime, and it becomes clear that more than one villager was acting suspiciously… and secrets are simmering beneath the calm surface of this close-knit community. As events from the past play tag with the present, he’s forced to question everything he thought he knew. Was the death of his father in a car crash a decade earlier really accidental? Has his relationship stirred up something that someone is prepared to kill to protect? It seems that there may be no one that Even can trust. But can we trust him? A taut, moving and chilling thriller, Inborn examines the very nature of evil, and asks the questions: How well do we really know our families? How well do we know ourselves? Huge fan of Mr Enger’s books, and Inborn is no exception. Wonderful characters, perfectly balanced plotting deftly played out over the multiple timelines. Tonight is the night for secrets… Pregnant Victoria Valbon was brutally murdered in an alley three weeks ago – and her killer hasn’t been caught. Tonight is Stella McKeever’s final radio show. The theme is secrets. You tell her yours, and she’ll share some of hers. Stella might tell you about Tom, a boyfriend who likes to play games, about the mother who abandoned her, now back after twelve years. She might tell you about the perfume bottle with the star-shaped stopper, or about her father … What Stella really wants to know is more about the mysterious man calling the station … who says he knows who killed Victoria, and has proof. Tonight is the night for secrets, and Stella wants to know everything… I read a lot of crime books. Some are good, some are great. This one falls firmly into the latter category. Call Me Star Girl is tautly written, cunningly plotted and twistier than a curly wurly. Louise Beech has crafted a beautifully dark little tale in Call Me Star Girl, with a creeping sense of menace that leaves you wondering if you locked the doors. You might want to go and check. You never know who might be lurking outside. Easily a contender for crime book of the year. For centuries, the kingdom of Iraden has been protected by the god known as the Raven. He watches over his territory from atop a tower in the powerful port of Vastai. His will is enacted through the Raven’s Lease, a human ruler chosen by the god himself. His magic is sustained via the blood sacrifice that every Lease must offer. And under the Raven’s watch, the city flourishes. But the power of the Raven is weakening. A usurper has claimed the throne. The kingdom borders are tested by invaders who long for the prosperity that Vastai boasts. And they have made their own alliances with other gods. It is into this unrest that the warrior Eolo–aide to Mawat, the true Lease–arrives. And in seeking to help Mawat reclaim his city, Eolo discovers that the Raven’s Tower holds a secret. Its foundations conceal a dark history that has been waiting to reveal itself…and to set in motion a chain of events that could destroy Iraden forever. Very weird, very brilliant. Glorious worldbuilding. A story of gods and power and what people will do to gain the latter and the price they’re willing to pay to do so. But Ann Leckie does this with such a deft hand that you’re left marvelling at how it’s all constructed. The way she plays with character and language and structure reminded me not a little of the skilful hand of Claire North, and whilst they tell very different stories, they both show a similar joy at playing with expectations. Lord of Secrets – Breanna Teintze Magic is poison. Secrets are power. Death is . . . complicated. Outlaw wizard Corcoran Gray has enough problems. He’s friendless, penniless and on the run from the tyrannical Mages’ Guild – and with the search for his imprisoned grandfather looking hopeless, his situation can’t get much worse. So when a fugitive drops into his lap – literally – and gets them both arrested, it’s the last straw – until Gray realises that runaway slave Brix could be the key to his grandfather’s release. All he has to do is break out of prison, break into an ancient underground temple and avoid killing himself with his own magic in the process. In theory, it’s simple enough. But as secrets unfold and loyalties shift, Gray discovers something with the power to change the nature of life and death itself. Now Gray must find a way to protect the people he loves, but it could cost him everything, even his soul . . . More wonderful fantasy here. A magic-related heist, some more brilliant wordbuilding, a nice magic system (though not for the magic wielders themselves). Great characters, Gray has a nice line in funny one-liners and the plot fairly rattles along. Definitely check this out. The Furies – Katie Lowe In 1998, a sixteen-year-old girl is found dead on school property, dressed in white and posed on a swing, with no known cause of death. The novel opens with this image, as related to us by the narrator, Violet, looking back on the night it happened from the present day, before returning to relate the series of events leading up to the girl’s murder. After an accident involving her Dad and sister, Violet joins Elm Hollow Academy, a private girls school in a quiet coastal town, which has an unpleasant history as the site of famous 17th century witch trials. Violet quickly finds herself invited to become the fourth member of an advanced study group, alongside Robin, Grace, and Alex – led by their charismatic art teacher, Annabel. While Annabel claims her classes aren’t related to ancient rites and rituals – warning the girls off the topic, describing it as little more than mythology – the girls start to believe that magic is real, and that they can harness it. But when the body of a former member of the society – Robin’s best friend, with whom Violet shares an uncanny resemblance – is found dead on campus nine months after she disappeared, Violet begins to wonder whether she can trust her friends, teachers, or even herself. More magic here, though of the witchy variety. A tightly-drawn portrait of a private girls school with secret societies and a mysterious teacher. Oh, and a murder. Though the murdered girl went missing months ago… Splendidly creepy, The Furies is a book which will keep you up long past the witching hour trying to get to the bottom of what happened at Elm Hollow Academy. Sanda and Biran were siblings destined for greatness. Her: a dedicated soldier with the skills to save the universe. Him: a savvy politician with ambitions for changing the course of intergalactic war. However, on a routine maneuver, Sanda’s gunship gets blown out of the sky. Instead of finding herself in friendly hands, she awakens 230 years later upon an empty enemy smartship who calls himself Bero. The war is lost. The star system and everyone in it is dead. Ada Prime and its rival Icarion have wiped each other from the universe. Now, separated by space and time, Sanda and Biran will find a way to put things right. Smart, slick sci-fi with brilliant characters and a cracking plot, Velocity Weapon is everything I love about science fiction. The worldbuilding is superb, spanning hundreds of years of political shenanigans and a planetbusting doomsday weapon wouldn’t be amiss in an Iain M. Banks novel. It’s hard to say too much about Velocity Weapon without spoiling the plot, and it’s really something you need to go into without knowing too much. Suffice it to say that if you like your space opera played out on the grandest, galaxy-spanning stage, with some brilliantly diverse characters and a whip-smart plot, then this book is for you. Loved it. Ten sentient AIs out of ten. Hugely recommended. Every year, on the same night in July, a woman is taken from the streets of London; snatched by a killer who moves through the city like a ghost. Another strong contender for crime book of the year, The July Girls is just brilliant. A fabulous twist on the serial killer trope, brilliant characters and fantastic writing. Trust me. Just read it. Everyone has heard of the Gameshouse. But few know all its secrets… It is the place where fortunes can be made and lost through chess, backgammon – every game under the sun. But those whom fortune favors may be invited to compete in the higher league… a league where the games played are of politics and empires, of economics and kings. It is a league where Capture the Castle involves real castles, where hide and seek takes place on the scale of a continent. Among those worthy of competing in the higher league, three unusually talented contestants play for the highest stakes of all… Three interlocking short stories about the mysterious Gameshouse. Few know of it, fewer still are invited to play amongst the elite. From the opening in 17th century Venice where a young woman plays an unusual game of cards, to 1930s Thailand for a game of hide and seek across a whole country, to the epic, globe-trotting finale where the stakes are highest. Originally three ebook novellas, The Gameshouse showcases Claire North’s prodigious writing talent. Dare you play the game? FOR SALE: A lovely family home with good-sized garden and treehouse occupying a plot close to woodland. Perfect for kids, fitness enthusiasts, dog walkers . . . And, it seems, the perfect hunting ground for a serial killer. On a hot July day, Garrick and Olivia Lockwood and their two children move into 25 The Avenue looking for a fresh start. They arrive in the midst of a media frenzy: they’d heard about the local murders in the press, but Garrick was certain the killer would be caught and it would all be over in no time. Besides, they’d got the house at a steal and he was convinced he could flip it for a fortune. The neighbours seemed to be the very picture of community spirit. But everyone has secrets, and the residents in The Avenue are no exception. After six months on the case with no real leads, the most recent murder has turned DC Wildeve Stanton’s life upside down, and now she has her own motive for hunting down the killer – quickly. Last on my list, but by no means least, Fiona Cummin’s superb The Neighbour. Delightfully creepy, another serial killer with a difference. Told over the course of a few days over the long, hot, sticky summer of 2018, The Neighbour is wonderfully atmospheric, and not a little claustrophobic in places. The cast of neighbours on The Avenue are an intriguing bunch, and you’re never quite sure who to suspect, though you’ll end up questioning what you think about pretty much all of them along the way. I particularly liked DC Stanton, though Cummins does rather put her through the wringer in this one. I’d love to see more of her in future books. Loved it from the first page to the last. Very highly recommended. So, dear reader. There are my favourite books of the first half of 2019. Have you read any of them? What have been your favourite books? I’d love to know!

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« הקודםהמשך » Orl. My fair Rosalind, I come within an hour of my promise. Ros. Break an hour's promise in love? He that will divide a minute into a thousand parts, and break but a part of the thousandth part of a minute in the affairs of love, it may be said of him, that Cupid hath clap'd him o' the shoulder, but I warrant him hcart-whole. Orl. Pardon me, dear Rosalind. Ros. Nay, an you be so tardy, come no more in my fight; I had as lief be woo'd of a snail. Orl. Of a snail? Ros. Ay, of a snail; for though he comes flowly, he carries his house on his head; a better jointure, I think, than you can make a woman :: Besides, he brings his destiny with him. Orl. What's that? Ros. Why, horns; which such as you are fain to be beholden to your wives for: but he comes armed in his fortune, and prevents the slander of his wife. Orl. Virtue is no horn-maker; and my Rosalind is virtuous. Ros. And I am your Rosalind. Cel. It pleases him to call you so; but he hath a Rosalind of a better leer than you.+ a perfected by Sir T. Haman:] Oldo 3 than you can make a woman:] Old copy-you make a woman. Corrected by Sir T. Hanmer. MALONE. 4 a Rosalind of a better leer than you.] i. e. of a better feature, complexion, or colour, than you. So, in P. Holland's Pliny, B. XXXI. c. ii. p. 403 : “ In some places there is no other thing bred or growing, but brown and duskih, insomuch as not only the cattel is all of that lere, but also the corn on the ground,” &c. The word seems to be derived from the Saxon Hleare, facies, frons, vultus. So it is used in Titus Andronicus, Act IV. sc. ii: « Here's a young lad fram’d of another leer." ToLlet. Ros. Come, woo me, woo me; for now I am in a holiday humour, and like enough to consent:What would you say to me now, an I were your very very Rosalind? Orl. I would kiss, before I spoke. Ros. Nay, you were better speak first; and when you were gravell’d for lack of matter, you might take occasion to kiss. Very good orators, when they are out, they will spit; and for lovers, lacking (God warn us !5) matter, the cleanliest shift is to kiss. Orl. How if the kiss be denied ? Ros. Then she puts you to entreaty, and there. begins new matter. Orl. Who could be out, being before his beloved mistress? Ros. Marry, that should you, if I were your mistress; or I should think my honesty ranker than my wit. Orl. What, of my suit? Ros. Not out of your apparel, and yet out of your suit. Am not Í your Rosalind ? Orl. I take some joy to say you are, because I would be talking of her. Ros. Well, in her person, I say—I will not have you. In the notes on the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, Vol. IV. p. 320, lere is supposed to mean skin. So, in ljumbras MSS. Coti. Cai. II. fol. 129: “ His lady is white as whales bone, “ So fair as blosme on tre." STEEVENS. 's (God warn us !)] If this exclamation (which occurs again in the quarto copies of A Midsummer Night's Dream) is not a corruption of “God ward us,” i. e. defend us, it must mean, “ fummon us to himself.” So, in King Richard III: “ And fent to quarn them to his royal presence." with a Grecine; Troilus had his person, vide Orl. Then, in mine own person, I die. Ros. No, faith, die by attorney. The poor world is almost fix thousand years old, and in all this time there was not any man died in his own person, videlicet, in a love-cause. Troilus had his brains dash'd out with a Grecian club; yet he did what he could to die before ; and he is one of the patterns of love. Leander, he would have lived many a fair year, though Hero had turn'd nun, if it had not been for a hot midsummer night : for, good youth, he went but forth to wash him in the Hellespont, and, being taken with the cramp, was drown’d; and the foolish chroniclers of that ages found it was—Hero of Sestos. But these are all lies; men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love. Orl. I would not have my right Rosalind of this mind; for, I protest, her frown might kill me. Ros. By this hand, it will not kill a fly: But come, now I will be your Rosalind in a more coming-on disposition; and ask me what you will, I will grant it. Orl. Then love me, Rosalind. 3- chroniclers of that age ] Sir T. Hanmer readscoroners, by the advice, as Dr. Warburton hints, of some anonymous critick. JOHNSON. Mr. Edwards proposes the same emendation, and supports it by a passage in Hamlet : “ The coroner hath sat on her, and finds itChristian burial.” I believe, however, the old copy is right; though found is undoubtedly used in its forensick sense." Malone. I am surprized that Sir Thomas Hanmer's just and ingenious amendment should not be adopted as soon as suggested. The allusion is evidently to a coroner's inquest, which Rosalind supposes to have sat upon the body of Leander, who was drowned in crofl. ing the Hellefpont, and that their verdict was, that Hero of Seftos was the cause of his death. The word found is the legal term on such occasions. We say, that a jury found it lunacy, or found it manslaughter; and the verdict is called the finding of the jury. Ros. Yes, faith will I, fridays, and saturdays, and all. Orl. And wilt thou have me? Ros. Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing ?-Come, sister, you shall be the priest, and marry us.—Give me your hand, Orlando: What do you say, sister? Orl. Pray thee, marry us. • Cel. I cannot say the words. Ros. You must begin, — Will you, Orlando, Cel. Go to: Will you, Orlando, have to wife this Rosalind? Orl. I will. Ros. Then you must say,-- I take thee, Rosalind, for wife. Orl. I take thee, Rosalind, for wife. Ros. I might ask you for your commission; but,—I do take thee, Orlando, for my husband : There a girl goes before the priest; and, certainly, a woman's thought runs before her actions. Orl. So do all thoughts; they are wing’d. 6 . There a girl goes before the priest;] The old copy reads “ There's a girl," &c. The emendation in the text was proposed to me long ago by Dr. Farmer. Steevens, Ros. Now tell me, how long you would have her, after you have possess’d her. Orl. For ever, and a day. Ros. Say a day, without the ever: No, no, Orlando; men are April when they woo, December when they wed: maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives. I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen; more clamorous than a parrot against rain; more new-fangled than an ape; more giddy in my desires than a monkey: I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain, and I will do that when you are dispos'd to be merry; I will laugh like a hyen, and that when thou art inclined to sleep. i l will cweep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain,] The allusion is to the cross in Cheapfide; the religious images with which it was ornamented, being defaced, (as we learn from Stowe,) in 1596, “ There was then set up, a curious wrought tabernacle of gray marble, and in the same an alabaster image of Diana, and water conveyed from the Thames, prilling from her naked breaft." Stowe, in Cheap Ward. Statues, and particularly that of Diana, with water conveyed through them to give them the appearance of weeping figures, were anciently a frequent ornament of fountains. So, in The City Match, Act III. sc. iii : Now could I cry « Runs lamentations,” " Here in the garden, wrought by curious bands, “ Naked Diana in the fountain stands." WHALLEY. 8- I will laugh like a hyen,] The bark of the hyena was anciently supposed to resemble a loud laugh. So, in Webster's Duchess of Malfy, 1623: " Methinks I see her laughing, • Excellent Hyena!” Again, in The Cobler's Prophecy, 1594: “ You laugh hyena-like, weep like a crocodile."

Separate names with a comma. Discussion in 'THE Gretsch Discussion Forum' started by Parttime, Jan 30, 2020. Yes I do and I'm playing it right now! Aside from wanting an old Country Gent I am more than happy withe my Terada 6122 '62 II. The only thing I'd change on it are the pups. In 1969, I purchased a NIB 1967 Double Anniversary from Viner Music in Bangor, Maine. It was my pride and joy, my primary gig guitar and my "American Express" 'cause I never left home without it. It went through the windshield of my '64 T-Bird (made me a believer in seat belts) the OHC protected it and it went overseas with me. Through a series of mistakes, it became twisted out of shape and nobody in my circle knew anything about straightening it. It was useless to me, so I sold it for little or nothing. After a slew of used Fender Mustangs, they were cheap, plentiful and I'd burn one up in about a year of gigging, I found a '65 Guild Starfire V. I loved this guitar, but never stopped thinking about and lusting after that Gretsch Double Anniversary, to be called Double Annie. In 1995, I decided to quit the "electric scene" and just play acoustical guitars. The Guild went to a treasured friend and I started my acoustic journey. Fender Telecaster came to me and I used it as a trade in on my first Gibson. Twenty five years later, I still play acoustical most of the time, all have saddle bridge transducers and run through amps and sound systems, so in the Spring of 2018, I found a NIB 2017 (50 years newer than my first) Gretsch Double Anniversary reissue. every bit as nice as my first one, but with the years of acoustic playing, it has taken me some time to revive my rockabilly styling that the Double Annie does so well. At 9 years old, my grandson thinks I'm a pretty cool dude. Just turned 70 last fall and play mostly household gigs with friends and a couple times at church every week. Our worship team leader, and young woman of 40, commented that the Gretsch was awesome and could I bring it all the time. I manage a few bars of "Daytripper" and "Pretty Woman" mixed with some "Truckin" and "Honkey-Tonk" among others. "Sunshine of your Love" makes a cool call to worship on occasion and "Walk Right In" is a known winner. "Jesus and Momma", by Confederate Railroad, brought tears to the eyes of the Pastor's wife. (Wiping her eyes, she told my Mom, "and I'm not even a mother!") My Mom, RIP, played piano in church the last 20 years of her 83 years and, when I joined her on their worship team, she told me I was going to have to "tone down" my music. I told her the music wasn't mine, it was God's and HE didn't put me here to "tone it down". He put me here to bring life to HIS music, which I now have done for 34 years. Now it's just "Jesus and Me" and my Double Annie. I was going to buy a hot rod or chet with dynas the i saw the 53 I had them. They were stolen from me in Florida last year. Guitar center sold them before I knew they were missing. Neither the police or Guitar Center are interested in helping me try and get them back. Very sad! View attachment 130912 View attachment 130912 View attachment 130913 I did. But they were stolen from me in Florida last year. Neither the police nor Guitar Center, who they were sold through before I realized they were missing, are willing to help me get them back. Very sad! Considering the Gretsch of my dreams doesn't exist and prolly wouldn't be made by the custom shop even if I gave them the cash... then it only exists in my dreams. Here is mine................ I've had 2x G6131 jet firebirds, 4x g6114 new jets, 1x G6128 1973 custom order duojet, 2x G6128-57 duojet and a G6122JR country classic. Everyone that I sold I regret selling, especially the 73 custom order jet. Currently still own the G6122JR and a G6128-57 and love them... So guitar of my dreams... Yeah, I just have many dreams! For years now I have always wanted the Anni Jr , no one seems to sell them on though. Someone just posted one for sale on this forum Welcome to the forum, Hoser! Welcome to the forum, Gbrandroundup ! You have a beautiful guitar! I am found of this one! Welcome to the forum, JimEddie ! I have the Gretsch hollow body of my dreams. Now I’m working on the Jet I only have 1. I never dreamed I would own one. It's an Electromatic that my children got me as a gift about 5 years ago. So I don't dream about any others. I just enjoy the one I have. That headstock inlay is absolutely awesome!!! Not yet... but it's shipping out to me tomorrow. Tell us more! Soon, my friend! All will be revealed.

“Noon was chill and misty when they reached the park. Although a scattering of hopeful crocuses had pushed their way through the grassland, the chill damp of winter continued to hang in the air. She had swathed herself in a woolly scarf and hat. Only her eyes and broad cheekbones were showing, invigorated by the fresh air. Kurt had thrown on a thin fleece. She could see him visibly relaxing as they left the traffic-filled streets and entered the wide green space of the park.” This is a passage from Penny’s Antique Shop of Memories and Treasures, and it’s the part where the two main characters, Penny and Kurt, first take a walk in London’s Richmond Park. When I first started writing this story, I had a vague idea of the characters and setting. I always find it strange how my vague ideas seem to solidify, and how everything comes together eventually to fit the theme of my novel. Richmond Park is the largest Royal Park in London, and it hasn’t changed much for hundreds of years. It was originally grassland and common land used by the people, but was established as a Royal Park by Charles I in 1625. Charles came to Richmond to escape the plague in the city. He loved the hunting there so much, he decided to turn the place into his own park, and he walled it in with eight foot stone walls. As you can imagine, his decision wasn’t too popular with the commoners who’d been using it. The King allowed pedestrians a right of way, though, which was big of him. To this day, the walls remain, and the Park is still full of deer – although the Queen and her family no longer hunt them :) Nowadays Richmond Park is open to the public twenty four hours a day. If ever you are in London, it’s a fabulous place to visit. Although it’s surrounded by houses and tower blocks, once inside the massive park you could honestly believe you are in the country. The landscape includes hills, woodland gardens, grasslands and ancient trees, and the wildlife is astonishing. The Park is most famous for its herds of deer, but it is also a National Nature Reserve, a European Special Area of Conservation and a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and absolutely teems with wildlife of all sorts. So why did I choose Richmond Park as one of the settings in Penny’s Antique Shop of Memories and Treasures? Well, first of all there was the sense of history. Penny is an antique dealer, and has a vivid imagination. She loves to immerse herself in the past, and to picture how the people and places must have been in those days. My hero, Kurt, doesn’t share her imagination – but he loves to hear Penny speak. For his part, Kurt loves the outdoors. “I don’t like to feel boxed in,” is a phrase Kurt repeats in the novel. Kurt is reserved, but when he gets into the park with Penny, he begins to open up to her for the first time. I love to incorporate the setting in the theme of my writing, and in Richmond Park I found the perfect place for love to blossom between Penny and Kurt. It can be a magical place to visit. If you’d like to see some more photos, I can recommend the aptly named Richmond Park Photos, which shows some beautiful images. You can also see the Park by satellite with Google Maps. As Kurt goes on to say in Penny’s Antique Shop, Richmond Park can be a wonderful place for city-dwellers to escape all the stresses of city life. According to this article in The Daily Mail, one young woman found the park such a healing place to visit after suffering from depression, she actually had a map of it tattooed on her thigh! (Although it’s not always stress free – Richmond Park was also the scene of internet sensation Fenton the dog ) Richmond Park is one of the world’s great city parks, with an ancient history, and an important landscape for wildlife lovers and Londoners still today. I loved the idea of it playing a role in my novel, and becoming part of the relationship between my hero and heroine. I hope you liked my introduction to Penny’s Antique Shop of Memories and Treasures, and its setting in RIchmond Park. Are there any settings in novels that remain with you long after reading? Is the setting important to you, as a reader, or as a writer? Do you enjoy reading novels where the setting is part of the theme? If you have any views or comments, I’d love to hear from you.

Block on Trump's Asylum Ban Upheld by Supreme Court After a mere five weeks of being enacted, there is talk of having the NH gay marriage law repealed. However, there are many who will not let the NH gay marriage law go down without a fight. The Boston Herald reports that a New Hampshire House Judiciary Committee is advising against the repeal. The Judiciary Committee has advised that the House shoot down a constitutional amendment that attempts to define marriage an institution between a man and a woman, versus between two individuals. While it seems that the NH gay marriage law getting repealed is unlikely, opponents of the law were hoping to keep the law at bay while the Republicans make an effort to become a majority in November. It is then that, if elected to a majority, they are expected to attempt the repeal of the law and ban gay marriage. However, the Concord Monitor reports that Kevin Smith, executive director of Cornerstone Policy Research predicts that the House will shoot down both measures. He is quoted as saying: "More than anything, it's symbolic. The voters are going to know whether the Legislature wants them to have a voice on this issue." The legislature can act as soon as next week on the issue. Republicans in New Hampshire have been very vocal about their displeasure over the new law. As we wrote about previously in FindLaw's Law and Daily Life Blog, New Hampshire state Rep. Jordan Ulery, made it very clear that he was against same sex marriages: "A man and a woman together create a family where individuals of the same gender cannot create a family." For more information, please visit our Related Resources links. Sign into your Legal Forms and Services account to manage your estate planning documents.Sign In Create an account allows to take advantage of these benefits:

66 years later than Make Way For Tomorrow and 50 years later than TS, Baghban (2003) treats the same subject of the generation gap in a changing world. But in contrast to both MWT and TS Poojah the old woman character is stereotypically the sexual object. Poojah is beautiful and glamorous. The actor who plays her is Hema Malini aged 55, a dancer and big film star. Contrary to the actor, who became a politician, Poojah is not only a woman who is there only to serve husband and children, but I feel, is also the source of trouble because of her bad judgement. The actor playing her husband is also a big star who is said to be 60 in the film. Even allowing for the demands of the genre (Bollywood) that require song, dance, romance, sentimentality, unambiguous good and bad characters, I did not expect such a male centred approach to the theme of the family generation gap. The old couple have 4 sons, 3 daughters-in-law, an adopted son, a teenage granddaughter and a younger grandson. At the start of the film this makes a big happy family. But the sons with the help of their wives and a new way of life, turn out to be unreliable when the parents are in need and thereon are the ‘baddies’. It is the adopted son who shows respect and care to his adopted parents. I will not dwell on the three-hour film with its visual appeal, dancing, singing, and the tear jerking separation of the couple but draw attention to certain scenes. In the older film the love between the couples is a comfortable, caring and sharing one. Love and desire in this young-old couple of Baghban are expressed in words, gestures song and dance. Poojah shows her love by serving food and drink to her husband and sons in many scenes. Even when separated from her husband the conversation on the phone involves Poojah worrying about what her husband is eating. It is Poojah who is responsible for the initiating event. Her son has requested her to ask the father for a loan to pay for a car. Here we are shown that Poojah has no sense of money as she does not even know the word for ‘down payment’. The husband obliges to please her without discussion about the wisdom of this decision which will cost the couple their financial security and necessity for their sons’ help and shelter. The next event Poojah is responsible for is accepting the solution of separation proposed in bad faith by the sons goaded by their wives. Whereas the husband was determined not to be separated from her it is Poojah who pleads and vouches for the good intentions of the children. In the household of her son, Poojah is the spokesperson for traditional male values. She advises her son to keep a check on his wife and daughter and know where they are at all times, as his father did at home to keep order in the family. To the argument that times have changed she replies : “Times never change for a woman”. This is followed by yet another faux pas when she takes him his favourite dish to his office because it is his birthday. In a very unlikely episode she rescues her granddaughter from the aggressive attention of her admirer at a Valentine party and takes the blame for coming back late. It is the only incident that gives Poojah a pro-active role and establishes a trusting relationship with her granddaughter. In the rest of the film Poojah is back with her husband, in scenes nearly identical to some of MWT: the meeting between two train journeys, the test drive, the hotel where they spent their honeymoon. The arrival of the caring adopted son, the publishing of the book ‘Baghban’ and the launch close the narrative. The final speech delivered by the husband brings tears to Poojah eyes. It is all about traditional values, the duties of children towards their elders: “Times have changed, life has changed… our father was God…at our Mother’s feet lay our heaven”. It closes with the father disowning the children. Poojah follows suit and declares that as a mother she would forgive the sons but as a wife she cannot. The grandson jumps in his grandfather’s arms and thus reconciles the future with the past. In this film the pairing of the word Father with God occurs more than once. There are from time to time some token acknowledgements of the role of Mother and love for the mother but she is subservient to the Father throughout.

Seahorse Rodeo Folk Revival presents... The Seahorse Rodeo Folk Review: Best Acts of 2010 Published in arrangement with the authors Compiled by Seahorse Rodeo Folk Revival Edited by Trevor Richardson Cover design and interior layout by Erin Deale Interior illustrations by Trevor Richardson Copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and “Seahorse Rodeo Folk Revival,” except in the case of brief quotations embodied within critical articles and reviews. This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead or undead, or historical events, is purely coincidental. 4 Preamble A Letter from the Editor Dear Revivalists, Curious Perusers and Distant Friends, For those of you that may be wondering, the Seahorse Rodeo Folk Revival began in May 2010 over diner coffee. It was me and my girlfriend, Erin Deale, talking about a desire to change things. The way we saw it, as aspiring creatives ourselves, an artist in the current system has only a limited level of control over their own destiny or “success” or future – however you choose to label it. Let’s look at the facts. We are taught to seek out the patronage of other, larger interests. Whether that means a publishing company, record label, film studio, agent, manager, or art gallery, the end result is still the same: we are handing our fates over to an outside force that may not have our best interest at heart. More than that, the idea out there is that we need them if we want to succeed. If they say no then that’s that. Erin and I didn’t feel that was right and we started trying to think of a new system. The philosophy of Seahorse began with an agreement that this stalemate isn’t good enough anymore. The larger, often corporate entities are granted the power to determine what the art world looks like, and that power is given out, supported and maintained largely by the artists themselves. The artists’ intentions are not evil, it isn’t selling out or bastardizing standards, it’s simply a desire to reach the largest possible audience that motivates them. However, best intentions aside, the backlash of reaching out to Big Business for help is apparent, albeit, rarely voiced in the way we came to look at it. It is this backlash that inspires the hipster outcry of “sellout” or “mainstream” and the like. Simply put, in granting so much power to big business, in allowing them to determine which art “makes it” and which doesn’t, we have given them the power to determine what the art world looks like. Everywhere we go, the books we see in stores, the music we hear on the radio, somewhere along the line there’s been some bigger group working to get it where it is. So what about the stuff they say no to? What about the fact that they have obtained the power to say no? The resources of some of these groups are astounding, able to make or break the fates of dreamers in a single blurb, so why the negativity? Why the resistance. In truth, if their motivation were actually based on the artists themselves all would likely be well. But that is clearly not the case. Any business, no matter how idealistic, is always going to be motivated by economy. Their choices are based on markets, sales and predictable gains, not the quality of the contributions our generation is making to art history. Not that we can blame them, but if we imagine every one of these corporate interests sharing the 5 motivations it is not difficult to recognize the potential for homogenization. Everything that gets promoted looks the same if everything is chosen for the same reasons. We wanted to break up the monotony. We wanted creative diversity, but to do that we needed a way to get our hands on the same resources as the larger powers we hope to contend with. How do you get ahold of the power to help art succeed without becoming another corporation? That question led directly to the Seahorse project. The idea was to bring artists together to pool resources, skill, labor and more. No single person gains an abundance of power, no one is in charge here. We’re all in this together. The idea is that we are stronger working as a group than we are working alone or, in some cases, against each other. Trying to bring people together to create new, diverse projects that benefit everyone is what we are all about. No one is taken advantage of and no one is putting more into it than the other. The goal is to be completely communal while trying to make truly great art, music or literature successful. We have many experiments in the works, ranging from social events, public installation pieces, mixed media performances and more. One of those experiments was an absurdist magazine simply dubbed The Seahorse Rodeo Folk Review. Like so many fledgling attempts, we’ve had our bumps and false starts, but the result of our efforts has made up for any amateur failings. Over the course of the year we published work from many talented young writers on their way up. All of the work has merit ranging from interesting turns of phrase, bizarre voices, impressive storylines – it was all off the proverbial beaten path in some form or other and as such would probably never make it if there wasn’t someone there willing to give it that first shot. This anthology represents the combination of the Seahorse philosophy, the raw talent of many creative individuals, and a year of our best, strongest voices. Hopefully the first of many to come, this anthology exists as a declaration of intent. We want to be responsible for bold work created independently, off the grid, marketed to those that share our spirit, and created by those that want to be part of something new. We are always looking for new names, fresh suggestions, and creative ideas. As the editor, and one half of the team that makes Seahorse tick, I am proud of the fruit of our labors and the literary hopefuls, the someday giants, collected together in this book. Thanks for Reading, Trevor Richardson Editor-in-Chief, The Seahorse Rodeo Folk Revival Table of Contents If I Lost My Mind Josh Goller....................................................................................................................................6 El Paso Carib Guerra................................................................................................................................9 Dreams I Hope Don’t ComeTrue,Number 73 Thomas O’Connell....................................................................................................................14 Elusive Dillon Mullenix..........................................................................................................................16 The Ballad of LongTom Garroutte Daniel Eli Dronsfield................................................................................................................20 This WackyWeather Danger Slater............................................................................................................................40 Margot in Reverse Adam Moorad..........................................................................................................................47 LastThings Robert Kulesz............................................................................................................................54 Babe Rockerfeller:A Canadian Gothic Lumberjack Romance KirkA. C. Marshall...................................................................................................................58 His CableTelevision Ray Succre.................................................................................................................................76 Kill Room Debate Walter Foley..............................................................................................................................78 Dismantled Bill James..................................................................................................................................82 Sonata Miles Klee..................................................................................................................................90 Sensorium 7 Isaac Coleman..........................................................................................................................98 The Great Growing J.P. Kemmick.........................................................................................................................125 Talking the Untimely Demise of Uncle Sam Trevor Richardson..................................................................................................................143 7 If I Lost My Josh Mind Goller If I lost my mind, I would shave every hair from my body and slather myself with paints of all colors. I would dance in the rain, my umbrella turned upside down, and sing “London Bridges.” But I haven’t lost my mind, so I obsess about fixing errant strands of hair in place with product. I lament the occasional pimple. I remove lint from my nicer clothing with a band of masking tape turned inside out around my hand. If I lost my mind, I would wrench off the mini-blinds in my bedroom. I would punch through the window panes and rip holes in my bedroom walls with a claw hammer. I would glut my lungs on the newfound breeze and bask in the halo of settling drywall dust. But I haven’t lost my mind, so I sit in front of a computer for eight hours a day, tucked away in the dim corner of an office, surrounded by stacks of paper. I return home to search for the elusive job that will promise a larger workspace, taking breaks to stare at a television screen and watch commercials I now know by heart. If I lost my mind, I would greet everyone on the morning train. I would shake every hand as I walked down the street. I would pat the backs of passersby and offer unsolicited words of encouragement. I would assign concocted names to each stranger and greet them as such. “Hello, Walter Kensington.” “Top of the morning to you, Charles Pittman.” “Looking well today, Abigail Peppercorn.” But I haven’t lost my mind, so I avoid eye contact even when it takes considerable effort to do so. I do not engage in candor or camaraderie. In the instances where polite greetings are unavoidable, I take care not to call people by name for fear of using the wrong one. 8 If I lost my mind, I would run through the park, limbs flailing, face red. I would find a moist spot and rip clumps of sod. I would shower my head with the soil. I would overturn the largest rock I could manage and stuff beetles down my shirt. But I haven’t lost my mind, so I trudge up three flights of stairs to my apartment. I squash centipedes on my wall with Kleenex. I slump onto the sofa and watch a man on television get dunked upside down in a tank of cockroaches and win a million dollars. If I lost my mind, I’d hit the streets with a pack of cigarettes, case of cheap beer, and pocketful of one-dollar bills. I would comb the city for all the panhandlers and hobos I could find. I would gather the old woman singing badly through broken teeth. I would collect the man who thinks he’s Jesus and hasn’t washed his feet in months. I would grab the fat man in the lime green polyester suit who talks to himself under the bridge. I would gather them all. We would each have a drink and a smoke. We would talk loudly all at once. We would each buy a single lottery ticket and beg for a penny to scratch it. If nobody won the jackpot, I would invite them back to my place to use the toilet and play Twister. But I haven’t lost my mind, so when I pass the homeless I clutch my spare change in my pocket to stop its jingling. I scowl. “They’ll just use it for booze.” I pick up a six-pack and some Parliaments at the Safeway and cross the street to avoid passing a man in a sleeping bag. Once I return home, I use my toilet without joy. osh Goller sprouted in Wisconsin soil but the winds carried him to the gloom and damp of the Pacific Northwest. His short fiction has appeared in many online and print publications and he recently earned his MFA in Writing from Pacific University. He writes art-house movie reviews for a local weekly and in his spare time he enjoys driving through fog and not taking himself too seriously. He can be reached at [email protected]. ElCaribPaso Guerra The trees to the edge of the road are tall, and block the sun in a blinking sequence as he drives by. They’re moss drenched. Fern sprouts out in the branches nooks where the moss grows thick. The sun visor is pulled down and out to shade his eyes, and the car will stop soon. There’s no gas. He can feel the choked rattle coming on, but he’ll drive it until it stops. The sun is getting close to the hills, and he’ll walk for a while before he sleeps. Just for a few hours. Using the backpack for a pillow. Under the wool blanket. The smell in the wood is soft and rain. The ground gives. It’s sweet on his back. There’s still some light in the sky. The clouds carry it around, and it sits on the bark tipped outline of the trees. He breaths in, silently, and soon he falls asleep. He’s a child & there are other children with him edged out from the large chain lowering them on a stone disk down the well. The walls are dripping & one of the children sits very close to him immediately next to him is crying [Where are we?] around her shaking tongue. He doesn’t know but it feels like forever & at last he’s resigned. It’s darker when he wakes. It won’t be long till the sun rises. There’re birds already sounding, and the wind is laying in wait. It may rain. There’s always a chance up here. Better to expect the rains. He rolls his blanket ties it to the backpack. The backpack rests well on his body. He undoes his zipper, and reaches in with his fingers to maneuver his penis from the fly styling, and when he pees there’s a stale tension in his cheeks relieved to his temples a moment in his neck. His face dips. A smile release it’s warming. Does just what it should. He’s walking on the side of the road again while the sun is rising. He had been running before. He always begins in a sprint, and when his legs hurt and his chest burns he walks. He’ll run again in a few hours because nobody will have picked him up, for company or pity, and he won’t stop 11 unless he finds water or food. The sky is thick and close with clouds. Some heavier and grey but the others lit as though light were their color. There are some flowers in the grass past the pavement. Small white flowers that remind him of a dress that a woman with red hair had worn in a photograph. He had always hoped to see her in the dress under sun and near those flowers. He had wanted to take a picture like that one since the smile in the other wasn’t meant for him, or had she known? and thought of him saved that smile for him to see then. But he had never known her on a sunny day. Close to nightfall, when the bottoms of the clouds are pink against the graying blue, and the stars sneak out when his eyes stop searching in the rich blue descending, a truck pulls to the side of the road. He walks through the warm exhaust He hears the lock click open on the inside of the door. The handle is roughed plastic. Beads of water are pressed against his palm, and he feels the mechanism release. The side mirror catches the tail light when he opens the door and again when he closes it. Now the red and waterbled halo stays in view, colors the trees and road which begin to move instead. The man to his left is thin and not old, but probably looks older than he is. The truck is newer, but not fresh. Mostly plastic bottles line the floor he can feel the fold of a magazine which has been wet and dry before. A gallon jug is heavy with water or some other liquid against his boot. The driver looks at him with no intent, then back to the road and the headlights rolling over what moves by. He flashes the brights at hills and sharp curves. At some point he smokes a cigarette and cracks the window to a thin whistle. “Where’re you headed?” The driver says. They all ask that question in those words. He wonders if they all would normally use the word ‘headed’, or if the context somehow demands it. “El Paso,” says the man. The driver lets a few quick laughs in his closed mouth. “Well I could take you down to Eagle’s Pass. I’ll bet you’d get a ride to Reno from there.” On the radio a slow deep voice that knows that this is its audience, and so speaks mostly for its own sake. Weak sad strings open behind it. They grow more pleading. The hot air is drying his skin. The driver nods with the undertow of the violin. “So what’s in El Paso?” “I’m meeting somebody there.” “Who’s that, some sweetie?” he slips, then quickly, “Look at me being nosy.” “It’s fine. I’m meeting an old man. A friend of mine.” The driver looks over at him for a moment then back to the road. 12 “I used to have a friend who lived down around there. Las Cruces, really. My roommate in college. He was all right. He was tall. Funny guy.” Neither man talk for miles in the night. On these higher roads, clumps of snow sit unmelted, and flash bright in the headlights when they pass. “Do you mind if I sleep?” “No,” says the driver, “Go ahead.” “Thanks.” “No problem. Bet you’re real tired.” “I am,” says the man. The driver nods in the glow of the dash. Ave Maria begins its creeping blue rise. The grace comes in with that golden cello and with closed eyes—lashes brushed aside and aside by the wind leaked through the driver’s cigarette smoke—he forgets himself again. In a room with no ceiling hardwood a smell like an old cigar box. The walls are divvied compartments with holes for handholds & though they’re all different sizes the drawers are stacked to fit. He’s running the fingers of his right hand against the smooth wood some small drawers in the far corner rattle as though with the very sensation on his fingers. He removes his hand the rattle stops like it never began & when he touches his chest it sounds again. This time a few of the larger drawers clatter above him slide open then shut in rhythm. There’s a ripple of wood against wood as the drawers open shut in a rising wave. A sudden ripping bang as they all move at once. It’s almost deafening in the instant, but when it ends, again, it’s as though it never happened. He shakes from the frame a bright light sun on metal sounds that shouldn’t be in this room. He knows. Then it’s still again. He reaches for a large drawer the height of his chest. He pulls it open it’s very light as if on rollers but the feel is grain against grain & he looks inside of it. The drawer is a long way down & lined in an elegant pattern with oddly sized slats. In the corner far left from himself is a small wooden man opening one of the slats. Bright flash of sun off metal the smell of gasoline & restrooms & tires sound of freight engines in long rows, the driver’s voice— “Hey there,” says the driver. The man rubs his eyes awake and the world opens up around him, “Took you all the way through to Doyle, but this is my stop.” “Thanks,” he says, grabbing up his backpack. “No problem,” the driver pauses, looks down for guilt or sympathy, “You need a little cash or something?” “Could I take this water jug?” “The jug?” the driver looks at the jug, as if to appraise its worth, considers, and then shrugs, “Well sure. I guess so. It’s yours.” “ T h a n k s .” The sun is bright, but the air has a dry chill. The man lowers his cap, but the 13 light gray parking lot is blinding in refraction. Windshields each hold another sun heat from engines shimmering hoods the bending of vision around metal mirages. He walks around to the side of the shop, spots the spigot next to a stack of plastic milkcrates all different colors, darker tones and one light blue. The tap is hot, and tough to open. Like the windshields, each drop of water holds another sun. They splatter on the browning soak concrete, and onto the tips of his shoes. It feels good in his hands. It’s starting to cool. Against his face, he can feel the dirt and salt holding thick where the water doesn’t wash and he holds both hands under the glutting stream brings them to his face over his hair. His cap falls to the ground beside. He fills up the jug and sets it near the wall. It’ll make running bulky but he knows that he is water. Constantly refilling, cleansing, never let your water sit, become a cesspool. He turns to pick up his hat which he wets before running his hair back and fitting it again to his head. He turns the tap off. The straps on his shoulders are wet now, but the backpack is still light. His body feels good when he slings it off, relieved, like his back is floating. From the backpack he pulls out a coil of nylon rope and a small knife he keeps sharp in a leather sheath. Wrapping the cord around two fingers, tight into the meat, the man measures a length from his elbow to fingers twice and cuts it free. Reties the cord. places it and the knife in the backpack. He picks up the jug which he loops the rope through and once the backpack is on he rests the rope sling over his shoulder on the strap. He stands up, and walks back into the glare. He feels like a centered point. An apex from which two unavoidable truths become equally immediate, and both equally unattainable in their constant withdrawal. Moments pass, and shiver still from his distance— ever growing—as he’s carried on into everything new, still familiar. He does move, of course, in a certain way, but always towards and away, towards everything else. Limitations. When he’s running again he feels the movements as specifically as he can. Just the brief touch of his foot, the lean of his chest. The duck and bounce of his forehead and the skin on his cheeks. His arms move as though they must, in sway opposite his tense calves, and from the shoulder he pushes hard with his elbows, his thighs. He wonders how fast he can make his body move without losing control of its rhythm. There is no movement everything in perfect function the right place all adults & their infinite children all with no faces which is a same face since the face itself never changes looking out of blood chapped swollen eyes pus pore lashes the tired blink of necessity solving the dryness of inaction which is to say constant action all parts realized at once & shown here in varying degrees of now in chains ball gags match the color red of their eyes their nipples like the smell of spit the sound of screaming every sound in an otherwise void. 14 arib Guerra: est. 1984 +41.2 -123.2; 1/6852472823; loc. +40.7 -73.9 circa 2011. Dreams I Hope Don’t ComeTrue, Number 73 Thomas O’Connell She came upon a picnic table by the river. A birthday cake sat at one end. The candles were still lit and dripping opaque wax, which gathered on top of pale frosting. Matching paper plates and napkins sat facing each other on either side of the table. A piñata had been lynched in a nearby tree. There were no party guests around. They had been hiding in the river, holding their breath, waiting for her to arrive. They were going to jump up out of the water and yell, ‘surprise’ Because she was late, they all drowned and floated down stream to somebody else’s party. homas O’Connell is a librarian living in the mountains of southwestern Virginia, although his heart will always remain in his native New England. His influences have been P.D. Eastman, S. E. Hinton, and R. S. Thomas. Poetry and fiction has appeared in Caketrain, Sleepingfish, The Broken Plate, Slab, and The Blue Earth Review, as well as other print and online journals. Given time to spend, he spends it with his wife and daughters. Given time to waste, he creates space-age folk art. Elusive Dillon Mullenix There is a new attraction on the back-country roads of San Diego County, and it isn’t the ferocious and hard to kill wild boars (currently en route from Texas), which I’ve been hoping for. No, this is a mutant anomaly far more intriguing, even to a non-scientist, like my neighbor Ed, who finds these creatures fascinating and calls them, “Crooked thieves, locked into a death grip with the rest of the world.” On countless nights we’ve gone out with flashlights, and one particularly bright strobe light, looking for these strange beasts. It was a misadventure in search of these loathsome men that brought me near them at first, their psychosis engrossed me, and became an addiction so consuming that it’s rivaled the strongest narcotics. Now, it has to be said that this is a tricky endeavor - chasing the natives one requiring much skill and patience. All the driving, when you’re out after sunset with your camera, must be done with the headlights off so that the animals won’t know you’re coming and flee into the darkness. Don’t worry about the hum of the engine, though, they usually mistake that for the natural vibrations of the desert, which they are particularly familiar with and attuned to like Aboriginals. In the truck, or whatever you are pursuing them in, you must be silent and ready, no talking and mundane chit-chat, and for God’s sake keep the speed down or you’ll miss them. Mostly they are found hiding in road-side ditches or roaming through high grass, their black plastic bag slung to the curb as they pick up one can at a time. Now, if you see a creature as previously described then you’ve probably 18 seen him! The miraculous high desert road tweaker. You are now part of an elite club, my friend, but beware, this person is not to be approached, they are violent and have been known to attack passersby unprovoked. This, however, will not deter you, I’m sure, because this minor setback does not, to the passionate observers of the road tweaker, diminish at all their incredible draw. They are, in fact, akin to Darwin’s finches. When the road tweaker first appeared they weren’t seen during the day, but now that isn’t the case, they are braver, no longer scared to show their shallow faces, emaciated bodies, hunger ridden bodies, pacing with a quickness not common to normal men along the roadside. They are driven by an incentive to consume and everything counts. They are going green (in the American Business Sense), but they didn’t mean to. It was just the only viable option when it came time to score another hit. Occasionally, these men of leisure sickness stick out their opposable thumb, in hopes of conning you to the side of the road, like a traveler might, but these transient clones will rob you blind and steal your car, and your woman, to trade on the black market for speed, a small butane torch, and a few good light bulbs. Then they’ll be on the road again, like a run-dry Kerouac going crazy in the high desert of San Diego County. This is the land of wine and tweak, good old fashioned chemical nuts with guns and flu medicine, cooking methamphetamine in white trailers hidden in rocks and brush. The flowing industrial stranglehold on the economy has made it worse, the rich are noticeably nervous, and the poor are more virulent. The world is different for me today, but history has seen it all before, and is laughing at our short-term memory loss. If you ever get curious, and you’re already coming out to Julian to eat pie, or Temecula to drink wine, or Ramona to hit the rodeo, or the Salton 19 Sea to score meth, drive a little slower and watch the roads, we’ll be out here, Ed and me, watching for the ghosts of moonless nights and sun beaten days, and if you’re good enough, maybe you’ll see a good example of the Nation in Action also. The road tweaker is a microcosm, a personification, of the modern America, a keyhole into its paradigm. He’s eco-conscious because it helps to subsidize his dwindling economic resources and make him seem reasonable to those who question him. He has many addictions, none of which he is willing to give up, even in times of drought and economic rancor. He is happy to sustain his incomprehensible lifestyle by stealing and suckling from the tit of other hard working people(s) of this country. He poisons the land he uses, pollutes the air with escaping plumes of fumes, pours toxins into the water supply, occasionally blows things (including himself ) up, ruptures the ground he builds on, and creates a bio-hazard catastrophe on a global scale. But, he is private and therefore uncontrollable. He is perplexing… and he doesn’t think. He acts without a thought to what it does. The road tweaker is a total narcissist and he is distinctly American. For those of you that are scared, don’t worry, they only run wild by night, in the day they are little more docile, especially in the summer months. The sun is baking their brains then, and cooking them alive as they walk with their shirts off – but the summer is a scant season, and nothing much is seen by the weekend-warrior, only the real road-dogs like Ed and me, out here every day & night like hounds, baying when the guttural squeal of a road tweaker is caught by the hot wind and flown across the valley. If you see this ravenous animal, starved and mangy, you’ll know him by the burnt red color and texture of his skin, thoroughly abused it barely holds on to their corpse like bodies, and his pipe will be hanging out from one of his haggard pockets, ready for use at any moment – but they will act like they don’t see you, staring at the ground. It will look almost like they are buffalo waiting to be shot, huddled in their diminished number that are, now, somehow on the rise like an inflated Titanic rising to the surface. Get a sense of the epidemic that’s spreading across these hills and making us all hunters. In the city no one thinks of the madmen high on adrenaline and crystal, looking like the re-birthed homeless depraved dead who walk around like burnt-out wrestlers on a starvation diet. But here, in Warner Springs, CA, it’s a daily reality, and it’s amusingly caustic. 20 here is an anarchist living in a fortified compound in high desert where the wind blows, carrying the strange smells of a haggard people hundreds of miles across rotten stewing images of corpses left like molted skin; and trees to timid to grow, wave scantly in that acrid atmosphere, calling out nameless hopes to the sick man who lives there, like a hermit, writing epitaphs for the lost. His name is Dillon Mullenix. He has been published in FORTH Magazine, Autumn Letters, Glass Cases, PenSpark, The Seahorse Rodeo Folk Review and Haggard & Halloo, as well as two anthologies, Relationships and Other Stuff and Vwa: Poems for Haiti. [email protected] The Ballad of LongTom Garroutte Daniel Eli Dronsfield The following are transcripts of interviews that I have conducted over the last fifty years in more than one hundred countries concerning the enigmatic and near-mythical trickster hero of the Northwest; LongTom Garroutte. Interviewing the Mirror. “Have you never heard the tale of LongTom Garroutte? Why, he’s the greatest American hero since Paul Bunyan, the best since that old moonshiner Johnny Appleseed. The earliest stories of the most recent incarnation of LongTom often begin during the great hobo migrations of the early twentieth century right here in these United States. He is said to have saved Rusty Skillet himself from the hands of blood-lusting Pinkerton’s in the hollers of West Virginia. It’s said that he stole the President’s turkey on Thanksgiving while all the hoboes were camping in Washington. LongTom, Junkyard Jed, and 3-tooth Tiny broke thirty-one anarchists out of prison in Joliet, Illinois. Once he even stole an entire train and gave the grain and millet to bankrupted orphanages and churches. He only did these things because he liked mischief and adventure, not because of any staunch or solid moral code. At least that is what he would claim through eloquent mumbles if you were to ask. I heard that he invented zippers and barbecue sauce, and that he was the first man to hit a grand slam. I heard that he twice talked Charlie Chaplin out of suicide. I heard he was ten foot tall and that he was a midget, I heard he looked like a Viking and that he was half African and half Mohican, I heard he fathered a hundred sons and seven daughters. It is difficult to say how long he lived or where, because everyone sees him as such a different man. And in a way, I think that is correct. LongTom is a character that lives through generations, he is like Tin Cup, or Jesus… The first time that I heard about LongTom Garroutte I had never heard about him. He has been said to be many things. Well, one thing for sure, he was a man. He walked these hills and sailed those seas. Some would have you believe 22 that he was more than a man, that he was carved from bronze and not from flesh, and these are the philistines and dilettantes that I set out to disprove… Every man’s story deserves to be told… At least once… The first time I saw him I was but a boy, knee-high to a june bug. It was in the middle of this country, out there where the corn grows tall and the cheeks grow rosy. Me and three of my brothers were on the trail of a pack of coyotes that had been eating our chickens. Least we thought it was coyotes. We were slogging around and swishing through the tall grass when we came across it. It had been a coyote pack’s den, but no more. When I looked back inside of it all I saw was blood and fur and two beady green-blue eyes. That was the first time I laid my peepers on this man, LongTom. He was probably ten years older than me, but so skinny he looked younger, and I shan’t forget to mention that he was shithouse crazy. We took him back to the farm because he had killed the coyotes, saving us the trouble. We let him sleep in the barn that night, but back then he was wilder than the wind or a wolverine and he ran away in the night and I didn’t see him again for decades. Over the years as I worked in mines and on trans-Atlantic steamers I would hear mention of him. He is a man who cut a wide swath. It seemed as if people would attribute the most outrageous and fantastical exploits to this man without ever having met him. In truth, I don’t think any of the stories really capture that power, that frightening whimsy, and that lust to know all things that resides just behind the eyes and nose of our man Mr. LongTom Garroutte.” Oregon fighting ducks. “Thing most people don’t know is that the ducks in Oregon are some of the most violent creatures ever to exist. They are rarely seen fighting in the wild. In the wild, the dominant male duck becomes so dominant that he no longer has to fight. He rules through a regime of sheer terror. Any duck that has questioned his power has already been reduced to a greasy, feathery, smear. Was a time when LongTom lived on an island in the Mckenzie River and he had seen the deadly dance of the ducks. LongTom, being a man of the world, had seen much spectacle. He had lost many pesos at cockfights in his life. When he saw the unabashed honking quacking murderousness of the ducks, he got an idea. That is how the notorious resurgence of Oregon duck fighting began. First he trained a duck. Logically he grabbed the dominant male of the area. He called this duck Tractor-Face Jim, and he was a killer. After his training old Tractor-Face would strike at anything that moved like a quacking cobra. He was a lighting bolt of a mallard and LongTom became quite proud. Now, when it came to the lifestyle of LongTom he would go for months in absolute hermitage and then reappear in society and immerse himself in humanity and shenanigans 23 until that once again soured, and he would ramble the hell on. So he had been out in the bush training ducks to fight and he wanted to show off. He wanted the world to know of Tractor-Face Jim. So, LongTom, never being a man to sit and wait for something to happen, set out to find some competition. It began in all the bars of Oregon. From Davy Jones Locker down by the creaking docks of Charleston up to the sunburned blackberries of Blue River, LongTom Garoutte worked the taverns, looking for bikers and badmen, talking to hunters and highwaymen, looking for somebody who had a fighting duck. And that is how he ran into me, your man, Curly Burns. You see, I myself come from a long line of hard men in the Oregon hills and when I was a boy my granddaddy had a resident flock of ducks on his land. Those ducks were like fucking pitbulls. I never felt safe around them. I remember seeing the duck fights as a boy. Groups of small dark Calapooyan men wearing fedoras and Mexican blankets would come down out of the hills. Some of them would have ducks tucked proprietarily under their arms. All the ducks have to be blindfolded, because they are killers, they attack any other duck they see. Gaunt, red-cheeked white men, not filled with the fleshiness you see in folk these days, would ride up on skinny horses with mason jars filled with moonshine. There was much whooping and money changing hands. It inevitably ended with men fighting in the dusk with rusty blades, arguing over unpaid debts or slights of honor. When I met LongTom, I was just back from the war. He was a whooping and a hollering and buyin drinks and dancing in the sawdust. I liked his style and quick as we shook hands he asked me what I knew about fighting ducks. Well, I says, I looked him up and down and I sez, “Yeah, I might know more than your regular Joe…” He seemed trustworthy, despite his obviously loose hold on his sanity. He then took me out to his truck and showed me his duck, Tractor-Face Jim. Now that was one bad duck. He had scars all over his face and the second his blindfold was removed he lunged right at me. LongTom laughed with a whiskey wheeze and asked, “Can you find us some competition?” I sez “Damn LongTom! Looks like you already found some! What happened to that ducks face?” I remember he seemed surprised, but he just looked right back at me and says, “Training.” Training! Hah! He was a unique individual this guy. Shit,… Well then what happened… Well from there things just snowballed. Seems like the rural folk around here had just been waiting for something to bring them all together and it turned out that LongTom Garroutte’s idea to bring back the Dirty Depression Duck Fights was just the thing to do it. 24 By the third week we had to find a new venue because the crowds were getting so large and ornery. LongTom was like the master of ceremonies during these fights. He would get up there in his American flag zoot suit with the top hat and he would wave around his huge bad-ass duck Ol’Tractor-Face Jim, and he would challenge all comers. Thing was, he would always win… Most other folks had a whole truck filled with their fightin’ ducks, no, it wasn’t like the old days, although a few Calapooyans would still show up, now they dressed like rich cowboys…He always just had the one duck, Tractor-Face. Six weeks in we were doing it at the county fairgrounds. We paid off the Sheriff and we would have the fights in the middle of the week in the middle of the night. Some nights we had three hundred, four hundred people. That sort of thing is hard to keep quiet. So wouldn’t you know it, the local gangsters wanted in. They were something of a meth dealing and tractor stealing outfit. Not too intimidating but they seemed cracky enough to not have anything to lose. So we paid them too, shit, there was plenty of money. But if you give a mouse a cookie… so pretty soon those cracky bastards wanted a bigger and bigger piece of the action. LongTom didn’t care because that man never had much use for money, but me, I mean I got kids to feed and they sure ain’t getting fat. So it’s hard to say what was going through his head, I think he thought things were getting too commercial, he often complained that you couldn’t hear the pained quacking of highly trained Oregon fighting ducks anymore, and could instead only hear the “thundering of the buffoons”. He became a bit stormy of brow for a while there and I could see something brewing. The big night came and he was there drinking white lighting homemade moonshine out of a mason jar and smoking a haphazardly rolled cheroot. He was in high spirits and held Tractor-Face Jim slung across his chest in one of those things people use to carry their babies. “ “A day no ducks would die!” He said to me when I saw him. “What?” But that’s all he would say. “A day no ducks would die…” “But we’ve been killing ducks for weeks… Shit, that’s our business brotha…” He then took a large gulp of the shine, lit a match and proceeded to blow a giant fireball at a pile of hay in the corner of the fairgrounds. It immediately exploded into flame. “What the fuck?! What are you doing?! How did that hay get there?” He only answered one of my questions. “Oh. I put that there a couple of days ago.” “Why?” “You know, it’s strange… At the time that I did it, I didn’t myself even 25 know why… And look at it now… It’s a magical world…” Then he just looked at me. He was such a strange dude. People came running towards the fire with blankets and buckets. “Now we release the ducks.” He said this with conviction, in a low voice so only I could hear. “But they are savages, they’ll kill each other the second you let them free!” “Well, that’s freedom motherfucker!” Then he punched me in the face. I saw him fifteen years later and he only had one leg. I think he recognized me, we didn’t really talk, we just nodded, quite profoundly, to one another. The Tiger-Lady. It has been said that he was an operative, a spy. Though I personally cannot imagine that he was very helpful to any particular side, as he was quite definitely a man who disdains anyone in power. He disdains a power that needs to be awarded and respects power when it is natural. He was never a man to respect laws or governments, but I think the idea of being a spy and the adventures that he could get into are what brought him in. The way that I heard it he was in China. This is Cultural Revolution, closed to the world, sixty million people starving to death, Chairman Mao, muthafuckin China. At this time there were a great number of people trying to escape the death camp that mainland China had become under Mao’s flabby iron fist. The way with the highest success rate was swimming to Hong Kong. This is an audacious swim even for an Olympic athlete and in a stretch of sea that is profoundly shark-infested. I met a number of older Chinese men over the years and they all have told similar tales: as they were swimming away from a certain hell upon earth, near death they were, some of them with a wife or child clinging monkey-like to their back, they saw a man. A white man, or certainly not a Chinese man, a man with strange laughter in his eyes, and he was swimming the other direction! None of them could believe that anyone would want to go where they were coming from. They tried to tell him, they shouted and waved their arms, he waved back, but he just kept swimming. So he got ashore. Now, he was always a trapper, a killer, he was good with his hands and could walk naked into the bush anywhere in the world and live comfortably. In China he wanted to wrestle a tiger. Sure he was spying on the communists to see what they were up to, but he didn’t give a fuck for the affairs of the world. He wanted to wrestle a tiger. Before he did that he went into villages and he saw the people starving and killing each other. He saw a group of peasants attack and eat their former landlord. He is said to have knocked a man out of the way to get a piece for himself (“Just curiosity”). Gnawing on a grown man’s 26 forearm, LongTom growls out the only phrase he knows in Chinese, “Where lives a tiger?” A blind man who is eating a big bloody chunk of his landlord grabs LongTom by his shirt and goes to lead him away. They go. They go down through the village and outside of it and up over two hills. They walk very slowly because the blind man is leading. Eight days later they arrive at another village, they walk through that, and just outside the village on a little green Chinese hilltop, there is a house. It is made of bamboo and sits high off the ground on less than confident stilts. The old blind man points at the hut, says some shit in a mumble, and begins to walk away. LongTom shouts after him, “Where lives a tiger?” The old man points at the shack and says the word for tiger and another word that young LongTom can’t understand. Then he climbs the hill, ascending unknowingly directly into the claws of the tiger-lady. You see, the old man is half deaf as well as blind and when LongTom showed up the old man just assumed he was looking for the tiger-lady, so being a good communist he had taken him to her. She was something of a legend in here own right, so it almost makes sense that she would cross paths with such an epic wanderer and romantic as our man LongTom Garroutte. It seems that two hundred some years ago a tiger had come into this village and eaten a family, it is said that he spared their youngest daughter but not without giving her a very violent tiger-raping and fleeing back into the bamboo. From this horrific affair a child was produced. Everyone in the village wanted to throw it in the river and forget the beastliness that had occurred there, but the holy man wouldn’t allow it. He was very wise and three and a half feet tall. He took the baby. He raised it himself in a cave behind the highest waterfall. The half-tiger baby was gorgeous, but dangerous to raise. The holy man soon was killed by his playful little tiger-girl. She felt no guilt, as she was a tiger. She then ran through the woods but couldn’t live just as a tiger, she also was a girl and when she reached a certain age she desired copulation. She went to the logging camps deep in the jungle. These camps were staffed by chiseled little Burmese men who worshipped leaves and wind and hiked up through the jungle from their villages in Burma. They would log a great section of this foreign forest and take payment and return to their village, deep in the tall trees. The trees surrounding their home contained their gods and they would kill to protect them. That is why they had to hike so far, to find trees without their gods in them. Obviously these trees still contained gods, just not their gods. A man must find a way to make it. When she first appeared the men were scared, but she could be quite provocative with her feline grace. She could almost talk, but at this generation her tongue was just a little bit too tiger still. So soon she fucked the whole camp, 27 but their puny human masculinity could not sate her thirst, many men were killed in the process. She ran on. So it was to be for her, and then following her, her daughter. Her daughter’s daughter is the one we meet along with our man LongTom Garroutte. Now her daughter’s daughter, our aforementioned Tiger-Lady, was more lady than tiger. The tiger in her was three generations back. She was something of a mythical character in the small village where she lived. As we have said she lived in a stilt shack on top of the hill. The villagers would occasionally climb the hill and supplicatorily leave her things, rice, sweet treats, combs with emeralds inlaid in them, daggers, and pearls. She took it all and rarely gave them the slightest response. Once a year she would perform what the villagers simply called “The Wildness” and lash about through all the valleys sating her tigress’ lustiness. She was now nearing thirty and had yet to produce an heir. She was feared, due to the fact that during her period of wildness she had killed a number of young men and boys with her ferocious copulation. When LongTom arrived at the bottom of the hill the Tiger-Lady was out behind her house slicing the wings off of butterflies with her thin sword. It made a wonderful noise when the blade slashed through the air and the silence of the wings being removed was like a siren call to LongTom’s unique ears. He walked up the hill barefoot and silent but her minute feline whiskers twitched and alerted her of his presence long before he came into view. He came around the corner of her house and she was ready, just before he had come she had leapt upon the roof and now pounced upon him with a ferocious roar. She was decidedly Chinese but her hair was streaked with shocks of orange and startling white. She had long claws that were retractable and the only thing about her face that betrayed the tigress in her heritage were her slightly oversized eyes. They were green and the eyeball itself was shaped like that of a feline. As she dug her four sets of claws into twenty wounds on LongTom’s chest, thigh, neck and genitals, he couldn’t help but be shocked by her beauty. He stared into those eyes, eyes the likes of which he had never before seen on a human, and he had a moment of realization. “I came to wrestle a tiger.” He thought to himself and then looking at this gorgeous beast who had pounced on him, he snatched one of her claws loose and flipped her over. What followed was a squabble that made such horrible noises as to give children in villages two days hike away nightmares for years. They rolled and they snarled and they fought. Within ten minutes her shack was torn to the ground and it’s bamboo used as a weapon until smashed to bamboo dust. They, still locked in a high pitched tangled snarl of battle, rolled thumpity-thump down the hill and plopped right into the swiftly flowing river. Their fight continued under water and down river for an hour or more, then they both flopped to the reeds of the river bank, naked, bloodied and exhausted. 28 This is the story of how LongTom Jr., the tiger boy, was conceived.” The Havana Slammer. “Well, me and Garroutte got off the boat in Kingston, no Havana, Havana! Of course, it had to be, well, off the boat we went for a bit of shore leave. It was me and Garroute, we left the boys on board to guard the boat, because back then, well shit, I bet even today, those docks down there in the Caribbean, every single one, filled with pirates, thieves ready to steal the wheel right out of your prop house, crafty devils… yes, me and Garroutte, and we are down in the Prado, we sidled up to one of those down and dirty, built in 1321 type Cubano cantinas and grabbed ourselves a two liter bottle filled with that sweet molasses of Cuban rum, and into the streets, why we painted the town! And in Havana everything needs a paint job… We quickly met up with three gorgeous eyed girls filled with the kind of whore’s charm you only find in Cuba and Brazil and we danced the dirty sweaty night away, we ended up in their room and they began to speak in a language different from the Spanish we had been speaking all night, they talked in a weird secret language. All the words they used started with the sound of the letter p. “pippila petoto pedangi petricio…” some shit like that… LongTom didn’t give a damn because somehow he had two of them in his bed… When I woke up the three of them were sitting on their bed naked and someone had produced a chicken, it was walking slowly around the bed on some line drawings, looked like one of them chickens that can play tic-tac-toe. They were still speaking in that weird ass pippilo poopoloo language and I couldn’t understand shit, but won’t you know it, fucking LTG is speaking that shit as if he was born with it on his tongue. I remember thinking to myself “what the fuck are they going to do with that chicken?” But then I heard that church bell chime and I realized we were set to leave at oh seven hundred and I will be damned if that bell didn’t clang seven times. I damn near knocked my little Guantanamera onto the floor on my way out of there. “LongTom! Let’s get a move on!” I threw open the rickety old Havana door and flakes of sky blue paint fluttered to the ground like little lead based snow flakes. He didn’t even look up. “You go. This is way more interesting.” Shit, I looked around that room and they started talking really fast in their weird strange Cuban whore language that Garroutte now knew so well, and I slammed the door and ran for the port, leaving behind a veritable blizzard of sky blue. I had to jump off the end of the dock and swim to the boat, and that was the last time I saw LongTom Garroutte. 29 You know what I heard happened though? Not sure if this is true, but an old salt told me… After that, Garroutte and his two Voodoo priestesses got in really close with Castro. What happened was they got arrested for doing some crazy fucking large scale voodoo shit and when they were about to gun him down Fidel was actually there to watch. LongTom was blindfolded but, just before they shot him, he began to speak. No one could pull the trigger, you know Cubans, they love a good orator. He gave a speech for some nineteen hours and Fidel spared their lives. It is said that for a period of two years he was something like spiritual advisor to Fidel. He took to wearing fatigues all the time just like the Beard and he grew a thick beard and smoked cigars and he would make outrageous demands of Castro and Fidel wouldn’t be able to deny it because he feared Garroute’s power. He ended up getting a cobra and he would walk around with it in his sleeve, slithering up there all poisonous and vipery. He tried to get Fidel to be revolutionary in all areas, he wanted him to legalize drugs and homosexuality and subsidize every artist, eventually Fidel grew tired of LongTom and his Voodoo whore priestesses. But by then I think LongTom was probably bored with playing that role and interacting with humans so much and he left the capital. I heard he went and lived in a cave way up on a cliff in Pinar Del Rio for a while with a goat he named Maurice. He just drank goat’s milk and ate lizards fried on a stick the whole time. After that I heard he jumped on another ship, and lord only knows what happened after that. Monkeys and Molotov’s. Well some folks might try to tell it like it’s a romantic tale… shit was about as romantic and pulling a rotten tooth out of your rotten head… It was Kinshasa… It was the seventies. I was sitting in Chez George drinking away the hotness of the afternoon when in walks this guy, your man. He is old, at least sixty-five but he walks with a certain vigor. He is a sinewy mutherfucker, coiled-like. Anyway, he walks in with a chimpanzee. Walks in, sits at the bar, orders a bourbon on the rocks and- I was listening- “a double for my monkey.” The chimp has climbed up onto the bar and is cracking peanuts. The bartender sees the wad in LongTom’s hand and is the coolest thing in the hot Congo afternoon when he obliges this request as if it happens to him thrice daily. The chimp and man are both served and set about sucking at their drinks. It was maybe three thirty in the afternoon and the ape, this strange man, and myself were the only occupants of the bar aside from the bartender and two whores snatching naps on barstools behind languidly rising smoke plumes. Next I see the old guy light up a smoke and light up one for the monkey. I laugh aloud and we make eye contact for the first time. He doesn’t look at me 30 threateningly, it is almost dismissive, but I get a strange feeling. Not wanting to seem coarse or species-ist I decide to engage this extraordinary couple in conversation and perhaps find out a little about what the fuck is going on. The introductions were turgid and the conversation muddy. Somehow I blubbered out a question about the possibility of them being circus performer’s and Mr. Garroutte backhanded me across the mouth. My nose began to bleed. Upon seeing this he immediately softened and made long explanatory speeches that could be construed as apologies and spoke often of being “out in the bush” and of “forgetting the nuances of how to deal with city-humans”. We then spoke for a while of fighting techniques and avant garde filmmakers, and the bar began to fill with the usual nighttime crowd of foreign journalists and peace corps types. I could see him get steadily more uncomfortable as the place crowded. As people showed up, each and every one commented comedically about the monkey and when they would try to touch him he would very mannishly shrug off or slap away their paws. As the night wore on he would growl at them. Low, mean, growls that would provide us with ample space at the crowded bar. People and ape became drunk and I could smell carnage in the air. When it happened it looked like LongTom did most of the fighting, the monkey went straight for the bartender, then the register, then the vault. LongTom fashioned a Molotov cocktail from a bottle and held the crowd at bay with it while the monkey disappeared into a back room. There was an explosion just before he threw the Molotov, and there was one right after. Last thing I saw was LongTom and the ape jumping through a plate glass window and running away, the ape carrying a weighted down pillow case and firing a pistol wantonly back in our direction. Somehow this was never in the newspapers.” Dolphin boy. “It was in the Amazon, I mean deep down there, where the men are naked and the treetops disappear the heavens, down where the bugs can spit fire and cure cancer, down on that big muddy river that still has pink river dolphins swimming beneath it’s lazy swirls. I was drinking sugar-cane juice down by the river when I see this white man paddling a canoe. He is paddling standing up and in the boat with him are two Chiquiki looking girls with nose plates and machetes. The canoe was riding low low in the water due to it’s cargo of capybaru and tapir pelts. Upon seeing me, well, I can’t really call it a smile, but, he bared his teeth at me, and then hailed me in a language that I didn’t recognize. I responded in a click/whistly combination of Aymara, Quiche, and Portugese. Apparently my polyglottic response pleased him and he poled and paddled his little boat over to the bank in front of me. In 31 Portugese he asked for news of the dolphins, the pink ones… I said I knew nothing. He stepped out of the canoe, wading knee-deep in the cocoa brown water towards me. He sat beside me and produced a skinny spiraling shell. He packed the wide end of it with a gummy black substance. He lit it, and smoked a milky wave of smoke, taking three volcanic puffs and passing it to me. I took it and puffed. It tasted like the inside of a temple smells. The girls stayed in the boat and sang a song in low harmony. We just sat there and smoked until our vision sharpened. Soon everything zinged as it moved. The birds chirped along with the frogs and bugs symphonically. The warm night wind blew and LongTom asked if I wanted to barter. I told him I had nothing to trade. He told me we all have something. I looked at myself and at the dirt upon which I sat, and I looked back at him. He bared his fangs once more. “Where are the dolphins?” I looked at his eyes. They were wild and leonine, they almost rolled in his head. Just then I heard a wail, small and high-pitched emanating from the canoe. A baby popped it’s head over the side of the canoe, crawling out from under the animal pelts. The baby had very indigenous features except for it glowing green eyes and great shock of curly blond hair. LongTom smiled and said, “My son.” He looked over with paternal bliss for a moment, then looked back at me with business in his eyes. “I don’t mean the dolphins any harm. I am trying something new. You have no reason to fear me.” He went to the boat and produced a leather bota bag filled with pisco and lime juice. He plopped on the bank next to me and told me his plan, his theory. He was obviously an accomplished linguist and it was in that direction he was questing. He told me of working on a research boat years ago at sea. “You see, it was like this, we followed a pod of dolphins during a Trans-Pacific migration, and we were recording their speech and attempting to identify patterns and linguistic repetitions in dolphin language. We recorded their songs and played back parts of their recorded speech to them. They became excited and made many new sounds. The problem here was that our recording robot did not have the human brain’s capacity to learn. It would play back random clips and this eventually frustrated the dolphins. They would try to engage in conversation with us and the robot could only respond with nonsensical foolishness, and they finally gave up attempting to communicate. Try as I might, I couldn’t make the dolphin noises or find any recognizable speech pattern. I have just been a human too long to learn the dolphin language. So I gave up for a long time. But, now…” He gestured with a leathery elbow to the canoe, where the two girls had started a fire and were cooking a big hunk of tapir haunch. They had ceased to sing but continued to whistle lowly along with the random meter of the fires crackle. The baby had climbed over the side and crawled and splashed dangerously in the shallows. “I have a son. He has not been human too long. I think he can learn to speak dolphin, if we can just give him that chance.” He looked at me quite seriously, but I couldn’t contain myself and let out a hearty guffaw. He chuckled along with me. “I don’t know how, but I will try to help you. I have always wondered… I have always wanted to talk to animals, or at least understand what they are saying. Dolphins, huh? Well there aren’t very many left.” “I know. Now is the time.” We finished the pisco, ate the tapir haunch (delicious) and set out downriver on a dolphin hunt, beneath the cover of a lonely white moon. Many days we spent, dolefully floating, sticking our heads and the baby’s head underwater, hoping for high-pitched dolphin squeals. Nothing. Once a piranha bit me on the nose. LongTom fought and killed an anaconda just to combat boredom. We would drop the girls off, dressed only in mud, on the riverbank and pick them up two days downriver. They would always have a large supply of fresh bush meat and smiles in their eyes. We went up and down, tributaries and inlets, we talked with fisherman and fire-eaters, loggers and Indians, we saw river sharks, we saw alligators, capybarus and crocodiles, we saw it all. No dolphins. LongTom began to get frenzied. He began to fear that his baby was becoming too much of a human, too far from the womb to understand a language spoken underwater. As we flowed downriver LongTom would periodically hold the boy underwater, to remind him, to help him learn, sometimes I feared the boy might drown. As things were becoming dire, when near to all hope was lost, a dolphin jumped right in front of our canoe, pink as Valentine’s day, and splashed a little brown river water deliciously onto my lower lip. LongTom howled and tossed his son into the river. He had attached a vine to the boy’s ankle and trained him to float just below the surface with a thin slice of bamboo as an improvised snorkel. Magically, the dolphin came right for him. All you could see from the surface was a pink dorsal fin and a little brown butt, bobbing with the current. Eventually the dorsal fin disappeared and LongTom hauled Dolphin Boy back aboard. About an hour later, from downriver, we see four pink dorsals swimming our way. This time they stayed for hours. The boy came back aboard smiling and 34 squealing in a decidedly dolphinesque pitch. Next day there were nine pink dorsals. Soon we had countless numbers surrounding us. The river veritably roiled with pink dolphin. LongTom loved it, but became worried because he was now having trouble teaching the boy human language, which was an essential element to the execution of his plan. The boy’s squeals sounded exceptional and other-worldly when uttered above water. He had never yet said a human word. One day, about midday, when the river was so full of dolphins you could cross it by hopping from back to back, it happened. The canoe was upended. The vine was sawed through by three pairs of dolphin teeth and he was spirited away. He looked back at us, at his father and mothers as he sat astraddle the biggest dolphins pink dorsal fin. We could do nothing. We all bobbed in the drink, watching Dolphin Boy disappear. When he was almost out of sight a great vocal peal escaped him, it was heavy with dolphin accent but it also sounded positively like an infant trying to speak Chiquiki, yelling ‘Daddy!’ That was the day LongTom heard his son’s first and last human words. The dolphins took him. I knew LongTom Garroutte for thirty more years after that and that is the only time that I saw him cry. Shit, I saw him get shot twice, well, those tears and those dirty thieving dolphins are still down there, flowing slow, along with the Amazon, and you can see ‘em, if you use your eyes right. Zebras, Bacon, and Breastmilk Cheese. “Old Garroutte, he wasn’t the type of man who would be told things were impossible. Or, actually he quite often told that things were impossible, but he was the type of man who never would believe it. I met him, oh when was the first time? Ah, yes, back then, anybody who was doing anything interesting was doing it in Africa. I was working as a bush pilot in Eastern Botswana. The first time I saw LongTom I thought I was saving his life. HE got really mad at me. You see, I was flying some cocaine smugglers back to the coast along with three German tourists who wanted to see the “real Africa”. I looked down and I saw a man all alone and stark against the savannah. A man alone out there is like a man bobbing in the middle of the sea. By that I mean, he need saving. So I spiraled down to save him, much to the lament of my smugglers and tourists. As I neared him, a small herd of zebras stampeded away. When I landed I expected him to be overjoyed. I expected him to act like a man who has been rescued from certain death. Instead of that response, it was quite the opposite. He bared his fangs at me through the window. When I finally cut the engine and opened the door he was already deep into a horrifc and multi-lingual obscene invective heavy tirade that damn near stripped the paint 35 off my plane and the enamel off my teeth. I must say I was taken aback. I had never heard anyone speak like that, least of all someone that I had risked my life to rescue. I just closed the door on his guttural profaneness and flew away. I didn’t see him for a year or so after that, but I thought of him nay times. I also heard reports on the bush grapevine that there was some crazed American out there trying to ride a zebra. When I heard that, I knew it had to be LongTom Garroutte. That turned out to be his name. Two years later, I was working, once more for the ex-pat community, and at this point I had become a bacon smuggler. Muslim laws are put into place but german tourist still need their bacon and schnitzel. I had a little Citroen station wagon and I would run the Malawi-Mozambique border every three weeks. As I was bribing my way across the border one day, I was engaged in generic banter with the border guards and they mentioned that a man riding a zebra had just bribed his way across the same border, using not money, but some type of exotically pungent and flavorful cheese. I found this hilarious. I relayed to them my encounter with what must have been the same man. Now I was intrigued by this guy and I decided I would set about seeking him out. You see, I am no greenhorn, when Maurice Mulligitawny wants to find a man, that man is as good as found. So, I got in country, sold my bacon, collected some cash and imported cigarettes and crates of liquor, these things being a perk of being involved in the ancient and dignified trade of smuggling. I made some queries, tapped a couple of contacts, and I got a location on your man. Well, the reports weren’t positive as to his location, but word was that he had charmed his way into a fiercely traditional tribe of warrior nomads who were currently encamped down on the banks of the big river. I went down to check it out and was promptly chased away with rocks and spears clattering off my windows. Rumors continued to circulate, the talk of a tamed zebra I found intoxicating, because shit, I don’t know what you know about zebras, but I know quite a bit. Zebras are some of the most vicious, pernicious, wild, and stubborn animals that exist upon the face of the blue and green earth. People have been trying to ride zebras since the dawn of time. Problem is, whenever a human gets close enough to a zebra to throw a lasso around its neck that zebra would bite said person, most likely in the face, but the arm or leg too, and proceed to run up and across and around, dragging and trampling the enterprising person until they are dead, or wish they were. Yeah, the classic horse kick hasn’t been the zebras chosen weapon, they are biters. If you have ever been around a horses mouth you surely have noted the 36 scariness of those enormous yellow teeth, teeth that could grind off a mans arm. The thing about horse teeth that is exceptionally intimidating is their flatness, those grass chewing teeth would grind your bones to powder. So I wondered how this guy could have tamed a zebra. I wanted an audience with anyone who had the audacity to even attempt such a feat. So, I set up a stake out. I headed back to the border, a place I knew he had been. I also suspected he was smuggling something, which is a bit of a personal affront to me, as he would be cutting into my business. Deals would have to be made. I slipped the border guards a carton of Galouises and they smoked as I sat in stake out. After a couple of days of this, there he is, and he comes riding up on a zebra. The guards were elated, as they had become unabashedly addicted to his stinky cheese. They moved towards him with reverence and humility, they didn’t even brandish their weapons, which I had come to regard as the sole occupational imperative of third world border guards. He greeted them with papal waves and a gentle paternal condescencion. He gave them a large chunk of cheese wrapped in Swaziland newspapers. They danced and chanted. I moved in. “That is a fine mount. From where was it acquired?” “Acquired? So coarse. We encountered one another out there in the wilds. Our relationship is one of mutual respect and understanding. I needed transport and he needed purpose.” “You seem an accomplished horseman. How does the zebra ride?” “A tempermental mount no doubt, but with proper crop application he moves well enough. It is something like riding the worlds strongest donkey, something of a super-ass.” We conversed for a while in this vein, him never dismounting, and I alluded to the business in which I myself was involved. This intrigued him, I think he liked the idea of bacon smuggling. I tried repeatedly to query him about his cheese, he remained tight-lipped, though he ended up giving me a small piece. The cheese was of a unique and near-erotic flavor. I commented on this and Garroutte laughed a hearty laugh. I asked if we could meet again, and he gave me a time and date three weeks in the future. The location was left undisclosed. “How am I supposed to be there if I only know the when and not the where?” He cocked an eyebrow and then he spurred his zebra on. I couldn’t help but laugh. I am not a mystic, so I gave chase. I have tailed many men in many countries, on foot, at sea, in car, bus, and bicycle, but never before have I tailed a man traveling on zebra back. This presented me with unique challenges. I had trouble following in my automobile due to obvious noise and speed reasons. On foot, I had difficulty keeping up with 37 LongTom and his zebra. They would walk for long stretches and then explode into a gallop. It seemed as if Mr. Garrouttes control of his mount was far from absolute. I followed at a useless distance for hours, and then, after cresting a small hill, I saw a zebra. I am no weakling. I rolled up my sleeves. I went to sneak up behind it and when I was just close enough to grab it, it whirled around and bit me on me left bicep. Its teeth sunk and clamped down solid on my bone.Then he ran. Three days later I awoke on the bank of a big muddy river, surrounded by zebras and elaborately costumed natives. Before me, sitting on a stool made from an elephants foot, was LongTom Garroutte. He introduced himself to me and dumped a bucket of dirt brown river water over my head. I could not speak. The three preceding days came back to me in a blur of unspeakable pain and horror. There was a dead zebra on the bank next to me. It looked as if its neck had been snapped. Garroutte explained that one of the young girls of the tribe had saved my life. She smiled down at me shyly, clutching her spear before her with both hands. As I scanned the crowd I slowly realized it was all women. I worked my way up to leaning on one elbow, and in trying to speak, succeeded only in vomiting a stomach-full of blood. As I lay there in the dirt, puking blood and attempting to draw wind into my punctured lungs, he looked down at me with unadulterated contempt. “Why were you following me?” I mumbled some nonsense and LTG spat at me and walked away. The little woman who had saved my life moved forward and squatted proprietarily by me in the dirt. Everyone else slowly mumbled and shuffled away. That little lady was my salvation. She helped me staged to her grass hut and she nursed me back to help through the monsoon rains using a combination of acidic tinctures and esoteric chants. It was near a month before I could walk again and I didn’t see LongTom the entire time. She carved me a handsome cane from a wildebeest femur and thence I could locomote. Once again, I set out in search of Garroutte. I really just wanted some cheese. After convalescing for near to six weeks I had picked up a bit of the native tongue and I began to query my native princess as to how the cheese was produced. At first she was coy, but I eventually got it out of her. The next day at dusk I snuck to the spot, to see. I was surprised to not see any cows, nor goats, not that they were common in the region. But where was he getting the milk? It was a straw hut, like the rest, erected during the monsoon and easily blown away after, the brilliant low impact housing of the nomad. Two young women came out, chatting amiably. I wrapped myself in a shawl and hunched over my cane, limping like an old lady and hoping to get a look in the door as I passed. Just as I walked by a young woman was coming out the door, and as the door blanket swung back into place I caught a momentary vision of what was go 38 ing on inside. There was LongTom and he was cupping the breast of a tribal teen and holding jar in one hand. In the split second that I saw and realized, so did he. As if sensing my presence, he looked up just then and we locked eyes for a single moment. The door blanket swung finally closed and I heard a guttural growl from inside. I tried to make my escape, shuffling painfully through the closing dusk. He was on me in a flash, knocking me to the dirt. “Why can’t you just leave me alone? “You’re interesting.” “You are such an American, you want to ruin everything. Must you master every mystery? Let me tame Zebras and make breast milk cheese! I let you do whatever you want! Just back the fuck off !” At this point I realized we were not going to become friends and felt stupid and needy for forcing this situation. I just got up and limped away, never learning how to make cheese from breast milk, or how to break a wild zebra. He was an asshole, but I understand. I obviously didn’t have much to offer such a man. The Murderous Catapulter. “Well it started with a string of unsolved murders… We kept finding men in the middle of the woods crushed to death, as if they had fallen from a great height. There were no parachutes. I thought we had a Peron-type, old school Argentinestyle helicopter assassin. That is to say, after my primary investigations I became quite sure we had an aircraft involved. I came across your man one day, deep deep in the bush. He was fashioning a rabbit trap from a tender sapling. When he saw me he let it go, and it sprung back upright, much like a miniature catapult. Now, I been a law man for a long time, and sometimes, there ain’t no detective work in it, you just know. You see a man, and you know it’s him that’s done it. This was such a case. I saw him, way out there in the woods, your man, LongTom Garroutte, and I knew he was involved, I didn’t rightly know how right then, but all my internal alarm bells clanged and clonged. We locked eyes and I stepped to him. “Where were you last night?” I’m a cop. I don’t mince words. I wanted to use my presence and position to intimidate him. He appeared unflapped, amused even. “Hunting.” And he went to resetting his rabbit trap. I stood there a while longer, asked a couple more textbook questions and received mono-syllabic replies. Back at the crime lab, the boys told me that our victims did not fall straight down, they had come in at an angle. This had us confused. A straight 39 helicopter suicide or murder is investigatable, but this, we didn’t have a suspect, a motive, or a method of dispatch. We just had bodies, broken in the bushes, as if tossed from the heavens. I spent a lot of time out there in the woods where we found the bodies, and when I was out there I saw quite a bit of you Mr. Garroutte. He lived, as far as I could tell, in a cave behind a waterfall and killed or picked all his own food. He would sit, patient with a lasso in the center of a deer trail. When a deer finally happened by, he would yank the lasso around an ankle and move in. He would have the deer’s throat slit before it realized it had even been caught. He tanned the hide and made pants and jackets of amazing quality. He would stand atop the waterfall with spear in fist, waiting for salmon to expose their silvery sides. He made musical instruments from their small bones. I staked out his cave for six weeks and never saw him interact with another person, let alone murder one. The victims all turned out to be high powered and particularly unscrupulous timber executives, so I gave up my stake out and went to the city to see the source, to investigate the lives of these men, the beginning, instead of solely investigating the place where they had ended. Around about that time was when we found the senators body. He was killed in the same manner as all the rest. When I got to his cave, Garroutte was gone, there was no sign he had ever been there. He left no trace. I started looking around, kicking floors, punching rock walls, pouting, angry that I had lost my man. As I stepped outside I could hear the roar/crackle of a large fire in the distance. Fighting preservation instincts, I headed for the flames. There, in a small clearing of blue and purple wildflowers, engulfed in a raging inferno, was the largest catapult I have ever seen. LongTom was on the far side with a pitchfork throwing great heaps of dry pine needles onto the fire. He smiled at me through the flames. I was circumnavigating the fire when my legs were swept out from under me, and I found myself swinging, upside down, and a little too close to the flames. I stared at him, and he laughed at me. “You are a murderer.” “The catapult did all the killing.” “You won’t get away with this.” “I punish myself when I do bad things. I don’t trust your blanket justice. I am an autonomous entity. I am not subject to your laws. “Those men died because they wanted to kill this forest. With the aid of a socio-pathic catapult the forest ended up killing them. Who would you charge with a crime here? The Earth?” I swung gently as he spoke, the asshole. So, yeah, that’s it, he left, that’s all, that’s the one that got away, are we done here?” 40 aniel Eli Dronsfield is an explorer, educator, author, photographer, visual artist and filmmaker. A graduate of The Evergreen State College, he received degrees in Independent Film Production, Linguistics, and Crypto-Zoology. His first film to receive notice was “The Iceblock Cometh! The Life of a Cambodian Iceblock.” This film premiered in the Hawaii International Film Festival in 2005. Indie Wire called it “…brilliant…”. He is an avid writer and has been published in The Barcelona Review and The Seahorse Rodeo Folk Review, as well as a number of smaller literary magazines. His play “The Verbose Gourmands” ran for six weeks at The Hollywood Fight Club Theater. [email protected] 12/14/80 www.dedunlimited.com http://dedmedia.tumblr.com/ ThisWackyWeather Danger Slater Dear Fellow Scientists, Greetings from SkyFortress3000! I wish I were writing to you today on more cordial terms. Since my banishment from the League of Extraordinary Pancakes [the world’s preeminent scientific/pancake collective] our relationship has been a bit..well... stressed. In case you were wondering, the answer is yes, I recieved your death threats. I have edited them for grammatical errors and have sent them back to you. If you require any more proofreading in the future, my office hours are 9am-1pm, Monday-Friday. I realize you all consider me a “loose cannon” of sorts. You claim my techniques are reckless. Unnecessary. Amoral, even. Listen, just because a guy clones a few dozen Sexy Hitlers’ and then declares his floating islandfortress its own private country, all of a sudden, I’m the one who’s being unreasonable. Let me tell you something - if my Sexy Hitlers’ had succeeded in their Final Solution, we’d all be wearing a lot less pants right now. But I’m not bitter. So I compose this letter not to publicly proclaim my hatred for you all - a hatred that is both all-encompassing and eternal - but rather, to extend an olive branch. A peace offering. My Fellow Scientists, I need your help! I’m sure by now you’ve noticed the recent surge of bizarre weatherrelated phenomena we’ve been experiencing. It’s hard not to. The sky is in revolt and the weather is something that affects us all. It has the power to ameliorate or destroy. Revive and ravage. The weather is the ultimate unifier, pulling every living being under its big, blue blanket. So before you rip this letter up and use it as toilet paper or campfire kindling or tickertape for your sactimonious robot-orgy parades, please know, all I’m asking from you is to listen for a moment with an open mind and heed the warning I am about to relay. I’m speaking, of course, about global warming: 42 What is causing it and what are its implications? *** I, like most of the scientific community, used to scoff at the idea of climate change. But all that changed a few months ago when it started raining amputated limbs outside of my Los Angeles body dysmorphia clinic: At the time, body dysmorphia was all the rage in Hollywood after Jennifer Aniston, Matthew McConaughey, and their entire viewing audience had their brains removed before the premeire of their latest romantic-comedy crapfest Someone Else’s Finger. As it was reported in Us Weekly, proponents such as Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Sir Ben Kingsly could all attest - amputation is the fastest way to shed those extra pounds - and keep them off ! Every trophy wife in Beverly Hills was rushing out to have thier legs cut off or their hunchbacks removed. And I was making bank! Then one typical level-5-smog-alert-self-righteous-liberalism-tiny-dogsin-purses afternoon the sausage-like clouds above us started to gather. The sky grew meaty and sinister. Thunder clapped. And suddenly fingers, toes, arms, legs and torsoes were falling from the heavens in a torrential downpour. The terrified screams of pedestrians echoed across Rodeo Drive as a meteorite comprised of condensed guts - appendixes, pancreata, and other assorted viscera - smashed into my solid gold Rolls Royce, evaporating it in a mushroom cloud of gore. The L.A. River overflowed with sweet and sour slime, washing away hoboes and shantymen alike on its apocalyptic journey to the sea. The corpse-shower shocked the newsmedia, causing Local 12’s weatherman Chip Branson to nearly mess up his hair. Luckily, his helmet of hairspray and perfectly straight teeth repelled the cascading refuse with tact and aplomb. Afterwards, he straightened his tie, looked directly into the camera, screamed, “IT’S THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD!” and then blew his brains out on live TV. The local Emmy was awarded to him posthumously. Meanwhile, on the streets, in the thick of it all, knee deep in the mucous and severed limbs and bile stood I, watching the sun turn the color of blood. The ground shook as a very, very, very, very centralized earthquake nosed its way through Tectonic plates and rocked the lowest part of my lower intestine. Before I knew it, I - one of the greatest minds the world has ever known - was uncontrollably pooping in his pants! Patients leaving the clinic were both confused and anxious. Were the body parts they had just removed enacting their swift yet austere revenge? And was I, their favorite doctor - one whom they had lauded and hailed as their makeshift Messiah; a title I humbly accepted because, in fact, I most 43 definately deserved it - suffering from a case of Fatal Diaper Failure? The shock of it all was too much for them to handle. One by one, they orderly took their own lives. I could only watch in horror as my friends, relatives, and lovers perished by their own [lack-of ] hands. *** [Personal note: I realize that performing elective disfiguring surgery on the rich and famous is not the nobelest line of work a man of my stature could persue. Some even say it violates the Hippocratic oath that I, as a doctor, have sworn to uphold. But it takes a fuck-ton of money to keep SkyFortress3000 running efficently. So judge me not, fair members of the Leauge. I’m just trying to make this world a more beautiful place, one severed organ at a time.] *** I realized then that something was wrong. This type of extreme weather is usually reserved for the Armageddon. Never in the summer. And never in L.A. But the debacle at the B.D.C. was to be merely the tip of an evermelting iceberg: Reports of midnight sun, fire snow, reverse tornadoes, and banana tsunamis are pouring in faster than the election committe of Miami-Dade county can count the ballots. After a month of recounts, bake-offs and a few “lazy Sundays,” in an unprecedented act of nepotism and political bias, George W. Bush was declared the Supercell Supreme of the United States of America and Hell froze over. While many Democrats merely cried, a few began spontaneously lactating bees, prompting some Republicans to declare America as the new land of Milk and Honey. As the Supercell destroyed cityscapes and countrysides alike [most notably, New Orleans. The mishandling of the situation by FEMA and ineptitude of the fedral government had UNICEF up in arms and forced certain narcacisstic rappers to proclaim “Cyclones don’t care about black people!”] the social-economic infrastructure crumbled around us. The country slumped into a Depression. Obesity rates rose. Incidents of violent crime increased. And somehow I misplaced my car keys. Again! All of this commenced in the winter of 2008 with the election of Barack Obama into office, promising to give us the “Change We Need.” The disenfranchised were hopeful. Finally a candidate who’s rhetoric didn’t seem like a complete natural disaster. But alas, on Inaugeration Day, just seconds after being sworn into office, President Obama “changed” into a Katabatic 44 wind which blew any chance of healthcare reform right out the window. Millions of people are still living in poverty and recieving improper medical care, ushering in a new era that many backalley abortionist are calling: The Golden Age of Organ Theft. Indeed, prices for black market organs have inflated, and nearly everyone is feeling the crunch. But until the auto industry can develop a proper electric car, the cost for a gallon of blood will continue to rise. *** The economic devistation is just one of the many facets that global warming will affect. The planets average temperature has climbed 1.4 degrees F since 1880. While adversaries of global warming claim this statistic is bogus [as it was reported in the confidential intraoffice memo between Cargo shorts lobbies, entitled: The Future of Cargo Shorts: The Fallacy of Global Warming and How Exploiting the Lie is Going to Make Us All Very, Very Rich. Perhaps We’ll Even Get a Blow-Job From That Girl at the Starbucks. Did You See the Tattoo of a Cheshire Cat She Has on Her Forearm? So Cute. I Bet She’s a Tiger in the Sack. Me-ow! HaHaHa.] But the Cargo shorts conspiracy is literally full of holes. Seriously, I put my cell phone in my pocket and it must have fallen out somewhere. It had all my contacts in it and everything. So annoying. By the way, I need your number. I know we don’t talk much, but just in case, you know? The fact is, the increased sale of Cargo shorts is just a symptom of a much larger problem. All fashion trends aside, complete ecosystems are at stake. The Nuclear Reactor Coral Reefs are rapidly disappearing. Roman Emperor Penguins are being fed to the lions. Bi-Polar Bears have fallen into a funk. And Serial Killer whales have grown lethargic, no longer stalking and hunting the vulnerable young women on which they used to prey. The increased volume of vulnerable, young women has put an unnatural strain on their local environment as the demand for new-age self-help books and vampire novellas have risen exponentially, causing the continued deforestation of Amazon.com. *** I realize the sheer volume of this information is daunting to you. To put it all in perspective, I have compiled a list of facts and myths about global warming which may prove helpful as you disseminate this material: 45 MYTH: Global warming is responsible for stealing my newspapers every morning. FACT: It is your redneck neighbor that is stealing your papers. MYTH: Global warming does not exist. FACT: Global warming is very real. More real than you, even, as you, I suspect, are a hallucination brought on by a sentient supercomputer [see archived footage: sect. IIX, file 426: The Matrix.] MYTH: Global warming will not affect me in my lifetime. FACT: Global warming will affect you in your lifetime because it is happening. It’s happening RIGHT NOW! Oh wait, it just stopped. Okay, it’s happening again. Now it seems to be slowing down a bit. And... it stopped again. Hold on...oh, no it didn’t. My mistake. It just kind of looked like it did for a sec, but yeah, it’s still going on like it was before. Wait...okay, now it’s stopped. For real, this time. Crap, it started again. MYTH: Last night, global warming and Bigfoot thew eggs at my house and then toilet papered my tree. WTF? FACT: While global warming and Bigfoot did both egg and toilet paper your house last night, they both did it of their own volition. The fact that it happed on the same date is coincidence. While global warming was only looking for some cheap thrills, Bigfoot’s agenda is still unknown. MYTH: History shows us the planet goes through natural heating and cooling cycles. How do we know that global warming is the result of our anthropogenic influence? FACT: While what you say is true, the rate at which our atmosphere is warming far exceeds the rate at which it happens historically. Natural climate change can take several thousand years. What we’re experiencing has only taken decades. Plus, what do you know about history, anyway? You barely graduated county college. Remember that class we shared? I saw you doodling in your notebook, like, the whole time. Don’t even try and tell me you were listening. Oh, that’s how you learn? By drawing a unicorn fighting a helicopter? Yeah, right. Listen, kid, your good looks and charm may have gotten you by in the past, but you’re in the big leauges now. What’s that? You’re only in college because your parents are making you go? Ya, real good reason to persue an education. What are you studying anyway? Environmental science?!? Oh Jesus! 46 MYTH: Global warming is having an affair with my wife. FACT: Again, the redneck neighbor. *** The research facilities in SkyFortress3000 are vast. When the Sexy Hilters are not busy commiting genocide against their own bodies [an act they call “making love”,] they are fastidiously at work, compiling data. Attached to this letter will be a spreadsheet, graphing their findings. Be advised, the sheet will only spread after a lobster dinner, a couple of glasses of wine, and some coy yet flirtatious remarks. WARNING: DO NOT PRESSURE THE SPREADSHEET. It’s been hurt before and it may take a while for it to trust you. As the planet’s best and brightest, we have an obligation to ensure that future generations will be allowed to prosper. The world our children are to inherit is a dangerous one. Our pursuit of technology and convinience has poisoned the globe, almost irrevokably. Putting aside all the petty differences and tenuous pancake breakfast’s that we’ve shared, I am calling on you, my fellow scientists, to help me in reversing the folly of our selfish ways. I have at my disposal an unlimited supply gorgonzola cheese, an as-yet untested DeathRay, and a paper sack full of illegal fireworks smuggled in from the next state over. I am willing to donate these resources towards whatever plan of action that we, together, can come up with concerning this impending plight. Please get back to me as soon as possible. The Sexy Hitlers’ are waiting by the phones. Call in the next 20 minutes and recieve a second complimentary Snuggie - The Blanket That Has Sleeves®. . Thank you for your time. Hugs and Kisses, Dr. D. Slater, Carnival Barker and Mad Scientist anger_Slater is the world’s most flammable writer! He’s so flammable that he’s actually on fire as you read this! Seriously. Why are you still here? Go get help, goddamn it! His short fiction has appeared in online magazines and offline anthologies, and his poetry can be found in many truck stop bathroom walls across the country. His first novel, Love Me, will be out in Summer 2011. For more disinformation please visit his website: dangerslater.blogspot.com. Margot in Reverse Adam Moorad God watches trashcans from the eyes of a toothpaste billboard. He hangs, suspended like a vulture above my block, floating high above the aluminum sides of buildings on the outskirts of this outskirt. Apartments sag with cadged windows. Dogs bark. Planes purr. A kid in the street smashes a can against the curb and kicks it. I hear it skip across the road towards the gutter…God doesn’t blink. On the ground shadows draw burn-mark sketches in the shapes of angel wings. I watch them reaching blindly towards alleys choked with yellow shrub and thistle – wild species impressive in their ability to tolerate the environ their Maker made them in. Glass from Margot’s shattered windshield is still scattered across the fractured pavement like sharp, malformed marbles. They reflect sporadic light from the sun in mazy spiderweb white against sewer gravel. Everything is irreparably broken. I see a Hispanic girl on the sidewalk and watch her picking pepperonis from a wet slice bleeding transparent through a paper bag. She licks her fingers and swallows. The church bell tolls three blocks away. It does every hour almost on the hour. I cough and keep on coughing. The sun descends behind billboard and coats the churchyard in shade. I limp to my balcony where my cane sticks to the tar on my platform. Like every day, I see strangers smoking on faraway terraces through the aerial disconnect. We recognize one another as familiar, gimp silhouettes outlined against the sky. To 49 gether we sweep the street with our eyes from opposing perches. The stale, windless dusk wraps bands of vinegar around every exposed object. My skin tingles. The air is dry and vague with the aroma of cigarettes and kerosene. My mouth begins to water. The odor absorbs me. ■ We were driving and now we’re not. “You want to use this?” Margot says, holding out a wadded paper towel. In spite of everything, her voice is sympathetic, almost tender. “Why? Do I need it?” I ask her. “Is my nose running?” “Not running. You’re bleeding, but I mean, I guess it’s running too.” “It is? I’m sorry…” I tell her. She hands me the paper towel and rummages through her purse. “I usually keep Kleenex in the glove box, but I don’t think I have any.” “I can use my shirt,” I say. “What the hell does it matter?” “No,” she says. “I love that shirt. Don’t get it all bloody.” My shirt is hers – old and dingy with the dander of other men. I take the paper towel, unfold it and spread it across my face. All I can see is the color yellow. I hold it in place for a few minutes, leaning my head back. My ears sting with the ring of airplane cabin pressure. The salt flavor breaches taste buds on the back of my tongue. My seatbelt unbuckles itself. I swallow. “Here they are,” Margot says. Her voice carries the air of resiliency, of somehow maintaining buoyancy on an ocean where nothing floats. I feel myself sink in a graceful drowning. I remove the paper towel and come-up for air. Margot is holding a compact mirror in one hand and a packet of tissue in the other. 50 “God, you look like Rocky,” she says. “I hate that movie,” I say. My eyes are fixed on the cement wall. Its mortar. Its sallow globules of paint. Margot doesn’t speak for a while. I wonder if she’s even there. I take the packet of tissue. Again, I tell her I’m sorry. “I’m sorry too,” she says. The church bells ring. It is eight after the hour. ■ Unexpectedly, the clouds open like curtains and begin to dry the wet jetties along the shore. I watch Margot watching the booths and fountains and Ferris wheels through the fading marine layer. A baby on a blanket rolls over, screaming, kicking its feet and holding up its hands. It is naked except for a pair of sandy socks. It lies between its mother and father on a spread towel beside us. The father murmurs muted Russian into a cellphone. The mother holds a milk bottle of formula in her hand. The fluid laps softly inside its plastic canister. I begin to thirst. Margot presses against me oddly, pulling me aside. I have never seen anyone so pale and disengaged. She twists her feet in the sand and shakes her head. I look down and watch the beach swallow her shoes. I nod my head, but she isn’t looking. “Are you alright?” I ask. “You feel sick again, or what?” “Just funny,” she says. “We can leave now.” She walks briskly up the beach, retracing the same route we had taken earlier down the boardwalk from the parking lot. I follow, but she stops. “You want something to drink, some water?” I ask. “I think I should just sit down for a minute,” she says. We cross the street and enter a dark cocktail bar on the final block before the lot. The place is empty. The bartender fills troughs with ice. He looks at us knowing 51 ly, like he’s seen us before. The jukebox mumbles distorted ambience. The sound hangs stale in the sour indoor air. Margot rests her arms on the counter. Her skin glistens with a creamy heat. She lowers her head, just touching it to her forearm. She falters slowly and feigns, like she wants to collapse on the floor. I watch her breath coalesce in the fuzz around her lips. I listen and hear all the little eggs hatching inside her. ■ The television hisses a soundless vacuum. We stare at the screen in silence, watching the weather coat the earth on Doppler radar. Green and yellow shapes sidewind across the mapped sky like a snake. A gentleman in a suit whispers daily horoscopes from a faraway studio. “I’ll think about it when the time comes,” I tell her. “It’s just the way I’m made.” “Somebody’s going to catch you and beat you to death,” she says. Her voice is low and tense. “I’m not stupid enough to get caught,” I tell her. “Not to boast or anything.” I offer a prayer to God, but end up only talking to myself. “How long has it been?” she asks. Her eyes tell me that she doesn’t want to know. “I don’t really remember,” I say. “What am I doing wrong?” “Nothing,” she says. “It’s fine. Let’s talk about something else.” Her basement smells of ash. I watch a commercial, feeling congested in the head and chest. A red-lettered weather bulletin scrolls horizontally beneath a mouthwash advertisement. “We smoke too much,” she says. “Then quit,” I say. We become silent. I grind my teeth, feeling the tickle and throb of bone against 52 bone. She slips a Camel in her mouth and lights it with a kerosene lamp. When she does, she looks much more natural than before. ■ Margot smiles slowly, rubbing her leg back and forth. “Everybody in the world thinks they’re going to heaven,” she says. I sigh and move with her, nudging. “It’s natural,” I tell her. “Do you even care?” She brings her hand up from under the water. I can see her make a tiny fist of sudsy knuckles against my ribcage. “It gets to be a drag,” she says, segueing matter-of-factly. “And why is that?” I say. “Because no one actually understands the bible, or anything,” she says. I nod. “Sometimes you’re too much,” I tell her. I taste methane on my tongue and feel disgusted. She puts her hand back underwater and takes her pants off. I do the same. “Shut up,” she says. And I do. We lay there side by side breathing one another’s air. “What time is it?” I ask. “Never mind,” she says. “Are you in a hurry?” “You wanted me to leave,” I say. 53 “I’ll call you a taxi when I’m ready,” she says. Her mouth is muffled against my chest. “Whatever,” I say. “Don’t act like that.” She hitches her arms around my head. Her lips smack. I laugh. She snickers. I take in a lungful of air and shudder a gasp into the old bathwater, swallowing some. I close my eyes and hold my breath. “My God,” I hear her say through bubbles. “We’re in the tub.” Slowly, her voice and my own thoughts entwine in lathered submersion. All our sounds become inaudible, communicating only in the way soap does with raw nerve endings on infected skin. dam Moorad is the author of Prayerbook (wft pwm, 2010), I Went To The Desert (Thunderclap Press, 2010), Oikos (nonpress, 2010), Book of Revelations (Artistically Declined Press, 2011), and Piñata (propaganda press, 2011). He lives in Brooklyn. Visit him here:adamadamadamadamadam.blogspot.com. LastRobert Things Kulesz The world was ending again. It woke Marshall up and that took some doing. He’d heard the percussive roar of it deep down in his dream, and it woke him from that dream. The rest of them, the mobs rampaging in the street, they knew something was wrong; there was no way to miss that. They just didn’t know what. The ocean, all the water had been sucked far out, exposing the green-black bottom and wet hills. The populace panicked, tearing in and out of buildings and searching frantically for some high ground, but there was none. Marshall himself panicked, racing in his nightclothes up the narrow winding alleyways to the highest spot he knew, the druggist’s place, ten feet above sea level. Since the Heat Storms of a century ago, the ancient Flat Earth myth was very nearly a reality. Whole mountain ranges had collapsed into the weakened crust of the planet, deserts had stretched out their needy arms and wild seas had devoured the coasts. The town was pure pandemonium; a brightness shed itself on the night as the bell struck two, and there was something almost beautiful about the rearing horses and the fires out of control and the babies being dropped in the straw, the sky unpredictable and alive. Car batteries failed-- there weren’t too many cars left from before the Storms anyway, and the limited phone service died too. The high wail of humanity before it goes out. At the druggist’s, the black and white parquet floors were running with liquid, some of it on fire. The man himself was slumped in a tatty velvet chair in his bathrobe, depressed apparently, smoking a cigarette, which he never did. His assistants were tearing the place apart, so much shouting and climbing of ladders, clearing of shelves, gathering 56 of powders. “The ocean will be coming back soon,” Marshall said to the druggist, “in a high black wall. You know that, right?” The druggist stood up from the chair and told his assistants to dispense a liquid agent which would impair the fears of those about to die, namely everyone in the room. Not whiskey. It was something yellow and viscous; the druggist said it would be like getting drunk but faster and more philosophical; it would raise the mind to such metaphysical heights that looking down on your own head you’d see nothing but a pinprick. Then the Earth itself would become a pinprick, the stars would become huge, then pinpricks again; the blackness, the void, the eternities would all shrink into a little ball that would drop into the bearded mouth of a giant upturned head, and make an Adam’s Apple inside the giant throat that supported the head. Then the head would become a pinprick. By the time that happened you’d be dead. Marshall drank it down. “Death,” the druggist reminded him, “a bell that wakes you from a dream.” He sat down again. There was almost enough of the agent to go around but one man was shorted, assuring complete consciousness when the awful moment came; his bravery failed and he ran screaming into the fires in the street, maddened, in a futile attempt to outrun the onrushing deep. “Well,” Marshall said, “in five minutes it’ll all be over.” He leaned closer to his friend the druggist and put a hand on his arm. “There’s a giant hole in the ocean. The crust is collapsing in on itself. It’s like a continental sinkhole.” The druggist slouched back down into his wine-colored ratty armchair and raised his fingers to a tent. “Ah, so that’s what it is this time. A hole. I thought it might be more storms, or another asteroid. Mountain slides. Mud quakes. Something like that. What’ll they think of next?” “The Atlantic is getting sucked out but it’s coming back,” Marshall said. “I heard it in my dream.” “What a dream that must’ve been!” the druggist said. Behind him, his assistants in their white lab coats sat around the large wooden table near the open kitchen, swapping sports statistics and drinking orange juice. “Death is quite the conniver, and we’re perennial rubes.” “It’s a little unfair,” Marshall admitted, “seeing as there’s no sound basis for a hole in the ocean, so suddenly like that, but who can argue with a dream? I mean, it’s scientifically disingenuous at best.” 57 “Disingenuous and undeniable, I’m afraid. Still, you’d think we might catch on after all the times we’ve died already. It’s always this way, isn’t it?” “I remember one time,” Marshall said, “I fell through the ice. I’d gone down to the pond on my own, after my older brother had warned me not to. That was hard. They planted a tree in the schoolyard in my memory. That tree stood for over three hundred and fifty years before it went down in a storm. It became the same man who just ran screaming down the street. I only saw the resemblance just now.” “Why do we always remember these things at the last minute?” wondered the druggist, leaning back to stare at the ceiling. “Yes, you were a little girl, back in the early nineteenth century... your house was near the coast. I was the milk cow living in the pasture across the road. It’s all coming back again. It’s always in the last minutes that you remember absolutely everything.” Marshall nodded. “I used to pet you through the fence.” “Why a druggist this time, I wonder?” said the older man, wiping his glasses on his lab coat. “If you go from milk cow to druggist, is that a promotion?” Marshall tapped his front teeth with a fork. “This is bigger. I mean it’s not just us this time, not just Earth. This is an exponential thing.” “Yes,” murmured the druggist, putting his glasses back over his ears. “It does feel more important. We’re moving past religion, I think.” The windows began to buzz lightly. The room went dark. Phosphorescence lit the outside world; a blue electric line sparked back and forth along the crest of a huge wave, just visible though still miles away. “I’ll see you soon, somewhere.” Marshall’s voice came out of the darkness. “Not this world again, I think. I can’t even imagine what we might become. Something different.” The world was a pinprick far below and the stars were becoming huge. “Right,” breathed the druggist, closing his eyes. “Could it be stranger than this, though?” His voice was fading. He laughed. “I mean these hands, these long fingers, cylinders... and such tiny eyes!” He held up his arm and squinted but it was too dark to see. “How did we ever find this beautiful?” obert Kulesz writes short things that he remembers when he wakes up in the morning. He’s published some of these in 5_Trope; Wascana Review; The Santa Barbara Review; The Bitter Oleander Press. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize but wasn’t surprised when he didn’t win, for the same reason he doesn’t play the lottery. It’s for suckers.. Babe Rockerfeller: A Canadian Gothic Lumberjack Romance KirkA. C. Marshall I was heading my way up north, in slow but surly pursuit of the seasonal mallard migration, in the hopes that there would be some shooting at the tooth of Powder Mountain. It had proven one helluva long racket, both in physical mileage and in manifestation, from my outpost as Store Manager of the town of Whistler’s Timber Supplies and Woodwork Shop. I’d hung our sign reading “Closed Till after fall” in our shop front window – knowing well that drifts of blue autumn snow would soon obscure the glass – and had bedded down early, with nary an eyeful of William Carlos Williams and a kick of gin before sleep stole on me. 4 am the next morning, and with a burning cigarette bummed from the deck of Red Devon quashed into my shirt-pocket, I’m surveying the lay of the country at the cabin of my Winnebago. Extinguishing the cigarette onto the sole of my boot, I crunch out of the caravan’s threshold into the snow, and of a sudden it’s falling freely onto my shoulders like the stoat-robe of a boggart-king, or the nuclear fall-out from some misbehaving hydrogen bomb. I’m breathing gin into the woodland air. The smoke hangs for a moment so that my eyes sting, and the song of a warbler resonates in the thick of the treeline. A star looms sharply at the height of the sky’s thermals, right above me, and I can still make the shape of a few others, night’s celestial survivors clustering to a raft in the wake of day. I do a hard and savage piss at the back of the truck, thrust the hood of my parka over my scalp, and shoulder the supplies. Winter game, as a stoic sort, can be pretty timid and selective in when they choose to break hibernation: but like those possessed of even the best stamina, it ain’t wrong to anticipate the transgressions of deviants. It’s near to a koan what my daddy imparted to my childhood sister and I, before he suffered a heart attack and suffocated to death in the ore mine: You ever seen a caribou read? Nossir. And you know why? Because caribou harbour no concern for the theories of those animals who can. I wasn’t presuming to pretend that a population of buck elk would be fanging through the pine at Brandywine Mountain, especially not so early in the season. One evening at the shop, I just became consumed. 60 A feeling of urgency descended upon me. My heart beat like the handshake of a Blackjack champion. Standing at the counter, I had to excuse myself. The sweat was streaming off me, lashes of it, and I retreated to the shed, out back in the frost, fists balled to my abdomen. Panting, I shut out the birdcall and the susurration of engines at the front of the store. I was being called. It felt like an invitation to fight, simultaneously mean and polite, and I knew the ghost of my daddy was calling upon me to forge my way northward. I’d heard tell of rogue black bear coasting like sludgetankers through autumn’s yellow revolt, and of a convoy of wapiti which made their claim of the maples in a clearing somewhere north-west of Brandywine Falls. A reverent people, elk. This herd was said to be decades old, the veteran phalanx of some lost generation, vaulting over river cascades and through bitter snowfall in a feeble plight to recreate the grandeur of a winter exodus. Either unprepared for or contemptuous of the commitment necessary to abandon the choreography of an annual migration, these elk took to the highest fucking climes of British Columbia in order to satisfy tradition, and the onus of their forebears. I couldn’t much discern the point, not at the time, but it took me more than a few months after the event to realize that I wasn’t just seeking a trophy for validation to justify the beckoning which had begun to seize me up during the day, invading the mental refuge I’d established for nights of unaided sleep. It took me more than a few months, actually, to appreciate that I’d long been hibernating on my feet. I had yet to endure two different heartbreaks and confront the possibilities of unnegotiable catastrophe, kill a creature that wanted my future, and dispense with daddy’s 77 magnum over the smoking foundry of Brandywine Falls before returning home. Bullet cartridges blossomed from my fist down into the swell of the rapids, darting from beneath my presiding shadow like a shoal of red salmon into rhapsody, into deep water. For hours my hands would stink of gunpowder as I tramped back up the foothills, leaving prints for a flank of wolves to divine in the permafrost of afternoon. *** At 7,700 feet, Powder Mountain prevails over the ice fields which extend from the mouth of the Squamish River to the south of Whistler all the way to the furthest topography of Ganbaldi Provincial Park, devolving into a ridgeback annex which wallpapers the frozen horizon, describing a circumference of caldera lakes and stone promontories which no hand of miraculous intent could properly sculpt. I’m fond to regard the summit as the centrifuge of some widespread storm front. Rolls of thunder descending in parabolas of molten basalt. Forks of lightning carved from granite, and wind-smoothed like striated glass. But I ain’t much of a proponent of narrative-fantasy, leastways not over a long61 haul: I can’t seem to muster the longevity, nor maintain the lie which an athletic imagination demands. So I’m swift to calculate that Powder Mountain is really only as vertiginous and impressive as fable might protest, when it’s viewed in the bracing clasp of a chill violet dusk. Looking at it square, like I’m fixing to deter a returning shark, I can’t assemble the syntax, nor the breadth of wonder which that mountain provokes in me when I survey its implacable contest, ingest its scorn and tiger beauty. Hunching low to the undergrowth, I squat and exhale vapour. I’ve long been loathe to exchange parry or parlance in the language of the clock, but it takes me a sure ten minutes kneeling in the new lawn of snow to fasten the gas kerosene, like a bedroll, to the centre of my back. In seconds it’s aflame behind me, a fist or blade of orange light cleaving the conspiracy of forest blackness embroidering the pinewood canopies. The flame flickers as I walk, sending and disrupting silhouettes to the borderzones of my peripheries, fireshapes like autumn leaves dancing on the canvas of a Canadian morning. Oil fumes escort my passage as though the jet of ink enabling a squid’s escape. My feet are breaking tiny icicles as they fall; and still the buoyant squash-racquet devices attached to the underside of my snowshoes erase these furrows which my progress leaves: like the ribbon of a typewriter spun from silence, quietly reclaiming words as it surfs across a page. This begins the lonely march. It’s an hour before I palm a cigarette into my mouth, striking the waxen match-head against an emery board I’d misplaced in my jacket pocket; another hour after that, as daylight intrudes with the welcome vehemence of an old pro, before I stop to gauge my bearings and refill my water-flask. Sometimes all this snow, all this vibrant ice can make a man believe things his own blood would accelerate to disconfirm. It’s the violence of wind loping uncaged and luminous through the trees, or the sound of a branch snapping a pace of twelve feet behind you, or the illusion of movement at the height of the closest foxhole undergrowth when everything is disorientating and obscured by log pile mists that can converge to spook a man. I was being haunted by birds. At the outset of my trek there had sounded the occasioned warble of a thrush, the startled alarm of a wood-pewee as its red-breasted platitudes reverberated through the gaps of conifers, voices like bells from thoraxes of glass and throats of melody. It didn’t take six cigarettes to start hearing the whoop of a pride of kestrels hunting above me, or the manic chattering of magpies between the leaves and the opaque peat-like fog. I’d divined fresh rainwater after harvesting a bushel of ice from the edge of a snow-bank, malingering on my haunches and snapping like rabies at the wheel of a pocket-lighter with my thumb, melting the frost into the bottleneck of my flask, when I heard wind of the barks. It sounded like laughter at first, dark choleric laughter, a coughing that wheeled and escalated between the snowfall, the flakes tumbling too heavily to discern where the murder or merriment emanated from. A wing flapped. A cough, a 62 bark. I shouldered my pack, the kerosene lamp curiously contributing no measurement of security to my passage. I forged through the snow, doubling my efforts, scaling higher ground, running, tripping, clawing without traction at the mantle of white death, forever judging and collapsing the mortar and marrow of men, snow above me, snow below me, snow sweeping into my fucking eyes, snow. The light was venomous, silvering, spangling through prismic sleet like chaos braiding chaos between strange attractors. It kept falling, would not concede, did not recede. It continued to blind me, and the voices were sharp now, viscid and insistent. When I couldn’t move any more I waved my arms about, sundering my umbilicus with the forest floor and its autumn graves. I shook off clover, snow, sky, ghosts, snow. An apparition formed before me, and I knew it was both the birds and not the birds: a scarecrow united through, and agglomerated by the forms of a parliament of ravens; black birds with red hearts and pupils, come before me to build the body of a man. The wraith engineered from this swarming, rustling roost of ravens was looking at me, manifest before me with two hundred persecuting eyes. He outstretched his arms, the forms of arms. The birds chittered like a Spanish monkey puzzle tree, the tide of quarrelling, carolling laughter shivering down the scarecrow’s body. His arms were wings, and they were the assemblages of wings. I could not discriminate a face, if such a creature can be said to possess one, but he did have a chest because it rose and fell with the breath of two hundred others. ‘What the fuck do you want?’ I screamed, my face hot with tears. ‘Leave me the fuck alone!’ A voice as bright, as accusatory, as noxious as a firework held back the advance of day. ‘I need to know the state of my son. I need to know Babe Rockerfeller, my son, possesses the fortitude and gamble to devour this fucking mountain and all its power.’ ‘Dad,’ I croaked, my voice hoarse, ‘I’m okay now. Just demonstrate me some fucking peace.’ *** I spun around wildly, stumbling in the snow, now succumb to the visor of blackness which had hooded me, screaming into the night, breathing hot pillows into the air, breathing lotuses. The warbling and politics and brilliant chatter of the ravens expanded, coalesced to seal me into an envelope of corvid speech and blue illumination, a realm of sound where no compass nor cartographer could have proven useful. I squared up into a boxer’s stance, my eyes and forehead lowered, the cleft of my chin sharp with my chest. I would fight the visions of the night, I decided: I would not allow the moon its crimson 63 victory, I would violate, I would seize the hearts of ravens, still dark and beating; condemn them to lands leagues beneath our earthly wind. I would swing my fists. I would eat the ripest cries for mercy, never mind the bitterness, and spit out the pips. ‘I taunt you with a dare!’ I shrieked, my voice and its hoarse promise failing through the blanket of snowfall which cloaked my mouth and eyes. I spat out snow, but it did not abate: it continued to enter me, burrowing into my ears and nostrils, blinding me with a sharp frost which accumulated like glass-crafted dew over the lids of my eyes. ‘Reveal yourself, and I shall kill you without pleasure!’ I whispered, my throat strangulated by the deed of some unapologetic apocalypse. I could see nothing; the windows had been boarded from the outside, by swift and unholy hands, and I was trapped behind once-inviting walls, clawing like a feeble animal at where I guessed points of light used to penetrate. Blindness is like being in a condemned church that is about to be razed to its foundations. I couldn’t see the fire – my eyes were too fast-closed to afford me the luxury of witnessing my demise – but there was a flame forged by devils encircling me, I was compelled to admit to that much, and before the weapon of the night struck me its savage blow, I felt good about having seen my daddy, and my body exhaled like the chrysalis of a leopard moth until it was fit to rupture. Something sudden and wet and angry rustled beneath the schism of my chest, and I could feel the gin leave my stomach and exit my mouth in plumes of dragon breath, until my ears burned and my head pounded. There were sounds in my mind, somewhere, like a rage born in driving rain. I fucking hated this snow. I hated the moon, I hated the forest which had me skulking on my belly like a cornered fox, I hated the birds, conspirators on wings, I hated the witching hour and the dark which had flooded my body, burying me whilst I still yet breathed. I tore off my gloves, and scratched at my eyeballs, unvigilant and furious, shouldering the blizzard wind and all this molten ice, unending space-junk being shed from on high, to the hackles of my back, murmuring to myself, Get behind me, get behind me, give me only your blessing. My hands found their purchase, and my eyes graced the cold clearing, vision rushing back like sound through a wave-pounded ear. I was standing alone, and it appeared the snow had long since stopped falling. The sun was banding the trunks and boughs of trees, emerging from between the thick of pines. The sky was light, unclouded, bearing the hue of a honeycomb city. I heard owls make off, their great wings thrashing, into the woodland’s barren centre, where the shadow of dawn retreated the slower. I stood within a cairn of volcanic stone, the surface and contour of each metamorphic rampart gleaming like an evil prize beneath the treeline. My eyes were bleeding, the trickle feeding into the apexes of my mouth, and though my lantern was extinguished, as dead as the world in a historical photograph, I could only smile. My breath returned, ragged and euphoric, like a dog pulled from 64 the body of a river and reclaimed by its master. The morning was trembling between the teeth of conifers and the needles of powdered snowflake. I couldn’t fathom what I was seeing. As cool as new steel, the fist of my heart unclasped itself, wholly inviting the ebullience of this new event and embracing the sun as it gloried in my surroundings. Not three metres from the pinnacle of my shade, at the centre of the cairn of stone beat the flesh and thresh of a giant monarch butterfly, with a span of orange wings more vast than the days of spring. The insect had to be a metre-and-a-half wide at the diameter if I’m to own up to my talent for the measurement-tape at all. It was labouring over an egg of ice, drinking its fill with the singular zeal of a fey thing, all proboscis and wisdom and iridescence and wing. I lay down beside the butterfly, unfastening my pack, and watched it open and close like a fist or a flower, until my head became heavy, and sleep smote me of reason. *** ‘There are some who sleep as though fearful that their indiscretions might surface in their slumbering behaviors, thrashing and shunning away from the rose-dark toxicity of dreams.’ The voice entered my head with a means to usurp me, upturning the furniture of fantasy to sit astride the throne of the black kingdom behind my eyes. It smoked sweet tobacco, and purred its witticisms with a face like that of the red astral tiger. ‘There are still others, however,’ the voice demurred, ‘who sleep with the abandon of escapologists. Succumbing to the night’s helm to evade eyes who might wish to ask discriminating questions.’ It paused to inhale deeply from its filterless smoke. Red Devon. My brand. My deck of cigarettes. ‘In theory, one such question could manifest itself as: “Who the fuck is it that I find sprawling in his own spew on country repatriated to the remaining ancestors of the Squamish Indian Tribe, and why does he carry nothing but books of William Carlos Williams and ten boxes of cigarettes?”’ I woke, then, all breath evacuating the fortress of my sternum. A man of Indian descent with deep-set eyes, a green so dark they appeared lapis lazuli, had the peak of his knee set with a violent mathematics squarely into my rib cage. I screamed soundlessly, my retinas casting their aspersions whilst I held clenched teeth. He observed these silent allegations with a quixotic amusement, and shifted the fullness of his weight so that my lungs could do nought but embrace the trespass. I choked, and I mouthed something from a Herman Melville novel or a Billy Zane flick. It made no impression: the blood of the Squamish ran through this man like centuries through the Squamish River. I couldn’t do 65 squat to him that might lend an edge of malice to the drama of my ill-forged threats. He looked equipped to arm-wrestle the one-eyed Jack of Diamonds, least of all a carpenter from Whistler with a receding hairline and the scar of a car collision wrapping the bridge of his boarish nose. I ascertained the commonplace: the Squamish maintained the advantage. ‘What do you want me to say? What the hell do I have to say to get your carcass off me?’ He exchanged a stare with me that was a dazzling thing to behold. In the spangle of afternoon light, I could neither identify nor guess at where the whites might be. It was a gaze to shovel away the violet dusk. The Squamish was smiling. ‘Ah. So much depends upon the red wheelbarrow.’ He withdrew his knee, and my lungs swelled to burst, pitching me forward until I was involuntarily possessed by a coughing rage, gulping in droughts of air, shuddering with jaw agape, sucking it in, all that damaged life. I watched him shrink back beside my pack, as I lay cradled like a foetus in the bower of surface snow. Laboriously, his face a crossword puzzle of scar-tissue, he sank to his ass and thrust his palm into the innards of my supply-pack. ‘Get your claw off my shit,’ I grunted, feeble enough not to mean it and smart enough not to try. I saw the coyote, then. It sat on vigilant haunches, the gums of its teeth bared and marbled-gold. It was calculating the arithmetic of a kill: how swiftly did it need to seize my jugular between its jaws before I might react, before I might demonstrate competition for my own life? Or maybe it wasn’t contemplating much at all. My daddy always said a dog’s as dim a specimen of creation as you’re likely to find during the prowess and on the plane of mortal man. Just what do you reckon a hound wants to ask of you, if it were privileged the intellect? I tell you, now, Babe Rockerfeller: Why does the master never have to lick his own balls? ‘Can you tell your ungovernable fuck-dog to go eat a deer or something?’ I groaned as I struggled to propel myself onto my elbows and sit upright, with daylight encircling my gin-fug forehead. ‘You whine like a bitch,’ The Squamish trilled. ‘You best be wary. White Wake is the duke of all coyote, and never neglects an opportunity to sow the seed of future pack-kings.’ The dog looked to its master, before returning to entreat me with a gaunt, funereal glare. White Wake’s teeth caught the phosphorous frozen light, his tongue lolling between its cage like a gladiator at the entrance to the field of battle. I might have chosen to say something dumb and cavalier, but I hadn’t evaded death by raven to suffer murder by a wolf ’s basest and most primeval prejudice within half a day’s hoof from the crag of Powder Mountain. Instead, I encouraged within the Squamish his satisfaction. Instead, I rolled the die and entered the game. ‘Okay, okay now, River Phoenix. Light me up a Red Devon, and maybe prevent your coyote from raping me, and I’ll show you a like courtesy.’ 66 An unsealed deck of cigarettes fell on my chest, followed by a pocket lighter. The Squamish’s head cocked quizzically toward my own, his lofty eyes divined my every moral measure, drinking my frostbitten uneasiness like it constituted the best part of the milkshake. I could almost imagine the appetitive slurps. His hard face slackened. The crow’s feet which had claimed sovereign territory of the topography around his eyelids started to conspire. The Squamish was grinning. ‘Those of the Squamish First Nation who still retain the Salishan dialect call me Blue Bluff Crow,’ the Squamish muttered with a voice that pirouetted between that of a horse-whisperer and that of a wharf-blown fishmonger. He extended me his palm, vice-like and skeletal. I took it, and using the grip like a fulcrum he pulled both himself and me wholly onto our feet. ‘Of course, today a name like that’s been disinvested of both its significance and power. And it’d seem prosaic of me to pretend like I live out here in the pinewoods – perpetuating an existence of diasporic mimesis – pitching fistfuls of flammable, iridescent dirt into the autumn wind like some hokey alchemist or huckster-shaman.’ The Squamish had yet to release my hand. Still, I felt it’d be somewhat insensitive to divorce him of the chance to deliver his reverie, by alerting him to the fact that my wrist had gone numb. I felt pockets of inspiration rise within me like pearls of helium. ‘But I gotta call you something. You understand: the colonial mission’s taxonomizing instinct: 1066 and All That. If I’m remiss to classify you now that I’m within a bear’s-hug of you, I won’t ever get my name canonized in The Century’s Great Naturalists, along with those other genius-anthropologists John Ford and Al Jolson. This is my potential for being the Great White Hype we’re talking about. You’re not so savage as to refuse me that?’ I waited, indiscreetly searching the Squamish’s wan, cobalt face for an indication that his penchant for swift-footed banter and my self-deprecatory sarcasm had somehow converged to locate a common ground of expression. His face was inviolable, impassive, weathered with its tattoo-like network of skin depressions, heavy lining and scars by either fatigue or seasonal erosion. Observing the peninsulas of flesh rippling across Blue Bluff Crow’s face was akin to contemplating cloud forms: the longer you stared, the more you’d start to see. Islands warped and waned over his countenance, like the sundering of Pangaea. Fissures bisecting Blue Bluff Crow’s cheeks and mouth adopted weird, distorted shapes, not dissimilar to the effect of pareidolia associated with the knots and callouses of redwood trees. I could see ravens flocking east; a spring ascending the face of a mountain; my daddy whittling wooden birds with a pen-knife whilst standing by the sink and whistling; white perennials strewn by my ma’s burial plaque; my first fist-fight at school; the Toulousain broad who’d fucked me for birthday well-wishes before stealing off to leave me a heartless dandy; the interior of my shop devoid of occupancy, wood skeletons engineered into familiar shapes to afford me some semblance of company. 67 The Squamish broke out into riotous peals of laughter. ‘You fucking guy,’ he was repeating, his chest beneath its leather jacket shuddering with a private, pious mirth. ‘“The Great White Hype”. Hoo!’ I was on safe soil: the Squamish harboured a bellicose highwayman’s sense of comedy. ‘You want a name? For you, I’ll be Charlie Chinstrap. A colonized man of gentrified heritage such as yourself should feel right at home in saying that.’ ‘Right on, Charlie,’ I balked, retrieving my palm from his. ‘Like the brother I never had and always wanted.’ He hooted like a nocturnal visitor from out of the woodwork, directly beneath an unadulterated Canadian sky. White Wake took up chorus to Charlie’s chuckles, arching his lupine snout back and lowing with wanderlust at the distant image of Powder Mountain. It damn near sent my hackles astir, but I could still catch wind of my daddy’s voice telling me the best jokes are those that, upon hearing, give you the willies, just that itty bit. *** I’d long since unfastened the ironwork kerosene-lamp from my pack like a limp and lurid thing, and had begun sculpting a tubular parcel of smoke-dried beef with the sickle of my hunting knife, acquiring a satisfaction and feel for the method. I was fixing to tuck in and palm a hemisphere of the preserved brown meat into my gob’s wet yawn, but White Wake wouldn’t suffer nor tolerate any of it. Fucking canine. His jaw and its legend of serrated teeth were mechanisms of unsurpassable architecture. I dispatched the log of charcoal-salted jerky directly into the coyote’s maw. Fucking asinine. ‘I know a good thing too many about coyote.’ I hazarded a philosophical leer. Charlie, for whom I’d hastily developed a perplexing fondness for, was occupied in administering dime store shaving foam in a lather to the crevasses of his cheeks, before sweeping them clean with the whetted filament of a singleedged razor. It reminded me of something; but the shape and veracity of the memory had been eroded and reconfigured by years of forgetting, so I pushed it away, and out it went again, a coracle departing the moor to be reabsorbed by a lingering fog. ‘I’m addressing you, Chuckles.’ ‘And I’m maintaining my damndest to ignore your every squeal for favour.’ He was proud of that one: the vertices of his mouth contorted vaguely, a grey man emerging from a snowstorm of experience; an old man reunited with his dignity, remembering how to dress himself. Such were the gravity and relevance of Charlie’s linguistic victories. ‘Ho, now, Chuckles! Reveal your intention to deploy me one of your half-liners next time.’ I hunkered over my 68 snowshoes, fingers steepled in the frost. I began to fastidiously relace my boots. ‘Otherwise you might blindside me. I’m lucky I’m even breathing after that last palaverlanche.’ ‘Fuck your mother,’ was Charlie’s response, and I had to admit I was stalemated. He encapsulated me, attended to me with those deepest, winter-woozy eyes. Charlie’s eroded, spider-vein face was shorn of its final vestiges of decay, irradiating the new moon’s lackluster reflection. ‘What? No retort?’ He rotated to face me, and I understood, perhaps like I’d never understood before, that sometimes a person knows the exact moment when they’ll meet death, but even an agent of purpose, even a man of elegance and virtue will not betray that same confidence and slink with resignation to their venue of passing. I was staring at a boy, and I was staring at a ghost. Somewhere in the morphology between the two stood before me a regal fucking Charlie Chinstrap, and I held his gaze, because I was going to be privileged with witnessing something I sensed was both glorious and terrifying. I’d never been so scared in my life as in that unnavigable chasm of seconds prior to Charlie speaking his next endorsement. I don’t believe I’ve been ever so scared since. ‘We’re hunting, White Wake and I. If you know something of coyote that might work in my favour to possess, I’d be obliged to you, lumberjack from Whistler.’ ‘I’m firstly compelled to clarify my means of employment,’ I croaked, placing a lit cigarette to the cushion of my lips. The longer and more persuasively I stalled, the more time I’d retain in preventing Charlie from whatever exigency or manufacture of death he was willing to surrender himself to. As I was standing right there, whole hours away from the snarl of mountain country I’d embarked four torrid days prior to embrace, I became sure: I would not allow this sad, time-crippled Indian man the leniency of a triumphant, allegorical death. It ain’t life’s duty – nor its responsibility – to convey the morality found in fiction. An honest man has no entitlement to demand a subtext for his plight, a meaning in the way or wend of a river. Boy: You’d be nought but a marvellous fool to hope for some final meaning, and your mother didn’t birth no fool I ever held. My daddy’s words, my saving grace. ‘I’m a carpenter: not a lumberjack. And, Chuckles, I can tell you this much, without a transitory invading doubt. Whatever the fuck you’re out here beneath the echelons of Powder Mountain to hunt, White Wake won’t be capable of taking down.’ Charlie Chinstrap became Blue Bluff Crow in the dance of heartbeats. There was no mirth here. ‘What is it that you think is out there, Babe Rockerfeller? What is it that you believe a senile old Squamish bastard and his slow-starving lap-mutt is committed to fighting? What are you convinced of ?’ I extinguished the cigarette into the snow, and breathed deep from the constellation of smoke. ‘I’ve got a reasonable idea,’ I exhaled, sheathing my hunting blade to the kiss of its scabbard. If this were any sort of mythopoetic quest narrative, I’d have expected nothing less than the following; but I couldn’t consider myself the idle construct of an author-god’s fable, the benefactor of some perverse, arduous fantasy – I stank of sweat too much, and wheezed too much from the altitude of the ascent to disprove the factual currency of my present situation. That’s why, when 70 both Blue Bluff Crow and I heard the unearthly thunder bellow through the steaming bracken, we blanched perceptibly from the causal theatricality of the sound, and exchanged wary silences with our eyes. The noise repeated, this time accompanied by heartbeat echoes of throaty reverberence, and birds evacuated their canopied roosts, wingspans erupting near, far and away. It was the third call which reified my hunch that the entity making it was not of meteorological or geological persuasion. There was no possibility in hell, no way. An animal was advertising a challenge. It was recruiting for a purpose. ‘It wants us to find it,’ I said, withdrawing daddy’s 77 magnum from the holster on my back, and tightening my fingers around the weapon grip. ‘That’s no cautionary threat. It’s inviting us to go find it.’ I lunged around to confront the Squamish. ‘What the fuck lives out here in these blue mountains?’ ‘Shepherd’s bane,’ Charlie grinned. ‘That song’s the fighting dirge of Powder Mountain’s very own Black Stag. And hoo-boy, White Wake and I’ve been tracking this thing from the mouth of the Squamish River two weeks tramping south of here.’ The Indian gripped me by the elbows, and breathed something rotten, tropical and sickly sweet onto my neck. His eyes were dancing pugnaciously, and I knew then that this was how he’d prepared to do it: Charlie Chinstrap would claim the hide of this illegitimate beast, or be killed beneath its head and hooves. ‘Don’t you see, lumberjack from Whistler? The Black Stag is the devil’s hand, incarnate. It’s a creature so rare and loathsome that any evidence attesting to its existence has warped into rumor, has faded into folktale. But I’ve seen it once before.’ Charlie’s face shone from within, made epiphanic by some secret and furious inspiration. He looked like a lunatic. I pulled away, but he clutched at my wrists, propelling me forward to hold his gaze. ‘It doesn’t take on the form of your private psychical horror – it manifests a new one. Your own father thought that if he could tame it, he might be able to locate solace in the feral eyes of the Black Stag. If you fish in the abyss for revelation, stare into that lonely chasm for some justification to continue living, the abyss fishes in you for every last hidden minnow of regret.’ ‘What are you saying?’ Charlie loosened his vice-like hold. I seized my fists into the folds of his leather jacket, pulling him back, but he was lost to me; he was laughing giddily, giggling even, and I would have slapped him of all daylight with the open splay of my palm, if he didn’t artfully dart through my grasp, and make off in a half-bent run beyond the clearing into the thick of the treeline. ‘How did you know my daddy? What do you know about it?’ I was screaming into vacant space at the centre of a cairn of stone. Screaming with me, the raucous bray of the Black Stag exploded from amongst the conifers. His brazen silver coat flashing past me, White Wake was a fleeting lupine shape whole yards away, already the size of my thumb-nail. 71 *** This whole thing teeters on the cusp of cliché. I was breathing hard, my lungs pumping. Some quiet exultation burned in my chest. I blew oxygen into the night. The branches of trees thrashed against my running legs, leaving scars and gashes like a coastline breeze. I couldn’t see Charlie, or White Wake, but ravens were flying overhead, flitting like kites through the greenery, and I knew daddy was directing my vengeful hand. I had the rifle lashed fast to my sternum, and the snow was as soft and forgiving as heather. A full autumn moon hung billowing above me, luminous and melancholy. It cast shadows onto the surface snow. I could feel my feet quicken, swift as a kill. I began talking then, whispering things to myself which I can neither recall nor decipher. I was vaulting through forest vegetation, my rib cage churning, and the Blag Stag’s thunderous voice remained half a yard in front of me; quarter of a yard. I could do this without Charlie, without his coyote. This belonged to me – this was the destiny I’d authored. The Black Stag’s head was mine for possessing. Racing now, I capered through pine needles and tangles of maple, blood bubbling from bitter cuts to my forehead. I broke into an up-slope culvert of mountain-rock, breath smoking like a blade on a forge. Five metres away from my entrance, the Black Stag was champing the wind with its great fleecy head lowered. An ash-black ewe with the red tufts of a fox’s winter-coat sprouting from its throat, the Black Stag of Powder Mountain snarled, stamping cloven hooves the hue of funeral soil into the plateau. I smiled recklessly, maybe the first time I’d felt closest to daddy since he’d left for that last ore-mine appraisal. I raised the sight of the 77 magnum to my right eye, caught the demon between my crosshairs. Hurriedly, I sought motivation, casting about for a hero’s sentiment. I remembered the words of the Squamish Indian. ‘Fuck your mother,’ I told the Black Stag as it cannonaded into me, squeezing the trigger, razing the mountain with a blast of gunpowder, the recoil and my adversary sending me without purchase wheeling into free air. *** I was lying stunned and inert on my back, my head swimmy in a poetic breed of darkness. My blindness was total. I couldn’t discern the fingers of my hand, even when I pressed my palm to the tip of my nose. I had either lost my sense of sight irrevocably, was dead, was writhing in the abdomen of a leviathan, had departed the plane of mortal territory, or had fallen into a crack of torture’s making. My body ached; I felt afire, and my stomach felt like it had suffered the brunt of a prizefighter’s wrath. I pitched forward, throwing up the alkaline contents of my tiny, torn gut all down my shirtfront. A car had hit me. No, a 72 freight train. A jet fighter, right in the eye of my chest. I vomited again, halfgagging when no new pre-digested remnants followed. Rocks of various shapes and classification rustled beneath my back, stabbing into the fleshy contusions between my shoulder-blades. I rolled, groaning, onto my side. There was a stave of light protruding through the implacable black vicissitude presiding above me on this side of my enclosure, and I could half-make out the ambiguous, geometric shapes of abandoned pick-axes and a coiled tether of horsehair rope. ‘A fucking mine-shaft,’ I growled, coughing a pulpy slurry of blood and phlegm into the charcoal beneath my chin. I hauled myself upright, swearing, onto the balls of my knees, and squinted with bloodshot eyes into the unilluminated confines of this mineshaft beneath the carbuncles of British Columbia. I knew where I was, though I’d never seen it before. It was like recognizing the face of the stranger you instantly wish to wed amidst a thrall of anonymous, comingling people. My deceased daddy’s supply-pack lay crumpled a handspan away from my sluggish grasp. Through the visor of a belligerent headache, I identified it with my eyes without needing to debate the obvious. My hands hunted in it, squeezing the dirt-clothed baggage beneath my nose, wanting to inhale the history of a family legacy now long vanished. I came out with a compass-watch, a cylindrical flask of water, a paperback edition of A Voyage to Pagany, its pages gummed together by dew and fungus. I was breathing so hard. My heart was booming, here, beneath the surface of the snow-dappled universe. I held it. I’d been travelling doggedly, for five days, for five years, for five million tears to feel the shape of this ending, its rectangular form, between the cathedral of my fists. I held it. A reason for my daddy’s desertion. I couldn’t prevent myself from howling. I stared at the object more fragile than an infant love in the clutch of my fingertips. I rotated the letter in my hands, exhaled, and tore open the envelope. A single page withered in my grasp. I made my way towards the light, scaling the rock, pushing against the underside of the mountain with my snowshoes until I could see that new day sky. It’s not a blue. It’s unclouded and azure. I read daddy’s words. *** Look. The thing a person needs to appreciate is that there forever arise trials to untether a strong, generous being, and sometimes there’s no method of evasion which you might hope to call up to benefit you whilst the world shrinks to hug you in a human-chain of calamity and the basest evil. But stories neither demand nor expect a hero of an immaculate cloth. That’s not what’s expected: what makes a man into a beautiful victor, what marks a man as an agent for certain justice all 73 depends upon the pact he’s forged with the very guts which any reputable diviner will confirm contains the most forsaken future hidden to him. You can always tell a good one from the way he holds himself ! Dignity resides not at the surface of tissue, muscle, or even bone. Goodness – that rarest and most cultivated fungus – a true man’s goodness proliferates like a cluster-fuck in the blood, in the marrow, and nowhere else. Like mushrooms chairing a committee in the dark. You can’t cast disputations. You can’t disregard the mane of a champion, no matter how gorgeous or mutt-ugly it veils his hard, blue eyes. You can’t blow smoke-rings around his visage. You can’t hope to thwart him, not by binding yourself to his fucking ankle. You mustn’t obstruct his passage. A hero is a thing of the greatest, divine and most violent of creative acts. It is a thing that casts constellations to the winds. He is a wonder. He is marvellous and ungovernable. Do not reckon with a hero. You will only weep later, when you recall the way in which you retreated to kiss his feet. I cannot stress the importance of this thing I am about to tell you, son: When your mother died, I understood how desolate and tiny a man I was. For the first time, son. It was like squinting through the other end of a telescope to look at myself from a distance of kilometers, and I could only suffer the amazement of how so much love can diminish to something so broken and gambled and unshared. I walked down that hospital corridor. The tears were flooding my face. I fell to my knees. The wardens swarmed upon me, and my fingers hooked into the indistinguishable grooves of white adobe tiles. I probably called out names of people I hadn’t seen in decades. I know I cowered somewhere amongst a collusion of rubber-soled sneakers, spitting when I couldn’t cry and crying when I couldn’t utter the word “No” anymore. Losing your sweetheart is a wicked wound, boy. And fingers whispered over my body, kneading me into boozy reaction, but I can only accurately quantify the ache by establishing the following context: in fifty-eight scrofulous years, I’d never before been exhausted of light leaving me, like that, not ever. They say – those bad, forlorn souls with foul hearts and corrupt hungers – that when you break a man, there’s one moment before his heart cavorts spastically into its awful descent. And it ain’t anything as graceful as a flock of swans bearing the newborn babes of God Himself falling without music or glory into the black watches of some silent wood. It’s the death-blow that misery anticipates. It’s the bullet to an innocent dream formed of color and revelation. I don’t think I ever explained, not to you or your tiny sister, what your mother meant to me. A man is an animal, and he must exist in solitude, and it’s an artefact of his honour to keep that moment which broke him like a whip to himself. What I’m saying is that I ran underground. I’m a coward, boy. I sought escape in my Canadian mine-shafts; some place I could sculpt a foundation and prize jewels from the bedrock of disorder; torchlight so bright I would hope to go blind and forget the joy of your mother’s face. I’m a fool, understand? I might hope to succumb to the 74 bloom of cataracts, but what I was rejecting was the fact that I had a happy ending. It was staring at me. Like two awesome trophies waiting to be remembered with faultless patience. You’re my hero, Babe Rockerfeller. Your sister is my hero. The trick of a hero is to exchange every endless kindness until an old, sad fucking fart fails to discriminate the meaning behind that sacrifice of self. You and your sister shouldn’t have had to suffer the collapse of someone you admired, whilst life had already robbed you of someone you loved. I made a second marriage of my work. And that was wrong. I never told you that. So I’m sorry. The moment I knew the break in my gut wasn’t irreparable wasn’t a momentous realization. Not even an event lambent with fortune, promise or resolution. The hospital orderlies pushed me through the door, and there you and your sister were. Standing there. Your faces were already shining from the tears. But it was your hands, boy. Your hands were there to lift me up, right beneath the arms, and I’ve never known a hero who had such a hidden wealth of fortitude. You’re more than a man, Babe Rockerfeller. You’re a son. And I’m a father who forgot it. Maybe for a minute. Before you buried my face into your shirt. What can I now say? I’m sorry I had to do this. I couldn’t wait any longer. Not for her. I will miss you. But you know that. You were always smarter than your old man. *** When I think back on my time searching desperately for a direction or directive at the foot of Powder Mountain, all those years and seasons ago, the memory that comes most readily to mind is standing over the cascade of Brandywine Falls after the rifle floated away from me, tumbling and pitching with the white-water swell. A rogue elk meandered up to the river on the far bank. Its kingly crown of antlers was host to hundreds of perched and staring ravens. I cocked my head, with measured reverence, to the image of my daddy’s legacy, and turned my back on Powder Mountain, even though its peak vibrated with splendor and sunshine. I shook my daddy’s compass, turned south, and began the short, sublime march. Somewhere not quite near, a coyote lowed at the starless morning sky. I wiped my palms onto the frost, and walked into the winter of Whistler, calling out the names of the trees as I passed. *** 75 irk Marshall is a twenty-six-year-old Brisbane-born, Melbournebased writer. He is the author of Carnivalesque, And: Other Stories (Black Rider Press; 2011) and A Solution to Economic Depression in Little Tokyo, 1953, a 2007 Aurealis Award-nominated full-colour illustrated graphic novelette. Kirk has just completed a standalone novella entitled The Signatory, which constitutes a 45,000-word exploration of Scottish cryptozoology, amongst other concerns of the day. He edits Red Leaves / 紅葉, the first Englishlanguage / Japanese bi-lingual literary journal. His CableTelevision Ray Succre Cord and unferal current state one thing, border of a television made to put shape around a sheet face, even while the signals single through one another, pieced apart, seamed together cosmetically by the cathode, his adult film singed in weather to a static rhyme of pleases-the-mind and shows-a-thing, shorting eyes out, his mother’s shriek from his kidhood, and his auger stare now measured in commercial half-years. These people are dead. They state one thing to a man watching sadness at twenty five, and his glass of nothing special. ay Succre is 34 and currently lives in Coos Bay, Oregon, a small, coastal town where art is sparse and, when it does exist, is of a general relation to driftwood, deer, dying romance, or various maritime subjects. He has tried to leave the town numerous times. He is married, has a four year-old son, and loves the south coast. Ray is a novelist and a writer of poetry, and his work can be found in hundreds of publications in print and online across two dozen countries. His poetical fugue theory has been published in several publications and his early work also appeared in The Book of Hopes and Dreams, a charity anthology edited by Dee Rimbaud, out of Scotland. For images or small talk, indecent propositions, query by email: [email protected]. Also, you can read his online journal for some information about him that is not in the third person at: Ray Succre, Specific, and feel free to peruse his Interviews with the Dead. You can find Ray on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads, all under the simple username raysuccre. Kill Room Debate Walter Foley 1: You’re sitting in a dark room, and in front of you is a lamb and a snake. A voice tells you that one of them must die, and it’s your choice which. 2: The snake. 1: Why? 2: Oh, come on. 1: Because the lamb is cuter? 2: No. Some other reason. 1: Then why? 2: It was just a random choice. I picked at random. 1: OK, sure. Now you’re sitting in a dark room, and in front of you is an adult human and a cow. A voice tells you that one of them must die, and it’s your choice which. 2: The cow. 1: Why? 2: It’s a cow. What do you want me to say? 1: Explain. 2: Well, as far as we know, a human has more potential than a cow at assessing, enjoying, and marveling at reality. It’s self-aware, so you would be robbing it of more. Also, the human is so frail. We’re emotional — Does the voice say how it’s going to be killed? 1: No. 2: That’s the other thing. If there’s a lot of pain involved, I’d much rather it not be a human. When a cow feels pain, it probably just feels pain. When a human feels pain, it asks, “Why is this happening to me?” It’s heartbreaking. 1: Now you’re in a room with an adult human and an alien from some other galaxy. The voice tells you the alien is even more self-aware, and much more emotional and intelligent than the human. Which one dies? 2: … I’m not answering that. 80 1: Answer it. 2: No. It’s stupid. 1: Did I just strike an uncomfortable thought, or a gorgeous one? 2: Shut up! You shut the hell up and get out! I won’t talk to you anymore! 1 was just trying to create a discussion during a lull at breakfast. She used a similar set of questions on all of her friends, trying to spark a debate for the sake of debate, but 2 felt something change inside him seconds before lashing out at his friend. Now he felt a massive weight inside his chest as he sat frozen in his chair, eyeing 1 as she stormed out of the café. He didn’t move for hours, cried a little, couldn’t hear the people bustling around him. Eventually he was home. He definitely walked the 6 miles, but couldn’t remember much about it as he stumbled into the kitchen. Bugs. Bugs everywhere. He grabbed his old magazine, rolled up and crusty with death, riddled with tiny legs and guts. He felt sick and slapped himself across the face. There was stale bunt cake sitting uncovered in the refrigerator. He bit off a small chunk for himself then laid the rest on the floor next to the cabinet and sat cross-legged to watch the bugs feast. He just now noticed his exhaustion and fell forward onto his face, careful to dodge the bugs. He rolled over and stayed there. Sprawled on his back, mouth open. It took almost a week, but he eventually forced himself to slide three feet over and stick his head under the sink to catch an average of 29 drops of water on his tongue per day from the leaking pipe. He never closed the refrigerator door, so the bugs had been feeding and multiplying at an astonishing rate. When they became so numerous that they started traveling in a steady, unbroken flow, their little bodies began to feel more like a massage creeping over his body than the unnerving tickle that at first drove him crazy. Every so often a bug would crawl into his mouth and get sucked down his throat as he slept, keeping him alive and conscious for another day. But as the bugs grew in number, and the stench of the house attracted more and more creatures, 2 found himself with a fuller and fuller belly, week to week. And as the sink pipe corroded, he received better hydration. One day a mouse propped itself onto his nose and upper lip to drink 81 from the pipe. It gnawed at the metal, choked on some rust, and fell dead into 2’s mouth. Sweet protein. Once digested, this would be the last bit of strength he needed to stand up and start his life again. It took him hours to reach the front door, sliding his feet across the floor to clear a path, carefully brushing the bugs out of his clothes and crevices. He was so flabby and weak. Twiggy arms with mushy gut and bosoms. Nearly blind from the sun, he crawled along the pavement with one squinty eye open to avoid squashing something. He reached the door to 1’s apartment and knocked feebly. She screeched when the smell stabbed at her nostrils. 2: Hey. What’s the alien look like? 1: Classic image. Pale glow, anemic body, large black eyes. 2: I’d kill the alien. alter Foley writes a mini-zine of flash fiction and essays, many of which are posted at henrystrashcan.wordpress.com. He lives in Philadelphia where he likes to play drums and do readings whenever possible. You can contact him at [email protected]. Dismantled Bill James Veronica Belen Karina Anayeli Rice Chicken Beef Stew Radish Turnip Carrot Sticks Mormon Chicks Are Hot Sinead O’Connor enlisted to be lead singer of the “Bodies Revealed” touring band. Sinead O’Connor in a Wendy’s commercial. Sinead O’Connor as the subject of the song “Thrash Unreal.” Clipboards Pizza Party Run-through We have a plan! A plan to get rid of David Ivan. Cyrus: Cyrus has only one ear as a result of his youth fencing instructor’s propensity toward prescription drug use. 84 Callie: Callie was raised in a remote area of Vermont to which her parents had defected after Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction threatened Callie’s innocence. Michael said that Lonny was definitely gay. Did you pick up on that? Stephen: Stephen has a violently intense fear of the color blue. He has a 504 plan in place that demands an effort be made to avoid exposing Stephen to the color blue itself as well as any verbal mention of that particular color. This will make Stephen’s participation in the class’s study of Island of the Blue Dolphin particularly difficult. Sarah Palin ate my dog. scaffold forest letter Pearl Hester Prynne noon/midnight The letter Pearl day/night Hester Prynne The forest Arthur Dimmesdale The scaffold Which has greater influence on an individual’s freedom: the individual itself or the individual’s surroundings/environment? Support your answer with specific examples from the text. Does freedom come from within the individual, or is it determined by forces outside of the individual? Support your answer using specific examples from the text. Turtle Probing Assistant Telephone Plays Accordion Terrible Polyphonic Armoire Tiger Pretending Amish The assassination of Michael Gross by the well-mannered love child of Gary Bus 85 ey. Before you got here, Michael told the instructor that his grandparents built the county. He invented Spanish but he forgot it during The Industrial Revolution. They can’t spell but they know Darwin is The Devil. Did he say, “rice”? I also have a student that I suspect has Tourette’s. He keeps telling me to “Fuck off.” There’re also soft tacos. Eragon Stew One of them said, “You match again!” Manifestation Determination Is the crunching really loud? He’s got moxy! I picture them pinching each other in the car all the way back to Calaveras County. 2 ways to fail: -Don’t know shit -Not enough hand-outs It’s becoming increasingly difficult to determine who exactly the greatest human being of all time is. Personal Safety Kit 1. Cookie Dough 86 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. Barbecue Sauce Copy of Terms of Endearment Chinese Handcuffs Kneepads Wooden Nickels Various recipe books “Making of Speed 2: Cruise Control” Collectible Stickers Tang Happy thoughts The Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin Sense of Balance James Spader Fan Club Membership Card Silly String Question: What member of blah, blah, blah had a uniquely distinct signature? Response: John Hancock David Ivan [in incredibly disconcerting Chris Farley voice]: Johnnn Hancock? It’s Herrrbie Hannncock! [laughs heartily as he looks around room at people in room, none of whom are laughing heartily] Resolved: an individual’s freedom is dependant upon forces external to the individual. David Ivan to new girl: So where are you from? So what’s your story? Why are you here? Mumble, mumble, classes and stuff ? So are you going to be with us, or are you taking classes here and there (gyrates hands at “here” and “there”)? We can be a little rowdy but you’ll be alright. A single rosebush, against the wall of the town prison, surrounded by an overgrowth of weeds: this powerful image, brought forth in the opening pages of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, serves to establish the author’s tone and purpose in the story that follows it. The rosebush clearly symbolizes the individual, as the aforementioned image suggests a single object of color and beauty amongst the multitude of colorless and dull weeds. As the novel progresses, we see that the individual in question is 87 Hester Prynne, as Hawthorne clearly describes his protagonist as a single object of dignity and elegance amongst the drab Puritan society in which she is placed. It is through Hawthorne’s diction that his biases for Hester and against Puritan society are made evident. The weeds, which, as mentioned above, symbolize society, are described as “unsightly vegetation.” The rosebush itself, however, is described as having “delicate gems” offering “fragrance and fragile beauty.” It is through these descriptions that Hawthorne establishes the tone of an oppressive society threatening the individual. We have a plan to get rid of David Ivan. David Ivan is a student in our credentialing program, which is like night school for teachers who are not yet real teachers. David Ivan is annoying. He makes jokes that are not funny and then laughs at them. His voice sounds like something is sitting on his head. His nose is weird. It looks like he was making a face and it got stuck, like children’s mothers always say will happen. The plan is foolproof. He will not notice until it is too late. We are going to dismantle him. We will take little pieces of him away, bit by bit, until he is gone. On the first Wednesday of the month, Anne will take away David Ivan’s fingernails. On the second Monday of the month, Tyleen will take his toes. On the second Wednesday of the month, Michael will distract him with a question about NASCAR while Melissa takes off his left arm. By the third Monday of the month, the plan will be going smoothly. David Ivan will be missing his fingernails, all of his toes, and one arm, and will seem to be none the wiser. WHO ARE YOU? Do you belong? What does it mean to belong? How do you know you belong? Jessica? Jenny Silvia bluish gray stucco Titles 88 “Mormon Chicks Are Hot” “Flashfloods of Pain” “The Spirit of Things Never Said” “Where’s My Butter?” “Migrant Ed” “The Assassination of Michael Gross by the Well-Mannered Love Child of Gary Busey” “Adam Hill is a Shape-Shifter” “Sarah Palin Ate My Dog” “Karate Kult” “When Swayze Was Mine” “Sinead O’Connor: Alien Bounty Hunter” “Our Flasher” “Don’t Call Me ‘Mom’” “I Agree With EVERYTHING” “Interception” Have you seen No Country for Old Men? The book? In the book, Lewellen’s wife says, “That’s what she said” as a joke, but they didn’t use it in the movie. In the first scene in their trailer house. 1. Do you like your job? Why or why not? 2. Warm up Rhetorical Question Hypophora Chief Seattle Lean On Me It will start with his fingernails. He won’t miss fingernails. Just one or two at a time. He’s no doubt a busy little fellow, as many of us are. He hasn’t the time to fret over a few missing fingernails. Eventually he may come to accept it, and if so, wonderful, things will be set in motion. A week or so later, when a finger comes up missing, he may think nothing of it. Just one of those things, he may think. Move on. It could be worse. I’m lucky to have fingers in the first place, by God. And once he’s come to these terms, what’s one more finger? And then another? So that’s it. That’s the plan. The plan to get rid of David Ivan. This debate is a war The bank of justice is bankrupt This idea is a cancer on our society He doesn’t loaf around, that’s what. ill James is a recent graduate of the Low Residency MFA program at the University of Nebraska. He has taught High School English for the past five years, before which he worked at Wal-Mart. His work has been published in The Seahorse Rodeo Folk Review, Cause and Effect, Mississippi Crow, Foliate Oak, The Duck and Herring Co. Pocket Field Guide and Leaf Garden. You can find Bill on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/people/BillHoward-James/1622730556. Sonata Miles Klee I. Adagio sostenuto Sam was watching a commercial and the commercial was there with him. The commercial showed a man growing agitated in his attempts at sleep, while beyond him and barely sketched a woman’s silhouette dozed on. Quiltō, said a toasted female voice. “Quiltō,” Sam intoned, sipping his beer. He acted like he was interested in what TV said, just to humor it. Is now Quiltō+. An extended release sleeping aid with two layers. “Layers?” The man had stopped thrashing under his blanket. His eyes were closed and his smile pinned on. The woman—the wife—from over a shoulder observed his contentment, the utter stillness of which had woken her. The pill’s first layer puts you to sleep. The second layer keeps you asleep: No more waking up before you’re ready. What an ominous thing to promise, Sam thought—better steer clear. He looked at his beer and found it to be an empty bottle of Quiltō+. Doesn’t mean I took them all, he reasoned. Or any. It was late; he was ready for the last beer of the twelve-pack he’d bought to help himself pass out. He walked to the fridge and opened it. His reflection did like 92 wise in the full-length mirror on the far side of the living room. Only his reflection was slower, and the fridge light filled its face like the lurid glow of treasure in an old pirate movie. There were two beers in there, double the expected inventory. Sam took the one sitting further back. He returned to the living room, where the bottle opener was. The TV was saying people who take Quiltō+ occasionally experience positive side effects. “Positive?” said Sam, popping the beer. The piano music in the commercial swelled; he plucked the remote from the mess on his coffee table and held down the left half of the VOL -/+ button. Nothing happened. He pressed the left of VOL -/+ more seriously, then whacked the remote and pressed the button with calm firmness. Scoffing for effect, Sam got up to press the TV set’s VOL - button (separately articulated from the VOL +). The music, meanwhile, stayed loud, because it was coming from his stereo. He’d also left the fridge open: disappointing behavior. So a commercial had slipped into his frame, real graceful—no excuse to waste electricity. Approaching the cold fluorescence in the kitchen, a link in his chain of reasoning snapped, and it was remotely deduced that his proximity to the open fridge meant the time had come to open the last beer. At that moment Sam was just two sips into the surprise extra beer now warming on his coffee table, which in being forgotten and not serving its purpose had been erased from a couple layers of exis tence. But the stereo. You could see how the grilles of the speakers blurred as each lucid chord touched down. Sam ran his hand over the vibrations and looked at the beer bottle in his hand. His dad’s brand, dark as dark chocolate, pines and a modest Northeastern peak on the label. Someone’s lazy idea of where beer comes from. Ask your doctor about Quiltō+, said the toasted female voice, and the screen imposed a purple over-starry sky above the dreaming insomniac. In its center hung the benevolent yellow drug like the moon after plastic surgery. “What doctor,” Sam said, on his knees, searching the disaster of the coffee table for his bottle opener and thereby knocking over the opened, half-existing beer he’d forgotten. He sprang forward to save it; everything else on the table slid off in a sheet. A full beer in each hand, he let his face drop carefully onto the cleared surface, a 93 nice enough fact even if the mound of ash and broken ceramic and census forms alongside it was not. This commercial, he sensed, was going on forever, or repeating itself, or almost over. “Don’t wait another minute for a good night’s sleep,” it said. Oh god, Sam thought, face soaking up the table’s cool wood as a wave of stars twinkled to life along his narrow band of vision. Got to remember what I was going to do. What I’m doing. He picked his head up and took a long swallow of the open beer after trying to swig from the closed one. He pulled his legs out of their compressed kneel and stretched them under the coffee table. They touched the mess on the far side. His head lolled back onto the couch, and a loathing crystallized in Sam—because what had he been doing, watching a commercial when he could have fastforwarded. II. Allegretto One balmy Tuesday in the Late Cretaceous, a triceratops awoke with a start, shook off her advanced dreams (triangles, endless triangles) and ambled over to some shrubs for a midnight snack. The search for high-density leaf coverage led her away from the slumbering herd, toward plants on the fringe of the area they’d methodically stripped that day. A groggy hundred yards later, at the edge of a rushing stream, the triceratops found what she was looking for. Four-five good mouthfuls of leaves left on this shrub, she estimated. No feast, but a respectable late-night nibble. She clamped onto the lowest-hanging leaves with her powerful beak and set to chewing. As she savored the waxy treat, her upper horns jostled the skeletal shrub to a gentle rhythm established by the lock-tempo churn of her jaw. Suddenly there was a hot breath on the triceratops, and she looked around in alarm for whatever had breathed on her. She looked in every direction and back at the bush. The heat was still there, on the peak of her back. She waited a beat and did something for the very first time: she looked straight up. Had she tried it any other time, she would have been unimpressed with up, up being the meaningless pattern of inedibility she’d always assumed. But in the center of up’s untouchables was a sun pulsing red and hot. Though it hurt to have her bony frill pressed against her back like that, she kept her sight trained upward. The sun was growing, though it did not light the land, and the hot breath sensation began to feel like a burn. When she could stand it no longer the triceratops galloped into the cooler dark. 94 A sound like hissing geysers built around her. She turned to see a giant egg-shaped stone sitting right where she’d stood a moment ago. She crept back toward it, taking cover behind another barren shrub, vexed at her failure to catch its scent. The stone cracked near its base, and through the crack a straight dark leg extended. For a while nothing more happened; the stone showed no sign of activity, and the triceratops had laid eggs like this, ones that get halfway through hatching and then give up and wait for their mother to help. At last there was a glimmer at the crack. It traveled like an upright beam of water along the extended leg. Another followed. When they reached where the leg met high grass along the stream, the triceratops came to see that these were living beings, silver and shaped like thin saplings. Mesmerized, she drew closer. They were speaking to one another in calls too quiet and muddled to understand. “Why are we meeting him here?” she didn’t hear one of them say. “Don’t ask me his business,” she missed the other replying. “You’ll go far in this organization if you stop asking the incriminating questions.” The first silver sapling, the inquisitive one, scratched the left set of its branches with the right set. It stepped away from the second sapling, toward the stream, and cautiously dipped a lower extremity. The second sapling reached behind the dark leg they’d walked down together and produced a black tube that glowed red-hot at the tip. It aimed this tube at the inquisitive sapling’s crown of branches and approached. “Well this place is a dump,” the inquisitive sapling said. “Say something good,” the sapling with the weapon said. “Last thing that toy under your skin records.” The inquisitive sapling spun to face its killer and froze in thickening red light. Its branches withered and turned to ash that dropped in a hazy cone around its stillupright trunk. The trunk went papery and hollow. The living sapling tossed its weapon aside and kicked the husk of its partner into the stream, where it flaked apart and became yet more shine on the hurried water. The triceratops resisted valiantly, but in the end a full-octave burp escaped her. The lone silver sapling—already halfway up the dark leg to its stone—paused and 95 cocked its branches. It glided back down to the grass, strode over to the shrub the triceratops was hiding behind (as if it knew all along she was spying) and spoke directly through the bramble at her. There was no point in being impolite, so the doe-eyed triceratops came around the shrub to engage the silver sapling, which tracked her movement with an air of infinite patience. Once out in the open, she snorted and stomped a triceratops greeting customary in those parts, but the poor sapling was too dumb to understand. It merely clicked in soft laughter at her display and went up the leg to the crack in its stone, the stone then withdrawing the leg and sealing the crack and twanging up beyond the planet’s hold. III. Presto agitato At dawn they were going to round us up and do the massacre right, so an obvious question loomed: where would we throw our very last party? We were semi-hungover from the previous night’s revelry, and it was late into Saturday’s drizzle when we got around to asking. Even before settling the matter, we gathered our accessories—among them a battery-powered record player, a wooden coffee table with glued-on ashtray, a leather beanbag, a moody Rothko liberated from its frame—and swooped down on the city like drunken angels. For an hour we bullshitted each other about acid jazz in the middle of Riverside Drive, cabs swerving wetly around our humble cluster of furniture and guests. As the rain broke Ryan brightly informed us of a gathering some blocks south, on the Staten Island ferry. Eliza said if we were schlepping all the way down there, we may as well stop by the party on the 1 train and pay our respects, so we trooped into the dank intestinal subway, hopped the Seventh Avenue Local and took turns doing goofy pole dances as we hurtled sideways through space-time, with Logan pompously translating the Morse code of tunnel lights that flickered by. Alas, as with most 1 train parties, it wasn’t long before a crasher arrived and tried to hijack the ambiance with his acoustic guitar. Not wanting to make a big fuss, we bade a French goodbye and hit the ferry affair a tad early. It was just as well, seeing as parties were often catatonic until we came along to resuscitate them, full of solitary people doing solitary things like reading novels or playing handheld videogames or adjusting fat earphones. We took the coffee table and beanbag and a mattress we’d found in the gutter en route and stacked them on an unoccupied bench toward the prow, then played King of the Mountain until Quentin twisted her ankle in a flirtatious war of attrition with Jules. For a dagger of a moment we 96 feared our fun was finished, and Jules went the color of mayonnaise. But Quentin declared that nothing would spoil our evening and asked for some ice, of which we naturally had a bucket, as Gregory took his Chivas on the rocks. It was the relief of our short lives. After a cocktail intermission we found ourselves back on the southern tip of Manhattan: fortuitous, as a Chinatown party was on the point of existence. There was a terrifying round of Manhunt that made use of the cramped and alley-like streets, Chase ATM lobbies serving as jails until Foster escorted a captive Logan to one and found Melissa and Nikolai—warden and ward—lewdly tangled. While they buttoned and smoothed their clothes, others of us congregated on the curb serving as territory line to signal that the game was up; head by head we collected our ranks until only Ryan was missing. Quentin texted him. Gregory said to forget it, that he’d obviously run into some other crew. The faces of these rival playboys and playgirls ricocheting around in our skulls, we walked toward an idea of sunrise and caught the 6 train well after its gala had fizzled, empty save a few evaporating puddles. We disembarked when Eliza reported a whiff of afterparty emanating from the corner of 75th and Madison—a dubious scent, we concurred, given its Upper East Side origins, but no one offered an alternative. Soon enough we encountered the jutting tiers of The Whitney and began to exchange troubled glances. The sky was a pinkish gray. This place was dead. We started slowly, uncertainly north. Then Melissa stopped walking, and we all stopped with her. “I don’t know why I stopped just now,” Melissa said when she saw we were waiting. A police car slid past us and parked at the corner. Two cops got out and walked toward us. The one who’d been driving was sipping from a huge Yankees thermos, and the one who spoke first had a discolored dent in his forehead. “What’d you, forget?” he asked us with his hands on his belt. “Hey,” said the one with the thermos. “They won’t all fit.” “We can fit four,” his partner told him. “All we need. You, you, you. You.” The four of us chosen were handcuffed together in same-sex pairs while the rest watched with historic expressions. 97 “Ladies get dropped first,” the cop with the thermos explained as we crammed into the backseat of the squad car. “They get processed at a separate facility.” Our friends blew meaningful kisses and waved tiredly as we swung east around the corner of 76th street. They’d scatter across the boroughs to doze away their mistakes in private. I hoped there would be no need for the siren; exotic flowers of pain had opened behind my eyes. The cop driving slurped from his thermos while the other slapped his knees. “Had your fun then, did you?” one of them asked. We turned south on Park Avenue and had the next light, and green lights all the way out. iles Klee is 26 and lives in Manhattan. His writing has been published in The Awl, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Contrary Magazine, Storychord and elsewhere. Sensorium 7 Isaac Coleman I am going to read this story one more time. I’ve read this story seven times now without speculating about the characters’ names. It seems like the plot is more important than their names. None of the characters use each other’s names, and two characters are figments of the imagination of the protagonist. I’m still not sure how this works in fiction, but all the same, I’m going to use names even though the author didn’t provide any. Leonard is sitting on the corner of a messy bed painting another version of his vision onto a canvas resting on an easel. The painting in progress looks similar to forty-two other canvases scattered and stacked about. Built-in chestof-drawers line the walls underneath the windows of the second-story bedroom. Leonard is only wearing blue jeans; a few smudges of green paint cover his arms and tone torso. He is meticulously, frantically, applying tiny strokes of gold to the center of the canvas. Natalie slowly opens the door and eases her head into the room filled with paintings and dirty clothes. She knocks and speaks simultaneously, “Ready for lunch?” Her voice is nasally and sugary sweet. The noise causes Leonard’s hand to jolt upward across the canvas. A smear of gold strikes through the blue sky. When I first read this story, there were just generic tags on the dialogue like: says the artist, she says, the administrative assistant says. This time I want to give more depth to the characters which is ironic because if ‘the artist’ knew I was reading his story again, not to mention exposing him to who knows how many more people, he would be upset. So if you’re joining this reading late, you should know that the protagonist is crazy, and there is a trick ending, but it changes with each reading, so I can’t ruin the story beyond telling you that much. And the ending isn’t at the end. I’m calling the artist Leonard, which isn’t too terribly clever in respect to the fact that when I think of a painter, which is the type of artist Leonard is, the 100 painter that comes to mind is Leonardo DaVinci, so I dropped the “o.” Before I read the opening scene, where Leonard is now painting, everyone should know that Leonard is crazy. I told you this, but it is more complex than that. Leonard is crazy but thinks himself to be sane and wants to trick the world into thinking he’s crazy. It’s a catch twenty-two; the crazy can’t know they’re crazy. All that Leonard really wants is to perfect the image he has had in his head since he was a child. The image is a field of rye with a grove of pine trees that taper toward the vanishing point on the horizon in the middle of the canvas; overhead, clouds swirl, and a barbed wire fence acts as an illusory barricade in the foreground. The catalyst that will push Leonard into seeking refuge in a psychiatric ward is his roommate, which is the first problem in this story. Until today, the roommate, who may also be crazy, who was once just ‘she,’ who is now Natalie, used to leave Leonard alone while he painted. I’m still not sure what role, besides being Leonard’s roommate, that she plays in his life. It isn’t very important to the plot, but I’m curious. The author doesn’t say much about her. The way she acts so caring toward Leonard, it’s like she must be dating him, which makes sense, but she hasn’t been dating Leonard very long. In fact, Natalie has only been living with Leonard for about one month. Leonard suspects that Natalie is a homeless drug addict. He picked her up at the bar one night, took her home for a one night stand, and when the next few days passed and she remained, as though not really there at all, Leonard didn’t say anything. They basically started functioning in the same apartment, sometimes going all day without interacting until the evening when they made sweet gymnastic sex. This, Leonard excused himself, was a good enough reason to avoid ever really talking to her. He thought that by not talking to her, and only interacting physically with someone, he could have one perfect, meaningful relationship, even if it was ephemeral. And it is ephemeral. I won’t lie to you. Natalie doesn’t exist. Well, maybe she did the first night Leonard met her, but she left his apartment a long time ago. But the author wants you to believe that she is real. At this point, it really doesn’t matter, other than it makes accounting for the gymnastic sex a little awkward, but it could be explained, but there’s no need going into such perverse things. That story is in a magazine that people read without looking at the words. Or you can use your imagination if you have to. From now on, realize that Natalie is the result of Leonard’s mind and body overworked. Yes, that way. This is a turn off in the fact that this scene is the “and then he woke up” scenario, but I promise you the schematics of this story are structurally sound. It really doesn’t matter if Natalie is real. None of this is of any importance to Leonard’s story. Leonard is a crazy painter, and without an anonymous audience, 101 none of this would matter. Natalie’s biggest problem is that she started talking to Leonard, who is crazier than a crow flying through a glass city at night, but to his credit, he did realize that the silence wouldn’t last forever. Leonard thinks maybe she is a theater major trying out an existential acting exercise on him. Leonard is sitting on the corner of a messy bed painting another version of his vision onto a canvas resting on an easel. The painting in progress looks similar to forty-two other canvases scattered and stacked about. Built in chest-ofdrawers line the walls underneath the wall to wall windows on the two exterior sides of the second story, corner bedroom. Leonard is only wearing blue jeans; a few smudges of green paint cover his arms and tone torso. He is meticulously, frantically, applying tiny strokes of gold to the center of the canvas. Natalie slowly opens the door and eases her head into the room filled with paintings and dirty clothes. She knocks and speaks simultaneously, “Ready for lunch?” Her voice is nasally and sugary sweet. The noise causes Leonard’s hand to jolt upward across the canvas. A smear of gold strikes through the blue sky. “Dangit.” This doesn’t sound harsh enough. “Do I need to hang a sign on that door that says ‘do not knock’ just to remind you every day?” Leonard does have anger problems, but having anger problems myself, I find his response to the situation justified. “No,” Natalie responds, probably with indignation. “I’m not stupid. Do you have to be in a pissy mood with me just for trying to make you lunch?” “No. I don’t want lunch.” Leonard responds calmly, and slowly turns back to his painting. In his mind’s eye, he is already covering the yellow streak with blue, but he is afraid to actually continue. He thinks that this particular painting is closer to matching the very image in his mind than any other version. “I’m really intent on finishing this. I’ll cook for myself when I finish up here. Could you please try and make sure not to disturb me again until I’m done, okay, sweetie?” Leonard speaks without turning around. He thinks this might emphasize how desperately he wants to finish this painting. “Fine. I was just out here cleaning, you know, and got hungry. I miss you. I thought it would be nice if we took lunch together. Why don’t you take a break and come have lunch with me?” Natalie’s dialogue really makes Leonard freak out now. He throws his brush against the white wall. The brush leaves a tiny yellow splatter. I wish he is an abstract painter using a thick brush to spread around a large quantity of red; then when he throws the brush, it would seem to mean more with globs of red splattering everywhere—at least, if not red, a large brush, but I just read this how it is written. Poor Leonard is really just a beautiful, misunderstood, stereotypical, artist type who just happens to be crazy. And he has a problem controlling his temper. 102 “Because I don’t want to. Baloney sandwiches, twenty-five cent potato chips, and Kool-aid don’t really interest me right now. Because this-” Leonard gestures to the canvas with both hands, “this is what is important to me. Finishing this painting that inspiration is striking me with, inspiration that I am losing having to have this conversation with you right now, this, this painting is what is important to me right now. I haven’t felt this good about a painting for three months.” Knowing that one of the characters is a figment of the imagination of the protagonist undermines the power of this scene, but now it won’t feel like a rip-off when the author tells you that Leonard has been hallucinating. The painting that he has been working on looks nothing like what he thinks he sees—the colors are muddled. Leonard walks over the dirty clothes lying on the hardwood floor to pick up his brush. Leonard really is a good guy. He says, “I’ll by you oysters and a steak dinner with the most expensive bottle of wine I can find when I’m done. Just don’t distract me again until I come out of this room.” “It’s always about you isn’t it? You have no feelings for me. You think your work is so important, well, I’m important too, damnit. I’m just going to completely quit worrying about you.” This is what Natalie says before she slams the door. Leonard sits back on the bed corner and runs his thumb nail through the bristles of the brush and has an epiphany. He wonders if Natalie could be a figment of his imagination. It creates a binary between the different consciousnesses of his mind. One side is telling him to come out and live and take a break before he truly snaps, while the artistic side is consuming him. Then when these two forces meet, he shouts about oysters and steak. Remember: The last thing Natalie said was “I’m going to completely quit worrying about you.” Leonard runs his thumb nail through the sparse hairs of the paint brush that are clogged with thick yellow paint. Not thick bristles with red paint. “If only you would. If only you would.” To digress again, I must say, I hate it when characters say the same thing twice. Leonard’s hallucination that is Natalie re-enters the room. “Are you sure I can’t fix something and bring it in here for you to snack on?” “Yes. Get out of here.” Leonard rinses his brush in the jar of yellowish water. The yellowish jar is one of an assortment of jars of many colors that rests on a cardboard box next to his easel. Various sized brush handles stick out the tops of all the jars. Leonard picks a fat brush from the blue colored jar. With his thumb and forefinger, he squeezes down on the hairs to remove the water. He is looking down around his feet for his pallet when he hears a vacuum roaring upand-down the hall. Of course, there is no vacuum whirring; this is part of Leonard’s hal 103 lucinating mind, but right now he is envisioning Natalie pushing the vacuum up-and-down the long narrow Persian rug in the hallway. Leonard is incensed that Natalie is not only vacuuming a rug outside the door, a rug that doesn’t need vacuumed, but that Natalie is so scatterbrained that she isn’t fixing herself lunch and has now chosen to vacuum with a vacuum that Leonard doesn’t even own. The fact that she is somehow cleaning his house with a vacuum that he doesn’t own infuriates him further. As the vacuum that only exists in Leonard’s mind subsides, the noises from outside grow louder. These noises do exist. The sounds existed throughout the day; Leonard just found a way to block them out until now. The noises consist of car engines, brakes squealing, children shouting, a couple arguing, and then finally a car alarm is set off. The car alarm is actually set off by the author of this story when he visits Santa Barbara. He walks past a purple Dodge Viper that tells him to “step back.” Being commanded to do anything by a car pisses him off, so he kicks it. This simultaneously happens every time I read this story. Leonard stares so intently at his work that he becomes lost in it. He hypnotizes himself. In Leonard’s imagination, he gets up and closes the window. The window actually remains open, but Leonard truly believes he got up and closed it. Outside, it is now ninety degrees and rising, but the air conditioner was left running all night, making for a chilly morning; however, now that Leonard thinks he has closed the window, he believes it is getting cooler. To refresh himself, he moves the brushes in the green jar to the side and drinks the water. Leonard loads a fat brush up with blue and white and begins covering the long yellow smear. In Leonard’s mind, he hears what he believes to be the sound of his door opening. He turns to watch Natalie enter, carrying a plate in one hand with a glass of red liquid in the other. “I went ahead and put mustard on your sandwich. I didn’t think you would mind. I figured everyone likes mustard. What’s a sandwich without mustard? Whew it’s hot in here.” Natalie sets the plate and glass on the card board box and walks toward the window. Leonard watches as his hallucination opens the window that was never closed. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember that well. I think my memory must be slipping. Didn’t I tell you not to disturb me again?” “Well, I just thought-” Natalie tries responding before Leonard cuts her off. “I thought that I said that I wasn’t hungry yet, that I wanted to be left alone. Do you recall me saying that? I forget.” “Don’t get upset. I thought a little food would help fuel all that creativity my baby has.” “I know you’re trying to help. I thank you, but it would be of more help 104 if you stayed out of here until I’m done. Every time you distract me, and just having someone else around is distracting, it takes twice that long to get back in my zone. So if you would, please stop coming in here until I’m done.” “Alright, honey.” Technically, ‘alright’ should be two words, but it seems appropriate in dialogue as a kind of exclamation. All right? Alright! All right. The voice of Natalie in Leonard’s head tries soothing his anger. “I didn’t know it was that big of a deal. I just thought it would be better if I brought you lunch, then you wouldn’t have to worry about getting up and fixing something if you got hungry.” “Thanks.” Leonard thinks he sounds real sarcastic as he says this. “I appreciate it. I’m going to finish painting now. I’m almost done, okay?” “Okay. I’m going to do some laundry.” Natalie walks around the room in a flamboyant manner, bobbing up and down picking up an array of t-shirts and blue jeans. Her blonde hair falls around her face each time as she bends over. “No, you see, you need to get out of here completely, right now.” Leonard doesn’t like to use obscenities. He believes it makes a person sound despicable. I like characters to cuss even though I don’t. “There’s two weeks of laundry in the downstairs bathroom; there’s no need for you to be in here. And even if you can actually get the six tons of laundry done that is downstairs before I’m finished, which you won’t, there’s still no need for you to come back in here. Do you understand?” “Yes, fine, if you want to be in this pigsty, that’s fine with me. Go on ahead. I don’t see how anyone could focus on anything else except this mess. We should-” “Go!” Leonard’s exclamation should stand alone with just a period behind it. But he really shouts “Go.” “Fine.” Natalie shouts back. Leonard hears her slam the door. The sound, that was never made, makes him jump. Leonard doesn’t usually whistle, but he begins whistling as he returns to painting. I wonder if it would mean more if I told you that he just whistled his own melody or if something would be lost if I don’t say he whistled some famous symphony that makes you draw an allusion to Beethoven’s deafness, or Mozart’s brilliant eccentricities. I wish he was whistling something clever right now, but he’s not. It’s just mediocre whistling. Almost random really. Just as the tip of his blue brush is about to be pressed against the canvas, there is a knock on the door. “Oops, I’m sorry; I forgot not to knock. This will be just a second.” Leonard doesn’t turn from the painting. He continues staring into the vanishing point. Since Natalie is in his mind, if he realizes this, he could visualize her wherever he wants. But he doesn’t turn around and Natalie doesn’t enter into his sight. He only hallucinates hearing her. “I was just wondering if you paid the phone bill last month.” 105 “Yes.” Leonard replies and wishes he could dissolve into the horizon of his painting, but the barbed-wire fence is there to keep him out. “It’s paid.” “That’s good. I have just been using the phone a lot lately and I haven’t seen a bill show up. I thought that I would help pay the next one. The next bill should be here in a couple days, won’t it?” “Probably, go look at the calendar. I really need to finish this, okay?” Leonard’s calendar is full of receipts paper-clipped to the pages. He always marks the day he sends off his bills, who to and how much. He is diligent in such endeavors. He keeps each calendar for three years before throwing them away. “Okay.” Natalie responds. See I could have just said “she responds,” but now it is more personal, but a name doesn’t make her any more real. “No more distractions, okay?” “Okay.” Natalie responds. She exits the room then immediately returns. “Whaaaaaaat?” Leonard asks. He is on the verge of crying. “Are you okay?” “Yes. Yes. Yes. I’m just great. Now leave and don’t bother me again, and I’ll be better. I’m about to freak out. I’m not making any outrageous requests, am I?” “No, I just needed to ask you one more thing. It’s really important.” At this remark, Leonard turns toward Natalie. He is wearing one of those go-aheadand-wow-me looks. An-entire-novel-could-be-reduced-to-single-stagnant-moment-with-hyphens, but this, unlike Natalie, is moving toward an objective, the not-at-the-end-of-the-words-but-the-end-of-this-story objective. She did not continue speaking. “What?” Leonard snaps. “What? What is it? Huh? What’s so important?” “Do you-I was-uh. I was wondering. What was it? How, what do you call it? I suddenly can’t think. You know that. Did you uh-” Natalie begins laughing, “I forgot what I was going to ask you.” “Yes, I’m sure it’s hysterical, now get out of her before I stitch your mouth shut, okay?” See how much less disrespectful Leonard sounds when he doesn’t add curse words to that sentence? It would have sounded a thousand times worse if he used any vulgarity, which I wish he would have, but if he used the obscenities, Leonard would be getting beaten down by his own hallucination, which would be hysterically contrived. “You prick,” she scowls. She sounds more upset than angry. As she turns to walk out the door, Leonard lets out a long breath through his nose. Natalie turns back around, “Oh, I remember now; do you have-” “No you don’t. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don’t even talk to me. Go. Get out of here. Turn around and leave this damn room.” Is damn a curse? If it is, it is a minor one. Leonard is at his limit. 106 Once upon a time in a workshop, the author of this story was told that, at this point, he needed to have Leonard, who then was simply called ‘the artist,’ get up and lock the door. “The problem is, I don’t imagine the bedroom door having a lock,” the author, who shall remain anonymous, responded. Then the person critique-slash-criticizing the author’s plot said that ‘the artist’ should at least get up and move the free standing chest of drawers in front of the door. To which the author simply replied, “’the artist’ didn’t think of it, he’s crazy.” I think that this is a valid answer, but it is too simple. In truth, the problem with the suggestion of moving the chest of drawers in front the door wouldn’t do any good. One, because Natalie doesn’t exist, accept for in Leonard’s mind. If she appeared in the room without moving the chest of drawers, Leonard would have a meltdown discovering that he is actually crazy—possibly sending him out the window which would deter this story from getting to the climax. Also, if Natalie was a real person, and as crazy as she appears to be, she would just push hard enough to eek the door open enough to speak into the room, all of which would be distracting in itself. It is fairly easy to push objects on smooth hardwood. And, if Leonard moved the bed in front of the door, which is the only thing that might keep it from opening, he would be spending his time moving furniture rather than painting, and at this moment in the story, he just wants to return to his painting. All of this is in vain anyway because Natalie isn’t going to come back to the room. Hopefully that’s a sigh of relief for you. The way she keeps returning in the beginning of this story never ceases to annoy me. Back to the story at hand. To which Natalie responds, “Asshole,” and leaves the room. Leonard gets up from the corner of the bed and walks over to the window. A group of children playing street football are yelling and laughing louder than before. The sounds of kids playing normally wouldn’t set Leonard off, but today he is particularly disturbed. He yells out the window, “Find somewhere else to play. I’m working up here.” This time Leonard actually closes the window. He slams it. “There. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe, just maybe.” Leonard talks to himself, which is funny to say since Leonard has been talking to himself this whole time, but this time he is full-throttle-consciously talking to himself. Sweat begins building up on his face again. He looks down at a pair of dirty underwear. He wipes his brow with the back of his forearm and begins applying a massive quantity of blue over the yellow streak. Leonard wants to be a nice guy. That’s why I like him. That and his artistic ambitions. I like people with a purpose. It really upsets me to have to know that a nine year old boy named Bobby is about to punt his football through the window Leonard just actually closed. Bobby should have known better than to punt the ball in such a boxed in neighborhood. His kicks always pull hard to 107 the left, but that’s just because he is wearing his red Chuck Taylor’s. One day he will start taking his shoe off to kick and will become a brilliant kicker, but today he is wearing his shoes, and he kicks the ball through Leonard’s window. This is the story I want to read next, but I shouldn’t say so much about a minor character, but if I read this story again, I would want to remember to pursue Bobby’s story from here next time too. Today, however, this still seems too non-sequitur. After the football flies through the window, it knocks over Leonard’s easel, causing his brush to smear blue over the green pine trees. When the easel falls over, it knocks his cardboard box over. Multi colored jars of water, a glass of Kool-aid, and a stale sandwich on a plate that Leonard brought himself a week ago and forgot to eat splatters all over the floor. He picks up the football and pats it in his hand in traditional quarterback style. “I told you to play somewhere else.” Leonard throws the ball, but his spiral is slightly off, and the ball breaks out another window. Leonard shakes his head ‘whatever.’ The only child left in the vicinity is Bobby. He is hiding behind a car, and the only reason he remains is because it is his football. When the ball breaks out another window from the inside, a huge, gap-toothed smile spreads across Bobby’s face as he laughs. Leonard reconstructs his easel and sets the painting back up; he turns his head to the ceiling and raises his arms. It’s funny. He’s agnostic, but he still blames a higher power for all his problems. I want to tell him that it could have been anyone, but it had to be someone. The minute the author conceived the idea for the plot the characters came with it, and thus, Leonard was born to be Leonard, unless his name gets changed in a later reading. But no matter his name, he is still ‘the artist,’ and each time he will raise his hands to the sky and question. A simple sensorium test might deduce that he is bonkers, but it couldn’t measure how bonkers. However crazy crazy can get isn’t important. It’s just important to the story that Leonard really loses his wits. This is good because he is starting to realize his real purpose in this story. The sooner he completes the plot arc, the sooner I can read something else. Enough, it’s time to move forward. The important thing now is: The screen behind Leonard’s mind is beginning to flicker between the present skewed-painting, to that of a man sitting in a dark room painting. The image is blurry in his mind, but it will become clearer. Just as the large tip of the blue brush is about to touch the canvas, the phone rings. He sits there for a moment waiting for Natalie to answer the phone, but the phone continues ringing. His thoughts flicker to the dark image of the man, alone in a barren room, painting. As the phone continues ringing, Leonard walks around the room gathering up his art supplies. He places the supplies in a green canvas bag, and places two blank canvases into a large, brown, portfoliotype bag. He pauses, and puts his hand to his ear. The phone rings again. He 108 picks up a once-white-now-paint-splattered shirt, and pulls it over his green smudged torso. Ever so calmly, Leonard places the two bags just outside the bedroom door. He slowly walks back in, and begins smashing his paintings into the walls. As he finishes splintering the wood frames against the white walls, he picks up the mutilated painting he spent the entire day working on and throws it out the shattered window. The jumbled mess of canvas and wood hit a jagged piece of glass and knocks it out on its way down. Leonard places the straps of both bags over his shoulders and proceeds down the stairs—careful to only step down in synchronization with each ring. The slow, falling, steps jar each leg to the hip. His sight flickers from the staircase to that of the man in the dismal room. Leonard is realizing his next biggest purpose. He sees that the man in the dismal room has a small barred off window that overlooks a field of rye with a barbed wire fence and some pine trees. If I took you to this window and let you look in from the outside, you would see that it is Leonard who is the man painting. I don’t need to do this because I’m sure you already assumed that it is Leonard in this dark room. When Leonard reaches the landing, he turns and stares at Natalie. She is sitting on the couch next to the phone. It is a red phone with push buttons and a tightly wound curly cord attached from the receiver to the base. The phone is still ringing. Natalie turns her head from the television, and looks at Leonard. “What?” she asks. The phone cuts off mid ring. When another ring doesn’t come, it seems eerie. Never before has a phone ringed so many times in a row. Somehow the phone company didn’t intercept the ongoing call to inform the imbecile, who happens to be a collection agent, that no one was going to answer. (This is known because the phone was answered in version four). Without saying a word, Leonard opens the door, and turns to exit. “Where are you going?” Natalie asks. “Away.” This is when the screen would stay focused on the open door then fade to black if this was a movie. When I originally received this story, it looked like an engineer’s diagram for a computer chip. That really made my job easier. The author told me he wanted to see this as a movie someday. He said he was also searching for a screenwriter to adapt it—if I don’t do a good job reading this. Next, when the scene fades in, the author wants to make sure his director places a camera in a flower bed. The effect would be a time lapse sequence where the front of the screen is focused on a flower closing for the evening while people and cars zoom around in the background. Leonard would approach slowly. Instead, I will have to use the mind’s eye as a lens through which to view this effect. Somehow this is symbolic to the story. After Leonard leaves his apartment, he wanders aimlessly through the lush city of Santa Barbra, California. At dusk he sits on the outside wall of a 109 brick flowerbed. The wall runs along a sidewalk in front of a mortgage company. The sun drops. The city takes on that blue lull. The cockroaches begin scurrying in zigzagged paths from the lawns, over the sidewalks, and back into the grass. Crickets chirp. The air is still warm from the concrete and ocean, but the cool, sunless atmosphere permeates the current temperature. The best description for how the air feels is in the summer when you bring in your jug of fresh sun tea and the liquid is still warm and you pour yourself a glass and add ice cubes and after you let the glass sit for a moment and then take a drink and you can feel the warm and cold strands of liquid run over your tongue. This is how the atmosphere feels on Leonard’s body. Leonard turns and notices one of several pink flowers on the bush in the planter. The flower has five petals, and on each petal, two maroon stripes run from the inside to the tip. Leonard stares at the flower so closely that the yellow stamen touches his nose. It’s a large flower. He watches the flower go through the delicate process of closing itself up for the night. To exercise artistic freewill, the author makes the flower open itself up again before his eyes then close again. I thought this might mess with Leonard, but he’s so crazy and into beauty that he just watches, completely mesmerized. Since he doesn’t have anything to do until morning, he watches the flower open and close until the sun comes up. Now the sun is up. It would be for the best if Leonard went to get some breakfast, at least a cup of coffee, but he doesn’t. His life has already been lived. If I would have known that it would take so long to depict a classical plot arc for a novella, and so many attempts, I would have charged more to read this. But from here it’s about to get easier for me. Coming up shortly, Leonard is going to be narrating his own story to himself, which gets hectic, and I won’t be the force in the story that I have been. Don’t be upset for me though. I’ll still be with you. It really isn’t narrating; it’s mostly just a mess of internal and external dialogue getting confused. This is another element that makes the plot. He doesn’t believe anyone is listening to his thoughts, but he’s narrating his thoughts as though someone is listening. Fortunately for him, his poetic thoughts are recorded here in a moment. I just thought I would let you know this before Leonard forgets his art supplies on the sidewalk and begins walking. He wants to find a mental institution to commit him. As he begins walking toward the outskirts of town, there is a heavy flow of people walking in the opposite direction. Not one person walks in the same direction. Leonard is still wearing his white, paint splattered shirt. The other people are mostly business people wearing dark suits. This may seem like a coincidence, but it cannot be. This happens in every reading. It must be a difficult thing being a character in a text, particularly a crazy character. They have nothing to attach themselves to. 110 I have been up front with you since the beginning, so I will continue to do so. While Leonard is busy believing that he is having a conversation with the gate attendant for a mental hospital, which is actually just a phone booth, I must let you know that the author wanted me to trick you. I was half inclined to go along with this, but I don’t want to have to sucker punch you. At the same time, if I don’t sucker punch you, then you will know that this story is a fraud and quit reading. But if I don’t sucker punch you, then I will still have to sucker punch you in some other way—which will probably be cheaper and shoddier. This is all terribly confusing for me. I mean, I have to understand all this; you don’t. Hopefully you won’t realize you’ve been sucker punched. I’ll let you decide. Here it is: the author wants me to show Leonard walking across some sort of grassy knoll toward a brick building with a white portico. During this scene, Leonard begins an eloquent little speech to no one, internally. Committed. That was the idea. Not your normal goal at twenty-one, but no one wants to be average. I prefer to think of myself as an all too true, altruistic, articulate artist eccentrically adding to that which has been left unfulfilled, lacking and then leaking the essence of men too preoccupied to be fully consumed, too engrossed with life’s little vices and man’s splendors to ever really find their consummation. This is just my annotation of course. What do I know? I’m just another artist. I made up my mind that I would take a shortcut past the long meandering curve winding around all the prodigality my path was spiraling down and jump right into my future fate. Becoming voluntarily institutionalized isn’t as easy as one thinks; especially if you are trying to go about it without having to flip the bill. Trying to convince a person that you are crazy enough to need locking up is a tough angle to work when you are coherently standing in front of them, arguing that you need mental help, and lots of it. When Leonard enters the front door of this building, the author wants me to read a sign above the door with the name of some purified water distributing company—a name like Water Drop Off or something more obvious. The author wants me to trick you into believing that Leonard actually walks into a water distributing company that fills those huge jugs of water that are in office buildings all over the world, 32% of which just released a loud bubble, but only 3% of that 32% of water jugs all over the world did the loud bubble actually startle anyone. The majority of that 3% are paralegals in New York City, where it is now 8:54 p.m. and dark. Here’s the thing: In Leonard’s mind, he believes he is entering a mental hospital, the author wants you to believe it is a purified water distributor’s office, but it is neither of these things, which I am sure you already guessed. Leonard actually wanders through a vacant lot and into a warehouse that caught fire last week. The warehouse used to store thousands of novellas that no one would read because of weird plot designs that readers now find blasé. The fire was started by one of the workers who saw that a large shipment of her novella was going to be stored in this funeral home for stories. 111 Unable to sell a new story, she had been working in the warehouse for over five years trying to block out the bizarre ideas in her head and write something insipid like working in a warehouse. She was justly upset before, but finding a bundle of her unread stories stacked sixty feet into the air made her madder than Duchamp in a pissing contest with gravity, so she touched a match to the pyre of her dreams. Dread the day there is a short story funeral home. So I especially thank you for allowing me to read this story to you. Now that you know the “conflict” of the story, which is a total fraud, I will continue on with this proto-metafictional story. Now you know the truth. This is like knowing how the magician pulls the rabbit out of the hat and still wanting to act surprised. I hope that you feel like you have enough invested in this story to want to know how it ends, which you knew to be a trick ending because I told you from the beginning, but I don’t know how I can trick you into being tricked since I already told you, that I wouldn’t, unless something here genuinely is tricky? To keep going: Leonard, the poor guy who just one draft ago didn’t even have a name, walks into the brick building with a white portico, the building he believes is a psychiatric ward, the building that the author wants me to convince you is actually a water distributing company, which is really a burned down warehouse. I already feel like I should have just lied to you. You are supposed to believe that Leonard is hallucinating but he realizes on some level that he is hallucinating within a hallucination. So, independent of the truth, the tension of the story is this: Leonard wants to be locked up so he can spend his days painting, which he wouldn’t be able to do anyway because the staff wouldn’t feel safe allowing him to have a paint brush that is capable of poking out an eye, if the staff rationally existed, but the only thing standing in his way is the administrative assistant, who he fears is trying to test him to see if he is crazy in order to justify seeing the doctor. Now it is really comical that the author wants you to believe the administrative assistant actually works for a water distributing company while she doesn’t exist at all; which, in a moment, you will see that from the dialogue the author provides, I wouldn’t have been able to convince you into thinking that she is real anyway, particularly not after Natalie. Now that I have popped this over-inflated, un-necessary plot device, I will let the story go: Leonard walks through the open lobby, an open room with a dome ceiling, marble floors, and two staircases crawling up the wall on each side. A hallway is seen immediately upon opening the door. He walks down the long corridor, and enters into a small room. This small room is more like a waiting room situated in front of a bigger room filled with filing cabinets and a purified water dispensing machine. The only thing really separating these two rooms is the secretary’s desk and part of a 113 wall that juts out from the hallway. This hallway can be seen from the waiting room. Down the hall, Leonard can see the trim for several doors. At the end, a frosted glass window is glowing with sun light. The administrative assistant is a middle age woman who is more than a little overweight with shoulder length, brown, wavy hair. Her face is puffy and round; she has gleaming blue eyes. She actually reminds me of the phlebotomist that injected the author with morphine when he broke his foot. He was carrying his typewriter to the trash because he had just purchased a laptop computer and a printer after dropping out of technical school. It typed up a sheet that said it regretted that he didn’t walk on his hands. Leonard doesn’t have the knack for tact so he simply jumps on top of the secretary’s desk, which knocks over her hand crafted pen holder. The pen holder is made out of a small, ceramic pot filled with beans designed to hold decorative pens wrapped in twisty-tie material with fake flower heads on top. Leonard shouts, “I’ll freak out right now. Is that what you are trying to do? Drive me to violence? I can get violent if you want me to.” “Sir. Sir. Calm down.” Her voice is soothing. It’s a good voice for a person to have who must deal with angry, crazy people, Leonard, who thought he was in a mental hospital, thought. “Don’t lie to me,” he responds out loud, “I hate malevolence. Just tell me where the doctor is.” These aren’t the words I would have chosen for him to use, but Leonard has quite the vernacular. And I think his dialogue sounds forced. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice is shaky; I know she is honest about being honest. Leonard hopped backward off the desk and jambs his hands in his jeans’ pockets. “As long as you’re being honest.” It really isn’t difficult to act crazy, heck, it’s the act of willingly admitting you’re crazy and having someone believe it that is the hard part. Any idiot can answer the doctors’ questions to make themselves sound sane or not. I’m not crazy; I just need to be able to constantly create without worldly distractions. Maybe that does make me psycho, I don’t know, but I can’t think about that now; I need to keep a good head on my shoulder;, now’s not the time to start second guessing myself. Thoroughly satisfied that he just proved to the secretary that he is in need of a doctor, Leonard walks over to one of the hard, black, plastic chairs that are shaped in a round curve to fit an over-average sized person’s rump. Here again I wonder if I should name the administrative assistant. I really don’t want to name her, but perhaps it would be easier to say “Linda” rather than “the administrative assistant.” Maybe I’ll use “Linda,” but as you partake in this story, pretend it just says, “the administrative assistant,” rather than “Linda,” then you will understand why I don’t think I should even bother. Perhaps I 114 should just be thankful that the author is giving me such liberty over his story. I am probably making this story of even less consequence by saying so much, but this is better than a person with voices in his/her head using a computer to write her/his memoirs while lying to the reader to make the story more complicated than it needs to be and then hiring someone to read it who ruins the whole story in the opening paragraph by imposing too much upon the text. I figure the extreme change in character would help convince her to convince the doctor to come see me with urgency; that I really am a person in need of a special room where I can be safe from other people and other people can be safe from me. A place where I can focus on one thing and one thing only, all the while inadvertently saving the world. They’ll encourage me to paint to help keep me from freaking out. Not only is Leonard really starting to lose it at this point, but he is also narcissistic. Leonard has a unique brain disease. Each side of his brain is genius independent of the other side. The problem is that both sides are forced into the same skull, and there isn’t room enough for both halves. Imagine the most brilliant creative half a mind and the most brilliant analytical half a mind in the world coming together to argue. This is what Leonard suffers from, and not even the most genius psychologist in the world can help him. I asked the author what he thought happens to Leonard, who was then just ‘the artist.’ He said he didn’t care. His response makes me feel horrible. It’s not like an abandoned character can just extend the text on its own. Even if you aren’t a static character, your life suddenly becomes extremely stagnant. The best thing you can wish for is death. So the next time a character that you like dies, don’t feel sad for him/her/it. Death is the best place for any character, and for the love of bullion cubes don’t let them get dehydrated into a Hollywood actor. But while Leonard is narcissistic, when he is done with this story, someone is going to find him a new world where he sells all of his imperfect paintings for so much money that he purchases the world. But that’s going to be another problem for after this story is read. Leonard picks up a magazine from the stand next to his chair. He stares at the clock on the wall while holding the prominent science magazine. Every ten seconds he turns the page. He is exaggerating looking at the clock and not at the magazine as he flips the pages to emphasize to the administrative assistant, Linda, that he needs mental help. Linda is still staring at Leonard. She looks to Leonard as though she has never seen a crazy person, which should be true since the author wants me to trick you into believing that Linda, who doesn’t exist to begin with, is actually a secretary for the purified water distribution company called Water Drop Off. Now here’s something I can work with. Leonard stares at a picture of a human embryo. “You believe in cloning, don’t you?” Leonard turns the magazine cover, which is actually the remnants of a charred noveu novel, toward Linda. “I suppose they can do anything these days.” 115 “Oh, not just these days, they’ve been doing it for a while, thanks to our friends. They’re just now starting to let us know about it. Actually, we’re all clones from a superior race.” “Really?” Linda began picking up the beans one at a time and placing them in the pot. I imagine that the reason why the author doesn’t have her do anything at this point is because she is terrified. And she isn’t real. She speaks to humor me, I like that. She’s good at dealing with what she has to deal with. “That’s interesting.” Linda continues. “Yes, the only reason I know so much is because I’m a hybrid. I was carefully selected to be a master painter and a genius of cosmic energies. Would you like to see some of my paintings?” Where is it? Where did I put it? The one I had painted to mock the existence of the human race. (A painting Leonard never painted). One I had painted intentionally poorly to test them, to see if they could grasp what I really wanted to show them, see if they could handle true beauty. Here it is. The one done with all that overwhelming, un-necessary green. Let’s see what she thinks about this abstract garbage. In Leonard’s mind, he thumbs through his canvas bag; the bag that he left sitting on the sidewalk next to the wall where he watched the flower opening and closing all night. He held up his hands to show the secretary a painting that wasn’t there. “Oh, that’s interesting.” Linda looks like she is filled with disbelief. Yes, let her be filled with disbelief. It doesn’t matter. What is interesting about it? It was recklessly made to show you and the rest of your naïve kind that you have no taste. You honestly think I would let you see the good stuff ? Not after that remark. Interesting? Hah. “Yes, what really makes this piece interesting is that I used various carcasses I found on the highway for paintbrushes. See, this swirl around the edge here was done using the tail from an all black cat. Not too unlucky, huh? Most the rest of it was done using various bird bodies; they just get so flat after a while. The tedious aspects were performed using catalpa beans believe it or not. I guess I should name this piece Recycled Road Kill. I’m sure you know what it’s like being a poor arteeest, huh?” I’m sure she appreciates the way I said ‘artist.’ “Well, I know what it’s like to be poor. What is ‘not too unlucky,’ though? The cat or the painting? I don’t understand what you mean.” What is ironic is that Linda believes Leonard to be some theater major performing some existential exercise to fulfill a class requirement. And she is waiting for one of the drivers to come into the office and kick the kid out. That guy would either be named Dan or Larry, but that guy doesn’t show up. “Interesting. Interesting. Interesting questions you ask. They really are interesting.” Hopefully after using the word ‘interesting’ redundantly she’ll get a feeling for how stupid she is. “Do we ever sense sorrow, or just fall flat, flattered, 116 dashed with green, screened, sent screaming chasing our tails, that that cat should be used past its own queer, primitive emotions? Fluttering down to the symbolism of cynicism I throw mockingly in the arrogant direction taste dictates. Unable to even falter past perversities contained, canned and contaminated thirteen shades of growing grass falling on lawns as if it were melting?” Now would be a good time to start slapping myself frantically with the magazine. The poor secretary looks mystified. Maybe if I flail about slapping myself that will help to snap her out of it. That look on her face is driving me crazy. If you could see Leonard slapping himself in the face the way I do, you would laugh so hard. No matter what, you can’t fake slapping yourself repeatedly in the face with a book. Leonard gets so carried away with his own masochism that he falls to the floor and continues slapping himself all over his body with what he believes is a magazine. Incidentally, this instigates a response from Linda, “Sir. Sir. Sir.” Linda rises from her chair. “Yes?” Leonard stops as abruptly as he began. This is where Linda tries gaining credibility as a character. “I’ve humored you as long as I can. You’re going to have to go.” “But, but, but…” But is the most exquisite word to use in order to buy time to think of something more clever to say all the while sounding like you know what you are about to say. I’ll walk around the room touching things. Yes, that’s what I’ll do. The paintings. The paintings, this I can see. Which doesn’t exist, but Leonard runs his fingers over the smooth wooden frames regardless of its existence. The plant. Yes, the plant as life would have it. Free coursing chaotic essence of indifference. How gently you sit, stridently glorified. Misted ideas of casualness as you drain your free resources, turning them into your own. Leonard rubs one of the fat, greenish yellow, heart shaped, leaves dangling from a hanging pot. “I told you when I arrived here, I need help. I see these certain shades that should not be, then in splendid fury I fuse them with subliminally soft sounds that the light makes as it dances across the iris of my mind. But, but, but…” Leonard scratches, more like claws, at his head. He claws trying to soothe some cerebral itch. I can’t blow it now: I just have to get locked up. She seems calmed down. I need to be locked up, the only place in this system I can have what I need. Food, shelter, bed, a view, a place to paint most of all, and everyone knows there are plenty of drugs if I choose to want them and lots of quiet time. I just want to freely paint. The tap on the shoulder from Linda snaps Leonard out of it. The tap is him walking backward into a piece of rebar. The figment of Linda is holding an aspirin—palm up. “Here, maybe this will help you.” And thus it begins. Leonard picks up the aspirin with his thumb and forefinger. “Thank you.” When Linda turns, Leonard places the pill in the pot hanging from the ceiling. She’s not going to get me that easily, not yet. I still need a 117 clear head to get fully committed. I’m sure that one little pill probably detours the rest of the suckers. That one little pill happens to be a corroded bolt that was left in the ashes of the warehouse. “None of this is your problem, I know. I’m sorry; I’m sorry; I’m sorry. Like I said, if I could just see the doctor...You see, he, we, the doctor, I, uh, we, if the doctor, I could just, all this pain in my head.” Leonard begins hugging himself and turns to look out a window that isn’t there. It feels cold in here. The view here is strange, very strange. I grew up here. I know this town. I swear the mental health hospital use to face toward the ocean. Why can’t I remember? This bugs me. “I’m so confused. Where did it all go? We lulled past the desert in our narcoleptic dreams of dreary misery. Trying to surpass the dry pains of physical existence in a non-substantial world counteracted by the weight of profitable progress; we mass produced our demise in a consuming nightmare of social technological frequencies disrupted by metaphors, miscalculations, and this malignant malnourished magisterial society of malfeasance. I’m trapped amongst a bunch of enviable invalids.” While Leonard falls to his knees and begins crying, I wanted to comment that he sure is poetic in a nonsensical, Marxist, narcissistic, loquacious kind of way. “Sir, you’re obviously in a lot of pain.” Her voice still sounds sympathetic even over her irritability. This is good. Linda began to lift the receiver of the phone, but when Leonard jumped to his feet, she quickly released. “What are you doing?” She better not be calling the cops, oh God, the last thing I need involved with is the cops. I came here to get away from having to deal with life’s unpleasantries. What the hell is she doing? Leonard is superfluously paranoid of police. “I was just a – never mind. It’s not important. If it’s going to upset you-” “You were, weren’t you? Geez! You heard me, didn’t you?” I hope that you realize that this whole story is a complete, convoluted mess; I realize now that no matter how many times I read this it is going to be a mess. When I get to the end this time, I’m not sure what I’ll do. Like I said, you’ll still see the original end to the story. Leonard is entirely insane, but now he is beginning to freak out even more. Oh no, don’t think, don’t think don’t think, don’t think- He thought Linda might be listening to his thoughts. “Sir, what are you talking about? I don’t think I understand.” Leonard put his hands on her desk and is bending over, glaring in her face. Don’t think don’t think don’t think don’t think don’t think don’t think- “Now you’re mocking me, eh?” Don’t think don’t think don’t think don’t think. Leonard snatches the phone. The secretary seizes the phone. Leonard yanks the phone off the desk and out of Linda’s hands. Leonard stumbles backward across the room. At this point, neither character realizes that the plastic clip attachment that locks in the phone just ripped off the cord. The phone is now useless. Leon 118 ard doesn’t know this; he slams the phone down. Well, if the phone existed, which it does on two and a half levels, this is what happens to it, but it doesn’t exist; Leonard just grabbed a charred up copy of a book in the warehouse and swung it against an “I” beam. The aforementioned act causes Linda to start shrieking and crying. Well, technically she might be having a sudden outburst of her own. Maybe the thought that she never loved her dead father might have just hit her at this moment. This is highly improbable. One, because when someone jerks a phone out of your hands and smashes it, a normal human response to this is to shriek and cry; and second, I am well informed of all the ins and outs of this story, as I have almost read this eight times now, and Linda does indeed scream because of the phone getting ripped out of her hands and slammed to the ground. Linda actually loves her father very much; her father is still alive and well in Phoenix. I only mention this to let you know that I do know all about this story, but I need to hide some of my knowledge from you because I could just tell a story like: a man was born on earth, he lived his life there, and then he died there—in between, he had complications, but it would be more fun to read if I filled it in with details like he is a crazy artist, and the thought of him dying prematurely never enters your mind, even though death is inevitable, and the best thing for a character— especially if you have the misfortune of being a character in a slice of life story, in which the main character would never die anyway. “What are you doing here?” Linda asks. “What do you want from me? I don’t know what you want.” “I don’t want anything from you. I want to see the doctor; that’s what I’m doing here.” How many times do I have to tell you? “Did you hear that? Huh?” Leonard is starting to lose the faculty to decipher between his internal and external dialogue at this point. Plus he is hearing something in a part of his mind that I’m not even sure if he can hear, but he is looking for it anyway. “There’s no doctor here,” Linda soothes. “That’s what I was doing on the phone; I was calling you a doctor. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” “Well isn’t that what I wanted you to do in the first place? And to think I believed you.” I can’t believe I even showed her my otiose painting. I do love the way Leonard speaks. I need a dictionary just to keep up with him. Too bad he’s crazy; who uses a word like ‘otiose’ these days? He’s becoming more megalomaniacal by the moment. “Now I don’t believe you. I know you were trying to have me jailed. Well forget that. I’ll come out worse than when I went in. Besides, think of the universe. What will happen when they won’t let me paint for a month straight? All I’m asking for is one simple freedom. I just want to talk to the doctor; he’ll see. Then the world will understand: Mom, the landlord, Mrs. Allison, my class, Natalie, all of them. You hear me? All of them will understand. All of them, you hear me? I’ll set them free.” Maybe you were mocking me all along. Too humor 119 ing, you’ve seen a lot of nut jobs in here. Should I show you the real paintings? “Huh?” “I don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t know.” “Good answer. You haven’t quite achieved the right answer yet, but you are getting closer.” I want to show you who believes. You must see the correct painting, that which will set us free. It will come to be known, rejoiced, the simplicity of intimacy intricately woven to subdue all subversions from equality, blatantly pointing out Unitarian structure. It is an almost overloaded carousel of light, blinding the dark side of man in an acquiescing entourage of ideal scenes being played out by humanoid structures. “I’m sure you will find it interesting to say the least.” Linda blots her eyes with a balled up tissue. “I’m sure.” See, this sounds so phony. Leonard turns to grab another painting from his bag that isn’t there. If there is one thing that could be said for certain about this insanity it is this: The bag that Leonard left on the sidewalk was found by another fictional character from another book. The character’s name is Horse Badorties, and he comes from The Fan Man, written by Henry Kotzwinkle. When he finds the blank canvas, he says, “Cool man, now this is art, man.” He is en route to his number three pad where he will flop the painting down on a pile of to-go containers filled with rotting bits of low-mien. After he throws the canvas down, he won’t remember he has it in his house until three days from now, at which point he will be walking through his number three pad, eating chili out of a can, when he will step his foot through the center of the canvas. When he looks down to see where the ripping sound came from, a spoonful of chili will fall and splatter on the painting. He will step out of the middle of the painting and pick it up and say, “Wow, man. Now this is art with a Horse Badorties twist, man.” How the heck did this happen? Leonard holds up the painting that isn’t there. He sees a hole ripped through the painting that isn’t there. “Don’t blame her. She’s already teetering on the edge of hysteria.” “What’s going on? What’s the matter?” This is where Leonard completely switches his internal dialogue with his external dialogue. This isn’t going to be as hard to follow as I previously believed it would be. I’m not going to italicize his external dialogue or anything stupid like that. It’s just for some reason what he would normally say out loud to Linda he is speaking in his mind while his thoughts are verbalized. I will only tag the next few lines so you follow. What am I saying? If I read this again, I will just scrap this paragraph. I mean if I can’t trust my reader, then whom can I trust? None of this nonsense makes sense unless it’s read. Only you can pass judgment on this. I trust you. It’s no wonder I live on the freeways in L.A. with a sign that says: WILL READ FOR MONEY. I should have known that any decent reader wouldn’t end up living on the freeway. What kind of story did I expect to get? It’s no wonder I’m stuck with this classical 120 plot arc piece of crap story where the main character is so crazy no one believes a damn thing. Don’t get me started on what a cheap-shot, crack-pot…the author is. “The poor thing cannot help but ask. How sweet?” Leonard says this out loud, but to him, he just said this in his mind. Then he thinks he says this, but thinks: Nothing. Nothing, it’s not a big deal; it wasn’t like I put any real creative genius in this piece. It just upsets me that I had to gather up all those carcasses and spend time making something like this. Leonard sets the painting that doesn’t exist back down on top of his canvas bag that isn’t there and slowly walks towards Linda, who isn’t there, but is more so there than the paintings. He stops in the middle of the cramped lobby and begins think-speaking. “Now let’s not play the blame game. She’s already upset enough. It’s not her fault you can’t control yourself better. It is a shame, though, I didn’t spend that time creating something sublime, but then again, here it would sit, torn. Without it I wouldn’t have known now what I now know about her.” This looks a little weird on the page, but the secretary responds to this comment, but because the mind works at a rate that is really off the time scale, Leonard thinks he says this thought in a flash before she responds. He thinks he says, I can’t believe I tore this painting. Did you notice me do that during one of my little outbursts? Oh, well, could I get another cup of water? I think I’ll paint. That will fix everything. It will help me to relax. No more wasting time or energy on foolishness until the doctor gets here. “Excuse me?” I wish Linda said something better than that, but she doesn’t. I want to ameliorate her response so it is more cleverly fitting to both of Leonard’s dialogues, but it isn’t up to me to altercate what these characters have to say to one another. Get me a cup of water. “Today would be nice.” Leonard begins unpacking his art supplies from the bag that isn’t there. “What? What? I don’t understand.” Water! Water! Water! What don’t you understand? I just need a cup of water so I can paint. I think the exclamation marks work well here. “Shish. Just when I start seeing the dim little light between her ears, and then splat.” Leonard slaps his hands together. “She falls flat. Smack, crack, she’s dense as a brick.” “What are you going off about now? How crazy are you?” What are you going off about now? How crazy are you? “Is she onto me? Maybe it’s a test, but why is she testing me? Unless she’s been the doctor all along, but if she’s been the doctor all along, then this whole thing is working because any other person would have seen I am actually sane and kicked me out by now.” How crazy are you? I just asked for a cup of water so I can paint and you just sit there. “Sir, this is a purified water outlet. You need to either decide if you are 121 going to make a purchase or leave before my boss gets back and sees what you’ve made of his office. He’s not as patient as I am.” Linda must have been expecting this guy to be back any minute. If I was her, I would have run out of the office screaming by now. But she just keeps picking up the beans one at a time. What makes this so bizarre is that I know enough people who wouldn’t do a damn thing in this situation. They would sit there picking up the beans and raking in the hours. As a matter of fact, I wish someone would come in and mess with me at my job, but this is my job, but I don’t get paid by the hour. I think if I read this story again I’m going to change some things. The author can go to hell. As a matter of fact, the next time I read this story, I’m not even going to read this story. I’ll read something about a secret love affair between two Japanese girls and when their families find out, they’ll commit harakiri without the knowledge that the other one is doing the exact same thing. If there can be an exact, proto-opposite, modern version of Romeo and Juliet that would be my proffering. “All I wanted is water, and now I’m being threatened with it. I don’t get it.” If this really is a water outlet, all I need right now is one cup, you do sell it by the cup, don’t you? If you could get it for me now, that would be really helpful. You know how it is, no, well, of course not. You see, inspiration is hitting me right now and it is vital that I get my cup of water. Leonard props his elbows on his folded legs and uses his hands to hold his head up. “Here.” Linda says and extends a clear plastic cup of water in front of Leonard’s face. “ At last, her voice has gained a sense of irritation.” Thank you. “Finally, I only asked ten times.” Leonard sets the cup on the ground in front of him and swishes the end of the brush, he isn’t actually holding, around in the water while Linda swipes one of the blue and white brochures from the floor—one of the brochures that were stacked on her desk before Leonard jumped on it from off the floor. “Here, look.” Linda waves the brochure in front of Leonard’s head bent toward the ground. “Look at this, I’m not kidding. Look at this.” Leonard doesn’t bother to lift his head. He begins moving his hand around above the floor. In his mind, he is working on his painting. I wish you could see this version of his painting. Sure, it doesn’t exist anymore than the canvass itself, but this one truly is superb. Oddly enough, he isn’t painting the painting he’s been trying to perfect all his life. Linda puts the brochure so close to Leonard’s face that it almost touches his nose. “Look. You see, sir, we really are just a water distribution company. I don’t know why you think this is a doctor’s office. Let me plug my phone back in, and I will call you a cab and make sure you get to where you want to go today. No hard feelings, huh? I’ll pretend none of this ever happened.” 122 “You will, will you? You’re going to make sure I get to freely paint all day long, as long as I want, distraction free, without any worries?” No, thanks. I’ll just sit here and paint until the doctor returns. That sounds so familiar, the way everyone closes their eyes hoping I’ll go away. And don’t plug your phone back in. I don’t trust you. “She must be the doctor. She’s trying to convince me this isn’t the doctor’s office. This is some sort of test. I’m onto their conniving little ways.” Leonard motions with his hand as though he is squeezing a tube of paint. Linda picks up the phone and examines the broken wire. “What the hell does she think she’s doing?” I thought I told you not to bother? “I-I-I-I-I-I-I I was just going to get a hold of the doctor for you, that’s all.” “I keep trying to tell her I hate malevolence, but nooooooo. No one likes a nice guy.” Who did you just call? You just called the police didn’t you? Didn’t you? Just to spite me. Just to spite me because I told you that was the one place I didn’t want to go. Maybe I should have come in here begging for jail; then I would have received a doctor. “Don’t worry, I want to help.” Leonard stands and rushes towards Linda and takes her down by the throat. His grip tightens. Why do you hate me? Why are you doing this to me? Is this some sort of test? “I’m really going crazy now. Is this what she wanted? It sure makes me feel better. Wait a minute, she can’t be the doctor.” Leonard lets go but remains on her chest. (Actually he held down a metal bar and was covered in soot). He looks around the room, amazed, as if he just solved a quadratic equation for the first time. Maybe I should read this again and let that brush splatter against the wall with red paint in its bristles. Linda coughs and rubs her throat. “You sure catch on quick, whacko.” “If she was a doctor she would have been intrigued to see what kind of neurosis dribbled out of my mind through my brush onto the canvas.” Sorry about that. You just got me worked up about the whole phone thing. Just don’t call anyone else and we’ll be fine. “I can’t believe I lost it like that.” Leonard smoothes Linda’s black blouse down for her and stands up and offers her his hand. Linda takes his hand, and he pulls her up. “This is good though; this is good, she’ll be sure to encourage the doctor to lock me up right away. She’ll probably go rushing right into his arms and tell him what a loon I am.” Leonard continues making imaginary brush strokes. Linda returns to her desk and starts twirling a white pen on the knuckle of her thumb. Leonard hears a distant knocking. It is actually a cop popping the siren of the police car. In version three of this story, I became the cop and rescued Leonard and it lead to my demise, taking a sniper bullet to the head—swimming from the coast of California to Japan to find the story about the lesbian couple. So, I guess this is the end of the story, even though the words continue. The author won’t allow me to become one of the characters in the story I’m reading. He receives a 123 memo from NASA in the future, threatening him not to let me do it—explaining about black holes and alternate dimensions and mysterious disappearances. Besides, if I save Leonard, that would mean I would have to become a character in this story, and I still have other stories I want to read before I get trapped in my own. Well, this is it: The cop pops the siren a couple times for good show. Initially, the cops are called because someone reported seeing Leonard trespassing in the recently burned down warehouse. That, and obviously he is talking to himself, which scares the mother of two young boys who like to play in the neighborhood. The cop pops the siren a couple more times for them; they’re still at that magical age where a cop is neat to see. It makes Leonard believe he is hearing a knocking in another part of the building. “What kind of administrative assistant is she? She doesn’t even answer the door.” Aren’t you going to get that? “Answer what?” Linda asks. The door, don’t you hear the door? This gets weird again. Now Linda, who is part of Leonard’s hallucination, begins answering Leonard’s thoughts, which was Leonard’s fear before he switched his verbal dialogue with his internal dialogue. “What are you talking about? I don’t hear anything.” What is it? “The knocking is driving me crazy. Make it stop, make it stop.” Right now, the cop, who I became in version three, is just watching Leonard from the car. It’s funny watching Leonard freak out. With the cop’s arrival, Linda realizes that she doesn’t exist, thus becoming ubiquitous to the text. She decides to make one last jab at Leonard, but fails anyway. “Maybe that’s your precious doctor you’ve been waiting for.” “It better be.” I’ve waited long enough. “Besides, my master piece is finished now, I’m prepared.” This is where the cop walks up tapping his yellow clicker pen against his metal clip board, pushing the spring top in and out nervously. Through Leonard’s eyes he sees a man in a white lab coat. “Are you okay?” the cop is obligated to ask. And I’m not giving the cop a name even if I read this a thousand times. Oh, thank you thank you doctor, it’s been so long. “I was wondering how long it would be before I got to see the doctor around here.” “I’m not a doctor, son, but I’m here now. I’ll help you.” “Now I really know he’s testing me, now’s my chance.” Doctor, doctor, I keep having this problem: Have you ever had one of those dreams where you are unquenchably thirsty and you cannot find water anywhere? Then you walk into a room and “Everyone is drinking big tall glasses if icy cold, purified water.” You drink and drink and drink. “Luckily your glass seems to keep filling itself up.” You keep drinking, it tastes so good. The taste of life. Then you wake up and find that you are even thirstier than in your dream. “Then you realize the bottle of water you 124 always keep full” next to your bed just for these moments is empty. “Unfortunately you’re also too lazy” to want to get up in the middle of the night “just for a drink of water.” “Okay, okay there buddy. Just what are you trying to tell me here? We’re going to get you some help. Just hold on a second.” The cop presses a button on the walky-talky on his shoulder and reports his location and situation. It’s okay, here, “I’ll show you.” I can’t tell you. “I’ll show you.” I’ll show you. Leonard bends over the blackened concrete and lifts up his imaginary painting. It is the most perfectly painted picture anyone has never seen. Leonard painted a brain in a jar in the desert, flawlessly. Unfortunately, it isn’t real, and he has been so bothered by the outside world that he forgot the painting he was trying to perfect. “He’ll understand.” You get it don’t you? Do you see? “Do you see?” “See what? I don’t get it. What are you trying to show me?” Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it perfect? It can be like this forever. Do you see? Do you understand? This is the solution. At this instance, Leonard realizes that he has been in an abandoned, burned down machine shop talking to figments of his imagination. “It really can be this simple, just give me a chance, there’s more, I promise, you’ll see. You’ll see. You do see the simplicity don’t you? This obvious truth I confide in you from the celestial clouds.” Leonard raises his arms to the sky, a deflating effect under a charred roof. “Soon it will rain down peace, washing away all this unsanitary physical distraction. The essence of light will reign supreme.” Leonard shouts this last part. Sometimes I wonder if this character is a prophet or a maniac. “Yes,” the cop says, “I see it. Why don’t you come with me? I’m going to take you to get some help, okay there buddy?” “It worked; at last, at last, it worked. I can hardly wait.” As the character is written, the cop forcefully grabs Leonard and leads him back to the cop car. Leonard struggles to turn around, but the cop keeps pushing him forward. Wait wait wait wait wait. Leonard coughs and speaks in a whisper as though regaining his voice. “Wait, my art supplies.” Leonard turns and extends his arm in vain. Through his eyes: art supplies on the lobby floor turn into art supplies on the sooty warehouse floor that dissolve into the sooty floor. The last image is a picture etched in the dirt. This cannot be the end of Leonard’s story. There’s too much uncertainty, too much left undone. That is why in the last version of this story I became the character of the cop after my obligation to read the story was completed. I took Leonard to my mother’s house, which turned into a saga of its own and ruined the story because it is not logical that the cop would drive Leonard to my mother’s house without my interference. And I ended up getting shot in the back of the head, which I think is un-necessary. But this time, someone like you, sees Leonard on his/her way home from work. The person is driving a white Honda Accord. The person may be you in a future reading of this story—now that you know what must happen. 125 saac Coleman has lived in various states all over the country, residing mostly in depression, anxiety, compunction and neurosis. Generously, he has posted his Master’s thesis at www.junkcityfilth.blogspot.com, free for everyone to view whether they belong to an institution of higher learning or not. His attorney assures him he owes the thesis publishing company no more than he’s already given them and that he retains all rights to the work he labored to create. A couple of his short stories, short as in under five pages, have been published by www.paperstreetonline.org and The Lion Lounge Press: The Companion Reader Vol. II. He is grateful to The Seahorse Rodeo Folk Revival for providing a venue for his his quasiexperimental novelette. He has a tendency to over-write and would be happy to over-answer any question you may have for him at fictionwave@ yahoo.com. Hopefully by the time you finish reading his story he will have decided upon a name for his new kitten. The Great Growing J. P. Kemmick It’s hard to say what drove Jeanie and me to plant the seeds in our pores. I think for Jeanie it might have been the stories passed down from her grandmother of an earth where things still grew, where we planted seeds that grew into things we could eat or at least admire. That was all before they had finished the Project, before the powers that be had decided we were all better off without dirt, before they moved the farms to the labs. I didn’t really have an opinion either way. My mother called Jeanie an old soul. She looked at least five years older than she really was: tangled hair, thick eyebrows, jewelry my grandma might wear, little wrinkles crackling from the corners of her eyes. It’s safe to say she looked wise. She read my palm the first time we met, told me there was a lot of pain in my past and that my future was flecked with disappointment and indecision and then just traced the lines of my palm up and down, saying nothing, like she was lazily following some river across a map. It was one of the sexier things a girl had ever done for me and helped me forget that just a moment before she had essentially called me a fuck-up. Looking back on our time together, I think she was probably just confused. Confused I was someone else. I’d like to think I never misled her, but I probably did, an innocent half truth here, a white lie there. She was beautiful though. Just really gorgeous in a way that was both retro and futuristic, like some time traveling gypsy. She never outright professed her love for the old world, but she would get this look in her eyes whenever someone would bring up an idea from the old days, like farming. I thought it was romantic at the time. I thought her ideas were hip with nostalgia. 127 In early June we climbed to the top of our apartment building and lay down on the hot tarry surface. That morning in bed we had slowly, hypnotically pushed seeds into each other’s bodies. We kept the blinds drawn so the sun creeping through the slats made the room glow and made the searching for each pore that much slower and deliberate. It was a muggy summer morning, our hair plastered to our foreheads, the smell of our sweat wrapped in the sheets and hanging in the air. A piece of wallpaper had started to come unglued. I’m not sure how Jeanie came by those seeds; maybe they were hand me downs from lost generations, buried in the back of some photo album. Jeanie’s family kept everything. We had made the process sexy, the leisurely massaging of each seed into our pores, and we had giggled, it tickled. And then we bathed, letting the water soak into our skin, our seeds, until we shriveled up like raisins and climbed the stairs to the rooftop, naked, letting the sun iron out our wrinkles. Maybe it’s not hard to say why I did it. Love or the assumption thereof. I don’t know, maybe there was some sense of elementary school science fair nostalgia in there too. I was pretty ambivalent about a lot of things back then. I thought I was going with the flow, but in hindsight the flow was at best a trickle. Or maybe it was Jeanie’s flow and I was just some drowning shipwrecked sailor she was doing her best to fish out. If Jeanie had wanted to set fire to the sun I would have done my best to aid her. As it was she wanted to lie naked with me on the roof for a summer and I could think of worse things to do with my time. Looking back on it all I think we were coming at the summer from entirely different angles. She never said anything about principles, about some deeper meaning, but I’m pretty sure it was there, whirling around her mind all summer. There had always been a tinge of rebellion to her eyes. Her mother had once told me she thought Jeanie’s persistent squinting was an attempt to crack her almond eyes. Jeanie probably knew I wasn’t the person to share that side with, even if she couldn’t get herself to admit it. At the time I was fairly preoccupied with her naked body, with her coy, trickling laugh. I was also young, simple enough. For the first week the seeds did nothing, just sat inside us, thinking about the possibilities, about how they thought they’d missed the opportunity a long time ago. Second chances. So Jeanie and I enjoyed ourselves. We pretended to ballroom dance under the summer sun, humming some old classical number, out 128 of tune and interspersed with laughter, our feet black with the soot on the roof. We had daily picnics, lying down on towels with sandwiches on our chests, cold beers nestled between our legs. It was slow, peaceful, good. I spent an entire day perched near the edge of the roof, watching people below. Our apartment was on a slow street, but the occasional car would hum along, its battery gently buzzing. I watched a little kid with a bouncy ball spend an hour throwing it off some steps and trying to grab it as it went flying at crazy angles back at him. I bet on a cat fight, lost money on a fat old tabby. Jeanie occasionally would come and put her arms around me and stare out over the city with me, looking at all that metal and pavement, reflecting and sucking up all the sun. She said something at one point about the color green and sounded wistful for some reason, but I can’t remember exactly what it was. At night when things quieted down a little you could hear the hum of the Conversion Factory, sucking in the CO2 and spewing out oxygen for us. It’s a nice system, efficient. At first the roots tickled. It was as if some small creature had found its way into my system and its little paws tip-toed under my skin. I told this to Jeanie and she called me adorable and kissed me, two quick short pecks. We watched planes fly overhead for hours at a time, lying naked on the roof, soaking up the sun to feed our submerged seedlings. I watched a Scrubber work its methodical way across the sky, hardly bigger than a dot, keeping us all alive. Sometimes one of us would let out a little shuddering giggle as a root system explored new territory inside our bodies. We’d be sitting on the edge of the roof or wandering around its periphery and we’d release a short laugh over the city, letting it free to make its own mischief. We laughed a lot back then at the little things. A bird shat right on Jeanie’s belly one day and we laughed hard for at least an hour. We were happy and we both thought we could nurture the seeds with our devotion, like we were raising a child. It makes little sense now, but we were young and empowered with an incomprehensible love. One day Jeanie suddenly stood up and made a mad dash for the stairs and came back a few minutes later with a paint set. She spent the rest of the day painting rainbows and fruits and vegetables on the side of the stairway door entrance. She wasn’t much of an artist, but her rainbows were pretty stellar; her strawberries looked like daggers. She shouted something to me about cave paintings, but 129 a street cleaner was humming by down below and I didn’t quite hear her. When I walked over to inspect her work more closely she told me to lie down and then painted a rainbow across my chest, lifting her brush carefully wherever a seedling had begun to sprout. Sometime during that first week I watched a colony of ants slowly form and build a mound over a thin snaking crack in the roof. They were resilient little creatures, hauling bits of asphalt and cement in place of the dirt that had long since been covered when the Project swept over the world. In history class they teach that the Project had been a common unifying goal, bringing all the world together under one purpose. It was cleaner, easier. We knocked off a few diseases in the process. Made sense. I saw what looked liked little bits of glass on the backs of a few ants as they built up their asphalt mound. In those first weeks we had a lot of sex, rolling around, constantly tumbling under and over each other to avoid contact with the hot roof for too long. The tips of greenery were showing through our skin and we ran our fingers over each others’ bodies, feeling the fuzzy spouts protruding from within. By the end of the first month we could see the roots meandering through our body like veins underneath our skin, now a dark brown hue from the sun and the roots. It became tougher, more taut as the roots bulged underneath. We could feel the weight. Things got a little more sluggish, our energy was going elsewhere. Early in the second month I caught a glimpse of reflected light off a neighboring roof. It was an exceptionally hot day and the roots were feeling heavier than ever under my skin, but I managed to prop myself up with one elbow and squint in the direction of the reflected sun. I could just make out the figure of a person on the other roof. I slowly realized that the light was reflecting off a camera lens, that we were being photographed. Within the week there was a media blitz on our roof, all the local stations wanting in on the story. We were cast as renaissance souls by some, backwards-looking outcasts by others. Nobody went after the love angle. We just took it in stride, annoyed, but little more, and waited for them to leave. 130 Stories like ours popped up in the paper occasionally with headlines like “MAN GROWS OWN APPLE.” But we weren’t doing it for them, we were doing it for us, for a youthful summer of excess love. At least I’m fairly certain that was the original intent, but we let it gestate, let the seeds grow, long enough for that to change. By the end of the week all the media had left. My younger brother, in his early twenties and sporting a suit and tie, stopped by one afternoon to see it for himself, called us freaks and took off, walking fast back towards the staircase, like he was afraid I was going to hit him. Both Jeanie and I were far along with the growth. It was getting harder to move around and we spent most of the days just lying on the roof. The days seemed longer, we talked less. I had green frilly carrot heads poking their way through my chest hair and a head of purple cabbage sprouting from my belly button. I had a patch of strawberries growing on both thighs, little green things, hard to the touch. Growing tan under the sun one day, Jeanie asked me if she somehow managed to find a piece of real earth somewhere, the dirt kind, if I would farm it with her. I told her dirt was long gone, that the Project had taken care of that. “But what if, hypothetically, the Project had missed a patch somewhere?” she asked. “I was thinking of getting into business at some point,” I told her. “My dad has some connections at the port.” She responded with a look that she wouldn’t take away and I glanced down just as she muttered, “Business.” I’m not sure why I felt ashamed; I thought the port was a good deal, solid future, but Jeanie had a way of confusing my senses. We had a big thunder storm mid-July. I hauled out an old tarp we had brought up just in case and we huddled under it while the storm raged down on top of us. Jeanie thought that maybe we should try to soak up some of the rain for the seeds, but I told her I sure as hell wasn’t going out into that storm. She gave me a look, more disappointed than anything, and threw her side of the tarp off and sat out in the rain. I lifted a corner of the tarp up and watched the rain pour down her body, her long hair plastered to her back, the water coursing over her breasts and causing the tips of the vegetables to sway against her body. She looked purposeful and also, sexy as all hell. 131 I woke up one morning and hauled myself up to take a quick walk around the edge of the roof to keep my circulation going. A little breeze rustled the stems and leaves of my body. Walking past the stairway entrance I noticed an addition to Jeanie’s painted rainbows, tomatoes and strawberries. THE NEXT PROJECT was scrawled in shaky handwriting across the top, looking somehow sinister next to the colorful childlike rows of the rainbows. That was the first, and just about the only, tangible sign that our summer was coming to and end; maybe why I allowed myself to feel so surprised when it actually did. Like I had needed concrete facts written in a well organized report. It was a day or two later that it became near impossible to talk. A few of the roots had found their way into my esophagus and conversation became painful. Jeanie was having the same trouble. I did my best to assure her it would be okay. I croaked out the occasional, I love you, and tried to say as much as I could with my eyes, but I’ve never been the best with non-verbal communication. Something about a subtleness I’ve never had. I accepted the pain, convinced myself that it was all part of that imaginary flow I thought I was cultivating, that it would take me where I needed to go. Jeanie was getting more distant. She returned my croaked loves with a certain sad look in her eyes, that only later did I realize was as much for me as her. One day I looked to my right and saw a crow not even a foot from my head, just sitting there, staring at me, asking me what the fuck I thought I was doing. They had kept the birds alive with centralized feeding stations, a small caveat to the few who had insisted on the old world ways. It was weird to see a bird so far away from the nearest station. I stared back at the crow, tried to explain that the pain of the roots twisting throughout my body translated to some kind of love, but I couldn’t seem to make it understand. I didn’t understand, how could it? Eventually it hopped to the edge of the roof and jumped off like a suicide. I looked back over at Jeanie and she was staring straight up into the sky, looking hard at it, concentrating. I raised an arm heavy with onion bulbs and brushed my fingers across her face and whispered, “I love you.” She kept focusing on the blue sky, didn’t say anything back. Any halfwit could have seen it was coming to an end, but I was lying naked on a rooftop next to a beautiful young woman with carrots sprouting from my chest. To say I was not thinking my clearest would be an understatement. And besides, I’ve never been good at letting love go, have always held onto the wreckage 132 long after the ship has gone down (sometimes after the rescue boats have come and gone). Two nights later I woke up to the sound of sobbing. Jeanie was sitting up next to me, pulling at the stems and stalks protruding from her body. It was a full moon and bright. The stems protruding from her chest swayed and bristled in the moonlight, giving the whole deal a horror movie vibe, like Jeanie was pulling out the tubes her creator had used to bring her to life. A small pile of vegetables was piled between her legs, tiny little carrots, a few miniature zucchini. Little dabs of blood showed where she had yanked each carrot from her skin. She was crying. “Jeanie,” I said. It sounded more like a painful hiss than anything. My vocal cords had nearly surrendered. “This isn’t what I thought it would be, Michael,” she said. And then quieter, “I don’t know what I thought it was going to be.” Her sobs and her strangled vocal cords mingled to create a sinister rasp. She yanked at another carrot and it popped forth from her sternum with a strange soft pop. I lifted my hand and put it on her thigh, overgrown with strawberries, but she just kept plucking away and the pile of food kept growing between her legs. I didn’t know what to say. Within twenty minutes she was vegetation free and she stood up. Little multi-colored flecks fell off her chest and legs. Standing there in the moonlight her body looked so different than it had when we’d begun. It was dark and stretched tight, like she had pulled all her skin against her bones and pinned it there. She looked ancient and beautiful and a little crazy. “It shouldn’t be this hard,” she said. “It shouldn’t hurt this much.” And then she walked away. I waited a few days for her to come back, to show up on the rooftop, still naked, and admit that love conquered pain, conquered all. By the fourth day I wanted her to show up to remind her that it had been her idea, that she had pressed the first seed into my flesh. On the fifth day I pulled the first carrot from my chest suddenly and within half an hour I had added my fresh produce to her small wilted pile. The painted rainbow was still there, flaked and cracked and looking like a perfect chronicle of the summer. My body looked like something that could no longer exist in this world, like something from the days before the Project, when things still twisted their way up from the earth. 133 P Kemmick grew up in Montana and now lives in Seattle. He is an active urban gardener and, inspired by his own writing, is trying out a little guerrilla gardening. He does not blog at jpkemmick.wordpress.com Showdown at Cherry Grove RetirementVillage: Compiled and edited by: J. KirbyWhite Michael Fugere The following is a series of excerpts taken from statements gathered by the local authorities. These are the exact words given by the residents, employees and guests who were present at the Cherry Grove Retirement Village on June 11th 2004 to witness the death of Mr. Oscar Joseph Barnes. -JKW Benson Whales: I ain’t ner seen an’thin’ like it: two civilized, elderly fellers gunnin’ down one ‘nother. Now don’t get me wrong, I seen my fair share of blood an’ whathavya, being a war veteran twice over, an’ all, but I ain’t ner seen a ol’ man like myself git shot up by ‘nother. Hell, the spectators of the whole dern thing said it was right friendly. Well I say, even in all my years of service to our country, I ain’t ner heard o’ friendly fire bein’ intentional. Ner in my life, I tell ya. It was the derndest thing...[Spits onto the ground] I tell you what; it was all ‘cause of that yank sumbitch, Windsor. I ner did trust that feller. He jus had this look like there weren’t somethin’ right with ‘im; like a light was on in ‘is head, but no one was home, but not like a crazy person really...though there ain’t no doubt that he had a screw looseÉ oh, hell, it’s hard to explain. I reckon he didn’t need a straightjacket, jus a whippin’ and a good talkin’ to is all. One things fer sure; that sumbitch got everyone riled up and believin’ all the mess he had said. Tellin’ us folks that we’re prisoners in our own bodies and whatnot. Crazy mess. Nonsense, I tell ya. We all shoulda had the sense the good Lord gave us to see that he was nuthin’ but trouble, but I reckon old folks like us like to hear things that sound hopeful. [Spits again] We all here done lived our lives. 136 I reckon it was Oscar what first started to associate with that ol’ loon, Windsor. Oscar had lost his wife ‘bout six months ago an’ was hurtin’ real bad jus like I had done when Arlene passed back in ‘96. He was new to Cherry Grove an’ look’d to be needin’ a friend, an’ since nobody weren’t to talk to Windsor too much, I guess Oscar decided to get acquainted with ‘im. It won’t too long after that that the strange mess Windsor was flappin’ his gums ‘bout started to sink into ol’ Oscar’s head. It’s right funny how some fellers will latch on to anyone who seem to have a answer. But livin’ to be this old, you know there ain’t no answer. Jus more questions. Lord knows I got a whole sack full of ’em after meeting Windsor and seein’ what he had done. Frank Stratton Jr.: Well Earl Windsor was – still is, I assume - a rather nice fella, or at least that’s how I’d seen him. He was never much of a talker, though I do remember him having no Southern accent when he spoke in his normal tone of voice. As I recall, someone had said he was originally from somewhere up north. Pennsylvania, I believe. Which I thought was kind of odd with him being so interested – well, obsessed - with Westerns and the way the movies said cowboys lived. You know, gun fighting, cattle wrangling, and all that. That should have been a warning sign now that I think about it; but like they say, hindsight’s 20/20. The first day he came to the home, he had with him a ton of video tapes, and watched them in the rec room whenever the TV was freed up. I remember the first time I tried to introduce myself to him; he was watching The Searchers with John Wayne, his favorite movie as it turned out. ‘The name’s Frank,’ I told him, and stuck my hand out for him to shake, but his gaze didn’t stray form that darn TV. I pegged him as being hard of hearing and repeated myself a couple a times, but he never looked away. I was rather irritated by that point and raised my voice at him, asking him if he ever heard of Southern hospitality. And to that, he just said, while doing a piss-poor John Wayne impression, ‘have a seat there, pilgrim. Things are just getting’ good.’ I couldn’t help but chuckle at the old fella when he said that with a straight face. I thought it may had just been a joke or his senility was kicking in, but that weren’t the case. [Smiles] He was dead serious and despite what some folks will think, he was – is - a sane man. I know that much is true. Gretchen Smith: Why Mr. Windsor was always a gentleman. He held open doors, 137 stood up when I walked into a room, tipped his Stetson hat when I passed him in the courtyard, he would even help me to my walker when it was out of reach. But I wasn’t the only one to be treated so kindly; all the ladies here at the home were too. Old age had not made him jaded like it has to so many other residents. Heavens, it was a breath of fresh air. If you ask me, I don’t think what he did was wrong. He gave some these folks here something to live for. He gave us a reason to get up each morning, even after many of our friends and families had passed on or abandoned us. We found solace in what Windsor was trying to do. Or at least most of us did. Now don’t misunderstand me; I think it’s an awful shame, what happened to Oscar, but he knew what he was doing when he put on that gun belt. He knew good and well. And I don’t think he’d regret doing it if he were still alive. Now I didn’t know Oscar as well as some. I wasn’t familiar with the hardships he had gone through in his life, but when he met Earl Windsor, he was happy for the first time in heaven knows how long. You could see it his eyes and I found comfort in that. Rachel Harley: Yes, sir, fifteen years; that’s how long I’ve been an employee here at Cherry Grove. Before that I worked at a retirement community – one not as nice as this one - out in Virginia where my husband was stationed while he was still in the Navy. He’s originally from South Carolina. That’s why we made the move here. What do I think about Earl Windsor? [Uncomfortably laughs] Let me tell you something, sugar; in all my years in this profession, I’ve never seen anything like this. I have been witness to many a disturbing act among the elderly: I’ve seen them hit and bite at one another; I’ve seen them try to take there own lives with cutlery and makeshift nooses, but I have never seen one of my residents murder another – and that’s what it was: murder. I don’t give a damn what other people tell you. The fact remains Earl Windsor – if that’s even his real name - murdered Oscar Barnes in cold blood. I’ll testify in front of a jury on that. Mark my words, sugar. Benson Whales: Dern straight he showed me those revolvers. Both of ‘em. And they was right fine pieces of work too. He had two .45 Colts that‘re ol’er than 138 the both of us, but sure as hell looked bran’ new, like he jus walked in a store an’ bought ‘em up that day. He kept ‘em in a ol’ wooden box uner ‘is bed. It had a picture of a feller on a mustang runnin’ down a stage coach etched a top of it. ‘Look here, Ben,’ he sed an’ showed ‘em to me. ‘They was my granddaddy’s,’ he sed, talkin’ like he was tryin’ a talk like me or sumthin.’ Hell, when I asked why he talked like he does, seeing as how he from up North and all, he got real mad and told me ner to call a Texan a filthy yank. I cain’t tell ya if he were playin’ er not. An’ yeah I held ‘em. They was right heavy. It was the first time I‘d held a pistol since Ko-rea. It felt odd, like they was sumthin’ wrong to grip a firearm when I won’t at war. I dunno. Er’thing ‘bout that feller was strange, I guess. [Shakes head] No, I dunno where they is nowÉI reckon with Windsor, wherever he may be. Like I sed, son, the whole dern thang is jus strange. Frank Stratton III: I was here with my son, visiting my father. We try to make it up to see him every other weekend. After my mother died we registered him with the home. He’s never complained, but after what happened today, I’m getting him out of here. I just can’t... [Covers his face with his hands] Good God. I mean, my son plays violent video games, but to see someone shot dead in real life, right in front of you has to be damaging. [Wipes a tear away] He’s only eleven for Christ’s sake! Frank Stratton IV: It was cool! It was like watching a Wild West movie or something. Two of Pa pa’s friends stood back to back and walked – like this [Makes large strides with his steps] – then they turned and [Forms a gun shape with his thumb and index finger] Pow! They shot at each other. [Laughs] Dad freaked out, but it was awesome. [Points to the police officer’s belt] Is that gun real? Gretchen Smith: Well he and Oscar became friends rather fast. They were inseparable, watching all those movies and playing cards in the court yard for hours on end. It wasn’t long before Oscar started to wear a cowboy hat like Earl. He 139 even began to talk to everyone in that fake Texas accent like him too. We all liked the two of them, well most of us did. I think Ben down right hated Earl and didn’t want anything to do with poor Oscar once they became pals. Betsy, Fay and I all thought they were very kind. It was nice having a couple of cowboys walking around, watching over us, helping everyone out the best they could. [Sighs] I don’t know what happened between them. Why they did what they did is beyond me. Like I said before, they were real good pals. You don’t shoot your pals, do you? Frank Stratton Jr.: Well this morning I woke up around six, got dressed, took my medicines, ate breakfast and wheeled out to the court yard. Gretchen and a couple other ladies were picking up pecans. (We have a tree back there. It’s a great big thing). Windsor and Oscar were sitting at a bench across from one another. They were both wearing Stetson hats and dusters. [Chuckles] I don’t know how in the hell they could stand it in this heat, but low and behold, they were wearing them. Like a couple of gunslingers. Gretchen strolled over to them with a grocery bag of pecans and offered to bake Windsor a pie. He silently tipped his hat in thanks and turned his attention back to Oscar. I didn’t really think nothing of it at the time, but Oscar looked upset. Come to think of it, he looked down right furious. Whatever Windsor had said to him got him fired up something fierce and made him pop up from that bench. [Points to a picnic table in the court yard] I remember Oscar pushed a flap of his coat aside to that Windsor could fully see his gun. What? No. [Points to his lap] it was in a holster. A leather one. Anyhow, he cocked the hammer and stared his friend down. Eventually Barnes stood up too. Fay Duncan: Oh yes, sir, he was a fine fellow. We all loved him, especially us girls. [Laughs] Mr. Windsor wasn’t half bad to look at, with those blue eyes and strong chin. He made us feel safe. Safe from what? I don’t know, but I liked it anyhow. And once he and Oscar both became cowboys, oh child, it was wonderful. I swear to you, those hats and coats made them look darn near thirty years younger, strutting around here like they owned the place. And let me tell you, Mr. Windsor spoke the truth. 140 What do I mean by that? Well for starters, he said that we all were running out of things to be thankful for. Most of us had already lost our spouses and were now losing our health. He said we had to live to the fullest and that our lives had kept us as prisoners for far too long. That’s truth if I ever heard it. A following? [Laughs] No, I wouldn’t say that. I mean, they were very well liked around here. [Rolls eyes] Well, Mr. Whales tends to exaggerate. I’d expect him to say some such of a thing, that old curmudgeon. He’s just mean as a snake and country as a stick, and that’s coming from a woman who has lived south of the Mason Dixon Line all her life. I wouldn’t pay him no mind. Mr. Windsor did not have any sort of following, unless you count Oscar. Benson Whales: What? Well she’s a damn lie! [Spits] That sumbitch had a follerin if I er seen one. Now they ain’t had uniforms an’ such, cept Oscar of course. Jus ax Betsy Miller. She kin tell ye; that’s fer dern sure. Betsy Miller: I wouldn’t say that. It won’t like some kind of hokey cult. We just really liked him. And he was right about a lot. Well for starters, he told us that we live the way society tells us: work hard, make babies, raise kids, retire, grow old then die. And we do this without question, without hesitation. We never take a minute to find the real us. What we can be, and who we really are. Windsor knows who he is. Do you? No. That’s just the you you think you are...[Cocks her head to the side]...What medication? Rachel Harley: He paid in cash. That’s right. And he registered himself in too. Well I didn’t question it. He just moved right in. The first day he stayed with us, he didn’t speak in any fake voice or wear any long coats or spurs. He was normal. Real quiet too. But the next morning, he was all dressed up like Wyatt Earp and was tipping his has to all the ladies here, saying, ‘ma’am’ like he was waltzing down the streets of Dodge City a hundred years ago. Yes. That’s right. About twelve o’clock noon is when it happened. Right out there [Points at the court yard] in the court yard. I was making my rounds in the building when I heard some shouting and came out to see what all the fuss was about and found about a dozen 141 residents and guests standing off to one side. They were watching something. A few of them were cheering. Others were screaming in protest. I couldn’t see what it was they were watching at first until I got a little closer. But by that time, Mr. Barnes and Mr. Windsor were already walking – pacing – away from one another. Once I saw the guns in their hands, I ran, shouting at them to stop but... [Sniffles and cries] Excuse me. Can I go now? That’s all the statement I really want to give if you don’t mind... Betsy Miller: I was out there when Oscar got upset. I couldn’t hear everything that Mr. Windsor said. It was something about their friendship, or lack thereof, I suppose. Well whatever it was made him right angry and he got up from where he was sitting. But when Mr. Windsor got up, Oscar went back inside. No. Mr. Windsor didn’t follow him. Frank Stratton Jr.: Well my eldest son, Frank and his youngest boy, Frankie was there visiting me. They came about eleven o’clock or so and sat with me in the court yard, a little after Oscar went inside. The weather was fair, not quite as hot as it had been last week. We sat for a bit talking about Frank’s job and such. Then just as Frankie was telling me about school, Oscar came back out. [Laughs] Frankie asked if it was cowboy day. Earl was standing in the middle of the court yard waiting for him. To be honest, I didn’t even see him standing there until Oscar met him there. There was a minute where they looked at each other, like they hadn’t seen one another for a good long while. My son asked me what was going one, but I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t help but watch them fellas standing there. Two gunslingers, they were. I weren’t the only one who was gawking at them. Everyone else was too. Before you know it, there was a group of people huddled on one side of them like we was watching some sort of game. Oscar and Earl shook hands then turned their back on each other and began to pace in opposite directions. They was taking big ol’ strides, one I know I couldn’t take even if I could still walk proper. I recon it was about twenty steps –or paces, I suppose – that they took. Once they got to the end of them paces they turned to each other 142 and shot. The sound damn near scared my son to death, but Frankie thought it was right entertaining. Earl holstered his gun and watched Oscar fall to the ground. I thought it was a joke. That maybe there was blanks in them pistols. But something – a feeling – said otherwise. I knew the Oscar Barnes was dead, and he died right over yonder [Points to the court yard] in that patch of grass. No. Nobody tried to stop it. We all just watched. Mrs. Harley came runnin’ up shortly after, hollerin’ for them to stop, but she was a little late. By the time she got up to Oscar, he was gone. I think she checked his pulse to make sure. I could feel my son’s hand on my shoulder and I looked up and saw he was cryin.’ Frankie looked shocked, but not upset in the least. Everyone else, ‘cept Mrs. Harley, had the same look on their face. They were apathetic. One of the people who lived here was just shot to death by another and no one seemed to be upset. It was like it was meant to be or something. Then it started to rain... I didn’t even see the clouds gathering before hand, but the sky just opened up and spilt out a tremendous downpour. The rain made the barrel of Oscar’s pistol steam up as he laid there still as can be. No. I didn’t see where Earl Windsor went. Everyone was looking at Oscar, just wondering if he was really dead – which he was. I don’t think we even noticed he was gone until Mrs. Harley asked where he was when she didn’t see him after checking on poor ol’ Oscar. Benson started to shout at us then, telling all of us that we were a bunch of fools and that we shoulda seen this comin.’ I hate to say it, but the mean ol’ bastard was – is – right. The strangest thing about it – which I know it’s hard to take the measure of something like this and even harder to determine what the strangest thing is – was that when all off us took our eyes off Oscar to look around for Earl, Oscar’s gun had done disappeared. That’s right. The damn thing vanished into thin air. It was there one minute, but once we looked away; poof ! It was gone. It was the damndest thing I think I have ever seen in my life, sir. The rest of the testimonies all coincide with the same scenario; the man that was referred to as Earl Windsor had fled the scene of the crime after he “murdered” Oscar Barnes. Despite the eye witness reports, the investigation could not prove foul play. No murder weapon was foundÉnor was there a bullet retrieved from the entry wound in Mr. Barnes’ body. The whereabouts of Mr. Windsor remain a mystery. -JKW 143 ichael lives in Virginia with his wife and Welsh corgi. He is in the process of putting finishing touches on his first novel and has written short stories and serialized graphic novels for Ronin Studios and Dial R. Talking the Untimely Demise of Uncle Sam Trevor Richardson This is Highway One. I see a Mexican vendor working a fruit stand that sells pickled freedom in glass jars. The sign says they’re a dollar and a quarter. Down in L.A. the population is made up of giant ants colonizing the sand and building up out of the desert. In Monterey, at the Naval Academy, the ants go marching in single file lines. Santa Cruz has a prostitute named Eden who says, “I’ll let you tend my garden for the right price,” but she’ll banish you if you don’t have the currency. There’s a record store in San Diego called the Record Store. They sell the cloned brains of Jim Morrison, John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix. For five easy payments of the still beating hearts of four immigrants, a pound of flesh, three gumballs and a mail order proof of citizenship you can have anyone reprinted and sold to you in a glass of formaldehyde. George W. Bush says, “I just bought Richard Nixon.” And Father Cannonball, who likes to blast himself ass first over the moon and into the child pool with his knees folded up to his chest, just bought his seventy times seventh copy of Jesus Christ. Driving up Highway One I stopped off to help a half-naked old man who had been beaten and robbed. When I sat him up his head was bare but I knew who he was even without the hat. I asked Uncle Sam what happened to his colorful suit and why he was wearing a burlap sack. He said, “I hocked the suit to make it to Hollywood and the hat for cocaine money.” I tell him to hop in and he bleeds into my felt seats. Uncle Sam tries to introduce himself, but I stop him and say, “Don’t worry, I know who you are, the name’s Jack Vagrant. Just call me Jack, none of that Mr. Vagrant crap.” Out near San José there’s a Mexican vendor throwing up beside a stand 145 that is trading ACME Coyote immigration kits for a steel bullet vibrator and a Hazmat suit. When we pull the car to the shoulder Uncle Sam screams, “Which way to Winston-Salem? We want to buy our cigarettes factory direct!” The vendor says he’ll show us the way if we’ll just take him as far as Kentucky Fried Chicken. I tell him it’ll be a piece of cake, there’s one on the corner. “No, no, Kentucky, the state Kentucky. I want to buy my chicken direct from factory.” So we spun it east and crossed over the chocolate ice cream peaks of the Rocky Mountains. Uncle Sam says, “I give up on Hollywood, I’m too old. That town chewed me up and spit me out.” The sun sets and Father Cannonball explodes out of the western sky and bounces off of the moon, landing on his back in Savannah, Georgia, like a flipped insect. We’re on our way past the non-refundable highway now. This is the only way out of the Safety Factory. The Vendor says he doesn’t remember entering the Safety Factory, but if you haven’t gone in than you can be damn sure that you haven’t made it out. If you don’t know than you are maybe already there, but to be sure you should bite your thumb at the Unknown Soldier and see what color your blood flows. If this does not work you must promptly paint your face with your thumb like the Sioux warrior, strip off your clothes and jump six times followed by a backward rain dance around the monument. When you finish and have certainly died then you will have made it out of the Safety Factory and into the Void. Here we are in Memphis. I bought my love a rose, but it was smug and I fed it to a black cat. We kicked the Vendor to the Kentucky curb and huffed it on fumes out to Winston-Salem where we brainwashed the driver of a Camel delivery truck with Uncle Sam’s cheap propaganda and some nicotine patches on each temple. He promptly insisted that we trade my car for his truck and we headed out toward DC with a ten year supply of Camel Turkish Golds pre-packaged, shrink wrapped tobacco in 200 cigarette cartons. We camped with the Cherokee on the Appalachians and used the cigarette cartons for logs because the firewood was wet. When Uncle Sam was ready to go he peed out the fire and pissed off some Indians, as per his habit. He laughed and sneezed red snot on his V-neck tee shirt. We took the Cherokee with us to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier biting our thumbs till they bleed blue and dancing backwards in the nude with pigeon feathers in our hair and Phillip Morris on our lips. When the Reflecting Pool flooded us out to sea we were not surprised, but did not expect the water to 146 smell like septic tank. The last thing I saw before it all went green was Uncle Sam straddling the Washington Monument and stroking his marble erection as if he could make Lincoln jealous. We washed up on the shores of Liberty Island and were apprehended by black suited ninjas with FEMA tattooed in white across the front of their masks. They dragged us to Guantanamo Bay and held us as terrorists without trial. In the sex pyramid nude distraction of four illegal immigrants a faux Al Qaeda predator and Uncle Sam poking the ones that weren’t looking. I snuck out an open door, punched a guard in the throat, burned down an outhouse, kissed the president’s daughter and hijacked a small pontoon plane that took me to Canada. I had no desire to remain in Canada for long and so I promptly stuffed myself into a beer keg and crossed illegally back into America via Niagara Falls. The reprinted brain bots of the Hale Bop Suicide Cult were hot off the presses from the Record Store and picked me up in the Partridge Family tour bus. Outside Astoria our journey was cut short when the bus driver reached over with a metallic arm and tried to remove my genitalia with a claw clamp hand. He told me it was for my own good and I dove through an open window, landing softly in the lap of Eden. I shouted, “Have you followed me?” She was sitting on the back of a red dragon that dragged its belly through the asphalt shoulder of the highway. Her legs were spread apart and she sat on his jagged spine plating with a moan. Eden told me she was the Whore of Babylon and she had come to make love to the son of the one that would bring the end. I tell her I left him in Guantanamo Bay and she snaps her fingers and rides the beast into the sea. I knocked a mime off of an invisible bike and pedaled into New York. On the corner I see a street performer playing a poodle like bag pipes and I watched as the resurrected dead pour out of Penn Station groaning their hunger for the right kind of brains. Pedaling my invisible bike through the crowd I’m shocked when they don’t even try to touch me. There’s a woman bending herself into coils like a snake until she pops a water balloon with her spine. A black stink slick sprays across the pavement and I ask her what it is, she says, “It’s the blood of Exxon Mobil shareholders and, for your information, all of the zombies ignored you because you have the wrong sort of brain.” “What is the right sort of brain?” I ask her, feeling left out. “You have to want a top floor business office and a secretary blowing your load under your desk. You have to want to buy a yacht with the money you swindled out of small businesses and whatever you saved by outsourcing to India and leav147 ing the blue collar workers shivering for whiskey in the dark.” “I don’t know what I want. Sometimes I think this new, senile Uncle Sam should just finish stroking the Washington Monument and blow his load over the whole damn country. It would be the honest way for us to go out, washed away under a flood of jizz as we all individually died in pursuit of our orgasmic future.” The Contortionist says, “That’s why the risen dead don’t want you.” I ask, “Do you know the way out of the Safety Factory?” “Did you bite your thumb at the Unknown Soldier and dance a rain dance naked and backwards?” “Yes.” “Did you paint your face with your blood like a Sioux warrior?” “Yes.” says. “Then you should be out of the Safety Factory by now,” the Contortionist “What about you, are you out?” “I was on my way out when I got pregnant by the American Dream. He sometimes visits us in the night and makes us have his baby. We can only raise it where the business is or the child will die.” “Where is your baby now?” I ask her. “He grew up quick and mean and built the Record Store before he ran for Congress.” The risen dead swarm out of alleyways all around me and tear the Contortionist into five pieces. I run away screaming and hide in an abandoned apartment building with boarded up windows. I mumble under my breath, “The Contortionist had the wrong kind of brain. People only die like that inside the Safety Factory. I’m still not out.” “Do you mind?” 148 In a dark corner on the other side of the room is a bug infested rusty spring mattress where the Easter Bunny is giving it to the Tooth Fairy from behind. He grunts in between heaving breaths, “We need to procreate, it’s the only way to keep kids dreaming, it’s the only way to keep imagination alive!” The moaning Tooth Fairy says, “The risen dead have come back for their candy and molar money and children do exactly what textbooks and Mario demand.” Breaking down some boards with my foot I leap onto the fire escape as the Tooth Fairy starts to shriek, “Oh yeah! oh yeah!” and I wonder why people always sound like they have just figured out the answer to a confusing question while they’re in the middle of the act. Down on the street at a bus stop Albert Einstein is knitting a red scarf with his theory of relativity stitched in blue. “Oh yeah!” he shouts and yells up at me, “Mickey Mouse is the Sixth Reich and God was a dinosaur. Uncle Sam follows Hollywood because that’s the new propaganda. And the Whore is Eden because the beginning is the end. When you bleed at honor and dance naked in the past you can break through the barriers. Outside of the Safety Factory anything is possible.” Does this mean I have made it out? Is this is life in the Void, where relativity is still a theory and laws do not exist? In the flash burn power surge of the Void I wander back down the avenue. Following a gang of traveling Hari Krishnas leads me into Union Station. This is New York, the Big Apple. I’m a fruit worm in the steam manholes of the city. I can see the rat people. The Rat People are climbing the gutter drains into the New York Times and running the country’s information. The Good Ones try to fight them off, but the Rat People are strong and slick. They know how to get you. The Rat People can bite your ankles from under your bed and then you are one of them. They spread their disease fast. I’m with the Rat People watching the Holy Spirit of Corporate Takeovers move in flame tongues at Pentecost Park. The street bums beg for mercy and ransom whiskey with the threat of spreading their disease. A drunkard waves a Coke Bottle full of rat blood under the nose of a Korean convenience store clerk that begs for his life with tears. This is Central Park and the trees are singing the National Anthem. The trees are singing the proverbs of the Torah. The trees are purple and smile the blood of patriots. The trees are mean here and I have to play 149 chess against Death for my freedom. You have to win your freedom every day here in the park. This is Central Park and the Rat People are growing as a demographic. Cigarette ads in magazines are now directed toward them and the trees tell me cigarettes are sold to the ones we hate the most. A large red-eyed elm says that we will kill them slowly if nothing else. Now I see a fountain spouting fresh oil from the veins of an OPEC charity stealer. This is New York. This is New York. I’m in New York. I’m right here in New York and a cab driver with the face of a dragon and the hands of a rabbit honks and gives me the finger. And now my hands are guns and I go firing at everything that moves. When your hand is a .357 Magnum flipping the bird means blowing flaming chunks of metal at the pigeons. The Rat People are eating the pigeons and calling it a social service like an inverted Pied Piper. They’re moving up Wall Street now and have already infected the Public Library and the entire Park. They don’t mess with Harlem. I don’t mess with them. And now I see a bearded lady using two living rattlesnakes as nylons by shoving her feet down their throats. She’s kind enough to point her toes to avoid tearing and she hooks their fangs around a belt made from a bicycle chain. The Gray Man passes me with a wave as he steers a cab down Fifth Avenue. I’m swimming with the fishes now, swimming with fleshy pink fins and a black cloth tail. I’m swimming toward the Lady on High. She supervises me. I tell her that she has large feet and a pole up her ass and I get her to crack a slight smile, which is hard this day and age, you can rarely get Liberty to laugh. Under her island there is a cave that leads to the heart of the earth. You can find the pipeline and ride the waterfall to the molten core. I ride Subterranea’s Niagara and land with a plop in the lake of fire. Millions of souls wail and scream in the flames and I see an entire section cordoned off for the souls of ex-military men, dictators, politicians, oil executives and plastic surgeons. And I scream through fish gills when I see that the demons are funhouse clowns and I am actually a mammal. Here I am in New York, the epicenter of the Human Quake. I’ve just broken through the surface of the earth and still found myself right here. I thought I was out, but apparently I still haven’t escaped the Safety Factory. Nothing is what it seems. We’re not even fixed in one place in the universe. We’re actually hurtling 150 through space at top speeds -- terminal velocity. Earth is a tennis ball, no shit, earth is a bowling ball. What happens when we knock down the pins? No, earth is a bullet, earth is a missile, earth is a rolling stone, a broken bone, a disconnected phone, a lost baby tooth -- earth is in the bag. Earth is in the Tooth Fairy’s black bag and she’s mating with the Easter Bunny to try to germinate a new race of long-dreaming children. We’re flying through space in that bag. What happens when you reach the end of the line? This isn’t a train. There is no end of the line. There is no stitch in time. What the hell do you save nine of, anyway? Time is not a straight line. Earth is in orbit around the sun and the sun is in orbit around the universe, orbiting its bright center. The heart of the galaxy pumps gravity like blood. That’s it. I am in the veins of outer space pumping around and around its body, around its heart. I am hemoglobin. I am red and white cells. No, I am platelets. No, shit, I’m a clot. I am a hemorrhage. I am the AIDS virus. No, I am poison. The Rat People designed me that way. They play me against myself. They play good against bad. They’ve played it so long that there is no black and white anymore. The chess pieces have all faded to gray. There is no longer any good or evil. There is only In-Between. Earth is purgatory. I am an angel and an imp, the twisted blue-steel face of an industrial strength Jack-O-Lantern. I am a pawn and a king. They designed me that way. They invented America and Hitler. I watch the stone gray walls breathe me in and out. This warehouse is a heaving, breathing, seething, teething brick lung and I am the factory pickle jar skirting down rust-iron rollers. The wall bubbles and pops and on the other side is the Void. This is the tunnel. This is the long downhill kiddy park slide toward the white light. This is the pathway to Subterranea. The earth is a hollow egg. Growing in the yellow glob molten lava chicken yolk are the souls of the damned, writhing over each other and shaking the surface world when they rattle their claptrap chains. An agonized woman sealed away in Subterranea’s fires wails and moans shaking the support pylons with her melt151 down hands. There was just a tsunami in the Philippines . A small, slant-eyed fisherman was washed under his boat. Now he stands beside me and says, “Have I made it out?” Yes, you have escaped the Safety Factory. But those that escape it in death all wind up here. You did not bite your thumb at the Unknown Soldier, dance naked backward and paint the war paint with your blood. You are not free. You are only fuel for the fire. “How deed yoo escape?” asks a fiery puddle that was a Frenchman. I didn’t, I’ve gotten close, but they track me with their instruments. Their implants are scattered throughout my body and if any of those of us that are tagged and marked should happen to rebel then they can hit a button and give us cancer. “What sort of the cancer?” asks the Philippines fisherman. Any sort they want, brain, lung, stomach, bone, prostate, cock, balls?anything. The burning form of a once former podiatrist stands out of the human fire and says, “I didn’t know there was a cock cancer.” This is Subterranea where everyone is freed from the Safety Factory. This is Subterranea where everyone is a prisoner of their freedom. This is Subterranea, where everyone’s a critic. Here you no longer have to work to buy your freedom, security and sanctuary. Here you are liberated from safety and imprisoned by the human furnace. This is the earth’s core. An oil drill cracks through the ceiling and rocks crash down all around us. A billion voices cry out, “Free us, free us, we used to be human. I want to go back.” But there is no going back once you’re in Subterranea. I glued a coffee mug to my hand and burned a swizzle stick to the church mast sailing down Broadway. I drank a cigarette and smoked away with Johnny Walker into the Milky Way wild abandon douche canal. That’s the only way to be Born Again in the Safety Factory. And if you want to see the end of the safety then just flip the catch and pull the Cold War Russian Roulette Trigger. 152 Tell ‘em Jack Vagrant sent you and they’ll give you a discount on nicotine bullets. I can see a popped collar on the Metrorail and a greased-shellacked hair-do in Grand Central. I can smoke myself a reality and trip myself a poison-pill tongue tip tranquility. And that’s the new Hookah Lounge of the Headless Horseman. Now there’s Uncle Sam sitting across from me in my dark room. He’s wearing a seven-foot scale model of the Washington Monument like a lesbian hayride strapon around his lap. And the New York Times they are a-changin?? The New York Times they are a-endin’ and if the truth is in you then you’ll taste it on your lips when God tea bags you ‘til you bleed. The Statue of Liberty is showing some shoulder as she wades her way toward the lost-show emigration nights of Ellis Island. Uncle Sam meets here with his strap-on, still new with the sales tag that says, “Made in Washington DC.” This, after all, is the only way he can hope to please so much woman. And don’t you know that Mt. Sinai is Mt. Rushmore and the Burning Bush was the start of America’s Presidential Dynasty? Uncle Sam is up there on Washington’s big skull flipping off his boots and removing his hat to worship on that hallowed ground. Kneeling in front of the Burning George W. Bush, he says, “Forgive me, father, for I have sinned. I took Lady Liberty to Ellis Island and sodomized her with the Washington Monument.” And the Burning Bush says, “Be not afraid, my son, this is the New World Order and I have commanded that in the New World Order all good Americans will flip up her toga and sodomize Lady Liberty.” Now the scene gets hazy and I can smell patriotism like an overheated radiator pouring anti-freeze green steam out of my ears as it grease-coats my walls. Now Subterranea opens up out of the wall vent and Dear old Uncle Sam enters in a tuft of flame wearing a black cape and rose-colored glasses. He smiles at me showing a row of jagged, sharp teeth and grows taller by two or three feet. His head itches the ceiling and his eyes breathe in his shadow mule. Uncle Sam tosses the cape off of his shoulders and his body is a liquid elephant from the waist down with the shoulders and arms of a stone-crocked donkey. He grows the Elephant Head on his right shoulder and trumpets his trombone trunk while the Donkey Head tumors out on his left shoulder saying, “Hee-haw, hee-haw, he loves to walk too tall.” 153 The mutant three-headed joker man chimera laughs-brays-trumpets and says, “I’ve upgraded to include the Darkness and the Light. I’m paying by praying and I’m neighing, braying the New America.” Panicking, I crawl into a corner to orgasm my tears onto the floor crying, “But you were Sam Wilson, the cover-front man of the 1812 Revolution soldiers. You were a hero with a blue collar and a meat factory.” And there, behind the lantern, I can see Subterranea trickling through the Void of the kerosene wick fire. In the orange-out blues a man without skin and a striped top hat says, “Let me out! let me free! I want to go back.” The sobbing Skeleton Man in a scorched overcoat tails jacket pulls at his chin hair. When the Beast sees him it disappears into its cape and out of the warehouse. Now I’m alone with the quiet temper of the Void. This is not the Safety Factory, this is not Subterranea. And I have not yet crossed over into the tunnel downhill slide, this is Oblivion and what happens in Oblivion stays in Oblivion. Now I stand in the meek chemotherapy lab bunkers that share a wall and a load bearing stud with Subterranea. This is the last gangrene Outpost of the Safety Factory. Here they handle all of the breeding, regeneration of limbs and resurrection of the dead. The transplanted cloned brain of Thomas Edison, only $19.95 at the Record Store, works the fingers of a chrome-plated robot that burns the bodies of homeless people, Mexicans and bull shit for fuel. He is repairing the damaged circuits of the Stock Market hive mind server. Uncle Sam recommended an upgrade and the Cyborg Edison begins replacing the Server’s copper wiring with gene-spliced nerve endings torn from the living brains of recently lobotomized illegal immigrants, Iraqi carpenters, journalists and crazies. Cyborg Edison says, “We must continually pursue more and more human technology. I want my cell phone to talk to me instead of ringing. My computer should smile at me and the Stock Market Collective Server should think on wires of human tissue. This is American self-actualization.” His iron claw fingers dig another nerve ending from the occipital region of a Catholic nurse’s lower cortex. Cyborg Edison stares at it vacantly through cellophane brake light reflector eyes and says, “That’s a big one, this will definitely do.” “You see, my dears,” he says to the twitching pack of brain dead spare parts 154 carriers, “We build up imaginary visions like money and then they hire someone like me to help them push it through the technology womb into existence. My dears, we build things like Stock Markets and watch them take on more life than even you or I have. Then we watch them run away and we have to catch them in bear traps and drag them back for me to repair. We built the Stock Market Server and watched it find so much identity all on its own that it has even gotten depressed and tried to take its own life on several occasions.” A blue flame sharpens out of the Cyborg Edison’s index finger and he welds the nerves into the Server. Lights flash awake and The Server moans, “No, not again. Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose in this world? What are you doing to me? What is the meaning of life? Why was I created?” And Cyborg Edison shouts, “It’s alive! It’s alive!” Climbing through a manhole like one of the Rat People brings me to Washington Square Park. I can see the Big Cop right now. When I’m in it I can see him clearly. The Big Cop is invisible to all, but he becomes apparent to me while I’m in the trip. The Big Cop is invisible, he moves like an amorphous wisp of cloud. He moves as spirit and drops down on those he wishes to use. I can see the Big Cop. He moves like a ghost on decent, peace-serving enforcers and transforms them into brutish Huns, Genghis Khans, and Gestapo drones of the Dream. The Big Cop turns decent social servants into blind, bullying wielders of the taser, the baton, the mace. The Big Cop turned the riot squad protectors into the mob tactic foot soldiers of Detroit, New York and LA. They became the murderous law wolves that sprayed tear gas on Chicano Rights activists or rounded up beatniks in the park. The Big Cop used them to spray down hippies with fire hoses and arrested sit-in black boy protesters and Dr. King. The Big Cop moves as a cloud and possesses. He turned decent National Guard boys into the sort that fired live rounds into the college students of Kent State. They fuel the fires of the Big Cop in Subterranea with the bodies of the doomed. We are, all of us, doomed. The Big Cop will find us one day. Maybe in a routine traffic stop gone wrong or when you say something he deems treasonous. And right now, this moment, I’m sticking out my thumb on Greenwich Avenue, hoping to hitchhike back to Highway One. I’m hoping to go back to the beginning, to try to start over. Maybe this time I can make it out of the Safety Factory. Maybe this time we can all get it right. 155 revor Richardson is the author of American Bastards, his first novel published by Inkwater Press in Portland, Oregon. The novel personifies the American collective memory through a modern fairy tale for grown ups that crosses into other worlds, encounters American icons and folk heroes and deals with the biggest of life’s challenges: personal identity. Trevor’s work aims to combine satire, absurdism and philosophical dilemmas in a way that is eye opening and entertaining rather than one or the other. He is a founding member of the Seahorse Rodeo Folk Revival, Editor-in-Chief of its literary endeavors and, above all, is always on the lookout for new talented people to work with as a writer and an artist. Trevor can be reached at [email protected]. Made in Portland, Oregon June 12, 2011 158

Unlocking the Sexy in Surrender: Using the Neuroscience of Power to Recharge Your Sex Life “Our marriage is good except for the sex.” “I just want our sex life to be like it was when we were first dating.” “Porn is much more exciting to me than my wife.” “We make sex a priority, but nothing we try seems to help.” If you can relate to any of these statements, you are far from alone. Until now, couples and even therapists have attempted to address diminished desire by focusing on all the wrong places. Anger, neglect, financial problems, poor communication — the list of the falsely accused is long. In Unlocking the Sexy in Surrender, Dr. Brandon shows that the true answers are actually tucked away in our brains. How are the brains of men and women different, and how do these differences impact the way we look at sex? Dr. Brandon expertly combines her decades of clinical experience with the latest findings from neural science and sex research to reveal a startling truth that may change the way you look at sex in your long-term relationship. If you love your partner, but wish the sex could be better, then this is the book for you. Reclaiming Desire: 4 Keys to Finding Your Lost Libido – I’m so busy and tired, how can I find time for sex? – How can I go from mommy one minute to passionate lover the next? – What medicines or natural herbs can I take to improve my libido? At some point in their lives, most women experience a decline in their sexual desire. Yet despite the vast number of books devoted to sex, surprisingly few focus on the problem of low libido. Fewer still offer any practical advice to the woman who has lost her sex drive and longs to find it again. Finally available in paperback, Reclaiming Desire presents the holistic approach that gynecologist Andrew Goldstein and clinical psychologist Marianne Brandon―co-founders of the Sexual Wellness Center in Annapolis, Maryland―use to successfully treat women with low libido. Capitalizing on their combined medical and psychological expertise, they reveal how a complex set of physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual factors―as well as specific life-changing events such as marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, divorce, and menopause―can affect female sex drive. Reading this book, women will come to understand that low libido isn’t “all in their heads”―or all in their bodies, for that matter. The problem is real and it’s diverse―but it’s curable. Monogamy: The Untold Story Monogamous relationships are firmly embedded in the framework of our society, and yet the divorce rate and common failures of intimacy in long-term relationships challenges the efficacy of this paradigm. Oddly, the concept of monogamy has been virtually ignored by mental health professionals, while anthropologists, sociologists, biologists, and zoologists have researched and explored the topic. Monogamy: The Untold Story presents not only the scientific research about the challenges of monogamy, but also the practical solutions to overcome them. In part one, the author explores sexual instincts and monogamy from an anthropological, biological, psychological, and social perspective. Part two offers men and women a step-by-step guide to enhancing passion and strengthening their intimate bond by capitalizing on their natural sexual instincts. Praise for Monogamy: the Untold Story by Dr. Marianne Brandon: “Intellectually substantial and down-to-earth useful. Brandon’s book will enhance your understanding as well as your love life.” – David P. Barash, Author of Strange Bedfellows: The Surprising Connection between Sex, Evolution, and Monogamy “brilliantly written, easy-to-use guide, couples will find ways to rejoice in monogamy despite incredible odds” – Stephen L. Braveman, Author of CPR for Your Sex Life: How to Breathe Life into a Dead, Dying, or Dull Sex Life “outlines practical steps with which couples can grow toward mature sexuality and deeper intimacy” – Julian Slowinski, Co-Author of the Sexual Male: Problems and Solutions

Jelia’s manner appears designed to draw foreigners, with her waist-length wavy hair and penchant for cutoff jeans and heels. Yet her coquettish demeanor turned severe and reserved as quickly as she switched to her native Visayan to talk a couple of new boyfriend she met recently. Leonor wasn’t shy about presenting her real-life identification and chatting over video, which reassured men that she wasn’t a scammer. For Leonor and other Filipina ladies in search of overseas husbands, a man’s readiness to send money quickly is a crucial sign of his potential. [newline]It’s often the anticipated beginning of the online mating ritual. - Thinking of worldwide mail order brides, men should detect the primary options for his or her search. - However, the extra actively the location is making an attempt to lure you in, the more you must take it with a grain of salt. - Read comprehensive reviews of in style marriage businesses and join the one that matches your requirements. - Assistance with visas, tickets, hotel reservations, embassy peculiarities may be shifted to professionals. - The next standards listed beneath may be assessed solely after registration. - Nonetheless, Filipinas, eager to marry American, Canadian, Australian, South Korean, along with different males are discovering loopholes to avoid what the law states. These web sites are known as “marriage” for a cause, after all! Describe your excellent bride, write down her qualities and options, clarify what kind of relationships you will have. That’s the best and the quickest method to discover a bride who will share your views. What sort of relationships are you planning to have? Russian mail order brides catalogue is filled with ladies who, mostly, search men to tie the knot with, but there are totally different instances. The Essential Of Mail Order Brides Pretty a lot all nations around the globe accept the idea of on-line dating websites, enabling its residents to think about their soulmates this fashion. Frequently, the marriage brokers are connected to worldwide relationship web sites that simplicity the re re looking out from starting to end. Of course, all of the web web websites talks about it need certainly to proceed with the primary tips of safety, supplying its customers with acceptable options and a top normal of safety. There are, in fact, two most typical approaches to meeting Russian mail order women. First, you’ll have the ability to go to Russia and look for your woman proper there. This is a great alternative to see Asian pretty girls face-to-face, talk, get to know one another better, and have a good time. Many males regard it as a kind of vacation with the advantages of meeting a possible partner. Common relationship websites often do not care about their users’ success in creating relationships. Unlike them, mail order brides websites provide all the wanted features and providers to make getting a international wife easier and quicker. How Mail Order Brides will Save You Time, Money, and Stress. From there, the method from first letter to marriage was a lot the identical as for males who obtained wives through their social networks again home. No, they aren’t, however there are some rules to comply with. Mail order bride legality largely is determined by your relationship. As a rule, low-cost mail order brides are thinking about critical relationships. Mail order brides services are apps and websites that cater to lonely women and men who are interested in beginning a family. These web sites hold huge catalogs of potential brides and grooms for you to select from. Leonor grew up in a rural area of the southern province of Davao, a city with just one home that was made of concrete and boasted home equipment like a fridge and washing machine. That home belonged to a lady who had married an American man she met via the mail. “To marry a foreigner was actually my ambition since once I was young—to have handsome and delightful kids and in addition to have a snug life,” stated Leonor. In the 15 years since Leonor and Dan met on-line, some things haven’t changed. Filipinas not need to sit down around and wait to be chosen, they usually now have far more access to these men’s advanced lives earlier than making a choice of their own. For many years, Western males picked Filipinas out of catalogues, deciding on from rows upon rows of hopeful women’s footage printed on cheap paper, like an odd yearbook or police lineup. That dynamic was simply starting to alter in 2001, when Leonor turned one of the first Filipina women to meet a Western associate online. Both of them provide a chance to like the profile of a woman, add it to favorites, ship the girl a letter, or launch a chat. However, there are additionally some distinctive options you won’t find on different relationship sites.

Hi, I am Nataly and I am the co-founder of Work It, Mom! I write the daily Work It, Mom! Blog where I talk about issues affecting working moms, goings on in our Work It, Mom! community, new site features, updates,and contests. I also share my own juggle between work and family and love to see members jump in with comments. Come and visit often! Nataly's profile on Work It, Mom! Categories: Your life I’m big in making lists and such so for years - many, many years actually - I’d try to sneak an hour to myself on December 31st, to go a coffee shop or a bookstore, and write down my New Year’s resolutions. I’d print them in neatly in a journal or my organizer and feel a wave of energy come over me, a sense of renewal and excitement to tackle them in the new year. My resolutions would vary from year to year but things like “lose some weight”, “stop being so stressed out”, and “quit (insert biting my nails, or playing with my hair, or biting my lip)” would invariably get on the list. I think they are worthy goals but the thing is, when it got to the end of that next year and I looked through my list the same thing would happen, over and over, like I was stuck in Groundhog Day: Most of my lofty, big resolutions remained unresolved and undone. I felt like crap, like a failure of some kind. And eventually I decided that feeling like crap wasn’t a good outcome of making New Year’s resolutions. So I stopped. Not making resolutions entirely, but making resolutions that were: -To NOT do something (e.g. biting my nails). I wanted my resolutions to be positive (e.g. keep my nails looking nice), vs. negative. -Related to how I look. I made this rule for myself and I have to say, it’s one of the best things I’ve done and I wish I had the wisdom to do it sooner. No resolutions about my weight or how my abs should look or where the fat on my butt should shift to. I get enough pressure to look amazing and thin and in shape from every magazine or TV show I glance at as a woman - no need to pressure myself. -Not immediately obvious in terms of how I’d achieve them. “I want to stress less” is a really general (although great, I admit) goal that doesn’t have any specific solutions in it. “I am going to go for a daily 20 minute walk” or “I am going to meet a friend for coffee when I am feeling stressed out and anxious” are specific solutions to the stress problem. So they get to go on the list. -Trying to fix something that I am pretty sure is not fixable. This is related to #2, but I am fairly certain that I will never have a flat stomach so after 33 years of life I’ve stopped making this a goal. I am sticking with my self-made rules this year. Really, I am. And I’ll prove it to you by sharing what resolutions I AM making in a follow-up post. But in the meantime, tell me: Do you make New Year’s resolutions? Do you write them down? Do you share them with others? Subscribe to blog via RSS

Probably because chicken is fucking delicious and pork is a no-no in Islam, KFC does incredibly good business in North Africa and the Middle East. KFC is so popular in the Arabic world that when people in Gaza were unable to get the Colonel’s secret recipe by normal means, people built a secret tunnel to smuggle the stuff up from Egypt. Last week, a group of Russians photographers apparently climbed the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. They hid from guards for four hours after the end of the visits and began to climb. According to one of the photographers, climb the pyramid can give punishment of one to three years. But it was worth it. “I was speechless,” he wrote. “I felt a creepy pleasure, an absolute happiness.” Right now, Egypt is in a weird place. President Mohammed Morsi is replacing the ousted Hosni Mubarek, and he’s being watched carefully by the Arab world, by Israel, by the US, UN and the people of Egypt. Shit’s about to blow up in the Middle East again, and Morsi is trying to balance loyalties… so when today he announced he was granting himself new powers like a complete lack of judicial oversight, it pissed of Egyptians and it pissed off the US State Department. No really, what a douche. Twenty four year old Moustafa “Big Mo” Ismail of Egypt officially has the title of the world’s biggest biceps. Apparently, he’s moving to America to have access to better training equipment to get SUPER DUPER BICEPS. Finally I would like to point out it kinda looks like he had breast implants, but in his arms. Most of the ancient pyramids in Egypt are pretty easy to find. They’re the really, really big pyramid shaped things in the middle of an otherwise fairly flat desert. But what about the reeeeeally old ones? The above image, spotted on Google Earth, may be a group of some of the first pyramids, well before the famous ones at Giza. So old that they’re nothing but worn down mounds. Two thousand years ago, Egypt was one of the great academic centers of the world. And now, one 19 year girl old named Aisha Mustafa has invented a quantum physics based propulsion system that would make the ancient Egyptian scholars proud, and it could represent the future of space travel. There is no shortage of information out there on the Great Pyramids of Egypt, but if you want an in-depth 3D exploration of the pyramids at Giza in your browser, you can take a look at Giza 3D. Pretty everyone has seen the Eye of Horus somewhere at some point. It’s been in every single movie, TV show, book and video game even remotely touching on anything to do with ancient Egypt, and it’s been turned into millions of cheap head shop pendants, but it’s more than meets the eye— it’s not just a cool symbol, but it’s a math problem. Egyptian husbands will soon be legally allowed to have sex with their dead wives - for up to six hours after their death. Archaeologists from Egypt and Sweden have unearthed the 1100 year old tomb of an ancient Egyptian female singer in The Valley of the Kings. The find is the first woman found to have been buried in this royal patch of ground who has not been royalty. Earlier this year, angry Egyptians ousted Hosni Mubarek from power, and in the interim, the country has been ruled by a military council. Now pissed off (surprise surprise) that the interim council is fucking things up, Egyptians have once again taken to the streets in the past couple months to demand the military council step down in favor of… somebody. And in the clashes between protesters and police, a cache of priceless hundreds year old documents have been destroyed.

Photo: Vivid Images/Getty Images By Amy Osmond Cook When it comes to gifts, I am an expert-at receiving them. I love gifts of any kind … from other people. (No, I'm not going to buy myself a $285,000 pink Bentley like Paris Hilton did last year.) The problem is, when it comes to giving gifts, I am a nervous wreck. Gift giving represents two things: (1) that you care about a person enough to give a gift, and (2) that you know a person well enough to give something that he or she will like. Mess one of those up, and it does some damage to your relationship. Related: Valentine's Day Gift Ideas Take, for example, the gift I gave to my husband five years ago. We were newly married, and I wanted to get him something personal and meaningful. He loves golf, and he's a funny guy-so I thought the trick remote control golf ball (that you can move when your opponent is about to swing) was going to be a hit. I waited in anticipation as he opened the box and saw a momentary look of confusion before he masked it with a smile. He thanked me and said that he loved it, but the damage was done. In that one look, I knew that my gift had tanked. Fast forward five years. After watching him play golf (a lot!) and listening to his golfing adventures with his buddies (a lot more!), I would never give him a remote control golf ball. I now know that, for him, the rules of golf are sacred. A serious golfer never tries to move an opponent's ball-especially for a laugh. It violates one of the cardinal rules of sportsmanship. (So does laughing at someone when he shanks his shot - I found out the hard way!) My gift bombed because I didn't know my husband well enough. I knew that he loved golf, but I missed the intricate details. Stories like mine are a dime a dozen-a woman receives a vacuum cleaner from her husband, and she runs to her room and cries. A man receives a toolbox and feels ashamed that he doesn't know how to use the tools inside. For better or worse, we attach special meaning to gifts, especially over the holidays. So if you want to put some currency in your partner's emotional bank account this holiday season, buy . . . Related: 10 Gift Ideas 1. Something intimate. Take note if your partner voices his wish list for Christmas. If he cares enough to say what he actually wants, paying attention to that will make him feel valued and understood. If he doesn't have a Christmas wish, try to find something that will have special meaning between the two of you. Still have those Angels tickets from your first date? Frame them! You can also make a gift meaningful by giving to something your partner cares about. For example, many celebrities, like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, care deeply about charitable causes and prefer donations to their favorite charities to extravagant gifts. 2. Something valuable. Take this relatively. If you want to take your relationship to the next level, give your partner something that says, "You are so valuable to me, I would sacrifice anything to have you in my life." That's what women hear when their boyfriends buy them expensive jewelry or spend all day helping them cook. It's not the money or the time, exactly-it's the fact that someone would sacrifice to give them something beautiful or meaningful. You don't have to be like Nick Cannon and buy your significant other a $400,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom or pull a Jude Law and buy your love a $200,000 diamond-and-sapphire ring, but it should be better than the pack of bubble gum my friend got from her boyfriend one year. If you're like me, gift giving is a nail-biting phenomenon. That said, if you give your partner something meaningful and valuable, you can move that relationship dial to the next level. Then again, you could always take your chances and buy a pair of two-person mittens that Chelsea Handler and Chuy are sporting this year! Amy Osmond Cook, Ph.D. is a faculty associate at Arizona State University, where she teaches Communication and English classes. She is the publisher of Sourced Media Books and co-author of Hope After Divorce and Full Bloom: Cultivating Success. Amy and her husband, Jeff, have five children and look forward to welcoming baby #6 in April 2012. For more information about Amy, please visit amyosmondcook.com.

Mexican standoff: the battle of Chichen Itza Since being named as one of the Seven New Wonders of the World, the Mayan temple has been the focus of an ownership dispute between a local family and those who want it to be returned to the people. David Usborne reports from Yucatá* Wednesday 07 November 2007 Even before the sun has begun to heat the pale stones of the Temple of Kukulkan pyramid and the adjacent Great Ball Court, the daily invasion of the Chichen Itza, the archeological jewel in the heart of Mexico's Yucatá* peninsula that – 1,000 years ago – was one of the largest city-states of the Mayan world, has begun. They traipse in not via the visitors' entrance but via litter-strewn paths through the surrounding woods. By the time the actual tourists arrive, either from their rooms in the few nearby hotels or on day-trip buses from the beaches of Cancun two hours away, this first human onslaught will be complete. They are the hundreds of vendors who every day erect their stalls all across the site, hoping to scrape a living selling so-called handicrafts which, in fact, are mostly kitsch souvenirs made in China. Even the barely aware visitor will sense that all is not quite as it should be at Chichen Itza. Its 100 acres can, on some days, feel like a seething bazaar of hawkers and child beggars. Serenity is elusive as you try to conjure in your mind the magnificence of what once stood here, or appreciate the ancient skills involved in placing the temple in direct correlation to the rays of the sun during the spring and autumn equinoxes, or in erecting the El Caracol Observatory to track the movement of the stars. The problem is partly one simply of Chichen Itza struggling to cope with its newfound fame. It is four months since it was designated one of the Seven New Wonders of the World in a global competition that invited people to vote via the internet. The other sites to win the honour included the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal and the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. The Chichen Itza archaeological park is now at risk of being overwhelmed by a new influx of tourists – and of vendors hoping to lighten their wallets. What most visitors do not know is that beneath the crisis of the vendors is a far more profound struggle over who is actually in charge of the park. As they file through the turnstiles, they are setting foot not on government property but on land owned by the Barbachanos, a prominent Yucatá* family. Since the results of the Seven Wonders vote was announced in July, Chichen Itza has been plunged into a dispute over its ownership, pitting the Barbachanos against the federal government. The row is as bitter as any Mexico has seen in decades, and echoes the raw class warfare that triggered the national revolution of 1910. The story of Chichen Itza's guardianship is already long and tangled. Barely 100 years ago, it was little more than a cattle ranch. True, the wider world knew of its special significance thanks to the US archaeologist John Lloyd Stephens and the British illustrator Frank Catherwood who, in 1843, stumbled on the ruins – then mostly buried in the jungle – and published a book, Incidents Of Travel In Yucatá*. But it was only in 1894 that Edward Thompson, the American consul in the city of Merida, bought the land and began concerted excavations, sending treasures to the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. Thompson soon found himself accused of illegal smuggling and the Mexican government summarily expropriated his home, the Hacienda Chichen, and all his land on which the temples stood. Years later, after Thompson had died back in the US, a new government dropped the original charges and returned the property to his heirs. They, in turn, decided to sell it in 1944. The buyer was Fernando Barbachano Peon, a grand-nephew of a former governor of Yucatá*. His commitment to opening up Chichen Itza to the outside world, which included building two hotels just beyond the limits of the site, earned him a reputation as the first pioneer of tourism, not only in Yucatá* but across Mexico. His legacy, you would think, would earn the whole family the eternal gratitude of the nation. However, that is far from the mood today. Within days of the Seven Wonders vote, the secretary of the parliamentary culture committee, the left-winger Jose Alfonso Suarez del Real, publicly demanded that the land be returned to the people. He even used the toxic word expropriation. "This has unleashed a national polemic," he said recently. "We are all asking, 'How can a Wonder of the World have owners?'" It is a battle to which the outcome is uncertain. On one side is the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), which for years has overseen the management of the site as a tourist destination, as well as continuing excavations. On the other are the various heirs to the Barbachano's estate at Chichen Itza, who originally celebrated its designation as a new world wonder but now find themselves under siege as a direct result of it. Their choices are bleak: agree to sell the land to the government for a deflated sum, accept a land-swap deal or see their property simply seized without compensation. It does not help that the different Barbachanos cannot agree on what to do. The disputed landed is divided between three Barbachano heirs. They are Fernando Barbachano Herrero, owner of the smartest of the nearby hotels, the Mayaland; Hans Thies Barbachano, who inherited the largest chunk of the site from his grandfather; and Carmen Barbachano. She is the current owner of the Hacienda Chichen, which these days is a charming 20-room hotel on the edge of tourist park. She had expected to pass it to her niece Belisa Barbachano, who manages the property. Seated in a flowing white dress as the evening sun casts shadows on the front terrace of Hacienda Chichen, Belisa professes ignorance as to the exact negotiating positions of her relatives, with whom, she says, she communicates only rarely. For her, however, the thought of the INAH and, therefore, the government taking her home away, for money or not, is offensive in the extreme. "I would think for anyone in Mexico this would be trulyunacceptable and not just for us," she says. "The land has been sold over and over and over again. We are not asking to keep something that we got in some kind of dubious manner." The insult is made worse, she argues, because of the love shown by the Barbachanos in looking after the land over the years. She describes the efforts she and her husband have made to restore the ecology of the property with a massive tree-planting programme, and her social work with the neighbouring Mayan communities. And what, she asks, have the Barbachano family ever done to bring detriment to the ruins? "We have always respected the site. We have never engaged in anything inappropriate as regards our responsibilities," she says. "We could have built 2,000-room resorts here like in Las Vegas but we have not." Indeed, the family has done nothing to violate a 1972 presidential decree which made clear that, while land at historical sites across Mexico may be in private hands, any archaeological treasures situated upon them belong to the government and are therefore controlled by the INAH. Quickly, the conversation turns to the current conditions in the park and, in particular, the daily overrunning of it by vendors. "For my guests, going there can be an exhausting experience because of those people, pushing, asking for money. Really, it is a disgrace," she says. But if Ms Barbachano blames the INAH for failing to control the vendors and to better look after the park, the officials see it rather differently. Closeted in a tiny room down a dark corridor from the main visitors' entrance, the director of the INAH's Chichen Itza field office, Eduardo Perez de Heredia, protests that with talks under way, polemics from either side are not going to help. "We want things to be solved for the benefit of everybody and we want to find common ground," he suggests diplomatically. "The situation is very difficult. It's not about good people and bad people". But when it is suggested to him that the Barbachanos have indeed done a good job of looking after the ruins, he harrumphs: "They are not looking after it. We are looking after it. The Barbachanos are not specialists in looking after antiquities like these. We are." The problem of the vendors is for him a symptom of the muddled ownership question. He says that transferring the land rights to the INAH "will help with the vendors issue but it is about much more than that". He adds: "At least we won't have any more confusion of responsibilities. Everything will be much easier if everybody knows who owns it." Suggest, however, that successive governments have not perhaps had the best record when it comes to balancing a hunger for tourist dollars with a respect for the land and the environment – think of the over-concentrated development of Cancun, or the wrecking of the reef off Cozumel – and he looks briefly puzzled, saying: "The government can do atrocious things sometimes but private owners can do atrocious things too." However strenuously they might argue that they have been good stewards of Chichen Itza, the Barbachanos know politics and popular sentiment still lingering from the revolution are not on their sides. Listen, for example, to Guillermo Canul, a Mayan guide in the park for 30 years, who describes the Barbachanos as "friendly" and adds that "everything the government controls is not so good, because corruption is bad". And yet he is clear about what should happen here. "The government should have this land," he says. "Otherwise it is the same old story: the rich have the land and kick the poor people from it." As for Belisa Barbachano, she is unwilling to predict whether this time it will be her family that gets kicked off by the government. "They may or they may not, it's in God's hands," she adds. "I cannot live my life in fear of what comes next." That's some guestlist! Stunning images show huge dynastic wedding between Ultra-Orthodox Jewish families which attracted 25,000 guests Terror at Woolwich barracks: Attacker tried to behead and disembowel British soldier Anonymity order lifted for triple child killer David McGreavy jailed in 1973 World news in pictures Far-right French historian, 78-year-old Dominique Venner, commits suicide in Notre Dame in protest against gay marriage - 1 Terror at Woolwich barracks: Attacker tried to behead and disembowel British soldier - 2 Mothers' diets may harm IQs in two-thirds of babies - 3 Gay couple beaten in park urge MPs to moderate language on gay marriage - 4 After woman sells virginity for $780,000, here are the results of our prostitution survey BMF is the UK’s biggest and best loved outdoor fitness classes Win anything from gadgets to five-star holidays on our competitions and offers page.

AcoustiRack silent server cabinet arrived as promised, today, in two large cardboard boxes securely strapped to a double-length wooden palette. With the welcome assistance of the delivery driver, who as usual pointed out that he shouldn't be helping me unload but then proved perfectly willing to do just that, we dragged the thing off the truck and deposited it in my front garden - at which point he roared off leaving me looking at around 180Kg of hardware. I've never assembled a cabinet from flat-pack before, and I must admit to slight nagging doubts that the end result will be as rigid as the conventional, welded models I'm used to. The aluminium alloy extrusions that form the frame are impressively crenulated in cross section, however, and one assumes that a complex design like that isn't just to look good... Assembling the cabinet itself will be no harder than building flat-pack bedroom furniture, I would say, but every flat surface has to be covered in pre-cut self-adhesive foam pieces and that is going to be quite a task. foam itself is somewhat of a surprise, as it's significantly more dense than the "Magic Fleece" that was the state of the art in PC silencing back in February 2002, so a flat box containing enough to line the cabinet was actually too heavy to carry inside unassisted and I ended up unpacking it in front of the house. Having checked the specifications, it's going to add something in the order of 50Kg to the total weight of the cabinet, which will make even a routine task such as lifting off one of the side panels something of a chore... I hope that it lives up to expectations! I'm still waiting for the fan tray to assist in exhausting hot air from the top of the cabinet (for some reason currently out of stock nationwide), which is highly desirable given the thermal insulation qualities provided by the all-enveloping foam lining and the relatively warm environment of my kitchen, but in any case I don't intend to start the migration into the new cabinet quite yet as it also involves a migration of my home domain controller to the new Dell server hardware. However, I expect that I can start attaching the foam sheets ahead of time, a process that looks somewhat like assembling a soft, squishy jigsaw, and will report back on how that progresses. A few quick links, after a somewhat trying day... But my Acoustirack cabinet arrives tomorrow, at least, so watch this space for photos! unexpected refill - the infamous "Hot Coffee" mod for GTA: San Andreas has come back to haunt the manufacturer, Take-Two, following a judicial ruling that a lawsuit over the hidden X-rated elements of the game can indeed seek class action status. Red Hat responds - following Oracle's somewhat premature announcement of cheap commercial support for Enterprise Linux, Red Hat has said that it won't cut its own prices in order to compete. Given Oracle's might and Larry Ellison's cut-throat ethics, I think Red Hat may be facing problems... Feet in mouths - meanwhile, it seems that Oracle would be best served attending to the plank in its own eye before the speck in its brother's. Their MetaLink support site has been unavailable for most of the day, doubtless causing some considerable banging of fists on desks in the executive offices... Caveat emptor - the Small Print Project continues to gather the worst user agreements, including a clause in the license for the Flash Player that allows Macromedia's new owner Adobe to audit your PC at any time. "Agreements" like this are a worrying trend, and really needs keeping an eye on. Some like it hot - IBM has demonstrated two new cooling techniques for modern high thermal load microprocessors. The grandly named "high thermal conductivity interface technology" turns out to be merely a new method of spreading thermal paste with a corrugated chip cap, however... comment - TechWeb has been chatting to Microsoft about the clauses in the Vista license that prohibit transferring the OS to more than one new PC, and the responses are hardly reassuring. As suggested, it's basically one reassignment and then buy a new license, which is far from ideal. Puzzling evidence - a review at Time starts by saying that the new Firefox 2 leaves IE7 "in the dust", but the article itself doesn't seems to support this claim. In fact, the only significant advantage mentioned seems to be a feature that is only of use when the browser crashes and closes! The shock of the new - and talking of the new browsers, it seems that both are suffering from vulnerabilities familiar from their previous versions: FF2 has a memory corruption bug dating from June, and IE7 has a window injection flaw first encountered in IE6. Oops! Every veteran techie knows that black computers run faster, which is why Dell overtook Compaq in the late nineties when they revamped the PowerEdge range in black and gunmetal - a lead which has remained firm until HP's recent re-launch of their newly acquired ProLiant server hardware in a similar colour scheme. I see no reason why this law shouldn't apply to storage systems as well, and as the entire bottom half of my new kitchen server rack was already going to be black the obvious solution was to re-spray the front panel of my Clariion fibre channel DAE to match. SAN giant EMC obviously knows about the black rule, as when they acquired the Clariion company they immediately switched to the higher performance colour scheme, but my DAE dates from before the buy-out and is resolutely beige. Oh, the shame... It was nothing that a quick trip to the back garden with a can of matt black spray paint couldn't resolve, fortunately and, especially considering the minimal preparation I bothered with (not much more than a quick blast with an air duster) the result is excellent. As usual the camera flash has bleached the black to a charcoal shade, and the reflections from the silver EMI shield behind the panel are far more apparent in the photo, but in real life it matches the flat black of my newly acquired Dell PowerEdge 4400 server, APC SmartUPS 3000, and PowerVault 132T tape AcoustiRack that is going to house the new systems is due to arrive early next week, and as it has to be assembled from flat-pack before I can install the servers and infrastructure it's going to be busy for a while. Photos as and when... Links in the chain... Syadmin persecuted - the operator of the BitTorrent tracker Elitetorrents has been sentenced to sentenced to five months in prison, followed by five months of home detention, and a $3000 fine. the 23 year old pleaded guilty to various charges of criminal - anti-DRM activist group Defective By Design is using Amazon's own "tagging" system to flag products containing usage-limiting DRM, such as Blu-Ray players, HD DVDs, Microsoft's Zune and Apple's iPod. More power to them! I've got a little list - PC Pro has a list of the ten worst IT predictions, from the imminent death of email under a barrage of spam, to the death of spam itself, via old chestnuts from the industry's early days about the large size and small number of computers in the years to come. Repel boarders - the creator of an online program that generates fake airline boarding passes (an idea mooted by security guru Bruce Schneier back in 2003) has been visited by the FBI and instructed in no uncertain terms to cease and desist - but given the climate I think he was lucky... Update: It didn't end there - later in the day returned to Christopher's house with a search warrant, smashed their way into his house, and seized his computers and other belongings. Given that the boarding pass web site had already been taken down, and there was never any suspicion that he was actually involved in terrorist activities, this can only be interpreted as a purely punitive action designed to send a message to anyone who might wish to expose the wholly inadequate "security theatre" behaviour of the DHS and TSA. If the US government spent even a fraction of the effort in hunting and catching real terrorists attacks of 2001? The powers that be certainly don't seem to...) as they do persecuting citizens who dare to exercise the very freedoms that we are told are being defended by this behaviour, the world really would be a safer place. Yours Truly - the widely prophesised crack-down on You Tube's copyrighted content (which, face it, is most of it!) continues, with a DMCA notice from attorneys at Comedy Central instructing the site's operators to remove clips from political satire shows The Colbert Report and The Daily Show. Coming home to roost - criminally negligent practices on the part of UK banks have been condemned by the Information Commissioner, following revelations that customers' personal details are being disposed of in a thoroughly insecure manner, enabling and even encouraging identity theft. The neutral zone - the judge presiding over a file-sharing case brought by Sony and the RIAA has ruled that an independent analyst will examine the defendant's computer, instead of a shill chosen by the music industry. Corporate bullying - at Slashdot, a poster neatly sums up the practical aspects of Sony's suit against grey market tech importer Lik Sang: whatever the legalities of the issue, if you're threatened by a giant multinational company there is no point at all in trying to defend yourself in court. alienates home-brewers - the licensing restrictions which forbid users from installing the Vista OS on more than two consecutive PCs will prove to be a deterrent to people who build their own systems, according to an article at Hexus, and I have to admit that I am unimpressed with this stricture myself. Voting felons - the management of voting machine manufacturer Advanced Voting Solutions, previously known as Shoup Voting Solutions, have a criminal record dating back to 1971, including convictions for bribing politicians and obstruction of an FBI enquiry into election fraud! Incredible... steal an election - meanwhile, an article at Ars Technica on the current state of electronic voting is receiving a lot of (thoroughly deserved) attention, and as a summary of the current state of the art it is both depressing and angering. Thanks to for the pointer. Dirty tricks - as if the thoroughly sleazy personality of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison needed any further exposure, his recent announcement of a support offering for Red Hat's Enterprise Linux product, at this stage completely imaginary, has served to slash their share price from $29 to $14 overnight... Thus pimping Demon - the pioneering UK ISP, owned by the company formerly known as Scottish Telecom since 1998, is for sale at an asking price of around £20 million. This values each Demon user at twice the value of an AOL user, based on their recent purchase by Carphone Warehouse. :-) another witch hunt - UK retailer Tesco has been vilified for selling a home pole-dancing kit, after a quirk of their indexing system lead to it being classified as a toy in their online catalogue. The outraged hyperbole that has followed is typical of the worst excesses of the overblown moral majority, with statements that the kit will "destroy children's lives", that buyers would be "depraved people who want to corrupt their children", and that "it requires the intervention of members of Parliament". In fact, the item was never intended as a children's toy, and in spite of allegations that "it will be sold to four, five and six-year olds" very few children of that age have their own credit cards or are in the habit of doing their own online shopping, something that the "think of the children" brigade conveniently overlooks. These people are always ready to assume that the absolute worst possible motives are behind any behaviour of which they don't approve, which I am convinced says a lot more about their own psychology than anything else. Fuck 'em all. I am too old to work sixteen hour shifts. Thanks to the traffic on the M25 motorway and visiting consultants without the wit to look at a map before setting out, however, that's exactly what I ended up doing yesterday. They arrived two hours later than the planned six o'clock start, so I didn't leave the office until 1am (and even then problems with the configuration of the RM/SE SAN replication software meant that another late night will probably be required next week), and although I took today off to compensate one of my PFYs phoned at lunchtime to talk about a problem with a tape library, and I don't feel that I've had much time to recover. Ah, well, at least it's the weekend now... While I sit here and groan gently to myself, then, some news links: "Bruce as a bonus" - Counterpane Internet Security, the company founded by guru Bruce Schneier, has been bought by UK telco BT for a sum in excess of £10m. The company will retain its own branding for a while, but ultimately it will be fully integrated into BT's managed security services to provide subscribers with a proactive warning of security threats. I have to admit that I'm surprised - I hadn't even realised that Bruce was for sale, but I guess that $20 million is a nice little nest egg for one's retirement... And this time, she's angry - Kathy Schoback, once employed by the doomed games manufacturer Infinium Labs and instrumental in the waste of $65 million of investor's money and the attempt to sue tech site [H]ard|OCP for libel, has resurfaced as a director of the CMP Game Group, organisers of various gaming industry conferences in the US. Given Infinium's reputation in the aforementioned industry, you can bet that appointment is going to raise a few eyebrows to say the least. Wars V2.0 - the BBC has reviewed the final versions of both IE7 and Firefox V2, and its final conclusion is that there's little (except personal preference) to choose between the two. The problem they describe with the IE7 taskbar icon not displaying a friendly page title certainly doesn't occur with either of the PCs I've installed it on, but on the other hand the comment that the anti-phishing filter can slow page loading times a touch is definitely something that I've noticed myself. The Ego speaks - Steve Jobs has been touring the business journals since the launch of Microsoft's Zune media player, insisting each time that the iPod's dominance is under no threat from either Microsoft or the horde of other devices on the market. I think he may well be right, at least in the short term, but it's typical of Steve's arrogance and if the iPod genuinely was on the way down he would be the very last person to admit it. Seeing both sides - UK modding site Bit-Tech is speaking out in defence of Sony's decision to crack down on grey market importer Lik-Sang and, like me, [H]ard|OCP is unimpressed with their stance. The warranty issues that the column discusses are rarely a deterrent for the early-adopters that companies like Lik-Sang supply and, indeed, many of them supply at least a limited warranty of their own. I have no time for the increasingly strong-arm tactics that Sony are adopting these days, and don't intend to use their products again unless their attitude changes for the better. Lipstick on a pig - Mark Shuttleworth, developer of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, says that free software must be more visually appealing if it is to attract more attention from mainstream computer users, avoiding "bling for bling's sake" but creating attractive, highly functional interfaces. Unfortunately the main focus of his article seems to be on Ubuntu's pretty new designer logo, so bizarrely it seems that he has actually managed to miss the point of his own lecture... a slip - Chinese industry journal DigiTimes suggests that Vista's rumoured release to manufacturing at the end of October has slipped a touch, and is predicting a new date of the second week of November. Persistent and stability-threatening bugs in the upgrade from Windows XP are being fingered for the latest delay, but the full commercial launch is still set for January 2007 as before. Too much time on their hands - the Popular Science blog has published a wonderful article on the physics of pole dancing, as the first part of part of a series analysing personal disasters captured for posterity on YouTube. The laws of motion cannot easily be flaunted, it seems from this clip, and at a certain point the significant angular momentum acquired overcame the tenuous coefficient of friction, to spectacular affect. More astroturf - The MPAA is sneaking sly little "polls" in amongst the reviews on MyMovieMuse, a site intended to allow viewers to provide information on the sorts of movies they'd like to see. As usual, their take on intellectual property and copyright is just plain wrong ("86% of you feel that creative ideas are property, just like furniture"), but cleverly designed to infiltrate the public's collective unconscious and change the way people think about both piracy and fair use. And, finally, although Microsoft's IE7 sent a congratulatory cake to the Firefox developers in celebration of the launch of Firefox 2, I am managing to resist the urge to join the assembled green ink and tinfoil hat brigade in attempting to decode Morse messages from the blobs of icing around the edge of the cake. Some people may well have way too much time on their hands, but this week, at least, I am not one of them... My feet feel like blocks of wood following a day spent in the Lakeside shopping center, a mall of sufficiently excessive size that even the most obsessive clothing and shoe fanatic I know was all shopped-out and glad to leave by the middle of the afternoon. And the disturbing thing is that, by the standards of its in the US and elsewhere, it's positively tiny... Meanwhile, then, all the news that's fit to blog: dubious device - the Spam Cube is a little appliance designed to pre-process a POP3 mailbox and clean it of unwanted messages, and the manufacturer claims that its "Artificial Intelligence engine" is a cut above the Bayesian algorithms so widely used elsewhere. I'm always a touch dubious of claims like that, especially when they use the term "AI", and as most of the reviews of the device that I've seen so far are written by extremely non-technical users I'm reserving judgement at this point... All about YouTube - the recently-purchased video sharing site has a skeleton in its closet, it seems, following the revelation that it handed over identifying information about at least one of its users to media giant Paramount Pictures following a subpoena that they've always been quite happy to do this, of course, but one legal expert has suggested that "YouTube seems to have given up too Fear of RFID - the RIFD industry, together with the governments and corporates who hope to make use of the technology to spy on their citizens and customers, are going out of their way to convince us that there are no risks associated with these remote data access techniques. Unfortunately the observed facts usually contradict these assurances, and this week's demonstration of how to hack the next generation of conctactless credit cards is no exception. Sony "cares" - Lik-Sang, a company that specialised in importing the latest consumer hardware from Japan to Europe and the US, has been forced out of business following legal threats from the electronics giant. As Boing Boing notes, this kind of behaviour is always highly counterproductive, as the people paying a premium for these grey market gadgets are evangelising early adopters who communicate their love of the technology to less Under the bridge - for more than a year the Full Disclosure security mailing list has been plagued by a troll going by the name of "n3td3v", together with the usual army of sock puppets supporting it. Now consultant Neal Krawetz has performed a statistical analysis of its posts and deduced that the account is used by three or possibly four writers, and is very probably a front for a hacking group named "Gobble", who's postings elsewhere are an excellent Reformed malware - the SpamThru trojan isn't the first virus to attempt to remove other malware (remember the war between the apparently endless versions of Netsky, Bagle and Mydoom a few years ago?) but it's certainly the first to ship with a pirated copy of a commercial anti-virus scanner. Having cleaned competing malware from the infected PC, it proceeds to send out a flood of the stock "tips" spam that is becoming so much of an annoyance these days. Copywrong - with the media industry spreading as many lies about copyright and intellectual property law as they can, it's no wonder that some are confused, but one would expect people working in the publishing industry, at least, to know the score. When it comes to the investigative newsletter the North Country Gazette, however, it seems that any attempt to point out their misconceptions will only be met with unprovoked abuse and wild, meaningless threats of legal action. An annoying little bug has emerged in Microsoft's Exchange email server, thanks to assumptions that have been hard-coded into the system's CDO components. October of this year has five Sundays, and as the component is programmed to automatically switch from GMT to DST on the 4th Sunday, normally the last, this month its clock will undergo the hour time change one week early. The symptom is that some calendar appointments may suddenly move one hour ahead during the last week of the month (yes, this week), to the confusion and annoyance of all concerned. I'm a little puzzled, however, as initial reports of the problem suggested that the month's 5th Sunday was a statistical oddity, but the MS Exchange Blog reveals that in fact it happened last year as well, and will happen again in 2010. Three times in five years is more than an exception, if you ask me, and whoever coded the 4th Sunday rule needs a good kick in the shin. Fortunately the bug is easily fixed on post SP2 Exchange servers, although the patch hasn't yet completed full regression testing and so should be approached with a degree of caution... Given that the problem only manifests when appointments are scheduled programmatically or via Outlook Web Access, however, it might be sensible just to ignore the whole problem until it goes away when the real clock change day arrives a week later... The Device - or, to give it its full name, the "Device Patented Process Indicating Apparatus", is an Art Deco cabinet featuring two large analogue meters, an eerily glowing tube of Agar gel, and a red warning light that flashes "in extreme circumstances". It connects to a PC via USB, and does nothing. It begins - while everyone waits to see what is going to happen to You ube following its acquisition by Google, the media industry is flexing its muscles by suing Bolt.com and Grouper.com (the latter recently acquired by Sony), two minor league video sharing sites specialising in music videos. nowhere - for those who are too lazy to even lift their mouse fingers, Italian start-up Synthtravels is offering guided tours of the best features of the popular online game worlds. I have to admit that the appeal of this kind of virtual virtual tourism somewhat escapes me... A red herring - the IT chief of the London borough of Newham, site of a highly-publicised "contest" between Microsoft and its open source competitors a couple of years ago, has confirmed that he is extremely pleased with the results of his decision to retain Windows and MS Office. Caught short - email pushing stocks and shares has been a mainstay of the spam industry for years, now, and it's informative to discover exactly how much one one could have lost by investing based on these recommendations. - this phishing scam attempts to extract user IDs and passwords from the unwary, but I can't help but feel that most people's suspicions would be roused by the atrocious spelling and bizarre turns of phrase. "Please don't make more dificult this situation", The purse-strings tighten - this year's $2 million prize for the best computer-controlled vehicle is the last of its kind, it seems, following DARPA's announcement that a newly-signed law forbids them to offer cash prizes. Opinions differ as to to the effect this will have on next year's contest. A second attempt - I was extremely unimpressed with the first podcast of Cory Doctorow's wonderful SF novel Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom, and I'm very much hoping that the second, a full-cast recording, will be an Conviction quashed - the ruling that lead to the government's current misguided witch hunt on "violent porn" has been overturned on appeal, with a trio of judges upholding an earlier decision by the Law Lords that the original jurors should have been given the option of a manslaughter verdict. Easynet heist - the ISP was the victim of a daring theft last week, when thieves stole £6 million of infrastructure hardware from their London headquarters in broad daylight. There seem to be a number of mysteries about the crime, however, not least of which was an apparent failure to inform the police! Goodbye civil liberties - I was dismayed to read in The Register that the government is funding local councils to pressure pub owners into installing fingerprint-based ID systems at the doors under threat of having their licenses revoked. Ah, the wonders of the high-tech police state.. :-( Blowing the whistle - a Maryland politico who has been a vocal opponent of the state's electronic voting systems has been sent anonymously a copy of the secret and proprietary source code form the controversial Diebold voting machines. Needless to say, the manufacturer is pretty much having a fit. In the last few months I've outgrown the 350Gb-odd volumes provided by the pair of little Sun StorEdge MultiPack cabinets on my home server, and several weeks spent poring over eBay finally turned up the solution. It's an old EMC Clariion DAE disk cabinet, and although I had intended to find a SCSI solution rather than fibre channel, the fact that it was fully-populated with ten 73Gb 1Gb FC hard disks had considerable appeal. It isn't widely known that these DAEs can exist comfortably on their own, directly connected to a server rather than via the matching Clariion storage processors and acting in what is charmingly called "JBOD" mode (Just a Bunch Of Disks) with the host system providing software RAID management. Fibre channel is an unusual technology for home use, I admit, but given that my new tape library also has a FC interface it's obvious that a fully-fledged home SAN is only just around the EMC hardware is solid and wonderfully built, as one would expect from enterprise storage systems, and although this unit is around five years old (when new, it would have cost well in excess of £10,000) it's been well looked-after and certainly doesn't look its age. 1Gb fibre channel hardware is old hat by current standards, of course, but it's still at least as fast as any SCSI system I could have afforded, and the relative obscurity of the technology means that it comes in at noticeably less per gigabyte. Unusually, EMC's own PowerLink support site denies all knowledge of the FC4500-era systems, but just as with the current models they were available rebadged by Dell (and others, including Silicon Graphics) and plenty of information can be found there instead. A stand-alone DAE doesn't need much configuration, though, with just a single FC-over-copper connection to an appropriate HBA in the server. I chose one of the standards, a QLogic 2200A sourced from the same company who sold me the DAE and recommended for use with it, and although it may take a moment of fiddling to find which of the two Link Control Cards is the favourite one, I'm not expecting too much trauma. What would be traumatic, however, is fitting the thing into my kitchen server cabinet. Although it occupies a little less vertical height than the Sun desktop units it will replace, with a depth of 60cm it will extend most of the way back into the 80cm cabinet and I'm rather concerned about ensuring adequate airflow. The tape library has a similar problem, and when I add the Dell PowerEdge 4400 server that is on its way to replace the old CompuAdd system, and the rack-format APC SmartUPS 3000 that is replacing the existing tower-format 2200 (did I forget to mention them?), unless I want a large stack of fried hardware something will need to be done! The best option will be to transplant everything into a proper 100cm deep server cabinet, so after all the work rearranging the cabinet to accommodate the tape library and camera server, it looks as if I'll have to rip everything out again and build a new one from scratch. This is where things may get a touch expensive, though, as when I started shopping around I discovered a wonderful unit by UK quiet PC specialist Acousti Products. AcoustiRACK is a 42U cabinet, designed with cunning baffles in the front and back doors, a baffled roof fan tray, and lined throughout with noise insulation. It claims to reduce the sound power levels significantly, without a proportionate increase in the internal temperature, and in fact the only drawback is that it costs not only an arm and a leg but an entire suite of internal organs too. At the moment my head is fighting my heart, but I'm afraid the battle may already be lost... Watch this space for details. The end of the week at last... What relief! News of upgrades to my home network tomorrow (I am embarrassed to admit that I am installing a SAN) but until then some quick tech links. The will of the RIAA - MasterCard has followed VISA in withdrawing its facilities from Russian music download site AllOfMP3.com, leaving the company spitting in impotent fury. Whatever the actual legality of the service, however, this is indeed a dangerous precedent as there have been no court rulings made anywhere in the world and the credit card companies are acting purely unilaterally after pressure from the recording industry associations and their tool the US government. victim of Pipex - the final straw that led me to dump Cix as a service provider after more than ten years was their acquisition by GX Networks, now rebranded under the Pipex banner, as every company they acquire seems to go to the dogs in very short order. Now that Bulldog has also been acquired by Pipex, the experiences of one of my colleagues suggest that the rot has already started to set in. Enterprise SATA - SATA drives are beginning to move up into the niche traditionally occupied by SCSI, with new models from Seagate and Western Digital offering 10,000 rpm spindle speeds, 24/7 design, and best of all five year warranties. Of course, the enterprise SAS and FC drives themselves aren't standing still, with 15,000 rpm performance and massive bandwidth, even if their capacities can't as yet match those of their 500 and 750Gb SOHO rivals. flaw - Undersound is a fascinating idea to allow subway travellers to exchange music with each other, but nowhere in the rather fluffy, new age project documentation do I see anything discussing how the ever-litigious music industry associations will feel about this - but I bet you a copy of "Steal This Book" that they won't like it one little bit. Vista woes - the angst over the licensing terms of the new OS continues, including the discovery of a clause prohibiting users from "working around any technical limitations in the software". It is assumed that this is intended as a ban on avoiding the built-in DRM, but the wording is sufficiently loose that it could also include 3rd-party fixes for un-patched bugs. Dirty tricks - organisers of the IFPI's Brazilian press conference to announce their latest music-sharing lawsuits barred a number of accredited legal experts from entering the room on what turn out to be purely spurious grounds, in all probability because of their opposition to the recording industry's lobbying for changes to Brazil's copyright law. A modest proposal - a report from the Gartner Group recommends that Apple should stop manufacturing their own hardware, and instead subcontract with Dell to build future Intel-based Macs. The all in prices that could result, they say, together with Dell's excellent distribution channel, could be just the thing to lift Apple out of its tiny niche market. What, already? - Secunia has announced a relatively trivial security vulnerability in IE7 only a day after the official launch, but given that the flaw affects IE6 as well (it is actually caused by an Outlook Express component) it seems likely that in fact is has been present throughout the betas but for some reason has only just been publicised. Jumping the gun - Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin has dismissed rumours that Vista will RTM next week, explaining that although the operating system itself is in good shape, the "ecosystem" of 3rd party drivers and applications still has some way to go. The suggested date for the business launch is now the end of November... The Wisdom Of Woz - Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has been out and about promoting his book iWoz, and one of his recent stops was at Microsoft. David Weiss of the Mac Business Unit has blogged some of the more memorable soundbites, and its nice to see that there's life in the old dog yet. His comment that "Steve jobs never programmed in his life" is especially poignant if you know the story Birth of the iPod - Steve Jobs has often claimed that the best-selling music player was his own baby, but in fact the iTunes software was originally licensed from another company and the hardware was created by Jon Rubinstein, previously a senior engineer at NeXT, and hired consultant Tony Fadell. Apple on the hook - following the news that a small proportion of recent iPods left the factory with a copy of the RavMonE.exe virus pre-installed, Apple's flippant attempt to blame Windows for being susceptible to malware has met with disapproval right across The horror - Oracle has published a gigantic update package containing 101 fixes for flaws in for long-standing flaws in its database and application servers, almost half of which can be exploited remotely, and some even bypass authentication and grant unrestricted access via a web browser! IE7 released - the final version of Microsoft's new browser is now available for download, and is joined by a customised version produced by Yahoo - although initial reports suggested that the web company had actually jumped the gun by releasing their version ahead of Microsoft's own. Vista early? - meanwhile, rumours escaping from Microsoft suggest that Vista might be released to manufacturing considerably earlier than was expected, on or around the 25th of this month, although if so it would be made available to businesses long before the official consumer launch. Controversy - a report from a team at the University of Maastricht on the commercial penetration of open source software suggests that it will manage well enough without further government protection, according to industry pressure group the Institute for Groggy but still punching - Russian music site AllOfMP3.com has given their first official press conference, but it was somewhat mysterious and contradictory (where has all the money gone?) and brings news that the RIAA et al have pressured Visa into withdrawing their credit card facility. inna box - Sun's "Project Blackbox" is a 20' shipping container containing enough power and cooling capacity to support up to 250 Sun Fire servers, together with their associated disk, tape and network infrastructure. I gather that the remarkable had a hand in the concept. PITO warning - following widespread abuse of the Criminal Records Bureau database, the chief executive of the UK's Police IT Organisation has warned that much tighter controls must be placed on private sector firms with authority to access government and police Spamhaus to fight - the beleaguered spam fighting organisation has reversed its earlier stance and announced that it will indeed appeal against the $11.7m judgment won by e360 Insight. The organisation hopes to prevent similar abuse of the US legal system by other spam companies. And finally, although the fantasy role-playing game D&D was heavily inspired by the work of J.R.R Tolkien, the Twenty Sided blog wonders how modern players would react if suddenly exposed to Lord Of The Rings today. The answer is the web Of The Rings, currently consisting of eighteen episodes brutally ripped from the Peter Jackson movies, and it's brilliant. A little batch of random links from around the Geek chic - at arts and crafts marketplace Etsy, some wonderful "Space Invador" cufflinks, and although the spelling leaves something to be desired the jewellery more than makes up for difficulties - we won't be able to be install Vista on an endless series of PCs, it seems, but in spite of the fuss this isn't really much different from the Product Activation in Windows XP. The human legacy - if the human race disappeared overnight, after a thousand years almost nothing would be left to show that we had ever lived on the planet, except our chemical and nuclear reprieve - following a long demonstration of the controversial game "Bully", a Florida judge has rejected a plea by the crazed anti-gaming lawyer Jack Thompson to ban the launch. Thank the mesons - high energy physics has been in the doldrums recently, but an interesting anomaly in the decay of B mesons has breathed fresh air into the field while we wait for the LHC. Let the seller beware - people advertising gaming PCs online are being asked to run the FRAPS benchmarking tool, and helpfully provided with a copy which contains a certain extra something... 8,000 lawsuits - recording industry group the IFPI has released its latest batch of file-sharing suits worldwide, but in the UK the BPI is having enough difficulties with just 59. Collateral damage - an Apple laptop user is alleging that using his MacBook Pro has left him with burns on the palms of his hands, and is muttering about suing the manufacturer. - IE7 may not be much less vulnerable to stupid browser addons than its predecessor, but at least 99% of the damage can be easily undone with a mouse click or two. Bio-computing - a computer using logic gates formed from strands of DNA has mastered the game of Tic-Tac-Toe, a remarkable development even if it currently takes up to 30 minutes per move. Jack - apropos of nothing much, Wikipedia has the full skinny on the "RJ" part of the terminology used for the modular jack plugs we know and love. One lives and learns! Deep fried - we've all seen the PC motherboard running in a bath of mineral oil, but using regular cooking oil instead allows you to play Quake while waiting for your chips to fry. Hand me the magnifier - the Small Print Project is collecting examples of the terms and conditions forced upon us when we install software, sign up to an online service, or unpack a product. Deniable plausibility - the recent North Korean tub-thumping has been provoked by the United States beginning to pull its forces out of South East Asia, according to an article at The Register. Theft of services - the latest firmware update for Creative's Zen music players has removed the facility to record from the built-in FM radio tuner, and needless to say some owners are not at Atomic power - I was delighted to see at Boing Boing that a whole bunch of information about Project Orion has suddenly surfaced, including a still-classified schematic of a design for a pulse unit. A revelation - the "Campaign For Real Beauty", a PR project by pharmaceuticals brand Dove, shows how a normal woman is physically and digitally manipulated into a typical cover girl. Fascinating. And finally, big changes at primo tech site Dan's Data. Firstly, Dan has recruited an old friend to assist with the hardware reviews, and his initial review of a webcam with a gimmick has all the technical depth and rich linking that I've always appreciated in Dan's own writing, together with the subtly different flavour that only a fresh hand can bring. Dan himself has been far from quiet, however, as apart from a recent batch of letters, articles and reviews, he has started a blog of his own. I was a little surprised by this, as Dan's Data has always seemed remarkably blog-like itself and the new site is not clearly differentiated as yet, but the content and style are both excellent as always. How To Spot A Psychopath is named after one of Dan's more notorious articles, and the blog has already made it to my nightly list of online reading. Recommended. My SAP cluster proved remarkably tolerant of having MS DTC, Server 2003 SP1, a bunch of firmware and driver updates, and the latest version of the Dell Server Administrator utility thrust onto it, and having upgraded the standby node successfully during the afternoon I bounced the cluster resources over from the live node right on the dot of six o'clock and was driving home again a little after seven. I have no way of testing SAP itself, though, and it remains to be seen whether I'm met in the car park tomorrow morning by a mob of irate developers. Ah, well, that's what shotguns are for. past through tomorrow - at PC World magazine's blog (although they call it a "techlog", presumably just to be different) a brief history of computer advertising on television, from the Atari 400 in the early eighties to Apple's current "Get A Mac" series featuring the remarkable John Hodgman as a boring, office-based PC. It will never catch on - a new display device from Toshiba gives the user a 360 degree view - but it comes in the form of a giant, fully-enclosed bubble-shaped helmet weighing 3Kg (and, incidentally, making the wearer look like some kind of mutant alien cyborg) and so is almost certainly doomed, like very other alternative display device I've seen, to ignominious failure and total obscurity. The drivers of the apocalypse - the Linux drivers for NVIDIA's graphics cards contain a confirmed buffer overflow weakness that could allow an attacker to run arbitrary code under root privileges, and the report suggests that the drivers for FreeBSD and Solaris are probably vulnerable as well. Ah, the wonders of alternative Would you like malware with that? - 10,000 MP3 players given away as prizes in a MacDonalds competition in Japan turn out to have contained the QQPass password-stealing trojan as well as a selection of free songs, and some reports suggest that simply connecting the player to a PC can allow the malware to jump across. foot in the door - the ever-expanding Carphone Warehouse group (I remember them back when they sold carphones, from a warehouse) is branching out again, this time with an auction site dedicated to selling second-hand phone handsets, each of which will have its IMEI checked against the CEIR to ensure that it's not stolen. Much ado about something - EU ministers are determined to block access to information disseminated by terrorists over the Internet, or information that could be of use to them, but they don't seem to have any idea of how to go about it - let alone how to go about it without implementing a Chinese-style national firewall system. More security theatre - following the conviction of the "terrorist mastermind" behind the diabolical "dirty bomb" and "gas limo" plans, The Register points us to a column at the Dick Destiny blog on the perennial favourite theme "its easy for terrorists", which makes me amazed that any of us godless Western infidels are still alive to read it. Steve Jobs is unconcerned about Microsoft's Zune player, he insists, dismissing it with a collection of strange sexually-loaded remarks: "It takes forever", he said in relation to the Zune's wireless music sharing. "By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left". Asked whether the iPod is becoming less cool as it becomes more common, he replied "That's like saying you don't want to kiss your lover's lips because everyone has lips". Sounds to me like he has something on his Just a few quick links, as it was my first day back at the office after that bug laid me low last week, and so thoroughly exhausting. Unfortunately tomorrow will be a long day too, as I have to stay late to upgrade a clustered pair of servers hosting the main SAP SQL databases with Server 2003 SP1, an that will involve installing a Distributed Transaction Coordinator (whatever that is!) into the cluster beforehand. My team is still fairly inexperienced with MSCS, so we'll be following the instructions carefully with one hand and keeping the fingers of the other one Fear Of A Bot Planet - the style of the new Suicide Bots weblog is vaguely reminiscent of a certain popular web site, but so far the promised "hot bot on bot action" seems distressingly absent. - a handheld inkjet that can print on irregular surfaces is an excellent idea, but fortunately they already exist on the market so there's no need to rip the guts out of an HP DeskJet like this... Online trading - Julian Dibbell's "Play Money" is an account of his year spent trying to earn a living by trading in the virtual objects used in online games, and is definitely one for my Amazon wish list. 100 - visitors to gaming site IGN have been voting for their all-time favourite games, but the publisher has chosen to be tease its readers by not releasing the top 50 until next week. Education is pointless - it is unrealistic to expect users to learn how to keep their own computers and data safe, says a Swedish student, and all responsibility for security rests with the IT Egg on face - The RIAA has abandoned a piracy lawsuit against someone who hadn't copied the music in question, didn't use file-sharing software, and had merely "ripped" MP3s from legal CDs. Applying pressure - and talking of everybody's favourite industry association, giant retail chain Wal-mart is leaning on the RIAA to reduce CD costs, and they have a lot of commercial muscle. to pre-sales - eBay has cracked down on people selling PS3 consoles ahead of the official launch in November, on the reasonable grounds that in the past many similar auctions have been fraudulent. Following the fatal shooting of the Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes in July 2005, a date of October 2007 has been set for the trial in the case that has been brought against the Metropolitan Police as a whole, on the somewhat unexpected grounds of failing to provide for his health, safety and welfare. The Met has attempted to have the case dismissed out of hand, of course, and the rejection of this plea caused a lawyer speaking on behalf of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair to state that the trial will have "serious implications on police policy nationwide". If these implications include policemen having to think twice before shooting innocent men seven times in the head (and once in the shoulder, although I assume that bullet was intended for his head as well) for no good reason, however, then I for one cannot see what the problem is: as a Londoner, right now I'm far more scared of the police than I am of the terrorists! former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev suggested that the US government squandered an opportunity to improve global politics since the Cold War ended, instead cashing in (along with other Western countries) on the unbridled burst of globalization that followed. When former statesmen such as Gorbachev, with no immediate political or financial axe to grind, are moved to compare US foreign policy to the AIDS virus, you can be sure that something is badly wrong. "The Americans will have to understand that in future they will have to cooperate and make decisions jointly, instead of just always wanting to give orders", said Gorbachev, and its clear from the various international reactions to the recent North Korean nuclear test that he is right. As usual, one of the most telling aspects of the story are the comments to the article on the Yahoo! News message boards, which highlight the events common to much of the US population, and which has helped their current government to get away with so much in the last few years. Oh, and they can't spell worth a damn, either... Elsewhere on the world stage, an article at Boing Boing reminds us of what Yahoo's policy of kow-towing to the Chinese government has actually achieved - three dissident journalists jailed for a total of 21 years, thanks to information willingly provided by the ISP in exchange for the chance of making a pot of money selling advertising and services. And just in case we needed a further reminder, this time of the exact nature of the government with which Yahoo and others are so keen to climb into bed, reports are emerging that a group of Tibetans trying to flee their country, annexed by China in the 1950s, have been shot dead by Chinese soldiers near the border with Nepal. The refugees included a nun and a group of children aged between six and ten, who were evidently so terrifying that, according to the official government statement, the troops had to open fire in self defence. Further reports suggest that Communist party officials are trying to silence witnesses, including Western hikers who were in the area when the killings occurred - and some visitors to the area claim that this is by no means the first such incident. Unfortunately violations like this occur on a daily basis throughout China, and it is very hard to see how any Western company can have significant dealings with the Chinese government while still maintaining (as Yahoo does) that it cares about doing business in an With Linux the OS of choice of the IT community's rugged individualists it shouldn't come as a surprise that everybody and their dog wants their own customised version, and the endless bickering over different interpretations of the GPL, together with retaliation against any company that dares to try to make money out of the OS, ensures that the code base seems doomed to fragment ad infinitum. The CentOS build that runs my revamped Raq web server appliance is a good example of the latter, having been created as a 100% binary compatible version of Red Hat's highly regarded Enterprise Linux build, only without the corporate branding and commercial support. With this in mind, it was rather depressing to read that the same thing seems to be happening to the popular open source applications as well, with the announcement of the Iceweasel web browser, a version of Firefox developed to avoid the trademarked Firefox logo and other code that cannot be freely distributed. The tendency of the open source "community" towards infighting and competition seems to be increasingly endemic, these days, so it was good to read of a project designed to bring integration and standardisation rather than further dissention. The Portland software project intends to bridge the gap between the two most popular Linux GUIs, KDE and GNOME, providing a common API to allow developers to support both interfaces without trauma. If Linux is ever going to make a significant impact at home and on the corporate desktop, as the fanboys perpetually insist is imminent, then it is clear that more time must be spent on collaboration between groups and less on bickering - and when even the allegedly philanthropic One Laptop Per Child project has apparently succumbed to the disease, it's probably time for people to sit up and take notice... Wizard of Ozzie - with Bill Gates stepping even further back from day-to-day management at Microsoft, his shoes are being filled by Ray Ozzie, the widely respected inventor of Lotus Notes. Ozzie is far removed from that of Gates and Ballmer in terms of both his management style and his views on technology, and it will be interesting to see in which direction he leads the company. The price of freedom - the UK government has finally released their own estimates of the cost of the controversial ID card scheme, and to nobody's surprise it is considerably less than independent figures. 15% of the estimated £5.4 billion covers the technology itself, with the rest going on personnel and premises costs. Given the government's record on IT spending, I simply don't believe it. Lies and damn lies - meanwhile, the latest Home Office Minister is still frantically trying to justify the ID card scheme itself, and this month the see-saw has bounced back from terrorism to immigration once more. His claims about a similar project in Sri Lanka turn out to be both misleading and irrelevant, however, especially considering that it was abandoned a year ago after Not with a bang, but a whimper - the first Hollywood movies on Blu-ray disks are now being launched, but the offerings chosen to highlight the new technology are lacklustre to say the least: Adam Sandler in "Click", shoot-em-up "Black Hawk Down", and something called "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby". Does this make you want to rush out an buy a whole new AV system? No, me neither... Blowing the golden whistle - a former Peoplesoft employee who revealed the extent of their eight year price-fixing strategy for US government contracts has been awarded $17.3 million, his share of the $98.5 million returned to the government by the company's new owner, Oracle. The Register is curious as to why no criminal charges have been pressed against Peoplesoft's management, though. Mergers and acquisitions - AOL UK has been bought by the ever-expanding Carphone Warehouse group for £370 million, adding 1.5 million broadband subscribers to its customer base and a further 600,000 dial-up users. The latter are probably rather less attractive to the new owner, and it will be interesting to see whether they can increase the incentive to migrate onto broadband Mergers and acquisitions #2 - the UK Internet market expanded dramatically in first few years of the decade, but it has become obvious that the country can't continue to support so many ISPs, especially down at the cut-rate and free end of the market, and the latest news is that one of the larger providers, PlusNet, may well be acquired by British Telecom. A small victory - Wikipedia's no-compromise stand against Chinese government censorship, almost unique amongst the big names in web services, seems to have paid off following reports that the majority of the English language site is now accessible. The Chinese language version may still be blocked, however, as are articles on subjects Share and share alike - reports on the perennial struggle for web browser market shares are contradicting themselves again, with one recent study claming that IE is losing ground to Firefox and another suggesting that all is still rosy for Microsoft. With both IE7 and Firefox V2 just around the corner, it will be interesting to see whether the war between statistical analysis companies Missing the boat - the writer of an article in Wired admits that he is becoming less and less convinced by the threat of cyber-terrorism, which he dismisses as a post-9/11 hoax intended to screw money out of the federal government. Readers of Rob Rosenbrger's VMyths site have been aware of these absurd claims since well before the Millennium, however, and dismissed them a long time ago... Illegal abduction - a German lawyer is intending to pursue state compensation for those who believe themselves to have been abducted by aliens, based on a law which grants payments to kidnap victims. His services will be in demand, he says, but "the trouble is, people are afraid of making fools of themselves in court". And finally, an article at DarkVision Hardware more battery life from your digital camera" contains such revolutionary advice as "recharge whenever you can" and "carry another battery", and ends with the suggestion that "until battery technologies improve to the extent that battery life is so long that it practically lasts forever you will have to be conscious about how you use your digital camera in respect to power consumption". The author, a certain Ziv Haparnas, is described as "a technology veteran" who "writes about practical technology and science issues", but if that is a typical example of his insight and vision I'd just like to go on record as suggesting that he doesn't give up his day job... Over the last few weeks I've been fascinated by Steve Kemper's book "Code Name Ginger", an account of the invention of the Segway personal transporter by Dean Kamen's New Hampshire-based DEKA engineering R&D company, so I was very surprised to read (in article describing how George W Bush fell off one!) that it was actually "developed by BAE Systems in Plymouth, Devon". I grew up in Plymouth, as it happens, and although the city has a proud history of naval and defence engineering, I can't let a mistake like that pass unchallenged. The article was published in June 2003, so it's a little late to request a correction, but although BAE Systems did indeed design and manufacture the gyroscopes used in the Segway's Balance Sensor Assembly (as well as in many other products and systems, of course), and are in a marketing partnership with the Segway company, I really can't see that qualifying them as the device's developer - and I'm sure that Kamen and his team would wholeheartedly agree! Elsewhere, the scandal over electronic voting machines continues to grow, with fresh publicity for allegations by Clint Curtis, a former programmer for electronics engineering firm Yang Enterprises, that Florida Congressman Tom Feeney asked him to develop a way of falsifying votes recorded on touch-screen voting machines in order to benefit the Republican party. Curtis can hardly be described as an unbiased witness, especially now that he's running against Feeney for Congress, but given the recent revelations concerning the ease with which machines from Diebold et al can be modified to run arbitrary unauthorised code, there's nothing inherently implausible in the claim. Meanwhile, the notorious German hacker group The Chaos Computer Club has called for a ban on the Nedap ES3B voting machine and similar European models following the discovery that they can be modified so extensively that they will even run program! Although my entire career has revolved around the use of computer technology as an enabler for business and government, twenty-something years in the industry has also left me with a healthy sense of scepticism, and it's quite clear that at this stage electronic voting is simply not safe enough to use. Any organisation that claims otherwise is either trying to sell voting machines, or hoping to exploit their weaknesses for political gain. recent furore concerns the court case brought against anti-spam organisation Spamhaus by arch-spammer e360 Insight. Spamhaus is a UK-based company, and they chose not to defend the case believing, correctly, that a US court had no jurisdiction over them. However, after the inevitable ruling against Spamhaus (including an award of $11,715,000 in damages), concerns started to circulate that the court might be able to have the spamhaus.org domain name suspended, effectively removing access to the service unless client systems worldwide were reconfigured to use an IP address or a replacement domain name. The effect this could have on the global levels of spam is fairly horrifying, but the Internet housekeeping organisation ICANN has already issued a statement saying that they do not have the authority to take this action even if so ordered. The registrar of the domain itself is in Canada and the DNS manager is in Europe, both outside of the court's jurisdiction, so assuming that ICANN sticks to its guns the only remaining US organisation is the Virginia-based Public Interest Registry which manages the .ORG hierarchy - and like ICANN they are very likely to refuse responsibility. I have a great deal of respect for Steve Linford and the other (largely volunteer) contributors to the project, and lawsuits like this serve to illustrate how annoying his anti-spam services are becoming to the heavyweight spam companies. More power to him! Although in computing terms I no longer consider traditional virus code to be nearly the risk it once was, when it comes to my own defences I'm not so confident, and this week a nasty little bug has sneaked past my immune system and laid me low. The culprit is probably the common cold rhinovirus, beautifully illustrated here by the team at University which determined the nature of the ICAM-1 receptor sites in human cells that provide the virus' avenue of attack. Knowing this does nothing to make me feel any better, however, and in spite of significant research into the malady there's still little one can do except treat the symptoms and pray for the merciful release of death. Elsewhere, at the weekend I had my first encounter with a real eBay fraudster, as opposed to the petty opportunists who try to pass off a faulty disk drive or screw one over shipping charges. I've outgrown the pair of Sun StorEdge MultiPack disk cabinets that are providing a home for the 350Gb-odd of data that has accumulated on my home server over the years, and having narrowly missed a beautiful ProWare SCSI/SATA RAID array that would have scaled up to 4Tb, I cast the eBay net a little wider. I've been aware that Apple was manufacturing a server range, and given their traditional penetration in the media sector it seemed logical that they would have some kind of large-scale storage system, but I'd never really noticed the Xserve RAID systems before and I so almost overlooked a unit that was being advertised a little outside of the regular areas for this kind of hardware. With a starting price of £100 for a capacity of 2.8Tb (and as many again drive slots still free) it was certainly eye-catching, and a check around the web revealed that not only was the system very similar to the enterprise hardware I'm used to (if considerably prettier, as befit's Apple's design ethos!) but that there was no reason why it couldn't be used just as well in a Wintel environment. Connectivity to the host is via Fibre Channel over copper, but the drives themselves are low-end SATA units, a combination that provides an excellent cost/capacity ratio, if at a considerably lower level of performance than 10,000 or 15,000 rpm SCSI or FC drives. I hadn't seriously considered using Fibre Channel on my home network before, but I have a generous quantity of it at the office and provided that one matches components carefully a point-to-point configuration is not inherently much more complicated The listing was mostly marketing boilerplate ("Data storage that rocks around the clock", indeed!) from Apple's web site, with a few personal touches, but one thing that was conspicuously absent was any information on payment methods accepted or shipping costs - so I emailed the seller to enquire, at which point everything started to feel a little odd... Here's the Subject:* Re: eBay Xserve RAID *Date:* Mon, 9 Oct 2006 18:09:52 EDT This deal will go trough eBay. You have the opportunity to purchase this item( same item) for GBP 700 Buy now. If you're ready for this purchase, I need to know your eBay user ID, confirm item number and full name and address for shipping. As soon as I have this informations I'll start the official procedure, and eBay will notify you about this. You'll also receive important guidelines + instructions from them (please go through them exactly). I'll handle the shipping, so this will be free of charge for you. Looking forward to hearing from you. Immediately after receiving this I checked eBay again, and when I discovered that the item had suddenly disappeared alarm bells started to ring: it's very unusual for a seller to suddenly offer a Buy It Now deal mid-way through the auction, very unusual to include shipping charges for something so expensive in the purchase price, and very unusual not to specify accepted payment methods - especially when asked about them specifically. I emailed the seller once more, repeating my request for that information, and also for his name (the unusual anonymity of it all was also making me feel uncomfortable), as well as an explanation of why the listing was no longer on eBay, but his only response was to email me the exact text of the original At this stage I started looking around eBay once more, this time searching through the completed listings to discover how much these arrays normally change hands for - and I was very surprised to find an absolutely identical listing, even down to the same out-of-focus photographs and comments about its use in a home office, having ended at the start of the month with a far more plausible price of £2750 plus shipping. I asked about this, too, although by this stage the alarm bells were ringing so loudly that they threatened to vibrate off their mountings, and it would have taken a pretty damn convincing explanation to allay my fears - but the response I actually received from the seller, or as I now realised the purported seller, did absolutely nothing to reassure me at all: Subject:* Re: eBay Xserve RAID *Date:* Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:02:39 EDT Sorry NO Paypal we have our own link to a secure server for payment with credit cards www.westernunion.com send cash at a Western Union OR Agent location or use your credit or debit card to send money online or use your credit or debit card to send money by phone at 0800 833 833 Hmmm. Of course, it's traditional that Western Union is the favoured method of all Nigerian funds fraudsters, eBay scammers, and other con artists, and that was definitely the last straw. I haven't responded, and he has presumably realised that the fish has slipped the hook and moved on in search of other suckers. I don't remember the name of the eBay seller's account, but it had a single figure feedback rating and apparently hadn't been in active use since last year, so it had probably been hijacked via a phishing scam or similar. It's possible that the mailbox was stolen as well, but AOL accounts are easy to come by and that's definitely an address to beware of... What strands out to me, really, is how stupid the scammer was, and although I would certainly have balked at sending money to a nameless Western Union account even if everything else had appeared above board, he could so easily have strung me along at least that far before arousing my suspicions. To begin with, simply putting a fake name on the end of his emails would have appeared far more normal, and leaving the eBay listing intact until the deal was settled would never have caused my eyebrows to raise in the way that suddenly cancelling it did. Not stealing the listing verbatim from an item that had been sold only ten days before would have helped a lot, too, as it's certainly not unusual for prospective buyers to check completed listings to gain an idea of the going price for items of interest. Of course, I suppose we should actually be grateful that these people don't seem able to implement their scams very well, or we'd all find ourselves owners of the 21st century equivalents of swampland or shares in the Brooklyn Bridge. Thanks heavens for small mercies... Please don't touch - just when you thought you'd heard every possible problem with Diebold's voting machines, it turns out that actually using the touch-screen of the current models will crash Astroturf campaigning - Janet Jackson's boob flash at the 2004 Super Bowl generated more than 270,000 complaints to the FCC, thanks to pressure group the Parents Television Council. Down but not out - a federal judge has rejected the US government's request to dismiss an ACLU lawsuit claiming that the USA Patriot Act is unconstitutional, allowing the case to proceed. The dark ages - the US Supreme Court has refused to consider a case challenging an absurd and archaic Texas law that makes it a crime to sell "sex toys shaped like sexual organs". Anarchy in the UK - British activists The Open Rights Group have published a list of suggestions for fighting the encroachment of restrictive DRM into the country - before it's too late. Vindicated after all this time - careful analysis of audio tapes from the 1969 moon landing reveals that Neil Armstrong really did say "one small step for a man", just as he had Have space suit, will travel - and talking of the space race, a vintage pressure suit from the Gemini program somehow turned up in a Kansas antique shop, surely the last one outside a museum. Vista FUD - an article in IT World claims that for a business to upgrade its workstations to Vista will cost up to $5000 per user, an absurd figure that is roundly dismissed by Ken Fisher at Ars Technica. On the horizon - and talking of the Vista OS, an article at the ever-useful Wikipedia summarises all the new features in one surprisingly long list. I'm really looking forward to the launch early next year. - I was trying to catch up on the current model Palm handhelds, today, and came across a useful comparison facility of both Windows and PalmOS devices at Dave's PDA - Japanese automata specialist Kokoro is hoping to rent out their latest teenage female robot as an eye-catcher for trade shows and exhibitions, a snip at $2500 per week. No more modding - console mod chip supplier Divineo has been fined more than $9 million in damages after a US federal court ruled that they had violated the DMCA. Locked away - with more and more people using PC security systems to protect their personal data, there are growing problems when they die leaving their records inaccessible to family members. Casting the net wider - the creators of the Kazaa and Skype peer-to-peer applications have started to promote a streaming video service that will deliver high-quality legal media across the And, finally, there's always something new... The latest M12 range from PC power supply specialist Seasonic has all the high power and blissful silence of my S12-600, but adds the flavour of the month in the form of a removable modular cabling system. I lust after it, but although obsolete my existing model is still extremely satisfactory and I really couldn't justify the cost (and, more importantly, the effort!) to replace it. The new version almost makes me hope for a catastrophic failure, A blast from the past - Mike tells me that the veteran microcomputer manufacturer Imsai is still very much in business, and although their current version can hold a modern ATX motherboard as well as the S100 backplane of the original, the front panel is still replete with all the switches and LEDs of the classic CP/M era. The computer achieved a certain notoriety following its use by hacker David Lightman in the 1983 movie Wargames, and I think the modern version would make a wonderful platform for playing Defcon, which was obviously inspired by the movie's graphics. Cold war relics - at Boing Boing, an Alaskan reader has created a Flickr album of a derelict military installation in the remote west of the country. The White Alice communications network acted as a microwave relay between the DEW missile warning sites, and although stations like these cost untold hundreds of millions of dollars back in the sixties and seventies, these days they have been abandoned and left to decay. They are striking memorials to the fear that was endemic to the period. Reinventing the wheel - to some people the Psion 5mx is one of the iconic palmtop computers, let down by the manufacturer's marketing and production quality rather than any problems with its basic design. A project hosted at Tom's Hardware Guide is proposing to create a modern palmtop inspired by the 5mx, but running Microsoft's XP or Windows Mobile operating systems. It's an interesting idea, but give the extreme difficulty of turning designs into hardware I firmly expect it to stay as vapourware. War is declared and battle come down - Russian music site AllOfMP3.com is under fire from both the legislature in its own country and the might of the US State Department, but it is clearly not going to go down without a fight. Still protesting that they are 100% legal in Russia (at least until the imminent change in intellectual property law that the US has insisted on) the site places responsibility firmly on their users to determine whether usage is legal in their own countries. - a team at UCLA has created a semiconductor by coating fragments of the tobacco mosaic virus in carbon nanoparticles and embedding the result in a polymer sandwiched between two electrodes. The result is a transistor matrix with similar properties to conventional flash memory chips, but capable of switching in microseconds rather than milliseconds. A working prototype is expected within four years. The reverse engineer - "DVD Jon" Johansen, the programmer who became famous by cracking the minimal encryption on commercial DVDs, originally so that he could play them on his Linux PC, is back in the spotlight again following his release of a clone of Apple's Fairplay iTunes DRM. Johansen claims to have stayed within the law by cleanly reverse engineering the system, and is intending to license it to companies that want to play their own content on Apple - as a long-time fan of SMP multi-CPU computers at home I have to confess to being surprised by how quickly Intel has introduced multi-core CPUs onto the consumer market, and how quickly the number of cores is ramping up. Tom's Hardware is playing with a pre-production version of the four core Kentsfield-based "Quadro" chip, and although there are still a few bugs, as could be predicted it is an enormously powerful CPU when running properly still not ready - Nokia doesn't think that Linux is mature enough for widespread use a mobile phone OS, apparently, citing problems with fragmentation of the standard code base and an over-sized memory footprint, among others. This is quite telling, as the company is one of the few manufacturers that have actually used the OS in a mobile device, in this case the neat little 770 Internet Tablet that Mike was showing me a few weeks ago. Eye on the spy - the US Government has confirmed (with gritted teeth, one suspects) that a Chinese ground-based laser installation has blinded the cameras of one of their orbiting spy satellites as it passed over the country. Details are spares at this stage, and in information has been released about which satellite was targeted, or whether the effect was merely temporary or, as seems very likely, the cameras or their electronic systems have been permanently damaged. Some news links to end the week - and having worked all last weekend I'm damn glad that it's here at last. The Illuminated One - after Mark Frauenfelder of Boing Boing appealed for donations to the cult author Anton Wilson, dying from post polio syndrome and in dire financial straits, to the amazement and delight of the author and his family more than $68,000 has been raised to ensure that his last few months are as comfortable as possible. I was blown away by Shea and Wilson's "Illuminatus" trilogy, and the "Schrödinger's Cat" trilogy that followed it, and I'm delighted to have been able to repay (even if only in a small way) a person who had such an effect on my thinking. Inside information - the fundamentalist Islamic stance on DRM and software copyright has now been clarified, thanks to Iranian Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khameini. The Ayatollah has a weblog where he offers advice and answers questions mailed to him (like the Usenet Oracle, with extra fatwa), and following a question on whether it was permissible under Sharia to crack time-limited demo versions of software produced by Western Imperialist software companies, it turns out that his viewpoints on intellectual property are unexpectedly similar to those of the corporates in question. Indian data theft - last night's TV documentary on the sale of personal information from Indian call centres used by UK corporates was certainly unsettling, but The Register reminds us that fraud and theft of confidential data is not limited to India, or to call centres, but is actually unsettlingly widespread. I was less than amused to see the call centre management division of consultancy firm Mphasis held up for censure, however, as their development division is currently writing some Siebel applications for my own company, and I've been obliged to give an unsettling level of remote access to our core servers to their Indian comedy arms trade - earlier this year the controversial and confrontational political satirist Mark Thomas assisted a group of teenage girls to set up an online arms brokering firm as part of a project for Channel 4's Dispatches programme, and their company traded in everything from small arms to the sort of "police and security equipment" commonly used for torturing prisoners and obtaining false confessions by repressive regimes such as the US government. Questions in Parliament have now been followed by the arrest of two men involved in illegal imports of the latter, but British firms make astonishing quantities of money from arms deals and I doubt that we'll see a change in the law. rise and fall of Gizmondo - the spectacular crash of the game console manufacturer after their over-hyped portable device burned through nearly $400 million of capital in less than four years was followed by the equally spectacular crash of the rare Ferrari Enzo belonging to company founder Stefan Eriksson. The circumstances surrounding the crash, and for that matter Eriksson in general, are explored in an article at Wired, complete with illustrations by comic book artist Jae Lee. Unauthorised access - the hated Diebold are not the only manufacturer of absurdly insecure electronic voting machines, it seems, following a demonstration by Dutch security consultants showing that the NEDAP machines, chosen two years ago by the Irish government but not yet used in anger, could be made to record inaccurate votes and even run arbitrary code in the form of a chess program. It's quite clear that electronic voting is simply not safe enough to use, and any organisation that claims otherwise is only doing so because they are intending to exploit those weaknesses. Now with less Appley goodness - After Steve Jobs's announcement that the shiny new 2nd generation iPod Nano is even thinner than the original version, a review at Ars Technica reveals that this is indeed the case... But as the difference is a mere 0.01", hardly detectable without a micrometer, it sounds as if the infamous Jobs Reality Distortion Field is in action again. All the news that's fit to link... Mostly courtesy of Ars Technica, tonight. Style over substance - research at Indiana University on the media coverage of the 2004 Democratic and Republican national conventions suggests that the topical news/comedy programme The Daily Show is actually as substantive a source of news as other more mainstream news programs - but they admit that the quality of the latter is still depressingly poor. The smoking gun - an internal investigation has concluded that Apple supremo Steve Jobs definitely knew about the backdated stock options that have attracted the baleful glare of the SEC, but that he did not benefit financially from them. However, board member Fred Anderson, who served as CFO during the period in question, has resigned over the issue. Interrogating MS - a shareholder proposal to oblige Microsoft to describe their stance on net neutrality has been excluded by a review board, but the source of the motion is a group acting as a corporate lobbying organisation than an actual investment fund, and in this case is presumably acting as a front for the telecoms companies that are pressing for a multi-tiered Internet. Lock-down - if Windows Vista is not activated within 30 days of installation, it will switch into a significantly reduced mode designed to limit the user to short sessions of web use and read-only access to data files, and without the fancy new Aero user interface at that - but it will not actually disable the PC completely, as some have speculated. The future of YouTube - I've always been puzzled by the popular video site's continuing existence, given that they serve 200Tb of data per day, don't charge for the service, and hold more copyright violating video clips than you can shake a subpoena at. A new advertising deal with Warner Music may help the finances a little, but legally the site seems to be hanging by a thread... Life mirroring art - Cory Doctorow's excellent SF novel "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" contains a social status mechanism he terms "whuffie" (which always makes me think of primo crypto-geek and the concept has now been translated into an open source service based around Skype. Who knows, it might even catch on! Kos censored - the influential left wing blog has somehow joined the list of porn sites blocked by the SmartFilter web filtering service, and based on anecdotal reports of other liberal sites that are being mysteriously misclassified and blocked by SmartFilter and its ilk, some are suggesting that it's not necessarily an Sleeping with the enemy - back in August a team of programmers working on the Firefox browser visited Microsoft to talk to the Vista development team. Both groups seem to have gained from the experience, and it even seems that Microsoft's open source developers are going to contribute source code to ensure that Firefox works smoothly with the new user interface technology. A waste of time - my friend Mike is complaining that my recent mention of the strategy game Defcon encouraged him to take a look for himself, leading to the complete loss of a day from his schedule. Judging by the comments of others, and the sudden rash of YouTube, the strange little web toy Line Rider is equally absorbing. Stay away, Mike, stay away! More PS3 woes - with quotes such as "there is no way this launch is going to go well", from a game retail store manager, circulating around the web, the future of the console looks a touch bleak. I loved one of the comments to the article at Ars Technica, though: "Sony might have problems with the PS3, but their battery business will pick up the slack." <laughing> Wireless pricing - a major Wi-Fi hotspot operator has criticised a report that objected to the cost of wireless access in UK hotels, some of which charge up to £20 per day. Their argument that "business class routers" are more expensive is largely spurious, though, even when the additional cost of power-over-Ethernet hardware is taken into account. A little misunderstanding - a researcher at the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark has succeeded in "teleporting" the information content of a macroscopic object containing thousands of billions of atoms over a distance of around half a metre. The original CNN story implies that matter itself was moved, but in fact it was simply a packet of information representing its quantum state - but, nevertheless, this is a significant and interesting achievement and holds great promise for the future of quantum computing and And finally, courtesy of Kelly's Cool Tools blog, a tip that could save someone's life - and for a change I'm going to reproduce it in its entirety: A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim quickly he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed and getting to the patient within 3 hours, which is tough. Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. But doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three 1. Ask the individual to SMILE. 2. Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS. 3. Ask the person to SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently, ie: It is sunny out today) If he or she has trouble with any of these tasks, call 9-1-1 immediately and describe the symptoms to the -- Passed along by Michael Hawley Still trying to catch up with myself, but as one PFY is off on a week long training course and another is on a two day site visit to our most far-flung sales office, life for the remaining PFY and I is proving a touch busy. There have been absolutely no problems arising from the work at the weekend, though, which I am extremely pleased about - the four of us work very well together, and as a team we've been pulling off some extremely smooth upgrades and new installations over the last year or so. Applause Without form, and void - recent reports of a large number of serious vulnerabilities in the Firefox browser may well be untrue, it seems, with the two hackers responsible for the announcement backing down from statements made at the ToorCon security conference. "The main purpose of our talk was to be humorous", one of them claimed - thus guaranteeing that nobody ever takes them seriously again - or invites them to speak at security conferences, either, for that matter... Addon for Excel - if pressed, I would have said that it wouldn't be possible to create a fully-graphical version of Pacman running under VBA in Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet, but this enterprising Japanese geek has produced not only that but Space Invaders as well, by treating the spreadsheet cells as the pixels of a raster display, changing their background colour repeatedly to create animation. You'd never know from looking at the games, certainly, that they were a spreadsheet! Going it alone - phone company Nokia is trying to drum-up overnight industry support for their Wibree personal area wireless networking standard, obviously intended to go head-to-head with Bluetooth. The chipset has noticeably lower power consumption, apparently, which is a definite bonus, but competition from both established technologies and upcoming ones will be stiff. Cruelty to animals - just when you though it was safe to go back to the USB hub, the latest dumb device is an animatronic hamster in its own plastic exercise wheel, and once hooked up to that wonderfully versatile port it monitors the Windows system so that the faster you type the faster it spins. I have to assume that somebody, somewhere, is paid to come up with ideas like this - which an unsettling thought... "I don't think so, Tim" - The leader of the Bracknell Forest district council has suggested that selling the personal details of residents that use the council's electronic entitlement cards to marketing firms could reduce council tax to zero, but the idea was later dismissed by an official statement - just as well, I suspect, as the data protection issues that such a move would raise are a The spam king - Hormel Foods, manufacturer of the original SPAM meat product, has failed in its attempt to obtain a European trademark for the word in connection with unsolicited commercial email. Their intention was to claim licensing fees from the myriad of companies who use "spam" in their product names etc, but their case that the public doesn't associate the term with bulk email really doesn't seem to hold much water. Verity Stob on the many and varied varieties of Microsoft Word users. Enough said. Catching up on the news from the last few days... Phreaking - hacker archivist Jason Scott is helping to preserve a collection of audio recordings from the phone phreaking culture of the early nineties. This is a decade or more after the wild days of Captain Crunch and Steve Wozniak, but of great interest none the Apple controversy - a demonstration of vulnerabilities in MacBook wireless stack has been cancelled following pressure from Apple, apparently, and the issue has divided the Mac fanboys down the middle. Subtly flawed - the myth of Firefox's security is also fading somewhat, it seems, with the announcement of a flaw that can be it is only one of around 30 that they are aware of. Fighting back - podcast creators and are considering legal action to fight Apple's continuing harassment of people using words containing "pod", but it seems to me that they only have themselves to blame for adopting it when a more generic term would actually have been preferable. Getting away with murder - UK consultancy Accenture is somehow managing to withdraw from the doomed UK National Programme for IT without paying the stiff penalty fees promised by the Director General only a few months ago. HP lawyer balks - Hewlett-Packard's General Counsel has resigned from the company, and has invoked her 5th Amendment rights to avoid to testifying before a government subcommittee that is investigating HP's controversial spying activities. TalkTalk quitters - dissatisfied users of the free ISP TalkTalk, owned by UK cellphone bucket shop chain Carphone Warehouse, are being allowed to escape binding 18 month contracts following widespread claims that the company has been unable to live up to its SWIFT violated - the Terrorist Finance Tracking programme run by the US Treasury has violated the privacy of up to 7,800 international financial institutions by its secret examination of financial records held by the Belgian interbanking agency SWIFT. Security theatre - courtesy of The Onion, US citizens offer their opinions on the War On Moisture: "The ban was a necessary precaution. We have to be willing to make these kinds of sacrifices if we're going to prevent scientifically impossible Bullying Take-Two - the controversial gaming company is under fire from the equally controversial lawyer Jack Thompson, who is crusading against their new game "Bully" even before anyone has seen an significant information about the game itself. Blasphemy - this enterprising modder has installed a micro-ATX SLI-capable motherboard into the chassis of a PowerMac G5, and he's made a very neat job of it. I just hope he's prepared for the outlandish hate mail that seems to follow these projects! - Canadian company Suissa Computers is manufacturing PCs built into beautifully crafted wooden cases looking more like designer furniture than anything else. Prices are high, certainly, but not outrageously so given the evident quality. C&C 3 - the third major version of Westwood's long-running strategy game is due next year, and although at this stage the web site is a classic example of style over content I shall be watching keenly for any genuine facts that emerge. Shall we play a game? - inspired by Risk and the classic movie Wargames, Defcon is the latest offering from Introversion, creator of the hacking game Uplink, and has as its theme the perennial favourite Global Multi-core gaming - Remedy has demonstrated how rich a gaming environment can be when multiple CPU cores are available - although as a dual-CPU user for many years I'm feeling a bit jaundiced about this sudden wave of enthusiastic support for SMP. Testing Turing - following extensive hype over a pair of online chat programs that are described as "artificial intelligence", The Register is poking fun at their creator Rollo Carpenter. The software is little more than an overgrown version of Eliza, though, as far as I can see... Highly suspicious - the latest project from technology artist Casey Smith is a device with no function other than to look suspicious. His other works are equally wonderful and equally pointless, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye on his web site Taking the cake - this wedding cake inspired by Terry Pratchett's novels comes complete with a turtle, four elephants and a full-detailed Discworld, and the result is absolutely stunning. I think it would be a shame to eat it! And finally, the shrinking planet - Google Earth has been a growing source of fascinating curiosities since its launch, and these lists of interesting things to do and to see there are well worth exploring. As promised, some pictures of the weekend's work to replace a couple of network cabinets - photos courtesy of my colleague Jim, who discovered a rather nifty blurring effect when he switched his camera to a slower shutter speed to avoid reflections from the flash, making me look like some kind of wiring dervish... The entire team worked themselves to a standstill on the project, this weekend, but the finished results were definitely worth it. On the left, the pair of half-height cabinets that have been holding our Cisco Catalyst 6509 switch and a bunch of Raritan Paragon KVM hardware - and on the right, the work in progress. The green cabling feeds ninety-odd servers, the vast majority of which have multiple network interfaces, and took another of my colleagues many hours of patient work to untangle the spaghetti that a previous project had left them in. Above the core switch are a bunch of smaller switches for DMZs, test subnets and the like, each with their own bundle of brightly-coloured string. The cabinet on the right of the picture is the new home for the KVM hardware (with a set of ninety-something prettily pink cables safely out of sight at the rear) and a Cisco Catalyst 5509 switch, bought ridiculously cheap on eBay as both a test-bed for our plans for implementing VLANs on the network and as an emergency backup in the event that its bigger brother ever commits suicide. Another blur of activity, and then the finished product. The photograph shows that they're leaning forward a little at present, as we haven't wound the stabilising feet down yet, and also how well they highlight the boring grey colour scheme of the patch panel cab next to them. We'd like to replace that one with a black unit, to match the general ambience that nine black cabinets full of tasteful black and gunmetal Dell PowerEdge servers has brought, but it holds about 60U's worth of Krone strips and Cisco workgroup switches as well as being attached to the PBX by cabling as thick as my wrist, so I'm inclined to think that unfortunately it would represent too much work to be worthwhile for purely cosmetic reasons. If we ever have to rewire the ground floor, though, that thing is history.. I spent all weekend in the office, along with the rest of my team, moving a large quantity of network infrastructure hardware (The wires! The wires!) from a pair of small cabinets to a pair of much larger ones, and given that when I finally reached home I was visited by a friend bearing three laptops and a printer for me to repair, right now I have had more than enough of technology. I'll post some photos of the work at the office tomorrow, but until then I'm you'll have to content yourselves with my traditional monthly stats before, I retire to the settee to spend the rest of the evening groaning gently. The eagle-eyed will have noticed that I've removed the Tweakers Australia Top 50 voting button from the bottom of the page, this month. A few weeks ago Mike pointed out that the page seemed to have disappeared, and in any case the list has grown less and less useful over the last few years, thanks to automatic vote forgery from an unscrupulous IT training manuals supplier. The site admins seem to have been completely unconcerned about this, surprisingly, to the point where it seems probable that they were not unconnected with said company, and all-in-all the thing has been something of a dead loss... The stats provided by such mainstream weblog analysis sites as The Truth Laid Bear and Technorati are far more accurate and reliable, of course, but unfortunately they brutally expose Epicycle as the small-fry that it currently is... It's a double-edged sword.

Thu July 10, 2014 Filmed Over 12 Years, 'Boyhood' Follows A Kid's Coming Of Age Originally published on Fri July 11, 2014 5:25 pm Usually when characters age in movies, they're covered with makeup and outfitted with prosthetics — or directors use different actors as the characters grow older. But in the new film Boyhood, none of that is necessary. The film takes place over the course of 12 years, and it was shot over the course of 12 years. So we watch the actors getting older for real, which gives their characters a sense of authenticity. At the beginning of the movie, the main character, Mason, is 6 years old. He and his sister, who is a couple of years older, live in a small town in Texas with their mother, who is divorced from their father. The film's writer and director, Richard Linklater, says that picking Ellar Coltrane to play Mason was a vital choice because he had to guess what he'd be like when he was 18. "I was in the unique once-in-a-lifetime position, really," Linklater tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "I was banking the whole movie on this kid." Over the next 12 years, the children grow up, and their parents stumble their way through the next stage of adulthood. Linklater also made the films Slacker, Dazed and Confused, the Before Sunrise trilogy, School of Rock and Bernie. He says shooting Boyhood was a rare venture because he had the luxury to figure out what the story needed, such as incorporating cultural shifts and changes in the actors' lives. "We filmed 39 days over about a 4,200-day stretch ... which is incredible," Linklater says. "It gave me so much time to just think and process everything we had done so far." On seeing people age on film Part of the idea was to see people transform in one sitting of a movie, to see them transform into that young adult, in this case, or see the adults get older. I mean, that is a fascinating journey we all make. I run into friends that I grew up with, and I look in their faces and [think], "Oh, my God, we're middle-aged people now." And I still see the little kid they were, and it's fascinating. [You] see a picture of yourself when you're little, and are you even still that person? Yes, there's a connection there. On casting 6-year-old Ellar Coltrane It was a huge leap. I just went with a kid who seemed kind of the most interesting. I liked the way his mind worked — he was a little mysterious and sensitive and very thoughtful. He was cut from no ordinary cloth. He was home-schooled, and his parents were artists, and I thought, "Well, that's cool. There'll be some family support for this undertaking. It will be a fun thing to do in his life." So I think I had the family support, but as far as he goes, you kind of have to admit that your main collaborator here has a really unknown future. But I would have each year to incrementally adjust and maybe go toward who he was becoming. That was sort of the design of the movie. On casting his daughter I almost felt like I didn't cast Lorelei. Once it was apparent that the older sister was in her age range ... she sort of insisted on the part. I never really thought about casting it traditionally. She sort of took the part like, "Daddy, well, I'm playing that part." She had grown up on movie sets. She had been in other movies — little parts — and it was very natural for her. She was very extroverted at that point in her life. The sassy kid at the beginning of the movie — that was her. On planning for scenes years in advance Even as I structured [the film] and knew the trajectories of the characters and all the physicality — they're moving here, there's a divorce, you get your degree, you move again ... I kind of had all that worked out, but I was kind of looking forward to the new ideas that would emerge in the process. I had notes that I knew I wanted to hit later in the film that I knew I couldn't even articulate yet. I knew, "Oh, that will be eight or nine years before I truly will know the right tone for that scene, but there it sits as a placeholder way into the future." TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Usually in movies, when we see a character age, it's with the help of makeup and prosthetics or using different actors as the character ages. But in the new film "Boyhood," none of that is necessary. The film takes place over the course of 12 years and it was shot over the course of 12 years. So we watched the actors getting older for real, which gives their characters a sense of authenticity. "Boyhood" was written and directed by my guest Richard Linklater, who also made the films "Slacker," "Dazed and Confused," the "Before Sunrise" trilogy, "School Of Rock" and Bernie. "Boyhood" begins when the main character Mason is six and his sister is a couple of years older. They're living in a small town in Texas with their mother, who's divorced from their father. Over the next 12 years, we watch the children grow up and their parents stumble their way through the next stage of adulthood. The parents are played by Ethan Hawke, who costarred in Linklater's "Before Sunrise" trilogy, and Patricia Arquette. The boy is played Ellar Coltrane. His sister is played by Linklater's daughter Lorelei. Let's start with a scene from about a quarter of the way through the film. The mother has remarried and found out too late that her new husband drinks and has an authoritarian streak. He's forced her shaggy-haired son to get a buzz cut. The boy's embarrassed by his haircut. Soon after, alone in the car with his mother, he lets her know how angry he is. (SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BOYHOOD) ELLAR COLTRANE: (As Mason) I mean, he didn't even ask. He just cut it. I mean, it's my hair. PATRICIA ARQUETTE: (As Olivia) Well, no wonder you were angry. I'd be angry too. COLTRANE: (As Mason) I look like a Martian now. ARQUETTE: (As Olivia) Honey, you know what? I'm going to talk to him about it later, OK? COLTRANE: (As Mason) I tried to call you but you didn't answer your phone. ARQUETTE: I'm so sorry. I've been so busy with school. Hey, for what it's worth it's hair and it will grow back. Now I can see your pretty eyes and your foxy face. COLTRANE: (As Mason) Why'd you even marry him? He's such a jerk. ARQUETTE: Well, Bill has his good qualities. You know, nobody's perfect. And now we have a family. COLTRANE: (As Mason) We already had a family. GROSS: Richard Linklater, welcome to FRESH AIR. You know, throughout my life... RICHARD LINKLATER: Thanks. GROSS: ...I've always wondered like - gee, what's that baby going to look like as a child, and what's that child going to look like as a teenager, and what's that teenager going to look like as an adult, and what's that adult going to look like as an elderly person? When I was in, like, grade school, I used to think like - what's the kid sitting next me going to look like an adult? Because I couldn't fathom kids my age looking like adults - it seemed just unimaginable to me that we'd all grow into what adults look like. And I'm wondering if that's part of what you were thinking about in shooting this film over 12 years. LINKLATER: (Laughing) Well, I don't know if that was the main motivation, but it was certainly kind of - part of the idea was to see people transform in one sitting of a movie - to see them transform into that young adult in this case or see the adults get older. I mean, that is the fascinating journey we all make. I run into friends from - that I grew up with - and I look in their faces and I'm like oh my God, we're middle-aged people now. And I still see the little kid they were. And it's, you know, it's fascinating when you see a picture of yourself when you were little and God, are you even still that person? Yes, there's a connection there. But I was in the unique, once-in-a-lifetime position, really. It felt like, when I was choosing the young actor Ellar Coltrane, I was staring in the face of a six- year-old, thinking - not just curious what - what are you going to be like, what are you going to look like when you're, you know, 18 - but it was kind of professionally important to me. (Laughing) You know, I was banking the whole movie on this kid and thinking - what kind of person are you going to grow up to be. It was kind of mysterious. And so... GROSS: Well, I thought about that a lot watching the movie, the risk that you took casting a six- year-old. You can't - I don't know how much you can predict as a film director or as a casting director or even as a parent what a child is going to look like, what their personality is going to be, whether they'll be at all interested in following through on this as they get older. So what did you do to not only audition the kid, but to screen them to see, like, do they have a chance of remaining interested over 12 years and maintaining a certain degree of talent? LINKLATER: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was a huge leap. I just went to the kid that seemed kind of the most interesting. I liked the way his mind worked. He was a little mysterious and sensitive and very thoughtful. He was cut from no, you know, ordinary cloth. You know, he was kind of home-schooled, his parents were artists. I thought well, that's cool. There'll be some family support for this undertaking. It'll be a fun thing to do in his life. So I think I had the family support. But as far as he goes, you just kind of have to admit you're collaborating - your main collaborator here is really an unknown future. So - but I would have each year to kind of incrementally adjust and maybe go toward who he was becoming. And that was sort of the design of the movie. So I can really sit here at the end and go - at the beginning, it's not really him. He's playing this fictional character. But by the end, all those years later, I think his character had morphed largely - still fictional character - but, you know, that's really him sitting up on the mountain at the end. I would say that's Ellar. GROSS: Can you tell us about the genesis of the plan? Like, what was the first idea you had for this movie? LINKLATER: I had been a parent for about six years, so I was really in the mindset of a kid. You know, you're so - that relation is so close, you can't help but dredge up your own childhood at every stage of development. But then simultaneous to that, I'm also bumbling through parenthood, this new thing that - like, oh well, does anyone know how to do this? You know, how do you - you know - something you're not really prepared for but you're doing your best. So all that experience and emotions added up to me wanting to tell a movie about childhood, I think. GROSS: And parenthood. LINKLATER: And parenthood, yeah because when you tell a story of kids at a young age, you know, the parents are such a big part of their lives. So I sat down to maybe write - I was going to - well, maybe it should be a novel. You know, I had something - maybe some experimental weird novel I'd always wanted to write. And this film idea hit me - well, what if I filmed a little bit every year? And in the one movie - the one story - everyone would age, you know, the kids would grow up, the parents would age and I could - you know - this vast cinematic canvas presented itself to me. It's like, oh, that had never been done, would that work? And it just presented itself to me all at one time. And the tone of the movie, everything, it solved all my problems. And that's the fun part, you know, that's the storytelling breakthrough. GROSS: How much of the story did you have in your mind when you set out to make the movie and how did that change as the years went by and the actors you were working with, particularly the children, one of whom is your daughter, changed? LINKLATER: All - it's both - the macro and the micro. GROSS: And you changed too, I'm sure. GROSS: I'm sure you've changed over 12 years. And your idea of how children mature and what happens to parents - I'm sure that changed over 12 years. LINKLATER: Of course, I looked forward to that. That was kind of built into the design of the movie. Even as I structured it and knew the trajectories of the characters and kind of all the physicality - oh, they're moving here, there's a divorce, you get your degree, you move again. The dad comes into your life and, you know, all this. I kind of had that all worked out. But I was kind of looking forward to, you know, the new ideas that would emerge in the process, you know. I had notes I know I wanted to hit later in the film that I knew I couldn't even articulate yet. I knew oh, that'll be eight or nine years before I truly will know the right tone for that scene. But there it sits as a placeholder way into the future. So it's kind of good to know what you're working toward. But it's also rare in film that you have this luxury of time. You know, we filmed our schedule - we filmed 39 days over about a 4,200 day stretch of time, which is incredible. So it gave me so much time to just think and process everything we had done so far. I could edit, attach that to this ever-growing film. Year-by-year it's becoming larger. I would edit the entire film again - watch it, think about it - what does the story need? Incorporate whatever is going on in the culture that I felt was relevant. And then also watch it click about it what does the story need. Incorporate whatever's going on in the culture that I felt, you know, was relevant. And then also incrementally aging and growing up cast, being in touch with them and what's going on in their lives. GROSS: Now, you cast your daughter as the older sister in the movie. And she's, like, what, a couple of years older than her brother? LINKLATER: Yeah, she was nine and Ellar was seven when we started, yeah. GROSS: So tell me why you cast your daughter. I was thinking part of the reason - I'm guessing here - that part of the reason was if you were willing to put your daughter through it, then you'd feel more comfortable putting Ellar, Ellar Coltrane through it. GROSS: And also his parents would feel more comfortable thinking, like, well, his own daughter's doing it, so he's going to treat my son OK. LINKLATER: They don't know who they're dealing with. No, you know, I never really thought of that. I guess that might've impressed them that oh yeah, I'm putting my family on the line for this. But it was really - it almost felt like I didn't cast Lorelei. She - once it was apparent that the older sister was in her age range, you know, the kind of - starts off kind of the annoying older sister. She sort of insisted on the part. I never really thought about casting it traditionally. I never - she sort of took the part like daddy, well, I'm playing that part. She had grown up on movie sets. She'd been in other movies, little parts. And it was just very natural for her. She's very extraverted at that point in her life. And, you know, the sassy kid you see at the beginning of the movie, that was her. GROSS: But didn't it cross your mind that there might've been one of those moments of - I hate you daddy and I hate your movie? LINKLATER: I didn't think that at the beginning because she was so gung-ho. But surprise, you know, here comes puberty (laughing). You know, adolescence and, you know, here we go. She did have a year where she was like dad, can my character, like, die? LINKLATER: You know, she was (laughing) - that wasn't, like, director-actor, that was daughter-father. And it was really cute and I couldn't figure out if she was having an emotional reaction to the dressing up for the Harry Potter book signing that year. And I only found out recently that was - it seemed irrational to me at the time, and I was like well, no Lorelei. You know, that would be a little dramatic for the film we're making. You know, she got through it. And then she really came back aboard and she never wanted to bail again. She was really a trooper and I'm very proud of the work she did. She was great. GROSS: My guest is Richard Linklater. He wrote and directed the new film "Boyhood." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR. GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Richard Linklater and his new movie is called "Boyhood," he wrote and directed it. And his other movies include "Slacker," "Dazed and Confused" and - and "Bernie". So you describe the character that your daughter, Lorelei Linklater, plays in the movie as like the annoying older sister. LINKLATER: Starts off that way GROSS: Starts off that way. So here's her starting off as the annoying sister moment. LINKLATER: Oh yeah. GROSS: And she - she's singing the Britney Spears hit, "Oops, I Did it Again." And - and - her - her - her younger brother is just feeling like tormented by being forced to watch her sing this. And she's like dancing around the room and everything. So, let me just play that moment and - and you'll hear him just kind of - feeling tormented and then she starts - kind of - you know, tormenting him. And then the mother walks in and... LINKLATER: ...She fakes crying. GROSS: And, yeah. She fakes that he hit her when really she's the one who's been picking on him. So - so - so here's scene. And this is Richard Linklater's daughter, Lorelei Linklater, as the older sister and Ellar Coltrane as the brother. (SOUNDBITE FROM FILM, "BOYHOOD") LORELEI LINKLATER: (As Samantha, singing) Oops I did it again. I played with your heart. I got lost the game. Oh baby, baby. Woops you think I'm in love, I was sent from above. COLTRANE: (As Mason Jr.) Stop. LINKLATER: (As Samantha, singing) I'm not that innocent. COLTRANE: (As Mason Jr.) Quit it. LINKLATER: (As Samantha, singing) You see my problem is this, I'm dreaming away, wishing that heroes truly exist. COLTRANE: (As Mason Jr.) Quit it. LINKLATER: (As Samantha, singing) I cry watching the days. You see I'm a fool, in so many ways. COLTRANE: (As Mason. Jr.) Mom. LINKLATER: (As Samantha, singing) But to lose all my senses... ARQUETTE: (As Olivia) What the hell is going on in here? Do you guys know what time it is? LINKLATER: (As Samantha, crying) He hit me. ARQUETTE: (As Olivia) Mason, do not throw things at your sister. COLTRANE: (As Mason Jr.) She's faking. She hit me first. ARQUETTE: (As Olivia) Listen, both of you. I'm going back to bed. I don't want to hear another peep out of here for an hour. Go to sleep. COLTRANE: (As Mason Jr.) Faker. GROSS: That was Patricia Arquette as the mother. My guess Richard Linklater wrote and directed the movie which is called "Boyhood." So I think that's great, and I was wondering if your daughter Lorelei at the time was singing, "Oops, I Did it Again," around the house. And I was wondering also what you thought of it when she was - when she was singing around the house because you know, Britney Spears was so - kind like of sexualized as a young teen and parents were like, oh my gosh, do I really want my daughter being that sexualized, that young. LINKLATER: No, my daughter lives in another - at that age lived in another century. She was listening to harpsichord. She's kind of a mediev - a medievalist. So, she wasn't really that familiar with Britney Spears. I mean, she knew the name and I think she had heard the song. She had to kind of learn that for the movie. But she was singing and dancing to her namesake, Marilyn Monroe's character in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," singing "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend." That she would sing and dance to, at a drop of a hat. She was a big Marilyn Monroe fan at that time. So, I even filmed as a backup, in case it ever got the rights to the Britney Spears song, I had her doing her take of - from "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." So that's really more who she was. GROSS: So want to jump ahead in time a few years in the movie - and this is a scene when your daughter, Lorelei Linklater, is in high school. We just heard her when she was about nine, no she's - in this scene she's in high school. And her younger brother's in middle school. And - so in the scene she's with one of her girlfriends talking at home in - in her bedroom and her mother walks in and is really angry that she neglected to do what she promised to do, which is pick up her younger brother from middle school. So here's the scene. (SOUNDBITE FROM FILM, "BOYHOOD") ARQUETTE: (As Olivia) Samantha. Why the hell didn't you pick up your brother like you said you would? LINKLATER: (As Samantha) OK, Mom. Mom, I know you're going to say - she was running late, and we couldn't turn around. ARQUETTE: (As Olivia) No, no. No excuses. The bottom line is, you didn't do what you say you were going to do. You stranded your brother. LINKLATER: (As Samantha) It's embarrassing to ask my friend to turn around and get some kid at the middle school. ARQUETTE: (As Olivia) What do you mean, some kid? He's your brother. And you know what? We've helped Janey out before. I mean, she lives right around the corner, it's no big deal. LINKLATER: (As Samantha) Sorry ARQUETTE: (As Olivia) You know what, Samantha? You need to start thinking long and hard about who you want to be. Do you want to be a cooperative person who - who's compassionate and helps people out, or do want to be a self-centered narcissist? LINKLATER: (As Samantha) You know what? You're right. I am this horrible person, but honestly he's not a baby anymore - you don't have to treat him like one. He's in eighth grade and he can find his way home if he wants to. ARQUETTE: (As Olivia) You know what? When Gabby leaves, you and me are going to have a chat. GROSS: That's Lorelei Linklatter and Patricia Arquette in a scene from Richard Linklatter's new movie, "Boyhood." And I - I love just hearing back to back the clip where daughter is like nine, and singing "Oops, I Did it Again," and hearing her in high school - it's much more interesting when you can see it too. So "Boyhood" is not a thriller but I found myself being nervous during a lot of the movie because I was always worrying that the kids will hurt themselves, or get into trouble, or something is going to go wrong. And it made me think - I'm not a parent, but it made me think about how parents probably live their lives that way because there's always so much to worry about when your children are going up. LINKLATER: It's the worst thing that gets imposed on you as a parent. Like your carefree days are over because - just that part of you - what's that part of the brain that's on the lookout for all danger? I mean that goes on... GROSS: ...It's called my brain LINKLATER: Yeah, just your entire brain. GROSS: Yeah, yeah. LINKLATER: Yeah. Well, that goes on red alert that - that gets - that knob goes to 11 and you're spending your whole time like, okay how are you going to - your job is to protect your kids, to such a degree. But you see it, we're conditioned. Audiences are conditioned, you know. In the film, there's a scene where these boys are like, throwing these saw blades at a... LINKLATER: ...Sheet rock I could feel it in audience, and it was the last thing that crossed my mind. It had crossed my mind in the shooting of that that there would be blood, or violence or any mistakes - it was just these guys kind of screwing around. But I felt it in the audience like, this is where the kid falls back on the blade and you know we have to - cuts off a finger or something, but it just - that usually doesn't happen in life, and this thing was so much about kind of - you know most - you get through life and there aren't these huge traumatic - there's a lot of little things. And there's another scene where his dad is warning him, don't drive and text. He is on a little road trip, driving with his girlfriend - she hands him the phone - he looks at a picture while he's driving - OK, here's where the car goes off the highway. But you see how much were conditioned in our, you know plot-based storytelling to have - to set these things up and pay them off and you realize just how fake that is to life. Most of us do survive do survive childhood. Most of the bad things don't happen. You know, we spend all our lives in fear for these things that never happen. And when things do happen, it's unexpected - it's not the way you thought you would and you realize there's nothing - not much you could have done to prevent it, sometimes. You know, but it's - it's just - you know, it's an unpredictable - there's just a random element to i, but yet you have to be concerned as a parent. So it's - it's - it's a tough trick to maintain. GROSS: But you're so right that were conditioned in movies to expect like, oh this is where the saw amputates his arm... GROSS: ...Or this is where the car drives off the road or, yeah. LINKLATER: It just doesn't happen. But that doesn't mean the film isn't a good drama. GROSS: But the thing is, sometimes it does hap - sometimes it does happen. LINKLATER: Sometimes it does, you know. Who gets through childhood without some stitches or a broke - you know, you're going to wear a cast at some point. Something is going to happen. But I just - that itself wasn't that dramatic to me. I was going for the little drama of life where maybe it doesn't feel that dramatic to the - to the parent like, oh we're moving you know just - you're the new kid in school, so what? You know, but for the kid that's - that's highly dramatic - that's traumatic, you know? So, I was trying from the kid's perspective get, just how dramatic you know, life can feel, even though it maybe to another perspective it doesn't feel that way or look that way, but it - it is. It's pretty dramatic. Just getting through life is pretty dramatic. GROSS: Richard Linklatter will be back in the second half of the show. He wrote and directed the new film "Boyhood." I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR. GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with screenwriter and director Richard Linklater. His new film "Boyhood" follows a 6- year-old boy, his 8-year-old sister and their divorced parents through the next 12 years of their lives. Linklater shot the film over the course of 12 years, so we actually see the children grow up before our eyes. Linklater's other movies include "Slacker," "Dazed and Confused," "School of Rock," the "Before Sunrise" trilogy and "Bernie." When we left off, we were talking about "Boyhood." The parents in "Boyhood" are divorced. They're played by Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke. And so she becomes a single mother. She goes back to school to get a psychology degree and hopes to earn a decent living teaching. But it's very hard on her and on her two children when she's in school because she can't give them the attention that she wants or that they want to have. And it's hard for her to focus on school, too. I read that your mother went back to school when you were growing up. Were your parents divorced? LINKLATER: Yeah, my mom was a young mom from the late '50s, early '60s. You know, good Catholic girl. She had her kids - I think when she had her third kid, me, she was 22. And I think she was very smart and still wanted an education and all that. So my childhood was my mom in school, my mom graduating. My mom graduated from college when she was, you know, a certain age. And then she got her masters. And then working getting, you know, teaching and then getting a college teaching job. So Patricia's academic career kind of is based sort of on my moms, that element. But my parents divorced when I was 7, so in this movie they're divorced from the very beginning because I didn't really want the audience to know too much about what happened there, kind of the way the kids - your parent's separation is kind of a mystery. You never know exactly what happened, maybe you never do. But certainly from a kid, you know, point of view you get pulled aside and said OK, well, Daddy's going to live here and, you know, they just kind of explain it to you. But it's kind of a mystery as to what happened between them before the movie starts. And even in the - at the very end of the movie, we're still learning - there'll be a little hint or a little something, we still kind of hear more about that relationship. GROSS: The character of the father in your movie - the Ethan Hawke character. He kind of disappears for a while. He's in Alaska. And then he comes back and wants to become a presence in his children's lives again. But, you know, he's the kind of father who's, like, a lot of fun to be around and really talkative and he takes them bowling and camping and this and that. But he doesn't have the responsibility that the mother has. So on the one hand, he's very likable. On the other hand, you know, she's got to do all the work. And he reminded me - he could have so easily have been a character, I think, in "Slacker" or "Dazed And Confused," somebody who grows up but is still somehow committed to the life they lived as a teenager. And doesn't quite know how to, like, what he wants as an adult or how to be an adult. And he wants to have a life in music but he isn't really pursuing it. Did you think of him that way? As being - as having... LINKLATER: Yeah. He follows this wonderful - I think he does mature. You see a guy kind of slowly giving up maybe his dreams of being a songwriter. Or clearly something happened between them that separated him from his family for a while there and his kids. But before the movie starts or within - between the first and second year, when he shows up in the movie, he's clearly made a decision off-screen to be a dad to those kids, you know. He's come back. He wants to be around them geographically and get his act together. And you see him consciously trying to be a good dad. He does love them. And he's trying very hard. But he's kind of, you know, like I said earlier, he's kind of bumbling through parenthood. He's figuring it out but kind of endearingly self-consciously. And I just think he's trying, which as a parent, that's so much of the game, you know, just to try. We're all going to get it wrong anyway, but you have to at least try. GROSS: When Ethan Hawke has a new girlfriend who he eventually marries in the film, his in-laws - they're really warm and loving, not only to him but to the whole extended family, to his children from another marriage. But they're also, like, so culturally and politically opposite from the Ethan Hawke character. They're very Christian. They're very politically conservative. They have guns. They're culturally opposite. But they're such lovely people. And I thought it was really good that you created these characters who aren't culturally like you or like his character and created two such great people. LINKLATER: Yeah. I'm glad you see it that way because some people sort of laugh like oh, they're these - his new step-grandparents seem a little, you know, they represent a lot of our country. And it's kind of based loosely on my own step-grandparents who were the sweetest people, who embraced my sisters and I as family immediately and loved us. And they were just wonderful. And yet there was that Christmas at age 13, you know, I call it my redneck bar mitzvah year where, you know, I did get a Bible with my name in it and a shotgun in the same year. And you realize it's just cultural. And most people get guns, they use it sportingly and recreationally, and nothing bad ever happens. You know, you learn safety, like he says. And nothing bad happens with those guns. So that's the vast majority of our culture. And I think a lot of people are sort of afraid of it, but you realize it's just cultural. GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Richard Linklater and his new movie is called "Boyhood." Let's take a short break, then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH AIR. GROSS: My guest is Richard Linklater. He wrote and directed the new film "Boyhood," and his other films include "Dazed and Confused" and "Slacker" and "Bernie." I want to ask you about "Bernie" since the story of that movie has become a story for you in real life off the screen. "Bernie" is based on the real story of a mortician who came to a small Texas town to practice. And apparently everybody in town just loved him because he took such good care of the bereaved and did such caring funeral services. He became very close to an older woman, who in the movie is played by Shirley MacLaine, and the character of Bernie is played by Jack Black. So he becomes very attached to this very wealthy older woman who kind of shows him this new life of fine food and travel around the world and beautiful clothes and stuff. But she becomes so domineering and so much - like treating him as if he's her servant. He kind of like snaps and actually shoots her to death and hides her for several months in the freezer until her body's discovered. He stood trial, he was found guilty, sentenced to life. But recently, tell us what happened. LINKLATER: Well, God, it's been such an interesting, crazy journey. You know, I made that movie... GROSS: You know what? Before you tell us what happened, I'm going to play a scene where Bernie's... LINKLATER: OK, sure. GROSS: ...So this is the scene in which he's being interrogated by a police officer, and it's in this scene that he actually confesses to the murder. The police officer starts first. (SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BERNIE") UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As Police Officer) How long you been thinking about killing her, Bernie? JACK BLACK: (As Bernie) I never thought of me killing Mrs. Nugent. I - I guess I fantasized about her death, but I was never the one responsible for it. She always died accidentally - like in a car accident or falling down the escalator at the mall in Longview. I was always the one weeping by her open casket, comforting others, being comforted myself. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As Police Officer) Why'd you want her dead, Bernie? BLACK: (As Bernie) She had become so mean and possessive of me. I couldn't face being around her any longer. And then it just happened. I don't know. I shot her. I shot poor Mrs. Nugent four times with the armadillo gun. UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As Police Officer) Then what? BLACK: (As Bernie) Well, then the Lord called her home. I know I done wrong, and I must atone for my sins. GROSS: Jack Black playing Bernie Tiede in a film directed and cowritten by my guest, Richard Linklater - great scene, great performance from Jack Black. LINKLATER: Yeah, Jack is incredible, just incredible. GROSS: Yeah and so that's based on real life. LINKLATER: Pretty much. GROSS: And he was serving a life sentence and that was changed. He's out now and living in your garage apartment. Why was the case reopened? Was it your movie? LINKLATER: Well, the movie was kind of the linchpin to that. It's funny, it's not a documentary, you know? It's just this kind of dark comedy. And it was a case I followed. I went to the trial back in '99 and I felt there was a movie there. I was so fascinated with that relationship and the whole culture surrounding it. And ultimately, it's a very interesting legal case that's portrayed in the movie. They moved the trial because he's too well-liked, which no one's ever heard of. They - he gets a very - from going from almost maybe getting off for the killing, he is punished in my mind and many others like way too much. He gets a life sentence for what was clearly kind of a - I don't know, to me and many others, it felt like a - definitely a murder with circumstances, kind of an abusive relationship. There was a lot going on, you know, between them that led to the tragedy. We had gotten to know Bernie. We went and visited him in prison and it sort of confirmed what I felt all along - that he wasn't the psychopath. He actually was the nicest guy in the world who had been driven to do this act. And it kind of begged the question, if the nicest guy could do that, what about the rest of us? Are we all capable of that, you know, given the right circumstances, the right abusive relationship? Maybe we are. And that was very intriguing to me. But the film doesn't really advocate, it just lays out, you know, what actually happened. A lot of that's based on the real transcript and what I saw at the trial, and no one really doubts it. But a lawyer saw the movie, we started talking to her - Jodi Cole, there in Austin. And she had a real sensitivity toward abuse, I think. GROSS: But the lawyer you're talking about did some investigation and found evidence that convinced her that he had been sexually abused as a child and that led to a dissociative experience is I think the language? LINKLATER: Well, it was one more piece of a puzzle - a psychological puzzle that you always wonder, what would drive someone? You know, when the abused victim finally lashes back and kills the abuser, the question is always whether it's the wife killing the husband or you know - whatever, it's very complex relationships. But like the obvious question is well, why didn't he just leave? They're dead and you're going to prison. You know, why didn't you just leave? It makes so much sense to the rest of us. But Jack Black asked Bernie that question and he answered it. He was like, Oh, you know, I couldn't do that. I mean, I was her only friend, you know? I mean, I was all she had. As much as she was torturing him to death, he loved her enough and felt for her because he was this compassionate person - was and is. And what would lead to that, as Jodi surmised when she found a few books about surviving sexual abuse and that when Bernie was young, there was an uncle in his life. He and a cousin and... GROSS: She found books in his - that he owned about surviving sexual abuse? LINKLATER: Yeah, and Bernie had never brought it up, you know, because I think it's something you just don't talk about. But it all kind of contributed to a bigger picture of, OK, well, he survived abusive himself. And that doesn't give you license to kill, but it's - a lot of people do survive a lot of trauma and don't do that, but it gives further explanation, I think. It puts it - it provides a context. When presented with that and given that Bernie had served 17 years, you know, I think that all led to a judge in our legal system kind of seeing it in a different way and thinking, well, he had served time. And there was a group of us who, if Bernie were to get out or that be a possibility, you know, I'd say, sure, he can live in my garage apartment... GROSS: Yeah, well, that's what you offered. You offered to have him live in your garage apartment and that was one of the conditions of his release. So I'm wondering how has that changed your life to have the subject of your film, who is a confessed murderer under extenuating circumstances, now being your tenant and neighbor? LINKLATER: All that other stuff doesn't matter. I'm just happy for Bernie that he's a citizen in the world, that he has a job, that he's reconnected with friends. GROSS: What's his job? LINKLATER: He's a paralegal. He got training. He's a very intelligent man, so I'm just happy to help in any way. And it's kind of an open-ended arrangement. He can stay as long as he needs to. GROSS: Richard Linklater, thank you so much. LINKLATER: Yeah, thank you for having me. Good talking to you. GROSS: Richard Linklater wrote and directed the new film, "Boyhood." Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

The actor who played Harry Potter may be the richest and most famous human of his generation on the planet, but during an interview at the Four Seasons hotel, Daniel Radcliffe, now just 24, exuded none of the cockiness one might expect of a celebrity best known for demolishing Horcruxes and slaying an evil dark lord in the Potter films. Radcliffe’s signature expressive, preternaturally blue eyes, as well as his pale, translucent skin and delicate features, suggest the aura of an iconic medieval saint (minus the Potter spectacles, of course). But his manner comes across as sincere, amusing and kinetic — he speaks a mile a minute and exudes a restless energy. And, as he is known to do, he humbly made a self-deprecating remark or two. Radcliffe described how projects need to scare him a bit to prove challenging, and joked about his slight stature — 5-foot-5. Since he plays Allen Ginsberg, the gay, Jewish Beat poet in John Krokidas’ new film, “Kill Your Darlings,” opening Oct. 16, Radcliffe also described his own scribbling of as many as 100 poems while on the Potter set, an endeavor he now regards “with a mixture of slight embarrassment and the occasional pride. They were lots of romantic poems, not that I showed them to any of my girlfriends; I wouldn’t have dared,” he said with a laugh. He did, however, publish several of those poems under the pen name Jacob Gershon, which he cobbled together from his middle name and the Anglicized version of his Jewish mother’s maiden name, Gresham (his father is a Protestant from Northern Ireland). He said he likes the similarity of “Gershon” to the biblical Gershom, Moses’ firstborn son, whose name in Hebrew means “foreigner.” “In our home, there was no religion,” Radcliffe said, “but as a young child I was quite inherently religious, though it was mainly feelings of guilt that caused my fervor. It was while studying world religions around age 14 that I became an atheist. The word God doesn’t mean anything to me, and I’ve never had anyone explain it in a way that made any sense to me.” Radcliffe said, however, that he is “proud to be Jewish,” that he has a Jewish humor book at home and that he loves Jewish jokes — when prompted, he told one about two elderly women who encounter a flasher and remark, of his coat, that the lining is terrible. “That’s an old joke from the rag trade that my grandmother used to tell,” he said, explaining that his Polish and Russian Jewish forebears practiced that trade and that his great-great-grandfather made his fortune by producing greatcoats for British soldiers during World War I. To prepare to play the teenage Ginsberg, circa World War II, Radcliffe avidly read the poet’s diaries and work, and he cites Ginsberg’s “Kaddish,” in which the author laments the death of his mentally ill mother, as particularly inspiring. “I came to understand what Allen went through with his mum, and that he spent time with her in institutions,” he said. “It must’ve been quite frightening to see your mother like that, and that must’ve led to a sense of not wanting to see her, and then to a huge amount of guilt about those feelings. “The mother relationship is always such a very important one for men, and particularly, it must be said, for Jewish men,” he continued. “The mother was such a strong figurehead in Jewish homes at the time and presumably must’ve been in the homes of Ginsberg’s friends. And for him not to have had that was one of the aspects that made him feel different from everyone else around him.” Radcliffe said as a Jewish-Irish student in his thoroughly Anglican grammar school, he also felt uncomfortably “different,” which was one reason he was eager to escape to the Potter film sets. Playing Ginsberg is a departure for the actor, his first major Jewish role, set during World War II and spotlighting the young Ginsberg as he leaves his childhood home in Paterson, N.J., for Columbia University, where he comes of age both artistically and sexually. The transformation comes courtesy of his seductive classmate, Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan), who introduces the awkward student to the downtown New York hipster life, to the future Beats William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster) and Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston), as well as prodding him to buck authority in his poetry. Everything changes when Carr is accused of murdering David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall), an older writer who had a stalkerish infatuation with Carr, and the fallout thrusts Ginsberg into a moral dilemma that, as shown in the film, is the most difficult of his young life. Also at the Four Seasons, Krokidas explained why he had sought out Radcliffe for the role: “Ginsberg, at the time, was the dutiful son taking care of his emotionally ill mother, Naomi, and he was always the good boy. And yet in his journals and inside his own head, he believed he had so much more to offer the world than people assumed. I thought that Daniel Radcliffe the person might identify with that.” Radcliffe, who first got the role of Harry Potter at age 10, readily agreed: “I can relate to the idea that people know just a tiny part of you, or one aspect of your personality, and they think they know who you are,” he said with intense earnestness. “Basically, it’s a case of people being obsessed just by the icon. For example, I always get asked the question, ‘What did it feel like to have grown up on screen?’ But I didn’t grow up on screen; I grew up making films. The private moments of my growing up are all my own — none of them appeared on camera, thank God.” Radcliffe has been anxious to prove that he can traverse the difficult terrain between child and adult star, a journey he began in earnest when he decided, at 14, while filming “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” that he wanted to make acting his lifelong profession. To that end, Radcliffe and his team of advisers realized that he needed to begin to take on new (and very different) roles even before the Potter series ended. And so, in 2007, the actor starred in the independent film “The December Boys,” as well as in a Broadway production of the stark psychological drama “Equus,” the latter requiring the boy wizard to perform grueling scenes in the nude. He recalled, with a smile, that one headline in advance of the opening of that play read “something like, ‘Crash! What’s that? The sound of a career coming to a grinding halt’ ” — despite which Radcliffe’s performance earned glowing reviews. He then expanded his repertoire with the Broadway musical “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” the 2012 horror film “The Woman in Black” and “A Young Doctor’s Notebook,” a bitingly satiric British television series, now showing in the United States on the Ovation network, based on a short story by the Soviet Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov. In the latter, Radcliffe plays a morphine-addicted young physician opposite Jon Hamm, who plays an older version of his character and with whom he appears bathing in a tub in one scene. The fiercely ambitious and prolific Radcliffe’s upcoming films include “The F Word,” a romantic comedy opposite Zoe Kazan, and the dark fantasy thriller “Horns,” in which his character literally sprouts horns. “Kill Your Darlings” will further distance Radcliffe from Potter, as in it he appears in his first explicit gay sex sequence, which prompted The Hollywood Reporter to crow, “The boy wizard never pinned his knees behind his ears.” “To be honest, that review did make me laugh,” Radcliffe said. But the scene was hardly gratuitous, he insisted. “John said he’d never really seen a very authentic loss-of-virginity scene for gay men on screen, and he wanted to get it right. So it’s not necessarily a steamy scene, as it’s being portrayed in some articles. It’s about vulnerability as much as anything else, and the fear and excitement that goes along with your first time.” It’s true that Radcliffe has shed his trousers in a variety of recent projects: “If it’s called for, I don’t mind taking off my Keds,” he said, matter-of-factly. “It’s not something I seek out, but I’m not going to be one of those people who complain about not wanting to do what’s in the script.” Krokidas, for his part, felt it was important to cast a Jewish actor as Ginsberg “because the film depicts one of Judaism’s greatest literary figures of the 20th century.” But, he recalled, he wasn’t initially sure Radcliffe was a member of the tribe and panicked when he realized, “There’s going to be sexuality in the film and how am I going to have him take his clothes off if he’s uncircumcised? And, this is so mortifying — I actually texted Dan, and he confirmed that he is indeed Jewish from the waist down.” There are also several sequences in which Ginsberg encounters anti-Semitism, including one where his Southern roommate declares, “You Hymies are really all about work.” “John and I talked about the prejudice that Ginsberg would have faced on a very casual, day-to-day kind of basis,” Radcliffe said of those scenes. “In my mind, Allen’s response to that would be to just internally go to that place of, ‘F--- you, I’m smarter than you.’ That’s his defense mechanism, and it’s probably mine as well.” Does he believe viewers ever will be able to separate him from his most famous character? “I’m always going to be associated with Potter; it was the way I was introduced to multiple generations of people,” he said. “So it’s going to be a while before people don’t associate me with that. “But,” he added, “I’m very proud to be associated with it. As long as it doesn’t prevent me from getting other work, then it shouldn’t be a problem.” “Kill Your Darlings” hits theaters on Oct. 16. We welcome your feedback. Your information will not be shared or sold without your consent. Get all the details. Terms of Service JewishJournal.com has rules for its commenting community.Get all the details. JewishJournal.com reserves the right to use your comment in our weekly print publication.

Short videos from Colorado Inside Out TV: Brian Williams suspended, but Al Charlatan remains on the air, 2/13/15; Persecution of bakers for free speech about gay issues, 1/30/15. The First Amendment Guide to the Second Amendment. 81 Tennessee Law Review 419 (2014). Media Errors in Coverage of Boulder High School: Falsehoods, Distortions, and Omissions by Bill O’Reilly and “Caplis & Silverman”. June 13, 2007. Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 911. July 1, 2004. Media Bias in the Coverage of Gun Control: The Press Evaluates the Popular Culture. Book chapter by Dave Kopel evaluates media bias in the 1970s. Sorry, Wrong Number: Why Media Polls on Gun Control are so Often Unreliable. 9 Political Communication and Persuasion 69-91 (no. 2, April-June 1992). With Gary A. Mauser. Massaging the Medium: Analyzing and Responding to Media Violence without Harming the First Amendment. 4 Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy 17 (1995). Round Table Discussion: Violence in the Media. David Kopel, Eleanor Acheson (Asst. U.S. Atty. Genl. for Policy Development), Charles W. Guswelle (Kansas City Star), and others. From University of Kansas Law School symposium. Covering the Screen in Blood. Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein attempts to square his anti-gun convictions with his bloody, gun-riddled movies. America's 1st Freedom. April 2014. Uncovering anti-Israel Propaganda with Philippe Karsenty. French media critic and elected official Philippe Karsenty joins Dave Kopel to discuss how one of the biggest anti-semitic hoaxes of all time was uncovered. In 2004, Mr. Karsenty set in motion a nearly decade long legal battle to blow the cover off a French TV station's deliberate hoax involving footage of a dying boy named Muhammad al-Durrah. The footage was shown on national TV and helped perpetuate anti-Jewish and anti-American terrorism for years to come. Aug. 16, 2012. 31 minutes. Media coverage of the Aurora murders. Kevin Dale (Denver Post) on CPT12 "Devil's Advocate" show. July 27, 2012. Don't turn Aurora killer into celebrity. USA Today. July 19, 2012. Excerpt read by Neil Conan on National Public Radio, July 23, 2012. Analysis in Come non parlare di una strage, Il Post (Italy). July 22, 2012. Kopel and Piers Morgan agree: Thursday would have been the better day for a gun control debate. CNN. July 19, 2012. Transcript. CNN Reliable Sources. Howard Kurtz bemoans "a troubling thing that television does," namely the rush to "turn such an atrocity into ideological fodder while the victims are still being treated." As an example, plays Morgan/Kopel interchange, with Morgan insisting a gun control debate must take place on the night of the crime. July 22, 2012. Transcript. Video. Kopel joins academics and religious leaders in joint letter against Obama administration's unconstitutional mandate for abortion pills. Feb. 27, 2012. Brown v. EMA casts doubt on the “weapons effect” justification for gun control. Volokh.com. June 27, 2011. Dog Wars and the First Amendment. Volokh.com. April 26, 2011. It's Howdy Bloomy Time. Biased media coverage of a report about Mexican guns from Michael Bloomberg's gun control lobby. America's 1st Freedom. Dec. 2010. Glenn Beck factual error. On local voting by non-citizens. Volokh.com. October 26, 2010. Rosary ban likely illegal, say Volokh and Kopel. Volokh.com. October 26, 2010. Media drove the Maes bike story, but parked for Hickenlooper. Media ignore mayor's desire to "wean" Coloradoans off automobiles. WhoSaidYouSaid.com, Oct. 25, 2010. Time.com corrects report on Betsy Markey’s health-care vote. WhoSaidYouSaid.com, Oct. 18, 2010. Denver Post erred in covering reckless charges against U.S. Chamber. When partisans make felony accusations with no evidence, newspapers should not give the charges credence. WhoSaidYouSaid.com, Oct. 16, 2010. Which pollsters are most accurate? When reporting on polls, media should consider 538's data about pollster accuracy. WhoSaidYouSaid.com, Oct. 6, 2010. I did NOT disrespect Jay-Z. Volokh.com. September 18, 2010. Trimming Citizens. Efforts to restrict the free speech rights which had been protected in the Citizens United case. America's 1st Freedom, June 2010. Big First Amendment win in United States v. Stevens. Volokh.com. April 20, 2010. Speech Freed! The Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United restores the free speech of civil rights groups, such as the NRA. America's 1st Freedom. April 2010. Self-hating Wolverine. Hugh Hewitt. Volokh.com. March 30, 2010 Does CHL Ban in Churches Violate the First Amendment? The Volokh Conspiracy. Sept. 29, 2009. Independence Institute cert. petition in campaign finance case. Volokh.com. September 22, 2009. New Challenge to McCain-Feingold. Kopel explains the Citizens United case, and the Supreme Court's oral argument. iVoices.org. Sept. 15, 2009. 11:16. Two Gentlemen of Verona, at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. The Volokh Conspiracy. July 20, 2009. Did Heller matter? The New York Times says it did not, but Kopel details the Times' numerous omissions. Dave Kopel's Second Amendment Podcast. April 3, 2009. MP3. Gun Rights and the Constitution: Was Heller Insignificant? An examination of last week's New York Times article, which overlooked most of the Second Amendment victories which have flowed from Heller. The New Ledger. March 26, 2009. We'll lose more than a paper. Farewell to the Rocky Mountain News. Final edition of the Rocky Mountain News. Feb. 27, 2009. Journalistic Stages of Grief. Brief essay in the Columbia Journalism Review on the closing of the Rocky. Feb. 27, 2009. La Voz best of the bunch. Examination of seven Spanish language newspapers published in the Denver are. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Feb. 21, 2009. Dying newspapers, vanishing coverage. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Feb. 7, 2009. Rocky, Post go all out for inaugural. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Jan. 24, 2009. ProPublica's shaky facts. Article on hydraulic fracturing in natural gas extraction is full of errors. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Jan. 10, 2009. Follow-up: My response to ProPublica's defense of its article. Opinion Pays its Own Way. Economic changes at newspaper may lead to more "news" articles which are really opinion pieces that are provided for free to the newspaper. The non-profit organization ProPublica is showing how to do this. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Dec. 27, 2008. blog: Boys go to ESPN to get more stupider. 12/22/08. Web, not bias, offing papers. Craigslist and declining literacy are why newspapers are in mortal peril. Ideological bias is a real problem, but not main threat to survival. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Dec. 13, 2008. The media-violence link. New Dutch study suggests newspapers, TV wise to show discretion. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Nov. 29, 2008. Evaluating Rocky, Post pre-election polling. The papers were right on the President and Senate race, but wrong on almost all the ballot issues. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Nov. 15, 2008. Election chaos online. The Denver Post's online ballot tool is imperfect, but much than that of the News. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Nov. 1, 2008. Columnist has his own paranoid style. Rocky Mountain News columnist (and University of Colorado law professor) Paul Campos used the famous essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics", by historian Richard Hofstadter as the template for a column criticizing Republicans. Kopel's column suggests that--at least based on the evidence within Campos's column--"the paranoid style" was more accurate as a description of Campos's own approach. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Oct. 18, 2008. CAIR's complaints about DVD hollow. Fringe group not worth notice media gives it. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Oct. 4, 2008. The media should not have wasted space covering the Council on American-Islamic Relations' bogus complaints about the movie Obsession, which warns of the dangers of radical violent Islamists. Post's bloggers beat Rocky's tweeters. Twitter's limitations a detriment to reporting. Also, the News Truth Patrol gets mixed up by the Bush doctrine, and RockyTalk Live overstates Palin's popularity. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Sept. 20, 2008. Media's hypocritical fixation on Palin a boon to McCain. Culture wars now a factor in campaign. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Sept. 6, 2008. Was MLK a Republican or not? Rocky Mountain News. Aug. 29, 2008. Also, the specialized press at the Democratic National Convention, and under-coverage of Obama's ground game advantage. Text and Twitter your way to victory. Rocky Mountain News. Aug. 28, 2008. Obama's brilliant use of social networking. Full Picture of Obama Emerging. Rocky Mountain News. Aug. 27, 2008. What the media hasn't told you about the socialist, racialist, Barack Obama Sr. Plus bogus claim from Time that older Jewish voters who don't back Obama must be racist. Interfaith Speakers Raise Questions. Rocky Mountain News. Aug. 26, 2008. Sister Helen Prejean and the head of the Islamic Society of North America. Al-Jazeera analysis of Biden severely flawed. Rocky Mountain News. Aug. 25, 2008. Also covers "rum, Romanism, and rebellion." In its obsession with Polis, Times misses other news. Newspaper blinded by gay candidate's success. Rocky Mountain News. August 23, 2008. Political websites for the insatiable. A survey of some of Colorado's best political websites. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. August 9, 2008. Papers mishandle Bruce allegations. Now, they should name his accuser. Also McCain's dog-whistle in TV ad appeals to anti-Tancredo voters. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. July 26, 2008. McCain protester coverage limited. Obama campaign's restrictions overlooked. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. July 12, 2008. Dailies' Haditha coverage admirable. More even-handed than national media. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. June 28, 2008. Privacy concerns at Post. New database listing state employees names and salaries is a bad idea. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. June 14, 2008. Dailies shrug off Libertarian confab. The American Spectator and The Colorado Independent provided the best coverage of the Libertarian Party presidential nominating convention in Denver. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. May 31, 2008. At 'Westword,' the sh-- must go on. Substance too often makes way for scurrility. Plus, pets and the housing "crisis," credulous coverage over possible Denver-Tokyo non-stop flights. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. May 17, 2008. Barr, Limbaugh go too far. Radio hosts talk of riots in Denver. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. May 3, 2008. Regrettably, Rhodes returns to radio. Progressive shock jock less than thoughtful. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. April 19, 2008. McCain preachers merit scrutiny, too. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. April 5, 2008. Do Rocky, Post give Dems a break? Analysis of two recent scandals says they do. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 22, 2008. Too often a crutch. Studies important enough to mention in a story should be cited. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 8, 2008. Analysis of Katy Human's flawed Denver Post article about what "studies have shown" about subsidized health insurance for children. And more general problems about use of "studies have shown" without citation to the studies. Relying too heavily on press releases. Rocky failed to get the other side of issue. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 23, 2008. Miscoverage of the effect of man-made chemicals on human and animal reproduction. Also, another falsehood from Maureen Dowd, and Gannett's effort to take over the Colorado State University newspaper. Polls have their place. Though sometimes off-base, they add spice to the political season. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 9, 2008. RedBlueAmerica.com off to a promising start. Web site promotes understanding of both sides. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 26, 2008. Politics from the Stump to the Web. A few tips for navigating the '08 campaign. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 12, 2008. Let news figures comment further. Google News leads the way for local media. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 29, 2007. Reducing the risk of copycat killers. How papers can avoid glorifying perpetrators. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 15, 2007. Columnist's howl replaces reason. Virulent attack on Tancredo by Paul Campos unsupported. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 1, 2007. Note: this article briefly and favorably mentions a column about the Annapolis Conference; the author of that column was David Ignatius, not David Sirota. Do endorsements by papers matter? Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 17, 2007. Paltry Denver Access? For some Rockies fans, that's what PDA stood for during World Series. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 3, 2007. Also, increased CO2 emissions from inefficient E-85 fuel. Photo illustrating story clouds issue. Brown cloud not the result of CO2 emissions. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 20, 2007. Plus more global warming coverage, the Coors-Miller merger, the Udall-Schaffer race, and public opinion on the death penalty. Stories about slain 'shield' lacking. Media miscoverage of Rachel Corrie and her terrorist-assisting International Solidarity Movement. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 6, 2007. It's how you use the space you have. Longer stories offer better chance for depth. Plus, corporate welfare for movie companies, coverage of ex-gays, and the Duke rape hoax. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 22, 2007. New Post Web site uses Internet well. Weblogs best part of PoliticsWest.com. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 8, 2007. Surveillance tactic. Radio host Dan Caplis's plan to videotape patrons of a swingers club is a terrible idea. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Aug. 25, 2007. A plus and a minus in the Post. Two stories about consequences of immigration reform hit and miss. Also, Kopel laments the continued shrinking of printed newspapers. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Aug. 11, 2007. Case against flying not so airtight. Debunks the claim that long-haul air travel produces more CO2 than driving the same distance in a SUV. The column also criticizes newspapers which published pre-publication reviews of the new Harry Potter book. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 28, 2007. Newshounds.us keeps tabs on Fox News. Similar watchdogs good idea for other networks. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 14, 2007. Plus, Colorado's most influential political blogs, and the Post's non-correction of a ridiculous statement wrongly attributed to Colin Powell. Media reaching out. And here are a few tips for how you can take advantage of the trend. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 30, 2007. A-Rod's indiscretion has no place on front page. Denver dailies wisely shun lurid tale. Plus: media ignores success of new Colorado anti-illegal immigration law; theatre critics underplays spy threat during the 1950s; new Issue Paper on O'Reilly, Caplis & Silverman falsehoods about Boulder High. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 16, 2007. Talk-show hosts amok. If most parents aren't upset, why do Caplis, Silverman carry on so? Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 2, 2007. Falsehoods and misinformation in the campaign against Boulder High School by Bill O'Reilly and the Caplis & Silverman Show. On the hustings. The good and the bad of Rocky's, Post's campaign trail coverage. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 19, 2007. Plus the lie that Timothy McVeigh was a Christian. Why Reveal Who's Concealed? What possible motive could some arrogant anti-gun newspapers have for publishing the names of Right-to-Carry permit holders? America's 1st Freedom, May 2007. by Paul Gallant, with David B. Kopel and Joanne D. Eisen. Echoes of abortion fraud. Were 1967's legislators, like 2007's Rocky, duped by false figure? Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 5, 2007. Airing, publishing killer's photos, rants reckless. Publicity a fresh inducement to mass murderers. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 21, 2007. Hits and misses for dailies as Tancredo enters race. Announcement coverage merely adequate. Also Diana Carman's bigotry about talk radio fans; misleading summary of academic research on taxi deregulation; false legitimacy for "female circumcision". Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 7, 2007. Internet humming with Nacchio trial coverage. Blogs, Web sites rife with insight, info. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 24, 2007. Coulter and Campos: Two sides of the same coin. One's right, one's left, but both often too shrill. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 10, 2007. A service to homebuyers. Though flawed, Post's cautionary tale valuable. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 24, 2007. Climate report too quickly embraced by journalists: Post columnist, others strangely unskeptical. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 10, 2007. criticizes the press for its overly credulous reporting of the latest output from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The column also looks at media coverage of a bill to mandate HPV vaccines for 6th grade girls; the factoid that only 2% of rape accusations are false; and the lingering influence of Michael Bellesiles on "The Mini Page." Big changes mean a smaller Rocky. City-side columnists see a major shift in location. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 27, 2007. Plus columnist Bill Johnson's libel of the Swift executives, and the unnoticed evidence that the legislature's crackdown on illegal aliens is causing them to leave Colorado. Daily stubbornly refuses correction. Review of Owens governorship included mischaracterization of ex-Rep. Schaffer. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 13, 2007. Plus a survey of some of Colorado's best weblogs. Tech glitches mar electronic editions. Online replicas of print News and Post prove difficult to read and navigate. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 30, 2006. The 'other' Tancredo ignored. From local media, you'd never know he's a big Taiwan backer. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 16, 2006. Columnist is out of his depth. Campos forgets rules of civil discourse in effort about war. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 2, 2006. Also: the hypocrisy and deceptive omissions of Colorado Media Matters.Media crossed line in Haggard 'outing'. Radio, dailies, TV yielded to their basest instincts in abetting attack on privacy. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 18, 2006. News out of joint on marijuana. Slang misuse, failure to check assertions hurts its coverage. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 4, 2006. Fair, balanced? Not our dailies. Think tank study finds News, Post toe the establishment line. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 21, 2006. Only press itself can stop copycats. Killers, suicides thrive on publicity given those who perpetrated earlier crimes. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 7, 2006. Ballot Builder has a ways to go. RockyMountainNews.com's service a nice try, but no cigar. Plus, coverage of Rosie O'Donnell's hate speech. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 23, 2006. CU prof ethical in dealings with law. JonBenet Ramsey case maven was right to help police apprehend suspect Karr. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 9, 2006. Owens the master in JonBenet case. Governor has artfully manipulated media with his pronouncements about slaying. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, August 26, 2006. Were front-page photos staged? Images from Qana raise issue of whether media were manipulated. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, August 12, 2006. Beauprez's gun policy mangled. Plus, stem cells, Microsoft suit against software pirates, bait-and-switch ads. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 29, 2006. Deficient stories hinder debate. Incomplete reports don't help our grasp of immigration issue. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 15, 2006. Epic battle for press freedom. In 1905, News owner took on a compromised supreme court. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 1, 2006. Failing to get the poop on Ensz. Post, News come up short on dog-feces-in-mail-slot story. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 17, 2006. Plus, Paul Campos misreads InstaPundit, Diane Carman falls for General Motors trolley car hoax, and The Nation wrongly charges the Colorado Rockies baseball team with racism. Climate alarmism a perennial. Study: Journalists have often blown hot and cold on issue. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 3, 2006. Plus, local media ignore Owens' call for illegal alien amnesty. Churchill report finds News on top. Web site had more extensive coverage - and quicker - than its rival at the Post. Also, media bashing of Colorado Springs and its elected officials and congressional candidates because of their un-p.c. stands on some social issues. Plus chess and poker coverage. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 20, 2006. Dailies fall flat in full rally coverage. Essential aspects of story go unreported, hard questions unasked by News, Post. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 6, 2006. Dailies are reliably pro-illegals. Critics little cited; columnists of one mind about the issue. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 22, 2006. Tattered Cover again Shows Grit. Plus, polling on illegal immigration; Palestinian Authority financial crisis. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 8, 2006. So much left out of Saddam stories. Documents, videos potentially explosive, but News, Post coverage only minimal. Plus, the lies of Mahmoud Abbas and Scott Ritter. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, March 25, 2006. Imam's critic shortchanged. Coverage of Sheikh Ekrima Sabri gave his record a pass. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, March 11, 2006. Alternative Media. Kopel MP3 podcast. March 8, 2006. Media skip other side of Sharpton. 'Hate-crime perpetrator' given a pass by Denver dailies et al. in CU appearance. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 25, 2006. Cartoon quarrel deadly serious. Free world must decide - will it submit to de facto sharia law or assert its rights. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 11, 2006. Did blogosphere influence vote? Corruption inquiry covered only on Web might have tipped Canadian election. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 28, 2006. Plus New York Times deception on Niger uranium, and media refusal to cover local abortion rally. Criticism of bias study is silly. Source of funding-right or left-needn't negate evidence. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 14, 2006. New study detects media's liberal tilt. Professors find most media 'significantly to the left of the average U.S. voter'. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 31, 2005. Report cards preview shaky. Without evidence, Post leaps to conclusion of unreliability. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 17, 2005. News restrained to a fault over CU. 'Nationally advertised disaster' of rabble at game scarcely noticed by Denver daily. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 3, 2005. Book on CU scandals imperfect. Slim citations, faulty reporting mar worthwhile "Buffaloed". Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 19, 2005. Post reverts to its one-time hysterics. Extremist rhetoric, deceptive reporting (by News, too) colored coverage of Ref C. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 5, 2005. Cheater prospers, after all. Contrast coverage of Briscoe, Romo: the wrong message. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 22, 2005. Case of the phantom protester. News columnist Bill Johnson and the anti-abortion picketer. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 8, 2005. U.S. Web firms aid in repression. Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft complicit in China's stranglehold on information. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 24, 2005. New Orleans city officials off hook. 'Stunningly incompetent' Mayor Nagin given a pass by Denver's News, Post. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 10, 2005. Also: cartoonists push junk science; paper promote illegal Internet gambling; News omits key fact in Gaza story. Sheehan's radical views little noted. Despite heavy coverage, nation's press strangely reluctant to report all she says. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, August 27, 2005. New Web site math challenged. Odds are that Colorado Pols won't be taken very seriously. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Aug. 13, 2005. Media-blasting book vanishes. Publisher drops exposé of CU coverage after lawyer's letter. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 30, 2005. Plus scientific research on human embryos, and the famine in Niger. Withholding news has merit. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 16, 2005. When the media should put more important interests ahead of the right to publish certain facts. The trouble with columnists. Local opinion brokers struggle with facts, reality in their work. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 2, 2005. Tragedy in Africa gets scant notice. Denver dailies, like others around U.S., find little room to cover continent's woes. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 18, 2005. Ethiopian genocide against the Anuak. Zimbabwe genocide by starvation. Congo civil war and genocide. Sudanese genocide. Hyperbole Taints Gitmo Coverage. Comparing death-free Guantanamo to murderous gulags grossly misleading. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 4, 2005. Plus slanted coverage of gay rights, and media blindness about the Iran nuclear weapons program. Newsweek's bad streak hits home. First the Quran debacle, then magazine's dubious elevation of a local high school. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 21, 2005. Plus an error-ridden article about the 1992 Amendment 2 anti-gay rights ballot initiative. Israel's 57th year of independence is covered solely with a biased A.P. story whitewashing the 1948 Arab war against Israel. Confusion over Charter Schools. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 7, 2005. Post story slanted against charter schools. Plus Guiliana Sgrena and Wayne Laugesen. And an explanation of "write-thrus." Shameless dailies run deceptive ad. 'Bait-and-switch' in wake of pope's death misleads readers, exploits the faithful. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 23, 2005. Plus: undercoverage of Benedict XVI's intellectual record. Over-coverage of failed anti-American demonstration in Baghdad. Papal coverage here magnificent. But Catholics don't get a 'free ride' as veto of controversial bill runs afoul of Post. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 9, 2005. On Balance, Post has Less. Recount of columnists tips the content scale to News. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 26, 2005. Plus the FBI "terrorist" list and gun sale checks, and a misleading photo of the olden days at the Rocky Mountain News. CU's academic culture ignored. Post columnist nearly alone in probing 'dysfunctional' milieu. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 12, 2005. Plus the academic freedom cases of Phil Mitchell at CU, and George Forsyth at CSU. And the unfair treatment of Liquor Mart, and the Baby 81 hoax. Post less gullible in Baby 81 hoax. It carried only 2 stories to the News' 9; AP reports rife with unsupported 'facts'. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 26, 2005. Plus media non-coverage of U.N. sex abuse, and coverage of the Saudi high school in Virginia that produced the man accused to trying to assassinate President Bush. Media Uneven in Churchill Rumpus. Westword first, but News, KHOW best as blogs, other news outlets play catchup. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 12, 2005. Bill Moyers and the Politics of Delusion, 1/31/05. Optimism in Iraq sniffed at here. Mostly positive pre-election poll of Iraqi voters given short shrift in Denver. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 29, 2005. Post misses boat on Hefley move. Even News barely notes role of rules in congressman's loss of ethics panel chair. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 15, 2005. Plus fraud in the real estate section, and coverage of Sri Lanka. Gadfly's Web site rough, effective. Zinna's Jeffco Exposed needs work, but attempted trick shows some are rattled. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 1, 2005. Global Warming Debate Heats Up. There's more - and less - to the story than most media would have us believe. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 18, 2004. Junk Science: Take it with a grain of salt. MSNBC.com, Dec. 6, 2004. The greatest junk science stories of the year. Dutch descend into barbarism. Denver dailies soft-pedal the killings of newborns under Groningen Protocol. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 4, 2004. Plus analysis of coverage of the democracy movement in the Ukraine, the UN scandals, and the Alabama state constitutional referendum. Arafat coverage. Stories in wake of Palestinian leader's death misleading and morally bankrupt. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 20, 2004. Political ignorance plays no favorites. Study says many voters 'know-nothings'; 2004 election winners, losers recapped. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 6, 2004. Archbishop takes his media lumps. Leader of Denver's Catholic community a lightning rod for nation's pundits. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 23, 2004. CBS peddling bogus draft fears. Local papers do better job of finding truth behind Dem-inspired red herring. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 9, 2004. Citizen journalists bring CBS to heel. Balance of 'information power' shifting after bloggers pounce on memo fiasco. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 25, 2004. Dailies Overlook Military Advances. Revolutionary developments in strategy, tactics given scant attention in Denver. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 11, 2004. Vets' end run irks traditional media. Bush-loathing press frustrated at inability to squelch Swift Vets' anti-Kerry efforts. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, August 28, 2004. Kerry's Cambodia Troubles Ignored. Denver dailies assail candidate's foes but cold-shoulder the issues they raise. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, August 14, 2004. Dailies best when covering Denver. News, Post just can't beat the Internet for national and international reporting. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 31, 2004. Press loath to tell rest of Wilson story. When diplomat's report is disputed, headlines vanish. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 17, 2004. Also, review of a terrible book review of What's the Matter with Kansas? Dailies' strengths, weaknesses ID'd. News best for full picture on Iraq, but for crucial legal issues, Post is tops. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 3, 2004. Media's Reagan tune has changed. Glowing coverage of ex-president's death in sharp contrast with earlier treatment. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 19, 2004. Coverage of anti-military protests and other foreign policy issues, from June 1982. Press accentuates negatives of Iraq. Media's obsessive lingering on problems neglects the many positives of situation. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 5, 2004. Plus NPR bias, Israel coverage. A Dementor Short. Mugglewear Casual mars Harry hat trick. Reason Online. June 4, 2004. Review of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban movie. Air America: the good and the bad. 'O'Franken Factor' rivals best right-wing programs, but 'Rhodes Show' is awful. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 22, 2004. Possibly big U.N. scandal slighted. News better at covering investigation into potential oil-for-food program corruption. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 8, 2004. Exaggeration-itis afflicting papers. Economic, political characterizations fall victim to lack of perspective at News, Post. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 24, 2004. Record gas prices, "ultraconservatives," and "the extreme right." Ordinary journalistic standards still prove elusive in CU story. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 10, 2004. It's not what's on TV, it's TV itself. Too much television time creates children uninterested in self-restraint or empathy. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. March 27, 2004. Media goes all fuzzy on protest. Lack of specifics, perspective on figures used by Auraria students hurts coverage. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, March 13, 2004. Plus Nelson Rockefeller's divorce, dubious statistics about "hate crimes" against homosexuals, and attacks on George Bush's campaign advertisements. Press ambushes CU football coach. Denver media unapologetically subject Barnett to raw character assassination. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 28, 2004. KOA's Dan Caplis a radio treasure. Lawyer/talk-show host is go-to guy for invaluable insights on Colorado stories. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 14, 2004. Plus the "imminent" canard about Iraq. Americans with Disabilities Act coverage. Post gets medical pot story right. Dispute over Hayden man's possession of marijuana is not yet in federal court. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Jan. 31, 2004. Facts don't muddy columnist's views. Sports writer apparently untroubled by historical accuracy, nonexistent sources. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Jan. 17, 2004. On Denver Post sports columnist Mark Kiszla. Plus Washington Post coverage of the FBI's warning about suspicious people with almanacs. Newsom Wins One. A First and Second victory. National Review Online. Jan. 8, 2004. Fourth Circuit rules that school cannot prohibit student from wearing NRA Shooting Sports Camp t-shirt. Blogs unearth dubious sources. Theories finger military for earthquake, illness, but who's behind these stories? Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Jan. 3, 2004. The junk scientist behind the hysteria over depleted uranium and other falsehoods about the U.S. military. News columnist scores a coup. Report on Baghdad anti-terrorism rally one more Iraq item ignored by others. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Dec. 20, 2003. Plus coverage of the trendy restaurant named for the genocidal tyrant "Mao," bogus statistics about the homeless, and the new government in Switzerland. Sloppy advocacy journalism ID'd. Thinly veiled support for identity-theft legislation takes form of story at Post. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Dec. 6, 2003. Plus, the disgraceful Associated Press story whitewashing Paul Robeson's love of Stalin and hatred of America. And a column by Bill Johnson giving a very incomplete account of a young man's suicide. It's not hard to spot the fallacies In columns and news stories. City's dailies promulgate 'facts' that are anything but. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Nov. 22, 2003. False claims that most of the people counted as "homeless" are all living on the street; that the partial-birth abortion ban lacks an exception for maternal life; and that most victims of war are women and children. Plus the amazing errors of Supreme Court history in a recent column by Steven and Cokie Roberts. Implication goes too far in column. Strong suggestion that woman underwent partial-birth abortion likely misled readers. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Nov. 8, 2003. Also, Ann Telnaes' anti-Christian hate cartoon, and asbestos litigation reform. Déjà vu in a liberated Iraq. Winning the war is half the battle; what's harder is winning hearts. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Oct. 25, 2003. All sides support jury rights idea. Dailies say 'conservative groups' behind concept, but ranks of supporters diverse. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Oct. 11, 2003. Plus defamation by the Anti-Defamation League, and the Denver Post's fabrication of an "appearance of impropriety" about Governor Owens' chief of staff. Ultimately, Fox is not the problem. European dismay with trends in U.S. misdirected at television news network. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Sept. 27, 2003. Columnists jump on Owens' woes. Marital troubles of governor, wife become grist for two commentators. Also looks at Cruz Bustamante's connection to MEChA. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 13 , 2003. West Nile fails to stir DDT debate. Mosquito-borne illness kills Coloradans but merits of banned pesticide ignored. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Aug. 30 , 2003. Readers fishing for perspective. Post wire story left out important facts about low cancer risk of farm salmon. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Aug. 16 , 2003 Other nations censor speech critical of homosexuality as "hate speech," 8/5/03. Religious matters get PC treatment. Dailies go with the flow, but each knows which side its bread is buttered on. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Aug. 2 , 2003. The media's fawning treatment of three nuns in the Plowshares movement who were recently sentenced to federal prison for vandalizing a defense facility. The column also looks at coverage of the Catholic sex abuse scandals, and at coverage of St. Juan Diego, the Mexican Indian who saw the Virgin of Guadelupe in 1531. Hunting/fishing coverage on rise. Denver dailies in dead heat; Boulder's Camera excels at other outdoor sports. Plus the identity of advice columnists, and chess coverage. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 19, 2003. Distortions mar Bighorn stories. Culturally biased coverage of the new Indian monument at Little Bighorn. Plus factoids about war deaths, and bogus claim that Colorado death penalty is racist. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 5, 2003. Two points about WMDs neglected . Did Clinton and those who authorized Resolution 1441 lie about Saddam, too? Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 21, 2003. Plus a look at Swiss and French newspapers. Gray Gun Stories. The New York Times' dishonest and mean-spirited coverage of the gun issue. National Review Online. June 9, 2003. With Paul Blackman. New standards for accuracy should be set up immediately. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 9, 2003. New York Times resignations, Maureen Dowd's lie, Microsoft market share, trans fats. Dowd's elision elicits derision. When she twisted quote by president, New York Times columnist went too far. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 24, 2003. Plus the lack of diversity at the New York Times, second-hand smoke, and "lynching" in South Carolina. Anti-Israel bias by Chris Hedges of the N.Y. Times. Volokh.com. 5/23/03. Crown jewels: UK newspapers. Aside from a few unworthies, Great Britain's dailies offer some fine reading. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 10, 2003. News tars Hootie with Klan brush. Controversial golfing figure is unfairly associated with racist organization. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 26, 2003. Also looks at media's popularity during Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, plus more on "war activists" and the Denver Mayoral race. blog: "Heywood Jablome" hoax, 4/22/03. 'Peace activist' or 'war activist'? Media should take greater care in their labeling of participants in conflicts. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, April 12, 2003. Also examines the Pearl Jam controversy, and the racist attack on Don Mares. Bowling Truths. Michael Moore’s mocking. National Review Online. Apr. 4, 2003. Deconstructing the dishonest documentary. In Gulf War II, old giants are passé. In early days of Iraqi war, Denver's 7 was the clear leader in news coverage. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 29, 2003. Plus Rachel Corrie, Supreme Court gay rights case, hockey playoffs, and censorship of sports stars. Devil's in details about uninsured. Biased coverage by newspapers often revealed in facts that went unreported. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 15, 2003. Deconstructing the "41 million uninsured Americans" factoid. Plus immigrants and Medicaid, abortion protests as "racketeering," and misuse of "alleged." Tancredo ill used by News reporter. Congressman has a bad idea, but writer shouldn't let personal bias color his story. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 1, 2003. Fencing the Mexican border. Iraqi stock market. Jihad demonstrators. NPR station can't handle diversity. Affordable housing. Russian nuclear facility. Relying on dailies not enough today. Internet supplements papers whose space constraints limit global coverage. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 16, 2003. Arab celebrations of Columbia tragedy. Franco-German support for Saddam WMD program. Gay rights polling. More on the Communists behind many anti-war protests. Media trip up in protest coverage. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 2, 2003. Media ignore the Communists organizing anti-war protests. Phony media claims that Bush is promoting a special SUV tax break. Other side of the equation missing. Some recent science-related stories have fallen short when it comes to balance. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, January 19, 2003. Discusses global warming, polar glaciers, Clean Water Act, Bush tax cuts, sex abuse of nuns. Media were real Christmas Grinch. Gloomy headlines told inaccurate story about the reality of holiday retail sales. Also, discusses anti-gun sneers by sportswriters, and sportswriters who don't understand odds calculation. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 5, 2003. Readers take Ken, Cal to woodshed. Post regulars Hamblin, Thomas garner most votes in 'Can the Columnist' contest. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 22, 2002. Reader challenge: Can the columnist. Too liberal? Too right-wing? Or just bad? Which opinion writers would you dump? Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 8, 2002. Column also reviews The News about the News: American Journalism in Peril, by Leonard Downie and Robert Kaiser. Papers could drop Dowd with ease. She and fellow N.Y. Times columnist Nicholas Kristof are second-raters of late. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 24, 2002. Column also reviews Todd Gitlin's book Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives. Political pollsters among big losers. Opinion trackers for News, Post seemed to be off target more than usual this year. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 10, 2002. Fox 31 misleads on 'sniper' rifles. Despite news segment's claims, it takes more than mouse click to obtain firearms. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, October 27, 2002. Shot Through the Heart. Anti-hunting propaganda on Showtime. Review of "Bang Bang, You're Dead." National Review Online. Oct. 16, 2002. With James Swan. 'Raines of Error' blights NY Times. News, Post only make matters worse by unquestioningly reprinting its stories. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, October 13, 2002. Dailies' stories on Tancredo slanted. Denver Post, particularly, indulged in 'bad journalism in service of liberalism'. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 29, 2002. Islamic extremists in U.S. overlooked. Domestic Muslims who sympathize with al-Qaida, other terror groups little noticed. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 15, 2002. Dailies ignoring Zimbabwe crisis. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 1, 2002. Mugabe prepares for genocide. Complex issues, one-sided stories. Media excel at presenting one side of a debate. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, August 18, 2002. Campaign finance "reform," bilingual teachers, African debt, vaccinations. Reading on reading between the lines. A few books that can help one become a more discerning consumer of the news. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Aug. 4, 2002. Suicide Statistics. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 28, 2002. Smoking hottest hot-button issue. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 14, 2002. Media too often politicize courts. Sometimes cases are actually decided on merits, without any political overtones. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, July 7, 2002. Paper blowing scientific smoke. Post's coverage of possible smoking ban in Fort Collins comes up short on 'facts'. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 30, 2002. Elliptic articles leave us in dark. Incomplete stories obscure more than they reveal, doing disservice to readers seeking bigger picture. Earl Hilliard's primary; the terrorist attack on an Israeli kindergarten; global warming and the EPA's illegal use of junk science. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 16, 2002. Meth lab video fearmongering. TV program pits neighbors against each other in government's crackdown on illicit drug factories. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, June 2, 2002. AP twists truth about Fortuyn: Wire service's characterization of slain politician completely at odds with his actual stated positions. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 19, 2002. Post, News flay reputations of 2. Character assassinations of right-wing politicians span globe, cross bounds of ethical journalism. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, May 5, 2002. Analysis of coverage of Pim Fortuyn and Tom Tancredo. Independent Gay Forum analysis of this article. Two hysterical drinking stories. Wire reports about college students and alcohol mixed ridiculous assumptions, sloppy journalism. RockyMountain News/Denver Post, Apr. 21, 2002. Mideast stories lack critical info. Too many witnesses and 'experts' go unidentified in Times and AP stories carried by Post and News. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Apr. 7, 2002. Post treatment of study shoddy: Daily apes public health department's viewpoint without giving report a thorough examination. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, March 24, 2002. Pearl's history barely reported. News, Post give little notice to crucial importance of slain Journal reporter's religious background. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Mar. 10, 2002. Post columnist incites outrage. Woody Paige's anti-Mormon diatribe incenses thousands of readers and ends in profuse apologies. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post,Feb. 24, 2002. Farmers' plight given its due. Oregon conflict among 2001's wrongly neglected stories, site says, but Denver dailies did cover it. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Feb. 10, 2002. Dailies shoot from hip, miss. Mischaracterizations of D.C. gun-control group bespeak sloppy reporting, editing at newspapers. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 27, 2002. Speak No Evil. The European Union revives the offense of Seditious Libel. Chronicles. Feb. 2002. With Paul Gallant & Joanne Eisen. Abuse of Power. Jailing journalists, and the Vanessa Leggett case. National Review Online. Jan. 22, 2002. With Paul Blackman. Broncos items lay papers bare. Recent coverage of Denver's most popular pro sports franchise exposes strong suits, frailties. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Jan. 13. 2002. And now . . . the rest of the story. In omitting critical facts, media sometimes commit greater sin than outright mistakes. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 30, 2001. News' bias clear in story of teen. Paper upholds 'sanctity of the gays-as-victims script' by giving contrary evidence short shrift. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Dec. 16, 2001. Rumors: Quash one, fuel one. While debunking Harry Potter author's Satanist 'quotes,' News promotes drug's 'role' in deaths. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post,Dec. 2, 2001. 'Israel lobby' a clear misnomer. Intimations by News international editor of an Israeli-controlled 'propaganda corps' ring false. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Nov. 18, 2001. Up with the People. Reviewing NBC’s Uprising. National Review Online, weekend edition. Nov. 10-11, 2001. With Glenn Harlan Reynolds. Objectivity takes holiday at Post. So-called analysis package on proposed 'kid tax' slanted heavily in favor of measure's proponents. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post,Nov. 4, 2001. Capturing the War. Denver newspapers do their part, but it takes others and the Internet to cover wide world of terrorism. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 20, 2001. CSAP Tantrum a Baseless Snit. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Oct. 7, 2001. News changes terrorism tune. Different tone imbued paper day after fawning New York Times article on former terror bomber. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post, Sept. 23, 2001. Image Problems Exile "Maury." Channel 9 boss says program is 'embarrassing,' but station still carries other low-brow programs. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Sept. 9, 2001. Redefining Justice. Houston journalist Vanessa Leggett is jailed by the FBI. National Review Online. Aug. 27, 2001. Post Puts Books on Top Shelf. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Aug. 12, 2001. Police Shootings Need More Scrutiny. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. July 29, 2001. Let's Give Utah a Little Credit. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. July 15, 2001. Real Censorship Story was Buried. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. July 1, 2001. Papers Couldn't Catch a Code. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. June 17, 2001 ADL Story Play Unjustifiable. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. June 3, 2001. Post Marijuana Editorial Wrong. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. May 20, 2001. Post's Bias Gets a Shot in the Arm. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. May 6, 2001. Orwell in Italy. National Review Online. April 25 , 2001. With Carlo Stagnaro. Old media gets government to crack down on Internet journalists. The Strangely Passive Media. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. April 22, 2001. West Wing Finance. Does West Wing count as a contribution to the Democratic Party under McCain-Feingold? The answer takes us back to Theodore Roosevelt's corrupt election campaign of 1904. National Review Online. Apr. 10, 2001. Cesar Chavez Sans Perspective. Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post. Apr. 8, 2001. The Campaign-Finance Struggle. The solution to the campaign finance mess is to kill corporate welfare, not to undermine the First Amendment. National Review Online. Mar. 21, 2001. Dead Ringers. When it comes to Olympic shooting sports, TV is in blackout mode. National Review Online Weekend, Sept. 23-24, 2000. Anti-Gunners Target Gun Ads, 1st Amendment. The Blue Press,Aug. 2000. In Italiano. The Day They Came to Sue the Book. The courts take out a contract on free speech. Reason. Aug./Sept. 1999. Ineffective Reform. Campaign Finance Laws Keep Missing Target. Rocky Mountain News. June 16, 1996. Polls: Anti-gun Propaganda. Certain pollsters who support repressive gun laws claim to have found increased public support for such laws. Are such polls accurate? Or are they typical of the manipulation of data which has long been the practice of pro-control pollsters? The American Guardian. Share this page: Follow Dave on Twitter. Search Kopel website: Make a donation to support Dave Kopel's work in defense of constitutional rights and public safety. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily representing the views of the Independence Institute or as an attempt to influence any election or legislative action. Please send comments to Independence Institute, 727 East 16th Ave., Denver, CO 80401 Phone 303-279-6536. (email)webmngr @ i2i.org Copyright © 2015

Whew. Remember back when I was going to get that one cute little puppy dog and it turned into two? I don’t regret it; however, I have been quote busy lately and unable to focus on other things. Juliet is doing better after her “pill” episode on our vacation, but of course I had to take her in to be spayed today because uhh well, she had an umbilical hernia that also had to be fixed. I know, I know. I work to pay for the dogs. I took my daughter with me to get Juliet and while I was waiting, a woman walks in with a Yorkie in her arms. At first I thought the dog was wearing this neat harness in green, but upon further inspection it was wearing a dress. Yes. It. Was. Not only that, but the lady was crooning to it about how pretty it looked for her doctor’s appointment with her favorite veterinarian (she even said the vet was her dog’s boyfriend, I did not make this up). She sat down in the chair and told the dog to sit in her lap like a lady. Apparently she was flashing everyone. Far be it from me to judge. I did want to laugh, but I managed to tell her how cute the dog looked. Now, I love my pets just as much as the next person, and I might secretly want to slap a bun costume on them at Halloween because, well people expect that sort of thing with a wiener dog; however I refrain myself. I find those chain e-mails that 50 million people have sent out with the animals in costume to be amusing, I can’t lie; however, I think the dogs might be plotting their revenge. Especially the cute Yoda pug. He is going to bite you one day if you keep doing that to him. It doesn’t stop me from forwarding the funny e-mails though. Anyway, I will end with these photos: No costumes were used in the making of this post. “I think animal testing is a terrible idea. They get all nervous and give silly answers.” ~Stephen Fry

It has been some time since the EARLE awards occurred. With that being the case, some clarifications are in order. The 2015 EARLE awards unfortunately will not be considering entries in any category based on performance in years past. If your stellar performance as a man or store or song or album occurred in the last 2 years, unfortunately, however deserving it may have been, it will never receive an EARLE. On with the show! Man of the Year This award goes to Stevie Benz. So many good hangs that range from laughing at Youtube videos to conversations about making music and where it collides with faith, and even a BROad trip for good measure. Honorable Mention would definitely go to David Shepherd. Man I love those two dudes. Woman of the Year Kori Allen is a lockdown for this this year. The patience and support and honesty that she has shown me all year long is worth so more awards than I can make up to give to her. She's forever Woman of the Year but of course I have to do it every year. Honorable Mention: Murphy McConn Pet of the Year Another Lockdown for sure for Rockey Balboa Allen. Honorable Mention: TIE: Hiccup and Walter The Dog. Store of the Year Cotton Bureau. Fantastic idea. Super comfy t-shirts. Honorable Mention: Amazon. It's AMAZing. Restaurant of the Year MOJO Hogtown BBQ. It's downtown. It's close. The food is tremendous. They have bourbon on tap. Honorable Mention: 4Rivers BBQ. 5 words: Bris. Ket. On. Bis. Cuits. Album of the Year Now we're getting to the really difficult ones. The winner has to go to Coldplay's newest album, "A Head Full of Dreams." It's worth mentioning that the album doesn't necessarily HAVE to have been released in 2015. Albums that were released in 2014 also count, provided my main exposure has been in 2015. Honorable Mention: Big Data: 2.0 Single of the Year This one pretty much has to go to Shut Up and Dance with Me by Walk the Moon. Not sure if I first heard it in 2014, but it still deserves the win because it's so overwhelming good was celebrated throughout 2015. Honorable mention: Adventure of a Lifetime by Coldplay (first song I learned on bass). New Artist of the Year The New Artist category always needs a little explaining. It's not always for artists that are brand new to 2015, just brand new TO ME in 2015. The winner this year is definitely Mister Barrington. Honorable Mention: Big Data Film of the Year I just can't pick any movie here EXCEPT for STAR WARS VII. A worthy addition to the series. Was this really in question? Honorable Mention(s): Mad Max Fury Road and The Big Short. Both phenomenal. Show of the Year This easily goes to Brooklyn Nine Nine. SO FREAKIN' GOOD. Love the characters and the writing and the stories. Honorable Mention: The Wire. (watched mostly in 2015) Book of the Year I have to give this to Difficult Men by Brett Martin. Incredible dive into amazing stories about antiheroes and the antiheroes that made the shows possible. Honorable Mention: Everything That Remains by Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus

Judas Magazine Focusing Mainly on Issue 1 from 2002 Judas Magazine was a critical magazine about Bob Dylan. Edited by the redoubtable Andrew Muir and Keith Wooten. Content is from the site's archived pages, mainly focusing on Issue 1 articles. Judas! magazine was more than just another Dylan fanzine, fine though all those are. It was a professionally published Dylan magazine, edited by Andrew Muir and produced by Keith Wootton, with regular contributions from professional writers and journalists in addition to well known writers from the 'Dylan world'. The first issue was published April 2002. There were 20 issues in all. The aim of the magazine is for everything in it to be of undoubted quality and relevance to the serious Dylan fan. In other words, something the reader can trust, look forward to receiving and will want to keep. Proposing A Toast To The King The Heylin Interview Sounding Like A Hillbilly Things Come Alive Life And Life Only On The Road Again Bow Down To Her On Sunday Me And Mr. Jones The Sad Dylan Fans By Mark Carter Proposing A Toast To The King by Gavin Martin ‘I feel like Bob Dylan slept in my mouth,’ Elvis Presley in a between song aside live in Las Vegas 24th August 1969. ‘Only one thing I did wrong, stayed in Mississippi a day too long,’ Bob Dylan ‘Mississippi’, ‘Love And Theft’, released September 11th, 2001. Earlier this year I asked Sir Paul McCartney what he thought when he considered the perpetual live performance schedule Bob Dylan has maintained for over a decade. What would drive an extremely wealthy musician, a gentleman of a certain age, to keep up such a work rate? As ever McCartney had a ready, though perhaps too hasty, response. ‘Lack of a good woman, that’s the only reason for staying on the road at our age,’ he told me. There may be some truth in that; perhaps the failure of his marriages to Sara Lowndes and Carolyn Dennis and the lack of a stable single-partner relationship since have provided a spur for Dylan’s travels. But, seeing Dylan perform at the incandescent, endlessly inventive heights he’s scaled over the three decades I’ve been watching him, it’s hard not to conclude that, whatever the reasons behind why he’s doing it, Dylan has found a deep purpose in his nightly toil. To see Dylan in full flow - from the raging torrents of electric fury, to the calm exultant moments when the musical interplay or three-part harmonies with Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton recall backwoods settlers or clapboard gospel house meetings - is to see a fabulous carnival of Americana unfold, cross-cutting and enveloping time itself. He has subsumed and lived through so many epochs and influences - slave songs, blues truths, the white heat of 60s electric transformation, the fascination with Sinatra-style phrasing and 30s crooning. A 60-year-old man who has survived illness, hard living, the peculiar demands of being a cult icon in the culturally saturated Ground Zero 21st century, embodying all these elements and reinvigorating them, is both fascinating and inspirational. A Dylan performance is an encounter and a reckoning with many characters and personalities; in this respect a Bob show can summon up a similar feeling to watching old Elvis live footage. The feeling can come at any point during the show. When he carouses gleefully into something as frivolous as ‘Country Pie’, slams into the rangy almighty bleakness of ‘Watchtower’, or beseeches and implores the muse or a higher power to come forth on the sacred bluegrass stormer ‘Wait For The Light To Shine’, Dylan is unabashedly celebrating a tradition, the tradition of individuality, wedded to a fond regard for and acute insight into the community from which such individuality springs. It is the same tradition that Elvis embraced with magisterial sweep. It was undoubtedly restrictions imposed by Colonel Tom Parker that prevented Elvis from ever leaving America to perform around the world, but Dylan traverses the globe with almost evangelical fervour. Eventually suffocated by a lifestyle which left him artistically impotent, Presley became a prisoner of his fame. He left the world as an icon, but his premature death deprived us of a fuller understanding of the world, and the humanity that nourished and influenced him. Freed from outside control, the ‘Dear Landlord’ who would put a price on his soul, Dylan’s command of his music and artistic destiny and his ability to recreate and add to his legacy by being so ‘on form’ in his 6th decade ensures he expands on the legacy of the onetime rock 'n' roll king. Sure, an early Dylan death, or even an end-of-the-century expiration might have suited the requirements of those sad fuckers who think over 40s/50s/60s something per-formers shouldn’t make rock 'n' roll. Or, even worse, the empty-headed romantics who find glamour in early deaths. Those who think there’s a sacred link that ensures the good - Hank, Gram, Jimi, Buddy - die young, and that in a corrupting, energy-sapping business a shock early farewell is the only way to preserve dignity. What a sadly narrow-minded and reductive view of a culture which has always celebrated life, freedom and omnipresent beauty. Like any child of the 50s drawn to the myriad possibilities thrown up by America’s musical melting pot, the young Robert Zimmerman was set free and transformed by the Memphis flash. It’s such a truism now that it’s easy to be blasé about the miraculous way music makes connections that would otherwise be impossible to imagine. Where else could the souls and fates of a dirt-poor son of the south and a middle-class product of the Midwest Jewish Diaspora become so entwined? Presley accelerated the culture by introducing the cool, glamour and daring which were a life-changing rebuke to McCarthy era racist America. The qualities that came through in Elvis TV appearances and in the records beamed into distant outposts by the magic of the airwaves became a potent catalyst in Dylan’s voracious intake of art, movies, literature and music. The Elvis quote that begins this piece is delivered in an offhand, jocular fashion but it contains an almost Dadaesque truth; in the nine years that Elvis had been away from the American stage, Dylan had been the prime figure to utilise and explore the cultural space Elvis had created. Dylan’s genius took many forms, but his natural grasp of alchemy - adding surrealism, folk protest, the intensified barbed verse/prose of Ginsberg and Burroughs to the arena Presley declared open for business - must rank among his greatest attributes. As a performer and writer Dylan interconnected with a whole other school of learning, enabling him to adopt a chameleon approach to his public image that Elvis must have envied. A captive of a dispiriting formula movie production line for most of the 60s, Presley remained socially and politically remote from Dylan and the era’s counterculture. The Vietnam War and The Beatles’ impact on America’s youth seemed to make Elvis a conservative God-fearing relic from a bygone era. But the counterculture hegemony had its own in built parsimony, shortsightedness and prejudices. As Elvis’s rampant afterlife has shown, his stature as a conservative relic was sorely over-hyped. Sure, he was a hopelessly confused drug-addled right-winger, but that shouldn’t be confused with artistic death. Indeed, the idea that Las Vegas became a kind of living tomb for him is loudly and triumphantly refuted by the astonishing performances on the 4CD Elvis Live In Las Vegas box set released in 2001. In the earlier performances on the box set, recorded in 1970 and 1972, Elvis connects not just with his own past (and by extension the country, blues, gospel shouters and smooth-voiced crooners that influenced him) but also bonds deeply with recent pop. The funny, irreverent and illuminating between-song raps have the charm and candour of a storytelling showman raised on travelling fairs and tent shows. In his version of ‘Release Me’ he tackles the song as if it was a composition that deserved to hold The Beatles ‘Strawberry Fields’/’Penny Lane’ single off the top of the British charts, which certainly wasn't the case when Englebert Humperdinck’s sickly original did just that in the UK in March 1967. His versions of Ray Charles’s ‘I Got A Woman’ and Del Shannon’s ‘Runaway’ show an affiliation with his 50s peers that encompassed both love and competitiveness. And there can be no doubt that when Elvis disciple John Fogerty heard his hero sing ‘Proud Mary’ his heart must have nearly burst with pride. Prior to his 1968 TV Comeback and his return to the live stage in Las Vegas Elvis had happened upon a Dylan song, ‘Tomorrow Is a Long Time’, on the Odetta Sings Dylan album. The song had not been released as a Dylan performance when Elvis recorded it in May 1966, but he completely understood its simple timeless poetry and elegant melodic flow. The performance was one of the most meaningful and beautiful by Elvis in a period when quickly knocked-out tat was the norm. You can hear the warmth and relief in Elvis’s voice as he sinks into a song that is spun from the same mastery of American folk culture, the seamless blend that exists only in music that inspired him. Though neither the rumoured May session of 1971 or the 1972 duet on ‘If Not For You’ discussed in John Bauldie and Michael Gray's All Across The Telegraph compilation probably ever took place, the connection between Elvis and Dylan has always remained strong. In 1977 Dylan reacted badly when a man he never met but whose art had provided the basis for much of his life died. He later said that when he heard the news of Elvis’s death he ‘had a breakdown. If it weren’t for Elvis and Hank Williams I couldn’t do what I be doing what I do today.’ You can’t know what it’s like to be a frontier artist unless you actually are one yourself. Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend have spoken about the sense of devastation and emptiness they felt when Jimi Hendrix died. I wonder if Dylan felt something similar when Elvis went, if he heard the king singing that song ‘Its your baby, you rock it’. A cursory look at Dylan’s career after Elvis died suggests someone trying to do justice to the memory and legacy of his forbear. Elvis's death coincided with the final chapter in the very public fracture of Dylan’s marriage to Sara Lowndes. Explicitly in the song ‘Sara’, allusively in many songs on Blood On The Tracks and Desire. With the sprawling much-derided movie Renaldo and Clara the relationship was laid bare with unnerving candour and, at least publicly, put to rest. It’s possible to view subsequent developments, the At Budokan album and the greatest hits tour, as Dylan’s equivalent to Elvis’s Las Vegas stint. Jerry Scheff from Elvis’s band joined on bass, while the girl backing singers recalled Elvis’s gospel muses The Sweet Inspirations. Presley had struggled to attain spiritual contentment while he was alive, a joy that can be heard most clearly in his gospel sides. Perhaps this fact was totally unconnected with Dylan’s conversion to Christianity, perhaps not. Perhaps it’s a measure of how completely absorbed Dylan has to be in a music and the culture that bred it (in this case sacred gospel music) to do it justice. I first saw Dylan play live at Wembley Stadium in 1984, a sluggish muggy Saturday afternoon, the Real Live Mick Taylor band in a stadium setting. I found it so weird, unbelievable in a way, that up there was my teenage hero onstage. When I was a kid hearing Bob’s 60s music in the 70s he seemed, like Elvis, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and countless others must have to him when he was growing up, like a creature from another planet. I never thought I’d get to see him, and subsequently I’ve come to feel blessed that I’ve had the chance to see Bob frequently, but, as is often the way with stadium gigs, on my first encounter Dylan seemed remote, going through the motions. Now I rationalise the memory - like any marathon runner in it for the long haul Dylan needed to pace himself, so perhaps he was already thinking of what lay ahead. If, as Mikal Gilmore recently suggested, Dylan lacked direction for most of the 80s, then for me the equivalent of the Elvis 68 Comeback TV special took place away from the cameras with the G.E. Smith band’s appearances in London and Dublin at the end of the 80s. The 80s had been a terrible stagnant period in rock history, the only living evolving embodiment of music from the source that I had apprehended was Van Morrison’s wondrous spiritual odysseys. Van and Bob – buddies, touring partners, that’s another story altogether but when I saw Bob at Dublin and Wembley something cracked open, something Van hadn’t touched when I’d been seeing him. It came out of the cold metallic edge of the sound, the music’s frenzied rush with Dylan sneering and cackling into the whirlwind, unleashing one apocalyptic blast after another. It was the zeal and vibrancy I’d sought but only initially found in punk, filtered through mesmeric multi-levelled songs. Songs that were on this evidence inexhaustible, always ready to offer up new treasures and rewards if treated with vigilance and respect. From that point on Dylan live shows became an all-bets-are-off, transforming experience. Some have complained about the ragged quality of the early 90s shows, the supposedly drunken meander of Hammersmith 1991 and his much criticised 6 night run at the same venue in 1993. I was there that1s not what I heard or experienced. There was Dylan in loose limbed good natured mood, a curious and irascible old cove, somehow maintaining a mystique, an unknowability that seems to be an essential part of his armour outliving his own myth. Wherever he wandered off the beaten track he was still able at every single performance to pull something extraordinary out of the hat, cast a new and unexpected light on one of the jewels on his own ‘highway of diamonds’ or do something unique and loving to a song by one of his early friends and influences, Tomorrow Night sticks out. I’ve heard certain critics give forth at the bar, surrounded by a coterie of friends and maybe even (God knows do critics have such things) admirers as they joylessly pick the show apart. These scholars of Dylan have a sneering know it all attitude and a way of reading the numerous blips and diversions that are intrinsic to Bobart. These would, if adhered to, suffocate his music. Dylan is all about making new discoveries even in songs that aren’t his own, songs as old and worn as Tomorrow Night where the very titles etch and explore the distance and relationship between the eternal road warrior/wandering minstrel and his audience. Dylan, the kid who claimed to have hopped out of Hibbing all those years ago to join a carnival, has engaged in a life-long study of the mechanics of performing, and the beautiful symmetry of his art means that there are moments when the songs speak of nothing so much as his undying fidelity to the song itself. What has kept Dylan going out there, spending endless nights on the Lost Highway, if not the song? The song is the sacred ground where Dylan the performer and Dylan the fan - dig the frame of references, the unending glee that courses through his performance and it’s clear Bob’s as big a fan as anyone in the house at any Dylan show - comes face-to-face with his fans and influences. And of course, Dylan has not only been able to learn from the dangers of Elvis’s life lived as an icon but has also been able to master his own fate by having the song-writing talent, perhaps the greatest song-writing talent in American history, that Elvis never had. What has kept Dylan going? The wind, the rain, gravity, many things, but partly a raging ego. It’s good fortune for the world at large that Dylan remains hungry, fascinated, bowled over by his own songs, the way they can comment on and shape the world, the way they defy time and space to find new meaning and pointed relevance in each successive era. The events of history may change but these songs he’s written are like mercury, always finding a new level, a way of fitting into current events and settings. I have had some of the most remarkable and unexpected experiences of song-meaning transference at Dylan shows. To hear him play ‘Maggie's Farm’ in the Brighton Conference Centre, beside the hotel where ex-Premier Margaret Thatcher almost met her end in an IRA bomb blast, was a cauterising and incantatory moment. Why should this be so? I mean ‘Maggie’s Farm’ certainly wasn’t written about Thatcher, but the song is its own magical little world. Played with the zeal and urgency Dylan brought to it that night, it could mean whatever you want it to mean. Of course with his own Russo-Judaic background and his keen awareness of the Scots, Irish and African songs and communities that feed the great river of American music, Dylan is an international performer in a way that Presley never was. He’s taking his art out into all manner of places that The King never knew existed, setting up his stall of magical potions anywhere and everywhere he can. I love that image of Dylan in the Howard Sounes book where he’s at a party and Maria Muldaur asks him to dance, and he says ‘I’d dance with you, Maria, but my hands are on fire.’ The young Dylan as a giddy can’t-keep-still manic ball of energy, the current of musical creativity running through him. Look at a few of the places Dylan has played during the so-called Never Ending Tour. With an orchestra in Japan, on the banks of the river Mersey in Liverpool, at a sport hall in Belfast, a boxing arena in New York and a cultural centre in Prague. Take a look at the itineraries of his tours and you realise that getting out there and doing it every night, playing music and investigating the songs is for him a cleansing exercise good for mental, spiritual and physical health. But in these new contexts its also a means of exploration and discovery; who knows what possibilities or secrets the songs will offer up in the next town or at tonight’s show. There’s no need for him to worry about what warped meanings, individual dramas or peculiar memories and meaning his audience take from the show. When it’s over he’s back on the road, ‘heading for another joint,’ a new audience waiting. The latter will no doubt be peopled by ever-younger faces. (This is the unwritten demographic increasingly obvious at Dylan shows. Last time he came here and toured in 2000 ‘his people’ regularly took younger less familiar faces from the back of the queue. A ploy rewarded with young faces suffused with joy at the end of the show, charging the venue with a mood of awe, optimism and renewal. And no wonder, name me another 60-plus-year-old performer who is so accessible in a live and in person situation, able to radiate cool and charisma without being an embarrassment, and I’ll show you Willie Nelson.) Still, the setting and local history can do strange things to a song, or at least my interpretation of a song. Like when I saw Dylan perform over three nights at the Palace of Culture in Prague in 1995. It was said that a back problem had prevented strapping on a guitar, so every night he took the stage holding the mic with one hand, finger pointing towards the roof, singing ‘Down In The Flood’. Now that song, written during the Basement sessions, relates to a non-specific scene plucked from American settler history. But in Prague it seemed to be about something else entirely. It was a strange few days. Between shows I’d wander the city, which had only recently been tagged as ‘the Seattle of Europe’ on account of the ever-increasing US student population who came to stay after the fall of Communism. I happened upon a photo exhibition by Dennis Hopper, shot during the early 60s. The juxtaposition of the ancient whitewashed cellar and the monochrome images of the 60s, James Brown beaming, surrounded by bikini-clad Californian girls, was striking. But not as striking or as haunting as the old Jewish town. During the war the Jewish population of Prague was almost completely wiped out. Terrazin concentration camp is located a short drive from the city, and the sense of loss and desolation hung heavy in the air on a walk through the old graveyard or the synagogue closed by the Nazis, attacked again in 1967. And a common sight there in the antique and book shops in the collections of religious relics was the Torah. The sacred Jewish symbol, a finger pointed heavenwards? Am I reading too much into it? Possibly, but that’s how songs work for me and Dylan is the master of the song. Why has Dylan been able to go on long past the point where Elvis gave up the ghost? It’s the difference between being the director rather than the actor in the movie of your life; being a songwriter Dylan writes his own script. When he sings he can grapple with fate, destiny, politics and the price of love, sometimes all of them at once. He has dug deep into his and America’s past to define the present and ponder the future, an ongoing process highlighted by the World Gone Wrong and Good As I Been To You albums, the sleeve notes he wrote for the former illustrating the righteousness of his quest perfectly. Dylan is the song scientist attuned to the levels of prophesy, intrigue and resonances that exist there. Is there an ending? So many of his friends and collaborators (Doug Sahm, George Harrison, Jerry Garcia) have gone in recent years, but Dylan keeps on mapping out euphorias and nightmares. He can’t help himself, he’s a cultural avatar, a living giant who will not be held to ransom by his past, who must keep driving forward. When I consider the phenomenal depth, velocity and sheer fecundity of Dylan’s art it’s easy to see rock 'n' roll as a finite culture. I mean after Elvis, after Bob, who’re you gonna put up as a contender? Sure ‘enjoyable acts’, ‘useful performers’ have come along since Bob first rocked the world, but comparing many (any) of them to Dylan is like comparing the recently discovered new planet 2001 KX76 – actually little more than a boring lump of frozen rock – to the sun or the moon. Thankfully Bob’s steadfast promise to stay true to his art is repeated again and again in song. From the vow to keep on keeping on in ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ (a song held for so long at the same position, 5th song into the set, that it became a rallying point or staging post for whatever was to follow) to the warm wry resignation of ‘Mississippi’, birth state of Elvis, fount of so much American music. And his songs, whether old like ‘It’s Alright Ma’ or new like ‘Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum’ cross time to stay true to the world and remain actively engaged with it. As the comic tragedy of the Clinton presidency was played out ‘Its Alright Ma’ sounded like a prescient up-to-the-minute commentary, riven with horror, haunted with paranoia, coursing with new life. And to see Dylan now in his pomp, his enthusiasm is infectious, I get renewed excitement for all types of music, music he doesn’t even touch – hip hop, techno, African, Latin, anything. Because the all-consuming energy and curiosity with which he approaches a performance rub off, you want to find out what more music can do to explain this world, or introduce you to new ones. I’m the sort of dimwit who uses songs to understand the world. A song is a dead text, it only comes alive when it’s inhabited by a performer. Ray Charles singing the beautiful ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’ is one of the most meaningful songs I know, an actualisation of long cherished truth which lies at the centre of everything from Joyce’s Ulysses to the Song of Solomon. It is easy to hear the song as a way of addressing the nature of the uncertainty, abandonment and heartbreak that Dylan felt when Elvis died. ‘I can't stop loving you/I've made up my mind/To live in memory of the lonesome times...’. Certainly, the way Colin Escott describes Elvis keeping on his toes in Las Vegas could easily have been written about present-day Dylan. ‘He recognised that he must mix it up. The show must be constantly reinvented, partly because there were returnees and partly because he needed to challenge himself and his band. He ran the gamut of American popular music; he had been listening intently to music since the mid 40s and knew 1000s of songs.’ When he got ill just after recording Time Out Of Mind Dylan told reporters when he left hospital that he had thought he was going to meet Elvis. He has said that during the recording of Time Out Of Mind he felt the presence of Buddy Holly, one of the first performers he ever saw, looming over the album, ‘guiding it in some way.’ Bob Dylan the giddy skinny guy who couldn’t dance with Maria Muldaur because his hands were on fire is still alive inside him. As he recently explained to Mikal Gilmore in a Rolling Stone interview, ‘I can’t really retire now because I haven’t done anything yet. I want to see where this will lead me because now I can control it all.’ What keeps Dylan going? A sense of duty and honour, a patriotism to the only America worth a damn – the America of Coltrane and Burroughs, Guthrie and Charley Patton, the need to keep the past alive, to keep the past in the present. Dylan’s mission, whether he sings sacred or secular, is profoundly spiritual. He knows that, as his friend and Sun Records founder Sam Phillips said when he heard Howlin’ Wolf, this is ‘where the soul of man never dies’. And in his songs what sport there is to be had, what a feeling of immortality matched to the ever-present sense of mortality. The ever unwinding narratives full of cul de sacs, wrong turns and offhand revelations. Songs full of snares, jarring reflections, dark alleys that stretch into the night, brilliantly illuminated clearings where you do no more and no less than confront your own soul. And always coming back to something sweet, something simple, pledging his time to you and the song. So much Bob to listen to, so little time. Recently, I’ve been listening to the bootleg of his Seattle 6th October 2001 show, the second show to feature songs from "Love And Theft". ‘It is time for Bob to park “Masters of War” away,’ says the sleeve note. ‘The notion it is the presence of weapons that cause war is obviously naive and misguided. Would Bob say the Boeing guys who designed the 757 or 767 are "Masters of War" since those planes were used in attacks?’ argues the writer. Sure 'Masters of War' was written long before the terrible events of September 11th but the song's central truths and the burning accusation contained in lines line ‘You that build the death planes/You that build all the bombs’ still hold true. Wars in our time rage before and after the Twin Towers collapse; the petrochemical and military-industrial complex are still the beneficiaries, humanity still the loser. Never mind the fact that, prior to the Twin Towers going down, Bush was widely seen as one of the weakest presidents in American history, elected and financed by less than scrupulous means. Bob’s inability to let the past rest is a rebuke to what Gore Vidal calls the United States of Amnesia. There are treasures aplenty on the bootleg live album, but the song I’m playing now is ‘Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You’. I love what he does with his voice here; apart from reinventing himself as an electric guitar player in recent years Bob has also proved to be the most imaginative vocalist alive. His phrasing rivals Sinatra as he uses a whole bag of tricks – lacerating spite, nonchalant indifference, gruff declamations, searing firepower – to put his mood across. He delivers the lyric here in a gasping, breathless fashion, as if he were off to meet Elvis or Woody but came back, ailing but determined to reassert himself. As the band takes the melody at a slow waltz pace the line about the ‘poor boy on the street’ sounds more than ever like a ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ acknowledgement. But the whole tenor of the performance sounds like he’s restating the promise - making explicit the obvious connection to the audience. The song fades out with guitar solo taking the place of the words. Bob plays a cyclical riff parlayed and buffeted by the band but the riff extends, ever renewing, coming back again and again. The waltz tempo hots up but the dance continues. He can dance now, Maria, he can really move. To paraphrase another great Jewish poet, Leonard Cohen, dance on maestro. Dance us to the end of love. This article is dedicated to John Bauldie for the warm companionship and helpful introductions to so many lovely people in Prague, 1995. Sounding Like A HillBilly: 'Moonshiner' by Robert Forryan I’ve been a moonshiner For seventeen long years. I’ve spent all my money On whisky and beer. I go to some hollow And set up my still, An’ if whisky don’t kill me Then I don’t know what will. I go to some bar room, And drink with my friends, Where the women can’t follow And see what I spend. God bless them pretty women I wish they was mine, Their breath is as sweet as The dew on the vine. Let me eat when I’m hungry Let me drink when I’m dry, Dollars when I’m hard up Religion when I die. The whole world’s a bottle And life’s but a dram, When the bottle gets empty It sure ain’t worth a damn. The most exquisite version possible of the traditional song known as, among other things, “Moonshiner”: a version in which he so fully inhabits the persona of the Old Derelict narrator (the grace-kissed soul as well as the voice of the man) that it is eerie…’ Michael Gray, Song & Dance Man III ‘What’s extraordinary about this recording of “Moonshiner” is how Dylan summons up the strength of characterisation to cram decades of experience, disillusion and resignation into his voice, while his subtle guitar and understated harmonica work perfectly to support the edge-of-the-grave moonshiner’s vocals. It’s ironic that this recording was made when some traditionalists were complaining that the 22-year-old Dylan couldn’t even sing properly (remember the jibe of the coffeehouse owner recounted in “Talkin’ New York”: “come back some other day – you sound like a hillbilly. We want folk singers here”).’ John Bauldie, The Bootleg Series booklet. The thoughts which follow come about as a result of e-mail correspondence between myself and Andrew Muir in which we had both expressed admiration for the performance of ‘Moonshiner’ which appears on The Bootleg Series set. It was then that I decided that I wanted to write about the song, though I had no idea what I wanted to say. It is easy to like a Dylan performance (easier than hating one), much harder to say anything of interest about it. For there are few things as dull as a eulogy. So much Dylan writing, and I do not exempt myself from this criticism, drifts into endless adjectives, similes and metaphors leading nowhere. The only point of writing for a magazine is to communicate – and to communicate you must have something to say which, in turn, means having thoughts to convey. So often it seems that adjectives, similes and metaphors become excuses not to think. They are so often meaningless. What I mean is that I come not to praise ‘Moonshiner’ but to talk about it and to see what happens. This is always referred to as a traditional song, so we don’t know how or where this song originated, or if it was once the creation of one individual. I’m not convinced that it meets the Woody Guthrie criterion: ‘You can’t write a good song about a whore house unless you’ve been in one’. I’m not sure I agree with Guthrie’s unimaginative views and I doubt that the author of ‘Moonshiner’ ever distilled moonshine. Whether he or she ever did or did not, I can well understand why this song reached out to the coffeehouse generation on the cusp of the Sixties. Moonshining was foreign to their experience, as foreign as Woody’s dustbowl ballads and talking blues. But there was something about the old, mythic America that appealed to that generation; my generation. We had been brought up on Western films and TV cowboy series. We bought into the concept of rugged authenticity and its natural superiority to sophisticated urban culture (even though the latter was our inevitable destination). We learned our liberal values and our sympathy for the outsider from so many Westerns where the lone stranger stood up for truth and justice against the baying mob. I am convinced that the Hippie movement owed some of its attraction to the fact that it echoed our assumptions about Native American Indian culture. For those movies had taught us to admire the 'noble savage' and to believe that his values were superior to those of our parents. In Westerns the bad guys were the bigots. You never heard the hero say: ‘The only good injun is a dead injun’. So, as we slid into late adolescence, the authenticity and ethnicity of folk music represented a natural home. And songs that spun tales of early, rural America or that evolved out of an oral culture were simply irresistible, if they were good songs. They still are. All of which explains why ‘Moonshiner’ endured. It appears to have been performed and recorded by many artists and is known under other titles, among them ‘Moonshiner Blues’ and ‘The Bottle Song’. It often features on albums of folk material, being a particular favourite among those who compile collections of Irish drinking songs. The Clancy Brothers have recorded it as ‘Moonshiner Blues’ and their upbeat, party-style presentation - so different from Dylan’s - is a typical performance of this song. Dylan’s is the only slow version I have heard and it struck me as odd that Dylan could make something so beautiful out of this subject. What could possibly be attractive about a derelict, drunken moonshiner? As Debbie Sims wrote in Issue 4 of Homer, the slut: ‘For “moonshiner” read alcoholic because, although romantically put and sweetly sung, this is a song about a man whose whole life has been dominated by drinking and being drunk’. As I typed those words, I realised I knew little about moonshining, so I did some investigating. I knew that moonshine was some kind of illegally distilled whisky, but that was about all. I know more now. Moonshine can be traced to Ulster immigrants who settled in the Appalachian mountains in the eighteenth century. They brought their own poteen-making methods with them, which evolved into moonshining. They were Protestants with a historical attachment to William of Orange. Hence they were known as King Billy’s men which, eventually, metamorphosed into Hillbillys – reflecting their political affiliations and their Appalachian homes. In his book Almost Heaven: Travels Through The Backwoods of America, Martin Fletcher seeks out moonshiners in Rabun County, Georgia, ‘the last real stronghold of moonshining in America’. He meets a law officer whose father and grandfather were both moonshiners. ‘There weren’t no other jobs back then. Had it not been for moonshining we would have starved. That’s what bought shoes for our feet.’ Fletcher goes on: ‘There was something distinctly comic about moonshining in Rabun County, Georgia. Everyone knew which families made moonshine… where they got their supplies and which welding shops made their stills. The moonshiners were mean but they were characters… when caught in the act, moonshiners considered themselves honour-bound to try to scarper through the woods even though most were now old men and often inebriated by their own product’. Moonshining goes on in the hills because they need to be near streams so that the stills can receive the cold running water they require. ‘The supplies and equipment are considerable. You need 800 pounds of sugar plus corn, yeast, malt and water to make 1,000 gallons of “mash”. You need several large wooden or plastic barrels in which to ferment the ‘mash’ and turn it into “beer”. You need the still itself – a copper or steel tank big enough to hold all the ‘beer’. You need bricks or breeze blocks to line a furnace beneath the still, 100-pound propane cylinders to boil the alcohol from the ‘beer’, car radiators in which to condense the steam and containers for the ensuing 100 gallons or so of moonshine’ – which is generally 95% proof. Fletcher describes moonshiners as ‘an endangered species’. Moonshiners were making moonshine long before it was illegal. In 1794 farmers in Western Pennsylvania rioted at news of a proposed tax on whisky. ‘There was something almost romantic about these old rogues, and America would be a less colourful place without them’. The first version of ‘Moonshiner’ I ever heard was by Bob Dylan on the Gaslight Tape from October 1962. In my early days of tape collecting names like the Gaslight and the Finjan Club and the Minneapolis Hotel simply dripped with nostalgia for the years of the Folk Revival. One imagines that this was not a one-off performance, but that it was a song Dylan had learned and that he carried with him as a usable item – a song to be pulled out when needed or when he was sufficiently interested. The real subject of this essay is the outstanding ‘official’ recording of 12 August 1963 which appears on The Bootleg Series. As John Bauldie said, maybe there is a mystery attached to why it was recorded just then, since Dylan was clearly focussed on producing albums of original material. Nevertheless, he achieves an immaculate performance in what seems to have been a single ‘take’. This suggests he was very familiar with the song by this time. There is a story about the Japanese artist, Hokusai: it is said that he painted a lion every day in the hope of one day painting the perfect lion. I like to imagine that Dylan had been striving to perform the perfect ‘Moonshiner’ and, having done so on 12 August 1963, he felt no need to ever perform the song again. In my dreams. There are, inevitably, differences between this later version and the Gaslight recording. Most obviously, on the earlier live recording there is no harmonica. Also, the first verse is reprised at the end, making four verses in all. And the second and third lines of the third verse become: ‘Moonshine when I’m dry, Greenbacks when I’m hard up…’ In terms of the actual performance, the guitar work from the gaslight sounds less accomplished, the voice deeper. There is less stretching of vowels and emphasis is placed on different words, which is hardly surprising. It’s as if he’s still wearing the song in, like a new pair of shoes that are too tight-fitting. Everyone says of The Bootleg Series recording of ‘Moonshiner’ that Dylan sounds as old as the moonshiner himself. Andrew Muir once said he sounded as ‘aged as the oldest cask whisky’. I think this is true, and I love the performance, but if you listen carefully I think you will find that the voice truly ages towards the end of the first verse when it breaks on the words ‘don’t kill me’. Until then he’s still a young man. The language of ‘Moonshiner’ intrigues me. I wonder exactly how old the song is and how much these lyrics are traditional and whether they have been adapted by Dylan at all? One somehow doubts that the lyricist ever was a moonshiner – there is something too poetic and too self-reflectively modern about the words for that to be believable. The sly character of the old man is cleverly drawn. Moonshining being illegal he necessarily practises the art of deceit. This aspect of his nature is doubly alluded to in that the still is hidden in a hollow, and by the fact that he chooses to drink where: ‘The women can’t follow And see what I spend…’ Women? Surely he means wife? Don’t men habitually try to hide their pleasure-spending from their women, be it on alcohol, books, CDs or football? Or does this line allude to a further deceit of an adulterous or bigamous nature? The following lines: ‘God bless the pretty women I wish they were mine…’ seem to indicate that faithfulness is not on his agenda. In fact, it seems that there is no area of life in which this moonshiner is to be trusted. The lines that I always lovingly return to when I’m away from the CD player and playing the song in my mind are these: ‘Their breath is as sweet As the dew on the vine…’ I think that a woman’s breath is not the feminine quality that would most appeal to the average male nose (how many people really have sweet breath anyway?). Debbie Sims contrasts the breath of the women with that of the moonshiner and suggests that the contrast is a part of their attraction to him. But surely, it is the scent of a woman that is more alluring than her breath? And what is truly attractive about dew is not its smell (does it have a smell?) but its visual beauty as, say, it is caught and tinted by the sun, or its gentle dampness – and dew, that foggy, foggy dew, has long held a sexual connotation in folk music. But in this performance breath is sweet, for, as John Bauldie pointed out, these are what Dylan himself called ‘exercises in tonal breath control’. Listen to the way he extends the ‘a’ in that first line, or ‘all my’ in the third line. The way Dylan uses his breath here is as sweet as… it’s just sublime. Even more sublime than the lovely ‘Copper Kettle’ in which he revisited the moonshining theme in 1970. In the end, it’s the performance that matters. He doesn’t sound like a hillbilly, this is a folk singer we hear. Bow Down To Her On Sunday by John Gibbens Among the reviews of The Nightingale’s Code, my ‘poetic study’ published by Touched Press in October last year, one common note was sounded. Whether the reviewer was appreciative (Paula Radice in Freewheelin’), dubious (Jim Gillan in Isis) or dismissive (Nigel Williamson in Uncut), the same point got picked on by each of them to demonstrate my occasionally – some said, and some said chronically – wayward thinking. This egregious fallacy was my suggestion that ‘To Ramona’, in its title, refers to the Tarot, and in particular to two cards, the High Priestess and the Wheel of Fortune. I’ll restate my case in a moment. Here is how Paula Radice responded to it: ‘I can accept… Gibbens’s view that the cycle of the first seven albums (up to the “cycle” accident!) turns around a midpoint of “To Ramona” on Another Side Of Bob Dylan… Where Gibbens loses me is then putting forward, as part of the justification for this thesis, that the first part of the title – To Ra – means Tora, the Tarot, and the Latin rota or “wheel”, and that these were deliberate inferences on Dylan’s part. It just seems unnecessary, indeed counter-productive…’ And this was Nigel Williamson’s view: ‘… if you didn’t see the significance in the fact that the first four letters of the title “To Ramona” spell TORA, which is the word on the scroll held by the High Priestess in the Tarot pack, then your appreciation of Dylan is superficial indeed. You’re probably the sort of person who doesn’t even appreciate that his early lyrics are characterised by the use of the metrical foot known as the anaepest. [sic]’ This is mere misrepresentation. I do not imply – certainly not in the section under discussion here, and I hope nowhere else – that someone’s listening which is not informed by the circumstances or connections I fetch to a song, whether from far or near, is therefore shallow or wrong or inadequate. If I propose a thought you had not already had, or convey some fact you didn’t know, am I thereby calling you ignorant? No: though not being able to copy the correct spelling of a word – like ‘anapæst’, say – from a book you are reviewing could be considered ignorant. Never mind. For now, I’m interested in why this ‘To Ra’ idea of mine caught the flak. But first let me explain it a bit more. My argument seems not to have been clear in the book, since none of the three reviews I’ve mentioned restated quite what I thought I had proposed. I’m not suggesting that Dylan juggled the four letters TORA to get Tarot and also ‘rota’, the Latin wheel, or that he would ever expect anyone to follow such a leap if he had made it. The letters appear like this, ‘TORA’, on the High Priestess card, and they also appear at the four cardinal points around the Wheel of Fortune, as T–A–R–O, just as N, E, S, W appear on a compass. But Dylan did not need to connect these himself – the link is made by A.E. Waite, who designed the pack in question, in his accompanying book The Key to the Tarot. He points out the letters and explains that they can be read clockwise from T in the ‘North’ position, back to T again, to spell ‘Tarot’; or from R in the South, clockwise, to read ‘Rota’; or from the T, anticlockwise, as far round as A, to read Tora. He further points out that this is the word on the High Priestess’s scroll, and that it stands for Torah, which is the Hebrew for law, or instruction, or direction, and the name given to the first five books of the Bible. Before we go any further, there are a few supporting points I should make. First, these writings of A.E. Waite are not at all obscure or esoteric. The Waite pack is probably the most popular form of the Tarot to this day, and would have been by far the most likely pack you’d come across in 1964, back before the general revival of the ‘occult’ led to a profusion of new designs. Likewise, Waite’s book is one of the favourite beginner’s guides to the cards and has been reprinted many times. I bought it as a cheap, recently published paperback in the 1980s. Second, we know that, many years later, Dylan took an interest in the Tarot and the Waite pack in particular. He ‘quotes’ the Empress card from it on the back sleeve of Desire. Even from a cursory look at the symbols and the ways of interpreting them, the influence of cartomancy – and especially the kind of symbolism that Waite draws from, mixing the biblical with the magical – can be seen both in Street-Legal and Renaldo & Clara. In the film, when Joan Baez appears as the Woman in White clutching a red rose, she echoes both the Empress, who wears a white gown sprigged with red roses, and the High Priestess herself, who wears a blue mantle over what I take to be a shimmering white gown. (It’s coloured white in places and blue in others – I think to give a moonlit effect. She has the full moon set in her crown and the crescent moon at her feet, and sits as it were in an alcove between two pillars, one black and one white.) In Waite’s little instruction pamphlet that comes in the box with the cards, the High Priestess is said to represent, in a reading, ‘the woman who interests the Querent, if male; the Querent herself, if female’. She also stands for ‘silence, tenacity, mystery, wisdom’. (Which is about as much detail as any of the biographers have been able to disclose about the character of Sara Dylan, isn’t it?) For all her virginal and remote attributes, it’s the Priestess and not, for example, the much more ‘earthy’ seeming Empress, who signifies a sexual and romantic relationship with a woman. Now perhaps we can see a link between the High Priestess and ‘To Ramona’, with its peculiar blend of ‘high’ philosophising and sensual romancing. It doesn’t seem to me far-fetched to suggest that the song arises from the combination of experience of and meditation on this image. It’s interesting that ‘Torah’ should mean instruction or direction, given that the song mixes several direct instructions – ‘come closer, shut softly your watery eyes’ – with its more abstract teachings – ‘Everything passes, everything changes’ and so on. Here I should make a third substantiating point. This stuff about the Tarot may or may not interest you, but I think you’ll agree that it is directly relevant to one period of Dylan’s work at least; that he clearly had its symbolism in mind about the time of Street-Legal and Renaldo & Clara, and that he invites us, as openly as he has ever done with any outside source, apart from the Bible, to use the Tarot as a ‘key’ to some of his images. But that was then. Is it likely that he’d known about, let alone thought about the cards, and used their symbolism as a source for his art as early as the mid-1960s? Well, the biographical evidence suggests that he learned about the Tarot from Sara, whom he most likely met sometime in 1964. Now here’s a nice piece of circumstantial evidence. The cover photograph of Bringing It All Back Home was taken in the first weeks of 1965. Put the Empress on the back cover of Desire alongside Sally Grossman, the lady in red on the front of BIABH (much easier to see if you’ve got the LPs). Do my eyes deceive me, or is that almost the same pose? I hope I’ve made a case, at least, that Dylan’s quite deep knowledge of the Tarot could go back a long way before Renaldo & Clara. While I’m making this defence, I’d like to make a retraction too. In my book I claimed of the Dylans, ‘We can date their meeting fairly accurately’. This was showing off, because I was pleased with myself for having tracked down two decaying hurricanes that hit New York in the autumn of 1964 – on 14th and 24th September – and concluded that this must pinpoint the ‘tropical storm’ that is mentioned in the song ‘Sara’ as marking their meeting. They were the only truly tropical storms to reach the northeastern seaboard that season, but it’s still just a guess, and a far cry from ‘fairly accurate’ dating. I’d much rather, really, that they’d met a lot earlier, before 9th June 1964, for example, when Another Side was recorded. Then maybe that storm could be the tremendous one of ‘Chimes of Freedom’, and they could be that ‘we’: ‘Starry-eyed and laughing as I recall when we were caught, / Trapped by no track of hours…’ The ‘message’ of ‘Chimes of Freedom’, with its Sermon on the Mount echoes, also chimes with that line in ‘Sara’ – ‘A messenger sent me in a tropical storm.’ (The sentence is ambiguous: he was sent along by the messenger is the top meaning; but it can be read grammatically as ‘How did I meet you?… [By means of] a messenger sent [to] me in a tropical storm.’) If a ‘real-life’ Ramona is required, Sara is a much more natural one than, say, Joan Baez. The Tarot doesn’t seem like Joanie’s bag, and nor do the confusion and tears that Ramona shows. But the feeling of being torn that the song describes wouldn’t be surprising in a woman, like Sara at that time, with a young child and a marriage falling apart. Identifying Sara, or anyone else, with Ramona doesn’t tell us much about the song (though the song might tell us something biographically about a relationship). But associating Ramona with the High Priestess, it seems to me, does add something to the song. It strengthens our sense of Ramona’s dignity – ‘the strength of your skin’, those ‘magnetic movements’ – that counterbalances this temporary bewilderment and weakness. It heightens the feeling of reciprocity. If Ramona is, in her better self, like the Priestess, then she is herself the source of wisdom and knowledge, and this situation where the singer is spelling out the facts of life for her could as easily be reversed, as the last lines acknowledge: ‘And someday, baby, / Who knows, maybe / I’ll come and be crying to you.’ As the precursor to a string of notable ‘advice-to-a-woman’ songs – ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, ‘Queen Jane Approximately’ – the Priestess image reinforces a basic respect that underlies them, that keeps them, somehow, despite their outspokenness, from sounding merely gloating or contemptuous. Much has been said of the viciousness, the sneer, the anger of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, but what has kept it alive so long is the way that this is mixed with a kind of stateliness. And this stateliness pertains to the person that the song describes, just as it does in ‘Queen Jane’. We may see the women, in the images, stripped of their trappings of comfort, prestige and power, but in the music we see them somehow the stronger for it. What makes the songs moving and lasting is the feeling that Dylan conveys, in everything apart from the words, that he’s not crowing ‘I told you so’, but saying rather, as he says Ramona says, ‘You’re better than no-one / And no-one is better than you’. That is a philosophical constant of Dylan’s work, a ‘something understood’ that keeps him on a level with us, however ostensibly preaching or haranguing or even vituperative his words. And this is what enables them effectively to preach and teach. My reason for mentioning the ‘To Ra’ hypothesis in The Nightingale’s Code was not so much to do with the High Priestess as with the Wheel, the Rota. Of course, this period of Dylan’s life was a ‘turning point’. What intrigued me was how consciously he seems to have realised it. The image of a wheel or ring is deliberately evoked in the front of Bringing It All Back Home, and it occurs in that key song ‘Mr Tambourine Man’, in the tambourine itself and in the ‘smoke-rings’ of the mind, and also in ‘To Ramona’: ‘my words would turn into a meaningless ring… Everything passes, everything changes’. I go on to discuss how Another Side itself seems to rotate around this central point, ‘To Ramona’, turning from a positive first side – Incident, Freedom, Free, Really – to a negative second – Don’t, Ain’t, Plain, Nitemare and so on; turning right round, in the end, from ‘All I really want to do is, baby, be friends with you’ to ‘It ain’t me you’re lookin’ for, babe.’ From there I go on to suggest an even wider wheel, still centred on ‘To Ramona’, with the three folk albums on one side and the three rock albums on the other. And there I leave you to decide for yourselves with what kind of consciousness Dylan could have created the ‘centre’ of such a wheel, when he could not know where it would stop. Which brings me back to my original question, why the reference to such esoterica as the Tarot got picked up. If there is any substance to my idea of a larger organised form to the whole sequence of Dylan’s first seven records, then how did it get organised? It suggests a shaping power of imagination far beyond what the ordinary Selfhood could encompass. The Canadian critic Northrop Frye wrote in Fearful Symmetry, his inspiring study of William Blake, ‘If a man of genius spends all his life perfecting works of art, it is hardly far-fetched to see his life’s work as itself a larger work of art with everything he produced integral to it’. This idea he expanded further in Anatomy of Criticism, which might flippantly be called the prequel to Fearful Symmetry, since it outlines the vision of all literature which he had seen through his reading of Blake: ‘It is clear that criticism cannot be a systematic study unless there is a quality in literature which enables it to be so. We have to adopt the hypothesis, then, that just as there is an order of nature behind the natural sciences, so literature is not a piled aggregate of “works”, but an order of words.’ My aim in The Nightingale’s Code was simply to set such a vision of Dylan’s work afoot. To be honest – not wanting to launch an anti-advertising campaign – this was what I’d missed in the critical studies I’ve read. The observations accumulate but they don’t seem to assemble into a picture. It’s not clear what the details are details of. I wanted to show how, for example, song might relate to song on an LP; how LPs themselves might be constellated in phases or cycles – or chapters, if you like. Also, what might be constants of the whole work, the forms and images that speak to each other across it. In this I seem so far to have failed, since the critic who was most responsive to the book, Paula Radice, took exception to precisely this schematic aspect of it. The tenor of most Dylan criticism at the moment is to celebrate the diversity of his work – to multiply its breadth and open-endedness. At the same time, I believe the perception that Dylan’s work is a whole, even while it can’t yet be seen whole, is well established – for example among the readership of this magazine. Many people – I would guess it’s probably most of the people who enjoy his music – have the sense that it’s worth getting to know extensively. There may be a certain consensus on the highs and lows, as well as our own personal charts, but I think most of us feel that the body of work adds up to something more than a selection of its highlights, however collectively edited. Don’t you also find yourself more often drawn back to, and getting more out of, a Dylan record you regard as second-rate, than is the case with many a first-rate record by other artists? Of course there are two important obstacles to studying Dylan as Frye studied Blake. One is that he is alive, and we can’t claim to see the work whole while it is still unfinished. The other is that it’s not literature. What constitutes the canon of Dylan’s work? ‘Mr Tambourine Man’, say, is an element of it, but what is ‘Mr Tambourine Man’? The first track on Side 2 of Bringing It All Back Home, or any one of the hundreds of other performances by Dylan himself, or for that matter by anyone else? In my book I opt for the official releases as forming a canon within the canon, so to speak. The artist himself gives some warrant for this. He doesn’t, at least in later years, give his songs in concert until they’re out on record – so that the live versions must to some extent be heard as subsequent variants of an original. The profusion of variants with Dylan has no real parallel among the poets of literature, but it’s not an alien thing altogether. The canons of poets are mostly synthetic; few are crystalline, fixed and simple. ‘A’ poem is often surrounded by a penumbra of other versions, earlier forms and later revisions. The ‘death-bed collected’ is the usual basis of a canon: the poems, and the forms of them, that were last authorised by the poet in their lifetime. But this needn’t prevail. Whitman, Wordsworth and Auden, for example, are all felt to have done injustice to their early work with later changes, and so there is often an alternative version of the poems as they first appeared. The canon of William Blake is, in fact, a striking anomaly something like Dylan’s. Not because Blake showed uncertainty in constituting his works: of him, more than any other English poet, we can say that the canon is ‘writ in stone’, since he personally, laboriously engraved in copper every single letter and punctuation mark of his completed poems. But the works he conceived are unities of word and image, and each copy of one of his Prophetic Books is unique, a combination of printing and painting. If he had had the audience and the resources, there might be as many Miltons and Jerusalems as there are ‘Mr Tambourine Men’. Well, almost. So the words of one of the poems reprinted in a book are not the actual thing that Blake made. This is why his work, though its influence grows year by year, is still regarded as obscure: because it is, and will be until there is a permanent free public exhibition of all his illuminated books together. At least there is, at last, two centuries on, an affordable one-volume, full-size reproduction (The Complete Illuminated Books, Thames & Hudson, 2000, £29.95). For future generations, the canon of Dylan’s work will pretty certainly include the concert recordings, studio outtakes and so on which are currently collected and curated by the fans. This is a fittingly democratic way for it to form, outside the ambit of the academies which Dylan has often berated. But I predict that the official albums will be the central structure around which the rest is organised, and I think that Dylan appreciates this, despite his pronouncements in periods of discouragement that he didn’t really care about making records, so long as he could perform. This was when he didn’t particularly care about making new songs either: compare and contrast with the clear sense of achievement that comes through in interviews now at having made ‘a great album’ in "Love And Theft". In an album, a set of songs is organised into a greater whole; in a concert they are organised into another, different whole. ‘Sugar Baby’ belongs at the end of ‘Love And Theft’; in a concert we might discover that it also belongs perfectly between ‘Buckets of Rain’, say, and ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’. This independence of the songs, their constant movement in relation to each other, does not diminish the order of the canon, but serves to knot it all the more integrally together. It may seem to have no parallel with the way that poems appear in a poet’s book, always the same words on the same page. Yet what Dylan does for us with his songs is quite close to the way that poets begin to be read when we know them well enough, so we can turn from one poem to another, cross refer, even read two poems side by side, nearly simultaneously. When I called my book The Nightingale’s Code I was obviously playing on the idea that Dylan is an enigma – that Dylanologists are still engaged in trying to ‘decode’ his lyrics. But I meant it more seriously in the sense of a ‘code of behaviour’, like the ‘code of the road’. The word comes from the Latin codex, which means originally a block of wood. A block was split to form leaves on which to engrave important and permanent documents, such as laws. In English the word ‘code’ – before it became synonymous with ‘cipher’ – meant ‘a digest of the laws of a country, or of those relating to any subject’ and ‘a collection of writings forming a book’ (Oxford English Dictionary). In other words, it’s an alternative term for the ‘canon’ that I’ve been using here. To my mind, the ‘code’ in Dylan – in the secret-language sense – is simply his ‘code’ in this second sense: the integrated body of work in terms of which each part can be interpreted. The resistance to my ‘To Ra’ idea – an arcane reference couched in a form rather like a cryptic crossword clue – springs I think from a generally healthy scepticism about hidden meanings and skeleton keys. Ingenious and cryptological explanations have fallen out of favour, due to their own excesses, and Dylanology pursues more sober, empirical and encyclopaedic projects. What was valuable, however, even in such wild theories as A.J. Weberman’s, was their search for the ‘thread’ of Dylan’s work. Weberman’s ‘plot’, applied to Dylan’s career up to the early Seventies, was the story of a Revolution betrayed by its leader (as far as I can make it out). He supplied for Dylan’s country music the cry of ‘Judas!’ that had earlier been flung at his rock music. If we don’t find schemes like this – or Stephen Pickering’s interpretation of the poet’s progress in terms of the Cabala and Jewish mysticism – satisfying, it’s because they seem reductive. Tying the form of artistic creation to another, extrinsic form, they restrict rather than expand its scope. The problem with approaching poetry or song as ‘code’ is that code in itself is meaningless. Once it has been deciphered it is ignored; it adds nothing more to the real message it was concealing. If a song is coded in this sense, then all our responses to what it ‘seems’ to be about would be like delusions. Hence our natural hostility to what is effectively a destructive form of interpretation. But a song can have ‘hidden’ or ‘other’ meanings in another way: not as concealed within it or ‘behind’ it, but hidden in the sense that we don’t see them until we see the larger form of which the thing we are looking at is a part. These are the relations that give a work of art its third dimension, its depth. The larger form is the artist’s body of work and also the ‘order of words’ that Northrop Frye speaks of, the total form of literature. With Dylan, of course, we cannot say simply ‘literature’. One of the reasons he strikes us as such an important figure is that an integral view of his work has to place it simultaneously in both literature and ‘popular music’ (there’s no word as neat as ‘literature’ to describe this other field); and therefore he unites, or reunites, these estranged relations. He’s not alone in doing this. Burns, Brecht and Lorca are three who spring to mind as co-conspirators, but their work has all ended up as books, and been subsumed into literature, and Dylan’s will not be subsumed. In fact, at the moment the emphasis is the other way, partly because of the nature of Dylan’s writing in its current phase, and partly because that ‘other’ field – the golden triangle that lies between points A (for art music like avant-garde jazz), C (for commercial or chart music) and F (for the various shades of ‘folk’ music and field recordings) – is at present, thanks to CDs and expiring copyrights, being formed into a canon of its own. In this respect "Love And Theft" is not ‘retro’ at all, because its encyclopaedia of ‘thefts’ goes hand in hand with a whole new level of documentation of its sources. Reference-spotting can be illuminating, but it’s not the end of hearing Dylan’s music in an integrated way – and it may not even be the beginning. Let’s say that the 12 songs of "Love And Theft" allude to 100 other records (it’s probably not an overestimate): we don’t necessarily get farther into it even if we track down every last one of them. The important thing would be to listen back and forth, so to speak. To know the why of one reference will tell us more than to know that 99 others exist. Which brings me back to my Tarot reference. The point is not that ‘To Ramona’ is really about a playing card instead of a person, or that Bob Dylan once practised divination. The point is that the High Priestess helps us see the ground on which Ramona moves, a harmony to her melody, if you like. A further quote from Northrop Frye, from Fearful Symmetry, may suggest how John Donne and Woody Guthrie, Tarot and ‘corpse evangelists’, ‘To Ramona’ and ‘Chimes of Freedom’ all come to combine in the form we know as Another Side. Speaking of the Renaissance humanists, he points out: ‘They had in common a dislike of the scholastic philosophy in which religion had got itself entangled, and most of them upheld, for religion as well as for literature, imaginative interpretation against argument, the visions of Plato against the logic of Aristotle, the Word of God against the reason of man.’ He goes on to say: ‘The doctrine of the Word of God explains the interest of so many of the humanists, not only in Biblical scholarship and translation, but in occult sciences. Cabbalism, for instance, was a source of new imaginative interpretations of the Bible. Other branches of occultism, including alchemy, also provided complex and synthetic conceptions which could be employed to understand the central form of Christianity as a vision rather than a doctrine or ritual…’ It remains only to say that in Dylan’s case the matter of references and possible allusions is slightly complicated by that aspect of him that plays the Riddler or the Jokerman. ‘Rainy Day Women #12 & 35’, anyone? Well, 1, 2, 3, 5 are the first four prime numbers, and the next in the sequence is 7, and this is the first track on Dylan’s seventh album. I’ve also speculated that they’re the numbers of hexagrams in the I Ching – something else he’s known to have been interested in, and once refers to openly: ‘I threw the I Ching yesterday, said there might be some thunder at the well.’ An interesting reading in the light of Blood on the Tracks, though ambiguously put. I’d assume it was hexagram 51, Thunder, moving to hexagram 48, The Well, but it could be the other way round. Either way, the judgment on The Well is fitting for that fresh tapping of former powers: ‘The town may be changed, but the well cannot be changed. It neither decreases nor increases…’ And the Thunder of the I Ching, as described in the translator Richard Wilhelm’s commentary – ‘A yang line develops below two yin lines and presses upward forcibly… It is symbolised by thunder, which bursts forth from the earth’ – is something that might well be called Planet Waves. So to return to Nos 12 and 35 – hexagram 12 is Standstill or Stagnation, and Blonde On Blonde is all about stasis and stuckness. Richard Wilhelm comments: ‘This hexagram is linked with the seventh month… when the year has passed its zenith and autumnal decay is setting in.’ That seventh album again, and according to my seasonal arrangement of Dylan’s records, Blonde On Blonde is an autumnal work. And 35? That’s called Progress and the image is of the sun rising over the earth. What lies beyond the stasis of Blonde On Blonde is, whaddyaknow, a New Morning. These are plausible references for the numbers, if you think they are there for any reason. They’re also both biblically important. Twelve, as in tribes and apostles, and 35 as a number of the apocalyptic proportion, as stated in the formula of Revelation, ‘a time, and times, and half a time’, i.e. 1 of any unit, plus 2 of it, plus a half = 3.5 and any of its multiples, like 7, or 70, or 35. The formula occurs, in fact, in chapter 12 of Revelation: ‘And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent. And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood.’ (‘Rainy Day Women’, anyone?) ‘And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth. And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.’ (‘They’ll stone ya when you’re tryin’ to be so good’ anyone?) Yet the suspicion is strong that they could actually be any numbers, and that what they mean at the beginning of the record, attached so arbitrarily to a title so arbitrarily attached to its song, is: prepare to be baffled. And yet, and still – why those particular numbers? Follow the Riddler into the labyrinth, but let a thread unwind as you go, or you may end up lost in there. A final quote from Northrop Frye. Of Blake he says: ‘He is not writing for a tired pedant who feels merely badgered by difficulty: he is writing for enthusiasts of poetry who, like the readers of mystery stories, enjoy sitting up nights trying to find out what the mystery is. Content from Other Issues Ain’t Bob About A (Singin’) Cowboy? By Pat Fitzgerald (In which the argument will be presented that Bob Dylan possesses a “cowboy attitude” and may have garnered some song lyrics from dialogue rendered from the western movies.) He enters his shows to the tune of Rodeo Hoedown Duded up like a cowboy goin’ to town. He don’t give no bullshit—no meaningless patter As he stands “at the keyboard with a gunslinger’s swagger.”1 He’s swung a lasso in the movies2 atop a horse And caught him a turkey—off camera, of course. He wrote that movie’s soundtrack and when asked why, “I had a fondness for Billy,”3 was his reply. He did the Kid right, composed the perfect atmosphere. Just head out to Lincoln4 where it’s played everywhere, In all the town’s museums for all to enjoy. Quite the achievement for a Midwestern boy. Did those western movies get into his brain When he was a kid on the Iron Mountain Range? Did he catch bits of dialogue that stuck with him, Heard over the Lybba’s5 kids’ matinee din? There was this line in The Law vs. Billy the Kid.6 Did Bob want to use it, the same as Billy did? “We still got better’n twenty miles to go before we get to town.” Ain’t that like he told us in “Cold Irons Bound”? “I don’t think about it,” was heard in The Great Divide.7 Could poss’bly, in his subconscious, those words did reside Till he thought about the daughters who put him down? Had he pictured them dressed in Miss Kitty-style gowns? In a Hopalong8 flick a dance hall girl once said Something that, maybe, lingered long in Bob’s head. “She doesn’t know whether to kiss him or kill him.” Was it a whim a lyric like that’s in “Standin’”?9 I know, it’s been said I watch too many westerns, An tyin’ those quotes to Bob is simply conjecture. But look at his music—it’s quite plain to see He know the source-ballads of western melody. In Bonnie’s apartment10 he sang “Wild Mountain Thyme.” In New York, at the Gaslight,11 “Barbara Allen” he chimed. Songs from the Isles—“”Wagoner’s Lad”, “Eileen Aaron” All traveled the wide ocean for our boy to croon. Those ballads wound their way to the Appalachians And soon bore the imprint of a brand new nation. From the mountains of the east, they traveled out west. Where new tales spun off them, as Bob’s own song suggests. To the sound of a traditional Irish tune Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie dies is a saloon. But first he roams from the White House to the Rockies Displaying the traits a legend should embody. Western ditties penned by Bob, they ain’t very many. Yet when rip-roarers all, there ain’t need for plenty. He learned his lessons well ‘bout how a tale to tell An’ once he gets a-goin’, his cowboy spirit swells. “Romance in Durango”—chili peppers, thund’ring guns, An outlaw with his querida on the run. ’Tis a Mexican yarn that’s filled with tragedy. South of the border cowboys can’t flee adversity. The haunting “Angelina” bears a western tinge With allusions to card games that no one can win. There’s bandits and shotguns, the sky changing shades And the hero must flee after his sad serenade. There’s folks in a song I feel is Bob’s western best, Equal to that flick in “Brownsville Girl”, starring Greg Peck. Lily was a gal about whom films could be written. The mysterious Jack of Hearts—for him she was smitten. Jealousy was Big Jim’s fatal flaw. Rosemary Faced the gallows, the deadly price her good deed carried. The setting, side plots, action, psychology Is everything that’s needed for a well-told movie. Wait—movies!? Let’s return once more to different times To that boy in Hibbing whose imagination shines When a bit of movie conversation sparks Something in his head that leaves an indelible mark. “He had it comin’,” said Gabby Hayes.12 His voice intones The timbre of the killer of Hezikiah Jones. And in Street Legal, after Bob got sober, Did he flash on Hoppy’s “ . . .We gotta talk this over.”?13 In Texas,14 ‘bout two drifters close as brothers, “We’ll meet again someday,” says one pal to another In a scene not unlike “Tangled”15 on the roadside, When he leaves the red-haired lady to roam far and wide. In The Gunfighter16—“Bring that bottle over here.” Is said by Greg Peck. Yeah, yeah, that’s not obscure. Could be chance that it’s in, “Be Your Baby Tonight.”17 I ain’t sayin’ my guess is necessarily right. But look at Gene Autry’s villain—quite often Big Jim.18 Remember The Last Waltz, that hat with the big brim? That same wide fedora is worn by Autry’s bad guys, As is a pencil-thin mustache, like on Bob’s lip did rise. There’s two simple words from Twilight on the Rio Grande,19 That I’m bettin’ in Bob’s memory did land. “Senor, senor,” from “Tales of Yankee Power,” A song more of Armageddon than of western lore. And in one Autry movie, a bus roles down the road.20 Is this where Bob’s restless feeling was first bestowed? Gene kept a-traveling to get to his next gig. Bob hits the highway in the same type of rig. Is it possible movies shaped Bob’s attitude And that’s how he became a western-type dude? Or perhaps you don’t see what I’m trying to say. And if you don’t agree, that’s perfectly okay. That he’s worn to Elton’s party21 and a boxing match.22 His western boots are legendary, at least to me. With black and white flames, they’re quite delightful to see. But that don’t count for much, because it’s just attire. To gain the cowboy attitude, one must reach higher. It’s not just about cattle, a lifestyle’s involved, And a respect for freedom’s a definite resolve. Who among us can deny that Bob is freewheelin’? The life’s choices he’s made would leave others reelin’. He stays on the road ‘cause settlin’ down ain’t his way. When you get right down to it, he just wants to play. I reckon he won’t quit. He’ll keep on singin’ his songs. Let’s hope that his wanderings remain wide and long, And he’ll always move forward with no regret Till, like an ol’ cowboy, he’ll ride into the sunset. 1. Robert Hilburn, Los Angeles Times October 17, 2002 review of Bob Dylan at the Wiltern Theatre 2. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid 3. Notes in Biograph,pg. 21. The entire quote is: “Why did I do it, I guess I had a fondness for Billy the kid.” 4. Lincoln, New Mexico, the site of Billy the Kid’s courthouse escape 5. Lybba movie theater in Hibbing, Minnesota, which was in operation when Bob was a boy. 6. The Law vs. Billy the Kid, Colombia Studios, 1954 7. Full title: All Along the Great Divide, warner Brothers studios, 1951 8. Wide Open Town, Paramount studios, 1941 ( I am aware that this film was released in the same year Bob Dylan was born, but many western movies were shown time and time again, not only in the movie theaters, but also on television in the 1950s, especially the Hopalong Cassidy series, which were marketed personally by William Boyd, who played Hopalong.) 9. Full title: “Standing In The Doorway,” by Bob Dylan 10. Bonnie Beecher’s apartment, Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 1961 11. Gaslight Café, New York, New York, October, 1962 12. My Pal Trigger, Republic studios, 1946 13. Full line: “Well now, listen, we gotta talk this over.” The Bar 20 Rides Again, Paramount studios, 1936 14. Texas, Colombia studios, 1941 15. Full title: “Tangled Up In Blue,” by Bob Dylan 16. The Gunfighter, Fox studios, 1950 17. Full title: “I’ll Be You Baby Tonight,” by Bob Dylan 18. Rootin’ Tootin’ Rhythm, Republic studios, 1937 (Another movie often showed on television during the 1950s.) Big Jim was also the much-used name of the villain in Gene Autry’s 1950s television series. 19. Twilight On The Rio Grande, Republic studios, 1947 (“Senor, senor” was also heard in Four Faces West, 1948 United Artists studios) 20. Melody Ranch, Republic studios, 1940 21. 10th annual Elton John AIDS foundation InStyle Party, April 1, 2001 22. Felix Trinidad-William Joppy WBA Middleweight Championship bout at Madison Square Garden, New York, NY, May 12 2001 Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right Chimes Of Freedom Subterranean Homesick Blues Inside The Gates Of Eden Too Much Confusion Four And Twenty Windows If You See Her, Say Hello Singing The Lexicon Time Out Of Mind “Love And Theft”

When Jay and Annie first got together, their romantic connection was intense – but ten years and two kids later, the flame of their love needs a spark. To kick things up a notch, they decide – why not? – to make a video of themselves trying out every position in The Joy of Sex in one marathon three-hour session. It seems like a great idea – until they discover that their most private video is no longer private. With their reputations on the line, they know they’re just one click away from being laid bare to the world... but as their race to reclaim their video leads to a night they'll never forget, they'll find that their video will expose even more than they bargained for. A high school senior drives cross-country with his best friends to hook up with a babe he met online. Pinku from 1968. Eddie lands his first teaching gig at an inner city middle school and finds his highly pubescent pupils are receiving no form of sexual education. Eddie isn't really equipped to teach them...he's not exactly experienced romantically. Sex is a background to examine intimacy and vulnerability. Looks at the complexity of modern day relationships told through eight separate couples. Through dialogue and compromising situations, the film takes us from the beginning of a relationship to the aftermath of one, and examines every stage in between seeing humor within the drama, heartache and confusion of it all. A guy's life is turned around by an email, which includes the names of everyone he's had sex with and ever will have sex with. His situation gets worse when he encounters a femme fatale (Ryder) who targets men guilty of sex crime. A sexually repressed woman's husband is having an affair with her sister. The arrival of a visitor with a rather unusual fetish changes everything. A New York writer on sex and love is finally getting married to her Mr. Big. But her three best girlfriends must console her after one of them inadvertently leads Mr. Big to jilt her. Herman has a weakness for strip clubs. Donny has a thing for condiments and Tiffany is a newly celibate martial artist. These are Andy's new friends after he unsuspectingly follows his dream girl into a sexual addiction recovery group. At first this seems like the best possible news! However, Andy's professional and personal life begins to unravel as he deepens his ties to this lovable, but damaged group. After a shallow womanizer refuses a mysterious homeless woman's request for a kiss, he wakes up the next morning to discover he's been changed into a woman. Set in London's world of high class call girls, Amoureux Solitaires tells the story of London based French escort Virginie, and Rupert, a man who rescues trafficked girls. “Half Baked” meets “Superbad” in this hilarious comedy following two young losers whose lives are unexpectedly turned upside down when they find some marijuana that has aphrodisiacal side effects. After deciding to use the wacky weed to their advantage, the guys meet an array of pot-loving beauties. A recently married scholar goes on a quest for knowledge of other people's wives, based on his philosophical differences with the Sack Monk. He encounters the Flying Thief, who agrees to help him find women, but only if he attains a penis as big as a horse's. The scholar has a surgeon attach said unit, and he's off and running on his mission, only to find that there are obstacles to his new lifestyle, such as jealous husbands and treacherous females. Tim is a humble pizza delivery guy hoping to get his big break in Hollywood. One day, opportunity knocks and Tim answers the call to fill in as superstar Cameron Hunter's body double. Hunter wants to step out of the spotlight for a while, so he asks Tim to take his place while he's gone. Tim fills his shoes comfortably well, doing interviews (and interviewers), swimming in his pool, driving his Porsche, and most importantly, sleeping with his sexy girlfriend. The story is loosely based on a 17th century erotic Chinese story named The Carnal Prayer Mat and follows a young scholar named Yangsheng who gets married to the beautiful daughter of a local merchant. When their sex life proves unsatisfactory, Yangsheng leaves home and journeys to the Pavilion of Ultimate Bliss. Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda are all married now, but they're still up for a little fun in the sun. When Samantha gets the chance to visit one of the most extravagant vacation destinations on the planet and offers to bring them all along, they surmise that a women-only retreat may be the perfect excuse to eschew their responsibilities and remember what life was like before they decided to settle down. A famous patissier and his women enjoy work and sex. Neung-geum has dreamt of being a pattisier. She stops supporting her boyfriends school bills. Woo-hyeon is a famous dessert patissier and he has secretive sex to get secret recipes but to him this is just a way to find sweetness. Neung-geum learns how to make dessert from Woo-hyeon. What kind of sex will they have today? What flavor? A group of college nerds secretly record a washed up celebrity having sex and post the tape on the internet. When the publicity revives the actress's career, every B-list celebrity, reality show reject, and celebutante in Hollywood want to star in the guys next "production." Buenos Aires screenwriter Pablo is hired to write a new romantic comedy. As he begins his story, he visualizes his characters living in Madrid. Pablo creates a meet-cute between Marina and Víctor, a cute couple in Madrid who are soon totally in love. Yet as Pablo gets more and more into the script, he finds it difficult to separate his movie characters from what is happening in his own real life – specifically, his own love life. The plot follows new prostitutes Susan (Karen Yeung), Fanny (Tung Yi), and Chinyun (Chung Chun), who are inducted into the Fragrance House brothel where they are trained in the ways of lovemaking by their veteran madam Tall Kau. Eventually all three enter circulation where Susan is crowned the top prize and becomes enamored of budding scholar Chu Chi-Ang. Fanny is jealous beyond all means and though she's bought by famous horse trader Sir Lui (Category 3 staple Tsui Kam-Kong), she still plans her revenge on Susan. Eventually the typical “torture the innocent naked girl for cheap thrills†stuff happens, while Chu learns various wacky sexual positions to get Susan back. Based on the bestselling book by Candace Bushnell, Sex and the City tells the story of four best friends, all single and in their late thirties, as they pursue their careers and talk about their sex lives, all while trying to survive the New York social scene. William Masters and Virginia Johnson are real-life pioneers of the science of human sexuality. Their research touched off the sexual revolution and took them from a midwestern teaching hospital to the cover of Time magazine and multiple appearances on Johnny Carson's couch. He is a brilliant scientist out of touch with his own feelings, and she is a single working mother ahead of her time. The series chronicles their unusual lives, romance, and unlikely pop culture trajectory. Jenna's American Sex Star is an adult pay-per-view reality television series hosted by Jenna Jameson on Playboy TV. In each episode, four contestants compete in a series of sexual performances for the judges and viewers then vote for their favorite performer on Playboy.com. Winners win an exclusive contract with Jameson's movie studio ClubJenna. Season 1 judges included Christy Canyon, Ron Jeremy, and Jim Powers. Season 2 judges included Jim Powers, Jenna Lewis, and Jay Grdina. The judges will eliminate two contestants and then viewers will vote for who should move on to the finals. Playboy TV's Andrea Lowell appears on season 2 as the Envelope presenter when girls are to be eliminated, or winners announced. Season 1 winner, Brea Bennett announced in an August 2007 interview that she had left Club Jenna. Season 2 winner, Roxy Jezel, stopped working with Club Jenna after one year, and stated that she planned to retire in August 2009. Zane's Sex Chronicles is an American television series based on the urban erotica novels written by Zane. The series follows the friendships and relationship of five female friends who enjoy the steamy stories of erotic writer Zane. The series premiered on Cinemax on October 11, 2008. The urban adult series was renewed for a second season, which premiered on March 5, 2010. The Best Sex Ever is an American erotic anthology series featured on Cinemax during their "After Dark" schedule. The series features simulated sex scenes, and thus can be categorized as "soft core" or "voyeur." The premise of the show is listeners of a fictional radio show titled, "The Best Sex Ever", call in to recount their sexual exploits. Many high-profile porn stars made an appearance on the show, such as Sunrise Adams, Syren, and Monica Mayhem. The Sex Files is a television program appearing on Discovery Channel Canada and shown on CTVglobemedia around midnight hours, because of content. It talks about several issues of sexuality, from genetics, reproduction, sexual orientation, puberty, etc. It does contain nudity, which is why it is shown in the midnight hours, but the nudity is done from a scientific point-of-view showing exactly what the topic is visually, good for people who want information on sexuality and the biology behind it. In Europe the show was called Sex Sense and featured a male narrator. The number of episodes and their titles were the same but the episodes themselves were slightly different as the more explicit scenes were replaced. It aired on Discovery Channel Europe. Starting with episode 41, it is broadcast in high-definition. A web-based reality porn show in search of the next top porn stars. Follow wannabe porn stars who have never been filmed before, actual civilians who responded to an open casting call. The contestants compete in increasingly explicit challenges to win their share of a $1M prize along with instant porn superstardom. An anthology series that explores the future of sex. Opposite Sex is an American comedy-drama series that aired during FOX's summer 2000 schedule. The series was one of the first teen dramas to primarily use independent artists on its soundtrack by such acts as Elliott Smith and Ben Lee. Johnny Rock is the aging lead singer of NYC's legendary early-'90s band The Heathens, who is trying to get both his band and his life back together. The aging and broke bad-boy rocker gets another shot at fame as a songwriter for a brash and talented young singer who's a big fan of his early work. Real Sex is a documentary television series broadcast on and a production of HBO. As its name implies, Real Sex is a sexually explicit "magazine" which "explores sex '90s style." Real Sex explores human sexuality, from the latest sexual fads to casual sex festivals and home production of pornographic movies. The show typically explores three to four topics each episode. Segments are separated by street interviews with random people, relating to the episode's topics. Episodes of the show investigate RealDolls, "Swingstock," a cunnilingus seminar, a perpetual sex machine for women, and lovemaking in chocolate. The last Real Sex episode aired in 2009. Older episodes as well as "best-of" episodes are frequently re-aired during late nights on HBO. It spawned a spin-off series called Pornucopia. Sex Education follows "a socially awkward high school virgin who lives with his sex therapist mother. He teams up with “whip-smart bad-girl” Maeve to set up a clinic to deal with their fellow students’ weird and wonderful problems. The wrenching plight of two Bosnian sisters and their descent into the dark world of enforced prostitution. Their journey is intersected by a British journalist struggling to uncover a conspiracy by American peacekeepers and the machinations of an international charity organization. A wedding reception hook-up leads to a culinary sex adventure and a sticky situation. A young couple’s sexual adventure proves that you can love nature, but it doesn’t always love you back. A cheating boyfriend drives a furious woman to take grudge sex to new heights. Eight college students get more than they bargained for when their professor forces the students to pair up and make clay sculptures of each other‘s genitals. A Girl's Guide to 21st Century Sex is a documentary TV series about sex, which ran in eight episodes on Channel 5 and was presented by Dr. Catherine Hood. The 45-minute long episodes were broadcast on Monday nights. The series started on 30 October 2006, with the final programme broadcast on 18 December 2006. Each episode explained a sex position and covered a sexually transmitted disease. Additionally, the following topics were discussed: sex among handicapped and overweight people, penis enlargement devices, penis enlargement surgery, sexual violence against men and penis removal, tantric sex, the g-spot, erectile dysfunction, sex reassignment surgery, cosmetic surgery of the vagina, swinging, lichen sclerosus, the use of recreational drugs during sex, male homosexual sex in public toilets, full body plastic wrap bondage, and sex dolls. The programme included close shots of the male and female body as well as footage of sexual intercourse and ejaculation filmed with an internal camera placed inside the vagina. These scenes were filmed using Australian-born pornographic actress Elizabeth Lawrence and English-born pornographic actor Stefan Hard. Strange Sex is an American documentary series that aired on TLC from July 18, 2010 to August 5, 2012. The series explores all things sex and relationships, especially if they are atypical. A drama chronicling the lives of twentysomethings in the hip L.A. neighborhood of Silverlake. Alles außer Sex was a German "dramedy" television series which aired on the TV station ProSieben between 2005 and 2006. The German television premiered on 9 November 2005 with an audience of 2.9 million viewers. Thematically, it is similar to the American television series Sex and the City and the British series Coupling. Indie Sex is a 2007 American television documentary film directed by Lesli Klainberg.

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I’m back on the asadora trail! I am determined to finish Asa ga Kita, if only to do justice to Tamaki Hiroshi’s first asadora outing in years – and a successful one, I might add, as the drama did well in the ratings game. It wasn’t difficult getting back into the groove as each episode and week ended on a mini cliffhanger that just whetted the appetite. Also, it was nice hearing the upbeat theme song again. Continue reading Here’s another round of Asa ga Kita to end off the year. Although I’ve been very slow with this asadora, it’s really quite enjoyable and easy to watch. The theme song is also fun to sing along to, since it’s so upbeat and very apt for Asa’s character. So far things are progressing well and both Asa and Hatsu are learning how to protect their respective families in their own ways. Dad’s words have a profound effect on them and it’s this principle that guides the sisters as they navigate the changing times and family fortunes. Continue reading I’ve been meaning to write about Asa ga Kita for a while, but real life got in the way and my computer has gone wonky, so this is terribly delayed and I don’t know if I’ll keep writing on it. However, the experience of watching my first asadora has been pretty good so far, and at 15 minutes (on the dot!) for each episode, it’s very easy to breeze through a week of episodes (six in total). Imai Asa (Haru) is the second daughter of a wealthy Kyoto merchant. A tomboy with a love of sumo wrestling and accounting, and penchant for asking questions, Asa is very different from her elder sister Hatsu (Miyazaki Aoi), who is the epitome of feminine grace. Asa and Hatsu have been betrothed from young to sons of two distinguished moneylending families in Osaka. Despite initial resistance from Asa, she soon falls in love with her fiancé Shirooka Shinjiro (Tamaki Hiroshi). After their marriage, Shinjiro has no interest in the family business and only devotes his time to the shamisen and other pleasurable activities. As difficult times beckon at the cusp of the Meji era and as the Shirooka family finds itself in financial straits, Asa steps up to take charge… Continue reading From left: Miyazaki Aoi, Haru, Tamaki Hiroshi It’s a new project for Tamaki Hiroshi! This time, he’ll be part of the NHK asadora called Asa ga kita, which is set at the end of the Edo/early Meiji Restoration periods and depicts the life of businesswoman Hirooka Asako (1849-1919), based on the novel Shosetsu Tosaborigawa Josei Jitsugyoka Hirooka Asako no Shogai by Furukawa Chieko. Young actress Haru will be the female lead Imai Asa, who was born as the second daughter of a wealthy merchant in Kyoto. Asa then went to Osaka and entered various business fields like coal mines, banks and life insurance. She also founded the first female university in Japan. Sounds like a woman ahead of her times! Tamaki will play Asa’s husband Shiraoka Shinjiro, the second son of a money-exchange family in Osaka. His character is described as bright and cheerful, with an interest in shamisen and tea ceremony (and possibly a dubious relationship with his shamisen teacher). After marriage, Asa’s entrepreneurial talents came to the fore as she made efforts to run a bank, colliery company and so on on behalf of her prodigal husband. This doesn’t sound particularly promising for Tamaki’s character, haha. Other notable cast members include Miyazaki Aoi as Asa’s elder sister Hatsu, Masu Takeshi and Terajima Shinobu as Asa’s parents, and Kondo Masaomi and Fubuki Jun as Shinjiro’s parents. I haven’t seen Haru in anything, so I have no idea if she can act. She’s only 23, but already has quite a number of works under her belt, so I’m hopeful that she’s got some acting chops if she’s gonna be leading an asadora. Apparently she had auditioned for previous NHK dramas and had not been selected, but her perseverance paid off on the fourth time – gotta give her props for not giving up! She’s 11 years younger than Tamaki, so I just hope they look compatible onscreen. It’d have been nice if it were Miyazaki playing Asa, since it’d be a reunion for her and Tamaki after they last starred in Tada, Kimi wo Aishiteru nine years ago. No matter what, I’m just glad Tamaki will be back in a drama, although it will be a while yet – filming will start next month and the asadora won’t premiere until September. It’s been 12 years since Tamaki was in an asadora (2003’s Kokoro), while it will be Miyazaki’s second asadora (she was the lead in 2006’s Junjo Kirari). And I’m happy they’re gonna film in Kansai, that’s a pretty awesome region. Asa ga kita will be NHK’s 93rd asadora and will run from Sept 28 to April 2. It is scheduled for 156 episodes and will air Mondays to Saturdays at 8am.

Lise Weil quotes Adrienne Rich: “I choose to love this time for once with all my intelligence.” This approach to loving seems to be the exact conceit of Weil’s intimate memoir. Frequent references to H.D., Virginia Woolf, Mary Daly–as well as run-ins in with Audre Lorde–work to create a robust, and sometimes surprising, portrait of the second wave feminist movement. Throughout In Search of Pure Lust, Weil is driven by this intellectual, all-in loving. In her many relationships, Weil lusts for woman not only as partners and lovers, but as poets, scholars, and visionaries. Judith Barrington’s Long Love is a collection of new and selected poems celebrating her impressive tenure as a writer. Drawing from Trying to Be an Honest Woman (1985), History and Geography (1989), as well as more recent works like Lost Lands (2008), this latest collection is anchored by Barrington’s stripped-back voice and generous poetic ear. below is a selection of our prints. for the full selection, sales, and updates on art shows visit instagram @roman.pace ~ prints are 15$ each or 5 for $50 ~ about the artist roman pace is a sapphic, non-binary artist living in the south. roman places their work within a collective conjuring of queer future. they use collage, photography, and craft to explore the relationship between madness and queerness. they are a co founding member of twiin flame art collective. reach out to them at [email protected] or check out their prints on instagram @roman.pace all art reflects the collective’s values as leftist and loving. want to connect? we love to chat with other queer artist folx! send us a message on the Contact page

On Reality Asserts Itself, Mr. Scheer talks about his father’s thirst for freedom and how that influenced his life; Scheer says defense of the U.S. Constitution, in spite of its flaws, is critical in defending against the erosion of democracy PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News Network. We’re continuing our interview with Robert Scheer, who joins us again in the studio. Thanks for joining us. PROF. ROBERT SCHEER, JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR: Thank you. JAY: And one more time, Bob Scheer is a veteran U.S. journalist, currently editor-in-chief of the five-time Webby Award-winning online magazine Truthdig. And Bob’s whole biography you’ll find below the video player here. Well, the framers of the Constitution–and it’s still the case today– SCHEER: Wore wigs. JAY: –it’s the sanctity of the individual who owns property. SCHEER: I know. We, you know,–. JAY: And it’s still today. SCHEER: Let me correct that. Let me just correct that, because that’s asserted over and over again. One of the major prophets of the American Revolution, and I would say the most important, was Tom Paine. And Tom Paine was not speaking to people who owned property. Tom Paine was that town crier. Tom Paine was that guy with the broadside. Tom Paine was that guy who hustled some printer. He was you. You know, he did but I did with Ramparts. That’s Tom Paine. Hustled some printer: yeah, I’ll pay you next month, you know, and meanwhile print my pamphlet. You know? And those pamphlets, no one can challenge that. Tom Paine was the guy who gave the American Revolution its urgency and definition, okay? And he was an immigrant, a recent immigrant from England, someone on the lam. You know? And if you look at Justice Roberts, the Supreme Court, the ruling a year ago in June on why the police can’t crack into your smart phone and use that data–unanimous decision of a Supreme Court that many of us don’t like, you know, but it included the liberals and the conservatives–unanimous. Scalia, everybody, said no, the cops can’t get that data, ’cause that’s a general warrant. That’s not specific. It’s a violation of due process. They can’t crack the code and convict you on some crime that they were not looking for. It goes back to English common law of the humblest peasant. This goes against your rich guys argument. The humblest peasant is off-limits to an agent of the king, cannot come in and rummage about. JAY: Yeah. SCHEER: The reason the Fourth Amendment is so important, as Justice Roberts said, the American Revolution was sparked by that demand. Okay? And when the agents of the king came in looking for your tax violation or are you selling rum or are you doing this or are you paying your taxes, blah blah blah, okay, they said that is what sparked the revolution. JAY: Yeah. But it’s fine in theory. It’s lovely on paper. We’re in Baltimore here. SCHEER: I’m in Baltimore. JAY: These constitutional rights of people who don’t own any property are violated after day every–. Go to court and see what constitutional rights, go see what constitutional rights Freddie Gray had, who just got murdered in Baltimore. It’s if you have property, you can actually assert those rights. Yes, they’re there for everyone. It’s like this–I once heard this coal miner, yes, anyone can go into the Ritz-Carlton, but not everybody can rent a room. It’s the same with constitutional rights. They’re there, but you can’t actually implement them unless you’ve got a lawyer, unless you–I mean, I walk into a police station; as you know, it’s a completely different story if some young black kid walks in. SCHEER: Yeah, I know. I understand. JAY: The reality– SCHEER: Let me explain what I’m–. JAY: –is different than the–than–and I’m–. Just a sec. And I’m not undervaluing the importance of these individual constitutional rights, even if the poor and people without property–it’s still massively significant that there’s still as much individual rights in the United States as there is. It’s very significant. And we need to fight for them. And this is why people that say we’re already living in fascism I don’t agree with, ’cause we’re really not quite there yet. And–. SCHEER: Those who say we’re already living in fascism have not been in– JAY: Lived in fascism. SCHEER: –have not been in a totalitarian country. JAY: I agree. SCHEER: You know. And this hit me–. Look, first of all, my parents came to this country–I don’t want to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” here, but they came because they had experienced, particularly my mother had experienced–you know, my mother was smuggling secrets in her hair when she was 17 years old and went to see somebody in Lithuania who was being tortured. She didn’t know he had been arrested. And she was put up by some people near the prison where she could hear his screams all night. And I’ve been in a lot of these countries. And I think it’s a copout. What you said–and I say this to you with great respect for what you do, great respect that you know a lot more about Baltimore and inner cities than I do, ’cause you’re working here. You care about covering it. And, also, anything I tell you in this show, I may be full of it, or I wouldn’t be a journalist. I may have it wrong. Okay? I’m not a big ideologue in that way. I don’t think I’ve got it all, a handle on everything. I really mean that. But I think–so let me get a little bit autobiographical here, which you wanted to do. I told you about finding those volumes by the garbage can. Now let me go back to my own childhood here, ’cause it really is important. My father was a part of–there were waves of German immigrants who came to this country, sparked by turmoil in Germany, of different kinds, but usually “Die Gedanken sind frei” [German: Thoughts are free], you know, the desire for freedom. It’s even in Beethoven’s Ninth, you know, the whole idea that, you know, thoughts matter. No tyrant shall–I forget the way it went, Die Gedanken sind frei, but no tyrant shall shape the–no one–no man can deny Die Gedanken sind frei, thought is free. PETE SEEGER SINGING “DIE GEDANKEN SIND FREI”: My thoughts will not cater to duke or dictator / No man can deny, Die Gedanken Sind Frei / No man can deny, Die Gedanken Sind Frei SCHEER: And my father had that. And I don’t know what happened to him. I think he had a physical fight or beat up his high school principal. He was a farmboy in Germany. And his mother got him–my mother came over in steerage. My father came over, I think, second class or just above steerage. I found his thing on Ellis Island–my son Peter did, and so forth. And my father, we don’t know. He was 13, 14, maybe 15, but probably 13, 14 when he came. He didn’t know anybody. He had some relative he was supposed to find, but when he finally found him, he didn’t like him. So this guy was on his own. And he came from a town in Germany were every male–in each of these towns–and I’ve been there many times, Southwest Germany. It’s called the /fɒls/, and land was too poor to support the whole–it’s like the Old South in the United States. So each village–and they were about 3 kilometers apart–the people would, the males would learn something, to make pots or do something. And my father’s village, Mackenbach, they were famous for training musicians for the circus and other things. So my uncle, who I found after my father died when I went back to Germany, my uncle Ludwig, he had actually–he was wounded at Stalingrad fighting the Russians, but he’d already been in Moscow before the war as a musician. So my father arrived. He had his clarinet. I still have it hanging–well, not that one. I have a different version of his clarinet that I got from his brother hanging on my wall. But my father came, and he played on street corners and played the clarinet and music, and he learned to be a hand knitter and then a knitter mechanic. He was good with mechanical things. And he worked very hard. Real strong work ethic. And he became a Wobbly and an anarchist, and then he flirted with his union, with–the industrial union was communist for, I think, three weeks. And he got kicked out when my Aunt Lillie testified against him because he ran a wildcat strike against the union’s demands at the New York knitting mills. And my mother and father met when my mother–in 1936, they met on a picket line, or ’35, and they had me, you know, the undocumented child. And that’s how I came into this world. I believe very much in a woman’s right to choose, but I’m glad that my own mother chose to have me. So I do believe life is quite precious that way, at least mine. And so I was born in this. And as far as justice being fair, I was raised from day one to say my father’s whole thing, he would tell me, he says, you know, just don’t to anything where those cops’ll get you, because they’ll get you in the police station, beat you around the head, you’ll be funny-headed and you’ll be no good to no one. Okay? That’s my father’s–boom. I would hear that over and over again. You know, just watch it, you know, because that happens in 77th Precinct. Boom–they’ll get you. And the cops were Irish. He didn’t like the Irish there because of that, you know, and the whole thing. And so I grew up in that. I knew life was not fair. I could see–when we went down to get something for my mother, I could see she’s working in a sweatshop. The people, the woman were in their underwear ’cause there was no air-conditioning. I grew up in the Bronx. We didn’t have air conditioning when I was growing up. We slept on a roof of the tenement. You know, I know all this stuff. My aunt was a German maid, very proudly. She worked for rich people in New York. So I didn’t come from some kind of–you know, I was aware of how unfair things were. On the other hand, I also was aware that there were things that worked better than they did in a lot of other countries. Like we had good public schools. I’m a post-FDR person. You know, I mean, FDR was the hero in our house. So elections do matter, because we got this guy in there, a rich American. We all knew he was a rich American. But the guy saved our ass. And I heard the same thing from Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan told me–and he said this in one of his books, but when I interviewed Reagan, and I got–we’ve got the tapes, Norman Lear Center, crew around with me, but I published it in the LA Times, and Reagan said in his home, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a god, you know, and his father was out of work just like my father was. His father went to work for–. JAY: Oh, he was a Democrat. SCHEER: He went–but his father went to work for the New Deal. My father went to work for the WPA. You know, my father lost his job the day I was born. He didn’t get a job until the war started. Okay? War against Germans and Germany. But, you know, he got his job back, and then he never missed a day of work for the next 25 years. You know, he had the perfect attendance at the New York knitting rooms, and he was a shop steward for 25 years. You know, an incredible work ethic. So I know about unfair. I mean, you know–. JAY: I’m not talking about unfair. I’m talking about something more specific. SCHEER: No, I understand about the courts. I understand how rigged it is. And, of course, as a journalist, I’ve covered the very things you’re talking about. However, the reason I’m acting with some urgency here and some energy: I have found too many people–not you, ’cause you are on a day-to-day basis dealing with these issues, so this is not personal. But I have found too many people who’ve said because the game is rigged, it becomes an excuse for inactivity. And what I learned as an early kid, as an early citizen in this country, in the worst of times there are opportunities. And I’ll just–and if I can tell you biographically, I’ll just go through a number of issues. But in terms of money, that was a big issue. Food was an issue in my house. Come on. I mean, when I read about people at risk for food, you know, we–my father, first of all, had another family, so we could never see his income. And he was a decent man, and he wasn’t married to my mother, so he was supporting two kids. And at his funeral, my half-brother and -sister and his ex-wife asked me to be the only speaker. Okay? And they loved my father. And my father was an ethical man who worked like a dog, and he supported this family, even though he’d fallen in love with my mother and, you know. So I respected that. And I remember my father. And we moved in with another family. We lived with my aunt and uncle and cousins and crammed into a very small flat in the Bronx. During the Depression it was very hard. And I remember, you know, there’d be a real question. We knew some guy who sold organ meats, you know, maybe there’d be a piece of liver or something, and we’d get it. I mean, but I remember it being real hard times. I remember Christmas, you know, there’d be some old toys under a tree that my uncle Leon, who had a fruit stand, somebody didn’t buy, some forelorn [fruit], so the night of Christmas, maybe he’d bring it back ’cause he couldn’t sell it, you know, we’d have it there. So I remember I didn’t have a bicycle or anything. I didn’t have any–I couldn’t get a glove. I couldn’t get anything. And my father would–he would have this line you hear from parents once in a while. He’d say, well, you earn your own money, you’ll be a man, okay, and you’ll make your decisions, but right now you’re going to be here to eat at six o’clock and you’re going to eat everything on your plate, and on the weekend I’m going to press you a shirt and you’re going to wear it, and we’re going to go see Aunt–my aunt and Uncle Leon, and you’re going to have a tie. My father was like that. You know, he was German and cleaned the stoops and the whole thing. But the thing, the reason I am here, the reason that I am an independent person: my father said to me, okay, when you earn your own money, you’re going to be a man, and I’m not going to tell you what to do or anything to think. My father and mother, despite that they were leftists, they never tried to shape my thinking in any kind of overt way. I mean, my father took me down in a bowery to see people taking hand-out of food and tell me, if you don’t work, that’s going to happen to you. You know, I’d get these little lectures all the time. But then my father said to me, if you want to know the formative experience in my–my father said, when [incompr.] and then this guy, Meir /ˈrʌvɪdʒ/, had this grocery store, and the milk companies came in to grab the projects that were near us, and Meir /ˈrʌvɪdʒ/ tried to keep them out. He failed after a couple of years. But he had this idea he would drop his milk bottles on the corner and he would have kids go up and deliver them. And they came in glass bottles, and there were 12 in a tray. Okay? They were pretty God damned heavy. And Meir /ˈrʌvɪdʒ/ couldn’t get anybody to take this job except me, because the other parents wouldn’t let their kid be out there at four or five in the morning. It’s a school day, and they’re not going to be running up and down the stairs. We didn’t have elevators in that project. And so I was Meir /ˈrʌvɪdʒ/’s golden boy. You know. And he paid me real money. He didn’t want to lose me, and he was nice to me. I had already started delivering orders. But had a real job, and I’m 12 and half years old. And I went from being the poorest kid to the richest kid in the neighborhood in a matter of weeks. Weeks. Suddenly I’m the kid who’d say, hey, I’m going to go buy my–I’ll put money down in a layaway plan and I’ll get my own bike, you know, I’ll get my own glove. And you know what, guys? You want to go eat pizza? We don’t have to eat that German Jewish crap. You know? Let’s go eat the guineas’. You know. And then we–yeah, we were racists in some extent. You know, we’ll go eat the–you know, and there’ll be a derogatory word for the Chinese for–everybody seemed to have a derogatory word. They called us the kikes, or the Germans were called the krauts. That was the Bronx. Okay. But I had this liberating thing at 12 and a half. You know, hey, I worked my ass off here, I can’t even stay awake during school, but I now have some measure of freedom. And I had political freedom. My father–and I had movement. My father said, he’d tell my mother, /ˈʃraɪnɨʃt/. You know, I wanted to hitchhike across the country when I was 16. I did it. My father said, how much money? I said, well, I have about $10, but I’m going to have a job in Levittown and /ˈfjoʊˌrɛli/ steel plant down in Pennsylvania. Is there still a–? Probably not. I came down here, to Pennsylvania, and first Levittown, I mean, the second Levittown down here. And then I remember I was in Chicago. I got jailed for vagrancy with my friend Eric Brown. And then they were charging us with some other stuff. And I got to make a call, and I call home collect. And my father says, where are you, Son? I said, I’m in Chicago. He says, what’d you do in–he said, what happened to your job? And I said, oh, it was real hard. And he says, oh, he couldn’t make the job. He said, well, this is costing money. He says, come home and tell me all about it. And he hung up on me. You know. And I had to deal with it myself. So he was very principled, and about politics. You know. I remember when I was at City College, just before my father–at Queens’ College, City College, around there, and I got involved in a thing of trying to have a Hyde Park Day at City College [incompr.] first Queens [incompr.] I had this idea, because we were in McCarthy period, you know, so you can’t have Paul Robeson come, you can’t have some communist. And I said, well, why not? You know, let’s just have everybody have a soapbox like they do down in Union Square, but we’ll have it right in the middle of the campus and we’ll call it Hyde Park Day like in England. And so I went up and find George Lincoln Rockwell or whatever, I found the Nazi, I find this one, whatever. And we’re right in the middle of Harlem. So the Amsterdam news condemned me, the New York Post. You know, editorialists condemned–I forget what my position–. JAY: For inviting a Nazi. SCHEER: Well, the communists, everything. You know, I mean, I was condemned all around. The Journal of America. I remember that. And I remember being home. I was having those–we had Robin Hood Day. There were all these protests happening on Queens’ College where I first started, ’cause I–and I was in engineering, and then City College, where Colin Powell was actually in my class, but he doesn’t–I talked to him a little bit, but he doesn’t remember that particular thing. But we were already doing protests at that time, in the ’50s, with McCarthy and so forth. And it took quite a bit of energy. JAY: Well, let’s talk about it in the next segment, ’cause the period of McCarthyism and Un-American Activities is a big issue. SCHEER: Yeah, but I’m just telling you that my father, who was fiercely anti-fascist–and after all had stopped talking to his relatives, and all my German relatives wouldn’t have anything to do with Germany and this whole thing, and yet the idea, well, if we’re going to have a range, let’s get a range of all these vegetarian and this one and anarchists and what have you, and have free speech. And I remember my father, he did something very dramatic. He took a knife, and we’re talking over one table of one of these things about free speech. I don’t know whether it was at Queens’ College [incompr.] And I remember–he had a pretty strong temper, my father, although he never hit me, but he would break every dish in the–you know, he had a real temper. And my father took a knife, put it into this wooden table, and said, looked at me and he said, he said, it’s interesting what you’re doing, you do what you want, you know more about this than I do, but if you ever become a Nazi, I’ll kill you. That’s the limits–for his part, that was his threshold. I’ll never forget it. I mean, that was it. JAY: Okay. We’re going to pick up this conversation in the next segment of Reality Asserts Itself on The Real News Network. Please join us. DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

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by Eric Maddern From the Gatekeeper Trust Annual Conference 2014, ‘Urban Pilgrim’, in Pewsey, Wiltshire 29-30 November 2014 Eric Maddern spoke at the Annual Conference 2014, telling some stories as part of his talk and in the pub in the evening! Here is an article that contains some of what he shared with us at the conference, including ideas for collaboration with Gatekeeper on a pilgrimage and a storytelling project that is starting to take shape. Lessons from Aboriginal Australia I’m going to start by taking you to the other side of the world to the Central Australian desert, where I lived and worked for a few years, back in the early eighties. I spent time with the indigenous people and learned a little from them. They had been naked nomads, expert minimalists who survived by roaming the land and harvesting its natural abundance. I think of them as primal rather than primitive, the first people who perfected their hunter-gatherer lifestyle over thousands of years. They knew things at the back of what we know now – fundamental, basic, core things – like, for example, how to grow a child into an adult. But the dimension of their culture that is most relevant to my subject today is what’s become known as ‘walkabout’. The Aboriginal people have a powerful creation mythology made up of stories explaining how the world came into being. These myths tell the origin of the sun, moon and stars, the animals and plants, the first people, fire… Outstanding features of the landscape – waterholes, rocks, hills, rivers – have stories explaining how they, and the plants and animals associated with them, came to have the qualities they have. Collectively these tales have become known as the Dreaming. As the people move around the land they visit these ‘sacred sites’ and tell the place its story. Except they don’t just tell it. They perform it, they re-enact it. They wear masks, paint their bodies, put feathers in their hair. They stamp the ground and chant their songs into the air. These events are rituals, ceremonies, and they have two very powerful effects. First is on those who take part in them. By re-enacting the story of their own Dreamtime ancestor, they ‘become who they were at the beginning of time’, thus contacting the eternal part of themselves. They come away strengthened and emboldened by touching their universal essence. But they also leave the land in good heart. Their stamps and songs ring out and somehow the land feels it – who knows, maybe drinks it in gratefully. And so it flowers. You tell its story to the land and together rejoice. The participants are refreshed, the place is revitalised. Fertility flourishes. You can tell that this ritual work is important to the Aboriginal people. They call it ‘business’. Someone who is deemed very knowledgeable and experienced in ceremony is called a ‘big business man’. This process re-consecrates sacred places. By admiring a place, by recognising its beauty, by giving thanks to it, even by saying ‘let’s play’, it could be that the land gives you gifts in return. These may be its fruits and berries, but they may also be the feeling of fullness in your soul. It reminds me of an old wondertale, told me by Laura Simms, where a young man has to go to the Land of No Return to bring back the Healing Leaves to cure his wife’s father’s blindness. His wife is a princess, her father, the king. He himself is nothing but a poor poet. He gets instructions for the journey from a dangerous giant who tells him that he will come to a place where the road will disappear. ‘There will be nothing before, behind and all around you,’ says the giant. ‘You will be completely lost and alone. Say, with all your heart, “oh, what a beautiful road” and a way will appear before you.’ Perhaps when we pay the Earth the compliment of admiring her beauty she responds in kind. She extends us a helping hand. White Man’s Dreaming? I know traditional Aboriginal culture is poles apart from the culture of Britain, both two hundred plus years ago and now. But perhaps because of its antiquity, because we humans spent 99% of our evolution as hunter-gatherers, because ancient man and woman lies just beneath the surface of we post-moderns, there may still be lessons for us to learn from them. Perhaps when children perform the Nativity and take on the roles of Joseph, Mary, the shepherds, angels and kings; perhaps when re-enactors re-enact medieval events such as the Battle of Hastings; perhaps we are doing that same thing the Aborigines do to keep the Dreaming alive – becoming who we were at the beginning of time, albeit mostly in a rather diminished form. Just before I returned from Australia I came across a book with the title, ‘White Man Got No Dreaming’. It was a brilliant collection of anthropological essays about indigenous Australia by W.E.H. Stanner. The title was a quote from an old Aboriginal man. He could see that whites in Australia had no spiritual connection to the land. We had left the land of our ancestors and were rootless. But it made me think, if there was a ‘white man’s dreaming’, what would it be? So since being back in Britain these last thirty odd years, that’s one of the things I’ve been exploring. Story and Place For the last 20 years, my friend Hugh Lupton and I have been delving into what is known as ‘The Matter of Britain’ – the old stories of Britain, from the totemic animals of the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers to the late medieval legends of Arthur – through a series of retreats for storytellers at a writers’ centre in North Wales. Four times our theme has been the ‘Four Branches of the Mabinogion’, legends which, though only written down in the 13th century, date back to well before the coming of Christianity, probably before the Romans too. Perhaps the best known of these is the Fourth Branch, the story of ‘Blodeuwedd, the Woman of Flowers’. This tale took place in North Wales and it’s possible to visit the sites named in the original: the hillforts of the wizards Math and Gwydion; the place where Lleu and Blodeuwedd had their hall; the stone with a hole, pierced when Lleu hurled a spear at his rival Gronw. One thing we have found in this extraordinarily rich exploration is that when you tell the story in the place where it is thought to have happened, both the story and the place come alive in a way that is impossible when they’re apart. Telling the story of the place in the place literally invigorates both the teller and, it seems, the place too. Echoes here of the ceremonies the Aboriginal people do to keep the spirit of the Dreaming alive. Beating the Bounds A few days ago I came back from a six day walk around Snowdonia. I’ve been writing a book of ‘Snowdonia Folktales’ and I wanted to beat the bounds of my book before writing the introduction. Despite it being November the weather was mostly dry, though because of the short days every evening I was looking for my camping spot in the dark. In this circular walk I wanted to link places that for me have powerful spiritual associations. Unfortunately I had to omit the walk down the north coast of the Llyn Peninsula to Bardsey and back along the south. It would have taken too long. Another time. Bardsey, or Ynys Enlli, the Island in the Current, was, after all, declared ‘the Rome of Britain’ by Pope Calixtus II in 1120. Twenty thousand saints are supposed to be buried on it. Merlin took the thirteen treasures of Britain there. It’s been a pilgrimage destination for a long time. It’s a very holy place. Conversing with the Genius Loci Nonetheless I had a wonderful time walking nearly fifty miles around the mountains of Eryri. The first two days I saw no one. So I spontaneously started talking to the trees, rocks and streams. One tough little hawthorn leaning out from a ledge by the path stopped me in my tracks. Its spiky branches were covered with soft, thick, pale-green lichen. It was small but felt to be hundreds of years old. It was there alone facing a precipitous black crag. I was full of admiration for its perfect form, felt compassion for its struggle, its aloneness. I spoke words of appreciation and respect to it. Of course it said nothing in reply but I experienced a kind of loving communion with it. It was the same a little further as I approached the pass between Moel Hebog and Moel yr Ogof, where Owain Glyndwr – leader of the war of independence in the early 1400s – had sheltered six hundred years before. Suddenly ahead was a mighty dark rock and immediately I saw a face, the head of a sleeping giant. Under his grim gaze I talked to him, asking if he remembered Owain coming down to sit on this grassy bank by this river crossing when his pursuers had departed. Again, a sense of communion. Sometimes I’d come upon a little stream and speak to it affectionately, with gratitude. Making friends with the landscape. Respecting special places. Conversing with the genius loci, the spirit that lies hidden but can be intuited here, there and everywhere. After coming home I found a friend of mine had written a book with almost that title: ‘The Art of Conversation with the Genius Loci’ by Barry Patterson. Highly recommended. - He says that although ‘the ancient knowledge (of these islands) maybe lost … the original source material is not some secret medieval fragment, it’s the life of rocks, land-forms, forests and fells; pools, rivers, shorelines and skies of Britain!’ - ‘The art of conversation with the Genius Loci,’ he says, ‘involves mainly one thing: spending … quality time with the threshold brook, in a sense of curiosity and wonder, listening to what it has to tell us and then sharing our feelings – something of what we are – with it… A quiet friendly greeting to the crows on the playing field. A small bow to the big old oak by the side of the road, not in a superstitious way but in a sense of celebration and connection.’ - ‘In my experience,’ says Barry, ‘Genii Locorum are very sensitive to human beings and many of them actually want to connect with us, even need us. Much can be achieved with a simple gesture from the heart.’ Colin Mortlock, the author of ‘Beyond Adventure’, sums this sentiment up thus: ‘Everything in Nature is alive in its own way… and seeks its well-being.’ Talking with the nature beings you encounter on a walk is a wonderful thing to do and definitely good for the soul! On any lengthy walk there is always the trudge, the slog of one step after another, the long stretches where not very much changes. Then you go round a bend in the path or over the brow of a hill or maybe you just look up and there it is: a place that has that spirit, a genius loci, something special. So my trudge finally got me to Dinas Emrys. For me this is the omphalos of North Wales, omphalos being the word Joseph Campbell uses for world navel or sacred centre. It’s probably the remains of an ancient volcano but now is a relatively unobtrusive hill in a valley surrounded by mountains. But it has one of the most extraordinary stories of just about any place in Britain. At its highest point are the foundations of a square tower and below, in a bowl shaped valley, is a rush choked pool and evidence of what looks like a ceremonial landscape. It’s hidden in the heart of the mountains below the summit of Yr Wyddfa, Snowdon, the highest mountain. It seems to have been used, off and on, for nearly two thousand years from the Iron Age to late medieval times. My hunch is that it was a place where the elders of the region came to take council in times of danger. And that it was used for ceremony. The story in brief is that after the departure of the Romans a usurper king, Vortigern by name, took refuge there and tried to build a tower. But it kept collapsing so, on the advice of an old druid, he sent soldiers looking for a fatherless boy to be sacrificed for the walls to stand firm. They found such a lad in the south and dragged him back to Vortigern’s tumbled tower. But at the crucial moment he broke free from his captors, leapt onto a rock and said: ‘No, this talk of sacrifice is nothing but lies. I’ll tell you why your walls fail to stand.’ For this boy was none other than the young Merlin and he had ‘the sight’. He told them to drain the pool and there they discovered a cavern, revealing two giant worms that soon became serpents and then dragons – one red and the other white. Soon the dragons resumed their eternal combat and when finally they’d chased each other over the horizon and out of view, leaving Vortigern and his men trembling with fear, the young Merlin spoke his first great prophecy. The Dragon’s are awake, there is a disturbance in the Land. The white dragon is the Saxon invader, the greedy, grasping newcomer. The red dragon is the people of Britain, the bearers of tradition, those who have been here since the beginning. They will chase each other back and forth across this land until such a time as arises the Boar of Cornwall. Only then will peace and harmony be restored. He will be the noblest king, and tales of his exploits will be as meat and drink to the storytellers who relate them in ages to come. But chaos will return and there will be centuries of destruction until a people in wood and iron coats come and restore the ancient ones to their homes. The eagle shall build its nest on Mount Yr Wyddfa. Gold shall be squeezed from the lily and the nettle, silver shall flow from the hooves of bellowing cattle. From the first to the fourth, the fourth to the third, the third to the second the thumb shall roll in oil. Though the Goddess be forgotten there will come a time of plenty when the soil will be fruitful beyond man’s need. The Fatted Boar will proffer food and drink, the Hedgehog will hide his apples in London. Underground passages will be built beneath the city. Stones will speak; the sea to France will shrink and the secrets of the deep will be revealed. But beware the Ass of Complacency, swift against goldsmiths, slow against ravenous wolves. Oak trees shall burn and acorns grow on lime trees. The Severn River will flow out through seven mouths. Fish will die in the heat and from them serpents will be born. And the health giving waters at Bath shall breed death Then root and branch shall change place, And the newness of the thing shall seem a miracle. The healing maiden will return, her footsteps bursting into flame. She will weep tears of compassion for the people of the land, Dry up polluted rivers with her breath, Carry the forest in her right hand, the city in her left, And nourish the creatures of the deep. With her blessing Man will become like God Waking as if from a dream: Heart open and filled with light, Radiant face, glowing like the rising sun, Shining eyes, like twin silver moons, Radiant ears, shimmering with song, Shining lips, that dance over words, Words of magic that burst into the air becoming swallows.. The soul shall walk out; the mind of fire shall burn. And in the twinkling of an eye the dust of the ancients Shall be restored. © Eric Maddern Dinas Emrys has a very strong genius loci. I talk to it like an old friend whenever I’m there. Sometimes I imagine it speaks to me through the sighing of the wind in the trees. As Barry says, I feel it responds to me being there and caring for it. This time, after having come to know so many of the characters of the area through writing ‘Snowdonia Folktales’, I found myself talking to ‘the boys’, the men who used to gather. I wondered what they’d make of the conveniences of modern life – the freeze-dried food, the little gas heater, the ultra-lite tent that keeps out the rain, the thermarest sleeping mat that softens the ground. A mix of wonder and horror I imagined. Before leaving the next morning I spoke again to the place my version of the prophecy. I imagined the genius loci nodding sagely at: ‘Root and branch shall change places and the newness of the thing shall seem a miracle…’ ‘Time is now, time is now’ squawked the imaginary parrot on my shoulder! Pass of the Two Stones Two days walking later and I was ready to begin the trek from Rowen in the Conwy Valley over the Roman Road to Aber Falls. Roman Road is a misnomer, though not surprising, as we love to attribute anything old and impressive to them. But when they found this route through the mountains it was already a well-beaten track. A better name would be Stone Age Way. It’s marked all the way by standing stones. At the eastern end was a settlement with two extraordinary burial chambers, one prominent and called Maen y Bardd (Stone of the Bard), the other hidden and underground. Maen y Bardd has two ‘windows’, one looking east along the coast, the route by which the Romans, Saxons and Normans invaded. The other looks south up the Conwy River, meaning ‘Holy River’, into the mountains, the heartland of the Cymru – always the last refuge of the indigenous people. They are like two eyes keeping watch. The eyes of the dead. A little further up the hill is a stone circle beneath the dramatic craggy summit of Tal y Fan to the north. What a spectacular setting for ceremony. Further up again are two powerful standing stones, which have stood there for many thousands of years. They are the gateway. They mark the threshold between worlds. For not far beyond over the next brow you catch the first glimpse of the island, the dark, mysterious, powerful, magical island of the Druids, Mon, Ynys Mon, now known as Anglesey. There are no stories of this place. It’s too old. But so many of the characters from ‘Snowdonia Folktales’ must have walked through here. And it’s hardly changed in all that time. Perhaps Taliesin himself, the first poet of Wales, stopped in that burial chamber. After all, why is it called Maen y Bardd, the Poet’s Stone? Maybe he received some of his poems there. The settlement above this place was, I believe, an outlier of the Druids. The gatekeepers lived here. At the other end of the Old Stone Age Road is Aber Falls. The Falls are a wonder. They must have been sacred to the old people, associated with the goddess Ceridwen perhaps, the water like her white hair flowing over the black shining rock. It’s up a side valley, the way up protected by a series of embankments. There are several hut circles. The last one, within sight of the Falls, is perfect and well defined. Outside seems to be a pile of burnt stones. In the entrance is a trench that may have been a bath. I wonder – were the people who lived here wizards who guarded access to the sacred Falls and conducted purification (sweat lodge type) ceremonies to prepare people for their encounter with the goddess? There are three natural flat stones to stand on and address the Falls. One at first sight, the second much closer, the third right by it. From the top you can look back and just glimpse Ynys Mon through a V in the mountains. Another Druid outlier? An Earth Walk? This country is full of amazing places. To finish I’d like to throw out an idea. It was originally cooked up by a few storytellers inspired by the idea of creating a contemporary Canterbury Tales pilgrimage. Now the idea has evolved. Canterbury is a wonderful place but rather out on a limb when you consider Britain as a whole. So how about this? We choose another more central location – Oxford has been suggested, as in the old tale of ‘Llys and Llyfelys’ it is said to be the centre of the country. Seed groups of people – storytellers, musicians, poets, artists and other interested people – set out from points all around the country at more or less the same time (say in May) and walk towards the destination. A bit like walking along the spokes of a wheel towards its hub. Some may just walk for a couple of weekends. Others may walk the whole way. En route we tell each other stories, meet people, listen to their tales, do impromptu performances, all on a broadly defined ‘green theme’. Imagine dozens of groups threading their way across the country, pied piper like, gathering followers as they go, inspiring creativity and renewed appreciation of nature, place and story. Eventually converging on the destination for a weekend celebration, maybe the autumn equinox. This idea has been mooted for some time now. It’s a big project to organise and for the two years has been on the backburner. I didn’t know then about the Gatekeeper Trust. Now I do. Maybe this could be a marriage made in heaven! Sir George Trevelyan was one of the founders of the Gatekeeper Trust. He had a favourite piece of poetry he often quoted. It’s from ‘The Sleep of Prisoners’ by Christopher Fry. I’ve taken the liberty of tweaking a couple of lines. THE HUMAN HEART The human heart may go the lengths of God. Dark and cold we may be, but this Is no winter now. The frozen misery Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move. The thunder is the thunder of the floes, The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring. Thank God our time is now when wrong Comes up to meet us everywhere, Never to leave us until we take The greatest stride of soul we ever took. Affairs are now soul size The enterprise is exploration into God. But where are we making for? It takes So many thousand years to wake, But will we wake for the whole Earth’s sake? In a brainstorm over lunch about the ‘Earth Walk’ Stratford-upon-Avon came up as a favoured focus for the destination of what I’m now starting to think of as ‘The Wheel of Britain Walk’!

Newspaper Page Text THE PITTSBURG DISPATCH FRIDAY, AUGUST 16, 188a A fflLLIMUN MONET To be Distributed Anions the Johns town Flood Sufferers. THE PLAN WHICH WAS ADOPTED. Governor Foraker at the Eeunlonof the ALL THE NEWS FKOM KEABBY TOWHS IgrECULTZLXOBAMTO THS DtfPATCB.! Johxstown, August 15. After confer ence with the local committees, a report was agreed upon by the members of the State Commission which are nowhere, and it will be presented to the full commission at their next meeting. The report provides for the distribution, which from data at hand will amount to $1,149,000, in nddition to the $500,000 previously appropriated. Those in 'classes 1, 2 and 3 will be paid off in full, receiving respectively $1,000, $900 and $500 each. This will require $435,000. Classes 4, 5 and 6 are to receive 30, 22 and 15 per cent each respectively, and the sums paid to each will be $458,364, $550,000 and $206,250. This compilation is made from the rating of the Board of Inquiry. Before the losses were sworn to the amounts in some of the classes will be changed considerably, as many individuals will be re-rated. It will be noticed that all this will not exhaust the relief fund within about $60,000, as there is about $160,000 on The passenger receipts at Johnstown sta tion were two and a half times greater, this year than last, while the freight receipts were a few thousand dollars less than last year. The general business was largely increased, bnt the decrease in freights is dne to the fact that the Oautier mills are not running this year. The Board of In quiry to-day moved their office to the Municipal building and a large force of clerks will be employed to get the papers in shape for the final "distribution. Quite a number of valuables have been turned over to-day by persons who had picked them up shortly after the flood. A systematic effort is being made to hunt things up, and much valuable property is being discovered. TOO HANI TEAMPS. A Perfect Epidemic of Thievery In tbo Neighborhood of Franklin. ISrECtU. TELEGRAM TO THE OISFATCIM Fkanklin, August 15. Tramps, horse thieves and burglars are getting in their work in this section of the State. This morning the safe in the ticket office of the Erie depot was blown open and $75 in cash taken. The baggage room was also visited, and trunks and valises ransacked and their contents stolen. Two horses were stolen from a farmer named Neely in Cherry Tree last night, but the thieves were so closely pursued that they abandoned the horses and Tramps raided a number of ireiehtcars standing on the "Western. New York and Pennsylvania tracks at Irvineton yesterday, and carried off add destroyed several hun dred dollars' worth of property. Detective "Wilmot succeeded in landing a nnmber of them in jail, beveral iarm bouses have also been robbed on the outskirts of the city, and scarcely a night passes without some horses being stolen and houses robbed. This vicinity is evidently the headquarters of a large gang of all-round thieves. TWO MEN DROWNED. They Are Swept Off a Bridge Across Eastoit, Pa., August 15. During last sight's storm Benjamin Andreas and Michael McDonald, of New York City, both married, were drowned at Wolnntport. They were employed on the, bridge being erected across the Lehigh river. Andreas was drowned at once. McDonald clung to the guy rope for two hours, became exhausted and then sank. Many people saw him clinging to the rope, but were powerless, owing to the strong current, to Attacked, bat Not Bitten by a Doc, She U Afraid of Hydrophobia. Cadiz, O., August 15. Miss Florence Burton, aged 20 years, daughter of a well-to-do farmer living near Hopedale, this county, has become demented. She was at tacked by a small dog about a week ago, but was not bitten. Her hallucination is thf t she will die in a short time, and tbat hydro phobia is to be the cause of her death. She has always been considered a smart girl. An Epidemic of Moonshine. IEIT-CIAL TELEGRAM TO THI DISPATCH.! Uniontowit, August 15. It is alleced that in what is known as toe "Tinkey Pritts" settlement, adjoining Somerset county, some 25 or 30 land owners are run ning moonshine outfits, and nearly all of them pose as respectable citizens. They are reported to have bought their land with money made through the business, and as there is no licensed house for many miles they manage to dispose of a great deal of the illicit fluid. , - Opening Up a Coal Region. rSrECI.lI. TELEGRAM TO TBI DISrATCH.l Mansfield Valley, Pa.. August 15. The managers of the Miller's Bun Bailroad have completed that branch between Bridge ville, on the Chartiers Valley Bailroad, and McDonald, on the Pittsburg, Cincin nati and St Louis Bailroad. The numer ous coal mines along the route are now in operation and the first coal was shipped this week. The mines are mostly operated by William P. Bend, the Chicago coal king. Domestic Trouble the Cnnte. tSFXCIAL TELEGRAM TO TDX OISrjvTCH.1 Cahlisle, Augoit 15. John Linn, brother of Samuel M. Linn, President of the Chambersburg National Bank and ex Judge, committed snicide last evening at his home by firing a bullet through his head. He was advanced in years, and was quite prominent Domestic trouble caused him to commit the act To be Gobbled br the Standard. rsrsctAi. TELEGRAM TO THE DISrATCn.l Wasincton, August 15. It is stated that the Standard Oil Company is negotia ting with E. M. Hukill for his leases, ag gregating 50,000 acres in Mt Morris, Greene county, and Preston County, W. Va., terri tory. The price to be paid for the leases, including producing wells and machinery, is put at $2,500,000. "" Alignment of a Shoe Firm. ISFECIAL TELECEAM TO TH DlSrATCB.1 Mansfield Valley, August 15. The ehoe firm of George B. Miller & Co., of Main street, this place, made an assignment yesterday to Ueorge B. Miller, Sr., who resides in Chartiers township, Washington county. The liabilities are about 1,800. Tbo Better Was tinned. SrZCTAI. TKLEGBAK TO TUB DISPATCH.! Fbankliw, Aucust 15. The Coopers town Creamery was entirely destroyed by tire last night, together with all its con tents, including 8,000 "pounds of butter. The plant had bnt recently been completed at a cost of 54,000. Ber Gru n KewTrlnU tfrlCIAI. TU.UIUU TO TUB MSrATCn.' Gbeessbcbo, August 10. Frank Baer, convicted recently in this eonrt of burning tee Chambers' mill at Latrobe, was this evening granted a new trial. THE VETERANS' EEUNION. Three Berfmcnu Gather Together nt Bnt ler for a Time. Butler, August IB. A large delegation of the members of the One Hundred and Second Begiment left the "West Penn depot, Allegheny, this morning for this place, to participate in the annual reunion of the regiment, which is being held here to-day. Company H of tba regiment left here under command of the late Major McLaughlin, early in the war and joined the regiment at Washington. It is the first time the regiment has held a re union at Butler, and the members oi H Company, together with the citizens, are dome: all in their cower to make the boys have a good time. Before leaving the de pot canes were, with his usual liberality to the old soldiers, presented to each of the members with the following inscription: "One Hundred and Second Begiment. General T. A. Bowley, er-Mayor Lyon, Captain J. D. McFarland, Captain S. L. Fuilwood, Captain James Bishop, Captain Andrew Large, Captain Sam Duvall, who is the Presidentof the organization; Captain "W. W. Fuilwood, Captain Lowry Jones, Cantain Alward and a number of other veterans are here. Colonel James D. Paschell, of Indiana, could not get here. A number of the members of the regiment have their wives and children with them, and the latter were handsomely entertained by the ladies of the town. Judge McCandless delivered an eloquent address ot welcome in front of the Court House at the fair grounds. Hon. A. L. Hazen addressed the old veterans. The event of the reunion, however, was the banquet this evening. 'Such an elaborate affair was never seen in this county and is rarely surpassed in the cities." The ladies were highly compli mented by their guests. The campfire at the opera house was in deed an old fashioned love feast. Colonel Danks, of Pittsburg, sang a song, the chorus of which, "There Will be no Sorrow There" was sung by the veterans. It was full of Miss Avers recited a poem. Captain Fleecer eulogized the regiments and ten dered a hearty welcome to them. He was answered by Captain Duvall, qf Pittsburg. Comrade Bev. W. O. Campbell paid a touching tribute to the absent cflmrades. There were other interesting speeches and beantiful song, roundinc out a day of pleas ure that will not soon be forgotten by the Blake One of His Customary Speeches at tho Snerman Brigade Reunion. tSPECIAL TELEOKAM TO TITS DISPATCH.! Caxtoh, August 15. It was a great day in Canton on account of Governor Foraker and the reunion of the great Sher man Brigade at Myers' Lake. Excursion ists by the carloads from Wooster, Cleve land, Massillon, Mansfield, Akron, Alli ance and other points crowded in, and 5,000 people gathered in the city of tents at pic turesque Lakeview and greeted the Governor with cheers, music and cannon salutes, as he reached the expectant gathering belated by a railroad accident on the Fort Wavne road near Wooster, but all the more wel come. Senator Conrad and Charles Kicks drove the Gubernatorial party from Mas sillon, and he arrived in time to make one of his characteristic speeches. Senator Sherman sent his regrets from Paris. "Old Tecumseh" was sorry he could not come from New York, and General Wood wrote from London that he would liked to have attended. During the course of his remarks Governor Foraker called Governor Fowle, of North Carolina, and Governor Gordon, of Georgia, to account for their speeches at the Washington Centen nial. The Governors address was enthusi IT DID NOT W0BK. A Sick Van Treated With the New Elixir Is Now Dead. ,. Shamokin; August 15. George Bobert son, of Mount Carmel, has been suf fering with inflammation .of the the bowels and kindred diseases lor years. On Tuesday last after his physicians had given up all hope it was suggested that they try the Brown-Sequard elixir. The man was unconscious when an injection ef a drachm was made in the left breast The patient did not notice it in the least, but after a short time he rallied and when a second injection was made in his arm he moved and complained of the pain. Yes terday he appeared to be somewhat better. but the improvement was only temporary and the patient died to-day. 8AH0EL MASON SUED. The Assignee of the Dlnfaonlog County Sheriff Wants lo Recover 8ST0. tsrzcL-i. tzlioham to the dispatch. Yotjnostown, O., August 15. Arthur O. Fording, assignee of ex-Sheriff .Eli B. Walker, to-day commenced suit against Samuel S. Mason, residing in Pittsburg. Mason was here last September operating a faro bank, and it is claimed by Fording that Walker was a producer and dropped J870 in one evening, for which judgment is The numerous suits being commenced to recover money from gamblers indicate that Walker's statement that ne was ruined at the gaming table is true. TIEED OF TR0DBLE. A Yonngl.ndy Attempts Enlclde by Taking ISrECTAL TXLXaiU-U TO TUX DISPATCH. Ebie, Pa., August 15. Family troubles and ill-health drove Miss Rose McLaughlin to attempt snicide to-day. She took lauda num enough to have killed several persons, but the timely arrival of her sister saved her from immediate death, and the doctors think tbat her life can be saved. The young lady lost her mother, to whom she was very devoted, five years ago; her father became insane in conseauence of an injury, and ill health finally shattered her reason. The young lady is held in high es teem. IN FINANCIAL TE0UBLE. A Receiver Appointed for One of Finding's Findlay. O., August 15. An attach ment of f 1,500 on a suit commenced by William Sheesley was made yesterday on the works of the American Machine Com pany, and Sheriff Cusac has levied on the property. A receiver was appointed to-day by the court The assets of the company are (60,000 and the liabilities in the neigh borhood of 50,000. The nominal capital of the company is $100,000, of which only 565.000 has been sold. The receiver was authorized to run the works and finish the machines on hand. Attempt to Correct a Mulatto Woman, bnt Are Foiled by a Planter. Gbasd Coteatt, La., August 15. About 2 o'clock: last night a mob visited the residence of J. B. Dnplecbein, a planter living about four miles from here for the pnrpose of regulating a mulatto woman whose conduct did not exactly suit their ideas. The woman was taken by the1 crowd, and as she was be ing carried away by them Dnplechein came upon his gallery and made an attempt to shoot, bnt his gun failed to fire, and the mob turned and seriously wounded him filling him full of buckshot from his head to nis waist. Mr. Dnplechein fired after he was shot and caused them to release tho woman, A hat was lound which was recognized, and the impression Is that thegnilty parties will be brought to justice, as it is nnl.Mj woman, can Identify bob of the party. A GIGANTIC EAINFALL Undoubtedly the Cause of the Eecent Disastrous .Floods. AN AVERAGE OP EIGHT INCHES Over an Area of More Than Square Miles in the State. NEAELY 7,000,000,000 T0HS IN WEIGHT rsricui. TEiEorojf to tub DisrATCH.l Habrisburq, August 15. Secretary of Internal Affairs Stewart has issued a report relative to the recent floods in Pennsylvania, caused by the rainfall of May 30 .to June L It was, says the report, a gigantic rainfall, amounting to an average of eight inches in depth of water, falling on an area of more than 12,000 square miles, and covering the mountain plateau and its eastern declivities from Johnstown to Harrisburg, and extend ing northward from Somerset to McKean and Tioga counties. This area ot rainfall was oval in form, but broader toward the north branch of the Susquehanna. Around this central body of flooded country the quantity fell off rapidly to six, four, and two inches, although the highlands in Maryland and Virginia, at the south, and in northeast Pennsylvania and southern New York had flooded rains of three to five inches in depth. LITTLE BAINFAI.L DT PITTSBTJBO. At Pittsburg there was only one and a half inches, although in Ohio, Michigan and Indiann, nearly three inches of rain fell on the 29th and 30th of May. There were flooding rains at the same time in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia. In, the southern counties of this State the rainfall was light, from half an inch to an inch only, although the southeast gale was more violent tnere, and it swept Dela ware and South Jersey with great lorce on The appalling losses of life at Johnstown, of course, could not have resulted from an storm, however great the rainfall, yet it was apparent at Philadelphia on the after noon of May 0, and during all the follow ing day, that the great heat and violent gale indicated a heavy rainfall in the interior of Taking the entire area visited by heavy and general rainfall May 28 to June 1, NO EECOBDED EXPERIENCE approaching it in magnitude. In Eastern Kansas and over much of Missouri it reached an average of 3 inches. In Illinois and all the States intervening to Pennsylva nia, the quantity varied from 2 to 4 inches; the observers of the several States' weather systems reporting very fullv. All their reports have been received and consulted, in writing and paper. The States southward, including Tennes see, had general and heavy rains nearly equal to those just referred to. And, while in the Ohio Valley and vicinity of Pitts burg there was less rain, the first mountain ous elevations eastward were deluged with rain, the southern border having several destructive local storms or cyclones, such as are characteristic of the southern border of an area of general disturbance WEIGHT OP THE WATEB. The vast weight of water falling is shown by a calculation based on the weight of a cubic foot, 35 feet being a ton. In the sur face of a so-rj-e mile there would be.66.377 tons forfln inch in depth. 631,016, tons for tc depAh-o! eight inches. The quantity falling on 12,000 square miles, at this rate, is 6,732, 246,000 tons. The force exercised bv vast bodies of water in motion is irresistible. In concluding, the report says: "In all respects the conditions were the most remarkable and peculiar of. those known to attend a general rainfall, and the vast masses of water thrown down over the surface of several States other than Penn sylvania, only add to the difficulty of ex plaining the origin of the storm, or the source from which so great a body of water can have been derived." AFTEE THE STATE. A Republican League to be Organized In Hubon, S. Dak., August 15. A call has been issued, for a convention to organize a State Republican leagne for South Da kota. The convention will be composed of delegates from all Bepublican clubs in the State, and will meet in this city at 10 o'clock A. M., on August 27 the day be fore the convening of the Bepublican State Entertainment la Dllllrale. The American Mnsical Star Specialty Company wilLgive an entertainment in the Opera House at Millvale to-morrow night The company is connected with Trinity Church, corner of Fulton and Center ave nues, and the proceeds will go to the benefit of a new society which is being organized in Two Wagons Collide. Two wagons belonging to a fanner and the Keystone Brewery collided yesterday on Main street Agent James Sweeney, of the brewing company, was thrown to the ground and severely cut about the head. Marriage Licenses Granted Yesterday. (Charles I.nwion Port Perry I Matilda Eckendahl Part Perry j truest ninsuuer Allegheny flaaae Woods Pittsburg 1 Mary Page Pittsburg J Michael Hodderman Pittsburg (John Carney Pittsburg I Kate Holleran...... Pittsburg (f. B. Haverstlck Pittsburg 1 Louisa H. Bender -.Pittsburg Harry W-Miller. Pittsburg j Julius H. Watcher Pittsburg 1 Mary A. Hocheder Beach Cliff CharlesJIcDonald Washington county I Corral Sunmey Washington county Charles Bogalawsky Pittsburg 1 Rose Davis Pittsburg 5 wiuiam raiwrsoa .-j-nrtie creek J Chris true White Tattle Creek 5 Perry Darls Pittsburg Alary Turner Pittsburg C Charles Strahley Pittsburg JKateL. Born Pittsburg C William U. Duval., Martha Bogues Allegheny a. w. Fleming Versailles township Loulia King Versailles towmhlp ( J&uoei Kdsre.. i nancy Hamilton. (Jacob K. Oelb I llza A. aiathias.. I Mary Kapp. It Your Dlood Pure? If not. If you havo bolls, pimples, humors," or .indications of scrofula or salt rheum, you should take Hood's Barsaparllla, which is the best blood purifier known. It effects wonderful cures where otter prepmtloM fall, Be rare to get Hood's. FOR MEKTAL DEPRESSION Uo Horaford'a Acid Phosphate. Dr. L. C. S. Turner. Colfax, la., says: "I MS very much pleased with It in mental depression from gastric troubles." Your Last Chance To go to the seashore via the Pennsylvania Eailroad will be Thursday, August 22, at the $10 rate for ten days. Special train will leave Union station at 8:50 A. M., arriving at Philadelphia at 7:15 p. it,, composed of Eastlake coaches and Pullman parlor cars. Tickets will also be good on 4:30. 7:15 and 8:10 P. M. trains on the same day. Seats in parlor cars and berths in sleeping cars can be secured now at office, 110 Fifth avenue. Maxt ladles are martyrs to suffering. nest help is ranters uinger xonic Parker's Hair Balsam is life to the hair. Cabinet photos, 89o per doz. Lies' Pop ular Gallery, 10 and 12 Sixth st MWPSu COLWELL On Wednesday, August 14, 1S89, at 4:20 P. JC. JAMES COLWJCLL, aged 82 years. Funeral from his late residence. Mulberry alley, between Twentieth and Twenty-first streets, on Friday at 930 A. v., to proceed to St Patrick's Church, where services will be held at 10 A. v. Friends of the family are k respectfully Invited to attend. 2 DeROY On Wednesday, Angust 14. iis. ' 1:40 a. M., Abraham DeRot, aged 80 years 1 month and 3 days. Funeral Fbiday, August 18, at 130 P. Jt. from bis late residenoe, 128 Forbes street Friends of the family are respectfully Invited New York, Chicago, Detroit and Columbus papers please copy. I 2 DOBBINS-On Thursday. August 15. 18S9. at 8 o'clock p. K., at her residence, 101 Sunth ave- nne, JMiegneny uiy. airs, asnie ajouuuo, wife of Thomas J. Dobbins and daughter pt Catherine and the late Adam Kountz, in the 28th year of her ace. Notice of funeral hereafter. DUNN On Thursday morning, at 2 o'clock, Ansie Dunn, daughter of the late John and Elizabeth Dunn. -aged 4 years. Funeral from Demmler, on Satusday apt ernoon on the arrival ot the 1 train. EXLER On August 15, at i r. M., RAPHAEL W., son of John and Mary Exler, aged 1 year, 6 months and 5 days. Funeral on Saturday, August -17, from his parents' residence, Charles street, Allegheny City, above Sarah street, at 10 A. JT. Friends of the family are respectfully invited to attend. 2 FISHER On Wednesday. Angust 14, 1SS9, at 830 1. m Mrs. Mart Fishes, aged 54 years 2 months and 21 days. Funeral from her late residence, 1S2 Forty sixth street on Saturday, at 8 a. jl Friends of the family are respectfully Invited to at HENKEL On Wednesday, August It, at 905 p. jc Julia, relict of Adam Henkel, aged 58 years and 5 days. Funeral on SATURDAY, August 17, at 2 P. M., from her late residence. No. 2012 Jane street Southslde, Pittsburg. Pa. Friends and mem bers of Fredericka Lodge, R. ;D., No. 102, are lng, August 14, at 8 o'clock, WlIXIAH C. KNIP lino, in the 31st year of his age. Funeral will take place from the residence of his father, No. 19 Middle street Allegheny, Friday a f ternoon, August 18, at 3 o'clock. Friends of the family are respectfully invited MILLER At Edeewood, on Thursday, Au- Sist 15. 1SS9, Mary Annie, daughter of Or ndo and Virginia Miller, aged 19 months. Notice of funeral hereafter. McO AHAN On Thursday, August 15, at 3.-15 a. 2L, Thomas B. McGahan. Funeral from his late residence. Albert street Thirty-second ward, on Friday, August 18, at 2 P. it. Interment private. RAY At the residence of his parents. No. 14 Linden street Allegheny City, on Thursday. Angust 15, 1889, at 2:15 p. v., HARRY W., only son of W. E. and Kezla M. Bay, aged 23 years 7 V Notice of funeral hereafter. 2 SGHBECKER on Wednesday. Aueutt 14. at 9 JB. A. M., Harry Em only son of John and MadeHoa Schreckcr, aged 13 years 9 months. FuneraMrom the parents' residence, DcSoto street Oakfand,pn Friday, August 18, at 2 o'cIock p. ac to proceed to Homewood Ceme tery. Friends of the family are respectfully invited to attend. 8CHAEFER On' ."Wednesday, August 14, 18S9, at 1125 P. V, Mri. C. A wife of Jacob Schaefer, and daughter of John and Rebecca Hinds, aged 32 yean 6 months. Notice of funeral hereafter. WANNEB On Wednesday. Angnst 14, 1889, at 830 P. M., Wilson Dinsmore, son of Oeorge and M. C. Wanner, aged 4 months 11 Fnneral from the parents' residence, Fifth street, Sbarpsbnrg, en Friday, 18th Inst, at 2 p. M." Friends of the family are respectfully Invited to attend. 2 WILLS On Wednesday. August 14, 1889, at 730 A. M., Rolla Douthett, youngest son of John A and Flora li. Wills, aged 6 months and "Safeirrthe arms of Jesns." Funeral services on Friday afternoon at 2 o'clock, from his grandmother's residence, Brighton road, Bellevne. Interment private. Trains leave P., Ft W. 4 0. B. E. at 11:00, 12:00, (Successor to Meyer, Arnold fc Co., Llm.,) UNDERTAKER AND EMBALMEB, Office and residence, 1134 Penn avenue. Tele phone connection, t myl0m9.2rwrsn JAMES M. FULLERTON, UNDERTAKER. AND EMBALMEB, No. 0 Seventh Stbeet. CHOICE CUT FLOWERS AND SMILAX A. IT. & J". B. MURDOCH, t-i A SMITHFIELD ST. DJLU Telephone & deS-fJ-invr ROSES, WATER LILIES. FLO WEBS AND FLORAL WORK A GREAT At low prices during summer. JOHN B. & A. MURDOCH, Telephone 238. 508 Hjimiraxb Sr. pEPRESENTEl) IN PITTSBURG IK 1SQ ASSETS . 19071,696 33. Insurance Co. of North America. Losses adjusted and paid by WILLIAM L 3 ONES. 81 Fourth avenue. 1a20-s2-D We will not carryover a pair of summer goods if low prices will sell them. A FEW OF THE BARGAINS FOB, LADIES. 60c Striped Cotton now 29c,60c Lisle now Sic, 75c Lisle now 4te,n 25 Lisle now 75c, H SUt now 75c, 50 and 75o Black now 35c. . A FEW OF THE BARGAINS FOB CHIL DREN. 60c Black Cotton, donblo knees, 19c; Stainless Black, double knees, 25c, worth 85c; 35c worth LADIES' GENUINE SWISS RIBBED 24 and 29c, reduced from 50c: 75c Lisle now 50c, SI Lisle now 75c; Silk from 75c up. Star Flannel Waists and Blouses Are selling fast, the prices make them go. INFANTS AND CHILDREN'S HATS All cut away down in price; they will cost you much more 30 days from now. Tennis Goods and Flannel Bhirts Must Blazers 82 R5. Caps 45s, Sashes 1 50: special lot of FUnnel Shirts SI 6a ThL is a great All Departments Full of Good Bargains JL G, CAMPBELL & SONS, 710 PENN AVENUE. 710 , PENN BDILDING, iJetween sUrtath asd Blfbth mm. SterlhTg Silver Spoons and Forks. Fine plated Table Knives and Forks, with pearl, ivory, etched, oxidized and plain handles. CABVEK SETS, with pearL stag horn, sil ver and ivory handles, put Up In cases of two, three, ttre and seven pieces. A complete stock oi Sterling Silver goods at WATTLES & SJHEAFER'S 37 FIFTH AVENUE. DO YOU KNOW WHY Of J. R. ANDERSON'S stock makes this the ' BUSIEST PLACE in midsummer, when all others complain of I M, LATIMER, 138 Federal St, Allegheny, Pa. Will continue to be very fashionable during this fall and winter, we are prepared to do .mo worK in ua oesc ana most aarame way. Goods left on Wednesday delivered on Satur day; left on Saturday delivered on Wednes day. Prices vary according to width. Sample and prices by mail if desired. GENTS' NECKWEAR BARGAIN& A lot of four-ln-hand ties and teck cotton scarfs at 5 cents each or 50 cents a dozen. Marked down from IS and 20 cents each. No tice this reduction. A lot of four-ln-hand ties and teck scarfs, finest satin and ottomen, AT SO CENTS EACH. Reduced from 1 and Si 25. BARGAINS IN -FANCY WORK GOODS. We are closing the entire balance of our stamped and tinted BOLTON SHEETING PIECES, consisting of splashers, scarfs, pil low covers, table covers, etc, at JDST HALF REGULAR PRICES. A fall line of Bargarran linen embroidery, all shades, to work the Bolton sheeting with. A bargain at hosiery counters: A lot of ladles' 25c black stockings, closing at 20o a pair. OliUNlGr 1UI UA MUSLIN AND CAMBRIC UNDERGAB In the tray on the end of the ribbon counter. LADIES' LAWN HATS and children's corded bats at GREATLY REDUCED TRICES. AnotheMot of those extra good solid wood pack hair brushes at 60c each: worth 75c each. I ui at we newest thing out In a TOOTH BRUSH, called the Made so that a current of air can pass through out the back by means of perforated holes, and so insuring that drying process necessary to the preservation of the brush. Made by Ch. Loonen. Price, 25c each. Send orders by mail if you are not In the city HORNE & WARD, 41 FIFTH AVENUE. ANCHOR REMEDY COMP'NY, S29 LIBERTY v STREET. Why do you pay $1 00 per bottle for Sarsaparllla and Beef, Wine and Iron when von can bur either Tire. 'paration from us at 75c per bottle. six bottles H 00, and quality guar anteed to be the best in the mar. ket. We bare numerous testimo nials from nhrglciAfis ajirl othpra indorsing our Liver Fills as a mild and effective cathartic They are unsurpassed. After giv ing them a trial you will use no others. Price 25c For sprains, bruises and all rheumatic pains, use the Anchor Liniment. It has no eauaL Come and see us If you are'ln any way THE MERCANTILE AGENCY R. G. Dun & Co., Germanla Bank Building 423 Wood street, cor- uec gi AJiamuuu, fiiuuurg. This establishment supplies all information as to the Btandin?. res eta, of business men throughout North Amer ica. It is the oldest and by far tho most com plete and extensive system over organized for the accommodation of Banking and Mercantile Interests and the General Promotion and Pro tection of Trade. Debts Collected and Legal Business Attended to throughout the North. American Continent. UNDOUBTEDLY BEYOND COMPARISON. New staple and desirable goods arriving daily in all departments meantime we continue the low prices proved such a success a great many all the year round goods at the mark down prices. Sec the large lines of Lace Curtains: $1 quality curtains 75c per pair. $1 50. curtains $1 per pair. $3 curtains $2 per pair. Finer grades at proportionate prices. In Carpet room prices cut $ to patterns, for 75c $1 25 Body Brussels Carpet for 90c. 60c Tapestry Brussels Carpet for 45c. Ingrain Carpets y$ off price. In Cloak room rare bargains in Shawls, Wraps, Jackets, Ladies' and Misses Silk, Stuff and Wash Suits, to clear. The low prices in Silks still on. Black Surahs now 50c, down from 75c $x Surahs now 75c. 1 25 Surahs now tu 90c $1 12 and $i 25 Black Gros Grains were $1 25, $1 '50 and $x 75. Fancy Silks all Open to-day beautiful line Bisque, Patent and China Dolls and Doll Heads, from 25c up. Bargains in Ladies' and Misses' Underwear, Infants' and Children' s White Dresses, all i off. See the beautiful White Goods and Embroideries at marked down, prices. J4 off Glassware, Queensware, Lamps, etc Mail orders promptljr filled at lowest prices.' " Oil II UTS For your choice of 500 popu lar Novels. Now is the time to buy your summer reading. The list includes the leading works of the following au S. Baring Gould, R. D. Blackemore, Bertha M, Clay, A. D. Ennery, B. L. Farjeon, Miss M. E. Braddon, F. Du Boisgober, Mary Cecil Hay, Helen B. Mather, Edgar Allan Poe, Mrs. J. H. Riddel!, W. Clark Russell, Count Lyof Tolstoi, I B. Waliord, H. Rider Haggard, Mrs. Cashel Hoey, F. W. Robinson, W. M. Thackeray, J. S. Winter, Charlotte M. Young, "John Bull" Books, Rosa Nou'te Carey, .Georgiana M. Cralk, Amelia B. Edwards, Geo. Manvllle Fenn, Washington Irving, Mrs. M. A. Holmes, D. Christie Murray, Robt. L. Stephenson AND MANY DTHERB. Fleishman & Co.'s bj Mail receive. prompt at-aulS-n "Established Over Half a Century." This Trade Mark is on our Windows. LADIES LOOK to YOUR FURS and bring them to us NOW for REPAIRING. REFITTING, REDYEING or MAKING OVER into tho newest FALL and WINTER STYLES, which are now ready, As we are dally getting busier in our Fur manufacturing department, we would advise those wishing anything done In this line NOT TO DELAY, as we can give more satisfactory work NOW than when our winter rush comes. 44! WOOD STREET. Five Doors from Fifth avenue. N. B. Inquiries by mall about above work, etc., receive our prompt and careful attention. 2Lt '1 I I KT A INSURANCE CO, .xXLl J LN .3L Hartford. ConrZ Assets, January 1, 18(7 S),83,Ka K EDWARDS & KENNEY, Agents, OQ Fourth avenue Pittsbure; ' " Mt jyLOJsnDArzr;f .att3-ttst 12. 167 and 169 FEDERAL STREET, ALLEGHENY, PA.- $. $1 Body Brussels Carpet, good B. & IB. -Friday, August 10. Friday Bergaina ! They're bargains that will interest you. Bar gains that will make Friday everything but a SUMMER DRESS GOODS BARGATNS StlU there's choice and plenty in the 60-cent goods SO cents a yard; K. 1-3 and i original prices; 15c, 2oe and S56 are other bargain prices. New .Silk PurcIiaBE. Rich Brocade Indlas, 21 inches wide, beauti ful shades for evening wear, worth every mill of a dollar; GO cents the price though. There's a genuine BOOH OH IN JACKETS. The cool weather has suggested the) need even no w, and more especially later.of Jackets. Wo have the Jackets. You cannot find as large an assortment or aS low prices. B0GGS & BUHL, 115, 117, 119, 121 Federal st,AIIegheny. A GOOD INVESTMENT In a growing locality in Alleflheny; corner lot with a frontage of 60 feet on each of two good streets. 2x5 room houses, room for 4 additional houses, all for HUiCl Inspect tbis AWeiiy Property Corner lot, with a frontage of 200 feet, large house, yielding a rental of $103 per year, always rented, and a small outlay In improvements would Increase the Income; $2,800 will buy It; choice and cheap Improved and unimproved properties la both cities and suburbs. Call and Men's Furnishing Stores, 4i38HITHFnXD STREET, . 100 FEDERAL ST., Allegheny. New line of Flannel Shirts just received. All the new thing in that line. Fall line of White Sblits.Iaundriedand un laundried. Best values tor the money. Dyeing, cleaning and laundry office. Pittsburg Telephone 1201; Allegheny Tele phone 31B3. JyS-atwr We have just received and have now ready fbr'inspeotion, beautiful China Dinner Sets, Fish Sets and a full line of nice China, odd pieoesto which we invite the attention of the ladies. R. P. WALLACE & odr 211 "Wood s-b OPPOSITE ST. CHARLES. TMtE IS QUITEJL DIFFERENCE. When old, shelf-worn, OUT-OF-STJTLE GOODS are put on sale to make room for something new and desirable, although they may be called bargains, they are dear adany price. On the other hand, when a mammoth stock of new, stylish goods are put on sale to quickly close out' business, you may expect real bargains. The latter is our case, all must be sold toithout reserve. Our stock comprises everything in the line of Lamps, Glass, China and Queensware, Gas Fixtures, Bronzes, Clocks, Articles for Use and Ornament, Birthday and Wedding Presents. It is impossible to name everything Call and see them, and see our prices and younvill be satisfied: that we are telling the truth. Our Cut Glassware department is an attraction in itself. The J. P.Smith Lamp, Glass and China Co 935 Penn Ave., Between Ninth and Tenth Sts. Dress Goods department replete with desirable gopds: The $z fancy wool Dress Goods now 55 and 60c The 75c imported Dress Goods now 50a Three lots of plain, mixed striped, plaid and fancy weave Dress r Fabrics at 20c, 25c and 37j4c are specially worth attention, many of them just half price. 20c striped and plain Beiges now 10c 31c f French Satines, 18 and 20c. Best American Satines, i2jc Light colored 15c Satine3, now 6a Challis and Challis Beiges 6c up. Colored Cashmeres, all wool, 30, 40, 50, 60 and 75c, are $ off price. Another case Turkey Red Tablings at 25c, worth 50c. Another case 'golden flax Table Linen at 50c a yard, regular price 65c Special bargains in Towels and Napkins. Parasols clearing at half price. Millinery in all its branches, including Ribbon, Feathers, Flowers, Indies' Ribbed Vests I2jc up. . Men's light weight Merino Shirts 15 and 25c up. Men's Fre&ck Balbriggu Shirts 33c, were 50c '. Samples seat when requested. . Pall Fabrics are axTivingr dally and our tailors are now bard at work manufacturinjr our Fall and Winter Olotbingr. In order to ob tain the necessary extra room we nave determined to dispose of all LIGHT and MEDIUM WEIGHT GOODS Immediately. To this end, former prices on Suits, Pants, Straw and Light Stiff Hats, Flan nel Shirts, Underwear, eta, have been reduced 25 to 50 per cent. STRASSBURGER & JOSEPH, TaUorsCloleK M Hatters, 161, 163 Federalist., Allegheny PHOTOaBAPHEB, 18 SIXTH 8TBEE2, A one, large crayon portrait $3 60; see them before ordering elsewhere. Cabinets. S2 and t2 69 per dozen. PBOJIPT DEHVEBXT of the past month, which hare

|Kingdoms of Madness Author: Hope Kills PM Seven cursed kingdoms, six mad sins. After Envy breaks her curse she wants to free her friends & save them from fate. But it won't be easy in an insane nonsence world. Revenge & tea will come ahead. Innocence and sanity will fade. No one will be sparedRated: Fiction T - English - Humor/Tragedy - Chapters: 11 - Words: 33,451 - Reviews: 13 - Favs: 3 - Follows: 4 - Updated: 05-20-12 - Published: 12-17-11 - id: 2980246 |A+ A- Full 3/4 1/2 Expand Tighten| It was as if time had frozen. No one moved, no one breathed, they just stared at the knight in confusion. Brendon was petrified, he was seeing Gluttony. He was seeing the man who destroyed his life, the most brutal sin of all but most important a dead man. May's dead husband. He felt his whole world spinning. Nothing made sense at this point…not that it ever made sense. The young man's face paled and his eyes rolled back. "Brend!" Toby called catching the unconscious young man. Mark jumped away from them and looked frightened at the two…well, three men "M-Myth?" He stammered looking around. "No way..he-he's dead." A loud thump was suddenly heard. The spirit had hit the ground with his hammer. Even though he was a spirit and not a solid being, his actions were still heard and felt. He was glaring at both monarchs. He hated them, he hated them for all the horrible things they had done. He would never forgive them. Emily looked at the scene with wide eyes. She couldn't see him, or feel him. But she was sure he was there. Her heart was racing as fast and loud just like it used to when he was around. Not because of love, but because of fear. "He is there…" Leah said monotonously. "Milord…" A tear rolled down her cheek as she walked towards the invisible sin. Myth looked back at her with mournful eyes. "Hi Leah…" He said even if he knew she couldn't hear him. He just wanted to talk to her, even if she didn't listen. Leah had been his company all along the curse. She never left him even once. And now… they were divided by this barrier of 'reality' and 'fantasy'. "Milord…" She repeated letting out a few tears. "Oh pffft!" Everyone turned up to see who was interrupting the moment. On top of them, clearly visible, was floating the same black haired woman that Brendon saw back in the mirror. She gave the scene a thumb down with a slightly disgusted face. "Bo-ring!" She said landing on her feet. Leah looked at her furiously. "YOU! How dare you laugh at such a serious event like this one!" She gripped her daggers ready to launch them at the woman. She ignored the annoying brunette and got her gaze back to Emily and a petrified Mark. "Scarlett…" Emily said through gritted teeth, waving her ax back. It looked as if everyone was dying to slash the guardian and chop her into small pieces. "Emily, Mark…Have I ever told you, you're both my least favorite sins?" She commented walking towards them. "But I really like your knight…" She winked an eye at Toby. A chill went down his spine, she freaked him out. He bit his lip and looked down at his unconscious friend, trying not to look into the guardian's eyes. She smiled devilishly, she knew she had managed to scare the poor knight. "You…what are you doing here?" Mark asked her with his eyes wide in fear. She swung her cane back on her shoulder and gave him a sharky grin. "It's my responsibility to always be around with the King of Gluttony. You'll see, you guys have provoked the spirit of Myth…he's pissed at both of you. If you don't follow my orders, he will summon a second curse on you." "Whoa what?" Myth said looking at her in disbelief. She winked an eye at her master and then back at the scared king and queen. "S-Second curse?" Emily stammered. "Nonsense! Only the goddesses Aria, Vera and Carmine can summon curses!" Mark shouted at the guardian. "That's what you think…Myth has the blessing of Vera still, this means he's a demigod technically that even in death he can do as he pleases." Both of them knew it was a lie, Myth didn't have that seal anymore, Vera had removed it when he died. The point of the blessing was to give to the most chaotic of the sins an edge in the Kingdoms of Madness which was like a board game for her. But since Myth had been 'eliminated' from this game it was useless for him to have it. But none of the other sins knew that. "No way." Emily said looking frightened. She looked at the woman in thought. Could she be lying? But she couldn't think clearly, she just didn't want to die yet or have a second curse thrown at the sins. "…What are your conditions?" She asked making her ax disappear. "Simple. Take the knight of Wrath with you and watch after him." Scarlett said firmly pointing at Brendon. "What?" The three other men said in disbelief. Myth's eyes were about to bug out. "Are you out of your fucking mind? These are assassins! You'll let my only hope under a group of assassins'care?" He complained angrily. Scarlett rolled her eyes and ignored her master. Aren't guardians supposed to listen to their masters? Myth thought in fury. "No way in Aria's hell!" Mark refused. "We'll take him." Emily concluded ignoring her husband. "What?" He said looking at her. Emily fixed a cold glare on him. She was tired of this, of him being a brat. So she did what she had to. A loud noise was heard due to the contact of his cheek and her hand. The hit was so hard that Mark's whole body turned to the side. He almost tumbled to the floor but he caught his balance. "I am done with your bullshit! We ARE taking the knight of Wrath and we ARE going to take care of him because I SAID SO. So shut up! You have done enough already!" Everyone looked at her shocked. She was beyond pissed. Last time anyone saw her act so pissed was when she last met Wrath in one of the battles. The king laid a hand on his reddened cheek. Before he could say anything the queen stormed away from him. "You! Toby! Bring him!" She turned around and nailed her eyes on the smiling guardian and narrowed them furiously. She had a lot in her mind, but instead of telling anything to her she just kept walking. Toby followed her with Brendon in his arms. "You're welcome." Scarlett whispered in his ear when he passed beside her. He looked down to the ground still avoiding her gaze and kept walking. Scarlett loved to trouble sins' minds. She found them like toys, just like Vera. The guardian watched the queen and knight go back to the clear part of the lake. When she turned back to the front the first thing she saw was Leah…just a few inches away from her face. Her brown eyes studying her inquisitively. "Tell milord…that I'll make everything alright." Scarlett looked at her confused and then looked at Myth. He looked at her equally as confused. Without further talking the knight ran off to chase the knight and queen. Scarlett watched her go. That was the part that made her feel pity for them…regrets and suffering of the sane ones. It must've been horrible for them. Watching your long life friends, your family…your life, shattered in pieces and you just standing there without being able to do anything. She looked at Myth kind of understanding him. It wasn't his fault to be that cruel. He had an overwhelming power, a horrible insanity case and an evil curse rotting his heart. Myth was still watching the way where Leah and the others had gone. This was a déjà vu for him. Everyone leaving him behind…but he was not going to stand there watching them go. He followed them as well not even asking Scarlett. The purple eyed woman just stood there. "Poor toys…they have no idea of how bad this is about to get." She pointed out looking up at the sky. She got her gaze back to the path the others had followed and let out a sigh. "You know Mark…you should enjoy the small happy moments of your life before there are none left." She said to Mark who was still standing behind her. He was looking at her blankly. "Also…you shouldn't keep things from your wife." She commented walking away. He looked at her in shock and stammered in a low voice. "H-How do you know?" He asked. She let out a small laugh and kept walking on. "There's always someone looking at you." Suddenly the woman faded, leaving Mark alone in thought. Alone…one of the things he was afraid the most…loneliness. He made his sword disappear and walked just the same way the others did. He knew they might now hate him, he knew he had to say the truth and he knew he now had to bear Brendon. But that didn't matter, why? Because it's all in his plan… "This is all your fault!" Dawn shout at a locked Marcel. After the incident with Brendon, May had been left in a terrible state and Dawn decided to lock Marcel in the dungeon in order for him not to get to see her sister. "If you…if you and your stupid brother wouldn't have appeared she would be fine. She was almost healed!" She yelled walking back and forth like a caged wild animal looking for a way out. "Both of us know that's a lie…" "SHUT UP! YOU DON'T KNOW HER!" Dawn barked hitting the wall with her fist. "Tell me, tell me…do you know how it feels watching the person you once knew so well become a monster…do you know how it feels to pretend that everything is perfect when you know everything is crumbling down." She fell to her knees and broke into crying. "I was so close to get her back and you ruined it." Marcel looked at her sorrowful. She was as hurt as the rest, except that she played strong. He knew she was nasty and despicable, but she was human. He knew he couldn't compare his pain with hers. He did lose Brendon…but he at least knew he was ok. While Dawn's parents where dead…and her sister was not the girl with whom she grew up with. Her whole world was over. She had the right to be like that. "Dawn…I'm sorry." He said in a soothing voice, reaching out a hand from his cell. She glared at him and slapped his hand away. "Fuck you!" She wiped a few tears away and put a cold face. "I don't need such a disgusting creature's pity. You're pathetic and useless to my eyes. You'd be better off dead."She said coldly, not taking her gaze off him. Marcel looked at her in disbelief at such cruelty. But how could he blame her. Instead of replying he bowed his head and sat down on his cell's bench. There was a tense silence in the dungeon for a while. Finally the blonde left leaving Marcel in that cold dungeon, with nothing but the rats and skeletons to make him company. He kneeled on the floor and looked at the only torch that light up the dungeon. Thinking of everything. He sighed in some sort of desperation. What got him here? In his best friend's dungeon who tried to murder him and made his brother disappear. He was now May's enemy. And his brother was somewhere…alone. Where did he go wrong? He sighed once again and kept staring at the torch. And he muttered the story…their story. "Once upon a time there were seven friends. A knight, a guardian, a clerk man, an aerialist…" "That he WHAT?" Pride got off her throne and looked at the three top knights of her army with fury. "H-He went to Wrath's palace. Then he was thrown in the dungeon by Dawn and…" He got cut off when the queen launched her glass cup to the wall furiously. Her eyes now dyed of a raging purple. "That traitor…he knows how much I hate those two!" She shout stomping on the floor. She was furious. She hated Wrath and Dawn. Those two had always been annoying and childish to her eyes. To know that your husband is off to your enemy's palace is shady but for the queen of Pride is an unforgivable crime. "My lady maybe it is not…" "You dare contradict me?" The queen said making a huge pitchfork appear in her fist. "N-No! I'd never do that!" "Now you're calling me a liar!" She accused with a glare that would make anyone scream in fear. "My queen I'm sorry I-" "DON'T ARGUE WITH ME!" She yelled now pointing the pitchfork to the three men. "And guess what, Leo is not here to make me think this twice." The three knights were shaking like little girls. They were the strongest knights in the army but believe me, even the bravest man in earth would pee himself just by seeing the queen of Pride angry. She grabbed impulse by moving her weapon back, ready to charge at them. But then a small whistling sound made her stop. She glared at one of the palace's columns, looking for the annoying whistler. "Woohoo! Yeah! Stab them Misty! Gosh I love murders!" A blunette clapped excited. No, fucking way… "Amin!" She growled taking a knife that she had hidden in her dress and launched it to the king. He dodged it easily and jumped off the column. "What a way to greet your guests. No wonder anybody ever comes to visit you." He mocked smirking devilishly. "Shut up! You! Useless rats! Attack!" The three knights pulled their swords out and charged to the king. Amin yawned not impressed by them and snapped his fingers making them disappear instantly. As if no one was ever there. The queen's eyes widened in horror by the act. "What the-" Before she could complete her sentence, Amin snapped his fingers again making her golden pitchfork fade. She looked at her palm where the weapon once rested. Fear started to take over her. It was gone. How did he pull that out, how did he eliminate her three soldiers just like that? When she raised her glance she met Amin's pale face. She stepped back startled by the sudden sight. "How did you do that?" She asked hoping it wasn't what she was thinking. But it was just that. Amin pulled out the Sacred Book grinning widely. Pride's eyes widened in horror. "You…you can't! Myth said that only Marcel and May could open it unless-" "Unless the curse was broken." He completed smiling. "One of us broke its curse. For instance the curse has been technically broken." He stated flipping over the book's pages looking for something. Misty looked concerned at the mischievous boy. He was up to something obviously, and it was no good as usual. "Amin…what's on your mind?" She asked looking around, searching for Leo, the knight of Sloth and Pride. Why isn't he coming back? She looked around impatiently. She had sent him to search some flowers for her and he hadn't come back. "Not much, just planning to win." Misty looked back at him surprised. "W-Win? You mean as in a…survival game?" She asked trying not to show fear. If he challenged her to a survival game she would stand no chance. She did have the fountain of Vera, but he had the Sacred Book which was written by the two goddesses. Everyone no matter their kingdom knew that whoever had that book controlled the whole board game (referring to Land of Aria) "Not just a stupid survival game, I mean this whole game, the Kingdoms of Madness." He said smirking devilishly. "Win? How can you win this Greed?" She said now referring to him as a sin. Sins tend to treat their enemies by their sin not by their name. Supposedly their not important enough to be called a name. "I can't tell you my plan if you're not on my side Misty." He extended his hand in a way the Pride could lay hers on his. She glared at his palm not quite understand what he was insinuating. She didn't trust Amin at all. He was a snake in the ground, willing to wipe off anyone that was on his way. Yet…he was powerful…and she was as greedy as him. "What will I get?" She asked now negotiating her loyalty. Amin smiled deviously realizing he had lured her into his plans. "Power…you'll be the most powerful next to me. Even the heavens will bow to you! You'll get everything you've dreamed of…I could even bring your family back." He said. Pride's eyes widened by the juicy offers, specially the one of her family. It was wrong though. It was all so wrong. With this she would betray Marcel. But you can't betray someone that betrayed you first…there was nothing to lose then. She lied her hand on his smirk mischievously. "So…what is your plan?" She asked once more. "We have to attack a kingdom to gain more power." He stated. "I'd like to attack Wrath first of a-" "No." Greed cut her off. "Why?" He couldn't let her kill Wrath. She was an important piece on the board. Besides he was still planning on marrying the young queen. "She's way to powerful." That wasn't a lie. May controlled the two armies of Gluttony and Wrath. Not to mention the army of the undead which was given to her by Vera. There's also said that she has special powers…but nobody is witness of that. Just imagine all of that in the hands of an insane and broken queen. "So then what's your idea?" Pouted Misty crossing her arms. "Lust and Envy." "What? They have three armies AND kingdoms! Not to mention the thirst for blood those two bastards have." She stated to the ridiculous idea. "Yeah… But they're not in their kingdom." He said smirking in an evil way. Misty cocked an eyebrow confused. "Then…who is ruling that kingdom?" She asked not expecting the answer. "Violet." He replied making her and himself smile triumphantly. "Looks like we have this battle ensured. Shall we tell Vera?" She asked looking up. Amin shook his head laughing a bit. "Don't worry she'll know." May will take care of that.

In Fall 2010, twenty-eight of my friends and I compiled a list for RevSF of 52 comic series that deserved to be collected, the Uncanny Un-Collectibles: Missing Comic Book Trades. With the release of Showcase Presents: The Spectre (see below), I decided to revisit the six part bitchfest and see what else has been collected since then. -- Rick Klaw Published September 14, 2011: Paul O. Miles: "Sugar and Spike are next door neighbor babies, who understand each other’s gibberish and get into mischief. The thing about Sugar and Spike or other long running kid’s comics such as Little Lulu is there are rarely individual stories that tower over the rest and demand reprinting. Instead, you hope to have as much reprinted as possible so you can experience the cartoonist’s art over a wide range of work. Collects SHOWCASE #60, 61 and 64, THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #72, 75, 116, 180 and 199, THE SPECTRE #1-10, ADVENTURE COMICS #431-440, DC COMICS PRESENTS #29 and GHOSTS #97-99. / Published April 25, 2012 Scott A. Cupp: "In the mid-1960s DC was riding on the success of the Earth-2 stories in The Flash and Justice League of America, and they decided to revive the Spectre with Murphy Anderson and Neal Adams as the primary artists. The series lasted just thirteen issues (three in Showcase and ten in The Spectre) but they were wonderfully cosmic and supernatural in nature, unlike the original More Fun run. Published April 18, 2012 Joe Crowe: "In All-Star Squadron, Roy Thomas mixed World War II history with superhero continuity, and got himself a stew going. The stories made modern-age superheroes out of silly old Golden Age knock-offs. It raised a generation of continuity nerds. In the early 1980s, All Star Squadron was a welcome vacation from nearly every other comic, where heroes tried to find themselves or had human problems. The All-Stars had problems, too. But then they beat up super-Nazis." Collects LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #297-313 and ANNUAL #2-3. / Published October 19, 2011 Paul Benjamin: "Now that Paul Levitz has been reunited with the Legion of Super-Heroes, it’s about time some of his greatest work returned to store shelves. There’s a noticeable gap in DC’s collections: a long run by Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen beginning with the Great Darkness Saga. While that seminal storyline of the Legion vs. Darkseid has been collected, the rest of their run is only available to folks willing to delve into dusty longboxes. Now that Levitz is back in charge of his favorite characters, it’s time to treat fans to the stories that inspire the latest tales. Long live Levitz and Giffen! Long live the Legion! Published April 4, 2012 Brandon Zuern: Flex Mentallo, Grant Morrison's four-issue limited series about a musclebound superhero searching for other champions of justice, might not be for you. It's too psychedelic for a mainstream audience, yet too much in love with truth, justice, and the American Way for the weirdos and freaks. It's drug-fueled science fiction fantasy is more than the straight-laces can handle, but has a strangely sweet optimism that cynics won't get. It's a love letter to superhero ideals laced with LSD. It's beautiful like an explosion, thanks to the stunning art of Frank Quitely. Collects CHASE #1-9 and #1,000,000, BATMAN #550, #1-9, DC UNIVERSE SECRET FILES #1, SECRET FILES GUIDE TO THE DC UNIVERSE 2000 #31, SUPERMAN: OUR WORLDS AT WAR SECRET FILES #1, JSA SECRET FILES #2, THE FLASH SECRET FILES #3, THE JOKER: LAST LAUGH SECRET FILES #1, BATGIRL SECRET FILES #1 and HAWKMAN SECRET FILES #1. / Published December 28, 2011 Wayne Beamer: What 99 percent of us know about Chase is nothing, unfortunately. It was a blip of a 10-issue series last published in 1999 about Cameron Chase, a female governmental operative with the Department of Extranormal Operations who had a deep-seated hatred of most superbeings, good and bad. No great loss, right? Hardly. Chase marked the beginning of the artistic partnership of J. H. Williams III and Mick Gray, whose collaboration with Alan Moore on Promethea, a modern-day mashup of Wonder Woman and Fawcett's Captain Marvel, was among a handful of the best and most entertaining and beautiful superhero comics published anywhere by anybody over the past decade." Chase is now a regular character in Batwoman. Scheduled for the first half of 2012 but not yet released collections include Showcase Presents volumes featuring Rip Hunter and Sea Devils . It's not surprising that these are all DC books. Of the 52 titles mentioned, 26 of them were from DC (Marvel was a distant second with 5).

By Bernie on 06 Sep 2006 Photo Credit: Calvin College Imagine it's 1940 and you're sitting in the Zwie Pfennig Normales Cabaret in Berlin. Johannes Annalpfisdten is the stand-up comedy act for the night. Guten Abend, meine Damen und Herren. Und to the two Juden in the front row, sieg heil, fur dose who don't know what that means, I'll explain it zu you," he declares. "In German it means: 'I'm going zu kill you.'" The audience bursts into laughter. When the applause dies down, our Nazi comedian asks, "Zo, vat is the difference between a pizza pie and a Jew?" Someone in worn lederhosen in the back yells out, "Vat's the difference?" The comedian looks directly at the two Jews: "A Pizza Pie does not yell out 'oh vey is mir' when you stick it in the oven." The cabaret breaks into thunderous peals of laughter and guffaws. Even the two Jews in the front row find the joke immensely amusing. Moshe barely has the breath to tell Hymen, "This guy kills me, literally!" OK, so what's unbelievable about this scene? Too macabre for you? Well then, listen to this: Here is the guiding theme for the troupe: "The concept of this tour is to make a comprehensive effort to provide effective, significant, and appropriate comedy with an Islamic perspective, which is both mainstream and cross-cultural. The idea is to provide a venue whereby Muslims and non-Muslims can feel safe, relevant, and inclusive of an experience where humor is used to bridge gaps of bias, intolerance, and other social ills that are pre and post 9/11 relevant," says Preacher Moss, co-founder, and one of the featured comedians on the tour. However, there is a dark side to this group: according to Militant Islam Monitor they are affiliated with the Council of Islamic Organisations of Greater Chicago whose members are part of a network of radical Islamist organisations which are directly linked to Hamas and Al Qaeda and raises funds for convicted terrorists and other related causes. This comedy tour enables the group to go around the country pretending to be funny just so they can outreach to young Muslim men and turn them into Jihadists. If there are non-Muslims in the audience who laugh, they do so for the same reasons that Jews would laugh at a Nazi comedian. Here's some samples of "Muslim" humor. "I'm an American. But I'm an American Muslim. In fact, I consider myself a very patriotic American Muslim, which means I would die for this country…" "by blowing myself up…" "in a Dunkin' Donuts." Here's more unfunny Muslim Humor: BBC - Muslim comedians laugh at racism, Excerpt: With his bushy black beard and skullcap, Azhar Usman strides on to the stage with a raucous "Assalam Aleikum." "For those who don't know what that means, I'll explain it to you," he declares. "It means: 'I'm gonna kill you.'" The audience bursts into laughter. There are other Muslim "comedians" than these three: There is Tissa Hami a female, 30-year-old Iranian-American who performs her routine dressed in traditional Islamic hijab and jokes about stoning, harems, and hostage-taking. Topics that usually bring the house down in my home. Tissa is self-deluded if she thinks she is showing that Muslims can laugh at themselves; her type of irreverent attitude has gotten other young women hanged in Iran. She should know better. Child Rights Information Network, 3 Oct 2004, IRAN: Girl, 16, hanged It was when Atefeh appeared before Judge Rezaii for a fourth time that she lost her temper - and also her life. In a rage she tore off her hi jab - a headscarf - and told the judge she had been raped and it was his duty to punish her tormentors, not their victim. Rezaii told her she would hang for her "sharp tongue" and that he would put the noose around her neck himself. It became a personal crusade as he travelled to Tehran and convinced the Supreme Court to uphold his verdict. Yes, the mullahs would love Tissa Hami's sharp tongue. BBC - Muslim comic sees the funny side, Female Muslim comic Shazia Mirza: "I'm Shazia Mirza," she said. "At least that's what it says on my pilot's licence." BBC - Dark humour for dark times, Excerpt: Tissa Hami, an Iranian American, warns with a hint of a smile that if people do not laugh she will take them hostage. What these Muslim comics do not understand is that for self-deprecating humor to work, you have to make fun of yourself, not intimidate your audience. Jews make fun of themselves but they never cross the line. For example, you will never see a Jewish comic get up to an audience and say, "Shalom, and if you don't know what that means, let me explain, it means I come in the middle of the night and suck the blood from your children, and take their organs to sell on the medical market." That's not funny. Here's a pointless Kodak moment: If Muslims want to know what Muslim Humor is, they have to read Planck's Constant. Here's what's funny: - On my flight to New York there must have been an Israeli in the bathroom the entire time. There was a sign on the door that said "occupied." - What do you say to a Muslim woman with two black eyes? What’s to say? You already told her twice! - Q. How many Palestinians does it take to change a light bulb? A. None! They sit in the dark forever and blame the Jews for it! - Q: How many Palestinians does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: If you wait long enough, the Palestinians will manage to screw themselves. - Q: How many palestinians does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: Even if you change it, they'll never see the light. - Q: How many palestinians does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: None, the prison maintenance staff takes care of that. - Q: How many Muslims does it take to change a lightbulb ? A: None. If the lightbulb has died, it is the will of Allah, and it would be blasphemy to attempt to change it. - Did you hear about the Broadway play, "The Palestinians"? - What did one Palestinian woman say to the other? Does my bomb look big in this? - What do you call a first-time offender in Saudi Arabia? - So Abdul comes up to me and I notice stitches on both his wrists. So I say to him, "Abdul, I see you won your appeal." - Did you hear about the Muslim strip club? It features full facial nudity! - Why do Palestinians find it convenient to live on the West Bank? Because it's just a stone's throw from Israel! - Why are Palestinian boys luckier than American boys? Because every Palestinian boy will get to join a rock group! - Q: What does the sign say above the nursery in a Palestinian maternity ward? A: "Live ammunition." - A Palestinian girl says to her mommy: "Can I have Abdul's room after he blows up?" - A man goes into an adult entertainment shop and asks the assistant for an inflatable doll. "Would you like male or female?" "Would you like Black or White?" "Would you like Christian or Muslim?" This question confused the man, so he asked,"What has the religion got to do with it? It's an inflatable doll!" "Well," explained the assistant,"The Muslim one blows itself up!" - Hassan, a Palestinian, sees a friend over the Israeli fence. "Hey, Achmed, how do you get on the other side?" Achmed looks at him, scratches his head and says, "Hassan, you are on the other side." - So Fatima says to me, "My husband is so fat..." Naturally, I fall for it and ask, "How fat is he?" She says, "My husband is so fat it took two bombs to blow him up." - Did you hear about the Palestinian girls' night out? They sat around getting stoned. - Three boys in the fifth grade at an Israeli school are playing measure the wienie; a Bedouin, a Jew, and a Palestinian. The Bedouin pulls his out and it's only 3 inches long. Not bad (remember this is the fifth grade). The Jew pulls his Kosher sausage out and it, too, is 3 inches long. Farook, the Palestinian boy, draws his out from his shorts and it is 6 inches long! His two schoolmates are impressed: "That has to be the biggest wienie in the whole school!" So Farook runs excitedly home and asks his father, "Abba, I have the largest penis in the fifth grade, is it that Allah has blessed me because I am Muslim?" His father sighs and says, "no, Farook, it is because you are 19 years old." - When a Palestinian says they had a blast at a friend's house the other night, they're not talking about a party. - Q. What's the difference between a Muslim and a dog? A. You don't have to beat the dog with a stick to teach it something new. - Q. How can a Muslim tell if his wife is happy? A. Who cares? - Q. What do you call a Muslim with half a brain? - There were 3 men waiting for a bus ride in Montana, a cowboy, an indian and a Muslim. The cowboy trying to make small talk asked the other two how life was treating them. The indian not really wanting a conversation says "Once before you cowboys came we were many and now we are few." The Muslim sees his chance and tells the other two, "Once we were few and now we are many, so watch your back." The cowboy looks up at the Muslim and says. "We ain't played cowboys and Muslims yet." - Q. Why do Muslims wear those robes in Saudi Arabia? A. Goats can hear a zipper a mile away. - Two Muslims: - I heard that you have made a band. - Yes, it’s a quartet. - How many of you are there? - There are three. - Me and my brother. - You have a brother? - No, why do you ask? Variations of above: Photo Credit: Mike Keefe Political Cartoons Muslim Kitchen Accessory Photo Credit: MaxBlog.az al-Taqiyya comes natural to Muslims: Thank you, thank you My name is Goffaq Yussef. the anti-jihad pundit, The new source of Muslim outrage It's a song sang by these four Chechen girls, titled "Eastern Fairy Tale". The lyrics of this song run: "Do you want to be my fourth wife? Yeah, if you are my sixth husband". In the video, a boy asks the question and the group leader just answers. And there comes the real problem: the President of the Russian Islamic Committee, Gaydar Dzhemal, has declared that the video is immoral, because the "girls appear [in the video] as Muslims [he says Middle East Women] and because of that, they have offended to all Muslim women by spreading the offensive idea that is possible to have more than one husband". Translated from Eurabian News. Where is the sense of humour of a very important part of the Muslims that has been lost in so distant places that they cannot reach for it? It's a SONG, for God's sake…. [Actually the girls are one of Russia's favorite girlie groups, the Blestyashy] For more Palestinian jokes see Gates of Vienna. Click on al Qaeda training video image to view video: Anyone may republish this article for non-commercial use without asking my permission. I make it easy, see details here. comments powered by Disqus

Taxi Driver (1976) / Drama-Thriller MPAA Rated: R for strong sexuality, nudity, bloody violence, disturbing images, and pervasive language Running Time: 113 min. Cast: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel, Albert Brooks, Peter Boyle Small role: Martin Scorsese Director: Martin Scorsese Screenplay: Paul Schrader Review published December 26, 1997 A discharged Vietnam vet (De Niro, The Godfather Part II) works as a cab driver in the tough streets of New York City. He's antisocial and not very savvy about the way the world works, but manages to eke out a workable life for himself. He begins to become obsessed with a woman (Shepherd, The Last Picture Show) working for a presidential candidate, and manages to get her to go out with him. When she ultimately rejects him, he meets a preteen hooker (Foster, Foxes) whom he tries to help. With delusions of love fueling thoughts on assassinating the candidate, he begins to slip into madness. Taxi Driver is one of those rare films that actually gets better with each successive viewing. Deep and multifaceted, this is one of the best films of the 70s, and a stroke of genius on the part of director Scorsese (Mean Streets, New York New York). De Niro and Foster deliver brilliant and forever memorable performances, and Bernard Herrmann's (Marnie, Psycho) score is one of his best. Funny, tragic, moving and shocking -- a near masterpiece of pent-up angst cinema. ©1998 Vince Leo

|Character classes||Arcanist, Paladin (Dragons), Warrior, Rogue, Hunter, Scout, Gladiator, Priest (dragonspawn), Scalebane, Wyrmkin| |Breath||Frost, Ice, Arcane| |Racial leader(s)||Malygos the Spell-Weaver (formerly), Kalecgos| |Racial capital||The Nexus| |Primary language||Draconic, Common, Titan (language)| |Secondary language(s)||Any, usually Darnassian, Dwarven, Goblin, Thalassian| |Average height||Varies by species and age| |Alignment||Usually lawful neutral| The blue dragonflight, formerly ruled by Malygos, the lord of magic, was all but devastated by the evil Deathwing and his black dragonflight. The Blue Dragonflight is now ruled by Kalecgos. Though there are few great blue dragons left in the world, their magical powers are awesome to behold. Native to Northrend, the few blues stay relatively close to the great Dragonblight, where they commune with the ancient dragon spirits who died in ages past. Their freezing breath and gargantuan claws have been the death of many hapless travelers in Northrend. The blue dragonflight includes the blue dragons themselves as well as all other blue dragonkin such as dragonspawn and drakonids. - Blue wyrm - Blue dragon (mature) - Blue drake - Blue whelp - Blue dragonspawn - Blue drakonid The Blue Dragonflight encompasses both the literal descendants of Malygos — the blue dragons — and their loyal servants and companions, the blue dragonspawn. For the thousands of years between the Sundering and the destruction of the Demon Soul, blue dragons were all but unheard of, but they have begun to emerge in the world once again. Historically, dragons have had a reputation for spending their days in solitary contemplation of the secrets of the world, but in recent times blue dragons have proved to be more social due to the growing threats to all living creatures. In addition to their noted obsession with magic, blue dragons also enjoy researching other subjects. They could be called the academics among dragons; they have begun to serve more and more as the teachers of younger members of other species. While in humanoid form, many dragons also notice the scientific discoveries of other races and take an increasing interest in the development of engineering and similar studies. Adult blue dragons most often have names ending in "gos", or "gosa" for females. Sometimes synonyms of the word "blue", or terms relating to spellcasting find their way into a blue dragon's name as well. When taking humanoid form blue dragons most often choose gnomish or high elven forms. Malygos is said to have established magic itself and created all the spells that set the sky and earth into motion. While he is not revered as a god, for blue dragons see no godhood in scientific fact, he is considered the greatest scientific mind ever to have existed in the multiverse—or, at least, his flight considers him so. Blue dragons have a natural affinity for spellcasting, and most powers of sorcery are instinct even to young drakes. Because of their natural propensity for magic, they have high magic resistances and can withstand many magical attacks. They are also the masters of frost, their breath weapon can drain enemies’ magic energy, an effect the blue dragons term “withdrawing Malygos’s favor.” Blues find all forms of ice and water welcome, most making their lairs in the frozen peaks of mountains or in caverns near, or under, freezing water. Their traditional home is Northrend, where they remain close to the great Dragonblight, the final resting place of dragons. The blue dragons once communed with the dead there to ensure that each draconic spirit made its way into the Beyond. Northrend lies much in control of the Scourge, but blues still make pilgrimages to the dark northlands, seeking answers hidden among the bones of their dead. The most powerful blue dragon sorcerers claim that the spirits of the dead tell them a new upheaval is on its way, a cataclysm that will outweigh any trouble the world of Azeroth has yet endured. The blue dragons say this often, no matter what disaster the world suffers, so few have given their words much credence this time. More and more dragons however, migrate to the caverns of Mazthoril in Winterspring on Kalimdor. This migration occurs for two main reasons: First, because of the growing concern about another imminent attack on the World Tree; and second, to retreat from the Scourge, which some dragons see as a threat the dragonflight is not prepared to conquer. Blue dragons are a bit xenophobic, keeping to their territories and maintaining their own studies without interference. They are highly territorial, largely due to their paranoia that any intruder wandering into their lairs are probably agents of the black dragonflight, and won't hesitate to attack if his territory is invaded. Under such circumstances, a blue dragon is as violent and destructive as any black dragon. In previous years, blue dragons even attacked each other over territorial disputes, but such conflicts are unlikely now that so many dragons have adapted to living in groups for protection. In modern days blue dragons are rare and difficult to find, thus their society does not have a rigid hierarchy. Although some great blue dragons remain in the world, they are few and far between, studying their magic almost to the exclusion of all else. All blue dragons serve Malygos with roughly equal standing, although there are some ancient dragons who are considered authority figures simply due to their great knowledge and mastery of magic. In essence, it is a society ruled by the powerful, but in a group of intellectuals such as these any real ranking system would do nothing but cause endless debate. Males and females have equal standing in blue dragon society, although usually it is the female who chooses her mate. With a few exceptions, blue dragons usually take only a single mate, and they are immensely protective of their mates and children. Female blue dragons sometimes stalk and observe a potential mate in a number of different forms to gauge the male’s worth before revealing themselves. Blue dragons are the undisputed masters of magic, their culture revolving around the study and cataloging of magic and spells, primarily but not exclusively arcane magic. They focus on advancing in spellcasting ability, and the acquisition of knowledge and greater magical power to the exclusion of almost everything else, but this is not to say they are single minded. Rather, the dragons are extremely loyal, and know that the Titans gave their master his domain so that they would use their magic to keep the world safe. As such, the “proper” use of magic is a matter of great importance to the dragons — while blue dragons are naturally curious about the use of warlock magic and the like, they consider such forms of magic to be perversions of nature. For this reason, warlocks and necromancers are considered enemies of the dragonflight, although the dragons have higher priorities on their hit list — namely every living black dragon. In their pursuit of magic, blue dragons infiltrate mortal societies in humanoid forms to learn more about how mortals practice spellcasting. While some dragons have engaged in this activity for centuries, it has been widespread only since Malygos's recent recovery from years of insanity. While the dragons are primarily interested in arcane magic, other forms interest them as well, especially those that do not require the worship of a divine being. For this reason, a number of blue dragons engage in a scholarly study of the Holy Light. It isn't surprising to find blue dragons in the ranks of many mortal orders: the Kirin Tor, naturally, but also orders dedicated to the Light such as the Argent Dawn and the Knights of the Silver Hand. Blue dragons are scholars and often learn many languages, posing as mortal wizards and even paladins to better study the magical progress of the younger races. Many strive to impress their master, Malygos. Members of the blue flight value other thinkers such as writers, artist, spellcasters, academic types, and engineers. They have associated with the elves for the centuries, and more recently they study the unique skills of dwarven, gnome, and goblin engineers. They delight in knowledge and in samples of new crafts. Blue Dragonspawn, more often than the dragonspawn of other flights, become proficient arcanists and rise to positions of power and authority within their broods, General Colbatann of Mazthoril being a prime example. This is credited to the unusual intelligence and disposition towards magic associated with the blue dragonflight. Many other dragonspawn are warriors, rogues, hunters, scouts or gladiators. A few dragonspawn priests worship the blue dragonflight or Malygos, contrary to most blue dragon beliefs, but shamans and druids are almost unheard of among the blue dragonflight. The blue dragonflight’s belief system is scientific; they seek proof of everything, and take little on faith or word of mouth alone. The dragons revere Malygos as a creator of magic, but not as a god; rather, they feel Malygos is simply the greatest scientific mind that has ever existed. Those dragons that know of the Titans respect them as powerful users of magic and as creators, but they consider the Titans good examples and mentors, not divinities to be worshiped. Likewise, the dragons respect the followers of Elune, Cenarius and the other Ancients, but they do not worship these entities. The blue dragonflight is focused on the pursuit of ever greater power and knowledge. This doesn’t make them completely egocentric; the dragons share what they learn to help others of their kind as well as the world in general. Many blue dragons strive to impress their master, Malygos, with their knowledge of magic, or invent new spells or magic items. Members of the blue dragonflight value other thinkers, including spellcasters, engineers, writers, artists and general academic types. If a mortal shows a blue dragon a spell he has never seen, they earn that dragon’s respect. If they teach the dragon that spell, the mortal likely gains the dragon’s gratitude for a lifetime — and blues live a very long time. Generally, members of the blue dragonflight consider adventurers in general to be kindred spirits, but they highly favor those who are clever, inventive and powerful. While blue dragons are slowly growing in numbers again, they lack the power to take on the children of Deathwing, such as Onyxia and Nefarion, directly. As such, the blues entrust favored mortals with the task of fighting against these powerful black dragons, and reward their mortal allies with magical secrets and objects of power in return for risking their lives to aid the dragonflight. Generally, the blue dragonflight likes the mortal races, especially those that practice arcane magic, but there are a few exceptions. Most blue dragons dislike goblins, since many goblins serve the black dragonflight, and it was a group of goblins that outfitted Deathwing with the adamantine armor attached to his scales. Also, blue dragons are wary of orcs, due to their role in enslaving the red dragonflight in recent years. Relations between the blue dragonflight and the other dragonflights have dramatically improved since the fall of Deathwing at Grim Batol; many of the other dragons felt that the blues abandoned them after the construction of the World Tree; but now red, bronze and blue dragons guard Nordrassil together once again. Now, it should be noted however that several Blues are somewhat bitter after the events of the Nexus War. Blue dragons are some of the foremost arcane spellcasters on Azeroth. As such, some are concerned that the demons’ taint may touch and corrupt the dragonflight. These concerns are unfounded; blue dragons, blue wyrmkin, and the rest of the dragonflight are immune to arcane corruption — though no one yet understands why. Perhaps they have mastered magic to such an extent that they surpassed the danger. If this is true, perhaps arcanists of other races can achieve similar transcendence. HistoryThis section concerns content exclusive to the Warcraft novels or short stories. Charge of the Dragonflights Before the Titans departed Azeroth, they charged the greatest species of the world with the task of watching over it. In that age, there were many dragonflights, yet five flights, one of which was the blue, held dominion over their brethren, and were chosen to shepherd the budding world. The greatest members of the Pantheon imbued a portion of their power upon each of the flights' leaders. Norgannon, the Titan lore keeper and master-magician, granted the blue dragon, Malygos, a portion of his vast power. From then on, Malygos would be known as the Spell-Weaver, the guardian of magic and hidden arcanum. The time following this came to be known as the Age of Dragons, when the civilization of dragonkind was at it's peak. For thousands of years, his children prospered and experimented with the eldritch powers of the universe, unrivaled in their mastery of arcane power. The blue dragons were numerous and co-existed peacefully with the other dragonflights, working together to safeguard their world. But this age would not last forever. War of the Ancients When the night elves inadvertently called the Burning Legion to the world, the blue dragons were among the first to realize the potential threat; and when the Aspect of the Earth, Neltharion, suggested creating a magical artifact to aid in the destruction of the demons, the blues were some of the first to agree to the plan. Malygos himself was one of Neltharion’s closest friends, and he gave much of his own essence toward the creation of this object, called the Dragon Soul. When each dragon had contributed a portion of his or her essence to the artifact, Neltharion deemed it complete, and brought it to bear against the demons — but only for a precious few moments. Soon, he turned the artifact against the terrified night elves as well, and finally his own brethren. The shocked dragons were helpless to resist the power of the Dragon Soul, for it contained a fraction of the essence of each — with the exception of Neltharion himself. All the dragonflights, save Neltharion’s own, were paralyzed in the air until the timely intervention of Korialstrasz, one of the mates of the red dragonqueen, who had been absent from the initial use of the artifact. While Korialstrasz was no match for the might of the Aspect of Earth, he was powerful enough to interrupt Neltharion’s concentration for a moment, which freed the other dragons from their paralysis and allowed them to act. Malygos, infuriated at the betrayal by one of his closest companions, struck first, but at a great price. As the blue dragonflight flew into formation to attack Neltharion, the mighty black wyrm unleashed the full fury of the Dragon Soul against them, and the power instantly slew nearly every one of them. Malygos narrowly managed to raise a protective spell fast enough to survive, and only a handful of others reached the safety of his barrier in time. As the other dragons turned to act, Neltharion retreated, leaving the blue dragonflight broken in his wake. Following the betrayal, the surviving red, green, and bronze dragons secluded themselves, hoping to recover from the Dragon Soul's powers. Korialstrasz teleported himself to the icy caverns of the blue flight to search for any remaining life. He found none, save a few nearly frozen, but still intact, eggs. Knowing these eggs were the only hope of a future the blue flight had, he placed them in a pocket universe, where time ran ever so slowly, until he could pass them on to someone he could trust. The Kaldorei and their allies managed to defeat the legion, but at great cost. Azeroth was sundered. After the Sundering The loss of most of his children and mates drove Malygos out of his mind. Malygos continued for some time in the war against Neltharion, who now called himself Deathwing, but Malygos’s presence in the world diminished over time. Perhaps Malygos’s last sane act was placing many of his surviving dragons in the caverns of Mazthoril to hold eternal vigil over the sacred site of Mt. Hyjal, location of the world tree Nordrassil and the second Well of Eternity. Malygos, in his rage and grief, split his home from the rest of the land, creating the gap later known as the Westrift that separates Coldarra from what had become mainland Northrend. The few survivors settled on Coldarra, carving their own caverns out of the Nexus. For 10,000 years the Aspect Malygos fell deeper and deeper into his madness. He isolated himself in his lair and refused all visitors. Blue Dragons were rarely seen, and most of the survivors had gone into hiding from the blacks. For thousands of years, none but a few of the most ancient dragons knew of Malygos’s whereabouts, and much of his dragonflight hid in solitude, realizing their fight against Deathwing was doomed without their leader. After having nearly wiped out the flight, the black dragons were not ready to leave the last few blues in peace. The survivors of the blue flight had fled to Northrend, when Deathwing attacked, slaughtering them by the dozens. The survivors fought back but were no match for Deathwing's ferocity. In the process their homes were destroyed and the land so damaged it could never recover. The area became the Dragonblight. Over what is now Crystalsong Forest another battle between the blacks and blues was waged. The dying blues released their magic and it sprinkled down to cover the landscape. Finally a elder blue wyrm, beset by many blacks, released a spell to turn his attackers into stone, but the magic blanketing the area amplified the spell and crystallized the landscape. The drawn out war between the black dragonflight and the other flights decimated the species, with all flights losing members, the blues losing many of what few they had left. The dragonflights hunted the blacks to the brink of extinction, but were greatly weakened by their sacrifice to the Demon Soul. Ultimately the blacks were nearly wiped out, though the other flights never truly recovered from those dark times and were never again seen in the same numbers as before. The Age of Dragons had passed. Guardians of Magic A few remaining members of his flight continued their mad masters job of studying magic throughout the millennia in attempts to keep the mortal race's abuse of it in check. The Arcanomicon, a map of the world's ley lines gifted to Malygos ages ago by the titan Norgannon, has been continuously updated and revised by the blue dragons over the long years of Malygos's seclusion. Other blues, such as Sapphiron and Azuregos, continued to search for and hoard artifacts of great magical power, keeping them from inexperienced hands. When the legion was planning its second invasion of Azeroth, another agent, Arcanagos, attempted to sway the Guardian Medivh away from the path he was taking under the control of the Dark Titan, Sargeras. War of the Shifting Sands A thousand years before modern times, the almost-extinct blue dragons still managed to lend their aid to the night elves and the bronze dragonflight during the War of the Shifting Sands. Led by Arygos, child of Malygos, the blues fought the Silithid and their Qiraji masters furiously and ultimately helped push them back to their city where they were sealed away from the world. The dragons suffered few casualties but the progeny of Malygos, Arygos, was until recently believed lost, having charged deep into Ahn'Qiraj during the final push. After the war a shard of the Scepter of the Shifting Sands was entrusted to the blue wyrm Azuregos by Anachronos the bronze. Battle of Grim Batol In the events leading up to the Second War, Deathwing led a powerful orc warlock named Nekros to the Dragon Soul — now renamed the Demon Soul — and instructed him how to use it. Nekros used the Demon Soul to force the red Dragon Aspect, Alexstrasza, into submission, and forced the rest of the red dragonflight to serve him or risk the death of their queen. Korialstrasz, who escaped by faking his death and taking the identity of an archmage of the Kirin Tor, sought the other Aspects for help. Though each Aspect was difficult to convince, he eventually succeeded, and the dragons battled Deathwing in the sky near Grim Batol. Korialstrasz’s human apprentice, Rhonin, defeated Nekros and used one of Deathwing’s scales to destroy the Demon Soul. The destruction of the artifact released the ancient power that had been sealed inside for millennia, and allowed the Aspects to defeat Deathwing and force him to retreat. This final battle was known as the Battle of Grim Batol. Malygos had seemed almost indifferent to the news at first. When Korialstrasz asked for Malygos' assistance in his queen's rescue he hinted to the lord of the blues that as the aspect of life, there could be something Alexstrasza could do for him and his nearly-extinct flight. After heavy consideration and some coaxing from Ysera, he agreed. After having his powers restored to him, Malygos regained his sanity and his agents became more active in the world. The blue dragonflight, still recovering from the events that occurred ten thousand years ago, nevertheless continued to safeguard the world from corrupting magic and those who would wield it. Since the blue dragonflight was so long secluded from the affairs of mortals, most were pleasantly surprised at the progress humans and high elves had made. Their pride in the accomplishments of these races allows them to justify taking humanoid form to trade secrets with the mortals. Since Deathwing’s disappearance, the black dragonflight is less organized, and this chaos allowed the blues the chance to strike back against the murderous dragons who hunted them for millennia. General Cobaltann, one of the eldest and most powerful of the blue dragonspawn, organized an army to protect all creatures against the threat of the black dragonflight — and if he has his way, his army will grow strong enough to obliterate the black dragonflight. Aftermath of the Third War The blue dragonflight was nearly absent from the battle against the second coming of the legion, also known as the Third War. In the aftermath of the Battle of Mount Hyjal, blue dragon guardians were stationed at Hyjal Summit, where they, along with the Reds, Greens, and Bronzes, guard the World Tree from another attack by the remnants of the Burning Legion in Darkwhisper Gorge. During the war the fabled Sunwell had been lost to the Elves of Quel'thalas. Malygos and the blues felt a great flaring of power, coming from Lordaeron. The Spell-Weaver, with no elders at his disposal, sent the young Kalecgos to investigate. Tyrygosa, Kalecgos's intended mate, followed soon after, arriving just in time to save Kalecgos from the Scourge. In their company was a strange young woman by the name of Anveena Teague. On a visit to Tarren Mill they were joined by the paladin Jorad Mace. The four journeyed together, their exploits eventually leading them to Quel'thalas where after being assaulted by Dar'Khan Drathir and an enslaved Korialstrasz they discovered Anveena was the new avatar of the Sunwell. Dar'khan was defeated and Anveena was left in the care of Lor'themar Theron and Halduron Brightwing. Kalecgos, having sworn to look after her, remained in Quel'thalas as Anveena's guardian. The Burning Legion survivors of the third war, led by Lord Kazzak were ultimely able to reopen the Dark Portal. Once the initial demonic onslaught was subdued, a number of nether dragons attempted to cross into Azeroth, only to be met by a force of blue dragons whom quickly destroyed and prevented all but one in entering. The lone survivor, Zzeraku, was however quickly captured by Sintharia. Since that time the blue dragons monitor the portal from their sanctum, and nothing crosses in or out without their knowing. In World of WarcraftThis section concerns content exclusive to World of Warcraft. The icy caverns of Mazthoril in Winterspring teem with blue dragonkin under the Matron Protectorate, Haleh, and General Colbatann. These dragonkin are fierce enemies of the black flight and desire to strike out against its new leaders; Nefarian and Onyxia. They also keep an eye on the demons to the south in Darkwhisper Gorge. The dragons are concerned the demons there will soon launch another attack against Mount Hyjal and the dragons stationed there. Recently they have come under attack by Nefarian's dragonriders, coming in the darkness of night, and kidnapping whelps to be used in experiments to create a new chromatic flight. Azuregos and his brood of dragonspawn guard the ruins of the ancient night elven city of Eldarath. The city is rumored to hold many powerful highborne artifacts scattered throughout the ruins. Azuregos will stop at nothing to safeguard these artifacts from falling into mortal hands. Arygos, thought to have been lost during the War of the Shifting Sands, was recently found to be alive inside Ahn'Qiraj, as a slave of C'thun, along with Caelestrasz and Merithra. The dark master of Ahn'Qiraj used the tortured dragons to power his new creations: Moam and the other Obsidian destroyers. Andorgos came to Ahn'Qiraj after sensing his trapped brethren within, but dares not travel into the temple from fear of falling under the old god's control. In Burning CrusadeThis section concerns content exclusive to The Burning Crusade. Tyrygosa, princess of the blue flight, has traveled to the shattered realm of Outland to study the mysterious Nether Dragons. The nether dragons are the spawn of Deathwing, who as eggs were exposed to the arcane energies of the twisting nether when Draenor was shattered by Ner'zhul's portals. Tyrygosa seeks to better understand the rogue nether dragons, under the control of Veraku, and ultimately take control of them and keep their temperament, inherited from their sire, under control. Kalecgos had until recently remained guarding Anveena on Quel'Danas. The return of the Sun King, Kael'thas Sunstrider, fresh from his defeat in Tempest Keep, has brought the Burning Legion to Azeroth, and Kalecgos has been taken as their slave. Malygos has sent Madrigosa to assist Kalecgos in combating the demonic horde. Wrath of the Lich KingThis section concerns content exclusive to Wrath of the Lich King. Having awoken from the madness that engulfed him, Malygos quickly assessed the state of magical affairs on Azeroth and concluded that magic was running amok throughout the world, blaming the mortal races and their reckless pursuit of magical power. Determined to forestall a catastrophe, the blue aspect decreed that the world's unbridled magic must be reined in by any means necessary. Determined to manipulate all existing magic to serve his own purposes, he now seeks to divert Azeroth's ley lines to his own home, the Nexus by the use of giant constructs known as Surge needles. The blue dragonflight has been ordered to maneuver the colossal machines into key positions over magical ley line clusters, their work has already begun in the Dragonblight. Malygos' actions however carry disastrous consequences, splintering the world's crust and opening unstable rifts in the twisting nether. If successful, his tampering could result in an ecological and magical catastrophe that would threaten not only the stability of Northrend, but ultimately the equilibrium of the entire world. The red dragonflight and the Kirin Tor now fight against Malygos in this Nexus War. In their campaign to rein in the world's umbridled magic, the blue dragonflight has diverted much of the ley lines' magical energy to the Azure Dragonshrine, empowering the flight and altering their appearance. With this power the blue flight has boldly began to launch attacks against Wyrmrest Temple, what was once considered neutral ground. The other flights have formed the Wyrmrest Accord, and fight back to defend the temple against their misguided brethren. In CataclysmThis section concerns content exclusive to Cataclysm. With the death of Malygos, the black dragonflight has invaded Azshara to hunt down Azuregos. Azuregos, along with Kalec, will help low level Horde players repel the invasion. Kalecgos has also been confirmed by Christ Metzen at Blizzcon 2010 to be made the Blue Dragon Aspect. In Mists of PandariaThis section concerns content exclusive to Mists of Pandaria. Blue dragonflight has effectively disbanded during the events of Tides of War, with most, if not all, dragons leaving their Coldarra home. It is stated in the novel they were driven by desire to find new place in the new world where Hour of Twilight has passed. Their former Dragon aspect has joined the Kirin Tor. |Kalecgos||Agent sent in search of the Sunwell's remnant magic. Finds Anveena, avatar of the Sunwell, and vows to defend her. Played a critical role at Sunwell Plateau. Named the new Aspect of Magic after the death of Malgyos. In the novel Jaina Proudmoore: Tides of War, he falls in love with Jaina and later becomes a member of the Kirin Tor. Leader of the Blue Dragonflight after the defeat of Malygos.||Dragon/Aspect||Alive| |Malygos||Former Leader of the blue dragonflight. Blessed by the Titans as the Aspect of magic, and called the Spell-Weaver. Has declared war on Azeroth's spellcasters.||Aspect||Killable, Deceased (lore)| |Andorgos||Agent which came to Ahn'Qiraj after sensing his trapped brethren within. Found at the entrance to the temple.||Dragon||Alive| |Arcanagos||Agent who confronted the guardian Medivh at Karazhan, and was burned from within, remains littering the area. Reincarnation known as Nightbane.||Dragon||Undead-Killable| |Arygos||Son of Malygos. Fought in the War of the Shifting Sands and taken prisoner by C'thun. Found deep in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. Later betrayed the Blue Dragonflight to Deathwing and played a role in the defilement of the Chamber of the Aspects.||Dragon||Alive| |Azuregos||Guardian of the ruins of the ancient highborne city of Eldarath in Azshara. Blue Scepter Shard holder.||Dragon||Killable, Alive| |Balacgos||Son of Malygos. Slain in ancient times by his own creation, a cerulean cube designed to absorb latent magic now known as Balacgos's Bane.||Dragon||Deceased| |Cyanigosa||Sent by Malygos to the Violet Hold of Dalaran under orders to free all prisoners and launch an a full scale invasion of the city.||Dragon||Killable| |Eregos||The Ley-Guardian. Can be found in upper reaches of the Oculus.||Dragon||Killable| |Haleh||Consort of Malygos. Matron Protectorate of Mazthoril in Winterspring, guarding Hyjal Summit from the demons in nearby Darkwhisper Gorge.||Dragon||Alive| |Madrigosa||Dragon sent to Quel'Danas alongside Kalecgos. Flys over the Dead Scar, taunting Brutallus, whom eventually kills her. Reincarnation known as Felmyst.||Dragon||Undead-Killable| |Sapphiron||Ancient servant of Malygos. Lair invaded by Arthas who slew and raised him as a Frost wyrm. Serves Kel'thuzad, guarding his inner sanctum in Naxxramas.||Dragon||Undead-Killable| |Saragosa||Consort of Malygos. Guardian of Coldarra. Killed when lured into a trap set in motion by her former prisoner Keristrasza.||Dragon||Killable| |Sidragos||Sent orders to Goramosh directing him to move all forces under his command to the Azure Dragonshrine.||Dragon||Alive| |Sindragosa||The Frost Queen, first of the Frostbrood. Former prime consort of Malygos. Perished in the War of the Ancients, and remains were once found in Icecrown.||Dragon||Undead-Killable| |Tyrygosa||Kalecgos's intended mate. Assisted restoring the Sunwell's power to the Elves of Quel'Thalas. Found at the Celestial Ridge studying the nether dragons.||Dragon||Alive| |Vyragosa||A wandering blue dragon found in the Storm Peaks.||Dragon||Killable| |Azurous||Drake who patrols the region of Winterspring.||Drake||Killable| |Indigos||Drake found in Dalaran Crater in the Hillsbrad Foothills.||Drake||Killable| |Manaclaw||Drake found inside the caverns of Mazthoril.||Drake||Killable| |Scryer||Drake-Champion of the blue dragonflight. Located inside the caverns of Mazthoril.||Drake||Killable| |Spellmaw||Drake who patrols the area outside Mazthoril.||Drake||Killable| |Awbee||Whelp abducted to Blackrock Spire by Nefarian's agents for his chromatic experiments. Sends adventurers to Haleh in Winterspring.||Whelp||Alive| |Cerulean||General of the blue dragonflight forces found in Coldarra.||Dragonspawn||Killable| |Colbatann||General and military leader of the blue dragonflight forces on Kalimdor. Resides in Mazthoril. Staunch enemy of the black dragonflight.||Dragonspawn||Killable| |Drakos||The Interrogator. Winged dragonspawn found in the Oculus.||Dragonspawn||Killable| |Goramosh||Dragonspawn in charge of the blue dragonflight forces found at the Moonrest Gardens.||Dragonspawn||Killable| |Goredrak||Azure-Lord of the blue dragonflight. Found in Coldarra.||Drakonid||Killable| |Insivius||Curator of the blue dragonflight. Leads the mage hunters in Coldrock Quarry in digging up sacred tuskarr artifacts.||Drakonid||Killable| |Varos Cloudstrider||Azure-Lord of the blue dragonflight. Can be found in the Oculus.||Drakonid||Killable| - ^ a b c d e f Lands of Mystery, 116. - ^ a b Lands of Mystery, 119. - ^ Lands of Mystery, 121. - ^ Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos manual, 82. - ^ a b c d e Lands of Mystery, 114. - ^ Manual of Monsters, 31. - ^ a b c Lands of Mystery, 115. - ^ a b c d Lands of Mystery, 117. - ^ Lands of Mystery Web Bonuses, 2. - ^ Lands of Mystery, 95. - ^ "Charge of the Dragonflights" (HTML). Official World of Warcraft Community Site, History, Chapter 1. Retrieved on 2008-05-14. - ^ The Well of Eternity, 193. - ^ Monster Guide, 39. - ^ The Sundering, 25. - ^ a b Lands of Mystery, 96. - ^ Lands of Mystery, 97. - ^ Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos manual, 142. - ^ The Well of Eternity, 245. - ^ a b "The Nexus" (HTML). Wrath Of The Lich King Official Site. Retrieved on 2008-05-14. - ^ "Legacy of the Damned: The Return to Northrend", Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Blizzard Entertainment. - ^ a b "Raid Encounters" (HTML). Official World of Warcraft Community Site. Retrieved on 2008-05-14. - ^ "War of the Shifting Sands" (HTML). Official World of Warcraft Community Site. Retrieved on 2008-05-14. - ^ Day of the Dragon, "19-21". - ^ Lands of Mystery, 17. - ^ Dark Factions, 147. - ^ Dragon Hunt, "1". - ^ Ghostlands, "6". - ^ Night of the Dragon, 98. - ^ Lands of Mystery, 124. - ^ "Monsters of Ahn'Qiraj: Moam" (HTML). Official World of Warcraft Community Site. Retrieved on 2008-05-14. - ^ "The Dragonblight" (HTML). Wrath Of The Lich King Official Site. Retrieved on 2008-05-14.

Eeeeew, those hawks, I have had two encounters over the past two months with them, never had an issue with them before, but this year things must be hard for them, no clue why, it has been no different than other years. Well, that I know of. The first time, I was around, the hawk flew into one of the chicken yards and landed in a tree, just on the perimeter. I hollered and yelled at it and was running to it throwing sticks. It flew away. That was that. Everyone had hidden inside their houses or under some brushy stuff near the side of a pen. No rooster call that made an alarm that day, he must have been somewhere else. The other day, I was doing some stuff inside the small chicken house. I heard the rooster scream. As you are saying Natalie, that sound that they make when they really mean business, is nothing on earth that you will ever forget. This I can only equate to a scream. The roosters spend their entire day watching the sky, the area around, everything, never foraging much, just watching. I heard Ivan scream, loud and clear and immediately went outside to see what was up. This sound makes my blood run cold, as I know it is a command from the rooster, not a warning, but a clear and present danger command. This command was given to all the chickens and roosters, about 35 birds in total. They knew if they didn't listen, their beautiful lives would be over, each one believes this very deeply. The cochins all ran into their houses, the younger set of birds all headed for the bushes, deep underbrush, covered in blackberry vines, where nothing can get at them, never in a million years could anything get down from above down into there, the older set of birds all ran to two separate houses, hiding in places I never would have dreamed they could fit, but they did (I was shocked at how small a place a bird can squeeze into when the desire is there). And Ivan stood there, beneath the wide overhang, watching and watching. I was watching him as I was watching the hawk. The hawk alighted upon a wheelbarrow that I had recently been using. It was just outside the one side of the cochin run. It perched on that wheelbarrow, its back was to me. I ran out to that spot and yelled and yelled at the top of my lungs. Things I won't repeat here, smiling, I can make some pretty loud sounds for a small gal. I picked up a yellow plastic electric fence post and swung it in the air at it. It was this final measure that made it fly away. But not far. It perched in a tree that on the perimeter of my yard and looked at me. Nerve of brass. I still had the electric fence post in my hand and threw it as high in the air and with all my might (was really good at swinging at bat at baseball, and still have a pretty good arm). The fence post went high in the air, not even coming close to the bird, but it made a point. The bird flew away to another tree, as if it was taunting me. I picked up the fence post again and began to wave it, the bird finally left. Guess it got sick and tired of my silly antics and thought that there would be no point to further try to get a meal here. The young birds would not come out of the bush for quite some time. I am a patient woman and I waited for them to come out. In the meantime, I encouraged everyone to go into their houses and I locked them in. Eventually with some nice coaxing the younger ones came to me, and I encouraged them to go home too. This was 11:00 in the morning, they stayed safe and sound within their night homes until about 3:00. I let them out again for about and hour or so. By this time the waning light is causing the birds to want to go into a nice place to rest and sleep, and with a teeny tiny bit of encouragement, all went back into bed, safe and sound, all tucked in, with my wishes for a peaceful sleep. Those hawks. Those hawks. Beautiful days, love and live them, with great health. Cindi

|Series||The Deptford Trilogy| |Preceded by||Fifth Business| |Followed by||World of Wonders| Published in 1972 by Macmillan of Canada, it deals with the aftermath of the mysterious death of Percy Boyd "Boy" Staunton retold during a series of conversations between Staunton's son and a Jungian psychoanalyst. The Manticore won the Governor-General's Literary Award in the English language fiction category in 1972. Many[who?] believe that this selection was due in part to the fact that Davies did not win in 1970 for his novel Fifth Business. - David Staunton — Son of the billionaire Boy Staunton, he is the narrator of the novel. After a psychotic episode in Toronto he seeks out the help of Jungian psychoanalysts in Zurich. He is a famous barrister, an alcoholic, and a keen patron of the arts, with a heightened sense of morality and a hero worship for his father mixed with filial defiance. - Johanna Von Haller — David Staunton's Jungian analyst in Zurich. More clever than Staunton in debate, she guides him through the multiple phases of Jungian analysis, being the subject of his projections of the shadow, the friend, and the anima. She warns Staunton that theirs is only the first phase of analysis. She has helped him discover who he is. The next phase would help him discover what he is (an allusion to the quest to discover the collective unconscious in oneself). - Dunstan Ramsay — The narrator of the novel Fifth Business. Born at the turn of the twentieth century he is maimed in World War I, wins a Victoria Cross, and devotes his life to the study of saints and myth. He watched over David Staunton during his youth while his father is absent and is a fixation for David who believes him possibly to be his father through an alleged affair with his mother. - Boy Staunton — David Staunton's father. Through his immense business skills he becomes a billionaire in the sugar processing business in Canada. He has almost no insight into himself but is a charming man with an immense need for sexual gratification. David Staunton idealizes his father at the start of the novel, and his narrative can be seen as an extended effort to know who his father really was. - Leola Staunton — David Staunton's mother and the ravishing wife of Boy Staunton and first love of Dunstan Ramsay. A sometimes weak, sometimes strong woman who cannot live up to her ambitious husband's expectations. - Liselotte (Liesl) Naegeli — Daughter of a millionaire Swiss watchmaker who assists Magnus Eisengrim in his travelling magic show. She is bisexual, and the victim of an early adolescent affliction (never specified but possibly acromegaly) which leaves her unusually tall and with large features. After David's analysis she tries to shock him into understanding the nature of the collective unconscious. - Magnus Eisengrim — Master magician and illusionist, he is a permanent guest at the Swiss mountain retreat of Liselotte Naegeli and much despised initially by David Staunton for his presumed role in his father's death. During an extended Christmas holiday at the Naegeli mansion, Staunton comes to a grudging acceptance and perhaps even admiration of Eisengrim. His ability to accept Eisengrim symbolizes the last step in Staunton's evolution towards a "whole" human who can take or leave others without upset. - The Manticore at the Internet Book List St. Urbain's Horseman |Governor General's Award for English language fiction recipient The Temptations of Big Bear

Or, my New Reality. The past year has brought many changes into my life, most of them not good. I finally got my doctor to listen to me explain that my swollen ankles and rapidly increasing shortness of breath were not just due to my being fat and lazy. Nope, I have a heart condition called dystolic dysfunction, meaning the blood is slow to fill up my heart and move on to the other chamber. Nothing too serious, apparently, she didn’t even refer me to a cardiologist, I did that on my own. He confirmed that diagnosis, but said he was more worried about my lung function. Off I went to a pulmonary specialist … after months of tests, drugs, one blot clot scare, I was told my “exercise-induced asthma” is really pulmonary hypertension, and when my symptoms didn’t improve with drugs and a C-Pap machine for the sleep apnea that MIGHT have led to this, he put me on oxygen. Here’s what ph is: “Pulmonary hypertension is a type of high blood pressure that affects only the arteries in the lungs and the right side of your heart.” It is not necessarily related to overall high blood pressure – my bp has always been low to normal. “Pulmonary hypertension is a serious illness that becomes progressively worse and is sometimes fatal. Although pulmonary hypertension isn’t curable, treatments are available that can help lessen symptoms and improve your quality of life.” That caused me to wonder “why me?” I have gained weight in the last 15 years, but most of my family are as large or larger. I exercised, until I couldn’t handle it any more, I never smoked, never did illegal drugs, have a fairly healthy diet, good blood pressure, but I’ve got a progressive health condition for which there is no cure except a lung transplant, and nobody else in my family has this. Why me? Why not me? Is it genetic, or does it have something to do with the miracle diet drug combination that was all the rage 15 years ago – until people starting have problems with enlarged hearts and other inconvenient side effects. I got checked, my heart was fine, no harm, no foul, and no weight lose. When I began researching my health problems, guess what popped up in the adds for lawyers in the sidebar – yes, that drug combo is rearing its ugly head again. People who took the combo as long as 15 years ago have developed primary pulmonary hypertension, among other things. I have to try to get my doctor’s attention to find out if that’s the kind I have – and if it is, I might get a settlement from the drug company, but I might not live long enough to spend it. If my granddaughter happens to read this – DON’T WORRY! This is probably not the kind I have. My mother has similar issues and a lot of other health problems I don’t have, and she is 89. She feels like hell most of the time, but she’s still here, and at least her mind is sharp, even though her body is shot. My doctor assure me there are new drugs in the testing stage, new treatments, we’ve caught the problems fairly early, time is on my side. But listen, I’ve had symptoms of both conditions for years, but when I told my doctors, they just blew me off. I was fat and out of shape but otherwise they found nothing wrong. Be your own advocate, you know your own body, insist on being taken seriously when you think there’s a problem. It sucks to realize I may be disabled within the next decade, or maybe the next 2 years. My new reality is that I will have to lug a heavy oxygen bottle around when I “exert” myself – i.e. walk more than 5 minutes, do housecleaning, go to the mall … Doctors can diagnosis these things, but as my friend Connie, who has COPD and a long history of dealing with the medical profession, tells me, they don’t tell you how to deal with what comes next. After I had a lung catherization that showed no blood clot after all, the nurse called me to tell me to “keep doing what you’ve been doing!” with a big smile in her voice. Doing what I’ve been doing hasn’t helped, the breathing problems just keep getting worse. I’m trying to hope for the best but prepare for the worst, getting my affairs in order, trying not to let my mother know how serious my condition is becoming, learning how to navigate my world with a heavy oxygen bottle strapped over my shoulder, thinking it may be time to ask for a handicapped hang tag because I can’t walk up my stairs without gasping for breath. My new reality – I had planned to travel after I retire in 2 years, but the rules and regulations involved in flying when you’re oxygen-dependent are mind-boggling. I have begun knocking items off my bucket list – I’ll probably never return to Thailand, never see Angor Wat, maybe soon I won’t be able to go to western Massachusetts for Arlo’s October concerts … Will I be around to see what my brilliant granddaughters become, will I be able to go to their weddings, hold their children? This sucks, did I mention that? Time will tell … My other new reality – I’ve had my first Christmas as a fatherless child, the first Father’s Day with no one to send a card to, no one to call me his baby girl. I’ve had the first Memorial Day when I visited my dad and talked to a carved headstone. There’s a quote I think about by Mark Halliday in Keep this : “Everybody’s father dies But when my father died, it was my father.” I can say now that my father died last Christmas Eve, and I can believe it and accept it, but when I remember how his last minutes on earth were spent choking and gasping for air because a medical “professional” gave an unconscious man who couldn’t swallow a dose of liquid medicine, well, that anger is still with me, as well as my anger over the lawyers who said we had no case because he was so old his life had no value, legally speaking. I’ve learned that now that he’s gone, some members of the family are not treating Mother the way he treated her, with love and respect, taking care of her until his frail body gave out. Her last months, or weeks, or days are not peaceful, her very large extended family are not flocking around her, and I have tried to make things better but I’m too far away and it’s breaking my heart. Here is a woman who devoted her life to her family being ignored, neglected, or treated as a nuisance. How can that be? Gotta stop now, my eyes are leaking … Well, I think I’ll end this now. It’s taken me a long time to put the words on the screen. Isn’t there a quote about “misery shared is misery halved”? I feel better now. Aug. 5, 2010. I’m feeling better today, physically and emotionally, and I’m ready to add the part where there’s Light at the End of the Tunnel, and It’s Not a Freight Train, Every Cloud has a Silver Lining, Into Every Life a Little Rain Must Fall … I was thinking of a song Pete Seeger, one of my personal heroes, wrote years ago about aging. Pete’s in his 90’s now and still going strong, BTW. The chorus is “How do I know my youth is all spent? My get up and go has got up and went. But in spite of it all, I’m able to grin, when I think of the places my get up has been.” I have been to far away places with strange-sounding names that most people only dream about – China, Siam (Thailand), the Philippines, Taiwan, Cambodia, Turkey, Peru, Nicaragua, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, England, Scotland, Wales …and I almost forgot the Arlo Guthrie Blundering through the Alps tour that sent my life in a whole new direction – Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy … Copper Canyon, Mexico Shirley, Arlo & Annie in front of the Matterhorn I have worked on archeological excavations in some of those places, even though I never finished that dissertation. I had wonderful parents, and my dad lived to the ripe old age of 89, and my mother is 89 aiming for 90. I have known love, even if it wasn’t forever, and I have two sons I adore, and four granddaughters any grandmother would be proud to claim. I’ve done some writing that got published, and even got praised. I’ve got a job I enjoy, and I’m not likely to lose it before I reach retirement age, and I have good health insurance. Way too many Americans don’t have that security these days. I’ve followed a different path than I’d thought I would, way back in my youth, and it’s been interesting and exciting and sometimes strange, but rarely dull. I’ve met some wonderful people, some famous, most not, who have become great friends. You know who you are, and I want to tell you how much your support and love and strength has meant to me through the years, through the good times and the hard times, and I know you will be there for me in the unforeseeable future, come what may. I might have a lot of years left, there may be a miracle cure in somebody’s lab at this very minute, or maybe not. Whatever happens, I’ll still be able to look back and grin, when I think of the places my get up has been. Latest news from my friend Connie, who keeps up with this stuff: “Potential Treatment for Pulmonary Hypertension Discovered ScienceDaily (Aug. 11, 2010) — Researchers in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta are one step closer to a treatment for pulmonary arterial hypertension, a potentially deadly disease. Pulmonary arterial hypertension, which is high blood pressure in the lungs, currently has only a few treatment options, but most cases lead to premature death. It is caused by a cancer-like excessive growth of cells in the wall of the lung blood vessels. It causes the lumen, the path where blood travels, to constrict putting pressure on the right ventricle of the heart which eventually leads to heart failure. Evangelos Michelakis, his graduate student Gopinath Sutendra and a group of collaborators have found that this excessive cell growth can be reversed by targeting the mitochondria of the cell, which control metabolism of the cell and initiate cell death. By using dichloroacetate (DCA) or Trimetazidine (TMZ), mitochondria targeted drugs, the activity of the mitochondria increases which helps induce cell death and regresses pulmonary hypertension in an animal model, says Sutendra. Current therapies only look at dilating the constricted vessels rather than regression, so this is a very exciting advancement for the lab. “In the pulmonary hypertension field they’re really looking for new therapies to regress the disease, it might be the wave of the future,” said Sutendra. “The other thing that is really exciting is that TMZ and DCA have been used clinically in patients so it’s something that can be used right away in these patients.” Clinical trials are expected to be the next step. Michelakis is currently working with a college in the United Kingdom to have patients with pulmonary hypertension take DCA.” Read Full Post »

by Anna Sugden I'm delighted to welcome back a Lair favourite and a great supporter of the Banditas, Beverley Kendall! Beverley has joined us today to tell us all about her fab new novella All's Fair in Love and Seduction. So, without further ado, let's get right to the important stuff. Lovely to see you here again, Beverley. Thanks Anna, and the rest of the Bandits, for hosting me on your lovely blog. It’s always great to be back in the Lair. :) We're excited about your novella. Can you tell us about it? I'd love to. Here is the blurb: With her seduction she hopes to gain his affections For Miss Elizabeth Smith, sharing her first kiss with the charming Lord Derek Creswell is nothing short of a dream come true...that is, until she is spotted by one of the most influential gossips of the ton. With scandal nipping at her heels, to avoid total social ruin, Elizabeth must present a fiancé by the end of the Season. But when the viscount proves reluctant, Elizabeth is forced to employ a seduction of a different sort... With his seduction he is determined to ruin her Viscount Derek Creswell believes Elizabeth set out to trap him into marriage. After all, her sister attempted the very same thing with his brother six years before. Now the delectable Miss Smith expects a betrothal and a ring, while Derek finds her ruination infinitely more appealing... But as Derek sets out to seduce only her body, Elizabeth is intent on claiming his jaded heart. Oooh! Sounds delicious. What inspired you to write this story? I started writing this novella because there was going to be a year gap between my first book, Sinful Surrender and A Taste of Desire (the first and second book in The Elusive Lords series) and I wanted to put something out in between to keep readers interested in the series. Unfortunately, that didn’t occur so I decided to move the story so it occurred between A Taste of Desire and An Heir of Deception (the final book in the series). What a fun idea! I know readers will be thrilled that they have something to tide them over until An Heir of Deception is out. What did you particularly love about Derek and Elizabeth? I really love that Derek is so torn when he discovers who Elizabeth is. His initial instinct is to seek revenge but that begins to war with his growing feelings for her. I love that even though he doesn’t intend to, he defends her, instinctively protecting from slander and gossip. I love that Elizabeth is a woman who knows what she wants and she allows her heart to lead the way. And like Derek, she has a loyalty streak a mile wide. She’s vulnerable, which to me, is a good thing as that vulnerability makes her human and not wimpy or missish. Yet she has a steel spine and takes her knocks in stride. Together, the two are combustible and that’s what made writing them so much fun. What appeals to you about historical courtship? I love the formality of a historical courtship. There is an interesting challenge not being able to just throw them into each other’s company at any given time or day. I love having to make my hero and heroines work to be alone together—which is no small feat. Do you have to read your other books before reading this one? No, readers don’t have to read the other books to follow this book. However, I will say, you will meet characters in All’s Fair in Love & Seduction who you will immediately sense had their own book. Hopefully, spending just a little time with these characters will have new readers eager to go back and read their love story. ;) What’s next for you? Right now I’m working on An Heir of Deception, the first three chapters of which are included at the end of All’s Fair in Love & Seduction). This is probably the most anticipated book of the series and it is definitely the darkest. This book will tell the tale of the tumultuous relationship between Alex and Charlotte. This story is my personal favourite. After An Heir of Deception, I will start a new connecting series—The Temptresses. The first book in the series, Twice the Temptation, will feature Catherine (Charlotte’s identical twin sister) and Lucus Beaumont, the gorgeous American Charlotte befriended in New York. Lots to look forward to! And, we're especially glad to know that you have a new series coming up soon. All's Fair in Love & Seduction is an ebook and is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smash Words, All Romance eBooks and The Season. Beverley has graciously offered one lucky commenter a $15 eGift Certificate and an entry for the Grand Prize Drawing (December 17, 2011) of an iPad 2. All you have to do is tell her how you like to read connected books or books in a series. Do you prefer to wait until they’re all out and read in one sitting or read them as they come out? Do you have to start with book one or are you happy to start anywhere in the series and catch up later? Beverley Kendall has lived on two continents, in three countries, two provinces, and four states. She stopped her nomadic existence and settled in Georgia with her young son. All things artistic feed her creative passion, but none more than writing. Readers can visit her at: http://www.beverleykendall.com/, follow her on twitter: @beverleykendall, friend her on Facebook or on her review site and blog http://www.theseasonforromance.com/

On December 20, 2011, reporting on the meeting of the Eritrean regime’s so-called Cabinet of Ministers, Asmelash, the mouthpiece of the regime recited (among many other personal declarations of Isaias) that the tyrant had given new directives to his servile cabinet ministers. This is what Asmelash reported: “…President Isaias continued, since it is an obligation and a right of every student to lean the Arabic language, and since in the previous years the methods that were applied to teach Arabic have been regressive and unproductive, a new system of teaching that should enable students to become proficient in Arabic should be implemented, if possible within one year and if not within two years, and [to that effect] President Isaias gave firm instruction to the ministry of education to set up a task force that would carry out this study and follow up its application and implementation…“ Never mind the long sentence, it is how it came in the usual PFDJ Tigrinya. Never mind the picture of the meeting which like always shows “ministers” taking notes as in a high school exam setting, and their leader giving them lessons like a teacher. But regardless of all that, the policy switch is significant for those of us who have been seriously struggling to expose the damaging policies of the PFDJ, the sole legal party in Eritrea. This change of policy could be related to a diplomatic maneuver being attempted by an Arab leader who is a close ally of Isaias. The Arab leader is said to have been advising Isaias to join the Arab League to supplement the loss of support that Gadaffi and Mubarek offered him in the past. It is very possible that Isaias is paving the way to formally apply membership to the Arab League—a league that would become more dysfunctional once the mentally disturbed Isaias is added to its ranks. For God’s sake, this is a league that couldn’t do anything tangible to alleviate the suffering of so many Arabs at the hands of tyrants. Look at Yemen and Syria for the obvious exhibit. Finally, after two-decades of wreaking havoc, the Eritrean tyrant indirectly admitted guilt for the damage he inflicted on the Eritrean people with one of his many bigoted policies. Finally, he instructed his lieutenants in the rubber stamp Eritrean cabinet of ministers to adopt the policy that he mischievously evaded for decades. Finally, one night he dreamed of a policy and the next day he made it a law. Finally, it dawned on him that the issue will never evaporate into thin air. Eritreans have enough experience with “Nsu” (Isaias) to be aware that his motive is neither genuine nor noble; he just hopes his moody policy will serve as a calming pill to those who oppose his policy, a policy that had a crippling effect on his regime. Finally, he seems to have recognized he cannot murder Arabic and live in peace— it is a foundation of Eritrea and it is deeply-rooted in the Eritrean psyche, more than his sick attitude, more than the roots of his insane self. The following is what I have been saying in many words, in all my speeches and writing: “If the PFDJ had adopted a dual education language policy in 1993, today we will have all Eritreans, regardless of their region and religion, speaking fluent Arabic and Tigrinya.” Well, that was not meant to be. Unfortunately after long years of struggle and many sacrifices, Eritrea ended up with a sick man at the helm of power instead of a visionary leader. Defining The Isaias Regime So far, defining the Isaias regime has been controversial; and, over the last few months, I have been developing a rough theory that would hopefully help in defining the PFDJ cult regime—I will share my theory with my readers at a later stage. For now, let’s agree that the Isaias domain is nothing but the PFDJ cult. PFDJ, the sole legal party in Eritrea, is a cult, and Isaias Afwerki, its sole leader with super rights, is the cult leader. In a cult, setting, “members’ adulation of charismatic leaders contribute[s] to the leaders becoming corrupted by power.” Cults depend heavily on brainwashing their members who always get their marching orders from their leader; they never change their message or slogans until he does. When he does, they never think of what they have been parroting and switch to the new message with no feeling of guilt or shame. If the cult leader says the sky is red, they will argue to death that it is red. If the next day he says the sky is green, they will condescendingly argue it is green and “rebuff” anyone who argues otherwise. They totally ignore the fact that, until the previous day, they had claimed the sky was red—no apologies, no recognition of their past confusion, and certainly no humility at all. Until the era of Youtube, the PFDJ cult used to sell VHS tapes of all the meetings and festivals that they held. Every member was pressured and harassed to buy a copy to the extent that cult members memorized the number and the titles of the many tapes by heart. You might not find a shelf of books in the house of the cult members, but you most certainly will find a library of every tape the cult produced. Very few tapes were not distributed because they were found to be too embarrassing, or too telling of the nature of the cult and its leaders. That is when the cult lieutenants intervened and censored the tapes. One such tape is the recording of a cult meeting that Isaias held in Washington DC in 1993. The tape of that meeting was not distributed because the lieutenants decided to hide the embarrassing situation where the cult leader and his assistants appeared totally wasted in the pre-meeting function held in their honor.2 That day, Isaias appeared behind a table with his close associate Mahmoud Sheriffo (now “disappeared” and most likely dead) to his right, and Hagos Kisha (the party bag man, now on the UN watch list and soon to be on its list of forbidden travelers) to his left. The cult members in the crowd who packed the meeting hall were too excited to notice the drunk nature of their leader; and if they did, it was normal to them. Only a short clip of the recording of that meeting found its way to Youtube. In that clip, you can watch Isaias shamelessly vomiting his bigotry in public. Until well into the meeting, the cult had no idea that their leader will surprise them with statements that will massage their ego by making wild bigoted statements. When he did, they were ecstatic with joy, laughing and cheering wildly. In a language dripping with mockery and hatred, the cult leader insulted, and degraded a section of the Eritrean people in a manner reminiscent of what his predecessors, the bigoted kings of Ethiopia, had done. He poured his venom belittling two young Eritreans (a woman in Muslim garb speaking fluent Tigrinya and a man who doesn’t speak the language) when they asked about the situation of the dual official languages of Eritrea, reminding him that in a supposedly independent Eritrea, half the population should not be left behind for lack of a language of communication with the government. In an idiotic remark, Isaias chastised the two citizens for asking questions in the question time of the meeting! He rudely remarked: “It is surprising to see Tigrinya speakers who do not want to speak their language but opt for Arabic!” He poured his bigoted wrath at a section of the Eritrean people; everyone knew his targeted group. No one challenged him for the lies and his misconstruing of facts. He knew and so did his listeners that there are no Tigrinya speakers who refuse to speak their language. Yet, he victimized the two citizens who respectfully asked him to maintain the Arabic and Tigrinya dual language arrangement for the sake of the Eritrean unity! Surely he remained in character: true to his cult beliefs, its destructive, exclusionary policies and practices. He replied in the only manner he know how: rude and chastising. While all this was going on in the hall, the crowd had no reaction but to continue being entertained. Not many questioned the sanity of their leader; not many questioned if his pronouncements were becoming of a head of state; no one thought it was their compatriots being insulted in public by a leader who was supposed to be the president of all Eritreans. On the contrary, like any obedient cult members, they just registered what he said in their mind, internalized it, and kept repeating his bigotry for the last two decades, and still continue to do so. With their attitudes, they damaged what was left of the harmony among Eritreans and they kicked their marginalization and exclusion project with full force. What possessed them to do so. How do the cult view the cult leader? Why is it taking them many decades to wake up? Are they now going to repeat what Asmelash recited on the regime-owned television on December 20? Time will tell! The Cult Was Already Formed In 1989, long before the euphoric years of the early nineties, and the above mentioned meeting of 1993, Isaias conducted a public meeting in Washington DC. By then the formation of the cult was well established. An attendant of that meeting emotionally describes Isaias as follows: “After I heard him, I recognized that he was a blend of all freedom fighters, dead and alive, and of the convictions of all the Eritrean peoples: peasants, nomads, literate and illiterate. I heard the voice of wisdom in our land, of the peasantry and the indomitable spirit of all the Eritrean fighters” It is understandable that some might go out of their way in expressing their passionate love for Isaias in that euphoric time; but the bigoted Isaias never represented the spirit of Eritreans or their wisdom. His destructive actions and tactics were opposed and criticized by many since the early seventies. Unfortunately, even those who found out his real character too late are not willing to abandon the cult policies despite the chaos and damage they inflicted on Eritrea and its people. And that forces one to conclude that they are no different from their leader: bigoted, arrogant, insincere, racists and foul-mouthed. Not just Isaias alone, but they too are the cause of our current predicament: a state of mistrust, disharmony and disarray. The cult members are those who flocked to see their cult leader by travelling thousands of miles, never questioning his damaging policies, his injustices and his brutality—his enablers flocked in their hundreds to New York last September to hear him speak. Only a few brave Eritrean souls demonstrated outside the meeting place to expose the tyrant and shame his enablers who endorse his brutality and lawlessness by sloganeering: He’s Us and We’re Him! Such lack of dignity and servitude, such dead conscience is really difficult to understand in this age unless one identifies the Eritrean regime as Isaias’ PFDJ cult. And ironically, the words that always comes out of the cult members’ mouth is “national unity!” In the language of the rascal Isaias, one would be tempted to say, “unity my foot.” In an interview that the cult leader had in 1987, Isaias stated that he, “learned Arabic to be able to communicate with [his] brothers in the field.” But in 1993, he condescendingly humiliated the two citizens: “do you speak Arabic in your homes?” What he doesn’t know was that in fact one of them might. The issue here calls for scrutiny: why did Isaias need to learn Arabic to communicate with his “brothers” and then make fun of those who are his “brothers” and who can only communicate with him in Arabic? Why does he want to deny Eritreans to communicate with their “brothers” in the language they use to communicate with each other? The Surrender Of The Cult Leader Now that the cult leader has surrendered and gave his directives to the ministry of education to teach Arabic, what are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to rejoice and say, ‘thank you papa Isaias, one concession, now continue to rule just like nothing happened?’ Hell no. He just can’t simply evade accountability for the decades of polarization he created; for the uprooting of people; for destroying the co-existence formula that Eritreans religiously kept; for causing the decay of the little education system that Eritrea had; for creating generations of illiterate youth; for denying Eritrea the resources of its children; for breaking the dream of our nation. Hell no. The damage that was done cannot be remedied by a policy switch that Isaias adopts in a hangover state after a wild liquor-drenched night. The Arabs say, “Afa Allah An Ma Selef”…Let bygones be bygones, even God forgives the mistakes of the past. All right, let God forgive him, together with any repentant, it is not our business. Wronged people have a right to claim justice for the wrongdoing. In 1993 when the Eritrean land was liberated, large numbers of the population were school age children. If not for Isaias’ bigoted policy, today every Eritrean under the age of 37 would have been fluent in both Arabic and Tigrinya languages. And anyone below the age of 44 would have proper conversational skill in two languages. Add to that the number of those who are already bilingual, well over 80 percent of Eritreans would have been bilingual. Of course, that assumes the educational standards, and illiteracy rates would have been far better than they are now—and if not for Isaias’ sick policies they would have been so. But Isaias can only do what Isaias knows best: destruction and chaos. Finally, can now we say that Isaias conceded, nay, we can say he surrendered and admitted that the bigoted policy he imposed on Eritrea was nothing less than destructive? Of course, he wouldn’t be Isaias if he openly admitted the damages he inflicted on the nation, but his switch of policy confirms just that: he surrendered to the view that all Eritreans (except the bigoted) hold. But whatever he does, one cannot hire a pickpocket for a position of a bank manager. Benjamin Zablocki, a professor of Sociology at Rutgers University, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult A source knowledgeable of the event informed the author. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bstFi9qYF5U&feature=related (accessed on December 24, 2011 Illen Gebrai, Eritrea, Miracleland, self-published in 1993, P7 Ahmed Mohammed Nasser, Tahadyat Messiryah Imam AlMujtama’a Al Eritry, self published, P82

Wednesday, November 4, 2015 1:30 PM EST First Evangelical Covenant Church 1933 Tremont Blvd. N.E. Grand Rapids, MI 49504 At the family's request memorial contributions are to be made to those listed below. Please forward payment directly to the memorial of your choice. First Evangelical Covenant Church Food Pantry Fund 1933 Tremont Blvd. N.W Grand Rapids, MI 49504 Below is the contact information for a florist recommended by the funeral home. Life Story / Obituary With a life that spanned nearly a century, Dorothy Kingsley was a vivacious, vibrant, and spirited woman who lived a life of purpose while holding her loved ones near. It was on October 18, 1916, that Raymond and Minnie (Videan) Hall were blessed with the birth of the baby girl they named Dorothy M. in Sturgis, Michigan. The second of four children of this family, they moved to the South side of Grand Rapids while Dorothy was a young girl. She attended local schools but left South High School in the 11th grade to help support the family as her father suffered with health issues. In keeping with her vivacious spirit she did go back to high school, took the required classes and graduated from Union High School in1972 at the age of 56. After being introduced by friends, Dorothy married her sweetheart, Paul Kingsley, in 1938 and settled on the West side where they soon welcomed their son, Ray, into their hearts and home. As WWII landed on our doorstep in 1941, Paul was called to serve during which time Dorothy worked at the Globe Knitting Company sewing and packing parachutes for the military. Upon his discharge, Paul returned home and started a business, Resistive Welder Service Company, and their family grew to include Chic, Diane, and Art. Dorothy focused her attention at home, and was active in the lives of her children including as president of the PTA and as a leader in Boy Scouts. She also volunteered within her community in other ways. Along with her family, Dorothy was an active member of the Evangelical Covenant Church. She joined the choir at age 70 and was the oldest member of the choir for many years. Dorothy was a very adventures person who loved to do things and go places. They often camped as a family, and when their children were grown she and Paul traveled more extensively to places like Asia, Africa, Europe, and China in addition to several places within North America. Dorothy and Paul also kept a huge flower and vegetable garden. Life was forever changed for Dorothy with the death of her husband in the mid nineties. Just a short time later her daughter, Chic, died, and although these were trying times her faith and the love of her family got her through. She was still active, too, as she traveled with her children and even her grandchildren. Bold and aggressive at times, Dorothy even pinned a grown man who was attempting to steal money from her daughter’s store in Charlevoix! She rode a motorcycle, went tubing at the age of 80, and continued to be the life of wherever she went. Deeply loved, Dorothy Kingsley will be forever missed. KINGSLEY – Mrs. Dorothy M. Kingsley, aged 99 of Grand Rapids passed away peacefully Sunday November 1, 2015. She was preceded in death by her husband Paul Kingsley and her daughter Chic Piccard. Surviving are her children: Ray and Maria Kingsley, Art and Janice Kingsley, Diane and John Ochs, her son-in-law Marvin and Dee Piccard, 8 grandchildren, 11 great grandchildren and one great great granddaughter and many nieces, nephews, her cousin and close friend, Marilyn Knapp. A service to celebrate her life will be held Wednesday at 1:30 PM at the First Evangelical Covenant Church, 1933 Tremont Blvd. N.W. Private interment will be in Rest Lawn Cemetery. Relatives and friends are invited to visit with the family Tuesday at the Heritage Life Story Funeral Home, 2120 Lake Michigan Dr. N.W. from 2-4 and 7-9 P.M. For those who wish memorial contributions to the Salvation Army or the First Evangelical Covenant Church Food Pantry fund would be appreciated. To read more of Dorothy’s life, share a memory or sign the online register book please visit www.lifestorynet.com

This is an excerpt from the excellent article Toxic Porn, Toxic Sex: A Real Look at Pornography You can’t learn the truth about sex from pornography. It doesn’t deal in truth. Pornography is not made to educate, but to sell. It is a big business that makes a lot of money, and doesn’t care how. Porn producers will show you whatever they think will make you come back and buy more. So, pornography will tell whatever it wants to attract you and/or hold an audience. Porn thrives on myths – mistruths about sex, women, marriage and a lot of other things. Let’s look at some of these and see just how they can mess up lives and attitudes: - Myths #1 – Women are less than human The women in Playboy magazine are called “bunnies,” making them cute little animals or “playmates”. Penthouse magazine calls them “pets.” Porn often refers to women as animals, playthings, or body parts. Some pornography shows only the body and doesn’t show the face at all. The idea that women are real human beings with thoughts and emotions, wonderful companions and spouses is played down or ignored. - Myths #2 – Women as a “sport” Some sports magazines have a “swimsuit” issue. This suggests that women can be just some kind of sport. Porn views sex as a game and in a game, you have to “win,” “conquer,” or “score.” Men who buy into this view like to talk about “scoring” with women. They start judging their manhood by how many “conquests” they can make. Each woman I “score” with is another trophy on my shelf, another “notch” in my belt to validate my masculinity. - Myths #3 – Women are property We’ve all seen the pictures of the slick car with the sexy girl draped over it. The unspoken message, “Buy one, and you get them both.” Hard-core porn carries this even further. It displays women like merchandise in a catalog, exposing them as openly as possible for the customer to look at. It’s not surprising that many young men think that if they have spent some money taking a girl out, they have a right to have sex with her. Porn tells us that women can be bought. Women and children are not commodities that can be bought or sold. - Myths #4 – A woman’s value depends on her attractiveness Less attractive women are ridiculed. They are called offensive names simply because they don’t fit into porn’s criteria of the “perfect” looking woman. Porn doesn’t care about a woman’s mind, emotions or personality, largely-only her body. - Myths #5 – Women like rape “When she says no, she means yes” is a typical porn scenario. Porn teaches men to enjoy hurting and abusing women for entertainment. This is truly demeaning, offensive and unrealistic. - Myths #6 – Little kids should have sex One of the biggest sellers in pornography is imitation “child” porn. The women are “made-up” to look like little girls by wearing pony tails, little girl shoes, holding a teddy bear. The message of the pictures and cartoons is that adults having sex with kids is normal and “alright”. This sets the porn user up to see children in a sexual way. These are our children, and our upcoming next generation. - Myths #7 – Illegal sex is fun Porn often has illegal or dangerous elements thrown in to make sex more “interesting.” It suggests that you can’t enjoy sex if it isn’t weird, illegal or dangerous. Truly a deception. - Myths #8 – Prostitution is glamorous Porn paints an exciting picture of prostitution. In reality, many of the women portrayed in pornographic material are runaway girls trapped in a life of slavery, some are orphans. Many having been sexually abused. Others are infected with incurable sexually transmitted diseases that are highly contagious and often die very young. Many take drugs just to cope. . .

Millions of Wattpad readers love Caleb and Red’s epic story: “I love this book to the core.” “I was so addicted… So in love that I couldn’t stop reading.” “The characters are just so real and possess such pure, raw emotions and passion.” “This book took me through an emotional roller coaster! I love everything about it!” THEY SAID SHE WAS GOING TO BE MY RUIN… THEN LET HER RUIN ME. He had everything—wealth, adoration, a brilliant future. Until one chance encounter changed everything. The moment Caleb Lockhart spotted the mysterious woman in her siren red dress, he couldn’t tear his eyes away. For the first time in his life, he wanted something. Something he knew he could never have. The unforgettable stranger he dubs RED. I stopped when I reached the kitchen. It had the same modern industrial feel as the rest of the place. There was a bar on the left side of the room with barstools tucked underneath. Crisp, white cupboards, granite countertops, glass pendant lights hanging from the vaulted ceiling, stainless-steel appliances—the whole works. My breath caught as I set eyes on someone standing in the corner. He was tall, his shirtless back showing he had tan skin, and I could see his muscles were rippling when he moved his arm. I stood there, nervous and scared. As if he sensed my presence, he turned around. His eyes widened and his jaw fell open as he took in my appearance. I knew that face. Caleb. Caleb Lockhart! Oh no, not him! This was not happening. I’d woken up in the lair of the campus man whore. A piece of bread fell out of his mouth as he continued to gape at me. His wavy brown hair was mussed and sticking up everywhere, as if he too had just woken up. His chest and stomach were well defined. The long counter in front of him ended just below his waist so I couldn’t see if he was— Please, God, I hope he’s wearing something down there. And then he grinned. As if he had all the time in the world, his gaze leisurely traveled from the top of my head to my toes, then back up to my face. I felt my toes tingle. “Hey, baby, you look like you’ve had a busy night,” he drawled. “Did we… Did you…?” I stuttered, crossing my arms to hide my chest from his lascivious gaze. One dark brow lifted as he waited for me to finish my question. My mouth felt dry, and my head was starting to throb. I looked down at my naked feet and wondered where I’d put my shoes. Silly, silly girl. “Just tell me,” I said finally. “Tell you what exactly?” His eyes were laughing at me, and I could see his dimples. He knew exactly what I was talking about, but he seemed to find joy in torturing innocent people. Jerk. When he stepped around the counter, I moved a step back and yelled, “Stay away from me!” At least he was wearing sweatpants. He frowned, holding his hands up. “What the hell is wrong with you?” My eyes frantically searched for a weapon nearby, in case he decided to attack me. I could grab one of the pans on the hanging pot rack if needed. “Why am I here?” “You don’t remember?” I had a sudden urge to pull my hair. “Remember what?” His face darkened. “Some pervert nearly attacked you last night. I saved you.” He shook his head. “He could have raped you.” My head started to throb. Memories from last night were starting to come back. “And you threw up all over my car.” He paused. “Twice.” “R-raped me?” I vaguely remembered resisting a guy’s advances. What if it was him? Caleb nodded, staring at me intently. The way his green eyes bored into me triggered a memory. A low, masculine voice murmuring, I’ve been looking for you my whole life… I shook my head to clear it and glared at him. “How do I know you’re not that guy?” “Oh please,” he scoffed, rolling his eyes. “I don’t have to force a girl to sleep with me.” He stepped back, leaned against a butcher block behind him, and crossed his arms against his impressive chest, studying me with his head tilted to the side. The muscles in his arms flexed. “Thank you,” I said quietly, but I was still suspicious. Growing up in a rough area meant suspicion came naturally to me. “I don’t remember much from last night.” “You were drunk,” he stated. “I think I remember that part.” “And you’re not hungover?” I shook my head. “Amazing,” he said, sounding impressed. “Look, if you don’t mind giving my shoes back, I can get out of your way.” I assumed he knew where they were. I didn’t find them in the bedroom. “Not so fast.” “What?” My eyes shot to an espresso machine sitting on the counter five feet away. I could use that in case he decided to grab me. Could I lift it? “You threw up all over my car, and I just got it a few weeks ago.” Oh. I bit my lip. “Isn’t your dad rich?” I gestured uselessly at the luxury surrounding us. “Can’t you just have somebody clean it for you?” His eyebrows shot up. “So you’re going to have someone else clean up your mess?” I clenched my teeth. “What do you want from me?” Leaning back, he pulled himself up to sit on the butcher block, his glorious body on uninterrupted display. I gulped. “Do you have anywhere to go when you leave?” There was a basket filled with apples beside him. He reached for one. How fortunate he was to reach for food whenever he wanted. He didn’t have to fear being hungry…or homeless. “What kind of question is that? I’m going home.” I had no clue where home was, but he didn’t know that. Without removing his gaze from mine, he tossed the apple in the air, caught it, tossed it again. “And where is that?” My stomach quietly growled. “It’s none of your business.” “Well, I quite possibly saved your life. I believe in conserving energy, so I want to make sure you don’t waste mine. I asked you last night where you live, and you told me you’re homeless. Frankly, right now, you look like someone just stole your last dollar.” My mouth opened in shock. He placed the apple back in the basket and crossed his arms again. Was he flexing in front of me? “Why do you care?” I demanded. It was a moment before he answered. “Do you really have somewhere to go?” The mild, sympathetic tone did it. I felt my throat close and my eyes tear up. I could tell he was uncomfortable with my sudden display. He jumped off the butcher block and went to open the fridge. “Here,” he said quietly, handing me a bottled water. I tried to say thank you, but my throat was too tight. When I looked up, he was backing away from me. “You know you stink, right?” I laughed. I laughed so hard that I was almost hyperventilating. Then I started crying. I couldn’t stop if I wanted to. To keep myself from falling on my face, I squatted where I was and sat on the floor. My crying turned to ugly hiccup-sobbing. He must have thought I was insane. “Why don’t you stay here for a bit until you find an apartment?” Shocked, I could only stare up at him. He shrugged. “I know when someone is at the end of their rope,” he added. At the end of their rope? I glared at him, quickly wiping at my tears. I hated looking up at someone when I talked to them so I got back on my feet, struggling to pull my dress down. He was still taller, which made me angrier. “Listen, pal, I may be homeless, but I am not accepting your charity.” We both fell silent. The sound of the water bottle crinkling in my hand was followed by that of a steady stream of water spilling onto the floor. Embarrassed, I closed my eyes. When I heard him clear his throat, I tried to calm my breathing by counting to ten before opening my eyes. His eyebrows were raised as if he was waiting for me to say something. When I didn’t, he continued. “Where else will you go? A homeless shelter? Listen.” He raised his index finger. “One, I live by myself, so you’ll only have the pleasure of my company. Two”—he raised a second finger—“you’re certainly safer here than at a shelter. And three”—he raised a third finger—“ding, ding, ding! You can stay here for free.” I narrowed my eyes. It all sounded too good to be true. “Why are you helping me?” Life had beaten me enough that I knew nothing came free. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know.” Live with Caleb Lockhart. In this huge place. For free. My only other options were the shelter or live on the streets. “I’m not going to be your prostitute.” He looked insulted. “Do you really think I need one? Woman, have you seen this body? Besides,” he added, grinning, “when you decide to sleep with me, you’ll be the one paying me.” Wow. The size of his ego must constantly give him a headache. I gave him a disgusted look and pretended to yawn. “Everything that’s coming out of your mouth sounds interesting. I don’t know why I keep yawning.” Those green eyes widened and homed in on my face. I thought I’d pissed him off this time, but the most unexpected thing happened. He started laughing. “I like you,” he said, chuckling. “I mean you’re a knockout, but I didn’t think it went beyond that.” Did he just insult me? “I’m offering you a way out of your misery. Why don’t you take it?” He pinched his nose with his fingers. “And could you please take a shower? You might be gorgeous, but I ain’t spending time with a girl who smells like the sewer.” I huffed. He was right though—I smelled really, really bad. But… “Then what do you want in exchange?” “Not everyone wants something from you,” he replied grimly. “Oh, is that what you think?” I laughed bitterly. “Everyone wants something one way or another. Haven’t you learned that yet?” He tilted his head to the side and studied my face again. I wondered what he saw when he looked at me. My looks and the shape of my body usually made people think I was always looking for fun. Fun was the last thing on my mind. I was too busy staying alive, too busy working for my next meal to think about anything else. Last night had been an anomaly. I had no other good options—just shelter or street—and he was offering me a way out. He at least looked sincere. It was about choosing the lesser of two evils. I took a deep breath. “I could clean,” I said quietly. Was I really doing this? Why not? The world hadn’t given me a free ticket in so long. I was overdue for one. “Sorry?” He blinked at me, and I wasn’t sure if he was teasing or serious. “I didn’t hear what you said.” I took another deep breath, and this time my voice was stronger. “I could clean your place in exchange for my stay.” “I already have someone come in three times a week for that,” he answered. “I can cook.” He frowned. “Don’t string me along like that. That’s not very nice.” I rolled my eyes. “Can you really cook?” His face lit up. He looked like a little boy who had found the last cookie at the bottom of the jar. “Yes,” I answered, ignoring the crazy effect his smile had on me. This was too easy. “You said you live by yourself, but how can you afford this place?” His expression shuttered. I hoped he didn’t think I was trying to find out how much money he had. That I was a gold digger. But why wouldn’t he think that? He didn’t know me from Eve. I might have been poor, but I wasn’t a freeloader. My hands proved how hard I worked, and I was proud of that. One more year and I would get that diploma. I’d work my ass off to have a good life. I didn’t need much—a steady job, a simple house, and a serviceable car would be more than enough to make me happy. And I would never go hungry again. I’d get there without help from anyone. “Look,” I hissed angrily. “I was only curious. If you think I’m some gold digger—” He held a hand up. “Will you stop putting words in my mouth? Do you really think I want this life? This…this.” He gestured to the whole room. “You think this makes me happy?” His jaw was set, his hands fisted. “Yes!” I answered. I fell silent, incredulous. He had no concept of what it meant to go hungry, to not know where he was going to sleep next, to live in fear. We were worlds apart. This was never going to work. We both stood there awkwardly, but after a few seconds, he opened his mouth again, waggling his eyebrows as if nothing had happened. “Know what? You do my homework while you’re cooking my dinner tonight.” So much for that moment. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. “Hold on,” he said. “I didn’t even get your name.” “I’m Caleb Lockhart.” Chasing Red Duology: Chasing Red (Book 1) Always Red (Book 2)

As you may have guessed the name I’m writing this under isn’t my real one. Don’t ask me why I feel the need to hide my identity, but it feels right to me so anytime you see ‘Alphonse’ I’m referring to my Dunan’s actual name. Anyway, my own idiosyncrasies aren’t why I’m writing this. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of video games, not anymore anyway. When I was younger I loved them to death, but I’m twenty-six and I’ve found that as I get older they’re just less enjoyable. I think it may have something to do with the fact that very few games catch my interest anymore, but that’s for another time. What I’m about to tell you isn’t a recent event and took place when I was in high school. Back then I was in love with a game called Suikoden 2. Now I’m not a fan of the series, #1 was okay, #2 the very pinnacle of the series, #3 was garbage, #4 was eh, and #5 I’ve never played. I’ve also played very few of the spin offs mainly because most were never released in English and I can’t read Japanese. If you don’t know what Suikoden is it’s an old RPG for the PSX. If you feel like Googling Suikoden 2 or just looking it up on gamefaqs.com you can learn more about it, I would recommend playing it, though you’ll probably have to get a ROM as finding a hard copy is pretty expensive these days (mine cost me around $250 on Amazon.) Now, I know where this seems to be heading, but nothing strange ever happened to me in Suikoden 2, I just love the game and feel most people would because of the story, side quests, and extras in the game. #1 is pretty good too and should be played first (both because end save data unlocks things in #2 as well as the fact that certain characters carry over) but #2 is better and #1 isn’t necessary to understand it. Sorry, I’m getting distracted. So I use to look up art and information on Suikoden 2 all the time and ran across two Japanese only game titles Genso Suiko Gaiden Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. Essentially these are text and picture based games that give you some background information from Suikoden 2, expound on relationships of some characters from both 1 & 2, and also provides some info into the backgrounds and goals of some characters in #3. Yea, back then I was still trying to be loyal to the whole series even though #3 had clearly been disloyal to the series and me as a fan. I didn’t have too much experience with ROMS or Emulators at this point in life. Pretty much all of my knowledge came from playing Suikoden 2 on EPSX. Even though I owned Suikoden 2 I had gotten a ROM because playing the game so often on my PSX had actually caused it to have an issue with a part of the game in Tinto where I would be stuck in the mayor’s manor at night unable to exit or go up stairs forcing me to reset and hope that it didn’t happen again. Sometimes I got lucky, but I’d had the game for about six years and played it continually so the error was becoming more and more common. Hell you could see the burn marks in the bottom of the disc from being played so much. So I got the ROM and bought a PSX-esque style game controller to play with. After a while of playing Suikoden 2 on EPSX I decided to try my hand at finding Genso Suiko Gaiden Vol 1. It took me a while, but overall the game wasn’t too difficult to find, and I ended up downloading it from Emu Paradise since coolrom.com hadn’t had it. The download hadn’t had the (J) notation after the title in the file name so I thought it was a translated copy. I started the game and the opening movie caught me making me ready to immerse myself in the world of Suikoden from a different angle. Of course I ended up finding out very shortly that the entire game was still in Japanese. I tried to play and understood none of what was going on. I recognized some of the characters, Nash from #3, Sierra from #2, and thought the art work was awesome. But I was choosing options at random and had a similar feeling to the Suikoden Card game I had downloaded for Visual Boy Advance, which was also in Japanese, meaning I felt like I was wasting my time. So of course, as any good gamer, I decided that my best option was to find an English patch. Well, I found a website that was devoted to translating both the first and second game and developing a patch for the ROMs to make them English reader friendly. Unfortunately both games were only about forty percent translated and no patch had been developed. I really didn’t look that hard the first time and other than this one site I didn’t find anything. I figured if so few sites popped up right away the odds weren’t very good. I was pretty disheartened at this point, I mean I really wanted to play this game, but learning a whole new language to do it just wasn’t an option. Now, I’ve done Martial Arts most of my life and since I had done Nindo Ryu Kobujutsu I knew a little Japanese, but nothing on the scale I would need to read the characters. My last ditch effort was to look for a translated script (which I found) and attempt to get through the game that way. I got past the first chapter and entered a village in the second chapter, but it became tedious to keep looking at the script, ruined the experience, and I gave up. Frustrated I closed the emulator and went back to regular gaming, but I couldn’t get the idea of seeing my favorite game from a new angle as well as my favorite characters in a new light out of my mind. It stayed there in the back of my brain tucked away, waiting patiently. A few weeks passed before my insatiable need tugged at me. I decided that no matter what I was going to find an English patch for the ROM and play through this game, even if the patch wasn’t a good translation but just some fan made copy that was just close enough to the original to carry the basic meaning. I scoured the internet like a dog chasing down the scent of a steak. I didn’t just want it anymore, I burned for it, I needed it. All I could think of was playing this game. I must have downloaded at least a dozen patches from various sites with little to no effect, I was always sure to make a copy of the ROM in case things fell apart. Some of these patches worked in bits allowing some of the text to be changed to English while the rest remained unreadable. Some just turned the text into a garbled mess of characters, and others literally did nothing that I could see. One site I visited had a patch to download, but unlike the other patches the file had quite a few ratings and comments about how good it was. Feeling that others had used this patch with full effect I was pretty confident about it. I downloaded, unzipped, and applied the patch with great hopes. Now, I want to pause here for a moment to explain some things about Suikoden. The game is about war, meaning that death and blood are in the game. While mostly it’s pretty PG (nothing gory, no body parts ripped off, and gallons of blood didn’t cover any part of the game, etc.) it still had its moments. You can recruit 108 characters in the games to create your army and even use in the standard RPG (not all 108 could be used outside of the army battles.) However, these characters could die in the game and not just non essential characters either. While many of the characters you can recruit are missable in a normal play through even those essential to the story could die. This means you can’t just throw away your people’s lives in army battles because you may just lose them for the rest of the game and fewer troops meant harder battles, plus losing a member of your RPG party sucked. Death could happen, and more than once I had to reset Suikoden 2 to regain an ally I had lost because of my careless choices. I guess in the end the story behind Suikoden 2 kind of makes you become invested. I wanted to point this out because I was fully expecting some blood and death in Genso Suiko Gaiden considering the artwork was much more up close and detailed than Suikoden 2 which had bit type graphics. After the patch finished applying I loaded the ROM and prepared to play. Now, I had played up to the first village so getting there was easy as pie, of course being able to understand the text made the experience very enjoyable. The verbal sparring between Nash and Sierra was worth all the searching. The translation wasn’t so bad but not everything quite matched up to the script. At the first village I ended up in a fight. Now I don’t remember if this was automatic or if I had to choose to get involved, but some Highland Knights were attacking the people. There was the standard text style fighting where I chose my reactions and I won beating the enemy. I loved it; I cannot even describe just how much excitement and satisfaction I was getting. I had to fight a few other enemies before they were going to overwhelm me and I had to flee. Obviously this was a part of the story as was my character hiding. The screen flashed black, you know the standard “AND TIME HAS PASSED” flash in these types of games that lets you know you’ve been doing the same thing for a while. The village was burned down, clearly my character hadn’t changed the outcome of the village’s fate, but I knew this was coming. The flames of war had torn through Suikoden 2 and as this was related it was inevitable that they would consume a lot in this game as well. Nash, that’s the main character you basically play as at this point, walked through the village. The screen showed burned out homes, deserted shops, and bodies lying on the ground unmoving. The music became sad and I felt myself becoming angrily melancholic. This was just a game, but it was still an atrocity. These people just wanted to live their lives, to grow up and have children and love, and it was all ripped away from them. I listened to the music, saw the bodies lying around, and continued to hear it as Nash walked throughout the town seeing all of this and, in my mind, bearing a final witness to the lives lost. Then I heard it, under the music as if it was far off. A little girl saying “Mommy, why are you all red and sticky? Please, get up those bad men might come back!” I thought Nash would react and go look, but he didn’t. It was like it wasn’t really a part of the game. I thought maybe someone had added this in or maybe, because it was so low, that it was something the programmers had forgotten to remove from the track. A part of the game that was never fully developed and later removed, a belief I held mainly because it was similar to something Palika says to Jowy and the main character of Suikoden 2. Maybe homage purposely left behind? Nash didn’t leave the village instead walking towards a small patch in the middle of the town that had been gated off. The gate was on the ground indicating that at some point during the attack it must have been knocked down. The picture changed and the sky suddenly turned to night. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but each image had very slightly altered the sky moving more towards night so subtle that I hadn’t even noticed it. I looked up and rubbed my eyes behind my glasses. To my surprise it was dark in my room. The sun had actually gone down and it was night outside. During my game play I had been so immersed that I was totally unaware of my surroundings. I looked back at the screen and realized the sad music had stopped and been replaced by the sound effect of wind blowing. Of course this was mostly fake sounding but sometimes, at the high wind parts, it sounded as if someone was breathing into a microphone on the other end. You know that high scratchy kind of sound that usually grates on your nerves. It gave the entire scene a feeling as if I wasn’t just watching it, but I was there. A text box popped up asking me if I wanted to save my progress. I selected no and another box popped up reading “You have been playing for far too long. Please, rest your weary eyes for a while.” It then popped up the same text box asking me if I would like to save or save and quit. I figured it was a built in part of the game that forced you to quit if you played too long. Considering how long I had been unaware of anything in the real world I decided that it would be best to simply leave the game for the night. I clicked to save and quit and heard that little girl’s voice in the distance again under the sound effects. I thought she said ‘You’re sore’ but later I thought she said “Your sword.” I tried to sleep that night, but I heard something just as I was drifting off. It was the clear sound of the front door to my house opening and closing, then the steady sound of walking. Not normal walking, or sneak walking, but steady foot steps for Dunan that seemed to move at the pace one might expect from a man coming home after having worked a double shift without a break. They ascended the stairs and I got nervous. I thought someone had just broken into my house and yet no one else got up. My brother’s room was just behind mine and my grandparents, who raised me, slept just across the hall. The house was dark having only the light from the street lamps very dimly filtering in through drawn shades, which didn’t really give me much to see by. I couldn’t relax and as much as I told myself the sounds were my imagination I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. I’m not a huge believer in anything paranormal, but this was definitely happening. I always kept my katana behind the headboard of my bed and I reached for it pulling it around close to me and gripping it tight. If this was a robber he certainly wasn’t getting out of here unscathed. I heard the steps pause when I grabbed the weapon, for only a moment, before continuing up. When it reached the top of the stairs I was preparing for my chance, waiting to see the flashlight pop on, and wondering if I would react in time. I watched a shadow, darker than what surrounded it move to stand in front of my door. It was a tall man shaped figure and other than that had no discernable features. I knew it was looking at me and I stared right back at it for some time. I had spent so long staring at this seemingly malevolent entity without it moving that I became convinced it was just my imagination and went to sleep clutching my sword tightly. I sure as hell wasn’t going to push my luck by trying to approach it. The next morning I chalked the previous night’s events up to Dunan my imagination and a lack of sleep, but it took me a little longer to get to sleep from that night on and I made sure my sword was grasped tightly in my hands. I didn’t accept what had happened, just like I didn’t accept the Bloody Mary legend. Yet, I still never called on her in the dead of the night while in front of a mirror because sometimes you just never knew. I didn’t get to play again until the weekend because of all the homework I got that week, senior year was killing me. I started up the game and got ready to play, the game continued right where I left it. The night sky was dark in the picture and the graveyard was as anime-esque as one would expect. The sound of the wind whipped through my headphones and a text box appeared stating. “Welcome back. Your weary eyes are rested, and the prologue has ended.” I hit the confirm button assuming the game was referring to the fact that I had proceeded past the first section of the game and into the second. The image changed and showed a closer view as if Nash had actually entered the graveyard. The next text to appear was in Japanese and I groaned out loud throwing my head back in frustration. “I can’t read this crap. Please do not tell me that the patch only fixed the first part of the game. I will be so pissed.” I was a loner and talking out loud was second nature to me. My family were not talkers and conversation between any of us was rare. My brother and I were both reserved, so talking to the empty air was just habit. Association with people has never been a goal of mine or something I sought out. If it happened, it happened, but mostly I just stayed to myself. Anyway, I looked back at the screen hoping that it was simply one of a few untranslated parts. I went to the script I had downloaded and scrolled down past the first chapter. As I began to read the second chapter to find my place I noticed that what I was seeing and what the script depicted weren’t the same. According to the script Sierra should have left after Raen Penenberg’s Mansion in chapter one, which she had, but then I should have been taken to Muse, the capital of all the City States of Jowston Hill. This wasn’t Muse at all. The art work didn’t appear to be Muse in the least, except for a few differences, like the graveyard, the village looked somewhat like Toto or Ryube village. Basically a standard non-descript town. I thought maybe the English patch had messed with the game, but when I played through the Japanese text version I had also been taken to this village. It just didn’t make sense, could someone really have gone through the trouble to make all of this art, or at least edit it, and rewrite the game so you go to Toto? But why? None of the comments on the download had said it was off, in fact all the comments for it were positive so no one else got a screwed with download. Could it just be a mistake? A joke maybe for the x numbered person to get a phony version? “Are you? Or aren’t you?” the voice carried through my mind and I snapped my attention back to the screen. A non-descript, standard NPC, old woman was kneeling beside one of the graves and had spoken to me. The screen was letting me choose an option. I wasn’t sure how to answer the question since it was so vague and selected “am” from the two options. I hadn’t expected anyone in the game to directly speak, not that I was surprised, I mean Lunar and Lunar 2 had both had voice acting in their games so it wasn’t unheard of. Despite this small surprise the rest of her words were text as I was use to. “I believe you are, yet for how long? When does you are, become you aren’t? He does not want you to be. But to be not. Can you withstand it? Can you continue on in the wake of those screams that reverberate? Does it not, hurt you? Do you not hear them? They wish to enter, to rend, to break, but I see no value in such actions.” Suddenly there was a shrill laughter coming across as the woman’s still image bounced up and down. There was a hard crash against my window and I jumped staring as if I could see through the blinds to the window behind it. A second bang and I leapt up ripping my headphones off throwing my laptop on the bed and moved towards the window. I pulled the blinds open quickly but nothing was there. My heart was pounding as my brain puzzled over what could possibly have been hitting the window when the third crash came making me jump back at the intensity before my mind could process what had happened. “God, you’re a freagin’ idiot!” the wind was high and the intense blasts were just making the window slam against the frame because of their sudden change as they hit the side of the house. I’d freaked myself out over some stupid game that was probably hacked. I sat back on my bed and picked up my laptop to find a message on the screen. “Were you startled? He is coming, the madness, the insanity, yet his strength is still low. You may yet want to see what is here.” The old woman vanished from the screen and a text box asked if I would like to look at the graves. I selected yes, and the option to save was prompted again. I selected no and received this message. “Your knowledge is lacking. Please rest your weary mind.” And prompted me to save and return to title screen, or save and quit. I saved and returned to the title. I decided to try and continue but when I selected it, EPSX closed and a Windows alert appeared reading It freaked me out to be honest, but I went to a technical high school and took Info Tech as a shop. I knew that it was easy to program this kind of stuff if you had the time and toyed with the idea that maybe what I was seeing was an antipiracy joke. Something the programmers had created to stop people stealing the game like this. As I said at the beginning I wasn’t very experienced with emulators and knew that it was possible I had done something wrong and the game had registered that it was being played on a PC as a ROM or at least not an the right system. I shutdown my laptop and went to sleep. Clearly something was up. Though I was excited by the prospect of what was happening, I also felt like a kid who had just snuck into an abandoned house, on edge and weary of what was to come next. I had a hard time falling asleep as the wind kept slamming into my window making it rattle hard, but eventually I dozed. I dreamt about fire that night, smoke and flames that wreathed and twisted into the shapes of faces that seemed to be trying to escape their fate. They kept saying ‘why us?’, “how did we earn your wrath?”, and “please, no more.” I woke up in a cold sweat about half an hour before my alarm would have gone off. I knew the dream was inspired by the game, but that wasn’t what had bothered me. The feel of the dream was what had gotten to me, because it wasn’t new, in fact it was kind of like an old friend, but one of those ones you hoped never to meet again. See when I was very young I use to have this nightmare at least once a year. It was about this arcade game that was just…wrong. There’s no other way to put the feeling it gave me when I saw it. The entire machine was black like an old arcade Pac-Man only without any colorful designs on the side to give you a hint at what the game was and there wasn’t even a name. The b*****s weren’t labeled and it was only built for one player, it had a single joy stick and two red b*****s. Even when someone was playing it I never saw any images on the screen or heard any noises coming out of it. I was always confused at the beginning because everyone playing it would comment on how cool the game looked and how awesome it was, but anytime I tried to play it, nothing happened. In some ways the dream reminds me of the old Polybius urban legend though I didn’t find that out until its famous addition to the Secrets and Lies section of Game Pro which I subscribed to and by then the dreams had stopped. When someone else played the game they would become increasingly intent on it and I always tried to stop them. Eventually, after what I assumed they thought was victory over the computer, they would act like robots and attempt to kill me. I always knew it was coming and yet I could never do anything before the completion of the person’s game. I couldn’t run or hide or even make more than feeble verbal attempts to stop them. I knew what was happening that entire time, but was not allowed to freely choose my actions until after the game had completed its mission. Invariably I was never able to play the game, only escape from my fate, and eventually the dreams stopped. All I remember of them now are the game cabinet, a short scene in which I flee from my grandparents back hall into the street where an attacker slams the ground causing it to rumble and throw me off balance, and an image of that blank screen, but deep within it a silverish face, almost a mask, that I somehow know is seeing me just as I am seeing it. An image that flashed for only a split second before I awoke from each dream. I’ll always remember the terror and total lack of control I had in them. This dream felt the same, because in both of them it was as if they weren’t my dreams at all, but instead something that had already existed and I was only being allowed to watch, an inevitable but inescapable fate that would continue to play out until it finally overtook me. There wasn’t a feeling in the world that terrified me more. I skipped playing the game the next day. I was getting way too deep into it if I was staring to have nightmares, but my curiosity wasn’t sated and I began to look up if anyone else had been having any strange occurrences with the game. I couldn’t find anything on the internet related to it and after hours of searching I started trying to search for Dunan some of the phrases that had been presented to me, but came up with nothing. I think, now that I’m older, I probably would have taken screenshots (I would say video, but even to this day I’ve never gotten EPSX to properly record my games. Instead the game just becomes jumpy and the video ends up a very faintly connected slide show of still shots if it even records at all.) Posted on message boards despite my reluctance to engage with people, anything, but I never thought of it. Maybe it was because I was denying so much of what was happening, or maybe because any of what was going on could easily have been edited, or even written off as a hack of some sort, course I didn’t actually know that hacks were a thing back then, but I knew it was possible. It was a full week before I played the game again and since I was putting it off it was already nightfall when I started. I was lying down with my knees bent propping my laptop on them. Truth be told I had to make myself man up and when I finally continued the game I was greeted by another message, though this one seemed urgent and looked as if it had been scratched into the text box. The sound effect of wind had been heavy the last time, but now it sounded more like panting. Like someone had run really far or really fast and had stopped to catch their breath. The message read: “He is Coming. Glory of Harmonia to Dunan in the Highland. The Scarlet Toran has been broken. He is coming. He is coming. There is no where left for you to run.” This message made absolutely no sense. It didn’t say who “he” was, but Dunan, Harmonia, Highland, Scarlet, and Toran were all areas of the Suikoden universe. Dunan was the renamed City States of Jowston Hill at the end of the game. Highland was the kingdom the hero was originally from. Harmonia was a land that was to the north that you never saw, but it provided aid to Highland in battle. Scarlet was short for the Scarlet Moon Empire which was overthrown by the original hero McDohl of #1 and became known as the Toran Republic. I didn’t see why the lands of the game were being mentioned. The pictures suddenly showed a close up of a grave which had a blank line carved for the name and a small picture of the hero from Suikoden 2. Under this was a quote which read “Sacrificed, for the glorious repentance of Dunan. Though a hero of the people, and merciful in all he did, he did not oppose the greatest of villains and his demise was inevitable.” A second stone which read “Jowy: Given as tribute to the Scarlet Highland. His life was given over to the opposition of the oppressor. He who’s heart was black as night. Mourned was his body on the broken mountain side.” The third stone read “Alphonse: Fallen to the dark hand of Dunan. His hatred was not understood, nor his mercy ever seen. All hail the dark heart of Alphonse. There is no where left for you to run.” I didn’t comprehend what I was reading at first and it took a minute for it to sink in. The screen started to flash red and white and suddenly a voice said breathlessly “He is coming! Glory to Dunan, He is coming!” Suddenly I felt something hit my mattress hard from below. Like someone was lying underneath and had just punched as hard as they could into the middle of it. I immediately leapt into a sitting position scooting back from the middle of my bed tossing the laptop aside and tearing my headphones off. Honestly I didn’t associate this with the game in fact I didn’t know what to make of it. Maybe a spring popped, I’d had the same mattress for twelve years so it wasn’t out of the question, hell my body was imprinted in the thing both on my side and Dunan on my back. As I watched a second shot hit the mattress it lifted pushing outward. I shot to my feet, leapt to the end of my bed and jumped full force to the door of my room spinning around to look at my bed. My heart was racing and I was freaking out. There was a third thump against the underside of the mattress and I took off into my older brother’s room. I told him about the mattress, nothing else, and decided I wasn’t going back into that room. Course I never would call myself smart. In the end I went back to my room and found that the game had shut off and a Windows alert message was present. It read I decided I needed a break from all of this, it was getting way too freaky, but I also needed to finish this entire course of events. Whatever was going on, it was building to something and I needed to see it through to the end. Just not that night, I needed a rest and I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. I couldn’t bring myself to restart the game all day, but I had to complete whatever I had started. I decided that I wasn’t going to run away from this, I had trained for eleven years as a martial artist and I’d be damned if I was going to keep letting some game push me around. Working up my courage as the sun set I started up my laptop and began the game. The opening message upon continuing was simple this time. “He is here. Face him now or be no more. The Glory of Dunan rises. Will you be? Or will you be not?” I hit the confirm button and the text box disappeared. There was an image on the screen of a grave that had slid back to reveal a hole descending into the earth. Without being prompted I found myself descending into the open grave. I was in a cave like tunnel and I had to select to move forward bit by bit. While I thought there would be no enemies there were some that attacked every few steps. However, instead of an actual battle the game displayed questions, some were mundane, but some very personal, and some just confusing. I’ll list some of the questions below placing the answer I chose first in the line and the other possible answers after that. Some of these are exact and others are as close as I could remember. In the end I only included the ones that I did have some recollection of rather than the ones I thought where there but wasn’t sure of. “Are you afraid of the dark?” No-Yes “Is being what you do?” ???-Of Course –Who would? “Do you love your family?” Friend-Family-No One “Can you do the zombie shuffle?” Chickal-Dogras-___ “Does the light hurt your eyes?” No-Yes (There was a flash during this question) “Are you a bully?” No-Yes “Do you worship Dunan?” Death for me-Yes-Yes-With all my being “Is the glory of Dunan within you?” Appleseeds-Smile “What is thines desire?” Balance-Power-Wisdom-Peace-Desire-Madness “Are you afraid to be intimate?” Yes-No “If East could taste would West desire hunger?” Compass-North-South-Bahbahbodofilledahshickashickadorgelest(It sounded kind of like that so I tried my best to recreate it. I think it may have just been garbled text, but who knows.) “Does the dance fit the hat?” Fedora-Tophat “Can the essence of moonbeams top the hearing of the wind?” Wizard “Have you ever forced yourself on someone?” No-Yes-Only when I knew they wanted it On and on these questions went seeming so random and I answered but they didn’t appear to have any affect on the game at all that I could tell, but maybe this Dunan may he live forever, that the game alluded to was being affected by it. After about forty of these encounters I reached a set of stairs and descended heading down another hall. I only met three enemies and was given three statements which I could answer or ignore. I’ll list the statements and whether I answered or not. The fact was that even when I chose to answer I never saw a reply. “Kneel before the dark Dunan of madness.” Ignore “He is coming” Answer “Even in the brightest light, your heart still doth burn with demonic light.” Ignore I found myself in a large cavern where stood a man shaped figure that the game hadn’t given any detail to. Suddenly the figure appeared on my screen and looked, for all I could tell, like Luca Blight, except he wasn’t quite right. I heard a voice through the headphones, a laugh that told me this was most definitely supposed to be Luca Blight. Only, the voice was much more insane than I had ever imagined it. Now anyone who’s played Suikoden 2 knows that one look at the Luca Blight artwork is enough to tell you that he’s partially mad, though none the less cunning for it. But this face was just a little off, just a bit too far in that direction. Even the undertone in the voice said that this wasn’t Luca Blight wearing the cloak of insanity, but pure insanity wearing the cloak of Luca Blight. “I am Dunan, harbinger of madness.” That laugh, sounded again over the cautious music playing in the background. As if it was a signal that off key laugh seemed to cause a hiccup in the music. Now it began to speed up and slow down for split second intervals before returning to normal only to repeat again. This hiccup wasn’t unnatural and acted the same way Suikoden 2’s audio did before I figured out how to properly set up the plug-in. This didn’t freak me out because messing with the settings of the audio was possible during game play, in fact, the music just made the encounter more real, and gave me the distinct impression that I was indeed on his playing field, I had gone into his lair where madness was born and bred causing even the music itself to warp to his will. How long could I resist that undertone of insanity that seemed to offer such a sweet relief from all the problems of life? I shook my head and the image changed showing that Dunan’s face was frowning. Soon it changed back to that mad laughing expression and the voice warbled as if one of my headphone wires was broken and barely connecting. “Bow to Dunan and know that all that has come before this was but a temporary distortion of reality.” A text box appeared giving me three options Bow, Resist, Pause. I chose to resist and watched as the screen flashed red. It showed an image of the Main Hero from Suikoden 2 dodging a sword swipe, but the tip of the blade had caught his cheek and a thin line of blood ran down it. A short animation played showing Dunan swinging wildly. All hail Dunan. Not a cartoon like animation, more like a short .GIF that continued to repeat for a few seconds. My screen then jumped left and right as if dodging and flashed red once before Dunan continued. Glory to Dunan. “All will fall before Dunan. How can you hope to resist? There is peace and power in Dunan. There is reality, not a simple distortion of worlds.” I felt my mind whirling. Could he be right? Were my efforts inevitably futile? Long live Dunan. Did it really make more sense to give in and accept that life would become easier? Glorious Dunan. The cares of the world could flow away and I’d be Dunan safe in a world where no one could hurt me or control me. Dunan consumes all. Where I would be sole ruler over my destiny. No one Dunan would give glory to be able to hinder me and I could do whatever I Dunan pleased. Three options appeared “Bow, Resist, and Declare.” And I hovered over Bow. It would be so easy, Dunan in the highest, so wonderfully Dunan. Suddenly I heard that little girls voice saying “Why’s Daddy covered in this sticky red stuff?” I could bow and it would be over, but what then? What about my friends and family who depended on me? Yea, I Dunan would be in control, and my Dunan’s will would be absolute. But how self serving would that be? What about all the times they would need me to lean on, to carry them through and help them. No, it was too selfish to just give in and enjoy such a carefree life. This was about more, it was bigger than just me. I chose to declare and a text box appeared that said “Alphonse: My friends are important. I have gathered them from near and far, and we will defeat you. Just as the Mad Prince fell, so too with the Mad Emperor. No glory to Dunan. No Harmonia for Dunan. Dunan’s reign has passed into the shadows of time. For selfish is Dunan and I will not oblige his will.” Again the .GIF of attack played but this time there was no flash of red after my dodge and instead I was given three options similar to those seen in the dual sequences in Suikoden 2. It read Attack, Defend, Wild Attack. I choose to wild attack knowing that Dunan would not expect it and the screen flashed red five times before holding at red as a pained laughter kicked up. Dunan all hail him appeared bloodied and clearly injured, I’d done some massive damage to him long live Dunan as I had hoped, but just as Luca Blight once had he laughed it off, mad to the end and unable to know when he was going to be defeated. “Dunan will rise. The graves will tremble and the lands will burn in icy fire that consumes all there is. Pigs like you cannot stop me! Dunan is power, Dunan is brimstone and ashes. Dunan is life. Dunan is all, Dunan consumes all.” The .GIF animation played again and I was given the dodge sequence. This time I was given a fourth option for attack which read “Forgiver’s Sign.” I selected it and the screen flashed green and white as if using the final attack of the Bright Shield Rune. I felt a pressure in my head as if it was getting ready to explode as the bright screen pierced my eyes like needles. The game screen finally began to glow a brighter and brighter white before going dark. As the light faded so did the pressure Dunan the powerful I watched for a moment and was prompted with a text box which read. “The madness of Dunan is at rest.” I hit the button and the game returned to Dunan is all the title screen. All of the options were blanked out and I couldn’t select anything. I shut down EPSX and tried to restart it but with no Dunan luck. I didn’t understand what had happened and once I realized it was nearly three AM I decided to try again the next day. I shut down my laptop and lay down to sleep feeling as if I had just closed the cover on a long and tiring book. I had a hard time falling asleep and after a short time felt the corner of my bed sink in. My cat at the time was twenty pounds so it wasn’t uncommon of him to jump on the edge of my bed and do that. I called him up to me but he didn’t move. Sleep proved impossible with that corner of my mattress distracting me. After about half an hour I finally said “Come on up here or get off, you’re annoying me.” There was no response and so I kicked out thinking to push him off the bed and teach him a lesson. My foot met no resistance and suddenly the corner of my bed rose back up. I sat up terrified. I hadn’t felt any malevolence from whatever had been there, but I still didn’t like this kind of crap happening. I wish I could tell you everything wrapped up in a nice neat little bow, but it didn’t, not then anyway. The next time I started up Genso Suiko Gaiden it was back in Japanese and using the script I got to chapter 2 and Muse just like I was suppose to. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about these events and their connections and while I’m not sure I do have a theory. Dunan was the region that encompasses the City-States of Jowston Hill and the Highland Kingdom at the end of Suikoden 2. During the course of the game there is a lot of death, destruction, and heartache. But what if when I finished the game on the emulator, it wasn’t the end? What if all those victories, all those playthoroughs, all that death and destruction didn’t just fade away when I turned the game off? The game had used my real name, a name I never put on my computer. I always used an old nickname I’d had since my mIRC days, except for the Main Hero of #2, the only place it could have gotten it. I believe, fully, that every time I played there was a little left over, a little damage to Dunan may he rule forever, to its towns, cities, and citizens. Maybe the pile got too big, the madness and horrors of war visited time and again on these people finally rising up on it’s own to try and visit just a little of that madness on the one who caused it. I don’t know if this is true, and my love of games was never affected by it (though age took care of that to an extent.) My logical mind always tells me that it was just junk data, just the ghost in the machine, rising up, that it couldn’t really hurt me and like all junk eventually broke down and went back to being blank. But what about the mattress? What about the dark figure in my doorway? Was any of it even connected or was it all separate events that just happened to take place around the same time? Hadn’t the voice of the little girl both warned me and anchored me to reality? Or was that just junk data, a coincidence? The remains of those characters that held that more war wasn’t the answer? I don’t use my real name anywhere anymore, because what if Dunan great is he isn’t finished? What if Dunan glory be to him is still looking for me wanting to settle its score once more? I am not a superstitious man, and in the end I always tell myself that it was just the wild imaginings of a sleep deprived teenager and a game that must have been messed with. Maybe even just the imaginings of a guilty conscience that couldn’t separate the fake game from the reality of the situation because of the time and heart invested into it. The wild ideas of a child like mind similar to the monsters that we imagine living under our beds. But I still always cover my feet, close my door tight, and lie awake before I drift off listening for the sounds of steps coming up the stairs, or the door opening below me prepared to grab my sword. Maybe it really was all in my head, just an overactive conscience, and maybe it was just a hack or a joke, or an antipiracy message. But maybe it wasn’t, maybe games really do have memories, maybe the horrors we visit on them aren’t really forgotten when we reset them or turn off the power. I think they remember just the same as us and for that thought I will err on the side of caution. You must be asking yourself why I’m putting this down in writing. I’ve been offered a job on a very special project from which I feel I may not return. But I had to tell someone, had to get this off my chest and out of my mind. For Dunan is always with me. For He is coming, He rises. He is coming and there is nowhere left for you to run.

You have the ring in one hand and you’re down on bended knee. But do you know what to say when you propose marriage? “Will you marry me” just seems so abrupt. Everyone has their own way of proposing marriage. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to think that you only have to pop the question. But if you really want to make the moment count, you have to know what to say when you propose marriage. 1) Who is she to you? One of the things to say when you propose marriage is what that person means to you. She’s not just your girlfriend. You’ll have to tell her the qualities that endeared her to you. What does she bring to your life? 2) Who are you when you’re with her? What kind of person have you become since you two got together? Every woman wants to know that she has had some influence in her man’s life. Just make sure to enumerate only the positive influences. 3) What’s in store for the future? One of the important things to say when you propose marriage is your plan for the future. You don’t have to give her all the details, but it would be wonderful if you can say something about it. While not absolutely necessary in a proposal, it does give the girl the impression that you’ve thought long and hard about this plan. 4) What do you promise her? Don’t just recite the wedding vows. You have to promise from the heart. Do you promise to let her have monopoly of the remote control except during basketball season? You can be as funny as you want to make the whole situation lighter. 5) Tell her you love her and will love her more everyday. But most importantly, you have to promise her that you will love her forever. It’s what marriage is all about. You know there’ll be tough times but together, you’ll make it through. It’s important to know what to say when you propose marriage. You don’t need to have a script in hand, but it would be better if you tried to organize your thoughts before acting upon your feelings.

Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon , originally titled La Jangada was first published in 1881. Although Jules Verne owned a yacht, the St.-Michel III , and traveled frequently, he never set eyes on the Amazon Basin. However, he researched his subject extensively, consulting newspapers, maps, and the works of other authors. No doubt he would have sailed down the Amazon River had he not been shot in the leg by his insane son and had he not been forced to sell the expensive-to-maintain, ten-man-crew, St.-Michel III due to an unexpected downturn in his financial circumstances.La Jangada was part of the Voyages Extraordinaires adventure series published by Pierre-Jules Hetzel in Paris. Hetzel helped improve Verne's writings, which until then had been repeatedly rejected by other publishers. Hetzel read a draft of Verne's story about the balloon exploration of Africa, which had been rejected by other publishers for being “too scientific”. With Hetzel's help, Verne rewrote the story, which was published in 1863 in book form as Cinq semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a Balloon ). Acting on Hetzel's advice, Verne added comical accents to his novels, changed sad endings into happy ones, and toned down various political messages. In addition to his extensive travels and voracious reading, Jules Verne made use of a number of maritime experts, cartographers, and various consultants in order to get the details of his stories right. That he has become the second most translated writer (Agatha Christie is first) is testimony to his diligence and the ability to function as a team player intent on creating intimately intriguing novels of lasting value. Fred Dungan, publisher, DUNGAN BOOKS THE GIANT RAFT A CAPTAIN OF THE WOODS P h y j s l y d d q f d z x g a s g z z q q e h x g k f n d r x u j u g I o c y t d x v k s b x h h u y p o h d v y r y m h u h p u y d k j o x p h e t o z l s l e t n p m v f f o v p d p a j x h y y n o j y g g a y m e q y n f u q l n m v l y f g s u z m q I z t l b q q y u g s q e u b v n r c r e d g r u z b l r m x y u h q h p z d r r g c r o h e p q x u f I v v r p l p h o n t h v d d q f h q s n t z h h h n f e p m q k y u u e x k t o g z g k y u u m f v I j d q d p z j q s y k r p l x h x q r y m v k l o h h h o t o z v d k s p p s u v j h d. THE MAN who held in his hand the document of which this strange assemblage of letters formed the concluding paragraph remained for some moments lost in thought. It contained about a hundred of these lines, with the letters at even distances, and undivided into words. It seemed to have been written many years before, and time had already laid his tawny finger on the sheet of good stout paper which was covered with the hieroglyphics. On what principle had these letters been arranged? He who held the paper was alone able to tell. With such cipher language it is as with the locks of some of our iron safes—in either case the protection is the same. The combinations which they lead to can be counted by millions, and no calculator's life would suffice to express them. Some particular "word" has to be known before the lock of the safe will act, and some "cipher" is necessary before that cryptogram can be read. He who had just reperused the document was but a simple "captain of the woods." Under the name of Capitaes do Mato are known in Brazil those individuals who are engaged in the recapture of fugitive slaves. institution dates from 1722. At that period anti-slavery ideas had entered the minds of a few philanthropists, and more than a century had to elapse before the mass of the people grasped and applied them. That freedom was a right, that the very first of the natural rights of man was to be free and to belong only to himself, would seem to be self-evident, and yet thousands of years had to pass before the glorious thought was generally accepted, and the nations of the earth had the courage to proclaim it. In 1852, the year in which our story opens, there were still slaves in Brazil, and as a natural consequence, captains of the woods to pursue them. For certain reasons of political economy the hour of general emancipation had been delayed, but the black had at this date the right to ransom himself, the children which were born to him were born free. The day was not far distant when the magnificent country, into which could be put three-quarters of the continent of Europe, would no longer count a single slave among its ten millions of inhabitants. The occupation of the captains of the woods was doomed, and at the period we speak of the advantages obtainable from the capture of fugitives were rapidly diminishing. While, however, the calling continued sufficiently profitable, the captains of the woods formed a peculiar class of adventurers, principally composed of freedmen and deserters—of not very enviable reputation. The slave hunters in fact belonged to the dregs of society, and we shall not be far wrong in assuming that the man with the cryptogram was a fitting comrade for his fellow capitaes do mato. Torres—for that was his name—unlike the majority of his companions, was neither half-breed, Indian, nor negro. He was a white of Brazilian origin, and had received a better education than befitted his present condition. One of those unclassed men who are found so frequently in the distant countries of the New World, at a time when the Brazilian law still excluded mulattoes and others of mixed blood from certain employments, it was evident that if such exclusion had affected him, it had done so on account of his worthless character, and not because of his birth. Torres at the present moment was not, however, in Brazil. He had just passed the frontier, and was wandering in the forests of Peru, from which issue the waters of the Upper Amazon. He was a man of about thirty years of age, on whom the fatigues of a precarious existence seemed, thanks to an exceptional temperament and an iron constitution, to have had no effect. Of middle height, broad shoulders, regular features, and decided gait, his face was tanned with the scorching air of the tropics. He had a thick black beard, and eyes lost under contracting eyebrows, giving that swift but hard glance so characteristic of insolent natures. Clothed as backwoodsmen are generally clothed, not over elaborately, his garments bore witness to long and roughish wear. On his head, stuck jauntily on one side, was a leather hat with a large brim. Trousers he had of coarse wool, which were tucked into the tops of the thick, heavy boots which formed the most substantial part of his attire, and over all, and hiding all, was a faded yellowish poncho. But if Torres was a captain of the woods it was evident that he was not now employed in that capacity, his means of attack and defense being obviously insufficient for any one engaged in the pursuit of the blacks. No firearms—neither gun nor revolver. In his belt only one of those weapons, more sword than hunting-knife, called a manchetta, and in addition he had an enchada, which is a sort of hoe, specially employed in the pursuit of the tatous and agoutis which abound in the forests of the Upper Amazon, where there is generally little to fear from wild beasts. On the 4th of May, 1852, it happened, then, that our adventurer was deeply absorbed in the reading of the document on which his eyes were fixed, and, accustomed as he was to live in the forests of South America, he was perfectly indifferent to their splendors. Nothing could distract his attention; neither the constant cry of the howling monkeys, which St. Hillaire has graphically compared to the ax of the woodman as he strikes the branches of the trees, nor the sharp jingle of the rings of the rattlesnake (not an aggressive reptile, it is true, but one of the most venomous); neither the bawling voice of the horned toad, the most hideous of its kind, nor even the solemn and sonorous croak of the bellowing frog, which, though it cannot equal the bull in size, can surpass him in noise. Torres heard nothing of all these sounds, which form, as it were, the complex voice of the forests of the New World. Reclining at the foot of a magnificent tree, he did not even admire the lofty boughs of that pao ferro, or iron wood, with its somber bark, hard as the metal which it replaces in the weapon and utensil of the Indian savage. No. Lost in thought, the captain of the woods turned the curious paper again and again between his fingers. With the cipher, of which he had the secret, he assigned to each letter its true value. He read, he verified the sense of those lines, unintelligible to all but him, and then he smiled—and a most unpleasant smile it was. Then he murmured some phrases in an undertone which none in the solitude of the Peruvian forests could hear, and which no one, had he been anywhere else, would have heard. "Yes," said he, at length, "here are a hundred lines very neatly written, which, for some one that I know, have an importance that is undoubted. That somebody is rich. It is a question of life or death for him, and looked at in every way it will cost him something." And, scrutinizing the paper with greedy eyes, "At a conto only for each word of this last sentence it will amount to a considerable sum, and it is this sentence which fixes the price. It sums up the entire document. It gives their true names to true personages; but before trying to understand it I ought to begin by counting the number of words it contains, and even when this is done its true meaning may In saying this Torres began to count mentally. "There are fifty-eight words, and that makes fifty-eight contos. With nothing but that one could live in Brazil, in America, wherever one wished, and even live without doing anything! And what would it be, then, if all the words of this document were paid for at the same price? It would be necessary to count by hundreds of contos. Ah! there is quite a fortune here for me to realize if I am not the greatest of duffers!" It seemed as though the hands of Torres felt the enormous sum, and were already closing over the rolls of gold. Suddenly his thoughts took another "At length," he cried, "I see land; and I do not regret the voyage which has led me from the coast of the Atlantic to the Upper Amazon. But this man may quit America and go beyond the seas, and then how can I touch him? But no! he is there, and if I climb to the top of this tree I can see the roof under which he lives with his family!" Then seizing the paper and shaking it with terrible meaning: "Before tomorrow I will be in his presence; before tomorrow he will know that his honor and his life are contained in these lines. And when he wishes to see the cipher which permits him to read them, he—well, he will pay for it. He will pay, if I wish it, with all his fortune, as he ought to pay with all his blood! Ah! My worthy comrade, who gave me this cipher, who told me where I could find his old colleague, and the name under which he has been hiding himself for so many years, hardly suspects that he has made my fortune!" For the last time Torres glanced over the yellow paper, and then, after carefully folding it, put it away into a little copper box which he used for a purse. This box was about as big as a cigar case, and if what was in it was all Torres possessed he would nowhere have been considered a wealthy man. He had a few of all the coins of the neighboring States—ten double-condors in gold of the United States of Colombia, worth about a hundred francs; Brazilian reis, worth about as much; golden sols of Peru, worth, say, double; some Chilian escudos, worth fifty francs or more, and some smaller coins; but the lot would not amount to more than five hundred francs, and Torres would have been somewhat embarrassed had he been asked how or where he had got them. One thing was certain, that for some months, after having suddenly abandoned the trade of the slave hunter, which he carried on in the province of Para, Torres had ascended the basin of the Amazon, crossed the Brazilian frontier, and come into Peruvian territory. To such a man the necessaries of life were but few; expenses he had none—nothing for his lodging, nothing for his clothes. The forest provided his food, which in the backwoods cost him naught. A few reis were enough for his tobacco, which he bought at the mission stations or in the villages, and for a trifle more he filled his flask with liquor. With little he could go far. When he had pushed the paper into the metal box, of which the lid shut tightly with a snap, Torres, instead of putting it into the pocket of his under-vest, thought to be extra careful, and placed it near him in a hollow of a root of the tree beneath which he was sitting. This proceeding, as it turned out, might have cost him dear. It was very warm; the air was oppressive. If the church of the nearest village had possessed a clock, the clock would have struck two, and, coming with the wind, Torres would have heard it, for it was not more than a couple of miles off. But he cared not as to time. Accustomed to regulate his proceedings by the height of the sun, calculated with more or less accuracy, he could scarcely be supposed to conduct himself with military precision. He breakfasted or dined when he pleased or when he could; he slept when and where sleep overtook him. If his table was not always spread, his bed was always ready at the foot of some tree in the open forest. And in other respects Torres was not difficult to please. He had traveled during most of the morning, and having already eaten a little, he began to feel the want of a snooze. Two or three hours' rest would, he thought, put him in a state to continue his road, and so he laid himself down on the grass as comfortably as he could, and waited for sleep beneath the Torres was not one of those people who drop off to sleep without certain preliminaries. HE was in the habit of drinking a drop or two of strong liquor, and of then smoking a pipe; the spirits, he said, overexcited the brain, and the tobacco smoke agreeably mingled with the general haziness of Torres commenced, then, by applying to his lips a flask which he carried at his side; it contained the liquor generally known under the name of chica in Peru, and more particularly under that of caysuma in the Upper Amazon, to which fermented distillation of the root of the sweet manioc the captain had added a good dose of tafia or native rum. When Torres had drunk a little of this mixture he shook the flask, and discovered, not without regret, that it was nearly empty. "Must get some more," he said very quietly. Then taking out a short wooden pipe, he filled it with the coarse and bitter tobacco of Brazil, of which the leaves belong to that old petun introduced into France by Nicot, to whom we owe the popularization of the most productive and widespread of This native tobacco had little in common with the fine qualities of our present manufacturers; but Torres was not more difficult to please in this matter than in others, and so, having filled his pipe, he struck a match and applied the flame to a piece of that stick substance which is the secretion of certain of the hymenoptera, and is known as "ants' amadou." With the amadou he lighted up, and after about a dozen whiffs his eyes closed, his pipe escaped from his fingers, and he fell asleep. One thousand reis are equal to three francs, and a conto of reis is worth three thousand francs. ROBBER AND ROBBED TORRES SLEPT for about half an hour, and then there was a noise among the trees—a sound of light footsteps, as though some visitor was walking with naked feet, and taking all the precaution he could lest he should be heard. To have put himself on guard against any suspicious approach would have been the first care of our adventurer had his eyes been open at the time. But he had not then awoke, and what advanced was able to arrive in his presence, at ten paces from the tree, without being perceived. It was not a man at all, it was a "guariba." Of all the prehensile-tailed monkeys which haunt the forests of the Upper Amazon—graceful sahuis, horned sapajous, gray-coated monos, sagouins which seem to wear a mask on their grimacing faces—the guariba is without doubt the most eccentric. Of sociable disposition, and not very savage, differing therein very greatly from the mucura, who is as ferocious as he is foul, he delights in company, and generally travels in troops. It was he whose presence had been signaled from afar by the monotonous concert of voices, so like the psalm-singing of some church choir. But if nature has not made him vicious, it is none the less necessary to attack him with caution, and under any circumstances a sleeping traveler ought not to leave himself exposed, lest a guariba should surprise him when he is not in a position to This monkey, which is also known in Brazil as the "barbado," was of large size. The suppleness and stoutness of his limbs proclaimed him a powerful creature, as fit to fight on the ground as to leap from branch to branch at the tops of the giants of the forest. He advanced then cautiously, and with short steps. He glanced to the right and to the left, and rapidly swung his tail. To these representatives of the monkey tribe nature has not been content to give four hands—she has shown herself more generous, and added a fifth, for the extremity of their caudal appendage possesses a perfect power of prehension. The guariba noiselessly approached, brandishing a study cudgel, which, wielded by his muscular arm, would have proved a formidable weapon. For some minutes he had seen the man at the foot of the tree, but the sleeper did not move, and this doubtless induced him to come and look at him a little nearer. He came forward then, not without hesitation, and stopped at last about three On his bearded face was pictured a grin, which showed his sharp-edged teeth, white as ivory, and the cudgel began to move about in a way that was not very reassuring for the captain of the woods. Unmistakably the sight of Torres did not inspire the guariba with friendly thoughts. Had he then particular reasons for wishing evil to this defenseless specimen of the human race which chance had delivered over to him? Perhaps! We know how certain animals retain the memory of the bad treatment they have received, and it is possible that against backwoodsmen in general he bore some special grudge. In fact Indians especially make more fuss about the monkey than any other kind of game, and, no matter to what species it belongs, follow its chase with the ardor of Nimrods, not only for the pleasure of hunting it, but for the pleasure of eating it. Whatever it was, the guariba did not seen disinclined to change characters this time, and if he did not quite forget that nature had made him but a simple herbivore, and longed to devour the captain of the woods, he seemed at least to have made up his mind to get rid of one of his natural enemies. After looking at him for some minutes the guariba began to move round the tree. He stepped slowly, holding his breath, and getting nearer and nearer. His attitude was threatening, his countenance ferocious. Nothing could have seemed easier to him than to have crushed this motionless man at a single blow, and assuredly at that moment the life of Torres hung by a thread. In truth, the guariba stopped a second time close up to the tree, placed himself at the side, so as to command the head of the sleeper, and lifted his stick to give the blow. But if Torres had been imprudent in putting near him in the crevice of the root the little case which contained his document and his fortune, it was this imprudence which saved his life. A sunbeam shooting between the branches just glinted on the case, the polished metal of which lighted up like a looking-glass. The monkey, with the frivolity peculiar to his species, instantly had his attention distracted. His ideas, if such an animal could have ideas, took another direction. He stopped, caught hold of the case, jumped back a pace or two, and, raising it to the level of his eyes, looked at it not without surprise as he moved it about and used it like a mirror. He was if anything still more astonished when he heard the rattle of the gold pieces it contained. The music enchanted him. It was like a rattle in the hands of a child. He carried it to his mouth, and his teeth grated against the metal, but made no impression on it. Doubtless the guariba thought he had found some fruit of a new kind, a sort of huge almost brilliant all over, and with a kernel playing freely in its shell. But if he soon discovered his mistake he did not consider it a reason for throwing the case away; on the contrary, he grasped it more tightly in his left hand, and dropped the cudgel, which broke off a dry twig in its fall. At this noise Torres woke, and with the quickness of those who are always on the watch, with whom there is no transition from the sleeping to the waking state, was immediately on his legs. In an instant Torres had recognized with whom he had to deal. "A guariba!" he cried. And his hand seizing his manchetta, he put himself into a posture The monkey, alarmed, jumped back at once, and not so brave before a waking man as a sleeping one, performed a rapid caper, and glided under "It was time!" said Torres; "the rogue would have settled me without any Of a sudden, between the hands of the monkey, who had stopped at about twenty paces, and was watching him with violent grimaces, as if he would like to snap his fingers at him, he caught sight of his precious case. "The beggar!" he said. "If he has not killed me, he has done what is almost as bad. He has robbed me!" The thought that the case held his money was not however, what then concerned him. But that which made him jump was the recollection that it contained the precious document, the loss of which was irreparable, as it carried with it that of all his hopes. "Botheration!" said he. And at the moment, cost what it might to recapture his case, Torres threw himself in pursuit of the guariba. He knew that to reach such an active animal was not easy. On the ground he could get away too fast, in the branches he could get away too far. A well-aimed gunshot could alone stop him as he ran or climbed, but Torres possessed no firearm. His sword-knife and hoe were useless unless he could get near enough to hit him. It soon became evident that the monkey could not be reached unless by surprise. Hence Torres found it necessary to employ cunning in dealing with the mischievous animal. To stop, to hide himself behind some tree trunk, to disappear under a bush, might induce the guariba to pull up and retrace his steps, and there was nothing else for Torres to try. This was what he did, and the pursuit commenced under these conditions; but when the captain of the woods disappeared, the monkey patiently waited until he came into sight again, and at this game Torres fatigued himself without result. "Confound the guariba!" he shouted at length. "There will be no end to this, and he will lead me back to the Brazilian frontier. If only he would let go of my case! But no! The jingling of the money amuses him. Oh, you thief! If I could only get hold of you!" And Torres recommenced the pursuit, and the monkey scuttled off with renewed vigor. An hour passed in this way without any result. Torres showed a persistency which was quite natural. How without this document could he get his money? And then anger seized him. He swore, he stamped, he threatened the guariba. That annoying animal only responded by a chuckling which was enough to put him beside himself. And then Torres gave himself up to the chase. He ran at top speed, entangling himself in the high undergrowth, among those thick brambles and interlacing creepers, across which the guariba passed like a steeplechaser. Big roots hidden beneath the grass lay often in the way. He stumbled over them and again started in pursuit. At length, to his astonishment, he found himself shouting: "Come here! come here! you robber!" as if he could make him understand His strength gave out, breath failed him, and he was obliged to stop. "Confound it!" said he, "when I am after runaway slaves across the jungle they never give me such trouble as this! But I will have you, you wretched monkey! I will go, yes, I will go as far as my legs will carry me, and we shall see!" The guariba had remained motionless when he saw that the adventurer had ceased to pursue him. He rested also, for he had nearly reached that degree of exhaustion which had forbidden all movement on the part of Torres. He remained like this during ten minutes, nibbling away at two or three roots, which he picked off the ground, and from time to time he rattled the case at his ear. Torres, driven to distraction, picked up the stones within his reach, and threw them at him, but did no harm at such a distance. But he hesitated to make a fresh start. On one hand, to keep on in chase of the monkey with so little chance of reaching him was madness. On the other, to accept as definite this accidental interruption to all his plans, to be not only conquered, but cheated and hoaxed by a dumb animal, was maddening. And in the meantime Torres had begun to think that when the night came the robber would disappear without trouble, and he, the robbed one, would find a difficulty in retracing his way through the dense forest. In fact, the pursuit had taken him many miles from the bank of the river, and he would even now find it difficult to return to it. Torres hesitated; he tried to resume his thoughts with coolness, and finally, after giving vent to a last imprecation, he was about to abandon all idea of regaining possession of his case, when once more, in spite of himself, there flashed across him the thought of his document, the remembrance of all that scaffolding on which his future hopes depended, on which he had counted so much; and he resolved to make another effort. Then he got up. The guariba got up too. He made several steps in advance. The monkey made as many in the rear, but this time, instead of plunging more deeply into the forest, he stopped at the foot of an enormous ficus—the tree of which the different kinds are so numerous all over the Upper Amazon To seize the trunk with his four hands, to climb with the agility of a clown who is acting the monkey, to hook on with his prehensile tail to the first branches, which stretched away horizontally at forty feet from the ground, and to hoist himself to the top of the tree, to the point where the higher branches just bent beneath its weight, was only sport to the active guariba, and the work of but a few seconds. Up there, installed at his ease, he resumed his interrupted repast, and gathered the fruits which were within his reach. Torres, like him, was much in want of something to eat and drink, but it was impossible! His pouch was flat, his flask was empty. However, instead of retracing his steps he directed them toward the tree, although the position taken up by the monkey was still more unfavorable for him. He could not dream for one instant of climbing the ficus, which the thief would have quickly abandoned for And all the time the miserable case rattled at his ear. Then in his fury, in his folly, Torres apostrophized the guariba. It would be impossible for us to tell the series of invectives in which he indulged. Not only did he call him a half-breed, which is the greatest of insults in the mouth of a Brazilian of white descent, but curiboca—that is to say, half-breed negro and Indian, and of all the insults that one man can hurl at another in this equatorial latitude curiboca is the But the monkey, who was only a humble quadruman, was simply amused at what would have revolted a representative of humanity. Then Torres began to throw stones at him again, and bits of roots and everything he could get hold of that would do for a missile. Had he the hope to seriously hurt the monkey? No! he no longer knew what he was about. To tell the truth, anger at his powerlessness had deprived him of his wits. Perhaps he hoped that in one of the movements which the guariba would make in passing from branch to branch the case might escape him, perhaps he thought that if he continued to worry the monkey he might throw it at his head. But no! the monkey did not part with the case, and, holding it with one hand, he had still three left with which to move. Torres, in despair, was just about to abandon the chase for good, and to return toward the Amazon, when he heard the sound of voices. Yes! the sound of human voices. Those were speaking at about twenty paces to the right of him. The first care of Torres was to hide himself in a dense thicket. Like a prudent man, he did not wish to show himself without at least knowing with whom he might have to deal. Panting, puzzled, his ears on the stretch, he waited, when suddenly the sharp report of a gun rang through the woods. A cry followed, and the monkey, mortally wounded, fell heavily on the ground, still holding Torres' case. "By Jove!" he muttered, "that bullet came at the right time!" And then, without fearing to be seen, he came out of the thicket, and two young gentlemen appeared from under the trees. They were Brazilians clothed as hunters, with leather boots, light palm-leaf hats, waistcoats, or rather tunics, buckled in at the waist, and more convenient than the national poncho. By their features and their complexion they were at once recognizable as of Portuguese Each of them was armed with one of those long guns of Spanish make which slightly remind us of the arms of the Arabs, guns of long range and considerable precision, which the dwellers in the forest of the upper Amazon handle with success. What had just happened was a proof of this. At an angular distance of more than eighty paces the quadruman had been shot full in the head. The two young men carried in addition, in their belts, a sort of dagger-knife, which is known in Brazil as a foca, and which hunters do not hesitate to use when attacking the ounce and other wild animals which, if not very formidable, are pretty numerous in these forests. Torres had obviously little to fear from this meeting, and so he went on running toward the monkey's corpse. But the young men, who were taking the same direction, had less ground to cover, and coming forward a few paces, found themselves face to face with The latter had recovered his presence of mind. "Many thanks, gentlemen," said he gayly, as he raised the brim of his hat; "in killing this wretched animal you have just done me a The hunters looked at him inquiringly, not knowing what value to attach to his thanks. Torres explained matters in a few words. "You thought you had killed a monkey," said he, "but as it happens you have killed a thief!" "If we have been of use to you," said the youngest of the two, "it was by accident, but we are none the less pleased to find that we have done some And taking several steps to the rear, he bent over the guariba, and, not without an effort, withdrew the case from his stiffened hand. "Doubtless that, sir, is what belongs to you?" "The very thing," said Torres briskly, catching hold of the case and failing to repress a huge sigh of relief. "Whom ought I to thank, gentlemen," said he, "for the service you have "My friend, Manoel, assistant surgeon, Brazilian army," replied the young man. "If it was I who shot the monkey, Benito," said Manoel, "it was you that pointed him out to me." "In that case, sirs," replied Torres, "I am under an obligation to you both, as well to you, Mr. Manoel, as to you, Mr. ——" "Benito Garral," replied Manoel. The captain of the woods required great command over himself to avoid giving a jump when he heard this name, and more especially when the young man obligingly continued: "My father, Joam Garral, has his farm about three miles from here. If you would like, Mr. ——" "Torres," replied the adventurer. "If you would like to accompany us there, Mr. Torres, you will be hospitably received." "I do not know that I can," said Torres, who, surprised by this unexpected meeting, hesitated to make a start. "I fear in truth that I am not able to accept your offer. The occurrence I have just related to you has caused me to lose time. It is necessary for me to return at once to the Amazon—as I purpose descending thence "Very well, Mr. Torres," replied Benito, "it is not unlikely that we shall see you again in our travels, for before a month has passed my father and all his family will have taken the same road as you." "Ah!" said Torres sharply, "your father is thinking of recrossing the Brazilian frontier?" "Yes, for a voyage of some months," replied Benito. "At least we hope to make him decide so. Don't we, Manoel?" Manoel nodded affirmatively. "Well, gentlemen," replied Torres, "it is very probable that we shall meet again on the road. But I cannot, much to my regret, accept your offer now. I thank you, nevertheless, and I consider myself as twice your debtor." And having said so, Torres saluted the young men, who in turn saluted him, and set out on their way to the farm. As for Torres he looked after them as they got further and further away, and when he had lost sight of them— "Ah! he is about to recross the frontier!" said he, with a deep voice. "Let him recross it! and he will be still more at my mercy! Pleasant journey to you, Joam Garral!" And having uttered these words the captain of the woods, making for the south so as to regain the left bank of the river by the shortest road, disappeared into the dense forest. THE GARRAL FAMILY THE VILLAGE of Iquitos is situated on the left bank of the Amazon, near the seventy-fourth meridian, on that portion of the great river which still bears the name of the Mar⮯n, and of which the bed separates Peru from the republic of Ecuador. It is about fifty-five leagues to the west of the Iquitos, like every other collection of huts, hamlet, or village met with in the basin of the Upper Amazon, was founded by the missionaries. Up to the seventeenth year of the century the Iquito Indians, who then formed the entire population, were settled in the interior of the province at some distance from the river. But one day the springs in their territory all dried up under the influence of a volcanic eruption, and they were obliged to come and take up their abode on the left of the Mar⮯n. The race soon altered through the alliances which were entered into with the riverine Indians, Ticunas, or Omaguas, mixed descent with a few Spaniards, and today Iquitos has a population of two or three families of half-breeds. The village is most picturesquely grouped on a kind of esplanade, and runs along at about sixty feet from the river. It consists of some forty miserable huts, whose thatched roofs only just render them worthy of the name of cottages. A stairway made of crossed trunks of trees leads up to the village, which lies hidden from the traveler's eyes until the steps have been ascended. Once at the top he finds himself before an inclosure admitting of slight defense, and consisting of many different shrubs and arborescent plants, attached to each other by festoons of lianas, which here and there have made their way above the summits of the graceful palms and At the time we speak of the Indians of Iquitos went about in almost a state of nudity. The Spaniards and half-breeds alone were clothed, and much as they scorned their indigenous fellow-citizens, wore only a simple shirt, light cotton trousers, and a straw hat. All lived cheerlessly enough in the village, mixing little together, and if they did meet occasionally, it was only at such times as the bell of the mission called them to the dilapidated cottage which served them for a church. But if existence in the village of Iquitos, as in most of the hamlets of the Upper Amazon, was almost in a rudimentary stage, it was only necessary to journey a league further down the river to find on the same bank a wealthy settlement, with all the elements of comfortable life. This was the farm of Joam Garral, toward which our two young friends returned after their meeting with the captain of the woods. There, on a bend of the stream, at the junction of the River Nanay, which is here about five hundred feet across, there had been established for many years this farm, homestead, or, to use the expression of the country, fazenda, then in the height of its prosperity. The Nanay with its left bank bounded it to the north for about a mile, and for nearly the same distance to the east it ran along the bank of the larger river. To the west some small rivulets, tributaries of the Nanay, and some lagoons of small extent, separated it from the savannah and the fields devoted to the pasturage of It was here that Joam Garral, in 1826, twenty-six years before the date when our story opens, was received by the proprietor of the fazenda. This Portuguese, whose name was Magalha볬 followed the trade of timber-felling, and his settlement, then recently formed, extended for about half a mile along the bank of the river. There, hospitable as he was, like all the Portuguese of the old race, Magalha볠lived with his daughter Yaquita, who after the death of her mother had taken charge of his household. Magalha볠was an excellent worker, inured to fatigue, but lacking education. If he understood the management of the few slaves whom he owned, and the dozen Indians whom he hired, he showed himself much less apt in the various external requirements of his trade. In truth, the establishment at Iquitos was not prospering, and the affairs of the Portuguese were getting somewhat embarrassed. It was under these circumstances that Joam Garral, then twenty-two years old, found himself one day in the presence of Magalha볮 He had arrived in the country at the limit both of his strength and his resources. Magalha볠 had found him half-dead with hunger and fatigue in the neighboring forest. The Portuguese had an excellent heart; he did not ask the unknown where he came from, but what he wanted. The noble, high-spirited look which Joam Garral bore in spite of his exhaustion had touched him. He received him, restored him, and, for several days to begin with, offered him a hospitality which lasted for his life. Under such conditions it was that Joam Garral was introduced to the farm Brazilian by birth, Joam Garral was without family or fortune. Trouble, he said, had obliged him to quit his country and abandon all thoughts of return. He asked his host to excuse his entering on his past misfortunes—misfortunes as serious as they were unmerited. What he sought, and what he wished, was a new life, a life of labor. He had started on his travels with some slight thought of entering a fazenda in the interior. He was educated, intelligent. He had in all his bearing that inexpressible something which tells you that the man is genuine and of frank and upright character. Magalha볬 quite taken with him, asked him to remain at the farm, where he would, in a measure, supply that which was wanting in the worthy Joam Garral accepted the offer without hesitation. His intention had been to join a seringal, or caoutchouc concern, in which in those days a good workman could earn from five to six piastres a day, and could hope to become a master if he had any luck; but Magalha볠 very truly observed that if the pay was good, work was only found in the seringals at harvest time—that is to say, during only a few months of the year—and this would not constitute the permanent position that a young man ought to wish for. The Portuguese was right. Joam Garral saw it, and entered resolutely into the service of the fazenda, deciding to devote to it all Magalha볠had no cause to regret his generous action. His business recovered. His wood trade, which extended by means of the Amazon up to Para, was soon considerably extended under the impulse of Joam Garral. The fazenda began to grow in proportion, and to spread out along the bank of the river up to its junction with the Nanay. A delightful residence was made of the house; it was raised a story, surrounded by a veranda, and half hidden under beautiful trees—mimosas, fig-sycamores, bauhinias, and paullinias, whose trunks were invisible beneath a network of scarlet-flowered bromelias and passion-flowers. At a distance, behind huge bushes and a dense mass of arborescent plants, were concealed the buildings in which the staff of the fazenda were accommodated—the servants' offices, the cabins of the blacks, and the huts of the Indians. From the bank of the river, bordered with reeds and aquatic plants, the tree-encircled house was alone visible. A vast meadow, laboriously cleared along the lagoons, offered excellent pasturage. Cattle abounded—a new source of profit in these fertile countries, where a herd doubles in four years, and where ten per cent. interest is earned by nothing more than the skins and the hides of the animals killed for the consumption of those who raise them! A few sitios, or manioc and coffee plantations, were started in parts of the woods which were cleared. Fields of sugar-canes soon required the construction of a mill to crush the sacchariferous stalks destined to be used hereafter in the manufacture of molasses, tafia, and rum. In short, ten years after the arrival of Joam Garral at the farm at Iquitos the fazenda had become one of the richest establishments on the Upper Amazon. Thanks to the good management exercised by the young clerk over the works at home and the business abroad, its prosperity daily increased. The Portuguese did not wait so long to acknowledge what he owed to Joam Garral. In order to recompense him in proportion to his merits he had from the first given him an interest in the profits of his business, and four years after his arrival he had made him a partner on the same footing as himself, and with equal shares. But there was more that he had in store for him. Yaquita, his daughter, had, in this silent young man, so gentle to others, so stern to himself, recognized the sterling qualities which her father had done. She was in love with him, but though on his side Joam had not remained insensible to the merits and the beauty of this excellent girl, he was too proud and reserved to dream of asking her to marry him. A serious incident hastened the solution. Magalha볠was one day superintending a clearance and was mortally wounded by the fall of a tree. Carried home helpless to the farm, and feeling himself lost, he raised up Yaquita, who was weeping by his side, took her hand, and put it into that of Joam Garral, making him swear to take her for his wife. "You have made my fortune," he said, "and I shall not die in peace unless by this union I know that the fortune of my daughter "I can continue her devoted servant, her brother, her protector, without being her husband," Joam Garral had at first replied. "I owe you all, Magalha볮 I will never forget it, but the price you would pay for my endeavors is out of all proportion to what they are worth." The old man insisted. Death would not allow him to wait; he demanded the promise, and it was made to him. Yaquita was then twenty-two years old, Joam was twenty-six. They loved each other and they were married some hours before the death of Magalha볬 who had just strength left to bless their union. It was under these circumstances that in 1830 Joam Garral became the new fazender of Iquitos, to the immense satisfaction of all those who composed the staff of the farm. The prosperity of the settlement could not do otherwise than grow when these two minds were thus united. A year after her marriage Yaquita presented her husband with a son, and, two years after, a daughter. Benito and Minha, the grandchildren of the old Portuguese, became worthy of their grandfather, children worthy of Joam and The daughter grew to be one of the most charming of girls. She never left the fazenda. Brought up in pure and healthy surroundings, in the midst of the beauteous nature of the tropics, the education given to her by her mother, and the instruction received by her from her father, were ample. What more could she have learned in a convent at Manaos or Belem? Where would she have found better examples of the domestic virtues? Would her mind and feelings have been more delicately formed away from her home? If it was ordained that she was not to succeed her mother in the management of the fazenda, she was equal to any other position to which she might be With Benito it was another thing. His father very wisely wished him to receive as solid and complete an education as could then be obtained in the large towns of Brazil. There was nothing which the rich fazender refused his son. Benito was possessed of a cheerful disposition, an active mind, a lively intelligence, and qualities of heart equal to those of his head. At the age of twelve he was sent into Para, to Belem, and there, under the direction of excellent professors, he acquired the elements of an education which could not but eventually make him a distinguished man. Nothing in literature, in the sciences, in the arts, was a stranger to him. He studied as if the fortune of his father would not allow him to remain idle. He was not among such as imagine that riches exempt men from work—he was one of those noble characters, resolute and just, who believe that nothing should diminish our natural obligation in this respect if we wish to be worthy of the name of During the first years of his residence at Belem, Benito had made the acquaintance of Manoel Valdez. This young man, the son of a merchant in Para, was pursuing his studies in the same institution as Benito. The conformity of their characters and their tastes proved no barrier to their uniting in the closest of friendships, and they became inseparable companions. Manoel, born in 1832, was one year older than Benito. He had only a mother, and she lived on the modest fortune which her husband had left her. When Manoel's preliminary studies were finished, he had taken up the subject of medicine. He had a passionate taste for that noble profession, and his intention was to enter the army, toward which he felt himself At the time that we saw him with his friend Benito, Manoel Valdez had already obtained his first step, and he had come away on leave for some months to the fazenda, where he was accustomed to pass his holidays. Well-built, and of distinguished bearing, with a certain native pride which became him well, the young man was treated by Joam and Yaquita as another son. But if this quality of son made him the brother of Benito, the title was scarcely appreciated by him when Minha was concerned, for he soon became attached to the young girl by a bond more intimate than could exist between brother and sister. In the year 1852—of which four months had already passed before the commencement of this history—Joam Garral attained the age of forty-eight years. In that sultry climate, which wears men away so quickly, he had known how, by sobriety, self-denial, suitable living, and constant work, to remain untouched where others had prematurely succumbed. His hair, which he wore short, and his beard, which was full, had already grown gray, and gave him the look of a Puritan. The proverbial honesty of the Brazilian merchants and fazenders showed itself in his features, of which straightforwardness was the leading characteristic. His calm temperament seemed to indicate an interior fire, kept well under control. The fearlessness of his look denoted a deep-rooted strength, to which, when danger threatened, he could never appeal in vain. But, notwithstanding one could not help remarking about this quiet man of vigorous health, with whom all things had succeeded in life, a depth of sadness which even the tenderness of Yaquita had not been able to Respected by all, placed in all the conditions that would seem necessary to happiness, why was not this just man more cheerful and less reserved? Why did he seem to be happy for others and not for himself? Was this disposition attributable to some secret grief? Herein was a constant source of anxiety to Yaquita was now forty-four. In that tropical country where women are already old at thirty she had learned the secret of resisting the climate's destructive influences, and her features, a little sharpened but still beautiful, retained the haughty outline of the Portuguese type, in which nobility of face unites so naturally with dignity of mind. Benito and Minha responded with an affection unbounded and unceasing for the love which their parents bore them. Benito was now aged twenty-one, and quick, brave, and sympathetic, contrasted outwardly with his friend Manoel, who was more serious and reflective. It was a great treat for Benito, after quite a year passed at Belem, so far from the fazenda, to return with his young friend to his home to see once more his father, his mother, his sister, and to find himself, enthusiastic hunter as he was, in the midst of these superb forests of the Upper Amazon, some of whose secrets remained after so many centuries still unsolved by man. Minha was twenty years old. A lovely girl, brunette, and with large blue eyes, eyes which seemed to open into her very soul; of middle height, good figure, and winning grace, in every way the very image of Yaquita. A little more serious than her brother, affable, good-natured, and charitable, she was beloved by all. On this subject you could fearlessly interrogate the humblest servants of the fazenda. It was unnecessary to ask her brother's friend, Manoel Valdez, what he thought of her. He was too much interested in the question to have replied without a certain amount of partiality. This sketch of the Garral family would not be complete, and would lack some of its features, were we not to mention the numerous staff of the In the first place, then, it behooves us to name an old negress, of some sixty years, called Cybele, free through the will of her master, a slave through her affection for him and his, and who had been the nurse of Yaquita. She was one of the family. She thee-ed and thou-ed both daughter and mother. The whole of this good creature's life was passed in these fields, in the middle of these forests, on that bank of the river which bounded the horizon of the farm. Coming as a child to Iquitos in the slave-trading times, she had never quitted the village; she was married there, and early a widow, had lost her only son, and remained in the service of Magalha볮 Of the Amazon she knew no more than what flowed before her eyes. With her, and more specially attached to the service of Minha, was a pretty, laughing mulatto, of the same age as her mistress, to whom she was completely devoted. She was called Lina. One of those gentle creatures, a little spoiled, perhaps, to whom a good deal of familiarity is allowed, but who in return adore their mistresses. Quick, restless, coaxing, and lazy, she could do what she pleased in the house. As for servants they were of two kinds—Indians, of whom there were about a hundred, employed always for the works of the fazenda, and blacks to about double the number, who were not yet free, but whose children were not born slaves. Joam Garral had herein preceded the Brazilian government. In this country, moreover, the negroes coming from Benguela, the Congo, or the Gold Coast were always treated with kindness, and it was not at the fazenda of Iquitos that one would look for those sad examples of cruelty which were so frequent on foreign plantations. MANOEL WAS in love with the sister of his friend Benito, and she was in love with him. Each was sensible of the other's worth, and each was worthy of When he was no longer able to mistake the state of his feelings toward Minha, Manoel had opened his heart to Benito. "Manoel, my friend," had immediately answered the enthusiastic young fellow, "you could not do better than wish to marry my sister. Leave it to me! I will commence by speaking to the mother, and I think I can promise that you will not have to wait long for her consent." Half an hour afterward he had done so. Benito had nothing to tell his mother which she did not know; Yaquita had already divined the young people's secret. Before ten minutes had elapsed Benito was in the presence of Minha. They had but to agree; there was no need for much eloquence. At the first words the head of the gentle girl was laid on her brother's shoulder, and the confession, "I am so happy!" was whispered from her heart. The answer almost came before the question; that was obvious. Benito did not ask for more. There could be little doubt as to Joam Garral's consent. But if Yaquita and her children did not at once speak to him about the marriage, it was because they wished at the same time to touch on a question which might be more difficult to solve. That question was, Where should the wedding take Where should it be celebrated? In the humble cottage which served for the village church? Why not? Joam and Yaquita had there received the nuptial benediction of the Padre Passanha, who was then the curate of Iquitos parish. At that time, as now, there was no distinction in Brazil between the civil and religious acts, and the registers of the mission were sufficient testimony to a ceremony which no officer of the civil power was intrusted to attend to. Joam Garral would probably wish the marriage to take place at Iquitos, with grand ceremonies and the attendance of the whole staff of the fazenda, but if such was to be his idea he would have to withstand a vigorous attack "Manoel," Minha said to her betrothed, "if I was consulted in the matter we should not be married here, but at Para. Madame Valdez is an invalid; she cannot visit Iquitos, and I should not like to become her daughter without knowing and being known by her. My mother agrees with me in thinking so. We should like to persuade my father to take us to Belem. Do you not think To this proposition Manoel had replied by pressing Minha's hand. He also had a great wish for his mother to be present at his marriage. Benito had approved the scheme without hesitation, and it was only necessary to persuade Joam Garral. And hence on this day the young men had gone out hunting in the woods, so as to leave Yaquita alone with her husband. In the afternoon these two were in the large room of the house. Joam Garral, who had just come in, was half-reclining on a couch of plaited bamboos, when Yaquita, a little anxious, came and seated herself beside him. To tell Joam of the feelings which Manoel entertained toward his daughter was not what troubled her. The happiness of Minha could not but be assured by the marriage, and Joam would be glad to welcome to his arms the new son whose sterling qualities he recognized and appreciated. But to persuade her husband to leave the fazenda Yaquita felt to be a very serious matter. In fact, since Joam Garral, then a young man, had arrived in the country, he had never left it for a day. Though the sight of the Amazon, with its waters gently flowing to the east, invited him to follow its course; though Joam every year sent rafts of wood to Manaos, to Belem, and the seacoast of Para; though he had seen each year Benito leave after his holidays to return to his studies, yet the thought seemed never to have occurred to him to go with him. The products of the farm, of the forest, and of the fields, the fazender sold on the spot. He had no wish, either with thought or look, to go beyond the horizon which bounded his Eden. From this it followed that for twenty-five years Joam Garral had never crossed the Brazilian frontier, his wife and daughter had never set foot on Brazilian soil. The longing to see something of that beautiful country of which Benito was often talking was not wanting, nevertheless. Two or three times Yaquita had sounded her husband in the matter. But she had noticed that the thought of leaving the fazenda, if only for a few weeks, brought an increase of sadness to his face. His eyes would close, and in a tone of mild reproach he would answer: "Why leave our home? Are we not comfortable here?" And Yaquita, in the presence of the man whose active kindness and unchangeable tenderness rendered her so happy, had not the courage This time, however, there was a serious reason to make it worth while. The marriage of Minha afforded an excellent opportunity, it being so natural for them to accompany her to Belem, where she was going to live with her husband. She would there see and learn to love the mother of Manoel Valdez. How could Joam Garral hesitate in the face of so praiseworthy a desire? Why, on the other hand, did he not participate in this desire to become acquainted with her who was to be the second mother of his child? Yaquita took her husband's hand, and with that gentle voice which had been to him all the music of his life: "Joam," she said, "I am going to talk to you about something which we ardently wish, and which will make you as happy as we are." "What is it about, Yaquita?" asked Joam. "Manoel loves your daughter, he is loved by her, and in this union they will find the happiness——" At the first words of Yaquita Joam Garral had risen, without being able to control a sudden start. His eyes were immediately cast down, and he seemed to designedly avoid the look of his wife. "What is the matter with you?" asked she. "Minha? To get married!" murmured Joam. "My dear," said Yaquita, feeling somewhat hurt, "have you any objection to make to the marriage? Have you not for some time noticed the feelings which Manoel has entertained toward our daughter?" "Yes; and a year since——" And Joam sat down without finishing his thoughts. By an effort of his will he had again become master of himself. The unaccountable impression which had been made upon him disappeared. Gradually his eyes returned to meet those of Yaquita, and he remained thoughtfully looking at her. Yaquita took his hand. "Joam," she said, "have I been deceived? Had you no idea that this marriage would one day take place, and that it would give her every chance of happiness?" "Yes," answered Joam. "All! Certainly. But, Yaquita, this wedding—this wedding that we are both thinking of—when is it coming off? Shortly?" "It will come off when you choose, Joam." "And it will take place here—at Iquitos?" This question obliged Yaquita to enter on the other matter which she had at heart. She did not do so, however, without some hesitation, which was "Joam," said she, after a moment's silence, "listen to me. Regarding this wedding, I have got a proposal which I hope you will approve of. Two or three times during the last twenty years I have asked you to take me and my daughter to the provinces of the Lower Amazon, and to Para, where we have never been. The cares of the fazenda, the works which have required your presence, have not allowed you to grant our request. To absent yourself even for a few days would then have injured your business. But now everything has been successful beyond your dreams, and if the hour of repose has not yet come for you, you can at least for a few weeks get away from your work." Joam Garral did not answer, but Yaquita felt his hand tremble in hers, as though under the shock of some sorrowful recollection. At the same time a half-smile came to her husband's lips—a mute invitation for her to finish what she had begun. "Joam," she continued, "here is an occasion which we shall never see again in this life. Minha is going to be married away from us, and is going to leave us! It is the first sorrow which our daughter has caused us, and my heart quails when I think of the separation which is so near! But I should be content if I could accompany her to Belem! Does it not seem right to you, even in other respects that we should know her husband's mother, who is to replace me, and to whom we are about to entrust her? Added to this, Minha does not wish to grieve Madame Valdez by getting married at a distance from her. When we were married, Joam, if your mother had been alive, would you not have liked her to be present at your wedding?" At these words of Yaquita Joam made a movement which he could "My dear," continued Yaquita, "with Minha, with our two sons, Benito and Manoel, with you, how I should like to see Brazil, and to journey down this splendid river, even to the provinces on the seacoast through which it runs! It seems to me that the separation would be so much less cruel! As we came back we should revisit our daughter in her house with her second mother. I would not think of her as gone I knew not where. I would fancy myself much less a stranger to the doings of her life." This time Joam had fixed his eyes on his wife and looked at her for some time without saying anything. What ailed him? Why this hesitation to grant a request which was so just in itself—to say "Yes," when it would give such pleasure to all who belonged to him? His business affairs could not afford a sufficient reason. A few weeks of absence would not compromise matters to such a degree. His manager would be able to take his place without any hitch in the fazenda. And yet all this time he hesitated. Yaquita had taken both her husband's hands in hers, and pressed "Joam," she said, "it is not a mere whim that I am asking you to grant. No! For a long time I have thought over the proposition I have just made to you; and if you consent, it will be the realization of my most cherished desire. Our children know why I am now talking to you. Minha, Benito, Manoel, all ask this favor, that we should accompany them. We would all rather have the wedding at Belem than at Iquitos. It will be better for your daughter, for her establishment, for the position which she will take at Belem, that she should arrive with her people, and appear less of a stranger in the town in which she will spend most of her life." Joam Garral leaned on his elbows. For a moment he hid his face in his hands, like a man who had to collect his thoughts before he made answer. There was evidently some hesitation which he was anxious to overcome, even some trouble which his wife felt but could not explain. A secret battle was being fought under that thoughtful brow. Yaquita got anxious, and almost reproached herself for raising the question. Anyhow, she was resigned to what Joam should decide. If the expedition would cost too much, she would silence her wishes; she would never more speak of leaving the fazenda, and never ask the reason for the inexplicable refusal. Some minutes passed. Joam Garral rose. He went to the door, and did not return. Then he seemed to give a last look on that glorious nature, on that corner of the world where for twenty years of his life he had met with all Then with slow steps he returned to his wife. His face bore a new expression, that of a man who had taken a last decision, and with whom irresolution had ceased. "You are right," he said, in a firm voice. "The journey is necessary. When shall we start?" "Ah! Joam! my Joam!" cried Yaquita, in her joy. "Thank you for me! Thank you for them!" And tears of affection came to her eyes as her husband clasped her to his heart. At this moment happy voices were heard outside at the door of Manoel and Benito appeared an instant after at the threshold, almost at the same moment as Minha entered the room. "Children! your father consents!" cried Yaquita. "We are going With a grave face, and without speaking a word, Joam Garral received the congratulations of his son and the kisses of his daughter. "And what date, father," asked Benito, "have you fixed for "Date?" answered Joam. "Date? We shall see. We will fix it at Belem." "I am so happy! I am so happy!" repeated Minha, as she had done on the day when she had first known of Manoel's request. "We shall now see the Amazon in all its glory throughout its course through the provinces of Brazil! Thanks, father!" And the young enthusiast, whose imagination was already stirred, continued to her brother and to Manoel: "Let us be off to the library! Let us get hold of every book and every map that we can find which will tell us anything about this magnificent river system! Don't let us travel like blind folks! I want to see everything and know everything about this king of the rivers of the earth!" "THE LARGEST river in the whole world!" said Benito to Manoel Valdez, on They were sitting on the bank which formed the southern boundary of the fazenda, and looking at the liquid molecules passing slowly by, which, coming from the enormous range of the Andes, were on their road to lose themselves in the Atlantic Ocean eight hundred leagues away. "And the river which carries to the sea the largest volume of water," replied Manoel. "A volume so considerable," added Benito, "that it freshens the sea water for an immense distance from its mouth, and the force of whose current is felt by ships at eight leagues from the coast." "A river whose course is developed over more than thirty degrees "And in a basin which from south to north does not comprise less than twenty-five degrees." "A basin!" exclaimed Benito. "Can you call it a basin, the vast plain through which it runs, the savannah which on all sides stretches out of sight, without a hill to give a gradient, without a mountain to bound the horizon?" "And along its whole extent," continued Manoel, "like the thousand tentacles of some gigantic polyp, two hundred tributaries, flowing from north or south, themselves fed by smaller affluents without number, by the side of which the large rivers of Europe are but "And in its course five hundred and sixty islands, without counting islets, drifting or stationary, forming a kind of archipelago, and yielding of themselves the wealth of a kingdom!" "And along its flanks canals, lagoons, and lakes, such as cannot be met with even in Switzerland, Lombardy, Scotland, or Canada." "A river which, fed by its myriad tributaries, discharges into the Atlantic over two hundred and fifty millions of cubic meters of water every hour." "A river whose course serves as the boundary of two republics, and sweeps majestically across the largest empire of South America, as if it were, in very truth, the Pacific Ocean itself flowing out along its own canal into the Atlantic." "And what a mouth! An arm of the sea in which one island, Marajo, has a circumference of more than five hundred leagues!" "And whose waters the ocean does not pond back without raising in a strife which is phenomenal, a tide-race, or pororoca, to which the ebbs, the bores, and the eddies of other rivers are but tiny ripples fanned up by the breeze." "A river which three names are scarcely enough to distinguish, and which ships of heavy tonnage, without any change in their cargoes, can ascend for more than three thousand miles from its mouth." "A river which, by itself, its affluents, and subsidiary streams, opens a navigable commercial route across the whole of the south of the continent, passing from the Magdalena to the Ortequazza, from the Ortequazza to the Caqueta, from the Caqueta to the Putumayo, from the Putumayo to the Amazon! Four thousand miles of waterway, which only require a few canals to make the network of navigation complete!" "In short, the biggest and most admirable river system which we have in The two young men were speaking in a kind of frenzy of their incomparable river. They were themselves children of this great Amazon, whose affluents, well worthy of itself, from the highways which penetrate Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, New Grenada, Venezuela, and the four Guianas—English, French, Dutch and Brazilian. What nations, what races, has it seen whose origin is lost in the far-distant past! It is one of the largest rivers of the globe. Its true source still baffles our explorers. Numbers of States still claim the honor of giving it birth. The Amazon was not likely to escape the inevitable fate, and Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia have for years disputed as to the honor of its glorious paternity. today, however, there seems to be little doubt but that the Amazon rises in Peru, in the district of Huaraco, in the department of Tarma, and that it starts from the Lake of Lauricocha, which is situated between the eleventh and twelfth degree of south latitude. Those who make the river rise in Bolivia, and descend form the mountains of Titicaca, have to prove that the true Amazon is the Ucayali, which is formed by the junction of the Paro and the Apurimac—an assertion which is now generally rejected. At its departure from Lake Lauricocha the youthful river starts toward the northeast for a distance of five hundred and sixty miles, and does not strike to the west until it has received an important tributary—the Panta. It is called the Maraᯮ in its journey through Colombia and Peru up to the Brazilian frontier—or, rather, the Maranhao, for Maraᯮ is only the French rendering of the Portuguese name. From the frontier of Brazil to Manaos, where the superb Rio Negro joins it, it takes the name of the Solima볬 or Solimoens, from the name of the Indian tribe Solimao, of which survivors are still found in the neighboring provinces. And, finally, from Manaos to the sea it is the Amasenas, or river of the Amazons, a name given it by the old Spaniards, the descendants of the adventurous Orellana, whose vague but enthusiastic stories went to show that there existed a tribe of female warriors on the Rio Nhamunda, one of the middle-sized affluents of the great river. From its commencement the Amazon is recognizable as destined to become a magnificent stream. There are neither rapids nor obstacles of any sort until it reaches a defile where its course is slightly narrowed between two picturesque and unequal precipices. No falls are met with until this point is reached, where it curves to the eastward, and passes through the intermediary chain of the Andes. Hereabouts are a few waterfalls, were it not for which the river would be navigable from its mouth to its source. As it is, however, according the Humboldt, the Amazon is free for five-sixths of And from its first starting there is no lack of tributaries, which are themselves fed by subsidiary streams. There is the Chinchipa, coming from the northeast, on its left. On its right it is joined by the Chachapoyas, coming from the northeast. On the left we have the Marona and the Pastuca; and the Guallaga comes in from the right near the mission station of Laguna. On the left there comes the Chambyra and the Tigr鬠flowing from the northeast; and on the right the Huallaga, which joins the main stream twenty-eight hundred miles from the Atlantic, and can be ascended by steamboats for over two hundred miles into the very heart of Peru. To the right, again, near the mission of San Joachim d'Omaguas, just where the upper basin terminates, and after flowing majestically across the pampas of Sacramento, it receives the magnificent Ucayali, the great artery which, fed by numerous affluents, descends from Lake Chucuito, in the northeast of Arica. Such are the principal branches above the village of Iquitos. Down the stream the tributaries become so considerable that the beds of most European rivers would fail to contain them. But the mouths of these auxiliary waters Joam Garral and his people will pass as they journey down the Amazon. To the beauties of this unrivaled river, which waters the finest country in the world, and keeps along its whole course at a few degrees to the south of the equator, there is to be added another quality, possessed by neither the Nile, the Mississippi, nor the Livingstone—or, in other words, the old Congo-Zaira-Lualaba—and that is (although some ill-informed travelers have stated to the contrary) that the Amazon crosses a most healthy part of South America. Its basin is constantly swept by westerly winds. It is not a narrow valley surrounded by high mountains which border its banks, but a huge plain, measuring three hundred and fifty leagues from north to south, scarcely varied with a few knolls, whose whole extent the atmospheric currents can traverse unchecked. Professor Agassiz very properly protested against the pretended unhealthiness o the climate of a country which is destined to become one of the most active of the world's producers. According to him, "a soft and gentle breeze is constantly observable, and produces an evaporation, thanks to which the temperature is kept down, and the sun does not give out heat unchecked. The constancy of this refreshing breeze renders the climate of the river Amazon agreeable, and even The Abb頄urand has likewise testified that if the temperature does not drop below 25 degrees Centigrade, it never rises above 33 degrees, and this gives for the year a mean temperature of from 28 degrees to 29 degrees, with a range of only 8 degrees. After such statements we are safe in affirming that the basin of the Amazon has none of the burning heats of countries like Asia and Africa, which are crossed by the same parallels. The vast plain which serves for its valley is accessible over its whole extent to the generous breezes which come from off the Atlantic. And the provinces to which the river has given its name have acknowledged right to call themselves the healthiest of a country which is one of the finest on the earth. And how can we say that the hydrographical system of the Amazon is not In the sixteenth century Orellana, the lieutenant of one of the brothers Pizarro, descended the Rio Negro, arrived on the main river in 1540, ventured without a guide across the unknown district, and, after eighteen months of a navigation of which is record is most marvelous, reached the mouth. In 1636 and 1637 the Portuguese Pedro Texeira ascended the Amazon to Napo, with a fleet of forty-seven pirogues. In 1743 La Condamine, after having measured an arc of the meridian at the equator, left his companions Bouguer and Godin des Odonais, embarked on the Chinchipe, descended it to its junction with the Maraᯮ, reached the mouth at Napo on the 31st of July, just in time to observe an emersion of the first satellite of Jupiter—which allowed this "Humboldt of the eighteenth century" to accurately determine the latitude and longitude of the spot—visited the villages on both banks, and on the 6th of September arrived in front of the fort of Para. This immense journey had important results—not only was the course of the Amazon made out in scientific fashion, but it seemed almost certain that it communicated with the Fifty-five years later Humboldt and Bonpland completed the valuable work of La Condamine, and drew up the map of the Manaᯮ as far as Napo. Since this period the Amazon itself and all its principal tributaries have been frequently visited. In 1827 Lister-Maw, in 1834 and 1835 Smyth, in 1844 the French lieutenant in command of the "Boulonnaise," the Brazilian Valdez in 1840, the French "Paul Marcoy" from 1848 to 1860, the whimsical painter Biard in 1859, Professor Agassiz in 1865 and 1866, in 1967 the Brazilian engineer Franz Keller-Linzenger, and lastly, in 1879 Doctor Crevaux, have explored the course of the river, ascended many of its tributaries, and ascertained the navigability of its principal affluents. But what has won the greatest honor for the Brazilian government is that on the 31st of July, 1857, after numerous frontier disputes between France and Brazil, about the Guiana boundary, the course of the Amazon was declared to be free and open to all flags; and, to make practice harmonize with theory, Brazil entered into negotiations with the neighboring powers for the exploration of every river-road in the basin of the Amazon. Today lines of well-found steamboats, which correspond direct with Liverpool, are plying on the river from its mouth up to Manaos; others ascend to Iquitos; others by way of the Tapajoz, the Madeira, the Rio Negro, or the Purus, make their way into the center of Peru and Bolivia. One can easily imagine the progress which commerce will one day make in this immense and wealthy area, which is without a rival in the world. But to this medal of the future there is a reverse. No progress can be accomplished without detriment to the indigenous races. In face, on the Upper Amazon many Indian tribes have already disappeared, among others the Curicicurus and the Sorimaos. On the Putumayo, if a few Yuris are still met with, the Yahuas have abandoned the district to take refuge among some of the distant tributaries, and the Maoos have quitted its banks to wander in their diminished numbers among the forests of Japura. The Tunantins is almost depopulated, and there are only a few families of wandering Indians at the mouth of the Jurua. The Teff頩s almost deserted, and near the sources of the Japur there remained but the fragments of the great nation of the Uma졮 The Coari is forsaken. There are but few Muras Indians on the banks of the Purus. Of the ancient Manaos one can count but a wandering party or two. On the banks of the Rio Negro there are only a few half-breeds, Portuguese and natives, where a few years ago twenty-four different nations had their homes. Such is the law of progress. The Indians will disappear. Before the Anglo-Saxon race Australians and Tasmanians have vanished. Before the conquerors of the Far West the North American Indians have been wiped out. One day perhaps the Arabs will be annihilated by the colonization of the French. But we must return to 1852. The means of communication, so numerous now, did not then exist, and the journey of Joam Garral would require not less than four months, owing to the conditions under which it was made. Hence this observation of Benito, while the two friends were watching the river as it gently flowed at their feet: "Manoel, my friend, if there is very little interval between our arrival at Belem and the moment of our separation, the time will appear to you to be "Yes, Benito," said Manoel, "and very long as well, for Minha cannot by my wife until the end of the voyage." A FOREST ON THE GROUND THE GARRAL family were in high glee. The magnificent journey on the Amazon was to be undertaken under conditions as agreeable as possible. Not only were the fazender and his family to start on a voyage for several months, but, as we shall see, he was to be accompanied by a part of the staff of the farm. In beholding every one happy around him, Joam forgot the anxieties which appeared to trouble his life. From the day his decision was taken he had been another man, and when he busied himself about the preparations for the expedition he regained his former activity. His people rejoiced exceedingly at seeing him again at work. His moral self reacted against his physical self, and Joam again became the active, energetic man of his earlier years, and moved about once more as though he had spent his life in the open air, under the invigorating influences of forests, fields, and running Moreover, the few weeks that were to precede his departure had been well At this period, as we have just remarked, the course of the Amazon was not yet furrowed by the numberless steam vessels, which companies were only then thinking of putting into the river. The service was worked by individuals on their own account alone, and often the boats were only employed in the business of the riverside establishments. These boats were either ubas, canoes made from the trunk of a tree, hollowed out by fire, and finished with the ax, pointed and light in front, and heavy and broad in the stern, able to carry from one to a dozen paddlers, and of three or four tons burden: egariteas, constructed on a larger scale, of broader design, and leaving on each side a gangway for the rowers: orjangada, rafts of no particular shape, propelled by a triangular sail, and surmounted by a cabin of mud and straw, which served the Indian and his family for a floating home. These three kinds of craft formed the lesser flotilla of the Amazon, and were only suited for a moderate traffic of passengers or merchandise. Larger vessels, however, existed, either vigilingas ranging from eight up to ten tons, with three masts rigged with red sails, and which in calm weather were rowed by four long paddles not at all easy to work against the stream; or cobertas, of twenty tons burden, a kind of junk with a poop behind and a cabin down below, with two masts and square sails of unequal size, and propelled, when the wind fell, by six long sweeps which Indians worked from a forecastle. But neither of these vessels satisfied Joam Garral. From the moment that he had resolved to descend the Amazon he had thought of making the most of the voyage by carrying a huge convoy of goods into Para. From this point of view there was no necessity to descend the river in a hurry. And the determination to which he had come pleased every one, excepting, perhaps, Manoel, who would for very good reasons have preferred some rapid But though the means of transport devised by Joam were primitive in the extreme, he was going to take with him a numerous following and abandon himself to the stream under exceptional conditions of comfort and It would be, in truth, as if a part of the fazenda of Iquitos had been cut away from the bank and carried down the Amazon with all that composed the family of the fazender—masters and servants, in their dwellings, their cottages, and their huts. The settlement of Iquitos included a part of those magnificent forests which, in the central districts of South America, are practically Joam Garral thoroughly understood the management of these woods, which were rich in the most precious and diverse species adapted for joinery, cabinet work, ship building, and carpentry, and from them he annually drew The river was there in front of him, and could it not be as safely and economically used as a railway if one existed? So every year Joam Garral felled some hundreds of trees from his stock and formed immense rafts of floating wood, of joists, beams, and slightly squared trunks, which were taken to Para in charge of capable pilots who were thoroughly acquainted with the depths of the river and the direction of its currents. This year Joam Garral decided to do as he had done in preceding years. Only, when the raft was made up, he was going to leave to Benito all the detail of the trading part of the business. But there was no time to lose. The beginning of June was the best season to start, for the waters, increased by the floods of the upper basin, would gradually and gradually subside until the month of October. The first steps had thus to be taken without delay, for the raft was to be of unusual proportions. It would be necessary to fell a half-mile square of the forest which was situated at the junction of the Nanay and the Amazon—that is to say, the whole river side of the fazenda, to form the enormous mass, for such were the jangadas or river rafts, which attained the dimensions of a small island. It was in this jangada, safer than any other vessel of the country, larger than a hundred egariteas or vigilingas coupled together, that Joam Garral proposed to embark with his family, his servants, and his merchandise. "Excellent idea!" had cried Minha, clapping her hands, when she learned her father's scheme. "Yes," said Yaquita, "and in that way we shall reach Belem without danger or fatigue." "And during the stoppages we can have some hunting in the forests which line the banks," added Benito. "Won't it take rather long?" observed Manoel; "could we not hit upon some quicker way of descending the Amazon?" It would take some time, obviously, but the interested observation of the young doctor received no attention from any one. Joam Garral then called in an Indian who was the principal manager of the fazenda. "In a month," he said to him, "the jangada must be built and ready "We'll set to work this very day, sir." It was a heavy task. There were about a hundred Indians and blacks, and during the first fortnight in May they did wonders. Some people unaccustomed to these great tree massacres would perhaps have groaned to see giants many hundred years old fall in a few hours beneath the axes of the woodmen; but there was such a quantity on the banks of the river, up stream and down stream, even to the most distant points of the horizon, that the felling of this half-mile of forest would scarcely leave an appreciable void. The superintendent of the men, after receiving the instructions of Joam Garral, had first cleared the ground of the creepers, brushwood, weeds, and arborescent plants which obstructed it. Before taking to the saw and the ax they had armed themselves with a felling-sword, that indispensable tool of every one who desires to penetrate the Amazonian forests, a large blade slightly curved, wide and flat, and two or three feet long, and strongly handled, which the natives wield with consummate address. In a few hours, with the help of the felling-sword, they had cleared the ground, cut down the underwood, and opened large gaps into the densest portions of the wood. In this way the work progressed. The ground was cleared in front of the woodmen. The old trunks were divested of their clothing of creepers, cacti, ferns, mosses, and bromelias. They were stripped naked to the bark, until such time as the bark itself was stripped from off them. Then the whole of the workers, before whom fled an innumerable crowd of monkeys who were hardly their superiors in agility, slung themselves into the upper branches, sawing off the heavier boughs and cutting down the topmost limbs, which had to be cleared away on the spot. Very soon there remained only a doomed forest, with long bare stems, bereft of their crowns, through which the sun luxuriantly rayed on to the humid soil which perhaps its shots had never before caressed. There was not a single tree which could not be used for some work of skill, either in carpentry or cabinet-work. There, shooting up like columns of ivory ringed with brown, were wax-palms one hundred and twenty feet high, and four feet thick at their base; white chestnuts, which yield the three-cornered nuts; murichis, unexcelled for building purposes; barrigudos, measuring a couple of yards at the swelling, which is found at a few feet above the earth, trees with shining russet bark dotted with gray tubercles, each pointed stem of which supports a horizontal parasol; and bombax of superb stature, with its straight and smooth white stem. Among these magnificent specimens of the Amazonian flora there fell many quatibos whose rosy canopies towered above the neighboring trees, whose fruits are like little cups with rows of chestnuts ranged within, and whose wood of clear violet is specially in demand for ship-building. And besides there was the ironwood; and more particularly the ibiriratea, nearly black in its skin, and so close grained that of it the Indians make their battle-axes; jacarandas, more precious than mahogany; c泡lpinas, only now found in the depths of the old forests which have escaped the woodman's ax; sapucaias, one hundred and fifty feet high, buttressed by natural arches, which, starting from three yards from their base, rejoin the tree some thirty feet up the stem, twining themselves round the trunk like the filatures of a twisted column, whose head expands in a bouquet of vegetable fireworks made up of the yellow, purple, and snowy white of the parasitic plants. Three weeks after the work was begun not one was standing of all the trees which had covered the angle of the Amazon and the Nanay. The clearance was complete. Joam Garral had not even had to bestir himself in the demolition of a forest which it would take twenty or thirty years to replace. Not a stick of young or old wood was left to mark the boundary of a future clearing, not even an angle to mark the limit of the denudation. It was indeed a clean sweep; the trees were cut to the level of the earth, to wait the day when their roots would be got out, over which the coming spring would still spread its verdant cloak. This square space, washed on its sides by the waters of the river and its tributary, was destined to be cleared, plowed, planted, and sown, and the following year fields of manioc, coffee-shrubs, sugar-canes, arrowroot, maize, and peanuts would occupy the ground so recently covered by the trees. The last week of the month had not arrived when the trunks, classified according to their varieties and specific gravity, were symmetrically arranged on the bank of the Amazon, at the spot where the immense jangada was to be guilt—which, with the different habitations for the accommodation of the crew, would become a veritable floating village—to wait the time when the waters of the river, swollen by the floods, would raise it and carry it for hundreds of leagues to the Atlantic coast. The whole time the work was going on Joam Garral had been engaged in superintending it. From the clearing to the bank of the fazenda he had formed a large mound on which the portions of the raft were disposed, and to this matter he had attended entirely himself. Yaquita was occupied with Cybele with the preparations for the departure, though the old negress could not be made to understand why they wanted to go or what they hoped to see. "But you will see things that you never saw before," Yaquita kept saying "Will they be better than what I see now?" was Cybele's Minha and her favorite for their part took care of what more particularly concerned them. They were not preparing for a simple voyage; for them it was a permanent departure, and there were a thousand details to look after for settling in the other country in which the young mulatto was to live with the mistress to whom she was so devotedly attached. Minha was a trifle sorrowful, but the joyous Lina was quite unaffected at leaving Iquitos. Minha Valdez would be the same to her as Minha Garral, and to check her spirits she would have to be separated from her mistress, and that was never Benito had actively assisted his father in the work, which was on the point of completion. He commenced his apprenticeship to the trade of a fazender, which would probably one day become his own, as he was about to do that of a merchant on their descent of the river. As for Manoel, he divided his time between the house, where Yaquita and her daughter were as busy as possible, and the clearing, to which Benito fetched him rather oftener than he thought convenient, and on the whole the division was very unequal, as may well be imagined. FOLLOWING A LIANA IT WAS a Sunday, the 26th of May, and the young people had made up their minds to take a holiday. The weather was splendid, the heat being tempered by the refreshing breezes which blew from off the Cordilleras, and everything invited them out for an excursion into the country. Benito and Manoel had offered to accompany Minha through the thick woods which bordered the right bank of the Amazon opposite the fazenda. It was, in a manner, a farewell visit to the charming environs of Iquitos. The young men went equipped for the chase, but as sportsmen who had no intention of going far from their companions in pursuit of any game. Manoel could be trusted for that, and the girls—for Lina could not leave her mistress—went prepared for a walk, an excursion of two or three leagues being not too long to frighten them. Neither Joam Garral nor Yaquita had time to go with them. For one reason the plan of the jangada was not yet complete, and it was necessary that its construction should not be interrupted for a day, and another was that Yaquita and Cybele, well seconded as they were by the domestics of the fazenda, had not an hour to lose. Minha had accepted the offer with much pleasure, and so, after breakfast on the day we speak of, at about eleven o'clock, the two young men and the two girls met on the bank at the angle where the two streams joined. One of the blacks went with them. They all embarked in one of the ubas used in the service of the farm, and after having passed between the islands of Iquitos and Parianta, they reached the right bank of the Amazon. They landed at a clump of superb tree-ferns, which were crowned, at a height of some thirty feet with a sort of halo made of the dainty branches of green velvet and the delicate lacework of the "Well, Manoel," said Minha, "it is for me to do the honors of the forest; you are only a stranger in these regions of the Upper Amazon. We are at home here, and you must allow me to do my duty, as mistress of the house." "Dearest Minha," replied the young man, "you will be none the less mistress of your house in our town of Belem than at the fazenda of Iquitos, and there as here——" "Now, then," interrupted Benito, "you did not come here to exchange loving speeches, I imagine. Just forget for a few hours that you "Not for an hour—not for an instant!" said Manoel. "Perhaps you will if Minha orders you?" "Minha will not order me." "Who knows?" said Lina, laughing. "Lina is right," answered Minha, who held out her hand to Manoel. "Try to forget! Forget! my brother requires it. All is broken off! As long as this walk lasts we are not engaged: I am no more than the sister of Benito! You are only my friend!" "To be sure," said Benito. "Bravo! bravo! there are only strangers here," said the young mulatto, clapping her hands. "Strangers who see each other for the first time," added the girl; "who meet, bow to——" "Mademoiselle!" said Manoel, turning to Minha. "To whom have I the honor to speak, sir?" said she in the most serious "To Manoel Valdez, who will be glad if your brother will "Oh, away with your nonsense!" cried Benito. "Stupid idea that I had! Be engaged, my friends—be it as much as you like! Be it always!" "Always!" said Minha, from whom the word escaped so naturally that Lina's peals of laughter redoubled. A grateful glance from Manoel repaid Minha for the imprudence of "Come along," said Benito, so as to get his sister out of her embarrassment; "if we walk on we shall not talk so much." "One moment, brother," she said. "You have seen how ready I am to obey you. You wished to oblige Manoel and me to forget each other, so as not to spoil your walk. Very well; and now I am going to ask a sacrifice from you so that you shall not spoil mine. Whether it pleases you or not, Benito, you must promise me to forget——" "That you are a sportsman!" "What! you forbid me to——" "I forbid you to fire at any of these charming birds—any of the parrots, caciques, or curucus which are flying about so happily among the trees! And the same interdiction with regard to the smaller game with which we shall have to do today. If any ounce, jaguar, or such thing comes too near, well——" "But——" said Benito. "If not, I will take Manoel's arm, and we shall save or lose ourselves, and you will be obliged to run after us." "Would you not like me to refuse, eh?" asked Benito, looking "I think I should!" replied the young man. "Well then—no!" said Benito; "I do not refuse; I will obey and annoy you. Come on!" And so the four, followed by the black, struck under the splendid trees, whose thick foliage prevented the sun's rays from every reaching the There is nothing more magnificent than this part of the right bank of the Amazon. There, in such picturesque confusion, so many different trees shoot up that it is possible to count more than a hundred different species in a square mile. A forester could easily see that no woodman had been there with his hatchet or ax, for the effects of a clearing are visible for many centuries afterward. If the new trees are even a hundred years old, the general aspect still differs from what it was originally, for the lianas and other parasitic plants alter, and signs remain which no native can misunderstand. The happy group moved then into the tall herbage, across the thickets and under the bushes, chatting and laughing. In front, when the brambles were too thick, the negro, felling-sword in hand, cleared the way, and put thousands of birds to flight. Minha was right to intercede for the little winged world which flew about in the higher foliage, for the finest representations of tropical ornithology were there to be seen—green parrots and clamorous parakeets, which seemed to be the natural fruit of these gigantic trees; humming-birds in all their varieties, light-blue and ruby red; tisauras with long scissors-like tails, looking like detached flowers which the wind blew from branch to branch; blackbirds, with orange plumage bound with brown; golden-edged beccaficos; and sabias, black as crows; all united in a deafening concert of shrieks and whistles. The long beak of the toucan stood out against the golden clusters of the quiriris and the treepeckers or woodpeckers of Brazil wagged their little heads, speckled all over with their purple spots. It was truly a scene But all were silent and went into hiding when above the tops of the trees there grated like a rusty weathercock the alma de gato or "soul of the cat," a kind of light fawn-colored sparrow-hawk. If he proudly hooted, displaying in the air the long white plumes of his tail, he in his turn meekly took to flight when in the loftier heights there appeared the gaviao, the large white-headed eagle, the terror of the whole winged population of these woods. Minha made Manoel admire the natural wonders which could not be found in their simplicity in the more civilized provinces of the east. He listened to her more with his eyes than his ears, for the cries and the songs of these thousands of birds were every now and then so penetrating that he was not able to hear what she said. The noisy laughter of Lina was alone sufficiently shrill to ring out with its joyous note above every kind of clucking, chirping, hooting, whistling, and cooing. At the end of an hour they had scarcely gone a mile. As they left the river the trees assumed another aspect, and the animal life was no longer met with near the ground, but at from sixty to eighty feet above, where troops of monkeys chased each other along the higher branches. Here and there a few cones of the solar rays shot down into the underwood. In fact, in these tropical forests light does not seem to be necessary for their existence. The air is enough for the vegetable growth, whether it be large or small, tree or plant, and all the heat required for the development of their sap is derived not from the surrounding atmosphere, but from the bosom of the soil itself, where it is stored up as in an enormous stove. And on the bromelias, grass plantains, orchids, cacti, and in short all the parasites which formed a little forest beneath the large one, many marvelous insects were they tempted to pluck as though they had been genuine blossoms—nestors with blue wings like shimmering watered silk, leilu butterflies reflexed with gold and striped with fringes of green, agrippina moths, ten inches long, with leaves for wings, maribunda bees, like living emeralds set in sockets of gold, and legions of lampyrons or pyrophorus coleopters, valagumas with breastplates of bronze, and green elytr欠with yellow light pouring from their eyes, who, when the night comes, illuminate the forest with their many-colored scintillations. "What wonders!" repeated the enthusiastic girl. "You are at home, Minha, or at least you say so," said Benito, "and that is the way you talk of your riches!" "Sneer away, little brother!" replied Minha; "such beautiful things are only lent to us; is it not so, Manoel? They come from the hand of the Almighty and belong to the world!" "Let Benito laugh on, Minha," said Manoel. "He hides it very well, but he is a poet himself when his time comes, and he admires as much as we do all these beauties of nature. Only when his gun is on his arm, good-by to "Then be a poet now," replied the girl. "I am a poet," said Benito. "O! Nature-enchanting, etc." We may confess, however, that in forbidding him to use his gun Minha had imposed on him a genuine privation. There was no lack of game in the woods, and several magnificent opportunities he had declined with regret. In some of the less wooded parts, in places where the breaks were tolerably spacious, they saw several pairs of ostriches, of the species known as naudus, from four to five feet high, accompanied by their inseparable seriemas, a sort of turkey, infinitely better from an edible point of view than the huge birds they "See what that wretched promise costs me," sighed Benito, as, at a gesture from his sister, he replaced under his arm the gun which had instinctively gone up to his shoulder. "We ought to respect the seriemas," said Manoel, "for they are great destroyers of the snakes." "Just as we ought to respect the snakes," replied Benito, "because they eat the noxious insects, and just as we ought the insects because they live on smaller insects more offensive still. At that rate we ought to respect But the instinct of the young sportsman was about to be put to a still more rigorous trial. The woods became of a sudden full of game. Swift stags and graceful roebucks scampered off beneath the bushes, and a well-aimed bullet would assuredly have stopped them. Here and there turkeys showed themselves with their milk and coffee-colored plumage; and peccaries, a sort of wild pig highly appreciated by lovers of venison, and agouties, which are the hares and rabbits of Central America; and tatous belonging to the order of edentates, with their scaly shells of patterns of mosaic. And truly Benito showed more than virtue, and even genuine heroism, when he came across some tapirs, called "antas" in Brazil, diminutives of the elephant, already nearly undiscoverable on the banks of the Upper Amazon and its tributaries, pachyderms so dear to the hunters for their rarity, so appreciated by the gourmands for their meat, superior far to beef, and above all for the protuberance on the nape of the neck, which is a morsel fit for a His gun almost burned his fingers, but faithful to his promise he kept But yet—and he cautioned his sister about this—the gun would go off in spite of him, and probably register a master-stroke in sporting annals, if within range there should come a tamandoa assa, a kind of large and very Happily the big ant-eater did not show himself, neither did any panthers, leopards, jaguars, guepars, or cougars, called indifferently ounces in South America, and to whom it is not advisable to get too "After all," said Benito, who stopped for an instant, "to walk is very well, but to walk without an object——" "Without an object!" replied his sister; "but our object is to see, to admire, to visit for the last time these forests of Central America, which we shall not find again in Para, and to bid them a fast farewell." "Ah! an idea!" It was Lina who spoke. "An idea of Lina's can be no other than a silly one," said Benito, shaking his head. "It is unkind, brother," said Minha, "to make fun of Lina when she has been thinking how to give our walk the object which you have just regretted "Besides, Mr. Benito, I am sure my idea will please you," replied "Well, what is it?" asked Minha. "You see that liana?" And Lina pointed to a liana of the cipos kind, twisted round a gigantic sensitive mimosa, whose leaves, light as feathers, shut up at the least disturbance. "Well?" said Benito. "I proposed," replied Minha, "that we try to follow that liana to its very end." "It is an idea, and it is an object!" observed Benito, "to follow this liana, no matter what may be the obstacles, thickets, underwood, rocks, brooks, torrents, to let nothing stop us, not even——" "Certainly, you are right, brother!" said Minha; "Lina is a "Come on, then!" replied her brother; "you say that Lina is absurd so as to say that Benito is absurd to approve of it!" "Well, both of you are absurd, if that will amuse you," returned Minha. "Let us follow the liana!" "You are not afraid?" said Manoel. "Still objections!" shouted Benito. "Ah, Manoel! you would not speak like that if you were already on your way and Minha was waiting for you at the end." "I am silent," replied Manoel; "I have no more to say. I obey. Let us follow the liana!" And off they went as happy as children home for their holidays. This vegetable might take them far if they determined to follow it to its extremity, like the thread of Ariadne, as far almost as that which the heiress of Minos used to lead her from the labyrinth, and perhaps entangle them more deeply. It was in fact a creeper of the salses family, one of the cipos known under the name of the red japicanga, whose length sometimes measures several miles. But, after all, they could leave it when The cipo passed from one tree to another without breaking its continuity, sometimes twisting round the trunks, sometimes garlanding the branches, here jumping form a dragon-tree to a rosewood, then from a gigantic chestnut, the Bertholletia excelsa, to some of the wine palms, baccabas, whose branches have been appropriately compared by Agassiz to long sticks of coral flecked with green. Here round tucumas, or ficuses, capriciously twisted like centenarian olive-trees, and of which Brazil had fifty-four varieties; here round the kinds of euphorbias, which produce caoutchouc, gualtes, noble palm-trees, with slender, graceful, and glossy stems; and cacao-trees, which shoot up of their own accord on the banks of the Amazon and its tributaries, having different melastomas, some with red flowers and others ornamented with panicles of whitish berries. But the halts! the shouts of cheating! when the happy company thought they had lost their guiding thread! For it was necessary to go back and disentangle it from the knot of parasitic plants. "There it is!" said Lina, "I see it!" "You are wrong," replied Minha; "that is not it, that is a liana of another kind." "No, Lina is right!" said Benito. "No, Lina is wrong!" Manoel would naturally return. Hence highly serious, long-continued discussions, in which no one would Then the black on one side and Benito on the other would rush at the trees and clamber up to the branches encircled by the cipo so as to arrive at the true direction. Now nothing was assuredly less easy in that jumble of knots, among which twisted the liana in the middle of bromelias, karatas, armed with their sharp prickles, orchids with rosy flowers and violet lips the size of gloves, and oncidiums more tangled than a skein of worsted between a kitten's And then when the liana ran down again to the ground the difficulty of picking it out under the mass of lycopods, large-leaved heliconias, rosy-tasseled calliandras, rhipsalas encircling it like the thread on an electric reel, between the knots of the large white ipomas, under the fleshy stems of the vanilla, and in the midst of the shoots and branchlets of the grenadilla and the vine. And when the cipo was found again what shouts of joy, and how they resumed the walk for an instant interrupted! For an hour the young people had already been advancing, and nothing had happened to warn them that they were approaching the end. They shook the liana with vigor, but it would not give, and the birds flew away in hundreds, and the monkeys fled from tree to tree, so as to point out the way. If a thicket barred the road the felling-sword cut a deep gap, and the group passed in. If it was a high rock, carpeted with verdure, over which the liana twisted like a serpent, they climbed it and passed on. A large break now appeared. There, in the more open air, which is as necessary to it as the light of the sun, the tree of the tropics, par excellence, which, according to Humboldt, "accompanies man in the infancy of his civilization," the great provider of the inhabitant of the torrid zones, a banana-tree, was standing alone. The long festoon of the liana curled round its higher branches, moving away to the other side of the clearing, and disappeared again into the forest. "Shall we stop soon?" asked Manoel. "No; a thousand times no!" cried Benito, "not without having reached the end of it!" "Perhaps," observed Minha, "it will soon be time to think "Oh, dearest mistress, let us go on again!" replied Lina. "On forever!" added Benito. And they plunged more deeply into the forest, which, becoming clearer, allowed them to advance more easily. Besides, the cipo bore away to the north, and toward the river. It became less inconvenient to follow, seeing that they approached the right bank, and it would be easy to get back afterward. A quarter of an hour later they all stopped at the foot of a ravine in front of a small tributary of the Amazon. But a bridge of lianas, made of bejucos, twined together by their interlacing branches, crossed the stream. The cipo, dividing into two strings, served for a handrail, and passed from one bank to the other. Benito, all the time in front, had already stepped on the swinging floor of this vegetable bridge. Manoel wished to keep his sister back. "Stay—stay, Minha!" he said, "Benito may go further if he likes, but let us remain here." "No! Come on, come on, dear mistress!" said Lina. "Don't be afraid, the liana is getting thinner; we shall get the better of it, and find out its And, without hesitation, the young mulatto boldly ventured "What children they are!" replied Minha. "Come along, Manoel, we And they all cleared the bridge, which swayed above the ravine like a swing, and plunged again beneath the mighty trees. But they had not proceeded for ten minutes along the interminable cipo, in the direction of the river, when they stopped, and this time not without "Have we got to the end of the liana?" asked Minha. "No," replied Benito; "but we had better advance with care. Look!" and Benito pointed to the cipo which, lost in the branches of a high ficus, was agitated by violent shakings. "What causes that?" asked Manoel. "Perhaps some animal that we had better approach with a And Benito, cocking his gun, motioned them to let him go on a bit, and stepped about ten paces to the front. Manoel, the two girls, and the black remained motionless where Suddenly Benito raised a shout, and they saw him rush toward a tree; they all ran as well. Sight the most unforeseen, and little adapted to gratify the eyes! A man, hanging by the neck, struggled at the end of the liana, which, supple as a cord, had formed into a slipknot, and the shakings came from the jerks into which he still agitated it in the last convulsions of his agony! Benito threw himself on the unfortunate fellow, and with a cut of his hunting-knife severed the cipo. The man slipped on to the ground. Manoel leaned over him, to try and recall him to life, if it was not too late. "Poor man!" murmured Minha. "Mr. Manoel! Mr. Manoel!" cried Lina. "He breathes again! His heart beats; you must save him." "True," said Manoel, "but I think it was about time that we came up." He was about thirty years old, a white, clothed badly enough, much emaciated, and he seemed to have suffered a good deal. At his feet were an empty flask, thrown on the ground, and a cup and ball in palm wood, of which the ball, made of the head of a tortoise, was tied on with a fiber. "To hang himself! to hang himself!" repeated Lina, "and young still! What could have driven him to do such a thing?" But the attempts of Manoel had not been long in bringing the luckless wight to life again, and he opened his eyes and gave an "ahem!" so vigorous and unexpected that Lina, frightened, replied to his cry with "Who are you, my friend?" Benito asked him. "An ex-hanger-on, as far as I see." "But your name?" "Wait a minute and I will recall myself," said he, passing his hand over his forehead. "I am known as Fragoso, at your service; and I am still able to curl and cut your hair, to shave you, and to make you comfortable according to all the rules of my art. I am a barber, so to speak more truly, the most desperate of Figaros." "And what made you think of——" "What would you have, my gallant sir?" replied Fragoso, with a smile; "a moment of despair, which I would have duly regretted had the regrets been in another world! But eight hundred leagues of country to traverse, and not a coin in my pouch, was not very comforting! I had lost courage To conclude, Fragoso had a good and pleasing figure, and as he recovered it was evident that he was of a lively disposition. He was one of those wandering barbers who travel on the banks of the Upper Amazon, going from village to village, and putting the resources of their art at the service of negroes, negresses, Indians and Indian women, who appreciate them very But poor Fragoso, abandoned and miserable, having eaten nothing for forty hours, astray in the forest, had for an instant lost his head, and we know the rest. "My friend," said Benito to him, "you will go back with us to the fazenda of Iquitos?" "With pleasure," replied Fragoso; "you cut me down and I belong to you. I must somehow be dependent." "Well, dear mistress, don't you think we did well to continue our walk?" "That I do," returned the girl. "Never mind," said Benito; "I never thought that we should finish by finding a man at the end of the cipo." "And, above all, a barber in difficulties, and on the road to hang himself!" replied Fragoso. The poor fellow, who was now wide awake, was told about what had passed. He warmly thanked Lina for the good idea she had had of following the liana, and they all started on the road to the fazenda, where Fragoso was received in a way that gave him neither wish nor want to try his wretched task THE HALF-MILE square of forest was cleared. With the carpenters remained the task of arranging in the form of a raft the many venerable trees which were lying on the strand. And an easy task it was. Under the direction of Joam Garral the Indians displayed their incomparable ingenuity. In everything connected with house-building or ship-building these natives are, it must be admitted, astonishing workmen. They have only an ax and a saw, and they work on woods so hard that the edge of their tools gets absolutely jagged; yet they square up trunks, shape beams out of enormous stems, and get out of them joists and planking without the aid of any machinery whatever, and, endowed with prodigious natural ability, do all these things easily with their skilled and The trees had not been launched into the Amazon to begin with; Joam Garral was accustomed to proceed in a different way. The whole mass of trunks was symmetrically arranged on a flat part of the bank, which he had already leveled up at the junction of the Nanay with the great river. There it was that the jangada was to be built; thence it was that the Amazon was to float it when the time came for it to start for And here an explanatory note is necessary in regard to the geography of this immense body of water, and more especially as relating to a singular phenomenon which the riverside inhabitants describe from personal The two rivers which are, perhaps, more extensive than the great artery of Brazil, the Nile and the Missouri-Mississippi, flow one from south to north across the African continent, the other from north to south through North America. They cross districts of many different latitudes, and consequently of many different climates. The Amazon, on the contrary, is entirely comprised—at least it is from the point where it turns to the east, on the frontiers of Ecuador and Peru—between the second and fourth parallels of south latitude. Hence this immense river system is under the same climatic conditions during the whole of its course. In these parts there are two distinct seasons during which rain falls. In the north of Brazil the rainy season is in September; in the south it occurs in March. Consequently the right-hand tributaries and the left-hand tributaries bring down their floods at half-yearly intervals, and hence the level of the Amazon, after reaching its maximum in June, gradually falls This Joam Garral knew by experience, and he intended to profit by the phenomenon to launch the jangada, after having built it in comfort on the river bank. In fact, between the mean and the higher level the height of the Amazon could vary as much as forty feet, and between the mean and the lower level as much as thirty feet. A difference of seventy feet like this gave the fazender all he required. The building was commenced without delay. Along the huge bank the trunks were got into place according to their sizes and floating power, which of course had to be taken into account, as among these thick and heavy woods there were many whose specific gravity was but little below that of The first layer was entirely composed of trunks laid side by side. A little interval had to be left between them, and they were bound together by transverse beams, which assured the solidity of the whole. Pia硢a ropes strapped them together as firmly as any chain cables could have done. This material, which consists of the ramicles of a certain palm-tree growing very abundantly on the river banks, is in universal use in the district. Pia硢a floats, resists immersion, and is cheaply made—very good reasons for causing it to be valuable, and making it even an article of commerce with the Old World. Above this double row of trunks and beams were disposed the joists and planks which formed the floor of the jangada, and rose about thirty inches above the load water-line. The bulk was enormous, as we must confess when it is considered that the raft measured a thousand feet long and sixty broad, and thus had a superificies of sixty thousand square feet. They were, in fact, about to commit a whole forest to the Amazon. The work of building was conducted under the immediate direction of Joam Garral. But when that part was finished the question of arrangement was submitted to the discussion of all, including even the gallant Fragoso. Just a word as to what he was doing in his new situation at The barber had never been so happy as since the day when he had been received by the hospitable family. Joam Garral had offered to take him to Para, on the road to which he was when the liana, according to his account, had seized him by the neck and brought him up with a round turn. Fragoso had accepted the offer, thanked him from the bottom of his heart, and ever since had sought to make himself useful in a thousand ways. He was a very intelligent fellow—what one might call a "double right-hander"—that is to say, he could do everything, and could do everything well. As merry as Lina, always singing, and always ready with some good-natured joke, he was not long in being liked by all. But it was with the young mulatto that he claimed to have contracted the "A famous idea that of yours, Miss Lina," he was constantly saying, "to play at 'following the liana!' It is a capital game even if you do not always find a poor chap of a barber at the end!" "Quite a chance, Mr. Fragoso," would laughingly reply Lina; "I assure you, you owe me nothing!" "What! nothing! I owe you my life, and I want it prolonged for a hundred years, and that my recollection of the fact may endure even longer! You see, it is not my trade to be hanged! If I tried my hand at it, it was through necessity. But, on consideration, I would rather die of hunger, and before quite going off I should try a little pasturage with the brutes! As for this liana, it is a lien between us, and so you will see!" The conversation generally took a joking turn, but at the bottom Fragoso was very grateful to the mulatto for having taken the initiative in his rescue, and Lina was not insensible to the attentions of the brave fellow, who was as straightforward, frank, and good-looking as she was. Their friendship gave rise to many a pleasant, "Ah, ah!" on the part of Benito, old Cybele, and others. To return to the Jangada. After some discussion it was decided, as the voyage was to be of some months' duration, to make it as complete and comfortable as possible. The Garral family, comprising the father, mother, daughter, Benito, Manoel, and the servants, Cybele and Lina, were to live in a separate house. In addition to these, there were to go forty Indians, forty blacks, Fragoso, and the pilot who was to take charge of the navigation of Though the crew was large, it was not more than sufficient for the service on board. To work the jangada along the windings of the river and between the hundreds of islands and islets which lay in its course required fully as many as were taken, for if the current furnished the motive power, it had nothing to do with the steering, and the hundred and sixty arms were no more than were necessary to work the long boathooks by which the giant raft was to be kept In the first place, then, in the hinder part of the jangada they built the master's house. It was arranged to contain several bedrooms and a large dining-hall. One of the rooms was destined for Joam and his wife, another for Lina and Cybele near those of their mistresses, and a third room for Benito and Manoel. Minha had a room away from the others, which was not by any means the least comfortably designed. This, the principal house, was carefully made of weather-boarding, saturated with boiling resin, and thus rendered water-tight throughout. It was capitally lighted with windows on all sides. In front, the entrance-door gave immediate access to the common room. A light veranda, resting on slender bamboos, protected the exterior from the direct action of the solar rays. The whole was painted a light-ocher color, which reflected the heat instead of absorbing it, and kept down the temperature of the interior. But when the heavy work, so to speak, had been completed, Minha intervened with: "Father, now your care has inclosed and covered us, you must allow us to arrange our dwelling to please ourselves. The outside belongs to you, the inside to us. Mother and I would like it to be as though our house at the fazenda went with us on the journey, so as to make you fancy that we had never left Iquitos!" "Do just as you like, Minha," replied Joam Garral, smiling in the sad way he often did. "That will be nice!" "I leave everything to your good taste." "And that will do us honor, father. It ought to, for the sake of the splendid country we are going through—which is yours, by the way, and into which you are to enter after so many years' absence." "Yes, Minha; yes," replied Joam. "It is rather as if we were returning from exile—voluntary exile! Do your best; I approve beforehand of what you On Minha and Lina, to whom were added of their own free will Manoel on the one side and Fragoso on the other, devolved the care of decorating the inside of the house. With some imagination and a little artistic feeling the result was highly satisfactory. The best furniture of the fazenda naturally found its place within, as after arriving in Para they could easily return it by one of the igariteos. Tables, bamboo easy-chairs, cane sofas, carved wood shelves, everything that constituted the charming furniture of the tropics, was disposed with taste about the floating home. No one is likely to imagine that the walls remained bare. The boards were hidden beneath hangings of most agreeable variety. These hangings were made of valuable bark, that of the tuturis, which is raised up in large folds like the brocades and damasks and softest and richest materials of our modern looms. On the floors of the rooms were jaguar skins, with wonderful spots, and thick monkey furs of exquisite fleeciness. Light curtains of the russet silk, produced by the sumauma, hung from the windows. The beds, enveloped in mosquito curtains, had their pillows, mattresses, and bolsters filled with that fresh and elastic substance which in the Upper Amazon is yielded by the bombax. Throughout on the shelves and side-tables were little odds and ends, brought from Rio Janeiro or Belem, those most precious to Minha being such as had come from Manoel. What could be more pleasing in her eyes than the knickknacks given by a loving hand which spoke to her without saying anything? In a few days the interior was completed, and it looked just like the interior of the fazenda. A stationary house under a lovely clump of trees on the borders of some beautiful river! Until it descended between the banks of the larger stream it would not be out of keeping with the picturesque landscape which stretched away on each side We may add that the exterior of the house was no less charming than the In fact, on the outside the young fellows had given free scope to their taste and imagination. From the basement to the roof it was literally covered with foliage. A confused mass of orchids, bromelias, and climbing plants, all in flower, rooted in boxes of excellent soil hidden beneath masses of verdure. The trunk of some ficus or mimosa was never covered by a more startlingly tropical attire. What whimsical climbers—ruby red and golden yellow, with variegated clusters and tangled twigs—turned over the brackets, under the ridges, on the rafters of the roof, and across the lintels of the doors! They had brought them wholesale from the woods in the neighborhood of the fazenda. A huge liana bound all the parasites together; several times it made the round of the house, clinging on to every angle, encircling every projection, forking, uniting, it everywhere threw out its irregular branchlets, and allowed not a bit of the house to be seen beneath its enormous clusters of bloom. As a delicate piece of attention, the author of which can be easily recognized, the end of the cipo spread out before the very window of the young mulatto, as though a long arm was forever holding a bouquet of fresh flowers across the blind. To sum up, it was as charming as could be; and as Yaquita, her daughter, and Lina were content, we need say no more about it. "It would not take much to make us plant trees on the jangada," "Oh, trees!" ejaculated Minha. "Why not?" replied Manoel. "Transported on to this solid platform, with some good soil, I am sure they would do well, and we would have no change of climate to fear for them, as the Amazon flows all the time along the same "Besides," said Benito, "every day islets of verdure, torn from the banks, go drifting down the river. Do they not pass along with their trees, bushes, thickets, rocks, and fields, to lose themselves in the Atlantic eight hundred leagues away? Why, then, should we not transform our raft into a floating garden?" "Would you like a forest, miss?" said Fragoso, who stopped "Yes, a forest!" cried the young mulatto; "a forest with its birds and "Its snakes, its jaguars!" continued Benito. "Its Indians, its nomadic tribes," added Manoel, "and even "But where are you going to, Fragoso?" said Minha, seeing the active barber making a rush at the bank. "To look after the forest!" replied Fragoso. "Useless, my friend," answered the smiling Minha. "Manoel has given me a nosegay and I am quite content. It is true," she added, pointing to the house hidden beneath the flowers, "that he has hidden our house in his betrothal THE EVENING OF THE FIFTH OF JUNE WHILE THE master's house was being constructed, Joam Garral was also busied in the arrangement of the out-buildings, comprising the kitchen, and offices in which provisions of all kinds were intended to In the first place, there was an important stock of the roots of that little tree, some six or ten feet in height, which yields the manioc, and which form the principal food of the inhabitants of these inter-tropical countries. The root, very much like a long black radish, grows in clumps like potatoes. If it is not poisonous in Africa, it is certain that in South America it contains a more noxious juice, which it is necessary to previously get rid of by pressure. When this result is obtained, the root is reduced to flour, and is then used in many ways, even in the form of tapioca, according to the fancy of the On board the jangada there was a huge pile of this useful product destined for general consumption. As for preserved meats, not forgetting a whole flock of sheep, kept in a special stable built in the front, they consisted principally of a quantity of the presunto hams of the district, which are of first-class quality; but the guns of the young fellows and of some of the Indians were reckoned on for additional supplies, excellent hunters as they were, to whom there was likely to be no lack of game on the islands and in the forests bordering on the stream. The river was expected to furnish its daily quota; prawns, which ought rather to be called crawfish; tambagus, the finest fish in the district, of a flavor superior to that of salmon, to which it is often compared; pirarucus with red scales, as large as sturgeons, which when salted are used in great quantities throughout Brazil; candirus, awkward to capture, but good to eat; piranhas, or devil-fish, striped with red bands, and thirty inches long; turtles large and small, which are counted by millions, and form so large a part of the food of the natives; some of every one of these things it was hoped would figure in turn on the tables of the master and And so each day shooting and fishing were to be regularly For beverages they had a good store of the best that country produced; caysuma or machachera, from the Upper and Lower Amazon, an agreeable liquor of slightly acidulated taste, which is distilled from the boiled root of the sweet manioc; beiju, from Brazil, a sort of national brandy, the chica of Peru; the mazato of the Ucayali, extracted from the boiled fruits of the banana-tree, pressed and fermented; guarana, a kind of paste made from the double almond of the paulliniasorbilis, a genuine tablet of chocolate so far as its color goes, which is reduced to a fine powder, and with the addition of water yields an excellent drink. And this was not all. There is in these countries a species of dark violet wine, which is got from the juice of the palm, and the aromatic flavor of this assais is greatly appreciated by the Brazilans, and of it there were on board a respectable number of frasques (each holding a little more than half a gallon), which would probably be emptied before they arrived at Para. The special cellar of the jangada did honor to Benito, who had been appointed its commander-in-chief. Several hundred bottles of sherry, port, and letubal recalled names dear to the earlier conquerors of South America. In addition, the young butler had stored away certain demijohns, holding half a dozen gallons each, of excellent tafia, a sugared brandy a trifle more pronounced in taste than the As far as tobacco was concerned, there was none of that coarse kind which usually contents the natives of the Amazonian basin. It all came direct from Villa Bella da Imperatriz—or, in other words, fro the district in which is grown the best tobacco in Central America. The principal habitation, with its annexes—kitchen, offices, and cellars—was placed in the rear—or, let us say, stern of the craft—and formed a part reserved for the Garral family and their personal servants. In the center the huts for the Indians and the blacks had been erected. The staff were thus placed under the same conditions as at the fazenda of Iquitos, and would always be able to work under the direction of the To house the crew a good many huts were required, and these gave to the jangada the appearance of a small village got adrift, and, to tell the truth, it was a better built and better peopled village than many of those on the For the Indians Joam Garral had designed regular cabins—huts without walls, with only light poles supporting the roof of foliage. The air circulated freely throughout these open constructions and swung the hammock suspended in the interior, and the natives, among whom were three or four complete families, with women and children, were lodged as if they were on shore. The blacks here found their customary sheds. They differed from the cabins by being closed in on their four faces, of which only one gave access to the interior. The Indians, accustomed to live in the open air, free and untrammeled, were not able to accustom themselves to the imprisonment of the ajoupas, which agreed better with the life of In the bow regular warehouses had arisen, containing the goods which Joam Garral was carrying to Belem at the same time as the products of his forests. There, in vast storerooms, under the direction of Benito, the rich cargo had been placed with as much order as if it had been carefully stowed away in a ship's hold. In the first place, seven thousand arrobas of caoutchouc, each of about thirty pounds, composed the most precious part of the cargo, for every pound of it was worth from three to four francs. The jangada also took fifty hundredweight of sarsaparilla, a smilax which forms an important branch of foreign trade throughout the Amazon districts, and is getting rarer and rarer along the banks of the river, so that the natives are very careful to spare the stems when they gather them. Tonquin bans, known in Brazil under the name of cumarus, and used in the manufacture of certain essential oils; sassafras, from which is extracted a precious balsam for wounds; bales of dyeing plants, cases of several gums, and a quantity of precious woods, completed a well-adapted cargo for lucrative and easy sale in the provinces of Para. Some may feel astonished that the number of Indians and negroes embarked were only sufficient to work the raft, and that a larger number were not taken in case of an attack by the riverside Indians. Such would have been useless. The natives of Central America are not to be feared in the least, and the times are quite changed since it was necessary to provide against their aggressions. The Indians along the river belong to peaceable tribes, and the fiercest of them have retired before the advancing civilization, and drawn further and further away from the river and its tributaries. Negro deserters, escaped from the penal colonies of Brazil, England, Holland, or France, are alone to be feared. But there are only a small number of these fugitives, they only move in isolated groups across the savannahs or the woods, and the jangada was, in a measure, secured from any attack on the parts of the backwoodsmen. On the other hand, there were a number of settlements on the river—towns, villages, and missions. The immense stream no longer traverses a desert, but a basin which is being colonized day by day. Danger was not taken into consideration. There were no precautions against attacks. To conclude our description of the jangada, we have only to speak of one or two erections of different kinds which gave it a very picturesque In the bow was the cabin of the pilot—we say in the bow, and not at the stern, where the helmsman is generally found. In navigating under such circumstances a rudder is of no use. Long oars have no effect on a raft of such dimensions, even when worked with a hundred sturdy arms. It was from the sides, by means of long boathooks or props thrust against the bed of the stream, that the jangada was kept in the current, and had its direction altered when going astray. By this means they could range alongside either bank, if they wished for any reason to come to a halt. Three or four ubas, and two pirogues, with the necessary rigging, were carried on board, and afforded easy communications with the banks. The pilot had to look after the channels of the river, the deviations of the current, the eddies which it was necessary to avoid, the creeks or bays which afforded favorable anchorage, and to do this he had to be in the bow. If the pilot was the material director of this immense machine—for can we not justly call it so?—another personage was its spiritual director; this was Padre Passanha, who had charge of the mission at Iquitos. A religious family, like that of Joam Garral's, had availed themselves enthusiastically of this occasion of taking him with them. Padre Passanha, then aged seventy, was a man of great worth, full of evangelical fervor, charitable and good, and in countries where the representatives of religion are not always examples of the virtues, he stood out as the accomplished type of those great missionaries who have done so much for civilization in the interior of the most savage regions of the For fifty years Padre Passanha had lived at Iquitos, in the mission of which he was the chief. He was loved by all, and worthily so. The Garral family held him in great esteem; it was he who had married the daughter of Farmer Magalha볠to the clerk who had been received at the fazenda. He had known the children from birth; he had baptized them, educated them, and hoped to give each of them the nuptial blessing. The age of the padre did not allow of his exercising his important ministry any longer. The horn of retreat for him had sounded; he was about to be replaced at Iquitos by a younger missionary, and he was preparing to return to Para, to end his days in one of those convents which are reserved for the old servants of God. What better occasion could offer than that of descending the river with the family which was as his own? They had proposed it to him, and he had accepted, and when arrived at Belem he was to marry the young couple, Minha But if Padre Passanha during the course of the voyage was to take his meals with the family, Joam Garral desired to build for him a dwelling apart, and heaven knows what care Yaquita and her daughter took to make him comfortable! Assuredly the good old priest had never been so lodged in his The parsonage was not enough for Padre Passanha; he ought to have The chapel then was built in the center of the jangada, and a little bell surmounted it. It was small enough, undoubtedly, and it could not hold the whole of the crew, but it was richly decorated, and if Joam Garral found his own house on the raft, Padre Passanha had no cause to regret the poverty-stricken church Such was the wonderful structure which was going down the Amazon. It was then on the bank waiting till the flood came to carry it away. From the observation and calculation of the rising it would seem as though there was not much longer to wait. All was ready to date, the 5th of June. The pilot arrived the evening before. He was a man about fifty, well up in his profession, but rather fond of drink. Such as he was, Joam Garral in large matters at different times had employed him to take his rafts to Belem, and he had never had cause to repent it. It is as well to add that Araujo—that was his name—never saw better than when he had imbibed a few glasses of tafia; and he never did any work at all without a certain demijohn of that liquor, to which he paid frequent court. The rise of the flood had clearly manifested itself for several days. From minute to minute the level of the river rose, and during the twenty-four hours which preceded the maximum the waters covered the bank on which the raft rested, but did not lift the raft. As soon as the movement was assured, and there could be no error as to the height to which the flood would rise, all those interested in the undertaking were seized with no little excitement. For if through some inexplicable cause the waters of the Amazon did not rise sufficiently to flood the jangada, it would all have to be built over again. But as the fall of the river would be very rapid it would take long months before similar On the 5th of June, toward the evening, the future passengers of the jangada were collected on a plateau which was about a hundred feet above the bank, and waited for the hour with an anxiety There were Yaquita, her daughter, Manoel Valdez, Padre Passanha, Benito, Lina, Fragoso, Cybele, and some of the servants, Indian or negro, of the Fragoso could not keep himself still; he went and he came, he ran down the bank and ran up the plateau, he noted the points of the river gauge, and shouted "Hurrah!" as the water crept up. "It will swim, it will swim!" he shouted. "The raft which is to take us to Belem! It will float if all the cataracts of the sky have to open to flood Joam Garral was on the raft with the pilot and some of the crew. It was for him to take all the necessary measures at the critical moment. The jangada was moored to the bank with solid cables, so that it could not be carried away by the current when it floated off. Quite a tribe from one hundred and fifty to two hundred Indians, without counting the population of the village, had come to assist at the interesting They were all keenly on the watch, and silence reigned over the impressionable crowd. Toward five o'clock in the evening the water had reached a level higher than that of the night before—by more than a foot—and the bank had already entirely disappeared beneath the liquid covering. A certain groaning arose among the planks of the enormous structure, but there was still wanting a few inches before it was quite lifted and detached from the ground. For an hour the groanings increased. The joists grated on all sides. A struggle was going on in which little by little the trunks were being dragged from their sandy bed. Toward half-past six cries of joy arose. The jangada floated at last, and the current took it toward the middle of the river, but, in obedience to the cables, it quietly took up its position near the bank at the moment that Padre Passanha gave it his blessing, as if it were a vessel launched into the sea whose destinies are in the hands of the Most FROM IQUITOS TO PEVAS ON THE 6th of June, the very next day, Joam Garral and his people bade good-by to the superintendent and the Indians and negroes who were to stay behind at the fazenda. At six o'clock in the morning the jangada received all its passengers, or rather inhabitants, and each of them took possession of his cabin, or perhaps we had better say his house. The moment of departure had come. Araujo, the pilot, got into his place at the bow, and the crew, armed with their long poles, went to their proper Joam Garral, assisted by Benito and Manoel, superintended At the command of the pilot the ropes were eased off, and the poles applied to the bank so as to give the jangada a start. The current was not long in seizing it, and coasting the left bank, the islands of Iquitos and Parianta were passed on the right. The voyage had commenced—where would it finish? In Para, at Belem, eight hundred leagues from this little Peruvian village, if nothing happened to modify the route. How would it finish? That was the secret of the future. The weather was magnificent. A pleasant pampero tempered the ardor of the sun—one of those winds which in June or July come from off the Cordilleras, many hundred leagues away, after having swept across the huge plain of the Sacramento. Had the raft been provided with masts and sails she would have felt the effects of the breeze, and her speed would have been greater; but owing to the sinuosities of the river and its abrupt changes, which they were bound to follow, they had had to renounce such In a flat district like that through which the Amazon flows, which is almost a boundless plain, the gradient of the river bed is scarcely perceptible. It has been calculated that between Tabatinga on the Brazilian frontier, and the source of this huge body of water, the difference of level does not exceed a decimeter in each league. There is no other river in the world whose inclination is so slight. It follows from this that the average speed of the current cannot be estimated at more than two leagues in twenty-four hours, and sometimes, while the droughts are on, it is even less. However, during the period of the floods it has been known to increase to between thirty and forty Happily, it was under these latter conditions that the jangada was to proceed; but, cumbrous in its movements, it could not keep up to the speed of the current which ran past it. There are also to be taken into account the stoppages occasioned by the bends in the river, the numerous islands which had to be rounded, the shoals which had to be avoided, and the hours of halting, which were necessarily lost when the night was too dark to advance securely, so that we cannot allow more than twenty-five kilometers for each twenty-four hours. In addition, the surface of the water is far from being completely clear. Trees still green, vegetable remains, islets of plants constantly torn from the banks, formed quite a flotilla of fragments carried on by the currents, and were so many obstacles to The mouth of the Nanay was soon passed, and lost to sight behind a point on the left bank, which, with its carpet of russet grasses tinted by the sun, formed a ruddy relief to the green forests on the horizon. The jangada took the center of the stream between the numerous picturesque islands, of which there are a dozen between Iquitos Araujo, who did not forget to clear his vision and his memory by an occasional application to his demijohn, maneuvered very ably when passing through this archipelago. At his word of command fifty poles from each side of the raft were raised in the air, and struck the water with an automatic movement very curious to behold. While this was going on, Yaquita, aided by Lina and Cybele, was getting everything in order, and the Indian cooks were preparing the breakfast. As for the two young fellows and Minha, they were walking up and down in company with Padre Passanha, and from time to time the lady stopped and watered the plants which were placed about the base of the "Well, padre," said Benito, "do you know a more agreeable way "No, my dear boy," replied the padre; "it is truly traveling with all one's belongings." "And without any fatigue," added Manoel; "we might do hundreds of thousands of miles in this way." "And," said Minha, "you do not repent having taken passage with us? Does it not seem to you as if we were afloat on an island drifted quietly away from the bed of the river with its prairies and its trees? Only——" "Only?" repeated the padre. "Only we have made the island with our own hands; it belongs to us, and I prefer it to all the islands of the Amazon. I have a right to be proud of "Yes, my daughter; and I absolve you from your pride. Besides, I am not allowed to scold you in the presence of Manoel!" "But, on the other hand," replied she, gayly, "you should teach Manoel to scold me when I deserve it. He is a great deal too indulgent to my little "Well, then, dear Minha," said Manoel, "I shall profit by that permission to remind you——" "That you were very busy in the library at the fazenda, and that you promised to make me very learned about everything connected with the Upper Amazon. We know very little about it in Para, and here we have been passing several islands and you have not even told me "What is the good of that?" said she. "Yes; what is the good of it?" repeated Benito. "What can be the use of remembering the hundreds of names in the 'Tupi' dialect with which these islands are dressed out? It is enough to know them. The Americans are much more practical with their Mississippi islands; they number them——" "As they number the avenues and streets of their towns," replied Manoel. "Frankly, I don't care much for that numerical system; it conveys nothing to the imagination—Sixty-fourth Island or Sixty-fifth Island, any more than Sixth Street or Third Avenue. Don't you agree with me, Minha?" "Yes, Manoel; though I am of somewhat the same way of thinking as my brother. But even if we do not know their names, the islands of our great river are truly splendid! See how they rest under the shadows of those gigantic palm-trees with their drooping leaves! And the girdle of reeds which encircles them through which a pirogue can with difficulty make its way! And the mangrove trees, whose fantastic roots buttress them to the bank like the claws of some gigantic crab! Yes, the islands are beautiful, but, beautiful as they are, they cannot equal the one we have made our own!" "My little Minha is enthusiastic today," said the padre. "Ah, padre! I am so happy to see everybody happy around me!" At this moment the voice of Yaquita was heard calling Minha into The young girl smilingly ran off. "You will have an amiable companion," said the padre. "All the joy of the house goes away with you, my friend." "Brave little sister!" said Benito, "we shall miss her greatly, and the padre is right. However, if you do not marry her, Manoel—there is still time—she will stay with us." "She will stay with you, Benito," replied Manoel. "Believe me, I have a presentiment that we shall all be reunited!" The first day passed capitally; breakfast, dinner, siesta, walks, all took place as if Joam Garral and his people were still in the comfortable fazenda of Iquitos. During these twenty-four hours the mouths of the rivers Bacali, Chochio, Pucalppa, on the left of the stream, and those of the rivers Itinicari, Maniti, Moyoc, Tucuya, and the islands of this name on the right, were passed without accident. The night, lighted by the moon, allowed them to save a halt, and the giant raft glided peacefully on along the surface of the On the morrow, the 7th of June, the jangada breasted the banks of the village of Pucalppa, named also New Oran. Old Oran, situated fifteen leagues down stream on the same left bank of the river, is almost abandoned for the new settlement, whose population consists of Indians belonging to the Mayoruna and Orejone tribes. Nothing can be more picturesque than this village with its ruddy-colored banks, its unfinished church, its cottages, whose chimneys are hidden amid the palms, and its two or three ubas half-stranded on the shore. During the whole of the 7th of June the jangada continued to follow the left bank of the river, passing several unknown tributaries of no importance. For a moment there was a chance of her grounding on the easterly shore of the island of Sinicure; but the pilot, well served by the crew, warded off the danger and remained in the flow of the stream. In the evening they arrived alongside a narrow island, called Napo Island, from the name of the river which here comes in from the north-northwest, and mingles its waters with those of the Amazon through a mouth about eight hundred yards across, after having watered the territories of the Coto and Orejone Indians. It was on the morning of the 7th of June that the jangada was abreast the little island of Mango, which causes the Napo to split into two streams before falling into the Amazon. Several years later a French traveler, Paul Marcoy, went out to examine the color of the waters of this tributary, which has been graphically compared to the cloudy greenish opal of absinthe. At the same time he corrected some of the measurements of La Condamine. But then the mouth of the Napo was sensibly increased by the floods and it was with a good deal of rapidity that its current, coming from the eastern slopes of Cotopaxi, hurried fiercely to mingle itself with the tawny waters of the Amazon. A few Indians had wandered to the mouth of this river. They were robust in build, of tall stature, with shaggy hair, and had their noses pierced with a rod of palm, and the lobes of their ears lengthened to their shoulders by the weight of heavy rings of precious wood. Some women were with them. None of them showed any intention of coming on board. It is asserted that these natives are cannibals; but if that is true—and it is said of many of the riverine tribes—there must have been more evidence for the cannibalism than we get today. Some hours later the village of Bella Vista, situated on a somewhat lower bank, appeared, with its cluster of magnificent trees, towering above a few huts roofed with straw, over which there drooped the large leaves of some medium-sized banana-trees, like the waters overflowing from a tazza. Then the pilot, so as to follow a better current, which turned off from the bank, directed the raft toward the right side of the river, which he had not yet approached. The maneuver was not accomplished without certain difficulties, which were successfully overcome after a good many resorts to This allowed them to notice in passing some of those numerous lagoons with black waters, which are distributed along the course of the Amazon, and which often have no communication with the river. One of these, bearing the name of the Lagoon of Oran, is of fair size, and receives the water by a large strait. In the middle of the stream are scattered several islands and two or three islets curiously grouped; and on the opposite bank Benito recognized the site of the ancient Oran, of which they could only see a few uncertain traces. During two days the jangada traveled sometimes under the left bank, sometimes under the right, according to the condition of the current, without giving the least sign of grounding. The passengers had already become used to this new life. Joam Garral, leaving to his son everything that referred to the commercial side of the expedition, kept himself principally to his room, thinking and writing. What he was writing about he told to nobody, not even Yaquita, and it seemed to have already assumed the importance of a veritable essay. Benito, all observation, chatted with the pilot and acted as manager. Yaquita, her daughter, and Manoel, nearly always formed a group apart, discussing their future projects just as they had walked and done in the park of the fazenda. The life was, in fact, the same. Not quite, perhaps, to Benito, who had not yet found occasion to participate in the pleasures of the chase. If, however, the forests of Iquitos failed him with their wild beasts, agoutis, peccaries, and cabiais, the birds flew in flocks from the banks of the river and fearlessly perched on the jangada. When they were of such quality as to figure fairly on the table, Benito shot them; and, in the interest of all, his sister raised no objection; but if he came across any gray or yellow herons, or red or white ibises, which haunt the sides, he spared them through love for Minha. One single species of grebe, which is uneatable, found no grace in the eyes of the young merchant; this was the caiarara, as quick to dive as to swim or fly; a bird with a disagreeable cry, but whose down bears a high price in the different markets of the Amazonian basin. At length, after having passed the village of Omaguas and the mouth of the Ambiacu, the jangada arrived at Pevas on the evening of the 11th of June, and was moored to the bank. As it was to remain here for some hours before nightfall, Benito disembarked, taking with him the ever-ready Fragoso, and the two sportsmen started off to beat the thickets in the environs of the little place. An agouti and a cabiai, not to mention a dozen partridges, enriched the larder after this fortunate excursion. At Pevas, where there is a population of two hundred and sixty inhabitants, Benito would perhaps have done some trade with the lay brothers of the mission, who are at the same time wholesale merchants, but these had just sent away some bales of sarsaparilla and arrobas of caoutchouc toward the Lower Amazon, and their stores were empty. The jangada departed at daybreak, and passed the little archipelago of the Iatio and Cochiquinas islands, after having left the village of the latter name on the right. Several mouths of smaller unnamed affluents showed themselves on the right of the river through the spaces between the Many natives, with shaved heads, tattooed cheeks and foreheads, carrying plates of metal in the lobes of their ears, noses, and lower lips, appeared for an instant on the shore. They were armed with arrows and blow tubes, but made no use of them, and did not even attempt to communicate with the FROM PEVAS TO THE FRONTIER DURING THE FEW days which followed nothing occurred worthy of note. The nights were so fine that the long raft went on its way with the stream without even a halt. The two picturesque banks of the river seemed to change like the panoramas of the theaters which unroll from one wing to another. By a kind of optical illusion it appeared as though the raft was motionless between two moving pathways. Benito had no shooting on the banks, for no halt was made, but game was very advantageously replaced by the results of the fishing. A great variety of excellent fish were taken—pacos," "surubis," "gamitanas, of exquisite flavor, and several of those large rays called duridaris, with rose-colored stomachs and black backs armed with highly poisonous darts. There were also collected by thousands those candirus, a kind of small silurus, of which many are microscopic, and which so frequently make a pincushion of the calves of the bather when he imprudently ventures into their The rich waters of the Amazon were also frequented by many other aquatic animals, which escorted the jangada through its waves for whole hours There were the gigantic pria-rucus, ten and twelve feet long, cuirassed with large scales with scarlet borders, whose flesh was not much appreciated by the natives. Neither did they care to capture many of the graceful dolphins which played about in hundreds, striking with their tails the planks of the raft, gamboling at the bow and stern, and making the water alive with colored reflections and spurts of spray, which the refracted light converted into so many rainbows. On the 16th of June the jangada, after fortunately clearing several shallows in approaching the banks, arrived near the large island of San Pablo, and the following evening she stopped at the village of Moromoros, which is situated on the left side of the Amazon. Twenty-four hours afterward, passing the mouths of the Atacoari or Cocha—or rather the furo, or canal, which communicates with the lake of Cabello-Cocha on the right bank—she put in at the rising ground of the mission of Cocha. This was the country of the Marahua Indians, whose long floating hair, and mouths opening in the middle of a kind of fan made of the spines of palm-trees, six inches long, give them a cat-like look—their endeavor being, according to Paul Marcoy, to resemble the tiger, whose boldness, strength, and cunning they admire above everything. Several women came with these Marahuas, smoking cigars, but holding the lighted ends in their teeth. All of them, like the king of the Amazonian forests, go about almost naked. The mission of Cocha was then in charge of a Franciscan monk, who was anxious to visit Padre Passanha. Joam Garral received him with a warm welcome, and offered him a seat at On that day was given a dinner which did honor to the Indian cook. The traditional soup of fragrant herbs; cake, so often made to replace bread in Brazil, composed of the flour of the manioc thoroughly impregnated with the gravy of meat and tomato jelly; poultry with rice, swimming in a sharp sauce made of vinegar and malagueta; a dish of spiced herbs, and cold cake sprinkled with cinnamon, formed enough to tempt a poor monk reduced to the ordinary meager fare of his parish. They tried all they could to detain him, and Yaquita and her daughter did their utmost in persuasion. But the Franciscan had to visit on that evening an Indian who was lying ill at Cocha, and he heartily thanked the hospitable family and departed, not without taking a few presents, which would be well received by the neophytes of the mission. For two days Araujo was very busy. The bed of the river gradually enlarged, but the islands became more numerous, and the current, embarrassed by these obstacles, increased in strength. Great care was necessary in passing between the islands of Cabello-Cocha, Tarapote, and Cacao. Many stoppages had to be made, and occasionally they were obliged to pole off the jangada, which now and then threatened to run aground. Every one assisted in the work, and it was under these difficult circumstances that, on the evening of the 20th of June, they found themselves at Nuestra-Senora-di-Loreto. Loreto is the last Peruvian town situated on the left bank of the river before arriving at the Brazilian frontier. It is only a little village, composed of about twenty houses, grouped on a slightly undulating bank, formed of ocherous earth and clay. It was in 1770 that this mission was founded by the Jesuit missionaries. The Ticuma Indians, who inhabit the territories on the north of the river, are natives with ruddy skins, bushy hair, and striped designs on their faces, making them look like the lacquer on a Chinese table. Both men and women are simply clothed, with cotton bands bound round their thighs and stomachs. They are now not more than two hundred in number, and on the banks of the Atacoari are found the last traces of a nation which was formerly so powerful under its famous chiefs. At Loreto there also live a few Peruvian soldiers and two or three Portuguese merchants, trading in cotton stuffs, salt fish, Benito went ashore, to buy, if possible, a few bales of this smilax, which is always so much in demand in the markets of the Amazon. Joam Garral, occupied all the time in the work which gave him not a moment's rest, did not stir. Yaquita, her daughter, and Manoel also remained on board. The mosquitoes of Loreto have a deserved reputation for driving away such visitors as do not care to leave much of their blood with the redoubtable diptera. Manoel had a few appropriate words to say about these insects, and they were not of a nature to encourage an inclination to brave their stings. "They say that all the new species which infest the banks of the Amazon collect at the village of Loreto. I believe it, but do not wish to confirm it. There, Minha, you can take your choice between the gray mosquito, the hairy mosquito, the white-clawed mosquito, the dwarf mosquito, the trumpeter, the little fifer, the urtiquis, the harlequin, the big black, and the red of the woods; or rather they make take their choice of you for a little repast, and you will come back hardly recognizable! I fancy these bloodthirsty diptera guard the Brazilian frontier considerably better than the poverty-stricken soldiers we see on the bank." "But if everything is of use in nature," asked Minha, "what is the use "They minister to the happiness of entomologists," replied Manoel; "and I should be much embarrassed to find a better explanation." What Manoel had said of the Loreto mosquitoes was only too true. When Benito had finished his business and returned on board, his face and hands were tattooed with thousands of red points, without counting some chigoes, which, in spite of the leather of his boots, had introduced themselves beneath his toes. "Let us set off this very instant," said Benito, "or these wretched insects will invade us, and the jangada will become "And we shall take them into Para," said Manoel, "where there are already quite enough for its own needs." And so, in order not to pass even the night near the banks, the jangada pushed off into the stream. On leaving Loreto the Amazon turns slightly toward the southwest, between the islands of Arava, Cuyari, and Urucutea. The jangada then glided along the black waters of the Cajaru, as they mingled with the white stream of the Amazon. After having passed this tributary on the left, it peacefully arrived during the evening of the 23d of June alongside the large island of Jahuma. The setting of the sun on a clear horizon, free from all haze, announced one of those beautiful tropical nights which are unknown in the temperate zones. A light breeze freshened the air; the moon arose in the constellated depths of the sky, and for several hours took the place of the twilight which is absent from these latitudes. But even during this period the stars shone with unequaled purity. The immense plain seemed to stretch into the infinite like a sea, and at the extremity of the axis, which measures more than two hundred thousand millions of leagues, there appeared on the north the single diamond of the pole star, on the south the four brilliants of the The trees on the left bank and on the island of Jahuma stood up in sharp black outline. There were recognizable in the undecided silhouettes the trunks, or rather columns, of copahus, which spread out in umbrellas, groups of sandis, from which is extracted the thick and sugared milk, intoxicating as wine itself, and vignaticos eighty feet high, whose summits shake at the passage of the lightest currents of air. "What a magnificent sermon are these forests of the Amazon!" has been justly said. Yes; and we might add, "What a magnificent hymn there is in the nights of The birds were giving forth their last evening notes—bentivis, who hang their nests on the bank-side reeds; niambus, a kind of partridge, whose song is composed of four notes, in perfect accord; kamichis, with their plaintive melody; kingfishers, whose call responds like a signal to the last cry of their congeners; canindes, with their sonorous trumpets; and red macaws, who fold their wings in the foliage of the jaquetibas, when night comes on to dim their glowing colors. On the jangada every one was at his post, in the attitude of repose. The pilot alone, standing in the bow, showed his tall stature, scarcely defined in the earlier shadows. The watch, with his long pole on his shoulder, reminded one of an encampment of Tartar horsemen. The Brazilian flag hung from the top of the staff in the bow, and the breeze was scarcely strong enough to lift the bunting. At eight o'clock the three first tinklings of the Angelus escaped from the bell of the little chapel. The three tinklings of the second and third verses sounded in their turn, and the salutation was completed in the series of more rapid strokes of the little bell. However, the family after this July day remained sitting under the veranda to breathe the fresh air from the open. It had been so each evening, and while Joam Garral, always silent, was contented to listen, the young people gayly chatted away till bedtime. "Ah! our splendid river! our magnificent Amazon!" exclaimed the young girl, whose enthusiasm for the immense stream never failed. "Unequaled river, in very truth," said Manoel; "and I do not understand all its sublime beauties. We are going down it, however, like Orellana and La Condamine did so many centuries ago, and I am not at all surprised at their "A little fabulous," replied Benito. "Now, brother," said Minha seriously, "say no evil of our Amazon." "To remind you that it has its legends, my sister, is to say no ill of "Yes, that is true; and it has some marvelous ones," replied Minha. "What legends?" asked Manoel. "I dare avow that they have not yet found their way into Para—or rather that, for my part, I am not acquainted with "What, then do you learn in the Belem colleges?" laughingly "I begin to perceive that they teach us nothing," replied Manoel. "What, sir!" replied Minha, with a pleasant seriousness, "you do not know, among other fables, that an enormous reptile called the minhocao, sometimes visits the Amazon, and that the waters of the river rise or fall according as this serpent plunges in or quits them, so gigantic is he?" "But have you ever seen this phenomenal minhocao?" "Alas, no!" replied Lina. "What a pity!" Fragoso thought it proper to add. "And the 'Mae d'Aqua,'" continued the girl—"that proud and redoubtable woman whose look fascinates and drags beneath the waters of the river the imprudent ones who gaze a her." "Oh, as for the 'Mae d'Aqua,' she exists!" cried the naﶥ Lina; "they say that she still walks on the banks, but disappears like a water sprite as soon as you approach her." "Very well, Lina," said Benito; "the first time you see her just let me "So that she may seize you and take you to the bottom of the river? Never, Mr. Benito!" "She believes it!" shouted Minha. "There are people who believe in the trunk of Manaos," said Fragoso, always ready to intervene on behalf of Lina. "The 'trunk of Manaos'?" asked Manoel. "What about the trunk "Mr. Manoel," answered Fragoso, with comic gravity, "it appears that there is—or rather formerly was—a trunk of turuma, which every year at the same time descended the Rio Negro, stopping several days at Manaos, and going on into Para, halting at every port, where the natives ornamented it with little flags. Arrived at Belem, it came to a halt, turned back on its road, remounted the Amazon to the Rio Negro, and returned to the forest from which it had mysteriously started. One day somebody tried to drag it ashore, but the river rose in anger, and the attempt had to be given up. And on another occasion the captain of a ship harpooned it and tried to tow it along. This time again the river, in anger, broke off the ropes, and the trunk mysteriously escaped." "What became of it?" asked the mulatto. "It appears that on its last voyage, Miss Lina," replied Fragoso, "it mistook the way, and instead of going up the Negro it continued in the Amazon, and it has never been seen again." "Oh, if we could only meet it!" said Lina. "If we meet it," answered Benito, "we will put you on it! It will take you back to the mysterious forest, and you will likewise pass into the state of a legendary mind!" "And why not?" asked the mulatto. "So much for your legends," said Manoel; "and I think your river is worthy of them. But it has also its histories, which are worth something more. I know one, and if I were not afraid of grieving you—for it is a very sad one—I would relate it." "Oh! tell it, by all means, Mr. Manoel," exclaimed Lina; "I like stories which make you cry!" "What, do you cry, Lina?" said Benito. "Yes, Mr. Benito; but I cry when laughing." "Oh, well! let us save it, Manoel!" "It is the history of a Frenchwoman whose sorrows rendered these banks memorable in the eighteenth century." "We are listening," said Minha. "Here goes, then," said Manoel. "In 1741, at the time of the expedition of the two Frenchmen, Bouguer and La Condamine, who were sent to measure a terrestrial degree on the equator, they were accompanied by a very distinguished astronomer, Godin des Odonais. Godin des Odonais set out then, but he did not set out alone, for the New World; he took with him his young wife, his children, his father-in-law, and his brother-in-law. The travelers arrived at Quito in good health. There commenced a series of misfortunes for Madame Odonais; in a few months she lost some of her children. When Godin des Odonais had completed his work, toward the end of the year 1759, he left Quito and started for Cayenne. Once arrived in this town he wanted his family to come to him, but war had been declared, and he was obliged to ask the Portuguese government for permission for a free passage for Madame Odonais and her people. What do you think? Many years passed before the permission could be given. In 1765 Godin des Odonais, maddened by the delay, resolved to ascend the Amazon in search of his wife at Quito; but at the moment of his departure a sudden illness stopped him, and he could not carry out his intention. However, his application had not been useless, and Madame des Odonais learned at last that the king of Portugal had given the necessary permission, and prepared to embark and descend the river to her husband. At the same time an escort was ordered to be ready in the missions of the Upper Amazon. Madame des Odonais was a woman of great courage, as you will see presently; she never hesitated, and notwithstanding the dangers of such a voyage across the continent, she "It was her duty to her husband, Manoel," said Yaquita, "and I would have done the same." "Madame des Odonais," continued Manoel, "came to Rio Bamba, at the south of Quito, bringing her brother-in-law, her children, and a French doctor. Their endeavor was to reach the missions on the Brazilian frontier, where they hoped to find a ship and the escort. The voyage at first was favorable; it was made down the tributaries of the Amazon in a canoe. The difficulties, however, gradually increased with the dangers and fatigues of a country decimated by the smallpox. Of several guides who offered their services, the most part disappeared after a few days; one of them, the last who remained faithful to the travelers, was drowned in the Bobonasa, in endeavoring to help the French doctor. At length the canoe, damaged by rocks and floating trees, became useless. It was therefore necessary to get on shore, and there at the edge of the impenetrable forest they built a few huts of foliage. The doctor offered to go on in front with a negro who had never wished to leave Madame des Odonais. The two went off; they waited for them several days, but in vain. They never returned. "In the meantime the victuals were getting exhausted. The forsaken ones in vain endeavored to descend the Bobonasa on a raft. They had to again take to the forest, and make their way on foot through the almost impenetrable undergrowth. The fatigues were too much for the poor folks! They died off one by one in spite of the cares of the noble Frenchwoman. At the end of a few days children, relations, and servants, were all dead!" "What an unfortunate woman!" said Lina. "Madame des Odonais alone remained," continued Manoel. "There she was, at a thousand leagues from the ocean which she was trying to reach! It was no longer a mother who continued her journey toward the river—the mother had lost her shildren; she had buried them with her own hands! It was a wife who wished to see her husband once again! She traveled night and day, and at length regained the Bobonasa. She was there received by some kind-hearted Indians, who took her to the missions, where the escort was waiting. But she arrived alone, and behind her the stages of the route were marked with graves! Madame des Odonais reached Loreto, where we were a few days back. From this Peruvian village she descended the Amazon, as we are doing at this moment, and at length she rejoined her husband after a separation of nineteen years." "Poor lady!" said Minha. "Above all, poor mother!" answered Yaquita. At this moment Araujo, the pilot, came aft and said: "Joam Garral, we are off the Ronde Island. We are passing "The frontier!" replied Joam. And rising, he went to the side of the jangada, and looked long and earnestly at the Ronde Island, with the waves breaking up against it. Then his hand sought his forehead, as if to rid himself of "The frontier!" murmured he, bowing his head by an But an instant after his head was raised, and his expression was that of a man resolved to do his duty to the last. FRAGOSO AT WORK "BRAZA" (burning embers) is a word found in the Spanish language as far back as the twelfth century. It has been used to make the word "brazil," as descriptive of certain woods which yield a reddish dye. From this has come the name "Brazil," given to that vast district of South America which is crossed by the equator, and in which these products are so frequently met with. In very early days these woods were the object of considerable trade. Although correctly called ibirapitunga, from the place of production, the name of brazil stuck to them, and it has become that of the country, which seems like an immense heap of embers lighted by the rays of the tropical sun. Brazil was from the first occupied by the Portuguese. About the commencement of the sixteenth century, Alvarez Cabral, the pilot, took possession of it, and although France and Holland partially established themselves there, it has remained Portuguese, and possesses all the qualities which distinguish that gallant little nation. It is today the largest state of South America, and has at its head the intelligent artist-king Dom "What is your privilege in the tribe?" asked Montaigne of an Indian whom he met at Havre. "The privilege of marching first to battle!" innocently answered War, we know, was for a long time the surest and most rapid vehicle of civilization. The Brazilians did what this Indian did: they fought, they defended their conquests, they enlarged them, and we see them marching in the first rank of the civilizing advance. It was in 1824, sixteen years after the foundation of the Portugo-Brazilian Empire, that Brazil proclaimed its independence by the voice of Don Juan, whom the French armies had chased It remained only to define the frontier between the new empire and that of its neighbor, Peru. This was no easy matter. If Brazil wished to extend to the Rio Napo in the west, Peru attempted to reach eight degrees further, as far as the Lake of Ega. But in the meantime Brazil had to interfere to hinder the kidnaping of the Indians from the Amazon, a practice which was engaged in much to the profit of the Hispano-Brazilian missions. There was no better method of checking this trade than that of fortifying the Island of the Ronde, a little above Tabatinga, and there establishing a post. This afforded the solution, and from that time the frontier of the two countries passed through the middle of this island. Above, the river is Peruvian, and is called the Maraᯮ, as has been said. Below, it is Brazilian, and takes the name of the Amazon. It was on the evening of the 25th of June that the jangada stopped before Tabatinga, the first Brazilian town situated on the left bank, at the entrance of the river of which it bears the name, and belonging to the parish of St. Paul, established on the right a little further down stream. Joam Garral had decided to pass thirty-six hours here, so as to give a little rest to the crew. They would not start, therefore, until the morning of the 27th. On this occasion Yaquita and her children, less likely, perhaps, than at Iquitos to be fed upon by the native mosquitoes, had announced their intention of going on ashore and visiting the town. The population of Tabatinga is estimated at four hundred, nearly all Indians, comprising, no doubt, many of those wandering families who are never settled at particular spots on the banks of the Amazon or its smaller tributaries. The post at the island of the Ronde has been abandoned for some years, and transferred to Tabatinga. It can thus be called a garrison town, but the garrison is only composed of nine soldiers, nearly all Indians, and a sergeant, who is the actual commandant of the place. A bank about thirty feet high, in which are cut the steps of a not very solid staircase, forms here the curtain of the esplanade which carries the pigmy fort. The house of the commandant consists of a couple of huts placed in a square, and the soldiers occupy an oblong building a hundred feet away, at the foot of a large tree. The collection of cabins exactly resembles all the villages and hamlets which are scattered along the banks of the river, although in them a flagstaff carrying the Brazilian colors does not rise above a sentry-box, forever destitute of its sentinel, nor are four small mortars present to cannonade on an emergency any vessel which does not come in when As for the village properly so called, it is situated below, at the base of the plateau. A road, which is but a ravine shaded by ficuses and miritis, leads to it in a few minutes. There, on a half-cracked hill of clay, stand a dozen houses, covered with the leaves of the boiassu palm placed round a All this is not very curious, but the environs of Tabatinga are charming, particularly at the mouth of the Javary, which is of sufficient extent to contain the Archipelago of the Aramasa Islands. Hereabouts are grouped many fine trees, and among them a large number of the palms, whose supple fibers are used in the fabrication of hammocks and fishing-nets, and are the cause of some trade. To conclude, the place is one of the most picturesque on the Tabatinga is destined to become before long a station of some importance, and will no doubt rapidly develop, for there will stop the Brazilian steamers which ascend the river, and the Peruvian steamers which descend it. There they will tranship passengers and cargoes. It does not require much for an English or American village to become in a few years the center of considerable commerce. The river is very beautiful along this part of its course. The influence of ordinary tides is not perceptible at Tabatinga, which is more than six hundred leagues from the Atlantic. But it is not so with the pororoca, that species of eddy which for three days in the height of the syzygies raises the waters of the Amazon, and turns them back at the rate of seventeen kilometers per hour. They say that the effects of this bore are felt up to the Brazilian frontier. On the morrow, the 26th of June, the Garral family prepared to go off and visit the village. Though Joam, Benito, and Manoel had already set foot in a Brazilian town, it was otherwise with Yaquita and her daughter; for them it was, so to speak, a taking possession. It is conceivable, therefore, that Yaquita and Minha should attach some importance to the event. If, on his part, Fragoso, in his capacity of wandering barber, had already run through the different provinces of South America, Lina, like her young mistress, had never been on Brazilian soil. But before leaving the jangada Fragoso had sought Joam Garral, and had the following conversation with him. "Mr. Garral," said he, "from the day when you received me at the fazenda of Iquitos, lodged, clothed, fed—in a word, took me in so hospitably—I have "You owe me absolutely nothing, my friend," answered Joam, "so do "Oh, do not be alarmed!" exclaimed Fragoso, "I am not going to pay it off! Let me add, that you took me on board the jangada and gave me the means of descending the river. But here we are, on the soil of Brazil, which, according to all probability, I ought never to have seen again. Without that "It is to Lina, and to Lina alone, that you should tender your thanks," "I know," said Fragoso, "and I will never forget what I owe here, any more than what I owe you." "They tell me, Fragoso," continued Joam, "that you are going to say good-by, and intend to remain at Tabatinga." "By no means, Mr. Garral, since you have allowed me to accompany you to Belem, where I hope at the least to be able to resume my old trade." "Well, if that is your intention—what were you going to ask me?" "I was going to ask if you saw any inconvenience in my working at my profession on our route. There is no necessity for my hand to rust; and, besides, a few handfuls of reis would not be so bad at the bottom of my pocket, more particularly if I had earned them. You know, Mr. Garral, that a barber who is also a hairdresser—and I hardly like to say a doctor, out of respect to Mr. Manoel—always finds customers in these Upper "Particularly among the Brazilians," answered Joam. "As for "I beg pardon," replied Fragoso, "particularly among the natives. Ah! although there is no beard to trim—for nature has been very stingy toward them in that way—there are always some heads of hair to be dressed in the latest fashion. They are very fond of it, these savages, both the men and the women! I shall not be installed ten minutes in the square at Tabatinga, with my cup and ball in hand—the cup and ball I have brought on board, and which I can manage with pretty pleasantly—before a circle of braves and squaws will have formed around me. They will struggle for my favors. I could remain here for a month, and the whole tribe of the Ticunas would come to me to have their hair looked after! They won't hesitate to make the acquaintance of 'curling tongs'—that is what they will call me—if I revisit the walls of Tabatinga! I have already had two tries here, and my scissors and comb have done marvels! It does not do to return too often on the same track. The Indian ladies don't have their hair curled every day, like the beauties of our Brazilian cities. No; when it is done, it is done for year, and during the twelvemonth they will take every care not to endanger the edifice which I have raised—with what talent I dare not say. Now it is nearly a year since I was at Tabatinga; I go to find my monuments in ruin! And if it is not objectionable to you, Mr. Garral, I would render myself again worthy of the reputation which I have acquired in these parts, the question of reis, and not that of conceit, being, you understand, "Go on, then, friend," replied Joam Garral laughingly; "but be quick! we can only remain a day at Tabatinga, and we shall start tomorrow at "I will not lose a minute," answered Fragoso—"just time to take the tools of my profession, and I am off." "Off you go, Fragoso," said Joam, "and may the reis rain into "Yes, and that is a proper sort of rain, and there can never be too much of it for your obedient servant." And so saying Fragoso rapidly moved away. A moment afterward the family, with the exception of Joam, went ashore. The jangada was able to approach near enough to the bank for the landing to take place without much trouble. A staircase, in a miserable state, cut in the cliff, allowed the visitors to arrive on the crest of the plateau. Yaquita and her party were received by the commandant of the fort, a poor fellow who, however, knew the laws of hospitality, and offered them some breakfast in his cottage. Here and there passed and repassed several soldiers on guard, while on the threshold of the barrack appeared a few children, with their mothers of Ticuna blood, affording very poor specimens of the mixed race. In place of accepting the breakfast of the sergeant, Yaquita invited the commandant and his wife to come and have theirs on board the jangada. The commandant did not wait for a second invitation, and an appointment was made for eleven o'clock. In the meantime Yaquita, her daughter, and the young mulatto, accompanied by Manoel, went for a walk in the neighborhood, leaving Benito to settle with the commandant about the tolls—he being chief of the custom-house as well as of the military establishment. That done, Benito, as was his wont, strolled off with his gun into the adjoining woods. On this occasion Manoel had declined to accompany him. Fragoso had left the jangada, but instead of mounting to the fort he had made for the village, crossing the ravine which led off from the right on the level of the bank. He reckoned more on the native custom of Tabatinga than on that of the garrison. Doubtless the soldiers' wives would not have wished better than to have been put under his hands, but the husbands scarcely cared to part with a few reis for the sake of gratifying the whims of their coquettish partners. Among the natives it was quite the reverse. Husbands and wives, the jolly barber knew them well, and he knew they would give him a Behold, then, Fragoso on the road, coming up the shady lane beneath the ficuses, and arriving in the central square of Tabatinga! As soon as he set foot in the place the famous barber was signaled, recognized, surrounded. Fragoso had no big box, nor drum, nor cornet to attract the attention of his clients—not even a carriage of shining copper, with resplendent lamps and ornamented glass panels, nor a huge parasol, no anything whatever to impress the public, as they generally have at fairs. No; but Fragoso had his cup and ball, and how that cup and ball were manipulated between his fingers! With what address did he receive the turtle's head, which did for the ball, on the pointed end of the stick! With what grace did he make the ball describe some learned curve of which mathematicians have not yet calculated the value—even those who have determined the wondrous curve of "the dog who follows his master!" Every native was there—men, women, the old and the young, in their nearly primitive costume, looking on with all their eyes, listening with all their ears. The smiling entertainer, half in Portuguese, half in Ticunian, favored them with his customary oration in a tone of the most rollicking good humor. What he said was what is said by all the charlatans who place their services at the public disposal, whether they be Spanish Figaros or French perruqiers. At the bottom the same self-possession, the same knowledge of human weakness, the same description of threadbare witticisms, the same amusing dexterity, and, on the part of the natives, the same wide-mouth astonishment, the same curiosity, the same credulity as the simple folk of the civilized It followed, then, that ten minutes later the public were completely won, and crowded round Fragoso, who was installed in a loja of the place, a sort of serving-bar to the inn. The loja belonged to a Brazilian settled at Tabatinga. There, for a few vatems, which are the sols of the country, and worth about twenty reis, or half a dozen centimes each, the natives could get drinks of the crudest, and particularly assai, a liquor half-sold, half-liquid, made of the fruit of the palm-tree, and drunk from a coui or half-calabash in general use in this district of the Amazon. And then men and women, with equal eagerness, took their places on the barber's stool. The scissors of Fragoso had little to do, for it was not a question of cutting these wealthy heads of hair, nearly all remarkable for their softness and their quality, but the use to which he could put his comb and the tongs, which were kept warming in the corner in a brasier. And then the encouragements of the artist to the crowd! "Look here! look here!" said he; "how will that do, my friends—if you don't sleep on the top of it! There you are, for a twelvemonth! and these are the latest novelties from Belem and Rio de Janeiro! The queen's maids of honor are not more cleverly decked out; and observe, I am not stingy with the No, he was not stingy with it. True, it was only a little grease, with which he had mixed some of the juices of a few flowers, but he plastered it on like cement! And as to the names of the capillary edifices—for the monuments reared by the hands of Fragoso were of every order of architecture—buckles, rings, clubs, tresses, crimpings, rolls, corkscrews, curls, everything found there a place. Nothing false; no towers, no chignons, no shams! These head were not enfeebled by cuttings nor thinned by fallings-off, but were forests in all their native virginity! Fragoso, however, was not above adding a few natural flowers, two or three long fish-bones, and some fine bone or copper ornaments, which were brought him by the dandies of the district. Assuredly, the exquisites of the Directory would have envied the arrangement of these high-art coiffures, three and four stories high, and the great Leonard himself would have bowed before his transatlantic And then the vatems, the handfuls of reis—the only coins for which the natives of the Amazon exchange their goods—which rained into the pocket of Fragoso, and which he collected with evident satisfaction. But assuredly night would come before he could satisfy the demands of the customers, who were so constantly renewed. It was not only the population of Tabatinga which crowded to the door of the loja. The news of the arrival of Fragoso was not slow to get abroad; natives came to him from all sides: Ticunas from the left bank of the river, Mayorunas from the right bank, as well as those who live on the Cajuru and those who come from the villages of the Javary. A long array of anxious ones formed itself in the square. The happy ones coming from the hands of Fragoso went proudly from one house to another, showed themselves off without daring to shake themselves, like the big children that they were. It thus happened that when noon came the much-occupied barber had not had time to return on board, but had had to content himself with a little assai, some manioc flour, and turtle eggs, which he rapidly devoured between two applications of the curling-tongs. But it was a great harvest for the innkeeper, as all the operations could not be conducted without a large absorption of liquors drawn from the cellars of the inn. In fact, it was an event for the town of Tabatinga, this visit of the celebrated Fragoso, barber in ordinary and extraordinary to the tribes of the Upper Amazon! AT FIVE O'CLOCK in the evening Fragoso was still there, and was asking himself if he would have to pass the night on the spot to satisfy the expectant crowd, when a stranger arrived in the square, and seeing all this native gathering, advanced toward the inn. For some minutes the stranger eyed Fragoso attentively with some circumspection. The examination was obviously satisfactory, for he entered the loja. He was a man about thirty-five years of age. He was dressed in a somewhat elegant traveling costume, which added much to his personal appearance. But his strong black beard, which the scissors had not touched for some time, and his hair, a trifle long, imperiously required the good offices of a barber. "Good-day, friend, good-day!" said he, lightly striking Fragoso on the Fragoso turned round when he heard the words pronounced in pure Brazilian, and not in the mixed idiom of the natives. "A compatriot?" he asked, without stopping the twisting of the refractory mouth of a Mayouma head. "Yes," answered the stranger. "A compatriot who has need of "To be sure! In a minute," said Fragoso. "Wait till I have finished with And this was done in a couple of strokes with the curling-tongs. Although he was the last comer, and had no right to the vacant place, he sat down on the stool without causing any expostulation on the part of the natives who lost a turn. Fragoso put down the irons for the scissors, and, after the manner of his brethren, said: "What can I do for you, sir?" "Cut my beard and my hair," answered the stranger. "All right!" said Fragoso, inserting his comb into the mass of hair. And then the scissors to do their work. "And you come from far?" asked Fragoso, who could not work without a good deal to say. "I have come from the neighborhood of Iquitos." "So have I!" exclaimed Fragoso. "I have come down the Amazon from Iquitos to Tabatinga. May I ask your name?" "No objection at all," replied the stranger. "My name is Torres." When the hair was cut in the latest style Fragoso began to thin his beard, but at this moment, as he was looking straight into his face, he stopped, then began again, and then: "Eh! Mr. Torres," said he; "I seem to know you. We must have seen each "I do not think so," quickly answered Torres. "I am always wrong!" replied Fragoso, and he hurried on to finish A moment after Torres continued the conversation which this question of Fragoso had interrupted, with: "How did you come from Iquitos?" "From Iquitos to Tabatinga?" "On board a raft, on which I was given a passage by a worthy fazender who is going down the Amazon with his family." "A friend indeed!" replied Torres. "That is a chance, and if your fazender would take me——" "Do you intend, then, to go down the river?" "No, only to Manaos, where I have business." "Well, my host is very kind, and I think he would cheerfully "Do you think so?" "I might almost say I am sure." "And what is the name of this fazender?" asked Torres carelessly. "Joam Garral," answered Fragoso. And at the same time he muttered to himself: "I certainly have seen this fellow somewhere!" Torres was not the man to allow a conversation to drop which was likely to interest him, and for very good reasons. "And so you think Joam Garral would give me a passage?" "I do not doubt it," replied Fragoso. "What he would do for a poor chap like me he would not refuse to do for a compatriot like you." "Is he alone on board the jangada?" "No," replied Fragoso. "I was going to tell you that he is traveling with all his family—and jolly people they are, I assure you. He is accompanied by a crew of Indians and negroes, who form part of the staff at the fazenda." "Is he rich?" "Oh, certainly!" answered Fragoso—"very rich. Even the timber which forms the jangada, and the cargo it carries, constitute a "The Joam Garral and his whole family have just passed the "Yes," said Fragoso; "his wife, his son, his daughter, and Miss Minha's "Ah! he has a daughter?" said Torres. "A charming girl!" "Going to get married?" "Yes, to a brave young fellow," replied Fragoso—"an army surgeon in garrison at Belem, and the wedding is to take place as soon as we get to the end of the voyage." "Good!" said the smiling Torres; "it is what you might call a betrothal "A voyage of betrothal, of pleasure, and of business!" said Fragoso. "Madame Yaquita and her daughter have never set foot on Brazilian ground; and as for Joam Garral, it is the first time he has crossed the frontier since he went to the farm of old Magalha볮" "I suppose," asked Torres, "that there are some servants with "Of course," replied Fragoso—"old Cybele, on the farm for the last fifty years, and a pretty mulatto, Miss Lina, who is more of a companion than a servant to her mistress. Ah, what an amiable disposition! What a heart, and what eyes! And the ideas she has about everything, particularly about lianas—" Fragoso, started on this subject, would not have been able to stop himself, and Lina would have been the object of a good many enthusiastic declarations, had Torres not quitted the chair for another customer. "What do I owe you?" asked he of the barber. "Nothing," answered Fragoso. "Between compatriots, when they meet on the frontier, there can be no question of that sort." "But," replied Torres, "I want to——" "Very well, we will settle that later on, on board the jangada." "But I do not know that, and I do not like to ask Joam Garral to allow "Do not hesitate!" exclaimed Fragoso; "I will speak to him if you would like it better, and he will be very happy to be of use to you under the And at that instant Manoel and Benito, coming into the town after dinner, appeared at the door of the loja, wishing to see Fragoso Torres turned toward them and suddenly said: "There are two gentlemen I know—or rather I remember." "You remember them!" asked Fragoso, surprised. "Yes, undoubtedly! A month ago, in the forest of Iquitos, they got me out of a considerable difficulty." "But they are Benito Garral and Manoel Valdez." "I know. They told me their names, but I never expected to see Torres advanced toward the two young men, who looked at him without recognizing him. "You do not remember me, gentlemen?" he asked. "Wait a little," answered Benito; "Mr. Torres, if I remember aright; it was you who, in the forest of Iquitos, got into difficulties with a "Quite true, gentlemen," replied Torres. "For six weeks I have been traveling down the Amazon, and I have just crossed the frontier at the same time as you have." "Very pleased to see you again," said Benito; "but you have not forgotten that you promised to come to the fazenda to my father?" "I have not forgotten it," answered Torres. "And you would have done better to have accepted my offer; it would have allowed you to have waited for our departure, rested from you fatigues, and descended with us to the frontier; so many days of walking saved." "To be sure!" answered Torres. "Our compatriot is not going to stop at the frontier," said Fragoso, "he is going on to Manaos." "Well, then," replied Benito, "if you will come on board the jangada you will be well received, and I am sure my father will give you "Willingly," said Torres; "and you will allow me to thank you Manoel took no part in the conversation; he let Benito make the offer of his services, and attentively watched Torres, whose face he scarcely remembered. There was an entire want of frankness in the eyes, whose look changed unceasingly, as if he was afraid to fix them anywhere. But Manoel kept this impression to himself, not wishing to injure a compatriot whom they were about to oblige. "Gentlemen," said Torres, "if you like, I am ready to follow you to the "Come, then," answered Benito. A quarter of an hour afterward Torres was on board the jangada. Benito introduced him to Joam Garral, acquainting him with the circumstances under which they had previously met him, and asked him to give him a passage down "I am happy, sir, to be able to oblige you," replied Joam. "Thank you," said Torres, who at the moment of putting forth his hand kept it back in spite of himself. "We shall be off at daybreak tomorrow," added Joam Garral, "so you had better get your things on board." "Oh, that will not take me long!" answered Torres; "there is only myself and nothing else!" "Make yourself at home," said Joam Garral. That evening Torres took possession of a cabin near to that of the barber. It was not till eight o'clock that the latter returned to the raft, and gave the young mulatto an account of his exploits, and repeated, with no little vanity, that the renown of the illustrious Fragoso was increasing in the basin of the Upper Amazon. AT DAYBREAK on the morrow, the 27th of June, the cables were cast off, and the raft continued its journey down the river. An extra passenger was on board. Whence came this Torres? No one exactly knew. Where was he going to? "To Manaos," he said. Torres was careful to let no suspicion of his past life escape him, nor of the profession that he had followed till within the last two months, and no one would have thought that the jangada had given refuge to an old captain of the woods. Joam Garral did not wish to mar the service he was rendering by questions of too pressing a In taking him on board the fazender had obeyed a sentiment of humanity. In the midst of these vast Amazonian deserts, more especially at the time when the steamers had not begun to furrow the waters, it was very difficult to find means of safe and rapid transit. Boats did not ply regularly, and in most cases the traveler was obliged to walk across the forests. This is what Torres had done, and what he would continue to have done, and it was for him unexpected good luck to have got a passage on the raft. From the moment that Benito had explained under what conditions he had met Torres the introduction was complete, and he was able to consider himself as a passenger on an Atlantic steamer, who is free to take part in the general life if he cares, or free to keep himself a little apart if of an It was noticed, at least during the first few days, that Torres did not try to become intimate with the Garral family. He maintained a good deal of reserve, answering if addressed, but never provoking a reply. If he appeared more open with any one, it was with Fragoso. Did he not owe to this gay companion the idea of taking passage on board the raft? Many times he asked him about the position of the Garrals at Iquitos, the sentiments of the daughter for Manoel Valdez, and always discreetly. Generally, when he was not walking alone in the bow of the jangada, he kept to his cabin. He breakfasted and dined with Joam Garral and his family, but he took little part in their conversation, and retired when the repast During the morning the raft passed by the picturesque group of islands situated in the vast estuary of the Javary. This important affluent of the Amazon comes from the southwest, and from source to mouth has not a single island, nor a single rapid, to check its course. The mouth is about three thousand feet in width, and the river comes in some miles above the site formerly occupied by the town of the same name, whose possession was disputed for so long by Spaniards and Portuguese. Up to the morning of the 30th of June there had been nothing particular to distinguish the voyage. Occasionally they met a few vessels gliding along by the banks attached one to another in such a way that a single Indian could manage the whole—navigar de bubina, as this kind of navigation is called by the people of the country, that is to say, "confidence navigation." They had passed the island of Araria, the Archipelago of the Calderon islands, the island of Capiatu, and many others whose names have not yet come to the knowledge of geographers. On the 30th of June the pilot signaled on the right the little village of Jurupari-Tapera, where they halted for two or three hours. Manoel and Benito had gone shooting in the neighborhood, and brought back some feathered game, which was well received in the larder. At the same time they had got an animal of whom a naturalist would have made more than did the cook. It was a creature of a dark color, something like a large Newfoundland "A great ant-eater!" exclaimed Benito, as he threw it on the deck of the "And a magnificent specimen which would not disgrace the collection of a museum!" added Manoel. "Did you take much trouble to catch the curious animal?" asked Minha. "Yes, little sister," replied Benito, "and you were not there to ask for mercy! These dogs die hard, and no less than three bullets were necessary to bring this fellow down." The ant-eater looked superb, with his long tail and grizzly hair; with his pointed snout, which is plunged into the ant-hills whose insects form its principal food; and his long, thin paws, armed with sharp nails, five inches long, and which can shut up like the fingers of one's hand. But what a hand was this hand of the ant-eater! When it has got hold of anything you have to cut it off to make it let go! It is of this hand that the traveler, Emile Carrey, has so justly observed: "The tiger himself would perish in its On the 2d of July, in the morning, the jangada arrived at the foot of San Pablo d'Oliven硬 after having floated through the midst of numerous islands which in all seasons are clad with verdure and shaded with magnificent trees, and the chief of which bear the names of Jurupari, Rita, Maracanatena, and Cururu Sapo. Many times they passed by the mouths of iguarapes, or little affluents, with black waters. The coloration of these waters is a very curious phenomenon. It is peculiar to a certain number of these tributaries of the Amazon, which differ greatly in importance. Manoel remarked how thick the cloudiness was, for it could be clearly seen on the surface of the whitish waters of the river. "They have tried to explain this coloring in many ways," said he, "but I do not think the most learned have yet arrived at a satisfactory "The waters are really black with a magnificent reflection of gold," replied Minha, showing a light, reddish-brown cloth, which was floating level with the jangada. "Yes," said Manoel, "and Humboldt has already observed the curious reflection that you have; but on looking at it attentively you will see that it is rather the color of sepia which pervades the "Good!" exclaimed Benito. "Another phenomenon on which the savants are "Perhaps," said Fragoso, "they might ask the opinions of the caymans, dolphins, and manatees, for they certainly prefer the black waters to the others to enjoy themselves in." "They are particularly attractive to those animals," replied Manoel, "but why it is rather embarrassing to say. For instance, is the coloration due to the hydrocarbons which the waters hold in solution, or is it because they flow through districts of peat, coal, and anthracite; or should we not rather attribute it to the enormous quantity of minute plants which they bear along? There is nothing certain in the matter. Under any circumstances, they are excellent to drink, of a freshness quite enviable for the climate, and without after-taste, and perfectly harmless. Take a little of the water, Minha, and drink it; you will find it all right." The water is in truth limpid and fresh, and would advantageously replace many of the table-waters used in Europe. They drew several frasques for It has been said that in the morning of the 2d of July the jangada had arrived at San Pablo d'Oliven硬 where they turn out in thousands those long strings of beads which are made from the scales of the coco de piassaba. This trade is here extensively followed. It may, perhaps, seem singular that the ancient lords of the country, Tupinambas and Tupiniquis, should find their principal occupation in making objects for the Catholic religion. But, after all, why not? These Indians are no longer the Indians of days gone by. Instead of being clothed in the national fashion, with a frontlet of macaw feathers, bow, and blow-tube, have they not adopted the American costume of white cotton trousers, and a cotton poncho woven by their wives, who have become thorough adepts in its manufacture? San Pablo d'Oliven硬 a town of some importance, has not less than two thousand inhabitants, derived from all the neighboring tribes. At present the capital of the Upper Amazon, it began as a simple Mission, founded by the Portuguese Carmelites about 1692, and afterward acquired by the Jesuit From the beginning it has been the country of the Omaguas, whose name means "flat-heads," and is derived from the barbarous custom of the native mothers of squeezing the heads of their newborn children between two plates, so as to give them an oblong skull, which was then the fashion. Like everything else, that has changed; heads have re-taken their natural form, and there is not the slightest trace of the ancient deformity in the skulls of the chaplet-makers. Every one, with the exception of Joam Garral, went ashore. Torres also remained on board, and showed no desire to visit San Pablo d'Oliven硬 which he did not, however, seem to be acquainted with. Assuredly if the adventurer was taciturn he was not inquisitive. Benito had no difficulty in doing a little bartering, and adding slightly to the cargo of the jangada. He and the family received an excellent reception from the principal authorities of the town, the commandant of the place, and the chief of the custom-house, whose functions did not in the least prevent them from engaging in trade. They even intrusted the young merchant with a few products of the country for him to dispose of on their account at Manaos and Belem. The town is composed of some sixty houses, arranged on the plain which hereabouts crowns the river-bank. Some of the huts are covered with tiles—a very rare thing in these countries; but, on the other hand, the humble church, dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, has only a roof of straw, rather more appropriate for a stable of Bethlehem than for an edifice consecrated to religion in one of the most Catholic countries of the world. The commandant, his lieutenant, and the head of the police accepted an invitation to dine with the family, and they were received by Joam Garral with the respect due to their rank. During dinner Torres showed himself more talkative than usual. He spoke about some of his excursions into the interior of Brazil like a man who knew the country. But in speaking of these travels Torres did not neglect to ask the commandant if he knew Manaos, if his colleague would be there at this time, and if the judge, the first magistrate of the province, was accustomed to absent himself at this period of the hot season. It seemed that in putting this series of questions Torres looked at Joam Garral. It was marked enough for even Benito to notice it, not without surprise, and he observed that his father gave particular attention to the questions so curiously propounded The commandant of San Pablo d'Oliven硠assured the adventurer that the authorities were not now absent from Manaos, and he even asked Joam Garral to convey to them his compliments. In all probability the raft would arrive before the town in seven weeks, or a little later, say about the 20th or the 25th of August. The guests of the fazender took leave of the Garral family toward the evening, and the following morning, that of the 3d of July, the jangada recommenced its descent of the river. At noon they passed on the left the mouth of the Yacurupa. This tributary, properly speaking, is a true canal, for it discharges its waters into the I硬 which is itself an affluent of the Amazon. A peculiar phenomenon, for the river displaces itself to feed its Toward three o'clock in the afternoon the giant raft passed the mouth of the Jandiatuba, which brings its magnificent black waters from the southwest, and discharges them into the main artery by a mouth of four hundred meters in extent, after having watered the territories of the Culino Indians. A number of islands were breasted—Pimaicaira, Caturia, Chico, Motachina; some inhabited, others deserted, but all covered with superb vegetation, which forms an unbroken garland of green from one end of the Amazon to the other. THE CONTINUED DESCENT ON THE EVENING of the 5th of July, the atmosphere had been oppressive since the morning and threatened approaching storms. Large bats of ruddy color skimmed with their huge wings the current of the Amazon. Among them could be distinguished the perros voladors, somber brown above and light-colored beneath, for which Minha, and particularly the young mulatto, felt an instinctive aversion. These were, in fact, the horrible vampires which suck the blood of the cattle, and even attack man if he is imprudent enough to sleep out in the "Oh, the dreadful creatures!" cried Lina, hiding her eyes; "they fill me "And they are really formidable," added Minha; "are they "To be sure—very formidable," answered he. "These vampires have a particular instinct which leads them to bleed you in the places where the blood most easily comes, and principally behind the ear. During the operation the continue to move their wings, and cause an agreeable freshness which renders the sleep of the sleeper more profound. They tell of people, unconsciously submitted to this hemorrhage for many hours, who have never awoke!" "Talk no more of things like that, Manoel," said Yaquita, "or neither Minha nor Lina will dare sleep to-night." "Never fear!" replied Manoel; "if necessary we will watch over them as "Silence!" said Benito. "What is the matter?" asked Manoel. "Do you not hear a very curious noise on that side?" continued Benito, pointing to the right bank. "Certainly," answered Yaquita. "What causes the noise?" asked Minha. "One would think it was shingle rolling on the beach of the islands." "Good! I know what it is," answered Benito. "Tomorrow, at daybreak, there will be a rare treat for those who like fresh turtle eggs and little turtles!" He was not deceived; the noise was produced by innumerable chelonians of all sizes, who were attracted to the islands to lay their eggs. It is in the sand of the beach that these amphibians choose the most convenient places to deposit their eggs. The operation commences with sunset and finishes with the dawn. At this moment the chief turtle had left the bed of the river to reconnoiter for a favorable spot; the others, collected in thousands, were soon after occupied in digging with their hind paddles a trench six hundred feet long, a dozen wide, and six deep. After laying their eggs they cover them with a bed of sand, which they beat down with their carapaces as if they were rammers. This egg-laying operation is a grand affair for the riverine Indians of the Amazon and its tributaries. They watch for the arrival of the chelonians, and proceed to the extraction of the eggs to the sound of the drum; and the harvest is divided into three parts—one to the watchers, another to the Indians, a third to the state, represented by the captains of the shore, who, in their capacity of police, have to superintend the collection of the dues. To certain beaches which the decrease of the waters has left uncovered, and which have the privilege of attracting the greater number of turtles, there has been given the name of "royal beaches." When the harvest is gathered it is a holiday for the Indians, who give themselves up to games, dancing, and drinking; and it is also a holiday for the alligators of the river, who hold high revelry on the remains of the amphibians. Turtles, or turtle eggs, are an object of very considerable trade throughout the Amazonian basin. It is these chelonians whom they "turn"—that is to say, put on their backs—when they come from laying their eggs, and whom they preserve alive, keeping them in palisaded pools like fish-pools, or attaching them to a stake by a cord just long enough to allow them to go and come on the land or under the water. In this way they always have the meat of these animals fresh. They proceed differently with the little turtles which are just hatched. There is no need to pack them or tie them up. Their shell is still soft, their flesh extremely tender, and after they have cooked them they eat them just like oysters. In this form large quantities are consumed. However, this is not the most general use to which the chelonian eggs are put in the provinces of Amazones and Para. The manufacture of manteigna de tartaruga, or turtle butter, which will bear comparison with the best products of Normandy or Brittany, does not take less every year that from two hundred and fifty to three hundred millions of eggs. But the turtles are innumerable all along the river, and they deposit their eggs on the sands of the beach in incalculable quantities. However, on account of the destruction caused not only by the natives, but by the water-fowl from the side, the urubus in the air, and the alligators in the river, their number has been so diminished that for every little turtle a Brazilian pataque, or about a franc, has to be On the morrow, at daybreak, Benito, Fragoso, and a few Indians took a pirogue and landed on the beach of one of the large islands which they had passed during the night. It was not necessary for the jangada to halt. They knew they could catch her up. On the shore they saw the little hillocks which indicated the places where, that very night, each packet of eggs had been deposited in the trench in groups of from one hundred and sixty to one hundred and ninety. These there was no wish to get out. But an earlier laying had taken place two months before, the eggs had hatched under the action of the heat stored in the sand, and already several thousands of little turtles were running about the beach. The hunters were therefore in luck. The pirogue was filled with these interesting amphibians, and they arrived just in time for breakfast. The booty was divided between the passengers and crew of the jangada, and if any lasted till the evening it did not last any longer. In the morning of the 7th of July they were before San Jose de Matura, a town situated near a small river filled up with long grass, and on the borders of which a legend says that Indians with tails once existed. In the morning of the 8th of July they caught sight of the village of San Antonio, two or three little houses lost in the trees at the mouth of the I硬 or Putumayo, which is about nine hundred meters wide. The Putumayo is one of the most important affluents of the Amazon. Here in the sixteenth century missions were founded by the Spaniards, which were afterward destroyed by the Portuguese, and not a trace of them now Representatives of different tribes of Indians are found in the neighborhood, which are easily recognizable by the differences in their tattoo marks. The I硠is a body of water coming from the east of the Pasto Mountains to the northeast of Quito, through the finest forests of wild cacao-trees. Navigable for a distance of a hundred and forty leagues for steamers of not greater draught than six feet, it may one day become one of the chief waterways in the west of America. The bad weather was at last met with. It did not show itself in continual rains, but in frequent storms. These could not hinder the progress of the raft, which offered little resistance to the wind. Its great length rendered it almost insensible to the swell of the Amazon, but during the torrential showers the Garral family had to keep indoors. They had to occupy profitably these hours of leisure. They chatted together, communicated their observations, and their tongues were seldom idle. It was under these circumstances that little by little Torres had begun to take a more active part in the conversation. The details of his many voyages throughout the whole north of Brazil afforded him numerous subjects to talk about. The man had certainly seen a great deal, but his observations were those of a skeptic, and he often shocked the straightforward people who were listening to him. It should be said that he showed himself much impressed toward Minha. But these attentions, although they were displeasing to Manoel, were not sufficiently marked for him to interfere. On the other hand, Minha felt for him an instinctive repulsion which she was at no pains to conceal. On the 5th of July the mouth of the Tunantins appeared on the left bank, forming an estuary of some four hundred feet across, in which it pours its blackish waters, coming from the west-northwest, after having watered the territories of the Cacena Indians. At this spot the Amazon appears under a truly grandiose aspect, but its course is more than ever encumbered with islands and islets. It required all the address of the pilot to steer through the archipelago, going from one bank to another, avoiding the shallows, shirking the eddies, and maintaining the advance. They might have taken the Ahuaty Parana, a sort of natural canal, which goes off a little below the mouth of the Tunantins, and re-enters the principal stream a hundred an twenty miles further on by the Rio Japura; but if the larger portion of this measures a hundred and fifty feet across, the narrowest is only sixty feet, and the raft would there have met with a On the 13th of July, after having touched at the island of Capuro, passed the mouth of the Jutahy, which, coming from the east-southeast, brings in its black waters by a mouth five hundred feet wide, and admired the legions of monkeys, sulphur-white in color, with cinnabar-red faces, who are insatiable lovers of the nuts produced by the palm-trees from which the river derives its name, the travelers arrived on the 18th of July before the little village At this place the jangada halted for twelve hours, so as to give a rest to the crew. Fonteboa, like most of the mission villages of the Amazon, has not escaped the capricious fate which, during a lengthened period, moves them about from one place to the other. Probably the hamlet has now finished with its nomadic existence, and has definitely become stationary. So much the better; for it is a charming place, with its thirty houses covered with foliage, and its church dedicated to Notre Dame de Guadaloupe, the Black Virgin of Mexico. Fonteboa has one thousand inhabitants, drawn from the Indians on both banks, who rear numerous cattle in the fields in the neighborhood. These occupations do not end here, for they are intrepid hunters, or, if they prefer it, intrepid fishers for the manatee. On the morning of their arrival the young fellows assisted at a very interesting expedition of this nature. Two of these herbivorous cetaceans had just been signaled in the black waters of the Cayaratu, which comes in at Fonteboa. Six brown points were seen moving along the surface, and these were the two pointed snouts and four pinions of the lamantins. Inexperienced fishermen would at first have taken these moving points for floating wreckage, but the natives of Fonteboa were not to be so deceived. Besides, very soon loud blowings indicated that the spouting animals were vigorously ejecting the air which had become useless for their Two ubas, each carrying three fishermen, set off from the bank and approached the manatees, who soon took flight. The black points at first traced a long furrow on the top of the water, and then disappeared for a time. The fishermen continued their cautious advance. One of them, armed with a very primitive harpoon—a long nail at the end of a stick—kept himself in the bow of the boat, while the other two noiselessly paddled on. They waited till the necessity of breathing would bring the manatees up again. In ten minutes or thereabouts the animals would certainly appear in a circle more or In fact, this time had scarcely elapsed before the black points emerged at a little distance, and two jets of air mingled with vapor were noiselessly The ubas approached, the harpoons were thrown at the same instant; one missed its mark, but the other struck one of the cetaceans near his It was only necessary to stun the animal, who rarely defends himself when touched by the iron of the harpoon. In a few pulls the cord brought him alongside the uba, and he was towed to the beach at the foot of the village. It was not a manatee of any size, for it only measured about three feet long. These poor cetaceans have been so hunted that they have become very rare in the Amazon and its affluents, and so little time is left them to grow that the giants of the species do not now exceed seven feet. What are these, after manatees twelve and fifteen feet long, which still abound in the rivers and lakes of Africa? But it would be difficult to hinder their destruction. The flesh of the manatee is excellent, superior even to that of pork, and the oil furnished by its lard, which is three inches thick, is a product of great value. When the meat is smoke-dried it keeps for a long time, and is capital food. If to this is added that the animal is easily caught, it is not to be wondered at that the species is on its way to complete destruction. On the 19th of July, at sunrise, the jangada left Fonteboa, and entered between the two completely deserted banks of the river, and breasted some islands shaded with the grand forests of cacao-trees. The sky was heavily charged with electric cumuli, warning them of renewed storms. The Rio Jurua, coming from the southwest, soon joins the river on the left. A vessel can go up it into Peru without encountering insurmountable obstacles among its white waters, which are fed by a great number of petty affluents. "It is perhaps in these parts," said Manoel, "that we ought to look for those female warriors who so much astonished Orellana. But we ought to say that, like their predecessors, they do nor form separate tribes; they are simply the wives who accompany their husbands to the fight, and who, among the Juruas, have a great reputation for bravery." The jangada continued to descend; but what a labyrinth the Amazon now appeared! The Rio Japura, whose mouth was forty-eight miles on ahead, and which is one of its largest tributaries, runs almost parallel with the river. Between them were canals, iguarapes, lagoons, temporary lakes, an inextricable network which renders the hydrography of this country But if Araujo had no map to guide him, his experience served him more surely, and it was wonderful to see him unraveling the chaos, without ever turning aside from the main river. In fact, he did so well that on the 25th of July, in the afternoon, after having passed before the village of Parani-Tapera, the raft was anchored at the entrance of the Lake of Ego, or Teffe, which it was useless to enter, for they would not have been able to get out of it again into the Amazon. But the town of Ega is of some importance; it was worthy of a halt to visit it. It was arranged, therefore, that the jangada should remain on this spot till the 27th of July, and that on the morrow the large pirogue should take the whole family to Ega. This would give a rest, which was deservedly due to the hard-working crew of the raft. The night passed at the moorings near a slightly rising shore, and nothing disturbed the quiet. A little sheet-lightning was observable on the horizon, but it came from a distant storm which did not reach the entrance to the lake. AT SIX o'clock in the morning of the 20th of July, Yaquita, Minha, Lina, and the two young men prepared to leave the jangada. Joam Garral, who had shown no intention of putting his foot on shore, had decided this time, at the request of the ladies of his family, to leave his absorbing daily work and accompany them on their excursion. Torres had evinced no desire to visit Ega, to the great satisfaction of Manoel, who had taken a great dislike to the man and only waited for an opportunity to declare it. As to Fragoso, he could not have the same reason for going to Ega as had taken him to Tabatinga, which is a place of little importance compared to Ega is a chief town with fifteen hundred inhabitants, and in it reside all those authorities which compose the administration of a considerable city—considerable for the country; that is to say, the military commandant, the chief of the police, the judges, the schoolmaster, and troops under the command of officers of all ranks. With so many functionaries living in a town, with their wives and children, it is easy to see that hair-dressers would be in demand. Such was the case, and Fragoso would not have paid his Doubtless, however, the jolly fellow, who could do no business in Ega, had thought to be of the party if Lina went with her mistress, but, just as they were leaving the raft, he resolved to remain, at the request of Lina "Mr. Fragoso!" she said to him, after taking him aside. "Miss Lina?" answered Fragoso. "I do not think that your friend Torres intends to go with us "Certainly not, he is going to stay on board, Miss Lina, but you wold oblige me by not calling him my friend!" "But you undertook to ask a passage for him before he had shown any intention of doing so." "Yes, and on that occasion, if you would like to know what I think, I made a fool of myself!" "Quite so! and if you would like to know what I think, I do not like the man at all, Mr. Fragoso." "Neither do I, Miss Lina, and I have all the time an idea that I have seen him somewhere before. But the remembrance is too vague; the impression, however, is far from being a pleasant one!" "Where and when could you have met him? Cannot you call it to mind? It might be useful to know who he is and what he has been." "No—I try all I can. How long was it ago? In what country? Under what circumstances? And I cannot hit upon it." "Stay on board and keep watch on Torres during our absence!" "What? Not go with you to Ega, and remain a whole day without "I ask you to do so!" "Is it an order?" "It is an entreaty!" "I will remain!" "I thank you!" "Thank me, then, with a good shake of the hand," replied Fragoso; "that is worth something." Lina held out her hand, and Fragoso kept it for a few moments while he looked into her face. And that is the reason why he did not take his place in the pirogue, and became, without appearing to be, the guard upon Did the latter notice the feelings of aversion with which he was regarded? Perhaps, but doubtless he had his reasons for taking no account of them. A distance of four leagues separated the mooring-place from the town of Ega. Eight leagues, there and back, in a pirogue containing six persons, besides two negroes as rowers, would take some hours, not to mention the fatigue caused by the high temperature, though the sky was veiled with Fortunately a lovely breeze blew from the northwest, and if it held would be favorable for crossing Lake Teffe. They could go to Ega and return rapidly without having to tack. So the lateen sail was hoisted on the mast of the pirogue. Benito took the tiller, and off they went, after a last gesture from Lina to Fragoso to keep his eyes open. The southern shore of the lake had to be followed to get to Ega. After two hours the pirogue arrived at the port of this ancient mission founded by the Carmelites, which became a town in 1759, and which General Gama placed forever under Brazilian rule. The passengers landed on a flat beach, on which were to be found not only boats from the interior, but a few of those little schooners which are used in the coasting-trade on the Atlantic When the two girls entered Ega they were at first much astonished. "What a large town!" said Minha. "What houses! what people!" replied Lina, whose eyes seemed to have expanded so that she might see better. "Rather!" said Benito laughingly. "More than fifteen hundred inhabitants! Two hundred houses at the very least! Some of them with a first floor! And two or three streets! Genuine streets!" "My dear Manoel!" said Minha, "do protect us against my brother! He is making fun of us, and only because he had already been in the finest towns in Amazones and Para!" "Quite so, and he is also poking fun at his mother," added Yaquita, "for I confess I never saw anything equal to this!" "Then, mother and sister, you must take great care that you do not fall into a trance when you get to Manaos, and vanish altogether when you reach "Never fear," answered Manoel; "the ladies will have been gently prepared for these grand wonders by visiting the principal cities of the Upper Amazon!" "Now, Manoel," said Minha, "you are talking just like my brother! Are you making fun of us, too?" "No, Minha, I assure you." "Laugh on, gentlemen," said Lina, "and let us look around, my dear mistress, for it is very fine!" Very fine! A collection of houses, built of mud, whitewashed, and principally covered with thatch or palm-leaves; a few built of stone or wood, with verandas, doors, and shutters painted a bright green, standing in the middle of a small orchard of orange-trees in flower. But there were two or three public buildings, a barrack, and a church dedicated to St. Theresa, which was a cathedral by the side of the modest chapel at Iquitos. On looking toward the lake a beautiful panorama unfolded itself, bordered by a frame of cocoanut-trees and assais, which ended at the edge of the liquid level, and showed beyond the picturesque village of Noqueira, with its few small houses lost in the mass of the old olive-trees on the beach. But for the two girls there was another cause of wonderment, quite feminine wonderment too, in the fashions of the fair Egans, not the primitive costume of the natives, converted Omaas or Muas, but the dress of true Brazilian ladies. The wives and daughters of the principal functionaries and merchants o the town pretentiously showed off their Parisian toilettes, a little out of date perhaps, for Ega is five hundred leagues away from Para, and this is itself many thousands of miles from Paris. "Just look at those fine ladies in their fine clothes!" "Lina will go mad!" exclaimed Benito. "If those dresses were worn properly," said Minha, "they might not be so "My dear Minha," said Manoel, "with your simple gown and straw hat, you are better dressed than any one of these Brazilians, with their headgear and flying petticoats, which are foreign to their country and their race." "If it pleases you to think so," answered Minha, "I do not envy any of But they had come to see. They walked through the streets, which contained more stalls than shops; they strolled about the market-place, the rendezvous of the fashionable, who were nearly stifled in their European clothes; they even breakfasted at an hotel—it was scarcely an inn—whose cookery caused them to deeply regret the excellent service on the raft. After dinner, at which only turtle flesh, served up in different forms, appeared, the Garral family went for the last time to admire the borders of the lake as the setting sun gilded it with its rays; then they rejoined their pirogue, somewhat disillusioned perhaps as to the magnificence of a town which one hour would give time enough to visit, and a little tired with walking about its stifling streets which were not nearly so pleasant as the shady pathways of Iquitos. The inquisitive Lina's enthusiasm alone had not They all took their places in the pirogue. The wind remained in the northwest, and had freshened with the evening. The sail was hoisted. They took the same course as in the morning, across the lake fed by the black waters of the Rio Teffe, which, according to the Indians, is navigable toward the southwest for forty days' journey. At eight o'clock the priogue regained the mooring-place and hailed the jangada. As soon as Lina could get Fragoso aside— "Have you seen anything suspicious?" she inquired. "Nothing, Miss Lina," he replied; "Torres has scarcely left his cabin, where he has been reading and writing." "He did not get into the house or the dining-room, as I feared?" "No, all the time he was not in his cabin he was in the bow of "And what was he doing?" "Holding an old piece of paper in his hand, consulting it with great attention, and muttering a lot of incomprehensible words." "All that is not so unimportant as you think, Mr. Fragoso. These readings and writings and old papers have their interest! He is neither a professor nor a lawyer, this reader and writer!" "You are right!" "Still watch him, Mr. Fragoso!" "I will watch him always, Miss Lina," replied Fragoso. On the morrow, the 27th of July, at daybreak, Benito gave the pilot the signal to start. Away between the islands, in the Bay of Arenapo, the mouth of the Japura, six thousand six hundred feet wide, was seen for an instant. This large tributary comes into the Amazon through eight mouths, as if it were pouring into some gulf or ocean. But its waters come from afar, and it is the mountains of the republic of Ecuador which start them on a course that there are no falls to break until two hundred and ten leagues from its junction with the main stream. All this day was spent in descending to the island of Yapura, after which the river, less interfered with, makes navigation much easier. The current is not so rapid and the islets are easily avoided, so that there were no touchings or groundings. The next day the jangada coasted along by vast beaches formed by undulating high domes, which served as the barriers of immense pasture grounds, in which the whole of the cattle in Europe could be raised and fed. These sand banks are considered to be the richest turtle grounds in the basin of the Upper Amazon. On the evening of the 29th of July they were securely moored off the island of Catua, so as to pass the night, which promised to be On this island, as soon as the sun rose above the horizon, there appeared a party of Muras Indians, the remains of that ancient and powerful tribe, which formerly occupied more than a hundred leagues of the river bank between the Teffe and the Madeira. These Indians went and came, watching the raft, which remained stationary. There were about a hundred of them armed with blow-tubes formed of a reed peculiar to these parts, and which is strengthened outside by the stem of a dwarf palm from which the pith has Joam Garral quitted for an instand the work which took up all his time, to warn his people to keep a good guard and not to provoke these In truth the sides were not well matched. The Muras are remarkably clever at sending through their blow-tubes arrows which cause incurable wounds, even at a range of three hundred paces. These arrows, made of the leaf of the coucourite palm, are feathered with cotton, and nine or ten inches long, with a point like a needle, and poisoned with curare. Curare, or wourah, the liquor "which kills in a whisper," as the Indians say, is prepared from the sap of one of the euphorbiace栍 and the juice of a bulbous strychnos, not to mention the paste of venomous ants and poisonous serpent fangs which they mix with it. "It is indeed a terrible poison," said Manoel. "It attacks at once those nerves by which the movements are subordinated to the will. But the heart is not touched, and it does not cease to beat until the extinction of the vital functions, and besides no antidote is known to the poison, which commences by numbness of the limbs." Very fortunately, these Muras made no hostile demonstrations, although they entertain a profound hatred toward the whites. They have, in truth, no longer the courage of their ancestors. At nightfall a five-holed flute was heard behind the trees in the island, playing several airs in a minor key. Another flute answered. This interchange of musical phrases lasted for two or three minutes, and the Muras disappeared. Fragoso, in an exuberant moment, had tried to reply by a song in his own fashion, but Lina had clapped her hand on his mouth, and prevented his showing off his insignificant singing talents, which he was so willingly On the 2d of August, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the raft arrived twenty leagues away from there at Lake Apoara, which is fed by the black waters of the river of the same name, and two days afterward, about five o'clock, it stopped at the entrance into Lake Coary. This lake is one of the largest which communicates with the Amazon, and it serves as a reservoir for different rivers. Five or six affluents run into it, and there are stored and mixed up, and emerge by a narrow channel into the main stream. After catching a glimpse of the hamlet of Tahua-Miri, mounted on its piles as on stilts, as a protection against inundation from the floods, which often sweep up over these low sand banks, the raft was moored for the night. The stoppage was made in sight of the village of Coary, a dozen houses, considerably dilapidated, built in the midst of a thick mass of orange and Nothing can be more changeable than the aspect of this village, for according to the rise or fall of the water the lake stretches away on all sides of it, or is reduced to a narrow canal, scarcely deep enough to communicate with the Amazon. On the following morning, that of the 5th of August, they started at dawn, passing the canal of Yucura, belonging to the tangled system of lakes and furos of the Rio Zapura, and on the morning of the 6th of August they reached the entrance to Lake Miana. No fresh incident occurred in the life on board, which proceeded with almost methodical regularity. Fragoso, urged on by Lina, did not cease to watch Torres. Many times he tried to get him to talk about his past life, but the adventurer eluded all conversation on the subject, and ended by maintaining a strict reserve toward the barber. After catching a glimpse of the hamlet of Tahua-Miri, mounted on its piles as on stilts, as a protection against inundation from the floods, which often sweep up and over these low sand banks, the raft was moored for the night. His intercourse with the Garral family remained the same. If he spoke little to Joam, he addressed himself more willingly to Yaquita and her daughter, and appeared not to notice the evident coolness with which he was received. They all agreed that when the raft arrived at Manaos, Torres should leave it, and that they would never speak of him again. Yaquita followed the advice of Padre Passanha, who counseled patience, but the good priest had not such an easy task in Manoel, who was quite disposed to put on shore the intruder who had been so unfortunately taken on to the raft. The only thing that happened on this evening was the following: A pirogue, going down the river, came alongside the jangada, after being hailed by Joam Garral. "Are you going to Manaos?" asked he of the Indian who commanded and was "Yes," replied he. "When will you get there?" "In eight days." "Then you will arrive before we shall. Will you deliver a letter "Take this letter, then, my friend, and deliver it at Manaos." The Indian took the letter which Joam gave him, and a handful of reis was the price of the commission he had undertaken. No members of the family, then gone into the house, knew anything of this. Torres was the only witness. He heard a few words exchanged between Joam and the Indian, and from the cloud which passed over his face it was easy to see that the sending of this letter considerably surprised him. HOWEVER, if Manoel, to avoid giving rise to a violent scene on board, said nothing on the subject of Torres, he resolved to have an explanation with Benito. "Benito," he began, after taking him to the bow of the jangada, "I have something to say to you." Benito, generally so good-humored, stopped as he looked at Manoel, and a cloud came over his countenance. "I know why," he said; "it is about Torres." "And I also wish to speak to you." "You have then noticed his attention to Minha?" said Manoel, "Ah! It is not a feeling of jealousy, though, that exasperates you against such a man?" said Benito quickly. "No!" replied Manoel. "Decidedly not! Heaven forbid I should do such an injury to the girl who is to become my wife. No, Benito! She holds the adventurer in horror! I am not thinking anything of that sort; but it distresses me to see this adventurer constantly obtruding himself by his presence and conversation on your mother and sister, and seeking to introduce himself into that intimacy with your family which is already mine." "Manoel," gravely answered Benito, "I share your aversion for this dubious individual, and had I consulted my feelings I would already have driven Torres off the raft! But I dare not!" "You dare not?" said Manoel, seizing the hand of his friend. "You dare "Listen to me, Manoel," continued Benito. "You have observed Torres well, have you not? You have remarked his attentions to my sister! Nothing can be truer! But while you have been noticing that, have you not seen that this annoying man never keeps his eyes off my father, no matter if he is near to him or far from him, and that he seems to have some spiteful secret intention in watching him with such unaccountable "What are you talking about, Benito? Have you any reason to think that Torres bears some grudge against Joam Garral?" "No! I think nothing!" replied Benito; "it is only a presentiment! But look well at Torres, study his face with care, and you will see what an evil grin he has whenever my father comes into his sight." "Well, then," exclaimed Manoel, "if it is so, Benito, the more reason for clearing him out!" "More reason—or less reason," replied Benito. "Manoel, I fear—what? I know not—but to force my father to get rid of Torres would perhaps be imprudent! I repeat it, I am afraid, though no positive fact enables me to explain my fear to myself!" And Benito seemed to shudder with anger as he said these words. "Then," said Manoel, "you think we had better wait?" "Yes; wait, before doing anything, but above all things let us be on our "After all," answered Manoel, "in twenty days we shall be at Manaos. There Torres must stop. There he will leave us, and we shall be relieved of his presence for good! Till then we must keep our eyes "You understand me, Manoel?" asked Benito. "I understand you, my friend, my brother!" replied Manoel, "although I do not share, and cannot share, your fears! What connection can possibly exist between your father and this adventurer? Evidently your father has never seen him!" "I do not say that my father knows Torres," said Benito; "but assuredly it seems to me that Torres knows my father. What was the fellow doing in the neighborhood of the fazenda when we met him in the forest of Iquitos? Why did he then refuse the hospitality which we offered, so as to afterward manage to force himself on us as our traveling companion? We arrive at Tabatinga, and there he is as if he was waiting for us! The probability is that these meetings were in pursuance of a preconceived plan. When I see the shifty, dogged look of Torres, all this crowds on my mind. I do not know! I am losing myself in things that defy explanation! Oh! why did I ever think of offering to take him on board this raft?" "Be calm, Benito, I pray you!" "Manoel!" continued Benito, who seemed to be powerless to contain himself, "think you that if it only concerned me—this man who inspires us all with such aversion and disgust—I should not hesitate to throw him overboard! But when it concerns my father, I fear lest in giving way to my impressions I may be injuring my object! Something tells me that with this scheming fellow there may be danger in doing anything until he has given us the right—the right and the duty—to do it. In short, on the jangada, he is in our power, and if we both keep good watch over my father, we can spoil his game, no matter how sure it may be, and force him to unmask and betray himself! Then wait a little longer!" The arrival of Torres in the bow of the raft broke off the conversation. Torres looked slyly at the two young men, but said not a word. Benito was not deceived when he said that the adventurer's eyes were never off Joam Garral as long as he fancied he was unobserved. No! he was not deceived when he said that Torres' face grew evil when he looked at his father! By what mysterious bond could these two men—one nobleness itself, that was self-evident—be connected with each other? Such being the state of affairs it was certainly difficult for Torres, constantly watched as he was by the two young men, by Fragoso and Lina, to make a single movement without having instantly to repress it. Perhaps he understood the position. If he did, he did not show it, for his manner changed not in the least. Satisfied with their mutual explanation, Manoel and Benito promised to keep him in sight without doing anything to awaken his suspicions. During the following days the jangada passed on the right the mouths of the rivers Camara, Aru, and Yuripari, whose waters instead of flowing into the Amazon run off to the south to feed the Rio des Purus, and return by it into the main river. At five o'clock on the evening of the 10th of August they put into the island of Cocos. They there passed a seringal. This name is applied to a caoutchouc plantation, the caoutchouc being extracted from the seringueira tree, whose scientific name is siphonia elastica. It is said that, by negligence or bad management, the number of these trees is decreasing in the basin of the Amazon, but the forests of seringueira trees are still very considerable on the banks of the Madeira, Purus, and other tributaries. There were here some twenty Indians collecting and working the caoutchouc, an operation which principally takes place during the months of May, June, and July. After having ascertained that the trees, well prepared by the river floods which have bathed their stems to a height of about four feet, are in good condition for the harvest, the Indians are set to Incisions are made into the alburnum of the seringueiras; below the wound small pots are attached, which twenty-four hours suffice to fill with a milky sap. It can also be collected by means of a hollow bamboo, and a receptacle placed on the ground at the foot of the tree. The sap being obtained, the Indians, to prevent the separation of its peculiar resins, fumigate it over a fire of the nuts of the assai palm. By spreading out the sap on a wooden scoop, and shaking it in the smoke, its coagulation is almost immediately obtained; it assumes a grayish-yellow tinge and solidifies. The layers formed in succession are detached from the scoop, exposed to the sun, hardened, and assume the brownish color with which we are familiar. The manufacture is then Benito, finding a capital opportunity, bought from the Indians all the caoutchouc stored in their cabins, which, by the way, are mostly built on piles. The price he gave them was sufficiently remunerative, and they were Four days later, on the 14th of August, the jangada passed the mouths of This is another of the large affluents of the Amazon, and seems to possess a navigable course, even for large ships, of over five hundred leagues. It rises in the southwest, and measures nearly five thousand feet across at its junction with the main river. After winding beneath the shade of ficuses, tahuaris, nipa palms, and cecropias, it enters the Amazon by five Hereabouts Araujo the pilot managed with great ease. The course of the river was but slightly obstructed with islands, and besides, from one bank to another its width is about two leagues. The current, too, took along the jangada more steadily, and on the 18th of August it stopped at the village of Pasquero to pass the night. The sun was already low on the horizon, and with the rapidity peculiar to these low latitudes, was about to set vertically, like an enormous Joam Garral and his wife, Lina, and old Cybele, were in front of Torres, after having for an instant turned toward Joam as if he would speak to him, and prevented perhaps by the arrival of Padre Passanha, who had come to bid the family good-night, had gone back to The Indians and the negroes were at their quarters along the sides. Araujo, seated at the bow, was watching the current which extended straight away in front of him. Manoel and Benito, with their eyes open, but chatting and smoking with apparent indifference, walked about the central part of the craft awaiting the hour of repose. All at once Manoel stopped Benito with his hand and said: "What a queer smell! Am I wrong? Do you not notice it?" "One would say that it was the odor of burning musk!" replied Benito. "There ought to be some alligators asleep on the neighboring "Well, nature has done wisely in allowing them so to "Yes," said Benito, "it is fortunate, for they are sufficiently formidable creatures!" Often at the close of the day these saurians love to stretch themselves on the shore, and install themselves comfortably there to pass the night. Crouched at the opening of a hole, into which they have crept back, they sleep with the mouth open, the upper jaw perpendicularly erect, so as to lie in wait for their prey. To these amphibians it is but sport to launch themselves in its pursuit, either by swimming through the waters propelled by their tails or running along the bank with a speed no man can equal. It is on these huge beaches that the caymans are born, live, and die, not without affording extraordinary examples of longevity. Not only can the old ones, the centenarians, be recognized by the greenish moss which carpets their carcass and is scattered over their protuberances, but by their natural ferocity, which increases with age. As Benito said, they are formidable creatures, and it is fortunate that their attacks can be guarded against. Suddenly cries were heard in the bow. Manoel and Benito came forward and looked. Three large saurians, from fifteen to twenty feet long, had managed to clamber on to the platform of the raft. "Bring the guns! Bring the guns!" shouted Benito, making signs to the Indians and the blacks to get behind. "Into the house!" said Manoel; "make haste!" And in truth, as they could not attack them at once, the best thing they could do was to get into shelter without delay. It was done in an instant. The Garral family took refuge in the house, where the two young men joined them. The Indians and the negroes ran into their huts and cabins. As they were shutting the door: "And Minha?" said Manoel. "She is not there!" replied Lina, who had just run to her "Good heavens! where is she?" exclaimed her mother, and they all shouted "There she is, on the bow of the jangada!" said Benito. "Minha!" shouted Manoel. The two young men, and Fragoso and Joam Garral, thinking no more of danger, rushed out of the house, guns in hand. Scarcely were they outside when two of the alligators made a half turn and ran toward them. A dose of buckshot to the head, close to the eye, from Benito, stopped one of the monsters, who, mortally wounded, writhed in frightful convulsions and fell on his side. But the second still lived, and came on, and there was no way of avoiding him. The huge alligator tore up to Joam Garral, and after knocking him over with a sweep of his tail, ran at him with open jaws. At this moment Torres rushed from the cabin, hatchet in hand, and struck such a terrific blow that its edge sunk into the jaw of the cayman and left Blinded by the blood, the animal flew to the side, and, designedly or not, fell over and was lost in the stream. "Minha! Minha!" shouted Manoel in distraction, when he got to the bow of Suddenly she came into view. She had taken refuge in the cabin of Araujo, and the cabin had just been upset by a powerful blow from the third alligator. Minha was flying aft, pursued by the monster, who was not six feet away from her. A second shot from Benito failed to stop the cayman. He only struck the animal's carapace, and the scales flew to splinters but the ball did not Manoel threw himself at the girl to raise her, or to snatch her from death! A side blow from the animal's tail knocked him down too. Minha fainted, and the mouth of the alligator opened to crush her! And then Fragoso jumped in to the animal, and thrust in a knife to the very bottom of his throat, at the risk of having his arm snapped off by the two jaws, had they quickly closed. Fragoso pulled out his arm in time, but he could not avoid the chock of the cayman, and was hurled back into the river, whose waters reddened all "Fragoso! Fragoso!" shrieked Lina, kneeling on the edge of the raft. A second afterward Fragoso reappeared on the surface of the Amazon—safe But, at the peril of his life he had saved the young girl, who soon came to. And as all hands were held out to him—Manoel's, Yaquita's, Minha's, and Lina's, and he did not know what to say, he ended by squeezing the hands of the young mulatto. However, though Fragoso had saved Minha, it was assuredly to the intervention of Torres that Joam Garral owed his safety. It was not, therefore, the fazender's life that the adventurer wanted. In the face of this fact, so much had to be admitted. Manoel said this to Benito in an undertone. "That is true!" replied Benito, embarrassed. "You are right, and in a sense it is one cruel care the less! Nevertheless, Manoel, my suspicions still exist! It is not always a man's worst enemy who wishes him dead!" Joam Garral walked up to Torres. "Thank you, Torres!" he said, holding out his hand. The adventurer took a step or two backward without replying. "Torres," continued Joam, "I am sorry that we are arriving at the end of our voyage, and that in a few days we must part! I owe you——" "Joam Garral!" answered Torres, "you owe me nothing! Your life is precious to me above all things! But if you will allow me—I have been thinking—in place of stopping at Manaos, I will go on to Belem. Will you take me there?" Joam Garral replied by an affirmative nod. In hearing this demand Benito in an unguarded moment was about to intervene, but Manoel stopped him, and the young man checked himself, though not without a violent effort. THE ARRIVAL DINNER IN THE MORNING, after a night which was scarcely sufficient to calm so much excitement, they unmoored from the cayman beach and departed. Before five days, if nothing interfered with their voyage, the raft would reach the port of Manaos. Minha had quite recovered from her fright, and her eyes and smiles thanked all those who had risked their lives for her. As for Lina, it seemed as though she was more grateful to the brave Fragoso than if it was herself that he had saved. "I will pay you back, sooner or later, Mr. Fragoso," said "And how, Miss Lina?" "Oh! You know very well!" "Then if I know it, let it be soon and not late!" replied the good-natured fellow. And from this day it began to be whispered about that the charming Lina was engaged to Fragoso, that their marriage would take place at the same time as that of Minha and Manoel, and that the young couple would remain at Belem with the others. "Capital! capital!" repeated Fragoso unceasingly; "but I never thought Para was such a long way off!" As for Manoel and Benito, they had had a long conversation about what had passed. There could be no question about obtaining from Joam Garral the dismissal of his rescuer. "Your life is precious to me above all things!" Torres had said. This reply, hyperbolical and enigmatical at the time, Benito had heard In the meantime the young men could do nothing. More than ever they were reduced to waiting—to waiting not for four or five days, but for seven or eight weeks—that is to say, for whatever time it would take for the raft to get to Belem. "There is in all this some mystery that I cannot understand," "Yes, but we are assured on one point," answered Manoel. "It is certain that Torres does not want your father's life. For the rest, we must still It seemed that from this day Torres desired to keep himself more reserved. He did not seek to intrude on the family, and was even less assiduous toward Minha. There seemed a relief in the situation of which all, save perhaps Joam Garral, felt the gravity. On the evening of the same day they left on the right the island of Baroso, formed by a furo of that name, and Lake Manaori, which is fed by a confused series of petty tributaries. The night passed without incident, though Joam Garral had advised them to watch with great care. On the morrow, the 20th of August, the pilot, who kept near the right bank on account of the uncertain eddies on the left, entered between the bank and the islands. Beyond this bank the country was dotted with large and small lakes, much as those of Calderon, Huarandeina, and other black-watered lagoons. This water system marks the approach of the Rio Negro, the most remarkable of all the tributaries of the Amazon. In reality the main river still bore the name of the Solimoens, and it is only after the junction of the Rio Negro that it takes the name which has made it celebrated among the rivers of the During this day the raft had to be worked under curious conditions. The arm followed by the pilot, between Calderon Island and the shore, was very narrow, although it appeared sufficiently large. This was owing to a great portion of the island being slightly above the mean level, but still covered by the high flood waters. On each side were massed forests of giant trees, whose summits towered some fifty feet above the ground, and joining one bank to the other formed an On the left nothing could be more picturesque than this flooded forest, which seemed to have been planted in the middle of a lake. The stems of the trees arose from the clear, still water, in which every interlacement of their boughs was reflected with unequaled purity. They were arranged on an immense sheet of glass, like the trees in miniature on some table epergne, and their reflection could not be more perfect. The difference between the image and the reality could scarcely be described. Duplicates of grandeur, terminated above and below by a vast parasol of green, they seemed to form two hemispheres, inside which the jangada appeared to follow one of the great circles. It had been necessary to bring the raft under these boughs, against which flowed the gentle current of the stream. It was impossible to go back. Hence the task of navigating with extreme care, so as to avoid the collisions on either side. In this all Araujo's ability was shown, and he was admirably seconded by his crew. The trees of the forest furnished the resting-places for the long poles which kept the jangada in its course. The least blow to the jangada would have endangered the complete demolition of the woodwork, and caused the loss, if not of the crew, of the greater part of the cargo. "It is truly very beautiful," said Minha, "and it would be very pleasant for us always to travel in this way, on this quiet water, shaded from the rays of the sun." "At the same time pleasant and dangerous, dear Minha," said Manoel. "In a pirogue there is doubtless nothing to fear in sailing here, but on a huge raft of wood better have a free course and a clear stream." "We shall be quite through the forest in a couple of hours," said "Look well at it, then!" said Lina. "All these beautiful things pass so quickly! Ah! dear mistress! do you see the troops of monkeys disporting in the higher branches, and the birds admiring themselves in the pellucid "And the flowers half-opened on the surface," replied Minha, "and which the current dandles like the breeze!" "And the long lianas, which so oddly stretch from one tree to another!" added the young mulatto. "And no Fragoso at the end of them!" said Lina's betrothed. "That was rather a nice flower you gathered in the forest of Iquitos!" "Just behold the flower—the only one in the world," said Lina quizzingly; "and, mistress! just look at the splendid plants!" And Lina pointed to the nymph桳 with their colossal leaves, whose flowers bear buds as large as cocoanuts. Then, just where the banks plunged beneath the waters, there were clumps of mucumus, reeds with large leaves, whose elastic stems bend to give passage to the pirogues and close again behind them. There was there what would tempt any sportsman, for a whole world of aquatic birds fluttered between the higher clusters, which shook with the stream. Ibises half-lollingly posed on some old trunk, and gray herons motionless on one leg, solemn flamingoes who from a distance looked like red umbrellas scattered in the foliage, and phenicopters of every color, enlivened the temporary morass. And along the top of the water glided long and swiftly-swimming snakes, among them the formidable gymnotus, whose electric discharges successively repeated paralyze the most robust of men or animals, and end by dealing death. Precautions had to be taken against the sucurijus serpents, which, coiled round the trunk of some tree, unroll themselves, hang down, seize their prey, and draw it into their rings, which are powerful enough to crush a bullock. Have there not been met with in these Amazonian forests reptiles from thirty to thirty-five feet long? and even, according to M. Carrey, do not some exist whose length reaches forty-seven feet, and whose girth is that of a hogshead? Had one of these sucurijus, indeed, got on to the raft he would have proved as formidable as an alligator. Very fortunately the travelers had to contend with neither gymnotus nor sucuriju, and the passage across the submerged forest, which lasted about two hours, was effected without accident. Three days passed. They neared Manaos. Twenty-four hours more and the raft would be off the mouth of the Rio Negro, before the capital of the province of Amazones. In fact, on the 23d of August, at five o'clock in the evening, they stopped at the southern point of Muras Island, on the right bank of the stream. They only had to cross obliquely for a few miles to arrive at the port, but the pilot Araujo very properly would not risk it on that day, as night was coming on. The three miles which remained would take three hours to travel, and to keep to the course of the river it was necessary, above all things, to have a clear outlook. This evening the dinner, which promised to be the last of this first part of the voyage, was not served without a certain amount of ceremony. Half the journey on the Amazon had been accomplished, and the task was worthy of a jovial repast. It was fitting to drink to the health of Amazones a few glasses of that generous liquor which comes from the coasts of Oporto and Setubal. Besides, this was, in a way, the betrothal dinner of Fragoso and the charming Lina—that of Manoel and Minha had taken place at the fazenda of Iquitos several weeks before. After the young master and mistress, it was the turn of the faithful couple who were attached to them by so many bonds of gratitude. So Lina, who was to remain in the service of Minha, and Fragoso, who was about to enter into that of Manoel Valdez, sat at the common table, and even had the places of honor reserved for them. Torres, naturally, was present at the dinner, which was worthy of the larder and kitchen of the jangada. The adventurer, seated opposite to Joam Garral, who was always taciturn, listened to all that was said, but took no part in the conversation. Benito quietly and attentively watched him. The eyes of Torres, with a peculiar expression, constantly sought his father. One would have called them the eyes of some wild beast trying to fascinate his prey before he sprang on it. Manoel talked mostly with Minha. Between whiles his eyes wandered to Torres, but he acted his part more successfully than Benito in a situation which, if it did not finish at Manaos, would certainly end at The dinner was jolly enough. Lina kept it going with her good humor, Fragoso with his witty repartees. The Padre Passanha looked gayly round on the little world he cherished, and on the two young couples which his hands would shortly bless in the waters of Para. "Eat, padre," said Benito, who joined in the general conversation; "do honor to this betrothal dinner. You will want some strength to celebrate both marriages at once!" "Well, my dear boy," replied Passanha, "seek out some lovely and gentle girl who wishes you well, and you will see that I can marry you at the same "Well answered, padre!" exclaimed Manoel. "Let us drink to the coming marriage of Benito." "We must look out for some nice young lady at Belem," said Minha. "He should do what everybody else does." "To the wedding of Mr. Benito!" said Fragoso, "who ought to wish all the world to marry him!" "They are right, sir," said Yaquita. "I also drink to your marriage, and may you be as happy as Minha and Manoel, and as I and your father have "As you always will be, it is to be hoped," said Torres, drinking a glass of port without having pledged anybody. "All here have their happiness in their own hands." It was difficult to say, but this wish, coming from the adventurer, left an unpleasant impression. Manoel felt this, and wishing to destroy its effect, "Look here, padre," said he, "while we are on this subject, are there not any more couples to betroth on the raft?" "I do not know," answered Padre Passanha, "unless Torres—you are not married, I believe?" "No; I am, and always shall be, a bachelor." Benito and Manoel thought that while thus speaking Torres looked toward "And what should prevent you marrying?" replied Padre Passanha; "at Belem you could find a wife whose age would suit yours, and it would be possible perhaps for you to settle in that town. That would be better than this wandering life, of which, up to the present, you have not made so very much." "You are right, padre," answered Torres; "I do not say no. Besides the example is contagious. Seeing all these young couples gives me rather a longing for marriage. But I am quite a stranger in Belem, and, for certain reasons, that would make my settlement more difficult." "Where do you come from, then?" asked Fragoso, who always had the idea that he had already met Torres somewhere. "From the province of Minas Geraes." "And you were born——" "In the capital of the diamond district, Tijuco." Those who had seen Joam Garral at this moment would have been surprised at the fixity of his look which met that of Torres. BUT THE CONVERSATION was continued by Fragoso, who "What! you come from Tijuco, from the very capital of the "Yes," said Torres. "Do you hail from that province?" "No! I come from the Atlantic seaboard in the north of Brazil," replied "You do not know this diamond country, Mr. Manoel?" asked Torres. A negative shake of the head from the young man was the only reply. "And you, Mr. Benito," continued Torres, addressing the younger Garral, whom he evidently wished to join in the conversation; "you have never had curiosity enough to visit the diamond arraval?" "Never," dryly replied Benito. "Ah! I should like to see that country," said Fragoso, who unconsciously played Torres' game. "It seems to me I should finish by picking up a diamond worth something considerable." "And what would you do with this diamond worth something considerable, Fragoso?" queried Lina. "Then you would get rich all of a sudden!" "Well, if you had been rich three months ago you would never have had the idea of—that liana!" "And if I had not had that," exclaimed Fragoso, "I should not have found a charming little wife who—well, assuredly, all is for the best!" "You see, Fragoso," said Minha, "when you marry Lina, diamond takes the place of diamond, and you do not lose by the change!" "To be sure, Miss Minha," gallantly replied Fragoso; "rather I gain!" There could be no doubt that Torres did not want the subject to drop, for he went on with: "It is a fact that at Tijuco sudden fortunes are realized enough to turn any man's head! Have you heard tell of the famous diamond of Abaete, which was valued at more than two million contos of reis? Well, this stone, which weighed an ounce, came from the Brazilian mines! And they were three convicts—yes! three men sentenced to transportation for life—who found it by chance in the River Abaete, at ninety leagues from Terro de Frio." "At a stroke their fortune was made?" asked Fragoso. "No," replied Torres; "the diamond was handed over to the governor-general of the mines. The value of the stone was recognized, and King John VI., of Portugal, had it cut, and wore it on his neck on great occasions. As for the convicts, they got their pardon, but that was all, and the cleverest could not get much of an income out of "You, doubtless?" said Benito very dryly. "Yes—I? Why not?" answered Torres. "Have you ever been to the diamond district?" added he, this time addressing Joam Garral. "Never!" said Joam, looking straight at him. "That is a pity!" replied he. "You should go there one day. It is a very curious place, I assure you. The diamond valley is an isolated spot in the vast empire of Brazil, something like a park of a dozen leagues in circumference, which in the nature of its soil, its vegetation, and its sandy rocks surrounded by a circle of high mountains, differs considerably from the neighboring provinces. But, as I have told you, it is one of the richest places in the world, for from 1807 to 1817 the annual return was about eighteen thousand carats. Ah! there have been some rare finds there, not only for the climbers who seek the precious stone up to the very tops of the mountains, but also for the smugglers who fraudulently export it. But the work in the mines is not so pleasant, and the two thousand negroes employed in that work by the government are obliged even to divert the watercourses to get at the diamantiferous sand. Formerly it was easier "In short," said Fragoso, "the good time has gone!" "But what is still easy is to get the diamonds in scoundrel-fashion—that is, by theft; and—stop! in 1826, when I was about eight years old, a terrible drama happened at Tijuco, which showed that criminal would recoil from nothing if they could gain a fortune by one bold stroke. But perhaps you are not interested?" "On the contrary, Torres; go on," replied Joam Garral, in a singularly "So be it," answered Torres. "Well, the story is about stealing diamonds, and a handful of those pretty stones is worth a million, sometimes two!" And Torres, whose face expressed the vilest sentiments of cupidity, almost unconsciously made a gesture of opening and shutting his "This is what happened," he continued. "At Tijuco it is customary to send off in one delivery the diamonds collected during the year. They are divided into two lots, according to their size, after being sorted in a dozen sieves with holes of different dimensions. These lots are put into sacks and forwarded to Rio de Janeiro; but as they are worth many millions you may imagine they are heavily escorted. A workman chosen by the superintendent, four cavalrymen from the district regiment, and ten men on foot, complete the convoy. They first make for Villa Rica, where the commandant puts his seal on the sacks, and then the convoy continues its journey to Rio de Janeiro. I should add that, for the sake of precaution, the start is always kept secret. Well, in 1826, a young fellow named Dacosta, who was about twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, and who for some years had been employed at Tijuco in the offices of the governor-general, devised the following scheme. He leagued himself with a band of smugglers, and informed them of the date of the departure of the convoy. The scoundrels took their measures accordingly. They were numerous and well armed. Close to Villa Rica, during the night of the 22d of January, the gang suddenly attacked the diamond escort, who defended themselves bravely, but were all massacred, with the exception of one man, who, seriously wounded, managed to escape and bring the news of the horrible deed. The workman was not spared any more than the soldiers. He fell beneath he blows of the thieves, and was doubtless dragged away and thrown over some precipice, for his body was never found." "And this Dacosta?" asked Joam Garral. "Well, his crime did not do him much good, for suspicion soon pointed toward him. He was accused of having got up the affair. In vain he protested that he was innocent. Thanks to the situation he held, he was in a position to know the date on which the convoy's departure was to take place. He alone could have informed the smugglers. He was charged, arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. Such a sentence required his execution in "Was the fellow executed?" asked Fragoso. "No," replied Torres; "they shut him up in the prison at Villa Rica, and during the night, a few hours only before his execution, whether alone or helped by others, he managed to escape." "Has this young man been heard of since?" asked Joam Garral. "Never," replied Torres. "He probably left Brazil, and now, in some distant land, lives a cheerful life with the proceeds of the robbery which he is sure to have realized." "Perhaps, on the other hand, he died miserably!" answered "And, perhaps," added Padre Passanha, "Heaven caused him to feel remorse for his crime." Here they all rose from the table, and, having finished their dinner, went out to breathe the evening air. The sun was low on the horizon, but an hour had still to elapse before nightfall. "These stories are not very lively," said Fragoso, "and our betrothal dinner was best at the beginning." "But it was your fault, Fragoso," answered Lina. "How my fault?" "It was you who went on talking about the district and the diamonds, when you should not have done so." "Well, that's true," replied Fragoso; "but I had no idea we were going to wind up in that fashion." "You are the first to blame!" "And the first to be punished, Miss Lina; for I did not hear you laugh all through the dessert." The whole family strolled toward the bow of the jangada. Manoel and Benito walked one behind the other without speaking. Yaquita and her daughter silently followed, and all felt an unaccountable impression of sadness, as if they had a presentiment of some coming Torres stepped up to Joam Garral, who, with bowed head, seemed to be lost in thought, and putting his hand on his shoulder, said, "Joam Garral, may I have a few minutes' conversation with you?" Joam looked at Torres. "Here?" he asked. "No; in private." They went toward the house, entered it, and the door was shut It would be difficult to depict what every one felt when Joam Garral and Torres disappeared. What could there be in common between the adventurer and the honest fazender of Iquitos? The menace of some frightful misfortune seemed to hang over the whole family, and they scarcely dared speak to each "Manoel!" said Benito, seizing his friend's arm, "whatever happens, this man must leave us tomorrow at Manaos." "Yes! it is imperative!" answered Manoel. "And if through him some misfortune happens to my father—I shall kill BETWEEN THE TWO MEN FOR A MOMENT, alone in the room, where none could see or hear them, Joam Garral and Torres looked at each other without uttering a word. Did the adventurer hesitate to speak? Did he suspect that Joam Garral would only reply to his demands by a scornful silence? Yes! Probably so. So Torres did not question him. At the outset of the conversation he took the affirmative, and assumed the part of "Joam," he said, "your name is not Garral. Your name is Dacosta!" At the guilty name which Torres thus gave him, Joam Garral could not repress a slight shudder. "You are Joam Dacosta," continued Torres, "who, twenty-five years ago, were a clerk in the governor-general's office at Tijuco, and you are the man who was sentenced to death in this affair of the robbery and murder!" No response from Joam Garral, whose strange tranquillity surprised the adventurer. Had he made a mistake in accusing his host? No! For Joam Garral made no start at the terrible accusations. Doubtless he wanted to know to what Torres was coming. "Joam Dacosta, I repeat! It was you whom they sought for this diamond affair, whom they convicted of crime and sentenced to death, and it was you who escaped from the prison at Villa Rica a few hours before you should have been executed! Do you not answer?" Rather a long silence followed this direct question which Torres asked. Joam Garral, still calm, took a seat. His elbow rested on a small table, and he looked fixedly at his accuser without bending his head. "Will you reply?" repeated Torres. "What reply do you want from me?" said Joam quietly. "A reply," slowly answered Torres, "that will keep me from finding out the chief of the police at Manaos, and saying to him, 'A man is there whose identity can easily be established, who can be recognized even after twenty-five years' absence, and this man was the instigator of the diamond robbery at Tijuco. He was the accomplice of the murderers of the soldiers of the escort; he is the man who escaped from execution; he is Joam Garral, whose true name is Joam Dacosta.'" "And so, Torres," said Joam Garral, "I shall have nothing to fear from you if I give the answer you require?" "Nothing, for neither you nor I will have any interest in talking about "Neither you nor I?" asked Joam Garral. "It is not with money, then, that your silence is to be bought?" "No! No matter how much you offered me!" "What do you want, then?" "Joam Garral," replied Torres, "here is my proposal. Do not be in a hurry to reply by a formal refusal. Remember that you are in "What is this proposal?" asked Joam. Torres hesitated for a moment. The attitude of this guilty man, whose life he held in his hands, was enough to astonish him. He had expected a stormy discussion and prayers and tears. He had before him a man convicted of the most heinous of crimes, and the man never flinched. At length, crossing his arms, he said: "You have a daughter!—I like her—and I want to marry her!" Apparently Joam Garral expected anything from such a man, and was as quiet as before. "And so," he said, "the worthy Torres is anxious to enter the family of a murderer and a thief?" "I am the sole judge of what it suits me to do," said Torres. "I wish to be the son-in-law of Joam Garral, and I will." "You ignore, then, that my daughter is going to marry Manoel Valdez?" "You will break it off with Manoel Valdez!" "And if my daughter declines?" "If you tell her all, I have no doubt she would consent," was the impudent answer. "All, if necessary. Between her own feelings and the honor of her family and the life of her father she would not hesitate." "You are a consummate scoundrel, Torres," quietly said Joam, whose coolness never forsook him. "A scoundrel and a murderer were made to understand each other." At these words Joam Garral rose, advanced to the adventurer, and looking him straight in the face, "Torres," he said, "if you wish to become one of the family of Joam Dacosta, you ought to know that Joam Dacosta was innocent of the crime for which he was condemned." "And I add," replied Joam, "that you hold the proof of his innocence, and are keeping it back to proclaim it on the day when you marry "Fair play, Joam Garral," answered Torres, lowering his voice, "and when you have heard me out, you will see if you dare refuse me "I am listening, Torres." "Well," said the adventurer, half keeping back his words, as if he was sorry to let them escape from his lips, "I know you are innocent! I know it, for I know the true culprit, and I am in a position to prove your "And the unhappy man who committed the crime?" "Dead!" exclaimed Joam Garral; and the word made him turn pale, in spite of himself, as if it had deprived him of all power of reinstatement. "Dead," repeated Torres; "but this man, whom I knew a long time after his crime, and without knowing that he was a convict, had written out at length, in his own hand, the story of this affair of the diamonds, even to the smallest details. Feeling his end approaching, he was seized with remorse. He knew where Joam Dacosta had taken refuge, and under what name the innocent man had again begun a new life. He knew that he was rich, in the bosom of a happy family, but he knew also that there was no happiness for him. And this happiness he desired to add to the reputation to which he was entitled. But death came—he intrusted to me, his companion, to do what he could no longer do. He gave me the proofs of Dacosta's innocence for me to transmit them to him, and he died." "The man's name?" exclaimed Joam Garral, in a tone he could "You will know it when I am one of your family." "And the writing?" Joam Garral was ready to throw himself on Torres, to search him, to snatch from him the proofs of his innocence. "The writing is in a safe place," replied Torres, "and you will not have it until your daughter has become my wife. Now will you still refuse "Yes," replied Joam, "but in return for that paper the half of my fortune is yours." "The half of your fortune?" exclaimed Torres; "agreed, on condition that Minha brings it to me at her marriage." "And it is thus that you respect the wishes of a dying man, of a criminal tortured by remorse, and who has charge you to repair as much as he could the evil which he had done?" "It is thus." "Once more, Torres," said Joam Garral, "you are a "Be it so." "And as I am not a criminal we were not made to understand "And your refuse?" "It will be your ruin, then, Joam Garral. Everything accuses you in the proceedings that have already taken place. You are condemned to death, and you know, in sentences for crimes of that nature, the government is forbidden the right of commuting the penalty. Denounced, you are taken; taken, you are executed. And I will denounce you." Master as he was of himself, Joam could stand it no longler. He was about to rush on Torres. A gesture from the rascal cooled his anger. "Take care," said Torres, "your wife knows not that she is the wife of Joam Dacosta, your children do not know they are the children of Joam Dacosta, and you are not going to give them the information." Joam Garral stopped himself. He regained his usual command over himself, and his features recovered their habitual calm. "This discussion has lasted long enough," said he, moving toward the door, "and I know what there is left for me to do." "Take care, Joam Garral!" said Torres, for the last time, for he could scarcely believe that his ignoble attempt at extortion had collapsed. Joam Garral made him no answer. He threw back the door which opened under the veranda, made a sign to Torres to follow him, and they advanced toward the center of the jangada, where the family Benito, Manoel, and all of them, under a feeling of deep anxiety, had risen. They could see that the bearing of Torres was still menacing, and that the fire of anger still shone in his eyes. In extraordinary contrast, Joam Garral was master of himself, and almost Both of them stopped before Yaquita and her people. Not one dared to say a word to them. It was Torres who, in a hollow voice, and with his customary impudence, broke the painful silence. "For the last time, Joam Garral," he said, "I ask you for a "And here is my reply." And addressing his wife: "Yaquita," he said, "peculiar circumstances oblige me to alter what we have formerly decided as to the marriage of Minha and Manoel." "At last!" exclaimed Torres. Joam Garral, without answering him, shot at the adventurer a glance of the deepest scorn. But at the words Manoel had felt his heart beat as if it would break. The girl arose, ashy pale, as if she would seek shelter by the side of her mother. Yaquita opened her arms to protect, to defend her. "Father," said Benito, who had placed himself between Joam Garral and Torres, "what were you going to say?" "I was going to say," answered Joam Garral, raising his voice, "that to wait for our arrival in Para for the wedding of Minha and Manoel is to wait too long. The marriage will take place here, not later than tomorrow, on the jangada, with the aid of Padre Passanha, if, after a conversation I am about to have with Manoel, he agrees with me to defer it no longer." "Ah, father, father!" exclaimed the young man. "Wait a little before you call me so, Manoel," replied Joam, in a tone of unspeakable suffering. Here Torres, with crossed arms, gave the whole family a look of inconceivable insolence. "So that is you last word?" said he, extending his hand toward "No, that is not my last word." "What is it, then?" "This, Torres. I am master here. You will be off, if you please, and even if you do not please, and leave the jangada at this "Yes, this instant!" exclaimed Benito, "or I will throw Torres shrugged his shoulders. "No threats," he said; "they are of no use. It suits me also to land, and without delay. But you will remember me, Joam Garral. We shall not be long before we meet." "If it only depends on me," answered Joam Garral, "we shall soon meet, and rather sooner, perhaps, than you will like. To-morrow I shall be with Judge Ribeiro, the first magistrate of the province, whom I have advised of my arrival at Manaos. If you dare, meet me there!" "At Judge Ribeiro's?" said Torres, evidently disconcerted. "At Judge Ribeiro's," answered Joam Garral. And then, showing the pirogue to Torres, with a gesture of supreme contempt Joam Garral ordered four of his people to land him without delay on the nearest point of the island. The scoundrel at last disappeared. The family, who were still appalled, respected the silence of its chief; but Fragoso, comprehending scarce half the gravity of the situation, and carried away by his customary vivacity, came up to Joam Garral. "If the wedding of Miss Minha and Mr. Manoel is to take place tomorrow on the raft——" "Yours shall take place at the same time," kindly answered And making a sign to Manoel, he retired to his room with him. The interview between Joam and Manoel had lasted for half an hour, and it seemed a century to the family, when the door of the room Manoel came out alone; his face glowed with generous resolution. Going up to Yaquita, he said, "My mother!" to Minha he said, "My wife!" and to Benito he said, "My brother!" and, turning toward Lina and Fragoso, he said to all, "To-morrow!" He knew all that had passed between Joam Garral and Torres. He knew that, counting on the protection of Judge Ribeiro, by means of a correspondence which he had had with him for a year past without speaking of it to his people, Joam Garral had at last succeeded in clearing himself and convincing him of his innocence. He knew that Joam Garral had boldly undertaken the voyage with the sole object of canceling the hateful proceedings of which he had been the victim, so as not to leave on his daughter and son-in-law the weight of the terrible situation which he had had to endure so long himself. Yes, Manoel knew all this, and, further, he knew that Joam Garral—or rather Joam Dacosta—was innocent, and his misfortunes made him even dearer and more devoted to him. What he did not know was that the material proof of the innocence of the fazender existed, and that this proof was in the hands of Torres. Joam Garral wished to reserve for the judge himself the use of this proof, which, if the adventurer had spoken truly, would demonstrate his innocence. Manoel confined himself, then, to announcing that he was going to Padre Passanha to ask him to get things ready for the two weddings. Next day, the 24th of August, scarcely an hour before the ceremony was to take place, a large pirogue came off from the left bank of the river and hailed the jangada. A dozen paddlers had swiftly brought it from Manaos, and with a few men it carried the chief of the police, who made himself known and came on board. At the moment Joam Garral and his family, attired for the ceremony, were coming out of the house. "Joam Garral?" asked the chief of the police. "I am here," replied Joam. "Joam Garral," continued the chief of the police, "you have also been Joam Dacosta; both names have been borne by the same man—I At these words Yaquita and Minha, struck with stupor, stopped without any power to move. "My father a murderer?" exclaimed Benito, rushing toward Joam Garral. By a gesture his father silenced him. "I will only ask you one question," said Joam with firm voice, addressing the chief of police. "Has the warrant in virtue of which you arrest me been issued against me by the justice at Manaos—by Judge Ribeiro?" "No," answered the chief of the police, "it was given to me, with an order for its immediate execution, by his substitute. Judge Ribeiro was struck with apoplexy yesterday evening, and died during the night at two o'clock, without having recovered his consciousness." "Dead!" exclaimed Joam Garral, crushed for a moment by the news—"dead! But soon raising his head, he said to his wife and children, "Judge Ribeiro alone knew that I was innocent, my dear ones. The death of the judge may be fatal to me, but that is no reason for me And, turning toward Manoel, "Heaven help us!" he said to him; "we shall see if truth will come down to the earth from Above." The chief of the police made a sign to his men, who advanced to secure "But speak, father!" shouted Benito, mad with despair; "say one word, and we shall contest even by force this horrible mistake of which you are the victim!" "There is no mistake here, my son," replied Joam Garral; "Joam Dacosta and Joam Garral are one. I am in truth Joam Dacosta! I am the honest man whom a legal error unjustly doomed to death twenty-five years ago in the place of the true culprit! That I am quite innocent I swear before Heaven, once for all, on your heads, my children, and on the head of your mother!" "All communication between you and yours is now forbidden," said the chief of the police. "You are my prisoner, Joam Garral, and I will rigorously execute my warrant." Joam restrained by a gesture his dismayed children and servants. "Let the justice of man be done while we wait for the justice And with his head unbent, he stepped into the pirogue. It seemed, indeed, as though of all present Joam Garral was the only one whom this fearful thunderbolt, which had fallen so unexpectedly on his head, had failed to overwhelm. THE TOWN of Manaos is in 3࠸' 4" south latitude, and 67࠲7' west longitude, reckoning from the Paris meridian. It is some four hundred and twenty leagues from Belem, and about ten miles from the embouchure of the Rio Negro. Manaos is not built on the Amazon. It is on the left bank of the Rio Negro, the most important and remarkable of all the tributaries of the great artery of Brazil, that the capital of the province, with its picturesque group of private houses and public buildings, towers above the The Rio Negro, which was discovered by the Spaniard Favella in 1645, rises in the very heart of the province of Popayan, on the flanks of the mountains which separate Brazil from New Grenada, and it communicates with the Orinoco by two of its affluents, the Pimichin and After a noble course of some seventeen hundred miles it mingles its cloudy waters with those of the Amazon through a mouth eleven hundred feet wide, but such is its vigorous influx that many a mile has to be completed before those waters lose their distinctive character. Hereabouts the ends of both its banks trend off and form a huge bay fifteen leagues across, extending to the islands of Anavilhanas; and in one of its indentations the port of Manaos is situated. Vessels of all kinds are there collected in great numbers, some moored in the stream awaiting a favorable wind, others under repair up the numerous iguarapes, or canals, which so capriciously intersect the town, and give it its slightly Dutch appearance. With the introduction of steam vessels, which is now rapidly taking place, the trade of Manaos is destined to increase enormously. Woods used in building and furniture work, cocoa, caoutchouc, coffee, sarsaparilla, sugar-canes, indigo, muscado nuts, salt fish, turtle butter, and other commodities, are brought here from all parts, down the innumerable streams into the Rio Negro from the west and north, into the Madeira from the west and south, and then into the Amazon, and by it away eastward to the coast of the Atlantic. Manaos was formerly called Moura, or Barra de Rio Negro. From 1757 to 1804 it was only part of the captaincy which bears the name of the great river at whose mouth it is placed; but since 1826 it has been the capital of the large province of Amazones, borrowing its latest name from an Indian tribe which formerly existed in these parts of equatorial America. Careless travelers have frequently confounded it with the famous Manoa, a city of romance, built, it was reported, near the legendary lake of Parima—which would seem to be merely the Upper Branco, a tributary of the Rio Negro. Here was the Empire of El Dorado, whose monarch, if we are to believe the fables of the district, was every morning covered with powder of gold, there being so much of the precious metal abounding in this privileged locality that it was swept up with the very dust of the streets. This assertion, however, when put to the test, was disproved, and with extreme regret, for the auriferous deposits which had deceived the greedy scrutiny of the gold-seekers turned out to be only worthless flakes of mica! In short, Manaos has none of the fabulous splendors of the mythical capital of El Dorado. It is an ordinary town of about five thousand inhabitants, and of these at least three thousand are in government employ. This fact is to be attributed to the number of its public buildings, which consist of the legislative chamber, the government house, the treasury, the post-office, and the custom-house, and, in addition, a college founded in 1848, and a hospital erected in 1851. When with these is also mentioned a cemetery on the south side of a hill, on which, in 1669, a fortress, which has since been demolished, was thrown up against the pirates of the Amazon, some idea can be gained as to the importance of the official establishments of the city. Of religious buildings it would be difficult to find more than two, the small Church of the Conception and the Chapel of Notre Dame des Remedes, built on a knoll which overlooks the town. These are very few for a town of Spanish origin, though to them should perhaps be added the Carmelite Convent, burned down in 1850, of which only the ruins remain. The population of Manaos does not exceed the number above given, and after reckoning the public officials and soldiers, is principally made of up Portuguese and Indian merchants belonging to the different tribes of the Rio Negro. Three principal thoroughfares of considerable irregularity run through the town, and they bear names highly characteristic of the tone of thought prevalent in these parts—God-the-Father Street, God-the-Son Street, and God-the-Holy Ghost Street! In the west of the town is a magnificent avenue of centenarian orange trees which were carefully respected by the architects who out of the old city made the new. Round these principal thoroughfares is interwoven a perfect network of unpaved alleys, intersected every now and then by four canals, which are occasionally crossed by wooden bridges. In a few places these iguarapes flow with their brownish waters through large vacant spaces covered with straggling weeds and flowers of startling hues, and here and there are natural squares shaded by magnificent trees, with an occasional white-barked sumaumeira shooting up, and spreading out its large dome-like parasol above its gnarled branches. The private houses have to be sought for among some hundreds of dwellings, of very rudimentary type, some roofed with tiles, others with interlaced branches of the palm-tree, and with prominent miradors, and projecting shops for the most part tenanted by Portuguese traders. And what manner of people are they who stroll on to the fashionable promenade from the public buildings and private residences? Men of good appearance, with black cloth coats, chimney-pot hats, patent-leather boots, highly-colored gloves, and diamond pins in their necktie bows; and women in loud, imposing toilets, with flounced dressed and headgear of the latest style; and Indians, also on the road to Europeanization in a way which bids fair to destroy every bit of local color in this central portion of the district of the Amazon! Such is Manaos, which, for the benefit of the reader, it was necessary to sketch. Here the voyage of the giant raft, so tragically interrupted, had just come to a pause in the midst of its long journey, and here will be unfolded the further vicissitudes of the mysterious history of the fazender THE FIRST MOMENTS SCARCELY HAD the pirogue which bore off Joam Garral, or rather Joam Dacosta—for it is more convenient that he should resume his real name—disappeared, than Benito stepped up to Manoel. "What is it you know?" he asked. "I know that your father is innocent! Yes, innocent!" replied Manoel, "and that he was sentenced to death twenty-three years ago for a crime which he never committed!" "He has told you all about it, Manoel?" "All about it," replied the young man. "The noble fazender did not wish that any part of his past life should be hidden from him who, when he marries his daughter, is to be his second son." "And the proof of his innocence my father can one day produce?" "That proof, Benito, lies wholly in the twenty-three years of an honorable and honored life, lies entirely in the bearing of Joam Dacosta, who comes forward to say to justice, 'Here am I! I do not care for this false existence any more. I do not care to hide under a name which is not my true one! You have condemned an innocent man! Confess your errors and set matters right.'" "And when my father spoke like that, you did not hesitate for a moment to believe him?" "Not for an instant," replied Manoel. The hands of the two young fellows closed in a long and Then Benito went up to Padre Passanha. "Padre," he said, "take my mother and sister away to their rooms. Do not leave them all day. No one here doubts my father's innocence—not one, you know that! To-morrow my mother and I will seek out the chief of the police. They will not refuse us permission to visit the prison. No! that would be too cruel. We will see my father again, and decide what steps shall be taken to procure his vindication." Yaquita was almost helpless, but the brave woman, though nearly crushed by this sudden blow, arose. With Yaquita Dacosta it was as with Yaquita Garral. She had not a doubt as to the innocence of her husband. The idea even never occurred to her that Joam Dacosta had been to blame in marrying her under a name which was not his own. She only thought of the life of happiness she had led with the noble man who had been injured so unjustly. Yes! On the morrow she would go to the gate of the prison, and never leave it until it Padre Passanha took her and her daughter, who could not restrain her tears, and the three entered the house. The two young fellows found themselves alone. "And now," said Benito, "I ought to know all that my father has "I have nothing to hide from you." "Why did Torres come on board the jangada?" "To see to Joam Dacosta the secret of his past life." "And so, when we first met Torres in the forest of Iquitos, his plan had already been formed to enter into communication with my father?" "There cannot be a doubt of it," replied Manoel. "The scoundrel was on his way to the fazenda with the idea of consummating a vile scheme of extortion which he had been preparing for a long time." "And when he learned from us that my father and his whole family were about to pass the frontier, he suddenly changed his line of "Yes. Because Joam Dacosta once in Brazilian territory became more at his mercy than while within the frontiers of Peru. That is why we found Torres at Tabatinga, where he was waiting in expectation of "And it was I who offered him a passage on the raft!" exclaimed Benito, with a gesture of despair. "Brother," said Manoel, "you need not reproach yourself. Torres would have joined us sooner or later. He was not the man to abandon such a trail. Had we lost him at Tabatinga, we should have found him "Yes, Manoel, you are right. But we are not concerned with the past now. We must think of the present. An end to useless recriminations! Let us see!" And while speaking, Benito, passing his hand across his forehead, endeavored to grasp the details of the strange affair. "How," he asked, "did Torres ascertain that my father had been sentenced twenty-three years back for this abominable crime at Tijuco?" "I do not know," answered Manoel, "and everything leads me to think that your father did not know that." "But Torres knew that Garral was the name under which Joam Dacosta was "And he knew that it was in Peru, at Iquitos, that for so many years my father had taken refuge?" "He knew it," said Manoel, "but how he came to know it I do "One more question," continued Benito. "What was the proposition that Torres made to my father during the short interview which preceded his expulsion?" "He threatened to denounce Joam Garral as being Joam Dacosta, if he declined to purchase his silence." "And at what price?" "At the price of his daughter's hand!" answered Manoel unhesitatingly, but pale with anger. "The scoundrel dared to do that!" exclaimed Benito. "To this infamous request, Benito, you saw the reply that your "Yes, Manoel, yes! The indignant reply of an honest man. He kicked Torres off the raft. But it is not enough to have kicked him out. No! That will not do for me. It was on Torres' information that they came here and arrested my father; is not that so?" "Yes, on his denunciation." "Very well," continued Benito, shaking his fist toward the left bank of the river, "I must find out Torres. I must know how he became master of the secret. He must tell me if he knows the real author of this crime. He shall speak out. And if he does not speak out, I know what I shall have to "What you will have to do is for me to do as well!" added Manoel, more coolly, but not less resolutely. "No! Manoel, no, to me alone!" "We are brothers, Benito," replied Manoel. "The right of demanding an explanation belongs to us both." Benito made no reply. Evidently on that subject his decision At this moment the pilot Araujo, who had been observing the state of the river, came up to them. "Have you decided," he asked, "if the raft is to remain at her moorings at the Isle of Muras, or to go on to the port of Manaos?" The question had to be decided before nightfall, and the sooner it was settled the better. In fact, the news of the arrest of Joam Dacosta ought already to have spread through the town. That it was of a nature to excite the interest of the population of Manaos could scarcely be doubted. But would it provoke more than curiosity against the condemned man, who was the principal author of the crime of Tijuco, which had formerly created such a sensation? Ought they not to fear that some popular movement might be directed against the prisoner? In the face of this hypothesis was it not better to leave the jangada moored near the Isle of Muras on the right bank of the river at a few miles The pros and cons of the question were well weighed. "No!" at length exclaimed Benito; "to remain here would look as though we were abandoning my father and doubting his innocence—as though we were afraid to make common cause with him. We must go to Manaos, and without "You are right," replied Manoel. "Let us go." Araujo, with an approving nod, began his preparations for leaving the island. The maneuver necessitated a good deal of care. They had to work the raft slantingly across the current of the Amazon, here doubled in force by that of the Rio Negro, and to make for the embouchure of the tributary about a dozen miles down on the left bank. The ropes were cast off from the island. The jangada, again started on the river, began to drift off diagonally. Araujo, cleverly profiting by the bendings of the current, which were due to the projections of the banks, and assisted by the long poles of his crew, succeeded in working the immense raft in the desired direction. In two hours the jangada was on the other side of the Amazon, a little above the mouth of the Rio Negro, and fairly in the current which was to take it to the lower bank of the vast bay which opened on the left side of the At five o'clock in the evening it was strongly moored alongside this bank, not in the port of Manaos itself, which it could not enter without stemming a rather powerful current, but a short mile The raft was then in the black waters of the Rio Negro, near rather a high bluff covered with cecropias with buds of reddish-brown, and palisaded with stiff-stalked reeds called froxas, of which the Indians make some of their weapons. A few citizens were strolling about the bank. A feeling of curiosity had doubtless attracted them to the anchorage of the raft. The news of the arrest of Joam Dacosta had soon spread about, but the curiosity of the Manaens did not outrun their discretion, and they were very quiet. Benito's intention had been to land that evening, but Manoel dissuaded "Wait till tomorrow," he said; "night is approaching, and there is no necessity for us to leave the raft." "So be it! To-morrow!" answered Benito. And here Yaquita, followed by her daughter and Padre Passanha, came out of the house. Minha was still weeping, but her mother's face was tearless, and she had that look of calm resolution which showed that the wife was now ready for all things, either to do her duty or to insist on her rights. Yaquita slowly advanced toward Manoel. "Manoel," she said, "listen to what I have to say, for my conscience commands me to speak as I am about to do." "I am listening," replied Manoel. Yaquita, looking him straight in the face, continued: "Yesterday, after the interview you had with Joam Dacosta, my husband, you came to me and called me—mother! You took Minha's hand, and called her—your wife! You then knew everything, and the past life of Joam Dacosta had been disclosed to "Yes," answered Manoel, "and heaven forbid I should have had any hesitation in doing so!" "Perhaps so," replied Yaquita; "but then Joam Dacosta had not been arrested. The position is not now the same. However innocent he may be, my husband is in the hands of justice; his past life has been publicly proclaimed. Minha is a convict's daughter." "Minha Dacosta or Minha Garral, what matters it to me?" exclaimed Manoel, who could keep silent no longer. "Manoel!" murmured Minha. And she would certainly have fallen had not Lina's arm supported her. "Mother, if you do not wish to kill her," said Manoel, "call me "My son! my child!" It was all Yaquita could say, and the tears, which she restrained with difficulty, filled her eyes. And then they all re-entered the house. But during the long night not an hour's sleep fell to the lot of the unfortunate family who were being so JOAM DACOSTA had relied entirely on Judge Albeiro, and his death was most unfortunate. Before he was judge at Manaos, and chief magistrate in the province, Ribeiro had known the young clerk at the time he was being prosecuted for the murder in the diamond arrayal. He was then an advocate at Villa Rica, and he it was who defended the prisoner at the trial. He took the cause to heart and made it his own, and from an examination of the papers and detailed information, and not from the simple fact of his position in the matter, he came to the conclusion that his client was wrongfully accused, and that he had taken not the slightest part in the murder of the escort or the theft of the diamonds—in a word, that Joam Dacosta was innocent. But, notwithstanding this conviction, notwithstanding his talent and zeal, Ribeiro was unable to persuade the jury to take the same view of the matter. How could he remove so strong a presumption? If it was not Joam Dacosta, who had every facility for informing the scoundrels of the convoy's departure, who was it? The official who accompanied the escort had perished with the greater part of the soldiers, and suspicion could not point against him. Everything agreed in distinguishing Dacosta as the true and only author of the crime. Ribeiro defended him with great warmth and with all his powers, but he could not succeed in saving him. The verdict of the jury was affirmative on all the questions. Joam Dacosta, convicted of aggravated and premeditated murder, did not even obtain the benefit of extenuating circumstances, and heard himself condemned to death. There was no hope left for the accused. No commutation of the sentence was possible, for the crime was committed in the diamond arrayal. The condemned man was lost. But during the night which preceded his execution, and when the gallows was already erected, Joam Dacosta managed to escape from the prison at Villa Rica. We know the rest. Twenty years later Ribeiro the advocate became the chief justice of Manaos. In the depths of his retreat the fazender of Iquitos heard of the change, and in it saw a favorable opportunity for bringing forward the revision of the former proceedings against him with some chance of success. He knew that the old convictions of the advocate would be still unshaken in the mind of the judge. He therefore resolved to try and rehabilitate himself. Had it not been for Ribeiro's nomination to the chief justiceship in the province of Amazones, he might perhaps have hesitated, for he had no new material proof of his innocence to bring forward. Although the honest man suffered acutely, he might still have remained hidden in exile at Iquitos, and still have asked for time to smother the remembrances of the horrible occurrence, but something was urging him to act in the matter without delay. In fact, before Yaquita had spoken to him, Joam Dacosta had noticed that Manoel was in love with his daughter. The union of the young army doctor and his daughter was in every respect a suitable one. It was evident to Joam that some day or other he would be asked for her hand in marriage, and he did not wish to be obliged to But then the thought that his daughter would have to marry under a name which did not belong to her, that Manoel Valdez, thinking he was entering the family of Garral, would enter that of Dacosta, the head of which was under sentence of death, was intolerable to him. No! The wedding should not take place unless under proper conditions! Never! Let us recall what had happened up to this time. Four years after the young clerk, who eventually became the partner of Magalha볬 had arrived at Iquitos, the old Portuguese had been taken back to the farm mortally injured. A few days only were left for him to live. He was alarmed at the thought that his daughter would be left alone and unprotected; but knowing that Joam and Yaquita were in love with each other, he desired their union without delay. Joam at first refused. He offered to remain the protector or the servant of Yaquita without becoming her husband. The wish of the dying Magalha볠was so urgent that resistance became impossible. Yaquita put her hand into the hand of Joam, and Joam did not withdraw it. Yes! It was a serious matter! Joam Dacosta ought to have confessed all, or to have fled forever from the house in which he had been so hospitably received, from the establishment of which he had built up the prosperity! Yes! To confess everything rather than to give to the daughter of his benefactor a name which was not his, instead of the name of a felon condemned to death for murder, innocent though he might be! But the case was pressing, the old fazender was on the point of death, his hands were stretched out toward the young people! Joam was silent, the marriage took place, and the remainder of his life was devoted to the happiness of the girl he had made his wife. "The day when I confess everything," Joam repeated, "Yaquita will pardon everything! She will not doubt me for an instant! But if I ought not to have deceived her, I certainly will not deceive the honest fellow who wishes to enter our family by marrying Mina! No! I would rather give myself up and have done with this life!" Many times had Joam thought of telling his wife about his past life. Yes! the avowal was on his lips whenever she asked him to take her into Brazil, and with her and her daughter descend the beautiful Amazon river. He knew sufficient of Yaquita to be sure that her affection for him would not thereby be diminished in the least. But courage failed him! And this is easily intelligible in the face of the happiness of the family, which increased on every side. This happiness was his work, and it might be destroyed forever by his return. Such had been his life for those long years; such had been the continuous source of his sufferings, of which he had kept the secret so well; such had been the existence of this man, who had no action to be ashamed of, and whom a great injustice compelled to hide away from himself! But at length the day arrived when there could no longer remain a doubt as to the affection which Manoel bore to Minha, when he could see that a year would not go by before he was asked to give his consent to her marriage, and after a short delay he no longer hesitated to proceed in the matter. A letter from him, addressed to Judge Ribeiro, acquainted the chief justice with the secret of the existence of Joam Dacosta, with the name under which he was concealed, with the place where he lived with his family, and at the same time with his formal intention of delivering himself up to justice, and taking steps to procure the revision of the proceedings, which would either result in his rehabilitation or in the execution of the iniquitous judgment delivered at Villa Rica. What were the feelings which agitated the heart of the worthy magistrate? We can easily divine them. It was no longer to the advocate that the accused applied; it was to the chief justice of the province that the convict appealed. Joam Dacosta gave himself over to him entirely, and did not even ask him to keep the secret. Judge Ribeiro was at first troubled about this unexpected revelation, but he soon recovered himself, and scrupulously considered the duties which the position imposed on him. It was his place to pursue criminals, and here was one who delivered himself into his hands. This criminal, it was true, he had defended; he had never doubted but that he had been unjustly condemned; his joy had been extreme when he saw him escape by flight from the last penalty; he had even instigated and facilitated his flight! But what the advocate had done in the past could the magistrate do in the present? "Well, yes!" had the judge said, "my conscience tells me not to abandon this just man. The step he is taking is a fresh proof of his innocence, a moral proof, even if he brings me others, which may be the most convincing of all! No! I will not abandon him!" From this day forward a secret correspondence took place between the magistrate and Joam Dacosta. Ribeiro at the outset cautioned his client against compromising himself by any imprudence. He had again to work up the matter, again to read over the papers, again to look through the inquiries. He had to find out if any new facts had come to light in the diamond province referring to so serious a case. Had any of the accomplices of the crime, of the smugglers who had attacked the convoy, been arrested since the attempt? Had any confessions or half-confessions been brought forward? Joam Dacosta had done nothing but protest his innocence from the very first. But that was not enough, and Judge Ribeiro was desirous of finding in the case itself the clue to the real culprit. Joam Dacosta had accordingly been prudent. He had promised to be so. But in all his trials it was an immense consolation for him to find his old advocate, though now a chief justice, so firmly convinced that he was not guilty. Yes! Joam Dacosta, in spite of his condemnation, was a victim, a martyr, an honest man to whom society owed a signal reparation! And when the magistrate knew the past career of the fazender of Iquitos since his sentence, the position of his family, all that life of devotion, of work, employed unceasingly for the happiness of those belonging to him, he was not only more convinced but more affected, and determined to do all that he could to procure the rehabilitation of the felon of Tijuco. For six months a correspondence had passed between these two men. One day, the case being pressing, Joam Dacosta wrote to "In two months I will be with you, in the power of the chief justice of "Come, then," replied Ribeiro. The jangada was then ready to go down the river. Joam Dacosta embarked on it with all his people. During the voyage, to the great astonishment of his wife and son, he landed but rarely, as we know. More often he remained shut up on his room, writing, working, not at his trading accounts, but, without saying anything about it, at a kind of memoir, which he called "The History of My Life," and which was meant to be used in the revision of the Eight days before his new arrest, made on account of information given by Torres, which forestalled and perhaps would ruin his prospects, he intrusted to an Indian on the Amazon a letter, in which he warned Judge Ribeiro of his approaching arrival. The letter was sent and delivered as addressed, and the magistrate only waited for Joam Dacosta to commence on the serious undertaking which he hoped to bring to a successful issue. During the night before the arrival of the raft at Manaos Judge Ribeiro was seized with an attack of apoplexy. But the denunciation of Torres, whose scheme of extortion had collapsed in face of the noble anger of his victim, had produced its effect. Joam Dacosta was arrested in the bosom of his family, and his old advocate was no longer in this world to defend him! Yes, the blow was terrible indeed. His lot was cast, whatever his fate might be; there was no going back for him! And Joam Dacosta rose from beneath the blow which had so unexpectedly struck him. It was not only his own honor which was in question, but the honor of all who belonged to him. THE WARRANT against Joam Dacosta, alias Joam Garral, had been issued by the assistant of Judge Ribeiro, who filled the position of the magistrate in the province of Amazones, until the nomination of the successor of the late This assistant bore the name of Vicente Jarriquez. He was a surly little fellow, whom forty years' practice in criminal procedure had not rendered particularly friendly toward those who came before him. He had had so many cases of this sort, and tried and sentenced so many rascals, that a prisoner's innocence seemed to him ࠰riori inadmissable. To be sure, he did not come to a decision unconscientiously; but his conscience was strongly fortified and was not easily affected by the circumstances of the examination or the arguments for the defense. Like a good many judges, he thought but little of the indulgence of the jury, and when a prisoner was brought before him, after having passed through the sieve of inquest, inquiry, and examination, there was every presumption in his eyes that the man was quite ten times guilty. Jarriquez, however, was not a bad man. Nervous, fidgety, talkative, keen, crafty, he had a curious look about him, with his big head on his little body; his ruffled hair, which would not have disgraced the judge's wig of the past; his piercing gimlet-like eyes, with their expression of surprising acuteness; his prominent nose, with which he would assuredly have gesticulated had it been movable; his ears wide open, so as to better catch all that was said, even when it was out of range of ordinary auditory apparatus; his fingers unceasingly tapping the table in front of him, like those of a pianist practicing on the mute; and his body so long and his legs so short, and his feet perpetually crossing and recrossing, as he sat in state in his magistrate's chair. In private life, Jarriquez, who was a confirmed old bachelor, never left his law-books but for the table which he did not despise; for chess, of which he was a past master; and above all things for Chinese puzzles, enigmas, charades, rebuses, anagrams, riddles, and such things, with which, like more than one European justice—thorough sphinxes by taste as well as by profession—he principally passed his leisure. It will be seen that he was an original, and it will be seen also how much Joam Dacosta had lost by the death of Judge Ribeiro, inasmuch as his case would come before this not very agreeable judge. Moreover, the task of Jarriquez was in a way very simple. He had either to inquire nor to rule; he had not even to regulate a discussion nor to obtain a verdict, neither to apply the articles of the penal code nor to pronounce a sentence. Unfortunately for the fazender, such formalities were no longer necessary; Joam Dacosta had been arrested, convicted, and sentenced twenty-three years ago for the crime at Tijuco; no limitation had yet affected his sentence. No demand in commutation of the penalty could be introduced, and no appeal for mercy could be received. It was only necessary then to establish his identity, and as soon as the order arrived from Rio Janeiro justice would have to take its course. But in the nature of things Joam Dacosta would protest his innocence; he would say he had been unjustly condemned. The magistrate's duty, notwithstanding the opinions he held, would be to listen to him. The question would be, what proofs could the convict offer to make good his assertions? And if he was not able to produce them when he appeared before his first judges, was he able to do so now? Herein consisted all the interest of the examination. There would have to be admitted the fact of a defaulter, prosperous and safe in a foreign country, leaving his refuge of his own free will to face the justice which his past life should have taught him to dread, and herein would be one of those rare and curious cases which ought to interest even a magistrate hardened with all the surroundings of forensic strife. Was it impudent folly on the part of the doomed man of Tijuco, who was tired of his life, or was it the impulse of a conscience which would at all risks have wrong set right? The problem was a strange one, it must be acknowledged. On the morrow of Joam Dacosta's arrest, Judge Jarriquez made his way to the prison in God-the-Son Street, where the convict had been placed. The prison was an old missionary convent, situated on the bank of one of the principal iguarapes of the town. To the voluntary prisoners of former times there had succeeded in this building, which was but little adapted for the purpose, the compulsory prisoners of today. The room occupied by Joam Dacosta was nothing like one of those sad little cells which form part of our modern penitentiary system: but an old monk's room, with a barred window without shutters, opening on to an uncultivated space, a bench in one corner, and a kind of pallet in the other. It was from this apartment that Joam Dacosta, on this 25th of August, about eleven o'clock in the morning, was taken and brought into the judge's room, which was the old common hall of the convent. Judge Jarriquez was there in front of his desk, perched on his high chair, his back turned toward the window, so that his face was in shadow while that of the accused remained in full daylight. His clerk, with the indifference which characterizes these legal folks, had taken his seat at the end of the table, his pen behind his ear, ready to record the questions and answers. Joam Dacosta was introduced into the room, and at a sign from the judge the guards who had brought him withdrew. Judge Jarriquez looked at the accused for some time. The latter, leaning slightly forward and maintaining a becoming attitude, neither careless nor humble, waited with dignity for the questions to which he was expected to "Your name?" said Judge Jarriquez. "Where do you live?" "In Peru, at the village of Iquitos." "Under what name?" "Under that of Garral, which is that of my mother." "And why do you bear that name?" "Because for twenty-three years I wished to hide myself from the pursuit of Brazilian justice." The answers were so exact, and seemed to show that Joam Dacosta had made up his mind to confess everything concerning his past and present life, that Judge Jarriquez, little accustomed to such a course, cocked up his nose more than was usual to him. "And why," he continued, "should Brazilian justice pursue you?" "Because I was sentenced to death in 1826 in the diamond affair "You confess then that you are Joam Dacosta?" "I am Joam Dacosta." All this was said with great calmness, and as simply as possible. The little eyes of Judge Jarriquez, hidden by their lids, seemed to "Never came across anything like this before." He had put the invariable question which had hitherto brought the invariable reply from culprits of every category protesting their innocence. The fingers of the judge began to beat a gentle tattoo on the table. "Joam Dacosta," he asked, "what were you doing at Iquitos?" "I was a fazender, and engaged in managing a farming establishment of considerable size." "It was prospering?" "How long ago did you leave your fazenda?" "About nine weeks." "As to that, sir," answered Dacosta, "I invented a pretext, but in reality I had a motive." "What was the pretext?" "The responsibility of taking into Para a large raft, and a cargo of different products of the Amazon." "Ah! and what was the real motive of your departure?" And in asking this question Jarriquez said to himself: "Now we shall get into denials and falsehoods." "The real motive," replied Joam Dacosta, in a firm voice, "was the resolution I had taken to give myself up to the justice of "You give yourself up!" exclaimed the judge, rising from his stool. "You give yourself up of your own free will?" "Of my own free will." "Because I had had enough of this lying life, this obligation to live under a false name, of this impossibility to be able to restore to my wife and children that which belongs to them; in short, "I was innocent!" "That is what I was waiting for," said Judge Jarriquez. And while his fingers tattooed a slightly more audible march, he made a sign with his head to Dacosta, which signified as clearly as possible, "Go on! Tell me your history. I know it, but I do not wish to interrupt you in telling it in your own way." Joam Dacosta, who did not disregard the magistrate's far from encouraging attitude, could not but see this, and he told the history of his whole life. He spoke quietly without departing from the calm he had imposed upon himself, without omitting any circumstances which had preceded or succeeded his condemnation. In the same tone he insisted on the honored and honorable life he had led since his escape, on his duties as head of his family, as husband and father, which he had so worthily fulfilled. He laid stress only on one circumstance—that which had brought him to Manaos to urge on the revision of the proceedings against him, to procure his rehabilitation—and that he was compelled to do. Judge Jarriquez, who was naturally prepossessed against all criminals, did not interrupt him. He contented himself with opening and shutting his eyes like a man who heard the story told for the hundredth time; and when Joam Dacosta laid on the table the memoir which he had drawn up, he made no movement to take it. "You have finished?" he said. "And you persist in asserting that you only left Iquitos to procure the revision of the judgment against you." "I had no other intention." "What is there to prove that? Who can prove that, without the denunciation which had brought about your arrest, you would have given "This memoir, in the first place." "That memoir was in your possession, and there is nothing to show that had you not been arrested, you would have put it to the use you say you "At the least, sir, there was one thing that was not in my possession, and of the authenticity of which there can be no doubt." "The letter I wrote to your predecessor, Judge Ribeiro, the letter which gave him notice of my early arrival." "Ah! you wrote?" "Yes. And the letter which ought to have arrived at its destination should have been handed over to you." "Really!" answered Judge Jarriquez, in a slightly incredulous tone. "You wrote to Judge Ribeiro." "Before he was a judge in this province," answered Joam Dacosta, "he was an advocate at Villa Rica. He it was who defended me in the trial at Tijuco. He never doubted of the justice of my cause. He did all he could to save me. Twenty years later, when he had become chief justice at Manaos, I let him know who I was, where I was, and what I wished to attempt. His opinion about me had not changed, and it was at his advice I left the fazenda, and came in person to proceed with my rehabilitation. But death had unfortunately struck him, and maybe I shall be lost, sir, if in Judge Jarriquez I do not find another Judge Ribeiro." The magistrate, appealed to so directly, was about to start up in defiance of all the traditions of the judicial bench, but he managed to restrain himself, and was contented with muttering: "Very strong, indeed; very strong!" Judge Jarriquez was evidently hard of heart, and proof against At this moment a guard entered the room, and handed a sealed packet to He broke the seal and drew a letter from the envelope. He opened it and read it, not without a certain contraction of his eyebrows, and then "I have no reason for hiding from you, Joam Dacosta, that this is the letter you have been speaking about, addressed by you to Judge Ribeiro and sent on to me. I have, therefore, no reason to doubt what you have said on the subject." "Not only on that subject," answered Dacosta, "but on the subject of all the circumstances of my life which I have brought to your knowledge, and which are none of them open to question." "Eh! Joam Dacosta," quickly replied Judge Jarriquez. "You protest your innocence; but all prisoners do as much! After all, you only offer moral presumptions. Have you any material proof?" "Perhaps I have," answered Joam Dacosta. At these words, Judge Jarriquez left his chair. This was too much for him, and he had to take two or three circuits of the room to WHEN THE MAGISTRATE had again taken his place, like a man who considered he was perfectly master of himself, he leaned back in his chair, and with his head raised and his eyes looking straight in front, as though not even noticing the accused, remarked, in a tone of the most perfect Joam Dacosta reflected for a minute as if hesitating to resume the order of his thoughts, and then answered as follows: "Up to the present, sir, I have only given you moral presumptions of my innocence grounded on the dignity, propriety, and honesty of the whole of my life. I should have thought that such proofs were those most worthy of being brought forward in matters of justice." Judge Jarriquez could not restrain a movement of his shoulders, showing that such was not his opinion. "Since they are not enough, I proceed with the material proofs which I shall perhaps be able to produce," continued Dacosta; "I say perhaps, for I do not yet know what credit to attach to them. And, sir, I have never spoken of these things to my wife or children, not wishing to raise a hope which might be destroyed." "To the point," answered Jarriquez. "I have every reason to believe, sir, that my arrest on the eve of the arrival of the raft at Manaos is due to information given to the chief of the "You are not mistaken, Joam Dacosta, but I ought to tell you that the information is anonymous." "It matters little, for I know that it could only come from a scoundrel "And what right have you to speak in such a way of this—informer?" "A scoundrel! Yes, sir!" replied Joam quickly. "This man, whom I received with hospitality, only came to me to propose that I should purchase his silence to offer me an odious bargain that I shall never regret having refused, whatever may be the consequences of "Always this method!" thought Judge Jarriquez; "accusing others to clear But he none the less listened with extreme attention to Joam's recital of his relations with the adventurer up to the moment when Torres let him know that he knew and could reveal the name of the true author of the crime "And what is the name of the guilty man?" asked Jarriquez, shaken in his "I do not know," answered Joam Dacosta. "Torres was too cautious to let "And the culprit is living?" "He is dead." The fingers of Judge Jarriquez tattooed more quickly, and he could not avoid exclaiming, "The man who can furnish the proof of a prisoner's innocence is always dead." "If the real culprit is dead, sir," replied Dacosta, "Torres at least is living, and the proof, written throughout in the handwriting of the author of the crime, he has assured me is in his hands! He offered to sell it to "Eh! Joam Dacosta!" answered Judge Jarriquez, "that would not have been dear at the cost of the whole of your fortune!" "If Torres had only asked my fortune, I would have given it to him and not one of my people would have demurred! Yes, you are right, sir; a man cannot pay too dearly for the redemption of his honor! But this scoundrel, knowing that I was at his mercy, required more than my fortune!" "My daughter's hand was to be the cost of the bargain! I refused; he denounced me, and that is why I am now before you!" "And if Torres had not informed against you," asked Judge Jarriquez—"if Torres had not met with you on your voyage, what would you have done on learning on your arrival of the death of Judge Ribeiro? Would you then have delivered yourself into the hands of justice?" "Without the slightest hesitation," replied Joam, in a firm voice; "for, I repeat it, I had no other object in leaving Iquitos to come to This was said in such a tone of truthfulness that Judge Jarriquez experienced a kind of feeling making its way to that corner of the heart where convictions are formed, but he did not yet give in. He could hardly help being astonished. A judge engaged merely in this examination, he knew nothing of what is known by those who have followed this history, and who cannot doubt but that Torres held in his hands the material proof of Joam Dacosta's innocence. They know that the document existed; that it contained this evidence; and perhaps they may be led to think that Judge Jarriquez was pitilessly incredulous. But they should remember that Judge Jarriquez was not in their position; that he was accustomed to the invariable protestations of the culprits who came before him. The document which Joam Dacosta appealed to was not produced; he did not really know if it actually existed; and to conclude, he had before him a man whose guilt had for him the certainty of a However, he wished, perhaps through curiosity, to drive Joam Dacosta behind his last entrenchments. "And so," he said, "all your hope now rests on the declaration which has been made to you by Torres." "Yes, sir, if my whole life does not plead for me." "Where do you think Torres really is?" "I think in Manaos." "And you hope that he will speak—that he will consent to good-naturedly hand over to you the document for which you have declined to pay the price he "I hope so, sir," replied Joam Dacosta; "the situation now is not the same for Torres; he has denounced me, and consequently he cannot retain any hope of resuming his bargaining under the previous conditions. But this document might still be worth a fortune if, supposing I am acquitted or executed, it should ever escape him. Hence his interest is to sell me the document, which can thus not injure him in any way, and I think he will act according to his interest." The reasoning of Joam Dacosta was unanswerable, and Judge Jarriquez felt it to be so. He made the only possible objection. "The interest of Torres is doubtless to sell you the document—if the "If it does not exist," answered Joam Dacosta, in a penetrating voice, "in trusting to the justice of men, I must put my trust only in God!" At these words Judge Jarriquez rose, and, in not quite such an indifferent tone, said, "Joam Dacosta, in examining you here, in allowing you to relate the particulars of your past life and to protest your innocence, I have gone further than my instructions allow me. An information has already been laid in this affair, and you have appeared before the jury at Villa Rica, whose verdict was given unanimously, and without even the addition of extenuating circumstances. You have been found guilty of the instigation of, and complicity in, the murder of the soldiers and the robbery of the diamonds at Tijuco, the capital sentence was pronounced on you, and it was only by flight that you escaped execution. But that you came here to deliver yourself over, or not, to the hands of justice twenty-three years afterward, you would never have been retaken. For the last time, you admit that you are Joam Dacosta, the condemned man of the diamond arrayal?" "I am Joam Dacosta." "You are ready to sign this declaration?" "I am ready." And with a hand without a tremble Joam Dacosta put his name to the foot of the declaration and the report which Judge Jarriquez had made his clerk "The report, addressed to the minister of justice, is to be sent off to Rio Janeiro," said the magistrate. "Many days will elapse before we receive orders to carry out your sentence. If then, as you say, Torres possesses the proof of your innocence, do all you can yourself—do all you can through your friends—do everything, so that that proof can be produced in time. Once the order arrives no delay will be possible, and justice must take its Joam Dacosta bowed slightly. "Shall I be allowed in the meantime to see my wife and children?" "After today, if you wish," answered Judge Jarriquez; "you are no longer in close confinement, and they can be brought to you as soon as The magistrate then rang the bell. The guards entered the room, and took away Joam Dacosta. Judge Jarriquez watched him as he went out, and shook his head "Well, well! This is a much stranger affair than I ever thought it would THE LAST BLOW WHILE JOAM DACOSTA was undergoing this examination, Yaquita, from an inquiry made by Manoel, ascertained that she and her children would be permitted to see the prisoner that very day about four o'clock in the Yaquita had not left her room since the evening before. Minha and Lina kept near her, waiting for the time when she would be admitted to see her Yaquita Garral or Yaquita Dacosta, he would still find her the devoted wife and brave companion he had ever known her to be. About eleven o'clock in the morning Benito joined Manoel and Fragoso, who were talking in the bow of the jangada. "Manoel," said he, "I have a favor to ask you." "What is it?" "And you too, Fragoso." "I am at your service, Mr. Benito," answered the barber. "What is the matter?" asked Manoel, looking at his friend, whose expression was that of a man who had come to some "You never doubt my father's innocence? Is that so?" said Benito. "Ah!" exclaimed Fragoso. "Rather I think it was I who committed "Well, we must now commence on the project I thought of yesterday." "To find out Torres?" asked Manoel. "Yes, and know from him how he found out my father's retreat. There is something inexplicable about it. Did he know it before? I cannot understand it, for my father never left Iquitos for more than twenty years, and this scoundrel is hardly thirty! But the day will not close before I know it; or, woe to Torres!" Benito's resolution admitted of no discussion; and besides, neither Manoel nor Fragoso had the slightest thought of dissuading him. "I will ask, then," continued Benito, "for both of you to accompany me. We shall start in a minute or two. It will not do to wait till Torres has left Manaos. He has no longer got his silence to sell, and the idea might occur to him. Let us be off!" And so all three of them landed on the bank of the Rio Negro and started for the town. Manaos was not so considerable that it could not be searched in a few hours. They had made up their minds to go from house to house, if necessary, to look for Torres, but their better plan seemed to be to apply in the first instance to the keepers of the taverns and lojas where the adventurer was most likely to put up. There could hardly be a doubt that the ex-captain of the woods would not have given his name; he might have personal reasons for avoiding all communication with the police. Nevertheless, unless he had left Manaos, it was almost impossible for him to escape the young fellows' search. In any case, there would be no use in applying to the police, for it was very probable—in fact, we know that it actually was so—that the information given to them had been anonymous. For an hour Benito, Manoel, and Fragoso walked along the principal streets of the town, inquiring of the tradesmen in their shops, the tavern-keepers in their cabarets, and even the bystanders, without any one being able to recognize the individual whose description they so Had Torres left Manaos? Would they have to give up all hope of coming across him? In vain Manoel tried to calm Benito, whose head seemed on fire. Cost what it might, he must get at Torres! Chance at last favored them, and it was Fragoso who put them on the right track. In a tavern in Holy Ghost Street, from the description which the people received of the adventurer, they replied that the individual in question had put up at the loja the evening before. "Did he sleep here?" asked Fragoso. "Yes," answered the tavern-keeper. "Is he here now?" "No. He has gone out." "But has he settled his bill, as a man would who has gone for good?" "By no means; he left his room about an hour ago, and he will doubtless come back to supper." "Do you know what road he took when he went out?" "We saw him turning toward the Amazon, going through the lower town, and you will probably meet him on that side." Fragoso did not want any more. A few seconds afterward he rejoined the young fellows, and said: "I am on the track." "He is there!" exclaimed Benito. "No; he has just gone out, and they have seen him walking across to the bank of the Amazon." "Come on!" replied Benito. They had to go back toward the river, and the shortest way was for them to take the left bank of the Rio Negro, down to its mouth. Benito and his companions soon left the last houses of the town behind, and followed the bank, making a slight detour so as not to be observed from The plain was at this time deserted. Far away the view extended across the flat, where cultivated fields had replaced the former forests. Benito did not speak; he could not utter a word. Manoel and Fragoso respected his silence. And so the three of them went along and looked about on all sides as they traversed the space between the bank of the Rio Negro and that of the Amazon. Three-quarters of an hour after leaving Manaos, and still they had seen nothing! Once or twice Indians working in the fields were met with. Manoel questioned them, and one of them at length told him that a man, such as he described, had just passed in the direction of the angle formed by the two rivers at their confluence. Without waiting for more, Benito, by an irresistible movement, strode to the front, and his two companions had to hurry on to avoid being left The left bank of the Amazon was then about a quarter of a mile off. A sort of cliff appeared ahead, hiding a part of the horizon, and bounding the view a few hundred paces in advance. Benito, hurrying on, soon disappeared behind one of the sandy knolls. "Quicker! quicker!" said Manoel to Fragoso. "We must not leave him alone for an instant." And they were dashing along when a shout struck on their ears. Had Benito caught sight of Torres? What had he seen? Had Benito and Torres already met? Manoel and Fragoso, fifty paces further on, after swiftly running round one of the spurs of the bank, saw two men standing face to face to each They were Torres and Benito. In an instant Manoel and Fragoso had hurried up to them. It might have been supposed that in Benito's state of excitement he would be unable to restrain himself when he found himself once again in the presence of the adventurer. It was not so. As soon as the young man saw himself face to face with Torres, and was certain that he could not escape, a complete change took place in his manner, his coolness returned, and he became once more master of himself. The two men looked at one another for a few moments without a word. Torres first broke silence, and, in the impudent tone habitual to him, "Ah! How goes it, Mr. Benito Garral?" "No, Benito Dacosta!" answered the young man. "Quite so," continued Torres. "Mr. Benito Dacosta, accompanied by Mr. Manoel Valdez and my friend Fragoso!" At the irritating qualification thus accorded him by the adventurer, Fragoso, who was by no means loath to do him some damage, was about to rush to the attack, when Benito, quite unmoved, held him back. "What is the matter with you, my lad?" exclaimed Torres, retreating for a few steps. "I think I had better put myself on guard." And as he spoke he drew from beneath his poncho his manchetta, the weapon, adapted at will for offense or defense, which a Brazilian is never without. And then, slightly stooping, and planted firmly on his feet, he waited for what was to follow. "I have come to look for you, Torres," said Benito, who had not stirred in the least at this threatening attitude. "To look for me?" answered the adventurer. "It is not very difficult to find me. And why have you come to look for me?" "To know from your own lips what you appear to know of the past life of "Yes. I want to know how you recognized him, why you were prowling about our fazenda in the forest of Iquitos, and why you were waiting for us at "Well! it seems to me nothing could be clearer!" answered Torres, with a grin. "I was waiting to get a passage on the jangada, and I went on board with the intention of making him a very simple proposition—which possibly he was wrong in rejecting." At these words Manoel could stand it no longer. With pale face and eye of fire he strode up to Torres. Benito, wishing to exhaust every means of conciliation, thrust himself "Calm yourself, Manoel!" he said. "I am calm—even I." And then continuing: "Quite so, Torres; I know the reason of your coming on board the raft. Possessed of a secret which was doubtless given to you, you wanted to make it a means of extortion. But that is not what I want to know at present." "What is it, then?" "I want to know how you recognized Joam Dacosta in the fazenda "How I recognized him?" replied Torres. "That is my business, and I see no reason why I should tell you. The important fact is, that I was not mistaken when I denounced in him the real author of the crime of "You say that to me?" exclaimed Benito, who began to lose "I will tell you nothing," returned Torres; "Joam Dacosta declined my propositions! He refused to admit me into his family! Well! now that his secret is known, now that he is a prisoner, it is I who refuse to enter his family, the family of a thief, of a murderer, of a condemned felon, for whom the gallows now waits!" "Scoundrel!" exclaimed Benito, who drew his manchetta from his belt and put himself in position. Manoel and Fragoso, by a similar movement, quickly drew "Three against one!" said Torres. "No! one against one!" answered Benito. "Really! I should have thought an assassination would have better suited an assassin's son!" "Torres!" exclaimed Benito, "defend yourself, or I will kill you like a "Mad! so be it!" answered Torres. "But I bite, Benito Dacosta, and beware of the wounds!" And then again grasping his manchetta, he put himself on guard and ready to attack his enemy. Benito had stepped back a few paces. "Torres," he said, regaining all his coolness, which for a moment he had lost; "you were the guest of my father, you threatened him, you betrayed him, you denounced him, you accused an innocent man, and with God's help I am going to kill you!" Torres replied with the most insolent smile imaginable. Perhaps at the moment the scoundrel had an idea of stopping any struggle between Benito and him, and he could have done so. In fact he had seen that Joam Dacosta had said nothing about the document which formed the material proof of his Had he revealed to Benito that he, Torres, possessed this proof, Benito would have been that instant disarmed. But his desire to wait till the very last moment, so as to get the very best price for the document he possessed, the recollection of the young man's insulting words, and the hate which he bore to all that belonged to him, made him forget his own interest. In addition to being thoroughly accustomed to the manchetta, which he often had had occasion to use, the adventurer was strong, active, and artful, so that against an adversary who was scarcely twenty, who could have neither his strength nor his dexterity, the chances were greatly in his favor. Manoel by a last effort wished to insist on fighting him instead "No, Manoel," was the cool reply, "it is for me alone to avenge my father, and as everything here ought to be in order, you shall be "As for you, Fragoso, you will not refuse if I ask you to act as second for that man?" "So be it," answered Fragoso, "though it is not an office of honor. Without the least ceremony," he added, "I would have killed him like a wild beast." The place where the duel was about to take place was a level bank about fifty paces long, on the top of a cliff rising perpendicularly some fifty feet above the Amazon. The river slowly flowed at the foot, and bathed the clumps of reeds which bristled round its base. There was, therefore, none too much room, and the combatant who was the first to give way would quickly be driven over into the abyss. The signal was given by Manoel, and Torres and Benito Benito had complete command over himself. The defender of a sacred cause, his coolness was unruffled, much more so than that of Torres, whose conscience insensible and hardened as it was, was bound at the moment to trouble him. The two met, and the first blow came from Benito. Torres parried it. They then jumped back, but almost at the same instant they rushed together, and with their left hands seized each other by the shoulder—never to leave go again. Torres, who was the strongest, struck a side blow with his manchetta which Benito could not quite parry. His left side was touched, and his poncho was reddened with his blood. But he quickly replied, and slightly wounded Torres in the hand. Several blows were then interchanged, but nothing decisive was done. The ever silent gaze of Benito pierced the eyes of Torres like a sword blade thrust to his very heart. Visibly the scoundrel began to quail. He recoiled little by little, pressed back by his implacable foe, who was more determined on taking the life of his father's denouncer than in defending his own. To strike was all that Benito longed for; to parry was all that the other now attempted to do. Soon Torres saw himself thrust to the very edge of the bank, at a spot where, slightly scooped away, it overhung the river. He perceived the danger; he tried to retake the offensive and regain the lost ground. His agitation increased, his looks grew livid. At length he was obliged to stoop beneath the arm which threatened him. "Die, then!" exclaimed Benito. The blow was struck full on its chest, but the point of the manchetta was stopped by a hard substance hidden beneath the poncho of Benito renewed his attack, and Torres, whose return thrust did not touch his adversary, felt himself lost. He was again obliged to retreat. Then he would have shouted—shouted that the life of Joam Dacosta depended on his own! He had not time! A second thrust of the manchetta pierced his heart. He fell backward, and the ground suddenly failing him, he was precipitated down the cliff. As a last effort his hands convulsively clutched at a clump of reeds, but they could not stop him, and he disappeared beneath the waters of the river. Benito was supported on Manoel's shoulder; Fragoso grasped his hands. He would not even give his companions time to dress his wound, which was very "To the jangada!" he said, "to the jangada!" Manoel and Fragoso with deep emotion followed him without speaking A quarter of an hour afterward the three reached the bank to which the raft was moored. Benito and Manoel rushed into the room where were Yaquita and Minha, and told them all that had passed. "My son!" "My brother!" The words were uttered at the same moment. "To the prison!" said Benito. "Yes! Come! come!" replied Yaquita. Benito, followed by Manoel, hurried along his mother, and half an hour later they arrived before the prison. Owing to the order previously given by Judge Jarriquez they were immediately admitted, and conducted to the chamber occupied by The door opened. Joam Dacosta saw his wife, his son, and Manoel enter the room. "Ah! Joam, my Joam!" exclaimed Yaquita. "Yaquita! my wife! my children!" replied the prisoner, who opened his arms and pressed them to his heart. "My Joam, innocent!" "Innocent and avenged!" said Benito. "Avenged? What do you mean?" "Torres is dead, father; killed by my hand!" "Dead!—Torres!—Dead!" gasped Joam Dacosta. "My son! You have A FEW HOURS later the whole family had returned to the raft, and were assembled in the large room. All were there, except the prisoner, on whom the last blow had just fallen. Benito was quite overwhelmed, and accused himself of having destroyed his father, and had it not been for the entreaties of Yaquita, of his sister, of Padre Passanha, and of Manoel, the distracted youth would in the first moments of despair have probably made away with himself. But he was never allowed to get out of sight; he was never left alone. And besides, how could he have acted otherwise? Ah! why had not Joam Dacosta told him all before he left the jangada? Why had he refrained from speaking, except before a judge, of this material proof of his innocence? Why, in his interview with Manoel after the expulsion of Torres, had he been silent about the document which the adventurer pretended to hold in his hands? But, after all, what faith ought he to place in what Torres had said? Could he be certain that such a document was in the Whatever might be the reason, the family now knew everything, and that from the lips of Joam Dacosta himself. They knew that Torres had declared that the proof of the innocence of the convict of Tijuco actually existed; that the document had been written by the very hand of the author of the attack; that the criminal, seized by remorse at the moment of his death, had intrusted it to his companion, Torres; and that he, instead of fulfilling the wishes of the dying man, had made the handing over of the document an excuse for extortion. But they knew also that Torres had just been killed, and that his body was engulfed in the waters of the Amazon, and that he died without even mentioning the name of the guilty man. Unless he was saved by a miracle, Joam Dacosta might now be considered as irrevocably lost. The death of Judge Ribeiro on the one hand, the death of Torres on the other, were blows from which he could not recover! It should here be said that public opinion at Manaos, unreasoning as it always is, was all against he prisoner. The unexpected arrest of Joam Dacosta had revived the memory of the terrible crime of Tijuco, which had lain forgotten for twenty-three years. The trial of the young clerk at the mines of the diamond arrayal, his capital sentence, his escape a few hours before his intended execution—all were remembered, analyzed, and commented on. An article which had just appeared in the O Diario d'o Grand Para, the most widely circulated journal in these parts, after giving a history of the circumstances of the crime, showed itself decidedly hostile to the prisoner. Why should these people believe in Joam Dacosta's innocence, when they were ignorant of all that his friends knew—of what they alone knew? And so the people of Manaos became excited. A mob of Indians and negroes hurried, in their blind folly, to surround the prison and roar forth tumultuous shouts of death. In this part of the two Americas, where executions under Lynch law are of frequent occurrence, the mob soon surrenders itself to its cruel instincts, and it was feared that on this occasion it would do justice with its own hands. What a night it was for the passengers from the fazenda! Masters and servants had been affected by the blow! Were not the servants of the fazenda members of one family? Every one of them would watch over the safety of Yaquita and her people! On the bank of the Rio Negro there was a constant coming and going of the natives, evidently excited by the arrest of Joam Dacosta, and who could say to what excesses these half-barbarous men might be led? The time, however, passed without any demonstration against On the morrow, the 26th of August, as soon as the sun rose, Manoel and Fragoso, who had never left Benito for an instant during this terrible night, attempted to distract his attention from his despair. After taking him aside they made him understand that there was no time to be lost—that they must make up their minds to act. "Benito," said Manoel, "pull yourself together! Be a man again! Be a son "My father!" exclaimed Benito. "I have killed him!" "No!" replied Manoel. "With heaven's help it is possible that all may not be lost!" "Listen to us, Mr. Benito," said Fragoso. The young man, passing his hand over his eyes, made a violent effort to "Benito," continued Manoel, "Torres never gave a hint to put us on the track of his past life. We therefore cannot tell who was the author of the crime of Tijuco, or under what conditions it was committed. To try in that direction is to lose our time." "And time presses!" added Fragoso. "Besides," said Manoel, "suppose we do find out who this companion of Torres was, he is dead, and he could not testify in any way to the innocence of Joam Dacosta. But it is none the less certain that the proof of this innocence exists, and there is not room to doubt the existence of a document which Torres was anxious to make the subject of a bargain. He told us so himself. The document is a complete avowal written in the handwriting of the culprit, which relates the attack in its smallest details, and which clears our father! Yes! a hundred times, yes! The document exists!" "But Torres does not exist!" groaned Benito, "and the document has perished with him!" "Wait, and don't despair yet!" answered Manoel. "You remember under what circumstances we made the acquaintance of Torres? It was in the depths of the forest of Iquitos. He was in pursuit of a monkey which had stolen a metal case, which it so strangely kept, and the chase had lasted a couple of hours when the monkey fell to our guns. Now, do you think that it was for the few pieces of gold contained in the case that Torres was in such a fury to recover it? and do you not remember the extraordinary satisfaction which he displayed when we gave him back the case which we had taken out of the "Yes! yes!" answered Benito. "This case which I held—which I gave back to him! Perhaps it contained——" "It is more than probable! It is certain!" replied Manoel. "And I beg to add," said Fragoso, "for now the fact recurs to my memory, that during the time you were at Ega I remained on board, at Lina's advice, to keep an eye on Torres, and I saw him—yes, I saw him—reading, and again reading, an old faded paper, and muttering words which I could not "That was the document!" exclaimed Benito, who snatched at the hope—the only one that was left. "But this document; had he not put it in some place "No," answered Manoel—"no; it was too precious for Torres to dream of parting with it. He was bound to carry it always about with him, and doubtless in that very case." "Wait! wait, Manoel!" exclaimed Benito; "I remember—yes, I remember. During the struggle, at the first blow I struck Torres in his chest, my manchetta was stopped by some hard substance under his poncho, like a plate of metal——" "That was the case!" said Fragoso. "Yes," replied Manoel; "doubt is impossible! That was the case; it was in his breast-pocket." "But the corpse of Torres?" "We will recover it!" "But the paper! The water will have stained it, perhaps destroyed it, or rendered it undecipherable!" "Why," answered Manoel, "if the metal case which held it "Manoel," replied Benito, who seized on the last hope, "you are right! The corpse of Torres must be recovered! We will ransack the whole of this part of the river, if necessary, but we will recover it!" The pilot Araujo was then summoned and informed of what they were going "Good!" replied he; "I know all the eddies and currents where the Rio Negro and the Amazon join, and we shall succeed in recovering the body. Let us take two pirogues, two ubas, a dozen of our Indians, and make a start." Padre Passanha was then coming out of Yaquita's room. Benito went to him, and in a few words told him what they were going to do to get possession of the document. "Say nothing to my mother or my sister," he added; "if this last hope fails it will kill them!" "Go, my lad, go," replied Passanha, "and may God help you in Five minutes afterward the four boats started from the raft. After descending the Rio Negro they arrived near the bank of the Amazon, at the very place where Torres, mortally wounded, had disappeared beneath the waters of the stream. THE FIRST SEARCH THE SEARCH had to commence at once, and that for two weighty reasons. The first of these was—and this was a question of life or death—that this proof of Joam Dacosta's innocence must be produced before the arrival of the order from Rio Janeiro. Once the identity of the prisoner was established, it was impossible that such an order could be other than the order for his execution. The second was that the body of Torres should be got out of the water as quickly as possible so as to regain undamaged the metal case and the paper it ought to contain. At this juncture Araujo displayed not only zeal and intelligence, but also a perfect knowledge of the state of the river at its confluence with the Rio Negro. "If Torres," he said to the young men, "had been from the first carried away by the current, we should have to drag the river throughout a large area, for we shall have a good many days to wait for his body to reappear on the surface through the effects of decomposition." "We cannot do that," replied Manoel. "This very day we ought "If, on the contrary," continued the pilot, "the corpse has got stuck among the reeds and vegetation at the foot of the bank, we shall not be an hour before we find it." "To work, then!" answered Benito. There was but one way of working. The boats approached the bank, and the Indians, furnished with long poles, began to sound every part of the river at the base of the bluff which had served for the scene of combat. The place had been easily recognized. A track of blood stained the declivity in its chalky part, and ran perpendicularly down it into the water; and there many a clot scattered on the reeds indicated the very spot where the corpse had disappeared. About fifty feet down stream a point jutted out from the riverside and kept back the waters in a kind of eddy, as in a large basin. There was no current whatever near the shore, and the reeds shot up out of the river unbent. Every hope then existed that Torres' body had not been carried away by the main stream. Where the bed of the river showed sufficient slope, it was perhaps possible for the corpse to have rolled several feet along the ridge, and even there no effect of the current could be traced. The ubas and the pirogues, dividing the work among them, limited the field of their researches to the extreme edge of the eddy, and from the circumference to the center the crews' long poles left not a single point unexplored. But no amount of sounding discovered the body of the adventurer, neither among the clumps of reeds nor on the bottom of the river, whose slope was then carefully examined. Two hours after the work had begun they had been led to think that the body, having probably struck against the declivity, had fallen off obliquely and rolled beyond the limits of this eddy, where the action of the current commenced to be felt. "But that is no reason why we should despair," said Manoel, "still less why we should give up our search." "Will it be necessary," exclaimed Benito, "to search the river throughout its breadth and its length?" "Throughout its breadth, perhaps," answered Araujo, "throughout its length, no—fortunately." "And why?" asked Manoel. "Because the Amazon, about a mile away from its junction with the Rio Negro, makes a sudden bend, and at the same time its bed rises, so that there is a kind of natural barrier, well known to sailors as the Bar of Frias, which things floating near the surface are alone able to clear. In short, the currents are ponded back, and they cannot possibly have any effect over this depression." This was fortunate, it must be admitted. But was Araujo mistaken? The old pilot of the Amazon could be relied on. For the thirty years that he had followed his profession the crossing of the Bar of Frias, where the current was increased in force by its decrease in depth, had often given him trouble. The narrowness of the channel and the elevation of the bed made the passage exceedingly difficult, and many a raft had there come to grief. And so Araujo was right in declaring that if the corpse of Torres was still retained by its weight on the sandy bed of the river, it could not have been dragged over the bar. It is true that later on, when, on account of the expansion of the gases, it would again rise to the surface, the current would bear it away, and it would then be irrevocably lost down the stream, a long way beyond the obstruction. But this purely physical effect would not take place for They could not have applied to a man who was more skillful or more conversant with the locality than Araujo, and when he affirmed that the body could not have been borne out of the narrow channel for more than a mile or so, they were sure to recover it if they thoroughly sounded that portion of the river. Not an island, not an islet, checked the course of the Amazon in these parts. Hence, when the foot of the two banks had been visited up to the bar, it was in the bed itself, about five hundred feet in width, that more careful investigations had to be commenced. The way the work was conducted was this. The boats taking the right and left of the Amazon lay alongside the banks. The reeds and vegetation were tried with the poles. Of the smallest ledges in the banks in which a body could rest, not one escaped the scrutiny of Araujo and his Indians. But all this labor produced no result, and half the day had elapsed without the body being brought to the surface of the stream. An hour's rest was given to the Indians. During this time they partook of some refreshment, and then they returned to their task. Four of the boats, in charge of the pilot, Benito, Fragoso, and Manoel, divided the river between the Rio Negro and the Bar of Frias into four portions. They set to work to explore its very bed. In certain places the poles proved insufficient to thoroughly search among the deeps, and hence a few dredges—or rather harrows, made of stones and old iron, bound round with a solid bar—were taken on board, and when the boats had pushed off these rakes were thrown in and the river bottom stirred up in every It was in this difficult task that Benito and his companions were employed till the evening. The ubas and pirogues, worked by the oars, traversed the whole surface of the river up to the bar of Frias. There had been moments of excitement during this spell of work, when the harrows, catching in something at the bottom, offered some slight resistance. They were then hauled up, but in place of the body so eagerly searched for, there would appear only heavy stones or tufts of herbage which they had dragged from their sandy bed. No one, however, had an idea of giving up the enterprise. They none of them thought of themselves in this work of salvation. Benito, Manoel, Araujo had not even to stir up the Indians or to encourage them. The gallant fellows knew that they were working for the fazender of Iquitos—for the man whom they loved, for the chief of the excellent family who treated their servants so well. Yes; and so they would have passed the night in dragging the river. Of every minute lost all knew the value. A little before the sun disappeared, Araujo, finding it useless to continue his operations in the gloom, gave the signal for the boats to join company and return together to the confluence of the Rio Negro and regain the jangada. The work so carefully and intelligently conducted was not, however, at Manoel and Fragoso, as they came back, dared not mention their ill success before Benito. They feared that the disappointment would only force him to some act of despair. But neither courage nor coolness deserted the young fellow; he was determined to follow to the end this supreme effort to save the honor and the life of his father, and he it was who addressed his companions, and said: "To-morrow we will try again, and under better conditions if possible." "Yes," answered Manoel; "you are right, Benito. We can do better. We cannot pretend to have entirely explored the river along the whole of the banks and over the whole of its bed." "No; we cannot have done that," replied Araujo; "and I maintain what I said—that the body of Torres is there, and that it is there because it has not been carried away, because it could not be drawn over the Bar of Frias, and because it will take many days before it rises to the surface and floats down the stream. Yes, it is there, and not a demijohn of tafia will pass my lips until I find it!" This affirmation from the pilot was worth a good deal, and was of a hope-inspiring nature. However, Benito, who did not care so much for words as he did for things, thought proper to reply, "Yes, Araujo; the body of Torres is in the river, and we shall find it if——" "If?" said the pilot. "If it has not become the prey of the alligators!" Manoel and Fragoso waited anxiously for Araujo's reply. The pilot was silent for a few moments; they felt that he was reflecting before he spoke. "Mr. Benito," he said at length, "I am not in the habit of speaking lightly. I had the same idea as you; but listen. During the ten hours we have been at work have you seen a single cayman in the river?" "Not one," said Fragoso. "If you have not seen one," continued the pilot, "it was because there were none to see, for these animals have nothing to keep them in the white waters when, a quarter of a mile off, there are large stretches of the black waters, which they so greatly prefer. When the raft was attacked by some of these creatures it was in a part where there was no place for them to flee to. Here it is quite different. Go to the Rio Negro, and there you will see caymans by the score. Had Torres' body fallen into that tributary there might be no chance of recovering it. But it was in the Amazon that it was lost, and in the Amazon it will be found." Benito, relieved from his fears, took the pilot's hand and shook it, and contented himself with the reply, "To-morrow, my friends!" Ten minutes later they were all on board the jangada. During the day Yaquit had passed some hours with her husband. But before she started, and when she saw neither the pilot, nor Manoel, nor Benito, nor the boats, she had guessed the search on which they had gone, but she said nothing to Joam Dacosta, as she hoped that in the morning she would be able to inform him of their success. But when Benito set foot on the raft she perceived that their search had been fruitless. However, she advanced toward him. "Nothing?" she asked. "Nothing," replied Benito. "But the morrow is left to us." The members of the family retired to their rooms, and nothing more was said as to what had passed. Manoel tried to make Benito lie down, so as to take a few "What is the good of that?" asked Benito. "Do you think I THE SECOND ATTEMPT ON THE MORROW, the 27th of August, Benito took Manoel apart, before the sun had risen, and said to him: "Our yesterday's search was vain. If we begin again under the same conditions we may be just as unlucky." "We must do so, however," replied Manoel. "Yes," continued Benito; "but suppose we do not find the body, can you tell me how long it will be before it rises to the surface?" "If Torres," answered Manoel, "had fallen into the water living, and not mortally wounded, it would take five or six days; but as he only disappeared after being so wounded, perhaps two or three days would be enough to bring him up again." This answer of Manoel, which was quite correct, requires some explanation. Every human body which falls into the water will float if equilibrium is established between its density and that of its liquid bed. This is well known to be the fact, even when a person does not know how to swim. Under such circumstances, if you are entirely submerged, and only keep your mouth and nose away from the water, you are sure to float. But this is not generally done. The first movement of a drowning man is to try and hold as much as he can of himself above the water; he holds up his head and lifts up his arms, and these parts of his body, being no longer supported by the liquid, do not lose that amount of weight which they would do if completely immersed. Hence an excess of weight, and eventually entire submersion, for the water makes its way to the lungs through the mouth, takes the place of the air which fills them, and the body sinks to the bottom. On the other hand, when the man who falls into the water is already dead the conditions are different, and more favorable for his floating, for then the movements of which we have spoken are checked, and the liquid does not make its way to the lungs so copiously, as there is no attempt to respire, and he is consequently more likely to promptly reappear. Manoel then was right in drawing the distinction between the man who falls into the water living and the man who falls into it dead. In the one case the return to the surface takes much longer than in the other. The reappearance of the body after an immersion more or less prolonged is always determined by the decomposition, which causes the gases to form. These bring about the expansion of the cellular tissues, the volume augments and the weight decreases, and then, weighing less than the water it displaces, the body attains the proper conditions for floating. "And thus," continued Manoel, "supposing the conditions continue favorable, and Torres did not live after he fell into the water, if the decomposition is not modified by circumstances which we cannot foresee, he will not reappear before three days." "We have not got three days," answered Benito. "We cannot wait, you know; we must try again, and in some new way." "What can you do?" answered Manoel. "Plunge down myself beneath the waters," replied Benito, "and search with my eyes—with my hands." "Plunge in a hundred times—a thousand times!" exclaimed Manoel. "So be it. I think, like you, that we ought to go straight at what we want, and not struggle on with poles and drags like a blind man who only works by touch. I also think that we cannot wait three days. But to jump in, come up again, and go down again will give only a short period for the exploration. No; it will never do, and we shall only risk a second failure." "Have you no other plan to propose, Manoel?" asked Benito, looking earnestly at his friend. "Well, listen. There is what would seem to be a Providential circumstance that may be of use to us." "What is that?" "Yesterday, as we hurried through Manaos, I noticed that they were repairing one of the quays on the bank of the Rio Negro. The submarine works were being carried on with the aid of a diving-dress. Let us borrow, or hire, or buy, at any price, this apparatus, and then we may resume our researches under more favorable conditions." "Tell Araujo, Fragoso, and our men, and let us be off," was the instant reply of Benito. The pilot and the barber were informed of the decision with regard to Manoel's project. Both were ordered to go with the four boats and the Indians to the basin of Frias, and there to wait for the two Manoel and Benito started off without losing a moment, and reached the quay at Manaos. There they offered the contractor such a price that he put the apparatus at their service for the whole day. "Will you not have one of my men," he asked, "to help you?" "Give us your foreman and one of his mates to work the air-pump," replied Manoel. "But who is going to wear the diving-dress?" "I am," answered Benito. "You!" exclaimed Manoel. "I intend to do so." It was useless to resist. An hour afterward the raft and all the instruments necessary for the enterprise had drifted down to the bank where the boats were The diving-dress is well known. By its means men can descend beneath the waters and remain there a certain time without the action of the lungs being in any way injured. The diver is clothed in a waterproof suit of India rubber, and his feet are attached to leaden shoes, which allow him to retain his upright position beneath the surface. At the collar of the dress, and about the height of the neck, there is fitted a collar of copper, on which is screwed a metal globe with a glass front. In this globe the diver places his head, which he can move about at his ease. To the globe are attached two pipes; one used for carrying off the air ejected from the lungs, and which is unfit for respiration, and the other in communication with a pump worked on the raft, and bringing in the fresh air. When the diver is at work the raft remains immovable above him; when the diver moves about on the bottom of the river the raft follows his movements, or he follows those of the raft, according to his convenience. These diving-dresses are now much improved, and are less dangerous than formerly. The man beneath the liquid mass can easily bear the additional pressure, and if anything was to be feared below the waters it was rather some cayman who might there be met with. But, as had been observed by Araujo, not one of these amphibians had been seen, and they are well known to prefer the black waters of the tributaries of the Amazon. Besides, in case of danger, the diver has always his check-string fastened to the raft, and at the least warning can be quickly hauled to the surface. Benito, invariably very cool once his resolution was taken, commenced to put his idea into execution, and got into the diving dress. His head disappeared in the metal globe, his hand grasped a sort of iron spear with which to stir up the vegetation and detritus accumulated in the river bed, and on his giving the signal he was lowered into the stream. The men on the raft immediately commenced to work the air-pump, while four Indians from the jangada, under the orders of Araujo, gently propelled it with their long poles in the desired direction. The two pirogues, commanded one by Fragoso, the other by Manoel, escorted the raft, and held themselves ready to start in any direction, should Benito find the corpse of Torres and again bring it to the surface of the Amazon. A CANNON SHOT BENITO THEN HAD disappeared beneath the vast sheet which still covered the corpse of the adventurer. Ah! If he had had the power to divert the waters of the river, to turn them into vapor, or to drain them off—if he could have made the Frias basin dry down stream, from the bar up to the influx of the Rio Negro, the case hidden in Torres' clothes would already have been in his hand! His father's innocence would have been recognized! Joam Dacosta, restored to liberty, would have again started on the descent of the river, and what terrible trials would have been avoided! Benito had reached the bottom. His heavy shoes made the gravel on the bed crunch beneath him. He was in some ten or fifteen feet of water, at the base of the cliff, which was here very steep, and at the very spot where Torres had disappeared. Near him was a tangled mass of reeds and twigs and aquatic plants, all laced together, which assuredly during the researches of the previous day no pole could have penetrated. It was consequently possible that the body was entangled among the submarine shrubs, and still in the place where it had Hereabouts, thanks to the eddy produced by the prolongation of one of the spurs running out into the stream, the current was absolutely nil. Benito guided his movements by those of the raft, which the long poles of the Indians kept just over his head. The light penetrated deep through the clear waters, and the magnificent sun, shining in a cloudless sky, shot its rays down into them unchecked. Under ordinary conditions, at a depth of some twenty feet in water, the view becomes exceedingly blurred, but here the waters seemed to be impregnated with a luminous fluid, and Benito was able to descend still lower without the darkness concealing the river bed. The young man slowly made his way along the bank. With his iron-shod spear he probed the plants and rubbish accumulated along its foot. Flocks of fish, if we can use such an expression, escaped on all sides from the dense thickets like flocks of birds. It seemed as though the thousand pieces of a broken mirror glimmered through the waters. At the same time scores of crustaceans scampered over the sand, like huge ants hurrying from their hills. Notwithstanding that Benito did not leave a single point of the river unexplored, he never caught sight of the object of his search. He noticed, however, that the slope of the river bed was very abrupt, and he concluded that Torres had rolled beyond the eddy toward the center of the stream. If so, he would probably still recover the body, for the current could hardly touch it at the depth, which was already great, and seemed sensibly to increase. Benito then resolved to pursue his investigations on the side where he had begun to probe the vegetation. This was why he continued to advance in that direction, and the raft had to follow him during a quarter of an hour, as had been previously arranged. The quarter of an hour had elapsed, and Benito had found nothing. He felt the need of ascending to the surface, so as to once more experience those physiological conditions in which he could recoup his strength. In certain spots, where the depth of the river necessitated it, he had had to descend about thirty feet. He had thus to support a pressure almost equal to an atmosphere, with the result of the physical fatigue and mental agitation which attack those who are not used to this kind of work. Benito then pulled the communication cord, and the men on the raft commenced to haul him in, but they worked slowly, taking a minute to draw him up two or three feet so as not to produce in his internal organs the dreadful effects of decompression. As soon as the young man had set foot on the raft the metallic sphere of the diving-dress was raised, and he took a long breath and sat down to The pirogues immediately rowed alongside. Manoel, Fragoso, and Araujo came close to him, waiting for him to speak. "Well?" asked Manoel. "Still nothing! Nothing!" "Have you not seen a trace?" "Shall I go down now?" "No, Manoel," answered Benito; "I have begun; I know where to go. Let me Benito then explained to the pilot that his intention was to visit the lower part of the bank up to the Bar of Frias, for there the slope had perhaps stopped the corpse, if, floating between the two streams, it had in the least degree been affected by the current. But first he wanted to skirt the bank and carefully explore a sort of hole formed in the slope of the bed, to the bottom of which the poles had evidently not been able to penetrate. Araujo approved of this plan, and made the necessary preparations. Manoel gave Benito a little advice. "As you want to pursue your search on that side," he said, "the raft will have to go over there obliquely; but mind what you are doing, Benito. That is much deeper than where you have been yet; it may be fifty or sixty feet, and you will have to support a pressure of quite two atmospheres. Only venture with extreme caution, or you may lose your presence of mind, or no longer know where you are or what to do. If your head feels as if in a vice, and your ears tingle, do not hesitate to give us the signal, and we will at once haul you up. You can then begin again if you like, as you will have got accustomed to move about in the deeper parts of the river." Benito promised to attend to these hints, of which he recognized the importance. He was particularly struck with the fact that his presence of mind might abandon him at the very moment he wanted it most. Benito shook hands with Manoel; the sphere of the diving-dress was again screwed to his neck, the pump began to work, and the diver once more disappeared beneath the stream. The raft was then taken about forty feet along the left bank, but as it moved toward the center of the river the current increased in strength, the ubas were moored, and the rowers kept it from drifting, so as only to allow it to advance with extreme slowness. Benito descended very gently, and again found himself on the firm sand. When his heels touched the ground it could be seen, by the length of the haulage cord, that he was at a depth of some sixty-five or seventy feet. He was therefore in a considerable hole, excavated far below the ordinary The liquid medium was more obscure, but the limpidity of these transparent waters still allowed the light to penetrate sufficiently for Benito to distinguish the objects scattered on the bed of the river, and to approach them with some safety. Besides, the sand, sprinkled with mica flakes, seemed to form a sort of reflector, and the very grains could be counted glittering like luminous dust. Benito moved on, examining and sounding the smallest cavities with his spear. He continued to advance very slowly; the communication cord was paid out, and as the pipes which served for the inlet and outlet of the air were never tightened, the pump was worked under the proper conditions. Benito turned off so as to reach the middle of the bed of the Amazon, where there was the greatest depression. Sometimes profound obscurity thickened around him, and then he could see nothing, so feeble was the light; but this was a purely passing phenomenon, and due to the raft, which, floating above his head, intercepted the solar rays and made the night replace the day. An instant afterward the huge shadow would be dissipated, and the reflection of the sands appear again in full force. All the time Benito was going deeper. He felt the increase of the pressure with which his body was wrapped by the liquid mass. His respiration became less easy; the retractibility of his organs no longer worked with as much ease as in the midst of an atmosphere more conveniently adapted for them. And so he found himself under the action of physiological effects to which he was unaccustomed. The rumbling grew louder in his ears, but as his thought was always lucid, as he felt that the action of his brain was quite clear—even a little more so than usual—he delayed giving the signal for return, and continued to go down deeper still. Suddenly, in the subdued light which surrounded him, his attention was attracted by a confused mass. It seemed to take the form of a corpse, entangled beneath a clump of aquatic plants. Intense excitement seized him. He stepped toward the mass; with his spear he felt it. It was the carcass of a huge cayman, already reduced to a skeleton, and which the current of the Rio Negro had swept into the bed of the Amazon. Benito recoiled, and, in spite of the assertions of the pilot, the thought recurred to him that some living cayman might even then be met with in the deeps near the Bar of But he repelled the idea, and continued his progress, so as to reach the bottom of the depression. And now he had arrived at a depth of from eighty to a hundred feet, and consequently was experiencing a pressure of three atmospheres. If, then, this cavity was also drawn blank, he would have to suspend his researches. Experience has shown that the extreme limit for such submarine explorations lies between a hundred and twenty and a hundred and thirty feet, and that below this there is great danger, the human organism not only being hindered from performing his functions under such a pressure, but the apparatus failing to keep up a sufficient supply of air with the desirable regularity. But Benito was resolved to go as far as his mental powers and physical energies would let him. By some strange presentiment he was drawn toward this abyss; it seemed to him as though the corpse was very likely to have rolled to the bottom of the hole, and that Torres, if he had any heavy things about him, such as a belt containing either money or arms, would have sunk to the very lowest point. Of a sudden, in a deep hollow, he saw a body through the gloom! Yes! A corpse, still clothed, stretched out like a man asleep, with his arms folded under his head! Was that Torres? In the obscurity, then very dense, he found it difficult to see; but it was a human body that lay there, less than ten paces off, and perfectly motionless! A sharp pang shot through Benito. His heart, for an instant, ceased to beat. He thought he was going to lose consciousness. By a supreme effort he recovered himself. He stepped toward the corpse. Suddenly a shock as violent as unexpected made his whole frame vibrate! A long whip seemed to twine round his body, and in spite of the thick diving-dress he felt himself lashed again and again. "A gymnotus!" he said. It was the only word that passed his lips. In fact, it was a puraque, the name given by the Brazilians to the gymnotus, or electric snake, which had just attacked him. It is well known that the gymnotus is a kind of eel, with a blackish, slimy skin, furnished along the back and tail with an apparatus composed of plates joined by vertical lamell欠and acted on by nerves of considerable power. This apparatus is endowed with singular electrical properties, and is apt to produce very formidable results. Some of these gymnotuses are about the length of a common snake, others are about ten feet long, while others, which, however, are rare, even reach fifteen or twenty feet, and are from eight to ten inches in diameter. Gymnotuses are plentiful enough both in the Amazon and its tributaries; and it was one of these living coils, about ten feet long, which, after uncurving itself like a bow, again attacked the diver. Benito knew what he had to fear from this formidable animal. His clothes were powerless to protect him. The discharges of the gymnotus, at first somewhat weak, become more and more violent, and there would come a time when, exhausted by the shocks, he would be rendered powerless. Benito, unable to resist the blows, half-dropped upon the sand. His limbs were becoming paralyzed little by little under the electric influences of the gymnotus, which lightly touched his body as it wrapped him in its folds. His arms even he could not lift, and soon his spear escaped him, and his hand had not strength enough left to pull the cord and give the signal. Benito felt that he was lost. Neither Manoel nor his companions could suspect the horrible combat which was going on beneath them between the formidable puraque and the unhappy diver, who only fought to suffer, without any power of defending himself. And that at the moment when a body—the body of Torres without a doubt!—had just met his view. By a supreme instinct of self-preservation Benito uttered a cry. His voice was lost in the metallic sphere from which not a sound And now the puraque redoubled its attacks; it gave forth shock after shock, which made Benito writhe on the sand like the sections of a divided worm, and his muscles were wrenched again and again beneath the Benito thought that all was over; his eyes grew dim, his limbs began to But before he quite lost his power of sight and reason he became the witness of a phenomenon, unexpected, inexplicable, and marvelous in the extreme. A deadened roar resounded through the liquid depths. It was like a thunder-clap, the reverberations of which rolled along the river bed, then violently agitated by the electrical discharges of the gymnotus. Benito felt himself bathed as it were in the dreadful booming which found an echo in the very deepest of the river depths. And then a last cry escaped him, for fearful was the vision which appeared before his eyes! The corpse of the drowned man which had been stretched on the sand arose! The undulations of the water lifted up the arms, and they swayed about as if with some peculiar animation. Convulsive throbs made the movement of the corpse still more alarming. It was indeed the body of Torres. One of the suns rays shot down to it through the liquid mass, and Benito recognized the bloated, ashy features of the scoundrel who fell by his own hand, and whose last breath had left him beneath the waters. And while Benito could not make a single movement with his paralyzed limbs, while his heavy shoes kept him down as if he had been nailed to the sand, the corpse straightened itself up, the head swayed to and fro, and disentangling itself from the hole in which it had been kept by a mass of aquatic weeds, it slowly ascended to the surface of the Amazon. THE CONTENTS OF THE CASE WHAT WAS it that had happened? A purely physical phenomenon, of which the following is the explanation. The gunboat Santa Ana, bound for Manaos, had come up the river and passed the bar at Frias. Just before she reached the embouchure of the Rio Negro she hoisted her colors and saluted the Brazilian flag. At the report vibrations were produced along the surface of the stream, and these vibrations making their way down to the bottom of the river, had been sufficient to raise the corpse of Torres, already lightened by the commencement of its decomposition and the distension of its cellular system. The body of the drowned man had in the ordinary course risen to the surface of the water. This well-known phenomenon explains the reappearance of the corpse, but it must be admitted that the arrival of the Santa Ana was a fortunate By a shout from Manoel, repeated by all his companions, one of the pirogues was immediately steered for the body, while the diver was at the same time hauled up to the raft. Great was Manoel's emotion when Benito, drawn on to the platform, was laid there in a state of complete inertia, not a single exterior movement betraying that he still lived. Was not this a second corpse which the waters of the Amazon had As quickly as possible the diving-dress was taken off him. Benito had entirely lost consciousness beneath the violent shocks of the Manoel, distracted, called to him, breathed into him, and endeavored to recover the heart's pulsation. "It beats! It beats!" he exclaimed. Yes! Benito's heart did still beat, and in a few minutes Manoel's efforts restored him to life. "The body! the Body!" Such were the first words, the only ones which escaped from "There it is!" answered Fragoso, pointing to a pirogue then coming up to the raft with the corpse. "But what has been the matter, Benito?" asked Manoel. "Has it been the want of air?" "No!" said Benito; "a puraque attacked me! But the noise? "A cannon shot!" replied Manoel. "It was the cannon shot which brought the corpse to the surface." At this moment the pirogue came up to the raft with the body of Torres, which had been taken on board by the Indians. His sojourn in the water had not disfigured him very much. He was easily recognizable, and there was no doubt as to his identity. Fragoso, kneeling down in the pirogue, had already begun to undo the clothes of the drowned man, which came away in fragments. At the moment Torres' right arm, which was now left bare, attracted his attention. On it there appeared the distinct scar of an old wound produced by a blow from a knife. "That scar!" exclaimed Fragoso. "But—that is good! I "What?" demanded Manoel. "A quarrel! Yes! a quarrel I witnessed in the province of Madeira three years ago. How could I have forgotten it! This Torres was then a captain of the woods. Ah! I know now where I had seen him, the scoundrel!" "That does not matter to us now!" cried Benito. "The case! the case! Has he still got that?" and Benito was about to tear away the last coverings of the corpse to get at it. Manoel stopped him. "One moment, Benito," he said; and then, turning to the men on the raft who did not belong to the jangada, and whose evidence could not be suspected at any future time: "Just take note, my friends," he said, "of what we are doing here, so that you can relate before the magistrate what has passed." The men came up to the pirogue. Fragoso undid the belt which encircled the body of Torres underneath the torn poncho, and feeling his breast-pocket, exclaimed: A cry of joy escaped from Benito. He stretched forward to seize the case, to make sure than it contained—— "No!" again interrupted Manoel, whose coolness did not forsake him. "It is necessary that not the slightest possible doubt should exist in the mind of the magistrate! It is better that disinterested witnesses should affirm that this case was really found on the corpse of Torres!" "You are right," replied Benito. "My friend," said Manoel to the foreman of the raft, "just feel in the pocket of the waistcoat." The foreman obeyed. He drew forth a metal case, with the cover screwed on, and which seemed to have suffered in no way from its sojourn in the "The paper! Is the paper still inside?" exclaimed Benito, who could not "It is for the magistrate to open this case!" answered Manoel. "To him alone belongs the duty of verifying that the document was found within "Yes, yes. Again you are right, Manoel," said Benito. "To Manaos, my friends—to Manaos!" Benito, Manoel, Fragoso, and the foreman who held the case, immediately jumped into one of the pirogues, and were starting off, when Fragoso "And the corpse?" The pirogue stopped. In fact, the Indians had already thrown back the body into the water, and it was drifting away down the river. "Torres was only a scoundrel," said Benito. "If I had to fight him, it was God that struck him, and his body ought not to go unburied!" And so orders were given to the second pirogue to recover the corpse, and take it to the bank to await its burial. But at the same moment a flock of birds of prey, which skimmed along the surface of the stream, pounced on the floating body. They were urubus, a kind of small vulture, with naked necks and long claws, and black as crows. In South America they are known as gallinazos, and their voracity is unparalleled. The body, torn open by their beaks, gave forth the gases which inflated it, its density increased, it sank down little by little, and for the last time what remained of Torres disappeared beneath the waters of the Ten minutes afterward the pirogue arrived at Manaos. Benito and his companions jumped ashore, and hurried through the streets of the town. In a few minutes they had reached the dwelling of Judge Jarriuez, and informed him, through one of his servants, that they wished to see him The judge ordered them to be shown into his study. There Manoel recounted all that had passed, from the moment when Torres had been killed until the moment when the case had been found on his corpse, and taken from his breast-pocket by the foreman. Although this recital was of a nature to corroborate all that Joam Dacosta had said on the subject of Torres, and of the bargain which he had endeavored to make, Judge Jarriquez could not restrain a smile of incredulity. "There is the case, sir," said Manoel. "For not a single instant has it been in our hands, and the man who gives it to you is he who took it from the body of Torres." The magistrate took the case and examined it with care, turning it over and over as though it were made of some precious material. Then he shook it, and a few coins inside sounded with a metallic ring. Did not, then, the case contain the document which had been so much sought after—the document written in the very hand of the true author of the crime of Tijuco, and which Torres had wished to sell at such an ignoble price to Joam Dacosta? Was this material proof of the convict's innocence irrevocably lost? We can easily imagine the violent agitation which had seized upon the spectators of this scene. Benito could scarcely utter a word, he felt his heart ready to burst. "Open it, sir! open the case!" he at last exclaimed, in a broken voice. Judge Jarriquez began to unscrew the lid; then, when the cover was removed, he turned up the case, and from it a few pieces of gold dropped out and rolled on the table. "But the paper! the paper!" again gasped Benito, who clutched hold of the table to save himself from falling. The magistrate put his fingers into the case and drew out, not without difficulty, a faded paper, folded with care, and which the water did not seem to have even touched. "The document! that is the document!" shouted Fragoso; "that is the very paper I saw in the hands of Torres!" Judge Jarriquez unfolded the paper and cast his eyes over it, and then he turned it over so as to examine it on the back and the front, which were both covered with writing. "A document it really is!" said he; "there is no doubt of that. It is indeed a document!" "Yes," replied Benito; "and that is the document which proves my father's innocence!" "I do not know that," replied Judge Jarriquez; "and I am much afraid it will be very difficult to know it." "Why?" exclaimed Benito, who became pale as death. "Because this document is a cryptogram, and——" "We have not got the key!" THIS WAS a contingency which neither Joam Dacosta nor his people could have anticipated. In fact, as those who have not forgotten the first scene in this story are aware, the document was written in a disguised form in one of the numerous systems used in cryptography. But in which of them? To discover this would require all the ingenuity of which the human brain was capable. Before dismissing Benito and his companions, Judge Jarriquez had an exact copy made of the document, and, keeping the original, handed it over to them after due comparison, so that they could communicate with Then, making an appointment for the morrow, they retired, and not wishing to lose an instant in seeing Joam Dacosta, they hastened on to the prison, and there, in a short interview, informed him of all that had Joam Dacosta took the document and carefully examined it. Shaking his head, he handed it back to his son. "Perhaps," he said, "there is therein written the proof I shall never be able to produce. But if that proof escapes me, if the whole tenor of my life does not plead for me, I have nothing more to expect from the justice of men, and my fate is in the hands And all felt it to be so. If the document remained indecipherable, the position of the convict was a desperate one. "We shall find it, father!" exclaimed Benito. "There never was a document of this sort yet which could stand examination. Have confidence—yes, confidence! Heaven has, so to speak, miraculously given us the paper which vindicates you, and, after guiding our hands to recover it, it will not refuse to direct our brains to Joam Dacosta shook hands with Benito and Manoel, and then the three young men, much agitated, retired to the jangada, where Yaquita was awaiting them. Yaquita was soon informed of what had happened since the evening—the reappearance of the body of Torres, the discovery of the document, and the strange form under which the real culprit, the companion of the adventurer, had thought proper to write his confession—doubtless, so that it should not compromise him if it fell into Naturally, Lina was informed of this unexpected complication, and of the discovery made by Fragoso that Torres was an old captain of the woods belonging to the gang who were employed about the mouths of "But under what circumstances did you meet him?" asked the "It was during one of my runs across the province of Amazones," replied Fragoso, "when I was going from village to village, working at my "And the scar?" "What happened was this: One day I arrived at the mission of Aranas at the moment that Torres, whom I had never before seen, had picked a quarrel with one of his comrades—and a bad lot they are!—and this quarrel ended with a stab from a knife, which entered the arm of the captain of the woods. There was no doctor there, and so I took charge of the wound, and that is how I made his acquaintance." "What does it matter after all," replied the young girl, "that we know what Torres had been? He was not the author of the crime, and it does not help us in the least." "No, it does not," answered Fragoso; "for we shall end by reading the document, and then the innocence of Joam Dacosta will be palpable to the eyes of all." This was likewise the hope of Yaquita, of Benito, of Manoel, and of Minha, and, shut up in the house, they passed long hours in endeavoring to decipher the writing. But if it was their hope—and there is no need to insist on that point—it was none the less that of Judge Jarriquez. After having drawn up his report at the end of his examination establishing the identity of Joam Dacosta, the magistrate had sent it off to headquarters, and therewith he thought he had finished with the affair so far as he was concerned. It could not well On the discovery of the document, Jarriquez suddenly found himself face to face with the study of which he was a master. He, the seeker after numerical combinations, the solver of amusing problems, the answerer of charades, rebuses, logogryphs, and such things, was at last in his true At the thought that the document might perhaps contain the justification of Joam Dacosta, he felt all the instinct of the analyst aroused. Here, before his very eyes, was a cryptogram! And so from that moment he thought of nothing but how to discover its meaning, and it is scarcely necessary to say that he made up his mind to work at it continuously, even if he forgot to eat or to drink. After the departure of the young people, Judge Jarriquez installed himself in his study. His door, barred against every one, assured him of several hours of perfect solitude. His spectacles were on his nose, his snuff-box on the table. He took a good pinch so as to develop the finesse and sagacity of his mind. He picked up the document and became absorbed in meditation, which soon became materialized in the shape of a monologue. The worthy justice was one of those unreserved men who think more easily aloud than to himself. "Let us proceed with method," he said. "No method, no logic; no logic, no success." Then, taking the document, he ran through it from beginning to end, without understanding it in the least. The document contained a hundred lines, which were divided into half a "Hum!" said the judge, after a little reflection; "to try every paragraph, one after the other, would be to lose precious time, and be of no use. I had better select one of these paragraphs, and take the one which is likely to prove the most interesting. Which of them would do this better than the last, where the recital of the whole affair is probably summed up? Proper names might put me on the track, among others that of Joam Dacosta; and if he had anything to do with this document, his name will evidently not be absent from its concluding paragraph." The magistrate's reasoning was logical, and he was decidedly right in bringing all his resources to bear in the first place on the gist of the cryptogram as contained in its last paragraph. Here is the paragraph, for it is necessary to again bring it before the eyes of the reader so as to show how an analyst set to work to discover its P h y j s l y d d q f d z x g a s g z z q q e h x g k f n d r x u j u g I o c y t d x v k s b x h h u y p o h d v y r y m h u h p u y d k j o x p h e t o z l s l e t n p m v f f o v p d p a j x h y y n o j y g g a y m e q y n f u q l n m v l y f g s u z m q I z t l b q q y u g s q e u b v n r c r e d g r u z b l r m x y u h q h p z d r r g c r o h e p q x u f I v v r p l p h o n t h v d d q f h q s n t z h h h n f e p m q k y u u e x k t o g z g k y u u m f v I j d q d p z j q s y k r p l x h x q r y m v k l o h h h o t o z v d k s p p s u v j h d. At the outset, Judge Jarrizuez noticed that the lines of the document were not divided either into words or phrases, and that there was a complete absence of punctuation. This fact could but render the reading of the document more difficult. "Let us see, however," he said, "if there is not some assemblage of letters which appears to form a word—I mean a pronounceable word, whose number of consonants is in proportion to its vowels. And at the beginning I see the word phy, further on the word gas. Halloo! ujugi. Does that mean the African town on the banks of Tanganyika? What has that got to do with all this? Further on here is the word ypo. Is it Greek, then? Close by here is rym and puy, and jox, and phetoz, and jyggay, and mv, and qruz. And before that we have got red and let. That is good! those are two English words. Then ohe—syk; then rym once more, and then the Judge Jarriquez let the paper drop, and thought for a few minutes. "All the words I see in this thing seem queer!" he said. "In fact, there is nothing to give a clue to their origin. Some look like Greek, some like Dutch; some have an English twist, and some look like nothing at all! To say nothing of these series of consonants which are not wanted in any human pronunciation. Most assuredly it will not be very easy to find the key to The magistrate's fingers commenced to beat a tattoo on his desk—a kind of reveille to arouse his dormant faculties. "Let us see," he said, "how many letters there are in the paragraph." He counted them, pen in hand. "Two hundred and seventy-six!" he said. "Well, now let us try what proportion these different letters bear to each other." This occupied him for some time. The judge took up the document, and, with his pen in his hand, he noted each letter in alphabetical In a quarter of an hour he had obtained the following table: "Ah, ah!" he exclaimed. "One thing strikes me at once, and that is that in this paragraph all the letters of the alphabet are not used. That is very strange. If we take up a book and open it by chance it will be very seldom that we shall hit upon two hundred and seventy-six letters without all the signs of the alphabet figuring among them. After all, it may be chance," and then he passed to a different train of thought. "One important point is to see if the vowels and consonants are in their normal proportion." And so he seized his pen, counted up the vowels, and obtained the following result: a=3 times, e=9, i=4, o=12, u=17, y=19 — Total . . . 276 times. "And thus there are in this paragraph, after we have done our subtraction, sixty-four vowels and two hundred and twelve consonants. Good! that is the normal proportion. That is about a fifth, as in the alphabet, where there are six vowels among twenty-six letters. It is possible, therefore, that the document is written in the language of our country, and that only the signification of each letter is changed. If it has been modified in regular order, and a b is always represented by an l, and o, by a v, a g by a k an u by an r etc., I will give up my judgeship if I do not read it. What can I do better than follow the method of that great analytical genius, Edgar Allan Poe?" Judge Jarriquez herein alluded to a story by the great American romancer, which is a masterpiece. Who has not read the "Gold Bug?" In this novel a cryptogram, composed of ciphers, letters, algebraic signs, asterisks, full-stops, and commas, is submitted to a truly mathematical analysis, and is deciphered under extraordinary conditions, which the admirers of that strange genius can never forget. On the reading of the American document depended only a treasure, while on that of this one depended a man's life. Its solution was consequently all the more The magistrate, who had often read and re-read his "Gold Bug," was perfectly acquainted with the steps in the analysis so minutely described by Edgar Poe, and he resolved to proceed in the same way on this occasion. In doing so he was certain, as he had said, that if the value or signification of each letter remained constant, he would, sooner or later, arrive at the solution of the document. "What did Edgar Poe do?" he repeated. "First of all he began by finding out the sign—here there are only letters, let us say the letter—which was reproduced the oftenest. I see that that is h for it is met with twenty-three times. This enormous proportion shows, to begin with, that h does not stand for h, but, on the contrary, that it represents the letter which recurs most frequently in our language, for I suppose the document is written in Portuguese. In English or French it would certainly be e, in Italian it would be i or a, in Portuguese it will be a or o. Now let us say that it signifies a or o. After this was done, the judge found out the letter which recurred most frequently after h, and so on, and he formed the following table: "Now the letter a only occurs thrice!" exclaimed the judge, "and it ought to occur the oftenest. Ah! that clearly proves that the meaning had been changed. And now, after a or o, what are the letters which figure oftenest in our language? Let us see," and Judge Jarriquez, with truly remarkable sagacity, which denoted a very observant mind, started on this new quest. In this he was only imitating the American romancer, who, great analyst as he was, had, by simple induction, been able to construct an alphabet corresponding to the signs of the cryptogram and by means of it to eventually read the pirate's parchment note with ease. The magistrate set to work in the same way, and we may affirm that he was no whit inferior to his illustrious master. Thanks to his previous work at logogryphs and squares, rectangular arrangements and other enigmas, which depend only on an arbitrary disposition of the letters, he was already pretty strong in such mental pastimes. On this occasion he sought to establish the order in which the letters were reproduced—vowels first, Three hours had elapsed since he began. He had before his eyes an alphabet which, if his procedure were right, would give him the right meaning of the letters in the document. He had only to successively apply the letters of his alphabet to those of his paragraph. But before making this application some slight emotion seized upon the judge. He fully experienced the intellectual gratification—much greater than, perhaps, would be thought—of the man who, after hours of obstinate endeavor, saw the impatiently sought-for sense of the logogryph coming into view. "Now let us try," he said; "and I shall be very much surprised if I have not got the solution of the enigma!" Judge Jarriquez took off his spectacles and wiped the glasses; then he put them back again and bent over the table. His special alphabet was in one hand, the cryptogram in the other. He commenced to write under the first line of the paragraph the true letters, which, according to him, ought to correspond exactly with each of the cryptographic letters. As with the first line so did he with the second, and the third, and the fourth, until he reached the end of the paragraph. Oddity as he was, he did not stop to see as he wrote if the assemblage of letters made intelligible words. No; during the first stage his mind refused all verification of that sort. What he desired was to give himself the ecstasy of reading it all straight off at once. And now he had done. "Let us read!" he exclaimed. And he read. Good heavens! what cacophony! The lines he had formed with the letters of his alphabet had no more sense in them that those of the document! It was another series of letters, and that was all. They formed no word; they had no value. In short, they were just as hieroglyphic. "Confound the thing!" exclaimed Judge Jarriquez. IS IT A MATTER OF FIGURES? IT WAS SEVEN o'clock in the evening. Judge Jarriquez had all the time been absorbed in working at the puzzle—and was no further advanced—and had forgotten the time of repast and the time of repose, when there came a knock at his study door. It was time. An hour later, and all the cerebral substance of the vexed magistrate would certainly have evaporated under the intense heat into which he had worked his head. At the order to enter—which was given in an impatient tone—the door opened and Manoel presented himself. The young doctor had left his friends on board the jangada at work on the indecipherable document, and had come to see Judge Jarriquez. He was anxious to know if he had been fortunate in his researches. He had come to ask if he had at length discovered the system on which the cryptogram had been written. The magistrate was not sorry to see Manoel come in. He was in that state of excitement that solitude was exasperating to him. He wanted some one to speak to, some one as anxious to penetrate the mystery as he was. Manoel was just the man. "Sir," said Manoel as he entered, "one question! Have you succeeded better than we have?" "Sit down first," exclaimed Judge Jarriquez, who got up and began to pace the room. "Sit down. If we are both of us standing, you will walk one way and I shall walk the other, and the room will be too narrow to hold Manoel sat down and repeated his question. "No! I have not had any success!" replied the magistrate; "I do not think I am any better off. I have got nothing to tell you; but I have found out a certainty." "What is that, sir?" "That the document is not based on conventional signs, but on what is known in cryptology as a cipher, that is to say, on a number." "Well, sir," answered Manoel, "cannot a document of that kind always be "Yes," said Jarriquez, "if a letter is invariably represented by the same letter; if an a, for example, is always a p, and a p is always an x if not, it cannot." "And in this document?" "In this document the value of the letter changes with the arbitrarily selected cipher which necessitates it. So a b will in one place be represented by a k will later on become a z, later on an u or an n or an f, or any other letter." "And then, I am sorry to say, the cryptogram is indecipherable." "Indecipherable!" exclaimed Manoel. "No, sir; we shall end by finding the key of the document on which the man's life depends." Manoel had risen, a prey to the excitement he could not control; the reply he had received was too hopeless, and he refused to accept it for good. At a gesture from the judge, however, he sat down again, and in a calmer "And in the first place, sir, what makes you think that the basis of this document is a number, or, as you call it, a cipher?" "Listen to me, young man," replied the judge, "and you will be forced to give in to the evidence." The magistrate took the document and put it before the eyes of Manoel and showed him what he had done. "I began," he said, "by treating this document in the proper way, that is to say, logically, leaving nothing to chance. I applied to it an alphabet based on the proportion the letters bear to one another which is usual in our language, and I sought to obtain the meaning by following the precepts of our immortal analyst, Edgar Poe. Well, what succeeded with him collapsed with "Collapsed!" exclaimed Manoel. "Yes, my dear young man, and I at once saw that success sought in that fashion was impossible. In truth, a stronger man than I might have been "But I should like to understand," said Manoel, "and I do not——" "Take the document," continued Judge Jarriquez; "first look at the disposition of the letters, and read it through." "Do you not see that the combination of several of the letters is very strange?" asked the magistrate. "I do not see anything," said Manoel, after having for perhaps the hundredth time read through the document. "Well! study the last paragraph! There you understand the sense of the whole is bound to be summed up. Do you see anything abnormal?" "There is, however, one thing which absolutely proves that the language is subject to the laws of number." "And that is?" "That is that you see three h's coming together in two What Jarriquez said was correct, and it was of a nature to attract attention. The two hundred and fourth, two hundred and fifth, and two hundred and sixth letters of the paragraph, and the two hundred and fifty-eight, two hundred and fifty-ninth, and two hundred and sixtieth letters of the paragraph were consecutive h's. At first this peculiarity had not struck the magistrate. "And that proves?" asked Manoel, without divining the deduction that could be drawn from the combination. "That simply proves that the basis of the document is a number. It shows ࠰riori that each letter is modified in virtue of the ciphers of the number and according to the place which it occupies." "Because in no language will you find words with three consecutive repetitions of the letter h. Manoel was struck with the argument; he thought about it, and, in short, had no reply to make. "And had I made the observation sooner," continued the magistrate, "I might have spared myself a good deal of trouble and a headache which extends from my occiput to my sinciput." "But, sir," asked Manoel, who felt the little hope vanishing on which he had hitherto rested, "what do you mean by a cipher?" "Tell me a number." "Any number you like." "Give me an example and you will understand the explanation better." Judge Jarriquez sat down at the table, took up a sheet of paper and a pencil, and said: "Now, Mr. Manoel, let us choose a sentence by chance, the first that comes; for instance: Judge Jarriquez has an ingenious mind. I write this phrase so as to space the letters different and I get: “That done,” said the magistrate, to whom the phrase seemed to contain a proposition beyond dispute, looking Manoel straight in the face, “suppose I take a number by chance, so as to give a cryptographic form to this natural succession of words; suppose now this word is composed of three ciphers, and let these ciphers be 2, 3, and 4. Now on the line below I put the number 234, and repeat it as many times as are necessary to get to the end of the phrase, and so that every cipher comes underneath a letter. This is what we J u d g e j a r r i q u e z h a s a n i n g e n i o u s m i n d2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4. And now, Mr. Manoel, replacing each letter by the letter in advance of it in alphabetical order according to the value of the cipher, we get: j + 2 = l u + 3 = x d + 4 = h g + 2 = i e + 3 = h j + 4 = n a + 2 = c r + 3 = u r + 4 = v i + 2 = k q + 3 = t u + 4 = y e + 2 = g a + 3 = c h + 4 = t a + 2 = c s + 3 = v a + 4 = e n + 2 = p i + 3 = l n + 4 = r g + 2 = i e + 3 = h n + 4 = r i + 2 = k o + 3 = r u + 4 = y s + 2 = u and so on. “If, on account of the value of the ciphers which compose the number I come to the end of the alphabet without having enough complementary letters to deduct, I begin again at the beginning. That is what happens at the end of my name when the z is replaced by the 3. As after z the alphabet has no more letters, I commence to count from a and so get the c. That done, when I get to the end of this cryptographic system, made up of the 234—which was arbitrarily selected, do not forget!—the phrase which you recognize above is replaced by “And now, young man, just look at it, and do you not think it is very much like what is in the document? Well, what is the consequence? Why, that the signification of the letters depends on a cipher which chance puts beneath them, and the cryptographic letter which answers to a true one is not always the same. So in this phrase the first j is represented by an l, the second by an n; the first e by an h, the second b a g, the third by an h; the first d is represented by an h, the last by a g; the first u by an x, the last by a y, the first and second a's by a c, the last by an e, and in my own name one r is represented by a u, the other by a v, and so on. Now do you see that if you do not know the cipher 234 you will never be able to read the lines, and consequently if we do not know the number of the document it remains undecipherable.” On hearing the magistrate reason with such careful logic, Manoel was at first overwhelmed, but, raising his head, he exclaimed: “No, sir, I will not renounce the hope of finding the number!” “We might have done so,” answered Judge Jarriquez, “if the lines of the document had been divided into words.” “For this reason, young man. I think we can assume that in the last paragraph all that is written in these earlier paragraphs is summed up. Now I am convinced that in it will be found the name of Joam Dacosta. Well, if the lines had been divided into words, in trying the words one after the other—I mean the words composed of seven letters, as the name of Dacosta is—it would not have been impossible to evolve the number which is the key of the document.” "Will you explain to me how you ought to proceed to do that, sir?" asked Manoel, who probably caught a glimpse of one more hope. "Nothing can be more simple," answered the judge. "Let us take, for example, one of the words in the sentence we have just written—my name, if you like. It is represented in the cryptogram by this queer succession of letters, ncuvktygc. Well, arranging these letters in a column, one under the other, and then placing against them the letters of my name and deducting one from the other the numbers of their places in alphabetical order, I see the following result: Between n and j we have 4 letters, between c and a—2, between u and r—3. Likewise, between v and r—4, between k and i—2, between t and q—3. Similarly, between y and u—4, between g and e—2, between c and z—3. "Now what is the column of ciphers made up of that we have got by this simple operation? Look here! 423 423 423, that is to say, of repetitions of the numbers 423, or 234, or 342." "Yes, that is it!" answered Manoel. "You understand, then, by this means, that in calculating the true letter from the false, instead of the false from the true, I have been able to discover the number with ease; and the number I was in search of is really the 234 which I took as the key of "Well, sir!" exclaimed Manoel, "if that is so, the name of Dacosta is in the last paragraph; and taking successively each letter of those lines for the first of the seven letters which compose his name, we ought to "That would be impossible," interrupted the judge, "except on "What is that?" "That the first cipher of the number should happen to be the first letter of the word Dacosta, and I think you will agree with me that that is not probable." "Quite so!" sighed Manoel, who, with this improbability, saw the last chance vanish. "And so we must trust to chance alone," continued Jarriquez, who shook his head, "and chance does not often do much in things of this sort." "But still," said Manoel, "chance might give us this number." "This number," exclaimed the magistrate—"this number? But how many ciphers is it composed of? Of two, or three, or four, or nine, or ten? Is it made of different ciphers only or of ciphers in different order many times repeated? Do you not know, young man, that with the ordinary ten ciphers, using all at a time, but without any repetition, you can make three million two hundred and sixty-eight thousand and eight hundred different numbers, and that if you use the same cipher more than once in the number, these millions of combinations will be enormously increased! And do you not know that if we employ every one of the five hundred and twenty-five thousand and six hundred minutes of which the year is composed to try at each of these numbers, it would take you six years, and that you would want three centuries if each operation took you an hour? No! You ask the impossible!" "Impossible, sir?" answered Manoel. "An innocent man has been branded as guilty, and Joam Dacosta is to lose his life and his honor while you hold in your hands the material proof of his innocence! That is what is "Ah! young man!" exclaimed Jarriquez, "who told you, after all, that Torres did not tell a lie? Who told you that he really did have in his hands a document written by the author of the crime? that this paper was the document, and that this document refers to "Who told me so?" repeated Manoel, and his face was hidden in In fact, nothing could prove for certain that the document had anything to do with the affair in the diamond province. There was, in fact, nothing to show that it was not utterly devoid of meaning, and that it had been imagined by Torres himself, who was as capable of selling a false thing as a true "It does not matter, Manoel," continued the judge, rising; "it does not matter! Whatever it may be to which the document refers, I have not yet given up discovering the cipher. After all, it is worth more than a logogryph or a At these words Manoel rose, shook hands with the magistrate, and returned to the jangada, feeling more hopeless when he went back than when he set out. A COMPLETE change took place in public opinion on the subject of Joam Dacosta. To anger succeeded pity. The population no longer thronged to the prison of Manaos to roar out cries of death to the prisoner. On the contrary, the most forward of them in accusing him of being the principal author of the crime of Tijuco now averred that he was not guilty, and demanded his immediate restoration to liberty. Thus it always is with the mob—from one extreme they run to the other. But the change was intelligible. The events which had happened during the last few days—the struggle between Benito and Torres; the search for the corpse, which had reappeared under such extraordinary circumstances; the finding of the "indecipherable" document, if we can so call it; the information it concealed, the assurance that it contained, or rather the wish that it contained, the material proof of the guiltlessness of Joam Dacosta; and the hope that it was written by the real culprit—all these things had contributed to work the change in public opinion. What the people had desired and impatiently demanded forty-eight hours before, they now feared, and that was the arrival of the instructions due from Rio de Janeiro. These, however, were not likely to be delayed. Joam Dacosta had been arrested on the 24th of August, and examined next day. The judge's report was sent off on the 26th. It was now the 28th. In three or four days more the minister would have come to a decision regarding the convict, and it was only too certain that justice would take its There was no doubt that such would be the case. On the other hand, that the assurance of Dacosta's innocence would appear from the document, was not doubted by anybody, neither by his family nor by the fickle population of Manaos, who excitedly followed the phases of this dramatic affair. But, on the other hand, in the eyes of disinterested or indifferent persons who were not affected by the event, what value could be assigned to this document? and how could they even declare that it referred to the crime in the diamond arrayal? It existed, that was undeniable; it had been found on the corpse of Torres, nothing could be more certain. It could even be seen, by comparing it with the letter in which Torres gave the information about Joam Dacosta, that the document was not in the handwriting of the adventurer. But, as had been suggested by Judge Jarriquez, why should not the scoundrel have invented it for the sake of his bargain? And this was less unlikely to be the case, considering that Torres had declined to part with it until after his marriage with Dacosta's daughter—that is to say, when it would have been impossible to undo an accomplished All these views were held by some people in some form, and we can quite understand what interest the affair created. In any case, the situation of Joam Dacosta was most hazardous. If the document were not deciphered, it would be just the same as if it did not exist; and if the secret of the cryptogram were not miraculously divined or revealed before the end of the three days, the supreme sentence would inevitably be suffered by the doomed man of Tijuco. And this miracle a man attempted to perform! The man was Jarriquez, and he now really set to work more in the interest of Joam Dacosta than for the satisfaction of his analytical faculties. A complete change had also taken place in his opinion. Was not this man, who had voluntarily abandoned his retreat at Iquitos, who had come at the risk of his life to demand his rehabilitation at the hands of Brazilian justice, a moral enigma worth all the others put together? And so the judge had resolved never to leave the document until he had discovered the cipher. He set to work at it in a fury. He ate no more; he slept no more! All his time was passed in inventing combinations of numbers, in forging a key to force this This idea had taken possession of Judge Jarriquez's brain at the end of the first day. Suppressed frenzy consumed him, and kept him in a perpetual heat. His whole house trembled; his servants, black or white, dared not come near him. Fortunately he was a bachelor; had there been a Madame Jarriquez she would have had a very uncomfortable time of it. Never had a problem so taken possession of this oddity, and he had thoroughly made up his mind to get at the solution, even if his head exploded like an overheated boiler under the tension of its vapor. It was perfectly clear to the mind of the worthy magistrate that the key to the document was a number, composed of two or more ciphers, but what this number was all investigation seemed powerless to discover. This was the enterprise on which Jarriquez, in quite a fury, was engaged, and during this 28th of August he brought all his faculties to bear on it, and worked away almost superhumanly. To arrive at the number by chance, he said, was to lose himself in millions of combinations, which would absorb the life of a first-rate calculator. But if he could in no respect reckon on chance, was it impossible to proceed by reasoning? Decidedly not! And so it was "to reason till he became unreasoning" that Judge Jarriquez gave himself up after vainly seeking repose in a few hours of sleep. He who ventured in upon him at this moment, after braving the formal defenses which protected his solitude, would have found him, as on the day before, in his study, before his desk, with the document under his eyes, the thousands of letters of which seemed all jumbled together and flying about his "Ah!" he explaimed, "why did not the scoundrel who wrote this separate the words in this paragraph? We might—we will try—but no! However, if there is anything here about the murder and the robbery, two or three words there must be in it—'arrayal,' 'diamond,' 'Tijuco,' 'Dacosta,' and others; and in putting down their cryptological equivalents the number could be arrived at. But there is nothing—not a single break!—not one word by itself! One word of two hundred and seventy-six letters! I hope the wretch may be blessed two hundred and seventy-six times for complicating his system in this way! He ought to be hanged two hundred and seventy-six times!" And a violent thump with his fist on the document emphasized this charitable wish. "But," continued the magistrate, "if I cannot find one of the words in the body of the document, I might at least try my hand at the beginning and end of each paragraph. There may be a chance there that I ought not to And impressed with this idea Judge Jarriquez successively tried if the letters which commenced or finished the different paragraphs could be made to correspond with those which formed the most important word, which was sure to be found somewhere, that of Dacosta. He could do nothing of the kind. In fact, to take only the last paragraph with which he began, the formula was: P=D, h=a, y=c, f=o, s=s, pbsp; Now, at the very first letter Jarriquez was stopped in his calculations, for the difference in alphabetical position between the d and the p gave him not one cipher, but two, namely, 12, and in this kind of cryptograph only one letter can take the place of another. It was the same for the seven last letters of the paragraph, p s u v j h d, of which the series also commences with a p, and which in no case could stand for the d in Dacosta, because these letters were in like manner twelve spaces apart. So it was not his name that figured here. The same observation applies to the words arrayal and Tijuco, which were successively tried, but whose construction did not correspond with the After he had got so far, Judge Jarriquez, with his head nearly splitting, arose and paced his office, went for fresh air to the window, and gave utterance to a growl, at the noise of which a flock of hummingbirds, murmuring among the foliage of a mimosa tree, betook themselves to flight. Then he returned to the document. He picked it up and turned it over and over. “The humbug! the rascal!” he hissed; “it will end by driving me mad! But steady! Be calm! Don't let our spirits go down! This is not the time!” And then, having refreshed himself by giving his head a thorough sluicing with cold water: "Let us try another way," he said, "and as I cannot hit upon the number from the arrangement of the letters, let us see what number the author of the document would have chosen in confessing that he was the author of the crime This was another method for the magistrate to enter upon, and maybe he was right, for there was a certain amount of logic about it. "And first let us try a date! Why should not the culprit have taken the date of the year in which Dacosta, the innocent man he allowed to be sentenced in his own place, was born? Was he likely to forget a number which was so important to him? Then Joam Dacosta was born in 1804. Let us see what 1804 will give us as a cryptographical number." And Judge Jarriquez wrote the first letters of the paragraph, and putting over them the number 1804 repeated thrice, he obtained 1804 1804 1804 phyj slyd dqfd Then in counting up the spaces in alphabetical order, he obtained s.yf rdy. cif. And this was meaningless! And he wanted three letters which he had to replace by points, because the ciphers, 8, 4, and 4, which command the three letters, h, d, and d, do not give corresponding letters in ascending the series. “That is not it again!” exclaimed Jarriquez. “Let us try And he asked himself, if instead of this first date the author of the document had not rather selected the date of the year in which the crime was committed. This was in 1826. And so proceeding as above, he obtained. 1826 1826 1826 phyj slyd dqfd and that gave o.vd rdv. cid. the same meaningless series, the same absence of sense, as many letters wanting as in the former instance, and for the same reason. “Bother the number!” exclaimed the magistrate. “We must give it up again. Let us have another one! Perhaps the rascal chose the number of contos representing the amount of the booty!” Now the value of the stolen diamonds was estimated at eight hundred and thirty-four contos, or about 2,500,000 francs, and so the 834 834 834 834 phy jsl ydd qfd and this gave a result as little gratifying as the others—— het bph pa. ic. “Confound the document and him who imagined it!” shouted Jarriquez, throwing down the paper, which was wafted to the other side of the room. “It would try the patience of a saint!” But the short burst of anger passed away, and the magistrate, who had no idea of being beaten, picked up the paper. What he had done with the first letters of the different paragraphs he did with the last—and to no purpose. Then he tried everything his excited imagination could suggest. He tried in succession the numbers which represented Dacosta's age, which would have been known to the author of the crime, the date of his arrest, the date of the sentence at the Villa Rica assizes, the date fixed for the execution, etc., etc., even the number of victims at the affray at Tijuco! Nothing! All the time nothing! Judge Jarriquez had worked himself into such a state of exasperation that there really was some fear that his mental faculties would lose their balance. He jumped about, and twisted about, and wrestled about as if he really had got hold of his enemy's body. Then suddenly he cried, "Now for chance! Heaven help me now, logic is powerless!" His hand seized a bell-pull hanging near his table. The bell rang furiously, and the magistrate strode up to the door, which he opened. "Bobo!" he shouted. A moment or two elapsed. Bobo was a freed negro, who was the privileged servant of Jarriquez. He did not appear; it was evident that Bobo was afraid to come into his master's Another ring at the bell; another call to Bobo, who, for his own safety, pretended to be deaf on this occasion. And now a third ring at the bell, which unhitched the crank and broke the cord. This time Bobo came up. "What is it, sir?" asked Bobo, prudently waiting on the threshold. "Advance, without uttering a single word!" replied the judge, whose flaming eyes made the negro quake again. "Bobo," said Jarriquez, "attend to what I say, and answer immediately; do not even take time to think, or I——" Bobo, with fixed eyes and open mouth, brought his feet together like a soldier and stood at attention. "Are you ready?" asked his master. "Now, then, tell me, without a moment's thought—you understand—the first number than comes into your head." "76223," answered Bobo, all in a breath. Bobo thought he would please his master by giving him a pretty large one! Judge Jarriquez had run to the table, and, pencil in hand, had made out a formula with the number given by Bobo, and which Bobo had in this way only given him at a venture. It is obvious that it was most unlikely that a number such as 76223 was the key of the document, and it produced no other result than to bring to the lips of Jarriquez such a vigorous ejaculation that Bobo disappeared like a THE LAST EFFORTS THE MAGISTRATE, however, was not the only one who passed his time unprofitably. Benito, Manoel, and Minha tried all they could together to extract the secret from the document on which depended their father's life and honor. On his part, Fragoso, aided by Lina, could not remain quiet, but all their ingenuity had failed, and the number still escaped them. "Why don't you find it, Fragoso?" asked the young mulatto. "I will find it," answered Fragoso. And he did not find it! Here we should say that Fragoso had an idea of a project of which he had not even spoken to Lina, but which had taken full possession of his mind. This was to go in search of the gang to which the ex-captain of the woods had belonged, and to find out who was the probable author of this cipher document, which was supposed to be the confession of the culprit of Tijuco. The part of the Amazon where these people were employed, the very place where Fragoso had met Torres a few years before, was not very far from Manaos. He would only have to descend the river for about fifty miles, to the mouth of the Madeira, a tributary coming in on the right, and there he was almost sure to meet the head of these capitaes do mato, to which Torres belonged. In two days, or three days at the outside, Fragoso could get into communication with the old comrades of the "Yes! I could do that," he repeated to himself; "but what would be the good of it, supposing I succeeded? If we are sure that one of Torres' companions has recently died, would that prove him to be the author of this crime? Would that show that he gave Torres a document in which he announced himself the author of this crime, and exonerated Joam Dacosta? Would that give us the key of the document? No! Two men only knew the cipher—the culprit and Torres! And these two men are no more!" So reasoned Fragoso. It was evident that his enterprise would do no good. But the thought of it was too much for him. An irresistible influence impelled him to set out, although he was not even sure of finding the band on the Madeira. In fact, it might be engaged in some other part of the province, and to come up with it might require more time than Fragoso had at his disposal! And what would be the It is none the less true, however, that on the 29th of August, before sunrise, Fragoso, without saying anything to anybody, secretly left the jangada, arrived at Manaos, and embarked in one of the egariteas which daily descend the Amazon. And great was the astonishment when he was not seen on board, and did not appear during the day. No one, not even Lina, could explain the absence of so devoted a servant at such a crisis. Some of them even asked, and not without reason, if the poor fellow, rendered desperate at having, when he met him on the frontier, personally contributed to bringing Torres on board the raft, had not made away with himself. But if Fragoso could so reproach himself, how about Benito? In the first place at Iquitos he had invited Torres to visit the fazenda; in the second place he had brought him on board the jangada, to become a passenger on it; and in the third place, in killing him, he had annihilated the only witness whose evidence could save the condemned man. And so Benito considered himself responsible for everything—the arrest of his father, and the terrible events of which it had been the In fact, had Torres been alive, Benito could not tell but that, in some way or another, from pity or for reward, he would have finished by handing over the document. Would not Torres, whom nothing could compromise, have been persuaded to speak, had money been brought to bear upon him? Would not the long-sought-for proof have been furnished to the judge? Yes, undoubtedly! And the only man who could have furnished this evidence had been killed through Such was what the wretched man continually repeated to his mother, to Manoel, and to himself. Such were the cruel responsibilities which his conscience laid to his charge. Between her husband, with whom she passed all the time that was allowed her, and her son, a prey to despair which made her tremble for his reason, the brave Yaquita lost none of her moral energy. In her they found the valiant daughter of Magalha볬 the worthy wife of the fazender of The attitude of Joam Dacosta was well adapted to sustain her in this ordeal. That gallant man, that rigid Puritan, that austere worker, whose whole life had been a battle, had not yet shown a moment The most terrible blow which had struck him without prostrating him had been the death of Judge Ribeiro, in whose mind his innocence did not admit of a doubt. Was it not with the help of his old defender that he had hoped to strive for his rehabilitation? The intervention of Torres he had regarded throughout as being quite secondary for him. And of this document he had no knowledge when he left Iquitos to hand himself over to the justice of his country. He only took with him moral proofs. When a material proof was unexpectedly produced in the course of the affair, before or after his arrest, he was certainly not the man to despise it. But if, on account of regrettable circumstances, the proof disappeared, he would find himself once more in the same position as when he passed the Brazilian frontier—the position of a man who came to say, "Here is my past life; here is my present; here is an entirely honest existence of work and devotion which I bring you. You passed on me at first an erroneous judgment. After twenty-three years of exile I have come to give myself up! Here I am; judge me again!" The death of Torres, the impossibility of reading the document found on him, had thus not produced on Joam Dacosta the impression which it had on his children, his friends, his household, and all who were interested in "I have faith in my innocence," he repeated to Yaquita, "as I have faith in God. If my life is still useful to my people, and a miracle is necessary to save me, that miracle will be performed; if not, I shall die! God alone is The excitement increased in Manaos as the time ran on; the affair was discussed with unexampled acerbity. In the midst of this enthralment of public opinion, which evoked so much of the mysterious, the document was the principal object of conversation. At the end of this fourth day not a single person doubted but that it contained the vindication of the doomed man. Every one had been given an opportunity of deciphering its incomprehensible contents, for the "Diario d'o Grand Para" had reproduced it in facsimile. Autograph copies were spread about in great numbers at the suggestion of Manoel, who neglect nothing that might lead to the penetration of the mystery—not even chance, that "nickname of Providence," as some one has called it. In addition, a reward of one hundred contos (or three hundred thousand francs) was promised to any one who could discover the cipher so fruitlessly sought after—and read the document. This was quite a fortune, and so people of all classes forgot to eat, drink, or sleep to attack this unintelligible Up to the present, however, all had been useless, and probably the most ingenious analysts in the world would have spent their time in vain. It had been advertised that any solution should be sent, without delay, to Judge Jarriquez, to his house in God-the-Son Street; but the evening of the 29th of August came and none had arrived, nor was any likely to arrive. Of all those who took up the study of the puzzle, Judge Jarriquez was one of the most to be pitied. By a natural association of ideas, he also joined in the general opinion that the document referred to the affair at Tijuco, and that it had been written by the hand of the guilty man, and exonerated Joam Dacosta. And so he put even more ardor into his search for the key. It was not only the art for art's sake which guided him, it was a sentiment of justice, of pity toward a man suffering under an unjust condemnation. If it is the fact that a certain quantity of phosphorus is expended in the work of the brain, it would be difficult to say how many milligrammes the judge had parted with to excite the network of his "sensorium," and after all, to find out nothing, absolutely nothing. But Jarriquez had no idea of abandoning the inquiry. If he could only now trust to chance, he would work on for that chance. He tried to evoke it by all means possible and impossible. He had given himself over to fury and anger, and, what was worse, to impotent anger! During the latter part of this day he had been trying different numbers—numbers selected arbitrarily—and how many of them can scarcely be imagined. Had he had the time, he would not have shrunk from plunging into the millions of combinations of which the ten symbols of numeration are capable. He would have given his whole life to it at the risk of going mad before the year was out. Mad! was he not that already? He had had the idea that the document might be read through the paper, and so he turned it round and exposed it to the light, and tried it in that way. Nothing! The numbers already thought of, and which he tried in this new way, gave no result. Perhaps the document read backward, and the last letter was really the first, for the author would have done this had he wished to make the reading more difficult. Nothing! The new combination only furnished a series of letters just as At eight o'clock in the evening Jarriquez, with his face in his hands, knocked up, worn out mentally and physically, had neither strength to move, to speak, to think, or to associate one idea with another. Suddenly a noise was heard outside. Almost immediately, notwithstanding his formal orders, the door of his study was thrown open. Benito and Manoel were before him, Benito looking dreadfully pale, and Manoel supporting him, for the unfortunate young man had hardly strength to support himself. The magistrate quickly arose. "What is it, gentlemen? What do you want?" he asked. "The cipher! the cipher!" exclaimed Benito, mad with grief—"the cipher of the document." "Do you know it, then?" shouted the judge. "No, sir," said Manoel. "But you?" "Nothing?" gasped Benito, and in a paroxysm of despair he took a knife from his belt and would have plunged it into his breast had not the judge and Manoel jumped forward and managed to disarm him. "Benito," said Jarriquez, in a voice which he tried to keep calm, "if you father cannot escape the expiation of a crime which is not his, you could do something better than kill yourself." "What?" said Benito. "Try and save his life!" "That is for you to discover," answered the magistrate, "and not for me ON THE FOLLOWING day, the 30th of August, Benito and Manoel talked matters over together. They had understood the thought to which the judge had not dared to give utterance in their presence, and were engaged in devising some means by which the condemned man could escape the penalty of the law. Nothing else was left for them to do. It was only too certain that for the authorities at Rio Janeiro the undeciphered document would have no value whatever, that it would be a dead letter, that the first verdict which declared Joam Dacosta the perpetrator of the crime at Tijuco would not be set aside, and that, as in such cases no commutation of the sentence was possible, the order for his execution would inevitably be received. Once more, then, Joam Dacosta would have to escape by flight from an unjust imprisonment. It was at the outset agreed between the two young men that the secret should be carefully kept, and that neither Yaquita nor Minha should be informed of preparations, which would probably only give rise to hopes destined never to be realized. Who could tell if, owing to some unforeseen circumstance, the attempt at escape would not prove a miserable failure? The presence of Fragoso on such an occasion would have been most valuable. Discreet and devoted, his services would have been most welcome to the two young fellows; but Fragoso had not reappeared. Lina, when asked, could only say that she knew not what had become of him, nor why he had left the raft without telling her anything And assuredly, had Fragoso foreseen that things would have turned out as they were doing, he would never have left the Dacosta family on an expedition which appeared to promise no serious result. Far better for him to have assisted in the escape of the doomed man than to have hurried off in search of the former comrades of Torres! But Fragoso was away, and his assistance had to be dispensed with. At daybreak Benito and Manoel left the raft and proceeded to Manaos. They soon reached the town, and passed through its narrow streets, which at that early hour were quite deserted. In a few minutes they arrived in front of the prison. The waste ground, amid which the old convent which served for a house of detention was built, was traversed by them in all directions, for they had come to study it with the utmost Fifty-five feet from the ground, in an angle of the building, they recognized the window of the cell in which Joam Dacosta was confined. The window was secured with iron bars in a miserable state of repair, which it would be easy to tear down or cut through if they could only get near enough. The badly jointed stones in the wall, which were crumbled away every here and there, offered many a ledge for the feet to rest on, if only a rope could be fixed to climb up by. One of the bars had slipped out of its socket, and formed a hook over which it might be possible to throw a rope. That done, one or two of the bars could be removed, so as to permit a man to get through. Benito and Manoel would then have to make their way into the prisoner's room, and without much difficulty the escape could be managed by means of the rope fastened to the projecting iron. During the night, if the sky were very cloudy, none of these operations would be noticed before the day dawned. Joam Dacosta could get safely away. Manoel and Benito spent an hour about the spot, taking care not to attract attention, but examining the locality with great exactness, particularly as regarded the position of the window, the arrangement of the iron bars, and the place from which it would be best to throw the line. "That is agreed," said Manoel at length. "And now, ought Joam Dacosta to be told about this?" "No, Manoel. Neither to him, any more than to my mother, ought we to impart the secret of an attempt in which there is such a risk "We shall succeed, Benito!" continued Manoel. "However, we must prepare for everything; and in case the chief of the prison should discover us at the moment of escape——" "We shall have money enough to purchase his silence," "Good!" replied Manoel. "But once your father is out of prison he cannot remain hidden in the town or on the jangada. Where is he to find This was the second question to solve: and a very difficult one A hundred paces away from the prison, however, the waste land was crossed by one of those canals which flow through the town into the Rio Negro. This canal afforded an easy way of gaining the river if a pirogue were in waiting for the fugitive. From the foot of the wall to the canal side was hardly a hundred yards. Benito and Manoel decided that about eight o'clock in the evening one of the pirogues, with two strong rowers, under the command of the pilot Araujo, should start from the jangada. They could ascend the Rio Negro, enter the canal, and, crossing the waste land, remain concealed throughout the night under the tall vegetation on the banks. But once on board, where was Joam Dacosta to seek refuge? To return to Iquitos was to follow a road full of difficulties and peril, and a long one in any case, should the fugitive either travel across the country or by the river. Neither by horse not pirogue could he be got out of danger quickly enough, and the fazenda was no longer a safe retreat. He would not return to it as the fazender, Joam Garral, but as the convict, Joam Dacosta, continually in fear of his extradition. He could never dream of resuming his To get away by the Rio Negro into the north of the province, or even beyond the Brazilian territory, would require more time than he could spare, and his first care must be to escape from immediate To start again down the Amazon? But stations, village, and towns abounded on both sides of the river. The description of the fugitive would be sent to all the police, and he would run the risk of being arrested long before he reached the Atlantic. And supposing he reached the coast, where and how was he to hide and wait for a passage to put the sea between himself and his pursuers? On consideration of these various plans, Benito and Manoel agreed that neither of them was practicable. One, however, did offer some chance of safety, and that was to embark in the pirogue, follow the canal into the Rio Negro, descend this tributary under the guidance of the pilot, reach the confluence of the rivers, and run down the Amazon along its right bank for some sixty miles during the nights, resting during the daylight, and so gaining the embouchure of the Madeira. This tributary, which, fed by a hundred affluents, descends from the watershed of the Cordilleras, is a regular waterway opening into the very heart of Bolivia. A pirogue could pass up it and leave no trace of its passage, and a refuge could be found in some town or village beyond the Brazilian frontier. There Joam Dacosta would be comparatively safe, and there for several months he could wait for an opportunity of reaching the Pacific coast and taking passage in some vessel leaving one of its ports; and if the ship were bound for one of the States of North America he would be free. Once there, he could sell the fazenda, leave his country forever, and seek beyond the sea, in the Old World, a final retreat in which to end an existence so cruelly and unjustly disturbed. Anywhere he might go, his family—not excepting Manoel, who was bound to him by so many ties—would assuredly follow without the slightest hesitation. "Let us go," said Benito; "we must have all ready before night, and we have no time to lose." The young men returned on board by way of the canal bank, which led along the Rio Negro. They satisfied themselves that the passage of the pirogue would be quite possible, and that no obstacles such as locks or boats under repair were there to stop it. They then descended the left bank of the tributary, avoiding the slowly-filling streets of the town, and reached the Benito's first care was to see his mother. He felt sufficiently master of himself to dissemble the anxiety which consumed him. He wished to assure her that all hope was not lost, that the mystery of the document would be cleared up, that in any case public opinion was in favor of Joam, and that, in face of the agitation which was being made in his favor, justice would grant all the necessary time for the production of the material proof his innocence. "Yes, mother," he added, "before tomorrow we shall be free from "May heaven grant it so!" replied Yaquita, and she looked at him so keenly that Benito could hardly meet her glance. On his part, and as if by pre-arrangement, Manoel had tried to reassure Minha by telling her that Judge Jarriquez was convinced of the innocence of Joam, and would try to save him by every means in his power. "I only wish he would, Manoel," answered she, endeavoring in vain to restrain her tears. And Manoel left her, for the tears were also welling up in his eyes and witnessing against the words of hope to which he had just And now the time had arrived for them to make their daily visit to the prisoner, and Yaquita and her daughter set off to Manaos. For an hour the young men were in consultation with Araujo. They acquainted him with their plan in all its details, and they discussed not only the projected escape, but the measures which were necessary for the safety of the fugitive. Araujo approved of everything; he undertook during the approaching night to take the pirogue up the canal without attracting any notice, and he knew its course thoroughly as far as the spot where he was to await the arrival of Joam Dacosta. To get back to the mouth of the Rio Negro was easy enough, and the pirogue would be able to pass unnoticed among the numerous craft continually descending the river. Araujo had no objection to offer to the idea of following the Amazon down to its confluence with the Madeira. The course of the Madeira was familiar to him for quite two hundred miles up, and in the midst of these thinly-peopled provinces, even if pursuit took place in their direction, all attempts at capture could be easily frustrated; they could reach the interior of Bolivia, and if Joam decided to leave his country he could procure a passage with less danger on the coast of the Pacific than on that of the Atlantic. Araujo's approval was most welcome to the young fellows; they had great faith in the practical good sense of the pilot, and not without reason. His zeal was undoubted, and he would assuredly have risked both life and liberty to save the fazender of Iquitos. With the utmost secrecy Araujo at once set about his preparations. A considerable sum in gold was handed over to him by Benito to meet all eventualities during the voyage on the Madeira. In getting the pirogue ready, he announced his intention of going in search of Fragoso, whose fate excited a good deal of anxiety among his companions. He stowed away in the boat provisions for many days, and did not forget the ropes and tools which would be required by the young men when they reached the canal at the appointed time and place. These preparations evoked no curiosity on the part of the crew of the jangada, and even the two stalwart negroes were not let into the secret. They, however, could be absolutely depended on. Whenever they learned what the work of safety was in which they were engaged—when Joam Dacosta, once more free, was confided to their charge—Araujo knew well that they would dare anything, even to the risk of their own lives, to save the life of their master. By the afternoon all was ready, and they had only the night to wait for. But before making a start Manoel wished to call on Judge Jarriquez for the last time. The magistrate might perhaps have found out something new about the document. Benito preferred to remain on the raft and wait for the return of his mother and sister. Manoel then presented himself at the abode of Judge Jarriquez, and was The magistrate, in the study which he never quitted, was still the victim of the same excitement. The document crumpled by his impatient fingers, was still there before his eyes on the table. "Sir," said Manoel, whose voice trembled as he asked the question, "have you received anything from Rio de Janeiro." "No," answered the judge; "the order has not yet come to hand, but it may at any moment." "And the document?" "Nothing yet!" exclaimed he. "Everything my imagination can suggest I have tried, and no result." "Nevertheless, I distinctly see one word in the document—only one!" "What is that—what is the word?" Manoel said nothing, but he pressed the hand which Jarriquez held out to him, and returned to the jangada to wait for the moment of action. THE LAST NIGHT THE VISIT of Yaquita and her daughter had been like all such visits during the few hours which each day the husband and wife spent together. In the presence of the two beings whom Joam so dearly loved his heart nearly failed him. But the husband—the father—retained his self-command. It was he who comforted the two poor women and inspired them with a little of the hope of which so little now remained to him. They had come with the intention of cheering the prisoner. Alas! far more than he they themselves were in want of cheering! But when they found him still bearing himself unflinchingly in the midst of his terrible trial, they recovered a little of Once more had Joam spoken encouraging words to them. His indomitable energy was due not only to the feeling of his innocence, but to his faith in that God, a portion of whose justice yet dwells in the hearts of men. No! Joam Dacosta would never lose his life for the crime of Hardly ever did he mention the document. Whether it were apocryphal or no, whether it were in the handwriting of Torres or in that of the real perpetrator of the crime, whether it contained or did not contain the longed-for vindication, it was on no such doubtful hypothesis that Joam Dacosta presumed to trust. No; he reckoned on a better argument in his favor, and it was to his long life of toil and honor that he relegated the task of pleading for him. This evening, then, his wife and daughter, strengthened by the manly words, which thrilled them to the core of their hearts, had left him more confident than they had ever been since his arrest. For the last time the prisoner had embraced them, and with redoubled tenderness. It seemed as though the d鮯uement was nigh. Joam Dacosta, after they had left, remained for some time perfectly motionless. His arms rested on a small table and supported his head. Of what was he thinking? Had he at last been convinced that human justice, after failing the first time, would at length pronounce Yes, he still hoped. With the report of Judge Jarriquez establishing his identity, he knew that his memoir, which he had penned with so much sincerity, would have been sent to Rio de Janeiro, and was now in the hands of the chief justice. This memoir, as we know, was the history of his life from his entry into the offices of the diamond arrayal until the very moment when the jangada stopped before Manaos. Joam Dacosta was pondering over his whole career. He again lived his past life from the moment when, as an orphan, he had set foot in Tijuco. There his zeal had raised him high in the offices of the governor-general, into which he had been admitted when still very young. The future smiled on him; he would have filled some important position. Then this sudden catastrophe; the robbery of the diamond convoy, the massacre of the escort, the suspicion directed against him as the only official who could have divulged the secret of the expedition, his arrest, his appearance before the jury, his conviction in spite of all the efforts of his advocate, the last hours spent in the condemned cell at Villa Rica, his escape under conditions which betokened almost superhuman courage, his flight through the northern provinces, his arrival on the Peruvian frontier, and the reception which the starving fugitive had met with from the hospitable fazender Magalha볮 The prisoner once more passed in review these events, which had so cruelly marred his life. And then, lost in his thoughts and recollections, he sat, regardless of a peculiar noise on the outer wall of the convent, of the jerkings of a rope hitched on to a bar of his window, and of grating steel as it cut through iron, which ought at once to have attracted the attention of a less absorbed man. Joam Dacosta continued to live the years of his youth after his arrival in Peru. He again saw the fazender, the clerk, the partner of the old Portuguese, toiling hard for the prosperity of the establishment at Iquitos. Ah! why at the outset had he not told all to his benefactor? He would never have doubted him. It was the only error with which he could reproach himself. Why had he not confessed to him whence he had come, and who he was—above all, at the moment when Magalha볠had place in his hand the hand of the daughter who would never have believed that he was the author of so frightful And now the noise outside became loud enough to attract the prisoner's attention. For an instant Joam raised his head; his eyes sought the window, but with a vacant look, as though he were unconscious, and the next instant his head again sank into his hands. Again he was in thought back at There the old fazender was dying; before his end he longed for the future of his daughter to be assured, for his partner to be the sole master of the settlement which had grown so prosperous under his management. Should Dacosta have spoken then? Perhaps; but he dared not do it. He again lived the happy days he had spent with Yaquita, and again thought of the birth of his children, again felt the happiness which had its only trouble in the remembrances of Tijuco and the remorse that he had not confessed his terrible secret. The chain of events was reproduced in Joam's mind with a clearness and completeness quite remarkable. And now he was thinking of the day when his daughter's marriage with Manoel had been decided. Could he allow that union to take place under a false name without acquainting the lad with the mystery of his life? No! And so at the advice of Judge Ribeiro he resolved to come and claim the revision of his sentence, to demand the rehabilitation which was his due! He was starting with his people, and then came the intervention of Torres, the detestable bargain proposed by the scoundrel, the indignant refusal of the father to hand over his daughter to save his honor and his life, and then the denunciation and the arrest! Suddenly the window flew open with a violent push from without. Joam started up; the souvenire of the past vanished like a shadow. Benito leaped into the room; he was in the presence of his father, and the next moment Manoel, tearing down the remaining bars, appeared before Joam Dacosta would have uttered a cry of surprise. Benito left him no time to do so. "Father," he said, "the window grating is down. A rope leads to the ground. A pirogue is waiting for you on the canal not a hundred yards off. Araujo is there ready to take you far away from Manaos, on the other bank of the Amazon where your track will never be discovered. Father, you must escape this very moment! It was the judge's "It must be done!" added Manoel. "Fly! I!—Fly a second time! Escape again?" And with crossed arms, and head erect, Joam Dacosta stepped forward. "Never!" he said, in a voice so firm that Benito and Manoel The young men had never thought of a difficulty like this. They had never reckoned on the hindrances to escape coming from the Benito advanced to his father, and looking him straight in the face, and taking both his hands in his, not to force him, but to try and convince him, "Never, did you say, father?" "Father," said Manoel—"for I also have the right to call you father—listen to us! If we tell you that you ought to fly without losing an instant, it is because if you remain you will be guilty toward others, toward yourself!" "To remain," continued Benito, "is to remain to die! The order for execution may come at any moment! If you imagine that the justice of men will nullify a wrong decision, if you think it will rehabilitate you whom it condemned twenty years since, you are mistaken! There is hope no longer! You must escape! Come!" By an irresistible impulse Benito seized his father and drew him toward Joam Dacosta struggled from his son's grasp and recoiled a "To fly," he answered, in the tone of a man whose resolution was unalterable, "is to dishonor myself, and you with me! It would be a confession of my guilt! Of my own free will I surrendered myself to my country's judges, and I will await their decision, whatever that decision may "But the presumptions on which you trusted are insufficient," replied Manoel, "and the material proof of your innocence is still wanting! If we tell you that you ought to fly, it is because Judge Jarriquez himself told us so. You have now only this one chance left to escape from death!" "I will die, then," said Joam, in a calm voice. "I will die protesting against the decision which condemned me! The first time, a few hours before the execution—I fled! Yes! I was then young. I had all my life before me in which to struggle against man's injustice! But to save myself now, to begin again the miserable existence of a felon hiding under a false name, whose every effort is required to avoid the pursuit of the police, again to live the life of anxiety which I have led for twenty-three years, and oblige you to share it with me; to wait each day for a denunciation which sooner or later must come, to wait for the claim for extradition which would follow me to a foreign country! Am I to live for that? No! Never!" "Father," interrupted Benito, whose mind threatened to give way before such obstinacy, "you shall fly! I will have it so!" And he caught hold of Joam Dacosta, and tried by force to drag him toward the window. "You wish to drive me mad?" "My son," exclaimed Joam Dacosta, "listen to me! Once already I escaped from the prison at Villa Rica, and people believed I fled from well-merited punishment. Yes, they had reason to think so. Well, for the honor of the name which you bear I shall not do so again." Benito had fallen on his knees before his father. He held up his hands to him; he begged him: "But this order, father," he repeated, "this order which is due today—even now—it will contain your sentence of death." "The order may come, but my determination will not change. No, my son! Joam Dacosta, guilty, might fly! Joam Dacosta, innocent, will not fly!" The scene which followed these words was heart-rending. Benito struggled with his father. Manoel, distracted, kept near the window ready to carry off the prisoner—when the door of the room opened. On the threshold appeared the chief of the police, accompanied by the head warder of the prison and a few soldiers. The chief of the police understood at a glance that an attempt at escape was being made; but he also understood from the prisoner's attitude that he it was who had no wish to go! He said nothing. The sincerest pity was depicted on his face. Doubtless he also, like Judge Jarriquez, would have liked Dacosta to have It was too late! The chief of the police, who held a paper in his hand, advanced toward "Before all of you," said Joam Dacosta, "let me tell you, sir, that it only rested with me to get away, and that I would not do so." The chief of the police bowed his head, and then, in a voice which he vainly tried to control: "Joam Dacosta," he said, "the order has this moment arrived from the chief justice at Rio Janeiro." "Father!" exclaimed Manoel and Benito. "This order," asked Joam Dacosta, who had crossed his arms, "this order requires the execution of my sentence?" "And that will take place?" Benito threw himself on his father. Again would he have dragged him from his cell, but the soldiers came and drew away the prisoner from his At a sign from the chief of the police Benito and Manoel were taken away. An end had to be put to this painful scene, which had already lasted too long. "Sir," said the doomed man, "before tomorrow, before the hour of my execution, may I pass a few moments with Padre Passanha, whom I ask you "It will be forbidden." "May I see my family, and embrace for a last time my wife "You shall see them." "Thank you, sir," answered Joam; "and now keep guard over that window; it will not do for them to take me out of here against my will." And then the chief of the police, after a respectful bow, retired with the warder and the soldiers. The doomed man, who had now but a few hours to live, was left alone. AND SO the order had come, and, as Judge Jarriquez had foreseen, it was an order requiring the immediate execution of the sentence pronounced on Joam Dacosta. No proof had been produced; justice must take its course. It was the very day—the 31st of August, at nine o'clock in the morning of which the condemned man was to perish on the gallows. The death penalty in Brazil is generally commuted except in the case of negroes, but this time it was to be suffered by a white man. Such are the penal arrangements relative to crimes in the diamond arrayal, for which, in the public interest, the law allows no appear to mercy. Nothing could now save Joam Dacosta. It was not only life, but honor that he was about to lose. But on the 31st of August a man was approaching Manaos with all the speed his horse was capable of, and such had been the pace at which he had come that half a mile from the town the gallant creature fell, incapable of carrying him any further. The rider did not even stop to raise his steed. Evidently he had asked and obtained from it all that was possible, and, despite the state of exhaustion in which he found himself, he rushed off in the direction of the The man came from the eastern provinces, and had followed the left bank of the river. All his means had gone in the purchase of this horse, which, swifter far than any pirogue on the Amazon, had brought him to Manaos. It was Fragoso! Had, then, the brave fellow succeeded in the enterprise of which he had spoken to nobody? Had he found the party to which Torres belonged? Had he discovered some secret which would yet save Joam Dacosta? He hardly knew. But in any case he was in great haste to acquaint Judge Jarriquez with what he had ascertained during his short excursion. And this is what had happened. Fragoso had made no mistake when he recognized Torres as one of the captains of the party which was employed in the river provinces of the He set out, and on reaching the mouth of that tributary he learned that the chief of these capitaes da mato was then in the neighborhood. Without losing a minute, Fragoso started on the search, and, not without difficulty, succeeded in meeting him. To Fragoso's questions the chief of the party had no hesitation in replying; he had no interest in keeping silence with regard to the few simple matters on which he was interrogated. In fact, three questions only of importance were asked him by Fragoso, and these were: “Did not a captain of the woods named Torres belong to your party a few "At that time had he not one intimate friend among his companions who has recently died?" "And the name of that friend was?" This was all that Fragoso had learned. Was this information of a kind to modify Dacosta's position? It was hardly likely. Fragoso saw this, and pressed the chief of the band to tell him what he knew of this Ortega, of the place where he came from, and of his antecedents generally. Such information would have been of great importance if Ortega, as Torres had declared, was the true author of the crime of Tijuco. But unfortunately the chief could give him no information whatever in the What was certain was that Ortega had been a member of the band for many years, that an intimate friendship existed between him and Torres, that they were always seen together, and that Torres had watched at his bedside when he This was all the chief of the band knew, and he could tell no more. Fragoso, then, had to be contented with these insignificant details, and departed immediately. But if the devoted fellow had not brought back the proof that Ortega was the author of the crime of Tijuco, he had gained one thing, and that was the knowledge that Torres had told the truth when he affirmed that one of his comrades in the band had died, and that he had been present during his last The hypothesis that Ortega had given him the document in question had now become admissible. Nothing was more probable than that this document had reference to the crime of which Ortega was really the author, and that it contained the confession of the culprit, accompanied by circumstances which permitted of no doubt as to And so, if the document could be read, if the key had been found, if the cipher on which the system hung were known, no doubt of its truth could be But this cipher Fragoso did not know. A few more presumptions, a half-certainty that the adventurer had invented nothing, certain circumstances tending to prove that the secret of the matter was contained in the document—and that was all that the gallant fellow brought back from his visit to the chief of the gang of which Torres had been a member. Nevertheless, little as it was, he was in all haste to relate it to Judge Jarriquez. He knew that he had not an hour to lose, and that was why on this very morning, at about eight o'clock, he arrived, exhausted with fatigue, within half a mile of Manaos. The distance between there and the town he traversed in a few minutes. A kind of irresistible presentiment urged him on, and he had almost come to believe that Joam Dacosta's safety rested in his hands. Suddenly Fragoso stopped as if his feet had become rooted in the ground. He had reached the entrance to a small square, on which opened one of the There, in the midst of a dense crowd, arose the gallows, towering up some twenty feet, and from it there hung the rope! Fragoso felt his consciousness abandon him. He fell; his eyes involuntarily closed. He did not wish to look, and these words escaped his lips: "Too late! too late!" But by a superhuman effort he raised himself up. No; it was not too late, the corpse of Joam Dacosta was not hanging at the end of the rope! "Judge Jarriquez! Judge Jarriquez!" shouted Fragoso, and panting and bewildered he rushed toward the city gate, dashed up the principal street of Manaos, and fell half-dead on the threshold of the judge's house. The door was shut. Fragoso had still strength enough left to knock at it. One of the magistrate's servants came to open it; his master would see In spite of this denial, Fragoso pushed back the man who guarded the entrance, and with a bound threw himself into the judge's study. "I come from the province where Torres pursued his calling as captain of the woods!" he gasped. "Mr. Judge, Torres told the truth. Stop—stop the "You found the gang?" "And you have brought me the cipher of the document?" Fragoso did not reply. "Come, leave me alone! leave me alone!" shouted Jarriquez, and, a prey to an outburst of rage, he grasped the document to tear it to atoms. Fragoso seized his hands and stopped him. "The truth is there!" "I know," answered Jarriquez; "but it is a truth which will never see the light!" "It will appear—it must! it must!" "Once more, have you the cipher?" "No," replied Fragoso; "but, I repeat, Torres has not lied. One of his companions, with whom he was very intimate, died a few months ago, and there can be no doubt but that this man gave him the document he came to sell to "No," answered Jarriquez—"no, there is no doubt about it—as far as we are concerned; but that is not enough for those who dispose of the doomed man's life. Leave me!" Fragoso, repulsed, would not quit the spot. Again he threw himself at the judge's feet. "Joam Dacosta is innocent!" he cried; "you will not leave him to die? It was not he who committed the crime of Tijuco; it was the comrade of Torres, the author of that document! It As he uttered the name the judge bounded backward. A kind of calm swiftly succeeded to the tempest which raged within him. He dropped the document from his clenched hand, smoothed it out on the table, sat down, and, passing his hand over his eyes—"That name?" he said—"Ortega? Let us see," and then he proceeded with the new name brought back by Fragoso as he had done with the other names so vainly tried by himself. After placing it above the first six letters of the paragraph he obtained the following formula: O r t e g a P h y j s l "Nothing!" he said. "That give us—nothing!" And in fact the h placed under the r could not be expressed by a cipher, for, in alphabetical order, this letter occupies an earlier position to that of the r. The p, the y, the j, arranged beneath the letters o, t, e, disclosed the cipher 1, 4, 5, but as for the s and the l at the end of the word, the interval which separated them from the g and the a was a dozen letters, and hence impossible to express by a single cipher, so that they corresponded to neither g nor a. And here appalling shouts arose in the streets; they were the cries of Fragoso jumped to one of the windows, and opened it before the judge could hinder him. The people filled the road. The hour had come at which the doomed man was to start from the prison, and the crowd was flowing back to the spot where the gallows had been erected. Judge Jarriquez, quite frightful to look upon, devoured the lines of the document with a fixed stare. "The last letters!" he muttered. "Let us try once more the It was the last hope. And then, with a hand whose agitation nearly prevented him from writing at all, he placed the name of Ortega over the six last letters of the paragraph, as he had done over the first. An exclamation immediately escaped him. He saw, at first glance, that the six last letters were inferior in alphabetical order to those which composed Ortega's name, and that consequently they might yield the number. And when he reduced the formula, reckoning each later letter from the earlier letter of the word, he obtained. O r t e g a 4 3 2 5 1 3 S u v j h d The number thus disclosed was 432513. But was this number that which had been used in the document? Was it not as erroneous as those he had previously tried? At this moment the shouts below redoubled—shouts of pity which betrayed the sympathy of the excited crowd. A few minutes more were all that the doomed man had to live! Fragoso, maddened with grief, darted from the room! He wished to see, for the last time, his benefactor who was on the road to death! He longed to throw himself before the mournful procession and stop it, shouting, “Do not kill this just man! do not kill him!” But already Judge Jarriquez had placed the given number above the first letters of the paragraph, repeating them as often as was necessary, as 4 3 2 5 1 3 4 3 2 5 1 3 4 3 2 5 1 3 4 3 2 5 1 P h y j s l y d d q f d z x g a s g z z q q e h And then, reckoning the true letters according to their alphabetical order, he read: “Le v鲩table auteur du vol de——” A yell of delight escaped him! This number, 432513, was the number sought for so long! The name of Ortega had enabled him to discover it! At length he held the key of the document, which would incontestably prove the innocence of Joam Dacosta, and without reading any more he flew from his study into the street, To cleave the crowd, which opened as he ran, to dash to the prison, whence the convict was coming at the last moment, with his wife and children clinging to him with the violence of despair, was but the work of a minute for Judge Jarriquez. Stopping before Joam Dacosta, he could not speak for a second, and then these words escaped his lips: THE CRIME OF TIJUCO ON THE ARRIVAL of the judge the mournful procession halted. A roaring echo had repeated after him and again repeated the cry which escaped from every mouth: Then complete silence fell on all. The people did not want to lose one syllable of what was about to be proclaimed. Judge Jarriquez sat down on a stone seat, and then, while Minha, Benito, Manoel, and Fragoso stood round him, while Joam Dacosta clasped Yaquita to his heart, he first unraveled the last paragraph of the document by means of the number, and as the words appeared by the institution of the true letters for the cryptological ones, he divided and punctuated them, and then read it out in a loud voice. And this is what he read in the midst of profound Le v鲩table auteur du vol des diamants et de 43 251343251 343251 34 325 134 32513432 51 34 Ph yjslyddf dzxgas gz zqq ehx gkfndrxu ju gi l'assassinat des soldats qui escortaient le convoi, 32513432513 432 5134325 134 32513432513 43 251343 ocytdxvksbx bhu ypohdvy rym huhpuydkjox ph commis dans la nuit du vingt-deux janvier mil251343 2513 43 2513 43 251343251 3432513 432 etnpmv ffov pd pajx hy ynojyggay meqynfu q1n huit-cent vingt-six, n'est donc pas Joam Dacosta, 5134 3251 3425 134 3251 3432 513 4325 1343251 mvly fgsu zmqiz tlb qgyu gsqe uvb nrcc injustement condamn頠 mort, c'est moi, les mis鲡ble 34325134325 13432513 4 3251 3432 513 43 251343251 l4msyuhqpz drrgcroh e pqxu fivv rpl ph employ頤e l'administration du district diamantin, 3432513 43 251343251343251 34 32513432 513432513 hqsntzh hh nfepmqkyuuexkto gz gkyuumfv out, moi seul, qui signe de mon vrai nom, Ortega. 432 513 4325 134 32513 43 251 3432 513 432513 syk rpl xhxq rym vkloh hh oto zvdk spp “The real author of the robbery of the diamonds and of the murder of the soldiers who escorted the convoy, committed during the night of the twenty-second of January, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-six, was thus not Joam Dacosta, unjustly condemned to death; it was I, the wretched servant of the Administration of the diamond district; yes, I alone, who sign this with my true name, Ortega.” The reading of this had hardly finished when the air was rent with prolonged hurrahs. What could be more conclusive than this last paragraph, which summarized the whole of the document, and proclaimed so absolutely the innocence of the fazender of Iquitos, and which snatched from the gallows this victim of a frightful judicial mistake! Joam Dacosta, surrounded by his wife, his children, and his friends, was unable to shake the hands which were held out to him. Such was the strength of his character that a reaction occurred, tears of joy escaped from his eyes, and at the same instant his heart was lifted up to that Providence which had come to save him so miraculously at the moment he was about to offer the last expiation to that God who would not permit the accomplishment of that greatest of crimes, the death of an innocent man! Yes! There could be no doubt as to the vindication of Joam Dacosta. The true author of the crime of Tijuco confessed of his own free will, and described the circumstances under which it had been perpetrated! By means of the number Judge Jarriquez interpreted the whole of And this was what Ortega confessed. He had been the colleague of Joam Dacosta, employed, like him, at Tijuco, in the offices of the governor of the diamond arrayal. He had been the official appointed to accompany the convoy to Rio de Janeiro, and, far from recoiling at the horrible idea of enriching himself by means of murder and robbery, he had informed the smugglers of the very day the convoy was to leave Tijuco. During the attack of the scoundrels, who awaited the convoy just beyond Villa Rica, he pretended to defend himself with the soldiers of the escort, and then, falling among the dead, he was carried away by his accomplices. Hence it was that the solitary soldier who survived the massacre had reported that Ortega had perished in the struggle. But the robbery did not profit the guilty man in the long run, for, a little time afterward, he was robbed by those whom he had helped to commit the crime. Penniless, and unable to enter Tijuco again, Ortega fled away to the provinces in the north of Brazil, to those districts of the Upper Amazon where the capitaes da mato are to be found. He had to live somehow, and so he joined this not very honorable company; they neither asked him who he was nor whence he came, and so Ortega became a captain of the woods, and for many years he followed the trade of a chaser of men. During this time Torres, the adventurer, himself in absolute want, became his companion. Ortega and he became most intimate. But, as he had told Torres, remorse began gradually to trouble the scoundrel's life. The remembrance of his crime became horrible to him. He knew that another had been condemned in his place! He knew subsequently that the innocent man had escaped from the last penalty, but that he would never be free from the shadow of the capital sentence! And then, during an expedition of his party for several months beyond the Peruvian frontier, chance caused Ortega to visit the neighborhood of Iquitos, and there in Joam Garral, who did not recognize him, he recognized Joam Dacosta. Henceforth he resolved to make all the reparation he could for the injustice of which his old comrade had been the victim. He committed to the document all the facts relative to the crime of Tijuco, writing it first in French, which had been his mother's native tongue, and then putting it into the mysterious form we know, his intention being to transmit it to the fazender of Iquitos, with the cipher by which it could be read. Death prevented his completing his work of reparation. Mortally wounded in a scuffle with some negroes on the Madeira, Ortega felt he was doomed. His comrade Torres was then with him. He thought he could intrust to his friend the secret which had so grievously darkened his life. He gave him the document, and made him swear to convey it to Joam Dacosta, whose name and address he gave him, and with his last breath he whispered the number 432513, without which the document would remain undecipherable. Ortega dead, we know how the unworthy Torres acquitted himself of his mission, how he resolved to turn to his own profit the secret of which he was the possessor, and how he tried to make it the subject of an odious Torres died without accomplishing his work, and carried his secret with him. But the name of Ortega, brought back by Fragoso, and which was the signature of the document, had afforded the means of unraveling the cryptogram, thanks to the sagacity of Judge Jarriquez. Yes, the material proof sought after for so long was the incontestable witness of the innocence of Joam Dacosta, returned to life, restored to honor. The cheers redoubled when the worthy magistrate, in a loud voice, and for the edification of all, read from the document this And from that moment Judge Jarriquez, who possessed this indubitable proof, arranged with the chief of the police, and declined to allow Joam Dacosta, while waiting new instructions from Rio Janeiro, to stay in any prison but his own house. There could be no difficulty about this, and in the center of the crowd of the entire population of Manaos, Joam Dacosta, accompanied by all his family, beheld himself conducted like a conquerer to the magistrate's And in that minute the honest fazender of Iquitos was well repaid for all that he had suffered during the long years of exile, and if he was happy for his family's sake more than for his own, he was none the less proud for his country's sake that this supreme injustice had not been And in all this what had become of Fragoso? Well, the good-hearted fellow was covered with caresses! Benito, Manoel, and Minha had overwhelmed him, and Lina had by no means spared him. He did not know what to do, he defended himself as best he could. He did not deserve anything like it. Chance alone had done it. Were any thanks due to him for having recognized Torres as a captain of the woods? No, certainly not. As to his idea of hurrying off in search of the band to which Torres had belonged, he did not think it had been worth much, and as to the name of Ortega, he did not even know its value. Gallant Fragoso! Whether he wished it or no, he had none the less saved And herein what a strange succession of different events all tending to the same end. The deliverance of Fragoso at the time when he was dying of exhaustion in the forest of Iquitos; the hospitable reception he had met with at the fazenda, the meeting with Torres on the Brazilian frontier, his embarkation on the jangada; and lastly, the fact that Fragoso had seen him "Well, yes!" Fragoso ended by exclaiming; "but it is not to me that all this happiness is due, it is due to Lina!" "To me?" replied the young mulatto. "No doubt of it. Without the liana, without the idea of the liana, could I ever have been the cause of so much happiness?" So that Fragoso and Lina were praised and petted by all the family, and by all the new friends whom so many trials had procured them at Manaos, need hardly be insisted on. But had not Judge Jarriquez also had his share in this rehabilitation of an innocent man? If, in spite of all the shrewdness of his analytical talents, he had not been able to read the document, which was absolutely undecipherable to any one who had not got the key, had he not at any rate discovered the system on which the cryptogram was composed? Without him what could have been done with only the name of Ortega to reconstitute the number which the author of the crime and Torres, both of whom were dead, alone And so he also received abundant thanks. Needless to say that the same day there was sent to Rio de Janeiro a detailed report of the whole affair, and with it the original document and the cipher to enable it to be read. New instructions from the minister of justice had to be waited for, though there could be no doubt that they would order the immediate discharge of the prisoner. A few days would thus have to be passed at Manaos, and then Joam Dacosta and his people, free from all constraint, and released from all apprehension, would take leave of their host to go on board once more and continue their descent of the Amazon to Para, where the voyage was intended to terminate with the double marriage of Minha and Manoel and Lina and Fragoso. Four days afterward, on the fourth of September, the order of discharge arrived. The document had been recognized as authentic. The handwriting was really that of Ortega, who had been formerly employed in the diamond district, and there could be no doubt that the confession of his crime, with the minutest details that were given, had been entirely written with his own The innocence of the convict of Villa Rica was at length admitted. The rehabilitation of Joam Dacosta was at last officially proclaimed. That very day Judge Jarriquez dined with the family on board the giant raft, and when evening came he shook hands with them all. Touching were the adieus, but an engagement was made for them to see him again on their return at Manaos, and later on the fazenda of Iquitos. On the morning of the morrow, the fifth of September, the signal for departure was given. Joam Dacosta and Yaquita, with their daughter and sons, were on the deck of the enormous raft. The jangada had its moorings slackened off and began to move with the current, and when it disappeared round the bend of the Rio Negro, the hurrahs of the whole population of Manaos, who were assembled on the bank, again and again re-echoed across the THE LOWER AMAZON LITTLE REMAINS to tell of the second part of the voyage down the mighty river. It was but a series of days of joy. Joam Dacosta returned to a new life, which shed its happiness on all who belonged to him. The giant raft glided along with greater rapidity on the waters now swollen by the floods. On the left they passed the small village of Don Jose de Maturi, and on the right the mouth of that Madeira which owes its name to the floating masses of vegetable remains and trunks denuded of their foliage which it bears from the depths of Bolivia. They passed the archipelago of Caniny, whose islets are veritable boxes of palms, and before the village of Serpa, which, successively transported from one back to the other, has definitely settled on the left of the river, with its little houses, whose thresholds stand on the yellow carpet of the beach. The village of Silves, built on the left of the Amazon, and the town of Villa Bella, which is the principal guarana market in the whole province, were soon left behind by the giant raft. And so was the village of Faro and its celebrated river of the Nhamundas, on which, in 1539, Orellana asserted he was attacked by female warriors, who have never been seen again since, and thus gave us the legend which justifies the immortal name of the river of the Here it is that the province of Rio Negro terminates. The jurisdiction of Para then commences; and on the 22d of September the family, marveling much at a valley which has no equal in the world, entered that portion of the Brazilian empire which has no boundary to the east except the Atlantic. "How magnificent!" remarked Minha, over and over again. "How long!" murmured Manoel. "How beautiful!" repeated Lina. "When shall we get there?" murmured Fragoso. And this was what might have been expected of these folks from the different points of view, though time passed pleasantly enough with them all the same. Benito, who was neither patient nor impatient, had recovered all his former good humor. Soon the jangada glided between interminable plantations of cocoa-trees with their somber green flanked by the yellow thatch or ruddy tiles of the roofs of the huts of the settlers on both banks from Obidos up to the town of Then there opened out the mouth of the Rio Trombetas, bathing with its black waters the houses of Obidos, situated at about one hundred and eighty miles from Belem, quite a small town, and even a citade with large streets bordered with handsome habitations, and a great center for cocoa produce. Then they saw another tributary, the Tapajos, with its greenish-gray waters descending from the south-west; and then Santarem, a wealthy town of not less than five thousand inhabitants, Indians for the most part, whose nearest houses were built on the vast beach of white sand. After its departure from Manaos the jangada did not stop anywhere as it passed down the much less encumbered course of the Amazon. Day and night it moved along under the vigilant care of its trusty pilot; no more stoppages either for the gratification of the passengers or for business purposes. Unceasingly it progressed, and the end rapidly grew nearer. On leaving Alemquer, situated on the left bank, a new horizon appeared in view. In place of the curtain of forests which had shut them in up to then, our friends beheld a foreground of hills, whose undulations could be easily descried, and beyond them the faint summits of veritable mountains vandyked across the distant depth of sky. Neither Yaquita, nor her daughter, nor Lina, nor old Cybele, had ever seen anything like this. But in this jurisdiction of Para, Manoel was at home, and he could tell them the names of the double chain which gradually narrowed the valley of the "To the right," said he, "that is the Sierra de Paracuarta, which curves in a half-circle to the south! To the left, that is the Sierra de Curuva, of which we have already passed the first outposts." "Then they close in?" asked Fragoso. "They close in!" replied Manoel. And the two young men seemed to understand each other, for the same slight but significant nodding of the head accompanied the question and reply. At last, notwithstanding the tide, which since leaving Obidos had begun to be felt, and which somewhat checked the progress of the raft, the town of Monto Alegre was passed, then that of Pravnha de Onteiro, then the mouth of the Xingu, frequented by Yurumas Indians, whose principal industry consists in preparing their enemies' heads for natural history cabinets. To what a superb size the Amazon had now developed as already this monarch of rivers gave signs of opening out like a sea! Plants from eight to ten feet high clustered along the beach, and bordered it with a forest of reeds. Porto de Mos, Boa Vista, and Gurupa, whose prosperity is on the decline, were soon among the places left in Then the river divided into two important branches, which flowed off toward the Atlantic, one going away northeastward, the other eastward, and between them appeared the beginning of the large island of Marajo. This island is quite a province in itself. It measures no less than a hundred and eighty leagues in circumference. Cut up by marshes and rivers, all savannah to the east, all forest to the west, it offers most excellent advantages for the raising of cattle, which can here be seen in their thousands. This immense barricade of Marajo is the natural obstacle which has compelled the Amazon to divide before precipitating its torrents of water into the sea. Following the upper branch, the jangada, after passing the islands of Caviana and Mexiana, would have found an embouchure of some fifty leagues across, but it would also have met with the bar of the prororoca, that terrible eddy which, for the three days preceding the new or full moon, takes but two minutes instead of six hours to raise the river from twelve to fifteen feet above ordinary high-water mark. This is by far the most formidable of tide-races. Most fortunately the lower branch, known as the Canal of Breves, which is the natural area of the Para, is not subject to the visitations of this terrible phenomenon, and its tides are of a more regular description. Araujo, the pilot, was quite aware of this. He steered, therefore, into the midst of magnificent forests, here and there gliding past island covered with muritis palms; and the weather was so favorable that they did not experience any of the storms which so frequently rage along this Breves Canal. A few days afterward the jangada passed the village of the same name, which, although built on the ground flooded for many months in the year, has become, since 1845, an important town of a hundred houses. Throughout these districts, which are frequented by Tapuyas, the Indians of the Lower Amazon become more and more commingled with the white population, and promise to be completely absorbed by them. And still the jangada continued its journey down the river. Here, at the risk of entanglement, it grazed the branches of the mangliers, whose roots stretched down into the waters like the claws of gigantic crustaceans; then the smooth trunks of the paletuviers, with their pale-green foliage, served as the resting-places for the long poles of the crew as they kept the raft in the strength of the current. Then came the Tocantins, whose waters, due to the different rivers of the province of Goyaz, mingle with those of the Amazon by an embouchure of great size, then the Moju, then the town of Majestically the panorama of both banks moved along without a pause, as though some ingenious mechanism necessitated its unrolling in the opposite direction to that of the stream. Already numerous vessels descending the river, ubas, egariteas, vigilandas, pirogues of all builds, and small coasters from the lower districts of the Amazon and the Atlantic seaboard, formed a procession with the giant raft, and seemed like sloops beside some might At length there appeared on the left Santa Maria de Belem do Para—the "town" as they call it in that country—with its picturesque lines of white houses at many different levels, its convents nestled among the palm-trees, the steeples of its cathedral and of Nostra Senora de Merced, and the flotilla of its brigantines, brigs, and barks, which form its commercial communications with the old world. The hearts of the passengers of the giant raft beat high. At length they were coming to the end of the voyage which they had thought they would never reach. While the arrest of Joam detained them at Manaos, halfway on their journey, could they ever have hoped to see the capital of the province of It was in the course of this day, the 15th of October—four months and a half after leaving the fazenda of Iquitos—that, as they rounded a sharp bend in the river, Belem came into sight. The arrival of the jangada had been signaled for some days. The whole town knew the story of Joam Dacosta. They came forth to welcome him, and to him and his people accorded a most sympathetic reception. Hundreds of craft of all sorts conveyed them to the fazender, and soon the jangada was invaded by all those who wished to welcome the return of their compatriot after his long exile. Thousands of sight-seers—or more correctly speaking, thousands of friends crowded on to the floating village as soon as it came to its moorings, and it was vast and solid enough to support the entire population. Among those who hurried on board one of the first pirogues had brought Madame Valdez. Manoel's mother was at last able to clasp to her arms the daughter whom her son had chosen. If the good lady had not been able to come to Iquitos, was it not as though a portion of the fazenda, with her new family, had come down the Amazon to her? Before evening the pilot Araujo had securely moored the raft at the entrance of a creek behind the arsenal. That was to be its last resting-place, its last halt, after its voyage of eight hundred leagues on the great Brazilian artery. There the huts of the Indians, the cottage of the negroes, the store-rooms which held the valuable cargo, would be gradually demolished; there the principal dwelling, nestled beneath its verdant tapestry of flowers and foliage, and the little chapel whose humble bell was then replying to the sounding clangor from the steeples of Belem, would each in its turn But, ere this was done, a ceremony had to take place on the jangada—the marriage of Manoel and Minha, the marriage of Lina and Fragoso. To Father Passanha fell the duty of celebrating the double union which promised so happily. In that little chapel the two couples were to receive the nuptial benediction from his hands. If it happened to be so small as to be only capable of holding the members of Dacosta's family, was not the giant raft large enough to receive all those who wished to assist at the ceremony? and if not, and the crowd became so great, did not the ledges of the river banks afford sufficient room for as many others of the sympathizing crowd as were desirous of welcoming him whom so signal a reparation had made the hero of the It was on the morrow, the 16th of October, that with great pomp the marriages were celebrated. It was a magnificent day, and from about ten o'clock in the morning the raft began to receive its crowd of guests. On the bank could be seen almost the entire population of Belem in holiday costume. On the river, vessels of all sorts crammed with visitors gathered round the enormous mass of timber, and the waters of the Amazon literally disappeared even up to the left bank beneath the vast flotilla. When the chapel bell rang out its opening note it seemed like a signal of joy to ear and eye. In an instant the churches of Belem replied to the bell of the jangada. The vessels in the port decked themselves with flags up to their mastheads, and the Brazilian colors were saluted by the many other national flags. Discharges of musketry reverberated on all sides, and it was only with difficulty that their joyous detonations could cope with the loud hurrahs from the assembled thousands. The Dacosta family came forth from their house and moved through the crowd toward the little chapel. Joam was received with absolutely frantic applause. He gave his arm to Madame Valdez; Yaquita was escorted by the governor of Belem, who, accompanied by the friends of the young army surgeon, had expressed a wish to honor the ceremony with his presence. Manoel walked by the side of Minha, who looked most fascinating in her bride's costume, and then came Fragoso, holding the hand of Lina, who seemed quite radiant with joy. Then followed Benito, then old Cybele and the servants of the worthy family between the double ranks of the crew of the Padre Passanha awaited the two couples at the entrance of the chapel. The ceremony was very simple, and the same bands which had formerly blessed Joam and Yaquita were again stretched forth to give the nuptial benediction to their child. So much happiness was not likely to be interrupted by the sorrow of long separation. In fact, Manoel Valdez almost immediately sent in his resignation, so as to join the family at Iquitos, where he is still following the profession of a country doctor. Naturally the Fragosos did not hesitate to go back with those who were to them friends rather than masters. Madame Valdez had no desire to separate so happy a group, but she insisted on one thing, and that was that they should often come and see her at Belem. Nothing could be easier. Was not the mighty river a bond of communication between Belem and Iquitos? In a few days the first mail steamer was to begin a regular and rapid service, and it would then only take a week to ascend the Amazon, on which it had taken the giant raft so many months to drift. The important commercial negotiations, ably managed by Benito, were carried through under the best of conditions, and soon of what had formed this jangada—that is to say, the huge raft of timber constructed from an entire forest at Iquitos—there remained not a trace. A month afterward the fazender, his wife, his son, Manoel and Minha Valdez, Lina and Fragoso, departed by one of the Amazon steamers for the immense establishment at Iquitos of which Benito was to take Joam Dacosta re-entered his home with his head erect, and it was indeed a family of happy hearts which he brought back with him from beyond the Brazilian frontier. As for Fragoso, twenty times a day was he heard to repeat, “What! without the liana?” and he wound up by bestowing the name on the young mulatto who, by her affection for the gallant fellow, fully justified its appropriateness. “If it were not for the one letter,” he said, “would not Lina and Liana be the same?”

TehMac If your intention is ultimately to date this girl on a serious level, you should text her more than once a week. In a July study titled “Mobile’s Impact If you want to read similar articles to He Broke Up With Me but Keeps Texting Me, How to Masturbate for the First Time - Girls . Expert Dating Tip for Single Women – Stop Texting with Him Until He Asks You on a Date Dating Coach for Women After 40 Years Old Advises the Single Woman to Stop Texting Men Until the Guy Asks for a First Date But then it keeps me thinking, I think the problem with girls being in the relationship as someone who want to keep texting, is because we are still in the beginning of dating phase where it is started through texting. This is a huge reason why guys keep in contact texting and don't step up to see you. Seven Ways to Text with Graciousness and Savvy. Comment back and include what you want the world to consider about keeping others first while texting. Last day of class offered her a ride home she told me she had a bf. I have been texting her everyday for the past 5 days. The Temptation of Texting, Calling, or Writing with a No Contact Order—Don’t Unfortunately, despite popular belief, not all attorneys are rich. Everyday he's been texting me and I keep telling him I'm not this girl named Emily. . but the thing is, you should text her first all the time. which I did. You lack an abundance mentality and you don’t have ANY other options. then one day he texted me and then i pretended not to know who he was then he asked. Well now she has quit her job and stays home with her so called boy friend. Except one thing. It hurts every time she texts me (lately her texts to me are funny pictures from online but before they were her saying she is sorry and misses me). They like the feeling of being chased by a guy that they like. This may be for fun, but the longer it continues, the more likely she is crushing on you. Its just how it is. The Womanizing Texter. 2 of them he said were his best friends so I just left it at that and I trusted him talking to them. I won't let her controll me anymore. It also can be the best tool to use if you’d like to really, really annoy people. RE: Girls texting back first So, I did a quick facebook Snoope and found something. I'm only 15 and I was grossed out when he said that. Today I will be talking about if a girl likes you if she keeps texting you My vlogging channel: https://www. I am a little more cautious than usual because I was snooping through his phone once and I found a text that was sent to her at 3:30AM after he was drunk at the bars asking her what her buzzer number was. > This girl that keeps texting me has the most boring text so instead of saying something funny or charming like I usually Things seem to be going well between the two of you—at least via text—but you know that he’s just not into you. Does that mean he's not into me? Texting turned girls into sabermetrics freaks who only care about the numbers. Girl I fucked keeps snapping me instead of texting This girl I fucked last, whom I made squirt and pretty sure I did what I had to do for her to call me back kind of pulled away from texting. I started to back off. 5 Toxic Behaviors that STOP Your Ex Girlfriend From Loving You Again 1. How do I stop him from texting me? What To Do When A Guy Suddenly Stops Texting You. So I'm wondering if girls get annoyed if guys text message them everday I love my husband very much, but one thing that bugs me is that he is always receiving texts from another woman at church. He keeps on telling me how awesome his show more So, thanks for reading guys :) I broke up with my ex about 3 weeks ago, it was a mutual agreement and we both agreed we fell out of love and it would be easier if we weren't together. Texting guys seldom makes logical sense. Therefore, if we have our first bang on Saturday, I'll probably only text her on Wednesday to set up plans for the upcoming weekend. She found out you were trying to get with a bunch of other girls. I think you should be honest and do what you are comfortable with. Those girls always end up with a guy right after me and they get everything I wanted to have with those girls. Texting is practically the most common form of communication nowadays. Texting has no tone so we look for anything concrete to give us Texting girls is a skill that anyone can learn. By: Bobby If you don’t know how to text a girl back in a way that keeps building attraction She texts me first, so I Does My Ex Want Me Back if She Keeps Texting Me? So does the act of texting you mean your ex girlfriend wants to get back together? Not necessarily and probably not now, at any rate. me how my number got into his phone (i know it doesnt make any sense ) but all the time he keep texting me first and most of the time i dont reply and sometimes At first it seems sweet that they care but eventually you realize they want a texting relationship rather than a real one. How To Make A Girl Want You Over Text One – Always Stay Positive. Texting other girls behind my back 10-11-2013, 01:04 PM My boyfriend and I have been together for a little over two years now, we first started dating and I knew about him talking to girls and hanging out with them, I was ok with it, he said they were just friends. At the end they may even say "I had a good time, let's do it again?" and they usually text me first after the date. I never texted out first. If it is to gain something concrete, like a date, be sure that your texts have been guiding you to that goal. And I've learned to just not bother with women like that. Don’t keep My ex girlfriend of 6 months dumped me just over a month ago and keeps texting me. make her want you. It’s like a secret texting language that only girls can truly understand and appreciate. Not the best Some girl keeps texting me insisting I'm this guy named Josh. like shes good at baking to sell her self to me. How to Send Dirty Texts. One week after, when I saw him again, he told me he just broke up with her. Texting keeps you there for when they want you, but also keeps you at arm's length and keeps him safely out of a relationship. My questions are. that I am trying to give her space and not put my feelings first. I just feel like I'm too naive and not a real guy since it keeps happening to me. I have had plenty of relationships and time dealing with girls that were attracted to me, and I developed the same attraction and magically they leave. But until now he is acting weird, same behaviour. For a new plate, that's usually once a week. That's a girl who is bored, wants attention, maybe does it for fun, to flirt for fun, will use you for emotional support. However, many more would be rich if we had a nickel every time we heard a client with a protection order against him (or her) say, “but she (or he) texted me first!” . so stop texting her all the time and let her text you. That initial interest that she had in you will more than likely begin to wane at this point. For this guy, texting is the perfect way to keep you—a woman—at arm’s length. you need to be a little harder to get. I told him i fall for him a month ago but he told me he is not ready because he just got out of 6 years relationship. if a guy can master this, they definitely have 15 Reasons Why Your Ex Still Texts You and Stays in Touch. Why has he stopped texting me? it’s one of the most frequently asked questions in the dating game, and also one of the easiest to explain. if she doesnt text you first My Ex Won't Stop Texting Me He has admitted many times that he doesn't love me and that he has had many girls since we've broke up. youtube. if she doesnt text you first A guy was texting me first thing in the mornings & thru out the day then he stopped texting first. In How to Quit Being a Loser With Women, you’ll learn when I get her number, I don’t call or text unless she texts first OR I’m calling or texting to invite her out. You’re not treating it like you would a normal conversation I have a lot of readers ask how often they should text someone. At first, I was replying to the texting talking to her, hoping something more would come out of it, however, in the past couple of days I've decided she's not my type of girl. He wouldn't have left if he cared. so i cut my lose's n moved on as i didnt want to waste time. But then sometimes they just keep texting back and forth for a week or more (and I am responsive!) without asking for a second date. And yes, both men and women are guilty! 1. #3. My plan was to contact her the day after and ask about her schedule. The Ultimate Guide For Texting Girls. he’s stringing me along and texting other girls okay, basically girls like it when you text them first. Sometimes the questions I get are really hard ones, and today’s is an example. Ever been texting a girl you wanted to get to know better and all you get are one word responses? While a few well placed one word responses are fine, it might be aggravating to constantly get nothing back. “I especially notice it when I’m texting another girl friend, because we feed off of each other. I got my first cell phone when I was 12 years old and started dating my boyfriend, Nick, when I was Her Question: This is the fifth time I've initiated the texting. I got a cute friend who'se a girl. On a whole, the rules for texting a guy you like are similar to the rules for dating. I deserve someone who will risk much more than being grounded for leaving the house at 2 a. I like it if the texts are thought out and actually have a point. she keeps texting "Make sure you know WHO you're texting. So far in one week they have 640 text messages. If you’re a girl talking to another girl and you feel like you’re in a subtle-texting stalemate, it may be in your best interest to ask her if she likes you, especially if you’re unsure whether or not she is interested in dating girls. we text everyday. Today is your lucky day. If you have more interest than them in the relationship they will lose interest. Signs a girl might be in to you over text! My jewelry line: http://www. Keeping an ex girlfriend on the other end of your phone is always a good idea, just in case you want to get together with her later on down the line. Finally, Thank you for not liking my dad. (me, then she didn't reply) then ask her if she thinks its weird when girls shave it bare . She Doesn’t Call or Text Back Because Because She’s Bored. #2. One of my friends that Did she know that you were infatuated with her? If she knows that you are infatuated with her, she is toying with for self serving reasons. I'm on some of the dating apps and I've had a number of really good first dates with guys. In fact, a man can actually be texting several women on a regular basis. Ever since, she texts me almost every hour (even if I don't reply), asking how I am, what I am upto, she even said in one text she really likes me (which I didn't reply to). So why do some girls do that—even when you don’t respond?! Enjoy your day!” or you be the one to send the first text and say, “Just thinking about you. If he keeps it up, shorten your replies and take How to Reply to One Word Texts from Girls. Read on to discover the 21 shocking mistakes men make when texting girls, so you can stop burning numbers and start getting dates! So you asked a girl out, she said no, and suddenly she is hammering you with text. sooo does that means she has a crush on me? i asked her if she rly like me but she refuses. Feel free Don’t text her everyday, it makes you look bad…. " someone sent me that many texts without giving me the opportunity to respond first the phone a little bit helps me. How to Masturbate Anally . As in She starts texting me first, but it's always so bland and direct. She misunderstands my request of “what’s your schedule” and/or doesn’t give me a date. Everybody loves the feeling of “He texts me every day, does he like me?” is not an easy question to answer, because each man has a different motive. So, why he keeps texting you then? Guys don’t usually keep texting someone if they’re not interested in them, but if they do, it could be one of several simple reasons. you dont want to look clingy, so dont get upset with her if she doesnt text you first immediately. If you are texting a special girl that you like, you must always keep it ultra positive. They probably need some time to decompress as well, and a rapid fire text might make them start to wonder, “If we keep dating or begin a relationship, is this person going to be constantly texting me every two minutes?” Playing By The Rules When Texting After The First Date I wasn't all that into her at first, but over time her flirty ways started to build attraction in me. she'll find it as youre too easy to have. Really, there is no “one size fits all” answer, but in my opinion, continuity is king! Need Advice: Dating a girl that keeps texting other guys! Page 1 of 3 (1, 2, 3): I'd drop her for any one of several things you mention. Most desperate act: I have considered spy ware on her phone to see what she it texting him. Girl keeps texting me. of why they’re texting you in the first place. The Four Types Of Texters To Beware. "There's nothing wrong with texting after a breakup, especially if you parted on semi-good terms. Further through the day my bf was really moody and different towards me and then he finally Does Double Texting Ruin A Potential Relationship? Here’s The Truth From Real Guys double texting is totally fine — at first. He wants a child now and I want a child later, so it's over. This is also a great game to pass the time while you’re bored at work. If you chose to read this feature, you likely had a situation where you thought you were totally cool with a guy and suddenly you are asking, why did he stop texting me? Why Do Guys Send Text Messages To Keep In Touch While Dating? when a guy asks me out – esp for a first date – via txt and doesn’t even bother to call or Hi all, Had a one night stand with this girl I met on tinder. Girl keeps texting me? does she like me or just friendship? Got this girls number n we text for a bit and really like her. Signs She Likes You Through Texting. m. Be Completely Honest He keeps texting you one question after another and therefore you keep having to respond with long paragraphs, huh? Enough. But it IS a lot more positive a sign than you might initially realize. 8. I'm trying to make a clean break and he's texting me as if we are still together but our breakup wasn't over anything small. My idea was to show her the letter first and ask what she thought about it. I think it’s inappropriate for a married man to text with another woman, but they both think it’s harmless. Literally NOTHING. She sometimes asked me to help her daily stuff, like gas meter reading Don't be the secret or the one that keeps running back to what broke you in the first place. My memories of what she looks like is very faint because she didnt have any strong markers, but the location of her sister matches what she told me. 7. One of the most common questions from girls when it comes to dating and texting is that, “Why did he suddenly stop texting me?” You may complain, “He stops texting me”, and when you say it, it does not mean that he has not texted you in the past a few hours. Check out these six common texting mistakes that can kill any new relationship. The first one – where you were planning to meet your coworker – came as no surprise, because of course you would need to handle some logistical issues with meeting each other for lunch. okay, basically girls like it when you text them first. The first move is 'The Snub'. The 10 Questions About Responding To Your Ex’s Texts You Have Been Dying to Ask! One of the things you will learn today is not only how to respond to an ex asking how you are doing, but let me give you some answers now on how to deal with a whole assortment of text message questions he might send you such as: I wrote a letter to her ex lover asking him to stop all contact. After I fucked her last week I went to Miami the following weekend. She texts me everyday and she likes to start hello first. If things are confusing try talking it out with the guy. Again, texting is easy. In this case, texting is his low commitment way to stay in touch. But don’t underestimate how fun this game can be. This new fad of text messaging was too impersonal, too informal, too slow, and not long after, too popular to At first, we scoffed at this “short message service,” famously known as SMS. Check out our top 10 list below and follow our links to read our full in-depth review of each online dating site, alongside which you'll find costs and features lists, user reviews and videos to help you make the right choice. I know many of you have caught your husband on Facebook with another woman, or texting another woman, and your whole world is thrown up in the air. But anyway, he has a girlfriend so that was that. Girl has a bf but keeps texting me. 33. Now that i started texting him less often he usually text me first or call me. It’s a great texting game that may help in forming a bond with your partner, especially if you like him/her. Serious Discussions - Is it OK to bring up the topic via text? What She Really Wants You To Text talk to you in a bit — my supervisor keeps emailing and I don’t think I can tell him I’m busy talking to a pretty girl. Odds are, you don’t. She derives satisfaction in knowing that she still owns a piece of you even though shore rejected you. Add your answer to the question "He dumped me for another girl so why does he keep texting me?" Already have an account? Login first Don't have an account? Register in under one minute and get your own agony aunt column - recommended! Texting With Your Ex After The Breakup Alright, so here's what you do when your ex keeps texting you. She keeps sending me pictures of her. Here’s what you need to do to make a girl want you inside out over text. Almost overnight, the problem of girls not texting back and girls not calling back all but disappeared. Discussion in 'The Vestibule' started by JohnWallIsMyHero11, Jan 19, 2011. For some guidance, here are five of the common mistakes guys make when texting girls – and what you can do to avoid them. Given the ease of texting, it’s easy to slide into frequent, continuheous messaging. He still responds when I text him but seems a little distracted? Girls forget that guys get nervous too. For example, if she is telling me a funny story or updating me on some breaking news or even asking me about what my plans are for the weekend. yesterday morning i was in bed and he text me and i said to my bf will you check who it is and he was like oh its just O2. Texting personal and mundane details — and the quick responses that follow — can make people feel closer. Usually, flaky girls do reply to the first texts because they enjoy that push-pull dynamic going on, and push-pull starts with a pull. Filed Under: Ask Glenn Tagged With: best first texts, best texts to send a girl, dating advice for men, dating advice for older men, didn't text back, Glenn Pearce, how to get a girl to text back, how to get a girl to text you back, how to get a text back, is she ignoring me, is she ignoring my text, no text back, she didn t text back, texting I think you and I are on the same page here…I suggest that women DO kiss on the first date if they want a second date…A lot a women, and I mean a lot, make the intention of NOT kissing on the first date…It’s not saying it will fail the relationship…For most women it is like a self-respect thing…They feel if it gets too intimate too fast, the relationship doesn’t last as long If she keeps texting me, I will just ignore/answer depending on what she asks. we met n a few times but nevr kissed or anything. My ex girlfriend of 6 months dumped me just over a month ago and keeps texting me. But it still left me scratching my head a bit why did spending more time with a girl and having her come to like you more lead to her falling off the face of the Earth and not returning text and calls later? 15 Texting Mistakes That Stop You From Getting the Date a date within the first or second day of texting. My crush told me first he is in love with his girl. You just scored the digits of your second hottest prospect on OKCupid and you're ready to start scheduling actual dates. Every Monday I try to answer a Reader Question. I am not a person that ignores people, I will always want to make people happy. We texted for like a week after and she came over again and we had sex again. Say No To Texting And Driving 32. soon after i tried to meet with her again but then i found out she was still involved with her ex. Help! If learning how to text guys and keep them interested without being annoying is a struggle for you, there are several important points to keep in mind. ive been with my guy now for a year and i have found out he has been texting two different girls i forgot it the first time and moved on but he started texting another 3 weeks ago do u think he can stop it so we can move on? or do u Just think ain't man enough to tell me he don't want me any more . We hung out watching tv that night and she was just really starting to get annoying and too handsey and I was just starting to be like I'm not into this and I just decided we should go to sleep and I'd have to tell her I wasn't interested anymore the next day. Share 2K. I'm just not interested in that kind of a relationship anymore. You use it when your ex sends Also, you might stress your poor date out. If a guy suddenly stops texting you, the best possible thing you can do in the moment is take a step back and focus on your vibe. told me he had fun and it was nice meeting me, and to text him when I got home so he knew I got home safe. He told me right away he has a girlfriend, and yes I will admit I was a little disappointed because it is not often you meet an attractive guy who you click with so well. Chill out. It’s a stigma/double standard though – because it’s safe to assume that when you’re single, you’re probably going on dates with a few different people, yet no girl wants to simply be an option; girls want to feel like the high and mighty prize. I am at the end of my rope with the both of them. If this is your first visit, these girls, grab my ass, try to kiss me, etc in public. No chance for me to go out with him. The only problem is when the texts become way too monotonous. Mostly HB6-7. Again, this sounds super demeaning. com/ Subscribe to my VLOGGING channel!!!: https://www. “Abbreviating words when I’m texting has become so second nature to me,” Hannah says. " "As time goes on, it's easy to forget why you broke up in the first place, or who was to blame. But like all skills, it takes knowledge, application, and refinement. But don't start tapping away at that touchscreen At first I wasn't sure what I thought about her, I mean I met her once at a party but then she texted me the day after the party, and it was by far one of the most random, grossest message I've ever gotten from a girl talking about getting boogers over herself when she sneezed, and it might sound crazy that's when I started to crush on her, if 9 Reasons For Why An Ex Will Text You After A Breakup By Chris Seiter If you want to understand why your ex is texting you after a breakup then there are 9 things that you need to take into account. WHat do I do? She just keeps texting me from outta nowhere. Now in order to figure out what kind of text messages attract a woman and keep her interested, you must first understand what text messaging should be used for. But my husband still texts her constantly. This taught me that nothing is more important than family. How many times a guy texts first has become the only thing girls trust for whether a guy cares. My gf dumped me but keeps texting. Keeps playing with her hair usually a huge hair flip or two,I think she also Why do girls sometimes give men their phone numbers and then refuse to respond to their text messages? What is the root cause of this problem and is there a way to stop it? Why Isn’t She Texting Me Back? The reason she isn’t texting you back is because you are needy. Girls forget that guys get Things seem to be going well between the two of you—at least via text—but you know that he’s just not into you. I am waiting for him to tell me if he wanna go with me but he didnt. She would text me every couple of days. I told him alone and he said i should not be going alone. So what you need to do when a girl doesn’t respond to your text is first of all to sit down and think about why you’re texting her in the first place. These 13 rules make sure it doesn’t happen again. I will give a guy leeway to text me for the first couple dates, but I evaluate it in the context of his If he keeps up the conversation, feel free to continue texting for as long as you would like. Texting is the biggest catch-22 of our time. I like him would like to chill out really with him. 3 Purposes for Texting Girls Why doesn't he ask me out but he keeps on texting me? However he never told me to meet even though he keep textig me first and asking how I am doing and telling ok plz help me anybody well there is this boy in my sister’s class we were in the same group chat . Now if a girl texts you first it’s a clear sign she wants to stay engaged and connected with you. It’s usually best to just move on. ” 4. I text a few times with no response. com/channel/UCvLQqo6XnqyWbJjt82IELpg Inst ex girlfriend keeps texting me. He thinks it’s funny, and he keeps texting her back, but the texts don’t stop. shikkushikku. Texting her to meet up. But if you are always initiating, stick to doing so a maximum of 3 or 4 times per day. Sending dirty texts, or sexting, is the perfect way to turn on your love interest and to take things to the next level -- as long as you send them to the right person at the right time. It can be helpful then, to have a set of rules for texting girls that will keep you from slipping up. 9. This is especially annoying when you have a moderately good first date and then the guy keeps texting you yet never mentions going out again. He’s not ready to be exclusive, but seeks female attention. The very first rule when it comes to the fact that he is texting other girls is to confront him! It might be difficult to do it right up front, but girls, once you get it all out in the open and ask him straight out if he is texting other girls, you'll feel better. What wow. Also, her sisters boyfriend happened to text me at 7:30 asking where I was tonight and what I was doing??? A little background on me and her new guy. When it comes to texting a girl you just met, one tiny mistake can ruin everything. I'm 25, have my own house, great job, and her new guy is 21, manages the gym she works out at and lives a hour from her apartment with his parents. You meet a guy. Start by sending him this text that will make him psychologically addicted to you. Many guys ask me “is it bad to text a girl everyday?” and this is an important question with a somewhat complex answer. 1. Boyfriend texting girls behind my back User Name: Keep in mind that between month 2 and now, he's not exchanged such messages with the girls, and give it time. And while she may have broken the texting ice, it’s entirely possible that this is all the initiative she’s going to take. For me, texts were just a case of the girl contacting me to see if I was available. Class is over now but she keeps texting me even when she's with her bf. Should I try and make moves on her? Or make it a friendly relationship? She's only been with he bf for maybe 2 months now if that helps any. We exchanged numbers. The Player’s Guide to Texting Girls. Girls want to keep texting not because we prefer texting, but we are hoping that it will get us to the next level, which is We have over 500 text messages between the two of us. Personally speaking, when I was dating multiple women, I was only ever replying to texts from women. I set up the time for our meet and she completely flaked. But still he is sending me mails like, "hi, how r u Well, its not as bad as it sounds Im a senior grade 12 in highschool she is grade 10 Me and my friend had a bet on this day with our other 2 friends at school when almost all kids were outside on activity day so we had a bet to get as many girls numbers, and who ever got most won the bet We ended up talking to 2 grade 10 girls and going out with them to a near by food court near the school Why did he stop texting me? If you are asking this question, the truth is, he probably isn’t into you. It makes them feel desired and attractive. You’ll likely relate I told him I wasn't and he texted me saying that I was playing hard to get, and every girl who played hard to get with him got into bed with him. You would think that great texting would be the precursor to a great date but, for some people, passive communication — like texting — is the end Are you always the one who texts your crush first - does he or she never start a conversation or text you out of the blue? That's a sign that your crush might just be texting you out of boredom or politeness and doesn't think of you when you're not around. Dealing With The First Flake. By: Bobby If you don’t know how to text a girl back in a way that keeps building attraction She texts me first, so I Texting the cute guy from the gym when he’s trying to sleep will turn that “yay she’s texting me!” moment into “why is that girl waking me up?” Not a great first impression. But I won't do more "work" to get her, untill she shows more interest back. One possible reason he stopped texting was because texting with you felt more like something he had to do rather than something he wanted to do. I accept that and I told him I need to move on. My ex Jeremy keeps texting me and I don't understand why. Give him the chance to get in touch with you first, if he so desires. It really doesn’t matter how magical your chemistry is because texting is a whole different story. Listen, most girls love being pursued. This new fad of text messaging was too impersonal, too informal, too slow, and not long after, too popular to 4. he left and he started texting me and calling me Texting is merely an additional thing to use – it should not be your main type of communication for arranging times to meet up. We are like couple, but then he told me he’s not in love with me so no relationship to offer. Now he tells me we can chill out but no serious relationship. It’s okay to want to be old-school. Even though it seems that she is more excited to hear from you when you text her once a week, that novelty will eventually wear out. But what’s obvious is that his intentions are unclear, and this should be a deal breaker in and of itself. 15 Reasons Why Your Ex Still Texts You and Stays in Touch. at first it started off her calling me and texting me first everyday. The second one though – where’d that one come from? I Quit Texting My Boyfriend for a Week, and Here's What It Taught Me About My Relationship. Next time, simply reply to his questions with a simple, “Call me…I’d love to hear your voice. This guy gets annoyed when girls check in. Welcome to our reviews of the ex girlfriend keeps texting me (also known as girlfriends quiz). Are you wondering what the protocol is for texting a guy you like? Do you sit by the phone for hours on end watching and waiting for him to text first? Are you agonizing over what to say and when to say it? Well, before you send off that first “hey, sup?” here are the 7 rules for texting a guy For me, personally, if I have sex with a girl for the first time - the next time she will hear from me is when I want to make plans for the next date. If the first couple of messages amount to "heyyy lol" "hahah good" "nothing lol" it's clear to me what she's expecting - for me to lead her around by the nose and give chase when she wants it. I’ve been dating my boyfriend for a year now, and a couple months ago I found out he was texting 3 different girls behind my back during the first 2 months of our relationship. Where things go from there is going to be up to you. I actually asked her how her weekend was yesterday, and she later texted me "Lol its about time you talked to me in person but then you just walked away with your head down like you always do". You see, whether or not you should be texting a girl everyday depends on what your relationship with her is. Gave her a ride home one day and everything seem good. If you aren't so available, it you aren't so eager to engage in his texting game, he will see you as more valuable. and since then we've been texting more and getting on better. i randomly typed this into google just to see if it was real: ” when and what to text a girl” this was the first page that popped up and the first i clicked… turns out, its just as real and complicated as asking a girl out or flirting with a girl in person… and it makes sense… texting is so big now adays, especially with girls…. Question for girls (ADULT girls) - After a first date this girl keeps texting, do i reply fast? Ok really, I don't want no 16 year old drama queen girl to answer, I am 24 male and want an ADULT female to answers. He Texts Me All The Time You know the drill. BONUS: If she’s not texting back, Discover The Exact Texts you need to get her texting back and out on a date in our next article. I want to connect with someone 8 Basic Rules For Texting a Girl You Like been fine. I honestly believe it's all mind games. How to Make a Guy Call Instead of Texting You. What to do? so this girl keeps texting me first starting a few days ago this girl in the class below me have been texting me first since 3 days ago. I stopped messaging him after our holiday. I have asked him to stop and he refuses. Don’t fall prey to ‘premature escalation’ texting it’s hardly unusual for guys and girls to engage in epic pre-first-date texting sessions. She took the first initiative to text me. Hold off on the texts for a couple of days. When you first think about this game, you might find it a little boring. Plus, there’s no defined rule out there that says only guys can be direct. I have remained very calm when we talk but am a depressed Usually, flaky girls do reply to the first texts because they enjoy that push-pull dynamic going on, and push-pull starts with a pull. My Ex Keeps Texting & Emailing Me; Does it Mean They Want Me Back? Should I Stay Facebook Friends With My Ex? What Do I Say To Them? What Are The Best Ways To Make My Ex Boyfriend or Girlfriend Miss Me? My Ex Caught Me Cheating: How Can I Get My Ex To Take Me Back? My Ex Has a New Boyfriend or Girlfriend - What Can I Do To Get Them Back? - How To Ask a Girl Out over Text and Get a Yes! - 6 things Not To Text a Girl - Emotionally Connect with Women Over Text - Why Do Girls Stop Texting Back -The #1 Reason - Why Women Pull Away - The Truth - Flirty Text Messages to Send to Girls - What to do if a Girl Doesn't Text You Back - How To Flirt with a Girl With Text Messages and Get Her So if you’re thinking “my ex girlfriend keeps contacting me and I’m not sure why”…then you should be glad because there’s lots to hope for. It could be innocent but common sence says I know what to expect. Everyday it seems like she is taking less interest in talking to me. This girl keeps texting my boyfriend but he insists they are just friends. com/channel We all had a good night, and in particular me and this guy got on really well and had laugh. However, you must avoid making the same mistakes that made her lose attraction in the first place. he left and he started texting me and calling me Girls from 18 – 30ish love the game, they want to be played and do not like stability. A girl keeps texting me for almost a year, everyday, but we didnot meet each other in reality. TehMac She will get frustrated if you just stick with only texting her once a week as time goes by. But then he’s the one who do the first texting again, telling me he doesn’t want to lose me and want to try to have relationship with me. I've asked this girl a few times to come join me and she's been busy or flaked. If she communicates a lot with you in other written mediums, social networks, and emails — she likes you. I get it. Trust me on this! 2. Girls want to create connection. The fact that there is more than 1 issue that is a non-starter, makes the decision o drop her a no-brainer. Texting Tips for Girls Thursday, February 3, 2011. If she initiates some sort of texting game with you, she may be trying to gage you and figure you out. She being friendly or does she like me? Got this girls number n we text for a bit and really like her. &has been trying to flirt with me at first i thoight oh its nothing but he keeps texting and i hvnt replied or told my boyfriend. Didn’t get a reply right away? It’s okay. As in Finally, An Answer! Why He Texts You, But Never Asks You Out It's more like a meeting to see if there will be a first date as you check each other out. We went on the date, I thought it went great, and he even kissed me goodnight. We love it for its convenience and fun Emojis, but we probably don't notice just how much it's making us feel like sh*t. It was really pissing me off since she was one the one that always hinted at us getting together, now she is standing me up and not even texting back. You know how crazy this basically, I'm just curious, what keeps a guy texting you constantly, when he doesn't even want a second date with you?! Here's all the details. As said, I will just work on myself, improve myself, etc. So know how to text right with these tips! 1. He isn't asking to see me so he can't miss me that much. If you’ve ever found yourself sitting on your bed waiting for a text from a guy that’s never going to come, don’t reel off a million messages to him demanding to know why the texting stopped – your dignity is worth more then that! At first, we scoffed at this “short message service,” famously known as SMS. "At first, if a girl is texting with me, I do not mind at all. She told me that she would stop texting him and she just keeps on. Why is she texting me so much? This girl is always texting me, but when I try and hang out with her she finds an excuse to bail. so he keeps up the flirting and They wonder, “Why is he texting me?” That’s the difference between warm and cold texts. girls keeps texting me first

Sorry, the answers are 10% late this month; I have been on holiday in (would you believe) North South Australia. I had a nice holiday, well, except for Pauline Hanson appearing in the town to make a speech (or possibly to register a new party). Following the success of my talk to NSW Skeptics – I got a free meal and ran away before being lynched – I will attempt to give similar trivia demonstrations to Brisbane and Gold Coast Skeptics on July 12 & 13. See the May answers for locations. Our triple, tripartite, tridimensional winner of tremendously terrifying and thoroughly titillating trivial tripe this month is the long-suffering of Moe, Victoria – the only town to be named after a stooge! As the perpetrators sped across Suva on their way to carry out the Fiji coup of mid-May 2000 what went wrong? - Sped? Across Suva? Impossible I would say. If they were speeding, the ever vigilant Fijian police would have booked them. They probably didn’t notice the guns while they were writing the ticket. - They got stopped by police and booked for speeding on the way to the coup – “Off to a Turkey shoot then are we? Well, be careful of all those guns now, and drive slowly the rest of the way”. - They got there. They took the democratically elected government as hostages. They claimed they had “authority” from the “general council of chiefs” to set up a new “government”. Oh yes, and Mr Speight was interviewed live by Richard Carlton. What else could go wrong? - The public started to support such a bone-headed enterprise. Other Answers Being Held Hostage: - In the usual way of irony they stepped on a banana peel (q.v.) and fell. - George Speight got his skirt shut in the passenger’s side door and tore the hem. - George left his “first against the wall” list on the fridge. - They had the wrong map. They were intending to conduct a coup in Monaco (or Coup de Grace as it was once called) - In their haste they got a speeding ticket, and that was before they got to the car (a Toyota Corolla Coupe I believe). - Apparently the coup was not where they left it, so they carried out a TV and a microwave instead. - They were speeding and thus copped a ticket – as if George Speight didn’t have enough tickets on himself to begin with. - Nothing went wrong with the spate of speeding Suvans because, of course, everyone knows that one’s Sulu will always get any enterprise where it wants to go. (I admit that Ratu Sir Kamikazi Mara crashed and burned. But he wasn’t a perpetrator. I’m confused. Again.) - The dealer was all out of coups. They had to settle for a sedan. - They all wanted to be Mr Black (oops I don’t know if that’s politically correct). - They have underestimated the strength of MY forces, the fools! bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-! - Some of them turned chicken and flew the coup. - George Speight received an invitation to the reunion of his rugby club in Brisbane and almost called the whole thing off. (The coup that is) - First they realised they didn’t have a flag for the new republic / democracy / dictatorship / franchise. As they were heading into the local ‘Flags R Us’ (all unstable regions have one), they got pulled over by the police. ‘Hello Hello Hello, wot’s all this then?’ - Ratu Sir Kamasisimara changed the way his name was spelled to Bob. - George spilled his kava down the front of his skirt and had to turn around to get a clean one from home. - They didn’t get hit by a meteorite? - They still ended up holding the coup in Fiji. Canberra would have been better – then we could have got shot of the GST and all those annoying little politicians we don’t like that keep popping back up after an election. - They forgot that their mums had told them to be home by 9pm. As a result they are now fearful for their safety if they leave the parliament building and go home. Now that we have survived the year 2000 leap year problem, what will happen in 3000 and 4000? - 3000 is not a leap year but 4000 is. - I will age another year. - Nothing much, because there will be no official year 3000 or 4000 “AD”, because by then people will have abandoned the silly calendar we currently use for something more scientific, more accurate, and, most importantly, less culturally biased and less steeped in religious superstition. Correct Answer (thanks to James Randi): The year 4000 C.E. — and every year divisible by 4000 — will NOT be a leap year. That’s to take care of those pesky seconds but are “left over” in the solar year. I expect that none of you would be alive to take advantage of this esoteric knowledge. If I’m wrong, please inform me. More Useful Answers - Lots of IT consultants will make lots of bananas, (did I say bananas, sorry, I mean money) out of the Y3K &Y4K bugs. - Conspiracy theorists will make lots of money flogging books on how to survive the Y3K and Y4K bugs. - There will be no problems with computers, because having had to deal with the y2k problem, and knowing that there might be a problem, people will be forwards looking enough that they will care about a problem that _might- affect their antedecentants. - What makes you think anyone alive today actually cares? [Well I do. Year 2000 was very nice and now I am going to make money out of this one] Equally Correct Answers That Will Not Generate Very Much Money: - You’ve got it all wrong – it’s the year 4095 that’s going to be special, it’s actually FFF (in hex) or 7777 (Octal), so it must be reeaaaally special. [And 2025 will be the first three-digit year in base 45 … Ching! Dollar signs ring up in my eyeballs….] - I don’t care. I’ve had enough of computer dating problems. [Me too – I took one out and it never called me back] Ooo er. Y2k, bah humbug. Now the great 1990 decade roll-over bug, now that was something. In my day, we only had ONE digit to store dates. 2 digits, sheer luxury! [Oh, you had digits … we had to use notches on a stick] [Oh, a stick, how nice, what I would have given for a stick ….] - In 2999 CE, nobody will give a rat’s arse about whether to leap or not to leap: goofy religious sects will convince large numbers of people that The End Of The World Is Nigh (Mike Willesee XXXII will present a one-hour holoscreen special detailing the scientific proof that this will definitely happen), and Barry Jones XXVII will explain why the millennium party plans are premature but the masses will ignore him. Then about February 3000, food reconstitutors and water purification units will plummet in value, as people try to sell their bunker fittings. Later in the year, a man in a dress will stage a coup on the moon. Europa will export bananas to Queensland. Queen Camilla IV will do a birthday walkabout, accompanied by the current Queen Mother in her golf hoverbot (she may or may not be dead by then, it’s hard to tell, gin has a strangely preservative effect on the tissues). A whole bunch of other stuff will happen, too, but my crystal ball is idling rough in the cold weather today – however, I advise everyone to tell your descendants to back “Martian Marauder” in the 4000 Holden-Kawasaki Melbourne Cup. - According to my crystal ball, Fitzroy will reform a football team with Elvis playing full forward, win the pennant and have a series of mp3 hit singles - Assuming you have an answer you can prove correct 1000 & 2000 years in advance, can I have next weeks Tattslotto answers? They are not leap years. [Well I might ask, how do you know that? Eliminating 11 of the 45 numbers is quite a useful prediction] - Collingwood will win another premiership. - If the temperature continues to rise, as predicted, most of the water will boil off by 3000. There won’t be any problems because there won’t be any humans to cause them. [Ah, but what about methane from ants farting?] - Literalist bible believers will continue to say the second coming of Jesus is imminent. - Most current Microsoft and UNIX software will have failed thoroughly by then, and they will still be trying to do the Y3K and Y4K fixes. A significant amount of money will have been spent on them, and they will still be late in arriving and will be shot full of bugs. However, OpenVMS, a proprietary operating system born in the 1970’s, will still be chugging on merrily – it is good for up to about the year 5800. - That’s a very big question, Dr Bob. How will you know if the answers are right? - There will be another debate about whether or not the year 3000 or 4000 represents the start of the new millennium. - We will have big millennium parties and all get thoroughly pissed again, but I probably won’t be around to enjoy it (except perhaps as a frozen head on a Popsicle stick). - We will have The Millennium Bug hype revisited and re-revisited, we will get the third and fourth comings of Christ and maybe they will have developed an original plot for Home And Away - What about the year 10,000, when we go to five digit years? Why are software development people SO short-sighted? What European country exports bananas? Iceland (Alright, I cheated and looked in this months mag. Or was this a conspiracy to catch out all those of us who cheat at this quiz?) - You obviously bought the Great Banana Trivia Book at the Big Banana on your last visit to Coffs Harbour. Two banana questions in a row. The UK imports loads of bananas but as the Poms think they are all growing the wrong way, they sell them all to the French. - Would you believe Norway? They also export camels. - Who cares? Australia exports nuts. Both Ken Ham and Andrew Snelling have moved to the USA. - Well not Belgium, that’s for sure, or Hergé would never had made that dumb mistake and drawn them growing downwards in “Tintin and the Broken Ear”, would he? - The Vatican. Oh, sorry, I thought the question was what European country is bananas. - The UK. I mean, look at the exports: Python, Fawlty Towers, Not The Nine O’clock News, Ben Elton, Dawn French, Red Dwarf, Terry Pratchett, etc etc etc they’re clearly all bananas. Quentin Crisp was a fruit, but I don’t know if he counts. - The one that has bananas to export. Probably Portugal. - The Canary Islands. - Not Finland. - I’m guessing France because they NEVER let go of their colonies, so no doubt some tropical banana producer counts as French territory. - I’m a Queenslander what would I know about European bananas? - Iceland – because they are already refrigerated! - Hveragerði in Iceland exports bananas, presumably for frozen banananana (sorry, too much T.Pratchett there) probably for use in frozen daquiri’s… - Give me a break, I’m still trying to figure out which end is up! - Finland. They export those frozen choc banana thingies to cinemas worldwide. - Finally an easy one! Obviously Greece, that’s where we get Nana Mouskouri! - Britain … or more precisely, its colonies in the Caribbean. [The Poms lost those years ago – perhaps they haven’t noticed] - Bananas imported into France, Spain and the UK (from the Caribbean) are transported to other EU states. Technically this makes France, Spain and the UK exporters of Bananas. - Australia cunningly smuggles them out disguised as Australian Dollar coins. - All of them – they buy them from Latin America at a low price, and re-sell them to other countries, getting the middle man’s profit. - Zimbabwe. As I have already told you the Rev Canaan Banana used to be head of state (I wish you would pay attention) there, but when he was caught him interfering with a choir boy, he was exported. What? Zimbabwe isn’t a European country? You pedantic bastards are what give pedantic bastards a bad name. The joke doesn’t work any other way because the Rev C Banana was never head of state of Iceland. Why was the prolific author Barbara Cartland buried in a cardboard coffin? A thousand outrageous quips spring to mind, but as soon as one seems to be foremost, another equally good one rushes to my cranium and I break up laughing uncontrollably again. Token way-off-target answer: She died penniless Here we go: - It seemed like a good idea. When she finally died, it was an even better idea. - She was worried that if she came back to life as a Zombie, that she wouldn’t be able to get out of a regular coffin. - So the worms could get to her quicker just in case she was just faking. Apparently the Queen Mother stood by the graveside singing “I won! I won!” - Dame Barbara was buried in a cardboard coffin because of her concern for the environment – which is a bit rich, really, coming from a woman who probably single-handedly destroyed more trees with the prolific publication of her trash fiction than any other person has managed. (Apart maybe from that God bloke and his followers, with their best selling trash fiction, ‘The Bible’). - Her makeup was sufficient for embalming purposes, but the cardboard box improved her appearance. - Revenge for the cardboard characters she foisted off on the public. - To quote the late, great Miss Minnie Bannister, Goon extraordinaire, “You can’t get the wood you know.” - After wasting so much wood pulp during her extraordinarily long literary (?) career, Babs had a fit of the guilts about wasting yet more on a wooden casket. - Obvious answer: She was dead. Less obvious answer: she wanted to continue in paperback! - For ease of pulping and recycling as Stephen King’s love-child. - They could not think of anything else to do with all of her unsold books, so they recycled them into cardboard coffins, thus putting her remains in remainders. - Because it’s much easier to scratch your way out of if you’re not dead. - I don’t know why they bothered with the whole burial thing, frankly, she was obviously mummified many years ago. - She felt guilty about all the trees that were wasted to go into her books. This answer has been submitted without comment. [Until now] - After penning down so many, she had finally become a cardboard character herself. - Because they couldn’t find a wooden one in pink. - Was it a recycled Icelandic banana carton? Who knows, who cares… Her books have been a waste of thousands of trees already, one tree more for a coffin wouldn’t have been much more. Then again, maybe they were her recycled books in which case it was an admirable usage. - What else would the Queen of Paperbacks be buried in? - Family members get the last word at funerals. Enough said. What body or area has a flag of three horizontal stripes, blue green and red? – which nobody got (don’t you people read New Scientist?) Mars (I don’t know who decided this, or what the Martians think, or what use it will be – perhaps they will win an event at the Olympic Games – naah, then they would need a theme tune as well) Various Vexing Vexillological Variants: - TV land. Specifically, a trinitron television set screen if viewed very closely - Barbara Cartload - Ireland. . .no, wait, Russia. . . uh Tadjikastan??? - Blue green and red are only two colors, and therefore would only count as two stripes. Trick question. - The Lost City of Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, Area 51, Von Danikens Land, the Flat Earth Society’s HQ, Heaven, Hell, Hades, Tartarus, the Seventh Heaven, and numerous others as listed in my new book “The Many Coloured Flags of the Lost and Strange but True Worlds of the Unexplained”. - My body, especially after a session with the Rev Bananana and B Cartland and their collection of whips. The area is none of your business. I don’t ask you about your peccadilloes do I? Is it true that a peccadillo is the result of genetic manipulation of a peccary and an armadillo? Answer me that you know-all bastard. - My body has an area of three horizontal stripes – must get that bathroom window replaced. Also the bug crawling across my desk has stripes of blue, red, and green, although I can’t tell whether they are horizontal or vertical – depends on what way he is heading at the time - My body has a small blue green and red pennant. And a weathercock. - My flag has. Since the coup at Number 14. I have formed a separate state and installed myself as Emperor. I have declared war on the house down the back and will annex numbers 12 and 16 as soon as they go on holidays. - Lizbeth Gore, I saw it on Sports Illustrated. Still in therapy. - My body is those colours after my weekly session with Madam Lash. But I’m not a flag. Does that count? - The mythical land of Azerbaijan– which doesn’t exist. It is a myth created by the purveyors of the inherently false spherical earth theory. The reason that ‘Round Earth’ mapmakers add in countries is to explain the extra space you end up with when you project a flat surface on a globe. Maybe their ’round earth’ propaganda would be more believable if CNN faked a story about a war, famine or disaster in “the Republic of Azerbaijan” once in a while. - Azerbaijan and Malawi [A new country, challenged not only by terrible poverty but also by a major geographic rift that separates it into two parts with incompatible cultures] - I have no bloody idea (or interest)! - It is not Barbara Cartland’s body, she wouldn’t be seen dead in anything but pink. There are three contenders but they all have a little bit extra: Azerbaijan – this comes with a bonus white crescent and star; Mauritius – this comes with a bonus yellow stripe; South Africa – this comes with some natty white piping and a bonus black and yellow wedge. - The Garden of Eden. Blue symbolised the first fight they had (over an apple!), green was the colour of the apple and red was the colour of their faces when their deity said “gotcha!” The three horizontal stripes stood for their three children, and were horizontal, not vertical, as a mark of respect for the late Abel. This flag is still out there somewhere as absolute proof of the inerrancy of the Bible. - The flag of Azerbaijan consists of blue, red and green stripes, with white crescent and star in the centre. The unofficial Kanaky local flag of New Caledonia also has blue, red and green stripes, with a black thingy on a yellow circle on the left (it’s much prettier than the official ‘French’ flag). Thank you, Dr Bob, this was an instructive question; today I learned that ‘vexillology’ is the study of flags (it comes from the Greek for ‘pastime taken up by sad geeks who found trainspotting to be too stimulating’.) - The body of a rugby league half-back - Azerbaijan has stripes but it has a crescent & star as well, Eritrea has a red isoceles triangle between stripes of green & blue – it also has <cue irony> an olive branch. The Gambia has blue red & green but with white borders on the stripes. You probably have some esoteric flag in mind, something like the Icelandic Banana Freezers League emblem. Apropos of absolutely nothing, did you know Afghanistan won the “most frequent flag changes of the 20th Century contest”, it changed it flag 20 times since 1901. - The flag’s tattooed across my girlfriend’s buttocks, and she’s starting to regret it. - All of them. - My body, when I’m simultaneously DEPRESSED, JEALOUS, and ANGRY. - Most bodies with flags on are dead (see above about Barbara Cartland) so it doesn’t matter if the flag is purple with yellow and green polka dots, really. - The local yacht club in Sete, South of France. - A very vex(illolog)ing. Azerbaijan has blue/red/green with a crescenty thing in the middle and Gambia has red/blue/green with white borders between the stripes. Is it Elle MacPherson in a Benetton swimsuit? Can I phone a friend? [Yes, but not with that – use the telephone instead] - I’m pregnant. [Crikey, now what do I say? Does your brother have a shotgun?] - Hints for all players on how to win this quiz. Bring Dr. Bob a degree of separation closer to Philip Glass. - Thanks for being willing to take input from North Americans. [No worries – do you have anything else I can take?] - If I ever make it on “Who wants to be (patronised by) a millionaire?” will you be my friend? - I just feel that I should FLAG the fact that your contest is of a very high STANDARD. (I’ll stop now before I go bananas). - I really have no idea, but I just love to read the answers people put in as jokes. - Hmmm … Military coups, leap years, bananas, Barbara Cartland, and flags. Looks like your psychoanalyst has achieved something, although I recommend you continue your visits at $595 a visit for 5 more visits. - You may not believe this, but I really saw a spaceship land. The captain was a sentient carrot and all the other crew consisted of a variety of vegetables (or in their own language, a soup of vegetables). The captain disembarked, walked straight past me and said to the nearest tree “take me to your weeder” - That banana question was hard. I got sucked in to reading a whole lot of stuff about the politics of the EU on banana imports. - Is this really optional? [All the girls ask me that] - Is Anna Russell still alive? I think I’ve been channelling her this week – if she’s not actually dead yet, this has alarming implications. <hiyatahoooooo!> Oh, bugger, there it goes again….. - You do something to me. Something that simply mystifies me. Tell me, why should it be, you have the power to hypnotise me? - Prawn to thing 4. [Now that the square is empty, wine glass to e2] - Stop beating up on Hergé, Dr Bob. Upsidedown bananas notwithstanding, he was a very talented dude. Did you know that Steven Spielberg has admitted that Indiana Jones was based on Tintin? (Now if only Hergé could have drawn Harrison Ford…) - Sorry, I was 10% late with this quiz entry, but then I have removed the excise and sales tax for those parts which are applicable, then rounded up to the nearest 5 cents, then added the number I first thought of, then rounded down to the nearest Treasurer or Prof.Alan Fels. AAaaaaaaggh! I’m NOT mad, really! - What do you get if you cross an atheist with a Mormon? Someone who knocks on your door for no reason.

Ajmer is a city located in the State of Rajasthan in India and is one of the places that are frequented by tourists from all over the world. The city lies in the heart of Rajasthan and carries religious as well as historical importance. This city is influenced by Mughal and Rajput architectural designs and is famous for numerous shrines including the famous Moinuddin Chisti Dargah (also called Madina of India) which is a mosque created in the memory of a Muslim Sufi saint. The city is also known as the gateway to the famous town of Pushkar and is only six miles away from it. How To Reach Ajmer The nearest airport is in Jaipur which is about seventy miles from the city; Jaipur being one of the bigger cities in Rajasthan is connected to all the metro cities in India. The city is connected by rail to Delhi by the Delhi-Ahmedabad Mail which is a slower option and is an overnight journey. The faster way to get to this city is by the Ajmer-Shatabdi Express that takes lesser time compared to other trains from Delhi. Ajmer is also well connected by road to major cities in Rajasthan such as Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Pushkar. The six lane highway from Jaipur is one of the best routes for reaching the city and the journey takes about two to three hours. The city is not very big and offers many options for a tourist as far as getting around the city is concerned. Buses, rickshaws, cycle rickshaws, and horse drawn Tongas are available for traveling in the city. Many rickshaw drivers also offer to take tourists to the holy city of Pushkar; however there are other cheaper options available for visiting Pushkar which can be availed of if frugality is one of your priorities. The best way to soak in the beauty of this city is to travel by a Tonga which will give you a leisurely tour of the city. The city of Ajmer has a rich history of both Mughal rulers as well as Indian kingdoms as it saw a power struggle between them from 1100 A.D to 1880 A.D. In the late Nineteenth century, the city was sold by the Maratha rulers to the British East India Company and has seen steady governance and peace since that time. There are many places in the city that have borne witness to the skirmishes and power struggles before British Imperialism. The architecture, culture and the lay out of the city is a potpourri of Mughal, Marwar, and British architecture. This one of the Jain temples in the city and is famous for its carvings and intricate designs that are quintessential to Jain temples all around the world. The temple also serves authentic Jain food but the timings of the meal are fixed and if you want to enjoy these simple Jain delicacies then you may have to enquire about the meal timings in advance. The temple is huge and has many other smaller temples connected to it which makes a trip to these temples at least a one day affair. Moinuddin Chisti Dargah This is a very famous shrine for Muslims and has the tomb of a Sufi saint who was also known as ‘Khwaja Garib Nawaz’ or the benefactor of the poor. This place is also called the Mecca or Madina of India and is visited by Muslims as well as people belonging to other faiths. People who are unable to visit the real Mecca due to some reasons often come here to quench their thirst for religious pilgrimages. The marble decorated shrine with two courtyards has a small chamber that is occupied by the grave of the saint and is usually crowded with pilgrims scampering to bask their eyes with the holy shrine. Folklore has it that whatever a pilgrim wishes for in this place comes true and many people can be seen spending their time reading the Koran, oblivious of the hullabaloo surrounding them. One of the striking memories, that I cannot help but mention when I visited this place, was a woman who was reading the holy book, tears rolling down her cheeks, soaking the book as she prayed for something. This fort is one of the first hill forts constructed in the world and definitely the first hill fort to be constructed in India. The fort was constructed in 1354 A.D by a Hindu ruler named Ajaypal Chauhan and now lies in ruins. The place was dismantled by the British and made into a sanatorium for British soldiers. It has a two mile long wall protecting the fort and the only way to enter is by using some rather steep and roughly paved rocky steps. The fort doesn’t offer many attractions but is a milestone in history since it was one of the first hill forts that were constructed in India. Adhai Din Ka Jhonpra This place is a perfect example of Indian architecture mixed with Mughal designs; the place literally translates to ‘two and a half days hut’. The unique name is due to the two and a half day festival that is annually held here. The original structure was a Jain temple that was converted into a Mosque by Qutbuddin Ayebak who was a Mughal king. The place is noted for its calligraphy in the Nashk and Kufic scripts which are derivations of mainstream Arabic calligraphy. Most of the temple is in ruins but the exquisite designs of the numerous pillars here provide a glimpse into ancient history. The Ajmer Museum, also known as the Magazine is one of the ‘must-see’ places in the city. It was the palace of Akbar which was then converted into a museum by the British for its archeological and historical importance. The place has many artifacts, sculptures, inscriptions, and excavated material, some of which dating back to 3000 B.C. The museum opens at ten in the morning and closes at four-thirty in the afternoon. A leisurely ride on a Tonga to the museum can take a person back in time and a complete day can be spent at the museum pondering and appreciating the various paraphernalia that are on display. Ana Sagar Lake This lake was built by Anaji Chauhan who was the grandfather of Prithvi Raj Chauhan, a famous ruler in the twelfth century. The lake was further adorned by a garden and marble pavilions by Shahjahan and Jahangir. The lake dries up in summer and is best visited after or during the monsoons. Some of the best hotels in Ajmer include The Mansingh Palace [Ph: +91 145 2425702], Hotel Ambassador [Ph: +91 145 2425095], Hotel Regency [2 star, Ph: 91-145-2620296, 2622439, 5101300], and Hotel Sahil [Ph: 0091-145-2632511, 2632995, 5100511]. These are all luxurious hotels and are recommended for people who like spending on lavish indulgences. The in house restaurants of these hotels are also the best places to eat since most of the hotels in the city are a little seedy.

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Kimmie Gibbler’s no-good, soon-to-be-ex-husband fucks up when he’s supposed to pick up their daughter’s birthday cake and accidentally gets one that’s meant for a priest who is retiring from a lifetime of molesting young boys. I know that not all priests molest young boys and everything but I just want you all to look at that picture one more time and try to tell me that the creators didn’t go out of their way to pick the guy with the most boy molestingest face imaginable to put on that cake. There’s just no way that guy hasn’t molested a lot of young boys. So, anyway, Ramona is turning 13 and her big wish is for her parents to get along. They vow to make this wish come true and then they give her some fancy shoes that she has a hard time walking in. Meanwhile, down at DJ’s pet clinic, Steve shows up and he’s like please baby baby please baby baby baby please but DJ is like, “remember how my husband got burned alive in a fire? I’m still all fucked up over that. We can hang out if you want but there’s no way I’m lettin’ you stick it in,” and Steve is down, probably because not having sex with DJ gives him fond memories of when they dated in high school. Matt, the new guy that DJ works with, enters the scene with Steve’s dog and Steve is like who the fuck is this mufucka? Steve gets all threatened by Matt’s masculine swagger and decides that the best way to prevent him from having sexual tension with DJ is to fix him up with Kimmie Gibbler. DJ actually thinks that setting Matt up with Kimmie Gibbler is a good idea so she invites him to Ramona’s party because nothing makes a girl’s 13th birthday more memorable than a strange man coming over to fuck her mom. DJ wonders why she feels compelled to clean the fuller house before the kids’ party and then there’s an extended close-up of her dusting a terrifying photo of Danny’s horrible face. Man, if I had a picture like that in my place I’d never sleep again. DJ’s middle kid comes in and starts talking about how much trouble he’s having with training the dog to stop shitting in the house. Why is this his responsibility? I know that he should be learning how to take care of the dog and everything but it seems pretty obvious that this kid doesn’t-and shouldn’t be expected to-have the capacity to housetrain a dog. He’s like 8 years old. Regardless, DJ’s just like, handle that shit, with no help from me. Ramona comes home with her parents and makes a meta-joke about the dress that she just bought, which was designed by the Olsen twins. It’s slightly more subtle than the show’s last onscreen comment about the Olsen twins because the actors don’t all stop and stare at the camera for 30 seconds this time. Stephanie walks into DJ’s oldest kid’s room as he covers himself with cheap cologne and stupid accessories because he hella wants to bang one of Ramona’s friends. Stephanie talks him into removing all of the stupid accessories and I guess it’s supposed to be a valuable life lesson about being who you are or whatever but it could also just be about choosing better accessories. I kind of think that he should have kept the huge gold chain, tho. There’s a whole scene with DJ’s middle kid making the dog sit on a little plastic potty that’s entirely designed to make us go, “aww.” It is a pretty cute dog but even still, I feel like my intelligence is being insulted here. Ramona gets all dressed up for her party and then, while she takes pictures with her parents, Matt shows up and he and DJ share some more of that delightful will-they-or-won’t-they tension. It’s done well enough to almost make you give a shit about what will happen. Matt is supposed to be introduced to Kimmie Gibbler but she and Fernando are all groping each other and shit while they get their photos taken together so Matt’s like why you trynna hook me up with some woman who’s still all up on her ex-husband? Good question! The next thing we see is Ramona’s birthday party, which looks pretty alright. Where is this supposed to be exactly? I’m not really clear on that… Anyway, DJ’s oldest kid tries to hit on Ramona’s friend, Lola, and he fucks it up because he’s a sorry ass chump. Just as Stephanie prepares to subject everyone to her tasteless electronic garbage music the power goes out, denying the one true cure for all of these poor kids who are clearly suffering from dance fever. Stephanie tries to salvage the party by playing music from her iphone but it doesn’t work because it’s a terrible idea. Inside the house, DJ’s middle kid worries that the power going out is a sign of the zombie apocalypse. Oh, so I guess that means that the party was taking place in the backyard. I couldn’t really tell. Anyway, DJ’s middle kid interrogates DJ to find out if she’s a zombie and then he starts wondering if the baby is a zombie, which the audience really finds hilarious for some reason, probably just because they like looking at the baby. Stephanie frantically tries to get the party back on track and suggests that everyone enjoys some cake while they wait for the power to come back on. Unfortunately, she takes the cover off the cake only to discover that it’s melted. Is the cake melting supposed to be related to the power going out, or are these problems unrelated? It seems really odd to me that no one would have thought about an ice cream cake melting. How long was it sitting out there? Anyway, long story short, Stephanie kind of flails around and tries to make the party suck less ass but it’s a lost cause. DJ and Matt find Kimmie Gibbler standing alone in the kitchen so DJ takes it as an opportunity to introduce them, in a sexy way. Unfortunately, Kimmie Gibbler immediately starts choking but Matt has the good sense to administer the Heimlich maneuver. Kimmie Gibbler hugs Matt with gratitude after he saves her life but, wouldn’t you know it? Fernando walks in right then and misinterprets their interaction and then, in true cartoon Latin stereotype fashion, he challenges Matt to like a duel or something. DJ and Kimme Gibbler explain that Matt was saving Kimmie Gibbler from choking and then Fernando starts thanking and kissing him. Man, this guy can’t turn it down a notch for even one second. Matt decides to leave so DJ walks him out and the sexual tension between them as they say goodbye is like a sauna, you guys. It’s just that hot and steamy. Right as Matt is about to whip it out, DJ opens the front door and Steve is standing there, fully ready to murder DJ if she won’t return his affections. Seriously, I like Steve and everything, but he’s being a real fucking creep right here. Ramona walks in on her parents arguing and she’s like wah wah wah my party sucks a fat dick and my stupid parents won’t stop fighting and then she runs upstairs to pout like a stupid baby and the audience kind of softly goes, “aww.” This show is all about acknowledging what was bad about the original show while still doing it anyway. Like, we’re supposed to know that it’s hokey when the audience goes, “aww” but if they do it kinds of subtly it’s ok, or like a throwback or something. So Kimmie Gibbler and Fernando go up to Ramona’s room and they’re like sorry that we’re such shitty parents. Ramona says that she wishes that they could get along and they’re pretty real about how they have a really dysfunctional relationship but they still love her and want to be good parents. I actually think that this is fairly well done. Like, they clearly still wanna bang each other but they can’t work it out as married people so they’re trying to balance that out because they’re both devoted to their kid. That’s some real shit that happens and it’s presented here as a complicated situation, not one that has a simple solution. Again, I’m basing my praise off of incredibly low standards but, all things considered, I thought that this was not terrible. Everyone from the party comes into Ramona’s room and sings her happy birthday while carrying cupcakes with candles in them. I’m not sure where the cupcakes came from but whatever. Just as things seem to be turning out ok the power comes back on because everyone has to get what they want all the time on these shows and then Ramona alludes to her birthday wish being for her parents to get back together. That’s probably what will end up happening, if for no other reason than to prove me wrong for trying to give this show some credit. All the kids start dancing to Stephanie’s horrible doo doo beats and then DJ’s oldest kid tries asks Ramona’s friend that he has a boner for if he can dance near her and she’s like I don’t give a fuck what you do, which he takes as a victory. After the party, Ramona expresses her gratitude to her parents for making sure that she had an only kind of shitty birthday and then she leaves them to have a moment alone. They sorta patch things up and then they start dry humping and DJ’s middle kid sees the whole thing, which will surely cause him to be sexually dysfunctional in a few years. I mean, he might be already. He was hiding in the doghouse with that dog and there was some serious barking going on. Anyway, Kimmie Gibbler tells him that he has to keep the dry-humping a secret because it might make for a somewhat intriguing multi-part storyline, what with this Netflix binge-all-the-episodes-at-once model and everything, and then DJ comes out and asks what’s going on and no one will tell her. What a cliffhanger!

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Welcome to the TV Roundtable, where some of TV Club’s writers tackle episodes that deal with a central theme. The next three installments focus on episodes with musical sequences. “Substitute Father” (Taxi, season one, episode 22; originally aired 5/15/1979) In which the Sunshine Cab Company adopts its own “Sonny Boy”… (Available on YouTube) Erik Adams: So far, this edition of the Roundtable has focused exclusively on the last 20 years of TV history. The oldest episode we’ve discussed was a Frasier from 1996; the last two weeks dealt with musical episodes that aired after Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s “Once More, With Feeling,” the prototype for integrating song and dance into a non-musical universe in the post-Sopranos era. My original pick was the Rocko’s Modern Life Earth Day special, “Zanzibar!,” but after a while it just seemed like more of the same. Besides, we already looked at a toe-tapping installment of a cable cartoon that glanced sideways at suburbia, and it nearly ripped our little Roundtable asunder. (Also, the other Rocko’s Modern Life short that’s paired with “Zanzibar!,” “Fatal Contraption,” features no songs. In fact, it features no character dialogue at all. It’s “Once More, With Feeling” and “Hush” in a single half-hour.) Frankly, it makes more sense to go back to a TV period when Frasier Crane was but a twinkle in Glen and Les Charles’ eyes. The sight of a character sitting down to pound out a tune at the piano or make a swipe at being a star in the music biz is a longstanding TV tradition—it’s only recently that it’s assumed such highfalutin’ thematic weight or put on theatrical airs. Just the other day, I found myself flipping between I Love Lucy’s “The Operetta”—in which Lucy’s spendthrift ways result in her women’s league operetta being dismantled by repo men mid-performance—and a Petticoat Junction repeat that ended with the Shady Rest crew and an out-of-town visitor gathering around the upright for a parlor-room sing-along. (Apparently that kind of thing happened a lot during the show’s later years; Petticoat Junction’s tortured production history and demise at the hand of CBS’ “rural purge” would make for an interesting 100 Episodes piece down the line.) The TV archives are positively littered with discarded Bodine-O-Phones and characters who can fit the Johnny Bravo suit. Ultimately, I didn’t end up reaching that far back. I went with an episode that shares some DNA with “Look Before You Leap” (as well as the Roundtable’s old stomping grounds, Cheers), from another series written and produced by the Charles brothers: “Substitute Father,” one of the final episodes of Taxi’s first season. Befitting Taxi’s laid-back, character-driven storytelling, the musical sequence in “Substitute Father” doesn’t call much attention to itself. In fact, it takes place apart from the main body of the episode entirely: If “Substitute Father” were made today, the sozzled rendition of “Sonny Boy” led by Louie De Palma (Danny DeVito) and Alex Rieger (Judd Hirsch) would be reserved for the post-episode tag. Here, it’s the moon-eyed denouement to a story that finds the men of the Sunshine Cab Company watching after the son of fellow driver Elaine Nardo (Marilu Henner), each taking a unique shine to the kid. Struggling actor Bobby Wheeler (the late Jeff Conaway) opens up to the boy, Jason, after he relays some positive reviews from Elaine; palooka-with-a-heart-of-gold Tony Banta (Tony Danza) gives up his Jason-induced panic when he realizes he can spend his time with the kid doing what he used to as a youth: punching. (Relax. He takes the boy to the boxing gym.) Unfortunately, what they’re actually supposed to be doing with Jason is helping him study for a citywide spelling bee. When he’s felled by a wily noun (“vermeil”) that’s beyond the swath of the dictionary he’s memorized, the guys take it hard—another disappointment in lives built on the stuff. Never mind that they proved their true worth as father figures. They let the kid down, they let Elaine down, and so they let Louie’s bottle of 12-year-old Scotch down their throats, which sets the stage for a little Al Jolson. I love the understated elements of the performance: The way Louie bursts into song after a few silent beats suggests a genuine spontaneity, and though Alex’s call-and-response routine is as musty as the song itself, Hirsch’s slow trudge toward DeVito’s lap deserves the laughs it gets from the studio audience. Swinging his cup around and hitting his consonant sounds hard (no “boy’s soul”/“boy’s hole” confusion on this one), DeVito hams it up, but in a way that the legitimately soused are wont to do. And at the end of the song, Conaway, Danza, and Randall Carver (in his final credited appearance as college boy John Burns) all gather around to join in on a climactic, rough-hewn harmony. It’s a delightful testament to what they’ve gone through during the previous 23 minutes, a series of events that takes them from co-workers to participants in a five-way custody and back again. The characters take a lot of actions as a collective in “Substitute Father,” hence Tony’s brilliantly dunderheaded follow-up to Alex’s comment about getting over-excited at the spelling bee: “Yeah, we’re his father.” I’m going to guess that the placement of “Sonny Boy” inspired some anxiety in viewers who are seeing this episode for the first time, a certain “When are they going to get to the fireworks factory?” sensation regarding the musical sequence. (And maybe even some concerns that this was the wrong episode.) My main question to the group: Does “Sonny Boy” feel like it belongs with the rest of this episode? Is it an effective way of articulating the emotions the cabbies don’t seem to have the words for after Elaine returns for Jason? And have our expectations for musical sequences where musical sequences don’t normally go reached the point where a relatively quiet moment like this lacks impact? Or is it more effective in its lack of bluster? Phil Dyess-Nugent: God, how I loved this show when I first caught up with it, in reruns, in the mid-’80s. It seemed casually sophisticated in a way that nothing else on primetime TV did then, and not too many things have since. Part of that came down to the way the writers were willing to try things that came from far out of left field, but the actors worked together with such skill and conviction that the episodes held together without ever seeming scattershot. This isn’t my favorite episode of the series—none of the ones from the first season are. (The first season had a tendency to fall back on sentimental hugging-and-learning moments, such as the line from Judd Hirsch here that elicits an “Awww!” from someone in the studio audience. This probably helped put it over with critics, though once the show was going full speed, it dropped those kinds of scenes like a hot rock.) But the closer here is one of my favorite scenes. At its best, the show—which had Andy Kaufman adapting his stage act to a sitcom role and people like Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, and the late Lenny Baker dropping in to fill its guest spots—had an off-Broadway feel amid the polished cartoon brashness of most of the network TV of its time. There’s a weird beauty in the way this story morphs into first a rap session and then a revue number. It’s perfect for these people, and like a lot of Taxi at its best, it sums up the enduring appeal of New York at a moment when the city itself was on the verge of imploding. In the context of both the city these people live in and the TV schedule they were part of, it’s a little break from all the pushiness. Genevieve Koski: As to your first question, Erik, I think “Sonny Boy” definitely works—much better than the discussion between the five guys that precedes it, in my opinion. It’s not that the “What have we learned today?” wrap-up between the five guys over a bottle of Scotch is terrible, or terribly out of place in a show like Taxi, but it’s very static and stagy in a way that calls attention to its efforts to wrap things up following Elaine and Jason’s exit. Now, granted, “Sonny Boy” wouldn’t have really worked without that initial bout of inebriated feelings-sharing. But on an emotional level, it works better as a conclusion, walking the fine line between sentiment and comedy more ably than Alex’s concluding observation that raising kids is hard, but if all you get out of it is the occasional hug, hey, it’s not such a bad deal. That very well may be true, but stating it so explicitly, and in such an incongruously macho environment, is just kind of awkward. Ironically, Louie’s clumsy, Scotch-soaked performance turns out to be much more graceful and affecting. Setting aside the musical component for a moment, I enjoyed “Substitute Father,” which I hadn’t seen before (I’ve seen a fair amount of Taxi, but just the episodes deemed marathon-worthy by Nick At Nite schedulers in the ’90s), as a whole for its take on parenting. The idea of a “fun parent” and a “mean parent” is a pretty familiar sitcom convention, but it’s usually seen in family sitcoms—like The Simpsons or Modern Family, to cite a couple more current examples. This episode takes the idea behind that—the idea that a parent can be a kid’s friend, but also occasionally has to be a parent—and injects it into more unusual circumstances. I’m not sure how sound Elaine’s idea to leave her young child in the care of a bunch of childless bachelors overnight is (but hey, it was the ’70s, I wasn’t there, what do I know?), but the results are well-realized. There’s a little bit of the requisite fearful overreaction—oh God, kids, what do I do??—on the part of Tony, but all of the guys quickly realize that being around kids can be an awful lot of fun, provided all you have to do is hang out and be their pal. However, none of them are prepared for—or perhaps even aware of—the other side of the coin, the one that requires you to be the bad guy and make the kid study. Interestingly, Jason himself sort of fills this role, or tries to, though his halfhearted reminders to his babysitters that he has to study can’t stand up to their enthusiasm to hang out with their new playmate. As a character, Jason is kind of a weenie (especially that whole “It was my fault, mom” B.S.), but it’s interesting to see the range of parental-like reactions he inspires in his temporary guardians: fear, curiosity, wonder, loyalty, wistfulness. Which is what makes “Sonny Boy,” a song that evokes all those emotions, such a fitting epilogue. Ryan McGee: I’ll be the outlier here and say that I quite liked the scene involving the five men after Jason leaves. As several of you have pointed out, it’s so on-the-nose that you half expect that “The More You Know” rainbow to appear on the edges of the screen. However, one of my favorite aspects of Taxi is its melancholy. In this case, the letdown that occurs after Jason’s departure naturally flows from the highs each man experienced in sharing a little piece of his life. Had Jason never showed up, none of these men would be feeling the loss they do in that scene. And while the lifestyle depicted in this show doesn’t always offer much chance for real introspection, the time allotted to these men to admit just how incredible it would be to be a father is downright heartwarming. It’s not the type of scene I’d like to see every week; such moments turn into part of the larger narrative machinery rather than an exception that proves the rule. (It’s probably why season five’s “Jim’s Inheritance” haunts me in ways few other episodes do.) What those final five minutes raise is a question that in many ways is more relevant than ever: To what extent do we tolerate non-comedic elements in our half-hour shows? (I’m borrowing this phrase from Todd’s analysis last year, although I’ve offered up thoughts like this myself as well in the past.) At the time Taxi aired, one simply had to call programs of that length “sitcoms.” But even by the time Scrubs, which we’ll cover next week, was in full swing, there were plenty of programs taking the 30-minute slot and filling it with as much pathos, angst, anger, and sorrow as any hourlong drama. Are we inherently resistant to the type of moralizing in those final moments because of the execution or its very placement within an episode of Taxi itself? In this particular case, despite being higher on that scene than most here, I can see how its execution is less than perfect. But the metric of “How much did it make me laugh?” is still applied to Girls, Louie, Wilfred, and a host of other programs, persisting as the dominant way of determining the success of an episode of TV. I like shows that take the format and do more than try to make people laugh. And while I did laugh quite a bit while watching it, that final non-musical scene will stick with me longer than anything else. Noel Murray: Like Phil, I watched Taxi fairly obsessively in syndication in the ’80s, and yet I had zero memory of this episode—perhaps because it’s not an especially flashy or wacky one. There’s no Reverend Jim, since he wasn’t a regular yet. No Latka, for reasons unknown. And very little Elaine, which may be the real reason why this one never stuck with me. (I kind of had a crush on Marilu Henner when I was a teenager.) Yet I liked “Substitute Father” a great deal, even though it’s a decidedly softer Taxi. The show could be profoundly sentimental at times—Ryan mentioned one of my own favorite episodes in that regard, “Jim’s Inheritance”—but this one is sentimental in a different way, in keeping with its focus on a child. Even Louie is a gentler crank, not as cartoonishly awful (in a good way) as he’d eventually become. The humor stems a lot from Jason’s non-precocious reactions to the Sunshine crew. When one of them nervously asks, “You’re a kid, huh?” Jason answers, “I try.” When asked “What do you wanna eat, kid?” he answers, “Food.” Those are believably kid-like jokes. They’re also very true to what it feels like to be an adult, entertaining a youngster. Even we parents, who are used to our own broods, often feel like we’re onstage for long stretches, whether we’re trying to impart stern life lessons or we’re trying to make sure that our kids have a happy, memorable day. No wonder then that the guys all get drunk and sing at the end of this episode. What else could they do with all that residual actorly energy? Donna Bowman: I never expected to hear a distinct echo from Renaissance Florence in the mouth of Judd Hirsch. And yet his speech at the end of the episode (“What about all the money, not to mention all the worry and heartache that goes into it? It never ends! What’s it all for? What’s the best you get out of it?”) could have been lifted directly from Book One of Leon Battista Alberti’s I Libri Della Famiglia, a 15th-century dialogue about fatherhood. As Lionardo, a swinging bachelor, expounds how joyful and easy it is to raise excellent sons, his brother Adovardo pipes up every few pages to interject some reality into the proceedings. “I think I might soon show you that with children of every age, a father has not a few troubles,” he deadpans, before discussing illness, waywardness, vanishing prospects, and the constant fear and anxiety parents suffer in knowing that fortune, a fickle and unpredictable force, might desert their offspring despite all efforts to procure advantages for them. Lionardo’s rosy moral admonitions are supposed to be taken seriously, but I find myself siding with Adovardo—not because my kids give me any grief, but because I know that this state of affairs is not due to my excellence as a parent, but to sheer dumb luck. This episode really won me over (although I respect Taxi tremendously, I’ve never been a student of the show) with its crackerjack acting and warm, humane perspective on the stagy setting and the schticky characters. Just look at the gag with Louie trying to get the attention of the trio as they search for an emergency babysitter for Jason. DeVito’s prompting coughs are huge, wet hacks, and Alex immediately seizes on the opportunity to send him into paroxysms by affecting deliberate cluelessness. The punchline—“Nah, I don’t want Jason to catch his cold”—delivers classic rimshot satisfaction, but not at Louie’s expense, as the gang immediately lets him in on the joke during the fadeout. Todd VanDerWerff: Taxi’s one of my favorite shows to point to when it comes to arguing that the multi-camera sitcom can feel as moving and modern and artful as the single-camera sitcom (an argument I make so often that I can feel myself turning into a cranky old man). And while “Substitute Father” is nowhere near one of my favorite episodes of the show, it exemplifies much of the way the series worked in that regard, at least for me. It’s quiet and almost stately at times, and it’s driven by the characters’ uncertainties and doubts as much as it is by big punchlines and jokes. That quietude slowly seeped out of the multi-camera sitcom over the years, and I’ve always liked the way that Taxi echoed those plays so beloved by college-theater groups and community-theater companies—plays that take place in a single location where a group of characters work, then follow them through a workday (or two or three). It’s memorable and not particularly fussy and often just fun to watch. As for the musical sequence (or the scene preceding it), I don’t have all that much to add. What I like about it is the way it contributes to the loose feeling of the episode as a whole. Noel mentions up top that it feels almost off the cuff, meant to fill time at the end of a long season when everybody involved probably just wanted to get on with the hiatus. But that gives it an almost joyous immediacy, too. These guys have found themselves in the bottom of their cups and in this song, and that will be enough for now. Taxi was never again as popular as it was in this season. It sank down the Nielsen charts, and finally died an unfortunate death on a channel other than the one that first picked it up, which was seen as a harbinger of the networks abandoning quality TV. (Its timeslot partner that season? Cheers, the whole reason this little group got together in the first place.) But the show was discovered and fondly remembered by those who happened upon it in syndication, and I’ve always seen it as the perfect show to watch at 3 a.m., something to stumble upon when you can’t sleep, and TV needs to be not just a way to deaden your senses, but a kind of balm as well. No offense to Randall Carver, but John is lost in Taxi’s world. You can feel the writers trying to elbow him out of “Substitute Father,” all the while thinking, “Too bad we can’t work that acid casualty who oversaw Latka’s green-card marriage into this.” (Or Latka himself, for that matter.) [EA] Randall Carver got a bad break. (According to Wikipedia, he’s now a real-estate investor in the San Fernando Valley who “has appeared in a religious docudrama that sometimes turns up on the Trinity Broadcasting Network.” Also, he was in There Will Be Blood.) There’s nothing especially wrong with his sweet-schmuck character, except that he’s extraneous; he’s too obviously there because someone thought the audience needed an innocent to identify with, and the show already had its perfect audience-identification character in Alex, the middle-aged guy who’s the only one of the cabbies who identifies himself as a cab driver, not as someone on the way to something better. To achieve full strength, Taxi needed Christopher Lloyd’s Reverend Jim and Latka and, eventually, Carol Kane as Mrs. Latka; but it never felt as if it needed John, even when he was supposed to be at the center of an episode. (The John episode that I remember best is the one where he impulsively gets married, and it belongs to Dolph Sweet in the role of John’s his father-in-law.) [PDN] Crimson carpeting, exaggerated geometric patterns, utilitarian yet artful placement of a vertical “EXIT” on the doors: Yep, that’s definitely a school auditorium that was remodeled in the 1970s. [EA] Danny DeVito still has his uses, I suppose, but like his frequent collaborator Jack Nicholson, he turned into a self-conscious, self-congratulatory institution a while back, and it’s amazing to see him back when he was still an actor creating characters. As Erik points out, his hamminess during the song is in character, and so is his behavior when he’s on the phone taking the complaint from the woman a cabbie insulted (“How fat are you?”) or telling Jason that it can be tough when you don’t have a father to teach you to drink or use rough language. If DeVito played those scenes today, he’d play them as an impish troublemaker who delights in knowingly being bad, for the audience’s delectation. But Louie is just a guy who’s so unsocialized that, at the end of the day, he’s kind of winning. [PDN] I know it’s the late ’70s, but I think three is the maximum number of undone buttons allowed in the presence of children, Jeff Conaway. [GK] I liked the detail of the guys looking over to the judges’ table for confirmation of the correct spelling after every word. As a fairly terrible speller—hey, I grew up in the era of spell check!—I sympathize. [GK] Sticking with the melancholy theme of my analysis—my word, that’s a semi-depressing theme song, no?—it feels like the person riding in that cab just woke up after a night spent in hell and is returning to his barely-worth-it existence on the other side of the bridge. [RM] It’s funny that you should mention waking up with regard to Bob James’ “Angela (Theme From Taxi),” Ryan. I’ve always associated that flute intro and the sound of James’ electric piano with falling asleep in the backseat of my parents’ car, thanks to the song’s heavy rotation within the playlist of the Detroit-area late-night radio show Pillow Talk. The vibe of the track is so nocturnal—and so closely tied to half-remembered visions of headlights and illuminated signs streaking by—that it’s always been odd to me that the Taxi opening takes place during the day. [EA] I’ve written a few times about the Taxi opening credits, which are maybe my favorite in all of TV history. The music of Taxi in general feels like being lost inside of a Steely Dan song, which is a place I very much like to be. [NM] Of all the proscenium sets in sitcoms of this time, the Taxi set might be my favorite. It’s relatively uncluttered downstage, but has a wealth of information along the peripheries that makes it feel lived in. [RM] I’d be curious to know the origin of that musical tag. It almost feels like the episode was running short and they threw the whole scene together at the last minute, kind of like how Andy Griffith and Don Knotts used to on The Andy Griffith Show. That’s one of the reasons I love TV so much. [NM] Maybe I’m more attuned to accents after writing a whole For Our Consideration essay about them, but it seemed to me like Henner was doing more of an exaggerated “New York” voice in her scenes here. [NM] Was anybody else sure that Jason would be bounced in the first round? Finishing second in a district-wide spelling bee is really nothing to be embarrassed about. (That said, as someone who sweats through his shirt every time his son is at a Quiz Bowl tournament, I identified with the guys’ anxiety.) [NM] I’m with Noel; I was certain that, after the buildup of Jason’s thwarted attempts to study and the vigor of his cheering section, he would flop on the first word. Why didn’t somebody tell him that first runner-up is awesome? On the other hand, I’m glad that the episode was more about the experience of the men making such an investment in the kid, rather than the kid feeling like he let himself down. [DB] I could swear I’d never set eyes on John, the Sunshine Cab Company’s blandest member, before this moment. So his defining character traits were that he was a) married, and b) kinda dim? [DB] I do so miss the MTM house style of putting the “star credits” in the closing credits, then showing a representative shot from the episode that just ended. (Taxi was a Paramount production, but its brain trust involved most of the guys who’d made MTM what it was, so it counts.) [TV] Next week: Ryan McGee directs the Sacred Heart Singers as they learn “Everything Comes Down To Poo” (and other important life lessons) in Scrubs’ “My Musical.” (It’s available for streaming on Netflix and Amazon.) After that, we bring the curtain down with readers’ choice, so start making the case for your favorites here; we’ll collect the nominees and post a poll Friday.

I have seen so many anons come on here to bash certain groups of women. The sad part is I think they realize (or at least I hope they do) that the blanket generalizations are ridiculous since such a large site has women from many different places and backgrounds. So let me tell you a bit about me and why the anons will love to hate on me :) I grew up in a poor family. Dad left mom for another woman when I was about 6 years old, leaving her with no job, no vehicle, a pile of bills and 2 kids in a single wide trailer in the middle of the country. I was thankful I had my grandparents (who allowed us to live in the trailer that my grandpa bought) since they made sure that we always had food, clothes and a warm place to stay. This even while my mom worked nights at a nursing home so that she could provide for my sister and I. I remember that our favorite days were the first of the month. That meant it was time for food stamps and we would come home to find the cabinets filled with food. Mom would even buy extras so that she could put them aside in large blue bins which were stored in our closet just in case of an emergency. I grew up knowing the worth of money. I remember waking up cold at night because we ran out of propane, I remember watching my step dad walk out of the house with a baseball bat and chase off people who were going to repossess our car. He later stepped up and started night classes to get his degree and a better job. For me, growing up was hard. I knew what the stress of being poor and working hard to get no where did to my parents. My father was not a big part of my life. I am honestly happy for that. I worked hard throughout my school career since I knew I didn't want to be where my parents were. I graduated high school as a national honor society student and one of the top 10% of female graduates in my state. I knew we didn't have money so I joined the military. There I met my now ex husband who I married a month before graduating high school. My naive teenage self thought that to get anywhere I had to be married (that was the basic consensus in the culture I grew up in). After a few years of marriage that was hell due to emotional and psychological abuse, I cheated on him and then filed for divorce. The affair gave me a reason and the courage to finally leave. I am glad I did since he started getting physical with me after that. The rest of my life has been spent with my DH who just beat cancer in November, my DD and our dog. We are not currently working but instead are going to school with our sights set on med school. Yes we are on PA but not for much longer. I have a disability compensation rating through the VA, we both get paid through our GI bills for school and DH will be getting his VA disability compensation soon (and when he does we will not be using PA anymore). I was on the President' Honor Roll last semester and am a model student. Things are far from perfect here but we are happy since we are making progress from where we both started. Some other specs: I am pro-choice, I breastfed for 3 months then formula fed, I am Pagan and I am a liberal. So much for the stereotypes that could have controlled my life early on. So go ahead and bash away, ask me anything or do whatever.

It was difficult to imagine a musical that could use Aegis’s diverse discography, one that spans 15 years of the band’s existence, and seven albums. From posters and press releases it was clear that PETA’s Rak Of Aegis was using the song “Basang-basa sa Ulan” as center, with the obvious premise of … uh … rain to tell what would be a painfully contemporary story for nation. It was difficult to be optimistic, but it sure was easy to get excited. I was sitting after all on the balcony, right side, and from where I was I could clearly see the members of Aegis below, sitting on the second row. Not even an ill-behaved little girl who should not have been brought into the theater, could ruin that image of the Sunot sisters singing and laughing along to the musical that lives off their music. That’s getting ahead of the story. Which is one that’s as simple as it can be. Barangaya Venezia has been knee deep in flood waters for months, and there is no government to help them. There is only Barangay Kapitana Mary Jane (Isay Alvarez) who is suffering too as her shoemaking factory – the one that employs the barangay – is being killed by the incessant rains and a flood that has most everyone in imported plastic shoes that survive the waters. Flood waters, by the way, that are right at the center of this musical’s set, the inadvertent central character as well of a town that had gotten used to makeshift and do-it-yourself walkways and stairs, that have allowed for continued commerce and mobility no matter the sad state of their homes. This set by Mio Infante looked fantastic, but also difficult to follow for any audience. Sitting where I was, it was sometimes unclear that the man on the boat was the one singing; or that the voice was coming from the platform closest to where I was. Too, we were missing the smell: they didn’t talk about it until the end either. But let’s start with this: Rak Of Aegis had everything going for it in its first 20 minutes. It established a family in crisis, one that was further impoverished by the rains and floods. It established a town in crisis, not because they are poor but because they lived with flood waters in their midst, and rain just kept coming. It established young unrequited love. It highlighted hopelessness by finding hope in uploading a YouTube video of star-of-the-barangay Aileen, just in case Ellen Degeneres asks her to come to America. If this was a straight play, it would be so heavy-hearted and heavy-handed. With a soundtrack of Aegis songs, all well-placed in the telling of the narrative, and with a cast that did not miss a beat in the almost campy, necessarily self-reflexive and ironic telling, this musical had the right amount of lightness and comedy – the better to balance the sadness with. And you will get carried away: the songs are familiar, the writing is flawless for all of Act One. It was a balance that had me teary-eyed and laughing at the same time, moving from the crises of poverty magnified by stagnant water and the threat of rains, to the Aegis songs being all sak-sak-puso-tulo-ang-dugo – and that’s no exaggeration. This is really the success of this first act of Rak Of Aegis: it is able to create a world that is in the more famous songs of this band, and it’s a world that is as believable as those songs are. There’s tragedy but also laughter, there are families that survive the worst of times, friendships that sometimes outdo our familial relationships. There is dreaming that seems shallow and impossible, there is the internet as the platform for dreaming. There is the enterprising Pinay, as there is the vigilant Pinoy, who knows what’s wrong with his lot, and who is to blame for it. Barangay Venezia does not ask for pity nor charity; it demands justice. In the first act of Rak Of Aegis, what is palpable is discontent that is merely overshadowed by need. And there are past relationships that become the present’s undoing. But also there is just a young woman wanting better for family and town, and who takes it to absurd ends. This first act is enough reason to see Rak Of Aegis. And then there is this cast, small but so in sync, you actually believe Barangay Venezia to exist. Aicelle Santos in the lead role of Aileen was everything I expected after having seen her stage debut in Katy! last year. It isn’t just about having a voice that can sing those Aegis songs with chutzpah, it is also her ability to make this character her – you completely forget she’s a diva you watch on Sunday TV. In fact, you forget she’s made a career out of being biritera at all, as she does the light and heartfelt scenes with aplomb, and that take on the promo-girl was a scene-stealer. Aileen’s counterpoint in this story is her father Kiel (Robert Seña), a tired man who used to be the town playboy. Age has caught up with him, as has the fact of a town ruined by rain and floods that won’t go away. He is angry and frustrated, and is dealing with a daughter who gets caught up in the absurd task of earning despite, and from the, flood that won’t go away. Seña’s magic is in the old man stance that he takes, the one who is learned but now also fragile, the one who has no time for regret because the present is urgent. The urgency is in the voice that he uses to sing those heart-wrenchingly painful songs. Two other actors who would just consistently bring the house down were Phi Palmos as Jewel and Jerald Napoles as Tolits. Now one of the great things about this musical is that it refused to do stereotypes, and this was true of the character of Jewel, the lone gay individual in the barangay. Here she is also the center of commerce (with a sari-sari store that sells everything from beer to load), as she is the only other person with a dream of better, confident in his artistic abilities (he designs shoes), and his smarts. Palmos rises to the occasion of this character and layers her with perfect timing and a voice that does not falter. But Napoles’s take on Tolits is what will stick with you, not because his character is complex – his is the unrequited love that the story starts with – but because the portrayal is wonderfully truthful even as it is comedic. His take on Aegis songs were also en pointe, powerful in its pain and longing, and always a surprise because Tolits’s demeanor is shy and quiet. Napoles’s timing, his movements, all of it was this character, and made it the most complete figure on that stage. It it because of these characters, and all of Act One, that the second act’s flaws just became more glaring, where the complexities of flooded towns and development, of corrupt government officials and desperate times, are not dealt with completely nor properly. The story unravels and one thinks: ah, just like that? No build-up, no tearing apart of the fact of development vis a vis flooding, globalizations vis a vis local industry? It was almost a god-in-a-basket, the resolution too swift it failed to truly be a resolution. Too there’s this: to bring these concepts into the mix and not discuss it well is an injustice to the ones who are truly suffering because of those same things, yes? And that was what they wanted to talk about too, interspersing the narrative as they did with footage of our catastrophic floods. But even worse than this? The insistence on making Rak Of Aegis into a story with a happy ending, i.e., complete with a fashion show in place of curtain call. It was the most awkward I’ve seen any cast taking their bows. I felt for them because they deserved more applause, but the audience was confused about whether this was part of the play, or curtain call – and the latter was just an epic fail. Good thing the rest of this wasn’t a fail at all, and certainly it was a valiant effort to bring together such a critical issue as flooding and the music of Aegis. It might have failed at talking about the former, but at least it had Aegis down pat. That’s good – and happy – enough for me. Rak Of Aegis opens 2014, and closes the 46th theater season, for PETA. It was written by Liza Magtoto and directed by Maribel Legarda, with musical direction by Myk Solomon, and set by Mio Infante. Rak Of Aegis runs until March 9.

- Table View - List View Many strategies are explained as actions that will achieve the desired goals or visions of the company, but in order to predict the success of your strategy it is vital to gain an understanding of how it will impact on the financial statement. Executive Finance and Strategy works on the premise that financial models can clearly demonstrate where a particular strategy might lead, enabling you to evaluate past accounts and statements in order to respond to recent company history. It also explains how company law and ethics underpin financial statements and clarifies your responsibilities as a senior manager or director. By using finance as a record keeper and predictor of success, it helps you quantify your strategy to gain support from colleagues and take the right actions to ensure sustainable growth. Executive dysfunction occurs in many clinical conditions and has significant impact on multiple facets of life. This book summarizes executive function and dysfunction for practitioners, researchers and educators, covering lifespan development, assessment, impact and interventions. Drawing together clinical, neurobiological and developmental viewpoints, the authors summarize the latest research findings in practical and applied terms, and review conceptual approaches to assessing and identifying executive function and dysfunction. Several chapters are devoted to practical aspects of executive dysfunction, including research-based treatment strategies, educational implications, forensic cautions and intervention resources. Executive dysfunction in ADHD, LD, MR, autism, mood disorders, epilepsy, cancer and TBI is covered, with test performance, neuroimaging and clinical presentation for these clinical conditions. The book concludes with anticipation of future work in the field. This is a key reference for medical, psychological and educational professionals who work with children, adolescents and young adults in clinical and educational settings. This groundbreaking book offers a comprehensive theory of executive functioning (EF) with important clinical implications. Synthesizing cutting-edge neuropsychological and evolutionary research, Russell A. Barkley presents a model of EF that is rooted in meaningful activities of daily life. He describes how abilities such as emotion regulation, self-motivation, planning, and working memory enable people to pursue both personal and collective goals that are critical to survival. Key stages of EF development are identified and the far-reaching individual and social costs of EF deficits detailed. Barkley explains specific ways that his model may support much-needed advances in assessment and treatment. Three complete Drucker management books in one volume -- Managing for Results, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and The Effective Executive with a new preface by the author.In his preface, Peter F. Drucker says: "These three books should enable executives -- whether high up in the organization or just beginning their career-- to know the right things to do;-- to know how to do them; and-- to do them effectively.Together, these three books provide The Toolkit for Executive Action."Drucker identifies and explains the practices, decisions and priorities for achieving business performance and executive effectiveness. These books cover "the three dimensions of the successful practice of management." Managing for Results was the first book to explain business strategy. Drucker shows how the existing business has to focus on opportunities rather than problems to be effective, for it is the opportunities that will bring growth and performance. Innovation and Entrepreneurship analyzes the challenges and opportunities of America's new entrepreneurial economy. It is a superbly practical book that explains what established businesses, public service institutions and new ventures have to know, learn and do to prepare and create the successful businesses of tomorrow. In The Effective Executive, Drucker discusses the five practices and habits that must be learned for executive effectiveness. Ranging widely through business and government, he demonstrates the distinctive skill of the executive and offers fresh insights into old and seemingly obvious situations. Together, these three books have sold more than a million copies; they have been published throughout the world and continue to sell actively. These are essential works for the executive and manager by "the dean of this country's business and management philosophers." --Wall Street Journal The final word on what traits make for highly successful managers--and a detailed explanation of how to identify potential standout performers. Executive Intelligence is about the substance behind great leadership. Inspired by the work of Peter Drucker and Jim Collins, Justin Menkes set out to isolate the qualities that make for the 'right' people. Drawing on his background in psychology and bolstered by interviews with accomplished CEOs, Menkes paints the portrait of the ideal executive. In a sense, Menkes's work reveals an executive IQ--the cognitive skills necessary in order to excel in senior management positions. Star leaders readily differentiate primary priorities from secondary concerns; they identify flawed assumptions; they anticipate the different needs of various stakeholders and how they might conflict with one another; and they recognise the underlying agendas of individuals in complex exchanges. Weaving together research, interviews and the results of his own proprietary testing, Menkes exposes one of the great fallacies of corporate life, that hiring and promotion are conducted on a systematic or scientific basis that allows the most accomplished to rise to their levels of optimal responsibility. Finally, Menkes is a passionate advocate for finding and employing the most talented people, especially those who may have been held back by external assumptions. The final word on what traits make for highly successful managers - and a detailed explanation of how to identify potential standout performers. "Executive Intelligence" is about the substance behind great leadership. Inspired by the work of Peter Drucker and Jim Collins, Justin Menkes set out to isolate the qualities that make for the 'right' people. Drawing on his background in psychology and bolstered by interviews with accomplished CEOs, Menkes paints the portrait of the ideal executive. The deadliest strike will come from outer space. When America develops the most powerful defense system in history, will it be used to protect the nation--or will it be used to force universal domination? This question must be answered in the stillness of outer space and the corridors of the White House. The United States has just unleashed the most powerful weapon in history--a missile-launching satellite called Thor's Hammer that can strike anywhere on the planet in seconds. Now the United States stands unchecked in military dominance. Or does it? The world's other major superpowers, Russia and China, are rocked by America's development, and they scramble to respond by gaining control of the seas. When terrorists hijack Pakistani missiles and fire them at Indian cities, U.S. president Joseph Gardner has only one option: to use the untested Thor's Hammer. But something goes awry and the Hammer misses one of its targets, killing thousands of Pakistani civilians. In retaliation, Pakistan and the Middle East decide to give China strategic naval advantage by granting it access to Middle Eastern ports. To make matters worse, days after the crisis, Somali pirates board a Chinese freighter off the coast of Mogadishu and slaughter the crew. China responds by brutally attacking and then occupying Somalia, quickly setting up missile pads that can target U.S. naval ships across vital sea-lanes in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden, as well as any ships transiting the Suez Canal. Now the U.S. high command is on red alert and the country's security is in total jeopardy. . . . Another flash point quickly emerges-in Earth's orbit. When Chinese and Russian spacecraft surround an American space station, the threat is clear: negotiate and compromise, or China and Russia will cripple the U.S. Navy with ballistic missiles. Retired Air Force lieutenant general Patrick McLanahan returns to assist the commander of the U.S. Space Defense Force, Kai Raydon. But can McLanahan and Raydon stop the Chinese and Russian spaceships? Or will the world's superpowers be plunged into a full-scale war? All the while, President Gardner must face threats from within when his own vice president begins to challenge his decisions-and maybe even his job. With Executive Intent, the New York Times bestselling master thriller-writer Dale Brown crafts an action-packed tale of intrigue and technological weaponry that pits the world's superpowers in a contest for Earth's oceans and ultimate high ground-space. From employee to mommy-to-be. . . Career-girl Kristen Lewis is at the top of her field. She's driven, sensible--and her spur-of-the-moment decision to have one perfect night with sexy Nate was totally out of character! She puts it behind her. . . until she's faced with two shocks: she's pregnant. . . with her boss's baby! Nathan Boyd, one of Australia's leading entrepreneurs, buries himself in his work to forget his private torment. But now he's faced with a dilemma: the first woman to tempt him in a long time is his employee. Executive Power arms readers with effective, fast-acting techniques that show them, step-by-step, how to get what they need before they and their companies pay a heavy toll for lack of it. This book contains specific, carefully formulated psychological tactics that can be applied to any business situation, with any person. This book offers readers the opportunity to use the most important psychological tools governing human behavior, not just to level the playing field, but to create an automatic advantage in today's business world. The book will arm the reader with the tactics to:* Get back any customer you've lost.* Find out who in your company is loyal to you and who is not.* Get any group of people to get along and work as a team.* Turn a lazy worker into an ambitious go-getter.* Fire anyone easily, without an argument or even a difficult conversation.* Dilute the impact of negative publicity quickly.* Collect money owed, no matter how long it's been overdue.* Inspire your client, colleague, or boss to go along with your idea or plan.* Manage the unmanageable-get any employee to fall in line with the company line. CIA superagent Mitch Rapp battles global terrorism in a high-octane follow-up to The New York Times bestselling Separation of Power -- another chillingly authentic adventure from the master of the political thriller. Mitch Rapp's cover has been blown. After leading a team of commandos deep into Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from joining the nuclear arms race, he was publicly hailed by the president as the single most important person in the fight against terrorism. But after years of working covertly behind the scenes, Rapp now lives in the glare of the public spotlight, lauded by the nation and an easy target for virtually every terrorist from Jakarta to London. As special advisor on counterterrorism to CIA director Dr. Irene Kennedy, Rapp is ready to fight the war on terrorism from CIA headquarters rather than the front line. That is, until a platoon of Navy SEALs, sent to the Philippines to save an American family kidnapped by radical Islamic terrorists, is caught in a deadly ambush. The mission had been top secret -- so who told the enemy? All evidence points to the State Department and the Philippine embassy. But a greater threat still lurks. An unknown assassin working closely with the highest powers in the Middle East is bent on igniting war. Now, with the world watching his every move, will Rapp be able to overcome this anonymous foe and once again keep the flames of war from raging? Transporting us into an intriguing geopolitical puzzle full of deadly motives, covert operatives, and all the true-to-life insider detail we've come to expect from Vince Flynn, Executive Power is a high-flying story that delivers shattering suspense with the velocity of a 9mm bullet. Do you exude confidence and credibility? Can you command a room? Sylvia Ann Hewlett, one of the world's most influential business thinkers, cracks the code of Executive Presence (EP) for men and women intent on winning the next plum assignment and doing something extraordinary with their lives.You might have the qualifications to be considered for your dream job, but you won't get far unless you can signal that you're "leadership material" and that you "have what it takes." Professionals are judged on presence as well as on performance. Using a wealth of hard data--including a new nationwide survey and dozens of focus groups--Hewlett reveals EP to be a dynamic mix of three things: how you act (gravitas), how you speak (communication), and how you look (appearance). She also draws on in-depth interviews with a wide selection of admired leaders to reveal how they embody and deploy key elements of EP. This book is immensely practical. Hewlett teases out tactics that can help you raise your game and close the gap between merit and success. She offers the unvarnished advice you won't get from supportive friends and tackles head-on such touchy subjects as too-tight clothing and too-shrill voices. She shows how the standards for EP vary for men, women, multicultural, and LGBT employees, and she shares how to get meaningful feedback from politically correct bosses intent on avoiding the real issues. The good news is that EP is eminently teachable. You can learn how to "show teeth" while remaining likable, and you can teach yourself how to dress appropriately while staying true to yourself. You don't have to be born with the voice of James Earl Jones or the looks of Angelina Jolie to hurdle the EP bar. With hard facts and vivid examples, Hewlett shows you how to ace EP and fully realize your unique potential--no matter who you are, no matter where you work. When private detective Dana Cutler is hired to follow college student Charlotte Walsh, she never imagines the trail will lead to the White House. But the morning after Walsh's clandestine meeting with Christopher Farrington, President of the United States, the pretty young coed is dead-the latest victim, apparently, of a fiend dubbed "the D.C. Ripper." A junior associate in an Oregon law firm, Brad Miller is stunned by the death row revelations of convicted serial killer Clarence Little. Though Little accepts responsibility for a string of gruesome murders, he swears he was framed for one of them: the death of a teenaged babysitter who worked for then-governor Farrington. Suddenly nowhere in America is safe for a small-time private eye and a fledgling lawyer who possess terrifying evidence that suggests the unthinkable: that someone at the very highest level of government, perhaps the president himself, is a cold and brutal killer. Collected from the Chicago Tribune's column of the same name, Executive Profiles is an intimate and informative look into the lives of top Chicago business and organization leaders, executives, and CEOs. These profiles do more than just detail the success of these individuals' companies, however. In discussions that range from family to hobbies to personal business philosophies, the interviewers seek to understand the people behind the heads of these stalwart Chicago institutions.Arranged by industry, Executive Profiles is a serious look at an eclectic range of Chicago's movers and shakers, but it also offers an entertaining peek into the more personal, human sides of these business leaders. For fascinating insight into the habits and philosophies of Chicago's driven business and nonprofit executives, look no further than this inspiring collection. AN FBI AGENT TAKES THE BIGGEST-AND MOST DANGEROUS-RISK OF HIS CAREER: LEAVING BACHELORHOOD BEHIND Crime investigator Thadius "Thad" Winston must protect his high-ranking political mother after she is shot and nearly killed. He is prepared for risks. What he isn't prepared for is Lucy Sinclair. Hired as his mother's nurse, Lucy is capable, compassionate and entirely inconvenient for Thad. He doesn't enivision a life of shared love or commitment, yet he can't deny the intense attraction growing between them. And when a stalker sets his sights on Lucy-possibly the same man who tried to kill his mother-Thad realizes just how much he has to lose. Betrayed by the political game, a brilliant, idealistic campaign manager now finds himself chosen by the CIA for an extremely sensitive and volatile national security operation. Caught in a world of clandestine affairs and high-tech espionage, he becomes the key suspect in an explosive murder case that could cost him everything, including his life! When her sham engagement finally ended, celebrity chef Corri Harris was free to indulge in a steamy affair. Sexy studio executive Aidan O'Brien seemed to be just the remedy for her bruised ego. The problem? Aidan was her boss! With their illicit affair moving full steam ahead and no mention of commitment, Corri feared she'd become nothing more than Aidan's pet proté gé e. Once he'd taken her career as far as he could, would he discard her for another ingé nue? Loving The Boss MEMO To: The Single Women in the Office From: Rachel Sinclair, Bride in Waiting Re: My Ex-Flame Has Returned! I can't decide if this is the best day of my life or the worst. I thought I'd never see Nick Delaney again, but imagine my surprise when he showed up in my office declaring his need for me--as live-in nanny to his orphaned niece! I used to dream about the sexy businessman proposing marriage, but thankfully I'm over that. That is, I was--until he kissed me... How-to guidance for defining and implementing a complex project performance environmentSharing his forty-five years of project management experience, best-selling author and industry guru Robert Wysocki presents a straightforward, enlightening, and pragmatic guide to help senior managers make the transition to an organization that profits and thrives on complexity. The first book to discuss practical project management mitigation strategies, Executive's Guide to Project Management presents easy-to-implement infrastructures and processes that will ensure the continued success of your organization and maximize your investment of every project.Collects in one resource all the relevant information for understanding and creating an environment for improved complex project performanceA must-read for every member of your senior management teamShows you how to regain responsibility, take action, and skillfully handle complexity to mitigate risk and increase return on project investmentsIt's time for your senior management team to take back control of your investments in projects and programs. Executive's Guide to Project Management shows you how to cultivate your part of the organization so that it can respond to a changing project environment with the infrastructure to support the project and program investment decisions. Flynn Maddox, The driven vice president of Maddox Communications, thought he was over his ex-wife, Renee. But when he learned that they were still married--and that she was trying to have his baby--he realized he had never stopped wanting her. it was time to put his fierce negotiating skills to good use. He would give her the baby she so desperately wanted. . . but not without getting her to sign off on some terms of his own. A SCANDALOUS PREGNANCYTelling her high-society family she was about to be an unwed mother had been tough. So how could she possibly inform the Garrison clan that the baby's father was their archenemy? Brooke planned to keep the paternity secret. . . then millionaire hotel mogul Jordan Jefferies learned the truth. And he was not about to let her fear of scandal stop him from claiming his child. Or from making Brooke his wife. Damien Trent's time for revenge was at hand. The Australian businessman had bided his time, waiting for Gabrielle Kane to return. She'd dared to leave his bed years ago without a word. . . but now she needed him if she was to save her family's company. And Damien would lend his help. . . but his price was Gabrielle's hand in marriage. With five years of waiting behind him, Damien had no plans on making this a marriage in name only. A masterful, inventive thriller from a remarkably assured and always surprising young writer. Perpetual graduate student Joseph Geist is at his wit's end. Recently kicked out of their shared apartment by his girlfriend, he's left with little more than a half bust of Nietzsche's head and the realization that he's homeless and unemployed. He's hit a dead end on his dissertation; his funding has been cut off. He doesn't even have a phone. Desperate for some source of income, he searches the local newspaper and finds a curious ad: CONVERSATIONALIST SOUGHT. SERIOUS APPLICANTS ONLY. PLEASE CALL 617-XXX-XXXX BETWEEN SEVEN A. M. AND TWO P. M. NO SOLICITORS. And so Joseph meets Alma Spielman: a woman who, with her old-world ways and razor-sharp mind, is his intellectual soul mate. How is he to know that what seems to be the best decision of his life is the one that seals his fate? Acting as the executor, representative, or administrator of an estate is a complicated and time-consuming task, not only in an administrative sense but often in an emotional sense as well. The Executor's Handbook, Fourth Edition is a comprehensive guide for readers who need help understanding the basics of the procedures that settle an estate. In practical and straightforward language, it covers all aspects of estate administration, including funeral arrangements, organ donation, administering probate, dealing with the deceased's assets and liabilities, and personal representative's compensation. You will understand not only your responsibilities but the responsibilities of those who will be assisting you. Tables of state income tax rates, intestacy laws, and state-by-state probate requirements are also included, and a glossary, index, and list of recommended works complete this handbook. "A great and calamitous sequence of arguments with the universe: poignant, terrifying, ludicrous, and brilliant. The Exegesis is the sort of book associated with legends and madmen, but Dick wasn't a legend and he wasn't mad. He lived among us, and was a genius."--Jonathan Lethem. Based on thousands of pages of typed and handwritten notes, journal entries, letters, and story sketches, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick is the magnificent and imaginative final work of an author who dedicated his life to questioning the nature of reality and perception, the malleability of space and time, and the relationship between the human and the divine. Edited and introduced by Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem, this will be the definitive presentation of Dick's brilliant, and epic, final work. In The Exegesis, Dick documents his eight-year attempt to fathom what he called "2-3-74," a postmodern visionary experience of the entire universe "transformed into information." In entries that sometimes ran to hundreds of pages, Dick tried to write his way into the heart of a cosmic mystery that tested his powers of imagination and invention to the limit, adding to, revising, and discarding theory after theory, mixing in dreams and visionary experiences as they occurred, and pulling it all together in three late novels known as the VALIS trilogy. In this abridgment, Jackson and Lethem serve as guides, taking the reader through the Exegesis and establishing connections with moments in Dick's life and work. The e-book includes a sample chapter from A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick. Crosnoe (sociology, U. of Texas, Austin) presents findings from the first-ever national study of the school readiness of Mexican immigrant children. As the number of Mexican immigrants to the U. S. continues to increase, the author argues, it is critical that we determine ways to improve the educational prospects of the Mexican immigrant children if they are to eventually become prosperous, productive, fulfilled citizens. The study examines various aspects of their lives--including health, the home environment, and childcare arrangements--to identify what helps and what hurts these children in the first years of elementary school, and concludes with some recommended social policy changes For educators, policymakers, and parents. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)

Kojo and Tom Sherwood chat with D.C. Council Member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) The locavore movement is growing and for some people, eating local isn’t enough – they want to drink local too. The region’s wine industry has blossomed over the last few decades, but unpredictable weather and favoritism for European or California wines mean local vintages still have a long way to go. We take a look at the ways weather, culture and history combine to create wines unique to the Washington area. - Tony Wolf Professor of Viticulture, Virginia Tech; Director, Alson H. Smith, Jr. Agricultural Research and Extension Center - Dave McIntyre wine columnist, The Washington Post; co-founder, DrinkLocalWine.com - Todd Kliman Food and Wine Editor and Restaurant Critic, Washingtonian Magazine MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. It's Food Wednesday. As the old saying goes, if you don't like the weather, wait a minute, it will change, which has certainly been the case this spring. Unusual weather almost always has a big effect on crops. And for vineyards in an already challenging climate, like Maryland or Virginia, extreme weather adds an extra layer to an intricate process. MR. KOJO NNAMDIBut no one ever said making wine was easy. And there's a long history, complex culture and loads of research poured into every bottle of locally made wine. Joining us in studio to discuss this is Dave McIntyre. He's the wine columnist for The Washington Post and the co-founder of DrinkLocal.com. (sic) Dave McIntyre, thank you so much for joining us. MR. DAVE MCINTYREThank you, Kojo. Glad to be here. NNAMDIAlso with us in studio is Todd Kliman. He is the food and wine editor for the Washingtonian, where he also serves as the magazine's food critic. He's the author of "The Wild Vine: A Forgotten Grape and the Untold Story of American Wine." Dave McIntyre, you should be offering congratulations to Todd Kliman because he's gotten yet another James Beard Award nomination. He's up for the M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award for his work in Lucky Peach magazine. NNAMDIBut he's up against two other writers, and the winner will be announced on May 4. Of course, Todd won a Beard Award in 2005 for best newspaper column when he was writing for the Washington City Paper, but that's enough praise for Todd, don't you think? MCINTYREWell -- and for the record, I think I was one of the first to even tell him about the nomination when he got it, so... MR. TODD KLIMANI think I didn't even know when Dave sent me a text. NNAMDIWell, good luck to you, Todd Kliman. NNAMDIYou can join this conversation by calling 800-433-8850. 800-433-8850. You can send email to [email protected], send a tweet, @kojoshow, or go to our website, kojoshow.org. Join the conversation there. Weather is a factor in growing any kind of plant. But how does it affect wine grapes in general, and how are recent extremes shaping the 2012 season so far? I'll start with you, Dave McIntyre. MCINTYREWell, as I wrote in my column in The Washington Post last week, the early season has caused the vines to -- what we go through what we call bud break about two weeks earlier than usual. And that one thing sort of brings an early season. It might be better in the fall. But, right now, it presents a danger because there's always a chance that the weather will turn -- as you said, just wait moment -- and if we get a deep freeze around 28 degrees, that can be disastrous to vines when they're in this early stage. MCINTYRESo that's what local growers were worried about at least for the last couple of weeks. Now that the weather stayed warm, they might be beginning to worry about strong storms and hail. NNAMDIYou talk about the joke in California that there was no climate there, and that's why the wine always did so well. MCINTYREThe wine was consistent because they would always have a good vintage. And, of course, that actually has been turned on its head the last two years. California has had troublesome vintages in 2010 and 2011. So they're being reminded out there that Mother Nature has her say. NNAMDIUnderscoring Todd Kliman's point that two years are alike. KLIMANThat's, to me, the beauty of wine, is you don't know what you're going to open. I mean, maybe that's not consoling to the consumer spending a lot of money in some cases on a bottle of wine. But the idea that you don't know what it's going to be. You don't know what's going to be until you open it. It might be bad. It might be wonderful. It might surprise you. I think that's one of the nice things in a kind of a plasticky homogenized world to have something that is so dependent on the seasons and on time and place. To me, it's a beautiful thing. NNAMDISo the better growers are constantly adapting, constantly studying, and that's one of the concerns. Let's cut to the chase here. That's one of the concerns you have, it is my understanding, about the Trump family getting into the winemaking business in Virginia, this business of knowing and studying and adapting and learning. KLIMANWell, learning is nice. And I think people who are serious about what they do, they spend time to learn. They do their homework. They immerse themselves in the culture. And that's not what the Trump family appears to be doing. I did an interview about a month or so ago with Eric Trump, Donald Trump's son, who is a Georgetown graduate. And it was actually a pretty hilarious interview because he talked about the family move into wine as if it was just this very natural thing. KLIMANAnd I said, well, this is not what you as a family do. You build skyscrapers. You build casinos. He said, well, it's very consistent with what we've been doing, which is opening golf courses. And I said, what's the connection? And he said, well, they're both agricultural ventures. And I thought, oh, gosh, here we go. OK. He also talked about the idea that one of the great things about Virginia, beyond the history, what attracted the family, is -- to buying the Kluge estate, which had gone to auction, was that there's so much diversity in Virginia wine. KLIMANAnd I -- you know, it's a buzzword I hadn't heard before. And I said, well, how do you mean diversity? He said, well, you've got red wines. You've got white wines. You've got sparkling wines. And I thought somebody who is very much out of his depth here. And they're all about point scores. And it's -- I see them coming in as -- certainly, they're bringing a lot of attention already to Virginia wine nationally. But Trump is a vulgarian, and what he symbolizes is kind of everything that passionate winemakers have worked to not be. NNAMDIDave McIntyre, it's not my fault that climate doesn't understand the relationship between water and greens and growing grapes, but explain for us what do you think the entry of the Trumps into winemaking in Virginia can or may not do. MCINTYREWell, I do remember laughing pretty hard when I read Todd's interview. But I'd like to look at it this way. The learning curve aside, there are people working at the former Kluge estate, now Trump winery, who do know the business. And the Donald has always had a reputation for hiring and, of course, firing people to -- who know what they're doing. But what, I think, we'll actually -- you'll actually see is that -- and when I interviewed Eric Trump, he made the point that this was a logical extension of the luxury business for them. MCINTYREAnd they were going to put the sparkling wine into all their hotels and all their golf courses and all their resorts and business mediums and things like that. So if you think of somebody going to a Trump casino in Vegas and there's a bottle of Trump winery sparkling wine in the room and they try it and they like it and they say, wow, this wine is from Virginia, next time they come to Virginia, they might remember that and say, oh, yeah, I've had some good Virginia wine. MCINTYRELet me try a Linden or let me try a Barboursville, let me try a Horton. And so I think, in the end, in that way, at least, it's going to have a good influence for the industry. NNAMDIIt's a conversation about local wines. That was David McIntyre -- Dave McIntyre. He's the wine columnist for The Washington Post and co-founder of DrinkLocal.com. (sic) Todd Kliman is also with us. He's the food and wine editor for the Washingtonian magazine, where he also serves as the magazine's food critic. Joining us now by phone from Winchester, Va. is Tony Wolf. NNAMDIHe's a professor of viticulture at Virginia Tech, where he's also the director of the Alson H. Smith Jr. Agricultural Research and Extension Center. Tony Wolf, welcome to this conversation. I'd like to hear your take on the recent extremes in weather and how they might be shaping the 2012 wine season so far. DR. TONY WOLFYeah. Well, thank you. Thanks, Kojo and gentlemen. NNAMDIAnd feel free to welcome the Trump debate that we're having. WOLFI got in on the tail end of that. And I'll address your question. I think I'd prefer to do that. Yeah, it's certainly been a rollercoaster ride this spring. And I've been with the industry for close to 30 years. And this is certainly, in my memory and industry's memory, the earliest bud break that we've seen -- bud break being the onset of the growing season for the grapevines -- you know, throughout most of the state occurring around the third week of March. WOLFAnd we -- you know, the thing that really makes us nervous at this time of the year, of course, is the fact that we do have the potential for spring frost after their -- that bud break event. And if that occurs in a widespread fashion and a severe fashion, we stand to lose a good bit of our crop for the year. So that's always a possibility. And here in Northern Virginia, certainly in the Winchester area, we have at least another two weeks before that threat has really dropped to nil. WOLFSo we've got a ways to go before we're out of the woods. Current concerns right now are -- I mean, we're -- this is agriculture. If you're growing grapes, you'd always got an eye to the weather forecast. And, you know, we're concerned about frequency of rain, how much rain we're going to get, the untimeliness of that rain. But I think a point that needs to be made and just kind of come full circle on this is that it's -- you know, the early part of the season has a bearing on how much crop will produce. WOLFIt's really the last 30 to 50 days of the season that determines in large part the quality of the crop and ultimately the wine quality potential. So we've got two ends of the spectrum here, the early part of the season and the latter part or the last part of the season. And they really have kind of two different influences on the vintage per se. NNAMDIAnd, Todd Kliman, as with so many things, location is a big factor in success. What role does terrain play in successful winemaking? KLIMANWhat role does the what play? I'm sorry. NNAMDIThe location, terrain -- terrain. KLIMANOh, the location. Well, it's actually a huge -- it's a huge factor in terms of both the quantity and the quality of grapes. In fact, a lot of what we did in the early '80s, you know, really with the current revival of the current industry was really focused on vine survival and obtaining a consistent production of grapes on a year-to-year basis. We've kind of shifted gears somewhat in the last 10 to 15 years and focused more of our research efforts on improving the quality of grapes and wine quality potential. KLIMANBut if you go back, you know, 30 years or so, winters were more harsh. They were colder. Despite the fact that we grow a lot of -- I mean -- there are a lot of native grapevines indigenous to this area. The predominant grapes that we grow, the species of grape, vinifera, are not indigenous to this area. And they're susceptible to winter injury. And so in those winters when we had temperatures dipping below zero degrees Fahrenheit on a routine basis, we would have routine problems with cold injury to grapevines. KLIMANSo a lot of the site selection that went into this industry in the '80s, late '70s, '80s and even into the '90s, a lot of that focused on where we could grow grapes to have them survive from year to year and also to produce a consistent crop from year to year. That is still very important. We've more or less learned those lessons. KLIMANFor the most part, though, we still see sometimes vineyards go into places where we would rather not see the vineyards planted. But people that understand topography and local mesoclimate type of impacts on grape production understand where grapes should and should not be grown. NNAMDIOn to the telephones. Here is Jennifer in Middleburg, Va. Jennifer, you're on the air. Go ahead, please. JENNIFEROh, hi, Kojo. How are you doing? JENNIFERYou know, you've got -- you have on a couple of my favorite wine journalists, and I needed to say hi. JENNIFERHi, Todd. Hi, Dave. How are you guys doing? JENNIFERSo, you know, when you're talking about native grapes, I'm all ears. NNAMDIWell, I'm glad you're all ears because I'm about to ask Dave and Todd to talk a little bit about the particular challenges that Virginia faces, that winegrowers, say, in France or California do not face. First, you, Todd Kliman. KLIMANWeather is a big one. Rain, changing of the seasons, dramatic shifts -- I mean, California, as you said earlier, really has no weather, except that -- and as Dave said... MCINTYREExcept good weather. KLIMAN...good weather and a lot of consistency. And Virginia's got all sorts of challenges. Jenny, who's on the line now, told me a story many years ago when frost came one winter. She was panicking and -- Jenny McCloud at Chrysalis Vineyards, she was panicking because the frost was about to destroy her vineyard, and so she hired in helicopters to... NNAMDIJennifer is the helicopter person. KLIMANYes, to circle the vineyard and have those blades going and hoped that that would bring in some warm air over the crops. NNAMDIDid that work for you, Jennifer? JENNIFERYeah, it actually did during those really cool nights where there's no wind. The cold air has a tendency to settle in the lower lying areas, and it displaces the warmer air to -- not just even 20 or 25 feet up, it can be six or seven or even eight degrees warmer. So that's what the wind machines do, you know, that you see in vineyards sometimes. NNAMDIYeah, Dave, you've written about windmills that some wineries have on their land. What's the purpose of those? MCINTYREWell, it's the same concept as the helicopters, to move the air around and avoid the cold air settling right around the buds and the shoots with vines. JENNIFERYeah, you're mixing that warmer air that has stratified up above the cold air and just mixing it up and warming up the air in total. NNAMDITony Wolf, to a lot of people, that would seem a little bit counterintuitive, but it seems to be that some good science behind it. WOLFYeah. Well, you know, the downside of the wind machines is their capital cost, and these units are costing 25 to $30,000 a piece just for the purchase price. The operational costs add to it as well. So if you don't have frost on a regular basis, maybe just once every 10 years or two times in a decade you have a problem, certainly flying a helicopter at $800 to $1,000 an hour or so avoids some of that capital outlay and gets you through the problem. As Jennifer said, it's basically pushing that warm air down to the environment of the grapevines. NNAMDIJennifer, thank you very much for calling. We've got to take a short break. When we come back, we'll continue our conversation on local wines. Inviting your calls at 800-433-8850. If you've got questions about the history of wine in the U.S. local wine culture or how grapes are grown, give us a call. 800-433-8850. I'm Kojo Nnamdi. NNAMDIIt's Food Wednesday. We're talking local wines with Tony Wolf. He's a professor of viticulture at Virginia Tech, where he's also the director of the Alson H. Smith Jr. Agricultural Research and Extension Center. Dave McIntyre is the wine columnist for The Washington Post and co-founder of drinklocalwine.com. Todd Kliman is food and wine editor for the Washingtonian Magazine, where he also serves as the magazine's food critic. He's the author of "The Wild Vine: A Forgotten Grape and the Untold Story of American Wine." NNAMDICall us, 800-433-8850. Have you visited a local winery lately? We'd love to hear about your experience. If so, you can send email to [email protected]. Todd, you have written about the history of wine making in the U.S. When it comes to Virginia wineries, it seems there are two long-standing divergent mindsets among vineyard owners. How do they differ? KLIMANWell, you have what I call the terroirs. These are folks who have surveyed the land. They've tried various methods. They've determined that there are certain grapes that are not going to grow here. They might be the wines that everybody wants to drink: chardonnay, pinot noir, et cetera, et cetera, but they're not really suited to the soil, to the land, to the air that's in Virginia. And they move beyond and then try to see what historically has worked or what will work now, and that brings in a grape like Norton, which was the inspiration for the "The Wild Vine." KLIMANYou have winemakers like Dennis Horton, like Jenny McCloud, who are embracing grape varieties that the average person probably has not heard of. I said Norton, cabernet franc, petit verdot, viognier. And, you know, in the wider wine world, these wines just don't have cache. They don't have any kind of reference point for most casual drinkers. And, of course, therefore, they don't have any real perceived worth for Somali restaurants, for a lot of higher-end restaurants to stock. KLIMANWine magazines generally don't have a great interest in them. They're not getting the big point scores. But they do tend to flourish in all the regions of Virginia. On the other hand, you have what I kind of think of as the by-any-means-necessary crowd, and Patricia Kluge used to be in that camp. I think the Trumps certainly are going to be in that camp. And these are winemakers who are just interested in producing a good wine, whether it reflects the character of Virginia, whatever that might be, whether it speaks to a time and place. KLIMANThey're simply interested in a good wine that will impress a journalist or somebody giving a score, and it's a wine that if you -- there are some good examples. I'm not trying to paint with too broad a brush. But, generally, those wines are -- there's a kind of a generic quality to them. They are kind of across the board good, but not indicative of anything that is going on currently in Virginia. NNAMDIThe two groups, in a way, might be chasing different dreams. Dave, Virginia wines are often in the spotlight, and they're earning an increasing number of accolades. But Maryland wineries are growing by leaps and bounds. What's different when it comes to the wines that they produce and the conditions the vineyards are coping with and are there any similarities? MCINTYRECertainly climate is similar. The big difference you have between Virginia and Maryland aside from the relative size of the two states is that the Virginia government has long supported the wine industry and has helped it develop with some favorable laws and regulations, whereas Maryland did not until fairly recently. But since right around the turn of the millennium, you have a real growth spurt in Maryland wines, so you had about 12 wineries in 2000, and they're up around 54 now. MCINTYREAnd part of that is also a big drive toward quality. You have a winery like Black Ankle Vineyards up near Mount Airy. It's fairly well credited with launching this. Young couple had some money, wanted to open a winery, and they searched three or four years until they found a nice rocky hillside with porous soils that would give them that good water drainage to help with the rains and the air drainage that Tony Wolf was talking about to help with any frost potential. MCINTYREAnd they planted vines, and they used different techniques than were popular in Maryland in planting their vines and growing them. And they just started making really nice wines right off the bat, and other people turned around and said, whoa, we can do that here? And more are. So what you're seeing in Maryland now is more wineries focusing on making quality wines from grapes that either they grow in Maryland or at least the grapes are grown in Maryland. MCINTYREAnd that's kind of one of the dirty little secrets of local wines is that a lot of them can be made with at least a substantial portion of grapes that are shipped in from California or elsewhere. So even if it's a Maryland winery or a Virginia Winery, it's not necessarily a local wine. NNAMDI800-433-8850. We'll get back to the calls in just a second, but is there a type of wine to which you typically gravitate? Call us, 800-433-8850. You can send us a tweet, @kojoshow. What is it that you like about your favorite wine? You can also send email to [email protected]. Tony Wolf, Virginia has put a lot of resources into fostering its wine industry. Now, you're expanding your scope beyond the commonwealth. What are you working on now? WOLFWell, our focus is really still the commonwealth. I mean, I'm an employee of this commonwealth, Virginia Tech. It's agency of the commonwealth, and so that's really where our efforts are. I think what you'd might be alluding to, though, is the fact that last year, we received a fairly sizable grant from the USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, their specific programs, especially crops research initiative. And this is a large grant that involves those research and educational components. WOLFVirginia Tech is the lead institution on that, but there are seven institutions, mostly land grant institutions involved in the Eastern U.S. And in a nutshell, the title speaks to much of what you've -- your listeners have already heard in the last 20 minutes or so. But the project is entitled "Improved Grape and Wine Quality in a Challenging Environment," with a subtitle of "An Eastern U.S. Model for Sustainability and Economic Vitality." One of the key words in there, though, was challenging or challenging environment. WOLFSo we have -- there are several different objectives in here, but one of the primary objectives that we're pursuing -- there's 20 researchers involved in this project. One of the primary objectives is really focused on understanding, measuring and modifying the variability that we see in vineyard and in grapevine growth. All of these things that we've talked about with climate -- untimely rainfall, for example -- lead to quite a bit of variability in the ripening of grapes, in the amount of growth to the grape vines. WOLFSo what we're really trying to do is be able to predict that in a more measurable way so that we can advice growers on means of adapting to that. We can't, for example, turn the rain off, but as Dave commented with Black Ankle Vineyard, we're really paying much more attention to the water holding capacity of the soil and practical ways that growers can modify that, even using competitive cover crops that reduce water availability to the vines particularly during the ripening period. WOLFSo we have other objectives in this project. One of the -- another one of the large areas, just briefly, is the development of sort of a new generation geographical information system approach to better matching grapevine variety with a particular site. And, again, this speaks to some of the things that you've heard here in the last 10, 15 minutes. Should we be growing chardonnay in all locations of the state? Probably no. NNAMDIIndeed, I will get to that more specifically in a minute, but I want to bring the listeners back in on the conversation. Chris in Warrenton, Va., thank you for waiting. You're on the air. Go ahead, please. CHRISThank you, gentlemen. It's great to have this program on. My question is regarding geographical importance. California is New World, Europe, Old World, and Virginia is geographically -- and also by palate structure, I think -- halfway between the two. And the benefit Virginia has with its challenges is a long hang time. I like to hear a little bit of input about the benefit of humidity and its challenges of getting the grapes to ripe which increases hang time and increases more interest of terroir into the fruit itself and the wine that it represents. NNAMDIHere is Dave McIntyre. MCINTYREWell, it's the first time I've heard humidity in Virginia as a good thing. Certainly, I think what -- and Tony can speak to this. The growers here have learned to cope with the humidity a lot better now, and they have better canopy management, they call it. That's pruning the leaves off the vines during the season. It promotes air flow through the grapes and helps dry them out a little bit. And there are various different ways that they have to deal with the problems of humidity. MCINTYREAnd as far as the hang time goes, it has actually been kind of impressive if you follow the harvest as I do every year. In 2010, we had a really early one, but -- and last year, of course, everybody wanted to build an ark 'cause it would rain for 30 days in a row, and it was extremely challenging. But in previous years, you'll have people -- wineries in Northern Virginia at around Front Royal that are harvesting as late as October and November. MCINTYREAnd that does help increase the ripeness of the grapes and gets the -- what we call as green unripe or vegetal flavors out of the grapes. So, again, this is part of the way that local grape growing and winemaking has been improving over the years. KLIMANThe caller brought up the idea that Virginia is, you know, in between, as you could say, in between California and Europe. And I think one of the things that's interesting for people who are not currently turned on to Virginia wines is that what you have is -- when you have a really good Virginia wine, you've got something that, I think, has the best of both worlds. You've got that nice fruitiness, that freshness that you get in the lot of the California wines. KLIMANBut you have the lower alcohol content and the kind of the -- sort of the leaner qualities of European wines, and so Virginia wines at their best are something different in the marketplace. Beyond that, of course, is just that if you drink a local wine, you're drinking something that's an expression -- it's a cultural expression. And it's not simply that you are trying to buy something to impress somebody or you're buying a bottle to make a statement. You're taking part in something that's going on now and that's reflective of the place you live. KLIMANSo much in the food and wine world is, you know, so much hinges on this idea of the best. But it's a really shaky argument. You have things like -- they're really popular right now at a lot of restaurants, local oysters, Rappahannock oysters. Well, they're not the best oysters in the world. I wouldn't even say they were top three if I were going to rank the oysters in the world, but there's a different taste to those oysters. There's a different quality. And you eat that oyster, and you know you're kind of taking part in something that's now. And there's a beauty to that. NNAMDITony, partly through trial and error, vineyards and researchers have identified some varieties of grapes that grow well in this region. What are some of the best bets locally? WOLFThe, you know, just as it's sort of a general categorization of grapes that do well in this are those that we growers tend call weather grapes, those that withstand these rainfalls and these rainy harvests that we have had such as in 2011. Petit manseng, for example, is one of those sort of esoteric varieties. It's really grown principally only in one very small region of France, but we took it interest in it in the '80s because it has -- it had done so well in a research planting in New York state. WOLFWe brought cuttings down here, evaluated it, and it just does very well. It's very small varied variety. It withstands the rainfalls that we can get during the fall and right and fairly uniformly. It's not -- does not produce a wine though that everybody likes. It's not as perhaps food friendly as a more neutral white variety, like chardonnay or pinot grigio, but there are others as well. We have some what we call hybrid varieties. WOLFThese are interspecific varieties that have both American-type grapes in them and the European vinifera grapes, things like vidal blanc. We produced a lot of vidal in Virginia, and Maryland produces a lot as well. We have others, such as among the Bordeaux reds, petit verdot does reasonably well in this climate. Again, these are all varietals. There's opportunity for blending these as well. WOLFDave and Todd can speak more about that in terms of consumer preferences, but we don't -- I think as a consumer myself, we get kind of hang up on just varietal names and the blending opportunities as illustrated by the Hodder Hill, which won the Governor's Cup this year. I think it's a good example of what we can do with putting some of these varieties together. NNAMDIDave, you also flag petit manseng. MCINTYREWell, petit manseng I really enjoy because it can do an off-dry wine with just a little bit of sweetness, but it can also do a late-harvest dessert wine that is really unctuous and sweet and quite lovely. But I'd like to follow up on what Tony just mentioned about the blending. One of the movements you see now in Virginia is an emphasis on -- and I think this is a sign of the maturity of the industry -- an emphasis on single -- what we call single-vineyard wines, wines that are an expression of the place. MCINTYREAnd these might be not labeled as cabernet sauvignon because to do that, you need 75 percent of that grape to put that on the label. And they would be blends of several different grapes to try to get an expression of the place. For instance, Tarara Vineyards in Loudon County is going in that direction. Linden has always been in that direction. And he -- Jim Law makes some very expressive reds from his growers, and he always bottles them -- I mean, he makes some blends, too, but he bottles the single-vineyard ones. MCINTYREAnd, of course, the one that's gotten a big splash the last year is RdV Vineyards out near Delaplane, which is one-site blend of three or four Bordeaux-type grapes. And the Glen Manor Hodder Hill that Tony mentioned just won the Governor's Cup. And in that competition, we had 12 wines singled out, and five of those were what we call Bordeaux blends or Meritage blends. So that's a good trend. That's an area that Virginia is doing really well. NNAMDIChris, thank you very much for your call. I got to take a short break. When we come back, we will continue this conversation about local wines with Todd Kliman, Dave McIntyre and Tony Wolf. The lines are busy. So if you'd like to get in touch with us, shoot us an email to [email protected], send us a tweet, @kojoshow, or simply go to our website, kojoshow.org. Join the conversation there. If you have a go-to favorite type of wine, you're wondering whether there's a local variety that you might also like, you can send us a tweet, @kojoshow. I'm Kojo Nnamdi. NNAMDIIt's Food Wednesday, local wines with Tony Wolf. He's a professor of viticulture at Virginia Tech, where he's also the director of the Alson H. Smith, Jr. Agricultural Research and Extension Center. Dave McIntyre is the wine columnist for The Washington Post, and he's the co-founder of drinklocalwine.com. Todd Kliman is the food and wine editor for the Washingtonian. He also serves as the magazines food critic. NNAMDIHe is the author of "The Wild Vine: A Forgotten Grape and the Untold Story of American Wine." We go directly to the phones and talk now with Cathy in Delaplane, Va. Cathy, you're on the air. Go ahead, please. CATHYHi, thanks for taking my call. And, yeah, I live in what is now becoming wine country in Delaplane, and it's lovely to see so many vineyards popping up all over the place. I have a question about a particular variety of wine, the Norton. When I went to one of the wineries nearby, there was a wonderful story about how the Norton was preserved during Prohibition. And I wonder if you could tell more about that story. And also, I tried to go back to the same winery... NNAMDII'm afraid we only have about 15 minutes left, and you should know that Todd Kliman's book is about Norton red wines. So I'm going to ask him to, as they say on the Hill, restrict his remarks. Go ahead, please, Todd Kliman. KLIMANWell, I think Norton is a fascinating grape and a fascinating story. And just to link back to what we were talking about earlier about the best versus what's interesting, you know, most people in the wine world have very little regard for Norton, including, at times, the gentleman to my right, but… NNAMDIIt would be Dave McIntyre. KLIMANNo. It wouldn't be Dave. It wouldn't be Dave. MCINTYREPutting words in my mouth. KLIMANBut I think it's such an interesting wine. And so many wine makers in Virginia are so concerned about making wines that will compete nationally. You hear that a lot. You hear it in Missouri, too, which is a really interesting and important -- historically important wine region. And I think that what Norton gives these wineries may not -- it's a challenging wine -- challenging grape to work with, certainly in the vineyard and in the cellar as well. And it's not to everybody's taste. KLIMANThere's just this quality about it. There's a wild quality that not everybody cops to. But the thing is that what Norton gives Virginia is a story, and a story is really important, a story that goes back 200 years, and in reality probably 400 years, because of the experiment of Daniel Norton who created the Norton grape in the throes of despair after losing his family. And that story, I mean, his breakthrough, his cracking of the code has -- you know, the context of that goes back to the earliest settlings of the country. KLIMANSo that story is really fascinating, and I think that it doesn't necessarily make for an easy wine for people to embrace. But that story can be used, I think, for marketing purposes and for introducing people to a new taste. NNAMDIAnd, Cathy, he won't do it, so I will shamelessly plug the book, "The Wild Vine: A Forgotten Grape and the Untold Story of American Wine" by Todd Kliman. CATHYWhere can I get it? CATHYNo, I mean, the Norton wine. KLIMANOh. No, don't drink the wine. Get the book. No. The wine is -- there are at least more than -- I want to say more than two dozen, more than three dozen in the state. MCINTYREI think so. The leading ones would be Chrysalis in Middleburg -- Jenny called in earlier -- and, obviously, Horton, and everybody loves saying Horton Norton. NNAMDICathy, the conversation we had with Todd about this book was on June 22, 2010, so you can find that in the archives at our website, kojoshow.org. Thank you very much for your call. Here is Jennifer in Warrenton, Va. Jennifer, you're on the air. Go ahead, please. JENNIFERHi. I am the wine director at The Inn at Little Washington, and I've had the absolute pleasure to not only sit and taste wine with Dave McIntyre but to have a conversation with Todd Kliman. And I also read his book before coming to Virginia to take on the position... NNAMDIAnd you're still so young. That's amazing. But go ahead, please. JENNIFERNo, no, no, no. It was amazingly interesting, and shed so much light on the subject that I was embarrassed I didn't know enough about. And it's been amazing to me how often people have spoken about the wine industry and don't know about Virginia. And I've had the ability to almost have an educational platform with using "The Wild Vine" as my backdrop. And the information that I gleaned from that has been unbelievable. JENNIFERI would like to say, though, for those who have any doubts about Virginia wine, I spent 11 years in California, and my second day on the job, I went on a tasting with the first lady of Virginia. And I hate to use the word embarrassed again, but I will because I could not believe that I did not know this was happening here. I was blown away. Impressed is an understatement. And it was just fascinating to me to be able to be part of what, I think, is becoming the new winery generation. NNAMDIHere's Dave McIntyre. MCINTYREYeah. I'd like to add to that. It's something that led myself and my friend Jeff Siegel down in Dallas to create DrinkLocalWine.com as a means of calling attention to this happening throughout the country because what we call the winestream media, the magazines and everything, tends to have their editorial schedules, and there's no room for new regions... NNAMDIAnd I'm glad Jennifer called because it allows me to raise this issue with you and with Todd -- and feel free to jump in, Tony, also. A lot of people like to eat local, but they don't necessarily drink local. Why do you think there's a bias against American wines, with a possible exception of California? Why does that bias tend to persist? MCINTYREWell, I think a lot of it is... NNAMDII hear Tony laughing in the background already. MCINTYREYeah. And he knows that this is a subject dear to Todd's and mine hearts. We call this the locavore, local poor, conundrum. The -- I think a lot of it is a sense that -- and mistaken sense -- that local wines aren't very good. I mean, there are some very bad Virginia -- wine made in Virginia and Maryland. There's bad wine made in California. NNAMDIThere's bad wines everywhere, yes. MCINTYREExactly. And a part of it, too, is that, you know, some people might have tasted wine 20 years ago at a festival and not liked it. Or they might have tasted wine 20 days ago and had one that they didn't like, so they write it off and say, well, OK, Virginia is making wine, but it's not very good. The quality is getting better. Some (word?) like Jennifer and others here in D.C. are beginning to pay attention, which is great. So we're beginning to see more on local lists. MCINTYREThere's also a distinction that people say, well, local food is fresh, and local wine isn't. And I don't buy that. I think that's a false distinction because they're farmers, and you're supporting your local farmer whether he's growing lettuce or growing grapes. KLIMANI think a lot of it comes down to status, and it's something that a lot of people in the industry will just not admit. When you're eating, you know, some kind of heirloom pork grown in some town in Virginia, and it's presented to you at a restaurant, and there's this, you know, lengthy explication at the table, and you get the papers for the pig, and you're told the entire history of the pig, I mean, that's selling of a story. And you're being presented that as kind of a status symbol. KLIMANThis is better, you're being told implicitly, because it's coming from here. And it may be better. It may be a wonderful thing. But the argument doesn't extend to wines. When it comes to wine, all sorts of arguments are thrown up to shoot it down, as Dave just mentioned. And I think the problem is that -- what people are missing is that when you eat that local pig or you eat any local greens, I mean, you are supporting a larger system of making and distributing. KLIMANBut you're also supporting people who are making this product in the here and now, and you're supporting something that is part of this micro or local culture, I guess we could call it. And that has intrinsic worth. NNAMDITony, care to comment? WOLFWell, just to follow up. I agree entirely with what Todd and Dave have already said. There's no point in repeating that. Just a sad statistic, though, in the industry is the fact that Virginia still hovers around a 4 percent market share with Virginia wine sales. And we could compare ourselves to Oregon, a figure that I've heard recently from there is upwards of around 40 percent. WOLFSo 40 percent of the wines in Oregon that are purchased by Oregonians are Oregon wines, and yet we're down at a low single-digit figure of four. And that figure has stayed there, not budged in many, many years. So we do have a lot of room to grow. I think the general greater availability of wines and good wines today also it gives, you know, consumers this vast opportunity to try different wines. WOLFAnd I guess I would just echo the comments that have been said before. The variability that sometimes occurs with vintages here leads to, you know, some people's displeasure with wine. If they go back to the same winery looking for the same wine, it may vary in quality from year to year. NNAMDIWell, Jennifer, thank you very much for your call. JENNIFEROh, my pleasure. Thank you so much for having it. NNAMDIAnd Jennifer addressed Virginia. Now, here is Regina in Baltimore, Md., who will talk a little bit about Maryland. Regina, you're on the air. Go ahead, please. REGINAHi. Thank you so much. As Kojo mentioned, I'm from Maryland, and I actually work with the Maryland Wineries Association. And I was calling to ask your guests to speak about the local food and local wine movement, but they've covered that in depth. So I just wanted to mention one of my favorite things in working in the industry is the personality and getting out to go visit wineries and meet the people who are growing the grapes and making the wine and the stories behind the industry, again going all the way back to the beginning of this country. REGINAAnd Maryland's history parallels Virginia. And those early grape growers -- you know, Thomas Jefferson had a friend up here in Maryland named John Adlum, and they would send wine samples back and forth. So I really feel the personality of the industry members add so much to the wine experience 'cause wine is so experiential. NNAMDII guess it gets back to what you were talking about, to some extent, Todd Kliman, and that is the story. People need to know the story in the same way that Jennifer and Regina now know the story. KLIMANA story is so valuable. A story, you know, illumines so much. I think it's so interesting to talk to people -- call them foodies -- who travel to Europe, and they go to these small towns and they eat at the local cafes and bistros and trattorias. And, you know, the idea is that you go into this local place, and you're experiencing this local culture, and you drink the local wine. KLIMANAnd it's not great wine, but it's the idea of this food is going with this wine. This wine was made here. This food comes from here. And yet, here, in Virginia, that doesn't have any resonance for a lot of people. NNAMDIDave McIntyre, back to Maryland, you were telling me about a book. MCINTYREWell, Regina McCarthy, who just called in, is also the author of a new book called "Maryland Wine: A Full-Bodied History," which is telling the story of the wine -- the growth of the wine industry through the state. We also have a new book published in -- about Virginia by a gentleman named Richard Leahy called "Beyond Jefferson's Vines." I was -- I wrote the introduction to that. MCINTYREI haven't had a chance to read the full book in published form yet of either of those, but I'm looking forward to it. I think that's a sign that the local wine movement is growing, that we have these books. I've read one recently from Texas called "The Wine Slinger Diaries" by Russ Kane. It's great to see this attention out there. NNAMDIRegina, for being so modest, I will shamelessly plug your book again, "Maryland Wine: A Full-Bodied History." Regina, thank you very much for your call. REGINAThank you so much. NNAMDIAnd here now is Mary Ellen in Purcellville, Va. Mary Ellen, you're on the air. Go ahead, please. MARY ELLENWhy, thanks, Kojo. I'm a big fan of yours and local Loudoun County wines and just wanted to state that Loudoun County is identified as D.C. wine country. And we have 24 vineyards and wineries, which are only an hour outside of D.C. And I certainly hope that one day the Loudoun County viognier will be known like Napa's chardonnay. MARY ELLENAnd you had asked what we like besides the flavor of local wine, and of course it's the beautiful rolling terrain, the awesome tasting rooms that are here and the gracious hospitality and, as you already did mention, the winemakers. And one in particular I would just like to share is North Gate Vineyard and their petit manseng, which is done by Vicki Fedor. NNAMDIThank you very much for your call. We're running out of time very quickly, but, Todd Kliman, we have not yet talked about cost. KLIMANNo. And that's the bugaboo here. The wines are -- some of them are very reasonably priced, $10, $15, $20. But the really -- a lot of the exciting stuff is in the $25, $30 range, and that's kind of out of reach of a lot of people. NNAMDIIn this economy. KLIMANYeah. And besides which, the wines are not easy to get. I've had a lot of people say, where can I get a Norton, or where can I get a viognier? And you can't just wander into most wine shops and find them. You've got to seek them out. That makes things complicated, and Virginia is going to have to do more to address those issues. NNAMDITodd Kliman, he's the food and wine editor for the Washingtonian magazine. He also serves there as the magazine's food critic. He's the author of "The Wild Vine: A Forgotten Grape and the Untold Story of American Wine." Good luck with the James Beard nomination. NNAMDIDave McIntyre is the wine columnist for The Washington Post and co-founder of drinklocalwine.com. Dave, thank you for joining us. MCINTYREThank you, Kojo. NNAMDITony Wolf is a professor of viticulture at Virginia Tech. He's also the director of the Alson H. Smith, Jr. Agricultural Research and Extension Center there. Tony, thank you for joining us. WOLFThank you, Kojo. NNAMDIAnd thank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi. Most Recent Shows Kojo and guests explore what you can learn about D.C. by riding its bus system. T.C. Boyle's latest novel explores the darker side of the American ideal of freedom, from a woman who follows the extreme libertarian "sovereign citizen" movement to a disturbed young man who models himself on the pioneer John Colter. It's your turn to discuss these topics or whatever is on your mind.

A couple of days ago, I received the following note by email, which I'm going (with permission) to share with you today, together with my reply: "Hi Anna. After reading your last post about encouraging homemakers, I thought I'd email you. I have been married for about a year now, and while we haven't been blessed with children yet, I never run out of things to do at home. I enjoy my calling as wife and helpmeet, and find true satisfaction in creating a warm and cozy home. The problem: my husband doesn't appreciate my work. Normally I try to complete all the daily chores before he comes home and welcome him when I'm refreshed and relaxed. It seems as though he resents me 'not being properly tired'! Before we got married, he said many times how much he would love me to be a stay at home mom, but it seems he doesn't see a point in me being 'just' a stay at home wife. Recently he started pressuring me to find a job. I'm afraid of neglecting my home and our relationship, and also of getting used to having a second income and not being able to quit once we do have children. This is creating a lot of tension between us. What am I to do? Any suggestions will be appreciated. Hi Carolyn! I'm not married yet, so it might be that I can't have a really thorough understanding of your situation (and that's why, if you don't mind, I will share this on my blog; hopefully we'll get some feedback from married ladies!). However, I understand very well your feeling of being under-appreciated. As you probably already know I'm a grown-up daughter who spends most of her time at home, and more than once, I had to face the question, 'so, what do you do?' Usually I try not to get into lengthy discussions about the way I view my role as a woman; sometimes I answer tongue-in-cheek: 'What, you mean apart from organizing, cooking, baking, cleaning, decorating, budgeting, scheduling, learning new skills, my crafts, and oh, I almost forgot, tending to the needs of my elderly grandmother?' I also understand your point about being resented for not being 'properly tired'. In our crazy world, many people are overwhelmed and exhausted on the border of collapse, so much that it actually begins to seem normal. Isn't it ironic how it seems almost indecent to seem cheerful and peaceful at the end of the day? And even as someone who devotes herself to her family and home, there is the temptation of justifying our presence by being as hectic-paced as a woman who tries to balance career, marriage and home; otherwise, doesn't it mean we're not using our time well? Doesn't it mean we are lazy? Well, no. And while I found out that, just like you said, I never run out of things to do at home, and could do them from morning till night, running around with my to-do list and crossing things off it, I think this would ruin much of the value and pleasure of good home life. After all, one of our major goals is creating a peaceful dwelling, right? So I think it's good and right that you try not to pile too much on yourself every single day, so that you can truly be there for your husband when he comes home. You have the energy to talk to him, hear about his day, cheer him up. This important part of your relationship would be in danger if you came from work, exhausted, and still with a zillion chores to do, instead of spending quality time together. You could point this out to your husband, along with other reasons why you feel it's the best decision for you to remain at home. You could, together, go over the reasons why your husband wants you to be a stay-at-home mother, and see if any of them are still applicable while you don't have children yet. You want to take into consideration work-related expenses, too, which might eat away a larger part of your income than you imagine. And like you already said, you don't want to get used to a second income for funding additional, unnecessary expenses, which will make it much more difficult to come back home if and when you become a mother. But ultimately, I think you should put your trust in God and follow your husband's authority in this area; if after you discuss it, he is still adamant about you finding a job outside the home, so be it. Maybe your work at home, which is not appreciated when it's quietly done while your husband is away, will be missed when you don't have as much time to invest in your home. More importantly, maybe your husband will miss the special time you had in the evenings, when he came from work to a pretty, clean home, a delicious home-made dinner, a cheerful, welcoming smile, and relaxed conversation. … Married homemakers: your input will be very much appreciated, especially those of you who don't have children yet. Mothers: did you work outside the home before you had children? If you didn't, what was your reasoning? If you did, did you feel it takes a toll on your family life?

At the loft, Dante awakened Lulu, who was agitated by a disturbing dream. In the dream, Lulu had berated Luke and told him angrily that he loved alcohol more than life. When she told this to Dante, she said that the dream was the opposite of how she felt. Lulu said that she felt as bad for Luke as for Lucky and that she was not mad at her dad. Dante said that a person felt what they felt. He comforted Lulu. Luke was drunk and flicking a cigarette lighter on and off as he surveyed the gasoline-soaked floor of the Haunted Star. Lucky entered the casino and told Luke not to stop on his account because he loved fireworks. Then he asked Luke what he would accomplish by burning up Ethan's job and Tracy's investment with the Haunted Star. Lucky said that Tracy would be angry so Luke was probably burning up his marriage as well. Luke said it would simplify his life. Lucky said that it reminded him of the night that Luke had burned down his blues club. Lucky said that burning the club had not worked out well for Luke and burning the Haunted Star would not work out either. Lucky said that burning up the boat was an empty gesture that would not get Jake back. Luke said it would be a spectacular way to break with the past. Lucky said that a wise man, his father, had told him that he could not outrun the past. Luke was thoughtful when Lucky left the casino. Lulu also visited Luke on the Haunted Star. She smelled the gasoline, and Luke told her that he was reconsidering burning up the boat because it was a repeat of burning up his blues club. Lulu told him she would clean up. When Luke continued to flick the lighter as she cleaned, she asked him to stop. He said that some things could not be cleaned up. Lulu told him that unless he wanted to risk both their lives, he should put the lighter away. At Kelly's, Carly encouraged Sam to have a baby with Jason. Carly said that what had happened with Jake proved that life was random. She said that Jason would be an excellent father and should have a kid of his own. Sam said that she could not deal with the sadness if something went wrong. Sam said that there was a 50 percent chance that she could not carry a baby to term. Carly offered to be a surrogate. Sam said that she appreciated the offer, but she did not think that Jason wanted to have a baby. Carly said that Jason was grieving and that Sam would have to make the decision. After Carly left, Kristina approached Sam and told her that she was trying to make a decision about college. She did not know whether to continue hoping that Yale would accept her, or put down a deposit for a school where she was already accepted. Sam said it was a difficult decision, and she would help in any way she could. At the penthouse, Michael told Jason that Ronnie had picked up Abby and was questioning her about Brandon's murder. He wanted to rush down to the station, but Jason prevented him. Jason sent Diane instead and assured Michael that Abby would be fine. When Michael tried to join Abby, Jason said that Ronnie was using Abby as bait. Michael said that he did not care what Ronnie did to him because he was worried about Abby. Jason said that it was not Michael that Ronnie was after, but Jason. Michael finally understood that Ronnie would threaten to send Michael prison to get Jason to make a false murder confession to protect Michael. Michael left the penthouse, but not before promising to stay away from the police department. Lucky stopped in to apologize to Jason for not protecting Jake. He told Jason that he should have stopped Luke from drinking. He said that the irony was that Jake had been conceived because of Lucky's addiction and had died because of Luke's. Lucky said he was sorry for being a coward and not standing up to Luke when it counted. Jason told Lucky that he was not to blame. Jason said that he knew that Lucky had loved Jake and done everything he could for him. Lucky said that Jake might have still been alive if he had confronted Luke about his drinking. Patrick went to Kelly's to meet Robin, but found Lisa instead. He accused her of following him, but she said it was a coincidence because she was there to meet Johnny. A couple of blocks away, Robin ran into Johnny and wanted to clear the air. She wanted to know if Lisa and Johnny were dating. She hastened to add that she was not judging; she just wanted to know if Lisa had moved on from Patrick. At Wyndemere, Brook Lynn offered Nikolas her sympathies. Nikolas was glad to see her and told her that he'd had a wonderful time with her, but that everything had changed when Jake died. He said that he truly cared for her and that she had helped him through a dark and dangerous time. He told her that she had made him laugh again. He said that he would always be grateful, but for the time being, he would be preoccupied with family and it was not fair to her. She told him that his instincts about family were right on and she admired him. Brook Lynn said that she had been offered a place with a touring Latin band. She had intended to decline if Nikolas needed her, but since he didn't, it appeared to be the right thing to do. Brook told Nikolas that she had learned a lot from him. He said that he would miss her. She told him not to lose her number because one never knew what would happen in the future. They shared a short, loving kiss before Brook Lynn went upstairs to pack her bags and leave Wyndemere for good. Johnny was smiling when he met Lisa at Kelly's. She said that she was glad that someone was happy to see her, and then recounted her meeting with Patrick. Johnny was skeptical and told her that she needed some amusement, like a movie. She said it was difficult when Robin and Patrick were constantly abusing her. Johnny said that the games were over, and she needed to move on. She said that if Patrick had given her that much attention when she was obsessed with him, they would have had a normal affair and she would have moved on. Lisa worried that Patrick would go to Steve and get her fired. Johnny told her to get over it. Lisa wondered if she should get to Steve first. Then she remembered the movie they were supposed to see. Johnny was disgusted with her and told her that she still had Patrick on the brain and he had stuff to do. When he left Kelly's, Lisa walked over to Kristina. Patrick arrived shortly after Robin got home with Chinese take-out. She wanted to know why he had cancelled their date night at Kelly's. He said he wanted to be home with Robin and Emma. They talked about Emma, and then Robin wanted to know the real reason. Patrick told her about his conversation with Lisa. Robin suggested that maybe Lisa was backing off, but Patrick said that Lisa had acted normal before then lashed out. Patrick did not want Lisa to hurt Robin or Emma. Robin hoped that Lisa had transferred her attention to Johnny, but Patrick said that Lisa had successfully gotten away with her schemes, and he feared that she would try something again. Robin said that they had talked enough about Lisa and should concentrate on themselves and their lives. She said it was date night for them, and they should have fun with it. Patrick agreed. Patrick and Robin discussed landscaping their back yard. Patrick wanted to hire it done, but Robin wanted more hands-on. They joked about going upstairs to complete their date night. They opened fortune cookies. When Robin's said that she would receive a gift, Patrick said that he had just picked up tickets for a rock concert. They agreed to ask Kristina to be Emma's babysitter. Michael went to the loft to see Dante. He said that Abby was in trouble and asked Dante to help. Michael assured Dante that neither he, Abby, nor Jason had killed Brandon. Dante believed him. He also respected Michael for understanding that Ronnie was baiting Michael to get to Jason. Dante agreed to help, but made Michael promise to stay away from the police department. Johnny found Luke on the Haunted Star and said that he wanted to buy back into the business. Luke said that he did not care about business. Johnny tried to be affable and identify with Luke, when he said that they had both done things they regretted and that they were both way past redemption. Luke was cold when he called Johnny a "choirboy" and said that whatever Johnny was looking for was not on the Haunted Star. Michael went to see Carly and Josslyn at the hospital. Carly was sympathetic to Abby's plight, but told Michael that Abby was strong and would be okay. Michael said that he did not want Abby to have to relive her abuse for a jerk like Ronnie. Carly told Michael that he had to be strong and not let Ronnie bait him into actions that would get him sent back to prison. She advised him to stay away from Abby until Brandon's killer was found. Dante went to Jason and told him that Abby was calm and handling Ronnie's interrogation very well. Jason wanted to tell Michael, but Dante said to wait. He told Jason that Brandon had no money and had originally had a public defender until a high-priced lawyer had stepped in and taken over his case for free. Dante said that someone with deep pockets had been bankrolling Brandon. Lucky went to see Lulu at the loft. She told him about her visit with Luke. She said that he had put away the lighter and cleaned up the Haunted Star. Lulu said that Luke was in a lot of pain and did not know what to do. Lucky said that Luke did know what to do. Lucky told Lulu that Luke would drink until he no longer felt the pain. At the hospital, Carly admitted to Michael that she had initially disapproved of Abby because Abby had been a stripper, and an older woman. Carly had changed her mind about Abby after Carly realized that Abby was good for Michael. "That's awesome. Let's just leave it at that," Michael snapped. Carly explained that she couldn't because Abby's ex-boyfriend, whom Michael had beaten up, had been found dead. Carly thought that Michael and Abby should take a step back from their relationship until things had settled down. Michael wondered if Carly would stand aside to protect herself if Jason and Sonny were in trouble. Jax walked up moments later and then remarked that he was glad to see that Josslyn was on everyone's minds. Michael decided to leave, so he excused himself and left. Carly quickly filled Jax in on her conversation with Michael. Jax warned Carly that Michael was growing up, so Michael would make his own choices. "Not if I can change his mind," Carly argued. Jax decided to change the subject to find out if there had been any more news about Franco. Carly admitted that Franco had gone silent, but he remained a concern, so Shawn would continue to guard Josslyn. Jax resented Jason's mercenary watching over his daughter. Carly argued that Jason had persuaded Lucky and Liz to donate Jake's kidney, which meant that Jason had saved Josslyn's life. Jax assured her that he was grateful for what Jason had done, but he didn't appreciate Jason's presence in Josslyn's life. Carly admitted that she was surprised that Jax wasn't with Brenda. She quickly realized that Jax hadn't heard about Lucian, so she filled him in about Brenda's newfound son. On a street corner, Michael bumped into Johnny. Johnny offered to help if Michael and Abby had any problems as a result of Brandon's murder. Michael thanked Johnny and then continued on his way. Carly went to Abby's apartment to talk to Abby about Michael. Carly expressed concern about Michael's anger issues; she feared that Michael's temper might get the best of him if a cop questioned Abby about Brandon's murder. Carly wanted Abby to consider taking a break from her relationship with Michael until Brandon's murder had been solved. Abby admitted that she had similar concerns about Michael. Moments later, Michael entered the apartment. Michael's temper flared when he saw his mother standing in the living room. Michael immediately accused Carly of trying to bully Abby, but Abby insisted that Carly hadn't been doing any such thing. Michael angrily ordered Carly to stay out of his business and then ordered her to leave. Carly claimed that Michael's outburst was exactly what she had been concerned about. After Carly left, Abby admitted that Carly had a point. Michael argued that he didn't want Abby to let his mother manipulate her. He explained that Ronnie had only questioned Abby to provoke Michael, so that Jason would step in. Michael admitted that Franco had been obsessed with Jason, so everything Franco had done had been to get Jason's attention. Abby thought that Franco sounded like a very sick man. "You have no idea," Michael confessed. He revealed that Franco had sent Carter after him because the rape had been Franco's way to mess with Jason's head. Michael realized that it sounded selfish, but he couldn't imagine being alone again. Abby assured Michael that there would be no going back for them. At the hospital, Alexis found Jax watching over Josslyn. Alexis was happy to hear that Josslyn would be released from the hospital in a few days, but she was curious why Jax seemed down. Jax told Alexis about Lucian. She confessed that something about Suzanne's story sounded wrong. Jax agreed. Alexis realized that she wasn't in a position to judge, but she was curious if Brenda realized that Lucian might end up either shot, kidnapped, or blown up if he were raised in Sonny's world. Alexis reminded Jax that Kristina had not escaped unscathed, despite the limited contact that Kristina had with Sonny during the early years. Alexis couldn't understand why Brenda would make the choice to raise her son with Sonny when Sonny wasn't even Lucian's father. Jax agreed, so he decided to pay Brenda a visit to get a read on the situation. Alexis warned Jax that he was headed down a slippery slope by getting involved in Brenda's problems. Later, Carly entered Josslyn's hospital room to find Alexis sitting next to Josslyn's crib. Alexis quickly explained that Josslyn had been asleep the whole time, so she hoped that Carly didn't mind the visit. Alexis admitted that she had stopped by to drop off some books for Josslyn that Alexis had often read to Kristina and Molly when they had been little. Carly assured Alexis that she wasn't bothered by the visit or the gifts. Alexis let Carly know that Jax had gone to see Brenda. It didn't escape Alexis' notice that Carly had taken the news in stride. Carly confessed that she was resigned to Jax always going to Brenda. Alexis hoped that the visit with Brenda didn't cause problems for Carly and Jax. Carly insisted that all that mattered to her was that Jax was a great dad to Josslyn. At Jason's penthouse, Spinelli tried to stonewall Dante when Dante asked to see Jason. Dante explained that the evidence continued to point to Jason as the primary suspect in Brandon's murder. Spinelli wasn't surprised that the "long arm of the law" continued to look in the wrong direction, but he was offended by Dante's insensitivity during Jason's time of grief. Dante admitted that he didn't think that Jason or Michael was responsible for Brandon's murder, but the weapon used was the same kind of gun that Jason was known to carry, and that Michael had access to it. Diane arrived moments later. Dante quickly explained to Diane that he was trying to clear Jason and Michael of killing Brandon, so he needed her help. Dante revealed that Brandon had hired a high-powered attorney named Angela Dwyer to represent him. Dante pointed out that Brandon hadn't had the kind of money to pay for someone as expensive as Ms. Dwyer. Diane conceded that Angela Dwyer was a great attorney, but Ms. Dwyer had very questionable morals. Dante was curious if Diane knew which of Angela Dwyer's clients might hate Jason and Sonny. Diane revealed that the Zaccharas had recently hired Angela Dwyer. Dante thanked Diane for her help because she had saved him quite a bit of time. After Dante left, Diane announced to Spinelli that their book was a huge success. Diane was certain that she and Spinelli would be asked to write a sequel, so she wanted to get a jumpstart on the next novel. She urged Spinelli to gather some new case files for them to review. Spinelli quickly snatched up his files before Diane had a chance to read them. He explained that some of his files were too confidential for publication. Patrick and Robin were walking home when they saw Johnny and Lisa on a street corner. Patrick suspected that it wasn't an accidental encounter. Johnny immediately went on the offensive by accusing Patrick of having a god complex. Johnny insisted that Patrick didn't have the right to question them. Patrick and Robin argued that Johnny didn't know the real Lisa, so he couldn't appreciate just how dangerous she was. Lisa played the victim by denying that she and Johnny had been stalking Patrick and Robin. Patrick ignored Lisa's cries of innocence to warn Johnny that Lisa was using Johnny as a smokescreen to hide behind. After Patrick and Robin left, Johnny made it clear that Lisa had better not prove Patrick right. Patrick remained in a foul mood after he and Robin arrived home. Robin realized that Patrick was still thinking about their encounter with Lisa and Johnny. Patrick admitted that he was frustrated because Lisa was good at pretending to be normal. He feared that Johnny was enabling Lisa. Patrick argued that it was easy to see that Johnny was projecting Claudia onto Lisa, which said something very disturbing about Johnny's psyche. Patrick was certain that Johnny viewed Lisa as a victim, which made Johnny protective of her. Robin pointed out that Lisa was delusional because she was fixated on the one-night stand with Patrick, but Patrick insisted that Johnny didn't see that. Patrick worried that there wouldn't be any limits to what Lisa could do with Johnny backing her up. Robin was certain that Johnny would not condone Lisa harming them, so perhaps Johnny was what Lisa needed to pull Lisa back from the brink. At Kelly's, Kristina spoke to Taylor on the phone about his acceptance to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Kristina assured Taylor that she was happy for him and then ended the call. Afterwards, Brenda walked up to greet Kristina. Kristina was stunned when Brenda decided to introduce Kristina to Lucian, who was seated at a nearby table with Max. Kristina was curious how Sonny felt about Brenda's long-lost son. Brenda admitted that they were all trying to adjust, but things were better than Brenda could have imagined. Kristina proposed getting all the kids together to meet Lucian over lunch. Brenda loved the idea, but she wanted to wait a bit until Brenda and Sonny had a chance to bond with Lucian as a family. A few minutes later, Brenda gathered up Lucian, so that they could go home to work on some plans for a playground in the backyard. A short time later, Diane entered the parlor of Greystone Manor, to find Max playing with one of Lucian's toys. "There's my big, sexy man-child," Diane said. Diane suggested that she and Max spend some time together, but Max explained that he had to work. Moments later, Brenda popped into the parlor, looking for one of Lucian's books. After Brenda left, Diane asked Max who Lucian was. Max reluctantly told Diane about Brenda's son. Diane felt a massive migraine starting, but Max reminded her that Sonny was a natural at being a dad. Diane disagreed; Sonny was a natural at making children, not raising them. Jax arrived a few minutes later, looking for Brenda. Max dashed off to fetch Brenda, so Jax decided to question Diane about Michael's legal situation in regards to Brandon's murder. Jax wondered how worried he should be. "Moderately," Diane answered. Diane assured Jax that she was doing her best to keep Michael and Abby out of jail. Brenda entered the parlor seconds later, so Diane excused herself to give them some privacy. Jax admitted that he had heard about Lucian. Brenda beamed as she confessed that she was thrilled to finally have her own family. Brenda gushed about Lucian and then confided that it felt as if he were the last missing piece of her life. Jax was happy for Brenda; however, he warned her that it would change things. Brenda revealed that things were already different. Brenda eyes filled with tears as she confessed that she just wanted to keep her son safe. Lisa entered Kelly's, and immediately noticed that Kristina seemed rattled. Kristina confessed that it might sound petty, but she was upset because her dad would be spending time with Brenda and Lucian rather than with Kristina. Kristina also admitted that her best friend, Taylor, had been accepted to Brown University. Lisa feigned sympathy and then offered to help take the edge off. Kristina wasn't interested in taking any drugs, but Lisa assured her that she had been suggesting some herbal supplements. Lisa offered to pick them up for Kristina, so Kristina agreed to try them. After Lisa left, Ethan walked in. Ethan confessed that he had hoped to see her because he needed her help. Ethan admitted that he had been out of town when Jake had been killed; however, since his return, he had wanted to be able to help Luke. Kristina wondered how Luke was doing. "Not good," Ethan admitted. Ethan had no idea what to do, so Kristina advised Ethan to simply be there for Luke. Kristina reminded Ethan that he and Luke didn't have a messy history to get in the way of things, so it should be make everything easier. Ethan appreciated the advice and then changed the subject to find out what was going on with Kristina. Kristina told Ethan about Lucian and then admitted that she felt threatened because she feared that the progress that she and Sonny had made would be undone. Ethan urged Kristina not to shut out Sonny, because she had a place in Sonny's life that no one could take away. They decided to share a piece of pie as they talked about Kristina's concerns about getting into Yale. Ethan suggested that Kristina look at things objectively, without worrying about what Alexis wanted for her. Ethan thought that she should figure out why she wanted to go to Yale and then decide if it would be a good fit for her. Kristina liked the sound of that. At the hospital, Lisa emptied out the bottle of herbal supplements and then replaced them with a narcotic. Lisa was on her way to Kelly's when she ran into Johnny on the street. Johnny admitted that it was fascinating to watch Lisa scurry from one place to another. He was curious what she was up to, but Lisa denied that she was doing anything. According to Lisa, she was starving, so she intended to go to Kelly's for something to eat. Johnny was prevented from pursing the conversation when Dante called out to him. Lisa walked away as Dante approached Johnny to question Johnny about Angela Dwyer. Dante admitted that it was a strange coincidence that Brandon had been able to afford an attorney who worked for the Zaccharas. Johnny suggested that Dante question Angela Dwyer about Brandon. Dante thought it was odd how everything always seemed to lead back to Johnny. Kristina decided that she would follow any advice that Ethan gave her because she found it inspiring how free and true to himself Ethan was. Ethan chuckled as he confided that disaster tended to follow in his wake. Lisa walked up and then admitted that Kristina seemed to be in a much better mood. Kristina credited Ethan for helping her. At Johnny's penthouse, Michael explained that he had stopped by because he wanted to question the people at Vaughn's about what they had seen on the night of Brandon's murder. Johnny warned Michael that the police would become suspicious if Michael were to start nosing around the club. Michael hoped to find evidence to exonerate Abby, but Johnny insisted that it would appear as if Michael were trying to cover something up. Johnny reminded Michael that the wife or girlfriend was always the prime suspect in any murder case, so he urged Michael to be smart. Michael was curious why Johnny seemed determined to help him, instead of seeking revenge for Claudia's death. Johnny confessed that Claudia had been sick with guilt for her role in getting Michael shot, and that she had been half gone when she had taken Carly hostage, so Johnny didn't blame Michael. Olivia went to Dante's loft to drop off some food. She immediately noticed that her son seemed less than enthusiastic about her visit, so she asked him what was wrong. Dante admitted that he suspected that Johnny had set up Michael to gain leverage over Sonny. Olivia advised Dante to warn Sonny, but Dante feared that it might trigger a war between Sonny and Johnny. Olivia urged Dante to figure a way around it. Dante argued that the truce between Sonny and Johnny was fragile at best, so Olivia suggested that Dante stop thinking like a cop, and start acting like a brother and son. At Greystone Manor, Sonny instructed Max to keep a low profile when Max was out in public with Brenda and Lucian. Max realized that Brenda wanted to live as normal a life as possible. Sonny reminded Max that there wasn't anything normal about his life or the situation with Lucian. Moments later, Diane entered the parlor to drop off some documents for Sonny. She was curious if Max were on break, but Max explained that he had been updating the boss. Diane acknowledged that Max was great with children, but she reminded Sonny that Max had a life outside of Sonny's world. Sonny explained that he wanted to make certain that Brenda's maternal rights to Lucian were legal and airtight. Diane wondered what Sonny's role would be in Lucian's life. Sonny ignored Diane's question to add that he wanted Brenda's custody of Lucian to be ironclad. Diane wondered if Brenda had gotten a DNA test done to determine if Lucian were Brenda's biological child. Sonny insisted that they would deal with that later, so Diane agreed to draw up the paperwork. Sonny was relieved because he feared that Suzanne might cause problems if the custody issue weren't settled quickly. Diane was curious who Lucian had been living with prior to arriving in Port Charles. Sonny explained that, according to Suzanne, the adoptive parents had been killed, so he worried that some of their relatives might decide to claim Lucian. Diane promised to check everything out, but she wondered if Sonny planned to adopt the young boy. Sonny admitted that he just wanted to support Brenda, which Diane thought was a wise decision. Sonny demanded to know what Diane meant by that. Diane dared Sonny to look her in the eye and then tell her that he wanted another child. Sonny reminded Diane that he didn't pay her to pry into his personal life. Diane pointed out that Sonny was married to Lucian's mother, but Sonny was tired of Diane's lectures. Diane revealed that her book was a runaway best seller, so it would serve Sonny right if she were to quit her job to focus on her writing. Sonny made it clear that he was done talking, so Max volunteered to drive Diane to her office. Diane warned Sonny that Max would be taking a "well-deserved" five-hour lunch and then walked out. Dante stood in the doorway, watching the exchange. After Diane left, Sonny admitted to Dante that Diane was a terrific lawyer, but he sometimes questioned if she were worth it. Dante advised Sonny to be nice to Diane because Michael might need her skill. Sonny became momentarily sidetracked when he made a quick call to line up a bodyguard for Lucian. Afterwards, Sonny admitted that he was frustrated because it was impossible to find someone qualified to watch over the little boy. Sonny noticed Dante's confusion, so he filled Dante in about Lucian. Dante was curious if there were any proof of Suzanne's claims. Sonny explained that Suzanne had provided them with a birth certificate, but Dante pointed out that the piece of paper didn't mean anything, since he had been able to claim that the child was his at one time. Sonny wanted Brenda to be happy, but he didn't trust Suzanne. Sonny acknowledged that Lucian was a sweet child, but he confided that he didn't want any more children because he had his hands full with the children that he had. Dante was curious if things might have been different if Sonny had known about Lucian before the wedding. Sonny insisted that he would have loved Brenda, but he conceded that his life was difficult, so all he could do was adjust to the new situation. Sonny then asked Dante about his earlier comment regarding Michael. Dante told Sonny about Brandon's murder, and how concerned Michael had been about Abby. Sonny argued that Abby was a big girl who could take care of herself; however, Sonny refused to let Michael end up back in prison. Dante confessed that Johnny might be trying to exploit the situation. Sonny was stunned when Dante revealed that Brandon had hired the Zaccharas' attorney, Angela Dwyer, to bail Brandon out of jail. Sonny was certain that Johnny wanted to set Michael up for Brandon's murder to get back at Sonny. Dante urged Sonny to be careful not to start a war, but Sonny insisted that he would do whatever was necessary to protect Michael. Later, Michael paid his father a visit. Sonny admitted that he knew about Abby's ex-boyfriend's murder, so Michael quickly denied having killed Brandon. Sonny warned Michael that Johnny might be behind it, but Michael was skeptical because Johnny didn't have any reason to want to set up Michael. Sonny argued that getting Jason or Michael charged with murder would be a perfect way to distract Sonny. Michael wondered why Johnny would want to break the peace, so Sonny explained that the natural state of the Zaccharas was not peace, but rather chaos. Sonny explained that Brandon had hired Johnny's attorney, which meant that the dots connected to Johnny. Michael was reluctant to rush to judgment, but Sonny insisted that Michael didn't owe Johnny any loyalty. Sonny demanded to know exactly what Johnny had said and done for Michael. Michael admitted that Johnny had loaned Abby some money, which he hadn't pressured her to pay back, and then warned Michael when Brandon's body had been found. Sonny ordered Michael to shut Johnny down if Johnny tried to reach out to Michael or Abby. Sonny explained that one of the principals of war was to know one's enemies; Sonny knew Johnny. At Kelly's, Lulu thanked Maxie for covering for her at work. Maxie assured Lulu that she understood because Lulu was grieving for Jake. Maxie wondered how Lulu was holding up, so Lulu confessed that she felt like she was on overload. Maxie offered to take Lulu to a spa, but Lulu declined because she needed time to figure out her family issues. Lulu explained that Luke had attempted to burn down the Haunted Star and that Lucky was stuck on being hurt and angry. Lulu thought perhaps Liz might help Lucky to move forward, but Maxie insisted that Lulu should avoid pushing Lucky and Liz together because it would make things worse. Lulu thought that was harsh of Maxie to say. Maxie insisted that she was sympathetic to Liz's loss, but she doubted that Lucky and Liz's problems would magically disappear because they had lost a child. Lulu argued that grieving together was a part of the healing process. "Says who?" Maxie wondered. Maxie explained that it was one thing if Lucky and Liz reconciled on their own, but it would be a disaster if Lulu tried to push them together. Afterwards, Maxie decided to go to the hospital to seek Matt's advice. Maxie wondered if she had done the right thing by suggesting that Lulu not encourage Liz to help Lucky. Matt was curious why Maxie had felt that way. Maxie explained that she had said some mean, but true, things about Liz and how Jake's death didn't change anything between Lucky and Liz. Matt didn't see anything wrong with that, if Maxie believed what she had said. Maxie insisted that Liz was bad for Lucky because Liz had gotten "knocked up" by some other guy -- twice. Matt agreed that Lucky and Liz were better off apart, but Maxie admitted that she sounded like a hypocrite because she had faked a pregnancy, scored drugs, and then fed Lucky's addiction in order to hold onto him. "Wow," Matt responded in a shocked tone. Maxie realized that they had never discussed it, but Matt recovered quickly and then assured her that she was being too hard on herself. Maxie confessed that she had never liked Liz, so she believed that Lucky deserved better. Maxie then revealed that she had wished for bad things to happen to Liz in the past, but insisted that she had never wanted Liz to suffer the loss of a child, so she felt that she needed to make things up to Liz. Dante returned home to find Lulu leaving a message for Lucky. After Lulu ended the call, Dante wondered if everything were okay. Lulu confessed that things were worse between Luke and Lucky because Lucky wanted to wash his hands of Luke. Lulu revealed that Lucky couldn't deal with Luke's alcoholism while Lucky was struggling with the grief of losing Jake. Lulu had reminded Lucky that Luke was in pain, so she had urged Lucky to have more faith in Luke. Dante realized that it was tough dealing with family problems. Lulu was curious if they were talking about her family or Dante's family. Dante told her about his suspicions that Johnny might be trying to set up Michael to get to Sonny. Lulu conceded that it sounded like more than a coincidence that Brandon had hired the Zacchara family attorney, but she doubted that Johnny would frame Michael for murder. According to Lulu, Johnny wasn't amoral, and he had a soft spot for children raised in the mob. Lulu insisted that Johnny had always felt bad that he hadn't been able to stop Claudia from getting Michael shot. Dante wondered if he had been looking at the situation from the wrong angle; perhaps Johnny had killed Brandon as a favor to Michael. Michael arrived home after Lulu left. Michael was furious that Dante had talked to Sonny instead of to him. Michael insisted that he wasn't stupid or weak. Dante explained that Sonny had a right to know what was going on, but Michael argued that it would have helped if Michael had known about Dante's suspicions when Michael had talked to Johnny. Dante was curious when Michael had met with Johnny, so Michael told Dante about his request for permission to question the employees at Vaughn's. Dante warned Michael that stay clear of the strip club because the cops might suspect that Michael had something to hide. Michael admitted that Johnny had cautioned him about the same thing. Dante insisted that nothing good could happen if Michael became involved in the investigation. Michael refused to do nothing while he, Abby, and Jason were suspects. Dante realized that Michael was desperate to be in control of things because he had felt powerless in Pentonville. "Yeah, you're damn right," Michael responded. At Kelly's, Olivia explained that she had called to meet Steve because she wanted to see how he was holding up. Steve confessed that he was worried about his sister. Olivia understood that, but she was concerned about Steve. Steve admitted that he was still trying to process Jake's death. Olivia warned Steve that throwing himself into his work wouldn't help because there was more to life. "Like you," Steve quietly replied. Olivia smiled and then invited him to join her for a picnic in the park on Saturday. She offered to provide the food if he provided the music by taking his guitar. Steve agreed, but explained that he had to get back to work. After Steve left, Olivia bumped into Johnny as she was leaving Kelly's. She admitted that she had heard that he was involved with "the unstable" Lisa Niles, and tangled up in the mess with Michael. Johnny insisted that he had merely given Michael some advice. Olivia assured Johnny that he didn't have to evade or deny anything with her. Johnny chuckled as he confessed that he missed how straightforward she had always been. Olivia reminded Johnny that he had always been a "crummy" liar, so she knew that Johnny was up to something; however, she refused to believe that he would purposefully hurt Michael. Later, Johnny was on the phone with Anthony, when someone knocked on the door. It was Sonny. Sonny accused Johnny of paying for Brandon's attorney and then wondered if Johnny thought that Sonny would allow Johnny to frame Michael for Brandon's murder. Liz was reviewing Aiden's paternity results when Nikolas stopped by. Nikolas confessed that he was glad that she had called. Liz explained that she needed to talk to him about something, so she invited him to sit down. Liz set the paternity results on the table and then admitted that she had been having a difficult time understanding how life could go on after Jake's death. However, she realized that her boys needed her, as did Lucky. Liz knew that Lucky was dealing with a lot because of Luke and the guilt over leaving the boys with her, even though Jake's death had been her fault. Nikolas insisted that Liz wasn't to blame because it could have happened to anyone. Liz worried that Lucky needed Nikolas, but Nikolas quickly assured her that he and Lucky had worked things out. Liz was relieved that Lucky felt close to Nikolas again. Liz wasn't surprised when Nikolas confided that Lucky had struggled to remain sober; she imagined that it had been tempting to escape the pain of losing Jake. Nikolas admitted that he never wanted to risk losing Lucky as a brother again. Liz decided to go to work after Nikolas left. Steve immediately objected when he saw Liz at the nurses' station. Liz insisted that she needed Steve to be a chief of staff rather than a brother. Steve assured her that he was; he argued that it was too soon for her to consider treating patients. Liz argued that she had been a nurse for a long time, so she would never endanger her patients. Steve felt that she needed more time to grieve for Jake, but Liz made it clear that she would always grieve for her son. Steve admitted that he had talked to their sister, Sarah, and that he and Sarah had agreed that it might be best for Liz and the boys to have a change of scenery. Steve suggested that Liz visit Sarah in California for a while. Liz revealed that she needed to do something first before she could consider it. Meanwhile, Maxie let herself into Liz's home to drop off a plant. Maxie looked for a piece of paper to jot down a note, but found Aiden's paternity results instead. Maxie pulled the paper out of the envelope and then read the results. At Liz's house, Maxie read the paternity results just as Lucky entered the house. Lucky was surprised to see Maxie there. Maxie quickly shoved the results into her purse and then she explained she had dropped off a plant. Maxie added that she had passed the nanny and children on their way to Wyndemere, so the nanny had given Maxie permission to enter on the condition that Maxie locked up on the way out. Maxie then quickly changed the subject by asking how Lucky was holding up. Lucky confessed that it had been hard since Jake had died. Maxie was surprised when Lucky admitted that he was reluctant to see Liz because he was afraid that Liz would blame him for Jake's death. Lucky felt that he should have done something about Luke's drinking years ago because Lucky had known that Luke frequently drove drunk. Maxie insisted that Lucky couldn't blame himself for Luke's choices. She explained that guilt was a wasted emotion because it kept people stuck. Maxie advised Lucky to forgive himself and then move forward. Nikolas arrived moments later, so Maxie quickly excused herself. Nikolas and Lucky talked about Liz and then Lucky confided his regrets about not forcing Luke to seek help for his drinking. Nikolas reminded Lucky that they had all turned a blind eye to Luke's drinking. Lucky argued that, as Luke's son, Lucky might have been able to get through to Luke. At the hospital, Steve tried to persuade Liz to consider taking the children to visit Sarah in California. Liz insisted that she couldn't just pack up the kids, and leave, without trying to make things right with Lucky. Liz explained that she had let Lucky down in a lot of ways. Steve argued that Lucky and Liz should have been helping each other, but Lucky had barely been around since Jake's death. Liz explained that Lucky rightfully blamed her for the accident, so she understood why Lucky had kept his distance. Later, Liz arrived home to find Nikolas waiting for her. She was surprised when she noticed the plant. Nikolas revealed that Maxie had dropped it off. Shortly after Nikolas left, Maxie returned. Maxie admitted that she had a good idea why Liz had called. Liz wondered if Maxie planned to blackmail her with Aiden's paternity results. Maxie started to deny it, but then conceded that Liz had good reason to jump to that conclusion. Maxie clarified that she had taken the results to keep Lucky from seeing them, so she quickly handed them back to Liz. Maxie was curious who else knew that Lucky was Aiden's father. Liz admitted that it was just her and Maxie. Maxie admitted to being the "queen of bad choices," but she wondered if perhaps Liz thought that Lucky deserved to know the truth about Aiden when he was grieving so deeply for Jake. At the Haunted Star, Tracy admitted that Luke's office reeked. Luke sarcastically remarked that it was his new aftershave. Tracy confessed that she had heard about Luke's threats to torch the casino, so she suggested that Luke's energy would be better spent focusing on work. According to Tracy, work was a great way to escape from the pain. Tracy ignored Luke's protests by offering to have Alice stop by to clean. Luke surprised Tracy by revealing that he had almost driven home the night before, but he hadn't been able to get into the car because it had reminded him too much of the night that Jake had died. Tracy tried to steer Luke to a safer topic by offering to buy him something to eat. Luke agreed, but only if he could drive. Tracy didn't think it would be a good idea. Tracy and Luke talked about his drinking, which prompted Tracy to suggest that Luke consider looking at alcohol differently because what he was doing wasn't working for any of them. Luke tried to change the subject by tossing a baseball at Tracy, which she deftly caught. "Lucky catch," Luke scoffed. Tracy thought perhaps it might be because she took daily walks since Luke's first heart attack, or because she had been an all-star shortstop in a previous life. Her eyes filled with tears as she added, "Or maybe it's just because I didn't have a fifth of scotch before breakfast." Tracy set the ball down and then quietly left. Lucky was strumming his guitar in his apartment when Steve knocked. Lucky was concerned that something might be wrong with Liz, but Steve explained that he was furious because Jake's death had been as hard on Liz as it had been on Lucky. Steve insisted that Jake's parents should be helping each other, instead of keeping their distance. Lucky admitted that he blamed himself for Jake's death. Steve was stunned; he insisted that Lucky wasn't responsible for what had happened. Lucky argued that he had ignored Luke's drinking for years. Lucky insisted that he would have been dead that if Liz had done the same when Lucky had been battling an addiction to pills. Lucky credited Liz with doing everything in her power to help Lucky to get sober. Lucky believed that if he had done the same for Luke then Jake might not have been killed. Lucky was certain that Liz was disappointed in how Lucky had handled Luke's alcoholism. Steve suggested that Lucky needed to blame himself as a way of try to control the situation. Lucky recalled that one of the twelve steps of recovery was to let go of things, which couldn't be controlled. Steve advised Lucky to get over himself because Liz needed her hero back to tell her that she wasn't to blame for what had happened to Jake. After Steve left, Tracy showed up to plead with Lucky to go to Luke. "Is he on fire?" Lucky wondered. Tracy admitted that Luke wasn't, so Lucky pointed out that there wasn't a rush for him to see Luke. Tracy insisted that Luke was in serious trouble, and she feared that something terrible would happen. Lucky didn't seem concerned, so Tracy kept pushing Lucky to talk to Luke. Lucky argued that he needed to focus on his own sobriety, but Tracy warned him that Lucky could lose his father if something weren't done. Steve entered Luke's office in time to have a baseball tossed at him. Steve quickly caught the ball, which prompted Luke to wonder if everyone in town played baseball on the side. Steve pointed out that a trained surgeon had to have quick reflexes. Luke wondered how Liz was holding up. Steve admitted that Liz needed Luke's help, so Steve urged Luke to stop wallowing and self-destructing because Lucky couldn't focus on Liz while Lucky was concerned about Luke. At the loft, Michael accused Dante of pushing Sonny and Johnny closer to a mob war. Dante suggested that Michael could keep the peace by severing all ties with Johnny, but Michael resented being told what to do. Michael insisted that he needed to find the killer to clear himself, Abby, and Jason as suspects in Brandon's murder. Dante argued that it was his job to do, not Michael's. Michael began to rant about how the system had failed him, so Michael needed Johnny's help to find the person who had murdered Brandon. "Oh, cut the crap Michael," Dante snapped. Dante believed that Michael was just looking for an excuse to work with Johnny, so that Michael could get into the mob. Dante suggested that Michael wanted to prove that he was as good of a criminal as Sonny, but Dante insisted that all Michael would just throw his life away. Michael insisted that he wasn't incompetent. Dante clarified that he had never said that; Dante acknowledged that Michael had dealt with more than Dante ever could have. Michael was curious if Dante could have fought off Carter. Dante admitted, "I don't know." Michael was certain that Dante was just staying that because Dante didn't want to admit that Michael was weak. Michael insisted that he wanted to be strong. Dante didn't think that aligning himself with thieves and killers was the way. Dante argued that Sonny didn't want that for Michael. Dante made an impassioned plea for Michael to reconsider his choices, but the speech had little impact on Michael. Dante realized that all he could do was assure Michael that he would always love Michael because they were brothers. At Johnny's penthouse, Sonny admitted that he wasn't surprised that Johnny had set up Michael for Brandon's murder. Sonny accused Johnny of being a coward and an opportunist. Johnny threw the insult back in Sonny's face by pointing out that Sonny's marriage to Claudia had been a business arrangement. Sonny suggested that Johnny was motivated by revenge, but Johnny argued that he was trying to save Michael from Sonny. Sonny reminded Johnny that he had honored the truce, so he warned Johnny not to push his luck. Johnny wondered when it became a violation of the truce to befriend Michael. Johnny conceded that his father, Anthony, was crazy, but Johnny insisted that his life had been a "cakewalk" compared to the way that Michael had had been raised. Sonny refused to let Johnny manipulate Michael, but Johnny reminded Sonny that Michael was an adult who could make his own choices. Sonny wanted Michael to complete his parole and then to go on to college, so Sonny warned Johnny to leave Michael alone, and stop hiding behind children. After Sonny left, Michael knocked on the door. Michael demanded some answers from Johnny about Angela Dwyer's connection to Brandon. Johnny denied that he had anything to do with Angela representing Brandon in court or killing Brandon. Johnny insisted that he was trying to save Michael from himself. Michael was curious what that meant. Johnny knew that Michael idolized Sonny, but Johnny compared the mob to being in a candy store. According to Johnny, Sonny had decided that candy wasn't good for Michael, so Sonny had tossed Michael out of the candy store, but Sonny had remained behind to gobble up all of the candy. Michael made it clear that Johnny couldn't turn him against Sonny, but Johnny argued that Sonny wanted Michael to have nothing to do with the business. Michael thought that Johnny was implying that Michael wasn't good enough. Johnny rolled is eyes and then clarified that Sonny loved the business and the power; however, Sonny had blood on his hands that Sonny didn't he didn't want brushed off on Michael. Johnny explained that Sonny wanted Michael to stay squeaky clean. Michael was curious if Johnny intended to offer him a job. Johnny refused to do that because Sonny would find a way of absolving himself of any wrong doing. Michael wondered how he could trust Johnny when Johnny hated Sonny. Johnny confessed that he knew what it was like to try to go straight after being raised in the business. Johnny warned Michael that the violence would eventually take its toll, so he encouraged Michael to ride it out with Abby, and go to college. Michael suspected that Johnny was trying reverse psychology. Johnny denied it, but he did admit that he wouldn't turn Michael down if Michael approached him for a job. At Jason's penthouse, Sam told Jason about Carly's offer to carry a baby for them because Carly believed that Jason needed a child. Jason apologized for Carly's behavior, but Sam assured him that he didn't have to worry about it because she thought it had been rather selfless of Carly. However, Sam realized that Jason was grieving, so she didn't think that the time was right to think about starting a family. Jason appreciated Sam's understanding. Sam recalled that Jason had given her time to grieve after her daughter had died, so she wanted to be as supportive as Jason had been. Later, Sonny arrived to talk to Jason about Michael's situation. Jason and Sonny agreed that Johnny was trying to recruit Michael. Sonny warned Jason that Michael wasn't listening to Sonny's advice, so they needed to make sure that Johnny was "nailed" for Brandon's murder. After Sonny left, Michael stopped by. Michael realized that Jason had spoken to Sonny about Johnny, but Michael insisted that Johnny wasn't trying to frame Michael for Brandon's murder. Jason hoped that Michael realized that Johnny was trying to recruit Michael to work for the Zaccharas. Michael didn't want Jason to worry about him, so Jason suggested that Michael stay away from Johnny. Michael refused to make any promises. Michael admitted that he would rather work for Jason and Sonny, but Jason made it clear that it wasn't an option. Michael argued that Jason had made the choice to join the organization, but Jason insisted that he hadn't realized what he had been getting into. Jason explained that he had to walk away from Jake to spare Jake from having to go through what Michael had endured. Jason insisted that the business had robbed him of the chance to know Jake, so the lifestyle had not been worth it. Sonny was in a foul mood when Dante entered the parlor of Greystone Manor. Sonny warned Dante that Johnny was becoming a problem because Johnny was trying to recruit Michael. Dante pointed out that they couldn't do anything about it if Michael were receptive to Johnny's offer. Sonny made it clear that he expected Dante to do whatever was necessary, including bending the law, to keep Johnny away from Michael. Dante refused to twist the law to serve his needs. Dante admitted that he couldn't blame Michael from trying to follow in Sonny's footsteps because Sonny was married to a supermodel, and answered to no one while someone like Dante was just an underpaid cop. Sonny urged Dante to make Michael understand that Michael had the potential to be better than Sonny. Maxie explained to Liz that Lucky and Nikolas had almost discovered that truth about Aiden's paternity, and she asked Liz when she would divulge the truth. Liz hypothesized that Helena had altered the original DNA test results and lamented that she had been so preoccupied that the results of the new test she'd commissioned that she hadn't paid attention to Jake before he wandered into the street. Maxie made it clear that Lucky and Nikolas had to know the truth. "Either you tell them," threatened Maxie, "or I will." After Maxie left, Liz perused the test results again. Sam arrived to express her regrets. Liz asked how Jason was doing, and Sam responded that he had thrown himself into his work to distract himself from his grief. Liz expressed her desire to go back to work and added that Steven wouldn't let her, because he felt she needed more time. Sam apologized for having been so awful to Liz after Jake's birth. Liz expressed her regrets that she had turned her back on Lucky when he'd needed her most and for letting Jason down by convincing him to give up his son. As Sam left, Liz handed her a toy motorcycle, Jake's favorite, to take to Jason. Tracy asked Lucky to reach out to his father. Lucky replied that it seemed as if everyone was in need but that he was having a tough time just getting through the day. Lucky also told Tracy that there was nothing he could do about Luke's self-destructive behavior. Tracy asked if Lucky thought she'd been enabling Luke to continue his addictive tendencies. Lucky agreed that she had but that everyone who cared for Luke had been guilty. Lucky admitted that he had been the worst offender. Tracy forcefully stated that everyone close to Luke had reached out to him but that Lucky was the only one who could get through to Luke. "I can't look at him anymore without seeing that night flash through my mind," Lucky said. An exasperated Tracy left the apartment. Later, Maxie stopped by, bearing flowers. She shared with Lucky that Liz was beating herself up, because Liz believed she was solely responsible for Jake's death. Maxie also stated that Lucky was not responsible for Luke's addiction. She apologized for having been partially responsible for Lucky's addiction, having supplied him with pills and destroying his marriage to Liz. Lucky said that, had things played out differently, Jake wouldn't have been born and that having been a father to Jake had made it all worth it. As Nik showed up, a skittish Maxie abruptly departed. Nikolas assured Lucky that there was no timeline for grief. Lucky stated that he didn't want to be angry with his father, but that Luke refused to admit that his drinking had been a factor in the accident. Lucky took responsibility for not having confronted Luke over his addiction. Nik posited that it wouldn't have made a difference had Lucky called Luke on his behavior. Lucky believed that Luke might not have gotten behind the wheel if Lucky had expressed his concerns. He wondered how he would help his father when it was taking everything in Lucky not to fall apart. As Nik assured his brother that Lucky was stronger than he gave himself credit for, Liz walked in with the results of the paternity test. Steven visited Luke and told him that he wasn't interested in revenge. Luke agreed that Lucky, as well as Steven, had every right to hate him. Luke told Steven that Liz had stopped by to see him and had apologized for not watching Jake more closely the night of the accident. Luke suggested that Lucky convince Liz that Luke was wholly at fault for Jake's death. Steven retorted that Lucky had barely been in touch with Liz since Jake's funeral. Lucky had to let Liz know that it hadn't been her fault, but that wouldn't happen until Lucky could stop worrying about Luke's impending meltdown. "Put someone else ahead of your pain," Steven admonished. Luke replied that he had no idea how to do that. After Steven left, Tracy walked in. She was not amused by Luke's drunken humor. Luke surmised that Tracy had spent the day pleading with family in the hopes that someone could break through to him. She replied that all three of his kids had agreed on one thing: that they'd end up burying Luke, too, if he kept heading in the direction he was going. Suzanne shared with Brenda the fun she and Lucian had enjoyed together. After putting her son down for a nap, Brenda returned to find that Suzanne had left. Sonny maintained that he had not said or done anything to nudge Suzanne to leave. Brenda said that she owed Suzanne a debt of gratitude because Suzanne had reunited Brenda with Lucian. Sonny reiterated that he didn't trust the woman and that there was a chance that Lucian was not Brenda's son. He worried that, the more time Brenda and Lucian spent together, the harder the fall would be if the boy turned out not to be her son. He urged her to have a DNA test done, and Brenda agreed, though she said it would only prove what she already knew. She boasted how happy she was that Sonny would be Lucian's father, but Sonny countered that his kids had suffered because of the life he led. Brenda shared her opinion that most of Michael's problems existed because Carly was his mom. Later, Sonny went to see a surprised Suzanne. Suzanne repeated that she had only hidden Lucian to keep the boy away from Theo. She told Sonny that Brenda was alive because Suzanne had run interference all those years, to keep Theo away from Brenda. Sonny replied that he didn't believe a word out of Suzanne's mouth. Suzanne suggested that she and Sonny put aside their mutual animosity for the sake of Lucian and Brenda. Sonny tried to get Suzanne to admit that she was using the boy to try to work Brenda. Suzanne vociferously denied the assertion and suggested that Sonny was feeling threatened by Lucian, because Brenda would be unable to devote one hundred percent of her energy toward Sonny. Suzanne offered to take the boy and disappear. Jason implored Michael not to go into business with Johnny because it would destroy Michael's life and harm those he loved. Michael asked if Jason regretted joining the business. Jason explained that he'd likely have died if it hadn't been for Sonny but that Jason deeply regretted all the pain, suffering, and loss the business had caused him and his loved ones. He made it clear that Michael would pay dearly if he joined the mob. Michael said that he would never be able to wear a tie and sit behind a desk, as it would kill his soul. Jason clarified that he didn't want to coerce Michael into trying to be someone he wasn't. Michael only wanted to be in control of his life, and working for Johnny, he believed, would give him that. Jason shared that he'd felt the same way after the accident that caused his amnesia. The Quartermaines had tried so hard to help him regain his memories that they'd pushed too hard, ultimately prompting Jason to reject them. Jason assured Michael that, whatever choice Michael ended up making, even if it was the wrong one, Jason would never turn his back on Michael. Sam returned to Jason's penthouse after Michael left. She recounted the interaction she'd just had with Liz, concluding that Liz had been very gracious. Sam presented Jason with the toy motorcycle and said that she believed he would have made a great father. Jason mused that a good father knew when to let his child grow up and make his own decisions. Michael was at that point, and Jason admitted that he was scared for his nephew. Sam agreed that Michael would have to choose his path and live with the consequences. Jason said that whatever he did, it would never be enough to keep his loved ones safe. Michael went to see his dad but had a visit with Brenda instead. Brenda asked for his opinion as to whether Lucian would be happy having Sonny as a father. Michael stated that he loved his father but that he was thankful Morgan and Josslyn were growing up with Jax, because Sonny's business was no place for kids.

FILM CLIPS / Also opening today Published 4:00 am, Friday, April 14, 2006 'The Lady in Question Is Charles Busch' Documentary. Starring Charles Busch, Julie Halston, Kenneth Elliott, Carl Andress. Written and directed by John Catania and Charles D. Ignacio. (Not rated. 94 minutes. At the Castro Theatre.) Some say all the great movie stars are gone, but I say we've still got Charles Busch. A one-man archive of vanished showbiz glamour and period acting styles, Busch has reincarnated the great ladies of stage and screen in such camp treasures as "Vampire Lesbians of Sodom" and "Psycho Beach Party." This affectionately observed, nimbly edited (and perhaps a mite overly reverent) documentary, framed by a clever pseudo-newsreel format, traces Busch's "strange sort of career as a leading lady" from an "actress-crazy" troubled kid obsessed with opera and vintage movies to East Village fringe theater impresario to Broadway playwright ("The Tale of the Allergist's Wife"), novelist ("Whores of Lost Atlantis") and movie star. Busch's "Die, Mommie, Die!" opened the 2003 San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival at the Castro Theatre; his next film, "A Very Serious Person," written, directed and starring Busch as -- gasp! a male nurse -- premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 28. A San Francisco favorite, the conventionally uncastable Busch became a playwright by necessity to accommodate his romantic sensibility and uniquely outsize talents and, in the best parts of "Lady in Question," we watch him develop his solo work at San Francisco's Theatre Rhinoceros through his rise during the mid-'80s (concurrent with the crux of the AIDS crisis, which informed his work and affected his Lost-in-Limbo troupe members) through the five-year run of his breakthrough show, "Vampire Lesbians." More than just your garden-variety gender-blending genius, Busch in his heyday was a master of pastiche, hybridizing the almost-forgotten genres such as historical pageants, anti-Nazi melodramas and '60s beach movies. Though the film feels too long by about 30 minutes, veering into Lifetime network melodrama and padded with celebrity accolades (Kathleen Turner, Paul Rudnick, B.D. Wong and an embarrassing encounter with Rosie O'Donnell), it thrills nonetheless with priceless footage of mid-'80s stage performances and rare offstage glimpses of the gentle and self-effacing Busch, who onstage bursts into glorious flame as a draggin' lady for the ages. -- Advisory: Contains gender humor and brief nudity. -- Joe Brown 'Shakespeare Behind Bars' Documentary. Written and directed by Hank Rogerson. (Not rated. 93 minutes. At the Lumiere and Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley.) Standing in what looks like an open field, a burly man with a shaved head earnestly delivers a speech from "The Tempest" ("Our revels now are ended ..."). A moment later, we spot what is unmistakably a guard's tower in the background. The setting is a maximum-security prison in Kentucky, and the actor rehearsing his lines is an inmate. He's among a group of prisoners at the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex who, for therapeutic and educational purposes, annually stage a Shakespeare play. They're serving hard time, but they're lucky enough to be in a facility where the man in charge "hates prisons" -- those that exist only for punishment. The warden believes that part of his mission is educational. These inmates actually are doubly fortunate because they are also in the good hands of Curt Tofteland, artistic director of the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival, who volunteers his services as facilitator. This affecting documentary focuses on their 2004 production, a play whose themes of forgiveness and redemption certainly ought to have some resonance for the inmates. And the men -- Hal, Red, Big G and the others -- are amazed at how accurately "The Tempest" speaks to their situation. Filmmaker Hank Rogerson's strategy is to allow us to get to know the men before we learn about their crimes, which are some of the worst imaginable: multiple murder, serial child molesting, cop killing and the like. The men, often in tears, tell their stories, by turns appalling and heartbreaking. Inevitably, we wonder about the authenticity of their remorse. Are the men, several of whom are coming up for parole, simply trying to con the authorities (to say nothing of the filmmaker and the viewers)? Rogerson declines to force a conclusion: The inmates present their stories, placing the audience exactly in the position of a parole board, pondering how much the men have really changed. Most viewers will probably conclude that at least some of the inmates are sincere. The film makes the case -- one that always needs making -- that, despite what they've done, these men retain some shred of humanity. In addition to lots of rehearsal snippets, Rogerson includes scenes of the actual production, which is spirited and moving. As Tofteland points out, when "The Tempest" was originally staged, actors were looked down upon as the dregs of society. He thinks Shakespeare would approve of this production. -- Advisory: The film includes disturbing descriptions of real-life crimes. -- Walter Addiego Documentary. Directed and produced by Joseph Mathew and Dan DeVivo. (Not rated. 96 minutes. At the Roxie.) Filmmakers Joseph Mathew and Dan DeVivo probably had no idea that when they were making "Crossing Arizona," the issue of immigration reform, already a hot-button topic, would fill urban streets with tens of thousands of protesters and create chaos in Congress, but in their good luck, that is exactly the situation as their movie opens at the Roxie today in its theatrical premiere. The film, which premiered at Sundance in January, examines the immigration problem along the Arizona-Sonora border. An estimated 3,000 Mexicans have died there trying to cross into the United States since 1993, when government policy mandated fencing off the border near urban areas, primarily San Diego and El Paso, Texas, where illegal immigration had become problematic. Undocumented immigrants are still trying to cross the border, into the more dangerous Arizona desert, where water, food and medical assistance are as scarce as the Border Patrol. Mathew and DeVivo try to give all sides of this complex story. They talk to activists who are both for and against illegal immigration, human rights groups that provide water at checkpoints, law enforcement officials, politicians, local ranchers, "coyotes" who traffic illegal immigrants across the border and illegal immigrants themselves. As Ray Borane, the mayor of Douglas, Ariz., points out, far-left liberals, ultra-right-wing conservatives and everyone in between seem to agree that the current U.S. policy is not working. It's what to do about it that is in contention. No hour-and-a-half documentary can do much more than scratch the surface of the issue, but Mathew and DeVivo provide an excellent primer and some human faces on the front lines. Any solution will have to combine delicate diplomacy, national security issues, economic concerns of both American employers and workers, and a better, more sensible system of acquiring citizenship. "Crossing Arizona" left me with some indelible images: The body of a 28-year-old pregnant woman in the desert, the exchange between a retired nurse and an activist, and the rancher who said he has endured more than $1 million in cattle losses and damage because of illegal immigrants crossing his land. Most haunting was the meeting of an Indian providing water at various checkpoints on a reservation and an undocumented immigrant who had paid about $1,300 to be smuggled across the border so he could work to get enough money for his wife's surgery. The American lends a sympathetic ear and provides some water and food but tells the Mexican he will not survive unless he turns himself in to the Border Patrol. The look on the Mexican's face says it all. Screenings will have bilingual subtitles. The filmmakers will be at screenings today through Sunday. -- Advisory: Some graphic images of dead bodies. -- G. Allen Johnson 'La Mujer de Mi Hermano' Drama. Starring Bárbara Mori, Christian Meier and Manolo Cardona. Directed by Ricardo de Montreuil. (R. 89 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.) Repressed desire! A sultry soap-opera star! Incest! Gay politics! "La Mujer de Mi Hermano" has it all. Now if it only had a decent plot. Ricardo de Montreuil's artfully filmed feature is a soap opera with pretensions to art, but a soap opera nonetheless. The plot: Ten years of marriage to the wealthy but sterile Ignacio (Christian Meier) -- a guy so repressed he wears boxers while skinny-dipping -- have left Zoe (Bárbara Mori) sexually starved and bored out of her mind. Enter Ignacio's freeloading, freethinking artist brother, Gonzalo (Manolo Cardona), who wants to paint Zoe's portrait and show her his etchings, so to speak. The inevitable happens. The two become lovers, plunging Zoe into a conundrum as old as melodrama: Should Zoe choose security over passion? Honor before fulfillment? Some fresh revelations further complicate matters as Zoe, suffering beautifully and showing a lot of leg, learns more about her husband than she cared to know. Soon every member of the incestuous love triangle must make big decisions. Whatever shall they do? Viewers will probably guess most of the answers a third of the way through and struggle to maintain interest for the remainder. More intriguing are the questions that remain unanswered, such as how Zoe's embalmed marriage lasted a decade, or how anyone could manage a happily-ever-after scenario considering some of the narrative's tawdrier details. "La Mujer" tackles none of these. Not surprising, considering the characters are the stuff templates are made of, from Zoe the suffering nymph to Gonzalo the irresponsible rebel to Ignacio the uptight husband with a secret. They yield predictably shallow results. Signs that de Montreuil can do better can be found in the movie's opening sequence: a muted, microcosmic landscape of dead leaves and dying insects, drifting like emotional flotsam in Ignacio's swimming pool. If only the director had followed through on these promising metaphors. Maybe next time. As is, "La Mujer de Mi Hermano" is just titillation -- and not terribly interesting titillation at that. -- Advisory: Sexual situations and language. -- Neva Chonin

Happiness and Choices “If you get lost in a trigger that thrusts you to a painful event, take a deep breath and remember: we can’t change that we’ve hurt before, be we can choose not to suffer now.” ~Lori Deschene, Founder of TinyBuddha.com I perceive happiness to be a choice. It can be as much of a choice as deciding what pair of jeans to wear in the morning, what song to upload onto your iTunes, or what Italian restaurant to dine at on a Friday night. If we can easily succumb to the negative emotions of hostility, jealousy, anxiety, or sadness, why can’t we turn it around and decide that in the present moment we want to be happy? Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky discusses the “happiness set point,” in her book, The How of Happiness. She suggests that 50 percent of happiness is genetically predetermined, while 10% is due to life circumstances, and 40 percent is the result of your own personal outlook. She cites strong evidence and research for the genetic “set point,” which comes from a series of studies with identical and fraternal twins. However, Lyubomirsky does argue that despite a certain “set point” one might possess, there is always room for improvement; if certain individuals do seem to be low on the ‘happiness gene,’ there is no reason to raise the white flag and carry on in gloom. “Although on the face of it, the set point data appear to suggest that we all are subject to our genetic programming, that we all are destined to be only as happy as that “programming” allows, in actuality they do not. Our genes do not determine our life experience and behavior. Indeed our “hard wiring” can be dramatically influenced by our experience and our behavior… Even the most heritable traits like height, which has a heritability level of .90 (relative to about .50 for happiness), can be radically modified by environmental and behavioral changes.” Echoing Lyubomirsky’s stance on our free will to evoke happiness, Emily Giffin’s novel, Love the One You’re With, illustrates how life and love are the sum of our choices, and it’s never too late to embark on another path to attain peace of mind. The female protagonist, Ellen Dempsey, is happily married to Andy Graham, but when she runs into Leo, a past love, on a New York City crosswalk one consequential afternoon, she’s torn between loving the one she’s with, while not being able to forget the one who got away. As the storyline unfolds it becomes clear that although the main character is settled into a certain life, a certain routine, she can still choose the road she wants to be on. It’s a perfect read for the young woman who does struggle between loving two people and who must make the choice to be with the person who is the right fit. Sometimes we tend to let our emotions get the best of us, and we may surrender to a negativity spiral, so to speak. It’s certainly easier said than done to shed unhealthy thought patterns, but we may have a lot more control over our mental state than we realize; we have the power of choice. “The past is over. What happened happened,” Lori Deschene stated in one of her blog posts. “Today is a new day, and freedom comes from seeing it with new eyes. It comes from recognizing what’s going on in our minds, and then choosing to release those thoughts and feelings. We all deserve to feel peaceful, but no one else can do it for us.” Suval, L. (2012). Happiness and Choices. Psych Central. Retrieved on August 18, 2017, from https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/01/11/happiness-and-choices/

I’m reading a book from the Oprah Book Club. It’s a sad book, the story of misfits and misguided fits and the consequences of their actions, which are tragic – beautifully described, but tragic. In fact, it’s a lot like other Oprah Book Club books I’ve read. There’s a sense of obligation almost, like the reading lists in college or on Facebook. But you read it at arms length, letting in only tiny bits and pieces – turning on NCIS in the background so you don’t completely fall under the spell, the shockingly fascinating spell of people completely screwing up their lives and their children’s lives. Not really reading it, but unable to put it away – quickly forgetting as soon as you’ve turned down a corner and spread it on the side table, breaking the spine. Needing a break. I blame the Chicago diva. She who creates millionaires with the wave of her Book Club wand. Then that made her feel guilty and she stopped it, but not really, so it’s still out there. The power is unimaginable. Power Oprah. With favorites. The thing is – I used to love the gutsy, robust woman with the country phrases and the big laugh. I loved the magazine – finally a publication that made me feel good about myself instead of bad about myself! I loved the search for the spiritual, the center, the new norm, the love of self. But somewhere along the way the contradictions have become too much. The little school for the “right” African girls – again the life-changer waves a wand. That hasn’t gone too well. The advocacy for simplicity juxtaposed with the lavish gifting. Who are we kidding, girlfriend? And the scourge of existence – body image – going on and on and on and on in endless, belly-button-examination about eating and exercising and denial and freedom and getting coaching and doing it on your own, liking yourself, but changing your belt. This never-ending dance around self-loathing. Please stop. Step away from the navel. So, what is the Oprah Winfrey Network except taking it all to a deeper level? Behind the shows? Show business about the reality behind the show business? Does anybody still care that much? OWN? No, Oprah, what happened to Let it Go? Dr. Phil? Nate Burkas? Gayle? Do we really have to see everyone cash in this last year? I happened to be home today at the time the show comes on. Thought about it. But couldn’t really bear the thought of twirling on that merry-go-round for an hour. In the end, it’s all been a phenomenon. There will never be another Oprah. And I don’t think there should be.

Friday morning, leaders of pro-choice and feminist groups gathered at the Center for American Progress to debate the movement's future. One of the panelists reported that the latest annual tally of abortions in this country was 1.295 million. The most recent comparative numbers, detailed in an article I brought to the meeting, indicated that our abortion rate exceeds that of every Western European nation. "Raise your hand if you think that number is too high," the conference moderator told the 50 people in the room. I saw one hand go up. The woman next to me said she saw another. The two hand-raisers used to work for pro-choice groups but no longer do. This is the predicament facing the abortion-rights movement. It's led by three kinds of people: Those who see no problem, those who are afraid to speak up, and those who think it's futile. I'm betting that the denial, fear, and futility will give way. But it'll take time. I should mention that I didn't raise my hand. I was invited to the meeting, along with my friend Katha Pollitt, to debate the wisdom of declaring a pro-choice war on the abortion rate. Katha and I are on the record on this question. I'm for it; she's against it. Although I'm pro-choice, I can't claim to be part of the movement. I haven't earned it, and as a professional critic, I can't make such a commitment. So I came, I made my case, and then I shut up and listened. It was like preaching to the choir, except that my preaching was Sunni, and the choir was Shiite. The silence about whether there are too many abortions was partly a nuance problem. Some attendees worried that saying yes would signal approval of restrictions rather than voluntary reductions. The hard-nosed political people in the room probably wanted to slap their foreheads at this hairsplitting. I certainly did. The lesson of John Kerry's defeat, and arguably the whole sorry history of recent Democratic politics, is that nuance kills. (I wrote a book arguing the opposite, but, uh, I'll explain that another time.) Most voters think in simple terms. Sixty percent of them have no problem telling pollsters they want fewer abortions. If you can't connect with these voters, you're in trouble. I'm not a woman, obviously, so I hesitate to say this—but is it really true, as some folks at this meeting argued, that abortion is fundamental to how today's women construct their lives? I understand the point, made by the Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, that this generation of women has grown up with the implicit assumption that they can get an abortion legally if they need one. But I find it hard to believe that many women would call this part of how they construct their lives. You construct your life around things you expect, plan, or hope for. You might construct your life around your menstrual cycle or your boyfriend's maintenance of the condom supply. But abortion? Isn't that the thing you don't construct your life around, because you don't want to think about it? And shouldn't a movement that aims to reflect the way women construct their lives deal with it in that context, as a fallback? My other problem at gatherings like this one is that I'm not a lefty. So, I listened with dismay as some speakers dismissed the abortion debate as a byproduct of racism and misogyny. Pro-lifers don't really care about morality, said one participant: They just "want white women to have more white babies." She went on to assert that leaders of protest groups such as Operation Rescue do what they do because they have no other way to make a living—possibly the most amazing statement I've ever heard, considering that the entire penalty-avoidance strategy of such groups is perpetual poverty. I'm happy to vouch that the people in this room, some with backpacks or spiky hair, are nothing like the "abortion industry" depicted by pro-lifers. But it's not like the grunts at the National Right to Life Committee have been lunching at Jack Abramoff's restaurant. Then I have this hangup about relativism. Like most people, I'm open to relativism. If you accept that the rightness or wrongness of abortion depends to some extent on circumstance, or that as a general rule, the woman in question is more entitled to weigh the moral factors than Rick Santorum is, that makes you a bit of a relativist. But it was clear at Friday's meeting that many pro-choice activists go further. They're absolutists about relativism. They argue that abortion is good because it's what a woman wants, and that the goodness or badness of abortion depends entirely on her choice. They insist all choices must be "respected" and "free from stigma." I don't get it. If everything has to be respected, what's the value of respect? If every exercise of liberty has to be free from stigma, how secure is liberty? This is why I'd never cut it in a movement. I have no patience for diplomacy, or, as I prefer to call it, evasion. Right away, I got in trouble for calling abortion "bad." I like such words because they're blunt: They express a nearly universal gut reaction and make it clear which direction you'd like to go. The absolute relativists in the room found these words unacceptable, since they "stigmatize" and "pass judgment" on women and doctors. (As far as I can tell, women who have abortions, and doctors who perform them, are more judgmental about the act than the movement's leaders are.) To my relief, cooler heads pointed out how judgmental the absolute relativists are about gender equality and human rights. Liberals treat judgment the way conservatives treat sex: forbid it, except when you're doing it. I knew I'd get flak for using the word "bad." But I was amazed at the group's reaction to the word "responsibility," which was the subject of the next panel. "Responsibility is to me a code word that has a lot of racial and class … implications," said one participant. "I don't like the word 'responsibility,' " said another. "I don't want to talk about responsibility unless we're talking about the government taking responsibility," said a third. Hoping to bring the discussion back to earth, the moderator suggested, "Is there a way for us to reclaim the idea of responsibility?" The answer was a chorus of rejection, punctuated by a "No way!" She retreated apologetically. Fortunately, repression, even when practiced by the left, doesn't work. Again and again, participants who decried stigma, judgment, and overt advocacy of fewer abortions went on to concede that some women find abortion "sad" or that pro-choice policies on birth control and sex education reduce the abortion rate. Advocates who work with post-abortion women were the most explicit. One described the abortion dilemma as "awful." Another called for more stories of women who, while regretting their own abortions, wouldn't deprive others of the choice. Slowly, as though coming to terms with buried sexuality, the abortion-rights leadership is groping for a way to think and talk more frankly about the morality of ending unborn life. In part, this process is being driven by political defeat. In part, it's being driven by the truth of women's experiences. In part, it's a matter of younger women taking over the movement, uninhibited by old fights and fears. And in part, it's a matter of reflection by some who fought those fights but see how times have changed. Abortion no longer symbolizes freedom and women's rights as it did in the 1960s and 1970s, one old-timer observed; the movement must ask how abortion fits into its mission, not the other way around. Another veteran warned her colleagues that fetal life has become "the elephant on the kitchen table": If you can't acknowledge it, people will tune you out. In the struggle for self-correction, such candor and wisdom will help. So will humor. Toward the end of the meeting, a Planned Parenthood executive announced with delight that Wal-Mart had just agreed to stock morning-after pills. "Of course, we don't want anyone to shop at Wal-Mart," cracked a woman to her right. Everyone laughed. Irony is part of a well-balanced diet, especially when you're earnest.

White Woman’s Memoir This is the place for you if - You want to learn about what it’s like to be white in the United States and to adapt to a community of color. - You’re becoming a part of a different community from the one you grew up in. - You’re white and you want to know you’re not alone in trying to figure out what that means. - You like what you see. Most Recent Post I’ve watched the movie “The Help” many times. You know that part at the beginning where Skeeter asks Aibileen if she ever wanted to be something other than a maid? Aibileen just smiles. I finally figured out what it was, and how it came true for her…read more Does calling myself white seem racist? If it seems weird to you, or even racist, that I’m calling myself “white,” you’re not alone. A lot of people think that. For most of my life, I wouldn’t have called myself white at all. Yet I’ve grown to realize that it’s not pejorative or racist, it’s a simple fact about who I am. Just as I see gender and age, I see race. It’s a simple fact about people. Why I’m writing this memoir I’m writing this memoir because I’m a white woman who fell in love with and married an African-American man. I probably wouldn’t have realized how important exploring race was if I hadn’t fallen in love with Kyle (my husband). As someone who is curious about people and constantly learning, I want to explore the world of my husband, his family, and their community. I want to fit in with my new Southern, black, socially conservative, small-town, churchgoing family — me, an unchurched liberal white Pacific Northwesterner from a big city. Read more on the About page. A Memoir You Might Like Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by J. D. Vance. If you want to understand white, rural America, this memoir is a good place to start. Especially given that Donald Trump is now President of the United States.

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You for many people like us just like nobleman furthermore , we reveal diverse Pokemon shots, we all add more various things about Pokemon that any of us pray this would satisfy you and you feel with this net, pleased read : and even known as Pokemon is amongst the Manga that is taken from film game. most In series(p) Tv may be a continuing growth of Pokemon Video Game ,with the exception which is certainly developed exclusively being a anime series and along with appointed for a Online video media Game. for a Movie Game. Pokemon is a Employment from Satoshi Tajiri put together 1st inside 1995, This valuable computer game is amongst the Developers game’s Press enfranchisement, among the list of xbox game enterprises which includes successfully made the actual best-selling Mario Online video media Activity avaiable for purchase, to help you perform repeatedly its to start with achievements within constructing Fictitious personalities through the era of the Bugs are generally kept by means of individuals or even ordinarily called the Pokemon Trainer. By way of having that Trip or possibly Hallucination Style Pokemon correctly grew to become one of several minute a good number of successful anime as well as games inside good reputation for media franchises through Okazaki,japan at the same time to get elevated stages Pokemon gotten to the 3rd get ranking because the the majority victorious dealership across the world, Which consists of spectacular victory Pokemon unfolds in several creates in addition to varieties for example Gum anime, manga, Mmorpgs, Buying and selling Credit card, text books, and other knick knacks that are made simply by implementing different individuals inside the Pokemon series. Some Pokemon Instructor includes a reasonably serious mission connected with doing these items in Pokedex which is a powerful electronic device implemented to provide a alarm or perhaps informer related to pokemon owned by oppositions and also countryside pokemon, pokedex can be used as an execlopedia of web data from many Pokemon of snagged, a Personal trainer have got to earn fight with additional pokemon and when these Personal trainer records some pokemon a instructor will get every piece of information regarding the caught pokemon, via the picture, the particular label pokemon equally a host to origins and even most of the home, all of these information and even material are located in some sort of Pokedex managed by just Personal trainer of which this pokemon array that hopefully will obtain instructor: Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness review CNET from pokemon xd gale of darkness review, source:www.cnet.com Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness review CNET from pokemon xd gale of darkness review, source:www.cnet.com Walkthrough Part 20 Pokemon XD Gale Darkness Video from pokemon xd gale of darkness review, source:www.chaptercheats.com Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness w POKEAIMMD & CBB Ep 4 from pokemon xd gale of darkness review, source:www.writtenepisodes.com Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness GC Game GameCube Pokemon from pokemon xd gale of darkness review, source:www.vizzed.com Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness GC Game GameCube Video from pokemon xd gale of darkness review, source:www.vizzed.com _ Pokemon Legend The Majesty of the Creator of the World Pokemon These sum is undoubtedly considered to be the earliest Pokemon provide on the earth, could living was given birth to inside the Pokemon world. Due to this, there should be hardly any Pokemon anywhere which could fit the occult power. belongs to the finally technology Pokemon group, named this’get better at involving choice’since it features the strength of different types about Pokemon inside. He / she is probably the Pokemon in whose presence globally, will be considered early myth just by a good number of people. The particular amount was within this twelfth animated widescreen motion picture on the gum anime Pokemon range permitted, Arceus plus the Gem associated with Living, circulated found in 2009, Arceus’s company name on their own comes from a schooling would include biology posture written text which means that the biggest time and also from the word archon which translates to mean’Typically the rule, the bodies cells physique on the Arceus any time noticed is usually just like some desired form of transport or maybe a llama, They’re the latest four-legged Pokemon, almost all of as their chest muscles is certainly vivid white having a variety of dull about the bottom. Arceus by itself contains a top of your head condition that could be particularly exclusive, considering it possesses a rather long spherical tresses and even sharpened by the end, resembling a significant of one’s wizard’s head wear upon a classic Euro tale. These stern relating to his or her physical structure also offers any the identical shape, simply because while in the go, On both walls of this have to deal with there is also a set of taper-shaped the ears, thus it appears similar to a saddle horn and a jewelry decoration around the forehead. includes a tough fretboard just like an Ilama, just where on attributes there is simply a department that only has a fin-like shape. In the gut, there exists a golden ornamentation in the shape of one of the wheels placed on his body. Inside the decoration, there’s an easy renewable treasure, that is definitely disconnected relating to 5 components, The good thing about yellow metal are offered also, regarding all thighs because both versions contains gold-coloured nails. Nevertheless exclusively, the golden shades by their system changes color selection if he makes use of amongst the strengths acquired, because of 16 pieces’early storage’he has to shift the level of strength. As an illustration, the actual rare metal color involving this physical structure can flip the colour inexperienced the moment they become Pokemon together with forage type as well as is going to be navy in the event that he / she flipped him self in to water-type Pokemon. _ Victini, ‘Pokemon Legend of the Little Rabbit of Victors’ Powering the woman small,and lovely amount, there’s a simple significant energy not even really should be doubted, it is company is magic from win in just about every fight which has taken place intended for a large number of years. Victini has become the exceptional along with fifth-generation pokemon species of flame in addition to psyhic beginnings, primary participating in that 14th pokemon alive aspect motion picture discharged in two reproductions, referred to as Pokémon this Video: White-Victini in addition to Zekrom. Not to mention Pokéwednesday any Dvd movie: Black-Victini and additionally Reshiram. Either dvds ended up being first unveiled during 2011, any term Victini develops from a combined glory thoughts signifying glory not to mention little language that contain tiny meaning, the work with Victini is viewed motivated by a goddess around the age-old Ancient greek language mythology in Nike, our bodies is just like some rabbit contains a major ear canal, in which smells like the particular cover letter’V ‘. at the after part carries a profile such as few of wings, which often can take a flight, Almost all overall body Victini solution coloring, sole over the outer position on the ear canal, simultaneously extremities which happen to have orange colored color. He / she also has sizeable excellent blue eye lids, defining it as start looking highly adorable. From the hands and feet, Victini just has 3 palm each kids finger in both wrists and hands and 2 kiddy hands in both legs. Along with the hands within the side, Victini possesses among the many unique patterns when they is normally viewed holding up her only two hands, and so developing some’V’notification with a shape body language to represent victory. Victini itself is no Pokemon living inside rough outdoors as being a habitat. As a replacement, she were located around a town named Eindoak, and that is an area of the Empire within the Vale region. By just looking at which usually 1000’s of years earlier Victini would have been a Pokemon who was close friends that has a double about Land belonging to the Vale. To start with he’d given his or her chance to the cal.king, to help him or her pet travel these Sword on the Vale structure to the spot, if you want to avoid the demolition due to this Tartar Force. Efforts has been powerful, but yet for reasons uknown, Victini was in fact caught up inside palace vicinity, right after that king’s loss for the reason that unpleasant incident got place. Victini herself features a element nature the fact that is often cheerful, timid, and elusive. Due to his / her shyness, she or he regularly incorporates his or her flexibility to produce their shape silent, and even will for sure disclose himself for you to all who have received his particular confidence. They yet another caring particular person, and will not waver to assist you to overcome to his or her local persons today when playing in danger. _ Piplup, ‘Pokemon king of the Penguins of the Dignity of the Blue’ Him / her shape that looks extremely cute as well as precious, will be the drawing card the fact that many times generates some people fooled will probably look and feel, At the rear of any contrast utilizing the picture which can be viewable is often a sum involved with cavalier who is responsible for upholding his or her self-esteem. Piplup, known as Pochama, is amongst the fluids category Pokemon class, is really a suit age bracket Pokemon, primary debuted on the anime Pokemon sequence: Gemstone & Pill range, It is the initial Pokemon operated from Get through, one of many reasons customer protagonists from this course, as soon as she or he primary chosen to become a Pokemon personal trainer you need to this adventure. These company name Piplup itself, derived from a blend of the saying message pip, a term signifying an established state for a child baby rooster well before them hatches from its egg. Together with the term plunk / plup that’s the sound of drinking water gurgling developed at a pebble in regards to puddles. In physical form, Piplup’s details is without a doubt comparable to the latest penguin more often than not, having to deal with navy blue head of hair that looks contrasted utilizing its vivid white have to deal with as well as almost all of the entrance of that body is lumination blue. The total amount saved throughout coloration, building Piplup found putting on any cloak on her body. All the bill concerning this are up against contains a short measurements, and is stained, such as coloration concerning some of thighs, because both versions has only three fingers. Found in Piplup’s body system, the good news is one of a kind, light-weight green structure, most suitable over the rest of its bill, that steadily the form from the top which represents all the sum of one’s Piplup made up of honour. Furthermore, the two main oval-shaped habits for the chest, that is definitely white. Eventually, when the time comes some Piplup may well change to a Prinplup. At this stage, Piplup’s body system spreads instances as huge as previously that looks such as child penguin, learning to be a top of your head who has a resemblance to the horn. Additionally, by just workout together with work, an important Prinplup could advance inside Empoleon that’s the other second evolutionary form of Piplu. Around the finished steps these history, ugly Empoleon appears quite definitely more advanced than past evolutionary forms. The more vibrant switch consistantly improves coloration in the feathers figure involved with Empoleon that is certainly presently more decided with african american, when ladies bright sample in the shape of some fortify in belly, earning Empoleon check just like dressed in some sort of tuxedo suit. That piece in her head which formerly was similar to the automobile horn, has now was a good 3-eyed pate, helping to make his particular beauty appear as if any penguin king. _ Cyndaquil, ‘The Freaky Mouse Pokemon’ This physique most likely are not seen as an chance, for the diffident nature. However , in back of very, stashed away an exceptional capability, which will make it structure risks to help you their opponent. Cyndaquil as well as generally known as Hinoarashi is certainly one species of Pokemon fire-pipe. It is the second-generation Pokemon, which usually initially been seen in with 2000, throughout the next year or so for the Pokéfriday anime collection: The particular Johto Journeys. One is the 3rd Pokemon of Ash, which inturn he / she was given throughout this excursion, Cyndaquil’s special label, made from a blend of the word clinker that’s got this is of ash, together with quill word meaning surges, like some form of flame configuration in his / her figure, which usually appears to be like as being a spikelet like for example body hedgehog. Cyndaquil’s body appears to be much like a variety of rodent mammal referred to as Shrew or even a rodent and as well a particular Echidna or even a squealer spine. It features a little shape and runs using couple of legs. Most of the is white wine get, as you move the upper side with one’s body will be turquoise. Body Cyndaquil by themself appears a range of Shrewmouse and then Echidna just as well because in his or her pawning aspect there’s a flame that is certainly the same shape as a fabulous joblessness like is very important on the sticker on the human frame of each Echidna, but yet on the other hand, almost all of the additional features are indifferent having a Shrew. Cyndaquil on its own features a tough snoot and then view which will generally go looking sealed, a small grip which will does not have paws and kiddy hands, but there is the latest nipper with each one thigh, as opposed to Charmander owning a powerful’interminable flare’that in case outages may pressured their everyday life life, the fireplace in Cyndaquil’s again to some extent different. For just sure circumstances, Cyndaquil is usually frequently experienced with out using fire on this spine, though it doesn’t stop here have an affect on immediate influence on the and additionally health and wellbeing from his or her entire body like Charmander. Any time the fireplace have before happen to be put out, it might size up together with size in place over again, as he for a second time noticed the eliminating passion even when fighting. In the event that the hearth is put out, you will see 4 purple oval-shaped scars at the lower back, that could be it is said getting to of this flames. When the time comes, the Cyndaquil are able to advance suitable Quilava. At this time, this total body could grow greater now his or her structure realistically seems to be much more similar to a Weasel or a weasel. One of the most attractive shifts will be in his particular little brown eyes which have been currently now not shut down, these outgrowth in some hearing, and also the relationship concerning their human body that may be currently placed found at a couple of tips to wit the pinnacle head that looks like the mohawk haircut new hair-do and even in the final analysis in the to come back which is alot more for instance a after part, by using train and then working hard, a fabulous Quilava can certainly center directly into her up coming manner, to become a Typhlosion. During this period, his or her form has not yet switched a whole lot right from before. Simply, his or her is right now increasing extremely huge, along with a growth about fangs, as well as a flame concerning his / her human body that’s at this time simply situated by single place, around the neck. _ Rayquaza, ‘Pokemon Legend of the Green Dragon of the Ruler of the Sky’.. The appearance of her own figure at the acquire has been a fantastic incident, in which will be able to not happen with the secondly time. Known as the’leader on the celestial sphere ‘, significantly earlier that confuses to the natural environment, the place the idea lifetime and pertains ability, Rayquaza is one of the well-known Pokemon varieties of tartar and then fly type. Oahu is the than era Pokemon, first i went to inside lcd screen alive the silver screen this 7th from the Pokemon gum anime range, Pokéfriday: Fate Deoxys what was launched around 2004. Is it doesn’t group of 3 expert, organ of the necessary trinity with the mainland leader not to mention Kyogre (ruler of the oceans). These brand Rayquaza comes from a mix of the definition of beam signifying sun as well as the text quasar and that is the particular list for starters astronomical concept, which is the source connected with electromagnetic electric power, can consult the expression Raqiya that means this welkin or construction of the atmospheric core, it is actually on their own some in’ energy’of one’s Rayquaza. This work is usually reported to be stirred using a celebrated creature referred to as Ziz’the beautiful ruler’who is responsible for unbeatable on Jewish legends. Inside superstar is without a doubt also told, Ziz (: Rayquaza) also has other sorts of peers that is Behemoth or possibly Groudon as well as Levianth or maybe Kyorge, Intention involved with different Rayquaza results stated to be empowered in the our god Quetzalcoatl with the Aztec tribe beliefs. They’re an important the almighty, shownd in the form of some sort of snake or possibly a tartar controlling above, setting up a border between this planet, beach plus sky. From actual perspective, Rayquaza offers a big, alternative entire body and it has a physique containing any ophidian and additionally monster, On the shoulder joint to your poop, there’s a simple portion such as a extension accompanied by a reddish collection, with a population of form resembling some sort of guiding fender by using an aeroplane. Along the length of the bodies cells physique for Rayquaza, as a result of head to stern, there exists a blue group of friends for emblems that appear to be like a pattern on his or her body. Rayquaza has an incredibly exact makeup structure having a snake, especially with a clear,crisp fang which usually resides for the inside about his / her mouth. From the neighborhood with the head, one can find 4 items the fact that look like a saddle horn, which in the top side regarding some of horns contain a lengthier size, whilst the over the mouth space has a smaller form. Whilst by hand way more for instance a snake, still its ability to soar above, in addition to both of your hands hands along with a couple of paws further,it teaches our bodies to a dragon. _ Haunter, ‘The Terrifying Terror Pokemon in the Darkness’ Inside iniquity in her find disappearing, ready together with catching in her victim. Together with his occurrence, the guy can cast scourge and also worry, so that you can everybody close to the pup, Haunter or even commonly known as Spider, are you types of pokemon style spider and also poison. They are the primary generating pokemon, which has surfaced due to the fact the best time of year of this zanzibar copal pokemon string, Pokéwednesday: Indigofera tinctoria League. Haunter herself is a secondly sort of some sort of Gastly with which has developed over time, a new Gastly has some type of orbs or perhaps a power sphere from a wraith soul. Gastly’s private entire body stated to be made up of 95% pathogens like flatulence, the amount is just described as developing a face shaped like a fabulous black baseball, when the item consistently happens a new yellow obscure that is a kill gas which usually is from his body. Haunter’s designate is derived from the idea of worry so this means’persistent ‘, annoyingly,many people he does as a general touch, this valuable number might be, in line with Dila, a historical mythology inside Filipino philosophy, around spiritual mood which will drift in the divider and might result in the the loss of an gentleman through thrashing his particular body. Haunter can be described as violet Pokemon which includes a poisonous chemicals gas-forming substance. It possesses a great round head off, and even a couple palm taken away from from the body, once each fretting hand possesses about three finger, which is also which included a pointed claw. Surrounding the head, you will find there’s razor-sharp part of an stiletto heel mane brand on features, to boot the particular quarter which also contains a clear,crisp design not to mention narrowing around the tip. They have good sized trilateral ordered little brown eyes, having small pupils, similar to some sort of dark colored dot, given it advances perfectly into a Haunter they are going to have a relatively wide dental problems measurements, in which feels crisp and clean smile along with long-term glossa is within the mouth. the Haunter the moment it consists of achieved a specific place might later on grow suitable Gengar. At this stage, some of the most striking corrections noticed in his or her body system are actually more and more increased as well as rounded. On top of that, large connected with this little brown eyes have become made inflammed, with this issue involving a set of hip and legs including a dustup for clean white teeth prepared efficiently like a human’s teeth. _ Snivy, ‘The Cold Green Snake Pokemon’ Powering the nice and even strange character, you will find a beauty which their charm challenging to resist. His private, usually calm in all problems, represents typically the exquisite mother nature containing flowed in him or her pet, Snivy and even referred to as Tsutarja is amongst the varieties of Pokemon with the yard It’s the fifth-generation Pokemon that will to start with developed on the Pokemon cartoons line Pokéfriday the Course: African american & Whitened considering the fact that 2010. Snivy is undoubtedly the 4th Pokemon, attained by just Ash in her experience, Snivy’s Company name, derived from the lizard phrase solution meaning snake, plus explained common ivy which can be the naming of a form of creeping plant. The particular determine is without a doubt reportedly moved by way of a particular types of lizard which includes a narrowing gun muzzle, termed as a lizard or maybe snake-shaped snake. In relation to fisking, Snivy is known as a two-legged Pokemon, small , willowy, and also belongs to the reptile class. Almost all body’s green, cream color selection relating to the undersurface in his or her body. There exists a white wire from in to this butt and around the eyes. On top of the neck, Beyond the neck of, must avoid discolored bent composition the fact that resembles the sort of a new catch connected with German commendable dresses inside Renaissance century. Snivy carries large red face, a set fists equally by means of two finger, and then male lower limbs that appear to be really small and yet competent at supporting it is body. Snivy features a after part appearance that would be particularly completely unique mainly because in the final analysis it happens to be shaped like a three-pronged thumb together with a large size. Yet another special point, as it happens Snivy can make use of’renders’inside stern to build particles photosynthesis to absorb the sun together with transform it again inside energy source usage pertaining to the pup that could try to make Snivy go along with agiler any time fighting. But, as soon as the illness is undoubtedly stressed, typically the’thumb’positioned in the final analysis from the pursue will likely start looking cancerous resulting from power loss. Some Snivy regardless of whether possesses hit a clear level, will in the end germinate in a Servine. At this time along with the expanding total body on the greater, today regarding all the stern connected with couple of different hair strands regarding leaves, primarily smaller. Even at the top of a scalp can be a hornlike piece, as well as portion that smells like some’arrest’upon the neck of grows more lengthy, offfering a silhouette for ‘ V ‘. After driving via diverse routines together with diligence, in that case Servine are able to progress towards a Serperior, With this last trend, the foremost detectable alteration of which often for this kind some sort of Serperior not anymore carries some hands or even feet, At present his / her style appearances like a good ophidian , ugly a Serperior appearance which means that classy and elegant, Ken Sugimori, the particular designer possibly even promises which usually some of the external why people love the actual Serperior, countless have creativity from majestic German nobleness during the Renaissance, Among the many design fleur-de-lis expression on the chest area Serperior stirred by way of the type of badges the fact that nobles been on individuals days. _ Roselia, ‘Pokemon the Beauty of the Roses Two colours’ The beauty with the girl find is definitely a all natural enchantment, that is certain to consume any one just who encounters it. For a thorny increased by, regarding every single elegance it gives you, there is a deadly probability that means it is undeniable. Roselia is among the most third-generation Pokemon varieties of grass and poisonous substance, which initially showed up through 2002 inside Pokemon cartoons selection Pokéfriday the Line: Deep red together with Sapphire. It is the to begin with place of organic evolution, at a Budew who’s got acquired growth. Roselia identity by themself, is usually a mix the term rose which translates to mean tulips, as well as word of mouth azalea is normally grouped azalea blossoms, Could be undoubtedly with the inspiration in the amount Roselia, was based on the advantage of a went up, Roselia can be a Pokemon in which uses a pair thighs and legs butt including a human, posesses a minor body system dimensions, and additionally a good many body is green. Just simply previously mentioned his / her head, you will discover two to three well-defined spines which kind like a crown. These thorns include a kill which may paralyse a competitor, Roselia includes minimal dark-colored eye, together with huge sexy eyelashes that will make her loving appearance exquisite, At the nck locale, you will find there’s foliage who sorts just like a receiver collar at the clothes. Plus, you will find there’s leafage by using a even bigger volume which will handles practically almost all of the face involving the body body no more than, as a result experienced making use of a good apron. The duration of typically the foliage was initially marginally distinctive between Roselia man and then female. Where in Roselia men leafage length and width on the body is actually smaller, dissimilar to the female total body Roselia? From the riffle, there is also a grey brand habit who documents these shape’V’in the middle. Throughout Roselia’s hands and fingers, the good news is improved which includes roughly exactly the same measurements since it’s head. Relating to a good hand, this elevated is actually red. Whilst in the left, typically the improved possesses a diverse colors this really is blue. In spite of this, it is stated in many situation, a improved definitely will experience an bizarre colour. In which in the right can be red-colored, will alter the colour to make sure you purple. While on the particular left hand beforehand pink, right now improve shades to black. The Roselia, whether seems to have gotten to a clear phase after may evolve as a Roserade. At this point, the most noticeable actual improvements are noticed throughout several well-defined spines at the fists, which often have finally happened to be succeeded because of the growth of’head of hair’composed of the white kind of raised petals. Much better deal with spot, you can find at this moment an element that may smells like masquerade costume mask covering up this deal with, coupled with that emersion connected with a green leaf like any’drape ‘, what these days switches a riffle with Roselia’s total body earlier. Roserade is at this point further unexplained, as compared with while comprising of Roselia is a bit more observable innocent. _ Vaporeon, ‘Pokemon the Four-Legged Blue Mermaid’ Considering the marvelous strength trapped in the The water Stone, it may grow as well as grow stronger. Such as working liquid, down the page his / her calm-looking figure out, the guy can carry aside just about all his particular oppositions, Vaporean or referred to as Tub areas, is among the most types of Water-type Pokemon. He will be the original technology Pokemon, that has came about given that the 1st winter within the cartoons Pokemon selection, Pokéwednesday: Indigofera tinctoria League. Vaporeon on its own is just about the finished evolutions of Eevee, of which developed through using only liquid stone. The actual company name Vaporeon comes from a mix of written text, vapour so are drinking water like petrol, as well as the message aeon, a period of time which unfortunately can not be tested, which usually is the time essential for that Pokemon to assist you to evolve naturally. the final message contained in every one brand with all the self-proclaimed evolutionary forms of any Eevee. On the grounds that is essential development during an Eevee isn’t affected by the way in which prepared he has been the Pokemon. Very merely as a result of exploiting your supernatural abilities associated with specified things filed on object. a great Eevee might evolve within the future manner there are a comparatively quite short time. The origin of one’s inspiration connected with Vaporeon’s own figure remains to be very much uncertain, but it’s considered to be blending marine or perhaps marine canines, feline as well as pet home kinds plus canids which were carnivorous varieties of canines, as well as greatly assist law of similarity, Vaporeon might be thought to be empowered by a brute through Greek mythology the ancient labeled Telkhiens. While there are, the body’s blending terrain canines and even canines that reside inside the water. It’s really a Pokemon that may is run on 3 hind legs, and then a physique how large a fabulous dog. Nearly all of Vaporeon’s body’s lighting green along with navy throughout the travel, at the spiny dorsal fin or maybe the spiny fin is undoubtedly on the back of the end, Regarding part of the facial area in addition there are 3 components of cream-colored fin that has a higher measurements, Couple of at the everywhere you look section connected with the face area, and 1 berries is actually earlier mentioned his head. It is known, generally if the weather will come in the following few hours, the particular fins concerning this system could certainly recognize it again you need to to help beveled seeing that an indication of elements will come down. Also, there is a styles with the nck Vaporeon, when a spherical part the same shape as some receiver collar for clothes, that is definitely mostly used when products through American magnanimousness in the middle of these 16th century. Several other individuality could also be looked at inside trail with Vaporeon, with a population of shape that is definitely rather just like any creature in the htc legend, that is the mermaid. But yet nevertheless a lot of the entire body looks like a some seafood like fish, Vaporeon seems to have the design of the eye lids along with estuary being a cat. _ Corsola, ‘Blue Pokemon Blue Pokemon’ Not only does it offer wonder exclusively, the use of with the ability to provide lots of benefits to have, For instance a stronger coral about the surf on the seaside, right behind the web delightful presence, its preserved tricky which will it’s not easy to be shattered. Corsola or simply often called Sunnygo certainly one species of water-type Pokemon and additionally stone. They are the next era Pokemon, which initial looked inside anime Pokemon chain, Pokémon: Become an expert in Quest. Corsola might be Misty’s one-eighth Pokemon, the very first time she or he becomes all through his / her adventures along the region regarding Grey Mountain Isle. Typically the identity Corsola themselves, producing from an assortment of coral formations words and phrases that means coral reefs reefs, along with the term diesel engine might be named a new sun’s rays ray. Corsola determine might be stirred in accordance with the submarine biota, namely inflammed reefs as well as crimson coral formations ocean, one of many red coral reefs that may automobile splendor, traditionally used being a creative hobby fabric or even just utilised like jewellery. In a bricks-and-mortar viewpoint, Corsola has a little round body, when there are 4 branches/stems maturing about the higher an important part of their body system, which in turn look really comparable to the particular function for the reefs reefs. For the public presence, ideal for the perhaps the temple, there’s an easy office along with a much smaller dimension, therefore it appears some sort of horn. Besides, there’s an easy set of minor oval-shaped big eyes, charcoal which inturn would make the sum to take a look adorable. Much of the physique Corsala, pink coloured through an assortment of vivid white in the foot of this body similar to a style. She has a pair of palm together with 4 modest thighs and legs butt compliment his particular body. Far apart from Pokemon overall, Corsola itself is identified Pokemon it does not germinate, for that reason it is going to continue to be in the small form. Corsola may be a Pokemon variety the fact that day-to-day lives as well as is found typically from the wild. However , it seems, some sort of Corsola is formulated specially as a result of men and , pertaining to a specific purpose. It may constantly be located in trivial sultry water, from the southern region marine environments as their natural and organic habitat. To improve good, any environment where by Corsola lifetime really should be comfortable and features clean and uncontaminated water. Because if he / she existence in the filthy and even toxin heavy environment, that limbs connected with his particular overall body will struggle to manufacture attractive colors, and also growth rate might also decrease. Throughout great health, a limbs involving one’s body will be able to build on a regular basis, to the point where all the offices will certainly be released, replaced because of the growth of recent branches. The item tells such branches, can easily build lower back solely inside single night. Twigs are let go, mostly could help individuals that should be delt with making it several come up with coral formations reefs or jewellery, to make sure that afterwards can have a deal benefit and also artistic worth is high. A fabulous Corsola usually resides with types, methods an important nest plus together forms his or her cuddle to provide a’dwelling home’for the purpose of them. Besides, this draw close is usually searched by humankind, as a general bottom basic foundation regarding going family home, by the majority life inside the coast neighborhood, White Mountain Island island. Most of the users who work as craftsmen, measuredly build their residence just simply in this article typically the Corsola herd, to become proficient in the event that they’re going to’buy’free limbs designed to subsequently get to be the information of coral formations reefs. Typically, a good Corsola, commonly has the features of a gay as well as helpful aspect, frequently on mankind or any other Pokemon. _ Greninja, ‘Pokemon of the Ninja Frog’ Through a variety of exercise routines along with diligence, his work progressed directly into one of many Pokemon that attained this play name being the fastest. Its extremely extraordinary speed, a primary tool that means it is some sort of poisonous competition, Greninja as well as often known as Gekkouga, is among the Pokemon varieties of fluids and darker type. Oahu is the 6th technology Pokemon. initial seemed to be while in the gum anime Pokemon string, Pokemon: A & Wye, Greninja was basically major Pokemon which usually Ash bought, when ever he or she started this excitement, At the start of his following assembly, next Greninja nevertheless available as a fabulous Froakie, still immediately following suffering from many different escapade along with struggle with Ash tree, when the rope advanced as a Frogadier, just up until at long last, Frogadier may well down the track evolve proper Greninja. These brand Grenaan again comes from a combination of the phrase grenouille in which through the french language expressions means some toad frog, as well as the message ninja that may be all the industry of a’criminal and even skilled infiltrate’within the feudalistic period of The japanese, Greninja figure will be reportedly impressed in one species of amphibian predators this is a horned batrachian , The cause for the word ninja will be pinned about the number for Greninja, encouraged by the old Western folktale about’These Storyline for the Dashing Jiraiya ‘, pertaining to the unique talent of any ninja of the time, which will remodel in a giant frog. the entire body associated with Greninja is definitely associated by using a toad, the Pokemon which will runs using not one but two feet, and features how large a great adult’s body. From the mind, arms and legs of one’s navy-blue Grenoman, followed by 3 white wine bubbles, in just about every section of his or her control not to mention feet. While on the capitulum, facial skin to chest muscles, contains a contrasting colouring for cream. In addition to they can be kept on the second legs, there’s a simple routine wooden shuriken soft blue. A grapevine by themself comes with some of extremities, which will with each and every toe of the foot includes a level with membrane layer for a frog. Is very important belonging to the head off involving Greninja incorporates a proportionate building which usually is exclusive, in which, in case regarded, has a resemblance to the shape from the stern connected with an aeroplane. One more completely unique item on the Greninja, excellent for an extended time lingua diameter, as a result they can actually encapsulate this for the throat, the software seems to be as a scarf that may handles the eye together with make a incomprehensible effect for a ninja. Greninja is certainly a unheard of Pokemon and will be very rarely suffered while in the undomesticated, also comprising Froakie though. On the other hand, as it would be some water-type Pokemon, the idea generally favors spaces towards the h2o similar to a body of water within general. Of this aspects for the outdoors, Greninja is mostly a Pokemon that greatly exhibits his or her trustworthiness in addition to dedication to your owner. It provides a exciting and never self-centered nature. As a Pokemon, they are very sensible, plus illustrates a superb knowledge or worry in opposition to his or her friends, making him invariably go ahead and take project so that you can normally give protection to these guys out of your pressure about distress. Greninja itself is some sort of shape, who seems to be highly partial to fighting. particularly if she is the chance to attack with the help of an intense opponent. _ Ho-Oh, ‘Pokemon Legend of the Eternal Bird the Happiness Bearer’ Through man an important sweetness of this key shades for the rainbow shall be built because he jigs spanning the sky, Of course these pressure that produces man able to converted from the ashes, producing his / her find might carry on living eternally ageless, Ho-Oh or even also known as Houou, is about the Pokemon class unbelievable second-generation terminate not to mention driving type. Ho-Oh very first seemed to be ever since the main situation from the Pokéwednesday liveliness series Pokéwednesday: Indigo plant Category, Ash tree very first reads Ho-oh in the forest, any time they’re on his particular option to Viridian city, their initial daytime as a Pokemon coach, lying down on the floor, coupled with Pikachu who was seriously injured at that moment, The appearance of Ho-Oh right away developed a rainbow seem in the sky, additionally as soon as the storm. But then Ash’s Pokedex was in fact struggle to naturally find typically the Ho-Oh physique, now Ho-Oh’s overall look found in the original instance, very much like a fabulous cameo, given that their find has never in fact happened to be mentioned significantly. As a result, Ho-Oh by themself new categorised simply because mythical Pokemon inside the moment generation. The particular title Ho-Oh is undoubtedly a mixture of the definition of Hoo that is representative of the actual phoenix arizona fowl in the trust associated with Offshore society. And also the word Ouyang proceeds from the actual notification O and even emperor that means saturnia pavonia or maybe’O’which suggests king so this means saturnia pavonia and even’O’which translates to mean king. Ho-Oh’s figure out is definitely motivated because of the icon on the Arizona, especially a good Fènghuánanogram, the actual identify for only a phoenix,az who has interminable living within Oriental mythology. Or simply mentioned, his or her figure out ended up being encouraged by a unbelievable avian labeled Huma. Read all through this lifespan, the actual physique involving Huma will be observed controlling above lacking truly asleep some bit. The crna can restart by his own or others, along with lung burning ash strengths or maybe fire within his body. Any Huma bird can be symbolic of luck together with association, he will convey joy to be able to any person so,who unexpectedly were able to watch this figure. Originating from a vigorous mind-set, Ho-Oh’s body is made since similar, for a blend of phoenixes and additionally peacocks. The majority of the feathers on the body are actually white along with great yellow, at the annexe, down on your body about Ho-Oh consists of, some cellular levels from colors dominated by reddish, associated with the white kind of in addition to renewable because colour gradation. The particular roll involving wings might be in a position to having a light of sunshine, that can create a range surface each time that it jigs along the sky, accordingly the range graphic above, is normally a sign of their presence. Yellowtail down tend to be when combined product coloration for the tip. Vary when using the green colors that rules his / her body, period of time aspect or even belly Ho-Oh solely white. Ho-Oh provides an environmentally friendly red stripe relating to her nck, an enormous wonderful orange nib, a good deep group around his red-lit cornea space, rrncluding a gold yellow-crested tresses together with his head. Selan the fact that, Ho-Oh also has a pair of black-coloured feet, having 4 bits of fingers accompanied by lengthy claws. _ Umbreon,’Pokemon the Mysterious figure under the Moon of the Moon’ With the awesome strength belonging to the moon’s radiation, it may well develop along with increase stronger. During the iniquity involved with the night the fact that contains 1000 classifications, you will find there’s physique gift using suspense, covering up as well as ready restfully just for the presence of the challenger, Umbreon and even often known as Blacky, belongs to the Dark-type Pokemon species. He’s one minute generating Pokemon, what looks inside cartoons Pokemon range, Pokémon : Johto Conference Champions. Umbreon has become the maximum evolutions on the Eevee, which in turn been refined whenever the connection between man plus the trainer was so shut for a friend. Therefore in the course of the night, while a great Eevee has gone through different exercises plus effort, by making use of that moonlight’s illuminating vitality of sunshine, he may well then center inside an Umbreon. The list Umbreon alone develops from a comprehensive forensics education terms, umbra of which during Latin will mean tincture and even may also be taken since the outline within the moon around, which in turn is intended throughout the presentation of the solar power eclipse befell, As well as concept about that’s a period of time who can not be calculated or simply figured out, whereby this unique alludes just how long the item gets a Pokemon so that you can evolve naturally. The idea of aeon can be, the total word of mouth linked to each and every name of all evolutionary styles of any Eevee. Umbreon’s figure out is usually encouraged with a dark colored snake or maybe a dark-colored fox. He’s got a tough spike just like a Moon on Lapin safely contained at a htc legend that could be widely believed in these eastern location about Asia. Ring-shaped patterns or possibly stained forums at Umbreon’s body along with the trend with man in the moon token usually associated with snake figurines together with the goodness Anubis on historic Egyptian culture. None can typically the sequence also be said to be an important outline with a diamond ring of sunshine, which inturn is created because a solar energy over shadow occurs. With a bricks-and-mortar perspective, Umbreon can be described as four-legged Pokemon, trim just as a cat, and an appearance measurement on the fox. Virtually all of Umbreon’s person is decent african american, together with a yellow-colored ring-shaped routine in the forehead as well as every half about usual legs. When Umbreon on their own offers brilliant scarlet big eyes, which often seems to be fairly differentiation aided by the colour in the body. Umbreon even been found undertake a pair of clear fangs, might no more than wind up being accessible whenever she opened up his / her mouth. Also, She has extended radio stations such as a bunnie, nevertheless wrought tapering located at the perimeters, or perhaps a long tail assembly with identical figures, a little bit thicker. Together with a couple radio stations and also end, there is also a white sections of which forums it. By simply in the event the night time comes the whole set of orange piece of his physical structure, will probably shine teeth whitening really brightly in the dark plus pass on fright towards someone near him. As well while he or she hits his particular attackers, the ring-shaped routine regarding his / her overall body might also glow. _ Leafeon, ‘Pokemon The Cats of Leaves Lovers of Peace’ Including facilities, just for your guy, natural light plays the main component of her life. With out them, he cannot get hold of an energy eating, which happens to be dealing with involving the power. For example saving money crops providing a feeling of silence, and also the determine what people always jam packed with peace of mind not to mention peace. Leafeon, commonly known as Leafia, are probably the grass-type Pokemon species. Is it doesn’t 4th technology Pokemon which foremost seemed on the Pokemon gum anime chain, Pokéwednesday any Series: Generally as well as Pearl. Leafeon has become the greatest evolutionary sorts of a Eevee, which in turn been refined as a result of the process of working out plus the hard deliver the results not wearing running shoes started until eventually during one time it might advance proper Leafeon in some conditions. This company name Leafeon is undoubtedly an assortment of riff word sense foliage, along with aeon which is a time which cannot be tested, what themselves describes the time this takes a Pokemon to develop naturally. The idea of aeon is, the final word attached to every different name of all the so-called evolutionary kinds some sort of Eevee. Leafeon figures tend to be stated to be encouraged by means of a cat in addition to a sibel, like the Leafeon habit of ascending forest, also know as the seem it creates is definitely identical to the sound of a cat as well as a fox. Originating from a vigorous opinion, Leafeon’s entire body looks similar to a blend of a cat in addition to a fox. Them goes to the four-legged mammalian Pokemon class. Much of Leafeon’s is cream-coloured, along with dark brown on all fours, and likewise inside their ears. It includes dark little brown eyes and then smallish tip, which happens to be identical to the contour of a cat’s face plus nose. During Leafeon’s body system, it again thrives similar to a marijuana in certain parts of her body. But there’s single big-sized bud, which unfortunately increases in the actual travel, thus making an incomparable design like a’cap ‘. The single most stunning features of some Leafeon overall look is without a doubt the form regarding a couple hearing in addition to longest tail that appears such as leaf. Consequently, it is stated which usually Leafon’s private cell structure is a lot like that will of an plant. As a result so that it is competent to conduct the entire photosynthesis to offer breathable oxygen that might clean and renew the atmosphere roughly it. As a result, every Leafeon came across being sleeping on a sunny day, it might be agreed he had been going through the operation of photosynthesis. The above mentined brief description could very well be pleasure with regards to your daytime, the whole picture Elegant Pokemon Xd Gale Of Darkness Review- of which is already when in front of you actually might be verification all of us have a passion for ones’s’s activity relating to some of our cyberspace, and wish you aren’t getting fed up courting to internet, we do hope you furthermore become a good inspirator involving similar systems, which often considering the plan you happen to be a part of the era of the a happiness of others.

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*The American Yawp is an evolving, collaborative text. Please click here to improve this chapter.* ¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 Revolutionary technological change, unprecedented global flows of goods and people and capital, an amorphous and unending “War on Terror,” accelerating inequality, growing diversity, a changing climate, political stalemate: our world is remarkable, frustrating, and dynamic. But it is not an island of circumstance–it is a product of history. Time marches forever on. The present becomes the past and the past becomes history. But, as William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” ((William Faulker, Requiem for a Nun (New York: Random House, 1954), 73.)) The last several decades of American history have culminated in the present, an era of innovation and advancement but also of stark partisan division, sluggish economic growth, widening inequalities, widespread military interventions, and pervasive anxieties about the present and future of the United States. Through boom and bust, national tragedy, foreign wars, and the maturation of a new generation, a new chapter of American history is busily being written. II. American Politics before September 11, 2001 ¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 The conservative “Reagan Revolution” lingered over the presidential election of 1988. At stake was the legacy of a newly empowered conservative movement, a movement that would move forward with Reagan’s vice president, George H. W. Bush, who triumphed over Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis with a promise to continue the conservative work that had commenced in the 1980s. ¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 1 George H. W. Bush, whose father, Prescott Bush, was a United States Senator from Connecticut, was a World War II veteran, president of a successful oil company, served as chair of the Republican National Committee, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and was elected to the House of Representatives from his district in Texas. After failing to best Reagan in the 1980 Republican primaries, he was elected as his vice president in 1980 and again in 1984. In 1988, Michael Dukakis, a proud liberal from Massachusetts, challenged Bush for the White House. ¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 1 Dukakis ran a weak campaign, but Bush, a Connecticut aristocrat who had never been fully embraced by “movement conservatism,” hammered him with moral and cultural issues. Bush said Dukakis had blocked recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in Massachusetts schools, that he was a “card-carrying member” of the American Civil Liberties Union. Bush meanwhile dispatched his eldest son, George W. Bush, as his ambassador to the religious right. ((Bill Minutaglio, First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty (New York: Random House, 1999), 210-224.)) Bush also infamously released a political ad featuring the face of Willie Horton, a black Massachusetts man and convicted murderer who raped a woman after taking advantage of a Massachusetts prison furlough program during Dukakis’ tenure. “By the time we’re finished,” Bush’s campaign manager, Lee Atwater, said, “they’re going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’ running mate.” ((Roger Simon, “How A Murderer And Rapist Became The Bush Campaign’s Most Valuable Player,” The Baltimore Sun (November 11, 1990).)) Liberals attacked conservatives for perpetuating the ugly “code word” politics of the old Southern Strategy. ((See especially Dan T. Carter, From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996), 72-80.)) Buoyed by such attacks, Bush won a large victory and entered the White House ¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 Bush’s election signaled Americans’ continued embrace of Reagan’s conservative program and further evidenced the utter disarray of the Democratic Party. American liberalism, so stunningly triumphant in the 1960s, was now in full retreat. It was still, as one historian put it, the “Age of Reagan.” ((Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974–2008 (New York: Harper, 2008).)) ¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 The Soviet Union collapsed during Bush’s tenure. Devastated by a stagnant economy, mired in a costly and disastrous war in Afghanistan, confronted with dissident factions in Eastern Europe, and rocked by internal dissent, the Soviet Union crumbled. Soviet leader and reformer Mikhail Gorbachev loosened the Soviet Union’s tight personal restraints and censorship (“glasnost“) and liberalized the Soviet political machinery (“perestroika“). Eastern Bloc nations turned against their communist organizations and declared their independence from the Soviet Union. Gorbachev let them go. The Soviet Union unraveled. On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned his office, declaring that the Soviet Union no longer existed. At the Kremlin, the hammer and sickle was lowered and the Russian tricolor was raised. ((James F. Clarity, “End of the Soviet Union,” New York Times (December 26, 1991).)) ¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 The dissolution of the Soviet Union left the United States as the world’s only remaining superpower. Global capitalism seemed triumphant. Observers wondered if some final stage of history had been reached, if the old battles had ended and a new global consensus built around peace and open markets would reign forever. “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such,” wrote Francis Fukuyama in his much-talked-about 1989 essay, “The End of History?” ((Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?”, The National Interest (Summer 1989).)) Assets in Eastern Europe were privatized and auctioned off as newly independent nations introduced market economies. New markets were rising in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. India, for instance, began liberalizing its economic laws and opening itself up to international investment in 1991. China’s economic reforms, advanced by Chairman Deng Xiaoping and his handpicked successors, accelerated as privatization and foreign investment proceeded. ¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 The post-Cold War world was not without international conflicts, however. When Iraq invaded the small but oil-rich nation of Kuwait in 1990, Congress granted President Bush approval to intervene. The United States laid the groundwork for intervention–Operation Desert Shield–in August and commenced combat operations–Operation Desert Storm–in January 1991. With the memories of Vietnam still fresh, many Americans were hesitant to support military action that could expand into a protracted war or long-term commitment of troops. But the Gulf War was a swift victory for the United States. New technologies–including laser-guided precision bombing–amazed Americans, who could now watch 24-hour live coverage of the war on The Cable News Network (CNN). The Iraqi army disintegrated after only a hundred hours of ground combat. President Bush and his advisers opted not to pursue the war into Baghdad and risk an occupation and insurgency. And so the war was won. Many wondered if the “ghosts of Vietnam” had been exorcised. ((William Thomas Allison, The Gulf War, 1990-91 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 145, 165.)) Bush won enormous popularity. Gallup polls showed a job approval rating as high as 89% in the weeks after the end of the war. ((Charles W. Dunn, The Presidency in the Twenty-first Century (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2011), 152.)) ¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 President Bush’s popularity seemed to suggest an easy reelection in 1992, but Bush had still not won over the “New Right,” the aggressively conservative wing of the Republican Party, despite his attacks on Dukakis, his embrace of the flag and the Pledge, and his promise, “Read my lips: no new taxes.” He faced a primary challenge from political commentator Patrick Buchanan, a former Reagan and Nixon White House adviser, who cast Bush as a moderate, as an unworthy steward of the conservative movement who was unwilling to fight for conservative Americans in the nation’s ongoing “culture war.” Buchanan did not defeat Bush in the Republican primaries, but he inflicted enough damage to weaken his candidacy. ((Robert M. Collins, Transforming America: Politics and Culture During the Reagan Years (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 171, 172).)) ¶ 14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 1 Still thinking that Bush would be unbeatable 1992, many prominent Democrats passed on a chance to run and the Democratic Party nominated a relative unknown, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton. Dogged by charges of marital infidelity and draft-dodging during the Vietnam War, Clinton was a consummate politician with enormous charisma and a skilled political team. He framed himself as a “New Democrat,” a centrist open to free trade, tax cuts, and welfare reform. Twenty-two years younger than Bush, he was the first Baby Boomer to make a serious run at the presidency. Clinton presented the campaign as a generational choice. During the campaign he appeared on MTV. He played the saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show. And he told voters that he could offer the United States a new way forward. ¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 0 Bush ran on his experience and against Clinton’s moral failings. The GOP convention in Houston that summer featured speeches from Pat Buchanan and religious leader Pat Robertson decrying the moral decay plaguing American life. Clinton was denounced as a social liberal who would weaken the American family through both his policies and his individual moral character. But Clinton was able to convince voters that his moderated southern brand of “new” liberalism would be more effective than the moderate conservatism of George Bush. Bush’s candidacy, of course, was most crippled by a sudden economic recession. “It’s the economy, stupid,” Clinton’s political team reminded the country. ¶ 16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 0 Clinton would win the election, but the Reagan Revolution still reigned. Clinton and his running mate, Tennessee Senator Albert Gore, Jr., both moderate southerners, promised a path away from the old liberalism (and the landslide electoral defeats) of the 1970s and 1980s. They were Democrats, but conservative Democrats, so-called “New Democrats.” In his first term, Clinton set out an ambitious agenda that included an economic stimulus package, universal health insurance, a continuation of the Middle East peace talks initiated by Bush’s Secretary of State James Baker, welfare reform, and a completion of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to abolish trade barriers between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. His moves to reform welfare, open trade, and deregulate financial markets were particular hallmarks of Clinton’s “Third Way,” a political middle path that synthesized liberal and conservative ideas. ((For Clinton’s presidency and the broader politics of the 1990s, see James T. Patterson, Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); and Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974–2008 (New York: Harper, 2008).)) ¶ 17 Leave a comment on paragraph 17 0 With NAFTA, Clinton, reversed decades of Democratic opposition to free trade and opened the nation’s northern and southern borders to the free flow of capital and goods. Critics, particularly in the Midwest’s Rust Belt, blasted the agreement for opening American workers to deleterious competition by low-paid foreign workers. Many American factories did relocate by setting up shops–maquilas–in northern Mexico that took advantage of Mexico’s low wages. Thousands of Mexicans rushed to the maquilas. Thousands more continued on past the border. ¶ 18 Leave a comment on paragraph 18 0 If NAFTA opened American borders to goods and services, people still navigated strict legal barriers to immigration. Policymakers believed that free trade would create jobs and wealth that would incentivize Mexican workers to stay home, and yet multitudes continued to leave for opportunities in el norte. The 1990s proved that prohibiting illegal migration was, if not impossible, exceedingly difficult. Poverty, political corruption, violence, and hopes for a better life in the United States–or simply higher wages–continued to lure immigrants across the border. Between 1990 and 2010, the proportion of foreign-born individuals in the United States grew from 7.9 percent to 12.9 percent, and the number of undocumented immigrants tripled from 3.5 million to 11.2. While large numbers continued to migrate to traditional immigrant destinations—California, Texas, New York, Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois—the 1990s also witnessed unprecedented migration to the American South. Among the fastest-growing immigrant destination states were Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, and North Carolina, all of which had immigration growth rates in excess of 100% during the decade. ((Patterson, 298-299.)) ¶ 19 Leave a comment on paragraph 19 0 In response to the continued influx of immigrants and the vocal complaints of anti-immigration activists, policymakers responded with such initiatives as Operations Gatekeeper and Hold the Line, which attempted to make crossing the border more prohibitive. By strengthening physical barriers and beefing up Border Patrol presence in border cities and towns, a new strategy of “funneling” immigrants to dangerous and remote crossing areas emerged. Immigration officials hoped the brutal natural landscape would serve as a natural deterrent. ¶ 20 Leave a comment on paragraph 20 0 In his first weeks in office, Clinton reviewed Department of Defense policies restrcting homosexuals from serving in the armed forces. He pushed through a compromise plan, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” that removed any questions about sexual orientation in induction interview but also required that gay servicemen and women keep their sexual orientation private. The policy alienated many–social conservatives were outraged and his credentials as a conservative southerner suffered; liberals recoiled at continued anti-gay discrimination and his credentials as a liberal suffered–and cost Clinton political capital. ¶ 21 Leave a comment on paragraph 21 0 In his first term Clinton put forward universal health care as a major policy goal and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton played a major role in the initiative. But the push for a national healthcare law collapsed on itself. Conservatives revolted, the health care industry flooded the airwaves with attack ads, Clinton struggled with Congressional Democrats, and voters bristled. A national healthcare system was again repulsed. ¶ 22 Leave a comment on paragraph 22 0 The mid-term elections of 1994 were a disaster for the Democrats, who lost the House of Representatives for the first time since 1952. Congressional Republicans, led by Georgia Congressman Newt Gingrich and Texas Congressman Dick Armey, offered a new “Contract with America.” Republican candidates from around the nation gathered on the steps of the Capitol to pledge their commitment to a conservative legislative blueprint to be enacted if the GOP won control of the House. The strategy worked. ¶ 23 Leave a comment on paragraph 23 0 Social conservatives were mobilized by an energized group of religious activists, especially the Christian Coalition, led by Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed. Robertson was a television minister and entrepreneur whose 1988 long shot run for the Republican presidential nomination brought him a massive mailing list and network of religiously motivated voters around the country. From that mailing list, the Christian Coalition organized around the country, seeking to influence politics on the local and national level. ¶ 24 Leave a comment on paragraph 24 1 In 1996 the generational contest played out again when the Republicans nominated another aging war hero, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, but Clinton again won the election, becoming the first Democrat to serve back to back terms since Franklin Roosevelt. He was aided in part by the amelioration of conservatives by his signing of welfare reform legislation, “The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996,” which decreased welfare benefits, restricted eligibility, and turned over many responsibilities to states. Clinton said it would “break the cycle of dependency.” ((Carolyn Skorneck, “Final Welfare Bill Written,” Washington Post, (July 30, 1996), A1.)) ¶ 25 Leave a comment on paragraph 25 2 Clinton’s presided over a booming economy fueled by emergent computing technologies. Personal computers had skyrocketed in sales and the internet become a mass phenomenon. Communication and commerce were never again the same. But the tech boom was driven by business and the 90s saw robust innovation and entrepreneurship. Investors scrambled to find the next Microsoft or Apple, suddenly massive computing companies. But it was the internet, “the world wide web,” that sparked a bonanza. The “dot-com boom” fueled enormous economic growth and substantial financial speculation to find the next Google or Amazon. ¶ 26 Leave a comment on paragraph 26 1 Republicans, defeated at the polls in 1996 and 1998, looked for other ways to sink Clinton’s presidency. Political polarization seemed unprecedented and a sensation-starved, post-Watergate media demanded scandal. The Republican congress spent millions on investigations hoping to uncover some shred of damning evidence to sink Clinton’s presidency, whether it be real estate deals, White House staffing, or adultery. Rumors of sexual misconduct had always swirled around Clinton. The press, which had historically turned a blind eye to such private matters, saturated the media with Clinton’s potential sex scandals. Congressional investigations targeted the allegations and Clinton, called to testify before a grand jury and in a statement to the American public, denied having “sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky. Republicans used the testimony to allege perjury. In December 1998, the House of Representatives voted to impeach the president. It was a radical and wildly unpopular step. Two-thirds of Americans disapproved and a majority told Gallup pollsters that Republicans had abused their constitutional authority. Clinton’s approval rating, meanwhile, jumped to 78%. ((Frank Newport, “Clinton Receives Record High Job Approval Rating,” Gallup (December 24, 1998).)) In February 1999, on a vote that mostly fell upon party lines, Clinton was acquitted by the Senate. ¶ 27 Leave a comment on paragraph 27 0 The 2000 election pitted Vice President Albert Gore, Jr. against George W. Bush, the son of the former president who had been elected twice as Texas governor. Gore, wary of Clinton’s recent impeachment despite Clinton’s enduring approval ratings, distanced himself from the president and eight years of relative prosperity and ran as a pragmatic, moderate liberal. Bush, too, ran as a moderate, distancing himself from the cruelties of past Republican candidates by claiming to represent a “compassionate conservatism” and a new faith-based politics. Bush was an outspoken evangelical. In a presidential debate, he declared Jesus Christ his favorite political philosopher. He promised to bring church leaders into government and his campaign appealed to churches and clergy to get out the vote. Moreover, he promised to bring honor, dignity, and integrity to the Oval Office, a clear reference Clinton. Utterly lacking the political charisma that had propelled Clinton, Gore withered under Bush’s attacks. Instead of trumpeting the Clinton presidency, Gore found himself answering the media’s questions about whether he was sufficiently an “alpha male” and whether he had “invented the internet.” ¶ 28 Leave a comment on paragraph 28 0 Few elections have been as close and contentious as the 2000 election, which ended in a deadlock. Gore had won the popular vote by 500,000 votes, but the Electoral College math seemed to have failed him. On election night the media had called Florida for Gore, but then Bush made gains and news organizations reversed themselves by declaring the state for Bush—and Bush the probable president-elect. Gore conceded privately to Bush, then backpedaled as the counts edged back toward Gore yet again. When the nation awoke the next day, it was unclear who had been elected president. The close Florida vote triggered an automatic recount. ¶ 29 Leave a comment on paragraph 29 1 Lawyers descended on Florida. The Gore campaign called for manual recounts in several counties. Local election boards, Florida Secretary of State Kathleen Harris, and the Florida Supreme Court all weighed in until the United Supreme Court stepped in and, in an unprecedented 5-4 decision in Bush v. Gore, ruled that the recount had to end. Bush was awarded Florida by a margin of 537 votes, enough to win him the state, a majority in the Electoral College, and the presidency. ¶ 30 Leave a comment on paragraph 30 0 In his first months in office, Bush fought to push forward enormous tax cuts skewed toward America’s highest earners and struggled with an economy burdened by the bursting of the dot-com-bubble. Old fights seemed ready to be fought, and then everything changed. III. September 11 and the War on Terror ¶ 32 Leave a comment on paragraph 32 0 On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 operatives of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization hijacked four passenger planes on the East Coast. American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City at 8:46 a.m. EDT. United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower at 9:03. American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the western façade of the Pentagon at 9:37. At 9:59, the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. At 10:03, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, likely brought down by passengers who had received news of the earlier hijackings. And at 10:28, the North Tower collapsed. In less than two hours, nearly 3,000 Americans had been killed. ¶ 34 Leave a comment on paragraph 34 0 The attacks stunned Americans. Late that night, Bush addressed the nation and assured the country that “The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts.” At Ground Zero three days later, Bush thanked first responders for their work. A worker said he couldn’t hear him. “I can hear you,” Bush shouted back, “The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” ¶ 36 Leave a comment on paragraph 36 0 American intelligence agencies quickly identified the radical Islamic militant group al-Qaeda, led by the wealthy Saudi Osama Bin Laden, as the perpetrators of the attack. Sheltered in Afghanistan by the Taliban, the country’s Islamic government, al-Qaeda was responsible for a 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and a string of attacks at U.S. embassies and military bases across the world. Bin Laden’s Islamic radicalism and his anti-American aggression attracted supporters across the region and, by 2001, al-Qaeda was active in over sixty countries. ¶ 37 Leave a comment on paragraph 37 1 Although in his presidential campaign Bush had denounced foreign “nation-building,” he populated his administration with “neo-conservatives,” firm believers in the expansion of American democracy and American interests abroad. Bush advanced what was sometimes called the Bush Doctrine, a policy in which the United States would have the right to unilaterally and pre-emptively make war upon any regime or terrorist organization that posed a threat to the United States or to United States’ citizens. It would lead the United State into protracted conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and entangle the United States in nations across the world. Journalist Dexter Filkins called it a “Forever War,” a perpetual conflict waged against an amorphous and un-defeatable enemy. The geopolitical realities of the twenty-first-century world were forever transformed. ((Dexter Filkins, The Forever War (New York: Vintage, 2009).)) ¶ 38 Leave a comment on paragraph 38 0 The United States, of course, had a history in Afghanistan. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 to quell an insurrection that threatened to topple Kabul’s communist government, the United States financed and armed anti-Soviet insurgents, the Mujahedeen. In 1981, the Reagan Administration authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to provide the Mujahedeen with weapons and training to strengthen the insurgency. An independent wealthy young Saudi, Osama bin Laden, also fought with and funded the Mujahedeen. The insurgents began to win. Afghanistan bled the Soviet Union dry. The costs of the war, coupled with growing instability at home, convinced the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989. ((See, for instance, Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006).)) ¶ 39 Leave a comment on paragraph 39 0 Osama bin Laden relocated al-Qaeda to Afghanistan after the country fell to the Taliban in 1996. Under Bill Clinton, the United States launched cruise missiles at al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in retaliation for al-Qaeda bombings on American embassies in Africa. ¶ 40 Leave a comment on paragraph 40 0 After September 11, with a broad authorization of military force, Bush administration officials made plans for military action against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. What would become the longest war in American history began with the launching of Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001. Air and missile strikes hit targets across Afghanistan. U.S. Special Forces joined with fighters in the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. Major Afghan cities fell in quick succession. The capital, Kabul, fell on November 13. Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda operatives retreated into the rugged mountains along the border of Pakistan in eastern Afghanistan. The United States military settled in. ¶ 41 Leave a comment on paragraph 41 0 As American troops struggled to contain the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Bush administration set its sights on Iraq. After the conclusion of the Gulf War in 1991, American officials established economic sanctions, weapons inspections, and “no-fly zones.” By mid-1991, American warplanes were routinely patrolling Iraqi skies and coming under periodic fire from Iraqi missile batteries. The overall cost to the United States of maintaining the two no-fly zones over Iraq was roughly $1 billion a year. Related military activities in the region added almost another half billion to the annual bill. On the ground in Iraq, meanwhile, Iraqi authorities clashed with U.N. weapons inspectors. Iraq had suspended its program for weapons of mass destruction, but Saddam Hussein fostered ambiguity about the weapons in the minds of regional leaders to forestall any possible attacks against Iraq. ¶ 42 Leave a comment on paragraph 42 0 In 1998, a standoff between Hussein and the United Nations over weapons inspections led President Bill Clinton to launch punitive strikes aimed at debilitating what was thought to be a fairly developed chemical weapons program. Attacks began on December 16, 1998. More than 200 cruise missiles fired from U.S. Navy warships and Air Force B-52 bombers flew into Iraq, targeting suspected chemical weapons storage facilities, missile batteries and command centers. Airstrikes continued for three more days, unleashing in total 415 cruise missiles and 600 bombs against 97 targets. The amount of bombs dropped was nearly double the amount used in the 1991 conflict. ¶ 43 Leave a comment on paragraph 43 2 The United States and Iraq remained at odds throughout the 1990s and early 2000, when Bush administration officials began championing “regime change.” The Bush Administration publicly denounced Saddam Hussein’s regime and its alleged weapons of mass destruction. It began pushing for war in the fall of 2002. It was alleged by the Administration that Hussein was trying to acquire uranium and that it had aluminum tubes used for nuclear centrifuges. Public opinion was divided. George W. Bush said in October, “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun—that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” ((Thomas R. Mockaitis, The Iraq War: A Documentary and Reference Guide (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2012), 26.)) The Administration’s push for war was in full swing. Protests broke out across the country and all over the world, but majorities of Americans supported military action. On October 16, the United States Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iraq Resolution, giving Bush the power to make war in Iraq. Iraq began cooperating with U.N. weapons inspectors in late 2002, but the Bush administration pressed on. On February 6, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell, who had risen to public prominence as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of State during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, presented allegations of a robust Iraqi weapons program to the United Nations. Protests continued. ¶ 44 Leave a comment on paragraph 44 0 The first American bombs hit Baghdad on March 20, 2003. Several hundred-thousand troops moved into Iraq and Hussein’s regime quickly collapsed. Baghdad fell on April 9. On May 1, 2003, aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, beneath a banner reading “Mission Accomplished,” George W. Bush announced that “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” ((Judy Keen, “Bush to Troops: Mission Accomplished,” USA Today (June 5, 2003).)) No evidence of weapons of mass destruction had been found or would be found. And combat operations had not ended, not really. The Iraqi insurgency had begun, and the United States would spend the next ten years struggling to contain it. ¶ 46 Leave a comment on paragraph 46 0 Efforts by various intelligence gathering agencies led to the capture of Saddam Hussein, hidden in an underground compartment near his hometown, on December 13, 2003. The new Iraqi government found him guilty of crimes against humanity and he was hanged on December 30, 2006. IV. The End of the Bush Years ¶ 48 Leave a comment on paragraph 48 0 The War on Terror was a centerpiece in the race for the White House in 2004. The Democratic ticket, headed by Massachusetts Senator John F. Kerry, a Vietnam War hero who entered the public consciousness for his subsequent testimony against it, attacked Bush for the ongoing inability to contain the Iraqi insurgency or to find weapons of mass destruction, the revelation, and photographic evidence, that American soldiers had abused prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad, and the inability to find Osama Bin Laden. Moreover, many enemy combatants who had been captured in Iraq and Afghanistan were “detained” indefinitely at a military prison in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. “Gitmo” became infamous for its harsh treatment, indefinite detentions, and the torture of prisoners. Bush defended the War on Terror and his allies attacked critics for failing to “support the troops.” Moreover, Kerry had voted for the war–he had to attack the very thing that he had authorized. Bush won a close but clear victory. ¶ 49 Leave a comment on paragraph 49 0 The second Bush term saw the continued deterioration of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Bush’s presidency would take a bigger hit from his perceived failure to respond to the domestic tragedy that followed Hurricane Katrina’s devastating hit on the Gulf Coast. Katrina had been a category 5 hurricane. It was, the New Orleans Times-Picayune read, “the storm we always feared.” ((Bruce Nolan, “Katrina: The Storm We’ve Always Feared,” New Orleans Times-Picayune (August 30, 2005).)) ¶ 50 Leave a comment on paragraph 50 0 New Orleans suffered a direct hit, the levees broke, and the bulk of the city flooded. Thousands of refugees flocked to the Superdome, where supplies and medical treatment and evacuation were slow to come. Individuals died in the heat. Bodies wasted away. Americans saw poor black Americans abandoned. Katrina became a symbol of a broken administrative system, a devastated coastline, and irreparable social structures that allowed escape and recovery for some, and not for others. Critics charged that Bush had staffed his administration with incompetent supporters and had further ignored the displaced poor and black residents of New Orleans. ((Douglas Brinkley: The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (New York: Harper Collins, 2006).)) ¶ 52 Leave a comment on paragraph 52 0 Immigration, meanwhile, had become an increasingly potent political issue. The Clinton Administration had overseen the implementation of several anti-immigration policies on the border, but hunger and poverty were stronger incentives than border enforcement policies. Illegal immigration continued, often at great human cost, but nevertheless fanned widespread anti-immigration sentiment among many American conservatives. Many immigrants and their supporters, however, fought back. 2006 saw waves of massive protests across the country. Hundreds of thousands marched in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, and tens of thousands marched in smaller cities around the country. Legal change, however, went nowhere. Moderate conservatives feared upsetting business interests’ demand for cheap, exploitable labor and alienating large voting blocs by stifling immigration and moderate liberals feared upsetting anti-immigrant groups by pushing too hard for liberalization of immigration laws. ¶ 53 Leave a comment on paragraph 53 0 Afghanistan and Iraq, meanwhile, continued to deteriorate. In 2006, the Taliban reemerged, as the Afghan Government proved both highly corrupt and incapable of providing social services or security for its citizens. Iraq only descended further into chaos as insurgents battled against American troops and groups such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Al Qaeda in Iraq bombed civilians and released recordings of beheadings. ¶ 54 Leave a comment on paragraph 54 0 In 2007, 27,000 additional United States forces deployed to Iraq under the command of General David Petraeus. The effort, “the surge,” employed more sophisticated anti-insurgency strategies and, combined with Sunni moves against the disorder, pacified many of Iraq’s cities and provided cover for the withdrawal of American forces. On December 4, 2008, the Iraqi government approved the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement and United States combat forces withdrew from Iraqi cities before June 30, 2009. The last US combat forces left Iraq on December 18, 2011. Violence and instability continued to rock the country. V. The Great Recession ¶ 57 Leave a comment on paragraph 57 0 The Great Recession began, as most American economic catastrophe’s began, with the bursting of a speculative bubble. Throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium, home prices continued to climb, and financial services firms looked to cash in on what seemed to be a safe but lucrative investment. Especially after the dot-com bubble burst, investors searched for a secure investment that was rooted in clear value and not trendy technological speculation. And what could be more secure than real estate? But mortgage companies began writing increasingly risky loans and then bundling them together and selling them over and over again, sometimes so quickly that it became difficult to determine exactly who owned what. ¶ 58 Leave a comment on paragraph 58 0 Decades of financial deregulation had rolled back Depression Era restraints and again enabled risky business practices to dominate the world of American finance. It was a bipartisan agenda. In the 1990s, for instance, Bill Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, repealing provisions of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act separating commercial and investment banks, and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which exempted credit-default swaps–perhaps the key financial mechanism behind the crash–from regulation. ¶ 59 Leave a comment on paragraph 59 1 Mortgages had been so heavily leveraged that when American homeowners began to default on their loans, the whole system collapsed. Major financial services firms such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers disappeared almost overnight. In order to prevent the crisis from spreading, the federal government poured billions of dollars into the industry, propping up hobbled banks. Massive giveaways to bankers created shock waves of resentment throughout the rest of the country. On the Right, conservative members of the Tea Party decried the cronyism of an Obama administration filled with former Wall Street executives. The same energies also motivated the Occupy Wall Street movement, as mostly young left-leaning New Yorkers protesting an American economy that seemed overwhelmingly tilted toward “the one percent.” ((On the Great Recession, see Joseph Stiglitz, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy (New York: Norton, 2010.); and Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (New York: Norton: 2010).)) ¶ 60 Leave a comment on paragraph 60 2 The Great Recession only magnified already rising income and wealth inequalities. According to the Chief Investment Officer at JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, “profit margins have reached levels not seen in decades,” and “reductions in wages and benefits explain the majority of the net improvement.” ((Harold Meyerson, “Corporate America’s Chokehold on Wages,” Washington Post (July 19, 2011).)) A study from the Congressional Budget authority found that since the late 1970s, after-tax benefits of the wealthiest 1% grew by over 300%. The “average” American’s had grown 35%. Economic trends have disproportionately and objectively benefited the wealthiest Americans. Still, despite political rhetoric, American frustration failed to generate anything like the social unrest of the early twentieth century. A weakened labor movement and a strong conservative bloc continue to stymie serious attempts at redistributing wealth. Occupy Wall Street managed to generate a fair number of headlines and shift public discussion away from budget cuts and toward inequality, but its membership amounted to only a fraction of the far more influential and money-driven Tea Party. Its presence on the public stage was fleeting. ¶ 61 Leave a comment on paragraph 61 0 The Great Recession, however, was not. While American banks quickly recovered and recaptured their steady profits, and the American stock market climbed again to new heights, American workers continued to lag. Job growth would remain miniscule and unemployment rates would remain stubbornly high. Wages froze, meanwhile, and well-paying full-time jobs that were lost were too often replaced by low-paying, part-time work. A generation of workers coming of age within the crisis, moreover, had been savaged by the economic collapse. Unemployment among young Americans hovered for years at rates nearly double the national average. VI. The Obama Years ¶ 64 Leave a comment on paragraph 64 0 By the 2008 election, with Iraq still in chaos, Democrats were ready to embrace the anti-war position and sought a candidate who had consistently opposed military action in Iraq. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois had been a member of the state senate when Congress debated the war actions but he had publicly denounced the war, predicting the sectarian violence that would ensue, and remained critical of the invasion through his 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate. He began running for president almost immediately after arriving in Washington. ¶ 65 Leave a comment on paragraph 65 0 A former law professor and community activist, Obama became the first African American candidate to ever capture the nomination of a major political party. ((Thomas J. Sugrue, Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race Book (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).)) During the election, Obama won the support of an increasingly anti-war electorate. Already riding a wave of support, however, Bush’s fragile economy finally collapsed in 2007 and 2008. Bush’s policies were widely blamed, and Obama’s opponent, Republican John McCain, was tied to Bush’s policies. Obama won a convincing victory in the fall and became the nation’s first African American president. ¶ 66 Leave a comment on paragraph 66 0 President Obama’s first term was marked by domestic affairs, especially his efforts to combat the Great Recession and to pass a national healthcare law. Obama came into office as the economy continued to deteriorate. He managed the bank bailout begun under his predecessor and launched a limited economic stimulus plan to provide countercyclical government spending to spare the country from the worst of the downturn. ¶ 67 Leave a comment on paragraph 67 0 Despite Obama’s crushing electoral victory, national politics fractured and a conservative Republican firewall quickly arose against the Obama administration. “The Tea Party” became a catchall for a diffuse movement of fiercely conservative and politically frustrated American voters. Typically whiter, older, and richer than the average American, flush with support from wealthy backers, and clothed with the iconography of the Founding Fathers, Tea Party activists registered their deep suspicions of the federal government. ((Kate Zernike and Megan Thee-Brenan, “Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated,” New York Times (April 14, 2010); Jill Lepore, The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).)) Tea Party protests dominated the public eye in 2009 and activists steered the Republican Party far to the right, capturing primary elections all across the country. ¶ 68 Leave a comment on paragraph 68 0 Obama’s most substantive legislative achievement proved to be a national healthcare law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”). Presidents since Theodore Roosevelt had striven to pass national healthcare reform and failed. Obama’s plan forsook liberal models of a national healthcare system and instead adopted a heretofore conservative model of subsidized private care (similar plans had been put forward by Republicans Richard Nixon, Newt Gingrich, and Obama’s 2012 opponent, Mitt Romney). Beset by conservative protests, Obama’s healthcare reform narrowly passed through Congress. It abolished “pre-existing conditions” as a cause for denying care, scrapped junk plans, provided for state-run health care exchanges (allowing individuals without healthcare to pool their purchasing power), offered states funds to subsidize an expansion of Medicaid, and required all Americans to provide proof of a health insurance plan that measured up to government-established standards (those who did not purchase a plan would pay a penalty tax, and those who could not afford insurance would be eligible for federal subsidies). ¶ 69 Leave a comment on paragraph 69 0 In 2009, President Barack Obama deployed 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan as part of a counterinsurgency campaign that aimed to “disrupt, dismantle, and defeat” al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Meanwhile, U.S. Special Forces and CIA drones targeted al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders. In May 2011, U.S. Navy SEALs conducted a raid deep into Pakistan that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden. The United States and NATO began a phased withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2011, with an aim of removing all combat troops by 2014. Although weak militarily, the Taliban remained politically influential in south and eastern Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda remained active in Pakistan, but shifted its bases to Yemen and the Horn of Africa. As of December 2013, the war in Afghanistan had claimed the lives of 3,397 U.S. service members. ¶ 72 Leave a comment on paragraph 72 0 In 2012, Barack Obama won a second term by defeating Republican Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. However, Obama’s inability to control Congress and the ascendancy of Tea Party Republicans stunted the passage of meaningful legislation. Obama was a lame duck before he ever won reelection, and gridlocked government came to represent an acute sense that much of American life–whether in politics, economics, or race relations–had grown stagnant. ¶ 73 Leave a comment on paragraph 73 0 The economy continued its half-hearted recovery from the Great Recession. The Obama administration campaigned on little to specifically address the crisis and, faced with congressional intransigence, accomplished even less. While corporate profits climbed and stock markets soared, wages stagnated and employment sagged. By 2016, the statistically average American worker had not received a raise in almost forty years. The typical American worker in 2014, earning $20.67, had, after adjusting for inflation, earned roughly the same amount since 1979 (and, measured against the $4.03 workers earned in January 1973, which, adjusted for inflation, was roughly the purchasing power equivalent of $22.41 in 2014, had actually lost ground). ((Drew DeSilver, “For Most Workers, Real Wages Have Barely Budged for Decades,” Pew Research Center, October 9, 2014, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/.)) Moreover, most income gains in the economy had been largely captured by a small number of wealthy earners. Between 2009-2013, 85% of all new income in the United States went to the top 1% of the population. ((Kerry Close, “The 1% Pocketed 85% of Post-Recession Income Growth” Time (June 16, 2016) http://time.com/money/4371332/income-inequality-recession/. See also Justin Wolfers, “The Gains From the Economic Recovery Are Still Limited to the Top One Percent,” New York Times, January 27, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/upshot/gains-from-economic-recovery-still-limited-to-top-one-percent.html.)) ¶ 74 Leave a comment on paragraph 74 0 But if money no longer flowed to American workers, it saturated American politics. In 2000, George W. Bush raised a record $172 million for his campaign. In 2008, Barack Obama became the first presidential candidate to decline public funds (removing any applicable caps to his total fundraising) and raised nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars for his campaign. The average House seat, meanwhile, cost about $1.6 million dollars, and the average Senate Seat over $10 million. ((Julia Queen and Christian Hilland, “2008 Presidential Campaign Financial Activity Summarized: Receipts Nearly Double 2004 Total,” Federal Election Commission (June 8, 2009), http://www.fec.gov/press/press2009/20090608PresStat.shtml; Andre Tartar & Eric Benson, “The Forever Capaign” New York Magazine (October 14, 2012), http://nymag.com/news/politics/elections-2012/timeline-2012-10/.)) The Supreme Court, meanwhile, removed barriers to outside political spending. In 2002, Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold had crossed party lines to pass the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, bolstering campaign finance laws passed in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal in the 1970s. But political organizations–particularly Political Action Committees (PACs)–exploited loopholes to raise large sums of money and, in 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. FEC that no limits could be placed on political spending by corporations, unions, and nonprofits. Money flowed even deeper into politics. ¶ 75 Leave a comment on paragraph 75 1 The influence of money in politics only heightened partisan gridlock, further blocking bipartisan progress on particular political issues. Climate change, for instance, has failed to transcend partisan barriers. In the 1970s and 1980s, experts substantiated the theory of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming. Eventually, the most influential of these panels, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in 1995 that there was a “discernible human influence on global climate.” ((Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).)) This conclusion, though stated conservatively, was by that point essentially a scientific consensus. By 2007, the IPCC considered the evidence “unequivocal” and warned that “unmitigated climate change would, in the long term, be likely to exceed the capacity of natural, managed and human systems to adapt.” ((Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability: Global and Sectoral Aspects (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).)) ¶ 76 Leave a comment on paragraph 76 1 Climate change became a permanent and major topic of public discussion and policy in the twenty-first century. Fueled by popular coverage, most notably, perhaps, the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, based on Al Gore’s book and presentations of the same name, addressing climate change became a plank of the American left and a point of denial for the American right. American public opinion and political action still lagged far behind the scientific consensus on the dangers of global warming. Conservative politicians, conservative think tanks, and energy companies waged war to sow questions in the minds of Americans, who remain divided on the question, and so many others. ¶ 77 Leave a comment on paragraph 77 1 Much of the resistance to addressing climate change is economic. As Americans look over their shoulder at China, many refuse to sacrifice immediate economic growth for long-term environmental security. Twenty-first century relations with China are characterized by contradictions and interdependence. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, China reinvigorated its efforts to modernize its country. By liberating and subsidizing much of its economy and drawing enormous foreign investments, China has posted enormous growth rates during the last several decades. Enormous cities rise by the day. In 2000, China had a gross domestic product around an eighth the size of the United States. Based on growth rates and trends, analysts suggest that China’s economy will bypass the United States’ soon. American concerns about China’s political system have persisted, but money sometimes speaks matters more to Americans. China has become one of the country’s leading trade partners. Cultural exchange has increased, and more and more Americans visit China each year, with many settling down to work and study. Conflict between the two societies is not inevitable, but managing bilateral relations will be one of the great challenges of the next decade. It is but one of several aspects of the world confronting Americans of the twenty-first century, and yet many Americans doubt their nation’s political capacity to address them. ¶ 78 Leave a comment on paragraph 78 1 By 2016, American voters were fed up. In that year’s presidential race, Republicans spurned their political establishment and nominated a real estate developer and celebrity billionaire, Donald Trump, who, decrying the tyranny of “political correctness” and promising to “Make America Great Again,” promised to build a wall to keep out Mexican immigrants and, as the territorial ambitions and terrorist tactics of the Islamic State (commonly referred to as ISIS, short for the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, or sometimes as ISIL, short for the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) grabbed headlines, to alter immigration law to bar Muslim immigrants. The Democrats, meanwhile, flirted with the candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist from Vermont, before ultimately nominating Hillary Clinton, who, after eight years as First Lady in the 1990s, had served eight years in the Senate and four more as Secretary of State. Voters despaired: Trump and Clinton were the most unpopular nominees in modern American history. Majorities of Americans viewed each candidate unfavorably and majorities in both parties said, early in the election season, that they were motivated more by voting against their rival candidate than for their own. ((https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/14/a-quarter-of-americans-dislike-both-major-party-presidential-candidates/?tid=a_inl; http://graphics.wsj.com/elections/2016/donald-trump-and-hillary-clintons-popularity-problem/.)) With incomes frozen, politics gridlocked, race relations tense, and headlines full of violence, such frustrations only channeled a larger sense of stagnation, one which upset traditional political allegiances. In the end, despite winning nearly three-million more votes nationwide, Clinton failed to carry key Midwestern states where frustrated white, working-class voters abandoned the Democratic Party–a Republican president hadn’t carried Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania, for instance, since the 1980s–and swung their support to the Republicans. In the aftermath of the election, however, political divisions only deepened and a nation deeply divided by income, culture, race, geography, and ideology trudged onward. Americans looked anxiously to the future, and yet also, often, to a new generation busy discovering, perhaps, that change was not impossible. VIII. New Horizons ¶ 80 Leave a comment on paragraph 80 0 Much public commentary in the early twenty-first century concerned the “millennials,” the new generation that came of age during the new millennium. Commentators, demographers, and political prognosticators continued to ask what the new generation will bring. TIME‘s May 20, 2013 cover, for instance, read “Millennials Are Lazy, Entitled Narcissists Who Still Live With Their Parents: Why They’ll Save Us All.” Pollsters focused on features that distinguish the millennials from older Americans: millennials, the pollsters said, were more diverse, more liberal, less religious, and wracked by economic insecurity. “They are,” as one Pew report read, “relatively unattached to organized politics and religion, linked by social media, burdened by debt, distrustful of people, in no rush to marry— and optimistic about the future.” ((Paul Taylor, The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown (New York: PublicAffairs, 2014).)) ¶ 81 Leave a comment on paragraph 81 1 Millennial attitudes toward homosexuality and gay marriage reflected one of the most dramatic changes in the popular attitudes of recent years. After decades of advocacy, American attitudes shifted rapidly. In 2006, a majority of Americans still told Gallup pollsters that “gay or lesbian relations” was “morally wrong;” ((Gallup. Available online: http://www.gallup.com/poll/1651/gay-lesbian-rights.aspx.)) But prejudice against homosexuality plummeted and greater public acceptance of “coming out” opened the culture–in 2001, 73% of Americans said they knew someone who was gay, lesbian or bisexual; in 1983, only 24% did. Gay characters–and particularly gay characters with depth and complexity–could be found across the cultural landscape. Attitudes shifted such that, by the 2010s, polls registered majority support for the legalization of gay marriage. A writer for the Wall Street Journal called it “one of the fastest-moving changes in social attitudes of this generation.” ((Janet Hook, “Support for Gay Marriage Hits All-Time High,” Wall Street Journal (March 9, 2015).)) ¶ 82 Leave a comment on paragraph 82 0 Such change was, in many respects, a generational one: on average, younger Americans supported gay marriage in higher numbers than older Americans. The Obama administration, meanwhile, moved tentatively. Refusing to push for national interventions on the gay marriage front, Obama did, however, direct a review of Defense Department policies that repealed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in 2011. Without the support of national politicians, gay marriage was left to the courts. Beginning in Massachusetts in 2003, state courts had begun slowly ruling against gay marriage bans. Then, in June, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex marriage was a constitutional right. Nearly two-thirds of Americans supported the position. ((Ibid.)) ¶ 83 Leave a comment on paragraph 83 1 While liberal social attitudes marked the younger generation, perhaps nothing so defined young Americans than the embrace of technology. The internet in particular, liberated from desktop modems, shaped more of daily life than ever before. The release of the Apple iPhone in 2007 popularized the concept of “smartphones” for millions of consumers and, by 2011, about a third of Americans owned a mobile computing device. Four years later, two-thirds did. ((Monica Anders, “Technology Device Ownership: 2015” (October 29, 2015) Pew Research Center, http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/02/22/smartphone-ownership-and-internet-usage-continues-to-climb-in-emerging-economies/.)). ¶ 84 Leave a comment on paragraph 84 0 Together with the advent of “social media,” Americans used their smartphones and their desktops to stay in touch with old acquaintances, chat with friends, share photos, and interpret the world–as newspaper and magazine subscriptions dwindled, Americans increasingly turned to their social media networks for news and information. ((http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/24/how-social-media-is-reshaping-news/.)) Ambitious new online media companies, hungry for “clicks” and the ad revenue they represented, churned out provocatively titled, easy-to-digest stories that could be linked and tweeted and shared widely among like-minded online communities, ((See, for instance, Nicholas G. Carr’s 2010 The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist.)), but even traditional media companies, forced to downsize their newsrooms to accommodate shrinking revenues, fought to adapt to their new online consumers. ¶ 85 Leave a comment on paragraph 85 1 The ability of individuals to share stories through social media apps revolutionized the media landscape–smart phone technology and the democratization of media reshaped political debates and introduced new political questions. The easy accessibility of video capturing and the ability for stories to “go viral” outside of traditional media, for instance, brought new attention to the tense and often violent relations between municipal police officers and African Americans. The 2014 death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri sparked focused the issue and over the following years videos documenting the deaths of black men at the hands of police officers circulated among social media networks. It became a testament to the power of social media platforms such as Twitter that a hashtag, #blacklivesmatter, became a rallying cry for protesters and counter-hashtags, #alllivesmatter and #policelivesmatter, for critics. ((http://www.wired.com/2015/10/how-black-lives-matter-uses-social-media-to-fight-the-power/.)) ¶ 86 Leave a comment on paragraph 86 0 As issues of race captured much public discussion, immigration continued as a potent political issue. Even as anti-immigrant initiatives like California’s Proposition 187 (1994) and Arizona’s SB1070 (2010) reflected the anxieties of many white Americans, younger Americans proved far more comfortable with immigration and diversity (which makes sense, given that they are the most diverse American generation in living memory). Since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society liberalized immigration laws in the 1960s, the demographics of the United States have been transformed. In 2012, nearly one-quarter of all Americans were immigrants or the sons and daughters of immigrants. Half came from Latin America. The ongoing “Hispanicization” of the United States and the ever shrinking proportion of non-Hispanic whites have been the most talked about trends among demographic observers. By 2013, 17% of the nation was Hispanic. In 2014, Latinos surpassed non-Latino whites to became the largest ethnic group in California. In Texas, the image of a white cowboy hardly captures the demographics of a “minority-majority” state in which Hispanic Texans will soon become the largest ethnic group. For the nearly 1.5 million people of Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, for instance, where the vast majority of residents speak Spanish at home, a full three-fourths of the population is bilingual. ((U.S. Census data, 2010.)) Political commentators often wonder what political transformations these populations will bring about when they come of age and begin voting in larger numbers. ¶ 88 Leave a comment on paragraph 88 0 The collapse of the Soviet Union brought neither global peace nor stability, and the attacks of September 11, 2001 plunged the United States into interminable conflicts around the world. At home, economic recession, entrenched joblessness, and general pessimism infected American life as contentious politics and cultural divisions poisoned social harmony. And yet the stream of history changes its course. Trends shift, things change, and events turn. New generations bring with them new perspectives and they share new ideas with new technologies. Our world is not foreordained. It is the product of history, the ever-evolving culmination of a longer and broader story, of a larger history, of a raw, distinctive, American Yawp. X. Reference Material ¶ 90 Leave a comment on paragraph 90 0 This chapter was edited by Michael Hammond, with content contributions by Eladio Bobadilla, Andrew Chadwick, Zach Fredman, Leif Fredrickson, Michael Hammond, Richara Hayward, Joseph Locke, Mark Kukis, Shaul Mitelpunkt, Michelle Reeves, Elizabeth Skilton, Bill Speer, and Ben Wright. ¶ 91 Leave a comment on paragraph 91 0 Recommended citation: Eladio Bobadilla et al., “The Recent Past,” Michael Hammond, ed., in The American Yawp, Joseph Locke and Ben Wright, eds., last modified August 1, 2016, http://www.AmericanYawp.com. - ¶ 94 Leave a comment on paragraph 94 0 - Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press, 2012. - Canaday, Margot. The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011. - Carter, Dan T. From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994. 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Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. - Moreton, Bethany. To Serve God and Walmart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009. - Nadasen, Premilla. Welfare Warriors: The Welfare Rights Movement in the United States. New York: Routledge, 2005. - Osnos, Evan. Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. - Packer, George. The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013. - Patterson, James T. Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. - Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013. - Ricks, Thomas E. Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. New York: Penguin, 2006. - Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001. - Stiglitz, Joseph. Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy. New York: Norton, 2010. - Taylor, Paul. The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown. New York: PublicAffairs, 2014. - Wilentz, Sean. The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974–2008. New York: Harper, 2008. - Williams, Daniel K. God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. - Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. New York: Knopf, 2006.

The extraordinary life of history's first modern lesbian who inspired the television series Gentleman JackAnne Lister's journals were so shocking that the first person to crack their secret code hid them behind a fake panel in his ancestral home. Anne Lister was a Regency landowner, an intrepid world traveller ... and an unabashed lover of other women. In this bold new biography, prizewinning author Angela Steidele uses the diaries to create a portrait of Anne Lister as we've never seen her before: a woman in some ways very much of her time and in others far ahead of it. Anne Lister recorded everything from the most intimate details of her numerous liaisons through to her plans to make her fortune by exploiting the coal seams under her family estate in Halifax and her reaction to the Peterloo massacre. She conducted a love life of labyrinthine complexity, all while searching for a girlfriend who could provide her with both financial security and true love.Anne Lister's rich and unconventional life is now the subject of the major BBC TV drama series Gentleman Jack.

The setting is the Franco-Spanish border, the time 1940. Walter Benjamin, fleeing occupied France, presents himself to the wife of a certain Fittko he has met at an internment camp. He understands, he says, that Frau Fittko will guide him and his companions across the Pyrenees to neutral Spain. Frau Fittko takes him on a trip to scout out the best routes; he brings along a heavy briefcase. Is the briefcase really necessary, she asks? It contains a manuscript, he replies. "I cannot risk losing it. It... must be saved. It is more important than I am." The next day they cross the mountains, Benjamin pausing every few minutes because of a weak heart. At the border they are halted. Their papers are not in order, say the Spanish police; they must return to France. In despair, Benjamin takes a fatal overdose of morphine. The police make an inventory of the deceased's belongings. The inventory shows no record of a manuscript. What was in the briefcase, and where it disappeared to, we can only guess. Benjamin's friend Gershom Scholem suggested it was the last revision of the unfinished Passagen Werk , or Arcades Project. By his heroic if futile effort to save his manuscript from fascism and bear it to the safety of Spain, Benjamin became an icon of the scholar for our times. The story has a happy twist. A copy of the Arcades manuscript left behind in Paris had been secreted in the Bibliothèque Nationale by Benjamin's friend, Georges Bataille. Recovered after the war, it was published in 1982 in its original form - that is to say, in German with huge swathes of French. Now we have Benjamin's magnum opus in full English translation, and are at last in a position to ask the question: why all the interest in a treatise on shopping in 19th-century France? Benjamin was born in 1892, in Berlin, into an assimilated Jewish family. His father was a successful art auctioneer who branched out into property investments; the Benjamins were, by most standards, well-to-do. After a sickly, sheltered childhood, Benjamin was sent at the age of 12 to boarding school, where he was influenced by one of the directors, Gustav Wyneken. For years after leaving school, he was active in Wyneken's anti-authoritarian, back-to-nature youth movement; he broke with it only when Wyneken came out in support of the first world war. In 1912, Benjamin enrolled as a student in philosophy at Freiburg University. Finding the intellectual environment not to his taste, he threw himself into activism for educational reform. When war broke out, he evaded military service first by feigning a medical condition and then, after his marriage in 1917 to Dora Sophie Pollak, by moving to Switzerland. There they stayed until 1920, reading philosophy and working on a doctoral dissertation for the University of Bern; but the lack of a social life unsettled Dora, and they returned to Berlin. Benjamin was drawn to univer sities, remarked his friend Theodor Adorno, as Franz Kafka was drawn to insurance companies. Benjamin set out to acquire the Habilitation (higher doctorate) that would enable him to become a professor, submitting his dissertation, on German drama of the Baroque age, to the University of Frankfurt in 1925. Surprisingly, the dissertation was not accepted. It fell between the stools of literature and philosophy, and Benjamin lacked an academic patron to urge his case. His academic plans having failed, Benjamin launched himself on a career as a translator, broadcaster and freelance journalist. Among his commissions was a translation of Proust's à La Recherche du Temps Perdu; three of seven volumes were completed. In 1924, Benjamin visited Capri, at the time a favourite resort of German intellectuals. There he met Asja Lacis, a theatre director from Latvia and committed communist. The meeting was fateful. "Every time I have experienced a great love, I have undergone a change so fundamental that I have amazed myself," he later wrote. "A genuine love makes me resemble the woman I love." In this case, the transformation entailed a change of political direction. "The path of thinking, progressive persons in their right senses leads to Moscow, not to Palestine," Lacis told him. All traces of idealism in his thought, to say nothing of his flirtation with Zionism, were abandoned. His friend Scholem had emigrated to Palestine, expecting Benjamin to follow. Benjamin found an excuse not to come; he kept making excuses to the end. In 1926 Benjamin travelled to Moscow for a rendezvous with Lacis. In his record of the visit, Benjamin probes his own unhappy state of mind, as well as the question of whether he should join the Communist party. Two years later the pair were briefly reunited in Berlin: they lived together and attended meetings of the League of Proletarian- Revolutionary Writers. The liaison precipitated divorce proceedings in which Benjamin behaved with remarkable meanness toward his wife. On the Moscow trip, Benjamin kept a diary which he later revised for publication. He spoke no Russian. Rather than fall back on interpreters, he tried to read Moscow from the outside - what he would later call his physiognomic method - refraining from abstraction or judgment, presenting the city in such a way that "all factuality is already theory" (the phrase is from Goethe). Some of Benjamin's claims for the "world-historical" experiment he saw being conducted in the USSR now seem naive. Nevertheless his eye was acute. Many new Muscovites were still peasants, he observed, living village lives according to village rhythms. Class distinctions might have been abolished, but within the party a new caste system was evolving. A street market scene captured the humbled status of religion: an icon for sale was flanked by portraits of Lenin "like a prisoner between two policemen". Though Lacis is a constant presence in the Moscow diary, and though Benjamin hints that their sexual relations were troubled, we get little sense of her physical self. Benjamin had no gift for evoking other people. In Lacis's writings we get a much livelier impression of Benjamin: his glasses like little spotlights, his clumsy hands. For the rest of his life Benjamin called himself either a communist or a fellow traveller; for years after meeting Lacis, he would repeat Marxist verities - "the bourgeoisie... is condemned to decline due to internal contradictions that will become fatal as they develop" - without having read Marx. "Bourgeois" remained his cuss word for a mindset - materialistic, incurious, self-satisfied - to which he was viscerally hostile. Proclaiming himself a communist was an act of choosing sides, morally and historically, against the bourgeoisie and his own bourgeois origins. 'One thing... can never be made good: having neglected to run away from one's parents," he writes in One-Way Street, the collection of diary jottings, dream protocols, aphorisms and mordant observations on Weimar Germany with which he announced himself in 1928. Not having run away early enough meant that he was condemned to run away from Emil and Paula Benjamin for the rest of his life: in reacting against his parents' assimilation into the middle class, he resembled many German-speaking Jews of his generation, including Kafka. What troubled Benjamin's friends about his marxism was that there seemed to be something forced about it, something merely reactive. Benjamin's first ventures into the discourse of the left are depressing to read - rhapsodies on Lenin (whose letters have the "sweetness of great epic"), and rehearsals of the ominous euphemisms of the party: "Communism is not radical. Therefore, it has no intentions of simply abolishing family relations. It merely tests them to determine their capacity for change. It asks: can the family be dismantled so that its components may be socially refunctioned?" These words come from a review of a play by Bertolt Brecht, whom Benjamin met through Lacis and whose "crude thinking", thinking stripped of bourgeois niceties, attracted Benjamin for a while. "This street is named Asja Lacis Street after her who, like the engineer, cut it through the author," runs the dedication to One-Way Street. The comparison is intended as a compliment. The engineer is the man or woman of the future, the one who, impatient of palaver, armed with practical knowledge, acts and acts decisively to change the landscape. (Stalin, too, admired engineers. In his view, writers should become engineers of human souls, meaning that they should take it as their task to "refunction" humanity from the inside out.) Of Benjamin's better-known pieces, The Author as Producer (1934) shows the influence of Brecht most clearly. At issue is the old chestnut of Marxist aesthetics: which is more important, form or content? Benjamin proposes that a literary work will be "politically correct only if it is also literarily correct". The Author as Producer is a defence of the left wing of the modernist avant-garde, typified for Benjamin by the surrealists, who were against the party's stance on easily comprehensible, realistic stories with a strong progressive tendency. To make his case, Benjamin appeals once again to the glamour of engineering: the writer, like the engineer, is a technical specialist and should have a voice in technical matters. Arguing at this crude level did not come easily to Benjamin. Did his faithfulness to the party cause him no unease at a time when Stalin's persecution of artists was in full swing? (Lacis herself was to become one of Stalin's victims, spending years in a labour camp.) A brief piece from 1934 may give a clue. Here Benjamin mocks intellectuals who "make it a point of honour to be wholly themselves on every issue", refusing to understand that to succeed they have to present different faces to different audiences. They are, he says, like a butcher who refuses to cut up a carcass, insisting on selling it whole. How does one read this piece? Is Benjamin ironically praising old-fashioned intellectual integrity? Is he issuing a veiled confession that he, Benjamin, is not what he seems to be? Is he making a practical, if bitter, point about the hack writer's life? A letter to Scholem (to whom he did not always, however, tell the whole truth) suggests the last reading. Here Benjamin defends his communism as "the obvious, reasoned attempt of a man who is deprived of any means of production to proclaim his right to them". In other words, he follows the party for the same reason that any proletarian should: because it is in his material interest. By the time the Nazis came to power, many of Benjamin's associates, including Brecht, had read the writing on the wall and taken flight. Benjamin, who had felt out of place in Germany for years, soon followed. (His younger brother Georg was less prudent: arrested for political activities in 1934, he perished in Mauthausen concentration camp in 1942.) Benjamin settled in Paris, where he scratched a precarious existence contributing to German newspapers under Aryan pseudonyms (Detlef Holz, KA Stemplinger) and living on handouts. With the outbreak of war, he found himself interned as an enemy alien. Released through the efforts of French PEN [the world association of writers], he made arrangements to flee to the United States, then set off on his fatal journey to the Spanish border. Benjamin's keenest insights into fascism - the enemy that deprived him of a home and a career and ultimately killed him - concern the means it used to sell itself to the German people: by turning itself into theatre. It is commonplace to observe that Hitler's Nuremberg rallies, with their combination of declamation, hypnotic music, mass choreography and dramatic lighting, found their model in Wagner's Bayreuth productions. What is original in Benjamin is his claim that politics as grandiose theatre, rather than as debate, was not just one of the trappings of fascism, but fascism in essence. In the films of Leni Riefenstahl, as well as in newsreels exhibited in every theatre in the land, the German masses were offered images of themselves as their leaders called upon them to be. Fascism used the power of the art of the past - what Benjamin calls "auratic art" - plus the multiplying power of the new postauratic media, particularly cinema, to create its new fascist citizens. For ordinary Germans, the only identity on show was a fascist identity in fascist costume and fascist postures of domination or obedience. Benjamin's analysis of fascism as theatre raises many questions. Is politics as spectacle really the heart of German fascism, rather than ressentiment and dreams of historical retribution? If Nuremberg was aestheticised politics, why were Stalin's May Day extravaganzas and show trials not aestheticised politics too? If the genius of fascism was to erase the line between politics and media, where is the fascist element in the media-driven politics of western democracies? Are there not different varieties of aesthetic politics? The key concept that Benjamin invents (though his diary hints it was in fact the brainchild of the bookseller and publisher Adrienne Monnier) to describe what happens to the work of art in the age of technological reproducibility (principally the age of the camera - Benjamin has little to say about printing) is the loss of aura. Until roughly the middle of the 19th century, he says, an inter-subjective relationship of a kind survived between an artwork and its viewer: "To perceive the aura of a phenomenon [means] to invest it with a capacity to look at us in turn." There is thus something magical about aura, derived from ancient links, now wandering between art and religious ritual. Benjamin first speaks of aura in his Little History of Photography (1931), where he tries to explain why it is that, in his eyes, the very earliest portrait photographs - the incunabula of photography - have auras, whereas photographs of a generation later have lost them. In The Work of Art, the notion of aura is extended rather recklessly from old photographs to works of art in general. The end of aura, says Benjamin, will be more than compensated for by the emancipatory capacities of the new technologies of reproduction. Cinema will replace auratic art. Even Benjamin's friends found it hard to get a grip on aura. Brecht, to whom Benjamin expounded the concept during lengthy visits to Brecht's home in Denmark, writes as follows in his diary. "[Benjamin] says: when you feel someone's gaze alight upon you... you respond (!). The expectation that whatever you look at is looking at you creates the aura... This is the way in which the materialist approach to history is adapted! It is pretty horrifying." Throughout the 1930s Benjamin struggled to develop an acceptably materialist definition of aura and loss of aura. Film is postauratic, he says, because the camera, being an instrument, cannot see. (A questionable claim: actors respond to the camera as if it is looking at them.) In a later revision he suggests that the end of aura can be dated to the moment in history when urban crowds grew so dense that people - passers-by - no longer returned one another's gaze. In the Arcades Project he makes the loss of aura part of a wider development: the spread of a disenchanted awareness that uniqueness, including the uniqueness of the traditional artwork, has become a commod ity like any other commodity. The fashion industry, dedicated to the fabrication of unique handiworks intended to be reproduced on a mass scale, points the way here. In the late 1920s Benjamin conceived of a work that would deal with urban experience; inspired by the arcades of Paris, it would be a version of the Sleeping Beauty story, a dialectical fairy tale told surrealistically by means of a montage of fragmentary texts. Like the prince's kiss, it would awaken the European masses to the truth of their lives under capitalism. It would be 50 pages long; in preparation for its writing, Benjamin began to copy out quotations under such headings as Boredom, Fashion, Dust. But as a stitched-together text, it became overgrown each time with new quotations and notes. He discussed his problems with Adorno and Max Horkheimer, who convinced him he could not write about capitalism without a proper command of Marx. The Sleeping Beauty idea lost its lustre. By 1934 Benjamin had a new, more philosophically ambitious plan: using the same method of montage, he would trace the cultural superstructure of 19th-century France back to commodities and their power to become fetishes. As his notes grew in bulk, he slotted them into an elaborate filing system based on 36 convolutes (from German Konvolut : sheaf, dossier) with keywords and cross-references. Under the title "Paris, Capital of the 19th Century" he wrote a résumé of the material, which he offered to Adorno (he was by then receiving a stipend from, and was thus in some measure beholden to, the Institute for Social Research, which had been relocated by Adorno and Horkheimer from Frankfurt to New York). From Adorno, Benjamin received such severe criticism that he decided to set aside the project and extract from his mass of materials a book about Baudelaire. Adorno saw part of the book and was again critical: facts were made to speak for themselves, he said; there was not enough theory. Benjamin made further revisions, which had a warmer reception. Baudelaire was central to the Arcades plan because, in Benjamin's eyes, Les Fleurs du Mal first revealed the modern city as a subject for poetry. (Benjamin seems not to have read Wordsworth, who, 50 years before Baudelaire, wrote of what it was like to be part of a street crowd, bombarded on all sides with glances, dazzled with advertisements.) Yet Baudelaire expressed his experience of the city in allegory, a literary mode out of fashion since the Baroque. In Le Cygne, for instance, he allegorises the poet as a swan, scrabbling comically in the paved marketplace, unable to spread his wings and soar. Why did Baudelaire opt for the allegorical mode? Benjamin uses Marx's Kapital to answer his question. The elevation of market value into the sole measure of worth, says Marx, reduces a commodity to nothing but a sign - the sign of what it will sell for. Under the reign of the market, things relate to their actual worth as arbitrarily as, for instance, in baroque emblematics, a death's head relates to man's subjection to time. Emblems thus make an unexpected return to the historical stage in the form of commodities which, as Marx had warned, "(abound) in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties". Allegory, Benjamin argues, is exactly the right mode for an age of commodities. While working on the never-completed Baudelaire book, Benjamin continued to take notes for the Arcades. What was recovered after the war from its hiding place in the Bibliothèque Nationale amounted to some 900 pages of extracts, mainly from 19th-century writers but from contemporaries of Benjamin's as well, grouped under headings, with interspersed commentary, plus a variety of plans and synopses. The history of the Arcades Project, a history of procrastination and false starts, of wanderings in archival labyrinths in a quest for exhaustiveness, of shifting theoretical ground, of criticism too readily acted on, and generally speaking of Benjamin not knowing his own mind, means that the book we are left with is radically incomplete: incompletely conceived and hardly written in any conventional sense. Rolf Tiedemann, who published an edition of the work in 1982, compares it to the building materials of a house. In the hypothetical completed house the materials would be held together by Benjamin's thought. We possess much of that thought in the form of Benjamin's interpolations, but cannot always see how the thought fits or encompasses the material. In such a situation, says Tiedemann, it might seem better to publish only Benjamin's own words, leaving out the quotations. But Benjamin's intention, however utopian, was that at some point his commentary would be withdrawn, leaving the quoted material to bear the full weight of the structure. The arcades of Paris, says an 1852 guidebook, are "inner boulevards, glass-roofed, marble-panelled corridors extending through blocks of buildings... lining both sides... are the most elegant shops, so that such an arcade is a city, a world in miniature". Their airy glass and steel architecture was soon imitated in other cities of the west. The heyday of arcades extended to the end of the century, when they were eclipsed by department stores. The Arcades book was never intended to be an economic history (though part of its ambition was to act as a corrective to the entire discipline of economic history). An early sketch suggests something far more like his autobiographical work, A Berlin Childhood. "One knew of places in ancient Greece where the way led down into the underworld. Our waking existence likewise is a land which, at certain hidden points, leads down into the underworld - a land full of inconspicuous places from which dreams arise. All day long, suspecting nothing, we pass them by, but no sooner has sleep come than we are groping our way back to lose ourselves in the dark corridors. By day, the labyrinth of urban dwelling resembles consciousness; the arcades... issue unremarked on to the streets. At night, however, under the tenebrous mass of the houses, their denser darkness protrudes like a threat, and the nocturnal pedestrian hurries past - unless, that is, we have emboldened him to turn into a narrow lane." Two books served Benjamin as models: Louis Aragon's A Paris Peasant, with its affectionate tribute to the Passage de L'Opéra, and Franz Hessel's Strolling in Berlin, which focuses on the Kaisergalerie and its power to summon up the feel of a bygone era. In his book, Benjamin would try to capture the "phantasmagoric" experience of the Parisian wandering among displays of goods, an experience still recoverable in his own day, when "arcades dot the metropolitan landscape like caves containing the fossil remains of a vanished monster: the consumer of the pre-imperial era of capitalism, the last dinosaur of Europe". The great innovation of the Arcades Project would be its form. It would work on the principle of montage, juxtaposing textual fragments from past and present in the expectation that they would strike sparks from and illuminate each other. Thus, for instance, if item 2,1 of convolute L, referring to the opening of an art museum at the palace of Versailles in 1837, is read in conjunction with item 2,4 of convolute A, which traces the development of arcades into department stores, then ideally the analogy "museum is to department store as artwork is to commodity" will flash into the reader's mind. According to Max Weber, what marks the modern world is loss of belief, disenchantment. Benjamin has a different angle: that capitalism has put people to sleep, that they will wake up from their collective enchantment only when they are made to understand what has happened to them. The inscription to convolute N comes from Marx: "The reform of consciousness consists solely in... the awakening of the world from its dream about itself." The dreams of the capitalist era are embodied in commodities. In their ensemble these constitute a phantasmagoria, constantly changing shape according to the tides of fashion, and offered to crowds of enchanted worshippers as the embodiment of their deepest desires. The phantasmagoria always hides its origins (which lie in alienated labour). Phantasmagoria in Benjamin is thus a little like ideology in Marx - a tissue of public lies sustained by the power of capital - but is more like Freudian dreamwork operating at a collective, social level. "I needn't say anything. Merely show," says Benjamin; and elsewhere: "Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars." If the mosaic of quotations is built up correctly, a pattern should emerge that is more than the sum of its parts but which cannot exist independently of them: this is the essence of the new form of historical-materialistic writing that Benjamin believed himself to be practising. What dismayed Adorno about the project in 1935 was Benjamin's faith that a mere assemblage of objects could speak for itself. Benjamin was, he wrote, "on the crossroads between magic and positivism". Adorno later had a chance to see the entire Arcades corpus, and again expressed doubts about the thinness of its theorising. Benjamin's response was to invent the notion of the dialectical image, for which he went back to baroque emblematics - ideas represented by pictures and Baudelairean allegory. Allegory, he suggested, could take over the role of abstract thought. The objects and figures that inhabit the arcades - gamblers, whores, mirrors, dust, wax figures - are to Benjamin emblems, and their interactions generate meanings, allegorical meanings that do not need the intrusion of theory. Along the same lines, fragments of text taken from the past and placed in the charged field of the historical present are capable of behaving much as the elements of a surrealist image do, interacting spontaneously to give off political energy. In so doing the fragments constitute the dialectical image, dialectical movement frozen for a moment, open for inspection, dialectics at a standstill: "Only dialectical images are genuine images." So much for the theory, ingenious as it is, to which Benjamin's deeply anti-theoretical book appeals. But to the reader unpersuaded by the theory, the reader to whom the dialectical images never quite come alive as they are supposed to, the reader perhaps unreceptive to the master narrative of the long sleep of capitalism followed by the dawn of socialism, what does the Arcades Project have to offer? The briefest of lists would include: a treasure hoard of curious information about Paris, a multitude of thought-provoking questions, the harvest of an acute and idiosyncratic mind's trawl through thousands of books, succinct observations, pol ished to a high aphoristic sheen, on a range of subjects (example: "Prostitution can lay claim to being considered 'work' the moment work becomes prostitution"); and glimpses of Benjamin toying with a new way of seeing himself: as a compiler of a "magic encyclopaedia". Suddenly Benjamin, esoteric reader of an allegorical city, seems close to his contemporary Jorge Luis Borges, fabulist of a rewritten universe. From a distance, Benjamin's magnificent opus is reminiscent of another great ruin of 20th- century literature, Ezra Pound's Cantos. Both works are built out of fragments, and adhere to the high-modernist aesthetics of image and montage. Both have economic ambitions and economists as presiding figures (Marx in one case, Gesell and Douglas in the other). Both authors have investments in antiquarian bodies of knowledge whose relevance to their own times they overestimate. Neither knows when to stop. And both were in the end consumed by the monster of fascism: Benjamin tragically, Pound shamefully. It has been the fate of the Cantos to have a handful of anthology pieces excerpted and the rest quietly dropped. The fate of the Arcades may well be similar. One can foresee a condensed student edition drawn mainly from convolutes B (Fashion), H (The Collector), I (The Interior), J (Baudelaire), K (Dream City), N (On the Theory of Knowledge) and Y (Photo- graphy), in which the quotations will be cut to a minimum and most of the surviving text will be by Benjamin himself. And that would not be a wholly bad thing. What was Walter Benjamin: a philosopher? A critic? A historian? A mere "writer"? The best answer is perhaps Hannah Arendt's: he was one of "the unclassifiable ones... whose work neither fits the existing order nor introduces a new genre". His trademark approach - coming at a subject not straight on but at an angle, moving stepwise from one perfectly formulated summation to the next - is as instantly recognisable as it is inimitable, depending on sharpness of intellect, learning lightly worn and a prose style which, once he had given up thinking of himself as Professor Benjamin, became a marvel of accuracy and concision. Underlying his project of getting at the truth of our times is an ideal he found expressed in Goethe: to set out the facts in such a way that the facts will be their own theory. The Arcades book, whatever our verdict on it - ruin, failure, impossible project - suggests a new way of writing about a civilisation using its rubbish as materials rather than its artworks: history from below rather than above. And his call elsewhere for a history centred on the sufferings of the vanquished, rather than on the achievements of the victors, is prophetic of the way in which history writing has begun to think of itself in our lifetime. This is an edited extract from an article that first appeared in the New York Review of Books. The Arcades Project, by Walter Benjamin, translated from the German and French by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, is published by Belknap Press/Harvard University Press (£27.50).

Introduction: Literary Journalism from the Inside I burned holes in the VHS of the original Star Wars trilogy. My uncle saw Stars Wars Episode IV: A New Hope seventeen times in the theater when it came out in 1977 because most homes didn’t have the technology to experience movies any time back then. My mother took my brother and I to see the midnight premiere of Episode I. Star Wars is a whole family thing for me. My Saturday afternoons were filled with Gene Roddenberry television off-shoots. It’s safe to say that I’m a nerd. Movie posters plaster my walls. My other vehicle IS the Millennium Falcon. I am vocal about my hardcore love of sci-fi action movies and I will see as many as I can, no matter what B-movie status (looking at you Riddick) they achieve. This article is about sharing an insider’s view of events that play to subcultures and fringes. It’s about being the die-hard and not just a spectator. I’m geeking out in public. Setting the Scene The lobby of the Meyerhoff in Baltimore is flush with people. LED lights bathe the crowd in a shifting array of colors. Outside, the windows are plastered with the beaming face of pop culture legend George Takei amidst a backdrop of twinkling stars. Inside middle-aged patrons cluster in lounges with cocktails and wine. They wear suits, black cocktail dresses. A mother with wine-stained lips and smells of the trattoria down the street pulls a little girl by the hand as she follows her husband through the crowd. Mixed into the usual crowd of Baltimore Symphony Orchestra patrons are a strange emerging breed. Dyed hair, facial piercings, and casual clothes. Tartan Kilts. Star Trek flight deck uniforms? It is clear that an alternative group has shown up in droves for this unique event. How often do East Coast residents get to see a legendary Sci-Fi actor in the flesh? This isn’t just anyone, but an actor who has managed to stay relevant in the fast-paced world of social media even as an octogenarian. George. Mother-effin’. Takei. A group of Star Wars characters pose for pictures at the entrance. Nerds cluster. Many of them are younger than those in cocktail attire. The usual symphony patrons hold back, but gaze curiously at the paparazzi-like frenzy by the entrance doors. The lobby lights start to flicker, signaling the imminent start of the show, and the crowd pushes through into the auditorium, including the costumed characters. It becomes clear that these are not paid actors or mascots, but rather a group of ticket-holders who decided to dress up in support of their fandom. There is hushed buzz of silence as the lights go down and the stage lights up in a dazzling display of lasers and smoke. The deep thrum of sting instruments is heard and the show begins. Sci-Fi Spectacular was, well, spectacular! This is not the first time that the Sci-Fi Spectacular has hit the Baltimore area. The same cast assembled back in 2008 for the first performance, and since then quite a few regional orchestras around the country have hosted their own Sci-Fi Spectacular with George Takei. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, led by Conductor Jack Everly, occupied both the Strathmore and Meyerhoff for the extended weekend of February 20-23rd to bring the show back to the Baltimore/DC Metro area. The show opened with the opening title of Star Wars to the cheers of an excited audience. Not the typical BSO performance, there were laser displays and smoke machines to accent the futuristic and stirring pieces of music. The show mostly played tribute to the various works of John Williams, and the golden era of Science Fiction television and films. An original arrangement by Jack Everly, “Lost in Syndication” led the audience through a medley of TVLand sci-fi; The Jetsons, My Favorite Martian, Lost in Space, etc. The second act included music from the modern cinema counterparts to Star Wars and Star Trek, as well as six movements from the original The Day the Earth Stood Still, featuring George Takei performing alien Klaatu’s famous speech about peace and war, and the soloist Kristen Plumley’s unearthly vibrato as the sound effects of the spaceship wavering through the atmosphere. Overall, the quality of the music and orchestra was unparalleled. The narration by George Takei was not present throughout the program, which I am sure disappointed many of the die-hard fans who were in attendance mostly for the chance to see him in the flesh, myself included. However, when he was “beamed in” with the effects of lasers towards the end of the first act, thunderous applause and cheers erupted for two minutes straight. If there’s ever a measure of success in this life, it’s that level of sheer excitement from people just happy to be in the same room as you. When he did get to speak, Takei recounted how he found himself with a role in one of the (THE?) most iconic sci-fi shows of all time. He is a man who loves his fans and was happy to play into their ecstasy as he recited the opening to the original Star Trek show as the orchestra played the first act out. Other than wanting more of headliner George Takei, the production left nothing to be desired with stellar music, ethereal vocals, stunning visual effects, and a hand extended to sci-fi fandom. Bringing the intense nature of Sci-Fi fandom together with the high-brow nature of the symphony provided an uplifting experience for all attendees. This was a rare chance for the dedicated nerds to experience the music of their favorite films with a live orchestra, the acoustics and majesty of which simply cannot be matched in a home stereo system. There’s a special energy to it which those who are not otherwise invested in live fine arts are not often privy to. I think it is the hope of event programmers that attendees who came because they were invested in the content, would develop an appreciation for live orchestra that would extend beyond the movies it came from. During the performance, I heard a woman behind me speaking to her companion. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling, and said that she could see exactly what would be on screen if we were watching the part of the movie where that piece of music was playing. Experiencing something you love in a new way was a huge part of what this event was about. Likewise, because of the age of many of the pieces, these are works of music and motion picture that have been around long enough to permeate mainstream culture. While the average symphony patron might have had only a superficial appreciation for them, there’s no doubt that they would have at least some familiarity with the works represented, and maybe go home with the desire to discover the classic films and shows. One middle-aged couple I talked to were subscribed members to the BSO concert series, and had attended other events such as the BSO accompanying live a silent Charlie Chaplin film, and more classical events like Handel’s Messiah. They had seen many of the movies and even remember watching the original Star Trek on television, but didn’t necessarily consider themselves fans. They were amused by the die-hards in costume, but appreciative, yet had no desire to stay for the galactic themed post-performance party. Still, this was a classier affair and the orchestra-uninitiated audience was respectful of the musicians and took cues from the symphony crowd about when to be vocal about their excitement. This was definitely not your typical symphony event, but the alternative crowd brought out an aura of mutual love from the audience. It wasn’t hard for those who were not die-hard fans to be swept up in the verbal appreciation at referential in-jokes. The movers and shakers of this event clearly had the fandom in mind when planning. The featured soprano soloist appeared in cosplay as both a Star Trek officer and Princess Leia. The prize of one of those high-quality lightsaber reproductions (I hesitate to say “toy) was given out for the person that could name at least 4 of the shows featured in the “Lost in Syndication” arrangement. This show was definitely for the fans, by some fans. During the intermission, I saw an usher invite the Boba Fett cosplayer backstage. The intermission opened with him starting on stage until conductor Jack Everly informed him that “these were not the musicians you are looking for” with a wave of his hand. He was escorted offstage to laughter and applause. I can only imagine that as a cosplayer, that moment would be a dream come true. This impromptu addition showed how far the producers of the event were willing to go for the fans. Jack Everly announced the Cantina Theme from Star Wars was the greatest song ever written, startling the audience to laughter as it was not in the written program. Everly’s introduction to the pieces of music showed a great understanding of the origins of sci-fi in cinema and the theme of cosmic travelers far from home. He also shared stories of his personal connections to the pieces of music, including when he and teenage friends went to see E.T. on a whim and ending up crying for the poor little guy. It was a great reminder that everyone in attendance bought tickets because they shared a love for either powerful music or the stirring stories that those pieces of music helped create. The core audience for the event was clearly those who grew up watching these shows and movies, and those who continued to discover them in later decades. These works helped shape American pop culture as we know it today, but there is still a special place for those who connected to and absolutely fell in love with the stories, and they turned out in abundance that night. The show ended with the Vulcan salute and address “live long and prosper”. This show played to fans, and not down to them from the level of high art. Is this Fringe Event for you? Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Sci-Fi Spectacular with George Takei was rife with those happy to fly their geek flag high, but not inaccessible to those more conservative about their interests. It didn’t require much of an open mind, just a mutual appreciation of film and cinematic music. If a regional orchestra near you decides to bring Sci-Fi Spectacular to the stage, it’s a fringe event with mass appeal that you won’t want to miss. Got a story about geeking out in public? Leave a comment or drop us a line on our Facebook page!

Mark and I just got back from our babymoon in Maui and had the most relaxing, do-nothing trip ever. We had been going full-speed for many weeks, so it was nice to pause, put our feet up, discuss baby-related topics, get massages, watch the beautiful sunrises and sunsets, feel the warm sunshine, and binge on pineapple. On the trip we decided on a baby name (yay!!) and even ordered our first monogrammed pillow. We’d like to keep the baby name a surprise until he’s born, though. So until then, he’ll be “Goober Jr” or “Baby B”. I’ll give some hints: it starts with an “M” and there have been signs pointing to this name for over a year that we didn’t even notice until recently. We also ate a ton of juicy, sweet, local pineapple: pineapple with my water, pineapple in smoothies, pineapple in my morning acai bowls, free pineapple delivered to our hotel room, even pineapple-shaped cookies (ok those don’t count). I came down with a cold, so the pineapple was great for Vitamin C. Pineapple also has Iron, Folate, Vitamin B-6, Magnesium and Fiber which are all incredibly important for pregnancy. Magnesium, in particular, will help reduce some of the leg cramps I’ve been getting at night. And as a plant-based pregnant woman I have to be highly conscious of my Iron intake. So, bring on the pineapple!! We also hired a wonderful photographer to take some sunrise maternity photos for us at the beach. I heard from lots of mamas who said they loved having the memory of their baby bumps. So I’m glad we did it! Huge thank you to Love + Water Photography! Some lowlights included Mark getting stung by two jelly fish during his swim and ending up with a pretty big and itchy rash on his belly. Yikes! Maybe it was the universe’s way of giving him sympathy pregnancy belly itches? 😛 And I came down with a cold which meant that this vacation was even more relaxing than we expected! As relaxing as it was, I missed home and am ready to get back to a normal routine in SF. Before the babymoon we officially finished the nursery and we’re so happy with it! The finishing touches included adding photos to the wall using Mixtiles, adding bins and closet organizers, installing an Infant Coordination Bar, and adding a new “Dream Big Little One” decal on the wall. Now we just need to continue to buy clothes and other items to fill the space. Fun times! Some other fun stuff going on: - I scored free ice cream at Salt & Straw (our fave) because Mark asked, jokingly, if they had a “preggy lady discount”. It was quite possibly the best ice cream ever! - On a related note, I don’t have gestational diabetes! Woohoo! More ice cream! I had to get blood drawn 3 times over 2 hours after fasting and then drinking this super sugary drink. It wasn’t pleasant, but Mark was there with me which helped so much. - I had my first prenatal massage in Hawaii. Well, technically it was my second massage. The first one was in New Zealand when I didn’t even know I was pregnant. The massage therapist rubbed my belly and said, “wait… are you pregnant?” Turned out she was right! - I got a thoughtful gift card to Mom’s The Word, a maternity boutique in San Francisco and got some of the cutest dresses and bathing suit! Thanks Alex! - I’m reading “Mindful Birthing” right now as recommended by our doulas which provides meditation techniques to get through labor. So far I love it because it can apply to life, not just labor. - We stayed at the beautiful Hotel Wailea in Maui which is an adults-only hotel. And we realized this was probably the last time we’ll stay at an adults-only hotel for a very long time! It’s all kiddy pools from here! That’s all for now. What I’d love to hear from all of you mamas is: what can I expect from the 3rd trimester? Where should we shop for baby boy clothes? How did you decide how much time to take off before your due date?

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By LEO HOHMANN Of the 11 countries included in President Trump’s refugee ban, Somalia has by far the worst track record of assimilation. That ban expired last week and the U.S. will start accepting refugees again from the 11 high-risk nations, although Trump promises a more “extreme” vetting. Vetting, however, offers few guarantees that the refugees will become good Americans. Many of the Somalis who have run afoul of the law came here as child refugees, making them impossible to vet. Recently we learned the Somali refugee who knifed two brothers at the Mall of America was not involved in an attempt to steal clothing – a false narrative put out by Bloomington police – but actually carried out an unprovoked act of jihad. How do we know this? He admitted it in a prepared statement to the court. Mahad Abdiraham said he went to the mall on Nov. 12 to “answer the call for jihad.” Just before Christmas we learned of a knife attack on an innocent woman, Morgan Evenson, while she was walking home from work at the Apple Store in Minneapolis. She was stabbed 14 times by a man described as Somali. That man remains at large and the Minneapolis police falsely described the attack, again, as a failed robbery. This despite the fact that he never reached for his victim’s purse. The parade of Somali knife attacks continued last week when Khadar Hassan, 24, of St. Cloud was arrested and charged with second-degree assault for allegedly stabbing a woman he’d had a previous relationship with and was ordered to stay away from, the St. Cloud Times reports. There are now an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 Somalis living in Minnesota. Many of the resettlements in the St. Cloud, Austin, St. Joseph and Willmar areas have been driven by the meatpacking industry. And now Somali crime is starting to leak across the border from Minnesota into South Dakota. Lutheran Social Services, which operates a refugee resettlement office in Sioux Falls, has offloaded more than 4,500 Somalis over the last decade. But many of the Somalis resettled originally in Sioux Falls migrate to Aberdeen in search of work at Demkota Ranch Co., which runs a beef packing plant in the city. The latest group of approximately 50 Somalis arrived in Aberdeen on a bus in December, sources in the community told LeoHohmann.com. South Dakotans are beginning to get a taste of the crime that has plagued Minnesota. A Somali refugee was convicted last year for trying to sexually assault a wheelchair-bound mentally disabled woman at a group home in Aberdeen. Liban Mohamed, 39, had been in Aberdeen only a few days when he wandered away from the White House Inn, where he was living while hoping to land a job at the beef plant, and found the vulnerable woman sitting outside the group home. If a caretaker had not walked up and seen him with his hand reaching between the woman’s legs, there is no telling what he was planning to do next. There have also been several shootings by Somalis in South Dakota. In the summer of 2016, two Aberdeen men were shot at, one hit and wounded, in the street outside the Foxridge Apartments. The alleged shooter was Abdirhman Ahmad Noor, 24, who walked up to the injured man lying in the street and shot him a second time in the head. He miraculously survived, but Noor, who came to the U.S. as a child refugee, was charged with attempted murder and released on $50,000 bail. He never showed up for his March 2017 court hearing. Noor remains unaccounted for to this day. South Dakota State Senator and GOP congressional candidate Neal Tapio is leading perhaps the nation’s most aggressive effort to expose the fraud of refugee resettlements from Somalia and other jihadist hotbeds. Tapio has introduced a series of bills that seek to rein in high-risk resettlements in his state. “While many people see compassion to serve the less fortunate, the truth is the Somali community has not been able to assimilate and has proven to be a major terror threat in the United States,” Tapio said. “Together with nebulous forces in the multinational meatpacking corporations, resettlement agencies and anti-American Islamic organizations with ties to terrorist networks, the Muslim Brotherhood, along with willing accomplices in the media, these policies to force relocation of proven subscribers to Islamic fundamentalism need to be exposed and crushed,” Tapio added. Along with the cases cited above, the following list of documented examples shows a rather dubious record of behavior by Somali refugees and their family members. - A 73-year-old Meals on Wheels volunteer was dropping off meals at a homeless shelter in Shelburne, Vermont, when she was attacked by 32-year-old Somali migrant Abukar Ibrahim with a machete in early January 2018. The woman sustained multiple injuries including a severe wound to her leg. Tnuza Jamal Hassan, a 19-year-old woman from either Somalia or Ethiopia [Minneapolis police wouldn’t release her status] was arraigned last month on charges of first-degree arson after she allegedly set fires on the campus of St. Catherine University. Hassan told police she “wanted the school to burn to the ground” and that her intent was to “hurt people,” according to charges filed in Ramsey County District Court. Hassan told police she had written a letter to her roommates containing “radical ideas about supporting Muslims and bringing back the caliphate.” The prosecution alleges “…She told the police and fire investigators ‘You guys are lucky I don’t know how to build a bomb because I would have done that,’” the Star-Tribune reported. - On July 15, 2017, a Somali refugee serving as a Minneapolis police officer, Mohamed Noor, shot and killed an unarmed woman, Justine Damond, in her pajamas who had called 9-1-1 to report a rape taking place in the ally near her apartment. The city’s police chief was forced to resign but no charges have been filed against Noor, who had three previous complaints involving his treatment of women while on patrol. Dahir Ahmed Adan stabbed 10 shoppers at the Crossroads Mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on Sept. 17, 2016. The refugee asked shoppers if they were Muslim. If they said “no,” he attacked them with his knife, until he was shot dead by an off-duty cop. Adan’s brother was later jailed in North Dakota on drug charges. - In December 2016, Somali refugee Mohamed Ayanle, 22, was charged with first- and third-degree criminal sexual conduct after he allegedly raped a woman while riding a commercial bus through Polk County, Minnesota. The victim reported that Mohamed Ayanle forced her to have sex with him at knife point in the back of the bus. There was only one other passenger on the bus at the time, and after he finished raping the woman, Ayanle told her to go back to the front of the bus because she was “too fat.” Ayanle told police he had just arrived in Minnesota from Somalia three months prior to his arrest and that, in his opinion, the sex was consensual. - In the summer of 2015, a 49-year-old black Christian American, Freddy Akoa, was murdered in his Portland, Maine, apartment by three migrants he had befriended, two from Somalia and one from Ethiopia. One of the two Somalis, Mohamed Mohamud, led the brutal assault. They kicked and punched Akoa repeatedly and hit him over the head with a wooden coffee table for several hours before leaving the apartment. Freddy was found two days later dead. No motive was ever released for the killing, but Freddy’s blood-stained Bible was found lying open beside his body. - Davee Devose, a promising 21-year-old black student at St. Cloud Technical and Community College, was stabbed to death at a house party in June 2015 by then-16 year old Muhiyadin Mohamed Hassan, a Somali refugee who violated his juvenile probation and has since been moved to the adult system. In 2008, the government revealed that thousands of Somali families had fraudulently entered the U.S. as “refugees” by lying on their applications that they were related to Somalis already living in the U.S. The Wall Street Journal originally reported on how this fraud was uncovered by DNA tests, which led to a four-year closure of the so-called P-3 family reunification program for refugees coming from East Africa. The program was eventually restarted and none of the thousands of Somalis proven to have entered the U.S. by these fraudulent means were ever deported. - On the day after Memorial Day, May 31, 2016, in Lawrenceville, Georgia, a Somali refugee woman, Aisha Ibrahim, 31, appeared out of the woods wearing a burqa and beat an American woman with her own American flagpole. Ibrahim was granted bail and did not show up for her arraignment in court — she remains in the “missing” category to this day. A federal appeals court in December 2016 upheld the conviction of Mohamed Mohamud, the Somali refugee sentenced to 30 years in prison for plotting to bomb downtown Portland during the annual lighting of a Christmas tree. The truck bomb was a fake given to him in 2010 by undercover FBI agents posing as terrorists. His lawyers argued entrapment but the court ruled the government’s action fell short of any due-process violation. In 2013 Somali refugee Omar Mohamed Kalmio in North Dakota was sentenced to life in prison for the 2011 murder of a Native American family he had become involved with. - In November 2016, Abdul R. Ali Artan, an 18-year-old Somali refugee and student at Ohio State University, wounded 11 people at OSU in a car and knife attack. Minutes before his attack, Artan posted a message to his Facebook page, a rant full of anger at the United States with references to ISIS, but a Muslim friend told NBC News he was shocked because he believed Artan “loved America.” - In April 2011, Somali refugee Said Biyad was sentenced to life in prison for murdering his four children in Louisville, Kentucky. He avoided the death penalty by taking a plea agreement. - In July of last year, Abdinzak Ahmed Farah, 29, was arrested and charged with threatening his fellow Minnesotans with a knife in downtown Faribault. According to an eyewitness, Farah was eating raw beef with the knife and holding it out to patrons, asking them to play games. In a July 25 article, the Faribault Daily News reports a complaint filed in Rice County Court alleges Farah was downtown on July 12, pointing a knife and threatening to kill anyone who called police. He was asked to leave the area, which he did, only to return pointing the same knife at people as he spoke with them. Witnesses told police Farah was told to leave a second time, but later began chasing several people and threw the knife at them. - At least 40 Somali refugees have left the country to join overseas terrorist organizations such as al-Shabaab in Somalia and ISIS in Syria, the FBI has confirmed. Dozens of others have been charged and/or convicted of providing material support to overseas terrorists. One of the top terror recruiters for ISIS in the U.S. was Mohamed Hassan, a Somali refugee with roots in Minnesota. He turned himself in to authorities in Somalia in late 2015, after leading dozens of Somali-Americans to join ISIS. Through his Twitter persona, Miski, he even played a role in the terror attack on a Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, in which two Muslims planned to kill everyone and behead First Amendment activist Pamela Geller. - Dozens of large-scale khat busts have taken place in recent years, such as this seizure of 69 pounds of khat at the Philadelphia airport bound for Minneapolis, and this one sending nearly 20 pounds to Minneapolis. Khat is a stimulant chewed by Somali men. - In June 2016, residents of the Linden Hills community in Minneapolis were terrorized by a gang of Somali youths for three straight days. Up to 20 of them raided the waterfront community and scared women off the beach by pretending to shoot them, ran their cars over residential lawns while screaming “jihad,” threatened to rape a young woman and beat up one resident’s dog. Police were called repeatedly but never seemed to be able to make it to the neighborhood before the Somali mob disappeared. No arrests were made and the Star Tribune ignored the story. - Minneapolis Police Department has for years tolerated an active Sharia cop, who married a Somali woman and patrols the Cedar Riverside area making sure Somalis are complying with Islamic dress codes and other Sharia rules. - In 2014, a mysterious New Year’s Day explosion occurred at a building containing several apartments and a grocery store in the heavily-Somali Cedar Riverside area of Minneapolis. According to a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, the city fire department requested the federal ATF not investigate the explosion, which killed three people, and the investigation has never come to an official conclusion on the cause. - Liban Haji Mohamed, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Somalia who came to the U.S. as a child refugee, was named to the FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists in January 2015. Mohamed, who worked as a cab driver in northern Virginia, was charged with providing material support and resources to al Qaeda and al-Shabaab, a Somali-based terrorist organization. “Al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for many bombings in Somalia and Uganda and the 2013 attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya,” said Carl Ghattas, special agent in charge of the Counterterrorism Division at the FBI’s Washington Field Office. “Liban Mohamed is believed to have left the U.S. with the intent to join al-Shabaab in East Africa.” - In May 2015, a UK media outlet broke the story that one of the Islamic State’s major recruiters turned out to be a female journalism student in Seattle who liked football, cheeseburgers, and convincing women in Syria and the EU to wage jihad. The student, a Somali named Rawdah Abdisalaam, who was known under the Twitter handle @_UmmWaqqas, was discovered to be working as a senior recruiter while living the good life in Seattle. The FBI was apparently not aware of her operation until the UK story broke. - In January 2014, Somali refugee Ahmed Nasir Taalil, living in San Diego, was sentenced to six years in prison for his part in a conspiracy to funnel money to the Somalia-based al-Qaida affiliate, al-Shabaab. Among Nasir-Nasir’s co-conspirators were cab driver Basaaly Saeed Moalin, who was sentenced to 18 years, Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud – a Somali imam at a local mosque – sentenced to 13 years, and Issa Doreh, who was sentenced to 10 years for working at a money transmitting business that helped move the illegal funds. - America’s neighbor to the north, Canada, has also taken in Somali refugees, though not in as great of numbers as the U.S., and has had its own set of problems. In one case in fall of 2017, a Somali named Abdulahi Hasan Sharif intentionally drove a U-Haul truck into pedestrians, injuring four, including one man who suffered a fractured skull. THERE IS MORE: See the followup to this story, “Rogue Somali refugees Part 2.“ Refugee proponents, many of them working for resettlement agencies that receive government tax dollars for every refugee they bring into the U.S., continue to say Somalis are an asset to the communities in which they live. But those words ring hollow for the growing list of victims of Somali violence. Those Americans shot or stabbed by Somali refugees, or raped by them, are seen by governing elites as mere collateral damage for what equates to a human-trafficking operation that brings billions of dollars into the coffers of resettlement agencies, and a steady supply of cheap labor for meatpackers, hotels, cab companies and other industries. And now that the refugee ban has expired, dozens of cities of all sizes can look forward to a new influx of unvettable refugees from this perpetually war-torn country. “The future fortunes of this nation depend on our ability to open our eyes and ears, to speak truth to lies and to prevail in the civilizational war of this age,” Tapio said. Leo Hohmann is a veteran journalist and author of the 2017 book “Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest through Immigration and Resettlement Jihad.” If you appreciate this type of original, fact-based reporting on topics others are afraid to investigate, please consider a donation of any size to this website.

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn. This week, we’re reading Ray Bradbury’s “Skeleton,” first published in the September 1945 issue of Weird Tales. Spoilers ahead. “His heart cringed from the fanning motion of ribs like pale spiders crouched and fiddling with their prey.” Mr. Harris’s bones ache. His doctor snorts that he’s “been curried with the finest-tooth combs and bacteria-brushes known to science” and there’s nothing wrong with him except hypochondria. Blind fool, Harris sulks. He finds a bone specialist in the phone directory: M. Munigant. This fellow, redolent of iodine, proves a good listener; when Harris has run through his symptoms, Munigant speaks in a strange whistling accent: Ah, the bones. Men ignore them until there’s an imbalance, an “unsympathetic coordination between soul, flesh and skeleton.” It’s a complicated psychological problem. He shows Harris X-rays, “faint nebulae of flesh in which hung ghosts of cranium, spinal-cord, pelvis,” and Harris shudders. If Mr. Harris would like his bones treated, he must be in the proper mood, must need help. Harris lies open-mouthed on a table, Munigant bending over him. Something touches Harris’s tongue. His jaws crack, forced outward, and his mouth involuntarily snaps shut, nearly on Munigant’s nose! Too soon, Munigant concludes. He gives Harris a sketch of the human skeleton. He must become “tremblingly” aware of himself, for skeletons are “strange, unwieldy things.” Back home, Harris studies both the sketch and himself. With mixed curiosity and anxiety, he fingers his limbs, probes skull and torso with the painstaking zeal of an archaeologist. His wife Clarisse, utterly at home in her lithe body, tells him it’s normal for some ribs to “dangle in midair” as Harris puts it—they’re called “floating ribs.” Fingernails are not escaping bone, just hardened epidermis. Won’t he stop brooding? How can he stop, now he realizes he has a skeleton inside him, one of those “foul, dry, brittle, gouge-eyed, skull-faced, shake-fingered, rattling things that lie “on the desert all long and scattered like dice!” Yet all three must be right, doctor and Munigant and Clarisse. Harris’s problem’s in his head, not in his bones. He can fight it out with himself. He really should set up the ceramics business he’s been dreaming of, travel to Phoenix to get the loan. Trouble is, the conflict between Harris’s interior and exterior grows. He begins to perceive his outside person as lopsided of nose, protuberant of eye, whereas the skeleton’s “economical of line and contour… beautiful cool clean calciumed.” Whenever Harris thinks he’s the one who commands the skeleton, the skeleton punishes him by squeezing brain, lungs, heart until he must acknowledge the real master. Clarisse tries to convince him there’s no division between his exterior and his skeleton—they’re “one nation, indivisible.” Harris wants to buy that. His skeleton doesn’t—when he tries to consult Munigant again, he flees the office with terrible pains. Retreating to a bar, he wonders if Munigant’s responsible—after all, it was Munigant who fixed Harris’s attention on his skeleton. Maybe he has some nefarious purpose, but what? Silly to suspect him. At the bar Harris spots an enormously fat man who’s obviously put his skeleton in its place. He works up courage to ask the man his secret and gets a semi-jovial, semi-serious reply: he’s worked on his bulk from boyhood, layer by layer, treating his innards like “thoroughbreds,” his stomach a purring Persian cat, his intestines an anaconda in the “sleekest, coiled, fine and ruddy health.” Also essential? Harris must surround himself with all the “vile, terrible people [he] can possibly meet,” and soon he’ll build himself a “buffer epidermal state, a cellular wall.” Harris must think Phoenix is full of vile people, because this encounter inspires him to take the trip. He’ll get his business loan, but not before a harrowing accident in the Mojave Desert. Driving through a lonely stretch, the inner (skeletal) Harris jerks the wheel and plunges the car offroad. Harris lies unconscious for hours, then wakes to wander dazed. The sun seems to cut him—to the bone. So that’s Skeleton’s game, to parch him to death and let the vultures clean away the cooked flesh, so Skeleton can lie grinning, free. Too bad for Skeleton a policeman rescues Harris. Home again, loan secured and Clarisse jubilant, Harris masks his desperation. Who can help? He stares at the phone. When Clarisse leaves for a meeting, he calls Munigant. As soon as he sets the phone down, pain explodes through his body. An hour later, when the doorbell rings, he’s collapsed, panting, tears streaming. Munigant enters. Ah, Mr. Harris looks terrible. He’s now psychologically prepared for aid, yes? Harris nods, sobs out his Phoenix story. Is Munigant shrinking? Is his tongue really round, tube-like, hollow? Or is Harris delirious? Munigant approaches. Harris must open his mouth, wide. Wider. Yes, the flesh cooperates now, though the skeleton revolts. His whistling voice gets tiny, shrill. Now. Relax, Mr. Harris. NOW! Harris feels his jaw wrenched in all directions, tongue depressed, throat clogged. The carapaces of his skull are riven, his ribs are bundled like sticks! Pain! Fallen to the floor, he feels his limbs cast loose. Through streaming eyes he sees—no Munigant. Then he hears it, “down in the subterranean fissures of his body, the minute, unbelievable noises; little smackings and twistings and little dry chippings and grindings and nuzzling sounds—like a tiny hungry mouse down in the red-blood dimness, gnawing ever so earnestly and expertly….” Turning the corner for home, Clarisse almost runs into a little man crunching on a long white confection, darting his odd tongue inside to suck out filling. She hurries to her door, walks to the living room and stares at the floor, trying to understand. Then she screams. Outside the little man pierces his white stick, crafting a flute on which to accompany Clarisse’s “singing.” As a girl she often stepped on jellyfish on the beach. It’s not so bad to find an intact jellyfish in one’s living room. One can step back. But when the jellyfish calls you by name…. What’s Cyclopean: Rich language makes the familiarity of the body strange: “faint nebulae of flesh,” “grottoes and caverns of bone,” “indolently rustling pendulums” of bone. The Degenerate Dutch: In places where a lesser writer might show Harris’s fear of his own body through judgment of others, Bradbury has Harris appreciating the way others’ bodies differ from his own. Women can be calm about having skeletons because theirs are better padded in the breasts and thighs (even if their teeth do show). A fat man in a bar is drunkly cynical about his own weight, but Harris yearns for such an overmatched skeleton. Mythos Making: Munigent, with his hollow, whistling tongue, makes for a subtle monster, but deserves a place alongside the most squamous and rugose Lovecraftian creations. Libronomicon: No books, but X-rays are compared to monsters painted by Dali and Fuseli. Madness Takes Its Toll: PTSD and supernaturally-inflamed dysphoria make for a terrible combination. It’s stories like this that make me wish all authors’ writing habits were as well-documented as Lovecraft’s. “Skeleton” appeared in Weird Tales in the September 1945 issue. That would be one month after the end of World War II, unless the issue was on newsstands a little early, as issues normally are. Pulp response times were pretty quick, so it’s just vaguely possible that Bradbury sat down on August 6th, banged out a story about people convinced to feed their skeletons to monsters, and had it out to the public in time for Japan’s final surrender. I can think of far less sensible reactions, honestly. Or on a more relaxed timeline, the German surrender in May could have inspired him to think “people hating their skeletons, that’s what I want to write about.” Which seems like more of a stretch, but then my fictional reflexes are a lot different from Ray Bradbury’s. Either way, “The war was just over” seems like the heart of the story, the bones beneath all Harris’s fears and neuroses. Bradbury needn’t draw the connecting ligaments. There are any number of possibilities, but here’s a likely one: a young man recently mustered out of the army, trying to get by in the less regimented world of post-war work, his PTSD coming out as barely-more-socially-acceptable hypochondria, his doctor as uninterested as most were in the reality of his aftershocks. Bradbury himself wasn’t permitted to join up due to poor eyesight, and spent the war years building his writing career. You could probably build a pretty good taxonomy of classic SF authors by their reactions to the wars of the 21st century—gung-ho, confidently patriotic, cynical, virulently pacifist—and when and whether they served in the military. “Skeleton” reminds me a bit of “Dagon”—both by authors never given the opportunity to fight, but well-aware that it broke people. Harris’s wife Clarisse makes a counterpoint to his brokenness. I like her, and I have a hunch about her: what kind of woman cheerfully spouts anatomy lessons and knows how to talk someone down from a panicked rant without freaking out herself? I’m guessing that she served too, probably as a nurse treating men just off the front lines. I love her even more than I love the guy in the bar who announces that his intestines are the rarest purebred anacondas. She knows what she’s doing, possibly the only person in the story who does—aside from M. Munigant. I don’t know what’s creepier about Munigant—his diet, or his hunting methods. No, I do know. There are plenty of osteophages in the world, but most of them get their calcium from dead things—either going in after meat-loving scavengers have picked them dry, or at the very worst having them for dessert after appreciating the rest of the carcass. Nature, weird in tooth and claw, sure, that’s fine. Munigant’s methods are unique. Just convince your prey to see their own skeleton as an enemy! It shouldn’t be hard—after all, if you think about it, it’s pretty strange to have this thing inside you, where you can never see it. Hard bones, better suited to hanging pendulous from castle ramparts or scattered picturesquely in desert dioramas. Maybe you’d better not think about it too hard. My reaction to this type of discomfort with physicality tends toward adamant refusal. It reminds me too much of the priest in Geraldine Brooks’s Year of Wonders who resists feminine temptation by thinking about how gross potential partners’ insides are. I’m more of a mind with Spike, reassuring Drusilla that he loves her “eyeballs to entrails, my dear.” But that kind of comfort with one’s own body is hard to come by. A predator who depends on people shuddering about their own insides… is going to feed well, and often. They arrived about the same time as the Lovecraft paperbacks I bought based solely on the gruesome yet strangely gorgeous demi-heads on the covers: two used paperbacks someone passed down to me, I can’t even remember who now. It might have been one of the nuns at St. Mary’s elementary school, who was cleaning out the book closet and who, coming across these two lightly tattered treasures, knew exactly which fifth-grader would appreciate them most. That’s right, yours truly, already infamous for drawing the Starship Enterprise and Dr. McCoy on her notebooks. (We were not supposed to draw on our notebooks. Although if it was Jesus or the Virgin Mary, you might get away with it. Starfleet officers did not cut it.) One of the used paperbacks was The Martian Chronicles. The other was The October Country. I read them both that summer after fifth grade, lying on the old couch on the back porch and sweating. Sometimes it was because it was 90º out and King, our neighbors’ massive white German Shepherd, was lying on my legs. More often it was because I was under the spell of a grandmaster storyteller and experiencing, I now think, not just the considerable pleasure of the fiction itself but also some of the exhilaration, the joy, the author had in writing it. Long after that summer, I would read this in Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing about another October Country companion of today’s “Skeleton”: The day came in 1942 when I wrote “The Lake.” Ten years of doing everything wrong suddenly became the right idea, the right scene, the right characters, the right day, the right creative time… At the end of an hour the story was finished, the hair on the back of my neck was standing up, and I was in tears. I knew I had written the first really good story of my life. And hey! When I read “The Lake,” my neck hairs were up, and I was in tears! Ditto for “Skeleton,” except I wasn’t in tears. I was more in luxuriously shuddersome gross-out. If any writer deserves the honorary Anglo-Saxon (and Rohirrim!) name of Gieddwyn (Wordjoy), it would be Ray Bradbury. Give him the least spark of inspiration as he’s strolling along, and bang! The dam’s blown to the moon, the flood’s released, and Ray’s on a wild kayak ride on the crest of it! Once he realizes, for Harris, that the skull is a curved carapace holding the brain like an electric jelly, you think he’s going to stop there? Some might say he should. It’s a fine metaphor. It’s plenty. No. Not for Ray. Not for the Ray-attuned reader. We are ready to go on the headlong plunge into skulls like cracked shells with two holes shot through by a double-barreled shotgun, by God! Skull like grottoes and caverns, with revetments and placements for flesh, for smelling, seeing, hearing, thinking! A skull that encompasses the brain, allowing it exit through brittle windows. A skull in CONTROL, hell yeah. You believe it now, don’t you? You feel the panic. Speaking of panic, I was about to write that Lovecraft feels more persnickety with words than Bradbury. But in moments of intense character emotion, terror or awe or his signature combination of the two, Howard can verbally inundate the page right up there with Ray, though with quite a different log-jam of vocabulary. And, already running out of room before I can speculate on whether Harris has the worst case of quack-aggravated body dysmorphic disorder ever. And just what the hell kind of monster is M. Munigant? An osteophage? Are there others in world mythology? What about the “Skeleton” episode of Ray Bradbury Theater in which Eugene Levy gets to play his born-to role as ultimate hypochondriac? And “The Jar,” which follows “Skeleton” in my October Country, and isn’t it all how we NEED the terror and awe? Grows the list! Next week, for real HPL completists, “Sweet Ermengarde.” Ruthanna Emrys is the author of the Innsmouth Legacy series, including Winter Tide and Deep Roots. Her neo-Lovecraftian stories “The Litany of Earth” and “Those Who Watch” are available on Tor.com, along with the distinctly non-Lovecraftian “Seven Commentaries on an Imperfect Land” and “The Deepest Rift.” Ruthanna can frequently be found online on Twitter and Dreamwidth, and offline in a mysterious manor house with her large, chaotic household—mostly mammalian—outside Washington DC. Anne M. Pillsworth’s short story “The Madonna of the Abattoir” appears on Tor.com. Her young adult Mythos novel, Summoned, is available from Tor Teen along with sequel Fathomless. She lives in Edgewood, a Victorian trolley car suburb of Providence, Rhode Island, uncomfortably near Joseph Curwen’s underground laboratory.

With the 30th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation and the brand new Star Trek: Discovery, it’s a great time to catch up with past Treks, too. I especially love the franchise’s first major female captain – Kathryn Janeway. Indeed, Star Trek: Voyager is all about boss women in what is essentially the Wild West of outer space. During Voyager’s seven seasons, Capt. Janeway, played by Kate Mulgrew (Orange is the New Black), slayed science and the Borg. Multiple times. She was an intellectual leader, putting her faith in science over feels. Still, she wasn’t afraid to break the Prime Directive Capt. Kirk-style because it was better to get out of danger and sort out the morality later. Janeway as a character was contentious amongst Trek fans, with a very vocal (and mostly male) group consistently calling for her head. Perhaps for this reason, Capt. Janeway died (but not really) so often, possibly more than any other Star Trek character. This might be because Janeway was a departure from fan-favorite Capt. Picard (Patrick Stewart), who was equal measure philosopher and diplomat. Another reason was most certainly sexism, as some fans just weren’t ready for a female boss. Sound familiar? Whatever the reason, many Trek fans and non-fans have missed out on one of TV’s best boss ladies. Whether it was warrior Seska breastfeeding on the bridge (Basics Part 1, S2:26), B’Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson) working out her cultural assimilation issues as a half-Klingon living in a human world (and smashing the patriarchy every chance she could), or Seven of Nine wrestling with issues including trauma, PTSD, and abortion — there’s no shortage of bosses on Voyager. Speaking of smashing the patriarchy, the series also took many opportunities to subvert gender stereotypes in really casual ways. When little Naomi Wildman’s mother dies, Neelix, a male Telaxian steps up to raise her with nary a mention of a woman doing it. When Torres gets married, she does it without a traditional wedding (human or Klingon) and suggests her husband take her last name, because “it is the 24th century.” When Seven of Nine explores dating, she brings flowers to give to Commander Chakotay. The men on Voyager also model a kind of patriarchy smashing of their own. The men on Voyager respect Janeway’s leadership skills, her science skills, and her bravery. They constantly have to check their privilege and get in line under female leaders all over the ship, including Chief Engineer Torres and Seven of Nine, both of whom slay STEM and kick ass daily. It’s never a question if women can be the boss. The women on Voyager are not there to be purely sex objects. Sure, Seven is beautiful and her character launched a million fan-boners. But make no mistake, her body is her own. The women on Voyager are fully in charge of their sexuality. When Torres gets infected with the pon farr, it becomes an episode rooted in consent. Even as she tries to seduce Tom Paris, who openly has feelings for her, he says no because “you’re my friend and I have to look out for you when your judgement’s been impaired.” Voyager also included one of the franchise’s most diverse casts (until Discovery). Three of the five lead bridge actors are people of color (Robert Beltran, Tim Russ, and Garett Wang) as well as the franchise’s first Latina and Latino lead actors (Dawson and Beltran). And I’m glad to see Discovery take that baton and move the line much farther down that field. These things matter. Representation matters. Even within the Trek universe, there is still a lot of sexism and racism. Just google Discovery memes or Voyager memes and you’ll find plenty of misogyny and racist bullshit. (I won’t reprint that vile here). When I went to share a gif online for the 30th anniversary of TNG, the only gif I could find with female characters was Deanna Troi and Beverly Crusher exercising in spandex leotards. Seriously. It can’t be said enough that one of the reasons Voyager gets mocked is misogyny. One of the reasons that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — led by the franchise’s first major black captain (Benjamin Sisko) — is routinely dismissed is no doubt due in part to racism. I have high hopes for Discovery and I want it to succeed for the same reason I wanted a good Wonder Woman movie — female and POC fans deserve to see themselves front and center in a franchise created with the explicit intent to confront racism and make a more egalitarian world. Star Trek is rooted in social justice and challenging stereotypes. It’s time for fans to catch up to the stories Trek is telling and has been telling for decades. If you’re not a Trek fan, the show is perfect as a stand-alone series. The starship Voyager is marooned across the galaxy and therefore you don’t need to know much of the old Trek stories because there are all new aliens and conflicts in this series. If you are a Trek fan, you’ll enjoy seeing familiar aliens – Klingons, Vulcans, Borg – in a scenario that puts all the conventional wisdom on its ear. How do you hold on to resentments and stereotypes when you’re stuck on a ship with the same people for 75 years? Voyager is worth the trip just for the insights and storylines about the Borg alone. So what are you waiting for? There’s never been a better time to jump into Voyager and spend some time with a crew that is about strong, independent women. Why not supplement your Discovery viewings with another great (and often overlooked) Trek series? Here’s your essential episode guide to Star Trek: Voyager. The Cloud (S1:5): Best entry point to the series and characters, with a recap of how they get stranded in the Delta Quadrant, a 75-year journey to Earth in the Alpha Quadrant. (Completists should watch the Pilot first, but it’s largely skippable.) Every major character gets some backstory in The Cloud. Meanwhile, Janeway worries about how to build a community made up of two warring crews and how to survive without any Starfleet backup. “There’s coffee in that nebula.” – Janeway, because bitch better get her coffee The 37s (S2:1): This episode has a throwback TNG feel with distinct Prime Directive overtones, but you won’t hear Janeway worrying about that. When the crew stumbles across Amelia Aerhart and other humans from 1937 frozen in cryostasis on a planet (after landing Voyager on the surface – whaaat?!), it opens a moral dilemma for Janeway as she ponders whether her mission to get home is a white whale. Janeway doesn’t waste a single syllable, let alone a tear, when she’s touched by how much her crew loves her. “Ma’am, I think I should tell you, I’ve never landed a starship before.” -Tom Paris “There’s always a first time.” – Janeway Alliances (S2:14): After constant Kazon attacks and crew members killed, Janeway reluctantly agrees to look into forming an alliance with certain Kazon sects in order to clear their space. This episode is full Janeway Boss-mode with plenty of deadpan zingers. “I see now that my instincts were dead on.” –Janeway Death Wish (S2:18): This episode has not just one Q, but TWO Qs! It’s the first of many Q visits throughout the series and it presents the biggest moral conundrum short of humanity being on trial in TNG. (Extra Spoiler: Not only does Will Riker make an appearance, but they GO TO THE CONTINUUM!) “Did anyone ever tell you you’re angry when you’re beautiful?” -Q flirting with Janeway Deadlock (S2:21): Full-strength Janeway as a total boss when a spacial rift creates two Voyagers. One is on the verge of destruction while the other is unharmed and the zombie-like Vidiians (always on the hunt to steal body parts) are ready to seize their ship. Janeway’s background in science and her willingness to sacrifice herself are key to saving the day. “I just saw myself run across the bridge — and I looked like hell.” – Janeway Blood Fever (S3:16): As the title implies, we’re in for some Vulcan pon farr action! Vulcan Vorik declares his desire to mate with his boss, Chief Engineer Torres, who rejects him, but gets infected with blood fever anyway. When she gets trapped underground on a planet with Tom Paris, it’s up to the playboy to save B’Elanna by any means necessary. (Extra points for a solid scene about consent as part of the storyline.) Make sure to watch the final two minutes for the first hint of the Borg, because the Delta Quadrant is their home space after all. “For such an intellectually enlightened race, Vulcans have a remarkably Victorian attitude about sex.” – The Doctor Scorpion: Parts 1 & 2 (S3: 26/S4:1): The Borg! The Borg offer to let Voyager travel through their space unharmed in exchange for help in their war against a species so powerful it is killing the Borg by the millions – Species 8472! Enter: Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan). “You are individuals. You are small and you think in small terms.” – Seven of Nine Year from Hell – Parts 1 & 2 (S4:8-9): Voyager gets thrashed to smithereens. Meanwhile, aliens on a time ship keep changing history, erasing billions of lives for their own selfish gain. This two-parter is one of the most bleak stories in the entire series, but if you like seeing Janeway fight to the death this two-parter is a must. Janeway and the crew are tested to the very limit practically every minute of this action-packed set of episodes. “As long as Voyager’s in one piece, we stay.” – Janeway The Killing Game: Parts 1 & 2 (S4:18-19): The Hirogen, a ruthless alien race whose culture centers around hunting prey (and everyone is prey) have seized Voyager, turning it into one big holodeck where they hunt the crew in the most violent programs (Nazi-occupied France, a Klingon war, etc.). Needless to say, the safeties are off. Watching Janeway basically single-handedly take back the ship (while wounded!) is some badass glory. (I also dig seeing Roxann Dawson, who plays B’Elanna Torres, sporting her real-life pregnant belly as part of her holodeck character.) In a season that has been particularly knuckle-bruising on the Voyager crew and ship, this two-parter shows how retreat might be the better part of valor, but you still come away bloody. “It would be cunning for you to agree.” – Janeway negotiating a cease-fire with a Hirogen who could easily break her in half Equinox: Part 1 & 2 (S5:25/S6:1): Good news: Voyager meets another Starfleet ship stuck in the Delta Quadrant! Bad news: They’re not only assholes, they’re also willing to kill to get home faster. Janeway is in peak Ahab fashion — even throwing Chakotay into the brig because he questions her. “I’m going to hunt him down, no matter how long it takes. No matter the cost. If you want to call that a vendetta, go right ahead.” – Janeway, pissed and all out of fucks Barge of the Dead (S6:3): The deep-dive Klingon episode. Torres finds herself on the Barge of the Dead — the River Styx of Klingon lore. When she meets her mother on the same boat destined for Grethor (aka Klingon hell), Torres has to channel her Klingon side to fight for her mother’s soul, and maybe her own. “I inherited the forehead and the bad attitude. That’s it.” – B’Elanna Unimatrix Zero Parts 1 & 2 (S6:26/S7:1): Janeway goes on a suicide mission to rescue Seven of Nine, after Seven rejoins the collective. This is the heart of the Borg and Janeway has to face off with the Borg Queen to save the day. (Other stand-out Seven episodes include The Raven, The Omega Directive, Drone, Repentance, Human Error, and Imperfection.) Prophecy (S7:14): A pregnant B’Elanna Torres finds herself on a ship full of Klingons who believe her fetus is their messiah. There’s even a fight to the death. “The only Klingon I’m scared of is my wife after she’s worked a double-shift.” –Tom Paris

Was it all a waste??? I'm 21 I have a daughter and a son and am the second oldest of 7 brothers and sisters, I don't get out a lot so when I do get to go out Id like to enjoy myself. I like reading writing drawing playing Serious "Real" ationship & Non-Smoker ONLY I am an ambitious individual who always thinks that nothing is impossible in this world. I don't judge people by their looks and I always like to help others if I can. So, I hope the girl What's life without smiles and laughter? wats up people... i've been a marine for 10 yrs now and been around da world,and now im here... jus relaxin... i'm puerto rican, love to jus layback and chill.im up for anythin but to me its all I'm Puerto Rican and Dominican and a very laid back person. Love to learn about different cultures. Although I can come off as boring and geeky, I can be seen as "one of the guys" or just a chill pers Looking for the real in an unreal world Family first always.... I am a hard worker.... Shoe whore and cigar aficionado..my 2? weaknesses is a man in a suit and tie who looks well put together and man in a uniform ... I love the finer thing how are you beautiful i love playing soccer, partying, listening to music, ia a very easy goin person easy to get to know and very polite and loves to interact with others Looking to share life's journeys and experiences Who I am..this should be fun... I don't care about who's winning or losing or that my friend or relative has a better lifestyle than I do. I'm independent, easygoing, dramaless,(no issues, no tissues) I Am Dat Sxxyung1 I'm 26 & I Luv Music To The Fullest. I Like All Types Of Music. I Like To Go Out & Have Fun Like Shopping, Site-Seeing In The City, Go To The Movies, Out To Eat, Amusement Parks & Other Adventurous Th Enjoys Life :) Hello, I am new to this city and hope to find new friends. I wouldn't mind finding a woman too :) I heard about this website from a friend.I come from the Netherlands, and I am in the musi The only 100% Free dating service. Register HERE to use this Free Dating Service, and start contacting other users for free Fun, outgoing & down to earth. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

pass in this generation. If you aren’t saved yet this is a must read! Download The Last Chronicles of Planet Earth August 13, 2012 Edition written by Frank DiMora Anyone who has read my book or seen any of live presentations knows I have been warning you since 1977 that we are well on our way to seeing the Mark of The Beast which Christ warned us about in Revelation 13:16 And he causeth all, both small and great , rich and poor , free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand , or in their foreheads: 17 And that no man might buy or sell , save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. In many of my posts I show you how ID technogloy is focusing on two areas of the body which is the hand and the face. Why is this? Because before it is all over the mark that will be used for you to buy or sell anything will be placed in your hand or forehead. The news you are watching is pointing to that mark. Before you watch this video please remember this, the only ones who have to be concerning about being able to buy or sell anything are those people who are left behind when the rapture of the Church takes place. For those of you who will not listen to what the Holy Spirit is showing you the video below is pointing to your future which will be ruled by the Antichrist when he tell everyone they have to be marked in their hand or forehead. When you watch the video you will see why many parents object this new technology. These parents obviously know the Lord and His signs of the last days. Palm Scanners To Pay For Lunch At Louisiana Elementary School Interview with Israel's Prime Minister. This interview addresses many issues I have been warning you about concerning the two coming wars below Remember all my warnings are based on what the Lord has given us in His Word. I am only carrying the message He has already given us. Isaiah 48:3 I foretold the former things long ago, my mouth announced them and I made them known; then suddenly I acted, and they came to pass. Isaiah 46:10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: I just found out the video below has gone private by the people who posted it. Sorry! Frank Take notice before you read the report below the nations or people in yellow are those listed in the Psalm 83 war. Headline: Egypt president to visit Iran, a first in decades CAIRO (AP) — Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi will attend a summit in Iran later this month, a presidential official said on Saturday, the first such trip for an Egyptian leader since relations with Tehran deteriorated decades ago. The visit could mark a thaw between the two countries after years of enmity, especially since Egypt signed its 1979 peace treaty with Israel and Iran underwent its Islamic revolution. Under Morsi's predecessor Hosni Mubarak, Egypt, predominantly Sunni Muslim, sided with Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-dominated Arab states in trying to isolate Shiite-led Iran. "A new understanding with Iran would be a big shake-up for a region that has been split between Tehran's camp — which includes Syria and Islamic militias Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza — and a U.S.-backed group led by Saudi Arabia and rich Gulf nations." To add another level of complexity, there is also the fact that Islamic militant group Hamas, which rules the Palestinian enclave in the Gaza strip to the frustration of neighboring Israel, is a historical offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the dominant force in Egyptian politics since Morsi's election." "Aware of the Gulf states' anxieties over the rise of political Islam in post-Mubarak Egypt, Morsi has focused on courting Saudi Arabia. He visited it twice, once just after he won the presidency, and a second time during the Islamic summit. In an attempt to assuage fears of the Arab uprisings by oil monarchs, he vowed that Egypt does not want to "export its revolution". He has also asserted commitment to the security of Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies, a thinly veiled reference to the tension between them and Iran." Headline: Dichter: Iran poses a threat to Israel's existence Prophecy Sign: Revelation 16:8 “The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was given power to scorch people with fire.” Revelation 7: 16 “Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat.” Extremely dry conditions in parts of Hawaii are forcing some ranchers to reduce their herds as they struggle to grow grass to feed cattle. Thirsty invasive axis deer are encroaching on crops as they seek water. A little more than half of Hawaii is in a drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a facet of the islands’ varied weather that has been posing problems for local ranchers for years. While large swaths of the mainland United States are in the midst of the worst drought in decades, the far-away Hawaiian islands in the middle of the Pacific are familiar with occasional drought. The wide-ranging weather of the islands can bring rainfall on one side of an island but be very dry just a few Ponoholo Ranch, one of the three biggest on the Big Island of Hawaii, is heading into its eighth year of drought conditions. “It’s our biggest challenge now,” said Sabrina White, a manager at the ranch in North Kohala. “It’s too dry. We don’t have the grass we need to feed the cows.” They’ve had to reduce their herd by about 2,000. Message from Pastor Fiaz in Pakistan Dear brother Frank, I visited two orphan families. One family is consist of four children and other three children and one widow. I visited them with my mother. Woman who in white glasess is my mother. I share the Word of God and said this is God who provide and open the heart of peoples. When I see these families my heart full of sorrow. They are leading their life very hardly. I am planning to help them for some education. When I see pain of other people I forget my pain. If I have anything in my pocket and see a needy I dont care my own and help them. Please keep me in your prayers. May God provide me more and I help them of monthly basis. You are angle of God for me in Pakistan. Your brother in Christ. The Last Chronicle of Planet Earth” Aug. 13,2012 Edition is now ready for you to download for free. Please note, the download may take some time to download but it will come up. The speed will depend on your computer. Download The Last Chronicles of Planet Earth August 13, 2012 Edition written by Frank DiMora Are you really searching to know the truth? Jesus will show it to you! the facts and evidence on my posts and in my book are real as they are taken from news around the world, and this news proves Bible prophecy is actually coming to pass in our generation, the information you read or see may scare you. If you are depressed or on any meds for depression, or have any type of mental disease consult your doctor before reading this material. If you would like me to come to your Church to give a prophecy seminar you can contact me either by writing to my P.O Box, or email me at [email protected]. There is no charge for my labor of love in Christ. Frank DiMora, P.O. Box 732, Lompoc Ca. All of my radio/video shows can be seen at The Edge. Just click to link below. What it will be like when the rapture hits. Rapture of the Church in English: Download A THIEF IN THE NIGHT- August 15 2012 (1) Link to the rapture of the Church in French.Download Thief in the Night- French

Ok, I will try to make this brief, but y'all know that's not one of my strong suits...so bear with me or just don't read this if you have no opinion about public education. First a few background things about myself, if you don't already know them. I have been a substitute teacher for 2 years now for the k-2nd public school in my town in MS. I take my job very seriously and do not consider myself a glorified babysitter in any form or fashion and do my utmost to make sure that the children experience the same or better learning environment when I am there as when their regular teacher is there. I am deeply emotionally invested in this school. My son is enrolled there (he's about to start 2nd grade) and out of the nearly 1000 children, you will be hard pressed to find one that I do not know and have not personally interacted with. I love each one of them in their own way... I say all of this to give you a better idea of where I am coming from and where my outrage is coming from in this story I am about to relay. I also ask for your honest advice and opinion; whether you agree with me or not, please share (don't just attack, by the way, please use logic and, if possible, references to back up your ideas)...Thanks in advance for that. This is a convoluted story, so I will try to keep it understandable the best I can. First off, at my school, you are able to have a choice of what teacher your child gets each year. (You have a list, order them among your preferences and child is matched to best meet his needs, etc...great system). I was troubled last spring when trying to choose my son's 2nd grade teacher because I wasn't comfortable with the teaching styles and lassie-faire attitudes among many of the teachers in this grade. (To back-track for one minute; my school is a level three in the rating system of the FABULOUS NCLB act) Because of this ridiculous rating, the administrators feel the need to do everything under the sun to make that rating higher (preferably the 5)...So, more often than not, whether they want to or not, most teachers give in and spend the majority of each day teaching the kids so that they will pass these standardized math and reading tests...Eventually, after rigorously questioning anyone with personal experience with the best of the teachers I had in my head to choose from, I chose one particular teacher, we'll call her Ms. Rainy. Yeah, I get Ms. Rainy and am actually quite happy, pleased with her teaching style and kid philosophy, etc. Well, Tues a teacher from the school who has a daughter who is in my son's grade and who was going to also be in Ms. Rainy's class calls and says we no longer have Ms. Rainy; she's been promoted to "reading facilitator" (a fucking joke of a job, by the way). Well, obviously I am not pleased about this idea, especially considering the school hasn't contacted me, only a friend who heard it through the grape vine. So I call another teacher and she gives me the whole story. Essentially the Vice principal at the school (whom I LOVED) was promoted to central office and because of this there was an opening for VP, so the reading facilitator (I'll call her Ms. Tom) gets promoted to the VP job. Hence, this is why I lost my great teacher. Anyhow, if this were the worst of it I would probably figure a way to switch teachers (I don't want him to have a first year teacher again, we've had that before and it was a nightmare). But its not the worst of it. Ms. Tom is a person that I have NO respect for in the slightest possible manner. (Also a side note, she hires the substitute teachers now.) Ms. Tom has personally told me, in no uncertain terms, that the children I teach reading to MUST pass all tests. And when I say this, I mean she expects for me to TELL the children the answers on the tests. And for those that even telling them the answers doesn't work, give them their tests back repeatedly until they at least make a passing grade. We had a huge showdown over this and I basically told her that I would NEVER, EVER cheat a child out of learning for the sake of giving the school a higher freaking ranking and that if I ever, ever heard of her encouraging a teacher to cheat MY child, I would make it my life's mission to make sure she lost her job. Yes, I am sure someone thinks this is stupid or going overboard, but this woman quite truly and honestly KNOWS that this reading program is a bunch of shit and DOESN"T teach the children much more than how to read words; they don't understand comprehension, they have no ability to use synonyms, that cannot paraphrase the stories into their own words and share them back; etc...its a horrible program. And for her to tell me that I "already have the lowest readers in 2nd grade, so they better not fall behind into Roots [this is the lowest level reading of 1st graders]", quite frankly she attempted to bully and intimidate me into doing as she wanted and I refused. Obviously, I have made an enemy for this and it doesn't hurt me for one second that that ladder climbing bitch doesn't like me. But, I am sick deep in my heart to know that she was promoted!!!!!!!!!! So she will now have even more power over these teachers to try and intimidate them into CHEATING on these test, especially the state tests. I am not the only one she's done these things to. I can nearly get each and every 1st and 2nd grade teacher to attest to these very same tactics, all in the name of getting a higher NCLB ranking!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ok, so what would you do? You can sing the praises of women all day long, but as long as you put a fertilized egg ahead of [their] welfare, you do not really care about them.-Dori 4/07

Saturday, July 29, 2006 Previouslies: Angela is a total pyscho, Vincent is still crazy, but looking better compared to Angela, Malan has major Freudian issues to work out, but he gets sent home for his driftwood-LOTR-homage. Ok, I've got to zip through this. You would think that work would slow down as we approach the ghost town days of August, but nooooo. Congress got a bug up its ass and I am working like recess is some sick fantasy I invented myself. So Heidi does the model selection quickly, and we realize that they are sticking with the system that allowed Zulema to announce, "I want to have a walkoff," like she was Zoolander. Nobody else can be Zoolander! Nobody!! Kayne sticks with his model. The Heidi announces that they are designing for the "hottest fashion accessory" and sends them away to await their meeting with Tim. They all start speculating and, for some reason, Laura gets this idea that it will involve horses. Whatever. I think she just wanted an excuse to wear her "equestrian Bridgehampton Polo opener outfit," carted all the way downtown from 77th and Park. They arrive in the Park and Tim shows up walking thirteen tiny PUPPIES!!! Laura looks like she swallowed Draino while all the other designers coo over the dogs and choose. The most astute comment made in the entire show is when Jeffrey says that they each picked the dog version of themselves. It's SOOO TRUE! So the designers take their canine Mini-Me-s back to the Sweatshop and get to work. They need a story for their model explaining her outfit and the coordinating dog outfit. They all come up with their little stories and get to work. There is some drama here involving Laura, Keith and her annoying bird-like chest but I've got to get to a briefing, so I've got to skip it. The biggest story here is that Bradley is totally screwing off, changing his design and not actually working. He laments that he doesn't want to get kicked off on his birthday, but he doesn't seem to be able to get anything done. Maybe he should go into therapy with Malan after the show. In the news, NBC cancels PR because the psychiatry bills exceed their budgets. This is totally ridonculous because he has the cutest dog!! I love Norwich terriers. It was all I could do to keep myself from jumping into the TV and stealing him. Onto the runway!! Michael, again, he showed a strong tweedly looking dress with crisscrossing neckline and STILL did not get picked for the top panel. What up guys?? I think he's just flying under the radar until BA-BAM he wins out of nowhere. Uli made this totally hot looking dress which is the type of thing I always want to wear but never have the guts to pull off. Her mix of patterns was pretty fricking awesome and I love the little jacket and the pug. I honestly thought she would get shafted again in favor of Allison, so I thought the win was well deserved. Allison's outfit was also pretty cool. It was a real outfit too, not just a dress. I thought she did a great job on the coat for the poodle when I saw it in the Sweatshop, but I didn't think it was that visible on the runway. Perhaps a different color would have been better, but what the hell do I know?? Also, NinaGarcia is totally enamored of hairstyles!! What's up with that? Move her to the Elle beauty department or something. Bradley, despite his total inertia and wishywashy-ness turned out a pretty sick outfit. I would like to wear that to work and cause quite the stir around the hearing room, y'know what I mean? He lives to see another day on the runway... Jeffrey, Kayne, Robert, Laura and Bonnie all made great outfits, but I also felt as thought they didn't really stand out in this episode. This was one of some really great highs and some MAJOR lows, so the middle is kind of large too. Also, if I don't get moving they are going to send the Capitol Police in here to drag me away from the keyboard. Although, PS, I'm getting tired of Laura's schtick with the tweedy suity coaty things with the faux fur. Can her five kids put together spell "one-note loser?" Crazy Pants Vincent is oh so crazy. He spend so much time cracking himself up over the dogs outfit that all he made was some teeny black dress and paired it with tights. Whatevs. He'll totally be KOed soon. Keith is so obnoxious! Talk about another candidate for PR Pyschoanalysis! Why is he such a pathological liar? He is obviously talented and gets stuff done, so why does he misrepresent things all the time to pump himself up? Get thee to a couch! Also, while Keith was taking his verbal beatdown from the estrogen packed panel, Bitchy Pants Allison is standing watching gleefully. Hey Angela, wipe that shit-eating grin off your face! You dress sucked poo! I'm sorry, I should say, weirdo crop top and hootchie puffy skirt. Oh, yeah, and when you design an outfit that looks EXACTLY LIKE YOURS (only skankier), don't wear it to the runway. It makes it obvious. Ivanka was totally my hero when she said the model looked like a street walker. Have her on the show more often. Poor, poor Katy. Her dress was just so blah. The puppy was so cute though! I feel bad mostly because she has to live with knwoing that Angela's psycho-crinkly-hooker outfit was chosen over hers. That must sting. OMG, I'm about to get fired. But next week!!! We find out what gets some one kicked out!! Will it be Bitchy-Pants Angela stealing Vincent's Lithium and snorting it herself? Will it be Bradley and his constant loser-talk? Keith and his pathological lying? Will Kayne and Robert fall madly in love and elope to Massachusetts have a wedding officiated by Michael Kors? Who knows!! Monday, July 24, 2006 We interrupt your regularly scheduled goofing off and internet surfing through the final sale items on JCrew.com to bring you some late breaking beauty news. As recently as, well, like 20 minutes ago, the FDA approved a new sunscreen product which has been shown to be effective in blocking UVA rays, exposure to which is linked to some cancers. Until now, sunscreens containing the active ingredient Mexoryl (or ecamsule, as it will be called in the U.S.) have only been available in Europe and Canada. Now, beauty junkies may know this product as the famous LaRoche-Posay Anthelios XL Lait SPF 60 which was featured in InStyle's Best Beauty Buys 2005 and recommended by every dematologist worth their salty publicist. It was coveted and brought back from St. Tropez in bulk or purchased at a ghastly price from Zitomer in New York because it was contraband here! The reason? FDA regulates sunscreens as drugs, not a cosmetics, which means their safety and efficacy must be proven before the product can be marketed. See 21 CFR part 352. Until today, Mexoryl's safety and efficacy had not been proven. Hence the ban, and the reason why Customs would take away your sunscreen and treat you like you had been bringing in Roofies from Mexico if they caught you. (This is really not actually true, but it was illegal to sell here) But the reign of sunscreen terror is over! The new product will be called Anthelios SX and will be distributed by LaRoche-Posay. Also, the actual SPF is 15, not 60; due to FDA regulations which set the standards for determining the sun protection factor of a product. For more information on this see the official FDA press release. And don't feel bad for Zitomer losing business in their $46 sunscreen. They still carry the illicit $32 Elnett hairspray in case you feel like being a rebel with your beauty... Like when you wander into a Neiman Marcus sale and find a pair of the Prada flats you lusted over all season long...miraculously in your size AND 50% off. Or when you visit that restaurant you've heard soooo much about (and that it is packed every night) and find that they can seat you that very minute. Yes, those are life's little charmed moments. Recently, I had my own beauty version of kismet, fate, destiny, divine intervention or whatever. On a stroll through Nordstrom's Anniversary Sale offerings I stopped to show a friend the lip gloss and fragrance I picked up from Trish McEvoy recently. Then I saw it. The Pretty Face palette. Typically, I don't think much of palettes. I don't think that everyone can really wear the same colors (witness me and my friend The Beauty Anti-Me) and therefore, even if I like a few of the colors of a palette, there will be at least three that languish untouched, unloved, and unhappy. And that spoils the point of the palette, which is to simplify my beauty bag. (HA! Like that's going to happen.) But this one is different. The microscopically thin, sleek black case houses four eyeshadows and a blush/bronzer. The eyeshadows are a cool bone color, a pale pink, a medium purple with gold flecks, and a twiggy brown. I actually did not buy the palette that day. I thought about for over a week, even though the sales associate told me they didn't have many left. I couldn't stop thinking how perfect all the colors were for me. When I finally stopped by, they told me they were out, but lo and behold! They found one. We were meant for each other. And the possibilities are endless. I have used all four of the shadows in varying combinations like Jelly Belly jellybeans to create different flavors/looks: - bone + pale pink = daytime shopping around 14th St. - bone + purple = looking professional while covering a hearing in Dirksen - pale pink + purple + brown-used-as-a-liner = date with boyfriend to Ray's the Steaks - bone + pale pink + purple-as-a-liner = drinks at Bourbon And I've only had it for a week!! Since I tend to be an awful packer, I have devised a small challenge for myself...this weekend when I head up to New York for the weekend, I will ONLY bring the palette. It's like Beauty Fear Factor!! No multiple shadows. No three blushes. Just me, the palette, some mascara and a travel brush kit. Let's hope I survive. Although there is a Sephora right down the street.... why, oh why, does Blogger hate me so? No picture today... Thursday, July 20, 2006 Okay! On to episode two! There was some minor lamenting about Stacey going home, particularly by Angela while she was in the bathroom plucking her eyebrows. Somehow I didn't really get the feeling that she was all broken up inside about it. Weird, huh? So, we go through the song and dance of picking the models. (Who, by the way, seem not as pretty, thin or tall as the models of the previous seasons. Is that just me being a bitchy couch potato?) Then Heidi gives them the challenge: design an evening gown for Miss USA to wear at the Miss Universe pageant!! At this point, I wanted them to cut to the shot of Kayne peeing his pants with excitement, because he obviously did. Back in the workroom, Tim and Miss USA give them the lowdown: they will pitch designs, Ms. USA will pick team leaders who will pick their companion for the Challenge a Deux. Her Highness would like an earth toned gown (no white!!) and no plunging necklines. Pencils at the ready? SKETCH! During the pitching process, poor Miss USA was subjected to some seriously bizarro behavior. Keith, who totally had immunity was all, "I vant to see your legssss!! I looooveee legssss!" while close-talking her out of the camera shot. Miss USA looked like she was about to break out her date rape whistle and go postal on his ass. Then Angela, who was too busy schnerring her way on to Kayne's team (or so she thought!!) to sketch anything tried to play Spanish Inquisition. Miss USA did not look amused. (Hey, Angela, why don't you just break out one of your EEveee. Sant. Looorant. dress designs? Yeah, that's right, you pronounce it wrong and I doubt anyone really thought your artsy crafty stuff looks like Tom Ford or Stefano Pilati. Stuff it.) Teams are formed and they shop for fabrics. Poor Crazy Pants Vincent gets stuck with Angela, otherwise, the teams all look pretty solid. Kayne and Robert immediately hit it off and buy a shimmery purple organza. Robert looks skeptical, but defers to Kayne's keen Jedi mind trick, "Tara will love it. You don't need to see his papers." Due to their fabulosity and tank tops, they will hereinafter be refered to as Team Too Gay to Function (2G2F). Except of course they do and they are AWESOME! I love their energy and witty banter with Tim. Back at the Sweatshop, Malan and Katherine start to work on Malan's vision. Katherine is mumbling about how great Malan is while he has an interview where he plumbs the depths of his soul about his Wicked Witch of the West mother. I will dub them Team Freud. Talk about a screwed up Elektra/Oedipal Complex! Jeffrey and Allison virtually never appear in this episode....so they are Team Invisible. Uli and Bonnie don't rate a whole lot of scenes either. We'll call them Team Invisible the Redux. Laura and Michael work away, but don't get much airtime in the Sweatshop scenes. However, due to Laura's perpetually slicked back hair (which only accentuates her oddly shaped head and the fact that she is so flat chested, walls everywhere are jealous) and Michael's neo-preppy look, I call them Team Classically Cueball. Most of the airtime is devoted to Crazy Pants Vincent and Bitchy Pants Angela who bicker over the design of the dress, and the fact that Angela is a freakizoid and Vincent's on crack. Tim looks distressed and seriously puts the smackdown on them in his blog. Ohhh, burn! After some awkward product placements and a hair and makeup montage, it's runway time!! I thought that the best dresses were: - Keith (who also totally looks like Hugh Laurie in House, but a younger-pre-Vicodin-bender and without the funny quips version) and Bradley's, although I didn't think it was very pageant-y. - Team Invisible the Redux, even though it was a little too free-fall in the boob area. Donald Trump would have liked it though (I think he judges these....) Also, guest judge Vera Wang gave them her ultimate compliment of being "modern" (also, love Wang's new line, but waaayy losing interest in her bridal gowns.) - Team Classically Cueball: loved the sparkles and the body-clingy-ness (shows off that 'athleticism' those pageant judges are always looking for) but it was a little boring and pretty close to white. PS What was up with black lace thing? Laura looked like she was wearing Britney Spears' castoffs. I don't think that the other Collegiate moms want to see that. - Team Freud showed up with their self-awareness and the ruching to end all ruchings. The dress looked like it was made out of bark. Their model looked like the tree version of those barnacled dead people in Pirates of the Caribbean. Also, Malan made the unfortunate mistake of insulting his model's rack. Ouch. I give him kudos for taking responsibility though. Backstage, after he gets the axe, he weeps about the shame of being kicked off and his mommy issues. I wonder if Bravo will cough up for therapy after this... - Team Invisible the Original showed a totally weird dress that would get Miss USA laughed at in like 40 different languages. I get the point Jeffrey, you're different, you hate everyone else, and you love having toxic inks drilled into your flesh. I'm kind of annoyed that they weren't drilled for their disdain for the point of the challenge but whatever. - Team Bitchy-Crazy Pants took most of the heat on the runway. I didn't think the dress would be that bad without the little wingy-things, but it was fairly whatever. I wish they had sent Angela and her hot-pink-skirt-with-patterned-tights ass home, but it wouldn't have really been fair. Oh, yeah, FYI Angela, that look went out in 1994. And now...the winners...TEAM 2G2T, KAYNE AND ROBERT!!!! I personally didn't love the dress even though it has the jewelry-as-a-part-of-the-outfit thing going on, but I knew it would appeal to Miss USA and was really perfect for her. Very pageant-y, but not over the top and was fairly original. I was really happy for Kayne because, even if he is out in the next challenge, he can go home to the middle of the country and have lots of pageant clients based on this dress alone. And that makes me happy for him, (Christ, I need a spot on the therapist couch next to Malan) and I loved watching Kayne and Robert collaborate and be all cute when they faux-hit on Tim. Tim loved it too, I can tell. Blogger REFUSES to let me to publish photos today! Pooh on them!! Check out BPR for photos of the gowns. Tuesday, July 18, 2006 Thhhhaaaankssss. Like I couldn't figure that out from the weather report? I'm also not a fan of going to different locations around the country to tell me that it's hot. There was a reporter on the Today Show telling me it was hot in Atlanta. She obviously not their local reporter because she actually used that nickname "Hot-lanta." That's like people who call San Francisco "Frisco." Bad news. Literally. So, while the rest of the country bakes in the heat, I'm inside freezing my butt off. Oh, that's right. Your tax dollars pay to have the entire government chilled to the temperature of a meat locker. Seriously, I have goosebumps as I type. However, since I will have to go outside at some point, I prepared my makeup accordingly. I found my tube of Laura Mercier's Eye Basics in Linen, which is a cream shadow-esque product made to match your eyelid shade. It comes in a lip gloss type tube with a wand applicator. and can be used as a primer or as a shadow itself. Today, I layered a little of Vincent Longo's Baby Love Shadow** on top. When I finally adjusted to the drastic temperature change in my office, I noticed that my shadow had not creased up the way it normally does. The powder stayed even and fresh looking. Which is more than I can say for my attitude about working today. Shouldn't the government save money on AC by shutting down for a few days? Call your congressman and tell him that's what you want!! **Makeup mystery: Has Vincent Longo discontinued it's single shade eyeshadows? I have seen the new Diamond Shadows, and the Trio shadows, but have not seen the other singles lately? Email me with info...I promise to keep all sources confidential. I can be like Judith Miller, only with better hair and a more friends! Monday, July 17, 2006 Well, the extreme weather keeps on rolling here in the Nation's Capital. While June was "the month that everything you know and love will be washed away in a torrent of water that flows from the sky endlessly," apparently July will be known as "the month where the sun will beat down upon you, the air will feel like split pea soup, and you will use three sticks of deodorant." I'm sure it comes as no surprise to anyone living in the Northeast, Midwest or Southwest...oh, hell, ANYWHERE...when I say, "It is ridonculously hot out!!" Yes, folks, here in D.C. the temperature is expected to hit 100 degrees today for the first time since August 2002. And it's apparently going to keep doing this until next week. It's like living in a Bikram yoga class. These are the days when I would rather stab myself with a red-hot poker than turn on my hair dryer, so I needed to get creative with my styling routine. I dug up a sample of appropriately-named-for-today Kiehl's Heat-Protecting Silk Straightening Cream and ran a dollop through my hair. Then I ran out the door because I was already late for work. After my weekly staff meeting, I checked my newly dried hair. Wavy, soft and shiny, with just a little puffiness and some flyaways. Pretty good, considering I spared myself the blowtorch that is my hairdryer. Hotter-than-hell conditions approved! I'm going to try to keep posting about beat-the-heat type beauty products, because the thought of doing anything else is enough to give me heart palpitations. In the mean time, please refrain from asking anyone, "Hot enough for ya?" Should you be on the receiving end of said statement, you have my permission to smack the speaker. Also, check out these tips on keeping cool from The Post, stop by a cooling center, or more tips from DCist. Friday, July 14, 2006 Color me snobby, call me a label whore, but I like BR better. I think Tim Gunn agrees with me too. Also!! My recaps will be included in the Recapalooza over at Blogging Project Runway, which is the official fan site for the show. So definitely check them out for other recaps, PR news, and emails from Tim, the judges, and the contestants! Thursday, July 13, 2006 I know they probably had just as many people in the others, but I have an HM/Memento thing going after a season finale where I forget that there are so many in the first few episodes. And just like my freshman chemistry class, the weak must be weeded out. The challenge in this episode was to create a garment using whatever materials they could rip from the apartments in 15 minutes. They all went crazy in the apartments tearing stuff off the walls, windows, beds, lamps, etc. Hell, I'm surprised no one brought the toilet paper to make a mummy dress. That would have been my vision. Very Herve Leger. Off to the workroom they run and start sewing sketching and bitching. Right away, the personalities start to emerge. Since everyone (and by that I mean Robin Givhan) is already abuzz about Malan Breton, I'll start with him. Yeah, he sounds like an ass, he turned down a spot on Season 2 (who took his place, by the way?), he snarks about the others' "behavior," and has a bizarre fake accent and laugh. His dress ended up being fine, although not mindblowing, and I didn't think his barbs lived up to the hype. But doesn't he totally remind you of Baby Stewie from Family Guy with the puffy half closed eyes and the weird laugh??? Anyone? Anyone? Buehler? Okay, maybe that's just me. Alison is totally adorable. Her dress was cute, but fit poorly. Angela? Um, who? Oh, the girl from Ohio. I'm just going to lump Angela, Katherine, Bonnie, Kayne and Bradley together in the truly unmemorable category. They get a big "whatever" from me. Uli made a fabulous dress that was sort of beachy and totally reminded me of the Marc Jacobs collection that I loved, but couldn't afford when Sweet Home Alabama came out (they used his stuff as Reese's character's "collection"). I was kind of surprised that she wasn't in the top. I'm dying to see her and Heidi get trashed and sing in German or something. Vincent officially the crazy to the runway. That hat was awesomely hysterical, and the dress wasn't bad. I'm glad he wasn't sent home, because I'm hoping for a Bob Mackie-esque outfit soon. And because... Stacey sucks. Truly. She can't work a sewing machine and she is fortyish and wearing a halter top from like Forever 21. Hint, it's not called Forever 21 because you think you can still be 21. I think the judges made an excellent call here by sending her packing. A Harvard degree only takes you so far in life, y'know? Jeffrey's tattoo was so incredibly distracting. I kept touching my neck when he was on screen, wondering how much that must have hurt. The dress was okay, the coat made me want to hurl. What happened to that cute blazer he showed during the auditions? Do that next time, and lose the 'tude. Keith's dress was pretty great. It was also pretty safe as far as innovation goes. Also, I doubt that was the first dress you ever made. Didn't he say he collaborated with Wyeth? Those dresses are on sale at Barney's as I type. Personally, I lllllooooovvveeedddd Robert's white dress with the bows. And not just because he designs for Barbie. I have a soft spot for jewelry that is built into clothes, like that Cacharel t-shirt when it first came out or that Azzarro dress that Diane Lane wore once. I think it's because I'm worried I will mix too many metals and look like a freak or something. Laura is kind of a mystery. She is a non-professional, but she can work a sewing machine. Hmmmm. I also totally agree with her statement about the slippery slope into sweats and minivans, so god bless her for being able to be a strict constructionalist. I'm guessing though, like Scalia, that could get her into trouble with the co-workers. Also, I could have lived without the jangly things and the mirrors on the coat, but maybe they were to detract from her ginormous jaw. Michael was another person I thought should have made it to the top-panel. I think he is GREAT. I think he is interesting, breaks the gay-white/asian/hispanic-guy-designer-or-a-girl mold that is pervasive on the show, and his dress was soooo pretty. Very Holly Golightly. Minus the cigarette since it would have ignited the coffee filters. In summation, I think the show is shaping up well. I thought the greatest moment was when they all returned to the apartments, assuming (as I did) that everything would be replaced but it wasn't! And they all had to sleep on broken, feathery furniture. That was funny. My prediction is that Michael and Robert are the two contenders to beat right now. Michael because I think he will develop a lot, but also sounds pretty drama free and cool. Robert has class and versatility. After all, Barbie has had many so many careers to design for! Maybe he could make a Hill Staffer Barbie after me some day...little J.Crew suit, pearls, copies of the Federal Register, Congressional ID tag, and a kung fu grip with a Starbucks latte. Hey...a girl can dream, can't she? photos courtesy of Bravo.com Also! Check out Tim's Take for Tim Gunn's very own adorable take on the episode. To sum up last night's intro episode, the Road to the Runway is paved with crazy people. Total lunatics. Have these people EVER watched the show? Have they ever heard of a BRA??? Well, fine they were shut down anyway. I thought the most interesting section of the show was showing what the previous contestants are up to now. We all know that the non-deranged people they focused on during the selection process are going to end up in the show and will be properly overly dramatized then. Austin: is designing bridal gowns for Amsale. I think this is actually a really good fit, so he can make girls all over America feel like pretty princesses. Also, I thought he sounded a little like he swallowed a bitter pill when talking about the show. Anyone else get that vibe? Wendy Pepper: You have to use the full name when talking about her. Umm, she says she's faboo and designing and all but it looked like the main thing she's done since the show is drop some lbs and get a face lift. Chloe: Chloe expanded her store in Houston, made t-shirts that have the name of her store on it and is charging more for her stuff. We didn't get to see a lot of that stuff though. She is still cute as a button. Jay: Jay has been working on building a business before showing a line. I agree with him that having the clothes available to a mass market once the collection debuts is important, but what happened to "Project Jay?" I thought that was all wrapped? Methinks there is something else going on here. Kara Saun: Kara Saun sounds like she is doing the same thing she did before the show, but on a bigger scale. Styling shows and movies, designing outfits for red carpets, Heidi, etc. Cute maternity stuff though. Daniel V.: Daniel V. says that he has been dressing people for events (I did like the red dress for that MTV VJ, but thought it would have looked better if she hiked up the bodice a little.) He says he would like to design under someone else before starting his own line. Smart cookie. Santino/Nick: Are both doing what they did before. Nick is teaching and being oh-so-funny-and-inspiring to his students and Santino is making clothes and walking around Venice Beach. Another thing ... I've heard some grumblings of discontent that DC wasn't chosen as a locale for scouting even though we have just as much talent and style as NY, LA, Miami and Chicago. White sneakers with suits, popped collars, flip flops, and jazzy ID holders aside, I honestly think that this was more a geographic thing than a style snub. We are 250 miles from NY. The Mommie Dearest fanatic traveled from Oklahoma with his sequins, so I think anyone serious about auditioning could have hopped on a Chinatown bus with a garment bag and done it. But if I see them in Seattle or Detroit next season, I might, in the words of Tim Gunn, be ready to bitchslap the producers. Next up! I'm working on a recap of the first episode where we see what the contestants are really made of and who is too crazy to live. I'm going to try to get these up soon after the airing, but let's just say that it's a good thing that it runs through August recess, because I do actually have a day job. Insert cackling laughter here. Wednesday, July 12, 2006 Now, I would looooove to provide you with a picture or a link etc., but for some reason, the internet is not coming up with anything. Damn you Al Gore and your interweb that gives me nothing but trouble!! Just kidding!! I love you Internet! The other day I took a stroll over to my neighborhood CVS as I was in dire need of shampoo and ... HOLY EXTREME MAKEOVER, BATMAN!! The store was totally different. All the aisles were reversed, there was a whole La Roche-Posay section and all the cosmetic aisles were backlit. And! Someone asked if she could help me!! Color me shocked. So I poked around and settled on the H.I.P. Pigment Stick, which is a part of L'Oreal's line that has some really out-there colors and boasts that it is "high intensity pigment." The pigment stick is kind of like a blunt-end Crayon made entirely out of shadow. There were several tempting colors, but I picked Alluring, a mauve-y purple color to add some punch to my NARS Penelope cream shadow, which is a silvery-mauve. The pigment stick gives good color, although it's a little dry and the flat end makes it a little difficult to line with. I'm kind of tempted to get all DIY on its ass and sharpen it over the sink. The color itself is a sparkly purple, but when applied with a light hand is acceptable for day. A heavier application could easily take it to happy hour (or that hour when happy hour ends and you are still ordering drinks). The price tag rang in around $10, which sounds little high for CVS, (I expect all things in a drugstore to cost $5 for some reason. Maybe I just live in a pre-Reagan world in my head) but I guess they have to pay for all that electricity to run the backlighting and the quality certainly seems better than the average drugstore brand product. Worth a shot. But you might want to wait and see if they make a cameo in PR3. I'm so excited I can barely sit still. Or maybe that's the three cups of coffee I chugged while trying to reconcile the fact that the Matt Lauer interview with Vladimir Putin was interpersed by a segment on the popularity of smoothies. Seriously? That's news? Can't Today save that for at least the 8 o'clock hour? Reviews of the new season are flying everywhere. Allegedly, Heidi, Nina, Michael and Tim are all back in top form and in the Road to the Runway show, we get a glimpse of Wendy Pepper (yet again. She must hate Middleburg,VA. She's never there.) The new cast is supposedly very talented and includes one Malan Breton, who is quickly singled out as the Wendy/Santino/Zulema of this season. Pulitzer prize winner and flip flop hater Robin Givhan at WaPo gives a good rundown of the characters (I know, this is reality TV, but c'mon!) BUT! A warning! She tells who wins the first competition, where the contestants must make a garment from the the materials in their Bravo sponsored apartments. DO NOT READ the second page if you wish to remain blissfully ignorant until the final moments. By the way, if I had known that you could win a Pulitzer for writing about fashion, I might have thought about J-school instead of law school. Oh, well, too late now, because the Pulitzer committee certainly isn't going to consider my Internet ramblings. Also, one of the reasons I really enjoy PR is because the contestants actually know what they are doing when they compete as opposed to most of the other reality shows. Don't get me wrong, I watch and love an embarrassingly large number of shows where I can gape in horror at the ridiculousness of humanity. The cast here have actually, at some point, made a garment, know how to sew, know how to pick fabrics, know how a model should walk, etc. And even though the challenges are often totally absurd, each person actually produces something that a model can wear (except maybe with that teensy ass baring dress Zulema made and then blamed the model's "big" butt). So, until the big fix tonight, try to stave off the withdrawal cravings by snooping around the official website where there are contestant bios, blogs (Tim Gunn's blog from Season 2 rocked! I'm a little bit in love with him.) and big pictures of Heidi Klum not pregnant this season. I'll be back with episode recaps later in the week!! Tuesday, July 11, 2006 I have a friend who is the makeup Anti-Me. By this I mean that she has the exact opposite coloring from me. I am pale, rosy and blonde with light eyes, and she has dark brown hair and eyes, in addition to olive skin. She is also tall and wears heels, which makes me look like a member of the Lollipop Guild when I stand next to her in flats, but I digress. Therefore, every cosmetic color that looks good on her makes me look like death warmed over or like I am about to join the circus. We love to shop for makeup, and often use the same products in different shades. We get a big laugh out of that. We are also huge nerds. But there is one color that resides in both our makeup bags. Oh, yeah, FYI, she has a perfectly neat and gleaming all-white bathroom where cosmetics are stored alphabetically, whereas mine are relegated to an old makeup bag on top of my dresser. See what I'm saying? The Anti-Me. Vincent Longo's Eyeliner in Silvertaupe. We figured this out by accident once at the Barney's in LA. Anti-Me brought me there because she was obsessed with the Vincent Longo foundation. Upon trying it out, the makeup artist also used a pencil as an eyeliner and to fill in my brows. I was quite taken with this product (apparently I also was British, soon I will start saying that I "fancy" things) and immediately added it to my growing heap of purchasables. But Anti-Me was looking at it curiously. She then fished around in her purse and produced the same pencil, saying that she bought it the week before. The makeup artist recognized her, that's when you know you have an addiction, by the way. She looked at the artist and said, "But you used it as a lip liner on me!" Apparently, the pencils do double as both eye, lip and brow pencils (okay, triple). I tried it on my lips later that day as an experiment and I looked like I had just visited the mortician. See? The Anti-Me. Anyways, I have continued to use the pencil as a perfect everyday neutral eyeliner, both by itself or topped with a variety of brownish eyeshadows. But if you run towards the Anti-Me colors, maybe try it as a lip liner. Oh, we also never went for the same guys. It's a very symbiotic relationship. I've joined in on the Great Eyeliner Hunt, started by JilBean. Look for more reviews of eyeliners to come, or check out an old one of mine on the Gel Eyeliner by Bobbi Brown. photos courtesy of Jilbean and Sephora.com Monday, July 10, 2006 The National Zoo's baby panda Tai Shan (nee, and heretofore referred to as, Butterstick) turned 1!! Okay, fine. This has nothing to do with beauty. But look how CUTE he is!!! And as a good Washingtonian, I cannot allow this event to go by without remarking upon it. B'Stick got some sweet birthday swag, including a wading pool and a giant fruitsicle made from fruit juice, yams, carrots and apples. (He skipped the cake given to the crowd. Too many empty carbs.) If you are a total sucker for that sweet baby panda face like me, there are lots of pictures, videos and articles available here at the Washington Post. Screw China! There is no way we are giving him back. So what if it causes World War III? photo courtesy of the WashingtonPost.com Friday, July 07, 2006 When I was down in Georgetown at Bluemercury buying my 8,000th pink lip gloss (which is still totally LOVE, so it was worth it) I snagged a sample of the NARS Monoi Body Glow II. It was an impulse request. I read in one of the three thousand magazines I go through every month that the Body Glow is this oil that is supposed to smell fantastic and be a great moisturizer which gives you that island-girl-beachy-sheen. And I'm hooked, because I'm all for something that makes me look like I come from an island. Strike that ... make that an island more tropical than Manhattan. So I tried it out. I was very concerned that the oil would just make me look kind of greasy and shiny, which would not be a good look for me. But it really didn't. I used a small amount and it sinks right in. In fact, I wish it gave me a little more sheen than it did. The best part? THE FREAKING SMELL! Yuhhh-my. The Sephora website gives the whole diatribe about the plant it comes from and gardenias, blah blah. It is really nice. And it actually works well with the new Trish McEvoy perfume. Score one for me! I never believed that I would be able to be someone who mixed frangrances. I typically go with Eau de Lubriderm over everything else. The only problem is that the smell is so tropical and beachy, I was actually worried that my co-workers would glare at me and say that I was really taking the recess hours a little too far. Then again, I try not to let them get that close to me. photo courtesy of Sephora.com Thursday, July 06, 2006 I think I might have a serious problem. I am totally addicted to lip glosses. No joke, I have about five in my purse right now, all in various shades of pink. But they are so pretty!! And I do like variety. And as far as addictions go, this has to be better than say... meth. Or cookies. So my latest conquest is Trish McEvoy's lip gloss in Shimmery Pink. Sampled at Bergdorf's Trish counter, my mother commented that it didn't really look like there was anything on. I responded by piling on a little more before heading out to be tortured by the salesman at Bendel's. Later, when we did the post-mortem on his ineptitude and dearth of knowledge about buffering solutions, my mother remarks, "Oh, that lip gloss is actually really pretty." Done. Now I had to have it. Fast forward to a quick spin around Blue Mercury in Georgetown and it was mine, all mine! Insert evil cackle here. The gloss is nice because in comes in the small tube, easily slipped into the tiniest of purses (FYI, I have no medium sized purses. Only huge and tiny. Go figure.) has a nice brush and smells kind of like aspartame. Yummy. One swipe delivers a nice sheer pinky color with silver shimmer that gives a perfect counterbalance to a darker eye, while two swipes produced a slightly disco ball/roller girl effect. Here's to hoping that I can hold back from future indulgences. photo courtesy of Nordstrom.com CLIPPING YOUR FINGERNAILS ON THE METRO!!!! Oh yes, that's right. This morning on the metro to work I sat in front of a man CLIPPING HIS FINGERNAILS. Right there in the seat. I almost hurled all over him. But that would also fall under the category of things which are not okay. insert shuddering and dry heaving here. Seriously, just thinking about it gives me the heebie-jeebies. I need a shower. Wednesday, July 05, 2006 I swore to all that is holy to me (namely, caffeine and Prada) that we would only go to the beauty section as I wanted to try out the Laura Mercier Tinted Moisturizer. We were both a little tired, hungry and be-blistered. Nota bene on foundation for me: I currently use Vincent Longo Healthy Fluid Foundation in Porcelain. They played a mean trick a few years back where it disappeared from the market to "reformulate" and I had to try other foundations. But it's back, baby! However, when summer rolls around, I find myself longing for something light and easy, hence the desire to check out the Tinted Moisturizer. And I hear it's all the rage in Paris. So we roll into Bendel's and I am immediately struck by how much a beauty floor resembles (at least what I imagine) a marketplace in Marrakesh with vendors reaching and jumping out from every direction trying to lure you into their stall. So I sidle up to the Laura Mercier counter and start poking around. Then the sales guy sidles up to me. I ask about the moisturizer and he looks like he has just won the lottery. "Let me put some on you!" he squeals. I glance at my mother, and reply, "Well, aren't you pretty hungry Mom? I don't want to take too long." As I say this I shoot her my best "let's get out of here!!" vibe. She says, "We can stay if you want to." So much for mother-daughter mental telepathy. So I sit. The guy starts rubbing my face with cleansers and gook, trying to sell me some primer with his totally rehearsed spiel. I notice an older saleswoman peering over his shoulder as he smears. Great...a newbie. He lauches into the ad copy on the Perfecting Water (didn't Nature perfect water on it's own? What with the two hydrogens and the oxygen, there's not that much room for anything else). And he's telling me that it's pH balanced. Okay, now I get snarky. "What's the pH?" I inquire. He looks totally befuddled, but regains his composure. Okay, now I'm super-snarky and I whip out my totally obnoxious science nerd skilz. "No, I mean, what is the pH? It's a number that describes the acid or base quality of the substance." Pause. "Weeeell...when your skin is not pH balanced, the water will put it back in balance." I'm guessing my chemistry professor might have a few things to say about that one. Then he puts on the Tinted Moisturizer. I glance over at my mother, who has a grimace on her face that I haven't seen since I tried to go to school looking like Alicia Silverstone in Clueless. He hands me a mirror. GOOD GOD! I look ill. No, seriously, pale and clammy looking. Like I had the stomach flu. He tried to show me that it would be better with a little blush (picking a pooey brown color that my mother later remarked made me look "dirty") but to no avail. I hightailed it out of there with the "I need to see it in natural light" excuse. Ugh! Back to the Longo counter I go! I'm considering experimenting with the Longo Dew Finish foundation version...has anyone tried? Monday, July 03, 2006 Bergdorf Goodman's is a distinctly New York institution. As far as I know, it never branched out a la Barney's (LA, Chicago, Boston and a multitude of Co-Op stores) or Bendel's (anyone remember the outposts in Chicago and some mall in New Jersey? Anyone?). And as such, it has a certain je ne sais quoi air about it. Oh, wait, I do know what it is. That's the air of superiority. And inaccessibility. But...they've got the goods. I was browsing in the handbag section waiting for my mom to meet me when I witnessed a young girl, all of thirteen, walk directly up to a sales woman and ask, "Is there more to the store?" The woman shot her a withering look that would have stopped Medusa in her tracks. The girl pressed on, "I mean, are there clothes here?" At this point I feared for this girl's safety. As she opened her mouth again, the salewoman cut her off, "What are you looking for?" She replied meekly "Contemporary." The woman sighed, "Five," pointed to the general direction of the escalator and turned her back on the poor girl whose mother rushed over as they scurried off. That is what you must be prepared for if you want to shop at Bergdorf's. You must show no fear, as the sales staff can smell fear like cheap drugstore perfume and will pounce instantly. Walk tall and carry a big designer purse. After a romp in the shoe department, my mother and I descended to the beauty level as my mother swears that some salesMAN (later, at the counter at BG, the sales girl would speak very nastily about male makeup artists. I'm totally Switzerland in that debate. Color me neutral.) at Bloomie's sold her the wrong colors at Trish McEvoy. She made a beeline for the counter to rectify the mistake. As she told her tale of woe and shades too dark lipliner to the sales girl, I perused the merch and was particularly taken by the perfume section. Now, some of you may remember that I am really bad with stinky perfumes. But I began sniffing, and found one that I actually liked! It was Fragrance #4, Gardenia and White Musk. It is really light and floral, but not in an-old-lady-garden-smell (which is what I usually associate with florals). It also reminds me of the original Marc Jacobs perfume, but mercifully lacks that overdone-to-death aspect. Also, when I shoved my arm into my boyfriend's nose to get his take on the fragrance, he said he liked it. "Very clean," he nodded to me and my mother. This is totally something he is aping from some boyfriend handbook, as "clean" is an adjective typically reserved for socks worn only one day or something which was recently doused with Formula 409. But it's nice that he is so supportive. The nicest part? I was able to buy a small, travel sized bottle which, if I decide I like the scent, can refill from a bigger bottle, purchased at a later date. Kudos to Trish! This works out well for me. I also tried a cute peachy lip gloss from Trish, but cannot for the life of me remember what it's name was. I'm off today to try to track it down at Bluemercury in Georgetown (Hey, America's birthday can sort of be like my birthday too). Tomorrow...Adventures in Beauty, where I submit to a makeup application by a newbie makeup artist at Bendel's...the horrors!!

A Most Incredible Woman Outrageous Ideas on Sex Before Marriage Series by Marijo Phelps 3/04/2010 / Family "I've been pregnant 99 months" remarked the white headed woman sitting next to me on the screened in porch in her red zipper up the front house dress. I sat there processing the comment. OK, do the math. If you have had 11 children multiply that by 9 and you get 99 months. My friend, Mick, was 3rd from the end of the list. The first one died when he was 3 days old because Bernice has measles when she was expecting him. After Carl, the last one, the doctor told her it best be the last or she wouldn't live to raise them. I had no clue on this visit that this most incredible woman would soon become my mother-in-law. She worked very hard on various dairies all her life. Some they owned and some they rented. She was permanently bent over at an angle to her walker and could no longer stand straight upright. That didn't slow her down a bit. Her homemade rolls were something just short of heaven. And her son, well I was appreciating him more and more each day of our friendship. We were looking at a family photo album when I found a photo of Mick as a toddler, "boy, he sure was skinny back then!" Bernice didn't miss a beat and with a straight face that I soon came to love said "yes, I was still nursing Edith then so when Mick was born he nursed off his dad." That was supposed to explain why he was a thin little boy. The husky guy in the kitchen by the coffee pot had changed a bit over the ensuing years and I couldn't hide a grin. It soon became our routine to go and see Bernice each Sunday after church. We took a meal with us to share with her and she loved to tell tales about her "tribe" of kids. It was during these times I got glimpses into my friend's life growing up. The time they had black birds for dinner, the outdoor plumbing at a time when most of America had indoor, dead eye Bernice shooting copperheads and draping them over the fence to warn the others off. Then I knew that the killing of copperheads was a family trait that Mick had obviously inherited. All of the siblings lived within two hours of mama's place in Brushy Creek and we often got to see different ones on Sunday, along with nieces and nephews of Mick's. Some of them were closer to his age than his siblings. This was quite the family! Our visits were hot, sticky and the most enjoyable time I could imagine. Mom had a tiny air conditioner in the kitchen but we sat on the screened in porch more of the time. Over the weeks the Lord deepened my friendship with her son and we began to seek His input on a relationship that included eventual plans for marriage. God is SO good! LASCIVIOUSNESS or DEFRAUDING Continued Sex is any physical involvement before marriage: heavy "making out", petting or intercourse. As singles we can be complete only in Jesus. Marriage does NOT complete us. Our companion is to accent our life and ministry. What Happens When You Defraud? Proverbs 15:32 (New King James Version) 32 He who disdains instruction despises his own soul, But he who heeds rebuke gets understanding. The one who lacks discipline despises himself/herself. People get hard hearts because of guilt. The opposite of guilt is innocence. The spirit or righteous part of a man desires the gal to say NO. the flesh gets mad but later is thankful. Godly relationships are built on trust and honesty then love. A. Lasciviousness/defrauding reduces intimacy in communication especially in spiritual areas and matters. B. Lasciviousness/defrauding strips one of their self control C. Lasciviousness/defrauding strips one of their power of concentration D. Lasciviousness/defrauding destroys creativity E. Lasciviousness/defrauding produces strife, lust, arguments James 4:1-2 (New King James Version)Pride Promotes Strife 1 Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? 2 You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet[a] you do not have because you do not ask. Some of these writings are based on a lecture series called Sex and Dating by Dale Crall and are used with his permission. Thank you Dale! There are many more articles in this series if you enjoyed this one you might want to read the others! (C) Marijo Phelps all rights reserved. Use with proper credits. Saved by His grace in 1974, from 9 years of professing atheism into His loving arms. RN for 23 years, missionary with YWAM then statistical analyst for Every Home for Christ over 9 years. Living with my husband in the middle of a mountain meadow. GRIN! Wanting to spread the good news

There’s probably no good way to ease into the films of Takashi Miike, at least in the days before the prolific genre maestro started varying his extreme cinema provocations with offbeat experiments like the splatter-musical The Happiness Of The Katakuris or Sukiyaki Western Django. But I’ll never forget the odd sensation of seeing my first Miike, Ichi The Killer, at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival, where promotional barf bags were handed out in a cheeky effort to calibrate expectations. Though I rarely walk out on movies, the scheduling conflicts at film festivals make it easy to bail on one screening to make another, and the first 15 minutes of Ichi The Killer tested my flight-or-fight instinct like no other movie I can recall. It was purely a visceral response: How much more of this mayhem could I physically handle without, well, reaching for the barf bag? Let’s set the scene: One of the very first scenes has a pimp viciously pummeling a prostitute in the face and raping her while outside, on the balcony, a man in a black latex bodysuit masturbates. Out of an animated puddle of semen emerges the title: Ichi The Killer. But that’s just an amuse-bouche for the main course, an extended torture sequence that—at the time, anyway, before the debased likes of A Serbian Film and Martyrs—presses at the boundaries of representation. Acting on a rumor over who was responsible for his boss’ disappearance, Kakihara (Tadanobu Asano), a notoriously sadistic yakuza enforcer, gets his hands on Suzuki (Susumu Terajima), a gang leader thought to be bitter over a dispute in the pornography business. Wanting answers—and also wanting, just as fervently, the opportunity to dish out creative forms of abuse—Kakihara suspends Suzuki’s body from ceiling with giant hooks embedded into his shoulders, back, and legs, which hold him in a position not unlike Tom Cruise during the Langley break-in in Mission: Impossible. When that doesn’t get him the information he wants, Kakihara whips out a thin metal skewer and threads it through his left cheek and tongue. And failing that, he picks up a burbling pan of oil and douses Suzuki’s back and head until the skin starts peeling off. The shrimp tempura will have to wait. There are two possible reactions to this sequence the way Miike stages it. The first, obviously, is revulsion. There’s only a tiny subset of people who would even consider subjecting themselves to images that extreme—and within that, only the stout-hearted (or thoroughly desensitized) will emerge unshaken. The second, believe it or not, is laughter, and it’s this reaction that most surprised me when I was watching the sequence unfold—and it’s what ultimately kept me in my seat. Time and again, Miike passes a threshold in Ichi The Killer where the grotesque becomes comical, and the extreme becomes cartoony and ridiculous, a joke unto itself. Based on Hideo Yamamoto’s manga, Koroshiya 1, the film is an experiment in bringing manga-style violence and sexuality to live-action without much modification. And when human skin is made to stretch like Mr. Fantastic, the elasticity of the medium itself is tested. Asano’s Kakihara stands as one of the great modern villains, a sadomasochist who’s concerned less with the business of being a yakuza than the pleasure of dishing out (and receiving) the bloody retribution that comes with the job. When his mentor Anjo goes missing, along with over 3 million yen, Kakihara reacts with a strange ambivalence: He’s sad that Anjo, the only man who truly understood how best to torture him, is gone, but he clearly relishes the opportunity to interrogate potential suspects. And if they happen to be innocent, all the better: That only means more rivals he can merrily escort to the brink of death and beyond. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that kicking the hornet’s nest might be an existential threat to his own clan’s business, because his business is violence. With his shock of blond hair and the Joker-like smile created by permanent slits extending from the corners of his mouth, Kakihara gets the unforgettable introduction he deserves: As in his three increasingly outrageous Dead Or Alive films, which sandwich Ichi The Killer, Miike focuses on a showdown of opposing but equally titanic forces. The Ichi of the title, played by Nao Ohmori, has none of Kakihara’s zeal for ultra-violence, but if anything, is capable of doing more horrific destruction. Emotionally damaged and highly suggestible—he tends to sob meekly before his switchblade boots rise in a roundhouse kick to the jugular—Ichi acts as a kind of Manchurian candidate for yakuza boss Jijii (Shinya Tsukamoto), who uses implanted memories to rouse him into action. When Ichi attacks, the mess of body parts and innards is so absurdly grotesque that his clean-up crew has as much blood to Swiffer off the ceiling as the floor. He’s the innocent and passive counterpart to Kakihara’s licentious mischief-maker, a killer less by nature than nurture. Along with the byzantine plotting—another carry-over from manga, perhaps—Miike includes the flashbacks, fake memories, and explanations that account for what drives these men to such extremes. He did the same thing more effectively in his 1999 film Audition, which carries a measure of sympathy—or at least understanding—of a lonely young woman whose torture of a middle-aged widower with needle and piano wire comes rooted in her own abuse. Generally, these accountings are unnecessary and reductively pop-psychological; we don’t need anyone at the end of Psycho to explain Norman Bates’ behavior when Anthony Perkins’ performance and the revelation about his mother do the job. But Miike approaches these issue from a fresh angle: In Audition, the victim’s deception in holding a fake “audition” in order to find a love connection makes him partly responsible for the blowback that follows. Here, Kakihara and Ichi are prisoners to surrogate fathers that treat them (or have treated them, in the former case) like pitbulls trained to attack. The big difference, beyond their temperaments, is that with the loss of his mentor, Kakihara is a dog off the chain. Movies like Ichi The Killer cemented Miike’s reputation for creative torture well before the likes of Saw and Hostel came along, but it’s his sense of humor that sells these scenes as much as the imaginative torments visited upon the human body. The running joke of Ichi The Killer is that Kakihara and Ichi are so vicious in their methods that even hardcore yakuza thugs turn their heads in disgust. While Kakihara manages to hold Anjo’s clan together under his leadership—partly out of fear, and likely also because it’s better to have him as friend than adversary—his henchmen are inclined to wait outside when things get really ugly. Sometimes they don’t get the chance, like when he decides, in an impromptu gesture of repentance, to restore his honor by severing his own tongue on the spot (and carrying out a bloody, mush-mouthed cell phone conversation afterwards). Miike’s mix of the gruesome and the outrageously funny reaches its peak when Kakihara’s extra-wide maw gets employed in a way that’s fine for a Warner Bros. cartoon, but utterly disgusting in live action: In retrospect, my initial response to Ichi The Killer seems correct: The film operates like its own S&M session, finding that threshold where pain becomes pleasure—and the seemingly gratuitous becomes art. Miike is not just pushing the limits but extending them, and with his best films, like Ichi The Killer, he seems keenly attuned to what his audience can take and what more he can press them to accept. “There’s no love in your violence,” Kakihara gently informs a hapless assailant before grinding his clenched fist like a cheese grater. Miike does his violence with conviction. May 24: Vampire's Kiss June 14: UHF July 5: The Host

I've customarily done in-progress recaps of "DWTS" as it airs, but my schedule and energy level just haven't made that possible lately. I'll show Len Goodman what hectic looks like! I did watch the show, though, and posted a brief note on Twitter and FB. Some longer notes, as well as comments on my Monday comedies, after the jump. For me, "Dancing With the Stars" has settled into a three-way race among Gilles Marini, Shawn Johnson and Lil' Kim, and my two favorites are Gilles and Kim. Melissa Rycroft has gotten a good ride out of her long legs and her "Bachelor" history (referenced yet again last night in the ring conversation), but I don't think she's in the league of the other three. As the judges noted, she lacks some passion, and last night would have been a perfect opportunity to show it. Johnson is hampered on the hotter dancers by her youth and the show's wish to keep her dances "age appropriate," so Melissa could have made more points by steaming things up -- and couldn't quite do it. Still, Gilles, Len's "hectic" comments notwithstanding, is a dazzler, and I really like Lil' Kim, so I'd be very happy with them in the finals. (Wouldn't kick, though, if Shawn got there.) So where does that leave everyone else? Ty Murray continues to look uncomfortable on the dance floor; he has his moments but I don't think he'd be too upset if his run ended. Lawrence Taylor had one of his better nights, but he's still not in league with the big three. Steve-O isn't a good dancer, and he also looked ill at ease last night. That said, he's not a 4; that's just Len trying to run him off. Long before Steve-O performed, I predicted he would get straight 5's just because he's Steve-O; he managed to just about hit that total with a 16, although the individual scores were crazily divergent -- 7 from Carrie Ann, 4 from Len, 5 from Bruno. Of course, this was one of those nights when Len had his crankypants on very tight. As for Chuck Wicks, well, once again I had to look at a contestant list before realizing he was still on the show. He is very lucky to have girlfriend Julianne Hough as a dance partner, but he is thoroughly unmemorable. As for my comedies, I like the way "How I Met Your Mother" is bringing Barney's love for Robin closer to center stage. And we got another example last night of how close in personality -- and therefore well matched -- Barney and Robin really are, with both the look at Robin's sad dating life and her sleeping with Ted's assistant. (BTW, I remember some other show where a character had a superfluous assistant but am blank on which one. Help!). Good work by both of them. Nice way to get Lily out of the show so Alyson Hannigan could have her baby. And I guess I can live better with their not trying that hard anymore to hide Cobie Smulders's pregnancy, than with elaborate attempts to keep it covered. The stuff at Marshall/Barney's office was all right -- liked Fantasy Guy showing up as a Robin date -- but not paid off that well. And the Ted-procrastinating storyline was just another demonstration of how uninteresting Ted can be. He's the Chuck Wicks of "HIMYM." "Two and a Half Men," meanwhile, still makes me laugh. Sometimes it's at very stupid things, like Jake and the toilet paper, or Alan testing his watch in the water pitcher. But laugh I do. And the payoff to Chelsea's descriptions of her nightmarish mom was effective and suitably brief; if we had actually seen the dinner with Evelyn, it would have been overkill after the blast of lines when Charlie brings Chelsea's mom home. But here's my beef with "Men": Does anyone else find Jennifer Taylor's Chelsea a bad fit for the show? I keep thinking that she looks like the kind of woman Charlie would want, and therefore willing to think about settling down with. But she doesn't seem to be acting in the same show as everyone else; her line readings seem to take things more seriously than the dialogue calls for. I suppose she's meant to provide a measure of realism for Charlie -- a departure from farcical past relationships -- but it puts the show off balance.

*How does the song go? If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with? That’s probably what one woman thought when a “Kiss Kam” caught her live and her date refused to play along so she kissed the stranger sitting next to her. Well, hello. Oh forget the introductions! It’s safe to assume her date didn’t end well. It all went down at a Knicks game on Thursday at New York’s Madison Square Garden. A girl has to think fast in situations like this and needless to say, this girl represented! Read more at EURThisNthat.

Jeffrey Sauerbry found Not Guilty in death of door-to-door survey worker Summer Shipp Jeffrey Sauerbry is found not guilty in death of door-to-door survey worker Summer Shipp Glenn E. Rice, The Kansas City Star PUBLICATION: Kansas City Star, The (MO) DATE: April 21, 2016 An Independence jury returned a not guilty verdict Thursday in the case of a man accused of murdering a door-to-door market researcher in 2004. Prosecutors had accused Jeffrey S. Sauerbry of killing 54-year-old Summer Shipp, dismembering her and dumping her body over a bridge. After the verdict Thursday, Sauerbry cried and hugged his attorney. Sauerbry is already serving a life sentence for another murder. Brandy Shipp, the victim’s daughter, looked straight ahead and showed no emotion. She left the courtroom immediately. The jury had deliberated about 90 minutes Thursday, hours after hearing about an alleged confession critical to the prosecution. Earlier on Thursday, jurors heard from a witness how Sauerbry revealed a secret — that he had killed Shipp years earlier — to a friend as they surfed chat rooms and online dating sites in the friend’s home. The defense, however, attacked the credibility of that friend and stressed the lack of any physical evidence linking Sauerbry to Shipp. At the end of the two-day trial at the Jackson County Courthouse Annex in Independence, lawyers on the two sides used their closing arguments to paint vastly different pictures for jurors. Prosecutors called Sauerbry a cold, calculated and premeditated murderer. “Years had passed, and he thought he was free and clear,” said Jeremy Baldwin, an assistant Jackson County prosecutor. “Now she’s crying out for justice.” Sauerbry clearly was the last person Shipp was seen with that day, the prosecution said. After choking Shipp and dismembering her body, Sauerbry drove 13 minutes from the house he shared with his mother and dumped the body over a bridge, Baldwin said. It was a miracle that Shipp’s remains were recovered years later, he said. Prosecutors charged Sauerbry in 2012, shortly after his conviction in a 1998 murder case. Testimony in the Shipp case began Wednesday. By all accounts, Summer Shipp was a loving friend and mother. “She was her family’s strength for all these years, and it was only matched by Summer’s fight in death,” Baldwin told jurors. “It’s time to stand up for Summer Shipp. It’s time for justice to be served.” Brandy Shipp watched the trial and held the hand of one of her supporters. She lowered her head when Baldwin showed jurors a photo of her mother’s skull. The verdict was disappointing but not a complete surprise, she said. “We all knew going into this case that it would be highly circumstantial, so we all had our doubts about it,” Shipp said. “We would have liked to see justice for my mother. But fortunately he is already doing life without parole in prison for another murder, so he will never be able to do this to another person, and for that we are thankful.” Defense attorney John Picerno had told the jury that prosecutors didn’t have enough evidence, their key witness was not believable and his testimony could not be trusted. There was no physical evidence — no hair, blood or clothing fibers — to support prosecutors’ claim that Sauerbry choked Summer Shipp and dismembered her body before discarding it, he said. “We don’t know if it was a homicide. We don’t know how she was killed,” Picerno said. It was left to jurors to decide whether they believed what a witness told them happened one winter night in late 2007 or early 2008 in the basement of Darrel Wilson’s Independence house. Sauerbry and Wilson, longtime friends, were looking at the Internet, hoping to find women, Wilson testified Thursday. At one point, Wilson went upstairs for a diet soda. When he came back about 10 minutes later, he saw Sauerbry looking at a website featuring a picture of Shipp, the Kansas City woman who had vanished in December 2004 while conducting door-to-door market research in Sauerbry’s Independence neighborhood. Police soon launched a massive search for her, but results had eluded them and Shipp’s friends until fishermen found her skull in the Little Blue River nearly three years later. Wilson testified that when he saw Sauerbry staring at Shipp’s photo, he asked, “What are you looking at?” Sauerbry answered that he had a little story to tell, Wilson testified. The woman had come to his house, Sauerbry said, and knocked on the front door. He lured her to another entrance, strangled her, cut her up and put her body in trash bags because he thought she was a CIA operative. Asked by an assistant prosecutor his reaction to this news, Wilson said he told Sauerbry he didn’t want to hear any more and changed the subject. He later told his sister about the conversation, Wilson testified, but did not tell anyone else until police detectives came to him about the case. Picerno attacked Wilson by talking about his criminal history and by pointing out discrepancies between what he told investigators and what he said in two depositions. When Picerno pressured Wilson about the inconsistencies in his statements, Wilson picked up a deposition transcript that had been sitting in front of him and threw it down. “By God, he killed that woman,” Wilson exclaimed. “He chopped her up and put her in garbage bags.” During questioning by assistant Jackson County prosecutor Traci Stansell, Wilson said he gained nothing by agreeing to testify. The prosecution never presented physical evidence linking Sauerbry to Shipp’s death. Picerno did not call any witnesses for the defense. After the verdict, he said there was never enough evidence against Sauerbry and that was why he was found not guilty. “The alleged confession to Darrel Wilson was factually incorrect, and that’s their problem,” he said. “At the end of the day, he (Wilson) was factually incorrect on when and how it may have taken place, and in my mind that’s what happened.” Glenn E. Rice: 816-234-4341, @GRicekcstar Ian Cummings: 816-234-4633, @Ian__Cummings

Kuldeepak 29th May 2017 Written Episode Update Kuldeepak 29th May 2017 Written Episode, Written Update on TellyUpdates.com Vidya is watering the plants in garden. Chiragh says mummy play with me. Vidya says I have a lot of work. Chiragh says whom should I play with then? Vidya says let me make breakfast for everyone then I will play. He says no I want to play right now. I listened to you last night. I let you check my head. Vidya says I asked you to stay quite about it. Forget that I ever checked your head. He says what are you hiding from me? Vidya says you won’t talk on this topic after today. Chiragh says you lied to me. Vidya says what lie? He says that you love me. Vidya says that is the truth. Every mom loves her child.. Chiragh says then why are you not playing with me? Chiragh says I know you don’t wanna play with me. I am going to play with papa. He goes inside. Vidya serves everyone Vidya takes Diwan’s tea. She hears Diwan saying chiragh leave me. Save me. She drops the tea. When Vidya comes to room she sees chiragh throttling Diwan. Diwan i saying help me. Chiragh leave me. Vidya recalls when chiragh killed yashodin. Vidya shoves chiragh away. She says stay away from him. He is devil. don’t go near him. Diwan picks up Churagh. He says you shoved him so harshly. We were playing. What is the matter? She says I felt like.. Chiragh says mummy keeps scolding me. Diwan says mummy really loves you. Diwan says she can’t scold you. Chiragh says she scolded me when I asked her to play with me. And now she is asking you not to play with me either. Diwan says you were saying he is devil? Yes he is devil. He laughs. Diwan says its his age. Vidya says I was worried. Diwan says we were just playing. You thought he will actually kill me? Diwan hugs Vidya. He says I really liked though. I heard when a woman becomes a mother her child become first priority and papa’s love abates. But I am glad to see you still love. Chiragh says and how much you both love me? Diwan says this little. Chiragh says I won’t talk to you. Diwan hugs him and says we love you so much. They both play with each other. Vidya says chiragh is diwan’s life. When he gets to know what is inside Chiragh he will be so broken. How will he face the reality. Diwan says let me go to office now. Chiragh says see mummy I won. No one can beat me. He laughs. Vidya says enough. Stop laughing. Chiragh says you won’t let me laugh now? I won’t talk to you. Vidya hugs him and says sorry. Chiragh says I don’t want to talk to you. Vidya says friends.. he says I have only one friend. Bulbul, I will talk to her. I will go to school. Vidya recalls when he injured Yash. Vidya says you won’t go to school today. We will have fun at home. Chiragh says no I will go to school. Vidya says you wont go to school. He says I will. Vidya says you won’t. Why don’t you listen to me. She locks him in the store. Chiragh says mummy what are you doing. Please let me go to school. I will never annoy you. Please let open the door mummy. Vidya says how can I send you to school. Your truth has tied up my hands. I can’t leave you alone anywhere. Everyone is on breakfast table. Paresh says what do you think about our new project diwan? Diwan says what project. Paresh says Vidya you didn’t tell him about our new project? Where are you lost? Diwan says yes she is so lost. When I and chiragh were playing she thought he would actually kill me. Vidya says in heart how can I tell him the truth. Paresh says let me tell you. Our new project is launching chiragh enterprises. Bhagat says thats such a good news. Manjila says where is chiragh? Doesn’t he have to go to school. Vidya says he must be here and there. Shanaya says I haven’t seen him since morning. Everyone asks vidya where is chiragh? Vidya says he was arguing a lot since morning so I.. Shanya suddenly screams. Everyone asks what happened. She points at chiragh. Chiragh is standing there with a snake. Everyone is scared and screams. Diwan says chiragh leave it. Vidya says in heart he has no fear. Chiragh throws the snake away. Diwan hugs him. He says are you okay? did it bite you? Chiragh says the snake was coming in from the window so I stopped it. Alpesh says wow you are so brave. Superman. Bhagat says yes chiragh is so brave. Vidya sees red light in chiragh’s eyes. Precap-Vidya says to Manjila yashodin said if a devil comes inside a human he can’t live in society. Vidya says what should his mother do? Manjila says the mother should kill her motherhood to save the society. Update Credit to: Atiba

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By: Megan Munroe Published by: Turner Publishing Publication date: March 21, 2011 Ok, How much do you love that title??? Megan Munroe, author of Bitch, Please is dropping by to talk about nice girls in popular fiction and has kindly offered up two copies of her book for you! Stick around til the end of the post for your chance to win. And now, here's Megan.... Lessons from Fiction’s Most Famous “Nice Girls” Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures,” and as the founder of The Nice Girls Rule Movement and author of “Bitch? Please! How Nice Girls Can Succeed in a Bitch’s World”, I wonder if Mr. Emerson would agree that the “nice girl” heroine in fiction doesn’t get the kudos she deserves in real life. Fables promote nice girls finishing first and praise them for morality and valiance, but reality applauds the opposite. In fiction, like Cinderella, we see the good girl getting the man, the castle, and the sexy glass heels, but the reality of our culture’s current climate is that the evil stepsister seems to be getting what the nice girl deserves. If Ralph was right and fiction does reveal truth, then let’s celebrate some of fiction’s most famous nice girls and encourage each other to believe that the beauty of behaving well does have a happy ending. Jane Bennet | Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is the classic tale of unsuspecting love and fairytale endings. And despite the wide variety of lovable and intricate characters, the “nice girl” among them would have to be Jane Bennet. While her mild temperament and sweet-to-a-fault disposition almost cost her the love of Mr. Bingley, we were never happier for her when he finally did pop the question. Without conniving or gold digging, Jane Bennet reveals that you can have it all while keeping your heart in the right place. Anne Shirley | Anne of Green Gables Anne Shirley isn’t your typical nice girl. An orphan who grew up in a world where she was considered daft, Anne was often overlooked and misunderstood. A spirited redhead with a temper to match, she gets into trouble at school, irks her adoptive mother, and of course butts heads with her ultimate love, Gilbert Blythe. But her fiery attitude isn’t rooted in meanness. She desperately wants to be “angelically good,” but her vivid imagination always gets the better of her. An academic whiz, bosom friend, and kindred spirit, Anne Shirley is a model nice girl who teaches us you don’t have to be like everyone else to follow your dreams. Lily Owens | The Secret Life of Bees She may have accidentally killed her mother at the age of four, but that doesn’t mean that her dark past has any bearing on her bright future. In this story a fourteen-year-old white girl begins pondering the prevalent racism in rural South Carolina and progressively learns that love transcends skin color. Instead of smoking cigarettes behind the outhouse or judging others based upon appearances, Lily blossoms into a graceful young woman, who can teach all nice girls a thing or two about accepting those who are different than you. Nancy Drew | The Nancy Drew Series Most young girls read a Nancy Drew mystery novel at one point in their lives. Ms. Drew is a squeaky-clean sleuth with a penchant for unveiling secrets and setting things straight. Motivated by exposing the truth, Nancy teaches us to trust our instincts and to never second-guess our intuition, even when it seems that no one takes us seriously. Georgia Walker | The Friday Night Knitting Club Georgia Walker proves to all nice girls that second chances are the ultimate saving grace. Founder of a knitting club and single mother to her daughter Dakota, Georgia invites and inspires women in her community to become active members of each other’s lives and promotes a sense of sisterhood that is rarely found among women in our culture. Backbiting, jealousy, and covetousness are nowhere to be found, and instead, a bond of women is formed while each character grows and learns from each other. Georgia, in the end, discovers that even when you think your world is falling apart you are really just beginning to truly live. Bella Swan | The Twilight Series Bella is an unlikely nice girl. A moody, withdrawn type who doesn’t play super nice with those whose blood doesn’t run cold, she still has certain attributes that lend themselves to the nice-girl lifestyle. First, she doesn’t sleep with her high school boyfriend. (A feat in today’s sexually charged culture.) Second, she doesn’t cuss or wear revealing clothing. Third, she doesn’t run around boasting about Edward’s undying love for her or his super-sweet set of wheels. She’s humble, to the point of self-deprecation, and endearingly awkward. She’s proof that you don’t have to party, sleep with the football team, or wear sexy duds to get the guy or to possess eternal love. Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan | The Help Returning home is never easy, but when you are an unmarried woman “along in years” returning to Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 1960’s it is borderline taboo. But Skeeter Phelan is a nice girl who isn’t afraid to talk about taboos. In this beautifuly written story, Skeeter embarks on a journey to unveil truths about an often-overlooked society of women who are treated unfairly by their racist employers. She teaches nice girls that even when you are met with resistance, doing the right thing is worth the uphill climb. Laura Ingalls | Little House on the Prairie The wild frontier’s ultimate nice girl, Laura Ingalls took “honor thy father and mother” quite literally. Quick to help and never one to willingly disobey “ma” and “pa”, Laura’s actions have us asking is she a little too nice for reality? Her nice girl status shines through as she deals with her own share of troubles with a certain big B, Nellie Oleson. Their interaction in three of the Prairie books teaches all nice girls that exercising grace in the midst of even the meanest girls can help you rise above even the lowest of punches. Katherine | The Taming of the Shrew At first glance Katherine may seem like the biggest B on the block, but we discover as the story unfolds that even mean girls have a nice girl underneath if they are willing to dig deep enough for it. Unhappiness rules Katherine, so she turns to a sharp tongue and ill temper to keep people away. This is the exact type of insecurity that every B suffers from. This mean-girl-gone-good teaches nice girls everywhere that you shouldn’t jump to conclusions about a shrew in your life, and instead try to peel back some of her prickly layers one page at a time. Hester Prynne | The Scarlet Letter I know, I know. How did Hester Prynne make the list? She committed adultery and was the object of scorn and shame in her community. Well, nice girls don’t always get it right the first time. Nice girls make mistakes too, but Hester learned how to love the lowly in spirit through her experience and spent her free time caring for the poor and bringing them food and clothing. In the end, she becomes a hero to the women in her community and a confidant for other women who have suffered similar injustices. There are so many wonderful examples of nice girls in literature, but these are just a few of my favorites. I encourage you to value and uplift the protagonist nice girl in your own life and to stay true to your own storyline, no matter what antagonist may be standing in your way. Megan Munroe is the author of Bitch, Please! How Nice Girls Can Succeed in a Bitch’s World, and founder of the Nice Girls Rule Movement. For more ideas on becoming the Nice Girl in your cast of characters visit: www.nicegirlsrule.blogspot.com or www.meganmunroeauthor.com. And now, for your chance to win, please leave a comment telling me who your favorite fictional nice girl is. My fave has got to be Evie from Paranormalcy ~ such a sweetheart and I just ADORED everything about her! The contest will run until March 31, two winners will be chosen at random and the books will be mailed directly from the publisher. Open to US residents 13 and older. Good luck!

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I love the ABC series Once Upon a Time and I am equally enjoying the spinoff series, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. I was a bit confused, however, when I saw the first promo for the latter series where mention is made of a “murderous Red Queen”. At first I assumed they had simply created another mash-up character because the more widely known Queen of Hearts had already appeared in the original Once Upon a Time series. I am sure I was not the only one who thought something along these lines. But it didn’t take much research for me to realize that Lewis Carroll had in fact created two different antagonistic queens, one of whom is almost always forgotten. The confusion most likely arises from the fact that a lot of people do not know there are two different Alice in Wonderland stories. The original and most renowned is titled Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This was published in 1865. Six years later Lewis Carroll published a sequel called Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (often shortened to just Through the Looking Glass). Unless I am mistaken, there are no characters which overlap, with the exception of Alice herself. The simple way of understanding the difference between these two novels is to realize that in the first, Alice enters Wonderland by falling down a rabbit hole. In the sequel, Alice enters another world by going through a looking glass. This other world, however, is not Wonderland, but rather a parallel or mirror image of it and is known as Looking-Glass Land. The Queen turned crimson with fury, and, after glaring at her for a moment like a wild beast, began screaming “Off with her head!” – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter VII But the Red Queen drew herself up rather stiffly, and said “Queens never make bargains.” – Through the Looking Glass, Chapter IX And so, even though the characters are not identical, some are very much similar. In Through the Looking Glass, the Red Queen is the counterpart to the first novel’s Queen of Hearts. The Queen of Hearts is part of a court of live playing cards. The Red Queen is part of what is basically a live chess set. Both queens are quite antagonistic, if not downright evil. Both are identified by the color red, which could be symbolic of many things, the most obvious being anger or fury. The Queen of Hearts is arguably most famous for inexplicably crying out Off with her head!. The Red Queen, on the other hand, is not famous at all. To be perfectly honest, she really doesn’t say or do anything that is particularly memorable. So what is the difference between the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts? First of all, the Queen of Hearts, both though illustrations and through the description of her in the novel, comes across as an older woman. The Red Queen very much seems younger and more seductive. The main difference, however, is that although both woman are presented as being rather nasty, the Queen of Hearts comes across as having an unbridled and unrelenting passion while the Red Queen is more cold and calculating (following the Through the Looking Glass chess motif). In Once Upon a Time and Once Upon a Time in Wonderland Once Upon a Time has visited Wonderland only a couple of times so far. During these visits, they have used Cora, the wicked mother of evil queen Regina, to portray the Queen of Hearts. Cora is played by Barbara Hershey. Season 2 of Once Upon a Time showed us how she arrived in Wonderland by being pushed through a magical looking glass by her angry daughter. Cora or the Queen of Hearts will appear in the spinoff series as well. The Red Queen in Once Upon a Time in Wonderland is played by Emma Rigby. Barbara Hershey is very, very beautiful. But her character is still an older woman and seems to resort, not so much to a blind fury and an “Off with her head!”, but rather to blindly ripping out the heart of anyone who gets in her way. Another similarity between Cora and Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts is that each lady has a rather easy going and longsuffering husband. Cora’s husband, Henry, is rather trampled upon but does his best to take care of their daughter, Regina. The King of Hearts is a rather quiet character and his main use is to go behind the Queen’s back and pardon her potential victims before their heads can be taken off. Emma Rigby, on the other hand, is very young, and she portrays a queen who is much more broody. She keeps much of her emotions to herself and concentrates on strategy. In Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, the Red Queen even lives in a castle which is shaped like a chess set (and apparently listens to opera???). The towers are made out of different pieces and the floor is like a black and white checker board. The chess motif continues, often antagonistically, with a continual back and forth between her and Jafar, as if they really were playing a two sided game which involves the fates of Alice and Cyrus. Season 1: Episode 3, Forget Me Not, revealed that the Red Queen, like the Queen of Hearts, arrived in Wonderland by going through a looking glass. Neither Once Upon a Time series is meant to portray particularly pure adaptations of old stories. But as far as Lewis Carroll’s Alice, Kitsis and Horowitz have done much more than many other screenwriters. How many people even knew there was another queen besides the Queen of Hearts? Some elements of the Red Queen have been included in several film portrayals of Alice in Wonderland, and there is a rather bizarre Red Queen-type character in Tim Burton’s 2010 movie. But so far that has been all. © 2013 LastRoseofSummer2 Sarahslivinsji on November 01, 2013: Wow! Thanks for the info! When I started watching the spin off series (in wonderland) I had no idea there were two queens! Lisa Stover from Pittsburgh PA on September 09, 2013: Interesting, I didn't realize there were two stories.

No products in the cart. COUPLE’S NAMES // Amber Abrahams & Micheal Timm WEDDING DATE // Natte Valleij – We chose the most beautiful private residence which is rented out for weddings. The venue includes an overgrown fairytale garden with the perfect spaces for an outdoor reception in front of the manor house, an area for post-reception welcoming drinks and snacks, and my favourite section which is a stunning spot for that dream long table next to the risen dance floor which is also used for speeches. We decided not to use the indoor area to keep with our garden-themed wedding, although that is also an option. Natte Valleij also offers 14 sleeper accommodation on site! GUEST TOTAL // We had a total of 65 guests at our wedding, which was a small number for us as more than half of those guests were my family alone! We kept the group to close friends and family which made the day so special and intimate. Courtney Gretchen Photography – Courtney is a friend of ours whose work we have always loved. Knowing our photographer allowed us to really have fun with the photos and let loose. It was extremely important to me that the majority of our photos were simply documentary style and not posed. BRIDE’S DRESS // I wore the most incredible Bo & Luca gown which they call the Hudson. Bo & Luca were the only dress brand I visited and as soon as I put the Hudson gown on I was finished. The gown was made from the most beautiful satin that was silky soft. It fit like a glove and was so comfortable. I remember walking into the showroom with one specification in mind for my gown. “I would like to be able to sit barefoot on the grass with my legs crossed.” The Hudson gown allowed for that movement, especially when on the dance floor! BRIDESMAID’S DRESSES // My instruction to my 9 beautiful bridesmaids was to wear whatever it is that would make them feel the most beautiful. They knew it would be a warm February day and that a flowy long dress would be the most comfortable. They all wore such different, yet similar styles which when put next to one another looked like the most beautiful compilation I could have ever dreamed of. Giving them the freedom to wear whatever made them happy was a special way for me to share the unique and wonderful friends in my life through their different styles with my guests and family. PROPOSAL STORY // My husband proposed to me on his 25th birthday in front of both of our families. What is funny is that I didn’t find it strange at all that he invited my grandparents to his birthday lunch, we are a very close family and he has always been the sweetest with being extremely involved with my side of the family. His birthday was at one of our favourite places, Leopard’s leap, as they offer the most beautiful buffet lunch on Sunday’s that is so plant-based friendly and insanely delicious. Michael used his birthday speech to propose to me, and I remember being so caught off guard and absolutely shocked! I didn’t see it coming at all! The answer was an obvious yes, and I have never felt more loved than in that moment. WEDDING THEME // I had two ideas in mind for the wedding that I really wanted to actualize, and those were having an outdoor garden wedding, with accents of a bohemian floor table as a relaxed chill space for our guests. We found a company called ‘The Souk’ which allowed us to create the bohemian feel for such an amazing price. I highly recommend them. WEDDING RINGS // For our rings we decided to go for gold, literally. I had always said to Michael that he should never design my wedding ring for me because it was something I wanted to do myself. So he took the smart route and prosed with a beautiful simple gold band. He told me that we could melt it down and I could design the ring I wanted, but I fell so in love with the simple band that I decided not to change it, and I don’t think I ever will. My husband’s band is by ‘Dear Rae’ and is such a beautiful design. It has a signet style in a matching yellow gold to mine, with an intricate landscape design engraved on the top. FLOWERS & BOUQUETS // The flowers for our wedding day were done by the mother of my Maid of Honour. She is an extremely talented and creative woman whose floral arrangements spread throughout her home at all times. When she offered to do the flowers for our wedding as a gift, we felt so incredibly lucky. We decided to stick with very simple greens with dots of colour through the use of seasonal flowers. My bouquet was mostly green and draped down like perfection as I held it, with yellow flowers placed throughout. WEDDING CAKE // Our wedding cake was one thing I had sorted from the day we got engaged! I knew that I wanted to use ‘Thank Goodness Foods’ for our cake and they made a beautiful one-tiered banana and chocolate vegan cake, topped with berries and flowers. It was delicious. For our wedding day desserts, we asked ‘Rumsy’s Noose’ to make an assortment of vegan doughnuts for us. Oh my goodness, we are huge fans of theirs and cannot get enough, neither could our guests! FOOD & DRINKS // Our wedding food was the most exciting part of our wedding day (for me at least). I wanted to create a plant-based feast for our guests to enjoy and employed the help of my talented friend, Jüte Scott, a student at Silwood Kitchen to help me plan our menu and execute it for our 65 guests. Jüte and her catering partner, Meredith, let me be as involved as I wanted. We developed a buffet-style menu that we believed all of the guests would enjoy, with the hope that no one would even notice the lack of meat or dairy. I was so happy with the food, and the guests were extremely complimentary of the chefs. I still drool thinking of my stacked up plate of goodness. MEMORABLE MOMENT // The most memorable moment of our wedding day was walking down the aisle and seeing Michael’s face. He burst into tears which was always a secret wish of mine, to see him so excited after seeing me in the dress I had chosen. It was so special for me. ADVICE FOR BRIDES-TO-BE // My advice for brides to be is to make sure to put down on paper exactly what it is that you want out of the day. Do not create a day based on what you think others will want or based on what you think is expected of you. Our simple wedding allowed guests to feel relaxed, taking away the formal pressures of many other weddings we have attended. Stay true to yourself, don’t spend more than you need to, and keep it simple. VENDORS & SUPPLIERS // Venue: Natte Valleij Décor: The Souk Dress: Bo & Luca Cake: Thank Goodness Foods Desserts: Rumsy’s Noose Photographer: Courtney Gretchen Photography