#General San Martin station

[sheliach]

Buenos Aires - Retiro: Estación General San Martín  by Flickr

[440mxs-wife]

The Deal With Love

Pairing: Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy x F!Reader. Other Characters: Jim Kirk, Nyota Uhura, Christine Chapel, Dr. Jordan Wallace, Dr. Dylan Clark, Martin Sinclair (OMC’s).

Word Count: 9316 

Warnings: Fake dating, friends to lovers, well-meaning friends, alcohol consumption, some angst, conniving businessmen, but FLUFFFFFY ending.

Summary: One night, Dr. McCoy shows up at the bar owned by James T. Kirk, The Space Dock, with a problem. He’s about to close a deal with a major hospital, which will benefit his clinics. The hospital execs invite Dr. McCoy and his wife to their charity gala, where they hope to finalize the deal. However, Dr. McCoy isn’t married, so he asks the Reader to pose as his girlfriend, and she agrees. Only problem is, they have feelings for each other that have so far gone unspoken. Will they be able to go back to being “just friends” after the deal is done, or will there be heartbreak?

A/N: If you’ve been tagged here, it’s because you’ve interacted one or more times on a McCoy story of mine, or we’re moots. Whether you like or reblog, I am eternally grateful for your support. If anyone else would like to be tagged on any future Karl Urban character postings, or would rather leave the Crazy Train, please let me know. Thank you, and enjoy the show!

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Leonard McCoy had wanted to be a doctor for as long as he could remember. He read nearly every medical textbook and magazine article he could get his hands on. As a junior and senior in high school, he received special permission to help out in the nurse's office. That's also where he happened to meet his best friend, James T. Kirk, or "Jim", as he was known around school.

After graduation, their paths diverged for a time, with Leonard headed to medical school, while Jim opted to pursue a degree in business. Several years later, Jim was the owner of a highly successful bar in downtown San Francisco, called The Space Dock. Only the best bartenders in the city worked at Jim's club, where the line frequently stretched around and down the block, starting on Thursday nights.

Leonard, on the other hand, spent his years slowly building his first neighborhood clinic into a total of three successful ones. His clinics provided the best care in the city, regardless of a patient's financial status. Each clinic worked in general medicine, while also specializing in one other particular area of health care. It was this model that caught the attention of Martin Sinclair, the CEO of one of the top healthcare facilities in the city, Bayview General Hospital.

Tonight, Leonard was invited to meet with Sinclair and several of the board members to discuss a business matter. The board wanted to propose the acquisition of the McCoy clinics, bringing them under the hospital's umbrella. Leonard would still be very much involved in the day-to-day operations but would have access to more and better technology to serve his patients.

After drinks and an expensive meal, Sinclair asked Leonard for his thoughts on the business proposal. In his mind, Leonard was jumping for joy at the opportunities being presented to him. On the outside, though, his poker face was in control. "I appreciate the offer, which I must admit is rather generous. However, I hope you understand when I say I'd like to discuss this with the other members of my staff at the clinics," he responded.

Sinclair and the other board members all assured him they understood, and after dessert, they all walked out to the valet station. Everything was going well at this point, with each side thinking they had the upper hand. While they were waiting for their vehicles to be brought around, Sinclair turned to Leonard. "Oh, you must invite your wife to join us at our next event. My wife is always looking to meet new people and make friends," he remarked.

Leonard gulped. "My-my wife?" he questioned.

"You are married, aren't you?" another board member asked. At the look on Leonard's face, he explained. "We're all married. You see, we find that when a colleague is married, it shows a certain amount of stability in his life, someone who's going to stick around. Not someone who we spend all of our time training, only to have them leave to go to some other hospital. So, when do we get to meet her?" he wondered.

"Well," Leonard began. "Thing is, I'm not married," he admitted. "N-not yet, anyway," he hastily added when he saw the faces of his potential co-workers. "I do have a girlfriend, though. A wonderful woman, who I've been involved with for almost five years. Been thinking of asking her to take the leap, but I haven't found the perfect moment yet," he sheepishly grinned.

The group burst into laughter and some of them clapped a hand on Leonard's shoulder. They all agreed that Leonard should bring his girlfriend to the hospital's charity gala, scheduled to occur in three weeks. Sinclair and the others hinted that they also hoped Leonard would have a decision on their offer by that date. He assured them that he would consider their offer, and in the meantime, he would be needing two tickets for the gala.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

After he left the restaurant, Leonard headed for The Space Dock, to hang out with Jim and get his opinion on the deal. He needed some outside perspective, and he knew Jim would help him on that front. Leonard was still nursing his first glass of top-shelf bourbon when his eyes fell on you. He was usually around on Friday nights, watching as you made and served drinks to a packed club. However, this being a Wednesday night, he was surprised to see you working.

Leonard's eyes followed you as you took a tray laden with drinks over to a table of boisterous patrons playing cards. You set each drink in front of its recipient and smiled before turning to leave the table.

What happened next nearly had Leonard catapulting out of his seat. He watched in horror as one of the men reached out to try and pull you onto his lap. Fortunately, at the last second, you scurried out of the man's reach, then returned to confront him. As you spoke, his face seemed to get more and more pale and when you left again, he had a terrified look in his eyes.

You returned to the bar to wipe off your tray with a wet cloth, then smiled as you turned your attention to Leonard. "Oh, good evening, Leonard, how's everything going?" you asked.

"Going all right, everything okay with you? I saw what almost happened over there, what did you say to him?" Leonard wondered.

"I reminded him that his son, Mason, was a student in my class, and that I know his wife. I also mentioned what would happen if he or any of his friends with him tonight try to pull a stunt like that again," you replied.

"Really? What did you say you would do?" he couldn't help but ask.

You leaned in closer, and Leonard followed suit. "Um....I told him that if it happened again, I'd have to tell his wife about it at the next parent-teacher conference," you smirked. "He knows she's kinda scary about stuff like that."

Leonard threw his head back and burst into laughter. "Here I thought I was going to have to teach him a lesson in how to treat a lady, but you handled it just fine, darlin'," he remarked.

"While I appreciate the sentiment, I've handled worse before. Used to work in my uncle's bar when I needed money for college. Most of the customers were ex-military, a relatively good bunch for the most part. But occasionally we got a wannabe in there or some hotshot recruit who thought he could say or do whatever he wanted," you shrugged. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to fetch some more bottled beer from the cooler."

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Leonard shook his head and watched as you walked through the swinging doors leading to the walk-in coolers. It wasn't long before Jim was standing in front of him, wiping down the bar top. "Hey Bones, what brings you in here? And on a Wednesday of all days?" he asked.

The doctor gave Jim a quick smile, then told him about the dinner meeting he had with the execs from Bayview General Hospital. Leonard explained the particulars of the board's offer, and what it all would mean for his practice. Then he brought up the unusual conversation that occurred outside at the valet station. "I mean, it was beyond weird. He said they're all married, that it represented 'stability' in a person's life," he grimaced at the memory of the conversation.

Leonard motioned with his thumb to where you were clearing the empty tables, while still keeping an eye on your rowdy table of customers. "What's she doing here tonight? It's only Wednesday, and if I'm not mistaken, she has a job as a 2nd-grade schoolteacher in the morning," he pointed out.

"My regular Wednesday bartender called out with a family emergency, so she volunteered to take the the extra shift," Jim shrugged.

"That's got to be tough, working all week as a schoolteacher, then here on the weekends," Leonard mused. He watched as you now washed glasses behind the bar.

Jim kept his eyes on his friend while Leonard observed your routine of washing and rinsing the glassware for the bar. "Yeah, but she does it all with a smile. Hey, what are you going to do about a girlfriend or fiancée for this gala thing?" he asked, changing the subject.

Leonard's concentration on you broke for a quick second to respond. "Hmm? Oh, the hospital gig. Don't know yet," he murmured, his eyes back to observing you. "I wonder if....nah," he shook his head.

Jim started to catch on to Leonard's train of thought. "Why not?" he asked. "C'mon, she's perfect! Second grade schoolteacher, wholesome occupation. Plus, the two of you have been friends for a long enough time that it'll be believable that you two are a couple," he explained.

"Hmm. Wow, I can't believe I'm saying this, but Jim, you might be right," Leonard chuckled. "Doesn't hurt to ask her, right?"

You chose that moment to bring over a tray of washed glassware, and latched on to the end of Leonard's question. "Ask who, what?" you wondered.

Jim looked from Leonard to you and grinned. "You know, I just remembered, I've got some paperwork to do in my office. I'll catch up with you two later," he winked and patted your shoulder on his way out.

"Len? Everything all right?" you asked.

It was now or never, Leonard thought. "Do you have a minute? I have something I'd like to talk with you about," he started. You flashed him one of your beautiful smiles, which gave him the courage to share the events of his evening and to ask for your help.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

After he finished giving you the details of his plan, you silently digested the information. While he spoke, you were leaning forward, but now you were reclined in your chair, your palms flat on the table in front of you. It was a rather unusual thing to ask of you: pose as his girlfriend/fiancée to impress a bunch of hospital execs for a business deal.

The decision should have been a no-brainer. Do this favor for a friend by wearing a fancy dress to an upscale event with dinner and drinks. But in your case, it wasn't exactly that clear-cut of a decision anymore. Especially since lately, your feelings for Leonard had tiptoed across the line of simple friendship and into something more.

Sure, by the time Leonard came in on Friday nights, he usually had a grumpy look on his face. One that sometimes took until halfway through his second bourbon to begin to disappear. The other bartenders generally steered clear of Leonard until that point, except for you.

In your eyes, Leonard is exhausted and stressed-out from giving everything he has to treating his patients to the best of his ability. You admired him and couldn't imagine doing what he does, or how he does it, day in and day out, all with the utmost grace and dignity. The least you could do was pour the man a drink to help him relax from a day like that.

Leonard found himself studying your face, looking for any indication of your thoughts about his plan. "Well?" he prompted, breaking you out of your concentration. "What do you think? I'm willing to throw in some cash, or prizes, if that helps," he chuckled nervously.

You grinned at his attempts to alleviate any tension, or to possibly influence your decision. "Oh, no, no, Len. You don't have to do anything like that. I'll do this for you, no strings attached," you affirmed. Given the potential for heartbreak, you were aware that you may regret this, but there was no way you could turn him down. His friendship meant too much for you to do that. Somehow, you'd have to learn to live with the consequences, should they arise.

Just as Leonard thought it was about to all fall apart when you seemed to hesitate, you surprised him by agreeing to his plan. And though you'd said, "no strings attached", Leonard knew his heart was already somewhat tethered to yours. Perhaps these thoughts he's been having of something more with you aren't that unrealistic after all.

Leonard relaxed in his seat at the bar and reached out to take your hand in his. "Well, I don't quite know how to thank you for this, darlin'," he drawled. "They told me the gala was about three weeks from now. As soon as I have the exact date, I'll let you know, in case you need to go shopping or something," he mentioned. "At least let me help you by covering that expense."

You tapped your chin, pretending to think, then turned to Leonard. "Hmm. I s'pose I can live with that," you replied with a smile. "I'm sure I will need to get something to wear, at some point anyway. Not much call for a ballgown and high heels in my 2nd-grade class," you chuckled, as did Leonard. "But my dress remains a secret until that night," you advised, holding up your index finger.

"Fair 'nuff, sweetheart," Leonard grinned.

The two of you chatted for a little while longer until it was time for Leonard to head home. He hardly ever stayed much past eleven on Fridays, and it was now edging close to midnight. "I'll be here Friday night, as usual, so I'll see you then," he remarked. Before he left, he took your hand in his and pressed a kiss to the back of it, then gave you a roguish wink.

Your eyes followed Leonard as he walked out of the bar and into the night. The navy-blue dress slacks he was wearing clung perfectly to his backside. The top two buttons on his white dress shirt were open, giving you a tantalizing hint of his broad chest. His suit jacket was slung over one shoulder as he waved goodbye to Jim with his other hand.

Jim stood next to you and observed the way you ogled his best friend with your lips slightly parted as you watched him leave the bar. It wasn't until the door closed that you snapped your mouth closed and returned to the task at hand. "So, did Bones have anything interesting to say?" he smirked.

Your head swiveled in Jim's direction, and you rolled your eyes at the smug look on his face. "Oh, shut up, Jim," you muttered.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Later that night after your shift at the bar, you were reflecting on Dr. McCoy's offer as you relaxed on your couch. All you had to do was to pretend to be the woman in his life, long enough for him to sign the agreement for the business deal. After the hospital's charity gala, you could break up with him, and you go back to being just friends. He made it sound uncomplicated. But will it really be that easy?

You could tell yourself all you want that you agreed to his plan because it was about one friend helping another. However, it wasn't that simple, considering your feelings for Leonard, even though you were sure he didn't return them. This arrangement made you wonder if or how you could ever go back to being "just friends", after you'd known what it was like to be his. As your eyelids drooped, your thoughts drifted back to that night when you'd first met Leonard.

>>Flashback

"Good evening, what can I get for you?" you greeted with a bright smile.

Leonard seemed to wince at your cheerfulness. "Bourbon. Please," he grumbled.

You delivered his drink and watched as he threw it back in one go. "Another?" you asked, to which he nodded. "Rough day?" you wondered as you replenished his drink.

Leonard paused mid-sip on his second drink. "Look, I know that bartenders are supposed to be great listeners, but please. I just want to enjoy my drink without anyone trying to shrink my head, especially one of Jim's new bartenders," he muttered. "No offense."

"None taken, but I have a deal for you. I have a joke for you, and if you don't laugh or crack a smile, your next drink is on me. However, if I do get a laugh or smile, no matter how small, you have to say something nice," you proposed.

Leonard's head tilted in curiosity and said he'd take your deal. You told your joke, but you think you messed up the punch line, because Leonard had no reaction. "Guess that means you owe me a drink, darlin'," he remarked.

"I reckon I do," you replied as you poured his next drink, then introduced yourself. He gave his name in return, and he watched as you ran the bar with precision, charm and grace. Throughout the night, you checked in with him, offering little tidbits about your life, while he did the same. You noticed that as the evening progressed, his time between refills got longer, while his laughs and smiles were more frequent.

Eventually, it was time for him to leave, but not without flashing you a smile and mouthing, "thank you". Whether that was thanks for your care and conversation or for making him smile, you didn't care. You had made a difference and that was enough for you.

>>End of Flashback

From that very first interaction with Leonard, a beautiful friendship was born. He came in every Friday night after work, and you got to meet his and Jim's other friends. Soon after meeting everyone, you were welcomed into the friend group as if you'd been there from the beginning. It was a feeling you didn't want to lose, especially once your arrangement with Leonard was over.

Noticing the time, you got up from the couch and stepped into the shower, praying that the hot water would ease your aching muscles. You also hoped it would relax you enough to the point that your brain would slow down enough to let you sleep. For now, you decided to let things happen naturally between you and Leonard, and try not to overthink the situation. Easier said than done, but I've got to try, you thought as your head sank into the pillow.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"Well, it's about time," Uhura remarked. You had invited her to lunch because you needed a semi-neutral third party to help sort through your emotions.

"Wait, what's that supposed to mean, 'it's about time'?" you asked.

"I mean exactly that, it's about time Leonard wised up and asked you out on a date," she clarified.

"I suppose it is technically a date. I get all dressed up in a beautiful ballgown, Leonard picks me up from my place and we go to this hospital charity gala thing," you explained. "I'm there so that Len can project an image of 'stability' to the board members. They're all married, and if they think we're together, they'll want to do this deal with him."

Uhura rolled her eyes. "You two, I swear," she muttered under her breath. "Do you not see the way Leonard looks at you? Wh-when we're at the bar and you bring over the next round of drinks, his eyes follow your every move. They stay glued to you until you get back behind the bar," she stated. "I'm tellin' you, that man is smitten with you."

"Nuh-uh, he watches so that if I start to have any trouble because the tray is too heavy or something, he can jump in and help," you countered. "Doesn't mean he has feelings for me, or that he's 'smitten' with me, or anything else like that," you grumbled.

Uhura waved off your feeble explanation. "Never mind that. What happens after the hospital's thingamajig? Does everything go back to 'normal' with you and McCoy?" she wondered.

That's the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn't it, you thought. "I suppose so, I mean, I don't think either of us have thought that far ahead. Once he signs the contract and the deal goes through, he said I could break up with him and we'd go back to being friends," you explained.

As if Uhura could hear your thoughts, she remarked, "But you're thinking, 'what if that's not what I want', right?" You nodded at her keen observation as she reached over and covered your hand with hers. "Then you have to tell him. Take the leap and trust that Leonard will be there to catch you," she added.

You took a deep breath as you considered Uhura's words. "I'll keep it in mind. For now, I need your help to find a gown that will blow his socks off," you grinned.

"I can definitely help you with that, let's go!" Uhura exclaimed.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Across town, a meeting was being held between Dr. McCoy and the two chief physicians at his other clinics. He explained the terms of the deal with Bayview General Hospital, and what it would mean, especially with patient care. The conversation took a turn similar to yours and Uhura's when Leonard mentioned that he would be going to the hospital charity gala with you.

"Really? It's about damn time," remarked Dr. Jordan Wallace, one of his colleagues.

Leonard turned his surprised look towards Dr. Wallace. "Now, what's that supposed to mean?" he wondered.

"It means, Dr. McCoy, that we've been waiting for you to ask her out on a date since you first told us about her," answered Dr. Dylan Clark, another of his colleagues.

Leonard shook his head. "It's not like that between us, we're just friends who have known each other for a long time. They'll assume she's my girlfriend, and why should I correct their assumption?" he pointed out. "I suppose, technically, it is a date. We'll both be dressed up in our best, I'm picking her up from her house, and she'll be by my side for the evening," he explained.

Drs. Wallace and Clark looked at each other, unable to believe that Dr. McCoy, their friend and mentor, was this clueless about his feelings for you. "So, there's nothing more between you? This is only a business deal? What happens after the deal is signed, do you go back to being 'just friends'?" Dr. Clark wondered.

Leonard took a deep breath before answering. "I guess we haven't thought that far ahead, you know, about 'after'. It's not like I haven't ever entertained thoughts of something more with her," he admitted with a wry grin.

"What's so special about her anyway?" Dr. Wallace asked.

"Where do I start?" Leonard grinned. "She's intelligent, selfless, compassionate and has a great sense of humor. Her day job is a 2nd-grade schoolteacher, which should qualify her for sainthood on that alone. But she also works weekends at Jim's bar for some extra cash. On top of everything else, she's one of the most beautiful women I've ever met," he finished.

"Oh yeah, you're gone for this woman, Doc McCoy," Clark chuckled, as did Wallace. "My advice to you is to tell her how you feel. She sounds like an amazing person, and from what you've told us, you'd be perfect for each other. Take the leap and trust that she'll be there to catch you."

Leonard waved his hand to try and get the meeting back on track. "All right, all right, enough about my love life," he grumbled good-naturedly. "So, what are our thoughts on Bayview's offer?" he inquired, getting back to the business at hand.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

After lunch with Uhura, you had found the perfect gown, a floor-length burgundy one with tulle overlay and cap sleeves. It had gold sequins on the bodice, at the waist and on the skirt. You found a pair of gold pumps along with some earrings and a necklace to match.

When you got home, you phoned Leonard to let him know so he could match his pocket square to the color of your dress. "Not even a hint as to what it looks like, darlin'?" Leonard chuckled.

"Not even a little hint, Len. A girl has to have some mystery about her. Keeps a man guessin'," you added with a grin you hoped he heard through the phone.

"Well, all right. I s'pose I'll let you have your mystery, sweetheart. Can't wait to see you this Friday, though," Leonard replied softly. "You'll be all dressed up like a princess, while I play the part of the frog," he joked.

"Fortunately for you, a princess can turn the frog back into the prince with only one kiss. And I will be more than happy to bestow one on you. Even though you're already a prince in my book," you remarked shyly.

"That's mighty kind of you to say, sugar," Leonard replied quietly. "Sweet dreams, darlin'," he responded.

"Sweet dreams of you, Len," you whispered, then hung up.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

On the night of the gala, your friends Uhura and Christine came over to help you get ready. As you'd told Leonard, there wasn't much occasion for a ballgown and fancy shoes in your classroom. For this reason, you desperately needed your friends as reinforcements. Luckily, Christine was an expert with hair, which she put into a classic updo for you, with a few loose, wispy tendrils to frame your face.

Uhura was your cosmetics expert, keeping it at neutral colors for the most part. While at the same time, she was subtly enhancing your "existent beauty", as she'd called it. However, you were having trouble sitting still for her to apply the eyeliner and mascara. She finally stopped and asked you, "All right, what's going on? I can't finish your makeup if you don't stop fidgeting. What's wrong?"

You let out a breath you didn't know you were holding. "It's just....tonight might not be as easy as I thought it would be. I mean, yeah, sure, it'll be great when he holds my hand, or puts his arm around my waist, but that's because we're pretending," you explained. "We're putting on an act for those hoity-toity hospital execs so they'll sign this deal with him. What if I make a mistake and blow everything? And....I don't want it to be pretend anymore," you finished in a small voice.

"Oh, honey," Uhura brought you into a hug, being mindful of your hair. "It's going to be all right. Leonard will be by your side the whole night, and he won't let anything happen to you. Just relax and follow his lead. You two have been friends for such a long time that this should almost be like second nature to you," she pointed out.

"Yeah, you're right. If something's going to happen, it should do so naturally, as it would if no one is watching," you mused.

"Exactly, keep it natural. If you want to hold his hand, reach for it. If you need to hold his arm, take it," Christine chimed in. "And if he wants to kiss you, well," she grinned. "Then lock your lips with his and hold on for the ride," she cackled.

Once the laughter died down, Uhura returned to her task of your makeup. As soon as she finished, she and Christine helped you step into your gown and zipped it up. You slipped your feet into a pair of gold pumps with a low heel and headed out to the living room, where you'd left your jewelry. Right after you'd secured your crystal earrings in place, there was a knock at the door and you froze in place.

"He's here," you whispered, your hand rising to cover your mouth.

Uhura rolled her eyes with a grin as she rose from her chair. "Relax, honey, I'll get the door, even though I know it's for you," she smirked. She checked the peephole, turned to you with a wink and a nod of her head. You nodded back and waited with bated breath as she turned the doorknob.

The sight that greeted you was one for which you were not prepared: Leonard McCoy in a tuxedo. The man was devastatingly handsome enough as it was, no matter what he wore, but a tuxedo?? He was a menace to be sure, but in the best of ways. "Good evening, Dr. McCoy. Won't you please come in?" Uhura prompted.

"Thank you, Nyota, I....," Leonard's voice trailed off when his eyes landed on you. "Whoa, sweetheart," he whispered. "You look absolutely exquisite this evening. Truly breathtaking," he added with a warm smile.

"Good evening, Leonard. And thank you," you returned his smile a bit shyly. "You look rather dashing yourself. Charming and handsome is quite the lethal combination, I'll have to keep my eyes on you," you teased. In front of you was the box that held your jewelry for the evening, the necklace still in the case. "Oh, um, excuse me a moment, last part of getting ready," you motioned to the box.

Leonard stepped over to where you were fiddling with the clasp on your necklace with shaking hands. He covered your hands with his own and eased the delicate chain from your hold. "Allow me," he murmured. You turned your back to Leonard and watched as the pendant with your birthstone came into view. An involuntary shiver coursed through your body when Leonard's hands brushed the soft, short hairs at the nape of your neck, which did not go unnoticed.

His hands traveled from your shoulders and down the length of your arms, capturing your delicate hands in his larger ones. Leonard gently nudged you to pivot until you were facing him, a tender smile on his face. "Pretty as a picture, darlin'," he remarked, causing the heat to bloom in your cheeks.

"Hey, that's a great idea," Christine chimed in, holding up her phone. Leonard slipped his arm around your waist, tugging you closer to his side, while you moved to rest your left hand against his chest, palm side down. "Smile," she prompted.

Leonard had shifted so he was facing you more than he faced Christine's camera. His right hand lightly covered your left one, and his eyes focused solely on you. The corners of his mouth twitched upwards in a secret smile, one you were glad only you could see. "I am one lucky man tonight," he whispered. "Shall we?" he asked, to which you nodded.

You picked up your gold, quilted-leather handbag and dropped your phone inside to join your wallet. Leonard held out his arm, so you curled your hand around it and he tucked it close to his side. "Time for us to go. I bid you good evening, ladies. I'll try to have her home at a reasonable hour," he chuckled.

"Take all the time you want, it's not like she has a curfew or anything," Uhura snorted with laughter, which earned her a glare from you. Christine caught the exchange between you and Uhura, which caused her to break out into laughter as well. Leonard grinned and shook his head as he led you out to his car.

Christine pulled up the picture she took of you and Leonard and sighed. Uhura stepped over to peer over Christine's shoulder and let out a sigh. "They're so in love with each other, but neither one of them will admit it. That picture says it all," Uhura remarked while Christine nodded in agreement. "Send that to me, will ya?" she asked.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

At the event, you and Leonard were the last of your group to arrive, but that was to be expected. He introduced you as his girlfriend, and explained that you have been together for about five years now. Leonard mentioned that you had met at Jim's bar, and how he knew as soon as he met you, that he wanted to get to know you better.

It made your heart flutter to hear Leonard say that, but you wondered if it was part of the act, or if he truly meant it. You pushed it to the back of your mind when Leonard guided you out onto the dance floor.

As you swayed back and forth, there was a softness in his eyes. Leonard pulled you closer to his side and his hand covered yours, which was laying flat against his chest. When he moved to rest his cheek against the side of your head, you could feel him smile.

After dancing, it was time to find your assigned table for the sit-down dinner. Somewhere between the main course and dessert, the men adjourned to discuss the business proposal from Bayview General Hospital. That left you to fend for yourself with their wives, but you were determined to keep up the façade for Leonard's sake.

Martin Sinclair's wife asked you what you do, and you responded that you were a 2nd-grade school teacher. You earned some polite nods and murmurs of affirmation from a couple of the wives. However, you also got the feeling that the other wives were not known to work outside the home, if ever or at all.

You scanned the room and noticed that the other executives had left Leonard by himself at the bar, sipping a bourbon, no doubt. As gracefully as possible, you excused yourself from the table to check on him.

Not knowing whether the meeting went well or not, you approached Leonard with caution by carefully laying a hand on his bicep. "Len, is everything okay? Where did the others go?" you asked. When he turned to face you, you were greeted with the widest smile you'd ever seen on him.

Leonard looked like he could hardly contain his excitement. "Everything went smoothly, they walked me through the points of their offer. All three clinics will remain open, we continue to serve patients, with no changes in the staff levels. Everyone gets to keep their jobs, and we can all keep doing what we love," he gushed. In a rush of enthusiasm, he pulled you into his arms, lifting your feet off the ground as he gently twirled you around.

When your feet were finally back on the floor, you stayed within Leonard's tender embrace. "All this time," he murmured as his fingers tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. "We've known each other all these years. How am I only now realizing that--" his last thought was interrupted by his phone ringing in his pocket. He explained that it was Dr. Wallace calling to see about the deal, and nodded when you indicated you were going to freshen up.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

As you were leaving the ladies' room, you had only opened the door at a small crack when you heard two of the executives talking about the deal. They were congratulating themselves at getting Leonard to accept their terms, a few of which sounded different than what Leonard had told you.

One of them said that one of Leonard's clinics would have to close, because it wasn't profitable to accept all patients without adequate insurance. You decoded that it meant staff would be let go, and the city would lose a valuable and much-needed healthcare resource. Leonard would never agree to a deal that included those terms, thus you had to tell him before he signed anything. You waited until the men left the restroom area, then made your way back to the table.

Leonard checked his watch, anxious at the amount of time you were away from him. He was just about to go and look for you when you had returned to the table. "There you are sweetheart, I was about to send out a search party," he teased. His smile dropped when he saw the look on your face. "Is everything all right?" he asked quietly, growing more nervous by the minute.

"Not really, and I need to talk to you before you sign anything," you rushed out, then moved to a corner of the room near your table.

Leonard's face shifted to a look of concern as he rose from his chair and joined you. "Sweetheart, what's going on?" he wondered.

You relayed what you had heard on your way out of the ladies' room. When you got to the part about the clinic closing and the staff changes, Leonard waved his hands in front of you. "Wait, stop, that's not what's in this deal. They assured me--" he remarked, but you interrupted him.

"I think they told you whatever they needed to so that you would sign their deal. One of them said that it wasn't profitable to accept patients without 'adequate insurance coverage'. That was the reason they were closing one of the clinics," you explained.

Leonard vigorously shook his head. "No, no, you must have heard them wrong. Let's get back to our table so we can finish our evening," he demanded, reaching for your hand.

You pulled your hand out of his reach. "You can't sign that deal, Leonard. Please don't. You've worked so hard to get to where you are, and you're doing so much good for the city. I am immensely proud of you for that. But these men don't have your best interests at heart. All they see is profit and loss," you muttered.

"Can't you see what this deal means to me and my staff? To my patients? We can keep serving our patients like we always have, except now we'll have access to so many more resources! This deal is a good thing!" he exclaimed.

"Not if it comes at the expense of your patients, your staff and yourself," you replied sadly.

Leonard paused for a moment. "You know, it all must look so simple when viewed from the perspective of a 2nd-grade school teacher and part-time bartender," he shot back, his hands on his hips.

"What exactly do you mean by that?" you retorted.

"I mean, it's kind of hard to take the advice from someone whose biggest decision is what subject to teach a bunch of second graders every day. Meanwhile, I need to consider how I can best meet the needs of my staff and my patients. On top of that, I have real life-and-death situations to deal with." He watched as the color drain from your face at his response. Once the words were out of his mouth, he wanted nothing more than to cram them back in.

"Is that what you think about my job? About me? That my profession is inferior to yours, or that I am somehow 'less than'?" you countered. When Leonard didn't respond, you dropped your gaze to the floor. "Right. Well, you got your deal. Therefore, you no longer need me, so now we can break up. And I don't ever want to see you again," you croaked. "Goodbye, Leonard," you whispered. You picked up the skirt of your gown and rushed back to the table and grabbed your handbag before running out of the venue.

"NO! Sweetheart, wait!" Leonard shouted. He started to race after you, but was stopped by Mr. Sinclair.

"Is everything all right, Dr. McCoy? Looks like a little trouble in paradise, if you ask me," Sinclair smirked.

Leonard looked the hospital CEO in his eyes. "Yeah, well, I didn't ask you. The reason we were arguing was because of something she heard about your business proposal. You know, the part where you close one of my clinics and people lose their jobs. I believe you forgot to mention that in our agreement. I'd hate to think you'd lie to me about such an important aspect of the deal," he challenged, crossing his arms over his chest.

For his part, Sinclair looked nervous for about a half second, then quickly recovered. "Is that what she's up in arms about? Dr. McCoy, she's a school teacher. What does she know about making such complex business deals? Besides, we were going to discuss the staffing issue with you after the deal was signed. That way, we can decide how to best incorporate your resources with ours," he lied smoothly.

Leonard ran his hand over his face as he realized you'd been telling the truth and prevented him from making the biggest mistake in his life. Well, one of the biggest anyway. "I don't believe this. First of all, how dare you insult my girlfriend like that! Especially when she was right about you. Secondly, why would you lie to me about something this important?" he huffed. "Never mind, I don't care to hear your reasons or your excuses. Deal's off," he snapped on his way out of the ballroom.

As soon as he burst out of the front doors, Leonard's eyes frantically searched up and down the street, praying for a glimpse of you. A flash of gold caught his eye just as you finished tucking your skirt inside the taxi and you closed the door. Leonard ran and shouted for the taxi to stop before it pulled away from the curb, but it was too late and you were too far away. He pulled out his phone and dialed your number, only to have his call go directly to voicemail. With a string of curse words, he tried to call you again and again, with the same result.

Leonard slumped against the building trying to catch his breath, while silently mulling over what he'd lost this evening. He blew the deal, but for a good reason and he had no regrets about his decision to do so. There was no good reason for what happened with you, though, and there were oh so many regrets. He trudged to the valet station and handed over his ticket. Time to head home and see how long it would take to drown his sorrows in bourbon before he simply passed out.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

When the taxi dropped you off, you noticed that Christine's and Uhura's vehicles were still in your driveway. No doubt they want to hear how the evening went, you thought with a grimace. You fumbled in your handbag for your keys, but stopped when Uhura yanked open the door. Her eyes grew wide at seeing you alone on your front porch with Leonard nowhere in sight.

"Did I see you get dropped off by a taxi?" she asked. You nodded and dropped your gaze to the ground, not wanting her to see your face with your eyes red and puffy from crying. She stepped back enough to allow you to enter the house. You stepped out of your shoes, then picked them up and took them to your bedroom. "What happened? And where's Leonard?" Uhura inquired.

You heaved a deep sigh. "I need to get out of this dress first, then I promise I will answer all of your questions," you replied wearily. Before she closed your door, Uhura unzipped your dress so you could step out of it and put it back on the hanger. Once you had changed into your pajamas and fuzzy slippers, you stopped in the kitchen for a glass of water, then took a seat on the couch.

"The evening started off so well. Every time Leonard introduced me to someone as his girlfriend, all the butterflies in my stomach took off in flight. Deep down, I knew it was for show, but at the time, I didn't care. Anyway, we had a couple of dances before a lovely dinner. Then, right before dessert and coffee, Leonard and the execs stepped away to discuss the deal," you explained.

"Leaving you with the wives, I assume. That must have been fun," Christine muttered, rolling her eyes.

You chuckled softly and nodded. "It was okay. All part and parcel of the whole 'fake girlfriend' gig, I suppose," you mused. After taking a long drink of your water, you continued. "I saw Len standing by the bar, so I went over there to see how it went. He was so happy when he told me that they want to do the deal and explained some of the terms. I think he was about to say something important, but one of the doctors from his clinic was calling him for an update. So I excused myself to the restroom."

"All good, so far. What happened next?" Uhura asked.

"When I was coming out of the ladies' room, I heard two of the execs talking about the deal. Their terms were very different from what Leonard told me. I waited for them to leave then I returned to the table. I must've looked upset, because Leonard and I stepped aside, then I told him what I'd heard," you remarked.

"And how did he take it?" Christine wondered.

You took a deep breath and dropped your gaze to your hands, where your fingers were twisting in your lap. "Um....not well? I guess? He didn't believe me, said I must have heard wrong. I tried to convince him not to sign anything, because they were lying to him just to get him to agree to the deal. Then he...." your voice trailed off.

"Go on, what did he say next?" Uhura inquired in a tight voice.

"He said uh....he-he kind of indicated that as a 2nd-grade teacher, I have a rather simple view of things. That I couldn't possibly understand how complicated this deal is, or how beneficial it will be for everyone," you swallowed back a sob.

"He said that??" Christine gasped.

You nodded slowly. "I told him that if that's what he thinks of my job, of me, then he didn't need me anymore since he got his deal. I said we could break up now, and I didn't want to ever see him again. After that, I ran back to the table, grabbed my purse, and bolted out of the venue. One of the valets hailed a taxi for me, and Leonard's been blowing up my phone ever since I left." From the couch cushion next to you, a text notification sang out, so you held up your phone for Uhura and Christine to see.

Uhura made a noise of disgust, then scowled and held her hand out. You passed over your phone, which she promptly turned off then handed back to you. "There. Leave it off for the night, and you can decide in the morning if you want to talk to him," she advised, and you nodded in response.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

The weekend passed without any contact from you, which did nothing but fuel Leonard's concern for you. As far as he could tell, his text messages went unread and he had no idea if you listened to his voicemails. He went to The Space Dock on Saturday night, hoping to catch you at work. Jim told him that you'd taken the weekend off for personal reasons, deepening Leonard's anxiety about you.

That night after the gala, Leonard indeed went home and had more than a few swigs of bourbon. He wanted to drown out the memories of the evening, even though it had all started so well. Leonard was proud to introduce you to everyone as his girlfriend, something he wished was his reality, not fiction. The two of you even enjoyed a couple of turns around the dance floor before sitting down for dinner.

After the main course, the business portion of the evening occurred, where Sinclair and the others outlined their proposal. Everything seemed good on paper: no staff reduction and no clinic closures, just business as usual with access to more technology. He shook hands with Sinclair and the others, who advised him that the contracts would be sent to his office for signatures.

It all started to fall apart after you got back to the table and told him what you'd heard. You tried your best to convince Leonard that this deal wouldn't benefit him the way he thought it would. Problem was, he was too wrapped up in seeing its advantages that he didn't want to believe in anything that would threaten it.

So he lashed out and said those awful things to you, belittling your profession, diminishing your sense of self. Leonard could swear he witnessed the exact moment your heart shattered into thousands of pieces from the force of his words. And the light leaving your eyes was something he never wanted to see again as long as he lived, especially since he was responsible. You ran out before he could catch up to you and the taxi took you away from him before he could stop it.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Monday morning found Leonard at his desk, which was full of paperwork that needed various levels of his attention. Instead, he stared at his phone, willing you to answer at least one of his text messages or respond to one of his voicemails. Even if you told him to never contact you again, it would be some kind of answer. He was about to call Uhura or Christine for an update on you, when the door to his office flew open.

"What in the hell did you do that night?" Jim thundered. Leonard's office assistant, Abby, was close behind, trying to pull Jim back out of the office.

Leonard motioned to Abby that everything was okay and that he would take care of the situation from here. She nodded and closed the door behind her, then Leonard turned his attention to his visitor. "Now, Jim I-" he started.

"She quit, Leonard. My best bartender quit. Said she was sorry, and that it was for personal reasons, but she refused to elaborate. Now, I'm aware of her agreeing to be your pretend girlfriend, thus I can only surmise that something terrible went down that night because of it. So, out with it. What did you do?" Jim demanded, his arms crossed over his chest.

Leonard took a deep breath before responding. "Okay. Here's what happened," he relented, then ran through the events of that night. Jim eased himself into a chair and as he listened, he did a thorough review of Leonard's appearance. Dr. McCoy had a weekend's worth of stubble, coupled with a defeated expression on his face. Whatever happened, Jim could see that it greatly affected both of you, because he knew you weren't faring much better.

When Leonard finished his story, Jim sat back in his chair and let out a heavy sigh. "Wow. What are you going to do now?" he asked.

"I don't know, Jim. Right before you walked in, I was about to call Christine or Uhura to see if they would at least tell me how she was doing. However, I'm pretty sure they won't tell me anything. 'Girl Code' and all, I suppose," Leonard muttered, then he turned his sad expression to Jim. "I need to know how she is and explain how sorry I am for what I said," he implored. "And I have to tell her how I feel."

Jim thought for a few minutes then sat up in his chair and leaned his elbows onto Leonard's desk. "I have an idea, but it's nothing elaborate," he started.

"Go ahead. At this point, I'll do just about anything to get her back. She deserves the world, and I want to be the one to give it to her," Leonard declared.

Jim clapped his hands, then rubbed them together with glee, the complete opposite mood he had when he walked in. "Okay then. Here's what we do," he grinned.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"All right, class, when I get back, we'll start the next chapter for Where the Red Fern Grows," you promised. "For now, finish up your math worksheets from earlier today, otherwise please sit quietly until I return," you directed. A few moments ago, you'd received a text message from Margaret, the principal's assistant, asking you to please come down to the office.

When you were still a few feet away, you gasped in shock to see Leonard standing there with a bouquet of white and yellow tulips and pink roses. You stopped short in your path to the office, not wanting to be seen. Just as you turned around to go back to your classroom, Margaret called out your name and you cursed under your breath. Leonard's eyes caught yours and you could see the apology and regret, but you weren't exactly ready to forgive him quite yet.

"Margaret, what's this all about? I was getting ready to start our reading session when you called me down here," you narrowed your gaze. "I really don't have time for this. Besides, I told you that I don't want to ever see you again. I'm going back to my class," you directed at Leonard, then turned on your heel and started walking down the hall.

Leonard rushed out of the office and managed to catch your arm, which you promptly removed from his grasp. "Wait, please sweetheart, I need to talk to you," he pleaded.

"You said enough that night, Leonard McCoy. Your feelings about me and my chosen profession were made quite clear at the gala. I hope you still got everything you wanted after I left," you replied. "Now if you'll excuse me, my class is waiting to see what happens next with Big Dan and Little Ann," you remarked as you resumed your path back to class.

This time, Leonard didn't stop you, only stared after you to see what room you went into then wandered after you. He only got a few steps when Margaret tapped his shoulder, a laminated card on a lanyard in her hand. "If you're going to be roaming these halls, you must have a visitor's badge," she explained.

Leonard slipped it over his head then gave Margaret a brief smile. "Thank you."

"Listen. I don't know what's going on with you two. All I know is that in these past few weeks, she's been smiling a little easier and seems happier. I hope you work out whatever it is between you, because she's one of the best 2nd-grade teachers we have. You'll find her in Room 23B," Margaret winked.

Leonard's face broke out into a huge toothy grin. "Thank you, Margaret. I don't intend to let her get away," he winked back and headed for Room 23B. When he arrived, he noticed that the glass window by your door was covered in construction paper cutouts of stars. Each star had a student's name on it, and at the top of the window read the caption, "Reach For the Stars".

He peered into your room, where you were reading from a well-worn, leather-bound book, Where the Red Fern Grows. Although he couldn't hear your words aloud, Leonard could tell from your facial expressions that you were bringing the story to life. It was at that moment he saw how much of your heart and soul were invested in your profession. He understood more now why his words had hurt so much that night.

Leonard was about to walk away when a student turned towards the door and caught his eye. The student must have said something to you, because you stopped reading and quickly left your seat. You marched towards the door and yanked it open. By the time you slipped out into the hallway, you were fuming. "Are you out of your mind? How dare you interrupt my class time!" you hissed.

He held up his hands, pleading with you. "Wait! Please! All I want is a chance to explain myself. If you want nothing more to do with me after that, I promise I'll respect your decision," Leonard promised.

You shook your head. "No, you need to go home, Leonard, because I cannot have this conversation with you right now," you retorted. You spun on your heel and reentered your classroom, pulling on the door to close it behind you. However, it didn't completely latch, leaving a sliver of opportunity.

Leonard took a deep breath, checked the bouquet in his hand and nudged open the door. He saw your eyes widen with each step until he was standing before you at the front of the room. "I don't believe this! Leonard, please, now is not the time for--" Leonard stopped your rant with a swift press of his lips to yours.

At first you fought the urge to give in to what you've wanted since you first met Leonard, so you don't return his kiss. Not at first, anyway. But Leonard was persistent and didn't let your resistance deter him in the slightest. "I'm sorry, but this was the only way I could think of to get you to stop talking," he murmured.

Suddenly you were aware that twenty-five pairs of eyes were trained on the two of you, which caused a heat to bloom in your cheeks. "Um, don't look now, but we have an audience," you replied sheepishly.

You looked at the faces of your students, some smiling, but all fully paying attention to the drama unfolding before them. No doubt your real-life story was more interesting than the book your class was currently reading. You were their beloved teacher, and they had to see how it would play out.

At this realization, you snapped back to reality and the situation at hand. "Just answer me one thing, Leonard. Was any of it real for you? The stories, the compliments, did you mean any of it? I know what we said when we started this, but I've wanted it to be real for a long time. I-I am in love with you, Leonard McCoy," you declared softly.

Leonard audibly sighed with relief. "Sweetheart, of course it was real. I meant everything I said about you. When we met, how happy I was to be with you these past five years....how beautiful you were that night," he revealed. "And still are," he whispered. "I'm in love with you, too," he affirmed.

You tenderly cradled his jaw and stroked his cheek with your thumb, smiling when you felt him lean into your touch. "Class, what do you say? Show of hands for inviting Dr. McCoy to join us for the rest of class," you called, your eyes still trained on Leonard. Every hand shot straight into the air. "It's just me reading Where the Red Fern Grows," you murmured.

A grin slowly stretched across his face, then he leaned forward to touch his forehead to yours. "Good thing Margaret set me up with a visitor's badge, huh?" Leonard chuckled. "I would love to join you and your class," he remarked.

"Remind me to thank Margaret on my way out today," you giggled. Leonard nodded, then took your hand in his and pressed a kiss to the back of it. He picked up an empty chair and positioned it near your chair at the front of the room. When you reopened the book, you winked at Leonard before returning to where you'd left off in the story.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Tags: @marvelouslytrekking @spacedancer1701 @anna-phora @hailbop1701 @writercole @lassie-bird @never--doubt @phoenixisred @wayward-dreamer @erindiggory @strangesgirls @dumpsterhippie @genevablog26 @lokis-deares @medicatemedrmccoy @rooweighton @mamamercurymist @d-doki-doki @malmeansbad @imamotherfuckingstar-lord​

[josefavomjaaga]

Murcia, 1812

The edition of Soult’s memoirs occasionally in the footnotes quotes excerpts from other books, relating to the subject. In some cases, it’s the “Historia del levantiamento, guerra et revolucion de Espagna” by the Conde de Toreno. So, the scene below (from Volume 4) is a double translation, from Spanish to French and then from French to English. It’s about French troops entering Murcia on 26 January 1812.

All these [Spanish] forces were assailed at the same time, not only by those of Suchet and general Montbrun, but also by a part of the French Army of the South, which ran to take part in the spoils.

Or rather, as usual, Soult’s Armée du Midi, had been called in order to help Suchet conquer this rebellious province. It’s funny how the Armée du Midi, while never receiving any resources in men or money, because all that came from France was intercepted in Madrid at the latest and distributed elsewhere, was always the one everybody ran to if they wanted support.

The latter arrived on the 25th of January in sight of Murcia, and on the 26th General Soult, brother of the Marshal, entered at the head of six hundred horses. He had been preceded the day before by a detachment of troops, and both imposed on the inhabitants heavy contributions impossible to meet. To all these burdens, the French general wanted to add a new one, and ordered that a rich and splendid banquet should be prepared for him the same day in the archiepiscopal palace, where he was lodged. He was already savouring the delicacies which were served to him, when he was interrupted in this sensual occupation by a voice which cried out: "The Spanish troops have entered; the enemies are lost."

In fact, Don Martin de la Carrera, who was stationed not far from there, with a large part of the cavalry of the second and third armies, after having assembled a large body of cavalry in Espinardo, half a mile from the town, had just entered it through the Castilian gate at the head of a hundred horses. Other corps had orders to attack at the same time on the other points. Carrera's design was to surprise the enemies, who were hardly expecting this attack, to take them prisoner, or to drive them out, and thus to deliver the city from such a dangerous host.

Caught unawares, General Soult rose from the table in alarm, and, in his haste, he stumbled and almost rolled down the stairs. Although badly hurt by his fall, he nevertheless mounted his horse, and all his men followed him. Unfortunately, the same was not true of the people of Carrera's party, who, with the exception of those whom he led in person, either did not enter the town or soon retreated through error or lack of courage.

“Thanks, but I think we’ll pass this one.”

Don Martin was consequently obliged to face, alone with his hundred men, the forces of the enemy, which were so superior to him. He did not let himself be defeated, however, and before he was surrounded, he went through the streets and squares, slashing and killing as many of the enemy as he could get his hands on. The melee was sustained for a long time. It cost the French blood to put an end to it; but finally, Carrera [... plenty of heroic resistance later ...] fell lying in the street of San-Nicolas, where he died.

As horrible as this story is, I can’t help but laugh, both at the idea of Soult’s little brother Pierre rolling down those stairs, and that Spanish general running through the streets, killing Frenchmen left and right, calling for his men to follow him, until he looked over his shoulder … "Uhm… where are you guys?"

[usafphantom2]

IMAGES: Last F-18 Hornet training squad is deactivated in Miramar marking the end of an era

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 10/01/2023 - 20:11in Military

An air squadron that has been training pilots to fly the F/A-18 Hornets fighters for 50 years was deactivated at the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego, California, during a "t sunset ceremony" on Friday, marking the end of an era for the Department of the Navy.

For more than 50 years, the instructor pilots of the Navy 101 Fighter Attack Training Squadron, or VMFAT-101, "Sharpshooters" have qualified combat aviators and sent them to squads around the world. The " Sunset" celebrates the history of the squadron and the contributions to the readiness of the Marine Corps since its commissioning in 1969, when instructors first taught pilots to fly the F-4 Phantom II.

“As a former commander of the Sharpshooters, I can attest to the direct impact of the squadron on the operational readiness of the Marine Corps today,” Brig said. General Robert Brodie, assistant commander of the 3rd Marine Air Wing. "VMFAT-101 has shaped a critical element of naval aviation for half a century, and the marines and squadron sailors continue to be instrumental in preserving this combat legacy and transitioning to the next generation of combat aviation."

The U.S. Marines with the Navy Fighter Attack Training Squadron (VMFAT) 101, Marine Aircraft Group 11, 3ª Marine Aircraft Wing, conduct a mass formation. (Photo: U.S. Marine Corps / Lance Cpl. Samantha Devine)

The ceremony began with a tradition called "Flying the Barn", where 18 F-18 fighter pilots performed maneuvers in formation in front of a crowd of spectators. The "t sunset" ceremony followed and included comments from Brodie and others. Observing were retired squadron commanders and others from the air wing.

The event also included a traditional colorful casing where the honors and awards that the squad received in various conflicts and wars were ceremonially guarded. The squad also received several awards for its safety record flying thousands of hours without accidents.

Its decommissioning marks the end of an era as the last squadron of the Navy Department to train F-18 pilots

“Thousands of our crews passed through the corridors of '101',” Brodie said. "They learned air-to-air combat and air-to-ground combat. Many were launched from an aircraft carrier in the middle of the night from a deck."

Squadron personnel and aircraft will transition to the U.S. Navy Fighter Attack Squadron 323 in Miramar and will continue to train F-18 Super Hornets pilots as Navy Squadrons complete the transition to the new era F-35 fighters. The air wing has two F/A-18 Super Hornets fighter squadrons and six F-35 squadrons.

The F-18 Super Hornet fighters are scheduled to continue in service until 2030. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense continues to invest in the maintenance of the famous fighter, which, according to U.S. Navy officials, is complementary to the F-35.

Source: The Orange County Register

Tags: Military AviationF/A-18C/D HornetUSMC - United States Marine Corps/U.S. Marine Corps

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Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, he has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Daytona Airshow and FIDAE. He has work published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. Uses Canon equipment during his photographic work throughout the world of aviation.

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[jcmarchi]

Why Ukraine Is Not Getting The F-35? - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/why-ukraine-is-not-getting-the-f-35-technology-org/

Why Ukraine Is Not Getting The F-35? - Technology Org

Ukraine is eagerly waiting for the F-16 fighter jets to come to its aid. But why not go one step further and send Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II to Ukraine instead? The F-35 is a stealth jet fighter – it is hard to detect by radars and would be difficult to shoot down.

F-35 is a fifth-generation fighter jet with a stealth design hiding it from radars. Image credit: Joint Base San Antonio via Wikimedia

Singapore’s Defense Minister randomly mentioned that American F-35s are actively participating in missions over Ukraine. The United States denied this information, the Ukrainians did not boast about it, and the Russians did not accuse the United States of using the F-35 in a war zone either. On the other hand, if the F-35s are hard to spot using radar, maybe these jet fighters are operating in Ukraine and the Russians simply don’t know about it yet?

Ukrainian aviation expert Valery Romanenko explained: “It is impossible to use them without anyone noticing. Russians have quite a lot of various intelligence equipment, including radar stations, radio technical intelligence tools, and satellites. In general, it is not invisible. It’s just harder to spot.” He claims that the Russians would have certainly already detected the F-35 fighter jets over Ukraine.

Not even diving into all the stealth technology wizardry, one has to remember that the F-35 has a very recognizable shape. Russian soldiers would recognize an F-35 if it flew above them. Even if they didn’t realize they saw an F-35, they would certainly know that some previously unseen jet fighter is operating in the area and would start asking questions. All of this simply means that the F-35 does not conduct missions in Ukraine, and if it did, we would already know about it.

Why aren’t NATO countries sending F-35s to Ukraine? If Ukraine continues to build its capabilities, adopt NATO standards and improve its armed forces, the F-35 will definitely be in its future. But now the F-16 is a more reasonable choice.

F-16 is a fourth-generation fighter jet, while the F-35 is fifth generation, but it is still a huge upgrade for Ukraine. Image credit: Wikimedia

There are many more F-16 jets and there are surplus ones that some countries are replacing with the F-35. Thus, the West can provide Ukraine with a number of F-16 fighters without putting a dent in its own security. There are no spare F-35s anywhere. Also, the F-35 is a much more complex weapon and would require much more time and effort to master. Both pilots and technical personnel would train for much longer – it is possible that they wouldn’t even graduate in time to participate in this war.

On top of that, the F-16 is much cheaper than the F-35, in terms of acquisition cost, maintenance cost and operating costs. Finally, there are many more different weapon systems available for the F-16, because this jet fighter is simply serving for a longer time and does not hide its weapons in the fuselage for the sake of stealth.

And while Ukraine will receive used F-16s, there is no need to assume that the type itself is outdated. The F-16 is still in production and is superior in many categories to the Russian aircraft used in the war in Ukraine.

Written by Povilas M.

Source: NV.ua

[resolutionsolange]

BILAN CULTUREL - NOV+DEC. 2022

Cinéma :

Close - Lukas Dhont

Eo - Jerzy Skolimowski

Livres & bandes dessinées :

Les Mystères de Larispem, tome 3 - Lucie Pierrat-Pajot

Hex - Thomas Olde Heuvelt

L’autre moitié de soi - Brit Bennett

Stone Butch Blues - Leslie Feinberg

Tea Rooms - Luisa Carnés

L’Été Diabolik - Thierry Smolderen, Alexandre Clerisse

Chroniques de Jérusalem - Guy Delisle

Une année sans Chtulhu - Thierry Smolderen, Alexandre Clerisse

Spa - Erik Svetoft

Blake & Mortimer : Le Cri du Moloch - Jean Dufaux, Christian Cailleaux, Étienne Schréder

Blake & Mortimer : Le Dernier Espadon - Jean Van Hamme, Teun Berserik, Peter Van Dongen

Blake & Mortimer : Le Dernier Pharaon - Thomas Gunzig, François Schuiten,

Les vieux fourneaux, tomes 5 à 7 - Wilfrid Lupano, Paul Cauuet

Les sœurs Fox (2 tomes) - Philippe Charlot, Grégory Charlet

Tant pis pour l’amour, ou comment j’ai survécu à un manipulateur - Sophie Lambda

Le Singe de Hartlepool - Wilfrid Lupano, Jérémie Moreau

Neptune, tome 2 - Leo

Blake & Mortimer : Huit heures à Berlin - José-Louis Bocquet, Jean-Luc Fromental, Antoine Aubin

De cape et de mots - Flore Vesco, Kerascoët

Koko n’aime pas le capitalisme et autres histoires - tienstiens

Expos :

Tintin, l’aventure immersive - Atelier des Lumières, Paris

Exposition vidéo numérique et poétique - Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille

Biennale des imaginaires numériques - Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille

Concerts :

General Elektriks - La Maroquinerie, Paris

Jeux vidéo :

The House of Da Vinci 2 - Blue Brain Games

Spiritfarer - Thunder Lotus Games

Projections privées :

The Princess Bride - Rob Reiner

Scare Me - Josh Ruben

Hidden (court-métrage) - Jafar Panahi

Valérian et la cité des mille planètes - Luc Besson

Enola Holmes 2 - Harry Bradbeer

Glass Onion : A Knives Out Mystery - Rian Johnson

Swiss Army Man - Daniels

Bound - The Wachowski Sisters

The Handmaid’s Tale, saison 5 - Bruce Miller

Only Murders In The Building, saison 2 - Steve Martin, John Hoffman

Station Eleven, saison 1 - Patrick Somerville

Mercredi, saison 1 - Alfred Gough, Miles Millar

Chair Tendre, saison 1 - Yaël Langmann

His Dark Materials, saison 3 - Philip Pullman

Le Cabinet de curiosités de Guillermo del Toro, saison 1 - Guillermo del Toro

Découvertes musicales récentes :

( Requin Chagrin - Crush (ft. Anaïs Demoustier)  /  Chicks On Speed - Wordy Rappinghood )

[sidewalkstamps]

James Martin 1926 Contractor (Photo taken by Glen Creason on West Silverlake Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026)

A James Martin, contractor, “started erection of a 2-story residence at Whittier and Girand St. for Mr. McCrea in Hemet, CA (Southwest Contractor and Manufacturer, Volume 4, 1909). While I can’t be sure that’s the right Martin (James Martin is a very generic name, after all), I am sure this one is:

First time I’ve seen a mule in an ad! Sometimes he placed ads that said the same thing but didn’t have mules pictured, sadly (Pacific Coast Livestock Breeder, Volumes 1-2, Rising Publishing Company, 1920). 789 Lyon Street is in downtown Los Angeles right near that Denny’s east of Union Station by the 101. I think that address is now just some dirt next to the C. Erwin Piper Technical Center (which, by the way, is the world's largest rooftop airport, according to Wikipedia).

Martin was awarded the contract “for the removal of about 90,000 cu. yds. of earth at Hillhurst and Franklin Aves” (The Excavating Engineer--March 1922, p. 83, A.B. Morse Company).

In 1923, Martin was part of “Team Work” for “construction of approximately 70 miles of railroad from bagdad, San Bernardino County, to Daggett, San Bernardino County” (P. H. Birkhead, “Pacific Coast News”). And apparently ’Happy’ Cromwell and Fireman Wiggins [I couldn’t make those names up] made “dirt fly” for Martin for this work (The Excavating Engineer, Volume 17, May 1923, p. 168, Excavating Engineer Publishing Company, 1923). In the same year, Martin rented his “20-B shovel to Brown, Hansen & Rowe on excavation work” - I don’t know why this is print-worthy (ibid, December 1923, p. 421).

In 1925, Martin was the low bidder to improve Whitsett Avenue between Sherman Way and Ventura Blvd., including grading, paving, creating curbs, completing the storm drain, a reinforced concrete bridge, oiling the roadway, a decomposed granite driveway with oiled surface, and a wooden guard rail (Building and Engineering News, p. 27, Saturday July 11, 1925). Later the same year, he was awarded a contract by “bd. pub. wks.” to improve San Fernando Mission Blvd. between Balboa Ave. and the eastern city limit of the Los Angeles (Building and Engineering News, p. 26, Saturday November 21, 1925).

Another listing from the same year might be near the place Glen took his photo (Building and Engineering News, Volume 25, Issue 2, 1925)!

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

"Workers at General Motors, Toyota Motor, Target, and Macy’s in the Lone Star State will maintain face-covering protocols at work, the companies announced Tuesday, according to Reuters."

Restaurants in Dallas-Fort Worth requiring masks:

8 Cloves at the Dallas Farmers Market

AllGood Cafe in Deep Ellum

Armadillo Ale Works in Denton

Armoury D.E. in Deep Ellum

Asian Mint in Dallas and Richardson

The Basement Lounge in Fort Worth

The Bearded Monk in Denton

Bendt Distilling Co. in Lewisville

Beto & Son in West Dallas

Billy Can Can in Victory Park

Bisous Bisous Patisserie in Uptown

Black Coffee in Fort Worth

Blackland Distillery in Fort Worth

The Blue Fish in Allen, Fort Worth, Irving, Plano, Galleria Dallas and Lower Greenville in Dallas

The Boiled Owl Tavern in Fort Worth

Boulevardier in Bishop Arts

Braindead Brewing in Deep Ellum

Brown Bag Provisions

Burgerim in the West End

Cattleack Barbeque in Dallas/Farmers Branch

Cedar Springs Tap House in Dallas

CiboDivino Marketplace in West Dallas

Cindi’s NY Deli in Dallas and Carrollton

CocoAndre Chocolatier in Oak Cliff

Cold Beer Company in Deep Elum

Cookie Society in Frisco

Cox Farms Market in West Dallas

Cris and John in Far North Dallas

Cultivar Coffee in East Dallas

Detour Doughnuts and Coffee in Frisco

Division Brewing in Arlington

Double Wide in Deep Ellum

Dream Cafe on Mockingbird Lane and in the Quadrangle, both in Dallas

Dude, Sweet Chocolate in Oak Cliff

Dugg Burger on Garland Road and Walnut Hill Lane, both in Dallas

Easy Slider in Deep Ellum and Grapevine

Fat Straws in Dallas, Plano and Richardson

Fiction Coffee near downtown Dallas

The Fillmore Pub in Plano

Flying Fish in Addison, Arlington, Fort Worth, Garland, Plano and all Dallas locations

Flying Saucer in Fort Worth, Rockwall and Coppell

Four Bullets Brewery in Richardson

Four Corners Brewing in the Cedars

Full City Rooster in the Cedars

Funky Picnic Brewery & Cafe in Fort Worth

Gemma in East Dallas

Gold Rush Cafe in East Dallas

Golden Boy Coffee Co. (Denton, Coppell, Plano)

Goodfriend Beer Garden and Burger House in East Dallas

Goodfriend Package in East Dallas

Halcyon on Greenville Avenue in Dallas

Haute Sweets Patisserie in Lake Highlands

Hillside Tavern in East Dallas

Hive Bakery in Flower Mound

Homewood near Highland Park

Houndstooth Coffee on Henderson Avenue, Sylvan Avenue and North Central Expressway at Walnut Hill, all in Dallas

Invasion in East Dallas

Khao Gang (the takeout restaurant in place of Khao Noodle Shop) in Old East Dallas

Korean Street Eats in Carrollton

Las Almas Rotas in Exposition Park

La Casita Bakeshop in Richardson

Leaves Book and Tea Shop in Fort Worth

Liberty Burger, all five locations

The Local Oak in Oak Cliff

The Londoner in Addison

Los Vaqueros in Fort Worth and Weatherford

Lucia in Oak Cliff

Mario Bros. Tacos in Dallas and Plano

Marugame Udon in Carrollton and Dallas

Meddlesome Moth in Dallas Design District

Medieval Times near the Dallas Design District

Melt Ice Creams in Fort Worth and Dallas

Miriam Latina Cocina in Uptown

Nature’s Plate in Plano and Dallas, on Preston Road and on Northwest Highway

Neighborhood Services

Nickel City in Fort Worth

Niwa Japanese BBQ in Deep Ellum

Noble Coyote Coffee Roasters in Exposition Park

Nobu in Uptown

Nori Handroll Bar, Dallas

Oddfellows in Oak Cliff

Off the Bone Barbeque in the Cedars

One90 Smoked Meats in Lake Highlands

Opening Bell Coffee in the Cedars

Osuba Hibachi Sushi and Bar (Waxahachie, Cedar Hill)

Parigi on Oak Lawn Avenue

Partenope in downtown Dallas

Peaberry Coffee in Oak Cliff

Pho is for Lovers in Dallas and Richardson

Proper in Fort Worth

Rapscallion on Lowest Greenville

Resident Taqueria in East Dallas

Ricky’s Hot Chicken in Richardson

Rodeo Goat in Fort Worth, Dallas, Plano, Rockwall and Coppell

Roots Chicken Shak in Plano

Round-Up Saloon near Oak Lawn

Ruins in Deep Ellum

Sachet near Highland Park

Salsa Limon in Fort Worth and Dallas

Salum near Uptown

S&J’s Hot Chicken in northwest Dallas

Sandwich Hag in the Cedars

San Martin Bakery & Restaurant in Uptown Dallas

Single Wide on Greenville Avenue in Dallas

Slow Bone BBQ near the Dallas Design District

Smallcakes on Northwest Highway in Dallas

Society Bakery in East Dallas

Spiral Diner in Fort Worth, Dallas and Denton

Sprinkle’s Cupcakes (all locations)

Stevie’s Diner in Fort Worth

Streets Fine Chicken near Oak Lawn Avenue

Swizzle on Lowest Greenville

Szechuan Chinese Restaurant near the Medical District

Tacodeli in Plano and Dallas

Tarantula Tiki Lounge in Fort Worth

Tasty Tails in Richardson and Addison

Teasom in Uptown

Ten Bells Tavern in Oak Cliff

Thunderbird Station in Deep Ellum

Trova Wine Bar near Highland Park

True Kitchen + Kocktails in downtown Dallas

Twilite Lounge in Fort Worth

Uchi and Uchiba in Uptown

Urbano Cafe in Old East Dallas

Urban Taco at Mockingbird Station in Dallas

The Usual in Fort Worth

Val’s Cheesecakes on Greenville Avenue and Maple Avenue, both in Dallas

Vector Brewing in Lake Highlands

Veritas Wine Room in East Dallas

Vitality Bowls in Frisco, Las Colinas, Plano, Southlake and Dallas’ Preston Hollow

Wayward Coffee in Oak Cliff

Westlake Brewing Company in Deep Ellum

Whisk Crepes in West Dallas

Wits End in Deep Ellum

Xaman Cafe in Bishop Arts

Zaap Kitchen on Fitzhugh Avenue, Buckner Boulevard and Greenville Avenue, all in Dallas

Zen Sushi in Oak Cliff

[sheliach]

 General San Martín, a station on línea C (line C) de la red de subterráneos de la ciudad de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires Metro), was inaugurated on August 17, 1937. The Subterráneo de Buenos Aires (Bueneos Aires Metro), known locally as Subte, first opened in 1913. It was the first mass-transit system in South America, the Southern Hemisphere and the entire Spanish-speaking world. The network expanded rapidly during the early decades of the 20th century, but the pace of expansion fell sharply after the Second World War.

[greatworldwar2]

• Consolidated B-32 Dominator

The Consolidated B-32 Dominator was an American heavy strategic bomber built for United States Army Air Forces during World War II, which had the distinction of being the last Allied aircraft to be engaged in combat during World War II.

The engineering development of the B-29 had been underway since mid-1938 when, in June 1940, the United States Army Air Corps requested a similar design from the Consolidated Aircraft Company in case of development difficulties with the B-29. The Model 33 on which Consolidated based its proposal was similar to the B-24 Liberator. Like the B-24 it was originally designed with a twin tail and a large Davis wing, but with a longer, rounder fuselage and a rounded nose. The powerplants were to be the same quartet of eighteen-cylinder, 2,200 horsepower (1,600 kW) Wright Duplex-Cyclones, as specified for B-29s. The aircraft was designed to be pressurized, and have remote-controlled retractable gun turrets with fourteen .50 in (12.7 mm) machine guns. It was to have an estimated gross weight of 101,000 lb (46,000 kg). The first XB-32-CO, AAF s/n 41-141, was constructed next to the Army Air Forces (AAF) Base Tarrant Field Airdrome at the AAF Aircraft Plant No. 4 just west of Fort Worth, Texas along the south side of Lake Worth. The Consolidated Vultee Bomber Plant assembly line was six months behind schedule, the aircraft making its first flight on 7 September 1942. Due to problems with the pressurization system, the gun turrets and landing gear doors, these items were omitted on the first prototype. The aircraft had R-3350-13 engines inboard and R-3350-21s outboard, with all four powerplants driving three-bladed propellers. The XB-32 had persistent problems with engine oil leaks and poor cooling, but the B-29 also had similar engine problems. The first XB-32 was armed with eight .50 in (12.7 mm) machine guns in dorsal and ventral turrets, and an odd combination of two .50 caliber and one 20 mm (0.787 in) cannon in each outboard engine nacelle firing rearwards, plus two .50 caliber machine guns in the wings outboard of the propellers. The turrets were remotely controlled from periscopic sights in aiming stations inside the aircraft. The sights were coordinated by a sophisticated analog computer system developed by Sperry Gyroscope Company.

On March 17th, 1943, the initial contract was signed for 300 B-32-CFs but development problems continued. On May 10th, 1943, the first XB-32 crashed on takeoff after making a total of 30 flights before the second XB-32, s/n 41-142, finally flew on July 2nd, 1943. This aircraft had a traditional stepped cockpit canopy. Upon examination and testing, the USAAF recommended a large number of changes that included more conventional gun stations. The pressurization system had problems which were never solved and so the role of the aircraft was changed to operating at low to medium altitude. This decision meant that the pressurization system was easily eliminated from production aircraft. Problems with the remote-controlled gun turrets were never solved and the armament on production aircraft was changed to 10 .50 caliber machine guns in manually operated turrets: Sperry A-17 turrets in the nose and tail, two Martin A-3F-A dorsal turrets, and one Sperry A-13-A ball turret. The bomb load was increased by 4,000 pounds (1,800 kg) to 20,000 pounds (9,100 kg). The second XB-32 continued to have stability problems. In an attempt to resolve this a B-29 style tail was fitted to the aircraft after its 25th flight but this did not resolve the problem and a Consolidated-designed 19.5 ft (5.9 m) vertical tail was added and first flown on the third XB-32, s/n 41-18336 on November 3rd, 1943. The first production aircraft was fitted with a B-29 vertical tail until a new tail was substituted. By 1944 testing of the three prototypes permitted the AAF to place orders for over 1,500 B-32s. The first production aircraft was delivered on September 19th, 1944, by which time the B-29 was in combat in China. The first B-32 crashed on the same day it was delivered when the nose wheel collapsed on landing. Beginning on January 17th, 1945, 40 B-32A-5, -10 and -15 aircraft were delivered as unarmed TB-32-CF crew trainers.

Originally, the Army Air Forces intended the B-32 as a "fallback" design to be used only if the B-29 program fell significantly behind in its development schedule. As development of the B-32 became seriously delayed this plan became unnecessary due to the success of the B-29. Initial plans to use the B-32 to supplement the B-29 in re-equipping B-17 and B-24 groups before redeployment of the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces to the Pacific were stymied when only five production models had been delivered by the end of 1944, by which time B-29 operations were underway in the Twentieth Air Force. The first assignment of the B-32 began when General George Kenney, the commander of Allied air forces in the South West Pacific Area and commander of the U.S. Fifth Air Force, traveled to Washington D.C. to request B-29s. Since priority had been given to strategic bombing by the B-29, Kenney's request was denied, after which he then requested the B-32. Following a demonstration, the Army General Staff agreed that Kenney could conduct a combat evaluation, and a test schedule of 11 missions was set up, followed by a plan to re-equip two of the 312th Bomb Group's four Douglas A-20 Havoc squadrons with the B-32. Project crews took three B-32s to Clark Field, Luzon, Philippine Islands, in mid-May 1945 for a series of test flights completed on June 17th. The three test B-32s were assigned to the 312th BG's 386th Bombardment Squadron. On May 29th, 1945, the first of four combat missions by the B-32 was flown against a supply depot at Antatet in the Philippines, followed by two B-32s dropping 16 2,000 lb (910 kg) bombs on a sugar mill at Taito, Formosa, on June 15th. On June 22nd, a B-32 bombed an alcohol plant at Heito, Formosa, with 500 lb (230 kg) bombs, but a second B-32 missed flak positions with its 260 lb (120 kg) fragmentation bombs. The last mission was flown on June 25th, against bridges near Kiirun on Formosa.

The test crews were impressed with its unique reversible-pitch inboard propellers and the Davis wing which gave it excellent landing performance. However, they found a number of faults: the cockpit was noisy and had a poor instrument layout, the bombardier's vision was limited, the aircraft was overweight, and the nacelle design resulted in frequent engine fires (a deficiency shared with the B-29 Superfortress). However, the testing missions were mostly successful. In July 1945, the 386th Bomb Squadron completed its transition to the B-32, flying six more combat missions before the war ended. On August 13th, the 386th BS moved from Luzon to Yontan Airfield on Okinawa and flew mostly photographic reconnaissance missions. The missions were intended to monitor Japan's compliance with the ceasefire and to gather information such as possible routes occupation forces could take into Tokyo. On August 17th, the B-32s were intercepted by Japanese fighters. During the two-hour engagement, the Dominators suffered only minor damage and none of their crew were injured. "Though the B-32 gunners later claimed to have damaged one fighter and 'probably destroyed' two others, surviving Japanese records list no losses for that day or next." On August 18th, 1945, four Dominators were given the task of photographing many of the targets covered on the previous day; however, mechanical problems caused two to be pulled from the flight. Over Japan, a formation of 14 A6M Zeros and three N1K2-J Shiden-Kai (George) fighters attacked the remaining two U.S. aircraft. Saburō Sakai, a Japanese ace, said later that there was concern that the Dominators were attacking. The last B-32 combat photo reconnaissance mission was completed on August 28th, during which two B-32s were destroyed in separate accidents, with 15 of the 26 crewmen killed. On August 30th, the 386th Bomb Squadron stood down from operations.

Production contracts of the B-32 were cancelled on September 8th, 1945, with production ceased by October 12th. Many B-32s ended up being salvaged at Walnut Ridge, Arkansas with a total of 38 flown to Kingman Army Airfield for disposal. No examples of a B-32 remain today. The XB-32 (AAF Ser. No. 41-18336) was used as a ground instructional airframe for fire fighting training. Others were written off after suffering major damage in operational accidents. Excess inventories were flown either to Walnut Ridge Army Airfield, Arkansas, to be scrapped by the Texas Railway Equipment Company, or to Kingman Army Airfield, Arizona to be scrapped by the Wunderlich Construction Company. One of the few portions of a B-32 surviving is a wing panel removed from a static test model and erected at the Montgomery Memorial near San Diego, California as a monument to aviation pioneer John J. Montgomery.

[bobmccullochny]

November History

November 2 1795 - US President James K. Polk, born November 2, 1795 in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, died on June 15, 1849 in Nashville, Tennessee.

1865 - US President Warren G. Harding, born November 2, 1865 in Morrow County, Ohio, died on August 2, 1923 in San Francisco, California.

1889 - North and South Dakota both joined the United States.

1898 - Cheerleading was started at the University of Minnesota with Johnny Campbell leading the crowd in cheering on the football team with "Rah, Rah, Rah! Ski-u-mah, Hoo-Rah! Hoo-Rah! Varsity! Varsity! Varsity, Minn-e-So-Tah!" Princeton had published cheers for the audience to chant as early as 1877. In 1903 the first cheerleading fraternity, Gamma Sigma, was founded. Women started being popular cheerleaders in the early 1920s.

1936 - First high-definition TV broadcast service, by BBC in London. At the time "standard definition" was 30 horizontal lines making up the picture, and the '36 BBC hi-def had 240 lines. Today, 720 is considered the minimum for HD.

1936 - The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was established.

1957 - The Levelland UFO Case in Levelland, Texas, generated national publicity. Officially, they called it 'blue lightning'.

1959 - Quiz show scandal - Twenty One game show contestant Charles Van Doren admits to a Congressional committee that he had been given questions and answers in advance.

1960 - Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the trial R v Penguin Books Ltd, the Lady Chatterley's Lover case.

1965 - Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker, set himself (suicide) on fire in front of the river entrance to the Pentagon to protest the use of napalm in the Vietnam war.

1974 - Seventy-eight people died when the Time Go-Go Club in Seoul, South Korea burned down.

1983 - President Reagan signed the bill establishing the Dr Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, held on the third Monday in January.

1988 - The Morris Worm, the first internet-distributed computer worm to gain significant mainstream media attention, was launched from MIT. It was written by a student at Cornell University, Robert Tappan Morris. His intention was to gauge the 'size' of the intenet.

2000 - The first crew arrived at the International Space Station. The assembly of the IISS began in November 1998.

2003 - Arrested Development debuted on FOX. Despite acclaim from critics, Arrested Development received low ratings and the series was cancelled in 2006.

[cardest]

San Francisco playlist

San Francisco  - my favorite city in the world! The bands, the music, the songs are all here, in this playlist I created. I threw in a bit of Sac and went south by San Jose, Monterrey and up past Sausalito. Can we make it to 250 songs? Let me know what bands/songs I left out.

Have I left out a song or a band in this San Francisco playlist? Let me know! Cheers! 

Play the songs here at this link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-iHPcxymC1-HLG9q5rZLsqs8EYh6bhu- San Francisco

001 The Dillinger Escape Plan w/Mike Patton -  When Good Dogs Do Bad Things 002 Night flight Orchestra - California Morning 003 Quincy Jones - Call Me Mister Tibbs OST (Main Title) 004 James Taylor Quartet - Dirty Harry theme song 005 Faith No More - Seperation anxiety 006 Streets of San Francisco TV show theme song 007 Santana -  Evil Ways 008 High on Fire -  Electric Messiah 009 Metallica - Disposable Heroes 010 Hammers Of Misfortune -  Dead Revolution 011 Buddy Guy -  Hello San Francisco 012 Faith No More - Jungle 013 Isaac Hayes - Shaft 014 Orange Peels  - Back In San Francisco 015 Idris Ackamoor and the Pyramids - Message To My People 016 Thee Oh Sees - The Dream 017 Merle Haggard - Here In Frisco 018 Audrey Horne -  California 019 Journey -  Lights 020 Death Angel -  Hatred United / United Hate 021 Mel Tor Me - Got The Date On The Golden Gate 022 Duke Ellington -  Tourist Point Of View 023 Sons of Anarchy  - This Life (Sons of Anarchy Theme Song) 024 Larry Graham's Central Station - Earthquake 025 LARD - I Wanna Be A Drug Sniffing Dog 026 Machine Head -  California Bleeding 027 Neurosis -  The Doorway 028 KING WOMAN - Utopia 029 Lalo Schifrin - Magnum Force OST  Main Title 030 Forbidden -  Adapt Or Die 031 DBUK - In San Francisco Bay 032 Jack Name - Werewolf Factory 033 John Carpenter - Theme from "The Fog" 034 Khiis - Saboor 035 Richie Havens -  San Francisco Bay Blues 036 Metallica - Battery 037 Autopsy - charred remains 038 ExTREMITY_-_Crepuscular_Crescendo 039 The Otherside -  Streetcar 040 Quincy Jones - Ironside (TV Theme) 041 Megadeth -  Back in the Day 042 Sly and the Family Stone - Stand! 043 Faith No More -  From Out of Nowhere 044 Willie Hutch-Vampin (The Mack OST 045 Orchid -  Mouths Of Madness 046 Lalo Schifrin - Bullitt OST - On The Way To San Mateo 047 Vince Guaraldi - Woodstock's Dream 048 Fantomas -  4-11-05 049 Violation Wound - Fearmonger + State of Alarm 050 Primus - Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers 051 The Flower Pot Men - Let's Go to San Francisco (Part.1-2) 052 Bosse-de-Nage - Crux 053 Rod McKuen - The Beat Generation 054 Dionne Warwick - Do You Know The Way To San Jose 055 The Watchers - Sabbath Highway 056 Possessed - the eyes of horror 057 Scott McKenzie – San Francisco (Be Sure to wear flowers) 058 Tower Of Power -  Oakland Stroke 059 Big Trouble In Little China OST - Pork chop express 060 Vio-lence -  Calling In The Coroner 061 Black Oak Arkansas - The Big Ones Still Coming 062 Mr. Bungle - Love Is a Fist 063 VUUR -  The Fire - San Francisco 064 Testament - The Haunting 065 Electronicat - Frisco Bay 066 Y&T - Mean Streak 067 Thee Oh Sees -  Toe Cutter/Thumb Buster 068 Sweet - California Nights - Promo Clip (OFFICIAL) 069 Sadus - Swallowed In Black 070 Chuck Berry - San Francisco Dues 071 Sammy Hagar - Keep on rockin' 072 Fuzz -  Sleigh Ride 073 Otis Redding - Sittin' on The Dock of the Bay 074 Pleasure Leftits - The Gate 075 BL'AST - Sometimes 076 Santana - Samba de Sausalito 077 Acephalix - Upon This Altar 078 Sun Ra    - Lady With The Golden Stockings 079 Chris Isaak - San Francisco Days 080 Pointer Sisters - How Long (Betcha' Got A Chick On The Side) 081 High On Fire -  Carcosa 082 Will Haven -  When The Walls Close In 083 The Coup -  Laugh/Love/Fuck 084 King Khan - Teeth Are Shite 085 Deafheaven -  Irresistible 086 Glitter Wizard -  Blood of the Serpent 087 Jefferson Airplane -  It's No Secret 088 Cannonball Adderley - This Here 089 The Warlocks -  Can't Come Down 090 Squirmy Sax Man - I Still Believe 091 Acid King - Coming Down from Outer Space 092 George Duke - Sausalito 093 The Lost Boys - Cry Little Sister (Theme From The Lost Boys OST) 094 Betty Davis - [They Say I'm Different] He Was a Big Freak 095 Fever Tree - San Francisco Girls 096 The Dillinger Escape Plan w/ Mike Patton -  Pig Latin 097 Build Them to Break - Lucky Strike 098 Montrose - Rock Candy 099 PRIMUS - THE TOYS GO WINDING DOWN 100 Joe Satriani - Big Bad Moon 101 Sleater Kinney - Jumpers 102 GRUESOME - Dimensions Of Horror 103 Sly & the Family Stone - Everday People 104 Huey Lewis and the News - Back in Time 105 Hammers Of Misfortune - 2 17th Street 106 Jerry Fielding - Prologue _ Main Title (The Enforcer OST) 107 Metal Church - The Dark 108 Deftones - Ohms 109  John Lee Hooker - Frisco Blues 110 DRI - Go Die 111 16th & Valencia Roxy Music- Devendra Banhart, What We Will Be 112 MC Hammer - Too Legit to Quit 113 Dead Kennedys-Police Truck 114 Rancid - Adina 115 San Francisco's Shiver - Up My Sleeve 116 Bernard Herrmann - Vertigo OST - The Bay 117 Faith No More - Last Cup Of Sorrow 118 Blackburn & Snow -  Stranger In a Strange Land 119 The Doobie Brothers - What A Fool Believes 120 The Grateful Dead - Sugar Magnolia 121 Cab Calloway - San Francisco Fan 122 The Charlatans - codine 123 Buck Owens - Want To Live In San Francisco 124 Sleep - Dragonaut 125 Death Angel - 5 Steps Of Freedom 126 Neil Young - Heart of Gold 127 Vastum -  Reveries in Autophagia 128 Dead Kennedys -  Moon Over Marin 129 EchoBrain -  Colder World 130 Riz Ortolani    - Lombard Street   131 Waylon Jennings - San Francisco Mabel Joy   132 Con Funk Shun - Confunkshunizeya 133 Chic - Hes the Greatest Dancer 134 Peace Creep - Radio Free Alcatraz   135 ABBA - Santa Rosa 136 Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks - San Fransisco 137 Together Band - California Curl California Girl 138 The Hellers - It's 74 In San Francisco 139 Pat Todd - No Place Like Home 140 Nancy Wilson - I'm Always Drunk In San Francisco (And I Don't Drink At All) 141 Anathema -  San Francisco 142 Blue Cheer -  Fool 143 Exhumed - Gravewalker 144 Darondo - Let My People Go 145 Exodus -  Blood In Blood Out 146 Lalo Schifrin Dirty Harry OST - Scorpios Theme   147 Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues 148 Wild Light - California on my mid 149 Herbie Hancock - Man-child -  Hang Up Your Hang Ups 150 Fantomas -  Spider Baby 151 The Lord Weird Slough Feg -  Headhunter 152 The Animals - San Franciscan Nights 153 Twilight - Dance with Me 154 THE POINTER SISTERS - Yes We Can Can 155 Residents - Hello Skinny 156 CCR HEADCLEANER - Eat This Riff 157 LEON WARE  - Thats Why I Came To California 158 Creedence Clearwater Revival - I Put A Spell On You 159 Comorant - The First Man 160 Bosse-de-Nage  - The Trench 161 Hell Fire - Free Again   162 Riz Ortolani  - Golden Gate Bridge 163 Fleetwood Mac - You Make Loving Fun 164 Uther Pendragon - San Francisco Earthquake 165 Melvins - Zodiac 166 La Luz - California Finally 167 The Wyatt Act - Push 168 Santana - Soul Sacrifice 169 Cheap Trick - On the Radio 170 Electric Wizard -  Venus In Furs 171 Led Zeppelin -  Misty Mountain Hop 172 Tommy Castro - Callin' San Francisco 173 Viscious Rumors - Digital Dictator 174 Ghoul-Off With Their Heads 175 Diesel - Sausalito Summernight (Single Version) 176 Sheila E - A Love Bizarre 177 Starship - Nothings Gonna Stop Us Now 178 Jeffry Osboune - I Really Don't Need No Light 179 Nazareth -  Alcatraz 180 Freak of Nature - Rescue Me 181 Metallica - Crash Course In Brain Surgery 182 10000 Maniacs - Hey Jack Kerouac 183 Faith No More -  Get Out 184  URSA -  Wizard's Path 185 Jefferson Airplane - Aerie (Gang of Eagles) 186 Tower of Power - Just Enough and Too Much 187 Fred Hughes - san francisco is a lonely town 188 Mamaleek - Eating Unblessed Meat 189 Moby Grape - Naked If I Want To 190 Exodus - Metal Command 191 Pig Destroyer - Alcatraz Metaphors 192 the Donnas - You Make Me Hot 193 Hot Tuna - True Religion 194 Heathen - Opiate of the Masses 195 Fanny - Come and Hold Me 196 Sadus - Hands Of Fate 197 Negative Trend - Meathouse 198 Forbidden - Forbidden Evil 199 Spazz - Crush Kill Destroy 200 Testament - The Preacher 201 HEXX - Morbid Reality 202 Vio-Lence - Phobophobia 203 Dead Kennedys - One Way Ticket To Pluto 204 Tom Waits - Get Behind The Mule 205 CRETIN - It 206 RAMONES - Judy Is A Punk 207 Full House - Intro 208 Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band - Kerouac 209 Primus - Dirty Drowning Man 210 Wooden Shjips -  Motorbike 211 The Tony Williams Lifetime Ego - Clap City 212 Middle of the Road - Sacramento (A Wonderful Town) 213 Green Day - At the Library 214 Slayer -  Gemini 215 Tetema - Cutlass Eye 216 Defiance - Death Machine 217 Brisco County Jr theme 218 Doug McKechnie - Crazy Ray 219 Ulthar - Furnace Hibernation 220 Mr. Bungle -  ANARCHY UP YOUR ANUS 221 Dirty Ghosts  - Let It Pretend 222 They Might Be Giants - San Francisco (In Situ) 223 Metallica - The Shortest Straw 224 OM - Unitive Knowledge of the Godhead 225 Laaz Rockit - City's Gonna Burn 226 Autopsy - Skullptures 227 Mordred - Spectacle of Fear 228 Sly & the Family Stone - Luv N' Haight 229 Possessed - Seven Churches 230 Machine Head - The Rage to Overcome 231 Thelonius Monk - San Francisco Holiday 232 The Units - The Mission Is Bitchin 233 Del Tha Funkee Homosapien - Mistadobalina 234 Arnocorps - Dead lift 235 The Grateful Dead - The Golden Road 236 DRI - All for nothing 237 Jim Martin - Disco dust 238 Thee Oh Sees - I come from the mountain 239 Death Angel - Discontinued 240 Starship - We Built This City 241 Captured! by Robots - Endless Circle of Bullshit 242 Pins Of Light - My revenge 243 Sun Ra - We Travel the Spaceways 244 Faith No More - caffeine 245 David Lee Roth - Just like paradise 246 San Francisco Fog Horns by Golden Gate Bridge 247 Abscess - Tormented 248 Mortuous - Bitterness 249 Dead Kennedy's - California uber alles 250 Twitch Angry - San Francisco 666 Neurosis - Water Is Not Enough

So, hop on a cable car, grab ice cream at Swenson’s or bark back at the seals down by Pier 39. Catch a Bear’s game at Berkeley and do some squirmy sax moves in the Haight after you down some beers at the Toronado and play my San Fran playlist! Here are the songs in the link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-iHPcxymC1-HLG9q5rZLsqs8EYh6bhu-

[firstaidspray]

OC Traits!!

Saw some others doing this and I wasn’t tagged BUT I really wanted to talk about my idiots so here’s some info on Brittany, Nonia, Machete, and Jordanna!!

BRITTANY SPADE (Dawn of the Dead and Army of the Dead)

general-

name: Brittany Spade

alias(es): Britt, Bri

gender: girl (she/they)

age: 26

birthdate: feb 25

place of birth: montreal, quebec, canada

hometown: montreal, quebec, canada

spoken language(s): english, french, some spanish

sexual preference: bisexual

occupation: microbiology student, smuggler (army of the dead verse)

appearance-

eye color: brown

hair color: black

height: 5′1

scars: a few faded self harm ones on her arms

favorite-

color: pink

hair color: on herself- black on others- dark

song: bored by deftones

food: chicken strips, she has the palate of a child

drink: dasani water, NOT aquafina (even though the mall only has aquafina)

have they-

passed university: never got the chance :(

had sex: yes

had sex in public: yeah lol

gotten pregnant: no

kissed a boy: yes

kissed a girl: yes

gotten tattoos: yes, a small spade symbol on her right bicep and CJ’s initials on her left (in the dawn of the dead verse)

gotten piercings: yes, both nostrils and septum and multiple ears

been in love: yes

stayed up for more than 24 hours: yes

are they-

a virgin: no

a cuddler: yes

a kisser: yes

scared easily: no

jealous easily: sometimes

dominant: not at all

submissive: very

in love: yes and she can fix him (but it only works on CJ)

single: no

random questions (tw for self harm/suicide mention)-

have they harmed themselves: when she was younger

thought of suicide: a long time ago but not anymore

attempted suicide: yes

wanted to kill someone: yes, and she has

have / had a job: yes

have any fears: losing CJ/Martin/Lilly (depends on the verse), becoming infected

family-

sibling(s): Lilly is like a sister but they’re not actually related

parent(s): unnamed parents

children: none

significant other: CJ (Dawn of the Dead verse), Martin (Army of the Dead verse)

pet(s): none

NONIA FONZARELLI (Talladega Nights)

general-

name: Nonia Fonzarelli

alias(es): Darlin’

gender: girl (she/they)

age: 31

birthdate: feb 19

place of birth: newark, new jersey

hometown: west river, north carolina

spoken language(s): english

sexual preference: bisexual

occupation: clerk at 76 gas station, NASCAR driver (temporarily)

appearance-

eye color: brown

hair color: dark brown

height: 5'1

scars: some barely visible old self harm scars on her arms and thighs

favorite-

color: yellow

hair color: for herself- brown for others- grey (she likes dilves)

song: beautiful disaster by 311

food: seasoned steak fries (and they put that pickle on hers at applebee’s...big mistake)

drink: grape soda

have they-

passed university: no, but she eventually becomes a medical lab assistant via trade school

had sex: yes

had sex in public:...does in a car in a parking lot count?

gotten pregnant: no

kissed a boy: yes

kissed a girl: no

gotten tattoos: yes, a tramp stamp with tribal lines and crossed checkered flags

gotten piercings: yes, her nostril and many in her ears

been in love: yes

stayed up for more than 24 hours: yes

are they-

a virgin: no

a cuddler: ONLY with Reese, anybody else will die if they try to touch her

a kisser: yes but only with Reese

scared easily: no

jealous easily: not really

dominant: in a race, yes

submissive: only sexually

in love: very much so

single: no

random questions (tw for self harm/suicide mention)-

have they harmed themselves: yes

thought of suicide: not anymore

attempted suicide: yes

wanted to kill someone: with intrusive thoughts but not for real

have / had a job: yes

have any fears: losing Reese, driving (until Reese teaches her)

family-

sibling(s): one brother named Chase

parent(s): Lisa and Manny Fonzarelli

children: Ricky is technically her step son and he HATES IT

significant other: Reese Bobby

pet(s): Karen the cougar

MACHETE (DCEU)

general-

name: Shania Ramirez (DO NOT CALL HER THIS)

alias(es): Machete

gender: girl (she/they)

age: 27

birthdate: feb 14

place of birth: san antonio, texas

hometown: san antonio, texas

spoken language(s): english, spanish

sexual preference: bisexual

occupation: mercenary, Suicide Squad member

appearance-

eye color: brown

hair color: black

height: 5'1

scars: many self harm scars all over her arms, torso, and thighs

favorite-

color: hot pink

hair color: for herself- black for others- no preference

song: butterfly by crazy town

food: she’d live on sour candy if you let her

drink: mike’s hard raspberry lemonade

have they-

passed university: no

had sex: yes

had sex in public:...maybe

gotten pregnant: no

kissed a boy: yes

kissed a girl: yes

gotten tattoos: yes, one tattoo between her shoulderblades of an ornate butterfly with heart motif

gotten piercings: yes, her nostril, many ear piercings, tongue, and nipples

been in love: yessss

stayed up for more than 24 hours: yes

are they-

a virgin: no

a cuddler: not really but if Boomerang asks then she will

a kisser: yes

scared easily: no

jealous easily: yes

dominant: socially yes

submissive: sexually but otherwise no

in love: yes!!

single: no

random questions (tw for self harm/suicide mention)-

have they harmed themselves: yes, a lot

thought of suicide: in the past

attempted suicide: yes

wanted to kill someone: yes, and she has and will

have / had a job: yes

have any fears: losing Boomerang, loose hair touching her (it’s a weird little fear), people touching her neck other than Boomerang

family-

sibling(s): none

parent(s): unnamed parents

children: none

significant other: Captain Boomerang (current), Roman Sionis and Victor Zsasz (exes)

pet(s): none but she really wants a pet puffer fish. like really badly

JORDANNA LEWIS (Uncharted)

general-

name: Jordanna Lewis

alias(es): Jord, J, Angel of Death

gender: girl (she/they)

age: late 20s

birthdate: july 7

place of birth: melbourne, victoria, australia

hometown: melbourne, victoria, australia

spoken language(s): english, spanish, some broken maori

sexual preference: bisexual

occupation: mercenary, paramedic

appearance-

eye color: hazel

hair color: brown

height: 5′2

scars: some random dings here and there but they aren’t noticable

favorite-

color: sky blue

hair color: on herself- brown on others- no preference

song: counting blue cars (tell me your thoughts on god) by dishwalla

food: fried prawns (shrimp but she calls them prawns)

drink: strawberry flavored vodka

have they-

passed university: no

had sex: yes

had sex in public: probably

gotten pregnant: no

kissed a boy: yes

kissed a girl: yes

gotten tattoos: yes, one of a ring around her forearm with heartbeat waves on it

gotten piercings: yes, but just her ears

been in love: yes

stayed up for more than 24 hours: yes

are they-

a virgin: no

a cuddler: definitely 

a kisser: yes

scared easily: no

jealous easily: kind of but not really

dominant: in social situations and during combat

submissive: sexually

in love: yes

single: no she has TW O BOYFRIENDS

random questions (tw for self harm/suicide mention)-

have they harmed themselves: no

thought of suicide: no

attempted suicide: no

wanted to kill someone: yes, she has and will

have / had a job: yes

have any fears: losing Orca or Knot, drowning

family-

sibling(s): none

parent(s): Emilia and Steve Lewis

children: none

significant other: Orca, Knot (sorta, he’s a friend with benefits)

pet(s): none, who would trust her, Orca, and Knot with an animal???

[xtruss]

The Invention of the Police

Why did American policing get so big, so fast? The answer, mainly, is slavery.

— By Jill Lepore, A Critic at Large

— July 13, 2020 | July 20, 2020 Issue | The New Yorker

The Chinatown Squad, a notoriously harsh police unit in San Francisco, in 1905. Photograph courtesy Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

To police is to maintain law and order, but the word derives from polis—the Greek for “city,” or “polity”—by way of politia, the Latin for “citizenship,” and it entered English from the Middle French police, which meant not constables but government. “The police,” as a civil force charged with deterring crime, came to the United States from England and is generally associated with monarchy—“keeping the king’s peace”—which makes it surprising that, in the antimonarchical United States, it got so big, so fast. The reason is, mainly, slavery.

“Abolish the police,” as a rallying cry, dates to 1988 (the year that N.W.A. recorded “Fuck tha Police”), but, long before anyone called for its abolition, someone had to invent the police: the ancient Greek polis had to become the modern police. “To be political, to live in a polis, meant that everything was decided through words and persuasion and not through force and violence,” Hannah Arendt wrote in “The Human Condition.” In the polis, men argued and debated, as equals, under a rule of law. Outside the polis, in households, men dominated women, children, servants, and slaves, under a rule of force. This division of government sailed down the river of time like a raft, getting battered, but also bigger, collecting sticks and mud. Kings asserted a rule of force over their subjects on the idea that their kingdom was their household. In 1769, William Blackstone, in his “Commentaries on the Laws of England,” argued that the king, as “pater-familias of the nation,” directs “the public police,” exercising the means by which “the individuals of the state, like members of a well-governed family, are bound to conform their general behavior to the rules of propriety, good neighbourhood, and good manners; and to be decent, industrious, and inoffensive in their respective stations.” The police are the king’s men.

History begins with etymology, but it doesn’t end there. The polis is not the police. The American Revolution toppled the power of the king over his people—in America, “the law is king,” Thomas Paine wrote—but not the power of a man over his family. The power of the police has its origins in that kind of power. Under the rule of law, people are equals; under the rule of police, as the legal theorist Markus Dubber has written, we are not. We are more like the women, children, servants, and slaves in a household in ancient Greece, the people who were not allowed to be a part of the polis. But for centuries, through struggles for independence, emancipation, enfranchisement, and equal rights, we’ve been fighting to enter the polis. One way to think about “Abolish the police,” then, is as an argument that, now that all of us have finally clawed our way into the polis, the police are obsolete.

But are they? The crisis in policing is the culmination of a thousand other failures—failures of education, social services, public health, gun regulation, criminal justice, and economic development. Police have a lot in common with firefighters, E.M.T.s, and paramedics: they’re there to help, often at great sacrifice, and by placing themselves in harm’s way. To say that this doesn’t always work out, however, does not begin to cover the size of the problem. The killing of George Floyd, in Minneapolis, cannot be wished away as an outlier. In each of the past five years, police in the United States have killed roughly a thousand people. (During each of those same years, about a hundred police officers were killed in the line of duty.) One study suggests that, among American men between the ages of fifteen and thirty-four, the number who were treated in emergency rooms as a result of injuries inflicted by police and security guards was almost as great as the number who, as pedestrians, were injured by motor vehicles. Urban police forces are nearly always whiter than the communities they patrol. The victims of police brutality are disproportionately Black teen-age boys: children. To say that many good and admirable people are police officers, dedicated and brave public servants, which is, of course, true, is to fail to address both the nature and the scale of the crisis and the legacy of centuries of racial injustice. The best people, with the best of intentions, doing their utmost, cannot fix this system from within.

There are nearly seven hundred thousand police officers in the United States, about two for every thousand people, a rate that is lower than the European average. The difference is guns. Police in Finland fired six bullets in all of 2013; in an encounter on a single day in the year 2015, in Pasco, Washington, three policemen fired seventeen bullets when they shot and killed an unarmed thirty-five-year-old orchard worker from Mexico. Five years ago, when the Guardian counted police killings, it reported that, “in the first 24 days of 2015, police in the US fatally shot more people than police did in England and Wales, combined, over the past 24 years.” American police are armed to the teeth, with more than seven billion dollars’ worth of surplus military equipment off-loaded by the Pentagon to eight thousand law-enforcement agencies since 1997. At the same time, they face the most heavily armed civilian population in the world: one in three Americans owns a gun, typically more than one. Gun violence undermines civilian life and debases everyone. A study found that, given the ravages of stress, white male police officers in Buffalo have a life expectancy twenty-two years shorter than that of the average American male. The debate about policing also has to do with all the money that’s spent paying heavily armed agents of the state to do things that they aren’t trained to do and that other institutions would do better. History haunts this debate like a bullet-riddled ghost.

That history begins in England, in the thirteenth century, when maintaining the king’s peace became the duty of an officer of the court called a constable, aided by his watchmen: every male adult could be called on to take a turn walking a ward at night and, if trouble came, to raise a hue and cry. This practice lasted for centuries. (A version endures: George Zimmerman, when he shot and killed Trayvon Martin, in 2012, was serving on his neighborhood watch.) The watch didn’t work especially well in England—“The average constable is an ignoramus who knows little or nothing of the law,” Blackstone wrote—and it didn’t work especially well in England’s colonies. Rich men paid poor men to take their turns on the watch, which meant that most watchmen were either very elderly or very poor, and very exhausted from working all day. Boston established a watch in 1631. New York tried paying watchmen in 1658. In Philadelphia, in 1705, the governor expressed the view that the militia could make the city safer than the watch, but militias weren’t supposed to police the king’s subjects; they were supposed to serve the common defense—waging wars against the French, fighting Native peoples who were trying to hold on to their lands, or suppressing slave rebellions.

The government of slavery was not a rule of law. It was a rule of police. In 1661, the English colony of Barbados passed its first slave law; revised in 1688, it decreed that “Negroes and other Slaves” were “wholly unqualified to be governed by the Laws . . . of our Nations,” and devised, instead, a special set of rules “for the good Regulating and Ordering of them.” Virginia adopted similar measures, known as slave codes, in 1680:

It shall not be lawfull for any negroe or other slave to carry or arme himselfe with any club, staffe, gunn, sword or any other weapon of defence or offence, nor to goe or depart from of his masters ground without a certificate from his master, mistris or overseer, and such permission not to be granted but upon perticuler and necessary occasions; and every negroe or slave soe offending not haveing a certificate as aforesaid shalbe sent to the next constable, who is hereby enjoyned and required to give the said negroe twenty lashes on his bare back well layd on, and soe sent home to his said master, mistris or overseer . . . that if any negroe or other slave shall absent himself from his masters service and lye hid and lurking in obscure places, comitting injuries to the inhabitants, and shall resist any person or persons that shalby any lawfull authority be imployed to apprehend and take the said negroe, that then in case of such resistance, it shalbe lawfull for such person or persons to kill the said negroe or slave soe lying out and resisting.

In eighteenth-century New York, a person held as a slave could not gather in a group of more than three; could not ride a horse; could not hold a funeral at night; could not be out an hour after sunset without a lantern; and could not sell “Indian corn, peaches, or any other fruit” in any street or market in the city. Stop and frisk, stop and whip, shoot to kill.

Then there were the slave patrols. Armed Spanish bands called hermandades had hunted runaways in Cuba beginning in the fifteen-thirties, a practice that was adopted by the English in Barbados a century later. It had a lot in common with England’s posse comitatus, a band of stout men that a county sheriff could summon to chase down an escaped criminal. South Carolina, founded by slaveowners from Barbados, authorized its first slave patrol in 1702; Virginia followed in 1726, North Carolina in 1753. Slave patrols married the watch to the militia: serving on patrol was required of all able-bodied men (often, the patrol was mustered from the militia), and patrollers used the hue and cry to call for anyone within hearing distance to join the chase. Neither the watch nor the militia nor the patrols were “police,” who were French, and considered despotic. In North America, the French city of New Orleans was distinctive in having la police: armed City Guards, who wore military-style uniforms and received wages, an urban slave patrol.

In 1779, Thomas Jefferson created a chair in “law and police” at the College of William & Mary. The meaning of the word began to change. In 1789, Jeremy Bentham, noting that “police” had recently entered the English language, in something like its modern sense, made this distinction: police keep the peace; justice punishes disorder. (“No justice, no peace!” Black Lives Matter protesters cry in the streets.) Then, in 1797, a London magistrate named Patrick Colquhoun published “A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis.” He, too, distinguished peace kept in the streets from justice administered by the courts: police were responsible for the regulation and correction of behavior and “the prevention and detection of crimes.”

It is often said that Britain created the police, and the United States copied it. One could argue that the reverse is true. Colquhoun spent his teens and early twenties in Colonial Virginia, had served as an agent for British cotton manufacturers, and owned shares in sugar plantations in Jamaica. He knew all about slave codes and slave patrols. But nothing came of Colquhoun’s ideas about policing until 1829, when Home Secretary Robert Peel—in the wake of a great deal of labor unrest, and after years of suppressing Catholic rebellions in Ireland, in his capacity as Irish Secretary—persuaded Parliament to establish the Metropolitan Police, a force of some three thousand men, headed by two civilian justices (later called “commissioners”), and organized like an army, with each superintendent overseeing four inspectors, sixteen sergeants, and a hundred and sixty-five constables, who wore coats and pants of blue with black top hats, each assigned a numbered badge and a baton. Londoners came to call these men “bobbies,” for Bobby Peel.

It is also often said that modern American urban policing began in 1838, when the Massachusetts legislature authorized the hiring of police officers in Boston. This, too, ignores the role of slavery in the history of the police. In 1829, a Black abolitionist in Boston named David Walker published “An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World,” calling for violent rebellion: “One good black man can put to death six white men.” Walker was found dead within the year, and Boston thereafter had a series of mob attacks against abolitionists, including an attempt to lynch William Lloyd Garrison, the publisher of The Liberator, in 1835. Walker’s words terrified Southern slaveowners. The governor of North Carolina wrote to his state’s senators, “I beg you will lay this matter before the police of your town and invite their prompt attention to the necessity of arresting the circulation of the book.” By “police,” he meant slave patrols: in response to Walker’s “Appeal,” North Carolina formed a statewide “patrol committee.”

New York established a police department in 1844; New Orleans and Cincinnati followed in 1852, then, later in the eighteen-fifties, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Baltimore. Population growth, the widening inequality brought about by the Industrial Revolution, and the rise in such crimes as prostitution and burglary all contributed to the emergence of urban policing. So did immigration, especially from Ireland and Germany, and the hostility to immigration: a new party, the Know-Nothings, sought to prevent immigrants from voting, holding office, and becoming citizens. In 1854, Boston disbanded its ancient watch and formally established a police department; that year, Know-Nothings swept the city’s elections.

American police differed from their English counterparts: in the U.S., police commissioners, as political appointees, fell under local control, with limited supervision; and law enforcement was decentralized, resulting in a jurisdictional thicket. In 1857, in the Great Police Riot, the New York Municipal Police, run by the mayor’s office, fought on the steps of city hall with the New York Metropolitan Police, run by the state. The Metropolitans were known as the New York Mets. That year, an amateur baseball team of the same name was founded.

Also, unlike their British counterparts, American police carried guns, initially their own. In the eighteen-sixties, the Colt Firearms Company began manufacturing a compact revolver called a Pocket Police Model, long before the New York Metropolitan Police began issuing service weapons. American police carried guns because Americans carried guns, including Americans who lived in parts of the country where they hunted for food and defended their livestock from wild animals, Americans who lived in parts of the country that had no police, and Americans who lived in parts of North America that were not in the United States. Outside big cities, law-enforcement officers were scarce. In territories that weren’t yet states, there were U.S. marshals and their deputies, officers of the federal courts who could act as de-facto police, but only to enforce federal laws. If a territory became a state, its counties would elect sheriffs. Meanwhile, Americans became vigilantes, especially likely to kill indigenous peoples, and to lynch people of color. Between 1840 and the nineteen-twenties, mobs, vigilantes, and law officers, including the Texas Rangers, lynched some five hundred Mexicans and Mexican-Americans and killed thousands more, not only in Texas but also in territories that became the states of California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. A San Francisco vigilance committee established in 1851 arrested, tried, and hanged people; it boasted a membership in the thousands. An L.A. vigilance committee targeted and lynched Chinese immigrants.

The U.S. Army operated as a police force, too. After the Civil War, the militia was organized into seven new departments of permanent standing armies: the Department of Dakota, the Department of the Platte, the Department of the Missouri, the Department of Texas, the Department of Arizona, the Department of California, and the Department of the Columbian. In the eighteen-seventies and eighties, the U.S. Army engaged in more than a thousand combat operations against Native peoples. In 1890, at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, following an attempt to disarm a Lakota settlement, a regiment of cavalrymen massacred hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children. Nearly a century later, in 1973, F.B.I. agents, swat teams, and federal troops and state marshals laid siege to Wounded Knee during a protest over police brutality and the failure to properly punish the torture and murder of an Oglala Sioux man named Raymond Yellow Thunder. They fired more than half a million rounds of ammunition and arrested more than a thousand people. Today, according to the C.D.C., Native Americans are more likely to be killed by the police than any other racial or ethnic group.

Modern American policing began in 1909, when August Vollmer became the chief of the police department in Berkeley, California. Vollmer refashioned American police into an American military. He’d served with the Eighth Army Corps in the Philippines in 1898. “For years, ever since Spanish-American War days, I’ve studied military tactics and used them to good effect in rounding up crooks,” he later explained. “After all we’re conducting a war, a war against the enemies of society.” Who were those enemies? Mobsters, bootleggers, socialist agitators, strikers, union organizers, immigrants, and Black people.

To domestic policing, Vollmer and his peers adapted the kinds of tactics and weapons that had been deployed against Native Americans in the West and against colonized peoples in other parts of the world, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, as the sociologist Julian Go has demonstrated. Vollmer instituted a training model imitated all over the country, by police departments that were often led and staffed by other veterans of the United States wars of conquest and occupation. A “police captain or lieutenant should occupy exactly the same position in the public mind as that of a captain or lieutenant in the United States army,” Detroit’s commissioner of police said. (Today’s police officers are disproportionately veterans of U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many suffering from post-traumatic stress. The Marshall Project, analyzing data from the Albuquerque police, found that officers who are veterans are more likely than their non-veteran counterparts to be involved in fatal shootings. In general, they are more likely to use force, and more likely to fire their guns.)

Vollmer-era police enforced a new kind of slave code: Jim Crow laws, which had been passed in the South beginning in the late eighteen-seventies and upheld by the Supreme Court in 1896. William G. Austin became Savannah’s chief of police in 1907. Earlier, he had earned a Medal of Honor for his service in the U.S. Cavalry at Wounded Knee; he had also fought in the Spanish-American War. By 1916, African-American churches in the city were complaining to Savannah newspapers about the “whole scale arrests of negroes because they are negroes—arrests that would not be made if they were white under similar circumstances.” African-Americans also confronted Jim Crow policing in the Northern cities to which they increasingly fled. James Robinson, Philadelphia’s chief of police beginning in 1912, had served in the Infantry during the Spanish-American War and the Philippine-American War. He based his force’s training on manuals used by the U.S. Army at Leavenworth. Go reports that, in 1911, about eleven per cent of people arrested were African-American; under Robinson, that number rose to 14.6 per cent in 1917. By the nineteen-twenties, a quarter of those arrested were African-Americans, who, at the time, represented just 7.4 per cent of the population.

Progressive Era, Vollmer-style policing criminalized Blackness, as the historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad argued in his 2010 book, “The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America.” Police patrolled Black neighborhoods and arrested Black people disproportionately; prosecutors indicted Black people disproportionately; juries found Black people guilty disproportionately; judges gave Black people disproportionately long sentences; and, then, after all this, social scientists, observing the number of Black people in jail, decided that, as a matter of biology, Black people were disproportionately inclined to criminality.

More recently, between the New Jim Crow and the criminalization of immigration and the imprisonment of immigrants in detention centers, this reality has only grown worse. “By population, by per capita incarceration rates, and by expenditures, the United States exceeds all other nations in how many of its citizens, asylum seekers, and undocumented immigrants are under some form of criminal justice supervision,” Muhammad writes in a new preface to his book. “The number of African American and Latinx people in American jails and prisons today exceeds the entire populations of some African, Eastern European, and Caribbean countries.”

Policing grew harsher in the Progressive Era, and, with the emergence of state-police forces, the number of police grew, too. With the rise of the automobile, some, like California’s, began as “highway patrols.” Others, including the state police in Nevada, Colorado, and Oregon, began as the private paramilitaries of industrialists which employed the newest American immigrants: Hungarians, Italians, and Jews. Industrialists in Pennsylvania established the Iron and Coal Police to end strikes and bust unions, including the United Mine Workers; in 1905, three years after an anthracite-coal strike, the Pennsylvania State Police started operations. “One State Policeman should be able to handle one hundred foreigners,” its new chief said.

The U.S. Border Patrol began in 1924, the year that Congress restricted immigration from southern Europe. At the insistence of Southern and Western agriculturalists, Congress exempted Mexicans from its new immigration quotas in order to allow migrant workers to enter the United States. The Border Patrol began as a relatively small outfit responsible for enforcing federal immigration law, and stopping smugglers, at all of the nation’s borders. In the middle decades of the twentieth century, it grew to a national quasi-military focussed on policing the southern border in campaigns of mass arrest and forced deportation of Mexican immigrants, aided by local police like the notoriously brutal L.A.P.D., as the historian Kelly Lytle Hernández has chronicled. What became the Chicano movement began in Southern California, with Mexican immigrants’ protests of the L.A.P.D. during the first half of the twentieth century, even as a growing film industry cranked out features about Klansmen hunting Black people, cowboys killing Indians, and police chasing Mexicans. More recently, you can find an updated version of this story in L.A. Noire, a video game set in 1947 and played from the perspective of a well-armed L.A.P.D. officer, who, driving along Sunset Boulevard, passes the crumbling, abandoned sets from D. W. Griffith’s 1916 film “Intolerance,” imagined relics of an unforgiving age.

Two kinds of police appeared on mid-century American television. The good guys solved crime on prime-time police procedurals like “Dragnet,” starting in 1951, and “Adam-12,” beginning in 1968 (both featured the L.A.P.D.). The bad guys shocked America’s conscience on the nightly news: Arkansas state troopers barring Black students from entering Little Rock Central High School, in 1957; Birmingham police clubbing and arresting some seven hundred Black children protesting segregation, in 1963; and Alabama state troopers beating voting-rights marchers at Selma, in 1965. These two faces of policing help explain how, in the nineteen-sixties, the more people protested police brutality, the more money governments gave to police departments.

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson declared a “war on crime,” and asked Congress to pass the Law Enforcement Assistance Act, under which the federal government would supply local police with military-grade weapons, weapons that were being used in the war in Vietnam. During riots in Watts that summer, law enforcement killed thirty-one people and arrested more than four thousand; fighting the protesters, the head of the L.A.P.D. said, was “very much like fighting the Viet Cong.” Preparing for a Senate vote just days after the uprising ended, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee said, “For some time, it has been my feeling that the task of law enforcement agencies is really not much different from military forces; namely, to deter crime before it occurs, just as our military objective is deterrence of aggression.”

As Elizabeth Hinton reported in “From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America,” the “frontline soldiers” in Johnson’s war on crime—Vollmer-era policing all over again—spent a disproportionate amount of time patrolling Black neighborhoods and arresting Black people. Policymakers concluded from those differential arrest rates that Black people were prone to criminality, with the result that police spent even more of their time patrolling Black neighborhoods, which led to a still higher arrest rate. “If we wish to rid this country of crime, if we wish to stop hacking at its branches only, we must cut its roots and drain its swampy breeding ground, the slum,” Johnson told an audience of police policymakers in 1966. The next year, riots broke out in Newark and Detroit. “We ain’t rioting agains’ all you whites,” one Newark man told a reporter not long before being shot dead by police. “We’re riotin’ agains’ police brutality.” In Detroit, police arrested more than seven thousand people.

Johnson’s Great Society essentially ended when he asked Congress to pass the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, which had the effect of diverting money from social programs to policing. This magazine called it “a piece of demagoguery devised out of malevolence and enacted in hysteria.” James Baldwin attributed its “irresponsible ferocity” to “some pale, compelling nightmare—an overwhelming collection of private nightmares.” The truth was darker, as the sociologist Stuart Schrader chronicled in his 2019 book, “Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing.” During the Cold War, the Office of Public Safety at the U.S.A.I.D. provided assistance to the police in at least fifty-two countries, and training to officers from nearly eighty, for the purpose of counter-insurgency—the suppression of an anticipated revolution, that collection of private nightmares; as the O.P.S. reported, it contributed “the international dimension to the Administration’s War on Crime.” Counter-insurgency boomeranged, and came back to the United States, as policing.

In 1968, Johnson’s new crime bill established the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, within the Department of Justice, which, in the next decade and a half, disbursed federal funds to more than eighty thousand crime-control projects. Even funds intended for social projects—youth employment, for instance, along with other health, education, housing, and welfare programs—were distributed to police operations. With Richard Nixon, any elements of the Great Society that had survived the disastrous end of Johnson’s Presidency were drastically cut, with an increased emphasis on policing, and prison-building. More Americans went to prison between 1965 and 1982 than between 1865 and 1964, Hinton reports. Under Ronald Reagan, still more social services were closed, or starved of funding until they died: mental hospitals, health centers, jobs programs, early-childhood education. By 2016, eighteen states were spending more on prisons than on colleges and universities. Activists who today call for defunding the police argue that, for decades, Americans have been defunding not only social services but, in many states, public education itself. The more frayed the social fabric, the more police have been deployed to trim the dangling threads.

The blueprint for law enforcement from Nixon to Reagan came from the Harvard political scientist James Q. Wilson between 1968, in his book “Varieties of Police Behavior,” and 1982, in an essay in The Atlantic titled “Broken Windows.” On the one hand, Wilson believed that the police should shift from enforcing the law to maintaining order, by patrolling on foot, and doing what came to be called “community policing.” (Some of his recommendations were ignored: Wilson called for other professionals to handle what he termed the “service functions” of the police—“first aid, rescuing cats, helping ladies, and the like”—which is a reform people are asking for today.) On the other hand, Wilson called for police to arrest people for petty crimes, on the theory that they contributed to more serious crimes. Wilson’s work informed programs like Detroit’s stress (Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets), begun in 1971, in which Detroit police patrolled the city undercover, in disguises that included everything from a taxi-driver to a “radical college professor,” and killed so many young Black men that an organization of Black police officers demanded that the unit be disbanded. The campaign to end stress arguably marked the very beginnings of police abolitionism. stress defended its methods. “We just don’t walk up and shoot somebody,” one commander said. “We ask him to stop. If he doesn’t, we shoot.”

For decades, the war on crime was bipartisan, and had substantial support from the Congressional Black Caucus. “Crime is a national-defense problem,” Joe Biden said in the Senate, in 1982. “You’re in as much jeopardy in the streets as you are from a Soviet missile.” Biden and other Democrats in the Senate introduced legislation that resulted in the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. A decade later, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden helped draft the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, whose provisions included mandatory sentencing. In May, 1991, two months after the Rodney King beating, Biden introduced the Police Officers’ Bill of Rights, which provided protections for police under investigation. The N.R.A. first endorsed a Presidential candidate, Reagan, in 1980; the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police union, first endorsed a Presidential candidate, George H. W. Bush, in 1988. In 1996, it endorsed Bill Clinton.

Partly because of Biden’s record of championing law enforcement, the National Association of Police Organizations endorsed the Obama-Biden ticket in 2008 and 2012. In 2014, after police in Ferguson, Missouri, shot Michael Brown, the Obama Administration established a task force on policing in the twenty-first century. Its report argued that police had become warriors when what they really should be is guardians. Most of its recommendations were never implemented.

In 2016, the Fraternal Order of Police endorsed Donald Trump, saying that “our members believe he will make America safe again.” Police unions are lining up behind Trump again this year. “We will never abolish our police or our great Second Amendment,” Trump said at Mt. Rushmore, on the occasion of the Fourth of July. “We will not be intimidated by bad, evil people.”

Trump is not the king; the law is king. The police are not the king’s men; they are public servants. And, no matter how desperately Trump would like to make it so, policing really isn’t a partisan issue. Out of the stillness of the shutdown, the voices of protest have roared like summer thunder. An overwhelming majority of Americans, of both parties, support major reforms in American policing. And a whole lot of police, defying their unions, also support those reforms.

Those changes won’t address plenty of bigger crises, not least because the problem of policing can’t be solved without addressing the problem of guns. But this much is clear: the polis has changed, and the police will have to change, too. ♦

An earlier version of this piece misrepresented the number of Americans between the ages of fifteen and thirty-four who were treated as a result of police-inflicted injuries in emergency rooms.

— Published in the print edition of the July 20, 2020, issue, with the headline “The Long Blue Line.”

— Jill Lepore, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is a professor of history at Harvard and the author of fourteen books, including “If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future.”

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Cobra Kai and the Debate Around Cultural Appropriation

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This article contains Cobra Kai spoilers.

Why aren’t there more Asians in Cobra Kai? 

Since Cobra Kai first premiered on YouTube, The Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, and other publications have called out the series for its lack of Asianness. The series also scored poorly on UCLA’s 2020 Hollywood Diversity Report. Miguel (Xolo Maridueña) and Carmen (Vanessa Rubio) are the only non-white main characters. This was exacerbated when the recently-released season 3 excluded Aisha (Nichole Brown), a major character of color who was a fan favorite. 

Granted, Cobra Kai does have a few non-white actors in reccurring roles. They just aren’t leads. Nate Oh plays Nathaniel, but he is a minor character with minimal development. Kyler (Joe Seo) was the first bully to appear in Cobra Kai constantly harassing Miguel. To their credit, the writers made him a wrestler instead of a stereotypical martial artist, just because he’s Asian. Cobra Kai has revealed character backstories for nearly all the show’s bullies, including Kreese (Martin Kove), but not Kyler. He remains a secondary character, but has potential to emerge as a major villain next season. 

Season 3 also enjoyed some added Asian representation during Daniel’s trip to Okinawa with heartfelt cameos from Tamlyn Tomita (Kumiko) and Yuji Okumoto (Chozen) from The Karate Kid Part II. While both characters figure largely in the canon, their Cobra Kai appearance was too limited to be as Asian inclusions to the main cast. Perhaps they’ll return in season 4. Maybe Johnny (William Zabka) needs to learn Chozen’s pressure point technique too. (I would love to see Johnny in Okinawa.)

This is all to say that Cobra Kai is not as diverse or Asian-centric as one might expect a property about martial arts to be. But that just makes it the latest in a long line of Karate Kid properties that has had to grapple with the reality of how karate operates in a globalized world. 

In some ways, The Karate Kid was groundbreaking for Asian representation when it premiered in 1984. Daniel’s (Ralph Macchio) crane kick inevitably degraded into a mocking anti-Asian gesture. The pose is iconic, but mostly as ridicule. Even Will Smith took a poke at it when Morita made a guest appearance on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. And yet, Mr. Miyagi’s (Pat Morita) remarkable backstory in the film brought attention to the plight of Japanese Americans like never before.

In Miyagi’s poignant drunken scene, we discover that he was a veteran of the 100th/442nd Infantry Battalion (a.k.a. the ‘Purple Heart’ Battalion) and his wife died during childbirth in a WWII internment camp. The scene was almost cut because the filmmakers felt the tangent interrupted the momentum of the action. In retrospect, it was likely that this very scene sealed Morita’s Oscar nomination. Manned completely by Japanese Americans, the 100th/442nd was the most decorated unit for its size and service in U.S. history. 

Japan was the enemy, so the Battalion was constantly confronted by racism from surrounding ranks. The Army didn’t quite know what to do with them. They were sent on suicide missions in Europe, but they prevailed and kept coming back for more. They were awarded 18,143 individual decorations including 52 Distinguished Crosses and 21 Congressional Medals of Honor. The Medal of Honor is America’s highest award for combat valor. Miyagi has one. Recognizing the Purple Heart Battalion gave The Karate Kid a lot of soul, but Miyagi’s medal was historically awkward. The real story exposes deeper racial discrimination. 

The Next Karate Kid begins with Miyagi attending a 442nd commendation. In a respectful cameo, appearing as the Senator at that event was Daniel Inouye, an actual veteran of the 442nd who lost his arm in combat. He was the first Japanese American to serve in the House and Senate, and was a recipient of the Medal of Honor. However, The Next Karate Kid came out in 1994, six years before he received it. Twenty of the Medals of Honor that 100th/442nd vets received were upgrades awarded in 2000 after Congress rectified the oversight. The only one prior to that was given to Pfc. Sadao Munemori posthumously. He gave his life jumping on a grenade to save his comrades. When Daniel met Miyagi, no living Asian vets had a Medal of Honor.

On a personal note, my grandfather was Captain Taro Suzuki of the 100th Battalion. Like so many of his comrades, he was wounded in action. His right hand was permanently crippled, and he still had so much shrapnel in his body that he couldn’t pass through a metal detector. I inherited his Purple Heart which I cherish like the LaRussos treasure Miyagi’s medal. I heard his war stories growing up. The Karate Kid was the first time I saw his battalion represented in a movie. Miyagi’s drunken scene is still intensely moving and personal for me. 

Morita died in 2005 so Miyagi only appears in Cobra Kai flashbacks culled from the original movies. Although the series goes to great lengths to honor him, the lack of any Asian leads does give credence to those accusations of cultural appropriation and whitewashing. The thing is, much of the martial arts scene in the Western world has already been, for lack of a better term, whitewashed. And one character’s journey (and the real life figure he’s based on), helps illustrate martial arts’ approach to worldwide growth.

In Cobra Kai season 3, Young Kreese’s journey mirrors the real-life experience of the action choreographer of the original films, Master Pat E. Johnson. Kreese learned martial arts from his Caucasian commander, Captain Turner (Terry Serpico), who learned it while serving in Korea from Master Kim Sun-Yung. It was actually Korean Tang Soo Do, not Karate. Johnson learned Tang Soo Do from Master Kang Lo Hee while stationed as a U.S. Army chaplain in Korea. This is how Tang Soo Do spread westward. Many of the leading American martial arts proponents are not Asian. 

Today, martial arts belong to the world. For generations, Asian traditional martial arts have striven to propagate themselves globally. Judo and Taekwondo have become Olympic events and Karate was going to be added in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. It’s still on track when the games are rescheduled this summer. International organizations are found in every major martial arts style now and they are continuing to spread. So, it’s not entirely fair to begrudge the diaspora’s non-inclusivity. 

While The Karate Kid brought martial arts to the San Fernando Valley, other films and shows have spread the martial diaspora globally. The Blaxploitation genre glorified martial arts with its own unique take on the culture. Netflix’s Seis Manos is a Kung Fu based adult animated series set in Mexico. Although it does have a leading Asian role in Chiu (Vic Chao), is this cultural appropriation? Indian movie stars like Tiger Shroff and Akshay Kumar have brought martial arts to Bollywood in force with films like Commando, Baaghi, and Khiladi. That’s not Asian cultural appropriation, even though India is a different region of Asia where we don’t typically associate martial arts. 

Nevertheless, the international spread of Asian martial arts does not give filmmakers carte blanche to deny whitewashing and cultural appropriation. We must not go back to the days of Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins where Joel Grey played Chuin with slant eye makeup. 

Whether Cobra Kai culturally appropriates Asian culture or not, it can certainly increase its diversity. The setting, West Valley High School, is attended by students from Encino and Reseda. While Encino is over 80% white, Reseda is over 50% Hispanic and over 11% Asian. Statistically, the inclusion of Miguel and Carmen isn’t enough. The Karate Kid franchise was pivotal for representation. Conversations about appropriation and whitewashing aside, Cobra Kai can at least honor the franchise’s tradition and increase its diversity next season. 

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Cobra Kai season 3 is available to stream on Netflix now.

The post Cobra Kai and the Debate Around Cultural Appropriation appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[sheliach]

Buenos Aires - Retiro: Estación General San Martín La Gesta Sanmartiniana, a series of eight sculptural narrative murals designed in 1969 by artist Rodolfo R. Medina line the hallway towards la estación General San Martín. The murals are executed in polychrome cement and depict the achievements of General José de San Martín. La estación General San Martín, a station on línea C (line C) de la red de subterráneos de la ciudad de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires Metro), was inaugurated on August 17, 1937. The Subterráneo de Buenos Aires (Bueneos Aires Metro), known locally as Subte, first opened in 1913. It was the first mass-transit system in South America, the Southern Hemisphere and the entire Spanish-speaking world. The network expanded rapidly during the early decades of the 20th century, but the pace of expansion fell sharply after the Second World War.