#but she did say she’s been teaching this program for 19 years and has never approached a student with something like this

[loveofmylouis]

.

[elidokie]

i’m so scared that i’m faking being happy but at the same time i know i’m not because happiness is a choice (and also not a destination) and i choose it every day.

even though right now i have to urge to go, i know it’s all temporary. i keep imagining myself. when i die, all my stuff will go to Mar. even my 3DS, and even my copy of soul silver.

yikes. i hate feeling like this. i feel so icky and gross whenever i do. cmon eli! this isn’t you! you’re supposed to be happy and full of joy on the time! think of all the tender mercies! you fucked up bad yesterday, and God still let you get another chance! mom made breakfast! dad went out to buy us a drink at the new gas station they built down the road! and Mar is in the living room waiting for us to go outside and tell her about the new book we are reading!

cmon! think of how much you love being alive! because you do.

i have a hard time accepting the bad feelings as feelings of my own. my brain is so frustrating sometimes. it feels like it’s not mine.

i miss being little. i miss being 14. my parents were mean, and i didn’t have any friends, and i had the ugliest hair cut in the world — but i was 14 and i played my favorite video game for the first time, and all Mar n I had to worry about was our stupid Government class that we were taking for college credit.

Mom was really happy when we told her that we got accepted into the dual enrollment program, even though she didn’t understand that dual enrollment was for the students that were smart enough to be looked at as a waste. It’s a school in south Texas, with only 15% of the students actually going on to get a degree after graduation. Even if it was only for the numbers, it really did help out.

I didn’t think I was going to go to college. I get frustrated when people say that a Bachelors is the same as a HS Diploma. I didn’t decide I was going to college until my junior year. At most, I thought I was going to just finish off whatever I had left of classes at the community college I was already attending during high school. But then during the state exams, Mr Austin looked at Mr Sowell and went, “You are looking at the two brightest minds of the 21st century.” (referring to me and Mar), and even though it’s not true, because I’m just a 19 year old girl, it still gave me a sense of hope.

Mom never went to middle school (secondary school I guess) and has a 5th grade education. I do everything for her. We told her about World War 2. It’s crazy that she doesn’t know anything about it. Then we tried telling her about outer space, she doesn’t know much, but she knows about planets! we told her that there is a myriad of planets, and we told her what galaxies are, and how galaxies can collide, and how stars can die beneath their own weight.

i feel like that sometimes.

she says it’s too late for her, but i don’t think so. i’ve been trying to teach her english, but she doesn’t care to learn. she can order at the drive thru by herself and she can have a conversation with Bailey’s parents. that’s enough.

dad first told me he loved me during graduation. he hugged me too. i miss the feeling of dad being proud of me like that. i know moms always proud of me, but it’s in a different way.

i like seeing dads face light up. i hate the stigma that i have to take care of my parents once they get older, or that children of immigrants live for their parents, but it’s so true. dad always looked so happy after i performed.

when i passed my drivers test (after going to the DMV like 4 times) he hugged me and was like “i’m so proud of you!” and i think about that a lot. i told him how i was planning on going to UT (my literal dream school and i’m so glad to God that i even got accepted) for aerospace engineering. and he was so happy. then i ended up “following my dream” and going to liberal liberal arts school in Texas for fucking ENGLISH. and he still was so happy. i cried when they dropped me off at my dorm, and i still cry thinking about it.

andrew was so right when he said that moving away from your parents for college is some white people shit. i’m still grateful to the universe for the experience though.

when i came back home during the winter break, i think he could tell that my depression was coming back. maybe that’s why he was so supportive about me dropping out. i had 4 days left until i had to move back to Denton when i had decided to withdraw. fuck, i was so scared. i remember asking him over and over what he thought i should do, and he just went “whatever you want mija, it’s your life not mine” until i ended up actually withdrawing. i know that he knew i was scared.

the next day he took me to dallas to pick up my stuff. a 6 hour drive, 2 hours to pack, 6 hours back — and he didn’t complain. i was so miserable the whole spring, which sucks because it’s my favorite season.

we would take Mar to class 2x a week (Mar can’t drive, she’s too scared to, so dad would take her and i would tag along) and then sit in the Circle K parking lot for two hours until her Latin class was over (the drive to her uni was 45 minutes, so it made more sense to just wait there). He’d buy me an horchata and a hot dog, he was always like “these are good today!” and i would agree, i never told him that i don’t like hot dogs, but it’s okay because i think he was always trying to convince himself / trying to make me feel better about not being in school.

sometimes we would go to Taco Bell, or to Costco. it was always the same thing. me being miserable about having to be at a uni i don’t attend, and him trying to make me feel better without knowing how. i’m grateful though.

i told them i was going back to school in fall. they never asked me about it. that’s the only thing i’m jealous of white people for, that their parents know how to do all the college stuff. they wouldn’t check up on if i was caught up in the paperwork, or if i had talked to the school, or if i did my financial aid — they just assumed that i would do it on my own. and i did do it on my own, because i knew that they wouldn’t know how to help me.

i pushed myself.

after finally doing all the stuff for the school here, and finally setting up my classes and everything (thank god), i told dad how i was thinking of switching my major. i told him i was gonna switch to architecture. his only response was “that sounds like a reliable degree!”

i always switched up what i wanted because i want multiple things. but the one thing that i know for a fact i want, is to write. so he was still as happy when i told him that i was going to keep doing english, but i’m dropping the education courses. im switching to creative writing.

then we talked about grad school for a bit and i told him that i was planning on going to Utah or Minnesota near Juni. i think he’s more supportive of Utah, just because it’s closer to Cali. Mar is going to Cali for law, she takes all her law exam shits later this school year, and then is probably going to talk to grandma about moving in to the little studio in the back. grandma is obviously going to say yes.

dad also didn’t care that i stopped working. i mean, i know a part of did, but he never said anything. i like to think that i did a good job hiding how i was doing mentally, but every week dad would ask if i wanted to get a slushee from Sonic, which i know is his way of trying to make me feel better.

i stopped with the TEFL program i was doing. i know i’ll pick it up sometime later. right now i have to worry about getting an internship, grad school, applying for the study abroad program, and this upcoming semester. the fact that i’m graduating next winter feels like a sin. i just started college. maybe i should be more appreciative of the fact that i’m finishing early early.

also getting a job. but i have confidence that God has something better for me planned. i have enough money to pay for my car bill next month, and just barely enough for the one after that (i might have to ask dad to help a bit). the only reason i feel bad leaving the school in dallas, is because i was on a full scholarship. i think my parents paid like $1000 the whole semester and that was for the room i was staying in.

i don’t expect mom and dad to pay for this semester, especially since it was my choice to move back home. so i know i have to pay for it on my own. i’m okay with working 24/7 if it means they don’t have to worry about it. but, i know how dad is. he’d go into debt if it means i get to go to college.

Mar and i are on our own for grad school though, they made that VERY clear LMAO. i might check out that women’s only university that Ms. Burger told me about. she got her M.F.A there and said she loved it. she was a crazy woman, talking about how she lived in London, how she’s okay with being 57 and single because she has her dog, how she wrote her thesis on Little Women.

anyways, i feel like i’ve written enough. even though nobody reads this. it’s like i’m bothering my future self for whenever i do reread this. i talk a lot. i only really took notice of it because of how often i keep YAPPING to 26y/o. he said he doesn’t mind, but i’m scared that he does. because why would he want to hear some stupid 19 year old vent about stupid shit. either way i’m appreciative of it.

yesterday we played fortnite. he’s really good lmao. we won most of our games! it was really funny. the dynamic of our relationship is really funny. there’s like a 7 year (about to be 6!!) age gap between us which for the most part doesn’t really matter. but he’s experienced so many more things than me, and it’s very obvious at times. like when i talk about uni and my future, and then i realize that this mf already has his shit figured out. like, he’s GROWN. it’s really funny though. i made this grown man play fortnite with me. and it was fun!

ugh, i said i was gonna stop this text post but i always have to much to say. i miss juni. so so so very much. he’s literally my soul partner. i dream that im at his house sometimes. in the living room, i’m laying sideways on the couch and he’s laying on the recliner. his parents in the kitchen making dinner. his younger sister in her room playing roblox. i always feel at home when i’m there, as strange as it sounds. i’m eternally grateful that his family accepted me so easily. and that his mom loves me. it’s july there too.

i miss mn. i’m not going to be going there anytime soon, because juni is coming here in september. so i probably wont be there until december. which sucks because it means that i’m going to have to get a new job. since i’m taking 2 weeks to go to mexico, 1 for mn, and then 1 to go to georgia to visit Cav. so that’s like, the whole month! i’ll stress about it later.

none of these things are permanent so why stress? im just 19 (ugh i’m gonna keep saying this even after im 20.).

20 is so close and its scary. i feel like a baby. my dad still has to drive me around the city, and mom still eats dinner with me.

i think mom knows that my eating is getting worse again. she’s not very (i forgot the word but it has the same meaning as “slick with it”), as she’s always calls me during her lunch break to go “oh what did you eat for breakfast?”

that’s the only reason i have lunch with her sometimes. to ease her worries i guess. juni is more normal about it, he ask “did you eat?” like once every few days. i’m glad he’s like that but it also upsets me. i don’t think he understands my mental health issues, or my issues in general. he told me he didn’t care to learn about it because i’m a human and not an animal. which i understand. but also like, this is a part of me that isn’t going away.

i feel like we are at two different places sometimes. which is crazy because of how close we are, literal soul ties. i’ve known him all my life.

anyways. i think i’ll end this here. i’m sorry if there are any typos or inconsistencies in my writing here. i use this as a diary, i guess. i graduated with a 4.3 and got so many scholarships to write (because woo! there’s a lack of representation when it comes to latin authors getting published in the US! especially women!) so how jarring would it be for me to say that i never paid attention during english class. i don’t know what a preposition is, i don’t know how to properly structure sentences sometimes, but that’s okay!

i lied again. i did pay attention to english class. i just forgot almost everything i learned.

i’m getting hungry. i think i’m gonna get boba later. anyways. goodbye, i love you.

[lesfeldickbiblestudy]

  Through the Bible with Les Feldick LESSON 2 * PART 3 * BOOK 69 KINSMAN REDEEMER – PART 3 Revelation 5; Ruth; I Corinthians 15:1-4 Okay, once again we’re ready for program number three. We always appreciate the fact that you all stay to the end. We would like to welcome you to an informal Bible study. We just sort of take most of these things verse-by-verse and precept-upon-precept.  I have no agenda.  I don’t try to grind any axes.  I hopefully never name names.  Maybe some people think I should, but no, I don’t want to do that.  I feel if I keep teaching what the Book says, and I stay on the Truth, the Word will do everything that needs to be done.  Maybe that’s a pacifist approach, but that’s what I feel the most comfortable with, is to let the Word itself speak. Okay, here we’re in a beautiful love story between Ruth the Moabitess out of idolatry, who finally comes into a marriage relationship with a man of Israel who was a next of kin.  He was in a position to redeem the land that had been mortgaged.  And that was all according to Israeli law.  You couldn’t just go in and buy a piece of property and pay the mortgage and go on.  It was always according to the inheritances and that it stayed within the family. Now in the Book of Ruth, we’re going to continue on.  Forgive me if I take it pretty much reading it verse-by-verse.  I’ll never forget, quite a few years ago, a lady wrote and she said, “I’m a Jehovah’s Witness, but I love your reading program.”  So, sometimes it doesn’t hurt to read, because after all a lot of people don’t.  They just don’t read. Even if they look at it, they don’t read. I’ll never forget years back, I was teaching one of my classes here in Oklahoma. We were just a small group. I was reading a verse of Scripture and one of the ladies looked at me almost in utter shock and said, “Les, I read this, this afternoon, and it didn’t mean a thing like when you read it!” Well, maybe I do have a unique way of reading, so bear with me because I see no other way to teach a book like Ruth, because there aren’t a lot of things that I can go and chase other references.  It’s just simply a verse-by-verse love story. Yet we do want to get the impact of how God was in control of everything to bring about a redemption that would then fit with the redemption of Revelation chapter 5.  That’s the whole purpose that I’m trying to bring out. All right, come back with me now to Ruth chapter 2 and verse 19.  Ruth has now come home to the house of Naomi at the end of the day, up there in Bethlehem.  And naturally, I mean these people are just as normal and human as we are.  What’s the first question she asks Ruth?  Well, how’d it go today?  That about right?  Sure!  How did it go today, Ruth?  Did you have a good day? Ruth 2:19 “And her mother-in-law said unto her, Where hast thou gleaned today?  And where wroughtest (workest) thou?  blessed be he that did take knowledge of thee. And she showed her mother-in-law with whom she had wrought (worked), and said, The man’s name with whom I wrought is Boaz.” Well, that didn’t mean anything to Ruth.  She didn’t know of any particular connection.  But oh, the lights came on and the bells rang for Naomi! Ruth 2:20 “And Naomi said unto her daughter-in-law, Blessed be he of the LORD, who hath not left off his kindness to the living and to the dead.  (What’s she making reference to?  The family tree.  Her dead husband.  Her dead sons, who were all part and parcel of that inheritance - that piece of ground that’s lying there mortgaged.) And Naomi said unto her, The man is (What?) near of kin unto us, one of our next kinsmen.”  Hallelujah, Ruth!  This means something!  This is just the guy that we need.  He’s wealthy.  He’s next of kin.  He’s one of our kinsmen.  He’s going to be a kinsman redeemer. Ruth 2:21 “And Ruth the Moabitess said, He said unto me also, Thou shalt keep fast by my young men, until they have ended all my harvest.”  In other words, pick up the conversation. Now, you’ve got to read between the lines.

  Here these two women, the mother-in-law and her young daughter-in-law, are rehearsing the events of the day. She’s come home with an unusual amount of grain for just being a gleaner.  Why?  How come?  Well, the man told me I didn’t even have to wait for the harvesters.  I could take part of theirs.  And Naomi is just ecstatic.  I’m sure she is. Ruth 2:22 “And Naomi said unto Rut, her daughter-in-law, It is good, my daughter, that thou shalt go out with his maidens, that they meet thee not in any other field.”  What’s she telling her?  You stay on Boaz’s field. Don’t you wander anyplace else, because, hey, things are happening here!  God is in control.  Now Naomi becomes what we’d call Cupid.  She’s going to make sure that Ruth does everything right, so that we can see this consummation of a kinsman redeemer marrying this girl.  So, don’t put anything immoral in here.  Everything is according to custom and everything is in righteousness, because these are two people that God is going to use for His purposes. Ruth 3:1-2a “Then Naomi the mother-in-law said unto her, My daughter, shall I not seek rest for thee, that it may be well with thee? 2. And now is not Boaz of our kindred, (He’s our next of kin.) with whose maidens thou wast?”  In other words, whose maidens you’ve been working with.  Now see, Naomi knows the whole process.  Ruth is just a young, innocent girl, fresh out of a foreign country.  She doesn’t know the process of harvest time, but Naomi does.  Look what happens next. Ruth 3:2b “...Behold, he winnoweth barley tonight in the threshing floor.” Now again, you’ve got to know some of your ancient history.  What was the threshing floor?  Well, it was a flat, probably level piece, of property. It probably was on a rather high elevation. When you winnow grain as they did in antiquity, they’d probably beat it and beat it to get all the chaff loosened. In order to winnow it, then what did they do?  They pick up the container and they pour it out and let the wind blow the chaff aside and the grain falls straight down.  That’s what you call winnowing. Now, I’ve made comment of this before.  If you go through wheat country at harvest time, that old combine is just spewing all the trash out the back.  But where’s the grain?  Up in the tank.  Well, what’s happened?  They’ve separated all the straw and the chaff and the dust, and the pure wheat is up in the tank.  Well, all right, now they’re doing it in antiquity by just holding it up high and pouring the grain and letting the wind blow the chaff. All right, Naomi knows all about this, so she says, they usually do this at night.  I did some research on this. The reason they did it at night was not only to escape the heat, but there was usually a little more breeze.  It wouldn’t be that stifling stillness.  So, nighttime was when they could pick up some breeze.  So she said, now you get back to the threshing floor, because that’s where Boaz will be tonight.  All right, verse 3, now don’t tell me she’s not playing Cupid! Ruth 3:3a “Wash thyself…”  My goodness, you’ve been sweating all day.  Now you get yourself all cleaned up and you get perfumed and you get to where you’re attractive to Boaz. Ruth 3:3 “Wash thyself therefore, and anoint thee, and put thy raiment upon thee, (in other words, the best clothes that you’ve got) and get thee down to the threshing floor: but make not thyself known unto the man, (Don’t let Boaz know.  Don’t come in with a big bluster.  Just sort of slip in quietly. Don’t make yourself known.  Don’t let him even be aware that you are there.) until he shall have done eating and drinking (finished his evening meal).”  Now verse 4. Ruth 3:4a “And it shall be, when he lieth down,…” Now there again, what do you suppose was the custom? After they had been winnowing grain and they’ve had a long day, even overseeing the servants and stuff, everybody needs some rest.  So, they would just simply lie down and sleep up there on the threshing floor.  Again, Naomi knows all of this.

  Now, she says, Boaz will probably just lie down and sleep up there at the threshing floor without taking time to go home. Ruth 3:4b-7a “…that thou shalt mark the place where he shall lie, and thou shalt go in, and uncover his feet, and lay thee down; and he will tell thee what thou shalt do.  5. And she said unto her, All that thou sayest unto me I will do. 6. And she went down unto the threshing floor, and did according to all that her mother-in-law had instructed her. 7. And when Boaz had eaten and drunk, and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain:…” In other words, after he had finished that much of a day’s work. Ruth 3:7b-9a “…and she came softly, and uncovered his feet, (just exactly like Naomi told her to do) and she laid down. 8. And it came to pass at midnight, that the man was afraid, (Evidently the Lord had probably done something to shake him awake.) and turned himself: and, behold, a woman lay at his feet. 9. And he said, Who art thou?...”  Now you’ve got to remember in antiquity they had more darkness than we have. It was probably almost pitch dark. He doesn’t know who is at his feet. Ruth 3:9b “…Who art thou?  And she answered, I am Ruth thine handmaid: spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou ate a near kinsman.”  Now there again, you go back into antiquity and some of the customs of Israel were just exactly this. The maid would have her suitor just more or less cover her with a piece of what we would today probably call a quilt or something. So she says, “Spread your skirt over thine handmaid for thou art a near kinsman.” Ruth 3:10 “And he said, Blessed be thou of the LORD, my daughter: for thou hast showed more kindness in the latter end than at the beginning, in as much as thou followedst not young men, whether poor or rich.”  So, what is Boaz realizing?  That this girl isn’t just looking at that which was the most attractive or that which would satisfy the desires of a young girl, but even though Boaz was somewhat older, she was simply following the instructions of her mother-in-law.  Her mother-in-law’s only got one thing in mind.  What is it?  Get that mortgage paid off!  We want that mortgage paid off, and he’s the only one that can do it. So all of this, yes, it was some conniving. But listen, have other characters in God’s program connived?  Well, I reckon they did!  What about Isaac and Esau?  My, if anybody ever connived to get something done, Rebecca did.  Remember how she helped Jacob get covered up with animal skins so that poor old Isaac would be deceived?  So evidently it was all in God’s divine purposes, even though we may not consider it apropos.  But always remember, this is God at work.  After the fact, we can see why everything played out the way it did. Ruth 3:11 “And now, my daughter, fear not; I will do to thee all that thou requirest, (In other words, with regard to that mortgage.  Now, don’t get the immoral aspect.  Keep that out of your mind.  We’re dealing with a piece of property that has to be paid off with money.  Okay and he said,) I will do to thee all that thou requirest; for all the city of my people doth know thou art a virtuous woman.”  And Boaz, in so many words is saying, and I’m not going to do anything to change that.  So, you’ve got nothing to fear. Ruth 3:12 “And now it is true that I am thy near kinsman: howbeit (Now, there’s always got to be a monkey wrench.) there is a kinsman that is (What?) nearer than I.”  Ah, I bet the poor girl’s heart almost stopped.  There was another gentleman who was actually a closer relative even than Boaz.  According to Israeli law of the inheritance and everything, what did they have to do?  They had to give this guy first chance on the property.  Well, that’s enough to scare anybody isn’t it?  Boaz knows this and he tells her that there is someone else who has to have first chance at this buying off of your mortgage.  All right, verse 13, but he doesn’t send her home. We’re going to continue on the premise that we’re going to get this done.

Ruth 3:13a “Tarry this night, and it shall be in the morning, that if he will perform unto thee the part of a kinsman,…” Now, in straight English, what’s Boaz said?  Well, let’s just rest, sleep, and in the morning we’ll approach this fellow who is a closer next of kin than I am and see if he wants to pay off the mortgage.  That’s literally what he’s saying.  Let’s just wait until morning. We will approach him and see if he will do the part of a kinsman. Ruth 3:14-15a “And she lay at his feet until the morning: and she arose up before one could know another. (In other words, what?  Still dark.) And he said, Let it not be known that a woman came into the threshing floor. 15. Also he said, Bring the veil that thou hast upon thee, and hold it.…”  In other words, it was like a piece of cloth.  I suppose today I’d liken it to an apron.  My, how many of you have seen women take that apron, put a knot in the end of it, and fill it up with apples and whatever.  Those of you that are older, you remember that. All right, this is basically what he’s saying.  He said, now, Ruth, you take that piece of cloth that you’ve got.  We’re going to make a basket and fill it with what?  Grain.  Because that was the staff of life in that day. Ruth 3:15b “And when she held it, he measured in six measures of barley, and laid it on her: and she went into the city.” That was a pretty good chunk of grain that she had to carry home, in what then became a knapsack.  So when she held it, he measured six measures of barley and laid it on her and she went into the city (or into Bethlehem) to the home of Naomi.  All right, now you’ve got to read between the lines.  I’m always stressing that.  She gets home to Naomi and Ruth says to Naomi: Ruth 3:16-18a “And when she came to her mother-in-law (Naomi), she said, Who art thou, my daughter? And she told her all that the man had done to her.  17. And she said, These six measures of barley he gave me; for he said to me, Go not empty unto thy mother-in-law. 18. Then she said, Sit still, my daughter, until thou know how the matter will fall:…” Well, in plain English what’s she saying?  Let’s just play it cool.  Let’s not do anything rash.  Let’s just see how all this works out.  Now see, what I try to bring in here is it’s about 1500 BC.  It’s about 500 years before King David.  Were these people any different than we are today?  Not one bit!  These two women are just as concerned of what’s going to happen to their future with regard to that piece of ground, because they could end up with a fairly decent life, or they could end up continuing on poor as church mice.  So, they are concerned.  But Naomi is telling Ruth in so many words, let’s play it cool now Ruth.  Let’s not do anything rash or foolish that we lose it. Ruth 3:18 “Then she said, Sit still, my daughter, until thou know how the matter will fall:  for the man will not be in rest until he has finished the thing this day.”  Now again, this is the human element.  What do you suppose is churning in the heart of Boaz?  Oh, I hope that guy doesn’t take up the opportunity.  I hope that other fellow won’t buy the mortgage. He wants to have the opportunity of not only buying the mortgage, but he’s got Ruth on his mind.  Don’t think he hasn’t. Ruth 4:1a “Then went Boaz up to the gate,…” Now, what does that mean?  Well, in Old Testament language it means that that’s where the city fathers would gather at the city gate.  Now, if you go to the ancient city of Corinth, it was at the Bema Seat.  It was an elevated place where the city fathers would hold counsel.  All right, in Israel’s antiquity, then, to have the men at the gate meant, more or less, the city fathers.  These were the guys that were more or less in control of the community’s welfare. Ruth 4:1a “Then went Boaz goes up to the gate, and sat him down there: and, behold, the kinsman of whom Boaz spake came by;...” Now again, what is that?  Hey, that’s the God thing!  It’s that moment of Divine appointment.  Here comes just exactly the guy they are waiting for.

Ruth 4:1b “…the kinsman of whom Boaz spake (that is to Ruth) came by; unto whom he said, Ho, such a one! turn aside, sit down here.  And he turned aside, and sat down.”  Today we’d say what?  Hey!  Come here!  I’ve got something I want to talk to you about.  Boaz immediately fills what was required to make this kind of an agreement for witnesses and so forth. Ruth 4:2 “And he took ten men of the elders of the city, and he said, Sit ye down here.  And they sat down.”  They sat down.  They knew that there was something that was going to be conducted that was of importance. Ruth 4:3-4a “And he said unto the kinsman, Naomi, that is come again out of the country of Moab, selleth a parcel of land, which was our brother Elimelech’s: 4. And I thought to advertise thee, (or to let you know) saying, Buy it before the inhabitants, and before the elders of my people.  If thou wilt redeem it, redeem it:…”  Boaz says to the kinsman, you’ve got dibs on this thing.  You have got first rite by virtue of your relationship with Naomi.  Now, if you want this piece of property – buy it.  If you don’t, tell me so. Ruth 4:4b-5 “…if thou wilt redeem it, redeem it: but if thou wilt not redeem it, then tell me, that I may know: for there is none to redeem it beside thee; and I am after thee.  And he said, I will redeem it.  5. Then said Boaz, What day thou buyest the field of the hand of Naomi, thou must buy it also of Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance.” Now, all of a sudden everything changes, verse 6. According to the laws of redemption, this guy couldn’t do it.  So, he loses out.  All right, read it. Ruth 4:6 “And the (first) kinsman said, I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I mar mine own inheritance: redeem thou my right to thyself; for I cannot redeem it.”  Now according to the laws of Israel, and I haven’t go time to go into all that, but they recognized that this first next of kin, for whatever relationship he had other than Naomi, he could not redeem it.    So that opens the door for Boaz. Ruth 4:7-8 “Now this was the manner in former time in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning changing, for to confirm all things; a man plucked off his shoe, (This is the way they consummated these things legally.) a man plucked off his shoe, and gave it to his neighbor: and this was a testimony in Israel. 8. Therefore the kinsman said unto Boaz, Buy it for thee.  So he drew off his shoe.  Ruth 4:9-10 “ And Boaz said unto the elders, and to all the people, Ye are witnesses to this day, that I have bought all that was Elimelech’s, and all that was Chilion’s and Mahlon’s, of the hand of Naomi. 10. Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife, (Everything is falling in place.) to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance, that the name of the dead be not cut off from among his brethren, and from the gate of his place: ye are witnesses this day.”  Now verse 11. Ruth 4:11-12a “And all the people that were in the gate, and the elders, said, We are witnesses. The LORD make the woman that has come into thine house like Rachael and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel: and do thou worthily in Ephratah, and be famous in Bethlehem: 12.  And let thy house be like the house of Pharez, whom Tamar bare unto Judah,…” Oh, now wait a minute.  Here is what gets interesting in the genealogy of Christ.  Is it just a genealogy of the elite? Is it just a genealogy of the noble?  No.  Because what was Tamar?   Come on, you don’t want to say it, do you?  She was a prostitute. She had a child by Judah, who went in when he certainly shouldn’t have, but she ends up in the genealogy.   These people are aware of that.  They said well let Ruth be in the same vein.  Sure, she’s a Moabitess, but here by Divine appointment she has come in, and she’s going to be a part of this lineage of Israel.  Now, they didn’t know ahead.  They were just looking at what had gone in the past.   That’s why they said:

Ruth 5:12-14 “And let thy house be like the house of Pharez, whom Tamar bare unto Judah, of the seed which the LORD shall give thee of this young woman. 13. So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife: and when he went in unto her, the LORD gave her conception, and she bare a son. 14. And the women said unto Naomi, Blessed be the LORD, which hath not left thee this day without a kinsman, that his name may be famous in Israel.” Ruth 4:15 “And he shall be unto thee a restorer of thy life, (Now this is still where Naomi is coming in.) and a nourisher of thine old age: for thy daughter-in-law, who loveth thee, which is better to thee than seven sons, hath born him.”  Now, what does this do for Naomi?  Why, this put her in a place of ease for the rest of her days. Instead of being poverty stricken, she can now live with a certain amount of wealth.   But the important thing is what does this do with Ruth?  It puts her right into the genealogy of Jesus Christ. All right, I’ve got a minute of time.  Come up with me to Matthew chapter 1. This is the beauty of Scripture.  This is our Sovereign God.  This is why I make no apology for proclaiming who He is and what He is.  He’s in control of everything.  Even the little details like making the first next of kin unable to redeem.  The one that was meant to have it is going to get it. You got Matthew chapter 1?  For sake of time I’m going to bring you all the way down to verse 5 in the genealogy that began back there with Abraham. Matthew 1:5-6a “And Salmon begat Boaz of Rahab (Who was Rahab?  The woman on the wall at Jericho.) and Boaz begat Obed (And who was the mother of Obed?) of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse; 6. And Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat Solomon…” So there Ruth sits in the genealogy of our Lord Jesus Christ.  All right, but what was the picture that we tied in?  Christ is going to redeem planet earth as a next of kin.  He has the power and the wherewithal and the wealth of heaven to pay off the mortgage held by Satan.

[shortcrust]

Audio transcript of appointment between Lt. Ranger John Lawrence (ID J-JLAW_122.21-C) and Dr. Cai Qiu Yue (ID C-CQIU_824.65-D)

PPDC Mandated Counseling, Session #84 1601 HKT, December 19 2024 

CQY: So, Johnny. How did the sparring session go?

JL: Don’t give me that look.

CQY: What look? This is just my face.

JL: You know about LaRusso.

CQY: I don’t know anything which you haven’t chosen to tell me for certain. But I’m sure you’re aware of how Shatterdome walls like to talk.

JL: [inaudible]

CQY: This is still easier if you speak to me, not to your hands.

JL: I said I can’t believe it. 

CQY: How are you feeling?

JL: Don’t know. 

CQY: Okay. Let’s set some parameters.

JL: You love those.

CQY: Sure do. Should have been in K-Science. [pause] Alright. Wikipedia’s entry on Ranger LaRusso states the following; ‘Daniel LaRusso is an American pilot with the Pan Pacific Defence Corps. LaRusso helmed the Japanese jaeger Perfect Balance alongside Nariyoshi Miyagi until the latter’s death in 2020. His exit from active service removed the last of the Mark 1 jaegers from operation’. Would you say that is accurate?

JL: No.

CQY: How so?

JL: He didn’t ‘exit service’. He pussied out. 

CQY: He experienced an incredibly traumatic event. I would have thought that, of all people, you might have some understanding for how that must have felt.

JL: I didn’t take all the glory then quit when the going got rough.

CQY: No. And I would encourage you to feel sympathy about that, the next time you have dinner with Marshal Brown.

JL: [pause] Point taken.

CQY: Can you describe what happened for me? Today?

JL: He was on the mat with Miguel. He’d already been through most of the trainees and they were - fine, my kids are good, they’re great. But that wasn’t it; it just wasn’t lookin’ right. None of them were doing it wrong but I could just see how LaRusso wasn’t getting into it, was missing all these openings. It pissed me off. 

CQY: Because….

JL: Because he’s a good fighter! He should have been better than that. Like, how the hell am I meant find him a co-pilot if he won’t try.

CQY: Did you?

JL: Try, or find him a co-pilot?

CQY: Take your pick.

JL: Back when me and Bobby were in Cobra, it wasn’t - it was like we anticipated each other’s moves, you know? I could just guess what he was going to do next. With LaRusso it was more like I already knew. Like it was he was already in my head, and he’d read and practiced some kinda instructions written on the inside of my skull. He knew like I did. Like some other part of me.

CQY: And yet you don’t like him.

JL: Absolute shit for brains. [pause] Wait.

CQY: Perhaps not the best insult under the circumstances. Are you apprehensive about the drift?

JL: Not my first rodeo. 

CQY: I imagine Ranger LaRusso feels similarly.

JL: What, you talk to him too?

CQY: You have to know by now that I can’t tell you that.

JL: Yeah, y-

CQY: But no, I don’t. Have your seen your new jaeger?

JL: Hah, ‘new’. She’s a refurb.

CQY: Aren’t we all?

JL: I wish. 

CQY: What do you think?

JL: I think she’s gorgeous. I think she’s one of the most beautiful machines that man has ever made, and I can’t wait to die in her.

CQY: I see.

JL: Isn’t this where you usually tell me to be more optimistic?

CQY: John, the last time we spoke you were a highly specialised gym instructor. Now you’re suiting up to drive a 8,000 tonne robot for the first time in over a decade. There is no ‘usually’ here, and I’m not in the habit of lying to you.

JL: You know they’re not technically robots, right?

CQY: Yes. Don’t think I don’t notice you attempting to distract me, but yes. I do know that. 

JL: They’re letting me name her.

CQY: Oh?

JL: Don’t tell anyone, in case it gets back to LaRusso. Don’t want him to give me some pretentious sh- stuff. But I’m thinking Eagle Fang.

CQY: Eagle… Fang?

JL: Yeah. Like it?

CQY: I think it’s more important that you do. On different note; how is Robby?

JL: Still won’t speak to me. Still not speaking to me from the middle of the continent, though, so I’m taking the win.

CQY: Did you reach out to him like we talked about last week? Have you told him about your change in circumstances?

JL: He’s the one looking at the numbers. He’s a smart kid, he knows. 

CQY: And Cadet Diaz? Have you told him?

JL: Oh, come on. He definitely knows. Have you looked out the fucking window recently?

CQY: John.

JL: Sorry. [pause] Yue, I can either keep the kids safe by putting them as far away from the action as possible, or by teaching them how to fight. Call it playing the odds. Not that mine have never been all that great.

CQY: I understand that you still aren’t open to discussing the situation with Sergeant Diaz -

JL:  [crosstalk] You’re goddamn right I’m not.

CQY: [crosstalk] But I feel obliged to state for the record that what happened is in no way your fault. She was an exceedingly competent pilot who knew the risks she was taking, same as you. 

JL: Yeah sure, I knew the risks. Still ended up putting her in a fucking wheelchair. [pause] Sorry. 

CQY: I’ll let the ’goddamn’ slide. Call it an early Christmas present. [pause] John, I understand that for how closely you have been involved with the training and co-ordinating the jaeger program these last few years, there is a world of difference between teaching and doing. I would just like you to be able to feel whatever it is you need to feel about that.

JL: Well, doc, that was as delightful as ever. Same time next week?

CQY: Holidays.

JL: Oh, right. Hey, think they’ll still be paying us in January?

CQY: I’ve been stealing the cutlery from the canteen for years. If I pawn it I can probably keep us going for ano- [alarm siren begins sounding, recording ends abruptly]

[ Clearance D - Do not distribute or remove from PPDC site ]

[anambermusicbox]

September 29 Day Countdown (26/29): 2016-2018 Radio Interviews on 动感101《小畅翻牌》

2016/12/20

(2:00) Interviewer, knowing Ukraine has renowned music schools, thought Zhou Shen went to Ukraine specifically to study music before she found out he actually was in dentistry and then switched to music; she asks why he went to Ukraine to study.

Zhou Shen: Simple! Because it’s cheap. (T/N: it’s extremely extremely cheap compared to studying abroad in other countries, and Zhou Shen’s family was quite poor)

(3:00) How did you win your parents over?

ZS: I didn’t. I told them, “Hey, I don’t think I can do this” and they were like “What?” I said, “I really can’t do this.” At first, they didn’t really understand what I was going through at the time. They said, even if I had to retake a year or two, they wanted me to keep going. They said, then take some time to improve in the language. I said, “I really can’t do this anymore,” they said no, and later I went against their wishes and applied to the music conservatory anyways.

(7:30) ZS talks about how he didn’t talk to his parents for months after switching schools, until finally his parents told him, “Then in the future, whatever you do is no longer our concern” and then hung up on him. 

ZS: (8:10) They said, okay we’re not giving you money for school, you figure it out yourself. But parents are like this: they say things but don’t go through with it. So they gave me money for tuition but nothing to cover living expenses. (*laughs*) (Interviewer: They said, whether you eat or not is no longer our concern) Yup. (*laughs*) They said they’d give me money for living expenses only if I studied medicine or language. So I had to borrow money from a classmate for food. I held out for 2 months, starved for 2 months before they said, okay since you’re this persistent, even though we’re still against this- (Interviewer: They still don’t want their son to starve to death) Right, they didn’t want to lose a kid. (*laughs*)

Interviewer: (9:00) When did their attitude finally soften towards your decision? 

ZS: After the Voice. (T/N: ZS didn’t tell his parents before he competed on the show; they found out along with the rest of the public when it aired) [...] They thought, ah okay he’ll be able to take care of himself now, he knows what he’s doing.

Interviewer: (9:50) Are they proud of you?

ZS: Oh yeah, they’re absolutely embarrassing. (*laughs*) After the episode aired, my parents- they run a small business, and customers who came by, my parents would be like, “Look :) who this is :)” and the customer would be like “…??…uuhh who is-“ “ITS HUAN YAN, OUR SON SANG IT!!!” (*laughs*) and then the customer is like “uuhhh ehhrmm….” I wanted to die from the embarrassment oh my gOD, it was so awkward. So awkward. Afterwards, I started avoiding being with them when they were with people. (*laughs*) They- they’re parents; they were happy, and then they started to worry. (*laughs*) This career... how long would I be able to do it for...

(11:50) ZS talks about how surprised he was by how popular Big Fish was; after only a few days, a lot of covers started appearing online. The singers for Big Fish and Begonia’s other OSTs were very big names, Eason Chan and Lala Hsu.

ZS: At first, they planned to have another very big name singer to sing Big Fish (T/N: it was supposed to be Faye Wong!), but because of reasons, their plan never came to fruition. The song’s lyricist, Yin Yue, she’s really too good to me. She kept insisting to the director, “Zhou Shen can sing this song, you should let him try,” but the director honestly didn’t care. The production company and the director, they wanted someone had enough influence to promote the film. (Interviewer: But congratulations to them, they ended up choosing the right person for the song! :D)

(19:30) ZS: “[After Masked Singer], my parents, they posted a WeChat moment they was quite touching—they said “Our son sang so well and seeing him work so hard—we want him to continue singing.” (Interviewer: Oh so they go online often?”) Yeah, only because I spent years teaching them.” (*laughs*) 

(19:45) ZS: “Every time I come home, my parents play my songs non-stop. I asked them, aren’t you sick of listening to it? Later I asked my sister, and she told me they play my songs all the time everyday. I felt like, wah (Interviewer: “All these years of being a host, and my own parents are the most avid viewers of my program.”) Wow… auntie uncle, I’m very sorry… (T/N: LKJNASFDFA THIS MADE ME SPIT OUT MY FOOD I WAS EATING HAHAHA) they’re gonna hate me. [...] I think, being a parent is really such hard work.”

2016/12/17

(5:30) ZS talks about how he didn’t sing at all during in his middle school years. Interviewer asks whether he ever tried to conceal his being different from everyone else.

ZS: Actually, when you listen to me talk, I- all these years I’ve already gotten accustomed to making my voice lower, it’s a force of habit. I’ve forgotten what my regular voice is supposed to be like. If I relaxed my throat while speaking it would sound like this—thinner, higher. But now I can’t go back.

(7:50) Interviewer asks whether he’ll try out different styles of music:

ZS: I think right now, people don’t know me well yet. I want people to first know who Zhou Shen is, what kind of songs he sings, and then try other genres, and only then will people want to listen. If release a song, people will be like, who’s Zhou Shen and won’t try listening to it—and if they listen and it’s a genre I’m not good at? Wow, no one’s going to listen.

2018/02/03

(1:50) ZS: “Well for one thing, I really hate my voice. (Interviewer: Why?) A male with this kind of voice is really weird. (Interviewer: It’s unique! It’s memorable. Can you find other people with this kind of voice?) Yup. My dad. (*laughs*) One time, my manager called my dad and he- “Hello?” “Oh hello auntie-” I was like “wAIT WAIT WAIT that’s my dad” (*laughs*) (Interviewer: Can he sing too?) No way, he scares people to death when he sings, he can’t sing. (*laughs*)

(7:45) After Big Fish was released:

ZS: Everyone seemed to like it, it felt- Eh? This is great. After about two weeks though, comments started to appear like: “just found out a man sang this and I feel like vomiting, I deleted this song immediately.” And it wasn’t just this one, there were many comments like it. It was extremely upsetting. I felt like, one of those characters in a sad drama, the kind that gets abandoned and they’re crying like “what did I do to you to make you treat me like this? TT^TT”

Interviewer: It’s like, even if there’s a whole pile of positive comments, if there’s one negative, that’s the one you pay attention to. Even if there are 100 nice comments—

ZS: —if there’s one hurtful comment, that’s the one that sticks with you, exactly! Everyone has this tendency.

(7:20) ZS talks about his duet with Guo Qin again (see translation from another interview talking about it here), how he was just as nervous as he was in his own blind audition and how he would’ve blamed himself if she had lost: “She’s 17—super young, makes me so mad—and she was sitting so calmly; meanwhile, I was standing there, all my limbs trembling—like, who’s supposed to be helping who here?” (*laughs*)

(14:45) About how he’s grateful that he didn’t get popular overnight: 

ZS: If I got popular overnight, I think it would’ve been over for me. Because my singing really did need improvement. Also, I think my album is really important in that in helped me get through a bottleneck period. At that time, I felt like, no matter how I sang it didn’t sound good. I felt like, can I even sing? But the process of recording this album helped me to see where I needed to improve. 

So if I got popular overnight, it really would’ve been over for me, because my singing wouldn’t have improved. It would’ve stopped there. (Interviewer: And you would still believe that you’re really good.) Everyone around you is praising you like (*rapid clapping*) “You sing so well!! You sing so well!! Look at how everyone wants to hire you to sing, you sing super well!!” It’s over- it would really be over. […] I quite like progressing one step at a time.

(18:10) Zhou Shen talks about how, when he got eliminated on the Voice, he wasn’t crying because he lost, but because suddenly going from spending so much time together as a team and having such camaraderie to all but four eliminated was too heartbreaking.

ZS: (20:20) When I got eliminated, I was actually really happy. I don’t like competing, and I felt I didn’t have any pressure on me anymore. I felt bad for Li Wei because I knew there would definitely be a lot more pressure on him now, because now he has to represent our entire team in the future competition. 

After our PK, he—because we both cried so hard—he said (*shrill crying voice*) “Zhou Shen I’ll carry your name and compete to the end!! TT^TT” (*Interviewer laughs*) and I replied, (*shrill crying voice*) “You shouldn’t give yourself so much pressure, don’t carry my name just sing TT^TT” (*laughs*) 

You don’t understand how hard we were crying. After the PK, there had to be a 25-minute intermission because Na-jie had to cry too. So she’s there crying in the mentor area and I’m crying in the eliminated area and Li Wei’s crying in the advancement area. [...] During the blind auditions, every single person earned their place in the team one by one, and now all of them are being taken out one by one—it was quite brutal.

2018/02/10

(1:30) Zhou Shen talks about how he has a longer process to be accepted compared to other singers, because they first have to get over the fact that a man has this type of voice before they truly listen to him sing. Some people react like, WOW amazing!! while others are on the other end of the spectrum:

ZS: Once, I was at a restaurant and at that time, they were broadcasting the blind auditions of the Voice. The restaurant owner just happened to be watching it, and when I appeared, he was like “Eh? Who’s this- WAH-“ and immediately changed the channel. I was like ??? D’: ????? “…can I have some water?” (*laughs*) He changed the channel right in front of me, you know? He didn’t recognize me. It was- (*makes disgruntled noises*) It was really upsetting.

(2:20) ZS, about being on Masked Singer: “That was the first time I felt acknowledged by the sentence ‘wow this girl sings so well!’”

(20:30) In the three years since your debut, have you ever seen a fan who, because of your songs or your voice, their life changed?

ZS: Have I seen that personally? That would be impossible, but I have read about it in letters and comments. There was one comment, this person—they had depression, the kind that they were being prescribed medication for—but they started listening to my music and slowly started to become happier, their mental health improved. I was so astonished—music is really so powerful.

Another one was- to be honest, men with this type of voice are actually not uncommon. It’s really not just me. Once, I was at karaoke with an old schoolmate—middle school or high school, I forget—and he said, “because of you, Zhou Shen, because you sang in that competition [the Voice], I’m now brave enough to sing at karaoke. It feels like, even with this kind of voice, I can sing too.” That moment—I was so moved.

2018/05/19

(3:45) ZS talks about how Gao Xiaosong was really satisfied with how the album turned out, and how Gao Xiaosong is actually really thin.

Interviewer: Why do you always have to mention that? No one is asking about whether he’s fat or thin.

ZS, joking: How else do you think I got this album—I kept complimenting him as thin (T/N: HAHAHAHAHA)

[swanlake1998]

Article: Moving Over: A Powerhouse of Black Dance Is Retiring (Mostly)

Date: September 2, 2021

By: Charmaine Patricia Warren

Joan Myers Brown, the founder of Philadanco, is stepping back if not quite away from her duties. She still goes to the office every day.

Rushing to our Zoom interview from an in-person audition at the Philadanco studios, Joan Myers Brown opened the conversation by making me laugh. She asked for a reminder of what we were doing and then said, “What an honor, you want to talk about me — only thing I usually talk about is Philadanco.”

Myers Brown is the keeper of all things Black dance, and Philadanco (or, the Philadelphia Dance Company) is the troupe she founded in 1970. Now, after more than 50 years, she’s “moving over,” as she calls it, stepping back but not quite stepping away from the daily work of running the company.

At 89 (she turns 90 on Christmas Day), she is full of energy, and her memory is impeccable. Given the floor, she will share her love of dance, especially Black dance, for which she has been a champion and an institution builder.

True to her Philadelphia roots, in 1960 she founded the Philadelphia School of Dance Arts, for African American children; then Philadanco in 1970; in 1988, the International Conference of Black Dance Companies; and then in 1991, the International Association of Blacks in Dance (I.A.B.D.), which supports the Black dance community through gatherings, presentations, education and career guidance.

Of course, none of this existed when Myers Brown started studying ballet at 7 with Essie Marie Dorsey, whose school catered to Black children. (Dorsey, who passed for Spanish, had studied ballet with whites.) At 17, in the segregated 1940s, Myers Brown got the bug to become a ballerina from a white teacher, Virginia Lingenfelder, and was the first and only Black student in Lingenfelder’s ballet club.

Later, she studied at the Ballet Guild, where she was again the only Black student, and was spotted there by the British choreographer Antony Tudor, who invited her to take his class. “He was coming from England, so he didn’t have that American prejudice stuff,” Myers Brown said. “He taught me like I was the same as the others and not like an intruder.”

She never became a professional ballerina. “Other than Janet Collins, Blacks were not hired at that time,” she said, referring to the first African American prima ballerina with the Metropolitan Opera. But because of Tudor, Myers Brown performed in a community production of Michel Fokine’s “Les Sylphides” with the Ballet Guild and the Philadelphia Orchestra. At 19, Tudor encouraged her to move to New York; instead, she commuted to study with the dancer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham. “I would’ve been afraid to go to New York and live alone,” Myers Brown said.

She became a successful revue dancer and seized every opportunity to take class on her travels. “I read every book on ballet and dance, and then I chose to teach because I didn’t get the opportunities I wanted,” she said. “That’s when I started my school and tried to teach what I remembered.”

The Black dance community reveres her, and the world has been noticing. She was the subject of a 2011 book, “Joan Myers Brown and the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina,” by Brenda Dixon Gottschild. And in 2012, President Obama presented her with the National Medal of the Arts.

I met Myers Brown, or Aunt Joan as she is known to those close to her, when we were both instructors at Howard University in the early 1990s. Like me, those who’ve walked alongside her know that she is a powerful force, a leader who has set the tone for Black dance organizations to follow. And though Myers Brown is stepping back from her role at Philadanco, make no mistake: She still goes to the office, and is very involved.

When talking to Myers Brown, you bring your best because her presence demands it. She is always dressed to the nines, but her elegance is balanced by her lack of pretension and her quick, sometimes sharp, tongue.

“You didn’t ask me any questions,” she said near the end of our talk. I did, but they flowed organically because Aunt Joan made it so easy. 

Below are edited excerpts from our conversation.

Charmaine Patricia Warren: So, what made you decide it was time to step away?

Joan Myers Brown: Guess, just guess! I’ll be 90 years old. I have four dance companies, two dance schools and six grandkids. I’ve been working 15-hour days for 50 years, plus my school will be 60. I’ve given enough of my life to this, but I don’t own it.

Charmaine Patricia Warren: What do you mean you don’t own it?

Joan Myers Brown: Founder’s syndrome. After a while, the founder don’t mean anything because the company and organization have outgrown them.

Charmaine Patricia Warren: How are you feeling about moving over, as you call it?

Joan Myers Brown: I’ve settled on moving over, and I appointed Kim Bears-Bailey as artistic director. Now I have to let her know it’s OK to do what she thinks and let her make mistakes. But I need a managing director, someone who is committed to moving something other than their own aesthetic forward.

Charmaine Patricia Warren: Kim was first at Philadanco, in 1981, as a dancer. Did she make an impression on you back then?

Joan Myers Brown: She did. She was one of those girls that I don’t think ballet companies would have liked. You know how they do us when we are Black and we just don’t look the part. She wanted it, and was willing to put forth the work, and I said, “Why don’t you audition for Ailey?” She said, “Everything I need is here.”

Charmaine Patricia Warren: Was there a search for an artistic director?

Joan Myers Brown: Not artistic, managing. I’ve had three white girls come into my organization with all the qualifications, but there was a sensitivity chip about Blackness missing. They have to think differently about how they treat Black people and know what we need. When I was looking for a development director, I hired a company of three ladies.

Charmaine Patricia Warren: Are they Black?

Joan Myers Brown: No. White. I had to school them.

Charmaine Patricia Warren: Does Kim run the school also?

Joan Myers Brown: Well, the school is not part of the company. The first 10 years the company was housed in the school, but when we purchased the building, we reversed the roles. The school pays rent to the company. I kept the school for profit so I would be guaranteed an income as a single parent.

You know, the String Theory School wants to build a new location, a charter school, and call it the Joan Myers Brown School of the Arts.

Charmaine Patricia Warren: Wait, they’re naming a school after you?

Joan Myers Brown: Yes, and they want me to develop a curriculum, so I put Ali [Willingham, artistic director of Danco3] there because he teaches the way I like people to teach — know the craft, break down the movement, demand growth and not show off. Our youth are caught up in getting the applause and not learning the craft, so when I find the ones that really want to learn, they have someplace for classes and performing opportunities.

Charmaine Patricia Warren: The Black Lives Matter movement isn’t new to you, is it?

Joan Myers Brown: I experienced that in 1962, 1988 and 1995. Every time white folks in charge throw money out there and say, “Y’all got to help Black people,” they help us, but when the money’s gone, they’re gone. Have you noticed how every ad in Dance Magazine has a Black person? It’s like they are saying, “Look, I got one!”

Charmaine Patricia Warren: Did you envision I.A.B.D. conferences as a home base for the Black dance community?

Joan Myers Brown: You know, the first few conferences we were a mess, but we were happy to be together. Cleo [Parker Robinson] is from Denver; Jeraldyne [Blunden] was Dayton; Lula [Washington], Los Angeles; and Ann [Williams], from Dallas. And each time we learned something about our own organizations, about others doing the same thing, and how we can help each other. Mikki Shepard pulled us together, and people said we set the plate for DanceUSA. I was on the board of DanceUSA then. I said, “I got to get away from here and start my own thing because this ain’t helping Black people at all.” 

The younger members want to ignore the things we learned, and their opinions are valid, but I say experience teaches you something. I.A.B.D. was a gathering to bring us together and share stuff, now it’s a full-fledged service organization.

Charmaine Patricia Warren: Do you miss the early gatherings?

Joan Myers Brown: It wasn’t like, “Girl, you got to come,” but more like, “let’s be together.” And when Jeraldyne died, we were a mess. Debbie [Blunden-Diggs] is stepping up to the plate now.

Charmaine Patricia Warren: The Philadanco family is huge, isn’t it?

Joan Myers Brown: We have a saying: You “gon” — without the “e” — but you’ll be back. A girl from my summer program told her mom, “I want to go back to Philadelphia because they give the training I need.” And her mother said, “I used to be in Philadanco 25 years ago, I’m going back with you.” She moved back, and I put her in charge of my minis.

I’ll give you another example: My first company was football players. I had no big boys in the school, saw them playing at my old high school and asked them to be in a show. They were more interested in the girls at first and refused to wear tights. I couldn’t pay them, but the Negro Trade Union Leadership Council was paying Black boys to learn trades. I told them to go in the morning, learn the trade, get that check, and then come for class at night, and they caught the bug. One of the boys owns a company and does my renovations now.

Everybody can’t teach or choreograph; I encourage all of my dancers to have a second career so that when you stop dancing you can do something else.

Charmaine Patricia Warren: What do you wish for?

Joan Myers Brown: Well, I’m wishing that people would understand that I need to shore up this organization. So, if I drop dead, the organization won’t be saying, “Aunt Joan ain’t here, what are we going to do?” I want them to say, “Do this, and take care of that.”

Charmaine Patricia Warren: You always have a Plan B, so what is it?

Joan Myers Brown: I like living alone. I like being single. I had three husbands, I’m fine. My Plan B is to do nothing, but I realized that people pay me to talk so I might do some more of that.

Charmaine Patricia Warren: Did I forget anything?

Joan Myers Brown: No. Well, yes, I do what I do because it needs to be done. And I believe in helping people that need help, and if they don’t pay back, it’s OK. The last thing I can say is that being Black in America is being Black in America, and it ain’t easy.

[rafiamunir]

My Child With Down Syndrome in the world of COVID-19

I inherited the love of gardening from my parents. They took care of plants as children like they had feelings; my mom would be happy when it rained because her plants were happy. When I started my own gardening, I understood why they had such characteristics of patience, love, and happiness. Being a gardener teaches you how to patiently wait for the seeds to sprout, careful watchfulness, the beauty of life, and trust in God. Being a parent of Eman, my daughter with Down Syndrome, this inheritance has helped a lot. No matter how many weeds grow around us, we have learned to thrive on our grounds — stay happy and content.

Parents with children diagnosed with any special needs are having a challenging time in COVID-19. Our kids have in-home and onsite therapies one-on-one and in a group, to keep their lives structured, teach them mind-body regulation, gain coping skills, and develop social skills. Parents are not part of the therapies 80 percent of the time. So, to an extent, we are clueless as to what minute details the therapists cover with our kids. Moreover, the kids have developed an attachment with their therapists. They sometimes spend more time with them than they do with us. I have feared these moments but never imagined that I would live them too.

Eman is in one of the groups categorized to be high risk in terms of chronic heart, lungs, and respiratory conditions. There would be many parents who can relate to me. Not only the therapy sessions are missing, but the regular scans, tests, and check-ups have been delayed too. And for Eman, we already missed two which for her chronic condition is not good and has a toll on its own.

Eman, being a down syndrome loves routine. Every kid with special needs functions better with a routine. We make sure she starts her academic home session on time. In the first week, it was not understandable for her why at home she is learning what she normally does in school. A lot of fighting — guys! At home she knows her routine has been set for 2 years as reading minutes with Mom, drawing time with her siblings, then it is play and a movie. She is in the Extended School Program even in summers, so as not to break her routine and that she does not forget what she has learned. I just hope that everything gets better before the day to day structure fades away.

I am not the one who gives up easily, but frustration is one thing that has come between us during the therapy sessions, I must conduct at-home therapy according to the instructions I receive from the school therapists. To see her struggle through these sessions and not understand what I am saying. Of course, she and her therapists have chemistry of understanding that I don’t have with her. She loves her school — starts crying while talking about her class teacher. She comes down every morning, pours her cereals, after breakfast, the first question she asks is, are we going to school today. I explain to her every day why she isn’t. Sometimes, we think that showing graphics and talking to them will be easy for them to understand. Maybe, they do but it is set routine that has caused a disturbance in their world, which they may or may not be ready to accept for some time.

As a special need’s family — we did not get a manual as to how to deal with uncounted situations for her like this or any for that matter. We must move with her pace and not another way around. I am thankful that she is the youngest and has her older siblings to look up to. They take care of her needs such as playing basketball, watching movies, sleeping with them, and doing homework with her. Although we cannot fill in the missing pieces from her day to day life, we take her for long drives and put her playlist on, so she can enjoy. We go for walks; she loves to feel the air, the smells, the sounds — part of her sensory processing.

Trust and patience have taught us to fight with every situation without whining about it. Watching her every second solving her own problems, absorbing those frustrating tears, smiling because I just looked at her; give meaning to these moments. It is hard, yes, but the grace is to live through it with strength and hope.

[ennui-gt]

Here it is. A Piece Of Borrower Content Written Entirely In Stream Of Consciousness:

AN: so this is incomplete and very…needs revisions to the timeline to incorporate some things I added later! It’s the original universe that Mira’s from! I edited it like Slightly to just change Ross’s name to Ross (if u see Max anywhere that’s his old one I just felt like changing it so that’s just him but different. Anyway) Everything's under the readmore tab, cheers!

The Library Fairy:

-

Basic Plot (Chrono, comic starts from human perspective abt the ‘legend of the library fairy’ ig maybe. Nothing here is permanent cept the characterization)

Part A

1- Mira is borrower currently chillin in a college library

2- She lives off of the cafe on the second floor nd reads lots and lots of stuff about everything when the upper floors close (lower floor open 24/7 but upper floors r vacant p much after 12:00 AM)

3- she starts getting increasingly curious about human stuff cos she’s literate nd books r pry neat

4- it starts one night when she spots an unattended notebook and a half eaten blueberry muffin, nd it’s 12:30 so nobody’s coming back in atm (it’s the 80s so no laptops for the plebians quite yet)

5- so she goes ‘welp’ nd takes part of the muffin, then sees the work on the page and goes ‘hmmmm this is incorrect’ so she helps our and leaves notes here n there to point the kid in the right direction and puts down some book refs for further study bcos at this point she’s been there for 2 years and she knows where most things are

6- she stays behind to see if the human comes back for it, hidden in a hidey hole near the desk

7- human comes in, sees notebook, practically melts w relief nd stuffs it in his bag

8- next day human comes back nd leaves nother notebook and a cookie, along w a hidden camera

9- Mira goes ‘o boy, this a trap, innit’

10- Mira then decides ‘eh whatever I haven’t had contact w anyone in years now so I might as well’

11- she steals the camera film nd leaves a lil scrap of paper saying ‘nice try ;)’ on it

12- student comes back, sees paper, goes ‘dammit’, then leaves note addressed to the ‘library fairy’ and another cookie, as well as more of their work for her to help with

13- bout a decade goes by and now the “Library Fairy” is an urban myth, it’s currently 2003 so she’s also wound up on the school’s unofficial Wikipedia page under ‘local cryptids’

14- most library employees know of her but they don’t go looking out of fear stemming from superstitions bout her, somehow the legend grew from ‘can’t be photographed’ to ‘a student once saw her and died that day’

15- there’s now a small shrine devoted to her where ppl bring offerings hoping to get good grades in return, sometimes they will leave papers for her to proofread nd stuff

16- new prof (named Alexei) finds online article thinks he Knows What’s Up bcos he had a borrower friend as a kid, but they left when borrower’s fam found out about them knowing each other

17- he leaves note wedged in one of her secret entrances behind outlet, asking if she can meet w him at some point

18- Mira, already In it, goes ‘Okay. Alright. This has gone on for long enough. Time to go and never return’ but ofc she’s curious as all hell and like she decides she will at least honor the guy’s request for a convo b4 she goes, but on her terms and w/o speaking face 2 face

19- they Talk in the library after hours, bcos he paid off the janitor to let him stay after hours nd most of the student employees recognize him as a prof nd leave him alone

20- they talk again for every subsequent night

21- she uhhhh finally decides to reveal herself nd prays that her hunch was right nd he won’t try to grab her or anything

22- he doesn’t but she’s nervous so she winds up gettin caught in her own climbing rope like idiot, is now dangling from ceiling in tangled mess

23- he stifles chuckle nd she says smthn sarcastic

24- he moves closer and offers to untangle her

25- she’s like ‘please’

26- so he do, but her grip on the rope slips nd he has to catch her

26- so now she’s in his hand and he just sets her down and now he’s a bumbling embarrassed mess bcos he said he wasn’t going to hold her and he just did and o dear pls forgib him

28- nd she’s like ‘dude u just saved my life it’s fine ur fine chill’

29- internally she’s going HOLY FUCK AAAAAAA but externally, her human’s already worked up enough as it is so she’s gotta b the level headed one

29.5- after a while they both kinda get used to each other more, he gets tenure, they celebrate, some more stuff happens, Aleksei got married (not to Mira, Mira hasn’t actually rly thought about being in a relationship w anyone cos she’s laser focused on gaining as much knowledge as possible)

30- eventually Alexei’s like ‘hey so I’m dean of faculty for the biotech branch now uhhhh would u like actual job teaching students? Cos, uh, you can do it remotely thru online lectures n stuff, no in person interaction, and I uh was just kinda wondering—‘

31- she’s like ‘yes. Yes!!! LET ME HELP PEOPLE OFFICIALLY KINDA’

32- so now she’s a professor, and has revealed her Secret a few times here n there to a number of the faculty, nd she has recorded her own findings in a personal journal

33- ‘humans will treat u like a human if they think ur human first. The kids call it ‘catfishing’’

34- enter Ross, an mall goth who accidentally tripped headfirst into a premed program

35- Mira’s favorite field of study is bio so naturally she’s his prof for a majority of his classes

36- being the good boy that he is, he now knows Mira’s secret. There is an Entire Chapter on him finding out and legit just continuing their conversation as if everything was normal bcos he thought that was how he was supposed to handle the situation

37- then she says ‘u can ask questions, u know’ he’s like OH THANK FUCK CAUSE I HAVE SEVEN HUNDRED OF THOSE

38- and now he kinda knows what to look for in terms of ‘do borrowers live here check yes or no’

39-in his apartment, the answer is yes and he mistakenly kinda stumbles upon the mom one night when he wakes up in the middle of the night for Snack and opts to pretend like its not happening. Unfortunately the thing she was trying 2 borrow (piece of crumb cake for Son Boy’s birthday) is the thing he wants 2 eat so he’s like “uh. ‘Scuse me, ma’am.” and he peels back the saran wrap on the other side of the plate, takes piece, nd then leaves some there for her

40-so now the woman is like ‘welp guess it time 2 Leave’

.1- she and husband Talk

.2-they decide it best 2 go

.3-theyre Packing

.4-lil bab Ellie confused

.5-hawk attacke

.6-cut to Ross

41- Ross also happens to work at a bar and he goes outside for a break

43- he finds smal child—smol smal—on the sidewalk and said child is missing an arm, nd has lost a lot of blood, so he’s uhhhhh Losing It highkey

43.5-parents r nowhere 2 b seen, but the hawk is nearby and circling. Ross gets an idea of what just happened

44- he up and leaves work, thankfully his apartment is above the shop so he jumps up the fire escape w the child and

45- he make tourniquet

46- he calls Mira nd asks her 2 come over to ASAP. he’s A Mess at this point

47- it is Very touch and go, kid needs blood, Mira is the only viable donor so she’s just gotta pray that the blood type is fine and won’t kill him

48- and then eventually they manage 2 stave infection thru antibiotics properly dosed to his size, Mira does Math and Prays basically

49- ‘bout a month in, kid wakes up

50- kid doesn’t rember much since he’s only 3

51- hes v scared of Ross at first but over time he gets used 2 the human

52- kid (elliot) starts 2 call Ross ‘dad’ after a while

53- Ross: *internal screaming but in a good way*

54- the end kinda for now

Part 2

A- New Borrowers In The Building

—three of em. paranoid dad, mom, nd daughter that’s Elliot’s age so he’s pumped

B- Elliot offers them a place 2 stay briefly

C- he knows by now bout like, how borrowers don’t typically interact w humans and Auntie Mira’s a bit of a weird case so he just doesn’t tell em bout his dad being the human

D- the kid finds out first nd doesn’t tell the parents, but they figure it out later kinda and think that it’s a ‘o god he’s being kept as a pet’ sitch so they’re >:| abt it

E- they move out and try to take Elliot w them (by force bcos they think he’s brainwashed) but he escapes and makes it to Ross, who’s like “uhhhhhh”

F- and the mom come out the hole near the counter n starts yelling at Ross, who is…kinda used to it since Mira brings in ppl who need help from time 2 time and they typically don’t react well when they’re lucid enough to understand what’s going on. He’s just not used to being questioned about his own kid

G- so they’re like “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING WITH HIM”

H- and he’s like “r…raising him???”

I- and Ellie steps up and he’s like “this is my dad. I decided he was my dad when I was three. He’s being a good parent”

J- and Ross is like “yeah what he said. I’m a good parent.”

K- Ross is riding that high til the end of fucking time but like back to the story at hand

L- this is when the husband comes out nd is like “lissen. wifey. ily but that is a very big human and he hasn’t grabbed us yet so let’s count our blessings and gtfo”

M- but she’s like “uh no we stay until I’m sure Elliot is Safe and fucking Sound”

N- so they stay for dinner nd stick around a little longer.

O- Val (the kid) gets closer 2 Elliot and also Ross a bit

P- Mira shows once or twice, first time she shows up they’re like “oh god it’s the crazy doctor lady this all makes sense now” (bcos Mira does check up on as many borrower families as possible in her free time so word has got around by now Of her, and the number by which to contact her in case her services r needed)

Q- After a month or so, then they decide to leave bcos they’re like “look we get that ur son is ur son and he only has one arm and in our profession that is kind of a death sentence but we can’t have our kid getting used to dealing w humans who know about our existence” so they go and leave on a kind of sour note bcos Ellie can do anything he wants to do just as well as any other borrower Thank You Very Much and Ross is ready to fite anyone who thinks otherwise

R- Elliot starts trying 2 b more independent, basically from now on he’s like ‘I can do everything my Damn Self Thanks’

S- but uh he does it to a point where he’s going out of the way to endanger himself

T- so they get into a fite about it and ross Yells and Elliot is like ‘kthxbye’

U- and the boi just. Fuckin bolts. Runs Away. Ross is a Mess, he starts smoking again (he quit cold turkey the day he took Elliot in) to curb the depression, he’s jus. Not doin good, worried that his son is dead and the last time they talked it’d ended badly

V- FREEDOM!!!1! Except Ellie doesn’t kno how to take care of himself so it’s a rough month or so and then he runs into some other borrowers livin in their own town in the wild ig, chillin, being hella independent, and he’s like “uh yes ofc I will join u, I was w my dad for a while but.........” he neither confirms nor denies that his dad’s dead but everyone kinda just assumes.

Part 3

W-anyway a year goes by and then the borrower group gets hit hard w some kind of sickness ig. Elliot gets it too he’s basically incapacitated n drifting in and out of lucidity. So. They contact the weird crazy doctor lady who hangs around humans, a.k.a. Mira, and she’s like “oh. fuck. I know this kid.” bcos she does, u kno, and she jus treats em all for their ailment and shows them how to make antibiotic poultice thing in case smthn like it happens again. Mold. Penicillin is basically what it is

X-she and Elliot hav a Chat (Mira basically yells at him a lot) once he’s fixed up and he decides he’s gonna visit his dad but he makes it very clear that he is a Grown Up (he’s not, he’s literally sixteen), and he is living on his own now

Y- he agrees to stay for a week tho since he misses his home a lot tbh and Ross is just. Over the fucking moon to know he’s ALIVE, he’s not gonna fuck up their relationship by insisting that he stay. Or like, by keeping him ofc he would never

Z- unfortunately the borrower community put two and two together and figured out his dad’s human so they have his stuff packed up when he gets back w mira, who’s ready to go the fuck off on them

End 1:

-Ellie is living at Ross’s place atm and hopeful about the future basically. He eventually will go off on his own but he’ll keep in contact w his dad and stuff

Part C.5

55- few yrs later

56- elliot is Adult now he does adult borrower stuff

57- he moves out

58- finds nice borrower gf (her name’s Tess)

59- doesn’t tell her about his dad being human but talks about his dad a LOT

60- so when she asks to meet said father he’s just like “uh. Maybe we don’t do that actually”

61- and she’s like “y tho”

62- and he’s like “bcos”

63- anyway she decides to look into it cos she knows he goes to see his dad nd keep in touch but his dad is allegedly “a recluse who lives in the big scary human’s walls to avoid other ppl”

64- which is. Not true in the slightest tbqh he’s def not an introvert he’s just a workaholic and he Is the big scary human

65- anywho they run into Val and her wife and she’s like “how’s Ross been?” And Elliot is acting Very Suspish so she, being Smart, calls it immediately and is like “oh shit u haven’t told her yet have u”

66- Tess: “told me what”

67- Val: “El’s dad is a human, bro.”

68- Tess: “I’m sorry?”

69- this results in a Big Fight and they separate for like, a month. Elliot blames Val bcos he’s being irrational and doesn’t wanna admit to the fact that lying to his girlfriend for over a year was Real Bad Actually, but over time he’s like ‘yeah it’s my fault sry for snapping at u’ cos he works thru his emotions n stuff

70- Eventually gf comes back cos she’s like “ok so. I understand why you lied to me about your dad. It was a dick move but I do get it and I still care about you a lot. I would like. To meet him.”

80- this is a lie she does not want to meet him she is doing this bcos she does not want to lose Elliot and that outweighs the fear of his dad

81- so they go to meet him but she’s just kinda. Behind the wall at first like “that’s a crazy big human this is crazy ur crazy it’s time to gO”

82- Val is also there bcos she hasn’t seen Ross in a while

83- they eventually coax her out of hiding

84- and by that I mean Val picks her up and drags her out into the open by force bcos she basically freezes up the second she catches sight of Ross and Val’s like “u didn’t come all this way for nothing, bich”

85- they have a Painfully Awkward First Meeting, Tess is trying her best but oh god he’s just too fucking. Larg. Ellie ur dad too big

86- tbh tho the ice kinda breaks after Ellie and Ross get into a fight over smthn stupid (im thinking Elliot grumbles bout Ross’s hair being unruly and he’s worried that mira’s using it like a personal storage system again and Ross is like “I’ve been keeping better track of that actually” and then like a little line of paper clips and a few hand-bound notebooks tied together w some string fall out of his fucking mane and he’s like “I can explain”

87- “dad you can’t keep letting her use your hair like a fucking NEST”

88- Tess is laughing now cos god damn this was not what she was expecting

89- that’s it the end it ends w Tess laughing at them being idiots good times r had by all

Uhhhh that’s it so far. I have More but it’s kinda jumbled rn and I need to fit stuff in places. Anyway.

[blouisparadise]

Upon request, here is part two of our mpreg Louis fic rec list. The first part of this rec list was done a while ago and can be found here. Happy reading!

1) Always Coming Back To You | Explicit | 4749 words

Harry's been missing Louis for eight days, and eight days without his Omega feels like decades in his pre-rut state.

Louis happens to come back to him earlier than planned.

2) Through The Storm | Mature | 6497 words

Note: This fic has no smut, but it is MPreg Louis so we included it.

Harry and Louis' marriage has hit a rough patch. A much needed week vacation in Jamaica just may be the second chance their relationship needs. What could possibly go wrong?

The answer?

Everything.

3) You Can Show Me Your Heart | Explicit | 6935 words

Note: This fic is locked and can only be read by AO3 users.

Everyone knows about the unsinkable Titanic, which tragically did just that in April of 1912. However, not many people know the story of the Carpathia - the ship that raced to rescue and aid the survivors of the Titanic when the distress call came through. This is the story of the events leading up to the luxury liner crashing into an iceberg on that fateful spring night. More than that, this is the story of how two of Carpathia’s passengers - Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson - met, fell in love and helped over 700 people in the cold Atlantic water.

4) Cooking with Styles | Explicit | 9119 words

Anyone can cook— or so they say.

5) Something To Prove | Explicit | 9425 words

Louis is the first and only omega to work at Red Valley Medical Center. Despite being more than qualified, he still faces prejudice for his career choice everyday. From patients refusing his treatment to condescending alpha doctors intervening with his work, practicing medicine in Boston is more challenging than Louis had ever thought it would be.

6) We Will Get Through This | Explicit | 11219 words

Because of quarantine, Louis has to stay home with his roommate, Harry, who he's never really hung out with before. He's a sweet alpha who seems to really care and that annoys the hell out of Louis. But as he gets to know the alpha, he realizes it might not be dislike that he's feeling.

7) Easily | Explicit | 13588 words

Note: This fic is a sequel to this fic.

Years later, Harry and Louis are as strong as ever and more than ready to take the next step in the story of their lives. It gets a little weird, a little confusing, but at the end of the day, it is as easy as can be.

8) Baby Honey | Explicit | 14744 words

Note: The pairing in this fic is Alex/Louis.

When the next great war strikes, all alphas have to ship out. Alex leaves a little more behind than some of the others.

9) The Post-War BP | Explicit | 17732 words

The eight year war has left the country's birthrate severely stunted with a lack of virile alphas left to bring it back up. To ensure the survival of the country, the government opens The Breeding Program where young omegas can apply to carry an alpha's child in exchange for benefits.  Louis' family is struggling and the BP is one of the only ways to secure a roof over their heads.  Harry was drafted at the age of eighteen and spent six years of his life defending a country he doesn't recognize when he returns home.  The government made the bed but it's Harry that has to lie in it.

10) Souls; Plural, Parallel | Teen & Up | 19679 words

Note: This fic has no smut, but it is MPreg Louis so we included it.

Soulmates are rare, the sort of rare that means everyone has a story about a friend's sister's coworker or a brother's roommate's cousin. But the fact of the matter is that most people never meet theirs. It's unfortunate then, that Louis finds out the hard way that he met his soulmate in a club, and the guy never texted him back.

11) Be Mine, Dear | Not Rated | 20104 words

It really wasn’t fair. He was the oldest of all of them. He’s the one who dreamed about being bonded his whole life, while Liam laughed at the idea, until he met Sophia. Niall had always been indifferent, but when he met Heather six months ago, everything changed for him. He quickly went from being the only omega around two alpha’s, to the odd omega out. And it really wasn’t fair, because Liam and Niall both still protected him just as much as the did before, just as much they do their new mates now, but he was still bitter about it, so he’d pity himself as much as he wanted.

12) Oops, Baby, I Love You (In That Order) | Explicit | 25344 words

The minute Louis Tomlinson decides he don’t need no man to start a family, Harry Styles literally falls into his arms.

13) I’m Having Your Baby (It's None of Your Business) | Mature | 26383 words

A bet can cost you a lot. Harry learns this in the weirdest of ways.

Louis just wanted a baby, and he got so much more.

14) The Things I'd Do To Wake Up Next To You | Mature | 36109 words

AU. Harry wakes up to a pregnant Louis Tomlinson and a wedding band on his finger.

15) If I Stay | Mature | 37226 words

Harry and Louis agree to a temporary arrangement that Harry can't seem to walk away from no matter how many times he tries.

16) You Put the Sun in Sunday | Mature | 42319 words

Louis is a love-brainwashed-teenager of hope drenched in dreams, clad in oversized clothes damaged with holes, and standing waist-high in novels. Harry is a selfish closeted football captain with a head too big for his heart, and a bad habit of not thinking before he opens his mouth. No one ever said love was easy, Louis learned the hard way.

17) Flash Forward (We’re Taking On The World Together) | Explicit | 44273 words

In which Omega Louis and Alpha Harry are absolutely perfect for each other and say I love you too much.

18) Every Story Has Its Scars, Ours Is A Brand New Start | Mature |  62859 words

Life as a devoted husband and an amazing father turned out to be a little different than Louis had expected. Everyone tells him it doesn't have to be that way; that he's worth more and that he's so much stronger than any one person trying to keep him down. It's all just words though until he meets the one person who makes him truly believe it.

19) Such Good Luck | Explicit | 66205 words

An Edwardian AU where Harry is a young aristocratic lord and Louis is a working class dairy farmer. Secrets are a necessary part of their relationship, but Louis has one that could topple their whole world.

20) Things I Can't | Not Rated | 67495 words

Louis has a plan for his life. He’s going to be the first in his family to finish college. He’s going to be a doctor - the best damn doctor in the country. And he’s going to work his ass off to make sure his younger siblings never have to wonder whether they have the means to pursue their dreams.

He doesn’t have space in his plan for a relationship with an effortlessly alluring musician, and certainly not for the child that unexpectedly results from that union. Louis is at a crossroads he never thought to plan for, and now he must make a decision: between what he wants now, and what he wants most.

21) I’m Still Learning To Love | General Audiences | 74695 words

Note: This fic has no smut, but it is MPreg Louis so we included it.

An AU where Harry has almost everything in the world except for the will to move on.

22) I Want You So Much (But I Hate Your Guts) | Mature | 83648 words

AU in which Louis gets accepted to play for the Manchester University Alpha-Beta Football Team. The only problem: Louis is actually an Omega. He is determined to make it big in the football world, though, and he can't do that bound to an Omega team. With the help of a faked doctor's certificate and some pretty strong suppressants he is ready to fight for his dream.

That Harry Styles (Alpha, second year and youngest football captain of the A-B team in ages) doesn't seem to like him complicates matters, though.

23) Fucking Animals | Explicit | 116688 words

Louis is the frontman of an equal rights-movement, author of a book about beta-omega marriage and the struggles of being born and boxed into a personality you don’t necessarily feel you fit. The notion that an omega must want to be with an alpha or else he or she’s just settling for less, is bullshit.

But, fucking hell.

24) Be My Omega | Mature | 138372 words

It all started when the alpha laid eyes on the short curvy omega and he knew at that moment that his life would never be the same, in a good way of course.

25) Cold Little Heart | Teen & Up | 194600 words

Louis is a soft omega with an abusive past and an alpha child. A few months after getting a divorce, Louis meets Harry, an ex-military alpha wolf that offers him something -odd.

In exchange for teaching him how to cook, Harry will babysit his son, Abraham. Louis really could use the help.

26) Love Me Until The End | Mature | 207130 words

AU where Louis, an Omega, is the head nurse of the hospital in charge of running the nursing staff. Harry, an Alpha, is a highly respected surgeon working at the same hospital. They also happen to fall in love.

Check out our other fic rec lists by category here and by title here.

[koreaunderground]

2021-02-20: Dianna Ortiz, American Nun Tortured in Guatemala, Dies at 62

[nytimes.com][1]

  [1]: <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/20/us/dianna-ortiz-dead.html>

# Dianna Ortiz, American Nun Tortured in Guatemala, Dies at 62

Katharine Q. Seelye

* * *

She became a champion of survivors of torture and helped compel the release of documents showing U.S. complicity in decades of human rights abuses in Guatemala.

![Sister Dianna Ortiz in 1996. After being raped and tortured in Guatemala, she helped focus attention on the 200,000 people who were killed or disappeared during that country’s 36-year civil war.][2]

  [2]: <https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/02/19/obituaries/00ortiz1/00ortiz1-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale>

Dianna Ortiz, an American Roman Catholic nun whose rape and torture in Guatemala in 1989 helped lead to the release of documents showing American involvement in human rights abuses in that country, died on Friday in hospice care in Washington. She was 62.

The cause was cancer, said Marie Dennis, a longtime friend.

While serving as a missionary and teaching Indigenous children in the western highlands of Guatemala, Sister Ortiz was abducted, gang-raped and tortured by a Guatemalan security force. Her story became even more explosive when she said that someone she believed to be an American had acted in concert with her abductors.

Only after years of extensive therapy at the [Marjorie Kovler Center][3] in Chicago for survivors of torture did Sister Ortiz start to recover, at which point she began to hunt down information about her case. She went on to become a global champion for people subjected to torture, and her case would help compel the release of classified documents showing decades of U.S. complicity in human rights abuses in Guatemala during its 36-year civil war, in which 200,000 civilians were killed.

  [3]: <https://www.heartlandalliance.org/program/marjorie-kovler-center/> ()

It was never clear why she and many other Americans were targeted. She was told at one point that hers was a case of mistaken identity, an assertion she didn’t believe. Her attack came during a particularly lawless period; ravaged by war, Guatemala was being run by a series of right-wing military dictatorships, some of them violent toward Indigenous people and suspicious of anyone helping them.

Sister Ortiz’s 24-hour ordeal, initially labeled a hoax by American and Guatemalan officials, included multiple gang rapes. Her back was pockmarked with more than 100 cigarette burns. At one point she was suspended by her wrists over an open pit packed with the bodies of men, women and children, some of them decapitated, some of them still alive. At another point she was forced to stab to death a woman who was also being held captive. Her abductors took pictures and videotaped the act to use against her.

The torture stopped, she said, only after a man who appeared to be an American — and appeared to be in charge — saw what was happening and ordered her release, saying her abduction had become news in the outside world. He took her to his car and said he would give her safe haven at the American Embassy. He also advised her to forgive her torturers. Fearing he was going to kill her, she jumped out.

The trauma left her confused and distraught. She had become pregnant during the assaults and had an abortion. As often happens with people subjected to torture, much of her memory of her life before the abduction was wiped out. When she returned to her family in New Mexico and to her religious order of nuns in Kentucky, she didn’t know them.

“To this day I can smell the decomposing of bodies, disposed of in an open pit,” she said in an interview in the late 1990s with Kerry Kennedy, president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, an advocacy organization. “I can hear the piercing screams of other people being tortured. I can see the blood gushing out of the woman’s body.”

Image

![At a news conference in 1996, Sister Ortiz displayed composite drawings of her Guatemalan attackers.][4]

  [4]: <https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/02/19/obituaries/00ortiz2/merlin_183998217_d3a1bcff-aca8-4d70-ab8a-9e74a2c79241-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale>

When she suggested that her abductors were supervised by an American, she was smeared. “The Guatemalan president claimed that the abduction had never occurred, simultaneously claiming that it had been carried out by nongovernmental elements and therefore was not a human rights abuse,” she said in the interview with Ms. Kennedy.

Sister Ortiz filed Freedom of Information Act requests. She pressed her case in American and Guatemalan courts. In 1995, a federal judge in Boston [ordered a former Guatemala general to pay $47.5 million][5] to her and eight Guatemalans, saying they had been victims of his “indiscriminate campaign of terror” against thousands of civilians. (She never received the money.)

  [5]: <https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/13/world/us-judge-orders-ex-guatemala-general-to-pay-47.5-million.html> ()

She recounted her story to the news media and participated in protests to urge the American government to release its files on her. In 1996, she began a five-week vigil and hunger strike across from the White House seeking the declassification of all U.S. government documents related to human rights abuses in Guatemala since 1954.

In a little-noted moment, [Hillary Clinton, at the time the first lady, met with Sister Ortiz][6] during her hunger strike. Ms. Kennedy said in a phone interview that Mrs. Clinton’s prodding had helped lead to the release of government papers regarding Sister Ortiz.

  [6]: <https://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/05/world/hillary-clinton-visits-with-protesting-nun.html> ()

The files were heavily redacted and did not reveal the identity of the American or by what authority he had access to the scene of her torture. But Sister Ortiz’s case became part of a sweeping review of American foreign policy and covert action in Guatemala during the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations.

Over time, declassified documents showed that [Guatemalan forces that committed acts of genocide][7] during the civil war had been equipped and trained by the United States.

  [7]: <https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/daily/march99/guatemala11.htm>

“Dianna shined a huge spotlight on the fact that the United States government, through the C.I.A. and military intelligence, was working hand in glove with the Guatemala military intelligence units,” Jennifer Harbury, a close friend, said in an interview. Her husband, a Guatemalan commando, had been killed during the civil war.

In 1999, [President Bill Clinton apologized for the American involvement][8].

  [8]: <https://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/11/world/clinton-offers-his-apologies-to-guatemala.html>

Sister Ortiz’s book, “The Blindfold’s Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth” (2002, with Patricia Davis), recounted the psychological toll that both the abduction and her quest for the truth had taken on her.

And at some point, her friends said, she realized that she had to stop, for her own sanity.

“It was so exhausting for her; she had to pull back, or it was going to do her in,” Meredith Larson, a friend and fellow human rights activist who was also attacked in Guatemala, said in an interview.

Sister Ortiz stopped agitating for information in her own case, Ms. Larson said, but she became a champion of torture survivors, remaining active in torture-related causes.

“She has moved our collective consciousness on how destructive torture is and how important it is to support the well-being of survivors,” Ms. Larson said.

Dianna Mae Ortiz was born on Sept. 2, 1958, in Colorado Springs, Colo., and grew up in Grants, N.M., one of eight children. Her mother, Ambroshia, was a homemaker; her father, Pilar Ortiz, was a uranium miner.

She is survived by her mother; her brothers, Ronald, Pilar Jr., John and Josh Ortiz; and her sisters, Barbara Murrietta and Michelle Salazar. Another brother, Melvin, died in 1974.

Dianna yearned for a religious life from an early age and in 1977 entered the Ursuline novitiate at Mount St. Joseph, in Maple Mount, Ky. She then became a sister of the Ursuline Order. While undergoing her religious training, she attended nearby Brescia University, graduating in 1983 with a degree in elementary and early childhood education. She taught kindergarten before going to Guatemala in 1987.

In 1994 she moved to Washington to work for the Guatemala Human Rights Commission. There she met others who had lost loved ones to torture or who had been tortured themselves, and they started a group called Coalition Missing to draw attention to those who were killed or disappeared in Guatemala.

She later helped found the [Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition,][9] which became a global movement.

  [9]: <https://www.tassc.org/>

“What we saw was a woman of incredible courage and integrity who literally came back from the dead,” her friend Ms. Dennis said in an interview. “It was a struggle for her for years and years not to be pulled back into that awful place. But she claimed life and was able to do phenomenal work.”

[limit-list]

this is not about the ask game but was wondering if you had any thoughts about modern au princess yue? (super random but i think i saw some yue love from you on my dash this morning and saw u were taking asks right now) have a nice night/day 💛💛💛

Hiya Sonny!! I’m a lil late responding cause today was hectic lmao, but it was good!! I hope you’re also having a good night/day haha.

Bud I am always taking asks, I love getting asks, I love this ask. I have never once had thoughts about a modern au Princess Yue, but now I’m BRIMMING with thoughts.

(This got a lil long, sorry bout that)

Imma put this in a modern bending world, cause I can

This is long post-war, don’t think too hard on how the history played out. Doesn’t matter.

Arnook is still the Chief of the Northern Water Tribe, and Yue is the princess. There’s still a bit of sexism in the tribe, but benders are equal and Yue is treated with the respect she deserves.

Whenever Arnook went to World Leader Conferences when Yue was little, she went with him as his heir apparent. Similarly, Sokka and Katara attended with Chief Hakoda. Lu Ten attended with Fire Lord Iroh, and Zuko tagged along sometimes.

All that to say, childhood gaang antics ensued.

Sokka had a crush on Yue from age 7 to age 14. Yue had a crush on Sokka from age 8 to age 10. At age 10, Suki came to a World Leader Conference with the leader of the Kyoshi Warriors to observe the guard work (aka her guardian couldn’t find a babysitter) and Yue instantly decided she was in love.

When she wasn’t traveling with the Chief, Yue had tutors teaching her about etiquette, politics, languages and dialects, cultures, and anything else a future Chief would need. She didn’t have time for friends back home, and even if she did, she never had the freedom for them.

Aang was raised by the Air Nomads, and was presented as the Avatar at 16.

So what I’m getting at, is that in this perfect world where there’s no war and no tension between the four nations, the Gaang are a well established group of the children of world’s leaders.

Yue, aged 17, presents her case to her dad for permission to attend University outside of the Northern Water Tribe. Arnook is extremely against it. After like 4 months of arguing and persuading, he lets her send in an application. She gets accepted to a prestigious Political Science program, and after another month of debate over it, he lets her go.

At this point, Zuko is the oldest at 22, Sokka is 20, Suki is 20, Katara is 19, Yue is 18, Aang is 18, and Toph is 17. They all study at Republic City University (RCU). Have I ever seen LOK? No. Did I do any research for this? No. Our imaginations are flexible. They study in Republic City cause I say so.

Everyone already knows each other except for Toph, who they meet at RCU.

Yue is dating Suki, Sokka is dating Zuko, who is now the heir apparent of Fire Lord Iroh. Katara, Aang, and Toph are all single.

Yue loves talking cultural differences with the Gaang. Whether that means ideological beliefs, ethics, laws, government systems, religion, the arts, everyday life, whatever, she finds it fascinating.

Religion-wise, Yue is very spiritual. She strongly believes in the power of nature. One weekend every month, Yue and Katara go on hikes in the mountains. She has a window-sill garden where she grows flowers and herbs.

Yue and Suki like to explore Republic City together. They dip into thrift stores, tea parlors, skate parks, the drive-in movies, everywhere they can. Ofc, the Gaang goes on adventures across the city all the time, but Yue and Suki make sure they have date night at least once every two weeks.

Yanno how back when Obama’s daughter was in college, they tried to make her look like a bad person for doing normal teenager things? People definitely do that to Yue and the Gaang. People follow them around campus sometimes, taking pictures without permission and generally being nuisances. After someone follows her into a lecture class, pestering her and disrupting the class, Yue calmly and politely posts a statement that clearly states that she’s entitled to an education just like everyone else, and if people insist on disrupting her education like this, she will be forced to take legal action. Like a bad bitch.

After Zuko, Sokka, Suki, and Katara have all graduated, only Toph, Aang, and Yue are left in school. Toph, Aang, and Yue rent out a big apartment near campus. Sokka and Zuko live together, and Suki and Katara also share an apartment. Their parents or guardians have all agreed to let them have until the youngest ones graduate before they have to come home and get started on life.

That summer after Toph, Aang, and Yue graduate is absolutely insane. They sit down the week before graduation and craft an epic bucket list of everything they want to do before they have to enter the real world. They spend summer going through every single one, from pro-bending tournaments to hosting their own bake-off.

Sadly, everything must come to an end. Summer ends, Zuko goes back to the fire Nation, Sokka and Katara go back to the Southern Water Tribe, Suki heads back to Kyoshi, Toph decides to stay in Republic City with her girlfriend Smellerbee, and Yue and Aang go to the Northern Water Tribe.

Years later, they bring the world into a Golden Age. Avatar Aang holds peace among the four nations, but really it’s a Gaang group effort. Connections between the Fire Nation and the Water Tribes have never been better, after Fire Lord Zuko married Ambassador Sokka in a wedding officiated by Chief Yue. Katara becomes Chief of the Southern Water Tribes. Toph is a master sculpter. She smuggles money, jewels, and drugs inside hollow sculptures sometimes to get things where they need to go, but that’s not the point here. Suki teaches martial arts in the Northern Water Tribe, and she advises her wife, Chief Yue, on the side. Together, they see about finally ending the sexism of the Tribe once and for all.

They’re all really fucking happy. Yue dies of old age.

[tabloidtoc]

Globe, April 12

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Brad Pitt Blindsided by Abuse Bombshell

Page 2: Up Front & Personal -- former Vanderpump Rules hunk Jax Taylor hauling trash outside his L.A. home, tennis star Venus Williams had some courtside cuddles with her pet pup in Miami, sitcom star turned pot peddler Jim Belushi during a spin around Santa Monica

Page 3: Chrissy Metz runs errands in L.A., David Hasselhoff with his wife Hayley Roberts in Calabasas, Lena Headey buzzed around in L.A. on an electric bike

Page 4: Toxic TV talker Ellen DeGeneres is trapped in a tragic tailspin, belting back booze while struggling to get a grip on her fading career and rocky marriage -- after losing 1 million viewers this year alone, Ellen's once high-flying show is on thin ice and she's fighting with wife Portia de Rossi amid talks of a $300 million divorce -- her ratings are tanking, and her marriage is coming apart at the seams and she's knocking back the red wine to drown her sorrows -- her strategy is to let the storm about her talk show die down and then pull in some huge guest stars to win back her audience and reestablish herself as top dog on the talk show circuit -- at the same time, her 12-year marriage to Portia has been hanging by a thread and the two had been at loggerheads after serial house-flipper Ellen put the estate she bought from Maroon 5's Adam Levine on the market for $53.5 million and Portia thought it was finally going to be their forever home and it was like pulling the rug out from under her -- then another crisis struck home as Ellen rushed Portia to the hospital after she collapsed and Portia underwent an emergency appendectomy and is now recuperating but her spouse is a mess over Portia's health crisis and she's been drowning her sorrows in booze -- Ellen realizes much more than ever how much she desperately loves Portia and what she's got to lose if they split but she also knows it's be a lot of work to get the relationship back on track once Portia recovers

Page 5: Chevy Chase secretly cheated death after a secret heart condition landed him in the hospital for five long weeks and now he may never be out of the woods -- the 77-year-old, who is now recovering at his Westchester, N.Y. home, recently revealed the heart issue snuck up on him -- Chevy needed valve replacement surgery, and recovering boozer Chevy's long history of swilling alcohol had left him with an enlarged heart and acute cardiomyopathy, a disease that makes it harder for the organ to pump blood to the rest of his body and his heart problems stems from his years of drinking plain and simple and it's affected his heart, weakened it over the years -- however, before risky surgery could be performed, docs needed to make sure the comedian was stable enough for the procedure -- in 2017, Chevy claimed he'd finally gotten sober after one of his daughters said she gave up on him and his wife Jayni threatened to leave him if he didn't clean up his act but it may be too little too late for the comedy legend because valve replacement surgery could affect his activities for the rest of his life and it means his heart was pumping through an ineffective valve, and this damages heart muscles, which never grow back and he could have ongoing chest pains or dangerous heart rhythm disturbances, which could lead to heart attack or death

Page 6: Dr. Dre's estranged wife, Nicole Young, claims the rap mogul knocked her out cold in a drunken rage -- it's the latest bombshell in the couple's brutal divorce war, with Nicole making the explosive charge in an application for a restraining order that was denied by a judge and she also alleges Dre punched her squarely in the face after he felt she disrespected him at a party in 1999 and Nicole claims she woke up in their car with Andre speeding at over 100 miles per hour, drunk and out of control and he was swerving and weaving and she thought she was going to die and she also claims a drunk and angry Dre held a gun to her head during a 2012 dispute, saying she was terrified he was going to kill her -- Dre has denied all of Nicole's abuse claims

* In a desperate bid to save their crumbling romance, Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez are seeing a sex therapist to spice up their fizzling bedroom romps -- the duo called off their wedding plans after a stormy four-year affair and are on the brink of the end -- A-Rod staved off a break at the last minute by dashing down to the Dominican Republic, where J.Lo's filming her new flick and patching things up for the moment -- the biggest issue has been Alex's roving eye plus sexting various women on the side, and Jennifer wants to get to the bottom of why she's not enough for him

Page 7: Jeopardy! contestants want celeb medic Dr. Mehmet Oz axed as guest host -- casting the dubious doc celebrates the elevation of talking heads at the expense of academic rigor and consensus, according to a group of the game show's former winners and contestants in a letter -- the letter cites instances in which Dr. Oz used his authority as a doctor to push harmful ideas, and referred to a 2014 letter penned by faculty at Columbia Medical School, where Oz also teaches, calling for his removal from the program and the letter concludes inviting Oz to guest host is a slap in the face to all involved

Page 8: Jeffrey Epstein's accused madam Ghislaine Maxwell's third desperate bid to get out of jail on bail has been nixed by a federal judge -- the 59-year-old British socialite it rotting in a Brooklyn, N.Y. federal slammer denying charges she recruited underage girls to be sex slaves for her late lover Epstein, whose 2019 death in his jail cell is suspected on being a staged murder, despite an official ruling of suicide -- Maxwell's offer to plunk down $22.5 million and give up her citizenships in England and France was nixed by Judge Alison Nathan, who agreed with prosecutors the suspected Israeli intelligence asset was still a flight risk -- meanwhile, Ghislaine's lawyers claim she was abused by a guard and is losing hair and weight due to poor treatment in the slammer, where she's awaiting a July trail date

Page 9: Billionaire Queen Elizabeth is bracing for a big pay cut -- due to the financial crash triggered by the COVID pandemic, the Sovereign Grant, the tax money allowance the royals get, is expected to be slashed by more than 25 percent when it comes up for its five-year renewal in 2022 -- last year, Her Highness raked in $114.2 million from taxpayers, but that bundle was exceptional and cannot expect that to be repeated -- a major cost, besides allowances for the royal family, is a renovation of Buckingham Palace, which prices out at $500 million over 10 years -- one saving is Prince Harry and wife Meghan Markle have been stripped of their titles and public paychecks -- Her Majesty is aware of the current financial situation and is happy to play her part in cutting costs

* Prince Harry has landed a job as a hot-shot exec of a firm providing mental health and life counseling but it sounds like the tech start-up company is really using him as a celebrity showhorse -- Harry, who studied art and geography in college, will be Chief Impact Officer for BetterUp Inc, saying he intends to help create impact in people's lives -- BetterUp CEO Alexi Robichaux refused to say how much he's paying the prince, but noted Harry will have a meaningful and meaty role and will attend all employee meetings at the San Francisco headquarters and Robichaux also hinted at Harry's true value, saying he'll be a special guest at company events; in other words, the company will use him as a celebrity draw and they'll lure potential clients and investors to events by saying they can run shoulders with the prince and Harry has no psychology training; he will be a showpiece -- Harry first hooked up with BetterUp by using its app that gives proactive coaching and provides endless possibilities for personal development, increased awareness and an all-around better life and Harry says he was matched with his coach who is truly awesome and has always given him sound advice and a fresh perspective, which is so valuable

Page 10: Lisa Marie Presley is getting back on track after her son Benjamin Keough's tragic suicide and bitter divorce from Michael Lockwood, but she's still a hopeless addict -- Elvis Presley's 53-year-old daughter smokes like a chimney from morning until night and is struggling for every breath and she goes through a pack or two a day minimum and she simply can't quit and she has cut out triggers like booze and coffee, but she still needs her cigarette fix from the moment she wakes up until she puts her head down at night -- she was snapped having a smoke outside a COVID-19 testing center in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley and it was the only time she was spotted in public since her son died in July -- she started smoking at age 15 and has admitted this is the one thing that got her and bit her in the ass that she can't shake even those she's kicked pain pills, cocaine, booze and opioids and she's tried everything she can think of to quit: patches, nicotine gum, going cold turkey, but nothing works and she did stop for a spell after being hypnotized but a day or two later she was lighting up again -- she's losing weight, exercising more and eating healthier, but her smoking habit is the elephant in the room

Page 11: Following the heart-crushing suicide of her brother, Elvis Presley's granddaughter Riley Keough has become a death doula, a counselor who helps terminal patients and their cope with the devastating trauma -- Riley announced she'd completed her training on social media -- the daughter of Lisa Marie Presley and her first husband Danny Keough, Riley was devastated when her brother Benjamin Keough committed suicide with a shotgun last July -- spurred by the tragedy to become a death doula, Riley says she thinks it's so important to be educated on conscious dying and death the way we educate ourselves on birth and conscious birthing

* Reality TV train wreck Mama June Shannon claims she and her boyfriend Geno Doak spent $900,000 in a year to feed their drug addiction and the couple were spending $2500 a day, if not more, on methamphetamine -- June entered rehab with $1.75 in her pocket and they've been clean 14 months

Page 12: Celebrity Buzz -- reformed boozer Luann de Lesseps sips a soft drink in Mexico (picture), Real World star Rebecca Blasband believes she had an otherwordly 15-year beyond-the-grave relationship with Beatles legend John Lennon's ghost, in Australia a not so itsy bitsy spider bite turned into a giant wallop of a headache for Melissa McCarthy, Ilana Glazer and husband David Rooklin are happily expecting their first baby ironically right before of her horror movie False Positive, Sarah Silverman says no one ever told her not to use tongue in screen kisses and it got her fired from a show called Pride & Joy

Page 13: Al Pacino gets all gussied up in Italy to play fashion godfather Aldo in the biopic House of Gucci (picture), Justine Bateman (picture), Tom Selleck covers up his signature 'stache with a mask in L.A. (picture), first-time mama Katharine McPhee hit a sour note with composer husband David Foster for blabbing their newborn son's name Rennie David Foster on Today

Page 14: Rihanna plunked down $13.8 million for a new Beverly Hills mountaintop mansion that's literally surrounded by noteworthy neighbors like Paul McCartney and Mariah Carey and Madonna who live in the same exclusive star-studded cul-de-sac, Tom Cruise is on a mission to unload his Rocky Mountain getaway for $39.5 million, Goldie Hawn gushes her life partner Kurt Russell is still hot as heck after turning 70

* Fashion Verdict -- Miranda Lambert 4/10, Taylor Swift 5/10, Phoebe Bridgers 1/10, Giuliana Rancic 7/10, Brandi Carlile 6/10

Page 16: Cover Story -- Angelina Jolie is determined to paint her ex Brad Pitt as an abusive, drunken monster, and now she's got their kids backing her claim that he's the dad from hell -- the mom of six, who's been battling Brad in court over custody and money for five years, filed new bombshell papers saying she and her children want to testify their life was the pits -- while the documents are sealed, Angelina is making sure their kids paint Brad as violent and aggressive and her shocking charges continue earlier accusations by oldest child Maddox, now 19 and in college, who accused a booze-fueled Brad of abusing him on a private flight five years ago and Maddox essentially painted his dad as a demented monster and he went into detail about Brad's terrible temper, the abuse he inflicted on the whole household with his binge drinking and the scars that exist to this day because of the appalling way he alleges Brad treated his mom during the marriage -- Brad has reportedly been sober for years and Angelina's new claims of domestic abuse are basically a rehash of the old accusations -- legal experts also maintain the minor kids can only testify if Brad agrees to it, which is doubtful -- the superstars have spent a combined $10 million in legal fees and are currently battling over visitation rights for their brood and Angelina has refused to compromise, wants full custody and calls it a fight to the death and she doesn't care about Brad or how anybody sees their fight, she just wants what she feels she is entitled to as a mother and will fight with every inch of her body and soul to get it

Page 19: 10 Things You Don't Know About Topher Grace

* Katherine Heigl boasts she's bionic after having two titanium disks inserted into her neck and the actress says the surgery has freed her from the most excruciating pain

* Wendy Williams broke wind in a stunning fart-burp combo while she was live on camera, right in the middle to discussing Kim Kardashian's divorce from Kanye West -- the gassy lassie seemed surprised at her own outburst and apologized to the audience

Page 20: True Crime

Page 23: William Shatner is creating an artificial intelligence-powered version of himself -- in true sci-fi fashion, people in the future will be able to ask him questions about his life and times -- the 90-year-old icon is the first person to be captured by an advanced video and sound system developed by the L.A.-based company StoryFile -- Shatner says with StoryFile, we can now be present for the future; your authentic self, for all time

* Furious perfume mogul William Lauder is battling to kick his former mistress Taylor Stein and their 13-year-old love child out of her home and into the street, because their supposedly secret love affair was revealed -- the big stink exploded after the 60-year-old Estee Lauder heir learned his secret teen daughter wrote on social media that her parents were divorced but actually, Lauder never wed Taylor, but kept her like a queen in a $7 million, 6000-square-foot Bel Air mansion with a $1 million annual allowance for years and the only condition was that she keep their affair and the child under wraps, but the Park Avenue playboy claims she blasted their pact to smithereens when his illicit daughter blabbed about the relationship online -- Lauder hooked up with Taylor in Aspen in 2000 while still wed to wife Karen, mom of three of his daughters -- he knocked Taylor up in 2005, but told her to get an abortion because he was then in the midst of divorcing Karen but three years before the 2009 divorce, Taylor got pregnant again and gave birth to their girl and that's when the moneybags lover boy drew up the hush-hush deal

Page 24: COVID vaccines hidden dangers -- scientists warn shots don't work and have nightmare side effects

Page 27: Gal rock roadie Tana Douglas is snitching on music superstars including George Harrison and Iggy Pop, who she got close to during her wild years traveling with bands -- in her book called Loud, she recalls her job hauling equipment for bands nearly ended at age 21 when Beatle George Harrison was ready to propose, but she blew it; the two were getting close under a kitchen table after George fled his own birthday party, where he was embarrassed by his present: strippers and she ruined the mood by firing up a cigarette and George told her he would marry her tomorrow if she gave up smoking but the first female rock roadie couldn't kick butts -- she has crazy stories about saving AC/DC's frontman Bon Scott when he overdosed, Elton John who did drugs and threw tantrums, The Go-Gos, and doing a line of coke with Iggy Pop intended for David Bowie

Page 28: Health Report

Page 30: Julianne Hough has plumped up her kisser, and her new look falls flat -- the newly single star may have gone overboard with lip fillers to the point where she's almost unrecognizable -- Julianne's had some surgical and nonsurgical things done, but her lips just look wonky and no one can understand why she'd do it because her lips looked fine to her friends and family, but Julianne obviously thought they needed more volume and clearly got carried away -- she's also totally gone overboard with the spray tanning and hair extensions and she ditched the short blond bob that suited her so well and now she's looking like a Kardashian -- her lips look a bit swollen, so it's possible they will settle down and her natural lip proportions appear to have changed, with her upper lip the same size as her lower lip

Page 32: Tori Spelling has got the marriage blues and she's been out and about without her wedding ring -- the 47-year-old mom of five was spotted buying veggies at Underwood Family Farms in California's Moorpark with her kids but minus husband Dean McDermott and her wedding ring -- Tori's fed up with her mate, whining he's not doing his share around the house or paying her enough attention and they've found themselves in a real rut where they spend less and less time together and barely mention one another on social media and they haven't had a date night since goodness knows and Dean is never in the romantic mood and lately, they're more like brother and sister than husband and wife -- Tori wants Dean to step it up and start acting like a hubby instead of a leach and Tori's exhausting herself by taking care of the domestic chores single-handedly at times while Dean has other things on his mind and he hasn't picked up a vacuum or washed the dishes in weeks and sometimes he doesn't seem to be aware she's in the room and it's frustrating her to no end -- ditching her ring is sending Dean a very clear message that he needs to stop taking her for granted and work on the marriage

* Paul McCartney dove deep into his Beatles past and emerged with a children's book inspired by the group's 1966 hit Yellow Submarine -- Grandude's Green Submarine, a sequel to Paul's picture book Hey Grandude, will be released in September and changes the color of the submerged vessel

Page 36: Reality TV momager Kris Jenner is worth an estimated $190 million and masterminded the megabucks careers of her reality star daughters, but she confesses she was clueless about dough when she became divorced -- Kris confesses first husband Robert Kardashian handled everything and she never paid a bill during their 13-year marriage that ended in 1991 -- she said she woke up to responsibilities that she didn't have the day before but she says she's a quick study and she knew she had to get it together and she felt such an enormous sense of accomplishment to be able to figure it all out and pay her own bills and make her own money and do her own taxes and there were times when she didn't have a lot of money, but she was very organized -- now she studies business for new opportunities and she's interested in different businesses and how they evolve and how they become successful and she just enjoys the business world

* Bobby Brown's son Bobby Jr. died after accidentally overdosing on a killer cocktail of alcohol, cocaine and fentanyl, his autopsy reveals, but lawmen say they are now opening a criminal investigation into the 27-year-old's death at his father's home in suburban L.A. -- the autopsy report showed in his final hours Bobby Jr. consumed a deadly mix of tequila, cocaine and the prescription medication Percocet -- he was Brown's second child with former galpal Kim Ward

Page 38: Long-lost letters written by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's father, Alois, reveal the freaky Fuhrer grew up to be a cruel, tyrannical, arrogant lout, just like his old man -- the 31 letters were discovered by retiree Anneliese Smigielski in the attic of her house in the Austrian town of Wallern and are the basis of a new book by historian Roman Sandgruber -- penned to Anneliese's great-great-great-grandfather Joseph Radlegger, who sold retired customs official Alois a farm when future Nazi monster Adolf was six in 1895, the letters reveal Hitler's dad was a brutal boozer and boss of the house, but depended on the skills and money of his third wife, Klara, a former servant girl the cheating creep had seduced and wine-guzzling Alois was awfully rough with her and beat little Adolf and the other eight kids -- like his father, Adolf felt superior through the knowledge he had acquired in self-study and he saw himself as a military, technical and artistic genius, not only as a painter, but also as an architect, writer, composer and actor

Page 40: Bethenny Frankel is sporting an engagement ring from fiance Paul Bernon -- the three-stone ring features a huge eight- to ten-carat emerald-shaped center stone and if it's a real, natural diamond, its estimated value is up to $1 million

* Gwyneth Paltrow just babbled something her second husband, Brad Falchuk, probably doesn't want to hear: she never wanted to get divorced from Chris Martin but she wed Brad in 2018 and Gwyneth calls him the most amazing man adding they've built something that she's never had before

* Suzanne Somers brags she and husband Alan Hamel are having sizzling sex three times a day before noon -- she blames doses of hormones for their frisky urges in their golden years

* Klutzy comic Chelsea Handler jokes about her subpar skiing skills online, but later revealed she wrecked her knee and broke two toes after she flew into the trees on a snowy slope in Canada -- Chelsea confesses she took the terrible tumble in British Columbia, where she was training with a personal instructor

Page 41: Vin Diesel's son Vincent is learning it's a good career move to have a movie star dad -- the 10-year-old has landed a $1000-a-day role in his father's new Fast and Furious flick -- the kid plays the younger version of Vin's character Dominic Toretto in the already completed, ninth F&F film -- Vincent's mom is Vin's longtime galpal, Mexican model Paloma Jimenez, who also has two daughters with Vin -- unlike his dad's megabucks salary, Vincent got the basic $1005 daily rate

* The faith-based Duggar family of 19 Kids and Counting fame is still feuding after a sleazy sex scandal ripped them apart -- Jill Duggar Dillard, who's outed herself as one of four sisters molested by big brother Josh Duggar, reveals she hasn't visited her parents' home in years -- Jill and husband Derick Dillard, say they aren't allowed at Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar's Big House without her father's permission and Jill reveals there's some restrictions but also they just feel like they have to prioritize their mental and emotional health -- TLC axed the family's show after Josh was exposed as a child molester and in the past, Jill's admitted she's not on the best terms with some of her family

Page 42: Kim Kardashian has been getting back in touch with her body big-time now that she has booted Kanye West from her bedroom and her life and she's been strolling around totally nude -- with the pair's six-year marriage officially kaput, Kim is gleefully letting it all hang out, while indulging in once-forbidden McDonald's french fries -- Kanye made a habit of telling Kim to cover up and picked her to pieces for wearing sexy outfits and he said she needed to class up her act and grow old gracefully but now she's free to express herself and a lot of the time, especially when Kanye's looking after the kids, she's walking around totally in the nude and it's liberating for her to be at one with her body and she's made no secret of her desire to pursue a racy image and right now Kim's priority is to get her mojo back and learn to love herself again physically

* Britney Spears confesses she's been so wrapped up in battling the conservatorship over her estate, she forgot about singing until her mom reminded her -- the singer hasn't cut an album for five years as she's battled dad Jamie Spears for control of her $60 million fortune after a court gave him control when she went bonkers in 2008 -- she now realizes she's neglected her career after mom Lynne Spears sent her a video of her signing You Got It All at a '90s concert in Singapore and Britney tweeted that her mom reminded her that she can sing and she never sings anymore

Page 44: Straight Talk -- Cradle-robbing Scott Disick has struck again, scooping up a new galpal half of his 37 years, who is barely out of high school -- the latest victim is Amelia Hamlin, 19 years old and daughter of Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin

Page 45: Sharon Osbourne is demanding at least $10 million to walk away from The Talk after being accused of racist and sexist attacks on co-hosts -- Sharon is playing hardball, saying she was wrongly vilified for branding lesbian co-star Sara Gilbert a fish eater and calling Chinese-American Julie Chen slanty eyes -- it's going to become a battle royale and Sharon's made her demands clear and will fight tooth and nail and she's a street fighter and is used to playing down and dirty, owing to her years as a hard-nosed rock manager for husband Ozzy Osbourne

[lisarichardsonbylines]

How to Tell Your Husband You’re a Witch

Witches we need you. Now more than ever. In the time of COVID-19 we can find respite in place-based reverence, plant magic and the divine feminine. So writes Lisa Richardson, who came to witchiness with nothing but white hetero straight-lacedness and a crush on a yoga teacher.

Lisa Richardson | Longreads | April 2020 | 15 minutes (4,084 words)

On a Friday afternoon, pre-COVID-19, my husband dropped some ice-cubes into glasses, ready to make us screwdrivers and cheers to surviving another week of working/parenting/wondering where the hell the years were going, only, the vodka bottle was empty.

“Oh yeah,” I said, my eyes sliding sideways, trying to not cause a fuss, “I used it for medicine.” The previous week, the kitchen counter had been cluttered with a giant mason jar full of oily plant matter. “Balm of Gilead!” I explained, brightly, as he wiped away the breakfast crumbs around it.

“But what is it?”

“Cottonwood tips in oil.”

His eyes had flicked, then, over to the brand-new bottle of extra virgin olive oil that was now nearly empty, as I enumerated the medicinal benefits of this old herbal remedy (and all this from a tree in our backyard!). Twenty-four years together means I could hear the abacus in his brain clicking, as he wordlessly calculated the cost per milliliter of a gallon jar of plant matter masticating in top-shelf olive oil, against the cost per unit of a bottle of generic aspirin tables, overlaid with the probability of me losing interest in this project.

First the olive oil. Now the vodka for dozens of little jars of tinctures — garden herbs and weeds soaking in now-undrinkable booze. My midlife quest to attune more deeply to the rhythms of the natural world was starting to incur unexpected, but real, costs.

He was quiet, as he opened the fridge and pulled out a beer instead.

* * *

In my defense, I could have pointed my finger at Natalie Rousseau, a yoga teacher living in my 5,000 person village, who I’d first encountered leading a solstice yoga class billed as a way to survive the madness of the holidays (in slightly more gracious language). Thanks to her offerings of insight I did survive the commercial horror of the “festive” season, and a few months later, as the new moon entered Aries (whatever that actually means), I plonked down $200 to subscribe to her online 13 Moons course — my foray into “slowing down and being more present,” as I pitched it to my husband when he inquired about the strange entry on the credit card statement.

But I did not deflect the simmering tension between us by naming Natalie as the instigator of these “kitchen witch” experiments. Even though I am not a member of any kind of coven or cult, (I don’t think book club counts), I know deep in my bones to never throw another woman onto the fire for helping you. That has been done too many times.

But there it is. The word. Witch. The wound.

* * *

Every day, after COVID-19 entered our world, Natalie Rousseau has responded with an offering, a teaching — a meditation, an ancient mantra of protection, a yoga practice for managing anxiety, a how-to video on harvesting poplar medicine. It’s as if she’s been resourcing herself for this moment to develop the richest arsenal imaginable, to navigate, not the public health crisis, but the billion personal crises each of us is forced to confront as life as we know it slams into pandemic mode. It’s not what I thought a witch would do, if I ever thought about them at all.

Natalie doesn’t look like a witch either — not in the way I conceived it for last year’s Halloween costume, with my long black skirt, dollar-store pointy hat, and heavy black eyeliner, walking alongside my 6-year-old vampire-werewolf. Natalie is petite, just a few inches over five feet, her long blond hair still evoking the decade she spent living in a west coast surf town, her chest and lean muscled arms bright with full sleeve flowery tattoos and Mary Oliver quotes. She moves like a dancer, demonstrating yoga poses as if she’s transcending gravity. As a teacher, she speaks exactly, even in Sanskrit, and guides movement precisely, padding gently and soundlessly through the room, making an adjustment here, offering an instruction there.

So, I was surprised when she used the word “witch” to launch her new online offering, The Witches Wheel. The lure was irresistible. Natalie was claiming the word “witch” without flinching, without anger, without provocation, not as a way to reclaim feminine power and stick it to the men, warranted as that may be: It was essentially an invitation to observe the cycle of the seasons.

A threshold beckoned.

* * *

Natalie, a recent empty-nester, lives with her husband Paul and two dogs in a modest townhome, with a creek and a dozen rogue gardens installed by various residents running behind it. The garage is full of motorbikes. The porch is swept clean on the day I visit, six months into the 13 Moons program, wanting to talk with her about this radical word and why, in a world still unsure what to do with powerful women, she’s not afraid that she’s exposing herself to pitchforks and fires, haters, and trolls.

Even though I am not a member of any kind of coven or cult, (I don’t think book club counts), I know deep in my bones to never throw another woman onto the fire for helping you. That has been done too many times.

A tea blend of her own mixing — vanilla chaga chai — is brewing on the stove in an open saucepan. She tends to it, as I settle in, sneaking glimpses around the room, looking for evidence of witchcraft — pentagrams, cloaks, bottled frogs. Nothing. The space is uncluttered, a throw-rug on the armchair, a couple of stark white deer skulls are mounted, European-style, on a wall against a reclaimed barn board — definitely more Soho chic than occult-goth. Her husband returns from town, where he has picked up fresh croissants for us. He’s tall and strong, with a tightly cropped red beard — he looks like a guy you’d run into at the gym, at the surf break, at the hardware store.

“So, what’s it like living with a witch?” I ask him as Natalie attends to our tea, a light-hearted question sprouting out of the great compost of fears I am thinking. Is it impossibly hard to be with a woman who comfortably claims her own power, magic, cycles, voice? What kind of a man can love and honor a witch? And lurking deep beneath it all: Will my husband be one of them?

Paul rolls his eyes, overly-dramatically, pointing up to the light fixture in the kitchen — light bulbs housed in mason jars of all sizes, evoking summer cabins and fireflies and Kinfolk magazine dinner party lanterns. “I made this for her because everything ends up in jars. Have you seen inside these cupboards?” He walks around the house, in faux-exasperation, opening doors to reveal neat stacks of jars, full of dried petals, leaves, syrups, tonics, salves, salts. “And there’s more upstairs!” If it hadn’t been for the dinner party they’d hosted the previous night, most of their apartment’s horizontal surfaces would be covered in jars, he tells me, and the front porch would have housed a dead raven and a dead Cooper’s hawk.

“She’s always sending me out in search of dead things,” he jokes. He picks up roadkill in case she can salvage feathers or skulls.

“When he first met me, I was already a skull collector, and now he goes and finds them for me and brings them back,” says Natalie. “He’s gotten really good at living with witchy stuff.”

The two of them are remarkably self-sufficient — an animal lover (“he loves animals more than people”), Paul realized veganism left him tired and undernourished, so took up hunting to procure his own meat humanely; one of the deer skulls mounted on the wall was harvested this fall, its meat now fills their freezer. They grow a garden, wildcraft, eat well. There is an ease between them — a tidal push and pull as they navigate their modest shared space and the morning routine, without evidence of fake niceness, of power trips or struggles.

Witchcraft, in Natalie Rousseau’s mind, is too non-dogmatic and non-hierarchical to submit to a single all-encompassing definition. “As a practice, it’s so highly individual,” she says, “but across the board, it is very place-based, land-based and body-based. For me, it’s about cultivating a relationship with your own body, your own mind, your emotions, and subtle sensing faculties. It’s learning how to trust your intuition. It’s about reclaiming your own instincts, but also being able to feel: this is what stress feels like in my body, this is what relaxation feels like, this is what it feels like to say yes to something out of a sense of obligation or pressure, this is what it feels like to have a boundary. This is what it feels like when I’m safe. These cues come to us from our bodies. It has to be, for it to work well, otherwise, you’re always reaching outside yourself for another authority.”

This is what she wants to help women, particularly, to reclaim: their sense that they are the first authority on themselves, that they can trust their bodies’ wisdom.

“The biggest thing I want to share with people,” says Natalie of her teaching and online courses, “is how to trust themselves. Everyone can very easily make the medicines that their household would need for common household complaints — colds and flus and chest colds and menstrual cramps — so many basic things that anyone can make very simply, quite affordably. I’m not anti-pharmaceutical. There are many medications people have to take daily to live. And if I have a serious infection, I’m going to take antibiotics; if I am seriously ill, I am going to go to the doctor; if I have any kind of trauma, I’m going to be so grateful for that form of medicine. But I believe the role kitchen medicine has is in the maintenance and prevention of illness.”

One of her biggest laments, though, as she makes videos and handouts and shares them with her online community, is that even people who have paid to do her course don’t feel that they have the time to take it into their kitchens. “Making a tincture is literally pouring vodka over plant materials and leaving it on your counter for four weeks!” she says. But it is easier for most people to just buy one online and have it delivered to their doorstep. “I am saddened by how easily women give their power over. This is the biggest thing I’ve noticed as a teacher in the past couple of years — how quickly women will say, ‘but how do you do this? I don’t know how to do this! I’m afraid to try this because I might not be good at it, I might be doing it wrong. I’m an imposter.’ I really struggle with this. Where is it coming from?”

But she knows. We have relinquished our power, over a thousand years or more, of wounding, of witch-burnings, of patriarchy either convincing us we have none or forcibly stripping it away, (hello Harvey Weinstein), until all we feel empowered to do, now, in 2020, is consume. And we’ve been doing that with all our might.

We override the listening, we ignore the nudges, we push through, like good soldiers. “Most people are running so hard,” observes Natalie. “Our culture is so focussed on productivity. We are so overly heroic — it’s all or nothing. I can’t do something unless I’m an expert. I don’t want to try. But this is a craft. It’s a path of education.”

Natalie’s invitation is gentle, and she’s crafted her online course to serve that: Start with one plant and learn its taste, its smell. Spend five minutes a day on meditation or in conscious ritual and begin to notice what’s going on in your nervous system, in your mind, in your body.

“When he first met me, I was already a skull collector, and now he goes and finds them for me and brings them back,” says Natalie. “He’s gotten really good at living with witchy stuff.”

Don’t get so distracted by the word witch, that you fail to notice that it is connected to craft. Witchcraft, for Natalie, is a path of learning “how to trust and problem solve, from within, knowing that we are in a system of power that, for better, for worse, will strip us of any ability to trust ourselves and to always feel empty so we have to keep buying more stuff.”

When she says this, a deep thrill of recognition hums in me, accompanied by a shiver of fear. Those are revolutionary things to say out loud, to cast into the open air. I recognize it viscerally as the kind of talk that gets people in trouble.

* * *

Last summer, before I met Natalie, I had stepped from my backyard patio stones onto freshly cut grass and spied the sinuous form of a wandering garter snake. I leaned in quickly, excitedly, about to call my 6-year-old over to glimpse the garden visitor before it shimmied away. But it was eerily still. Ugly slash wounds marked its body. It was dead. Innocent victim to the ride-on lawnmower. Obliterated by our oblivion.

“Oh no,” I muttered. “I’m so sorry!”

I had already begun to wake up to the natural world, it’s rhythms, it’s offerings of medicine, it’s otherness, but it had come with a shadow side, a growing despair at what we were doing to the world. Even without a malicious intention, I was causing death and destruction — just mowing the lawn, drinking my coffee, wiping my ass: My actions, all our human activity, had compounding impacts that were destroying the snakes, the ocean, the atmosphere, the forests, the icecaps — beyond repair.

I wanted my garden to be a habitat. I wanted the bees to waggle-dance directions to my sunflowers to their hive-mates, I wanted the wandering garter snakes to nest in their hibernacula through the winter and bask in the long grass in the summer, I wanted to lie on my back and watch butterflies dance through the flowers and the hummingbirds zoom in and out, I wanted to inhabit innocence again.

I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. My penitence froze me in place, scared to make a move for fear of ruining something else. Then, regret overriding my squeamishness, I fetched the flat-bladed shovel and edged it under the dead snake. I carried her body over to the vegetable patch, and in a space between the beds, where the mower never goes, I laid her down. I picked marigolds and calendula from around the garden, where they’d been planted to keep the snails away, and lay the bright orange blossoms in a circle around her.

Grandmother snake, I whispered, hoping that some force that exists beyond the definitively dead snake at my feet, might spread the word among the entire species, “I’m sorry. We didn’t mean it. I will try to be more careful.”

It was a made-up ritual, the kind that a kid might perform deep in her dream world at the bottom of the garden, and it made my 44 year-old-self feel a little bit better. At least I’d made a gesture of repair, had expressed my desire to return into balance with the living world around me. If it had any effect, I’d never know. I went back inside, said nothing.

A few days later, out in the garden, my husband tripped over the skeleton of a decomposing snake, ringed by wilted flowers, half consumed by ants.

“That was spooky,” he confronted me. “What’s going on? Are you some kind of witch?”

* * *

* * *

Natalie has always been comfortable with the word. Now she’s having fun inviting people to consider the archetype, circle it, unpack it, stumble upon some kind of recognition: Wait a second! Maybe I am a witch!

“It’s cool how people in the western world can take a description that has been used mostly as a slur, and turn it around to use as something empowering,” she says.

For thousands of years, witch was a term used to incite violence against women. By the most conservative estimates, half a million people, mostly women, were executed in the European witch craze between 1300 and 1650. Accusations of witchcraft were used against women, says Rousseau, “in ways that were extremely dangerous and terrifying. It was really about getting power from them, and getting land back. So, to use a word like that in an empowered way, even today, you have to know you’re safe to do it. And it’s important to realize that in many places in the world, it’s still not safe for women to say that. But if we can, in safe places, take that word and turn it around, that, to me, is extremely powerful.”

I wanted the bees to waggle-dance directions to my sunflowers to their hive-mates, I wanted the wandering garter snakes to nest in their hibernacula through the winter and bask in the long grass in the summer, I wanted to lie on my back and watch butterflies dance through the flowers and the hummingbirds zoom in and out, I wanted to inhabit innocence again.

Natalie herself embodies empowerment. Not in the traditional way I have come to recognize power — as someone standing over, dominating someone else, her source of power comes from within.

She doesn’t need to take any from her partner.

“Do you find this relationship at all emasculating?” I joke to Natalie’s husband.

“I don’t. Not at all. No,” he replies.

“We’ve always given each other space to be ourselves.”

But that’s not always a guarantee of safety.

If it is dangerous to be an empowered woman in the world, then it’s dangerous, too, for the men who love them.

Lyla June Johnston is an author and activist of Diné and European heritage. Her inquiry into her disowned European heritage led to a realization: The millions of women burned alive, drowned alive, dismembered alive, beaten, raped and otherwise tortured as so-called, “witches,” were not witches at all. They were the medicine people of old Europe. Her lens, as a contemporary indigenous woman, and as a survivor of sexual violence, helped her identify that those were the women who understood the herbal medicines, the ones who prayed with stones, the ones who passed on sacred chants. And the all-out warfare of the witch burnings didn’t just harm the women. It had a profound effect on the men who loved them, their husbands, sons, brothers. She recognizes the echo of this in the story of her own time, of her own people. “Nothing makes a man go mad like watching the women of his family get burned alive. If the men respond to this hatred with hatred, the hatred is passed on. And who can blame them? While peace and love are the correct response to hatred, it is not an easy response by any means.”

How many men have kept their women down, tried to keep them at home, have become the handcuffs that the women fought against because they were answering to their own unarticulated primal instinct to keep them safe?

Natalie Rousseau speculates, “I am sure historically you had lots of husbands telling their wives to tone it down, not because they didn’t respect their power, but because they were genuinely afraid. I’d apply that to any women described as uppity — getting involved politically, or getting involved in local stuff that’s happening, fighting for the environment: Stop getting noticed so much. This could be dangerous.”

Some dangers are too great to be able to protect each other from. And so we turn the fight on each other — little domestic power-trips that distract us from the fact that we’ve relinquished all our power any way to the Great Machine.

* * *

My tentative inquiries into witchcraft, becoming fluent in my own moods and emotions, and paying attention to the seasons, barely prepared me for the abrupt slow-the-fuck-down order that came when COVID-19 landed in British Columbia, in my village, as school broke for spring break. The emergency handbrake was pulled. Everything came to a squealing stop — all my plans, canceled; all the stores, closing; the whole damn world, under house arrest and in a panic. The whiplash from the stunning speed of that shift has left my whole being hypersensitive to any sudden movement, to being jerked around. But the first things I have staked my trust in, in that space of uncertainty, were Natalie’s teachings: First, trust your body. Pause. Listen.

In self-imposed isolation with my husband and just-turned-7-year-old, I dance with anxiety and curiosity and disconnection and too-much-information. The well-trodden pathways we have all been racing along, flexing our power and exercising our entitlements as consumers, are suddenly bordered up with emergency tape. This invitation that Natalie has been dripping out, month after month, takes root. There is far more potency available to us, than shopping, driving, holidaying, consuming, endlessly moving around the planet.

There is potency in all the feelings that have been showing up at my door. Oh, good morning frustration. Ah grief, yes, I suppose you’d like a cup of tea. Hello there, existential terror, I wondered when you’d pop by. There is potency in sitting with my back against a huge cedar tree and listening, in slowing down so much that I can give my 7-year-old my full attention. There is potency even in my words, when I soothe him down from a tantrum by saying, “you know, this is a really hard time for everyone in the whole world right now because no one knows what’s going to happen and no one can play with their friends. I’m really proud of you.” And I can feel his body relax into this space of being acknowledged in his struggles and his efforts.

I don’t know if there are any medicinal properties in the tincture of St John’s Wort and valerian that I drop into water and hand my husband, to gentle his nervous system. Or in the jar of immune-boosting oxymel, that I brewed up with grated ginger and turmeric and orange peel, and shake every day. But even if it’s a placebo, there’s a relief for me in feeling I can do something, can offer my people some kind of healing intention in a little glass, that I can acknowledge that this is hard for my husband too, and that acknowledgment isn’t a concession that takes away from my own sense of struggle.

For decades, we’ve bought into the illusion that our power is as consumers. Now that stores are closing and the shelves are emptying and we have to stay home and not immediately indulge every whim that arises, we all feel powerless. But that was never our truest source of power. There’s another source that we can all plug back into, our deep relationship and interbeing with the life force. Maybe, this is our threshold moment. Maybe, this is a chance to craft a few little spells, to speak the words of the world we long to inhabit — a place where the currency of kindness and wonder flow, where humans return to a deep memory of belonging among the plants and creatures, and to brew up a cup of tea, light a candle, and dream it into existence. Maybe it’s an invitation to say, “I’m sorry, we didn’t mean to, I will try and be more careful,” and to build a little altar, even if you feel kind of cray cray doing it. Let your nervous system settle as you invent some small ritual, (just ask your inner 5-year-old for guidance, she probably remembers exactly what to do), and make a gesture of repair.

“I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have on my Apocalypse team,” I tell my husband, the night the global virus countertops 400,000. He’s been chopping wood, auditing the pantry, getting our kid across the finish line of the LEGO project that has absorbed him for four days. My husband was a farm kid. He’s always been practical, my polar opposite. Even when we have battled each other, (am I giving up too much of my power to him? If I acknowledge his pain and his needs, will that cancel mine out?) I’ve always known he would do anything to keep me safe. “Not that I can request an upgrade now,” I joke. “But I bet you’re glad to be stuck with me. One always wants a daydreamer at your side in a pinch.”

“Oh yeah,” he spoofs me: “’ The stock market is collapsing, let me just go check my Tarot cards.’”

We laugh. And hold each other. We can’t buy our way out of this. None of us. Our entire species, our global community, is being vividly reminded that we are all in this together, inextricably connected, epidemiologically entwined, in our vulnerability and our sweet potential. We didn’t need Amazon and airlines and online shopping to know what the witches have been telling us all this time. All the power we need is right here — between us, around us, within us. We just have to remember it.

* * *

Lisa Richarson

is a senior contributor to Coast Mountain Culture magazine and a columnist for Pique newsmagazine and edits the hyperlocal websites,

TheWellnessAlmanac.com

and

TracedElements.com.

She’s deep into a decade-long mission to slow the fuck down, but still optimize life for happiness and productivity. Born and raised in Australia, she has lived as a guest on the unceded territory of the Líl̓wat Nation since a ski vacation went rogue 20-odd years ago.

Editor: Carolyn Wells

Posted by

Lisa Richardson

on

April 8, 2020

https://longreads.com/2020/04/08/how-to-tell-your-husband-youre-a-witch/

[prosopopeya]

New Year’s Meme

this survey has been a tradition among my friend group for YEARS, but i haven’t filled it out since 2015 apparently. i’m not entirely sure why except 2016 was the year a lot of stuff changed for me, namely in that i finally got out of school in some form and started a new job, but i also had a few health problems that kept plaguing me (thyroid medicine being off, vitamin d) and my anxiety was all over the place. so here we go i’m doing it again and feel free to do it too if you want!!

1. What did you do in 2020 that you’d never done before? tried on wedding dresses. taught virtually. dealt (poorly) with drunk teenagers. performed in a pep rally. wore face masks all the time. i’m going to lump in living with someone. jon moved in october 2019, but i don’t think i did this quiz last year so. taught ap.

2. Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions and will you make more for next year? i don’t really like resolutions. they put too much pressure on me and i am a fragile person when it comes to setting expectations and living up to them. i did want to try to read more this year, and i maintained that until the pandemic, and then just kind of gave up requiring myself to do anything but live.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? i don’t think so. a coworker did.

4. Did anyone close to you die? jon’s cousin committed suicide in march or april. the circumstances were pretty upsetting. um. andy died in february, very suddenly. andy was my high school boyfriend for four years with whom i had a very... he scarred me in a lot of ways when it comes to sex and consent. it’s taken me a long time to unpack all of that. and i struggle with how much any of that was his fault or just bc he was a stupid kid too. our mutual friends had nothing but nice things to say about him on fb. anyway. he would guilt me into saying he’d kill himself if we broke up, and jon’s cousin killed himself over his girlfriend. so that was a complex part of the year.

5. What countries did you visit? none. literally the week before the quarantine, we went to asheville to visit jon’s cousin.

6. What would you like to have in 2021 that you lacked in 2020? maybe a different job? or at least some peace at doing mine.

7. What date from 2020 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? march 13 we cancelled classes and had a technology training day; the 15th we had another one, and then we were virtual the rest of the term. it was such a sudden shift and while i so loved working from home tbh, it was such a relief after a supremely shitty january/february work-wise, i still had a lot of keyed-up, stressful days centered around transitioning to being the senior upper school spanish teacher. i hate it!

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? writing 50k in the month of november. i have literally never done that before and actively reject nano as being typically unhealthy for how my mind works, so it was nice to do it entirely by accident.

9. What was your biggest failure? mishandling the drunken teenagers on that field trip in january.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? i sit crosslegged in my virtual teaching chair and i did it so much that my ankle hurt for the entire summer.

11. What was the best thing you bought? we put a deposit on our elopement in ireland. jon’s wedding ring. (i didn’t buy my wedding dress.)

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? my best friend at work who keeps me sane and is represented by benny in my au, which other than the fact that he is not my sidepiece, is perfect he is crucial to my survival at work and i love him so much. (also he is gay and the french teacher so the benny parallels just keep coming). everyone who tore down a statue in virginia (and other places, but especially monument avenue). everyone putting their lives on the line during this pandemic.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? guess! but aside from all the obvious, i found out a friend of mine at work voted for trump. my work bff and i had been trying for years to sway his politics, but that had us both deciding to give up on him.

14. Where did most of your money go?  food, ALCOHOL. god., our savings account. i did a pretty excellent job saving this year, though a good deal of that is because jon moved in and makes more money than me, and also we split all the bills.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? my wedding dress but strangely only when i went to try it on after it came in bc after the purchase i was so sure i’d made every mistake possible. my wedding band. wellbutrin changing my whole life. and, last but certainly not least, the gay angel and the bi(lingual) hunter. i wouldn’t have survived nov-dec in school without that distraction. the election.

16. What song(s) will always remind you of 2020? the entirety of taylor swift’s oeuvre this year, maybe specifically “this is me trying”

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:  i. Happier or sadder? happier, i suppose, perhaps contrary to what should be the case, but wellbutrin is a hell of a drug. ii. Older or wiser? wiser. ii. Richer or poorer? richer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? reading. cleaning. exercising.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? stressing. chaperoning.

20. How will you be spending Christmas? so, an update; last year was the first year i didn’t go to my mom’s for christmas. i was supposed to see her for thanksgiving last year, but she basically told us not to come bc she wasn’t feeling up to it (cool!), and we went to jon’s for christmas and my mom’s for new year’s. 

this year, obviously we couldn’t go to my mom’s. instead, we rented a little cabin by the lake. it was perfect; it was really really nice inside, the beds were SO SOFT, the pillows were the best things i have ever laid my head on, like i took off the pillowcases to try to find the brand. we had a little tiny christmas tree with tiny ornaments from walmart that we decorated. the 23rd, we went and picked up our wedding bands. we slept two nights in the (cold) back bedroom so i could wake up and look out at the lake. it snowed for christmas. :)

we opened presents on christmas eve, per jon’s family’s tradition. on christmas eve, we also went to his family farm and sat outside and hung out a little. every year his family does like a secret santa sort of thing and i got my first present in that exchange, which is notable bc jon and i are not yet officially married. i got a remote control car -- jon’s idea bc i couldn’t think of anything, and he was so delighted to hear that i loved playing with rc cars when we went to the beach as a kid.

christmas morning we facetimed my parents and opened some presents together. then jon and i marathoned mandalorian (after spending the previous few days watching several die hard movies), and then we watched wonder woman 1984 which was a bad movie.

21. How will you be spending New Year’s Eve? ok LAST year for new year’s, we were in a hotel room, so that was nice, bc it meant minimal stress with my parents. i had always wanted to go to this restaurant near us that has a special new year’s menu, so we did that. the night before or after i think we went to cheesecake factory, which was also amazing.

this year currently i’m tumbling and he’s playing pokemon, and in a bit we’ll try to time it so we finish schitt’s creek in time for the new year.

22. Did you fall in love in 2020? i re-fell in love with supernatural so that was nice.

23. How many one-night stands? 0. i submit we should randomly change question 23 each year to something more relevant to any of our life experiences.

24. What was your favorite TV program? what did i even watch this year. schitt’s creek. mandalorian. i mean obviously we know supernatural. the circle. are you the one (the queer season). pose. unsolved mysteries. we’re here! perry mason. watchmen. oh maybe that mcdonald’s monopoly fraud documentary. avenue 5. i’ll be gone in the dark. of those i think my favorite maybe is... pose or we’re here.

OKAY UM. on my 2014 version of this there were a bunch of questions about tv shows that i’m putting back in if only for the memories:

25. Which TV shows did you start watching in 2020? the haunting of bly manor, which we still need to finish. derry girls.

26. Which TV shows did you let go of in 2020? HERE’S WHY I WANTED TO RESURRECT THESE. here was my answer in 2015: “supernatural. goodbye, my sweet prince.” CAN YOU EVEN FUCKING BELIEVE

27. Which TV shows did you mean to get into but didn’t in 2020? Why? so far, queen’s gambit and that one on hulu with catherine the great. EVENTUALLY. 28. Which TV shows do you intend on checking out in 2020? fleabag. queen’s gambit. 29. Which TV show do you think you might let go of in 2020 unless things significantly improve? idk i drop things pretty regularly if they don’t entertain me 30. Which TV show impressed you least in 2020? GUYS HERE’S MY ORIGINAL 2015 ANSWER: “supernatural. :(”

anyway back to the rest of the quiz:

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? every person who refuses to listen to facts and information.

26. What was the best book you read? killers of the flower moon: the osage murders and the birth of the fbi, or the his dark materials series.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery? well i knew about tswift so i’m not going to count her albums. i will count this song that jon played for me once in the car that got stuck in my head for two weeks straight and led me down into a great related-songs spotify playlist: through the roof ‘n underground.

28. What did you want and get? a wedding dress and a very specific kind of wedding band. a gay angel. a christmas getaway. animal crossing.

29. What was your favorite film of this year? idk i don’t know how many films i saw this year. maybe mucho mucho amor: the legend of walter mercado

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? i was 32. we went to an escape room with a BUNCH of people -- work bff, my old work bff and his wife (old bc he quit and we’ve fallen out of touch :(), the cool new physics teacher and his fiancee, and the aforementioned trump voter and his wife, before we knew... we went out for brunch/lunch after. it was pretty great!

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? not having to chaperone that school trip in january. dean being bi in english as well as spanish. cas just ilke, appearing in 15x20. not having to physically go back to work this fall.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2020? no! real! pants!

34. What kept you sane? jon. supernatural (in a way?). animal crossing for a while. wellbutrin! i haven’t really been able to detail this yet, but finally i did something about tumblr and my therapist making me think about adhd. my doctor gave me wellbutrin (bc i lack any official diagnosis and was on anxiety meds anyway, and he was like let’s try this!) and it’s fucking. it’s a fucking godsend. surprisingly enough, my students. trying to provide them a safe space has been a calming thing for me.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? jensen ackles’ silence. misha collins again, i guess.

36. What political issue stirred you the most? the summer was so fucking intense. i guess though it was me trying to exert my influence in a responsible way with my students without trying to try to make them feel uncomfortable but then one kid was a vocally upset trump supporter after the election and i had to try to defuse that situation.

37. Who did you miss? my old work bff. several old friends that i’ve fallen out of touch with bc i have no object permanence.

38. Who was the best new person you met? people i met through the spn resurgence!

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2020: if you manifest it in an au, it will come. no really though. maybe that expectations are only as important as i make them out to be.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year: usually i have a hard time coming up with anything for this and i default to looking at my most played songs of the year. my most played song of the year received each and every one of its plays within the month of november and you can guess why. anyway see if this works

I had all and then most of you Some and now none of you Take me back to the night we met I don't know what I'm supposed to do Haunted by the ghost of you Take me back to the night we met - the night we met, lord huron

[worryinglyinnocent]

Fic: Haven (23/50)

Summary: They say Resembool is a haven, and they’re right. Lush pastures, quaint country town, farmers’ markets on Saturdays: a bucolic paradise.

But it’s more than that. Resembool is a haven for the runaways, the deserters, the people who don’t want to be found…

The Resembool community knows there’s something odd about Hohenheim, but they’re not going to let that stop them helping him out. This is Resembool after all, a place where no one has to hide and neighbours help neighbours, be they building a fence, chasing a sheep, or trying to save the country from an evil they inadvertently helped release centuries ago…

Or: A series of slices of life in an AU in which Hohenheim never leaves, and several broken state alchemists find hope and home in Resembool.

Rated: T

==

Haven

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [AO3]

Summary: Trisha decides that she and Hohenheim need a date night. Sherman and Marcoh volunteer to babysit. What could possibly go wrong?

Characters: Marcoh, Sherman (OC), Ed, Al, Trisha

==

When Ab volunteered herself and him for babysitting duty after Trisha lamented not having had a date night since Ed was born, Tim was convinced that she had in fact lost the plot. Tim has no experience with children, and he’s fairly sure that Ab doesn’t either, and he’ll be very surprised if they manage to get to the end of the night with no one getting killed or arrested. Tim has lived through a lot, and yet the idea of spending two hours with the Elric brothers is one of the most terrifying things that he can imagine. How does one go about entertaining children anyway?

When he voices the thought to Ab as they walk up the hill towards the Elric house, she just looks at him.

“Tim, these are Hohenheim’s kids. You know exactly how to entertain them.”

“Ab, you are not teaching those children alchemy!”

“They’ve been learning since they were three! They live and breathe the stuff!”

He can see that he’s not going to convince her that it’s a bad idea, and he’s given up even hoping that no one will be killed or arrested by the end of the night. 

Trisha opens the door and lets them in; Tim has never seen her wearing make-up and not wearing an apron before. Thankfully, Hohenheim looks just the same as he always looks. Tim doesn’t think he can handle any more surprises tonight. 

“They’ve had dinner and they know they’re not allowed any more snacks before bed,” Trisha explains. “So don’t give in however much they might beg. They can stay up until we get home if they want.”

“What are the rules on alchemy?” Tim asks, in the vain hope of heading Ab off at the pass.

Trisha just laughs, which is not at all reassuring, and shows them through to the living room where the boys are playing.

“Boys, Dad and I are going out now. Be good for Miss Ab and Dr Tim.”

“We will.”

Almost as soon as Trisha and Hohenheim leave the house, Ab gives a massive grin, rubbing her hands together.

“Ok kiddos. Who wants to have a go at some whirlwind alchemy?”

The response to this suggestion is an enthusiastically positive one, and Tim groans inwardly. The boys pull on coats and shoes over their pyjamas - at least it’s a mild summer night - and Ab herds them into the garden, showing them how to draw out her basic circle on the ground. Tim supposes he should be thankful that she had the sense not to attempt whirlwind alchemy indoors. 

It’s good to see Ab confident about using her specialised alchemy again though. It took over a year for her to come back to it after she left Ishval and rendered her tattoos useless. Tim hasn’t reached the stage of being comfortable returning to bioalchemy yet. The memories of his time involved in Philosopher’s Stone research are still far too fresh, especially given the conversations that he’s had with Hohenheim since he’s been in Resembool.

"Ok kids, I think we're ready. Tim, there's no need to look like we're about to blow the house down."

Tim raises an eyebrow, and Ab sighs.

"Tim, I am a professional. I promise you that I will not let anyone blow the house down."

Tim remains unconvinced, and is on the verge of drawing up a wall circle that he can activate and throw up to protect the little whitewashed house from what he is certain is going to be imminent destruction. The boys don't seem to notice his consternation and kneel down on the ground, pressing their hands against the circle to activate it. The lightning races around the edge and lights up the array, and they grin at each other. 

"The first thing you need to do is feel the particles in the air like you feel them in the ground when you do earth-based alchemy," Ab says, getting down on the ground with them, her hands hovering over the circle. "Lift your hands off the circle and see if you can feel the air particles. It's a bit harder because they're not tightly packed, but you should be able to feel them moving."

Despite still fearing for his safety, it's nice to see Ab teaching again. Tim knows she always intended to take an apprentice and pass on the secrets of whirlwind alchemy before Ishval happened, and teaching the Elric brothers is about as good a stopgap as she's going to get in the meantime. At least now she's teaching it to those who aren't likely ever to have to use it in service of the state. They've all used their alchemy for destructive ends for so long that sometimes it's hard to remember that it has positive uses as well, rather than just being bent to the military's will. 

"Once you feel the air particles, you need to make them move in the direction that you want them to move in; just like you change the order of the earth particles to make it into a different shape. We're going to make the air into a different shape. It's easiest like this." Ab holds her hands out horizontally, palms together but not quite touching, and makes little circular motions. Tim's seen her throw tornadoes off her palms like lightning and it's mesmerising to see it all in slow motion. A tiny whirlwind begins to form between her hands, and the boys copy her. Ab smiles at their exclamations of wonder, and adjusts their hand positions. 

"Now you can send the air wherever you want it to go. Let's stick with that direction."

Ab throws off her tiny whirlwind away from the house and the tree, and it soon fizzles out in the existing breeze. Perhaps another time, Tim would wonder what he was so worried about, but he's still not convinced that everything's going to be all right yet. 

The boys follow suit, their own little whirlwinds fizzling out soon after, and the light from the transmutation circle fades, this batch of tectonic energy used up. 

"Can we try again?"

"Go for it. Just don't aim the air towards the house or you'll give Tim a heart attack."

The kids continue to practice their little tornadoes for a while and Ab stands back, always ready to catch any wayward whirlwinds and redirect or flatten them. Eventually, the evening gets too cold for them to stay outdoors, and they go back inside. Tim tasks himself with making tea whilst Ab fields question after question about whirlwind alchemy from the boys. 

"What would you use it for?"

"The air's a good source of energy. Think about windmills. We can use whirlwind alchemy to make sure that the windmills are always able to go around and keep working."

It’s good to remember that alchemy can be used to help rather than hurt. 

The boys are evidently getting tired as the pace of their rapid-fire questioning slows, but they’re still awake, if drooping a little, when the front door opens and Trisha and Hohenheim return. 

“Hey boys.” Trisha comes over and gives each of them a kiss, both of them attempting to fend her off with exclamations of grossness. “Were you good for Miss Ab and Dr Tim?”

“Miss Ab taught us Whirlwind alchemy!” Al exclaims.

“Did she now?” Trisha just grins.

“Yeah, we can make windmills go now! Well, only little ones. But I’m sure we’ll get better!”

“I’m sure you will. Now, you go up and clean your teeth, and Dad and I will come tuck you in in a minute.”

The boys protest that they’re not tired, but since the protests are punctuated by long yawns, they give in easily and shuffle up the stairs. 

“They were good as gold,” Ab says to Trisha. “It was good to share my secrets with such enthusiastic pupils again. I know we’ve said it so many times before, but they really do have a natural gift for it. I reckon they could learn any branch they put their mind to.” For a moment, Ab looks wistful. “They’re in the best place, here in Resembool,” she says eventually. “Here where they’ll be hidden, nice and safe away from Bradley and the State Alchemist program wanting to get their claws into their talents.”

“Oh, don’t worry. We’ll make sure no one gets their claws into anyone.” Trisha sounds so bright and optimistic but there’s inner steel there; it’s one of the many qualities that Tim admires in her. 

He and Ab say their goodbyes and leave the house, and Ab gives a happy sigh as they make their way down the hill in the dark. 

“I like to think that one day there’ll be a generation of alchemists who aren’t as screwed up as we are, who can really take it back to its roots and use it for good.”

Tim likes that thought, too.

[southeastasianists]

'Usually I can earn between Rp.300,000 and Rp.800,000 (A$31 to $83) a night, just for one performance. Nowadays, since I live with my sister and have no wages, I help in her warung to show my gratitude,’ says Singgih via Whatsapp. In addition to assisting at the roadside warung in Parung, West Java, Singgih also uses his Instagram account to help his sister sell her homemade rengginang, a kind of traditional cracker. The government’s restrictions on movement and activities in response to COVID-19 have been in place since April. Fortunately, Singgih’s sister’s warung has remained open, but for musicians and other arts industry workers like him, the story is one of uncertainty and a daily struggle to survive.

Singgih, 29, is originally from Grobogan in Central Java. After graduating from the prestigious Indonesian Institute of the Arts (Institut Seni Indonesia, ISI) in Surakarta, Singgih has worked as a pengrawit or gamelan musician in Jakarta. He says before COVID-19 art performances were held in Jakarta each Saturday and Sunday, day and night. But now, ‘during social restrictions, all my job offers have been canceled or postponed. Until when, I don’t know.’

The art of playing gamelan instruments is called karawitan. The term comes from the Javanese word rawit which means intricate or finely worked. According to scholars, the music also matches this description. It is argued that the gamelan orchestra uses a more complex system than western music. The music produced by the gamelan orchestra is built from elaborate components, including both loud and soft instruments. One of the soft instruments, which adds melodic layers, is the singers’ voices. Karawitan divide the singing parts into the male singing, called gerongan, and the female singing, called sindenan.

Prior to COVID-19, the Javanese arts, especially karawitan, were flourishing in Jakarta, where the majority of residents are Javanese, and there was high demand for traditional musical performance to accompany slametan (blessing events). For Javanese, slametan are held to celebrate weddings, birthdays, circumcisions, the inauguration of a new house or building and commemoration days, among other events. Those who can afford to will rent a full gamelan orchestra and karawitan group to play. At the top end of the price scale, hosts may hold a wayangan: a performance of Javanese shadow puppets accompanied by a large karawitan group.

Who are the musicians making up Jakarta’s gamelan ensembles? Most pengrawit and pesinden (female singers) come from Yogyakarta, Central Java and East Java. Some graduated from an SMKI (Sekolah Menengah Karawitan Indonesia, vocational high schools for traditional arts), others from ISI like Singgih. However, the majority of pengrawit and pesinden in Jakarta are in fact self-taught. ‘Graduating from ISI doesn’t guarantee that a person can play gamelan properly,’ says Warsiah, a 50-year-old pesinden who lives in Kramat Jati, East Jakarta. ‘It takes a lifetime of learning and commitment to be a skilled artist.’

Warsiah came to Jakarta from Wonogiri in Central Java when she was just 16. She first worked selling jamu (a traditional herbal beverage) and did not begin to learn karawitan until she was in her thirties. ‘The pengrawit who heard me singing for the first time told me that my voice matched with the sound of gamelan. I felt encouraged. That’s when I began to learn properly,’ said Warsiah. She regularly attended karawitan rehearsals in Tanjung Duren, Ciledug, and Bekasi. Five years after her first encounter with gamelan, she took her first job as a pesinden.

Warsinah explained that becoming a pesinden meant she was able to leave her job as jamu seller. ‘I remember – it was the 2000s and I was booked as a pesinden every Saturday and Sunday. Imagine this! In the morning I would sing in a slametan event. Then I would go to a wedding ceremony. At night I was hired to accompany wayangan performances. I no longer had time for my business,’ says Warsiah, laughing with joy.

Pesinden are paid more than pengrawit. In recent years, for one karawitan performance in Jakarta, Warsiah is paid between Rp.700,000 and Rp.1 million. When accompanying an all-night wayangan performance, Warsiah earns Rp.1 million. This is different in her hometown. ‘Ten years ago, in my village in Wonogiri, a pesinden could be paid Rp.150,000 even for accompanying a wayangan performance from dusk till dawn.’

Singgih also thinks that his earnings in Jakarta are comparatively good. ‘Imagine this,’ he says. ‘For accompanying an all-night wayangan performance in Central Java, I get Rp.250,000 – if the event is big and the puppeteers are well known. In Jakarta, for the same effort, I can get Rp.500,000 – that’s the minimum fee for pengrawit accompanying a wayangan in Jakarta! So, I just worked on weekends and I could rest on weekdays.’ PSBB

On 10 April, the Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan issued social distancing regulations for an initial period of two weeks. The large-scale social restrictions, or PSBB, were then extended into June. Violations of PSBB carry penalties, including for not wearing face masks in public spaces.

With restrictions on social and cultural activities, the possibility of being paid to perform on stage disappeared overnight. Even before the regulation was introduced, Singgih and Warsinah were already seeing many social and cultural events being canceled or postponed. In addition to performing, both also teach karawitan, earning an additional monthly salary, but during PSBB art studios and universities where they normally teach have also been closed. Soft instruments in the gamelan ensemble / Rahmadi Fajar Himawan

‘I am kind of grateful that all of this [PSBB] happened during Ramadan,’ Singgih reflected. Ramadan ran from 23 April to 23 May this year, and karawitan and wayangan performances are not usually held during this time. Some slametan, such as weddings, are never held during Ramadan out of respect for those who fast. ‘It’s like a coincidence, right?’ Making a living

In April, Joko Widodo announced that the annual mass exodus (mudik) during Ramadan was banned. This meant Warsiah and Singgih, like millions of other Jakartans not native to the city, were unable to celebrate Eid in their hometown. Normally at this time, with performances not allowed during Ramadan, they would return home and gather with family, and after Eid, go back immediately to Jakarta to take up opportunities for work. This year, unable to perform or return to their hometowns, musicians like Warsiah and Singgih have stayed in Jakarta where they are doing whatever they can do to survive.

Warsiah started making jamu again. She charges Rp.10,000 per bottle and promotes it through social media. ‘It’s not bad – it supports me,’ she says. Warsinah has a mushroom farm near her house in Kramat Jati and also an egg farm at her family home in Wonogiri. Though her farms are not large, she feels lucky to be able to support herself during PSBB. ‘But I can’t go to my hometown to celebrate Eid,’ she says.

Some, like Warsiah, make food or beverages or do sewing to make a living and they use social media such as Facebook or Whatsapp to promote their goods. Others like Singgih, rely on the support of their family and work in the family business.

In April, the Ministry of Education and Culture launched a program called Pendataan Pekerja Seni Terdampak COVID-19 (Register of Arts Workers Impacted by COVID-19). The ministry’s stated aim was to make an inventory of arts workers financially impacted by the pandemic. With the data collected, they would aim to distribute donations to those who had lost income. No specific amount of compensation was announced. A similar program was also launched by the City of Jakarta’s Department of Culture, called Pendataan Pekerja Seni di Jakarta yang Terdampak Secara Ekonomi Akibat COVID-19 (Register of Arts Workers in Jakarta Economically Impacted by COVID-19).

There are currently three options for government assistance for musicians like Warsinah and Singgih. Besides the compensation payments, the ministry aims to include musicians in existing social programs, namely Program Keluarga Harapan (Family Hope Program) or Kartu Prakerja (Pre-Employment Card). The ministry is also encouraging any arts workers ineligible for both those programs to perform through online platforms, including its own newly established Budayasaya. Although it is still early days, it does appear that artists who already have a high profile are making good use of online platforms like this. However, it is less clear if they will benefit performers and musicians like Warsinah and Singgih who are less well-known.

The Ministry of Culture and Education created the Budayasaya platform on Youtube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, to broadcast arts performances.

As their incomes are less than the limit of Rp.10 million per month, Warsiah and Singgih hope they will be eligible for inclusion in these existing social safety net programs. However, there is another potential hurdle: to be classified as an arts worker, you must not have received income from non-arts-related work. Ironically, this may yet prevent musicians from receiving government assistance as they have needed to use their non-arts skills to survive this far.

On 26 May, the Ministry of Education and Culture finally distributed payments, called PL2B, to those arts workers deemed eligible who had registered back in April. Each successful applicant received Rp.1 million as a one-off payment upon completion of documents required by the ministry. The City of Jakarta’s Department of Culture distributed similar payments in early May.

Like more than 40,000 other arts workers who registered with the ministry by the deadline, Singgih put a great deal of hope in the government programs. I contacted him again in late May via WhatsApp to ask how his application went. He was not one of the lucky ones. His application for compensation was rejected. ‘But PSBB will end soon, right?’ he asked me hopefully. I asked him what he would do if PSBB was extended further. ‘Actually, I have no idea,’ he told me. ‘For now, I hope all of this is stopped immediately.’