#also yeah it was 200$ a month but i was like. crazy productive and also pulling insane hours doing complang bullshit for kryptonian

[possamble]

anon ask responses

glad this one hit. the appeal of covert exhibitionism for farcille is that marcille IS italian and she IS catholic even if catholicism doesn't exist in this world. she suffers from thought crime guilt all the time and falin accidentally stumbles her way into using it to greatly benefit them both

oh can you fucking imagine marcille getting horrendously stuck while trying to get out of a tight dress. just absolute pathetic arms straightjacketed above her head and her face covered so she's basically in blindfolded bondage. falin walks in and at first is like laughing trying to help her but then goes hmm... what if....

i like the yelling a lot. fulfilling my fantasy of ao3 being like google docs and letting people highlight specific parts to comment on them i want to KNOW i love seeing that the parts im proud of hit the mark and being surprised hearing that the parts i didn't put much thought into were the best parts for some people

[chocolate-failure]

It's probably time for an update. This shit has been fucking stressful. I never talked about Talullah and I don't think I will in any detail. DIg almost died because he refused to put aside his pride and turn around before he was extremley ill, in turn almost killing me in the process. He spilled my water and couldn't make it through the trail so we had to go backward on a trail that wasn't designed for it. I didn’t have enough time to rest because I was worried about leaving him alone and I kinda never want to go hiking with him again and that's pretty much the in and out of it.

I went to the dentist this past Thursday and was told that while I have been taking care of my teeth that they are all rotting out of my face hole to the tune of a cool $20,000. I need 3 root canals and 4 crowns. That isn't even getting into the 12 some odd fillings I need on top of that. But yeah my teeth were super clean, no tater build up, very little plaque. Which like... I rather have years of build up and a mouthful of teeth that aren't on the brink of rotting 🥴 The dentist told me some people just have bad teeth and that's just really mfkn disappointing. Cuz like of course I purge but it's not as bad as when I was a kid and in recent months hasn't been everyday. I always make sure to wash out my mouth and brush with fluoride mouthwash whenever I purge. I even keep the shit on me when in out and about. When I was a kid I was brushing maybe a few times a week and purging upwards of 6 or 7 times a day. I remember one day counting 14 times and being proud of that shit. God I was so mfkn stupid. But I was also a fucking child. I needed a doctor. I needed therapy, not to be forced to eat by my mother. That only resulted in my teeth rotting out of my face. And being told that makes me even more phobic of food. As delusional as it sounds it very much feels like food is what got me here. It's not like I can undo what my mom did or take something from her to make me whole again, but food... I can continue to avoid that right?

I haven't purged since going to the dentist which is not as impressive or brave as it is pathetic. And the days leading up to the dentist I was pretty good at keeping the purging to a minimum but it wasn't in anticipation of going to the dentist. Anyone who knows ed knows that it doesn't give af about alleviating the stress of whatever else is going on in your life. In fact, it only gets worse as a product of you having other things going on. God I wanna be fucking dead.

Lmfao despite being in fucking crisis right now I was doing okay for the past week. I had an appointment with a psychiatrist last Wednesday and she gave me 3 weeks of latuda samples and a prescription for latuda that I can actually afford. For anyone looking to get latuda the site is canadadrugsdirect.com, they have the generic version that comes out to $100 for 100 40mg pills. For me that's 200 doses which is enough for half a year if I play my crazy cards right. Hopefully I won't need more but even then 100 doses for $100 is way more manageable than $500 for 100 doses for American Latuda. God I fucking hate it here.

Rn I'm at 153, in the tub trying to get that down to something more manageable. I've been extremely stressed this week because of the dentist and dig had a tantrum in the store yesterday that just completely depleted my battery. I'm so fucking done. But of course after getting over the initial shock of all my teeth rotting I drank a bunch of shit and ate more than I usually do. I actually didn't eat a wh9le lot but whatever is going on with me made me super constipated. I drank some dieters tea last night and my poop came out like rabbits' that's never happened to me. It happens with laxatives and smooth move tea but never dieters tea. Whatever is in that shit it literally will give you diarrhea. It just makes my shit loose af but I have really bad chronic constipation so I can actually count the number of times I've had diarrhea outside of being a baby on 2 hands. And I wouldn't be surprised if I asked my mom if I didn't have very few instances of diarrhea as a baby. I literally have some undiagnosed it's and noone wants to fucking listen to me. It's not normal to only shit 4 times a month or have to manually activate your metabolism to avoid having an impacted colon. God I fucking hate this.

But yeah, I ate prob a few hundred under a normal 2000 calories yesterday maybe 1200... it wasn't a lot but maybe I'm also retaining water due to stress either way I went from 146 at the beginning of the week (Tuesday) to 155 this morning. It's driving me up the fucking wall. It feels like I never get a chance to find equilibrium or maybe it just doesn't exist for me. Idk but I'm kinda fucking losing it. It's been nearly 5 months I've been stuck around the low 150s and high 140s. It's been an absolute nightmare and it feels like i can't trust myself or my body to do well by me. I feel like I'm falling apart and I've really only gotten better at pretending I'm fucking fine.

[plush-anon]

You worked at joanns? 😍 dream job

In all fairness, a large part (and I do mean a LARGE part) of why I enjoyed working at Joanns were the managers.

The store manager was a guy named Richard, one of maybe two or three men who worked there total, and this man was practically a saint as far as retail goes.

This was a man who would, with no hesitation, get on the floor to help customers, or hop on the registers to check customers' purchases out, or pop on to the cutting counter to cut fabric. He remembered the names of regulars, would chat and smile while getting shit done, and was the type of guy to speak slowly and softly when we had shitstains explode at us measly peons for not giving them the full cost of an item back in a return (ex $200) when they used a coupon to purchase an item to begin with and only paid a portion of the cost (ex. $150). No joke, this actually happened to me on Black Friday with a man who stood at about 6 foot with a crewcut and a snarl (the military Karen, if you would)

Richard, of course, stood at about 6 foot 5 inches, and reminded me of a ginger grizzly bear in some ways. Very few customers continued to be assholes when they asked to speak to the manager and Richard came over, smiling wide. He encouraged us to chat with the customers while we worked the cutting counter - it was a good way to learn about what they were making, encouraged general conversation and lent itself to a better environment for everyone, worker and customer alike, so we weren't just awkwardly standing in silence the whole time.

The assistant store manager (aka his second in command - we had two other assistant managers, but she wielded more power than both of them) was Farrah, and she was basically Cool Wine Aunt, but with weed. She was open about smoking it (but not in a pressure-the-underlings kind of way, but more of a 'yeah, it calms me down' kind of way) but never on the clock, and was just really chill in general. She was also a 'jump on the registers' type of manager, and on occasion would take the closing staff out to get a drink from the texmex place next to us in the shopping center, and cover one for each of us - particularly during the Holiday Clusterfuck of October, November, and December (their Frozen Kahlua Mudlslide was my alcoholic drink of choice - they also had these spicy chicken strips that were amazing with it, but I digress).

Both of them were amazing people who would support and back us up without hesitation (if they weren't dealing with corporate or stock trucks coming in), and both routinely worked 15 to 20 hours UNPAID overtime during the Holiday Clusterfuck so that we the underlings could get more hours without Corporate jumping up our ass about going over budget.

They were also refreshingly upfront in our monthly meetings about profits and meeting them, as well as why company policy was the way it was, and how to work within the boundaries so we got more hours. One of my favorite moments was when they said the fabric sales essentially covered their own cost (production and delivery); the rest of the cheap crap in the store was what covered our paycheck and electricity, so hawk it as much as you can if you want extra in the bank (paraphrasing here, but that's not that far off what they actually said tbh).

With some Karen-y exceptions, the customers were honestly pretty chill. There were two women from a nearby church who bought well over 200 yards of cut fleece to make no-sew fleece blankets for children and the poor in December (it took forever to do, but they were so cheerful about it and told some funny anecdotes in between, kept the counter clear as soon as they were cut, etc. Took them three carts to haul everything to the register XD).

There was the slew of quilters making everything from baby blankets to anniversary gifts to quilts for their grandkids attending the local university that they could wear to football games in the colder weather, while still showing team pride. They always bought quarters and eighths and the end of the bolt for half price, digging thru our remnants bin for something they might have missed they could get for half price. They always talked about what they were working on, and spoke in great detail on their kids or cousins or niblings or grandkids. I saw so many pictures on phones, in wallets, and they loved them to absolute pieces.

There were cosplayers making their first costume to comicon, halloween goers trying their hand at making their own outfits, and a few furries making custom suits for order or just updating their own personal outfit. There were the usual school and church Christmas plays that needed costumes, and folks making custom table runners and place settings for family holiday meals.

One notable young man bought out 30+ yards of our 65" inch wide bolt felt for JEWELRY projects he was making as a part of his business and as a part of his art program (you can major in art with a concentration in jewelry making, and he was using it for that). He didn't leave a card, but the pictures he showed us were STUNNING.

We had a few elderly mothers come in with their daughters, to pick out fabrics so they could make their own wedding dresses, or quinceanera outfits, or veils; they showed us the patterns they had, or the pictures they were basing the designs off of, and all of them were STUNNING. (One came back in with the finished dress in the bag, this intricately beaded poofy dress that had to have taken days, hot pink and shiny).

We had local restaurant owners pop in for re-upholstery projects and curtains and vinyl; same with teachers and deck dads and furniture restoration workers that would gush about the design, what they had planned. Some would bicker with their spouses on the pattern, but it felt good-natured on the whole.

We had some elderly men come in to peer over our sewing machines - "How much it run for? My wife's birthday is coming up and her old machine's about done, and I want to surprise her. She had a Singer, but she hates the electronic screens on some of these newer ones, they hurt her eyes." - and moms coming in to sew some custom bed sheets for their kids - "My son really likes the new My Little Pony show, but he's a little shy about it. Do you think the blue's okay? Only he like yellow more, but they don't have any back there and he doesn't MIND blue really but - Actually scratch that, how wide is the fabric? My pattern says it needs to be at LEAST 22 inches wide, does it say on the box?" - and people coming up with some WILD craft ideas that were always a delight to hear them gush about - "So this MAY seem crazy, but I can turn these plastic pumpkin trick-or-treat pails into SNOWMEN heads with felt like this. We fill them with treats for the kids since we don't have a fireplace and they like it fine, but someone said I should sell these on Etsy and people really like them! But I've run out of pumpkins, and you have NO idea how happy I am that you guys still have some left."

The group we had to work with was also pretty crafty; a few were chronic call-outs, some a bit lazy, some perpetually done-with-this-nonsense, but we were mostly on the same page on shift, and all of us were crafty as heck. The employee discount was a blessing AND a curse, lemme tell you.

Stock was the best part, for me. Hours before the store opened at 9 AM, we would rip open the boxes and stuff everything onto the shelves, organizing anything the closing shift missed the night before along the way, updating new stickers or shuffling pegs over for new product arrangement, etc. We could listen to music or podcasts as we worked, and I ended up impressing some of them bc of how fast I tore through everything some mornings (the music definitely helped out there).

I was actually about to be promoted to assistant manager after 6 months, but then I got my job with the university, and they had federal health benefits AND dental, so... yeah, no contest there. Richard actually laughed when I told him I'd been hired at the university and was giving my two week notice, since it meant he didn't have to do the slew of paperwork that accompanied new assistant manager hires. He congratulated me on the job, especially the health benefits - he said that was a perk worth leaving any job here for. I nearly cried with relief that he wasn't mad.

He and Farrah chipped in and got me a small music box that plays Man of La Mancha's Dream the Impossible Dream on my last day. It still sits on my desk at work.

It was honestly my favorite retail job out of the bunch I've suffered through. Surprising at first, since I initially received a rejection email bare HOURS after my interview with Farrah, but about a month later (as I trawled endlessly through interview after interview, desperate for anything those first few months ), I got a call back from them asking if I was still interested (which I was, bc hey a job!). They remembered me specifically bc I had missed my bus to the interview, called ahead to let them know I would be late, then walked the whole way there in the rain to get there. (It was only about a mile and a half away, so not a terrible journey, but flooding is an issue in our flat-ass city; I looked like a drenched afghan hound holding a useless umbrella, so enjoy that imagery).

They were particularly impressed by the calling-ahead part.

Unfortunately, both of them ended up moving on to different paths over the year after I left - apparently they had been friends with benefits (? I say hesitantly, since I ran into one of my coworkers at an art show later on and she spilled the beans there - she was a bit flighty in nature though, and got caught up in gossip a LOT, so who knows. Lovely brocade custom projects though), and his ex girlfriend had called corporate on them and got both fired.

I think Farrah came back some time later, but the damage was done after that - the new manager came in and operated SOLELY to corporate policy. A LOT went to pieces in terms of store cleanliness, order, and general camaraderie after that - the new fabric counter folks look and sound dead inside, and barely interact with customers (not even a 'whatcha making' in passing, which is kind of sad - the stories I got helped to pass the time, and kept me from using up all of my Set Conversation Phrases for customers that actually WOULD leave us standing in silence). Corporate also stopped some of the smaller store policies that made our job easier and gave the customers a little something extra (the 'end-of-the-bolt' discount - if, after the customer orders say, 2 yards of fabric on the bolt, and there's say, a half yard "remnant" left on the bolt, we can sell them the remnant for half-price. A LOT of quilters LOVED this, and we did too, since it saved us from filling out the remnant tag and printing a sticker later on).

Just goes to show how important good management is in a business; especially when it can kick a store previously part of the top 50 stores in the NATION (while being a medium store at that - smaller place, NOT Hobby Lobby size like the Large stores) to something much less pleasant. I could be rose-goggling the situation thought - retail is still retail, no matter how nice some aspects are - but it still sticks with me as to how good he experience was even taking into account that it WAS minimum wage retail.

Food for thought, lads, food for thought.

[rosepetals-flyingbirds]

Don’t Leave.

With: Bucky x Reader.

Words: 3.548.

Yes, i have a similar version with Ivar.

“Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“Say you love me.”

“I love you.”

She would ask that, she didn’t want to sound clingy, probably why the moments she asked those simple four words were always when they were the most intimate.

How beautiful she is. Bucky could never grasp why she was with him. Y/N would always laugh when he said something as cliche like “I’m so lucky to have you”,“you’re so beautiful, what are you doing with me?”, "my sweet little angel", "my doll".

The truth was that Y/N found Bucky extremely handsome. She could watch him all day if required. She loved his eyes, his lips, his facial hair which seemed to grow by seconds, his soft hair, his jaw, his scars, his metal arm, his nightmares.

Everything.

But she also loved his personality. He was such a complicated person! Traumatized, stubborn, closed off but… he was funny, so damn smart, sweet, surprisingly romantic, and truly cared about her.

Both were too scared to start something when they first fell for each other. Bucky had such a terrible life filled with torture and loss. So even if unconsciously, he expected pain from all the situations, and if he couldn't love himself how could someone else love and accept him?

And Y/N had too much trust issues to trust a guy. Maybe it could be her father’s responsibility for cheating on her mother, hell, even her mother’s fault for cheating on her father!

Maybe it was all the people's fault for cheating on their s/o and acting like it was okay… like it was some animal instinct that overpowered them.

Weak.

But she allowed Bucky in her heart, how could she not? Never a guy has made such sweet displays for her. It was in the details, when he saved the last cupcake for her. When he would give her his jacket. Or offered her a ride on his motorcycle when she needed to go somewhere and Bucky didn't want her feeling crowded in the subways and buses.

Even so much as buying flowers. Back in the day it was normal, to court someone. Buy some flowers, a box of chocolate -or in the case of New York's depression, a flower stolen on the neighbor and some candy his parents had saved in the fridge- but in the modernity, it seemed as "clichê", he thought of asking help to make a cd to you, but then they said now it was a playlist-thing and he excluded that idea because it was getting too weird and he didn't want to ask help. So he did buy flowers, not a bouquet, but a small jar with a tiny flower so she could plant, then another, then a small cactus, and when the idea of receiving flowers from him was something expected; He bought a bouquet.

And it was stunning.

A mix of blue roses, with white tulips, lavender, and blue nemophila. Only the most distinct, so Y/N could feel he thought about her in the whole process. Which everyone could see he did. She was the only thing that mattered to him. He was so gentle, never pushed her to do something she wasn't comfortable with, on the contrary actually, y/n that initiated the first time they had sex, the kisses grew deeper but Bucky wasn't ready so they waited until he felt comfortable. He was honest, kind, and even with his nightmares... he opened up to her, allowed her in the vastness that was his mind. His guilt, his pain.

He trusted her, and Y/N thought it was amazing.

Once -while friends- they went to a small gathering Fury throw to celebrate a successful mission that took a couple of years to be done. And everyone was dressed up, and even that some said it was a small party, it ended up with 200 people. Bucky didn't want to go at first, but Steve told him it would do good, and then Y/N was excited too so he made the effort.

Besides, since he started working with the team, the shield agents took a likening to the metal armed man.

Bucky thought in holding his hair together in a man bun, but then he felt weird so he took it off. So he tried another style but it was also ridiculous. He ended up letting it freely, as usual, she seemed to like in that way.

But deep down he just wanted to look good. For her.

They went together to the place, of course it was high safety so they could relax, even for just a moment. Y/N looked stunning, per usual, she didn't like to use makeup on the daily basis, and she was a fucking piece of art. But she also managed to look striking with those products on her face, Buck giggled as she held his arm for support since she was wearing Natasha's heels, and since people always saw them together and adding that in the party people were sure they got together. 

Steve was proud, very much. Even though his heart broke a bit since he had a major crush on Y/N since the day he saw her for the first time. But the way Bucky looked at her... that was what love glowed like.

But as the night went on and Y/N mixed with her other friends, Bucky kept alert and spotted a man staring at her, he was Jay Halstead, a good guy, great agent, and Y/N's friend, and what pissed Bucky more was the fact that they would look great together.

If Jay was a prick, it would be easier but he was a good fella, as good at the level that he served with Sam in the army, good as he was the one that helped Steve to find the best psychologic on the country.

Annoyingly good. And he would be good for her.

Buck was talking with Steve and Clint when he got a glimpse of Jay approaching y/n, and she was very happy to see him. Hugged him and even allowed him to linger his arm on her shoulder.

Buck's stance changed and Steve realized why.

Clint drank his beer and shrugged. "If she isn't your girlfriend you can't be pissed because other guys like her."

Buck didn't agree, nor responded but he knew what Clint meant.

Before Steve could give some advice Buck smiled, y/n waved at him and called him over.

Buck looked at Steve who told him it was okay.

Jay smiled seeing Bucky, shook his hand and Buck was glad Jay’s arm wasn't around y/n's shoulder anymore.

"Hey, just wanted to congratulate you on the last mission, saw the files and you fixed what Fury has been trying to fix in 12 years."

Taken aback by the praise Buck only nodded, but a small smile lingered on his face. "Thanks, man."

"And also he now beats Steve in the mornings run." Y/N confessed.

Jay laughed and by Y/N’s smile it was clear it was an inside joke. "No one can ever beat Steve Rogers, I fainted last time I tried."

"Well, I have been winning in runs over the punk since we were 10. Some things don't change with time."

"Yeah, i have to go. Mission tomorrow morning, just passed by to say hello to everyone." Jay leaned and kissed Y/N's cheek. "Bye, sweetheart. Good to see you." And then extended his hand again to shake Bucky's. "And congratulations again, i am happy you're in the avengers. The world needs you." With a tap on the shoulder, Jay left and Bucky stood a bit shocked for what the man said.

But after all, it was all Y/N has been saying over the months she met him.

And after what seemed like ages Y/N finally let him in. And Buck also fought his demons and allowed to be loved and cherished by someone.

And it was amazing.

                               ...

Meeting her family took a bit longer than the ’normal’ couples take. Her family was okay, but she was worried about how they would feel and most importantly how Buck would feel.

Y/N’s family lived far and using Tony's jet they flew to her homeland, her cousin flirted with Bucky wich made Y/N glare at her almost all barbecue. Y/N's mom was a bit worried about her daughter date a man in such a dangerous life, but she was happy so that was all that mattered.

And Bucky's family was Steve, so it was clear that he accepted them together. 

Buck has never felt so much like he did with her.

                               ...

Dream.

Dream was the word Bucky could only imagine when Y/N danced for him. Her small satin dress covering her smooth skin, he loved how her hips moved so graciously, the scent of her shampoo, how she kissed his cheeks when he made coffee for her. Y/N could be in her period, feeling awful wearing baggy pants and still, she managed to steal his heart even without trying. He was sure that no one had ever loved someone as much as he loves her.

He could do anything for her.

                               ...

On a mission, Bucky was looking the area of the attack arguing with Sam of where was the best point of attack, he was really close to yell at the man who never agreed with his tactics when his phone made a ping sound letting him know a message has arrived.

Hey baby, I hope you’re okay and you haven’t slapped Samuel! I’m watching you, mister! ;)

I’ll have to make a small trip with Brenda, she had a problem with her parents and she needs me to help her. I’m sorry but I really have to go. See you in a few days.

Bucky, I love you. With all that I am.

Bucky found it weird, Brenda’s family lived in another country, why she would make such travel in a hurry? 

Of course, Y/N was a good friend, but she didn’t do such spontaneous things.

As he glanced at his cellphone with a keyboard (designed for him, since his metal arm managed to break the last smartphones) he re-read the messages before he tried to call her only to be met with a voice message. He tried to calm his nerves down and finish his work. She had warned him after all, it wasn’t like she went away without telling him.

At their apartment, he saw a few notes here and there, one in the fridge telling she left some leftovers for some days. 

Another in the bathroom reminding him to buy shampoo and one on their bedroom saying: “You won’t die if I stay a few days away.”

Silly girl.

But even if Buck was suspicious of the sudden new he needed to trust her, he couldn’t be the crazy boyfriend who didn’t trust his girl.

However on the next day, he found it completely weird that she didn’t call him, she sent a text saying she was okay and safe but she couldn’t call him, he asked why but she just asked him to trust her and quickly stopped answering his texts.

Really really weird.

Was she kidnapped? Was she cheating on him? Was she really traveling with her friend? His mind couldn’t stop making ideas up. Bad assumptions up.

Gladly Bucky had a great memory so he remembered Brenda’s adress when Y/N went there a few months prior, he had to go there and see if Brenda was at home, if his girl was there or if she was actually out of the country. If she was out of danger.

Finally reaching the the street he stopped the car before walking to Brenda's house. He knocked on the door praying for no one to be home, but after a few seconds, it quickly opened with Brenda showing him a confused face. “Hey? What are you doing here?”

Fuck. “Hey, um, is Y/N here?”

“No, actually I haven’t talked with her for weeks now. Why? Did you guys had a fight?” For Brenda, it was almost impossible for you and Buck to fight, but as herself had a realtioship where she thought the man was perfect, she knew to expect anything.

Y/N lied, what was happening?

Knowing it wasn’t for the best to let her know about the situation he made a small smile. “Yeah, we did, I thought she was here. Thanks.” He hurriedly left not waiting for her response.

All the -painful- way home Bucky overthought his whole relationship, why would Y/N lie to him?

He couldn’t place a reason for it, the only things that were hammering on his thoughts were the hypothesis: Kidnap, cheating or she simply got tired of his traumatized self.

But why would she cheat on him? 

Wasn’t he a good boyfriend? Does she suddenly feel tired of his problems?  

Was she tired of his hard personality? 

Wasn’t he satisfying her in bed?

Have you found someone else?

Why?

And most important…if so, with who?

Bucky's mind was around doubts and adding all of his insecureness wasn’t helping much.

He didn’t even realize he reached her building until he saw his neighbor going for a walk with his dog. The whole walk he was pinned by fear and rage that he didn’t even count his steps.

To not help much his case he called her with no answer, he texted her with no answer either.

What could he do? He didn’t know where she was, or with who she was.

Was she safe?

“What is happening, my heart? Why are you lying to me?” He mumbled alone in their bedroom.

His heart cracking each thought he had.

After five longs and painful days, he received a text.

Hey Bucky. I’m going home we need to talk.

Bucky couldn’t answer, he couldn’t possibly ask what she wanted to talk about? Why would she leave him?

                               ...

There she stood, a single suitcase in her hand and a tired face.

Bucky wanted to hug her, to get in his feet, and to say how worried he was… but no! He allowed his rage to consume him when he saw she was alright and no enemy of his has taken and hurt her.

He was mad.

“Hey Bucky we-”

“Why?” Without letting her finish her sentence or even getting up from the couch, he asked.

“What?”

“Why you left and lied? Are you tired? Do you want to break up? Because i re-create the past weeks and i can’t see a reason for this, Y/N. You ran away and lied to me saying you traveled with Brenda to Brazil?”

She didn’t argue, only let the suitcase on the floor and rubbed her face. And with her silent stare, Bucky knew the end was near.

And that would break him, make all of the pieces he built in the last years since he got free from Hydra to fall apart.

Letting a sarcastic chuckle his frustration over the last weeks started to show with full force. “You’re selfish! I always said that i don't need your help, that i was broken and still am but you didn't have to stay with me. I always warned you and now that i'm so fucking deep in love with you-you will destroy this. But please, tell me what is it. Am I not satisfying you enough? Or is the nightmares? Maybe because i ca not go to the library with you or because we can’t go to the movies and i know you always says that Stark's is almost the same but you love movies and Y/N-” 

For more dramatically Bucky sounded, she knew he was self-conscious about his state, of course, he did therapy to help with his self-loathing but seeing the most precious thing getting ready to leave was about to break his cold-mended heart.

Making all his therapy process going to air.

Y/N stood there, looking tired and staring at him. She knew he would be mad, she was mad at herself for lying so blatantly. “Are you done?”

Taking a deep breath and placing his hands on his pockets he nodded, trying to control the tears to leave his eyes.

“I’m not cheating you, I never did, I never will. And i'm not tired of us. I’m not overwhelmed, you are the most important thing in the universe to me.” She took her jacket off and walked to the couch.

Bucky looked at her carefully while she approached him, so what was the problem then. “Tell me.”

“I’m not trying to break up with you, if that is what you think.”

He nodded and let a small sigh let his nostrils. A lock of hair leaving his man bun and Y/N's fingers itched to pull it behind his ear.

“I… I needed some time to think, I didn’t want to lie to you but I really needed some time alone without you getting worried.”

Was she sick? Why was she so sad? 

He sat by her side and looked at her lap taking a deep breath, her gaze met Bucky's and she nodded her head almost telling herself it was the proper moment. “I’m pregnant.”

The time seemed to stop for Buck, such a brilliant man and that was the only thing he hasn’t anticipated to leave her beautiful’s lips.

It made sense for him now, Y/N was always predicting the worst. Always waiting for the day he would grow tired of her and leave, or only try to have some “fun” and fool around with someone else. 

She didn’t want to have a child because she was afraid she would have to do it all by herself.

“Y/N… baby, I’m-”

“I don’t want it.” Her answer was firm but her lips were trembling with nerves. “I-” Her eyes filled with tears, even with the past days being of pure anxieties and sorrow, she still had tears left. “I can’t have it, Bucky. I- I-, I’m so scared.”

He couldn’t control his eyes when they glanced at her belly, his child was there, growing each day. He wanted the baby, wanted a boy or a girl to cherish and take care.

And only the thought of a baby so pure and ethereal as Y/N meant a lot. 

It was his.

After everything he suffered, everything he did that provoked people to suffer, he was blessed with a son or a daughter.

But he needed to focus on her.

“Will you try ab- abortion?” He didn’t want her to do that, he would try to change her mind if she said yes but he knew it was her choice.

“I… I don’t know! I mean no I won’t. I can’t! But Bucky, I’m so so scared.”

“You think I’ll leave.” He said softly, she looked at him startled, but she shouldn’t. Bucky always knew her. “You know I would never abandon you, especially not with our child.”

She nodded, her heartbeat going faster and faster by the second. He could hear it, of course he could. Apparently, the time to “cool off” didn’t help as she has thought.

Bucky gently held her waist and thigh and pulled her to his lap, Y/N hugged him tightly and started to sob. Bucky was her home.

And she was terrified he would leave her, especially with a child to take care of.

“Shh shh, pretty girl. It’ll be okay.” His hand started to caress her scalp softly trying to bring her some comfort.

Some minutes of pure comfortable silence passed before Y/N straightened her back and looked at the deep blue of his eyes. “I’m sorry I lied…” She murmured.

Bucky chuckled at the thought of how angry he was 20 minutes ago at her, now it seemed really stupid the way he allowed his demons to make him think the worst of his angel. 

“I forgive you. Y/N,” He raised his hand and touched her cheek softly, she leaned in and kissed his palm. “I know you’re worried I’ll leave or that you will have to raise that child alone but I promise you that I won’t let you down! I won’t let our child down!” He placed his other hand on her belly, Y/N smiled at the vision. 

Of course, she didn’t have a bump yet, but seeing Bucky hand touching a place where half him and half her was growing was a new comforting feeling.

Y/N nodded and smiled at him, lifting her pinky she pouted. “Promise? Even that the serum has some effect or if someone tries to take them away from me. Promise you will be there for me?”

He chuckled at her cuteness but realized how deeper the worries about a child was, interlacing his pinky with hers he nodded. “I promise.” She leaned in and kissed him lovely. She missed him.

He gazed at her, and as he passed his thumb under her eye to dry a tear, he was more sure than ever that she was the light of his life. “We got this, my love.” He affirmed his hands holding her face softly. “We do.”

Bucky Barnes is good at protecting the ones he loved, so he will do the possible and impossible to protect his perfect little family.

                        …

<3 <3 <3

[sciencespies]

Some people keep parasitic leeches as pets, and let them drink their blood

https://sciencespies.com/humans/some-people-keep-parasitic-leeches-as-pets-and-let-them-drink-their-blood/

Some people keep parasitic leeches as pets, and let them drink their blood

To the disgust of many of our readers, we have discovered that keeping leeches as pets is actually a thing.

And yeah, it’s certainly… a bit different. But in light of humanity’s disconnect with nature, and our concerning lack of knowledge about parasitic creatures, the idea that some of us are nurturing these parasites is also, uh, fascinating.

“They’re amazing, curious creatures that grow like crazy and make wonderful pets,” leech keeper Ariane Khomjani told ScienceAlert.

He explained how individual leeches have their own unique personalities, with some being more adventurous and others more shy.

“Some like to try and sneak a feed more often than others, haha! But once they’re full, they’re content to sit and rest for a bit out of water if handled gently,” he said.

Khomjani has four of these squishy vampires, including Leara who is pictured below. The species he keeps is one of the larger types: buffalo leeches (Hirudinaria manillensis) from Asia.

Leara the leech. (Ariane Khomjani/Instagram)

There are over 600 leech species worldwide and most, but not all of them, are blood suckers. Others, like worm leeches (Pharyngobdellida), are predators that swallow their invertebrate prey whole, while some species are detritivores that eat organic debris.

These wriggly sausages can have up to eight pairs of ocelli (eye spots), which they use to detect the shadows of potential prey. Their brain bits are spread across 32 body segments, and they are hermaphrodites, so each individual leech has both male and female organs, although they still require a mate to breed.

If a hungry parasitic leech senses your body heat or the CO2 in your breath, it can loop its way towards you by using its mouth and butt suckers. Yes, you read that right, their butts suck, too.

Leech looping locomotion. (Chiswick Chap/Wikipedia/CC By SA 4.0)

If it finds a suitable bit of host, the leech will inject its saliva – which contains anaesthetic and anti-blood clotting compounds – before biting down with two- or three-pronged serrated jaws.

“Once they get feeding you don’t even feel it, even with the large buffalo leeches,” explained Khomjani, although the initial bite can hurt a bit. They can go up to a year between feeds, but leech sellers recommend feeding the larger species every 3-6 months.

Of course, as with anything involving direct contact with your bloodstream, feeding a leech your own blood should not be attempted without first seeking advice from a doctor. Some people are allergic to leech saliva and there’s always a risk of catching an infection from them.

Khomjani told us that while most bite wounds heal without a scar, due to the anti-coagulants in the leech saliva, it can sometimes take several days for a bite to stop bleeding. But it’s exactly these saliva properties that have long made leeches of interest to humans.

“Leeches have been linked with human culture, particularly in Europe, for centuries,” parasitologist Mackenzie Kwak from National University of Singapore told ScienceAlert.

In fact, we have been keeping leeches, primarily for medical purposes, for around 3,000 years. During the Victorian era (in the 1800s) they were recommended for treating everything from headaches to nymphomania.

This craze led to a rather absurd battle between rival pharmacies, who produced increasingly elaborate leech jars in order to entice customers to choose their product.

They were ridiculous, huge, over the top, and not really even practical for storing the escape artist leeches at all. But ultimately it was all about appearances, and a more eye catching display meant more customers.

Here’s some photo examples of this madness.

(6/7) pic.twitter.com/g4gl10suk2

— Jane Nibful ♿️ (@Nibful) June 13, 2019

This historic use of leeches severely reduced medicinal leech (Hirudo medicinalis) populations across Eurasia, so this species is now protected.

Today, leeches are still kept for use in both human and animal medicine around the world and are approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as “medical devices“.

“Leeches are used post-operatively in patients who have had digit reattachment or muscle or flap surgery,” nurse Julie Smolders from South Western Sydney Local Health District told ScienceAlert.

“The leeches are applied to the site and suck away the congested blood to allow for blood flow to the peripheries to keep the surgical site viable.”

The hospitals keep 100-200 leeches to make use of this blood-vessel clearing ability. These leeches are sourced from captive bred populations raised in controlled environments, to help minimise the potential risk of infection.

(Ariane Khomjani/Instagram)

If the idea of keeping one of these little Draculas intrigues you, but you’ve no interest of offering yourself up as a meal, there are various accounts online of pet leeches being fed raw liver or heated blood from the butcher.

“Provided the blood [is] fresh and not treated with any preservatives or anything like that, I could see that sort of thing potentially working,” Kwak told ScienceAlert, pointing out that parasitologists and medical entomologists have been using similar techniques to maintain parasites in laboratories for decades now.

He believes “pet leeches are a marvellous way to learn about parasites, and on a broader level, to appreciate how intricate and bizarre the natural world can be.”

When asked about people’s negative reactions to his pets, Khomjani replied, “could you imagine the outrage if someone talked about dogs and cats the way you see them talk about leeches?”

A version of this article was originally published in July 2019.

#Humans

[fisherfurbearer]

fuck sam walmarts

and fuck management

I’ve had it. Left the store in tears tonight.

as some peoople probably/hopefully know. walmart closes at 6 pm on christmas eve. no one actually gets to leave at 6 becuase of shitty last minute customers. but it is what it is.

this. is really personal but im honestly SO close to just. killing myself? so who cares

basically. had a really really bad last few days. spent a lovely time with family (jessies family, his oma and opa and sister and parents and it was just a great time. theyre more family to me than most of my blood family) but it did make me Sad in Deep ways as we dont know if this is going to be our last christmas with his oma who isnt doing so good. and it just twisted me up a little but was othewrsiwse a great day. but then sunday i just...had a huge breakdown in the morning and decided to use my accomodation (i get 2 excused absenses a month) to cool down and gte myself together. slept a lot. woke up adn got a lot done, felt great, then i CRASHED really really bad, got really angry, lashed otu, took like...8-10 sleeping pills...theyre horrific things and im never doing that again...had to sleep for two days after that...felt horrifically sick, in pain, just awful. had repeating nightmares over and over. which has also been wearing me down recently. wasnt able to work monday either because i still couldnt stand and between the pills and the depression/anxiety and really just. felt like the world was ending.

decided sometime last night id just...try my best to make it in today, work my shift (really long 9-6, knowing i wouldnt leave on time nad htisis my first time working in 5 days now...which is rough...) and if i can get through this, i have another couple days off in a row after that (schedules fault, not mine...do feel awful i missed 3 days before that though...) and we can just. get back on track

today i DID go to work, jessie drove me in

i worked. a long time. im supposed to get a break every 2 hours and a 1 hour lunch

i gott my first break on timeish.

then i got my lunch 6 hours after i got in. at which time i got “locked out” for not taking my lunch and coudlnt do anything on the registers. i was supposed to get it 4 hours in. its christmas eve and excruciating and im still in pain and tired from my previous days breakdowns, but otherwise?? i did really good. i didnt mind at all that my lunch was so late. i was a little miffed, but its ok. i dont care, so long as i get it eventually. anyway they FINALLY noticed i was locked out and got me coverage and i ended my lunch at 4. things continued ok. worked on self checkout, met a lot of regulars i really like, prevented $200 of theft (HAHA WOW that was really really funny i love preventing petty theft. i prevent so much theft every week its my pride and joy) just did okay. then they had us close self checkout that took a little while. then at 5:00-5:10 or so i went to my Manager/Supervisor/”““People LEad” as walmart is now trying to call them, lets call her manager Y, and i told her i still need my break and will i get it before i leave. she said go to register 4. i asked again hey will i get my break though and she said yeah and i thought to mysel HAHA thats not going to happen but ok

really stupid that after bieng locked out the first time she couldnt give me my break before i openned a register with a line i cant get rid of

anywayy i did ok otherwise for a while

but at 5:25 or so i reminded a CSM “hey i need my break still can i get that?” and she just ssaid yeah well try to get someone and then more time passed so much time. i put through an ask on the register “assistance needed”. waited another 10 minutes. “assistance needed” again. starting to get anxious. its past 5:40. the line is so long. theres so MUCH NOISE. Its SO LOUD. the intercom keeps going off, no one is responding to me, i dont have a mat to stand on so my knees HURT,, im not doing okk

i switch my light to flashing/need assistance and start looking for someone to ask for help. its 5:45, i need my break NOW, i DESERVE IT for workng this long ass shift and they already missed several of my last breaks a week ago AND got me locked out today and im STARTING TO GET ANXIOUS PELASE I JUST WANT MY BREAK SO BAD

nnthgen a csm is passing by im about to lose it, so i tell her CSM J, please i really need my break now PLEASE and im starting to ccry and i try to tell her whats going on but she shushes me and goes and gets sometone

im full on tears at this point, im so strreesed out,,

manager Y and some other snooty manager come over andd. ffkcing. ask me whats wrong. im crying and i try to explain im really really stressed out, i havent had my last break, ive been trying to get someone for so long now, i just really need to leave im so sorry

and theyy just. fckkng

ffcking manager Y jjst ssays ok “ill give you your break” and “this is your last break” and i ssaid?? yeah i knoww?? andd she saidd “next time youre like this, just dont come in”

i quote that completeltyyy....i really lost it then...i cried som muchh

this isnt the first itme she said something like this to meee...

she asked me “why are you CRYING” When i had an anxiety attacki n the store once, when ic cloked in and couldnt get myself together,, she didnt give me time to calm down, she didnt listen as to why, she just said “why are you crying. this is a BUSINESS. you cant be CRYING Here.” and i just said ok ill go home bye and leftt

andd when i tried to get my availability changed from 7-9 to 7-6/7-7 because the random late shifts with 7 am shifts was messing me up really really bad and my doctor thinks i need to hcange it too, she just said “i cant do that. thisi sa BUSINESS.” and she wouldnt listen when i said i might have to quit because of this, this is for my health, im literally scheduled 7-2 every sunday in december, busiest day of the busiest month and you cant even chop TWO HOURS off my weekend availability????

andd i jjst

ive HAD IT with her

ive had ittt

im so ashamed and angry and anxious and i still havent stopped cryingg. she called me over to her again as i was leaving and she blamed me for it. she ssaid a customer was upset that i “Screamed” (ues i raised my voice a little but i wasnt screaming??? also the two customers i was attending to when this was going on and i cried were VERY KIND nad jjst said i was doing a good job and thanked me for being there) and called a manager over (but...csm J got them?? not a customer...??) and i cant be acitng like this, i cant do customer service when im stressed,, and d i should just STAY HOME If im going to be like that

then shee fufkcing toold me i DID IT WRONG, that i “shouldve called someone over” I TOLD HER I DID!!!!! I DID!!!!!!!!!! YOU NAIL INTO MY HEAD IM NOT ALLOWED TO LEAVE THE REGISTER SO I DIDNT, I DID EVERYTHING ELSE I COULD THOUGH!!! I REQUESTED HELP TWICE!! I TURNED MY LIGHT TO FLASHING!!! I TRIED TO CATCH A MANAGER WALKING BY TO HELP ME!!! N OONE LISTENED UNTIL IT WAS TOO LATE, I DID EVERYHTING I COULD!! yet she seriously told me to my face that “you didnt call anyone”, “you couldve turned your light to flashing” WHICH I DID and sshee jjst said that i made customers uncomfortable and i cant work like thatt and just stay hhome

ii stayed home sunday because i was having a mjor mental emergencyy.

i came in today because i was feeling better and i took it eaasy and ended up doing a wonderful job and mad eso many people smilea nd fixed so many problems that wouldve otherwise upset a lot of folks and i met my regulars and made old folks smile andd i prevented a lot of theft that no one else wouldve caughtt and i jjstt broke down after 9 hours and not getting a last break and all the chaos of register (WHICH BY THE WAY THEY KNOW I DONT LIKE REGISTER!!! I THRIVE ON SLE FCHECOUT!!! THATS MY JOB TITLE!! THATS WHAT I DO!!!! THEY KNOW THISS!!!!) and HER AVOIDING GIVING ME MY FUCKING BREAK and NOT RESPECTING MY FFUCKING METNAL DISABILITIES LJNASDKAJHDBASJSDNAJSNDKANSD

I JJST DONT KNOW WHAT TO DOO

i really want to die and i really want to never go back but i really loved my job i loved helpting people ii jjst hate her so muchhh and i feel GENUINE DREAD/SEVERE ANXIETY jjst SEEING her nnow

she doesnt CARE about anyone but herself shes a horrible peson i cant tell the store manager though cause she wont care either and manager Y has more clout than me so shell just twist my words and make me out as the bad guy as hte “CRAZY ONE” who cries and gets stressed (FOR COMPLETELY VALID REASONS AFTER BEING PUSHED OVER THE EDGE) even tthough i work SO FFRIKCING HARD and do SUCH A GOOD JOB and asdjanjsdhajshdas

i d ont know what to doo

i cant work another job because no where else pays as much or will let me do self checkout only, because being a cashier stresses me so muchh

ii...really wanntted to grow stuff and make preserves and sell bee products and work with folks raising heritage sheep and make more fiber art andd open a little stall at a local market and sell all that,, and offer more online and do customs andd stuff

i know i could mkae money that wa ybut i ccantt start it so sudenly and im too Broken to do it seriouslyy and i dont even want to HAVE to quit because of ONE PERSON But shes done this so many times now and this is the nfinfal streaww

i jjst dont know what to doo...

i cantt stop cryingg

i cant even enjoy christmas nnow. wanted to see my stepdad and give him his presernt and maybe be ok.

last christmas we had to move because our house was condemned after a fire. now im going to have to lose my job because of a horrible manager who doenst respect my metnal health or anything about me reallyy. and unfortunately im such a failure that i cant. do anything else and if i lose this job ill lse my animla sand i wotnt be able to do anyhtingg andd im jjust fucking trash

goddammit i dont know what to do. i really dont. hhahaaa. i just really want to end it. ive come so far and none of it fucking matters because of thiss fucking horrible manager.

[memphisdepayff21]

Intro

Kari

“Sire...Hey baby!”

I smiled as my son  walked in with my best friend and a Chic-fil-a meal in his hand. Placing my receipt book down, I stooped down to his level, kissing him up.

“How school go?”

“Good. Mimi got me chigga fil a”

I laughed, looking up at Melissa and mouthing a thank you. My hours are long, I’m a single mother, a single women, and my family is..... inconsistent. And not that  it’s their job but a little help would be great.

“Alrght, go sit in fi mi office. We leave soon”

He nodded, walking off with his Ipad and food in his hand and to my office.\

“You think you can fix this glue before you leave girl?”

Melissa questioned. I laughed and nodded my head.

“I can fix it now Sit”

She smiled and hopped in my chair.

I’m a hairstylist in New York. The first African-American/ Italian Salon owner and Barbershop on t6his block. I built it from the ground up. Literally. I bought the building, fixed it up,  bought all equipment. I don’t owe anybody, but everybody owes me. I rent my booths out to stylist and barbers, and I own 5 investment properties in New York.

My prices for hair are as such:

Leave out’s are $140, Frontal Sew Ins are $180, Closure Sew Ins are $140, Bob leave outs are $150, $360 Frontal Sew Ins are $200, High and Low ponytails are $100, Sweep ponytails with tracks is $120, and so and and so forth. I also make wigs which can goo for $300-$400. And if I install it, it’s $80 extra. Plus my classes which are $1200. Sounds like a lot put bitches go crazy for my styles, wigs, and classes. I walk out and make at least $4,000 a day. And that’s on a slow day. It’s a blessing to be in the position I’m in, I’ve done celebrities head as well, I say local, but I’m well know and travel for certain clients like Ari Fletcher, Toya Carter, Tiny Harris. Nothing crazy, but I’m trying to make my way up the ladder.

“Thank you for picking Sire u-”

“Girl, we’re sisters. It’s nothing. How’ve you been?”

I exhaled. I try not to complain about much, I just take it all in stride and know God is working.

“I’m good, you know. I get lonely. But I’m blee-”

“Hello... Is this Sire’s?”

A older women spoke as she walked in. I meant to lock that shit. 

“Yes ma’am, it is. But I’m close-”

“Oh please love. If you could do my hair. My son has a brunch set for me tomorrow and I’m out of options”

I exhaled. Tired, and ready to get my baby home, I wanted to say no. But she was so sweet and respectful with how she asked. I nodded. 

“Yes ma’am. I can help you”

8:59 pm

“You can be my honey?”

“What’s a honey?”

Mrs. Phylicia spoke to Sire as he sat in her lap, talking her head off. But she loved it, and was soaking it all up.

“Hayden calls his grandma, Honey. You can be my honey”

She laughed, looking at me and I laughed and shook my head.

“Sire.... you’re tired. And Mrs. Phylicia, we are all done”

Turing her around, she looked at her hair and her mouth dropped.

“Wow... thank you baby. This is beautiful”

“It is beautiful honey”

She laughed, rubbing cheek then looking back at me.

“How would you like to attend my birthday brunch. I’d love to have you two. It’s the least I could do for taking up your time”

“Oh no, we’d had to intrude”

She smiled and shook her head.

“No intrusion at all. Please”

Rasheed

“Baby, I’ll be glad when you buy a home. 90 flights up gives me anxiety”

My mother spoke across from me as she sipped her wine. My dad looked up at the sky and shook his head.

“He’s a bachelor hunny\. Why would he need a home right now”

Nothing my head, I thanked my chef as she handed me an other glass of wine then looked at my mom.

“Exactly, bachelor... I’m living my best life”

“Don’t you want a family baby? Shoot I want some grandkids”

She was pressed more than me. But to answer that, of course I did. But in my position. It’s hard to know whats real and whats fake. I guess now would be a good time to introduce myself. I’m Rasheed Ali Bailon

Thanks to my real father’s inheritance, my mother, and my skill at being really good at keeping and saving money, I’ve extended my money to the next degree. I was at first worth only $198 Billion. Now, as of today, I’m worth $250 Billion

I found out my pops was a fucking Billionaire. I was his side chick child. Had when he cheated on his wife. All these years I thought he just didn’t give a fuck about me. But he wrote letters for me every year and had them put aside. He passed 2 years ago and left me everything. His $198 billion company and all of his billions to me solely. ME. A poor ass kid from The BX. I’m 22 and a Billionaire. He had 5 kids total and a wife and left it to me, all of it. Every single penny. They got the house and a car or two, but fuck it, I’ve bought that time 1000.

The money ain’t changed me though, Just made me smarter. My circle got smaller, my time is a bit busier, and I’ve invested in a fleet of jets, yachts, buildings, residentials, shit the building I live in, I own. I’m blessed. 

I am the CEO Of previous Toussaint Incorporation, It’s now Bailon Incorporation. I was also grated the right to change the name. We invests in and hold dozens of major public and private companies. As part of our portfolio, my company also owns and operates several self-titled companies, including Bailon Home Services of America and Bailon Direct Insurance Company.

But apart from our branded companies, Bailon does a bit more than provide insurance. In 2017, Bailon companies and holdings contribute a variety of commodities and services to the market - including producing computers and electronic products, providing insurance, producing clothing, serving food products, automotive products and services and much more. Although Toussaint Inc. originally started out primarily in the textile industry, I’ve grown to make it become a conglomerate that invests in a diverse group of major companies and provides the prime example of my famous value investing strategy.  

I have 100% ownership in multimillion and billion dollar companies. And not all of them are the same. I’ll name a few. For starters, Billups Brick Company, it’s construction, I own it 100%. AlterLinks, Electric Transmission, I own it 100%, and it’s also a  subsidiary of Bailon Energy. I mean the list is long, jewelry, auto sales, utilities, Insurance, Bond Insurance, Media,  Logistics, Food and Beverage, Pipeline, Clothing, Luxury, Jets, Furniture, Sports Equipment,  Pharmaceuticals, Materials and Construction, as I said before the list exceeds my age of life. Plus more.

Once again, I’ll say I’m blessed. I bought my mother a house, she’s well off even though she’s always been her own hustler. The lavish life is the shit, I’ll admit. But a nigga has had his fair share of lame females and one night stands, so much so that I’m ready to settle down. Just hanging with the niggas gets bored. I want a wife, a daughter or a son. Mostly a daughter though.

“Yeah, one day. Not now. I haven’t come across any one that grabs my attention”

“Well it’s coming. I’ve prayed on it, I heard the lord say it. It’s coming. Also, I’ve invited a person to my brunch tomorrow”

I raised a eyebrow. A friend? I’ve planned this thing for 2 months, from what she told me, no adjustments needed to be made.

“Who?”

“Does it matter, a extra 2 will be there. It’s going to be grand”

[pkansa]

It was just about a year ago that we told you about the Axiom 26 Bleu Horizon, which was an addition to the successful crowd-funding project that Axiom had undertaken (and we wrote about here).  There have been some bumps in the road to production, but the models are now shipping, and we’ve spent some time with the Axiom 26 Bleu Horizon.

If you recall from that original writeup, I was initially taken by the Lemonburst model – at least, until the Axiom 26 Bleu Horizon was announced about a month later.  In the steel, the impression remains the same – while the red, white, and blue color palette is fairly restrained (a matte dial and case will do that), this is still a bold watch, due to that case.

On one hand, a 42mm steel case topped with a sapphire crystal is a fairly normal spec.  It’s when you take into account the rounded edges of the case, along with the dome of the crystal, that you realize that the watch as a bit more of a bulbous look than we might otherwise expect.  When you add in narrow wire lugs, the visuals make for an even larger-looking watch.  So, yeah, this is one that stands out.

And as a matter of fact, it did draw attention around the lunch table at work as well.  A quick explanation of how pocket watches used to get lugs soldered on to become wristwatches later, and the watch made sense to them.  For me, the lugs themselves have become a bit of a coin toss.

By that, I mean that, at times, the 14mm wire lugs on the Axiom 26 Bleu Horizon feel too narrow to me.  This is most present when I consider how narrow it ends up making the central part of the two-piece strap.  Sure, the larger cuff part (at 26mm) does balance it out a bit, but there’s no denying the narrowness.  Design-wise, I’ve gotten used to it.  When I start thinking about any sort of aftermarket straps, though, those thoughts have to go out the window unless you go the custom route (say, perhaps from GasGasBones).

Which isn’t to say the straps that came with the Axiom 26 Bleu Horizon (we got to test out both the blue and the black leather; the brown was unfortunately sold out) are not nice straps.  They’re nice pieces of leather, with the narrower portion threading through slots in the larger portion, creating a sort of NATO-style effect.  I also liked how the buckle on the strap has a built in keeper – a nice touch.

Wearing the Axiom 26 Bleu Horizon is a comfortable affair.  The 88g watch really doesn’t weigh down the wrist, and even with the height of the watch coming in at 14.5mm, it’s easy enough to slip under the wrist (all the curves help that out). This is an area the narrow portion of the strap helps as well, as you don’t have a whole lot of bulk under the wrist.

Given the size of the dial on the Axiom 26 Bleu Horizon, telling time at a glance is simple.  You’ve got appropriately proportioned hands, which (in white) stand out in stark contrast against the blue dial.  This is true at night, as well, when the blue lume starts to glow (a shame, though, that the red 12 doesn’t glow in an orangey-red).  The one callout here is that the crystal itself is crazy reflective, I believe due to the curves.  So, if you’ve got a lot of bright, separated, lights overhead, be ready to tilt your wrist around a bit to see the time.

All in all, I do rather like the Axiom 26 Bleu Horizon.  Sure, there are some details on it that perhaps are not perfect in my own book, but I’m not the one designing the watch, and it is the first outing for the brand.  I’ve no doubt we’ll see them tweak and adjust things as time goes on, and I’ll be on the lookout for what the second generation brings.  For now, the $399 Axiom 26 Bleu Horizon is a very interesting option for those on the hunt for a nouveau vintage military-style watch.  axiomwatches.fr

Review Summary

Brand & Model: Axiom 26 Bleu Horizon

Price: $399

Who’s it for? You like the looks of the original trench watches, but want something full modern, with a good dose of color as well

Would I wear it?  I can see it in the mix – it’s quite a bit different than anything else I have

What I’d change: Lume the 12, and consider some wider lugs.

The best thing about it:  The overall look, and commitment to rounded edges and curves.

Tech Specs from Axiom

DIAMETER: 42mm

MATERIAL: 316L Stainless Steel

FINISH: Non-reflective sandblasted finish

CRYSTAL: Domed sapphire crystal

WATER RESISTANCE: Water-resistant to 200 meters

MOVEMENT: Miyota 8218, Automatic, 21,600 vph, 21 jewels

FUNCTIONS: Hours and minutes in the center. Subsidiary seconds dial at 6 o’clock. Date at 3 o’clock

POWER RESERVE: Circa 42 hours

STRAP: Of two parts, of 26mm and 14mm

STRAP MATERIAL: Selected brown calf leather, engraved on the back

BUCKLE: Stainless steel pin buckle

DIAL: Glossy blue dial

HANDS: Luminous skeleton hands

WARRANTY:  2 years

Spending time with the @AXIOM_Watches 26 Bleu Horizon #under$500 #french #newvintage #military #blue It was just about a year ago that we told you about the Axiom 26 Bleu Horizon, which was an addition to the successful crowd-funding project that Axiom had undertaken (

[careyourself]

I Kinda Don't Care Humor T Shirt

But this is new business and you don’t know what you agree to when you what you’re actually giving is where you’re agreeing with you that none of these kids are reading and that you realize and occasionally you sign a I Kinda Don't Care Humor T Shirt contract and you didn’t read it you hold up in court that you didn’t know what I’m saying is that these are predatory practices and we have to educate people on how bad it actually is because people are just you say okay click my friend does it all do it I don’t care if you are so are I still yeah okay him the episode Blake a few years ago that the human centipede so were stopped about whether you agreed to it you interested a few servers are read to the brine joke is that they keep taking these signing contracts without reading them and ask them to all kinds of firstborn child kind of stuff a dream to become part of the human centipede so when I have the next world war based around tick tock right all yeah but I also think maybe PlayStation and Xbox might do a World War II. So Wiseman is point Scalia is word of her death sent shockwaves around the handle that well resident was speaking at a campaign rally in Minnesota touting the importance of judicial nominations is quicker on his feet and Biden that’s one thing I’ll give him he’s quicker on his feet wet with software and Biden’s are of Ginsberg’s passing even as a supporter shouted the new the next president will get 1 to 3 or four Supreme Court justices I do want to bring up that when school Leah died it was right before Obama was about to leave office right before the election the trunk got elected in and they were Republicans were like a Obama leave that appointment up to the next parade it was over six months before right and this is left to us before and Mitch McConnell was in charge and to use 237 or something to 47 was a well over 200 days prior to Obama leaving and Mitch McConnell wouldn’t even hold a hearing for Obama and now Mitch McConnell’s like when you try to cram someone that were less than halfway last night. And is hereand I clothingand present also present very well before the emails that she is on practicaland wonderful people you entertain United Nations I do indeed yes I have trained back to my previous statement I do recall it comes to continental title to send you a call the conversation again I do yes verified other can read it back to me please now actually give them okay Tuesday January the rarest rock she had a different perspective than the restand I think that we found a sadand thinking that we perhaps would wanted to see me for anywhere so we all get a grant which was like aand wonder what we know I cannot purpose for lying aboutand it is strange that that’s less than like it is a little once again nominated that putting Ferdinandand boss lady in their ruling of the bus a particular with the bus baby is a genius exploration of the evils of late capitalism as told through a baby in a coma Verizon how monies dreaming all that it’s a really trippy psychedelic blades like Smith has been seen since what you areas are the outand writing right here at work her job to rewatch minivan forced us to watchand and in light of that they clearly do you look at meand a lot of people think even stronger one human being so which is really funny great foundand had Legoand Batmanand that’s literally the reason lightingand the word Lego man then there like now it’s dumb that he did not shameand are literally just look at the time because those are two of the better animated movies exiting the government was but they are my favorite Batman movies really think I 2012and the screeners for dark night right I was shocked because I looked backand forth read the entire synopsis they managed to write up a whole synopsis without once mentioning the word nowhere to be found on the beach I think I’lland the cover was Bruce Wayne climbing like the wall is no those of a no it’s just Christian mailand in the rain heard like down from like the bar idea that it was just like the colostomy bag Academy voter anymore the impression that there really is then again looking at Wolverine on the Lorraine in combating now should wonder woman need help from for me personally I the superhero film how you compare superhero film to the drama what account if you can’t be beautiful to selectionand even

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THIS WEEK WAS DEATHLY KAMALI HARRIS CLOSELY TAKING THE I Kinda Don't Care Humor T Shirt POSITION OF VP FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND THEN THE FIRST ARTICLE IS WIKILEAKS POST UTTERED IN 37 DOCUMENTS ON KAMALI HARRIS HOURS AFTER SHE WAS NAMED JOE BIDEN’S RUNNING MATE THEN WE HAVE THIS IS REALLY BIG DOWN THE LEGAL. Tupac is amazing is very good I just didn’t like the Snoop Dogg character I thought that was sad I didn’t look or feel like Snoop Dogg certain things get the feeling off but I it was I a good movie it’s good to check it out I think it’s impossible to contact his whole life two hours so that poor young saluteand Gigi Mayo did a good job may not did a good joband off course Grady did a good job rabies my guy as he did a great job he played a perfectly but yeah man I go’s latest hours yeah I was a great topic know how would now like you might not like it tell you right back has they would wanted to go to he would probably wanted to go deeper into his life but I think I think you should go see the movie event because I cannot get support things like this in the culture anyways okay so in the end this is good I’m not telling you anything bad it wasn’t a bad movie is a good movie I would tell you it was trash out was actually I was satisfied when I leftand you know you don’t see that movie at this as I was satisfied I got paid my money saw that movie actually bought three tickets are a why why didn’t know what I wanted to go side by three different ticket so I ended up spending 21 see the movie way it’s good I got to go see it that way in Michigan in early dealing I went at 10 AM yet definitely also lucky organized you can be happy sought that because it’s two hours of gray filmmaking okay there might be a few characters that didn’t play detect the characters we know in real life like Snoop Dogg that’s okay your stoveand enjoy the movie hundred percent pay they show every a showing of illness too much they just don’t going total depth of the do you go in the just theater now I didn’t I went to ANSI I know Johnson had here in Atlanta check that out there’s also a Cindy bistro but I went to ANSI the reclining seats not taking part wouldn’t go see JGI now I mean you know I think there needs to be another Tupac I think there needs to be a longer Tupac moving his his life he can’t I still can’t believe he was only 25and did all the things he didn’t like this guy like let’s bring up the staff to say it I how many movies is Tupacand I think he was in seven movies he was an 11 movies 11 movies how many how did the any reported 12345677 now moansand then 7 pounds while he was aliveand then after his death wine 234 5678 910 like her 11 hours after his death I think even more than maybe 12 that’s crazy because think about it most people can’t do that their whole life he didn’t like years that’s crazy as first argument 119 91 Tupac Now that’s crazy man so he he was really like active active like six years that’s it six years man that’s crazy man in a day show everything him even wanting to kinda get off death row that the way he died way that a problem with some crib members right before he died think they can show everything generally leads to much outmanned so as for everyone to play now appreciate you broke appreciationand salute Yogi Banks was good to Tupac was pretty amazing brought me to do all that in such a short amount of time that’s crazy we that’s think about that Mandy that no one is ever to be like pot hate it when people compare themselves to talk like even Wyattand Lucci dropped something today saying something pot did know you near Pac Man you can’t be out for two yearsand compare yourself to talk I’m sorry man I’m sorry if you a betting thugand attend movies if you been an 11 moviesand you haven’t done seven now moans within five years get I hearand also had deftly watch the movie the least two hours two hoursand 20 minutes is pretty long but doesn’t feel that long cuts like you going through that timeline talks deftly the greatest just product the jaded JPEGand said her character was a bunch of lies they put in what the movie guys okay there was they had to establish that jaded taking Tupac had a special relationship that was deeper than just being friends it was a soul sold their souls matched rightand I was the only way they can kinda show that in a short amount of time so they had to show interaction with him in jail that was really deep in the content they had to embellish a little bit go totally crazy with itand show jaded Tupac in effect seen Ernie think that she even said their relationship was deeper than sex they never had sex it was deeper than sex because they it was a mental bondand you know she said you only get one of those friendships your whole life nowand I you know that they did for the movie I don’t think a hand biotics aren’t always exactly on a percent okay but you know annulment JT never was going to leave death row JT yes he was actually Wendy day who was friends with talk he was leaving death row he just couldn’t get off because they worry that he would have to get lawyers everything to he was in the process of doing honestly the last three months he was trying to get his paperwork right to get off the death row but you don’t just tell himand walk away like Dr Dre did it savage life but he had moneyand he started a labeland Dr Dre produced his own shared everything so he didn’t need anybody Tupac had to doand difficult awake is the way he he was on pal from death row it they were buying a house everything he was too tightand it was it would take him a few months to on ravel from death row on my arm to come out soon is joking to Jordan for retro shop tomorrow okay cool I think the movie was asked it was just it was good Okay I’m not I’ll think so afraid of the movie was okay it wasn’t trash it was good I think it was good I thinkand encourage everybody to go see it it wasn’t the best bioticand fiber seen think the strata Compton was fucking go feeling to it is that it was missing that feeling but still get why is your character she played a big role in cycles of yet they missed out a few people but in the mist at the scene where he spent on the infamous stingray spent on the the I reportersand 40 guy I heard about 40 got was pop today are I hope he pulls through nine John Singleton has a real spooky shit going onand I I think it would be good if he he was turning it too deep with it was it better than the movie the movie was more cinematic than this was I can’t say it was better though they were about equal now peace mode staffand how they betray the relationship between pocketand his mother that was dealt those were the two strongest characters meand I’m right just talk about the movieand I will talk about tomorrow to if you guys but I it ways that those were the two strongest characters man they showed how strong the bond was between his mother how his mother was there form after she got cleanand he had some successand got her cleanand everythingand she was more clearheadedand help was there for Pokand warned him about certain things going on in that your target on his back as he was a black leader evaluate it was definitely was it’s definitely were seeing Jason was definitely worsening is get Richard tried die trying a better movie better yes it is because think about it. You know interaction ever had because you couldn’t speak at all thank you everybody else took offense to everyone who came as something they would take a look at say anything back so they would just say everything is going to say my face would just tell also’s argument was that your Film I get out there that think they are right baseball garden I did bring you it is betterand has been so interested is a friend of my body get out there the antibody is in a hospital make their case advantage of them in any way you possibly can move on to our first story here todayand is according to the high reporter scares me that actually deadline high reporter broke a story about a lot of yesterday deadline is not about the new villainand wonder woman to is none other than Sheena played by Kristen Wade apparently paycheckand has had her eye on wake for a while now to play this roleand it looks to be confirmed so that she is going to be going up against wonder woman in the sequel to this massive wonder woman they came out last year the new movie comes on November 1 2000 19th J Washington in any way on the panel knows a little something about Sheena is get a VU what does this mean for wonder woman to you no more you know what for first was one of one woman’s biggest adversaries which is cool use granted they didn’t do in the first movie you burned her out from World War Iand had going forward for two Christian week is interesting casting choice as we been seeing a lot lately with comedic actorsand actresses black I said this on twitter if we can get great Elizabeth Banks is repulsing granted the movie the powerand the heart of the story the cake they did on Rita was nice the way she looked at the different look the vision of a Christian week plan is now will she be as serious or comedic is the question you know now also the story of cheetah is a British archaeologist who goes in Africa they had an opportunity to make this potentially a black British woman there’s a lot of things you do great don’t have to change the cultureand the nationality of the character but you done about bunch of things Christian week is a good choice I believe black will have to see you know when you quit yesterday about the rhetoric also compares it was an interesting one at a very early going on to policy your readerand are in the phase where you will reader processing the I actually like our industry in a limitedand I know the old school reader pulseand everybody was hoping to see in Greenwich have to change things sometimes so using the way they get Elizabeth with this one the Krispy Kreme things a little too much I limit like the look is what I was talking about we can expect her to look as bad as she didand who is a Christian we can look like an incredibly soft terrifyingand look like everything that nightmares are because I know that person that scale afterand I had decided not to go sleep that night like this character sheet in general it is likely because of the complaint getting a lot of Power Rangersand about Elizabeth is reader repulsive she was doing her job if your job was to be in the 90s show Power Rangers seem to fit in with the time when the new movie was trying to do so how’s the character like cheetah who from the fanart for whatever is you are looking to come up with seems a little more outlandish than what we got in wonder woman the first movie I was I get a job with the town because this is the first outlandish character to get that’s a human who transformsand something else with justice league you halfstep more that’s in our worldly creature is in itself with complementingand get everything that’s naturally in Atlanta so we understand that this is gonna be something new to see the DCU you know that to be the interest of our behind again we dealt with psychological sale a question when dating Ghostbustersand other films but this has to be something different will have a comedic element potentially Casio serious will see Harry immediately relocatedand seeing like comedians turn into the deep illness rolesand I rooted for everyone in the marketing point of vampire only those crazy if I were to do a rather like the movie didn’t work as well rises to be in one hour photo resigning like this could work out I think it did think Connex can test it to a darker side of their personality getting Kristen Wade is going to be able to do you I have made during especially the just need your initial impression is lie regarding the morning moreand more I read the other where twins are rolling over she’s going to be a good work can know that she is a good idea if Peterson is really talking on the show where it’s like you feel about one wayand in the next week you feel the same exact way did you get this newsand then have an initial reactionand has that changed all sense you heard about this yesterday plates at the words were not including the reference got into because I first heard the confidenceand Christian way to be able to take her time fender from the community of economic theory generally by tradition works much better than tomato doctors trying to go however my question really affect the talent of what wonder woman he was going to be because if they are bringing Christian right are they planning to make it more the sort of lighthearted comedic type of film compared to the first one where there very negligible humor so much of the few moments of levity but it’s not going the route of life like they do in the NICU movie maxed out when they are trying to may be asking rather than actually having Kristen be super hard core cannot write most of the last few got from wonder woman were were very genuine think the reason for that is because she was allegedly try to find her way in the man’s world so to speak because she went out of her boss Dennis Garethand her interactions the chemistry Chris finds where we got most of the yacht if you will get a movie like Ghostbusters obviously that’s more spoof the then I think you get to see if you wanted so here’s the big question you are left to get over to the panel as a fan person wayand that they can be won over to her performance the one I wanted is under just a little bit of pressure yet again because the first time a woman came outand had to rescue us from this dark gray toneand it succeededand then you have justice leagueand now very divisive movie again so whatever man does with my CAN have a more serious darker tone seems once again is directing it what do we need wonder woman to have in order to make Kristen Wade fit into this balance because as we saw with justice league trying to shift the entire town of DC name from Zach Siders darker version to Joss Wheaton’s line or humorous version the China ship Nike seven Apple man James one says dark black James wants a what you expect I think it’s the balance you’re gonna have a humorist element with one woman like you said in the first you have those humorous moments when you tap into that a little more Diana plays around that we seem that she jokes moreand now she’s more accurate to the world again if this present day is his will to but it doesn’t matter I think I will have a lot more humorand Patty Jenkins also ceased exercising more than anything else so that’s what I would single phase it is Kathy Parsley I can send out the rest of the DCU yelled at everyone with your director changes with your your hiringsand firings of executives with your cash comingand going like the movie I want to make I guess Kristen Wade is a cheetah going to do it I can do I want right now how skinny my confidenceand she sort of envisioned Christian right brain itselfand the one she essentially is writing the role for Christianand the only present quite depressing right was Christianand I think that will be sort of tailored to Christian relaxing make this work a lot more holisticallyand cohesively been made in micro barring a comedic actress integral where really wasn’t for you See Other related 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[wineanddinosaur]

VinePair Podcast: West Coast Wildfires Demand Our Attention

The 2020 wildfire season has already had devastating effects up and down the West Coast, with lives lost, homes destroyed, and horrific air quality choking tens of millions of people. Beyond those immediate dangers are several other types of concerns — such as how the fires will affect American wine production. There are worries that lingering smoke might irrevocably taint wine grapes that are almost ready to be picked, or that such toxic air might make harvesting those grapes unsafe. Fear that hop fields in Washington and Oregon — which produce 98 percent of the nation’s hops — could burn. Dread that industries and companies already grievously harmed by the crippling effects of Covid-19 will not be able to survive the massive losses these fires could produce.

The question remains: Is the rest of the country (and the world) paying attention? Will images of neon orange skies and vast clouds of smoke resonate outside affected areas? What can we all do to address this crisis, both in the short and long term? That’s what Adam Teeter, Erica Duecy, and Zach Geballe discuss on this week’s VinePair podcast.

Listen online

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Or check out our conversation here

Adam: From Brooklyn, New York, I’m Adam Teeter.

Erica: From Jersey City, I’m Erica Duecy.

Zach: And in Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.

A: And this is the VinePair podcast. And Jersey City?

E: Yeah, we are back in Jersey City.

A: Wow.

E: I have to say, it is quite shocking. I traded the view out my window in Connecticut, which was of a pond and a field and a mature grove of trees, and right now I am looking down a block in Jersey City where all but one of the stores is shuttered. The only one that’s open is a liquor store at the end of the block and homeless encampments right in front of me — worse than I’ve seen since I’ve lived in Jersey City.

A: And you’ve been in Jersey for how many years?

E: For 12 years.

A: Wow. It’s crazy, right? You come back and this is what’s happening.

E: It’s a shock to the system. It really is.

A: Do you have any restaurants on your block, any bars?

E: Yes, there is one across the street — there was one I should say, but now it’s permanently closed.

A: Wow. Just crazy. But anyway, welcome back to the tri-state area.

E: Thank you.

Z: Wait, isn’t Connecticut part of the tri-state area?

E: Is it?

A: Yeah, it is.

Z: I thought it was New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

A: Yeah, it is, never mind. So welcome back to the metro area.

E: Thank you.

A: Welcome back.

Z: If you see your pond out your window, that will be just the latest natural disaster.

E: I’m just waiting for the streets to open up. So that’s next.

A: Big news in New York is that they’ve finally decided that they’re going to allow 25 percent indoor dining, as of Sept. 30, which is pretty crazy. I still don’t know. I know we’ve talked about this before, but I don’t think I’m going to go dine indoors.

E: I’m not. I’ve decided that I am not comfortable dining indoors until the pandemic is curbed. Until it’s either pretty much eradicated or there’s a vaccine, I’m just not comfortable. I just don’t think it’s worth the risk.

A: Yeah. I don’t think so either. Zach?

Z: Zero chance. As we’ve talked about a number of times on this podcast, it’s been very weird to live six months of my life without restaurants, but I can live another six months, a year, two years. I don’t want to get Covid. So no, not going to a restaurant.

A: The sidewalk cafes, at least out here in Brooklyn, are more crowded than ever. People are definitely trying to have some sort of normalcy. My wife was saying earlier this week, and I agree with her, she said she misses quarantine. And I said, “What do you mean?” And she said, “I miss when we knew what the rules were.” When we were all staying inside, we were socially distancing, and maybe we saw the one random person that we felt really comfortable seeing. She said, “I crushed quarantine.” We were cooking. And now this middle ground is so weird because, what is acceptable? What isn’t acceptable? Do you go back to the office? Do you not go back to the office? You have so many offices they’re reopening. Do you go out to eat? Do you not? If you go out to eat, where do you go out to eat? Where do you sit when you go out to eat? How do you treat people? We should say either everything is shut down, or everything’s open. And I’m sure that that’s very hard for any owners, as well, of restaurants. I know it’s hard for us as a business. When do we open the VinePair office, which still isn’t open? Just thinking about do you open, or do you not? How do you open? What does that look like? It’s crazy. And there’s no guidance at all.

E: It’s totally inconsistent. My kids are doing remote school and I had to chase down a Chromebook. I went into the city yesterday and went into an electronics store where it was masks optional. I said, are you kidding me?

A: Are you serious?

E: I am serious. In Chelsea, I went into a large chain electronics store and it was masks optional. People had no masks on and I beat a path out of the store so quickly. Then I came back over to the same large chain store a little bit farther out in Jersey and it was masks required. It’s inconsistent. Completely inconsistent.

A: That’s one of the reasons that the percentage law got overturned in New York City because, for those not familiar, there’s this one area of Queens where the line is very blurred between where Queen stops and where Long Island begins. And there was this restaurant in Queens that was like, “Look, literally 200 feet from our door is one of our competitors who happens to be on Long Island and they are open with 50 percent capacity indoors. Please explain why it’s not safe 200 feet away here, but it’s safe enough there.” And then they sued the state. And I think that was one of the things Cuomo responded to, and one of the reasons he gave 25 percent, because it is, across the board, inconsistent. And that’s what just makes this so nuts. Some states are saying it’s completely fine to be at 75 percent capacity. Some states are saying it’s not fine to be eating at all, indoors or outdoors. It’s crazy, I think it’s what is making us all a little nutty.

Z: Well, that’s one of the advantages of being in a city where we are not very close to any other state line. For Erica, going from New Jersey to New York is a very, very simple trip, and you can come across different laws and different practices. Whereas in Washington State, there’s a statewide mask mandate. I’m not concerned that the store I go into is going to have a different policy or different rules because they’re in a different jurisdiction. But I totally agree that one of the major issues that we’re all dealing with is there aren’t a lot of well-articulated guidelines. And I’m not going to turn this into a huge rant. But one of the big problems is that many of us crushed lockdown, and nothing really happened. That’s the part of this that’s really hard. If we had gone three months of lockdown and then emerged, like a lot of Europe did, we would’ve been able to go back to some semblance of normal life. Not that any of us would’ve said, “Oh, man, Covid was great.” It was obviously horrible on so many levels, but at least we would have felt like that time that was, for a lot of us, very difficult and very traumatic in a lot of different ways, was put to use. Instead, we’re still in this pandemic, where things aren’t all that much better. We still don’t have any f***ing clue what’s going to happen. And we’re about to get to the time of year where going outside, for most of us, is going to be not very pleasant. We’re not going to be able to hide out outside and sort of ignore it. We’re gonna be stuck indoors, or forced into shared public spaces. And that part is the part that’s going to suck, because it’s not going to be as clear-cut as it was in March, April, and May about what we need to do. But we’re still going to have to deal with the fact that, if we’re doing things in public, they’re going to be indoors for most of us.

A: I guess we’ll get through it. We’re all trying. And drinking a lot. Anyways, let’s get into this week’s topic, which is one that we all felt is very important and worth discussing, which is the awful fires that are ravaging the West Coast of the United States. And it’s interesting, when we were all talking about the subject for today’s podcast, I was slacking with both of you and I shared with you this interesting thought that I read in The New York Times this morning, which was basically that the fires aren’t getting enough attention. And one of the biggest reasons that this writer was saying that they don’t think that they are is because, for a lot of people who probably listen to the podcast, this is one of the main things you’re thinking about if you live on that side of the country. But because the media is based on the East Coast, they’re just not covering it as much as they would if these fires were happening on the East Coast of the country. Which I think is worth considering, because these are fires that are really damaging whole swaths of land in California, Washington, and Oregon, and really affecting people’s livelihoods in a very fundamental way. And then on top of that, there’s a pandemic. It’s just really terrible. So I think we want to use this podcast to draw attention to what’s happening on the West Coast and talk a little bit about how they’re really going to impact the people who are going through it, but also truly let you know if you’re a listener and you aren’t truly aware of what’s happening, to please be aware of what’s happening and think about supporting the wineries, breweries, etc. that are going to be really suffering because of these fires. Zach, you’re over there, so let’s start with you. What’s it like to be living in Seattle? Does the reporting feel more constant for you than it does for us? What are you hearing from people that you know on the west side of the country in terms of what they’re dealing with?

Z: I think there are multiple parts to the answer. Unsurprising, I suppose. The first thing I would say is that one thing that’s challenging for people on the East Coast to understand if you haven’t spent a lot of time on the West Coast, is how big the states are out here and how big the fires are. You can look up some of the details on the fires, in particular, in California and the amount of land that’s burned and the scope of them. But it’s the size of states, obviously not the size of California, but it’s the size of other states. But at the same time, much of this land is very remote. Even in California, certainly in Oregon, and some of the cases in Washington with the fires, there are not big population centers. And I think that generally one of the reasons why these big fires over there — not just this year but in previous years, too — don’t draw media attention, is it happens far away from New York City. But also, when you have hurricanes or earthquakes, often where that footage and that coverage is coming from our cities. Big population centers that are damaged. And to this point, so far, while all these big population centers on the West Coast are being impacted with smoke and ash and things like that, the fires, themselves, have not necessarily threatened these cities. But at the same time, they are massive. And big fires are fundamentally different from earthquakes or hurricanes because we don’t really know when they’re going to end. An earthquake happens, and obviously there’s tremendous damage, and it could start fires and things like that. But the earthquake, itself, is a few minutes and then there are certainly aftershocks. And with hurricanes, we have really sophisticated modeling technology, we have a pretty good idea for where a hurricane’s going to go, when it’s going to arrive, when it’s going to pass. And there’s a ton of work and a ton of damage, but it’s mostly in the cleanup. With fires, they’re so unpredictable, they’re so dependent on winds that can shift suddenly and on conditions on the ground that are very hard to understand. And so there’s a part of this that is just very difficult to forecast and that creates a lot of uncertainty. It also creates a lot of danger. The thing I would say to this point is that what I’ve seen and heard from friends up and down the coast is that the scary thing for a lot of people is this that is earlier than fire season is supposed to happen, especially in California. And so on the one hand, land that burns and woods that burn aren’t going to burn again in a month, but there’s certainly all the still-existing potential for the typical fire season for much of California and Oregon, and to some extent Washington, which is now through October. So the fact that we already have these massive fires formed in August is scary. We’ll talk later about the impact on wine and beer, but there are real concerns about what this means even without all the added challenges that this year was going to have thanks to Covid.

A: That’s interesting. I actually didn’t realize that it was earlier, to be honest. Again, that’s because we don’t deal with it on this side of the country as often. I really had no clue. That’s crazy.

E: I think probably the best way to visualize it, and I was looking at the fire maps today, is there’s a site that’s fire.ca.gov and that is a government website that tracks fires — not just in California, but you can also see the ones in Oregon and Washington on that map. And if you look at it today, Thursday, Sept. 10, you can see that the fires are stretching all the way from the Mexico border all the way up to Canada. It’s pretty shocking and upsetting to see how many fires are happening and we’re only in the first week of September. I think just in California alone there’s 28 major wildfires and 14,000 firefighters who are currently working overtime on these things. And then I couldn’t believe the photos that came out in San Francisco and parts of Oregon where literally yesterday was the day that the sun did not rise. It was shocking to see those otherworldly orange-yellow glow images of just hundreds and thousands of acres being just totally decimated. It was pretty shocking to see the imagery.

A: It’s really nuts. I was talking to someone in Napa last week who said they came out of their house in the morning, and their car was covered in ash. Even if you’re not in the path of the fire, the fire is impacting you — and especially impacting you if you are a grower. One of the biggest things that we’re hearing a lot about now is how the fires are going to impact harvest, for hops as well as for grapes. A lot of people were saying early on that this was going to be a major year for grapes, especially in California. That there was going to be so much supply, but because of Covid maybe less demand, so we’re going to see a ton of that wine on the market across the country. People were joking, saying, “You’re probably going to find Napa Cabernet in Texas Hill Country wine,” whatever the legal limit of that was, because there was just going to be so much. And now, everyone’s talking instead about smoke taint. And so I’m not as familiar with smoke taint in terms of scientifically how it works. And I was hoping one of you was to talk us through. I understand smoke taint is that the grapes get tainted with smoke and then they taste like smoke. But I’m not sure how that works, and why it can’t be reversed.

E: Zach, you probably have a better handle on it than I do.

Z: I’m going to give my best explanation as to what exactly happens here, and try to explain what smoke taint is — and why it’s something to both be concerned about, and also not super concerned about. The one thing is there’s still not a lot of great understanding, scientifically. What conditions lead to smoke taint in a finished wine are not super-well understood. Over the last few years, there’s been more emphasis in academic and research settings to try and understand this at an academic level, and I think some of the big wine companies are probably doing some research, too. Australia is really the place where a lot of the research has been done because wildfires have been a bigger issue for them than in the U.S. in the past. One thing to note is that smoke taint is really only a risk with red wine, because the smoke taint affects the skins of the grapes. It adheres to the skins of the grapes, and so you’re only going to really extract the compounds that we think of as smoke taint when you’re doing maceration of some length, which is what you do for red wine, but not for white or rosé. White wine and rosé should largely be safe. The biggest risk with smoke taint is that it seems to be only really detectable post-fermentation, or even sometimes after aging. So one of the real issues for winemakers is that in the vineyard or at the sorting table, in the same way that you could detect rot or mildew, you can’t necessarily detect smoke taint. And it’s not like washing the grapes seems to do a lot. It’s that the skins, themselves, take up these compounds and lock them in, and then they are released through fermentation and sometimes in the aging process. And so the problem is basically that you can have wine that seems fine through fermentation and then a few months into the aging process, you go in and you smell it or you taste it and you go, “Oh s***, my wine is ruined, it’s tainted.” And that is the big risk here. You’re going to have a lot of different approaches from wineries and winemakers. Some of them may be very cautious and may decide to do very little winemaking this year, or they’re going to make nothing but white and rosé or they’re going to make really limited macerations, or they’re going to do whatever they can to try and avoid smoke tainted wines. Others might say f*** it, we’re going for it and if we detect smoke taint, then s***, we have got to do something with that wine. And maybe the answer is blended in and blended away in small quantities. There seems to be a school of thought in winemaking that a very small amount of smoke tainted juice can be non-detectable or even can add a desirable smoky note as opposed to the classic ashtray note of a truly smoke-tainted wine — which I’ve had the chance to try being on the West Coast. I’ve had winemakers sometimes with previous vintages that were smoke tainted tell me to try it and see what smoke taint is, and you’re like, “Oh s***, this is disgusting.” And the honest truth is that at this point, from what I know, we don’t have good testing for this pre-fermentation. It’s going to be a crapshoot, which is the s****y part of this, and I don’t have a better way to explain it than that.

E: I’ve seen some very varying opinions on how long the exposure period is, as well. Some people in the past have said it takes several days of prolonged heavy smoke exposure to really damage the grapes and have those phenols stick to the grape in a way that can’t come off. But then I’ve seen others saying that even a day or two of that type of heavy smoke exposure can really ruin the grapes. And, of course, as you said, it’s going to be less with white wine, or we may even see more rosé wines being made this year as a way to try to salvage some of those red wine grapes. Because you’re just not going to be able to leave the juice on the grapes to develop the red wine characteristics that you need over a long period of time with that smoke effect there. So I think what we’ll see is a change in how people are going to operate this year. Looking at all of California, you see reports of grape producers already saying that they’re not going to take their crops or that they’re not going to make wine this year in Sonoma, in Napa, in Paso Robles, in the Central Coast, all throughout the state. I’ve seen a lot of conversation happening about who is or isn’t going to make wine and which grapes were able to come in before the fires really got going. I think that’s what’s at play here, it’s really the entire harvest. If the grapes were not already picked before the smoke got heavy, it could be ruinous for some producers.

A: It’s just nuts. It really is crazy because it’s just sh****ness upon sh****ness, and there’s nothing that you can do. And that’s what I’m worried about, because there have been so many of these fires in recent years. Has there been anything that the wine industry has done? And maybe we don’t know the answer to that question. And if you’re a podcast listener and you do, let us know at podcast@vinepair.com. But has there been anything that has been done to try to mitigate that risk? Do the wineries have smoke taint insurance now? Are there other things that they can do that really will help them if they lose a huge majority of their crop?

E: I know that there is some insurance, there’s some agricultural insurance that could come into play. But it’s probably, like all insurance, there’s so many hoops to jump through to try to be able to take advantage of it. So I’m not sure if there’s kind of a hard- and-fast rule about what would and would not qualify.

A: Interesting. So you just make a lot of brandy with it or something? Does it just turn into a bunch of gin all of a sudden? Some of these wines could you just distill? Is that what you’re stuck with?

Z: Turn it into hand sanitizer?

A: Yeah, exactly. Speaking of hand sanitizer, the Champagne producers who said, “We will not release the wine on the market if it is cheaper, it will be hand sanitizer.” I wonder if that’s what you’re going to see. A lot of high-quality California wine sanitizer.

Z: Well, you also have this other problem that’s going on that we kind of touched on. In wine and in hops there were already labor issues thanks to Covid. And the other thing to think about is that vineyard work in a lot of these places is not necessarily all that safe. Fortunately, Seattle didn’t have it nearly as bad as some other parts of the West Coast, but the last couple of days here, especially Tuesday, it was not safe to be outside for prolonged periods of time. Certainly not doing something as physically demanding as harvesting grapes. And that is another piece of this. As you mentioned earlier on, Adam, we were already talking about potentially a smaller crop and questions about what would happen to grapes that were on the vine that maybe there wasn’t the labor to pick. And you’re going to potentially add to that. We’re kind of at the early stages of harvest for a lot of areas on the West Coast, but it’s getting there. Early to mid-September is certainly the beginning of the harvest season for a lot of places, and we’ll be in full swing quite soon, and many of these fires are far from contained, and there can always be new fires and things like that. One possibility is there’s a lot of unharvested grapes this year. The birds have a great year. And that may just be one of the answers. In the end, it’s not worth it from a variety of levels, economically, health-wise, etc., to pick a lot of grapes. It’s kind of sad on the one hand, think of the wine that could have been if it wasn’t smoke-tainted. On the other hand, maybe the best answer is just to basically say 2020 sucks for everyone. We’re just going to move on.

A: Except for the birds.

E: One angle that we have been reporting on is how local tourism has been a lifeline for a lot of wineries and breweries and distilleries who’ve been able to do curbside and outdoor tastings, and this is adding insult to injury. Now, not only can you not sell your wines on-premise or pick the grapes, but also you have the small, diminished lifeline that you did have of serving people at your tasting room. That. too, is gone. So, we have the plague, we have the fire, and the locusts are coming next. That’s for sure.

A: Totally.

Z: As long as there’s no smiting of the firstborn because that would be bad for me.

A: It’s just nuts. And, Zach, just really quickly before we wrap this one up for today, because last week was so long. We talked a little about the grapes but I know we mentioned hops earlier. How is the smoke impacting hops? How are the fires impacting hops?

Z: That’s a good question, and I’ll give what I know to this point. I will say right upfront, I don’t have an answer yet. I’ve been trying to find one. I don’t know that anyone knows. I don’t think there’s as much concern about smoke taint on hops. Basically what happens with grapes is the smoke compounds bind to sugars in the grapes and that’s how they’re locked into the grape itself, and then that’s why it’s released during fermentation and later on, during the maturation process. Since hops are not picked for their sugar, they’re not the fermentable substance in beer — that’s barley and other malted grains — there isn’t the same risk. There could be some flavor impacts, but the hop growers I spoke to are not concerned about the hops, themselves, being damaged. The issue is really twofold. One is, again, the same as with wine, an issue of labor and whether it’s safe to pick. Hop harvesting, like wine harvesting, is a mix of mechanization and hand labor, and obviously, if the air is unsafe to be out in, then things don’t get picked. And for those of you who don’t know, around 98 percent of the hops in this country are grown in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho in the broader Columbia Valley footprint. And this is right where many of these fires are, so there’s that risk. And then there’s also the honest risk of many of these hop fields, as opposed to vineyards, are more closely situated to some of these fires. And because of where they’re positioned — more in the valley floors than on hills — they are, I think, at more risk of burning. I haven’t heard yet about any of that, but according to a couple of growers I was talking to actually for an article that I’m working on for VinePair — which hopefully will come out, although I’m in the process of having to rewrite it because these fires are changing the story — there are definitely some concerns about an actual loss of crop due to the fire. To say nothing of people’s homes and businesses and things like that and also, of course, possibly lives. So that’s very much a TBD. But, yes, there’s also a real risk to the hop harvest in the U.S. this go-round. Again, what that means, no one knows yet, but we’ll follow up for sure. But it’s not just wine that’s potentially being impacted here.

A: If you are listening, please reach out to wineries that you love, breweries that you love. Support them, buy their products, because everyone’s going to need a lot of help to get through this. These fires are absolutely nuts, and we should be paying attention to them more if you are not already.

Z: And learn to love white and rosé, because that might be all you’re getting domestically.

A: This has been an interesting podcast. Please, if you have any thoughts, reach out to us at podcast@vinepair.com. We’d love to hear your views, other topics you’d like us to discuss in future episodes. And as always, thanks for listening. Erica, Zach, I’ll see you next week.

E: See you then.

Z: Sounds great.

A: Thanks so much for listening to the VinePair Podcast. If you enjoy listening to us every week, please leave us a review or rating on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever it is that you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show. Now, for the credits. VinePair is produced and hosted by Zach Geballe, Erica Duecy and me, Adam Teeter. Our engineer is Nick Patri and Keith Beavers. I’d also like to give a special shout-out to my VinePair co-founder Josh Malin and the rest of the VinePair team for their support. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you again right here next week.

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.

The article VinePair Podcast: West Coast Wildfires Demand Our Attention appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/west-coast-wildfires-demand-our-attention/

[johnboothus]

VinePair Podcast: West Coast Wildfires Demand Our Attention

The 2020 wildfire season has already had devastating effects up and down the West Coast, with lives lost, homes destroyed, and horrific air quality choking tens of millions of people. Beyond those immediate dangers are several other types of concerns — such as how the fires will affect American wine production. There are worries that lingering smoke might irrevocably taint wine grapes that are almost ready to be picked, or that such toxic air might make harvesting those grapes unsafe. Fear that hop fields in Washington and Oregon — which produce 98 percent of the nation’s hops — could burn. Dread that industries and companies already grievously harmed by the crippling effects of Covid-19 will not be able to survive the massive losses these fires could produce.

The question remains: Is the rest of the country (and the world) paying attention? Will images of neon orange skies and vast clouds of smoke resonate outside affected areas? What can we all do to address this crisis, both in the short and long term? That’s what Adam Teeter, Erica Duecy, and Zach Geballe discuss on this week’s VinePair podcast.

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Adam: From Brooklyn, New York, I’m Adam Teeter.

Erica: From Jersey City, I’m Erica Duecy.

Zach: And in Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.

A: And this is the VinePair podcast. And Jersey City?

E: Yeah, we are back in Jersey City.

A: Wow.

E: I have to say, it is quite shocking. I traded the view out my window in Connecticut, which was of a pond and a field and a mature grove of trees, and right now I am looking down a block in Jersey City where all but one of the stores is shuttered. The only one that’s open is a liquor store at the end of the block and homeless encampments right in front of me — worse than I’ve seen since I’ve lived in Jersey City.

A: And you’ve been in Jersey for how many years?

E: For 12 years.

A: Wow. It’s crazy, right? You come back and this is what’s happening.

E: It’s a shock to the system. It really is.

A: Do you have any restaurants on your block, any bars?

E: Yes, there is one across the street — there was one I should say, but now it’s permanently closed.

A: Wow. Just crazy. But anyway, welcome back to the tri-state area.

E: Thank you.

Z: Wait, isn’t Connecticut part of the tri-state area?

E: Is it?

A: Yeah, it is.

Z: I thought it was New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

A: Yeah, it is, never mind. So welcome back to the metro area.

E: Thank you.

A: Welcome back.

Z: If you see your pond out your window, that will be just the latest natural disaster.

E: I’m just waiting for the streets to open up. So that’s next.

A: Big news in New York is that they’ve finally decided that they’re going to allow 25 percent indoor dining, as of Sept. 30, which is pretty crazy. I still don’t know. I know we’ve talked about this before, but I don’t think I’m going to go dine indoors.

E: I’m not. I’ve decided that I am not comfortable dining indoors until the pandemic is curbed. Until it’s either pretty much eradicated or there’s a vaccine, I’m just not comfortable. I just don’t think it’s worth the risk.

A: Yeah. I don’t think so either. Zach?

Z: Zero chance. As we’ve talked about a number of times on this podcast, it’s been very weird to live six months of my life without restaurants, but I can live another six months, a year, two years. I don’t want to get Covid. So no, not going to a restaurant.

A: The sidewalk cafes, at least out here in Brooklyn, are more crowded than ever. People are definitely trying to have some sort of normalcy. My wife was saying earlier this week, and I agree with her, she said she misses quarantine. And I said, “What do you mean?” And she said, “I miss when we knew what the rules were.” When we were all staying inside, we were socially distancing, and maybe we saw the one random person that we felt really comfortable seeing. She said, “I crushed quarantine.” We were cooking. And now this middle ground is so weird because, what is acceptable? What isn’t acceptable? Do you go back to the office? Do you not go back to the office? You have so many offices they’re reopening. Do you go out to eat? Do you not? If you go out to eat, where do you go out to eat? Where do you sit when you go out to eat? How do you treat people? We should say either everything is shut down, or everything’s open. And I’m sure that that’s very hard for any owners, as well, of restaurants. I know it’s hard for us as a business. When do we open the VinePair office, which still isn’t open? Just thinking about do you open, or do you not? How do you open? What does that look like? It’s crazy. And there’s no guidance at all.

E: It’s totally inconsistent. My kids are doing remote school and I had to chase down a Chromebook. I went into the city yesterday and went into an electronics store where it was masks optional. I said, are you kidding me?

A: Are you serious?

E: I am serious. In Chelsea, I went into a large chain electronics store and it was masks optional. People had no masks on and I beat a path out of the store so quickly. Then I came back over to the same large chain store a little bit farther out in Jersey and it was masks required. It’s inconsistent. Completely inconsistent.

A: That’s one of the reasons that the percentage law got overturned in New York City because, for those not familiar, there’s this one area of Queens where the line is very blurred between where Queen stops and where Long Island begins. And there was this restaurant in Queens that was like, “Look, literally 200 feet from our door is one of our competitors who happens to be on Long Island and they are open with 50 percent capacity indoors. Please explain why it’s not safe 200 feet away here, but it’s safe enough there.” And then they sued the state. And I think that was one of the things Cuomo responded to, and one of the reasons he gave 25 percent, because it is, across the board, inconsistent. And that’s what just makes this so nuts. Some states are saying it’s completely fine to be at 75 percent capacity. Some states are saying it’s not fine to be eating at all, indoors or outdoors. It’s crazy, I think it’s what is making us all a little nutty.

Z: Well, that’s one of the advantages of being in a city where we are not very close to any other state line. For Erica, going from New Jersey to New York is a very, very simple trip, and you can come across different laws and different practices. Whereas in Washington State, there’s a statewide mask mandate. I’m not concerned that the store I go into is going to have a different policy or different rules because they’re in a different jurisdiction. But I totally agree that one of the major issues that we’re all dealing with is there aren’t a lot of well-articulated guidelines. And I’m not going to turn this into a huge rant. But one of the big problems is that many of us crushed lockdown, and nothing really happened. That’s the part of this that’s really hard. If we had gone three months of lockdown and then emerged, like a lot of Europe did, we would’ve been able to go back to some semblance of normal life. Not that any of us would’ve said, “Oh, man, Covid was great.” It was obviously horrible on so many levels, but at least we would have felt like that time that was, for a lot of us, very difficult and very traumatic in a lot of different ways, was put to use. Instead, we’re still in this pandemic, where things aren’t all that much better. We still don’t have any f***ing clue what’s going to happen. And we’re about to get to the time of year where going outside, for most of us, is going to be not very pleasant. We’re not going to be able to hide out outside and sort of ignore it. We’re gonna be stuck indoors, or forced into shared public spaces. And that part is the part that’s going to suck, because it’s not going to be as clear-cut as it was in March, April, and May about what we need to do. But we’re still going to have to deal with the fact that, if we’re doing things in public, they’re going to be indoors for most of us.

A: I guess we’ll get through it. We’re all trying. And drinking a lot. Anyways, let’s get into this week’s topic, which is one that we all felt is very important and worth discussing, which is the awful fires that are ravaging the West Coast of the United States. And it’s interesting, when we were all talking about the subject for today’s podcast, I was slacking with both of you and I shared with you this interesting thought that I read in The New York Times this morning, which was basically that the fires aren’t getting enough attention. And one of the biggest reasons that this writer was saying that they don’t think that they are is because, for a lot of people who probably listen to the podcast, this is one of the main things you’re thinking about if you live on that side of the country. But because the media is based on the East Coast, they’re just not covering it as much as they would if these fires were happening on the East Coast of the country. Which I think is worth considering, because these are fires that are really damaging whole swaths of land in California, Washington, and Oregon, and really affecting people’s livelihoods in a very fundamental way. And then on top of that, there’s a pandemic. It’s just really terrible. So I think we want to use this podcast to draw attention to what’s happening on the West Coast and talk a little bit about how they’re really going to impact the people who are going through it, but also truly let you know if you’re a listener and you aren’t truly aware of what’s happening, to please be aware of what’s happening and think about supporting the wineries, breweries, etc. that are going to be really suffering because of these fires. Zach, you’re over there, so let’s start with you. What’s it like to be living in Seattle? Does the reporting feel more constant for you than it does for us? What are you hearing from people that you know on the west side of the country in terms of what they’re dealing with?

Z: I think there are multiple parts to the answer. Unsurprising, I suppose. The first thing I would say is that one thing that’s challenging for people on the East Coast to understand if you haven’t spent a lot of time on the West Coast, is how big the states are out here and how big the fires are. You can look up some of the details on the fires, in particular, in California and the amount of land that’s burned and the scope of them. But it’s the size of states, obviously not the size of California, but it’s the size of other states. But at the same time, much of this land is very remote. Even in California, certainly in Oregon, and some of the cases in Washington with the fires, there are not big population centers. And I think that generally one of the reasons why these big fires over there — not just this year but in previous years, too — don’t draw media attention, is it happens far away from New York City. But also, when you have hurricanes or earthquakes, often where that footage and that coverage is coming from our cities. Big population centers that are damaged. And to this point, so far, while all these big population centers on the West Coast are being impacted with smoke and ash and things like that, the fires, themselves, have not necessarily threatened these cities. But at the same time, they are massive. And big fires are fundamentally different from earthquakes or hurricanes because we don’t really know when they’re going to end. An earthquake happens, and obviously there’s tremendous damage, and it could start fires and things like that. But the earthquake, itself, is a few minutes and then there are certainly aftershocks. And with hurricanes, we have really sophisticated modeling technology, we have a pretty good idea for where a hurricane’s going to go, when it’s going to arrive, when it’s going to pass. And there’s a ton of work and a ton of damage, but it’s mostly in the cleanup. With fires, they’re so unpredictable, they’re so dependent on winds that can shift suddenly and on conditions on the ground that are very hard to understand. And so there’s a part of this that is just very difficult to forecast and that creates a lot of uncertainty. It also creates a lot of danger. The thing I would say to this point is that what I’ve seen and heard from friends up and down the coast is that the scary thing for a lot of people is this that is earlier than fire season is supposed to happen, especially in California. And so on the one hand, land that burns and woods that burn aren’t going to burn again in a month, but there’s certainly all the still-existing potential for the typical fire season for much of California and Oregon, and to some extent Washington, which is now through October. So the fact that we already have these massive fires formed in August is scary. We’ll talk later about the impact on wine and beer, but there are real concerns about what this means even without all the added challenges that this year was going to have thanks to Covid.

A: That’s interesting. I actually didn’t realize that it was earlier, to be honest. Again, that’s because we don’t deal with it on this side of the country as often. I really had no clue. That’s crazy.

E: I think probably the best way to visualize it, and I was looking at the fire maps today, is there’s a site that’s fire.ca.gov and that is a government website that tracks fires — not just in California, but you can also see the ones in Oregon and Washington on that map. And if you look at it today, Thursday, Sept. 10, you can see that the fires are stretching all the way from the Mexico border all the way up to Canada. It’s pretty shocking and upsetting to see how many fires are happening and we’re only in the first week of September. I think just in California alone there’s 28 major wildfires and 14,000 firefighters who are currently working overtime on these things. And then I couldn’t believe the photos that came out in San Francisco and parts of Oregon where literally yesterday was the day that the sun did not rise. It was shocking to see those otherworldly orange-yellow glow images of just hundreds and thousands of acres being just totally decimated. It was pretty shocking to see the imagery.

A: It’s really nuts. I was talking to someone in Napa last week who said they came out of their house in the morning, and their car was covered in ash. Even if you’re not in the path of the fire, the fire is impacting you — and especially impacting you if you are a grower. One of the biggest things that we’re hearing a lot about now is how the fires are going to impact harvest, for hops as well as for grapes. A lot of people were saying early on that this was going to be a major year for grapes, especially in California. That there was going to be so much supply, but because of Covid maybe less demand, so we’re going to see a ton of that wine on the market across the country. People were joking, saying, “You’re probably going to find Napa Cabernet in Texas Hill Country wine,” whatever the legal limit of that was, because there was just going to be so much. And now, everyone’s talking instead about smoke taint. And so I’m not as familiar with smoke taint in terms of scientifically how it works. And I was hoping one of you was to talk us through. I understand smoke taint is that the grapes get tainted with smoke and then they taste like smoke. But I’m not sure how that works, and why it can’t be reversed.

E: Zach, you probably have a better handle on it than I do.

Z: I’m going to give my best explanation as to what exactly happens here, and try to explain what smoke taint is — and why it’s something to both be concerned about, and also not super concerned about. The one thing is there’s still not a lot of great understanding, scientifically. What conditions lead to smoke taint in a finished wine are not super-well understood. Over the last few years, there’s been more emphasis in academic and research settings to try and understand this at an academic level, and I think some of the big wine companies are probably doing some research, too. Australia is really the place where a lot of the research has been done because wildfires have been a bigger issue for them than in the U.S. in the past. One thing to note is that smoke taint is really only a risk with red wine, because the smoke taint affects the skins of the grapes. It adheres to the skins of the grapes, and so you’re only going to really extract the compounds that we think of as smoke taint when you’re doing maceration of some length, which is what you do for red wine, but not for white or rosé. White wine and rosé should largely be safe. The biggest risk with smoke taint is that it seems to be only really detectable post-fermentation, or even sometimes after aging. So one of the real issues for winemakers is that in the vineyard or at the sorting table, in the same way that you could detect rot or mildew, you can’t necessarily detect smoke taint. And it’s not like washing the grapes seems to do a lot. It’s that the skins, themselves, take up these compounds and lock them in, and then they are released through fermentation and sometimes in the aging process. And so the problem is basically that you can have wine that seems fine through fermentation and then a few months into the aging process, you go in and you smell it or you taste it and you go, “Oh s***, my wine is ruined, it’s tainted.” And that is the big risk here. You’re going to have a lot of different approaches from wineries and winemakers. Some of them may be very cautious and may decide to do very little winemaking this year, or they’re going to make nothing but white and rosé or they’re going to make really limited macerations, or they’re going to do whatever they can to try and avoid smoke tainted wines. Others might say f*** it, we’re going for it and if we detect smoke taint, then s***, we have got to do something with that wine. And maybe the answer is blended in and blended away in small quantities. There seems to be a school of thought in winemaking that a very small amount of smoke tainted juice can be non-detectable or even can add a desirable smoky note as opposed to the classic ashtray note of a truly smoke-tainted wine — which I’ve had the chance to try being on the West Coast. I’ve had winemakers sometimes with previous vintages that were smoke tainted tell me to try it and see what smoke taint is, and you’re like, “Oh s***, this is disgusting.” And the honest truth is that at this point, from what I know, we don’t have good testing for this pre-fermentation. It’s going to be a crapshoot, which is the s****y part of this, and I don’t have a better way to explain it than that.

E: I’ve seen some very varying opinions on how long the exposure period is, as well. Some people in the past have said it takes several days of prolonged heavy smoke exposure to really damage the grapes and have those phenols stick to the grape in a way that can’t come off. But then I’ve seen others saying that even a day or two of that type of heavy smoke exposure can really ruin the grapes. And, of course, as you said, it’s going to be less with white wine, or we may even see more rosé wines being made this year as a way to try to salvage some of those red wine grapes. Because you’re just not going to be able to leave the juice on the grapes to develop the red wine characteristics that you need over a long period of time with that smoke effect there. So I think what we’ll see is a change in how people are going to operate this year. Looking at all of California, you see reports of grape producers already saying that they’re not going to take their crops or that they’re not going to make wine this year in Sonoma, in Napa, in Paso Robles, in the Central Coast, all throughout the state. I’ve seen a lot of conversation happening about who is or isn’t going to make wine and which grapes were able to come in before the fires really got going. I think that’s what’s at play here, it’s really the entire harvest. If the grapes were not already picked before the smoke got heavy, it could be ruinous for some producers.

A: It’s just nuts. It really is crazy because it’s just sh****ness upon sh****ness, and there’s nothing that you can do. And that’s what I’m worried about, because there have been so many of these fires in recent years. Has there been anything that the wine industry has done? And maybe we don’t know the answer to that question. And if you’re a podcast listener and you do, let us know at podcast@vinepair.com. But has there been anything that has been done to try to mitigate that risk? Do the wineries have smoke taint insurance now? Are there other things that they can do that really will help them if they lose a huge majority of their crop?

E: I know that there is some insurance, there’s some agricultural insurance that could come into play. But it’s probably, like all insurance, there’s so many hoops to jump through to try to be able to take advantage of it. So I’m not sure if there’s kind of a hard- and-fast rule about what would and would not qualify.

A: Interesting. So you just make a lot of brandy with it or something? Does it just turn into a bunch of gin all of a sudden? Some of these wines could you just distill? Is that what you’re stuck with?

Z: Turn it into hand sanitizer?

A: Yeah, exactly. Speaking of hand sanitizer, the Champagne producers who said, “We will not release the wine on the market if it is cheaper, it will be hand sanitizer.” I wonder if that’s what you’re going to see. A lot of high-quality California wine sanitizer.

Z: Well, you also have this other problem that’s going on that we kind of touched on. In wine and in hops there were already labor issues thanks to Covid. And the other thing to think about is that vineyard work in a lot of these places is not necessarily all that safe. Fortunately, Seattle didn’t have it nearly as bad as some other parts of the West Coast, but the last couple of days here, especially Tuesday, it was not safe to be outside for prolonged periods of time. Certainly not doing something as physically demanding as harvesting grapes. And that is another piece of this. As you mentioned earlier on, Adam, we were already talking about potentially a smaller crop and questions about what would happen to grapes that were on the vine that maybe there wasn’t the labor to pick. And you’re going to potentially add to that. We’re kind of at the early stages of harvest for a lot of areas on the West Coast, but it’s getting there. Early to mid-September is certainly the beginning of the harvest season for a lot of places, and we’ll be in full swing quite soon, and many of these fires are far from contained, and there can always be new fires and things like that. One possibility is there’s a lot of unharvested grapes this year. The birds have a great year. And that may just be one of the answers. In the end, it’s not worth it from a variety of levels, economically, health-wise, etc., to pick a lot of grapes. It’s kind of sad on the one hand, think of the wine that could have been if it wasn’t smoke-tainted. On the other hand, maybe the best answer is just to basically say 2020 sucks for everyone. We’re just going to move on.

A: Except for the birds.

E: One angle that we have been reporting on is how local tourism has been a lifeline for a lot of wineries and breweries and distilleries who’ve been able to do curbside and outdoor tastings, and this is adding insult to injury. Now, not only can you not sell your wines on-premise or pick the grapes, but also you have the small, diminished lifeline that you did have of serving people at your tasting room. That. too, is gone. So, we have the plague, we have the fire, and the locusts are coming next. That’s for sure.

A: Totally.

Z: As long as there’s no smiting of the firstborn because that would be bad for me.

A: It’s just nuts. And, Zach, just really quickly before we wrap this one up for today, because last week was so long. We talked a little about the grapes but I know we mentioned hops earlier. How is the smoke impacting hops? How are the fires impacting hops?

Z: That’s a good question, and I’ll give what I know to this point. I will say right upfront, I don’t have an answer yet. I’ve been trying to find one. I don’t know that anyone knows. I don’t think there’s as much concern about smoke taint on hops. Basically what happens with grapes is the smoke compounds bind to sugars in the grapes and that’s how they’re locked into the grape itself, and then that’s why it’s released during fermentation and later on, during the maturation process. Since hops are not picked for their sugar, they’re not the fermentable substance in beer — that’s barley and other malted grains — there isn’t the same risk. There could be some flavor impacts, but the hop growers I spoke to are not concerned about the hops, themselves, being damaged. The issue is really twofold. One is, again, the same as with wine, an issue of labor and whether it’s safe to pick. Hop harvesting, like wine harvesting, is a mix of mechanization and hand labor, and obviously, if the air is unsafe to be out in, then things don’t get picked. And for those of you who don’t know, around 98 percent of the hops in this country are grown in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho in the broader Columbia Valley footprint. And this is right where many of these fires are, so there’s that risk. And then there’s also the honest risk of many of these hop fields, as opposed to vineyards, are more closely situated to some of these fires. And because of where they’re positioned — more in the valley floors than on hills — they are, I think, at more risk of burning. I haven’t heard yet about any of that, but according to a couple of growers I was talking to actually for an article that I’m working on for VinePair — which hopefully will come out, although I’m in the process of having to rewrite it because these fires are changing the story — there are definitely some concerns about an actual loss of crop due to the fire. To say nothing of people’s homes and businesses and things like that and also, of course, possibly lives. So that’s very much a TBD. But, yes, there’s also a real risk to the hop harvest in the U.S. this go-round. Again, what that means, no one knows yet, but we’ll follow up for sure. But it’s not just wine that’s potentially being impacted here.

A: If you are listening, please reach out to wineries that you love, breweries that you love. Support them, buy their products, because everyone’s going to need a lot of help to get through this. These fires are absolutely nuts, and we should be paying attention to them more if you are not already.

Z: And learn to love white and rosé, because that might be all you’re getting domestically.

A: This has been an interesting podcast. Please, if you have any thoughts, reach out to us at podcast@vinepair.com. We’d love to hear your views, other topics you’d like us to discuss in future episodes. And as always, thanks for listening. Erica, Zach, I’ll see you next week.

E: See you then.

Z: Sounds great.

A: Thanks so much for listening to the VinePair Podcast. If you enjoy listening to us every week, please leave us a review or rating on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever it is that you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show. Now, for the credits. VinePair is produced and hosted by Zach Geballe, Erica Duecy and me, Adam Teeter. Our engineer is Nick Patri and Keith Beavers. I’d also like to give a special shout-out to my VinePair co-founder Josh Malin and the rest of the VinePair team for their support. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you again right here next week.

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.

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VinePair Podcast: West Coast Wildfires Demand Our Attention

The 2020 wildfire season has already had devastating effects up and down the West Coast, with lives lost, homes destroyed, and horrific air quality choking tens of millions of people. Beyond those immediate dangers are several other types of concerns — such as how the fires will affect American wine production. There are worries that lingering smoke might irrevocably taint wine grapes that are almost ready to be picked, or that such toxic air might make harvesting those grapes unsafe. Fear that hop fields in Washington and Oregon — which produce 98 percent of the nation’s hops — could burn. Dread that industries and companies already grievously harmed by the crippling effects of Covid-19 will not be able to survive the massive losses these fires could produce.

The question remains: Is the rest of the country (and the world) paying attention? Will images of neon orange skies and vast clouds of smoke resonate outside affected areas? What can we all do to address this crisis, both in the short and long term? That’s what Adam Teeter, Erica Duecy, and Zach Geballe discuss on this week’s VinePair podcast.

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Adam: From Brooklyn, New York, I’m Adam Teeter.

Erica: From Jersey City, I’m Erica Duecy.

Zach: And in Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.

A: And this is the VinePair podcast. And Jersey City?

E: Yeah, we are back in Jersey City.

A: Wow.

E: I have to say, it is quite shocking. I traded the view out my window in Connecticut, which was of a pond and a field and a mature grove of trees, and right now I am looking down a block in Jersey City where all but one of the stores is shuttered. The only one that’s open is a liquor store at the end of the block and homeless encampments right in front of me — worse than I’ve seen since I’ve lived in Jersey City.

A: And you’ve been in Jersey for how many years?

E: For 12 years.

A: Wow. It’s crazy, right? You come back and this is what’s happening.

E: It’s a shock to the system. It really is.

A: Do you have any restaurants on your block, any bars?

E: Yes, there is one across the street — there was one I should say, but now it’s permanently closed.

A: Wow. Just crazy. But anyway, welcome back to the tri-state area.

E: Thank you.

Z: Wait, isn’t Connecticut part of the tri-state area?

E: Is it?

A: Yeah, it is.

Z: I thought it was New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

A: Yeah, it is, never mind. So welcome back to the metro area.

E: Thank you.

A: Welcome back.

Z: If you see your pond out your window, that will be just the latest natural disaster.

E: I’m just waiting for the streets to open up. So that’s next.

A: Big news in New York is that they’ve finally decided that they’re going to allow 25 percent indoor dining, as of Sept. 30, which is pretty crazy. I still don’t know. I know we’ve talked about this before, but I don’t think I’m going to go dine indoors.

E: I’m not. I’ve decided that I am not comfortable dining indoors until the pandemic is curbed. Until it’s either pretty much eradicated or there’s a vaccine, I’m just not comfortable. I just don’t think it’s worth the risk.

A: Yeah. I don’t think so either. Zach?

Z: Zero chance. As we’ve talked about a number of times on this podcast, it’s been very weird to live six months of my life without restaurants, but I can live another six months, a year, two years. I don’t want to get Covid. So no, not going to a restaurant.

A: The sidewalk cafes, at least out here in Brooklyn, are more crowded than ever. People are definitely trying to have some sort of normalcy. My wife was saying earlier this week, and I agree with her, she said she misses quarantine. And I said, “What do you mean?” And she said, “I miss when we knew what the rules were.” When we were all staying inside, we were socially distancing, and maybe we saw the one random person that we felt really comfortable seeing. She said, “I crushed quarantine.” We were cooking. And now this middle ground is so weird because, what is acceptable? What isn’t acceptable? Do you go back to the office? Do you not go back to the office? You have so many offices they’re reopening. Do you go out to eat? Do you not? If you go out to eat, where do you go out to eat? Where do you sit when you go out to eat? How do you treat people? We should say either everything is shut down, or everything’s open. And I’m sure that that’s very hard for any owners, as well, of restaurants. I know it’s hard for us as a business. When do we open the VinePair office, which still isn’t open? Just thinking about do you open, or do you not? How do you open? What does that look like? It’s crazy. And there’s no guidance at all.

E: It’s totally inconsistent. My kids are doing remote school and I had to chase down a Chromebook. I went into the city yesterday and went into an electronics store where it was masks optional. I said, are you kidding me?

A: Are you serious?

E: I am serious. In Chelsea, I went into a large chain electronics store and it was masks optional. People had no masks on and I beat a path out of the store so quickly. Then I came back over to the same large chain store a little bit farther out in Jersey and it was masks required. It’s inconsistent. Completely inconsistent.

A: That’s one of the reasons that the percentage law got overturned in New York City because, for those not familiar, there’s this one area of Queens where the line is very blurred between where Queen stops and where Long Island begins. And there was this restaurant in Queens that was like, “Look, literally 200 feet from our door is one of our competitors who happens to be on Long Island and they are open with 50 percent capacity indoors. Please explain why it’s not safe 200 feet away here, but it’s safe enough there.” And then they sued the state. And I think that was one of the things Cuomo responded to, and one of the reasons he gave 25 percent, because it is, across the board, inconsistent. And that’s what just makes this so nuts. Some states are saying it’s completely fine to be at 75 percent capacity. Some states are saying it’s not fine to be eating at all, indoors or outdoors. It’s crazy, I think it’s what is making us all a little nutty.

Z: Well, that’s one of the advantages of being in a city where we are not very close to any other state line. For Erica, going from New Jersey to New York is a very, very simple trip, and you can come across different laws and different practices. Whereas in Washington State, there’s a statewide mask mandate. I’m not concerned that the store I go into is going to have a different policy or different rules because they’re in a different jurisdiction. But I totally agree that one of the major issues that we’re all dealing with is there aren’t a lot of well-articulated guidelines. And I’m not going to turn this into a huge rant. But one of the big problems is that many of us crushed lockdown, and nothing really happened. That’s the part of this that’s really hard. If we had gone three months of lockdown and then emerged, like a lot of Europe did, we would’ve been able to go back to some semblance of normal life. Not that any of us would’ve said, “Oh, man, Covid was great.” It was obviously horrible on so many levels, but at least we would have felt like that time that was, for a lot of us, very difficult and very traumatic in a lot of different ways, was put to use. Instead, we’re still in this pandemic, where things aren’t all that much better. We still don’t have any f***ing clue what’s going to happen. And we’re about to get to the time of year where going outside, for most of us, is going to be not very pleasant. We’re not going to be able to hide out outside and sort of ignore it. We’re gonna be stuck indoors, or forced into shared public spaces. And that part is the part that’s going to suck, because it’s not going to be as clear-cut as it was in March, April, and May about what we need to do. But we’re still going to have to deal with the fact that, if we’re doing things in public, they’re going to be indoors for most of us.

A: I guess we’ll get through it. We’re all trying. And drinking a lot. Anyways, let’s get into this week’s topic, which is one that we all felt is very important and worth discussing, which is the awful fires that are ravaging the West Coast of the United States. And it’s interesting, when we were all talking about the subject for today’s podcast, I was slacking with both of you and I shared with you this interesting thought that I read in The New York Times this morning, which was basically that the fires aren’t getting enough attention. And one of the biggest reasons that this writer was saying that they don’t think that they are is because, for a lot of people who probably listen to the podcast, this is one of the main things you’re thinking about if you live on that side of the country. But because the media is based on the East Coast, they’re just not covering it as much as they would if these fires were happening on the East Coast of the country. Which I think is worth considering, because these are fires that are really damaging whole swaths of land in California, Washington, and Oregon, and really affecting people’s livelihoods in a very fundamental way. And then on top of that, there’s a pandemic. It’s just really terrible. So I think we want to use this podcast to draw attention to what’s happening on the West Coast and talk a little bit about how they’re really going to impact the people who are going through it, but also truly let you know if you’re a listener and you aren’t truly aware of what’s happening, to please be aware of what’s happening and think about supporting the wineries, breweries, etc. that are going to be really suffering because of these fires. Zach, you’re over there, so let’s start with you. What’s it like to be living in Seattle? Does the reporting feel more constant for you than it does for us? What are you hearing from people that you know on the west side of the country in terms of what they’re dealing with?

Z: I think there are multiple parts to the answer. Unsurprising, I suppose. The first thing I would say is that one thing that’s challenging for people on the East Coast to understand if you haven’t spent a lot of time on the West Coast, is how big the states are out here and how big the fires are. You can look up some of the details on the fires, in particular, in California and the amount of land that’s burned and the scope of them. But it’s the size of states, obviously not the size of California, but it’s the size of other states. But at the same time, much of this land is very remote. Even in California, certainly in Oregon, and some of the cases in Washington with the fires, there are not big population centers. And I think that generally one of the reasons why these big fires over there — not just this year but in previous years, too — don’t draw media attention, is it happens far away from New York City. But also, when you have hurricanes or earthquakes, often where that footage and that coverage is coming from our cities. Big population centers that are damaged. And to this point, so far, while all these big population centers on the West Coast are being impacted with smoke and ash and things like that, the fires, themselves, have not necessarily threatened these cities. But at the same time, they are massive. And big fires are fundamentally different from earthquakes or hurricanes because we don’t really know when they’re going to end. An earthquake happens, and obviously there’s tremendous damage, and it could start fires and things like that. But the earthquake, itself, is a few minutes and then there are certainly aftershocks. And with hurricanes, we have really sophisticated modeling technology, we have a pretty good idea for where a hurricane’s going to go, when it’s going to arrive, when it’s going to pass. And there’s a ton of work and a ton of damage, but it’s mostly in the cleanup. With fires, they’re so unpredictable, they’re so dependent on winds that can shift suddenly and on conditions on the ground that are very hard to understand. And so there’s a part of this that is just very difficult to forecast and that creates a lot of uncertainty. It also creates a lot of danger. The thing I would say to this point is that what I’ve seen and heard from friends up and down the coast is that the scary thing for a lot of people is this that is earlier than fire season is supposed to happen, especially in California. And so on the one hand, land that burns and woods that burn aren’t going to burn again in a month, but there’s certainly all the still-existing potential for the typical fire season for much of California and Oregon, and to some extent Washington, which is now through October. So the fact that we already have these massive fires formed in August is scary. We’ll talk later about the impact on wine and beer, but there are real concerns about what this means even without all the added challenges that this year was going to have thanks to Covid.

A: That’s interesting. I actually didn’t realize that it was earlier, to be honest. Again, that’s because we don’t deal with it on this side of the country as often. I really had no clue. That’s crazy.

E: I think probably the best way to visualize it, and I was looking at the fire maps today, is there’s a site that’s fire.ca.gov and that is a government website that tracks fires — not just in California, but you can also see the ones in Oregon and Washington on that map. And if you look at it today, Thursday, Sept. 10, you can see that the fires are stretching all the way from the Mexico border all the way up to Canada. It’s pretty shocking and upsetting to see how many fires are happening and we’re only in the first week of September. I think just in California alone there’s 28 major wildfires and 14,000 firefighters who are currently working overtime on these things. And then I couldn’t believe the photos that came out in San Francisco and parts of Oregon where literally yesterday was the day that the sun did not rise. It was shocking to see those otherworldly orange-yellow glow images of just hundreds and thousands of acres being just totally decimated. It was pretty shocking to see the imagery.

A: It’s really nuts. I was talking to someone in Napa last week who said they came out of their house in the morning, and their car was covered in ash. Even if you’re not in the path of the fire, the fire is impacting you — and especially impacting you if you are a grower. One of the biggest things that we’re hearing a lot about now is how the fires are going to impact harvest, for hops as well as for grapes. A lot of people were saying early on that this was going to be a major year for grapes, especially in California. That there was going to be so much supply, but because of Covid maybe less demand, so we’re going to see a ton of that wine on the market across the country. People were joking, saying, “You’re probably going to find Napa Cabernet in Texas Hill Country wine,” whatever the legal limit of that was, because there was just going to be so much. And now, everyone’s talking instead about smoke taint. And so I’m not as familiar with smoke taint in terms of scientifically how it works. And I was hoping one of you was to talk us through. I understand smoke taint is that the grapes get tainted with smoke and then they taste like smoke. But I’m not sure how that works, and why it can’t be reversed.

E: Zach, you probably have a better handle on it than I do.

Z: I’m going to give my best explanation as to what exactly happens here, and try to explain what smoke taint is — and why it’s something to both be concerned about, and also not super concerned about. The one thing is there’s still not a lot of great understanding, scientifically. What conditions lead to smoke taint in a finished wine are not super-well understood. Over the last few years, there’s been more emphasis in academic and research settings to try and understand this at an academic level, and I think some of the big wine companies are probably doing some research, too. Australia is really the place where a lot of the research has been done because wildfires have been a bigger issue for them than in the U.S. in the past. One thing to note is that smoke taint is really only a risk with red wine, because the smoke taint affects the skins of the grapes. It adheres to the skins of the grapes, and so you’re only going to really extract the compounds that we think of as smoke taint when you’re doing maceration of some length, which is what you do for red wine, but not for white or rosé. White wine and rosé should largely be safe. The biggest risk with smoke taint is that it seems to be only really detectable post-fermentation, or even sometimes after aging. So one of the real issues for winemakers is that in the vineyard or at the sorting table, in the same way that you could detect rot or mildew, you can’t necessarily detect smoke taint. And it’s not like washing the grapes seems to do a lot. It’s that the skins, themselves, take up these compounds and lock them in, and then they are released through fermentation and sometimes in the aging process. And so the problem is basically that you can have wine that seems fine through fermentation and then a few months into the aging process, you go in and you smell it or you taste it and you go, “Oh s***, my wine is ruined, it’s tainted.” And that is the big risk here. You’re going to have a lot of different approaches from wineries and winemakers. Some of them may be very cautious and may decide to do very little winemaking this year, or they’re going to make nothing but white and rosé or they’re going to make really limited macerations, or they’re going to do whatever they can to try and avoid smoke tainted wines. Others might say f*** it, we’re going for it and if we detect smoke taint, then s***, we have got to do something with that wine. And maybe the answer is blended in and blended away in small quantities. There seems to be a school of thought in winemaking that a very small amount of smoke tainted juice can be non-detectable or even can add a desirable smoky note as opposed to the classic ashtray note of a truly smoke-tainted wine — which I’ve had the chance to try being on the West Coast. I’ve had winemakers sometimes with previous vintages that were smoke tainted tell me to try it and see what smoke taint is, and you’re like, “Oh s***, this is disgusting.” And the honest truth is that at this point, from what I know, we don’t have good testing for this pre-fermentation. It’s going to be a crapshoot, which is the s****y part of this, and I don’t have a better way to explain it than that.

E: I’ve seen some very varying opinions on how long the exposure period is, as well. Some people in the past have said it takes several days of prolonged heavy smoke exposure to really damage the grapes and have those phenols stick to the grape in a way that can’t come off. But then I’ve seen others saying that even a day or two of that type of heavy smoke exposure can really ruin the grapes. And, of course, as you said, it’s going to be less with white wine, or we may even see more rosé wines being made this year as a way to try to salvage some of those red wine grapes. Because you’re just not going to be able to leave the juice on the grapes to develop the red wine characteristics that you need over a long period of time with that smoke effect there. So I think what we’ll see is a change in how people are going to operate this year. Looking at all of California, you see reports of grape producers already saying that they’re not going to take their crops or that they’re not going to make wine this year in Sonoma, in Napa, in Paso Robles, in the Central Coast, all throughout the state. I’ve seen a lot of conversation happening about who is or isn’t going to make wine and which grapes were able to come in before the fires really got going. I think that’s what’s at play here, it’s really the entire harvest. If the grapes were not already picked before the smoke got heavy, it could be ruinous for some producers.

A: It’s just nuts. It really is crazy because it’s just sh****ness upon sh****ness, and there’s nothing that you can do. And that’s what I’m worried about, because there have been so many of these fires in recent years. Has there been anything that the wine industry has done? And maybe we don’t know the answer to that question. And if you’re a podcast listener and you do, let us know at podcast@vinepair.com. But has there been anything that has been done to try to mitigate that risk? Do the wineries have smoke taint insurance now? Are there other things that they can do that really will help them if they lose a huge majority of their crop?

E: I know that there is some insurance, there’s some agricultural insurance that could come into play. But it’s probably, like all insurance, there’s so many hoops to jump through to try to be able to take advantage of it. So I’m not sure if there’s kind of a hard- and-fast rule about what would and would not qualify.

A: Interesting. So you just make a lot of brandy with it or something? Does it just turn into a bunch of gin all of a sudden? Some of these wines could you just distill? Is that what you’re stuck with?

Z: Turn it into hand sanitizer?

A: Yeah, exactly. Speaking of hand sanitizer, the Champagne producers who said, “We will not release the wine on the market if it is cheaper, it will be hand sanitizer.” I wonder if that’s what you’re going to see. A lot of high-quality California wine sanitizer.

Z: Well, you also have this other problem that’s going on that we kind of touched on. In wine and in hops there were already labor issues thanks to Covid. And the other thing to think about is that vineyard work in a lot of these places is not necessarily all that safe. Fortunately, Seattle didn’t have it nearly as bad as some other parts of the West Coast, but the last couple of days here, especially Tuesday, it was not safe to be outside for prolonged periods of time. Certainly not doing something as physically demanding as harvesting grapes. And that is another piece of this. As you mentioned earlier on, Adam, we were already talking about potentially a smaller crop and questions about what would happen to grapes that were on the vine that maybe there wasn’t the labor to pick. And you’re going to potentially add to that. We’re kind of at the early stages of harvest for a lot of areas on the West Coast, but it’s getting there. Early to mid-September is certainly the beginning of the harvest season for a lot of places, and we’ll be in full swing quite soon, and many of these fires are far from contained, and there can always be new fires and things like that. One possibility is there’s a lot of unharvested grapes this year. The birds have a great year. And that may just be one of the answers. In the end, it’s not worth it from a variety of levels, economically, health-wise, etc., to pick a lot of grapes. It’s kind of sad on the one hand, think of the wine that could have been if it wasn’t smoke-tainted. On the other hand, maybe the best answer is just to basically say 2020 sucks for everyone. We’re just going to move on.

A: Except for the birds.

E: One angle that we have been reporting on is how local tourism has been a lifeline for a lot of wineries and breweries and distilleries who’ve been able to do curbside and outdoor tastings, and this is adding insult to injury. Now, not only can you not sell your wines on-premise or pick the grapes, but also you have the small, diminished lifeline that you did have of serving people at your tasting room. That. too, is gone. So, we have the plague, we have the fire, and the locusts are coming next. That’s for sure.

A: Totally.

Z: As long as there’s no smiting of the firstborn because that would be bad for me.

A: It’s just nuts. And, Zach, just really quickly before we wrap this one up for today, because last week was so long. We talked a little about the grapes but I know we mentioned hops earlier. How is the smoke impacting hops? How are the fires impacting hops?

Z: That’s a good question, and I’ll give what I know to this point. I will say right upfront, I don’t have an answer yet. I’ve been trying to find one. I don’t know that anyone knows. I don’t think there’s as much concern about smoke taint on hops. Basically what happens with grapes is the smoke compounds bind to sugars in the grapes and that’s how they’re locked into the grape itself, and then that’s why it’s released during fermentation and later on, during the maturation process. Since hops are not picked for their sugar, they’re not the fermentable substance in beer — that’s barley and other malted grains — there isn’t the same risk. There could be some flavor impacts, but the hop growers I spoke to are not concerned about the hops, themselves, being damaged. The issue is really twofold. One is, again, the same as with wine, an issue of labor and whether it’s safe to pick. Hop harvesting, like wine harvesting, is a mix of mechanization and hand labor, and obviously, if the air is unsafe to be out in, then things don’t get picked. And for those of you who don’t know, around 98 percent of the hops in this country are grown in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho in the broader Columbia Valley footprint. And this is right where many of these fires are, so there’s that risk. And then there’s also the honest risk of many of these hop fields, as opposed to vineyards, are more closely situated to some of these fires. And because of where they’re positioned — more in the valley floors than on hills — they are, I think, at more risk of burning. I haven’t heard yet about any of that, but according to a couple of growers I was talking to actually for an article that I’m working on for VinePair — which hopefully will come out, although I’m in the process of having to rewrite it because these fires are changing the story — there are definitely some concerns about an actual loss of crop due to the fire. To say nothing of people’s homes and businesses and things like that and also, of course, possibly lives. So that’s very much a TBD. But, yes, there’s also a real risk to the hop harvest in the U.S. this go-round. Again, what that means, no one knows yet, but we’ll follow up for sure. But it’s not just wine that’s potentially being impacted here.

A: If you are listening, please reach out to wineries that you love, breweries that you love. Support them, buy their products, because everyone’s going to need a lot of help to get through this. These fires are absolutely nuts, and we should be paying attention to them more if you are not already.

Z: And learn to love white and rosé, because that might be all you’re getting domestically.

A: This has been an interesting podcast. Please, if you have any thoughts, reach out to us at podcast@vinepair.com. We’d love to hear your views, other topics you’d like us to discuss in future episodes. And as always, thanks for listening. Erica, Zach, I’ll see you next week.

E: See you then.

Z: Sounds great.

A: Thanks so much for listening to the VinePair Podcast. If you enjoy listening to us every week, please leave us a review or rating on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever it is that you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show. Now, for the credits. VinePair is produced and hosted by Zach Geballe, Erica Duecy and me, Adam Teeter. Our engineer is Nick Patri and Keith Beavers. I’d also like to give a special shout-out to my VinePair co-founder Josh Malin and the rest of the VinePair team for their support. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you again right here next week.

Ed. note: This episode has been edited for length and clarity.

The article VinePair Podcast: West Coast Wildfires Demand Our Attention appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/west-coast-wildfires-demand-our-attention/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/629343204866736128

[comicswithcate2020]

Connor’s Collection of Comics

Imagine being seven years old, sitting in a movie theater and watching Toby McGuire on the big screen wearing the iconic blue and red suit. Imagine leaving the theater speechless and wondering what other adventures and stories Spiderman has to offer. That’s exactly when 25 year old Connor O’Keefe decided he wanted to try comic books. Connor has been collecting comic books for almost 15 years. Growing up in Medford, MA, Connor was influenced by his parents and the pop culture that surrounded  him. Between the cartoons that he used to watch and growing up with comic book movies originally starting to come out, Connor became hooked. It was after the third Sam Rani Spiderman movie that Connor officially got into comics. He became a collector of all things Venom and Venom related. Although Connor's collection isn’t just limited to Marvel, as he also collects a lot of Star Wars merchandise. He specifically likes General Grievous- he recently completed a General Grievous model. To complete the model, he painted it by hand to make it look more realistic. A peek into his bedroom can show you just how much he has collected throughout the years.

His walls are adorned with quite a few posters, his shelf is filled with comics, posters and frames that have yet to be hung sitting in a pile on the floor. A lot of these frames were gathered at Comic Cons- when he got old enough, he started going to Boston Comic Con with his father and has been known to go for at least one out of the three days every year. He has autographed headshots of different characters, like Bane from Batman. Yet to be hung up is a Venom shadow box filled with different cut outs of Venom’s different art styles throughout the years. Funko Pops adorn his shelves and his TV stand, ranging with characters from The Big Bang Theory to Smuag from Lord of the Rings. Everywhere you look in his room, you can find something comic related- whether it is DC, Marvel, Star Wars, or even select video games.

Growing up in Medford, Connor would go to shop at Harrison's Comics, found in The Meadow Glen Mall. When he was 14, his family moved to Reading, MA and Connor realized he needed to find a new store. He happened upon Comically Speaking and has been going there ever since.

Q: How were you introduced to comic books?

A: They were just there. I was born in 95’ so I had my adolescence and early adulthood molded by the comic book movies. As we know them today, they started really in 1998 with Blade. That's kind of when they started taking off, because then they had the Sam Raimi SpiderMan movies, the original X-Men trilogy, and so on. I grew up watching these movies and watching the cartoons and eventually, I think it was after SpiderMan 3 came out, I was in fifth grade, I thought, ‘yeah, I want to read the material that inspired these movies that I liked so much.’ I was living in Medford at the time, so there was a comic book store, Harrison’s, that was in the Meadow Glen Mall, which is no longer a thing in Medford. But I went there and I picked up a couple of back issues of comics and I have been reading comics consistently since then. It's a month to month thing, but the movies basically got me into it. Well, the movies and the cartoons.

Q: Who is your favorite character and why?

A: My favorite character is Venom, specifically Eddie Brock as Venom. There have been a couple of different characters that have had that title. Eddie is my favorite character because first of all, his visual design is very good. It's very crisp- you immediately know when you're looking at when you see him. He’s super edgy and I really like that kind of thing. I like Eddie because he's had a very long transformation over the course of the 30 years he's been around. At first he was just trying to kill SpiderMan and then he had an arc where he realizes that Spiderman isn't such a bad guy. And then he was sick with cancer and he realized, ‘Hey, I have kind of been doing some terrible stuff’ and he gets better from the cancer and he decides he's going to take this new lease on life and become a better person and be a hero. When I first started reading comics, they were in the middle of the cancer arc. So while I've been reading comics, I only know Eddie Brock as a hero. So in my mind, Venom is a superhero because that's what he's been for 20 of the 30 years he's existed.

Q: What type(s) of comic related things do you collect?

A: I do collect back issues, starting when I was in fifth grade, so I am 25 now. I take great pride in the fact that I have amassed, I don't want to say all of them cause I'm sure there's an odd issue here or there that I might've missed. But every single issue that Eddie Brock has appeared in, with the exception of his first and second appearances, which are like massively expensive, $200-300 issues. Those are the great white whales. But I have just about every single issue of comic book that he's ever appeared in over the course of 30 years. I kind of take some pride in that. That's taken a while to amass. Obviously that's ever expanding because he has a current ongoing book. In terms of other things I collect,  I am trying to build a physical collection of the movies. Personally I enjoy streaming content but at the same time I realize that I don't want to be left without a particular film, if a company decides that they want to pull an individual move from a service. A little while ago they almost pulled Friends from Netflix and people started freaking out, everyone was losing their minds about it. And I'm like, ‘Hey, buy the physical copy, no one's taken that away from you.’ So I collect the movies. I think out of the 20 Marvel Studios movies, I have about 17 of them in some capacity or another.  I don't necessarily collect games, there haven't been too many comic book games lately. But I do play them when they come out.

Q: Which is your most treasured comic?

A: My most treasured comic is the first mini series of comics I ever got. It's a series of six issues that came out in 94’, called Venom: Lethal Protector. It was Eddie Brock's first standalone story where he was trying to prove his worth as a hero and they were kind of hard to track down. I had to track them down over the course of two years. I started collecting them when I was in fifth grade. It was before the internet really took off, and before online ordering was a thing. So I was tracking 20 year old comics down at brick and mortar stores, which is kind of a tall order. Especially when you're 10 years old and you can't get anywhere yourself. So I have all six of those. They're in packages, they're propped up and they're preserved. I don't read them, I have different means of reading the story if I ever want to revisit it. But those are probably my most treasured thing in my comic collection.

Q: Which comic book related movie is your favorite and least favorite?

A: I'm going to sound like a bit of a broken record, but the Venom movie that came out, the other year has a very special place in my heart even though it's not necessarily one-to-one with the character. That movie was in production, since SpiderMan 3 came out in 2007. It's been in production a very long time and people have been trying to get it off the ground for many, many years and I was following it day by day. When that finally came out, I had this big party, I basically went through my contacts and got a bunch of people that I knew over the course of that 10 year span. And I'm like, ‘Hey, you remember that Venom movie I always talked about? Uh, it's finally coming out. You guys want to go see it?’ It was this big thing. I have pictures from that day. We all went to Dick's Last Resort in Boston, we went out to dinner beforehand and we all just had a great time with it. That movie, even though it's not a perfect movie by any stretch of the imagination, it holds a very special place in my heart.

Q: Are there any movies that you think goes against a character completely?

A: This is a slightly controversial opinion. I don't think Marvel Spiderman, like the current Spiderman, Tom Holland is good. I enjoy the movies and I think Tom Holland's great. But Spiderman- he's supposed to be his own man. In the new Marvel movies that come out, he's presented as Iron Man's sidekick. He has not had a solo movie where he's dealing with one of his own villains. Every villain that Spiderman has so far is somebody who's pissed off at Iron Man. So Spiderman has to spend his solo movies, cleaning up Iron Man's messes. I think that it's really unfortunate that they used Iron Man as Spiderman's jumping off point because Spiderman has, out of all the characters, some of the richest individual stories he can tell. Every character has their big stories, but Spiderman has the most. He is that company's flagship character and has been for so many years before Iron Man blew up. It's especially unfortunate that Iron Man has taken the place of Uncle Ben in the current Spiderman movies. Uncle Ben is the reason Spiderman does what he does in every single medium across the board. So, slightly controversial take on that one. But yeah, Tom Holland Spiderman, while enjoyable to watch is definitely not the Spiderman I would have liked to have seen on the big screen. I still think Toby Maguire is probably the most accurate Spiderman.

Q: Can you touch upon the movie script that you wrote for Venom when you were younger?

A: I was 10 or 11 years old and I had written a script for the Venom movie that was 20 pages long because I had no concept of how that would translate to the screen. I still have it by the way, it's up in my room on my desk. It's terrible and it's cringy and it's everything you would expect a 10 year old to write. But I got to say, I wrote a fight scene in that movie and that fight scene is a banger. I would love to see that translate to the big screen. 10 year old Connor could choreograph fights. All this crazy stuff was going to happen, they're really beating the life out of each other. Lampposts were flying, it was great. I want somebody, if you're reading this, give me a call. We can work something out.

Q: How did you find out about Comically Speaking?

A: A couple of years after I started getting into comics, my family moved from Medford to Reading. Granted this was not the thing that really drove me to Comically Speaking. The thing that drove me to Comically Speaking was Harrison's shuttered their doors like a year or so before we made the move. So when we ended up in Reading, I knew I needed to find a new place to do comics stuff . So I  just Googled places for comics near me and Comically Speaking came up and I went there and I've been going there pretty consistently since we moved to Reading about 11 years ago.

Q: What were your first impressions of the store?

A: My first impression of the store was that I felt a little overwhelmed. They have a lot more than Harrison's did, in terms of their selection of books. You got to remember also at the time, I was like 13 and they like to think that they know everything and when they are presented with something that they do not know, they refuse to admit that they do not know it. So I spent about 40 minutes in that store just wandering around like a dumb ass, searchng for what I was looking for. Eventually I figured it out, It was the preteen equivalent to when they change stuff around at the grocery store and you get angry that you can't find it. But yes, I was very overwhelmed and I was too full of myself to accept anyone's help.

Q: You’ve been to other stores that sell comics, chain stores and whatnot, how does Comically Speaking compare?

A: I’m struggling to remember what the Harrison's in Medford was like because that was  a lifetime and a half ago. There’s one in Salem, it’s pretty easy to navigate. They have stuff like manga, the Japanese comics. Harrison's is all right, I prefer Comically Speaking myself,it's my home store. Newbury Comics they're less of a comic store, you'll go into Newbury Comics and you can get a lot of stuff there, but you walk in there like, ‘Hey, I'm looking for comics’ and they have this tiny itty bitty rack in the corner with like only like 10 of the most recent comics of the most from the most popular books. And it's just like, 50% of your name is complete bullshit Newbury Comics. You're selling like 10 comics in this store. Comically Speaking, for me, is where I want to go and get some books. I'm gonna get some books and with the downstairs area I can go down there and get collectibles now. I only go to Harrison's or Newbury if I'm completely out of the area, those were my go to while I was at school in Beverley. But if I'm here and I have the time and money, I'm definitely going to be in Comically Speaking at least once a month, picking up the books that I read.

Q: What do you think about Comically Speaking as a whole?

A: It's my store. There's a lot of concern right now, I don't know how familiar you are with the actual comics industry, but one of their big shipping companies, Diamond, shut their doors for the minute because of the coronavirus. So DC and Marvel can't get their books out if Diamond isn't actually moving them. The Corona virus is going to be hitting the comics industry a lot harder than most industries. I am a little concerned about it because the locally owned stores are going to be the ones hit by it. I'm hoping that everything works out once this wears off and things are stable again. I'll definitely be going in there and helping out, spending some time. I like the store, it’s a good homey environment. That's the other thing about Newbury, I walk into Newbury Comics and I get the trendy geek vibe. When you go into Comically Speaking, I never get that vibe. It's just very down to earth and it doesn't feel  pretentious. It's always like these people like what they're doing, they like comics. If I walked into a Newbury Comics and I asked them what they thought of a particular artist, they wouldn't know. I don’t know, there's more genuineness there to the people and the environment. Everything about Comically Speaking, I feel like I'm with my people there.

Q: What do comics mean to you?

A: They entertain me. I like reading the stories. I think most of the characters are pretty good. There are more characters you can count with comics. I could sit here for hours and I probably wouldn't even scratch the surface. They’re really good to convey things about who we are as a people and what we hold dear. If you exist on this earth, if you have a pulse, there's a comic book character that you can connect with in some way. Or you can look at this character and say, ‘Hey, I understand what that person is going through. I want to read more about that person and I want to see what kind of adventures they go on’. You can connect with that and I think that's what gives any type of medium; comics, movies, TV shows. That's what gives mediums their strength. When you can look at characters and see characters who you are inside, or  you know someone like that. I think that's what gives a story their legs. Comics for me are filled with characters like that.

[anyway-i-love-vanderwood]

Harvest Moon AU - Zen Heart Events

Black Heart Event

Time: 12PM-6PM; Any season but Winter

Weather: Sunny

Location: Aurora Lake

[You walk into the bottom section of Aurora Lake, which lies south of the Moonlight Mine. Zen frequently can be found practicing the guitar by the lake’s shores, and you walks in on him doing so. He does not notice you at first, and you watch him practice while musical notes appear above his head.]

Zen: They think I’m crazy. ♪ My heartbeat goes up. ♫

Zen: Words cannot express my love for you! ♫♪

Zen: Did you – ack!

[An exclamation point appears above Zen’s head, and he stops playing as he notices you.]

Zen: <MC>, I didn’t see you out there! How long have you been listening?

Zen: …A while, huh? Well, I understand. It’s hard to ignore my alluring presence!

Zen: What brings you this far out of town? 

> [Choice 1] “It’s beautiful out. I wanted to take a walk.”

Zen: Ahh, isn’t it, though? The sound of the wind, the song of the birds, the smell of the flowers drifting on the breeze…

Zen: It’s enough to make a man feel alive, isn’t it?

Zen: Whenever I visit to the lake, I remember why I moved to Mystic Valley in the first place. The fresh air has a way of making my soul feel… clean.

Zen: I always come out here to practice. Would you like to listen for a while? I’ll play you something a bit more polished.

[You nod and walk over to sit by Zen. Go to [A]

> [Choice 2] “I wanted to see you, my darling Zenny-zen♥”

(Zen blushes)

Zen: Hahaha, wow! Are you a fan?

Zen: Jeez, I’m so lucky… someone as cute as you was looking for me?

Zen: Well, come on over. I’ll play you something a bit more polished.

[You nod and walk over to sit by Zen. Go to [A]

> [Choice 3] “I was headed to the mine, when I heard you playing…”

Zen: I guess you’d have to pass me if you wanted to get there, huh?

Zen: I’m surprised you go in there… but I guess there’s stuff you need in the dirt. Ores for your tools, minerals to sell…

Zen: It’s filled with monsters though, right? I hope you’re careful.

Zen: I’d hate to see someone as cute as you end up in the clinic.

Zen: How about you take a break and listen to me for a while? I’ll play you something a bit more polished.

Zen: Back-breaking labor can wait a few minutes, right?

[A]

[Zen plays another song, musical notes appearing above his head as he strums. When he’s finished, he looks to you.]

Zen: That’s one of the first songs I learned how to play. What do you think?

> [Choice 1] “It sounded really nice.”

(Zen +200)

Zen: Thank you! I practice every single day. I have to, if I’m ever going to be a success.

Zen: Well, at least…

[Go to [B]

> [Choice 2] “That’s one of the songs in the musical Dandelion, right?”

(Zen +500)

Zen: You’re right! It’s the opening number! Wow, how did you know?

Zen: You must really like musicals.

Zen: It’s always been my dream to be in a production of Dandelion. Or… well, any musical really, haha.

Zen: Singing, acting, being on stage – it’s my dream. And every day, I’m out here practicing until I can make my dream come true.

Zen: Well, at least…

[Go to [B]

> [Choice 3] “That’s not really the kind of music I like…”

(Zen -200)

Zen: O-oh, ahaha…

Zen: It’s from a musical, but I guess that sort of thing isn’t for everyone.

Zen: They’re what I love, though. Musicals.

Zen: There’s just about the singing and the dancing – I feel like you can really feel the heart and soul that the actors put into the production.

Zen: Well, at least…

[B]

Zen: That’s what I tell myself when it seems hard to keep going.

Zen: The road to stardom isn’t an easy one, and I’d be lying if I said it never got rough, but…

Zen: It’s a small price to pay for your dreams, huh?

Zen: I figure you’d understand, given that you took over that old farm-plot and all. It can’t be easy, and it also can’t have been a popular decision among your friends and family.

Zen: I mean, who decides to drop society and run off to become a farmer, anyway?

Zen: --Ah, sorry! Don’t take that the wrong way. I meant it as a compliment.

Zen: My family… wanted me to be plain. Dull. Boring. To just follow along with the crowd, and to be exactly like everyone else.

Zen: I know what you’re thinking! With a face like mine, how could I be destined for anything but show business?

Zen: …But, to them, what was most important... was being normal.

Zen: So anyone who forges their own path and carves their own destiny like you... well! I think that’s a pretty admirable person.

Zen: Anyway, sorry for keeping you. I’m sure you’re busy.

Zen: Come see me any time, okay? ♥ I’m always happy to have an audience.

[end]

[The rest of the Heart Events are under the read more!]

Purple Heart Event

Time: 12PM-6PM; Any season.

Weather: Sunny

Location: Aurora Lake

[You walk into the scene to find Yoosung standing by the water along with Zen. They seem to be in the middle of a conversation.]

Yoosung: In the beginning, you used to come out with me every weekday after practice! Then, it started being every other weekday…

Yoosung: And now that Rika’s gone? You never help me with the Community Center! If I didn’t know better, Zen, I’d say you didn’t care anymore.

Yoosung: But that can’t be true, right?

Yoosung: Of everyone in this town…

Yoosung: You’re the person… who still dreams the most about the day when everything is finished and you finally have an auditorium to perform in.

Zen: That’s true, but…

Yoosung: But what? But you’d rather not get your hands dirty and instead let me do all the work?

Yoosung: Is that it?

Zen: No!

Zen: Yoosung, do I seem like a lazy guy to you? It’s not that at all!

Zen: It’s just…

Zen: V already… told us to stop working on it. And he has the deed - without his approval and that damn cat-mayor’s permission, we can’t even think about opening the building!

Zen: Yoosung, I want a stage more than I want to keep breathing.

Zen: But we can’t do anything until we convince the two of them! Otherwise –

Yoosung: I thought you liked breaking the rules!

Yoosung: Liked flouting authority, liked proving that everyone else’s opinions didn’t matter! When did a stupid piece of paper start scaring you?

Yoosung: How are you going to get famous if you don’t have a stage to play on?!

Zen: …

[The two of them finally notice you, and sweat-drops appear before both of their heads.]

Zen: <MC!> God, you really have a habit of walking in on things, huh?

Yoosung: U-uh, hi, <MC!>

Yoosung: I’m sorry, Zen and I were just… talking about the old community center…

Yoosung: You know, that big old ruined building a bit north of the bakery?

Yoosung: Back in the day, Rika, V, Zen and I used to have all of these plans of fixing it up and using it to hold town-wide events like classes, art-shows, and, y’know, plays…

Yoosung: Things that might encourage more people to live here and help the townsfolk connect with each other…

Yoosung: But all progress has stopped, and the woodwork has been left to rot.

> [Choice 1] “Do you want help fixing it?”

(Zen +500)

[An exclamation point appears over Yoosung’s head.]

Yoosung: What, really? Is that a serious offer?

Yoosung: Yes, absolutely! It honestly gets really, really, really depressing working on it all by myself!

Yoosung: …So depressing that I sometimes skip out on it and play video games instead…

Yoosung: Come on! I’ve hauled the tools up there already, and I brought a cooler full of soda, too!

Zen: W-Wait!

[Question marks appear above Yoosung and your head.]

Zen: Er, well, I guess I can take a break from practice, too…

Zen: Let’s go buy a pack of beer, though. You can’t drink soda when you’re doing construction work!

Zen: That’s just lame.

Yoosung: That… kinda doesn’t sound safe?

Zen: Oh, come on, it’ll be fine. It makes things more fun!

[You walk off screen with Zen and Yoosung. The screen goes dark, and when it comes back, the clock has been set to 6PM and you’re outside the community center with Zen and Yoosung. You can control your character now, but if you talk to them before leaving, you get some unique dialogue.]

Zen: Don’t worry, I’ll get him home. Jeez, he really can’t take his booze, huh?

Yoosung: Zen, your hair is so pretty and your skin is so soooooft… I want to wear it…

[end]

> [Choice 2] “You should probably just let it collapse. It’s kind of ugly.”

(Zen -500)

Yoosung: It’s, it’s not ugly!

Zen: It kind of is…

Yoosung: That’s only because no one will help me fix it! It’ll be like a beautiful butterfly coming out of its cocoon when it’s done… you’ll see!

[A sweat-drop appears over Zen’s head.]

Zen: Look… if it means so much to you, I can come help for a little bit.

Zen: But we have to get V to agree to the repairs. Okay? Otherwise, I’m just going to spend my time practicing.

Yoosung: You know he’s never going to agree to that…!

Zen: It’s our best shot. There’s no way the mayor will intervene; that guy doesn’t care about anything other than cats and money.

Yoosung: Sigh…

Zen: Hey, maybe one day one of your chickens will lay a golden egg and we’ll just be able to throw tons of cash at Jumin.

Yoosung: That’s geese, and I already tried that!

Zen: …What.

Yoosung: Yeah! The wizard on the hill said if I got a goose and did the macerana in front of it while balancing a melon on my head and jumping up and down, it’d lay a golden egg after a month!

Yoosung: But it didn’t work!

Yoosung: Maybe I didn’t do it right...?

Zen: S-seriously, kid…

Yoosung: Anyway, let’s go!

[Yoosung and Zen walk away, but Zen stops by you before he goes off the screen.]

Zen: Sorry <MC>, I won’t be able to play for you today.

Zen: It might be a lost cause, but Yoosung is my friend. I have to help him out occasionally or he gets pretty hard to deal with.

[end]

Blue Heart Event

Time: 6PM-11PM; Any season.

Weather: Sunny

Location: Meteor Hill Peak

[Meteor Hill is where the Wizard 707 lives – and it’s also the best stargazing spot in town! When you enter the area, the camera pans up to Zen standing by the very top of the mountain, and you walk up beside him.]

Zen: Oh, hey there, <MC>…

Zen: Sigh…

[Choice 1] “You look sad. What’s wrong?”

Zen: Sad? Hmn. I suppose I am a bit gloomy, but nothing is wrong, don’t worry!

Zen: It’d be crime against the world itself if anything bad happened to me. ♥

Zen: I was just thinking about some things, that’s all.

[go to A]

[Choice 2] “That’s not a very energetic greeting.”

Zen: Haha, sorry, you’re right.

Zen: Hey there, <MC!>

Zen: Is that better?

Zen: It’d be horrible for me to deny you my beautiful, smiling face. Though… isn’t there something tragically beautiful by a gorgeous, sad man under the stars?

[A laughing face appears over Zen’s head.]

[A]

Zen: Anyway, the sky is so clear tonight… why don’t you join me?

[You walk up and sit beside Zen, and he turns to face the sky once more.]

Zen: Looking at the sky makes you think, huh? About how small everything is, how tiny and insignificant we are compared to the stars…

Zen: Yet, we humans have managed to touch them, haven’t we? We’ve launched rockets to the moon, we’ve made telescopes that can see distant planets…

Zen: And through art and literature, we’ve managed to, as a species, achieve heights that our ancestors could only dream of.

Zen: Beautiful paintings. Music that can move you to tears. Acting that takes you into another time, another place, that’s so convincing that it makes the characters appear real.

Zen: We’ve made light of the constellations; we ourselves have become stars.

Zen: Sigh…

Zen: Do you ever think about how the people that might be watching the same sky as you? People you’ve left behind, people who might not even remember that you exist…?

[Choice 1] “I do.”

Zen: You should tell me about them sometime. I’d love to hear about the kinds of things you think about in the darkness of the night.

[Choice 2] “I don’t.”

Zen: No? That’s probably for the best. It means that you’re not chained by your own regrets, that you can face the present without looking behind you.

Zen: Myself, on the other hand…

Zen: …

Zen: I’ve left a lot of people behind over my life.

Zen: My friends. My… family.

Zen: They didn’t believe that I could amount to more than a “pretty-faced, shallow thug”, so one day, I – I got on my motorcycle and just drove. And drove. And drove until the city was behind me, and all that I could see, for miles and miles, were green, rolling fields.

Zen: I didn’t have a lot with me. I only brought my jacket, my guitar, and a small knapsack filled with some of my clothes and my wallet.

Zen: I started living simply, just playing and singing in towns. I’d buy a bit of food - whatever I could afford - with the tip money…

Zen: And then I moved on.

Zen: I don’t know what I was looking for.

Zen: I don’t know if I was even looking for something, in the end, it was more like… it came looking for me.

Zen: Have… I ever really told you about Rika?

[You shake your head.]

Zen: Well, I came to Mystic Valley on a rainy day in the summer. It was pouring, I was soaked through, and I didn’t have enough money to stay anywhere. But! It was warm, so I thought, oh, I’ll just find someplace to wait out the rain and just sleep outside.

Zen: Hehe, can you imagine that? I was kind of like the prince of the forest in those days… sleeping under the open air. It was nice, sometimes.

Zen: I mean, sometimes it wasn’t, but look on the bright side, right?

Zen: Anyway, you know how the restaurant has that great porch? Well, I took shelter under there, and since I was bored, I brought out my guitar and started playing.

Zen: After a while… someone came out and saw me there, dripping on one of the chairs and playing away without a care in the world.

Zen: It was Rika.

Zen: She was astounded. She told me my music was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard, and she dragged me inside to introduce me to V. And V, that guy could really fret up a storm, you know? He got me a change of clothes, something warm to eat, and he also offered me a place to stay.

Zen: Free of charge. What a guy, right?

Zen: Anyway, they were both so excited. They asked me a million questions about myself – who I was, where I was from, what I was doing out here – and when I said I wanted to be in show business, Rika said…

Zen: “V! Let’s let him play here! He’ll bring in customers!”

Zen: …Those were really fun days… the restaurant was packed whenever I’d play. Everyone was laughing… I brought smiles to all their faces.

Zen: Even that damn mayor came out of his ivory palace to listen. Haha.

Zen: We’d even talk about how, when the community center was all fixed up, I’d even be able to put on plays… I could have a whole theatre-troupe, and achieve my real dream of telling a story on stage…

Zen: …

Zen: …But… that all stopped when she died.

Zen: V just… retreated into himself.

Zen: He didn’t… ask me to stop playing, really, but whenever I tried, I just remembered when Rika and V used to be there at the counter laughing, and…

Zen: After she was gone…

Zen: …

Zen: It… made me think of my parents…

Zen: And how they said everything about me was just temporary. My pretty looks, my hopes and dreams –

Zen: “Why on earth would you want to be an actor, Hyun? Even if you do make it, which you won’t, people will forget about you as soon as someone new comes along. Why not do something that’ll make a permanent difference in the world?”

Zen: And – even though I didn’t want to – when I remembered them smiling, I asked myself…

Zen: Did… I really leave anything lasting, even when people loved me?

Zen: Because in the end, those smiles disappeared.

Zen: And now, I’m nothing.

[Choice 1] “You’re not nothing!”

Zen: Haha… That’s sweet of you to say, <MC>. And it’s not really fair of me to whine to you about all this; you do keep visiting me. You are a fan. And please, believe me, I appreciate your support more than you know.

Zen: When you smile at me…

Zen: When you look at me as I’m playing…

Zen: When you visit me, day after day, and sit beside me by the lake…

Zen: I really… feel it. How much I love this place. How much I love being able to touch people with my voice.

Zen: I want to be heard, <MC>.

Zen: I want to be listened to.

Zen: I want to tell people the things they need to hear, the things that will make them smile and laugh and feel like the world is alright.

Zen: I want to be the light for those who are struggling.

Zen: I want to show them there’s something worth fighting for!

[go to B]

[Choice 2] “You should keep trying.”

Zen: Keep trying? I’m not… sure what I’m trying to do anymore.

Zen: What did I think would happen…? I ask myself that all the time. I feel like such a wash-out. Do I really have any actual talent? Part of the reason I wanted to be an actor was because women kept telling me that I was so beautiful I sparkled, and that I ought to be on the stage, but –

Zen: I don’t want to be looked at because I’m pretty; I wanted to be looked at because I have something to say!

Zen: Something for people to hear!

Zen: Something that, when people listen to it, makes them feel!

Zen: I want to make people happy!

Zen: I want to make people smile!

[go to B]

[Choice 3] “Why don’t you go back to the city?”

Zen: That’s a fair question to ask. If I want to make it big, then playing in a small town probably isn’t the best route to that, right? Abandoning this place, going back and trying my hand at the theater business…

Zen: It makes sense. But. Something about that – I just can’t do it.

Zen: Mystic Valley has its problems; but it gave me a place to call home when I couldn’t find one anywhere else. Rika, V, the entire town – they liked me because my talents brought them joy. It wasn’t shallow, it wasn’t just because of my appearance…

Zen: They heard something in my voice that they loved. Not my face; my voice.

Zen: For once, I felt like I was heard. And now? I want –

Zen: I want people to judge Mystic Valley not by appearances, but instead by its heart!

Zen: I want everyone to remember what’s so good about this place!

Zen: I want to put it into a song, put it into a story so I can convey it to them, what I feel! And to help them remember how they felt, once!

[B]

Zen: I want - !

Zen: …

[Zen stands up, and then exclaims to the sky - ]

Zen: I want everyone to feel like they can wish again!

Zen: What am I doing, sulking up here on top of a mountain? Man – what have I been doing all these months?

Zen: Playing by myself in the woods, waiting for people to stumble across me and discover me because I’m too afraid of bringing pain rather than joy with my work?

Zen: What the heck; that’s dumb!

Zen: You know what, <MC>? I’m going to march right down to the bar and tell V, straight up, that he needs to let me play there again!

Zen: We need to hold concerts there again!

Zen: Sure, something bad happened, but we can’t be sad forever!

Zen: Sure, the town is having trouble, but –

Zen: There are beautiful things out there, waiting to be seen!

Zen: Like me! Like you! Like the stars – I want everyone in this town to remember that they can be happy!

[Zen pants, and then turns back towards the path leading down the mountain.]

Zen: <MC>, thank you! I feel like I’ve been born again as a new man.

Zen: It’s gotten so dark, so please, let me walk you home. After that…

Zen: I’m going to go talk to V.

[The scene ends with a heart appearing over your head and you walking back down the path with Zen. After this, Zen’s schedule will change, and he’ll start routinely playing at the bar.]

[End]

Green Heart Event

There is no event at the green heart level, however to see the final two heart events, a token of affection must be given in the form of a ‘heart gem’ to the object of your affections. This makes the relationship ‘official’, and the rest of the town acknowledges you as dating your chosen candidate.

Zen: Is this – is this for me?

Zen: Really? Really, really – you’re giving this to me?

Zen: <MC>, I could kiss you! Can I kiss you? I really want to kiss you!

Zen: Goddess, you have no idea how many times I’ve imagined this happening. You confessing your love to me... and then me sweeping you off your feet and carrying you off to the moon!♥

Zen: Ahh, I’m happy! I’m so happy! I want to go tell everyone that <MC> likes me!

Zen: Me~♥ Me~♥! I’m the luckiest guy in the world!

Zen: <MC>, let me take you on a date today! Anywhere you want; my treat!

Zen: I’ll do anything at all for the cutest, sweetest person in the world.

[Hearts appear over the both of your heads, and the scene fades to black. When it comes back, you’re standing outside of your farmhouse, in the evening, with full energy.]

[Note: After this heart event, if you interact with the ‘journal’ in Zen’s room, it’ll be filled with love poems and sonnets.]

Yellow Heart Event

Time: 8AM-4PM; Any Season.

Weather: Any

Location: Meteor Hill

[You walk onto the screen to find Zen in front of the door to the Wizard’s house. When he hears you, he turns around and an [!] appears above his head.]

Zen: <MC!> Just the person I was hoping to see!

Zen: This has to be fate. Come on! Let’s get our fortune told together.

[You and Zen walk into the tower… Where you’re greeted emphatically by 707, whose voice resonates through the house even though you can’t see him initially.]

Seven: Ooohh!! What’s that, I hear? Is someone knocking at my door and summoning me, the magnificent wizard Seven-oh-Seven?!

Seven: Well, actually, you didn’t knock, which is awfully rude.

Seven: How about you try that again?

[Zen turns to the door, and though he doesn’t leave, he knocks on it.]

Zen: Is that better, oh Great Wizard?

Seven: Much, thank you!

[Seven suddenly appears, sliding down banister the spiral-staircase which lies in the center of the ground floor. When he lands, he poses and sparkles.]

Seven: What can I do for you, humble children of men? What great secrets can I reveal; what darkness needs to be banished with the unrelenting force of light?!

Seven: Tell me, oh noble petitioners, so I may aid you in your quest for glory!

Zen: Pffthaha… I just want the usual, Seven. Though I was hoping you could have a two-for-one special? See, I have my partner here, and…

Zen: Well…

Zen: I’d like our compatibility rated.♥

Seven: A compatibility rating? Oh joy!

Seven: And may there be joy to you both! At least, if the stars will it.

Seven: Sit down, then! And present your offerings, so I may be compensated for my just and true work.

[Zen walks up to Seven.]

Zen: Here you go, pal. Fresh from the supermarket.

Zen: I got you two packs since there are two of us.

Seven: Ah, the sweet nectar of life! The ambrosia of the gods! Liquid manna straight from heaven –

Seven: PhD Pepper!

Seven: This will do. Now, we’ll begin!

[You and Zen sit together in front of Seven’s crystal ball, and he walks on the other side, beginning to make hand gestures. The screen darkens a bit, and the blips of Seven’s dialogue get a different cadence.]

Seven: Now, let us peer into the future…

Seven: The future of you and Zen…

Seven: Abra-cadabra, alakazam, make me more than what I am, show me the heart of the golden land…

Seven: Bim-bam-boom!

Seven: . . .

Seven: The stars… have spoken…

Seven: Hyun Ryu…

Seven: <MC>…

Seven: Ah, what happiness is this…? It’s so profound, I can almost taste it.

Seven: Yours is a relationship that fills the other with love.

Seven: Stability. Support. Inspiration. You work harder for the sake of the other, and through that work, you both make the world a better place.

Seven: Wherever you go, your love will plant the seeds of new beginnings… not just for yourself, but for those around you.

Seven: Yours is a love that will touch others who view it. And it will be viewed by others!

Seven: A life of seclusion, of being a recluse… is not an option to you. And neither do you want it to be…

Seven: Because through being seen, you’ll ultimately make others happy.

Seven: You see each other for the beauty in your spirits…

Seven: Ahh, it makes me jealous just to look at you!

Seven: If I had to give you a compatibility rating…

Seven: It would be the fluffiness of a rabbit’s fur! Very soft, very nice, would definitely pet again!

Seven: (Though, it’s nothing compared to my beautiful Elly!!)

[Seven’s blips turn back to normal, and the screen lightens again. A heart appears over Zen’s head.]

Zen: Hear that, babe? We have the wizard’s blessing!

Zen: This is such great news!

[A heart appears over your head.]

Zen: Thank you, Wizard! I’m in your debt.

Seven: I can only tell you what the stars have been telling you all along. But, you are welcome!

Seven: Now go! Be free! Be happy!

Seven: And sing of your love, to anyone that’ll listen!

[You and Zen walk out, but the camera lingers on Seven for a final line before going dark.]

Seven: Heh-heh-heh… he’s going to be unbearable from now on. Oh well! That’s for the rest of the town to deal with.

[End]

Pink Heart Event

Time: 6PM-12PM

Weather: Any

Location: Señor Saguaro (V’s Restaurant)

[This heart event is preceded in the morning by you getting a letter. It’s from Zen, saying that he’s set up a special concert at V’s restaurant… and he’d like you to attend! You can walk in any time after 6, and the event will be triggered.]

[Zen is on the stage, and the camera follows your character as you walk up and take a seat at one of the tables near the front. Zen doesn’t stop playing, and finishes up the song before addressing the audience – which is pretty large. Larger than any of his performances so far.]

Zen: Thank you all for coming out here tonight. It really means a lot to see so many faces out in the crowd!

Zen: Especially those of you who are smiling and in love.♥ That’s my favorite kind of expression in the world!

Zen: …I’ll be honest, in the past, I sometimes hated looking at couples. There’ve times when I’ve been jealous of other’s happiness...

Zen: Times when I’ve been sad and confused about what to do…

Zen: And times when I’ve just wanted to give up and say, ‘you know? My dreams aren’t worth it!’ but, in the end…

Zen: There was someone beside me who told me to keep trying.

Zen: There was someone beside me who kept pushing me to succeed.

Zen: And that, my friends –

Zen: Is our local farmer, <MC!>

Zen: Everyone give <him/her/them> a round of applause for being a stellar member of the community, an excellent human being, and, dare I say it –

Zen: The best partner a guy could ask for.

[You blush as the crowd reacts in various ways. Some laugh, some clap, and some shake their heads because Zen’s kind of a moron.]

Zen: Anyway, this goes out to you, babe.

Zen: …I really, really love you.

[Zen begins to play another song – which is a finished version of the one he was singing in the very first heart event - and the screen fades to black after it’s completed. When it comes back into view, you and Zen are standing outside of Señor Saguaro, and it’s very dark.]

Zen: Thanks for coming tonight. I really appreciate it.

Zen: And, uh, sorry for gushing about you in public there, I just really couldn’t help myself.

Zen: …So… I’ve, uh. I’ve been talking to some people in town.

Zen: And – uh. We petitioned Jumin…

Zen: And while he’s still saying that we don’t have the funds to make progress on the community center, he did say that he has some pretty big rooms in his manor that we could use to practice, and, well.

Zen: Maybe put some small shows in, too.

[Choice 1] “That’s exciting!”

Zen: Isn’t it? A place to work that isn’t out in the middle of the woods! It’s like a dream come true.

Zen: Jumin says he has some props we can use, too!

[go to A]

[Choice 2] “Maybe Jumin’s not totally heartless after all.”

Zen: Pft, I wouldn’t go that far, he said he’d want some of the proceeds from the show to go to the town coffers.

Zen: …Though, on second thought…

Zen: I guess… he probably would use that money to help the town, huh?

[A sweatdrop appears over Zen’s head.]

[A]

Zen: Anyway, I’d really love it if you came to some of the practices.

Zen: Maybe… you’d even want to try acting yourself?

Zen: No pressure! But… it’d mean a lot for you to be there.

Zen: I’d like you to see how far I’ve come.

[A heart appears above both your heads, and then Zen leans in and kisses you.]

Zen: …Thanks for being you, <MC>.

Zen: Shall I walk you home? I think it’d be a good way to end the night.

[Another heart appears over your head, and you and Zen walk off together.]

Marriage:

After seeing Zen’s final heart event, you can propose to him using a Prismatic Letter Opener, which is a longstanding tradition in Mystic Valley. A few things change after marrying Zen. He moves in with you, and he’ll practice on your farm instead of going out to the lake. He and Yoosung also start working on the Community Center as part of your daily routine. Zen also will write you letters that you can find on your night-stand in the evening, telling you how much he loves you and appreciates you.

After marriage, an event chain is unlocked with V and Jumin regarding the community center, and that starts the post-marriage content of fixing it up.

[ivyimagine-blog]

SEE: LIMA, PERU

Welp, here goes nothing! I am finally getting the chance to sit down and type the post I have been dying to write about for the past month. I am so excited to finally share my story with you all!

Back in May, I discovered an organization called MEDLIFE while searching through the many organizations we have available to us at my school, Oakland University. I was hoping to find an opportunity that would give me involvement and leadership. 

MEDLIFE- Medicine, Education, and Development for low income families. This description promptly fascinated me so I decided to do some research on the program. Basically, the organization holds these awesome trips that take place predominantly in South America and Africa to help communities who are underprivileged. I applied for the trip and was blessed with the opportunity to go! Here is a little bit of insight on what my experience with MEDLIFE was like.

DAY 1: Arrived in Lima. Lima is a huge district in Lima, Peru, filled with many smaller cities in it. We stayed in Miraflores, the wealthiest city within the district of Lima. It is a beautiful, vibrant place along the Pacific Ocean. The views on the drive to our hostel were unlike anything I have ever seen before.

Our hostel was not the worst, but it definitely was nothing like places I’ve stayed at before. The downsides were: wifi that only worked occasionally, so it was very hard to reach family and friends back home, and very small rooms with minimal space.

The first day we spent roaming Miraflores, shopping and forming a feel for our home for the week. The streets were clean and busy, the buildings were tall and the culture was captivating. After checking out a few shopping stands, and caffeinating with a much needed Starbucks run, we visited the Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist, which is a breathtaking, Roman Catholic cathedral built in 1535.

From there, we went on to visit the one and only, Larcomar, an enormous shopping center and tourist site located right on the ocean. The mall is known to have every store you can imagine, as well as tons of fun places to eat and game.

On the way back to our Hostel, we stopped in the Indian Market Miraflores, a vast marketplace, full of amazing Peruvian souvenirs and gifts. I loved everything, I honestly could not stop shopping. If I could go back right now, just for that market, I so would.

So, Kennedy Park is a park honoring President John F. Kennedy. The park has street vendors and artists galore. But wait.... it gets better. The park is home to many residential cats. A park.. filled with popular paintings and street art, food, shopping, and well, cats... What could be better?! At night, the park is lively as ever, and still feels safe to shop and explore around. Not to mention, it is surrounded by a vast array of restaurants, cafes, shops, and about every other thing the capital of Peru could offer you. The sellers are so kind, and the products are one of a kind because you can’t find them anywhere else, yet all for a low cost. If you happen to come here after Peru wins a game of fútbol.... Well lets just say you’re in for a fun time.

Eventually, the afternoon came to an end and we all wanted to get some rest from our long day of traveling. But that didn’t stop us for too long. Our next stop was near Kennedy Park, the so-called Calle de las Pizzas (Pizza Street), a whole street that in fact does include a couple of pizza places but that also turns into a party boulevard after the sunset. We ended our night at this incredible place, being lured in by deals on food and drinks from the restaurant workers outside! The atmosphere was extraordinary. I loved every minute of our time as a group here and of course, the pizza was bomb.

DAY 2: Scheduled on the second day was our reality tour. The reality tour was meant to introduce us to the villages we were going to be volunteering at. It was remarkably eye-opening. The smell in the air from the garbage being burned was unbearable, the "houses” were shacks and the bus ride up to the top of these communities was scary nonetheless; but it made me appreciate life back at home. Stray dogs were everywhere and the difference from the city life to village life was very clear. 

What amazed me was when our tour guide brought us to the top of the mountain-like landfill. A climb over 200 steep stairs to see a wall that the villagers built. The people living in San Juan de Miraflores, the poor community, were paid by the rich who live on the other side to build it. The wall represents that the wealthy people do not want to contribute to any development; they choose to separate themselves from those who should be included in their community, and they choose to forget about the horrific mess happening on the other side. The wall reads “In Lima we adore the cement that pardons the memory.”

DAYS 3 & 5: Clinic Days! Throughout the week we are assigned either clinic day or project day. Clinic means we will be setting up and working at mobile clinics in different areas. The clinics we run are: toothbrushing, hygiene, pharmacy, dental, doctor and triage. Throughout the week, I was given two assignments each day. Toothbrushing consisted of a line of super cute kids, waiting patiently to learn how to brush their teeth! They got to keep their toothbrush and were so excited to receive one. The mothers were extremely appreciative and although there was a language barrier, their gratitude was undoubtedly expressed. After toothbrushing, we applied fluoride to their teeth, and the kids would proceed to the hygiene station where they could wash their hands. 

Shadowing the doctors was another favorite of mine. The doctors had us take blood pressure and would explain to us the diagnosis for each patient so that we had something significant to take away with each one. I loved being able to see up close and personal how genuinely the doctors cared and how happy they were to be able to give them care. From this station, the patients would take their prescription and head over to pharmacy.

At pharmacy, patients would receive their prescriptions provided by MEDLIFE. This is something that is absolutely irreplaceable for a community like San Juan de Miraflores. Anything from tylenol, to vitamins, to ointments and insulin were provided to them. Though this seem to be short-term care, quick fixes, MEDLIFE works with patients and establishes a follow-up program; keeping track of their medical history to continue providing care and medicine for them each time the families return to the clinics. They also go to the homes of patients who are not stable or mobile enough to comethemselves, to deliver medicine and other necessities to them, such as milk or bread.

Dental... well, I’ve always asked myself who are these crazy people that sign up to work on teeth for their entire life!? But after working this station at the mobile clinics, it shed some light for me on why it is an interesting field. I worked with the dentist, taking notes and suctioning the saliva for them. Gross, but... surprisingly fun!

Day 4: This day was project day. Our chapter’s project was to build two staircases for the citizenry in San Juan de Miraflores. Since they are living on what used to be landfills, the hills are extremely steep making it difficult for the residents to reach their homes. Not only is this construction important for their physical health, but staircases are also necessary in order for them to receive land titles from the city. Land titles are difficult to obtain without staircases because in the event of a natural disaster, such as an earth quake, legally the community needs a safe way to evacuate. A land title also provides an address, which then can give them legal electricity, plumbing and access to other important needs.

On my project day, our job was to bring large, tall, heavy blocks of wood up stairs (remember the 200 steep stairs I mentioned before.. yeah, that times 4!). The wood was being used to separate cement for the stairs our group was building the days before us, and it needed to be taken up another set of stairs. It was the hardest work I have ever done, to be honest, and afterwards we had a break and then spent the rest of the time painting the stairs we built. Though the work was demanding, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Day 5: Inauguration day: the day we commemorate the staircases. It started off working the mobile clinics, and afterwards we made our way back into the hills and celebrated. We had finished painting the staircases, the families decorated them in balloons, and after a few speeches of gratitude from both community members and group leaders, we broke a bottle of champagne at the ends of both the staircases, and were given pop and a meal cooked by the residents to celebrate. Everyone was smiling. I swear, the happiness and joy in the air could be felt from miles away. 

Day 6: Our final day was bittersweet. Sad because our time was coming to an end, but also happy because the day was incredible. We left the hostel at 3 AM I believe, and headed to Ica, the capital of the Ica Region of Peru. Our adventure began four hours later, when we arrived in Paracas and started with a boat tour of the Islas Ballestas. The Ballestas Islands lie off the southern coast of Peru, near the city of Pisco. The uninhabited islands are home to sea lions, pelicans, and Humboldt penguins. On the way, we passed the Candelabra geoglyph, an enormous hillside etching of mysterious origins. It is a given you will fall in love with Peru.

The next thrill of the day was located about an hour away: Huacachina, the desert oasis village in Ica, Peru. Our mission was to ultimately sandboard but the way up was somethin’ else. The dune buggies run across the high, rolling sand dunes surrounding the village and we made our way to the top of one, we got on our boards and went down the dune! On our stomachs.... HA! You thought my first time sandboarding would be my last? You thought wrong. The sand was awesome, and sliding down was fast and absolutely exhilarating. The climb back up was always a rough one, but BEYOND worth it once you were able to board again.

My trip to Lima was the experience of a lifetime. It was inspiring, rewarding, exhilarating, and it pushed me to step out of my comfort zone, make friends, try new things and see new places. I hope to go back to Peru one day and visit Lima, and other regions of Peru too. I hope my MEDLIFE trip summary gave you some advice on what to expect if you’re interesed in going on a trip like this and I hope I helped you discover something you would also love to do.

-I

[sciencespies]

People are keeping parasitic leeches as pets, and letting them drink their blood

https://sciencespies.com/humans/people-are-keeping-parasitic-leeches-as-pets-and-letting-them-drink-their-blood/

People are keeping parasitic leeches as pets, and letting them drink their blood

To the disgust of many of our readers, we recently discovered that keeping leeches as pets is actually a thing.

And yeah, it’s certainly… a bit different. But in light of humanity’s disconnect with nature, and our concerning lack of knowledge about parasitic creatures, the idea that some of us are nurturing these parasites is also, uh, fascinating.

“They’re amazing, curious creatures that grow like crazy and make wonderful pets,” leech keeper Ariane Khomjani told ScienceAlert.

He explained how individual leeches have their own unique personalities, with some being more adventurous and others more shy.

“Some like to try and sneak a feed more often than others, haha! But once they’re full, they’re content to sit and rest for a bit out of water if handled gently,” he said.

Khomjani has four of these squishy vampires, including Leara who is pictured below. The species he keeps is one of the larger types: buffalo leeches (Hirudinaria manillensis) from Asia.

Leara the leech. (Ariane Khomjani/Instagram)

There are over 600 leech species worldwide and most, but not all of them, are blood suckers. Others, like worm leeches (Pharyngobdellida), are predators that swallow their invertebrate prey whole, while some species are detritivores that eat organic debris.

These wriggly sausages can have up to eight pairs of ocelli (eye spots), which they use to detect the shadows of potential prey. Their brain bits are spread across 32 body segments, and they are hermaphrodites, so each individual leech has both male and female organs, although they still require a mate to breed.

If a hungry parasitic leech senses your body heat or the CO2 in your breath, it can loop its way towards you by using its mouth and butt suckers. Yes, you read that right, their butts suck, too.

Leech looping locomotion. (Chiswick Chap/Wikipedia/CC By SA 4.0)

If it finds a suitable bit of host, the leech will inject its saliva – which contains anaesthetic and anti-blood clotting compounds – before biting down with two- or three-pronged serrated jaws.

“Once they get feeding you don’t even feel it, even with the large buffalo leeches,” explained Khomjani, although the initial bite can hurt a bit. They can go up to a year between feeds, but leech sellers recommend feeding the larger species every 3-6 months.

Of course, as with anything involving direct contact with your bloodstream, feeding a leech your own blood should not be attempted without first seeking advice from a doctor. Some people are allergic to leech saliva and there’s always a risk of catching an infection from them.

Khomjani tols us that while most bite wounds heel without a scar, due to the anti-coagulants in the leech saliva, it can sometimes take several days for a bite to stop bleeding. But it’s exactly these saliva properties that have long made leeches of interest to humans.

“Leeches have been linked with human culture, particularly in Europe, for centuries,” parasitologist Mackenzie Kwak from National University of Singapore told ScienceAlert.

In fact, we have been keeping leeches, primarily for medical purposes, for around 3,000 years. During the Victorian era (in the 1800s) they were recommended for treating everything from headaches to nymphomania.

This craze led to a rather absurd battle between rival pharmacies, who produced increasingly elaborate leech jars in order to entice customers to choose their product.

They were ridiculous, huge, over the top, and not really even practical for storing the escape artist leeches at all. But ultimately it was all about appearances, and a more eye catching display meant more customers.

Here’s some photo examples of this madness.

(6/7) pic.twitter.com/g4gl10suk2

— Jane Nibful ♿️ (@Nibful) June 13, 2019

This historic use of leeches severely reduced medicinal leech (Hirudo medicinalis) populations across Eurasia, so this species is now protected.

Today, leeches are still kept for use in both human and animal medicine around the world and are approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as “medical devices“.

“Leeches are used post-operatively in patients who have had digit reattachment or muscle or flap surgery,” nurse Julie Smolders from South Western Sydney Local Health District told ScienceAlert.

“The leeches are applied to the site and suck away the congested blood to allow for blood flow to the peripheries to keep the surgical site viable.”

The hospitals keep 100-200 leeches to make use of this blood-vessel clearing ability. These leeches are sourced from captive bred populations raised in controlled environments, to help minimise the potential risk of infection.

(Ariane Khomjani/Instagram)

If the idea of keeping one of these little Draculas intrigues you, but you’ve no interest of offering yourself up as a meal, there are various accounts online of pet leeches being fed raw liver or heated blood from the butcher.

“Provided the blood [is] fresh and not treated with any preservatives or anything like that, I could see that sort of thing potentially working,” Kwak told ScienceAlert, pointing out that parasitologists and medical entomologists have been using similar techniques to maintain parasites in laboratories for decades now.

He believes “pet leeches are a marvellous way to learn about parasites, and on a broader level, to appreciate how intricate and bizarre the natural world can be.”

When asked about people’s negative reactions to his pets, Khomjani replied, “could you imagine the outrage if someone talked about dogs and cats the way you see them talk about leeches?”

#Humans