#trailblazer was sick and sick and sick and sick. died over and over and over again

[camellcat]

guh. playing wolfquest again with the new update out. started a new run with nakita and her husband stag, and obviously I clicked "regenerate family snapshot" thinking it would add the new litter alongside the old one bc duh ofc people are going to be having multiple litters with the same mate, won't they?

but no. it didn't. it just REPLACED my old family tree. it REPLACED NAKITA'S FIRST LITTER ????

this was almost cause for another meltdown. thankfully I just went back into an old save and fixed it, but holy hell. everything almost fell apart there for a second

like the new litter and all, but they're test run babies, made to die and move on about. they're not nakita's darling litter that I spent days of my life if trying to keep alive, okay?

[callingofstars]

i am sleep deprived and utterly insane but 3.4 FRAME-BY-FRAME TRAILER ANALYSIS GO!!

(spoilers under the cut)

i think i was right about Phainon fighting the flame reaver to the death and becoming him, in a sense - blending his past and future selves to create the form we see in his ultimate.

the “observations” made by the emanator and likely the aeons, signifying that this is the moment Phainon gains their recognition and ascends to embody destruction. which would also fit with the core theme of that path, giving yourself and everything you once loved away to calamity.

speaking of - MYDEI!!!!!! MYDEI MENTIONED!!!!!!!!!!!! AT LEAST 1 SECOND OF MYDEI CONTENT IN VERSION 3.4!!!!!!!!! EVERYONE CHEER

also this parallel completely destroyed me. his face when fighting beside Mydei never changed, even if now it’s only a fond memory. he even turns and looks over his shoulder, as if thinking Mydei would appear behind him in a blaze of glory, like he used to .i’m going to be sick

these scenes went by really fast but? hey hoyoverse? WHAT IS THIS. i would say the fractured memory cutscene is the trailblazer getting forcibly pushed out of Amphoreus as it collapses, since they are an outlander, but this doesn’t make sense because if so Dan Heng would appear also. and he is fine and nothing happens to him ever (COPING) !!

March 7th and Phainon’s ultimate form are reflected in a few of the mirrors, which could signify that the shattering is more connected to March/Mem/Cyrene and their past rather than the planet as a whole. i am officially not ready for the trailblazer to experience even more horrors

speaking of, and i say this through tears and gritted teeth, i do not believe Dan Heng won the duel w flame reaver. just putting it out there given Stelle’s look of distress and the fact that Phainon gets a turn battling him at the basin.

HE’S GOING TO BE FINE THOUGH BECAUSE EVERYONE ON AMPHOREUS IS GOING TO BE FINE AND NOBODY DIES !!!!!!!! thank you for your time, passes out and dies

[selfaware-promise-au]

AU's Backstory

Its almost the whole AU's backstory.

Warning: OOC, I guess. Mentions of human experimentation, cults, evil gods, death. Implications or torture and slavery. Also, there are Original Characters.

Beginning

Countless Amber Eras ago, Honkai World was created by Kairos, Aeon of Aeons. Among all the planets, he created Aeons. Aeons were supposed to be their guardians and army.

For fa few Eras everything were mostly fine, safe for a few serious conflicts, natural disasters, that ended in a few planets being destroyed.

Kairos were devastated because of it. In their mind, something caused these incidents. Some sort of powers far beyond their reach. They start searching for an answer how to prevent another disaster from happening.

Unfortunately, they found an answer, that in their eyes were suitable. A horrible answer.

On one of the planets, that never experienced any disasters, Kairos found a Cult. Members of the Cult were living for an idea of breaking the bonds of morals, of doing anything they want. It included kidnapping and all kinds of torture.

Kairos stopped the Cult, arresting the leader. In a few months, the plague stroked. Most of the population became sick, many of them died.

During the plague, Kairos found time to look through the Cult's Leader's library. Here they found a concept of Balance.

Life is like a scale. Good and evil should weight the same. If you put too much good or evil, the scales will fall, spilling everything you have been trying to balance. And chaos will start.

Kairos thought, that it was the answer they were searching for. For some reason, Kairos thought, that plague happened, because he removed the Cult, "The Evil", from the scales. Kairos orchestrated the Cult's Leader's escape, letting the Cult start all over again on some different planet.

I should put it here, there were no such things as Balance, plague still would happen, and all disasters, that caused Kairos to look for answers, would also happen.

Kairos decided to keep an eye on the Cult. Making sure, that they will continue to exist, and, if the Cult became too big, destroy it and find a new leader on another planet.

------

Akivili and Start Rail

When Star Rail were created, the trips between planets become possible.

Kairos decided to let the Cult exist on multiple planets. So far, in Honkai World, there were no disasters. In Kairos mind, the Balance was working. They didn't think, that one day Cult will be noticed by one of their aeons. And the worst one to learn about the Cult and Balance.

Akivili noticed strange spaceships traveling between planets. Once, one of Akivili's trailblazers were almost kidnapped by one of the spaceships. Akivili and Astral Express team saved them and a group of kidnapped victims. From captured ship crew, Akivili learnt about the Cult. THEY decided to ask Kairos for help in destroying the Cult.

Kairos sent Akivili away, telling them about the Balance and importance of the Cult.

Akivili couldn't let it stay that way.

THEY decided to look for help. In far away world, that Kairos and Aeons started to visit every year after Akivili created Start Rail.

Astral Express left for Teyvat.

Akivili talked with Primordial One. They agreed to help.

Akivili return to Honkai World and told Aeons about Kairos's actions.

Aeons decided to rebel.

After a long battle, Kairos lost.

Primordial One, or, as they decided to call themselves in Honkai World, Alaric, became the New Ruler of Honkai World.

Cult were destroyed.

But it wasn't the end.

Conspirator and Akivili's Rebellion

------

Two tyrants

For Amber Eras everything was fine. Until Akivili, once again, noticed strange spaceships. Moreover, on one of THEIR journeys they met a person, who have powers, eery similar to Kairos's and Alaric's powers.

After an investigation, Akivili realised the true horror of the situation.

Not only Alaric decided to believe in Balance. They decided to go far and beyond to maintain it.

Not only the Cult will become bigger. People's free will and negative emotions will be taken away. Because only truly good people will balance that scales.

Teyvat and another future world (New Eridu) will also get same fate.

'Fortunately', only higher gods can do a mind control. Alaric aren't a higher god. But they had a goal in mind. They decided to make an "artificial" god, who's only powers would be mind and emotion control.

To do that, Alaric started to experiment.

They start fusing essence and flesh of immortal beings (including their flesh and Kairos's) with mortals. They managed to make two family lines. One of them were more of Alaric's powers, and another were more of Kairos's.

After that, Alaric started to literally bred two families next generations. Until they got two perfect descendants.

The two descendants, with some magical help from Alaric, fell in love and had a child. Child had a perfect mix of both families' powers.

Alaric were close to get their perfect god. All they need a are few more descendants, whose parents would be carefully selected.

Akivili, horrified by what is going on and what will happen, tried to fix the situation.

THEY also felt guilty for bringing Alaric to Honkai World, and thought, that it's their duty to fix everything.

------

Akivili, even with the help of all Aeons, couldn't come up with a working plan.

They couldn't fight with Alaric, and their perfect children were always under protection. Lan tried to shoot the current descendant with THEIR arrow, only for them to be unharmed.

Help came from another divine being.

Balthasar, brother of Alaric and Kairos (one of the many), was visiting Alaric at that time. He learnt about Alaric's plans. Horrified, he offered his help to aeons. Akivili and Aeons refused, being fed up with divinity. However, Balthasar managed to get aeons to listen.

His plan was simple. The next descendant will be the one Alaric were waiting for. To get them, their second parent should be carefully selected. Alaric already introduced the selected pair to Balthasar. Father is Alaric's perfect child, and mother is a prodigy from a long dynasty of Pathfollowers. Balthasar offered to kill the prodigy, and trick Alaric's perfect child into having a baby with a normal, ordinary woman. Baby won't get any more powers, and will lose a good chunk of heritable powers.

After that, Alaric's Perfect Child will also be killed and baby would be transported into a different world (Earth), where Balthasar will take care of them and their future descendants. Until one day, the perfect descendant will be born. Descendant with human morality and with limited powers who could become a leader of Rebellion against Tyrant.

Aeons were skeptical. They were thinking about dismissing Balthasar's plan, when, suddenly, Terminus appeared in that point of time.

In secret from Balthasar, THEY gave all aeons a portrait of Reader. Without going into many details, THEY told about Reader's arrival and the future war against tyrant.

Akivili decided to place their hope in Reader. It earned Reader a nickname "Akivili's Hope".

Aeons and Balthasar had another talk. During that, Balthasar made a promise.

"I promise, that one day, the tyrant will fall, and all of you will be free."

Balthasar's plan were set in motion. To cover it up, Akivili started the rebellion.

Rebellion failed. Many aeons' followers and Akivili died.

But Balthasar's plan was a success.

The baby were born and were transported to the Earth. Balthasar left Honkai World.

Unfortunately, no one thought about collecting Prodigy's and Alaric's Perfect Child's corpses.

Alaric, enraged by betrayal and the loss of their artificial god, harvested powers from their dead bodies, making a powerful spell. Spell, that could take control over mind and emotions.

It wasn't perfect, it required a lot of artifacts and constant supervision to work properly. It could be messed up with, and Alaric should be ready to fix it in any given moment. Fix it again and again.

But, for now, it did its job.

It took away free will.

Alaric decided to start their experiments all over again.

In one last attempt to mess with Alaric, Terminus decided to use remains of Kairos's powers and woke up the last aeon, Nanook The Destruction. If, by some miracle, THEY were wrong, and Reader never arrived, at least the corrupted world and corrupted gid will be destroyed.

Aeons is waiting for Reader's arrival.

------

In the Real World

Balthasar got into the Real World a few decades before Christianity were created. His plan was simple. Look from afar after the baby, and make sure, that, when they grow up, they have a lot of kids.

In Balthasar's logic, his plan worked only because Alaric preferred to keep it one child per generation. So, to have more chances to get needed descendant, there should be a lot of kids.

Plan backfired horribly.

Balthasar wasn't one of the highest gods, and he has limited influence on Earth. He couldn't use his powers to track down all Descendants. Because of that, some descendants were 'lost'.

Moreover, powers of the second generation of descendants one day go awry, causing chaos.

And getting attention of two higher gods. Dimer, The Embodiment of Death and Aletheia, The Embodiment of Life.

After an integration, Balthasar explained the situation and his plan to the duo.

After yelling at him making a poor job in making a plan, Dimer and Aletheia decided to help their chosen descendant deal with Alaric.

Dimer and Aletheia were looking after 'lost' descendants, while Balthasar was dealing with descendants he knew about.

Despite having a same goal, they aren't on the same side.

Balthasar thinks, that he understands the situation much better, and his plan is perfect, and there are no lost descendants. He wants to prove it. He thinks, that Aletheia and Dimer are too controlling. Balthasar will be the driving force in Imposter AU.

Aletheia and Dimer are more concerned with the well-being of people, including descendants. They want to make sure, that the situation will resolve as bloodless, as it can.

-----

Reader

One of the lost descendants. Reader barely have any powers, except for poison resistance and an ability to break Alaric's mind control.

At the beginning of the AU, Reader are aware about Dimer's and Aletheia's true natures, but have no idea about their upbringing.

When everything started, they were asked to build up a good relationship with people of three worlds and investigate. They weren't asked to fight with Alaric or their soldiers.

[fandomstars]

So I’ve recently been into the ship Bagginshield…here’s a crossover of Pokemon!

( PS - I’ve only seen the Peter Jackson movies so bear with me some things won’t be canon and so on.)

A Hobbit Pokémon Journey (Bilbo’s Team)

Bilbo Baggins Team:

Pollen the Whimsicott

Skills: Healing + Defense

Moves: Cotton Guard, Helping Hand, Moonblast, Razor Leaf, Growth, Solar Beam, Leech Seed, Thief, Facade, Protect, Light Screen, Psychic, Hurricane, Shadow Ball, and Sunny Day

Ability: Chlorophyll

Backstory: When someone is born, they are born alongside their partner Pokemon. In Bilbo’s case, a small (smaller than normal), shiny Cottonee.

Bilbo was born on the coldest of winter days, and him and said Cottonee didn’t nearly make it due to the cold weather. It didn’t help years later when he was a teen, that his parents died during the Fell Winter, and so both were outcasted from the rest of Bag End.

But the two made due with what they had, and lived in the shire for years. They battled ranger’s Pokemon that patrolled Hobbiton, Lobelia (she always put his parents shire as the prize if she won.), and otherwise did normal hobbit things.

Pollen evolved on Bilbo’s coming of age birthday, a sun stone given by Gandalf (who also trained Bilbo in battle/watch over him over the years since his parents death).

Pollen is a very determined mon, and will protect Bilbo with every fiber of her being. She also makes a very nice pillow/net when falling.

She didn’t put up with Lobelia’s verbal jabs, she wasn’t going to do the same with stubborn, rude dwarves either. Not even if Bilbo has a crush on the most stubborn, rudest dwarf of the bunch.

Myrtle the Gogoat

Skills: Healing + Stamina

Moves: Horn Leech, Growth, Leech Seed, Aerial Ace, Magical Leaf, Zen Headbutt, Protect, Stomping Tantrum, Body Slam, Vine Whip, Helping Hand, Earthquake, Bullet Seed, and Energy Ball

Ability: Sap Sipper

Backstory: Myrtle was raised in a farm near Hobbiton when she was traded to Bilbo.

She was one of the most determined and adventurous Pokemon on the ranch, and so wasn’t upset by the trade due to the chance of adventure.

She grew close to Bilbo on the journey, and even more so after he saved her and others from being eaten by trolls.

Ready to use vine whip to pull Bilbo back on her saddle, or a horn leech to mow down enemies, this was a Pokemon that was ready and willing to protect Bilbo no matter what.

(Pretend the kid is Bilbo instead okay?)

Dewdrop the Quagsire

Skills: Defense + Stamina

Moves: Rain Dance, Yawn, Earthquake, Stockpile, Recover, Ice Punch, Water Pulse, Substitute, Trailblaze, Facade, Aqua Tail, Mud Shot, Stone Edge, and Counter

Ability: Water Absorb

Backstory: Bilbo found him swimming in a lake near Rivendell. The two got along quite well, and said water-ground type couldn’t help but talk of the stories his father spoke of another hobbit coming to Rivendell years ago. He happily joined Bilbo on his quest. Also no way was he going to let poor Bilbo drown in a lake come Mirkwood!

Nebula the Absol

Skills: Attack & Speed

Moves: Night Slash, Double Team, Protect, Will-o-Wisp, Shadow Claw, Psycho Cut, Flamethrower, Ice Beam, Thunderbolt, Iron Tail, Shadow Ball, Zen Headbutt, Stone Edge, and Calm Mind

Ability: Super Luck

Backstory: Instead of a ring, Bilbo found an injured Absol.

Using his hobbit healing powers (roll with it), he healed the bad cut on one of her legs.

Nebula never received kindness before, usually seen as a curse or worst to others, and as such found refuge in said cave before Bilbo came here.

She vowed to always be there for him from now on, and the first thing she did was protect him from the goblin eating creature (she didn’t dare think of how Bilbo could of died from said creature if she hadn’t been there).

She even saved him from Thorin’s gold sickness wrath, tackling the dwarf before he could grab her hobbit and throw him off the ramparts.

Some say the tackle knocked the dwarf out of said haze, but Bilbo just winces at what look to be possible broken ribs.

(I know it isn’t shiny in this but pretend okay?)

Clover the Ferrathorn

Skills: Defense & Stamina

Moves: Iron Defense, Flash Cannon, Pin Missile, Toxic, Giga Drain, Shadow Claw, Brutal Swing, Thunderbolt, Poison Jab, Stealth Rock, Substitute, Power Whip, Revenge, and Hyper Beam

Ability: Iron Barbs

Backstory: Clover had lived in Mirkwood for a long time.

He remembered when it was once Greenwood, and has seen the corruption take form. He tried to warn Thranduil, but he didn’t listen.

So, occasionally helping elves and other travelers get through the forest, he most of the time either took down spider hoards or napped.

It was during said nap he was awoken by shouts and the familiar hiss of spiders.

Swooping down from the trees, he only managed to save the hobbit by squishing a spider by his thorn paws (claws?).

After getting the gist of what happened, Clover decided to help the hobbit free his dwarves.

While the rest of Bilbo’s team worked to feeding and hiding the hobbit from the elves, Clover snuck through the prison and worked to freeing the dwarves.

Eventually Clover lead the company out of the forest, joining them along Bilbo’s team.

If anyone asked, it was to finally get Thranduil out of the diseased forest and help someone other than himself.

Truly though, it was to make sure Bilbo didn’t die from a dragon for another king’s needs.

He’s already dealt with an elf king, he can only hope a dwarf one is better off.

Wonderheart the Dragonite

Skills: Speed & Power

Moves: Fire Punch, Thunder Punch, Dragon Tail, Dragon Dance, Water Pulse, Aerial Ace, Flamethrower, Earthquake, Ice Beam, Light Screen, Rain Dance, Hurricane, Protect, and Facade

Ability: Multiscale

Backstory: Wonderheart was different from dragons of the past.

For one, she rather hoard books, pillows, and soft blankets than gold of any kind.

She had a wonderful cave of such items, and had been reading and napping away for centuries aside from an occasional appearance at a Erebor festival.

But then Smaug came, and fear of hatred from dwarves, had fled back to her cave for years.

She knew she couldn’t have saved the kingdom, but over the years had trained herself so that one day, she could take down Smaug and get the dwarves back their home.

And she did just that, though it took a hobbit and his Pokemon to distract said dragon first before she made her move.

After taking down the dragon in a grueling battle, she came back to the castle and decided to stay and help the rebuilding while chatting with the hobbit.

He was different from dwarves, and if there was one thing she loved, it was learning.

The two had a joyful conversation, that is until she noticed Thorin.

She remembered when the dwarf was born, and sadly she remembered when his grandfather fell to the gold sickness (she still had no clue how that could have been cured).

When Thorin began to change, she ushered Bilbo to flee the castle, take the Arkstone to Gandalf, and she hoped somehow destroy it before it destroys Thorin.

Sadly Bilbo was determined to get through to Thorin.

One tackle from an Absol later, and she was just glad Thorin was back to normal. Though she silently grumbled that if that was all it took, she could have smacked the king of now and before ages ago.

Then came the Orc army.

While she was still resting from her fight with Smaug, she wasn’t going to let the dwarves fight another battle without her this time.

Saving the princes, she let Bilbo go off to save Thorin.

Though if she had known he would take a hit for the dwarf to do so, she would have gone after the white orc herself.

Still, thanks to Gandalf’s help, Bilbo recovered and eventually decided to stay in Erebor (but making sure to sent word back to Bagg-End of what must be done with his family shire and that dwarves from the Blue Mountains would be coming eventually to get certain items he wished to have with him).

Wonderheart eventually found a tunnel that expanded to the castle from her cave, that lead to Bilbo & Thorin’s room alongside both of their Pokemon team’s rooms.

Life was good.

——-

[posttexasstressdisorder]

All By Himself

Eric Carmen Was a Power-Pop Legend. Then He Vanished

In the final years of his life, the musical genius behind songs like “Go All the Way” and “All by Myself” was estranged from much of his family — and went down a rabbit hole of far-right conspiracies

January 19, 2025

A s soon as he answered his phone, Clayton Carmen knew he was getting bad news. It was March 2024, and by then, nearly a decade had passed since he had seen his father, Eric Carmen — the power-pop trailblazer and Raspberries frontman best remembered for the hits “Go All the Way,” “All by Myself,” and “Hungry Eyes.” Clayton’s stepmother, Amy, was on the other end of the line. The 27-year-old hadn’t seen her since his high school days, when Clayton knocked on the door of the house that Amy shared with his dad in an attempt to finally reconcile their differences. Carmen and Amy responded to the overture by closing the curtains, calling the police, and reporting a trespasser.

“I remember going, ‘Oh, boy, if you’re calling me, I can’t imagine this is good,’” Clayton says. “She told me, ‘Your dad died yesterday.’”

Eric Carmen’s brother, Fred, received a similar call from Amy. Fred hadn’t communicated with his older brother since 2016, even though they were as close as siblings could be for the first 55 years of his life. Fred blames Amy for inspiring a series of lawsuits that separated Eric from his brother, his son, and 24-year-old Kathryn Carmen, Eric’s only other child. He had some questions.

“I said, ‘Was he sick? Were there issues?’” Fred says. “She said, ‘No. We went out to dinner the night before and he seemed fine. We watched TV before going to bed. The next morning, I ran some errands while he slept in, like he always did. When I came home, he was gone.’”

“I’m not commenting on my husband’s death, but that is not what I said to Fred Carmen,” says Amy Carmen, who initially declined to be interviewed for this article, but eventually responded to a list of inquiries.

In search of more details about his brother’s passing, Fred says he phoned the coroner’s office in Maricopa County — Carmen had lived in Paradise Valley, Arizona — to ask for a copy of the autopsy report. He was told it wasn’t available, and later learned that Amy had filed a lawsuit against the police, fire department, medical examiner, and the county’s public-health office to prevent the report’s release, even to Carmen’s children.

“We should all get the respect of being remembered for our accomplishments during our time here,” Amy says, “not the most personal moment in our lives — the time we leave this earth.” (Last September, a judge agreed with Amy, stating that the release of records relating to Carmen’s death would cause Amy and the estate “substantial grief and harm.”)

On Eric Carmen’s official website the day after his death, a vague announcement informed fans only that he had died “in his sleep, over the weekend.” Eleven months later, the exact cause of Carmen’s death at 74 is just one of many questions about his enigmatic life that linger. Why did the singer, fiercely private, go so public in his support of Donald Trump during his final years, posting furious MAGA missives that horrified many longtime friends and fans? Why did he almost completely abandon his music career after scoring worldwide hits in the late Eighties? What caused him to sever ties with his only children? And how did the family schism widen to the point that Amy is now accusing Clayton and Kathryn of once plotting their father’s murder, in one of multiple lawsuits Amy has been involved in following Carmen’s death?

In an attempt to answer these questions, I spent the past six months reporting on Carmen’s life through interviews with family members, his former manager, close friends, bandmates, and fellow musicians who drew a lifetime of inspiration from his work. The complex portrait that emerged varies wildly, depending on who’s doing the telling. His bandmates and friends who stayed with him to the end describe Carmen as a kind and generous suburban dad, happily retired, madly in love with Amy, and shattered by the loss of his relationship with his kids. His brother, children, and ex-wife, Susan, describe a bitter, paranoid conspiracy theorist haunted by the past, lost in the face of shifting musical tastes, hopelessly addicted to alcohol, and manipulated by Amy to turn on his family.

Amy strongly denies turning Carmen against his children, and claims they wanted nothing from their father besides his money in the last decade of his life. “I loved Eric and stood by him through the tough times, unlike his brother and his children,” she says. “Eric had every reason for wanting to be estranged from [his family]. But please, be sure to blame the new wife.”

The one thing nobody disputes is that Carmen was a perfectionist and musical genius. “After he died, I saw he hadn’t made music in over 25 years,” says Steven Van Zandt. “I was like, ‘Goddamn!’ It’s such a shame, because I can tell you as a writer, performer, arranger, and producer, his records were some of the greatest ever made. They were right at the top. Right at the top.”

The final arc of Eric Carmen’s life began in 2014, when he came across the Facebook page of a former NBC-affiliate meteorologist in Cleveland. It was Amy Murphy, who was then living in Arizona. Carmen, still in Cleveland at the time, began an online and then in-person courtship with Amy, ultimately marrying her in 2016. “I received a Facebook direct message from him,” Amy said at Carmen’s memorial service last year. “It simply read, ‘Did you know you were my favorite weather girl when you were in Cleveland?’ ”

Before long, the couple moved into a new house together in Cleveland. From the start, Carmen’s children, Clayton and Kathryn, didn’t take to Amy. “The comparison I always make is to The Parent Trap. I always think of her as the evil stepmom/girlfriend,” Clayton says. “When my dad was around, she was very smiley, happy, and sweet. But my sister and I knew from the very beginning that she was really, really, really bad news.

“My father was just a very manipulatable, paranoid, isolated person,” he continues. “And suddenly someone comes into his life and, instead of his kids, who will push back on him, she’s a sycophant. She’ll say yes to whatever he wants. She’ll agree with him on his zaniest, most deranged conspiracy theories. She was just what he wanted.”

Amy emphatically denies this categorization of their relationship. “I never asked him for anything,” she says. “Unlike the other barnacles in Eric’s life, I didn’t need anything.”

A page from Kathryn’s diary, dated Feb. 12, 2016, when she was 15, reveals her state of mind while living part-time with Amy and her father. “I can’t stop dwelling on how much I hate them,” she wrote. “Clay and I have discussed killing Eric and driving his Jag to California. Our plan sounds better and better … I got so angry tonight I couldn’t stop shaking. I can’t be responsible for my own actions at this point.”

The diary entry was cited as evidence that Kathryn and Clayton were “planning Eric’s murder” in a recent legal filing by Amy’s attorneys. “Amy took multiple photos of my diary to drive a wedge into the relationship with my father,” Kathryn writes in an email to Rolling Stone. “These antics started as soon as she moved into the home. She would often comb through my brother and I’s rooms looking for anything that could harm a parent-child relationship. I am truly saddened that Amy would try to publicly misuse the private ramblings of a child who was experiencing so much heartbreak and pain at home.… Of course my brother and I never had any intention of causing physical threat to our father as she’s suggesting.”

In April 2018, Carmen and Amy left Ohio to resettle in Arizona, but withheld telling the other members of the Carmen family; they resisted any attempt by Clayton and Kathryn to reconnect, as well. “This was Eric’s choice,” Amy says. “Eric had no desire to reestablish contact with any of them. Eric’s legal counsel and all of his close friends know that they individually and collectively made his life a living hell.”

According to their close friends, Carmen was extremely happy in the final six years of his life, and even drastically reduced his drinking, a problem with alcohol that had plagued him for much of his career. “[Amy] was really good for him,” says Raspberries drummer Jim Bonfanti. “She was a different person than Eric, but she’s smart, and she really loved him. He was as happy as I’d seen him.” Bernie Hogya, who co-wrote the 2011 biography Eric Carmen: Marathon Man with Ken Sharp, echoes Bonfanti’s assessment. “I’d never seen him happier,” he says. “She really grounded him.”

The start of Carmen’s relationship with Amy happened to coincide with the political rise of Donald Trump. Carmen became one of Trump’s staunchest celebrity defenders on Twitter, especially when Covid began, which he saw as a conspiracy to undermine the then-president. “Unemployment skyrocketed, the ‘lockdown’ crashed Trump’s economy, teachers don’t want schools to open,” he wrote in one tweet. “People lost businesses they worked their whole lives for. All to hurt Donald Trump. We’re just collateral damage. And the REAL point is mandatory vaccination with an ID for all.”

When Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Carmen had a public meltdown on Twitter, slamming the “mainstream media.” “It is time to turn off the MSM, en masse,” he wrote when the networks reported Biden had defeated Trump. “Watch Newsmax and OANN … The entire MSM has called the election for Biden. Not surprising, since they were all part of it. Please, President Trump, do not concede.”

In the tense weeks that followed, Carmen started to tweet slogans associated with the fringe-right QAnon movement, like “the storm is coming,” along with absurd lies about Dominion and Smartmatic voting machines rigging the election, and fevered, Alex Jones-style declarations about an impending apocalypse. “I know all about ‘The Great Reset,’” he tweeted on Nov. 17, 2020. “I’m wondering how they intend to accomplish it. I’ve been thinking more along the lines of taking out the power grid and the financial system in one massive cyber attack. Whatever it is, it will make Covid look like a small bump in the road.”

Some of his friends did their best to ignore Carmen’s online outbursts. “When he went sideways politically, we just didn’t discuss politics,” says Van Zandt. “That’s what I do with all my friends when we differ. We may differ politically, but I don’t write people off that way. I’m like, ‘Hey, we see things differently politically, and that’s OK. Let’s not make that part of the conversation. We got plenty of other things to talk about.’”

Back in Cleveland, Carmen’s kids were aghast. “The most I can make sense of it is that he did struggle with depression,” says Kathryn. “He wasn’t religious, and I think he was almost vulnerable to that sense of belonging later on in life that Trump provided. Our jaws were on the ground as we saw everything unfold with his politics.”

“The more that Trump appeared on my TV, the more I would pick up on certain little things about him that reminded me of my dad,” says Clayton. “Just as much as you look at Trump as a textbook narcissist, my dad was a narcissist to the most textbook degree.”

There’s no denying the musical talent of Eric Carmen. Even before he entered kindergarten, the Cleveland Institute of Music recognized something in the boy. His aunt, Muriel, was a world-renowned viola player in the Cleveland Orchestra, and it was clear her tiny nephew, who loved to hang out in the theater whenever she rehearsed, soaking up the music like a sponge, inherited her gift. “He was playing piano before he could walk,” says Fred Carmen. “I could bang my spoon on a steel bowl and he’d go, ‘C-flat.’ He literally had perfect pitch.”

When Carmen was just three and a half, the Cleveland Institute of Music offered him an enrollment. (To this day, by all accounts, he holds the record as the youngest student in the 104-year history of the organization.) It didn’t take him long to master a multitude of classical instruments, including piano and violin, but he switched to guitar as a 14-year-old after seeing the Beatles perform on the The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. “I took guitar lessons at the same time,” says Fred. “It was very frustrating for me, because I was going through one book every three months. He was going through three books every three days. He just had incredible natural talent.”

His proficiency on guitar helped him stand out in a school where he very much felt like an outsider. “He had a complex about being the Jewish kid with very curly hair,” says Kathryn Carmen. “He saw the Beatles with their straight British cuts. He really, really wanted that hair. And I think he just became obsessed with trying to get it straight.” (Getting his hair just right was a lifelong quest. By the late Eighties, he toured with a large suitcase devoted solely to hairbrushes and sprays.)

In the late Sixties, Carmen became a local teenage legend for his ability to take complex songs like “Walk Away Renee,” “Sloop John B,” and “The Kids Are Alright” and re-create them onstage. He played in various bands at Hullabaloo clubs and bars all across Cleveland and the surrounding suburbs, eventually teaming up with the cream of the local scene: drummer Jim Bonfanti, guitarist Wally Bryson, and bassist Dave Smalley. They called themselves the Raspberries, not after the fruit, but the slang term for blowing air out of your mouth as an angry retort. “Eric knew exactly what he wanted the band to be,” says Bonfanti. “He wanted us to have something different and special. He was on a mission.”

A big part of that mission was eschewing the excesses that had crept into rock by the early 1970s. To Carmen, pop music peaked around the time of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and the Beatles’ Revolver, and he had no interest in drum solos, 10-minute songs, or anything that felt even remotely like prog. “I remember Eric saying, ‘You won’t hear any flute solos in this band,’” says Bonfanti. “We wanted to be the next Beatles, which was a pretty lofty goal.”

They took at least a step toward that goal in 1972, when they released their self-titled debut album on Capitol Records, the same label as the Fab Four. Carmen, Bryson, and Smalley, all still in their early twenties, each came to the sessions with songs they’d written on their own, but Carmen’s stood out, especially “Go All the Way.” Inspired by the Rolling Stones’ “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” it’s a three-and-a-half-minute blast of guitar and layered vocal harmonies, with lyrics told from the perspective of a young woman urging on her boyfriend. “He heard the whole thing in his head,” says Bonfanti, “and he relayed what he was hearing to us.”

“Go All the Way” slowly climbed the Billboard Hot 100 through the summer and fall of 1972, eventually peaking at Number Five. But Capitol had no idea what to do with the Raspberries. The first LP came with a sticker that smelled like a raspberry when you scratched it, and they were marketed to tweens in magazines like Tiger Beat. Their first tour was sponsored by Carefree Sugarless Gum and played largely to high schools. “The label never figured us out,” says Bonfanti. “And our big mistake was not finding the right manager. We handled everything ourselves, and that sort of screwed us.”

The Raspberries’ second LP, Fresh, hit just seven months after the first. On the cover, they look like an early disco band in matching white suits with giant black-tab collars. Once again, all the best songs were Carmen originals, notably “I Wanna Be With You” and “Let’s Pretend,” both power-pop classics that pulsate with a Brian Wilson sense of sorrow and yearning.

The critics, however, were underwhelmed. “After listening to this for a month,” sniped Robert Christgau, the so-called dean of American rock critics, “all I remember is three songs.”

Van Zandt says the reaction was unfair. “The Raspberries were like the Who meets the Beatles,” the E Street Band guitarist says. “And now when you look back, you realize they were inventing power pop.”

But by 1973, just one year after “Go All the Way,” the Raspberries were falling apart due to personality conflicts, poor management, and differing musical visions. When the dust settled, Bonfanti and Smalley were out, and Carmen and Bryson limped forward with two new bandmates, bassist Scott McCarl and drummer Michael McBride, to cut the optimistically titled Starting Over in 1974. Even then they weren’t on the same page. “He was really into the Beach Boys,” says Bryson. “I didn’t see the point in that. I didn’t think you could beat the Beach Boys at their own game.”

With his Capitol deal on the line, Carmen poured everything he had into a new song, “Overnight Sensation (Hit Record).” It had been two very long and frustrating years since he’d had a genuine hit record, and the five-and-a-half-minute mini opera was a plea for recognition told from the perspective of an outsider — which is most decidedly how Carmen felt. At 25, he was in danger of becoming a one-hit wonder.

What happened instead to the Raspberries isn’t unique in rock history: Their influence wasn’t recognized until long after they ceased to exist. The band went on to inspire significantly more successful groups, like Cheap Trick and Kiss, and even motivate Bruce Springsteen to lean into pop when making The River in 1979.

“One of my favorite records that summer was the Raspberries’ Greatest Hits,” Springsteen said in 1998. “They were great little pop records. I loved the production, and when I went into the studio a lot of things we did were like that. Two-, three-, four-minute pop songs coming one right after another.”

Springsteen borrowed Raspberries song titles “I’m a Rocker” and “I Wanna Be With You” (both written by Carmen) and used them on new songs he cut for The River. “Bruce is not shy,” says Van Zandt. “He believes in my philosophy, which is you’re only as cool as who you steal from.”

Susan Carmen, Eric’s then-wife, happened to be in the Los Angeles studio where Celine Dion was busy making sure the Carmen family wouldn’t have to worry about money for a very long time. It was the mid-Nineties, and Dion was working with producer David Foster on songs for her hugely successful album Falling Into You. Susan was brought in by songwriter Diane Warren to say hello to Dion, having no idea that the French Canadian singer was recording vocals for “All by Myself,” Eric Carmen’s 1975 hit.

“Celine was having some difficulty with hitting some of the notes,” says Susan, who was married to Eric for more than 20 years. “David Foster came in and jokingly said, ‘If you can’t hit that note, Whitney’s two doors down.’”

That was all the inspiration Dion needed: She hit the note, and “All by Myself” became inescapable on Top 40 radio during the late Nineties. The recording made Carmen millions — money that went very far in the Rust Belt town of Cleveland. “Celine Dion did us a lot of favors,” says Kathryn Carmen. “I grew up very, very privileged.”

The story of “All by Myself” goes back to 1975, right after the Raspberries imploded and Clive Davis considered signing Carmen as a solo artist to his new label, Arista. His interest grew considerably once he heard a piano ballad Carmen had written about the loneliness he felt after the Raspberries split, drawing musical inspiration from Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (so much inspiration, in fact, that the Rach­maninoff estate squeezed him for 12 percent of the song’s publishing). “All by Myself” “captured that feeling that everyone has had, at one time or another, and I purposely tried to keep the lyric very simple and conversational,” Carmen told biographers Sharp and Hogya. “Like I was talking to a friend, or just thinking out loud. I guess it all worked.”

The song reached Number Two on the Hot 100, and when the follow-up ballad, “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again,” hit Number 11, it looked as if Carmen was going to become a genuine pop star.

But much like what had happened with “Go All the Way” three years earlier, the brief flash of success was followed by a long period of turmoil and bitter frustration. The problem began when Carmen realized that Arista expected a second album of songs similar to “All by Myself.” “Clive said that ‘Once you go pop, you can never go back,’” Carmen told Sharp and Hogya. “I assume he meant that you can never be considered a ‘serious rock artist’ again. I wish he’d have mentioned that to me before I signed my contract, because if he had, I wouldn’t have signed with him.”

Carmen envisioned his second solo album as a grand artistic statement on par with Abbey Road — he even unsuccessfully attempted to recruit Beatles producer George Martin — and the songs he wrote told the story of a life filled with loneliness and heartbreak. He called the album Boats Against the Current, taking the title from the last line of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

But working in London with producer Gus Dudgeon, who helmed Elton John’s best Seventies albums, Carmen failed to finish a single song. He returned to America with hefty studio bills and, according to Fred Carmen, an addiction to cocaine. “He stayed at my house for six weeks after that,” says Fred, “until we were able to get him back to normal.”

Carmen then headed to Los Angeles to produce the album himself, with musicians like Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro, guitarists Richie Zito and Andrew Gold, and Rolling Stones saxophonist Bobby Keys. The Beach Boys’ Bruce Johnston helped arrange the background vocals and coaxed Brian Wilson into the studio to sing on the Beach Boys-inspired “She Did It.” When all was said and done, Carmen had spent $400,000 (or a little over $2 million in 2025 dollars) on Boats Against the Current.

Hoping to make that back, Davis insisted on adding background vocals to the sparse title track to gear it toward radio, a move that horrified Carmen. Davis also tore up Carmen’s carefully crafted track sequence. “It’s completely backward from what Eric wanted,” says Hogya. “He said to me, ‘If you listen to it backwards, it’s my biography. It’s my life story. But if you listen to the way Clive decided to track it, it doesn’t make any sense.’”

Despite all of Davis’ meddling (or perhaps because of it), the album was a complete stiff, peaking at Number 45 on the Billboard 200. A 33-date tour was booked, including quick runs opening for Elvin Bishop and Hall and Oates, but half were canceled. Only years later would Boats Against the Current be recognized as a classic. “It has an overall kind of a melancholy to it that feels real and sincere,” says Brian Wilson bandleader Darian Sahanaja, who grew close to Carmen in the Nineties. “Like Brian did on Pet Sounds, he’s trying to capture this loss of innocence, and a yearning for acceptance.”

Carmen would never again have that much freedom in the studio. On 1978’s Change of Heart, he succumbed to Arista’s demands and added tacky disco sounds to many of the tracks — but bookended the album with the orchestral ballads “Desperate Fools” and “Desperate Fools Overture.” “The album starts and ends with this really sorrowful song about being in L.A. and being broken,” says Hogya. “That was a lament of him being forced to do what’s going to come in between those songs.”

Two more failed albums followed, and Carmen went into career hibernation. “The music business changed into something that he wasn’t familiar with so much, and didn’t love,” says Fred Carmen.

It took two of the most successful teen movies of the Eighties to bring Carmen’s career back from the dead. The revival began in 1983 when he co-wrote the Ann Wilson-Mike Reno smash duet “Almost Paradise” for the Footloose soundtrack, and continued in 1987 when he agreed to cover “Hungry Eyes,” written by John DeNicola and Franke Previte, for Dirty Dancing. The Patrick Swayze movie became a cultural phenomenon, and its soundtrack spent an astounding 18 weeks at Number One on the Billboard 200. To capitalize on the success, a Dirty Dancing tour was put on the road in the summer of 1988 that visited 90 cities in just three months.

Carmen hit the road with model Susan McClurg, whom he started dating after noticing her on a billboard in Cleveland, but the glamorous rock & roll tour she imagined quickly became a grind. “It was also really rough on his voice. Well before midway through, he was getting injections in his vocal cords because his throat was bleeding,” Susan says. “He got a little sloppy, too. He would have too much to drink, and he would forget the words to the songs. It wasn’t ideal.”

Carmen was forced to bow out, leaving him with bitter memories of life as a touring artist. But he did have a new song, “Make Me Lose Control,” that Arista released on a Greatest Hits package designed to cash in on “Hungry Eyes” mania. It became an even bigger hit. Momentum was starting to build again, but Carmen hit the brakes when he learned that Davis expected him to work with outside songwriters for his next album.

Two years passed, the alt-rock revolution was on the horizon, and slick pop hitmakers were falling out of fashion. Carmen all but vanished from the public sphere. After a few years of living with Susan in L.A. and attempting to write hits for others, he moved back to Cleveland to start a family.

“He just didn’t know where he fit in the pantheon of music stars anymore,” says Fred Carmen. “That frustrated him greatly, and he just retracted.”

Unwilling to compromise his vision and bend to record-industry demands, Carmen turned his attention toward his family. His son, Clayton, was born in 1997, and Kathryn followed three years later. “To young kids, he was great,” says Susan. “He adored them.”

He took a brief break from suburban-dad duties in 2000 and hesitantly returned to the road after he received an offer to join Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band, alongside Jack Bruce of Cream, Simon Kirke of Bad Company, and Dave Edmunds. Carmen worked meticulously to learn every nuance of the classic-rock set list. But his drinking problem, which Susan first noticed on the Dirty Dancing tour a dozen years earlier, had grown into a major issue on a tour that, according to a Starr dictate, was 100 percent dry. “Ringo was a tough taskmaster,” says Susan, who remembers Carmen’s manager David Spero calling her on a few occasions to warn, “He’s about to get kicked off the tour.”

“I think it was very important to Ringo to have everybody on the same page,” Spero says. “We had guys like Jack Bruce, who was obviously a heavy drinker. But he would go to a different bar than the hotel bar, and he would do it on his own. But you don’t bring it to work, and Eric brought it to work.”

The Ringo tour, including a triumphant hometown show on the Cleveland lakefront, lasted a mere eight weeks. When it resumed the following summer, Roger Hodgson from Supertramp was given Carmen’s role as the band’s keyboardist.

Around this time, whispers of a Raspberries reunion were in the air, but bringing the idea to fruition took years of false starts and nearly hit the skids when Carmen made it clear that he wanted a larger share of the spoils. After months of rehearsals where he obsessed over every note, Carmen and the Raspberries finally booked dates in November 2004, at the opening of the House of Blues in Cleveland.

“I get goose bumps thinking about it,” says guitarist Paul Sidoti, who was plucked from obscurity for the shows by Carmen, three years before Taylor Swift hired him as her guitarist and bandleader, a position he holds to this day. “We were so excited. From the minute we opened with ‘I Want to Be With You,’ we were floating. You just felt the love in that room.”

The feedback from fans and the press was ecstatic, with many calling it one of the all-time-great reunion shows in rock history. For Carmen’s kids, it was their first real opportunity to see their father perform live. “We didn’t really understand how much people loved him,” says Kathryn. “It was mesmerizing. It was so funny to see my teddy-bear dad as a rock star.”

The one-off gig turned into a small series of shows in 2005 and 2007. “I remember going to the House of Blues in Hollywood,” says Sahanaja. “We all couldn’t believe we were hearing these songs live.”

But the reunion burned out in April 2009, when the Raspberries agreed to play a lone date at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on the weekend of the induction ceremony. Sidoti was helping Swift prepare for a tour, so the Raspberries hired multi-instrumentalist Paul Christensen to take his place. In rehearsal, he worked up a sax solo to play during “Overnight Sensation.” “Guess what happens when we get to that part of the song?” Bonfanti says. “Wally played a guitar solo over the sax solo. I looked over at Eric. He looked over at me. I knew it was done.” Bryson doesn’t recall this incident but does remember it being a very tense evening. “Eric’s ego could fill a stadium,” he says. “And he kept interjecting with suggestions at soundcheck. I told him to ‘shut the fuck up.’”

The Raspberries never played again. But two years before the Hall of Fame gig, there were already signs that things were not well with Carmen. “I went to see him after the L.A. House of Blues show in 2007,” says Sahanaja. “He was completely tanked. He kept talking and talking about how much he loved a song of mine. And I was so, so uncomfortable. I actually had to leave, because it was like, ‘I don’t like seeing you like this.’”

The headline on TMZ read “Hungry Bloodshot Eyes.” Below it was a two-and-a-half-minute dashcam video of Carmen in 2008 stumbling through a field sobriety test in Orange, Ohio, after running over a fire hydrant. When the cops showed up, there was a half-empty bottle of vodka in the front seat. His blood alcohol level was .23, nearly three times the legal limit.

It was Carmen’s second DUI in just two years, and a judge sentenced him to 30 days in jail. His marriage to Susan was in shambles. “He used coke early on,” Susan says. “By the time the kids came around, it was just alcohol. When we lived in L.A. [in the early Nineties, before they married], he went to Betty Ford. It was a condition of the marriage. He spent six weeks there, but he just couldn’t maintain it. And as soon as his father died in 2007, he just went off the rails.”

“I almost mark my time with him into two periods,” adds Clayton Carmen. “Before my grandfather died, and after my grandfather died. It almost felt like anything before then was just childhood. And anything after that point, I feel like I became so much more clearly and keenly aware of his problems that he has, with drinking obviously being a big one.”

Carmen’s brief attempts at Alcoholics Anonymous went nowhere. “He was a pretty stark atheist,” says Kathryn. “AA requires you admitting that there is a bigger force in play, and kind of taking a back seat and being humbled. And my dad couldn’t get with the program, quite literally. He didn’t believe in it.”

This all came to a head in 2007, when an inebriated Carmen caused the band to miss a flight to a show on the West Coast. “He kept losing his boarding pass,” says Bryson. “He was really out of it. It seemed a little immature to me to get so drunk.” According to Susan Carmen, this incident was followed by one of many interventions that ultimately went nowhere.

This is not an easy topic for Bonfanti to address today. “I did all I could to help him,” he says, wearily. “I supported him as much as anybody could. But it was hard.” (Amy Carmen doesn’t deny that Eric had a significant drinking problem before they met. “Eric claimed that the sadness and toxicity swirling around him during those years ‘would drive anyone to drink,’” she says.)

Carmen’s alcoholism was his family’s primary concern, but they were also worried about his mental health. Conspiracy theories had interested him to the point that Susan claims he once filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get materials about the Kennedy assassination from the Warren Commission. As time went on, they occupied even more of his time. He became especially fixated on chemtrails, the baseless notion that the government is using airplanes to add toxic chemicals to the atmosphere. “A jet would go over our house and leave a little white trail,” says Susan. “He’d look up and say it was an effort to sterilize people.”

“It was very hard to get him off of the topic of chemtrails,” says Fred Carmen. “I would show him the articles that debunked all of that stuff, but true believers are true believers. There was no talking him out of it.”

Chemtrails even came up around 2013, when Carmen worked with Sahanaja and his group, the Wondermints, on “Brand New Year” for the Essential Eric Carmen collection, which would end up being his final song. “I left the room to set up some mics,” says Sahanaja. “I came back and heard the word ‘chemtrails.’ Our guitarist Nicky [Walusko] was kind of a conspiracy guy himself, and they were getting real enthusiastic about it. And I had to say ‘Guys, we have to work …’”

(Amy disputes the notion that Carmen was a conspiracy theorist and says she never heard him refer to chemtrails. “Eric was a voracious reader and was up on all current events, topics, and controversies,” she says. “He liked engaging in conversation about such controversies, but that did not make him a ‘conspiracy theorist.’ People who want to disparage Eric by claiming this most certainly have their own agendas in doing so.”)

Eric Carmen also refused any offers to perform live. “He could have been a huge casino act,” says Spero. “But he was afraid of failure. He was afraid he’d be playing in front of empty houses.”

Around 2005, Spero approached him with what he calls a “heavy-six-figures” opportunity to play “All by Myself” on TV in France. “I said, ‘Hey, four first-class tickets to Cannes, a week in an A+++ hotel, and a shitload of money,’” says Spero. “‘All you have to do is play “All by Myself” with an orchestra, and you will own the master. You couldn’t ask for a better deal.’ He wouldn’t do it.”

No member of Carmen’s family had heard this story before, but they aren’t surprised. “We never went anywhere, really, because Eric didn’t want to travel,” says Susan. “He became very reclusive when we were in L.A. in the mid-Nineties, and then grew more intensive. We could never plan a vacation where he would ever have to get up before noon,” she adds. “No activities. He wouldn’t go to things at the kids’ school if it was in the morning.”

According to Clayton, Susan, and Fred, Carmen spent most of his daytime hours in his office trading stocks online or reading the fan forum on his official website, often posting himself. “That was the perfect scenario, because he could communicate with people, but he didn’t have to leave his chair in his office, and no matter what, at the end of the day, the focus always came back to him,” says Clayton.

To put it mildly, Clayton doesn’t feel that Carmen was a very good father. “There were just certain really classic all-American-dad things that I didn’t get from him that I did really want from him,” he says. “I would beg him to go outside and play catch with me, and most of the time it was like, ‘Oh, it’s too humid out, it’s going to mess up my hair.’ There was always an excuse. He was very, very different from your standard paternal, father-figure archetype.”

“There should be no mistake that he loved Clayton and Kathryn,” Fred Carmen says of his brother. “But I don’t think he really had a concept of what it was to be a parent.”

By everyone’s account, Carmen and Susan’s divorce, which began in 2009, was brutal, stretching out for roughly a decade as they battled over money and custody of the children. They eventually reached a shared-custody agreement that left no one satisfied. “There wasn’t much communication between the two of them,” says Kathryn. “I was getting into that age where I was like, ‘Please don’t make me bring my duffel bag to school.’”

Carmen eventually moved into an apartment near the Beachwood Place mall on the east side of Cleveland. He tried to date women online, but it didn’t go very well. According to Clayton and Fred, he met a woman online named Nancy, who claimed to be decades younger than him. They spoke on the phone nearly every day for almost two years, often for hours at a time. But they never met, despite some close calls where she canceled at the last minute. “She concocted this whole elaborate story about how she had been a nurse in Afghanistan, and returned with some sort of rare illness that doctors couldn’t figure it out,” says Clayton. “My dad took it upon himself to do this research and identified some sort of rare disease that he thought she had. My sister and I basically told him for eight months, ‘You’re getting catfished.’ And he was completely in denial about it.”

“I remember printing out an article that said ‘Top 10 Ways to Know You’re Being Catfished,’” adds Fred. “She checked every box, and he refused to believe it.”

Not long afterward, Carmen met Amy, and as they dated and eventually married, he slowly became estranged from his brother, his ex-wife, and both of his kids. Fred Carmen says that was by Amy’s design. “The plan was to first pull me away from Eric and then pull the children away from Eric, so that she was the sole source of everything, and that she would control him,” he says. “To her credit, she was very effective. Again, Eric is a conspiracy theorist. She made him believe his entire family was engaged in a conspiracy against him.”

“We were excluded from their lives,” replies Amy. “As soon as everyone thought the money train had ended, Clayton, Susan, and Kathryn were all about getting whatever they could get.”

In the early days of the marriage, Amy says, she was a devoted stepmother. “I [tried] to include Clayton and Kathryn in our lives,” she says. “I was very happy to help both of them with their homework, and prepare meals. I straightened Kathryn’s hair before school, as she ate the breakfast I prepared for her, and I welcomed and taxied their friends. I helped Eric cover the ceiling of Kathryn’s bedroom with red and white balloons to surprise her on Valentine’s Day.”

Both sides of the Carmen family divide cite a wild party that Clayton threw at Eric and Amy’s house when they were out of town as a turning point in their relationship. “I should have had you charged with breaking and entering, and vandalism,” Eric wrote to his son in a 2018 email.

“From that point on,” says Susan, “neither Clay nor Kath could go over to the house unless they were invited. It was like they were strangers in their own home.”

At this same time, Eric Carmen filed a lawsuit against Fred, alleging mismanagement of his finances, improperly using money to provide care for their mother, and excessively charging him legal fees throughout the divorce period. Fred says he first got wind that this might be coming when Carmen and Amy were at his house for a party. “My nephew came to me,” says Fred. “He said, ‘You need to watch out for Amy. I just heard her say to my dad there was no way you could have paid for your new deck on your own.’ That was the kind of thing Amy was saying to him to make him conclude I was stealing from him.”

Amy says this is completely inaccurate. “I only saw Fred’s deck one time, and frankly it wasn’t that impressive,” she says. “I never told Eric or concluded that Fred ‘was stealing from him.’”

Fred denies any wrongdoing. They wound up settling out of court.

When Clayton graduated from high school and planned on enrolling at NYU, he says, he learned that his father wasn’t willing to pay for it. Per what Amy calls “a very questionable prenuptial agreement” with his ex-wife Susan, Eric had to provide tuition for an in-state school. But Eric wouldn’t pay for Ohio State, either, leading to a legal battle between the father and the son. “I never, ever, ever wanted it to come to that,” says Clayton, “but those were the options I was facing, and it was like, this isn’t little, menial shit, this is my college education, and this is something that gives me the basis to start the rest of my life.”

Amy says that Clayton never took his academic career seriously; he was once penalized by the school’s Committee on Academic Misconduct (Clayton doesn’t deny this: “I fully fucked up,” he says). She provided an email Eric sent to his son regarding college housing. “Right now the only achievement I’m interested in is you getting good grades and graduating in eight semesters,” Eric wrote. “We are talking about your college education. The education for which I am paying.”

Clayton’s tuition bill remained a point of acrimony. He claims that Eric and Amy instituted grade minimums, and forced him to live in the cheapest dorm and use the skimpiest meal plan. “The two of them really terrorized me for my first couple years of college and made me jump through hoops,” he says. Amy scoffs at this. “If begging Clayton to sign up for classes or for on-campus housing, so their father could pay for them on time, is making someone ‘jump through hoops,’” she says, “then [he has] a severely skewed view of the rest of the world today.”

The details of Carmen’s death remain shrouded in mystery, but some of his friends weren’t surprised when they heard the news in March. Says his former manager Spero: “He didn’t take care of himself. Towards the end, he’d gained a lot of weight.”

Fred and Clayton say they heard similar stories from Amy about him taking too many vitamins in the final weeks of his life, and essentially overdosing on them. “Amy said Eric was taking 200 supplements in the morning and 200 vitamin supplements at night,” says Fred. “And he had lost 11 pounds because he was taking Ozempic.” (Amy doesn’t deny her husband took supplements, but says, “I never told anyone that Eric took ‘400 supplements a day.’”)

When Clayton and Kathryn asked about a memorial service, Amy was initially vague. They learned the details secondhand: She had organized a private ceremony at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix for April 20, 2024. “Please,” read a note attached to the invitation, “do not forward or share details of the celebration with anyone.” To make sure Clayton, Kathryn, and Fred wouldn’t come, she stationed armed guards outside the doors.

“At what point does a person take a step back and say, ‘OK, I literally hired armed guards to keep my deceased husband’s children away from attending their father’s funeral?’” says Clayton. (“I chose to have a beautiful but private celebration of Eric’s life,” says Amy. “I unapologetically did not invite anyone who was disparaging or hurtful to my husband.”)

The bad blood continued on Aug. 8, when the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame held “Eric Carmen Day” and posthumously awarded him a key to the city of Cleveland. For the first time in years, Amy was in the same room with Susan, Clayton, and Kathryn. “Kathryn had been told she’d have time to share some remarks she wrote,” says Clayton, who recently took a job at the talent agency CAA, in the music brand-partnerships division, “but Amy threw a tantrum backstage and delayed the ceremony by 45 minutes, so my sister and I watched from the crowd without any acknowledgment and had to watch Amy speak and accept the award on my dad’s behalf.” (Amy says that any delay in the ceremony was not due to her, and claims it was the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, not her, that opted to pull Kathryn from the program at the last minute.)

Nobody in attendance had any idea there was backstage rancor. Heartfelt video testimonials were delivered by some of the biggest names in rock & roll: Kiss’ Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, Van Halen’s Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony, Cheap Trick’s Robin Zander, John Oates, the Beach Boys’ Al Jardine, Foreigner’s Lou Gramm, Peter Frampton, Clive Davis, and others. “I only wish he were here to accept this award and to see this amazing crowd of people who loved him and loved his music,” Amy told the crowd, fighting back tears. “Although, I have all day felt him with us in spirit.”

The word that comes up most often when people talk about Eric Carmen is “perfectionist.” He was a perfectionist when it came to crafting songs in the studio, refusing to settle for anything less than the music he heard in his head. He was a perfectionist when playing live, insisting on months of rehearsal prior to every tour, where he instructed every musician on exactly how to play their instrument and their parts. And when things didn’t go exactly his way, Carmen preferred walking away to accepting anything short of his exact creative vision.

It was an attitude that produced stunningly brilliant pop music that will endure for generations. It also caused him to abandon his career, and retread inward in the latter years of his life. But despite all of the heartbreak he left behind, on both sides of the Carmen family divide, his loved ones are working, some with help from therapists, to focus on the good times and his enormous gifts.

“Eric was, on balance, generally, a good person,” says Fred. “There were things that Eric did that made you scratch your head or say ‘That’s just not the way you should be handling this stuff.’ But did he have a bad heart? No, he didn’t have a bad heart. He had a good heart.”

“His God was music,” says daughter Kathryn, who is in the process of finishing up her schooling and working as a buyer for a clothing store. “He told me music was the only connection to something divine he ever had in his whole life. I would watch him sit at the piano and just lose himself. I got to see so much of that. And I do feel so, so lucky. Despite the past seven or so years, I wouldn’t trade any of it for a normal childhood.”

[starshifter]

Here's my little write up of the system drama that Blade doesn't care about. Just in case any readers are curious.

The Suthi system:

So Huth and the other planet that had an intelligent species on it, Suthi, have a long and complicated history.

Suthi, occupied by the Ziva, who are vampires (don’t ask. This planet system was originally designed for another fandom… I just didn’t have a fic to use it for, so I stole it. I world build for fun, okay.), has treated the Chèvren like cattle for a large part of their shared history. The Suthi hit space age first, so they won that little war between planets.

As such, their language is now the native tongue. I based their language on Etruscan and the Chèvren’s on French (as I’m sure many have noticed). (This is again due to the original fandom. ….it was witcher btw. This is all Blood and Wine’s fault. The higher vampires fascinated me and they used Etruscan for them.)

There have been a lot of rebellions and attempts at changing things over the centuries. Progress has been made, so the Chèvren have a lot more rights now, but it’s still far from perfect. There was a lot of terrible shit being done to the Chèvren with little to no consequence if the perpetrator was Ziva. One of these ongoing rebellions led into the formation of the extremist group that Culseva (Tabbeau, as he went by at the time) and Renais (Sren, as he was named in the language the Ziva use) led. When I say extremist, I mean firefights in the streets kind of thing. They had their supporters and their detractors (gotta admit, I'm kinda cheering them on), but eventually they were forced to flee the city they were based in due to several extremely bloody confrontations in the streets between them and Ziva military forces that killed a lot of bystanders.

This is when their group moved out to Sommetique and found the Stellaron. Culseva was already starting to wonder if they were doing the right thing after watching several of his close friends get killed for no gain. Renais, however, became even more zealous and started talking about genocide of the Ziva and such. Culseva just wanted their planet and sovereignty back. They had a bad fight and split. Culseva went on to join a new group that was looking into more peaceful means of change because he was sick of the fighting but still desperately wanted change.

It was in that new group that he eventually met the Trailblazers. Himeko, March, Stelle, and Dan Heng all came down to Huth in search of the Stellaron causing problems (since thats how ever planet visit goes, right?). Himeko and March ended up joining the group that was going to Suthi to negotiate for Huth’s independence (the Ziva were starting to face both internal and external pressure to do this. They still had other planets in the system for resources, why did they need to keep Huth under their control?) In fact, one of the people in this negotiations group was a Ziva. They weren’t the only Ziva who was in this group either, just the one picked for the negotiations. It was still mostly Chèvren tho.

Meanwhile, Dan Heng and Stelle went with Culseva to deal with the Stellaron. He had kept his violent past hidden, but he realized what the Stellaron was when he heard the Trailblazers description of it and decided that this was the final duty he needed to fulfill to put his past to rest. Of course, it doesn’t end up going well for him… RIP Culseva. If I’d been willing to add in an OC, you would have had a really emotional arc in facing your ex. And then probably died in that fight instead oops.

Anyways, March and Himeko helped negotiate for true freedom for Huth by insinuating shit like no one from outside their system would deal with them if they didn’t, but if they did, maybe they’d put in a good word to the IPC for business opportunities in this system. Faced with their own people starting to turn on them for perpetuating this, the continuing difficulty of keeping Huth in check, and the possibility of outside consequences; the Ziva leaders finally caved and gave Huth its sovereignty back. Huth would never recover from everything they’d lost in the centuries of oppression (like the planet’s original name. They might bring it back eventually, but for now it’s still Huth), but they had the chance to start over now.

Quick glossary of what I was using:

Vampire planet: Suthi Vampire species: Ziva

Goat planet: Huth Goat species: Rasna(sing.)/Rasenna(plu.) // Chèvren The mountain base with the stellaron: sacnicleri // Sommetique (sommet and magnifique)

Sren // Renais Culseva // Tabbeau

[emocka]

Letters for the heart

Aether x reader

Plot: Aether died in a crash. It broke you. A peice of you went missing when his eye went blank. But little did you know he left several letters for you.

Note: I figured it was a time I faced my grandmother's passing after 2 years and 8 months. This is for those who are struggling to face the reality of a loved one passing. The rant reader gives is a rant I went through as well. Everyone grieves differently.

Notes:angst with some comfort. Everyone is aged up for obvious reasons, mentions of past violence, and disasters

Final note: caelus is the trailblazer name in atar rail, and someone drew something with both caelus and aether in it

'Come closer' He said cupping your cheek.

You did as he said.

'I'm so sorry kit kat know I love you.' He said before kissing your cheek gently. He hand fell on the bed.

You wailed as the light in his eyes went dull. The monitor flat lining. Doctors and nurses rushed to help him. One nurse gently guided you out of the room.

A few minutes he was pronounced dead. You cried as a nurse led you down the hall to a quiet room.

'I'm sorry for your loss' He said as he sat you down. 'IF you want anything just call'

With that he left you alone.

You sobbed for hours. The reality hitting you hard.

Your husband of 25 years was gone. No more making new memories, no more dancing in the living room, spending time in the backyard watching the rain fall, stealing his jacket before work, it was all gone.

There was a knock on the door. You looked up as the same nurse entered the room.

'I know your having a hard time but they were going to throw these out.' He held up aether scarf and jacket. You lunged out of the chair grabbing them.

'What about his wedding ring?' You asked quietly wrapping the scarf around your neck.

'Would you like his jewelry?' The nurse asked.

'Please' you whispered burying your face in the jacket.

'OK. I'll grab it all.' He left.

You started crying again. Keeping your face in the jacket. You wished you had prevented him from leaving this morning.

The nurse returned.

'Hey, I have his earrings and wedding ring' He said holding them out for you.

You took them thanking the nurse before asking where the exit was.

----

The next several days were difficult for you. You were sleeping on the couch, trying to avoid the bedroom. Your fifteen year old daughter Reyna worried sick. Your sister in law calling, trying to get you to get up.

'Hey mom, look what I found' Reyna said. 'Dad left a letter behind'

You looked at her confused. Letter? She held out a lavender envelope. On it in his handwriting was your name. Reaching out slowly you took it and stared.

'Buts he's dead...this is...' You stared at it more before opening the letter up.

Dear kit kat,

So your probably curious as to why I started calling you kit kat. Well remember the incident back in college? The one that landed you in the deans office with a week suspension?

You fought someone over a kit kat bar. We were at a party that night and you had it in your hand. Some guy snatched it out of your hand and ate it in front you.

I've never seen someone so angry over a piece of candy that they curbed stomped their butt. I almost didn't pull you off him but while he did deserve it I couldn't stand to see you in jail so I pulled you off him. Who knew you had it in you to beat someone bloody.

That night we went to my dorm room and hung out. You were crying due to the time of the month. You were in a lot of pain. So i bandaged your hands then gave you a kiss.

Thats when I started calling you kit kat. You remember what I say everytime you asked for one?

'Kit kat for my kit kat?' You roll your eyes every time i say that line.

I should wrap this up. But know I love you so much.

Your prince,

Aether ♡

You sniffed as your daughter fell on the floor laughing.

'You got into a physical fight in college? Over some candy?!' Reyna laughed more

'Hey, when you're on your monthly and craving something only for someone to snatch it out of your hands, you get down to business and beat someone heads!' You glared at her. 'Where did you find this?'

'I was in the kitchen when I opened the spice cabinet.' She said, sitting up. It was taped on the door. Are you doing ok?'

You nodded a small smile appearing.

'Yea I'm doing ok' you hugged the letter close.

'So what's next?' She asked.

'I don't know...I don't know' you trembled slightly.

'Hey well be ok! I promise!' Reyna said trying to cheer you up. 'Oh I have an idea!'

You looked at the child as she ran off.

----

You were cleaning the living room when you stumbled across another letter. Same colored envelope same handwriting.

Dear princess,

What a night huh? Started off with classes ending in the hospital. Why did we agree to that stupid party?

Oh well hope your head feeling better cause we need to shop for a new table since the one we had broke. We also received a noise complaint from the neighbors. That party was ok. I'm just glad we came home. Though I'm curious as what drove you to asking me to do body shots.

Oh God. You remember that night. You two were alone doing body shots which led to an intense make out session. The table broke under the weight of two people. Aether had managed to protect you but you still hit your head against his hard.

I wonder if you remember what you told me last night. You sounded scared of the future. You asked if we would ever break up. I told you no it wouldn't happen. Your to precious to break up with.

All that aside I think we learned our lesson on body shots and tables. Not to say it won't happen again I did enjoy it ;).

Love you,

Aether

You smiled at the letter and the memory.

'I really miss you,' you said out loud. 'I wonder...'

You looked down the hall at the bedroom you shared with him.

'Should i?'

----

'Hey mom?' You looked up from photo album. 'You said dad left something for me?'

You nodded standing up. Walking over to the desk you pulled open the drawer and collected his wedding ring.

'I want you to have this' you held it out.

She looked at the ring before shaking her head no.

'I want you to have that. Can I redeem it for something else instead?' She asked.

You raised an eyebrow as she pointed at the scarf.

'I want dad's scarf. I have more memories with the scarf than the ring.'

You nodded placing the ring back in the drawer.

'Thanks mom' she hugged you. 'Hey wanna go out to the movies? They have some good one right now'

You hugged her back smiling.

'Yea let's go.'

----

'Hi lumine,' you were standing at the front door.

Lumine had shown up at your door. Why? You weren't sure.

'His things are still in the bedroom.' You stepped aside as she entered heading for the room.

'Where's his wedding ring? I want that.'

'No. Your not getting it. That mine.' You said. 'I gave him that not you.'

'Give me the wedding ring' She demanded.

'No'a voice said. You looked over and saw lumine mom. 'The wedding ring holds many memories for her. For archons sake lumine. The ring is hers. Lets go. Y/n dear? I hope you come by soon. We love you' the two left.

'Mom was that grandma I just saw in the drive way?' Reyna asked walking in confused.

You nodded.

'Your friend willing to let you sleep over? I have to work tonight'

She nodded.

'Yea she said her dad kazuha said it was fine.' Reyna looked at you. 'I can go get a job to help with the bills'

'No. Focus on school and friends. Besides work is making some arrangements for me to do it at home. So this situation is almost over.' You looked at her.

'Mom...I know it's been hard since he passed away. I see how bad it affected you.' Reyna approached you. 'You need a break or help. I want my mom back. The fun loving smart sassy mom.'

You watched as she cried going in for a hug. You accepted the hug.

'Mom just take a break please, do it for me' she mumbled in your shoulder.

Tears streaked your face.

'Please mom' Reyna asked. 'Please?'

'I can't . When the house is empty I feel alone. It so empty without him.'

'I know mom. I feel the same way but he wouldn't want us to be this way. He'd want us to perk up and have fun. Do you want to know what dad told me?'

You nodded.

'A few years ago I asked him how much he loved you. His response? He'd follow you across time. Everytime he looked at you it was like the first day You met all over again. So let live a happier life. His presence is still around us. Let try ok?'

You sobbed as she spoke. Reyna tightened the hug.

'We'll both do it for him ok?' She cried.

'When did you become a therapist?' You asked.

----

Reyna held the shoe box close. What you didn't know was the aether had given her a bunch of letters. She had counted over thousands of them. It was like he was writing every hour of the day.

....

'Rey?' She looked up as aether walked in.

In his arms was a box.

'I want you to have these.' He held the box out.

'What this dad?' She asked taking the box.

'Believe ot or not those are letters to your mom. Would you believe me if I told you I was writing these since I was twelve years old?'

'What? You told me you met in college!?' Reyna giggled.

'Officially yes but what she doesn't know is that I was the child bully in elementary school. I got my kumpets later for that.'

'You use to make fun of mom?' She asked.

He nodded. 'How did it bite you in the butt?'

'In the form of my sister knocking me out' He said laughing

'You got ko'ed by aunt lumi?' He nodded.

'Say Rey? If you ever fall in love, treat them well, ok?' Aether looked at her '. You never know what can happen.'

'AETHER. DID YOU CAN LUMINE?' You shouted.

'Oh darn I forgot it was date night' He ran out of her room.

....

'OK. I'm gonna hide this one on the couch.' Reyna said.

She did just that. Placing the letter in the couch while you were in the kitchen cooking. You found the letter.

Dear kit kat,

As I write this I can still hear the screams and sobbing. This has been a bad week for us. First the bomb threat then the school shooting now it the hurricane.

The shooting and hurricane were the worst.

I can still hear your screams from the hurricane. My heart sank. I know it was scary for the both of us. Hell I cried with you while we we in the tub during the storm.

To make up for the disasters, I'm going to take you on a week vacation. School is closed for the week. Who knows, maybe we'll get lucky and well have decent TV shows to watch. I promise you a lot of cuddles and 'cuddles'

Love

Aether ;)

You recalled those events. You and aether hid in the girls bathroom. You were crying terrified of what was going to happen. Aether held you hand over your mouth lips touching your temple constantly, your head against his chest.

During the hurricane you were both hiding in the tub. Aether was indeed crying but he kept silent while you were screaming. You were so terrified. In the end you both fell asleep in said tub. The only warmth you both had was his jacket. He had put it on you to keep you warm. He was the first to wake up checking on you making sure you were ok.

'Hey kit kat, it's over' He said waking you up gently. 'Lets get out of the tub and in an actual bed.'

You smiled at the memory towards the end.

'Thank for the letter prince' you said hugging it to your chest.

Suddenly there was a knock on your door. You went to answer it.

Opening the door you looked at your brother.

'Hiezou?' You looked at him 'why are you here?'

He didn't answer instead opting to hug you. You hugged him back..

'Mom told me what happened. ' He said. 'I'm sorry for your loss'

'Thanks.' You said.

'I also came by to see my neice.' He said.

'HIEZOU' You jumped at Reyna voice.

She ran and crashed into you and him.

'OK. Lemme go. Hiezou how long you staying?' You asked pushing arms off you.

'Awhile. Not sure when.' He said as you got up.

'OK um-' you started.

'I'll take the couch' He said hugging reyna.

Oh. You left the room.

---

It was half past nine and you were staring at the bedroom door. You want to go in but your were panicking. It was becoming too much.

'OK y/n' you whispered. '1...2...3!'

You swung the bedroom door open, taking a deep breath you walked in. Looking around the room was the same. Aether desks clean and organized, your desk slightly messy. One side of the room was filled with stuffed animals. Your wedding photo hug by the bed which was shoved in the corner. Next to it was another picture you in a cheer uniform him in his college volleyball uniform. He had you up in his arms. It was the day you two got engaged.

He had gotten down on one knee after winning a volleyball state championship. You said yes. You recalled him saying you'll marry after graduation.

Walking over to the bed you grabbed the picture hugging it close.

'I hope your in a better place'you whispered before lying down in the bed.

That night Reyna snuck in the room to place a letter under the pillow. She came out only to be caught by hiezou.

'Its a long story if your curious' She said looking at him.

'I love stories so tell me in the living room' He smiled.

----

You groaned as the sun peeked through the window. Turning around you slide your hand under the pillow behind your head. You felt it. Opening your eyes more you pulled the letter from the pillow. Smiling at the letter you opened it.

Dear kitten,

I'm going to kill that guy! He had no right to ask you about your body. And he didnt see the ring?!

I'm sorry he made you insecure. I know you don't want to be touched right now. Maybe we can discuss this tomorrow. I think I'll surprise you with something special.

I'm gonna head to bed soon. Hopefully you'll be up for a hug tomorrow.

Love you,

Aether

Oh that's right. That did happen. Some dude kept asking about your body commenting on your chest and how small it was. You remember crying as aether told him for the hundredth time to stop it. When it came to the comment about your chest aether had socked the guy in the jaw. The guy was out cold on the floor while aether rushed you out. You did not want to be touched after that comment. Aether respected that opting you stay next to you. The next morning he was sleeping in his own bed. So you crawled over to him. He had a small smile on his face as he pulled the comforter over your heads.

'Sleep in kitkat' He said before planting a kiss to your head.

----

'Mom?' You looked at Reyna. 'Can i have dad's jac-'

'No' you said.

'But-' She began

'No.'

'Why? You have his ring.' She said. 'I want his jacket.'

'Too bad I said no' you glared at her.

'I want the jacket mom. You don't even wear it. I want it. Just let me-'

'You have his scarf.'

'So I cant have his jacket too. Why so attached to it?'

'Why are you asking for it?'

'I don't know. Why are you attached to it?'

'Were you the one who was hiding in a girls bathroom when shots were fired? Hurricane causing you to fall asleep with him in the bathtub? Three earthquakes? Two floods? The night I announced we were expecting? When I was giving birth? Oh what about the college dance? He was wearing that jacket during those events. That jacket hold many memories both good and bad.' You glared at her. 'I won't let you have it.'

'Mom it just his volleyball jacket from college'

'Yea and? It holds a lot of memories. You not getting it and that's final' you left the kitchen.

She stood there dumbfounded. Over a piece of clothes? She just wanted it cause why not?

So she decided to do something she never done.

----

You were at work when she took it. Former nurse turned dispatcher. Answering emergency calls.

'Hey y/n?' The trainee asked 'I have someone on the line about to give birth'

You switched over to the line guiding them through the process.

'Oh I did it!' The person said as you heard cries. 'Here babe. You did it.'

You smiled as tear pricked your eyes.

'Ma'am?'You heard the women. 'Do you know any good boy names.'

'Oh no. My husband and I had a daughter. Never got around to having another child.' You said a few tears falling.

'Oh.' The was a pause before she asked. 'What was his name?'

'Aether Caelus' you said.

'Oh.' You heard the male in the background 'those are wonderful names'

'Aether it is' you burst in to sobs at that.

'Are you ok?' Your co worker asked.

You nodded hanging up on the call.

'Its so hard! How do you process a death?! Especially when you were suppose to tell him your were expecting?!'

'I processed my mom's death by writing letters, and going to therapy.' She said. 'How have you been coping?'

'I've been finding letter around the house lately' you sniffed taking off your ear piece 'the dates start from college. I've found four so far.'

'Reading them help?' She asked.

'It just takes me down memory lane' you said.

'Do you feel better after you've read them?' She asked again.

'Yea' you looked at your coworker.

'Start there and go' She smiled. 'It'll get better'

----

'Hey mom...'you looked at Reyna. 'So I did something bad'

.....

She lost the jacket. She took it off. One moment of was on her desk the next it was gone.

Reyna went into full panic mode.

'Reyna? What wrong' tomo asked her.

'I lost my dad's jacket. The one my mom wouldn't let me have' she panicked. 'That jacket hold meaning for my mom'

'What does it look like?' He asked concerned.

'White and gold with the number 4' she began. 'It has dad's last name on it'

'What's his last name'

'In college it was Caelus.'

He nodded.

....

'You took it?' You asked quietly. 'Despite my saying to not?'

She nodded sobbing.

'Fine. Your grounded. One week no tomo' you said.

'What did i-' tomo started

'No Tomo!' You glared at him.

'No Tomo' He left.

'I'm gonna finish dinner. Go do your homework' you said turning back to the stove.

'O-ok'she left.

You finished cooking serving a plate for Reyna. After you called her to eat you went to the bedroom to cry.

Reyna sat at the table looking at the food.

'I'm sorry. I didn't realize how much it meant.' She left the table food untouched. Heizou entered the house the moment she left the kitchen.

'You ok?' He asked her.

'Heizou? How important was dad's jacket to mom? How many memories does it hold for her?' Reyna looked at her.

'Too many to count. The first memory of the jacket happens to be the first time they actully talked. You mother accidentally knocked him out with her baton.' Heizou smiled.

'Huh?'

'Its a long story' He said sitting down 'wanna hear it?'

'Yea' Reyna sat back down.

'Freshman year of college. We were in week two'

....

Aether sighed.

'Lumine why?' He asked her.

'I don't know. Mom said it.' She replied twirling her hair. 'Come. Their about to start the baton twirling.'

'GO ARCHONS!' They looked over at the cheerleaders. They were in a giant pyramid. 'And down. SLOWLY PEOPLE! THAT HOW WE BREAK OUR LEGS'

You were at the top of the pyramid listening to the captain. You looked behind you to see the guy arms out waiting for you. You fell backwards into his arms.

'Thanks' you said getting on your feet.

'OK girls when you have finished disassembling grab a baton.' The captain said helping girls down.

'So why are we here watching this? I have practice in a hour' Aether watched you. 'Is that y/n?'

Lumine looked at him.

'You have hearts for eyes. Yes it her. You saw her last year.' She said rolling her eyes. 'Just go talk to her. She probably forgot about the whole bully situation.'

'I dont like her. And o was making dun of her' He looked at lumine. 'You know how kids pull on girls hair because they like them?'

'Really? So you teased her to the point of crying?' She asked raising and eyebrow.

'OK I'll admit i took it too far but regardless I had still do have the biggest crush on her.' He said staring at you.

'Weird way of showing it' lumine muttered punching his arm.

'Ow what was that for?' Aether asked rubbing his arm.

'Just go talk to her.' Lumine smiled.

'OK girls you can practice tossing and catching. I'm gonna take care a of a few things. Feel free to leave when it's five thirty.' The cheer captain said before leaving.

The squad stayed talking and tossing the batons. Aether sighed before standing up from the bleachers.

'Come on. I need to go talk to the volleyball captain. He said he has my jacket ready.'

Lumine looked at him.

'Yea ok.' She sighed standing up. They retrieved his jacket.

'Oh and don't forget physical' the coach said.

The two started walking from the office. As you had tossed the baton up in the air twirling around.

The next two seconds slowed down for you both. Aether looked up as you stared in horror.

'Look out!' You shouted.

Aether just stood there as the baton hit him.

'Oh my archons I am so sorry!' You ran over to him. 'This is my fault.'

You started running a mental checklist.

'He conked out.' You brought your phone out calling heizou.

Heizou came and with his help you managed to get him in the car. Heizou threw a fit when aether woke up throwing up.

'NOT MY CAR!' Heizou shrieked.

'Oh shut up.' You replied smacking his shoulder. 'We both own this car. I'm the one paying the insurance. Mom and dad gave it to both of us for college. Shut your gay ass up and PAY ATTENTION! YOU IDIOT!'

Heizou swerved to avoid a crash. Aether whimpered at the movement before blacking out.

'Hey its ok' you said quietly rubbing his head.

'How do you know im gay?' He asked.

'Were twins. Trust me I've known since we were 12' you replied. 'Plus your crush on the next door neighbor kazuha'

---

'OK so he has a concussion. Luckily it's a mild one. All you need to do is make sure he's getting rest.' The nurse said.

You nodded.

'OK here a list of mods he can take to help with a headache' you took the paper. 'You two have a great day.'

The nurse left.

'Your pretty' Aether said.

'Thanks. Let's go back to campus. Heizou took the car so I'll order a rideshare' you smiled at him before unlocking your phone.

......

'What other memories?' She asked.

'Well I think she and your dad had their first kiss at a theater. From what I saw he had given her the jacket cause it was cold. There the shooting that happened. Now that was scary. Um earthquakes, hurricanes, proposal, day of your birth, school dance, the fight,'

'Fight?' Reyna asked.

'Your dad got into a fist fight with someone at a bar and landed in jail for it. Your mom bailed him out. He was very protective of your mom. To the point that he got suspended three times.'

'What was the fight about?' Reyna looked at him curious.

'Remember what we're always teaching you? About being safe whem drinking?' He asked smiling.

'Yea, im not an adult though'She replied confused.

'Ah ah ah. What's the rule?' He gave her a look.

'Any thing I drink can be spiked soda, water. If i suspect its been apiked report it.' She sighed. 'So?'

'Someone spiked your moms drink on thier third year anniversary while they were at a bar. Aether noticed she was acting out of sorts and tracked down the person after he got her to the hospital. That fight got him a two week suspension jail and off the court for one game' heizou looked at reyna. 'He was serious about her safety.'

'I see'reyna looked at the floor. 'I see why the jacket is important.'

'Want help finding it' He asked.

'Please.'

-----

You were sleeping when heizou snuck in.

'Hey sis' He whispered 'I found it. Had to pay up money for it.'

Heizou placed the jacket on the bed.

'I know your hurting and trying to hold on to what you can. And that's fine but I think his death is taking you down. Mom says you haven't been to visit her. She say your throwing yourself into your work.'

You stirred slightly adjusting your position. Heizou went quiet as you mumbled.

'Aether...I miscarried' a few tears escape. 'I'm sorry'

Heizou took a deep breath.

'We should sit down and talk about it' He sighed quietly leaving the bedroom.

Reyna snuck in after him placing a letter on the jacket.

---

You woke up the next morning tears streaming down your face. The dream you had felt real. You were talking to him, telling him.you miscarried. The kiss felt real.

But the kiss wasn't. Sitting up you looked around before spotting the letter and jacket. You lunged for the items. Hugging the jacket you looked at the letter. Putting the jacket down you opened the letter carefully.

Dear princess,

I know your feeling really depressed. I did research on postpartum depression and pulled a plan for us. What your going through breaks my heart. I see how it affecting you. It's why I helped you bathe. I know you were embarrassed about the whole thing but I don't care. I just want my precious wife to be happy.

I'm going to ask my sister to take Reyna for a few days. I think we could use some time alone. Maybe catch up on sleep, watch some TV. That one Kdrama you haven't watched for a while released a new season. If you want we can also go out to eat.

I know I can't experience what your going through but I do know you need support. I'll be that support.

Love,

Aether

You smiled going down memory lane.

.....

'Hey kit kat can you come with me?'Aether asked.

You had just put Reyna down for her nap. Your face was stained with tear streaks. You nodded following him.

Aether took your hand guiding to the bathroom. The shower was running. You cried embarrassed for letting yourself go.

'Hey don't cry' He cupped your cheek. 'I want to do this. Come on. Let undress.'

Aether kissed your cheek as he helped you in the shower.

You guys were out an hour later. Aether was Towel drying your hair.

'You want to braid it? Curl it?' He asked as he ran his hand through your hair.

It was mostly dry now.

'Curl it please' you said quielty.

'OK. Let me get the hair dryer and curler.' Aether planted a gentle kiss on your head.

He climbed off the bed and went in the bathroom to retrieve said items among a few other things.

Aether had a hair routine that you occasionally followed. Returning back he went behind you and started the routine. After running the dryer he started curling it.

'Hey princess. What do you want to do tonight?' He pulled at the newly made curl gently, making it fluffy.

'I want take out and sleep.' You replied enjoying the warmth from the curling iron. 'When did you learn to use a curling iron?'

'Watching you' Aether pinched your cheek gently. 'We can do take out.'

You hummed in response as aether continued. After awhile he finished your hair.

'There all done. How does my pretty girl feel now?' He asked unplugging the curling iron.

'I feel somewhat alright.' You said as aether put everything away.

'That better than not being ok' Aether turned off the bathroom light. 'Anything in particular sound good?'

You shook your head no.

'OK I'll choose food. ' He grabbed his phone. 'You rest. I'll be back. Kiss.'

You gave him a kiss as you pulled the blankets up to your neck.

'Thanks Ae' you looked at him.

'Your very welcome princess.' He smiled before you closed your eyes.

....

'Thanks for that' you whispered hugging the letter.

You sighed quietly, slipping the letter in the drawer next to the bed. You got off the bed, walking over to the door.

Heizou opened it.

'Can we talk?'He asked.

'Sure. What happened?' You looked at him.

'Its about aether and his death' heizou looked at you 'moms worried, our cousin is worried, lumines worried'

You scoffed at lumines name.

'She sure seems worried. She wanted the wedding ring. I don't know what she took'

'She wanted the ring because she wanted to do something for you. She knew how much aether meant to you. She said she had his volleyball ring, high school graduation ring. Not the point though. It's about how your handling it. So start talking' He gave you a look.

You sighed.

'Fine wanna hear me rant?' You asked. 'I'll rant. I'm mad that I didn't stop him from leaving that morning. I'm mad at him cause now I have to raise Reyna by myself, he broke the promise to always be together. I'm upset the doctors gave up on him,'

Heizou listened as you started rasing your voice. You were turning red. He knew what you were going through.

Suddenly you started crying

'Im alone, raising a 15 year old daughter. I had a miscarriage and wasn't able to tell him, he's going to miss Reyna important life events, no more midnight walks, everything is gone' you looked at him tears streaming down your face.

'He may be gone but he's still in your heart. A part of him is in Reyna as well.' Heizou pulled you forward wrapping his arms around you. 'I know it's been difficult. Everyone watched you two as the love you guys had bloomed. While I know I don't understand his death, I do understand how bad it affected you. But you need help.'

You nodded.

'And as your older brother-'

'You ten seconds older' you said.

'As your older brother I demand we go to therapy' He said.

You thought about it before nodding.

'Ok.'

'Good cause my therapist wants to see you today' He said.

----

'So you two are twins' the therapist said. 'Ok, y/n?'

You nodded.

'Lets dive into aether death.' She said as the session began.

You talked. Heizou was in the lobby so he didn't see the scene.

'Ever since he died letters have been showing up' you looked at her.

'Tell me about these letters' you pulled out a letter as she asked.

'There letters from him. The dates are different. But each letter talks about a different event. This one talks about the affects after giving birth to our daughter' you held it out.

The therapist took the letter.

'May I read it?' You nodded.

'How do you feel about these letters?' She looked up from the letter.

'Honestly...it helps. I like that i can see what his thoughts were on some things.' You held your hand out for the letter. 'I can go back to the past in a way'

She handed you the letter.

'Ok' you watched as she wrote something down. 'Well continue this in two week's. Send in your brother. He's next'

You nodded standing up.

----

You waited in the lobby as heizou talked to the therapist. You were scrolling through your phone looking at photos and videos. You stopped at one vidoe and looked at it. You hit play.

'Hey aether?' You asked. 'You promise we'll have an eternity together?'

Aether looked at the camera.

'I promise. Celestia can't tear us apart' he said. 'No matter what'

'Swear?'

He was nodding.

'Cool! Bet you can't poke your tongue out cross your eyes and look down at the same time?' You said giggling.

He did that causing you to laugh.

'Hey that's not fair!' He whined.

The vidoe ended as you smiled.

'Ready to go?' Heizou asked.

You looked up nodding.

'OK. Lets go. Reyna still at school right?' You nodded. 'OK wanna go hang out? It's been year since we did sibling stuff. We can go to the mall, movies, whatever you want'

You gave it some thought.

'Mall sounds nice.' You said standing up. 'Lets go'

He smiled as you both left the building.

----

'Seriously? I thought I his it really well' hiezou said.

You laughed.

'It was obvious. The way you stared at him made it clear.' You said. 'That how I knew you were gay. But I love you as you are gay or not.'

'How come you never outed me?' He asked.

'Wasn't my place. ' You looked at him. 'But the day you came out to our parents was terrifying'

Heizou nodded. Your parents had kicked him out at 16. You panicked and managed to make arrangements with some friendly cousins to house him. You were forbidden from talking to him.

You said screw that rule. Heizou was your twin, brother and best friend. You weren't loosing him because of his preference. Your mom eventually came around to accepting his sexuality while your dad was dead set against it.

'Thanks for making those arrangements. Don't know where I'd be.'

'Anything for my brother. Besides your stuck with me for ever. Even if your ten seconds older.' You smiled opening your arms for a hug.

'Thanks' He hugged you.

'Your welcome' you said.

---

That night you returned home and walked into the bedroom. You sat down at aether desk and looked at it. Looking over the desk you spotted his phones.

Miraculously it survived the crash. You touched the phone gently.

Aether always let you on his phone. Sometimes your take it out of his hands to take random pictures, videos ect. In return he would take your phone as well. It was a fun thing you guys had and honestly you learned more about 3ach other this way.

Popping the phone on the charger you watched as the screen came to life. You took a deep breath before swiping up to unlock it.

You tried the wedding date as the pin. It worked.

'You did always use the same pass for everything.' You smiled as you began to scroll through his phone.

You opened the gallery on his phone. You looked at the pictures smiling going over the memories.

'I love you' You said turning the phone off.

Getting ready tonsleep you crawled in the bed looking at the phone one last time.

'I think...I think...I think I can start healing.' You said nodding off.

----

Over the next six months you found several more letters from him. Each letter talked about a different event that happened, he talked a out his feeling in that moments, exclaimed his love for you.

You kept all letter you found. Currently you were making dinner when heizou came home with reyna.

'Welcome back you two.'You said setting the lid down. 'Reyna how was the sleep over with tomo?'

'It was great!' She put her bag on the couch. 'What's for dinner?'

'Golden shrimp balls' you slapped heizou hand. 'Keep away from the food I'm not done.'

'But im hungry!' He put his hand yo his chest in a dramatic way.

You rolled your eyes at him.

'Drama queen' heizou gasped.

'I'm telling mom!' He whined.

You giggled as you finished making the food.

'Dinner is served.' You grabbed plates and handed one to heizou. 'Now you may eat'

'Hey mom?' Rey watched 'how come you and heizou are really close?'

'I dont know' you both said.

'Dad says you two were crazy back in college' She giggled.

'He's not wrong' you replied. 'At the bar in the middle of the dance floor shaking our butt to shake senora, screaming lyric to whatever song played during a car ride.'

Heizou nodded as he sat down.

'Your dad didn't get mad or anything he just rolled his eyes' you said giggling.

'Weird' Rey said.

'Weird?' You raised an eye brow 'that's coming from the girl who still smacks jello with a spatula, and made yogurt art on my kitchen wall'

'Huh?' Heizou looked confused.

'MOM!' Reyna looked away embarrassed.

'As I thought' you said smiling.

'I told you it just something funny' she said. 'I'm gonna go eat dinner in my room. I'll do homework then I'm heading off to tomos again.'

You nodded. Handing her a plate she left for her room.

'Explain the jello thing' heizou demanded.

You sighed and launched into the story.

'She was four'

-----

You watched as aether placed the plate on top of the bowl flipping it over.

'Thanks for that ' you said.

'No worries kit kat' He smiled. 'Now I'm gonna take a shower. Please join?'

'Sure' you had placed the jello on the table. 'Shell be fine while we shower right? She's only four'

Aether gave it some thought enfore walking over to the frigde. He grabbed a couple yogurt packets setting them on the table.

For a four year old Reyna was tall. At this time she was also getting sassy and bossy. Wonder who it came from. But over all she was the sweetest person you gave birth too.

'OK. Up you go' He said sweeping you off your feet.

'Hey!' You laughed as he made a dash toward your master bathroom.

----

'How does-' heizou started but you shushed him.

-----

During the shower Reyna had come out of her room. She was allowed in the kitchen juat not the fridge. So everytimw you and aether showered you left out something for her to eat.

Entering the kitchen she spotted the yogurt. Climbing the chair she began to open them when her four year old mind had an idea. Taking the dairy treat she threw it at the wall multiple times. After she was satisfied she spotted the jello. She spotted a spatula. Grabbing it she started smacking the jello making noises.

You remember part clearly as while aether was washing your hair you guys heard a scream. You and aether had rushed out of the shower only to find Reyna giggling as she smacked the jello. The scream? One of Joy.

Aether sighed.

'Last time I leave jello out' you said. 'Come on let's go finish our shower. That'll keep her entertained'

You started laughing as you and h returned to finish the shower.

----

'After that I cleaned it up.' You watched as heizou laughed.

'So that why you called her jello smack' He said.

'Hey, aether and i wanted a shower. At least we got a laugh out of it' you smiled sitting at the table. 'But the after math wasn't fun. Aether cleaned the mess while I gave her a bath.'

He smiled.

'You know what? I think I can learn to move past this.' You said looking at your brother.

'Think you'll go back out in the sea of dating?' He asked.

'No. I know I already found the one. I've always known that. I don't want to date again.'

Heizou smiled as he nodded.

----

As the years passed you watched as you kept finding the letters reading them, saving them. You got to watch Reyna big events, her milestones.

Your time came when you were in your sixties. Reyna had accepted that fact. She knew you wouldn't come back. So she revealed what she was doing. Her lover tomo behind her.

'I suspected. But I'm glad you did it.'you smiled before closing your eyes one last time.

'So...what's next?' Tomo asked as he squeezed Reyna hand.

'We live' She smiled.

---

The star in teyvat had you place. You remwber waking up in a sea full of weird gold orbs.

'Where am i?' You asked as you felt a breeze.

'Oh your here!' You heard a familiar voice. 'I've been waiting for you kitkat.'

You felt a pair of arm wrap around you. You looked at the arms. They looker familiar. So you turned to look at the source of the voice.

'Aether?' You looked at him.

'Rwmwber the saying?' He asked.

'The stars in teyvat has a place for you' You said. 'Oh dear I must look like I'm in my sixties....why do you look like your 24?'

'You'd still look beautiful.' He said pointing down at the floor.

You looked down. You saw yourself. You looked 24.

'Come on.' He held his hand out. 'We can walk among the stars now.'

You smiled taking his hand. As you stood up a small white dress appeared on your body.

'I love you, Aether'

'I love you, y/n'

[plannedparenthood]

Thank You, RBG

We are heartbroken. Supreme Court Justice and gender equality hero Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Friday, Sept. 18. Her death is a painful loss for our country. She was a fierce and unapologetic warrior for equality, and her achievements are endless. As we mourn we’re also embracing our gratitude for her service to our country.

Cherishing RBG’s Legacy

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg committed her life to protecting the rights, freedoms, and health of people across the country — in particular women, communities of color, and others whose voices too often go unheard. She was a true trailblazer who inspired millions of girls and women to fight through sexism and discrimination to make American a better place to work, to live, and to love. 

Her powerful words over the years, including her razor-sharp dissents, helped push our nation toward freedom and opportunity for all. Her spirit, values, and words will be deeply missed.

A Modern Revolutionary

Some revolutionaries shook up a society with anger burning and guns blazing. Others studied hard, knocked down an unfair system one peg at a time, and spoke truth to power while wearing a lace collar. That was Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 

She got two mottoes from her mother, Celia Bader (who marched for women’s suffrage): 

“Be independent,” take care of yourself without being financially beholden to a man, and

“Be a lady,” don't allow emotions like anger to be so consuming they get in your way.

When Ruth Bader Ginsburg saw anything repugnant — like systemic discrimination — she would get straight to work. It wasn’t easy. Over decades, Ruth Bader Ginsburg faced a slew of indignities. But she harnessed courage and resolve to strategically break down America’s sexist, unethical laws and institutions. 

To honor the Notorious RBG, we’ve collected our seven favorite facts about her life and her legacy.

7) RBG was defiant in the face of entrenched sexism in college and law school.

Most colleges didn’t accept women in the 1950s, and Ruth Bader was one of the first to break the gender barrier. At Cornell University, she was sexually harassed by a professor, who offered answers to a test in exchange for sex. She confronted him: “I went to his office and I said, ‘How dare you? How dare you do this?’ And that was the end of that.” 

At Harvard Law School, she and the eight other women in her class of more than 500 students were ogled, ignored in the classroom, excluded from the library, and asked by the dean how they could possibly justify taking a seat away from a man. But that hostile environment didn’t stop her. 

She fought it with brain power and superhuman physical endurance. She was so obsessed with the law that she’d regularly stay up until dawn studying. Well into her 80s, she retained her reputation for working until 3 a.m. and living on just two hours of sleep. 

While she was kicking butt at the top of her classes, she was also taking care of her young daughter and sick husband. Martin (Marty) Ginsburg contracted testicular cancer and had extensive radiation therapy, which kept him from going to his own law school classes. So, RBG organized his friends to attend his classes, worked through their notes with Marty, and typed up Marty’s papers — all while doing her own schoolwork on top of it. 

She tied for first in her class from Columbia Law School in 1959. She also was the first person to become a member of both the prestigious Harvard Law Review, and the Columbia Law Review — one of many of her unprecedented feats. She proved to those elite schools that a woman could succeed.

6) RBG showed the world what a partnership looks like in a husband-wife relationship.

Ruth Bader met Marty Ginsburg while they were both at Cornell University, and they forged an equal partnership from the beginning. He learned to cook so she didn’t have to. Later, he lobbied for her seats on the Court of Appeals in D.C. and on the Supreme Court. And he gave up his law firm in New York to follow her to Washington — a shocking move at the time. 

Here’s how she put it at her 1993 Senate confirmation hearing:

“I surely would not be in this room today without the determined efforts of men and women who kept dreams of equal citizenship alive. I have had the great good fortune to share life with a partner truly extraordinary for his generation. A man who believed at age 18 when we met that a woman’s work, whether at home or on the job, is as important as a man’s. I became a lawyer when women were not wanted by most members of the legal profession. I became a lawyer because Marty supported that choice unreservedly.”

5.) RBG won a whopping five cases before the Supreme Court — and they all advanced the Constitutional protection of equal rights for all Americans.

As smart and accomplished as Ruth Bader Ginsburg was, no law firm would hire her after she graduated from law school. Law firms slammed the door in her face time after time because they only hired men. She realized that “being a woman was an impediment.”

As Ginsburg navigated the legal working world in the 1960s, she saw how thousands of state and federal laws were treating women as second-class citizens. At that time, most states’ laws allowed employment termination for pregnancy, and let banks deny credit to women without a male co-signer. The Supreme Court had rejected every challenge to laws that treated women worse than men.

All this gender discrimination fueled Ginsburg’s drive for social justice. In the early 1970s, she followed the strategy of NAACP civil rights lawyer and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who helped dismantle Jim Crow laws case by case over many years — leading to Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which outlawed racial segregation in schools in 1954. Like Marshall, Ginsburg centered her arguments on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which says all persons should be treated equally under the law.

Throughout the ‘70s, Ginsburg led the ACLU’s Women's Rights Project, for which she argued and won five landmark gender equality cases before the Supreme Court. As she said in the 2018 documentary RBG: "I knew that I was speaking to men who didn't think there was such a thing as gender-based discrimination, and my job was to tell them it really exists.”

These cases set the foundation for the country’s laws against sex discrimination, and helped eliminate being male as the criteria for employment, pay, and benefits:

Two cases in 1975 and 1979 established the requirement that women serve on juries, recognizing that they should enjoy both the benefits and the responsibilities of our judicial system.

“The vaunted woman's privilege viewed against history's backdrop simply reflects and perpetuates a certain way of thinking about women. Women traditionally were deemed lesser citizens.”

—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, arguing before the Supreme Court (Duren v. Missouri, 1979)

An employment benefits case in 1973 required the U.S. military to equally distribute family-based benefits for service members regardless of sex.

“In asking the Court to declare sex a suspect criterion, we urge a position forcibly stated in 1837 by Sara Grimke, noted abolitionist and advocate of equal rights for men and women. She said, ‘I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.'”

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg, arguing before the Supreme Court (Frontiero v. Richardson, 1973)

Two cases in 1974 and 1975 threw out gender-based distinctions in survivors’ benefits, granting widowers the same benefits as widows. RBG argued that while giving widows special treatment sounded nice, it wasn’t. Withholding benefits to widowers devalued the work of their deceased wives.

“A gender line...helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.”

—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, arguing before the Supreme Court (Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, 1975)

4) At her confirmation hearings, RBG openly declared that abortion access is a Constitutional right.

At her 1993 Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Ruth Bader Ginsburg showed what it looks like to uphold constitutional rights. Unlike recent Supreme Court nominees, she affirmatively declared the Constitutional right to safe, legal abortion. When Sen. Hank Brown (R-CO) grilled her about her views on abortion, she declared:

“But you asked me about my thinking about equal protection versus individual autonomy, and my answer to you is it's both. This is something central to a woman's life, to her dignity. It's a decision that she must make for herself. And when Government controls that decision for her, she's being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.”

3) RBG wrote the historic decision ruling that state-funded schools must admit women.

In 1996, Justice Ginsburg wrote the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in United States v. Virginia, which ruled that the Virginia Military Institute’s men-only admission policy violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. Justice Ginsburg destroyed the Institute’s argument that its program wasn’t suitable for women. Instead, she wrote that:

“[G]eneralizations about ‘the way women are,’ estimates of what is appropriate for most women, no longer justify denying opportunity to women whose talent and capacity place them outside the average description.”

The school has admitted women since then, and — as Justice Ginsburg predicted — they have made the school proud.

2) RBG’s dissent from the majority in Lilly Ledbetter’s case led to the passage a fair pay law.

In 2007, Justice Ginsburg dissented in the ruling against Lilly Ledbetter — a tire factory employee who learned, decades into her tenure, that she was being paid much less than men in the exact same supervisory role: She was making $3,727 per month, while her male counterparts were making between $4,286 and $5,236 per month. However, she lost the case because the Civil Rights Act had a statute of limitations for reporting on discrimination. 

In her scathing dissent, Justice Ginsburg wrote that gender discrimination can be hidden for a long time and “the ball is in Congress’s court” to change the rule. In 2009, Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which extended the Civil Rights Act’s statute of limitations and guarantees women equal pay for equal work.

1.) RBG put the smack down on TRAP laws in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. 

In the landmark Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt case in 2016, the Supreme Court — including Justice Ginsburg — ruled that two abortion restrictions in Texas were unconstitutional because they would shut down most clinics in the state and cause Texans an “undue burden” on access to safe, legal abortion. The case exposed the lie that anti-abortion politicians have been peddling for years: that it’s somehow “safer” when the state imposes medically unnecessary, onerous targeted restrictions against abortion providers (TRAP) laws. 

In her concurring opinion to the majority, Justice Ginsburg wrote:

“Given those realities [that keep abortion access out of reach], it is beyond rational belief that H.B. 2 could genuinely protect the health of women, and certain that the law ‘would simply make it more difficult for them to obtain abortions’... When a State severely limits access to safe and legal procedures, women in desperate circumstances may resort to unlicensed rogue practitioners... at great risk to their health and safety.”

With this historic decision, the Court reaffirmed the constitutional right to access legal abortion. This decision was a triumph for abortion access. And when one of the restrictions that Ginsburg helped strike down came up in another lawsuit this year, Ginsburg again helped lead the Court to protecting abortion access in a major Supreme Court victory for reproductive rights.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg rose for all of us. How will we work together to rise for her?

From day one, Justice Ginsburg recognized our constitutional right to control our bodies and our destinies. That is a legacy that cannot and must not depart with her. 

Justice Ginsburg stood up for us. Now it’s our turn. 

Follow Planned Parenthood at facebook.com/PlannedParenthood and twitter.com/PPFA to stay updated on how to get involved. Together, we will rise. 

By Miriam at PPFA

[patchdotexe]

explorers of arvus: heading back / 3.11.21

zoom and enhonse

LAST TIME ON ARVUS taure passed out and we are now down a healer! also we met a disciple of halvkar, and surprisingly did not murder her. this is fine. we have instantly gotten distracted by our various carts. cats. our various cats

DID ANY OF US CATCH TAURE, SHE FELL OVER sieron tried to catch her and smacked charlie+thorne in the face (he rolled a nat1, f) BUT the catboy is to the rescue bc silje is the designated Not Incompetent of the group today

CONSULT THE CHILD hewwo yrel yrel: her mind is being consumed by the serpent of nightmares. :D charlie: HELLO?????//

so, dendar(?) the night serpent is imprisoned beneath arvus! she was formed from the nightmares of the first sentient being, and sometimes she eats people's nightmares. if she's exceptionally hungry, she'll force nightmares onto people for her to feed off their fear. yrel thinks taure will Probably wake up. there's a thing on arvus mentioned by the locals called a "sleeping sickness" where people will fall asleep for a few days, sometimes longer, but will wake up. its magical in cause, the people afflicted by it have horrific nightmares, and its just kinda. a thing. wowza

(i have gone back to spelling yrel's name as yrel bc i think it looks nice)

OH HEY SOMEONE POSTED A THEORY ON ONE OF MY STICKMOLUS ANIMATIONS man i should get back to stickmolus sometime. once dsmp releases its awful grip on me.

i keep getting distracted by seeing myself in the camera preview. i have a tooth gap! what the fuck its cute?? K I KNOW WE'RE SUPER BLURRY IN FRONT RN BUT PLEASE HELP ME STAY FOCUSED I SWEAR -leo

we're gonna build a sled! to put taure on. thorne: i have a good strength score. ....i say, out loud charlie: i am four feet tall. [cue argument between thorne & sieron about them both being horcs but sieron has a +0 bc strength is his dump stat] OH, OKAY, THORNE ROLLED A NAT20 TO CARRY TAURE. NICE

[discussion about what to tell everyone at camp vengenace] thorne: the last thing we need to do is a witch hunt charlie: --and we already hunted the witch! the witch has been hunted.

time to discuss strategy! we need to figure out how to head back to camp vengeance, eg if we want to follow the path we already took or if we wanna do some trailblazing. looks like we're gonna try and take the most direct path! which means we'll prolly risk tangoing with some undead but im willing to risk it TINY HUT STAIRCASE sorry i just remember it now and then

nyx: [meowing at his cats] thorne: uh... why is silje meowing? jorb: silje's food bowl is empty jorb: you look at silje's food bowl and there's a divot in the middle and the food is all on the sides emotionally, we must bully the catboy silje saw something interesting and started meowing

thorne: ill take first watch silje: ill also take first watch. charlie: [quietly] gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyy (but, like, extended for 15 seconds)

silje: [takes watch] [rolls a nat1 and gets distracted by looking at his crush]

THORNE HAS LOCATED A DOG the dog does not give a shit about the tiny hut. THE DOG HAS PEED ON THE TINY HUT goodbye dog

EVERYONE IS ROLLING AT LEAST 1 NAT1 thorne: wow! that sure is a dog. thorne has drawn the worst possible dog. thorne has erased the worst possible dog. we dont speak of the worst possible dog its the dog version of honse. DONSE

sieron is now on watch! MAN we are havin trouble rolling today. at least kali's here to make sure sieron doesnt stare at a rock for 50000 years sieron sees a mouse! bottom text

charlie is now on watch! kali is havin a big ol thonk. nothing meaningful has come of this

i am perceiving some deer. sieron is not perceiving some deer. silje is perceiving some deer, but better the deer are fucked up and undead! silje has gone from "we should hunt these deer for food" to "we should hunt these deer for sport"

charlie: i do not feel like being jumped by five thousand skeletons

charlie takes first watch with sieron! WHY ARE OUR ROLLS SO TERRIBLE taure is super cursed right now. that's not very pog charlie: this place sucks. thorne: to be fair, we havent-- charlie: YOU'RE ASLEEP, SHUT UP

oh hey coolname galvanic finally partied. nice.

thorne is at watch! solar: hey, is leomund's tiny hut an orb? there's a critter digging around! AH, THE CRITTER IS UNDEAD. this could be a problem

solar: hey michael, how much does the horrific sin against god dog i drew look like this creature michael: [dice roll noises] about 50%.

michael: if anyone likes, they can make a nature check-- solar: ME MEMEMEMEME ME ME ME

its a bulette! aka a land shark. problem: they are not normally undead. this one is undead.

jorb: imagine if you could tame one of those and use it as a mount. leo: IT WOULD JUST DIG UNDERGROUND AND LEAVE YOU THERE

we are just calling it a weird dog

we're going to mail a letter to the heart of arvus. HEY, CHECK OUT THIS WEIRD DOG,

JORB FOUND ART OF A BABY BULETTE. WEIRD PUPPY!

solar: hey guys, check out this sick art of a bulette i found

silje kept a lookout for the weird dog but its just fucked off. goodbye, weird dog give it up for day 3!

man there's been like, three incinerations today in blaseball. what's up with that. I SWEAR IM MOSTLY PAYING ATTENTION its just been an eventful day in blaseball. also im wearing my garages bomber rn. jaylen is home wooOOOO the wind smells stinky. this is fine.

we're actively avoiding whatever combat michael keeps nudging at us bc we're carrying around an unconscious person and i SWEAR hes gonna throw something directly at us once he's done with our shenanigans

UHH MICHAEL ASKING FOR PASSIVE PERCEPTION LOL

huh. this place used to be inhabited? we're in the woods rn but there's some like, stone ruins? like, VERY ruins. like, not really any structures standing, but enough evidence to show there Were things. WE FOUND A STATUE charlie: i want to smash my face against the lore.

used to be a circle of standing stones, but most of em fell over or got overgrown. inside of the circle has been cleared, although v roughly-- ground's torn up statue is of fjolnir! warrior holding up a spear and shield. AH, THERE ARE CORPSES, a human got REAL fucked up here. one of the corpses is straight up impaled on fjolnir's spear. n ... not pog.

i am trying so, so hard to pay attention. but i also kinda wanna take a nap.

charlie: [stares at statue] [rolls a 4] i wonder if he had a dick.

okay so something rolled in, tore up the overgrowth inside the circle, and murdered a couple dudes. and was also super tall and human-adjacent. hrm.

oh my god why are we rolling so shit today. time to stealth away and hope we dont get casually dismembered

k: jorb's hair is so long... leo: K, PLEASE,

time for a break! i am very tired but im gonan see if i can push through a little further. nyx is petting his cat why do orangatangs look like that

first watch is thorne and sieron! have they even, like, talked thorne unhabby ): thorne's worried we were tresspassing when checking out the statue, meanwhile im thinking about that one time when sieron got bit by a groundhog

(oh my god this is from late 2018)

leomund's tiny hut, aka the anti-sea bear circle we are getting SO much mileage out of the tiny hut. SILJE HUMS A SONG WITH KALI cute........... FINALLY I HAVE ROLLED ABOVE A 14 wait no i rolled a 16 twice. anyway we are not dead

nearly at camp vengenace! boy howdy i hope camp vengeance didnt get burned down. AH FUCK TAURE IS UNCONSCIOUS SO WE CANT CAST FOR DETECT POISON kaepora nearly made us all shit ourselves but its okay he just saw some bison and thought it was cool Michael Is Consulting Several Tables

WHY DOES JORB'S CAMERA ZOOM LIKE THAT why am i hungry. i have so many questions

HEY, TALL GUY [smacks sieron]

camp vengeance looks better! like, nobody's Obviously Sick anymore, the medical tents arent overfilled, we did it! we saved the dayyyyyy time to report to ryder! taure's getting dropped off at the medical tent

man remember when charlie didnt wear pants

oh man, with taure unconscious charlie is now taking point with social interaction. wild. jk im making jorb do it bc im tired HAHA NAT 20 PERSUASION BC OF ME HELPIN SIERON man ryder is such a cock. he was totally ready to keep throwing troops at heaven's brazier to die until we managed to persuade him out of it. jorb: did we tell ryder about the vision? michael: you kinda just took a look at him and went STINKY BOY!

okay yeah anything that dies on arvus will just pop back up as undead. man, arvus sucks.

ryder: alright, dismissed. charlie: seeya, soldier boy! :D hahahahaha im gonna eat his knees.

SILJE NEEDS ENRICHMENT IN HIS ENCLOSURE

charlie: ive decided he sucks. silje: we've already arrived to that, you're late!

LMAO WE WALKED IN ON INGRID AND HER CRUSH they fuckin. nice. you go, you funky lesbian

jorb: we've got the tiny hut, we could go anywhere leo: we could go to SPACE! nyx: we could not go to space. leo: WITH A TINY HUT STAIRCASE, WE CAN,

we are 320 miles away from the spaceship that exists on arvus. nice.

michael: justin sees you-- roll a strength saving throw. leo: i cant wait to die! [rolls a 3] I AM CRUSHED BY MY DOG michael: he rolled a nat20.

BOSS ENCOUNTER: CHARLIE'S DOG (the small circle next to him is one of the medical tents.)

THORNE IS PACT OF THE GUN solar: PARRY THIS, YOU FUCKING CASUAL

sieron, to ingrid: seems like youve been doing well charlie: i punch sieron. sieron: sieron: the camp, of course.

man we have no idea if the heart of arvus is actually related to the prophecy or not. theres a Lot of stuff lining up, but not enough, and its hard to say how much of it couldve been literal?

solar & michael: [discussing exposition] me: [cracking up bc penn sent me a funny dsmp joke]

prophecies are weird.

charlie is just s she is just sitting here SILJE PLAYED CARDS REALLY GOOD AT ME nyx rolled a nat20 and took all my money

oh cool we can talk to yrel telepathically! time to hoist yrel. THIS IS SO SCUFFED thorne mentioned yrel and now we're trying to explain to ingrid that we have a magic talking snake charlie: I WANT TO GO HOME. thorne: we cant go, we have a GOD-KING to kill! "i think theyre insane, theyre talking to a snake" "ingrid, druids exist" "oh. im gonna go back to getting railed by my 7 foot tall girlfriend"

[charlemange1]

Ask of the Lesser (Frankenstein/Lovecraft Works): 6 Gods and Monsters

Darkness enveloped my little cell as I waited for my last sunrise. A cruel ending it was, to be hung in the square and have the name Frankenstein permanently branded with unhallowed deeds. The shadow of Victor’s legacy would trap me till the end, and I had only myself to blame. My selfish desires to revive my family had blinded me to Curwen’s dark work. A mistake I realized had likely cost many lives, judging from the number of crates I had delivered over the past few months. Human blood! Oh, if only I had known! How could I hate Victor when in my own obsession I had enabled such atrocities? What right had I to judge him when I was enslaved to the same master?

My head thumped against the wall in defeat. Victor. My mind drifted back to our final conversation in the villa, when we were all that remained of our family and a trembling husk was all that remained of him.

“That daemon has struck down everyone but you, and he is coming, Ernest! I have failed to stop him, and he shall claim you too, if you stand idle!”

“Calm yourself, Victor. You are unwell,” I soothed, watching him pace the floor. “Elizabeth’s death has shaken you.”

“Murder. She was murdered by him, Ernest! You must believe me!” Victor clutched my shoulders with boney fingers. He shoved his journal against my chest, and I saw his nails were gnawed to bloodied stubs. “Here is my journal, dated years ago! Could madness be so precise? So detail-oriented?”

Grief had settled into every line of his exhausted face. His manic eyes pleaded with me through the strands of unkempt hair that floated rather than fell around his head. I ignored the lice crawling in the knotted curls and gently shut the journal.

“Victor, you know I stumble with such fancy words. These are scribbles to me.” I patted his trembling hand. “How about we get some sleep, huh? The servants are pouring some Laudanum to calm your nerves.”

“I do not need calm, we must act,” Victor’s voice rose to the rafters in desperation. My hand discreetly waved forward the servants positioned in the hall. “I have wrought terrible mayhem upon our house, but I will not let my curse consume you too! You are all I have left, Ernest. I beg of you to believe me! Not these mad claims, but me. As my brother, you must heed this threat!”

“Yes, yes, Victor,” I smiled gently and fought back tears. Elizabeth and Papas’ deaths had broken him. My poor, hysteric brother! He had always been the strong one. The one with all the talent pushing my miserable frame to be better. Where had that trailblazer gone? My brother may have been clutching me, but he had abandoned me in spirit. The Victor I had known was gone. The servants filed in to take his imposter away.

“Do not let them do this, Ernest,” Victor fought the hands that restrained him, though he had lost the strength to fight long ago. “Please, believe me! I cannot lose you too!”

“You are mad with grief, Victor,” I soothed. “Rest will restore you.”

You are the strong one! How can you fall apart and leave me alone?

Victor opened his mouth, but my mind was set. Something like defeat settled in his eyes. Victor’s body went limp as the servants’ drug him to his room. His eyes never left me, two watery pits silently pleading to be heard.

Wanting to save a thick-skulled wretch like me.

My hands pressed against my eyes and I wept for words left unspoken. He had cared! Victor had done wrong by turning from God, but I had turned my back on my own brother who so desperately wanted to keep me safe.

Was that why his creature had spared me? Not because I was to insignificant for my death to hurt Victor, but because me living and reducing his suffering to the rambles of a madman was the ultimate punishment? Victor could find strength in those murdered by destroying his monster and avenging them. The misery I had to live with in their absence would not end by Victor putting a bullet through the creature’s heart. My murdered family’s thoughts were at peace, but my ongoing misery was Victor’s shame to carry to the grave knowing he was responsible. His fond letter crinkled in my pocket, and I knew I could not hate him. I knew then too, that the unhallowed work that had withered his spirit and decimated our family could not continue, no matter the intent.  

The prison door swung open and a streak of light cut back the shadows. I covered my eyes from the haggard silhouette outlined against the intense brightness.

“Ernest, what in heavens name are you doing here?”

“Walton?” Blinking rapidly, I focused on the captain’s battered frame. “Have you come to take me to the gallows?”

Silence settled between us.

“I want to know why?”

“Why an invalid like me would play with a fire that scorched my brother?” I laughed bitterly. “I thought I could resurrect my family and we could be happy again, but not if their life comes from the death of others. I have seen death, Walton, and felt the void created in its wake. I would never subject anyone to that grief, even if it meant restoring my only source of happiness. I know what such work did to Victor and saw how it tore our family apart. I was a fool to think any good could come of its continuation.” I turned from the captain. “So write your sequel. Tell the world what a fool I am!”

“You are a fool,” Walton nodded. He bent beside me and rested his hand across mine. “But you are not a bad man. You clearly did not know the contents of your wicked cargo. It seems your destiny to be caught up in the madness of others, a lonely ship tossed about in a storm it could never hope to understand. You know better now, though.” Walton’s voice cracked. “Tell me who tricked you? What are they planning with Victor’s work?”

My repressed misgivings of Curwen resonated with Walton’s trembling voice. I had been too focused on my family to consider how Curwen would utilize the spark of life after they were brought back. What had he meant about merging raised souls with new flesh to be unstoppable?

“I do not know the details, but if the end justifies the mean, and that mean is human blood, it is a wicked thing,” I frowned. “Is this an interrogation?”

“A rescue,” Walton corrected, stepping aside to give me a clear path to the door. Seeing the confusion on my face, he pulled out an empty sack and smiled. “Your father was a magistrate. You should know how a few gold coins can sway a verdict. Yet not everyone has deep pockets, if you want the night on our side, we must quit this place and put an end to whatever is brewing on the edges of Ingolstadt.”

Gripping the wall, I pulled myself to a standing position, longing for my cane left by the river. “I will do whatever I can to stop Mr. Curwen from following in my brother’s steps.”

“We will stop,” Walton placed a hand on my shoulder.

“Captain, this is my sin to mend,” I said. “You must not jeopardize your life to let mine be at peace.”

“I fear all life will be in jeopardy if I stand idle,” Walton frowned. “I am more than just the historian of great men’s exploits, and you are not your brother. You do not have to do this alone.”

A roach darted in and out of the shaft of floor light. What chance had I of talking down Curwen alone? Walton knew the thrill of discovery, he could speak a language to Curwen that I had never known and Victor knew all too well. And, despite the pain Walton’s biography had caused me, I realized that Victor’s legacy overshadowed us both, but while I was tied to Victor by blood, Walton merely happened upon him by chance and was unknowingly thrust into this world of gods and monsters. I was shunned for the deeds of my brother, but as I looked at the frail captain, I knew he had suffered too. My hostility was unwarranted, and I extended my hand to relate as much to Walton.

“Shall we destroy that feind, then?” Walton asked, eagerly returning the handshake.

I thought of the morning after the servants had drug Victor away. I had stood in his empty room torn apart by a hasty deserter rushing to an Arctic death.

I shook my head beside Walton. I had ignored Victor for the last time.

“Walton, my brother held this man to the highest regard. I will not underplay the depravity of Mr. Curwen’s work, but perhaps his delusions of grandeur have incapacitated his ability to reason, a crime which I cannot judge, nor you, Arctic explorer. When we enter the university, let me speak with him before any rash action is taken.”

“And if speech fails?”

“You know what Mr. Curwen will do, and that cannot be.”

Walton looked reluctant, but having nearly died in his own quest for glory, he could not protest.

Outside, we were met by a horrid wind that sent overturned barrels bouncing across the streets. Walton found me a broom to replace my cane as we hurried past window shutters slamming open and shut. It seemed nature itself was sick of this wicked business.

“Does this Curwen character work with human flesh?” Walton shouted above the wind as we cleared the courtyard.

“Initially, though his process for reanimation differs greatly from Victors. He boils the body down to salt and relies on black magic for completion.”

Walton nodded with a frown. “By any chance, did you ever inspect Victor’s casket after I delivered him to you?”

“There was no reason to after I saw his face,” I said, confused by this question. A chorus of barks and howls rose up throughout the city. Were they following us?

“I see,” Walton said, eyes darting around in search of bloodhounds. “Given your former disbelief of Victor’s accomplishment, I refrained from sharing certain requests he relayed to me. Requests I felt best to omit from my biography.”

“Do tell?” I said as a man leaned out his window to wrangle the collar of his howling dog in a vain attempt to silence it.

“Victor said he did not wish to be brought back and asked for me to dismember and discard him after death,” Walton admitted, side stepping a bouncing barrel. “An odd request, considering he alone knew the secret of reanimation. Or so I thought.”

“Right,” I said absently. The unnamable smell from Curwen’s lab hung heavy in the air. “Did you do it?”

“I could only bring myself to throw his left hand overboard, I am no butcherer!” Walton shivered from more than the wind. “I did not know if that means anything to you now?”

“It appears straightforward enough,” I breathed as the gates of Ingolstadt University came into view. “Victor cannot be revived.”

[youngandhungryent]

Rock & Roll Icon Little Richard Laid To Rest In Huntsville, Alabama

Source: Bill Tompkins / Getty

The legendary and influential Little Richard passed away earlier this month after battling a long illness at the age of 87. The Rock and Roll icon was laid to rest in Huntsville, Ala., the town where he attended college after a brief retirement near the height of his fame in the 1950s.

As TMZ reports, the artist born Richard Penniman was laid to rest in Huntsville at the Oakwood Memorial Gardens Cemetry, right across from Oakwood College, a Seventh-Day Adventist HBCU where Little Richard studied theology after leaving music behind for a spell.

TMZ adds:

The trailblazing rock ‘n’ roll star’s niece, opera singer Brandie Sutton, sang during his service. Dr. Carlton P. Byrd delivered a eulogy, and Richard’s family spokesman David Person gave some closing remarks before he was laid to rest.

As we reported … Little Richard died earlier this month at his Tennessee home, surrounded by his brother, sister and son. His bass guitarist, Charles Glenn, told us Richard had been sick for a couple months before he passed.

The singer, of course, is known for his enormous influence over the rock ‘n’ roll genre, with insanely popular hits like “Tutti-Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally.” The Beatles have credited him as an inspiration, and Richard paved the way for acts like James Brown, The Rolling Stones and even Michael Jackson further down the road.

Little Richard was 87 at the time of his passing.

—

Photo: Getty

source https://hiphopwired.com/872304/little-richard-funeral-huntsville/

[cds-arts]

Emily Warren Roebling  //  trailblazers

Emily Warren Roebling’s life was supposed to be an uneventful one. The well-bred daughter of an upper-class New York couple, a proper Victorian girl like herself wasn’t expected to amount to much.  A husband, four or five kids, and a quiet life spent in domesticity.  Well, life has a way of being unpredictable. Roebling’s started unremarkably. She had a normal childhood (as normal as you can have with eleven siblings).  She was educated, but that wouldn’t have been unheard of for an upper-class girl.  In 1865 she married her husband, Washington Roebling, the son of the man who had designed the Brooklyn Bridge.  Washington had spent his life training under his father.  He knew the ins and outs of this feat of engineering and was his father’s right hand in its construction.  Just a few short years into the project, the couple’s life was upended.  Washington’s father was struck with tetanus and died only partway into the bridge’s construction.  Washington, as his father’s successor, took over the project.  He threw himself so deeply into its construction that he developed such a terrible case of caisson disease that he was essentially left as an invalid for the rest of his life.  With just a few short years of construction under his belt, Washington Roebling left one of the world’s greatest feats of engineering completely unfinished.  Till now, Emily had spent most of her life as the typical Victorian housewife.  But seeing her husband’s legacy begin to slip away, she jumped into action.  In the early days of her husband’s sickness, Roebling would visit him in his sickbed and update him on the bridge’s progress.  As he dictated his instructions for her to bring back to his workers, she began to learn.  Over time, she picked up enough knowledge that she essentially became Chief Engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge project.  While her husband was Chief Engineer in name only, Roebling herself took up all of his duties.  She oversaw the day-to-day construction of the bridge.  She dealt with contractors and politicians, gave orders to workers, and made modifications to the plans on the fly.  She became Washington’s partner and had an equal hand in the continued planning of the project.  Four the next fourteen years, Emily Roebling was for all intents and purposes the true Chief Engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge.  Even though most of the physical work she did herself, she continued to fiercely guard her husband’s legacy.  Emily had put so much of her own work into the project that her husband was almost stripped of the title of Chief Engineer.  She made impassioned speeches to both engineers and politicians alike to defend the work he had accomplished, even in his current state of illness.  In 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was finally completed and Emily Roebling was given the honor of being the first to cross it.  Surprisingly, she was given full credit at the time for her work.  At the opening ceremony, Abram Stevens Hewitt declared the bridge “an everlasting monument to the sacrificing devotion of a woman and of her capacity for that higher education from which she has been too long disbarred.”

[ace-trainer-risu]

Why do you hate bosie douglas?

Oh man bout to lay down some Oscar Wilde Discourse!

Just kidding. Sort of?

Anyway, the short answer would be that I really, really love Oscar Wilde. He’s definitely one of my favorite authors/artists/historical figures ever. He was an amazing and incredibly influential figure who lived a tragic life and died way too young, and Bosie (aka Lord Alfred Douglas, for those unfamiliar with his nickname) was not the only person responsible for the tragedy of Oscar’s life, but he undeniably played a role in it. And I just, I really can’t forgive him for that.

The long answer is…

Well, okay, so at my university, English majors had to take a senior thesis class, which was basically just a seminar where you studied one topic really in depth. I took mine on Oscar Wilde, and it was an amazing class, so I really know a lot about him and have read a lot of his writings. 

I never know what is and isn’t common knowledge about Wilde since I know a lot about him, but for those who don’t really know him, the basic story is that Wilde was a popular and scandalous Victorian author and playwright. He popularized various fashionable movements like aestheticism and dandyism. It was kind of an open secret that he was carrying out affairs with men. He had an affair with a younger man named Lord Alfred Douglas, AKA Bosie, who was a wealthy aristocrat from the Queensbury family. In the late 1890s, at the height of Wilde’s playwriting popularity, Wilde was embroiled in a series of trials that ultimately led to him being jailed for four years hard labor for gross indecency (essentially for having sex with men). Upon getting out, Wilde emigrated to France, where he died shortly after at the age of 46. 

This is not the point of this post, but I highly recommend reading him. The Picture of Dorian Gray is obviously his most famous work, and it’s really beautiful and weird and fucked up and super gay. The Importance of Being Earnest is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read, and it’s also so influential of a work that it’s really hard to see how influential it is, because of course lots of things are like Earnest, except they’re like that because of Earnest. But what I would really recommend to first time Wilde readers is “The Happy Prince” which is a beautiful and heartbreaking little fairy tale that he wrote. He was a hugely influential author on modernism, post modernism, comedy, playwriting, etc. 

This is tumblr so I feel strangely compelled to defend my love for him, so, yes, Oscar Wilde is #problematic fave. He practically invented being a problematic fave. I can almost guarantee that young Victorian ladies were fanning themselves and sighing over how much they loved his plays but it was too bad he was so scandalous and their mama wouldn’t let them go see him lecture. I am Aware. I could cheerfully list his myriad sins. But for pretty much all of them, I can think of mitigating factors. I will settle for saying that it’s essentially unfair for a modern, Western person to judge the sexual lives of queer* people in the past. They lived in a completely different culture from us, and many of them were simply doing the best they could under difficult, painful circumstances. It’s important to remember that legal, socially accepted same sex relationships are a very recent invention in the west. If Oscar Wilde cheated on his wife and turned to sex workers, well, what the hell else was he going to do? It’s probably worthwhile to note that by all accounts, he always treated his wife and sex workers very decently and generously. 

(*Queer is an anachronistic term. I am aware. However, it’s a little tedious to write out “same sex attracted people” every time. In my opinion, queer is the modern term that most closely matches the way that Oscar Wilde wrote about sexuality. So that’s what I’m going to use.) 

Despite his flaws, Wilde also did a lot of amazing stuff. He was, by most accounts, incredibly generous and kind. He was funny and witty. He was good to his children. My friends, we probably wouldn’t look at pretty pictures and write #aesthetic if it were not for Oscar Wilde. He modernized play writing. He was a socialist!!! He was a feminist!! He hated corsets!! He wrote out like a fifty page essay that was basically his headcanons about how Shakespeare was bi and hooking up with his one of his actors who was named Willie Hughes. He wrote kinda bad poetry (which I personally like). He lowkey had a feud with Henry James. He was a Fashion Icon who loved having his photo taken. If you or someone you love has ever worn a tux you can thank Wilde for helping popularize them. And, in my opinion most importantly, he was constantly thinking and writing (subtextually) about how to revolutionize cultural thought about sexuality and male identity. To call Oscar Wilde “gay” or “homosexual” is really a simplification of how he thought about sexuality. In fact, he explicitly objected to being called homosexual (altho it’s important to remember that was a much more stigmatizing term at the time than it is now!). Oscar Wilde, instead, was interested in a forming a world in which, basically, everyone could be themselves and could express themselves freely through art and sex. He wanted people to be able to freely love each other without being slapped with some fixed, restrictive label. Like, you guys, do u ever cry b/c Oscar Wilde just wanted the world to be beautiful and queer and free and for everyone to be gay and happy and make art BECAUSE I DO 

And, like, okay. Bosie had a hard life too. I get that! His father has gotta be on the list of like Top Ten Biggest Assholes In History. As much as I dislike Bosie, multiply that by like ten hundred and that’s how I feel about fuckboy Marquis of Queenbury. I know I made that post about traveling back in time to punch Bosie; well, the only reason I don’t wanna punch his dad is b/c his dad like literally invented (a form of) boxing and I’m very small. I am Positive I could take Bosie in a fight, and I am positive his black hole of a father could take me. Also it was probably not easy to be a trailblazing twink in the 1890s (altho like John Gray managed it without being a literal piece of shit so……..). To be serious, Bosie clearly had a lot of rough stuff in his life. But, you know, so do lots of people. And I know I was just saying it’s hard to judge historical figures for their sex lives, but I’m judging Bosie for his behavior, not his sex. So, with all the context out of the way, here’s why I hate Bosie:

a) His poetry is like the soppiest shit ever. 

b) He was extremely emotionally manipulative and possibly abusive toward Oscar Wilde. I know it seems kind of weird, because our cultural mindset for abusive relationship is big beefy guy beating his small, helpless wife. And Bosie and Oscar are both men, and Oscar was older and physically larger (did you know that he was like six foot? I hadn’t known that.). But there’s a lot of fucked up stories about their relationship. They were very on again off again, with Oscar frequently being the one to end things, and there are reports of Bosie going to extreme ends to get them back together, including threatening to kill himself. One story, which is hilarious with the distance of time but would have surely been dreadful when it happened, is that one time when they broke up, Bosie sent Oscar a nine. page. telegraph. NINE PAGES! For those of you who don’t know, telegraphs back then charged by the word. That’s like sending your boyfriend nine pages worth of texts, except you send each word individually and you know for a fact he’s out of data for the month. Also some poor individual had to type it all out for you. And yes, Wilde was the one to pay, because you could send telegraphs collect. And this despite the fact that Bosie was very well off, whereas Wilde, who was rather extravagant in his pursuit of dat aesthetic lifestyle, was usually tight on money. There’s also a rather horrible story about a time where Bosie fell ill and Wilde tenderly nursed him back to health, and then when Bosie recovered and Wilde caught his illness and fell sick himself, Bosie verbally abused him and left him alone to suffer. What I’m saying is, it was not a healthy relationship and Bosie did not treat Wilde well.

c) It’s basically inarguable that Bosie played a significant role in Wilde’s trial. Again, I’m not saying it’s just his fault, because it wasn’t. But things would have gone down massively differently without Bosie…or they might not have gone down at all. (Do u ever cry b/c maybe Wilde didn’t have to die at 46 and maybe if he hadn’t queer rights would be years, decades ahead of where they are now I mean I’m not saying definitely, I’m just saying m a y b e???)Queensbury family dynamics were a highly complex thing. It’s probably significant that somewhat before the trial, Bosie’s older brother died under controversial circumstances. The official story was it was a hunting accident, but the gossip of the day was that he killed himself because he was having an affair with another man. This was a serious blow to Bosie’s father, so when his youngest son, with whom he’d always had a contentious relationship, started publicly cavorting with a man rumored to be up to some real scandalous shit, the Marquis of Queensbury was not happy. At one point he even physically threatened Wilde’s life. But Wilde, at least at first, genuinely tried to calm things down. He repeatedly advised Bosie to make up with his father; instead, Bosie continued to provoke him. Eventually, Queensbury left a note for Wilde at a club accusing him of being a sodomite (basically the Victorian equivalent of calling someone the f-slur). And this is where things get really messed up. All of Wilde’s friends advised him to just leave things alone, not make things messy. Bosie, in contrast, advised Wilde to sue his father for libel. So, like, quick note about the legal ramifications of this: basically, libel is only illegal if it’s not true. Thus, all Queensbury’s lawyers had to do was prove that Wilde was having sex with men, which they were able to do, because, you know, he was totally having sex with men. I mean, it was wildly foolish of Wilde to sue for libel when he knew it was not libel! Why would Bosie push him into that?And that wasn’t the end of it, because the Labouchere Amendment made it illegal for two men to have sex, even in the privacy of their own homes. So, because Queensbury’s lawyers could prove that Wilde was engaging in gross indecency, he was able to be charged. The libel trial ruined Wilde’s social standing; the second trial ruined him legally. Oh, and the costs of the trial also bankrupted him! Things then get slightly more horrible, because, for a person of Wilde’s fame and status, the police basically gave you a warning period. There was a time frame in which he could have fled the country, and extradition treaties were not really a thing then, so although he would have been ruined and unable to return to England, he wouldn’t have been arrested. All of his friends advised him to flee, but he didn’t. And no one really knows why, although if you ask me, it’s because a) he was basically an extremely self destructive person, and b) I think it’s probably unimaginably heart breaking to have your entire society turn on you and paint you as a monster and pervert, and maybe at a certain point you lose the will to fight, and c) Oscar Wilde wanted everything to be beautiful and like art, like a story, and I wonder if he didn’t feel that this was how the story of his life was “supposed” to go. But that’s really just my theory.And so Oscar Wilde was sent to jail for 4 years hard labor, and by all accounts his heart and his health were broken. He lived in France for a few years, but he never wrote anything again other than the Ballad of Reading Gaol (“Each man kills the thing he loves”… I’m looking at YOU Bosie), and then he died, still quite young, and not of syphilis despite what certain supposedly reputable biographies try and tell you.And none of that had to happen. None of that would have happened if it weren’t for Bosie. He shouldn’t have pushed his father to attack Oscar, and he certainly shouldn’t have pushed Oscar into the libel trial. Oscar Wilde himself wrote that he felt as if Bosie threw him and his father at each other, as if he was trying to destroy both of them. And then after the trial, he basically abandoned Wilde. I believe he only visited him in jail once. Why would you do that? Why would you try and destroy the person you supposedly love, the person that loves you? I just can’t understand or forgive that. I know I joke around a lot in this post but what happened to Wilde honestly makes me so sad. It breaks my heart. He was a beautiful person who wanted to make the world beautiful and full of love and art, and the person he loved tried to destroy him. And really, the inexcusable straw for me is that later in life Bosie wrote some piece of shit biography in which he denied that he and Wilde were ever lovers and painted Wilde as some sort of monster and pervert. No one fucking asked you, Bosie. 

So yes, that’s why I fucking hate Bosie, and that’s my Oscar Wilde Discourse™. 

[talabib]

Leadership Journey: Abraham Lincoln

Have you seen that movie starring Daniel Day Lewis as Martin Van Buren? What about the one with Henry Fonda as a young Rutherford B. Hayes? Of course you haven’t!

When it comes to American presidents worthy of screen time, no one springs to mind quicker than Abraham Lincoln. Even today, over 150 years after his death, Lincoln continues to dominate American popular culture. But what is it that makes his legacy so strong?

This post takes a deeper look at Lincoln’s life and career. It shows how his political genius, ability to inspire and strength of vision changed the United States forever.

Abraham Lincoln’s childhood made him a uniquely ambitious man.

You might be familiar with the story of Abraham Lincoln being born in a log cabin and learning to read by candlelight. But his early years were filled with many more significant hardships.

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, and, as soon as he was able, he was put to work on the farm by his father, Thomas Lincoln. Young Abraham would help his father chop down and split trees, dig wells and plow fields.

His father was illiterate and often at odds with Abraham’s desire to educate himself. Thomas was even known to burn Abraham’s books so as to keep young Abraham from being distracted from getting his work done. If there was one admirable trait Thomas passed on to Abraham, it was his love of storytelling and keeping friends entertained with a good anecdote.

While he didn’t get along with his father, Abraham had a loving relationship with his mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln. Though little is known about Nancy Hanks, she was by all accounts a smart, strong-willed woman who helped teach Abraham to read and write.

Sadly, tragedy first struck the Lincoln family when Abraham was nine years old and his mother died of “milk sickness,” a poisoning contracted from contaminated dairy. The death further strained the relationship between Abraham and his father.

More tragedy followed when, less than ten years later, Abraham’s sister, Sarah, died during childbirth. And to make matters worse, his first love, Ann Rutledge, died in 1835, likely of typhoid fever.

But these hardships didn’t break young Lincoln’s spirit. Instead, they toughened his resolve and strengthened his ambitions.

His stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, helped nurture his self-confidence and encouraged his education despite his father’s attitude. To his stepmother and all of Lincoln’s friends, it was clear that he had a spark of greatness that transcended the poverty and misfortune of his surroundings.

And so, in April of 1837, Lincoln moved to Springfield, Illinois, to start a career in law.

The Republican Party came together as the result of a turbulent political landscape.

During his law career, Lincoln was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1834. The following decades (1840s and 1850s) turned out to be combative ones for the United States. But many politicians were making a name for themselves by debating the issues.

The most pressing political issue was slavery. The United States continued to expand as western territories were established. Consequently, there was a strong national divide between the northern “free states” and southern “slave states” as to whether new territories such as California or New Mexico should allow slavery.

Another big point of contention was the controversial Fugitive Slave Law, which required escaped slaves to be sent back to their masters, even if they sought refuge in a free state.

In an effort to defuse increasing tensions, The Compromise of 1850 was passed, keeping slavery out of California but strengthening the Fugitive Slave Law. Any palliative effect the compromise had was only temporary, as the debates started up again in 1854 in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed these territories to decide for themselves whether slavery should be allowed. This decision effectively repealed a previous statute that stated slavery would not be allowed north of the state of Missouri.

This turn of events lit a fire under Abraham Lincoln’s political career and he became more active in his campaign against the spread of slavery.

The reignited debates ended up being the reason for the creation of the Republican Party in 1854. The prominent political parties at the time, the Whigs and Democrats, were so divided on the issue that the anti-slavery advocates decided to band together as Republicans.

Ohio statesman Salmon Chase was among the party’s high-profile members. He made headlines as one of the most outspoken anti-slavery advocates and became the nation’s first Republican governor.

After Lincoln’s Whig Party split apart, he joined the Republicans along with New York Senator William Henry Seward and prominent St. Louis statesman Edward Bates.

As leaders of the Republican Party, these men became rival candidates leading up to the 1860 presidential election.

To call Lincoln an underdog would have been an understatement.

It may come as a surprise, but Lincoln wasn’t initially the top choice when it came to picking a Republican nominee for the election of 1860. Lincoln had had a comparatively modest and brief career in politics compared to the other candidates.

First, there was William Henry Seward, who was considered an expert politician. His exuberant personality made him well suited to his career as a lawyer. His enthralling senate speeches – considered the “rallying cries” for the Republican movement – made headlines around the country. It also didn’t hurt that his long-time advisor was Thurlow Tweed, the prototypical political boss and campaign manager.

Then there was Salmon Chase, a trailblazer for the anti-slavery cause. Chase had made a name for himself in many high-profile cases by defending escaped slaves and fighting against the Fugitive Slave Law. Though he would lose these cases, the language he used to claim that the law was unconstitutional would serve as a part of the Republican Party’s foundation.

Finally, Edward Bates was one of the most esteemed candidates up for nomination. At 66 years of age, Bates certainly had seniority over the other candidates. By 1860, he’d already had a long and storied law career in St. Louis and was a veteran of the War of 1812. On top of that, he was one of the men who drafted the state constitution of Missouri and was considered a national advocate for mending the division between North and South.

Meanwhile, all Lincoln had to offer was a humble law career and two failed bids at the Illinois state senate in 1854 and 1858. So it’s no surprise that he wasn’t initially a front-runner for the Republican nomination.

Lincoln’s nomination at the Republican Convention was a big surprise.

In fact, none of Lincoln’s rivals for the nomination considered him a threat. But, while the others were resting on their laurels, Lincoln was out building up momentum.

In 1858, Lincoln had his first taste of national exposure in the now legendary Lincoln-Douglas debates. Though he ended up losing the senate race to Douglas, he did win the popular vote. Plus, the speeches he gave in those debates would go on to be published and studied in debate classes for years to come.

Prior to the Republican Convention in 1860, Lincoln campaigned all over the north, including the important New England states, giving captivating and eloquent speeches that perfectly laid out the Republican agenda.

Lincoln remained clear and consistent with his anti-slavery stance and showed a willingness to work with the south and border states to resolve the issue. Perhaps most importantly, throughout his career he made friends, not enemies, wherever he went.

Seward and Chase, on the other hand, were overly confident and did not feel the need to campaign.

Seward decided to go on a tour of Europe in 1859 rather than campaign for votes. Chase could have capitalized on his absence, but he felt that he deserved the nomination for the work he’d already done.

Both of these candidates had always been ambitious in their careers and this meant that they had stepped on more than a few toes on their way up the political ladder. In other words, both candidates had enemies in prominent positions within the Republican Party.

For Bates, it may have been a crucial last-minute error that took away his chances. Unlike Lincoln, Bates was inconsistent when asked to clarify his stance on slavery. Bates responded by being dismissive of the subject, preferring to talk about more unifying issues like the economy. Bates felt the issue of slavery was causing too much agitation and even suggested that politicians were engaging with it for their own political benefit.

There’s little doubt the Republican party wasn’t happy with his statement. All this led to Lincoln surprising his rivals and winning the nomination at the convention.

Despite putting together a balanced cabinet, President Lincoln underestimated the feelings of the South.

Lincoln’s victory in the 1860 presidential election was the greatest testimony to his intelligence as a politician to date. And when the time came to pick the members of his presidential cabinet, Lincoln kept thinking responsibly.

When selecting the department heads of his administration, his strategy was clear: to pick the men who were most qualified for the job, regardless of whether they had been Democrats or Whigs. This meant turning to his rivals: Chase, Seward and Bates.

Lincoln gave Seward the prominent position of Secretary of State, made the esteemed Edward Bates his Attorney General and named Salmon Chase the head of the Treasury Department.

For the other positions, he continued to select a healthy mix of important politicians. To represent the influential state of Pennsylvania, he appointed former Democrat Simon Cameron as Secretary of War and Kentucky-born Montgomery Blair as Postmaster General. The Blair family had been a powerful force in the Democratic party.

With these surprising choices, Lincoln created a team of rivals. Rather than taking the common path of choosing close friends and allies who would blindly support him in his opinions, Lincoln chose a group of smart and ambitious people who could voice their diverse perspectives on issues to help him make the best choices.

Lincoln believed this mix of people could help him reunite the North and South, but he didn’t realize how dire the situation would quickly become.

Immediately following Lincoln’s election, the Great Secession Winter began. South Carolina voted to secede from the Union, citing the election of a “Black Republican” as the tipping point. Further exacerbating Southern grievances were political efforts to prevent slavery from spreading to new territories and attempts to nullify the Fugitive Slave Law. This move was quickly followed by Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Texas.

Lincoln’s challenges came quickly with the onset of the Civil War.

Lincoln’s presidential inauguration was on March 4, 1861. Relations between the North and South were already so bad that newspapers were calling Lincoln “the first president of the Northern Confederacy.” It wasn’t the best way to start, but Lincoln was up for whatever challenge came his way.

And the first one landed on his desk the following day. Lincoln received an urgent letter informing him that South Carolina’s Fort Sumter had been cut off from supplies and was in danger of being taken over by Southern Confederates. Lincoln needed to make a decision: send reinforcements and risk further agitation or surrender the fort, which could be seen as a sign of weakness.

Lincoln didn’t act hastily. He understood the significance of this first conflict and reached out to his cabinet members for their opinions. At first, only Seward opposed reinforcing Fort Sumter, feeling it would be better to take the hit and focus on saving other Southern outposts.

In the end, Lincoln attempted to send reinforcements but the plan went badly when conflicting orders were accidentally sent out. Although the mistake was caught and revised plans were dispatched, Confederate authorities intercepted the revised message and ordered a strike on Sumter before the reinforcements could arrive.

Fort Sumter was surrendered on April 13 and Lincoln took full blame for the outcome of the failed mission. Throughout Lincoln’s presidency, his colleagues marveled at his magnanimous nature, his willingness to accept responsibility, and his ability to forgive others for their faults.

After the fall of Fort Sumter, Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas and Tennessee seceded from the Union and the United States was on the verge of civil war.

The first blood was spilled in Baltimore on April 19, 1861, after a Massachusetts regiment was attacked while passing through. The northern Union was trying to mobilize troops as they quickly realized they were quite unprepared for war. The Union had little in the way of weapons, uniforms or horses.Lincoln urged Chase and Cameron to quickly and efficiently get the Union military into fighting shape.

Lincoln had to keep the North united after dispiriting defeats.

A bloody conflict between the North and South now appeared inevitable. But Lincoln saw an opportunity to unite the hearts and minds of the North by addressing Congress on July 4, 1861. He made it explicit to everyone that this war was not just about slavery but, much more, about fighting to keep the very idea of democracy alive.

Unfortunately for Lincoln, it would take some time before he would find the right general to lead his army and match his spirit.

The First Battle of Bull Run took place in Virginia on July 21, 1861. The battle was so close to Washington D.C. that it could be heard by residents in the city. But Confederate Gen. Thomas J. Jackson proved too much for the Union soldiers, sending them running in retreat and earning himself the nickname “Stonewall Jackson.”

To try and rally the troops, Lincoln put General George McClellan in charge. He did well to organize the army but made the grave mistake of constantly overestimating the size of the Confederate army, often claiming there were twice as many troops as there actually were.

As a result, he refused orders from Lincoln and the Secretary of War to advance his troops, instead stalling and asking for more troops. This led to more defeats outside of Richmond, VA and in the Second Battle of Bull Run where his delay in providing reinforcements caused 10,000 casualties.

Lincoln knew changes had to be made and he looked to his own cabinet first. Cameron proved unreliable, and his Department of War was rife with corruption. Cameron was unaware that associates had been pocketing contract money and wasting public funds. Edwin Stanton, a former Democrat and US Attorney General, who would remain in the position for the next six years, replaced him.

Timing is everything: the Emancipation Proclamation shifted the course of the war.

Lincoln knew it was time to take drastic action. He’d heard that the Confederate armies were using slaves to help their efforts and, for months, the question of whether to enlist black soldiers in the Union army was being debated among his cabinet.

So, in July of 1862, Lincoln presented the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet. As an executive order in a time of war, it would allow Lincoln to circumvent Congress. With one blow, he could strike down the Fugitive Slave Law and declare the 3 to 4 million slaves in the United States free, as well as being eligible to serve in the army.

Seward wisely cautioned Lincoln against announcing the proclamation immediately, pointing out that, in the midst of all their losses, the proposal would come off as a last ditch effort and add to the Union’s low morale. Lincoln took his advice and patiently waited for a Union victory.

Finally, following victory at the Battle of Antietam, the opportunity had arrived. On September 17, 1862, Confederate General Robert E. Lee advanced into Union territory and forced General McClellan to take action. A horrific battle ensued, with over 20,000 casualties. Lee eventually retreated, but McClellan once again stalled, failing to advance on Lee’s troops, allowing them to regroup.

It was McClellan’s last action as Union general. Stanton considered him a traitor and Lincoln finally had him relieved from duty.

But the victory at Antietam was what the Union needed after many crushing defeats. At the beginning of 1863, Lincoln announced that he would enact the Emancipation Proclamation.

More success soon followed and Lincoln found a general he thought could lead the Union to victory. General Ulysses S. Grant was proving to be the Union’s best asset in a western campaign where he laid claim to the Mississippi River and divided the Confederate army. Thanks to his victories, and a hard-fought win at the Battle of Gettysburg, the war was finally shifting in the Union’s favor.

Before Lincoln’s reelection, his cabinet provided an important victory but also disappointment.

Sure enough, at the beginning of 1863, Lincoln remained true to his word and issued the Emancipation Proclamation. A regiment of 180,000 black soldiers formed to help fight a war that was still costing the country many lives.

The ongoing horrors of the war, including the 50,000 casualties at Gettysburg, meant that Lincoln’s re-election was far from a sure thing. But Lincoln and his administration would make an important decision that would help bring the war to a close.

The Battle of Chicamauga was an intense two-day fight that took place in September of 1863. The Confederates lost over 18,000 troops and the Union just over 16,000. But, although the Union lost, they managed to hang on to the important city of Chattanooga.

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton immediately jumped at the chance to take advantage of this. Calling an emergency session with Lincoln and the rest of the cabinet, he proposed a plan to quickly send 20,000 troops to reinforce Chattanooga and launch a new offensive before the Confederacy could regroup. With the cooperation of the railroad department, Stanton ensured that his plan could be carried out within seven days. Lincoln approved, and put General Grant in charge of the new offensive.

Stanton’s plan – which was considered one of the fastest mobilizations in military history up till that point – was a success. Union forces pushed confederate troops out of Tennessee.

Meanwhile, not sensing that Lincoln’s administration was inching the Union towards a victory over the Confederates, the Democrats were launching a misguided campaign against Lincoln. With former General McClellan as their candidate, they proposed making peace with the South at any cost.

But just three days after the Democrats announced this platform, Union General William T. Sherman won a crucial victory for the North, taking the city of Atlanta. This was quickly followed by the navy’s capture of the Confederate port of Mobile Bay. These victories crippled the Democrats’ policy of compromise and secured Lincoln’s re-election.

At the end of the war, Lincoln still exhibited his determination and goodwill.

With his second term underway, Lincoln once again showcased his remarkable goodwill and loyalty to his colleagues.

Lincoln was aware that his ambitious Secretary of Treasury, Salmon Chase, had been campaigning for his own shot at the presidency during the recent elections. But Chase finally overstepped his bounds when he refused to acknowledge mistakes made while appointing friends within his own department.

Lincoln accepted Chase’s resignation, but, as always, he was wise not to ruin what had been a fruitful relationship. Lincoln took the opportunity to appoint Chase as a Chief Justice in the US Supreme Court.

His goodwill to those who would even conspire behind his back never went unnoticed. Seward once proclaimed that, “his magnanimity is almost superhuman.”

Meanwhile, Lincoln could see the end of the war approaching. And he knew that, in order to keep his Emancipation Proclamation alive during peacetime, he would have to push a constitutional amendment through Congress.

On January 6, 1865, he introduced the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery once and for all. Lincoln met individually with important members of Congress to stress the positive effect the amendment would have on ending the war and breaking the spirit of the Confederacy. And with the help of assistants campaigning on the amendment’s behalf, he secured the five Democratic votes needed to push it through Congress.

During these first few months of 1865, representatives from both sides of the war, including Lincoln, were meeting to discuss an end to the war. Unfortunately, neither side was willing to compromise and the final battles of the war continued.

General Sherman succeeded in capturing the cities of Columbia, South Carolina, and Charleston, North Carolina. And, finally, on April 2, 1865, Union troops defeated General Lee in the Battle for Petersburg, leading Confederacy leaders to flee their capital, Richmond, Virginia.

To mark this occasion, Lincoln triumphantly walked the streets of Richmond, Virginia, surrounded by cheering former slaves. The war was drawing to a close, and on April 9, Lee finally surrendered his 28,000 troops to Grant.

Lincoln’s death was also a loss for the south.

Following the surrender of Lee’s troops, Lincoln gave a rousing speech from the White House, expressing his hopefulness to quickly return the southern states to the Union and heal the wounds of the nation.

In the crowd that day was John Wilkes Booth and two of his fellow conspirators, Lewis Powell and George Atzerodt. The three men had hatched a plan to kidnap Lincoln and exchange him for Confederate prisoners of war.

But after hearing Lincoln’s speech, and being so enraged by the idea of former slaves getting citizenship, Booth changed the plan to kill Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward.

The plan was set into motion on April 14, 1865, as Lincoln was watching the play Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater. Booth, a professional actor familiar with the theater, showed his card and gained entrance to Lincoln’s seating box.

Booth fired one shot into the back of Lincoln’s head. Major William Rathbone, also seated in the box, tried to grab him, but Booth took out a knife, slashed Rathbone across the chest and jumped from the box to the stage below.

Meanwhile, Lewis Powell gained entrance to Steward’s house, slashing and stabbing his way through the home, severely injuring many other people before he found the bedridden Seward. Powell stabbed Seward in the face but, luckily, Seward had just undergone surgery due to a near-fatal carriage accident. The metal used to repair his jaw likely saved his life.

George Atzerodt backed out of his part in the plan to kill Andrew Johnson. Kidnapping was one thing, but he was not a murderer.

Abraham Lincoln died the next morning and the entire nation, including the south, lost a valuable friend.

Both Ulysses S. Grant and the southern-born Montgomery Blair heard the news and felt that it was a tragic blow to the reconstruction of the United States.

Blair said, “Those of southern sympathies know they have lost a friend willing and more powerful to protect and serve them than they can now ever hope to find again.”

Part of the political genius of Abraham Lincoln was how he chose the members of his cabinet. He knew he could make the best decisions for the country by surrounding himself with his political rivals, i.e., people who disagreed with him and each other, but who represented the best minds to explore all sides of an issue.

See what made Abraham Lincoln the greatest American President.

Have you seen that movie starring Daniel Day Lewis as Martin Van Buren? What about the one with Henry Fonda as a young Rutherford B. Hayes? Of course you haven’t!

When it comes to American presidents worthy of screen time, no one springs to mind quicker than Abraham Lincoln. Even today, over 150 years after his death, Lincoln continues to dominate American popular culture. But what is it that makes his legacy so strong?

This post takes a deeper look at Lincoln’s life and career. It shows how his political genius, ability to inspire and strength of vision changed the United States forever.

Abraham Lincoln’s childhood made him a uniquely ambitious man.

You might be familiar with the story of Abraham Lincoln being born in a log cabin and learning to read by candlelight. But his early years were filled with many more significant hardships.

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, and, as soon as he was able, he was put to work on the farm by his father, Thomas Lincoln. Young Abraham would help his father chop down and split trees, dig wells and plow fields.

His father was illiterate and often at odds with Abraham’s desire to educate himself. Thomas was even known to burn Abraham’s books so as to keep young Abraham from being distracted from getting his work done. If there was one admirable trait Thomas passed on to Abraham, it was his love of storytelling and keeping friends entertained with a good anecdote.

While he didn’t get along with his father, Abraham had a loving relationship with his mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln. Though little is known about Nancy Hanks, she was by all accounts a smart, strong-willed woman who helped teach Abraham to read and write.

Sadly, tragedy first struck the Lincoln family when Abraham was nine years old and his mother died of “milk sickness,” a poisoning contracted from contaminated dairy. The death further strained the relationship between Abraham and his father.

More tragedy followed when, less than ten years later, Abraham’s sister, Sarah, died during childbirth. And to make matters worse, his first love, Ann Rutledge, died in 1835, likely of typhoid fever.

But these hardships didn’t break young Lincoln’s spirit. Instead, they toughened his resolve and strengthened his ambitions.

His stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, helped nurture his self-confidence and encouraged his education despite his father’s attitude. To his stepmother and all of Lincoln’s friends, it was clear that he had a spark of greatness that transcended the poverty and misfortune of his surroundings.

And so, in April of 1837, Lincoln moved to Springfield, Illinois, to start a career in law.

The Republican Party came together as the result of a turbulent political landscape.

During his law career, Lincoln was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1834. The following decades (1840s and 1850s) turned out to be combative ones for the United States. But many politicians were making a name for themselves by debating the issues.

The most pressing political issue was slavery. The United States continued to expand as western territories were established. Consequently, there was a strong national divide between the northern “free states” and southern “slave states” as to whether new territories such as California or New Mexico should allow slavery.

Another big point of contention was the controversial Fugitive Slave Law, which required escaped slaves to be sent back to their masters, even if they sought refuge in a free state.

In an effort to defuse increasing tensions, The Compromise of 1850 was passed, keeping slavery out of California but strengthening the Fugitive Slave Law. Any palliative effect the compromise had was only temporary, as the debates started up again in 1854 in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed these territories to decide for themselves whether slavery should be allowed. This decision effectively repealed a previous statute that stated slavery would not be allowed north of the state of Missouri.

This turn of events lit a fire under Abraham Lincoln’s political career and he became more active in his campaign against the spread of slavery.

The reignited debates ended up being the reason for the creation of the Republican Party in 1854. The prominent political parties at the time, the Whigs and Democrats, were so divided on the issue that the anti-slavery advocates decided to band together as Republicans.

Ohio statesman Salmon Chase was among the party’s high-profile members. He made headlines as one of the most outspoken anti-slavery advocates and became the nation’s first Republican governor.

After Lincoln’s Whig Party split apart, he joined the Republicans along with New York Senator William Henry Seward and prominent St. Louis statesman Edward Bates.

As leaders of the Republican Party, these men became rival candidates leading up to the 1860 presidential election.

To call Lincoln an underdog would have been an understatement.

It may come as a surprise, but Lincoln wasn’t initially the top choice when it came to picking a Republican nominee for the election of 1860. Lincoln had had a comparatively modest and brief career in politics compared to the other candidates.

First, there was William Henry Seward, who was considered an expert politician. His exuberant personality made him well suited to his career as a lawyer. His enthralling senate speeches – considered the “rallying cries” for the Republican movement – made headlines around the country. It also didn’t hurt that his long-time advisor was Thurlow Tweed, the prototypical political boss and campaign manager.

Then there was Salmon Chase, a trailblazer for the anti-slavery cause. Chase had made a name for himself in many high-profile cases by defending escaped slaves and fighting against the Fugitive Slave Law. Though he would lose these cases, the language he used to claim that the law was unconstitutional would serve as a part of the Republican Party’s foundation.

Finally, Edward Bates was one of the most esteemed candidates up for nomination. At 66 years of age, Bates certainly had seniority over the other candidates. By 1860, he’d already had a long and storied law career in St. Louis and was a veteran of the War of 1812. On top of that, he was one of the men who drafted the state constitution of Missouri and was considered a national advocate for mending the division between North and South.

Meanwhile, all Lincoln had to offer was a humble law career and two failed bids at the Illinois state senate in 1854 and 1858. So it’s no surprise that he wasn’t initially a front-runner for the Republican nomination.

Lincoln’s nomination at the Republican Convention was a big surprise.

In fact, none of Lincoln’s rivals for the nomination considered him a threat. But, while the others were resting on their laurels, Lincoln was out building up momentum.

In 1858, Lincoln had his first taste of national exposure in the now legendary Lincoln-Douglas debates. Though he ended up losing the senate race to Douglas, he did win the popular vote. Plus, the speeches he gave in those debates would go on to be published and studied in debate classes for years to come.

Prior to the Republican Convention in 1860, Lincoln campaigned all over the north, including the important New England states, giving captivating and eloquent speeches that perfectly laid out the Republican agenda.

Lincoln remained clear and consistent with his anti-slavery stance and showed a willingness to work with the south and border states to resolve the issue. Perhaps most importantly, throughout his career he made friends, not enemies, wherever he went.

Seward and Chase, on the other hand, were overly confident and did not feel the need to campaign.

Seward decided to go on a tour of Europe in 1859 rather than campaign for votes. Chase could have capitalized on his absence, but he felt that he deserved the nomination for the work he’d already done.

Both of these candidates had always been ambitious in their careers and this meant that they had stepped on more than a few toes on their way up the political ladder. In other words, both candidates had enemies in prominent positions within the Republican Party.

For Bates, it may have been a crucial last-minute error that took away his chances. Unlike Lincoln, Bates was inconsistent when asked to clarify his stance on slavery. Bates responded by being dismissive of the subject, preferring to talk about more unifying issues like the economy. Bates felt the issue of slavery was causing too much agitation and even suggested that politicians were engaging with it for their own political benefit.

There’s little doubt the Republican party wasn’t happy with his statement. All this led to Lincoln surprising his rivals and winning the nomination at the convention.

Despite putting together a balanced cabinet, President Lincoln underestimated the feelings of the South.

Lincoln’s victory in the 1860 presidential election was the greatest testimony to his intelligence as a politician to date. And when the time came to pick the members of his presidential cabinet, Lincoln kept thinking responsibly.

When selecting the department heads of his administration, his strategy was clear: to pick the men who were most qualified for the job, regardless of whether they had been Democrats or Whigs. This meant turning to his rivals: Chase, Seward and Bates.

Lincoln gave Seward the prominent position of Secretary of State, made the esteemed Edward Bates his Attorney General and named Salmon Chase the head of the Treasury Department.

For the other positions, he continued to select a healthy mix of important politicians. To represent the influential state of Pennsylvania, he appointed former Democrat Simon Cameron as Secretary of War and Kentucky-born Montgomery Blair as Postmaster General. The Blair family had been a powerful force in the Democratic party.

With these surprising choices, Lincoln created a team of rivals. Rather than taking the common path of choosing close friends and allies who would blindly support him in his opinions, Lincoln chose a group of smart and ambitious people who could voice their diverse perspectives on issues to help him make the best choices.

Lincoln believed this mix of people could help him reunite the North and South, but he didn’t realize how dire the situation would quickly become.

Immediately following Lincoln’s election, the Great Secession Winter began. South Carolina voted to secede from the Union, citing the election of a “Black Republican” as the tipping point. Further exacerbating Southern grievances were political efforts to prevent slavery from spreading to new territories and attempts to nullify the Fugitive Slave Law. This move was quickly followed by Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Texas.

Lincoln’s challenges came quickly with the onset of the Civil War.

Lincoln’s presidential inauguration was on March 4, 1861. Relations between the North and South were already so bad that newspapers were calling Lincoln “the first president of the Northern Confederacy.” It wasn’t the best way to start, but Lincoln was up for whatever challenge came his way.

And the first one landed on his desk the following day. Lincoln received an urgent letter informing him that South Carolina’s Fort Sumter had been cut off from supplies and was in danger of being taken over by Southern Confederates. Lincoln needed to make a decision: send reinforcements and risk further agitation or surrender the fort, which could be seen as a sign of weakness.

Lincoln didn’t act hastily. He understood the significance of this first conflict and reached out to his cabinet members for their opinions. At first, only Seward opposed reinforcing Fort Sumter, feeling it would be better to take the hit and focus on saving other Southern outposts.

In the end, Lincoln attempted to send reinforcements but the plan went badly when conflicting orders were accidentally sent out. Although the mistake was caught and revised plans were dispatched, Confederate authorities intercepted the revised message and ordered a strike on Sumter before the reinforcements could arrive.

Fort Sumter was surrendered on April 13 and Lincoln took full blame for the outcome of the failed mission. Throughout Lincoln’s presidency, his colleagues marveled at his magnanimous nature, his willingness to accept responsibility, and his ability to forgive others for their faults.

After the fall of Fort Sumter, Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas and Tennessee seceded from the Union and the United States was on the verge of civil war.

The first blood was spilled in Baltimore on April 19, 1861, after a Massachusetts regiment was attacked while passing through. The northern Union was trying to mobilize troops as they quickly realized they were quite unprepared for war. The Union had little in the way of weapons, uniforms or horses.Lincoln urged Chase and Cameron to quickly and efficiently get the Union military into fighting shape.

Lincoln had to keep the North united after dispiriting defeats.

A bloody conflict between the North and South now appeared inevitable. But Lincoln saw an opportunity to unite the hearts and minds of the North by addressing Congress on July 4, 1861. He made it explicit to everyone that this war was not just about slavery but, much more, about fighting to keep the very idea of democracy alive.

Unfortunately for Lincoln, it would take some time before he would find the right general to lead his army and match his spirit.

The First Battle of Bull Run took place in Virginia on July 21, 1861. The battle was so close to Washington D.C. that it could be heard by residents in the city. But Confederate Gen. Thomas J. Jackson proved too much for the Union soldiers, sending them running in retreat and earning himself the nickname “Stonewall Jackson.”

To try and rally the troops, Lincoln put General George McClellan in charge. He did well to organize the army but made the grave mistake of constantly overestimating the size of the Confederate army, often claiming there were twice as many troops as there actually were.

As a result, he refused orders from Lincoln and the Secretary of War to advance his troops, instead stalling and asking for more troops. This led to more defeats outside of Richmond, VA and in the Second Battle of Bull Run where his delay in providing reinforcements caused 10,000 casualties.

Lincoln knew changes had to be made and he looked to his own cabinet first. Cameron proved unreliable, and his Department of War was rife with corruption. Cameron was unaware that associates had been pocketing contract money and wasting public funds. Edwin Stanton, a former Democrat and US Attorney General, who would remain in the position for the next six years, replaced him.

Timing is everything: the Emancipation Proclamation shifted the course of the war.

Lincoln knew it was time to take drastic action. He’d heard that the Confederate armies were using slaves to help their efforts and, for months, the question of whether to enlist black soldiers in the Union army was being debated among his cabinet.

So, in July of 1862, Lincoln presented the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet. As an executive order in a time of war, it would allow Lincoln to circumvent Congress. With one blow, he could strike down the Fugitive Slave Law and declare the 3 to 4 million slaves in the United States free, as well as being eligible to serve in the army.

Seward wisely cautioned Lincoln against announcing the proclamation immediately, pointing out that, in the midst of all their losses, the proposal would come off as a last ditch effort and add to the Union’s low morale. Lincoln took his advice and patiently waited for a Union victory.

Finally, following victory at the Battle of Antietam, the opportunity had arrived. On September 17, 1862, Confederate General Robert E. Lee advanced into Union territory and forced General McClellan to take action. A horrific battle ensued, with over 20,000 casualties. Lee eventually retreated, but McClellan once again stalled, failing to advance on Lee’s troops, allowing them to regroup.

It was McClellan’s last action as Union general. Stanton considered him a traitor and Lincoln finally had him relieved from duty.

But the victory at Antietam was what the Union needed after many crushing defeats. At the beginning of 1863, Lincoln announced that he would enact the Emancipation Proclamation.

More success soon followed and Lincoln found a general he thought could lead the Union to victory. General Ulysses S. Grant was proving to be the Union’s best asset in a western campaign where he laid claim to the Mississippi River and divided the Confederate army. Thanks to his victories, and a hard-fought win at the Battle of Gettysburg, the war was finally shifting in the Union’s favor.

Before Lincoln’s reelection, his cabinet provided an important victory but also disappointment.

Sure enough, at the beginning of 1863, Lincoln remained true to his word and issued the Emancipation Proclamation. A regiment of 180,000 black soldiers formed to help fight a war that was still costing the country many lives.

The ongoing horrors of the war, including the 50,000 casualties at Gettysburg, meant that Lincoln’s re-election was far from a sure thing. But Lincoln and his administration would make an important decision that would help bring the war to a close.

The Battle of Chicamauga was an intense two-day fight that took place in September of 1863. The Confederates lost over 18,000 troops and the Union just over 16,000. But, although the Union lost, they managed to hang on to the important city of Chattanooga.

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton immediately jumped at the chance to take advantage of this. Calling an emergency session with Lincoln and the rest of the cabinet, he proposed a plan to quickly send 20,000 troops to reinforce Chattanooga and launch a new offensive before the Confederacy could regroup. With the cooperation of the railroad department, Stanton ensured that his plan could be carried out within seven days. Lincoln approved, and put General Grant in charge of the new offensive.

Stanton’s plan – which was considered one of the fastest mobilizations in military history up till that point – was a success. Union forces pushed confederate troops out of Tennessee.

Meanwhile, not sensing that Lincoln’s administration was inching the Union towards a victory over the Confederates, the Democrats were launching a misguided campaign against Lincoln. With former General McClellan as their candidate, they proposed making peace with the South at any cost.

But just three days after the Democrats announced this platform, Union General William T. Sherman won a crucial victory for the North, taking the city of Atlanta. This was quickly followed by the navy’s capture of the Confederate port of Mobile Bay. These victories crippled the Democrats’ policy of compromise and secured Lincoln’s re-election.

At the end of the war, Lincoln still exhibited his determination and goodwill.

With his second term underway, Lincoln once again showcased his remarkable goodwill and loyalty to his colleagues.

Lincoln was aware that his ambitious Secretary of Treasury, Salmon Chase, had been campaigning for his own shot at the presidency during the recent elections. But Chase finally overstepped his bounds when he refused to acknowledge mistakes made while appointing friends within his own department.

Lincoln accepted Chase’s resignation, but, as always, he was wise not to ruin what had been a fruitful relationship. Lincoln took the opportunity to appoint Chase as a Chief Justice in the US Supreme Court.

His goodwill to those who would even conspire behind his back never went unnoticed. Seward once proclaimed that, “his magnanimity is almost superhuman.”

Meanwhile, Lincoln could see the end of the war approaching. And he knew that, in order to keep his Emancipation Proclamation alive during peacetime, he would have to push a constitutional amendment through Congress.

On January 6, 1865, he introduced the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery once and for all. Lincoln met individually with important members of Congress to stress the positive effect the amendment would have on ending the war and breaking the spirit of the Confederacy. And with the help of assistants campaigning on the amendment’s behalf, he secured the five Democratic votes needed to push it through Congress.

During these first few months of 1865, representatives from both sides of the war, including Lincoln, were meeting to discuss an end to the war. Unfortunately, neither side was willing to compromise and the final battles of the war continued.

General Sherman succeeded in capturing the cities of Columbia, South Carolina, and Charleston, North Carolina. And, finally, on April 2, 1865, Union troops defeated General Lee in the Battle for Petersburg, leading Confederacy leaders to flee their capital, Richmond, Virginia.

To mark this occasion, Lincoln triumphantly walked the streets of Richmond, Virginia, surrounded by cheering former slaves. The war was drawing to a close, and on April 9, Lee finally surrendered his 28,000 troops to Grant.

Lincoln’s death was also a loss for the south.

Following the surrender of Lee’s troops, Lincoln gave a rousing speech from the White House, expressing his hopefulness to quickly return the southern states to the Union and heal the wounds of the nation.

In the crowd that day was John Wilkes Booth and two of his fellow conspirators, Lewis Powell and George Atzerodt. The three men had hatched a plan to kidnap Lincoln and exchange him for Confederate prisoners of war.

But after hearing Lincoln’s speech, and being so enraged by the idea of former slaves getting citizenship, Booth changed the plan to kill Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward.

The plan was set into motion on April 14, 1865, as Lincoln was watching the play Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater. Booth, a professional actor familiar with the theater, showed his card and gained entrance to Lincoln’s seating box.

Booth fired one shot into the back of Lincoln’s head. Major William Rathbone, also seated in the box, tried to grab him, but Booth took out a knife, slashed Rathbone across the chest and jumped from the box to the stage below.

Meanwhile, Lewis Powell gained entrance to Steward’s house, slashing and stabbing his way through the home, severely injuring many other people before he found the bedridden Seward. Powell stabbed Seward in the face but, luckily, Seward had just undergone surgery due to a near-fatal carriage accident. The metal used to repair his jaw likely saved his life.

George Atzerodt backed out of his part in the plan to kill Andrew Johnson. Kidnapping was one thing, but he was not a murderer.

Abraham Lincoln died the next morning and the entire nation, including the south, lost a valuable friend.

Both Ulysses S. Grant and the southern-born Montgomery Blair heard the news and felt that it was a tragic blow to the reconstruction of the United States.

Blair said, “Those of southern sympathies know they have lost a friend willing and more powerful to protect and serve them than they can now ever hope to find again.”

Part of the political genius of Abraham Lincoln was how he chose the members of his cabinet. He knew he could make the best decisions for the country by surrounding himself with his political rivals, i.e., people who disagreed with him and each other, but who represented the best minds to explore all sides of an issue.

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Helpful Guidelines For Deciding On Vital Issues For Iso Xp Probiotic Protein

Top Information For 2017 On Picking Core Issues For New Zealand Grass Fed Whey Protein Canada

Minister Simon Coveney has highlighted how, three decades ago, when milk quotas were introduced, Ireland produced the same volume of milk as New Zealand - 5.5 billion. Since then, the New Zealanders have not just beaten us at rugby, they have increased their milk production to 20 billion litres a year, while our output has remained static. The New Zealand example, which relies heavily on sales of baby and infant formula milk to China, has helped fuel hopes that we can expand our production by 50pc with the lifting of quotas. But Dr Richard Hackett believes we need to have a mixed agricultural economy, continuing to grow crops. "The danger is that we will become a one-trick pony. The growth in milk to China is in follow-on infant formula and whey powders for protein supplements, but those are not necessarily stable markets. "What happens if the Chinese decide they don't want imported infant milk or whey powders any more? It's hard for a farmer to suddenly turn off the tap," warns Dr Hackett. "If you spend a couple of million on a milking parlour and then all of a sudden the price collapses, you can't suddenly grow lettuce in the milking parlour." Those expanding their dairy herds and installing robots to milk their cows will hope that a greater flow of milk will be met by rising demand. Kevin Bellamy, dairy analyst with Rabobank, predicts that annual demand for milk will rise by an average of 2pc every year between now and 2020. This is being driven by continuing global population growth, urbanisation and rising disposable income. Irish infant formula milk is attractive to middle-class Chinese parents, who were spooked by a contamination scandal in 2008 when 300,000 children became ill and six died.

For the original version including any supplementary images or video, visit https://www.independent.ie/business/farming/dairy/land-of-milk-and-money-31097659.html

Reach Your Fitness Goals With These Tips

Fitness entails so much more than just the aesthetics of your physical form. Fitness can improve the quality of your life and help you live longer. You must take on a mindset that provides you with the ability to make certain changes in order to better take good care of yourself. This collection of fitness advice will light the way for you as you find fitness yourself. One tip for keeping with your fitness regimen is to join a fitness club and pay upfront for multiple months. This will "lock you in", so to speak, and keep you coming back over time. Only do this if you can't find any other motivation for getting yourself there. Setting a goal will help you stay motivated. This encourages you to move beyond obstacles instead of feeling defeated by them. Having a goal discourages thoughts of quitting and will keep you motivated to continue on with your fitness program. Simple push-ups can actually tone your triceps. Well, not quite average. Instead of the traditional style, a nice angle at roughly 45 degrees with your palms is much better practice. This modified pushup is the most effective way to get those triceps strong and toned. It is necessary to walk with proper form. You should be standing tall, and your shoulders should be drawn back. Put your elbows at a 90-degree angle. Your arms should be opposite of your forward foot. Make contact with the ground first with the heel, and then roll your foot onto the ground. Put exercise on your schedule if you frequently are skipping it or making up reasons to put it off. Evaluate your schedule and set a concrete number of days every week that you will make yourself work out. Don't let yourself get away with skipping days. If you're sick or have an emergency that causes you to skip a day of your fitness program, make it up on a day you don't usually work out. Do you want to make doing chin-ups easier? Changing the way you think about them can help. Think of yourself pulling your elbows downward instead of lifting yourself up. Changing the way you think about an exercise can make it seem simpler and you will want to do more chin-ups. Make sure your workout shoes fit well. Try to purchase shoes later in the day after your feet have had a chance to spread. The toe-box of the shoe should allow one half inch of wiggle room for all of your toes. There should be just enough room for your toes to wiggle slightly. To achieve greater weight loss results, turn up your workout's "density." More exercises performed in a shorter time frame can increase your weight loss. Shorten breaks between intervals and sets in order to increase the density of your workouts. Your weight loss will be increased by this method. Box squats really work those quadriceps, so make sure they are part of your workout. Box squats are excellent because they give you an extra boost of power as you complete your squats. The only thing you need is to set a box right behind you. Perform the squat you would normally, but pause while about to sit on the box. Go easy on the muscles that you worked yesterday. The easiest way to accomplish this is to do the same exercises, just without putting forth a full effort. Not giving fitness a try means you are missing on the possibility to improve your lifestyle. If you can implement the fitness techniques you have learned throughout the body of this article, you can begin to take your fitness to levels you never thought possible.

Realistic Secrets Of Canada For 2017

The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures. Mark Hawkins, president and CFO of San Fransisco-based tech company Salesforce, is pictured at the company's office in Toronto on May 1, 2018. California cloud-computing giant Salesforce.com Inc. will launch a US$100-million Canadian venture fund Thursday, targeting early-stage companies here that work with its leading sales and marketing platform. The fund is one slice of US$2-billion in Canadian investment promised by Salesforce in February when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited the company’s San Francisco headquarters. The fund, to be run by Salesforce Ventures, its enterprise cloud-business investment arm, is different from a standard venture-capital fund. It’s part of the company’s continuing mission to deepen its global roots and offer new tools to its 150,000-plus customers. While the Canada Trailblazer Fund will invest in early-stage companies, the requirement for participating companies to use Salesforce’s customer-relationship management (CRM) platform will narrow the number of companies eligible to participate. Still, it remains a substantial investment in the future of Canadian cloud computing. “We’re trying to help develop the ecosystem, and by developing the ecosystem, we want our customers to have solutions for any need they have,” said Mark Hawkins, Salesforce’s president and chief financial officer, in an interview at the company’s office in Toronto ahead of the announcement. Salesforce has already picked the fund’s first four investments: the Toronto capital markets CRM startup Tier1CRM; the Burnaby, B.C., workplace-security and guest-experience company Traction Guest; the retail-worker-app provider Tulip, from Toronto; and the Quebec City technology-integration company OSF Commerce. An ecosystem that helps Salesforce would likely benefit an ever-increasing number of Canadians.

For the original version including any supplementary images or video, visit https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-salesforce-to-launch-us100-million-venture-fund-in-canada/

Clueless About Vitamins And Minerals? Gain Knowledge Here

Who doesn't love food? However, many people do not eat a diet that gives them enough vitamins and nutrients. You must have the 21 essential vitamins and minerals to maintain good health. Learn about the importance of vitamins and how to make them a part of your life here. Do you want strong bones? One of the best ways for you to have good bone health is to make sure you have enough calcium in your diet. Without vitamin D, your body cannot absorb calcium fully. There are several ways to get the necessary vitamin D, including supplements, food and even sunlight. These will help your body absorb calcium. One of the most important things for healthy red blood cell production is having adequate iron levels. Red blood cells are what carry oxygen around your body. Women require more iron than men, so you are likely to find these supplements packed with more of this mineral. Iron deficiency often causes exhaustion and breathing problems. You should be making sure your daily diet consists of the right nutrients and vitamins in order to stay healthy. Any vitamins will certainly add to your healthy diet to improve the way you feel and make those visits to the doctor few and far between for only a few dollars each month. Riboflavin, also known as vitamin B2, is found in bananas, dairy products and asparagus. Scaly skin and cracked lips can occur if you have a vitamin B2 deficiency, and your red blood cell count can also decrease. Riboflavin can help prevent cataracts, anemia, cancer, and carpal tunnel syndrome. Vitamin and mineral supplements are more important these days than ever before. Canned and packaged goods on grocery store shelves lose nutrients during processing. A good multivitamin supplement can help to replace these lost essential nutrients. If you are menopausal avoid taking prenatal vitamins since it is not the right blend of nutrients for you. Sometimes, women will take these vitamins to help make their nails and hair grow longer. Though this might be safe, post-menopausal women can receive too much iron by taking them. There are many fruits and vegetables which are full of vitamin C. Supplements are great for anyone who just can't get enough nutrients by eating. It helps your immune system stay strong while beating back your acne. There have also been studies done that show vitamin C has assisted patients with ADHD, Alzheimer's, and dementia. Adults who cannot tolerate pills can take children's chewables, but you will have to do the math to get the right Whey Protein amount of nutrients. You need more vitamins than kids, of course. Do not take too many though, as this can have adverse effects. Before buying any vitamins and minerals, have a checkup to see if you are suffering from any deficiencies. This is the first step to figuring out which supplements you require. Always get your vitamin and mineral supplement information from a reliable source. Many advertisements don't always share the best information. Always question the information you get. If you have doubts, schedule a talk with your doctor before choosing to take supplements. Take your calcium carbonate with food in order to boost bone health. You can take calcium citrate with water, but calcium carbonate could upset your stomach if not taken with food. If you do, it is unable to get absorbed. You must understand that any over-the-counter medications you take can sometimes negatively interact with vitamin supplements. Some potential interactions can put your very life at risk. If your doctor is going to prescribe medicine, make sure they know if you're taking any supplements. When shopping for store-bought medications, ask the pharmacist about any adverse effects they may have. Food doesn't always gives us all we need. Sometimes we need supplements. Vitamins are a great way to stay strong. Use these tips to keep your body in tip-top shape.

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Maurice Lucas Succumbs to Most cancers

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Maurice Lucas - who was battling in opposition to bladder most cancers for a prolonged time died in his homeland on Sunday. Maurice was fifty eight lots of many years prior, and obtained performed some fantastic hoop online video online games and dazzled various. He helped Portland to have house an NBA title in 1977 as a electricity ahead and he was also the assistant mentor for the Trailblazers. Lucas has a few small children, two sons - David and Maurice II and a daughter Kristin, who are now remaining on your own with their mom - Pamela.

Lucas obtained a Gratifying Career

Forward of leaving the team to undertake surgical therapy closing 12 months, Maurice was serving as an assistant mentor to the Portland Trailblazers. He joined the crew in Portland in 1976, and performed 14 expert seasons adhering to that. Maurice experienced a wholesome and enjoyable career, but 'the Enforcer' will definitely be skipped by his team and his former teammates.

Having walks Throughout the Highway Carries Risks Much too

Most cancers has been the function for the fatalities of hundreds of thousands shut to the world. One more kind of most cancers malignancy that influences guys and gals who operate in and all-all over asbestos is Mesothelioma. Mesothelioma causes degradation of the mesothelium, and therefore it has an impact on all of a human's inner organs. Mesothelioma has been shut to specified that the time of the Professional Revolution thinking of that that was the clarification for the unfold of this sickness. Hundreds of factories and industries that have been established up mainly because the Professional Revolution even so keep on to function, but with rigid protocols, despite the threat of asbestos. Asbestos is not the only hazardous merchandise or support in market, as extended as the stability measures are adopted, there will not be any perfectly currently being risks. With that explained, there has been an enhance in the cost of this wide variety of most cancers in Europe.

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