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sylvies-chen · 3 years

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Fic request. I have two.

15 for Upstead and 29 for Burzek.

Thank you! :)

Hi anon, tysm for the request! These are going to be more than 100 words (I know some people are very strict on what a drabble is but consider these short oneshots instead). I’ll post both of them under the cut!

Also, here’s the PROMPT LIST in case you want to spend more!

15. “When I’m with you, I’m home.” (Upstead)

“So your apartment’s getting fumigated again?”

Hailey nods.

It should be normal for Hailey to stay over at Jay’s, especially since her apartment’s been sprayed for termites so many times. Month five of the pandemic isn’t exactly making people eager to invite her into their homes so when Jay offered to let her crash with him, it seemed like the logical move. Intelligence can quarantine together, after all, and she’s only been back from New York for a couple of months so staying with him feels like making up for lost time. That is, until she gets to his apartment the first night and all of her complicated little emotions kick in.

“Ugh, yeah. This is the third time in two years. You know, the building I stayed in back in New York wasn’t fumigated the entire time I was there. My landlord’s becoming more trouble than he’s worth, maybe I should just move,” she grumbles while spreading sheets over his sofa (she’d chosen the couch since she’s shorter, and frankly, sleeping in his bed is too tempting to agree to).

“What, are you missing the hosh-posh NYC hotels?”

“Maybe a little,” she admits with a grin.

“Well if you move to New York for the fancy hotels then I’d have to go too, and that’s something I’d really rather not do.”

“You would?” A small lump catches in her throat and she stops fussing with the sheets instantly. His eyes are already on her when she looks up. They’re nervous but intense. Oh god, she

“Yeah,” Jay replies, his voice raspy and bashful. He nervously fluffs the pillow on the couch but then moves closer to her. She can see him swallow hard, his eyes never leaving her. She moves to plug in her phone in the charger next to him, but he doesn’t move out of the way for her and it just makes things even more tense. There’s so little space between them right now. It’s not professional. Why does she love it so much? “When I’m with you, I’m home.”

“I...” Her eyes go wide at his word, her breathing becoming naturally heavier. His lips part only slightly when she doesn't break her gaze.

Her heart melts. Hailey is his partner, friend, maybe even something else. But now she’s... his home?

“I- I just mean,” he continues before she can speak, clearing his throat awkwardly, “we’re partners. I’m going where you’re going, remember?”

She wants to say that his words back then were under a completely different context. Following someone to a new unit is one thing, but following them to a whole different city is a new level of personal. She also wants to tell him that she’s home when she’s with him too— more so than any home she’s ever lived in (even with her own family). But that’s a whole other conversation. It’s a wall crumbling, a damn breaking, a reason to finally let him make her happy. And she isn’t sure if she’s ready for that yet.

“Yeah,” she settles on as her response, softly squeezing onto the pillow in her hands. “I remember.”

Hailey doesn’t get an ounce of shuteye that night. Her mind wanders, replays those words over in her head, and wonders if maybe, just maybe, Jay's sitting in his bed doing the same thing.

29. “It’s okay to cry.” (Burzek)

Kim wakes up in the hospital and the fluorescent lights are blinding.

It’s the first thing she notices when her eyes open. That, combined with the noises, makes her head pound and the bullet wounds in her stomach sear with blazing agony. The second thing she notices is the warm hand squeezing hers. It takes all of her might to turn her head but when she does, the hand holding hers belong to none other than Adam Ruzek.

Because of course it’s Adam. Because it’s always Adam.

“Hey,” he whispers, sitting upright and leaning over.

Kim opens her mouth to speak to him but nothing comes out at first. It’s the first time she realizes how dry her throat is. God, everything in her body hurts like hell. “Hi,” she manages to sputter out, her voice hoarse and quiet like Makayla’s when she came down with the flu.

Wait. Makayla. She has a daughter. Where’s her daughter? “Makayla,” she sputters. “Where is she?”

“Don’t worry, she’s at school. She made me promise to pick her up after so you’ll see us again in the afternoon.”

Kim smiles faintly, envisioning Makayla’s excited and impatient face as she waits for the school day to end.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like hell,” she mutters teasingly, holding her side in pain as soon as she laughs. “It’s like the world’s worst hangover except, you know... I got shot.”

Adam tries to laugh but it fades quickly. His grip tightens on her hand, and his other hand moves to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear before caressing her cheek gently.

“Walton...” Kim asks.

“I don’t know,” he admits to her, hanging his head. “Voight and Hailey went to chase leads while I stayed with Makayla, and then.... I don’t know.”

Her eye catches his. She sees it all on his face: his tightened lips, his steady hands, his tender eyes. There’s something so soothing about him; there always has been. It’s a calmness, a steady but reassuring force that makes her want to completely crumble. She feels the tears well in her eyes.

“It’s okay to cry,” he tells her softly. “You know that, right?”

And in one fowl swoop, the damn breaks.

In one fleeting moment, everything she’s been feeling about what she went through comes flooding in through torrential sobs and hiccups.

As always, Adam’s there to hold her.

“Hey, shhh. It’s okay. I’m here.” He presses his forehead to her. It’s soft, but there are tears of his own coming down too.

It’s painful; it’s beautiful. And for one moment, she swears she never wants to be without him again.

#abby writes #gilbxrt-blythe writes #this took me longer than planned because I accidentally deleted the Upstead prompt while trying to transfer it onto here #I’m so D U M B #these will not be drabbles #I can’t do <100 words I JUST CAN’T #upstead #burzek #drabble prompts #fanfic prompts

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nevifiax · 3 years

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cexizseaz · 3 years

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choice new york

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sezixaziz · 3 years

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choice New York companies

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techcrunchappcom · 3 years

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New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/renters-still-evicted-despite-federal-ban-news-sports-jobs/

Renters still evicted, despite federal ban | News, Sports, Jobs

BOSTON — A nationwide eviction ban was supposed to protect tenants like Tawanda Mormon, who was forced out of her two-bedroom apartment last month in Cleveland.

The 46-year-old, who was hospitalized in August for the coronavirus and can’t work due to mental health issues, said she fell behind on her $500-a-month rent because she needed the money to pay for food. When she was evicted in October, Mormon said she was unaware of President Donald Trump’s directive, implemented in September by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that broadly prevents evictions through the end of 2020.

“It was difficult. I had to leave all my stuff,” said Mormon, who has been staying with friends and relatives since her eviction. “I don’t have no furniture, no nothing.”

With most state and local eviction bans expired, the nationwide directive was seen as the best hope to prevent more than 23 million renters from being evicted amid a stalemate in Congress over tens of billions of dollars in rental assistance. It was also billed as a way to fight the coronavirus, with studies showing evictions can spread the virus and lead to an increase in infections.

The CDC order has averted a wave of evictions, housing advocates said, but tenants are increasingly falling through the cracks.

Some judges in North Carolina and Missouri refused to accept the directive, tenant advocates said.

The order has been applied inconsistently, and some tenants, who had no legal representation, knew nothing about it.

Landlords in several states also unsuccessfully sued to scrap the order, arguing it was causing them financial hardship and infringing on their property rights.

“Right now, we are seeing variations in the way courts are applying the CDC order, and we are also seeing a lack of knowledge among tenants and property owners,” said Emily Benfer, a law professor at Wake Forest University and the chair of the American Bar Association’s COVID-19 task force committee on evictions. “Advocates are working overtime to inform tenants of their rights under the CDC order and, in many places, evictions are going forward.”

In Fremont, Nebraska, Dana Imus went to court this month to avoid getting evicted for falling behind on rent. The 41-year-old mother of four lost her job as a forklift operator in March due to the pandemic and hasn’t been able to get another one — partly due to her car breaking down.

When she presented a declaration to her landlord that she qualified for the federal moratorium, she said he told her wrongly that Nebraska didn’t recognize it. She also tried to pay her landlord $400 of the $1,000 rent for October, but he refused. She used the money, instead, for a car payment and now has no money for rent.

“It’s been a struggle,” she said. “It’s stressful. But I trust God so, I mean, I’m not too worried about it. I know I am not going to be evicted because I trust God.”

Those who didn’t know about the CDC moratorium include Charlene Wojtowicz, who thought she had avoided eviction from her two-bedroom house in Cleveland after a nonprofit paid three months of her back rent and her landlord withdrew his lawsuit. This week, the landlord demanded the 33-year-old mother of three pay the $455 she owes for November.

“I’m worried that me and my kids will be out on the street,” said Wojtowicz, who lost a new housekeeping job after getting COVID-19 this summer. “I’m a single mother with three children trying my hardest. It’s not like I don’t want to pay this man.”

Eviction filings have begun creeping up in several states, with the Eviction Lab at Princeton finding cities in South Carolina, Ohio, Florida and Virginia saw big jumps during October. A factor, tenant advocates said, was the CDC’s guidance related to the order last month that allows landlords to start eviction proceedings.

“It’s pretty alarming that lots of evictions are still, at least, being filed,” said Eric Dunn, director of litigation at the National Housing Law Project in Richmond, Virginia. The act of filing an eviction, he said, can prompt tenants to move out ahead of a hearing over fears that an eviction record would prevent them from renting another apartment.

“Because tenants often value their ability to obtain other rental housing over remaining in one specific property, the fact that such cases are being filed likely has a chilling effect on tenants who would otherwise assert the moratorium,” he said. “Tenants who receive eviction notices will move out to avoid the creation of an eviction record, rather than stay in their homes.”

The CDC last month also said landlords have the right to challenge the veracity of tenants’ declarations that they qualify for the moratorium. A false claim could result in criminal charges for perjury, and lawyers for landlords have taken advantage of that language to challenge tenants in court.

To be eligible for protection, renters must earn $198,000 or less for couples filing jointly, or $99,000 for single filers; demonstrate that they’ve sought government help to pay the rent; declare that they can’t pay because of COVID-19 hardships; and affirm they are likely to become homeless if evicted.

“We now have to fight this battle every time we go into court, where it’s not enough that the tenant provides the declaration,” said Hannah Adams, an attorney for Southeast Louisiana Legal Services. “Now they have to explain where every penny of their monthly check is going or even if they are getting a check. It creates a higher burden for tenants than was intended by the original order.”

Also driving evictions is that the order only applies to nonpayment of rent.

As a result, landlords are increasingly trying to sidestep the order by evicting tenants for minor lease violations like excessive noise or trash, or they are simply not extending leases, tenant advocates said.

That is what is happening to Imus, according to Caitlin Cedfeldt, a staff attorney at Legal Aid of Nebraska. Even before a judge ruled Monday that she qualified for the federal moratorium, her landlord gave her a new notice to vacate, alleging criminal behavior at her residence.

“The landlord lost today, but I think they are going to keep coming after her with notices like these in an attempt to circumvent the federal order,” Cedfeldt said by email.

The other challenge is that any legal victory could be short-lived. The CDC order is set to expire Dec. 31, just when a spike in virus cases threatens to further undermine the economy. Many tenants owe months of back rent. The global investment bank and advisory firm Stout estimates that by January, renters will owe as much as $34 billion.

It is unclear if the moratorium will be extended as tenant advocates have demanded. In addition, a coronavirus relief package that could include tens of billions of dollars for rent and mortgage assistance appears to be going nowhere. State and local rental assistance programs provided some relief, but advocates say the funds fall far short of what is needed.

Advocates already are pressing President-elect Joe Biden to sign a broad, new national eviction moratorium on his first day in office. They want Biden to work with Congress in his first 100 days to pass a relief package that includes at least $100 billion in emergency assistance for renters and landlords and resources for the homeless.

“By the time President-elect Biden takes office on Jan. 20, we may be in the midst of a historic eviction crisis in our country if no action is taken between now and then,” said Diane Yentel, president of the National Low-Income Housing Coalition.

Today’s breaking news and more in your inbox

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#despite #evicted #federal #renters #still #Sports

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deniscollins · 4 years

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As Businesses Close, WeWork Tries to Lure Workers Back

WeWork, which operates shared work spaces, could be dealt a grievous blow by a widespread shutdown, a once celebrated start-up that was already struggling and SoftBank last week threatened to walk away from a tender offer to buy $3 billion of existing shares from other WeWork shareholders. WeWork has allowed employees who normally staff its locations to work from home. If you were a WeWork manager, would you offer employees a $100-a-day bonus In order to entice some of them to come back to work: (1) Yes, (2) No? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision. If you were a WeWork employee, would you accept the offer? Why?

In the fight against the spreading coronavirus, countless businesses, restaurants and bars have temporarily shuttered to stop people from congregating.

But WeWork, which operates shared work spaces, has kept most of its locations open. As of Tuesday, WeWork’s website said only two of its co-working offices in North America were closed and none were closed in Europe. The last public communication about the virus from the company to its customers, which include freelancers, small businesses and large corporations like Amazon, was 12 days ago, in which it listed the precautions it was taking. WeWork has allowed employees who normally staff its locations to work from home, but this week it started to entice some to come in with $100-a-day bonuses, according to an internal memo reviewed by The New York Times.

One thing is clear: A widespread shutdown could deal a grievous blow to WeWork, a once celebrated start-up that was already struggling.

In a turbulent past six months, WeWork called off an initial public offering as investors balked at its losses and corporate governance, laid off hundreds of employees, changed its top leadership twice and was bailed out by SoftBank, WeWork’s dominant shareholder. SoftBank, a Japanese conglomerate that runs a large technology investment fund, stepped in after WeWork nearly ran out of money. But its cash outflows are expected to be even greater this year as it completes an expansion that will almost double its locations.

Though most of WeWork’s locations are officially open — the company said that it provides essential services that many state and local governments have allowed to continue — almost no one is in them. In Midtown Manhattan, home to several WeWork spaces, the usual heavy flow of customers has dwindled to a trickle, according to two employees who work in or are monitoring those locations, and who asked not to be named because they feared losing their jobs.

The coronavirus pandemic is depressing demand for shared work space and the looming recession could prompt many freelancers and small businesses, which make up much of WeWork’s customer base, to save money by working from home — something many white collar professionals worldwide are quickly becoming accustomed to. WeWork customers can sign up for space on a month-by-month basis, allowing them to leave quickly. The company, by contrast, has yearslong leases with landlords.

“From all directions, WeWork looks dark,” said Vicki Bryan, chief executive of Bond Angle, a research firm. “This was true before we had this historic pandemic crisis. But now those levers it could have pulled, to at least buy some time, have gone.”

And as it contends with the outbreak, it’s financial position could weaken because of an internal struggle among its shareholders.

SoftBank last week threatened to walk away from a tender offer to buy $3 billion of existing shares from other WeWork shareholders. If that transaction doesn’t happen, WeWork would not receive $1.1 billion in debt financing that is part of SoftBank’s rescue, according to a person briefed on the deal who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

SoftBank in recent months has plowed $1.5 billion into the company in return for new stock, and says it stands behind another $4 billion of debt financing. But if SoftBank were to walk away from the tender offer and withdraw the $1.1 billion loan, landlords that lease office space to WeWork may begin to doubt SoftBank’s commitment to the business.

SoftBank is facing its own pressures. The company and its $100 billion Vision Fund have stakes in many young companies that were struggling well before the virus hit. In an effort to allay the concerns of investors, SoftBank said on Monday that it would sell assets worth up to $41 billion to buy back $18 billion worth of shares and pay down debt. Its shares soared Tuesday on the news but were still down by a third from the high they reached last month. “WeWork is not SoftBank’s only drama child,” Ms. Bryan of Bond Angle said.

SoftBank’s new hardened stance toward WeWork could be a negotiating tactic aimed at forcing other investors, including Benchmark Capital and Adam Neumann, WeWork’s co-founder and former chief executive, to accept a lower price.

The other shareholders are fighting back. On Sunday, two WeWork board members — Bruce Dunlevie, a founding partner of Benchmark Capital, and Lew Frankfort, the former chief executive of Coach — who make up a board committee created last year to evaluate its financing options — said in an statement that SoftBank was “obligated to consummate the tender offer” and added that “its excuses for not trying to close are inappropriate and dishonest.” Benchmark, a prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm, applied to sell its entire WeWork stake in the tender offer, according to the person briefed on the deal. Mr. Dunlevie did not respond to a request for comment.

If SoftBank walks away from the offer and WeWork doesn’t get the loans it is counting on, the company could be in peril, analysts say.

“Business disruption related to the global recession, spread of coronavirus and uncertainty surrounding SoftBank’s longer term commitment to WeWork has placed added pressure on the long-term viability of the company,” Standard & Poor’s said in a statement on Monday to explain why it was downgrading WeWork’s credit rating further into junk status. WeWork’s bonds have plunged to levels that suggest investors believe a default is likely.

An immediate problem for WeWork is convincing people that the company is responding appropriately to the coronavirus outbreak. Some employees and customers have questioned WeWork’s decision to keep locations open.

In a memo sent on Sunday to employees in the United States and Canada, WeWork’s chief operating officer, Shyam Gidumal, said the company had been “designated an essential business under orders we have reviewed.”

Asked about the memo, Nicole Sizemore, a company spokeswoman, said under New York State’s order, companies providing mail and shipping, security and storage — services that WeWork provides — are considered essential. “WeWork is a service provider and we have an obligation to keep our buildings open,” Sandeep Mathrani, WeWork’s chief executive, and Marcelo Claure, executive chairman, said in another company email on March 18.

WeWork, however, may be having problems convincing employees to work at its locations. In his memo, Mr. Gidumal said workers who came in would get $100 a day, up to $500 a week, and the bonuses would be paid in a lump sum monthly. The money was meant to be “in recognition of our community employees’ willingness to support our members by keeping our buildings open and operating during these extraordinary times,” the memo said.

One of the WeWork employees monitoring Midtown locations said the bonus offer put workers in the difficult position of taking on a potential health risk for a few hundred dollars. This person said lower-paid staff who face financial hardships would be more likely to come in than other employees.

#WeWork

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theliberaltony · 7 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

If you’re looking for someone to teach you the dark arts of opposition research, Alan Huffman is your man. A former daily news reporter and a political researcher for, by his count, more than 100 candidates, Huffman is the co-author of “We’re With Nobody,” a look inside the “oppo” industry.

That industry once aimed to stay out of the spotlight but now finds itself at center stage. Amid swirling questions and investigations into how campaigns obtain negative information on their opponents, recent reports on organizations linked to both Democrats and Republicans in 2016 have drawn attention and criticism.

A lawyer representing Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee reportedly paid a group called Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research, and that group hired former British spy Christopher Steele to dig up dirt on Donald Trump. (Fusion GPS had also worked with Republican interests during the 2016 primaries.) Steele’s salacious dossier of allegedly compromising information gathered by the Russians — much of it unproven and denied by Trump — was eventually leaked to the media. Complicating matters further are accusations that Steele paid sources to get information. And it has been reported that a company that consulted for Trump’s campaign, Cambridge Analytica, had reached out in 2016 to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange about exploiting emails from Democrats that Russia had allegedly hacked and passed on to WikiLeaks. Assange said he rebuffed the company’s requests.

We asked Huffman, who has worked with candidates from both major parties but mostly works with Democratic campaigns, to help us understand how campaigns and the media use opposition research, and how to interpret the latest revelations. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Hilary Krieger: Could you start by telling us a bit about the history of opposition research — how it developed and evolved?

Alan Huffman: People have been doing oppo for centuries. It’s just what you do: You try to find out the strengths and weaknesses of your opponent. I don’t really know when it sort of morphed into also finding out your own strengths and weaknesses. But the attacks that were made on political candidates go back to the origins of the country.

The process of getting that information sort of stayed submerged until really the last decade or so, maybe the last two decades, because when we [Huffman and research partner Michael Rejebian] first started doing it, the candidates were all really paranoid about anyone finding out. You know, like your opponent’s going to hold a press conference and say, “My opponent has hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on me.” But everybody knows that it’s done now.

Krieger: So can you give me an example from hundreds of years ago? Do you have any great stories of somebody like Thomas Jefferson doing oppo?

Huffman: I remember even back in the Roman days that it was not unusual for the Senate to dig up dirt on opponents — sometimes with violent results. [Huffman later emailed to relate a story that Rejebian wrote about in their book: “One case of early American oppo came during the 1800 presidential election between incumbent John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the latter of whom reportedly hired a ‘scandalmonger’ named James Callender, who had previously revealed a romantic tryst between Alexander Hamilton and a married woman, to research (and promote) an allegation that Adams for some reason wanted to go to war with France. Callender was subsequently jailed for sedition, and after Jefferson was elected, Callender sought a job as a postmaster. When he didn’t get the job, he publicly disclosed his arrangement with Jefferson, along with allegations that he’d dug up about Jefferson and his slave children.”]

Krieger: You said things changed about a decade or two ago.

Huffman: We started doing this in the early ’90s, and I would say probably toward the later ’90s is when it sort of came out into the open. I don’t think it was directly a result of this, but it coincided with all the Bill Clinton scandals. I think at that point, there was no point in pretending that this was all just civil discourse.

Krieger: So while the labors of opposition researchers have become more public since then, has the process itself stayed pretty much the same?

Huffman: What has changed about the process is really the advent of the internet infiltrating into every sector. We still have to go on the ground, but not for as long, usually, because some of the records are available online. So much is now recorded on social media.

But the overall process is still the same because we’ll talk to anybody. We sit down with some guy that seems a little bit crazy, who’s sitting outside of his trailer with a shotgun across his lap because he thinks somebody is going to kill him for talking to you. Maybe he has something and maybe he doesn’t, but we’ll talk to anybody so long as it leads to documentation — and it’s worthless for our purposes if it doesn’t.

Krieger: What are the kinds of things you do to get this information? Are there dirty tricks involved?

Huffman: Michael and I are both trained as journalists, and we approach all of this the same way we would if we were writing for a publication. So, no, there are no dirty tricks on our end, but there are sometimes things that are directed at us. We get death threats, we get followed, all kinds of things like that happen — which just serves the purpose of telling us that we’re getting warm. We like it when that happens because it tells us that we’re on the trail of something that somebody is afraid of.

People think of opposition researchers like political operatives — they are a sort of tool of the political machine — but in general they’re outsiders. And I can’t tell you how many times we’ve sat down with the candidates after we gave them the report, and he or she has said, “Whose side are you on? I look worse than my opponent in your report.”

We’re like, “Sorry, we’re not going to gloss over anything.” We’re also not going to encourage them to use something that sort of goes beyond the boundaries of what we consider our purpose, which is to document the fitness of a candidate to serve, ultimately. Sometimes that might be found in their divorce case records. But in general, we might look at all that stuff, but using it almost always backfires on someone unless it’s just really, really damning. Of course, now, with the way the whole political discourse is changing, who knows what will backfire or what people will just ignore. Trump has just changed the playing field for everybody.

Krieger: Can you spell out your process a bit more?

Huffman: We’ll start out like everyone else, I guess. Initially we just start doing manic googling and find out everything that we can about them. Then we’ll do an exhaustive Lexis Nexis search and see what’s been published. Basically you just build kind of a work outline and see what are the big issues here.

If you’re an incumbent, we’re going to look at, what is your voting history, what comments have you made that are telling in any way. And we’re going to look at whether you pay your taxes. Sometimes that leads you to interesting places. Sometimes it leads to clear wrongdoing.

Krieger: What are some of the information sources that are publicly available that people might not know to think about?

Huffman: Really anything that is public record, we’re going to look at. If we go to the courthouse, I always stop and just look at the building directory and look at every single office in that building. I think, is there anything that they keep that might be illuminating? The permit office, for example, if the guy’s a big developer or landlord. We just kind of go through the whole list every single time.

You customize it with what you know about the candidate, but you’re going to look at their personal voting history. At the county and city level, you’re going to look at all the criminal records. You’re going to look at whether they got a bunch of speeding tickets, and if so, does it make any difference? Is there something else that makes that notable?

You’re going to look at all the court cases. If there were minutes to meetings that they were a part of, you’re going to look at those — and fall asleep with your head on the table.

Once you’ve done the initial documentary research, you’re going to talk to any sources that you can that might just enlighten you about this candidate. And again, it’s always in the hopes that it will direct you toward documentation. So you might not know that there had been suspicious fires at a number of businesses owned by this candidate. It had never been reported in the news, but somebody who worked in the kitchen of the restaurant will tell you that. Then you can go back and find the records that you otherwise would not have known to look for. So it’s very important to talk to people.

And that’s what I thought about when I was looking at this whole issue of the dossier and whether we would have done that. We don’t normally deal with spies. But we will talk to just about anyone as long as it leads to documentation.

Krieger: What do you make of the dossier, the information in it, how it was obtained?

Huffman: You know, you hear a lot of things, and you might even take note of them, but there’s a lot in the dossier apparently that is undocumented, just as there’s a lot that’s documented. It’s such a complicated story that it’s hard to tell exactly what was going on. A Republican starts the process and then the Democrats pick it up, which is not as unusual as it sounds.

Krieger: You saw the dossier get into the media. So how does that part of the process work?

Huffman: That’s something that I have limited knowledge about because in some cases when we turn in the report, that’s the end of it for us. You know the campaign has no interest in us whatsoever from that point on, and we have no control over what they do. If we think there are red flags, we will note that in the report. But then again, in most cases they don’t use it at all. They just like knowing.

Krieger: When you see information you may have gathered wind up in the media, do you think that there’s any issue with how that information is reported on? Is it standard practice for journalists to say that this was provided by a campaign as opposition research? Are there any sort of standards of transparency?

Huffman: There are no established standards. It really falls on the journalist to be responsible for the source of their information. Whether or not the person who shared that information with the journalist explains how it came about, I think most journalists would know that this is clearly the result of somebody doing oppo. But to the journalist it’s a question of: Does it matter if it’s a partisan document as long as it’s also true? The whole point is to get the truth out there, so yes, it may be questionable who has what agenda. But if it’s public record, you just saved them some time. If I was a reporter and something got leaked to me, I would say, “Yeah this was leaked to me.” But you may have an agreement that you’re not going to say who.

One thing that sort of came out and that kind of gave me pause when thinking about this dossier story is the whole issue of buying information, which is sort of antithetical to us and to journalists. If somebody came to us and said, “We will sell you this,” we would automatically be suspicious and skeptical.

Krieger: Should journalists be more up-front about where they’re getting this information?

Huffman: If there’s any issue about it, about how you came to possess this information and if it came from someone who had been involved in [gathering] it somehow, I think a reporter should definitely be up-front about it and not pretend that this all just magically fell into place. And I think that one of the problems now in journalism is there’s not nearly as much focus on documentation as there once was.

Those are the bigger problems, and I hate to sound like a broken record, but it just all goes back to documentation. If you don’t have it, then you don’t have anything. Unfortunately, that’s our view, and it’s not necessarily the way it works. I mean, look at Trump. He’ll say anything, and he gets the media coverage and he creates this whole weather system that is based on nothing. And so somehow the idea of having documented facts begins to feel a little quaint. But that’s what we traffic in, for better or worse.

Krieger: We were talking about the dossier and how that was compiled. What about Cambridge Analytica reaching out to WikiLeaks for information?

Huffman: We would never deal with a Russian operative because they’re basically an enemy of the state and we’re Americans. And I would be very wary about anything that had been stolen. I would look at [the emails] for sure. I would read them and I would see what I could find that could guide my questions when I interview someone and ultimately lead to some proof of what happened. But the provenance of the documents is important.

Krieger: Putting the WikiLeaks example in the context of the norms of how these things work, does it seem like a really different scale of magnitude, or is it just sort of the next step in getting what information you can?

Huffman: It is kind of the next step. For better or worse, I think because there is such a craving for information, people are going to take it wherever they find it. And, unfortunately, [they may take it] even if it’s not clearly true. There’s no guidebook for doing opposition research and, politics being so volatile, to me the whole [WikiLeaks] thing is a little bit more cautionary than the dossier.

Krieger: Why is the WikiLeaks incident more troubling to you than the dossier?

Huffman: It [the dossier] doesn’t seem like an illegitimate way to find things out. Now, there are aspects of it that I’m curious about and that seem a little strange. But I don’t think it’s as unusual as, say, accepting a big document dump from WikiLeaks that may have been obtained in an illegal way.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Hilary Krieger

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Overlooked No More: Lillian Harris Dean, Culinary Entrepreneur Known as ‘Pig Foot Mary’

This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.It’s fall, maybe October, in the early 1900s. On a bustling Manhattan street corner, Lillian Harris Dean stands in a starched gingham dress, her fingers resting on the handlebar of a baby carriage.“Pig’s feet!” she cries to passing neighbors, as she does in a play about her life written by Daniel Carlton. “A taste of down home for your weary bones.”From the baby carriage — an early version of a food truck perhaps — Harris Dean sold traditional Southern meals: fried chicken, corn and, of course, pig’s feet. Her cooking soothed the palates of African-American transplants who, like her, had come to the unfamiliar metropolis in the purgatorial period between Reconstruction and the Great Migration. She eventually built a name and a fortune as a culinary entrepreneur and as a landlord, squarely planting herself in the history of Harlem. Before long her neighbors christened her “Pig Foot Mary,” the Madonna of the sidewalk.“People talk about seizing an opportunity and finding a market — she did all of that,” Jessica B. Harris, a food historian and cookbook writer, said in a phone interview. She wrote about Harris Dean in “High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America” (2011). Harris Dean used her cooking as a path toward financial independence, taking hold of an informal culinary economy that has historically provided opportunities to women of color, from African-American caterers in the 1700s to churro sellers in today’s subways.She marketed her food by tapping into the nostalgia of her customers, offering them a tether to the culture they missed as they tried to forget the legacy of slavery and servitude they had left behind.“What she was doing,” Harris said, “was bringing the people the food of memory — the things they remember, the things they know.”Lillian Harris was born in the Mississippi Delta between 1870 and 1873, according to a 1929 obituary published in The New York Age, a local African-American newspaper. Her parents were also born in Mississippi, census records show. After the end of slavery, Harris “drifted into New York penniless” in 1901, the prominent black journalist Roi Ottley wrote in “Springtime in Harlem,” an article he published in his 1943 book “New World A-Coming: Inside Black America.”She saved her first $5 while working as a maid in New York, polishing floors and shaking out sheets. With her savings she bought a secondhand baby carriage, a 59-cent tin boiler and a charcoal stove. She set up shop each day on a corner near Columbus Circle, alternating between the only two cotton dresses she owned.“From the beginning, Miss Harris exercised care and cleanliness,” The Age said of her in a profile in 1923. “Everything about it was spotlessly clean, including her own poor garments.”Soon, she traded in the baby carriage for a portable steam table that she had designed herself. After two years, she moved her business to Amsterdam Avenue between 61st and 62nd streets, where she stayed for 11 years. Business blossomed. She went from selling a dozen pigs’ feet a day to more than 100 a day and 325 on Saturdays. Though her cooking methods are lost to time, she most likely first boiled the pigs’ feet, which are similar in consistency to sausage, and then served them fried.“As many as 25 customers have stood in line at her stand waiting to be served,” The Age wrote, adding that “she had people eating pigs’ feet who never ate pigs’ feet before.”People came from as far away as New Jersey and Long Island just to try her cooking, the newspaper wrote.In 1908, Lillian Harris married John Dean, an educated man from Lynchburg, Va., who had been a postal worker and owned a newsstand. As Harlem became a hub for the thinkers, musicians and artists of the emerging Harlem Renaissance, she moved her business there in 1917 and worked on the corner of 135th and what is now Malcolm X Boulevard for 16 years. Like the famous street vendor in “The Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel and ode to Harlem, the smell of her cooking gave them a sense of belonging. “She was saying to people, ‘This is your place,’” said Psyche Williams-Forson, the chairwoman of American Studies at the University of Maryland. “This street corner, this city, this part of the world. This is your place.” Williams-Forson wrote about Harris Dean in “Building Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, & Power” (2006).Carlton’s play “Pigfoot Mary Says Goodbye to the Harlem Renaissance” was presented in 2011 by the Negro Ensemble Company and produced by the Metropolitan Playhouse. Benja Kay Thomas played the title character. Written entirely in verse, the play takes place on Harris Dean’s last day on the corner as she says goodbye to friends.In researching her life, Carlton said in an interview, he found that Harris Dean “was somebody who talked to both the domestic workers and the people who were creating the culture.”Around the corner from her stand, he said, A’Lelia Walker, the daughter of the beauty entrepreneur Madame C.J. Walker, hosted elaborate dinner parties as part of her Dark Tower salon. “People like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston would come out of these fancy dinners and probably want some pig feet, some chitlins, some hog maws,” Carlton said. Pig Foot Mary was also a minor character in “Hoodlum,” a 1997 film about Harlem in the 1920s starring Laurence Fishburne and Vanessa Williams. Harris Dean was played by Loretta Devine.Using the money from her successful stand, Harris Dean switched her focus to real estate, buying buildings and renting apartments during what became known as Harlem’s gold rush.Most notably, she bought a five-story apartment building on the corner of 137th and Lenox Avenue for about $40,000 (about $650,000 today) and rented the units to tenants. She sold it six years later to an undertaker for $72,000 (about $1 million today).“She couldn’t read or write, but she could sure count her money,” Regina Abraham, who wrote “Pig Foot Mary: The Saga of Lillian Harris,” a children’s book published in 2011, said in an interview.Harris Dean owned several other buildings around Harlem, renting and selling them as the neighborhood grew. One property she owned became a residence for the Young Woman’s Christian Association. Today her buildings have become Harlem Hospital, a Salvation Army complex and St. Mark the Evangelist Church. And on the Harlem corner where she once sold pigs’ feet stands the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, an outpost of the New York Public Library.Harris Dean became a philanthropist later in life. In 1927 she gained attention for cooking “an old fashion pig foot dinner” for the Working Women’s League. An article in The Age about the event described her as “one of the wealthiest women in Harlem.”She left New York in 1923 and traveled for six months, stopping in places like Yellowstone National Park and Los Angeles, The Age wrote.She died, on July 16, 1929, in Los Angeles while visiting friends. By then she had amassed a fortune of $375,000 (about $5.5 million today). Her body was brought back to New York, and hundreds came to the funeral. The Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Sr., the pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church and the father of the future congressman, gave her eulogy, praising her for “her business ability, her thrift and her desire to help her race.”Jack Begg contributed research. Source link Read the full article

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shirlleycoyle · 5 years

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WeWork’s Implosion Shows How SoftBank Is Breaking the World

Why should we believe any of the people responsible for the ongoing tech bubble when they claim what they’re doing has great benefit for humanity? Listening to them, you might think that rising inequality, rampant tax evasion, and ecological devastation are simply capitalism run amok. This assertion, however, obscures what the bubble has done to “disrupt” our society at an individual, collective, and institutional level.

There is perhaps no better example of how wildly out-of-control venture capital and Silicon Valley have gotten than the slow-moving disaster that is WeWork and the attempt by SoftBank, its largest investor, to save it by burning through an ungodly sum of its near-unlimited money.

Despite its spectacular implosion, WeWork refuses to die. Tuesday, SoftBank closed on a deal that will see it put an additional $10 billion into the company, which is now valued at $8 billion—a far cry from its $47 billion valuation earlier this year. SoftBank's newest deal includes a $5 billion loan, the acceleration of a $1.5 billion investment originally scheduled for next year, and the buyback of up to $3 billion in SoftBank stock from employees and investors. This brings SoftBank’s total investment to over $19 billion.

WeWork has delayed thousands of its scheduled layoffs because it does not have enough cash for the severance costs. Co-founder and former CEO Adam Neumann, however, is receiving a $1.7 billion golden parachute. This does not include the $700 million he already made when he sold stock ahead of the planned IPO. This does include, however, his sale of $970 million of his stock to SoftBank, a credit to repay a $500 million loan from JPMorgan, and $185 million in consulting fees.

WeWork's co-founder and former CEO Adam Neumann. (Michael Kovac / Contributor)

What Silicon Valley truly is, once we move past the sales pitch, is not pleasant. We have a closely-knit network of venture capitalists who rarely have to suffer the consequences of their profit-seeking behavior. Their efforts have real-world consequences that have allowed companies like Uber to ignore regulations and create a new underclass of gig workers, WeWork to light money on fire, Airbnb to inflate residential rents, and a host of other corporations to increasingly privatize more and more of our lives.

Behind these firms is a house of cards of funding—angel investors and venture capitalists and firms like SoftBank who use their money to artificially drive the values of companies to absurd levels, with the goal of cashing out before that house of cards crumbles.

With WeWork, SoftBank almost pulled it off, until would-be investors in the company’s IPO realized it wasn’t worth anywhere near SoftBank’s pumped-up valuation.

SoftBank itself is heavily reliant on debt. It is obsessed with debt financing, which means that, in order to make investments, it will take out loans against the equity it has on another company. SoftBank has taken unprofitable companies, pumped them full of borrowed money to turn them into larger, still unprofitable companies, and hoped that with SoftBank’s influx of cash, they can undercut market rates, monopolize an industry, jack the prices back up, and make off like bandits. We’ve seen this strategy with Uber, where SoftBank is the largest investor. And now we’re seeing it with WeWork. Failing monopolization, or basic business stuff like “making money,” SoftBank can at least keep up the smoke-and-mirrors long enough to do an IPO so it, a startup’s founders, and other early investors make a lot of money; later investors, employees, customers, and the public at large get screwed.

But not every industry can be monopolized (or at least, they can’t be monopolized fast enough; even SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son admitted recently that he is getting tired of losing money). A series of unprofitable startups have been launched in markets that, thus far, haven’t shown that they can be monopolized profitably. These companies, in “disrupting” existing businesses by undercutting them with artificially low prices subsidized by VC cash, destroy the pre-existing firms and devastate the communities that rely on them. With WeWork and perhaps Uber, there’s evidence that this strategy can’t last forever. When these firms inevitably falter or crash or retreat, the cleared ground is just that—cleared ground, littered with corpses of the local businesses and communities and individuals harvested for profits.

Venture Capital Is an Illusion

The idea behind venture capital is simple: raise capital from institutional investors (pensions, endowments, etc.), buy equity stakes in a multitude of start-ups, then oversee operations until the start-ups go public or are sold to a bigger company and investors can cash out. Venture capitalists work under the assumption that most investments will fail and some will show unremarkable returns, but at least one might be the next Facebook or Google and will offset all other losses.

From the dot-com crash of 2000 to 2018, VC has exploded from $100 million annually to $131 billion annually. 80 percent of that spending is concentrated in just four metro areas (the Bay Area, New York, Boston, and LA).

A 2018 study by University of California researchers Martin Kenny and John Zysman maps out the same period and explains that the explosion of the number of start-ups, the proliferation of unicorns (start-ups valued at $1 billion or higher), and the unprofitability of a majority of unicorns when hitting the public market are a consequence of them "each trying to ignite the winner-take-all dynamics through rapid expansion characterized by breakneck and almost invariably money-losing growth, often with no discernible path to profitability."

Much of the returns on VC investments are being grabbed by a close-knit group of investors who get in early, often at the expense of the public. In 1998 a Fortune article noted, “the dirty little secret of the venture business is that VCs can be enormously successful even though most of their portfolio companies may tank in the public markets.” In the dot-com bubble, IPOs enriched venture capitalists and other early investors who cashed out—investors connected enough to get in early, and wealthy enough to be insulated from whatever risks the public would be exposed to as investors or consumers. In today’s bubble, VCs are facing mounting skepticism about these unprofitable enterprises and doubling down to protect their investments.

In the last bubble, companies stayed private for an average of four years; today it is more than 11 years. That longer lead time can inflate valuations as companies draw more funding rounds, each of which necessitates that the company’s value goes up. It also gives these companies more time to construct a narrative about their path to profitability.

But in recent years, the more money that SoftBank has pumped into a company, the worse their returns have been. WeWork is currently losing $5,197 per customer per year, and in many big funding rounds, SoftBank has been its major (and sometimes only) investor. Uber takes a loss on every ride it gives; we are killing Uber simply by using it, with each ride’s true cost subsidized thanks to billions from VCs like SoftBank. SoftBank throws billions at these companies despite no evidence they will ever be profitable. Why?

Deep-pocketed VCs understand that while continually pumping money into a company can prop up valuations, it’s not enough. You also have to pretend business is something that it’s not. Vision Fund investments need a vision, after all. It doesn’t matter whether Uber or WeWork actually work—or what happens when they fail—but that they have a vision that sounds profitable.

One of Uber’s more ingenious moves to preserve its valuation: autonomous vehicles. The only justification for its ludicrous valuation was the dream of a future global monopoly (and subsequent profitability) ushered in by getting rid of Uber’s most expensive cost: its underpaid drivers.

It’s not clear if self-driving cars will ever be possible, but even if they did happen, Uber would on some level just be exchanging the labor costs of human drivers with the capital costs of owning autonomous vehicles and training their software. But the possibility that Uber—a company that, it's all too happy to remind everyone, simply makes a smartphone app—could invent and bring to market a technology that can completely replace human drivers led to ever-increasing valuations. As of August, Uber still had yet to ever turn a profit. When Uber held its IPO, many of its earliest investors made fortunes: co-founders Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp became multi-billionaires, SoftBank made over $9 billion, Benchmark Capital made over $6 billion, and the Public Investment Fund about $3 billion. Its stock price has since plummeted 30 percent.

Likewise, while WeWork was burning SoftBank’s cash on its core business, it branched out to burn more money on side projects. WeWork bought 20 other companies in the leadup to its IPO, including Meetup, the office cleaning and management company Managed By Q, and a marketing firm called Prolific Interactive. All the while, WeWork was actually just a real estate company that pitched itself as a tech company; it’s still unclear whether WeWork is anything more than an ineffective, deeply indebted landlord.

“At what point does malfeasance become fraud?” asked Scott Galloway, a New York University Business School professor who dubbed the company WeWTF after reading through its financials in the company’s IPO filing. It’s not clear what happens to commercial property since WeWork was the largest tenant in downtown Chicago, New York City, and London. It has stopped signing new leases, and, unless it magically starts making money, it may at some point have to close the majority of its 500+ offices in 100+ cities.

So how did WeWork go from a valuation of $47 billion to an investor coup in just 30 days? People started to realize that WeWork was only “worth” $47 billion because SoftBank said it was.

Matthew Stoller elaborates on this in a fantastic dissection of WeWork and, well, the economy at large:

“There were several 'rounds' of WeWork investment where Softbank was buying more shares at higher valuations,” Stoller points out. “WeWork ostensibly became more valuable because Son said it was more valuable, and bought shares for higher prices. And since there was no public market for these shares, the pricing of the shares was totally arbitrary. WeWork then used this cash to underprice competitors in the co-working space market, hoping to be able to profit later once it had a strong market position in real estate subletting or ancillary businesses."

"The goal of Son, and increasingly most large financiers in private equity and venture capital, is to find big markets and then dump capital into one player in such a market who can underprice until he becomes the dominant remaining actor. In this manner, financiers can help kill all competition, with the idea of profiting later on via the surviving monopoly."

We do not have companies like Uber and WeWork because they’re efficient or innovative or even because we want to, we have them because they are being subsidized by venture capital. And here’s what we have to show for it: an underclass of gig workers, increased traffic congestion and urban pollution, the global suppression of labor standards, hollowed-out public transportation and taxi businesses across the world, and the instability that will come when Uber and WeWork collapse as SoftBank and other investors get tired of losing money from these creatively unprofitable businesses.

So What?

It’s easy to take a look at these numbers, and what is happening, broadly speaking, and allow your eyes to glaze over. Some dude who walks barefoot down the streets of New York City becomes a billionaire; some of his investors make a lot of money, some other billionaires lose a few billion. We laugh or decide not to pay attention. The billionaires keep doing what they want and keep finding other companies to pump up.

But the side effects of venture capital’s quest for not just big companies but the biggest companies may haunt us even on the off chance that regulators and politicians decide to try to reign them in. It has created, for example, a world where our individually and socially created data is owned by large corporations like Google or Facebook; perhaps if you’re lucky you’ll be compensated for with a paltry dividend paid out to you. It has created a world where we are inundated with goods and services that are free or subsidized in the short-term (i.e. search, social networks, meal plan boxes, delivery services, video streaming, ride-hailing, etc.) but that we are at some point going to pay for with our data or our jobs or our autonomy or our attention or, eventually, with our money because, once a monopoly is achieved, the price can be increased.

The tech bubble is not simply a market problem. We have allowed venture capital to concentrate power in ways that dictate how our cities work, how our technology is developed, how labor operates, and how we relate to each other. A digital economy where large technology platforms and start-ups turn our public sphere into a series of fiefs rationing out goods and services is not a natural development—it’s not even a progressive one.

If there is a takeaway, it is that this tech bubble is worse than the last precisely because it has incubated for so long. It has naturalized the privatization of our lives as technology’s teleology when really that is a political project being advanced for the benefit and profit of a narrow group of elites at the expense of the public. Getting out of the bubble requires us asking some basic questions that sound revolutionary only because of how much bullshit we’ve absorbed. Do we actually need computers and sensors embedded in every surface? Are there social and political problems that simply cannot or should not be solved within the market? And how are we going to go about rebuilding society if our answers lead us in that direction?

WeWork’s Implosion Shows How SoftBank Is Breaking the World syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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williamlwolf89 · 4 years

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133 Writing Quotes to Motivate, Inspire, & Kick Your Butt in 2020

Who doesn’t love writing quotes?

A good quote can uplift you. It can encourage you when you feel like giving up. It can inspire you when you need a tiny lil’ spark to start writing.

In this simple, easy-to-read resource, I’ve compiled a list of inspiring, motivational quotes about writing and life that have been shared with the world by famous authors, public figures, and great literary minds, both past and present:

27 Inspirational Writing Quotes

36 Quotes About Writing

24 Writing Quotes of Encouragement

46 Motivational Quotes for Writers

Let’s jump in.

27 Inspirational Writing Quotes

1. You fail only if…

“You fail only if you stop writing.” (Click to Tweet) — Ray Bradbury

2. Type a little faster…

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.” (Click to Tweet) — Isaac Asimov

3. Do it for joy…

“I’ve written because it fulfilled me. Maybe it paid off the mortgage on the house and got the kids through college, but those things were on the side — I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.” (Click to Tweet) — Stephen King

4. You must write it…

“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” (Click to Tweet) — Toni Morrison

5. Taste life…

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” (Click to Tweet) — Anaïs Nin

6. Don’t water it down…

“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; (and) don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” (Click to Tweet) — Franz Kafka

7. Write every day of your life…

“Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.” (Click to Tweet) — Ray Bradbury

8. Cut it to the bone…

“When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.” (Click to Tweet) — Stephen King

9. Everything in life is writable…

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” (Click to Tweet) — Sylvia Plath

10. How vain is it…

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” (Click to Tweet) — Henry David Thoreau

11. What is written without effort…

“What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.” (Click to Tweet) — Samuel Johnson

12. Change more lives…

“90 percent perfect and shared with the world always changes more lives than 100 percent perfect and stuck in your head.” (Click to Tweet) — Jon Acuff

13. Don’t quit…

“You can’t fail if you don’t quit. You can’t succeed if you don’t start.” (Click to Tweet) — Michael Hyatt

14. That’s how you create art…

“Write something that’s worth fighting over. Because that’s how you change things. That’s how you create art.” (Click to Tweet) — Jeff Goins

15. Determination never does…

“Inspiration may sometimes fail to show up for work in the morning, but determination never does.” (Click to Tweet) — K.M. Weiland

16. Exercise the writing muscle…

“Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.” — Jane Yolen

17. Write what disturbs you…

“Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.” — Natalie Goldberg

18. Write what…

“Write what should not be forgotten.” — Isabel Allende

19. Lens to focus…

“Words are a lens to focus one’s mind.” — Ayn Rand

20. Breathings of your heart…

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” — William Wadsworth

21. Blank page…

“You may not always write well, but you can edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.” — Jodi Picoult

22. No talent for writing…

“It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.” — Robert Benchley

23. The most beautiful things…

“The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.” — Andre Gide

24. You create them…

“Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.” — Chris Grosser

25. Write something worth reading…

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” (Click to Tweet) — Benjamin Franklin

26. Better than perfect…

“Done is better than perfect.” — Sheryl Sandberg

27. No such thing as writer’s block…

“There’s no such thing as writer’s block. That was invented by people in California who couldn’t write.” (Click to Tweet) — Terry Pratchett

36 Quotes About Writing

1. No greater agony…

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” (Click to Tweet) — Maya Angelou

2. Every secret of a writer’s soul…

“Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.” (Click to Tweet) — Virginia Woolf

3. Show me the glint of light…

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” (Click to Tweet) — Anton Chekhov

4. Surprise…

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” — Robert Frost

5. The first draft…

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” — Terry Pratchett

6. One of the exquisite pleasures of writing…

“I would write a book, or a short story, at least three times — once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say. Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one’s fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.” — Bernard Malamud

7. The difference between…

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” (Click to Tweet) — Mark Twain

8. The whooshing sound…

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” (Click to Tweet) — Douglas Adams

9. Write as clearly as I can…

“The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.” — E.B. White

10. Words can be like x-rays…

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.” — Aldous Huxley

11. A lesson in creative writing…

“Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. (…) All they do is show you’ve been to college.” — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

12. Find the right words…

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” — Jack Kerouac

13. When I sit down to write…

“When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.” — George Orwell

14. Only a great man can write it…

“Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.” — Oscar Wilde

15. Leave out the parts…

“I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” — Elmore Leonard

16. My courage is reborn…

“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” — Anne Frank

17. A person is a fool to become a writer…

“A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.” (Click to Tweet) — Roald Dahl

18. No one knows…

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” — Somerset Maugham

19. To discover…

“I write to discover what I know.” — Flannery O’Connor

20. Wants to be written…

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” — Madeleine L’Engle

21. Writing is easy…

“Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” (Click to Tweet) — Gene Fowler

22. Never have to change…

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” — Saul Bellow

23. No shortcuts…

“Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.” — Larry L. King

24. Irritated by my own writing…

“I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.” — Gustave Flaubert

25. Mighty book, mighty theme…

“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.” — Herman Melville

26. Good writing…

“Good writing is rewriting.” — Truman Capote

27. Writing advice…

“Don’t take anyone’s writing advice too seriously.” — Lev Grossman

28. The Muse…

“Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.” — William S. Burroughs

29. Using two words…

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” — Thomas Jefferson

30. Greatest part of a writer…

“The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.” — Samuel Johnson

31. Great writer…

“Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he’ll eventually make some kind of career for himself as writer.” — Ray Bradbury

32. Do not hoard…

“Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.” — Annie Dillard

33. You can make anything…

“You can make anything by writing.” — C.S. Lewis

34. Have something to say…

“You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

35. Failed writers…

“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.” — T.S. Eliot

36. Wake up…

“I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast — talk them or write them down.” — Ernest Hemingway

24 Writing Quotes of Encouragement

1. Waited for perfection…

“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” (Click to Tweet) — Margaret Atwood

2. The good writers…

“Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.” (Click to Tweet) — Orson Scott Card

3. Start writing…

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” (Click to Tweet) — Louis L’Amour

4. A writer needs three things…

“A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.” — William Faulkner

5. Didn’t quit…

“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” — Richard Bach

6. One true sentence…

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” — Ernest Hemingway

7. Part of the learning process…

“You have to resign yourself to wasting lots of trees before you write anything really good. That’s just how it is. It’s like learning an instrument. You’ve got to be prepared for hitting wrong notes occasionally, or quite a lot. That’s just part of the learning process.” (Click to Tweet) — J.K. Rowling

8. Road to achievement…

“Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.” — C. S. Lewis

9. Writing is more difficult…

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” — Thomas Mann

10. Tell it as best you can…

“(…) write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.” (Click to Tweet) — Neil Gaiman

11. What you have to say…

“Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.” — Barbara Kingsolver

12. Pouring yourself into your work…

“When you are pouring yourself into your work and bringing your unique perspective and skills to the table, then you are adding value that only you are capable of contributing.” (Click to Tweet) — Todd Henry

13. Like driving a car at night…

“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” — E. L. Doctorow

14. Be brave…

“We were born to be brave.” (Click to Tweet) — Bob Goff

15. Start somewhere…

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.” (Click to Tweet) — Anne Lamott

16. Rejection slips…

“I could write an entertaining novel about rejection slips, but I fear it would be overly long.” — Louise Brown

17. Ideas are like rabbits…

“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” — John Steinbeck

18. Ideas are like rabbits…

“I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged.” — Erica Jong

19. Meant to read it…

“If the book is true, it will find an audience that is meant to read it.” — Wally Lamb

20. They know it…

“People say, ‘What advice do you have for people who want to be writers?’ I say, they don’t really need advice, they know they want to be writers, and they’re gonna do it. Those people who know that they really want to do this and are cut out for it, they know it.” — R.L. Stine

21. Writing prompts…

“Most writers draw a blank when they first start with writing prompts. Keep pushing through, because something thrilling will start to happen.” — Mel Wicks

22. None of their business…

“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.” — Ernest Hemingway

23. Keep it simple…

“I do not over-intellectualise the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the d*mned story.” — Tom Clancy

24. Surviving the rollercoaster…

“Being a writer is not just about typing. It’s also about surviving the rollercoaster of the creative journey.” (Click to Tweet) — Joanna Penn

46 Uplifting, Motivational Quotes for Writers (or Anyone Really)

1. Success is no accident…

“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.” — Pele

2. Count the days…

“Don’t count the days, make the days count.” — Muhammad Ali

3. If my determination…

“Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.” — Og Mandino

4. Hard work…

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” — Tim Notke

5. Live and learn…

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” — Mahatma Gandhi

6. Living our fears…

“Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.” — Les Brown

7. Perseverance…

“I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.” — John D. Rockefeller

8. Meant to be reached…

“A goal is not always meant to be reached; it often serves simply as something to aim at.” — Bruce Lee

9. Not a product of my circumstances…

“I’m not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” — Stephen Covey

10. Fear of failure…

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve, the fear of failure.” — Paulo Coelho

11. The whole secret…

“The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one’s destiny to do, and then do it.” — Henry Ford

12. Have to settle…

“If you are not willing to risk the usual you will have to settle for the ordinary.” — Jim Rohn

13. Perfection…

“Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” — Vince Lombardi

14. Stepping stone…

“Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.” — Oprah Winfrey

15. Self-confidence…

“The best way to gain self-confidence is to do what you are afraid to do.” — Swati Sharma

16. Great work…

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” — Steve Jobs

17. Successful people…

“Unsuccessful people make their decisions based on their current situations. Successful people make their decisions based on where they want to be.” — Benjamin Hardy

18. Success…

“Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” — Winston Churchill

19. Born to win…

“You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.” — Zig Ziglar

20. Tried anything new…

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” — Albert Einstein

21. Learn from the mistakes…

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

22. With all you have…

“Do what you can with all you have, wherever you are.” — Theodore Roosevelt

23. All our dreams…

“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” — Walt Disney

24. Our greatest story…

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” — Confucius

25. Enough time…

“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.” — H. Jackson Brown Jr.

26. Hustle…

“What you lack in talent can be made up with desire, hustle and giving 110% all the time.” — Don Zimmer

27. The best you can…

“Do the best you can. No one can do more than that.” — John Wooden

28. What we fear…

“What we fear of doing most is usually what we most need to do.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

29. See opportunities…

“If you believe it’ll work out, you’ll see opportunities. If you don’t believe it’ll work out, you’ll see obstacles.” — Wayne Dyer

30. Strive to be worthy…

“Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.” — Abraham Lincoln

31. Excellence…

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle

32. Key to success…

“One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation.” — Arthur Ashe

33. Can’t lose…

“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” — Bill Gates

34. Comfort zone…

“Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.” — Brian Tracy

35. Positive thought…

“Just one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day.” — Dalai Lama

36. Develop success…

“Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” — Dale Carnegie

37. Expect great things…

“You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them.” — Michael Jordan

38. Do small things…

“If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.” — Napoleon Hill

39. The other side of fear…

“Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” — George Addair

40. Path to success…

“The path to success is to take massive, determined action.” — Tony Robbins

41. Tough times…

“Tough times never last, but tough people do.” — Robert Schuller

42. Left undone…

“Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.” — Pablo Picasso

43. Keep going…

“Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.” — Sam Levenson

44. One more time…

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” — Thomas Edison

45. All you’ve got…

“Give your dreams all you’ve got and you’ll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.” — William James

46. Never gives up…

“It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.” — Babe Ruth

What are Your Favorite Writing Quotes?

These are some of the best motivational quotes on writing the world has to offer, and yet we’ve merely scratched the surface — there are thousands upon thousands of great, inspirational quotes about writing.

So, I want to hear from you:

Which writing quote is your favorite?

Let me know in the comments below.

The post 133 Writing Quotes to Motivate, Inspire, & Kick Your Butt in 2020 appeared first on Smart Blogger.

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newagesispage · 4 years

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MAY 2020

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Check out the We are One Global film fest on youtube from May 29-June 7. We will be able to experience movies from Cannes, Sundance, Tribeca and Venice for free!! Yahoo!!

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May 10 will bring us The Feeding America comedy Fest. So far the stars on board are Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, Tiffany Haddish, Chris Rock, Louie Anderson, JB Smoove, Brad Garrett, Jon Lovitz, Tim Meadows, Keegan-Michael Key, George Lopez and Sarah Silverman, just to mention a few.

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Jim Carrey will release his Memoirs and Misinformation on May 5.

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If you need honest medical info, take a look at Quackwatch: A guide to quackery, health fraud and intelligent decisions.

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Current times are a magnification of a problem that has been brewing for quite some time. The kiss ass, the indifferent, the greedy who don’t miss a trick are todays fortunate sons.** If half of this country didn’t want the other half to have a fighting chance we wouldn’t be in this situation right now. The Federal government should have all of our best interests at heart. I will never understand why so many of the’ have not’ voters love supporting the’ haves ‘that love to fuck over the little guy.

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SAVE THE USPS!!

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I guess we know how this country would be prepared to react to bioterrorism.

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SNL is working from home like so many but with Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, Fred Armisen, Paul Rudd, Miley and Sandler.

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George Gray, announcer for the Price is Right is recovering after a week of 3 heart attacks.

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Marijuana use is at an all -time high. Alcohol use is up 40%.

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What is up with Georgia Governor Brian Kemp who seemed so surprised at the virus months after everybody else seemed to know the facts? This is what happens if we only listen to Trump and Fox news.** He is so ready to open up the state early. ** A Georgia citizen said it best: Kemp mandates restaurants open, whether I reopen dining rooms or not. I file for business interruption insurance, it does not go through since I am “allowed” to operate full capacity. My landlord can demand all their money since I am allowed to fully operate. Furloughed staff that is collecting unemployment insurance have to come back to work or I have to let them go. Their unemployment insurance then goes on my tab. If things blow up again they are still on my tab, not on the state since they are no longer employed. This is about screwing the working class.** A dog has now been diagnosed with the virus as well as some cats.

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UFO footage has been declassified by the pentagon. Wow, anything to distract! ** This whole Scary Clown 45 mess often seems like a big government experiment. Just how much will we put up with? How stupid or complacent are we??

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The President’s council on reopening America has a message for our country: Die you fucking slaves. Die Die Die. We’re rich and you’re not and we’ll be even richer after the mass burials are over. Sucks to be you.

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The Federal government does not have absolute power. Why do “big government” haters suddenly want the Feds to run their lives??** Some checks were delayed because Trump wanted his name on them?** The Huffington Post has reported that $180,000 a year of Trump campaign money is given to his son’s significant others.

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The Carter’s have asked donors to the Carter Center to instead give those donations to local organizations in need.** A great charity is RIP medical debt which puts $100 to every dollar you donate to wipe out medical debt.

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Need some nature sounds in your life? Visit NPS.gov/sounds

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It looks like Macgruber may become an 8 episode series according to Will Forte.

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It is sort of reassuring to see that the late night hosts who mostly hover around my age, are no better at technology than I am.** BTW, Billy Eichner is such a great guest from home.. more please!** I see that one of the 8G band on Late Night has a big pic of Mick’s face behind him at home. I also see that same pic everyday above my desk. A kindred spirit.

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Linda McMahon, wife of WWE chair, announced the18.5 million Trump super PAC in Florida. Governor DeSantis now calls WWE essential. Many of the wrestlers were fired so the bottom line looks good.

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Being willfully stupid is not part of the Christian tradition.- John Meecham

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Some fast food workers went on strike. This is a good time to do it. Risking your lives for minimum wage is hardly worth it.

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Threadgill’s, the Austin bar that helped launch Janis Joplin is closing down.

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Is this true? 150 members of the Saudi royal family tested positive for covid-19.** Did Trump play down the virus because he owes millions to China’s state owned banks or was it to try to get dirt on Biden?

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I am not sure what has happened to the American workplace. So many strides were made in the mid 20th century but a lot of that seems to have fallen away. I see so many employers leaving it to employees to provide supplies before they even get the job. Teachers sometimes buy things for the classrooms. Some employees must buy their own cell phones for video conferences or even punching in and out. Some nursing home employees bring in their own cough drops or snacks for residents. How much $ do the people at the top need?? No sick pay? Work or starve!

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Everyone staying at home proves how badly we need a better high speed internet system in the U.S.

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Porn hub has been giving free porn.** The My Pillow guy is praising Trump as he donates 50,000 masks.

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All these Trump worshipping MAGA shills, they’re willing to die for the dumbest, flounciest fancy lad in history. –Patton Oswalt.

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So we don’t want to give Government help to immigrants who pay taxes, we do want to help cruise lines who avoid taxes by registering as foreign companies. Got it! ???

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The Neo confederate hate group, ‘league of the south’ is moving ahead with its annual conference in June.** Trump is getting ready to open the country with a coalition of his republican Governors and companies (some of whom seemed surprised). ** How did we get here? If our Pres is incapable of reading simple memos, he is incompetent. ** Scary Clown is trying to speed up the Wall as we are dropping like flies.

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This can’t be true. Federal agents are confiscating masks and supplies in hospitals, presumably for ICE agents??** Was Scary Clown 45 trying to force congress out of session so that he could skate some recess appointments by?** Rules have been weakened as to the release of mercury and various toxins from oil and coal power plants.** Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil do not seem to concerned about the virus.** Trump circled back around to the heat and light thing as a cure because he could not get over the shit he got for telling us that spring’s warm weather would take care of everything, right?

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Chicago businessman Gene Staples has purchased Indiana Beach amusement park and will open in July if he is able.

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Nascar will be back this month with new races but without the live audience.

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Catch Ashes to Ash: The disappearance of Robert Bee on Youtube.

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As everyone is sick with respiratory problems and the pollution has ebbed a bit, scary clown 45 has to roll back some of our rules that protect clean air. Auto emissions are rolled back to 1.5%. He has to be loving the fact that we can’t all gather and protest. Hmmm?? Perhaps it is a conspiracy.. but his.** Oh but the disbelievers did gather in Michigan with dolls in nooses and confederate flags. Why do they think that the medical experts are telling them this for partisan reasons or just for their own kicks? They have our safety in mind. Use your fucking heads. How can this country get stupider as time goes on? ** Why can’t they just cover Covid treatment? Medical debt is gonna skyrocket.** I don’t like big government either but in times of crises and health care, we need it to work properly. ** But when the powers that be tell us that animals can’t get it and then a tiger gets it or that masks don’t protect you and then they suddenly do, it makes us all skeptical. Way to confuse us fuckers!! Even with the ignorant and the panicked, just tell us the truth and the average person will be with ya!!** It was snowing in April? Where was this warmer weather that was going to kill the virus?

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You just knew that Trump and his cronies had money on the line when it came to hydroxychloroquine. ** Scary Clown 45 has removed the very man who was set to oversee the $ 2 trillion stimulus. The good ol boys can’t wait to get their hands on that money while people are dying. ** Trump delayed checks that are not direct deposit because he wants his name on them.** People had trouble getting thru when applying for unemployment. Canada gave out the benefits and then checked the details.** States and companies are very confused. Jared claims he is in charge, Pence is supposed to be in charge and FEMA claims they are the final word. Trump seems to thrive on chaos. The states bidding, stocks up and down and Doctors disagreeing are right up his alley. He probably does hate being stuck at the WH.

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People will forgive you for not being the leader you should be, they will never forgive you for not being the leader you claim to be.

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Why should it be surprising that poor communities are being hit so hard? The poor, the minorities do so much of the cleaning, the cooking and delivering that still has to be done. When people are not sheltering in place because they are needed or they need that paycheck, of course they are getting infected since they are still out there. Add to that, little or no health care and poor diets from food deserts etc. and there you go.

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White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham is out after 9 months. Kayleigh Mcenany is in.** Vaccine chief Rick Bright is reassigned. He recently wanted to put hydroxychloroquine to some rigorous tests. He has been vocal about the administration.

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Lights Out is leaving Comedy Central and looking for another place to air.

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Can’t wait to see Mrs. America about the women who shaped our past.

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I rarely pay attention to advertising but I love that Chantix turkey. I hate the fact that he had a smoking problem, though.

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Every prisoner in every prison, especially the non -violent and the elderly should be reviewed. There needs to be more room made for white collar crimes that hurt so many more of us.

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Word is that Kim Jung un is brain dead.

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Rumble media has released Planet of the Humans from Jeff Gibbs on Youtube . The film will run free for 30 days and sort of explodes the myth of our ‘green’ heroes.

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Common, Woody Harrelson and Shinola watch co. have created a cannabis leak motif watch and the proceeds will go to criminal justice reform.

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Navy Captain Crozier was fired for telling the truth and looking after his crew. ** The U.S.S. Comfort isn’t taking Covid patients??

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Good bye Schitt’s Creek. We sure will miss ya!!

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Franklin Graham was asking volunteers for his field hospital in NY to sign a ‘statement of faith.’ It stated that they, “believe in God’s plan for human sexuality within the context of marriage between a man and a woman and that those that stray from those beliefs face eternal damnation and eternal judgement in Hell.”**

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Jon Cryer has a new book out: So that happened.

We can see now what would happen if all the humans were dead. The mountain goats have come down the hill and taken over a town in Wales. The Pandas are finally mating in Hong Kong now that they have some privacy.

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Bernie is out after 4 long conversations with Obama and tells us that he will concentrate on the pandemic. Looks like we are stuck with Biden. At least Biden is talking about lowering Medicare to 60. It’s not enough but at least it’s a start.** Who will the female VP pick be, Klobuchar, Witmer, Abrams??

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Netflix along with Steve Carell and Greg Daniel will bring us Space Force on May 29 with Lisa Kudrow and John Malkovich.

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In Sweden, all land is for public use. Imagine!!

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ICP cancelled their Juggalo fest.

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Perhaps home schooling will become more popular. Perhaps with the pollution dropping, humans will get the message that we have really fucked ourselves in this world. Less cars people!!** The Twitter CEO donated a billion. That made the other top $ people look like schmucks.

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Kleenex Cottonelle is donating a million rolls and a million bucks. Share A Square!!

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Fight Island??

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Tiger King.. who cares.. Crip Camp is the one to watch. A Secret Love is also great. This is the world that we should build from the ashes of Covid-19.** Stop trying to get me to watch Tiger King. –Bill Maher

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We are in a recession.** I don’t understand when I see so many “devout” people show no respect for religions other than their own.

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Tom Pelphrey on Ozark this season just blew me away!! He has to be the one to watch at the Emmy’s.

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On a personal note: Hey Aunt Ritski, I will never forget that you saved a couple of people from drowning when you were a lifeguard. I will never forget one of your favorite tales, that you wanted to be Miss Kitty when you were 5 years old and got a little drunk trying. I will never forget the times that you drove thru the ditches, your Cooter Brown stories or the way that you often left all the change on the bar when we were out. How could anyone forget the weddings, the bullet you had to live with the rest of your life and the love you had for your siblings. We will miss you forever because all of the lives you touched would have been a whole lot different without you in it. What the fuck would we have talked about if not for the saga of you? I can think of nobody who would disagree with that. Your family loves you baby. Go in Peace and serenity.

R.I.P. Adam Schlesinger, Ellis Marsalis Jr., Mort Drucker, Lorena Boreja, Janet Alexander, Patricia Bosworth, Bucky Pizzarelli, Logan Wiliams, Maeve Williams, Wallace Roney, Joe Diffie, Andrew Jack, Alan Merrill, John Prine, Thomas L. Miller, tornado victims, Charlotte Figi, David Driscoll, Hal Willner, Patricia Bosworth, Ann Sullivan, Brooke Taylor, the Canadian shooting victims, Matt Seligman, Barney Ales, Bootsy Barnes, Bruce Meyers,Roger Beatty, the tornado victims, Tim Brooke- Taylor, Jorge Camara, Andrew J. Fenady, Brian Dennehy, Don Reed Herring, Henry Graff, Allen Daviou, Tom Lester, Bill Withers and Rita Hale.

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walterfrodriguez · 4 years

Text

A-Rod is coming for NYC and SoFla real estate

Alex Rodriguez (Photos by Guerin Blask)

Alex Rodriguez has seen both his professional and personal life covered exhaustively in newspapers across the country for decades now.

But since retiring as the Yankees’ star third baseman in 2016 — and, according to Forbes, pocketing over $480 million during his 22-year, pro-baseball career — he’s become even busier.

He’s now juggling regular media appearances with color commenting baseball games (he’s a broadcaster for Fox Sports and part of ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball team) and growing his real estate and investment empire, which all operates under his A-Rod Corp. umbrella.

He is also co-hosting a podcast, which launched last year, called The Corp, where he’s interviewed guests ranging from Martha Stewart and Kevin Bacon to real estate tycoons like Barry Sternlicht and Barbara Corcoran. Oh, he also has two daughters, ages 11 and 14, and is engaged to superstar singer, producer and actress Jennifer Lopez — aka J.Lo.

Since he founded the Miami-based A-Rod Corp. in 2003, the firm has purchased over 15,000 apartments across the U.S., deploying hundreds of millions of dollars on real estate and investing in companies like the hospitality startup Sonder, private jet startup Wheels Up, Snapchat and NRG eSports.

Sternlicht said Rodriguez has shown that he’s willing to put in the time and energy needed to succeed in business and said he comes to an “informed decision based on reasoned information and careful diligence.”

“Alex approaches business with the same dedication and passion he did baseball,” Sternlicht told The Real Deal via email. “Alex wants to win, really crush, in his work as he did in the majors.”

In July, A-Rod Corp. closed on a $4.5 million condo at Terra’s Grove at Grand Bay, twin luxury towers in Miami designed by starchitect Bjarke Ingels. (The company is building out its unit as an office and creating a ground-floor event space).

Meanwhile, in May, the Miami-based Monument Capital Management, A-Rod Corp.’s multifamily arm, launched its fourth residential fund focused on workforce housing with the majority of the roughly $50 million it raised coming from family offices and high-net-worth individuals, including fellow professional athletes (though he declined to name any).

It’s planning to buy about $200 million worth of real estate and has already closed on properties in Illinois and Tennessee with a third under contract in North Carolina. And it’s looking to launch a fifth fund, for $100 million, in 2020.

Workforce housing has been “one of the best places to take your money” because it has “tremendous yield and protective downside,” he said, during one of two interviews with TRD last month. The first of those conversations was at partner Stonehenge NYC’s Manhattan office, the second at his sprawling 11,000 square-foot Florida home, which has an indoor basketball court and where his art collection is on display.

In Miami, Rodriguez’s company is also investing in at least two developments, the Fairchild Coconut Grove, a boutique condo project, and a 31-story rental tower at 40 Northwest Third Street, the latter with Grand Station Partners.

On the New York front, last December, Adam Modlin, Rodriguez’s personal broker in New York, introduced him to Stonehenge CEO Ofer Yardeni and, six months later, the trio announced a partnership to buy rental buildings and condos in the Big Apple. They’re now in contract on their first deal: A 100-plus-unit rental building on East 51st Street in Manhattan.

The partners will be tapping their personal networks to raise about $500 million and then leverage that to buy $1 billion worth of value-add multifamily real estate in the city in the next 18 months, said Yardeni.

“Collaborating with [Rodriguez] will be extremely beneficial to all of us,” Yardeni said, noting that Rodriguez has a “tremendous network and an excellent reputation.”

“The vast network that he has can help Stonehenge go and raise capital from family officers, high-net-worth individuals and more institutional players because when Alex calls, everybody listens,” Yardeni added.

Modlin also gushed about Rodriguez, saying the retired Yankee has been “thinking about investing in New York City multifamily for years” and that he “brings a secret sauce.”

“Alex is a partner that anyone would dream to have,” Modlin said.

The 44-year-old Rodriguez — who just sold a home in Los Angeles (which he bought from Meryl Streep) for $4.4 million and unloaded a $17.5 million pad at 432 Park Avenue — spends about half the month in Miami. The other half is spent jet setting on his Gulfstream IV to New York, L.A. or wherever else his broadcasting responsibilities take him.

Below is an edited and condensed version of his conversations with TRD — which were more focused on real estate stats than baseball stats.

You made your first real estate purchase in your early 20s, only a few years into playing for the Seattle Mariners. Tell us about that deal. It was a duplex out of Miami. The reason I liked the investment was because it was 10 minutes from Miami Beach and 10 minutes from Coral Gables and it was near the water. I needed around $48,000 [for the] down payment. I was very nervous about it. It was near the Miami arena. My thesis for the investment was very simple — it was around fear. I felt that if I bought some real estate that over time, if I signed a 15- to 20-year note, that by the time I was 30 or 40 I would have a handful of assets with very little debt. That was my answer to not going bankrupt, owning hard assets.

So, is that why you initially got into real estate? You said you didn’t want to go bankrupt. That’s all I’ve ever known. I always say, stick to what you’re passionate about and what you know. Coming from a single mother, all we knew was renting. We never bought anything. I envisioned one day as a young man that if I got an opportunity to trade places with a landlord that I would.

Alex Rodriguez (center) with Adam Modlin (left) and Ofer Yardeni

Do you only purchase multifamily? We’re really focused. Yes, I play sports. But I play baseball. Yes, I play real estate, but I play multifamily. … I’d say [our] average is Class B properties. There’s always an added-value component to them.

You spent the majority of your baseball career on the Yankees under Joe Torre and Joe Girardi. What did you learn from them about running and managing an organization? Joe Torre and Joe Girardi were both great managers. They both held me accountable. They expected you to show up early and leave late and they did not micromanage. Joe Girardi was more hands on, and Joe Torre was more like the Godfather. I remember one time I was struggling and Joe Torre brought me into his office. He thought I was overworking. I was nervous because it was 2004 and it was my first year as a Yankee and they have this incredible history with so many championships. I thought he was going to be mad and really get upset with me and he said ‘Look, I think you’re pressing too much. If you turn around, there’s a beautiful bottle of wine, Silver Oak and next to it a cigar.’ He said, ‘I want you to go home, drink that bottle of wine.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m not much of a drinker of wine.’ He said, ‘Drink it and have a cigar, and come back, tomorrow’s game is at 7. If you show up before 6 o’clock I will fine you. So just show up and play.’ It made me so nervous to show up to the park so late. Usually, you’re there five or six hours before the game. [But] I show up around 6 o’clock. That night, I go out and hit a home run. The next night I go out and hit two home runs and off I went and finished that season very strong.

You went straight to the Mariners from high school, forgoing a scholarship to the University of Miami. Have you considered going back to school and getting any degrees? I’ve always thought about it. Joe Girardi always said that I was a teacher and a student at heart. And I think he’s right. I love to learn. I’m constantly trying to educate. I’ve been self-taught because I didn’t have any formal education. But I wouldn’t rule it out.

Does your team scout out opportunities and bring them to you? How involved are you in the whole process? I mean if you talk to Lane LaMure, Jeff Lee, Lisa Peier and Erin Knight [from my team], they’d probably tell you I’m involved too much. But I think that as we scale, we have to really count on our team. Ideas and opportunities come from all over the place.

How big is the company? It’s fluctuated. We were at one point 10,000 apartments. Today we might fluctuate by 3,000 to 6,000 depending on whether we’re buying or selling. We feel that it’s fairly late in the cycle right now. We take the philosophy that we sell 3,000 but we buy 1,000.

Are you worried about a recession? Are you preparing for that? We’re definitely in a defensive mode. We have our feet on the brakes a little bit. We made the decision about three years ago to start selling some of our portfolios and preparing for an opportunity. So, while we’re still buying, we’re cautious.

You’re investing in Chicago, New York and Miami. What other cities are you eyeing right now? We like to buy, fix [and] refinance. We’ve had a lot of success in secondary and tertiary markets, especially in the southeast. North Carolina has been great. We’ve had a lot of success in Texas. Chicago has been an incredible investment for us. … We’re very fortunate to have [Monument’s Chief Investment Officer] Stuart Zook leading the way. He’s always identifying new markets. Interesting markets where we haven’t been before are Tucson, Reno, Portland and Seattle. As we kind of move into the West Coast for the first time, it’s been a fun process. [Zook is] really good about picking what’s next. He’s got some great cities up his sleeve.

I read that you know Warren Buffet. What’s the best advice he’s given you? One of the lessons learned from Warren Buffet has been to do what you absolutely love to do with the people you love and respect. One of the interesting things I found with Warren is that he’s 89 and to this day, he’s still putting in six days of work. He’s in the office every day at 7:30. He reads five to eight hours a day.

Who else do you look up to in the real estate industry? I look up to Stuart Zook. I feel incredibly fortunate that I met him almost 11 years ago. I thought it was the biggest break of my [business] career to find a guy that’s managed over $2 billion in assets over the course of his career and who understands the game so well. Someone who’s extremely ethical and incredibly conservative. We do this all the time [head butting motion] because I want to buy, and he says ‘No, no, no.’ That’s why he’s a much better investor than I am and why our returns have been incredible. He’s like Ted Williams. If it’s not right down the middle, center cut … he does have Buffet-esque discipline. I wish mine could be that good. But I’m a little more aggressive.

Does being a celebrity works against you in business? It’s a great question. As an athlete, there’s a gift and a curse. Sometimes, people celebrate and take the meeting. But for the most part, they’re thinking that you’re just an athlete. So I think part of what you have to do as an athlete is surround yourself with institutional-type investors with incredible background so a) they understand that your infrastructure and your team is one that can play at the big-league level and b) be one that can actually follow through and do the things they say they can.

There were reports that you are launching a business reality show in the same vein as “Shark Tank” on NBC. What can you tell us about it? We can’t talk much about the business show, but we’re very excited about and it has a little bit of a “Shark Tank” twist.

You told a crowd at a 2018 real estate convention that J.Lo loves real estate and has a “superpower to see what’s good and what’s not.” Do you guys talk about real estate and do you have plans to invest in any projects together? Jennifer loves residential real estate. I love commercial real estate. So, we make a good team there. She has impeccable taste, obviously. When you walk into her home, it’s always impeccable, smells good and is always in great neighborhood.

You two recently sold your condo at 432 Park. Why did you sell? Was it an investment decision or a personal decision? It was a trade. We love the building. We went in, we bought it. We have a big family — we didn’t fit. We needed a little bit more space.

Are you looking for a new apartment in New York City? I wouldn’t say so. We’re happy.

You announced your engagement to J.Lo in March. When’s the wedding? Now that was a nice pivot. We went from New York real estate to the wedding. Why don’t we go back to New York real estate?

How did you first meet Adam Modlin and how did you make the jump from broker-client to business partners? I met Adam over 25 years ago over at Bergdorf Goodman when he was selling suits. I knew I was going to like Adam from the get-go because the suit cost $500 and he tried to sell it to me for $5,000. I said this guy’s a pretty good salesman. Adam Modlin is a savant when it comes to New York real estate.

What about Ofer Yardeni? I met Ofer through Adam. I met him in South Florida over dinner [at Prime 112 in Miami Beach]. We quickly hit it off. Then we set a meeting together that lasted three days on the West Coast. My partner, Lane LaMure, came out. Adam came out. Over the course of two or three days we put together what we thought was a really great idea to buy real estate in New York City. Ofer has an incredible background. He served in the Israeli military. … He has a great family, great morals, great ethics and great background. He brings that intensity from his [military] background. He’s up every day at 4 a.m., he’s working out by 5, in the office by 6:30 or 7. With my background in New York, it’s always been a dream of mine to own real estate [there]. It’s the best real estate in the world. To have an operator who essentially is like Michael Jordan in his space … I thought it would be a great partnership.

Principal of Monument Capital Management Stuart Zook and executive vice president Erin Knight

When do you plan to make your first NYC investments? We’re close to having a letter of intent for an asset right here in Manhattan. It’s a great opportunity for us. It’s rentals and it’s in Manhattan.

Where else do you see potential in New York? Around Yankees Stadium or around Citi Field in Willets Point and Flushing? I think that there’s upside around Yankee Stadium and around the Mets [at Citi Field]. I think both have a lot of upside. Anywhere in New York City, you have the potential. … But I think for this particular venture, we’re really focused on Manhattan.

A-Rod Corp. is moving to a condo in Coconut Grove. One your execs, Erin Knight, said the firm is bullish on the area. Are you planning any other investments there? Well, Erin Knight is from Miami and she went to school right down the street at Ransom Everglades. So, we ended up buying this beautiful office space. The kids go to school nearby and right across the street we’re developing about 27 apartments in a place called the Fairchild Coconut Grove, which is right on the water. We’re very bullish when it comes to Coconut Grove. In five or seven or 10 years, you’re not going to be able to recognize Coconut Grove. It’s going to be awesome.

Where else in Miami? We’re developing about 31 stories, 300 units in downtown Miami. We love rentals and it’s just a place that’s on fire. I love Coral Gables, Coconut Grove, Miami Beach. I wish I was spending more time in Miami

I read that $20 million of the $50 million you raised for that fund came from high-net-worth individuals. Have you tapped any other athletes or celebrities? We’re very diversified. They come from the private equity world, hedge funds and entertainment. We have probably a dozen athletes that have come on board. One of the things I’m very proud of with our LPs [limited partners] is that over 95 percent of anybody who’s come in has never left us. They just keep doubling, tripling down.

What advice do you give to young athletes who want to invest in real estate or start their own business? Do you get that question? Yeah, I do. We have several dozen athletes that have invested with us, and every single one of them has come back for more. [I say] ‘I made mistakes, just like I made mistakes in baseball. I had some failures, that’s part of it. But I think never trying to be involved, that’s also a mistake.’ Even if you’re not interested, you have to be interested in protecting your future. I think you have a responsibility to yourself and a fiduciary duty to your family. … Real estate, with the right partner, is a great hedge to the W2 income you earn as an athlete. While your career earnings potential downgrades, your real estate appreciates. The No. 1 thing I would say is find a great partner. … No. 2, find yourself a great lawyer [who can] structure deals in a way that you have downside protection and you’re not putting yourself out there. No. 3, I would say, never personally guarantee. No PG for an athlete. So many people have gotten hurt like that. And then fourth, I would say, find [a deal where] everybody has skin in the game.

Have they been happy with their investments? The greatest thing for me is when I send them their returns. I’ll send them an email, and they’ll call me right away. They’re like, ‘What? Are you serious?’ It makes me happy because a) it’s interesting to them and b) they’re connected and they have some passion behind it. And athletes are really smart people. … They just need a little financial coaching, financial literacy. But once they get it and they’re confident, they’re quick learners. They just have to have people that look out for them.

Is there someone who did that for you? I’ve always had a passion for it. And then I looked up to some of my buddies like Magic Johnson, Greg Norman, Arnold Palmer, Pat Riley. All of them became friends and mentors. I really think that for athletes, picking great mentors is an incredible way to go. Almost like picking a board of advisers as diverse as you could think of — from age to gender to skill set. One thing that’s always going to be true is that you’re going to come into some challenges and choices. To be able to have a handful of people that you’ve very carefully put together, it’s so powerful. For me it’s been incredibly powerful to have people in the tech space, to have strong women, to have people in finance, to have people in sports. I can’t just have five athletes on my board.

Do you see opportunities in esports and other types of entertainment from a real estate angle? We own a big stake in NRG eSports in San Francisco. We’re building a new arena for them in SF, which we’re very excited about. We’re bullish about the space. When you think about esports in general, there’s more kids today playing esports than physical sports. While it’s great for the business of esports, it’s scary for the next generation.

How much cash do you have in your pocket? I have zero cash in my pocket. My money is in real estate. Why, do you want some of my money?

How do you manage your time? You’re extremely busy. I would say that it’s a blend between running A-Rod Corp. [and] media obligations. First and foremost is obviously being with my family and the kids.

Is this the busiest you’ve ever been? For sure. I thought I was busy when I played baseball. Even with baseball there’s a predictable schedule every day. This changes every day.

Do you still have an intense workout schedule? I try everywhere I go to get a workout in. I try every day to break a sweat, especially when I travel. I try to incorporate hot yoga. It relaxes me, it’s like meditation.

If you didn’t have baseball or real estate, what would you be doing? I think private equity. I love building things. I like curating great teams. I love to see other young people win and make a lot of money. There’s nothing that makes me happier than to see people on my team the first time they make a million dollars. It’s life changing. Coming from team sports, you just love to win with teammates. I don’t think it’s a lot of fun to win by yourself. What fun is it to get rich alone? That sucks. You want to share the pie a bit. What happens is when everyone tastes that champagne or how sweet the cake is, then everyone gets to the office at 6:30 in the morning instead of 7:30. And now you’re looking at the next deal, and the next deal. The power of alignment is everything.

What do you want people to know about you that they don’t already? I feel like they know a lot. One, that I’m a terrible cook and an even worse dancer. Other things they probably don’t know is that I enjoy business just as much as I enjoy sports … and I go at business just like the way I approach sports. You’re only as good as your team — you’re an average of the five people you surround yourself with every day.

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Overlooked No More: Lillian Harris Dean, Culinary Entrepreneur Known as ‘Pig Foot Mary’

This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.

It’s fall, maybe October, in the early 1900s. On a bustling Manhattan street corner, Lillian Harris Dean stands in a starched gingham dress, her fingers resting on the handlebar of a baby carriage.

“Pig’s feet!” she cries to passing neighbors, as she does in a play about her life written by Daniel Carlton. “A taste of down home for your weary bones.”

From the baby carriage — an early version of a food truck perhaps — Harris Dean sold traditional Southern meals: fried chicken, corn and, of course, pig’s feet. Her cooking soothed the palates of African-American transplants who, like her, had come to the unfamiliar metropolis in the purgatorial period between Reconstruction and the Great Migration.

She eventually built a name and a fortune as a culinary entrepreneur and as a landlord, squarely planting herself in the history of Harlem. Before long her neighbors christened her “Pig Foot Mary,” the Madonna of the sidewalk.

“People talk about seizing an opportunity and finding a market — she did all of that,” Jessica B. Harris, a food historian and cookbook writer, said in a phone interview. She wrote about Harris Dean in “High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America” (2011).

Harris Dean used her cooking as a path toward financial independence, taking hold of an informal culinary economy that has historically provided opportunities to women of color, from African-American caterers in the 1700s to churro sellers in today’s subways.

She marketed her food by tapping into the nostalgia of her customers, offering them a tether to the culture they missed as they tried to forget the legacy of slavery and servitude they had left behind.

“What she was doing,” Harris said, “was bringing the people the food of memory — the things they remember, the things they know.”

Lillian Harris was born in the Mississippi Delta between 1870 and 1873, according to a 1929 obituary published in The New York Age, a local African-American newspaper. Her parents were also born in Mississippi, census records show.

After the end of slavery, Harris “drifted into New York penniless” in 1901, the prominent black journalist Roi Ottley wrote in “Springtime in Harlem,” an article he published in his 1943 book “New World A-Coming: Inside Black America.”

She saved her first $5 while working as a maid in New York, polishing floors and shaking out sheets. With her savings she bought a secondhand baby carriage, a 59-cent tin boiler and a charcoal stove. She set up shop each day on a corner near Columbus Circle, alternating between the only two cotton dresses she owned.

“From the beginning, Miss Harris exercised care and cleanliness,” The Age said of her in a profile in 1923. “Everything about it was spotlessly clean, including her own poor garments.”

Soon, she traded in the baby carriage for a portable steam table that she had designed herself. After two years, she moved her business to Amsterdam Avenue between 61st and 62nd streets, where she stayed for 11 years. Business blossomed. She went from selling a dozen pigs’ feet a day to more than 100 a day and 325 on Saturdays. Though her cooking methods are lost to time, she most likely first boiled the pigs’ feet, which are similar in consistency to sausage, and then served them fried.

“As many as 25 customers have stood in line at her stand waiting to be served,” The Age wrote, adding that “she had people eating pigs’ feet who never ate pigs’ feet before.”

People came from as far away as New Jersey and Long Island just to try her cooking, the newspaper wrote.

In 1908, Lillian Harris married John Dean, an educated man from Lynchburg, Va., who had been a postal worker and owned a newsstand.

As Harlem became a hub for the thinkers, musicians and artists of the emerging Harlem Renaissance, she moved her business there in 1917 and worked on the corner of 135th and what is now Malcolm X Boulevard for 16 years. Like the famous street vendor in “The Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel and ode to Harlem, the smell of her cooking gave them a sense of belonging.

“She was saying to people, ‘This is your place,’” said Psyche Williams-Forson, the chairwoman of American Studies at the University of Maryland. “This street corner, this city, this part of the world. This is your place.” Williams-Forson wrote about Harris Dean in “Building Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, & Power” (2006).

Carlton’s play “Pigfoot Mary Says Goodbye to the Harlem Renaissance” was presented in 2011 by the Negro Ensemble Company and produced by the Metropolitan Playhouse. Benja Kay Thomas played the title character. Written entirely in verse, the play takes place on Harris Dean’s last day on the corner as she says goodbye to friends.

In researching her life, Carlton said in an interview, he found that Harris Dean “was somebody who talked to both the domestic workers and the people who were creating the culture.”

Around the corner from her stand, he said, A’Lelia Walker, the daughter of the beauty entrepreneur Madame C.J. Walker, hosted elaborate dinner parties as part of her Dark Tower salon.

“People like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston would come out of these fancy dinners and probably want some pig feet, some chitlins, some hog maws,” Carlton said.

Pig Foot Mary was also a minor character in “Hoodlum,” a 1997 film about Harlem in the 1920s starring Laurence Fishburne and Vanessa Williams. Harris Dean was played by Loretta Devine.

Using the money from her successful stand, Harris Dean switched her focus to real estate, buying buildings and renting apartments during what became known as Harlem’s gold rush.

Most notably, she bought a five-story apartment building on the corner of 137th and Lenox Avenue for about $40,000 (about $650,000 today) and rented the units to tenants. She sold it six years later to an undertaker for $72,000 (about $1 million today).

“She couldn’t read or write, but she could sure count her money,” Regina Abraham, who wrote “Pig Foot Mary: The Saga of Lillian Harris,” a children’s book published in 2011, said in an interview.

Harris Dean owned several other buildings around Harlem, renting and selling them as the neighborhood grew. One property she owned became a residence for the Young Woman’s Christian Association.

Today her buildings have become Harlem Hospital, a Salvation Army complex and St. Mark the Evangelist Church. And on the Harlem corner where she once sold pigs’ feet stands the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, an outpost of the New York Public Library.

Harris Dean became a philanthropist later in life. In 1927 she gained attention for cooking “an old fashion pig foot dinner” for the Working Women’s League. An article in The Age about the event described her as “one of the wealthiest women in Harlem.”

She left New York in 1923 and traveled for six months, stopping in places like Yellowstone National Park and Los Angeles, The Age wrote.

She died, on July 16, 1929, in Los Angeles while visiting friends. By then she had amassed a fortune of $375,000 (about $5.5 million today).

Her body was brought back to New York, and hundreds came to the funeral. The Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Sr., the pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church and the father of the future congressman, gave her eulogy, praising her for “her business ability, her thrift and her desire to help her race.”

Jack Begg contributed research.

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