#Uniquely among my middle eastern family members

[fealtyfaggot]

WAIT IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW MY MOTHER IS A SWEDE

[divinaes-bookofsecrets]

can i get a spirit guide reading too? ): ive been dying to find my own..♎

Hi 👋 hello there pleased to meet you ♎

×JaxDessa×IS YOUR SPIRIT GUIDE CURRENTLY🐠🌏🐚

She is female inter-terrestrial Female-Sea Creature who visits middle Earth and thats about as close as she gets to you personal space other than being able to e a essence that communicates or manipulates your current or future circumstances.

As an etheric being, Mermaid is “out of time” even as magic. She can teach you to walk through different worlds safely. There are spaces and places where all time swirls together, opening infinite possibilities.

If Mermaid Spirit had a mantra, it would be “go with the flow.” Give yourself to the ebb and flow of Mermaid’s ties. This provides you with adaptability akin to how water takes on the shape of its container.

Lightworkers, such as myself, 🌐🐚🐠 believe that Mermaids may have come originally from Atlantis as shapeshifters. Afterward, they moved into the Etheric realm; this is the place wherein we can connect with them and learn their wisdom. Mermaid Medicine supports environmental health and the kingdom of the sea. If you are doing workings for the Earth, they are excellent helpmates.

Like the creature of myths, Mermaid Totems are drawn to water. The ocean, in particular, has healing and energizing qualities to it. The Mermaid Mage often works exclusively with the Water Element; and Jaxdessa is no different she happens to be an elite member of the aquatic Water Mystics in her colony in the ethereal realm of existence....

This Mer-Woman has been with you since your birth and will likely be with you until the END of time; but first let's dive fins deep into her bio and see what she's in your life for?

🦋🌏🦋Being female, the symbolism and meaning of the Mermaid ties to the Sacred Feminine, specifically Goddesses like Venus who rules love, and the Sea Goddesses like Calypso. This is not a woman who can be tamed. The fierce individuality among Mermaids is well known – so much so that they may resist settling down in any one spot. Here Mermaid Spirit appears linked heavily to uniqueness and non-conformity.

Are you looking for a way to express yourself? Trying to find clarity in love matters? Mermaid as a Spirit, Totem, and Power Animal can help! Mermaid teaches to find balance between the heart and mind! Delve deeply in Mermaid symbolism and meaning to find out how this animal spirit guide can aid, inspire, and balance you!

Mermaid Symbolism & Meaning

The myths of Mermaids (and mermen) are enchanting. The rich voice of the Mermaid calls out to us with symbolism and meaning that clarifies the role this Fantasy Spirit Guide plays in our lives. Many stories of the Mermaid tell of enticing beauty, raw sensuality, and humans who succumb to their haunting songs; in this, we see where Mermaid becomes an emblem of balancing our heart and head. We need to think clearly even in matters of love and lust. Additionally, there are times in our lives where its ok to dance to a different, magical tune. Individuality and non-conformity are definitely traits of the Mermaid.

Mermaid Omens: Mermaids seem to be fairly lucky in that, if in a generous mind, they might grant a wish. Having said that, sailors consider them a foreboding sign that the proverbial ship may never reach land again.

Etymology: Mermaid comes from the 14th century term mermayde, meaning Maid of the Sea. The Old English word was similar – merwif, or Water Witch.

Being female, the symbolism and meaning of the Mermaid ties to the Sacred Feminine, specifically Goddesses like Venus who rules love, and the Sea Goddesses like Calypso. This is not a woman who can be tamed. The fierce individuality among Mermaids is well known – so much so that they may resist settling down in any one spot. Here Mermaid Spirit appears linked heavily to uniqueness and non-conformity.

Reach out to Mermaid as a Power Animal any time you work with the element of water in ritual, meditations or magic. There are other goals for which Mermaid can help. When you need inspiration, particularly in song, she can release your self-consciousness, so you really sing from your heart. Regarding sexuality, she removes inhibitions that hold you back from true pleasure.

Mermaid represents transition and transmutation. When you face unique changes in your life, she can help steady the waters around you.

Finally, call to Mermaid when you struggle with your emotions or when your intuition seems to have dried up. Mermaid medicine heals broken hearts and discouragement, then goes on supporting your intuitive self so you can avoid the chaos.

Mermaid as a Celtic Animal Symbol

Celtic Tradition has a long-standing relationship with magical water creatures. Sprites and nymphs often lived nearby sacred falls and wells. The Mermaid, however, lives in the sea. In this culture, the symbolism and meaning of Mermaid is that of the feminine element of the Universe. It is powerful and mysterious. The image of the double-tailed Mermaid adorns many churches represents the ultimate Celtic goddess, Sheela-Na-Gig.

Native American Mermaid Symbolic Meanings

One story from the Mi’kmaq tribe tells of a bird who discovers a pond with five lovely women therein. He noted that they didn’t really look totally human, having silvery scaled skin and hair of seaweed. They adorned themselves with gifts of the sea, and the bottom half of their body was that of a fish.

The Passamaquoddy tales recount the story of how two girls became Mermaids (HeNwas). They went swimming in an area prohibited by their parents. They came to a spot where they were surrounded in slime. Their legs became snakes, their hair black and wearing silver bands on their arms and neck.

Sekani legend talks of the marriage between a human and a Mermaid. By the first winter, the Mermaid yearned for her ocean home. She begged for freedom. It wasn’t until the second winter, however, that the man complied so she could hunt for him. Each day she returned dutifully with food. They became happy and had seven children. After the last child, winter returned, and the man sadly broke a hole in the ice so she could return. When she began swimming, she realized her children could not follow her. She tried to work a spell, placing water on their lips and telling them to follow her. Sadly they drown and were never seen again.

Mermaid Dreams

Mermaids in dreams almost always represent femininity with all its lovely attributes. These dreams often reveal clues to your feminine side. This can be a happy omen unless you fear the emotions and insights Mermaid brings.

A Mermaid swimming in water may represent a girth of emotions that threaten to overwhelm. You feel as if you are going under and giving in to the pressures around. Find your life vest and get some help and support.

Far Eastern Mermaid Symbolic Meanings

There are numerous stories of Mermaids in China. Literature depicts her as similar to western Mermaids with the ability to cry pearls, shapeshift, foretell the future and craft magical items.

One story tells of a Mermaid who asked to stay with a human family for many days so she could weave and sell her cloth. In thanks for the human’s hospitality, she cried a container full of pearls and gave it to the family.

Mermaid Symbolic Meanings Key

Adaptability

Awareness

Discretion

Divination

Emotions

Innocence

Non-conformity

Psychic Aptitude

Shapeshifting

Uniqueness

Artists frequently depict Mermaids with a fish bone comb; this illustration came about due to sailors’ beliefs. If you had fish bones on board a ship, one could know what type of weather was coming through divination and take control of a storm to calm the winds. Another tool of the Mermaid is a mirror. This object has long been used for magic as a “looking glass” much like a crystal ball. Mirrors represent the moon and the intuitive self. Wrap these tools into a medicine bag, and you have future-telling abilities, far sight, sensitivity, and psychic aptitude.

WHAT DO MERMAIDS LOOK LIKE ?🧜‍♀️ 🧜‍♀️

Traditional Mermaids have the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a fish. Images of Mermaids appear as early as ancient Babylon. Sailors considered images of Mermaids as a good luck charm, which is why figureheads were carved with Her image.

Being tied to the Water Element, Mermaid may take on the meaning of a source of life, cleansing, and renewal. Water can also be a fierce foe, with crashing waves that threaten to take us under into the unknown. The ancients found themselves inexplicably attracted to the Mermaid, while also being frightened of their powers.

These “Angels of the Sea” appear most frequently at dawn and dusk. These are “in between” times when the veil between worlds grows thin. Some say they only show themselves to people who have pure hearts, giving he Mermaid the symbolism of discretion and awareness.

WHAT DOES JAXDESSA LOOK LIKE?

Here....She is .. 🧜‍♀️ 7:47 PM(look up the numerology or 747 and 757 , 759)

Those are your times you'll be likely to sense her close to you...

When Jaxdessa swims with you, she brings you into the realm of Water, which also speaks of our emotions. You will be challenged to dig deep inside yourself to understand your fears and scars fully. Only by so doing can you truly heal. Throughout this journey, Jaxdessa offers love and support.The Mermaid animal spirit may also bear a message about reconnecting with your inner child and nature. The innocence and joy of the child dances with the beauty of the world. There is a richness in this relationship building process, and Mermaid is your guide...

When working with your Mermaid guide, it is essential that you remain true to yourself: She will not condone facades. Keep it real and be ready to swim.

Those born with Mermaid imprinted on their soul feel at one with nature. They see the wonders of the world with an appreciative eye, but also know that there is much more going on behind the proverbial curtain. The Mermaid constantly interacts and exchanges various feelings with others including joy, peace, and liveliness. The Mermaid’s language of love is an affirmation.

Greed doesn’t really measure in the mind of the Mermaid. They do not seek to possess others, but rather walk with them in mutual goals and dreams. The Mermaid’s inner child is strong and very active.

More...SpiritGuide bio

The Mermaid person has intense psychic abilities. You see spirits, fairies, Devas, Angels, and other Fantasy creatures easily. Some of the gifts you may have include clairvoyance and hypnotic allure

The Mermaid is an amazing empath, but this can also be her undoing. She feels everything. A crowded room can become totally overwhelming. Thankfully with time and practice, she can learn to detach from others feelings and consider them much as one might watch a movie. This protects the Mermaid from psychic overload and burnout. ((YOU MORE THAN LIKELY CSN RELATE TO THIS AND MOST OF THE MERMAID QUALITIES BECAUSE YOU ARE HER SHE IS YOU;; DO YOU SEE THESE SIMILARITIES YET?))

💘 💜 💛 💚 🧡 💘

Regarding relationships JaxDessa people may not settle down, but they certainly enjoy a good lover. There is raw, unbridled sexuality here that begs for attention. Because they are very private people, however, some of these desires go unfulfilled.

Spirit Guides 3 Messages for me today (current date Jan 11th 2021)

First message: #1

ANGEL NUMBER 833

Number 833 is a blend of the vibrations and energies of number 8 and number 3, with number 3 appearing twice, amplifying its influences of 3, and relating the the Master Number 33. Number 8 relates to self-confidence and personal authority, discernment, higher wisdom, achievement and successes, practicality, consideration, giving and receiving, and serving humanity. Number 8 is also the number of karma; the Universal Spiritual Law of Cause and Effect. Number 3 is the number of affability, enthusiasm, assistance and encouragement, communication and self-expression, growth, expansion and the principles of increase, manifesting, broad-minded thinking, talents and skills, and the energies of the Ascended Masters. Master Number 33 (the Master Teacher) relates to the attributes of the ‘healer’, compassion, blessings, the teacher of teachers, inspiration, honesty, discipline, bravery and courage.

Angel Number 833 is a powerful message and sign that you are being fully supported, surrounded and supported by your Spirit Guides ...It indicates that you are successfully manifesting prosperity and abundance in your life by the positive choices you have made and are currently making. Put your personal attributes and talents to good use and be open to receiving your well-earned rewards and blessings. Trust that all is going to Divine plan.  

Angel Number 833 brings a powerful message of love and support, encouragement and guidance, and your SpiritGuide(s) ask that you maintain a positive attitude and outlook to continue manifesting positive abundance into your life. Remember that what you put out to the Universe comes back to you, so ensure that you use your personal power and talents in a positive manner, always.

Angel Number 833 tells you to take ownership of your own life and discover your dreams. Use your personal creativity in constructive and productive ways, and put your skills and talents to work to achieve your heart’s desires. You get what you expect so make sure you radiate positive energies and expect the highest and best in return. Trust that you will find success in your chosen endeavours.

  

Number 833 relates to number 5 (8+3+3=14, 1+4=5) and Angel Number 5.

Now look up # 5 see what it is ? Thats your next mission .🧜‍♀️.

Second Message : WHAT I NEED TO HEAR RIGHT THIS MOMENT ...

If you were to bite into a piece of cake and think it's awful because of certain flavors or a lack of some ingredient, it would not be pleasant in the moment. Even so, the experience could be beneficial to you later on. Suppose you wanted to bake a special cake for someone. The experience you had with the unappetizing cake might inspire you to do things differently. Every bad experience has an upside, Dear Jaxdessas darling, even if it doesn't seem so in the moment. Remember that today if something doesn't seem ideal.

Third Message: 🌟 ⭐ 💫 🌠 🌃 ✨ 🌟 ♎ January 11 - January 17

A project that is in the final stage of development could get a really big boost this week, dear Jaxdessas darling. This may come out of left field, and the help you need may come from someone you least expected and perhaps you don't even like, but don't cut off your nose to spite your face. This is essential assistance, and you should be grateful for it. Success is possible with a work- or money-related venture that didn't seem to be going very well all that long ago. This is due to your persistence and your optimistic attitude, so let this be a lesson for future endeavors. Some venture that you have put a lot of time and energy into may wind up hitting a brick wall very soon. You may want to proceed anyway, and you may want to figure out how many ways there are to get over the wall that stands between you and success. But before you invest that time, think about whether this will be worth the effort in the end. There could be something else coming along that could take its place, and that could be easier and more rewarding in the end.

&&&

A creak you hear in the dark could be the settling of an old house, or it could be a burglar creeping on the stairs. Loud voices you hear coming in through the windows could be your neighbors arguing, or it could be those same neighbors sharing good news. The lamp going out on your nightstand could be a sign that electricity has shut down, or it could mean you need a new bulb. There is often more than one way to interpret something, and usually there's nothing to worry about. Remember that today, Taurus, if you are tempted to follow worrisome thoughts. It's more likely there's nothing to worry about.

FINAL THOUGHTS?.. THE WISE ADVICE FROM YOUR MYSTIC MERMAID 🧜‍♀️

Step 1) Define Your Core Values

Know what is most important to you by determining your values for your professional and personal life.

These are the principles that are the foundation for your priorities, choices, actions, and behaviors.

You can start by looking at this list of values.

Step 2: Practice the habits.

Pick one or two from this list of positive character traits above to practice for several weeks.

Write down the actions you want to take or the behaviors you define that reflect this trait, and implement them in your daily life and interactions.

Wear a rubber band on your wrist or create other reminders to help you practice these good qualities.

Step 3: Find people with good character.

Surround yourself with people who reflect the character traits you want to embrace.

They will inspire and motivate you to build these traits in yourself.

Try to avoid people who have a weak character and make bad decisions.

Step 5: Take some risks.

Start taking small actions toward a goal or value that involves some level of risk.

When you face the possibility of failure and challenge yourself toward success, you become mentally and emotionally stronger and more committed to your principles.

Step 6: Stretch yourself.

Create high standards and big goals for yourself.

Expect the best of yourself and constantly work toward that, even though you will have setbacks and occasional failures.

Every stretch builds your confidence and knowledge that your positive character traits are getting stronger.

Step 7: Commit to self-improvement.

Realize that building your character is a life-long endeavor.

It is something that is practiced both in the minutiae and the defining moments of your life.

There will be times you step up to the character traits you embrace and other times you falter.

Thank You for taking the time to meet your Spirit Guide today have a nice day 😊 ✨ 💛 ☺ 💗

[ziastarss]

WORLD LITERATURE

Each literature signifies our nations even our culture, it has its own artistic and national features. It is essential to study our world as it helps us to understand more, the life and people with different perspectives. It forms our world outlook and familiarize us with the masterpieces of their literature. 

a.) Southeast Asia - The entire region of Southeast Asia, with the exception of Thailand due to it’s not a country yet; fell under colonial rule. From this we could actually perceived even from the word “under colonial rule” that they were oppressed. The historical experiences of people have been deeply intertwined for centuries. Colonialism has altered Southeast Asian social structure and brought modern western ideas and concepts into society as well. Most of their literatures are actually consists of how they were repressed those dark times, the reason why their literature reflects their philosophies of life, and the struggles and success of their developing nations and its people.

Some Southeast Asian Literature:

Jose Protacio Rizal Mercado Y Alonso Realonda

- Was a Filipino nationalist and polymath during the tail end of the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. He is tagged as the national hero (pambansang bayani) of the Filipino people. An ophthalmologist by profession, Rizal became a writer and a key member of the Filipino Propaganda Movement, which advocated political reforms for the colony under Spain. He was executed by the Spanish colonial government for the crime of rebellion after the Philippine Revolution, inspired in part by his writings, broke out.

 - Noli Me Tangere Together with its sequel, El Filibusterismo are widely considered as the national epic of the Philippines. Jose Rizal conceived the idea of writing the novel that would expose the ills of Philippines society and he preferred that the prospective novel express the way Filipino culture was perceived to be backward and anti-progress.

- Burmese Days, first novel by English writer George Orwell, set in British Burma during the waning days of Empire, when Burma was ruled from Delhi as part of British India, it is "a portrait of the dark side of the British Raj."

b.) East Asia - It includes Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Taiwanese Literature. East Asian literature reached prominence in the Literary World. The literatures of East Asia are drawing inspirations from pluralistic sources, within as well as beyond their region. The Chinese literary norms, canons of poetry, lyrical prose and classical novels have shaped the literary taste of the gentry and the ruling class of East Asian countries, especially Japan and Korea. Modern literature in East Asia subsequently developed along a more dichotomized east/west traditional/modern path. The spread of World Literature is heavily dependent on translation. In the case of East Asia, the language of literature was largely monolingual in classical times. 

Some East Asian Literature:

Tale of Genji -  a classic work of Japanese literature written in the early 11th century by the noblewoman and lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu. The tale concentrates on Genji's romantic life and describes the customs of the aristocratic society of the time. It may be the world's first novel, the first modern novel, the first psychological novel or the first novel still to be considered a classic

The Vegetarian - A South Korean three-part novel written by Han Kang and first published in 2007. Based on Han's 1997 short story "The Fruit of My Woman", The Vegetarian is set in modern-day Seoul and tells the story of Yeong-hye, a part-time graphic artist and home-maker, whose decision to stop eating meat after a bloody, nightmarish dream about human cruelty leads to devastating consequences in her personal and familial life.

Haruki Murakami -  A Japanese writer,  Murakami's most notable works include A Wild Sheep Chase (1982), Norwegian Wood (1987), The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994–95), Kafka on the Shore (2002), and 1Q84 (2009–10).

c.) South and West Asia - 21st Century Middle Eastern Literature encompasses a rich variety of genres and addresses human experience often through a realist approach. In the Hellenistic period literature and flourished in Western Asia. Traditional literary forms such as lists continued to be produced by the native population and were adapted by the new rulers. The works by these South and West Asian authors captures the heart of their reader, also their minds. Often dealing with controversial or emotional subject matters, these writers have a unique ability to calmly discuss or explore contentious issues.

Some South and West Asian Literature:

The Epic of Gilgamesh -  The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, regarded as the earliest surviving great work of literature and the second oldest religious text, after the Pyramid Texts. These independent stories were later used as source material for a combined epic in Akkadian.

My Name is Red -  My Name Is Red  is a 1998 Turkish novel by writer Orhan Pamuk. The novel incorporates metafiction in such ways as making frequent reference to the reader and to the narrators' awareness that they are characters in a book. Each chapter of the novel has a different narrator, and usually there are thematic and chronological connections between chapters.

Nilanjana Sudeshna -  "Jhumpa" Lahiri is an American author known for her short stories, novels and essays in English, and, more recently, in Italian. Lahiri's early short stories faced rejection from publishers "for years". Lahiri's writing is characterized by her "plain" language and her characters, often Indian immigrants to America who must navigate between the cultural values of their homeland and their adopted home.

d.) Anglo-American and Europe - The united states was one a colony of Britain, as such, its early literature was closely linked to traditional English Literature. English is a main language and a British culture and the British empire have had significant historical ethnic, linguistic, and cultural impact. American literature has produced some of the significant prose and poetry the world has seen, American literature began as an extension of English literature. It encompasses literature written in Old English, epic poetry is the common style and religious literature continued to enjoy popularity and Hagiographies were written and adapted. 

Some Anglo-American Literature:

Beowulf -   An Old English epic poem consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important works of Old English literature. The story is set in Scandinavia in the 6th century. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall in Heorot has been under attack by a monster known as Grendel. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then also defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years later, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is mortally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants cremate his body and erect a tower on a headland in his memory.

The Canterbury Tales - A collection of 24 stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. The tales (mostly written in verse, although some are in prose) are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return.

Walt Whitman -  was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. Whitman's work breaks the boundaries of poetic form and is generally prose-like. He also used unusual images and symbols in his poetry, including rotting leaves, tufts of straw, and debris.

e.) Africa - African Literature oftentimes refers back to its colonial past, and it is in this reference that its literature becomes unique, subersive and expressive. Africa’s literature includes slave narratives, protests colonization, calls for independence, African pride and their hope for their future. This literature is essential because it offers opportunity to hear the voices of African people, and to spread awareness to the one’s who’s lacking.

Some African Literature:

Things Fall Apart -  The debut novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, first published in 1958. Its story chronicles pre-colonial life in the southeastern part of Nigeria and the arrival of Europeans during the late 19th century. It is seen as the archetypal modern African novel in English, and one of the first to receive global critical acclaim.

Half of a Yellow Sun - A novel by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The story in Half of a Yellow Sun centres on the war. Adichie grew up in the aftermath of the war: "The need to write about it came from growing up in its shadow. This thing that I didn't quite understand was my legacy. It hovered over everything". She has stated she believes that many of the issues that caused the war remain today. Because none of the major political events were changed in the book, Adichie said that the book contained "emotional truth", and that the book showed the war had a significant impact upon the people of Nigeria.

Chimamanda Adichie - A Nigerian writer whose works range from novels to short stories to nonfiction. She was described in The Times Literary Supplement as "the most prominent" of a "procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors [which] is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature", particularly in her second home, the United States. Adichie, a feminist, has written the novels Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), and Americanah (2013), the short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), and the book-length essay We Should All Be Feminists (2014). Her most recent book, Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, was published in March 2017.In 2008, she was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant.

f.) Latin America - Latin American literature is characterized by mysticism, magic, uniqueness, raw creativity and wonder. Over the years, they developed a rich and complex diversity of theme, forms, creative idiom and styles. The colonial period was important because it was the beginning of the written tradition in Latin American Literature, they began to take shapes, they wrote documents that recorded the way life change after the Spanish infiltrated their lands. 

Some Latin American Literature:

One Hundred Years of Solitude -  a landmark 1967 novel by Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez that tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founded the (fictitious) town of Macondo. The novel is often cited as one of the supreme achievements in literature. The magical realist style and thematic substance of One Hundred Years of Solitude established it as an important representative novel of the literary Latin American Boom of the 1960s and 1970s, which was stylistically influenced by Modernism (European and North American) and the Cuban Vanguardia (Avant-Garde) literary movement.

The Alchemist - A  novel by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho that was first published in 1988. An allegorical novel, The Alchemist follows a young Andalusian shepherd in his journey to the pyramids of Egypt, after having a recurring dream of finding a treasure there. The book's main theme is about finding one's destiny, although according to The New York Times, The Alchemist is "more self-help than literature.

Gabriel García Márquez - Was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, particularly in the Spanish language, he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature. García Márquez started as a journalist and wrote many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981), and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing a literary style known as magic realism, which uses magical elements and events in otherwise ordinary and realistic situations.

[apptowonder]

Learning Each Other’s Languages -- Hybridity, Whiteness and Liturgical Inculturation in American Orthodoxy

Note: The following is an adaptation and expansion of a short paper I submitted for my seminary class on Theology, Race & Culture. 

"Baptism is the transgression of flesh and Spirit that requires assertions of cultural or racial purity to be resisted and renounced. But in this baptismal moment there also lies the profound transformation of the community, for with every new member comes the possibility of transformation, change, and adaptation in its inclusion not only for the welcomed but for those who welcome. The body of Christ shifts and moves and learns new languages as it adds new members. Its body becomes new as the person becomes new."*

Among Orthodox Christians in the United States, there is a common sentiment that the various jurisdictions and hierarchies are living in a state of canonical irregularity, or at any rate in a way that damages Orthodox witness. This is due to the fact that, unlike most other places in the world, the United States does not have a unified Orthodox Archdiocese or Patriarchate to oversee the flock of Orthodox Christians there.** If only we could create an American Orthodox Church, people say, we would solve the problems of Orthodoxy in America. 

Common objections raised include i. the failure of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) to become the unifying ecclesial body due to poor planning and ii. the logistical challenge of compiling all the various Orthodox bishops in the United States into one wholly unified Holy Synod. That is to say, the objections people raise are usually logistical.

However, it is my opinion that not enough attention has been paid to the cultural and theological problems such a project would need to contend with. Orthodoxy in the United States must contend with the realities of whiteness, both around it and inside it. Yet the Orthodox community is also in a unique position in relationship to other Christian communities brought over to the Americas in the colonial era. Orthodoxy, contrary to the belief of some demagogues and even well-meaning laity, cannot excuse itself from the ways it has assimilated to the systems of whiteness. But its relationship to the American articulation of whiteness, as well as the possibility of ways forward, must be handled differently than the relationship of other Christian traditions that have been in this country for longer and with more power to shape its contours.

As a white convert and clergyman in a non-canonical Orthodox jurisdiction, I speak from a position of some distance. I cannot speak with authority to what first, second and third generation immigrant churches will navigate their position as the Orthodox Church in this part of the world. What I am going to do is attempt to trace some of the history of Orthodoxy in the Americas as it has been relayed to me by parishioners and clergy I have been in community with (primarily but not exclusively the Greek church, primarily but not exclusively canonical). I will then attempt to describe some of the questions my own life as an Orthodox convert and seminarian has forced me to wrestle with, and how they might be worth pondering for other converts and “Americanized” Orthodox communities.

As I understand it, the history of Orthodox Christian churches in the United States has had moments of both refusal of and assimilation to whiteness, with assimilation being more and more the dominant trend in Orthodox churches of European descent***. With the possible exception of the Russian church in the Alaska territories, Orthodox communities were not present in the States when the Anglo-Saxon-led colonial Christianity was being shaped initially. When Orthodox Christians came to the United States in the waves of immigration from Eastern Europe and the Middle East, I don't doubt that they too were gradually assimilated to being "white"****. However, given that they were not present to shape the default "white Christianity" of America, my sense from what I've read and seen is that they continued to express their Christian faith within their own cultural idioms (eg, Greek, Arabic, Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, etc). One interesting side effect of this phenomenon is that there has never been, to my knowledge, a unified American Orthodox Church. The closest attempt, the OCA, was backed by the Russian church and continues to display primarily Slavic liturgical forms in English. However, the Russians did not consult the majority of other Orthodox hierarchs from the various ethnic communities and so the OCA is canonical but not unifying.

White Anglo-Saxon^ converts to Orthodoxy as I’ve experienced tend to fall into one of three categories. There are doubtless more categories and reasons for conversion, but these three stand out as primary tropes specifically for how white Anglo-Saxon converts engage with the intersection of their own culture and Orthodox cultures. We will briefly discuss these categories as a way of examining whiteness in the American Orthodox convert constituency.

I. The “Orthobro”

Many white evangelicals, conservative Christians and some right wing former atheists convert to Orthodoxy because they perceive it as a source of “pure” Christianity (”pure” here meaning always conservative, usually ‘Western’ (despite the prevalence of orientalism in Western European portrayals of Orthodoxy) and often white), in contrast to the ‘degeneracy’ of progressive or even centrist Catholic and Protestant Christianity. These folks often like to ‘LARP’ practices of Byzantium or Imperial Russia, or at the very least have a nostalgia for a mythic past of Christian dominance which maps onto but far eclipses the complex realities of cultural exchange and theological hybridity of Eastern Christianity. These folks tend to advocate for traditionalist ‘family values’, lean towards more rigid expressions of Orthodoxy (usually monastic, often though not always emerging from Russian piety). For the Orthobro, whether they conceptualize it in these terms or not, Orthodoxy is seen as a haven and “safe space” for white Christian identity

II. The Paleo-Occidentalist

Pardon the jargon-y name. This person can overlap with “the Orthobro,” but does not always. Where the Orthobro generally accepts the Eastern Christian traditions of Orthodoxy as part of their white supremacist project^^, the Paleo-Occidentalist wants to leverage Orthodox theological tradition to reinvigorate their own Western rite Christianity. This can be for positive reasons (a desire to confess Orthodox faith without having to abandon one’s sense of cultural, confessional or ethnic heritage) or for more sinister reasons (wanting to prop up Western chauvinism in an Orthodox key). Regardless, these converts tend to coalesce around Western rite projects, and those of goodwill often have very positive and edifying things to say about the ecumenical heritage of the undivided Church. I personally am a bit frustrated by the history of Western rite Orthodoxy and the way it has led to friction within communities, but I do think that the desire to express Orthodox faith in a different cultural context is an admirable one. We will return to some of the possibilities alluded to by Paleo-Occidentalists in the conclusion. For now, though, it’s worth noting that Western rite Orthodoxy has generally taken on two forms: i. Converting current Western liturgies to Orthodox theology by removing or adding individual prayers, while keeping the general flow and structure of, say, the Mass the same. ii. Attempting to reconstruct pre-Schism Western liturgies from historical and archaeological evidence. 

III. The Traditionalist Radical

This third category can overlap with the “Paleo-Occidentalist” depending on liturgical preference, and it is the category I myself fall into. Most “TradRads” I’ve met are Eastern rite. This may be because, ironically, we are engaged in a similar flight from American cultural Christianity but for starkly different reasons than the “Orthobro”. The TradRad who seeks out Orthodoxy in the Eastern rite generally wishes to find a tradition that is rooted in the core creeds of Christianity but is distant enough from their own religio-political context to provide a fresh start. On this foundation, the TradRad draws from the political implications of the Church Fathers and Mothers, as well as the tradition of Orthodox contemplation and spirituality, to build a foundation for the pursuit of social justice in harmony with the Gospel and the tradition of the Church. In general, we are socially progressive and/or leftist, but theologically traditional (invested in taking the Creeds and spirituality of the Church at their word).

As a result of this phenomenon, my life so far as a convert to Orthodoxy has been one of expressing my faith in worship through liturgical forms of a culture that is not my own. I have gravitated towards the Greek use, since that was the community I was initially welcomed into and which has a theological tradition and aesthetic I have the most affinity for. In so doing, I have tried to be mindful of place, history, and the people I worship alongside in ways that are faithful to our life in community.

My liturgical life has become more complex lately as I have stepped into a ministry leadership position in a small mission parish which currently consists entirely of converts to Orthodoxy and inquirers from not historically Orthodox cultural/ethnic backgrounds. We continue to use the Greek/Constantinopolitan "use" of the Byzantine rite as it has become one of the authentic matrices in which Orthodox prayer life is expressed in the United States (along with the Slavonic rite, the Antiochian use, etc). In an Orthodox parish composed of parishioners from historically Orthodox cultural backgrounds, the hybridity and transformation through encounter of "learning new languages" tends to happen more organically, with the various cultural traditions of the community members being woven into worshiping life. As I pursue formation and explore a vocation to the priesthood, I continue to wrestle with these dynamics. How can we as a community of primarily cultural "outsiders" who identify with Orthodox faith but do not have recourse to Orthodox resources from our own cultural backgrounds** empower the transformation of our community towards greater hybridity and multiplicity? 

As mentioned above, one common answer has been the attempt to articulate a “Western-rite Orthodoxy” in various ways. While this is potentially a valuable pastoral project, and I don’t doubt the sincerity or Orthodox piety of my Western--rite compatriots, it often feels to me that those hierarchs who oversee the Western rite are more trying to fit a different theological tradition to a standard of arbitrary Orthodox "purity," rather than adapting what has emerged organically in Orthodox contexts to a Western liturgical style or engaging possibilities of hybridity. This is not to say that, even in convert communities, we should do away with the Eastern rite or Eastern hymnody. I will likely always default to the Divine Liturgy in Byzantine chant. But I do think it’s worth imagining new ways that cultural hybridity could shape American Orthodoxy in ways that reflect its diverse constituents. What would it look like, for example, to celebrate the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom with Western style polyphonic chant or choral hymnody? How might we draw on the influence of Orthodox saints who lived in the Christian West (say, St. John Cassian or St. Irenaios of Lyons)? Could it be possible to incorporate musical traditions of the parishioners that are not from historically Orthodox countries, with input and direction from those parishioners (ie, gospel music or Latin American music)? What about iconography?

None of these suggestions are complete answers, nor would I adopt them personally without deeper thought and consultation with my own communities. But I think they’re worth thinking about. How do we as converts embrace the heritage of one another’s culture as we come alongside each other in a common Orthodox faith? I don’t have an answer for that yet (and indeed, there will never be one definitive answer), but I have a feeling that the answers that Orthodox communities discover to these questions will shape the future of American Orthodoxy far more profoundly than attempts to unify the hierarchies on a structural level. 

*Dr. Brian Bantum, Redeeming Mulatto: A Theology of Race and Christian Hybridity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2010), 159.

**If we think about it for more than a minute, we will realize that there are other parts of the world where this is also true of Orthodoxy. Consider, for example, the unfortunate situation in Ukraine. However, the United States is certainly the largest landmass where this phenomenon holds true, and therefore gets the most attention.

***The situation of American Orthodox Christian communities constituted by immigrants from the Middle East and the Horn of Africa is more complex, and depending on the region, some parishes will also be multiethnic and/or multiracial, which comes with its own challenges and opportunities that are beyond the scope of this response to fully address

****For more, see Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color

^ While “Anglo-Saxon” is in some ways here a reductive term, I use it to refer to people of an Anglo-Saxon or similar background who formed the dominant class of white settlers in America. As someone of English and German extraction, I place myself in this category for the purposes of how my body is read.

^^ Lest I be misunderstood, let me make it very clear that the Eastern rites are not inherently white supremacist. What I mean here is that the Orthobro tends to co-opt the particularity of the Eastern rite as a sign of the “purity” of his white Christianity, deploying it contrastively against the Western rite, rather than seeing it as the theological expression of particular communities who are not inherently better or worse than Western Christian communities.

**There have been attempts to develop a "Western rite" in Orthodoxy, some of which have canonical blessing from an Archdiocese or Patriarchate. In my opinion, however, these have been inadequate as they primarily consist in taking a Catholic or Anglican rite and removing any prayer that is deemed 'non-Orthodox'. While this is potentially a valuable pastoral project, it feels more like trying to fit a different theological tradition to a standard of arbitrary Orthodox "purity," rather than adapting what has emerged organically in Orthodox contexts to a Western liturgical style or engaging possibilities of hybridity. The closest thing to this more organic approach has been the attempt to reconstruct pre-Schism Western rites such as the Gallican Missal. However, these projects in my estimation can and are easily co-opted by ideologues with ethno-nationalist leanings. The Eastern rites are not immune to this, but Western rite reconstruction projects in my opinion have been more often directly deployed by Western chauvinists.

[elisaphillips]

Macropost 4

R1. Differentiate the impacts of social determinants of health that contribute to health disparities in rural communities as compared with urban communities

             When we arrived at Burgaw Middle School an hour early, a line of cars already snaked around the adjacent neighborhood. “Oh my gosh, are they already here for the drive-through?” I thought out loud. “I think so,” said one of my group members with a tinge of astonishment in her voice.  Our practicum group had arrived early at Burgaw Middle School to set up vendor booths for our semester event, a free community drive-through event at which community members could drive through to obtain sundry supplies, such as children and adult diapers, feminine hygiene products, blankets, masks, hand sanitizer, children’s books, and a bag of fresh produce harvested earlier that morning. Given that we had switched the location at the last minute and only distributed flyers a few days prior, we were shocked, albeit a bit relieved, to see such an immense turn-out. Yet, the resident community partners who arrived to help with the distribution did not appear to share the same sense of astonishment.

             I turned to the lead volunteer director, an older woman who was herself a volunteer at the event. “Wow, I really thought no one would come on such short notice,” I said. “Oh honey, I knew they would,” she sighed. “There’s a lot of need around these parts. Word spreads fast, especially when there’s food involved.” She was right. Covid-19 has exacerbated the pre-existing need in many rural Eastern North Carolina counties, and it became quickly apparent on this warm October afternoon as over 180 people lined up in hopes of obtaining food and other supplies. About forty-five minutes into the drive-through, we ran out of nearly all of our supplies, many of which had been donated earlier that morning by a handful of concerned community organizations, including a local dentist, a domestic violence shelter, a health center, a non-profit thrift store, and our precepting organization, Feast Down East. Fortunately, some of the other community partners who arrived for distribution had anticipated the turn-out and planned accordingly. Nevertheless, our group was stunned.

             Yet, given the unique social determinants of health which contribute to increased levels of food insecurity in rural areas, we should not have been surprised (Gundersen et al., 2020). A brief dive into the existing literature serves to shed some light on the unique social and environmental factors which act in tandem to contribute to a heightened level of food insecurity in rural regions as compared to urban regions. As mentioned in previous posts, individuals living in rural communities tend to receive lower wages and have less access to job opportunities and transportation (Warren & Smalley, 2014). Due to national shift to large-scale, “export-oriented agriculture,” rural individuals also tend to have less access to fresh, affordable food options within their immediate vicinity (Hossfeld & Mendez, 2018, p S10).

             In addition, research seems to indicate that rural-dwelling individuals have fewer food assistance resources in times of crisis than their urban counterparts, a reality which is especially pertinent during the current pandemic (Waity, 2016; Whitley, 2013). As anyone who has worked in food distribution is aware, it is not cheap to transport and refrigerate mass amounts of food; as such, it is often very difficult for small, rural food pantries with limited funding to sustain the level of productivity needed to support the high amount of food insecure individuals in their region (Whitley, 2013). A study by Waity (2016), which utilized Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping, revealed that rural counties, despite their greater need, possessed fewer hunger relief agencies, such as soup kitchens and food pantries, than urban counties. Perhaps even more surprising was the finding that rural counties with higher rates of poverty had fewer hunger relief agencies than wealthier rural counties (Waity, 2013). In other words, those who most need supportive food resources often have the least access.

             As one might expect, implementing a solution to the complex issue of rural food insecurity is a task rife with challenge. After several conversations with various food-pantry directors in Pender County, it became apparent that hunger relief agencies in rural North Carolina are struggling to meet the needs of their residents. One director informed me that their pantry has more users than ever before, with hundreds of families showing up each week. In addition, despite our team’s efforts to help this community with a free community drive-through, a single bag of perishable produce can only last so long, especially when one has a whole family to feed. Therefore, solutions to rural food insecurity must extend beyond reactionary measures, such as food drives, food pantries, and soup kitchens, even though supportive measures for these stop-gap measures are sorely needed in rural regions. Additional steps must also be taken to remedy the current agricultural model which focuses heavily on the large-scale production and export of commodity products rather than meeting the needs of local residents (Hossfeld & Mendez, 2018). This is one of the many reasons why I believe in the importance of programs and initiatives intended to support small-scale farmers and local food systems, such as those provided by Feast Down East.

             I encourage those of you who are reading this to consider the ways in which you might contribute to your local food system. Whether it be through engagement with local growers, purchasing food from local farmers’ markets, donating to local food pantries, or becoming involved in a more political manner, we can alleviate food insecurity in rural areas and help restore the health of the vulnerable among us. If you would like to contribute to the enhancement of community-based food systems in Eastern NC through the work of Feast Down East and their partners, you may click here to learn more. I hope you will join me on a journey towards a future in which no person, rural or urban, must go hungry.  

@drtillman​

 References

Gundersen, C., Dewey, A., Engelhard, E., Strayer, M., & Lapinski, L. (2020). Map the Meal Gap 2020. Feeding America. https://www.feedingamerica.org/sites/default/files/2020-06/Map%20the%20Meal%20Gap%202020%20Combined%20Modules.pdf

Hossfeld, L. H., & Rico Mendez, G. (2018). Looking For Food: Food Access, Food Insecurity, and the Food Environment in Rural Mississippi. Family & Community Health, 41(2), S7-S14. 10.1097/FCH.0000000000000182

Waity, J. F. (2016). Spatial Inequality in Access to Food Assistance in Indiana. Sociological Inquiry, 86(1), 103-126. 10.1111/soin.12098

Warren, J. C., & Smalley, K. B. (2014). What Is Rural? In J. C. Warren, & K. B. Smalley (Eds.), Rural Public Health: Best Practices and Preventive Models (pp. 5-6). Springer Publishing Company.

Whitley, S. (2013). Changing Times in Rural America: Food Assistance and Food Insecurity in Food Deserts. Journal of Family Social Work, 16(1), 36-52. 10.1080/10522158.2012.736080

[chiseler]

When Nature Was Golden

Let’s open with a few passages of deathless prose from the classics.

EMORY’S SOFT-SHELLED TURTLE (18 in.; to 35 lb.) is the only Southwest member of an edible group with long necks and short tempers. Handle with care.

BELTED KINGFISHER Where there are fish there are Kingfishers, beating the air in irregular flight, diving into water with a splash and emerging with fish in their beaks.

THE EASTERN MOLE or common mole makes the mounds that dot your lawn. You are unlikely to see any moles, for they stay underground unless molested.

You saw them in the basement of your third-grade best friend, or in your school library. If you were lucky, you had one or two at home—your older sister read them first, years ago; maybe they’d even belonged to one of your parents. Paperback books just a bit smaller than pulp fiction novels, though equally thick, their illustrated pages of a glossier, higher quality. The typeface was Futura, that design marvel of yore, also seen in the old Hall of Dinosaurs in the American Museum of Natural History. Insects, Seashores, Mammals, Reptiles and Amphibians—which did you have? The Golden Guides gave us our natural world in all its glory, and managed to do it in a singular style, dry yet affectionate, concisely informative and never, ever dumbed-down. They were written for children, but each, too, is a cracking read for any adult eager to learn. Or to remember.

Naturalist Herbert S. Zim, who founded this series of guides and wrote many of them, was born in New York in 1909. Raised there and in Southern California, he finished his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D at Columbia University. He was then a science teacher for twenty-five years—at Ethical Culture schools in New York City, and later at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. One wonders where on earth he found the time to crank out so many books. Each was a loving collaboration with other educators, not solely Zim’s effort. But the synthesis of these people, the meticulous research required to bring together all the info, was his responsibility, from 1949 until the early 1970s. Zim, in 1969, was also the editor of an 18-volume set of encyclopedias named Our Wonderful World.

Of the 84 Golden Guides, Zim wrote or co-wrote 24. Is it confirmation bias that makes me believe those are the best of the bunch? The simple style is charming, with phrases like Rock Ground Squirrels, found in the Southwest, are our largest terrestrial squirrels. What grace: with a hint of pride to be from the United States, he said that the squirrels are ours. (I also appreciate that he uses the word “unique” correctly, without qualifiers. The Barn Owl is unique, not “totally” or “somewhat” unique.) The occasional anachronism amuses. Once in awhile Zim tells us which kind of turtle or ground squirrel makes a good pet, if captured.

You have been seeing birds as far back as you can remember and you will continue seeing them wherever you may be. It’s a real pleasure to see them. You can see more birds and more kinds of birds by learning how to look. This book will help you. It is not written for the expert, but for people who want to see birds just for the joy of it.

First become familiar with the mammals pictured and described. Look through the Key to Mammals on the next pages so that you can recognize the major mammal groups. Try to see the mammal well enough to decide, for example, whether it is a rodent or a shrew.

Familiarity with fishes gained by thumbing through pages at odd moments may enable you to make rough identifications at sight. Use this book as an “arm-chair” guide, but also take it into the field with you, for that is where it can be used best. On fishing trips take it along in a plastic bag.

Originally named the Golden Nature Guides, the series name was shortened to “Golden Guides” when they began branching out into other topics—for example, Guns, Sports Cars, and Casino Games. But these adult subjects did not make it into most family rooms, and the more popular guides about flora and fauna, insects, weather, stars, and the like are the ones most frequently found today. The illustrations by James Gordon Irving and others are remarkably detailed, the beauty of pure accuracy from a time when nature photography was rare.

A particularly enchanting feature of the Guides is the family tree, usually a two-page spread of swooping, color-gradated branches, each limb ending in a small picture of an animal in its biological order, labeled something like “Cutlass Fishes” or “Scorpion-Flies.” No less an artist than Matt Groening would eventually parody this format for his Life In Hell comic, describing the evolution of record-store clerks from sullen teens.

Herbert Zim, in his long career as an educator, was the one who brought lab instruction into science courses at the elementary-school level. Anyone who looked through a microscope before they reached ninth grade might have him to thank. And one attribute of Golden Guides is the way they expect one to get involved, not just in the field, but with “amateur activities” like building a birdhouse or preserving animal tracks in plaster. Through such deep engagement, the reader is encouraged not just to appreciate nature, but to discover new things about it, making new contributions to science.

He demanded no less of himself. Going through what biographical information there is on Zim, which is all very straightforward, one notices the list of scientific associations he belonged to, numbering more than twenty. They included the Audubon Society, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Everglades Natural History Association, and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Truly, this was a vigorous and busy man.

Like so many cultural products of their time, the Golden Guides can look antithetical to today’s progressive values. Just ask the Yuman Indian woman who sits weaving cotton, bare-breasted, in one of the pictures in a guide to the American Southwest. In little vignettes we see depicted dozens of trappers, fishermen, tourists, birdwatchers—all white, mostly male. Under the entry for “Other Suckers,” Zim claims “some are so easily caught that every boy knows them.” If the Guides were written just for boys, this is a great shame, though their ubiquity meant that many girls of all different backgrounds would find them. The scientific language is devoid of prejudice, by its nature, and is there for any young person dedicated enough to study it. It prizes the natural world above all. One passage recently took me by surprise for its passion, on a page about the fishing industry: If you are interested in fishes, conservation—the wise use of all our natural resources—is your problem too.

Maybe it’s our current predicament that makes one particularly fond of the outside world, and of non-humans. Back in March, I started watching a live online feed from The Aquarium of the Pacific each night, comforted by the variety of fish, sharks, and rays that swam peacefully by. Curious about a small fish with long, showy gold fins, I consulted Fishes to identify it, and Irving didn’t disappoint. Meanwhile, Herbert Zim informed me that the species, named Lookdown, belong to the mackerel-like family of “jacks” and are fine eating.

In 1934, Zim married the Russian-born Sonia (Sonnie) Bleeker, who had studied anthropology at Columbia. The couple had two sons. Bleeker, too, worked in the book world—as an editor at Simon and Schuster, then as a full-time children’s book author. They eventually moved to Florida. Just like the descriptions in the guides, these biographical facts fall well short of being dull. They force me to imagine how energetic, how full life must have been in the Zim household as the kids grew up; and how many subtropical species kept Herbert company in his later years. After Bleeker’s death, he married Grace K. Showe in 1978. He died at Plantation Key in 1994, of complications from Alzheimer’s.

LIVE OAK has become a symbol of the South. The low, spreading tree, often covered with Spanish moss, marks old plantations and roadside plantings. The elliptical, blunt-tipped, leathery leaves are evergreen—that is, they remain green and on the tree throughout the year. The acorns are small but edible; wood is used for furniture. Two other southeastern Oaks (Laurel and Willow) have leaves of somewhat similar shape, but they are thinner and more pointed than Live Oak. Several western Oaks are evergreen. Botanists apply the unqualified name Live Oak only to this species. Height 40 to 60 ft. Beech family

In a Manhattan backyard in the middle of June, a couple of mourning doves fly between the trees. I’m aware that the gentle woop-woop-woop sound they make is not their voices but their wingbeats. The dogwood’s cream-yellow blooms have begun to fade, as is proper at this time. Above me a juvenile blue jay, still fluffy, shrieks out his typical noisy cry. I’m intrigued to see a red speck moving among the hairs on my arm—it’s a clover mite, an insect I haven’t noticed in decades. As recently as 1982, I was a four-year-old marveling at the rolling movement of clover mites on a windowsill—smaller than pin heads, bright candy-apple red. Somewhere along the line they stopped showing up, at least with the frequency they did back then. Now, seeing even one evinces a swell of emotion. (Incidentally, the same is true of another brightly-colored beauty, the red eft, which used to be so numerous in summer that we had to tiptoe on New York State gravel roads to avoid stepping on them.)

We learn more from Zim’s texts than he bargained for. His Golden Guides speak of a midcentury United States where all these animals and plants were still commonly seen. Just based upon my memories from the past 20 or 30 years, there seem to be fewer animals everywhere; in the 1950s, then, was the Earth just teeming with them, in every corner of every suburban lawn? Having learned that the biomass of insects, in particular, has started to fall fast, I yearn for the spectacle of clover mites and hastily do a search for them. Yes, the internet reassures me: we in New York City still have lots of the red bugs, enough to warrant a FAQ page from a pest-control company. They’re harmless to humans, pets, houses, and furniture. They munch grass and reproduce parthenogenically, which means every individual can lay viable eggs, without mating.

Of course, the sites telling me this haven’t worded their data quite as eloquently as Herbert Zim would have. Still, I thank him for the spark of curiosity that got me there at all. He taught me not just how to identify a clover mite, but how to care about her.

by Amanda Nazario

[hadarmarkin]

The Sephardic Communities in Jerusalem - The Invisible Walls of the City

Diaspora is defined as the dispersion of the Jews beyond Israel or as Jews living outside Israel. Accordingly, this blog has thus far explored the life of Sephardic communities in various countries in the Mediterranean Basin and in the Middle East. This post, however, is a special one as it is dedicated to a group of Sephardic communities that have been residing in Israel for over 500 years. These Sephardic communities left their diasporic homes towards the ancient homeland starting in the 16th century, but still to this day operate within their old and somewhat isolated diasporic mode of speaking their own dialect, resolving conflicts in community structures, and marrying among themselves. As the holy capital, the city of Jerusalem became a hub for those types of Sephardic communities, and for that reason, it is the focus of this blog post.

A Peculiar City

As a sacred place for the three monotheistic religions, Jerusalem attracts people from a wide array of origins to settle in it. A short walk in the city streets reveals how incredibly diverse and complex it is. Every neighborhood encompasses a different world of language, culture, and worship. Sometimes within a distance of a few houses, the scenery changes dramatically: Arabic replaces Hebrew or Yiddish and affluent residences transform into low-income housing. It is not a rare sight, for instance, to witness an old Palestinian shepherd letting his sheep graze in the front lawn of an urban neighborhood. Being so hard to define or explain, no wonder that the late Amos Oz, one of Israel’s most renowned authors, called the city “one of the most peculiar places on earth.”

Unfortunately, as well reflected in global news, the relationships between the various ethnic and religious groups in the city are far from being harmonious. Clashes minor or major occur daily, fueling the already heated climate. The late Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, a longtime resident of Jerusalem, repeatedly lamented about the friction in his poems. Below is a passage from his poem “Jerusalem,” which beautifully captures the city’s animosity:

On a roof in the Old City

Laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight:

The white sheet of a woman who is my enemy,

The towel of a man who is my enemy,

To wipe off the sweat of his brow.

(Above- the different communities in the Old City)

Even within the Jewish context, there are invisible walls dividing the numerous religious sects and various ethnic groups, which exist beyond the obvious separation from the ultra-orthodox sector. The Sephardic community, as previously mentioned, is an umbrella name for multiple groups that are separated from each other linguistically and culturally, as they originated from various parts of the world, such as Uzbekistan, Bulgaria, Yemen, Iran, and more. Although these communities have maintained friendly relationships on the surface, there is a strong sense of segregation between the communities, each keeping its gates closed for outsiders. Even the formation of the State of Israel that unified everyone under the idea of one nation could not dissolve these firm barriers.  

This post will look into these communities and specifically showcase two distinct groups: the Ladino speaking community and the Bucharian (Uzbek) neighborhood,  through art and culinary.

Ladino Speaking Communities: Jewish, Latin, and Balkan Mixed Together

The 16th century marked major shifts in Jewish demography. In the wake of the expulsion from Spain (1492) and the forced conversion in Portugal (1497), Jews wandered eastwards around the Mediterranean basin. About 200,000 Jews found refuge in the Muslim-ruled Ottoman Empire, which at the time, extended from the Balkan regions of Europe to the vast lands of the Fertile Crescent. As a result, cities, which had little-to-no Jewish population, such as  Constantinople and Salonika, became significant centers both demographically and spiritually.

A sizable group of deportees also arrived to the land of Israel, then a province in the Ottoman Empire, and settled mostly in Jerusalem. Since the expulsion created an acute theological crisis, many sought resort in apocalyptic beliefs. Jerusalem was, therefore, the ultimate destination for those who connected their plight with the arrival of the Messiah.

In addition, to those who came directly to Jerusalem, a constant flow of Jews migrated towards Jerusalem from the Balkans and present day Turkey throughout the late 15th and 16th centuries. Therefore, by the mid-16th century, the number of Jews in the city doubled. New Sephardic synagogues were established inside the walls of the Old City, and these attracted well-known rabbis and scholars, such as Rabbi Ovadia Bertenura and Rabbi Solomon Sirili.

Little by little, the immigrants from Spain and the Ottoman Empire evolved into a community known as the Old Sephardic community in Jerusalem. This community prided itself for being Sephardim Tehorim–Pure Sephardic– direct descendants of the glorious community from Spain, which generated some of the greatest Jewish philosophers and poets. Being extremely connected to their heritage, the community zealously maintained the religious practices and language called Ladino, a blend of medieval Spanish with some Turkish and Arab words, written in Hebrew script.

(Above- a Sephardic family in the mid 19th century)

The Ladino speaking community, also known as the Spanyolitim, saw itself as the elite of the Jewish society in Israel. They negotiated with the Ottoman officials and the Muslim populaition in the country. Many of them were merchants, who traveled to other cities in the Ottoman empire - mainly Beirut and Damascus-  to import goods. Given their socio-economic status and their attempt to keep their lineage unmixed, the Spanyolitim refrain from marrying outside their community. Marital relationship with the Ashkenazi community was banned, and even engaging with other groups within the Sephardic community  (such as the Mograbim,the North African Sephardim) was unacceptable. Wedding celebrations, as well as other communal gatherings, took place in the four Sephardic synagogues in the Old City.

(Above- Yochanan Ben Zakai Sephardic synagogue in 1927)

The thread of keeping a tight and pure community is in the center of the novel the Beauty Queen of Jerusalem by Sarit Yishai Levi. The story takes place in the late 19th century and early 20th century and it centers the Armosa family  - an archetypical old Sephardic family: well to do with a prominent ancestry. The older son, the handsome Gabriel, is the promise and pride of the family. However, much to his parents' dismay, Gabriel falls in love with an Ashkenazi Ultra-Orthodox woman and attempts to elope with her.

At this point, the story very much resembles a famous Jerusalem’s love tale between Itamar Ben Avi and Leah Abushdid occurring in the mid 19th century.  Ben Avi, the grandson of Eliezer Ben Yehuda, the father of modern Hebrew, was madly in love with Abushadid, a member of a distinguished Sephardic family. After years of persistent courting, Abushadid’s family finally gave its consent to the Shidduch, and the couple -at least as told- had a long and happy marriage. This love story became material for songs and novels in Israeli culture, but more so paved the way for “mixed” marriages.

Unfortunately, in the book The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, the end is far from being happy as Gabriel’s plan to escape ends in a fiasco: the death of his father from shame and grief. Guilt stricken, Gabriel returns to his mother’s house. Furious, his mother decides to teach Gabriel a lesson: a bad Sephardic Shidduch is better than a love based arrangement with someone “who is not one of us.” Accordingly, she forces him to marry the poor and unattractive, yet Sephardic, Rosa. From this point on, the motif of community pressure and unhappy marriage keeps echoing as the plot develops.

The novel walks the reader through some of the historical landmarks happening in the Sephardic community at the time. The first eminent one is the process of relocating outside of the Old City, known in Jewish history as “leaving the walls.” Given the poor sanitary conditions in the Old City, the Armosa family, like many other Sephardic, Ashkenazi, and non-Jewish families, moves outside of the Old City into a new neighborhood. The then new and today famous and classic neighborhoods, such as Yemin Moshe, Mishkenot Shaananim, and Ohel Moshe played an important role in shaping the unique landscape of modern Jerusalem as well as speeding social changes, westernization, and modernity among these old communities.  Another important development described in the book was the loss of supremacy to the Ashkenazi Jews, given the massive immigration waves from Eastern Europe throughout the early to mid 20th century. At the beginning of the book, Gabriel is portrayed as a strong,  business savvy, and revered young man, but as the novel prolongs his health and businesses deteriorate, and he is incapable to find his place in Mandatory Jerusalem, where Ashkenazi Zionist activists set the tone.   The analogy created through Gabriel’s character tells the sad story of many other Sephardic notable men, who were pushed aside and disregarded by Ashkenazi dominated Zionist leadership.

Beyond tragic love stories and unfortunate historical development, The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem is a celebration of Sephardic culture and especially food. Dishes mentioned in the book, such as Sofrito and Avikas con Aroz (bean stew with rice) brings the reader back to Medieval Spain. But Sephardic Jerusalem food has more than a Spanish accent. Inevitably, Sephardic cooks incorporate ingredients used in the local Palestinian cuisine such as fresh sheep milk cheeses, garbanzo beans (used for hummus and other dishes), and lentils, into their home kitchen. Emulating their Muslim neighbors, they served their bitter coffee with overly sweet pastries and even added tamarind sauce to various dishes to obtain the sweet-sour flavor that is so prominent among the Spanyolitim. Another component in the Sephardic Jerusalem cuisine is the Balkan-Turkish influence brought by the Sephardic Jews, who lived in other regions of the Ottoman Empire before settling in Jerusalem. Dishes, such as Burekas filled with feta cheese, spinach, and Stoletch–rice pudding with dried fruit– are examples of the Balkan impact.

Perhaps the most important characteristic of Sephardic cuisine is resourcefulness. Living in a city that underwent numerous conquests, destruction, natural disasters, and famine,  the Spanyolitim learned the hard way how to source and prepare a wholesome meal with the local flora. In fact, it is said that during the siege on Jerusalem in 1948, in which the city suffered from great deficits, Sephardic women made bread, patties, and even omelets from Mallow, a local wild plant. Okra is another example of a vegetable popular among Spanyolit cooks as it is local, versatile, and nutritious. The traditional Sephardic way of cooking okra with acidic tomato sauce helps to diminish its texture, and highlights its nutritional value and flavor. Ironically, after years of having a bad reputation as a “grandma food,” Israeli chefs and dieticians are now embracing this vegetable and the Sephardic way of cooking it.

Okra in Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

3 cups of fresh or frozen okra

1 onion shredded in food processor

2 big tomatoes crushed

1 clove of garlic sliced

3 tbsp of olive oil

1.5 tbsp of sugar

2 tsp of pepper

Salt

½ cup of water

Juice from ½ a lemon

Making

Trim the edges of the okra

Warm the oil in the pan and add the onion, garlic and tomatoes. Once boiled, lower the heat and cover the pan.

Add the okra and the rest of the ingredients (except the lemon). Cook until softened but not mushy. 

Squeeze some lemon before serving.

Serve warm with rice or any other grain.

Uzbekistan

The Uzbeki community –known in Israeli as the Buchari community– in Jerusalem might be a tiny fragment of the overall population but it is a notable one. The Bucharim arrived in Jerusalem in several immigration waves from 1890 to 1914. The Russian conquest of Uzbekistan stimulated many to leave and because the community was observant by nature, Jerusalem was a natural choice for  resettlement.

Originally, the first Buchari immigrants opted to buy land in the Old City. However, the harsh living conditions behind the walls in addition to their needs as a young and culturally and linguistically unique community drove the Bucharim out to search for their own space. In 1894, after several years of community fundraising, a lot was purchased northwest of the Old City. The new immigrants initially named their new space Rechovot (meaning streets in Hebrew) but it was soon known by all as Shchunat Ha’Bucharim or the Buchari Quarter. Eager to replicate their old community life, the Bucharim hurried to establish communal facilities, such as a senior living home, orphanage, and several synagogues, including the Mosayof synagogue named after the community spiritual leader Rabbi Shlomo Mosayof. In addition, a Talmud Torah school teaching in both Hebrew and Parsi was founded to solve the language barrier problems that young Buchari boys were experiencing when visiting schools in other communities.  Unlike other new Jewish neighborhoods at the time that were built simply and in a haste, much thought and funds were put into the urban planning and architecture in the Buchari Quarter. Given the generosity of the wealthy members, the facades of the buildings were embellished with Jewish Stars and other decorations, trees were planted on the side of the roads, and empty lots were allocated for farming. Considered then exotic within the Jerusalem landscape, the quarter attracted visitors from within and outside of Jerusalem to admire its beauty and to explore its vivid community life.

(Above- The Davidof family, one of the most prominent families in the Buchari community, a portrait from the early 1920′s)

Today, Shchunat Ha’Bucharim is still a popular destination and several of the sites are protected by the Israeli Council of Historic Preservation. However, given various demographic and political shifts, the original Buchari population shrank and because of this, many of the structures suffer from neglect. As the quarter borders with Jerusalem’s Ultra-Orthodox residential complex, there is an increasing “invasion” of young Haredi families who cannot find housing in their overpopulated neighborhoods. The growing Ultra-Orthodox presence also impacts the moderate religious nature of the Buchari community, as shown in the Israeli film, The Women’s Balcony.

(Above- a street sign in the quarter)

(Above- an example of the Buchari’s quarter unique architecture- the Davidof “Palace”)

The Women’s Balcony (directed by Shlomit Nehama and Emil Ben-Shimon, 2016) is the story of the small but devoted community of the Mosayof synagogue. The men in the community compose a loyal Minyan, and take care of the synagogue maintenance. However, their wives are the burning candle, and the real power behind the joyous life cycle, holiday celebrations, and the community aid. One day, this peaceful life is disrupted. The synagogue ceiling collapses during a Bar Mitzvah ceremony, where the rabbi is badly injured and the structure itself requires serious work. Puzzled by this accident, the men in the community accept the authority of a young charismatic rabbi as their new spiritual leader. The new rabbi is indeed very knowledgeable and committed to repairing the damage, but his religious views are far more radical and do not match the community’s long tradition of religious moderation. The women are the first ones to be affected by his strict agenda. They are excluded from worship and are blamed for being overly permissive when it comes to modesty and Jewish laws. Caring deeply about their community, the women decided to fight back. For more on their struggle, watch the movie on Amazon prime video.

(Above- a scene from the movie)

Although food is not the focal point of the movie, many of the scenes  take place in Shuk Machne’ Yehuda, a traditional Middle Eastern Marketplace that is a destination for pre-Shabbat shopping as well as culinary tourism. Zion, one of the characters in the movie, is the owner of a spice store in the Shuck, and is also famous for making delicious fruit salads using fruit from the nearby stands. And indeed, as the movie portrays, the Buchari cuisine very much relies on the use of local and fresh produce as well as aromatic seasonings.  Given Uzbekistan’s location in central Asia on the  Silk Road, the Buchari food incorporates Russian, Turkish, and Iranian influences. The result is a cuisine that has bold flavors and rich seasonings. Lamb is the favorite meat, and its fat alongside some herbs and leafy green vegetables are highly used to flavor foods. Accordingly, the traditional dishes are Manto- meat dumplings with vegetables and Legman soup made with noodles, lamb and fresh veggies. Similar to the Iranian cuisine rice is the wide-used grain. Bachash, the traditional rice, has many variations from a green one with cilantro, dill, and spinach to a simple white version with thin noodles (or orzo in this case) at the bottom. The movie shows a quick glimpse of a basic white Bachash, and therefore this is the recipe I chose to highlight.

The recipe for Bachash is taken from the book Jerusalem. Palestinian chef Sami Tamimi and Israeli chef Yotam Ottolenghi pay homage to their hometown while curating a plethora of recipes from Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities. Their seminal groundwork into the Jerusalem cuisine truly helps with understanding the different influences and flavors that make Jerusalem a synonymous name for unique yet comforting food. The beautiful photos, as well as the interesting historical and cultural segments, make this book a nice possession even if not used for cooking.

Unlike many dishes in this book (or in other Ottolenghi’s books), this rice recipe is extremelya to make and does not require any speciality ingredients. My rice recipes are usually taken from the Persian cuisine, which requires longer cooking time and prep. When I made this dish, I was pleasantly surprised how incredibly quick and easy was the process without compromising the texture and flavor.  

White Bachash

Ingdientes:

1 ⅓ cup basmati rice

1 tbsp ghee (or butter)

1 tbsp sunflower oil

2 ½ cup chicken/ veggie stock

1 tsp salt

½ cup orzo*

Process:

Rinse rice and soak it for 30 minutes in cold water. Drain and rinse again.

Melt butter and oil on medium heat in the pot.

Add orzo and fry for  3-4 minutes or until orzo turns dark golden.

Add the stock , bring to a boil, and cook for 3 minutes.

Add the drained rice and salt, bring to a gentle boil, stir once or twice, cover the pan, and simmer over low heat for 15 minutes. Try not to uncover the pan- keeping it closed helps the rice to steam properly.

Turn off the heat, remove the lid, and cover the pot quickly with a clean kitchen towel. Place the lid back on top of the towel, and leave for 10 minutes.

Fluff the rice with a fork before serving.

* I used GF chickpea flour orzo, which I think added a nice flavor to the rice.

[zephyra-in-the-house]

A Wolf and a Leopard Walk Into A Store... Sounds Like the Start to a Bad Joke

Summary: Noanric is a continent known for its unique culture and freedom from most anything. The only problem is that the country is young and its rules fail to hold back the humans from trying to overthrow the demons. Without official protection, many demons are falling victim to experiments to decrease their power and influence from the world. In the midst of this place, Vanoss and his pack are asked by the country’s leader to liberate a group of demons from a human laboratory close to their territory. However, Vanoss has been warned of a loophole among this chaos. Can he lead his pack to safety and discover the blue demon from the prophecy? Or will he suffer the consequences of a past long forgotten?

Hello Tumblr! It is I, you’re provider, your liberator from school, your friend and your author for this fanfic~ My name is Zephyra. What you’re seeing here is a work in progress and I have been uploading chapters for this story since July of last year on Archive and Wattpad. So far, I’ve already gotten through 14 chapters and, as I have it planned out now, there should be 55 chapters by the time I’m done. It will take a while, so I hope you guys are in for the long haul. Enjoy!

Notes for this chapter: This is the first time I have posted any of my writing. This is not the first story or fanfic that I’ve written, but it’s the first one I’ve made public. For the past nine years, I’ve been writing several books that I created and the universe I’m using for this fanfiction is based in that Original Universe. With that being said, there are different rules for some things in this story that I will have to explain before each chapter wherever the rules apply.

I do have a random upload schedule. My writing habits are flawed to say the least, but summer is coming up, so hopefully I’ll have more time to write longer and better chapters. I try to get out a chapter every two weeks, but my readers from other websites know that I haven’t been maintaining that schedule since the beginning of this year. 

I encourage positive criticism and I would love to hear back on things that I could improve on or mistakes that I make.

This picture is my design for the Ev-Meister, the one and only VanossGaming. I do my own art and I will try to have cover photos for each chapter.

Thank you to the people who have chosen this fic.  Be prepared for the long haul because This Is Gonna Take A While~

Enjoy!

Chapter 1

Next Chapter: Chapter 2

Most Recent Chapter: Chapter 3

Vanoss’ Perspective:

  The stars danced in entrancing circles across the sky as I slipped through the shadows of the night. I paused for a moment, staring up at them as they blinked at me.

   Around me, the forest shimmered to life. Shadows clung to every mossy rock and leaf. The slow breeze thrumming through the undergrowth sent shivers down my spine, making my fur puff out just a little more. The itch under my skin for dense rainforests and humid climates was tempered by the sounds of the night murmuring against my ears.

  It was springtime in Noanric and, thus, still cold from the previous winter, especially where we lived.

  Stretched from the northern tip of the world down to the hottest areas at the equator, there existed a continent known as Noanric. My pack and I lived somewhere in the middle where the trees were nothing but cotton or pine and the winters were sometimes long and harsh. Personally, the cold climate was the only regrettable part of settling down in this area. It was also the only compromise that everyone in the pack could make though.

  Despite most of the pack members being from the feline family, all of us had grown up in different environments. Each of us preferred something different for a place to settle in, whether it was hot, humid climates or damp rainforests. Eventually, we stumbled across the territory we lived in now and it suited many of everyone's requirements.

  Back when we all first met, having so many diverse people in the pack had caused a lot of arguments. On top of that, my alpha subgender caused a lot of authoritative issues, especially after I claimed the other two alphas, Marcel and Tyler. For a while, I was almost convinced that none of us could get along enough to be in a pack.

 However, since finding our new home three years ago, it was a rarity to find a pack member in a bad mood. Of course, arguments weren’t avoidable all the time. Sometimes, fights broke out. Trying to smooth out disputes was probably the most stressful part of my job as leader.

  I had always wanted to be a part of a pack, but I never saw myself at the head of it. For the longest time, I had even ignored the the itch for companionship that always crawled under my skin. Somehow though, I ended up being pack leader. Ever since then, I'd been even more anxious to serve my pack members to the best of my abilities. Yet, the stress still sometimes got to me.

  Occasionally, for reasons like this, being the leader got a bit overwhelming. Then again, too much social interaction never failed to exhaust me. It didn’t help that both of my preferred animal forms were solitary creatures.

  Luckily, because my pack was mostly feline, they were also solitary people. None of them minded it too terribly when I took these moments to step out and recharge my social batteries.

  A sigh escaped me as my gaze wandered from the stars in the sky above to the trees as another gust of wind passed through my fur. I hummed softly when I felt the animal in me wake up the longer I stayed in my shifted form.

  That night, I sported the fur of a black panther- A.K.A. a melanistic leopard. Normally, my fur was spotted and striped like any other leopards, but I changed it occasionally to suit my needs.

  Not everyone could do this, mind you. I’d only ever met one other shapeshifter like me in my life, and he couldn’t do half the stuff I could.

  Even though I knew I could shift into anything I wanted and make it any color I felt was the most appealing, I rarely used this ability. For the most part, I limited myself to my leopard form and, occasionally, my owl form. Other than that, I had no use for my shapeshifting abilities for anything besides races.

  That night was one of the only exceptions I made to my rule though. Being able to blend in with the shadows of the night came in handy when I didn’t want to be caught by anyone happening to take a midnight stroll like me.

  When I left the house, I had no real goal as to where I was going in mind. The only thing I wanted to do was to get away. Apparently, my subconscious had other ideas which I didn’t recognize until I glanced around to spot a familiar tree with gnarled roots nearby.

  With a smile, I lifted my head to scent the air.

  As I suspected, the first thing I picked up was the scent of the river that made up the eastern border of our territory. A thrill of amusement raced through me as I angled towards the smell and increased my pace to a light trot. Somewhere, I knew the scent would lead me to my favorite part of the river. The waterfall.

  The sound of it hit me before the view did. As soon as I broke through the tree line, I was greeted by a blast of mist. It was one of the most welcome feelings I had that night, despite the air around me dropping several degrees. The cold atmosphere only grew colder as I paced forward to admire the scene laid out before me.

  Just a few feet away from the treeline, the ground dropped away off the face of a cliff. Rivulets of water from the river rushed over the edge of the precipice and plummeted down to the pit below. From my vantage point, the waterfall seemed almost never ending. The sound of it was so immense that I couldn’t even hear my own breath over its roars. Even the ground below me trembled at its presence.

  Below me, the cliff dropped down to a pit of water thirty feet down. The top of the waterfall sat several feet away, formed into a half circle, spitting water over its edge with torrential force. The rocky edges of the cliff stuck out in some places which created miniature waterfalls against the main stream of gushing water.

  This part of the river and further down where the river meandered into our territory were my favorite spots to hang out, especially when I needed to be reminded of just how amazing life can be.

  The waterfall felt so terrifyingly vast that I simply sat in awe for a moment. A waterfall can take a person and dash them to pieces in all the worst ways possible. Yet, they can be so magnificent in all their power.

  The power vibrating through the ground was almost a comfort for me and, for once, I felt smaller than usual. For a moment, I wasn’t anything special or different. For once, there was something in the world with a power as terrifying as mine.

  A low growl rumbled through my chest as these thoughts crossed my mind. I shoved them away instinctively.

  Without thinking about it, I backed up to the tree line before launching myself across the stretch of open grass between me and the cliff. In one powerful motion, I flung myself off the cliff edge and plummeted towards the pit below.

  The plunge was unlike any other thing in the world. It reminded me of a hurricane or a hail storm. The mist from the waterfall slapped me in the face as I plunged downward, my tail streaming out behind me.

It felt like I fell forever. There was so much adrenaline in my veins that it made those moments spent dropping to the water below stretch into unfathomable lengths of time. I had gone cliff jumping here many times before, but I was still taken by surprise when my body hit the water and the air was knocked out of me. The fact that the water was probably only 50°F didn’t help.

  After a moment spent speeding through the water like a missile, I felt my front paws brush the bottom of the pit followed by the rest of my body. I stayed on the muddy floor for a moment before pushing off and propelling myself upwards. By the time my head broke the surface, the current of the waterfall had already pushed me out a ways away from where I had jumped.

  The ground wasn’t too far down near shore, so I could easily touch. However, instead of getting out of the water, I paddled back out into the pool, relishing in the water tugging against my fur. It was still somewhat cold but, between being acclimatized to the temperature and the nature of my body heat, it didn’t bother me.

  If Brian or Brock were around, they would look at me like I was crazy. Of course, their werecat forms had thick shaggy fur which dragged them down in the water so it was understandable that they didn’t like being in it for too long.

  After a while, a cold breeze swept across the water, chilling the top of my head. I took that as my signal to get out.

  With reluctance, I swam to shore on our side of the territory and pulled myself from the water’s clutches. I couldn’t stay in the water all night. Eventually, I had to return home and face my responsibilities.

  Shaking myself, I sat down on the river shore and looked up at the sky once more. Above me, the stars continued their watchful gaze over me and a full moon glowed over the treetops. The sight made me smile. These were the nights that I enjoyed the most.

  You could enjoy it more if you were actually doing your job. A voice whispered in the back of my mind.

  I frowned and twisted around to clean a wet patch of fur on my back.

  I’m just enjoying myself while I still have the chance. I argued.

  The world rippled around me as another gust of wind spread through the trees and the grass.

  Normally, I loved the wind and its playfulness. After jumping into the water in the middle of spring though, the wind was not as welcome as usual.

  With a shiver, I stood and walked away from the river’s edge to a giant boulder on the shore. This particular boulder sat like a huge chair which faced the border of our territory on the other side of the river. In the middle of it, a perfect bowl had been carved out. It was just big enough for me to curl up in with room to spare.

 Shaking myself off one more time, I jumped up and settled into the rock to clean myself.

  Personally, I appreciated the position of the rock since it meant that I could watch what happened on the other side of the border while also being comfortable. My pack and I were the only ones who could see what lay on the other side of the river. Anyone on the opposite side couldn’t see us. In this sense, the barrier resembled a one way mirror.

 The entire territory was designed like this. When we decided to call this place home, our physical boundaries were overlaid with tons of complex spells. These spells made them unaware of a mountain, or a river, or a waterfall just on the other side of the border. If they were careless, they could plummet to their death.

  On top of that, if someone survived a fall, there laid a spell that incapacitated any human or demon that came across our borders. This spell could encompass a person’s mind, restricting them until they became delusional or incredibly weak, or it could attack a person's nervous system and paralyze them. The person would then fall into a coma-like state, at which point we simply had to carry them back out of the territory. Only pack members, along with some roguish friends, were immune to these spells.

  There was only one spot that had no physical advantage on the other side of its border. It lay further north of the river. Originally, it was a hill, but we blew it out years ago to make a road for our vehicles.

  For the most part, the pack used their animal forms to get around. However, when we went shopping or needed to blend in with the humans in town, we usually took one of the six cars that we owned. It was an expensive venture to keep so many vehicles but, sometimes, having that much transportation back and forth is necessary.

  Despite having no physical advantages, the road exiting our territory was protected by our most advanced spells, some of which could immobilize any demon within seconds. No matter what, every part of our territory was protected in some way, shape, or form.

  Lui, Marcel, and Nogla had derived all of the spells we used from older spells they knew. Every spell was a modified version of something much older than us and we designed them to suit our needs.

  For this reason and many others, I held a great deal of pride for my pack. They were all ingenious in their own unique ways.

  All the more reason for them to be protected. The voice from earlier whispered again. I recognized the presence of the animal within me, his alpha instincts coming out to play.

  “I can protect them just as well by myself. Whatever she has to say is most likely irrelevant to their safety.” I growled back at the beast.

 The leopard bared his fangs at me and began pacing back and forth, his heavy footsteps echoing through the confines of my mind.

 You won’t know if it’s relevant until you talk to her. He argued. I shook my head and laid down on the rock below me.

  The leopard had a point. Instead of swimming around in the water all night, I should’ve been at my meeting, confronting my responsibilities head on.

  I didn’t want to though. The letter I received earlier in the week had me on edge. The way the whole thing was worded made me anxious. Their was something very important that would be discussed in the meeting that night, but I wasn’t sure what it was.

  That was part of the reason why I decided to take a walk. I was avoiding my meeting with her until the last possible second. Plus, I knew that I wouldn’t have nearly as much free time after I talked to her.

   Your responsibility is to your pack. The leopard murmured, his voice softening with sympathy. Situations where they are concerned take priority over your “personal time”.

  I knew he was right. Deep down, I knew I was responsible for the pack and that my meeting could have everything to do with them. I had to go back.

  With a frustrated growl, I stood and gave myself a rough shake before jumping off my boulder and heading back into the forest. Luckily, I didn’t have to worry about being seen with fluorescent markings, like Marcel’s stripes, as I made my way through the undergrowth.

  As if the simple thought had summoned him, the wind shifted to drag a familiar scent across my nose. The barrier behind me almost seemed to flex inwards, signaling the passage of someone through our borders. I stopped and waited as some rustling off to my left kicked up.

  A moment later, a stocky white tiger came stalking out of the shadows. His fluorescent green and purple stripes slowly pulsed back to life to fill in the black in his pelt. His orange eyes were such a contradiction to his overall color scheme that I felt mildly surprised, as usual, when they too flashed in the darkness of the night.

  “What’re you doing out here Evan?” The tiger asked quietly, his body slowly releasing itself from the shadows.

  “Thinking.” I answered simply. The feline narrowed his eyes at me, his ears twitching with curiosity.

  “So, the honorable leader needs some alone time to think about how important his job is. What a surprise.” He purred, his actions exuding intense amounts of sarcasm.

  I scoffed and shook my head. “What are you doing out here Marcel?”

  There was a slight variation in the pulse of Marcel’s stripes but his expression remained neutral. “I was looking for you, o great lafaino.”

  The tiger lowered himself to the ground in a dramatic bow. I couldn't help but roll my eyes, my attention briefly catching on the shadowy bushes surrounding us as they fluttered.

  “You were looking for me." I mused as a thought occurred to me. The tiger raised himself up and met my gaze levelly. "On the other side of the border?”

  Marcel flashed his fangs at me in an animalistic smile. “Mini told me you might have been trying to find some tail out there.”

  I snorted and flicked my ears at him. “There’s tons of food already in our territory.”

  “You know that’s not what I meant.” The tiger huffed.

  I rolled my eyes and walked past him, into the woods. His tail flicked my shoulder lightly as I passed.

  “That’s exactly why I answered the way I did.”

  Marcel simply chuckled and followed me as I headed back to the house.

  Marcel was an interesting person- like most everyone else in the pack. I was fairly convinced that the tattoos on his arms were some symbol of royalty somewhere along the tiger bloodline. No matter how many times I asked though, he wouldn’t tell me what tribe he came from or if my suspicions were correct.

  Marcel came to the pack years ago, accompanied by Scotty, in search of people who were “like him”- whatever that meant. The tiger had an interesting sense of humor and a thrilling laugh that left people feeling giddy. Sometimes, he had a different way of speaking, but almost every single person in the pack had a slight variation of speech or an accent to their words. No two of us were alike.

  Marcel and Tyler both came to me in the search of being understood. The only unfortunate part about them joining my pack was that, because they were both alphas, they tended to challenge my authority more often than the others. Luckily, they complied in letting me be the leader of the group but I knew that, if they wanted, either of them could easily try to dethrone me.

  I still enjoyed their company though. No matter what, everyone who had come to me and joined my pack or simply stopped by to say hi as friends was appreciated.

 Smii7y, along with his mate, Kryoz, was one of those few random friends that stopped by every once in a while. Sincw they were our friends, our spells didn't affect them. I didn't know them all that well, but Mini and Panda spent a lot of time at their cabin just outside our borders. At least, they did whenever the two rogues weren't out of town on a mission.

 The main group, Mini, Wildcat, Terroriser, Moo, Lui, Nogla, Marcel, Scotty, Panda, and I, stayed on the territory for longer periods of time. Some of the others took moments of alone time like I did, but we all lived in the same two story white house in the middle of our large chunk of land.

 Seventy miles east of our territory lay the human city, Panlyog. It wasn’t my favorite place to be and most of the others agreed with me about that, so we kept to ourselves unless we needed something from the humans.

  I was mulling over the plans to make a trip into Panlyog the next day when the wind shifted and Marcel’s scent hit me full force. Normally, I didn’t mind, but there was an ever so slight variation in it that night. I couldn’t quite put a claw on what that variation was, but it was definitely different in an unsettling sort of way.

  I watched the powerful tiger carefully as he prowled through the undergrowth beside me. He was too busy scenting the air around us to notice my curiosity. Chalking it up to a flaw in my sense of smell, I shrugged off my intrigue as we continued towards the house.

  Our house wasn’t hard to miss if you knew what you were looking for. It stood on a hill, pearly white, two stories above the ground and a basement stuck halfway into the hill. The only thing that stopped it from sticking out like a sore thumb was the thick copes of trees surrounding it in a 10 foot radius and the giant canopy of branches overhead. The trees were so thick in the area that no creature had ever attempted getting through it. Even the roof of the house was designed to look like the ground to avoid aerial attacks.

  The only way in and out of the ring around the house was to go through secret passageways built into the bushes surrounding the area. The white building was our perfect escape, especially with Nogla’s collection of flowers planted all around the edges.

  Marcel and I wove our way through the bushes and into the clearing beyond. I glanced around briefly, my eyes catching on a light in a window on the second floor and another coming from downstairs. The second light was too dim to be from the living room, so I assumed it came from either the kitchen or the TV.

  As Marcel and I approached, one of the flood lights on the front porch turned on, revealing a wooden platform with three steps leading up to it. The porch stuck out a few feet from the front of the house with a table and several chairs sitting on top of it. Around it, several bushes and flowers of varying colors appeared.

  Once we reached the top of the steps, Marcel and I began transforming back into our human forms. My transformation was easy because of my shifter genes, but Marcel took his time to rearrange his body.

  For shapeshifters, transforming in a “puff of smoke” is the best description for a our transformations. Shifting is, for the most part, swift and painless for most shifters. Hence the name. Not everybody had it so easy though.

  It didn’t matter how skilled or fierce a demon was. Almost every one of them had some difficulty with shifting. Some people couldn't shift fast without experiencing pain and others couldn't physically force a shift.

 Whatever their reasoning, I didn’t find slow shifting very appealing, especially after listening to Marcel’s bones break, scrape, pop, and crack back into place for about thirty seconds.

  “Ya done?” I asked with mock impatience as Marcel finished.

  He rolled his eyes at me and chuffed lightly with his remaining tiger-like vocal chords. “Show off.”

  As soon as we walked in the front door, the sweet smell of beta wafted over my nose. Marcel and I followed the scent through the open area inside the front door into the kitchen. There, we found Mini leaning against the stove with a cup of water in his hands. His blue-gray eyes lifted as we walked in.

  “Hi Mini!” Marcel called to him softly.

  Mini smiled and responded in kind but with more exaggeration on the quietness. After all, it was one in the morning and nobody likes being woken up in the middle of the night.

  Marcel cupped a hand around his mouth and mock whispered, “How are you?”

  Mini copied him with a smile. “I’m fine. How are you Marcel?”

  “I’m good.”

  “That’s good.” The two of them laughed before Mini’s attention shifted to me and he smiled anew.

  “How’s the leader tonight?” He beamed while still keeping his voice low.

  I hesitated for a split second. It was an innocent question, but Mini’s beta scent meddled with my head.

  My first thought was to tell him the truth. I didn’t want to come home and go to sleep. I didn’t want go to my meeting. I didn’t want her in my head and, most of all, I didn’t want to take this mission. Everything that was about to happen gave me an awful sense of foreboding.

  I wanted to tell Mini all of this. What I didn’t want to do was explain myself in front of Marcel though. Call it a superiority complex or an alpha’s complex, but showing weakness to another alpha didn’t quite sit right with me.

   So, after a split second of hesitation, I responded with, “I’m good. How are you?”

   “I’m good,” Mini replied, his eyes narrowing slightly.

  When I didn’t respond with another “that’s good”, Mini raised an eyebrow and looked at me out of the corner of his eye. Marcel plowed on without noticing my internal crisis.

  Fortunately, the tiger wasn’t really in the mood to give us a play-by-play about his adventures outside of the territory. Instead, he told Mini that it was quiet and that he hadn’t found anything interesting before giving us a tired wave and casting a “good night” over his shoulder as he walked away.

  Mini and I responded in kind and watched the alpha walk up the stairs. As soon as the tiger was out of earshot, Mini turned an inquiring eye to me.

  I sighed and sat down at the island in the middle of the kitchen. “I can’t sleep at night. You know that.”

  The beta across from me slowly nodded before rolling his eyes. “Strange. I was hoping to finally hear about this piece of tail you’ve been seeing.”

  I briefly glared up at him before turning my gaze down to my hands. “You know that if that was true, I would tell you or Moo.”

  At times like this, I felt bad for my two betas. They both wanted me to find someone to spend my time with and date, but I couldn’t give that to them. The people in my pack were too much like brothers and dating humans was forbidden by law in Panlyog. All of my options were sort of closed and everyone in the pack knew it, especially Mini and Moo.

  As betas, it was their job to look after my mental health. Betas are responsible for the mental and physical health of everyone in the pack. That’s why they are better at molecular regeneration and have a particular resistance to the illusions of their pack’s minds.

  I knew it was harmful for my alpha within me to spend so much time alone, even if I was surrounded by pack members most of the time. It was uncommon for a subgender voice to be as strong as mine. It just so happened to be even more uncommon that someone who had an unstable alpha like mine was ever put into a position of leadership. Having so many conflicting thoughts and instincts was dangerous for me.

  On one hand, I wanted to protect my pack. On the other, I wanted to find someone who could temper my demons. So far, I was having no luck with either option and that was bad news for Moo and Mini.

  “I’m sorry.” I murmured, looking up into Mini’s face. He gave me a solemn smile and sighed.

  “Don’t be. You’ll find someone. We have faith in you. We always do.” Mini responded easily, as he had done many times before.

  I gave him a small smile before staring back down at the counter top. After a moment, a cup of water was suddenly placed in front of me. I hadn’t even noticed the faucet being turned on. Ignoring this fact, I murmured a quiet thanks before taking a sip.

  “I don’t want to go to sleep tonight.” I admitted reluctantly.

  There was a moment of silence before Mini coughed. I reminded myself to add cold medicine to the shopping list for Panlyog the next day.

  “Why is that?” He asked in a slightly strained voice.

  I reached up with my hand to squeeze the bridge of my nose. “I’m supposed to have a meeting with Ms. Evelynn tonight.”

  There was a flash of surprise on Mini’s face. To his credit, it only lasted a few seconds before his face went back to a generally neutral expression.

  After a moment, the beta nodded and took a drink of his own glass of water.

  “Let me get this straight…” He folded his hands together before gesturing at me and raising an eyebrow. “You are purposely avoiding a talk with the one and only Zephyra Evelynn?”

  I couldn’t help but give the beta a tired smile as he spoke.

  “Somehow, you seem to think that that will go without consequence?”

  I sucked in a breath to argue but stopped halfway through when I realized that he was right.

  “Of course there’ll be consequences.”

  Mini made a “duh” face and gave me wide eyes. “Ya think?”

  I shook my head and ran a hand through my hair. “I just know that she’s going to give me some problem that I’ll have to figure out how to fix.”

  “Oh right. I forgot. Responsibilities. Your worst nightmare.” Mini mocked sarcastically.

  I glared half-heartedly up at him before making a face. He wasn’t wrong…

 “Obviously. But she keeps coming back. This time though, I get the feeling that this case is bigger than usual.“

 Zephyra Evelynn was the Kafaira, the continental leader, of Noanric. As the title suggests, the entire continent was subject to her jurisdiction.

  Since she had such a large responsibility, Zephyra never traveled long distances. Instead, she set up meetings in letters and visited people in their dreams in order to share messages. That was one of the many unfortunate things about meeting her.

 Meeting Zephyra in my dreams meant that she had access to my subconscious mind; in which case, it didn’t really matter whether or not I tried to hide any of my thoughts from her. She could hear everything I thought when she visited me. The only thing she couldn’t see was my memories, which is something I was always grateful for. No matter what happened, the powerful Demon-Wolf never failed to put me on edge.

  Mini sighed and gave me a sympathetic look. “I understand why you’re avoiding it. Still, you shouldn’t shirk your responsibilities.” The beta sighed, giving me a sympathetic look before his expression turned sour. “Plus, you more than anyone should know that your actions have repercussions, especially with someone as powerful as Zephyra.”

  Part of me winced at Mini’s implications, but the other part of me knew he was right in fearing Zephyra.

 There was a common misconception about Zephyra throughout, not just the continent, but the entire world. Most people heard tales of her power and her incredible military feats as well as her political prowess and they immediately assumed that she was an all-powerful being that held the world in her paws.

  Personally, I knew Zephyra wasn’t as scary as everyone made her out to be. Perhaps that came as a result of actually seeing her outside of the paintings and fairy tales though.

  “Yeah, well, at least I can choose the time that we meet. I could stay up for days and avoid the meeting if I wanted to.” I muttered as I chugged what was left of my glass of water. Mini rolled his eyes.

  “You’re such a child.”

  “Yeah and you’re a man baby. That’s right. I just owned you.” I leaned back in my chair with a playful expression as Mini shook his head.

  Smiling, the beta stood to take my empty glass and walked back to the sink. I scooted my chair out with a small hint of reluctance and followed him.

  All jokes aside, I was still a little agitated, not only because of my meeting with Zephyra, but because I was reminded of domestic problems with my pack.

  Mini was hiding something from me. He had been for months now, both him and Wildcat. I could feel that there was something wrong between them, but neither of them would talk to me about it. That secret was the only reason Mini would be up so late with such a tainted quality to his scent, and it was the reason he was sick at the moment.

  I huffed a sigh and stuffed my hands in my pockets. “I can’t avoid it forever though. So, I might as well be a ‘responsible’ leader and go to bed.”

  “That’s probably a good idea.” Mini chuckled as he turned around to face me.

  I smiled before reaching out an arm, waiting for the traditional warmth. As usual, Mini endorsed me in a short side-hug. I considered scent marking him but decided against it. Tyler would be pissed if I tried that and, after tonight, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have the energy to tease him in the morning.

 “Get some sleep.” Mini murmured as we released each other. I shook my head and smiled.

  “I doubt that’ll happen for me. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen for you though.” I responded with a significant look at the beta.

  He nodded and ducked his head. “I know. I’ll try.”

 “Good night Mini.” I called as I turned to go upstairs.

 “Good night Evan.” Mini responded as I walked away.

  At the top of the stairs, there was a large open room that we used as a secondary sitting/study area. There were couches, TVs, and five desks crammed into the small space. On the left side of the stairs lay five rooms- each of which belonged to Wildcat, Mini, Basically, Panda, and Scotty- and a storage closet for blankets and sheets. The right side contained another five rooms- each of which belonged to me, Lui, Nogla, Terroriser, and Moo- along with the upstairs bathroom. All the alphas stayed closest to the staircase as a safety precaution. Therefore, I didn’t have to walk far to get to my room.

  As soon as I opened the door, I was met with a sweet vanilla scent. I looked over at the desk on the right side of the room to see a tiny flame waving at me from the confines of the glass around the candle.

  Moo must have visited. I thought to myself. With a smile, I glanced down the hallway to where his room sat. He knew me too well.

  With a satisfied hum, I stepped inside and quietly closed my door. It was dark in my room, but I had no trouble navigating my way through the darkness despite the piles of messes all over my floor.

 With careful steps, I walked over to the candle and gently blew it out before going over to my bed and flopping down. Admittedly, I was exhausted, so it was no surprise when I passed out almost immediately.

Notes:

I hope you guys enjoyed. I know there’s not a lot of plot related stuff right now but it definitely picks up speed here soon. This chapter and the next are mainly here to set the scene and do a bit of world building so, after that, it gets easier to read.

I need to explain a few things here. Firstly, most every demon has two seperate entities that live inside their head. They have the human side, split into a conscious and a subconscious, and the demon side. The demon side is pure instinct, containing every fight or flight response and all a person’s skill in everything related to survival. The human side is the rational side. Generally, the demon is less dominant and bows to the human in most cases. However, people who have anomalies in their instincts (i.e. subgenders or half breeds) tend to have a demon side that is equally as powerful, if not more powerful, than the human counterpart and that can sometimes be an issue. This is a common problem with subgenders because of the nature of how they were created, which I’ll explain at a later date.

In accordance to the dialogue that has quotations around italic marks, like whenever Marcel and Evan are talking in their animal form: I write these scenes like this because, when demons are in their animal forms, they don’t have a spoken language like humans. Their “speech” is actually a mixture of body language and sounds made in their throats (grunts, chuffs, and sometimes clicking of the tongue or teeth).

There are also two “need-to-know” terms which are: Kafaira and Lafaino. The first of these terms is simply a label for all continental leaders, of which there are seven in total according to each continent. The second refers to pack/tribe/clan leaders. The “o” and the “a” are relative to gender, just like certain words in Spanish. If either of the terms ends in “o”, it means the person is male. If it ends in an “a”, it means the person is female. There is also a third ending which is “e” for those who are genderless or both genders.

Thank you for reading <3

[alphonso4602-blog]

The Relevance Of Janitorial Cleaning

Desire to escape the urban area? Through ending up being an energetic community individual (each on HubPages, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest as well as Google.com+), you can easily help to develop a powerful readership and also drive more web traffic to your articles. The Soviet Union was actually a hellscape that kept its people captive, so the ones who could possibly run away accomplished this. To the United States where they might be even more free of charge to make a living only stay. The Ingalls' family adventure, nevertheless, no matter how dangerous or grueling it might seem to be to modern minds was actually certainly not unique. This nation surrounded through Norway in the west as well as Finland in the northeast, the Skagerrak Strait and also the Kattegat Inlet in the south west, along with the Baltic Ocean and the Gulf of Bothnia in the eastern. And then on Sunday, American hate happened cycle. Many people nourish off the exhilaration of living in a metropolitan area that is actually consistently abuzz with task, which surely describes Bangkok effectively. Every now and then a property owner will definitely select to set up a home kitchen sink that is actually yet another shade (like red or fitness-web.info blue or environment-friendly) however art work cooking area drains dark is actually still unusual. Chinese individuals seemingly look after quite concerning shedding their face. However, researchers coming from the Educational institution of The golden state have shown that when white supremacists are actually faced along with evidence of a dark forefather, they rush to explain away the end results. Although she gave a terrific stand out of color to her stylish white colored meet with her sulky great smoky eye and strappy gold Tom Ford Heels, her enchanting colored lips on its own helped her certainly not be actually washed out due to the white colored and also blonde combo. Among the literature sources which motivated this study is the research on Zimbabwean popular music done through Thomas Turino (2000 ). Assessing guide Veit Erlman takes note that the concentrate on Turino's research study is actually the development of cutting edge popular music sung by Thomas Mapfumo and also other Zimbabwean performers, the progression of this particular songs coming from its own origins in early Rhodesian time to the introduction of the urbane culture one of the dark middle-class in individual Zimbabwe as well as just how this generated metropolitan prominent types modeled on effects coming from the Mills Brothers to Elvis Presley". Your firm can definitely employ business in these 2 nations to outsource part of your company or even all of it. Nonetheless, you ought to keep in mind that you must pick a contracting out provider that supplies top quality and skillfully performed tasks. In our industrial mentor our team keep 3 factors in thoughts: to begin with, that the trainee will be actually therefore informed that he will be actually permitted to meet conditions as they exist currently, in the aspect of the South where he lives-in a phrase, to become capable to perform the many things which the world desires carried out; 2nd, that every pupil that finishes coming from the institution should possess enough skill, combined with cleverness and moral character, to enable him to earn a living for himself as well as others; 3rd, to deliver every grad out sensation and recognizing that work is actually beautiful-to and also sensible bring in each one affection labour rather than making an effort to escape it. Along with the agricultural instruction which our team give to young men, and the training given to our gals in every the normal residential jobs, our experts now teach a number of girls in farming every year. I feared, nevertheless, that the way may likewise level for me to talk straight to a depictive Southern white target market. Your short articles might be actually hidden for policies transgressions, yet they are actually still available to you in My Account In some cases, if we discover a design of violations, each one of your short articles might be private at once. About this time I came back to Kentucke along with my family members; and also listed below, to prevent an analysis into my conduct, the reader being actually just before educated of my bringing my loved ones to Kentucke, I am under the requirement of notifying him that, throughout my bondage along with the Indians, my spouse, who despaired of ever before viewing me again, expecting the Indians had placed a duration to my lifestyle, maltreated along with the hardships of the nation, as well as bereaved of me, her only happiness, had, prior to I came back, transported my household and also goods, on equines, through the wilderness, among a wide variety of threats, to her daddy's residence, in North-Carolina. What is actually just as crucial, every one of the students works daily at some industry, in order to get skill and also the love of job, in order that when he heads out coming from the organization he is prepared to establish individuals along with whom he mosts likely to work a suitable instance in the concern of field.

The put off fulfillment of the conclusive feasibility study, depending on to the company, are going to certainly not result in any type of delays in the estimated durations for project development and also appointing. " We believe this is a logical decision for the U.S. Team of Electricity provided Clean Pipes Electricity Allies' evident desertion of the suggested Plains & Eastern HVDC venture.

[the-record-newspaper]

General: ‘Israel is ready’

Brig. Gen. (Res.) Yehiel Gozal

From Record Staff Reports

Israeli Defense Force Brig. Gen. (Res.) Yehiel Gozal says his country’s troops are ready for whatever may happen.

“We are more prepared and have more technology than we ever,” Gozal said. “As far as military capability, we are one of the strongest military powers in the Middle East for sure. Our strategy is not to wait for them at the border.”

Gozal was interviewed via phone by The Record on Thursday afternoon. The interview was arranged and some of the questions were formulated by Record columnist Earl Cox, an expert on Israeli and Middle Eastern affairs.

Gozal was in Wilkes County Friday morning. Then, Bart Peacher with "It is Time Israel" along with Cox, Israel's Ambassador of Goodwill, hosted a "meet and greet" with Gozal. About 30 people attended the event which was held at the Apple Tree Lodge in Moravian Falls. After this meeting, Gozal and Cox left to visit television stations in three states and hold several meetings, sharing information about the current situation in Israel and the Middle East from an insider's perspective.

                         Gozal with Earl Cox at last Friday’s gathering

Tiny Israel faces many threats – Palestinians, Syrians, and Iranians – but members of its armed forces have for decades proven to be fearless fighters.

And, with the recent rocket attacks near the Gaza Strip, there is speculation that a new war

may be brewing.

“When you take a risk of launching rockets into Israel, it can escalate immediately,” Gozal said. “If a rocket (for example) were to happen to hit an Israeli school, it would mean they had gone too far. They can’t always control their resolve. One mistake could lead to a war they do not want.”

Gozal has an impressive resume.

He is a senior military professional with extensive experience in solving strategic security, diplomatic, and business challenges, including an international position based in the U.S. and France.

Gozal is currently the CEO of the Yahad - United for the Israeli Soldiers Fund. “Yahad” – is the joint organization of AWIS (Association for the Wellbeing of Israel's Soldiers) and The Libi Fund, the official body for donations which benefit the soldiers of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) with all overhead costs financed by Israel’s Ministry of Defense, 100 percent of all donations are utilized for their objectives without any overhead. He served as chairman of The Paratroops’ Heritage Association – Israel from 2010 to 2018.

He is national director of Friends of the IDF - USA from 2003 to 2008. The Friends of the IDF (FIDF) is a charitable organization that raises funds on behalf of the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces and their families. As National Director, Brig. Gen. Gozal has: Launched long- and short-term planning, with metrics to measure success; changed organizational and board culture, introducing a fiscal transparency that has led to greater trust, commitment, and individual investment; established an endowment to cover operational costs so that 100 percent of funds raised go to programs that directly benefit soldiers; created and implemented procedures to increase efficiencies, reduce expenses, enhance productivity, and improve employee retention; raised the organization’s profile in the U.S.A., Central and South America.

By instituting those changes, FIDF has earned a 4-star (highest possible) rating by Charity Navigator, America's premier independent charity evaluator. In addition, FIDF has:                                                           more than doubled its donor base; more than tripled its annual revenues to $61 million; broken fund-raising records – including a one-evening net of $26 million in pledges; begun the construction in Israel of 50-plus capital projects of more than $1 million each; and more than tripled the number of scholarships awarded to veteran soldiers.

In 2000, Brig. Gen. was appointed IDF Defense Attaché to France, Spain, and Portugal. While representing the Israeli Ministry of Defense, he forged productive working relationships across political lines that provided critical access and interchange among all levels of government. During his tenure, he facilitated agreements between the French Army and the IDF on joint, as well as created business opportunities for Israeli defense industries. Brig. Gen. Gozal also established warm ties with France’s Jewish community, which led to increased tourism, immigration, and fund raising opportunities.  

From 1976 – 2000, Brig. Gen. Gozal worked his way up from paratrooper to Chief of Staff of the Southern Command. During that time, he developed expertise in both the execution and logistics of high-intensity warfare (commanding five divisions with 50,000 soldiers), as well as the strategy and management of low-intensity conflicts (commanding special-forces/anti-terror units).  In 1982, during the first Lebanon War, Gozal received the IDF Citation of Honor for Bravery in Combat, when he was wounded twice and still refused to abandon his soldiers during combat.

Gozal speaks Hebrew, English and French with a full working knowledge of each. He was born in Tel-Aviv, Israel, in 1957. His wife is Ayelet and their children are May, Eden, Romy and Adam.

As for recent events and possible upcoming scenarios, Gozal said, “This takes you back to 1973 and the Yom Kippur War, and it was a big victory.”

But, politics is the problems.

“I cannot assure that the politicians in the world will support us,” he said. “If it was up to me, we can stand and be determined and face every threat we have in the Middle East.

When asked, “How the international community can be supportive of Israel's soldiers who are fighting a very difficult enemy?” Gozal answered, “I would say it would be much easier for us if there was less interference. The problem is that some of the countries and states in the world, especially in the west, think they know how to solve our problems when they really don’t. We know how to protect ourselves.”

He added, “I don’t think we need to prove who is right and who is wrong. As long as they won’t be involved it’s better for us. If Europeans want to help, let them talk about peace, not about what Israel is doing wrong. Israel wants peace.”

Gozal has duel citizenship in the U.S. and Israel. When asked, “Why would an American living a relatively predicable and comfortable life volunteer to become a lone soldier (one who was not born in Israel or is not Jewish) in Israel's army, leaving his family, friends and culture?”

He said that there are around 7,000 “lone soldiers” in the IDF. About 4,000 are from other countries including the U.S., China, Russia, Brazil and Argentina.”

“That’s something unique,” Gozal said. “It means a lot for them to do this. When you serve in the Israeli Defense Forces, you are sending a unique message. It’s the military of God. We are, as a military, defending Israel, defending the Holy Land. It’s a very special mission to come and to serve and to do things that affect the whole world.

My responsibility as CEO (of Yahad) is to support those lone soldiers in Israel. We became their family. Some of them have been killed. They’ve sacrificed their lives to come and fight for Israel. And, it’s not for salary. It’s a real privilege to be a young man or woman to come and to be able to say, ‘I serve God.’”

[script-a-world]

(1/3) Do you have any resources or advice for writing about a ruler who has multiple wives? I have an idea for a book where the MCs father married the daughters of the kings of three neighboring kingdoms with the idea that while the heir might not be of the blood of all of them if they are raised together with their half blood siblings and by their step-mothers they will view all four kingdoms as being home. In addition, the first three children besides the main heir will, regardless of gender

(2/3) will either be heir to their mother's respective kingdoms if there isn't already one or will be added to the line of succession and given advisory roles to their oldest sibling. Basically, regardless of which child sits on the main throne their will have strong ties to the neighboring kingdoms creating a coalition through blood as well as treaties. The wives will have equal power to the king but, I'm more than a bit concerned that no matter how I right them the very act of making the three(3/3) queens sister wives will make the whole thing extremely misogynistic or at the very least I will be accused of insulting middle eastern/Indian culture by either unintentionally using racist/bigoted tropes or just being plain ignorant about the subject. I have tried looking for information of the subject but, I've had a hard time finding information that isn't written with a western bias or isn't flat out porn so any help you guys can give me would be much appreciated.

Werew

I’m sorry it took so long you get to your question, nonnie! As it’s a delicate subject, I wanted to attempt to do it justice, and it took a little longer than most!

Disclaimer: I am not polyamorous, Have only some background knowledge about this, and I am in no way an authority. Nonetheless, here are some thoughts that I have about this situation. Though the arrangement sounds like a great idea to promote peace and prosperity between the kingdoms, it also, at face value, dings all my 'implausible' alarms. In order for this situation to have arisen peacefully, it seems like the kingdoms will need to be such close friends/neighbors/allies that they are all chill with this arrangement and its ability to bring them closer together politically... and even the possibility that this single, highly powerful family that has been formed will one day just straight up decide to amalgamate the kingdoms. Most nations are separate from their neighbors because there are inherent cultural, ideological, etc differences between them, and even if they like their neighbors, most sovereign nations are not going to be chill with the possibility of one day being dissolved into another nation. I'm not saying that the situation is impossible, but I do think that you need to answer the following questions in order to make it seem plausible:What event or events have made these nations so friendly? Were they once part of a singular entity, and if so, do they still share most of the same culture? If they're culturally close enough to potentially tolerate a merger, why aren't they already one nation? If they were ever one, why did they split? Is there an outside force for them to unite against that makes their differences seem minor? Do they still have quibbles in spite of their friendly status?Or, if the above questions don't seem like the situation that you want:What events lead to the king with the three wives being in his position of greater power? Were the other kingdoms forced to cooperate with this arrangement? Are there forces threatening to tear it apart, or forces threatening them all if they don't somehow force themselves to work together? What are the opinions about this among the other three nations' courts, and how do they differ from one another?Basically, what I'm getting at is this: I don't see this marital situation as being entirely impossible, but it doesn't sound to me like something that a bunch of kingdoms are just going to arbitrarily agree to unless there are some major forces at play that make this alliance more appealing than the alternatives. Though simply marrying off some daughters to the same guy won't immediately grant him a significant amount of power, because of the potential for his children to inherit other thrones, there's a chance down the road that one or more of these kingdoms could essentially forfeit their sovereignty by agreeing to this. Generally, different nations have their own interests to look after, and even if none of those interests are cruel, or corrupt, or overly greedy, they are still going to conflict in some ways just because each kingdom's situation (resources, population, requirements, etc) is going to be different. It is normally in a nation's interest to keep sovereignty so that nothing in their borders can be controlled by an outside force and they cannot be forced into a disadvantageous situation.For this reason, if I were to read this book, I would be disappointed if there wasn't any tension created by this marital situation, or by the reasons for it in the first place.Now, on to the more personal situation of the royal family: again, I don't think it's impossible for this to be a happy, advantageous marriage for all of them, I just think that it's implausible and that, like with the political situation, you're going to have to do a little work in order to make it believable.

This is definitely a political marriage, and it’s up to you whether you want it to remain strictly political or include some degree of romance between the king and the wives.

Having multiple people involved in a romantic relationship, in a political marriage, or in a marriage that is some of both is going to require a lot of careful thought, and there are going to be a lot of dynamics at play--and this complexity will only increase as the number of children increases. First of all, it seems unlikely that the king and all of his wives consider this to be the best possible situation for them personally and romantically. Maybe one or more of them is happiest in a polya relationship, but maybe one or more of them would 100% prefer a monogamous relationship. Maybe they don't all love each other romantically, but cooperate in a friendly manner for the sake of the children and their various kingdoms.

Also, think about how they solve conflicts between themselves, whether personal or political. Having a ruling duo can result in the rulers being on opposite sides of a political issue, or even just at odds because of a fight they’ve had recently. The opportunities for conflict multiply when there are four people involved.

What I'm getting at is something like this: if I read this book and all three wives saw each other as friends/sisters, each loved the king, he loved them all back, and they all lived happy, carefree lives... I would probably throw the book across the room. I think that it is unlikely that all of the wives will be in this for the romance, definitely not above all. Maybe they all get along, all live pretty happily, and all see each other as family... but keep in mind that their different personalities (reinforced by different cultural backgrounds) will mean that between any two members of this marriage, there will be a completely unique dynamic. I would be much happier if, instead of the above example, any number of these situations was the case:

The king had a favorite or at least a certain amount of preference between his wives.

Two or more of the wives had romantic and/or sexual attachments to each other

At least one dynamic between them is purely political; maybe one wife has no romantic feelings for the husband but agreed to the marriage for other reasons

One or more of these people are unhappy about some aspect of their lives pertaining to the marriage.

This is not to say that I don't think that happiness is possible among these four people; I just don't think that it will be easy and natural, I don’t think they will all have the same views about their relationship, and I don't think it's likely that they were all 100% down for this marriage before it happened. Because of the political nature of this marriage, one or more of them might not have had a choice. One or more of them might have had a choice, but their decision was based entirely on political factors or some other logical reason rather than an emotional one.Keep in mind that different people will want different things in life. One wife might be uninterested in being in power, but is happy when she and her children are well taken care of. One wife might be interested in nothing other than running the country, and her main reason for having children is to further her own position. One might be in love with the king. One might be in love with one of the other wives. One might be aromantic or asexual or both, and is happy in a loveless marriage because it provides other things in life. Any of the things I just listed could also apply to the king instead.

As for whether this is inherently misogynistic... my honest answer would have to be “I’m not sure.” With your situation as it stands, there is no getting around the fact that the king holds more power than his wives, but I think that with some context, you can reduce the implications of this. If you mention a historical example of a queen having power and having multiple spouses/consorts (male or female) to show that this situation is not purely patriarchal, that might have the effect that you’re wanting. I would suggest changing one or more of the wives into a husband instead--but if that person is cis, that would remove their ability to have biological children and might get in the way of the point of the marriage in the first place. Having a trans man as one of the king’s spouses might have the effect you’re looking for, but I am honestly not sure whether having a trans character in that situation would be invalidating of that person’s identity; I suspect it would depend heavily on how you present it.

I highly recommend going to @scriptlgbt with your question and further questions you may have about representation; even if you choose not to make any of the possible changes that I have listed, your original situation at least has things in common with polyamorous relationships, which they are able to discuss with a lot more knowledge than I am.

Also, keep in mind that there’s nothing wrong with having misogynistic elements and situations in your story, as long as you address them as such. Having a perfect situation can make your story less interesting than some good conflict and tension over inherent issues present in the system. There is a difference between having the characters hold certain beliefs, and condoning them as the author. Depending on what POV you write from and your style, it can be fairly easy to make it clear that the characters’ views are not correct.

@scripttorture had some more background knowledge on this subject than I did, and had the following suggestions: “I think that jumping just to modern polya relationships might not........cover it exactly. I know that multiple partners was a big thing in Western Africa, China and the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire would probably be easiest to find stuff on and the West African stuff I know most about is errrrrrrrr complicated in that the King could have several thousand 'wives' most of whom were basically just the female branch of the army. Reading through the question in its entirety it actually screams 'Ghana' to me, which had both polygamy and matrilineal inheritance. I can't think of a book title off the top of my head but Yaa Asantewaa the Queen Mother who led the Ashanti army against the British might be a good person to look up.”

I'm sorry for the length of this reply and the rambliness of it, but I hope that my reasoning makes sense and helps you to write your story a little better!

[sciencespies]

Christmas Across Indian Country, During the Pandemic and Before

https://sciencespies.com/history/christmas-across-indian-country-during-the-pandemic-and-before/

Christmas Across Indian Country, During the Pandemic and Before

Smithsonian Voices National Museum of the American Indian

Christmas Across Indian Country, During the Pandemic and Before

December 22nd, 2020, 11:00AM / BY

Dennis Zotigh

“Hogan in the Snow,” ca. 1985. Painted by Robert Draper (Diné [Navajo], 1938–2000). Chinle, Navajo Nation, Arizona. 26/6481 (National Museum of the American Indian)

The introduction of Christianity to the original peoples of the Americas can be controversial in Native circles. Europeans brought Christianity to this half of the world and imposed it on Native communities, knowingly replacing existing spiritual beliefs with the beliefs taught in the bible. Cruelty and brutality often accompanied the indoctrination of Native peoples. Yet it is also true that some tribes, families, and individuals accepted the bible and Jesus’ teachings voluntarily.

Music played an important part in converting Native people, establishing their practice of worship, and teaching them how to celebrate the Christmas season. Perhaps the earliest North American Christmas carol was written in the Wyandot language of the Huron-Wendat people. Jesous Ahatonhia (“Jesus, He is born”)—popularly known as Noël huron or the Huron Carol—is said by oral tradition to have been written in 1643 by the Jesuit priest Jean de Brébeuf. The earliest known transcription was made in the Huron-Wendat settlement at Lorette, Quebec, in the 1700s.

During the 1920s, the Canadian choir director J. E. Middleton rewrote the carol in English, using images from the Eastern Woodlands to tell the Christmas story: A lodge of broken bark replaces the manger, the baby Jesus is wrapped in rabbit skin, hunters take the place of the shepherds, and chiefs bring gifts of fox and beaver furs. A much more accurate translation by the linguist John Steckley, an adopted member of the Huron-Wendat Nation of Loretteville, makes clear that the carol was written not only to teach early Catholic converts within the Huron Confederacy the story of Jesus’ birth, but also to explain its significance and to overturn earlier Native beliefs.

Here are the first verses of the carol in Wyandot and Steckley’s complete English translation:

Estenniayon de tsonwe Iesous ahatonnia onn’ awatewa nd’ oki n’ onyouandaskwaentak ennonchien eskwatrihotat n’onyouandiyonrachatha Iesous ahatonnia, ahatonnia. Iesous ahatonnia.

Ayoki onkiennhache eronhiayeronnon iontonk ontatiande ndio sen tsatonnharonnion Warie onn’ awakweton ndio sen tsatonnharonnion Iesous ahatonnia, ahatonnia. Iesous ahatonnia.

Have courage, you who are humans; Jesus, he is born Behold, the spirit who had us as prisoners has fled Do not listen to it, as it corrupts the spirits of our minds Jesus, he is born

They are spirits, sky people, coming with a message for us They are coming to say, Rejoice (Be on top of life) Marie, she has just given birth. Rejoice Jesus, he is born

Three have left for such, those who are elders Tichion, a star that has just appeared on the horizon leads them there He will seize the path, he who leads them there Jesus, he is born

As they arrived there, where he was born, Jesus the star was at the point of stopping, not far past it Having found someone for them, he says, Come here! Jesus, he is born

Behold, they have arrived there and have seen Jesus, They praised (made a name) many times, saying, Hurray, he is good in nature They greeted him with reverence (greased his scalp many times), saying, Hurray Jesus, he is born

We will give to him praise for his name, Let us show reverence for him as he comes to be compassionate to us. It is providential that you love us and wish, I should adopt them. Jesus, he is born.

All throughout Indian Country, Native people have gathered in churches, missions, and temples to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ by singing carols and hymns in their Native languages. In some churches, the story of Jesus’ birth is recited in Native languages. Some Native churches host nativity plays using Native settings and actors to re-enact the birth of Jesus Christ. Among Catholics, Christmas Eve Mass traditionally begins in Indian communities at midnight and extends into the early hours of Christmas Day. In tipis, hogans, and houses, Native American Church members also hold Christmas services, ceremonies that begin on Christmas Eve and go on all night until Christmas morning.

In contemporary times, traditional powwow singing groups have rearranged Christmas songs to appeal to Native audiences. A humorous example is Warscout’s NDN 12 Days of Christmas, from their album Red Christmas. Native solo artists also perform Christmas classics in Native languages. Rhonda Head (Cree), for example, has recorded Oh Holy Night, and Jana Mashpee (Lumbee and Tuscarora) Winter Wonderland sung in Ojibwe.

Native communities host traditional tribal dances and powwows on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Among the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest special dances take place, such as buffalo, eagle, antelope, turtle, and harvest dances. The Eight Northern Pueblos perform Los Matachines—a special dance-drama mixing North African Moorish, Spanish, and Pueblo cultures—takes place on Christmas Eve, along with a pine-torch procession.

In an earlier year, Grandson Maheengun Atencio and Grandmother Edith Atencio prepared for the Matachines Christmas Eve dance at Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, New Mexico. Due to the pandemic, many ceremonial dances across Indian Country have been postponed, as Native people are very concerned for the safety of their elders. (Photo courtesy of Maheengun Atencio, used with permission)

For Native artisans, this is traditionally the busy season as they prepare special Christmas gift items. Artists and craftsmen and women across the country create beadwork, woodwork, jewelry, clothing, basketry, pottery, sculpture, paintings, leatherwork, and feather work for special Christmas sales and art markets that are open to the public. For the 15 years before 2020, the National Museum of the American Indian held its annual Native Art Market in New York and Washington a few weeks before Christmas.

In many communities and homes, Christian customs are interwoven with Native culture as a means of expressing Christmas in a uniquely Native way. The importance of giving is a cultural tradition among most tribes. Even in times of famine and destitution, Native people have made sure their families, the old, and orphans were taken care of. This mindset prevails into the present. Gift-giving is appropriate whenever a tribal social or ceremonial gathering takes place.

In the same way, traditional Native foods are prepared for this special occasion. Salmon, walleye, shellfish, moose, venison, elk, mutton, geese, rabbit, wild rice, collards, squash, pine nuts, red and green chile stews, pueblo bread, piki bread, and bannock (fry bread) are just a few of the things that come to mind. Individual tribes and Indian organizations sponsor Christmas dinners for their elders and communities prior to Christmas. Tribal service groups and warrior societies visit retirement homes and shelters to provide meals for their tribesmen and women on Christmas Day.

According to the Urban Indian Health Commission, nearly seven out of every ten American Indians and Alaska Natives—2.8 million people—live in or near cities, and that number is growing. During the Christmas holidays, many urban Natives travel back to their families, reservations, and communities to reconnect and reaffirm tribal bonds. They open presents and have big family meals like other American Christians.

For the last few years, Native friends have shared their families’ Christmas plans and traditions with the museum. This extraordinary year, we asked how the Covid-19 pandemic is affecting their families and communities. Those replies are given first here, then the answers we received in 2019 and 2018. Thank you to everyone who took time to tell us a little about their lives.

I live in Upstate New York. Most of my adult life I hardly had Christmas with my family, because I was deployed, stationed overseas, or too far from home. It’s nothing new to be with just my immediate family. So, for anyone who says they can’t have Christmas with family, please consider the men and women in uniform who can’t this year and ones before who weren’t able to.

Topeka, Kansas: I’m a middle school history teacher, and we are in remote education. Our Covid numbers are some of the highest in the country. No churches are open, so no services. Most stores close early, and there is a restaurant and bar curfew. No congregating of any sort is allowed, and we have not only mask mandates, but other rules that have curtailed any events.

The saddest thing I saw today was that our Prairie Band Potawatomi neighbors just a few miles north of us can’t sell enough of their meat, so they are advertising selling it at the Rez gas station in bulk. They’re hoping to break even, but likely will take a loss. Covid is taking a toll everywhere, but here in Indian Country it’s so real. Many of my students, including my tribal students, are facing a very difficult Christmas. Our school has adopted a family whose parents asked only for a kitchen trash can, storage container, and cleaning supplies for gifts. It truly is a hard Christmas.

Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico: We will be fasting for the winter solstice as usual here in Zuni. No change for us, the whole village will be in seclusion and praying for 10 days. So no big change from the lockdowns. Stores and business are usually closed during that time.

Elgin, Oklahoma: My husband is in the hospital with Covid, pneumonia, and blood clots in his lungs. I am trying to keep the Christmas spirit alive for our kids. We cannot go to the hospital to see him, and that is driving me nuts.

I usually host a family Christmas cookie exchange party each year. It’s a time our relatives come together, despite our busy lives, to spend a day of fun, laughter, and love during Christmas, and it was canceled this year due to the pandemic. I cannot spend Christmas with my sisters or dad because of the pandemic. I just have to drop their gifts off at the porch. We cannot get together on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day to exchange gifts and partake in the Christmas holiday.

When I get on social media, I see so many people asking for prayers because someone they love has tested positive for Covid, or their loved one is in the hospital because of Covid, like my husband, or they lost a loved one due to Covid. I just pray for everyone.

Garden Grove, California: With California in another lockdown, we will be stuck in our homes for Christmas. We will only be able to call our relatives this year and wish them a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Unfortunately most gifts have to be mailed out and not hand delivered, so we can’t really see the excitement our gifts give to others. I’m hoping next Christmas will be way better for all of us.

Cherokee, living in Spain: I do not celebrate Christian ways but respect the ones who do. My kids, grands, and I had covid-19 by early March, without much trouble, so we hugged all year through. Sending much love and many prayers to each and all back home.

Duluth, Minnesota: No impact. We’re still making homemade gifts and will gather like we do every other day. We have a social contract.

In Manitoba, Canada, we are under a Red Zone, which means a lot of restrictions when it comes to gatherings. People from this province have traveled to Kenora, Ontario, and Yorkton/Regina, Saskatchewan, to shop for the holidays. Toys R Us is the go-to place, but some orders are not filled, and you’re given a rain check. Places such as Walmart stopped selling anything outside of essentials.

As for my home, my child is not traveling this year to spend the holidays with his dad’s side of the family. Flying is out of the question, and driving would be hazardous, not to mention each province has its own high numbers. We can’t even go home to our reserve due to limited access to the communities. Outside of our own home, we have declined dinner invitations due to social distancing and have made alternate plans to stay home and have a hot meal.

No matter what, I am with my child, and that is all that matters to me. I don’t really care for the commercialization of Christmas. I think it’s best to have money in case of an emergency. We had a major storm that took down power lines last year. Who knows what this year will bring?

All in all, I wish everyone a safe holiday. Prayers to those who lost loved ones or have loved ones whose lives have been impacted by Covid. My gift is spending the holidays with my li’l sidekick and creating our own memories. Be safe!

On the eastern coastal lands here in North Carolina, no friends are sharing the rides to the winery for the Christmas decorations and lights. Celebrations have been thrown out the window, and, as restaurant gatherings are gone, so is the laughter and good cheer with friends while sharing a memory of the past year. Hibernation is occurring as no doorways are opening. Shopping and wrapping gifts are gone, even the homemade ones—the pandemic has closed employment. Less making cookies and cakes–the oven surely won’t be used for just li’l ole me.

And it’s okay. Life is going to turn around. What Christmas will bring is to celebrate with more phone calls, including a face-to-face; chatting on social media; wishing all the best of the holidays; dreaming of a new world in 2021. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Gloucestershire in the UK: All Christmas and solstice plans involving travel are canceled as the virus is still spreading. The government was allowing travel for Christmas period, but we don’t trust what they say. If people travel, it will be out of control again.

New Hampshire: Typically I take baked goods and homemade Christmas presents to friends. I will often spend time with them catching up. I also send out 50 or so Christmas cards. None of that this year. I will see my children and granddaughter though, as we live in the same town and have been seeing each other since the beginning. I am sad I can’t spread my usual greetings this year when we all so need it.

Fort Hall, Idaho: We generally have a Christmas Eve gathering with family. Not this year.

Del Muerto, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation: The 76th year of family hosting a community Christmas has been canceled. Treats, toys, and winter jackets will not be provided, but it’s all for safety precaution.

South Dakota: I have not done Christmas or any holidays for over 24 years as part of my de-colonization. We are so brainwashed from childhood. The real tests are triggers like certain songs. It’s a hard journey to undertake. It’s another level of healing the traumas of Christianity and family beliefs, however, and I made it.

Louisville, Kentucky: Well, as Christmas comes around, I always look forward to going to my last living grandmother’s. Like 90 years old. Normally we would go to see her and the whole family—all the cousins and, yes, even aunties. Ayeee. Lol. We would all eat and open presents and chat. But this year presents are being sent in the mail. We may have a family computer time face to face. It isn’t the same as giving my grandmother a hug and her seeing all her kids, grandkids, and great grandkids. It saddens my heart. She is at an age, and we never know when it’s time to be called home. So I know these times are important. The pandemic as made a saddened Christmas time.

Manitoba, Canada: First time ever not all congregating at Mom’s house. We are having our smaller dinners in our homes. However, this Santa will be delivering gifts Christmas Eve.

Living in Southern California has made celebrating or doing anything for the holidays nearly impossible. We are on total lockdown. Even going out to buy decorations has not happened for me. Many family members have been unemployed for five or six months, so we are all financially unable to help each other. And because of the lockdown, we can’t even get together in person to support each other. We are blessed, however, to all be healthy.

Cloquet, Minnesota: We are not having a family get together. First time ever in my life.

Edmonton, Alberta: No travel to family in the north and south. My 75-year-old mom is depressed. My grandbaby will not see his dad’s side, which affects bonding. Normally we have a big Christmas meal and share with others. Not this year, though.

Lac du Flambeau, Wisconsin: No visiting from friends and relatives on Christmas Eve, and the big Christmas dinner feast is just for immediate family. Once again, I can’t show off my baby grandson, who still hasn’t met some of his relatives.

Tualatin, Oregon: We are already isolated and have been practicing social distancing and wearing our masks because it is mandated, so we plan to have our Christmas as usual. Our children and grandkids will be with us to celebrate. We are a very small family and living here all these 30-plus years, it’s no different than before. It’s always been just us. We’ve grown from a family of five to ten. God has blessed us so. Aho Dawkee—thank you, God!

Holiday ornaments created by schoolchildren for the Capitol Christmas Tree Campaign to decorate a holiday tree at the museum on the National Mall. From left to right: Three ornaments made by unnamed Pikumi (Blackfeet Nation) students, 2008. Blackfeet Reservation, Montana. 26/7446, 26/7451 and 26/7454. An ornament representing a rattle made by Shelbey (family name not recorded, Yavapai), 2009. Prescott, Arizona. 26/7716. A snowman ornament made by Ayanna (family name not recorded, Tohono O’odham), 2009. Arizona. 26/7717 (National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian)

White Swan, Washington, sent on the winter solstice: “This is NDN New Year (the shortest day of year), but it’s close to Christmas so we still have gift exchanges. Santa shows up at our longhouse; he also has 2 with him, our version of Krampus. I’m not sure how far back this goes. Maybe it’s Bigfoot and is s’posed to scare the kids into being good. My dad used to dress that way and come in with Santa. I don’t know who does it now. Some of my family thought it was me, but I think it’s two of my cousins.”

Miami, Oklahoma: “Seneca–Cayuga social dances with horned rattles and supper at my sister’s house. Oh, can’t forget our coins for playing some Indian dice and playing Cards against Humanity! Lol. Lots of fun and laughter.”

Albuquerque, New Mexico: “Spending Christmas Eve in the village of Taos Pueblo, building and then watching the bonfires burn, and watching the procession of the Virgin Mary.”

Minneapolis, Minnesota: “Honoring our relatives with a memorial horse ride called the Dakota 38 + 2. On December 26, 1862, at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, in Dakota County, 38 Dakota men were hung all at once. It is recorded as the largest mass execution in U S. history. This is how most of us here in Mni Sota celebrate this time of the year.”

Southern Manitoba, Canada: “Last year we as a family spent the day together and went to a movie theater all day. On the 26th, we made a meal and set out a spirit dish for the Dakota 38 + 2.”

Nevada City, California: “I’m a Choctaw Jew, so I celebrate by having a gift-card drive, and going to temple and Christmas church! My grandfather is in a home, so I spend time with him and whoever else is close.”

Kents Store, Virginia: “We don’t do Christmas, but we have a solstice celebration and teach Abenaki farming at a local school. It’s part of their winter festival including other people and faiths into their curriculum.”

Phoenix, Arizona: “I will go to my reservation, Eastern Band if Cherokee in North Carolina, and exchange gifts with my family. My dad is 84 years of age, so I always make it a priority to go back there. Everyone will come to Daddy’s house to eat turkey and ham. And whatever else my sister cooks.”

Disautel, Washington: “Leading up to Christmas we take grandson out to chop down a tree. Let him help pick it out. Hunt for a deer. Then a family dinner at home. Kids come to visit to get their presents. Tree’s lit up. Decorations. Candy and snacks.”

Tesuque Pueblo, New Mexico: “Spending time at the Pueblo plaza house, watching the winter dances, being with all the family, sharing wonderfully prepared food by the women in the family. There is always laughter, kids running around, and friends dropping by. The usual! Lol.”

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada: “We’ll spend Christmas with family, sharing a meal and putting out a feast plate for our loved ones who passed away.”

Montross, Virginia: “My family recognizes our elders community members and recalls those who, though gone, have impacted our lives in a good way.”

Edmondton, Alberta, Canada: “Now that I’m a grandma, I spend it with my grandbaby. Usually my daughter, mom, and nephew, too. If I can, we cook (a lot) and eat together. In the past, we have shared with police officers or corrections staff where I used to work. If there is a round dance close, I go there.”

Portland, Oregon: “Donate time at the local veterans shelter.”

Warm Springs, Oregon: “I usually stay home with my granddaughters. We spend the day with each other and enjoy a nice hot fire with delicious foods. We understand that this is not our holiday, but we have adapted it to suit us.”

Apache, Oklahoma: “Christmas Eve: Attending Petarsy Indian Mission in good ol’ Richards Spur, Oklahoma. We get greetings from the Indi’n Santa who brings all the good lil Indi’n boys & girls presents. We sing Comanche hymns, and everyone receives a brown bag of fruit, hard Christmas candies, and nuts. Then we go home to eat Uthivah (Mexican) food and play monopoly till some gets mad. In the morning the kids must sing a Christmas carol before they are allowed to open presents, and we only hope no one sings the Twelve Days of Christmas! The day will be followed by a Christmas dinner.”

Santa Fe, New Mexico: “Since we aren’t Christians, my mama called it Big Winter Give-Away Day. She always put up an NDN tree full of Native ornaments made by her friends—tiny beaded moccasins, little pottery angels, wee cradleboards, miniature painted rawhides, and a very special felt beaded turtle that her mother made. Our angel was always one of us girls‘ little Indian dollies.

“Now that Mom‘s footprints have joined the others in the Milky Way, I put her tree up. She taught us to be generous, ‛to give until it hurt.’ It is this lesson that I pass to my sons, not only for one day, but as a way of being in this world.”

Winter Haven, California: “With my little family. We don’t do gifts just have a feast and spend quality time.”

Hood River, Oregon: “We spend Christmas centered on our Creator, whose name is Jesus Christ, who brought our people to this great promised land. As an Elder, I gather and teach my children my life’s lessons and the reality of resurrection and life after this mortal life because of this Jesus Christ. I cry out of gratitude for his tender mercies. I smile because I see the light of this knowledge in my children’s eyes.”

“After we put the star on the tree, open our simple gifts for one another, eat and laugh with one another, we kneel and pray as my father and grandfather did, carrying on our tradition of gratitude, the tradition of knowing of a greater power. My children have learned that Christmas is not the only day for prayer and sincere repentance. We follow after our Creator, Jesus Christ, with all our imperfections, and because of him we can be forgiven. How holy is His name! We prepare to meet Him, for He will come again, soon.”

Hąwe Wakąndeyinge Tųnye Girorisge! (Merry Christmas!) This Native nativity scene took place at the Otoe–Missouria Tribal Complex near Red Rock, Oklahoma, as part of their Light up the Encampment Grounds event. The animal figures represent the seven clans of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe. Instead of a manger, a cradleboard holds the newborn Jesus. (Used with permission, courtesy of Johnnie Dee Childs)

Tama, Iowa: “As a special day of feasting, we first set aside prayer and food offerings in the sacred fire for relatives before our own indulgence. The respect is that you allow your remembrances—those who have passed—to eat first. Oftentimes with the greater ghost feasts you are also sending prayers for good health, long life—for yourself as well as for your family, plus any others. It is promised that your requests will be granted.”

Southern Maryland: “Our Elders Council (Choptico) have our winter gathering and feast close to or on the day of winter solstice. This year’s menu: Seafood and root veggies. We still have a traditional Christmas dinner for the extended family. Historically Maryland Natives were proselytized by Jesuits and many, if not most, tribal members remain Catholic today.”

Barona, California: “This year I’m doing tamales, meat pies, and empanadas! Someone else made tamales and I’m making the rest.”

Carnegie, Oklahoma: “I remember when we would camp at Red Church or White Church Christmas week. There would be snow on the ground. We slept in the tent with our Ah-Pea (grandmother), and people would get up and cook in the dining hall all three meals. All those paper sacks would be lined up in the church and filled with fruit and Christmas candy. Everyone got a treat sack and missionary gift. Church ran late; sometimes we’d sleep on the floor.

“I wouldn’t trade anything for those days. Singing and praying in Kiowa. Some beautiful memories. They have all gone on now. Thank you for letting me share.”

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: “On Christmas eve my grandkids have a sleepover with their cousins and we have singing and dance contests (the best steps win a prize) with the kids to encourage them all to sing and dance. Food-eating contests, too (who can eat the most fry bread). We wind up having a little powwow in the house. It tires them all out, too. Breakfast is a big pot of sofkee (seasoned grits). I cook fry bread, three sisters [corn, beans, and squash], salmon, turkey, ham, corn-on-the-cob, cornbread, bread pudding, sweet potato pies, wild rice, string beans, other vegetables. All fresh, nothing from a can. My mother this year started a new tradition: She wants us to write down on a paper and bring it to Christmas dinner to speak on what we are all thankful for and how our year went. My mom also leads us in the traditional holiday songs everyone knows.”

Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin: Christmas was introduced to certain families back in the late 1920s, early 1930s by my grandfather (choka) George Lonetree and his cousin, Sister Kate Massey, who was a priest. They both were in boarding school in Toledo, Iowa, when they first knew about Christmas and the art of giving presents to people. So my choka decided to gather families who were curious about Christmas. These Christmas gatherings happen near Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. We always have some Native food on the table. My mother always made sure of that. It could be Indian corn soup, fry bread, cranberries, duck, rabbit, and sometimes wintergreen tea. Right around Christmastime, the Eagle Clan of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin will have their Winter Clan feast. The winter solstice, yeah, like the first day of winter.”

Parker, Arizona: “Sheep ribs cooked over the coals, tortillas, vegetable and mutton stew. Roasted Hatch chili salsa, yeast bread, coffee, and maybe empanadas.”

British Columbia, Canada: “We try to include Native-inspired dishes—salmon, berries, roots, deer meat. I only cook turkey for the kids. But if I cook a turducken (turkey, duck, and quail) it seems more inspiring lol.”

Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, New Mexico: “At Ohkay Owingeh the Turtle Dance is the driving event. Everything else is second or worked around the dance.”

Crystal Falls, Michigan: “Gotta have some wild rice and venison is we what have. It is always good, and turkeys are native to here, though I’m not a wild turkey fan lol.”

Tappahannock, Virginia: “Dinner is mostly the regular holiday foods except we have to have potato salad and corn pudding. Our Christmas breakfast is oyster stew and watercress if we can gather enough.”

Chicago, Illinois: “Ten years ago we would cook up ham and turkey with all the side dishes. For years the American Indian Center had a Thanksgiving dinner and a Christmas party. We would decorate the tribal hall. I would hear people talking about how traditional they were and still celebrating these holidays and not caring about their cultural teaching. So I decided to change it. I just reworded it to a “giving thanks feast” and encouraged everyone to write what they were truly thankful for. We had a “winter feast.” No decorations, and we shared the teachings of how we celebrate the seasons and why each is important to us. I had many positive comments, and it seemed like they were listening and questioning the religious beliefs. It wasn’t about shopping and presents. Unfortunately they have not been doing any of these events since I left. Everyone wants their urban rez back.”

Ardmore, Oklahoma: “Our church plays have Christmas hymns in Choctaw language, and we always get that brown paper bag filled with fruit, ribbon candy, and orange slice candy. Our church is the Ardmore Indian Baptist Church, in the Chi-Ka-Sha Baptist Association.”

Maui, Hawai’i: “We cook pigs underground here on the Islands. It’s called imu. This year we are going to do it for the homeless. We pretty much go around and see if everyone is fed.”

Dennis W. Zotigh (Kiowa/San Juan Pueblo/Santee Dakota Indian) is a member of the Kiowa Gourd Clan and San Juan Pueblo Winter Clan and a descendant of Sitting Bear and No Retreat, both principal war chiefs of the Kiowas. Dennis works as a writer and cultural specialist at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

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#History

[dlewrambo]

Reasons to visit Israel

First and foremost, I really love travelling. Going to other places, seeing beautiful creatures especially to places that are rich in culture and heritage. I haven’t been to Israel before but when I finish my studies ang get a nice job, I’ll save money because I really want to visit Israel, especially to the places where Jesus was crucified. There are many Biblical sites or places in Israel and I would love to visit those places soon, in the right time. Israel is a complex, intriguing, and significant state to visit no matter your background. The region draws travelers worldwide who come out of interest, religious pilgrimage, or to simply have a luxurious vacation. From desert to sea, Israel is anything but boring. Those who visit gain a deeper understanding of life in one of the world’s most complicated places, and are sure to have an experience of a lifetime. Adventure travelers will feel a thrill exploring Israel’s vast range of natural features, history buffs will get their fix among ancient ruins, foodies must try hummus flavored ice cream, and religious travelers will find deeper meaning.

 But before that, I will be listing the places that you should or you must visit in Israel:

 1. “Acre – North Israel”

-   A variety of different cultures have inhabited Acre throughout its history, including the Crusaders and the Ottomans, each leaving their mark on this region. With interesting, culturally molded buildings, ruins and sights around every corner, Acre is a must-visit location in the north of Israel. Enjoy a romantic evening walk along the port, have a meal at one of the local restaurants or take a relaxed stroll through Acre’s markets. A rarely visited site in Israel, this amazing old city offers the best of the old and new world: great restaurants perched on its seaside cliffs and even a world-class hotel alongside all the fun of a classic Arabic market.

 2. “Sea of Galilee”

-   The Sea of Galilee, or as Israelis call it, the Kinneret, is a major water source, as well as the largest freshwater lake, in Israel. The history of the lake goes way back. According to the New Testament, many of Jesus’ miracles occurred here, including his walk on the water. Today, tourists visit The Sea of Galilee to enjoy the relaxing lake, have fun building rafts, or practice various water activities. Called the Sea of Galilee by Israelis, Lake Kinneret is the site where Jesus is said to have walked on water. It’s also Israel’s main reservoir and a favorite tourist attraction for locals, who can regularly be found basking along its beaches.

 3.     “Golan Heights”

-   In the north of the country you can find Golan Heights, a mountainous region with breathtaking landscapes, wonderful nature reserves and intriguing historical attractions for the whole family. If you’re interested in hiking, the Golan region offers a variety of different paths with varying levels of difficulty, dependent on the time of year. It is especially impressive during spring, when flowers are blooming and the fields are green. In wintertime, the Hermon Mountain, located in the Golan Heights, is an ideal destination for skiers.

 4. “Masada”

-   This mountaintop fortress in the Israeli desert was once the last holdout for the     members of the Jewish revolt against the Roman empire. Their fate was a bitter one after a lengthy siege they decided to take their own lives rather than surrender but visiting the site is anything but bitter. Wake up extra early and hike or just take the tram and enjoy this amazing historical site. Masada is an ancient fortress in southern Israel’s Judean Desert. It's on a massive plateau overlooking the Dead Sea. Among the ruins are King Herod's Palace, which sprawls over 3 rock terraces, and a Roman-style bathhouse with mosaic floors. The Masada Museum has archaeological exhibits and recreations of historical scenes.

 5. “Dome of the Rock”

-   The Dome of the Rock is an Islamic shrine located on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock is in its core one of the oldest extant works of Islamic architecture. Its architecture and mosaics were patterned after nearby Byzantine churches and palaces, although its outside appearance has been significantly changed in the Ottoman period and again in the modern period, notably with the addition of the gold-plated roof, in 1959 to 1961 and again in 1993. The octagonal plan of the structure may have been influenced by the Byzantine Church of the Seat of Mary built between 451 and 458 on the road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The Foundation Stone the temple was built over bears great significance in the Abrahamic religions as the place where God created the world and the first human, Adam. 

 6. “The Israel Museum”

-   The Israel Museum was established in 1965 as Israel's foremost cultural institution and one of the world’s leading encyclopedic museums. It is situated on a hill in the Givat Ram neighborhood of Jerusalem, adjacent to the Bible Lands Museum, the Knesset, the Israeli Supreme Court, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Its holdings include the world’s most comprehensive collections of the archaeology of the Holy Land, and Jewish Art and Life, as well as significant and extensive holdings in the Fine Arts, the latter encompassing eleven separate departments: Israeli Art; European Art; Modern Art; Contemporary Art; Prints and Drawings; Photography; Design and Architecture; Asian Art; African Art; Oceanic Art; and Arts of the Americas. Among the unique objects on display are the Venus of Berekhat Ram; the interior of a 1736 Zedek ve Shalom synagogue from Suriname; necklaces are worn by Jewish brides in Yemen; a mosaic Islamic prayer niche from 17th-century Persia; and a nail attesting to the practice of crucifixion in Jesus’ time.

 7. “Dead Sea”

-   It is also called Salt Sea, landlocked salt lake between Israel and Jordan in southwestern Asia. Its eastern shore belongs to Jordan, and the southern half of its western shore belongs to Israel. The northern half of the western shore lies within the Palestinian West Bank and has been under Israeli occupation since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The Jordan River, from which the Dead Sea receives nearly all its water, flows from the north into the lake. The Dead Sea has the lowest elevation and is the lowest body of water on the surface of Earth. For several decades in the mid-20th century, the standard value given for the surface level of the lake was some 1,300 feet or 400 meters below sea level. 

 8. “Mount Zion”

-   Mount Zion is a hill in Jerusalem, located just outside the walls of the Old City. The term Mount Zion has been used in the Hebrew Bible first for the City of David and later for the Temple Mount, but its meaning has shifted and it is now used as the name of ancient Jerusalem's Western Hill. Mount Zion has been holy to Jews, Christians, and Muslims for hundreds of years. The people who live and work here represent the cultural diversity of the area and of Jerusalem as a whole. The Window to Mount Zion site created an interactive, online communal guide that features local people telling the story of Mount Zion from their perspective. In addition, you can find useful and historical information about Mount Zion.

 9.    “City of David”

-   The City of David, a neighborhood of Silwan, is a Palestinian Arab village intertwined with an Israeli settlement, and the archaeological site which is speculated to constitute the original settlement core of Bronze and Iron Age Jerusalem. The international community regards Israeli settlements illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this. Archaeologically it is best known for its Canaanite infrastructure dated to the Middle Bronze Age, and its newer structures from the Iron Age, built by Judean kings. Organised as an Israeli national park, its management was taken over in 1997 by the Ir David Foundation.

 10.  “Al-Aqsa Mosque”

-   Al-Aqsa Mosque, located in the Old City of Jerusalem, is the third holiest site in Islam. The mosque was built on top of the Temple Mount, known as the Al Aqsa Compound or Haram esh-Sharif in Islam. Muslims believe that Muhammad was transported from the Great Mosque of Mecca to al-Aqsa during the Night Journey. Islamic tradition holds that Muhammad led prayers towards this site until the 17th month after his migration from Mecca to Medina, when Allah directed him to turn towards the Kaaba in Mecca. Another earthquake destroyed most of al-Aqsa in 1033, but two years later the Fatimid caliph Ali az-Zahir built another mosque whose outline is preserved in the current structure. The mosaics on the arch at the qibla end of the nave also go back to his time. 

These places are very worth it to visit, because you will see the Biblical sites in real life and you can see that God is really good and very imaginative and creative. If you love travelling, I encourage you to visit first these places in Israel before visiting other nice places because we don’t know when we will die and you will miss the opportunity to visit those holy places and to know and to witness what happened in those places before. 

[mihretsgermanlitblog]

Five Interesting Nonfiction Books

The Diary of Anne Frank: “Anne Frank's Diary is not a novel or a tale of the imagination. It is the diary kept by a young Jewish girl for the two years she was forced to remain in hiding by the Nazi persecution of the Jews of Europe. Between June 1942 and August 1944, from Anne's thirteenth birthday until shortly after her fifteenth birthday, Anne Frank recorded her feelings, her emotions, and her thoughts, as well as the events that happened to her, in the diary which her father had given her as a birthday present. Together with her parents and her sister, Margot, the Van Daan family (consisting of a husband, a wife, and a son, Peter, two years older than Anne) and, later on, an elderly dentist named Mr. Düssel, Anne lived in a set of rooms at the top of an old warehouse in Amsterdam, Holland, concealed behind a hidden door and a bookcase. During the day, when people worked in the office and in the warehouse below, Anne and the others had to keep very quiet, but at night they could move around more freely, though of course they could not turn on any lights nor show in any way that the house was inhabited The Diary is many things at one and the same time. It is an amusing, enlightening, and often moving account of the process of adolescence, as Anne describes her thoughts and feelings about herself and the people around her, the world at large, and life in general. It is an accurate record of the way a young girl grows up and matures, in the very special circumstances in which Anne found herself throughout the two years during which she was in hiding. And it is also a vividly terrifying description of what it was like to be a Jew — and in hiding — at a time when the Nazis sought to kill all the Jews of Europe.” (CliffsNotes)

My Father’s Country: The Story Of A German Family.” In this gripping memoir, the daughter of a man who conspired to assassinate Hitler tells the story of three generations of her family and offers unparalleled insight into the German experience in the last century. On August 15, 1944, Major Hans Georg Klamroth was tried for treason for his part in the July Plot to kill Hitler. Eleven days later, he was executed. His youngest daughter, Wibke Bruhns, was six years old. Decades later, watching a documentary about the events of July 20, she saw images of her father in court suddenly appear on-screen. “I stare at this man with the empty face. I don't know him. But I can see myself in him.” How could her family succumb to Nazi sympathies? And what made her father finally renounce Hitler?” (Amazon)

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit:”Based on the gripping real-life story of the author, this poignant, suspenseful middle-grade novel has been a favorite for over forty years. Perfect for Holocaust Remembrance Month. Anna is not sure who Hitler is, but she sees his face on posters all over Berlin. Then one morning, Anna and her brother awake to find her father gone! Her mother explains that their father has had to leave and soon they will secretly join him. Anna just doesn't understand. Why do their parents keep insisting that Germany is no longer safe for Jews like them? Because of Hitler, Anna must leave everything behind.” (Amazon)

A Women In Berlin: “For eight weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman kept a daily record of life in her apartment building and among its residents. "With bald honesty and brutal lyricism" (Elle), the anonymous author depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity, as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. "Spare and unpredictable, minutely observed and utterly free of self-pity" (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland), A Woman in Berlin tells of the complex relationship between civilians and an occupying army and the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject.” (Amazon)

Forgotten Soldier: “Recounts the horror of World War II on the eastern front, as seen through the eyes of a teenaged German soldier. At first an exciting adventure, young Guy Sajer’s war becomes, as the German invasion falters in the icy vastness of the Ukraine, a simple, desperate struggle for survival against cold, hunger, and above all the terrifying Soviet artillery. As a member of the elite Gross Deutschland Division, he fought in all the great battles from Kursk to Kharkov. Sajer's German footsoldier’s perspective makes The Forgotten Soldier a unique war memoir, the book that the Christian Science Monitor said "may well be the book about World War II which has been so long awaited." Now it has been handsomely republished containing fifty rare German combat photos of life and death at the eastern front. The photos of troops battling through snow, mud, burned villages, and rubble-strewn cities depict the hardships and destructiveness of war. Many are originally from the private collections of German soldiers and have never been published before. This volume is a deluxe edition of a true classic.” (Amazon)

[newstfionline]

These presidents all said they were going to change America. How’d that work out?

By Joel Achenbach, Washington Post, January 18, 2017

Twenty-four years ago, William Jefferson Clinton promised change.

“Thomas Jefferson believed that to preserve the very foundations of our nation, we would need dramatic change from time to time,” the 42nd president said in his first inaugural address. “Well, my fellow Americans, this is our time.”

He had been echoing Jefferson promiscuously for days. Jefferson had won the first “change election” in American history, in 1800--federalists out, “republicans” in--and now Clinton had ended 12 years of Republican occupation of the White House. He had journeyed to Washington from Monticello, recreating Jefferson’s trip 191 years earlier, this time in a bus with a license plate reading “Hope 1.”

His predecessor had been a heroic World War II pilot, part of the Greatest Generation. Clinton was a boomer. The Cold War was over, and Clinton vowed to focus on domestic issues, boost the economy, help the middle class, reinvent government and provide universal health care while balancing the budget and just in general being transformational.

Then came reality. “Dramatic change” in Washington is hard to come by--as Clinton and just about every other “change” candidate has learned.

Donald Trump vowed to drain the swamp of Washington, but here’s a different metaphor: It’s a fortress, with moats, drawbridges, hidden passageways, secret tunnels, dungeons. Outsiders struggle to master the place. Among the impediments to change is the Constitution. It fetishizes the distribution of power. Members of Congress take seriously the notion that they’re part of an equal branch of government. Supreme Court justices and federal judges have life tenure. The president’s own turf, the executive branch, is a bureaucracy staffed by civil servants who do not always jump on command.

And so, although the president of the United States may be the most powerful figure in the world, we recall what Harry Truman said when Dwight Eisenhower was about to succeed him: “He’ll sit here, and he’ll say, ‘Do this! Do that!’ And nothing will happen. Poor Ike--it won’t be a bit like the Army.”

The job of a president today is something that Jefferson could not have recognized when he took the oath in 1801. At the time, the federal government was tiny, and Jefferson vowed to downsize it further, including reductions in the Army and Navy. He wound up nearly doubling the size of the nation, via the Louisiana Purchase, and he pushed a trade embargo that set the stage for the War of 1812. Sometimes presidents change things in ways they don’t intend.

A populist down on bankers. Andrew Jackson was the most prominent change candidate of the first half of the 19th century. He was a populist who ran against the Eastern bankers and ended the grip on the presidency of the Adams family and the Virginia planters. His 1829 inauguration was marked by a wild White House party in which inebriated supporters--a drunken mob, as some saw it--drank whiskey-laden punch and broke china and furniture. Jacksonian democracy had arrived, though for Native Americans it led to the Trail of Tears, and Jackson’s battle against the banks led to economic chaos and eventually, soon after he left office, the depression known as the Panic of ‘37.

Nothing brought change to America so dramatically as the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, which triggered secession, civil war, emancipation, the Constitutional prohibition of slavery, and a new beginning for the nation in which the words “the United States” would generally be treated as a singular rather than a plural. Some 750,000 Americans died in the war, and Lincoln was fated to be the final casualty.

Change didn’t always require an election. Teddy Roosevelt, just 42 years old, took the oath after William McKinley died from gunshot wounds. The energetic young president co-opted the press corps and used the presidency’s “bully pulpit” to do battle with monopolists and robber barons and push a progressive agenda.

Every modern change-agent president labors in the long shadow cast by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his first hundred days in office. But the conditions that enabled the passage of FDR’s New Deal were unique. He took the oath of office at the nadir of the Great Depression. Banks were locking their doors. Unemployment stood at 25 percent. Communism and fascism had taken hold in Europe, and the survival of democracy was in doubt. Some pundits called for FDR to assume dictatorial powers. Stasis was not an option.

“FDR was able to accomplish what he did in the first hundred days only because the Great Depression was rewriting the rules of the game,” says Margaret O’Mara, a historian at the University of Washington.

The Democrats won five straight presidential elections until Dwight Eisenhower captured the White House in 1952. Ike never proclaimed himself a change agent. The New Deal survived.

“What Eisenhower was most brilliant at was bureaucracy. He knew when to threaten, he knew when to pull out, he knew when to bring in outsiders,” said Heather Cox Richardson, a historian at Boston College.

Kennedy’s chilling vision. Then came John F. Kennedy and a generational change. In his inaugural address, he offered a chilling vision of a nation and a civilization on the eve of destruction. Nuclear holocaust now seemed a plausible fate.

“The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life,” Kennedy said. He spoke of “the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science,” and “mankind’s final war,” and the “hour of maximum danger.” It was scary stuff.

His point, says Larry Sabato, director of tnhjhjjjjhe Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, was that he would be just as tough on communism as any Republican. Kennedy flexed his muscles as a Cold Warrior and, just a few months into his term, approved the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba--a complete fiasco. The young president had to learn on the job.

Kennedy’s assassination put Lyndon Johnson in the White House. Johnson’s mastery of the Washington political machinery is unmatched in modern times, and after his landslide 1964 victory he succeeded in advancing his Great Society agenda of social programs and civil rights laws. LBJ showed what an aggressive president coupled with a friendly Congress can do. “The presidency is a battering ram,” writes historian Stephen Skowronek in his book “The Politics Presidents Make.”

That aggression proved LBJ’s undoing, however. He fully owned America’s escalation in Vietnam, and as the war revealed itself to be a tragic quagmire, he lost public support and went on prime-time television to say he would not seek reelection.

That led to a change in party control of the White House. Richard Nixon had vowed that he, personally, had changed since his younger days. He was “the new Nixon.” In his first inaugural address he called for political harmony.

“To lower our voices would be a simple thing,” Nixon said.

Voices, however, were not lowered, and not simply because the Vietnam War dragged on for years. Nixon had a deep flaw in his temperament: insecurity, which expressed itself as resentment and paranoia. His White House became a dark place of dirty tricks, slush funds, an enemies list and “plumbers” to plug news leaks.

William Safire, a Nixon aide, later wrote a book that described Nixon as a layer cake. Formal on top. Below that a progressive. Below that a poker player. “Under that is the hater, the impugner of motives, the man who claims he is not angry with the press because he cannot be angry with somebody he does not respect.”

Watergate destroyed Nixon’s presidency and serves as an enduring lesson that character matters.

‘Their time has run out.’ When Jimmy Carter ran for president in 1976, he embraced his status as outsider: “The insiders have had their chance and they have not delivered. And their time has run out.”

His inaugural message was high-minded, bordering on moralizing. He talked of “the spiritual strength” and the “moral strength” of the nation, and the obligation to take on “moral duties.” In his inaugural parade, he and the first lady surprised everyone by getting out of their armored limousine and walking on Pennsylvania Avenue. He was just Jimmy, a peanut farmer from Georgia--a dramatic change in presidential style.

But as soon as he entered the White House, he alienated Democrats in Congress by going after their pork-barrel projects. He didn’t think he needed a chief of staff, and so day to day, Carter micromanaged, overconfident in his ability to study every issue, read every report. Things went south in the coming years: gas lines, soaring inflation, the Iran hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Carter beat back a Democratic primary challenge from liberal hero Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, but on election night 1980 Carter was buried in the Ronald Reagan landslide.

Historians say Reagan came closest among modern presidents to matching FDR’s success in changing Washington. Though vowing revolution, Reagan was also a pragmatist. He picked his rival George H.W. Bush (who was ultra-establishment) as his running mate, and installed as his first chief of staff Bush’s campaign chairman, James A. Baker.

Reagan was, as historian Richard Reeves put it, a “clean-desk man,” sticking to a 9-to-6 work schedule with a lunch break upstairs with the first lady and, often, a nap. He ran Cabinet meetings that often ended with the directive, “You fellas work it out.”

In his first inaugural address Reagan had decried deficit spending: “For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children’s future for the temporary convenience of the present.”

And then he proved to be the biggest deficit spender since FDR. Reagan pushed through a large tax cut and a huge boost in military spending. Deficits soared to levels not seen since World War II. But he didn’t pay a political price for that and won reelection in another landslide.

The ‘New Democrat.’ After Reagan, the word “liberal” became a pejorative. When Bill Clinton won the presidency, he did so by running as a “New Democrat,” a triangulator, renouncing old-school Democratic tax-and-spend policies. Clinton’s goal of “dramatic change” fell victim to Republican intransigence and his own lack of professional and personal discipline. And a more subtle change was also afoot: The political parties had become more ideologically consistent and, thus, more polarized.

Clinton took office with an economic stimulus plan, but he could never get it through the Senate. His push for universal health care failed spectacularly. His successful proposals skewed conservative, and he lamented to his staff that they had become Eisenhower Republicans. After learning early on that Congress had put limitations on new spending, he exploded with frustration.

“I won’t have a goddamn Democratic budget until 1996!” Clinton fumed, according to a memoir by his labor secretary, Robert Reich. “Education, job training--none of the things I campaigned on. What’ll I be able to tell the average working person I did for him?”

The Democrats were clobbered in the midterm election, losing the House for the first time in 40 years. For Clinton, that was the wrong kind of change.

Barack Obama made change the central theme of his 2008 presidential bid, saying in his convention speech, “Change happens--change happens because the American people demand it, because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time. America, this is one of those moments.”

And change did happen, as he became the first African American in the White House, coming into office with high approval ratings in the midst of the Great Recession. Republican leaders in Congress chose the path of obstruction. Obama’s successful legislative efforts relied almost exclusively on Democratic votes, and as Democrats lost power on the Hill, he resorted to executive orders--actions that can be wiped out with the stroke of a pen. Some of Obama’s signature achievements could prove to be ephemeral.

Every presidency is unique and unscripted, except for the oath of office, unchanged since it was written in 1787--Article II, Section One of the Constitution. Obama in 2009 had to take the oath twice because both he and the chief justice flubbed it the first time.

History isn’t predictive, but it’s a guide. One broad lesson is something Obama said he learned only after he arrived in the White House:

“The federal government and our democracy is not a speedboat,” Obama said. “It’s an ocean liner.”

[showlexsite]

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