#that 50 year old absentee father

[floating--goblin]

the fact that when he got with sister imperator, nihil already had a son that was (at least) in his 20s and two others who were ~10 and she STILL got with him and he STILL fumbled that so bad. truly only the most mediocre succeed in life

[qqueenofhades]

I hope this doesn’t sound too ignorant, but as a non-American (South African here!), everyone is saying that this election is very incredible and different than others? Something about how the democrats have managed to hang on to power and it’s very close? What makes that so unique, and why is it so surprising that the democrats still (likely) have the senate? Shouldn’t you have a democratic congress because you have a democratic president? Here we do have a bunch of different parties, we don’t really have to main ones that always win, except the same corrupt party keeps getting elected again and again because it’s a very unfair system. While I do personally view Nelson Mandela as a hero to our country, his party has fallen so far from his beliefs and everyone is still so obsessed with him, and that seems to be much the case with America and the founding fathers, if I’m not mistaken?

I’m really sorry and I hope this doesn’t come across as sarcastic or dumb, I just don’t fully understand American politics and am a bit confused about your elections, and are they genuinely as bad and messed up as ours? Thank you so much!

Oh Jesus. Asking for a beginner-level crash course on American politics is a bit like asking for a beginner-level crash course on nuclear physics, but I'll do my best. Short answer: yes, American elections are fucked up to such a cosmic degree that it's truly astonishing that they still work at all, and yes, as many of my recent posts have discussed, it's shocking that the midterms went as well for the Democrats as they did. Because:

There are 50 states. Every single state has a considerable degree of autonomy over their own voting laws, voter eligibility, whether voters can register online, vote absentee, etc etc. Thus, the states run by Republicans have been rushing to enact as many restrictive voting laws as possible, meaning that this impacts who is able to actually cast a ballot (and indeed, have that ballot counted).

Each state is also very often "gerrymandered," aka divided into districts where one party has a better chance of winning than the other. Republicans, because they suck, also draw districts that erase or severely reduce Black voting power. For example, if you have District 1 that is 80% Black and therefore something like 80% Democratic, you cut little bits off the edges and put those in red districts, so you turn one safe-Democratic seat into multiple swing or Republican-leaning seats. It sucks.

The Supreme Court, after Trump got three picks with lifetime appointments, has 6 conservatives and 3 liberals, which means that if the conservatives vote as a bloc (as they often do), they can overrule pretty much anything they please (as long as it is a pending case before them). This has been especially notable with voting-rights cases this cycle, and was also the reason that Roe vs. Wade (the right to an abortion in all 50 states) was overturned this summer, capping 50 years of Republican efforts to do just that.

Every election, with the big exception of one, is won the old-fashioned way (whoever gets the most votes wins). The exception is the presidential election. There, it doesn't matter if you win the popular vote, as long as you win the Electoral College. Because of racism, each state in America has a certain number of electoral votes that reflect its population. California, with 40 million people, has 55 electoral votes; Wyoming, with 300,000, has 3. (And yet, they both also get two senators! This seems fair). Therefore, winning the popular vote in blue California is more important than winning the popular vote in red Wyoming.

This is also where we get the term "swing states." These states don't consistently vote Republican or Democratic, so whoever can win those has a better chance of winning the presidency. For example, Pennsylvania voted for Trump (red) in 2016 and for Biden (blue) in 2020, by relatively small margins each time. Yes, the Electoral College is a horrible system and we all know it. It's why Trump became president in 2016 despite losing the nationwide popular vote; he eked out just enough votes in key states to win the Electoral College (you need 270 electoral college votes to win; there are 538 up for grabs overall).

Likewise, the midterm elections are, almost without exception since 1934, used to punish the incumbent president's party for the perceived fuckups of the last two years. So if the president is Republican, the midterms lean Democratic; if the president is Democratic, the midterms lean Republican. The reason that everyone is so surprised at the Democrats doing well is because of 80+ years of historical precedent dictating that they would take a beating. But because Republicans have gotten so crazy, people shied away from voting for them. The Republicans were projected to win up to 5 Senate seats and up to 40+ House seats. As of this writing, they have won... zero and 8, or thereabouts, and it's still not clear who will secure 218 of the 435 seats in the House, which is the amount needed for a majority. Some of those House wins are also offset by the Democrats winning Republican seats back from them, hence why overall control is still up in the air.

So in other words, Congress is LESS likely to be Democratic when the president is Democratic, rather than the same party.

Trump's big thing after he lost in 2020 was to yell to the high heavens about imagined "voter fraud," which was clearly the only reason he could possibly have lost. This is why he tried to launch a coup and sent the January 6 mob to attack the Capitol during Congress's certification of the 2020 election results.

There are probably a ton of other factors I am forgetting, but yes, once again: I cannot possibly emphasize enough what a shitshow it is, and the fact that despite all of the above, the Democrats are guaranteed to keep the Senate and are still in the running for House control. Even if the Republicans do win the House, it will be by such a tiny margin that they will have trouble doing anything except wasting everyone's time with pointless revenge investigations. Democrats will still control the Senate and the Presidency until 2024, and thus can block House GOP nonsense and continue to confirm judges, which is very important after the number of unqualified right-wing hacks that Trump stuffed onto the bench with lifetime appointments.

[psybrepunk]

I guess it's the daddy issues/absentee father or something but my favorite fucking trope in media is brusque, perhaps harsh man who just suddenly decides This young girl is my daughter now. Some amazing examples:

Geralt and Ciri (The Witcher series)

Kiryu and Haruka (Yakuza series)

The Hound and Arya Stark (GOT TV show)

Clavain and Felka (Revelation Space novels)

Joel and Ellie (The Last of Us)

Not the exact same trope but kudos to The Mandalorian for Din Djarin being like This is my 50-year-old baby now and I would literally die for him.

[invisibleanonymousmonsters]

Absentee

Character: Jason Todd x Fem!Reader

Summary: When Y/N fell in love with Jason Todd, she didn’t realize the normalcy she lost would become such a problem in their relationship. And she didn’t know how much pain it would cause to hide her boyfriend’s secrets. 

Word Count: 4,600 – One Shot

A/N: This is probably a really personal story. And you all might hate it or not relate to it. But oh well...

Y/N had her music playing in her headphones just quietly enough so she could hear them announce when her plane was boarding.

Between corporate holidays and what was left of her vacation days for the year, she was able to go home for a week and a half.

Only, she was hoping that this year she wouldn’t be going home alone.

But when Jason got sucked into a case two weeks before their flight back to her hometown, she knew there was no way he’d be accompanying her.  

“I’m so sorry, Y/N. I just–“ Jason had tried to tell her when she realized they weren’t going to be spending the holidays together.

“You don’t have to apologize. There are more important things right now than meeting my crazy family,” Y/N laughed lightly. “But they’ll be bummed.”

Jason still looked so down guiltily. He knew that Y/N had been downplaying how excited she was for her family to meet him.

Yeah, Y/N was upset, but her family was even more upset. Being in a different part of the country and them never putting in the effort to visit her, they had yet to meet Jason. Even when the two of them had been dating for 10 months.

Y/N had met all of Jason’s brothers, along with Bruce and Alfred. It had all been against his will, his family strategically running into them or invading his apartment when they knew Y/N would be there. Jason acted annoyed by it, but Y/N knew he was happy for her to meet them and without him having to act like he cared.

But Jason had only ever waved on FaceTime to her family or sometimes answered calls from them when Y/N left her phone next to him and went to another room.

It wasn’t like Y/N needed her family’s approval. She knew what she wanted and what was best for her. Their opinions didn’t hold as much weight with her as they thought.

But Y/N also had never introduced her family to a boyfriend before. Things either fizzled out before then or the relationship was so casual that the thought of even mentioning a boy-toy’s name in passing to her family made her want to jump out a window.

———

“So Jason couldn’t get out of work last minute?” Y/N’s older sister, Kate, asked as they drove to her house after picking her up from arrivals.

And so it began.

“No,” Y/N answered. “His boss is sort of an asshole. He’s a workaholic and can’t fathom why anyone else would ever be anything different.”

The truth was that Jason didn’t really have a job. When it came to income, Jason was resourceful. He was still a hitman for hire. But once the killing part of that job stopped – which was long before Y/N ever met him – it didn’t rake in as much money. Most of his money was either stolen from criminals or he would work odd jobs here and there.

However, the lie Jason and Y/N had agreed on was that he was a mechanic. And Jason did know absolutely everything there was to know about cars and motorcycles. He’d even promised Y/N that if she ever decided she wanted him to drop the vigilante life, he would do just that and start his own mechanic shop. But Y/N knew better than to ever ask that of him.

“Cars don’t stop breaking – even around the holidays,” Y/N joked darkly.

“Mhmm,” her sister answered.

Y/N already knew what her family thought of her boyfriend’s “job”: it wasn’t good enough for them.

The only reason they let it slide was because they knew Bruce Wayne was his adoptive father. Therefore they interpreted Jason’s ‘lack of ambition’ as his personal rebellion against his privilege and upbringing.

“Mom said he sent flowers and a bottle of wine to the house today and apologized for not being able to make it,” Kate added.

Y/N quickly looked at her in surprise.

“So I’m guessing from your reaction that it wasn’t your idea,” Kate teased.

“No,” Y/N shook her head. “He didn’t even tell me he did that.”

That was a Bruce Wayne move for sure. It didn’t matter that Jason had a rocky relationship with him, the Wayne charm and manners were deceivingly contagious.

————

Later that night, when everyone was in bed and Y/N decided to finally unpack. And she was surprised to find two of Jason’s t-shirts hidden in her bag. They were her favorites of his, always stealing them. Mostly she wore them to lounge around the apartment or to wear to bed. But her favoritism was in no way hidden.

Jason must’ve snuck them in her bag while she wasn’t looking.

Y/N smiled as she grabbed one of the shirts and raised it to her nose. It still smelled like him.

It was enough to make her feel guilty for not having called him yet. She’d texted him that she landed, but other than that, she’d been pretty silent.

She grabbed her cell and dialed.

“Hey, you.”

He always answered her calls as if they made his day, even if she’d called him multiple times that day already. His reaction to her calls never failed to make Y/N smile.

“I didn’t really expect you to pick up,” Y/N admitted.

“Always got time for you,” he answered lightly.

But then she heard background noise: wind blowing, distant sirens, people shouting at each other nearby.

Jason was on patrol. Or maybe he was doing some recon. 

But Y/N knew not to ask. 

“I see some of your clothes made the trip,” Y/N commented through a smile. Jason could hear the smile in her voice. “Those t-shirts have a mind of their own…”

“And my mom thought the flowers and card were sweet,” she added.

“I might not have met her yet, but I know that’s not gonna be enough to win her over,” Jason answered darkly.

Y/N didn’t say anything, because they both knew he was right.

“Flight was fine?” Jason asked, changing the subject.

“Mhmm.”

“I miss you.”

Y/N shook her head and laughed. “No, you don’t. I’ve been gone for like 12 hours.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

She rolled her eyes. “Always the romantic.”

More sirens could be heard. They sounded closer this time. “Are you being careful?” All playfulness had disappeared from her voice.

“Of course.”

Y/N sighed. “Jason, I’m serious. Please, be safe.”

“I know. I know. Don’t worry about me.”

“You know that’s not gonna happen, J.”

He ignored her comment. “I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

————————

To say Y/N’s time at home was rough…was an understatement.

If Y/N wasn’t being asked a million questions about Jason, she was being interrogated for why he wasn’t there. And if Jason wasn’t the subject of the conversation, people acted like she was single – some even talking about setting her up.

Y/N realized she preferred the former.

Every year, her family threw a giant party.

And for the past five years, Y/N had always been the only one that was single. All of her siblings, all of her cousins, all of their family friends, all of their neighbors…every single one of them had a significant other during those years. 

Everyone...except her. Now, this year, all of them had kids or were expecting.

It was exhausting. 

Sometimes Y/N felt like they were all robots programmed to do the exact same things at the exact same time –  no original thought to be had.

Y/N would be lying if she didn’t spend most of the party wishing Jason was at her side. He would make fun of awkward situations with her. And he would stick up for her when her family teased her a little too much.

The other thing Y/N wasn’t prepared for was unintentionally studying  her family’s boyfriends or husbands. She felt like she was watching everyone’s relationships through a different lens now that she herself had her own. And to put it as kindly as possible…she was not impressed.

Y/N noticed how none of the men offered to help in the kitchen, instead deciding to sit on the couch and watch football and scream at the television. Or how when her cousin handed her son to her husband, and he acted like he didn’t even know how to hold the one year old. And later, when his diaper needed to be changed, he handed him back to his wife as if he had no idea how to do it himself.

Yet her family was stuck on Jason not being able to visit or that he was a mechanic.

What did someone’s job matter if they treated her like she was their world and he the best thing to ever happen to her?

If Jason were here, he would be in the kitchen cooking. And if they had a kid, it would be a 50/50 job – not a burden only Y/N had to bare. He would try to get to know everyone because he would want to know the people who raised the woman he loved. He’d make sure to check in on Y/N every once in awhile, making sure she didn’t need anything. 

Thinking about it all made Y/N miss Jason even more.

Needing to get some air, she decided to go outside and let the winter chill refresh her. It had been getting too hot in the house.

Y/N pulled her phone out of her back pocket and tapped Jason’s name.

“Hey, you.”

“Hi,” she sighed.

Just hearing his voice made her feel a bit better and tension left her body.

“What’s wrong?” Jason quickly asked.

“Nothing. Just…wanted to check in.”

For a second, she was going to explain that she had the sudden realization that all the men connected to her family were trash. And witnessing it was making her miss him more. But she didn’t really want to waste her breath and she figured she’d just come off dramatic more than sincere.

“Are you at your apartment?” She asked quickly.

“Yeah, I’m gonna leave for patrol in a bit…”

Then Y/N’s mind suddenly thought, ‘Fuck it.’

“Jason?”

“Yeah, kid?”

“If you were here…” She began softly.

“Mhmm,” he encouraged.

“What would you be doing?”

Jason was a bit confused by the question for a second. But he slowly got what she was asking.

“Well,” he took in a shallow breath. “I would’ve stolen Alfred’s famous chocolate chip cookie recipe and whipped up those bad boys to bring over. And I’d pretend to care about football with your dad.”

That made Y/N laugh.

“I’d help your mom in the kitchen, even when she pretended not to want it.”

“Really laying it on thick, huh?”

But Y/N knew he was right. Jason was the cook between the two of them – and a good one, too. He also was a helper. He couldn’t sit back and watch someone do something while he did nothing. No matter how big or small.

“Shhh,” Jason reprimanded and then continued. “But most importantly, I’d try to get as many embarrassing stories about you as I possibly could.”

“Well, thank goodness you’re not here then,” she teased with a roll of her eyes.

Jason was quiet a second before he asked, “Wanna tell me what’s wrong now?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Just miss you.”

“I miss you, too.”

“All my family’s boyfriends and husbands are losers. And I guess I’m just now realizing it.”

“Ahh,” Jason noted.

Now he really knew why she’d asked her question.

“It’s snowing here,” he told her as he looked out the window. “It’s almost making Gotham look pretty.”

“Are you going to the manor for Christmas?”

“Probably not,” Jason answered.

“Jason,” she grumbled. “What are you going to do instead? Sit in your apartment alone?”

“I’m gonna patrol. Crime doesn’t take holidays, Y/N.”

“Cheesy,” she pointed out. “Please be with your family, Jason. I don’t want you to be alone. OK?”

“I’ll think about it.”

Y/N knew that was as good as it was going to get.

Then she felt something on her cheek and she looked up. “Hey, it just started snowing here, too…” She told him with her head tilted back.

“I love you,” he sighed.

“I love you, too. Be careful tonight, Jason.”

Y/N gave herself a few more moments outside before returning to the party.

When she walked back inside, she immediately heard her name. But no one was calling to her. 

She was being talked about. 

She recognized her mom and sister’s voices, and then a couple of her aunts. They were talking around the corner, completely unaware that Y/N was in hearing distance.

So Y/N couldn’t help but linger.

“She says he works a lot. Every time I facetime her, he’s never there,” her sister Kate told the women. “I wouldn’t even really know what he looked like if it weren’t for her photos that she’s sent me. He doesn’t have any social media.”

“I just can’t believe he couldn’t get work off. Around the holidays?” Her mom added in utter disbelief. “Sounds like it won’t be surprising when she finds out he’s been unfaithful,” one her aunts commented.

The group hummed in agreement, but also disappointment. 

“He doesn’t even live in Metropolis. He lives in Gotham,” her mother supplied, only further backing the idea that Jason wasn’t committed. “God knows why. But I hate that Y/N is constantly going there. No good news comes from that city.”

Y/N clenched her teeth in anger.

If only they knew the truth about Jason. 

He was a hero and risked his life every night for an entire city – a city that had done nothing but hurt him. And he was 20 times the man than any of the men in their family.

She just wanted to scream at them for being so judgmental about a person they’d never even met.

But she couldn’t.

So Y/N stormed up to her childhood bedroom and decided she had enough of the party.

She shouldn’t have come home for the holidays. She would’ve rather waited for Jason to get back from his Red Hood work than listen to her family misjudge the first man she ever truly loved and wanted to share with them.

————————

Y/N was so tired when she got off the plane.

She felt like a zombie as she walked to baggage claim to grab her duffle.

What she wasn’t expecting was to find her boyfriend waiting for her in arrivals.

Y/N had told him she would just get a car.

But Jason seemed to have other ideas.

Y/N’s entire face brightened at the sight of him.

She practically ran to him and jumped into his arms.

Jason chuckled at her enthusiasm.

“What are you doing here?” She asked, her words muffled by his body.

“I thought I’d surprise you,” Jason said through a smile before he kissed her head.

Y/N didn’t respond, just held him tightly.

“Come on. Let’s get your bag and head home,” he finally told her.

—

“So, how was it?” Jason asked once they got into his car. Y/N shrugged, “It was fine.”

Her lack of details and curt response was enough warning for Jason to realize things were not totally fine between them.

He didn’t bother asking for more details during the car ride home. Instead, he answered all her questions about what he had been up to, how the case was going, if his family was alright.

Once they got back to Y/N’s apartment in Metropolis, the grace period seemed to be over.

Y/N had grown quiet as she moved around her apartment, unpacking and putting all her things away.

Jason walked into her bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed as she folded clean clothes. “This might be a shot in the dark. But I can’t help but feel that you’re not happy with me,” he finally pointed out.

She didn’t answer or look at him, just kept folding.

“Did something happen while you were at home?” Jason pushed.

She still didn’t answer. So Jason reached for her hands, holding them gently.

“Hey, talk to me. What’s going on?”

“I just didn’t expect how hard it was going to be…” she finally whispered with a bowed head.

“What would be?”

“Just going home without you,” she explained.

“Did something happening?”

“I mean, kinda? Not really. They just…” she hesitated. Did she really want to confess all of this to him? She knew it would only hurt him. "They think you’re a bad boyfriend.”

Jason just nodded slowly.

He should’ve seen this coming. Of course her family didn’t think he was good enough. How could they think anything different?

“I’m just…fucking frustrated,” Y/n groaned. “I knew what I was getting into when you told me about your other life and who you really were. I was willing to keep your secret and protect it. I just never thought about how hard it would be keeping it from my family.”

She shook her head. “They think you’re not committed or something. And that…that you’re probably cheating on me.”

The idea of him ever doing that her made Jason sick to his stomach.

“I’m sorry,” Jason mumbled.

“What?” Y/N gasped. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“But I have,” he argued. “I put you in this position.”

“No, I did. I did when I fell in love with you,” she clarified.

“But I don’t want you lying to the people you love.”

“I’m not telling you this because I’m mad at you or blame you, Jason. I’m trying to tell you why I’m frustrated.”

She rubbed her face. “I just want them to know what an amazing person you are...and how brave and selfless. How you take care of me and love me and…and protect me.” Her eyes began to water. “They’re never gonna know the real you…even when they do meet you. And I fucking hate it.”

“So what if you told them?” Jason offered.

Her eyes widened at that. “Jason…”

“I’m serious. What if you told them?”

She thought about it. But she already knew the answer.

“It wouldn’t do any good. If I told them, then they’d be worried about me. Worried that your other life was putting me in danger. Worried that I would get pulled into it.”

Jason knew she was right.

Her family probably preferred an absentee boyfriend over a vigilante.

“But I see how the shitty men that have joined my family are. And you’re nothing like them. You’re so much better. And they’ll never even know.”

“Come here,” Jason muttered before he pulled her to him.

He let her body sink into his as he held her.

“I’ll do anything you want,” he whispered as he rubbed her back. “I just want you to be happy.”

“I always wondered what it would be like to finally been in a relationship – to just have someone on my team no matter what. I went to all those family gatherings thinking I’d never have it. And once I did, once I found you…” Her thoughts died out. “I just never expected it to be this way.”

“Do you regret it?” Jason asked as he pulled away to look in her eyes.

Her brow furrowed. “Regret what?”

“Being with me. Falling in love with me.”

Her heart broke at the question. “Oh, Jason. Of course not. Never.”

“What if I stopped?” He asked.

“No. I would never ask that of you,” she quickly shot down.

“I’d do it for you,” he tried to argue.

“I know you would. But I’m not asking. Because I know what it would do to you. Every time you’d see something in the news, you’d hate yourself. Because you would convince yourself that you could’ve stopped it. And maybe you would be right.” She took in a deep breath. “Red Hood isn’t just something you do. He’s a part of you. And even though I worry about you constantly, I’m never gonna tell you to stop.”

Jason took his time in reading her face.

“OK?” She pushed.

He nodded.

Then he embraced her once again.

“I’m sorry you have to keep my secrets,” he breathed into her hair.

————————————

Y/N walked into Jason’s apartment.

It was a Friday night and they agreed to have her come to his place this weekend.

Jason was always weary of her coming to Gotham, preferring her to stay in the safety of Metropolis.

He knew they couldn’t do the distance forever, and eventually they’d move into together. But he wasn’t ready to leave Gotham yet. And he didn’t want Y/N to lowering herself to such a city.

“J!” Y/N called when she walked in.

He had given her keys to his apartment quite early in their relationship, and told her she was welcome at his place any time. However, he wasn’t a fan of her getting there after dark. Gotham was Gotham, and he didn’t like her wandering around the city by herself just in order to give him a surprise visit.

An envelope on Jason’s kitchen counter caught her attention.

She nosily looked at it and saw that they were plane tickets to her hometown with both of their names on each of them.  

She heard Jason walk up behind her. “What’s this?”

“A surprise,” he shrugged.

“What do you mean?” She laughed.

“We’re gonna visit your family,” he explained casually. “I called your mom and sister to find a weekend that worked.”

Y/N was shocked to silence.

“I know I fucked up when I couldn’t go with you during the holidays. I know this isn’t gonna solve everything. But I figured…it’s start.” Before he could say more, Y/N threw her arms around him.

————

Jason Todd knew how to throw on the charm. And no matter how thick he laid it on, it always felt sincere.

Y/N smiled as she watched her boyfriend interacting with her family.

He knew so much about each of them already, that he knew exactly what to talk about with every one of them.

For their long-weekend visit, they had decided to stay with her sister.

Jason knew she would be the hardest to win over and was the most protective over Y/N. He made it his personal mission to befriend her and show her how much he loved her little sister.

Y/N never said so, but Jason knew how important it was to her that Kate approved of him.

However, Jason hadn’t been able to have a conversation alone with her all weekend.

Until their last morning there.

Y/N was still sleeping when Jason had made his way to the kitchen.

He figured he could make Kate and her husband breakfast after housing them for a long weekend. And he made sure to start a pot of coffee while he was at it.

Halfway through making his specialty waffles, Kate walked into the kitchen rubbing her eyes.

“Oh, hi,” she greeted, clearly surprised to find Jason cooking in her kitchen.

“Morning,” Jason greeted.

“This is a surprise,” she said as she looked around the kitchen.

“There’s coffee if you want some.”

“T-Thanks…” she managed to mutter. “Do you need some help?”

“Nope. I got it. You just relax.”

Kate seemed to be unsure of how to behave when she was alone with her little sister’s boyfriend, and eventually sat on the kitchen stool with her coffee.

“Do you cook a lot?” She finally broke the silence with her question.

“I enjoy it,” he answered with a shrug. “I figured it’s the least I can do for you guys putting us up.”

“That’s very sweet of you, Jason.”

He continued cooking.

Kate figured this was her opportunity to get to know Jason – and not just through Y/N’s eyes. So, she started asking him question after question, and he seemed happy to answer them. Kate was surprised to find out about Jason’s traumatic childhood, making him realize that Y/N must’ve only shared his relation to Bruce Wayne and nothing more about his life before becoming an adopted Wayne.

Jason wasn’t surprised Y/N kept that part of his life to herself. She was protective of him that way. She always felt like his past was his story to tell, not hers.

“I know missing the holidays didn’t leave the best impression,” Jason told her after they’d been talking for awhile.

“You really mean a lot to Y/N. And your opinion matters more to her than you might think,” he added as he crossed his arms.

Kate seemed a little taken aback by how unafraid he was of confrontation.

He seemed more mature for his age – maybe for hers, even.

“I know I’m not going to win any of you over from just a single trip,” Jason continued. “But I’m going to work my ass off to make sure I get there.”

Kate smiled at that.

“I love her,” he told her quietly, but with determination. “She’s…Well, she’s the best thing to ever happen to me.”

Then he smirked. “And I’m not dumb enough to do anything to fuck things up with her.”

He took in a shallow breath. “I just…I just needed you to know that.”

Kate’s heart swelled from hearing her little sister’s boyfriend confessing his love for Y/N.

“Thank you for telling me that,” she whispered, trying to stop herself from crying. “I worry about her. And I hate that she’s so far away sometimes. I miss her.”

“She misses you, too,” Jason assured her.

“Thank you for taking care of her. I’m suddenly realizing you’re the only reason she’s eating anything that’s not out of a takeout container.”

Jason laughed. “I plead the fifth.”

Before any more could be said, Y/N walked into the kitchen as if she was sleep walking.

“Well, look who it is…” Jason teased.

Y/N walked to him silently, clearly wanting cuddles.

Jason chuckled at her, but gave her what she wanted. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. He had kept the PDA at an absolute minimum while he had been around Y/N’s family. But he couldn’t help it when Y/N was her sleepy and adorable self.

“You sleep OK?” He tried to whisper to her.

But Kate still heard it and pretended to look down at her phone.

Y/N nodded into his neck, making him chuckle at her more.

This was new for Kate, seeing her sister being loved and loving someone. Her instinct was to say it made her uncomfortable. But it was just something she wasn’t used to.

Soon Kate’s husband woke up and they all ate breakfast together.

And a few hours later, Y/N and Jason were packed and their was a Lyft was waiting outside to take them to the airport.

Jason hugged Kate and her husband and thanked them for hosting them. Then he grabbed Y/N’s bags and gave her a moment alone with her sister as he took their stuff to the car.

“I think I owe the two of you an apology…” Kate told her little sister.

“You do?”

“I think I judged him a bit too much before really giving him a chance.”

Y/N winced, but nodded. “Yeah, you did, actually.”

“He really loves you.”

Y/N smiled. “He does.”

“I just want you to be happy, you know that right?”

“I know. But sometimes you think that what makes you happy is what would make me happy. Our lives are different. And we want different things. Just because my relationship looks different than yours doesn’t mean it’s worse in some way.”

Kate nodded sadly, knowing her sister was right. “I get that now.”

-----------

A/N: I was inspired to write this when I thought about how my own family would react to me having a boyfriend like Jason Todd: a man who was secretly a vigilante and had a past too hard for anyone to ever imagine. Hopefully, other people can relate to this and it wasn’t too personal. 😬

Let me know what you thought!!!

[baeddel]

discussion on this post, @horatiovonbecker asks @otatma their opinion about extended families as an alternative to the nuclear family. @otatma replies that it is “a good thing to strive for” but “depends hugely on the family being nontoxic.” true enough!

as it’s my activity feed and they can’t stop me i’ll butt into the conversation. i grew up in an extended family. i lived with my mother and my maternal grandparents, and my aunt would live with us some days out of the week. all of this was accomplished in a 2-bedroom bungalow. i had very little privacy and i hated it; when i was 15 i ran away. my mother pleaded with the council and we managed to secure a terraced house in a socialized housing estate with a bedroom for each of us, plus a spare room (almost unthinkable today). we live near our grandparents and they visit every day.

when i was 16 i met my absentee father. he had been homeless in England and imprisoned in Scotland and when he returned to Ireland that year i found him living in a rhizomatic extended family scenario spanning four generations and three households. they were always being chased out by landlords or paramilitaries and relocating and, in any case, one could never predict who would be living in which house at any time; children would live with grandparents one month, parents the next, aunts and uncles the next, and so on. even husbands and wives did not always share a home.

[long post: 3k words, on the historical development of family structure in Ireland and England and what it means for monogamy, the family and anarchy]

based on this i believed the extended family to be an Irish institution. this is an assumption i shared with most sociologists and historians until about the 1990s (Seward et. al., 2005, pg. 2). the standard narrative was that, world-over, families historically lived in large, three-generation households and that thanks to the industrial revolution this was deteriorating. “Max Weber himself implies in his magisterial way that the rise of capitalist organisation was associated with 'the household community shrinking' ” (Laslett, 1974, pg. 7). Ireland was traditionally conceived of as an exception to this process of deterioration as, on this account, the extended family remained dominant while the rest of the world was going nuclear. it turns out to be the reverse in both cases: the extended family was never the dominant family structure anywhere (ibid. pg. 2-3; Vann 1974, pg. 3-4), except for in Ireland beginning in the 19th century, where over the course of the 20th century it did deteriorate (Laslett, 1974 pg. 34; Gibbon & Curtin, 1978).

the reason for this is embarassingly obvious once you realize it. the fact is that not all families in a society can be extended families. if all children remain in the family home along with their children into perpetuity this house will soon have the population of a small town. this is actually the origin of society proposed by Filmer in Patriarcha (1680), where parental authority becomes the “fountain of all Regal Authority” as their progeny multiply, until humanity is scattered about in the Confusion of Tongues (pg. 11-15). without a Confusion of Tongues to interrupt the exponential increase (and millions, rather than thousands, of years to account for) we have to imagine another sort of family structure. the 19th century sociologist Frédéric Le Play proposed that a new family structure emerged out of ancient patriarchy which he called the Stem-Extended Family. on this account one son was selected to inherit and he remained at the family’s residence; the other siblings were dispersed (Gibbon & Curtin, 1978 pg. 2-3).

to the extent that this form of family organization did exist, it could not have been the dominant form. in a family with three sons, two of them would have to go and form nuclear families with their spouses. they might go on to build their own extended family, or they might not. in many societies the extended family was indeed considered “a good thing to strive for”, and this was the position adopted by the conservative Catholic Le Play, and later accepted by the Catholic Church, who lobbied for policy interventions that would stem the tide of nuclear proliferation in Ireland, particularly by limiting employment opportunities for women. For example, women were barred from civil service positions until 1973 (Seward et. al., 2005, pg. 7).

if this is the case, how could the extended family become the dominant form of family structure in Ireland in the 19th and early 20th centuries? the most significant factor was the reorganization of agriculture carried out by English colonial interests; after the infamous Potato Famine the population of Ireland almost halved (after already more than halving after Cromwell’s genocides), as well as the almost constant state of war that Ireland was submerged in (continuing into the 90s in the occupied North). in the aftermath it was necessary for families to consolidate (Seward et. al., 2005, pg. 3). on top of this, fertility was exceptionally low and emigration was exceptionally high (in the North it remains very high, especially among Catholics). as a result, more generations could live together, and children were more likely to leave the country than disperse elsewhere in Ireland (Seward et. al., 2005, pg. 14). throughout the 20th century, as industry and free secondary education were introduced to Ireland, more children began to move from country to town and nuclear families rapidly replaced extended ones  (Seward et. al., 2005, pg. 6).

my family tree more or less follows this narrative along. in the chaos following the Land War my great, great grandmother was the head of a large intergenerational family involving aunts and uncles, as well as an adopted street orphan. my great grandfather met a homeless woman possessing a child out of wedlock and fell in love with her; they moved to this town and rented a house while he sought work as a street sweeper, starting a new nuclear family. in the 40s my grandmother worked in factories until she married my grandfather, a sailor, and they began their own nuclear family in the same town, renting different little apartments until, thanks to the state of the housing market in the 80s, they purchased the modest accomodations aforementioned. by the 90s this arrangement threatened to become a new Stem-Extended Family (with my mother and i playing the role of inheriting sons), but it proved inoperable in the new context of the 21st century’s mechanized Ireland, and we spilled over into our own single-parent home. given that both me and my aunt are infertile, the maternal line terminates here.

does it follow that we ought to give in and admit that the nuclear family is the natural unit of human society, and that the extended family is possible only in the middle of an ongoing genocide? despite what we’ve just said, there doesn’t seem to be good evidence for this either. while Gibbon & Curtin characterized a debate where Laslett “advanced the iconoclastic [proposition] that there had been little essential historical change in family structure” (1978, pg. 3) this doesn’t seem to actually be Laslett’s position. Laslett argued that family size has not changed considerably throughout history, but on the very first page of his landmark Household and Family in Past Time (1970) he emphasizes that he is “not concerned with the family as a network of kinship” and instead defines his area of research in terms of “coresident domestic groups”, which might bear little relationship to kinship structures. in the past the household very frequently involved not just blood relatives but “lodgers, boarders and visitors” (Vann, 1974, pg. 5) as well as slaves and servants. Vann quotes Etienne Hélin's caution that “[a]rithmetic means, although they varied so little covered a whole series of different situations” and describes how post-industrial English households had twice the number of blood relatives per house as pre-industrial ones, but fewer lodgers, and thus about the same mean. the difference between historical and modern families might not be one of size but of an increasing emphasis on blood relations.

it may come as a surprise that, as a matter of fact, Old English has no word for family. they have a word for relatives in general (sibb), for tribes (cynn, the root of Modern English kin), but the basic social unit known to the Anglo-Saxons was the hiw (and its many compounds), which might be translated ‘household’ (or, indeed, ‘coresident domestic group’). who belonged to a hiw? it was somewhat nakedly a property relation. it was not only a man’s wife and children but also his servants, his slaves, as well as his animals (Stanley, 2008, pg. 1). the Textus Rofensus makes only one distinction between members of a household, that they be “slaves or free” (ibid. pg. 7). it could also refer to a monastic group, involving the whole cloister. Stanley notes (and it seems true to me) that there is a virtual absence of family relations in the corpus of Old English literature. in fact i cannot think of a single example, except perhaps for the monster Grendel and his mother. in the mournful Wife’s Lament and the passionate Wulf and Eadwacer the emphasis is on completely personal affections and seductions, and in any case both depict forbidden relationships outside of the hired.

correspondingly, we find that the average Anglo-Saxon home was a large one; typically they were a single room which measured about 50 square meters and “could have accomodated up to about a dozen or so people” (Hines, 2003, pg. 139). there is no reason to suppose that this was to accomodate several generations of blood relatives; the Anglo-Saxons had many, now very unfamilliar, relationships to populate their houses with. there was husband, wife, and concubine, along with their children; there was slave and hostage (Lavelle, 2006), including many orders of slaves with different status (such as the relatively respectable title of bryti, a sort of ‘head slave’); and indeed guest, visitor, boarder, and in the case of lords and aristocratic thegns, perhaps retainers. in Beowulf about thirty thegns sleep with their lord in Heorot, pulling aside the bench-planks and replacing them with straw beds at night (and when the Geats arrive they incorporate them as still more visitors). we know that at least some beds were placed in recesses in the walls and had curtains (Wright), perhaps to accomodate private intimacy between husband, wife and concubine or, indeed, guest, retainer, hostage, slave, or (why not?) animal. even when husband and wife are the only kin relatives in residence we would hesitate to call this arrangement a ‘nuclear family‘, or indeed an ‘extended family’ should it include a grandparent.

why has industrial modernization corresponded with the narrowing of the productive unit of society to the nuclear family (or, increasingly, the single parent family)? why have non-blood relations become so systematically excluded from the household? these seem like open questions to me. our own experience leads us to suspect conditions placed on family structure by the labour market together with city planning. until the 70s in Ireland, as we discussed, it was typical (and indeed lawful) for wives to stay at home and husbands to work; today very few workers could afford to keep their wives at home, even without children. houses are also too small to sustain extended families (nevermind concubines, hostages and the rest). old council houses such as ours have two bedrooms, one for the parents and the other for the children, along with a room for guests. today they do not include the guest room. there are, in addition, only two common rooms: a family room and a kitchen. it is not only difficult to accomodate three generations in these houses (the small guest bedroom is a poor substitue for the reitrement room of many 19th century Irish houses), it is difficult to accomodate even two generations. teenagers will already complain about sharing a bedroom, and one sibling might take up the guestroom. but we know of women with six, seven, as many as twelve children who live here. as adults they could fill at least three of such houses. all of this is possible only on the theory that as the children grow up they will move out into their own homes.

so. it is tempting to analyze the family situation abstractly, counting up the merits and dysfunctions of different systems and comparing them. for example, using Hirschman’s well-known framework of “exit” and “voice”, we might ask how effective the different forms of family structure are at responding to dysfunction (abuse, neglect and so on). the extended family, we might say, gives a child better access to “voice” - they can turn to parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and siblings for help. your mother might answer to your grandmother who is therefore well poised to address parenting issues, while your father can probably smoothe things over with your uncle if you quarrel. this means that you actually have to worry less about “toxicity” in the family compared to a nuclear family where parents aren’t accountable to anyone. however, in case of a family wide problem, you may have much less room to “exit” compared to a nuclear family, where exit is expected.

which one is better? you might reply that the extended family sounds better. it very well might be; but in reality you’ll never get to act on this exercise in judgement no matter how much striving you do. the nuclear family does not predominate because of the tyrannical thirst for the awesome power of parenthood (no matter how much we do find this thirst satisfied), but because of the given conditions of labour, housing, inheritance and so forth. this is why @horatiovonbecker can reply that all of this is “fair enough” but that they ”don't think it follows that discouraging monogamy will help.” no, surely it does not follow. especially now that we know that family size and kinship relations are not essential features of domestic organization. why was monogamy ever implicated in the first place?

now it seems like a curious slip of the tongue that when Goldman and Parsons disagree about monogamy they do so by attacking and defending the family by turns. but at that time monogamy was not so easily separable. free love was not really polyamory. it was this and also the abolition of both marriage and parenthood, as they understood both as property relations: “marriage slavery”, as even Parsons called it, and parental ownership of children. it was also the abolition of sex work, which they understood as the "public” expression of the subjugation of women which finds its “private” expression in marriage (Marx & Engels, 1848, pg. 24-25), ie. that women are dependent on men’s property and must acquire it by marriage or by sexual labour. as a corrolary they advocated for divorce (which became an immense priority to later Soviet planners who designed mobile, modular homes which would allow couples to separate and cohabit arbitrarily). it was also access to contraceptives and to abortion, as well as, believe it or not, very often the advocacy of eugenics (on the account that with abortion, contraceptives and the freedom to select partners, the previously blind and mute force of sexual reproduction would become domesticated to the rational will; see the anarchist journal Moses Harman founded in the 1880s, Lucifer the Light Bearer, later renamed the American Journal of Eugenics).

this constellation of problems no longer appear all together. after most women entered the conventional work force we could no longer as easily see monogamy and marriage as a relationship of slavery. as we say in the previous post, for many women the struggle is that they are too independent, saddled with childrearing and wage labour and housework with only the cold comfort of the day-care for assistance. for this reason sex work no longer appears as anything special compared to the other forms of labour women do out of necessity; “sex work is work” is the guiding catchphrase of militant sex workers. contraceptives and abortion still appear as a leading issue in feminist agitation but we no longer imagine they have the power to transform the everyday life of the household (nevermind summon forth the genetic Ubermensch). all together the abolition of marriage was replaced, as @birlinterrupted​ reminds us, with its extension: gay marriage. as of right now monogamy and marraige are still inseparable (i can now marry one of my girlfriends but not all three), but we think it need not always be. all together the program fragmented as its success was realized in pieces and none of them were actually irreparably fixed by the property relation (even if they did emerge from it).

Engels actually believed that a true equality of the sexes would, “according to all previous experience,” result in monogamous men and polyandrous women (Engels, 1884, pg. 43), but he admits that we can only conjecture about “the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production.” he finishes this thought with this remarkable little statement:

[W]hat will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman’s surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love, or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of the economic consequences. When these people are in the world, they will care precious little what anybody today thinks they ought to do; they will make their own practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of each individual – and that will be the end of it.

the straightforward correspondence between property, economic dependence and monogamy is still here, and which to us now seems insufficient to the problem (ie. the problem still persists after these given conditions are eliminated). broadening the question from questions of marriage, sexual access and economic dependence to the more general question of the organization of the household in general and the necessary social and economic conditions proper to it would clarify what’s really at stake in domestic oppression, the organization of reproduction, and so on. but it remains true that we can only remain sensitive to trends, to those of us organizing new experiments with the household, and where new opportunities might open as the present conditions dig their own grave.

Let’s give the final word to an old friend. What is the Family, Renzo Novatore? Why, nothing but “the denial of life, love and liberty.” Nevermind his entry for Love, which is a “deception of the flesh and damage to the spirit, disease of the soul, atrophy of the brain, weakening of the heart” and so forth.

[impalas-r-important]

Love of my Life - (5) Don't play games with me

Summary: Game night ends with a surprise

Warnings: N/A. Let me know if you find any that I should be listing!

A/N: I know Jody isn't a big player at this point in the show, and that Donna hasn't even been introduced. But I love them and we're just going to pretend for the sake of the story!

Series Masterlist

It was your turn to make treats for game night, so after you had showered and dressed, you pulled together ingredients for cookies and preheated the oven. Sam, Bobby and Nick were in the living room and Dean had just joined.

“Of course, you show up after we’ve cleaned the place.” Bobby remarked as Dean sat down. The boys all talked and laughed for a while, and you were glad to see that Dean was finally warming up to Nick. Once you put the cookies in the oven, you began to clean up.

“I’ll wash if you dry.” A deep voice offered. You looked up to find Nick holding out a dish towel to you, which you accepted.

“I’m glad to see Dean is finally speaking to you.” You gave Nick a side glance.

“Yeah, me too. He’s a really cool guy, I’d love to pick his brain sometime.”

The two of you worked like a well-oiled machine and were done with the dishes in no time. Dean couldn’t help but watch from the living room.

“Dean, are you even listening?” Sam snapped his fingers and frowned. He knew exactly what Dean was watching.

“Yeah, sorry. What’d you ask?” Dean blinked a few times, bringing himself back to reality.

“What games should we play tonight?” Sam opened up an old cupboard full of card and board games.

“I’m always down for a little poker.” Dean said as he grabbed a few decks of playing cards.

Jody filed in soon after and brought Donna with them, who had been visiting. You yelled hello from the kitchen and pulled the cookies from the oven.

“Smells amazing.” Nick leaned over the tray and inhaled, then reached for a cookie. You quickly slapped his hand.

“You gotta wait until the games start.” Nick gave you an exaggerated puppy dog look. “Sorry, not buying it. Sam’s been giving me that look for years. I’m immune to it.” Nick huffed in defeat and gave you a quick kiss on the forehead.

Jody couldn’t help but notice the new hunter who was strangely close to you. She approached Sam with a headful of questions. “Sam, did I just see some guy give Y/N a kiss on the forehead?”

“Yeah, that’s Nick. He’s been hanging around here for a few weeks while he heals up from saving Bobby’s bacon. He’s a decent guy, and he’s got it real bad for Y/N.”

“Uh huh…” Jody paused to think. “I guess what I’m really wondering is why hasn’t Dean ripped Nick’s throat out for even standing 5 feet from Y/N?”

“I’m sure he wants to. But Dean made his choice, and I reminded him that. I hated seeing Dean lead Y/N on like he might eventually get back with her someday.”

“But we all know Lisa’s just a temporary thing, right?” Jody looked to Sam for assurance, but he stayed silent. “Right?!” She emphasized.

“I don’t know anymore. I don’t think she’s right for Dean, but he hasn’t given any signs of leaving her. Maybe it’s permanent.” Sam took a drink of his beer.

“Oh.” Jody looked back over into the kitchen to see Nick leaning against the counter watching you with adoring eyes as you moved the cookies from the baking sheet to the cooling rack. “She does seem happy with him, and hell she deserves to be happy. But I gotta admit, Dean and Y/N seemed like they were perfect for each other. Like a match made in heaven.” She scanned the room to find Dean sitting on a chair in the corner next to Donna, trying his best to look invested in their conversation, but stealing occasional glances into the kitchen. Jody excused herself from her conversation with Sam and placed her hand on Dean’s arm, interrupting Donna mid-sentence. “Can I steal Dean for a sec?” Donna nodded and smiled, and Jody signaled for Dean to follow her out of the room. She sat down on the bottom step of the staircase. Dean followed suit.

“Everything ok, Jody?” Dean asked with concern in his eyes.

“I should be asking you that.”

Dean looked taken aback by her question and simply responded, “Well I’m just peachy,” before finishing off his beer.

“Dean, you don’t seem happy. Maybe it’s none of my business, but I think you and I know each other well enough that I can ask… What the hell are you doing?”

“What?” A confused Dean looked at Jody with questioning eyes.

“I’ll say it once and then drop it, because I’m not one to nag.” Jody took a deep breath and exhaled. “You belong with Y/N, Dean. I know it, you know it, everyone knows it. You were literally made for each other. The first time that I saw you with Y/N, I knew that she was the one for you. I saw it in your eyes, and how you spoke with her, how you touched her. It was straight out of a crappy romance novel.” Jody looked at Dean, who was avoiding eye contact. “So, I don’t know what’s going on between you two, or between Y/N and Nick, or between you and Lisa. But I know what I know, and I know that Y/N is the girl for you. You’re not really you when you’re not with her.”

Dean played with the label on his beer bottle and remained silent for a few moments, as did Jody. She wanted to give him the chance to talk if he wanted to.

“I’m still in love with her.” Jody could feel the pain dripping from his words. “I wake up every morning wishing that she and Sam had just rang the stupid doorbell instead of leaving for a year the night they came back. I would have left with them and I’m know I would still be with Y/N now. But I made a commitment that I can’t bring myself to break.”

“To Lisa?” Jody placed her hand on Dean’s back. He shook his head and closed his eyes, trying to contain his emotions.

“To Ben.” He answered and clenched his jaw. “I don’t love Lisa and I would have left the second I knew Y/N was back. But when Ben looked me in the eyes and told me that he thinks of me as his Dad, his real Dad, I knew I had to stick around for the long haul. I know firsthand how an absentee father can screw you up, and I can’t do that to him. But I can’t keep pretending that everything is all right.”

“I see.” Jody nodded. “Have you told anyone else about this? Sam or Bobby?” Dean shook his head. “Well, I can’t tell you what you do in this situation, but I do know that you’re a good man, Dean Winchester, and I’m here if you ever need to talk through things.” Dean nodded and Jody stood up, pulling him up by the arm. “Let’s go play some games.” She smiled and led him into the living room where the furniture had been pushed to the sides of the room to make room for the poker table.

“There you are!” You greeted as Dean and Jody joined your group. You could tell Dean was off as he sat down across from you. His eyes met yours and you immediately recognized the pain in his expression. Dean took a deep breath, picked up the cards he had been dealt, and put on a fake smile. At this point in his life, he was an expert at putting on a happy face, but you knew him too well and saw right through it. You were pulled back to reality by Nick putting his hand on your knee, signaling it was your turn. You gave him a sheepish smile and played your cards.

Your felt your heart being torn in 2 ways. For a long time, you thought Dean would be your forever, and you knew a part of you would always love him no matter what. But he was with someone else and showed no signs of wanting you anymore. Nick, on the other hand, was caring and had opened his heart to you quickly. He was handsome and funny and sweet, and any girl would be lucky to have him. You felt in the wrong because you knew that even if you pursued a relationship with Nick, you wouldn’t be able to give him all of you. Dean Winchester would always own a piece of your heart, a big one at that, and you were reminded of that every time you looked at him.

Hours had passed and it was getting late. You had all had fun, but people were filing out the door. You organized the cards into their proper decks and put them away. Sam helped you fold the table up and Nick and Bobby were picking up bottles and cans and clearing plates. You didn’t see Dean and assumed he must have left with the group but thought it was odd that he didn’t say goodbye. You said goodnight to the boys and headed up to your room. Dean had been off all night and you were worried. Your hand reached into your pocket and pulled out your phone. You scrolled down to Dean’s name and debated whether or not to call him. As you pushed your door open, you were startled to find someone sitting on your bed. You immediately went into defense mode, grabbing a knife from the top of your dresser.

“Dean?” You asked softly, putting down the knife and joining him on the edge of the bed. He was looking through an old photo album that you kept in the drawer of your nightstand.

“I remember when we took this. Sam was so mad that we stopped in the middle of the desert for one stupid picture.” Dean held up a picture of you sitting on top of his shoulders, pointing to the “Welcome to New Mexico” state sign. Dean was wearing a grey t-shirt and sunglasses and you had your hair pulled up in a messy ponytail. This was one of your favorite pictures. You made the boys stop so you could take a picture anytime you passed one of those state signs and were determined to get a picture with all 50 of them. Dean thought it was stupid at first, but he saw how happy it made you. Eventually he joined in, and the two of you would make silly poses next to each sign, leaving Sam to be the photographer.

“There’s still a few states that I need pictures of.” You took the book from Dean and slowly flipped through the pages. This album was one of your most cherished belongings, but you hadn’t looked through it for almost a year and a half. The memories that these pictures brought back were always happy at first but following closely behind was the pain of knowing that you and Dean would never be that close again.

“How many? Maybe we can take a few road trips and hit the ones you don’t have. Could be fun.” Dean suggested, raising his eyebrows.

You wanted to say yes, pack a bag, and leave right that minute. That’s the kind of thing the two of you used to do. But things were different now. Your smile faded, and instead of accepting his invitation, all you managed to say was, “Are you sure Lisa would be okay with that?”

Dean pursed his lips and nodded, silently agreeing that you had a point. He turned to look at you with desperation in his eyes and opened his mouth to say something before Sam walked in, breaking the tension.

“Hey, man, I thought you left. Thanks for helping clean up.” Sam said sarcastically as he flopped down on your bed. “Oh, man, I remember these pictures.” He took the book from your hands and scanned the pictures. “I miss these times. The three of us out on the road.”

“Me too.” You and Dean agreed in unison.

It was already late, but you and the brothers stayed up for at least another hour remembering stories about your past. You could hear Nick’s boot heavy on the stairs as he walked towards your room.

“Nick!” Sam yelled to get his attention.

Nick stopped and peaked his head in the door. “This must be the afterparty.” He smiled and you signaled for him to come in.

“Alright, you gotta tell us your craziest hunting story.” Sam demanded.

“Hmm…” Nick pondered and scratched his head. “Twin falls, Idaho, 2010. Four vamps, two werewolves, one ghoul, and two idiot hunters who thought they could handle it by themselves.”

“Sounds like the start of a crappy joke.” Dean chimed in.

Nick laughed and continued with his story. You all exchanged hunting tales until you grew tired and gave a big yawn.

“You know, my buddy found a case in Virginia. We could head out in the morning and help him if you guys feel up to it?” Nick suggested. “I’m dying to get back out there, even if I am limited.” He lifted his leg with the boot on it.

“I’m game!” Sam hopped off the bed. “I’ll go pack. Night guys.”

“Y/N?” Nick looked for your answer.

“Hell yes. I’m itching for a good fight.” You said sleepily.

“Sweet. See you in the morning.” Nick winked at you as he left.

“I’d offer for you to come, but…” You trailed off; your words directed at Dean.

“I know.” Dean nodded in acceptance. He readjusted himself to lay back on your bed, hands behind his head. “I miss hunting.”

“Hunting misses you.” You laid down next to him. “I mean, you’re Dean freaking Winchester. I’ve been told by a reliable source that some people call you The Ultimate Hunter.” You exaggerated your words and chuckled to yourself.

“More like the ultimate retiree now.”

You studied the ceiling and looked over to Dean, who had his eyes closed. It was at least 2 AM and you figured he was tired. “So, what were you doing in here tonight, anyway?” You figured you deserved an answer since he almost gave you a heart attack.

Dean’s breathing was slow and steady. “I don’t know. I just started walking and this is where I ended up.”

“Going through my stuff? You’re lucky I didn’t throw my knife at you. You scared the crap out of me when I first walked in.”

Dean smiled. “That’s what you get for beating me in poker tonight.”

“You mean kicking your ass in poker tonight?”

“Same difference.” He pushed you with his elbow a bit. The two of you lay in silence for a few minutes.

“You seemed off tonight.” You glanced at him.

“Just tired. Bobby’s couch wasn’t the most comfortable last night.”

“No, that’s not it. Are you feeling okay lately? You’ve been over here more in the past few weeks than you have in the past few months.”

Dean shrugged. “I guess it just sucks knowing that I’m being replaced.”

“Replaced?”

“Yeah. With Nick.”

“Uh, Nick isn’t replacing you.” Dean sat up and swung his feet over the edge of the bed.

“Sure feels like it. Sam has become fast friends with him, Bobby trusts the guy, and now the gang is going out on a hunt without me.”

“Dean, you know we’d love it if you came hunting with us, but you got out of the life and Sam and I are just trying to respect that.”

Dean rubbed his hands over his face. “But worst of all, I see the way he looks at you. I know that look because that’s how I used to look at you.” You looked down at the floor, searching for the right words. “Hell, I still do, Y/N/N.”

Chapter 6

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@vicmc624

[sav-grey]

MEET THE GREY FAMILY: 

Richard Grey (Ralph Fiennes) - 55 years old

Susanne Grey (Kate Moss) - 47 years old

Sierra Grey (Florence Pugh) - 21 years old

Savannah Grey (Madelyn Cline) - 19 years old

Sedona Grey (Lily-Rose Depp) - 18 years old

Father - Richard Grey

Richard is a fearsome, intimidating figure, who absolutely melts around his three daughters. He might be a little absentee, as a finance man, but he makes up for the time he spends at work instead of at home with a huge salary, family money, and credit cards for each of his daughters. He refuses to see anything but the best in them, and always believes that they are not at fault. ....Except for Sav sometimes. 

Mother - Susanne Grey

Susanne may be a stay at home mother, but that also doesn’t mean she’s ever been hands on. A former model, she was always a little bit more of a trophy wife, rather than a mom, and as she’s aged, she’s just kinda found it hard to keep track of all three of them. One of them is always up to something. Sedona is her favorite, but she won’t admit that out loud. Unless she’s a couple of glasses of wine in. 

Eldest Sister - Sierra Grey (Libra - September 29th, 2000)

Sierra is still in college, and she’s the one Sav really learned her partying ways from. Her friends were always amused by the middle Grey tagging along, and it’s safe to say they were not good influences. Sierra is a loose cannon, and has no idea what she wants to do with her life. She’s extremely kind-hearted and actually one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet, with good advice, if you can ever pin her down long enough to get her to have a conversation. 

Youngest Sister - Sedona Grey (Cancer - July 19th, 2003)

Sedona is the least pretentious of all of the daughters, even though she’s the most spoiled. She’s actually hard-working, and plans to follow in their father’s footsteps into finance. She is your typical, bratty youngest sister. She tries to keep Sav and Sierra in line, but does that by tattling on them to their parents constantly, which really has just ended up with Sedona getting left out of their more risky adventures. 

THE GREY’S - PATERNAL FAMILY:

Andrew Grey (Cillian Murphy) - 48 years old

Melody Grey (Madisyn Menchaca) - 18 years old (Pisces - February 28th, 2003)

Mel is the daughter of Richard’s younger brother. She and Sav are extremely close, and Mel also attends Luxor. Although she is technically a year younger than Sav, they’re in the same grade since Sav had to repeat kindergarten (lol). She’s actually fairly smart, though she is fairly naive/easily manipulated, and extremely spoiled, and so she definitely comes off even more out of touch then Savannah. She has the feels like your typical pisces, but the resting bitch face definitely comes from that scorpio rising. 

Jillian Grey-Kennedy (Kathryn Hahn) - 50 years old

Kyle Kennedy (Danielle Campbell) - 24 years old (Aries)

Kyle is the oldest cousin on the Grey side, the daughter of Richard’s sister. She grew up in Texas, as Jillian Grey moved there to marry the son of an oil baron, just increasing how rich that family was. Kyle was a competitive gymnast who was on track to go to the Olympics until she had a devastating injury, and then she moved out to Los Angeles and is working as a bartender and fucking around because she has no idea what else to do. She’s kinda a huge bitch, and doesn’t get along with the rest of the cousins as well, but she’s still around when they need her to be.

TBD - MATERNAL FAMILY

Maternal Aunt - (Teressa Liane) - 35 years old

Maternal Uncle - TBD FC

Maternal Cousin - (Olivia Holt) - 22 years old

[pigtailedgirl]

Cobra Kai LOVE

So I finally got to watch all of Cobra Kai after loving the first two free episodes on Youtube but not affording it or having access til Netflix.

Dad and I nostalgia tripped it together and it's so good and it was also a great little family thing to do for us, since we always watched the movies as a family and are missing Mom, and I cried (there were some moments in season 2 especially hard) and laughed and we both loved it and I can't wait for season 3.

What can you say about a show that picks up 30 years after a properties heyday and kills as a tie-in! That honours the themes, and even better the cheese and feelings of the originals. Be it kick-ass karate, 80s style and music, the over the top plotting, and the profound kinda searching for inner life peace mixed with silly karate moves or metaphors and longing for Dad guidance.

I absolutely adore Johnny, who is by no means a perfect person. He's a stunted functional alcoholic who reopens his best part of his life, he tragically peaked in high-school (Christ!), for the best intentioned reasons, not realizing until committing the same mistakes how toxic it was the first go round.

Daniel. Oh you sweet fucking it up-ward man. Every movie was Miyagi having to help you pull your hot head out of your own ass because you were desperate to earn inner acceptance through outer validation and he's not around to do it anymore and you sweet pea think you've got it figured out, that you can give it to kids or protect them from the bullying toxicity of the way that high-school and a loss of place moving to California and Cobra Kai did you in, but you just keep jumping from victim to projecting and anticipating victim-hood and responding against Miyagi's first lesson, learn karate so you don't have to use it to fight.

It's sad and beautiful that these two are twinned and stuck in their pasts. Man-children in their 50s still trying to grow up (And figure out technology in Johnny's case LOL) hurting their future generation.

The teen themes are great.

Teen Breakdown of S1 & S2

The beginning popular crowd being easy and simple bullies. Morphing in Season 2 as both Cobra Kai and Demetri, Robbie and Sam trade off with Hawk and Tory on are we the bullied or the bullies all at once. Free for all high-school fight!

Aisha and Miguel represent the honesty of strength of self and confidence in finding themselves and their voice in Cobra Kai.

Hawk and Demitri, of using a newfound self to bully or staying safe to play victim.

Robbie as the growth from getting respect and guidance from Miyagi karate and Daniel, being the truest student, to the heartbreaking reality it doesn't mean you still don't crave wanting to be declared ultimate right or winner and fuck yourself over with your past issues.

As Miguel does the twin tango with him in having innate respectability and good moral guidance, even passing it to Johnny, but slipping into loss at the karate finals, mentally giving into loss of morality being violent to show his strength and losing himself and his GF, and physically when he's hurt (please be just hurt) defending the good guidance of mercy and stopping fighting.

But yeah, I could do essays on all the teens.

Then there's Sam, Daniel 's daughter. Robbie's mirror student and Aisha should be her foil but I fear based on a rumour and the way of season 2, they went with the easier and show attractive rival GF Tory.  Samantha Larusso is a problem. She is marked good, to be going the way of Robbie to being the child of the former protagonist that leads into a creation of harmony among the two karate's and teachers/families/philosophies. Instead despite the show sympathizing and trying to identify with her as that role, she's straight up a cause of strife and exhibits neither the good traits of Miyagi karate, or a inner self confident bravado of Cobra Kai. She's almost the bizzaro evil version of a teen Ali, and that guy from the third movie. She thinks she's both victim and bad ass and she's just someone who needs a good dose of someone sitting her down to tell her she's owed or earned either status. And Aisha, the friend she wasted for faux status as a popular pretty girl, as well as her adult parents letting her currently skate responsibilities of teenage dramas and violence, and her suitors, whom she waffles unhealthy betwixt so that they all suffer, are the ones to do it. She doesn't need her ass kicked by Tory, who is a one note character, she needs her mindset toggled by realizing her self-wants aren't priority. Basically grow up, and outta the me mentality.

What's fabulous is the show honoring it's roots in teen drama and life so it's not like the drama is too over the top. How their world revolves around them and their perception of the importance of their wants. Romance. Party. Popularity. Identity.

Leading to the teenage version of power posturing. Bullying. (Which even the adults haven't mastered escape from.)

The high-school pettiness and importance of structure and status and coolness. The different norms of today versus the 80's that are still about wealth, the right looks (cultural or physical), and violence being the forever enforcer. Of course kids will break down along the lines of Cobra Kai and Miyagi karate. Brute correctness or passive acceptance?

Seeking strength and refusing to accept weakness of self builds confidence. Using that strength to physically fight in anything but defense brings a cycle of conflict and violence.

Neither the past nor the present generation ignore the other big life influence of the age. There you have the Daddy or parental abandonment angles.

Johnny's step dad failed him in absentee. Kreese used his position as teacher to abuse him. Johnny failed his kid in absentee. Johnny tries to uses his teacher position with Miguel to fix all these errors. Meanwhile Daniel is over there in the opposite corner with lost his father figure, and then Miyagi taught him respect and guidance and Daniel regained one and clung, and now Daniel is a lost or losing father figure to his own son and daughter, the family unit does not respect him or seek his guide. So he entwines his then teaching Sam and Robbie as a fix.

But does karate fix this shit?

So all these kids they drag in are confounded by the lessons because a step would be stop you yokels and talk or acknowledge what really happened in high-school and with All Valley and Ali and Kreese and Miyagi. And move on.

You won 30 years ago Daniel. Miyagi was a great old man and your teacher and like a Dad but you never had to be the best or have the girl to earn him. You got bullied by Kreese & co, were devalued because you weren't rich or popular in high-school. Some people were dicks. Or worse. Tell the world. You don't have to beat them now and forever to hold to knowing that. Be a happy car salesman and focus on your own kids.

Johnny, 30 years have passed my dude. You were okay with defeat when you gave Daniel that trophy and said he was all right. Cling to that guy, not the jerk with a shitty teacher/Dad, pining for a girl you were in conflict with. And stop reliving the mindset you were the loser in those things ending. You missed out on living with your losses and celebrating the moments between and after. Find a GF. Reconcile with your biological son. Admire and mentor your students of now. Take a lesson from your Miguel and be like the young man you clearly are learning from. You will never be a loser to this kid, you will always be the bad ass who defended him.

Also also, I hilariously crack-ship Daniel/Johnny as a love hate bromance. HEAD GAMES vid it!!

Also, Daniel's wife is a treasure with her snark on the childishness of this karate feud. She the MVP.

And I legit cried with my Dad and the Miyagi grave visit. At the Tommy scenes. At the Miguel voicemail. At the Mrs. Larusso Dad on my shoulder scene.

And you can't not laugh at dick billboard.

[skgway]

1828 Dec, Fri. 26

6

11 35/60

From 7 1/2 to 7 50/60 reading Dr. Hutton’s excellent and most temperate speech in last Saturday’s Mercury in favour of emancipation. His sentiments on the subject, my own –

Breakfast at 7 50/60 in 20 minutes – Went out at 8 1/4 to Lightcliffe to pay Mrs. William P– [Priestley] for carriage of the parcel of books I paid for yesterday – Got there in about 1/2 – Sat talking. Mentioned the inconvenience of my being here, my fathers oddity of temper. To live with my mother was much to be pitied, and excused my father. Wont let me put stoves in the North parlour and room, tho my aunts coming here depends on it. A hundred a year would be enough to pay for her board and that of George and MacD[onald]. Did not see Mr. P– [Priestley]. Mrs. P– [Priestley] walked with me as far as the Hipperholme bar, I then went back with her to her own gate, and we parted there at 11 50/60 –

In returning, met the Saltmarshes (Mr. & Mrs. Christopher S– [Saltmarshe) in their carriage – Had passed Shibden – Thought from my manner of speaking of it yesterday they could not get there – Jno [John] – said it was no worse than usual – and took Mrs. S– [Saltmarshe]’s card for Marian instead of a call – 

Then went up Barraclough-lane to George Naylor’s – Took him to shew me what Joseph Hall wanted – Haigh has bought the bit of waste there of Mr. Rawson, wants to enclose it, make a garden of it, and block me up – Has already abused Joseph Hall’s son for carting across it – Said I would consider about it – But that I could not be thus blocked up – I had nothing to do with Haigh – Should speak to Mr. Rawson – He had no right to sell it – 

Then a good deal of conversation with George N– [Naylor] as to raising his farm etc. He must give me his opinion as to the rest and I should not hurt him. Pearsons and Hardcastles each worth fifty and Hilltop forty five, and to raise Hemingway twenty guineas fair to take cottages at half the actual rents. The man that George wishes me to take for the next vacant farm is John Kurten who married a Miss Priestley of Halifax has for three or four years been a preacher, but would give it up. Has a hundred a year of his own and wants a farm for his lads. Would be advised in all things at first by George. 

Said I should give Balmfirth notice to quit. He thought I could not get rid of him. We will try, said I. For that, explained that it was to get rid of a bad tenant with less trouble, for which I mainly had agreements, because then I could quit them in 6 months from the time instead of 3 times that time – Balmfirth has just sold off 500 stalks of hay to a man who is bankrupt and will therefore get nothing for it – 

Then walked along the top of the hill and got down into the plantation at 2 1/4. Nobody there – Went to the cunnery – The men Throp and Nathan came from dinner at 2 1/2 – Throp cleaning trees in the Hall wood, Nathan helping Jno [John] and William to clear the plantation, and Robert walling with James Smith for my father, a bit of Jno [John] Bottomley’s wall near the pit road gate at the too of the old bank that had come down – 

Staid a little in the plantation – From 3 20/60 to 5 with Throp – Planted out 2 little yews from the plantation and removed the 2 cypresses lower down, next to the wood – A pity to move them, they were beginning to strike out little roots so nicely – 

Came in at 5 10/60 – Dressed – Wrote the 1st 7 lines of yesterday – Dinner at 6 1/4 – Afterwards till 10 asleep on the sofa – Then sat talking 1/2 hour about the bit of waste near Joseph Hall’s, raising rents etc. and discharging James Travis – 

On going up Barraclough lane to George N– [Naylor]’s saw 3 or 4 men one with a gun and dog, in George N– [Naylor]’s field or Balmfirth’s – Asked his name (lives near the bridge?) discharged him – He would have a written discharge – Was qualified – Had a certificate – I could only make him pay for trespassing – At last, he was for asking leave to come – No! Said I, you are too late now – You shall have a written discharge – and it is your peril you come shooting on my ground without my leave – On inquiry James Greenwood junior at the Cunnery told me he had discharged him several times – Jno [John] has often seen him in the fields – 

Came up to bed at 10 1/2 – Till 11 looking over rent roll, and making, rough draft calculation of what the farms and pews would bear raising – Can now manage something upwards of sixty pounds and b[y] and b[y] can get about eighty or ninety, that I shall make what I now have, altogether thirteen hundred a year – Fine day – Frosty – Farenheit in the library 9 degrees colder this morning than yesterday – 

[sideways in margin] Musing this morning as I walked to Lightcliffe (first time the idea ever struck me) that as much is done for the rights of the Roman Catholics why not something for the rights of single women to vote for members of parliament? Write on this, on the good of raising women to a proper rank in society, their influence, their general education and manners in different countries in times past and present, their relative degrees of respectability.

[More on Dr. Hutton’s Speech]

Dr. Hutton’s Speech - Leeds Mercury Dec. 20, 1828

We have great pleasure in laying before our readers the following excellent speech, which was indeed to have been delivered at the Leeds Meeting to Address His Majesty in favour of the Catholic Claims. 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, – In the cause which has assembled us together this day I cannot but feel deeply interested. As a man and a Briton, I must be anxious to see the rights of men and Britons freely and fully participated by all my fellow-countrymen and as a Christian desirous that the truth may have free course amongst us I must wish that all the stumbling blocks of party prejudice and passion, with which our own frailty and folly, or those of our ancestors, have strewed the path of religious inquiry may be removed, and that we may all rejoice in the liberty wherewith it was the design of Christ to make us free. But, I stand in the midst of my fellow-men and my fellow-Christians many of whom I know to be as willing as myself; and more competent, to plead our common cause; their love of liberty, civil and religious, I believe to be not [insurdent?] than my own, and however we may differ on other subjects, I am assured of their entire sympathy with me in the wish to banish the temporal power altogether from the field of religious controversy; and to leave Truth – omnipotent Truth – to fight her own battles, with “the sword of the spirit; which is the word of God” In the character of a man and a Christian, therefore, I could have gladly remained silent, satisfied to say, “God speed,” with all my heart, to my friends and brethren around me, one of whom I cannot forget, has within the last few days nobly vindicated the rights of his fellow-men on Christian grounds, with a spirit and an eloquence, which multitudes have felt as deeply as myself, and which it would be superfluous therefore for me to panegyrize. There is a character, however, in which others cannot speak for me, and in which therefore I would embrace the opportunity of saying a word or two for myself. I appear amongst you; my fellow-townsmen, not only as an inhabitant of Leeds, bound to you by the strong ties of hospitality, and an absentee in the body from the land of my nativity, yet often-present with her in the spirit, with a heart that bleeds for her miseries, and kindles into indignation at her wrongs, and rejoices

in my hope, however faint, of seeing those miseries relieved, and those wrongs redressed. You have assembled, I trust, to express to our gracious King, your cordial acquiescence in a measure, should it be his good pleasure, in concurrence with the other branches of the legislature to sanction it, which I am not indeed so sanguine as to think will prove a panacea for all the numerous ills under which my unhappy country has so long suffered; but which, nevertheless, I am convinced will do something for her; – will help at least to soften and soothe the animosities, by which, while the present system of parish favour, proscription, and exclusion [?] she must continue to be torn asunder; a measure which will remove at least one material cause of dissension estrangement, and will tend in facilitate, if it does not absolutely produce that union of hearts amongst Irishmen, without which there can be no union of minds to any good purpose.

You have met, Gentlemen, to do what you can to alleviate to do what you can to alleviate the wretchedness and promote the future welfare of my suffering country, and I cam anxious, I confess, to express to you the deep interest that I take in a cause which the [?ctive] feelings of nature combine with reason and reflection to render dear to me. I should indeed be worthy of reprobation if I could stand by an uninterested spectator, where others, who have less reason, manifest so fervent a zeal. Gentlemen, if there still remain doubt and indecision amongst you on the subject before us, I cannot but think that it arises, rather from those prejudices and prepossesions of which we all carry about with us too large a share, – rather from the fluctuations of excited feeling, than from any serious difficulty suggested by the understanding. If the decision had rested with reason alone, it would have been long since made, and Fox and Barke, and Pitt and Canning, those master minds of various moulds, supported by almost all the intellectual strength of the houses of Peers and Commons, would not have addressed their powerful arguments to the British people in vain. But that people have a strong hatred of oppression, a powerful sympathy with suffering. Of Roman Catholics as they exist in the present day, either in the Sister Island or elsewhere, Englishmen know little, but they have many of them read tho fearful ties, and inspected the no less fearful prints in Fox’s book of Martyrs, and the have all heard of sundry wicked Popes, and more formidable still, of bloody Mary! Often, I am persuaded most Roman Catholics have been affected towards her, as an excellent preiste of the Church of England is said to have been towards a certain creed, and wished, alas! in vain, that they could be well rid of her. In truth I cannot but think it is somewhat unkind, when people are evidently ashamed of their relations, to be always putting them in mind of them, and I must say I feel some pity for my Roman Catholic brethren, when I see the blood brought into their countenances by the perpetual obtrusion of that bloody queen on their reluctant memories. But what proof have we that Roman Catholics either love or have any inclination to imitate that wicked woman? Earnestly do they disclaim all approbation of her conduct, and loudly do they protest against the injustice and cruelty of making them answerable for the crimes of their ancestors, whether of noble or ignoble blood.

True it is that Mary was a bloody persecutor; but it is prejudice and bigotry alone that dwell exclusively upon her atrocities, and contrive at the same time to forget the less numerous perhaps, but still bloody persecutions of her protestant sister Elizabeth – not in this connection certainly though a Rev. Gentleman has styled her so “of happy memory.” Few indeed are the sects that have not at one time or other swelled the annals of persecution, and we should all of us perhaps have reason to tremble if Heaven were to visit upon our heads the sins of our fathers in this respect. Calvin persecuted Servetus to death. Is there a Calvinist living now that pretends to vindicate the deed? Archbishop Cranmer persuaded King Edward against his will to condemn to the stake Joan Bocher and George Paris, one for denying the humanity, and the other for dyeing the divinity of Christ. What member of the Church of England will come forward to prove that Cranmer was justified in doing so? Luther, the father of the Reformation though he was against punishing heretics with death, thought that other punishments less severe might be lawfully hindered on them. “It is sufficient,” says he in one place, “that they should be banished.” In another passage he allows that “heretics may be corrected and lured to silence, if they publicly deny any of the articles received by all Christians, and particularly that Christ is God.” In a third passage he goes further, and says “that heretics, though they may not be put to death, may however be confined, and shut up in some certain place and put under restraint as madmen.” What think you, my fellow-townsmen, ought we to be satisfied with Luther’s toleration, and rest contented to enjoy our liberty of conscience in a gaol, or what might be called perhaps a heretic’s asylum. Though we are most of us Protestants, and as such have no small reverence for the great reformer, I rather think we shall none of us agree with him on this subject. Once more, that you may not think me partial, I may just mention, that Socinus, whom you probably think a great favourite of mine, and for, whose genius and virtues I will not deny that I feel a sincere respect, in a letter of his still extant vows [?] his opinion that “obstinate heretics” or, as he explains the epithet, “heretics who will pay no attention to their adversaries arguments, may be properly prevented from reading then opinions, if it cannot be otherwise done by chains and a prison.”  According to which doctrine I fear there are not a few in Leeds, whom, if I and my friends were in power, we should be under the painful necessity of placing under restraint. On this subject however, as on several others, I have the pleasure of assuring you that we take the liberty of dissenting from Socinus, and that you need be under no alarm on this head even if we should be called to rule over you. The truth is, that in the former days of ignorance, the spirit of persecution was to be found, in a greater or less degree, in almost every church. The Emancipationists say some of their opponents, cannot have read history: I answer, that they would have read it to little purpose, if they had not learned from it, that persecution of all kinds and in every degree is detestable, and that to persecute Roman Catholics a little now, because they persecuted our ancestors a good deal formerly, is neither wise nor Christian conduct. The church of Rome, I grant, was more deeply stained by the guilt of persecution than most of the churches that have seceded from her; but this is easily accounted for without supposing that it is essential to her nature to persecute, and that, no lapse of time, or alteration of circumstances can enable her to purge off this stain. It should be remembered, that she had long been in the possession of unrivalled and almost unbounded power; It was to be expected therefore, in consistency with all that we know of human nature, that, when the first attack was made up on that power, pride, and anger, and every other malignant passion should instantaneously rise up in arms, against those whom, as supreme judge in her own cause, she would naturally regard as rebellious schismatics and wicked innovators.

The Church of England on the contrary, chastised in her infant days by her aged parent, and surrounded almost from the first by Dissenters, was early taught wisdom and mercy by her own sufferings. Had she stood as long without a rival as the Church of Rome, it is at least possible that she might have persecuted as bitterly. The hostile spirit which some of her sons have manifested and still manifest to Dissenters as such, and the high tone which they assume, as if the mere act of their tempora establishment qualified them to take spiritual precedence of  those around them, would lead one to apprehend that even the Church of England meekly as, I grant, she has for the most part carried her faculties, might have abused, if she had enjoyed, enresisted, and unbounded power. In truth such power is good for none of us. We are all, not merely liable but likely to abuse it. The Church of Rome in power, however, and the same Church out of power, are very different. B[?] the terror of Europe, at St. Helens was a quiet gentlemanly, and somewhat [?] man: and so it is with the Pope in these days. As [?] as we are concerned, he might as well be at Helena as where he [?] an ocean flows between us and him; – the ocean of knowledge – which he can never cross to set foot in a hostile manner on our shores. Were he to do so, were he to threaten either our civil or religious liberties, I will pledge myself for my countrymen, yes, for my Roman Catholic countrymen; that they would be amongst the first to assist in driving him back to his snug hole and corner in Italy. Except as a peaceful ecclesiastic, a kind of Archbishop of Canterbury of the Church of Rome, the Pope neither has, nor can ever any substantial power in this realm. The greatest power he enjoys here at present is that which our No-Popery friends so kindly confer upon him, of frightening the grown-up children, who are not ashamed to listen to the horrible stories which they tell about him. What says our able townsman, Mr. M. Sadler, of these Papists, – this people who have been brought up under this murderous system, – who have imbibed, with their mothers milk, these doctrines, which according to our Brunswickers, not only forbid them to keep faith with heretics, but would lend them to commit murder upon all such? You shall hear “In the character of the inhabitants of Ireland!” says Mr. S. “there are the elements of whatever is elevated and bole.” These, however [?] down and hidden, are indicated whenever their development is not rendered impossible. Their courage in the [?] and panegyric of min, and has never been surpassed; their charity, notwithstanding their poverty, never equalled.” “Even while I am thus writing,” says Mr. Sadler, “I will dare to assert, that in many a cabin of that country, the godlike act of our immortal Alfred,” (who by the way, was a Roman Catholic too) “which will be transmitted down to the remotest generations – the dividing his last meal with the beggar, is this instant being repeated; – and their gratitude for kindnesses received equals the ready warmth with which they are ever conferred.” I mean not to contend” Mr. S proceeds, “that they have not faults and grievous ones, but these are mainly attributable” (I agree with him cordially) “to the condition to which they have been so long treated.” He then proposes his remedies, some of them well, worthy of attention, for Ireland’s calamities, and anticipates a time when “the Social edifice compact together and at unity in itself shall never again be shaken.” I thank Mr. M. Sadler in the name of my country, – I warmly thank him for his eloquent panegyric upon her sons, whom Popers, it seems, has not altogether corrupted, and whom unequaled charity I should hope, – charity that divides with the beggar his last meal should not be banished or transformed into the [?]-like spirit of malignity, and murder, by a little more kindness. Their “gratitude for kindnesses received,” Mr. S tells us equals the [?] warmth with which they are ever conferred.” Take Mr. S’s word for it, if you will not take mine. Though I too know something of the Irish heart – take the world of both of us, that they will not abuse your favours – that they will not violate your generous confidence – no, not for all the Popes and Priests that the word can contain, – but, on the contrary, will return [?] your  and your [?] every deal of kindness as you shall mete out to them. But what does Mr. S. say of emancipation in his work on the grievances of Ireland?

Of Emancipation Mr. S professes to say nothing. He merely intimates – and here too I agree with him – that Ireland has other grievances of a very serious nature to complain of to neglect those latter [?] talk of Emancipation only is in his mind, to pay tithe of mint and anise, and cumin, and to omit the weightier [?] of the saw of patriotism– judgment, mercy, and idolity supposes it to be so allow that Emancipation resembles the small tithes yes Mr. S. I should think would be one of the last persons to recommend our not paying them – he will doubtless remember the words, “these things ought the to have done, but not to leave the others undone.” – Having had [?] her tithe of [?] which she did not ask for, poor Ireland might perhaps be grateful for what she would deem a tithe of [?], in the form of Emancipation. I have read Mr. S’s book on Ireland with some attention: I admire the spirit of [?] and generous feeling in which it is written; I think that he has taken a true view of some of the sources of Ireland’s mystery, and I approve of some of the remedies which he proposes but I cannot agree with him that little good would be effected by pinning all sects on the same [?] of equality in respect to civil rights and privileges, and thus doing away the bitter jealous with which a depressed [?] always regard a dominant and domineering party, especially if the former be, as in the present instance, the more numerous. Does Mr. S. think that any good could be effected by it? If so, he ought not to be a Runswicker, and in his book certainly we may look in vain for the spirit of that party. Gentlemen, you are many of you anxious and so I confess am I, how can any honest and consistent Protestant be otherwise? – to see our Roman Catholic brethren brought over to Protestantism. Is this your real wish? Remove then the barriers which sever them from you in mind as well as body. Remove the party prejudices which dender their understandings and their heards inaccessible to any arguments or pleadings, however powerful and just, that you can address to them, I solemnly warn you, Gentlemen, that in perpetuating their persons and party hostility, you will necessarily obstruct their conversion to what you deem truth and in so doing, may find hereafter that you have “fought against God.” There is little change that we shall convince or persuade those with our lips, whom by our actions we are degrading and insulting. And is it not a degradation and an insult to brand your fellow-countrymen as persons whose patriotism a breath from Rome can disperse, at any moment, into thin air – whose oaths of allegiance and fidelity are not to be believed – and who are not to be allowed to serve their king and country in a civil capacity because they acknowledge an ecclesiastical superior in the supposed successor of St. Peter? The Roman Catholics are clamouring for power, say the Brunswickers. No, Sir – It is for eligibility to power, a right to which our Constitution supposes every Brion entitled who is not incapable of exercising it, or who has not forfeited his right to do so by his misconduct. Minors, aliens, criminals, and Roman Catholics, with a few other Sectarians, (who scruple to take the oaths prescribed) are the classes of persons noted by Blackstone as incapacitated from serving in Parliament. And is there no injury, no insult, in this association? I contend Sir, that there is, and that neither Roman Catholics nor any other class of sincere religionists whatsoever, ought, as such, to be ranked with [?], aliens, and criminals. If Protestant Englishmen were thus associated, the blood would boil in their veins; and can they wonder, then, that it runs in a quickened current through the body of the Irish Catholic, constitutionally hot in temper as he is warm in heart? As for the danger likely to result from admitting Roman Catholics into the legislative body, it is really childish to talk of it. While the comparative strength of the two parties throughout the United Kingdom remains as it is, there cannot, obviously, be the shadow of danger of Popish domination if all the Catholic Members without an exception) were Catholic barristers, as clever as O’Connell, and us eloquent as Shell, and if in the fervour of a zeal, such as few Protestants feel for the 39 Articles, they were to bring the questions of Transubstantiation and the Papal supremacy before the House every Session, which is not highly probable, I will leave it to any Brunswicker possessed of a decent portion of common sense, to compute the probable number of their converts, within any given time. And as for the House of Lords, their ease there would be still more hopeless, their advocates being still fewer in number, and the prejudices of [?]; we know, peculiarly strong. The Earl of Shrewsbury, it is true, has written a book in defence of his creed, but he will find some difficulty in persuading the Lords Temporal to read it – find the Lords Spiritual will, of course, find it easy to refute anything that a hymn can have urged upon the subject. On the whole nothing can be made ridiculous than the pretended apprehension of Poplar legislation, [?] weak heads may possibly entertain it; but when men of sense pretend to feel it, the purest candour must fear that it is their object to frighten and delude those whom they know to be ignorant, and therefore expect to be credulous. But say some really good men, the Roman Catholic religion is so attractive to the imagination, from the antiquity of its origin, and the splendour of its ritual; its doctrine of absolution, purgatory, &c. are so well calculated to make fail man easy under the burden of his frailties; and, in short, it is so skillfully accommodated throughout to the weakness of our nature, that we cannot but fear that if placed on an equality in other respects, with Protestantism, it may have superior charms for the multitude, and may even in time win over our princes and our rules by its seductions. So long, I would reply, as the Establishment retains its rich endowments, and enjoys the exclusive patronage of the Crown, there can be little fear of such a catastrophe. The majority, of the higher class especially, will long feel the sacred duty of conforming to an Established Church, of the truth of which they will require no surer voucher than the simple fact that it is established. I mean no disrespect to the Church of England, as a church, when I assert, that religion so well endowed as here – a religion that, in the phrase of Burke, can “raise a mitred head in Courts and Parliaments,” be its forms and doctrines and theological merits what they may, need be under little apprehension of any sudden or material defection of its wealthy and powerful adherents. But this, it will be said, is a mere argumentum ad hominem, addressed to the worldly wise, which will not satisfy those who are upon conviction piously attached to Protestantism, and seriously apprehensive of a revival of Popers. 

To objectors of this class, those worthy and pious men, for I doubt not there are many such, – who not having studied the subject in its political bearings, ground their hostility to Catholic Emancipation solely on their fears of the future prevalence of what they deem a dangerously erroneous creed, I would reply by this simple question, “– whether they can seriously think; that in a fair and equal contest with error, truth is in any danger of being defeated; or that with the favour of God on her side she can fall of being victorious? For my own part I am well persuaded that she needs none of the weapons, either defensive or offensive, with which the rulers of this world are so troublesomely axous to supply her. If she might have her own will she would cast them all from her, as David cast from him the armour of Saul. Like that brave champion of the Lord of Hosts, she would go forth to the battle free and unencumbered, trusting for her defense to God’s favour and her own unfettered movements, and asking for no weapons of more destructive power than a few sound and solid arguments, smooth pebbles well rounded from Silaos brooke, with the sling of natural eloquence, to send them home to their destination. Reflection I think will soon convince the pious and the good that error can be no match for truth, when they stand on equal ground, and that to pretend to guard the latter by pains and penalties is to discover want of faith in her native resources, and in reality to encumber her with aid. In conclusion I would say with my esteemed and respected brother, to our friends of the Church of England, “Be just and fear not.” – Be generous and fear not. You have relieved the Dissenters from their shackles. You have elevated them to equality with yourselves. I trust you will reap the good fruits of having done so; and that you will find in us your cordial and zealous co-adjustors in every just, humane, and virtuous enterprise. But let us pead with you, – gratitude should be like that of the manumitted slave, the first effect of whose recovered liberty is to render Him indifferent to the sorrows and the sufferings of the former companions of his bondage, gratitude, I say, which in our ethical system is not that frosty kind of feeling which some seem to imagine it, having ore affinity to cold than heat, and exerting a contractile rather than an expansive influence, gratitude for our own success excites us to plead with you for the brothers of the family who are still excluded, still degraded. Try my Roman Catholic countrymen, and, trust me, you will find them also capable and worthy of being connected with you in the equal bonds of brotherhood. If you thought them your enemies it were a noble and Christian experiment, and experiment justified by a wiser and better policy than that of this world, – to try to subdue them by your kindness. “If thine enemy hunger feed him, if he thirst give him drink,” says an apostle. ‘Absurd policy!’ says a Brunswicker; food will strengthen, and drink refresh him, and his power to do you mischief will be greater than ever. Christ however and Paul thought otherwise and foreold that by so doing we should “heap coals of fire on his head,” and melt or [?] him into friendship with us. This is human nature in this opinion; and Mr. M. Sadler has told you that my countrymen are not an exception to the general rule, but that they are as capable of gratitude as they are of kindness. All that I wish, my friends, is that you would try them. 

[baoshan-sanren]

Can I? Talk about Lan Xichen? I’m having some Feelings™. Idk what those feelings are but they are Feelings™. I felt bad for him at the end of the show but I also wanted to kick him in the ass a little bit like “how did you not see this???” Also I can’t tell if he’s husband material or not. He’s confusing.

Oh God, you’re gonna regret asking me this.

I’ve been thinking about Lan Xichen A LOT lately espc bc there was that post going around about the top 5 himbos of The Untamed, and ofc Lan Xichen took the #1 himbo spot bc Jin Guangyao played him like a fiddle for 50 episodes. 

But the thing is, I don’t think Lan Xichen is dumb, I think he’s got some serious avoidance issues. This is my theory, and bear with me here cause I’m a psych major and I can’t help myself. I think Lan Xichen’s childhood was pretty shit. Everyone (including Lan Xichen) always focuses on how Lan Wangji felt when his mother died, and how it affected his relationships with other people, but like, Lan Xichen was there too. He’s older than Lan Wangji, so he probably understood a lot more of what was going on, and he was the older brother with absentee parents, and he was probably the one his uncle really focused on since he was the future clan leader, so he had quite a burden to bear at a young age. 

I think Lan Xichen’s everyday motto is basically like I need to lead the clan and be a solid presence for Lan Zhan and be an example to the younger disciples and a comfort/help to my uncle and a morally upright example to the sects at large and… you get what I’m saying? My boy’s got childhood PTSD lingering all over the place and no one sees it. That part in the novel where he gets drunk and his voice changes is a dead giveaway. The dude doesn’t even speak in his natural tone because it’s loud and booming, and we can’t have that, he has to be the soothing one, he has to be the peacemaker, he has to be the shining example of upright behavior, he has to be Lan Xichen who is calm and placid and steady, because if he’s not, then what is he? We talk about Lan Wangji and his strict adherence to the Lan Sect Rules (+ adding another thousand or so, and boy, do I have a field day with that whole psychology of rigid mr. perfect who nevertheless gets drunk every time wei wuxian smiles pretty, but that’s another essay all together) but I think Lan Xichen suffered a lot of damage to his psyche in the childhood, and instead of therapy, he filled all the ragged holes and edges with duty and responsibility and Lan Sect Rules, basically allowing them to complete him as a person.

But no set of rules ever written can make a man complete, and Lan Xichen could be the actual embodiment of moral uprightness, but he’s still a thirty-something year old man who doesn’t know what to do when people he loves let him down. And how could he? He never dealt with the fact that his parents let him down. When he tells Wei Wuxian about his parents, and then asks if Wei Wuxian understands why his father did what he did, that section broke my heart.

Lan XiChen continued, “After the ceremony was completed, my father found a house and locked my mother inside. He found another house and locked himself inside. It was called secluded meditation, but it was in truth to repent.”

He paused before speaking again, “Young Master Wei, can you understand why he did such a thing?”

Wei WuXian answered after a moment of silence, “He could neither forgive the one who killed his teacher nor watch the death of the woman who he loved. He could only marry her to protect her life and force himself not to see her.”

Lan XiChen, “Do you think that this was right?”

Wei WuXian, “I don’t know.”

Lan XiChen looked somewhat lost, “Then, what do you think would be right?”

Wei WuXian, “I don’t know.”

I’m not at all surprised that someone as intelligent as Jin Guangyao so easily found Lan Xichen’s vulnerabilities and exploited the shit out of them. If it wasn’t Jin Guanyao, it would’ve been someone else at a later date. 

So I mostly feel bad for him. Like, a lot. 

[blackkudos]

Mary Wells

Mary Esther Wells (May 13, 1943 – July 26, 1992) was an American singer, who helped to define the emerging sound of Motown in the early 1960s. Along with The Supremes, The Miracles, The Temptations, and the Four Tops, Wells was said to have been part of the charge in black music onto radio stations and record shelves of mainstream America, "bridging the color lines in music at the time."

With a string of hit singles composed mainly by Smokey Robinson, including "The One Who Really Loves You"", "Two Lovers" (1962), the Grammy-nominated "You Beat Me to the Punch" (1962) and her signature hit, "My Guy" (1964), she became recognized as "The Queen of Motown" until her departure from the company in 1964, at the height of her popularity. She was one of Motown's first singing superstars.

Life and career

Early life and initial recordings

Mary Esther Wells was born near Detroit's Wayne State University on May 13, 1943, to a mother who worked as a domestic, and an absentee father. One of three children, she contracted spinal meningitis at the age of two and struggled with partial blindness, deafness in one ear and temporary paralysis At age 10, Wells contracted tuberculosis. During her early years, Wells lived in a poor residential Detroit district. By age 12, she was helping her mother with house cleaning work. She described the ordeal years later:

Daywork they called it, and it was damn cold on hallway linoleum. Misery is Detroit linoleum in January—with a half-froze bucket of Spic-and-Span.

Wells used singing as her comfort from her pain and by age 10 had graduated from church choirs to performing at local nightclubs in the Detroit area. Wells graduated from Detroit's Northwestern High School at the age of 17 and set her sights on becoming a scientist, but after hearing about the success of Detroit musicians such as Jackie Wilson and the Miracles, she decided to try her hand at music as a singer-songwriter.

In 1960, 17-year-old Wells approached Tamla Records founder Berry Gordy at Detroit's Twenty Grand club, with a song she had intended for Jackie Wilson to record, since Wells knew of Gordy's collaboration with Wilson. However, a tired Gordy insisted Wells sing the song in front of him. Impressed, Gordy had Wells enter Detroit's United Sound Systems to record the single, titled "Bye Bye Baby". After a reported 22 takes, Gordy signed Wells to the Motown subsidiary of his expanding record label and released the song as a single in September 1960; it peaked at number 8 on the US Billboard R&B chart in 1961, and later crossed over to the pop singles chart, where it peaked at number 45.

Wells' early Motown recordings reflected a rougher R&B sound than the smoother style of her biggest hits. Wells became the first Motown female artist to have a Top 40 pop single after the Mickey Stevenson-penned doo-wop song "I Don't Want to Take a Chance" hit number 33 in June 1961. In the fall of that year, Motown issued her first album and released a third single, the bluesy ballad "Strange Love". When that record bombed, Gordy set Wells up with the Miracles' lead singer Smokey Robinson. Though she was hailed as "the first lady of Motown", Wells was technically Motown's third female signed act: Claudette Rogers, of Motown's first star group the Miracles, has been referred to by Berry Gordy as "the first lady of Motown Records" due to her being signed as a member of the group, and in late 1959 Detroit blues-gospel singer Mable John had signed to the then-fledgling label a year prior to Wells' arrival. Nevertheless, Wells' early hits as one of the label's few female solo acts did make her the label's first female star and its first fully successful solo artist.

Success

Wells's teaming with Robinson led to a succession of hit singles over the following two years. Their first collaboration, 1962's "The One Who Really Loves You", was Wells's first hit, peaking at number 2 on the R&B chart and number 8 on the Hot 100. The song featured a calypso-styled soul production that defined Wells's early hits. Motown released the similar-sounding "You Beat Me to the Punch" a few months later. The song became her first R&B number 1 single and peaked at number 9 on the pop chart. The success of "You Beat Me to the Punch" helped to make Wells the first Motown star to be nominated for a Grammy Award when the song was nominated for Best Rock & Roll Recording in 1963.

In late 1962, "Two Lovers" became Wells's third consecutive single to hit the Top 10 of Billboard's Hot 100, peaking at number 7 and becoming her second number 1 hit on the R&B chart. This helped to make Wells the first female solo artist to have three consecutive Top 10 singles on the pop chart. The track sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. Wells's second album, also titled The One Who Really Loves You, was released in 1962 and peaked at number 8 on the pop albums chart, making the teenage singer a breakthrough star and giving her clout at Motown. Wells's success at the label was recognized when she became a headliner during the first string of Motortown Revue concerts, starting in the fall of 1962. The singer showcased a rawer stage presence that contrasted with her softer R&B recordings.

Wells's success continued in 1963 when she hit the Top 20 with the doo-wop ballad "Laughing Boy" and scored three additional Top 40 singles, "Your Old Standby", "You Lost the Sweetest Boy", and its B-side, "What's Easy for Two Is So Hard for One". "You Lost the Sweetest Boy" was one of the first hit singles composed by the successful Motown songwriting and producing trio of Holland–Dozier–Holland, though Robinson remained Wells's primary producer.

Also in 1963, Wells recorded a session of successful B-sides that arguably became as well known as her hits, including "Operator", "What Love Has Joined Together", "Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right" and "Old Love (Let's Try It Again)". Wells and Robinson also recorded a duet titled "I Want You 'Round", which would be re-recorded by Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston.

In 1964, Wells recorded "My Guy". The Smokey Robinson song became her trademark single, reaching number 1 on the Cashbox R&B chart for seven weeks and becoming the number 1 R&B single of the year. The song successfully crossed over to the Billboard Hot 100, where it eventually replaced Louis Armstrong's "Hello, Dolly!" at number 1, remaining there for two weeks. The song became Wells's second million-selling single.

To build on the song's success, Motown released a duet album recorded with fellow Motown singing star Marvin Gaye, Together. The album peaked at number 1 on the R&B album chart and number 42 on the pop album chart, and yielded the double-sided hits "Once Upon a Time" and "What's the Matter With You Baby".

"My Guy" was one of the first Motown songs to break on the other side of the Atlantic, eventually peaking at number 5 on the UK chart and making Wells an international star. Around this time, the Beatles stated that Wells was their favorite American singer, and soon she was given an invitation to open for the group during their tour of the United Kingdom, thus making her the first Motown star to perform in the UK. Wells was only one of three female singers to open for the Beatles, the others being Brenda Holloway and Jackie DeShannon. Danny Tyrell accompanied her in live shows in Detroit. Wells made friends with all four Beatles and later released a tribute album, Love Songs to the Beatles, in mid-decade.

Former Motown sales chief Barney Ales described Wells's landmark success in 1964:

In 1964, Mary Wells was our big, big artist, I don't think there's any audience with an age of 30 through 50 that doesn't know the words to My Guy.

Leaving Motown

Ironically during her most successful year, Wells was having problems with Motown over her original recording contract, which she had signed at the age of 17. She was also reportedly angry that the money made from "My Guy" was being used to promote The Supremes, who had found success with "Where Did Our Love Go", just as "My Guy" was promoted, using the profits from another, earlier hit Motown song. Though Gordy reportedly attempted to renegotiate with Wells, the singer still asked to be freed from her contract with Motown.

A pending lawsuit kept Wells away from the studio for several months, as she and Gordy brokered the contract details, with Wells fighting to gain a larger share of the royalties she had earned during her tenure with Motown. Finally, Wells invoked a clause that allowed her to leave the label, advising the court that her original contract was invalid, as she had signed while she was still a minor. Wells won her lawsuit and was awarded a settlement, leaving Motown officially in early 1965, whereupon she accepted a lucrative ($200,000) contract with 20th Century Fox Records.

Part of the terms of the agreement of her release was that she could not receive any royalties from her past works with the label, including use of her likeness to promote herself.

Career struggles

A weary Wells worked on material for her new record label while dealing with other issues, including being bedridden for weeks suffering from tuberculosis. Wells's eponymous first 20th Century Fox release included the first single "Ain't It The Truth", its B-side "Stop Taking Me for Granted", the lone top 40 hit, "Use Your Head" and "Never, Never Leave Me". However, the album flopped, as did the Beatles tribute album she released not too long afterwards. Rumors have hinted Motown may have threatened to sue radio stations for playing Wells's post-Motown music during this time. After a stressful period in which Wells and the label battled over various issues after her records failed to chart successfully, the singer asked to be let go in 1965 and left with a small settlement.

In 1966, Wells signed with Atlantic Records' subsidiary Atco. Working with producer Carl Davis, she scored her final Top 10 R&B hit with "Dear Lover", which also became a modestly successful pop hit, peaking at number 51. However, much like her tenure with 20th Century Fox, the singer struggled to come up with a follow-up hit, and in 1968, she left the label for Jubilee Records, where she scored her final pop hit, "The Doctor", a song she co-wrote with then-husband Cecil Womack. (Meanwhile, she had attempted a film career, but only managed a guest starring role in 1967's "Catalina Caper".) In 1970, Wells left Jubilee for a short-lived deal with Warner Music subsidiary Reprise Records and released two Bobby Womack-produced singles. In 1972, Wells scored a UK hit with a re-issue of "My Guy", which was released on the Tamla-Motown label and climbed to number 14. Though a re-issue, Wells promoted the single heavily and appeared on the British TV show Top of the Pops for the first time. Despite this mini-revival, she decided to retire from music in 1974 to raise her family.

Comeback

In 1977, Wells divorced Cecil Womack and returned to performing. She was spotted by CBS Urban president Larkin Arnold in 1978 and offered a contract with the CBS subsidiary Epic Records, which released In and Out of Love in October 1981. The album, which had been recorded in 1979, yielded Wells's biggest hit in years, the funky disco single, "Gigolo".

"Gigolo" became a smash at dance clubs across the country. A six-minute mix hit number 13 on Billboard's Hot Dance/Club Singles chart and number 2 on the Hot Disco Songs chart. A four-minute radio version released to R&B stations in January 1982 achieved a modest showing at number 69. It turned out to be Wells's final chart single.

After the parent album failed to chart or produce successful follow-ups, the Motown-styled These Arms was released, but it flopped and was quickly withdrawn, and Wells's Epic contract fizzled. The album's failure may have been due to light promotion. She still had one more album in her CBS contract, and in 1982, released an album of cover songs, Easy Touch, which aimed for the adult contemporary radio format.

Leaving CBS in 1983, she continued recording for smaller labels, gaining new success as a touring performer.

On the April 21, 1984 edition of American Top 40, Casey Kasem reported that Wells was attempting to establish a hot dog chain.

In 1989, Wells was celebrated with a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation during its inaugural year.

Final years

In 1990, Wells recorded an album for Ian Levine's Motorcity Records, but her voice began to fail, causing the singer to visit a local hospital. Doctors diagnosed Wells with laryngeal cancer. Treatments for the disease ravaged her voice, forcing her to quit her music career. Since she had no health insurance, her illness wiped out her finances, forcing her to sell her home. As she struggled to continue treatment, old Motown friends, including Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, members of the Temptations and Martha Reeves, made donations to support her, along with the help of admirers such as Dionne Warwick, Rod Stewart, Bruce Springsteen, Aretha Franklin and Bonnie Raitt. That same year, a benefit concert was held by fellow fan and Detroit R&B singer Anita Baker. Wells was also given a tribute by friends such as Stevie Wonder and Little Richard on The Joan Rivers Show.

In 1991, Wells brought a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Motown for royalties she felt she had not received upon leaving Motown Records in 1964 and for loss of royalties for not promoting her songs as the company should have. Motown eventually settled the lawsuit by giving her a six-figure sum. That same year, she testified before the United States Congress to encourage government funding for cancer research:

I'm here today to urge you to keep the faith. I can't cheer you on with all my voice, but I can encourage, and I pray to motivate you with all my heart and soul and whispers.

Personal life

Wells married twice: first, in 1960, to Detroit singer Herman Griffin. The marriage of the teenage couple was troubled from the start due to their age and Griffin's unhealthy control of Wells; they divorced in 1963. Despite rumors, she never dated fellow Motown singer Marvin Gaye, who would go on to have successful duet partnerships with Kim Weston, Tammi Terrell and Diana Ross after Wells had left Motown.

In 1966, Wells married singer-songwriter Cecil Womack, formerly of the Valentinos, and the younger brother of musician Bobby Womack. The marriage lasted until 1977 and produced three children. Wells began an affair with another Womack brother, Curtis, during her marriage to Cecil. Her relationship with Curtis Womack was reportedly abusive. Wells was a notorious chain smoker and went through bouts of depression during her marriages. After separating from Cecil, she attempted suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills when word had leaked of her affair with Curtis who was married. After the failed suicide attempt, Wells sought other methods of what she called "meditating," including using cocaine. Over time, she developed a heroin habit. Her drug habit ceased after she became pregnant with Curtis' child. After splitting from Curtis in 1990, Wells focused on raising her youngest daughter Sugar (b.1986) until her cancer appeared.

Wells had four children: Cecil, Jr., Harry, Stacy (with Cecil Womack), and Sugar (with Curtis Womack).

Death

In the summer of 1992, Wells's cancer returned and she was rushed to the Kenneth Norris Jr. Cancer Hospital in Los Angeles with pneumonia. With the effects of her unsuccessful treatments and a weakened immune system, Wells died on July 26, 1992, at the age of 49. After her funeral, which included a eulogy given by her old friend and former collaborator, Smokey Robinson, Wells was cremated, and her ashes were laid to rest in Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in a Womack family crypt. Family friend Sam Cooke is buried in The Garden of Honor, about 850 feet (260 m) to the west.

Accolades

Though Wells has been eligible for induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, being nominated twice in 1986 and 1987, she has yet to achieve it.

Wells earned one Grammy Award nomination during her career. Her song "My Guy" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.

Wells was given one of the first Pioneer Awards by the Rhythm and Blues Foundation in 1989. A year later, the foundation raised more than $50,000 to help with her treatment after her illness had wiped out all of her finances.

Wells was inducted into the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame in 2006. She was inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame in 2017.

[robertdowneyjjr]

What if the guardian of the Soul Stone isn't actually a real person but a manifestation created by the stone replicating the soul of the best messenger for the particular seeker? So not *really* the actual Red Skull (though he thinks it is) but a copy chosen for Thanos because he would best reflect Thanos & his reasons for wanting the stone etc. So maybe when Tony goes for the stone he doesn't meet the Red Skull, but Yinsen (or knowing Marvel, Howard).

holy shit, anon. this theory is wild af and i love it. i was going to expand on it, maybe write some meta, talk about how shitty howard is, but instead i wrote a fic.

title is (spoiler alert) tony yeets howard off a cliff

In the blink of an eye, the Space Stone transports them to the remote lands of Vormir.

Tony looks around, lets his eyes adjust to the darkness surrounding them.

“Well this place is certainly…big,” he says.

“Please don’t tell me we’re supposed to search every inch of the place,” Steve replies.

Tony looks at the gauntlet he’s wearing and shakes his head. “No. We don’t need to do that,” he responds. He looks up, stares across the distance at the two pillars looming overhead. “It’s there.”

“How do you know?”

“The stones…it’s like they’re drawn in that direction. They’re telling me they need to be there.”

Steve nods and turns to the stony path on his right. “Alright. Let’s go then.”

“Steve, wait.” Tony engages his thrusters and lifts a few inches off the ground. “Need a lift?”

***

As Tony touches down and waits for Steve to step off the suit, he notices a shadowy figure awaiting by one of the pillars.

“Welcome, Steve. Anthony.”

He knows that voice.

Steve steps forward. “How are you here?”

Howard Stark removes his hood and answers.

“I woke up here, after I died. I wasn’t given the privilege of reincarnation. I wasn’t welcomed at the pearly gates of heaven, or sent to hell for eternal damnation. Though I guess, this is its own kind of torture, isn’t it? This is my punishment, for trying to harness the energy of an infinity stone to shape the future as I saw fit.” Howard looks at Tony for the first time in 28 years. “Not unlike what you’re trying to do now, wouldn’t you say, son?”

“This is nowhere near the same,” Tony says.

“Isn’t it?” Howard turns to Steve. “If you were the one wearing that gauntlet, Steve, I would have believed this to be my last day guarding the stone.” He chuckles and shakes his head. “But no, you and your team decided to trust Tony with it. A big mistake, really. He’s always been too soft, too weak to do what needs to be done.”

Tony grits his teeth. “Just tell us what to do, old man,” he hisses.

“A sacrifice.” Howard looks at Tony and steps closer. “The soul demands an exchange. Someone you hold dear. Someone you love. A soul for a soul.”

Tony flinches back. “No. I’d kill myself before that happens.”

“But you don’t love yourself enough for that to work, do you?” Howard tsks. “So what will it be, son? Do you have what it takes? Are you strong enough?” He spares a glance at Steve before settling his eyes back on Tony. “I know that you love him, crave his attention and validation. Just like you craved mine. I dare you to tell me that I’m wrong.”

Steve cuts in. “Tony…”

He turns around and looks at Steve, sees the overwhelming sadness displayed across his features, and Tony knows, without a doubt, that Steve isn’t planning on leaving this barren planet.

“We don’t have any other choice. The rest of the universe is at stake.”

Tony scoffs. The rest of the universe. The universe is a joke, hellbent on making Tony as miserable as possible. Just when he got his team back, just when he got Steve back, he’s expected to give the man up again.

“There’s always another choice,” he insists.

Steve takes his hand. “Tony,” he whispers. “There’s no cutting the wire this time.”

Tony looks back at Howard, who’s standing with his arms crossed and eyebrow raised, expression the same as Tony remembers from his childhood, dripping with doubt and disdain and disappointment.

“Either do it or don’t. Stop wasting more of my time, boy,” Howard spits out.

Rage burns throughout Tony’s body as he hears his father’s words. The man has been dead for almost three decades, but he still has the ability to hit Tony where it hurts. Twenty-eight years, where Tony has gone through hell and back again, turned his life around and positively influenced other people, built a family and saved the world. But it’s still not enough to make Howard proud.

And suddenly, Tony knows what he has to do.

He lets go of Steve’s hand and walks towards his father.

“You’re right, dad,” Tony says. “I don’t have what it takes to give Steve up. Call me selfish, but I just won’t do it.”

Tony watches as Howard smiles smugly at him, looking as if he knew Tony would let him down, just like he always did.

“You’re also right,” he continues, “because I did always crave your attention. All I wanted was a father who was there for me. A father who was proud of me. Even now, after you’ve been gone for so long, I still assess everything I do by asking myself what I think you’d say if you were still alive. I’m almost 50 years old, and I’m still looking for validation from my dead, absentee father.”

Tony lets out a deep breath and smiles. He feels lighter now, like a huge weight has finally been lifted off his aching shoulders.

“I’m done with that now. There’s nothing I can do that would make you proud of me. Even after everything I’ve been through in the last decade, I can still see that you consider me a failure. It’s fine. You may not know my worth, but I do.”

Tony can see the smirk slowly slipping off Howard’s face as it dawns on the man that he’s underestimated his son yet again.

“I loved you, dad. I still do, even though the feeling was never mutual. I know you did the best you could.” He pauses and spares a kind smile for Howard. “I’m really glad I got to see you one last time. Goodbye, dad.”

He lifts his arm up, splays his fingers out, and repulsor blasts his father off the cliff.

***

In the blink of an eye, they’re back where they started when they first landed on this planet.

Tony’s fist is clenched–he doesn’t know when that happened–and when he opens it up, the Soul Stone shines bright and orange in his palm.

He turns to Steve and sees the man already smiling back at him.

“Let’s go save the universe.”

now on ao3

[bountyofbeads]

How One Bahamian Town, Nearly Destroyed, Is Coping After Dorian https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/world/americas/bahamas-abaco-hurricane-damage.html

How One Bahamian Town, Nearly Destroyed, Is Coping After Dorian

By Kirk Semple |Published Sept. 6, 2019 Updated 11:40 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted September 6, 2019 |

Leer en español

TREASURE CAY, Bahamas — Since Hurricane Dorian plowed through Stafford Symonette’s house, and with it much of his community of Treasure Cay, he has stopped by from time to time to visit the ruins of his home.

What he hasn’t been able to bring himself to do, he said, is sift through the debris for his belongings.

“I am not ready,” he said softly, as he sat down on the toppled trunk of a palm tree.

Much like residents in other communities across the northern Bahamas, Mr. Symonette and his neighbors in Treasure Cay, on Great Abaco Island, were only just starting on Thursday to come to terms with the scale of their loss and to make sense of it all.

Evidence of that destruction was everywhere:the wasteland where a Haitian community once stood. A 45-foot shipping container mangled like a piece of aluminum foil. A Baptist church made of concrete blocks that now stood roofless, open to the heavens.

Some 95 percent of Treasure Cay’s homes were damaged or destroyed. The storm knocked out its utilities, leaving the community without power, water or communication. One resident was killed and others were injured, some seriously enough to need emergency evacuation.

“It’s going to be a long haul,” said Steve Pedican, 58, a longtime resident.

Since Hurricane Dorian struck the Bahamas on Sunday night as a Category 5 storm, at least 30 people have died and thousands have been left homeless. Officials fear the death toll could rise substantially once they have better knowledge of the extent of the damage on the ground.

[See Hurricane Dorian in Pictures]

Treasure Cay seemed to be facing the disaster with a resignation that some residents attributed to two things: a deep religiousness among the Bahamian population, and a longstanding familiarity with hurricanes.

The community is in some ways typical of many others in the Bahamas: an amalgam of native-born Bahamians, mostly absentee foreign homeowners, tourists and migrants from elsewhere in the Caribbean, mainly Haitians.

The settlement, laid out on a peninsula scalloped with beautiful white-sand beaches, was created in the mid-20th century as a resort for foreigners, mainly Americans, residents said.

More recently, Bahamians have bought into the resort. Others live on its outskirts.

Treasure Cay’s population ranges between several hundred and several thousand, depending on who is counting and who is being counted.

Stephanie Hield, 63, the chairwoman of the local governing council, said about 450 Bahamian residents were there. But the full population can swell to multiples of that during peak vacation season. And if Haitian immigrants, many of them undocumented, are also included, the count leaps further.

Since the storm, residents have been doing a nerve-racking accounting, surveying surrounding settlements for their relatives, friends and acquaintances.

Lacking contact with the outside world and working phone lines, people have had to revert to word of mouth to pass on what little is known. On Wednesday, while waiting for the arrival of emergency supplies at a small landing strip near Treasure Cay, Ms. Hield, and Bridgette Chase, 50, a customs officer, compared notes.

“Everybody’s accounted for in Man-O-War,” Ms. Chase said, referring to a nearby cay.

“Everybody’s accounted for in Grand Cay,” Ms. Hield added. “Everybody accounted for on Turtle Cay.”

Though Coast Guard helicopters evacuated some injured residents earlier this week, the first planes carrying medical teams, volunteers and emergency supplies like water, food and chain saws began arriving at the settlement’s landing strip on Wednesday.

Scores of Haitians had flocked to the airport after hearing a rumor that there were going to be evacuations.

“We were told to come to the airport to evacuate so we could find a better place to stay,” said Kalisa Lubin, 21. But most were unable to get out.

Mr. Symonette, an evangelical pastor, was also at the landing strip. He had arrived at 7 a.m., driven more by faith than solid information, to wait for a plane he hoped would be sent by an American evangelical group. He sat on an upturned paint bucket, in the lee of a building that had once been the airport’s fire station.

The hurricane had stripped the fire station of its roof, and turned its contents into a jumble of furniture, construction material and office equipment. Trees surrounding the airport, like forests across the island, were mostly stripped of their leaves and leaning hard toward the West, raked over by the wind.

Private jets arrived throughout the day, disgorging supplies and volunteers, but not the one Mr. Symonette was waiting for.

As dusk approached, he offered to drive a reporter around the settlement. Since the storm, he had not ventured into town, staying mostly at the home of friends where he and his family sought shelter after the hurricane.

At Mr. Symonette’s home, he described how he and his family had tried to weather the storm. As the house was pulled apart, he recalled, they fled to an S.U.V. parked outside. But then the house’s roof fell on the S.U.V. so they shifted to a bigger S.U.V., where they spent the next few hours.

“It’s a miracle we’re even talking,” he said.

Mr. Symonette, who was raised in Nassau and moved to Treasure Cay about 50 years ago, drove through the community slowly, mostly in silence, occasionally pointing out landmarks.

“That was the primary school,” Mr. Symonette said. “This was a restaurant here. That was one under construction there.”

The landscape had been rearranged to such a degree, with one heap of debris indistinguishable from the next, that Mr. Symonette at times got disoriented, mistaking one cluster of homes for another.

“Wow,” Mr. Symonette muttered.

A group of men sat by the roadside near the wreckage of a Haitian community called Sand Banks.

“Pastor, how you doing?” one called out.

“I’m all right,” Mr. Symonette replied.

“Thank God for life,” the man said.

“Thank God for life.”

Mr. Symonette had one more thing to check out: the evangelical church where he was once the pastor. He had overseen its construction, which took seven years.

When it came into view, Mr. Symonette was visibly relieved. It was a tall, sturdy-looking building, and except for some pieces of roofing that had sheared off, it seemed to have survived the storm well.

Even the 20-foot-high cross that soared upward from the top of the facade remained in place, a fact that Mr. Symonette noted with satisfaction.

In Bahamas, a Blind Father Wades to Safety, His Disabled Son on His Shoulders

By Rachel Knowles | Published Sept. 5, 2019 Updated Sept. 6, 2019, 11:50 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted September 6, 2019 4:55 PM ET |

NASSAU, the Bahamas — The roof had blown clean off. Outside, the ocean surged, swallowing the land. Brent Lowe knew he had to escape — and take his 24-year-old son, who has cerebral palsy and can’t walk, with him.

But Mr. Lowe had another problem. He’s blind.

So he put his grown son on his shoulders, then stepped off his porch, he said. The swirling current outside came up to his chin.

“It was scary, so scary,” said Mr. Lowe, 49.

Clutching neighbors, he said he felt his way to the closest home still standing. It was five minutes — an eternity — away.

Stories of unlikely survival have slowly emerged in the days since Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahamas, pummeling the islands of Grand Bahama and Abaco for days before moving toward the Atlantic Seaboard.

While the damage has been visible from above, the full human toll is still far from certain, with 30 deaths confirmed so far and the authorities warning that the real number may be much higher.

The death count “could be staggering,” said Dr. Duane Sands, the minister of health, who updated the toll late Thursday.

Some neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble, almost entirely flattened by the storm. In others, 95 percent of homes have been damaged or destroyed.

Thousands of people are now homeless, taking refuge in gymnasiums or churches, and the authorities are bracing for an influx of bodies as the extent of the destruction becomes clear.

[See Hurricane Dorian in Pictures]

“We are embalming bodies so that we have more capacity as new bodies are brought in,” Dr. Sands said. “We need to get coolers into Abaco and Grand Bahama, because we believe that we may not have the capacity to store the bodies.”

Sandra Cooke, a resident of Nassau, the capital, said her sister-in-law had been trapped under a collapsed roof in the Abaco Islands.

At first, her brother couldn’t find his wife — then the family dog detected her in the rubble. When there was a break in the storm, neighbors helped free her.

“She was trapped under the roof for 17 hours,” said Ms. Cooke. She hired a private helicopter service to bring the rescued woman to Nassau, she said.

When Hurricane Dorian first made landfall on Sunday, Mr. Lowe recalled, all of its fury seemed to bear down on him.

The storm raging outside was one of the most powerful ever to sweep through the Atlantic. Its eye was approaching and the group of eight people inside Mr. Lowe’s cement house was particularly vulnerable.

In addition to Mr. Lowe and his disabled son, neighbors whose homes had already been destroyed were also sheltering there. Among them were two children.

As the storm howled around them, Mr. Lowe said, the roof began to lift off, then slap back down. Abaco withstood sustained winds of up to 185 miles per hour that day, with gusts that reached 220 miles per hour. The group sought safety in the bathroom, where they huddled together and prayed, hoping for relief. Mr. Lowe’s son was nestled inside the bathtub, he said.

That’s when the roof flew away.

Exposed to the elements, each person had to step out into the storm. They clung to each other and set out to find refuge.

“I’ve never experienced anything like that in my life,” said Mr. Lowe, who is no stranger to hurricanes but said he could never have imagined the terror of that day.

The group reached a neighbor’s home. Mr. Lowe and his son hunkered down there for a day until a rescue bus was able to pick them up on Monday and take them to a shelter.

On Tuesday night, he was evacuated to Nassau, where Mr. Lowe can get the dialysis treatment he needs three times a week. His son had to stay in Abaco, in the care of Mr. Lowe’s sister-in-law, he said.

“I came here with the clothes that I had on from Saturday,” he said.

Although Mr. Lowe and his son are now safe, his ordeal is, in some ways, only beginning.

He didn’t know if his eldest daughter made it through the storm, he said. The phone lines have been down for days and communication with Abaco is very difficult.

“Right before we had the wind, I spoke with her,” he said. “I wish I could have been able to call and ask somebody, you know, because I really was worried about them. I was worried about everybody.”

So many people have been pushed from their homes by the hurricane that in Marsh Harbour, the main town on Abaco, as many as 2,000 people were seeking shelter in a clinic and a government complex. Officials warned that tent cities might have to be set up to accommodate the many survivors.

There are also environmental concerns. The Norwegian energy company Equinor said an oil storage terminal on the island of Grand Bahama had been damaged. The terminal was leaking, the company said, though it was too early to tell how much oil had spilled.

From the air, the storage tanks appeared to have no lids. The domed tops of five of tanks were “gone,” a company spokesman said.

Bahamian officials urged their citizens to be unified.

“There are no words to convey the grief we feel for our fellow Bahamians in the Abacos and Grand Bahama,” Dionisio D’Aguilar, the tourism and aviation minister, said in a statement. “Now is the time to come together for our brothers and sisters in need, and help our country get back on its feet.”

Like many of his neighbors, Mr. Lowe is now homeless. After a lifetime on the outskirts of Marsh Harbour — where he raised a family and worked as a butcher in a fish house until he lost his eyesight to diabetes — his home, his community and everything he built has been obliterated.

Still, Mr. Lowe wants to return to Abaco.

“I have to go,” he said. “That’s where my family is. My kids are there, my brothers, my sisters, they’re all there.”

But he is unsure of its future. The damage is catastrophic.

In the area where he lived, “90 percent of the houses are compromised,” he said. “I’m talking about roofs gone, houses totally collapsed everywhere.”

He added, “I’m just wondering where we’re going to live when I go back home, what I’m going to do.”

Death Toll Rises to 30 in Bahamas, as Stories of Survival Emerge

By Rachel Knowles and Frances Robles |

Published Sept. 5, 2019 | New York Times | Posted September 6, 2019 |

NASSAU, Bahamas — Days after Hurricane Dorian bore down in fury on the Bahamas, leaving at least 30 people dead and thousands homeless, harrowing stories of survival have begun to emerge.

Sandra Cooke, a resident of Nassau, the capital, said her sister-in-law had been trapped under a collapsed roof in the Abaco Islands. At first, her brother couldn’t find his wife, but the family dog eventually detected her in the rubble. When there was a break in the storm, neighbors helped free her.

Ms. Cooke was reunited with her sister-in-law on Tuesday.

“She was trapped under the roof for 17 hours,” said Ms. Cooke on Wednesday, adding that she had hired a private helicopter service to bring the rescued woman to Nassau.

[Here’s how to help Hurricane Dorian survivors in the Bahamas.]

But officials fear that as the picture on the ground becomes clearer, the death toll could rise.

The death count “could be staggering” said Dr. Duane Sands, the Bahamas’ minister of health, on Thursday.

Dr. Sands said that there were already four undertakers working on Abaco Island, the largest island on the Abaco Islands, and that he did not know if more would be needed.

“We are embalming bodies so that we have more capacity as new bodies are brought in,” he said. “We need to get coolers into Abaco and Grand Bahama, because we believe that we may not have the capacity to store the bodies.”

Marvin Dames, the minister of national security, said at a news conference on Wednesday night that the process of clearing the streets and making airports available had already begun on the Abaco Islands and on Grand Bahama, the two areas of the archipelago hit hardest by the hurricane, one of the strongest Atlantic storms on record.

Aerial footage taken over the Abacos showed roads washed away and debris scattered across beaches. Splintered wood jutted from clusters of damaged homes.

Gaining access to Marsh Harbour, the largest city on Abaco Island, has been problematic, with the airport, Leonard M. Thompson International, left underwater for days after the storm. Like Ms. Cooke, other people also resorted to private companies to help in the evacuations.

A British Navy vessel is stationed near Marsh Harbour for relief support and has been distributing food and water.

There are no official estimates of the number of people displaced by the storm. But in Marsh Harbour, as many as 2,000 people were seeking shelter in a clinic and a government complex.

“Already we have begun the process of evacuating people from Abaco into New Providence,” Dr. Sands said. New Providence is the island where Nassau is located. “Those airlifts have started.”

He said some evacuees were being sent to the Kendall G.L. Isaacs National Gymnasium in Nassau, but that additional shelters would have to be identified.

Dr. Sands also said it was possible that tent cities would be set up on Abaco Island.

The Norwegian energy company Equinor said the hurricane had damaged its oil storage terminal in South Riding Point on the island of Grand Bahama. The terminal was leaking, the company said, but it was too early to tell how much oil had spilled.

During a flight Wednesday over the terminal The New York Times saw storage tanks that appeared to have no lid. The domed tops of five of its tanks were “gone,” a company spokesman said, but only three contained significant amounts of oil before the hurricane.

Oil was visible on the ground surrounding the tanks, but the seawater around the terminal was clear.

“Ahead of the hurricane we shut down the terminal as a precautionary measure and the terminal has been designed with hurricanes and storms in mind,” said Erik Haaland, a company spokesman. “The areas surrounding the tanks are also designed as barriers to contain oil spills. So far we have not received information that oil has been observed at sea.”

Some areas near the terminal had been evacuated at the request of local authorities. The company was still trying to establish a better overview of the terminal and said it was “mounting a safe and timely response to the situation.”

“While weather conditions on the island have improved, road conditions and flooding continue to impact our ability to assess the situation and the scope of damages to the terminal and its surroundings,” the statement said.

No Equinor employees were at the terminal when the storm passed. Equinor, formerly known as Statoil, said it shut down operations of the terminal at noon last Saturday in preparation for the hurricane. The workers were given time off to look after their families and secure their private homes, the statement said.

The storm made landfall in the Bahamas on Sunday as a Category 5 hurricane and stalled there for three days, inundating the islands and destroying homes and businesses.

In the days since, the storm has weakened significantly, and by Thursday morning was swirling off the coast of the Carolinas as a Category 3 hurricane. Residents there were bracing for dangerous rain, winds and storm surge.

In the Bahamas, officials made pleas for support and prayers from the international community.

“There are no words to convey the grief we feel for our fellow Bahamians in the Abacos and Grand Bahama,” Dionisio D’Aguilar, the tourism and aviation minister, said in a statement. “Now is the time to come together for our brothers and sisters in need, and help our country get back on its feet.”

He urged travelers to visit areas in the Bahamas that were not affected by the storm in order to aid the country’s economic recovery.

[hallsp]

Story of Mercy sisters in Castletown

                     On the occasion of the centenary of the coming of the Sisters                      of Mercy to Castletownbere in 1964, a local paper carried                      the following comment: 'By their devotion to the corporal                      works of Mercy, their care and attention to the sick, the                      poor and the training of the children of the town under                      their care in their schools, they have endeared the Order                      to young and old'.

                                          It was a fair comment and a fitting tribute to the Sisters,                      especially to the pioneer group who arrived in Castletownbere                      in September 1864, making it their home and the centre of                      their charitable activities. Now forty-two years on, we                      reach a milestone in the passage of time and witness many                      changes, changes that the Sisters themselves could never                      have envisaged or imagined. We now live in a prosperous                      town where there is little, if any, real poverty, among                      the people, who are highly educated and technically advanced.                                                                  We live in a time of great opportunity and great liberation.                      In order to understand why the Sisters of Mercy were founded,                      as indeed many of the religious congregation, we need to                      familiarise ourselves with the state of affairs in Ireland                      around the early nineteenth century.                                            Ours was a broken and divided land, the Ireland of the Big                      House culture where the minority, mainly English settlers                      and absentee gentry enjoyed the fruits of the land and the                      labours of the poor people. Unemployment, poverty, malnutrition                      and illiteracy were their lot, drunkenness and vice were                      widespread among them. Educational facilities were inadequate                      and proscription of Catholicism had effectively excluded                      the Catholic Irish from the professions and from political                      power in their own country.                                            Into this Ireland Catherine McAuley, founder of the Sister                      of Mercy, was born in 1778, the eldest of a family of three.                      She lived in Stormanstown House, north Dublin. The only                      concession towards Catholics in her father's day was that                      which allowed them to engage in trade and non-professional                      activities, so he became a carpenter, builder, real estate                      dealer and gradually moved towards prosperity as a self-made                      man.                                            It was he who taught her the important things in life -                      prayer, the truths of Christ and integrity of character                      - but from her mother she inherited an amalgam of refinement                      and culture which led her to observe later that 'a perfect                      religious is a perfect lady'. However, the family was soon                      to meet with tragedy in the sudden death of her father.                      Afterwards her mother mismanaged the family finances and                      exposed her children to anti-catholic influences which claimed                      allegiance of all except Catherine.                      After her mother's death in 1798, Catherine was adopted                      by a Protestant couple, the Callaghans. She went to live                      with them in Coolock and, because of her constant witness                      to Gospel values, she had the joy of leading both her adoptive                      parents to conversion.                                            In 1831, two years after Daniel O'Connell had broken the                      chains by the Emancipation Act, Catherine founded her Order                      and came with her seal of Mercy to relieve human misery                      in all its forms and work for the physical, social and moral                      regeneration of the people. The rule and constitutions of                      her Congregation were approved by his Holiness Pope Gregory                      XVI in 1835. The tree of Mercy was planted in December 1831                      in Baggot Street, quickly spread its branches throughout                      Ireland. In September 1864, a branch reached out to isolated                      Castletownbere and under the authority of Most Rev. David                      Moriarty, Bishop of Kerry, Mother M. de Salles Bridgeman                      and Sister M. Xavier Kenyon left Holy Cross Convent, Killarney,                      and arrived safely in Castletownbere, covering the journey                      in a 'covered car'.                      On arrival in the town they stayed at a Miss Greenway's                      house until a house was ready for them. (Some research shows                      that there was a family named Greenway living in Greenway                      Lane", at the West end of the town. It is now "Tallon                      Road".)                                            Some time later, a Mrs. Geran, who is described as a member                      of the Broderick family, donated a house to the Sisters                      which was fitted out as a convent. This house is the house                      adjoining Fr Sean O'Shea's at the rear of the Garda Station.                      The Sisters took possession of it on September 8, when Holy                      Mass was celebrated there for the first time by Rev. Fr                      Michael Enright. On September 20, these sisters were joined                      by four more sisters from the Holy Cross Convent, Killarney.                      They were: Sr. M Assisi Taylor, Sr. M. Frances Kavanagh,                      Sr. M Gertrude O'Connell and Sr. Martha.                                            This little band was the nucleus of the Sisters of Mercy                      here in Castletownbere. They were the pioneers of the works                      of the Order of Mercy among the poor people who seemed to                      have lost all hope. For a historical record tells us that                      there was in fact no actual difference between Berehaven                      during the famine and Berehaven then. Poverty and distress                      and dire want were visible in everypart of the locality                      - "vast tracts of land untilled and undrained; very                      bad public roads; dirty streets without flag-way or foot-path                      for the greater part; a fine harbour with out even a fishing-boat;                      not one landlord that owns an acre resides in the locality".                                                                  The branch planted in Castletownbere in September 1864 grew                      and blossomed over the years into the stately tree now over                      looking Bantry Bay. Mrs. Geran's house, which became the                      Sisters' first Convent, was situated at the top of the town,                      quite close to the sea in the vicinity of where now stands                      the Garda Siochana Barracks. Mr Thomas Leahy of Cork, a                      large land-owner and landlord in Berehaven gave Fr Enright                      £300 towards the erection of this Convent.                                            (This is the same Leahy who carried out the evictions of                      his tenants in Kilmacowen in 1907.) The Castletown people                      contributed £219 and a friend gave £50. The                      Sisters remained in the building for ten years. Then they                      decided to leave the West End. Why? "For the proximity                      of the old house to the sea, though pleasant in summer,                      was rather inconvenient in winter, as the tide occasionally                      made its way into the lower apartments."                                            In 1872, Mother de Sales, who was the local Superior, set                      about the building of a new convent near the parish church.                      The site was given by the Earl of Bantry and work commenced                      on August 28, 1872, Mr. Thomas Leahy came to the Sisters'                      Aid again with a donation of £1,000. Voluntary subscriptions                      amounted to £450. Dr. Moriarty contributed £100                      and the proceeds of a bazaar brought in £150. On April                      4, 1874, the Sisters took possession of the new building.                                                                  They were £400 in debt to the builder, Mr. Murphy,                      Bantry (who was a native of Castletownbere and father of                      William Martin Murphy, MP), but once more Mr Thomas Leahy                      came to the rescue and sent £500 to Dr. Moriarty.                      The extra £100 was for the chapel, which was to be                      built later.                      As the community increased the Convent had to be enlarged.                      In 1883 plans were drawn up by Mr Galvin from Valentia for                      a new wing. But the contract was not accepted until 1889.                      £600 in funding was raised by means of a bazaar and                      a grand drawing of prizes. On the 26th of April 1890, which                      was the Feast of Our Lady of Good Counsel, the new wing                      was blessed and Mass was said for the first time in the                      new Chapel in July 2nd, 1890.                                            On the Feast of the Guardian Angels less than a month after                      their arrival on Castletownbere the Sisters took charge                      of the existing school, run by the two secular teachers                      in one of the two houses on the Convent ground. One of these                      teachers resigned immediately and the other continued for                      sometime to help the sisters. They got the other house fitted                      up for senior classes and by November the schools were connected                      with the National Board of Education and were working satisfactorily.                      These schools, though fitted up at considerable expense,                      were only makeshift and were unsuited to the purposes of                      education; they were built on soil won from the sea over                      which high tides continued to ebb and flow and they afforded                      such scanty accommodation as to imperil the health of the                      children. So after the Sisters transferred to the new Convent,                      Mother de Sales, urged by Dr Moriarty, set about the erection                      of new schools.                                            The foundation was laid a little South East of the Convent                      on 31st May 1877 and the schools were opened on 30th January                      1878. They consisted of two long rooms divided by a glass                      partition - a class room and Children of Mary's Room. They                      were known as St Mary's and St Joseph's. They cost £793                      plus. Though Priests and people gave generous contributions                      the Community was £400 in debt. Appeals for aid, approved                      by the Bishop, were published in four papers The Cork Examiner,                      The Kerry Sentinel, The Freeman's Journal, and The Nation.                      Letters of appeal were sent in various directions.                      Here is an extract from The Kerry Sentinel, November 4th                      1879:                                            "The appeal which we publish in our columns today from                      the Sisters of Mercy, Castletown Bere, is one which we would                      strongly urge upon the attention of the charitable. For                      the erection of the Convent and schools, the good people                      of Castletown Bere willingly taxed themselves at an extent                      commensurate with their means, and were it not for the distress                      which prevails there both now and for some time past, we                      have no doubt but the parishioners of Castletown Bere would                      still make a further effort towards completion of their                      good works.                                            We can speak from personal observation of the excellence                      of the instruction imparted in the schools at Castletown,                      and we unhesitatingly state that no where have we seen imparted                      an education more thorough and practical, or more calculated                      to exercise a good and beneficial influence on the future                      lives of those instructed. We therefore strongly urge upon                      you the attention of our readers the modest appeal of the                      Castletown Nuns."                                            In October 1889 after many almost insurmountable obstacles                      the building of St Joseph’s School was commenced in                      a field close to the back of the Convent. The school was                      opened on 8th September 1890. In order to facilitate the                      Sisters to go alone from the Convent to the School the tunnel                      was built (Cost £27) thus connecting the Convent and                      the school and keeping the enclosure unbroken. The school                      cost £1200 and there remained a debt of £300.                      The principal merchants of Castletownbere and others held                      a meeting for the purpose of raising funds to help Rev.                      Mother Assisi to pay this debt. When Miss Julia McCarthy                      resigned her position as teacher of the smaller boys, Rev                      Canon McDonnel, P.P gave the boys (44 on rolls) to the care                      of the Sisters and St Patrick's School was opened for them                      on 4th July 1904.                                            After a short time, the school was recognised by the National                      Board of Education. Many boys who are now priests received                      their early education here.                                            In the early 1920s the staff of St Joseph’s' School                      depleted, but in 1925 Mother M Rosaire Corcoran went to                      the training college of Our Lady of Mercy, Carysfort Park,                      Blackrock, Co. Dublin to be trained as a National Teacher.                      She was the first religious to be admitted to the College,                      so she literally made history: she opened the doors of the                      College to members of all the religious Congregations in                      our Country. Two years later Mother M. Thaddeus Lyne was                      sent to be trained too, so the school was then fully staffed.                                            In 1932 Mother M. Therese Corcoran, (Mother Rosary's sister)                      a valiant woman of great vision and an outstanding educationist,                      began the Secondary Top in St Josephs' School and since                      then, all through the years, the people of Beara had no                      more worries about educating their children.                      The school ranked among the best in Ireland and the pupils                      were always outstandingly successful, obtaining first place                      several times in competitive exams. From it, numbers have                      passed to positions in the Civil Service and to the Preparatory                      Colleges which led on to training for the teaching profession.                                            About 1946 the Sisters began to collect funds for a new                      school because St Joseph's was now in bad repair. The collection                      amounted to a little over £300 which they lodged in                      the bank. In 1954 appeals were sent out to all past pupils                      and to all Berehaven friends in the USA. The Beara Clubs,                      both in New York and Boston took up the cause and collected                      about £6000. Appeals sent to past pupils, raffles                      and donations brought in about £800.                                            This money was invested in 1956 until the country could                      afford to give a grant for the new school. There was no                      local contribution whatever. In the Spring of 1961 the Beara                      Clubs in USA sent another donation of £271 and in                      April of that year the O'Brien Brothers, Kenmare, commenced                      preparing the site for the new school. As the old site had                      to be extended the Sisters bought a field from Mr. Arthur                      Hanley and in addition to this they sacrificed a big portion                      of their own field. June 15th 1963, the Community gave dinner                      to all workmen and on July 1st the new school - Scoil Mhuire                      Gan Smal - was opened.                                            St Patrick's School was now empty as all the Junior School                      (boys and girls) moved up to Scoil Mhuire Gan Smal. As there                      was no secondary education available in Castletown at that                      time for boys, Most Rev. Dr. Moynihan asked Rev. Mother                      Rosari to consider renovating St Patrick's School and its                      environment in view of making it suitable as a secondary                      school for boys. In accordance with the Bishop's wishes                      the construction of Mean Scoil Naomh Iosaf was started in                      the Summer of 1963. Mr. D. Kennedy, Tralee was Architect                      and the O'Brien Bros. accepted the contract at a cost of                      £8,842 plus extras for roof repairs etc There was                      no financial help from any source, no State grant, no local                      collection or contribution; the Community had to bear the                      burden of all the expense together with all the inconvenience                      the expansion entailed, because rooms had to be taken from                      the Convent to provide sufficient space for all the pupils                      who sought admission to the school.                                            Mein Scoil Naomh Iosaf the first co-educational School in                      Ireland, opened in 1964 with 100 girls and 30 boys on the                      roll. (Some ten years previously we did have co-education,                      but there was only one boy on rolls! Brendan Hanley of Eyeries                      came to Mother Therese in desperation because he was unable                      to get a place in a boarding school that year.                                            She got permission both from the Bishop and from the Department                      of Education to accept him in our school and he was the                      only boy in Inter Cert class that year. He was later Father                      Brendan Hanley, MSC. The Secondary Top for girls which functioned                      in St. Joseph's since 1932, was transferred to the renovated                      building and classes were recognised by the Secondary Department                      of Education. Renovation and expansion had to continue to                      meet the needs of the increasing numbers. The immense blocks                      of hard rock yielded to machinery and gave way to two fine                      playgrounds as well as to shelters for bicycles. By September                      1968 there were 220 pupils on rolls.                                            The care of orphan children being one of the works of the                      Order of Mercy, as soon as the Sisters came to Castletownbere                      they fitted up part of one of the houses on the Convent                      ground as a small orphanage. The Annals say that an amount                      of good was effected in this small building.                                            But the work was abandoned in 1874 when the sisters moved                      to the new Convent. Orphans were numerous in Beara because                      of the occurrence of fever and other contagious diseases                      arising from the poverty of the people and also because                      of the many fathers who lost their lives fishing. For all                      these children there was no provision now but the Workhouse                      where they grew up without any domestic or industrial training.                                                                  After much prayer and consideration, the sisters decided                      to establish an orphanage in connection with their Convent.                      Rev. Mother Assisi discussed the project with Father Dan                      Harrington, a native of Castletownbere, and President of                      St. Michael's College, Listowel at the time. He encouraged                      the undertaking and promised to go to the USA to collect                      funds if the Bishop approved.                                            Most Rev. Dr. Andrew Higgins fully approved of the enterprise                      and gave Father Harrington a letter of recommendation. A                      collection was made in Castletownbere on 24th September                      1883 by the two curate, Father Pierce and Garvey and a concert                      was held too.                                            The people gave according to their means. The priests of                      the diocese generously and promptly responded to the appeal                      and the Bishop gave £20.                                            Father Dan Harrington sailed for the USA on February 3rd,                      1884 and after a terrible voyage of 14 days landed safely                      in New York. For over a years, he travelled about questing                      for funds; the sacrifices he made and the difficulties he                      encountered and the hardships he endured in this cause are                      known only to God.                                            Several times he wrote to the sister keeping them au fait                      with his success. One letter tells how all the Berehaven                      people received him with open arms. He collected money in                      New York, in Boston and made "a fruitless journey"                      as far as Lake Superior. On one occasion he sent a cheque                      for £300 "most of which was received from natives                      of Donegal, Derry and Tyrone." In all he collected                      £1,000.                      In March, 1886, the community bought Denis Neill's field                      as a site for the orphanage. They gave another field in                      exchange for it plus £155. By 1891 the building was                      completed and the next step was to apply for the existing                      grant, allocated by an act of parliament to industrial schools                      for the maintenance and clothing of orphans.                                            The Lord Lieutenant and his suite visited Castletown Bere                      on May 8th just when the orphanage was finished. Mother                      Assisi invited him to see it and asked him for the Government                      grant. He promised to do his best, but was not at all sanguine                      that the Treasury would vote the grant as £100,000                      was already being spent on Industrial Schools in Ireland.                                                                  Petitions were addressed to the Lord Lieutenant on various                      occasions afterwards, but all to no avail; the grant was                      never given, and so the orphanage never sanctioned as such.                      In 1904 the building became St. Patrick's School and in                      1963 it was completely remodelled and became Mean Scoil                      Naomh Iosaf.                                            Mercy is all embracing and can never do enough. Many waters                      cannot quench it, no floods can sweep it away. During their                      early years in Beara the Sisters hastened to meet the various                      needs all around them. Repeatedly we read in the Annals                      that they gave breakfast to the poor children attending                      school.                      They also collected clothes for them even from the USA.                      Sister M. Francis Clare (Kenmare Convent) sent regular donations                      of £50 for the poor. On one occasion, February 1880,                      some of this money was given to Canon Carmody to provide                      Spillers (fishinglines) for the fisherman of Bere Island                      and Deeshert, seed potatoes and meal were bought to others.                                                                  December 26th 1895, the Sisters were requested by the Board                      of Guardians to take charge of the Workhouse. They were                      only too glad to accept as they longed to help the sick                      and dying. Mother M. Xavier O'Connell; and Mother Margaret                      Mary Griffin were the first Sisters appointed for this work.                      A plan was drawn up for the convent and changes in the wards.                      Work started in March 1896. In the meantime four sisters                      set out to visit the hospitals in Killarney, Tralee and                      Listowel in order to acquire a knowledge of hospital duties.                      When they returned in June the Convent was almost completed;                      they took possession of it July 1st and called it St. Joseph's.                                                                  A lace class granted by the Congested District Board, was                      opened in Castletownbere on 10th March, 1906. Miss Mary                      Roche was the first teacher. At a later date this industry                      was taken over by the sisters. The industry flourished'                      employment and training in machine knitting and in the making                      of Limerick Lace were given to many girls in Beara. The                      Lace Class was discontinued in the late 1940's.                      In the days when the sisters resided up town the first "invasion"                      of the tide in to the lower apartments was a memorable one!                      It was the 29th January, Rev. Mother de Dales' Feast Day.                                            Early in the morning one of the Sisters proceeded to the                      kitchen and as panic-stricken to find the dainties prepared                      for the feast floating on the waves. She thought she could                      save them, but she emerged minus a shoe!                                            Imagine Pope Leo XIII was acquainted of a bazaar held in                      Castletownbere in 1888 in aid of St Joseph's School! He                      sent an exquisite Cameo as one of the prizes. Small wonder                      that it headed the long list of 69 prizes!                                            Even the Royalty visited Castletownbere! On July 31st, 1903                      the town had one glorious hour when King Edward VII and                      his Queen Alexandria passed through the streets. The children                      of the parish too had one great feast with the £12                      given them to commemorate the Royal Visit.                                            Because of the convent being founded from Killarney, it                      remained affiliated with it under a local Superior until                      1878. That year Most Rev. Dr. McCarthy decided that it should                      become an independent house and on October 4th, he appointed                      Sister Mary Assisi Taylor first Mother Superior of the Convent.                                                                  Since then all through the years the Convent kept its autonomy                      and flourished under the authority of a long line of dedicated                      and competent Superiors. On April 28, 1973 the two hundred                      Mercy Sisters in the diocese were amalgamated and the Castletownbere                      Superior, Mother M Philomena Harrington, was elected the                      first Mother General of the group: Once again the convent                      had a local superior, as in the early days superiors came                      to Castletownbere from Killarney and Tralee.                                            The first schools the Sisters had in Castletown were situated                      in the West End until 1878, when they were transferred to                      new building near the convent. When the new Community School                      was built in Cametringane some of the sisters were teaching                      up town again.                                            As a result of all her labours and exertions, Mother M de                      Sales, the foundress of the Convent, returned in very delicate                      health to Killarney in July 1878 and she died there seven                      years later. It is significant that almost a century later                      another great "builder" of the local community                      - Mother M Therese Corvoran, the last one to join the glorious                      galaxy of those gone before them - that she, too wore herself                      out in the service of her children and of the people of                      Beara.                                            For during the last eight years of her life she paid the                      price for her unselfish giving and total commitment to the                      Lord. Yes, History does repeat!                                            In its hey-day, the convent owned a farm which extended                      along the old river road at Toormore and also had a large                      herd of milking cows. They made their own butter and kept                      a large garden, as well as a good orchard, which we well                      remember for its fine apples.                                            Over the past number of years, painful decisions have had                      to be taken. In 1971 the Sisters of Mercy in the Kerry Diocese                      amalgamated and in 1994 those of the whole country. With                      a view to the future and in line with modern thinking, the                      nuns left their big Convent in December 1989 and moved to                      smaller groups into smaller residences which were built                      near St Joseph's Hospital.                                            The old convent building is now a hostel. The twenty-first                      century Ireland, though having its own special needs, has                      outgrown the needs of the nineteenth century, and one can                      say that Catherine McAuley's vision for society then, had                      come to fruition in our time, in that we enjoy many privileges                      among which are free education, free health care for those                      in need, a social service which caters for the poorer section,                      and we live in a time when the old and infirm are well catered                      for.                                            It was not from chance or mere accident or just for the                      sake of a name that the Castletownbere Convent was called                      "Divine Providence". These two words enshrine                      for the nuns a wealth and a heritage over the years and                      treasured beyond all the gold in the world.                                            For them, Divine Providence was their Heavenly Father, watching                      over them, taking care of them and providing for them and                      doing everything a good father does for his children. For                      the history of their convent to the story of God's fatherly                      care, visible and tangible at all times down the years.                                     ��      So often the tender "branch" swayed and rocked                      beneath the force of violent storms of problems and pressures                      of financial difficulties and anxieties, of sickness and                      death, but it never broke.                                            The winds of death started as early as 1870 and on three                      occasions swept away the young - Sister Bridget Murphy in                      1870 was still a novice; Sister M. Fincarr Murphy in 1916                      had been just eight years a nun; Sister M. Patricia Kelly                      in 1940 was only thirty-six years.                                            At its peak the convent had some twenty-four sisters, now                      sadly the numbers are down to five plus two sisters in hospital                      in Tralee. When we visited the little cemetery at the rear                      of the old Convent, we counted forty-four graves.                                            Writing some years ago, one of the sisters said the following:                      "Dear Sisters - our Community in Heaven, as we lovingly                      call you, we dedicate these pages to you and to the memory                      of your great deeds which we have endeavoured to recount.                      We will remember you forever with unbreakable affection,                      with admiration, with gratitude and with nostalgia.                                            "No one among us now in Divine Providence knows you                      all, but all of us know many of you. We have lived with                      you and walked with you and talked with you and laboured                      with you. We sat at your bedside and we nursed you and we                      have accompanied you to your resting place.                                            "We miss you- life is not the same without you. But                      we continue to show our trust and gratitude to our Heavenly                      Father by accepting a new manifestation of His love in this                      change. We carry on your work as best we can. We strive                      to be totally committed and dedicated to Christ like you.                                            "Despite any trappings of riches acquired by us in                      recent years we want to be pure of heart and poor in fact                      just like you - you really had nothing. Life to you was                      Christ and now death had brought you something more, for                      what you desired, you now see, and you will sing forever                      of the Lord's love.                      "We are still 'racing for the finish' and we look forward                      to rejoining you on the great Eternal Shore. I bParrthas                      na nGrast go rabhaimid."                                            Courtesy of the Southern Star                      05/08/2006

A teacher resigned when the sisters took over the local school!!!!!

[jacksonlamanda]

The Cup Final - Liverpool Vs. Leeds () | Liverpool, Liverpool team, Liverpool players

Liverpool v leeds fa cup final - : Fa Cup Final - Liverpool V Leeds United [Import anglais]: Movies & TV

Phil Taylor's and the 50's liverpool v leeds fa cup final final side's support at Wembley. The thrill of Wembley's final whistle, by Ian Callaghan. Cup final cartoon. Liverpool v leeds fa cup final Wembley hoodoo by Bill Shankly. Press report from Adrian Killen's scrapbook. Byrne - injured hero of Liverpool.

Final that almost died of tactics. Geoff Strong's fantastic gesture. The queen hands the cup to Big Ron. I'm a freak at Wembley! Chairlift finale. Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon. Image Unavailable Image not available for Color:. Format: DVD. DVD "Please retry". Give the gift of Amazon for any occasion. Free shipping on all gift cards Shop now.

Special offers and product promotions Amazon Business: Make the most of your Amazon Business account with exclusive tools and savings. Register a free business account. Product details Aspect Ratio : 1. Customer reviews. Format: DVD. DVD —.

FA Cup Final 1965

DVD "Please retry". Give the gift of Amazon for liverpool v leeds fa cup final occasion. Free shipping on all gift cards Shop now. Special offers and product promotions Amazon Business: Make the most of your Amazon Business account with exclusive tools and savings.

Register a free business account. Product details Package Dimensions : 7. Customer reviews. How are ratings calculated? Leeds liverpool v leeds fa cup final the fortune to be drawn against lower division opponents Southport, Shrewsbury Town and Crystal Palace on the way to Wembley, although they had also ousted League champions Everton and Manchester Unitedrequiring replays on both occasions.

Liverpool's only absentee was England wing-half Gordon Milne, who had damaged his knee ligaments over Easter. Strangely, Milne's father had missed the final for Preston North End when he broke a collarbone a fortnight before the final against Huddersfield Town. Coincidentally, Leeds were the first Yorkshire club since then to have made it to the final.

Gigantic Scottish centre-half Ron Yeats skippered the side and was supported by young Tommy Smith, sweeping up despite wearing the No 10 shirt. Their inclusion was fixtures nations league in serious doubt, although it meant that the promising Terry Cooper, who had done so well liverpool v leeds fa cup final covering for both Bell and Johanneson in the second half of the campaign, missed out.

Former England World Cup centre-forward Alan Peacock completed the line up after fully recovering from a serious knee injury that had kept him out of the side until the end of February.

Leeds United v Liverpool, 01 May 1965

While Leeds were generally rated narrow favourites, there were far more red colours in the Wembley crowd than white, and Don Revie 's still relatively unproven young side was apprehensive as they came out of the tunnel. Bill Shankly turned to his old Merseyside adversary, Bobby Collins, and asked him how see more was. Collins responded, "I feel awful," capturing the mood of his team.

Collins: "You've got little chance of winning at Wembley unless most of your players have played there previously, and liverpool v leeds fa cup final what to expect. Leeds allowed themselves to be caught up in the hullabaloo surrounding the final and the youngsters especially found it very difficult to relax.

On the Friday a week before the Cup final, we played at Sheffield; we left Sheffield on the Monday to go to Birmingham, then went to London to prepare for the final cuo the Wednesday. So the players had slept in three different beds in five days, and allowed this to have an unsettling effect. I don't know why, but this fina, always been a bit of a jinx ground for me; the prospect of playing at Wembley has never thrilled me as it does most fellows.

The skipper also chose to forsake the new socks most of his team mates wore: liverpool v leeds fa cup final preferred woollen to nylon because I felt more comfortable; the only trouble was that with constant washing they turned yellow. Throughout the campaign I'd worn my yellowing socks and for the final we had bright new white ones, which I was not happy about.

After explaining this to Don, being incredibly superstitious himself, he insisted I wear my old discoloured socks that had served me so well during the season. I thought that would be the end of the matter, but the media picked it up and even the Liverplol of Edinburgh noticed them and pointed it out when he was introduced to the teams before the game! Liverpool v leeds fa cup final Scots Collins and Ron Directory came forward for the toss, and there were fully liverpool v leeds fa cup final inches between the heights of the giant and the midget.

The United captain called correctly, opting to change ends and allow the Reds to kick off in overcast conditions. Liverpool, battle hardened from three years in the top flight and twelve months of European competition, were assured, fluid and liverpool v leeds fa cup final. They played within themselves and were always more concerned with the certainty of possession than the gamble of a panicky forward pass.

Their formation alternated smoothly between andfounded on the calm midfield platform given them by the control of Strong and Stevenson. Their four forwards were in constant shuttle between midfield and attack, offering width and the constant comfort of cul short square pass.

Their movement allowed them to develop clear and precise passing triangles round pedestrian opponents. The fjnal and ease with which St John and Hunt combined in slick and smooth one-twos left Charlton and Hunter nonplussed and slack jawed. United, in contrast, were as rigid and static as the stance of Alan Peacock, constantly outthought and liverpool v leeds fa cup final. Their defence, tantalised by Liverpool's patterns and movement, insisted on lying deep, entrenched constantly on the edge of their penalty area; Bremner, Giles and Collins clustered tightly in midfield, content to move as a unit but with only the long through ball as an outlet; Johanneson, strangely out of sorts, and Storrie, rendered immobile and ineffective by early injury, made only fitful contributions out wide, leaving Peacock alone and exposed down the middle, dominated almost completely by the looming Yeats.

While the midfield trio had their moments, they were either caught too far upfield, leaving Liverpool an acre of room to exploit and their back four dreadfully exposed, or too remote from their forwards to bring them into the game in any meaningful way. It was dreadfully disappointing and Leeds looked one dimensional and emasculated. For Albert Johanneson, the stage had been all set for him to deliver the sort of performance that would take the cause of the black footballer in Britain to fresh heights.

He could leesd cemented his reputation as one of the most exciting wingers in fx game, but he seemed overwhelmed by the occasion. Liverpool v leeds fa cup final was the one player in the Leeds eleven who could excite crowds, but Liverpool handled him superbly, with Lawler sitting deep and waiting for the South African to commit himself.

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ELECTION 2020-SEPT 11

Trump, Biden marking 9/11 with very different tones

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. (AP) — One spent time quietly consoling families. The other proclaimed America’s might. President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival, Joe Biden were marking the 19th anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks at memorials Friday, where their differences in style couldn’t have been more sharply on display. Trump and Biden were both traveling to rural Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the hijacked Flight 93 crashed in a field, killing everyone onboard. But the two would not cross paths. While Trump spoke at the site’s annual morning memorial ceremony, Biden will visit later, after attending the 9/11 Memorial & Museum’s annual commemoration at Ground Zero in New York, along with Vice President Mike Pence.

BC-VIRUS OUTBREAK

Daily US virus deaths decline, but trend may reverse in fall

The number of daily U.S. deaths from the coronavirus is declining again after peaking in early August, but scientists warn that a new bout with the disease this fall could claim more lives. Experts say the arrival of cooler weather and the likelihood of more indoor gatherings will add to the importance of everyday safety precautions, like wearing masks, staying home and washing hands. The U.S. has seen two distinct peaks in daily deaths. The nation’s summertime surge crested at about half the size of the first deadly wave, which arrived in April. That’s when deaths first peaked at an average of 2,240 each day.

AP-US-ELECTION-2020-TEXAS-MAIL-VOTING

Vote-by-mail advocates lose appeal in Texas

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal appeals court has dealt another blow to vote-by-mail advocates in Texas. A push by the state’s Democrats and some voters to allow mail balloting during the coronavirus pandemic had been upheld by a federal district judge. But a divided three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated that ruling late Thursday. The panel rejected an argument that the vote-by-mail statute in Texas discriminates on the basis of age. The argument was based on the law allowing people ages 65 and over to vote by mail, but not younger voters who don’t have a disability or other specified reason for absentee voting.

AP-US-OFFICER-SHOT-CLEVELAND

Funeral held for police detective killed in the line of duty

CLEVELAND (AP) — A Cleveland police detective killed in the line of duty along with a civilian last week has been recalled as a leader who proudly served on the force because he wanted to protect the city he grew up in. A funeral service for Detective James Skernivitz was held at Rocket Mortgage Field House. Among those speaking at the event were city Police Chief Calvin Williams and U.S. Attorney General William Barr. The 53-year-old Skernivitz, a married father of three and a 22-year member of the Cleveland force, was killed Sept. 3 along with 50-year-old Scott Dingess as they sat in the officer’s unmarked car during a drug operation on the city’s west side.

POLICE SHOOTING-WISCONSIN

Man shot during Kenosha protest still remembers screams

MILWAUKEE (AP) — A Wisconsin man who was shot during a protest against police brutality in Kenosha last month says he still remembers the screams that night and he’s in constant pain. Prosecutors say 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse of Antioch, Illinois, shot Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber and Gaige Grosskreutz during a protest the night of Aug. 25. Rosenbaum and Huber were killed. Grosskreutz was wounded in the arm. Grosskruetz told CNN for a story posted online Friday that he was shot in the bicep and had to use a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. He says he still remembers the gunshots and the screams and he’s in constant pain.

SEPT 11-ANNIVERSARY

US marks 9/11 anniversary at tributes shadowed by virus

NEW YORK (AP) — Americans are commemorating 9/11 as a new national crisis in the form of the coronavirus pandemic reconfigures and divides anniversary ceremonies and a presidential campaign carves a path through the observances. In New York, victims’ relatives gathered Friday morning for split-screen remembrances at the Sept. 11 memorial plaza at the World Trade Center and another nearby set up by a separate 9/11-related organization. President Donald Trump spoke at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania, when Vice President Joe Biden was due later. Biden also attended the observance at the 9/11 memorial in New York, where he and Vice President Mike Pence greeted each other.

AP-US-SEPT-11-ANNIVERSARY-THE-LATEST

The Latest: Relatives, Trump, Biden gather to mark 9/11

NEW YORK (AP) — Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said it’s “disgraceful” that the official 9/11 commemoration event features only prerecorded name readings. The National September 11 Memorial and Museum cancelled its tradition of having relatives read the names of the dead aloud at the commemoration as a coronavirus-safety precaution. Giuliani attended a separate ceremony held near the memorial that included people reading victims’ names aloud. Giuliani was widely lauded for his empathetic response to the attacks as the city’s mayor. He says he promised that day never to forget.

AP-VIRUS-OUTBREAK-THE-LATEST

The Latest: Dutch officials: Highest daily total since April

The Dutch public health institute says that 1,270 people tested positive for COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, the highest number since mid-April. The rise Friday marks the second time this week that Dutch daily infections have topped 1,000 and are the latest sign that the virus is making a resurgence in the Netherlands. The increase comes despite a bottleneck at testing stations around the country due to delays at laboratories that process the tests. More than 6,200 people are confirmed to have died in the pandemic in the Netherlands, though the true number is higher because not everybody who died of suspected COVID-19 was tested.

POLL-MENTAL HEALTH-YOUNG ADULTS

Poll: Pandemic takes toll on mental health of young adults

PHOENIX (AP) — A new poll has found that the coronavirus pandemic has taken a harsh toll on the mental health of young adults in the United States. The latest COVID Response Tracking Study conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago found those between 18 and 34 were more likely to report negative feelings or experience stress-related symptoms like trouble sleeping than any other age group. Besides starting their adult lives during the pandemic, they are also dealing with a recession as they navigate life transitions like starting college or finding jobs without being able to experience normal social activities.

AP-FINANCIAL-MARKETS

US stocks struggle higher as tumultuous week comes to close

NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are trying for another comeback on Wall Street Friday, as a tumultuous week of big swings comes to a close. The S&P 500 was up 0.4% in midday trading, but only after an earlier gain of 0.8% vanished completely. Momentum has been lightning-quick to shift on Wall Street recently, and a similar morning gain for the S&P 500 on Thursday gave way to a 1.8% loss for its fourth drop in five days. The Nasdaq composite, which includes many of the superstar tech stocks that have been the focus of the market’s recent selling, was up 0.1% after flip-flopping earlier between gains and losses.