#French Catholic Educational Program

[horizon-verizon]

Anne Boleyn wasn’t exactly a Protestant as is often said but she was a Reformist. She still held on to some of the Catholic beliefs such as the doctrine of transubstantiation but rejected papal authority, promoted erastianism and worked on getting the Bible translated into vernacular English so the common people of England could read it and understand it (The Bible was released shortly after her death, with the dedication page hastily changed to Queen Jane’s name). She wanted to purify the Catholic church of things she saw as abuses (such as the extreme wealth of the Catholic Church, and excessive accumulation of wealth in general, selling salvation — literally!) and superstitions. She’s the one who introduced Henry VIII to the idea of becoming Head of the Church of England by giving him a book written by William Tyndale, Obedience of a Christian Man, with certain passages marked by the impression of her fingernail. It was a bold move because the book was banned and had been seized by the Church when they found it in her possession. Anne asked Henry to get it back for her and read it. (Anne’s brother, George Boleyn, smuggled banned religious texts for her, purchasing them on his travels to the Continent.)

Anne sheltered religious dissidents. She saved the life of the French reformer Nicolas Bourbon as she had appealed to the French royal family to spare his life as a favor to the English Queen. Nicolas Bourbon would later refer to Anne as “the queen whom God loves.” She restored Richard Herman to the membership of the English Society of Merchants, from which Cardinal Wolsey had expelled him for his involvement in translating the New Testament into English. Anne also offered safe passage to England to French humanist reformers. She paid for scholarships so Reformist scholars could attend the universities. (Many of them stayed after they graduated to teach the next generation and spread Reformist ideas.) She personally selected six of the nine bishops appointed during her reign. She was extremely charitable and generous and sew shirts for the poor. When monasteries were dissolved, Anne advocated the redistribution of their resources and wanted to use the money to fund educational programs and other charitable causes. On the other hand, Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s chief minister, wanted to transfer these funds to the king’s coffers.

In short, religious issues were the primary focus of the work she did during her reign. Her goal for the advancement of a more tolerant religious point of view was unusual in an age that favored rigid religious practice. It’s one of the reasons she was so deeply unpopular — she was seeding “heresy” in so many areas. Eustace Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador in England, regularly complained to his home government of “the concubine” being “the cause and nurse of the spread of Lutheranism in this country”. They were right to be alarmed; Anne Boleyn’s work helped lay the foundations of the Anglican church. It would later be expanded upon by Queen Kateryn Parr, who appointed two of Anne’s scholarship students to be the tutors of Edward VI, the first Protestant monarch.

Wow. Yeah, this is displays a lot more devotion to a certain mission and a desire to change a society or a generosity that some people tried to say Alicent displays--which was never actually spelled out or claimed even in F&B, btw!--as reason for them to believe that Alicent was a good Queen or just a good person. The whole Queens-as-leads-of-charity-and-alms thing. Can't find the post.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Why are we so fascinated with aliens?

Robert Smith is convinced the aliens have won. "The invasion has happened—it's all over," says the University of Alberta space historian who teaches a course on the history of extraterrestrials.

It's not so much that Smith believes in their literal existence, only that aliens have staked their claim in the human imagination.

"Look at the TV listings on any given night, and it's clear they are everywhere," he says. "The number of programs with extraterrestrials is striking."

Just last month, the seventh film of the Alien franchise, "Alien Romulus," was released in theaters worldwide. The series has gripped the collective imagination since 1979 and is showing no signs of slowing down. Romulus has grossed more than $225 million worldwide so far, making it the third-highest-grossing film in the series.

When he isn't tracking every detail of the James Webb telescope, launched in December of 2021, for an upcoming book on the subject, Smith is reviewing his notes for a senior seminar called "The History of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate." According to him, it's the only course in the world that probes "the existence, nature and possible significance of extraterrestrial life from the ancient world to today."

Smith contends aliens have been invading our imagination at least since the ancients. The Greek philosopher Epicurus—who first came up with the idea that the universe is made up of atoms—speculated about other worlds, as did the Roman poet Lucretius.

In the second century CE, Lucian of Samosata wrote what is considered the first work of science fiction, a satire called "A True Story" about inhabitants of the sun and the moon fighting over the colonization of Venus.

"There's always been this fascination with what you could call the other, often very similar to us but sometimes different or even wildly different," says Smith.

"The extraterrestrial becomes a kind of mirror, and by trying to understand how people see extraterrestrials, we're also learning about what people think it is to be human."

Even the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages considered the possibility of aliens as a manifestation of God's power, says Smith.

"If you attended a medieval university … one of the topics you would likely have examined would have been other worlds, because if you said there were no other worlds, it was regarded as limiting God's power."

The popular fascination with aliens took off with the publication of "Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds," by French author Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle in 1686, says Smith. Considered the first scientific blockbuster in publishing history, it was read by many people at the time and is still in print today after almost 100 editions.

The best English translation of the text, according to Smith, was done by a former U of A English professor and science fiction writer, H.A. Hargreaves, in 1990.

Considered one of the first major works of the Enlightenment, it was partly inspired by Copernicus' revolutionary discovery that Earth revolved around the sun, rather than the other way around. That shift in cosmology allowed for the possibility of other solar systems, and therefore other worlds.

By the 18th century, "The great majority of educated people probably believed in life on other worlds," says Smith.

The popularity of "Conversations" and the idea of extraterrestrial life increased well into the 19th century, fueling a hot debate between two major intellects of the age—scientist David Brewster and Anglican minister and philosopher of science William Whewell. That debate "spawned a huge body of literature," says Smith, including perhaps the most famous alien invasion tale of all time: H.G. Wells' 1897 "War of the Worlds," which left its indelible mark well into the 20th century.

Wells' novel was widely seen as a reflection of anxiety over British imperialism. The author once said the story was prompted by a discussion with his brother about the brutal British colonization of Tasmania; he wondered what would happen if Martians treated England the same way.

War of the Worlds tapped into a fundamental human fear, famously manifested when the 1938 CBS Radio version narrated by Orson Welles reportedly caused panic among some listeners who didn't realize it was fiction.

For the most part, says Smith, interest in aliens dropped off slightly in the first half of the 20th century as astronomers surmised that solar systems were relatively rare. But the mania picked up again with the space race of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

"As soon as we sent a spacecraft into space, we were thinking about the implications of that," says Smith. "Remember, the Americans actually celebrated their bicentennial in part by looking for life on Mars (with the launch of Viking 1 in 1976)."

Since then, interest in aliens has been relentless and pervasive, with a flood of movies attesting to our fascination with all things extraterrestrial, from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," "Star Trek" and "2001: A Space Odyssey" to "Alien," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "The X-Files" and "Dr. Who." And that barely scratches the surface.

After taking the long view, does Smith believe in the existence of extraterrestrials? He prefers to defer to the great science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. "Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."

IMAGE: "Alien: Romulus" — the seventh film in the long-running franchise — is the latest example of how humans depict extraterrestrials as objects of both fascination and dread. Credit: Disney

[spine-buster]

American here, is French a requirement for schools ? If so when is it introduced ?

Here, at least in my state, students can elect a language to learn in 7th grade and then in highschool we were required to have 4 years of a language (for those who wish to go to a 4 year university, not community college). Most students continued the language elective they chose in 7th grade in highschool so it was rather easy for lots to get a bi-literacy seal on their diploma at graduation if they took an AP tear . For us the major language was Spanish with German coming in a close second

I can only speak for Ontario (as provinces have jurisdiction over education), but I believe that in public schools, French begins at grade 4, whereas in public Catholic schools, French starts in grade 1. Regardless, you must take it up until grade 9, and then in grades 10-12 it becomes an elective. If you take French all four years of high school you can graduate with a French certificate. Other languages are offered as electives throughout high school, depending on availability. For example, my school offers Italian, Spanish, and Latin. My high school also offered German.

When I was a kid in elementary school we also had a local languages program and learned Italian along with French (the area I lived in in Toronto was very Italian, so it made sense for the area). I don't know if that's still a thing.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 12.22 (after 1950)

1963 – The cruise ship Lakonia burns 290 kilometres (180 mi) north of Madeira, Portugal with the loss of 128 lives. 1964 – The first test flight of the SR-71 (Blackbird) takes place at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, United States. 1965 – In the United Kingdom, a 70 miles per hour (110 km/h) speed limit is applied to all rural roads including motorways for the first time. 1968 – Cultural Revolution: People's Daily posted the instructions of Mao Zedong that "The intellectual youth must go to the country, and will be educated from living in rural poverty." 1971 – The international aid organization Doctors Without Borders is founded by Bernard Kouchner and a group of journalists in Paris, France. 1973 – A Royal Air Maroc Sud Aviation Caravelle crashes near Tangier-Boukhalef Airport in Tangier, Morocco, killing 106. 1974 – Grande Comore, Anjouan and Mohéli vote to become the independent nation of Comoros. Mayotte remains under French administration. 1974 – The house of former British Prime Minister Edward Heath is attacked by members of the Provisional IRA. 1975 – U.S. President Gerald Ford creates the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in response to the 1970s energy crisis. 1978 – The pivotal Third Plenum of the 11th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party is held in Beijing, with Deng Xiaoping reversing Mao-era policies to pursue a program for Chinese economic reform. 1984 – "Subway vigilante" Bernhard Goetz shoots four would-be muggers on a 2 express train in Manhattan section of New York, United States. 1989 – Romanian Revolution: Communist President of Romania Nicolae Ceaușescu is overthrown by Ion Iliescu after days of bloody confrontations. The deposed dictator and his wife Elena flee Bucharest in a helicopter as protesters erupt in cheers. 1989 – German reunification: Berlin's Brandenburg Gate re-opens after nearly 30 years, effectively ending the division of East and West Germany. 1990 – Lech Wałęsa is elected President of Poland. 1990 – Final independence of Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia after termination of trusteeship. 1992 – During approach to Tripoli International Airport, a Boeing 727 operating as Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 1103 collides in mid-air with a Libyan Air Force Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23, killing 157 people. 1996 – Airborne Express Flight 827 crashes in Narrows, Virginia, killing all six people on board. 1997 – Acteal massacre: Attendees at a prayer meeting of Roman Catholic activists for indigenous causes in the small village of Acteal in the Mexican state of Chiapas are massacred by paramilitary forces. 1997 – Somali Civil War: Hussein Farrah Aidid relinquishes the disputed title of President of Somalia by signing the Cairo Declaration, in Cairo, Egypt. It is the first major step towards reconciliation in Somalia since 1991. 1999 – Just after taking off from London Stansted Airport, Korean Air Cargo Flight 8509 crashes into Hatfield Forest near Great Hallingbury, killing all four people on board. 2001 – Burhanuddin Rabbani, political leader of the Northern Alliance, hands over power in Islamic State of Afghanistan to the interim government headed by President Hamid Karzai. 2001 – Richard Reid attempts to destroy a passenger airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes aboard American Airlines Flight 63. 2010 – The repeal of the Don't ask, don't tell policy, the 17-year-old policy banning homosexuals serving openly in the United States military, is signed into law by President Barack Obama. 2016 – A study finds the VSV-EBOV vaccine against the Ebola virus between 70 and 100% effective, thus making it the first proven vaccine against the disease. 2017 – United Nations Security Council Resolution 2397 against North Korea is unanimously approved. 2018 – A tsunami caused by an eruption of Anak Krakatau in Indonesia kills at least 430 people and injures almost a thousand more. 2018 – The 2018–2019 United States federal government shutdown, the longest shutdown of the U.S. federal government in history, begins.

[mask131]

If you had told me extreme Christians and extreme Muslims would gather together for one common goal... Now, this is something people who do not live in French-speaking countries probably won't heard about, but very recently eight schools were burned in Belgium. These attacks, signed with "No EVRAS" inscriptions, are obviously the work of a gathering protest movement that has been forming itself in Belgium recently, gathering Christian extremists AND Muslim extremists.

And it is all of course linked to conspiracionist groups! You see, "EVRAS" is the name of a school-program in Belgium dedicated to creation classes and lessons about sex, sexuality and human reproduction in schools. Two such sex education classes are planned - a first for kids around 11-12 years old, another for teens around 15-16 years old. These are just your regular sex education classes, where you learn about how babies are made, how genital organs function, stuff like that.

But of course, social media and Internet-based conspiracy theorists immediately jumped onto the program, and gave birth to lots of vile rumors that were picked up by these two extremist groups - Christian (of the Catholic branch) and Muslims (I couldn't find what branch of Islam though). These rumors that prompted Christian and Muslim protesters to gather in the streets brandishing signs saying "Let's protect the innocence of our children" and stuff like that.

Rumors that have basically all the accusations you can throw at sex education classes and that have been thrown for decades now. "They show our children pornographic movies in school!" "Teachers masturbate themselves in front of children!" "They force children to masturbate!" "This program was put in place by paedophiles to groom our children" "They are pushing an homosexual agenda to turn all our kids homosexual", etc, etc...

And now, this resulted in eight schools being attacked and burned, with written on the untouched walls "NO EVRAS", so that the burners would make it clear why they destroyed the buildings.

[abbeyandolivier]

EXPLORING SCHOOLS IN BEACONSFIELD

Nestled on the peaceful island of Montreal, Beaconsfield stands out as a serene and family-friendly suburb with an exceptional focus on education. Renowned for its lush green spaces and welcoming community, this charming town offers a range of excellent schools catering to its residents’ diverse needs.

In this blog, the team at Abbey & Olivier will take a closer look at some of the reasons why Beaconsfield is considered a haven for quality education and the best place to make your home.

SUPPORTIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT:

Schools in Beaconsfield place a strong emphasis on creating a supportive learning environment for their students. Teachers, staff, and administrators work closely with families to ensure that each child receives the necessary resources and support to reach their full potential.

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT:

The tight-knit community of Beaconsfield plays an integral role in supporting its schools. Parents and community members are actively involved in school activities and events, creating a sense of camaraderie that enriches the educational experience.

HIGH-QUALITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS:

The public school system in Beaconsfield is highly regarded for its commitment to academic excellence and holistic development. With a focus on fostering creativity, critical thinking, and a love for learning, these schools provide a nurturing environment that empowers students to thrive.

EMBRACING TECHNOLOGY:

Beaconsfield schools are at the forefront of integrating technology into the learning process. From interactive whiteboards to educational software, students have access to innovative tools that enhance their understanding and engagement with various subjects.

FOCUS ON EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES:

Education in Beaconsfield extends beyond the classroom. The town’s schools actively encourage participation in extracurricular activities, ranging from sports and arts to community service projects. These activities foster teamwork, leadership skills, and personal growth.

SAFE AND ACCESSIBLE:

One of the reasons families choose Beaconsfield for their children’s education is the town’s reputation for safety and accessibility. The tranquil environment ensures a peaceful learning atmosphere, allowing students to focus on their studies and personal growth.

The Residents of Beaconsfield are highly educated and refined, with over 52% of the population having a university degree. Only 8% of the residents of Beaconsfield have no diploma, making it one of the most educated areas in Montreal.

POPULAR SCHOOLS IN BEACONSFIELD:

Beaconsfield Elementary School: A public English-language elementary school known for its strong academic program and community involvement.

St. Edmund Elementary School: A Catholic English-language elementary school that emphasizes character education and community service.

Kingswood Elementary School: A public English-language school with a focus on providing a caring and inclusive learning environment.

École Primaire Beaconsfield: A French-language elementary school that provides quality education in French.

Beacon Hill Elementary School: A public English-language school that focuses on giving its students a positive learning environment.

Christmas Park Elementary School: Christmas Park is a vibrant and welcoming community school that promotes success, wellness, and engagement for all learners!

Beaconsfield High School: A public English-language high school offering a range of academic and extracurricular programs.

[rodrigo-esc]

QUICK FACTS:

LEGAL NAME: Rodrigo Emiliano Escobar 

NICKNAMES: Rodri

DOB/AGE: May 17, 1993 (29 going on 30)

GENDER: Cis Male

PRONOUNS: He/Him

SEXUAL ID: Pansexual

HEIGHT: 5'11″

APPROXIMATE WEIGHT: 170 lbs.

LANGUAGES: English, French, and Spanish 

GLASSES/CONTACTS: Glasses and contacts

TATTOOS/PIERCINGS: both ears pierced, both nipples, sugar skull on right forearm, Hawk with spread wings under right breast. 

ALLERGIES: N/A

OTHER HEALTH ISSUES/DISORDERS: Bipolar Depression (controlled with medication) 

HOGWARTS HOUSE: Slytherin

FAITH/RELIGION/PHILOSOPHY: raised roman catholic/spiritual 

POSITIVE TRAITS (3): fiercely loyal, intelligent, bold

NEGATIVE TRAITS (3): impatient, brash, to himself

HOBBIES & ACTIVITIES:

writing, reading, journaling 

LIKES/FAVORITES:

foods/cuisine– Cuban, Mexican, and Colombian 

movie genres– Suspence,Horror, Comedy

flower– daisies 

snacks– Pop Corners, popcorn, taki

music genres– Metal, punk, alternative, grunge, old salsa

season– Winter

book genre– poetry, autobiography, fiction, all the books. 

animal– dogs

candy–  Gummi bears, watermelon slices

BIOGRAPHY (tw poverty, bipolar depression)

Rodrigo was born in Salina, California and live in absolute poverty all his childhood until he got his ticket out. One of five national scholarship winners to the Sacred heart Cathedral Prep in San Francisco, Rodrigo was able to leave to the boarding school at age 14 and graduated at age 18. At the schools, he kept the grounds and became close friends with the groundskeeper who advised him to use his talents to make it out of his childhood nightmare. 

 He was born to Emiliana Escobar and Santiago Videla. His dream has always been to get his mother out of Salina and getting her a job she would be proud of. He never forgot that dream. When he was at the tail end of his senior year work study program in which he mentored middle school kids, his father was arrested for grand larceny and incarcerated for 15 years without parole. Rodrigo saw it as his mother’s way out and he’d work as much as possible to help her leave Salina for good. 

With a high IQ level and a diagnosed neuro-divergent person, Rodrigo struggled with social norms and often rebelled against them. Not realizing how much his family life had affected him, he learned later in life he had been suffering from bi-polar depression. After entering a national writing competition, he gained the respect and curiosity of several publishing houses and won a full ride to UCLA where he studied English and Education. Rodrigo used some of his winnings to get his mother a food truck in San Francisco and got her to apply for housing as well. Once she received her voucher, Rodrigo had graduated university and he chose to live in the city he raised himself in. 

He started student teaching and soon discovered elementary school children was not it for him. Soon after, he did a stint at his alma matter, teaching high school kids but that didn’t go too well either. Finally, he found his place Saddle River Day school as a middle school English teacher. His adolescent years were tough for him, often getting into fights with his peers but always wowing administration in tests. Seeking therapy and psychopharmacological help, Rodrigo was able to keep himself balanced. He is still very close to his mother and visits her every day to bring her meals and look after her. He has not heard from his father nor does he want to.  

[octaviasdread]

any girls! dark academia movie recs? i really struggle to find anything not about a group of boys (as much as I love them)

SO MANY!!! This is probably a far more detailed answer than you were expecting but this is a popular question and I want to keep a list for myself and others.

Feel free to add to it/give opinions. I've tried to give a tw for anything I can remember

Girls! Dark Academia Movies/TV Shows

Mona Lisa Smile (2003)

1950s Women’s college

Art professor! Julia Roberts

She’s legit the female Mr Keating of the art & college world

Feminism vs. Tradition

Maggie Gyllenhall x Ginnifer Goodwin; their characters were more than friends. Fight me.

Does not end how you expect

Strike!/All I Wanna Do/The Hairy Bird (1998)

MY FAVOURITE!!!

Free on YouTube under one of its various names

Comedy

1960s all girls boarding school

Young Kirsten Dunst

Group of girls plot to sabotage a merger with a boys school less prestigious than their own

Secret attic clubhouse meetings of the D.A.R aka Daughters of the American Ravioli (eaten cold, ew)

girls get political & advocate for their rights using ANY elaborate and chaotic scheme

TW: eating disorder, vomiting & creepy male teacher but the girls plot against him too

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)

based on a short book I read for uni by Muriel Spark

1930s girls school in Edinburgh

Scottish teacher! Maggie Smith, controversial with a focus on romantic ideals

Spoiler alert, the liberal teacher is actually a fascist

Her group of fave students has cult- vibes and it’s fascinating

Picnic at Hanging Rock

1970s movie or 2018 mini series

Never watched either but I plan to

Wild Child (2008)

00s romcom every UK teen girl loves

Emma Roberts as the spoiled rich American teenager sent to a strict English boarding school

Plots to get herself expelled but oh no she’s making friends with the girls who help her

And the headmistress has a hot son, and he’s nice??? Double oh no

ICONIC SCENES

Everything! Goes! Wrong!

omg she burns the school down

Feel good, comfort, nostalgia

St Trinians (2007)

English girls boarding school

The kids are all criminals, no joke

So are the teachers

CHAOTIC

gay awakening for british girls

Art heist pulled off by school girls

Government tries to shut them down but oh no, the education minister & the headmistress are ex-lovers

Colin Firth x Rupert Everett in drag

Superior cast: Jodie Whittaker, Gemma Arterton, Juno Temple, Stephen Fry, Colin Firth, etc...

embodies the phrase 'problematic fave'

St Trinians 2: The Legend of Fritton’s Gold (2009)

Mystery, pirate ancestors, hidden treasure

omg Shakespeare was a woman

girls disguised as boys to infiltrate and rob the posh boys school

Villain! David Tennant in that ICONIC boat scene

Teen girls vs. ancient misogynist brotherhood

like the first film but MORE chaotic and BETTER!???

The Falling (2014)

1960s all girls school

best friends! but its unrequited love

Agoraphobic + distant mother aka mommy issues

Sudden death and the school suppresses/ignores the students grief, sparking mass hysteria & a fainting epidemic in the girls

Cast: Maisie Williams (GoT) & Florence Pugh (Little Women) & Joe Cole (Peaky Blinders)

TW: teen pregnancy, death, vomiting, underage s*x, sibling inc*st, past s*xual assault

READ THE PLOT SUMMARY FIRST

The Book Thief (2013)

Based on an amazing book by Markus Zusak

set in 1940s Nazi Germany

Daughter of a communist whose family were taken by the Nazis/died is fostered by an older couple who teach her to read & she paints a dictionary on the basement walls

Coming of age story about a compulsive book thief. No joke, this kid steals books from banned book burnings and breaks into the mayor's library through the window

Family hides the Jewish son of an old friend in their basement and he helps her to start writing about her experiences in the war

TW: death, bombings, WW2 anti-semitism

Mary Shelley (2017)

Overall good & roughly biographical

Pretty costumes and aesthetic

Modern feminist take on Mary Shelly in her own time period

So many INACCURACIES for the drama so don’t take it as truth

Percy Shelley slander and not all of it is justified

Cast: Elle Fanning, Douglas Booth, and Maisie Williams

The Secret Garden (1993)

Based on a fave childhood book

1901 colonial India & Yorkshire, England

Orphaned, spoilt & neglected girl sent to live with her reclusive Uncle in the English countryside

Gothic elements, mysteries, secret doors/passages/locked gardens

local boy with a flock of animals, magic, kids chanting around a fire and all around immaculate vibes

Happy ending!!!

Hidden Figures (2016)

African-American women as mathematicians for NASA

1960s space project

Women balancing a career and family obligations

Deals with racial & gender discrimination

Loosely based on the lives of Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan who worked for NASA as engineers & mathematicians

Anne of Green Gables (1985) & sequel (1987)

Adaptation L.M. Montgomery’s ‘Anne of Green Gables’ books

Canada (late 1890s/early 1900s)

Highly imaginative & bookworm orphan is adopted by a reclusive elderly brother and sister duo

Small town & school years comedic drama

Unrequited Enemies -> Friends -> lovers

Inspiring new woman teacher

Girls re-enact Tennyson’s poem and nearly drown for the aesthetic™

Dramatic poetry reading with INTENSE 👀eye contact👀

Writer! Anne & English teacher! Anne dealing with unruly girls school antics

Collette (2018)

biographical drama on french writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Collette

Victorian & Edwardian era France

More talented than her husband so she ghostwrites for him

Fight for creative ownership of her wildly successful novels

Affairs with a woman called Georgie and also with Missy, born female but masculine presenting

Cast: Keira Knightly, Dominic West, Eleanor Tomlinson (Poldark)

Enola Holmes (2020)

Netflix book adaptation

Younger sister of Sherlock Holmes

Victorian era! feminism/suffragettes

Mother-daughter focus

Mystery, adventure, secret codes, teens running away & escaping from (and eventually fighting) assassins

Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Henry Cavill, Sam Claflin, Fiona Shaw, Millie Bobby Brown

Ginger & Rosa (2012)

1960s England

best friends since literal birth navigating troubled teen years

poet & anti-nuclear activist! Ginger

off the rails but also catholic! Rosa

Shout out to Mark & Mark the gay godfathers we all want

family troubles 

TW: older man has an affair with a 17 yr old

Testament of Youth (2014)

based on WW1 memoir by Vera Brittain

young woman (writer & poetry lover) escapes traditional family & goes to study at Oxford University

abandons to become a war nurse

romance, tragedy and war trauma

Cast: Alicia Vikander, Kit Harrington (GoT), Taron Edgerton (Rocketman), Colin Morgan (Merlin)

Little Women (2019)

Writer! Jo & Artist! Amy

Mother/daughter focus and sister dynamics

the March sisters’ theatre club is *chefs kiss*

champagne problems edits of Jo x Laurie are a mood

Ambivalent ending perfectly captures Louisa May Alcott’s dilemma with the book the movie is based on

set in 1860s America

ALL STAR CAST and a Greta Gerwig masterpeice

Lady Bird (2017)

coming of age in early 2002/2003 Sacramento, California

all girls catholic school

writer! Christine aka Lady Bird wants to get outta town and start her life again at college 'in a city with culture'

Mother/daughter dynamics - so realistic!

I live for that Jesus car stunt & the nun's reaction

school theatre program

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Timothee Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein

Another Greta Gerwig gem

Beguiled (2017)

Virginia, civil war era

Girls school with only five students and two teachers left

Find an injured Union army soldier & bring him inside

Women & teenagers want his attention (v. problematic) before uniting against him

(tbh you'll either love it, hate it, or watch once & forget it)

Sofia Coppola film so its very feminine gaze

TW: violence, death, underage

Legally Blonde (2001)

No questions will be taken

Elle Woods was the blue print

TV series:

House of Anubis (2011-2013)

I know it’s a kids/young teen show but I still unironically love it

ANCIENT EGYPT!!!!

Modern day with Victorian era links to treasure hunters & Egyptian research expeditions (stealing from tombs)

Chosen one plot lines, curses, kidnapping, mysteries, secret tunnels under the school, elixir of life

Teens have investigate & protect themselves cus oh no the TEACHERS are involved in some shady stuff

new American kid at British boarding school is the actual premise not just a fanfic au

Nostalgic, light-hearted, funny, and kinda cheesy but I will accept no criticism

The Alienist (2018 -now)

Mid 1890s, New York

Woman’s private detective agency (Season 2)

Serial killer mystery

Woman secretary turns detective and teams up with a criminal psychiatrist and a newspaper editor to solve crime

TW: violence, child pr*stit*tion

Cast: Dakota Fanning, Luke Evans, Daniel Bruhl

The Queen’s Gambit (2020)

Woman chess prodigy

1950s & 1960s

TW: drug & alcohol abuse

Gentleman Jack (2019 - now)

Based on the diaries of Anne Lister

Victorian Yorkshire, England

Upper-class lesbians

Confident, suit wearing! Anne Lister x shy! Ann Walker

Business woman! Anne running the family mines

Cast: Suranne Jones (Doctor Foster) & Sophie Rundle (Peaky Blinders)

TW: violence

Gilmore Girls (2000-2007)

bubbly/ambitious single mom + intelligent daughter

bookworm! Rory Gilmore gets into a prestigious private school and then an Ivy League college

Small town drama is comedic gold

Fast dialogue packed with pop culture and literary references

Comforting & nostalgic

TEAM JESS

Anne with an E (2017-2019)

Loose adaptation of L.M. Montgomery’s ‘Anne of Green Gables’ books

they completely change the plot lines but it’s still very good content!

Orphan girl with trauma and a love of books/poetry is adopted by an elderly brother & sister duo, bringing light and fresh ideas to a rural community

Feminism, girls writing club, lgbtq safe spaces, girls eduction, black/indigenous representation

Miss Stacy as THAT inspiring teacher

Aunt Josephine’s lavish gay parties have my heart

TW: creepy male teacher tries to marry a student, racial discrimination, indigenous assimilation school

Victoria (2016-2019)

Adaption of Queen Victoria’s life

Victoria navigating her political, royal, and personal life

Albert’s involvement with The Great Exhibition, 1851 (on cultural + industrial innovations)

Alfred Paget x Edward Drummond is exquisite

Gorgeous costumes and aesthetics

TW: bury your gays trope

Derry Girls (2018-now)

1990s Northern Ireland during the troubles

Comedy, episodes 20-25 mins long

English boy sent to an all girls Catholic school with his cousin

✨Dead Poets Society parody episode ✨with a free-spirited female teacher

Sister Michael, the sarcastic nun who hates her job & reads the exorcist for giggles

Wee anxious lesbian! Clare Devlin (plus her friends wearing rainbow pins)

Badass with bad ideas! Michelle Mallon

Main Character! Erin Quinn

Lovable weirdo who would fight a polar bear! Orla McCool

Wee English fella & honorary Derry girl! James Maguire

Dickinson (2019-now)

Loose adaption of the poet Emily Dickinson’s life

Set in 19th century Massachusetts, US

Historical drama with modern dialogue & music that works SEAMLESSLY

gives a great understanding of Emily Dickinson’s poems

💕Vintage gays! Emily x Sue💕

Theatre club, writing, poetry, dressing as men to sneak into lectures, love letters, teen drama, feminism, and an underground abolitionist journal as a brief side plot in season 2

Wiz Khalifa plays death in a horse drawn carriage

TW: opium use

A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017-2019)

Based on great childhood books

Bookworm! brother, Inventor! sister, and baby sister with sharp teeth

Mystery, secret organisations, orphaned siblings figuring things out & fending for themselves against the villain after their fortune

Adults either cartoon evil, comedically incompetent, or SPIES

Boarding school, library owner, scientific researcher, and theatre episodes

Ambiguous time period which is really fun to try and pin point

Killing Eve (2018-now)

Classic detective who has homoerotic tension with the assassin she is tracking down

British Detective! Eve Polastri figures out the notorious assassin MI5 are investigating is a woman, is fired & then put on a secret MI6 case with a small team

Assassin! Villanelle, a psychopath with a tragic past and a mastery of both accents & fashion

Woman MI6 boss! Carolyn Martens, head of Russian section

Travel Europe following Villanelle’s killings and escaping the assassins sent by Villanelle’s organisation

‘You’re supposed to be my enemy and moral opposite but omg you’re the only one smart enough to get me and why am I obsessed with you????'

🚨 GO IN FOR A KISS AND THEN STAB YOUR ENEMY 🚨

Cable Girls/Las chicas del cable (2017-2020)

Spanish drama set in 1920s Madrid

Four young women at a telecommunications company form a group of friends and help navigate the difficult situations they are all in

Secret identities, dangerous pasts, murder, crime, lgbtq couple & throuple, trans man character, feminism/suffragists

girls commit crimes for humanitarian reasons and cover! it! up!

UNDERRATED SHOW!!!!

Gorgeous costumes and set

Haven’t finished it yet and I’m catching up

TW: abuse, violence, death

Outlander (2014 - now)

haven’t watched yet but plan to

Woman time travels to Scotland, 1743

Rebel highlanders, pirates, British colonies, American revolutionary war

Time jumps between 18th & 20th century

[a-room-of-my-own]

Gender theory is supposed to be a catholic hoax in France? I'm sorry what?! Tell me more please!

Well back in 2012 when the law for marriage equality was proposed, many people were against it, especially conservative catholics. There were protests with hundreds of thousands of people in the street for months.

The opposition was less about marriage per se than about adoption, so much that the protesters' main slogan was "a mom and a dad". The protests started to grow when they started to talk about how the next step was to bring the "gender theory" in our schools.

So according to them there was this theory coming from the US, that pretty much said there was no sex difference, that all that existed was "gender". That people, children, could "identify" with either gender and that we should tell children, as early as possible that it was fine to identify to another gender or to none. According to them the ministry of education had this theory included in their new equality program.

Everybody that was in favor of gay marriage just laughed. I mean who makes things like that up right? Everyone knows gender means "sex roles attributed to each sex" and telling children they can identify with the other sex just means telling them they can be interested in whatever they want, that they're not restricted by the body they're born in. At the time there were many articles in the French press debunking the gender theory hoax. It was obvious to everybody that it was just fear-mongering.

Since the majority of the population was in favor of gay marriage, they invented a conspiracy theory to scare people.

To this day, I still don't know if the gender theory was supposed to be implemented in schools. The ministry of educations equality program was abandoned because of the protests and I could never find the leaflets that were produced. They always maintained that it was just a classic equality program between boys and girls.

Obviously, many people in the protests were just huge homophobes, but I know people who protested, included one child psychologist, and they went because of the gender theory. Of course at the time I called them conspiracy theorists, after all that's what the entirety of the French press, quoting university sociologists, were doing.

So that's how the gender theory is considered to have been invented in 2012 by French catholic homophobes, to manipulate people into opposing marriage equality.

[thelanguagecommunity]

“what language should I learn?”

“is it better to learn [x] or [x]?”

“is it worth learning [x]?”

I get this type of question a lot and I see questions like these a lot on language learning forums, but it’s very difficult to answer because ultimately language learning is a highly personal decision. Passion is required to motivate your studies, and if you aren’t in love with your language it will be very hard to put in the time you need. Thus, no language is objectively better or worse, it all comes down to factors in your life. So, I’ve put together a guide to assist your with the kind of factors you can consider when choosing a language for study.

First, address you language-learning priorities.

Think of the reasons why are you interested in learning a new language. Try to really articulate what draws you to languages. Keeping these reasons in mind as you begin study will help keep you focused and motivated. Here are some suggestions to help you get started, complete with wikipedia links so you can learn more:

Linguistic curiosity?

For this, I recommend looking into dead, literary or constructed languages. There are lots of cool linguistic experiments and reconstructions going on and active communities that work on them! Here’s a brief list:

Dead languages:

Akkadian

Egyptian (Ancient Egyptian)

Gaulish

Gothic

Hittite

Old Prussian

Sumerian

Older iterations of modern day languages:

Classical Armenian

Classical Nahuatl (language of the Aztec Empire)

Early Modern English (Shakespearean English)

Galician-Portuguese

Middle English (Chaucer English)

Middle Persian/Pahlavi

Old English

Old French

Old Spanish

Old Tagalog (+ Baybayin)

Ottoman Turkish

Constructed:

Anglish (experiment to create a purely Anglo-Saxon English)

Esperanto

Interlingua

Láadan (a “feminist language”)

Lingua Franca Nova

Lingwa de Planeta

Lobjan

Toki Pona (a minimalist language)

Wenedyk (what if the Romans had occupied Poland?)

Cultural interests?

Maybe you just want to connect to another culture. A language is often the portal to a culture and are great for broadening your horizons! The world is full of rich cultures; learning the language helps you navigate a culture and appreciate it more fully.

Here are some popular languages and what they are “famous for”:

Cantonese: film

French: culinary arts, film, literature, music, philosophy, tv programs, a prestige language for a long time so lots of historical media, spoken in many countries (especially in Africa)

German: film, literature, philosophy, tv programs, spoken in several Central European countries

Italian: architecture, art history, catholicism (Vatican city!), culinary arts, design, fashion, film, music, opera

Mandarin: culinary arts, literature, music, poetry, tv programs

Japanese: anime, culinary arts, film, manga, music, video games, the longtime isolation of the country has developed a culture that many find interesting, a comparatively large internet presence

Korean: tv dramas, music, film

Portuguese: film, internet culture, music, poetry

Russian: literature, philosophy, spoken in the Eastern Bloc or former-Soviet countries, internet culture

Spanish: film, literature, music, spoken in many countries in the Americas

Swedish: music, tv, film, sometimes thought of as a “buy one, get two free” deal along with Norwegian & Danish

Religious & liturgical languages:

Avestan (Zoroastrianism)

Biblical Hebrew (language of the Tanakh, Old Testament)

Church Slavonic (Eastern Orthodox churches)

Classical Arabic (Islam)

Coptic (Coptic Orthodox Church)

Ecclesiastical Latin (Catholic Church)

Ge’ez (Ethiopian Orthodox Church)

Iyaric (Rastafari movement)

Koine Greek (language of the New Testament)

Mishnaic Hebrew (language of the Talmud)

Pali (language of some Hindu texts and Theravada Buddhism)

Sanskrit (Hinduism)

Syriac (Syriac Orthodox Church, Maronite Church, Church of the East)

Reconnecting with family?

If your immediate family speaks a language that you don’t or if you are a heritage speaker that has been disconnected, then the choice is obvious! If not, you might have to do some family tree digging, and maybe you might find something that makes you feel more connected to your family. Maybe you come from an immigrant community that has an associated immigration or contact language! Or maybe there is a branch of the family that speaks/spoke another language entirely.

Immigrant & Diaspora languages:

Arbëresh (Albanians in Italy)

Arvanitika (Albanians in Greece)

Brazilian German

Canadian Gaelic (Scottish Gaelic in Canada)

Canadian Ukrainian (Ukrainians in Canada)

Caribbean Hindustani (Indian communities in the Caribbean)

Chipilo Venetian (Venetians in Mexico)

Griko (Greeks in Italy)

Hutterite German (German spoken by Hutterite settlers of Canada/US)

Fiji Hindi (Indians in Fiji)

Louisiana French (Cajuns) 

Patagonian Welsh (Welsh in Argentina)

Pennsylvania Dutch (High German spoken by early settlers of Canada/ the US)

Plaudietsch (German spoken by Mennonites)

Talian (Venetian in Brazilian)

Texas Silesian (Poles in the US)

Click here for a list of languages of the African diaspora (there are too many for this post!). 

If you are Jewish, maybe look into the language of your particular diaspora community ( * indicates the language is extinct or moribund - no native speakers or only elderly speakers):

Bukhori (Bukharan Jews)

Hebrew

Italkian (Italian Jews) *

Judeo-Arabic (MENA Jews)

Judeo-Aramaic

Judeo-Malayalam *

Judeo-Marathi

Judeo-Persian

Juhuri (Jews of the Caucasus)

Karaim (Crimean Karaites) *

Kivruli (Georgian Jews)

Krymchak (Krymchaks) *

Ladino (Sephardi)

Lusitanic (Portuguese Jews) *

Shuadit (French Jewish Occitan) *

Yevanic (Romaniotes)*

Yiddish (Ashkenazi)

Finding a job?

Try looking around for what languages are in demand in your field. Most often, competency in a relevant makes you very competitive for positions. English is in demand pretty much anywhere. Here are some other suggestions based on industry (from what I know!):

Business (General): Arabic, French, German, Hindi, Korean, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish

Design: Italian (especially furniture)

Economics: Arabic, German

Education: French, Spanish

Energy: Arabic, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish

Engineering: German, Russian

Finance & Investment: French, Cantonese, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish

International Orgs. & Diplomacy (NATO, UN, etc.): Arabic, French, Mandarin, Persian, Russian, Spanish

Medicine: German, Latin, Sign Languages, Spanish

Military: Arabic, Dari, French, Indonesian, Korean, Kurdish, Mandarin, Pashto, Persian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Urdu

Programming: German, Japanese

Sales & Marketing: French, German, Japanese, Portuguese

Service (General): French, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Sign Languages, Spanish

Scientific Research (General): German, Japanese, Russian

Tourism: French, Japanese, Mandarin, Sign Languages, Spanish

Translation: Arabic, Russian, Sign Languages

Other special interests?

Learning a language just because is a perfectly valid reason as well! Maybe you are really into a piece of media that has it’s own conlang! 

Fictional:

Atlantean (Atlantis: The Lost Empire)

Dothraki (Game of Thrones)

Elvish (Lord of the Rings)

Gallifreyan (Doctor Who)

High Valyrian (Game of Thrones)

Klingon (Star Trek)

Nadsat (A Clockwork Orange)

Na’vi (Avatar)

Newspeak (1984)

Trigedasleng (The 100)

Vulcan (Star Trek)

Or if you just like to learn languages, take a look maybe at languages that have lots of speakers but not usually popular among the language-learning community:

Arabic

Bengali

Cantonese

Hindi

Javanese

Hausa

Indonesian

Malay

Pashto

Persian

Polish

Punjabi

Swahili

Tamil

Telugu

Thai

Turkish

Urdu

Vietnamese

Yoruba

If you have still are having trouble, consider the following:

What languages do you already speak?

How many and which languages you already speak will have a huge impact on the ease of learning. 

If you are shy about speaking with natives, you might want to look at languages with similar consonant/vowel sounds. Similarity between languages’ grammars and vocabularies can also help speed up the process. Several families are famous for this such as the Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, Romanian), North Germanic languages (Norwegian, Swedish, Danish) or East Slavic languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian). If you are a native English speaker, check out the FSI’s ranking of language difficulty for the approximate amount of hours you’ll need to put into different languages.

You could also take a look at languages’ writing systems to make things easier or for an added challenge.

Another thing to remember is that the languages you already speak will have a huge impact on what resources are available to you. This is especially true with minority languages, as resources are more frequently published in the dominant language of that area. For example, most Ainu resources are in Japanese, most Nheengatu resources are in Portuguese, and most Nahuatl resources are in Spanish.

What are your life circumstances?

Where you live with influence you language studies too! Local universities will often offer resources (or you could even enroll in classes) for specific languages, usually the “big” ones and a few region-specific languages.

Also consider if what communities area near you. Is there a vibrant Deaf community near you that offers classes? Is there a Vietnamese neighborhood you regularly interact with? Sometimes all it takes is someone to understand you in your own language to make your day! Consider what languages you could realistically use in your own day-to-day. If you don’t know where to start, try checking to see if there are any language/cultural meetups in your town!

How much time can you realistically put into your studies? Do you have a fluency goal you want to meet? If you are pressed for time, consider picking up a language similar to ones you already know or maintaining your other languages rather than taking on a new one.

Please remember when choosing a language for study to always respect the feelings and opinions of native speakers/communities, particularly with endangered or minoritized languages. Language is often closely tied to identity, and some communities are “closed” to outsiders. A notable examples are Hopi, several Romani languages, many Aboriginal Australian languages and some Jewish languages. If you are considering a minoritized language, please closely examine your motivations for doing so, as well as do a little research into what is the community consensus on outsiders learning the language. 

[tinyshe]

Immaculée Ilibagiza was born and raised in a small village in Rwanda, Africa. She enjoyed a peaceful childhood with her loving parents and three brothers. Education was very important in her household, so it was no surprise that she did well in school and went on to the National University of Rwanda to study electrical and mechanical engineering. It was while she was home from school on Easter break in 1994 that Immaculée's life was transformed forever.

On April 6 of that year, the Rwandan President’s plane was shot down over the capital city of Kigali. This assassination of the Hutu president sparked months of massacres of Tutsi tribe members throughout the country. Not even small, rural communities like Immaculée’s were spared from the house-by-house slaughtering of men, women and children.

To protect his only daughter from rape and murder, Immaculée’s father told her to run to a local pastor’s house for protection. The pastor quickly sheltered Immaculée and seven other women in a hidden 3 x 4 foot bathroom. For the next 91 days, Immaculée and the other women huddled silently in this small room, while the genocide raged outside the home and throughout the country.

While in hiding, anger and resentment were destroying Immaculée’s mind, body and spirit. It was then that Immaculée turned to prayer. Prior to going to the pastor’s home, Immaculée’s father, a devout Catholic, gave her a set of rosary beads. She began to pray the rosary as a way of drowning out the anger inside her, and the evil outside the house. It was that turning point towards God and away from hate that saved Immaculée.

In addition to finding faith, peace, and hope during those three months of hiding, Immaculée also taught herself English. Immaculée was always a good student and already fluent in Kinyarwanda and French. Using only a Bible and a dictionary, she spent countless hours in that cramped bathroom learning her third language.

After 91 days, Immaculée was finally liberated from her hiding place only to face a horrific reality. Immaculée emerged from that small bathroom weighing just 65 pounds, and finding her entire family brutally murdered, with the exception of one brother who was studying abroad. She also found nearly one million of her extended family, friends, neighbors and fellow Rwandans massacred.

After the genocide, Immaculée came face-to-face with the man who killed her mother and one of her brothers. After enduring months of physical, mental and spiritual suffering, Immaculée was still able to offer the unthinkable, telling the man, "I forgive you."

In 1998, Immaculée emigrated from Rwanda to the United States where she continued her work for peace through the United Nations. During that time, she shared her story with co-workers and friends who were so impacted by her testimony they insisted she write it down. Three days after finishing her manuscript, she met best-selling author Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, who, within minutes of meeting her, offered to publish her book. Dyer is quoted as saying, "There is something much more than charisma at work here - Immaculée not only writes and speaks about unconditional love and forgiveness, but she radiates it wherever she goes."

Immaculée's first book, Left to Tell; Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust (Hay House) was released in March of 2006. Left to Tell quickly became a New York Times Best Seller. To date, it has been translated into seventeen languages and has sold over two million copies. Immaculée's story has also been made into a documentary entitled The Diary of Immaculée. She has appeared on 60 Minutes, The CBS Early Show, CNN, EWTN, CBS Evening News, The Aljazeera Network as well as in The New York Times, USA Today, Newsday, and many other domestic and international publications. She was recently featured in Michael Collopy's Architects of Peace project, which has honored legendary people like Mother Teresa, Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama.

Immaculée has received honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Notre Dame, Saint John's University, Seton Hall University, Siena College, Walsh University and the Catholic University of America. She has been recognized and honored with numerous humanitarian awards, including The Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Reconciliation and Peace, the American Legacy's Women of Strength & Courage Award and the 2015 National Speaker’s Assocation’s Master of Influence Award.

Left toTell has received a Christopher Award "affirming the highest values of human spirit," and was chosen as Outreach Magazine'sselection for "Best Outreach Testimony/Biography Resource of 2007." Left to Tell has been adopted into the curriculum of dozens of high schools and universities, including Villanova University, which selected it for their "One Book Program," making Left to Tell mandatory reading for its 6,000 students.

Immaculée has written six additional books in recent years - Led by Faith: Rising from the Ashes of the Rwandan Genocide, Our Lady of Kibeho, If Only We Had Listened, Visit from Heaven, and The Boy Who Met Jesus, and The Rosary.

Today, Immaculée is regarded as one of world's leading speakers on faith, hope and forgiveness. She has shared this universal message with world leaders, school children, multinational corporations, churches, and at events and conferences around the world, including a recent presentation to over 200,000 people in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

A major motion picture about her story is under production with an international release in theaters in 2018.

[lawful-evil-novelist]

Jonathan Crane’s Backstory

So @themarchinghare mentioned I haven’t gone over Jon’s full backstory so I probably should.

CW for content regarding physical and emotional abuse, self-harm, suicidal behavior, and trauma.  Jon’s had a pretty rough life.

As some additional housekeeping, Project Titan takes place in January of 2012, City of the Lost takes place in March of 2013, and the currently unnamed Arkham Origins fic takes place in December of 2009.

So on October 31, 1982, Jonathan was born Jonathan Ulysses Crane in Arlen, Georgia to Karen Keeny — a 17-year-old from a long line of Georgia gentry — and Gerald Crane — a 19-year-old from Onigum, Minnesota.  Gerald was in Arlen for about a week for an odd job and left long before Karen even knew she was pregnant.  When Karen did find out, she considered giving her child up for adoption, but her grandmother, Mary Keeny, talked her out of it.  This is also, for the record, the start of Marion Keeny’s falling out with her mother and daughter.

Anyway, they didn’t think Jonathan’s birth would be much of a disaster.  Karen didn’t know the child was Gerald’s, and her mother and grandmother did not know Karen had actually slept with Gerald.  This is all somewhat important for one big reason: Gerald was Ojibwe, a Native American tribe most Americans probably know as Chippewa, and he looked it.  Before Jonathan was born, Mary was disappointed with Karen, she was mad Karen had a child out of wedlock and didn’t know the father, but Marion thought there wasn’t any reason to fear for the child’s wellbeing (unbeknownst to her, Jonathan’s upbringing wouldn’t have been much better if he were white but I digress)

Until Jonathan was born, that is.  Mary knew, pretty much immediately, that the child her granddaughter had just given birth to wasn’t white.  After a very long, uncomfortable interview, Karen admitted to sleeping with Gerald Crane, and the truth was out: Jonathan was Gerald’s son.  They did check and Marion contacting Gerald about Jonathan was another chip in her relationship with Mary but I digress.  Mary, despite being thoroughly a stringent, conservative woman of her time, decided to raise Jonathan and would allow Karen to stay until Jonathan was three.  Karen left the day after Jonathan’s third birthday and never returned.  Marion had left the year before after a bitter argument with Mary over letting Gerald see his son (Mary put her foot down and wouldn’t allow it).

Mary, who now had sole custody of Jonathan, chose to teach him strictly.  He was given a pretty traditional upper-class Victorian/Edwardian education: mathematics, classical literature, Latin, Greek, French, natural history, and music.  Jonathan was taught violin and piano, as well as proper formal etiquette, and he did have to use it.  Mary still attended a fair number of formal events, and she expected Jonathan to accompany her.  When Jonathan turned seven, Mary enrolled him in a Catholic private school, where the only real difference in the curriculum was more sciences (but not by much).

Strict education was kind of the tip of the iceberg for Mary.  She was absolutely abusive towards Jonathan.  She beat him, was demeaning, made him do most of the work around the house, and threw jeers at him on the regular.  And, of course, she locked him in a church full of crows if he “misbehaved too much” as with Year One.  Jonathan grew up terrified of his great-grandmother.

School wasn’t much of a haven for Jonathan either.  The school was extremely strict and, since Jonathan was left-handed, Mary Keeny had already been forcing him to use his right hand, so he managed to hide it fairly well at school.  Since Jonathan grew like a weed and was, even then, kind of effeminate-looking, he was bullied a lot.  While Jonathan didn’t struggle in school, he was isolated.

When Jonathan was 13, Mary Keeny passed away, and Jonathan was briefly put into foster care while the state looked for a relative to take him in.  While there he was put through a psych evaluation and diagnosed with ADHD and PTSD by the psychiatrist, who was the first person to ever be kind to Jonathan.  They immediately asked Karen to take her son in.  Karen didn’t want anything to do with Jonathan and wouldn’t even come to see him.  Gerald and his parents came to visit a few times, but Gerald ultimately realized he couldn’t afford to take care of Jonathan, and didn’t think he could give Jonathan what he needed.  After running through a few relatives in Georgia, the state reached out to Marion Keeny, who was living outside of Gotham and asked her to take in Jonathan.  Marion visited Jonathan once before agreeing.

Marion was a much better parent to Jonathan, but I won’t say she was perfect.  She was still a bit strict and was definitely learning on her feet to care for a child that had spent his whole life scared and alone.  She enrolled him in a private school that was a lot better for Jonathan’s wellbeing in general.  Jonathan was just starting to adjust when life threw another wrench into the works.

About three weeks after his fifteenth birthday, Jonathan was hospitalized after a suicide attempt.  Marion was kind of distraught but kept herself composed and managed to get him evaluated further.  Jonathan stayed in the hospital for about a month, at which point the doctors realized Jonathan was moving through mood phases.  He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and put on a mood stabilizer that was...okay?  It didn’t react badly aside from Jonathan having a decreased appetite so life went on as normal.  Jonathan got some flack at school for being out for a month but he kept up on his assignments and was generally as back to normal as he could get, aside from occasional short episodes that slipped past his medication.

Jonathan graduated high school a year early at 17 and attended Gotham University with a scholarship.  He majored in Psychology and was in the Pre-Medical Program, with every intent on becoming a psychiatrist.  Surprisingly (or perhaps because he kept taking courses at a local community college like an overachiever), Jonathan graduated in about five semesters (so two and a half years) and started on an MD at a medical school that he completed in...about 3 years?  Give or take?  While working on his MD he started teaching at Gotham U and continued teaching after getting his MD (yes, you are doing the math right, he was 21 when he started teaching).  He kept teaching until around 26 when he kind of got in trouble for having a gun loaded with blanks in a classroom and got fired.  Around that time he got a job at Blackgate Penitentiary and started helping GCPD and Batman with cases, all while planning revenge on Gotham U.  Originally, Jonathan hadn’t intended anything bad until he decided to stop taking his medication and physically dumped it down the drain out of spite.  Then things kind of went off the rails and we got Scarecrow.

Also as a clarifying note, Jonathan was Scarecrow for a solid year before being actually caught by Batman.  Batman foiled him a few times before then but Jonathan definitely was caught and put in Arkham (which was newly opened at the time)

So yeah, fun times were had all around.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 4.11

491 – Flavius Anastasius becomes Byzantine emperor, with the name of Anastasius I. 1241 – Batu Khan defeats Béla IV of Hungary at the Battle of Mohi. 1512 – War of the League of Cambrai: Franco-Ferrarese forces led by Gaston de Foix and Alfonso I d'Este win the Battle of Ravenna against the Papal-Spanish forces. 1544 – Italian War of 1542–46: A French army defeats Habsburg forces at the Battle of Ceresole, but fails to exploit its victory. 1689 – William III and Mary II are crowned as joint sovereigns of Great Britain on the same day that the Scottish Parliament concurs with the English decision of 12 February. 1713 – France and Great Britain sign the Treaty of Utrecht, bringing an end to the War of the Spanish Succession (Queen Anne's War). Britain accepts Philip V as King of Spain, while Philip renounces any claim to the French throne. 1727 – Premiere of Johann Sebastian Bach's St Matthew Passion BWV 244b at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Electorate of Saxony (now Germany). 1809 – Battle of the Basque Roads: Admiral Lord Gambier fails to support Captain Lord Cochrane, leading to an incomplete British victory over the French fleet. 1814 – The Treaty of Fontainebleau ends the War of the Sixth Coalition against Napoleon Bonaparte, and forces him to abdicate unconditionally for the first time. 1856 – Second Battle of Rivas: Juan Santamaría burns down the hostel where William Walker's filibusters are holed up. 1868 – Former shōgun Tokugawa Yoshinobu surrenders Edo Castle to Imperial forces, marking the end of the Tokugawa shogunate. 1876 – The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks is organized. 1881 – Spelman College is founded in Atlanta, Georgia as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, an institute of higher education for African-American women. 1908 – SMS Blücher, the last armored cruiser to be built by the Imperial German Navy, is launched. 1909 – The city of Tel Aviv is founded. 1921 – Emir Abdullah establishes the first centralised government in the newly created British protectorate of Transjordan. 1935 – Stresa Front: opening of the conference between the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, the Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini and the French Minister for Foreign Affairs Pierre Laval to condemn the German violations of the Treaty of Versailles. 1945 – World War II: American forces liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp. 1951 – Korean War: President Truman relieves Douglas MacArthur of the command of American forces in Korea and Japan. 1951 – The Stone of Scone, the stone upon which Scottish monarchs were traditionally crowned, is found on the site of the altar of Arbroath Abbey. It had been taken by Scottish nationalist students from its place in Westminster Abbey. 1952 – Bolivian National Revolution: Rebels take over Palacio Quemado. 1952 – Pan Am Flight 526A ditches near San Juan-Isla Grande Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, after experiencing an engine failure, killing 52 people. 1955 – The Air India Kashmir Princess is bombed and crashes in a failed assassination attempt on Zhou Enlai by the Kuomintang. 1957 – United Kingdom agrees to Singaporean self-rule. 1961 – The trial of Adolf Eichmann begins in Jerusalem. 1963 – Pope John XXIII issues Pacem in terris, the first encyclical addressed to all Christians instead of only Catholics, and which described the conditions for world peace in human terms. 1964 – Brazilian Marshal Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco is elected president by the National Congress. 1965 – The Palm Sunday tornado outbreak of 1965: Fifty-one tornadoes hit in six Midwestern states, killing 256 people. 1968 – President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing. 1968 – Assassination attempt on Rudi Dutschke, leader of the German student movement. 1970 – Apollo Program: Apollo 13 is launched. 1976 – The Apple I is created. 1977 – London Transport's Silver Jubilee AEC Routemaster buses are launched. 1979 – Ugandan dictator Idi Amin is deposed. 1981 – A massive riot in Brixton, south London results in almost 300 police injuries and 65 serious civilian injuries. 1986 – FBI Miami Shootout: A gun battle in broad daylight in Dade County, Florida between two bank/armored car robbers and pursuing FBI agents. During the firefight, FBI agents Jerry L. Dove and Benjamin P. Grogan were killed, while five other agents were wounded. As a result, the popular .40 S&W cartridge was developed. 1987 – The London Agreement is secretly signed between Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Shimon Peres and King Hussein of Jordan. 1990 – Customs officers in Middlesbrough, England, seize what they believe to be the barrel of a massive gun on a ship bound for Iraq. 1993 – Four hundred fifty prisoners rioted at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio, and continued to do so for ten days, citing grievances related to prison conditions, as well as the forced vaccination of Nation of Islam prisoners (for tuberculosis) against their religious beliefs. 1996 – Jessica Dubroff, her father, and her flight instructor, are all killed when their Cessna 177 Cardinal crashes after takeoff from Cheyenne Regional Airport, in Cheyenne, Wyoming. 2001 – The detained crew of a United States EP-3E aircraft that landed in Hainan, China after a collision with a J-8 fighter, is released. 2002 – The Ghriba synagogue bombing by al-Qaeda kills 21 in Tunisia. 2002 – Over two hundred thousand people march in Caracas towards the presidential palace to demand the resignation of President Hugo Chávez. Nineteen protesters are killed. 2006 – Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announces Iran's claim to have successfully enriched uranium. 2007 – Algiers bombings: Two bombings in Algiers kill 33 people and wound a further 222 others. 2011 – An explosion in the Minsk Metro, Belarus kills 15 people and injures 204 others. 2012 – A pair of great earthquakes occur in the Wharton Basin west of Sumatra in Indonesia. The maximum Mercalli intensity of this strike-slip doublet earthquake is VII (Very strong). Ten are killed, twelve are injured, and a non-destructive tsunami is observed on the island of Nias. 2018 – An Ilyushin Il-76 which was owned and operated by the Algerian Air Force crashes near Boufarik, Algeria, killing 257. 2021 – Twenty year old Daunte Wright is shot and killed in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota by officer Kimberly Potter, sparking protests in the city, when the officer allegedly mistakes her own gun for her taser.

[just-a-demi-bean]

I know an unreasonable amount of random facts due to the amount of research I’ve done for fics

You could probably ask me about the following things and I’d know them:

- Obscure restaurants in Paris, as well as a few random French phrases, and the history of the Louvre (Paris fic, used)

- universities in Paris that offer abroad programs, as well a bachelor’s in education (unused and USELESS i could not find one)

- deserted islands, myths about immortals, the afterlife, purgatory according to the catholic faith, grim reaper myths, death, medical terms (unposted and in progress)

- parts of the brain, particularly the hippocampus (Hanahaki fic, and I barely used any of my research)

- 60s fashion (including some modern ambidextrous takes on 60s fashion basically TWEED YES TWEED accompanied by excessive Singin’ in the Rain binging)

- types of flowers/flower meanings (flower shop au), as well as how to take care of a succulent, information that I did not use.

- wedding traditions and how to write wedding vows (tsukkiyama and daisuga wedding)

- the amount of alcohol in beer, soju, and champagne (oops)

- hundreds of synonyms for the words “pretty” and “smirk” (overused)

- how to make strawberry shortcake, as well as an actual attempt involving copious amounts of genoise sponge cake (unused)

- m&m stores (unposted) as well as how m&ms are made

- time differences, fashion differences, etiquette, in Korea, France, Japan

- vampire facts and myths (originally vampire’s sharp teeth are not the canines, they’re the 1st and 4th incisors. Take that, plastic Halloween teeth.)(Can’t touch silver, but they can see themselves in modern mirrors because mirrors used to be made with the silver. Now they’re not. So. Um. Take that as you please.) (Bokuaka. Will never be posted.)

[memorylang]

Language Learning, Mom’s Birthday | #43 | August 2020

Since Mom had held language-learning close-to-heart, I dedicate my August update to a language theme! 

With August 9, 2020, my late mom turned 55. I’ve often felt since 2017 a bittersweet fondness for the summer months between Mother’s Day and her birthday. That year had been my first summer in China getting to know Mom’s family after her death. 

For this August’s story, I’ve reflected a great deal on my experiences with language learning. Of which I’d written before, I’ve basically chosen five languages as the ones I want to be functional using (my native English included). So beyond the usual reflections from this COVID-19 summer in the States, I also take us back through my young life learning.  

And, I’m pleased to announce that I've begun to work on a new writing project! More on that soon. 

From Multilingual Mom to Me 

I start us from spring 2020, around evacuation back to the U.S. from Peace Corps Mongolia. 

By April 10-16, I’d been in my sixth week in Vegas again. Yet, less than a couple months before, I was in Mongolia packing to evacuate. As part of my coping while packing, I’d listened to hours of music. Much included Chinese Disney themes I’d found on Spotify. 

Well, having returned to Vegas, you might recall that the sisters’ songs in “Frozen II” resonated deeply with me. Whether while waking or working the yard, I’d listen to “Frozen II”' tracks in Chinese, sometimes in English. Finding songs in other langauges fit my 2020 exploration resolution. I humorously suspected that my Spotify Wrapped 2020 will surely list the same tracks in different languages... if only Spotify had Mongolian versions. Well, a month later, by week 10 (May 8-14), I’d exchanged the songs’ English versions for Spanish!  

That week also featured May 13, 2020—the third anniversary of Mom’s funeral. This year, something special happened.  

I’d received a fateful book—A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin. My college pastor had ordered this for me just days after I’d asked him what I should consider studying while discerning during quarantine a doctorate in religious studies. After my pastor noted my interest in world Christianity, especially its past and present in Asia, he highly recommended I study Church Latin. 

My pastor’s suggestion pleased me in a curious way. It reminded me of my Duolingo dabbling back in Mongolia, how at that time I’d favored Latin over Greek. Still, Liturgical Latin, studied seriously, seemed like quite an undertaking. Nonetheless my pastor commended my talents and felt confident I could succeed along paths God may open for me. I felt grateful for the aid! 

Embarking on my quest to learn Latin, I’ve found the language remarkable. 

It’s felt at times the culmination of my years learning languages. In fact, Mom had actually wanted my siblings and me to learn languages since we were little—She’d taught us to read English then tried to have us learn Chinese. Most summers, she’d have us in the mornings copy down Chinese characters before she’d let us play games or do activities that weren’t “educational.” 

While cleaning my family’s garage this COVID-19 this summer, I’d unearthed old notebooks in which my siblings and I would write Mom’s required phrases. I noticed how even back then I’d seem to try harder than most of my siblings, given how many characters I copied. Still, I hadn’t much inclination to know the language words beyond, then, clearing Mom’s barrier to letting me play games. 

Still, even if the notebooks had implied some aptitude I’d had for languages, Mom’s requirements left me if anything more averse to language acquisition than eager. 

Suffering Through Spanish

Many today may feel surprised to know that for years I’d called Spanish my second language. 

Given my childhood disdain for studying languages beyond English, I’d found my task to study Spanish in high school assiduous. I formally began in the language fall 2011 as a freshman. Spanish was our Vegas school’s only foreign language option, and all honors students needed two years of language. Yet again, my language studies drew from a requirement—little more. 

Many of my classmates and I rapidly found our classes exhausting, for our instructor had a thick French accent. Furthermore, verb conjugation, unfamiliar tenses and gendered vocabulary felt alien. I didn’t get why a language would be so complicated. 

Yet, despite my struggles to understand our teacher, she’d commended me because I “made the effort.” Well, I sometimes felt like I’d make the effort to a fault. When peers cheated on exams, my darn integrity had me abstain. 

By my second year, when I was succeeding in college-level AP world history, my fleetingly flawless GPA took from Spanish a beating. That hurt. By my senior year, at least Mom let me take Spanish online instead. I’d learned that I’d known more than I thought, but I still sucked. 

Redemption Through Mandarin

By fall 2015, I’d had graduated high school and enrolled as an honors undergrad facing another foreign language requirement. 

Licking my wounds from Spanish, I ruled out that language. I saw the University offered Chinese, though. Studying world history had interested me in Mom’s cultural background and native tongue. Considered she’d made my siblings stare at the language since childhood, I hoped it wouldn’t be too hard. So, I chose Mandarin Chinese.

And by my first days learning Chinese, I could already feel the benefits of having taken Spanish. 

Chinese felt astoundingly straightforward. Spanish had taught me to recognize that English letters (better known as the Latin alphabet) sound differently in different languages. For example, I felt pleased to notice that the ‘a’ /ah/ letter in Spanish sounds similar to its Chinese pronunciation. Thus, Spanish’s “mamá” and Chinese’s “māmā” relate, despite appearing in separate languages. 

Thanks to my Spanish experience, I picked up Chinese’s general pronunciation system far faster. Furthermore, I felt relieved to find that Chinese grammar lacked the conjugation and gender nightmares I’d faced in Spanish. I’d even loved how Chinese characters’ little images could often help me guess word meanings intuitively! 

My interest and success with the Chinese language led me to study abroad in 2017, planned with my mother before she was killed. I returned to China a year later, in 2018 on an intensive program. Both times, I spoke my mother’s native tongue, meeting relatives and making friends. I even received awards for my skills. 

Yet, despite my progress in Chinese, I’d often considered it only my third language. After all, much of my success in Chinese came having struggled through Spanish.  

  Finding Peace with Spanish

In my college senior year, January 2019, I’d attended a religious pilgrimage in Panamá—a Spanish-speaking nation. 

By that time, I’d grown acquainted with language immersions. In fact, I readily used my Mandarin skills when I met World Youth Day pilgrims from Hong Kong, Malaysia and Taiwan. They often felt shocked to meet someone outside their communities who knew their language! 

Of course, Panamá left me at times surrounded too by folks who only spoke Spanish, including my host family. 

I listened carefully. A luminous spark, I’d felt. Buried memories of my broken Spanish resurfaced. Near my last day in Panamá, I felt awed to have had a conversation with a cab driver completely in Spanish. 

My peace with Spanish became a renewed interest. 

After our pilgrimage, I’d continued with my host family and new Latin American friends to speak and write almost exclusively in Spanish. Online, we benefited over WhatsApp with Google Translate, too. Panamá in 2019 had taken a language that was for me dead and breathed in it new life. 

Peace Corps Language Level-ups

Later that year (last year), I began to learn what would be my fourth language and one entirely unfamiliar—Mongolian.

I should note that before reaching Mongolia June 1, 2019, I couldn’t even read its Cyrillic alphabet. I’d basically started at zero. 

Peace Corps’ language briefings had at least taught me that Mongolian is an Altaic language, distinct from Indo-European language like English and from character-based languages like Mandarin. Over the course of summer in villages of Mongolia, Peace Corps put us through mornings of immersive language training followed by returns home to our host families. 

Still, many Peace Corps Trainees felt unmotivated to learn Mongolian. After all, with statistically few Mongolian speakers worldwide, many felt that we wouldn’t have much utility for Mongolian outside Mongolia. Nevertheless, I felt motivated by desires to understand and feel understood. I powered through. 

Initially, Mongolian baffled me. 

Its Cyrillic alphabet (and its script one, too) includes consonant and vowel sounds unknown to English, Spanish and Chinese. Furthermore, Mongolian uses a case-based grammar of suffixes, a reversed subject-object-verb order and postpositions instead of prepositions. Mongolian even reintroduced me to my nemeses gendered vocabulary and tense-based verb endings!

I felt grateful for the sparse Chinese loanwords I wouldn’t have to relearn! Yet, my kryptonite was often pronunciation. Challenging consonants and tricky long vowels left me so inauthentic. Regardless, I was an ardent study who savored most every chance to receive Mongols’ clarifications and corrections. 

Finding Latin in Asia

Curiously, Catholic Churches became great places for my language learning.

This was the case for me both with learning Chinese in China and Mongolian in Mongolia. Parishioners would often take me under their wings to support me. Curiously in Mongolia, an English-speaking French parishioner pointed out once that Mongolian grammar is quite like Latin. I didn’t know Latin, though. 

I had encountered Latin, though. For, Asian vocabularies for Church topics often derived more directly from Latin than even English translations! These pleased me, since learning the vocabulary to speak about religion felt less foreign. 

Then came the sleepless nights during Mongolia’s COVID-19 preemptive quarantining, January and February. I’d had taken up Duolingo and opted for Greek or Latin in hopes that they’d bore me to sleep. I’d also hoped they might supplement how I teach English and read Scripture. And while Greek felt hopelessly confounding, Latin vocabulary felt surprisingly... natural. Despite my lack of formal training, I did alright just guessing. 

My Roads Led to Latin

From late May through mid-June 2020, I’d read the first four chapters of the Church Latin book. Meanwhile, mid-summer, I felt pleased to reach Duolingo’s Diamond League! Realizing that to become Champion would take far more effort than I cared to give, though I focused just on keeping my streak. 

Still, my Latin especially progress slowed after Dad’s remarriage and my relocation to Reno, Nev. My mostly-free summer rapidly grew hectic. But even in those first four Latin weeks, I’d discovered true gems in pursuing the historic language. 

At face value, Latin’s vocabulary reminded me of Spanish and English. Sometimes, Church words I’d learned first in Mandarin and Mongolian too related! Vocabulary felt profound. 

Furthermore, Latin grammar felt reminiscent of not only Spanish conjugations but indeed Mongolian cases! I felt relieved that Panamá had freed me from my conjugation aversion. Likewise, my Mongolian skills felt far from obsolete! 

To supplement my Latin studies, I try to translate between Chinese and Spanish, the way how in Mongolia I’d translate between Mongolian and Chinese. By juggling languages, I seek to codeswitch in more contexts with a more unified vocabulary. 

Wherever I wind up academically and professionally, I hope to work between languages. Through daily discipline, textbooks, apps, videos, notes and conversations, I trust I’ll go far. Feel free to connect if you want to practice with me! The more corrections, the better. 

From Ecclesiastical to Classical Latin

On August 23 (of my stateside week 25), I’d reunited in Vegas with a high school friend who’d studied classics in undergrad. From that meeting on, I’d not only ramped up my Latin studies but also transitioned from Ecclesiastical Latin to classical. 

For, Church Latin is but an evolving Latin. To understand the orgins of many words—beyond simply their uses within the Roman Catholic Church—I would need the eternal Latin that changes no more. Well, my friend offered to tutor me, so I offered to try! 

Classical Latin is harder, by the way. 

And in the midst of my suffering throughout September, my friend had even offered to tutor me Greek. While mostly joking (but also not), I’ve offered that I might learn Greek from him if for no other reason than to thank him for teaching me Latin! 

Nearly a month since beginning the tutorial system with him, we’ve since cleared over a fourth of a textbook meant sometimes to take a year’s worth of study. I hope by the year’s end to have finished the book. 

At least a third of my waking hours at times seem to go into Latin. But, it’s nice to keep learning! That same week, my siblings had all resumed their undergraduate studies. At least I’m still learning something! 

Embarking on a Book Memoir 

Besides working on my other languages, I’ve even placed time in my English. 

Lastly, I want to share about my writing quest! Although the project isn’t always across the top of my agenda, I keep at it. We return again to mid-summer. 

Peace Corps friends and I have often checked in on each other since evacuation to the States. Some also write. During a webinar for evacuated Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, I’d met many looking to tell their stories.

Most weeks since July, I’d also have a few video calls. I’d take these no matter what I was up to. I’d still been doing that ‘groundskeeping’ in Reno, Nev. of which I’d written before. Whether I was getting the mail, trimming the hedges, pruning the flowers, watering the lawn, raking debris, sweeping the floor, taking out the trash, tugging the garbage bins, adjusting the windows or washing the dishes, I’d often had some task that Dad requested I’d tend to. Calls with friends broke the monotony. 

After encouragement from mentors and friends, I’d decided to write a creative nonfiction book memoir for publication someday! 

The first step, of course, is having a manuscript. So, since week 17 (June 26–July 2), I’d been typing away at the first chapters to what seems will be a story spanning my three years of studies and service overseas after Mother’s death, leading up to my acceptance and peace. I'm excited to tell stories about finding purpose and identity, despite grief and loss. I hope it helps readers to find their own peace amid confusion. All things are so fundamentally interconnected. 

By three weeks in, I’d felt so grateful for the outpouring of support I’d received. Frankly, I wouldn’t be writing so much if people hadn’t been saying this has potential. Thankfully, readers offer marvelous insights. They treat the story as one deserving of quality. I love their attention to details. 

Still, among the most grueling lessons I’ve learned learned has been that a book about grief has needed me to relive the hurt of my mother's death for repeated days. I trust nonetheless that once I’ve written and rewritten well, the remaining may rest behind me. 

If you’re looking to read what’s coming, you’re in the right place. Merely starting on the book has helped me to improve my blog writing. You may have noticed in my recent summer 2019 throwback stories, for example, I’ve used more narrative than before. I hope you’ve enjoyed! 

The language studies and the book continue, though I’ve taken more breaks lately with the book. From mid-August I’d embarked on advocacy projects with the National Peace Corps Association. I’ll share more on that soon. Having doubled-down on my Latin studies from mid-September, it can be a quite a black hole for my time! For everything there is a season (Ecc. 3:1). 

Seeking to Stay Holy

A couple friends admired my dedication and called upon me to help them meet their spiritual goals. What a kind expereince! In helping them keep accountable, they’ve likewise helped me. 

With a homebound Knight of Columbus, we’d continued July’s rosaries throughout August, as many as three times a day leading up to the Catholic Feast of the Assumption. Afterward, we’d reduced our count back to two times daily through early September. I’d never prayed so many rosaries before! 

Through August, I’d also read a chapter of Proverbs daily with a friend. I’d reconnected with her during my outreach for the book. I enjoy our weekly Scripture chats, and she shows more Protestant perspectives on our faith!  

I find God a great companion along the journey of life. Regardless of how you view religious and spiritual topics, I trust that you have companions, too. They’re so important! 

On a positive note, I’d gotten to revisit my undergrad parish. I felt so amazed to hear that students I’d never met thought I was a cool person! I try not to think too highly of myself, but I feel touched when people notice me. I hope I inspire folks. 

Coming up Next

Thanks for reading my meta-stories about languages and stories!  

If you’ve been following my tales for a while now, you may recall I’d mentioned feeling surprised to learn that my mother had been studying Spanish around the same years I’d been studying it. I felt awed to realize that even when I’d tried to learn one of my earliest new languages, Mom was trying to learn what was for her one of a few. I’m glad to have perhaps inherited Mother’s interest in languages. 

Up next, I have a very special piece dated for September 2020 [and ultimately released in October]. I’m focusing on perspectives—mine and others’. I’m particularly excited to share adventures with teams including those within the American Psychological Association and the Honors College at the University of Nevada, Reno. They’ve given me plenty of fun roles amid the pandemic! 

I’m also writing about national and state parks! God, I love nature.

Stay healthy, friend.

COVID-19 and America Months 11 through 15 | April, May, June, July, August

Easter Epilogue in America | #35 | April 2020 

Remembering Mom—Third Year After | #36 | May 2020 

Fathers’ Day, Faith and Familiarity | #38 | June 2020

23rd Birthday~ Roses and Rosaries | #39 | July 2020

Language Learning, Mom’s Birthday | #43 | August 2020

You can read more from me here at DanielLang.me :) 

[dandimary]

"¿A quien le importa lo que digo por ahí? ¡Antes muerta que sencilla!"

TMR Renaissance ➝ Toni Martinez

General

Full Name: Pilar Antonia Martinez Nickname/Aliases: Toni Birthday: September 29th, 2000 Gender: Cisgender Female Hometown: Madrid, Spain Current Residence: London, England, UK  Sexual Orientation: Bisexual Education: Beauxbatons Academy of Magic Spirituality: Catholic

Physical Appearance

Faceclaim: Ana De Armas Height: 5′8″ Hair: Wavy, brown, shoulder length Eyes: Hazel, brown speckles in the center, light green rims. Build: Lean, toned curves, long legs. Notable Traits: Tiny mole in the middle of her left cheek.

Relationships

Parents: Emmanuel A. Martinez (father), Maria Rosa Martinez (née Flores, mother) Other Important Family: Megara Flores (cousin), Avalina Flores (cousin) Best friend(s): Megara Flores, her roommates back in Madrid. Romantic Interest(s): N/A Relationship Status: Single

Biography

Only child to Emmanuel and Maria Rosa Martinez, the moment Pilar Antonia Martinez was born, she was bred up for extravagance and worldly matters. Her childhood days were spent either accompanying her father on his travels around the globe or with her mother, exposed to the finest art lessons while surrounded by bookshelves filled with classic and foreign literature. From the age of 8, the most skilled witches and wizards within her extended family would take turns in teaching her to become proficient in Legilimency. Ever since then, Toni - as she is affectionately called by her loved ones - has had a quaint appetite for linguistics. Upon graduation from Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, she knew how to speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, French - and began learning Arabic as her fifth language. During her school years, she even participated in a one year exchange program at the Euro-Glyph School of Extraordinary Languages in Havana, Cuba. Apart from her academics, Toni has an extensive taste in music, from the archetypal flamenco sounds of a guitar to the popular, muggle music found on the radio, and everything in between.

All these extracurricular activities served a purpose beyond keeping a brilliant, outgoing little girl busy. These interests were engrained in Toni to prepare her for a just, poised life in the world of bureaucracy and diplomacy - a life very familiar within her family. Toni’s parents knew she was an incredibly gifted young woman, who would be successful throughout the course of her life in whatever she chose to do. There were no limitations of what her path would be, so long as she had a plan and worked hard to be the best. With that said, there were no objections from her parents when instead of becoming a politician’s wife, as they had imagined, Toni decided she wanted to become the politician herself. 

Toni has always had fire within her blood - a desire to learn so much about the world around her and make it better. It’s unsure whether it’s stemmed from often being able to read into people’s minds, but she has a curiosity to satisfy and opinions to be voiced. Having the honor to represent the Spanish equivalent of the Ministry of Magic, as an International Confederation of Wizards Ambassador, is a privilege she doesn’t take lightly. Having recently grown close with her cousin Megara, Toni has seen firsthand a growing movement within the werewolf civil rights community - one that she plans to take active part in. However, as many diplomats before her have faced and been tested, Toni has a line to be wary of striding; when does “politically correct” become a detriment to the good she’s capable of accomplishing? 

Personality

+ well-cultured, intuitive, charming, outgoing, diplomatic - headstrong, dependent, self-indulgent, fiery, conformist tendencies

Links

Blog 

Character Tag