#so i ordered some new summer clothes from a company based in america that was doing a sale

[fingertipsmp3]

I love starting to do something and just, immediately realising I have neither the patience nor the communication skills for it lol

[lovelyirony]

Hhhhhhnggggg I thought of something and I think you can make it beautiful. "Being your father is more important to me than being their friend."

thank you! 

If you had told Tony Stark that he would be a father figure some day, he would’ve laughed in your face. Because Tony Stark is not a figure for anything besides perhaps business or alcoholism. 

But then Iron Man. 

But then Avengers. 

But then...everything. 

The first time he really considers himself a father figure is when he gets emailed from Harley who starts it off with “why is your email embarrassingly easy to hack? Anyway I want to ask you about this robot thing. I’m not saying I’m building it but if I would be doing so what would I need.” 

Tony emails back: 

“When you hack into my email all of my employees who work in the encryption networks get an alert and put you on the ‘watch-for-this’ list. Basically all about employment. Anyway, suppose you are building this (and you are, because you’re a punk)...you need some copper wiring and I’ll send you the other stuff.” 

Harley and Tony pull up a sort of correspondence over email. And then Harley demands to have his number because “no one uses email anymore except for clothing companies, and you are not supplying me with any good deals on shirts.” 

(Tony absolutely does deny that he loves this kid when Rhodey catches them talking on the phone.) 

He also says he’s just providing a learning opportunity when Harley and his sister get to come to New York for a summer. 

“It’s because you like kids,” Rhodey says. “And you like Harley because he’s as much of a little shit as you are.” 

“False, he’s even more so. He built a potato gun and aimed it at me the first time we met.” 

“And you probably made some wise-ass remark about him or what have you. I wanna meet him.” 

Harley is an asshole. 

(Tony’s glad to have him.) 

His sister is sweet. Lily likes to learn about the world and the different connections between countries. Tony has no doubt that she has a career with the UN and makes sure to subtly get her books about political science and cool historical events. 

They don’t mention the distinct lack of the Avengers, at least until they’re at the dinner table and Tony’s picking at broccoli. 

“So, when are you going to recruit new members?” Harley asks, looking directly at him. He’s one of the few people in Tony’s life that can look at him directly now. He’s never shied away from that, and he can appreciate it. 

“Why would I recruit new members?” 

“We still need the Avengers. Besides, maybe you can find someone who doesn’t have as lame a costume as Captain America.” 

Tony snorts, taking his plate to the sink. 

“I’ll think about it.” 

He thinks long and he thinks hard that night. Tony’s not an idiot when it comes to the team’s whereabouts. They need somewhere where they are untouchable by anyone. 

And where better than a country with a long reputation of being a total recluse? 

He’ll have to ask King T’Challa if they also put coffee grounds down the sink. 

But they do need a team. And he remembers in the letter that Steve sent that he said that the Avengers were perhaps more of a family for Tony than for Steve. 

Yeah. It shows. Shows by the way Natasha, Clint, and Wanda all left with him. Shows how they’re family because no one’s there for Tony when he’s gasping for air from Steve’s shield crashing down on his chest, cracking. 

(He said that the shield didn’t belong to Steve. He wasn’t wrong. That shield doesn’t belong to Steve, because it’s not a belonging. It’s simply...Steve.) 

So. Family. Tony needs to find a new one. Or just new teammates. 

He talks to Rhodey, who agrees to be an overseer or who shows up. 

-

Rhodey asks about Spider-Man. 

“He’s on reserves only,” Tony says. “I can’t have him get hurt.” 

Peter’s a great kid. One of the best there is, most likely. (Just don’t ever ask Tony to say that out loud.) 

And he’s been itching to test out some new micro-fabric that has to do with defensive techniques that Tony’s been toying with, and this is the perfect time to introduce Peter to Harley. 

Harley’s soft, worn t-shirts contrast with the bright, punny shirts that Peter almost always wears. Peter talks a mile a minute while Harley really only says what he has to. 

At first, Tony isn’t sure if they’re going to get along. Harley’s not one for enthusiastic, jumpy people and hates going into New York City for literally anything. 

(“You’re supposed to come for dinner! We’re only eating with Pepper!” 

“I literally do not care. I saw a rat and I saw a person who was wearing neon orange. I am not dealing with this.”) 

But Peter is surprisingly savage when he wants to be, and they bond over roasting Tony within an inch of his life. 

“I literally cannot believe you,” Tony says. “You go from stuttering to roasting me over my shoe choice.” 

“Mr. Stark, those are quite possibly the ugliest shoes you could wear to this event,” Peter stresses. “You’re wearing a suit and bright orange shoes.” 

“Yes! It’s called being unique.” 

“It’s called ‘you’re about to get roasted by every magazine and social media account’,” Harley answers, not even looking up from his project. “Change your shoes.” 

“I’m Iron Man. I can handle a little fashion roasting.” 

“Yeah but you should have better taste,” Harley deadpans. “Go with the silver shoes. They’re not terrible.” Tony pouts but changes into the shoes. 

Harley and Peter send him both an article about “the unique, amazingly quirky style of one Tony Stark,” with captions that mean the same thing: told you so. 

It’s sad when Harley has to go back home with Lily. Tony promises them that they can spend every summer upstate if their mother is okay with it. Lily gives him a friendship bracelet before they fly and no, Tony does not Cry Actual Buckets. 

Peter’s summer is about to end, and Tony’s getting on him about last minute AP homework. 

“What do you mean you didn’t have time to finish up your AP History diorama? You spent all of last weekend googling military conspiracy theories! You have had time!” 

“Okay, that’s fair, but still--” 

Tony sends Harley and Lily care packages and letters. They send him back letters about the school day, what’s going on in the community, and Lily tends to “tell on” her brother about his own projects. 

“She didn’t have to tell you I was building a flying motorbike,” Harley whines. “Or that I couldn’t modulate it.” 

“Yeah, but she knows that you need someone to bounce ideas off of. So you could’ve easily talked to Peter or myself.” 

(The motorbike works and Tony has to plead with Harley not to use it to get to New York. 

“Feasibly if I could up the speed, Lily and I could be there in six hours so--” 

“Don’t you dare!”) 

Peter drops by all the time to check in on the progress of the new Avengers. They’ve contacted one of Rhodey’s “friends,” Carol Danvers. 

“A woman that cool? Simply could not have been ‘just’ a friend,” Tony says, smiling. “We’ll ask her about it later.” 

“Nope, you and your freaky Spider-Son are not asking Danvers shit,” Rhodey says. 

“He’s not my son.” 

“He might as well be, sweetheart. He’s already copying your penchant for graphic shirts and being horrible at lying.” 

“I’m not horrible at it.” 

“Yes you are,” Rhodey answers. “For example. Tell me a lie. Tell me that you hate Peter.” 

“Why would I ever tell that lie?” 

“Because you can’t. Next question. When are you going to lecture him about not stealing leftovers?” 

Tony laughs. 

- 

In all honesty, life has been going great. In Tony’s personal life, he and Pepper are going back to better terms friendship-wise. Harley is coming up for Christmas and Peter’s been planning Secret Santa with everyone who lives at the base. 

And then they hear word of a return. 

Rhodey wants to take...drastic measures. 

“We are not sending them to the moon,” Pepper says, rolling her eyes. 

“Why not?” 

“A waste of money, Jim. Honestly.” 

“True point.” 

Tony freezes when he realizes that he won’t be there in time to see them because he’s picking Harley and Lily up. 

“You take Peter with you, we’ll meet them, Rhodey says, smiling. “Nothing like a classic New York welcome, right?” 

“You are not yelling ‘fuck you’ with a bullhorn,” Tony responds, trying to hide a laugh. “I better not hear that you made international news.” 

“Then don’t turn on your TV.” 

Harley and Lily have already heard the news. Harley’s digging through his suitcase in the middle of the airport, and Tony has to flash a smile and a guilty look to a security guard in order for the TSA to lay off. 

“What are you doing, nerd?” Tony asks. 

“Trying to make a slingshot that has a bit more bite to it. You think we can pick up loose concrete rocks on the way to the base?” Harley asks. 

“No, we are not doing that. What I am doing is dropping you off at Peter’s house until I can get them somewhere to stay.” 

“You don’t owe them anything,” Lily remarks. “They broke international border rules and technically should be under government jurisdiction. You don’t have to give them a space.” 

“And yet I’m the only one good at containing,” Tony sighs. “Look, I’m sorry that this won’t be the ideal--” 

“Peter’s not at his house,” Harley answers, frowning at his phone. “Something about barricades?” 

“Oh my god,” Tony groans. “Rhodey got him. Well, in the car. How good are both of you at immediately ducking and rolling out of a car?” 

“We can still be there for you,” Harley says, annoyed. “I have a stun gun that could take down a tyrannosaurus rex.” 

“You can’t substantiate that with concrete evidence,” Lily argues. 

“I theorize that Rogers has to be weaker than a T-Rex, so I think it’s gonna be effective,” Harley responds. “Let me try it out, Tony? Please?” 

“No,” Tony says, but adds, “maybe in a week.” 

Peter is waiting inside and lights up when he sees Harley and Lily.

“Good, the holidays can really begin,” Peter jokes. “We even have the questionable side of the family in for a visit.” 

“For now,” Rhodey says, scowling. “Tony, please tell me they won’t be here for the holidays. We were supposed to pull out the decorations today.” 

“I’ll figure something out,” Tony says wearily. “Have the delegates been contacted?” 

“Marya and Joseph are on their way to deal with re-homing issues and family connections. They should be tied up with legal and personal aspects all day.” 

“Good,” Tony says. “But I do need to go greet them.” 

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Rhodey says, serious expression. “I can deal with them.” 

“You shouldn’t have to. And besides, it’ll be better coming from me. Being here for you all is more important than trying to be their friend.” 

Harley, Peter, and Lily give him a hug. 

“Don’t stay too long,” Peter says. “I made a Christmas Roulette Playlist.” 

“Why is it roulette?” 

“One Halloween song and at least one opera song. Whoever can name the song first wins the privilege of opening the first ornament for the tree.” 

“Wait up for me,” Tony says, grinning. 

It’s hard to face people you used to know. 

But Tony has a family to get back to. 

[lubbuthedigitalnomad]

A PERFECT PLACE

Happy Bob Marley BD (it was Feb. 6), Tibetan New Year (Feb. 12) and Valentine’s Day week! I hope you and yours are happy and healthy. Communications from America say that things are a little less crazy now that the election is over. That’s good. Even the most pro-American Asians were thinking we went a little wacky!

With any luck, folks in the USA will continue to take deep breaths and calm down. With a little effort, things will become less hateful and more loving as both the reds and blues start to realize that working together is the only way things will ever work at all. With that sentiment in mind, this week’s 1000 words are from the Fearless Puppy On American Road book, and about a time and place that remembers the more beautiful part of the American experience.

Once something changes, it can never go all the way back to what it was. In many ways, that is a good thing. We can preserve some better parts of the life we already had while allowing room for new and improved ideas. Insisting that both those new ideas, and the parts preserved from the old, are employed as actual improvements that benefit the vast majority of us has become the non-negotiable, essential responsibility of each and every citizen. Like it or not, it seems we will have to stay actively, consciously, and intelligently involved in order to insure success.

Please be well & stay well. Love, Tenzin and the Nepali Crew

FEARLESS PUPPY WEBSITE BLOG

FEARLESS PUPPY ON AMERICAN ROAD/AMAZON PAGE

REINCARNATION THROUGH COMMON SENSE/AMAZON PAGE

FEARLESS PUPPY ON AMERICAN ROAD WEBSITE

Rural Vermont

Helpfulness. Tribalism at its best. Everyone works together on everything. Lives depend upon each other in temperatures well below zero.

Hitchhiking is no longer just getting from here to there while barely knowing my host. Nearly every ride establishes or increases a friendship.

More cows per square mile than people, more open space than cows, and more forest than open space. Pronounced seasons and cycles. Cold, white winters. Muddy springs. Vibrant green summers pulsating with life that knows it only has a few months to do what needs to get done. Rainbow autumnal foliage so brilliant that guests come from continents away to view it. Streams clean enough to drink from.

Eggs come from happy chickens — not from the cruelty of large “animal production” warehouses.

Everyone waves hello to anyone driving by.

There’s always time to speak with whomever you meet at the General Store or Post Office. There’s always time. No hurry. Life comes first. Being is more important than doing (once the doing gets done).

The only store in town is the size of five closets but has everything — food, hardware, videos, clothing, beer, and more. A giant empty cable spool acts as a table around which to enjoy coffee, home- made donuts, and the company of neighbors. A best friend makes maple syrup. Everyone grows incredible gardens.

I have spent a lot of time with four other people and five beers staring into the open hood of a pickup truck that was not in need of repair.

Wood keeps you warm three times — once when you chop it, again when you carry it in, and the third time when you burn it. Overflowing abundance lives here. Some folks want more. Few need more.

Theater groups that produce professional-quality plays thrive in the forests of nearby vest-pocket towns.

The purity and clarity of omnipresent Nature rubs off on its human inhabitants. Crime, violence, and assorted hatreds appear only in newspapers and on TV stations. No one here has seen those things in person.

The Town Treasurer has a sign on his office explaining, “It’s very hard to get away with anything in a town this small.” Live and let live. If it hurts no one, it’s legal.

Resourcefulness is a way of life. Anything you need can be built from left over parts of things that you don’t need anymore. If you don’t know how, someone will show you. They’ll be happy to help — even happier if you bring a beer to say hello and thank you.

Deer hunters and trout fishermen deny slaughterhouses and corporate supermarket chains their abuses and profits. Unprocessed foods, hard exercise, low stress, clean air, and clean water deny the medical industry their profits from unnecessary surgery and drugs.

Awe inspiring natural beauty excludes land developers and their profit-over-people motivation. Their concrete and steel are not welcome here. The industrial decay that would lead to profits for a large assortment of unethical folks in fancy suits is denied entry by the conscious decisions of simple, intelligent farmers in overalls.

There will never be a Wal-Mart or a crack house here. There are many guns. They are never used for anything but hunting food. People are constantly helping each other to build a barn or house, dig out snow and mud, care for the children, cook, clean, weed the garden, and feed the animals. Anything that can be done at all is usually done by a group, even if it’s actually a one-person job. Folks enjoy each other’s company. Except in the most extreme circumstances, everyone deserves inclusion.

Parties get thrown together instantly for no other reason than that someone feels like being the host.

On a Tuesday, my friend Mike told me that he was having a party at his house on the following Saturday.

“What’s the occasion, Mike?”

“The occasion is that I just came up with the bright idea of having a party. I’ll get out a side of venison and buy a keg of beer. Tell everyone you see to tell everyone they see. If anyone wants to bring more food and drink, that’s good. If not, we’ll be fine with what we’ve got, I figure.”

“OK, Mike. I’ll get everyone but the assholes informed.”

“Inform the assholes too, buddy! Who knows? Maybe if they got invited to more parties, they’d figure out how to act better and wouldn’t be such assholes.”

It was hard to argue with Mike’s logic, but then again it is hard to argue with much of anything in a clean, friendly village.

During those years of having a home community and base station, a lot of work got done elsewhere. Rest time there made hitchhiking across nearly every inch of road in Northeastern America possible. I probably hitchhiked as many miles regionally during this period as the number of miles that were traveled in all the previous cross-country trips. Each full month of whistle stops working for environmental groups and charities included many towns and cities. It included talking to independent business folks all day about various causes, sleeping wherever possible, and celebrating whenever plausible. At the end of road tours like that, staring at mountains in between long naps was more of a necessity than an option. It is a lot easier to burn yourself up on the road when you know that a perfect place to revive is waiting for you.

The focal points of the road binges included Greenpeace, Citizen’s Awareness Network, and self-organized efforts to help support a Mexican orphanage, raise awareness and funding for American homeless folks, and help the victims of a very severe African famine. The results varied. My little part as a team member in the environmental efforts worked consistently for over a decade at each. The orphanage and homeless projects I organized worked minimally. The famine relief effort worked very well. It involved a governor, two senators, labor unions, school systems, businesses, major league sports teams, rock bands, and more. Thousands of people in the Northeastern section of America gave massive help.

This is a short chapter, but it covers a long period of years. Eventually, my good friend who allowed me this cabin in paradise had to liquidate his properties. This put me back out on the street at age fifty. But for a while, my life was as close to normal as it had ever been. It included long term friends and neighbors.

Those years seem to have gone by very quickly.​

About the Author

Doug “Ten” Rose may be the biggest smartass as well as one of the most entertaining survivors of the hitchhiking adventurers that used to cover America’s highways. He is the author of the books Fearless Puppy on American Road and Reincarnation Through Common Sense, has survived heroin addiction and death, and is a graduate of over a hundred thousand miles of travel without ever driving a car, owning a phone, or having a bank account.

Ten Rose and his work are a vibrant part of the present and future as well as an essential remnant of a vanishing breed.

Follow him on Facebook, Doug Ten Rose

Travel Adventure Books can be an excellent gift to your friends and family, buy from Amazon.com

#traveladventurebooks #keepreading #kindlebooks

The books Fearless Puppy On American Road and Reincarnation Through Common Sense by this same author are also available through Amazon or the Fearless Puppy website, where there are sample chapters from those books. Entertaining TV/radio interviews with and newspaper articles about the author are also available there. There is no charge for anything but the complete books! All author profits from book sales will be donated to help sponsor an increase in the number of wisdom professionals on Earth, beginning with but certainly not limited to Buddhist monks and nuns.

If you missed the Introduction to the new book that will be titled Temple Dog Soldier, or would like to see several chapters of it that are available for free online, go to the Puppy website Blog section. This is a book in progress. You will be reading it as it is being created! Just like you, I don’t know what the next chapter is going to be about until it is written. As the Intro will tell you, this is a totally true story — and probably the only book ever written by and about a corpse journeying completely around the world!

[lovelyfictional-imagines]

How to Disappear

So I’m painfully aware of how long it’s been, but I’m back with a new Doctor fic finally.

Song: How to Disappear - Lana del Rey

Word Count: 3142

John met me down on the boulevard Cry on his shoulder 'cause life is hard The waves came in over my head What you been up to, my baby? I haven't seen you 'round here lately All of the guys tell me lies, but you don't You just crack another beer And pretend that you're still here

             Heat emanated from the asphalt beneath her well-worn wedges, wrinkled dress fluttering about her legs as she strolled along a sidewalk bustling with every walk of life. Dozens of people that seemed to be straight out of magazines, performing and spectating, selling and advertising. A wry smile made its way across her dull, tired face. Vibrantly painting shops and other miscellaneous buildings passed on her other side, watching the world pass them by outside as others were constantly streaming inward and out. Everything she’d ever heard about California was true. Above her a lapis sky reflecting back, cotton ball clouds puffing along like steam engines above the crashing sea of humanity gathered near the ocean.

           (Y/N) swept her wavy (h/c) hair behind her, slipping through the crowd. Beautiful people met her face-to-face, brushing by her as if she belonged there. Thrumming with energy despite her complete state of utter exhaustion, her hand went to the bag dangling at her hip. Breaking from the crowd was almost difficult. There was something almost magical, the magnetism of being surrounded by so many eccentrics again. In the neon green light of the sign overhead, however, she felt the pull of something stronger: a cold beer after a weary day.

            Seating herself at the bar, she folded her legs neatly and searched in her purse. She took her compact out, reapplied her deep red lipstick, and ordered a cheap beer. The bartender almost smiled at her as she took her order, and offered her a lighter when the (h/c) pulled a cigarette from its pack. (Y/N) met the older woman’s gentle, watery blue eyes as she lit it, puffing out a cloud and murmuring a word of thanks. In return an ash tray was pushed her way, and she was alone with her thoughts again.

           It had been a long day. Or a week of long days, really. A long couple of months, would be a better descriptor.

           Six months ago she was climbing onto a plane with a breathtaking woman she’d only known for weeks, luggage stuffed haphazardly with clothes and other personal belongings. In the cold December air, she jetted for the New World alongside a goddess with a voice like honey and storms in her eyes, no sunlight on the horizon. Leaving London and a set of hazel puppy dog eyes in her wake. The pain flashed through them like lightning, her own (e/c) eyes watching it crackle across flecks of gold and green.

           Life was good for the first two or three months. They landed in the Big Apple, New York City, with a purse full of American currency and stars in her red, soggy eyes. From there they were unstoppable.

           Nights spent against each other, inhaling the sweet adrenaline of not knowing where they’d go next, heavy smoke, and the glitter her girl would dab onto her willowy cheekbones. Bus seats were their home when they couldn’t find somewhere to stay, shuttling off from town to town with no true destination in mind, just anywhere to run to. Anywhere they felt free. Until money started running low, and their dream crashed headfirst into an iceberg and sank, down and down until forgotten like ships from fairytales or dramatic novels or movies. And, they just so happened to bring their own Titanic down in the middle of Nevada.

           In the tiny house they’d managed to swing rent for, she felt every mile she’d traveled weighing on her shoulders. Even with the job she’d found, hunger pangs were still a reality. No longer salivating at the idea of escaping further into the American Dream, (Y/N) and the angel dripped and dripped until they were pools of tears that became oceans, rolling and thrashing, lashing out at each other. Gone were the featherlight kisses she’d pressed to her pillow-like lips, the intimate secrets and late nights spent lost in their own sultry twilight. Debauchery, it seemed, wasn’t a lifestyle she could realistically manage.

           Sticky, sweaty mornings spent groggy until hangovers set in were lost in time, dissolved like medicine in a glass of water. Biting kisses became biting remarks, and biting remarks grew into discussions that grew into (Y/N) moving out with all her savings. A bus ticket was her ticket to salvation, and she shipped off for California, the land of the freaks and free, apparently.

           Thick steps brought her onto the bus once again, and her thoughts were finally forced back to those eyes, loving her and hating her in equal measure as she ran from their affection. (Y/N) remembered how regret was a boulder sitting in her stomach, fear was the blood in her veins, He’d still come with hope things could’ve been different, and the last thing she remembered as she stared into their abyss is that she never deserved him.

           And in the midst of her misty-eyed reverie, an all-too-familiar touch ghosted her waist. Dabbing the wetness away with the napkin that had come around her almost empty drink, she turned to the love of her life with the same tenderness she’d always had.

           “Allow me to buy your next one, and the proceeding one, if I may.”

           The sound of his voice hummed through her like hot chocolate hitting a cold stomach. Flooded with remorse and the only true sense of comfort she’d ever known in her short life, she studied his sharp face. Thick, chestnut colored locks of hair flopped down over his forehead as he settled into the stool next to hers. Even in the middle of summer on the western coast, he wore his signature tweed coat over his brilliantly crimson bow tie. The bartender nodded at them from her spot behind the bar, sliding two more beers their way.

           All of a sudden it was their first meeting again, the one where she fell in love instantly.

           “Hello, Doctor.”

           “Hello (Y/N).”

 This is how to disappear This is how to disappear

             They danced on the floor after one two many rounds, (Y/N) thrown around the Doctor’s lithe frame as she cried for the fourth time that evening. One spent catching up, laughing like old times, and even talking of the future. Their future.

           “I’m sick, Doctor,” she whispered, voice slightly slurred as her damp cheek pressed into his chest. “I never wanted to leave you.”

           The Doctor stilled his swaying for a moment, but continued almost as if he hadn’t stopped. Raking his fingers clumsily through her long, dirty (h/c) hair, he pressed the thin line of his mouth to her forehead.

           “I know.”

 Joe met me down at the training yard Cuts on his face 'cause he fought too hard I know he's in over his head But I love that man like nobody can He moves mountains and pounds them to ground again I watched the guys getting high as they fight For the things that they hold dear To forget the things they fear

             The year was 1939, years before America joined the war. Word was coming from overseas, and it felt bleaker than the textbooks describe. (Y/N)’s stomach dropped when she heard of Germany’s attack against Poland, as if she didn’t know what came next. It was all worlds away, however, as she leaned against the concrete wall of the military base. Her curls were falling int he sticky southern heat of Louisiana, and she lifted her lit cigarette to her painted mouth. Across the yard, he sparred with a stocky man covered in tattoos.

           Travelling felt so good, for the first time in what felt like forever. The luxury of a confirmed bed to sleep in every time she chose, food being available almost instantly, but the true pleasure came in the company she kept while doing so. The Doctor, her sweet boy, the eternal man, took her in without a question. Her impending doom was a topic for another day whenever he wrapped her in his wiry but sturdy arms, eyes finding hers in confirmation she isn’t leaving again.

           Her mind is elsewhere as her own wandering eyes are focused on his back. In a baggy, soiled white tank top and hefty olive pants, dark boots that added two inches to his height, with shaggy hair that was already growing back, he seemed as if he almost belonged there. Landing solid punches left and right, he pulled back as his opponent countered. Dodging swiftly, he moved in again for a quick onslaught on the man’s side. Hunching over, the man seemed spent, and the Doctor turned his back on him. A mistake, however, when the man stood and lurched forward with a hairy-knuckled fist. She cried out, causing him to turn a few seconds too late as it collided with his sharp jaw.

           Hands covered her mouth as she watched him reel, spinning back with furious punches that came from some sort of inward strength. Sometimes she forgot he wasn’t human. Or, in actuality, she forgot he was so damn resilient. Two hearts pumping liquid gold through him, all the knowledge in the universe stacked carefully in his enormous mind, and thousands upon thousands of years of experience on his shoulders.

           Before she could process it, the match was over, and the Doctor was sauntering towards her. Sweat poured and clung to his unevenly tanned skin, dark eyes watching her with hunger. He grimaced at her as she took another drag, but it wasn’t the same disappointment as it once was. Now it was bitter resign, and he slid his shirt from around him and draped it across his shoulders before spitting blood and taking the cancer stick to hit it himself.

           “Where to next? Had your fill of propaganda and bigotry yet?”

           A dry chuckle left her throat as he smiled at her, causing her to roll her eyes. He puffed on as if he had his entire life. Carefully her eyes slid over his physique, taking in his muscles and dirt and grime, the bruises on his knuckles and face.

           “Or are you just trying to get off from watching me battle the entire army?”

           A sly smirk and light blush instantly bloomed across her face, and she dabbed at her brow with the handkerchief he’d made a show of giving to her in front of the other ladies she’d been working alongside.

           “Guilty as charged, hm? No, I believe we’ll be leaving tonight. Is that alright?”

           The Doctor merely watched the sun setting behind the other buildings, the sweet screams of cicadas loud in their ears as he reached for her. Throwing the butt down, his arm drew her to his chest and he dipped her, kissing her deeply. His mouth lately had become so sweet, it tasted of cherry pie and ashes and bittersweet unspoken words she knew were bursting in his chest like bubbles against the ground. Across the training grounds, other men whooped and whistled, and they simply remained wrapped up in one another, as always.

 This is how to disappear This is how to disappear

             Only having a year or two (approximately, give or take a few months) wasn’t as scary as movies or television shows made it out to be, or so (Y/N) thought.

           Given her diagnosis, she expected to feel her world crumble around her, or maybe for the sky to fall in the minute she stepped foot outside of her physician’s clinic. Instead, she felt numb. Not unhappy, but she simply did not feel. As she walked to the nearest gas station, she had a basic plan mapped out. Leave the Doctor on some sort of sour note so maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t try to follow her. Go somewhere to sit and decompose like all things do, maybe become fertilizer for wildflowers.

           Meeting Jacqueline was her self-described “sign” that she was in the right. Not like in television dramas where the main character was doing the wrong thing, but one reality show that made perfect sense, where she would leave both of the Doctor’s aged hearts broken and bitter, where he would be driven to scream her name out in frustration atop some building somewhere.

           Singing in a run-down pub was her only means on income, but she was still stunning in chipped heels and hand-me-down leopard print dresses. Deep mahogany hair that surrounded a porcelain portrait of perfection with slate blue eyes, false eyelashes, and a rose-kissed pout that (Y/N) never tired of meeting with her own until things went south. They fell into something that could’ve been more than infatuation if she hadn’t been so toxic and if (Y/N) hadn’t been hopelessly in love with someone else.

           In her head there was no other way of erasing herself, her existence entirely, without the Doctor’s help. So she went the human way out: selfishly, and without warning.

 Now it's been years since I left New York And I've got a kid and two cats in the yard The California sun and the movie stars And I watched the skies getting light as I write As I think about those years As I whisper in your ear

 A blissfully historic year and a half passed, and (Y/N) was surprisingly still kicking. Feeling weaker every day, it was almost as if she could feel the cancer spreading from her bones outward. Like a tree covered in vines or moss, feeling the tendrils rise and extend and envelop her. Sometimes she thinks the Doctor can tell she’ll pass soon, but she’s always prided herself on her acting. Or maybe he simply doesn’t want to believe it, only he knows but won’t tell.

Now it’s 1984, and she’s reclining on the front porch in a dusty town in Nebraska, feet propped against the chair’s arms. Corn surrounds them as far she can see, wind whistling through and shaking it. The open windows and breeze carry sounds of the Cheers theme and the Doctor rummaging through the kitchen, tinkering with something. On the horizon, the sun is setting and their friends are sprawled on a blanket on the front yard.

Amy and Rory laugh at the sky and whisper like lovestruck children, taking photographs and promising they’ll remember today forever, and (Y/N) can feel the warmth pooling in her chest at the immense amount of love she carries for them. As he wraps his arm around her and their lips lock, the clearing of one’s throat breaks her trance. Jumping at the sound, she playfully glares at her Doctor before realizing he was offering her a glass of iced tea, something he was surprisingly fond of after spending time in the southern United States.

“I never thought this would be where I’d want to be.”

The Doctor hummed in agreement as he sat in the vacant chair next to her, one hand cradling his own drink and the other instinctively falling over hers. As she gazed at the Doctor now, jacket abandoned and suspenders down around his waist, bowtie forgotten in their bedroom somewhere, she felt as if they’d been together for years. His socks were slouched around her ankles, brown with pastel spots, her fingers warm beneath his as the ice in her tea cooled her others, and she knew this was it. This was where she wanted to die. If an afterlife should exist, this would be the exact moment she’d choose for her own personal heaven. To live through every day with the ones she held dear, with not a care in the universe, forever.

That would be just fine.

Amy called to them, crawling up from Rory’s embrace, camera in hand. The pair approached them with the same warmth from her chest in their faces and cheeks, and it was so beautiful she could have wept.

“You look like those old married couples in paintings!”

And she took their picture.

(Y/N) wouldn’t have called them an old couple, but as she looked at her baggy jeans and heavy green sweater, she might have been swayed. They laughed regardless if they agreed, and the Doctor looked indignant as (Y/N) began to crawl into his lap.

“Just because I am an old man doesn’t mean I look it.” He huffed at the pair as they giggled and ran inside.

“Just like children.” She hummed, leaning her head against his as his arm slithered across her waist, accommodating her lighter than ever frame.

“I don’t look it, do I?” The Doctor asked, earning a chuckle in response.

“I dunno, I’ve always had a thing for older men. Maybe that explains why I’m so bloody attracted to you.

“Are you sure it isn’t my devilishly cunning mind or my incredibly chiseled jawline?” He smirked, turning to her with a wink.

“Oh yeah.” She finished, covering his mouth with hers.

Falling into the groove of the kiss, the Doctor dropped his glass as he lifted his hands to her hair. (Y/N) allowed hers to slide from hers as she reached for his face, neither minding the mess at the moment. Because at the moment, it was an alien and a human, completely intertwined with one another, burning their skin into each other’s, as if they could meld together into one and never be without.

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” the Doctor pulled away and began mouthing the words against the sickly skin of her neck, and she felt the words reverberate through her as if they were gospel, as if she were a holy vessel with divine intervention being delivered through her.

“Until every blade of grass falls away, until the winds cease, until all color fades from every star, I love you.”

“Mm, poetic for my gangly, awkward man, hmm?”

The Doctor breathed against her neck, no humor found tonight.

“No funnies tonight? Let me put my notecards away then.”

Pulling back, she pouted like a child in its parent’s lap. The Doctor was as serious as the grave, with pounds of suffering weighing his sad eyes down. (Y/N) turned and leaned into his chest, slouching down his torso before feeling his head lay on hers.

“Don’t be so blue, my great American novel is about to end spectacularly.”

           Her voice was a hoarse whisper. His response was silence.

           Until she felt his tears drip down into her hair, and (Y/N) simply rubbed his hands as the sun fell far from their sight. Laying in his lap, she felt him cling to her as he sobbed, all in silence.

 I'm always going to be right here No one's going anywhere

[mr-entj]

Any tips or useful resources for a rookie wanting to do more recreational travel in their future, especially to countries in Europe and SE Asia?

There are many different countries and unique cultures in Europe and Southeast Asia so I’m dumping generalized and random travel tips below.

Europe:

Use public transportation whenever possible because it’s safe, convenient, and affordable. Trying to get around the city in a taxi in their teeny tiny streets is usually more expensive and much slower. Also, don’t drive in Italy, it’s like the European automotive version of The Hunger Games.

Pack accordingly; that means clothes, medication, and travel accessories because everything is way more expensive in Europe if you forget something and need to buy it there.

If you buy anything, don’t forget to get a VAT refund before leaving. People miss out on a ton of money forgetting to do this.

TripAdvisor is your friend to look up reviews and recommendations of local spots, Yelp’s not big over there.

When ordering water in restaurants, specify that you want still water or you may get sparkling (carbonated) water instead. Water’s usually not free.

European food portions are 25-50% smaller than American portions, order accordingly with this knowledge to avoid leaving hungry. #Murica

Tipping in restaurants works differently depending on the country, it’s not the usual 18-25% that it is in America. 10% is a safe number but check local tipping etiquette.

Exercise volume control in public (and private) spaces. We’re usually louder than them overall without realizing it.

Whatever country you’re in, eat their bread. Their bread is magical.

Wearing Trump paraphernalia is a great conversation starter to make new friends

There’s a possibility you may arrive in Europe single but accidentally fall in love and marry a European on your way home. It happens from time to time. Just go with it.

Southeast (SE) Asia:

Singapore is the exception to these because it’s basically Asian Wakanda.

SE Asia is predominantly Muslim. Be aware and respectful of local culture when it comes to clothing and conduct.

Get all vaccines prior to going unless malaria and dengue fever are your idea of a good time. The CDC has a great resource for vaccines based on destination.

Pack medication for the following issues: diarrhea/upset stomach, headaches, and motion sickness. Activated charcoal pills are awesome for funky stomach issues. Pack mosquito repellent. Hand sanitizer is your best friend, use it all the time.

It’s hot in the winter and insanely hot in the summer. Be prepared to sweat like crazy and take 2-3 showers per day. Be a global citizen and wear deodorant. 

Bring cash prior to arrival because foreign exchange places are shady, expensive (conversion rates are bad and fees are high), or shady and expensive (as is the case in Asia). I typically bring $1,000 USD for every 1 week of travel per person but only keep $100 in my wallet when I go out into the city and leave the rest in my suitcase in the hotel locked, bolted, and hidden away.

Drink only bottled water, don’t drink from the tap. Tap water isn’t sanitary in SE Asia and anything that touches it or uses it as an ingredient will destroy your weak first world country stomach. This includes being careful when brushing your teeth. Order bottled water in restaurants.

Avoid street food, especially anything that’s uncooked (i.e. iced drinks, fresh fruit, shaved ice, cold desserts, etc.) because food safety isn’t strictly enforced in SE Asia. If you must eat street food, make sure it’s cooked thoroughly (i.e. fried foods).

Aside from that, try the local cuisine because it’s incredible. SE Asian exotic fruits, vegetables, meats, seafood, and flavors are unmatched. Try as much as you can while there. Eat everything.

If you have a friend/colleague/family member local to that country and who speaks the language, then have him/her buy all the tickets to attractions, museums, national parks, etc. Foreigners are often charged more money for these same tickets.

If you’re an adventurer who likes to go off the beaten path into more rural areas, then pack some toilet paper. Public restrooms there may not have normal flushing toilets, but instead holes in the grounds with a water hose or water bucket to wash your butt. You’re welcome.

If you go on a tour, the restaurants the tour group selects for meals are usually overpriced because they get kickbacks. Look around the area for better and cheaper alternatives.

General:

Most of my business travel tips apply to leisure travel.

Get all necessary visas before traveling. Don’t assume that an American passport will get you in everywhere (especially in Asia) or through certain countries in passing. We once got thrown out of the Czech Republic in ‘98 because of this oversight.

Bring a credit card without international fees because 1-5% fees add up quickly over the course of a trip. Before leaving, call the credit card company and let them know all travel dates so they don’t accidentally flag international transactions as suspicious (possible fraud) and freeze the card.

Activate an international data plan (ex: AT&T) while traveling overseas. Call and request this feature before you board the plane so it’s activated by landing. This will spare you the sticker shock of hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in roaming fees.

Bring a universal travel adapter and a power bank (up to 20,000 mAh) to charge your phone while out and about. Your smartphone is your lifeline in a foreign country for communication, navigation, and sometimes payment. Make sure it’s always charged.

For hotels and accommodations, it’s better to pay a little bit more money and book something closer to the center of the city than to pay less but stay farther away. The traffic (time) and transportation costs (money) going to and from the city will add up to more than what you initially saved. This is especially true in SE Asia where traffic is insane. Airbnb is a great option.

Don’t bring your passport with you when out and about, it’s going to get lost, and then you’re going to spend an entire day at the consulate dealing with disgruntled government employees and trying to prove you’re not trying to illegally immigrate into your home country. Leave it locked in your suitcase.

[hielorei]

Digimon Shared Universe.

I just put all the digimon seasons in one universe, with a timeline and how the characters grow with some relationships. if you want to read it go ahead, but then again, i merged 8/9 seasons, a few movies and mangas and I kept track of +70 characters. Infinity War the most ambitious crossover event in history? bitch please,

you can allways ask me about this, and/or give me ideas and suggestions

the events of each series stay the same but some thing change,,,

FRONTIER

Takuya (11), Kouji (11), Kouichi (11), Zoe/Izumi (11), Junpei (12), Tommy/Tomoki (8)

> +1 year

ADVENTURE

Tai (11), Matt (11), Sora (11), Izzy (10), Mimi (10), Joe (12), TK (8), Kari (8)

Takuya and Joe are classmates, while the adventure kids were in the Digital World, he got his D-Scanner back (he was in the same summer camp), thanks to the distortion. He knew something was up. Once he go back to the city contacted the other Frontier Kids, and all had their D-Scanners back. They decide to meet where everything started, Shibuya. When Myotismon attacked they protected the civilians. Then they watched how the Adventure Kids fought the Dark Masters.

> +3 years – Our War Game happens here-

ADVENTURE 02

Davis (11), Yolei (12), Cody (9), Ken (11), Willis (11)

TK (11), Kari (11)

Tai (14), Matt (14), Sora (14), Izzy (13), Mimi (13), Joe (15)

Takuya, Koiji, Kouichi and Zoe (15) – JP (16) – Tommy (12)

Zoe Move back to Italy. Tommy is Yolei’s classmate.

Hurricane Touchdown (not Digimon movie dub, but japanese version) happens after the Digimon Kaiser Arc.

Everything is the same up until the world Tour arc. In France TK and Tai are helped by Zoe. In Hong Kong, Izzy and Kari are helped by Kouji and Kouichi, Kouchi was in a vacation with his brother for the first time. Takuya was in Australia so he helped Cody and Joe, Joe was surprised that his old classmate was a digidestined. Cody was in Russia and Helped Yolei and Sora, but he trolled them and pretended to not know japanese. JP was in Mexico (he was there for a girl he starting dating online) and helped Matt and Ken. The american team is the same (Davis, Mimi and Micheal) but Willis is also there. The Frontier Kids cant go back to Japan, because their families. But are there in the final episode.

> +3 Years

ADVENTURE TRI

Tai, Matt, Sora (17) – Mimi, Izzy (16) – TK, Kari (14) – Joe (18)

Meiko (16), Daigo (30), Maki (30)

Joe started dating Zoe, Zoe is Joe’s mysterious girlfriend. Also, Tommy is dating Yolei. The Frontier kids were in the Dark Ocean while the Events of Tri happened. Figthing Daemon? Who knows-

> +2 Years.

TAMERS

Takato (12/13), Jenrya (13), Ruki (13), Ryo (14), Juri (13), Kazu (13), Kenta (13), Alice (13), Suzie (7), Makoto & Ai (4)

Yamaki (32), Riley (26), Tally (23)

The Secret Agency, after loosing Daigo and Maki took a new aproach for Digimon, and name themselves Hypnos. Yamaki was Daigo’s best friend and he wants revange.

JP, adressing the memory loss, decide to find a way for digimon to be always in the people’s mind, but keep it a secret, so he created a card game. The TCG was an instant success.

The wonderswan games are canon. After Ryo felt so betrayed by the adventure kids, he decides to start a new life and erase all memories of himself (even he forgot) and live in simulation made by the homeostasis. But after the reboot from Tri (he is 11 in Tri), he was back in the digital world and without memories whatsoever, he didnt age while in the simulation. So Gennai decides to disguise himself as his father. Even without memories, his connections to the digital world still there, what mades him really good at the TCG, getting the title of the Digimon King. A year before the events of Tamers he goes to the digital world with a girl name Alice, but there she dies and like Wizardmon, her spirit still alive (because she didnt die in her own world)

Cody is Ryo classmate. Yolei and Tommy break up but still friends.

This Digital world isnt the same as the Adventure/Frontier one. This is the digital world created by Yggdrassill after the old one is full (X Evolution Movie). This is why it looks so empty and unstable and why Digimon are never born again, its a mecanism to prevent the digital world from getting full (like your phones). The Holy Beast are based on data from old Digidestined Partners (Daigo and the others). And because we are talking about another digital world, the adventure/frontier kids arent very efective against the devas and the D-Reapper.

>+2 years

SAVERS

Masaru (14), Thomas (14), Yoshino (19), Ikuto (10)

Sampson (34), Miki (21), Megumi (21), Chika (10)

Nanami (14), Kouki (14), Ivan (19)

Takato, Henry, Ruki, Kazu, Kenta, Juri (15), Ryo (16), Suzie (9), Makoto, Ai (6)

Tai, Matt, Sora (21) – Izzy, Mimi, Meiko (20) - Yolei, Tommy (19) – Tk, Kari, Davis, Ken, Willis (18) – Joe, Zoe, Takuya, Kouji, Kouichi (22), JP (23), Yamaki, Maki (34), Riley (28), Tally (25)

Hypnos changes names to DATs, after realizing that battling digimon isnt the answer, and they start to invetigate them and controling them in order to protect the Human World. The Tamers Digital World closed for being to unstable after the Tamers kid got their partners back, but before the portal closed Gatomon felt Wizardmon in that digitalworld, and Kari encouraged her to go find her friend, and she did. And now the Human world is connected to the Adventure/Frontier Digital World again.

Izzy and Yolei joined DATs as data analizers joining Riley and Tally. Yamaki is in charge of the investigation side of DATs, While Sampson is in charge of the protection of the human world. And surprise! Sampson was a digidestined and was part of Daigo and Maki’s group. And Daigo-Maki-Sampson where a triangle like the fandom likes to think of Tai-Sora-Matt.

Takuya, Davis, Ruki and Kazu joins DATs under Sampson, and are the Savers kids tutors. The Sexual Tension between Rika and Thomas is real (but isnt sexual really becase they are 14 and 15 and thats fucking creepy, but it was the best way to describe it), Kazu became really good at the TGC, because he trained with Rika (I will use my dub version were Kazu did respect and admire Rika because she is the Digimon Queen and the sexist was Kenta, Kazu always called him out on his BS), also Kazu is dating Ryo (my AU, my OTP, my Canon.) but the relationship is secret, Kazu isnt ready to be out and Ryo is okay.

Matt is busy with rockstar stuff. Tai and Joe are busy with university. JP is busy running a company at only 23 and TK is the main writer of Digimon Stories, TK is in a polyamorous relationship with Kari and Willis (who moved to Japan). Sora started her first cloth collection with designs based on the digital world, and Mimi and Zoe are the main models. Mimi also started a movie career.

> +1 year

DIGIMON CIVIL WAR

DATs couldnt take care of all digimon related dangers so create various teams around the world.

DATs America: Willis, Sampson, TK, Kari, Ryo, Kazu, Izzy, Mimi, Tally

DATs Europe: Matt, Sora, Zoe, Joe, Tommy, Yolei, Thomas, Ivan, Miki, Tai

DATs Japan: Yamaki, Riley, Masaru, Ikuto, Yoshino, Ken, Davis, Ruki, Megumi

The Digital World start glitching and Ryo recovers his memories, and he is angry, especially at Tai and Davis. Ryo thinks that the Adventure group cant be trusted, on top of that, he discovers the story of DATs, and how it was called Hypnos, and what the organization did when was under control of Maki, whom is Back, and maybe its the cause of why the digital world is glitching. Who gave the right to a small group of humans to decide what is best for the digital world? The digidestined have to choose a side, Ryo Side, who think humans should leave the digital world alone and it population. Davis Side who after the Events of Tri, Tamers and Savers thinks Humans should protect the human world from the digimon (and maybe build a firewall around it and make the digimon pay for it). Both sides started fighting, until Tai took charge, and decide that diplomacy is the best choice, a middle ground.

DATs collapsed after that but didnt end. And the Door to the Digital world closed.  

> 2 years

XROS WARS

Taiki (13), Akari (12/13), Zenjirou (12/13), Kiriha (14), Nene (14), Yuu (11)

The Fusion kids are called to the Tamers Digital World once it bacame stable, it was divided in zones and all this time without being in danger allowed a new way of evolution.

In this AU, Akari Friendship and Zenjirou Courage made them worthy of their 

xrosloaders, with a little help of an Omegamon and never went back to the human world (because I cant be the one who connected what Omega said to Taiki about Akari’s friendship and Zenjirou’s courage with the their crosloaders colors, I mean, Akari got a light blue xrossloader and Zenjirou a orange one! Come one! It was a callback to the crests!)

Also, a Gatomon and a Wizardmon joined the Xros-Heart Army. And like the manga, Wizardmon also dies here and Gatomon jump to another digital world to find her best friend/lover.

> +1 year

HUNTERS

Taguiru (12), Yuu (12), Taiki, Zanjirou, Akari (14), Kiriha, Nene (15)

Ryouma (13), Ren (12), Airu (12), Hideaki (13), Kiichi (12), Mizuki (14)

KenX (12), Haruki (13), Noboru (13)

Makoto, Ai (10) – Suzie, Alice (13) – Ikuto, Chika (14) - Masaru, Thomas, Kouki, Nanami (18) – Takato, Henry, Rika, Kazu, Kenta, Juri (19) – Ryo, Cody (20) – TK, Kari, Willis, Davis, Ken (22) – Yolei, Tommy, Yoshino, Ivan (23) – Izzy, Mimi, Meiko (24) – Tai, Matt, Sora, Miki, Megumi (25) – Joe, Zoe, Takuya, Kouji, Kouchi (26) – JP (27) – Tally (30) – Riley (32) – Yamaki, Maki, Sampson (38)

Akari is classmate of Ikuto and Chika, whom may or may not have feelings for each other. Suzie is classmate with Ryouma. JP and Tally started dating. After Joe graduated got married with Zoe. Davis moved to the USA. Yolei and Ken are dating. Yamaki finally proposed to Riley. Without Daigo, Maki and Sampson started having a thing. Yoshino and Tommy are fuck buddies. Kazu is out and all his friends supported him and is happy with Ryo. Nanami dated Henry, but it didnt end well. Henry dated Takato, but they decided to stay as friends, and they still best friends (with benefits...), in fact, it was Henry who pushed Takato to ask Jeri out. And Jeri may or may not have had a one night stand with Rika (all the Tamers kids are at least bisexual, fight me, again, my AU, my canon). Takuya is dating Megumi. Matt and Sora Break up, and Sora is dating Kouichi. There are rumours in DATs that Thomas and Ruki are banging in “secret”, they are, but are horrible at keeping it a secret, and everyone pretends to not know about them.

A new thing called DigiQuartz is a plane similar to the Digital World in small scale, and it has characteristics of the DW-FAS (Digital World Frontier/Adventure/Savers) and DW-TX (Digital World Tamers/XrosWars) . DATs decide to investigate this and the leader of it is Izzy, helped by Yolei, Riley and Maki. They discover that the Digiquartz hold the data of creatures who died in other worlds. So they can recover Alice, Wizardmon, Meicoomon and Leomon (adventure). Gatomon was in the DigiQuartz looking for Wizardmon. Once the data recovered, Juri’s D-Arc linked with Leomon (because basically its the same digimon, but not “her leomon”), and Alice D-Arc linked with Wizardmon.

With the DigiQuartz Izzy could create new technologies and society advance really fast. Izzy also started working with a old professor on a AI, Code Name: Minerva.

> +4 years

APPMON

Haru (13), Eri (14), Astra (11), Rei (14), Yuujin (13), Ai-U (13), Hajime (8) Knight (?)

Makoto, Ai (14) – Taguiru, Yuu, Ren, Airu, Kiichi, Ken-X (16) – Suzie, Alice, Ryouma, Hideaki, Haruki, Noboru (17) – Ikuto, Chika, Taiki, Zanjirou, Akari, Mizuki (18) – Kiriha, Nene (19) -  Masaru, Thomas, Kouki, Nanami (22) – Takato, Henry, Rika, Kazu, Kenta, Juri (23) – Ryo, Cody (24) – TK, Kari, Willis, Davis, Ken (26) – Yolei, Tommy, Yoshino, Ivan (27) – Izzy, Mimi, Meiko (28) – Tai, Matt, Sora, Miki, Megumi (29) – Joe, Zoe, Takuya, Kouji, Kouchi (30) – JP (31) – Tally (34) – Riley (36) – Yamaki, Maki, Sampson (42)

JP’s Digimon company was absorbed by the L-Corp and cancelled the Digimon Franchise, But Haru has some memories of the games. Ryouma is dating Suzie and Henry doesnt like it at all. Matt dated Nene and it was scandalous since they both are well known musicians and have a 10 years diference… but it didnt worked at all, they still good friends tho, and collaborate from time to time. After that, Matt and Sora starting dating again, and he proposed to her. Taguiru is dating Hideaki, Airu is dating Alice. Davis and Takato opened a restaurant and Hideaki work part time there, and hopes to get an intership in L-Corp. Cody is in Law School. Yoshino and Ken enter the police. Kari graduated and is a teacher now.  A Hollywood studio got the rights of TK books. Takato is also in Art School.  

The DigiQuartz evolve into the AR-Fields, and in the space between the DW-FAS and DW-TX, the data there created a sub species knows as Appmons.

[mysweetestcreature]

Wish Upon A Star (StepBro!Harry) Part VI

Part V

***

Present Day: Six Years Later

“Look, I don’t care what Clintworth wants, the budget is the budget. So, you can tell him that it just can’t be done,” she slams the handset back on the base. She leans over to prop her elbows on the surface of the desk and brings her fingers up to soothe her temples. It’s April, and the marketing department has already hired their quota of new strategists for the season. However, the bloody head insists on taking in more than their budget permits. “Stubborn Americans,” she grumbles to herself.

After graduation, Y/n had been offered a job at one of the fastest rising corporations in New York. In just eighteen months, she managed to rise in the ranks to executive accountant. It’s a true testament to how much one can achieve with grueling nights of overtime and coffee running through the bloodstream.  

With a loud sigh, Y/n grabs her purse and coat, and pushes out the doors of her office, “I’m going out to lunch. If I have any messages, write it down and put it on my desk, yeah?” she calls to her assistant as she heads straight for the elevator. “Thanks, Miguel,” she winks. 

The weather is beginning to shift to higher temperatures after having suffered through a ghastly winter. She enjoys the moments when she’s able to walk through her city rather than having to hail for a cab. It’s true what they had told her before, the energy here is an incomparable force, and to think she almost ran away from it all. Truth be told, she hasn’t been home in over three years. There’s nothing there for her anymore, all that she could ever want is all right here. 

The money she’s making at work is decent enough that she’s able to afford a nice apartment on the Upper West Side. From her bedroom window, is a nice view of the Hudson. The thought that at twenty-four, she’s able to live such a lifestyle, still baffles her. Although, she has gotten accustomed to the nightlife that surrounds the area, it’s rather enjoyable. 

On special occasion, like when she’s sick of reading through all the financial reports that seem to pile high on her desk every day, she’ll call up either Anne or Eric for a few minute’s chat. They’d recently sold the house in Holmes Chapel and are now living in Camden. The decision was brought about when Eric was promoted to lead the London office, and he just couldn’t refuse such an offer. 

Her phone begins to vibrate in her pocket and she smiles when she sees who it is. “Hey there,” she flirtatiously greets.

“Someone’s running a bit late,” the person on the other end says. She giggles into the phone as she rounds the corner of 51st.   

“I’m walking into the restaurant as we speak. I can even see you right now!” she hangs up her phone and strolls over to the man dressed in the fitted navy-blue suit. He smirks when he sees her approaching and opens his arms out for her to enter. The man kisses her on the cheek before pulling out the chair for her to sit in.

“I see you decided to walk here,” he teases. “How’s work?” he asks while he glances over the menu.

She places the folded napkin in her lap and does the same. “Nothing out of the ordinary, it would just bore you,” she shrugs off. 

“Dollface,” he reaches for her hand across the table, “you could never bore me.” She looks up from reading the mouthwatering description of the taglierini to smile at him. 

“If you’re that curious, I’ve practically been breathing down marketing’s necks,” she says lightly.

He chuckles and kisses her knuckles, “It’s what you’re best at.” She playfully shoves at him before pulling her hand away.

“I resent that, William!” he lifts his hands up in mock surrender.

They had met during her last year at NYU. He was in one of the major business-exclusive fraternities and had bumped into her at one of their parties. At first, she didn’t think anything of him, but he was persistent and pursued her. It took about three months before she accepted to go on a date with him. One night out turned into frequent evenings spent walking through Central Park, and the rest is history. 

***

He tilts his head up and studies the way the wall is being painted. As he takes a closer look, he notices the air bubbles forming just above the arch. “Repaint this part when you get the chance, will you, Tony?” he orders. He waits for Tony to give him a salute before continuing to supervise the rest of the crew.

This is Harry’s biggest project to date. A social networking company based in America had acquired him to design the plans for their new London branch. They’ve made quite the wave in the recent years, and Harry was honored to take on such a job. 

Upon completion of his education, he’d been contracted by his place of internship to be a full-time architect. Harry has quickly become one of the most requested, and soon he’ll be eyeing a position as a partner. While he may be a bit young for that, if this project goes off without a hitch, he’s guaranteed for early consideration. 

His mum says he works too much and complains that he never visits them enough. He tries to see them at least twice a month, but it seems like he’s always got stuff to do, or so he tells them. Anne’s tried to set him up on dates with daughters of friends she’s made. None of them are of major interest to him. Relationships in general aren’t of any interest. 

Some would say he’s married to his job, and they’re probably right. Even while at university, Harry had poured his all into his school work. He considered everything around him to be a distraction, and he would only make time for social activity once he was sure to be at least two weeks ahead of deadlines. 

***

Age 20:

It’s a Friday night, and everyone in the dorms is out drinking, or partying, or both. Harry has his headphones on to cancel out the noise while he focuses on completing a blueprint which isn’t due for another week. His professor has been quite impressed with him, and he’s even offering him a student internship at his firm. 

Harry pretends that he doesn’t see his door open, and he chooses to ignore the blonde that waltzes over to him. He sighs when she takes off his headphones and insists on sitting in his lap.

“Where’ve you been all week?” she questions, as she attempts to discreetly shove her breasts in his face. “I’ve missed you,” she huskily whispers in his ear. He can’t help the way his eyes roll in annoyance. He had shagged her a few days ago while under the influence of some concoction one of his mates had given him. She had been giving him suggestive looks all night, before he thought ‘fuck it’ and let her take him back to her room.

Although, he thought he’d seen the last of her when he’d left once she’d fallen asleep. The one-night stands had become his thing, and they were to remain just that. So, as this girl—whose name he can’t for the life of him remember—is disturbing him from his assignment, well, it just won’t do. 

“Look…Tessa, I had a great time the other night, really I did, but I’m not exactly looking for anything more right now,” he says and does his best to politely shove her the fuck off him. 

“Excuse me? It’s Monica, you dick!” she responds, looking fully offended. He throws her an unconcerned look, and she storms out of the room. 

He sits back in his chair and breathes out in relief.

***

Present Day:

When she finally gets home, she opens up a bottle of wine and pours a glass for her and William. He’s making her dinner tonight, having left work early. For the last month or two, he’s been hinting at wanting to move in. She first noticed when he asked her if she wanted him to make space in his closet for her clothes. It’s a sweet gesture, but Y/n doesn’t know if she’s ready for that kind of commitment, or if she’ll ever be ready to take that next step.

“I’ve got some exciting news for you,” he calls to her from his place in front of the stove. 

She takes a sip from her wine, “Do tell.”

William stirs the vegetables around in the saucepan and puts the heat on low. “I’ve got business matters to attend to in London, so I have to fly out there in a few weeks. Since you’re from there and all, I was hoping that you’d want to come with me?” he grins at her. 

“First of all, I’m from Manchester,” she pokes him in the side, “and…I don’t know, Will. I’ve got work and you know they can’t function without me.”

He dismisses her with a wave of his hand, “I told you, you should just come work for me. I can pay you double than what they’re paying you now.” Her cheeks suck inwards, not this conversation again. Not wanting to ruin the mood, she brushes it off. “I can finally meet your parents. You said they live around the area, right?”

“Yeah, but my dad-”

“Great! I’ll book our flight after dinner,” he cuts her off and goes back to his cooking. Y/n leans back against the counter, in distress. 

***

“You’re really coming here? To London?” Carrie’s voice booms through the phone. After their meal, Y/n had faked drowsiness in order to get William to leave. She submerged herself in a hot bath before calling up her friend.

“Apparently. The new branch is about to open up and he wants me to come along,” she mutters.

“Well it can’t be that dreadful.” 

A sarcastic laugh echoes through the bathroom, “Trust me, it can. He wants to meet my parents.”

The line is silent for a moment, “Is that a bad thing? I mean you’ve been with the guy for, what? Two, three years?”

“I just don’t think I’m ready for him to meet everyone,” Her leg splashes out of the water, and she watches the suds flow down her skin. 

“And by everyone, you mean him, don’t you?” Her heart drops at the mention of him.

“Of course not, it’s been six years…” she sighs. And in those six years, she hasn’t spoken to him once. She hadn’t come home for Christmas break that first year, and he’d been gone for the entire summer holiday. He has an Instagram, but rarely ever uses it, so she’s pretty much in the dark in everything concerning him. Although, the few pictures he has from a few years ago—wow. If she thought he was gorgeous before, it’s rather frustrating how he’s just…unreal. 

“Then get your arse back here! If you’re really over him, it won’t be a problem, yeah?”

Her body further immerses itself into the bath. From what her mum had told her over the phone, he rarely sees them anymore. Too busy with his job and whatnot. She thinks carefully about this, what are the odds that they’ll even see each other? London is such a big city, it can’t be that hard to avoid someone. 

***

Harry is lying face down on the bed when his phone rings. He reads the caller ID and immediately picks up. “Yes, Mr. Schwartz,” he answers, the naked body next to him slings an arm over his back. He carefully picks it off before pulling the covers off. “I’ve got my people doing the finishing touches.” The voice on the other line continues to babble on, and quite pretentiously at that. 

“Ok, I’ll be sure to contact the decorator to follow-up on the tables.” His head falls back, and he covers his eyes with his palm. “I’ll be there, see you,” he hangs up his phone. The project, while he’s incredibly thankful for it, has him working with some of the snobbiest people he’s ever had the displeasure of working with—that’s from having only talked to them over phone. Just the way this man talks makes his skin crawl. He thinks they feel entitled, calling him at inconvenient hours because they seem to forget about the five-hour time lapse. 

He gets back into bed and allows the woman he picked up at the bar to straddle his waist. Her lips fall onto his in a sloppy kiss. She starts her trail from his neck and down his body until her lips wrap around his semi-hard member. He sucks in a breath and keeps his eyes shut because that way, he can pretend it’s her. 

***

Y/n is panicking, actually scratch that, she’s gone into a full mode frenzy. She’s been pacing around her office for god knows how long, trying to pull herself together. Miguel is watching her with concerned eyes from where he sits on the couch tucked in the corner of the room. 

“This is insane! I’m a grown-ass woman and bringing her boyfriend to meet her parents shouldn’t be such a nerve-biting thing, right? Right?” she nearly yells at him for confirmation.

“Honey, you’re making me dizzy. You need to sit down,” he motions for her to lie on the cushions. When she does, she lays her feet in his lap for him to massage.  

“I just don’t know what to do. I haven’t seen my parents in-”

“Three years, I know.”

“And I haven’t seen him since-”

“He left you in that closet.” She glares at him. “What? Not my fault you spill tea whenever you’re drunk.” 

Miguel has been her assistant since she’s taken the position as executive accountant. He probably knows more about her than any employee should ever know about his boss. He quite enjoys it though, he finds her life to be so exciting and dramatic. 

“What am I going to do? I can’t handle this! It’ll be nearly impossible!” she groans, nearly pulling out her own hair. She hasn’t even forgiven her parents for ruining her last relationship, and now she’s expected to introduce them to her newest? “Give me advice,” she whines to Miguel. 

He lets out a huff, “Like you said, you’re a grown-ass woman. Everything that happened to you before should remain in the past. That includes your,” he pauses and bites his lower lip, “extremely fine stepbrother.” 

***

Age 14:

Harry is at some stupid sports camp, and Y/n has become extremely restless at home. It’s only been three days since he’s left, and he’s not scheduled back for another four. She already misses him like crazy. Who would have thought that she’d be searching for his incessant pestering and corny jokes that only she seems to find funny? Her mum has suggested calling him up, but she can’t do that! If Harry were to find out that she misses him, he’d never stop teasing her about it. 

“Sweetheart, just call him. I think he’d really appreciate it if you did,” Anne nudges her towards the phone. Y/n crinkles her nose in thought and squints at it, as if touching it would burn the flesh off her hand. “Oh, for goodness sake,” Anne mutters and before Y/n can do anything, Anne’s already dialed the number and is waiting for someone to pick up.

“Yes, this is Anne Y/L/N, Harry Styles’ mother. If it isn’t an inconvenience, I’d like to speak to him,” she smirks at Y/n. Anne’s eyes are suddenly widening and she literally shoves the phone to Y/n’s ear.

“Hello?” Y/n gasps when she hears Harry’s voice. She looks to her mum, but the sly woman has already made a sneaky escape. 

“Hi, Harry,” she shyly replies. Curse her mum for putting her in this situation.

“Y/n! Hey! How are you? Wow, didn’t realize how much I missed you until I heard your voice.” Y/n can feel her face flush and she bites her lips together to prevent the huge grin threatening to form. “You still there?”

“Yeah, I’m still here,” she pauses. “I miss you too, like a lot. Hurry home, ok?”

“I’ll try my best, anything for my favorite girl.” She slides down the wall and suppresses her squeals with her knees.

***

Her reflection seems to be of someone she doesn’t recognize, it’s the first thing she notices when she takes a good look at herself in the hotel bathroom mirror. The person in front of her lacks the confidence that she normally radiates. There’s this pang in her chest that hasn’t left her since landing this morning. And no matter how many times she tells herself to relax, she feels like she’s sinking further into the feeling. 

Being in this city makes her anxious. All the broken promises that should have been glare at her wherever she turns. They had passed her would have been university in the car here. Y/n quickly wiped the single tear that fell down her cheek before William could notice. She wonders where she would be if they hadn’t gotten caught but forces the thoughts out of her mind. What’s over is over. 

Her and William are meant to meet her parents for lunch in a bit. She’s peeved at the part of herself that’s hoping that he’ll be there. “Of course, he won’t be there. He’s probably busy or something,” she points at her mirrored image, “You. Calm yourself down, Y/n.” When she recognizes how ridiculous she’s being, her lips flap to mimic a motorboat engine.  

***

Eric and Anne anxiously await their daughter at the restaurant. He’s eaten half the bread in the basket as he anxiously eyes the entrance. It’s hard to believe that it’s been this long since he’s last seen her. They’re not as close anymore, haven’t been since he’d forced her to leave. When they talk on the phone, it’s a simple ‘hi, hello’ before she’s hanging up to attend to her duties. 

“Honestly, Eric. I know you’re nervous, but please try to contain yourself,” Anne scolds him. She’s only slightly more put together than he is. 

Her husband taps his fingers impatiently on the table, “I can’t help it. Surprised she even told us she’d be here. I haven’t had a fully decent conversation with her since...” he shakes his head, not wanting to remember.

“See! There she is now,” the pair of them rise once they spot her walking towards them in some of the highest heels she’s ever seen.

“There she is!” Eric slowly wraps his arms around her.

“Hi, Dad,” she hugs him back awkwardly, then turns to greet Anne. “Hi, Mum.” 

“You look amazing! My goodness, New York has been good to you, hasn’t it?” her mother has her twirl in front of her. A blush creeps onto her cheeks, but an almost obnoxious cough has her turning back to William.

“Um…Mum, Dad, this is William,” she angles herself to reveal the man standing behind her. “My…boyfriend.” 

The older two give each other weary looks. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, William,” Anne is the first to speak. Eric eyes the man from head to toe. There’s something about him, he can’t quite put his finger on what it is, but he’s not sure if he likes it. However, he does extend his hand when he feels Y/n burning holes through his skull. 

“Let’s sit down, yeah? I’m starving!” Y/n tries to progress. She basks in the time that everyone takes to gloss over the menu, the less talking, the better. 

***

“So, tell me, Anne, what was this one like as a child?” William asks. “Y/n rarely talks about her life before NYU.”

Anne wipes her mouth her napkin and adjusts her posture, “She was the sweetest little girl! Always wanting to help me around the house and help me cook because the men were completely useless.” She sends her daughter a knowing smile.

“Hey, Harry and I did our best to keep up with you two!” Eric defends with a chuckle. Y/n watches as confusion adorns over William’s face.

“Harry? Who’s Harry?”

Her parents give her that look, and she crinkles her nose at the sight. She may have failed to tell him that she has a brother, but for a good enough reason. When she met William, the only thing she had mentioned was that she was from Holmes Chapel, that’s it. He, of course, asked about her parents, of which she obviously did mention. 

“Harry is our son,” Anne says as a matter of factly, “Y/n’s brother.” 

“You didn’t tell me you had a brother?” he eyes her disbelievingly. Y/n takes a long sip of water, hoping to buy time to think of an excuse. 

“Sure, I did!” she slowly places the glass down. “I mentioned him briefly once or twice.” She bites the inside of her cheek and hopes he’ll buy it. And thank god he does. 

***

Everything looks perfect. Harry had walked through all twenty-five floors of the building to make sure that the setup met his standards. And now, he watches as the people who will be using this space mingle amongst each other. His clients had invited him for the grand opening celebration. As much as he would rather avoid any big social gatherings, there is a lot riding on this, and he would like to meet the people he’s working for, in person. He’s asked around, and some people—he assumes are employees—tell him that the big boss is running a bit late. It’s a bit unprofessional, in his opinion. Harry grabs a fluke of champagne from a passing server and gulps it down in one go. 

That’s when he spots her from across the room. It’s like everything around him slows down. She’s just as beautiful as he remembers, if not, more. Her hair is curled just below her shoulders, and she looks so elegant in that satin dress she’s wearing. He thinks back to if he’s had too much to drink, when he realizes that the one he had just consumed is only his first. His eyes blink a few more times, but it’s not an illusion. She’s here, but why? All he wants to do is run right up to her and embrace her, kiss her. 

“Are you Mr. Styles?” he breaks contact with her figure when he feels a hand on his shoulder. He turns to meet a man that’s a few inches shorter than him.

“I am, but please, call me Harry” he replies. 

The man gives him an over exaggerated smile, exhibiting his too-white teeth. “William Schwartz, it’s nice to finally meet you,” he shakes his hand. “You know, I must say, I’m rather impressed with what you’ve done here. I mean, I’m just blown away by all the detail. This place makes the New York office look like a garbage dump.”

Harry chuckles and shakes his head, “I’m sure that’s not true, but thank you for the compliment. My team and I have worked really hard.” 

“My girlfriend was just telling me how wonderful the place looks,” William peers behind him, “Y/n!” Harry is frozen in his spot. In his head, he’s praying that it’s not the same Y/n, his Y/n.

***

She graciously pardons herself from the conversation when she hears William call for her. He’s talking to someone, but his back is turned to her. Once she’s close enough, her heart stops.

“…Harry?” she can’t believe he’s here. He slowly pans his head until their eyes connect. Suddenly she’s a teenager again, the butterflies in her tummy acting out whenever he’s near and look at her with those eyes. All she can think about is the urge to touch him again. The pictures she had seen on his profile hadn’t given him any justice. The first few buttons of his shirt are undone, and she sees fragments of tattoos over his chest. She remembers him telling that he wanted to get inked, but never expected this much. 

The world around them seems to fade away as they take a good look at one another. She’s so close, yet seemingly untouchable. There’s a spike in adrenaline coursing through his system as he watches her lip tuck beneath her teeth. It’s been so long.

William looks between the two of them, “Do you two know each other?”

Y/n hesitates at first, she’s still trying to figure out if the man in front of her is really there. “He’s my…” but it’s as though she can’t find the words. 

It’s him who breaks eye contact to look at William, then he clears his throat. “Her brother.” 

“Yes,” she narrows her eyes at him, “my brother.” 

“Oh,” William drags out, “so you’re the prodigal sibling that I’ve recently learned about.”

Harry raises an eyebrow at her, “I guess that’s me.”

“What a coincidence, isn’t it, Dollface? What are the chances that your brother is my architect?” his arm fastens around her waist, and she can’t help but feel awkward in her place. She does her best to put on smile to shield the inner turmoil. “Well, I’ll let you guys catch up.” Her eyes remain wide open when he pecks her goodbye.

The pet name has Harry about ready to throw up. His fists clench in his pockets as he watches them interact. He can’t stop the twinge of jealousy that rushes through him when William kisses her. “So, Dollface.”

***

A/N: This is a major catch-up part since I’ve jumped over a lot of time. Feels like we’ve just started, but now we’re starting the countdown to the end??? I love you all ❤️Tell me your thoughts here!

[pamphletstoinspire]

A Padre Pio Inspirational Story

“The war is a solemn moment for us all, but if we know how to live this moment with the pain and suffering that it necessarily brings, it will give life to great virtues and to new, healthy strength. The grain of wheat does not bear fruit if it does not suffer and decompose. Similarly, souls and nations need trials and suffering in order to emerge purified and renewed. So let us not fall short of the designs of providence which mingle joy with sorrow in the life of the individual and nations, enabling us to attain our last end.” – St. Pio of Pietrelcina

St. Padre Pio and World War II

Padre Pio’s gift of prophecy reached to individuals, nations and the world. Carmelo Durante experienced it first hand as the following story shows:

“During the last world war, I attended the Gregorian Pontifical University of Rome. I used to spend my summer holidays in San Giovanni Rotondo, close to my spiritual director, Padre Pio.

It was the summer of 1942. Naturally we spoke about the war everyday, particularly of the military victories of Germany on all the battlefronts.

I remember that one morning at the friary, I read in the newspaper that the German troops were approaching Moscow. I saw in that news flash, the end of the war, with Germany’s final victory.

I met Padre Pio in the hallway and said to him, Padre, the war is over, Germany has won! Who said so? Padre Pio asked. Padre, the newspaper! I answered. Padre Pio said, Listen to me, Germany, this time, will lose the war and worse than last time! Just remember that!

But Padre, I said, The Germans are already approaching Moscow! Just remember what I told you, he repeated. I insisted, But if Germany loses the war, it means that Italy will lose too!

He answered firmly, Well, we will have to see if we finish the war together! These words of his were totally obscure to me at the time, given that Italy and Germany were allies. The following year, Padre Pio’s words became clear after the armistice with England and America on September 8, 1943 and with Italy declaring war on Germany.

Another day, in the friary hallway, Padre Pio said to me, Italy will lose the war out of the mercy of God, not because of His justice.

But Padre, how can one lose a war out of mercy and not out of justice? He responded, It is as I say because if Italy won the war with Germany, when the war was over, Germany would crush Italy under its feet! Later it became clear to me how losing the war for Italy was really a victory and not a disgrace at all, but a grace.” – Carmelo Durante

______________________________

During World War II, hundreds of American soldiers who were stationed at military bases in Italy discovered Padre Pio, and San Giovanni Rotondo became a popular place of pilgrimage.

Padre Pio was always delighted to greet the American soldiers. His presence had a profound impact on the military personnel and many rediscovered their faith through their contact with him.

It seemed that Padre Pio knew only one English word, Okay. One visitor observed that although Padre Pio did not speak English, he nonetheless seemed to understand the Americans when they spoke to him.

In 1945, when World War II was finally over and American and British soldiers returned to their homes, they told their friends and family about Padre Pio and a growing flood of pilgrims from all over the world poured into San Giovanni Rotondo.

______________________________

U.S. Lieutenant Doyle Stickel wrote the following letter to his mother describing his visit to San Giovanni Rotondo during World War II.

Dear Mother,

I really had a privilege last Sunday. I saw a miracle! Really, I did. I had heard of Padre Pio and so I took a group with me. It was a very rough and dusty trip, but well worth it.

We went to Father Pio’s Mass and I was directly on the altar steps, as close as though serving Mass. Father Pio is the most devout priest I have ever seen at the altar. It took one hour and 45 minutes for the low Mass. You could see that he was close to God, talking to God. His eyes were half closed, his face twitched in agony, sweat gathered on his brow and tears flowed from his eyes at the consecration. I noticed then that the wounds of his hands were moist, that fresh blood was staining his fingers and the sides of his hands.

Believe me, Mom, it was all there! The saintly Father Pio, in his agonized face and his torn hands, brought you to that original sacrifice at Calvary. Everyone’s eyes were on him and the Sacred Host as it was elevated.

After the Mass was over, I, and several other soldiers, went into the sacristy. I knelt and kissed Father Pio’s wounded hand. Father Pio rested his hand on my head and blessed me. I was overcome with emotion.

I went out of the church a much shaken young officer, but very much stronger in my faith. I later returned and spoke to Father Pio. He had taken off his vestments and was clothed in the brown robe of a Capuchin monk. On his feet he wore soft slippers instead of the sandals of the Order. He limps from the pain of the wounds in his feet. I asked him if he would say a Mass for my family. He said he would be very glad to do so. He patted me on the shoulder and told me I was a good boy and would be home with my family soon. I have never met a more holy, devout man.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us. – Romans 8:18

______________________________

Bob Coble was stationed with the 15th Air Corps in Foggia, Italy in 1944. A number of the service men from his company went up almost every Sunday to see Padre Pio and some assisted at his Mass. They encouraged Bob to go with them and he finally decided to join them. Bob said, I went and saw Padre Pio and I knew that I had seen something real but with my upbringing, I saw no reason to change. Only one thing remained in my memory and remains in my memory today. I remember his hands, the wounds on them and the lacy cuffs that partially covered them. That image, as I said, remains today.

After Bob came back to the U.S. he became caught up in the activities of his busy life. The years sped quickly by. One year he received a Christmas card from a friend who told him about a book on Padre Pio and encouraged him to read it. The thoughts of his own encounter with Padre Pio came rushing back as he read the book. The experience had never really left him, it had only been pushed aside. As a result of reading the book, Bob started to attend Mass. He became a Catholic in 1988, 44 years after meeting Padre Pio.

This is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith. – I John: 5:4

______________________________

Father John D. St. John, a Jesuit priest and army air force chaplain made nine trips to San Giovanni Rotondo during World War II to see Padre Pio. He often invited the soldiers to go with him and he usually brought with him between fifty and one hundred military personnel.

On one visit, Fr. St. John took two soldiers and one army nurse. Fr. St. John said, I made no appointment with Padre Pio. I met the little brother at the door who looked like one of Snow White’s Dwarfs (Father Gerardo) and asked for Padre Pio, who came down in a few minutes and gave me the Roman embrace, kissing both my cheeks. When he was introduced to the people I brought, he became very cold. He had nothing to say to them. I told them to wait outside. I said, Che passa, Padre? He replied, Those people are sinful. He knew nothing about their background, but I knew that what he said was true, as I knew some of the sinful events in their lives.

On the way back home, Fr. St. John asked his companions what they thought about Padre Pio. One said Father, that man has done something to me. I can’t explain it. There was silence all the way back to the base. Because of this incident as well as others of a similar nature, Fr. St. John became convinced that God had given Padre Pio many special gifts for his ministry to souls and in this particular case, the gift of reading hearts.

The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light so that the darkness may not overtake you. – John 12:35

______________________________

Mario Avignone, a member of the 304th Bomb Wing of the 15th Air Corps visited Padre Pio and wrote:

“One time we left early in the morning for San Giovanni Rotondo where we were to visit with Padre Pio. As always we drove the jeep to the rear of the Friary. We had to drive the jeep into the barn and park it next to several donkeys. We attended Mass in the very crowded church. Never did I figure out how all of the people came to San Giovanni Rotondo to see Padre Pio. They came from everywhere even though a war was on and there was no transportation. Many people, I think, had to walk and hitchhike.

Regarding the Mass, Mario said, It was a Mass that I could not describe. It was so beautiful. The room was filled with a perfume that came from Padre Pio’s wounds. The only words that came forth from my mouth as I knelt watching a living saint celebrate the Holy Mass were, My Lord and my God.

After Mass, a friar took us to the dining room where we had breakfast. Padre Pio did not come to breakfast. He went straight to the confessional where hundreds of people were already standing in line.

When we went with the friars into the dining room for lunch we observed that Padre Pio ate nothing. He just pushed food around on his plate as he talked to us and to the others present.

Later we went to the gardens where Padre Pio took his evening walks. It was beautiful and quiet there. This was the only piece of heaven on earth that I have ever known.” – Mario Avignone

And this is how we know that He remains in us; from the Spirit that He gave us. – I John 3:24

______________________________

A Grace through the Intercession of St. Pio

The following is a letter written by Berta Forti regarding a grace she and her family received through Padre Pio’s intercession in a time of great danger:

We are fervent Catholics, and our family has been very devoted to Padre Pio since the first time we heard of him. The following event happened on November 6, 1943 when World War II was in full swing. We lived in Florence and our surname, Forti in Tuscany and also in Florence, is a Jewish name. Even so, our ancestors have never been Jewish.

The morning of November 6, 1943, four armed SS Germans rang our doorbell and accused us of being Jewish (my mother, my sister and I). They would have dragged us to who knows what terrible end, because the truck was already at our front door.

I must go back to the beginning of the war. We should have left our house because the zone we lived in was dangerous. I had taken a picture of Padre Pio and attached it to the door. I said, Padre Pio, we are staying here. I entrust our lives, our house, our belongings to you. We stayed there peacefully, even during bombardments.

That morning on November 6, 1943, the four SS Germans who wanted to remove us, not convinced that we were not Jewish, tried to penetrate into the house. No sooner had the first soldier, armed with a machine gun, put his foot inside the house, than the photograph of Padre Pio flew to our feet. Padre Pio’s face was upward and it brushed my foot lightly, like a butterfly.

The soldier looked down at the photo of Padre Pio. He touched his forehead in the military salute and said, Excuse us and left with the others.

Downstairs on the street, the poor Jewish people who were already gathered in the truck were crying with fright. What a danger we had escaped! My family and I attribute our safety to the miraculous intervention of Padre Pio. – Berta Forti

Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will preserve me; You will stretch out Your hand against the wrath of my enemies and Your right hand will save me. – Psalm 138:7

[darnellbobby]

I don't want producers to face the brunt.

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[vignaniasacademy]

08-05-2020 Current affairs & Daily News Analysis

Vande Bharat Mission: Students and migrant workers account for 64% of qualified registrations In one of the largest evacuation exercises named Vande Bharat Mission, the government will operate 64 flights between 7th and 13th of May to bring home nearly 14,800 Indian nationals stranded abroad due to the Corona virus lockdown.

About: The 64 flights which will be operated include ten flights from UAE, seven each from Bangladesh, Malaysia, United Kingdom and United States, five each from Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Philippines and Kuwait along with two each from Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. Out of the total, fifteen flights will bring back people to Kerala followed by eleven flights to Tamil Nadu and Delhi. Seven flights will be flying back people to Maharashtra and Telangana whereas five flights are slated for Gujarat.  Source : All India Radio ( International ) Read UPSC Current affairs and Daily News Analysis from IAS Study Circle in Bangalore Vignan IAS Academy THE RESISTANCE FRONT (TRF) A little-known outfit, The Resistance Front (TRF), had claimed responsibility for the April 5 attack on the security forces along the Line of Control in the Kupwara sector, where five Army personnel were killed. TRF is becoming the new face of Kashmir terror.

View of Indian Security forces: The Resistance Front (TRF) is a front organization of the Pakistan-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). It was promoted by Pakistan and created in August 2019 following the withdrawal of Article 370. All attacks carried out by the Pakistan-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) are being pinned on the newly formed “seasonal” group in the Kashmir Valley in order to escape scrutiny by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and avoid further sanctions. The global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog is to review Pakistan’s performance in acting against terror funding at its next meeting in Beijing in June. Pakistan wants to project Kashmiri terrorism as a resistance movement by Kashmiris. So far Hizbul and LeT have come under TRF’s umbrella.  Source : The Hindu ( Defence & Security ) Read UPSC Current affairs and Daily News Analysis from IAS Study Circle in Bangalore Vignan IAS Academy Visakhapatnam gas leak: What is styrene gas? A gas leak has claimed at least eight lives and affected thousands of residents in Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. The source of the leak was a styrene plant owned by South Korean electronics giant LG, located at RRV Puram near Gopalapatnam, about 15 kms from the coast city.

About: Styrene is a flammable liquid that is used in the manufacturing of polystyrene plastics, fiberglass, rubber, and latex. Styrene is also found in vehicle exhaust, cigarette smoke, and in natural foods like fruits and vegetables. Short-term exposure to styrene can result in respiratory problems, irritation in the eyes, irritation in the mucous membrane, and gastrointestinal issues. Long-term exposure could drastically affect the central nervous system and lead to other related problems like peripheral neuropathy. It could also lead to cancer and depression in some cases. Symptoms include headache, hearing loss, fatigue, weakness, difficulty in concentrating etc.  Source : Indian Express ( Science & Technology ) Read UPSC Current affairs and Daily News Analysis from IAS Study Circle in Bangalore Vignan IAS Academy What is African Swine Fever reported in India for the first time? Since February 2020, over 2,900 pigs have died in the Assam due to African Swine Fever (ASF). This is the first time that an ASF outbreak has been reported in India.

About: What is it? African swine fever is a highly infectious viral disease that affects pigs, warthogs, bush pigs, European wild boar and American wild pigs. Cause: It is caused by African swine fever virus, member of the Asfarviridae family. Transmission: Transmission can occur either directly contact of sick and healthy animals, and indirectly through contaminated feed, or on contaminated clothing, vehicles or as other fomites. Geographical Distribution: ASF is present in wild and/or domestic pigs in regions of Asia, Europe and Africa. ASF Virus is endemic to sub-Saharan Africa. It has been seen in South America and the Caribbean but has been eradicated. Symptoms: The infected animals get high haemorrhagic fever, lose of appetite, diarrhoea, reddening of the skin at extremities, chest and abdomen and die in 2-10 days. Prevention: There is no effective vaccine to protect pigs from the virus. No vaccine exists and culling (Slaughtering) is often the only effective way. Impact on Humans: Unlike the H1N1 virus that causes swine flu, the ASF virus doesn’t infect humans.  Important Info : African Swine Fever (ASF) vs Swine Flu? Swine influenza or swine flu is a respiratory disease of pigs, which is caused by type A influenza virus that regularly causes outbreaks of influenza in pig populations.While the swine flu causing virus leads to a high number of infections in pig herds, the disease is not as fatal and causes few deaths.Specific swine influenza vaccines are available for pigs.Further, while swine flu viruses don’t typically infect humans, cases have been reported in the past, most commonly when humans have contact with infected pigs.  Source : Indian Express ( Health ) Read UPSC Current affairs and Daily News Analysis from IAS Study Circle in Bangalore Vignan IAS Academy IIT-Delhi startup launches reusable antimicrobial mask NSafe An IIT Delhi startup ‘Nanosafe Solutions’ has launched an antimicrobial and washable face mask ‘NSafe’, which is reusable up to 50 launderings, thus greatly cutting down the cost of use.

About: NSafe mask has 99.2% bacterial filtration efficiency (at 3 microns) and complies with ASTM standards of breathability and splash resistance. It is believed to be the first fabric based antimicrobial face mask launched in India. NSafe mask enhances protection to the wearer through three different mechanisms: mechanical filtration, antimicrobial decontamination and repulsion of aerosol droplets.  Source : Times of India ( Health ) Read UPSC Current affairs and Daily News Analysis from IAS Study Circle in Bangalore Vignan IAS Academy R.K.Singh releases 'Impact of energy efficiency measures 2018-19' report The Union Minister of Power released a Report on “Impact of energy efficiency measures for the year 2018-19.”

About: With energy efficiency initiatives, India has already reduced the energy intensity of economy by 20% compared to 2005 levels. In COP-21, India pledged to bring down energy intensity of economy by 33 to 35% compared to 2005 levels by 2030. Implementation of various energy efficiency schemes have led to total electricity savings to the tune of 113.16 Billion Units in 2018-19, which is 9.39% of the net electricity consumption. The total energy savings achieved in 2018-19 is 23.73 Mtoe (million Tonne of Oil Equivalent), which is 2.69% of the total primary energy supply (estimated to be 879.23 Mtoe in India) during 2018-19. This includes both Supply Side and Demand Side sectors of the economy. These efforts have also contributed in reducing 151.74 Million Tonnes of CO2 emissions, whereas last year this number was 108 MTCO2. Source : PIB ( Economy ) Read UPSC Current affairs and Daily News Analysis from IAS Study Circle in Bangalore Vignan IAS Academy NATIONAL LAND MANAGEMENT CORPORATION The task force on National Infrastructure Pipeline has recommended setting up a National Land Management Corporation, which would help in monetising state-owned surplus land assets in a systematic way.

Recommendations: Such a corporation should be set up under Companies Act to function as the facilitator for land monetisation and an asset manager for lands owned by government of India and Central Public Sector Enterprises. A chief executive officer (CEO) and a technical team should be hired at market-linked compensation to carry out land monetisation. Apart from a CEO and technical team, the Corporation should have representation from the Finance Ministry, Department of Public Enterprises, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs as well as independent directors from finance and real estate industry. The Corporation can raise capital from the equity market, based on the value of its leased assets. The panel recommended the Corporation consider development or co-development of land belonging to defence or railways as well. It can also take up co-development of private land parcels adjoining government lands to maximise revenue.  Source : Indian Express ( Economy ) Read UPSC Current affairs and Daily News Analysis from IAS Study Circle in Bangalore Vignan IAS Academy

‘Darbar Move’ burdens exchequer: J&K HC

The Jammu and Kashmir High Court asked the Centre and the Union Territory (UT) administration of J&K to take a final call on the continuation of the ‘Darbar Move.’

About: What is it? Darbar move is the name for the bi-annual shift of the secretariat and all other government offices in J&K from Srinagar (state’s summer capital) to Jammu (state’s winter capital). When is it done? The secretariat is located in Srinagar from May to October and in Jammu from November to April. Along with the secretariat, the J&K High Court also moves. Who started the Darbar Move? The practice was startedby Dogra King Maharaja Ranbir Singh in 1872 to escape extreme weather conditions in these places. It was a compulsion in the past because of poor means of transportation and communication.  Important Info : Debate: Arguments against Darbar move: The Practice is inconvenient and a waste of time and money. Every year, over 7,000 employees along with thousands of files of the civil secretariat are ferried between Jammu and Srinagar in buses and trucks on the 300-km-long route .The move costs the State over Rs. 40 crore.Arguments in favour of it:Abolishing the “Darbar Move” may increase the feeling of alienation between Jammu (which is predominantly Hindu) and Kashmir (which is predominantly Muslim).J&K is not the only exception to have two capital cities. Recently, Andhra Pradesh has proposed three capital cities.  Source : The Hindu ( Polity & Governance ) Read UPSC Current affairs and Daily News Analysis from IAS Study Circle in Bangalore Vignan IAS Academy Some coronavirus patients who should be unconscious from lack of oxygen can appear totally fine. Doctors call it 'silent hypoxia.' Medical practitioners have reported a condition called ‘silent’ or ‘happy’ hypoxia, in which patients have extremely low blood oxygen levels, yet do not show signs of breathlessness. They are now advocating for its early detection as a means to avoid a fatal illness called Covid pneumonia.

About: Hypoxia is a condition wherein there is not enough oxygen available to the blood and body tissues. Hypoxia can either be generalised, affecting the whole body, or local, affecting a region of the body. According to researchers, Covid pneumonia — a serious medical condition found in severe Covid-19 patients — is preceded by ‘silent hypoxia’, a form of oxygen deprivation that is harder to detect than regular hypoxia. In ‘silent’ or ‘happy’ hypoxia, patients appear to be less in distress. Many Covid-19 patients, despite having oxygen levels below 80 per cent, look fairly at ease and alert. This phenomenon has puzzled several medical practitioners.  Source : Indian Express ( Health ) Read UPSC Current affairs and Daily News Analysis from IAS Study Circle in Bangalore Vignan IAS Academy RUSSIA-NORTH KOREA RELATIONS Russian President Vladimir Putin has awarded Kim Jong-un a commemorative war medal marking the 75th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany. The medal was awarded to Mr. Kim for his role in preserving the memory of Soviet soldiers who died on North Korean territory.

Background: Soviet troops helped drive Japanese forces out of the Korean peninsula in the final stages of WWII. The Soviet Union also played the main role in installing Kim Jong Un's grandfather, Kim Il Sung, as the first leader of the nascent Communist state in 1948. Alongside China, it supported North Korea during the 1950s Korean War, which never officially ended despite the 1953 armistice.  Important Info : The ceremony came days after Kim ended mounting speculation over his health when North Korean media published photos of him smiling at a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a fertiliser plant.His re-emergence came as a blow to the credibility of some high-profile defectors from the North who had speculated he was suffering from a grave illness or could even be dead.  Source : The Hindu ( International ) Read UPSC Current affairs and Daily News Analysis from IAS Study Circle in Bangalore Vignan IAS Academy Read UPSC Current affairs and Daily News Analysis from Top IAS Academy in Bangalore Vignan IAS Academy Daily Current affairs and News Analysis Best IAS Coaching institutes in Bangalore Vignan IAS Academy Contact Vignan IAS Academy Enroll For IAS Foundation Course from Best IFS Academy in Bangalore Read the full article

[awed-frog]

I saw your notes on the outrageous post about the 1% and I couldn't help but be curious about they things your friend experienced...

Hi there! So, yeah, it’s kind of a freakish story, because Iwent to high school with this girl - we were in the same class, andshe was so sweet - the bookwormish and Did you know there’sa wasp called Aha ha and ‘save the whales’ kind ofstudent, you know? And after graduating, she studied maths, and thenwe sort of lost touch - I heard she was working in London when I wasliving in the UK, so I reached out and got a very weird email back.We finally met on a train, just randomly, about five years afterthat, and that’s when she told me what had happened to her.

[Disclaimer: I’m not saying all banks and consulting companiesare cults, but if how much money you make depends on how many peopleyou screw over, then maybe it’s normal you attract a crowd ofpsychopaths and pathological narcissists, and things generally godownhill from there.]

So, the thing is - with a maths degree, you can do a lot of stuff,but my friend had a bit of an adulting crisis at the end of herstudies, because, she told me, every choice seemed so very permanentand she wasn’t ready to commit to a 3-years research program orteacher training or whatever, and this is when she was headhunted bythe banking industry and basically they made her believe they’d bethe right fit for her.

(And let me just say - because of my Oxford degree, I’ve beentargeted as well, and that one evening I spent with them remains oneof the scariest beyond the looking glass shit I’veever experienced in my life.)

Of course, their offer is dreamy - a flexible whatever, she leaveswhen she wants, she gets a free course in what they need her to do, asalary with a shitton of zeroes and the job is based infucking London - and at this point, my friend isstill a normal a kid and she’s thinking, I’m notenthusiastic about what banks get up to and it’s not the mostinteresting thing I could do with my degree, but hey, maybe I canlive in the UK for a couple of years and make some money and thenfind something better. And so off she went, and as she told meabout how she found her first flat, well, that’s the same thing Iwas going through in that same period some sixty miles away, becauseshe still had a normal budget (what she’d saved till then? summerjobs and grandparents’ gifts and some paid grading) and it’s hardto find a reasonably priced room in London, so she had to picksomething that was more than one hour away from the City and thatsounded like a very boring and long commute, but hey, London! And atthis point, you know, she looked out of the window, and her storystarted to become a bit more disconnected, jumping back and forth, soI’ll try to piece it together chronologically, but man, it wasreally chilling to hear it out of order, and I wish you’d beenthere with me because I don’t know how well I can put it intowords.

Anyway, so the first thing that’s a problem are her clothes: shecan see that as soon as she steps into the place, the way people lookat her, and she doesn’t get it, because she’s wearing this smartpantsuit she’s already uncomfortable in, and what the fuck? Andluckily she doesn’t have to wonder long, because that’s, like,the first thing her boss (a man) says to her: that she can’t dresslike that, because she’s going to meet clients from time to timeand that’s just not appropriate and my friend - a shy 23-year-oldwho grew up in the mountains, in a village of 46 people - stilldoesn’t know what she’s doing wrong, exactly, and it’sso embarrassing, because this is a man twenty years hersenior and her boss and she’s talking to her like she’s naked orsome shit, and finally - finally - he explains that she can’t buyoff the rack - tailor-made only, please. And she’s so stunned shejust babbles that she can’t afford that and this guy - this guytakes his wallet and places, like, 10 000 pounds on the deskand Please go get changed. 

(“It was like Pretty Woman,” my friendsaid, “except creepier, because I didn’t know the rules. Ididn’t know, well - I was shocked. Like, was that a test? Should Itake the money or not? And if I take it, does that come out of mypaycheck? Is it a gift? Do I have a choice over the clothes I wear ornot? Should I stand up for myself or give up? How do I make a goodimpression here?”)

And the thing is, you want to be polite, right? You want to fitin. You assume other people know better. 

(Especially as a young woman.)

And so my friend took the money and said thank you and spent herfirst morning shopping in a weird luxury place that only had one ofeach and came with complimentary champagne and truffle-flavoured hamand there were no curtains and no changing rooms and she had to stripdown to her underwear right in front of the saleswoman, but it alsodidn’t matter because she was the only customer and the shop lookedlike someone’s living room and again, what are the rules? 

And the thing is - the way she described it, every day was likethat in several small, insidious ways, every day there were athousand moments when she didn’t know what people expected fromher, and slowly the desire to be a good colleague turned into a thisis completely normal and how everyone lives thing and shedidn’t even notice it was happening.

Like, at first she’d been shocked by the price of meals. Peoplewould routinely order up food, or go out for dinner and spendthousands of pounds on one lunch. 

(Thousands. Of. Pounds.) 

And she’d been shocked by the rent of her new apartment (with a60-minute commute, she had maybe two hours of sleep a night, so shehad to move closer to the City), because £5000 a month? Back in uni,that had been her budget for a whole semester. And she’dbeen shocked by how many clothes and shoes and designer handbags sheseemed to be needing. And at how she’d stopped doing anything forherself, or having any control over her body - she never had the timeto cook, or even shop (her luxury kitchen was pristine, her fridgeempty), and someone would come into work and do her hair and nailsand whatever else it is that women need and barely ask her aboutstyle and colour because they could see she was out of her depth.

(“You remember how I was before, right? When I first arrived inLondon, I didn’t know how foundation worked. I never painted mynails, either. For job interviews and stuff I’d wear some of thateasy-to-apply eyeliner and mascara and feel like Greta Garbo, but inmy office, it was considered - people just frowned at you, you know?Or disregarded your wishes, or whatever. One day - it must have beena week after I started - a beautician just showed up, started talkingto me as if we’d arranged an appointment, asked me to chose betweenfour shades of pink that looked the same to me. Turns out, acolleague had told her to come to me next, already paid for it, sowhat do you do? I had to sit there in front of everybody and let thiswoman do my nails - I felt like an animal in a zoo, but nobody waslooking at me, nobody found it weird.”) 

And, look, I can’t really explain it the way she did, but whathappened next was that she didn’t have time to come home for avisit for, like, eight months, and when she finally showed upeveryone was half proud, half terrified, because yeah, she lookedgood and rich and successful, but she was also -completely different? When she’d left, she’d beenthis normal kid, vaguely left-wing, who’d liked hiking and onlyowned sport bras, and now she was - she was weird. Shehad no sense of reality. No compassion for anything or anyone. Shewas cold, annoyed by everything, incredulous at the fact herfavourite brands were not available in local shops, insisting thather parents and siblings should buy this and that to make their livesbetter. She ended up fighting with mostly everyone and going back toLondon after three days, and in the year after that, she only tookholidays with colleagues - three days of snorkeling in Kenya, aprivate plane party, a weekend of golfing in Scotland - and now shewas the one ordering the most expensive bottle on the menu androlling her eyes at badly-dressed interns, because - she’d made it.She was the 1%. 

(Or would get there, anyway.)  

Luckily, there’s a happy ending, and it’s surprisinglyanticlimatic. 

One night, my friend looked up from a party of high-endprostitutes and drunken antics and she suddenly saw how crazy andunhealthy it all was. It just happened. She looked at the woman onher left, snorting cocaine and laughing, and then at the man on herright, who had a stripper on his lap, and she just - stood up andleft. The very next day, she quit the firm, donated half her earningsto charity, travelled through South America for three months beforegoing back to university. Now she’s a researcher (she doessomething complicated to do with game theory, and I don’tunderstand any of it), and also - she’s back to her old lovelyself. She sees her friends, she gets on well with her family. She’skind. She’s normal. As I said - happy ending.

[beardcore-blog]

A Princess Diary

"What’s Wrong With Cinderella?"

I finally came unhinged in the dentist’s office — one of those ritzy pediatric practices tricked out with comic books, DVDs and arcade games — where I’d taken my 3-year-old daughter for her first exam. Until then, I’d held my tongue. I’d smiled politely every time the supermarket-checkout clerk greeted her with ”Hi, Princess”; ignored the waitress at our local breakfast joint who called the funny-face pancakes she ordered her ”princess meal”; made no comment when the lady at Longs Drugs said, ”I bet I know your favorite color” and handed her a pink balloon rather than letting her choose for herself. Maybe it was the dentist’s Betty Boop inflection that got to me, but when she pointed to the exam chair and said, ”Would you like to sit in my special princess throne so I can sparkle your teeth?” I lost it.

”Oh, for God’s sake,” I snapped. ”Do you have a princess drill, too?”

She stared at me as if I were an evil stepmother.

”Come on!” I continued, my voice rising. ”It’s 2006, not 1950. This is Berkeley, Calif. Does every little girl really have to be a princess?”

My daughter, who was reaching for a Cinderella sticker, looked back and forth between us. ”Why are you so mad, Mama?” she asked. ”What’s wrong with princesses?”

Diana may be dead and Masako disgraced, but here in America, we are in the midst of a royal moment. To call princesses a ”trend” among girls is like calling Harry Potter a book. Sales at Disney Consumer Products, which started the craze six years ago by packaging nine of its female characters under one royal rubric, have shot up to $3 billion, globally, this year, from $300 million in 2001. There are now more than 25,000 Disney Princess items. ”Princess,” as some Disney execs call it, is not only the fastest-growing brand the company has ever created; they say it is on its way to becoming the largest girls’ franchise on the planet.

Meanwhile in 2001, Mattel brought out its own ”world of girl” line of princess Barbie dolls, DVDs, toys, clothing, home décor and myriad other products. At a time when Barbie sales were declining domestically, they became instant best sellers. Shortly before that, Mary Drolet, a Chicago-area mother and former Claire’s and Montgomery Ward executive, opened Club Libby Lu, now a chain of mall stores based largely in the suburbs in which girls ages 4 to 12 can shop for ”Princess Phones” covered in faux fur and attend ”Princess-Makeover Birthday Parties.” Saks bought Club Libby Lu in 2003 for $12 million and has since expanded it to 87 outlets; by 2005, with only scant local advertising, revenues hovered around the $46 million mark, a 53 percent jump from the previous year. Pink, it seems, is the new gold.

Even Dora the Explorer, the intrepid, dirty-kneed adventurer, has ascended to the throne: in 2004, after a two-part episode in which she turns into a ”true princess,” the Nickelodeon and Viacom consumer-products division released a satin-gowned ”Magic Hair Fairytale Dora,” with hair that grows or shortens when her crown is touched. Among other phrases the bilingual doll utters: ”Vámonos! Let’s go to fairy-tale land!” and ”Will you brush my hair?”

As a feminist mother — not to mention a nostalgic product of the Grranimals era — I have been taken by surprise by the princess craze and the girlie-girl culture that has risen around it. What happened to William wanting a doll and not dressing your cat in an apron? Whither Marlo Thomas? I watch my fellow mothers, women who once swore they’d never be dependent on a man, smile indulgently at daughters who warble ”So This Is Love” or insist on being called Snow White. I wonder if they’d concede so readily to sons who begged for combat fatigues and mock AK-47s.

More to the point, when my own girl makes her daily beeline for the dress-up corner of her preschool classroom — something I’m convinced she does largely to torture me — I worry about what playing Little Mermaid is teaching her. I’ve spent much of my career writing about experiences that undermine girls’ well-being, warning parents that a preoccupation with body and beauty (encouraged by films, TV, magazines and, yes, toys) is perilous to their daughters’ mental and physical health. Am I now supposed to shrug and forget all that? If trafficking in stereotypes doesn’t matter at 3, when does it matter? At 6? Eight? Thirteen?

On the other hand, maybe I’m still surfing a washed-out second wave of feminism in a third-wave world. Maybe princesses are in fact a sign of progress, an indication that girls can embrace their predilection for pink without compromising strength or ambition; that, at long last, they can ”have it all.” Or maybe it is even less complex than that: to mangle Freud, maybe a princess is sometimes just a princess. And, as my daughter wants to know, what’s wrong with that?

The rise of the Disney princesses reads like a fairy tale itself, with Andy Mooney, a former Nike executive, playing the part of prince, riding into the company on a metaphoric white horse in January 2000 to save a consumer-products division whose sales were dropping by as much as 30 percent a year. Both overstretched and underfocused, the division had triggered price wars by granting multiple licenses for core products (say, Winnie-the-Pooh undies) while ignoring the potential of new media. What’s more, Disney films like ”A Bug’s Life” in 1998 had yielded few merchandising opportunities — what child wants to snuggle up with an ant?

It was about a month after Mooney’s arrival that the magic struck. That’s when he flew to Phoenix to check out his first ”Disney on Ice” show. ”Standing in line in the arena, I was surrounded by little girls dressed head to toe as princesses,” he told me last summer in his palatial office, then located in Burbank, and speaking in a rolling Scottish burr. ”They weren’t even Disney products. They were generic princess products they’d appended to a Halloween costume. And the light bulb went off. Clearly there was latent demand here. So the next morning I said to my team, ‘O.K., let’s establish standards and a color palette and talk to licensees and get as much product out there as we possibly can that allows these girls to do what they’re doing anyway: projecting themselves into the characters from the classic movies.’ ”

Mooney picked a mix of old and new heroines to wear the Pantone pink No. 241 corona: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Mulan and Pocahontas. It was the first time Disney marketed characters separately from a film’s release, let alone lumped together those from different stories. To ensure the sanctity of what Mooney called their individual ”mythologies,” the princesses never make eye contact when they’re grouped: each stares off in a slightly different direction as if unaware of the others’ presence.

It is also worth noting that not all of the ladies are of royal extraction. Part of the genius of ”Princess” is that its meaning is so broadly constructed that it actually has no meaning. Even Tinker Bell was originally a Princess, though her reign didn’t last. ”We’d always debate over whether she was really a part of the Princess mythology,” Mooney recalled. ”She really wasn’t.” Likewise, Mulan and Pocahontas, arguably the most resourceful of the bunch, are rarely depicted on Princess merchandise, though for a different reason. Their rustic garb has less bling potential than that of old-school heroines like Sleeping Beauty. (When Mulan does appear, she is typically in the kimonolike hanfu, which makes her miserable in the movie, rather than her liberated warrior’s gear.)

The first Princess items, released with no marketing plan, no focus groups, no advertising, sold as if blessed by a fairy godmother. To this day, Disney conducts little market research on the Princess line, relying instead on the power of its legacy among mothers as well as the instant-read sales barometer of the theme parks and Disney Stores. ”We simply gave girls what they wanted,” Mooney said of the line’s success, ”although I don’t think any of us grasped how much they wanted this. I wish I could sit here and take credit for having some grand scheme to develop this, but all we did was envision a little girl’s room and think about how she could live out the princess fantasy. The counsel we gave to licensees was: What type of bedding would a princess want to sleep in? What kind of alarm clock would a princess want to wake up to? What type of television would a princess like to see? It’s a rare case where you find a girl who has every aspect of her room bedecked in Princess, but if she ends up with three or four of these items, well, then you have a very healthy business.”

Every reporter Mooney talks to asks some version of my next question: Aren’t the Princesses, who are interested only in clothes, jewelry and cadging the handsome prince, somewhat retrograde role models?

”Look,” he said, ”I have friends whose son went through the Power Rangers phase who castigated themselves over what they must’ve done wrong. Then they talked to other parents whose kids had gone through it. The boy passes through. The girl passes through. I see girls expanding their imagination through visualizing themselves as princesses, and then they pass through that phase and end up becoming lawyers, doctors, mothers or princesses, whatever the case may be.”

Mooney has a point: There are no studies proving that playing princess directly damages girls’ self-esteem or dampens other aspirations. On the other hand, there is evidence that young women who hold the most conventionally feminine beliefs — who avoid conflict and think they should be perpetually nice and pretty — are more likely to be depressed than others and less likely to use contraception. What’s more, the 23 percent decline in girls’ participation in sports and other vigorous activity between middle and high school has been linked to their sense that athletics is unfeminine. And in a survey released last October by Girls Inc., school-age girls overwhelmingly reported a paralyzing pressure to be ”perfect”: not only to get straight A’s and be the student-body president, editor of the newspaper and captain of the swim team but also to be ”kind and caring,” ”please everyone, be very thin and dress right.” Give those girls a pumpkin and a glass slipper and they’d be in business.

At the grocery store one day, my daughter noticed a little girl sporting a Cinderella backpack. ”There’s that princess you don’t like, Mama!” she shouted.

”Um, yeah,” I said, trying not to meet the other mother’s hostile gaze.

”Don’t you like her blue dress, Mama?”

I had to admit, I did.

She thought about this. ”Then don’t you like her face?”

”Her face is all right,” I said, noncommittally, though I’m not thrilled to have my Japanese-Jewish child in thrall to those Aryan features. (And what the heck are those blue things covering her ears?) ”It’s just, honey, Cinderella doesn’t really do anything.”

Over the next 45 minutes, we ran through that conversation, verbatim, approximately 37 million times, as my daughter pointed out Disney Princess Band-Aids, Disney Princess paper cups, Disney Princess lip balm, Disney Princess pens, Disney Princess crayons and Disney Princess notebooks — all cleverly displayed at the eye level of a 3-year-old trapped in a shopping cart — as well as a bouquet of Disney Princess balloons bobbing over the checkout line. The repetition was excessive, even for a preschooler. What was it about my answers that confounded her? What if, instead of realizing: Aha! Cinderella is a symbol of the patriarchal oppression of all women, another example of corporate mind control and power-to-the-people! my 3-year-old was thinking, Mommy doesn’t want me to be a girl?

According to theories of gender constancy, until they’re about 6 or 7, children don’t realize that the sex they were born with is immutable. They believe that they have a choice: they can grow up to be either a mommy or a daddy. Some psychologists say that until permanency sets in kids embrace whatever stereotypes our culture presents, whether it’s piling on the most spangles or attacking one another with light sabers. What better way to assure that they’ll always remain themselves? If that’s the case, score one for Mooney. By not buying the Princess Pull-Ups, I may be inadvertently communicating that being female (to the extent that my daughter is able to understand it) is a bad thing.

Anyway, you have to give girls some credit. It’s true that, according to Mattel, one of the most popular games young girls play is ”bride,” but Disney found that a groom or prince is incidental to that fantasy, a regrettable necessity at best. Although they keep him around for the climactic kiss, he is otherwise relegated to the bottom of the toy box, which is why you don’t see him prominently displayed in stores.

What’s more, just because they wear the tulle doesn’t mean they’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. Plenty of girls stray from the script, say, by playing basketball in their finery, or casting themselves as the powerful evil stepsister bossing around the sniveling Cinderella. I recall a headline-grabbing 2005 British study that revealed that girls enjoy torturing, decapitating and microwaving their Barbies nearly as much as they like to dress them up for dates. There is spice along with that sugar after all, though why this was news is beyond me: anyone who ever played with the doll knows there’s nothing more satisfying than hacking off all her hair and holding her underwater in the bathtub. Princesses can even be a boon to exasperated parents: in our house, for instance, royalty never whines and uses the potty every single time.

”Playing princess is not the issue,” argues Lyn Mikel Brown, an author, with Sharon Lamb, of ”Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketers’ Schemes.” ”The issue is 25,000 Princess products,” says Brown, a professor of education and human development at Colby College. ”When one thing is so dominant, then it’s no longer a choice: it’s a mandate, cannibalizing all other forms of play. There’s the illusion of more choices out there for girls, but if you look around, you’ll see their choices are steadily narrowing.”

It’s hard to imagine that girls’ options could truly be shrinking when they dominate the honor roll and outnumber boys in college. Then again, have you taken a stroll through a children’s store lately? A year ago, when we shopped for ”big girl” bedding at Pottery Barn Kids, we found the ”girls” side awash in flowers, hearts and hula dancers; not a soccer player or sailboat in sight. Across the no-fly zone, the ”boys” territory was all about sports, trains, planes and automobiles. Meanwhile, Baby GAP’s boys’ onesies were emblazoned with ”Big Man on Campus” and the girls’ with ”Social Butterfly”; guess whose matching shoes were decorated on the soles with hearts and whose sported a ”No. 1” logo? And at Toys ”R” Us, aisles of pink baby dolls, kitchens, shopping carts and princesses unfurl a safe distance from the ”Star Wars” figures, GeoTrax and tool chests. The relentless resegregation of childhood appears to have sneaked up without any further discussion about sex roles, about what it now means to be a boy or to be a girl. Or maybe it has happened in lieu of such discussion because it’s easier this way.

Easier, that is, unless you want to buy your daughter something that isn’t pink. Girls’ obsession with that color may seem like something they’re born with, like the ability to breathe or talk on the phone for hours on end. But according to Jo Paoletti, an associate professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, it ain’t so. When colors were first introduced to the nursery in the early part of the 20th century, pink was considered the more masculine hue, a pastel version of red. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy and faithfulness, was thought to be dainty. Why or when that switched is not clear, but as late as the 1930s a significant percentage of adults in one national survey held to that split. Perhaps that’s why so many early Disney heroines — Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Wendy, Alice-in-Wonderland — are swathed in varying shades of azure. (Purple, incidentally, may be the next color to swap teams: once the realm of kings and N.F.L. players, it is fast becoming the bolder girl’s version of pink.)

It wasn’t until the mid-1980s, when amplifying age and sex differences became a key strategy of children’s marketing (recall the emergence of ” ‘tween”), that pink became seemingly innate to girls, part of what defined them as female, at least for the first few years. That was also the time that the first of the generation raised during the unisex phase of feminism — ah, hither Marlo! — became parents. ”The kids who grew up in the 1970s wanted sharp definitions for their own kids,” Paoletti told me. ”I can understand that, because the unisex thing denied everything — you couldn’t be this, you couldn’t be that, you had to be a neutral nothing.”

The infatuation with the girlie girl certainly could, at least in part, be a reaction against the so-called second wave of the women’s movement of the 1960s and ’70s (the first wave was the fight for suffrage), which fought for reproductive rights and economic, social and legal equality. If nothing else, pink and Princess have resuscitated the fantasy of romance that that era of feminism threatened, the privileges that traditional femininity conferred on women despite its costs — doors magically opened, dinner checks picked up, Manolo Blahniks. Frippery. Fun. Why should we give up the perks of our sex until we’re sure of what we’ll get in exchange? Why should we give them up at all? Or maybe it’s deeper than that: the freedoms feminism bestowed came with an undercurrent of fear among women themselves — flowing through ”Ally McBeal,” ”Bridget Jones’s Diary,” ”Sex and the City” — of losing male love, of never marrying, of not having children, of being deprived of something that felt essentially and exclusively female.

I mulled that over while flipping through ”The Paper Bag Princess,” a 1980 picture book hailed as an antidote to Disney. The heroine outwits a dragon who has kidnapped her prince, but not before the beast’s fiery breath frizzles her hair and destroys her dress, forcing her to don a paper bag. The ungrateful prince rejects her, telling her to come back when she is ”dressed like a real princess.” She dumps him and skips off into the sunset, happily ever after, alone.

There you have it, ”Thelma and Louise” all over again. Step out of line, and you end up solo or, worse, sailing crazily over a cliff to your doom. Alternatives like those might send you skittering right back to the castle. And I get that: the fact is, though I want my daughter to do and be whatever she wants as an adult, I still hope she’ll find her Prince Charming and have babies, just as I have. I don’t want her to be a fish without a bicycle; I want her to be a fish with another fish. Preferably, one who loves and respects her and also does the dishes and half the child care.

There had to be a middle ground between compliant and defiant, between petticoats and paper bags. I remembered a video on YouTube, an ad for a Nintendo game called Super Princess Peach. It showed a pack of girls in tiaras, gowns and elbow-length white gloves sliding down a zip line on parasols, navigating an obstacle course of tires in their stilettos, slithering on their bellies under barbed wire, then using their telekinetic powers to make a climbing wall burst into flames. ”If you can stand up to really mean people,” an announcer intoned, ”maybe you have what it takes to be a princess.”

Now here were some girls who had grit as well as grace. I loved Princess Peach even as I recognized that there was no way she could run in those heels, that her peachiness did nothing to upset the apple cart of expectation: she may have been athletic, smart and strong, but she was also adorable. Maybe she’s what those once-unisex, postfeminist parents are shooting for: the melding of old and new standards. And perhaps that’s a good thing, the ideal solution. But what to make, then, of the young women in the Girls Inc. survey? It doesn’t seem to be ”having it all” that’s getting to them; it’s the pressure to be it all. In telling our girls they can be anything, we have inadvertently demanded that they be everything. To everyone. All the time. No wonder the report was titled ”The Supergirl Dilemma.”

The princess as superhero is not irrelevant. Some scholars I spoke with say that given its post-9/11 timing, princess mania is a response to a newly dangerous world. ”Historically, princess worship has emerged during periods of uncertainty and profound social change,” observes Miriam Forman-Brunell, a historian at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Francis Hodgson Burnett’s original”Little Princess” was published at a time of rapid urbanization, immigration and poverty; Shirley Temple’s film version was a hit during the Great Depression. ”The original folk tales themselves,” Forman-Brunell says, ”spring from medieval and early modern European culture that faced all kinds of economic and demographic and social upheaval — famine, war, disease, terror of wolves. Girls play savior during times of economic crisis and instability.” That’s a heavy burden for little shoulders. Perhaps that’s why the magic wand has become an essential part of the princess get-up. In the original stories — even the Disney versions of them — it’s not the girl herself who’s magic; it’s the fairy godmother. Now if Forman-Brunell is right, we adults have become the cursed creatures whom girls have the thaumaturgic power to transform.

In the 1990s, third-wave feminists rebelled against their dour big sisters, ”reclaiming” sexual objectification as a woman’s right — provided, of course, that it was on her own terms, that she was the one choosing to strip or wear a shirt that said ”Porn Star” or make out with her best friend at a frat-house bash. They embraced words like ”bitch” and ”slut” as terms of affection and empowerment. That is, when used by the right people, with the right dash of playful irony. But how can you assure that? As Madonna gave way to Britney, whatever self-determination that message contained was watered down and commodified until all that was left was a gaggle of 6-year-old girls in belly-baring T-shirts (which I’m guessing they don’t wear as cultural critique). It is no wonder that parents, faced with thongs for 8-year-olds and Bratz dolls’ ”passion for fashion,” fill their daughters’ closets with pink sateen; the innocence of Princess feels like a reprieve.

”But what does that mean?” asks Sharon Lamb, a psychology professor at Saint Michael’s College. ”There are other ways to express ‘innocence’ — girls could play ladybug or caterpillar. What you’re really talking about is sexual purity. And there’s a trap at the end of that rainbow, because the natural progression from pale, innocent pink is not to other colors. It’s to hot, sexy pink — exactly the kind of sexualization parents are trying to avoid.”

Lamb suggested that to see for myself how ”Someday My Prince Will Come” morphs into ”Oops! I Did It Again,” I visit Club Libby Lu, the mall shop dedicated to the ”Very Important Princess.”

Walking into one of the newest links in the store’s chain, in Natick, Mass., last summer, I had to tip my tiara to the founder, Mary Drolet: Libby Lu’s design was flawless. Unlike Disney, Drolet depended on focus groups to choose the logo (a crown-topped heart) and the colors (pink, pink, purple and more pink). The displays were scaled to the size of a 10-year-old, though most of the shoppers I saw were several years younger than that. The decals on the walls and dressing rooms — ”I Love Your Hair,” ”Hip Chick,” ”Spoiled” — were written in ”girlfriend language.” The young sales clerks at this ”special secret club for superfabulous girls” are called ”club counselors” and come off like your coolest baby sitter, the one who used to let you brush her hair. The malls themselves are chosen based on a company formula called the G.P.I., or ”Girl Power Index,” which predicts potential sales revenues. Talk about newspeak: ”Girl Power” has gone from a riot grrrrl anthem to ”I Am Woman, Watch Me Shop.”

Inside, the store was divided into several glittery ”shopping zones” called ”experiences”: Libby’s Laboratory, now called Sparkle Spa, where girls concoct their own cosmetics and bath products; Libby’s Room; Ear Piercing; Pooch Parlor (where divas in training can pamper stuffed poodles, pugs and Chihuahuas); and the Style Studio, offering ”Libby Du” makeover choices, including ‘Tween Idol, Rock Star, Pop Star and, of course, Priceless Princess. Each look includes hairstyle, makeup, nail polish and sparkly tattoos.

As I browsed, I noticed a mother standing in the center of the store holding a price list for makeover birthday parties — $22.50 to $35 per child. Her name was Anne McAuliffe; her daughters — Stephanie, 4, and 7-year-old twins Rory and Sarah — were dashing giddily up and down the aisles.

”They’ve been begging to come to this store for three weeks,” McAuliffe said. ”I’d never heard of it. So I said they could, but they’d have to spend their own money if they bought anything.” She looked around. ”Some of this stuff is innocuous,” she observed, then leaned toward me, eyes wide and stage-whispered: ”But … a lot of it is horrible. It makes them look like little prostitutes. It’s crazy. They’re babies!”

As we debated the line between frivolous fun and JonBenét, McAuliffe’s daughter Rory came dashing up, pigtails haphazard, glasses askew. ”They have the best pocketbooks here,” she said breathlessly, brandishing a clutch with the words ”Girlie Girl” stamped on it. ”Please, can I have one? It has sequins!”

”You see that?” McAuliffe asked, gesturing at the bag. ”What am I supposed to say?”

On my way out of the mall, I popped into the ” ‘tween” mecca Hot Topic, where a display of Tinker Bell items caught my eye. Tinker Bell, whose image racks up an annual $400 million in retail sales with no particular effort on Disney’s part, is poised to wreak vengeance on the Princess line that once expelled her. Last winter, the first chapter book designed to introduce girls to Tink and her Pixie Hollow pals spent 18 weeks on The New York Times children’s best-seller list. In a direct-to-DVD now under production, she will speak for the first time, voiced by the actress Brittany Murphy. Next year, Disney Fairies will be rolled out in earnest. Aimed at 6- to 9-year-old girls, the line will catch them just as they outgrow Princess. Their colors will be lavender, green, turquoise — anything but the Princess’s soon-to-be-babyish pink.

To appeal to that older child, Disney executives said, the Fairies will have more ”attitude” and ”sass” than the Princesses. What, I wondered, did that entail? I’d seen some of the Tinker Bell merchandise that Disney sells at its theme parks: T-shirts reading, ”Spoiled to Perfection,” ”Mood Subject to Change Without Notice” and ”Tinker Bell: Prettier Than a Princess.” At Hot Topic, that edge was even sharper: magnets, clocks, light-switch plates and panties featured ”Dark Tink,” described as ”the bad girl side of Miss Bell that Walt never saw.”

Girl power, indeed.

A few days later, I picked my daughter up from preschool. She came tearing over in a full-skirted frock with a gold bodice, a beaded crown perched sideways on her head. ”Look, Mommy, I’m Ariel!” she crowed. referring to Disney’s Little Mermaid. Then she stopped and furrowed her brow. ”Mommy, do you like Ariel?”

I considered her for a moment. Maybe Princess is the first salvo in what will become a lifelong struggle over her body image, a Hundred Years’ War of dieting, plucking, painting and perpetual dissatisfaction with the results. Or maybe it isn’t. I’ll never really know. In the end, it’s not the Princesses that really bother me anyway. They’re just a trigger for the bigger question of how, over the years, I can help my daughter with the contradictions she will inevitably face as a girl, the dissonance that is as endemic as ever to growing up female. Maybe the best I can hope for is that her generation will get a little further with the solutions than we did.

For now, I kneeled down on the floor and gave my daughter a hug.

She smiled happily. ”But, Mommy?” she added. ”When I grow up, I’m still going to be a fireman.”

– by Peggy Orenstein, for the New York Times Magazine (December 2006)

Posted by lukewho on 2007-01-01 19:50:52

Tagged: , fremont , christmas , 2006 , jacinto , princess , disney

The post A Princess Diary appeared first on Good Info.

[wineanddinosaur]

Got Milk Stout: Craft Beer’s Hazy Respect for Iconic Intellectual Property

This year has been rife with legal battles involving breweries. Anheuser-Busch is entangled in a lawsuit for allegedly hijacking the Patagonia clothing brand, and its recently acquired Platform Beer Co. is in a trademark dispute with Bottle Logic Brewing over the two brands’ extremely similar logos. Yuengling and Anchor Brewing are disputing who owns the term “steam” beer, and, in May 2019, Guns ‘N’ Roses sued CANarchy for trademark infringement over Oskar Blues Guns ‘N’ Rosé ale. And perhaps most publicly, MillerCoors and Stone Brewing have been publicly battling over the former company’s Keystone label’s use of the name “Stone.”

With so many breweries, and evolving intellectual property laws, many companies struggle to create innovative labels and styles without crossing legal lines. But as the craft beer world gets bigger, so can repercussions for these illegal flirtations. Law professionals argue such behaviors could potentially damage a brewery’s brand, as well as its bottom line.

“The primary risk is financial,” Brendan M. Palfreyman, intellectual property and craft beer attorney at Harris Beach in Syracuse, N.Y., tells VinePair. Intellectual property, Palfreyman explains, is “an overarching term that covers various intangible types of property … [including] trademark and copyright. Copyright is meant to protect works of art that are fixed in some sort of tangible form, [while] trademark is a source identifier that tells you where particular goods are coming from,” he says. In the craft brewing industry, copyright and trademark allow brewers to “distinguish [their] goods from someone else’s.”

More often than not, copyright and trademark infringement issues are resolved in a friendly manner behind the scenes. “Most of the time, it’s one brewery calling another brewery,” Palfreyman says. “If it escalates, then [the brewer] serves a cease and desist from an attorney.” If the dispute continues beyond that, it goes to the federal level, he says.

For example, let’s say Brewery A contacts Brewery B because B’s label looks a lot like one A previously released. If Brewery B agrees to stop selling beers with those labels, the costs it incur will depend on the amount of beer packaged, and the packaging itself. A sticker is easier to remove or replace than something printed on a can, Palyfreyman says, and, in the latter case, a brewery “might have to dump the entire batch,” which is considerably costly.

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Extra Kreme from The Veil Brewing Co. in collaboration with Trillium. I know there was some hate on this one but I loved it. It's drinking great still #extrakreme #veil #theveilbrewing #trillium #trilliumbrewing #dipa #craftcans #craftbeer #beer #hophead #beerporn #beertography #beergram #fanaticbeer #beerstagram #instabeer #thebeercommunity #marylandmob #somdhopheadz

A post shared by JT (@shootpassbeerme) on Jun 5, 2017 at 4:32am PDT

Palfreyman believes a brewery is better off spending its hard-earned cash on a new mash tun or paying its employees, say, “than defending a cease and desist or lawsuit.” In amicably handled cases, “the sender [of the cease and desist] will give you a sell-off period,” Palfreyman says. In other words, “if you have three pallets left, you can sell through it. But next time you print labels, it has to be a different name,” he says.

Additionally, there are marketing concerns. ”[Breweries] are using this intellectual property in order to increase the buzz … [but] whether there’s a downside as well … that’s up for each brewer to decide.”

In March 2017, Richmond’s The Veil Brewing released an imperial IPA, Extra Kreme, in collaboration with Boston’s Trillium Brewing. The printed can label was deliberately designed to invoke Dunkin’ Donuts’ logo, and it even included the phrase, “Virginia Runs on DIPA.” (The coffee-and-doughnut chain’s slogan is “America Runs on Dunkin.”) Less than a week after its release, The Veil posted the following statement on Facebook:

“We often use artistic interpretation in our can designs in a light hearted way. In an effort to avoid conflict with existing brands we have agreed to take down images and advertisements related to Extra Kreme. We hope you enjoy this awesome one-off collaboration and we encourage you to grab some donuts to go along with your now unavailable for purchase Extra Kreme coffee mugs.”

(Meanwhile, it’s worth noting, Boston-based Harpoon Brewery legally partnered with Dunkin’ on Harpoon Dunkin’ Coffee Porter in 2018, and Harpoon Dunkin’ Summer Coffee Pale Ale in 2019.)

In September 2019, former “Great British Bake Off” host Mary Berry’s legal team issued a cease and desist letter to Armistice Brewing Company of Richmond, Calif., for its Mary Berry pastry stout. In cheeky craft brewery fashion, Armistice crudely changed the label by placing a happy face sticker over Berry’s likeness. It renamed the beer “Cease and Desistberry Pastry Stout.”

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🚨🙃PASTRY STOUT LIVES! BOTTLE RELEASE THIS FRIDAY🙃🚨 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ After we received a cease-and-desist from the agency representing British baking celeb (whose name may or may not rhyme with Hairy Larry), we spent thousands on a last-minute re-design with a boutique branding agency in London. The new name: Cease and Desistberry Pastry Stout. They did a bang-up job on the artwork for the new concept, and we’re sure that all that money was very well spent. Cease and Desistberry is a massive 10.4% pastry stout brewed with a silky milk-sugar finish. We added over two hundred pounds of red raspberry purree and two different kinds of single-origin cacao nibs from our friends at Dandelion Chocolate in San Francisco. Then we recirculated it on three pounds of Madagascar vanilla beans. The result is like a rich, decadent, double dark chocolate truffle with raspberries and vanilla bean whipped cream. Some might call it a good bake. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 🚨IMPORTANT RELEASE INFO🚨 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Wanna grab your share of the (in)famous Cease and Desistberry? We’re releasing 500ml bottles THIS FRIDAY (9/20) in the taproom! Bottles are $19 each, and will be available when we open the taproom at noon. Can’t make it to the taproom on Friday? No worries! We have an online ordering site where you can reserve your bottles for pickup. Online reservations start at 8am on Friday and can be placed by going to ToastTab.com/ArmisticeBeer. If you order online, you’ll have until Friday, September 27 (1 week) to pickup your orders. After that, the leftover orders will be resold with no refund. Please remember that we cannot give you your online order unless you present your photo ID and the credit card that you paid for the order with. See you Friday! 🙃🙃🙃 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Quick Details: ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ What: “Cease and Desistberry” Pasty Stout Bottle Release DATE: Friday, September 20 Online Reservations: 8am to Sold Out Taproom Sales/Pickups: 12pm to Sold Out PRICE: $19/bottle LIMITS: TBD Online Order Link: ToastTab.com/ArmisticeBeer

A post shared by Armistice Brewing Company (@armisticebeer) on Sep 18, 2019 at 11:44am PDT

Issues like these arise even when national chains and international television stars aren’t involved. In what may have been an innocent case of collective consciousness, between 2014 and 2016, several breweries released brands called “Shower Beer.”

Each beer was geographically and gustatorily distinct — a lager from Virginia, a pale ale from New York, and a lime gose from Connecticut — but the name had been registered by Charlottesville, Va.’s Champion Brewing in 2014. As a result, Connecticut’s Kent Falls Brewing renamed its Shower Beer “Lime Zest Gose,” and New York’s Yonkers Brewing pivoted to “Shower Time Pale Ale.”

Many brewers make light of these legal run-ins, but Palfreyman warns that breweries “should tread lightly, especially with intellectual property outside the brewing industry,” where brands are less lenient. Statutory damages can harm breweries down the line, “regardless of how many [beers] are printed or sold,” he says. “It can be much riskier from that standpoint, even if it’s only one batch.”

A recent example might be Smartmouth Brewing’s Saturday Morning IPA with Marshmallows, a limited-release beer that launched in February 2019. Although there was no official partnership to speak of, the beer’s recipe and label design blatantly take inspiration from General Mills’ Lucky Charms cereal.

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🍺 Saturday Morning by @smartmouthbeer … "Magically ridiculous 🌈 This special release from Smartmouth Beer will definitely strike a nostalgic chord for a certain childhood cereal. While sweet and fluffy on the nose like a sea of rainbow marshmallows, the palate is on the opposite end of the spectrum, with a bitterness that lingers." … 📷 #beertography and words by @jefflicciardello … 👉 Follow VinePair's @UniversityOfBrew

A post shared by VinePair University of Brew (@universityofbrew) on Mar 7, 2019 at 4:01pm PST

According to Palfreyman, this is not a trademark issue because no one would confuse the names Saturday Morning IPA and Lucky Charms. “The case for copyright infringement, however, would be much simpler because the question is about substantial similarity of the designs — whether the goods are related doesn’t matter,” Palfreyman wrote in a blog post for Beervana in 2018. “Statutory damages do not require proof of actual harm and instead damages can be automatically assessed in the court’s discretion, ranging from $750 up to $30,000.”

Be it a Lucky Charms-inspired IPA, or an array of beers that reference the arguably common experience of drinking in the shower, labeling consumer products after cultural phenomena can be risky business. On the bright side, these legal run-ins are mostly preventable. Whether that stops breweries from luring drinkers with legally hazy labels is another case entirely.

It’s all fun and games until brewers’ time — or worse, beer — is wasted.

The article Got Milk Stout: Craft Beer’s Hazy Respect for Iconic Intellectual Property appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/craft-beer-labels-intellectual-property/

[isaiahrippinus]

Got Milk Stout: Craft Beer’s Hazy Respect for Iconic Intellectual Property

This year has been rife with legal battles involving breweries. Anheuser-Busch is entangled in a lawsuit for allegedly hijacking the Patagonia clothing brand, and its recently acquired Platform Beer Co. is in a trademark dispute with Bottle Logic Brewing over the two brands’ extremely similar logos. Yuengling and Anchor Brewing are disputing who owns the term “steam” beer, and, in May 2019, Guns ‘N’ Roses sued CANarchy for trademark infringement over Oskar Blues Guns ‘N’ Rosé ale. And perhaps most publicly, MillerCoors and Stone Brewing have been publicly battling over the former company’s Keystone label’s use of the name “Stone.”

With so many breweries, and evolving intellectual property laws, many companies struggle to create innovative labels and styles without crossing legal lines. But as the craft beer world gets bigger, so can repercussions for these illegal flirtations. Law professionals argue such behaviors could potentially damage a brewery’s brand, as well as its bottom line.

“The primary risk is financial,” Brendan M. Palfreyman, intellectual property and craft beer attorney at Harris Beach in Syracuse, N.Y., tells VinePair. Intellectual property, Palfreyman explains, is “an overarching term that covers various intangible types of property … [including] trademark and copyright. Copyright is meant to protect works of art that are fixed in some sort of tangible form, [while] trademark is a source identifier that tells you where particular goods are coming from,” he says. In the craft brewing industry, copyright and trademark allow brewers to “distinguish [their] goods from someone else’s.”

More often than not, copyright and trademark infringement issues are resolved in a friendly manner behind the scenes. “Most of the time, it’s one brewery calling another brewery,” Palfreyman says. “If it escalates, then [the brewer] serves a cease and desist from an attorney.” If the dispute continues beyond that, it goes to the federal level, he says.

For example, let’s say Brewery A contacts Brewery B because B’s label looks a lot like one A previously released. If Brewery B agrees to stop selling beers with those labels, the costs it incur will depend on the amount of beer packaged, and the packaging itself. A sticker is easier to remove or replace than something printed on a can, Palyfreyman says, and, in the latter case, a brewery “might have to dump the entire batch,” which is considerably costly.

View this post on Instagram

Extra Kreme from The Veil Brewing Co. in collaboration with Trillium. I know there was some hate on this one but I loved it. It’s drinking great still #extrakreme #veil #theveilbrewing #trillium #trilliumbrewing #dipa #craftcans #craftbeer #beer #hophead #beerporn #beertography #beergram #fanaticbeer #beerstagram #instabeer #thebeercommunity #marylandmob #somdhopheadz

A post shared by JT (@shootpassbeerme) on Jun 5, 2017 at 4:32am PDT

Palfreyman believes a brewery is better off spending its hard-earned cash on a new mash tun or paying its employees, say, “than defending a cease and desist or lawsuit.” In amicably handled cases, “the sender [of the cease and desist] will give you a sell-off period,” Palfreyman says. In other words, “if you have three palates left, you can sell through it. But next time you print labels, it has to be a different name,” he says.

Additionally, there are marketing concerns. ”[Breweries] are using this intellectual property in order to increase the buzz … [but] whether there’s a downside as well … that’s up for each brewer to decide.”

In March 2017, Richmond’s The Veil Brewing released an imperial IPA, Extra Kreme, in collaboration with Boston’s Trillium Brewing. The printed can label was deliberately designed to invoke Dunkin’ Donuts’ logo, and it even included the phrase, “Virginia Runs on DIPA.” (The coffee-and-doughnut chain’s slogan is “America Runs on Dunkin.”) Less than a week after its release, The Veil posted the following statement on Facebook:

“We often use artistic interpretation in our can designs in a light hearted way. In an effort to avoid conflict with existing brands we have agreed to take down images and advertisements related to Extra Kreme. We hope you enjoy this awesome one-off collaboration and we encourage you to grab some donuts to go along with your now unavailable for purchase Extra Kreme coffee mugs.”

(Meanwhile, it’s worth noting, Boston-based Harpoon Brewery legally partnered with Dunkin’ on Harpoon Dunkin’ Coffee Porter in 2018, and Harpoon Dunkin’ Summer Coffee Pale Ale in 2019.)

In September 2019, former “Great British Bake Off” host Mary Berry’s legal team issued a cease and desist letter to Armistice Brewing Company of Richmond, Calif., for its Mary Berry pastry stout. In cheeky craft brewery fashion, Armistice crudely changed the label by placing a happy face sticker over Berry’s likeness. It renamed the beer “Cease and Desistberry Pastry Stout.”

View this post on Instagram

🚨🙃PASTRY STOUT LIVES! BOTTLE RELEASE THIS FRIDAY🙃🚨 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ After we received a cease-and-desist from the agency representing British baking celeb (whose name may or may not rhyme with Hairy Larry), we spent thousands on a last-minute re-design with a boutique branding agency in London. The new name: Cease and Desistberry Pastry Stout. They did a bang-up job on the artwork for the new concept, and we’re sure that all that money was very well spent. Cease and Desistberry is a massive 10.4% pastry stout brewed with a silky milk-sugar finish. We added over two hundred pounds of red raspberry purree and two different kinds of single-origin cacao nibs from our friends at Dandelion Chocolate in San Francisco. Then we recirculated it on three pounds of Madagascar vanilla beans. The result is like a rich, decadent, double dark chocolate truffle with raspberries and vanilla bean whipped cream. Some might call it a good bake. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 🚨IMPORTANT RELEASE INFO🚨 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Wanna grab your share of the (in)famous Cease and Desistberry? We’re releasing 500ml bottles THIS FRIDAY (9/20) in the taproom! Bottles are $19 each, and will be available when we open the taproom at noon. Can’t make it to the taproom on Friday? No worries! We have an online ordering site where you can reserve your bottles for pickup. Online reservations start at 8am on Friday and can be placed by going to ToastTab.com/ArmisticeBeer. If you order online, you’ll have until Friday, September 27 (1 week) to pickup your orders. After that, the leftover orders will be resold with no refund. Please remember that we cannot give you your online order unless you present your photo ID and the credit card that you paid for the order with. See you Friday! 🙃🙃🙃 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Quick Details: ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ What: “Cease and Desistberry” Pasty Stout Bottle Release DATE: Friday, September 20 Online Reservations: 8am to Sold Out Taproom Sales/Pickups: 12pm to Sold Out PRICE: $19/bottle LIMITS: TBD Online Order Link: ToastTab.com/ArmisticeBeer

A post shared by Armistice Brewing Company (@armisticebeer) on Sep 18, 2019 at 11:44am PDT

Issues like these arise even when national chains and international television stars aren’t involved. In what may have been an innocent case of collective consciousness, between 2014 and 2016, several breweries released brands called “Shower Beer.”

Each beer was geographically and gustatorily distinct — a lager from Virginia, a pale ale from New York, and a lime gose from Connecticut — but the name had been registered by Charlottesville, Va.’s Champion Brewing in 2014. As a result, Connecticut’s Kent Falls Brewing renamed its Shower Beer “Lime Zest Gose,” and New York’s Yonkers Brewing pivoted to “Shower Time Pale Ale.”

Many brewers make light of these legal run-ins, but Palfreyman warns that breweries “should tread lightly, especially with intellectual property outside the brewing industry,” where brands are less lenient. Statutory damages can harm breweries down the line, “regardless of how many [beers] are printed or sold,” he says. “It can be much riskier from that standpoint, even if it’s only one batch.”

A recent example might be Smartmouth Brewing’s Saturday Morning IPA with Marshmallows, a limited-release beer that launched in February 2019. Although there was no official partnership to speak of, the beer’s recipe and label design blatantly take inspiration from General Mills’ Lucky Charms cereal.

View this post on Instagram

🍺 Saturday Morning by @smartmouthbeer … “Magically ridiculous 🌈 This special release from Smartmouth Beer will definitely strike a nostalgic chord for a certain childhood cereal. While sweet and fluffy on the nose like a sea of rainbow marshmallows, the palate is on the opposite end of the spectrum, with a bitterness that lingers.” … 📷 #beertography and words by @jefflicciardello … 👉 Follow VinePair’s @UniversityOfBrew

A post shared by VinePair University of Brew (@universityofbrew) on Mar 7, 2019 at 4:01pm PST

According to Palfreyman, this is not a trademark issue because no one would confuse the names Saturday Morning IPA and Lucky Charms. “The case for copyright infringement, however, would be much simpler because the question is about substantial similarity of the designs — whether the goods are related doesn’t matter,” Palfreyman wrote in a blog post for Beervana in 2018. “Statutory damages do not require proof of actual harm and instead damages can be automatically assessed in the court’s discretion, ranging from $750 up to $30,000.”

Be it a Lucky Charms-inspired IPA, or an array of beers that reference the arguably common experience of drinking in the shower, labeling consumer products after cultural phenomena can be risky business. On the bright side, these legal run-ins are mostly preventable. Whether that stops breweries from luring drinkers with legally hazy labels is another case entirely.

It’s all fun and games until brewers’ time — or worse, beer — is wasted.

The article Got Milk Stout: Craft Beer’s Hazy Respect for Iconic Intellectual Property appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/craft-beer-labels-intellectual-property/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/188429258874

[johnboothus]

Got Milk Stout: Craft Beers Hazy Respect for Iconic Intellectual Property

This year has been rife with legal battles involving breweries. Anheuser-Busch is entangled in a lawsuit for allegedly hijacking the Patagonia clothing brand, and its recently acquired Platform Beer Co. is in a trademark dispute with Bottle Logic Brewing over the two brands’ extremely similar logos. Yuengling and Anchor Brewing are disputing who owns the term “steam” beer, and, in May 2019, Guns ‘N’ Roses sued CANarchy for trademark infringement over Oskar Blues Guns ‘N’ Rosé ale. And perhaps most publicly, MillerCoors and Stone Brewing have been publicly battling over the former company’s Keystone label’s use of the name “Stone.”

With so many breweries, and evolving intellectual property laws, many companies struggle to create innovative labels and styles without crossing legal lines. But as the craft beer world gets bigger, so can repercussions for these illegal flirtations. Law professionals argue such behaviors could potentially damage a brewery’s brand, as well as its bottom line.

“The primary risk is financial,” Brendan M. Palfreyman, intellectual property and craft beer attorney at Harris Beach in Syracuse, N.Y., tells VinePair. Intellectual property, Palfreyman explains, is “an overarching term that covers various intangible types of property … [including] trademark and copyright. Copyright is meant to protect works of art that are fixed in some sort of tangible form, [while] trademark is a source identifier that tells you where particular goods are coming from,” he says. In the craft brewing industry, copyright and trademark allow brewers to “distinguish [their] goods from someone else’s.”

More often than not, copyright and trademark infringement issues are resolved in a friendly manner behind the scenes. “Most of the time, it’s one brewery calling another brewery,” Palfreyman says. “If it escalates, then [the brewer] serves a cease and desist from an attorney.” If the dispute continues beyond that, it goes to the federal level, he says.

For example, let’s say Brewery A contacts Brewery B because B’s label looks a lot like one A previously released. If Brewery B agrees to stop selling beers with those labels, the costs it incur will depend on the amount of beer packaged, and the packaging itself. A sticker is easier to remove or replace than something printed on a can, Palyfreyman says, and, in the latter case, a brewery “might have to dump the entire batch,” which is considerably costly.

View this post on Instagram

Extra Kreme from The Veil Brewing Co. in collaboration with Trillium. I know there was some hate on this one but I loved it. It's drinking great still #extrakreme #veil #theveilbrewing #trillium #trilliumbrewing #dipa #craftcans #craftbeer #beer #hophead #beerporn #beertography #beergram #fanaticbeer #beerstagram #instabeer #thebeercommunity #marylandmob #somdhopheadz

A post shared by JT (@shootpassbeerme) on Jun 5, 2017 at 4:32am PDT

Palfreyman believes a brewery is better off spending its hard-earned cash on a new mash tun or paying its employees, say, “than defending a cease and desist or lawsuit.” In amicably handled cases, “the sender [of the cease and desist] will give you a sell-off period,” Palfreyman says. In other words, “if you have three palates left, you can sell through it. But next time you print labels, it has to be a different name,” he says.

Additionally, there are marketing concerns. ”[Breweries] are using this intellectual property in order to increase the buzz … [but] whether there’s a downside as well … that’s up for each brewer to decide.”

In March 2017, Richmond’s The Veil Brewing released an imperial IPA, Extra Kreme, in collaboration with Boston’s Trillium Brewing. The printed can label was deliberately designed to invoke Dunkin’ Donuts’ logo, and it even included the phrase, “Virginia Runs on DIPA.” (The coffee-and-doughnut chain’s slogan is “America Runs on Dunkin.”) Less than a week after its release, The Veil posted the following statement on Facebook:

“We often use artistic interpretation in our can designs in a light hearted way. In an effort to avoid conflict with existing brands we have agreed to take down images and advertisements related to Extra Kreme. We hope you enjoy this awesome one-off collaboration and we encourage you to grab some donuts to go along with your now unavailable for purchase Extra Kreme coffee mugs.”

(Meanwhile, it’s worth noting, Boston-based Harpoon Brewery legally partnered with Dunkin’ on Harpoon Dunkin’ Coffee Porter in 2018, and Harpoon Dunkin’ Summer Coffee Pale Ale in 2019.)

In September 2019, former “Great British Bake Off” host Mary Berry’s legal team issued a cease and desist letter to Armistice Brewing Company of Richmond, Calif., for its Mary Berry pastry stout. In cheeky craft brewery fashion, Armistice crudely changed the label by placing a happy face sticker over Berry’s likeness. It renamed the beer “Cease and Desistberry Pastry Stout.”

View this post on Instagram

🚨🙃PASTRY STOUT LIVES! BOTTLE RELEASE THIS FRIDAY🙃🚨 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ After we received a cease-and-desist from the agency representing British baking celeb (whose name may or may not rhyme with Hairy Larry), we spent thousands on a last-minute re-design with a boutique branding agency in London. The new name: Cease and Desistberry Pastry Stout. They did a bang-up job on the artwork for the new concept, and we’re sure that all that money was very well spent. Cease and Desistberry is a massive 10.4% pastry stout brewed with a silky milk-sugar finish. We added over two hundred pounds of red raspberry purree and two different kinds of single-origin cacao nibs from our friends at Dandelion Chocolate in San Francisco. Then we recirculated it on three pounds of Madagascar vanilla beans. The result is like a rich, decadent, double dark chocolate truffle with raspberries and vanilla bean whipped cream. Some might call it a good bake. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ 🚨IMPORTANT RELEASE INFO🚨 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Wanna grab your share of the (in)famous Cease and Desistberry? We’re releasing 500ml bottles THIS FRIDAY (9/20) in the taproom! Bottles are $19 each, and will be available when we open the taproom at noon. Can’t make it to the taproom on Friday? No worries! We have an online ordering site where you can reserve your bottles for pickup. Online reservations start at 8am on Friday and can be placed by going to ToastTab.com/ArmisticeBeer. If you order online, you’ll have until Friday, September 27 (1 week) to pickup your orders. After that, the leftover orders will be resold with no refund. Please remember that we cannot give you your online order unless you present your photo ID and the credit card that you paid for the order with. See you Friday! 🙃🙃🙃 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Quick Details: ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ What: “Cease and Desistberry” Pasty Stout Bottle Release DATE: Friday, September 20 Online Reservations: 8am to Sold Out Taproom Sales/Pickups: 12pm to Sold Out PRICE: $19/bottle LIMITS: TBD Online Order Link: ToastTab.com/ArmisticeBeer

A post shared by Armistice Brewing Company (@armisticebeer) on Sep 18, 2019 at 11:44am PDT

Issues like these arise even when national chains and international television stars aren’t involved. In what may have been an innocent case of collective consciousness, between 2014 and 2016, several breweries released brands called “Shower Beer.”

Each beer was geographically and gustatorily distinct — a lager from Virginia, a pale ale from New York, and a lime gose from Connecticut — but the name had been registered by Charlottesville, Va.’s Champion Brewing in 2014. As a result, Connecticut’s Kent Falls Brewing renamed its Shower Beer “Lime Zest Gose,” and New York’s Yonkers Brewing pivoted to “Shower Time Pale Ale.”

Many brewers make light of these legal run-ins, but Palfreyman warns that breweries “should tread lightly, especially with intellectual property outside the brewing industry,” where brands are less lenient. Statutory damages can harm breweries down the line, “regardless of how many [beers] are printed or sold,” he says. “It can be much riskier from that standpoint, even if it’s only one batch.”

A recent example might be Smartmouth Brewing’s Saturday Morning IPA with Marshmallows, a limited-release beer that launched in February 2019. Although there was no official partnership to speak of, the beer’s recipe and label design blatantly take inspiration from General Mills’ Lucky Charms cereal.

View this post on Instagram

🍺 Saturday Morning by @smartmouthbeer … "Magically ridiculous 🌈 This special release from Smartmouth Beer will definitely strike a nostalgic chord for a certain childhood cereal. While sweet and fluffy on the nose like a sea of rainbow marshmallows, the palate is on the opposite end of the spectrum, with a bitterness that lingers." … 📷 #beertography and words by @jefflicciardello … 👉 Follow VinePair's @UniversityOfBrew

A post shared by VinePair University of Brew (@universityofbrew) on Mar 7, 2019 at 4:01pm PST

According to Palfreyman, this is not a trademark issue because no one would confuse the names Saturday Morning IPA and Lucky Charms. “The case for copyright infringement, however, would be much simpler because the question is about substantial similarity of the designs — whether the goods are related doesn’t matter,” Palfreyman wrote in a blog post for Beervana in 2018. “Statutory damages do not require proof of actual harm and instead damages can be automatically assessed in the court’s discretion, ranging from $750 up to $30,000.”

Be it a Lucky Charms-inspired IPA, or an array of beers that reference the arguably common experience of drinking in the shower, labeling consumer products after cultural phenomena can be risky business. On the bright side, these legal run-ins are mostly preventable. Whether that stops breweries from luring drinkers with legally hazy labels is another case entirely.

It’s all fun and games until brewers’ time — or worse, beer — is wasted.

The article Got Milk Stout: Craft Beer’s Hazy Respect for Iconic Intellectual Property appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/craft-beer-labels-intellectual-property/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/got-milk-stout-craft-beers-hazy-respect-for-iconic-intellectual-property

[tipsycad147]

THE CARE AND FEEDING OF THE WITCH BROOM.

Posted on March 18, 2016 by Crooked Bear Creek Organic Herbs

As Witches, we need to be aware of the Ancient Broom Lore that has been passed down to us from those wonderful Crones of the past.

1- Never leave home for long periods of time without telling your broom.

2- Treat your broom as you would any other member of your family, with honour, reverence, and respect.

3- Magickal Brooms are not regular cleaning brooms and should not be used for such mundane tasks.

4- Never leave your Magickal Broom outside your cast circle.

5- Speak with your broom as you would speak to other members of your family or coven.

6- Never leave your Magickal Broom outside in the weather unless you ask the Broom.

7- Oil your broomstick with every turn of the wheel.

Brooms have long been known for their magickal ways, probably due to its shape, use in purification rites and kinship with magickal wands and staffs. The common household tool has been known to be so sacred that in many parts of the world there are Broom Deities.

Sao Ching Niang – The lady with the broom who lives in the Broom Star. When there is too much rain and the crops are threatened, it is not uncommon in China to see pictures of Brooms hanging on the front door or fences to bring clear and sunny weather to the field.

As this is invoking the Great Earth Goddess herself, the Broom Star is the fertile womb of our Great Goddess, and thus, she gives us life of the fields that are represented by the Corn Fields. Hence, the broom is brought into our homes from the womb of the Goddess.

In Mexico, the Witch Goddess Tlazoiteotl is depicted riding on a broom. This symbolises the coming of the night, the dark part of ourselves, the growing darkness of the winter.

The priests in South America have been known to burn offerings of owls and snakes. These were offered at the dark moon. Through these offerings, the people were calling upon the Broom Witch to sweep away their transgressions.

My grandmother was a Broom Witch. Here are some of the old backward things that can be done with a broom. On a hot summers day, I would watch her go out on the front porch and swing the broom over her head. Grandma would just tell me to be quiet, the rain was coming. And if fact she was right. A few hours later we always had rain. So Granny would call the rain with her broom by swinging it clockwise over her head.

In turn, if it was raining too much, she would go out and talk with her broom for a while on the front porch. She would sing “Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day”. Then she would raise her broom and swing it over her head counter-clockwise to stop the rain, and again, a few hours later the rain would stop.

With some practice, I know have mastered this little broom lore spell. I find it handy to tell the broom what I want it to do before I do it, then I say my incantation and swing the broom.

THE CARE AND FEEDING OF A MAGICKAL BROOM

When you first get your broom, always greet it by rubbing your hand over the entire staff of the broom. Learn the body of your broom, inspect it’s divets and curves. Use anointing oil to open and activate your broom. A good oil is made from rosemary, thyme, myrrh and lavender in the base oil. Make this oil by the full moon and then open your broom on the first day of the new moon. When getting a new broom, it’s always good to talk with it awhile. I usually carry mine along with me in my car, and I sleep with it by my bed. Talk with your broom, it’s amazing how much these magickal tools have to say to us and how lonely they become when cast to the side. After your broom has been chosen and spoken to, then start using it to call in your circle. I point the broom in the direction that I’m casting and use this to focalise the energy. Once the circle is cast, then I lay the broom to the east to guard the entrance until my magickal work is done. I also sprinkle salt in the east over the broom to strengthen the seal, especially if I find myself doing some intense spell casting. Once I’m done with casting my magickal work, I thank my broom and lift it from east and dismiss the quarters. A broom can also be used to cast a circle in a hurry, much the same way a staff can be used. If I know I need immediate protection, I point my broom to east and cast a circle with my broom pointed to the earth, moving in a clockwise direction. This really works if you are in a hurry and need to have some sacred space like NOW. I also oil my broom handle with my anointing oil 4 times a year during each turn of the wheel. This helps recharge the broom and helps you reconnect with it. It likes to be stroked and caressed. Your broom is a sensuous creature and likes to be part of the Divine Feminine.

BROOM SPELLS

The “Come to Me” Broom Spell

On a warm night (or turn the heater up), put on some Goddess clothing (loose and feminine), put on some soothing music that makes you want to dance. Now take your broom as if it were your beloved and dance with the broom until you are flying into the arms of your beloved. Whisper this four times to yourself….

By night’s light we shine bright By sunlight we are right By days end we are together by sacred rite.

Now cast your circle by laying your broom in each quarter. Lay the broom to the east and jump clockwise over it. Lay the broom in the south and jump clockwise over it. Lay the broom in the west and jump clockwise over it. Then lay it in the north and jump over it. Once you have completed your circle, your beloved will come to you within 24 hours. Use this spell to mend fights, or if you don’t have a mate, use this to call a mate to you.

SWEEPING SPELLS AND LORE

If you feel your life is in chaos, take a look around at your front porch and front walkway. If the front walks is cluttered with leaves and dirt, then sweep your walkway and front porch clean with your magickal broom and envision that your life is in order and that all that comes to your will be clean and cleared.

When you move from one house to another, it’s always good to change your workaday broom. Either burn your old one, or make sure that it is buried with honour. Always bring a new broom into the new house, but sweep some dirt from the outside in before you sweep the dirt from the inside out. This is to bring in good luck from the beginning and not push your luck out the door.

Always hang a broom by the front door for protection. Brooms will keep the bad things out and the good things in. I have a broom at every the door of my home. I keep it in the corner. Always stand a broom on end with the brush facing up. This helps the wear and tear on the brush and it’s also said to bring love from the earth through the broomstick and given up to the heavens through the brush.

If your broom falls from your hand while you are sweeping or doing other work, make a wish before you pick it up. It’s also said that if a broom falls from it’s kept place, company is coming and it’s not good news. When you pick up your broom after something like this happens, sweep the energy out the door and bid it adue not to return again.

If you or your kin are having recurrent nightmares or night haunting s, sweep the room clockwise while stating that all that lies between here and the other world be gone and back whence you came. Hither, hither, hither gone. Hither, hither, hither gone Hither, hither, thither gone So Mote It Be.

Now stand the broom outside the bedroom door and place a piece of garlic under the bed.

HANDFASTING AND MARRIAGE BROOM LORE

As a Priestess and Wiccan Minister, I perform several Handfasting Rites per year. One of the main things I encourage Wiccan engaged couples to do is to find a broom together. This is the symbol of hearth and home. Once the broom has been found, then it is anointed as I stated above, then some of the broom brush is pulled from the stem. That brush is then woven together and placed upon the wedding altar. The broom is present during our counselings sessions and then the wife-to-be is usually the keeper of the broom until the wedding. This represents that she is the keeper of the home and keeps peace and harmony while the man goes out to work. It also means that she is the keeper of the Magickal power of the home. As it seems in these modern times that this is wrong to have such sexed roles, this is Celtic lore from more than 600 years ago.

The night before the wedding, the couple will dress the broom by weaving 3 a strand of coloured ribbon around the handle. What this represents is the inter- twining of their lives and they themselves are no longer individuals but are part of each other. The broom is then placed either standing by the altar or placed lying under the altar during the ceremony as the vows are said, the promises made, that hands fasted. They are pronounced husband and wife and the broom is then put before them as the final test of love. The couple either steps, or in the old tradition, jumps, over the broom. This is the final end of the ceremony. Then it is recommended that the couple takes the broom home and makes love with the broom under the bed. This seals the marriage.

Your broom can be your best friend and your magickal ally. Treat your broom with honour, reverence and respect and you will have a life-long companion and ritual tool.

And then there is this…….

The Broomstick

The traditional companion of the witches was the enchanted broomstick, used for their wild and unholy flights through the night and probably to some distant Witches’ Sabbat. This is one of the first images you get to see as a child and this was doubtlessly believed by the prominent rulers of Europe. The number of actual confessions of witches doing so is remarkably small. Usually confessions state that they went to the Sabbat on foot or on horseback.

Legends of witches flying on brooms go back as far as the beginning of the Common Era. The earliest known confession of a Witch flying on a broom was in 1453, when Guillaume Edelin of St. Germain-en-Laye, near Paris, stated that he had done so. In 1563, Martin Tulouff of Guernsey said to have seen his aged mother straddle a broomstick and whisk up the chimney and out of the house on it, saying “Go in the name of the Devil and Lucifer over rocks and thorns”. In 1598 Claudine Boban and her mother, witches of the province of Franche-Comte, in eastern France, also spoke of flying up the chimney of a stick. The belief of flying off through the chimney became firmly embedded in popular tradition, although only a few people ever mentioned doing so. It has been suggested that this idea was connected with the old custom of pushing a broom up the chimney to indicate the absence of the housewife. The Germanic Goddess Holda or Holle is also connected with the chimney. Other indications that lead to the popular belief that witches actually flew on broomsticks can be found in an old custom of dancing with a broom between the legs, leaping high in the air. In Reginald Scot’s book, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, published in 1584, we find a similar description:

“At these magical assemblies, the witches never failed to dance; and in their dance they sing these words, ‘Har, har, dive dive, dance here dance here, play here play here, Sabbath, Sabbath’. And whiles they sing and dance, ever one hath a broom in her hand, and holdeth it up aloft.” Scot quoted these descriptions of Witch rites from a French demonologist, Jean Bodin, who made observations of a kind of jumping dance, riding on staffs. These customs might have contributed to the popular picture of broomstick-riding witches through the air.

In 1665, from the confession of Julian Cox, one of the Somerset coven, mentioned “that one evening she walks out about a Mile from her own House and there came riding towards her three persons upon three Broom-staves, born up about a years and a half from the ground. Two of them she formerly knew, which was a Witch and a Wizard”.

History Some authors claim that the oldest known source of witches flying on broomsticks is a manuscript called Le Champion des Dames by Martin Lefranc, 1440. This might be one of the oldest images representing a hag on a broomstick, but it is certainly not the first. A wall painting from the 12th century in Schleswig Cathedral (Germany) shows the Norse deity Frigg riding her staff. If we really dig a bit deeper into history, we’ll find that from the Roman world there are reports that mention witches flying on broomsticks as well as having used ointments, as early as the first century. They were called Straight (Barn owl) and the Lamiae from Greek culture had similar characteristics.

 Later in Roman history, the goddess Diana was the leader of the Wild Hunt: “It is also not to be omitted that some wicked women, perverted by the Devil, seduced by illusions and phantasm of demons, believe and profess themselves in the hours of the night to ride upon certain beasts with Diana, the goddess of pagans, and an innumerable multitude of women, and in the silence of the dead of the night to traverse great spaces of earth, and to obey her commands as of their mistress, and to be summoned to her service on certain nights”. (See: Canon Episcopi).

Similar beliefs existed in many parts of Europe. From Norse mythology, we know that the army of women, lead by Odin (Wodan), called the Valkyries, was said to ride through the skies on horses, collecting the souls of the dead. In continental Germanic areas, the goddess Holda or Holle was also said to lead the Wild Hunt and is connected to chimneys and witchcraft. Berchta or Perchta, another Germanic goddess, which can be identified with Holda, has similar characteristics.

Again in Celtic Traditions, the Horned God Cernunnos, and/or Herne the Hunter was leader of the Wild Hunt and the Scottish Witch Goddess Nicneven was also said to fly through the night with her followers. Eastern Europe sources also have a wealth of folklore about witches flying through the air. So flying through the air, evidently, was a deeply rooted mythological theme, associated with the free roaming of the spirit, the separation of soul and body.

Symbolism The broomstick is a female and male symbol, “the rod which penetrated the bush”. Its symbolism and interpretation is therefore purely sexual.

RITUAL USE There are hints of its use as an artificial penis or dildo. In a curious old book, A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon and Cant, by Albert BarrSre and Charles Godfrey Leland (1897-1899), we are told that the slang term in those days for a dildo or artificial penis was “a broom-handle”, and the female genitals were known vulgarly as “the broom”. To “have a brush” was to have sexual intercourse. Noteworthy is the evidence from Witch trials mentioning the “cold hard member of the Devil himself”. In 1662, Isabel Gowdie, accused of witchcraft, made a confession which could suggest that some sort of artificial phallus of horn or leather may have been used:

“His members are exceeding great and long; no man’s members are so long and big as they are….(he is) a meikle, black, rough man, very cold, and I found his nature as cold within me as spring-well water…He is abler for us that way than any man can be, only he is heavy like a malt-sack, a huge nature, very cold, as ice.

Besom Chant

Besom, besom long and lithe made from ash and willow withe Tied with thongs of willow bark in running stream at moonset dark. With a pentagram insight as the ritual fire is lighted Sweep ye circle, deosil, Sweep out evil, sweep out ill, Make the round of the ground Where we do the Lady’s will. Besom, besom, Lady’s broom Sweep out darkness, sweep out doom Rid ye Lady’s hallowed ground Of demons, imps and Hell’s red hound; Then set ye down on Her green earth By running stream or Mistress’ hearth, ‘Till called once more on Sabbath night To cleans once more the dancing site.

Broomstick Or The Besom,  The broomstick has come to be the traditional companion to the witch, and the enchanted steed for her wild and unholy night-flights through the air. Even Walt Disney paid tribute to its legendary magical character, in his film “Fantasia”, when he drew Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, with a bewitched broomstick that did its work only too well.

However, the broomstick was only one of the means witches were supposed to use for the purpose of flight. Its frequent occurrence in folklore points to the fact that it possessed some special significance. This significance is in fact a phallic one. In Yorkshire folk-belief, it was unlucky for an unmarried girl to step over a broomstick, because it meant that she would be a mother before she was a wife. Is Sussex, the May-Pole, which was itself a phallic symbol, used to be topped with a large birch broom. A ‘besom’ is a dialect term for a shameless, immoral female.

‘To marry over the broomstick’. ‘jump the besom’, was an old-time form of irregular marriage, in which both parties jumped over a broomstick, to signify that they were joined in common-law union. At gypsy wedding ceremonies, the bride and groom jump backwards and forwards over a broomstick; further evidence of the broom’s connection with sex and fertility.

In a curious and interesting old book, “A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon, and Chant”, by Albert Barrere and Charles Godfrey Leland (London, 1899 and 1897, also Gale Research, Detroit, 1889), we are told that a slang term in those days for a ‘dildo’ or artificial penis was ‘a broom handle’; and the female genitals were known vulgarly as ‘the broom’. To ‘have a brush’ was to have sexual intercourse. This throws considerable light on the real significance of the broomstick in witch rituals, and in old folk-dances, in which it often plays a part.

The original household broom was a bunch of the actual broom plant,”Planta genista”, tied round a stick. “Broom! Green broom!” was old street cry, used by vendors of broom-bunches for this purpose. The “Planta genista” was the badge of the “Plantagenet” family, who derived their name from it. They were rumoured to favour the Old Religion.

At one time of the year, the broom plant was unlucky. The old saying goes: “If you sweep he house with blossomed broom in May, you will sweep the head of the house away.” This could perhaps have some connection with old sacrificial rites at the commencement of summer. Sometimes the broomstick was regarded as having power to repel witches; perhaps with the idea of turning their own magic against them. At any rate, a broomstick placed across the threshold of a house was supposed to keep witches out.

A broomstick could also be a luck symbol. When alterations were being made to an old house at Blandford in Dorset in 1930, a broomstick was found walled up in the structure. It was recognised as having been put there for luck, and it was allowed to remain in its hiding-place. These additional meanings of the broomstick are in accord with its phallic significance. Things which are sex symbols are life symbols, and hence luck bringers and protectors against the Evil Eye.

In Reginald Scot’s “Discovery of Witchcraft” (London, 1584, and edited by Hugh Ross Williamson, Centaur, Southern Illinois University Press, 1964), he says of the witches’ Sabbats:” At these magical assemblies, the witches never faile to dance; and in their danse they sing these words, Har, har, dive divell, danse here dance here, plaoe here plaie here, Sabbath, sabbath. And whiles they sing and danse, everie one hath a broom in hir hand, and holdeth it up aloft.” He was quoting from the descriptions of witch rites given by a French demonologist, Jean Bodin. It appears from the other old description that witches also performed a kind of jumping dance, riding on staffs; and if broomsticks were used for this purpose, too, it is easy to see how this dance, combined with the witches’ experience of wild visions and dreams of flying while in a stage of magical trance, gave rise to the popular picture of broomstick-rising witches in flight through the air.

When broomsticks or besoms began to be made of more durable materials than the broom plant, the usual combination of woods for them was birch twigs for the brush, and ashen stake for the handle, and osier willow for the binding. However, in the Wyre Forest area of Worcestershire, the traditional woods are oak twigs for the sprays, which is the makers’ term for the broom part; hazel for the staff; and birch for the binding. All of these trees are full of magical meanings of their own, and feature in the old Druidic tree alphabets of Ancient Britain. The ash is a sacred and magical tree; the oak is the king of the woods; the hazel is the tree of wisdom; the willow is a tree of moon-magic; and the birch is a symbol of purification.

More Broomlore There are many beliefs based on the Broom as it made its genesis from medicine staff to symbol of Rebirth. The wedding broom represents a joining of souls working together as they jump over the Broom into their new life together. When a bride and groom moved into a new house, a new broom was be used to sweep a little dust into the door. Then this swept dust was placed onto the hearthstone to retain blessings.

Here is some of the folklore surrounding the Broom:

1) Never step over a broom laying on the floor, if you do & are unmarried you will stay that way.

2) When moving into a new home, a loaf of bread & a new broom should be sent in first for good luck.

3) It is bad luck to take a broom across the water.

4) Never lean a broom against a bed.

5) To keep a ghost out, lean a broom against the door jam.

6) To drop a broom means the company is coming.

7) To give away a used broom is bad luck.

8) A broom should never be used to sweep dust out of the front door because it sweeps the luck out with it.

9) Never sweep a house at night. It is an insult to the faeries & the spirits of the dead.

10) A broom standing outside the front door says that the lady of the house is away & the men of the house are at liberty to entertain guests. Even MORE Broom Lore……

BROOM LORE:

A broom dropping in front of the door means company before the day is over.

Always pick up, for luck, a broom that is lying on the floor or ground.

Always sweep dirt out the back door or you will sweep away your best friend.

Bad luck will befall you all year, if you sweep on New Year’s Day.

Burn up the rubbish when you sweep on New Year’s Day and you will have money throughout the new year.

Carry a broom under your arm for luck.

Carrying a broom over your shoulder will give you bad luck.

Do not sweep immediately after the departure of a guest or you will sweep him bad luck.

Dropping a broom while sweeping is the sign of a new carpet.

Hitting someone with a broom means that he will go to jail before a week has passed.

If a broom falls as you are passing it, you will have bad luck.

If a broom falls in front of you and you step on it before picking it up, you will have a “bed of sickness.”

If dirt is swept out a door before sunrise, you may expect bad luck.

If dirt is swept out of the house on Friday, the house will burn.

If someone comes in to see you and you pick up a broom and go to sweeping in front of them, that is the sign they are not wanted and you want them to go home.

If you go to someone’s house and have to step over a broom, it shows that the mistress of that household is an untidy housekeeper.

If you hand a broom through a window to someone, you may expect bad luck.

If you hit a person with a broom just before he starts “uptown,” he will have trouble before returning.

If you let a broom fall and do not step back over it immediately, someone dirtier than you will come.

If you must borrow a broom, take it without the owner’s knowledge, and you will not have bad luck.

If you must sweep on New Year’s Day, you can avert bad luck by not taking up the dirt and leaving it in a pile on the floor.

If you must sweep your kitchen after sunset, you can avert bad luck by burning the dirt.

If you step over a broom you will be arrested.

If you sweep after dark/ You will bring sorrow to your heart.

If you sweep after dark, you will sweep out the money made that day.

If you sweep in front of someone, you are sweeping them off the earth.

If you sweep under someone while he is sitting on a chair, you are giving him bad luck.

It causes bad luck to sweep a porch after dark.

It is a sign of good luck to have a broom drop in front of you.

It is a sign of misfortune, to lay a broom on the bed.

It is unlucky to borrow a broom.

It is unlucky to sweep dirt out a door at any time. Pick up the dirt and carry it outdoors for luck.

It is unlucky to sweep on Monday.

It means bad luck when a broom falls across the derail

It signifies bad luck, if you sweep under a bed on which someone is lying.

It signifies bad luck, to carry a broom through the house from the front door to the back door.

Keep the corners of your broom square or even for luck.

Lean a broom against a bed and you will be unlucky.

Lending a broom will cause you bad luck.

Let the broom rest with the straws up and you will be lucky.

Letting the sweeping edge of a broom wear off at the two corners will bring you bad luck.

Never burn up a broom; it will bring you bad luck.

Never sweep dirt out the front door; it will bring you bad luck.

Never sweep the kitchen after supper, whether daylight or dark, or you will sweep out all your money.

Never sweep your kitchen early in the morning before sunrise, or you will be unlucky.

Stand a broom on its handle and you will always be poor.

Step over a broom and you will break your mother’s back.

Stepping over a broom is a sign of slovenliness.

Stepping over a broom will bring sorrow to your heart.

Stumbling over a brook handle will bring you good luck.

Sweep after dark and you will never be rich.

Sweep dirt out of the house on Friday and it will cause you bad luck.

Sweep on the third day after Easter and you will have bugs in the house.

Sweep the top of a bed and you will have bad luck.

Sweep under a person’s feet while he is sitting in a chair and he will not grow any more.

Sweeping after dark means you will lose a friend.

Sweeping dirt over a doorstep after six o’clock in the evening will bring bad luck.

Sweeping on New Year’s Day means that you will sweep out the money made during the coming year.

Sweeping under chair upon which someone is sitting will make you unlucky.

The child who steps over a broom will get a whipping.

The one who is hit by a broom will soon be arrested.

The person under whose feet you sweep will always be poor.

The person who is hit on the top of the head with a broom will be arrested.

To avert bad luck after you have walked over a fallen broom, step backward across the broom.

To brush your boot with the broom while your are sweeping will give you bad luck for a week.

To have good luck, place the broom on its handle in a corner.

To set a broom in the corner with the brush up shows that you are an untidy housekeeper.

To step over a broom will start a quarrel in the house.

To sweep after dark will bring trouble to the house.

To sweep dirt out the door is a sign of a slovenly housekeeper.

Touching anyone with a broom while you are sweeping causes bad luck.

Walking over a fallen broom will cause you bad luck.

When a broom falls across the door, it indicates that you will walk on the strange ground.

When a small child takes a broom and begins to sweep, the company is coming.

When someone is hit with a broom, he should spit on the broom and take ten steps backwards so he will neither have bad luck or be arrested.

When you sweep after dark, you sweep away your friends and let enemies in.

You sweep away your best friend by sweeping after dark.

You will be unlucky if you do not pick up a fallen broom at once.

Your luck will be swept away, if you sweep your kitchen after sunset.

https://goodwitcheshomestead.com/2018/12/30/sacred-spiritual-nature/