#ive been the middle one since November 2016

[northoftheroad]

Dick Grayson – 80 years of hairstyles

Welcome to my ongoing TED talk about Dick Grayson. This week I’ll be talking about hairstyles. Just because fashion in hairstyles is kind of fun. 

The general hairstyle during the 1940s was short on the sides and back, longer on the top. One common variant was to have the top hair section parted on one side and combed over and slightly back to create a wave. (Wavy hair was in fashion in the 1940s.)

Dick did start with hair like that; longer on top and short side and back. In the very first panels, the top hair falls over his forehead. But he has been adventurous enogh to try out different fashions over the years to come. 

The original Dick Grayson hairdo – short sides, longer on the top.

Detective Comics # 38. By Bill Finger, Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson (1940).

As Robin. Top hair combed back, curls over the forehead. 

When he becomes Robin, the top hair is combed back; a cowlick makes part of the front hair fall in two curls over his forehead.

Detective Comics # 38. By Bill Finger, Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson (1940).

Silver Age/New Look. Parted on the side. 

His hairstyle will look the same for more than two decades. With the Silver age/New Look in Batman (1964), Dick’s hair is more likely to be visibly parted on the side, and sometimes a curl will fall down over the forehead.

Detective Comics # 327. By John Broome, art Carmine Infantino and Jie Giella (1964).

Longer fringe.

At some time in the very late 60s/early 70s, Dick grows a longer fringe that falls over the forehead (isn’t it a bit like the style popularized by The Beatles, you think?). This style will pretty much stay with him in the 70s, 80s and into the 90s.

Batman # 209. By Frank Robbins, art Irv Novick and Joe Giella (1969).

Tales of the Teen Titans # 44 (1984). By Marv Wolfmann and George Pérez, inkers Mike DeCarlo and Dick Giordano. 

Long hair (mid-90s).

A few years in the 90s, Dick has long hair. Sometimes it was drawn as a mullet (short on front and sides, long at the back), sometimes just long all over; the artists don’t seem to be able to agree. It was Mirage, posing as Kory/Starfire, who cut his hair to this look, over Dick’s mild protest, in New Titans vol 1 # 88 (July 1992). 

At times, Dick would have his long hair in a ponytial; funny enough, his hair was always much longer when he had it in a ponytail than when it was loose. It was that way he lost his long hair, in a fight in Nightwing vol 2 # 1 (October, 1996) when a thug cut off the ponytail.

Edit. Brian Stelfreeze, who designed the “fingerstrip look for Dick, wrote in the model sheet: "The "whip" is not all hair but keeps the look streamlined. It also changes Dick's appearance."

New Titans vol 1 # 88. By Marv Wolfman and Lein Wein, art Tom Grummett, Al Vey, Ian Akin and John Statema (1992).

The New Titans vol 1 # 99. By Marv Wolfman, art Tom Grumment and Robert Campanella (1993).

Robin vol 4 # 13. By Chuck Dixon, art John Cleary, Phil Jimenez, Ray Kryssing (1995).

Nightwing vol 1 # 1. By Dennis O’Neil, art Greg Land and Mike Sellers (1995).

Brian Stelfreeze’s model sheet. 

Nightwing vol 2 # 1. By Chuck Dixon, art Scott McDaniel and Karl Story. (1996)

Curtains hairstyle/fringe and some variations (1996 to 2018). 

After that, Dick went for what I think should be classified as the 90s curtains hairstyle, where the top hair is grown into a fringe that often falls over his forehead or even his eyes, and the hair is parted in the middle. It’s a lot like his original Robin hairstyle, to be honest, but his hair is often a bit longer on the sides than when he was a little Robin.

The following decades, he would mostly often stick to the curtain style, though sometimes the hair is parted on the side and he will look more like he did in the 80s. And in the Grayson comic book, the top hair was combed back, but often a few strands would fall forward.

Nightwing vol 2 # 14. By Chuck Dixon, art Scott McDaniel and Karl Story. (1997)

Nightwing vol 2 # 50. By Chuck Dixon, art Greg Land, Jose Marzan Jr and Drew Geraci. (December, 2000)

The Titans # 36. By Jay Faerber and Barry Kitson, art Rich Faber (2002).

Batman # 688. By Judd Winick, art Mark Bagley and Rob Hunter (2009).

Grayson # 15. By Tom King and Tim Seeley, art Mikel Janín. (2016)

Nightwing vol 4 # 10. By Tim Seeley, art Marcus To. (2017)

Batman vol 3 # 55. By Tom King, art Tony S Daniel and Danny Miki.(November, 2018)

Dick as a blonde – more likely than you think

Dick was supposed to be a blonde with a new secret identity, post his death in Forever Evil. Batman Eternal artist Jason Fabok made a Thanksgiving picture with a blonde Dick included (sitting behind Batman). 

However, plans change, and Dick kept his hair black in Grayson. According to the writer James Tynion IV on Twitter, “it mostly got dialed down to him removing a blonde wig on a case in the opening pages of Grayson #1″. 

Grayson # 1. Written by Tim Seeley, art Mikel Janín. 

Dick did, however, occasionally use a blonde wig in the New Teen Titans years, as a disguise.  

New Teen Titans vol 1 # 40. By Marv Wolfman and George Pérez, inker Romeo Tanghal.

Recently shot in the head; buzz cut. 

... And then came that unfortunate event when Dick was shot in the head on September 2019 (which had everyting to do with the story in the Batman title and nothing to do with telling good Nightwing stories). He came out of that with a buzz cut, short all over. Since then, his hairdo has gone through a few variations on short hair, including longer on the top but shaved on the sides. Incidentally, the shaved sides hairstyle for men was in vogue in 2019, so Dick continues to keep up with the fashion trends.

Nightwing v 4 # 50. By Benjamin Percy, art Travis Moore. (December, 2018)

Slightly later after being shot in the head; hair starting to grow out a bit.

Nightwing vol 4 # 57. By Zack Kaplan and Scott Lobdell, art Travis Moore.

Even later after being shot in the head; shaved sides.

Nightwing vol 4 # 63. By Dan Jurgens, art Ronan Cliquet.

And a little bit later again – his hair is a little bit longer. 

Nightwing vol 4 # 69. By Dan Jurgens, art Ronan Cliquet.

Sometime in the future... 

Still, I’m sure we’re all waiting for Dick to become the one and only Nightwing again, and let the hair grow a bit. And actually, we have had several stories where Dick is and looks like his normal self, while the amnesiac story drags out in the current Nightwing and other Bat-titles. 

Doomsday Clock # 9. By Geoff Johns, art Gary Frank (May, 2019.)

Concrete Jungle. By Mark Russel, art Ryan Benjamin and Richard Friend. Batman: Gotham Nights. # 5. (May, 2020).

[ngmatsu]

what's up with the denki stuff in the recent youkaimatsu house attraction? I mean, the youkaimatsu in general, but

(oh my god ive been so distracted from my matsu timeline, i didn’t even notice they put out a new set of stories!!! omg.)

i just read through this and i can type up a summary again! theres actually quite a lot of denki references, and a few other references, some of which i don’t really get. it seems to happen around the time of the last yokai event, from november 2016. [i’m not sure when specifically, though - in that event the matsus are possessed by yokai, but at the end they cast them out. that’s what’s visually represented in the attraction sprite, where their house is covered in seals and karamatsu’s ao-andon blue glow is glowing from inside. that said, at the end of the original yokai event, they say there are still yokai around at the end, so maybe they came back and repossessed the matsus?!? or did this happen in the middle? i dont know.]

tl;dr in these stories, the yokai-possessed matsus travel to a bunch of places and seem to experience time-travel-weirdness, and at one point they directly fly over Akatsuka Village and try to save the denkimatsus while they’re being sacrified. ALSO, some of the little object yokai (tsukumogami) show up in the regular town, including the best one, kankan (ozo’s animate coffee can...)

LONG DESCRIPTION OF THE NEW YOKAIMATSU ATTRACTION STORIES:

STORY 1:

-totoko wanders around with a huge katana, through the yokai-overrun version of Akatsuka District [from the 2016 yokai event], seemingly in a daze, singing “matsuno wa itsumo no basho...” [this is the song that appears in denki, that is apparently magical and used to ward off spirits] she slices at unseen entities [probably yokai] with her katana

- “a few days previous”, in a normal-looking Akatsuka District, totoko’s parents are concerned that she’s sleeping a lot, and wonder why she’s so tired.

-that night iyami is walking down a dark street in a business suit, commenting that the sun went down surprisingly fast. he feels eyes on him... totoko appears, seemingly in a daze, and says “someone is calling”. then an unknown sketchy entity gifts totoko a katana, that is said to cut spirits(ayakashi). iyami sees that there are tsukumogami (the little object yokai) around her and pisses himself in terror. narration says that strange entities/yokai have started appearing in Akatsuka District, and it is said a hunter appeared to hunt them down.

STORY 2:

-back at the matsuno house, the parents are terrorized by the sextuplets, who yokai-possessed, dancing around in their room. totoko shows up at the front door mid-battle and asks the parents if the matsus are home; they say yes they're upstairs, and she runs up... but then leaves, screaming "where did you go you neets?!" - clearly the matsus ran away.

-cut to the yokai matsus flying away, marveling at how fast they can soar, away from the town... to a mountain region, where they see a festival, and humans tied up, seemingly for sacrifice. they want to save the humans - kara shines a bright light but it does nothing; choro flaps his wings, then it rains rocks and dark clouds form, raining on the fire below. they flee when a helicopter shows up. 

-they flee to a place (forest?) that's full of sakura petals and smells like flowers - their appearance seems to suck up the pink of the flowers (the sakura!yokai sprites). they make merry, totty dances, oso drinks, but then suddenly it gets dark again and the flowers disappear. jyushi sees a sunglasses-wearing-man in a nearby park, runs over to talk to him - the man seems to be working on design drawings, and says that jyushi’s cool yokai appearance inspires him. [note: this is coachmatsu, specifically the version who appears in the yakuza au (gokuroumatsu), who designed the yakuza!matsus’s yokai tattoos! this is such a cool reference...]

-moving on, they remark that the seasons seem weird, since right now it’s autumn in Akatsuka District, but then they saw a summery mountain and a springy flowery forest. suddenly they’re in a snowy landscape - it's cold and they seek shelter in a temple, that someone seems to have opened for them. oso starts to get more yokai-y, enraged that they left their beer at home. jyushi says they should probably go home soon. then he seems to pause - "something's burning. the autumn mountain. the base of the mountain..." ichi tells jyushi to go home. [note: i’m not sure what the temple and the “autumn mountain” are. potentially referencing the superpowered samurai event [which has a temple], or some people were saying cyberpunk? (i still havent read that one.)]

STORY 3:

the next morning, back at the matsuno house the sextuplets are fast asleep; matsuyo pulls at their horns and tails but they won't come off. her and matsuzo talk about how theres been a big disaster throughout town with people becoming yokai-possessed, and theyre miserable abt having kids who are neets AND now yokai. dayon shows up at their door (dressed as a shrine maiden) advertising Mr. Flag's exorcism business. they take a leaflet.

later on, kara is "working" [as an ao-andon] while keeping a wary distance from totoko, who's still swinging her sword around. he goes to a dark warehouse somewhere, where two figures are telling ghost stories and blowing out candles. he excitedly waits after the 99th one (dokidoki) but they deliberately don’t say the 100th story, creating a “seal”. karamatsu sadly goes back to akatsuka district - where all the matsus are now being attacked by totoko. their parents look on semi-approvingly (hopeful this will cure their sons.) exorcist!hatabou says he wants to buy her katana. THE END

[end-o-the-line]

Trying to track the Winter Soldier through both canon and history....god help me....

As a follow up to the First Avenger timeline, insomnia brought us here.

February 1945 - Bucky falls from a goddamn train in the Alps. We've gone over this.

Okay, we know Bucky was in Russian/Hydra hands by early '45. The first thing to look into is Operation Paperclip. You may recognize this from TWS, but it was not made up by the MCU, it was a real thing. In May of 1945, a U.S. Army Major Robert B. Staver sent a telegram to the Pentagon, pushing the idea of capturing and using German scientists toward the war effort in the Pacific. They proceeded to do just that, housing captured scientists in southern Bavaria. So smart, keeping the Nazis in Germany and stuff. By November, the project had been renamed Operation Paperclip. For secrecy?

Most of the early objectives of this operation were to keep the German scientists from emigrating to non-’murica friendly countries and continuing their work. Eventually, the US realized it was just fine for them to continue their work, as long as it was for them. By the end of the war, Germans with 'marketable' knowledge were being 'recruited' through ‘orders’ for their families and such to report to Allied bases; the important ones were then moved to ‘secret’ locations (one was code-named DUSTBIN and it was proooobably in the desert near Los Alamos idk) and ‘questioned’; detained for months at a time.

Some of these scientists were later removed and charged for their war-time actions. Since we know Zola was still part of SHIELD when he built the nightmare computer in the 70's, he obviously wasn't one of those charged with the atrocities he committed. None of the scientists were free to roam until at least '47. That leads us to believe that Zola couldn't have gotten his hands back on Bucky for at least 2 years, likely more. It's possible Zola never got his hands on Bucky again, if you take Bucky's memories as more like amalgams and assume he just uses Zola as the face for any and all faceless scientists he encountered. It's not out of the question.

Moving on. Bucky is found by Russians, and since we've been over that too, needless to say it's highly unlikely that many Russians were deserting the Red Army to go be buddies with a mostly Nazi-associated Hydra operation at the end of WW2. The Russians and the Nazis were not friends, mmkay, Russia lost nearly 40 million people during WW2, and only 9 million of those were in combat. But, by the time the first traces of the Cold War come around, Russians in Hydra would definitely be a thing, just like Americans in Hydra would be a thing. Again, the date 1947 comes into play, as that's a pretty accepted start date of the Cold War tensions. But.

But.

Bucky was found by some very lost Russians and brought in, where they took him fuck knows where to pimp his ride. There's not much we can take from the MCU with the meager flashbacks, but there is a very clear timeline from Captain America: Winter Soldier Vol. 2. I'll fill in what I can from the MCU, since that's what this is focusing on, and rely on the comics for what I can’t.

March 23, 1945 - Bucky's KGB file is created by the KGB branch in Dnepropetrovsk Region, USSR, which in 2016 became known as Dnipro Raion, Ukraine. (**Thanks to Morrighan on AO3 for this translation!) Of note is the giant Dnipropetrovsk Automobile Factory, built by German POWs starting in December of 1945, which was planned by the Russians as a secret military machining plant. It wasn't under way at this particular date, but the supplies for such large industry were, and it stands to reason the future Fist of Hydra would have been brought to a place that was intended to become the center of the Soviet secret weapons think tank.

May 7, 1945 - Bucky dies. Like, literally. The comics are clear on this, that when the Russians found him he was frozen solid, and dead. One of them had been on a mission with the Commandos, though, and after seeing Bucky in action, suspected he had the serum just like Steve (he didn't, he was just a badass), so they thaw him like a Thanksgiving turkey to try to get tissue and fluid samples. When he's thawed, he's dead as a doornail. They revive him, though, and even the scientists are kind of shocked it worked, since he did not, in fact, have the serum. What he did have was the memory of how to kick ass, which they learn the hard way haha, so they sedate his ass until they can get all their samples from him. Having said that, MCU canon directly controverts this. MCU Bucky DOES have the serum, that's been made very clear from several of his feats of strength that did not include the metal arm, and he was obviously not flash frozen in the Alps because he remembers shit. So. Do with that dichotomy what you will, just thought I'd share.

May 21, 1945 - After determining that they can't recreate the serum from him, and that he's gonna kick their asses if they let him stay conscious, Bucky is put into cryo-freeze. Even the scientist making the notes is all IDFK about the order when it's given by Karpov, he's like birch is crazy.

In the flashback scene from TWS where Bucky's metal arm is being attached, the doctor uses a handheld electric bone saw.

The patent for the first hand held reciprocating saw was filed on June 27, 1952. Trust me. You do not want to try Googling that, okay, let me take the hit on those visuals. I spontaneously became a vegetarian. Anyway, it's safe to assume the flashback scene of Bucky getting what remained of his arm cut off was at the least 7 years of captivity later. Since Bucky hasn't aged any more than the Capsicle did, it's safe to assume, and mentioned in those pieces of comics canon, that the Russians essentially said *shrug* and stuffed the half-dead American soldier they found in the fridge for a decade like my grandmother used to do to the stuff she canned every summer.

Since the cryo containment they stuff him back into after he has the metal arm was actually in the operating theater, hence already tested and in use (and mobile, apparently? what did they do push him around on a handcart?? that would be the worst job) it's a pretty safe assumption to make that even MCU Bucky was almost immediately put on ice after being captured because he kept trying to kill folks, and kept that way until at least mid to late 1952, if not later.

Personal tangent? If the Russians/Hydra already had a Cryo tank to conveniently throw Bucky into, one can assume they had a use for it, right? My personal theory is that it was for Super Soldiers, meaning someone had at least theorized that a Super Soldier could be frozen. How many fucking Cold War resources do you think were put toward hunting for that fucking Valkyrie in the Arctic?

June 1954 - The date comes from Captain America: Winter Soldier Vol. 2 again, and it gels with the info above about the arm-attachment so I'm going with it. Bucky becomes the 'Fist of Hydra' and is then put back on ice because the Fist of Hydra tries to strangle his doctor. It would be super easy to split his time and say he was with the Russians until the dissolution of the Soviet Union, then was transferred to Hydra's control, but this Fist of Hydra line makes that impossible. So even though the Russians in the form of the KGB had him, they were obviously still working under or with the Hydrapus. Bucky worked for Department X in the Comics, but that's not an MCU thing, so. That's where the MCU and the comics diverge wildly, and make this a migraine-inducing task. Right after they let him out of Cryo, Bucky escapes, but since he's in the middle of the goddamn Soviet wilderness, he doesn't get far.

1959 - The first page of the file Steve receives from Natasha about the Winter Soldier is probably dated 1959, from the KGB branch in Lvovsky Region, USSR, which is the Lviv Region in Ukraine. The area is super varied in landscape and population, which could have served as a proving ground of sorts for a weapon like the Winter Soldier. This can probably be taken as a pretty clear date for when the Winter Soldier officially became 'active' under the direction of the KGB. That's five years from the metal arm being attached to becoming the Asset, during which you can only assume they were working on the base programming for what would later become the wipes.

1964 - This is technically when the Winter Soldier's kills start being counted, if you take Natasha's 'the last 50 years' literally. So I'm going to ignore pre-64 history, pretty much, and assume that the 5-10 years after June 1954 were spent turning Bucky into The Winter Soldier with mindfucking, training, languages, ect. It's important to note that in the comics, Bucky was never tortured, per se. Not physically, I guess, though the defining line of ‘torture’ here is thin. He was already an amnesiac, so they used a combination of sensory deprivation and 'Mental Implantation' experiments to make him loyal to them. You don't make someone loyal by beating the shit out of them, you know? There's also evidence in the movies in the way Bucky reacts to people; he is clearly in charge of the STRIKE team, not taking their orders; he doesn't flinch when Steve touches him, nor does he mind one bit the Wakandan doctors who are hooking him up to IVs, ect. He does not outwardly behave like a man who was subjected to decades of beatings or what have you.

Look at that cupcake, Jesus.

Since MCU canon is sparse with language info, I'll go with Comics canon on this; Bucky has stated that before Hydra, he spoke six languages. Hydra's own notes state that he spoke four. We'll go with Bucky on this one, since he would know amirite. I can't figure out what all 6 were for sure, but there is solid evidence that he spoke fluent English, German, and Russian. The other educated guesses would add Japanese, French, and Italian to that tally. It's also possible his sixth language was cursing, because even Deadpool is shocked at Bucky's language when he goes back in time and meets him during the War. Those are the most likely, simply because they were the relevant ones to the War effort and where he was deployed. There's a panel with War-dressed Bucky speaking Chinese, but wtf dude I mean....he was too young to be sent to China at any point before the War broke out, and there's no reason the War Department would have taught him fucking Chinese in the 40's when he was up to his ass in the European Theater, so that panel might be an alternate reality thing, idk.

After Hydra, he was additionally fluent in Chinese (probably post-Hydra, fuck that panel), Spanish, Polish, Romanian (MCU canon), and he became passable in Kree. At one point when he is Bucky!Cap, Steve seems to be under the impression that Bucky can also understand a dog barking. I don't know if that's a Bucky thing or a Steve thing, but it's apparently canon that Bucky talks to animals like a crazy cat lady enough that Steve thinks he's understanding them. Idfk dude.

Sooo, TL;DR:

WW2-era: English, German, Russian, Japanese, French, Italian (probably), and foul language.

Winter Soldier-era: Chinese, Spanish, Polish, Romanian, Kree, and dog? Probably a lot more, probably ALL the Soviet Bloc languages, tbh, I just don't have hard evidence of them. Ehhhh.....

.....while I at first assumed he was talking about the other Soldiers collectively in this scene, we could also assume that Bucky is telling Steve and Sam all that info about the other Soldiers because he's listing his own stats. So it's possible Bucky himself speaks upwards of 30 languages by the time he breaks free from Hydra. In addition to the Soviet Bloc, if he also spent a lot of time in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, all those different dialects could easily add up to 30+ languages.

Most of the 'training' he was given during that proving ground period would basically have been the Russians field-testing him and being all WOO he already knows this, because Bucky was already a Grade A Badass. They would have updated him on new technology as soon as it was available to him, because he can obviously fly SHIELD fighter jets without blinking an eye and is rather fond of commandeering random flying machines . . . I imagine he’d only be able to steal one of those and then realize he doesn’t know how to work it once.

1959-1964 - I got sidetracked. Anyway. There is some chatter in the fandom that Bucky killed Kennedy. If we take the 50 years thing literally and go with the 1964 date, he probably didn't. If we take it almost literally and infer the 1959 date on his file was from his first field test or mission, he . . . really could have killed Kennedy. I do like to mix my movies, though, and imagine that Bucky was sent to Dallas, met up with Magneto trying to stop him, hai there metal arm, and got wrapped up like a burrito in a chain link fence before he could fire a shot.....

Anyway....despite how well-armed the Winter Soldier is . . . jesus I just re-read this and realized I made a horrible pun but I'm not changing it because it made me laugh, most political assassinations are not usually by gun or knife. You can't have plausible deniability if you shoot someone in the face. That's why the Winter Soldier's reputation is as both assassin AND spy.

So I’m going to highlight some real-world events that you could ascribe to the Winter Soldier through the years, if you are so inclined to write these things in stories. Dates and locations are between the spades, for ease of tracking this sneaky bastard's possible real historical movements. Bold dates are confirmed by MCU canon.

♠ September 11, 1973 - Santiago, Chile ♠ The apparent suicide of Chile’s president, Salvador Allende - with an assault rifle – during the Pinochet coup. Being honest, this was probably the CIA, but still.

♠ early December 1977 - Cairo, Egypt ♠ David Holden - a writer, journalist, broadcaster, and possible CIA agent - was the Chief Foreign Correspondent of the Sunday Times, and is shot in still unexplained circumstances just before the peace talks between Egypt and Israel. With his connections, and possible CIA ties, there is no telling what this guy was up to, or who would have wanted him to stop doing it.

♠ April 17, 1978 - Kabul, Afghanistan ♠ Mir Akbar Khyber, an Afghan intellectual and a leader of the Parcham faction of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), was killed outside his home. I don't know how. His death led to the overthrow of the republic, and to the advent of a socialist regime in Afghanistan.

♠ December 23, 1978 - Phnom Penh, Cambodia ♠ Malcolm Caldwell, a British lecturer in southeast Asian studies and a Marxist writer who was a vocal supporter of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, was killed for no apparent reason other than being a douche. This one's interesting because there was a witness: About 11:00 p.m. that night [Elizabeth] Becker was awakened by the sound of gunfire. She stepped out of her bedroom and saw a heavily armed Cambodian man who pointed a pistol at her. (Sounds familiar right??) She ran back into her room and heard people moving and more gunshots. An hour later a Cambodian came to her bedroom door and told her that Caldwell was dead. . . He had been shot in the chest and the body of a Cambodian man was also in the room, possibly the same man who had pointed the pistol at Becker. Three days later, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and ended Khmer Rouge.

In comics canon, the Winter Soldier goes rogue some time in the 70's - I think, I cannot find it - on a job in NYC after seeing his little sister Rebecca on the street. Hydra tracks him down and pets him on the head and takes him back because he doesn't know why he bolted. After it becomes obvious that he's having issues, he shadows the head of the program (Lukin, the dude from Civil War) for two years as his personal bodyguard, then is put back into cryo. It isn't until after this stretch that the mind wipes start, because his behavior is degrading more and more and he becomes harder to handle. There is a ten year stretch here in the late 70′s to mid 80′s, basically, that this could have gone down.

♠ August 17, 1988 - Bahawalpur, Pakistan ♠ President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan dies in a plane crash, along with 31 others, including a shitload of important politicians I don't want to bother listing. Witnesses report the plane flying erratically, then nosediving and exploding on impact. An investigation concluded it was a 'criminal act of sabotage'. Zia-ul-Haq's most enduring legacy was his indirect involvement and military strategies against the USSR's war in Afghanistan.

♠ November 24, 1989 - Peshawar, Pakistan ♠ Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian Islamist leader - who Wikipedia claims is also known as the Father of Global Jihad - was killed with his two adult sons by a car bomb. In a narrow street across from a gas station, a bomb that had a 50-metre detonation cord led to the sewerage system where the assailant presumably waited. He literally laid in the sewers waiting, that's hardcore. Anyway, Azzam both controlled the jihadi forces who had fought against the USSR in Afghanistan and opposed the extension of the Islamist war to targets in the non-Islamic world. His protégé was a man named Osama bin Laden.

♠ December 16, 1991 - Upstate New York like a goddamn hipster ♠ Yeah, Mission Report and stuff. Howard and Maria Stark are murrrrrderrrrred in a car. (I have actual real meta that circles around this but that’s for a different bout of insomnia I guess).

♠ December 25, 1991 - Siberia, probably, jesus is anyone still reading this? ♠ The USSR is dissolved. It's likely they moved all their Hydra assets into Pierce's control shortly after this, meaning the Soldier became 'the Asset' and moved to DC like a politician. The scenes from Civil War with the other Soldiers going all Mutiny on the Bounty had to have happened somewhere in December of 1991.

♠ 6 April 1994 - Kigali, Rwanda ♠ The plane carrying Rwanda’s and Burundi’s presidents, Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, is shot down as it prepares to land, precipitating the Rwandan Genocide and the First Congo War. That's one hell of a precision strike, if you want chaos.

♠ November 11, 2004 - Gaza Strip, probably? ♠ Yasser Arafat dies in a Paris, France hospital, for reasons that are still not clear but apparently began to develop on October 25, 2004. Many believe he was poisoned by polonium laced into his clothing and belongings, which is why this one is sort of hard to place for a Winter Soldier location. I'm assuming he would have at least accessed the home in Gaza City, Palestine?

♠ July 30, 2005 - a mountain range in southern Sudan near New Kush ♠ John Garang, leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and Sudan’s new vice-president, dies in a helicopter crash after the January 2005 peace agreement, which leads to rioting in Khartoum.

♠ 2009 - Odessa, Ukraine ♠ The Winter Soldier visits Odessa so he can shoot Natasha Romanov in her bikini line, plus an engineer dude or something I'm too lazy to go looking for the story tbh, we've all seen the movie.

♠ May 4, 2012 - just outside nuke range of Manhattan, New York ♠ The Battle of New York. If I was Hydra, I'd have my greatest weapon poised and ready to go kick some alien ass if all else failed, kwim, but not so close as to be exploded. You can't rule the world if someone else has already conquered that shit.

♠ within a week of Monday, Memorial Day, May 26, 2014  - Washington, DC ♠ (brilliant date analysis from Katie_P on AO3!) Nick Fury is almost killed, twice. It's apparent that the Asset's home has moved from Siberia in the 90's to a bank vault in DC at some point in the last . . . IDK, 23 years. . We all saw the chase in the street, but the Soldier takes his shot through one of Steve's walls using thermal imaging on his scope, then plays ultimate frisbee with Captain America for a minute before saying fuck it and going back to the bank where they keep him.

Then some moron doesn't read his instruction manuals thoroughly and sends Captain America's dead best friend to kill him without anticipating the inevitable joint Cap/Asset system error.

Anyway. The Soldier saves Steve's dumb ass one more time, then bolts and heads back to the bank to utterly fuck that shit up, but he doesn't kill anyone there. He specifically says he has enough blood on his hands, and lets them all live. Then he ghosts and doesn't resurface until he smells plums two years later. As settled as he was in Romania, he probably spent at least half a year of those two years there.

That's all I got.

Okay Jesus, so that was a lot of work. Comics mentions that I didn't include? Steve and Bucky knew Wolverine during WW2. They fought together several times. And later, the Winter Soldier helps Wolverine escape from the Weapons X Facility, which Wolverine doesn't find out until much later. I don't know when that is and . . . God help me, I kind of don't care at this point? Also, one panel has Bucky claiming that he killed Hitler. If so, good.

[liberaleffects]

The morning of May 18th, eight high school students and two teachers lost their lives in Santa Fe, Texas, the sixth fatal school shooting of 2018. That same night, a woman was killed on the campus of Mount Zion High School in Jonesboro, Georgia. The students leave behind empty desks and diplomas. They all leave futures and families and friends, a painful collection of what-ifs. Each of their stories is unique, yet they each converge on a painful truth: They died at one of our schools. We said, “Never again.” But again is now. Today, we add the names of the most recent victims to our list of those we’ve lost in school shootings since Columbine. This list serves to keep our collective memory of these victims alive, but it also reminds us of the terrible human cost of gun violence; the terrible cost of insufficient support for troubled young people; and the terrible cost of our national complacency., eight high school students and two teachers lost their lives in Santa Fe, Texas, the sixth fatal school shooting of 2018. That same night, a woman was killed on the campus of Mount Zion High School in Jonesboro, Georgia.

The students leave behind empty desks and diplomas. They all leave futures and families and friends, a painful collection of what-ifs. Each of their stories is unique, yet they each converge on a painful truth: They died at one of our schools.

We said, “Never again.” But again is now. Today, we add the names of the most recent victims to our list of those we’ve lost in school shootings since Columbine. This list serves to keep our collective memory of these victims alive, but it also reminds us of the terrible human cost of gun violence; the terrible cost of insufficient support for troubled young people; and the terrible cost of our national complacency.

2018

May 18 | Mount Zion High School

The name of this victim has not yet been released.

May 18 | Santa Fe High School

Jared Black

Shana Fisher

Christian Riley Garcia

Aaron Kyle McLeod

Glenda Ann Perkins

Angelique Ramirez

Sabika Sheikh

Christopher Jake Stone

Cynthia Tisdale

Kimberly Vaughan

March 20 | Great Mills High School

Jaelynn Willey

March 7 | Huffman High School

Courtlin Arrington

February 14 | Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School

Alyssa Alhadeff

Martin Duque Anguiano

Scott Beigel

Nicholas Dworet

Aaron Feis

Jaime Guttenberg

Chris Hixon

Luke Hoyer

Cara Loughran

Gina Montalto

Joaquin Oliver

Alaina Petty

Meadow Pollack

Helena Ramsay

Alex Schachter

Carmen Schentrup

Peter Wang

January 31 | Lincoln High School

Ralph Kennedy

January 23 | Marshall County High School

Preston Ryan Cope

Bailey Nicole Holt

2017

December 7 | Aztec High School

Francisco "Paco" Fernandez Jr.

Casey Jordan

November 14 | Rancho Tehama Elementary School

Danny Lee Elliot

Barbara Ann Gilsan

Michelle Iris McFadyen

Joseph Edward McHugh III

Diana Lee Steele

September 13 | Freeman High School

Sam Strahan

April 10 | North Park Elementary School

Karen Elaine Smith

Jonathan Martinez

2016

September 28 | Townville Elementary School

Jacob Hall

Jeffrey Osborne

June 8 | Jeremiah Burke High School

Raekwon Brown

February 12 | Independence High School

May Kieu

2015

November 20 | Mojave High School

Taylor Brantley

February 15 | Tenaya Middle School

Benito Aguirre

2014

November 20 | Miami Carol City High School

Khambrel Manning

October 24 | Marysville Pilchuck High School

Shaylee Chuckulnaskit

Andrew Fryberg

Zoe Galasso

Gia Soriano

October 3 | Langston Hughes High School

Kristofer Hunter

August 14 | Saunders Elementary School

John A. Nieves Jr.

Bryant Wilder Jr.

June 10 | Reynolds High School

Emilio Hoffman

April 21 | St. Mary Catholic School

Nina Castro

April 11 | East English Village Preparatory Academy

Darryl Smith

2013

December 13 | Arapahoe High School

Claire Davis

October 21 | Sparks Middle School

Michael Landsberry

August 23 | North Panola High School

Roderick Bobo

January 7 | Apostolic Revival Center Christian School

Kristopher Smith

2012

December 14 | Sandy Hook Elementary School

Charlotte Bacon

Daniel Barden

Rachel D'Avino

Olivia Engel

Josephine Gay

Dawn Hochsprung

Dylan Hockley

Madeleine Hsu

Catherine Hubbard

Chase Kowalski

Nancy Lanza

Jesse Lewis

Ana Márquez-Greene

James Mattioli

Grace McDonnell

Anne Marie Murphy

Emilie Parker

Jack Pinto

Noah Pozner

Caroline Previdi

Jessica Rekos

Avielle Richman

Lauren Rousseau

Mary Sherlach

Victoria Leigh Soto

Benjamin Wheeler

Allison Wyatt

October 19 | Banner Academy South High School

Terrance Wright

March 6 | Episcopal School of Jacksonville

Dale Regan

February 27 | Chardon High School

Demetrius Hewlin

Russell King Jr.

Daniel Parmertor

2011

March 30 | Worthing High School

Tremaine De Ante' Paul

January 5 | Millard South High School

Vicki Kaspar

2010

October 1 | Alisal High School

Jose Daniel Cisneros

February 5 | Discovery Middle School

Todd Brown

2008

November 12 | Dillard High School

Amanda Collette

October 16 | Henry Ford High School

Christopher Walker

August 21 | Central High School

Ryan McDonald

August 14 | Lakota Middle School

Omero Mendez

February 12 | E.O. Green Junior High School

Lawrence "Larry" King

2007

January 3 | Henry Foss High School

Samnang Kok

2006

October 2 | West Nickel Mines School

Naomi Rose Ebersol

Marian Stoltzfus Fisher

Lena Zook Miller

Mary Liz Miller

Anna Mae Stoltzfus

September 29 | Weston High School

John Klang

September 27 | Platte Canyon High School

Emily Keyes

August 30 | Orange High School

Rafael Castillo

August 24 | Essex Elementary School

Linda Lambesis

Mary Alicia Shanks

2005

November 8 | Campbell County High School

Ken Bruce

March 21 | Red Lake Senior High School

Derrick Brun

Dewayne Lewis

Chase Lussier

Daryl Lussier

Neva J. Rogers

Chanelle Rosebear

Michelle Sigana

Thurlene Stillday

Alicia White

March 2 | Cumberland City, Tennessee

Joyce Gregory

2004

February 2 | Ballou High School

James Richardson

2003

September 24 | Rocori High School

Seth Bartell

Aaron Rollins

April 24 | Red Lion Area Junior High School

Eugene Segro

April 14 | John McDonogh High School

Jonathan Williams

2002

February 20 | Washington High School

Joseph Johnson Jr.

2001

March 30 | Lew Wallace High School

Neal Boyd IV

March 5 | Santana High School

Randy Gordon

Bryan Zuckor

2000

May 26 | Lake Worth Middle School

Barry Grunow

February 29 | Buell Elementary School

Kayla Rolland

1999

November 19 | Deming Middle School

Araceli Tena

April 20 | Columbine High School

Cassie Bernall

Steve Curnow

Cory DePooter

Kelly Fleming

Matthew Kechter

Daniel Mauser

Daniel Rohrbough

Rachel Scott

Isaiah Shoels

John Tomlin

Lauren Townsend

Kyle Velasquez

William "Dave" Sanders

[acidwaste]

hey so it seems i’ve forgot to do a l o t of tag memes, and i’m lucky i drafted a big bunch of them! lots of questions overlapped so i did my best to answer in different ways, sorry for the lateness! also @ the people that tagged me here, i wouldn't hesitate to kill for you

@natcaptor / @gayspaced

name: leon or lionel!

nicknames: literally the only nickname I’ve been referred to is “big gay” and like. word!

gender: im pretty sure im a guy, i have been kinda 🤔🤔🤔 abt my gender identity since around november-ish though

star sign: sagittarius!

height: 6’1! i’m told that I’m tall but my uncle is 6’7 so...

time: 3:36pm rn! ive been watching video essays and binging music all afternoon

birthday: december 9th!

favourite bands: animal collective, beach house, camp cope, car seat headrest, death grips, fleet foxes, florence + the machine, gang of youths, glass animals, gorillaz, hop along, iceage, idles, kero kero bonito, mgmt, miike snow, modest mouse, run the jewels, superorganism, the avalanches, the cat empire, the go! team, the mountain goats, the wombats, xiu xiu

favourite solo artists: alex lahey, anderson .paak, ariana grande, billie eilish, bjork, cashmere cat, charli xcx, courtney barnett, cupcakke, d.r.a.m, eric taxxon, frank ocean, gfoty, hatchie, janelle monae, jeff rosenstock, joanna newsom, jorja smith, jpegmafia, kacey musgraves, kali uchis, kendrick lamar, khalid, kimbra, lorde, mac demarco, madeon, mick jenkins, mitski, oneohtrix point never, perfume genius, ravyn lenae, rina sawayama, serpentwithfeet, sophie, st. vincent, sza, vince staples

song stuck in my head: caramelo duro | miguel // kali uchis! its a bop, miguel is one of the few singers that can convincingly make sex jams

last movie i watched: deadpool 2! it was even better than the first, which is a feat in itself ngl

when did i create my blog: december 2016??? i only started using it properly in february last year tho

last thing i googled: “im in my mums car broom broom.” dont @ me

do i have any other blogs: yeah, plenty actually!! i have blogs for aesthetic (@moltenstar), general inspo (@wverns), flight rising (@szarising, kinda inactive?), and overwatch (@blackhardts) tbh the vast majority of my ‘sideblogs’ are just saved urls H

do i get asks: when i say stupid shit like “rung has the ass of a dilf but the dick of a cockroach”

why i chose my url: that one panel where kobd have a vacation at the acid wastes because fuck its finally canon babey!

following: 1,767, which is kinda horrifying!!

followers: 890?? somehow??? thats almost One Whole Thousand and i don't even make content

average hours of sleep: around 6 or 7!! n e v e r more though

lucky number: 43 and 64!!

instruments: i'm too poor to afford music lessons or instruments jsbddsjknfs

what am i wearing: a grey shirt and nothing on my bottom half so my [redacted] is hanging tf out, i should put on some damn clothes

dream job:  oooo uhhh, i’m studying to get an education degree rn because i’d love to teach children (around grade 3-4s preferably because i'm too jittery to handle anyone younger and older kids probs won't listen to me as much as i lack plenty of assertiveness), but!! i’d honestly love to be a musician, one of those underground ones that get lots of critical acclaim

dream trip: one day i wanna gather up some friends and just go on a road trip! idm where we go to, as long as we just have fun and just! adventure!

favourite foods: rare steak, mashed potatoes, eggs, and energy shakes made with like. fruit / cheese / yoghurt / oats / chia seeds ! protein is a large part of my diet

nationality: new zealand, but living in australia

favourite song right now: best part | daniel caesar // h.e.r - gosh i need to re-listen to daniel’s album again, i don’t remember this beautiful song being there and that’s a crime

@damndesi / @novarebel / @luciform-philogynist

APPEARANCE - I am 5'7 or taller - I wear glasses - I have at least one tattoo (but I am getting a tā moko in December, I believe) - I have at least one piercing (planning to get a nose ring, like a bull!) - I have blonde hair - I have brown eyes - I have short hair - My abs are at least somewhat defined (b a r e l y) - I have or had braces

PERSONALITY - I love meeting new people - People tell me I am funny - Helping others with their problems is a big priority of mine - I enjoy physical challenges - I enjoy mental challenges - I am playfully rude to people I know - I started saying something ironically and now I can’t stop saying it - There is something I would change about my personality

ABILITY - I can sing well - I can play an instrument - I can do over 30 pushups without stopping (barely) - I am a fast runner - I can draw well - I have a good memory - I am good at doing math in my head - I can hold my breath underwater for over a minute - I have beaten at least 2 people arm wrestling - I can make at least 3 recipes from scratch - I know how to throw a proper punch

HOBBIES - I enjoy sports - I’m on a sports team at my school or somewhere else - I’m in an orchestra or choir at my school or somewhere else - I have learned a new song in the past week - I exercise at least once a week - I have gone for runs at least once a week in warmer months - I have drawn something in the past month - I enjoy writing - Fandoms are my #1 priority - I do some form of Martial arts

EXPERIENCES - I have had my first kiss - I have had alcohol (tastes like shit) - I have scored a winning point in a sport - I have watched an entire TV series in one sitting - I have been at an overnight event - I have been in a taxi - I have been in the hospital or ER in the past year - I have beaten a video game in one day - I have visited another country - I have been to one of my favorite bands concerts

MY LIFE - I have one person that I consider to be my Best Friend - I live relatively close to my school/work - My parents are still together - I have at least one sibling - I live in the United States - There is snow where I live right now - I have hung out with a friend in the past month - I have a smart phone - I own at least 15 CDs - I share my room with someone

RELATIONSHIPS - I am in a Relationship - I have a crush on a celebrity - I have a crush on someone I know - I’ve been in at least 3 relationships - I have never been in a Relationship - I have admitted my feelings to a crush - I get crushes easily - I have had a crush for over a year - I have been in a relationship for over a year - I have had feelings for a friend

RANDOM - I have break-danced - I know a person named Jamie - I have had a teacher that has a name that is hard to pronounce - I have dyed my hair - I’m listening to a song on repeat right now - I have punched someone in the past week - I know someone who has gone to jail - I have broken a bone (do fractures count?) - I have eaten a waffle today - I know what I want to do in life - I speak at least two languages (not fluently) - I have made a new friend in the past year

@smstransformers

age: 16

birthplace: auckland, nz

current time: 4:19 pm rn!!!

drink you last had: i just skulled half a liter of water whoops

favourite song: jesus etc. | wilco if we're talking abt an all-time favourite

grossest memory: accidentally swallowing a bee when i was seven years old (somehow nothing bad happened?)

horror, yes or no: not unless it’s an incredibly tame horror t b h, my threshold for scariness is very low

in love: i believe so!

jealous of people: lots of times, over really dumb things

love by first sight or should I walk by again: i believe that infatuation can exist at first sight but true love not so much. wish that could happen tho :C

middle name: shane!

siblings: my sister is eight years old, and my brother is seven!

one wish: EZ, make my anxiety disappear, i’d have a much more productive life

song i last sang: jupiter | haiku hands

time i woke up: 7:13, woke up immediately because i usually like to wake at 6:30

underwear colour: blue + purble

vacation destination: auckland / kingston / sydney!

worst habit: not remembering to make my goddamn bed, it looks like garbage

favourite food: mashed potatoes….

zodiac sign: sagittarius !!!

@alyonian

relationship status:

at the moment i’m single! and while being in a relationship sounds brilliant, the last two relationships i was involved in? didn’t work out to say the least, lucky i’m still young

favourite colour:

it’s been emerald green for the longest time but orange seems to be dethroning it at a steady pace

lipstick or chapstick:

i haven’t used chapstick since i was six but i probably should use it again, water is my substitute rn fdghdgh - and i haven’t ever used lipstick in any capacity? so i’d have to go with the former

last song i listened to:

the space traveller’s lullaby | kamasi washington - i’m trying to get through his second album rn (i left off on the second disk yesterday) and while everything he makes is undeniably amazing, it’s? a three hour album? i don’t have the attention span for his spiritual jazz, as great as it is

last movie:

monsters inc is playing on the television right now, i’ll go with that! the animation aged kinda badly but it’s still such a fun movie! sidenote: james p. sullivan? a childhood crush, so this gives me memories

top 3 tv shows/podcasts/comics:

i rarely, if ever, venture into these forms of media but! if i had to answer, i’d say;

unbreakable kimmy schmidt / parks & recreation / luke cage

taz / mbmbam (i havent like. watched a full episode of either but they seem cool,)

tf idw / …………. yeah that’s it, i’ve never read anything else. probably should!

additional favs:

my friends, writing (in theory), listening to video essays, learning music theory + instruments and understanding audio production software

top 3 bands / artists:

HHH okay if i had to limit my choices to just three artists, uh. lorde, the mountain goats, and sophie. i couldnt even fit janelle in i hate th is

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

@alyonian

color(s): light colors are always nice and pleasant, though anything peachy and sandy are the best! orange (specially pastel orange) is like. the best thing

last band t-shirt i bought: usually merchandising is very expensive and i dont have the money to accommodate that, but like. i do recall having a wiggles shirt when i was five. i wore it all the time, shjdjgsksd im sure that counts

last band i saw live: i almost went to splendor in the grass last year with family, which wasn't only cool since i’ve never been out of the state since i immigrated - the festival was in queensland, which is around a two hour flight from victoria - but the lineup was pretty fuckin lit too! the xx, haim, peking duk, tash sultana, future islands, vallis alps, a.b original,, i was p excited! unfortunately my uncle fell ill and so they had to give the tickets to extended family :( otherwise, i haven't been to a single concert in my life

last song i listened to: street fighter mas | kamasi washington - up to this song on the album and i really fuckin dig this! also the video is hypnotizing

last movie i watched: monsters inc is about to finish and up next is monsters university! which like…. honestly, this is an extremely unpopular opinion but, i like it just as much as the original? my opinion might be skewed because i’m a monster [hugger], but i like everything abt the movie! except for the finale of the scare games and the last five minutes of the movie, both were just. dreadful.

last three tv shows i watched: if aggretsuko counts that’s the last series i watched of my own volition, which is a miracle in itself considering that’s legit only the second anime i’ve watched to completion (the first being shirokuma cafe, which i probably need to re-watch). otherwise, the last two shows i had beared witness to were thirteen reasons why and queer eye bc my cousin put them on! that first show i could completely do without but queer eye is iconique

last 3 characters i identified with: grimlock (legit. all of them), urdnot grunt (mass effect) and vector the crocodile (sth), i’m not sure what this says about me other than Big

book(s) i’m currently reading: i’m reading ‘maus’ by art spiegelman at the moment, for the third time i believe? i believe my classmates are supposed to be writing an essay on this next term and shit, this novel is heartbreaking, i haven't been this emotional when reading a book than… ever, really. it’s a recommendation of the highest caliber

@victorion

name: leon / lionel, i picked up the second name because i was in a server with an admin that was also a Leon™

nickname: besides ‘Big Gay’ i also have the nickname ‘lemon lion’ which is! nice!!

zodiac sign: archer man

height: Tall™

language(s) spoken: english / some maori + italian

fav fruit: watermelons (only when in season)

fav scent: the smell of a freezer tbh? it just smells Nice i don’t know how to properly explain it

fav season: spring! the breezes are welcoming without being overbearingly freezing

fav color: ornge,,,,

fav animal: SHARKS + CROCS + FERRETS

coffee, tea or hot chocolate: tea! with some milk tho

average hrs of sleep: too little

fav fictional character: One character?????? uhhhhhhh……. like. biggest cc right now is either idw skids or oz from monster prom

no. of blankets you sleep with: depending on my mood but i’d say the average is like, 3??

fav songs: i quickly whipped up some songs i listen to

fav artists: i came to the realization that i like acts that are considered ‘bad’ like maroon 5/drake/lil yachty etc in specific doses… i wouldn't call them good yet, but! i have no beef and thats good

fav books: remember ‘where the wild things are’??? that shit was like. literal childhood, man.. :happytears: i really need to look for a copy again

@thonany-klieme

name: leon / lionel, interchangeable really

gender: male, im probs an nb guy

star sign: sagittarius!

height: 6’1

sexuality: gay??? im not sure, im mostly attracted to other guys but i have had very brief crushes on girls + nb people? sexuality’s confusing so im gonna just latch to the gaybel (gay label) for now

lock screen image: its the album cover of 1992 deluxe by princess nokia, tho it was “T Hanos” a few days ago since i change it often - my home screen is venom but his torso says ‘fuck machine’

ever had a crush on a teacher: no??

where do you see yourself in ten years: ideally i’m teaching kids math n english, realistically i’m probably going down with the political climate

if you could go anywhere, where would you go: new zealand!! or the netherlands

what was your favorite halloween costume: halloween is not big at all where i live, the only time i tried trick or treating was when i was like 7?? i threw a bedsheet on myself and pretended to be a ghost, though since there were no eyeholes + the sheet was blue, it looked more like i was just a moving lump

last kiss: never had one

have you ever been to las vegas: nah and i dont plan to?? how do you handle regular days of 40C wtf

favorite pair of shoes: i have this pair of jandals that ive worn for a fair bit longer than my other pair of shoes, tho i only wear them in summer + very warm nights

favorite book: ngl its. ‘the very hungry caterpillar’ by eric carle. i just, love it alot and i cant explain w h y

[jessefferguson]

My Double Life: 5 Years And Going

It’s been a LONG TIME since I wrote one of these, so I figured now was as good a point as any.

Words, spoken out loud, are funny. They can mean very different things.

Try this one:

I am still here.

and

I am still here.

Both of those are the best summary I can think of for how I feel today since today, May 21, is the 5th anniversary of when I was diagnosed with cancer. Five years ago, I sat in a sweltering doctors office in Washington, D.C. as he told me the results of my first biopsy. Five years later, I still have it.

After 5 years, I have two conflicting emotions: I’m still here (thank God) and I’m still (only) here. Five years later, not much has really changed but, also, everything has.

Over the 5 years, I’ve sort of lived a double life – that of a cancer patient and that of a political operative. Sometimes they overlap but, more often than not, they’re separate worlds.

By my best count, over the 5 years, I’ve had 4 surgeries, 33 days of radiation, upwards of 60 rounds of either chemotherapy or targeted therapy, about 75 blood tests, and 150 doctors’ appointments. And over the same 5 years, I’ve worked on 191 television ads, 311 polls, thousands of press releases and speeches, spent over $100 million (of other people’s money), and sent over 40,000 of my own tweets.

I continue to believe the same thing I did – and wrote about - 5 years ago, there are three keys to getting through this sort of thing: (1) Your family and friends; (2) Doctors who are the best; (3) Doing something with your time that you love to do. Even on the worst days of work, the fact that I was doing the work I wanted to do made it that much more possible to fight a disease I did not want to deal with.

WHAT’S THE LATEST WITH ME

I’m living and working from Brooklyn, still. I decided to stay here after the Clinton campaign ended rather than move back to D.C. for a bunch of reasons – closer to my doctors at Sloan Kettering and further from Trump at the WH. Both sounded like good ideas.

For just under a year, I’ve been on a clinical trail and it’s getting some pretty good results. It’s a targeted therapy drug and I’m one of the first to apply it to my unique disease. It’s unlikely to result in me being “cured” or “cancer free” but it’s definitely shrunk the disease in my skin tissue and throughout my head, neck and chest. It’s also brought down the swelling. The swelling issues are far from gone, but they’re better. The best case is that it continues shrinking things; the next best case is it stops anything from getting worse again. Either way, it’s turned my condition to a chronic one, for now. I’ll take it.

Every three weeks I do the same routine. I book a someone to come clean my house for that morning and I take a car down to Sloan Kettering.  I take a blood test. The doctor and I talk about medical stuff for a few minutes and politics for a few minutes and then he sends me for treatment. He’s not from America and has a healthy interest in all the crazy things in our politics.

It takes them about 2 hours to prepare the drug, so I have found a corner in the hospital that is usually empty for work — open the laptop, put on the head set and get to work. It’s my own cancer-center-based mobile-office. I have edited TV scripts and polls, held conference calls, did a radio interview and even convinced a donor to contribute – all from a table in a hospital waiting room. Last week’s discussion was about the placement of a media buy. It���s amazing what you can pull of when people don’t really know where you are.

The drug I’m on is an easy one – targeted therapy. It’s like a smart bomb of chemo that only goes to the cells that have the disease. The worst part is the IV, which I barely notice anymore and after 30 minutes, I’m out. On the road home to a clean house with the mild side effect of an uneasy stomach for a few days. Compared to the other drugs I’ve been on, this is like a piece of cake took a walk in a park.

How long will I stay on it? No clue. But it has made this condition chronic. If you offered me a deal today — get this treatment every 3 weeks for 30 minutes and the disease stays under control, I’d sign in a minute. I’d sign it for the next 10 years. For now, I’ll stay on it unless or until it stops working – then I’ll try something else.

WHAT HAPPENED SINCE 2016

As you may remember from my last blog post, just before election 2016, I had spent the previous 6 months working while dealing with the return of my disease.

On election night 2016, I did venture out. It wasn’t something I did often but I wanted to be with the team that night at the Javits Center in Manhattan. I could, now, try to pretend that I had doubts about the outcome of that night to try to make myself look extra smart, but that would be bullshit. I didn’t; I thought we’d win.

The beginning of that afternoon and evening were great. We were monitoring voting and doing the work we needed to do and I was also seeing some good friends who I had been away from while I worked the last few months from home.

Then, the results started and the mood changed. My heart started to sink, but I kept hoping. Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and others poured in. We knew we needed to hold Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to make it work.

While we waited for those results, I got up to go to the bathroom. As I stood at the urinal, a friend who had better sense for numbers and data than I do, approached the stall next to me. We looked at each other with the same forlorn look of despair as if our confidence was waning. He said “I just looked at the latest data from Michigan; it’s gone.”  And with that, I found out we had lost in a way befitting the occasion -- standing at a urinal.  

Whether you believe we lost because of a mission from Russia or a miss in Michigan, or any other reason, one thing was clear: we lost the electoral college. It was over. And while I stared at my peers and colleagues – friends who had hired me and  friends who I had hired – I couldn’t stop thinking, “What’s next?”

Despite what you might see or hear, the group who I worked with on that campaign were some of the smartest, most talented and most committed people I’ve ever had the privilege to work with. As I stared at all of them, I wonder what was next for them. As I thought about it more, I worried what was next for me.  

At one point, I wandered away and ended up sitting in the middle of the massive loading dock in the Javits Center with 4 senior staff from the campaign. There where shipping boxes, fork lifts, and one table with a few plastic chairs in the middle. We all just kind of stared at each other. Someone would say something about what we should do or what we should say and we’d all agree but, for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you today what anyone said.  

As the night ended, I was one of the last ones to leave. I’m not really sure why, I just couldn’t. I kept finding someone else to talk to. I was trying to be a bit of team cheerleader – as best as was possible at that moment.  

At around 4:30am that night, I left the Javits center along side two reporters I had gotten to know. We walked for a bit and then they got into cabs and drove off. I just started walking. And walking. I was thinking about what had happened and what it meant for the country. And, if I’m honest, what it meant for me. I had cancer and had just devoted two years of my life to trying to win the presidency – and had failed. I just kept thinking, maybe even crying a bit, and walking.

When I looked up, it was 6 am and the sun was rising. I had walked from the Javits Center at 36th street down almost to the World Trade Center. Much like I did while wandering around the streets of Washington on May 21, 2013, I had done lots of thinking. But now it was November 9, 2016, and it was time to go back to work. I took a cab home, slept for a few hours, and opened my laptop.

WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING SINCE

Since the campaign ended in 2016, I’ve been “consulting.” I’m still not sure what “consulting” means but it’s what I’m doing. I’m working on my own for a variety of political projects on a variety of important issues, trying to lend my experience to things where I think I can do something interesting and make a difference in the insane moment we’re in right now.

My work has ranged from the fight over the tax plan and some new digital campaign innovations, to a new polling project and an advertising campaign and others. It’s all kept me busy and kept my mind going – in the fight and doing what I love to do. The work is good cause it’s meaningful, it’s the work I want to be doing, and the variety of projects appeals to my attention-span-of-a-fruit-fly-nature.

It’s also allowed me to speak up a bit more about what I think, which has been quite a change. For the last 15+ years, I’ve always represented someone else – the DCCC Chairman, Secretary Clinton, etc. Now I’m speaking more and writing more in my own voice.

I still feel somewhat like a hermit. I live and work in my Brooklyn apartment. I get out more now than I used to, but, nothing like I did when I was healthy. When you’ve been dealing with this as long as I have, you start to lose track of what looking, feeling and being normal would be like. I get to the deli almost every morning and they know to make my eggs and have my iced coffee ready. Others around know me too. Life is easy and that’s important for me right now. One of these days, I’ll be up for making it harder again – but not yet.

THE HEALTH CARE ISSUE

The first project I took on was to help some friends with the coalition fighting the Obamacare repeal legislation. It’s been a hard-waged battle over the last 16 months to improve health care for people instead of letting it get dismantled.

But it’s also been the first time my double lives overlapped a bit. When the Affordable Care Act passed Congress, I was at my office near capitol hill, celebrating with everyone else. But it didn’t really mean anything to me. It was a good thing, but it wasn’t personal.

Seven years later, when repeal of it failed – repeal that would undercut protections for people with pre-existing conditions like I have – it was a very different moment. In fact, when the first repeal plan was pulled from the House floor, I was actually sitting at Sloan Kettering getting my chemo. I was on the phone talking with someone working with me while in the  hospital room getting treated as a news alert came across my computer screen.

I don’t often invoke my own personal health care situation while working on the issue because it shouldn’t be about me. I’m fortunate and would be able to get the care I needed if I had to. But sitting there at age 37, with an IV bag dripping a toxic chemical designed to keep me alive into my arm, I certainly had a different perspective than I had 8 years earlier as an otherwise-healthy, overweight 29 year old who saw passage of the ACA as a good reason to go to the bar and celebrate.

FIVE YEARS AND COUNTING

Once and a while I think about what I could be doing if I was fully healthy. I get sad. Maybe I get mad. As I approach 38 years old at the end of this year, more and more of my friends are having their first or second child and I’m forced to think if my life would be different if I hadn’t gotten this diagnosis five years ago. For sure, it would be. But, in the end, you play the cards your dealt and make damn well sure it’s a game you enjoy. You could win big or you could lose your shirt, but either outcome has to be worth it.

Five years ago I was diagnosed with a disease that probably should have killed me. Five years later, I’m still here. When I put it that way, it actually brings a smile to my face. I know talking about having cancer isn’t something that normally is joyful but being able to do what I love while living with the disease sure beats the alternative.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Hey, everybody! It’s Slack chat time!

We’re in the middle of another media cycle involving questions about the positioning of congressional Republicans vis-a-vis Trump. Basically, after his press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, people are asking why the GOP doesn’t do more to restrain Trump. So … here’s the question for today:

If you’re an elected Republican serving in Congress, is the Trump presidency worth it to you? You get wins on policy right now but you’re staring down likely losses in 2018 and maybe beyond. OR would you rather we have a President Hillary Clinton right now? You’re presumably not getting the policy outcomes you want but would likely be looking forward to gains in 2018 and perhaps 2020.

(We’re also asking this from the Democrats’ POV, but let’s start with Republicans.)

FWIW, I’ve gone back and forth on this in my head since we decided on this topic yesterday. At first I thought the answer was obvious. Now …

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): I would rather have a President Hillary Clinton.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): #actually

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): I’d rather have Trump.

natesilver: I don’t have enough information to answer the question.

micah: OMG

natesilver: Am I in a swing district?

micah: You’re the collective congressional GOP.

clare.malone: Hmm.

Now I’m waffling.

micah: So, my first thought was that the answer was OBVIOUSLY Trump.

natesilver: Just to complicate things … for me, the answer to this question is narrower if you’re asking me as a member of Congress as opposed to, say, a Democratic or Republican voter.

clare.malone: It depends on what you think the ultimate goal of Congress is.

To get elected again, to live another day?

Or, to accomplish something ideological?

natesilver: If you’re a member of Congress, you’re probably very concerned about re-election. And clearly you have much safer chances of re-election as a swing-seat Republican under Clinton than under Trump.

clare.malone: So. What’s the ultimate goal of a party’s caucus in Congress?

micah: OK, if it’s ideological/policy, it’s 100 percent Trump, right? The Supreme Court alone suggests that. Or, look at Trump’s effect on the judiciary more generally:

clare.malone: Right.

But if it’s about getting re-elected, then they want Clinton.

So I guess I don’t know the answer because I don’t know the goal of the Republican congressional caucus.

nrakich: You guys aren’t looking at the big picture! It’s not just Congress. State governments are important too — maybe even more important than the federal government, since it’s where much of the policy that affects people’s lives is made.

As you’ve written, Clare, the Obama years really weren’t too shabby for Republicans. They earned a stranglehold on 26 state-government trifectas (full control of the governorship and state legislature) and have used them to pass stricter laws on abortion, labor, etc. than they would have in Congress.

And if we’re focusing on Congress, that state government control is going to let the GOP continue to draw congressional district lines in 2021 unless something changes.

The Trump presidency threatens to effect that change.

natesilver: Can I ask for a redirect, Micah? Maybe we should be saying, “Are Republicans better off with Trump than with Clinton?”

And obviously there are a lot of subheadings under “Republican.”

micah: Yeah, but I don’t want to pick one subheading because then the answer is obvious.

Let’s disentangle all the subheadings!

natesilver: Ezra Klein argued recently that it was obvious that Republicans had made a good bet to stand behind Trump in 2016, because it had paid off with the SCOTUS picks. But I think it’s way too early to conclude that.

nrakich: I agree.

micah: This is actually kinda making my brain hurt …

I think Ezra is right …

natesilver: CONTRARIAN NATE SAYS RAWWWWWR

micah: In the short term, it’s paid off huge. And likely in the long term with the Supreme Court.

But if Trump sparks a wave of progressive activism — that’s obviously bad for the GOP.

But but politics always goes in cycles — back and forth, back and forth. From Clare’s piece:

So if your argument is that a backlash makes winning not worth it, then winning would never be worth it.

clare.malone: Why is it too early to conclude that, Nate? Because he might fuck up the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation?

natesilver: Because what if Republicans lose elections for the next 20 years as a result of a backlash to Trump? And, also, the public turns against every policy Trump once liked? ICE is abolished and single-payer medicine is established.

nrakich: That ^^

I also think Supreme Court picks are overrated. In the long run, they balance out — the next Democratic president will probably get a couple too. And it’s unpredictable what a justice does once he or she joins the court. Plenty of Republican-appointed justices have turned more liberal over the years.

micah: If there’s a backlash to Trump, eventually there will be a backlash to that backlash, no?

nrakich: If I were congressional Republicans/Republican voters/Republican squirrels/whatever, I would also be worried about Trump’s long-term effect on Hispanic voters.

clare.malone: I don’t know if I agree on that Supreme Court point, Nathaniel. This conservative majority could be a pretty powerful influence on judicial policy for decades. But yes, I do think it’s right to look at how growing demographic groups react to a political party.

But what are our parameters now?

micah: Republican squirrels.

clare.malone: jek;atw’ljrt

micah: Inequality these days is nuts.

nrakich:

(Yes, I know that’s a chipmunk)

natesilver: Here’s how I’d put it: There is almost always a backlash, which the party pays in the form of (1) tending to lose seats in Congress, and (1b) in state government and (2) some degree of thermostatic movement of public opinion against them, e.g. the public actually becomes more liberal when conservatives have been in power for a while and vice versa.

Those are BIG consequences so the question is — how much do you get out of it?

micah: A lot. I hate to keep going back to the Supreme Court, but …

nrakich: Probably not as much as they’d be able to with a different Republican president.

Marco Rubio could still win the primary, guys.

micah: #2020

natesilver: Hmm. So far, the GOP has gotten (i) a tax bill; (ii) 2 Supreme Court picks; (iii) lots of aggressive enforcement actions on immigration; (iv) lots of actions to sabotage Obamacare; (v) lots of … eccentric foreign policy behavior that they might not like; (vi) a trade war that they probably don’t want.

clare.malone: So they got three things they wanted, on average (if you say they wanted half measures on a couple things Trump went full throttle on).

That’s not so bad.

nrakich: But they also got some not-so-great stuff, even on policy.

micah: If you think Trump has been a mixed bag in terms of delivering on policy and ideological goals, then the answer is clearly President Clinton?

nrakich: Right.

micah: IDK, I can’t get past SCOTUS.

natesilver: I’m not saying it’s nothing. It’s quite a bit! But part of it is that they aren’t necessarily likely to get a whole lot more — or at least not a lot more of the stuff they like.

Democrats may or may not win a chamber of Congress — but even if they don’t, the GOP majorities are likely to be reduced down to a bare minimum.

micah: Republicans control all three branches of government, most states, etc. — I’m just very resistant to any argument that they’d rather the world look any other way than it currently does.

nrakich: I do think this question is incomplete without knowing how 2018 turns out.

natesilver: And 2020.

micah: Guys.

natesilver: And 2022.

micah: You are all basically saying, “We can’t answer this question until it’s answered for us.”

natesilver: I’M NOT THE ONE WHO ASKED THE QUESTION, MICAH!

micah: You agreed to the topic!

clare.malone: I’m stressssssed.

nrakich: I’m so sorry, guys. (I was the one who had the idea for this Slack chat topic, dear reader.)

clare.malone: lol, it’s fine. But now I know Rakich is a chaos monkey.

nrakich: Chaos squirrel.

clare.malone: I mean muppet.

natesilver: Let’s take what’s maybe an easier case. Let’s say Republicans lose in a wave election in November — they lose, say, 45 House seats, plus lose the Senate. Then Trump also loses in 2020 and they lose another 5 Senate seats or so.

Is it worth it then?

micah: I think the answer to that question is … yes.

natesilver: Yeah, I think that’s wrong, Micah.

clare.malone: Yeah, that would be bad.

The Senate loss is a little far out, though.

natesilver: Democrats will just undo the GOP’s tax policy.

nrakich: Micah, you think Republicans would take a teensy list of policy priorities in exchange for undoing all the electoral progress they’ve made for the last eight years?

micah: First, I don’t think it’s a given that the Democrats reverse that tax bill.

Second, I think that GOP progress was always fleeting, Nathaniel. See thermostatic point above.

You’re basically telling me that we return to a 2009ish-type government, but that the Supreme Court is conservative for at least a generation or so.

If I’m subscribing to the false idea that these elected officials and their voters want to win elections to achieve policy/ideological outcomes — which I am for this convo even though it’s not really right — then that last conservative majority on the Supreme Court is incredibly valuable because it’s really the only branch of government that doesn’t sorta inherently swing back and forth.

Control of the White House and Congress is always temporary, so I’m not super fussed about losing the gains I’ve made.

nrakich: But the alternative under President Clinton is that you lock in Republican control of the House for probably 10 more years and the Senate for perhaps a generation.

micah: I don’t think we know that.

natesilver: Are you reading too many liberal hot takes about the Supreme Court? The Supreme Court has already been conservative for many years. What would give the Democrats the best chance to make it not conservative is to have a majority of senators *and* the presidency.

micah: I haven’t been reading any takes — I just got back from vacation.

Now it’ll be MORE conservative!

natesilver: Would Clinton have gotten her justice appointed in a 52-48 Republican Senate?

micah: Probably not?

clare.malone: A more moderate one, yes.

micah: Wouldn’t she have nominated Merrick Garland?

clare.malone: Maybe, but maybe not.

micah: I have a hard time imagining Republicans confirming any Clinton nominee.

clare.malone: Clinton was never going to be able to nominate a Ginsburg type from the start.

natesilver: In FiveThirtyEight canon, she would have gotten Garland appointed on Earth 2, but in exchange for a bunch of Republicans being appointed to the cabinet.

But here’s the thing. With Trump in power, Democrats are probably going to end up with somewhere between 47-52 Senate seats after this year. Obviously a reasonably wide range there and I think they’re underdogs to take the Senate, although it’s competitive.

By comparison, though, if Clinton were president, where would Democrats end up? I haven’t done the math in detail, but I’d guess somewhere in the range of like 39-45 senators. They’d be in a lot of trouble, as Nathaniel said.

And they wouldn’t have had Doug Jones win that race in Alabama (in part because there would have been nothing to appoint Jeff Sessions to.)

nrakich: Yeah, in the Senate, Democrats are way overexposed in 2018 — a bad cycle for them could lead to the loss of 8+ Senate seats. There are 31 red states and 19 blue states in the U.S. — that means that the GOP “should” have 62 senators. If that scenario comes to pass, partisan gravity is going to make it very hard for Democrats to get back to a majority until party coalitions change, which can take decades.

natesilver: If you’re down to, say, 42 senators, you’re going to have a lot of trouble getting a liberal Supreme Court nominee for the foreseeable future, no matter who is president.

micah: OK, so yeah, let’s take this full on from the Democrats’ perspective: Would you rather have a President Clinton?

clare.malone: I think yes, you’d rather have Clinton. micah: Couldn’t Clinton have locked in a moderate court, though?

clare.malone: Not necessarily, Micah.

nrakich: I’ve been an electoral hipster on this topic for a while. Back in 2015, I wrote a semi-tongue-in-cheek article arguing that Democrats should cede the 2016 election to Republicans because Democrats need to rebuild their bench on the state level.

I mean, this is all hypothetical. But under a President Clinton, Republicans would win most of the governorships and state legislatures this year and in 2020. That would allow them to draw Republican-friendly House maps for all of the 2020s.

clare.malone: What if she wins two terms and Ginsburg retires when Democrats are in a better place in the Senate?

nrakich: It’s very hard for a party to hold the White House for four consecutive terms.

natesilver: There’s probably no universe in which Democrats would ever have had both a Senate majority and a President Hillary Clinton.

She’d have started out at 48, lost a bunch this year.

Then maybe you gain a couple back in 2020, which isn’t a bad map for Democrats.

But then you’re back in 2022 and midterms don’t usually go well for the president’s party.

nrakich: What do we think Clinton’s approval numbers would look like if she had won? My guess is they’d be pretty close to Trump’s right now. She’d have no policy wins to show off (since Republicans would control Congress), and those Republicans in Congress would be stirring the pot over her emails and other stuff, presumably.

micah: My first thought on this was … If you’re a progressive, and you care about an equitable society, the environment, health outcomes, etc. — I’m not sure there’s any argument that you’d prefer President Trump to President Clinton.

The only counter to that is if Trump sparks a generational counterswing — in which the next 5-8 years are bad for you, but the next 30 are good as a result.

natesilver: But presidencies always spark a backlash. That’s a given, or at least pretty close to it. The questions are (i) how soon the backlash comes, (ii) how big it is, and (iii) what Republicans accomplish before the backlash.

micah: That’s my point, Nate. I think it’s only “worth it” for Democrats if the backlash is historically huge.

natesilver: See, I disagree, because I think Trump’s accomplishments have been on the modest side.

clare.malone: One good thing for Democrats under Trump is the new bench that they seem to be developing.

natesilver: I mean, the party was sort of running on fumes.

clare.malone: In the long run, improving their prospects on the state level might serve them well. I’m not sure that would have happened under Clinton. They might have continued to paper over the state losses under Obama.

nrakich: Exactly, Clare. After a President Clinton, what would have come next? They’d be out of gas, and then you’d have a President Trump (or similar) in 2020/2024 anyway, plus you’d have missed your window to affect redistricting.

natesilver: Although — one thing we’re neglecting to mention here is that there’s a lot of damage Trump could do, e.g. to America’s international image, that isn’t really a *partisan* concern per se.

micah: That’s what I was typing!

It’s not just “accomplishments.”

It’s the whole Trump effect.

The illiberal stuff.

natesilver: But again, that, too, could spark a long-term backlash.

clare.malone: Yeah, the Trump reflection on the country in the eyes of the world is sort of a known unknown.

How much is it going to screw the country long term?

natesilver: And also, having a President Clinton (as Rakich was getting at) may have led to a Trump-type Republican getting elected in 2020, only with much bigger majorities in Congress.

clare.malone: Other countries might not trust our word on international treaties we want to make, etc., etc.

nrakich: America’s image bounced back pretty well from the Bush years, right? Although I think this is another level than that.

clare.malone: I dunno re Bush.

micah: Yeah, opinion of the U.S. (and the American president) shot up after Bush — and has dropped back down under Trump:

natesilver: Yeah, I don’t think this is comparable to Bush.

micah: OK, what if Trump leaves America 20 percent less democratic (small d)?

natesilver: Although, I also wonder if our allies sort of recognize that Trump’s an outlier instead of the permanent state of affairs.

nrakich: True, but I also wonder if he confirms what they secretly thought about the U.S.

clare.malone: Why would they not assume that another Republican president would now take policy positions more like Trump’s because that’s what Republican voters want?

nrakich: But then again, European allies are also dealing with their own Trump-like, anti-immigrant, populist figures.

micah: Yeah, it would be a mistake to think of Trump as an outlier.

natesilver: What if Trump sparks a backlash to populism in Western Europe because people associate populism with Trump?

micah: I sorta buy that.

Well, no … I don’t.

natesilver: There’s already a little bit of evidence of that. Populist candidates generally underperformed their polls in Western Europe in 2017. Eastern/Central Europe is a different story, it’s very important to say.

micah: To start to wrap this up … clearly most congressional Republicans are still happy with the tradeoff, no? (To shift the convo from what we think to what they think.)

nrakich: … are they?

Not to be a broken record, but you keep hearing about how, off the record, lots of Republicans say they’re fed up with Trump.

natesilver: Given how many congressional Republicans retired, the prima-facie evidence might be “no.”

nrakich: I bet plenty of them would take a President Clinton right now so they could try over again in 2020 with Mike Pence or someone more palatable to them. Plus, congressional Republicans were good at being the opposition party under Obama. They could have kept going with that. It was once they started needing to govern (i.e., with health care) that they sorta fell apart.

micah: If that were true, wouldn’t they be more forcefully rebuking/restraining Trump?

clare.malone: Maybe they’re waiting for the midterms to be over.

nrakich: I don’t think they would be, because they’re afraid of getting Sanforded.

If they’re ever going to break with Trump publicly (barring a major Mueller development), it would be in the time between this year’s primaries and this year’s general election. So I guess it’s too early to tell.

natesilver: Micah, I don’t think that necessarily follows. One thing about being a Republican in Congress is that it’s politically hard to oppose Trump, even if you think he’s terrible for your party and the country in the long term. Maybe that’s why so many of them are retiring.

micah: That’s partly true, but I also think much of the media is projecting when they imagine all congressional Republicans hate Trump.

They didn’t all retire, after all.

natesilver: And you know what really wouldn’t be fun? Having the same dilemma if you’d lost control of Congress anyway, which is probably more likely than not this fall.

(Of course, this is a bit self-fulfilling; one reason the GOP is favored to lose the House is because of all the retirements.)

micah: OK, final thoughts?

nrakich: This is how I see it:

Under President Trump, Democrats have a good chance to win back the House in the short term and be competitive in it throughout the 2020s (because of redistricting). In the Senate, they will probably maintain their small deficit in the short term but remain competitive in the long term. State governments are likewise competitive again for a decade or so. In the Supreme Court, a conservative majority is achieved and lasts an indeterminate amount of time.

Under President Clinton, Republicans would have kept/augmented their House majorities this year and drawn district lines to make it very hard for Democrats to win the House again until 2032. In the Senate, they would blow Democrats into oblivion with the bad Senate map in 2018, and the Senate wouldn’t be competitive again for several years either. In the states, Republicans likewise lock in control for another 10 years. And in the Supreme Court, Democrats get a liberal-to-moderate court for an indeterminate amount of time.

Your mileage may vary, quite a bit, for how to weight those. But I personally think the Clinton presidency one is the better scenario for Republicans, and the Trump presidency is the better scenario for Democrats.

I will now go collect my contrarian card at the front desk.

natesilver: I wouldn’t go that far. I mean — the default, certainly, is that you’d rather win the presidency than lose it. I do think, though, that it’s far from obvious that Republicans are better off with Trump and that people who think it’s obvious don’t have enough of a long-term view.

micah: I think it’s obvious.

[tyelkormo]

rules: answer 30 questions and tag 20 blogs you would like to get to know better.

tgb @nelyafinwe thank you so much!!!!

nickname(s): my mom calls me “you useless lesbian” sometimes gender: no thank you sign: virgo  height: 1,70cm (5ft7??? idk) time: 22:08 fav band(s): the national, glass animals, studio killers, exo, baths, f(x), the last shadow puppets, snsd, shinee fav solo artist(s): grimes, taeyeon, taemin, sunmi, jolin tsai, sufjan stevens, fever ray, carly rae jepsen, singersen, boa uhhhhhh theres so many honestly song stuck in my head: foreground by grizzly bear last movie I saw: candyman (1992) last show I watched: brooklyn 99 When did I create my blog: i just checked and apparently it was november, 2016? but ive been creating and deleting blogs on this hell site since 2009 what do I post: mostly tolkien stuff i guess?? anime? kpop? im a mess last thing I Googled: epicureanism cos i didnt know how to spell it do I have any other blogs: yes like ten, with one being active (writing blog!) do I get asks: no ): why did I choose my URL: i love a terrible nasty boy and celegorm is that boy  following: 74 followed by: 34 in this blog lol average hours of Sleep: 4-6h on weekdays, 2-4h on weekdays but then i take 8h naps lucky number: number nine - t-ara instruments: NONE because im POOR and that shit COSTS what I am wearing: pyjamas lmao i have a tolkien pyjama shirt thank you dream job: rich person. owner of a cat café. writer idk dream trip: china? new zealand? greece? malaysia? everywhere tbh fav food: pasta!!! soup. creme brulee nationality: brazilian fav song:  right now its a little god in my hands by swans last book I read: ): adhd wont let me read anymore ): top 3 fictional universes I wanna join: one without capitalism? where im not a mess??? where i have a gf?? but realistically, middle earth, maybe percy jackson? and uhhhh star trek

[californiaprelawland]

Affirmitive Action Takes The Polls Alongside Opponent Donald Trump

By Frances Conci, University of San Francisco Class of 2021

July 10, 2020

Affirmative action- a significant touchstone of a culture war within the United States is back in the head-lines amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Last week, the California Legislature voted to put an initiative on the statewide ballot in November that would repeal Proposition 209, which voters adopted in 1996 to ban affirmative action in government institutions, employment and contracting. If adopted by California voters, the new proposal known as ACA 5, would allow affirmative action in the University of California college system as well as in state hiring and contracting.ii

Affirmative Action A set of procedures designed to eliminate unlawful discrimination among applicants, remedy the results of such prior discrimination, and prevent such discrimination in the future. Applicants may be seeking admission to an educational program or looking for professional employment. In modern American jurisprudence, it typically imposes remedies against discrimination on the based on, at the very least, race, creed, color, and national origin.iii

The concept of affirmative action has existed in America since the 19th century, but made its first appearance during the time of President Kennedy’s Executive Order 10925 (1961). "The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.”v

Employment For government contractors, President Kennedy issued an executive order in 1961, mandating that government contractors to take “affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regards to their race, creed, color or national origin.” Since vi1965, government contractors have been required to document their affirmative action programs through compliance reports, to contain "such information as to the practices, policies, programs, and employment policies, programs, and employment statistics of the contractor and each subcontractor.”vii

General Employers who contract with the government or receive federal funding are required to document their affirmative action practices. Affirmative action is also a remedy under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, where a court finds that an employer has intentionally engaged in discriminatory practices.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, created by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, enforces the fol-lowing employment anti-discrimination laws:  1.Equal Pay Act of 19632.Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 19643.Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 19674.Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Sections 501 and 5055.Title I and V of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 19906.Civil Rights Act of 1991ix

Education Recipients of federal funds are again required to document their affirmative action practices. Educational institutions that have acted discriminatory in the past must take affirmative action as a remedy.x As a nation, we have had a handful of Supreme Court decisions related to affirmative action and education. One example would be Brown v. Board of Education, 1954. The Supreme Court held that public schools might not exclude minority students from white schools by sending minority students to a school that separately services minority students. This decision acted as a precursor to many of the education-based affirmative action movement and cases in the Supreme Court.  More recently, in 2016, the University of Texas at Austin used a Top Ten Percent Law. Any student who graduated in the top 10% of his or her high school class would be granted admission to the University. If an applicant were not in the top 10% of his or her high school class, the University would create an Academic Index (AI) and a Personal Achievement Index (PAI) for each student. 

The PAI considered applicant’s essays, as well as a full-file review" which included leadership and work experience, extracurricular activities, community service, and other “special characteristics” that might give the admissions committee insight into a student’s background; race was included as one of these special characteristics. The Court found that the University's use of race constitutes a "factor of a factor of a factor," which, as one factor in the University's holistic review process, is narrow enough to meet strict scrutiny. The Court also held that there is a compelling interest in "obtaining the educational benefits that flow from student body diversity." As such, strict scrutiny is satisfied, and the Court held that the use of race in the University's admissions efforts was constitutional.xiv

In the past week, a small group gathered at San Francisco’s Ferry Building before marching to City Hall. Hassan Zee, a film director and medical doctor living in San Francisco, said, “I decided to come and participate in Black Lives Matter because I am a brown person. It is very important in America that we sup-port the Black, brown, Asian, Middle Eastern, Pakistani ... America is a country where our forefathers came here from different countries.”

Lawmakers and advocates spoke in front of the crowd at City Hall, urging voters to pass a measure that they hope would create more diverse workplaces and education systems.  “We cannot just pretend that race doesn’t exist and say: ‘Oh, we live in this nirvana. We don’t have to pay attention to race.’We know that is false,” state Sen. Scott Wiener told the crowd.”Proposition 16 will be on the November ballot in this coming election, that if passed, will remove California’s 24-year old ban on affirmative action, overturning Prop. 209 and allow consideration of race and gender in public education, public hiring, and contracting. “Prop. 209 was one hundred and ten percent race-baiting,” Senator Wiener said. “It is a scar on the California constitution. We should be deeply embarrassed.” 

People have voiced that the overturn of Prop. 209 will help level the playing field for the black and brown communities. California’s move to embrace affirmative action, like Americans’ increased support for immigration and the recent spike in support for the Black Lives Matter movement, occurs in the climate of Trump’s presidency and his white nationalist MAGA movement. In many places across the country, the blunt pressure of Trump’s racial aggression is being met with blunt resistance. What he is for, large numbers of Americans are openly against.

________________________________________________________________

i Francis Wilkinson, “California Affirmative Action Gets Boost From Trump,” June 29, 2020,ihttps://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-29/california-affirmative-action-gets-boost-from-trump. See 1

ii“Affirmative Action,” Legal Information Institute (Legal Information Institute), accessed July 6,

iii2020, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/affirmative_action. See 3

iv See 3v Executive Order 10925

vi See 6vii Civil Rights Act of 1964

viii“Affirmative Action,” Legal Information Institute (Legal Information Institute), accessed July 6,

ix2020, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/affirmative_action.(34 CFR § 100.3(6)(ii))

xBrown v. Board of Education, 374 U.S. 483 (1954xiFisher v. University of Texas, 579 U.S. __ (2016),

xii See 12

xiii See 12

xiv Nicholas Chan, “Small, Impassioned Crowd Celebrates the Fourth of July with Protest for

xvAffirmative Action,” The San Francisco Examiner (The San Francisco Examiner, July 4, 2020), https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/small-impassioned-crowd-celebrates-the-fourth-of-july-with-protest-for-affirmative-action/. See 15

xvi See 15

xvii See 15

xviii See 1

xix Francis Wilkinson, “California Affirmative Action Gets Boost From Trump,” June 29, 2020,ihttps://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-29/california-affirmative-action-gets-boost-from-trump. See 1

Photo Credit: Joseluis89

[haikumomentsandinspiration]

#healthcarevacation, part IV

Today is Sunday, May 10, 2020: Mother’s Day. (I like that in Turkish, the name of the day is Mothers’ Day—plural. I prefer that.) 

This felt like the appropriate time to sit down and catch up with the documentation of this long journey. 

If you need to catch up, you can read Part I here, Part II here, and Part III here. 

So where were we? Ah, yes. December 2019. The pregnancy/birth guarantee program at Fertty International Clinic in Barcelona, Spain. 

In my research looking for a new clinic after the last failed transfer (and the poor communication after staffing changes at our old clinic), one thing became clear: G. needed to have more tests and analyses done to try to figure out why all these transfers, including a donor egg cycle with two transfers, had failed.

After much struggle trying (in vain) to have Kaiser cover the tests and analyses Gene and I needed to have done, we realized it was going to be cheaper and easier for Gene to fly solo to Spain in November to get all that done. He would come back to SF, we would wait about three weeks for the test results, and then, based on the test results, we would finalize the protocol for me and the embryo transfer. 

Thankfully, G’s results came back normal, everything within expected ranges and levels. So our application to the birth guarantee/shared risk program was officially approved. I would go to Barcelona (solo this time) at the start of my winter break, have a first scan to check my lining, adjust my medication as needed, and get ready for transfer day in about a week. 

On December 10, G and I went out for sushi in San Francisco one last time (we hoped) before pregnancy, and a week later, I left for Barcelona. My first check up at Fertty the day after my flight was mostly just blood work and an initial scan to see how my lining was coming along. The lining was fine, but surprise, surprise: I was getting sick with a cold—December flights/weather change were working their magic on me again. My doctor asked to see me in a couple of days, and told me to keep the clinic updated on my health. Two days later, my cold had gotten worse, but my lining was still all right. I spent the rest of the day looking for a reputable and affordable acupuncturist (the second part being the challenge), and thanks to a friend’s rec, I made an appointment, with a focus not on uterine lining support this time, but on kicking this cold’s ass before transfer day. 

I took it easy that week, feeling no pressure to do any sightseeing since my priority was the healthcare part of this #healthcarevacation without a doubt. I feasted (!) on soup, bone broth, and hot tea and not much else for several days, and slowly started getting better. My clinic decided to keep my transfer day as scheduled: December 27. Meanwhile, Rina joined me again in Barcelona for a few days for emotional support leading up to transfer day (she doesn’t need much of an excuse to travel, especially to Barcelona). 

December 27: Transfer Day! I went to the Fertty for my final blood work before the transfer and to sign some papers. Then, off to fertility acupuncture, and back to the clinic for my transfer. Everything went smoothly; we transferred one embryo this time, with four more good quality embryos left for future attempts/a sibling, so I was feeling good and positive. Besides, their recovery/rest room was the most comfortable one I’d been in in all these cycles at three different clinics. After resting a bit, I went out for lunch, then headed back to my acupuncturist for a post-transfer fertility acupuncture session. Stick, baby, stick! 

I took it easy the rest of the time I was in Barcelona. Went out for a walk at least once a day, but had lazy days for the most part. 

On New Year’s Eve, the woman I was staying with, Renata, and I went for a late lunch at her favorite Brazilian Bistro (she’s from Brazil). And for dinner, we decided to go to my favorite Turkish restaurant, which I knew would be open till late with their regular menu and would not be charging an arm and a leg for a modified menu. After lunch, Renata, another Brazilian friend of hers, and I walked to the beach for a Brazilian ritual honoring Iemanja (Brazilian spelling). We made wishes, prayed, meditated, and threw yellow and white carnations to the sea for Iemanja, then sat together and watched the sunset. I felt so grateful to be invited to join this ritual (this will be my new cultural appreciation vs. cultural appropriation example the next time I teach that class!). Ever since I’ve known about her, I’ve always felt drawn to Iemanja—being a Pisces and considering my home to be the sea more than any piece of land and all. I felt at peace, and all felt right in the world in a way that I hadn’t felt for a while during this long fertility journey. 

I took it easy the next day. And the day after that, the morning of January 3, I had some spotting...very faint, but still spotting. I called G. and cried on the phone. But as he said, we were not out yet. I let Fertty know, too; they said they would up my progesterone dosage and monitor me closely. I had a big lunch and a late dinner that day. Big mistake. I woke up around 3:30 am, nauseated, and threw up twice. In the morning, my spotting had gotten slightly darker, but it was still not heavy spotting and definitely not considered bleeding. I went up from 600 to 800 mg of progesterone a day, and followed the BRAT diet—well, just the R part. The following day, I was feeling better, and finally went outside and played tourist. Surrounding myself with the beauty of Barcelona felt healing. Meanwhile, my clinic told me I could come by the morning before my flight back home for a blood test so they could tell me sooner than later both the result and what the next steps would be. If I weren’t pregnant, I didn’t want to keep taking all those pills and patches loaded with hormones. 

January 7, 2020: pregnancy test day! A year ago today was transfer day at Irema clinic, I noticed. I had a glimmer of hope, but no gut feeling either way. I repeated the lesson I had learned from a guided meditation that had been helping me a ton: there is hope in uncertainty! I distracted myself by finally sitting my ass down and doing some lesson planing for my cultural competence/equity literacy unit. In the middle of that, around 2:30 pm came the phone call from the clinic. “Do you want me to tell you on the phone or do you want to come in?” I didn’t want to go in just to hear “I’m sorry...” and I wasn’t sure I wanted a hug. You can just tell me now, I said, bracing myself. 

And that’s how I found out I was pregnant. 

I don’t remember the exact words the patient coordinator said. I just remember it took a second for it to sink in, and then I started crying while still somehow continuing the conversation and smiling from ear to ear. I finished up my work, and headed to the beach for sunset, which was my plan whether it was positive or negative. Whether I had to celebrate or grieve, I wanted to do it facing the sea. 

I went to the beach, watched the sunset, thanked Iemanja, thanked the Universe, and recorded an “IVF Log” video, which I assumed we would eventually share with our baby. 

At this point, you may have noticed I didn’t call G as soon as I heard. The next day, January 8th, was my flight back, and the day of our first date 11 years ago. The plan was to tell him in person—our anniversary gift. 

When I arrived home, I didn’t let him know I already knew. I didn’t know if he knew that I knew. We had decided on no anniversary presents this year since we had plenty of medical expenses. Turns out G got me a couple of gifts. I would have been upset with him when we had said we weren’t doing presents. Instead, I went to the bathroom, took the pregnancy tests I’d been saving for this day, then went back to the living room, saying I did have some presents for him from Spain. I gave him the couple of small gifts I had gotten for him from Barcelona. Then, I said I realized there was one more thing, and went back and got the pregnancy tests. 

The adventure didn’t end there, leaving its place to a blissful period. I had some bleeding week 7 and week 8, and ended up going in for five ultrasounds in those two weeks, freaking out each time since that’s around the same time in my pregnancy and the exact way my miscarriage had begun back in 2016. Each visit, though, instead of the “I’m sorry...there’s no heartbeat” of 2016, we heard “there’s the heartbeat” and exhaled, immensely grateful. After week 8, all was well, but I remained cautious and scared, and didn’t want to share the news with anyone other than family for a while. 

Then, the month after my return from Spain, of course: a global pandemic! We were handling all the challenges of this fertility journey so well, apparently, that the Universe thought, “Here, how about a global pandemic during your pregnancy in case things seem too easy now?” “Awesome,” I thought sarcastically; “what perfect timing.” Then, I realized: wait...this IS perfect timing. I came back from Spain, and not long after, Spain was suddenly one of the epicenters of the pandemic, one of the first countries that took significant precautions. This pregnancy did have perfect timing for real. I feel for women whose cycles had to be canceled or postponed. 

Today, Mother’s Day, is exactly 22 weeks into my pregnancy—we are more than halfway there to our estimated September 13, 2020 due date. So it feels like it’s a good time to share the news at last.

I want to say that I do not take this pregnancy for granted—especially with the context of a global pandemic and how it has impacted assisted fertility cycles in mind. Each day, I thank the Universe “for this healthy pregnancy—for all the healthy days so far, and all the healthy days to come.” Each time I light a Shabbat candle, I pray not just for my own family and friends’ health, but also for all who are pregnant, and for all who are trying to get pregnant.  I had thought that after almost five years of trying to conceive, when we finally succeeded, we would have celebration and community...and hugs! Instead, we found a global pandemic, isolation, distance from our loved ones, and more than the usual dose of a new parent’s fear of the unknown. Last month, I spent a lot of time crying upon slowly realizing all the things I wasn’t going to get in this pregnancy:

- being pregnant out and about in the world and experiencing what that’s like, even with all its irritations (people trying to touch my belly, people not giving their seat up for me on public transportation...); watching people slowly notice it at work...

- looking at baby stuff in person with G.: “OMG...Look at this one! Isn’t this soooo cute?!?” 

- an all gender (in-person) celebration/party with our family/friends in July or August (silver lining, I guess, is that family/friends who aren’t in the Bay Area can attend the Zoom party now...whatever that will look like);

- going to Turkey in June one last time in a while before the baby comes; being pregnant on a beach in Turkey; going baby stuff shopping with my family in Turkey; eating all the amazing food in Turkey and knowing it was nourishing not just my soul, but also our baby. 

- having my parents’ hands on my pregnant belly, feeling the kicks of their first grandchild; 

- coming back from Turkey with my mom, who wanted to come for a visit before the baby to help us get ready at home; 

- the September visit from both my parents; possibly having my mother in the delivery room, and knowing my dad is in the waiting room, being anxious and impatient; wondering if Rina could make it, even, and if she could, knowing she would be taking some amazing newborn photos. 

Gratitude has been my savior this whole time, and it still is. I know we will have time with my parents, my sister, and my in-laws as they each meet our baby in person eventually, and we will all make beautiful, sweet memories. I know there was a time when there was no FaceTime that would allow a partner who’s not allowed to be at the anatomy scan to still be there virtually. I know there was a time there was no anatomy scan via ultrasound. I could go on. 

There is so much to be grateful for still. Thank you, Universe, for this healthy pregnancy—for all the healthy days so far, and all the ones to come. 

[thethingssafhaslearnedsofar]

Act 1, I Can't be Your Hero, Baby.

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

When I was a senior in college, I wrote an anonymous essay for The Daily Beast about what they wanted to call my dirty little secret, that I was undocumented. This was in 2011, before DACA, and I was one of the first undocumented students to graduate Harvard. The essay got me some attention, and agents wrote me asking if I wanted to write a memoir.

I was angry. A memoir? I was 21. I wasn't fucking Barbra Streisand. I had been writing professionally since I was 15 but only about music. I wanted to be the guy in High Fidelity. And I didn't want my first book to be a rueful tale about being a sickly Victorian orphan with tuberculosis who didn't have a social security number, which is what the agents all wanted.

The guy who eventually ended up becoming my agent respected that, did not find an interchangeable immigrant to publish a sad book, read everything I would write over the next seven years, and we kept in touch. I was the first person who wrote him on the morning of November 9th, 2016.

That morning, I received a bunch of emails from people who are really freaked out about Trump winning. And the emails, essentially, were offers to hide me in their second houses in Vermont or stay in their basements. Shit, I told my partner, they're trying to Anne Frank me.

By this point, I had read lots of books about migrants. I hated a good number of these books. I couldn't see my family in them, because I saw my parents as more than laborers, as more than sufferers or dreamers. I thought I could write something better, and I thought I was the best person to do it. I was just crazy enough. Because if you're going to write about undocumented immigrants in America, tell the story, the full story, you have to be a little bit crazy. And you certainly can't be enamored by America, not still. That disqualifies you.

I did not want to write anything inspirational. I wanted to write for everybody who wants to step away from the buzzwords in immigration-- the talking heads, the Dreamers in graduation caps and gowns-- and read about the people underground, not heroes, randoms, people. I wanted to write about my parents, and that's the story I'm going to tell here, the story of my parents.

If you ask my mother where she's from, she's 100% going to say, she's from the kingdom of god, because she does not like to say that she's from Ecuador, Ecuador being one of the few South American countries that has not especially outdone itself on the international stage. Magical realism basically skipped over it. And our military dictatorship never reached the mythical status of a Pinochet or a Videla. Plus, there are no world famous Ecuadorians to speak of other than the fool who housed Julian Assange at the embassy in London and Christina Aguilera's father, who she said was a domestic abuser.

If you ask my father where he's from, he will definitely say Ecuador, because he is sentimental about the country for reasons he's working out in therapy.

But if you push them, I mean really push them, they're both going to say they're from New York. If you ask them if they feel American, because you're a little narc who wants to prove your blood runs red, white, and blue, they're going to say no, we feel like New Yorkers. They've lived in New York since they left Ecuador in 1991.

I don't know much about my parents' decision to choose New York, or even the United States, as a destination. It's not that I haven't asked them why they came to the United States. It's that the answer isn't as morally satisfying as most people's answers are-- a decapitated family member, famine. And I never pressed them for more details because I don't want to apply pressure on a bruise.

The story, as far as I know it, goes something like this. My parents had just gotten married, and their small auto body business was not doing well. The idea of coming to America to work for a year to make just enough money to pay off their debts came up, and it seemed like a good idea. They left me with my dad's family when I was a year and a half old. That's about as much as I know.

My parents didn't come back after a year. They were barely making ends meet. When I was four years old, going to school in Ecuador, teachers began to comment on how gifted I was. My parents knew Ecuador was not the place for a gifted girl. The gender politics were too fucked up. And they wanted me to have all the educational opportunities they hadn't had. So that's when they brought me to New York. I was just shy of five when I stepped off the plane.

White Americans love academically achieving minorities. And I learned quickly that the most alluring thing about me was that I was young and brown and a good student, the holy trinity. I went to a Catholic elementary school on a scholarship, and we lived in Queens. My mother stayed home, and my father drove a cab. This was back when East New York was still gang country, and he had to fold his body into a little origami swan and hide under his steering wheel during crossfires in the middle of the day.

Then came September 11th, 2001. Here's how I remember the day my father started dying, not long after the twin towers fell. My father comes home from work, and I greet him in the doorway to give him a kiss hello. He walks slowly and comes toward my body at a strange angle a child could only interpret as a terrible fall. He collapses onto me to cry into my neck. I'm little, 12 or 13, but he does, he falls.

The letter says in English something about the DMV suspending driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants. It was part of an attempt to strengthen security measures after 9/11. My father had just lost his job as a taxi driver. He had also lost his state ID. Over the next 20 years, he'd lose many more things, but let's put a little blue thumb tack on this memory map, the first place in Hell we visited.

September 11th changed the immigration landscaper forever. ICE was the creation of 9/11 paranoia. It changed my father, too. It was hard to see him fall, because he was the most powerful person I knew. He was a difficult man, and I was a difficult child. I was polite and craved approval from authority figures, but I was also dark and precocious. Not precocious in the, we live in Tribeca, and my kid is a born artist, kind of way. More like, my immigrant third grader is reading Hemingway but is secretly drinking Listerine and toothpaste until she throws up because she wants it to kill her, kind of way.

Only years later would I realized how real my suicidal impulses were. That was too damn young, I'd think, lying down in the dark at my doctor's office with an IV of ketamine hooked up to my arm, hoping to extinguish the suicidality that began when I was five and lay crayons around the perimeter of my bed so I'd know in the morning if I'd been secretly raped at night. I'd know because the crayons would be broken.

My father read parenting books that explained how to raise troubled children. But those children were never straight-A students who were soft-spoken and loved teachers. It confused him, and the dissonance made him angry at me. He saw me as different from other children in a way that troubled him, and he fumbled in the dark to help me with what he couldn't name.

When I was off from school for any kind of break, my father would plan out my day in half hour increments, scheduling everything from bath time, to TV shows, to coloring time, to math drills, to time to play with dolls, and even bathroom breaks. He called it my schedule, and he hand wrote it on graph paper in different colored inks and taped it to my desk. When I became overwhelmed with panic, crying hysterically, he would send me to take a cold shower or take me out on a jog around the neighborhood.

He'd set aside a magazine or a newspaper articles for me to translate. He could not review the fidelity of the translation, but he judged my penmanship. I didn't know what would have happened to me if I had not been kept away from my own thoughts for so many years. My father kept me alive.

After my father lost his job as a taxi driver, he found a job as a delivery man at a restaurant down in the Financial District. In the mornings, he would deliver breakfast to offices-- a raisin bagel with cream cheese and a coffee with hazelnut creamer, orange juice and a banana, a granola bar and chocolate milk. There was no delivery minimum, so my father delivered it all. Because the deliveries were so small, sometimes he didn't get a tip. Sometimes he was told to keep the change, a quarter. Sometimes he was tipped in pennies. He had to say, thank you, sir, thank you, ma'am.

Sometimes he was given a $20 tip for a $5.00 breakfast. He always told us about those tips. They were usually from Puerto Rican receptionists who talked to him in Spanish and asked to see photos of me. When he came home was one of those tips, it was like having my dad back from the dead. He would dance to no music, and he'd make jokes, and he'd come out of his shower looking like a teenager.

My father didn't use a bike. He made all his deliveries on foot. He speed walked while carrying bags of food to offices on Wall Street. The plastic handles of the bags would twist and cut into his fingers, and he developed large calluses on both his hands. His polyester pants rubbed up against his calves so much that he lost all the hair on his legs.

He went through many pairs of inexpensive black rubber shoes. My mother massaged his feet at night. My dad's feet are small and fat, like mine, so you can't tell when they're swollen. After a few years, my dad's feet would hurt so much that he walked like he was on hot coals, sometimes leaning on me to move from the couch to the bed. Aye, yai, yai, yai, yai, he'd say, as he limped, like a mariachi.

When I was 15, the owner of the restaurant where my father worked hired a new manager to oversee the delivery men, who were all immigrants. The guy was Puerto Rican, an American citizen, and became immediately abusive, threatening to call ICE on them, yelling at them, getting up in their faces. My father fell into a bit of a depression.

I had just watched All the President's Men. I put on my best posh accent, dialed *69 to block my number, and called the restaurant. I asked to speak to the owner. I said I was a beat reporter for a big city newspaper and had just received a tip from a customer about overhearing racist abuse in the kitchen. And did he have a comment? The owner said he'd handle it and asked me not to write the story. I don't know, man, I said, it's a pretty good story. In the end, the manager was fired, and the cloud over my father lifted.

My father was furious when I told him what I did. But not for a minute in the 15 years since have I felt that what I did was unethical. Nor have I felt guilty for having a man fired. I'd do it again, but my accent would be better.

I went to a small public high school in Times Square, where around 80% of the student body was at or below the poverty line. We were mostly all black or Latinx. I was a high achiever. I wanted to go to the University of Chicago because I found the unofficial motto, where fun goes to die, appealing. But there is no beating Harvard. That name. I needed the name to keep my parents safe.

Harvard, at the time, did not know how to deal with undocumented students. When I was there, a very successful Wall Street man who knew me from an educational NGO we both belonged to-- he as a supporter, me as a supported-- learned I was undocumented and could not legally hold a work-study job. So every semester, he wrote me a modest check. In the notes section, and he cheekily wrote, beer money.

I wrote him regular emails about my life at Harvard and my budding success as a published writer. He was always appropriate and boundaried. I had read obsessively about artists since I was a kid and considered myself an artist since I was a kid, so I didn't feel weird about older, wealthy, white people giving me money in exchange for grades or writing. It was patronage. They were Gertrude Stein, and I was a young Hemingway. I was van Gogh, crazy and broken. I truly did not have any racial anxieties about this, thank god. That kind of thing could really fuck a kid up.

Different therapists throughout the years have tried to get me to confess to cultural shock about arriving to Harvard as a poor, undocumented freshman. But the truth is there was none. I've always had a really wonderful sense of self-esteem thanks to my mother, who is a tiny bit of a narcissist and has delusions of royalty, and because of my mental illness, which comes with delusions of grandeur of its own. So I kind of felt like it was my birthright. That probably makes a lot of people very mad.

As I began to receive my diagnoses and misdiagnoses throughout my 20s-- depression, anxiety, OCD, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, complex trauma-- I didn't feel anything other than affinity with writers I loved, people like Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Robert Lowell. It made sense to me that I had my own demons. Of course I did.

I've always been super casual when people ask me about my parents having left me in Ecuador. That's a bravado I'd like to keep on the official record. But sometimes I think about it. I haven't talked with my parents about their having left me in Ecuador when I was a year and a half old. Sometimes I do adorable things, like take pictures of myself chugging vodka bottles or pretending to down the contents of a pill bottle, and send them to my mother with the caption, because you abandoned me.

When I am away from my partner and dog for a few days for work, and it's hard, I wonder how my parents were able to do it for three years. I don't blame either of them for it. I never have. What I'm describing to you is dirt extracted from a very tight pore. I don't feel anything about being left on the day to day, but I am told by mental health experts that it has affected me.

And I fought that conclusion. I denied it. I wanted to be a genius. I wanted my mental illnesses to be purely biological. I wanted to have been born wild and crazy and weird and brilliant, writing math equations in chalk on a window. Instead, therapist after therapist told me I had attachment issues and that my mental illnesses were related to my childhood. I left those therapists, ghosted them.

But it's not just those early years without my parents that branded me. It's the life I've lead in America as a migrant. As an undocumented person, I felt like a hologram. Nothing felt secure. I never felt safe. I didn't allow myself to feel joy because I was scared to attach myself to anything I'd have to let go of. Being deportable means you have to be ready to go at any moment. I've never loved a material object. When my parents took me home after my Harvard graduation, we took the Chinatown bus, and we each took one suitcase of my things. If it didn't fit, we threw it out. We threw out everything that wasn't clothes.

After I graduated from Harvard, I went to Yale to do a PhD. I never wanted to PhD. But DACA didn't exist then, and I couldn't legally get a job anywhere. And I had to buy time for something to happen-- for the DREAM Act to pass, which my dad had assured me would happened since I was in middle school. And I needed the health insurance.

It's allowed me to write, and my parents will be proud when I get that doctorate. I have fetched the American dream and laid it at my parents' feet. But the twisted inversion that many children of immigrants know is that, at some point, your parents become your children. And your own personal American dream becomes making sure they age and die with dignity in a country that has long wanted them dead.

A few years ago, my father experienced heart failure. This was the moment I had been preparing for my entire life. Everything that had happened to me since I took that New York-bound flight 24 years ago had been preparing me for this moment. Learning English, getting bangs, gaining weight, losing weight, getting the sick puppy from the pet shop-- all of that happened to prepare me to this point. My parents were sick, undocumented, uninsured, and aging out of work in a fucking racist country.

Until the pandemic hit, my father was a salad maker, feeding Manhattan's executive class. He had worked for 14 years at the same restaurant, then left. He was invited to a promising new job, lured there by an acquaintance who assured him of better hours, better treatment, a better environment. My dad is very gullible.

He spent a week at this new restaurant, where, for spare change, they had him work all day. And then at the end of the day, he was given just two and a half hours to clean an industrial kitchen-- an industrial fryer, a refrigerator, a stove, an oven, and a sink-- wash the dishes in the dishwasher, take out the trash, sweep and mop the floors, and clean the garbage chute. His body was wrecked at the end of each day. I'm too old to for this, he said. So he quit. His old job wouldn't take him back.

Desperate, he began each morning by showing up at a Latinx job agency, which would send him out to audition at a different restaurant day after day, week after week, to no avail. My dad started texting me blurry cell phone pictures from the job agency. He took the photos when he was sitting in the waiting room of the agency, waiting for his name to be called.

The first picture is of a man, maybe in his late 70s, wearing a green button down, khaki pants, and aviator sunglasses. His lips are downcast. My dad said he was applying to be a dishwasher. The second picture is of a man, maybe in his late 40s, who was wearing a black baseball cap, a gray sweater, and maroon pants. My dad said he'd had a stroke. His right arm was paralyzed, and he had a limp and his right leg. He was also applying to be a dishwasher.

It's hard to see men like that not get jobs, my dad texted. I hope they have children who can take care of them, I respond. What I mean to say is, I hope they have a child like me. I hope everyone has a child like me. I tell god, this is going to kill me anyway, so just take me. Patent and mass produce and distribute me to undocumented immigrants at Walmarts. I am a professional undocumented immigrant's daughter.

I saved the photos on my phone as a reminder to myself of why I need to be successful, so successful, statistical anomaly successful. Then I deleted them because they harmed my mental health. I wish I still had them.

My parents live in New York City, and after the pandemic hit in March, they lost their jobs. They're both in Queens, the center of the center of the epidemic. I've prohibited my father from doing dangerous gig work, like deliveries. And I've begun to financially support them both. My mom is immunocompromised. She has an extremely low white blood cell count.

I have really lovely dreams, crazy fucking cotton candy fantasy dreams, dreams that make my whole body feel warm, where I cut up my chest, no anesthesia, take out my lungs, and implant them into her chest with the tree stitch. And if I'm lucky, in the seconds I have before I die, I would be able to see her heart. We wouldn't even need a ventilator.

There is a Harvard scholar named Roberto Gonzalez who has conducted longitudinal studies on the effects of undocumented life on young people. He found his subjects suffered chronic headaches, toothaches, ulcers, sleep problems, and eating issues, which is funny to find in research because I get these migraines, an 8 or 9 on the 10 point scale. I have a CAT scan, an MRI. I go to the neurologist. The readings are all inconclusive. I'm told it's a migraine with an unknown cause. Have you tried yoga, they say.

The headaches get worse when I write about my parents. From migrants shot in the head by Border Patrol, to migrant children being forcibly injected with drugs in detention centers, US government's crimes against immigrants are beyond the pale. And the whole world knows. But when I was growing up and throughout the Obama administration, similar crimes were happening, if on a different scale, and I'm not sure the same people cared.

I felt crazy for thinking we were under attack, watching my neighbors disappear and then going to school, and watching the nightly news, and watching award shows and seeing no mention. I felt crazy watching the white supremacist state slowly kill my father. I would frantically tell everyone that there was no such thing as the American dream. But then some all-star immigrants around me, who had done things the right way, preached a different story, and Americans ate that up. It all made me feel crazy. I also am crazy. Pero why?

Researchers have shown that the flooding of stress hormones resulting from a traumatic separation from your parents at a young age kills off so many dendrites and neurons in the brain that it results in permanent psychological and physical changes. One psychiatrist I went to told me that my brain looks like a tree without branches. So I just think about all the children who have been separated from their parents, and there's a lot of us, past and present, and some under more traumatic circumstances than others, like those who are in internment camps right now.

And I just imagine us as an army of mutants. What will happen to us? Who will we become? Who will take care of us? We've all been touched by this monster, and our brains are forever changed, all of us trees without branches.

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio reading an essay adapted from her brand new memoir, The Undocumented Americans. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/700/transcript

[bountyofbeads]

Donald Trump's body count: He's not just a narcissist and a liar. He's a killer

Donald Trump's criminal misbehavior has real consequences for real people. Too often, that includes death

LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV | Published NOV. 16, 2019 1:00PM (UTC) | Salon | Posted November 16, 2019 |

There was a moment early in the testimony last Wednesday by longtime diplomat and Army veteran Bill Taylor that was lost in the drama of everything else he had to say about Donald Trump’s attempt to extort the Ukrainian government. That was when Taylor dropped the fact that he had been on the “front line” of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia only the previous week and that on the day he was there, “a Ukrainian soldier was killed and four were wounded.”

The death of one soldier somewhere near the border with Ukraine and Russia may not seem like a very important event in the greater scheme of things as the House of Representatives considers the impeachment of Donald Trump. But it was important enough tor Taylor that he mentioned it in the fifth paragraph of his opening statement. He wanted to get it on the record early in his testimony that “even as we sit here today, the Russians are attacking Ukrainian soldiers in their own country and have been for the last four years.”

What happens in the background of practically everything that Donald Trump does or fails to do is that people are dying. This is why the impeachment hearings are about more than Rudy Giuliani running around trying to get Ukrainian prosecutors to investigate Joe Biden and his son or some spurious right-wing conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine, rather than Russia, that meddled in the 2016 election. Ukraine is quite literally fighting for its life against Russian aggression on its eastern border. As Taylor’s testimony made clear, the fact that Trump ordered that American military aid to Ukraine be withheld had deadly consequences.

While Donald Trump stood at a podium next to Vladimir Putin, as he did last year in Helsinki, and called the Russian president a “strong leader,” Ukrainians were being killed by Russian military forces that had invaded their country under Putin’s orders. At the same time Donald Trump stood next to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as he did in the White House on Wednesday, and referred to the Turkish president as “a tough guy who deserves respect,” Kurds were being killed by Turkish forces who invaded Syria with Trump’s explicit approval. Last summer, when Donald Trump sat across a table in Osaka, Japan, from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and called him “a friend of mine” who is doing “a spectacular job,” Yemeni civilians were being killed by American supplied “smart bombs” and armed drones, and the dismembered body of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, murdered by Saudi assassins last year in Turkey, still had not been found.

This week, while Donald Trump tweeted conspiracy theories about Joe Biden and launched personal attacks on former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch as she testified on Capitol Hill, two more school children lay dead and four more lay severely wounded in a hospital, shot by yet another mass killer on a rampage at a high school in Santa Clarita, California. The shooting in California came on the heels of an Oval Office meeting in late September between Trump and National Rifle Association Wayne LaPierre, during which LaPierre asked Trump to “stop the games” about gun control legislation and promised NRA support for Trump in his fight against impeachment, according to The New York Times. Trump spoke at the NRA convention in April of this year, and has long had a cozy relationship with the gun lobby. The NRA reportedly spent $30 million in support of Trump’s election in 2016.

Look at just a few of the mass killings that have happened since Trump took office: Las Vegas,  October 2017: 58 dead, 413 wounded. Sutherland Springs, Texas, November 2017: 26 dead, 20 wounded. Pittsburgh,  October 2018: 11 dead, 7 wounded. Parkland, Florida, February 2018: 17 dead, 17 wounded. Virginia Beach, Virginia, May 2019: 13 dead, 5 wounded. El Paso, Texas, August 2019: 22 dead, 24 wounded. Dayton, Ohio, August 2019: 10 dead, 27 wounded. Midland, Texas, August 2019: 8 dead, 25 wounded.

Donald Trump didn’t pull the trigger in Las Vegas or El Paso or Parkland or Dayton or this week in Santa Clarita. Donald Trump is not personally firing the artillery shells that are killing soldiers in Ukraine, nor is he gunning down Kurds in Syria or dropping smart bombs on civilians in Yemen. But unless he is impeached or defeated in the election of 2020, this is Donald Trump’s government, and it is exercising Donald Trump’s policies, and it’s Donald Trump’s Republican Party that stands in the way of sane gun legislation.

Every time you hear dry, foreign-relations talk about Russia or Turkey or Saudi Arabia “seeking influence in the region,” whether the region is the Middle East or Eastern Europe, what they’re really talking about is dead bodies. That’s the way these corrupt, dictatorial friends of Donald Trump “seek influence.” They order military forces under their command to kill people. That killing produced dead bodies, lots and lots of dead bodies. Taylor testified that more than 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since the Russians invaded Ukraine and seized Crimea. Estimates of the dead in Yemen run as high as 100,000, according to no less an authority than Fox News. More than 100 people have been killed and tens of thousands of refugees have been displaced since Turkey invaded northern Syria, according to NBC News. 

Every time you hear Donald Trump tell his screaming fans at one of his rallies that he’s going to “protect your Second Amendment,” what he’s really saying is that he’s going to protect the right of the next mass killer to go out and buy an assault rifle and all the ammunition he can carry, because that’s what it takes to produce the dead bodies that result from these mass killings.

The hearings into the impeachment of Donald Trump are supposedly about the president trading military support of Ukraine for investigations into his political rival Joe Biden. We’ve heard lots of talk about the “violation of norms” and “obstruction of justice” and “foreign meddling in our elections” and “witness tampering” and even “bribery and extortion.”

But there are other consequences of Donald Trump’s presidency. So long as he remains president, the dead bodies will continue to pile up in Ukraine and Syria and Yemen and in the schools and Walmarts and churches and synagogues of the United States of America. The dead bodies will be Trump’s, but the shame will be ours.

[mina-van1104]

•🏥💉A post continued of my other post I posted earlier. Here’s a happy picture of me, but I am not happy right now...My arm hurts with the IV also let it be known that I had a few of the nicest people who treated/treat me nicely while I am still being hospitalized at Renown for Physical medical problems for the 7th day since January 8th. Every time I don’t have a family member with me, some of the Renown staff have treated me like shit because they tend to take advantage of me and feel that I am not important and do not give me any dignity. There are several people. •

•

Please note that a guy who works at Renown named Carlos was treating me unfairly and please know that it is very disrespectful to talk in any patients’ room at the hospital in a different language. •

•

Carlos on 7th floor and a housekeeper were in my room in the hospital were yelling loudly across my room in Spanish and were laughing very loudly. I told please do not talk in a different language in MY room if you want to talk a different language please step out of my room. Carlos’s response was “This is America, Spanish is my language, and I could speak anything I want” Carlos was making it sound like I’m racist but little did he know that in any healthcare field you’re not supposed to talk in a different language in any patient’s ROOM because that is very disrespectful. You could talk any language in the hallway but do not talk in a different language in any patients’ room. I am the patient and I know my rights. A Registered Nurse came and said “Mina, you need stop being mean” I told I was never mean and was shocked that the RN was on his side. I was never mean to anyone EVER. •

•

Seriously?! WTF! I made it clear that I am not racist and that he could speak any language out in the hall but not in my room. Carlos was trying to make it sound like I’m racist. To let you all know all these incidences that have happened is when I didn’t have visitors with me so they try to take advantage of me so many times. That’s why I always have to have an older family member or an older friend with me so they don’t take advantage. When my dad came and finally visited me, Carlos saw and started pretending to be nice to me and gave me some gum. He didn’t think I had family/friends before! I’m a RENO NATIVE by the way. Stop treating me like I’m an out-of-stater/ foreigner! Grr stupid Trump presidency, you ruined America too much. 😡

•

Another person who works at Renown a lady who is a Phlebotomist named Lian came to my room and wanted to draw my blood. She grabbed my arm and I told her my arm was very sore and please be careful. And Lian the phlebotomist’s response was “I don’t see any bruises” I was appalled & terrified when she said that because I know I have some bruises that showed but my whole arm was sore and some of the bruises did not show up. I know what I feel. Do not underestimate me. I knew how incompetent SOME people are who work at Renown. HOW DARE She say that to me trying to make it sound like I was making up my pain but really I was in much physical pain. •

•

I knew I had the right to refuse some of the medications they gave to me but I let them know I couldn’t have one of the medications because it gave me a rash and bad side effects. Roxanne the Registered Nurse on 7th floor telemetry was giving me the medications and I refused 1 of the medications and I know I have the right to refuse. Roxanne yelled at me in a really loud tone trying to make it sound like I should take it and trying to manipulate me into taking medication that could affect my health- she yelled at me & knew that she has to do more work to chart that I refused medication. Roxanne the lady with dark short hair was being very inappropriate & I had a witness with me named Gar...ln. Seriously, why would this lady want to be a nurse if she was going to treat any patient like shit. Don’t take your anger out on your patients! Roxanne the Registered Nurse should NEVER be a nurse. Anyone who treats a patient like that should be fired! Obvious discrimination!

•

Some of the coworkers was making up stuff and trying to make it sound like I was a crazy person but realistically these particular workers were trying to provoke me into being angry and ThEY were the main problems not me. When I didn’t have any visitors at the moment. (I had family visitors everyday but at different times).•

•

I knew that I needed to rest that day to feel better physically because of my kidneys, and other PHYSICAL health problems, but I told them if i could shut the door because the Registered Nurse before the shift was named Denise I told her everything and she said I could shut the door shut fully and the Registered Nurse named Roxanne again barged in my room and yelled at me that I needed to keep the door opened and that it doesn’t matter if I would sleep or not.

•

I explained to Roxanne the RN that I need to sleep but her coworkers in the hallway were being too loud & obviously they were being idiots. And Roxanne yelled in a loud angry tone at me that she didn’t care that I needed to sleep but needed to open my door. I did not get my privacy or my dignity. How UNPROFESSIONAL is Roxanne the Registered Nurse on floor 7 and Seriously HOW RUDE!😡.

•

How in the hell does a staff not get simple messages across to people. How unprofessional are SOME of these workers at Renown?! Seriously are you f*cken kidding me. You guys are the rudest staff in Reno and that’s just really sad and embarrassing that some of these workers work at Renown.•

•

I need to sue someone who put me on this hold and I was always mentally stable. They were trying to make it seem like I was mentally unstable because I reported a few people at Renown in the past in 2017 when I was working at Renown (nonpaid or paid) for discrimination. Renown did not taking me seriously and decided to let me leave. So some people at Renown faked it and said I was mentally unstable & that is NOT true at all. I fainted and was unconscious until day 2 or 3 so they mistakenly assumed I was a confused person. •

•

Some of the coworkers I had in the past were trying to make it sound like I was crazy just to get back at me for reporting them in 2017 for discrimination. I am mentally STABLE and whoever put that on there needs to be sued! I’ve had enough! This unfair treatment needs to stop! They were trying to provoke me into making me angry and doing something crazy but realistically these people who work at Renown need to be fired. They are not Professional!😡 I’ve been tortured enough.

•

There were also a number of times on the 7th floor of Renown Tahoe Tower who need to be fired because it’s making Renown sound like shit.

•

I received my Certified Nursing Assistant License in 2014 and also did my clinicals at Renown for my Phlebotomy class and received my Phlebotomy License in 2015. I got 2 college degrees with a Bachelors in Community Health Sciences in Public Health. I came to the recruitment Human Resources at Renown in 2016 when I graduated from UNR in May 2016.

•

I spoke to Kristen Bishop one of the supervisors of phlebotomy and Lab Assistant job in 2016. And she judged me for how I looked and she pretended to look through my resume and KRISTEN BISHOP said she “Would rather hire someone who has worked at Walmart than hire me!” HOW freaking INSULTING!😡That was in 2016 of Summer and I still remember. Grrr.

•

Even though I had 3 years of hospital experiences beginning of 2012 by just hospital volunteering, with my clinical, 2 extra hospitals I did for UNR internships I already completed before showing Kristen Bishop. I knew where every room was at the hospital & were way professional than SOME of these InCOMPETENT workers at Renown. Trust me I am not jealous of some rude, insulting incompetent people. Me Almost having 7 years of hospital experiences paid or unpaid, Kristen Bishop insulted me & made me cry for weeks in 2016 because no one has said that to me to my face before. It was clear racial & age discrimination.

•

My accomplishments I have completed & put on my resume are all 100% true 💯. I would never makeup lies on my resume because I’m not fake like some people! I just literally just turned 26 in November & before I was 21 I have always been an overachiever even in high school & down to elementary school, middles school I’ve always been an overachiever & I already completed 2 of my medical licenses & did extras with 2 college degrees including my Bachelors Degree in something else.

•

You guys need to know that I have worked hard for accomplishments and they’re all true & real accomplishments. I am not trying to show off and not intentionally trying to make people jealous or feel bad, but that’s one of the reasons why I’m so proud of my accomplishments & they are so important to me but some bullsh*t hospitals thought I was making up my resume & some untrue rumors got spread around, catfished my facebook pretending to be me in 2017, sending inapropriate messages but truly I have completed all that I have said on my resume. Swear to GOD! Whoever is making up lies about me; you guys need to stop. I have been going through hell for years & have been hiding that to most people. You guys need to stop spreading lies. Discrimination is a big issue & I deserve way better!

•

The people have treated me like sh*t at Renown & some people need to be fired or make it known that some of the current/past co-workers at Renown are just so embarrassing because some of them are so INCOMPETENT! Karma will get back at you; and I don’t have to do anything because GOD is my witness; and anyone who treats people unfairly needs to be punished where I have done nothing other than being Asian. I’m still proud to be Asian American & born & raised in Reno & Sparks, Nevada. Always be proud of what ethnicity/race you are. I will never judge you of your race or how different you are & I am not racist- I will love you for who you are, gay, straight bi (even-though I’m straight) I will never judge you unlike SOME people who work at RENOWN & other people who has judged me.

•

I have been wrongfully put on hold and was told I need a sitter simply because some people I reported at Renown in 2017 wanted to retalliate at me making it seem like I was crazy psych person but realistically I AM NOT and those people need to be sued!! 😡 I have been tortured enough having no sharps not even forks in my meals. They need to be sued because they wrongfully put me on there on purpose. I’m now allowed to have jewlery now with my phone a few days ago. But whoever did this, YOU need to be punished!😡

•

The workers at Renown were trying to make it seem like I was mentally unstable and they were trying to provoke me into doing something crazy by making me angry on purpose. I need to be discharged soon. And if not, someone needs to help me sue & file a lawsuit! Someone please help me! 😭. •

•

Realistically the one’s treating me like shit are the actual ones who need help-NOT Me. I have been in physical pain & had physical health problems but they are mistakenly treating me like I’m a psych patient. Someone please help me sue! •

•

I’m obviously mentally STABLE & have always been mentally stable, always have and will love myself and never want to harm others, but the messages on the chart need to get across to the whole facility. Why are none of the updated reports filed in the chart in time?! seriously?! So UNpROFESSIONAL!! How dare you put me on this hold and torture me with needles poking me a dozen times and insulting remarks coming out of your mouths. Seriously so UNPROFESSIONAL. •

They were trying to make it sound like I’m an idiot but am obviously not-SOME of the people treating me like sh*t at Renown are the biggest idiots! How pathetic are they?! Seriously?! You guys are obviously jealous, racist, and ignorant, but you guys need to stop & you guys have been ruining my healthcare career where I have done NOTHING wrong. We need to sue!! •

•

Also 2 days ago, Amber a CNA ripped the EKG wires harshly off my body in a harsh way eventhough I still have heart palpitations. My family was not there to witness this. •

And for that I was getting way underpaid than some of my Caucasian friends who had way less experiences than me & who didn't have a college degrees; no offense to anyone- don’t take it personally but I have always been an overachiever I deserve way more than I was offered. I’m not really a person who likes to complain, but this has been making me very upset... but somewhere else in healthcare field hopefully in different hospital longterm or short-term plans I was meant for bigger things in healthcare than to be stuck in a sh*thole place treating me like crap all the time when I need is to get more respect & not to treat me unfairly.•

•

I loved the other hospitals I worked in & appreciated the coworkers who treated me nicely but racist coworkers is what made me left I reported it in the past & they did not take me seriously & some people need to be sued, but I have a life instead I’m physically still kind of sick and stuck & Renown doing useless things & focusing how to get rid of our one racist neighbor family disturbing us who we - my Family lived & owned same house for almost 30 years never had a problem with neighbors until 2017. You guys need to stop. You guys need to spread kindness because you don’t know what I and others have been through. •

•

What ever lies you’re spreading & insulting remarks you make does not make you look better. I never have been arrested before and still have not been arrested because I have done nothing wrong whoever was making that up- you truly need a life & stop ruining others. NONE of my family members have any criminal records. You need to stop with your racism & hate because it is really affecting me & my career that I have physically & mentally worked hard for & some people to be honest they have the easy way out- well lucky you!! I’ve worked harder than most people my age when I was younger so you guys need to stop lying about me. Been going through a lot of hell through the years- so simply shut your mouth & stop making stuff up about me because deep down some of you are jealous. You people hurting others with words will not make you look better than anyone & oh obviously you guys who did this need a life, because apparently you almost ruined a-lot of mine. Are you happy now?! I’m still staying positive but got better things to do longterm/short-term goals.•

•

Just get me out of Renown! Hopefully get discharged soon-if not, someone needs to get sued soon because I know my rights and they have been treating me inappropriately. I’m almost going crazy staying here because some of the staff are super rude. A few of the staff are super nice & I really appreciate it. I love my life & I’m not going to let jealous haters ruin it. I wouldn’t want to wish any harm on anyone so please prayers or help to me soon. Still trying to stay positive even when a lot of people are really sh*tty to me in life (like Roxanne the Registered Nurse on Renown Tahoe Tower floor 7) you guys need to file her. I’ve had enough of this & I deserve WAY better. Hopes & prayers or some help to me soon.💕

[kurreliina]

pointless post

fun fact

i have 153 songs in my “”“the playlist”””. ive been adding new ones nearly weekly since june 2015.

and if i put the playlist on shuffle, i can still remember the month and exact moments when i listened to that song.

Relient K : Mrs. Hippopotamuses’ ; last days of july 2016. chilling in the backyard and thinking about chicken. chicken are nice.

Down In Ashes : Beautiful Ghost ; september 2015. the first time i listened to this on a walk in the middle of the night. no light anywhere, just running in autumn rain seeing nothing but black. wow im such a sporty guy

4LYN : Nostalgia ; november 2015. literally just sitting in biology class. so interesting.

Crystal Castles : Not In Love ; autumn 2015. kinda same as the last one; walking back to class after break in school. trees and landscape and the school doors. i n t e r e s t i n g

Itchy Poopzkid : Dancing in the Sun ; in the middle of december 2015 ; listening to this in the livingroom. it was kinda luxus as i dont have speakers in my room. i was also dancing.

Hotel Books : Run Wild, Young Beauty ; spring 2016. okay this is a hard one, i just dont know. but it was spring aka the horrible vortex that always makes days stick together and me want to die so it doesnt count.

ok the last one i promise

Arctic Monkeys : Stop The World Cause I Wanna Get Off With You ; march 2016, making tortillas at my friend’s house. it was so nice and warm.

this post has literally no other point than me trying to convince myself that im able to do that. and provide nice information to stalkers. also its 10.30 am and i didnt sleep. again. im fucking dying guys

guys

[celtfather]

Diversity of Celtic Music #418

Strap yourself in for some high-speed, craic’n fun Irish Celtic music on this week’s Irish & Celtic Music Podcast.

The Gatehouse Well, Alasdair Fraser & Tony McManus, Teton Skye, Moch Pryderi, Farsan, The Glory Reel, Kevin Kennedy & Samantha Kennedy, Atyls, FinTan, Bridgid's Cross, Bernadette Morris, The Celtic Kitchen Party, Brendan Monaghan, St. Jame's Gate, Molly's Revenge

I hope you enjoyed this week's show. If you did, please share the show with ONE friend.

The Irish & Celtic Music Podcast is dedicated to growing our community and helping the incredible artists who so generously share their music. If you find music you love, buy their albums, shirts, and songbooks, follow them on Spotify, see their shows, and drop them an email to let them know you heard them on the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast.

Remember also to Subscribe to the Celtic Music Magazine. Every week, I'll send you a few cool bits of Celtic music news. It's a quick and easy way to plug yourself into more great Celtic culture. Plus, you'll get 34 Celtic MP3s for Free, just for signing up today. Thank you again for being a Celt of Kindness.

VOTE IN THE CELTIC TOP 20 With the new year comes a new votes in the Celtic Top 20. This is our way of finding the best songs and artists each year. Just list the show number, and the name of as many bands in the episode as you like. Your vote helps me create next year's Best Celtic music of 2019 episode.  Vote Now!

THIS WEEK IN CELTIC MUSIC

0:04 - "Tree Gap Set" by The Gatehouse Well from Bring You Ashore

3:45 - WELCOME / DIVERSITY TALK

6:14 - "Roslin Castle/Miss Gordon of Gight" by Alasdair Fraser & Tony McManus from Return to Kintail

12:18 - "The Chill Eastern Wind" by Teton Skye from Teton Skye

16:06 - "Welsh Bagpipe Medley" by Moch Pryderi from Moch IV

18:53 - "Oran An Roin" by Farsan from Farsan

23:06 - CELTIC FEEDBACK

25:50 - "The Flood of the Holm" by The Glory Reel from The Glory Reel

29:18 - "The Connemara Cradle Song" by Kevin Kennedy & Samantha Kennedy from When I Was One And Twenty

33:18 - "Atlas" by Atlys from Atyls

37:04 - "Tamosher" by FinTan from Excursion

39:55 - "John Ryan's Polka/Blarney Pilgrim" by Bridgid's Cross from Half Two

42:26 - CELTIC MUSIC NEWS

45:13 - "By the Water's Edge" by Bernadette Morris from Where the Heart Is

48:37 - "The Finest Local Pub" by The Celtic Kitchen Party from Sociable!

52:39 - "Unbroken" by Brendan Monaghan from Unbroken

55:48 - "Tullamore Dew" by St. Jame's Gate from Happy Life

59:44 - CLOSING REMARKS

1:01:28 - "The Western Shore" by Molly's Revenge With Moira Smiley from The Western Shore

The Irish & Celtic Music Podcast was produced by Marc Gunn, The Celtfather. To subscribe, go to Apple Podcasts or to our website where you can become a Patron of the Podcast for as little as $1 per episode. Promote Celtic culture through music at http://celticmusicpodcast.com/.

  CELTIC PODCAST NEWS

* Helping you celebrate Celtic culture through music. My name is Marc Gunn. I am a Celtic musician and podcaster. This show is dedicated to the indie Celtic musicians. I want to ask you to support these artists. Share the show with your friends. And find more episodes at celticmusicpodcast.com. You can also support this podcast on Patreon.

In every episode of the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast, I mention "celebrating Celtic culture through music." It’s easy to miss the nuance of this mission statement. This podcast is not just about the traditional music of Ireland or Scotland. It is about all of those under-served aspects of Celtic music, and its many forms, from around the globe. It's about the fusion, the change, and the growth of the musical traditions of the Celts.

So I found it disappointing to hear someone attack my guest host Susan J. E. Ritta last week for promoting the women of Celtic music and FairPle, an organization dedicated to giving Celtic women in music a voice. It's both disappointing and rather disgusting.

Women are under-represented throughout the music business, including Celtic music.

If you've spent ANY time studying the music business since it began, like I have, you would know this to be true.

Sadly, some folks feel threatened by those who are marginalized and gain a fair footing.

It happened to the Irish when they first came to American. If you have studied the history of the Celts, you will note the Celts too were marginalized. And when you belittle one marginalized group, you disgrace all of our Celtic culture. You disgrace the history and suffering the Celts endured and overcame.

So let me be clear. The women of Celtic music deserve our support. If you disagree, that's your choice. But I will continue to fight for these amazing women and promote FairPle and any organization that stands up against small-minded people who refuse to change with history.

So whether you're a new listener or long-time, if that's you, I wish you a fond farewell. This podcast is not for you.

TRAVEL WITH CELTIC INVASION VACATIONS Every year, I take a small group of Celtic music fans on the relaxing adventure of a lifetime. We don't see everything. Instead, we stay in one area. We get to know the region through it's culture, history, and legends. You can join us with an auditory and visual adventure through podcasts and videos. Join the invasion at http://celticinvasion.com/

THANK YOU PATRONS OF THE PODCAST! There are many ways to support the Irish & Celtic Music Podcast. You can make a donation through our website. You can buy a bumper sticker to show your support. You can buy an Irish & Celtic Music Podcast t-shirt or get the Sainted Song Henger Collection to tell the world you support Celtic culture through music. The best way is to become a Patron of the Podcast.

This show exists because of the kind patronage of people like you. You can make a pledge of a dollar or more per episode and cap how much you want to spend each month. Your generosity funds the creation, promotion and production of the show. It allows us to attract new listeners and to help our community grow. And you also get episodes before regular listeners.

You can become a generous Patron of the Podcast at http://patreon.com/celticpodcast.

I want to thank our newest patrons: Brian M, Jennifer, Robyn, Joyce, Rebecca H, BassPipes, Murray F.

  I WANT YOUR FEEDBACK

What are you doing today while listening to the podcast? You can send a written comment along with a picture of what you're doing while listening. Email a voicemail message to celticpodcast@gmail.com

Allison Walker-Elders emailed from DC: "Hi Marc,I've been meaning to write this email for weeks! During your episode # 405 (Fight Like a Celtic Woman) I was so moved by Heather Dale's song "One of Us" that I had to stop in the middle of my hour-long run and have a good cry.

The song reminded me of every woman I have ever looked up to in my life, personally or academically or in my career. I don't know if it was intentional on Heather Dale's part, but I was strongly reminded of the 2016 American election-- while I didn't always agree with Secretary Clinton, she would have made a great president and I was proud that she was one of us. Remembering that feeling of pride combined with the devastation of her loss while listening to "One of Us" brought me right back to that moment in the early hours of November 9th, 2016.

Thank you for everything that you do to raise up the voices of underrepresented Celtic musicians and songwriters.I especially appreciated Lady Susan's episode this past week and can't wait to listen to other episodes of her show.

If I were to request anything from your show, maybe it would be a longer episode for workouts--I'll be running a marathon later this summer and plan on listening to your show while I run it in the beautiful mountains of Washington State."

Thank you so much Allison for your touching response. I'm so happy the song moved you. It's become a favorite of my daughter Kenzie too. And I'm quite proud of that.

You are right. There are many voices underrepresented in the Celtic community, especially from Celtic women. I know a quarterly episode is a very small contribution. But I'm proud I can add that into the world. And while I originally planned it just for 2019, I've since changed decided to extend it into the future.

As for the longer workout episodes, may I should add that as a Patreon Milestone--Celtic Marathon Training. That'd be fun.

Check out this episode!

[fitnessexpert00-blog]

Fitness Isnt a Lifestyle Anymore. Sometimes Its a Cult

New Post has been published on https://fitnessqia.com/must-see/fitness-isnt-a-lifestyle-anymore-sometimes-its-a-cult/

Fitness Isnt a Lifestyle Anymore. Sometimes Its a Cult

San Franciscos Fort Mason park is empty in the early morning darkness, every surface the color of a used cast-iron pan. Its pouring rain, and Ive been wandering around since just after 6, trying to find well, Im not exactly sure. All I know is that, according to a Facebook post, members of one of the strangest fitness groups in the country are supposed to be meeting here right about now. But the Google Maps screenshot I pulled from the website seems to have directed me to a parking lot. Or the front door of the high-end vegetarian restaurant Greens. Its hard to tell.

I check Facebook again.

What are you planning to do for the first Monday of 2016? Sleep in? Lazily slog on into work? No need for that. Come join us for #DonutMondays at NPSF (Gil, dont forget the donuts!). Fort Mason. 6:25AM

Just as I start thinking Ill have to find my own doughnut, a woman in her mid-twenties jogs up to me looking equally lost. Shes dressed in a gray Adidas jacket, black leggings, and a tank top that resembles caution tape. Her wet hair is stuck to her forehead as though shes just been dunked in the Pacific.

Do you know where November Project meets? she asks with a slight accent. Relieved, I tell her Im trying to find them as well. Im Stine! she says.

And then she hugs me.

What distinguishes November Project is not just the fact that its freejust as instructors arent paid, members dont paybut the degree to which it actually is a social identity. The movement extends beyond exercising to encompass rituals and customs, social expecta­tions, and repercussions for failing to participate. Thats right: If you skip a November Project workout, youre not out any cash, but the fallout is arguably more severe. Youre, well, shamed. Online. Its weird.

Spoiler: Not a lot of people miss workouts. Teixeira calls it an absolute feast for someone studying motivation for exercise.

One member compared November Project to a church. More commonly, people refer to it as a cult. Never in the pejora­tive Im-trapped-and-I-cant-escape sense, though. More like, This is the greatest-tasting Kool-Aid in the world!

Laura McCloskey leads the San Francisco tribe in a high-intensity workout. Hugs and hand-holding are not optional.Jake Stangel

While we walk, Stine, whos originally from Denmark, tells me about her obsession with November Project. Shes been a member of the Boston tribebears repeating: tribefor about four months and is visiting San Francisco for the week. Its been such a great way to meet people. Cities can be lonely, but you have this instant community, she says, using a nice-enough line that begins to sound like propaganda as I hear other members repeat it.

Two people who say it a lot are Brogan Graham and Bojan Mandaric. They are November Projects cofoundersand they totally fit their gladiatorial-sounding names: 6-foot-tall, bald, tattooed former collegiate rowers. Back in 2011, when the friends were trying to stay motivated during a Boston winter, they agreed to work out every weekday morning at 6:30, keeping track of their progress on a spreadsheet named for that first month, November.

Then, for reasons neither can quite remember, they sent out a tweet to see if anyone would join in. Two people became three, and a movement was born. When the Boston tribe reached 300 people, Graham and Mandaric got matching tattoos.

In the past few years, fitness has developed into some­thing of a social identity — at least among plugged-in, upper-middle-class, roughly millennial-age urbanites.

It was a powerful turning point for Graham. During his sophomore year at Northeastern University, he was charged with assaulting a rival college rower. Though the charge was dropped in exchange for community service, he lost his scholarship and was kicked out of school. The experience shaped Grahams views on community and inclusion. Got a bad rap? I dont care, he wrote in the movements official history. Are you at November Project to be kind, work your ass off, and start your day right? Then thats all that matters.

As Stine is telling me how much she loves November Projects instant community, we find who were looking for. Unmistakably silhouetted against the foggy morning sky, about 40 people stand in a lopsided semicircle, arms crossed, heads bowed against the wind. They could be praying.

A woman in striped leggings and a North Face trucker hat climbs onto a park bench. Good morning! says Laura McCloskey, the San Francisco tribe leader, in a stage whisper. Were going to do a workout that I just came up with! I want everyone to break into groups of four! Find your four! Try to group up with someone you dont normally pair with!

Jake Stangel

Before we start, she asks if today is anyones first time. A few people raise their hands. I, not quite ready to give up my anonymity, do not. The newbies are directed to state where they come from, how they got here, and whether theyre single. A version of this happens at every November Project meetup, one of the traditions borrowed from Graham and Mandarics original Boston tribealong with chants, stair laps, a rallying move called the bounce, and, of course, physical affection. People come looking for a sense of belonging, Mandaric says. We foster that.

The same thing goes for November Projects other tactics for promoting inclusiveness. Hashtags are essential follow November Project on Twitter and youll see a lot of #hills­forbreakfast, #sleepwhenyouredead, and #justshow­up. Members usually don highlighter-colored sportswear, stenciled and spray-painted with the logo #grassrootsgear. The result is a group of people who look alike, sound alike, and hug alike.

Toward the end of our workout, a man in my squat group finally discovers that I didnt announce myself as a new member. Were going to fix this, he says with a grin. He outs me to McCloskey, who has me wave to everyone during the group photo (another ritual) and apologize for not making my presence known. Eventually, everyone becomes part of the tribe.

Jake Stangel

In Graham and Mandarics crew days, their coach had a policy: If anyone missed practice, the whole team had to do dry-land workouts. It worked because nobody wanted to let the group down. When they started November Project, they knew theyd need a similar system for keeping people accountable to the tribe.

I feel a tiny bit of thisan expectation that no one is above the groupwhen Im teased for not introducing myself. But thats nothing compared to what happens to someone who doesnt show up for a workout. For that, November Project has perfected a bizarre, more 21st-century form of establishing accountability: online shaming. This is known as We Missed You.

From November Projects website: If you decided that staying in bed was a better option than working out with your friends (who you promised that youll be there) then your face will be featured here.

Members usually don highlighter-colored sports­wear, stenciled and spray-painted with the logo #grassrootsgear.

By face, they mean embarrassing photos lifted from the shamed members Facebook profile or supplied by friends. Posts go on to explain that this person committed to attending a workoutmade a #verbal, in tribe-speakbut reneged. Screenshots of text messages and emails confirming said #verbal are posted, along with guesses as to why the absentee might have failed to show upanything from you must have gotten too drunk the night before to perhaps you were lost on a Segway tour. Its an elaborate expression of profound disappointment in the offending person, and there are hundreds of examples on the website.

Paddy OLeary, a member of the San Francisco tribe, remembers when he skipped a workout in 2013. A fellow member made him a We Missed You video; he hasnt missed a workout since. Other victims confirm the tactics effectiveness. You look like an idiot for sleeping in when everyone else is having an amazing time, says Holly Richardson, also in San Francisco. Its not worth it.

McCloskey makes no apologies for the policy. November Project is successful because it relies on word of mouth and accountability, she says. If I tell you that I will meet you at the corner of Market and Sanchez to run to November Project, come rain, snow, or dinosaurs, I will be there. In the event that someone sends one of those pathetic just cant do it texts at 5:55 am, we have the right to roast them. And roast we do.

Jake Stangel

Heres the fundamental thing about shaming: According to behavioral psychologists, its not supposed to work. Sure, it might force someone to make a change in the momentcontestants on The Biggest Loser shedding pounds before a national audience, for instancebut the effects dont always last. When your goals, attitudes, or values are shaped by external motivators, its unlikely youll stay satisfied or committed for long.

This is certainly true when it comes to working out. For decades, experts in behavior modification have tried to get people to commit to exercise. So far, nothing has worked, says Jack Raglin, a professor of kinesiology at Indiana University. It doesnt matter if youre paid to exercise, if youve paid to exercise, if you might die from lack of exercisemost people just dont stick it out.

Yet theres an undeniable element of shaming to this latest generation of exercise fads. It may have started with fitness trackers, which made people more aware of their activity levels in relation to othersreach 10,000 steps or your coworkers will know youre a slob. From there, programs began capitalizing on group pressure. In Orangetheory workouts, your calorie burn and heart rate are displayed on a screen. CrossFit posts scores as well, believing it encourages people to push harderand now its in 13,000 affiliated gyms worldwide.

But this motivation strategy, researchers like Raglin and Teixeira suggest, could be as doomed as any other. You may initially want to impress your peers or get your moneys worth, but those considerations rarely lead to true behavior change. If the standard adherence rate for exercise holds, Raglin says, half the people will stop showing up to these classes within a year.

Youd think this would apply to November Project too. After all, the threat of We Missed You is external. But there are some differences. November Project members are not paying anything to be there, the goals arent about burning the most caloriesyet people show up anyway. And many of them have been at this for years, without ever missing a single workout. Its clearly working for some people.

Jake Stangel

True motivation, Teixeira says, takes something extra, something intrinsic. If members of a group think they are gaining useful skills, feel personally valued, and perceive that they have control over their actions, they are more likely to fully commit. Teixeira believes November Project gives you a bit of all these things. And indeed, everyone I talk to seems like a lifer. But then again, I only talk to people who are there. The one real data point we have is that November Project continues to expand. A recent partnership with the North Face aims to help grow the movement.

Jennifer Hurst, an associate professor of health and exercise science at Truman State University, suggests November Project may be succeeding at pulling off a rare thing: positive shaming. It only works when the person truly cares what the shamers think, she says. The desire for social connectedness and the positive feeling some get from the environment must be worth the time, energy, and sacrifice. That explains why the rituals, cultlike as they seem, are so crucial. You dont want to disappoint people you hug, not to mention chant and bounce and dance with.

A number of years ago, Raglin and his colleagues found that married adults who enrolled in a recreational fitness program together had an average adherence rate of over 90 percent, compared to just 50 percent for those who enrolled on their own. The married pair didnt necessarily exercise together or even in the same room, Raglin says. They simply came and left together. Yet the social benefit was quite profound.

That may also help explain November Projects success. Members might not be married to each other, but theyre married to the group. And the group is what holds November Project together.

Jake Stangel

It turns out some November Project members actually are married to each other. At one of my workouts, a young couple tells me they met in the Boston tribe. The movement encourages this sort of thingleaders are expected to host mixers and speed-dating events. The phrase There will be babies appears on the blog and in promo material.

Yes, its all a bit creepy, and I dont blame passersby who look at us funny (there are many of them). And no matter how many times Im told that We Missed You is not about shaming, its about love, I wont be entirely convinced. But you cant deny the smile on these peoples faces. Nobody looks like that when theyre huffing it alone on a treadmill in their garage. I wont be heading up a November Project tribe back home in Santa Fe, but if one comes to my town, I wouldnt say no to a few hugs.

With dawn creeping over the edges of the city, we put our arms around each other and start to bounce. Yall good? someone says, in signature November Project whisper-shout. Fuck yeah! the group whispers back.

Surprising myself just a little, I say it too.

Meaghen Brown (@meaghenbrown) is a freelance journalist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the former online fitness editor for Outside.

This article appears in the July 2016 issue.

Read more: http://www.wired.com/