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papermoonloveslucy · 3 years

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REMINISCING

August 14, 1977

By Frank Swertlow, Chicago Daily News

BEVERLY HILLS - During the first years of television, Ed Wynn, the radio and stage comic, was trying to break into television with a half-hour comedy on CBS. (1)

One night, he invited a couple of second echelon performers to make an appearance: a comedienne, known as "Technicolor Tessie" for her blazing red hair, and a song-and-dance man, best remembered for hollering "babalu."

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz were the couple, and they, like Wynn, were sampling the waters of the new medium. CBS had asked Miss Ball and her conga-drum pounding husband to develop a comedy show for television. Later, after months of thought and testing their ideas on the vaudeville circuit, the couple came up with "I Love Lucy," the misadventures of Lucy and Ricky Riccardo. (2)

It made its debut on CBS in October 1951. More than a quarter of a century afterwards, "I Love Lucy" easily can vie for the honor of television's most successful show. It was the archtype [sp] domestic comedy, the bumbling husband and his daffy wife. It gave birth to two other Lucy shows, a host of specials and a giant production company, Desilu.

"We spent months thinking about what we should do," Miss Ball recalled. "We didn't want to be the average Hollywood couple. Nobody would think you had any problems if you had a car and swimming pool and a nice house.

"Ultimately, we wanted a show in which people could identify with us. Everybody could understand what it was like to struggle for a buck. I was an ordinary, everyday, middle class housewife. I wore the same dress often. My husband worked and tolerated my mistakes. It was something that everyone could identify with."

With the debut of the TV series, Lucille Ball, the former Goldwyn girl who started her film career in the 1930s, had a new career.

"I never expected the show to go more than a year," said Miss Ball. "I wanted to do the show on film so I could use them as home movies. Who knew about television then? It was a no-no to do TV work. The movie studios were against it."

To Miss Ball, who was not a new face to the public, the impact of her show was incredible. "We went to New York on a trip once and we were unprepared for what happened. People rushed up and wanted to touch you. They knew you, and called you by your first name. I had been in pictures for years, and most of the time I was never identified."

If the movers and shakers of the film industry who gave Miss Ball her start during the 1930s were alive, they would have been shocked. To them, simply and kindly, Lucille Ball was a B-movie queen, one of the many second-line actresses who never attained star billing, but who was an important ingredient to the motion picture industry.

Unlike many performers who labored under the cruel studio system, Miss Ball fondly remembered her early years in Hollywood. "It was nice to be under the umbrella of a studio. You always had a poppa. I loved it. I loved being part of the business. I would have swept floors just to be in it."

Miss Ball, however, did not forget the tactics of the brutal and disgusting lords of movieland. Harry "King" Cohn, the ruler of Columbia Pictures, stood out. "He made the biggest dent in everybody. He was ruthless. He always had to take a devious route." (3)

Miss Ball, who is not exactly a pushover, laughingly recalled the time she outwitted the sly Cohn.

Miss Ball had received an offer to work in a Cecil B. DeMille film, but Cohn refused to loan her to the producer. He was being mean. Then, Cohn decided to drop her contract. To do it, he sent the actress a horrible script something that the trade called a lease breaker. "Oh, everybody was dying to play opposite John Agar and Raymond Burr," she recalled jokingly. "I was going to be a harum [sp] girl." Naturally, Cohn expected her to refuse and it would be the end of her contract. (4)

The savvy Miss Ball decided to do the film and collect her check. When she made this announcement there was an uproar. She coyly told her bosses: "Oh, I want to do the film. It's a wonderful film."

Meanwhile, Miss Ball, who had been trying to get pregnant for years, found out she was going to have a baby. Now, she was in trouble. If Cohn found out, he would break her contract. "I only told my mother and my husband I was pregnant."

Keeping her lips sealed, she went ahead with Cohn's film. "The wardrobe girl kept looking at me in my harum [sp] girl costume and saying, 'What's wrong with you, you are getting so big.' "So, I told her, 'Don't worry, I ate a big meal last night. Just put a little more taffeta on my dress.' Well, I finished the film and I collected my $85,000."

"Then I had to go to Mr. DeMille and tell him I couldn't do his film. I was pregnant. 'What,' he said. And I replied. 'I'm going to have a baby. 'Get rid of it,' he said. And he was serious.' She declined. (5)

While Miss Ball's career as a TV star is secure (she still has a contract with CBS) (6) she is not so certain about the state of the industry. Today, unlike when she started on the air, shows are yanked off the screen within a couple of weeks. This, she said, destroys performers.

"If a show is canceled, the actor takes the blame. He or she suffers for it. They suffer inside. The rejection - they failed. (7)

"I would fail. You can't protect yourself. It's out of your hands. It's always Lucy failed or Rhoda failed or Farrah Sauset Fawcett Sauset, whatever her name is, failed. It's rough." (8)

Even so, Lucille Ball, the red-haired girl from Jamestown, N.Y., would still be on top.

# # #

FOOTNOTES FROM THE FUTURE

(1) Ed Wynn (1886-1966) was a vaudevillian who hosted “The Ed Wynn Show” on television from 1949 to 1950. Lucy and Desi guest-starred on the show.

(2) ‘Riccardo’ is probably a misspelling of ‘Ricardo’, but it was also the way their surname was spelled on “I Love Lucy” in early episodes!

(3) Harry Cohn (1891-1958) was a much-despised executive at Columbia Studios. Lucille Ball once facetiously told Louella Parsons that she liked Harry Cohn too much to ever sign a contract with him. What Lucille meant is that Cohn had a reputation for being difficult. Despite that fact, a casting draught forced her to sign with Columbia in 1949.

(4) Lucille Ball had often complained to Cohn about the quality of the pictures she had been doing at Columbia. At the time The Magic Carpet was made, Ball was only obligated to Columbia for one more film, and Cohn had producer Sam Katzman, who turned out most of Columbia's low-budget "B" pictures, concoct a cheap Arabian Nights fantasy as a punishment to Ball for her constantly challenging him. More salacious writers insist that Cohn’s frustration with Ball was due to the fact that she would not submit to him sexually.

(5) The DeMille film in question was The Greatest Show on Earth, a movie set at the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey circus. Lucille was set to play the elephant trainer, a role that went to Gloria Graham. It was a film Lucille really wanted to do - but she wanted a baby more. Later in life, Desilu created a TV version of the film. Lucille also guest-starred as the ringmaster on “Circus of the Stars II” in which Lucie Arnaz was featured as.... the elephant trainer!

(6) Lucille Ball had started working at CBS on radio and was considered their premiere star. In 1980, after her television shows had ended, she signed with NBC, a partnership that yielded very little except that Ball was obliged to appear on Bob Hope’s many specials, something she frequently did anyway. Both CBS and NBC declined her final series “Life With Lucy” which producer Aaron Spelling finally convinced ABC to air.

(7) Although this article was written ten years before “Life With Lucy”, Lucille could very well be describing her own devastation when the series was cancelled even before all the initial episodes aired. She was widely criticized and the series often turned up on “worst show” lists.

(8) Rhoda refers to a character on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” that was played by Valerie Harper, a performer that appeared on Broadway with Lucille. In 1974, the character was spun off into its own eponymous sitcom which aired for four seasons.

Farrah Fawcett-Majors was a beautiful blonde actress and poster girl that burst onto the TV scene in the mid-1970s. A year after this interview, she was in the hit series “Charlie’s Angels” entering American iconography for her feathered hair and curvaceous figure the same way Betty Grable had in the 1940s.

#Lucille Ball #Valerie Harper #Harry Cohn #Farrah Fawcett #The Greatest Show on Earth #Life With Lucy #Cecil B. DeMille #The Magic Carpet #Lucie Arnaz #Gloria Graham #Desi Arnaz #Ed Wynn #1977 #Frank Swertlow

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black-paraphernalia · 3 years

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Little-known document offering details about the names, ages, places of origin, and personal situations of thousands of blacks who fled American slavery and hoped to find their promised land in Canada.

It is called the Book of Negroes.

The handwritten ledger runs to about 150 pages. It offers volumes of information about the lives of black people living more than two centuries ago. On an anecdotal level, it tells us who contracted smallpox, who was blind, and who was travelling with small children.

One entry for a woman boarding a ship bound for Nova Scotia describes her as bringing three children, with a baby in one arm and a toddler in the other. In this way, the Book of Negroes gives precise details about when and where freedom seekers managed to rip themselves free of American slavery.

As a research tool it offers historians and genealogists the opportunity to trace and correlate people backward and forward in time in other documents, such as ship manifests, slave ledgers, and census and tax records.

Sadly, however, the Book of Negroes has been largely forgotten in Canada. And that is a shame. Dating back to an era when people of African heritage were mostly excluded from official documents and records, the Book of Negroes offers an intimate and unsettling portrait of the origins of the Black Loyalists in Canada.

Compiled in 1783 by officers of the British military at the tail end of the American Revolutionary War, the Book of Negroes was the first massive public record of blacks in North America. Indeed, what makes the Book of Negroes so fascinating are the stories of where its people came from and how it came to be that they fled to Nova Scotia and other British colonies.

The document, which is essentially a detailed ledger, contains the names of three thousand black men, women, and children who travelled — some as free people, and others the slaves or indentured servants of white United Empire Loyalists — in 219 ships sailing from New York between April and November 1783. The Book of Negroes did more than capture their names for posterity. In 1783, having your name registered in the document meant the promise of a better life. Source: Canadahistory.com

Black Paraphernalia Disclaimer- images from Google Images

The first proclamation appeared in November 1775, just months after the Revolutionary War had begun. To attract more support for the British forces, John Murray, the Virginia governor who was formally known as Lord Dunmore, infuriated American slave owners with his famous and the irony of him was he himself was a slave owner.

Dunmore Proclamation:

To the end that peace and good order may the sooner be restored ... I do require every person capable of bearing arms to resort to His Majesty’s standard ... and I do hereby further declare all indented servants, Negroes, or others (appertaining to Rebels) free, that are able and willing to bear arms, they joining His Majesty’s Troops, as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing this Colony to a proper sense of their duty to his Majesty’s crown and dignity. Enslaved blacks attentively followed this proclamation, fleeing their owners to serve the British war effort.

The Philipsburg Proclamation

Came four years later and was designed to attract not just those “capable of bearing arms,” but any black person, male or female, who was prepared to serve the British in supporting roles as cooks, laundresses, nurses, and general laborers. Issued in 1779 by Sir Henry Clinton, commander-in-chief of the British forces, it promised: “To every Negro who shall desert the Rebel Standard, full security to follow within these lines, any occupation which he shall think proper.”

By 1782, as it became apparent that the British were losing the war, and as George Washington, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, prepared to take control of New York City, blacks in Manhattan became increasingly desperate about their prospects. They had been promised freedom in exchange for service in wartime.

But would the British live up to their side of the bargain?

For a time, it looked as though they would not. When the terms of the provisional peace treaty between the losing British and the victorious rebels were finally made known in 1783, the loyal blacks felt betrayed. Article 7 of the peace treaty left the Black Loyalists with the impression that the British had abandoned them entirely. It said

All Hostilities both by Sea and Land shall from henceforth cease all prisoners on both sides shall be set at Liberty and His Britannic Majesty shall with all convenient Speed and without Causing any destruction or carrying away any Negroes or other Property of the American Inhabitants withdraw all its Armies, Garrisons, and Fleets, from the said United States.

Boston King, a Black Loyalist who fled from his slave owner in South Carolina, served with the British forces in the war, and went on to become a church minister in Nova Scotia and subsequently in Sierra Leone, noted in his memoir the terror that blacks felt when they discovered the terms of the peace treaty:

The horrors and devastation of war happily terminated and peace was restored between America and Great Britain, which diffused universal joy among all parties, except us, who had escaped from slavery and taken refuge in the English army; for rumor prevailed at New York, that all the slaves, in number 2,000, were to be delivered up to their masters, although’ some of them had been three or four years among the English.

This dreadful rumor filled us all with inexpressible anguish and terror, especially when we saw our old masters coming from Virginia, North Carolina, and other parts, and seizing upon their slaves in the streets of New York, or even dragging them out of their beds. Many of the slaves had very cruel masters, so that the thoughts of returning home with them embittered life to us. For some days we lost our appetite for food, and sleep departed from our eyes

Source: Canadahistory.com please click on link for the full fascinatiing story of the Book of Negros

#black paraphernalia #black soliders #black patriots #book of negros #did you know

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theculturedmarxist · 4 years

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This report was written by Andrew Perez, Julia Rock and David Sirota

Draft legislation circulating in the U.S. Senate would shield employers and health care industry executives from legal consequences when their business decisions injure or kill workers, customers and patients during the COVID-19 outbreak.

The unprecedented proposal to gut legal protections — which is being depicted as moderate compromise legislation and potentially attached to badly-needed state and local aid — follows a Harvard study showing a surge in worker COVID deaths following their requests for government regulators’ help.

The Huffington Post reported on Monday that Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is joining GOP senators in backing corporate immunity legislation. A draft of the legislative language obtained by The Daily Poster includes provisions that would:

Shield companies from all coronavirus-related actions retroactively — for at least one year, or until the pandemic is over — except in cases of “gross negligence.” Most coronavirus-related lawsuits would be forced into federal courts, which are considered more friendly to business interests.

Restrict the enforcement of longstanding laws such as the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when companies say they are attempting to comply with governments’ coronavirus guidance.

Empower the United States Attorney General to deem coronavirus-related lawsuits from workers, customers and attorneys “meritless” and then file civil actions against them as retribution. In order to “vindicate the public interest,” courts would be allowed to fine respondents up to $50,000.

Shield health care executives from lawsuits through language copied word-for-word from a statute passed in New York by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo amid a spate of COVID deaths in that state’s nursing homes.

“Substantially Immunizing Businesses From Risky Conduct”

The legislation defines gross negligence as “a conscious, voluntary act or omission in reckless disregard of (A) a legal duty; (B) the consequences to another party; and (C) applicable government standards and guidance.”

“We are wiping out the laws of negligence,” said Michael Duff, a former National Labor Relations Board official who is now a professor at the University of Wyoming College of Law. “As a practical matter, we are substantially immunizing businesses from risky conduct.”

“What they want to do in this bill is throw every lawsuit out before it conceivably gets to a jury,” he said. “It means that a judge has the authority to dismiss a case right upfront. Because there’s no way that plaintiffs are going to be able to meet this standard — gross negligence.”

He added that the provision empowering the Attorney General to punish plaintiffs “is a bald-faced threat of reprisal for having the temerity to pursue rights.”

“That Is Not A Negotiation — That Is A Collapse”

Lawmakers released a separate $748 billion COVID-related proposal that includes expanded unemployment benefits, an extension of the Paycheck Protection Program, and funding for COVID-19 testing and vaccine distribution. It would also reauthorize a CARES Act provision allowing the government to funnel money to out-of-work defense contractors.

The latter package did not include a new round of $1,200 stimulus checks sought by Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. Only $188 billion of the proposal is new stimulus money — the other $560 billion is repurposed from the CARES Act, passed this spring.

Sanders criticized Democrats for their handling of coronavirus relief talks. “What kind of negotiation is it when you go from $3.4 trillion to $188 billion in new money?” he said. That is not a negotiation. That is a collapse.”

According to Politico, Reps. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and Tom Reed, R-N.Y., the co-chairs of the House Problem Solvers Caucus, are pushing to combine the two bills into one $908 billion proposal.

#senate #covid19 #fuck covid #bernie sanders #capitalist hell #capitalism #anti capitalism #covid legislation #class war #class warfare #OSHA #law #covid law #covid cases #burn down the senate #burn down washington

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gagosiangallery · 4 years

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Meleko Mokgosi at Gagosian Britannia Street, London

September 2, 2020

MELEKO MOKGOSI Democratic Intuition September 29–December 12, 2020 6–24 Britannia Street, London __________ Democracy is incompatible not only with the foundational elements of the human subject, but also with the various systems and institutions that support dominant forms of subjectivity or humanism in general. In other words, democracy is incompatible with structural racism and institutionalized or systemic violence; democracy is incompatible with neocolonialism and neo-imperialism; democracy is incompatible with the instruments that reproduce the conditions for and possibilities of capitalism; democracy is incompatible with race discourse, Eurocentrism, ethnocentrism, and humanism—all of which have become the dominant ways in which reality is conceptualized, interacted with, and historicized. —Meleko Mokgosi Gagosian is pleased to present Meleko Mokgosi’s first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom and Europe, drawn from his grand project Democratic Intuition (2014–19). In works of sweeping scale and scope, Mokgosi combines history painting with cinematic montage, bringing together elements of religious iconography, advertising, and political propaganda from southern Africa and the United States to produce a layering of imagery both foreign and familiar. Reconceptualizing the intersection of art history, postcolonial nationhood, and democracy within an interdisciplinary critical framework, Mokgosi seeks to redress the many ways in which Black subjects have become unattributed objects of empire and institution. Democratic Intuition is an eight-part epic that includes multi-panel depictions of southern African life and folklore; its title is a nod to Gayatri Spivak’s theory that the functioning of democracy is dependent upon accessible education. Mokgosi engages this concept and its internal contradictions through compelling genre scenes—often involving prominent public figures—that jump-cut between the confines of manual work, the freedoms of intellectual enterprise, and their ties to gender and race. A parade of finely drawn characters emerges out of raw canvas backgrounds, portraying the asymmetries of power that underscore traditional divisions of labor.

One chapter in the series, Bread, Butter, and Power (2018), is a twenty-one-panel panoramic painting that addresses the peripheral position of the Black female subject, constricted by the informal economic sectors of agricultural and domestic labor. In one panel, uniformed schoolgirls painted in meticulous detail till a field of soil rendered in broad abstract strokes; in another, two elderly women sit proudly in decorated state regalia; in a third, two women in period dress embrace in an imagined domestic tableau that contains, among other visual cues, a portrait of a defiant young Harriet Tubman, dressed in the black, green, and red of the Pan-African standard; a self-portrait by Cameroonian photographer Samuel Fosso in the guise of Black radical Angela Davis; and Mokgosi’s own protest poster in ANC colors, which refers to the people’s battle cry following the infamous Uitenhage massacre in 1985: THEY WILL NEVER KILL US ALL. In another chapter titled Objects of Desire, individual small paintings of Afrocentric advertisements, Paleolithic cave paintings, and contemporary African objects are grouped together, dispensing with established representational hierarchies. Together with these images are text paintings in both English and Setswana, in which lines from museum wall labels, poems, and dinaane (oral histories) are accompanied by Mokgosi’s own critical marginalia. His annotations confront the erasure of African languages by racist policies under apartheid and reclaim these varied mother tongues. Key references for this chapter were the Museum of Modern Art’s controversial exhibitions “Primitivism” in Twentieth Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern (1984–85) and Objects of Desire: The Modern Still Life (1997), both notorious for framing historical African artworks as anonymous sources for early European modernism. Meleko Mokgosi was born in Francistown, Botswana, and lives and works between Wellesley, Massachusetts, and New York. He is codirector of graduate studies in painting and printmaking at the Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT, and cofounder of the Interdisciplinary Art and Theory Program, New York. Collections include the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME; Baltimore Museum of Art; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA; Pérez Art Museum Miami; and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Solo exhibitions include Democratic Intuition, Exordium, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2015); Pax Kaffraria, Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester and Rochester Contemporary Art Center, NY (2017); Lex and Love, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA (2017); Acts of Resistance, Baltimore Museum of Art (2018); Bread, Butter, and Power, Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles (2018); Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection: Meleko Mokgosi, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2019); Bread, Butter, and Power, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago (2019); Pan-African Pulp, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor (2019–21); and Your Trip to Africa, Pérez Art Museum Miami (2020–21). Mokgosi participated in the 2013 Biennale de Lyon, Meanwhile... Suddenly, and Then. Key chapters of Democratic Intuition were brought together in a major exhibition at The School in Kinderhook, New York, during 2019–20. A catalogue documenting the entire Democratic Intuition project will be copublished by Jack Shainman Gallery and Pacific Editions at the time of the London exhibition. During the exhibition, gagosian.com will host a curriculum and a series of online international seminars organized in collaboration with the artist. _____ Meleko Mokgosi, Bread, Butter, and Power, 2018 (detail), oil, acrylic, bleach, graphite, photo and pigment transfer, and permanent marker on canvas, with plastic sleeve, in 21 parts; 1 part: 108 × 72 inches (274.3 × 182.9 cm), 18 parts, each: 96 × 96 inches (243.8 × 243.8 cm), 1 part: 96 × 132 inches (243.8 × 335.3 cm), 1 part: 84 × 12 × 12 inches (213.4 × 30.5 × 30.5 cm) © Meleko Mokgosi

#Meleko Mokgosi #Gagosian

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imma-new-soul · 5 years

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A Helping Hand

Summary: owning a farm on your own is hard work so when a handsome man comes looking for work things start to heat up

Paring: Bucky Barnes X Reader

A/N: so I wrote this a while back but it was a bit rushed to me, so I rewrote it. Please tell me if you like it. Feedback is very welcomed

Warning: language, sexual content (not SMUT completely) but implied. If you don't feel comfortable reading please heed my warnings, this is written for a mature audience.

Word count:

Masterlist

Dry breezes swept through the grassy fields creating cascading waves of emerald. The strands that's roots bleed deep into the soil started to wither and darken, its beauty fleeting with every passing of the sun. Long labored days that birthed burning aches in the muscles of your limbs gave little to no reward.

The rains that had not come for weeks caused the buds to not bloom and the trees to bare no fruit. The desperate birds who scavenged through what little was left made certain that your harvest would not be enough to last through the winter.

These struggles and bounds brought the realization that you alone could not rid the farm of the decay that was settling in. You were well versed in the skill of caring for the animals but lacked the vast complex knowledge of agriculture. What little you did know of tending to the crops got you through your first year but only because the weather had often been kind to you.

In the days that followed you desperately hung posters on the walls of the markets, or lefts copies with the priest at the church. "Help Wanted, Room included" and other personal information littered the front of each sheet

The early sun was already high and present in the sky and a few boxes were already checked off of the list of morning duties when the sound of a shaking engine rattled down the path towards your house.

You stepped out from your home evaluating it's presence, black rubber wheels kicking up dirt like a sand storm, leaving a ghostly trail of dust behind it. The vehicle stopped directly in front of the porch and the loud engine rang out, The dead silence amplifying the sound ten fold.

The rumbling ceased, And the door swung open. out stepped a tall, cordial looking man. He wore a clean grey suit, fitted perfectly to his body. His shoes shined like they were brand new, even the bit of stubble that peaked out from face was trimmed and tamed.

He approached confidently, stretching his large arm out to greet you, providing you with a firm handshake. Never had you ever seen a man like this before, although his demeanor seemed tamed you could sence a danger about him. It burned in the pink of his lips and seeped out in the padding of his fingertips and that in itself excited you.

His eyes were beautiful shades of blue and they pierced into yours mysteriously, his skin soft, large warm hands and just his presence set off something strange and new inside of you.

"Hello ma'am my name is James Barnes, are you y/n?" He squinted his eyes, raising one hand uptop his forehead to shield him from the harsh baring sunlight. You nodded your head and in response he slipped his other hand into the back pocket of his pants pulling out a folded paper that orignally had been hung up in town advertising that you were hiring and offering a room.

"I saw this at the market, I called a few times earlier this morning but I figured you were busy, tending to the farm and the animals" he said unfolding the paper and flattening it out on his thigh so it seemed a little less wrinkled.

" Right, so James do you have any experience farming?" You said stepping a little closer to him. His scent like warm whiskey and smoked honey.

"Yes actually I was working for an elderly man for a few years before he passed" James said almost whispering at the last word that slipped from his lips, bowing his head an inch or two in respect.

He was not from around here, you could tell, his voice was deep and low but you could hear the remanince of a past life still lingering on his tounge, East coast, maybe New York or New Jersey? You thought.

"Ok well, James-"

"Call me Bucky" he interrupted and you continue on

"Ok well, Bucky! we start our day at 5am every morning, your room is upstairs down the hall from mine, and you'll get paid when all the work for the day is done. Do you have any questions?"

"Perfect and um.. yeah is there something I could help you with. now?" Bucky shrugging his shoulders a bit, flashing a charming smile that for some reason shuck through your bones.

You looked him over from head to toe shaking your head with a smirk on your lips.

"You're gonna need to change into something a little more…. Appropriate, but first come in for some breakfast Its almost done" you nudged your head towards the entrance of your home, signaling him to follow you and he complied walking closely behind.

The both of you stepped into the house and Bucky quickly took in his surroundings. The decor was old and outdated but had a certain timeless beauty to it. The house was huge and much bigger than any home he had ever lived in. The kitchen smelled of sizzling bacon and warm maple syrup that made Bucky's stomach growl in need.

Breakfast was silent as you expected but you couldn't help but steal wanton glances at Bucky. When is hand brushed against yours on occasion you blushed and shifted in your chair ignoring the weight building in your stomach and chest.

It was strange but also nice, sharing a meal with another person, a handsome stranger at that. You'd spent many months alone, in this big empty house that was full of everything but life.

You spend your day with little to no human contact. so when Bucky sat a bit closer to you then you expected, you welcomed his presence. happily.

After the meal you lead Bucky up the stairs to the end of the hall and to the room you assigned to him. It was spacious with large windows that faced the garden, they were covered with beautiful sheer white curtains that allowed the warm yellow glow of the sun to paint perfect squares of light on the dark oak wood floor and in the corner pressed against the wall was a tall brown framed wardrobe.

"This used to be my brother's room but it's yours now, there's some clothes in the wardrobe that might fit, and this is your bathroom" you pointing to a door that was directly behind him

"get changed and meet me in the stables out back" you instructed, walking out of the room and disappearing from his sight.

After about 10 minutes you spotting Bucky walking towards you and heat flushed your body. He wore a white tank top that tucked into some blue jeans. His arms were bare and his skin wrapped tightly and smooth around the muscles in his chest and arms.

You started by giving him a tour of the property. Fisrt was the stables where the horses were, you showed him the hen houses, pig pens, the cows and bulls and lastly the fields of crops that were sadly looking worse than they did yesterday.

You sighed when you approached the crops, looking out into the field, you couldn't help but feel like you failed. A heavy overwhelming feeling of grief washed over you like dark grey storm clouds rolling in.

Bucky noticed how your demeanor changed, the way your breathing got heavier and how you hung your head low then usual.

"Was this because of the drought?" He said turning to face you with a caring tone laced in each words.

" Yes. I water the whole field myself, everyday but the sun.. its drying the plants faster than I can water them." You said hanging your head lower than before.

A thick, uncomfortable silence loomed over the two of you until Buckys soft voice cut through it. "Don't worry y/n I can help you." He placed his hand on your shoulder in reassurance. You shifted your focus towards him searching for the pity he must of felt for you in his eyes, but you didn't find any. All you could see genuine kindness.

You stood there for a moment to long, lost in his eyes till you realized what you were doing, you shock your head and cleared your throat

"Well it's getting late you should start on your work now, harvest all you can then pull the dead crops out and we'll plant new ones." You said turning away and letting his hand fall to his side.

As the day dragged on you checked Bucky's work over he was a good worker and fast with his hands.

At midday the sun shone directly above and the sweltering heat beamed done on you both. You watched the sweat dripped from the back of his neck and down his chest, He noticed how your eyes lingered on him and took a mental note of it smiling when you weren't looking.

Night came fast like the dry winds but it was just as warm as the day. After hours of relentless work in the stables and around the house you headed to Bucky eager to finally finish your final task.

He stood among the tall grass, his skin and eyes glistened in the moonlight. A vision of unfiltered beauty. Hearing the shuffling of your feet he turned to you, his bright blue eyes pale and heavy as the day.

"Take off your shirt" you said leaving Bucky in a state of shock

"Excuse me?" He said pressing his lips together.

" Take off your shirt so I can wash it, if I wait any longer to do laundry they won't be dry by the morning." You explained laundry basket resting on your hip.

"Yes ma'am" Bucky replied pulling this shirt from his body.

Your mouth opened partly from the sight of his toned body. The heat on your skin become intense, as he drew closer to you, placing the top in the basket you held tightly to your hip. His eyes never leaving yours. He knew you hadn't been able to control yourself all day, stealing glances while he worked, biting your lip at the thought of his large hands on your skin.

He had you right were he wanted you and he wanted to watch you squirm and become undone. He pressed his chest to yours, leaning over to whisper in your ear.

" I don't mind if my things were wet".

His lips grazed your ear and a shiver ran through out your body. Your breath shuck and you cleared your throat again pulling away from him.

You went into the house to catch your breath and clear your mind. but Bucky followed closely, just a step behind you. Your footsteps were fast like your heartbeat and your mind cluttered with impure thoughts that you couldn't shake.

The loud creak from his feet and slam of the door behind you startled you but you showed no sign of fear. You felt his body pressed against yours but this time you did not pull away.

He stood behind you wrapping his arms around your waist swaying agonizingly slow. A hardness growing in his pants pressing up against you

"I saw you watching me, you must be lonely working up a sweat in this big ole house you must be wound up so tight, I bet you wouldn't mind if I gave you a bit of release". He moved his hand down slowly gradually reaching your upper thigh.

Your eyes flutter close. As his hand moved to where you needed him most

Lustful and longing for relief. Your body's collided mixing together, pressing on each other. Moans and screams filled the air and twisting with the smell of sex.

You laid there on the floor legs still hugged around Buckys waist, sweaty and out of breath. You turned your head to find him already looking down at you. A smile spread on both your lips all you could do is laugh uncontrollably still trying to wrap your head around what happened. Bucky joined in your laughter and placed a kiss on your forehead.

"Wow that was…"

"Amazing" Bucky said finishing your sentence

Tagging: @honeyvbarnes @sebbbystaaan @mushyjellybeans @babiiface95 @criminal-cookies @this-kitten-is-smitten @becausewhyknotme @theladyoffangorn @kitkatd7 @fangirl-introvert @constantaking @officialtonystarkprotectionsquad

#bucky fic #bucky x y/n #bucky x reader #bucky barnes #bucky #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes au #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x female reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky fandom #bucky fanfic #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes fandom #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fluff #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes feels

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brwnskin-bunnyteeth · 5 years

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Golden

A/N: Here it is!! About 2K of gibberish and longing. Hope y’all like this!! I did this as part of @hsogolden ‘s #FineLineFicChallenge. Sorry for the late entry! :-)

summary: heartbreak, Shakespeare, and bars

When she first met Harry, Y/N didn’t know what to make of him. The bar was dark, starlight shining down on a local performing spoken word, the population focused most on the performers and in booths, her friend waving her toward her barstool. Taking in her surroundings, admiring the various vintage posters and shirts that decorated the walls, the exposed brick and homely booths, and the brown-haired bartender that was currently chatting up her friend.

His hair, curly, a golden brown mess on top of his head, hands decorated with green and yellow nail polish and a spattering of rings, a gaudy dress shirt thrown on them.

She’d been friends with Dahlia long enough to know that Harry was an ex, someone that she didn’t connect with romantically but claimed he was her “shag soulmate”. But there wasn’t much that she knew about him, just that they were merely friends with benefits at the moment, an arrangement that was largely on hold as long as Dahlia stuck with her current fling.

His hand reached out to her as she sat down, a dimple appearing on his face, “ ‘m Harry.”

“ Y/N,” she said, as her hand dwarfed under his large grasp, his fingers calloused, his eyes boring down into her as he nodded and repeated her name as if he were reciting ancient text and couldn’t mess up the pronunciation. Dahlia simply rolling her eyes, ordering a cocktail and shots, and jumping into a work story.

Harry would join in here and there, chuckling at them.

And at times, he’d center his attention to her, head in hand as he intensely listened to her talk, his attention unwavering as cupid’s bow smites at her weary heart. Other moments, he’d be zoned out, listening to the slam poetry and serenades being played by locals and his hands would break the bubble they’d place around themselves whenever he was particularly enraptured.

Dahlia would later recant his behavior as normal, that he’d always been so impassioned and affected. Describing him as sensitive and dreamy-eyed.

The night ended uneventfully after the last of the patrons mulled out at 1 am. Harry calling a cab as he and a coworker closed up.

Her head full of dizzying thoughts when she was given his number, “I can tell we’re gonna be good friends, better to get this away with”, wide-eyed and just drunk enough to only be able to reply in a stuttering thanks as she drove away. His hand wriggling at her yellow cab, a faint dimple dotting the left side of his face, the sky clear and starry-eyed.

Waking up, Y/N was greeted with, “ ‘til next time, good night xx. ” to her “ got home safely “ text. They’d only known each other for a night and he already had a hold on her.

A nice cold shower brings her back to reality, as she scrubs his green eyes and cologne out of her system. His curly brown hair and easy smile invading her senses, butterflies flying about in her chest. It’d been so long, desire and infatuation feeling new and unnatural in her body. But she couldn’t let herself have a girly crush on a man like him, someone as enchanting as him—especially not one who regularly shags her friend.

Anything romantic was just a figment of her mind, obviously starving for affection and latching onto anyone remotely nice and endearing. He was just a nice guy, one who kept an agonizing gaze on her face whenever she spoke, one who smelled really nice despite working a whole shift at the bar. There was nothing remarkable about him, nothing worth getting attached to.

And yet, it was like her body was punishing her for being away from him, dealing with withdrawals after only meeting him once. Chest hurting as she thought about him.

Two weeks would go by and she’s still thinking of him. She passes by his pub on bus rides and a second always comes where her fingers swipe to his number, yearning to feast her eyes on him again.

Aphrodite herself would soon take pity on her state this night, Y/N unaware as she walks up the theater steps. Her mood, however, is morose when the night begins. Anxiety eats at her from the inside out, hands wringing as she avoids familiar faces in the theater hall.

Large posters don the walls, the face of her ex spread out in colossal laminated fashion and staring down at the floor.

It has been three months since Y/N’d seen him, her heart just as heavy as the day he left. It felt silly, still affected by his frame, still as love-sick, still as devastated.

He looked good, he was doing well. Memories of auditions and line readings, of all the frustration and dedication and late nights, flood her and she can’t help but be delighted for him. He’d been working hard for so long, and securing a lead role in this play was a dream of his.

Her ticket arrived after the fight, from when her presence was expected and assumed. And at first, she just ignored it; still too heartbroken to acknowledge his presence without tearing up. But she’d been preparing for this event for so long, too much of her energy wasted on him and this play, that it felt absurd to not at least go and see the damn thing. Even if she wasn’t attached to him anymore, even if she wasn’t even keen on theater.

Y/N can feel eyes boring into her, a chill moving down her figure as she enters. At this moment, she can tell she’s not going to get through the night without at least one drink if she planned on staying placid. Too many of his friends, his family, and his coworkers occupy the space, people she hasn't spoken to for far too long. She wondered if any of them knew about what happened or if they missed her or if she was even welcomed anymore.

The bar offers some relief; ordering a chill mojito, she admires the marble counter and intricate chandeliers on the ceiling, her eyes nervously looking around. And when her drink is placed in front of her, she reaches into her wallet, but her actions are interrupted when a familiar voice and ringed hand put some money down.

“Let me take care of that for you, bunty.”

Y/N can feel her heart jump all the way up her throat, gasping up at his frame and meeting his sparkling emerald eyes for the first time in weeks. She can feel her face warm up, heart beating as he peers down and wraps an arm around the back of her barstool. All she can do for a second is gape and gasp out a small objection, “Harry I-”

But his hand comes up, shaking his head, “No, nope”, dimples protruding as he continues to smile at her. “I’ve got this” he simpers, ordering his own drink and leaning in as other patrons squeeze by to grab a drink before the show. His voice turns sincere, low, when he takes a full hard look at her, “You look nice, really like that color on you”

And she wants to admonish him, wants to push his money away, wants to question his behavior, but his scent envelopes her—feeling fixed under his gaze. Tension fills the air and she’s drawing her eyes over him as well.

He’s wearing a red patterned vest with an embroidered oxford shirt collar peeking out at the top with the sleeves folded; his pants wide-legged and grayish-blue, loafers brown and heeled. His hair is parted in the middle, and his facial hair has grown, nails painted watermelon red and bright green. Several rings occupy his hands, and a pearl necklace winks at her from his neck and she breathes out a light, “So do you” before chasing her drink.

He’s laughing now, music to her ears, and she wants to bottle it up and save it for later. The two of them take another glance at each other, grins on their faces, silence falling as they take sips of their drinks.

The play begins after they make their way to their seats, the objection of her despair taking the stage. Seeing him for the first time in weeks affects her more than she realized it would.

Y/N knew heartbreak. At age 13, she experienced her first. As a cruel joke, the second hottest boy in her grade level pulled her to the side and kissed her, called her sexy, all for a dare, to win $40 for kissing a pig. He’d stolen her first kiss, playing with her emotions for forty fucking dollars. Her first reaction was to kick him in the nuts. And it gave her some relief, but tears still stung her cheeks, his pain doing nothing to soothe the heartache he inflicted on her.

She spent the rest of the night hiding in the bathroom, too ashamed to tell her parents, too broken to even speak of the incident. Weeks later, a new boy from New York tells her that he fancies her, well all she could do was laugh. How could someone as cool and cute as him like her? Her heart hardened then, the first of many betrayals.

So when she met Benji, she let herself settle, let herself be taken in by the conceited prick who didn’t deserve her love. They’d been together for almost two years but had known each other longer, Benji’s mom running a daycare next door. And she’d loved Benji, still did.

But, sitting there next to Harry, a thought occurred to her. Here is Benji, performing and doing an amazing and inspiring performance in front of industry folk. The fruits of his labor were finally blooming. Yet, she had little to show for those two years. It felt like a waste of her time, her youth. All of her focus was on him, not her.

She felt disgusted, her eyes wetting up and shooting daggers in his direction, his eyesight blinded by the stage lights. She thought she’d gone through the worst of it, that she was done crying, and yet tears threatened to fall down her cheeks—-stomach churning and leg antsy. Why did she drag herself down here? What did she think was going to happen? Was he supposed to realize that he was wrong for cheating on her, for dumping her, and welcome her back in? Was that really what she wanted?

The Shakespearean play continued in the foreground, Y/N slipping into what felt like a panic attack. Her heart dug at her chest, her feet propping her back up and leading her through the double doors.

The lobby is empty, one patron sitting at the bar, the play muffled but continuing in the background. Y/N feels the cold air and is granted with relief, head still spinning with negativity. Not a minute passes before the orchestra is unmuffled, the doors opening and showcasing Harry. He chases after her, concern on his face.

She feels embarrassed, embarrassed for him to see her like this, embarrassed to have made a scene. She turns to tell him to leave her alone when she’s engulfed in his arms, head resting on hers.

“You alright?”, his voice whispers as his arms rub her back, earnestly trying to calm her down. He’s looking at her, his eyes looking her up and down, trying to identify anything concerning. She’s humiliated, clutching onto his body like a toddler, internally deciding if she wanted to tell him everything. When she looks into his eyes, her lips detach from her teeth, and she tells him as much as he needs to know.

While she explains everything, he’s nodding, his face serious as his hands continue to rub her shoulders and back. He squeezes her tighter, his eyebrows furrowing as he takes in everything. He’s so quiet that Y/N can’t help but feel as though she shared too much. That he was only pretending to care, being a friend of a friend. But then he’s grabbing her shoulders, voice tight, as he speaks up, “Y/N, he’s a dick. He’s an absolute prick, and he doesn’t deserve to be cried over. I’m so sorry he hurt you like that.” He’s letting out a breath, anguish appearing on his face, as he continues, “you are not hard to love. the right people will love you because of who you are, not despite you. you're worthy of that love, and I don’t know if I should be the one to give that to you, but I like you. And I’d like to try and be the one to give that to you.”

Harry’s gripping her hands now, the weight of his words affecting her as she searches his face for any deceit. She tries to speak, mouth opening and closing like a fish, pursing her lips as she gathers her bearings. “Harry, that’s...I don’t know what to say.”

Mind racing as her mind begins to warp and twist his words. She’s rejecting his statement, mind unfurling and rejecting him.

He can feel her pull away, can see her do the mental gymnastics to reject his words, wracking his brain for some way to convince her otherwise. “I get that you’re scared. Rightly should be. But, you deserve happiness. I want to help you get over this talentless jerk. Wanna mend your broken heart.”

His hands move to her jaw, bringing her closer and boring into her eyes, “I know I’m acting pathetic, bunty, you’re just so striking that I haven’t been able to go a day without thinking of you. You’ve got me under control, have since you walked into my bar. I can’t imagine the thought of anyone else when I’ve got you right here.”

The air is charged, their bodies close to one another, eyes faced squarely on each other. Y/N can feel her heartbeat out of her chest, hands trembling on his biceps. His face is backlit by the golden chandeliers of the lobby, the only other sounds either muffled or clinking glass bottles.

He’s right, she’s scared. Scared of getting her heartbroken all over again, of being used by yet another man in her life. And yet, she wants to give in. His green eyes are tracing her features and she’s never before felt as snug and protected like this.

The space between them closes and his nose slides against her, her eyes fluttering closed before softly responding, “I don’t know what to think. You’re so bare, so frank, that it’s scary. How do I know that you won’t do the same as him?”

Harry kisses her. He presses his lips against hers, their bodies pressed closer than ever, eyes shut, as they both enjoy the moment. Harry kisses her like his life depends on it, her jaw in his hands. He kisses her like no one else has ever done. She’s breathless as she chases after him, want increasing by the second. Arms reach his neck and pull at his hair, his grip on her back as the kiss deepens.

Every fiber of her being is telling her to stop, that she shouldn’t trust him, that he’s just another smooth talker. But she can’t stop. His intoxifying taste has pulled her in, too drunk on his words and actions to even care anymore.

Pulling away, his lips follow, until Y/N is pushing him back. Her hands rest on his shoulders as the two share moony-eyed looks. Catching her breath, thumb reaching to rub off a bit of her lipstick from his lips, Y/N drops her hands to his. She pulls his arm, his body following after her as she heads for the door, eyes hooded, “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

Harry smiles, dimples jutting out, as he nods and pulls her in for one last knee-wobbling kiss, as they head out the door and into the golden sunset.

#harry styles #harry styles fic #hsogolden #harry styles blurb #finelineficchallenge #alicia writes

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wedesignyouny · 3 months

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tvdas · 4 years

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John Berryman in 1966, two years after the publication of “77 Dream Songs.” The Heartsick Hilarity of John Berryman’s Letters is a book review by Anthony Lane (in The New Yorker) of The Selected Letters of John Berryman. The book is edited by Philip Coleman and Calista McRae and published by the Belknap Press, at Harvard. My acquaintance, the generous Philip Coleman, mailed me a copy of this book at the end of October. Lane writes, “. . . anyone who delights in listening to Berryman, and who can’t help wondering how the singer becomes the songs, will find much to treasure here, in these garrulous and pedantic pages. There is hardly a paragraph in which Berryman—poet, pedagogue, boozehound, and symphonic self-destroyer—may not be heard straining toward the condition of music. ‘I have to make my pleasure out of sound,’ he says. The book is full of noises, heartsick with hilarity, and they await their transmutation into verse.” Here is the book review:

The poet John Berryman was born in 1914, in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was educated at Columbia and then in England, where he studied at Cambridge, met W. H. Auden and Dylan Thomas, and lit a cigarette for W. B. Yeats. All three men left traces in Berryman’s early work. In 1938, he returned to New York and embarked upon a spate of teaching posts in colleges across the land, beginning at Wayne State University and progressing to stints at Harvard, Princeton, Cincinnati, Berkeley, Brown, and other arenas in which he could feel unsettled. The history of his health, physical and mental, was no less fitful and spasmodic, and alcohol, which has a soft spot for poets, found him an easy mark. In a similar vein, his romantic life was lunging, irrepressible, and desperate, so much so that it squandered any lasting claim to romance. Thrice married, he fathered a son and two daughters. He died in 1972, by jumping from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis. To the appalled gratification of posterity, his fall was witnessed by somebody named Art Hitman.

Berryman would have laughed at that. In an existence that was littered with loss, the one thing that never failed him, apart from his unwaning and wax-free ear for English verse, was his sense of humor. The first that I heard of Berryman was this:

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we ourselves flash and yearn, and moreover my mother told me as a boy (repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored means you have no

Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored. Peoples bore me, literature bores me, especially great literature, Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes as bad as achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me. And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag and somehow a dog has taken itself & its tail considerably away into mountains or sea or sky, leaving behind: me, wag.

“Wag” meaning a witty fellow, or “wag” meaning that he is of no more use than the back end of a mutt? Who on earth is Henry? Also, whoever’s talking, why does he address us as “friends,” as if he were Mark Antony and we were a Roman mob, and why can’t he even honor Achilles—the hero of the Iliad, a foundation stone of “great literature”—with a capital letter? You have to know such literature pretty well before you earn the right to claim that it tires you out. Few knew it better than Berryman, or shouldered the burdens of serious reading with a more remorseless joy. As he once said, “When it came to a choice between buying a book and a sandwich, as it often did, I always chose the book.”

“Life, friends” is the fourteenth of “The Dream Songs,” the many-splendored enterprise that consumed Berryman’s energies in the latter half of his career, and on which his reputation largely rests. His labors on the Songs began in 1955 and led to “77 Dream Songs,” which was published in 1964 and won him a Pulitzer Prize. In the course of the Songs, which he regarded as one long poem, he is represented, or unreliably impersonated, by a figure named Henry, who undergoes “the whole humiliating Human round” on his behalf. As Berryman explained, “Henry both is and is not me, obviously. We touch at certain points.” In 1968, along came a further three hundred and eight Songs, under the title “His Toy, His Dream, His Rest.” (A haunting phrase, which grabs the seven ages of man, as outlined in “As You Like It,” and squeezes them down to three.) Two days after publication, he was asked, by the Harvard Advocate, about his profession. “Being a poet is a funny kind of jazz. It doesn’t get you anything,” he said. “It’s just something you do.”

There was plenty of all that jazz. Berryman forsook the distillations of Eliot for the profusion of Whitman; the Dream Songs, endlessly rocking and rolling, surge onward in waves. Lay them aside, and you still have the other volumes of Berryman’s poems, including “The Dispossessed” (1948), “Homage to Mistress Bradstreet” (1956), and “Love & Fame” (1970). Bundled together, they fill nearly three hundred pages. If magnitude freaks you out, there are slimmer selections—one from the Library of America, edited by Kevin Young, the poetry editor of this magazine, and another, “The Heart Is Strange,” compiled by Daniel Swift to toast the centenary, in 2014, of the poet’s birth. And don’t forget the authoritative 1982 biography by John Haffenden, who also put together a posthumous collection, “Henry’s Fate and Other Poems,” in 1977, as well as “Berryman’s Shakespeare” (1999), a Falstaffian banquet of his scholarly work on the Bard. Some of Berryman’s critical writings are clustered, invaluably, in “The Freedom of the Poet” (1976). In short, you need space on your shelves, plus a clear head, if you want to join the Berrymaniacs. Proceed with caution; we can be a cranky bunch.

Of late, Berryman’s star has waned. Its glow was never steady in the first place, but it has dimmed appreciably, because of lines like these:

Arrive a time when all coons lose dere grip, but is he come? Le’s do a hoedown, gal.

“The Dream Songs” is a hubbub, and some of it is spoken in blackface—or, to be accurate, in what might be described as blackvoice. It deals in unembarrassed minstrelsy, complete with a caricature of verbal tics, all too pointedly transcribed: “Now there you exaggerate, Sah. We hafta die.” To say that Berryman was airing the prejudices of his era is hardly to exonerate him; in any case, he seems to be evoking, in purposeful anachronism, an all but vanished age of vaudeville. Kevin Young, who is Black, prefaces his choice of Berryman’s poetry by arguing, “Much of the force of The Dream Songs comes from its use of race and blackface to express a (white) self unraveling.” Some readers will share Young’s generously inquiring attitude; others will veer away from Berryman and never go back.

For anyone willing to stick around, there’s a new book on the block. “The Selected Letters of John Berryman” weighs in at more than seven hundred pages. It is edited by Philip Coleman and Calista McRae, and published by the Belknap Press, at Harvard—a selfless undertaking, given that Berryman derides Harvard as “a haven for the boring and the foolish,” wherein “my students display a form of illiterate urbanity which will soon become very depressing.” (Not that other colleges elude his gibes. Berkeley is summed up as “Paradise, with anthrax.”) The earliest letter, dated September, 1925, is from the schoolboy Berryman to his parents, and ends, “I love you too much to talk about.” In a pleasing symmetry, the final letter printed here, from 1971, shows Berryman rejoicing in his own parenthood. He tells a friend, “We had a baby, Sarah Rebecca, in June—a beauty.”

And what lies in between? More or less the polyphony that you’d expect, should you come pre-tuned into Berryman. “Vigour & fatigue, confidence & despair, the elegant & the blunt, the bright & the dry.” Such is the medley, he says, that he finds in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and you can feel Berryman swooping with similar freedom from one tone to the next. “Books I’ve got, copulation I need,” he writes from Cambridge, at the age of twenty-two, thus initiating a lifelong and dangerous refrain. When he reports, two years later, that “I was attacked by an excited loneliness which is still with me and which has so far produced fifteen poems,” is that a grouse or a boast? There are alarming valedictions: “Nurse w. another shot. no more now,” or, “Maybe I better go get a bottle of whisky; maybe I better not.” There are letters to Ezra Pound, one of which, sent with “atlantean respect & affection,” announces, “What we want is a new form of the daring,” a very Poundian demand. And there are smart little swerves into the aphoristic—“Writers should be heard and not seen”; “All modern writers are complicated before they are good”—or into courteous eighteenth-century brusquerie. Pastiche can be useful when you have a grudge to convey: “My dear Sir: You are plainly either a fool or a scoundrel. It is kinder to think you a fool; and so I do.” It’s a letter best taken with a pinch of snuff.

Berryman was a captious and self-heating complainer, slow to cool. Just as the first word of the Iliad means “Wrath,” so the first word of the opening Dream Song is “Huffy.” Seldom can you predict the cause of his looming ire. A concert performance by the Stradivarius Quartet, in the fall of 1941, drives him away: “Beethoven’s op. 130 they took now to be a circus, now to be a sea-chantey, & I fled in the middle to escape their Cavatina.” The following year, an epic letter to his landlord, on Grove Street, in Boston, is almost entirely concerned with a refrigerator, which has “developed a high-pitched scream.” Berryman was not an easy man to live with, or to love, and the likelihood that even household appliances found his company intolerable cannot be dismissed.

Yet the poet was scarcely unique in his vexations; we all have our fridges to bear. Something else, far below the hum of daily pique, resounds through this massive book—a ground bass of doom and dejection. “You may prepare my coffin.” “If this reaches you, you will know I got as far as a letter-box at any rate.” “I write in haste, being back in Hell.” Such are the dirges to which Berryman treats his friends, in the winter of 1939–40, and the odd jauntiness in which he couches his misery somehow makes it worse. It’s one thing to write, “I am fed up with pretending to be alive when in fact I am not,” but quite another to dispatch those words, as Berryman did, to someone whom you are courting; the recipient was Eileen Mulligan, whom he married nine months later, in October, 1942. To the critic Mark Van Doren, who had been his mentor at Columbia, he was more formal in his woe, declaring, “Each year I hope that next year will find me dead, and so far I have been disappointed, but I do not lose that hope, which is almost my only one.” We are close to the borders of Beckett.

There are definite jitters of comedy in so funereal a pose, and detractors of Berryman would say that he keeps trying on his desolation, like a man getting fitted for a dark suit. The trouble is that we know how he died. Even if he is putting on an act, for the horrified benefit of his correspondents, it is still a rehearsal for the main event, and you can’t inspect the long lament that he sends to Eileen in 1953—after they have separated—without glancing ahead, almost twenty years, to the dénouement of his days. The letter leaps, like one of those 3 a.m. frettings which every insomniac will recognize, directly from money to death. “I only have $2.15 to live through the week,” the poet says, before laying out his plans. “My insurance, the only sure way of paying my debts, expires on Thursday. So unless something happens I have to kill myself day after tomorrow evening or earlier.” To be specific, “What I am going to do is drop off the George Washington bridge. I believe one dies on the way down.” If Berryman is playing Cassandra to himself, crying out the details of his own quietus, how did the cry begin?

It is tempting to turn biography into cartography—unrolling the record of somebody’s life, smoothing it flat, and indicating the major fork in the road. Most of us rebut this thesis, as we amble maplessly along. In Berryman’s case, however, there was a fork, so terrible and so palpable that no account of him, and no encounter with his poems, can afford to ignore it. The road didn’t simply split in two; it was cratered, in the summer of 1926, when his father, John Allyn Smith, committed suicide.

The family was living in Clearwater, Florida, at the time, and young John was eleven years old. There was a bizarre prelude to the calamity, when his brother, Robert, was taken out by their father for a swim in the Gulf. What occurred next remains murky, but it seemed, for a while, as if they would not be returning to shore. One of the Dream Songs takes up the tale, mixing memory and denial:

Also I love him: me he’s done no wrong for going on forty years—forgiveness time— I touch now his despair, he felt as bad as Whitman on his tower but he did not swim out with me or my brother as he threatened—

a powerful swimmer, to         take one of us along as company in the defeat sublime, freezing my helpless mother: he only, very early in the morning, rose with his gun and went outdoors by my window and did what was needed.

I cannot read that wretched mind, so strong & so undone. I’ve always tried. I—I’m trying to forgive whose frantic passage, when he could not live an instant longer, in the summer dawn left Henry to live on.

Smith’s death would become the primal wound for his older son. Notice how the tough and Hemingway-tinged curtness of “did what was needed” gives way, all too soon, to the halting stammer of “I—I’m trying.” The wound was suppurating and unhealable, and there is little doubt that it deepened the festering of Berryman’s life. As he writes in one of the final Dream Songs, “I spit upon this dreadful banker’s grave / who shot his heart out in a Florida dawn / O ho alas alas.” Haffenden quotes these lines, raw with recrimination, in his biography; dryly informs us that the poet, in fact, never visited his father’s grave; and supplies us with relevant notes that Berryman made in 1970—two years before he, in turn, found a bridge and did what he thought was needed. He sounds like a patient striving mightily to become his own shrink:

Did I myself feel any guilt perhaps—long-repressed if so & this is mere speculation (defense here) about Daddy’s death? (I certainly pickt up enough of Mother’s self-blame to accuse her once, drunk & raging, of having actually murdered him & staged a suicide.)

Alternatively:

So maybe my long self-pity has been based on an error, and there has been no (hero-) villain (Father) ruling my life, but only an unspeakably powerful possessive adoring mother, whose life at 75 is still centered wholly on me. And my (omnipotent) feeling that I can get away with anything.

For readers who ask themselves, browsing through “Berryman’s Shakespeare,” why the poet bent his attention, again and again, to “Hamlet,” to the plight of the prince, and to the preoccupations—as Berryman boldly construed them—of the man who wrote the play, here is an answer of sorts. And, for anyone wanting more of this unholy psychodrama, consider the list of characters. Berryman’s mother, born Martha Little, married John Allyn Smith. Less than eleven weeks after his death, she married her landlord, John Angus McAlpin Berryman, and thereafter called herself Jill, or Jill Angel. As for the poet, he was baptized with his father’s name, was known as Billy in infancy, and then, in deference to his brand-new stepfather, became John Berryman. This is like Hamlet having to call himself Claudius, Jr., on top of everything else. As Berryman remarks, “Damn Berrymans and their names.”

A book of back-and-forth correspondence with his mother was published in 1988, under the title “We Dream of Honour.” (Having picked up the habit of British spelling, at Cambridge, Berryman never kicked it.) Inexcusably, it’s now out of print, but worth tracking down; and you could swear, as you leaf through it, that you’d stumbled upon a love affair. The son says to the mother, “I hope you’re well, darling, and less worried.” The mother tells the son, “I have loved you too much for wisdom, or it is perhaps nearer truth to say that with love or in anger, I am not wise.” We are offered a facsimile of a letter from 1953, in which Berryman begins, “Mother, I have always failed; but I am not failing now.”

One obvious shortfall in the “Selected Letters” is that “We Dream of Honour” took the cream of the crop. Only eight letters here are addressed to Martha, six of them mailed from school, and, if you’re approaching Berryman as a novice, your take on him will be unavoidably skewed. By way of compensation, we get a wildly misconceived letter of advice from the middle-aged Berryman to his son, Paul, concluding with the maxim “Strong fathers crush sons.” Paul was four at the time. Haffenden has already cited that letter, however, and doubts whether it was ever sent. One item in the new book that I have never read before, and would prefer not to read again, is a letter from the fourteen-year-old Berryman to his stepfather, whom he calls Uncle Jack, and before whom he cringes as if whipped. “I’m a coward, a cheat, a bully, and a thief if I had the guts to steal,” the boy writes. Things get worse: “I have none of the fine qualities or emotions, and all the baser ones. I don’t understand why God permitted me to be born.” He signs himself “John Berryman,” the sender mirroring the recipient, and adds, “P.S. I’m a disgrace to your name.”

To read such words is to marvel that Berryman survived as long as he did. If one virtue emerged from the wreckage of his early years, it was a capacity to console; later, in the midst of his drinking and his lechery, he remained a reliable guide to grief, and to the blast area that surrounds it. In May, 1955, commiserating with Saul Bellow, whose father has just passed away, Berryman writes, “Unfortunately I am in a v g position to feel with you: my father died for me all over again last week.” He unfolds his larger theme: “His father’s death is one of the few main things that happens to a man, I think, and it matters greatly to the life when it happens.” Bellow’s affliction, Berryman reassures him, lofts him into illustrious company: “Shakespeare was probably in the middle of Hamlet and I think his effort increased.” Freud and Luther are then added to the roster of the fruitfully bereaved.

None of this will surprise an admirer of the Dream Songs. Among the loveliest are those in which the poet mourns departed friends, such as Robert Frost, Louis MacNeice, Theodore Roethke, and Delmore Schwartz. Berryman the comic, who can be scabrously funny, not least at his own expense, consorts with Berryman the frightener (“In slack times visit I the violent dead / and pick their awful brains”) and Berryman the elegist, who can summon whole twilights of sorrow. In this, a tribute to Randall Jarrell, he gradually allows the verse to run on, like overflowing water, across the line breaks, with a grace denied to our harshly end-stopped lives:

In the night-reaches dreamed he of better graces, of liberations, and beloved faces, such as now ere dawn he sings. It would not be easy, accustomed to these things, to give up the old world, but he could try; let it all rest, have a good cry.

Let Randall rest, whom your self-torturing cannot restore one instant’s good to, rest: he’s left us now. The panic died and in the panic’s dying so did my old friend. I am headed west also, also, somehow.

In the chambers of the end we’ll meet again I will say Randall, he’ll say Pussycat and all will be as before when as we sought, among the beloved faces, eminence and were dissatisfied with that and needed more.

A photograph of 1941 shows Berryman in a dark coat, a hat, and a bow tie. His jaw is clean-shaven and firm. With his thin-rimmed spectacles and his ready smile, he looks like a spry young stockbroker on his way home from church. Skip ahead to the older Berryman, and you observe a very different beast, with a beard like the mane of a disenchanted lion. Finches could roost in it. The rims of his glasses are now thick and black, and his hands, in many images, refuse to be at rest. They gesticulate and splay, as if he were conducting an orchestra that he alone can hear. A cigarette serves as his baton.

If you seek to understand this metamorphosis, “The Selected Letters of John Berryman” can help. What greets us here, as often as not, is a parody of a poet. Watch him fumble with the mechanisms of the everyday, “ghoulishly inefficient about details and tickets and visas and trains and money and hotels.” Chores are as heavy as millstones, to his hypersensitive neck: “Do this, do that, phone these, phone those, repair this, drown that, poison the other.” We start to sniff a blend—peculiar to Berryman, like a special tobacco—of the humbled and the immodest. It drifts about, in aromatic puns: “my work is growing by creeps & grounds.” Though the outer world of politics and civil strife may occasionally intrude, it proves no match for the smoke-filled rooms inside the poet’s head. When nuclear tests are carried out at Bikini Atoll, in 1954, they register only briefly, in a letter to Bellow. “This thermonuclear business wd tip me up all over again if I were in shape to attend to it,” Berryman writes, before moving on to a harrowing digest of his diarrhea.

Above all, this is a book-riddled book. No one but Berryman, it’s fair to say, would write from a hospital in Minneapolis, having been admitted in a state of alcoholic and nervous prostration, to a bookstore in Oxford, asking, “Can you let me know what Elizabethan Bibles you have in stock?” The recklessness with which he abuses his body is paired with an indefatigable and nurselike care for textual minutiae. (“Very very tentatively I suggest that the comma might come out.”) Only on the page can he trust his powers of control, although even those desert him at a deliciously inappropriate moment. Writing to William Shawn at The New Yorker, in 1951, and proposing “a Profile on William Shakespeare,” Berryman begins, “Dear Mr Shahn.” Of all the editors of all the magazines in all the world, he misspells him.

No such Profile appeared; nor, to one’s infinite regret, did the edition of “King Lear” on which Berryman toiled for years. What we do have is his fine essay of 1953, “Shakespeare at Thirty,” which begins, “Suppose with me a time, a place, a man who was waked, risen, washed, dressed, fed, on a day in latter April long ago—about April 22, say, of 1594, a Monday.” Few scholars would have the bravado, or the imaginative dexterity, for such supposings, and it’s a thrill to see a living poet treat a dead one not as a monument but as a partner in crime. “Oh my god! Shakespeare. That multiform & encyclopedic bastard,” Berryman says in a letter of 1952, as if the two of them had just locked horns in a tavern.

Such plunges into the past, with its promise of adventure and refuge, came naturally to Berryman, nowhere more so than in “Homage to Mistress Bradstreet,” which was published in the Partisan Review in 1953 and, three years later, as a book. This was the poem with which he broke through—discovering not just a receptive audience but a voice that, in its heightened lyrical pressure, sounded like his and nobody else’s. The irony is that he did so by assuming the role of a woman: Anne Bradstreet, herself a poet, who emigrated from England to America, in 1630. It is her tough, pious, and hardscrabble history that Berryman chronicles: “Food endless, people few, all to be done. / As pippins roast, the question of the wolves / turns & turns.” In a celebrated scene, the heroine gives birth. Even if you dispute the male ability (or the right) to articulate such an experience, it’s hard not to be swayed by the fervor of dramatic effort:

I can can no longer and it passes the wretched trap whelming and I am me

drencht & powerful, I did it with my body! One proud tug greens Heaven. Marvellous, unforbidding Majesty. Swell, imperious bells. I fly.

What the poem cost its creator, over more than four years, is made plain in the letters, which ring with an exhausted ecstasy. “I feel like weeping all the time,” he tells one friend. “I regard every word in the poem as either a murderer or a lover.” As for Anne, who perished in 1672, “I certainly at some point fell in love with her.” Berryman adds, as if to prove his devotion, “I used three shirts at a time, in relays. I wish I were dead.”

Is this how we like poetry to be brought forth, even now? Though we may never touch the stuff, reading no verse from one year to the next, do we still expect it to be delivered in romantic agony, with attendant birth pangs? (So much for Wallace Stevens, who composed much of his work while gainfully employed, on a handsome salary, as an insurance executive.) Berryman viewed the notion of his being a confessional poet “with rage and contempt,” and rightly so; the label is an insult to his craftsmanship. Nobody pining for mere self-expression, or craving a therapeutic blurt, could lavish on a paramour, as Berryman did, lines as elaborately wrought as these:

Loves are the summer’s. Summer like a bee Sucks out our best, thigh-brushes, and is gone.

You have to reach back to Donne to find so commanding an exercise in the clever-sensual. It comes from “Berryman’s Sonnets,” a sequence of a hundred and fifteen poems, published in 1967. Most of them had been written long before, in 1947, in heat and haste, during an affair with a woman named Chris Haynes. And, in this huge new hoard of letters, how many are addressed to Haynes? Precisely one. Gossip hunters will slouch off in frustration, and good luck to them; on the other hand, anyone who delights in listening to Berryman, and who can’t help wondering how the singer becomes the songs, will find much to treasure here, in these garrulous and pedantic pages. There is hardly a paragraph in which Berryman—poet, pedagogue, boozehound, and symphonic self-destroyer—may not be heard straining toward the condition of music. “I have to make my pleasure out of sound,” he says. The book is full of noises, heartsick with hilarity, and they await their transmutation into verse.

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workingclasshistory · 5 years

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On this day, 20 September 1893, New York Yiddish anarchist newspaper Fraye Arbiter Shtime (Free Voice of Labor) sponsored its first Yom Kippur concert, ball and buffet. A mass, 24-hour, anti-religious event, it was met by several thousand people outside Clarendon Hall with the police intervening and making arrests. The Yom Kippur Ball “tradition” originated in 1888 in London before spreading to New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago. It made a comeback in New York in 1900, when the Yiddish newspaper invited “all freethinkers to gather in the lovely Clarendon Hall where singing, recitations, and performances fitting for this occasion will be held.” Anti-anarchist repression by the state increased in the following years (partly in response to attacks by the "propaganda by deed" current) and the tradition of the ball weakened, eventually being replaced by a picnic on Long Island. Pictured: a poster advertising the event https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1215390048646143/?type=3

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iol247 · 4 years

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Flashback: Unabomber Publishes His ‘Manifesto’

Ted Kaczynski was a madman who killed and maimed innocent people – but did some of his worries for the future come true?

By 2017 standards, a bearded man ranting in his manifesto about how “one of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is leftism” might, at best, have a chance ending up name-checked by Alex Jones. Most likely, he’d become the hero of a thousand faceless message board posters. His 35,000-word diatribe against technology titled “Industrial Society and Its Future” might be suitable for a personal blog, but a national newspaper? Surely not.

Of course, more than 20 years ago, when Ted Kaczynski mailed out what would come to be known as the “Unabomber Manifesto,” it was huge news. After over a decade spent living as a recluse without electricity or running water in a cabin in Montana – sending mail bombs to university academics and corporate airline executives – Kaczynski sent letters to the New York Times and the Washington Post demanding they publish his manifesto and agree to print an annual follow-up for three years. If they did, the bombings would cease. If not, the Unabomber hinted at more bombings to come.

It had started in May of 1978, when a package exploded and injured a Northwestern University security officer. A year later, another bomb was sent to the same college, injuring a graduate student. Also in 1979, Kaczynski snuck a bomb into the cargo hold of an American Airlines flight. It went off mid-flight, causing an emergency landing and afflicting 12 passengers with smoke inhalation. In 1985, he switched things up, and sent a shrapnel-loaded bomb to a computer store in Sacramento, California, claiming the owner as his first victim. By the mid-1980s, the Unabomber had become a real-life American boogeyman. A killer who would strike without warning, and without much reason. Why was he doing what he did – and when would he do it again?

The publication of the manifesto would end up being his undoing. Members of Kaczynski’s family had a slight suspicion Ted could be the person behind the terror campaign. His brother David was one of the thousands of people who called the FBI tip-line after the manifesto was published and a million-dollar reward was offered for information leading to the capture of the Unabomber. After a long search, FBI agents arrested an unkempt Kaczynski in his Lincoln, Montana cabin on April 3rd, 1996. They found bomb making components, over 40,000 journal pages and the manifesto’s original typed manuscript.

There’s no defending the actions of a person who mails bombs with the intent to do serious harm. But Andrew Sodroski, executive producer of the new Discovery mini-series, Manhunt: Unabomber, thinks there is plenty to take away from Kaczynski’s words. As he said in a phone conference with reporters leading up to the show, “What the manifesto has to say about our relationship with technology and with society is more true right now than it was when Ted published it.”

Not many domestic terrorists convicted of murder get called prophetic by television producers – and there are scholars from different sides of the political spectrum who agree that the the Unabomber’s anti-technology stance was ahead of its time. “His work, despite his deeds,” wrote Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team, “deserves a place alongside Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, and 1984, by George Orwell.” Ray Kurzweil, noted author, computer scientist and futurist, quoted a passage from the manifesto in his 1999 book, The Age of Spiritual Machines. Some believe he’s a murderous modern-day Henry David Thoreau, while others say he’s a genius and a prophet. So what, exactly did he get right?

Kaczynski opens his manifesto with, “The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.” The technology he goes on to rail against, keep in mind, was mid-1990s – before smartphones, before Twitter, before “Likes” on Facebook and algorithms helped pick out things for you to buy and experience. Although the word “dystopia” never shows up throughout the essay, Kaczynski believed (and you have to assume still does so from his prison cell) that the future wasn’t some Philip K. Dick or Handmaid’s Tale scenario; the dystopian future started happening a long time ago. Computer networks, the mass-communication media, the modern health care system, pesticides and chemicals, all products of the Industrial Revolution, are destroying the planet, he writes. As one portion of the manifesto is sub-titled, “The ‘Bad’ Parts of Technology Cannot be Separated From the ‘Good’ Parts.”

In point number 49 the manifesto, Kaczynski writes, “In the modern world it is human society that dominates nature rather than the other way around, and modern society changes very rapidly owing to technological change.” One of the big problems, he believed while writing his manifesto, was the inevitable growth of artificial intelligence and how humanity will cope with it. “First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them.” As one Wired article explained in 2015, “A manufacturing device from Universal Robots doesn’t just solder, paint, screw, glue, and grasp – it builds new parts for itself on the fly when they wear out or bust.” From checking you out at the grocery store to flipping burgers, robots are being designed to integrate into the labor force and cut costs.

He goes on to write in point number 172, “In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.” When Kaczynski’s thoughts were published, we were still dealing with the Terminator version of the robots overtaking humanity and destroying it – it was a nightmare scenario, fiction. But Kaczynski wasn’t writing speculative fiction; he was stating, from an academically-trained point of view, where he saw technology headed.

Technology overtaking humanity was only one of the scary possibilities. The rise of the “one percent” super rich and corporations controlling everything, was another. “Human freedom mostly will have vanished, because individuals and small groups will be impotent vis-a-vis large organizations armed with supertechnology and an arsenal of advanced psychological and biological tools for manipulating human beings, besides instruments of surveillance and physical coercion,” he wrote.

Tech companies have untold amounts of data on every person that logs online for everything from shopping for cat litter to ranting on Twitter. How to understand that data – and what to use it for – is an industry in itself. Could it be used to manipulate us? See the 2016 U.S. election and the rise of fake news spread through Facebook. “Hyperpartisan Facebook Pages Are Publishing False And Misleading Information At An Alarming Rate,” as one 2016 BuzzFeed article put it, showed up in feeds even if the people didn’t follow those groups. Some of the false news was spread the old-fashioned way, through word of mouth; but, as John Herman of the New York Times explained, misinformation on the social media service thrives or dies, “at least in part, on Facebook’s algorithm.” As Kaczynski believes, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. All of this seemed farfetched when Kaczynski’s words were put in front of a mass audience. In 1994, audiences were being told suave cyberterrorists like the ones in the movie The Net were the ones looking to steal your information online and do whatever they please with it.

After all this, however, calling Kaczynski a prophet might be a stretch. He’s a highly intelligent person who wanted to try and stop where he saw humanity headed by any means necessary – including murdering people. Yet he routinely points out throughout his manifesto that there very well might be no stopping the inevitable. The entire point of his manifesto, as he states, is revolution, anarchy: “Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society.” Kaczynski, who has stated admiration for the eco-anarchist movement (“but I think they could do it better,” he also said in an interview in 1999), takes aim at both leftists, including “socialists, collectivists, ‘politically correct’ types, feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and the like”). He also writes, “conservatives are fools,” and that they’re, “just taking the average man for a sucker, exploiting his resentment of Big Government to promote the power of Big Business.” Kaczynski even engages in some gaslighting: “Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong and as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as strong and as capable as men.”

All of this reiterates the point that Kaczynski is no hero whatsoever. The person who wrote “Industrial Society and Its Future,” is a fanatic. And as is sometimes the case, fanatics can take things to the tragic extreme. Yet there is something to be taken away from his words if you read closely; it’s that we give up a piece of ourselves whenever we adjust to conform to society’s standards. That, and we’re too plugged in. We’re letting technology take over our lives, willingly. It’s the sort of thing that doesn’t take a madman dressed up like a prophet to tell us; it’s all too evident. Kaczynski, to steal a phrase from the tech world, was just an early adopter of these thoughts. Yet his warning will probably forever go unnoticed because of the horrific deeds he carried out to get his message across.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/flashback-unabomber-publishes-his-manifesto-125449/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

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creepingsharia · 5 years

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A Month of Islam in America: June 2019

Another month, and another step forward for sharia in America as more censorship was exposed. A whistleblower leak confirmed that @Pinterest protects Muslims and censors any reference to “creeping sharia,” and many other non-liberal topics.

Click any link below for more details and link to original source.

Jihad in America in June

Brooklyn: Muslim Immigrant Sentenced to 20 Years for Attempting to Join Islamic State (ISIS) Mohamed Rafik Naji was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment by United States District Judge Frederic Block for attempting to provide material support or resources to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a foreign terrorist organization. Naji pleaded guilty to the charge in February 2018.

Brooklyn: Muslim Woman Who Helped ISIS Gets 4 Years, But Will Be Out in 18 Months

With credit for time served, Sinmyah Amera Caesar will end up only serving about 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to charges accusing her of using social media to help recruit IS fighters under the nom de guerre “Umm Nutella.” She had also admitted violating a cooperation agreement with the government a — betrayal that infuriated prosecutors.

Illinois: Bosnian Muslim refugee and mother of 4 jailed for sending money, supplies to ISIS

Mediha Medy Salkicevic, a/k/a Medy Ummuluna, a/k/a Bosna Mexico, 39, was sentenced to 78 months in prison for conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.

Salkicevic, aka Medy Ummuluna and Bosna Mexico, espoused the ISIS philosophy that infidels should be killed and once said that unbelievers should be buried alive.

At the time of her arrest, she was working for an air cargo company at Chicago O'Hare Airport...

Illinois: Two Muslim converts convicted of aiding Islamic State (ISIS)

Joseph D. Jones and Edward Schimenti proudly waved a terrorist flag during a photo at a Lake Michigan park in Zion, had plotted to attack the Navy’s main U.S. training center near North Chicago and once had their eyes on planting an ISIS flag atop the White House.

Now Jones and Schimenti, both 37, have been found guilty of providing material support to ISIS.

Indiana: Yemeni Muslim who tried to join Islamic State terrorists gets 8 years in prison

U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Evans Barker handed down the 100-month sentence Friday afternoon in the case against 21-year-old Akram Musleh, U.S. Attorney Josh Minkler announced.

He admitted in the plea agreement that from about April 2016 through June 21, 2016, he offered himself to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, also known as IS, knowing it was a “designated foreign terrorist organization.”

Pittsburgh: Syrian Muslim Refugee Arrested for Planning Jihad Attack on Christian Church

Mustafa Mousab Alowemer, 21, a resident of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was arrested today based on a federal complaint charging him with one count of attempting to provide material support and resources to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization, and two counts of distributing information relating to an explosive, destructive device, or weapon of mass destruction in relation to his plan to attack a church in Pittsburgh.

“Court documents show Mustafa Alowemer planned to attack a church in the name of ISIS, which could have killed or injured many people...”

Ohio: Jordanian Muslim Immigrant Sentenced to 15 Years for Trying to Join Islamic State (ISIS)

A Dayton, Ohio man was sentenced today in U.S. District Court to 180 months in prison and 25 years of supervised release for attempting, and conspiring, to join the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

Laith Waleed Alebbini, 28, was convicted following a bench trial in November and December 2018 before U.S. District Judge Walter H. Rice.

Alebbini attempted, and conspired, to provide material support and resources to ISIS in the form of personnel, namely himself.

Alebbini, a citizen of Jordan and a U.S. legal permanent resident, was arrested by the FBI on April 26, 2017, at the Cincinnati/Kentucky International Airport, as he approached the TSA security checkpoint.

South Carolina: Muslim - twice convicted for attempts to join ISIS and kill Americans - gets 20-year prison sentence

A federal judge has sentenced a South Carolina man who tried to join ISIS to 20 years in prison.

Zakaryia Abdin, 20, pleaded guilty in September 2018. The Ladson man was arrested in March 2017.

New York: Bangladeshi Muslim immigrant arrested in Times Square terror plot

Ashiqul Alam was arrested Thursday after arranging through an undercover agent to buy a pair of semiautomatic pistols with obliterated serial numbers, prosecutors said. Police Commissioner James O’Neill said that development was “a clear indicator of (Alam’s) intent to move his plot forward.”

The defendant, a legal resident born in Bangladesh, moved to the U.S. as a child about 12 years ago...

He talked about wanting to “shoot down” gays, referring to them with a slur; using a “rocket launcher, like a huge one,” to cause havoc at the World Trade Center; and obtaining an enhanced driver’s license so he could walk onto a military base and “blow it up,” the documents said.

Illinois: Muslim Arrested for Threatening to Bomb Aurora Casino for Allah

A recently released affidavit and search warrant claimed that 30-year-old Musatdin M. Muadinov, while detained by police on Feb. 12, vowed to “pray to Allah” to “destroy the casino.” He further demanded to meet with President Donald Trump, saying that if his demands were not met, “we would all meet Allah,” according to the affidavit obtained by the Daily Herald.

Muadinov — who was dressed in what police described as “Muslim attire” when arrested — waived his right to remain silent.

More Jihad in America in June

Florida: Suspect sent bomb threats to judges ‘for cause of Islamic State’

Nebraska: Heavily armed Marine arrested trying to enter Air Force Base

Arizona: Muslim shared terror propaganda before attacking police officer

Brooklyn: Muslim in Jail for ISIS Support Pleads Guilty to Slashing Correctional Officer

South Carolina: Man who pledged allegiance to ISIS hid explosive device in teddy bear

Arizona: Witness in probe of 2015 Islamic jihad attack on free speech event convicted of lying to FBI

Libyan National Found Guilty of Terrorism Charges in 2012 Attack on U.S. Facilities in Benghazi

Iraqi Muslim who orchestrated jihad attack that killed 5 U.S. troops gets 26 years prison, then release to Canada

Immigration Jihad in America

Minnesota’s first Somali Muslim cop gets 12 years for murdering Australian woman

Minnesota: St. Paul’s first Somali Muslim city council member says criticizing his homophobic comments is… Islamophobic

New York: Brooklyn Mosque Blasts Islamic Call to Prayer to 20 Block Radius (VIDEO)

Somalis have Changed Minneapolis

New York: Thousands of Muslims take over two city blocks in Brooklyn to pray in the streets

Four Muslim ISIS suspects arrested in Nicaragua, likely headed for US

Islamization of America

Pennsylvania: 167-year-old Catasauqua church will become Islamic mosque

Pennsylvania: Former Easton church is now a Sunni mosque

Pennsylvania: Former daycare in residential Salisbury to become Muslim “community center”

Virginia: Residential home in Annandale to become a Muslim funeral home

Education Jihad in America

New Jersey Public School District to Students: “May Allah Continue to Shower You Love and Wisdom”

Maryland school fails Christian student for refusing Islamic prayer

New York: Cornell Univ. Muslim Students Demand More “Prayer Rooms”

Stanford administrators say advertising for conservative event threatens Muslim students

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Muslim Students Association: What Americans Need to Know

DOE Investigating Elite Colleges For Hiding Saudi, Qatari Cash from Regulators

Islamic Slavery & Sexual Jihad in America

Virginia: Three Muslim family members arrested for conspiracy, forced labor, and document servitude

Detroit Imam: Wife-Beating Serves to Remind Her That She Misbehaved (VIDEO)

Dhimmitude in Elected Office

Trump Admin Sues Greyhound for Banning Muslim Driver from Wearing Full Length Islamic Robe

Democrat majority passes defense authorization bill that funds transfer of remaining Gitmo jihadis to U.S.

Minnesota: City of Bloomington allows terror mosque to flout local laws (VIDEO)

Minnesota city council votes 5-0 to ditch Pledge of Allegiance (to avoid offending Muslims)

Diversity is our Strength Alert

Minnesota’s first Somali Muslim cop gets 12 years for murdering Australian woman

Minnesota: St. Paul’s first Somali Muslim city council member says criticizing his homophobic comments is… Islamophobic

Boston Police Dept’s First Muslim Captain Put On Administrative Leave Amid ‘Anti-Corruption’ Investigation

Minnesota: First Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar fined by state for unlawful use of campaign funds

Minnesota Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar filed joint tax returns before she married husband

Fraud for Jihad

Connecticut: Muslim Grocery Store Worker Pleads Guilty in $3.2M Federal Food Stamp Fraud

Massachusetts: Muslim Restaurant Owner Pleads Guilty to Tax Fraud Conspiracy

That’s just what we had time to compile for just the month of June.

Far too many steps forward for the sharia, and only a few pushbacks, but worth noting:

New Jersey: School District Scraps Posters Calling upon “Allah” to “Shower” Students with Blessings After Threat of Lawsuit

Rather Than Go to Trial, Terror-linked CAIR Settles with the Victims They Defrauded

Tunisian Muslim who swore allegiance to ISIS removed from U.S.

New York: Albany mosque imam convicted of terrorism is deported back to Iraq It’s almost midnight and Americans are losing their first amendment rights to sharia supremacists and the big technology, media and politicians who support them.

Please share this report before it’s too late.

#Legal #Jihad #Sharia #News #Politics #Immigration #monthly

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the-master-cylinder · 4 years

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Empire Pictures/Tycin Films (1986-1987) “At the time everyone was talking high concept so I said let’s do RAPISTS FROM OUTERSPACE.” Charles Band bought the film released as Breeders as well as Mutant Hunt, which Kincaid shot back-to-back. Director Tim Kincaid was rewarded with a long term, ten picture deal with Empire in which some of the films will be made under his Tycin Films banner and others under Millennium Pictures. The latter will include some bigger budget items. Make them for under $1 million each on 10-day shooting schedules, back to back. Kincaid explained that most of the Tycin features will be produced for direct-to video sales probably through Empire’s own Wizard Video. The remaining films will see a theatrical release.

Although filmed after Mutant Hunt, Breeders (1986) was the first to land on video store shelves aided by a stylish pulp-influenced poster. Though no censors could get at his script Kincaid did have a domestic overseer. “My wife is very much into making sure that women aren’t being ripped-off in these films,” he said. “We had a lot of nudity but we weren’t brutalizing women on screen. Everything is implied. Variety speculated that BREEDERS went out on video because of problems with the rating board, but we had always planned to make it an R-rated film. Nothing has been cut for the video release.”

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The climactic scenes of BREEDERS take place in the monster’s underground lair, where it has created a nest for its victims. Kincaid filmed in a series of catacombs under the Brooklyn Bridge, used by workers who built the structure. There are vast rooms with brick and stone archways, the largest of which is a prayer room used by the men before they went into the depths to work. Kincaid learned of the location from BREEDER’s makeup effects man Ed French.

The monster’s victims were to be seen immersed in a pit of translucent slime actually gelatin. But with the actresses disrobed and immersed, the jello failed to gel. Kincaid was wary of adding the chemicals necessary for fear of harming the girls.

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“The art director jumped in a van and headed for the nearest supermarket,” said Kincaid. “He brought back ten pounds of flour and we poured it into the pit. It worked, but unfortunately it turned it white and gave the scene these sexual undertones that we never meant for it to have. The girls ended up working in the stuff for four or five hours-until 4 a.m.”

Necropolis (1986) Reincarnated “Satanic Witch” from New Amsterdam, circa 1600’s comes back to revive her cult members by sucking the life force out of people.

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Robot Holocaust (1986) Just outside New Terra (whats left of New York City), Neo, a drifter from the atomic-blasted wastelands, and his klutzy robot sidekick arrive at a factory where slaves labor to fuel the Dark One’s Power Station. He meets Deeja, a woman (Nadine Hart) who convinces him to help rescue her father. The father is a scientist (Michael Dowend) who has invented a device that can break the Dark One’s control over the factory slaves. Gathering a motley crew of allies on the way, Neo goes to the Power Station to confront the Dark One’s evil servants.

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Mutant Hunt (1987), which Kincaid calls an adventure film with a science fiction background” finds Manhattan in a state of terror as Z, a mad industrialist, alters a squad of cyborgs with a drug known as Euphoron, turning them into crazed killers. The cyborg’s original creator is imprisoned by Z, but his sister escapes and seeks the help of Matt Riker, a private operative.

Kincaid directed MUTANT HUNT in 15 days, stretching the budget to give it more value and making up the difference by cutting corners on BREEDERS, putting that film in the can in only eight days. Empire is easily the most prolific distributor of genre films and their tactic of using both theatrical and video markets to release their product should enable them to keep a constant supply of films flowing to the fans. This is fine with Tim Kincaid, who seems to get a genuine joy out of making films, even on restricted budgets.

The location is a large industrial type complex, eight stories high and several blocks long. The Army abandoned the terminal more than a decade ago. Today, it is the home of a noisy spice factory, hundreds of dilapidated city buses, and a small, but eager film crew. “There’s nothing like a set that doesn’t move,” says Rick Gianasi. The beefcake actor plays the film’s macho hero, Matt Riker. “This place is fabulous,” he observes.

The same location, with its scores of broken windows and rusty train tracks, conjures up a nice post apocalypse scenario on this windy and cloudy morning. Despite the atmosphere, Kincaid explains that his movie is not set in the next century. “Matt Riker: Mutant Hunt is not Road Warrior or Star Wars,” he notes, but it is in the future, only about six years from now.”

Matt Riker: Mutant Hunt certainly has its share of Fango moments, so don’t get the idea that this flick is simply another science-fiction yarn. The movie’s mutants are actually diseased cyborgs, exploited by an evil genius called Z, who eventually run amuck throughout the Big Apple. Kincaid, while looking around the set and mapping out the morning’s schedule, adds that his film will not take itself too seriously, either.

“It’s sort of-I don’t want to say tongue-in-cheek because that term’s overused-a contemporary adventure,” he explains. “There’s not much hardware, just some lasers and effects. It isn’t knockdown, fall about-funny, but Matt Riker: Mutant Hunt has a sense of humor. The heroes are a happy-go-lucky trio of mercenaries, adventurers for hire who share a kidding camaraderie with each other. It’s a comic strip.”

The first shot of the day, which Kincaid is now planning, will take place on a concrete walkway inside a spectacular atrium that bisects the terminal. Grey buttresses jut out from both sides of the enormous hangar-like structure. Sunshine streams in from a huge skylight above, reducing the need for artificial lighting. To the left of the walkway, New York-based special effects man Matt Vogel peers over the charred remnants of Z’s dummy corpse, the victim of a Vogel pyrotechnic effect from the previous night’s lensing.

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Vogel, who honed his incendiary skills on the pyromaniac horror flick Don’t Go in the House, is also contributing cyborg sparks, various fireballs and assorted gunshots. And included in his makeshift FX lab–actually his very own spot on the floor are boxes of ornaments, Christmas balls. Christmas balls?

“We have this chemical called titanium tetrochloride, ” Vogel elaborates. “When you open it up, slivers of smoke come out. It was once used for skywriting. The smoke is nice, but you can’t contain it. If I put it in a Christmas ball and seal it up, I have a titanium tetrochloride bomb. With a small explosive charge, the ball breaks and tendrils of smoke emerge. The hardest part of my job is finding Christmas balls in September!”

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A few feet from Vogel’s effects “shop” is makeup man Ed French’s cluttered work area where he and his assistants John Bisson and James Chai leisurely paint some cyborg appendages. Later, French will supply an immobile six-foot cyborg “stretcho” arm, plus the diseased facial features for a cyborg duo. French took on a multiple challenge on these dual productions. Not only is he providing the special makeup effects, but Kincaid is letting him direct most of the FX sequences as well. “In terms of directing the special effects,” French reveals, “much of it is up to me. I don’t have any designs on becoming a director, but it is something I’ll have a lot to do with on these films. My storyboards are followed very closely by the editor. They’re very practical in terms of our shooting time. We can’t compete with An American Werewolf in London, but if it’s planned intelligently, we can have a lot of fun.”

French is particularly excited about a mechanical cyborg puppet that both he and Tom Lauten built for Matt Riker: Mutant Hunt. Its enticing features include a blown-away face with missing jaw, but French resists displaying this trophy, explaining that it is so fragile that he prefers to bring it out only when the cameras are rolling. Instead, visitors to the set get to see his chicken-wire-and-foam dummy, an unfortunate body that many crew members delight in kicking.

“This is our generic, all-purpose cyborg-dummy,”French announces, pointing to the abused double. “We took him apart yesterday, and pulled his arm off and had sparking as it came out of the joint. We divide him in half for an operating table scene. He also does some falling. This is body part city. We have an action scene where a cyborg knocks another’s head off, a combination dummy-puppet. We even have industrial strength cyborg blood squirting all over. It looks like anti-freeze.”

Nearby, two of the actor-cyborgs sit patiently while their bizarre crew cut hairstyles are neatly trimmed by the set’s conventional makeup artist Laurie Aiello. With their threatening height and muscular builds, these guys seem perfect for the cloneesque cyborgs, but their haircuts make them look like demented sailor boys. “We knew what we were getting into when we were offered the roles,” jokes Beta Cyborg Mark Legan, one of this production’s chiefly unknown cast. Alpha Cyborg Warren Ulaner doesn’t mind his appearance. “I was in the East Village the other night and my haircut was, more or less, conservative.” Adds French, “The makeups and designs are very stylized and give them a punk-heavy metal look.”

“I was looking forward to playing this kind of role,” says Legan, “because these guys are as villainous as you can get. Warren does a number of nasty things to people and gets a lamp stuck in his eye. Yesterday, I got to tear somebody’s arm off. That’s more fun than saving the girl. For me, the film’s highlight will be when I attack a couple in an alley, tear the girl’s head off and roll it down the street.”

For a production that is supposed to wrap in only 10 days, things are going very slowly on this Wednesday morning. Most of the crew point to the reason: they’re recovering from late night shooting of some extra action stuff to impress Charles Band. Band flew in earlier this morning to get an advance peek at the dailies and, according to French, liked what he saw. Today’s first shot involves a short dialogue scene with the intense Z (Bill Peterson) holding a fellow scientist (Marc Umile) at laser point. Kincaid is an atypical, laidback director who stresses the “please” when he calls, “Quiet, please” as things finally get moving.

“Maybe the pace will pick up suddenly, and it will be rat-a-tat-tat, scene after scene,” predicts the hopeful Ron (New York Ninja) Reynaldi. He plays Johnny Felix, a martial arts master and electronics expert to Riker. He also doubles as Matt Riker: Mutant Hunt’s comic relief and stunt coordinator.

Following the short dialogue scenes, Kincaid readies the next few shots in which the heroine (Mary Fahey, sister of Jeff Fahey), is chased down a dark tunnel. The crew pauses for the sun to hide behind some clouds (day for night). Despite the brief delay, the director remains confident that Matt Riker: Mutant Hunt will come in on schedule.

“I plan my films like any other feature,” he notes during a lunch break. “It’s like a jigsaw puzzle. What you have to realize is that a Magnum P.I. even though it’s 52 minutes long and they have a bigger crew and bigger budget-goes out in seven days. Everything is carefully planned out in advance and really set up so that we know where we are going. We know how long it’s going to take to shoot each thing and how much time to allow for it. That’s why we’re shooting so radically out of sequence.”

After Matt Riker: Mutant Hunt wrapped principal photography a week later-inserts will be shot soon and Band’s California-based technicians are doing the post-production opticals. Kincaid and company immediately began Breeders, a tale of lustful aliens invading Fun City with sex, sex, sex on their otherworldly minds. Some new crew members have joined this film, along with another batch of unknown performers, including makeup man Ed French. Breeders is shooting in the same underground tunnels.

“I think Breeders is going faster, but I don’t know why,” observes French, while preparing a shot with a grotesque half-alien/half-human baby. “Maybe it’s the script. Breeders is more elementary and straightforward. The style, which is very ’50s sci-fi monsters on the loose, almost dictates what you should do. On Matt Riker: Mutant Hunt, the script kept getting rewritten and getting bigger and more complicated. It’s an action movie with a lot of special effects. We knew Matt Riker would go over schedule a bit since it’s so ambitious.”

French steps aside to talk with his assistant, James Chai, who is lying on the dusty concrete floor for his part in bringing the monstrous puppet to life. The baby alien is appropriately disgusting, with an immense, gaping mouth running vertically down its face. A big, bulging bug eye blinks blindly. French applies some gooey methyl cellulose to its row of razor sharp teeth. Meanwhile, gun toting actor Lance Lewman and stake-wielding Teresa Farley wait for French to call action so that they can battle the crippled beastie. As on Matt Riker, Kincaid lets French direct his own special FX sequences.

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Acting is another experience French is enjoying on Breeders. The occasional actor plays a doctor possessed by the aliens. Eventually, he even turns into one. “It’s really kind of exciting,” French laughs. “There was an eerie moment yesterday. I’m supposed to be hiding this little creature and then let him loose on these people. I was in the shot, so I just couldn’t step out of the scene and check out the creature. I had to stay in character and let my assistant take care of it.”

In a connecting tunnel next door, a couple of production assistants place the finishing touches on the aliens’ “nest,” a squat six-foot-square box made of foam, goo, plastic and some broken glass. The “Gigeresque” nest is where the captive women are taken. Attractive actress Francis Raines, last featured as the first victim of The Mutilator, does not mind wallowing naked in the nest for her upcoming scene as alien breeding stock.

“This stuff is like food preservative,” explains Raines referring to the buckets of methyl cellulose ooze. “It’s not like they hired 40 Ukrainian elephants to spit in there. I go through the pit and transform to become another Breeder. I can’t wait! At least, I keep away from the dirt.

“My biggest scene is where it does its transformation and chases me around this photography studio while I’m modeling swimsuits. He gets me, attacks me, and uses me. The biggest effect occurs when this stomach cord shoots out and grabs me. Its tentacles drag me away.’

French insists that Breeders is not as lewd as it sounds, while Kincaid obviously believes that sex and violence sell flicks. “I’ve always liked the lurid exploitation movies of the ’50s when I was growing up,” Kincaid remarks. “I think the time is right for them to come back, since we’re coming to the end of the wholesome-family-type science fiction that appeals to a wide range audience. Now, we have a big video market for these low-budget pictures. There hasn’t been an audience for these movies in the last 10 to 15 years… until now.”

In addition to “tactfully” filming the alien rapes, Kincaid and French wanted an abstract look for the invaders. French based his designs on a book of insect microphotography. Most of the black-painted Breeders suit lies in sections around his ad-libbed workshop. A separate Breeders insert head is used for close-ups, and includes waving antennae. An alien hand snaps out a line like a frog’s tongue as well.

“The most challenging bit about the whole thing, and what I’m learning the most about, is integrating the monster suits into the film so that it doesn’t look like a monster suit,” explains French during a 4 p.m. lunch break. “I hate monster suits. Everytime you see this thing, we show a little more of it, like in The Elephant Man. First, you see its hand, then its shadow, a partial transformation, etc. It’s all judiciously shot and generally nightmarish. You’re not going to see a guy running around in a rubber suit.”

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Monster suits or not, everyone at Entertainment Concepts is banking that Breeders and Matt Riker: Mutant Hunt serve as the first of a succession of independent New York productions all to be released by Empire… if all goes right.

“Empire has approached us about working with them as an East Coast off-shoot of their production suppliers,” Tim Kincaid reveals. “Their films are shot all over the world, Spain, Rome, California, but they don’t have a group of people to supply them from the East Coast. They like the feel and scenic look of what they’ve seen. We’re hoping it’s the beginning of a series.”

Waldo Warren Private Dick Without Brain (1988) (The Occultist, MAXIMUM THRUST) A cyborg private eye is hired to protect a Caribbean president visiting New York City. Unknown to him, the president’s daughter is in league with his country’s rebels who are trying to assassinate him.

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The History of Empire Films Part Four Empire Pictures/Tycin Films (1986-1987) “At the time everyone was talking high concept so I said let's do RAPISTS FROM OUTERSPACE." Charles Band bought the film released as Breeders as well as Mutant Hunt, which Kincaid shot back-to-back.

#BAND #EMPIRE

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