#i feel fossilized after sitting and working on this 15 hours++

[jaemongus]

merry crisis

[peter-horrocks]

The glacial ice cave at Les Deux Alpes

After another hot summer in the south of France (sorry for those of you who experienced the opposite, I know how you feel I come from Manchester, UK) I was beginning to seriously wilt so it was with some relief that we headed off for ten days in the high French Alps.

The entrance to the ice cave at Les Deux Alpes is just beyond the people along the track

After last year's very successful trip to Les Menuires I doubted that we could repeat similar enjoyment this time round as at some stage it is bound to rain in the mountains and there has been plenty of that in many parts of France this year. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

We spent the first three days at La Foux d’Allos which is just two and a half hours drive north of Grasse where we live. Earlier in the year, we had spent a pleasant week there, just the two of us. This time we met up with my French wife’s sister and husband who had brought two of their grandchildren along with them, all the way from Normandy. They had a trying fifteen-hour journey down spent mainly in traffic jams ending with a rather terrifying last section over the Col d’Allos where the narrow road and huge vertical drops tested their nerves to the limit, though the kids marveled at the scenery. Regular skiers it was the first time they had holidayed in the high mountains in summer.

It was interesting to observe the reaction of the children who are aged seven and nine, the youngest is an absolute live-wire and the elder somewhat reserved and a bit of a bookworm, as La Foux d’Allos is a low-key sort of place and the main attraction is mother nature. Our first days walk directly from the apartment where they stayed (which is owned by a friend of ours, we stayed there previously) was up the valley to the source of the river Verdon which goes on to carve out the Gorge which is one of the most spectacular and visited in France. Up by the source there was hardly anyone, yet the scenery is magnificent and it gets better and better the higher you walk, and we got up high, to 2200 metres. Everyone loved it and the numerous marmots (a sort of groundhog) and circling birds of prey kept us entertained. I was delighted to rediscover the rock with a partial imprint of a giant ammonite fossil which I discovered last time, just off the beaten path.

Lac d’Allos

The following day, early in the morning (to be sure we got one of the limited parking spaces) we drove up to the Lac d’Allos which is the biggest, highest freshwater lake in Europe. A wonderful place for pleasant walking at high altitudes and a superb spot for a picnic in the fresh mountain air. Even after a couple of days of long walks, the kids were still keen to walk out in the evening so they could sit and watch the marmots gamble around grazing as the sun set, it was they who were pestering us adults to go.

Marmot

We took our leave and headed further north another four and a half hours drive to the Oisans valley and the famous ski resort Les Deux Alpes where we stayed in a superb recently built wooden chalet on the edge of the village with the luxurious feature of a hot tub on the big balcony which commanded stunning views of the valley, mountains, and glaciers. 

This time we were with my wife’s five grandchildren aged from three to twelve and their parents, like last year. It is amazing how relatively inexpensive such a high-quality chalet is even in peak season. There is demand and there are people who take holidays in the high mountains but its nothing compared to the millions who prefer to pack on to hot crowded beaches and pay through the nose for exorbitant coastal accommodation.

There is still a buzz around Les Deux Alpes in summer as the ski set is replaced by mountain bikers. This activity has exploded with the development of electric bikes which has opened up the sport to less fit people of all ages. And in the resort, there are lifts running to take bikes and riders up very high and dedicated graded tracks to ride down. There are specialized shops for hiring the bikes and all the necessary protective equipment too. All-day long there were hundreds of people setting off nice and fresh or returning covered in a respectable amount of mud, nearly all smiling, chatting, and enjoying themselves.

There were many bars and restaurants open and it was our first experience of presenting our Passe Sanitaire (obtained after our double vaccination jabs), which were duly scanned by the waiter’s mobile phone system when we paid our bill, all very relaxed, easy, and reassuring. None of the bars or restaurants were particularly busy but the atmosphere was pretty cool all the same, out on the terraces in the fresh air overlooking the magnificent mountains, it was nice after so much time at home recently, avoiding people.

The children enjoyed walks around the valley and their treats were the dry toboggan run and the ingenious non-motorized carts which were adapted to be dragged up the mountainside by the Poma lift leaving gravity to provide the speed on the downhill with braking being the drivers main preoccupation. All good fun. An unexpected bonus was the de-stocking of the equipment shops in the resort at the end of August with loads of high-quality gear being sold at half price, we picked up some incredible bargains including walking boots and ski jackets. 

Just inside the glacier surrounded by raw ice

The highlight of our stay was a visit to the ice cave at 3400 metres up on the high glacier. I had wanted to visit one since I discovered more about them during my time working in Chamonix where I had the privilege of skiing down the Valley Blanche, but never got round to visiting the ice cave in the Bosson Glacier. I’ve always been fascinated by glaciers, especially the fact that such a huge quantity of ice is constantly on the move, typically 25 cm a day. And my imagination was enhanced by the tale my brother told me of when he discovered the frozen body of a Japanese mountaineer on one of his expeditions up Mount Kilimanjaro from the Kenyan side, the glacier finally gave up its prisoner after 15 years of entrapment, and they were able to reunite the preserved remains of the unfortunate man with his family at last.

The ice cave is hacked out by hand

It costs 25 euros for the lift pass and entry to the ice cave at Les Deux Alpes. A ride up two very long gondola ski lifts then on the highest funicular railway in the world which actually goes through the rock under the glacier via a tunnel, is easily worth the money. We were accompanied by Mathieu and his twin boys aged seven, one of whom has difficulty walking, all of us were well kitted out with puffer jackets and walking boots, which we appreciated as we had to walk a couple of hundred metres across the snow to get to the ice cave entrance and there was a bitter chill wind blowing up there. 

The ice sculptures in the cave included this octopus

Inside the ice cave, I was surprised at how long it was, there were vivid explanations of how it is hacked out by hand and there are parts with fabulous ice sculptures of things like sea horses and fish which are beautifully smooth and nicely lit for maximum effect, which had the children enthralled. Clearly not one for the claustrophobic, it did not disappoint as an experience. 

The views from the suspended platform were spectacular

And once outside we walked a few hundred metres more in the snow to a suspended viewing platform with awesome views of the surrounding mountains and as we made our way back to the lift we saw the white peak of Mont Blanc the highest mountain in Europe which loomed above all else. 

The passes are valid all day and Mathieu immediately insisted that his wife Caroline accompany him back up to the ice cave as he didn’t want her to miss out, his interpretation of how she would feel was correct, she didn’t want to come back down, she loved it so much up there on top of the world. None of us wanted to leave Les Deux Alpes at the end of our stay either.

At the tourist office in Les Deux Alpes, we learned that in August this year the glacier was closed for summer skiing for the first time ever due to the effects of global warming. I can but hope we are not too late to react and modify our way of living in time to both avert pending climate-related disasters and save the magnificent mysterious glaciers all over the world.

[jenni42085]

Made in the AM <Two>

Ch. Two

Alex's POV

The rest of my day consisted of packing, making sure all my bills were paid up to date, and getting more coverage for my cellphone. I didn't have any idea of how long I'd be gone for but I packed enough clothing for atleast three weeks, hopefully that will be enough. Plus having two big suitcase with plenty of room for if I have any souvenirs.

"So where are you going first?" Tori asks while helping me straighten up my room. Figured since I might be gone a few weeks no need to come home to a dirty place.

"The itinerary says I'll start off in Singapore for a few days, and from there no idea really, I guess they figure if I finish quickly enough no need to fill me in. I hope to get a bunch of great pictures and souvenirs though in my down time. Are you sure you can't beg them to come with? I don't want to do this alone." I ask sitting down next to her resting my head on her shoulder.

"Lex, you are going to be fine. I'm sure they will absolutely adore you. Let's have our last lunch before you leave."

"T, what am I going to do without you there?" I ask getting my shoes on and lingering at the floor.

"You are going to shine bright like I know you can."

MANY HOURS LATER

"Alexandria, we're in Singapore." Paul nudges me awake.

I wipe the sleep from my eyes and look out the window. "What time it is? "

"Umm almost 8 am." Paul says as he hands my laptop bag from the overhead compartment. "We are heading to the hotel then possibly out to eat. The guys will probably be asleep until noon if not later."

"Ok, that's great because I'd like to sleep in an actual bed instead of on the plane. When will I meet them?" I ask because I'm not mentally ready yet. Most of the 15 hour flight was spent listening to their albums trying to figure out what kind of style they lean to. Mainly it is a lot of pop but some songs show a different kind of range in music, maybe I can use it towards my advantage. I didn't actually close my eyes until the last two hours of the flight.

"If you are up for it, you can meet them tonight before their show. If not tomorrow, I know jet lag is a pain."

"Understatement, I'll try to be up and ready to meet the guys tonight. I'm just exhausted."

"I understand, if you can't meet them today it is ok.  No stress.  " Paul replied leading to the black SUV.

We rode silently to the hotel, I was taking in the sounds, smells, and scenery of Singapore. This city is so large, I can't wait to explore but right now I can't wait to get to my room. Paul informed me that they had blocked off the entire penthouse so I wouldn't have to worry about anyone really bothering me.

I open the door to a large suite; most of the room was a crisp white color which was refreshing. There was a king size bed that has big plush white comforter on it. After my bags were in my room I stripped out of my clothes and step into the oversized bathroom. Seeing as I was too tired to soak in the tub, I opt for a shower because I don't think I could stay awake much longer. I dry off then apply some Love Spell body butter then put on a cami and some boy shorts then crawl into bed. Slowly, I close my eyes and drift off into dreamland.

BAM BAM BAM. What was that? I shoot up in bed with my heart racing. Seriously? I thought this was going to be a peaceful time of just exploring more emotions and writing but apparently not. These boys are already way to loud.  I grabbed my headphones and turn up some peaceful ocean waves then try to drift back to sleep.

I wake up to my once bright room to be dark but illuminated by the lights of outside. The city looks kind of like a Christmas wonderland with all the lights going on. I take out my camera and take a few shots of the beauty because it is absolutely breathtaking. I stretch once again and look at the clock. Paul had said that they try to leave for the arena by 8, that means I have less than forty-five minutes to get dressed.

Thankfully I'm not high maintenance it only takes fifteen minutes to get ready. I throw on my Old Navy skinny jeans with a plain white tee and my light weight gray hoodie. Part of me was afraid to wear flip flops in a high traffic place where someone might crush my toes so I fall back to my usual cotton candy colored Converse. Pretty sure that isn't the name of the color but I call them that since they are pastel purple, pink, and teal with a clear coat of glitter to make them sparkle.

Checking myself in the mirror I look more of a stage crew member then a song writer but meh. I'm comfortable and it looks semi cute. I throw my braids into a messy bun. So happy that my nap made me alert enough to not need any makeup, just some watermelon flavored Chapstick. I grab my mini Fossil cross body then pack the usual necessary items Chapstick, mirror, wallet, notepad, pen, room key, and cell phone then head out.

As I walk into the hallway I'm greeted by one of the security guards who looks rather intimidating. I give a small wave but he doesn't return it. "Miss Morris, this way to the van." I follow him down the hallway then midway I hear a door opening out comes Paul looking slightly stressed but upbeat.

"Glad to see you made it to our first concert after the break. They will be the best and most energetic. You can ride with us over there." I nod my head at him. " They should all be meeting us here in a moment and I'll introduce you."

I flash him a smile and reply "Great, can't wait." But mentally I can wait, this is seriously making my blood pressure jump a few points. This isn't what I need but yet here I am feeling hot and a little dizzy.

A loud noise approaching me knocks me out of my thoughts. What the fresh hell is going on? I turn around to be greeted with a herd of bodies. "Guys!! Seriously we don't need to get kicked out for all the noise." I stare back at the group of guys with wide eyes.

"Who's this? Your new assistant?" The blonde asks.

"No Niall, this is your songwriter. Her name is Alexandria. She is here to help you guys along. She is going to watch you guys tonight and probably travel with us for a few weeks. Be nice."

I have four sets of eyes shift in my direction suddenly I feel even more self conscious and kind of naked, I let a small " Hello" out with a wave.

"Hello Alexandria. I'm Niall." He offers his hand to me and I graciously shake it. He releases my hand then points out the rest of the guys, "That is Louis, Liam, and Harry."

Louis and Liam both give me a firm handshake while Harry barely acknowledges my presence. What crawled up his ass? Maybe he is still tired from traveling all day. Who knows, but it was kind of rude.  I guess my facial expression showed some disgust with his hand shake because Liam shot him a look. "Don't pay grumpy much mind, he didn't sleep to well on the drive here."

With that response I force my face into a half smile and nod. "No worries. And you can call me Alex."

"Well Alex, are you ready to see how we rock it out?" Niall asks excitedly. Again I nod feeling very shy and unsure of what I have signed up for. We pile into the van and head towards the arena. I wish I had brought that water I had just opened with me because my blood pressure is trying to get the best of me.

*****************************************************************************************************

Harry's POV

So this is our songwriter? She doesn't look like anything special. I was honestly hoping for someone a little fitter than that but I guess if you only write and never perform what would you expect.  Right?  This was not what I was expecting when Paul said Simon had sent us something that we needed. She seems nice enough just really quiet and very shy. It does beg the question as to how she was able to write music about love, life, and everything in between it doesn't seem like she even leaves the house often.

Niall and Liam are always the first to make friends with people. They have her seated in between them chatting it up like old friends."So what album were you working on last?" Louis asks as I shoot him a dirt look that he ignores.

"Umm, I... I have been working with Tori Kelly mainly." She finally managed to get out.

"Really!!?" Niall exclaims excitedly. "Her voice is powerful! Nobody Love is an epic song I bet the rest of her album will be amazing. How did you meet her?"

"High school."

"High school" the three of them repeat her as in a slight shock.

"Yeah, we have been best friends since freshman year."

Without even thinking I state, "So you are like riding off of her talent, yeah?" After the words left my mouth I knew I went to far. "Umm I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that"

But it was too late the damage was done. The van fell silent. I turned around to get a look at her, her face was illuminated by her cell phone and her face was solemn with tears in her eyes. "No, I got here on my own merit. I work hard I just don't sing. Simon picked me for my skills." She calmly states in a flat tone.

I hear Liam whisper something to her. My intention wasn't to make her tear up like that. Louis smacks me in the back of the head. "Smooth move mate! You are going to have her crying and not for the right reasons."

"Fuck! I wasn't trying to be mean. I was just wondering how she got here." I say as we get out of the van. Niall helps her out of the van and puts an arm around her shoulder.

As I bring up the rear Paul stops me, "Look, I know you aren't thrilled about this but give her a break she didn't even want to come because her nerves are so bad. She has maybe said twenty words to me on the flight. Simon wants her here because he thinks this is what you guys need so....."

I cut him off already knowing what he is going to say. "So don't fuck this up." I sigh as I enter the dressing room. The guys are shooting me looks as if I don't already know I've messed up, I don't want to be in the doghouse much longer so I decide to formally apologize. But as I'm about to do so I don't see her anywhere. "Where did Alexandria go?"

"No idea. She kind wandered off once we got inside." Liam says with a slight worried expression.

*****************************************************************************************************

Alex's POV

<sigh> This is exactly what I didn't want to happen. I just wanted to stay on comfort zone. I can feel my mood shifting to depression so I do one of the few things that calm me when I'm depressed.

"Hello?"

"Hey T. I know it is late. I just need to talk."

"Alex, what happened?" She asks groggily. I give her a run down of what has happened and she takes a breath "He is a man who obviously can't deal with the fact that you are so special and talented. If everyone else is being nice to you don't let one prick try to drag you down."

I let her words penetrate my heart and think on things. <sigh> "Ok I'm going to show them all how talented I am. Thanks T. I don't know what I'd do with out you."

"No problem. Night."

"Night." I hang up the phone and pull out my headphones. I need some real music to clear my head. I felt kind of old school so I played some Maroon 5 Songs About Jane. Listening to this album always calms my nerves.

Listening to Adam Levine's voice gives me a pretty wicked beat, then I start thinking over the conversation with T, 'Don't let anyone drag you down'. I made notes on my phone and my fingers start flying as I'm typing out lyrics. Apparently, I was so in the zone that I didn't notice anyone come up to me. I feel a hand touch my shoulder and it makes me jump out of my skin. "What?"

It was Harry looking pretty hot minus his shitty attitude. He looked at me with big green eyes that I could see why the women love him. "Ummm, I'm sorry for earlier I haven't really been myself lately. I didn't mean to say that. Can you please...."

"Please what?  Just don't worry about it.  You already don't like me for whatever reason so, lets just steer clear of each other and everything will be ok.  Alright?"  I reply without shedding a tear or batting an eye.  The look on his face was of shock.  He stood there a moment about to open his mouth.  "Just go back and get ready.  I have songs to write."  With those few words I leave him standing there speechless and speed walk to the nearest ladies room so I can get a few more moments of peace of quiet because my mind is racing with song lyrics.  Maybe proving people wrong will fuel the fire that I need.  <sigh>  I wonder if they have a spare guitar for me to use......

*****************************************************************************************************

Harry's POV

I can't bloody believe she dismissed me like I was nothing!  I was trying to give her a heart felt apology and cover my ass at the same time.  Not going to lie, I hate that I did say that out loud to her because I really know nothing about her, plus she is only here to help. Walking back to my dressing room I start warming up my vocals.  But this just adds to the stress I'm already feeling.  I'll find a way to make it up to her, but after the show.  I need my head in the game.

"Did you find her?"  Liam asks, he is always playing Daddy Direction.

"I did."

"And?"  He stops  lifting weights long enough to look at me.  I swear that is his new favorite pass time.  

"Well I tried...."

"You tried?!!  Harry.  Seriously?" he rolls his eyes.  

"She didn't want to hear it.  She just shut me down and sprinted away."

"Well bull lox, you have to make it right.  Soon."  Liam replies as he walks away from me.  "Next time think before you speak.  She is a nice girl."

*****************************************************************************************************

Alex's POV

The news of me being new to the whole concert spread pretty quickly because when I asked for a spare acoustic guitar it took them no time to let me borrow one I guess they know their job kind of depend on me to write music.  I sit on the counter in the ladies room and start getting a melody in my head.  There was a knock on the door.

"Yes?"  I ask.

It was a male's voice but not really sure who's.  "Alexandria?"  

"You can just call me Alex.  And can I help you?"  I reply shyly.

"Can I come in?"

"Umm, I guess so.  Who is it?"

"Niall."

"Sure come in."  The adorable blonde hair,  blue eyed, guy comes into the bathroom which was probably the size of my bedroom back home.  He looks at the fact I'm sitting on the counter with headphones on, guitar out, and my notepad writing stuff down.  Still unsure of my mood he stands in front of the sink, glancing in the mirror then back at the mess I have on the counter.

"You ok?"  I look at him and pull my ear plugs fully out, I can tell he is sincerely asking about my well being.

"Well, when I finish this song I might be ok.  I'm just in the zone and need this out of my system.  Why?"

He flashes me a quick smile.  "You are already writing?  I thought we were supposed to be doing it together."

"Yes, you are but right now I'm in the zone and can't afford to lose this."

"Aye!  Can I hear what you have so far?"

That question really throws me off guard, I know that eventually they will have to see my work first hand.  I look at him moment thinking over if I really want to do this.  "OK,"  I slowly start to drum the cords out on the guitar,

"I've got fire for a heart

I'm not scared of the dark

You've never seen it look so easy

I got a river for a soul

And baby you're a boat

Baby you're my only reason."  

I stop and look at him then continue, "I'm not sure what would be the other part of the verse  but I have the chorus

All my life

You stood by me

When no one else was ever behind me

All these lights

They can't blind me

With your love, nobody can drag me down"  

I finish playing and give him a look indicating that I needed his opinion.

"I like it.  Did you  just come up with it?"

"Yes.  Was feeling down about the car ride and I had to call my bestie, then I listened to Maroon 5 and now I'm feeling a little better.  I can't let anyone drag me down.  Even your bandmate."  

Niall starts packing my stuff up for me.  I cock my head to the side.  "I know Harry can be a pain, but he is the baby of the group so I just don't think he realizes how much of a jack ass he can be at times.  And I'm only packing your stuff up so you can watch the show."  He pulls me off the counter and pulls me in for brief hug.  "It will get better I promise."

"If you say so."  I mumble into his chest.

"I do.  Come and watch us.  Please."  He does a puppy dog face which causes me to smile.

"You are a lady killer I swear.  You look innocent then you pull that.  Don't think it will work all the time on me."  I say with a a smirk.  He gives me a quick wink.

"I know it won't always work but I'm going to milk it until it no longer does."  He puts an arm around me and lead me back to their dressing room.  With Niall looking out for me maybe this trip won't be so bad.  I'm ready to see what these boys have to offer.  

[lurafita]

Petvengers Chapter 2

I just realized that I forgot to post the other chapters here as well.

Read Chapter 1 here: Chappy 1

Again, this is also on Ao3, but I want to have duplicates, just in case.

here is the link if you want to read it on Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19139326/chapters/45486811

The Ao3 version has pictures of the pets!

  Bucky & Sam

When Peter had invited her over to Stark tower, so that she could meet Cap's new dog Colonel, and help him brainstorm for the next step of his mission (Ned had also been invited, but had had to decline due to a surprise weekend family trip), Michelle certainly hadn't expected that they would end up sitting cross-legged and drinking hot chocolate on Natasha Romanoff's bed. Said redhead, also known as Black Widow, was sat across from them in her desk chair, sipping on her own cup of the chocolaty beverage.

Her and Michelle had chosen a simple version of the drink; dark chocolate, some milk, a pinch of cinnamon. Nothing fancy and not too sweet. Whereas Peter had doctored his cup with extra sugar, mini marshmallows, whipped cream, vanilla extract, and sprinkles. Michelle was pretty sure that that monstrosity of a drink would cause diabetes in anyone else but Peter. Looking at it alone made her teeth ache.

Hope, Peter's most loyal companion, was for once not curled up, around, or all over his owner, and had instead laid his head on Natasha's thigh, while the former Russian spy was absently scratching his scalp.

"The key to manipulating others is to know what makes them tick."

The Black Widow had found the two teens in the common floor's living room (because even though everyone living in the Stark tower had their own floor, they all somehow gravitated to this one), discussing various ideas on how to get Bucky and Sam into the animal shelter. She had lightly scolded them for talking about a mission in such an open and unsecured place, ordered them into the adjoining kitchen for hot chocolate acquisition, and then corralled them (plus pitbull) down to her own floor and into her bedroom. Satisfied with their new location, Natasha then started to give the teen's a lesson in 'Spy Work 101'.

Peter was devotedly writing everything down, though Michelle had no idea where he had procured the notebook and pen from.

"Every person has a different emotional and psychological makeup and is, therefore, susceptible to different tactics."

She took a sip from her drink. Peter specifically made a note of that.

"So, before you start with your scheme, take your time to study your target. Learn to read them and see the best approach for getting them to bend to your needs."

Peter stopped scribbling for a moment, and looked at the redhead with a frown on his face.

"Couldn't I just do what I did with Steve?"

Natasha raised a single eyebrow.

"Have you heard about the boy who cried wolf?"

Peter nodded insightful.

"Good point."

And then he wrote that down, too.

Since the chance to learn from probably the best spy/secret operative/assassin didn't come by often, Michelle decided to make the most of it.

"Do you have any tips on how to best observe our targets?"

Natasha smirked.

             -----------------------------------------------------------------------

The first time that MJ and Peter observed the two men, Sam and Bucky were running through an elaborate obstacle course in the Danger Room*.

To be on a more even playing field, Bucky had taken off his vibranium arm and Sam his wings.

"You know, no one will judge you if you just give up. I mean, I will judge you... As will everyone else. But the option is there."

"Please. I'm just trying not to embarrass you too much. I could have already finished if I wanted to."

"You wanna put your money where your fucking mouth is?"

"You fucking asked for it!"

Peter and MJ made extensive notes while the other two sped up.

-

The next time that found the duo alone, they had somehow been ganged up on by the other Avengers into cooking for every one.

"Don't add pepper to that, it's gonna be too hot."

"Oh, sorry, I forgot that people your age have trouble handling spicy food. Want me to get out some prune juice for you? Should I puree your steak?"

"Maybe I should make some extra spinach for you, chances are you will finally put on some muscle, then. How about a glass of milk to strengthen your bones?"

"How about you shut up and give me a hand with peeling the potatoes?"

Since a picture said more than a thousand words, MJ took great care to draw the exact look on Sam Wilson's face when a detached metal arm landed right beside him.

-

The third time saw Bucky and Sam playing Mario Kart.

"I'm not at all surprised you chose the dinosaur. Feeling a special kinship with the fossil?"

"No more than you do with Princess Peach. What with you both being on your period."

It seemed that neither man was even out to win the race, but far more invested in hitting the other's character with an item, or pushing them off the track. When they finally crossed the finish line (after many, many swearwords; it was a good thing that Laura and Clint had taken their kids to visit Laura's parents), the two men sat back on the couch and took a long sip from their beer bottles.

Then they simultaneously turned their heads to the love seat beside the couch. The love seat that was currently occupied by one Spiderkid and one Spiderkid's friend who 'was a girl but not his girlfriend'. Who both had notebooks in their laps and pens in their hands and were staring at the men. Rather creepily.

The two pairs held eye contact for an uncomfortable amount of time.

"Did you two want to play?"

The teens shook their heads.

"You need help with... homework or something?"

Peter smiled.

"Nope, we are good."

The girl waved her hand at the pair.

"Carry on."

-

It was 1:45 am at night when Michelle was roused from her sleep by her buzzing phone. She opened up the screen to see that she had gotten a text message from Peter.

DefinitelynotSpiderman:  Calling in mission report. I'm not getting any new information. Awaiting orders.

MyfriendscallmeMJ: ... Peter, are you currently sticking to Sergeant Barnes ceiling and watching him in his sleep?

DefinitelynotSpiderman: Of course not! Ever since Bucky and Steve started dating, they moved in together on Cap's floor. Not trying to get an eye full of that! What kind of creepy stalker do you take me for?! DefinitelynotSpiderman: I'm observing Sam. DefinitelynotSpiderman: While sticking on his ceiling. DefinietlynotSpiderman: In the dark. DefinietlynotSpiderman: While he is sleeping. DefinitelynotSpiderman: It's super boring.

MyfriendscallmeMJ: Peter, go to bed.

DefinitelynotSpiderman:  Roger that.

-

After another week of close observation (to which the men had by that time caught on and were slightly freaked out by), Peter and MJ presented their findings to Natasha.

"They are like the worlds best frenemies."

Peter had once again made himself a cup full of 'Death by sugar', while Michelle and Natasha were enjoying some very nice tea, that Peter had 'borrowed' from Dr. Strange. (It was part of the training program Natasha had thought up for him to work on his stealth abilities. He had also 'borrowed' 15 single socks from Tony, Clint's fuzzy bathrobe, two pairs of Sam's sunglasses, and just an hour ago, Steve's running shoes. He had so far not been able to slip under the guard of the Winter Solider, and flat out refused to 'borrow' anything from Bruce. Dr. Banner was the god of science and shall not be used for training exercises.)

Natasha, who was at the moment wrapped up in Clint's fuzzy bathrobe, motioned for Michelle to elaborate on Peter's statement.

"They don't miss an opportunity to poke fun at, or insult the other, but even though it may seem as such at first glance, they are never actually hurtful to each other. Mr. Wilson holds regular counseling sessions with Sergeant Barnes, which we respectfully did not intrude on, but are likely about his fighting in a war and other trauma. And Sergeant Barnes helps out with Mr. Wilson's training and helps him to figure out new strategies and maneuvers for aerial combat."

Hope hadn't joined the teens in Natasha's room this time around, as he and Colonel were currently playing with Cooper, Lila and Nathaniel on the Barton's floor, under the watchful eyes of their parents (though Clint was most likely just as excited about having the dogs for some playtime as his kids were. He was fooling no one.)

"Sam has a bit of an inferiority complex, what with both his best friends being enhanced super soldiers, and is constantly trying it one-up Bucky."

Peter continued.

"And Bucky still sometimes struggles with understanding how the present, or in his view, the future and it's course of conduct works. He wants to learn to adapt on his own terms, and doesn't like having these things explained to him like he wouldn't get it otherwise."

MJ finished their report.

"They are both headstrong and independent. They like to help others, but don't like to be in a position where they themselves need help. They are very alike in that. Which leads to everything pretty much turning into a competition between them."

Natasha smiled proudly at them.

"Very good."

They smiled back.

"Thank you, Sensei."

Cue the raised eyebrow.

"Sensei?"

Peter shyly rubbed the back of his head.

"Well, you are teaching us some of the tools of your trade. Which makes you the Obi Wan to our Skywalker. But MJ voted against calling you Master, since that title caters to a patriarchal system. But the female form 'Mistress' sounded a bit too much 'Dominatrix'. So we settled on the more respectful Japanese term of Sensei. But we will totally stop calling you that if you don't like it, Tasha."

He nervously bit his lip as they waited for Natasha's verdict, and even MJ subtly shifted a little in her seat.

"No, I like it. Feel free to use it as much as you like. So now, my prodigious students, after having studied your targets, what have you come up with?"

Her smile widened more and more as the teens told her of their plan.

                    ---------------------------------------------------

 Stage 1: Divide

Michelle found Sam in the common floor's kitchen, seemingly enjoying a cup of coffee. Peter had used the terrible combined powers of his and Hope's puppy eyes, to convince Sergeant Barnes that he wanted to go get ice cream with the teen and dog, about fifteen minutes ago. Which led into the next part of their plan.

 Stage 2: Conquer

She casually strolled up to the table and sat down across from the infamous Falcon. He gave her a welcoming nod.

"Hey there, Michelle. You didn't want to go with the others to get ice cream?"

"Have you ever seen the absurdly sweet things Parker orders? I didn't feel like getting second hand diabetes today."

He snorted.

"Tell me about it. I swear I could feel my teeth starting to rot, the last time he made himself a snack. And by snack, I mean a deep fried mars bar, covered in whipped cream and wrapped in a chocolate chip pancake."

He shuddered at the memory. Then Michelle went in for the kill.

 -Hook.-

"And also, I don't need to listen to Sergeant Barnes rant about your inability to let yourself appear emotionally open or vulnerable."

The man almost chocked on his coffee.

"I'm sorry, what?"

With a casual shrug and a dismissive hand gesture, the girl elaborated.

"I mean, it's not a big deal or anything. We were talking about Hope and Colonel the other day, and how Peter tricked Captain Rogers. Peter thought he should do it again, you know, with someone else from the team. That loser is absolutely certain that everyone needs a pet because, and I quote 'Animals just make everything better, MJ.'."

The statement was followed by her trademark eye roll.

"Well, in the kid's defense, there are quite a few studies about the mental and psychological benefits a close relationship with a pet can have on a person. Especially those dealing with trauma. Many of the veterans I counsel have a therapeutic companion, or emotional support animal, as they are more commonly called."

Sam couldn't help but inject, but quickly got back to the matter at hand.

"What's that about Barnes spouting bullshit, though?"

 -Line.-

The teen across from him shrugged her shoulders.

"He simply stated that something like this wouldn't work on you. Since Peter's ploy heavily depended on the Captain being a 'pushover with a hero complex', and therefore unable to turn away from a 'little critter in need of love and affection'. You, on the other hand, were 'too insecure about your manliness, and wouldn't allow yourself to be seen as someone doting on an animal'. His words."

The coffee cup was set down harshly on the table, as Sam pushed himself upwards.

 -And sinker.-

"He did, did he." He growled. "Insecure about my manliness, my ass. I'm gonna show that bastard... Say, do you know which shelter Pete got the dogs from?"

Michelle easily suppressed a victorious smirk, and quickly typed out the signal message on her phone for Ned to be ready with his camcorder.

"I will show you the way." He nodded in acceptance. "Great. If we come across a shop selling sunglasses on the way there, remind me to get a pair. I seem to keep misplacing mine."

                      ------------------------------------------------------

They had taken Hope to the park first, and thrown around a Frisbee for the dog to chase after and catch. Natasha had told Peter to spend about thirty to forty minutes in the park, and after that approximately the same amount of time at the ice cream cafe, that was conveniently located halfway between the park and the shelter. (What was even better, was that this particular cafe had ice cream specifically made for dogs. So he had ordered Hope three big scoops of the dogs favorite flavor.)

While Hope was happily licking up his cold treat, and Peter was demolishing his triple banana split with extra toppings of everything, Bucky serenely drunk from his glass of frappuccino. The tranquility of the moment was only disrupted by the vibrating buzz of Peter's mobile phone, which he quickly took out of his pants pocket.

MyfriendscallmeMJ: The Falcon and his new companion have left the building. Ned is awaiting your arrival. Initiate phase 'Lonely Winter' now.

-Alright Parker-, he gave himself a mental pep talk, -your turn. Tasha and MJ have coached you through your lines all yesterday evening, you totally got this.-

"So," -maybe put a little less squeak into your voice!- "Hrm, I mean, so... You know, I think Sam is wrong."

Bucky grinned at him.

"Wilson is wrong about a lot of things. But what in particular are you referring to?"

 -Get it together, Spiderman! You can totally do this! Look him in the eye and lie right to his face!-

Peter fixed his stare resolutely on the coffee table and spun his spoon around his now empty bowl.

 -Coward!-

"Just something he said. Me and MJ were talking the other day, you know, about how great it would be if the others on the team would maybe adopt an animal from the shelter, too. I mean, the tower is more than big enough for it, and you can't deny that Steve has been a lot more relaxed ever since he got Colonel. You too, actually."

Bucky nodded to that. He had always had a soft spot for dogs, and really anything with big eyes and soft fur that needed his protection. He was always happy to volunteer taking both Colonel and Hope out for a walk, if Steve or Peter were busy. Just like this morning when he went jogging with Colonel, because his boyfriend refused to leave before he found his running shoes. (He hadn't found them. Bucky could have told him that the kid had them, but he was no snitch. Also, he knew very well that this was part of Natasha's stealth training, and since Peter never took things that held emotional value to their owners, Bucky was very satisfied with silently cheering the kid on.)

"Sam overheard us and said that you probably wouldn't go for it."

The Winter Soldiers eyes narrowed slightly.

"Oh?"

 -Don't panic, don't panic, don't panic! Lie your heart out you french frying licorice!-

"Yeah, like, you know, he was just like 'Nah, that relic wouldn't even know how to handle all the paperwork that comes with adopting a pet. Bet they didn't have that back in 1920. Probably just ran out on the street and took home the first thing that let itself be cuddled.' Well, something along those lines, I don't remember his exact wording (-because he never said that, you lying liar who lies!- ) and he said that you would be way too proud to ask for someone to explain it to you and stuff..."

He risked glancing up from the table to gauge Bucky's reaction, and holy mother of science! If the stormy look on the man's face said anything, he had totally bought Peter's bullshit!

-Whoohoo! Good work, Spidey!-

Feeling emboldened by this, he tried his best to adopt a casual, earnest posture.

"But, I don't think Sam is right. I mean, you know how to file your taxes and stuff, and I'm pretty sure that more than half the people in New York don't know how to do that correctly. Tony always just lets Pepper handle them. And besides, you are totally awesome with Hope and Colonel, and I don't think you would let something like pride stand in your way if you wanted to adopt a pet."

Another quick glance at the Sergeant revealed a mix of fondness, contemplation, and determination.

"You know what, kid? How about we make a little detour to that shelter of yours and show Sam how very, stupidly wrong he is?"

                       --------------------------------------------------------

Ned had opted out of accompanying the now foursome back to the tower, as he wanted to save the new video he had made to the file he had on his computer at home. Bucky had either not cared about Peter's friend filming him, while he went through the process of adopting an animal, or hadn't realized that he had been the sole focus of the camera.

When they entered the common floor, Hope tiredly trotting over to where Colonel had laid himself down beside the love seat, they were greeted by the sight of Steve, Sam, Michelle, Natasha and Pepper readying the room for a movie night.

Peter quickly ran over to Pepper and took two of the three huge bowls of chips she was trying to balance.

"Thank you, sweetie."

"No problem. Where are the others?"

Steve answered, setting down two huge jugs of iced fruit tea on the table.

"Clint and Laura are making sure that Cooper and Lila have finished their homework before we start with the movie. Bruce wanted to go over the latest results of some kind of experiment he was running one more time, but promised to be here in half an hour at the latest. May had to fill in for a colleague, and said to tell you to eat something healthy before you stuffed yourself with junk food. Speaking of which, here."

Steve had somehow procured a plate with steamed vegetables and some rice out of nowhere, and was shoving it into Peter's hands.

The younger looked at the food suspiciously.

"Did Aunt May make this before she left?"

Steve smirked.

"No. She tried her hand on a casserole... the smell was a little... pungent, to put it mildly. And Colonel kinda buried it in the flower field on the terrace. So I whipped this up for you."

Then he held out a fork for Peter to take, while the teen smiled in relief.

"Thanks Cap!"

He quickly sat down next to MJ and Natasha and began to eat.

"Where's dad?"

Pepper laughed lightly.

"He is busy disassembling the dryer. Said the machine keeps eating his left socks. How he figures they are his left ones is beyond me, though."

Natasha helpfully slapped Peter on his back, as he valiantly tried to not choke on his food.

Sam and Bucky meanwhile, had kind of squared up against each other, both standing opposite the other, with about three feet between them, and fixing the other with a snarky, triumphant kind of expression.

Sam broke the silence first.

"So, finally made it back, did you? Did the kid and the dog have to slow down for old man Barnes?"

"We took the scenic route, something you wouldn't know about, having so little stamina."

Then, as if they had planned it, Sam whistled sharply at the same time that Bucky stuck his hand in his hoodie pocket.

The human hand came out holding a little raccoon securely in its grasp.

"This is Arthur. He can't be returned to the wild, because one of his hind legs got stuck in a trap and they had to amputate it. And just so you know, I had no problems at all filling out his adoption forms."

At the same time a white cockatoo came flying into the room and landed on Sam's shoulder.

"This is Eames. He used to belong to a very ill mannered Londoner, and randomly spouts British swearwords, which is why no one wanted to adopt him. We bonded over calling you a bloody bastard." The "Bloody Bastard" was directly repeated by Eames. Sam smiled at his bird. "See? And for your information, I have no trouble at all with showing my emotional side."

The two stared at each other for a moment, processing what had been said.

"Why would I want to know that you filled out his papers by yourself?"

"Why would I care that you are not afraid to show your feelings?"

A stretch of silence followed, as everyone in the room was now staring at the two men and their new pets. Then, again creepily in sync, both men turned their gazes to the couch where two teenagers and one redheaded super spy were sitting.

"Pete..."

"Michelle..."

Natasha helpfully took hold of Peter's plate as the two teens stood up from the couch, quickly bowed to her, "Thank you, Sensei.", and then ran out of the room like the hounds of hell were behind them.

[essiefreds]

… so… this may or may not be a thing? We’re gonna see how people respond to it, I guess, and then maybe it’ll continue as a series? 

I don’t expect it to go well, because uh, I don’t have any idea how to write Steve Rogers as a character, and I feel as though there are some topics that could arise in this series that I might not know how to handle, so… 

(It’s a thing): 

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

Word Count: 2147

Tagged (if you’d like to be added to this list, btw, just send me a message and let me know!): @hotemotionalmess

“We need you to talk to him.“ 

You blinked at Nick Fury. Not only had you never been addressed directly by the head of SHIELD, you had never been in the same room as him. Now, here he was, standing in front of you, his arms hanging by his side, and a sincere expression on his face. 

"Uh… wait,” you said, deciding that it made sense to clear up this request he was bestowing on you before simply agreeing. After all, just because he was Director Fury didn’t mean that you were going to do everything he said. 

Especially something like this. 

“So… you want me to… befriend the man who has been trapped in ice for seventy years, in the hopes that… what? He’ll… decide to join society?" 

Fury lifted his shoulders. "Basically.”

“And why me?” you queried, frowning. 

“You have a way,” Fury said, as though that answered your question in the slightest. “Anyway, the sooner you can figure it out, the better, because we need him to, uh, not consider anything other than rejoining society.”

You did not have to ask him to elaborate on what he meant by that. Your experience with war veterans gave you a pretty solid understanding on the euphemisms of suicide. 

“All right,” you said, carefully, “but… if I don’t manage to get him to like me, then what?" 

"Well, we’re not incredibly worried about him,” the Director of SHIELD responded, “but we know that he must feel very lonely, and rather helpless. We’re not positive that he’ll accept you as a friend, but we also don’t think he’ll flat-out deny someone wanting to help him integrate back into society.” He offered you an expression that might have been reassuring, had he been anyone other than Nick Fury. “You’ll do fine.”

Again, he hadn’t answered your question, but hey, what were you supposed to do about it? He was your boss, after all. 

You’d joined SHIELD after an invitation had reached you in your tiny apartment in New York, which you rented through the funding you received from your job at the hospital as a receptionist. Although no one had ever told you how they’d figured out who you were, and what you did, you thought that you’d adjusted well to your position in SHIELD. Handling panicking people was something you were good at, and, more often than not, there was a panicking person, or group of people, for you to deal with on a regular basis. 

Aside from that, however, you were also extremely good at helping people who’d been through hell and had somehow gotten out of it, only to continue to be faced with it in their daily lives through nightmares and panic attacks. It was a skill you’d developed through extreme sensitivity that your mother often called psychic, and through your work with war veterans that passed through the hospital. You’d also created a group for them, at the nearby retirement community, where many were spending the remainder of their lives. 

It was because of this, you supposed, that Nick Fury had approached you to help with Steve Rogers, who’d recently been unearthed like a fossil or something. Although you’d never been one to read comic books, you knew who he was, who he had been, at any rate. 

You did not ask, but you wondered if Director Fury hoped to bring back who Steve Rogers had been, although for what purpose, you did not know. A back-up plan, in case aliens tried to take over the Earth, or something. 

Even with your experience, however, you did not have any idea how to handle a ninety-year-old man who looked and had the physicality of a twenty-year-old, especially one who had at one moment been in the 1940’s, and in the next had been thrown into the 21st century. 

It was going to be something new. 

“He’s been living in a facility that we’ve created to model the 1940’s,” Fury told you as he led you down one of the many hallways of one of the buildings that SHIELD owned. “We meant for it to help him adjust to what’s happened, but I don’t know how well it’s worked." 

"Right,” you said. Your mind was reeling. You’d put yourself into the shoes of many victims of trauma, but never before had you had to help someone who had been asleep for seventy years adjust to the new life that they were suddenly faced with. So much had changed since the ‘40’s, so many things, in fact, that you doubted you’d be able to think of them all, in order to help him adjust. 

Again, you weren’t positive that this was going to go well. 

It was too late, however, to back out. Fury would not have come to you, specifically, if he did not think you had at least some chance of making this work.

You supposed that out of many of your coworkers, you did have the best chance. 

Still. 

Director Fury paused outside a door down a bland hallway, and nodded to it. “We’ve had people check on him every hour or so since he defrosted, but he hasn’t been the most responsive to them,” he said. “So, first thing’s first -”

“Get him to respond to me,” you concluded. Fury dipped his head. You exhaled, and faced the door. “Sure. I can do this.”

“Good attitude,” Fury praised, and then he patted you on the shoulder. “And good luck.”

You nodded, and listened as he walked away. He did not leave the hallway entirely, you noticed. 

After taking a moment to center yourself, to calm your thoughts, you lifted your fist, and knocked politely on the door. 

You were incredibly surprised when, after a minute, it opened from the other side. 

Holy shit this man’s arms are the size of tree trunks.

So, needless to say, your first impression of Captain Steve Rogers was probably not the most profound. 

Luckily, you were good at pulling yourself together, and you quickly held out your hand towards the gorgeous figure that had opened the door. 

“Hello, Captain Rogers,” you said, offering a smile. “My name is Y/N.”

The moment you knew that helping Steve Rogers would be a wonderful experience was when he shook your hand, and said, “Pleasure to meet you, ma'am.”

You were almost positive you stood there, holding his hand and blinking at him like an idiot for at least two minutes, but he did not seem bothered. In fact, if anything, he seemed amused, especially when you finally realized that it was time to let go of his hand, and quickly dropped your own to your side. 

“I just… I’d heard that you were… well, here, and I wanted to know how you’re doing,” you said, hoping that you didn’t sound too much like you were stammering. “I mean, I don’t have any clue what it must be like for you, obviously, but I’d like to understand, so that I can help you in anyway I can.”

Captain Rogers’s amused expression faded, and he tilted his head, moving slightly so that he blocked the entrance way to his living space. “You don’t need to lie to me, ma'am,” he said, and you furrowed your brows, slightly. “I know that I’ve been causing troubles for the nice people of SHIELD, and that they want me to get a move on with reentering the world. It doesn’t need to be sugar coated for me.”

Okay. So, he understands that he needs to reinsert himself. That’s a good start.

“That’s true,” you said, calmly smiling once more, “but, like I said, I’m here to help you with that. I’m not just another person who’s been sent to check on you, make sure you’re trying. I’m here to help you try.” You paused, and then tilted your head, mimicking him. “Could I come in?" 

When he did not reply, immediately, you gestured down the hall. "Or you could come out, instead. We could go get something to eat?" 

"No,” he said, almost immediately, and you lifted an eyebrow. “Here’s fine. Come in, please.” He stepped out of the way of the door, and you sidled past him into the living space on the other side, already knowing that you had plenty of work to do. 

The living space was the same size of a small apartment. In fact, it was bigger than the apartment that you’d been living in, actually. There was a bedroom, with a bathroom attached, and a small kitchen that was in the same space a a living room of sorts. Looking at the furniture, including the TV and kitchen appliances, you saw that SHIELD had done everything it could to give Captain Rogers a 1940’s feel. 

The TV was a boxy, clunky thing. Next to the ragged looking couch was a square side table, on which sat a boxy radio. The lamp in the corner of the room had a very ugly shade on it. The carpet was atrocious, as was the tile in the kitchen. The appliances themselves were green. 

“They wanted it to feel like I was at home,” Captain Rogers said from behind you, seeing that you’d paused to take everything in. “It was nice of them." 

"Yeah, definitely,” you agreed, turning to watch him as he entered the kitchen, and opened the outdated fridge. You were honestly surprised that these things worked. He looked at you. 

“Would you like some water? It’s all I have." 

"Sure,” you said. “Thank you.”

You moved to sit down on the couch, and winced as a stray spring immediately dug up into your ass cheek. They couldn’t have given him at least a slightly comfortable couch? The radio was on, although it was only buzzing, softly; no music came from its single speaker. 

When Captain Rogers joined you, holding a glass of water, you nodded towards the radio, taking the glass from him. “No music?" 

He managed a small smile, one that looked almost sheepish. "I don’t really like the music that you have here,” he explained. 

“Oh,” you said. Obviously. “But, you like background noise?" 

"Sorry.” He immediately moved to turn the radio off, with the same ease you’d use to turn off a cell phone. “I just - it’s something that’s at least sort of similar to how the radio was. Static.”

You took a sip of your water, wondering how hard it would be to find a record player and some vinyls with ‘40’s music on them. After a period of time, you realized that Captain Rogers had not joined you on the couch, and you looked up at him. 

“Are you… not sitting down for a reason?" 

He let out a chuckle that sounded a bit forced. "It’s a small sofa,” he said, gesturing to it. 

Confused, but deciding to let him do what was most comfortable, you set the glass of water down on the table that the radio sat on, and looked at him. “So,” you began, “talk to me, Captain." 

"About what, ma'am?" 

"About you,” you said, gesturing. You smiled. “And I don’t mean Captain America. I mean you. Who is Steven Rogers? What was his life like?" 

For a moment, he was silent, and you wondered, briefly, if he didn’t quite understand why you wanted to know about him. 

Before you could say anything else, however, he spoke: "Was." 

You frowned, a little. "Was?" 

"You said, "What was his life like?”,“ he explained, his eyes trained on the floor. "Everyone else always talks in the present tense." 

You forced your shoulders to relax. This wasn’t going the way you’d hoped it would, so far, but you decided to just… stick with it. "Well, there’s really no sense in living in the past, is there?” you asked him. “I mean, you’re here now, and although there’s plenty of things from your old life that you can keep with you, and you can even be the same Steve Rogers that you were… there’s also things that you’re going to have to accept, and the fact that you’re in the 21st century is one of them." 

His gaze lifted, and met yours. God, his eyes were blue. "Easier said than done, don’t you think?" 

"Most things are,” you replied, easily. “And besides, you don’t have to do it alone, now.” You grinned at him. “I’m here to help.”

A moment of silence passed. For a scarily long second, you thought that maybe he was going to tell you to leave. 

Instead, he smiled back. “It is always easier doing something with a little help,” he admitted. “That’s something I’ve come to learn, anyway.”

You relaxed for real, this time. “Good,” you said. “Glad we can agree on that, at least.” You crossed your legs at the knee. “So, Captain -” you started, again. “What was your life like?”

[dorevenge]

where ignorance is bliss - chapter 7: about to billow

SUMMARY: Howard's research is stolen by an unknown group, and Maria reaches out to someone for help. [AO3 LINK]

CHAPTERS: 1 2 3 4 5 6 [7] 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 ☆

December 22, 1959 – Manhattan, New York City, Stark Manor

The house is littered with S.H.I.E.LD. agents when we arrive, dusting for fingerprints, hunting for footprints, desperately searching for any indication of who might have raided us. Howard goes straight to the office to try to write down a list of what might be missing and what S.H.I.E.LD. will need to look out for. The list is endless, and it’s a fruitless endeavor to try to recall everything he might have created in that mind of his. The agents won’t let me make tea in the kitchen, as there was an “active investigation” and I couldn’t “contaminate” so I sit idly by, helpless.

I wander over to the study where Howard and Peggy have been at it for hours, and when I arrive, the air is tense.

“Why would you even invent this? You’d think you’d have learned something after Leviathan.”

“Peg, I obviously didn’t know someone would steal something that isn’t even finished!” Howard returns Peggy’s stressed tone. “And in my own home.”

“The potential your reactor has, Howard, is irresponsible. The way you described it, if it’s unregulated… Maria.”

Howard relaxes at the sight of me and continues, his voice instantly calmer. “That’s why I haven’t released it. It’s gonna take years to perfect, decades even. A lifetime. If I create the arc reactor, it would be my highest achievement as a man. I want it perfect; I don’t want it tarnished by some dimwits trying to replicate it and ruining its potential.”

“It was your arc reactor plans that were stolen?” I ask Howard.

“Yeah. I’m starting something… Tentatively called the Unity Project.” Howard explains. “The Tesseract is this cube that creates insane amounts of energy, and we’re trying to figure out how to replicate that energy. The arc reactor is the key to our future – sustainable, unlimited energy – not relying on fossil fuels anymore.” He collapses in a nearby armchair. “But it’s not ready yet, and it could hurt people if it’s made before it is.”

I move over to his side. “I wish I could tell you some magical thing to make it all go away. What would we look for if these prototypes get made?”

“Neighborhoods would get leveled. Hundreds, even thousands, of people hurt as soon as it’s turned on.”

Peggy asks, “Do you remember what elements were in the plans? We could search for those, who’s buying them. tracking the isotopes. I can ask my people on the black market”

“I’ll add them to the list.” Howard slumps in his chair further. “I’ve been doing everything I can to stop the death toll in my wake, Peg, honest. I don’t want the Stark name to become a dirty one.”

“We’ll find the plans before anyone gets hurt. That’s what S.H.I.E.L.D. does,” Peggy assures us before leaving, taking Howard’s updated list with her.

Howard stands and pulls me into him, his nose buried in the side of my neck, his apologies blurring into sobs.

“It’s alright, dear,” I whisper, over and over, brushing his hair out of his face.

After a short while, once the shaking stops, he says, “I’ve never felt this way before. I’ve never felt so hopeless.”

-

By the next day, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents had gotten everything they needed and were out of the house. It was just Howard and I again, picking up the pieces. I haven’t even been a wife for a month yet, and I feel like I’m failing. I make dinner, clean house, everything my mother did for my father, everything I was taught to, but it feels like I’m not doing enough. He sat in his study all day, no appetite, lifeless until I open the door, then he’d smile for me, but it’s not the same smile he had in Monaco, in Rome, in Vegas.

“Howard,” I say softly as I open the door.

“Hey, doll,” he responds, blueprints and sketches in front of him.

“Here’s the paper and some coffee. Please let me know if I can help at all.”

I set the tray down and walk into his open arms. Howard says, “Your pretty face helps more than you know. I’m sorry I’m distant, it’s just if anything happens, it’ll be because of me.”

The newspaper falls open as I pour him a cup of coffee, and the deadline reads, “Stane Int. Declares Bankruptcy, Bachelor Genius Down on His Luck.” I skim the article, the following lines catching my eye.

 “Mr. Obadiah Stane recently cut ties with Roxxon Oil Company after an internal scandal, kept hush-hush, regarding their unregulated weapons division. Last week, the New York Times reported on how half of Roxxon’s inventory went missing, and no theft was reported to the police department after the incident. The misplaced weapons were traced to shipping crates sent back and forth to Russia, and our sources say they were supplying Communists with weapons directly. The bad press must be why our dashing young Mr. Stane abandoned his contract with Roxxon, but without their funds, his pockets are empty and declaring Chapter 11. We reached out to the office of CEO and owner Giulietta Nefaria for Roxxon’s response, but we have not heard back from either party. Is this the end of the road for one of the greatest minds of the 50s?”

“Howard, dear, you said you’re not able to make this reactor on your own, right? What if you got help?”

He takes a deep drink of the coffee. “Who did you have in mind?” I hand him the paper and watch his dark eyes take in the article. “Obadiah Stane, your ex-fiancé. You think I should work with him?”

“He’s brilliant. And he’s down on his luck. You might need a mind like his in your corner.”

Howard continues reading. “Good morals, I suppose. I’ll meet with him, and if you vouch for him, why not give him a shot?” He stands, planting a kiss on the side of my face. “I have to go in to the office today, but I’ll have Jarvis give him a call and set something up.”

“Mr. Stane said no,” Edwin Jarvis, Howard’s nervous butler, says, hanging up the phone, looking somewhat disgruntled. “Quite rudely, too.”

“You called his office? And he answered from there?” I ask, and Edwin nods. “Take me there.”

“Take you to the Stane International offices?”

“Yes, please.”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Obadiah sits alone in his office on the second floor, swallowed up by the darkness, no lights on in the whole building. He, for the first time, looks small, behind his giant desk, empty now except for a fountain pen and a bottle of whiskey. It’s half-gone, which surprises me; Obie was never much of a drinker, and when he imbibed it was the fruitier cocktails.

“I have an offer for you from Stark Industries.”

“Yeah, I know. Howard’s goddamn butler called me earlier. Probably saw the article and wants to rub my face in it, couldn’t do it himself.”

“That’s not true, Obadiah. Howard and I-”

He looks up at me, shooting daggers with his eyes. “Howard and you?” The light from the window illuminates the diamond on my hand, and I’m not quick enough to hide it. He laughs, a joyless laugh, to himself, shaking his head.

“You married him? You married this son of a bitch after leaving me? Do you remember how you left me? It was without a single word, Maria. You left my ring on my pillow and went off, and you married Howard fucking Stark? What did I do to deserve to always be second to him? He steals my inventions, he steals my investors, my spotlight, and now he steals the love of my life?”

“It’s not like that, Obie-”

“Don’t Obie me, Maria. Did he knock you up, like he’s done countless models and bimbos?”

“That’s not why I’m here.” I swallow hard, clinging to my pride. He ignores me and keeps going. I grip the envelope in my hand tighter.

“Are you happy? I hope you’re happy, and I hope the two of you drive each other off the road. I hope you produce his bastards, and I hope you drown with him. That man destroys everything he touches. And that’s what he’s doing to you, Maria. He’s destroying you, and because of his ring on your finger, the two of you will go down together.” He sits heavily back into his armchair.

“Are you finished with your tantrum?” I ask, refusing to cry. I will not let him see how he hurts me, I won’t.

“Just leave me alone, Maria. Just go.”

“Believe it or not,” I say, “I am here purely for business. I have a proposal for you.” I realize my poor choice of words before he makes a face at me at the word proposal.

“Of course he’d send you to do his business. Come to rub my defeat in my face, Mrs. Stark?” Obadiah spits his words out. “Laugh at my misery?”

“Not at all. Howard respects you as an inventor and a businessman. We both do. You took a risk, and it didn’t work out this time, but he wants to work with you,” I say.

He laughs half-heartedly. “I’m bankrupt. I’m worth no one’s respect.”

“I’m here with an offer from Stark Industries to purchase Stane International,” I say again. Obadiah looks at me skeptically as I continue. “The potential acquisition is outlined in great detail, I wrote it myself, including how the $220 million Stark Industries is offering would be dispensed to cover your debts and resume your research. Presently, Mr. Stark would like your attention on the Unity Project, his current focus on arc reactor technology and clean, sustainable energy, work directly with the Tesseract.” I hand him the packet of papers and step back. “I’ll leave the proposal with you, and we’ll await your response.”

“How much of this was your doing?” he asks, holding the papers in his hands but looking at me instead of them, still in disbelief.

“I always knew you would do great things, Obadiah. I think you deserve the chance to do them. If you think this is an offer out of pity or arrogance, you’re greatly mistaken. It took a fair bit of work to get Howard to realize he needs help, and the two of you will do great things together.” I lean towards the door again, anxious to leave his office.

“Maria,” Obadiah stands, the chair screeching below him, but he doesn’t approach me. He searches for words and can’t seem to find them. His breaks eye contact, looking down.

I leave the room, silent on the ride home with Edwin.

[sarissophori]

Forebode, Chapter 3

The shuttle entered the Wayfarer’s hangar bay and set down. The outer doors closed, and atmosphere displaced the vacuum. After undergoing decontamination, Barrens handed the flight recorder to Hornens in engineering, and Farzen gave his xenological sample to Dr. Han for study, glad to get rid of it.

       After a well-earned shower and food ration, Barrens went to C-deck’s rec room to relax, where Varrez and Talgold were also blowing off steam.

       “Welcome back” Varrez said.

       “Yup” Barrens said. “Pass me a beer, would ya?”

       Varrez nodded, handing him a bottle from a dispenser.

       “Much appreciated.”

       He popped the top and took a swig.

       “So, how was it down there?” Talgold said. “The moon, I mean.”

       “Cold, barren, lifeless” Barrens said. “A regular graveyard.”

       “That bad?” Talgold said. “I only ask because I wanted to go with the next away team, when Captain Hindel schedules it.”

       “It’s your typical dirtball, kid. What do you expect it to be?” Barrens said. “And that wreck? Jesus.”

       “We heard some of the crew talking about it” Varrez said. “Must’ve been worse actually being in it, though.”

       Barrens sighed, then took another swig. “Either of you two done any salvage before?”

       Varrez and Talgold shook their heads.

       “Well, when I’m not ordering part-time colonials around” he said. “I’m supervising recovery missions for the company. My first salvage was a medium-sized freighter that went missing in the Orion Traverse a few years ago. There was a crack in its radioactive shielding, so the crew abandoned it. By the time we got there, it’d been free-floating for a month; no power, not even auxiliary; the whole ship was pitch-black, and it was only me and two other guys to scout the whole ship, level by level.”

       He took a third swig.

       “Of course, you don’t really expect anything to happen to you. Not usually. Just a quick check for hull integrity, personal affects, logs, whatever else the company wants, and you’re out before the tugs haul it off; but there’s always something about being alone in a corridor, surrounded by the blackest darkness you’ll ever see, in the middle of space, with only one tiny little light.”

       He finished his beer and lobbed it in the trash, the noise surprisingly jarring.

       “This was different, though.”

       “How so?” Varrez said.

       “Has the captain told you guys anything yet?”

       “We’ve heard things in passing from the bridge” Talgold said. “But they’ve been pretty hush-hush about it.”

       “Without saying too much, then” Barrens said. “Things looked like they took a very bad turn before the end, especially in the lab. There was a…growth, or something, completely calcified, probably since the crash.”

       “A growth?” Talgold said.

       “If that’s what it was. Dr. Han’s got a little piece of it to play with, so maybe he’ll figure out whatever the hell it is.”

       Varrez and Talgold exchanged glances.

       “Is it—?”

       “Before you ask” Barrens said. “I don’t know anything about it. You got questions? Save’em for the captain or wait for the results.”

       “But what if there’s—?”

       “Go. Ask. The. Captain. I’ve probably said too much as it is. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna grab another beer, then I’m gonna go to bed. Later.”

       Barrens swiped another beer and promptly left, turning a sharp right at the bulkhead for the terminus, his boots thudding on the grating. Varrez and Talgold stared at the door as it closed, feeling suddenly uneasy.

       “What was that all about?” Varrez said.

       Talgold shrugged, and the two of them sat there for a long time without a word before returning, in uneasy thought, to their stations.

Up in A-deck, Dr. Han was performing several tests on his specimen from the Wanderer when Dr. Walsh entered, standing by the door frame.

       “Afternoon.”

       “Is it already?” Han said, not breaking his focus.

       “That’s what the clock says. Hard to tell otherwise.”

       “No kidding.”

       Han tapped at a few icons on his tablet, transferring them to his main console.

       “What brings you by?”

       “Hindel informed me we have a foreign specimen onboard” Walsh said. “As senior medical officer, I thought it prudent to stop in and see it for myself.”

       “Can’t admit it’s for your own curiosity, can you?” Han said, his attention now on the console itself.

       Walsh stepped forward, approaching the work area to glimpse, at a respectful distance, over the shoulder of his colleague, seeing the many tiny fragments sealed off in pressurized containers, others undergoing a variety of testing.

       “Is this it?”

       “That’s it” Han said. “Not much to look at really.”

       “Anything interesting?”

       Han turned his eyes to his tablet again.

       “Aside from being organic and carbon-based, most of the other tests are still too early for anything conclusive.”

       “Is there a chance of contagion?”

       “I don’t think so, considering XH-Ld’s environment, but better safe than sorry.”

       “The cornerstone of our professions” Walsh said, looking on, then furrowing his brow.

       “Where was this found, exactly?”

       “I’m not sure” Han said. “Near the crash, I think. Why?”

       “Curious” Walsh said. “I’ll let you get back to your work then.”

       Han nodded. “Drop in anytime.”

 Captain Hindel was sitting at her desk in her quarters when the door chime rang.

       “Enter.”

       Dr. Walsh stepped in, hands pressed at his back.

       “I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”

       “Just making arrangements for the next away team” Hindel said. “What can I do for you, doctor?”

       “I would like to ask you something” Walsh said. “The, um, specimen; was it found on or near the ship?”

       “It was found onboard” Hindel said.

       “Where?”

       “In the laboratory, covering up a chunk of it, too. We think they had it contained as a sample, until it broke out and grew after the crash.”

       “So, it grows and then…just fossilizes? In supposedly its native atmosphere?”

       Hindel shrugged. “I don’t know why you’re asking me. Dr. Han’s the go-to guy for anything xeno-related.”

       “I was already with him” Walsh said. “He says his tests are still too early to prove anything definitive.”

       “Then I don’t know what to tell you” Hindel said. “How about you tell me what it is you’re really concerned with?”

       “That’s just it, I don’t know what my concern is” Walsh said. “Only that I have it, and that I feel somewhat foolish for it being based solely on a feeling I can’t shake.”

       Hindel smiled. “Join the club. We’ve all been a little jittery since we got here; I’m sure nerves are most of it. We’re a new crew, and this is a first assignment for most of us. Hell, this ship is my first command. When you say you’ve got the jitters on a hunch, I know what you mean –none better.”

       “Yes, well, I appreciate your confidence” Walsh said.

       “Do you think we need stricter quarantine protocols?” Hindel said.

       “No, I’m sure the ones we have are fine” Walsh said. “I guess I just needed to have my vague premonitions noted, is all.”

       “Consider them noted” Hindel said. “Anything else on your mind?”

       “No, captain, not at the moment. But thank you for lending me your ear.”

       Walsh turned to leave.

       “Dr. Walsh?”

       He stopped and turned.

       “I like it when my medical officers come to me with their concerns, no matter how vague. If you have any more, please let me know.”

       “Of course, captain, and again, thank you.”

       Walsh left, and the doors closed. Hindel returned to her away team roster and a few of her more mundane tasks, including writing another log for her superiors:

 < Log 2

  Hindel, Laura A. manual report

  Mission time: 4,504 .15.07 hours

  USC Wanderer discovered on XH-Ld at 15 degrees lt., 45 degrees lg. of north

  hemisphere. Ship destroyed beyond short-term salvage. No surviving crew found;

  one body identified, buried. Flight recorder recovered. Found xeno-morphic anomaly

  onboard, see attachment 1. HUD feeds from SAR team attachment 2. Until further

  notified, proceeding with secondary mission objectives.

  (attachment 1)

  (attachment 2) >

 Another chime rang, this time on her console. She tapped on the icon.

       “Captain’s quarters.”

       “It’s Hornens, ma’am. I’m calling to update you about the recorder.”

       “Go ahead.”

       “Yeah, here’s the thing about putting it in an escape pod” Hornens said. “By removing it from the ship, it survives the crash. However, it still got knocked around a bit on landing. Now, because it was kept airtight it was spared corrosion, but a lot of data got corrupted anyway, and it’s gonna take a little while to clean up.”

       “How long?”

       “Hours, maybe” Hornens said. “And that’s with me and Mason working at it around the clock.”

       “If you don’t have anything more important to do, I request that you make this a top priority.”

       “Can do” Hornens said. “I’ll give you another update when we’ve got something, Hornens out.”

       The icon clicked off.

       Hindel went back to her away team roster and stared at it, not overthinking, but not blanking out; her mind was in a hazy area between, where intuition was allowed to creep in and make suggestions of its own. After a moment of hesitating on it, she opened a com-link to Sergeant Barrens.

       “Barrens reporting.”

       “Sergeant, I want you going down with the next away team.”

       “Understood” he said. “You expecting trouble? I thought this one was science only.”

       “Not your whole team, just you” Hindel said.

       “This is an unknown, unexplored world; I don’t anticipate trouble, but if something does happen, I want someone down there who knows what to do in a survival situation.”

       “I hear you, ma’am.”

       “Good, Hindel out.”

 The captain had her next team signed up and ready: geologist Dr. Varrez, xeno-specialist Dr. Han, and junior medial officer Dr. Talgold were selected. Attaching the sergeant to them as a contingency, she formalized the roster and returned to the bridge to help select the next landing site on XH-Ld. Ellson and Tajmaran already had the Wayfarer making topographical scans of the northern hemisphere. Varrez was also there, watching the images unfold across the main display.

       “I think it’s safe to say from these readings that the whole crust is mostly a silica-quartzite compound” Varrez said. She then pointed to a specific part of the scan.

       “And look here: limestone deposits, lots of them. Maybe it had water on it at some point, at least in these depressions.”

       “You know what they say” Hindel said. “Where there’s water, there’s life.”

       “And where there’s not, there’s fossils” Ellson said.

       “Very funny” Varrez said. “Though not strictly accurate. Actually, several species of bacteria and fungi can live without water for decades, even centuries, or even—”

       “Hey, biology nerd” Ellson said. “Another wave of scans coming in.”

       “Oh, these look promising.”

       Banter and small talk continued through the shift. Hindel caught snippets of it though sat mostly in her own thoughts again, mulling the same tired questions, wondering about the same missing pieces and returning to the same dead ends for answers, nowhere nearer to a sense of closure; where was the Wanderer’s crew? What happened to them? Why did they use one of their escape pods for their flight recorder and not personnel? Was there a mutiny? There was evidence for it, but what was the cause of the crash? Maybe the growth in the lab did have something to do with it. If so, was it a mistake allowing a piece of it onboard her own ship? She sank deeper in, losing track of both time and site results.

       “Captain?” Ellson said, breaking her concentration.

       “Yes, ensign?”

       “We’re getting strange readings not far from the Wanderer, near the highlands by the dune sea.”

       Hindel sat up from her slouching posture. “Bring it up on display.”

       Scans of the area in question pinpointed a location where metallic signatures were pinged; a wide, deep valley currently obscured by dust blowing down from the mountains.

       “Analysis shows traces of titanium-like composites and other unidentified metals” Tajmaran said, overlooking the same stats and furrowing his brow.

       “Very dense, highly structured. They don’t match anything on file.”

       “Any guesses, Dr. Varrez?” Hindel said.

       “Yours are as good as mine” Varrez said. “I’ve never seen anything close to this composition. It looks almost artificial.”

       “Artificial?” Hindel said, catching everyone’s attention. A charge of electricity swept the bridge crew, and they spun around in their chairs.

       “Wait, really?” Komev said.

       “Are you serious?” Ellson said.

       Tajmaran stared at her, intrigued.

       “I can’t make a definite statement either way without having a physical sample to study first, of course” Varrez said, immediately distancing herself from her words.

       “All I meant to say was that these types of atomic structures are rare to find in nature –not unheard of, but rare, and surprising.”

       “Or” Ellson said. “We could be dealing with something intelligently made.”

       “I’d rather rule out all other possibilities before jumping to that conclusion” Varrez said, almost defensively.

       Ellson shrugged.

       “I’m just saying, why beat around the bush like this, when it could be?”

       “Because you’re not the one with a science background?” Komev said.

       “Like I need a degree to tell the difference between a rock and a hunk of stainless steel.”

       “Some people do.”

       Ellson smirked.

       “If I needed one for example, I’d just pull out the lump of coal in your chest where your heart should’ve been, Komev.”

       “Stow it you two” Hindel said. “You’re both flight officers, now act like it.”

       “Yes ma’am” they said, turning to face their stations. Tajmaran shook his head, feeling the mood effectively killed. Varrez wondered if she should have even made the remark at all.

       “That being said” she said at length. “The possibility of it is worth checking out. Are any of the other sites as promising to you, captain?”

       “Well, let’s see” Hindel said, scrolling quickly through the candidates to familiarize herself, unwilling to admit she spent most of their shift staring off.

       “Many of these are geologically promising, but since this one has proved so controversial, it’s probably best to get it out of the way first.”

       “Agreed” Varrez said. “When will the shuttle be ready?”

       “It’s currently on standby” Hindel said. “I’ll give you and your team twenty minutes to prepare. Will that be enough time, doctor?”

       “Plenty” Varrez said. “I’ll get ready right now.”

       Varrez left with an air of excitement, moving swiftly past the pressure doors. Hindel got up and made to leave as well.

       “Ensign Tajmaran, you have the bridge.”

       “Uh, me, ma’am?” he said.

       “That’s what I said.”

       Ellson spun to face her.

       “With all due respect ma’am, I’m the senior flight officer.”

       “You are” Hindel said. “But neither you or Komev were becoming of your ranks, and that pissed me off; ergo, Ensign Tajmaran has the bridge.”

       Ellson and Komev glanced at each other. Tajmaran let out a low sigh, drumming his fingers on his console.

       “Oh boy.”

       “I won’t be long” Hindel said. “If you have any trouble, I’ll be in my quarters.”

[libgds]

To be honest, there was a little more to my annoyance with the girls’ constant questions and demands the first night at camp. My resilience is getting better, but it is not 100% and sometimes it still dips. When I got to our site after filling up the water tank, I noticed the brakes took a little more of a push to do the job.  Now last Fall when I had the RV repaired (windshield, quickly drained engine battery, and winterizing), the brakes were hard to depress.  When I got it ready to take to brake place this summer, they worked just fine. With Old Unreliable’s propensity to breakdown as far from home as possible, I could not help but start to spiral on if the brakes were going bad at our furthest point.

I was able to enjoy yesterday since we were staying parked, but today we were driving about an hour around the bay to Peterson Park. I did not sleep worth a darn last night wondering if the brakes would be fine or if I was going to discover a big problem. There was lots of deep breathing and trying to be logical about it by thinking through the obvious reason it took a little more to stop like I suddenly had a full tank of water sloshing around the back to push the RV forward.

I got up a 8am and after getting ready, waited for the girls to get up and going. It was too wet from a night of storms to sit outside, so I had to try to clear a spot at the dinette. I swear their suitcases explode every morning. Making a place to sit while traveling with preteens means moving aside bras and Paw Patrol fruit snacks.

We were not ready to pull out until almost 11am.

I pulled out of our spot and the brake pedal was stiff just like in the Fall My resiliency was probably at10% at most. I could stop, but it just felt like I needed to triple my stopping distance. We were going to dump the water tanks for gas mileage because the sloshing of partially filled water tanks makes handling harder than a full tank. This gave me oh so much time to freak out. I kept trying to throw in positive thoughts with the worst case imaginings like “it is very humid this morning from the rain and that makes brakes weird for a little bit.” This must have been the magic words, because once we pulled out of the dump station, the brakes were acting normally again.

The girls snacked as I white-knuckled even though the scenery was gorgeous as we hugged the coast around the bay. Things were working out, but anxiety does not just dissipate that easily. Now I was worried about looking for a place for lunch that could also accommodate us in the parking lot. Old Unreliable is that size that is just big enough to be unwieldy. Add that once we got going, I now worried about holding other drivers behind me up as a slowed for every curve. Things just came up on me too fast to pull over and before we knew it, we were at our destination.

The one landmark I remembered from last time was a cute goat farm and it is what I used to figure out which of the multiple Peterson Park, Beach, Recreation Area was the one I wanted. I don’t know who Peterson was, but there are too many things named for him.

I was a bit worried when we parked that I had picked the wrong Peterson because we did not pass a goat farm and the park did not look familiar. I was relieved when we found the trailhead down to the beach and that looked exactly as I remembered. Whew.

The water was gorgeous. It was a blue green shade that progressed to a deep blue as you moved from the shore. It looked like the Caribbean Sea instead of Midwestern lake.

Each of us had a bag, since last time I ended up with pounds of fossils in my pockets that made it hard to keep my pants from falling down.

The girls took to fossil hunting right away. I described to them what a Petoskey stone looks like (it is a type of fossilized coral that formed millions of years ago when the Midwest was covered by a shallow sea.) I also told them aboutcrinoids since I had found a lot of those too last time.

Abigail took to it pretty quickly and found some beautiful small stones. Loralie took a little longer to find some. She was also filling her bag with just pretty rocks she found, too. For the first hour, the both made me verify every find. We walked the shore with our head to the ground. It was 2pm when Abigail commented that our bags could not take much more. About half an hour later, Loralie’s bag ripped completely in half.  It was then that I realized that I should have used my reusable bags instead of the thin plastic ones to collect rocks.

We made our way back slowly enjoying the view and water along the way and always finding “just one more” fossil to collect.

There was some regrets expressed as we headed back up the trail with our treasures, but none were left behind.

At the top, we spread things out on a table and caught our breath, retrieved some stronger bags, and the girls went to a playground for a few minutes. It as around 4pm before we had a snack. At this point, none of us had had a proper meal that day. I am an aunt, not a parent so regular feedings are not in my skill set.

I had used Google Maps to get to the park and there were several turns on back country roads lined with orchards.  We now had no signal to get back to the campground. That is the problem with traveling via the cell phone. The Venn diagram of places with no cell signal and places you ant to take an RV are almost completely overlapping.

We retraced the first turn and then I had no clue. I had Abigail watch my bars so she could hit search as soon as we had some. Somehow our simpler route took us straight into one of the little towns I could not park in for lunch. It was better than our guided route and I saw a sign for the highway we had come in on, so we were back on track. My mom has the most amazing built in compass, so I guess I got a little of it, too.

We were back on the coast and I told the girls I would try harder to find a place to stop on the way so we could eat. Then we hit a traffic jam and any hope of stopping was lost as I got stuck in the wrong lane. We just ended back at the campground and I looked up a drive-in Betzie had recommended and found it was a 15 minute walk, so the girls agreed and we started walking the 3/4 mile to Don’s Drive-In.

We did not drive, so we got a picnic table. They had a side called Fabulous Fries (by the carload.) We all wanted fries, so we decided to share that. OMG. I kid you not, it was a takeout bag filled 6+ inches with steak fries. With our sandwiches and real fruit raspberry shakes, we were only able to get the bag down to 3 inches of fries even with this being our first meal of the day at 6:30. So if you ever go, bring twenty of you closest friends before you order fries by the carload because they mean it.

Good thing we had a long walk back to work off those fries.

The girls wanted to visit the beach again before heading into the campground for the night. The firewood delivery never happened, so we had not campfire to look forward to. The water was beautiful and becalming sound of the waves finally brought my anxiety all the way back to zero.

Tomorrow we head for home and I feel fine about the drive.

Fun with Fossils To be honest, there was a little more to my annoyance with the girls' constant questions and demands the first night at camp.

[betsynagler]

Ten Things I Did This Week That Prove I Have Learned Nothing in 50 Years

1. Forgot to move my car and got a street cleaning ticket.

I know, those of you who don't live in New York may not know what this is or why it's embarrassing, but here we have something called alternate side of the street parking, and it's how car owners organize their lives. You know that you'll have to move your car once or twice a week, depending where you park it, and so you must plan for this every time you take your car out – or don’t. Because there have been times I chose not to drive somewhere because I knew I'd have a hell of a time parking when I got home from work at midnight on a Monday — Monday night being the worst in my neighborhood of Tuesday, Wednesday, Tuesday-Thursday, and Monday-Thursday spots — so I decided, instead, to take the subway, even thought it added an hour to my commute (I know I'm lucky to have a decent public transportation option when a lot of people don't, and I do try to use it whenever possible. It's just that when getting to Greenpoint at 5 am can be either a 20 minute car ride or a 1.5-hour odyssey on the train if everything goes according to plan, and these days it rarely does, one does tend to opt for using the fossil fuels. I'm sorry). You also become obsessed with spots. Even when you're walking around like a normal New Yorker, you'll just notice a really juicy one and think, “Ooh, that's a good spot!” After all those nights of driving in circles and scanning the streets while having to keep your eyes propped open because you've already been awake for 16 hours, is it any wonder that your mind becomes trained in this way?

Which is why it's so ridiculous that I was fifteen minutes late to move my car on Wednesday. I mean, I know all the moves — the temporary double park, the fifteen minute car sit (I actually know people who plan to sit in their cars for the full 1.5 hours of street cleaning twice a week), I even have all the technology, deploying the Best Parking app for both lots and spots, setting alerts for this shit on my calendar, texting my husband to ask/remind him to move it when I'm not there (he finds it funny when I say I'm “reminding” him and it's the first time he's heard of it), and the fact that I managed to forget to ask him on this particular Tuesday, but then actually remembered when we got home at 10 pm, despite having had two beet martinis, then made the critical decision to get up at 8 am to move the car before the 9:30 am street clean, instead of doing the desperate night crawl, then completely forgot when I woke up the next day, is just not something that should happen. It's been a few years since I got a ticket for this, which I guess means I'm doing something right, but as someone who's lived in NYC for going on 29 years, and had a car for about half that time, it’s still sad.

2. Ate a lot of cheese and ice cream, even though I'm lactose intolerant.

Because turning 50 sucks, and they are delicious. And because I’m lucky to have a spouse who is very understanding.

3. Forgot to bring my mouse to work at my editing job, then bought a mouse and returned it the same day.

Part one – being that forgetful – sounds like something I shouldn’t really be doing for another ten or 15 years. Part two sounds like something I should have stopped doing in my teens, around the time when I learned how dumb it was to try calling the high school office claiming to be my mother to get back my confiscated Walkman (they didn’t buy it for a second). 

For the record, I took very good care of the mouse. I didn’t even eat while working the way I usually do.

4. Walked into one of those huge maps encased in metal and glass on the subway platform while reading my phone. Again.

I first did this some time in 2018, hitting myself squarely in the forehead. This time, I looked up just as I was about to hit the thing, so I hit it with my hand instead. It still hurt. It still felt stupid. 

I can say for a fact that this isn’t just about phone addiction, because I was reading the New Yorker on my phone at the time, and as a kid, I used to try and read books while walking to and from school. So this is really more about love of reading, or perhaps the use of reading as a means of escape, which I absolutely still do. I feel like maybe that’s somehow less immature than walking into something stationary while checking my Instagram for likes or taking a selfie. (For the record, I never take selfies, unless they’re of me reflected in something interesting, where my reflection is just one element of an attempt at being artsy. So there’s that.)

Yesterday, my hand was hurting and I couldn’t remember why. This is the great thing about being old and immature at the same time.

5. Lost to my husband at ping pong and Asteroids, but I did beat him at foosball.

My degree of skill at playing games that require good reflexes is pretty much the same as always: completely random. I often start off doing surprisingly well, then my opponent gets better as playing goes on, because that’s what’s supposed to happen when you remember how to do something, while, if anything, I get worse, because I lose focus and get distracted. If anything, my attention span has gotten shorter as I’ve gotten older, like most of us, because of how technology encourages that. I can’t get through writing this piece without checking my email and text messages and oh look that’s a notification that it’s my turn in Carcassonne…None of this applies to strategy games, oddly enough, which I do seem to improve at over time. Maybe it’s because I don’t have to use my brain and my body at the same time.

You might think the bigger question is, Why were you playing ping pong, Asteroids and foosball on your birthday (because that’s when we played these games)? But at this point you might not, since it kind of fits in with the whole narrative I’m building here.

6. Drank too much.

When I was younger, drinking too much meant getting sick or getting a hangover (rarely, because I was one of those lucky people who had to drink a lot to get either hungover or throw up. I’ve only been sick from drinking or hungover maybe twice each in my life), or, more likely, making an idiot out of myself. That was pretty much the worst thing that happened to me in my younger drinking years, because while I liked being relieved of my inhibitions, of which I have many because I’m a control freak, I very much don’t enjoy the idea of people noticing that I am relieved of my inhibitions, because I’m a control freak. But I can’t even get to any of those points these days, because now, drinking too much means just getting to the point of my acid reflux acting up, which, sadly, or not, happens after far fewer drinks than any of that other stuff. It’s also cumulative: if I drink four days during the week, I can probably get away with feeling okay on the first or second day, but by the fourth day, the jig is definitely up. Of course, this being the week of my 50th birthday, I went out four nights and drank on all of them, and now I feel pretty crappy. Maybe this doesn’t really count for this list, though, since I’ve only had the acid reflux thing for about five years. My body keeps changing as I get older and I’m constantly having to learn new rules about how it’s going to react to stuff. So it’s not 50 years, but five also does seem long enough to have figured this shit out by now.

7. Spent way too much time applying for something I know I’m not going to get (and may not actually want).

When I was younger, I applied to big writing and screenwriting competitions, the kind that everyone applies to, like the Nicholl Fellowship. I never won anything. Then I started getting more scientific about it, and started at what specific contests looked for, and looking for smaller competitions, like at smaller literary magazines, or competitions only for women, or only for women over 40, and started applying for those. I made it to one quarterfinal, and got a couple of nice rejection letters, and I did get some of my essays published in online magazines. I didn’t stop writing (blogging in particular did give me a small amount of instant gratification so I wasn’t going to quit doing that), but when it came to sending my writing out, I felt like I had better ways to spend my time. One of them was making documentaries — but that, of course, meant applying for grants and festivals. I got a few, and, more importantly, got some finished films out of that process that I was proud of, whereas the screenplays never got made, and so that seemed like progress. Then in the past few years I started trying to change careers and applying for editing and teaching jobs. Out of countless applications over several years, I’ve gotten maybe six interviews, but I’ve learned to streamline the process and only do applications that aren’t crazy complicated — especially because it seems like all of the editing jobs want recent college grads who are willing to work stupid hours for $40K a year and don’t care if they have health insurance.

For some reason, recently, I started adding the screenwriting applications back in. I don’t really know why. Maybe I’m hoping the world is actually changing and that people are now going to be more interested in the stuff I write, which is mostly about women, and I do see more women with writing and directing jobs in TV. But you can’t streamline an application that has 42 questions and requires you to upload a completed screenplay and a video of yourself (those of you who are aspiring screenwriters probably know the application I’m talking about because you also spent an absurd amount of time on it). And the worst part is that I probably spent as much time trying to decide whether or not to apply as I did on the actual application. Because I’m just that good at wasting time. And if I did by some miracle get this thing, I’d have to stand up and pitch my project in front of a room full of people, which is basically my worst nightmare — especially now that I’ve experienced a preview of that in the 12 takes I did of the video, and seen every little thing wrong with my word choice, and that annoying thing I do with my chin, and oh my God why can’t I stop blinking?

8. Repeatedly replayed several conversations I’ve had in the past week in my head, thinking about the stupid things I said and what I should have said instead.

I will point out that I did not do this with every conversation I’ve had in the past week, so, again, progress! But since one of those conversations was a Facebook argument about something political, I’m breaking even on this one at best.

9. Decided to write a blog called “Ten Things I Did This Week That Prove I Have Learned Nothing in 50 Years,” and then only came up with eight.

[lesbianrewrites]

The Martian Chapter 9

*disclaimer* This is a project done for fun, and none of these characters/works belong to me. I do not claim to own any of the material on this page.

This is a Lesbian edit of The Martian by Andy Weir.

Chapters will be posted every day at 2pm EST.

Google doc version can be found here. The chapter can also be found under the cut. Enjoy!

CHAPTER IX

LOG ENTRY: SOL 79 It’s the evening of my 8th day on the road. “Sirius 4” has been a success so far. I’ve fallen into a routine. Every morning I wake up at dawn. First thing I do is check oxygen and CO2 levels. Then I eat a breakfast pack and drink a cup of water. After that, I brush my teeth, using as little water as possible, and shave with an electric razor. The rover has no toilet. We were expected to use our suits’ reclamation systems for that. But they aren’t designed to hold twenty days worth of output. My morning piss goes in a resealable plastic box. When I open it, the rover reeks like a truck-stop men’s room. I could take it outside and let it boil off. But I worked hard to make that water, and the last thing I’m going to do is waste it. I’ll feed it to the Water Reclaimer when I get back. Even more precious is my manure. It’s critical to the potato farm and I’m the only source on Mars. Fortunately, when you spend a lot of time in space, you learn how to shit in a bag. And if you think things are bad after opening the piss box, imagine the smell after I drop anchor. Then I go outside and collect the solar cells. Why didn’t I do it the previous night? Because trying to dismantle and stack solar cells in total fucking darkness isn’t fun. I learned that the hard way. After securing the cells, I come back in, turn on some shitty ‘70’s music, and start driving. I putter along at 25kph, the rover’s top speed. It’s comfortable inside. I wear hastily made cut-offs and a thin shirt while the RTG bakes the interior. When it gets too hot I detach the insulation duct-taped to the hull. When it gets too cold, I tape it back up. I can go almost 2 hours before the battery runs out. I do a quick EVA to swap cables, then I’m back at the wheel for the second half of the day’s drive. The terrain is very flat. The undercarriage of the rover is taller than any of the rocks around here, and the hills are gently-sloping affairs, smoothed by eons of sandstorms. When the other battery runs out, it’s time for another EVA. I pull the solar cells off the roof and lay them on the ground. For the first few sols, I lined them up in a row. Now I plop them wherever, trying to keep them close to the rover out of sheer laziness. Then comes the incredibly dull part of my day. I sit around for 12 hours with nothing to do. And I’m getting sick of this rover. The inside’s the size of a van. That may seem like plenty of room, but try being trapped in a van for 8 days. I look forward to tending my potato farm in the wide open space of the Hab. I’m nostalgic for the Hab. How fucked up is that? I have shitty ‘70’s TV to watch, and a bunch of Poirot novels. But mostly I spend my time thinking about getting to Ares 4. I’ll have to do it someday. How the hell am I going to survive a 3,200km trip in this thing? It’ll probably take 50 days. I’ll need the Water Reclaimer and the Oxygenator, maybe some of the Hab’s main batteries, then a bunch more solar cells to charge everything… where will I put it all? These thoughts pester me throughout the long boring days. Eventually, it gets dark and I get tired. I lay among the food packs, water tanks, extra O2 tank, piles of CO2 filters, box of pee, bags of shit, and personal items. I have a bunch of crew jumpsuits to serve as bedding, along with my blanket and pillow. Basically, I sleep in a pile of junk every night. Speaking of sleep… G’night.LOG ENTRY: SOL 80 By my reckoning, I’m about 100km from Pathfinder. Technically it’s “Carl Sagan Memorial Station.” But with all due respect to Carl, I can call it whatever the hell I want. I’m the Queen of Mars. As I mentioned, it’s been a long, boring drive. And I’m still on the outward leg. But hey, I’m an astronaut. Long-ass trips are my business. Navigation is tricky. The Hab’s nav beacon only reaches 40km, then it’s too faint. I knew that’d be an issue when I was planning this little road trip, so I came up with a brilliant plan that didn’t work. The computer has detailed maps, so I figured I could navigate by landmarks. I was wrong. Turns out you can’t navigate by landmarks if you can’t find any god damned landmarks. Our landing site is at the delta of a long-gone river. If there are any microscopic fossils to be had, it’s a good place to look. Also, the water would have dragged rock and soil samples from thousands of kilometers away. With some digging, we could get a broad geological history. That’s great for science, but it means the Hab’s in a featureless wasteland. I considered making a compass. The rover has plenty of electricity and the med kit has a needle. Only one problem: Mars doesn’t have a magnetic field. So I navigate by Phobos. It whips around Mars so fast it actually rises and sets twice a day, running west to east. It’s isn’t the most accurate system, but it works. Things got easier on Sol 75. I reached a valley with a rise to the west. It had flat ground for easy driving, and I just needed to follow the edge of the hills. I named it “Lewis Valley” after our fearless leader. She’d love it there, geology nerd that she is. Three sols later, Lewis Valley opened into a wide plain. So, again, I was left without references and relied on Phobos to guide me. There’s probably symbolism there. Phobos is the god of fear, and I’m letting it be my guide. Not a good sign. But today, my luck finally changed. After two sols wandering the desert, I found something to navigate by. It was a 5km crater, so small it didn’t even have a listed name. But to me, it was the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Once I had it in sight, I knew exactly where I was. I’m camped near it now, as a matter of fact. I’m finally through the blank areas of the map. Tomorrow, I’ll have the Lighthouse to navigate by, and Hamelin crater later on. I’m in good shape. Now, on to my next task: Sitting around with nothing to do for 12 hours. I better get started!LOG ENTRY: SOL 81 Almost made it to Pathfinder today, but I ran out of juice. Just another 22km to go! An unremarkable drive. Navigation wasn’t a problem. As Lighthouse receded into the distance, the rim of Hamelin Crater came into view. I left Acidalia Planitia behind a long time ago. I’m well into Ares Vallis now. The desert plains are giving way to bumpier terrain, strewn with ejecta that never got buried by sand. It makes driving a chore; I have to pay more attention. Up till now, I’ve been driving right over the rock-strewn landscape. But as I travel further south, the rocks are getting bigger and more plentiful. I have to go around some of them or risk damage to my suspension. The good news is I don’t have to do it for long. Once I get to Pathfinder, I can turn around and go the other way. The weather’s been very good. No discernible wind, no storms. I think I got lucky there. There’s a good chance my rover tracks from the past few sols are intact. I should be able to get back to Lewis Valley just by following them. After setting up the solar panels, I went for a little walk. I never left sight of the rover; the last thing I want to do is get lost on foot. But I couldn’t stomach crawling back into that cramped, smelly rat’s nest. Not right away. It’s a strange feeling. Everywhere I go, I’m the first. Step outside the rover? First person ever to be there! Climb a hill? First person to climb that hill! Kick a rock? That rock hadn’t moved in a million years! I’m the first person to drive long-distance on Mars. The first person to spend more than 31 sols on Mars. The first person to grow crops on Mars. First, first, first! I wasn’t expecting to be first at anything. I was the 5th crewman out of the MDV when we landed, making me the 17th person to set foot on Mars. The egress order had been determined years earlier. A month before launch, we all got tattoos of our “Mars Numbers.” Johanssen almost refused to get her “15” because she was afraid it would hurt. Here’s a woman who had survived the centrifuge, the vomit comet, hard landing drills and 10k runs. A woman who fixed a simulated MDV computer failure while being spun around upside-down. But she was afraid of a tattoo needle. Man, I miss those guys. I’m the first person to be alone on an entire planet. Ok, enough moping. Tomorrow, I’ll be the first person to recover a Mars probe.LOG ENTRY: SOL 82 Victory! I found it! I knew I was in the right area when I spotted Twin Peaks in the distance. The two small hills are under a kilometer from the landing site. Even better, they were on the far side of the site. All I had to do was aim for them until I found the Lander. And there it was! Right where it was supposed to be! Pathfinder’s final stage of descent was a balloon-covered tetrahedron. The balloons absorbed the impact of landing. Once it came to rest, they deflated and the tetrahedron unfolded to reveal the probe. It’s actually two separate components. The Lander itself, and the Sojourner rover. The Lander was immobile, while Sojourner wandered around and got a good look at the local rocks. I’m taking both back with me, but the important part is the Lander. That’s the part that can communicate with Earth. I excitedly stumbled out and rushed to the site. I can’t explain how happy I was. It was a lot of work to get here, and I’d succeeded. The Lander was half buried. With some quick and careful digging, I exposed the bulk of it, though the large tetrahedron and the deflated balloons still lurked below the surface. After a quick search, I found Sojourner. The little fella was only two meters from the Lander. I vaguely remember it was further away when they last saw it. It probably entered a contingency mode and started circling the Lander, trying to communicate. I quickly deposited Sojourner in my rover. It’s small, light, and easily fit in the airlock. The Lander was a different story. I had no hope of getting the whole thing back to the Hab. It was just too big. It was time for me to put on my mechanical engineer hat. The probe was attached to the central panel of the unfolded tetrahedron. The other three sides were each attached with a metal hinge. As anyone at JPL will tell you, probes are delicate things. Weight is a serious concern, so they’re not made to stand up to much punishment. When I took a crowbar to the hinges, they popped right off! Then things got difficult. When I tried to lift the central panel assembly, it didn’t budge. Just like the other three panels, the central panel had deflated balloons underneath it. Over the decades, the balloons had ripped and filled with sand. I could cut off the balloons, but I’d have to dig to get to them. It wouldn’t be hard, it’s just sand. But the other three panels were in the damn way. I quickly realized I didn’t give a crap about the condition of the other panels. I went back to my rover, cut some strips of Hab material, then braided them into a primitive but strong rope. I can’t take credit for it being strong. Thank NASA for that. I just made it rope-shaped. I tied one end to a panel, and the other to the rover. The rover was made for traversing extremely rugged terrain, often at steep angles. It may not be fast, but it has great torque. I towed the panel away like a redneck removing a tree stump. Now I had a place to dig. As I exposed each balloon, I cut it off. The whole task took an hour. Then I hoisted the central panel assembly up and carried it confidently to the rover! At least, that’s what I wanted to do. The damn thing is still heavy as hell. I’m guessing it’s 200kg. Even in Mars gravity that's a bit much. I could carry it around the Hab easily enough, but lifting it while wearing an awkward EVA suit? Out of the question. So I dragged it to the rover. Now for my next feat: Getting it on the roof. The roof was empty at the moment. Even with mostly-full batteries, I had set up the solar cells when I stopped. Why not? Free energy. I’d worked it out in advance. On the way here, two stacks of solar panels occupied the whole roof. On the way back, they would be a single stack. It’s a little more dangerous; they might fall over. The main thing it they’ll be a pain in the ass to stack that high. I can’t just throw a rope over the rover and hoist Pathfinder up the side. I don’t want to break it. I mean, it’s already broken, they lost contact in 1997. But I don’t want to break it more. I came up with a solution, but I’d done enough physical labor for one day, and I was almost out of daylight. Now I’m in the rover, looking at Sojourner. It seems all right. No physical damage on the outside. Doesn’t look like anything got too baked by the sunlight. The dense layer of Mars crap all over it protected it from long-term solar damage. You may think Sojourner isn’t much use to me. It can’t communicate with Earth. Why do I care about it? Because it has a lot of moving parts. If I establish a link with NASA, I can talk to them by holding a page of text up to the Lander’s camera. But how would they talk to me? The only moving parts on the Lander are the high gain antenna (which would have to stay pointed at Earth) and the camera boom. We’d have to come up with a system where NASA could talk by rotating the camera head. It would be painfully slow. But Sojourner has six independent wheels that rotate reasonably fast. It’ll be much easier to communicate with those. If nothing else, I could draw letters on the wheels, and hold a mirror up to its camera. NASA’d figure it out and start spelling things at me. That all assumes I can get the Lander’s radio working at all. Time to turn in. I’ve got a lot of backbreaking physical labor to do tomorrow. I’ll need my rest.LOG ENTRY: SOL 83 Oh god I’m sore. But it’s the only way I could think of to get the Lander safely onto the roof. I built a ramp out of rocks and sand. Just like the ancient Egyptians did. And if there’s one thing Ares Vallis has, it’s rocks! First, I experimented to find out how steep the grade could be. Piling up some rocks near the Lander, I dragged it up the pile, then down again. Then I made it steeper, etc. I figured out I could pull it up a 30 degree grade. Anything more was too risky. I might lose my grip and send the Lander tumbling down the ramp. The roof of the rover is over 2 meters from the ground. So I’d need a ramp almost 4 meters long. I got to work. The first few rocks were easy. Then they started feeling heavier and heavier. Hard physical labor in a spacesuit is murder. Everything’s more effort because you’re lugging 20kg of suit around with you, and your movement is limited. I was panting within 20 minutes. So I cheated. I upped my O2 mixture. It really helped a lot. Probably shouldn’t make that a habit. Also, I didn’t get hot. The suit leaks heat faster than my body could ever generate it. The heating system is what keeps the temperature bearable. My physical labor just meant the suit didn’t have to heat itself as much. After hours of grueling labor, I finally got the ramp made. Nothing more than a pile of rocks against the rover, but it reached the roof. I stomped up and down the ramp first, to make sure it was stable, then I dragged the Lander up. It worked like a charm! I was all smiles as I lashed the Lander in place. I made sure it was firmly secured, and even stacked the solar cells in a big single stack (why waste the ramp?). But then it hit me. The ramp would collapse as I drove away, and the rocks might damage the wheels or undercarriage. I’d have to take the ramp apart to keep that from happening. Ugh. Tearing the ramp down was easier than putting it up. I didn’t need to carefully put each rock in a stable place. I just dropped them wherever. It only took me an hour. And now I’m done! I’ll start heading home tomorrow, with my new 100kg broken radio.

[bharatiyamedia-blog]

Eike Batista, Man Who Misplaced $35 Billion In One 12 months Has Some Recommendation For Elon Musk

http://tinyurl.com/y5mmdqkt Brazilian entrepreneur Elke Batista misplaced a fortune in mining and oil and gasoline industries. Strolling down a busy avenue in Rio de Janeiro one current afternoon, we ran into the Brazilian who’s greatest recognized for shedding $35 billion in a single yr. After initially attempting to deflect questions, he begrudgingly invited us alongside for a lunch that lasted two hours. The person, after all, is Eike Batista, who as soon as famously informed Mexico’s Carlos Slim to be careful as a result of, he mentioned, he was poised to surpass him because the world’s wealthiest individual. Slim has since pale to ninth on the listing, Batista to oblivion. Now, he is staging a comeback. Or attempting to, at the least. He is additionally obtained a lot of concepts for a person on the recent seat proper now that he sees as one thing of a kindred spirit, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and he is fast to spew criticism at these he feels did in his empire. Batista sat on the head of the desk at one in every of his favourite Japanese eating places in Rio, holding courtroom and quizzing companions about Brazil’s ongoing oil bonanza whereas he scribbled calculations on a spot mat. Pinned to his black sport coat was a golden solar, the brand of his erstwhile commodities empire that when made him the world’s eighth-richest individual, and a family identify in Brazil. “Individuals do not even know it is working,” Batista mentioned between bites of shrimp tempura, describing a port he owned that now hundreds large oil tankers sure for China. “It is greater than Manhattan!” Different former ventures are all buzzing alongside below overseas possession, and stay a supply of delight. Then a slight frown got here throughout his face. “Besides the oil.” He was referring to OGX, which went bust below a mountain of debt after an unsuccessful exploration marketing campaign. He blames President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for succumbing to a bout of useful resource nationalism, leaving solely shallow-water scraps for him. Then, with out lacking a beat, he drew parallels to an acquaintance who’s within the type of tight spot he is aware of too properly. “Elon Musk is affected by this proper now,” he mentioned. Like OGX earlier than it, Musk constructed Tesla on the premise of larger gross sales than have been delivered, and the failure despatched shares tumbling. Phrases like “distressed credit score” and “restructuring” entered the dialog. It is the most important decliner within the Nasdaq 100 Index this yr. Whereas variations between the lads are obtrusive — Musk needs his electrical vehicles to interrupt the world’s fossil gasoline habit — the sudden downfall of Batista’s oil firm affords a cautionary story for Tesla buyers. Each have attacked quick sellers with caustic tweets and made market-moving bulletins on social media, then got here below scrutiny from regulators for doing so. (Brazil’s securities fee this week banned Batista from operating publicly-traded firms for seven years and slapped him with a 536-million-real ($132 million) superb.) In addition they regretted having taken their firms public as soon as markets turned towards them, and suffered high-profile employees departures. The 2 have a private relationship. In 2008 Musk traveled to Rio throughout one other tough second, Batista mentioned. A failed rocket launch had put Musk’s house program unsure. In addition they met at Tesla’s manufacturing unit in California, and Musk returned to Rio in 2014 for the World Cup the place Batista assisted along with his social agenda. “I helped him to go to some events.” OGX nonetheless exists below a unique identify as a minor producer, not the large Batista envisioned. Tesla, too, dangers being relegated to a distinct segment participant amid rising competitors from established automobile makers who’re flooding the market with new fashions. Batista’s massive concern for the corporate is the standard — or lack-there-of, he says — of the inside of Tesla vehicles. It is an uncommon perspective. Not even essentially the most bearish Tesla bears are inclined to dwell a lot on the seats. “You’ll be able to select a Mercedes, Audi, or Jaguar which are cheaper than his SUVs, and also you sit in there and see the inside; you’ll be able to’t compete!” mentioned Batista, a former speedboat racer and automobile buff who displayed a Lamborghini in his front room till it was seized. “In case you do not right this, you fall behind.” Batista would not see Tesla bringing down Musk’s wider group of firms the way in which OGX sank his, even when the automobile maker would not endure. In any case, Musk has already altered the course of historical past by forcing the broader auto business to provide electrical vehicles. “He provoked a good looking and big transfer towards change,” Batista mentioned, after which made a comparability to himself. “We’re perfectionists, we’re nation-builders.” The dialog continued the following day at his workplace, a extra modest house than he occupied in his heyday, however nonetheless providing a view of Rio’s iconic Sugarloaf mountain and adorned by trophies from the previous. A surf board as soon as ridden by Gabriel Medina, Brazil’s two-time world champion, rested in a nook. A title belt given to him by a blended martial arts fighter held on his wall, and a espresso desk featured a pair of samurai swords that have been additionally a present. The person who as soon as repeatedly graced Brazil’s entrance pages declined to have his picture taken. He performed movies showcasing the businesses he as soon as owned, then spoke in regards to the 15 “unicorns” he is “breeding in my storage” that can restore him to prominence. One plan entails producing thousands and thousands of tons of calcium phosphate to sequester carbon emissions from energy plant stacks and automobile engines. One other is toothpaste that regenerates enamel, although the tubes he handed across the convention desk have been for now crammed with water. Batista says he is trying ahead, and is untroubled by the previous. “The issue is for folks to grasp that my relation to cash may be very totally different. I did not thoughts breaking my empire,” Batista mentioned, including that he shortly offered his firms on a budget. “You’ll be able to’t let tasks of that scale cease; if it stops for two, 3, four years, generally you’ll be able to’t catch up.” (Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is revealed from a syndicated feed.) 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[theconservativebrief]

Renewable energy is hot. It has incredible momentum, not only in terms of deployment and costs but in terms of public opinion and cultural cachet. To put it simply: Everyone loves renewable energy. It’s cleaner, it’s high-tech, it’s new jobs, it’s the future.

And so more and more big energy customers are demanding the full meal deal: 100 percent renewable energy.

The Sierra Club notes that so far in the US, more than 80 cities, five counties, and two states have committed to 100 percent renewables. Six cities have already hit the target.

The group RE100 tracks 144 private companies across the globe that have committed to 100 percent renewables, including Google, Ikea, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Nike, GM, and, uh, Lego.

The timing of all these targets (and thus their stringency) varies, everywhere from 2020 to 2050, but cumulatively, they are beginning to add up. Even if policymakers never force power utilities to produce renewable energy through mandates, if all the biggest customers demand it, utilities will be mandated to produce it in all but name.

The rapid spread and evident popularity of the 100 percent target has created an alarming situation for power utilities. Suffice to say, while there are some visionary utilities in the country, as an industry, they tend to be extremely small-c conservative.

They do not like the idea of being forced to transition entirely to renewable energy, certainly not in the next 10 to 15 years. For one thing, most of them don’t believe the technology exists to make 100 percent work reliably; they believe that even with lots of storage, variable renewables will need to be balanced out by “dispatchable” power plants like natural gas. For another thing, getting to 100 percent quickly would mean lots of “stranded assets,” i.e., shutting down profitable fossil fuel power plants.

LightRocket via Getty Images

In short, their customers are stampeding in a direction that terrifies them.

The industry’s dilemma is brought home by a recent bit of market research and polling done on behalf of the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group for utilities. It was distributed at a recent meeting of EEI board members and executives and shared with me.

The work was done by the market research firm Maslansky & Partners, which analyzed existing utility messaging, interviewed utility execs and environmentalists, ran a national opinion survey, and did a couple of three-hour sit-downs with “media informed customers” in Minneapolis and Phoenix.

The results are striking. They do a great job of laying out the public opinion landscape on renewables, showing where different groups have advantages and disadvantages.

The takeaway: Renewables are a public opinion juggernaut. Being against them is no longer an option. The industry’s best and only hope is to slow down the stampede a bit (and that’s what they plan to try).

The core of the industry’s dilemma is captured in this slide (on the left is the industry perspective):

EEI

Utilities don’t think it is wise or feasible to go 100 percent renewables. But the public loves it.

And I mean loves it. Check out these numbers from the opinion survey:

In our polarized age, here is something we almost all agree on: Renewable energy is awesome.

Here’s the most striking slide in the presentation:

EEI

In case you don’t feel like squinting, let me draw your attention to the fact that a majority of those surveyed (51 percent) believe that 100 percent renewables is a good idea even if it raises their energy bills by 30 percent.

That is wild. As anyone who’s been in politics a while knows, Americans don’t generally like people raising their bills, much less by a third. A majority that still favors it? That is political dynamite.

Insofar as utilities were in a public relations war over renewables, they’ve lost. They face a tidal wave. So what can they do?

What they can’t do is tell customers why they can’t do it. Customers do not want to hear excuses.

They tested the following message (this is an excerpt, with emphasis added): “Today, we can choose between a balanced energy mix, which provides reliable energy whenever we need it, and 100% renewable energy. But we cannot have both. We also need to consider the costs. … The logistics, resources, and costs would be immense.”

Nope. Customers didn’t want to hear it.

“You could tell what side he was leaning toward,” said one Phoenix focus-group participant. “He offered no solutions. It was just problem, problem, problem.”

“I want to hear about how the work would get done,” said a Minneapolis participant. “I don’t want to hear him complain about how much work it will take.”

Other can’t-do arguments drew similar reactions:

EEI

Can’t-do arguments get a company branded as anti-renewables, and that means Bad Guy. After that, customers aren’t listening.

If they want people to keep listening, utilities must begin by convincing them that they are on board with renewables. Thus, the very first piece of advice on “framing the conversation” reads, “Positive, pro-renewable message first … every time.”

An anti-renewables message, even a message that implies anti-renewables, is simply untenable.

That is worth noting. It’s something I’m not sure US climate hawks or political types have entirely internalized. There aren’t many contested political issues on which public opinion is so unequivocally on one side.

So utilities must convince customers that they support renewable energy, first thing, off the bat. (The best way to do that, of the options tested, was telling customers about investments — highlighting the rising level of investment in renewables. Money talks.)

If they can make that key connection, then they can swing the conversation around. Once customers are convinced that utilities are sincere about supporting renewables, they become more open to the message that getting to 100 percent will take some time, that it needs to be done deliberately, and that costs need to be taken into account.

“Given the cost and the complexities of it, it should be done gradually,” one Phoenix respondent said. “Not the next five years, but maybe by the end of our lifetimes,” said another.

The researchers tested the following message (excerpted): “[A balanced energy mix] helps us maintain consistent service for our customers and avoids over-reliance on a single fuel type or technology. This means we’re able to bring our customers increasingly more renewable energy without asking them to compromise on reliability or cost.”

That worked much better. “It seemed like we all have the same goal that we’re working toward,” said a respondent in Minneapolis. “In the meantime, they’ll use a balance to serve us. It’s sensible.”

In fact, in terms of reasons not to rely entirely on renewables, by far the most potent argument was that it would slow the transition to clean energy: “We can get to cleaner energy faster and more effectively if we use a range of sources and technologies.”

The state-of-the-art message for utilities, then, is this: Yes, we want to pursue renewables, but to protect consumers, we want to do it in a way that is “balanced, gradual, affordable, [and] reliable.” That means we should avoid, ahem, “short-term mandates.”

EEI

(How much this message will merely cover for efforts to block legislation and slow the transition depends on the utility.)

So where does this leave us in terms of the messaging landscape?

In the 100 percent renewables debate, there are roughly three camps, at least among the researchers, energy executives, climate advocates, and journalists who pay attention to these sorts of things.

The first, with most activists and advocates, supports 100 percent renewables as a clear, intuitive, and inspiring target, an effective way to rally public support and speed the transition.

The second camp believes that the cheaper, safer way to get to carbon-free electricity is not to rely entirely on renewables but to supplement them with “firm” zero-carbon alternatives like hydro, nuclear, geothermal, biomass, or fossil fuels with carbon capture and sequestration. (See this paper, from a group of MIT researchers, for the best articulation of that argument.) This camp supports the strategy California has taken, which is to mandate 100 percent “zero carbon” rather than “renewable” resources, to leave flexibility.

The third camp, containing many utilities and conservatives, flatly doesn’t believe 100 percent carbon-free electricity is possible anytime soon, and would just as soon not close working fossil fuel power plants before the end of their profitable lives. They would like to continue balancing the rising share of renewables with natural gas.

The first camp has won the public’s heart. Big time. Everyone, even those gritting their teeth, has to signal support for renewables if they want to be taken seriously.

There is some room for the third camp to convince the public that the transition to renewables needs to proceed carefully and “gradually.” That’s the ground advocates and utilities will be fighting on in coming years: not whether to go, but how fast. (There’s a lot of room within “not the next five years, but maybe by the end of our lifetimes.”)

Get used to it. Shutterstock

And there is some room for the second camp to convince the public that the transition to clean energy is best achieved by relying on sources beyond renewable energy, or at least by not locking ourselves into renewables prematurely. One of the survey’s findings is that under a range of questions, the public does not have a strong preference between increasing renewables and reducing carbon emissions. I doubt most people differentiate the two at all — they are vaguely good, environmental-ish things.

Similarly, I doubt the public at large will care much about the distinction between “renewable” and “clean,” which serves as a pretty good argument for the California approach. (The California approach, or at least earlier variants of it, has helped keep existing nuclear plants running in Illinois and New York.)

But these are implementation details. The decarbonization ship has sailed. Renewable energy is in the vanguard and, at least for now, it appears unstoppable. At this point, it is difficult to imagine what could turn the public against it. (Perhaps a giant wind spill?) The more relevant question is when lawmakers will catch on to renewable energy’s full political potential.

The basic message from the public, if I could pull together all the strands of the research, is this: We want clean, modern energy, and we’ll pay for it. We’re willing to let experts work out the details, but we don’t want to hear that it can’t be done. Just do it.

Utilities can’t make that sentiment go away, though they can and will try to soften it. In the meantime, in the off-chance that their messaging efforts fail, they’d better get serious about giving customers the clean energy they want.

Original Source -> Utilities have a problem: the public wants 100 percent renewable energy, and quick

via The Conservative Brief

[itbeatsbookmarks]

(Via: Hacker News)

(Disclaimer: I don't own a Tesla. I don't derive any benefits from Tesla referral sales. I don't own any Tesla stock, nor do I derive any income from Tesla's success or failure. I'm convinced the majority of online Tesla commenters are personally invested in [or shorting] $TSLA. I'm also convinced the majority of them are bots. I'm not sure which group annoys me more, the shorts or the whores. It's almost impossible to read anything about the Model 3 that isn't clickbait or doesn't omit information of value to the only people I care about: potential buyers.)

I just drove 2,860 miles cross-country in a Tesla Model 3, setting a new electric Cannonball Run record of 50 hours and 16 minutes. This wasn't a specially prepared press loaner or pre-production employee car; this was one of the first customer-owned cars delivered at the Fremont factory on December 27th, 2017. 

For those gambling on the 3's failure and Tesla's collapse, don't count on it. The Model 3 is delightful, odd, and brilliant—but there is one big, crackling bolt of a caveat.

The issue is not the build quality, nor is it the 15-inch touchscreen, which has absorbed almost all vehicle controls. Instead, it's the Autopilot user interface, which has gone from seamless to kludge overnight.

The good news: The majority of Autopilot UI issues are fixable with an over-the-air (OTA) software update.

The bad news? Until the Autopilot UI is updated, Tesla fans will bend like yogis to make excuses for it, and the $TSLA shorts will exploit it to deter new customers from what is otherwise a wondrous step forward for passenger cars. 

I love this car, but Tesla cannot solve the Autopilot UI problem fast enough.

Let's dive in.

Background

My co-driver was Model 3 owner Dan Zorrilla, a construction consultant and longtime Tesla Model S owner who was kind enough to give me unrestricted access to the car for four days.

Alex Roy

Daniel Zorrilla's Tesla delivery confirmation.

Price

See that $55,000 sticker price? Not quite the $35,000 Elon talked about, which is for a stripped, standard battery version that isn't yet out. That $55,000 is the price of a loaded, rear-wheel drive Model 3 with a larger battery that gets you 310 (EPA-rated) miles of range. 

Is it worth it? I think so. What's the electric alternative at any price? A Chevy Volt? A Bolt? A Nissan Leaf? Be serious.

If you want an premium electric car, Tesla is still the only game in town. Actually, if you want any electric car, unless you've got a charger at home or work where the vehicle can recharge undisturbed for hours, Tesla is the only choice. 

As for cross-shopping against internal combustion cars, it's pointless; you either buy Tesla's point of view regardless of cost, or you don't.

Range & Charging

Tesla claims the Model 3's 75kWh Long Range battery is good for 315 miles. The company also had an odd interaction with the EPA, which they asked to lower the official range rating, from 334 to 310 miles. With a 1,000-pound weight advantage over the S, I wouldn't be surprised if the Model 3 could be hypermiled to 350 or more. I wish knew what the absolute range figure is, but when you're driving cross country for time, it's unwise to drive the battery down to zero, or charge up to 100 percent.

Alex Roy

Investigating Supercharger availability prior to departure.

We stuck with Tesla's proprietary Supercharger network, without which the drive would have been 10-20 hours longer. Optimal charging speed generally occurs when the battery is below 50 percent capacity; above that, speed drops precipitously. Factor in temperatures below 20 degrees for most of the drive, and charging was further slowed. That's because Tesla slows down the charge rate when the cells are too cold "in order to maintain safety and maximum range."

I'll follow up on absolute range as soon as I get another Model 3 for testing.

Alex Roy

Still far cheaper than gas.

One new aspect of electric Cannonballing in a Model 3 was having to pay for charging. Model S and Model X vehicles delivered through December 31st of 2017 come with free Supercharging for the lifetime of the car. With the Model 3 you pay as you go. Our journey cross-country cost $100.95 in electricity. Cannonballing in my record-setting internal-combustion 2000 BMW M5 would have cost about $600 in fuel; it also would have been a little more than twenty hours quicker.

Tesla's Supercharger Network remains the best of breed, but charging speeds still have a ways to go in order to find parity with fossil fuel refilling.

You know what else has a way to go? Facilities at Superchargers, most of which are located near budget hotels and fast-food restaurants. Night-time charging is lonely, and bathroom visits in the winter mean a chilly walk, or ducking behind the transformers. 

Hey, here's a business opportunity: food delivery for Tesla owners at Supercharging stations.

Turo

Owner Daniel Zorrilla with his Model 3 at the Fremont Tesla Delivery Center.

Turo

Zorrilla's Model 3 before our cold weather testing. You're welcome, Elon.

Turo

Dat nose, though. Why so angry?

Exterior Design

The Model 3 is handsome, but not as sexy as the Model S. Who cares? It's a Tesla. Anyone who can't get past the slightly awkward nose is missing out on the most important car since the Ford Model T. Tesla is the first company to successfully define what its idea of our automotive future looks like, and you either buy Tesla's vision or you don't. Again, what's the alternative? It's not a Bolt, and everything else is years away.

Acceleration

In a straight line, the Model 3 is fine. It delivers a bit more than enough linear electric torque to satisfy, making it feel slightly faster than it is. Tesla claims 0-60MPH in 5.1 to 5.6 seconds. A 2018 BMW 3-series hybrid does it 5.9 seconds; a 340i sedan in 4.6.

In an automotive world where power is increasingly commodified, this is all pointless. No one cares. If you're buying a car based on 0-60 times, save up for a nice used 2015 Tesla Model S P90D with Ludicrous Mode. That'll do the deed in 2.6 seconds, smoking nearly every supercar ever made. If you haven't already placed a Model 3 order, 2015 P90D's will probably come off-lease before your Model 3 arrives.

Alex Roy

Model 3 owner Daniel Zorrilla, satisfied with Autopilot's performance. 

Handling

Excellent, but not necessarily fun—which is exactly what you'd expect from a 3,800 pound electric car with a very low center of gravity. It's certainly more fun than a loaded Model S, with an extra thousand pounds that negate its extra power.

Fit & Finish

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that Tesla has been suspiciously stingy with media access to the Model 3. The brief drives at last year's Hawthorne reveal demonstrated nothing other than the car exists; and that it looks pretty good in deliberately poor lighting. The first cars were delivered only to employees and those who appear to be friends of Elon—none of whom shared pictures of the interior or screen interface. Rumors suggested bad news for employees who let journalists into their cars. Jalopnik even put out a public plea for access Tesla wouldn't grant them.

Why the secrecy? The car is terrific.

I've now driven three different Model 3s over six weeks. Two were owned by employees, plus the car Zorrilla and I lived in for just over 50 frigid hours. I would have published my thoughts sooner, but it was unclear whether the employees' cars (or even Zorrilla's car, being one of the first such vehicles delivered) were truly representative. Some have suggested the cars currently being delivered are handmade because the production line is incomplete—or perhaps doesn't even exist.

I still don't know. I also don't care. What I do know is that the infamous panel gaps sticklers obsess over are there, but I wouldn't have noticed them if I wasn't bombarded by Seeking Alpha articles suggesting these are indicative of deeper production flaws, none of which I found.

Alex Roy

Does this bother you? Zorrilla didn't seem to care.

The Model 3 we drove cross country ran perfectly save one exception: an airbag warning light came on three times in the first twenty minutes of our drive before going off and never coming back.

Alex Roy

The early airbag warning, which disappeared, never to return.

Tesla's reliability was an issue at one time, but Consumer Reports now rates the S above average, and predicts the Model 3 will be average. None of this appears to be an issue for the majority of owners who voted Tesla the number-one brand in America for owner satisfaction in 2016 and 2017, ahead of Porsche.

Here's what I found, somewhat to my surprise: Zero squeaks or rattles, even after 2,860 wretched miles of altitude changes, rain, sleet and snow.

My only complaint may or may not be a design flaw: sitting on either side of the car, cold air bled onto my legs from a gap somewhere around the front edge of the front door. This was mildly apparent with the heat on high, and very apparent on low, or off. (Of course, we were driving at high-speed through the coldest winter in recent memory.) Zorrilla didn't feel it as much as I did, but he was wearing three layers on his legs, whereas I only wore two until I bought a blanket halfway through our journey for $10.

I followed up with Tesla about the draft. They said they'd look into it.

Alex Roy

No worse than anything out of FCA. Probably better.

What about touch points? The Model 3 reduces these 90 percent by moving almost all the interior controls to a 15-inch touchscreen. All that remains are the window switches, turn signals, partial wiper controls, the horn, a pair of sliders on the steering wheel, and the overhead hazard switch and lights. We're not in Audi territory in terms of quality, but all were adequate and worked perfectly.

Hinges? Latches? Door handles? They still worked perfectly when we got to NYC. I'm not sure what that proves.

Alex Roy

The infamous Tesla Model 3 car(d) key

Keyless Entry

Instead of a key, Tesla provides two RFID-enabled credit card-sized card keys, and a phone app. The cards unlock the car when held up to the B-pillar—but not if the pillar is covered in salt and ice, apparently. The Tesla phone app can also unlock the car via Bluetooth.

I grew up on traditional keys. I like the ritualized tabletop chi-clink of a metal key and branded fob. I also appreciate the redundancy of the phone/card combination. If this is the future, so be it.

Don't lose those cards, though. Zorrilla told me replacements cost $100. Paying that for a plastic card may sound criminal, but consider that replacement keys for most modern luxury cars often cost far more.

Interior Comfort

Very good. As good as a comparably priced Audi? No, but the the seats were lovely even after 50 hours. I slept reclined in the passenger seat like a baby, without a single ache or pain.

Legroom was surprisingly good. I'm six feet tall, and it's possible for one six-footer to comfortably sit behind another. The high roofline offers more headroom than in an S, allowing one to wear cheap cowboy hats purchased almost anywhere along I-40, I-44, and I-70.

Storage

Interior storage is better than a Model S, with side door pockets and a nice little shelf below the touchscreen designed for two phones with integrated charging docks. The 3's frunk/trunk combo offer just half the storage of the S (15 cubic feet versus 30) but its rear seats also fold down, carrying on the convenience of being able to place a fully inflated twin mattress in the trunk.

Alex Roy

The infamous inflatable twin bed. Works in any Model 3 or S.

Sound System

Very good, and much better than expected. Most people think big bass, more speakers, more woofers, more modes, and more DSP is a good thing. WRONG. Don't be fooled. I own a hi-end audio dealership, so I know what I'm talking about when I tell you that clarity is everything. Electric cars have a much lower noise floor, which means everything sounds better, even at low volume. Elon Musk is allegedly an audiophile, and it shows. Unexpectedly low wind noise is a big help.

Interior Design

The Model 3 is a triumph of industrial design. Forget the naysayers. Ask anyone who isn't a car person, or especially women—a group too often excluded from the conversation, despite its size and disproportionate purchasing power, by an industry yet to have its Weinstein moment—for real perspective. Starting with a clean sheet, Tesla has out-Volvo'ed Volvo, delivering the purest interpretation of Scandinavian design in automotive history. I felt liberated from the tyranny of traditional car dashboards full of knobs and buttons.

I'm not saying I'm opposed to analog controls and traditional dashboards. Quite the opposite. What I am opposed to is overly complicated design in either direction. The best iteration is always the simplest, and traditional car manufacturers have largely blown it in their respective efforts to integrate digital with analog.

Alex Roy

Clean design? The most Scandinavian car interior of all time is American.

I love the size, design, and placement of the 15-inch touchscreen, which feels fixed to the dash by the steel hands of God. Mercedes-Benz engineers should be ashamed of themselves; the $200,000+ G-Wagon's puny display—a joke by comparison—has the structural integrity of overused Legos. It could be pulled off with one had. The Model 3's display seems like it would require a sledgehammer to be dislodged.

Navigation/GPS

Wonderful. In conjunction with Tesla's excellent voice control, it's a revelation. Other manufacturers should weep.

HVAC

I especially loved the HVAC system, which disposes with a century of movable plastic vents that inevitably break, or droop. The Model 3 elegantly substitutes a wide vent above the wooden trim that spans the entire length of the dashboard. The other vents are concealed. An elegant control interface is accessed via that big dashboard display.

It's too bad we kept the heat off for most of the drive, to save power.

Alex Roy

Drag the air icons around, and that's where the air goes. Love. It.

Why hasn't anyone done this before?

It's not all perfection, though, because the Model 3 takes Tesla's war for simplicity off the deep end.

The Bad News: Autopilot User Interface

A lot of people laughed when Tesla put that massive, 17-inch portrait display in the center of the Model S and X. Too big! Too distracting! What if it breaks? I felt the same way, until I drove an S cross country in 2015. Tens of thousands of Tesla miles later, I love it even more.

US News & World Report

The S/X iteration works because, once you get past the loss of most traditional buttons and switches, the user interface strikes just the right balance between analog and digital, and the division (and optional duplication) of information between the displays is terrific. The voice control is terrific. The speedo is dead center.

Most importantly, Autopilot is controlled by a single perfect stalk left of the steering wheel. In conjunction with what remains the only effective situational awareness display in the auto industry—large, clear and mounted dead-center in front of the driver—Autopilot defined state-of-the-art for semi-autonomous driving systems.

This is what the Autopilot control stalk looks like in the S/X:

Alex Roy

Move down once for radar cruise control, twice for Autopilot. Turn the knob to control distance to the vehicle ahead.

To paraphrase Antoine de Saint Exupery, this stalk system is perfect not because there's nothing left to add, but because there's nothing left to take away.

This is what the S Autopilot display looks like, right in front of the drivers face, all the time:

Alex Roy

Tesla Model S Autopilot Situational Awareness Display

The S/X Autopilot display helps the driver understand the system's confidence—what it sees, and what it doesn't—when engaged, which can lead to the driver voluntarily disengaging the system before the system disengages itself. Understanding Autopilot is the key to using it safely; the more information a user has about what the system sees, the easier it is to master. Mastering it is the key to using any semi-autonomous system in a way that feels pleasing.

Here's what it looks like in the cluster:

Alex Roy

A first-generation Model S Autopilot display.

People talk about driving EVs with one pedal, but once you've mastered Autopilot in a Model S or Model X, you can drive it almost all day, in good conditions, with no pedals, keeping the system safely engaged by adjusting its speed and follow distance with your left hand gently on the wheel, left fingers extended onto the stalk.

Here's the Model 3 interior:

Alex Roy

I can totally buy the notion that a transportation appliance doesn't need to display any information directly in front of the driver. Why should it, if "Full Self-Driving"—as Tesla refers to Level 4 Automation—is supposed to arrive during the life cycle of the just-released Model 3?

But the 3 isn't capable of Level 4 today, and no one knows when it will be, so it remains a human-driven car.

As a human-driven car, I could even buy into the idea that the speedometer could be moved to the top left corner of the central display. It's not ideal, but it is in the driver's line of sight.

But the 3 isn't just a human driven car. It comes with Autopilot, and for hundreds of thousands of customers, Autopilot will be their first exposure to what they believe is the world's best semi-autonomous system. Autopilot, along with Tesla's Supercharger Network and its EV powertrains, is key to Tesla's competitive advantage, which erodes a little bit daily.

Unfortunately, the Model 3's Autopilot implementation currently sucks.

The Model 3 was clearly designed for Level 4 at the expense of Autopilot, a problem that will only loom larger the longer it takes Tesla to get to full self-driving.

How long before rivals release semi-autonomous systems as good as or better than Autopilot? Cadillac SuperCruise is the only contender today, but that won't last.

Why is the Model 3's Autopilot such a step backward? Because semi-autonomous driving systems require human interaction. The more complex and capable a semi-autonomous system, the more critical the human-machine interface (HMI).

Check out the 3's Autopilot UI:

Alex Roy

Tesla Autopilot in the Model 3

The Autopilot software is all there, but that perfect UI in the Model S and X is gone.

The situational awareness display is the one thing that can’t be moved off-center without harming the driver’s optimization of Autopilot. And yet, there it is: off-center.

Half the controls previously on the left stalk are now on right stalk. Why? Because the other half are now on the touchscreen, a decision I can only attribute to cost-cutting.

The radar cruise follow distance controls? Now within a secondary menu on the touchscreen. 

Alex Roy

It may seem insignificant, but experienced Autopilot users will notice. I hated it. First-time users are unlikely to adjust this, or even notice they can adjust it. How unfortunate for them. This might be forgivable, as it doesn't harm Autopilot as much as diminish the apparently unintended benefits of the prior UI. The elegance of the old stalk appears not have been a function of Tesla's wisdom, but rather because they sourced it from Mercedes-Benz. The 3's stalk? I don't know where Tesla got it, but it's both cheaper in and less functional.

What isn't forgivable is THIS:

Alex Roy

The Model 3's insane Autopilot speed control positioning.

In the S/X, the radar cruise/Autopilot speed is controlled by tapping the the left-hand stalk up or down. It has detents allowing for one- or five-mph increments.

In the Model 3, the speed control is moved to the screen right below the speedometer. They're not even up/down. They're left/right. And they're limited to 1 mph increments. This sucks. It makes it far more difficult to optimize Autopilot. Instead of tapping the left stalk down all the way a couple of times to drop 10 or 20 mph within the system, one has to repeatedly stab at the 3's screen to achieve the same outcome. The other option is to tap the 3's right stalk up, or tap the brakes, to disengage Autopilot, then reengage it at the desired speed. A decidedly inelegant solution.

Another big problem? A clear transition warning system is essential for safe use of a semi-autonomous driving system, especially in any car that lacks an active driver monitoring system (DMS) like the one in Cadillac SuperCruise—a system Teslas lack.

Tesla's DMS uses both audible and visual alerts if the driver takes his hands off the wheel for too long. Fail to take control and the system will disengage. If it forcibly disengages three times, Autopilot won't reengage until the vehicle is stopped.

The good news? The Model 3 has the same audible alerts as the S/X, which are adequate. The really bad news? Visual alerts are moved to the top left corner of the 3's touchscreen, right on top of the speedometer. This is as close to the driver’s line of sight as Tesla can get given the 3's centrally-mounted display, but it isn't good enough. This marks the second item that cannot be moved to the center display without harming optimization of Autopilot.

Over the course of 50 hours I can't remember how many times I missed the first blue flashing alert, which isn't accompanied by an audible warning, only for Dan to hit me in the arm and say, "Put your hands on the wheel."

The S/X driver display is shrouded and clear; the 3's touchscreen can be hard to read when daytime reflections are an issue. There is no universe in which moving the transition warning system off-center is a good idea, unless its placement is mitigated by warnings that are MUCH bigger and louder than currently found in the Model 3.

The Model 3 treats all of these concerns as afterthoughts—to Autopilot users' peril.

The Good News: How Tesla Can Fix This

As I was writing this, Tesla released an OTA (over-the-air) software update for a problem I was going to spit fire about: the absence of automatic windshield wipers. Why was this necessary? Because Tesla moved the primary wiper controls to the touchscreen. Ugh.

Were this car from any other company, franchise dealer agreements preventing OTA updates would have forced owners back to a dealership. Thank god for OTA.

But Tesla needs to act immediately on the Autopilot issues, because the more Model 3's are delivered in its current iteration, the more people will experience the inferior version.

Maybe if Tesla had been a little less stingy with testing—or even, god forbid, pre-production media access—they might have ironed these issues out sooner.

Alex Roy

Safety idea: if Autopilot is on, make the situational awareness display bigger. 

Alex Roy

See those steering wheel controls? Those should be for Autopilot.

Here's what Tesla must do to solve the Model 3's Autopilot UI problems:

Move the cruise follow distance control to the left scroll button on the steering wheel;

Move the cruise speed control to the right scroll button of the steering wheel;

Double the size of the situational awareness display on the touchscreen;

Double the size of the hands-off warning on the touchscreen;

Make the first hands-off alert audible;

Double the volume of hands of warnings.

I loved the Tesla Model 3, a fantastic and unique milestone in the history of passenger cars. For those who want to own a piece of tomorrow, today, there is nothing else currently on the market. I would happily own one, if only I didn't live in New York City, and also the Autopilot UI was updated. I think it's a bargain even at $55,000, because it's far more than a car. It's a work of art, a concept car come to life, more revelatory than the Model S, and historically even more important.

Without a personal stake in Tesla's success or failure, I can only say that I am rooting for them to meet their production and quality goals. The industry benefits from competition. The better Tesla does, the sooner the shakeout of legacy manufacturers who abandoned true innovation long ago. Cars like the underrated Cadillac CT6 with SuperCruise are evidence that the old world is paying attention. The Porsche Mission-E is coming. Startups like Rimac, Nio and Lucid are pushing the envelope of EV performance and design even further than Tesla.

Love him or hate him, we have Elon to thank, because the Model 3 is evidence that our automotive future is brighter than ever.

Alex Roy is Editor-at-Large for The Drive, Host of The Autonocast, co-host of /DRIVE on NBC Sports and author of The Driver, has set numerous endurance driving records in Europe & the USA in the internal combustion, EV, 3-wheeler & Semi-Autonomous Classes, including the infamous Cannonball Run record. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

[anthonycharlestabone]

Having trouble viewing? View in Browser Monday, October 23, 2017 TOP OF THE MORNING Welcome to Fox News First. Not signed up yet? Click here.   Developing now, Monday, Oct. 23, 2017: Obama-era Russia uranium deal investigation widens Trump warns House Republicans of midterm trouble if they don't pass tax reform Bernie Sanders seeking Senate reelection as independent, feeding 2020 buzz North Korea tension: Air Force reportedly preparing to put B-52 bombers on alert Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl to be sentenced after pleading guilty to desertion   THE LEAD STORY: The House Oversight committee has started investigating an Obama-era deal in which a Russian-backed company bought a uranium firm with mines in the U.S. ... The uranium agreement was reached while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. Some investors in the Russian-backed company, Uranium One, had relationships with former President Bill Clinton and donated to the Clinton Foundation. When asked on "Fox News Sunday" if a criminal investigation would be coming, Rep. Ron DeSantis, a member of the House Oversight Committee, responded: "It could be criminal." He cited statutes of limitations that may limit prosecutions of any crimes that may arise from the 2010 deal. From Fox News Opinion: Media won't touch Russian uranium story tied to Hillary Gregg Jarrett: The Clinton cover-up, brought to you by the same guys who are investigating Trump Judge Jeanine: Obama and Clintons 'sold us out' with Russia uranium 'racketeering operation' TRUMP TO HOUSE GOP - PASS TAX REFORM OR PAY THE PRICE: President Trump has warned House Republicans that voters will not be kind to them if they stand in the way of his push for broad tax reform ... In a conference call Sunday that included Vice President Pence, Trump told the House GOP to approve the Senate's version of the budget framework, which was narrowly passed Thursday night, to pave the route for tax reform. Sources familiar with the phone call told Fox News that Trump warned of big trouble for House Republicans in the approaching midterms if they fail to advance tax reform. House Speaker Paul Ryan on the call told Republicans he hopes to pass a revised version of the Senate bill this week. Fox Business Exclusive: Trump optimistic 'we're going to get our taxes' TUNE IN: Don't miss more Maria Bartiromo's exclusive interview with President Trump on "Mornings with Maria" today at 6 a.m. ET! PREPARED FOR NORTH KOREA: The U.S. Air Force is preparing to place its fleet of nuclear-armed B-52 bombers on 24-hour alert for the first time since 1991 amid escalating tensions with North Korea, the military branch's chief of staff said in a report ... Defense officials denied to Fox News that bombers were ordered to go on 24-hour alert, but Gen. David Goldfein told Defense One it could happen. "This is yet one more step in ensuring that we’re prepared,” Goldfein said. “I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure we’re prepared going forward.” Jimmy Carter willing to go to North Korea on diplomatic mission FEELING THE BERN ONCE AGAIN?  Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said Sunday he'll seek reelection as an independent next year. But his second visit in less than two months to the first-in-the-nation presidential primary state of neighboring New Hampshire is fueling 2020 buzz ...  The 2016 Democratic presidential candidate discussed his Senate reelection in an interview following an appearance in Rollinsford, N.H., small town along the Maine border. Sanders' trip to the critical primary state stirred more speculation that he just might run again for the White House in 2020, especially as he rallies the left wing of the party around a controversial 'Medicare-for-all' bill on Capitol Hill. Hillary Clinton uses obscenity on TV describing reaction to Trump's inaugural speech Maxine Waters wants to 'take out' Trump ARMY DESERTER TO FACE HIS PUNISHMENT: The fate of Bowe Bergdahl rests in a judge's hands now that the Army sergeant has pleaded guilty to endangering his comrades by leaving his post in Afghanistan in 2009 ... Bergdahl faces up to life in prison on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy after pleading guilty to the charges last week. His sentencing starts today at Fort Bragg and is expected to feature dramatic testimony about soldiers and a Navy SEAL badly hurt while they searched for him. Bergdahl was held captive for five years by Taliban allies after leaving his post. Bergdahl: Taliban more 'honest' than US Army Fox News Opinion: Bergdahl deal compromised US national security, Obama should be held accountable Who is Bowe Bergdahl?   THE WEEKEND THAT WAS THE SOCIAL MEDIA PRESIDENT: "I doubt I'd be here if it weren't for social media. There is a fake media out there. I get treated very unfairly by the media ... I have friends that say oh, don't use social media. When I put it out, you put it immediately on your show. The other day I put something out. Two seconds later I'm watching your show, it's up." – President Trump, on "Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo," discussing his frequent use of Twitter. WATCH 'SEINFELD' DOESN'T STAND THE TEST OF TIME: "I'm the first one to say that 'Seinfeld' can't work today because the cell phone would have killed it. It was about people engaging and thoughtfully engaging in minutia ... There were no cell phones in 'Seinfeld.'" – John O'Hurley, best known for playing wacky fashion designer J. Peterman on "Seinfeld," on "Watters' World," talking about why "Seinfeld" would not have worked in today's times. WATCH   MINDING YOUR BUSINESS Target gears up for holidays with free shipping and gifts under $15. J.P. Morgan reaches beyond its branches with new mobile account app. 7 changes to Social Security in 2018   NEW IN FOX NEWS OPINION David Bossie: Conservative Senate candidates ready to take on the establishment in 2018 Does General Kelly feud mean it's time for national service or a draft? The charitable health care racket -- Trump should slap new regulations.    HOLLYWOOD SQUARED Justin Timberlake to headline Super Bowl Halftime Show more than a decade after Janet Jackson 'wardrobe malfunction.' Harvey Weinstein leaves rehab after one week. Kathy Griffin has ugly break with her lawyer over beheaded Trump pic.   DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS? Fossilized teeth dating back 9.7 million years could 'rewrite' human history. PHOTO: 'Shrek' gets a police ticket. The fascinating sex life of Jonathan, the 186-year-old giant tortoise.   STAY TUNED On Fox News: Fox & Friends, 6 a.m. ET: Counselor to President Trump Kellyanne Conway talks about his push for tax reform and the war of words with Rep. Frederica Wilson. Hannity, 9 p.m. ET: Ivanka Trump sits down with Sean for a wide-ranging interview, from tax reform, coverage by an anti-Trump mainstream media and more!   On Fox Business: Mornings with Maria, 6 a.m. ET: From tax reform to health to North Korea, more of Maria's exclusive interview with President Trump. Varney & Company, 9 a.m. ET: Former Reagan economic adviser Art Laffer on the chances of tax reform by the end of the year. Plus, Walking Dead Executive Producer David Alpert dishes on the new season.   On Fox News Radio: The Brian Kilmeade Show, 9 a.m. ET to Noon ET: New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin takes on critics of White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. Howard Kittell, CEO of Andrew Jackson's Hermitage and historian Doug Wead draw parallels between Jackson and Trump. Jason Hall talks about his directorial debut in the new film, Thank You for Your Service.   #OnThisDay 2001: The nation's anthrax scare hits the White House with the discovery of a small concentration of spores at an offsite mail processing center. 1973: President Richard Nixon agrees to turn over White House tape recordings subpoenaed by the Watergate special prosecutor to Judge John J. Sirica. 1963: The Neil Simon comedy Barefoot in the Park, starring Elizabeth Ashley and Robert Redford, opens on Broadway.      Thank you for joining us on Fox News First! Enjoy your day and we'll see you in your inbox first thing Tuesday morning.   Unsubscribe ©2017 Fox News Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY, 10036. Privacy Policy.

[nofomoartworld]

Art F City: L.A. Art Diary Week Four (Everyone Loves Eames, Erotic Art, and More)

Screenprint by Polkela, seen at Co-Lab Gallery.

In his fourth week in Los Angeles, Michael Anthony Farley discovers that there’s not enough to do on weekdays and way too much to do on weekends. Here’s how he spent the weekend. Everyone loves Ray and Charles Eames, and erotic art.

Catch up on Week One, Week Two (and Week Two, Part Two), and Week Three.

Friday 7/14

I am working from a Starbucks in a nondescript strip mall near a Gold Line station in Pasadena. I stand in line for my second coffee, and give my name to the barista, when the man behind me asks “Michael? Michael what?” I turn around and realize I’ve just run into an old buddy from art school in Baltimore who I haven’t seen since we graduated. We chat about how we both ended up in the same suburban California Starbucks, thousands of miles from our hometown.

He moved out here to work in visual effects on films. Now, he’s attending a graduate program at the Art Center College of Design a few blocks away, learning virtual reality skills for the coming boom in demand. He tells me that he, like all the contract artists who work on big blockbusters, is under constant surveillance by the studios to make sure footage doesn’t leak as it did in the X-Men Origins: Wolverine debacle. I immediately start mentally formulating the plot of a William Gibson-esque thriller.

Hopping on the Gold Line back into the city, I transfer to the subway, on my way to the Expo Line—the newest and arguably most-praised piece of L.A.’s odd rail network. It’s irritating that you have to pay for each transfer (bringing the cost of a three-line rail trip to about the same as a Lyft line ride) but otherwise I’m pretty impressed by how much smoother and cleaner L.A.’s trains are than aging East Coast systems. I feel slightly vindicated for my uncommon decision to take public transit when I look down out the window of the elevated train and see untold millions of cars sitting in seemingly endless gridlock. The opening I’m heading to (oddly, the sole art event I could find on a Friday evening) is at The Landing, a gallery about 16 miles Southwest from my starting point. Google Maps tells me the trip will take around an hour and a half by public transit. Not wanting to repeat my usual mistake of showing up too late for L.A.’s early-to-bed art scene, I plan to get there around 6 p.m.

(L-R) Ryan Fenchel, “Sidereal Procession, the Adept in Public”; Don Edler, “Chaise Lounge for Celeste and Unmonumental Table,” 2017 (with John Zane Zappas Ashtray); Gary Knox Bennett, “Pair of Eames Chairs Assemblage,” 1959.

By some strange magic of perfectly-timed transfers, I actually arrive to the opening early. For about half an hour I’m the only one in the gallery, and the staff are shocked that I beat rush hour traffic and found parking. I explain that I took the train, which has an elevated station nearly directly above the gallery.

“Wow. What’s that like? I didn’t know anyone used it!”’

I wouldn’t say the train was packed, but it was far from empty. The opening on the other hand, remains pretty dead for the majority of time I hang around, which is confusing because the show is great and they’ve laid out the most impressive buffet of snacks I have ever seen (another strike of good luck, since my opening/dinner buddy cancelled on me last minute).

Gabrielle Garland

The group show, The Useful and the Decorative, pays tribute to The Landing’s former identity as a design gallery. It’s a collection of art objects that allude to functional designwares from plates to furniture. It’s right up my alley, as I love both painterly surfaces and midcentury modernism—two things that are rarely conflated outside of nonrepresentational painting. Here, though, design classics such as Le Corbusier’s chaise lounge and the much-treasured Eames recliner populate endearingly wonky paintings of interiors by Gabrielle Garland. She’s cleverly balanced expressive brushwork with subjects iconic enough to be legible despite warped perspective. There are no figures in the paintings. Staring into each domestic space, I imagine this is what it must be like to take an ayahuasca trip in one of those immaculate California homes from the pages of Dwell. It occurs to me that’s probably not an uncommon occurrence.

Don Edler, “Anthropocentric Tablet and Chablet Tair,” 2017.

The other highlight of the show is Don Edler’s work, which “fossilizes” contemporary design objects on the verge of obsolescence in hydrocal—iPhones, calculators, credit cards, and so forth. One piece in particular, “Anthropocentric Tablet” reminds me of Michael Jones McKean’s recent dystopic anthropology museum at The Contemporary. In both installations, there’s a sense that the world as we know it will disappear, and our material culture will be a cryptic piece of archeology for another to interpret.

I take the train back Downtown and an old friend from Baltimore, Neale, picks me up at the end of the line to catch up. We’re sitting on his balcony in a particularly picturesque corner of Echo Park when I notice a friend from Berlin has checked in on Instagram a few blocks away. I message my friend, filmmaker Yony Leyser, and find out he’s in town touring his documentary Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution. He invites us to an event at the Tom of Finland Foundation nearby and we decide to walk over.

In the garden of the Tom of Finland house.

As I should’ve come to expect by now, the walk takes far longer than we anticipated and everyone’s already hopping in Ubers by the time we arrive. Tom of Finland’s former home strikes me as surprisingly cutesy (a sentence I never thought I would type). Neale explains, “Navigating L.A. by Google Maps always fucks me up because you zoom in and there are grids within grids and the blocks are huge. It’s like watching Powers of 10.” Despite its Bermuda-Triangle-like navigational challenges, Los Angeles constantly redeems itself with Eames references.

We’re given an address to a secret-ish warehouse venue downtown, where a mini-festival of queer erotic performance art and video screenings is taking place. As soon as we arrive, someone wins a door prize comprised of various dildos. A performer described as “a proudly non-binary artist who prefers to be identified by their LinkedIn profile” begins lip-synching to Alice DeeJay’s 1999 club hit “Better Off Alone” while presenting their anus.

Having spent my day criss-crossing vast distances, I am deliriously tired. We’re being steered to some chill-out installation apparently intended to re-center our sexual qis or realign our erotic chakras or cleanse our auras (or something with crystals?). I’m told there’s no alcohol and I realize I probably can’t get through whatever this is without it. Yony disappears on foot to find an open liquor store. We warn him that after midnight in L.A. is the equivalent of 4 A.M. in any other city, but he persists.

He rounds a dark corner and it’s the last we see of him.

Saturday 7/15

Bodega Vendetta

I wake up on Neale’s couch and walk another deceptively far, scorching hot “10 blocks” to a friend-of-a-friend’s apartment who is a curator. He shows me this drawing by Bodega Vendetta and never have I wished more that a work on paper was an animated GIF.

Over the course of hours, I receive multiple conflicting texts from friends encouraging me to attend different events that all begin around the same time many miles apart. An art magazine release party! An opening in Culver City! An opening an hour away in the opposite direction! A party at a collector’s house! A party at a gallerist’s house! Yony’s screening! A party that’s “the L.A. pop-up of Club Glam”! (I am told that saying something is “The L.A. pop-up of _____” lends it credence, even if it’s a thing that hasn’t actually existed anywhere else.) I think about all the weeknights I’ve spent looking for something (anything) to do here and realize L.A. has the most extreme case of problematic weekend-loading I have ever encountered.

Megan St. Clair “FIRST PLANT,” oil on wood. Houseplant art is alive and well at Co-Lab Gallery.

I settle on attending The Co-Lab Gallery’s closing party with Liz Eldridge because I have heard good things from several friends about the Highland Park institution. Many of my peers in Los Angeles have small but impressive art collections, and a big chunk of those works came from Co-Lab. The gallery functions more like a retail space than a traditional white cube model—it’s jam-packed with art hung salon-style, with tables full of ceramics and racks of prints and other artist-made knick-knacks. This is a display strategy that normally would drive me crazy, but here it works because so much of the art is actually good and the volume allows the gallery to keep prices accessible. There are a handful of paintings priced under $100 that I’m seriously tempted to buy, but remember that figure represents about one week’s worth of necessary Uber rides here. I’m slightly ashamed that I’ve allowed L.A. to add another step in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Anti-gentrification wheat pastes in front of The Co-Lab Gallery.

I’m introduced to gallerist Kristin Hector, who first opened the space in Koreatown seven years ago, but has been in Highland Park for the past three. I ask her why the gallery is closing, and she blurts out “It’s not gentrification backlash! Everyone always assumes that!” (As in many pockets of East L.A., art galleries such as Co-Lab and “hipster” businesses like coffee shops and yoga studios along York Boulevard are frequently targeted by anti-gentrification graffiti.)

She explains that she wants to move into a larger space and shift the focus of the practice. I ask her if the jam-packed hang is indicative of every show or just a “going-out-of-business” sale vibe.

“Oh this is what all of our group shows are like!” she explains, between shouting out unthinkably reasonable prices across the room, “I love so many different aesthetics. It’s fun to see different styles come together—this is a good example,” she gestures to a wall of paintings that alternate between provisional painting, expressionist figuration, and realism, “Always colorful! Always a little ridiculous, and sometimes dark but vibrant!”

Liz and our friend Brittney are enthusiastically flipping through a rack of prints and other works on paper, asking each other for advice. Since wall space is already at a premium in Liz’s sunny Craftsman bungalow, I suggest investing in one painting for the same price as several cheaper pieces. We move around the room, deliberating. We��re both drawn to Julian Tan’s small acrylic paintings on panel. Each is obsessively jam-packed with detail, describing chaotic domestic spaces. (Naturally, as in the Gabrielle Garland paintings from the night before, Eames chairs make cameos. I start to think that if all artists in L.A. have such comfortable and tasteful furniture, it makes sense people become homebodies when they move here from cramped East Coast apartments).

Julian Tan’s cryptically detailed acrylic on wood paintings.

Liz—ever the dramaturg—begins excitedly fabricating narratives for each mise-en-scène: “This is clearly a room of privilege; it’s a kid who doesn’t understand what he has! I feel like this is the teenage fantasy of someone who grows up to be in the alt-right,” gesturing to an interior full of swords, video games, and other boy toys. Then, “Wait, is he making meth in this one? Meth AND an Eames chair?”

The paintings are all hypnotically captivating, but one detail (other than the titular cinematic reference) draws me to “2001 IS ON, LET’S CHILL”. On the coffee table a copy of Haruki Murakami’s “1Q84” is described with a remarkable economy of tiny brush strokes. It’s one of my personal favorite books of the past few years, so I could spot its signature cover anywhere, but Tan’s ability to squeeze so much charmingly shaky detail into a few square millimeters is still impressive. Its inclusion also complicates the “bro-iness” of the other objects in the homes—one of the book’s main plot lines is in essence a feminist revenge tale.

Liz ends up purchasing the piece (and plenty of works on paper too) and we leave ecstatically talking about how good owning art feels. On the way out, we overhear that the gallery’s new reincarnation will actually be as an art rental facility for film sets in North Hollywood, close to Studio City and its endless sound stages. At first we’re disheartened to hear that—Co-Lab seems to have filled a niche position in the city wherein young creative types could actually afford to support their peers. I then remember Mel Chin’s collective GALA Committee, which infiltrated the set dressing of Melrose Place with conceptual artworks. Kristin Hector seems to have a penchant for curating works with sneaky details, and I’m optimistic Co-Lab’s next incarnation might carry that torch.

L.A., after all, owes its cultural gravitas to the intersections of art and spectacle, counterculture and schlock. Who knows what books might show up on the coffee tables of shitty sitcoms and soap operas in the years to come? As we dive ever deeper into this latest battle of the culture wars, tactics like that will only become more vital than the first time around.

Detail from Julian Tan’s “2001 IS ON, LET’S CHILL,” Acrylic on wood.

from Art F City http://ift.tt/2vGAOTi via IFTTT

[cristinajourdanqp]

Solving Your Nature Deficit Disorder in the City: A Tree Grows…Almost Anywhere

Today’s guest post is offered up by Katy Bowman, biomechanist and author of the bestselling Move Your DNA and her recent book, Movement Matters, which examines our sedentary culture, our personal relationship to movement, and some of the global effects of outsourcing movement. I’m happy to welcome a good friend back to Mark’s Daily Apple to share on this topic. Just in time for Earth Day this weekend…

I recently held a couple of events in New York City. A question came up a few times: How can someone who lives and operates their daily life in a big city get the nature they both need and want when they’re unable or ready to change where they live? The answer can help many people in our culture achieve a deeper relationship with nature no matter where they live.

Step 1: Check your vacation.

Although the exact number and distribution of everyone’s vacation days range, if you’re someone who gets vacation time at work, take a good hard look at how you spend it. Do you spend this portion of your life—when you’re (supposedly) under the least amount of obligation—in nature camping or hiking? Start with this. Take seven or eight months to plan the wilderness experience you’ve been wanting. It doesn’t have to be expensive—see if you can borrow or rent camping gear, or share the costs of a campsite with friends. It can also be closer to home than you realize, and there are often organizations that help people connect to nature via public transportation or intercity buses.

Step 2: Check your weekends.

Any nature there? Are you hitting the trails for a day hike or taking the family to the park for a picnic? Is it difficult to get to nature because you’re already scheduled for and immersed in non-nature activities? Figure out why and adjust as possible.

Step 3: Check your time before and after work.

It may not be abundant time, but you can likely find 15-60 minutes at both the beginning and end of your day that are ripe for adjusting. Are you going outside for even 15-minute walks first and last thing? Do you ever step outside (or even look outside!) to gaze at and identify the phase of the moon? Ever get up early to revel in a sunrise, or is it too hard to get up that early? Hint: Going to bed earlier is sleeping in on the other side.

Step 4: Identify the many components of nature.

Although I’d argue that nature is everything, nature as we often think and talk of it—that wild place where we can escape and be free—can be thought of as the sum of many parts. When you say you want more nature, what draws you to it, exactly? A few aspects of nature include:

fresh air

natural light

long distances for viewing

temperature variations

plant interactions

the rhythm of seasons

the speed of the wind

precipitation

wildlife

natural movement

quiet

rest

biophony (the sound of the natural world, as opposed to anthropophony, the sound created by humans)

water

Of course, there are far more parts to nature than this. Once you can recognize them, you can select those that feel most necessary to you. Then you can identify elements of nature you can bring into your home or everyday life, to increase your overall interaction with various parts of nature.

Step 5: Adjust your environment.

If you love interacting with plants in nature but don’t have any on your desk, there’s a gap you can fill immediately, no matter your zip code. If you love the beauty of nature, decorate your windowsills or shelves with rocks and shells, and your table with bouquets of leaves or branches (from your weekend hike!). If you have or work with kids—or even if you don’t—keep baskets holding rocks, fossils, moss, snake skins, antlers, and bones where curious hands can find them easily.

Practice natural movements for exercise, sit on the floor or seats of various heights to use your knees and hips differently, and add rugs with various textures to stimulate bare feet. Lower your thermostat or open the windows more often. This way, you can start interacting with the aspects of nature just outside the walls of your office or home by moving the thermal-regulating parts of your body.

Go without sunglasses more often, starting off early and late in the day, a few minutes at a time, and build up to being able to tolerate natural light. Or walk without an umbrella sometimes and experience a little discomfort (and recognize how exhilarating that can be).

Try to eat locally enough that you’re in touch with when things are growing in your region; get to know which foods are ripe when. Keep some containers of medicinal plants (aloe is an easy one), herbs, or vegetables in your house or on a balcony, or volunteer at a community garden.

Keep a pair of binoculars by your window and become an urban bird watcher. There are more than pigeons out there, and even if there aren’t, pigeons are fascinating to observe.

Put your phone down and turn off your GPS and start navigating by map and then by landmark—skills that you’ll likely call on during your wilderness vacation.

Read books and poetry about nature. What you read helps to form your worldview. What you read is where you’re putting your attention. What ideas are you spending time with?

Step 6: Keep going.

When we have strong tendencies toward all-or-nothing thinking, we forget the value of small transitioning movements. Before you start a marathon, you’ve taken hundreds of smaller steps in small runs. In this same way, you can transition away from a nature deficit through hundreds if not thousands of small steps.

Where the magic happens is, once you take an hour or two to create a nature space on your desk (or wherever you start), you’ll find yourself thinking about how to change your weekend time. Once you decide to schedule your birthday party as a hike instead of a dinner party, you start thinking about how to get a garden started on your kitchen counter. As you adapt to nature, you sort of get pulled towards it. Just keep stepping, and you’ll see more nature appear…even in the heart of the Big Apple.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Which of these ideas has inspired you the most today? Other ideas to add? 

Bio: Katy Bowman is a biomechanist by training and a problem-solver at heart. Her award-winning blog and podcast, Katy Says, reach hundreds of thousands of people every month, and thousands have taken her live classes. Katy is the author of eight books, including the best-selling Move Your DNA and Movement Matters, a collection of essays in which she continues her groundbreaking investigation of the mechanics of our sedentary culture and the profound potential of human movement.