#also I have a commission to finish that a friend paid for LAST NOVEMBER

[biromanticbooknook]

My Most Ambitious Crossover

I got bored by posting only my second gen Amazon AU, so I’ll get back to that tomorrow, but enjoy this one-shot about Chloe and Marinette creating their own trip instead of their class trip in the meantime. Can’t have you all thinking I’m a one-trick pony, can I?

“-and that’s why we think you shouldn’t go on the trip this year.” Mlle. Bustier tried to look apologetic, but it was as much her idea as the students. Between Marinette refusing to set an example and Chloe associating with her, neither of them deserved to go.

“Oh, thank goodness. I was afraid I would have to get my daddy to donate 30% of the funds like he does every year.”

“I’m just glad I don’t have to take 60% of the trip funds out of my commission profits. That will give me a much bigger budget for fabric and accessories.” Everyone blanched at the statements of the 2 girls. They were saying that they paid for 90% of the trip every year, but that couldn’t be right. They worked so hard on fundraisers every year, they must be lying about how much they contribute.

Marinette just ignored them, turning to her seatmate. “Do you think that our other friends would want to go on a trip with us? Most classes take their trips during May, so we could leave at the beginning of June and take the entire summer.”

“Nice thinking, Maribug. With fewer people, prices go down and we can afford more bang for our buck.” They walk out of the classroom, discussing who to ask and when.

The class just made a big mistake.

-----

By the time the weekend rolled around, Marinette and Chloe had their group list finalized. The people going on their trip were themselves, Luka, Kagami, Aurore, Mireille, and Marc. They got together and started brainstorming fundraisers.

Marinette started. “There are the given examples; you know, car wash, bake sale, raffle. What else?”

“We could host a show.” Luka suggested.

“Like an exhibition?” Marinette asked. “We could have you perform, Kagami do a fencing demonstration, and I could do a small fashion show, using Chloe and Marc as models. Aurore and Mireille could be our MCs.”

“To capitalize on money-making, we could sell tickets, food and drink, and merch for Luka’s solo career as well as commission spots for our resident designer.”

“That’s good.” Marinette starts scribbling in the shared notebook.

“At Le Grande Paris, we could host parties. I know days when the grand ballroom is open. We could host an auction, sell lessons and creations and stuff. We could also host a masquerade ball that we sell tickets for. We could charge for food and drink. The pools are open for private reservation quite often, we could have parties there too.” Chloe takes the notebook and starts writing down her ideas, mapping out all the resources needed while muttering.

“We could also host a carnival or a gaming tournament in the ballroom.” Kagami looked thoughtful. “I’ve never actually been to one.”

Chloe added that to the list. “Should we do anything else?”

“We could start a go-fund-me. Artists and writers do it all the time to get their creations off the ground.” Marc murmured.

“That would be great. What’s our goal for this entire endeavor?”

“Our goal, Maribug, is €45,000. That should cover travel, boarding, tours, food, and souvenirs. Whatever we don’t spend gets redistributed to the group.” Chloe supplies.

“Then that should be it. Nice job, guys!”

“My, what a whirlwind of a planning session. I hope nothing rains on our parade. I wonder weather Mlle. Bustier’s class is doing this well.” Aurore beams at them.

“Mm-hmm.” Mireille agrees with Aurore.

“Probably not. Our classmates couldn’t pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel. They’ll just listen to Lila that the boot will empty by itself through the toe because ‘I worked on patenting this boot’, then they’ll get mad at the boot for not doing it.” Chloe chuckles dryly.

“Be nice.” Marinette reprimands half-heartedly.

-----

Chloe immediately filed the paperwork with the school board so they could go on their trip with no safety or legal concerns. She recruited Mme. Mendeleiev and M. D'Argencourt to be their chaperones, who were more than happy to go on an all-expenses-paid trip to Los Angeles, Star City, Central City, Metropolis, Gotham, New York City, and Tokyo.

They had their first fundraiser at the end of September, a pool party at Le Grande Paris. Even Mlle. Bustier’s class attended, though they didn’t know who had set it up, only that Luka was performing. They hadn’t even started their planning  yet. The group made €3,041.

The next was a car wash in the middle of October. It was cool enough for a car wash to be pleasant while being warm enough that everyone was still out and about. They earned €2,632. Bustier's class was getting ice cream and listening to Lila brag.

They then had an All Hallow’s Eve bake sale, complete with candy decoration reminiscent of the American holiday. They earned €1,800.

During November, they held a carnival, with a full fall theme. It was wildly popular with families from all over Paris, earning them €6,483. It was around this time that Mlle. Bustier’s class held a bake sale, and earned €1,594. They celebrated.

Throughout the holiday season, they took advantage of peoples’ spirit. They held a raffle throughout the 12 Days of Christmas, while also holding a bake sale the day before winter break. Overall, they earned €10,749.

Over winter break, Chloe bought plane tickets and reserved tours and hotels, so all that was left was to get money for the tours and food. They were over halfway to their goal.

During January, they rented a theater, and held their exhibition. They had a crowd of fencing enthusiasts, rock music lovers, and fashion followers. They made €5,830.

They held a date auction and a masquerade to celebrate Valentine’s Day. It was amazing, and they earned €7,284.

They had checked their go-fund-me, and had found that €10,000 was there, putting them €2,819 over their goal. They were ecstatic!

They still held the gaming tournament at the end of April, but let it be free for everyone to enjoy as their celebration of reaching their goal.

-----

Mlle. Butsier’s class had made €7,000 over their 3 fundraisers, and they were pretty proud of themselves. No doubt they would be going somewhere much better than whatever Maribrat and Chloe have planned. Once the girls walked into the classroom, the class started to brag.

“We’ve finished fundraising!”

Marinette smiled and decided to be nice to them. “Cool. Where are you going?”

“We are going to New York City.”

Chloe was not as kind. “Oh, so are we! It was so hard to raise the €45,000 needed for our trip, but we did it. It was so euphoric to meet our goal. How much did you guys raise?”

“We made €7,000.” The smiles slowly slipped off the faces of the class. “What do you mean the €45,000 needed?”

“Well, we needed to cover food, travel, boarding, and tours, and that was just for the 7 of us. I can’t imagine what the budget would’ve been like for an entire class.” Her smile got an edge, like a lioness who knew she had cornered her prey.

Her classmates blanched. “What was our budget, Alya?” Rose looked towards their new class representative, hoping that she had an answer.

“We never had one.”

“Well, at least you filed the paperwork right?”

“What paperwork?”

Marinette responded this time. “The paperwork needed to go on a trip. You were supposed to submit it to the school board for approval of safety and legality. It was on page 17 of the packet I gave you at the beginning of the year. Didn’t you read it, Alya?”

“I-I-no. Lila said that was just extra work that you had given me to throw me off my game. She said you didn’t actually need to do all of that.”

“I didn’t know that Lila had more experience being a class representative than me and Marinette, the only 2 people who have ever been class representative here.” Chloe’s voice became as sharp and sweet as her smile. “Well, have fun with your trip. Marinette and I have to do last-minute checks on our arrangements.”

The class looked at the people that had carried them the previous years, and realized how much they relied on the girls. Lila was cursing herself for pushing away the only people who actually did anything in this class.

-----

The class ended up going to Disneyland Paris, and tried their best to look as upbeat as possible on their social medias. Meanwhile, The group was having the time of their lives.

They stayed in LA for 2 weeks, visiting movie sets and meeting actors. They spent another week just going on everything at Disneyland and California Adventure.

They then spent a week in Star City, touring Queen Industries and having a meet and greet with Oliver Queen and his ward, Roy Harper, who seemed to enjoy Aurore’s outgoing personality. They even saw the vigilantes.

They spent another 2 weeks in Central City, touring STAR Labs and watching the rogues try to fight the Flash family. It was the most meta-filled city in the world, and They toured a forensics lab with Bart Allen. Chloe seemed grimly pleased with seeing the bodies. She might’ve been projecting certain people onto them, not that she would ever admit it.

2 weeks in Metropolis was really fun. They toured the Daily Planet with Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Mireille was amazed by what you could do to report without having to be in front of a screen. They made a scavenger hunt of how many Supers they could find, and they found 2 different superboys. Lex Corp also gave them a tour, although it was more professional than the tour of the Daily Planet.

They spent 1 week in Gotham. They toured Wayne Enterprises and stayed out of the Bats’ way. Luka got the phone number of Tim Drake. Marinette enjoyed the inspiration that the gothic architecture brought her. There wasn’t much of a nightlife scene, considering only fools stay out after dark in Gotham.

Their 1 week in New York City was hectic. The Avengers were all at the tower when they were touring with Pepper Potts by Chloe’s request. Chloe might’ve been unofficially adopted by Tony Stark when she stood up to them and made them ‘cease their bullshit’. The Black Widow also took a liking to the girl. They also ran into these weird teens muttering about monsters when they were waiting for the elevator at the Empire State Building.

2 weeks in Tokyo. Their last stop. They visited the prestigious Ouran Academy, the host club getting Marc to come out of their shell by constantly helping boost his self-esteem. Chloe enjoyed talking business and finances with Kyoya Ootori. Kagami led them all in a traditional tea ceremony, before they all stormed the streets to try the unfamiliar street food.

Marinette ended up being unofficially adopted by 3 heroes, 2 rogues, and 5 billionaires. She was happy getting to spend 7 weeks on the road with only her closest friends.

The class was incredibly jealous of the trip their classmates took. They hoped next year they could go on a trip like that as well, but they had missed their shot.

#maribat #marvelous ladybug #allusion to #pjo #ohshc #marinette dupain cheng #chloe bourgeois #caline bustier #luka couffaine #kagami tsuguri #marc anciel #aurore beauréal #mireille caquet #mendeleiev #d'argencourt #lila rossi #rose lavillant #alya cesaire #oliver queen #roy harper #bart allen #clark kent #lois lane #tim drake #pepper potts #tony stark #natasha romanov #kyoya ootori #i tagged every character i referred to by name and it took me like five minutes #alternate trip

[theculturedmarxist]

Below is the story of my day touring Tema with Prince Philip, in this chapter from my book “The Catholic Orangemen of Togo”. You may be surprised to read that I rather liked him.

The African Queen

One morning I was sitting in the lounge at Devonshire House, with its fitted wool carpets and chintz sofas. I was drinking the tea that our steward, Nasser, had brought me. I heard movement in a corner of the room, and thought it must be Nasser cleaning there. But looking round, I saw nobody. Puzzled, I got up and walked towards that corner. Rounding a settee, I nearly stood upon a thin, green snake. About four feet long and just the thickness of your thumb, it was a bright, almost lime green colour. There was not much wedge shape to its head, which rather tapered from its neck. Its tongue was flickering toward me, perhaps a foot away, its head raised only slightly off the floor. I took a step backwards. In response it too retreated, at surprising speed, and zipped up the inside of the curtains.

I stood stock still and yelled “Nasser! Nasser!” This brought Nasser hurrying into the living room with Gloria, the cook. “Nasser, there’s a snake in the curtains!” Nasser and Gloria screamed, threw their arms in the air, and ran together into the kitchen and out the back door of the house. This was not altogether helpful.

I remained where I was to keep an eye on the snake, not wanting it to be lurking inside the house unseen. After a while the front door opened and somebody, presumably Nasser, threw in Nasser’s scruffy little dog. The dog was normally banned from the house, and celebrated this unexpected turn of events by immediately urinating against the hall table. Then the dog too ran into the kitchen and out of the back door.

Abandoning my watch, I went out and recruited the reluctant gardeners and gate guards. They armed themselves with long sticks and came in and beat the curtains until the snake fell onto the floor. As it sped for cover under a sofa, Samuel the youngest gardener got in a solid blow, and soon everyone was joining in, raining down blows on the twitching snake. They carried its disjointed body out on the end of a stick, and burnt it on a bonfire.

Everyone identified it as a green mamba. I was sceptical. Green mambas are among the world’s deadliest snakes, and I imagined them to look beefy like cobras, not whip thin and small headed like this. But a search on the agonisingly slow internet showed that indeed it did look very like a green mamba.

The important question arose of how it had entered the house. With air conditioning, the doors and windows were usually shut. Nasser seemed to have solved the mystery when he remarked that a dead one had been found last year inside an air conditioner. The unit had stopped working, and when they came to fix it they found a snake jammed in the mechanism. That seemed the answer; it had appeared just under a conditioner, and it seemed likely the slim snake had entered via the vent pipe, avoiding the fan as it crawled through the unit.

This was very worrying. If anti-venom was available (and we held a variety in the High Commission) an adult would probably survive a green mamba bite. But it would almost certainly be fatal to Emily, and possibly to Jamie.

A week or so later, I was constructing Emily’s climbing frame, which had arrived from the UK. A rambling contraption of rungs, slides, platforms and trampolines, it required the bolting together of scores of chrome tubes. I was making good progress on it and, as I lifted one walkway side into position above my head, a mamba slid out of the end of the tube, down my arm, round my belly and down my leg. It did this in no great hurry; it probably took four seconds, but felt like four minutes.

There was one terrible moment when it tried an exploratory nuzzle of its head into the waistband of my trousers, but luckily it decided to proceed down the outside to the ground. It then zig zagged across the lawn to nestle in the exposed tops of the roots of a great avocado tree. Again the mob arrived and beat it to death with sticks. I persuaded them to keep the body this time, and decided that definite action was needed.

I called in a pest control expert. I was advised to try the “Snake Doctor”. I was a bit sceptical, equating “Snake Doctor” with “Witch Doctor”, but when he arrived I discovered that this charming chubby Ghanaian really did have a PhD in Pest Control from the University of Reading. As Fiona had an MSc in Crop Protection from the same Department, they got on like a house on fire and it was difficult to get them away from cups of tea to the business in hand.

He confirmed that the dead snake really was a green mamba. We obviously had a colony. They lived in trees, and he advised us to clear an area of wasteland beyond the boundaries of our house, and build a high boundary wall of rough brick at the back, rather than the existing iron palings. He also suggested we cut down an avenue of some 16 huge mature trees along the drive. I was very sad, but followed this sensible advice. That removed the mamba problem from Devonshire House. But I continued to attract mambas on my travels around Ghana.

The second half of that first year in Ghana was to be almost entirely taken up with preparations for the State Visit of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh in November 1999. A huge amount of work goes into organising such a visit; every move is staged and choreographed, designed for media effect. You need to know in advance just where everybody is going to be, who will move where when, and what they will say. You need to place and organise the media to best advantage. You need to stick within very strict rules as to what the Queen will or will not do. Most difficult of all, you have to agree all this with the host government.

I had been through it all quite recently, having paid a major part in the organisation of the State Visit to Poland in 1996. That had gone very well. The Poles regarded it as an important symbol that communism had been definitively finished. It was visually stunning, and at a time when the Royal Family was dogged with hostile media coverage, it had been their first unmixed positive coverage in the UK for ages. I had handled the media angles, and my stock stood very high in the Palace.

I am a republican personally; I was just doing my job. The Palace staff knew I was a republican, not least because I had turned down the offer of being made a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order (LVO) after the Warsaw visit. I had earlier turned down the offer to be an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) after the first Gulf war.

Rawlings was delighted that the Queen was coming. He craved respectability and acceptance in the international community, which had been hard to come by after his violent beginnings. But he had turned his Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) into a political party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), and had fought elections in 1992 and 1996 against the opposition New Patriotic Party, which had an unbroken tradition running back to Nkrumah’s opponent J B Danquah and his colleague Kofi Busia. There were widespread allegations of vote-rigging, violence and intimidation, and certainly in 1992 the nation was still too cowed to engage in much open debate.

Even by 1999, social life was still inhibited by the fact that nobody except those close to the Rawlings would do anything that might be construed as an ostentatious display of life, while Rawlings had sustained and inflated the personality cult of Nkrumah still further (he is known as Osagyefo, “the conqueror”.) Open discussion of the disasters Nkrumah brought upon Ghana was almost impossible. It is still difficult for many Ghanaians today, after decades of brainwashing. As Rawlings had gradually liberalised society, the increasing freedom of the media, particularly the FM radio station, was giving a great boost to democracy. But there was still much prudent self-censorship. The media was particularly reticent about investigating governmental corruption.

The NDC government was massively corrupt. There was one gratuitous example which especially annoyed me. A company called International Generics, registered in Southampton, had got loans totalling over £30 million from the Royal Bank of Scotland to construct two hotels, La Palm and Coco Palm. One was on the beach next to the Labadi Beach Hotel, the other on Fourth Circular Road in Cantonments, on the site of the former Star Hotel. The loan repayments were guaranteed by the Export Credit Guarantee Department, at the time a British government agency designed to insure UK exporters against loss. In effect the British taxpayer was underwriting the export, and if the loan defaulted the British taxpayer would pay.

In fact, this is what happened, and the file crossed my desk because the British people were now paying out on defaulted payments to the Royal Bank of Scotland. So I went to look at the two hotels. I found La Palm Hotel was some cleared land, some concrete foundations, and one eight room chalet without a roof. Coco Palm hotel didn’t exist at all. In a corner of the plot, four houses had been built by International Generics. As the housing market in Accra was very strong, these had been pre-sold, so none of the loan had gone into them.

I was astonished. The papers clearly showed that all £31.5 million had been fully disbursed by the Royal Bank of Scotland, against progress and completion certificates on the construction. But in truth there was virtually no construction. How could this have happened?

The Chief Executive of International Generics was an Israeli named Leon Tamman. He was a close friend to, and a front for, Mrs Rawlings. Tamman also had an architect’s firm, which had been signing off completion certificates for the non-existent work on the hotel. Almost all of the £30 million was simply stolen by Tamman and Mrs Rawlings.

The Royal Bank of Scotland had plainly failed in due diligence, having paid out on completion of two buildings, one not started and one only just started. But the Royal Bank of Scotland really couldn’t give a toss, because the repayments and interest were guaranteed by the British taxpayer. Indeed I seemed to be the only one who did care.

The Rawlings had put some of their share of this looted money towards payments on their beautiful home in Dublin. I wrote reports on all this back to London, and specifically urged the Serious Fraud Office to prosecute Tamman and Mrs Rawlings. I received the reply that there was no “appetite” in London for this.

Eventually La Palm did get built, but with over $60 million of new money taken this time from SSNIT, the Ghanaian taxpayers social security and pension fund. Coco Palm never did get built, but Tamman continued to develop it as a housing estate, using another company vehicle. Tamman has since died. The loans were definitively written off by the British government as part of Gordon Brown’s HIPC debt relief initiative.

That is but one example of a single scam, but it gives an insight into the way the country was looted. The unusual feature on this one was that the clever Mr Tamman found a way to cheat the British taxpayer, via Ghana. I still find it galling that the Royal Bank of Scotland also still got their profit, again from the British taxpayer.

So while the State Visit was intended as a reward to Jerry Rawlings for his conversion to democracy and capitalism, I had no illusions about Rawlings’ Ghana. I was determined that we should use the Queen’s visit to help ensure that Rawlings did indeed leave power in January 2001. According to the constitution, his second and final four year term as elected President expired then (if you politely ignored his previous decade as a military dictator). We should get the Queen to point him towards the exit.

Buckingham palace sent a team on an initial reconnaissance visit. It was led by an old friend of mine, Tim Hitchens, Assistant Private Secretary to the Queen, who had joined the FCO when I did. We identified the key features of the programme, which should centre around an address to Parliament. A walkabout might be difficult; Clinton had been almost crushed in Accra by an over-friendly crowd in a situation which got out of control. A school visit to highlight DFID’s work would provide the “meet the people” photo op, otherwise a drive past for the larger crowds. Key questions were identified as whether the Queen should visit Kumasi to meet Ghana’s most important traditional ruler, the Asantehene, and how she should meet the leader of the opposition, John Kufuor. Rawlings was likely to be opposed to both.

The recce visit went very well, and I held a reception for the team before they flew back to London. Several Ghanaian ministers came, and it ended in a very relaxed evening. Tim Hitchens commented that it was the first time he had ever heard Queen and Supertramp at an official function before. It turned out that we had very similar musical tastes.

Planning then took place at quite high intensity for several months. There were regular meetings with the Ghanaian government team tasked to organise the visit, headed by head of their diplomatic service Anand Cato, now Ghanaian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. We then had to visit together all the proposed venues, and walk through the proposed routes, order of events, seating plans etc.

From the very first meeting between the two sides, held in a committee room at the International Conference Centre, it soon became obvious that we had a real problem with Ian Mackley. The High Commissioner had been very high-handed and abrupt with the visiting team from Buckingham Palace, so much so that Tim Hitchens had asked me what was wrong. I said it was just his manner. But there was more to it than that.

In the planning meetings, the set-up did not help the atmosphere. There were two lines of desks, facing each other. The British sat on one side and the Ghanaians on the other, facing each other across a wide divide. The whole dynamic was one of confrontation.

I have sat through some toe-curling meetings before, but that first joint State visit planning meeting in Accra was the worst. It started in friendly enough fashion, with greetings on each side. Then Anand Cato suggested we start with a quick run-through of the programme, from start to finish. “OK, now will the Queen be arriving by British Airways or by private jet?” asked Anand. “She will be on one of the VC10s of the Royal Flight” said Ian. “Right, that’s better. The plane can pull up to the stand closest to the VIP lounge. We will have the convoy of vehicles ready on the tarmac. The stairs will be put to the door, and then the chief of protocol will go up the stairs to escort the Queen and her party down the stairs, where there will be a small reception party…” “No, hang on there” interjected Ian Mackley, “I will go up the stairs before the chief of protocol.” “Well, it is customary for the Ambassador or High Commissioner to be in the receiving line at the bottom of the aircraft steps.” “Well, I can tell you for sure that the first person the Queen will want to see when she arrives in the country will be her High Commissioner.” “Well, I suppose you can accompany the chief up the steps if you wish…” “And my wife.” “Pardon?” “My wife Sarah. She must accompany me up the steps to meet the Queen.” “Look, it really isn’t practical to have that many people going on to an already crowded plane where people are preparing to get off…” “I am sorry, but I must insist that Sarah accompanies me up the stairs and on to the plane.” “But couldn’t she wait at the bottom of the steps?” “Absolutely not. How could she stand there without me?” “OK, well can we then mark down the question of greeting on the plane as an unresolved issue for the next meeting?” “Alright, but our side insists that my wife…” “Yes, quite. Now at the bottom of the steps Her Majesty will be greeted by the delegated minister, and presented with flowers by children.” “Please make sure we are consulted on the choice of children.” “If you wish. There will be national anthems, but I suggest no formal inspection of the Guard of Honour? Then traditional priests will briefly make ritual oblations, pouring spirits on the ground. The Queen will briefly enter the VIP lounge to take a drink.” “That’s a waste of time. Let’s get them straight into the convoy and off.” “But High Commissioner, we have to welcome a visitor with a drink. It is an essential part of our tradition. It will only be very brief.” “You can do what you like, but she’s not entering the VIP lounge. Waste of time.” “Let’s mark that down as another issue to be resolved. Now then, first journey…”

The meeting went on for hours and hours, becoming increasingly ill tempered. When we eventually got to the plans for the State Banquet, it all went spectacularly pear-shaped as it had been threatening to do. “Now we propose a top table of eight. There will be the President and Mrs Rawlings, Her Majesty and the Duke of Edinburgh, The Vice President and Mrs Mills, and Mr and Mrs Robin Cook.” Ian positively went purple. You could see a vein throbbing at the top left of his forehead. He spoke as though short of breath. “That is not acceptable. Sarah and I must be at the top table”. “With respect High Commissioner, there are a great many Ghanaians who will feel they should be at the top table. As we are in Ghana, we feel we are being hospitable in offering equal numbers of British and Ghanaians at the top table. But we also think the best plan is to keep the top table small and exclusive.” “By all means keep it small,” said Ian, “but as High Commissioner I must be on it.” “So what do you suggest?” asked Anand. “Robin Cook” said Ian “He doesn’t need to be on the top table.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Neither could Anand. “I don’t think you are being serious, High Commissioner” he said. “I am entirely serious” said Ian. “I outrank Robin Cook. I am the personal representative of a Head of State. Robin Cook only represents the government.”

I decided the man had taken leave of his senses. I wondered at what stage can you declare your commanding officer mad and take over, like on The Cain Mutiny? Anand was obviously thinking much the same. “Perhaps I might suggest you seek instruction from headquarters on that one?” he asked. “Anyway, can we note that down as another outstanding item, and move on to…” I don’t know whether Ian secretly realised he had overstepped the mark, but he didn’t come to another planning meeting after that, leaving them to me and the very competent Second Secretary Mike Nithavrianakis.

The most difficult question of all was that of meeting the opposition. Eventually we got the agreement of Buckingham Palace and the FCO to say that, if the Queen were prevented from meeting the opposition, she wouldn’t come. But still the most we could get from Rawlings was that the leader of the opposition could be included in a reception for several hundred people at the International Conference Centre.

I had by now made good personal friends with several Ghanaian politicians. Among those who I could have a social drink with any time were, on the government side John Mahama, Minister of Information and Moses Asaga, Deputy Finance Minister, and on the opposition side John Kufuor, leader of the opposition, his colleagues Hackman Owusu-Agyemang, Shadow Foreign Minister, and Nana Akuffo-Addo, Shadow Attorney General.

In the International Conference Centre the precise route the Queen would take around the crowd was very carefully planned, so I was able to brief John Kufuor exactly where to stand to meet her, and brief the Queen to be sure to stop and chat with him. As he was the tallest man in the crowd, this was all not too difficult.

Once the Queen arrived and the visit started, everything happened in a three day blur of intense activity. Vast crowds turned out, and the Palace staff soon calmed down as they realised that the Queen could expect an uncomplicated and old fashioned reverence from the teeming crowds who were turning out to see “Our Mama”.

The durbar of chiefs in front of Parliament House was a riot of colour and noise. One by one the great chiefs came past, carried on their palanquins, preceded by their entourage, drummers banging away ferociously and the chiefs, laden down with gold necklaces and bangles, struggled to perform their energetic seated dances. Many of the hefty dancing women wore the cloth that had been created for the occasion, with a picture of the Queen jiggling about on one large breast in partnership with Jerry Rawlings jiving on the other, the same pairing being also displayed on the buttocks.

After the last of the chiefs went through, the tens of thousands of spectators started to mill everywhere and we had to race for the Royal convoy to get out through the crowds. Robin Cook had stopped to give an ad hoc interview to an extremely pretty South African television reporter. Mike Nithavrianakis tried to hurry him along but got a fierce glare for his pains. Eventually everyone was in their cars but Cook; the Ghanaian outriders were itching to start as the crowds ahead and around got ever denser.

But where was Cook? We delayed, with the Queen sitting in her car for two or three minutes, but still there was no sign of the Secretary of State or his staff getting into their vehicle. Eventually the outriders swept off; the crowds closed in behind and we had abandoned our dilettante Foreign Secretary. Having lost the protection of the convoy and being caught up in the crowds and traffic, it took him an hour to catch up.

Cook was an enigma. I had already experienced his famous lack of both punctuality and consideration when kept waiting to see him over the Sandline Affair. His behaviour now seemed to combine an attractive contempt for protocol with a goat-like tendency – would he have fallen behind to give a very bland interview to a male South African reporter? He was also breaking the tradition that the Foreign Secretary does not make media comments when accompanying the Queen.

When we returned to the Labadi Beach Hotel, there was to be further evidence of Cook’s view that the World revolved around him. He was interviewing FCO staff for the position of his new Private Secretary. Astonishingly, he had decided that it would best suit his itinerary to hold these interviews in Accra rather than London. One candidate, Ros Marsden, had an extremely busy job as Head of United Nations Department. Yet she had to give up three days work to fly to be interviewed in Accra, when her office was just round the corner from his in London. Other candidates from posts around the World had difficult journeys to complete to get to Accra at all. I thought this rather outrageous of Cook, and was surprised nobody else seemed much concerned.

The port town of Tema, linked to Accra by fifteen miles of motorway and fast becoming part of a single extensive metropolis, sits firmly on the Greenwich Meridian. As far as land goes, Tema is the centre of the Earth, being the closest dry spot to the junction of the Equator and the Greenwich Meridian. You can travel South from Tema over 6,000 miles across sea until you hit the Antarctic.

There was in 1999 a particular vogue for linking the Greenwich Meridian with the Millennium. This was because of the role of the meridian in determining not just longitude but time. Of course, the two are inextricably linked with time initially used to calculate longitude. That is why Greenwich hosted both the Naval Academy and the Royal Observatory.

The fascination with all this had several manifestations. There was a BBC documentary travelogue down the Greenwich meridian. There was a best-selling book about the invention of naval chronometers, Longitude by Dava Sobel, which I read and was as interesting as a book about making clocks can be. There were a number of aid projects down the meridian, including by War Child and Comic Relief. Tema and Greenwich became twin towns. And there was the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh to Tema.

I think this was the idea of my very good friend John Carmichael, who was involved in charity work on several of the meridian projects. It was thought particularly appropriate as one of the Duke of Edinburgh’s titles is Earl of Greenwich – though the man has so many titles you could come up with some connection to pretty well anywhere. We could make it a new game, like six degrees of separation. Connect your home town to the Duke of Edinburgh.

Anyway, Tim Hitchens had warned me that the Duke was very much averse to just looking at things without any useful purpose. As we stood looking at the strip of brass laid in a churchyard which marks the line of the meridian, he turned to me and said: “A line in the ground, eh? Very nice.”

But we moved on to see a computer centre that had been set up by a charity to give local people experience of IT and the internet (providing both electricity and phone lines were working, which thank goodness they were today) and the Duke visibly cheered up. He was much happier talking to the instructors and students, and then when we went on to a primary school that had received books from DFID he was positively beaming. The genuinely warm reception everywhere, with happy gaggles of people of all ages cheerfully waving their little plastic union jacks, would have charmed anybody.

We returned to Accra via the coast road and I was able to point out the work of the Ghanaian coffin makers, with coffins shaped and painted as tractors, beer bottles, guitars, desks, cars and even a packet of condoms. The Prince laughed heartily, and we arrived at the Parliament building in high good spirits. There he was first shown to a committee room where he was introduced to senior MPs of all parties. “How many Members of Parliament do you have?” he asked. “Two hundred” came the answer. “That’s about the right number,” opined the Prince, “We have six hundred and fifty MPs, and most of them are a complete bloody waste of time.”

The irony was that there was no British journalist present to hear this, as they had all thought a meeting between Prince Philip and Ghanaian parliamentarians would be too boring. There were Ghanaian reporters present, but the exchange didn’t particularly interest them. So a front page tabloid remark, with which the accompanying photo could have made a paparazzi a lot of money, went completely unreported.

On a State Visit, the media cannot each be at every occasion, as security controls mean they have to be pre-positioned rather than milling about while the event goes ahead. So by agreement, those reporters and photographers accredited to the visit share or pool their photos and copy. At each event there is a stand, or pool. Some events may have more than one pool to give different angles. Each journalist can probably make five or six pools in the course of the visit, leapfrogging ahead of the royal progress. But everyone gets access to material from all the pools. The FCO lays on the transport to keep things under control. Organising the pool positions ahead of the event with the host country, and then herding and policing the often pushy media in them, is a major organisational task. Mike Nithavrianakis had carried it off with style and only the occasional failure of humour. But he had found no takers for Prince Philip in parliament, which proved to be fortunate for us.

I should say that I found Prince Philip entirely pleasant while spending most of this day with him. I am against the monarchy, but it was not created by the Queen or Prince Philip. Just as Colonel Isaac of the RUF was a victim of the circumstances into which he was born, so are they. Had I been born into a life of great privilege, I would probably have turned out a much more horrible person than they are.

Prince Philip then joined the Queen in the parliamentary chamber. Her address to parliament was to be the focal point of the visit. I had contributed to the drafting of her speech, and put a lot of work into it. The speech was only six minutes long (she never speaks longer than that, except at the State Opening of Parliament. Her staff made plain that six minutes was an absolute maximum.) It contained much of the usual guff about the history of our nations and the importance of a new future based upon partnership. But then she addressed Rawlings directly, praising his achievements in bringing Ghana on to the path of democracy and economic stability. The government benches in parliament provided an undercurrent of parliamentary “hear hears”.

But there was to be a sting in the tale: “Next, year, Mr President,” the Queen intoned, “You will step down after two terms in office in accordance with your constitution.” The opposition benches went wild. The Queen went on to wish for peaceful elections and further progress, but it was drowned out by the cries of “hear hear” and swishing of order papers from the benches, and loud cheers from the public gallery. There were mooted cries of “No” from the government side of the chamber.

I had drafted that phrase, and it had a much greater effect than I possibly hoped for, although I did mean it to drive home the message exactly as it was taken.

For a moment the Queen stopped. She looked in bewilderment and concern at the hullabaloo all around her. The Queen has no experience of speaking to anything other than a hushed, respectful silence. But, apart from some grim faces on the government benches, it was a joyful hullabaloo and she ploughed on the short distance to the end of her speech.

Once we got back to the Labadi Beach Hotel, Robin Cook was completely furious. He stormed into the makeshift Private Office, set up in two hotel rooms. “It’s a disaster. Who the Hell drafted that?” “Err, I did, Secretary of State” I said. “Is that you, Mr Murray! I might have guessed! Who the Hell approved it.” “You did.” “I most certainly did not!” “Yes you did, Secretary of State. You agreed the final draft last night.”

His Private Secretary had to dig out the copy of the draft he had signed off. He calmed down a little, and was placated further when the Queen’s robust press secretary, Geoff Crawford, said that he took the view that it was a good thing for the Queen to be seen to be standing up for democracy. It could only look good in the UK press. He proved to be right.

The State Banquet was a rather dull affair. Ian Mackley’s great battle to be on the top table proved rather nugatory as, in very Ghanaian fashion, nobody stayed in their seat very long and people were wandering all over the shop. There were a large number of empty seats as, faced with an invitation to dinner at 7.30pm, many Ghanaians followed their customary practice and wandered along an hour or so late, only to find they would not be admitted. This caused a huge amount of angst and aggravation, from which those of us inside were fortunately sheltered.

Mrs Rawlings had chosen a well known Accra nightclub owner named Chester to be the compère for the occasion. His bar is a relaxed spot in a small courtyard that features good jazz and highlife music, and prostitutes dressed as Tina Turner. It was a second home for the officers of the British Military Advisory and Training Team (BMATT).

Chester himself was friendly and amusing, but amusing in a Julian Clary meets Kenneth Williams meets Liberace sort of way. Chester says he is not gay, (regrettably homosexuality is illegal in Ghana) but his presentation is undeniably ultra camp. It is hard to think of a weirder choice to chair a state banquet, but Chester was a particular pet of Mrs Rawlings.

Chester was stood on the platform next to the Queen, gushing about how honoured he was. His speech was actually very witty, but the delivery was – well, Chester. I turned to Prince Philip and remarked: “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen two Queens together before.” To give credit to Chester, I gather he has been telling the story ever since.

High camp was to be a theme of that evening.

Fiona and I accompanied the Royal party back to the Labadi Beach Hotel to say goodnight, after which Fiona returned home to Devonshire House while I remained for a debriefing on the day and review of the plans for tomorrow. By the time we had finished all that it was still only 11pm and I retired to the bar of the Labadi Beach with the Royal Household. The senior staff – Tim and Geoff – withdrew as is the custom, to allow the butlers, footmen, hairdressers and others to let off steam.

The party appeared, to a man, to be gay. Not just gay but outrageously camp. The Labadi Beach, with its fans whirring under polished dark wood ceilings, its panelled bar, displays of orchids, attentive uniformed staff and glossy grand piano – has the aura of a bygone colonial age, like something from Kenya’s Happy Valley in the 1930s. You expect to see Noel Coward emerge in his smoking jacket and sit down at the piano, smoking through a mother of pearl cigarette holder. It is exactly the right setting for a gay romp, and that is exactly what developed after a few of the Labadi Beach’s wonderful tropical cocktails.

We had taken the entire hotel for the Royal party, except that we had allowed the British Airways crew to stay there as always. Now three of their cabin stewards, with two Royal footmen and the Queen’s hairdresser, were grouped around the grand singing Cabaret with even more gusto than Liza. Other staff were smooching at the bar. All this had developed within half an hour in a really magical and celebratory atmosphere that seemed to spring from nothing. I was seated on a comfortable sofa, and across from me in an armchair was the one member of the Household who seemed out of place. The Duke of Edinburgh’s valet looked to be in his sixties, a grizzled old NCO with tufts of hair either side of a bald pate, a boxer’s nose and tattoos on his arms. He was smoking roll-ups.

He was a nice old boy and we had been struggling to hold a conversation about Ghana over the din, when two blokes chasing each other ran up to the settee on which I was sitting. One, pretending to be caught, draped himself over the end and said: “You’ve caught me, you beast!” I turned back to the old warrior and asked: “Don’t you find all this a bit strange sometimes?” He lent forward and put his hand on my bare knee below my kilt: “Listen, ducks. I was in the Navy for thirty years.”

So I made my excuses and left, as the News of the World journalists used to put it. I think he was probably joking, but there are some things that are too weird even for me, and the lower reaches of the Royal household are one of them. I have heard it suggested that such posts have been filled by gays for centuries, just as harems were staffed by eunuchs, to avoid the danger of a Queen being impregnated. Recently I have been most amused by news items regarding the death of the Queen Mother’s long-standing footman, who the newsreaders have been informing us was fondly known as “Backstairs Billy”. They manage to say this without giving the slightest hint that they know it is a double entendre.

The incident in parliament had made the Rawlings government even more annoyed about the proposed handshake in the International Conference Centre reception between the Queen and John Kufuor. My own relationship with Ian Mackley had also deteriorated still further as a result of the Royal Visit. I had the advantage that I already knew from previous jobs the palace officials and Robin Cook’s officials, and of course Robin Cook himself, not to mention the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh. All in all, I suspect that Ian felt that I was getting well above myself.

As the party formed up to walk around the reception in the International Conference Centre, Ian came up to me and grabbed my arm rather fiercely. “You, just stay with the Queen’s bodyguards” he said. I did not mind at all, and attached myself to another Ian, the head of the Queen’s close protection team. I already knew Ian also. Ian set off towards the hall and started ensuring a path was clear for the Queen, I alongside him as ordered. Suddenly I heard Sarah Mackley positively squeal from somewhere behind me: “My God, he’s ahead of the Queen! Now Craig’s ahead of the Queen.” If I could hear it, at least forty other people could. I managed to make myself as invisible as possible, and still to accomplish the introduction to John Kufuor. The government newspaper the Daily Graphic was to claim indignantly that I had introduced John Kufuor as “The next President of Ghana.” Had I done so, I would have been in the event correct in my prediction, but in fact I introduced him as “The opposition Presidential candidate”.

As always, the Queen’s last engagement on the State Visit was to say farewell to all the staff who had helped. She gives out gifts, and confers membership of the Royal Victorian Order on those deemed to merit it. Only once in the Queen’s long reign had she ever been on a state visit and not created our Ambassador or High Commissioner a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order – that is to say, knighted him. Ian and Sarah were to become Sir Ian and Lady Sarah. This seemed to me to mean the world to them.

The day before, Tim Hitchens had turned to me as we were travelling in the car: “Craig, I take it your views on honours have not changed.” “No, Tim, I still don’t want any.” “Good, you see that makes it a bit easier, actually. You see, the thing is, we’re trying to cut down a bit on giving out routine honours. The government wants a more meritocratic honours system. We need to start somewhere. So, in short, Ian Mackley is not going to get his K.” I was stunned. Tim continued: “And as well, you see, it hasn’t exactly escaped our attention that he has … issues with the Ghanaians, and some of his attitudes didn’t exactly help the visit. Anyway, if you were to want your CVO, then that would be more difficult. Ian Mackley is going to have one of those. So that will be alright.”

No, it won’t be alright, I thought. You’ll kill the poor old bastard. For God’s sake, everyone will know.

I wondered when the decision had been taken. The kneeling stool and the ceremonial sword had definitely been unloaded from the plane and taken to the hotel: that was one of the things I had checked off. When had that decision been reached?

We were lined up in reverse order of seniority to go in and see the Queen and Prince Philip. I queued behind the Defence Attaché, with Ian and Sarah just behind me. She was entering as well – nobody else’s wife was – because she was expecting to become Lady Mackley. Tim was going to tell them quickly after I had entered, while they would be alone still waiting to go in.

You may not believe me, but I felt completely gutted for them. It was the very fact they were so status obsessed that made it so cruel. I was thinking about what Tim was saying to them and how they would react. It seemed terribly cruel that they had not been warned until the very moment before they were due to meet the Queen. I was so worried for them that I really had less than half my mind on exchanging pleasantries with the Queen, who was very pleasant, as always.

If you refused honours, as I always did, you got compensated by getting a slightly better present. In Warsaw I was given a silver Armada dish, which is useful for keeping your Armada in. In Accra I was given a small piece of furniture made with exquisite craftsmanship by Viscount Linley. Shelving my doubts about the patronage aspect of that (should the Queen be purchasing with public money official gifts made by her cousin?) I staggered out holding rather a large red box, leaving through the opposite side of the room to that I had entered. Outside the door I joined the happy throng of people clutching their presents and minor medals. Mike Nithavrianakis and Brian Cope were Ian Mackley’s friends, and they were waiting eagerly for him. “Here’s Craig” said Mike, “Now it’s only Sir Ian and Lady Sarah!” “No, it’s not, Mike”, I said, “He’s not getting a K” “What! You’re kidding!” It had suddenly fallen very silent. “Ian’s not getting a K, he’s only getting a CVO.” “Oh, that’s terrible.” We waited now in silence. Very quickly the door opened again, and the Mackleys came out, Ian with a frozen grin, Sarah a hysterical one beneath the white large-brimmed hat that suddenly looked so ridiculous. There was a smattering of applause, and Sarah fell to hugging everyone, even me. We all congratulated Ian on his CVO, and nobody ever mentioned that there had been any possibility of a knighthood, then or ever.

Personally I don’t understand why anyone accepts honours when there is so much more cachet in refusing them.

#prince phillip #prince phillip death #prince phillip is dead #craig murray #ghana

[robogreaser]

This is a Long Time Coming...

It’s been a relatively hard task to sit down and make sense of, well, a lot of things as of late. I could chalk it up to the state of the world, but it’s been troublesome for significantly longer than that.

Long Story Short Version: I’ve been in a hell of a place, mentally, physically, and otherwise.

The proper story is a hell of a lot more involved than that and I know damned right well it’s going to take me a fair bit to explain myself and my various professional and social failings over the past... while. I’m gonna try to contain this under a read more, of course, but I apologize to mobile users if tumblr fucks that up.

Okay. That took a fair more bit of effort to figure out than I remember. Which, I suppose, is a fair enough bit of a segue into one thing that’s happened to me.

Tumblr has been deteriorating.

Whether I like to admit it or not, tumblr has been my go to social media platform since... 2011. Yeah. I’ve spent the vast majority of the decade here. I’ve seen a lot. Sure, I’ve lurked elsewhere, but I really cannot stand the interface and nature of a lot of other social media, especially the likes of twitter. Unfortunately for me, this place has been in constant decline for years now at this point. It extends well beyond the porn ban, but that’s a whole separate discussion.

I’ve lost touch with a lot of people I care about, some vanishing into the ether, some ghosting me, some just drifting into other communities or onto other sites. I’ve come to terms with the majority of this. It’s been happening for a while. It’s the very nature of digital relationships. It hurt, and I do think it’s contributed to a fair bit of stress and depression that has resulted in my... withdrawal from online spaces. It’s not a major factor, but its here, it’s present, it’s a factor in all of this.

I’ll be honest in that, well, I’ve tried to make this post several times over the past several weeks and months. It’s hard. Talking about my issues, using ‘I’ and ‘me’ so much in a post... it’s a bit jarring. But I’ll try to suck it up.

It’s been ten years (god I fucking hate time) since I’ve graduated high school. Yeah. It’s a fair thing to say that, on reflection, that’s incredibly jarring. The vast majority of that time has been... relatively unstable. I spent a fair few years working on my book and my publishing journey, now all but scrubbed clean from this blog (more on that later) and... well... Trying to be an adult. I’ve applied to, gotten accepted, and had to withdrawn from my dream school twice in this time. I’ve had a fair few jobs, nothing worthy of my resume, and lost all of them in one form or another, whether being fired for retaliating to my shitty work conditions, or, well, quitting for the sake of my own health during this pandemic. There has been a lot of family troubles. I’ve been through a lot of... ‘varied’ living situations, some horrendous, some just stressful, some, like now, actually really good compared to the others. And for the past few years in particular, it’s been constantly one thing after another, nonstop.

In short, progress is slow, but it’s happening. I don’t care to delve into a lot of these sorts of personal details lest this get to a ridiculous length, but that’s the short of the stuff I’d rather gloss over.

I’ve been on a health... Let’s call it a journey. I’ve been on a health journey. Over the past few years I’ve gone through the long processes of being diagnosed with ADHD, discussing my options regarding my depression and anxiety, and finally getting myself on a medication regimen that works. And then, because the health care system is a joke, I was without insurance. I had been off my medication, an absolute lifesaver and release of burden on my garbage tier brain, for eighteen months. Until last week. I think it’s fair to say, between my revolving door of living situations, employment, and then being un-medicated in a continually more stressful environment... That this is the main reason I’ve been absent. I’ve had no focus. There were weeks where I had no drive to do anything outside of routine that others depended on. I had not only gone back to how I was before situating my mental health, but in some ways, found a worse state.

Finances have been slowly eating away at me. I had been working a part time retail job until November, which made decent enough money, but not nearly for the amount of work and responsibility I was handling. I got fired. I found work with one of the big, corporate postal services. The pay was phenomenal, but it began to actively destroy my health, mainly physically, but also mentally, especially considering I was working a graveyard shift. Eventually when I began having prolonged health issues there, and then a whole lot of the symptoms of covid-19, on top of them turning me down for an entry-level position outside of the package handling, I had to quit. This was shortly after the lockdowns, in early April, and I refuse to look back despite people like my parents insisting on me trying to get work there again. Sure, the pay was phenomenal compared to anything else I had until then, but I cant continue to sacrifice my health. As of now, I’m unemployed, and... well...

I’m working on my commission queue. It’s art. It’s stuff I’ve owed friends (luckily those who are incredibly understanding and good to me) for an embarrassing amount of time, even before moving to and from Oklahoma at the end of 2016. I’m terrified of being the person who is known for taking commissioners’ money and running.

I know, I’m not good at giving updates. I’m not good at a consistent work schedule. I’ve had numerous tech failings over the past few years that constantly slow my roll on any progress I have made. Hell, I’ve had files corrupt despite being two thirds of the way complete when transferring from one computer to another. I’ve lost my cable for my external hard drive. I’ve had my tablet go to hell and back multiple times. But I am working. I am trying. I am sitting down as often as I can between looking for work and managing family nonsense to try and get my workload tidied up.

Which... brings me to my next point. And one I’m rather... ashamed about.

I have used trello, infrequently, since taking on a large load of commissions, and despite not being faithfully updating it and checking back on it, and using it to it’s fullest potential, I had kept, at the minimum, a list of all the work I did owe people using it. Well. Dumbass me attempted to use a mobile app. In short, in an effort to try and make myself tech literate and allow me easier access to my queue, I ended up deleting it. Somehow.

I’ve gone through and slowly flagged all my paypal notices and various emails concerning my commissions. I’m putting it together again. I’m trying. Granted, I am damned sure I am going to be missing someone, somewhere, somehow. I know it. I’ve got a shit brain, and despite my need for organization and minimalism, I don’t put it past me to have missed something along the way.

If you have commissioned me, please, do not hesitate to reach out and contact me regarding your commission. I owe every last one of you a massive apology for my continued failure to produce what you have paid for.

More likely than not, I have a wip already started somewhere, and if not, I have a slew of reference and thumbnails already compiled together somewhere on my computers. I am not ignoring this work. It’s been painfully, embarrassingly slow. It’s been one obstacle after another. But I have every intention of doing this work, and, likely, upgrading the quality of the finished piece past what my commissioners have paid for simply because I do feel bad about the wait time.

I have been inexcusably unprofessional. I know this and I am working as best I can with the time and resources I have to correct it.

In a similar vein, as I mentioned before, I have slowly been cleaning up my rather unimpressive publishing attempts. I’ve gone through and cleaned this blog recently, deleting reference to my work by name and the process of trying to get myself published. I may have missed a few posts here and there, but for the most part I would like a clean slate in regards to building a social media platform surrounding my written work. And this is the part where... I am probably going to be the most upfront and honest with you reading this than I have been publicly before.

I am not ashamed of who I’ve been online these past ten years or so, but it reflects only a sliver of my personality, a sliver of who I am as a whole. I catered to a very specific subset of who I am in pursuit of finding acceptance in communities much larger than myself. I’ve learned a hell of a lot about myself in that time. I figured out what’s important to me, my health, my sexuality, my relationships and my long term goals. I’ve found a very important group of friends. I’ve found people who understand and empathize with a lot of the things I have been through, experience, and am at my core.

But the fact of the matter is, this hypersexual, sci-fi aesthetic-oriented, very open person is only a singular facet. And it is not nearly enough of a reflection of who I am, or who I want to be as a professional, public adult. Will I always be gay for robots? Yes. Will I, when time permits and creative energies are present, continue to make nsfw art? Absolutely. Will I always have a toe dipped in erotic literature and the like? Most likely.

But a lot of me, a lot of my emotion and strife and feelings regarding most things in the world, are completely separate from this. It’s separate from me liking porn on twitter or having a homestuck roleplay blog. It’s separate from who I am in real life, with my boyfriend or with my family or with my work. And I have been dwelling on this, sincerely, for a while. I need to allocate more energy into my life. The separate life offline and online too, where I am pursuing an actual professional career, because, at the end of the day, I want to be an author. I want to have a career telling stories. And, in my time online, I’ve found a lot of skeletons in authors’ closets, the kind that really put mine to shame, and the kind that will always be a footnote to their work. You know the ones.

I want my creative work to speak for itself. I want people to be able to enjoy what I do without a specter, without my time and energy having to explain to a future audience why it is I had explicit thoughts about x,y, and z. I want to be able to write a book, write many books, and have people enjoy them without a footnote about me, a person with a sexual life and a history exploring it through years of depression and isolation, clouding it. It’s not fair to my work. It’s not fair to a future reader. It’s not fair to me.

I’ve got several social media accounts made and slowly coming to life that I need to spend more time with as I try and pursue this new, second leg of a very long journey into publishing. I’m not going to link those here, now or in the future. It’s likely a few people I know and trust have access to them. But I am, effectively starting over from scratch trying to build a platform as a writer. And it’s hard. Juggling that, alongside all of the things in the world today, alongside family and my relationships, alongside my commission queue? It bears down on me and if I didn’t have experience handling more than one thing at a time, I might trip up more frequently. Hell, I forget to post and use those new accounts regularly.

But I’m trying.

I’m not moving away from my current social circles or hobbies or anything like that. I’m not abandoning any fandom or friends or communities. But I am going to be trying to balance myself more thoughtfully moving forward, past just commissions, past just writing.

I’m here. I’m moving forward, slowly but surely, and I am making an effort to improve.

#jesus christ mike shut up

[neshabeingchildish]

Determined: A Chasper Fic Conclusion

Second half of the chapter is extremely kid heavy. I feel like those actually reading this know how I am about kids and writing kids into these things. Alas, we’ve reached the end of this journey. Thank you to all those who stuck with it. I know this fandom isn’t a long story fandom and I apologize that I keep doing this to y’all. But, finally, the end is here.

Happy, Healthy Endings for All

Henry pulled up to the gate of “the estate” and when he was going to push the button on the little box, heard a beep and a voice say, “Henry Hart, Access Granted,” before he had the chance to do so. 

“They’ve most likely programmed it to scan your car… or your DNA,” Piper commented with a shrug of her shoulders. 

“How rich are our friends these days?” Henry wondered.

“Well, Charlotte is a genius who works with tech and DNA stuff, so she might have done it herself, but if not, Jasper is literally the highest paid executive coach in the country as of last year,” Piper said. 

“I honestly thought for a while that Jasper made that career up and I still don’t even know what that means!” Henry chimed. 

“He tells big bosses how to be better bosses and writes books to help little bosses become big bosses, if they have enough money to do so.”

“Yeah, I don’t understand HOW, either. Like… Who looked at Jasper and decided that he knew this stuff? Is he good at it, or just one of those people who got lucky and gets paid a lot?”

“The companies that he helps have better stats after he’s done helping them reevaluate their model. He’s gonna get one of those Netflix deals, I think. To get his own show where he basically goes in there and you see a few of his projects. He writes books, does speaking engagements, invests his money, and is kind of even helping Charlotte to try to branch out on her own. He just… is good at what he does. But, I mean… Jasper’s kind of been this way. Remember whenever he was doing his vlog and podcast and he’d get all these places and fans sending him stuff? He has a knack for smoothing people over. I think if somebody is confident enough, people are willing to at least hear them out and when he got his foot in the door that way, he owned it.”

“Are you… giving Jasper compliments?”

“No. I’m telling you nice things about Jasper. Did you ever see his “How to be a Good Man to a Difficult Woman” series on his channel? He’s got some very good life skills, when he takes the time to think about it and not just blurts stuff out.”

“Wait. He had a…” He stopped speaking whenever he got closer to the house and the yard, which had a very enormous playground, off to the side like… almost like a park and a huge garden on the other side, with like… what his mind could only seem to think of as a “tiny neighborhood” beside them. “Did this come with the house?” Henry wondered.

“Nope. Jasper had it commissioned. Sat down with the kids and got their ideas, worked on some designs, spoke with his architect, and voila.”

“Why are there so many little houses here when the big house is huge?” 

“That you’ll have to ask them.”

.

Jasper was giving directions to the crew that he had working on this event, which Henry could tell were frat boys who probably knew him as an alumnus and wanted to make good with him. He could hardly believe that his Craig used to be one of those guys. He’d be meeting them later on, because he had some work emergency and insisted that Henry go on without him.

Whenever the Hart siblings walked up, Jasper dismissed the crew and came to hug them. “Hey! Glad you two could actually make it! I think this is your first time coming to the estate at all, so what do you think, finally seeing it in person?” (That was more to Henry, because Piper saw it before, even if it was only in the beginning.)

“What is this property, Dude?” Henry asked, marvelling around.

Jasper smiled proudly, “Well, the site where Charlotte will be opening her center after her hospital fellowship is in this area, so I wanted to make sure that we had a house near here. I can work from anywhere. Still unsure if we want to fully transition out of the old house, since so much of the kids’ memories are there, and Char’s still got a few years before she’ll even be opening the practice, but they’re all still young enough where you set up enough fun stuff and they don’t even know what their previous memories were. I don’t really want to rent it out and have anybody mess up any of the sentimental stuff, but we’ll probably have it for AirBNB for a while or something. Haven’t decided.” 

“What are all these little houses, Dude?” Henry asked, pointing at a few.

“Oh, that’s Jazz’s treehouse, up in the tree, and Amber’s dollhouse, Ruby’s funhouse and the baby playhouse for the new baby. It’s like a little kiddo community for them, and all of them have their dream playground in the community “backyard.” On the other side is Charlotte’s she shed, which is one of my birthday gifts to her…”

“It’s like… the size of a regular house,” Henry pointed out. 

“We’re on our fourth kid. Locking herself in the bathroom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, even in a house as big as our last one, or even as big as the new house,” he said, so casually, that it almost made sense to Henry for them to have a whole other goddamn house a few feet away from their ridiculously huge house! “And her garden is like her front yard, then there’s the three dog houses. The kids want a puppy, so we’ll be getting another one, and already are making room for them. The Kiddo community and the Doggo community right across the way from each other. Charlotte’s she shed and her home lab on either side of the big house.” He was pointing at everything. “Took YEARS to get it just perfect and I figured since the timeline was so close, that instead of doing the whole housewarming thing that we’ve done in the past that we’d just throw Charlotte’s 30th Birthday party here and get showing off the property and showering her in love all over with in one event. Plus, Diamond is coming ANY day now, so by the time we’ve got them coming home, there won’t be time for socializing between getting them nursed, Char’s fellowship, getting doctors and scientists and stuff for the clinic, lab, and the spaces in the center, and…” he shrugged. Henry noted that Jasper looked the happiest that he had ever seen him. Like, everything in his life was perfect. He hoped Charlotte was feeling the same. He had been super busy at work. Springtime was very hectic for weddings and his busiest summer was right around the corner. Plus, he had a man now, and was still a Swellview hero.

“So, you decided on Diamond, huh?” Piper asked. “Just keeping the whole crystals/stones thing going?” 

“After Jasper, who was of course just named for me, we went with birthstones. Wanted to have their names be closer connected to Jasper’s than ours or something else. Amber was better than Citrine or Topaz…” 

“Those are mine,” Henry said proudly to Piper. “November.”

Piper rolled her eyes. Jasper hadn’t stopped, “Ruby is my fellow Leo, and even though that’s typically considered a girl’s name, Ruby is thought of as King of gems, so we rationalized that it was  gender neutral and that if it wasn’t, we’d just have someone with a name that was as rare as the gem itself… you know, if they turned out to be a boy.”

“Ruby is actually a turning out to be a nuisance. They’re my favorite of all of your bad ass kids,” Piper said.

Instead of arguing that they weren’t bad kids (They weren’t, just very free kids). “I call them “Rascal,” Jasper said. “I don’t understand how they get into everything that they get into at 1. Jazz and Amber Reign at least waited until they were in the terrible 2s to begin their shenanigans. I think that they’re gonna be a genius, like Char. She was doing a lot at 1 too, I’m told...” 

Almost as if on cue, they heard Charlotte yelling, “Andro! Ruby Andromeda Dunlop!” the three looked up to see a barely walking 1 year old running quite haphazardly, holding something that appeared to be a food item tightly in their grip, laughing all the way, with a very pregnant mother chasing after them, running as haphazardly with all of that belly to lug around. 

Piper and Henry both cackled at the sight, but Jasper darted over and snatched up the baby and took the food from them. Charlotte caught up, caught her breath and explained, “I swear, I put it down for a split second to adjust my nursing pad and they grabbed it and ran!” Breathing still a little winded, she said, “Hey, Henry. Piper,” and retrieved her Danish. “I know that the party hasn’t started, but somebody made me miss breakfast,” she said pointing at Ruby. Piper reached for the baby and they went to her willingly. “And they go to Piper before they come to me… The person with the titty milk!”

“Because, I influence them to be the most them that they can be.”

“You can have them, at this rate,” Charlotte said. 

Jasper laughed, “She didn’t mean that. She can’t legally give them away. They’re half mine.”

“Where’s their bling?” Charlotte wondered, finishing off her pastry. “They’re family. They’ll need it for the family photo shoot, not that it’ll be very elegant, considering that Dunlop children are magnets for calamity.”

“It’s covered, Babe. Go sit down. You look like you’ve been through hell.” She frowned. “Beautiful, though!”

“Shut up,” she muttered, waddling back to where her seat was. 

The Dunlops were dressed in all white and diamonds (or you know, knock off crystals for the kids) for Charlotte’s 30th Birthday Diamond Ball. 

Jazz had selected to wear “whatever Daddy is wearing,” so they had a smaller version of his white, suit with opaque floral embroidery and crystal embellishments. They also already had their pants rolled up to the knees and had taken their mass of curls out of the neat braided bun that Charlotte had painstakingly put it into this morning. Fortunately, she’d had the foresight to make sure that they did the immediate family photo shoot before everything else. Charlotte noticed on the way back to her seat that Jazz had also taken their shoes and socks off. They were literally untamed before the party even began. She smiled and waved at them and they waved back, “Hey, Mommy! You look like a queen!”

“If you’re not gonna wear your fancy shoes, at least throw on your sneakers so you don’t hurt your feet on something!” Charlotte called back.

“I’ve got some in the treehouse!” They rushed to the tree, electing to climb the rope, instead of the ladder to retrieve sneakers. 

“You raised them to be independent,” Charlotte said. “Carefree Black child. Literally carefree. They don’t care ‘bout nothing.” 

At least Amber was still put together. They had wanted to wear a princess gown. “It’s a ball! I gotta wear a princess gown!” They insisted. They only had Disney ones in their collection and they needed white, so Charlotte asked them what gown they wanted a white version of. “All of them.”

“You can only wear one to Mommy’s birthday party, though.”

“What about Daddy’s birthday?”

“Daddy’s gonna have a grown man friends party for his birthday. We’re not gonna go to that. Maybe just have some cake at home earlier that day, and sure, you can have a gown for that, if you want.”

“What about my birthday?”

“Sure. For your birthday, you can definitely wear a white gown, but which one do you want for Mommy’s party?”

Amber laughed and placed a hand on Charlotte’s hand, like a little adult. “No, Mommy. For my birthday, I need all the gowns. White. Also… all of them, in yellow.” 

Charlotte smiled and said through her teeth, “Okay. Of course, it’s your birthday and Daddy has literally never told any of you ‘no,’ so I’m sure that we’ll be fulfilling that order. Now, you wanna tell Mommy what white gown you’ll wear to her ball?”

“Hmmm. Well, I think Tiana’s, but white. And I need to add a bustle, so I can dance with a prince, or Daddy if there’s only commoners.”

“Where did you learn the word bustle?” Charlotte whispered, making notes.

“Where did they learn the word “commoners?” Jasper wondered.

They instead made Amber a white Tiana gown that was short in the front, kind of like Char’s wedding dress, and a sparkly pair of white leggings, so that Amber wouldn’t protest too much to the lack of a bustle. Charlotte still didn’t know where they got that word from. But, passing by them on the swingset near their dollhouse, they were still dressed like she dressed them this morning, in their shoes and all.

Ruby being one, was the easiest to dress. Charlotte threw a white romper on them and a sunhat and they were the cutest kid in the world. Keeping it white and them out of trouble though? That was a task for somebody else today.

Charlotte’s twinkling maternity gown and updo made her look elegant enough for the party, but between her tiredness, hot flashes, being hungry A LOT, and rushing to the bathroom so much, she was lowkey miserable. She didn’t want to do a big thing for this birthday, being so close to her due date and this having been the most taxing pregnancy she had gone through, but Jasper seemed so excited about it and once the kids were in the mix with picking outfits and such, she felt obligated. 

He planned it for the weekend before her actual birthday, because the next weekend (a few days after her birthday) was around the due date. It was SO CLOSE. Their birthdays would be even closer together than hers and Jazz’s, which was at the beginning of the month and had been celebrated by unveiling the playground in the yard. Which was so extravagant, in Charlotte’s opinion. But, they had made sure to get a lot of land specifically TO BE extravagant, if they wanted to. 

Besides, Jasper paid for all of that, and what was she gonna do? Tell that man what he could and couldn’t do with his hard earned money? Jasper had always been extra, and now he could afford to be.

Jazz wanted a jungle gym. Amber wanted a carousel, and Jasper filled in a lot of the rest of it with stuff that he thought would be fun for them. She wondered if he wasn’t having some sort of early midlife crisis for a while, because he was extremely diligent on making this property perfect. But, that was because it would be their “Forever home” and he could pass it down from Dunlop to Dunlop for as long as they held it dear. “They’ve gotta hold it dear. It’s gotta be perfect. It’s my legacy.”

Watching him handle it was one of the ways she wound up pregnant again before he could have the chance to have a procedure. That man was simply too virile! And there was something about seeing him so passionately make plans and prep for their children’s futures that there was nothing sexier in the world than him in those moments. They scheduled his procedure after she realized that another Dunlop was on the way. Not that she had anything against her other 3 children, but four was twice what she initially saw for herself.

Charlotte LOVED being a mom. It was some of the best highlights of her life. She never would have expected to love it so much, but she absolutely did, aside from the pain of labor, her suffering was generally minimal. (Mainly, because she knew all of the rules medically, and she was able to figure out any necessary changes that she needed to make in her routine whenever her body called for it. 

She also loved the idea of helping other people safely become moms, especially with the somehow increasing number of fatalities in Black women attempting to do so. So, whenever she finished medical school, her residency and fellowship, she finally was confident and prepared enough to open her own center. 

She would be working as a medical biochemist, specializing in genetics for infants and childrens’ care. The site had an OBGYN, a pediatrician, a gynecologist, and a fertility specialist, when they started out. She wanted to make another option for women who might not get the proper care in other facilities, as well as options for  the babies and children that they had. Also, to help those who wanted to have children and had issues preventing them from doing so. 

Instead of having several doctors who are not associated in the building and renting from some leaseholder, she owned the building, would work from the lab with a team she selected, to avoid the disrespect and distrust at her previous lab, and found specialists that she was interested in, bringing what she valued most to the place. 

Having other Black female doctors around was also quite refreshing, for all of them and she made sure to include an onsite daycare with personally vetted childcare providers. Because she knew that she wasn’t the only working mommy and that was important to her, as well. (This was a separate place from the pediatric playroom), because that was for the potentially sick kids. She even involved the doctors and scientists that she would have there in the development process, as a bit of an interview situation. (They didn’t work for her, but she wanted the vision to work for everyone, and to find people who were on the same accord).

They called it A New Page Childcare Center, and Charlotte had never been happier in her life, as far as her work life went, as she was after getting it off of the ground. She was saving lives again, but doing it with a collective of like-minded professionals who respected and liked each other and worked well together. She could be here until she was ready to retire! Finally! She had not only found her calling, but she was able to build up something to follow it through, and she was able to see her children more throughout all of it.

Plus, even when helping a client through a strenuous process of tests and seeking out solutions or researching new ideas in genetics, she controlled her schedule and therefore was able to do things at this point in her life with Jasper and the kids that she felt guilty about not being able to do before, like family vacations and events. Henry and Craig FINALLY tied the knot shortly after Hen turned 33, and it was her center that they came to when seeking out a surrogate. 

At the center, they were able to speak with a surrogacy agent, because by that time, the center had grown to include an agency for surrogacy and one for adoption. By finding all these childcare specialists and providers and making room for them in her property, it was easy for people to explore all of these options in one place, and there were frequently workshops on site available for training in doula and midwife work, becoming foster parents, and NUMEROUS paid internships in every single one of the areas in the place. 

Now, most of these ideas she came up with, in tandem with Jasper during pillow talk. She knew if he knew how to do one thing, it would be to tell her truthfully how to have a fulfilling workspace. She just had never thought that she would be able to put all of these professions and occupations in one space. Whenever he would say, “Why don’t you just find one and get them in your building?” she would immediately think, I can’t do that! But now, she wasn’t even sure WHY she ever thought that she couldn’t do it! 

She guessed it sounded like too much. She guessed that it would be too hard to maintain rules, regulations, etc… But, Jasper pointed out, “But, they don’t work for you. As long as they can pay you to be in that space, it's an advantage to you all to have sources nearby to suggest. If fertility isn’t working out, your fertility specialist can suggest going to, you know… the fourth floor for a surrogate or the fifth floor for the adoption agency, etc. That way, they don’t have to look around, which would be additional stress and sometimes, you may be able to have a representative from the office of their next step come to speak with them and build rapport in that moment where they’ve lost a little bit a hope, to meet and reassure them that the last step was only another stepping stone and assure them that they will give their all to this particular leg of the journey.” There was always a brilliant idea coming out of him! She loved that man so much, more and more all of the time. 

.

The various talks that had to be had with them were generally successful. Having two socially conscious parents, they were going to get lessons about everything whenever they either were about to go out into the world on their own (school and such) or for more heavy topics, whenever they seemed to want to know. Of course, first and foremost was the way that people outside might perceive and treat them.

Jazz looked almost just like Charlotte, but with a different curl pattern. Her hair mostly grew down, but it was poofy enough that it fluffed out at the sides. It gave her just enough “other” for people to ask her “Black, and what else?” but, if she had it up or something, nobody even bothered. 

Amber was the only one that was really “light skinned,” but she always got a little browner in the summer. Her hair was curly like Jasper’s when he was a kid and it didn’t grow down, but out, so she had a huge curly fro.

Jazz said that Ruby was her mini… like she wasn’t cut from the very same cloth as Charlotte. Ruby had hair like Charlotte’s and similar features. Slightly less brown, but definitely darker than Amber. She looked even more like Charlotte, because they had similar mannerisms and the same face and hair. 

Diamond was only a couple of shades darker than Amber, but she had more of Jasper’s features than the others, who were basically molds of Charlotte with the slight differences mentioned, and her eyes were light colored. Well, they were somewhere between a hazel and a chestnut. Jasper insisted that she had his mom’s eyes. Charlotte just denied it on principle. She lowkey did have Pansy’s eyes and was really the only one that could “pass for a Dunlop,” according to some of the comments Charlotte had overheard and seen on posts before Jasper blocked somebody. People sometimes joked with Jasper to ask him if he was sure those were all his kids, but they quickly retracted these jokes, whenever they noted his face or body language. When Jazz was little, he’d be more likely to kick someone’s ass over it. By the time Amber came, it was asked less, but when it was brought up, Jazz was singled out! She “didn’t look mixed enough” someone said, in that way that he could tell they felt like they were just being honest. She looked just like her mother, if she had wavy hair!! And… what did people think that he was going to presume that they were suggesting about his wife when they asked him shit like that or made a funny little comment.

His mother made that mistake years ago. “I just don’t see any part of you in that one,” she said, opting to try to pick up Amber as she nudged her forehead towards Jazz. Amber hid behind her older sister. Something about Pansy made her nervous. The woman sighed and tacked on, “I don’t think it would hurt to get them DNA tested, just in case…”

And he told her, “If you hadn’t given me life, I would sock you in the mouth for that.” (Jasper never made threats like that at her and she was shook). 

“I was kidding! She’s just way darker than I thought she should be,” she had said about Jazz (which was PRIOR to Jazz identifying as a girl and ALSO made him upset that she called them a she), but Pansy had come out of that. They kept some distance between themselves and her until she had to seek them out and agree to the proper language and appropriate treatment. Then, Jasper monitored every time she was around for a long time before her and Charlotte were comfortable enough (and the kids were comfortable enough) for her to be allowed to spend time with them by herself.

She was a much better grandmother than she had been a mom, and he came to realize that a lot of people were weird about the fact that 3 out of 4 of his biracial kids didn’t quote unquote “really look biracial,” so they wanted to tell the girls about it whenever it was time for Jazz to go to her private school. Jasper wanted them in public school. There was one not too far from the house and it was considered when he bought it. But, they compromised that the kids could go to a private head start, maybe public elementary, and then Charlotte insisted on the private school when they got into junior high. But, after head start, all of Jazz’s friends were going to private school and she wanted to go, as well. Jasper wondered if Charlotte knew this would happen when she made that deal with him. She simply smirked in response.

“What the fuck is biracial?” Jazz had asked whenever the race talk came up. Charlotte threw her head back and Jazz winced, “Sorry, Mom.” She honestly never let go of the word, since she was 2 years old. But, she also had just presumed that since half of her family was different shades of brown and the other half were lesser shades of brown that other people had families that were just all kinds of browns and lesser browns, even those lesser brown people she knew from pre-k. 

Realizing that Uncle Henry and Uncle Craig were not going to be able to come together and simply make brown cousins or lesser brown cousins was like a shock to her system. They had to grow a baby somewhere else and try to pick somebody that would have some similar traits. Then, learning that people might be meaner to her because she was a darker brown than Daddy was alarming, to say the least, and that even more people might treat her differently because of her private areas that they couldn’t even see? She was scandalized and horrified. But… she said that sounded like it meant that girls were tougher than boys and she was “tough enough to be a girl.”

“It’s not really a matter of toughness. It’s more like what you feel like you are, inside. And it doesn’t have to be a girl, or even a boy. You might feel like something else that you don’t quite have the words for, and we’ll help you find the right words, if that’s the case or maybe even you’ll have new words for us that are more catered to who you feel like you are inside.” Charlotte said.

“Well, I don’t not feel like a girl. I feel like a girl who is strong and brave. Whatever that is is my gender. I don’t care. It’s never mattered before. I just am scared of the people out there that might try to treat me like I’m a Black girl. (I am, but… that’s scary stuff, Mom.”

“We’ll protect you as much as we can,” Jasper said.

“I have literally seen your father punch more than a few people for treating mommy some kind of way,” Charlotte admitted. Jasper’s face showed he had zero regrets about those choices.

“Don’t worry Dad. I have a mean right hook,” Jazz said. 

“Damn right you do. That’s that Dunlop Dumb Drop!” And with just that, the kid gestured for a double high five and they growled in each others faces and started barking. 

Charlotte, feeling left out said, “I have some drops too.”

Both of them looked at her and burst into crying laughter. “Mom, please, do not do this to me!” Jazz said as Jasper wiped his eyes from actually crying laughing about it. “Oh, you oughtta end all these talks like that. Who can feel worried when you’ve got this shining sense of humor.” 

Charlotte folded her arms, but couldn’t help but to laugh, in spite of herself of the fact that her young child thought it hilarious that she could drop somebody. “I never said with my fists, Kid. I’m a scientist and a doctor. I know at least one hundred ways to drop somebody without ever touching them. A lot of them, untraceable.” She threw a look at Jasper, who immediately stopped laughing. 

“Well, that’s just terrifying,” Jazz admitted. 

Charlotte winked, “Only for my enemies.” 

Now, Jazz offered her double high fives and said, “Friends for life!” 

Amber was concerned about things, but mostly about partnership. Why, at her age? They didn’t know, but they just answered her questions when they arose. “So. IF I AM a girl, feel like a girl, like things that the world says is for girls, but I also LIKE girls. Like, REALLY like girls, like - like them, you understand… can I still be a girl?”

“If you think you are, yes.”

“But, the world says that girls like boys, right? I hate boys. They’re smelly and unkind. They never like to wear pretty dresses that would be gorgeous on them. They hit you and say it’s because they like you, so if you want to hit them back, you don’t want to, because you don’t want them to think you like them, a stupid boy!”

Jasper balled his fists, “Who the hell hit you?” 

“Daddy, don’t get mad. Since hitting means boys like you, I didn’t hit him back, so he wouldn’t think I like him. Instead, I put mud in his sandwich when everybody was at recess.” She smiled proudly.

“Well, I’m glad that you got him back. But, next time, just hit him. Nobody gets to put their hands on you and if they really liked you, they wouldn’t. Also, who was it?”

“Are you gonna go punch the kid, Jasper?” Charlotte asked.

“I MIGHT!”

Charlotte changed the subject. “Not all boys are like that, but if you just don’t like boys, that’s still fine. You can like whoever you like.”

“I like girls.”

“Cool. Uncle Henry is a boy who likes a boy, Uncle Craig. And Uncle Jake and Uncle Ray…”

She looked frustrated, “Do only boys get to like boys in the world?” They’d already warned her that people are mean to girls, was not being able to like like other girls part of that meanness?

“No! Everybody gets to like whoever they like and sometimes the world is mean about it, but sometimes the world is nice.”

“The world better be nice to me, because there’s plenty of dirt out there for me to put on their sandwiches.”

Jasper whispered, “She’s terrifying, like you.”

“If by that you mean that she’s brilliant, thank you,” Charlotte whispered back and kissed him briefly.

“Hi. Could you not? I don’t really want to have to see boys and girls kiss in my own home,” Amber said, inciting cackles from both of them.

Ruby didn’t care either way. Whenever they told her all these things, they said they didn’t have questions, were undecided on if they knew what their gender was and didn’t care about racist people because, “I have a big, strong dad, a mom that can kill people quietly, an older sister who fights people and one that pees in people’s colas. I think that I’m well protected.”

Jasper and Charlotte were nodding, presuming that they probably had talked to their sisters about this before, but both stopped at “pees in people’s colas” and said, “Wait, what?” Ruby tilted their head, acting like they had no idea what they were asking about.

“I have nothing further,” Ruby said. They kept the “their/them” pronouns throughout life. It just seemed like a lot to them, to sit there and think and decide who they felt like when their upbringing didn’t place any value on gender roles. But, they were also fine with whatever pronouns someone else used for them. It didn’t really matter. 

Henry retired from hero life at 50. 

The Dunlop kids and the Hart kids got together to plan a Semi-Centennial celebration for their parents, instead of calling in a joint birthday celebration. A lot of things were happening within a few years’ time. Jasper and Charlotte being married for 25 years, Jazz becoming a professional athlete, Amber getting engaged to her college sweetheart, Ruby graduating from high school at the top of their class, JUST like their mom and going into an entire new wave of technology that fascinated Charlotte, and Diamond going into high school, and the fact that Uncle Henry was getting ready to “settle peacefully from everything else” and focus on H<3art Eyes until his official retirement… so retiring from Captain Danger so that he could have at least some good years in the wedding shop with his kids and husband, just living his life. 

His Dad and Ray had bought a boat a while back, which they mostly lived on, did some traveling in and also continued to enjoy perks such as the old Man Copter, which Ray basically just redecorated and put a cheesy postcard like caricature of the two of them on the side of it. The same for the RV that Jake brought, for whenever they wanted to travel on land. They were both retired and had no small kids. Ray never told Jake about Captain Man. The Hart kids agreed that he just COULDN'T have that information. It didn’t matter, anyway. They had been working well for about 20 years at that point. Neither chose to get married, but what they had was pretty undeniable. 

The child advocate in Charlotte Ambrosia Dunlop got with Schwoz years prior to come up with a way to keep Swellview safe from the villain threats without training children to work as heroes until they couldn’t. It was a solution that they sort of came to simultaneously, and Schwoz was very upset that he hadn’t really considered it before… Clone generation. Recreating a Captain Man and Captain Danger clone and having the Man Cave computer know just how and when they would need to be replenished! Charlotte didn’t want Schwoz to have to stay there, being the brain behind the thing, so she convinced him to make a Safe Halley, to control it all and to simply keep access to it, if something went wrong, one of them could go sort it out if they had to. But, they didn’t. They never had to again, and Swellview was still quite safe.

.

Charlotte, Jasper, Henry, Piper, Ray, and Schwoz sit on the patio, looking at the view of the sunsetting on the mountains during their annual Man Fam Getaway… “Our life was stupid crazy. I wouldn’t change a thing,” Charlotte said and everybody heard her and they all agreed.

*** The End***

#A Chasper Fic #chasper #henry danger #hd fanfic #Nesha HD Fics

[faerrest]

Bruh, im sick of spending money for services i never see what i pay for in return

First it was waiting months and months on photos (which thankfully, after friends helping to ask the photographer) we got 5 of total, 6 months later. Im hoping there's more still since we took more than that, but im afraid to ask and it was a group photographer thing so they technically dont owe me tons of photos

I commissioned someone a cosplay since they were offering 2 slots for a character back in June or July. They said they were starting to work on it in October and that theyd be able to finish and ship it to me in time for a con in November. Said yo wxpect it to ship in the first or second week of November. November and December end. Nothing. I worked up the courage to message them, ask if they sent it. Not even seen. Im too nervous to ask again even if it was a simple mistake/miss on their part. But im out 200 dollars on something i was expecting to have 2 months ago now

And i recently ordered 2 things off a cosplay website bc they were cheap and i thought itd be a fun cosplay. Was worried they wouldnt reach me in time for the con next month, so i stupidly paid an extra 35 for fast shipping. The processing for the items started the 10th, the last processing update was the 15th and it says the latest it should ship is the 28th... tomorrow. It also says it could BE here by then or at the latest the 10th of February, but im doubtful itll arrive in time now. Im trying to be more understanding of this one since im certain it ships from China and i feel for everyone there with the virus outbreak and the horrible situations those in Wutan especially are facing.

But overall, im just... so tired. I want to be more upset and angry than i sm, but i just do not have the energy. Im just very broke and very sad. All these happening in succession makes me feel like nothing is worth trusting or purchasing anymore

#venting stuff

[rockwell-light]

Goals for the New Year (2019 edition!)

Looking back at last year's journal I was pretty unfocused about my goals |D I think I had a vague idea of essentially wanting to share more of my OCs, wanting to post more, and wanting to make more time to interact with folks and draw. This year I've got a lot more substance to what I want, er, maybe a little too much? Let's review 2018 and then my new goals ;v;

What I did accomplish:

I ended up starting to make character reference sheets as a start to sharing my OCs, which wasn't a bad way to go <: This year I'd like to continue that trend for sure! It's helping me nail down appearances for some characters that have only been strictly written before, and finalizing/updating appearances for characters that I've drawn for a long time. I initially started with really clean references and then moved into more sketchy ones for the sake of saving time, and I'll probably continue to do that for most of my characters and side projects, minus the really important ones (I intend to give Rock, Cale, and Vox clean refs, for example). I also managed to post at least once every month here which was a goal of mine last year, and I'm very proud of myself for that

It seems like such a small amount of times to upload art (a minimum of 12 times all year) but it's a goal that seemed challenging with my lack of free time.

I am still working on making more time to draw and be social. The job I started at the beginning of last year really dug into my time and energy, and I ended up springing for a new one during the holidays. I've been told that somewhere probably from mid to late January (or maybe early February depending on how long it takes to train new folks) I'll be able to have less hours on my plate. This is a big deal because art is what I want to do most, and with more people slowly offering to commission me, I desperately want to have the time to do said commissions. I have turned down several friends and clients when asked (or not responded because I was unsure how to explain myself), purely because I didn't feel I could do even a single image in a timely manner, and I didn't want them waiting months for something they paid for. Fingers crossed this will be changing soon!

But that rolls into more things I did do! I took way more commissions last year than I have before, and I have a small steady queue of folks who would like more that I want to get back to! I also tried some YCHs and adopts and had some success there as well ;v; It was a goal of mine to really work at that stuff and even if it's a small amount compared to other artists, I'm really excited about it!

I also had my first ever convention table! My fiancee Cristal ( @hellscythearts ) and I got to sell our prints at an anime/geek convention and that was a dream come true! I've wanted to do that ever since attending my very first convention when I was really young. I also got a lot of practice in with clean line art and cell shading, which are two things I've always wanted to get better at, but had no confidence in ;v; and this year I really liked a lot of my pieces, enough to sell them as prints even!

What I didn't do:

I didn't end up sharing as much about my characters as I wanted to, or starting any big projects (curse you anxiety and time management!). While I did start making references for a lot of them (and their alternate universe variations because we have way too many AU versions hanging around), I didn't actually finish all of the references I wanted to. I also haven't actually TALKED about them that much outside of those posts.

There haven't been a lot of written snippets with large illustrations, or drabbles/plain writing shared. I also only did a handful of small comics when I'd hoped to do more to showcase their personalities. I do like the ones I did, I just want to do more! I'm still nervous to go in depth with many of them, even if their appearances are appealing I worry about their characterization or stories being uninteresting ;v; but I need to remind myself that I like writing them, and that should be the most important part. It's just a bonus if you guys end up liking them too!

I also didn't end up with a job that gave me more time but WE'LL SEE ABOUT THIS NEWEST ONE NOW THAT THE HOLIDAYS ARE WINDING DOWN.

What I want to do:

Okay, I have a lot of different ideas for what I'd like to work on this year. I'm going to lay out WAY TOO MANY GOALS, with the understanding to myself that I don't need to accomplish all of them. Even just one is okay. Please remind me of that too if I get too down on myself and my progress ;v; I want to do a lot but I need to take it easy on myself when it comes to productivity and output just because art isn't my main occupation yet. These goals are not listed in any particular order or priority!

Keep making references! There are lots of characters I didn't get to yet, and I want to at least get to the "main" ones and their original versions. Other sketchy AU refs are a bonus.

ACTUALLY SHARE PARTS OF MY OC'S STORIES AND MORE ABOUT THEM. This could be comics, drabbles, journal memes, or written snippets with art. It doesn't matter, make me post about my OCsand not just leave cool doodles and no information. I want you guys to start getting to know them like I know them.

COMICS. I want to start making comics. Both one off comics about my characters like I did in 2018, but also more structured ones. Cristal and I have so much writing done, and a few character stories that are basically finished, so no more excuses not to get drawing on at least one of those ones!

More Youtube: I have two different ideas about this. Last year I posted one speedpaint video almost every month, excluding November and December (although I did three in October so???) I want to try and keep that momentum. But I also want to try my hand at some other things-- specifically small animations. These would be pretty non-serious stuff, and mostly a lot of memes that fit my OCs, or maybe small 10-30 second scenes with music. So every month if I can, I'd like to post EITHER A SPEEDPAINT OR SHOT ANIMATION (with or without audio).

Attend more conventions! We've signed up for some so this is really just not to get discouraged and to keep signing up as more open. I know we won't get into all of them but I want to try to start doing it more regularly, being a part time convention artist is really appealing to me. Our first time was honestly like being paid to be on vacation and it was super good for my anxiety and stress issues.

Keep accepting commissions: It would be cool if I could take more of them this year, but I'd at least like to keep doing them at all. For the tail end of last year my momentum really died down and I stopped taking almost any. I'm not sure what a realistic goal/number here would be, so I'm sort of stuck on -take them at all- right now.

Continue posting art at least once a month to dA/twitter/tumblr! My standards with this goal are pretty loose. Big illustrations would be the ideal, but comics and references or weird experimental art are also a-okay. I want to stay lax about this.

Again, I don't need to do all of these goals. Heck I could probably rotate them a little through the year. These are just all the things I'd like to work on. Drawing and writing and animating are like, the things I've always wanted to do with my life, and I keep being afraid to put myself out there more. It can be hard to balance work with this (at the moment I'm doing A LOT OF OVERTIME), but it's ultimately what would make me the most happy. I want to be financially stable, but still be creatively fulfilled. Ideally I think working part time and then taking commissions/doing conventions/comics is where I want to shoot for, so we'll see what the year brings ;v;  

Now!!! Tell me about YOUR goals. What do you want to do this year creatively? How do you want to improve your art/writing? What about none art related things? How did you do with last year? Did you make progress? Did you find something new you're passionate about/interested in? What about non-art goals?

#long post #robot buzzin'

[adrian-paul-botta]

Here’s the dish on Massillon’s missing Lillian Gish mural

The 10-foot mural along state Route 21 was removed last month so the building can be repaired. MASSILLON Text messages and phone calls from friends weren’t enough to make Scot Phillips believe that a mural he painted years ago on a city building had somehow vanished. The artwork depicting Lillian Gish — whose acting career in the early 1900s spanned silent films, radio and later television in 1948 — is significant to Massillon because of her visits here between filming. Surely, it couldn’t be gone. To Phillips, an artist and the Massillon Museum’s operations officer, the mural holds special meaning. It was his first. And it helped launch a succession of other jobs painting murals. He had to see for himself. Phillips drove south on state Route 21 off Lillian Gish Boulevard SW. He could see the city’s pump station building. On the north side, a man had been using a pressure washer to clean the walls. Phillips was stunned. His friends weren’t kidding. The 10-foot mural depicting Lillian Gish in the 1926 film “The Scarlet Letter” — a familiar sight to passing motorists for the last seven years — had been wiped clean. “I don’t usually get emotional, but it does upset me that it is gone,” he said. What happened? Mayor Kathy Catazaro-Perry said the building had fallen into disrepair. The director of the wastewater management plant met with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Tuesday afternoon to address concerns with the structure and find the next best course of action, she said. The Lillian Gish mural was stripped from the pump station on June 2 to ready the building for examination and needed repairs. A Massillon Tigers mural remains on a pump station at the west end of Federal Avenue along Route 21. While that pump station also has some damage, it is unclear if the Tigers mural will need to be removed down the road. Though city officials could not specify what’s wrong with the building until the evaluation is finished, Catazaro-Perry said, she hopes to have the Gish mural repainted after the building is restored. “I know we all love the murals that are painted all around town, and we do anticipate it coming back as soon as we fix the infrastructure of the station,” she said. Tourist attractions The city’s mural project — an effort to help define Massillon and draw visitors by installing meaningful artwork on various buildings — was the vision of former mayor Frank Cicchinelli. He commissioned the paintings before Catazaro-Perry was elected to office in 2011. The Senior Citizens Center on Lincoln Way W was the first building to get one, Cicchinelli said. The city has (or had) at least four large murals and a few smaller ones, including the recently removed Lillian Gish design and Obie the Tiger — the Massillon City Schools’ mascot. “The (murals) really were tourist attractions, and I would hope the city would continue that same trend,” Cicchinelli said. “People would come through Massillon and see the murals. Sometimes they would stop and take pictures of the murals.” Work on the Gish piece, which encompassed three sides of the pump station, began in November 2010, with the finishing touches completed in late August the following year. Since then, Phillips has done at least 16 other wall paintings, including jobs in Akron and Kent. He doesn’t blame the city for the demise of the Gish mural. “It was amazing,” Phillips said. “I hadn’t painted a mural before. It launched my mural-making career. It’s unfortunate, but I understand it had to happen. There was really no other course of action.” Before putting the paint on the building, Phillips said, he used pencil to draw his vision on the wall surface. He was not paid but received $3,000 from the city for paint and other supplies. Phillips said he spent an additional $1,000 of his own money to complete both the Gish and the Obie murals. More murals Currently, Phillips is working on a piece in downtown Canton at Cleveland Avenue NW and Fifth Street NW that will depict a football scene of the rivalry between the McKinley Bulldogs and Massillon Tigers. “I think it was just one of those things that had to be taken care of quickly,” he said of the building where the Gish mural once took passersby back to another time. “I understand it’s a problem that the city had to deal with.” The Gish mural was the most recognized among Phillips’ work, he said, because of its location along Route 21. People traveling between cities or states saw it as a landmark announcing that they have arrived in Massillon. After the necessary repairs are made, Phillips said, he hopes he can reproduce the Gish art in the same location. However, he has been brainstorming other locations if the building’s condition is not fit for the painting. The pump station has water behind the concrete walls, which could decrease a mural’s life span due to moisture, Phillips said, noting the paint he uses is guaranteed to last at least 20 years. “If those can’t live on” he said, “I’d love to do something else in downtown Massillon somewhere.”

#lillian gish #massillon #mural #missing

[kiss-my-freckle]

The hiring of Tom Keen. The contradictions. 

From what they’ve shown, I believe Tom Keen had three separate employers. With the two they’ve shown, they’ve still handed us contradictions. 

Red and Berlin. 

Red hired Tom in 2009, Tom and Liz met July of 2010, Red fired/Berlin hired Tom in 2011, Tom and Liz married November of 2011. Tom said he worked for Red for two years. That puts Red hiring Tom in 2009. So Tom was hired at least 7 months before he actually met Liz in 2010. 

Red’s hire of Tom Keen.

2x19-

Red: When I hired Tom Keen, it was at a time of profound transition in your life. You’d already left behind the relative safety and innocence of youth. Sam’s care as a father had served you well, but you’d outgrown him. And I knew that eventually my life would jeopardize yours. So, in an admittedly presumptuous and ultimately futile effort to keep you safe, I hired Tom simply to be there as a friend of a friend to look after you from an arm’s length. 

5x8-

Major: The assignment’s deep cover. No timeline, no price tag. This may seem like a cake walk, but it’s the kind of assignment that makes me nervous. Our contractor has deep pockets. Demands the best, insists on anonymity. Tom: She’s cute. Major: That’s one more thing he insists on. Your job’s to be the friend of a friend, get to know this Milhoan, not to get involved with her. Just be a friend of a friend. You get that?

Tom: You hired me to spy on Liz. Red: I hired you to protect her.

Be a friend of a friend. I imagine friends protect friends, not spy on them.

Red’s fire/Berlin’s hire of Tom Keen.

2x19-

Red: When I learned that your relationship had become intimate, I fired him. I should’ve removed him, but you were already in love with him. And Tom, he shifted his allegiance to Berlin. In part - to protect himself from me, but also because it allowed for an inextricable intimacy and commitment to you. And so - you were married. And I couldn’t stay away any longer. A confluence of peril had entered your life, and I wanted to be within reach, to have influence. I turned myself in to the FBI to point you toward a truth that inevitably you would have to discover for yourself.

Tom aligned himself with Berlin prior to their wedding. He aligned himself with Berlin specifically so he and Liz could get married. That’s according to Red’s stated belief. This belief continues for both Red and Major in season two. 

2x15-

Major: Look, I told you what happened with Tom Keen. This is not my fault. Red: You vouched for him personally, Bill. I hired him on your recommendation. The merchandise was defective. Major: No. Keen was perfect - test scores, aptitude. There was no indication he would become emotionally involved. Red: But he did.

The Contradictions.

Major didn’t allow Tom to turn, nor did he get paid by Berlin for Tom to turn.

2x15-

Major: If I gave you his location, I’d have to betray a client. Red: That shouldn’t be hard, Bill. You betrayed me. You sold me an asset and then allowed him to turn when Berlin offered you twice as much. You’re in debt to me. Recognize this rather fortuitous opportunity for you to begin to make things even. Where can I find Tom Keen?

In fact, Major went off on Tom when he found out about their relationship. 

5x8-

Major: The contractor is livid. You weren’t supposed to get involved with the mark. Tom: Her name is Elizabeth. Major: I don’t care if she’s Queen Elizabeth and screwing her made you king. Get out. He will kill you if you don’t.

Tom’s romantic involvement with Liz began at some point after Red hired him, but also before Red fired/Berlin hired him. That means he was not hired by either Red or Berlin to get romantically involved with Liz. 

Who hired Tom to get involved with Liz?  

Someone did.

1x15-

Tom: I can’t. That’s why I came here, to tell you that I can’t do this because I love my wife. Jolene: Wrong answer! Elizabeth Keen is not your wife, she’s your target! Tom: She’s my what? Jolene: I think you know, Tom. Tom: What is this? Did they send you? Really? To what? Test me? I told you that I was in love with her because that is exactly what I am supposed to be. That - is my job.

Here, Tom admits that his job is to be “in love” with Liz.  Jolene refers to Liz as Tom’s “target.”

1x16-

Tom: You’re not my handler. I don’t work for you. Jolene: Berlin is having doubts. Tom: Yeah? Well, Berlin doesn’t have a damn clue. Do you have any idea how many candidates there were? They chose me. I’ve done everything they asked. I married the woman, for God’s sake. I’ve made her think my entire world revolves around her. And now - it’s been two years, and I’ve heard nothing.

Here, Tom admits doing everything they asked, that includes marrying Liz.

1x19-

Tom: It was the shoes. That’s when I knew. It was those brown leather shoes. It was our third or maybe fourth date. You’d come over to my place on Halstead, and we ordered, uh - takeout and rented a movie that we never finished because we ended up - And you had to get up early for work. And by the time I got up, you were gone. I remember standing in the closet, half-dressed, reaching for my shoes when I saw that you had drawn this little heart In the dust on my shoe. You remember that? It was the sweetest thing. And ever since that moment, I just felt - sorry for you. Because I knew - I knew that I had you. Part of me didn’t want it to work. But it did.

In Tom’s shoe story, he admits that it was his job to basically seduce her, that he didn’t want it to work, but it did. He knew he had her after their third or fourth date because she drew a heart in the dust on his shoe, and he basically felt sorry for her, but that was his job. 

3x7-

Tom: So, here’s the deal. Agent Keen and I were uh, married, as like, a job - you know? But you ever take one of those jobs just to pay the rent, and you find out that you’re - you’re good at it? Karakurt: You cannot excel at anything you do not love. Tom: Well, yeah. I mean, where were you when I was married? I didn’t figure that out till it was over.

Here, Tom admits to marrying Liz as part of a job, that he didn’t realize he was in love with her until it was over. This puts him realizing he was in love with her sometime after episode 1x19. 

3x13-

Gina: That’s why you want in on this? For her? Your phony wife? Tom: We’re not married. Gina: The mark you dumped me for? Here, Gina refers to Liz as Tom’s phony wife and his mark. Phony wife because marrying Liz was part of his job. 

Who was Tom's handler for Berlin?

Here's where things get really chaotic. Not just the employers, but the handlers too. We have two women who knew that Liz was Tom's mark: Gina and Jolene. Red and Major both appearing to believe Tom fell in love with Liz, neither of them commissioning him to so much as get romantically involved with her. Yet he was hired to do so, and even married her because they wanted him to. 

We have Tom referring to Major as his handler.

2x18-

Tom: These Germans want me dead. My handler too. So, please, I need your help. I need the passports.

Unless they lied in Tom's flashback in 5x8, Major didn't "allow" or "get offered twice as much" for Tom to work for Berlin.

We have Tom telling Jolene she’s not his handler. 

1x16-

Tom: You’re not my handler. I don’t work for you.

But we know that Jolene worked for Berlin.

1x16-

Jolene: Berlin is having doubts.

Jolene: We sent word four months ago.

Jolene: Berlin wants information.

The finer details. 

Tom told "Craig Keen" that he's the one accountable to Berlin.

1x18-

Tom: Easy for you to say. I’m the one who is accountable to Berlin. I’m coming to your hotel now.

Tom referred to Constantin while questioning the Russian with Katarina's photograph.

2x20-

Tom: Did the same thing last month. It’s probably why you don’t recognize me. Constantin. Berlin, man, he’s tough. I had to get away for a while, go to Germany, figure a few things out.

Here, he basically connected “Constantin” and “Berlin” in one sentence. A name Alexander Kirk hadn’t used for over 20 years. 

Tom knew where Berlin parked his money.

2x2-

Red: It’s funny. When I was standing there wondering if you had decided to let me die, a thought struck me. How did you know that Berlin had his money in that bank? At first, I thought it was the girl, that she told you. But the accounts would be coded, moved through shell corporations. Layers of protection. And then I realized, “No. Somebody has a secret Santa. A source.” Bravo, Lizzy. When you’re ready to share, I’d love to hear.

Tom also knew about Berlin's arms dealer.

2x7-

Tom: Sevan. Sevan Volkov. He runs arms for Berlin. He’d be able to set a meeting.

Red: I know you were expecting Volkov, but as luck would have it, he sold you out to Agent Keen.

Tom didn’t know of Alexander Kirk. 

3x22-

Red: Alexander Kirk. Tom: I don’t know who that is. Red: The man who ordered the attack on your wedding.

But he believed Alexander Kirk to be Liz’s father. 

4x4-

Liz: I don’t think he’ll hurt her. Tom: Of course he will. She’s his last chance of survival. Liz: If he hurts her, he loses me. Tom: Yeah, and lives.

And he believed this before getting his hands on the fabricated DNA report. 

He was "out" with Red.

2x19-

Tom: I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to be confused about my part in any of this. You, Liz. All of it. I’m out. I’m done.

He was "out" with Major.

2x18-

Tom: These Germans want me dead. My handler, too. So, please, I need your help. I need the passports.

Yet he asked Gina for help getting "out."

3x16-

Tom: So… I could end this right now. I could go find the Major, and I could end him too. Or… we can just agree to just walk away. I don’t come after you, and you don’t come after me or my family. Gina: I should have said yes that night in Budapest. Tom: No, Gina. Listen to me. I’m asking you to help me walk away. Please. Someday, maybe someone will do the same thing for you. Gina: I’ll try.

Gina speaking as if she were an employer of sorts. 

3x17-

Major: You were my finest accomplishment. And my biggest disappointment. Gina: Mine too. Gina: Those last few weeks, when I thought you were dead… I actually missed you. But I meant what I said. You’re my greatest disappointment.

And we have this bit of dialogue from Red to Tom.

5x8-

Red: I’ll say this for you - you’ve always believed that you were acting in her best interest. Selling me out to Berlin, faking her death - you always thought you were helping her.

#Anti-Tom Keen #Anti-Keen2 #TomSeries #dialogues

[paralleljulieverse]

In Blake Edwards’ 1982 film Victor/Victoria, there is a bittersweet moment when Victoria Grant (Julie Andrews), the down-on-her-luck English protagonist stranded in Depression-era Paris, drops her hitherto plucky facade and dissolves into weepy distress. Having been caught in a wintry downpour with newfound gay friend, Toddy (Robert Preston), Victoria retreats to Toddy’s apartment to dry off and enjoy a cognac-fuelled heart-to-heart. When she subsequently tries to slip back into her now dried clothes, Victoria discovers to her horror that they have shrunk to tattered rags. 

“My best dress,” she wails in shock at the waifish reflection in the dressing mirror. “I can’t go out like this…What am I going to do?!”  “Sell matches!” retorts Toddy in a vain attempt to jolly the situation. Victoria manages a wan chuckle before collapsing in tears into Toddy’s comforting embrace.  

The reference in this scene to Hans Christian Andersen’s “Little Matchgirl” is clear enough but Toddy’s gentle quip harbours another, potentially more pointed, intertextual allusion.* Star Julie Andrews actually played the Little Matchgirl in a 1959 tele-musical adaptation of the classic Andersen fairy tale made for BBC TV. 

Titled The Gentle Flame, the programme was something of a landmark event in British broadcast history. One of the most ambitious TV musical projects undertaken to that date by the BBC, The Gentle Flame was developed as a tailored showcase for Julie Andrews, with a specially commissioned script by writer-director Francis Essex (Essex, 40), and a suite of new songs from Ronald Cass and Peter Myers, the composer-lyricist team who would later go on to write a string of hit film musicals for Cliff Richard (Donnelly, 144-46).  Airing in peak time on Christmas Eve, The Gentle Flame was promoted as a major holiday entertainment and it attracted a substantial national audience (Cowan, 5).

To put The Gentle Flame in historical context, the 1950s was a period of profound transformation for British broadcasting. In 1954, the nation’s booming television market was opened to commercial competition with the creation of the ITA (Independent Television Authority) and the BBC suddenly lost its privileged monopoly as the sole TV network (Briggs, vol. V, 3ff; Holmes, 2ff). Confronted with a new landscape of competition and changing popular tastes, the iconic UK broadcaster moved to improve its marketability with an expanded range of audience-friendly fare. 

Earlier in the decade, the BBC had appointed Ronald Waldman as Head of its TV Light Entertainment Division and he was influential in overhauling the network’s programme offerings (Briggs, vol. V, 24). A seasoned industry veteran with many years experience as a successful radio producer, Waldman believed that the key to attracting a mass audience was the strategic use of “star power”. In a 1956 memo discussing the results of an internal audience research bulletin, Waldman noted with alarm how “two out of three viewers declares [sic] the ITA was better than the BBC in the matter of Variety…and stars” and that the broadcaster “must try and get some personalities” (cited in Bennett, 56). 

One of the “personalities” high on Waldman’s wish list was Julie Andrews. Years previously, Waldman had played an instrumental role in Julie’s early career when he introduced her as a ‘child prodigy’ to the airwaves of Britain on his popular radio show, “Tonight at 8″ in 1947. It was a longstanding professional association shared by other members of senior management at BBC-TV. When Waldman was promoted to Executive Business Manager of Programming in 1958, his former role of Light Entertainment Head was taken over by Eric Maschwitz who, as it happens, had also worked with Julie in her child star years on the production team of Starlight Roof (Briggs, vol. V, 196). It’s possibly not surprising, then, that “the Beeb” should have been keen to secure Julie for its expanding roster of television ‘names’ in the late-50s.

Not that Julie was exactly a stranger to the small screens of Britain. She had made her television debut as far back as 1948 appearing on Rooftop Rendezvous alongside parents, Ted and Barbara Andrews (”Rooftop”, 27). She then popped up with some regularity across the early 1950s as a guest on assorted TV musical variety revues and quiz shows. She even made a high profile appearance on the “commercial competition,” performing in 1955 on ATV’s hugely popular Sunday Night at the London Palladium, produced by another old-time associate, Val Parnell (Gray, 12). By the time Julie returned to the UK in 1958 as the triumphant star of My Fair Lady, her celebrity was at an all-time high and conditions were ripe for promotion to TV leading lady in her own right. 

In what was claimed to be “one of the biggest fees ever paid to a British star”, Julie was signed by the BBC in May 1959 to an exclusive deal for “four hour-long TV spectaculars” (”Julie Signs,” 3). Originally scheduled as monthly broadcasts to start in June, the series was subsequently postponed until after Julie had finished her London run in My Fair Lady in the autumn (”Julie’s TV Show Postponed”, 3). Meanwhile, the BBC built up public anticipation by featuring Julie in a special pre-filmed appearance on Harry Secombe’s popular variety show, Secombe at Large (30 May 1959, BBC). It also secured rights to Julie’s appearance on The Jack Benny Show from CBS in the US which it broadcast in September (Noble, 6).

Finally, on November 12, the first of Julie’s four specials for the BBC bowed amidst much fanfare (“Highlights,” 9). Simply called The Julie Andrews Show, the 45-minute specials (slightly shorter than the originally announced one hour format) were broadcast fortnightly on a Thursday evening at 7:30pm. The first three entries followed a standard TV variety format with Julie hosting, singing, performing and chatting with a roster of changing guest stars. The fourth and final entry took a different approach, devoting the timeslot to the premiere production of a new Christmastime musical, The Gentle Flame (”Gentle,” 7). 

A loose adaptation of Andersen’s “Little Matchgirl,” The Gentle Flame starred Julie as Trissa, the nineteenth-century beggar girl who uses her last box of matches to keep warm on a bitterly cold snowbound night. One by one she lights the matches and:

“as she does so she is transported into a world of music, beautiful gowns and dancing. She meets a young man and falls in love but when she discovers that the room in which she met him had been boarded up a long time ago, she finds herself poor and back in the street again” (Taylor, 8).

Appearing alongside Julie in the programme was a supporting cast of seasoned character actors including John Fraser as Charles the fantasy suitor, Jay Denyer as the Shopkeeper, and Pauline Loring as the haughty Rich Woman. Special musical support was provided by members of the Brompton Oratory Boys Choir (”Gentle,” 19).

In many ways, The Gentle Flame was not unlike a smaller-scale British Cinderella, the celebrated 1956 TV musical created by Rodgers and Hammerstein for Julie. Yet, despite its considerable cultural and historical significance, The Gentle Flame has largely fallen into obscurity. As far as can be ascertained, it hasn’t ever been seen since its initial broadcast almost sixty years ago and it is overlooked in all but the most exhaustive historical commentaries. Even Julie herself gives the programme short shrift. In her memoirs, she dispenses with the BBC series in a few short paragraphs, concluding with the matter-of-fact summation: “We ended up with four fairly good shows, the final episode airing on Christmas Eve” (268).

So what happened to The Gentle Flame and why isn’t it a bigger deal today? For a start, there is a question mark over whether or not a copy of the programme exists or, for that matter, ever did. Sadly, both the BBC and the BFI (British Film Institute) report that they don’t hold The Gentle Flame in their libraries and that there are no known records of it in any other archival repository (BBC Archives, personal communication, 11 November 2017).  

Up until the 1960s, most British television content was produced via live transmission and wasn’t typically recorded (Holmes, 9-10). Some select programmes were filmed in advance and others of special note were captured for subsequent rebroadcast and/or preservation using telecine cameras (in much the same way that Cinderella was recorded as a kinescope by CBS), but the lion’s share of TV content was live and unrecorded. Industry practice started to change in the late 1950s with the advent of videotape technology but, because it was prohibitively expensive, its incorporation was patchy. As late as 1963, less than a third of BBC programming was routinely recorded (Turnock, 95-96). 

In the case of The Gentle Flame, it is difficult to determine the exact technical status of its production. Not only is there no known copy of the original broadcast but, even more disconcertingly, BBC Written Archives have “not retained any production files for The Gentle Flame or other Julie Andrews Specials” (BBC Archives, personal communication, 11 November 2017). All that exists in “official holdings” is a microfilm copy of the script, an audience research report, and a handful of production stills. In the absence of concrete documentary evidence and/or a labour-intensive detective hunt through papers and collections that may still be in existence from people involved in the production, all we can ultimately do is speculate about how The Gentle Flame was produced and if a recorded copy was ever made.

Technical credits for the programme list an entry for “film sequences” by A. Arthur Englander and editing by Pamela Bosworth (“Gentle,” 19). This would suggest that at least some of the programme’s material was pre-filmed. The most likely scenario is that it was produced as a mix of live broadcast and pre-filmed sequences. This hybrid style was fairly common practice for BBC programmes of the era where pre-filmed sequences would be inserted into an otherwise live broadcast, typically to add exteriors or special effects shots that were impossible to do in a studio or to offer a “breathing space” for costume and scenery changes (Turnock, 87). 

There is certainly evidence that this practice of mixing live and pre-filmed sequences was used in earlier episodes of The Julie Andrews Show. Newspaper reviews make mention of the fact that, among other things, a comic sketch between Julie and Kenneth Williams in Episode 1 and an animated sequence and appearance by Stanley Holloway in Episode 3 were all pre-recorded inserts (Erni, 23 Dec., 38; Sear 26; Taylor 16). In the case of The Gentle Flame, it is most likely that the fantasy sequences with Julie and John Fraser at the ball would have been pre-filmed. Publicity photos reveal dramatic costume and hairstyle changes in these scenes that would have been difficult to negotiate in an exclusively live format. So, at a minimum, some of the material elements from The Gentle Flame must have existed in a recorded format.

Furthermore, given the unprecedented expense and prestige of these Julie Andrews specials, it beggars belief that the BBC wouldn’t have recorded them in some form or other –– if not for posterity, at least with an eye to possible rebroadcast and/or extended distribution. Historian Rob Turnock (2006) notes that, as early as 1952, the BBC was recording select live performances and staged programmes and even “established a transcription unit to distribute telerecordings and purpose made BBC films abroad” (90). Moreover, much of the reason the BBC commissioned their own staff writers to develop new programmes––as they did with The Gentle Flame––was to “generate material that it owned and could record by itself” without having to negotiate permission and clearance from external rights holders (ibid.).**

However, even if the BBC did record The Gentle Flame, it is no guarantee that the recording would still be in existence today. Because TV was widely viewed in the era as a transient medium of live communication –– in much the same way as radio or theatre –– there was little sense that TV programmes had lasting value or should be conserved beyond the period of their immediate use. It wasn’t till 1978 that the BBC initiated an archival policy but, by this stage, it was estimated that over 90% of all previous programming had been destroyed, whether through outright disposal or through wiping over for re-use (Fiddy, 3). When the BBC made the move to colour transmission in 1967, for example, it undertook a wholesale junking of old monochromatic programmes in the misguided belief that they no longer had appreciable value or purpose (Fiddy, 8). Hours of content from even hugely popular BBC series such as Doctor Who, Steptoe and Son, and Dad’s Army were lost in this way. 

So if The Gentle Flame were indeed recorded, any copies would really need to have defied the odds to have survived to the present day. But, who knows? Events like the BFI’s annual “Missing, Believed Wiped” public appeal have had great success in turning up many BBC programmes previously presumed lost forever. So maybe a copy of The Gentle Flame is lurking in some dusty, out-of-the-way storage facility somewhere just waiting to be rediscovered. If you’re reading this, Dame Julie, Check the attic!

Finally, the question remains: was The Gentle Flame any good? Well, critical reception of the programme was, it must be said, mixed. Maurice Wiggin of the Sunday Times called it “charming Christmastime fare” that displayed “cunning visual talent at full stretch,” though added as a slightly acerbic aside that writer-director Francis Essex “should stick to directing and leave writing to writers” (20). Guy Taylor, resident critic for The Stage, was positively rhapsodic in his review:

“My Christmas viewing started with Julie Andrews, and what better viewing can you find than that? She appeared with John Fraser in a delightful forty-five minute programme called The Gentle Flame, written and produced by Francis Essex…Everything about this show was right, the photography was delicate, the sets were imaginative and beautifully lit and the special music and lyrics by Peter Myers and Ronald Cass were charming…Essex’s script was excellent blending fairy-tale with the naturalistic and how nice it was to hear English spoken so clearly by Miss Andrews. Essex must have had this in mind when he wrote it.” (31 Dec, 8)

Others were not quite so enchanted. Irving Wardle of The Listener wrote that The Gentle Flame was:

“a really bad example of old-style musical comedy, eliciting push-button responses to such things as a waif in the snow, a ballroom and a Byronic bachelor with pots of money. The legendary association between romance and wealth is unobjectionable, but one does object to the dreadful dialogue (’This is my first ball’) Mr. Essex inflicted on Julie Andrews, and to the fact that he destroyed the sad poetry of the original by making the real world as fanciful as the one the girl imagined” (Wardle, 31 Dec, 11).

So, who knows? The Gentle Flame could be a lost mini-musical treasure or a hamfisted failure. Either way, to see and hear the young Julie Andrews perform a role written just for her during her prime Broadway years would have to be as close as imaginable to the perfect Christmas treat. 

Notes:

* Whether or not the reference to the Little Matchgirl in Victor/Victoria is an intentional nod to The Gentle Flame is hard to know. Blake Edwards was certainly a master of satirical allusionism and, like most of the films he made with his wife and longtime collaborator, Victor/Victoria features more than the odd snook at the “Julie Andrews image” including, in this case, quips about nuns, exploding umbrellas, and even recycled jokes from Thoroughly Modern Millie. However, The Gentle Flame isn’t exactly a high profile entry in the Julie Andrews canon, so any intertextual reference would be pretty left-of-field. Interestingly, the joke about the Little Matchgirl in Victor/Victoria was inserted during production. The original shooting script has a different line in this scene:

Victoria: What am I going to do? Toddy: Well, you could open a boutique for midgets!  (Edwards, 34)

** Clutching at straws, Julie does state in her memoirs apropos her BBC TV series that “we would tape one show a week” (279). Of course, the verb “tape” here could be being used symbolically rather than literally, but hope springs eternal. 

Sources:

Andrews, Julie. Home: A Memoir of My Early Years. New York: Hyperion, 2008.

Bennett, James. Television Personalities: Stardom and the Small Screen. London: Routledge, 2011.

Black, Peter. “Peter Black’s Teleview.” Daily Mail. 13 November 1959: 18.

Briggs, Asa. The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom. Vols I-V. London : Oxford University Press, 1995.

Cottrell, John. Julie Andrews: The Story of a Star. London: Arthur Barker, 1968.

Cowan, Margaret. “TV a Comedown? No, Says Julie.” Picturegoer. 12 December 1959: 5.

Donnelly, K.J. British Film Music and Film Musicals. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007.

Edwards, Blake. Victor/Victoria. Unpublished screenplay (Final revised version: 23 Feb 1981), Culver City, CA: Blake Edwards Company, 1981.

Erni. “Foreign Television Reviews: ‘The Julie Andrews Show’.” Weekly Variety. 18 November 1959: 34

_______. “Foreign TV Followup: ‘The Julie Andrews Show’.” Weekly Variety. 23 December 1959: 38

Essex, Francis. “Some Passing Memories.” Television: The Journal for the Royal Television Society. Vol. 16. No. 1, 1976: 36-41.

Fiddy, Dick. Missing Believed Wiped: Searching for the Lost Treasures of British Television. London: British Film Institute, 2001.

Forster, Peter. “Television: Instead of Lunch.” The Spectator. 11 December 1959: 878.

“The Gentle Flame.” Radio Times. 20-26 December 1959: 7, 19.

Gray, Andrew. “Julie Andrews is Booked for Sunday Palladium.” The Stage. 6 October 1955: 12.

“Highlight s of the Week: Julie Andrews.” Radio Times. 8-14 November 1959: 9.

Holmes, Su. Entertaining Television: The BBC and Popular Television Culture in the 1950s. Manchester University Press, 2008.

“Julie Signs Up for TV.” Daily Mail. 12 May 1959: 3.

“Julie’s TV Show Postponed.” Daily Mail. 13 June: 3.

Noble, Peter, ed. British Film and Television Yearbook, 1960. London: BA Publications, 1960. 

“Rooftop Rendezvous.” Programme Listing. Radio Times. 21-27 November, 1948: 21.

Sear, Richard. “Last Night’s View: The Unspoiled Fair Lady.” Daily Mirror. 13 November 1959: 26.

Taylor, Guy. “In Vision: Julie Andrews Makes Her BBC-TV Debut.” The Stage and Television Today. 19 November 1959: 16.

_______“In Vision: All Those Faithful Viewers.” The Stage and Television Today. 31 December 1959: 8.

Turnock, Rob. Television and Consumer Culture: Britain and the Transformation of Modernity. London: I.B.Tauris, 2006. 

Wardle, Irving. Critic on the Hearth: Bitter Rice.” The Listener. 19 November 1959: 8.

__________. “Critic on the Hearth: A Blow Out.” The Listener. 31 December 1959: 11.

Wiggin, Maurice. “Television: Low Tide, High Noon”. The Sunday Times. 27 December 1959: 20.

Wright, Adrian. A Tanner’s Worth of Tune: Rediscovering the Post-War British Musical. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010.

Copyright © Brett Farmer 2017

#julie andrews #television #musical #christmas #bbc #1959 #Hans Christian Andersen #the little match girl #the gentle flame #francis essex #ronald cass #peter myers #british musical

[strawberrypoundcake]

job causes bad health, then asks me to pay more and more money to fix it

So here’s what’s going on that’s got me so desperate for money all of a sudden, it’s a story that’s been ongoing and finally led up to this. I’ll link to it later from commission post.

After having worked a year and a half at my first retail type job, making less than living wage (more than when I started, but still shit) around March of this year I suddenly started getting all sorts of problems. My feet started to hurt a lot, and got worse every week, even though before I got pretty much used to standing all day and this never happened. It started getting to the point where I couldn’t even stand without going into extreme pain. (I started mysteriously gaining more weight too, but my doctor said it wasn’t related to the foot pain)

After visiting a doctor about this, which I took too long to do because it’s now July, they also noticed my blood pressure was WAY up, which was weird because it was fine last year!! They asked me to track it, and it was consistently high for 2 weeks. I have been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, panic attacks, bipolar disorder with extreme depressive episodes, and ADD, so my doctor/s blamed the overwhelming stress from my job, since that was the only factor that had changed from the previous visits. (supposedly my muscles, including the ones on my feet, were getting weaker from the stress or something like that, I dunno I’m not a doctor)

Meanwhile I was paying more money than I expected, because it turns out the shit insurance from my job, while covering SOME costs, most of the time covers only 70% of it. :| Literally any doctor that was recommended to me that would be fully covered had a minimum two month waiting period. Sure, let’s wait while my fucking blood pressure keeps getting higher and I have a stroke!! I was also paying a bit more for new prescriptions too, like one that helps with high blood pressure.

I took several PTO’s to try and get over all this junk because they wouldn’t give me paid leave... And I needed SOME money to pay for all this medical shit. Doctor kept recommending to not work there.

Another factor is that I’m leaving to South Carolina in November, so this wasn’t a job I was committed to. There was money that I would get for a while, enough to last until the move, if I just straight up left the job in mid-September. After much discussion in the household and from my doctors, I decided to just leave, because my conditions were getting worse and I couldn’t keep working here. 

They have a thing called COBRA which they ham-handedly explained to me, if I left I could continue coverage. “How much?” I ask, “around 300 dollars” they fucking say. It was around what I was expecting to pay for normal insurance, so I took it. Turns out it’s 490 dollars because it didn’t let me downgrade to the 300 one!!!!! Oops!!!! “You’d have to pay 490 dollars every month it’s happening, we can bill you or take direct deposit.” In what turns out to be a life-saving decision I say to just bill me. If I just pay for two months I can live with it.

As it turns out, they failed to fucking explain that they’re gonna bill TWO MONTHS in advance and they want that payment immediately, not at the end of the fucking month, when I get paid!! SO I have to pay essentially ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS that I don’t have upfront at once just so I can keep having medical. If I don’t pay it right away they’re going to put a delinquency in my credit. :) So, I have to take out a loan for this and now here I am, with no money for anything except my expensive-ass medical insurance that cost more than what my job was paying me and I need it because of shit that my job caused in the first place.

To top it off as well, even though it’s the same insurance I had before, I’m just paying more for it, it stopped covering my anxiety medication, it doesn’t even cover the generic. So now, here I am, without medication, going through extreme withdrawal symptoms and panic attacks, and without a psychiatrist because oops! The medical doesn’t cover any of them except for ones that again, have a two month waiting period or more.

I can’t cancel this shit medical insurance so I’m stuck with it for two months, broke and anxious. 

So this is why I’m desperate and asking here, and other places for money. Some friends have pointed out that my prices are too cheap, which I’m aware of, but I need money fast and I’m good with sketches and can finish them fast and since I’m out of a job and can’t stand much, I have more time to do them. Eventually I’ll raise their prices if I get more people than expected, (which I doubt will happen since I’m in a little corner of tumblr) or after November. So please, anything you can do to help so I don’t go berserk from all these panic attacks, would be greatly appreciated. (I’ll have a donate button as well!)

Thanks! :)

[newstfionline]

Trump Budget Cuts Put Struggling Americans on Edge

By Sabrina Tavernise and Trip Gabriel, NY Times, March 17, 2017

Regina Feltner, a retired nurse, was recovering from side effects of radiation therapy when she got the notice that her heat would be cut off. It was a bone-cold January day. The snow was so high that her daughter had to come over to take the dog out.

“I have lung cancer and it’s the dead of winter,” she remembers thinking. “What am I going to do?”

Help came in the form of a heating subsidy: money from the federal government, delivered by the Highland County Community Action Organization, a small nonprofit in rural southern Ohio, where Ms. Feltner lives.

Now, that program is on the chopping block. It is one of many cuts in President Trump’s new budget proposal that would inflict the deepest pain on the most vulnerable Americans--a great number of whom voted for him.

“I understand what he’s trying to do, but I think he’s just not stopping to think that there are people caught in the middle he is really going to hurt,” said Ms. Feltner, 57, who was a nurse for 25 years and voted for Mr. Trump. “He needs to make some concessions for that. I was a productive citizen. Don’t make me feel worthless now.”

As news of Mr. Trump’s budget begins to sink in across the country, Americans are trying to parse what the changes to the government’s spending plan might mean for them. It is only a proposal, an opening bid in what is likely to be a protracted public argument over national priorities. But it is important because it signals what the new president is thinking, his wish list for the size and shape of government.

In two days of interviews with beneficiaries of programs at risk in 11 states, many people said they did not see themselves reflected in Mr. Trump’s vision for the government. And some felt surprise at what has been left out.

Ms. Feltner said that without the heating subsidy she would probably have to move in with her daughter and two teenage grandchildren. “I’d still like to have a little dignity left, and not have to move in with someone else,” she said. “I used to be the one packing up the food in the food pantry for people,” she said. “Now I’m the one in line.”

Another proposed cut would defund the Appalachian Regional Commission, which was founded in 1965 to strengthen economic growth in a 13-state swath of the country. Of the 420 counties in the commission’s footprint, 399 voted for Mr. Trump.

“I hate to see him cut us,” said Chris Farley, 32, of Delbarton, W.Va., who was laid off from his job operating a drill at a surface coal mine in 2015 and is now in a jobs and education program partially funded by the commission.

Mr. Farley worked in coal for 11 years. When he was 18, his father, a miner, helped get him a job driving a truck that carried rocks. The pay was good: He was making $20 an hour when he was laid off--a punch he did not see coming.

The only work he found afterward paid minimum wage. With a wife and 3-year-old daughter, he struggled to pay the bills. “I tried everywhere to get a job,” he said. “I mowed lawns. I cut weeds. I hauled trash.”

Last year, his mother texted him about a job in farming through a local nonprofit called the Coalfield Development Corporation, which is partially supported by the Appalachian Regional Commission. It pays him $11.50 an hour for 33 hours a week growing cucumbers and raising chickens and pigs. It also pays for him to attend community college six hours a week where he working toward an associate degree. His grade point average is 4.0.

“I never dreamed I’d be going back to school,” he said. “I love it. It’s amazing. College is totally different than high school. Back then I was young and I didn’t care.”

The farm had its first full year last year: a good cucumber harvest, a lot of eggs sold. Mr. Farley was reminded of eating beans and tomatoes at his grandparents’ farm as a boy.

“I blew up the mountains,” he said, “and now I’m reclaiming the mountains.”

Another worker in the Coalfield Development jobs program is Tracy Spaulding, 19, the son of a longtime miner. When his father was laid off after nearly 30 years, he made ends meet by buying an industrial saw and cutting lumber. The younger Mr. Spaulding has skipped the mine altogether: He works in a wood shop making things like TV stands, cabinets and headboards for beds.

In November, Mr. Spaulding cast his first vote for president. He chose Mr. Trump, something he tries not to talk about with his friends who didn’t. “They get really sore about it,” he said. “Honestly, I like Donald Trump. That’s just how I feel, I like him. A lot of people don’t and I understand that.”

When asked what he thought about the proposed cut to the commission, he thought for a bit. “He ain’t pulled nothing on us yet,” he said.

He thought more. “I believe I’d be a little bit mad about it if he made that cut and I lost my job and schooling, you know? But things happen. People get laid off every day. I’ll make it one way or another.”

In Staten Island, N.Y., Raymond DeNozzo, 53, a carpenter who has lived in Sutton, W.Va., for 28 years, was back home visiting his father on Friday. He, too, voted for Mr. Trump. He believes his adopted state’s coal industry was decimated under President Barack Obama. He supports increased spending on veterans and on the military, and, at least in theory, cuts to some social programs. He thinks that welfare discourages people from working, for instance.

But his wife is a schoolteacher, their health insurance is through her job, and Mr. DeNozzo worries about the potential cuts to schools that could result from Mr. Trump’s budget. School consolidations are already overburdening teachers, he said. And they can also harm students, he said.

“That’s a concern,” Mr. DeNozzo said. “Will he keep the little schools open?”

Some of the programs in Mr. Trump’s sights are like unloved stepchildren, with alphabet soup acronyms unfamiliar to anyone except fiercely dedicated do-gooders. But they can have outsize effects on people’s lives.

Money from a Community Development Block Grant helped pay to remodel Shantell Swenson’s bathroom and kitchen in Salt Lake City, making it easier for her to use a wheelchair in her home and allowing her to cook on a stove for the first time. There have been other benefits, too. “Now instead of spitting my toothpaste into a cup I can roll under the sink,” said Ms. Swenson, 33, who has cerebral palsy.

Tired of lifting her legs into and out of a standard bathtub and begging landlords to change it, she scraped together her savings to buy a small house last May. The bathroom was finished in September, and the kitchen is on track for April. She calls the work life changing. “I would be old and gray and partially retired before I could have been able to afford this on my own,” she said.

Ms. Swenson said she did not “rage toward” Mr. Trump “like some people I know.” But when she heard about his proposed budget cuts, she said, she was “boiling with anger.”

One of those proposed cuts would kill the Legal Service Corporation, which funds 133 civil legal aid programs in the 50 states at a cost of $385 million. That funding stream makes up 40 percent of the budget for Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma, whose lawyers saved Paula and Joe Frye from losing their nine-acre home.

The Fryes, who live in Warner, had missed a $14 tax payment four years earlier. They learned that their property had been put up for auction only when a man pulled up to their home and Mr. Frye asked him what he wanted. “The man said he wanted to look at the land for sale,” said Mrs. Frye, a retired turkey hatchery worker.

They were unable to resolve the unpaid bill themselves, but the land was sold at a county auction for $5,000. The Fryes could not match that, or afford a lawyer.

Only when they turned to Legal Aid did a lawyer there discover a technical flaw in the county’s handling of the tax arrears and the Fryes got their home back.

“This is all we had,” Mrs. Frye said. “If it hadn’t been for Legal Aid, I guess we’d just live in our car.”

The Fryes, who did not vote, said they were reserving judgment on Mr. Trump. Some things are probably beyond the president’s control, Mr. Frye said. Mrs. Frye said they would be watching.

“I guess until we see exactly what he does do, then I’ll know if I like him or wish he had lost,” she said.

#Trump budget

[nextstepelectric]

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[kuyarexdelsdiaries]

KRD Reports: What Happened in October?

(This KRD Reports article is contributed through EIC’s good friend Carl Veluz).

As October came to a close, let's remember the highlights for the month of October.

1.) Farewell, Nene Pimentel (1933-2019) October 20, 2019 marked a sad day in Philippine Politics when former Senator and former Senate President Aquilino Quilinging "Nene" Pimentel, Jr. died at 5 AM after suffering complications from lymphoma at the age of 85 according to his namesake son Senator Aquilino Martin "Koko" Pimentel III. He was born on December 11, 1933 to parents Aquilino "Aqui" E. Pimentel, Sr. and Petra Quilinging in the town of Claveria, Misamis Oriental. In his early life, He finished his law degree at Xavier University in 1959 and practiced the profession from 1960 to 1980. During his early life as a lawyer, He married Lourdes de la Llana on April 30, 1960 and they had six children — Aquilino Martin “Koko” III, Gwendolyn Petrecia, Ma. Petrina, Aquilino Justinian IV, Teresa Lourdes and Lorraine Marie. That changed everything in 1971 when Pimentel, then a young lawyer, was elected as Misamis Oriental representative to the 1971 Constitutional Convention. Not only did Pimentel oppose amendments adverse to the people’s interest, he also denounced Ferdinand Marcos’ declaration of martial law in 1972. The following year, Pimentel and other Marcos critics were rounded up. He spent three months in detention at Camp Crame. His second arrest came a few years later when Pimentel, who ran alongside then Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr. under the Lakas Ng Bayan party, decried the results of the fraudulent 1978 Batasang Pambansa elections. His speaking out after losing the elections resulted in a two-month stay at Camp Bicutan. In 1980, Pimentel was elected mayor of Cagayan de Oro City, defeating a Marcos candidate. In 1981, he was ousted from office for supposed “political turncoatism.” However, massive demonstrations in his hometown forced Marcos to reinstate him as mayor — an early version of the “people power” that would help topple the dictator years later. In 1982, He founded his own party Partido Demokratiko Pilipino (PDP) and rounded up opposition leaders in Davao and Cagayan de Oro against the Marcos regime. PDP would merge with LABAN becoming PDP-Laban in 1986. In 1983, he was again arrested, this time on rebellion charges for allegedly giving P100 to a rebel leader. His fourth and last detention was for alleged participation in ambuscades. Although his supporters bailed him out, he spent seven months under house arrest. A Year after his friend former Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr. was assasinated at Manila International Airport on August 21, 1983, Pimentel won a seat in the Batasang Pambansa elections of 1984. But the Marcos government ousted him on the allegation that he had cheated in the elections. The Supreme Court itself recounted the ballots in an electoral contest. Pimentel was Cory Aquino’s original pick as vice president in the 1986 snap election, but when Salvador Laurel eventually became her running mate to help unify the opposition, Pimentel, recalled Aquino, “accepted it manfully.” After Corazon Aquino became President, Pimentel became Secretary of the Ministry of Local Government in concurrent capacity as Presidential Adviser and Chief Negotiator with the Muslim rebels. His task as Secretary of Interior and Local Government is to replace Marcos-backed candidates with OICs. Among them was Jejomar Binay of Makati (who replaced Nemesio Yabut following his death), 26-year old Francis Tolentino of Tagaytay and Rodrigo Duterte as OIC Vice Mayor. When he resigned as Secretary, Pimentel made his next move, to run as senator after Corazon Aquino included him in the reinvigorated Lakas ng Bayan Senatorial Slate for the 1987 Legislative Elections and Pimentel ended up in the 20th Place. During his first stint as senator, he was the principal author of Republic Act 7160 or the Local Government Code of 1991 which aimed to “liberate provinces, cities, municipalities and barangay from over-dependence upon the central government by increasing their powers and share in the taxes and wealth of the nation.” being the “Father of Local Government Code”. Aside of the Local Government Code, he authored and sponsored several key pieces of legislation such as the Cooperative Code, the Philippine Sports Commission Act, the People’s Small-Scale Mining Act and the Act creating the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. He also authored and co-sponsored the Generic Drugs Act and the Act Establishing the Philippine Police under a Reorganized Department of Interior and Local Government. On September 16, 1991, Despite Corazon Aquino's plea to convince him to vote in favor, Pimentel voted "No" to extend the PH-US Bases Treaty and was part of the Magnificent 12 senators. In 1992, Jovito Salonga invited Pimentel as his running mate under the Liberal-PDP-Laban Coalition, Koalisyong Pambansa but he lost finishing fifth among the vice presidential candidates by garnering 9.9% of the vote losing to former action star and senator Joseph Estrada. In 1995, He made his attempt to return to the Senate but he was defeated in the 1995 national elections after running for another term for the Senate placing on number 15 by means of dagdag-bawas scheme (which his son Koko would suffer the same fate in 2007). In 1998, Pimentel made his successful comeback in the Senate under the Laban ng Makabayang Masang Pilipino of Joseph Estrada placing 4th in the election results. On November 2000, Pimentel was installed as Senate President in time for the Impeachment Trial of Joseph Estrada But on January 16, 2001, Pimentel was one of those who voted in favor of the opening of the second bank envelope. Their vote was outnumbered and some of the opposition senators cried in front of Senate President Pimentel as he explained his vote. "I vote to do so because that is the only way to determine whether or not the contents of the envelope are relevant or material to the case at bar. Because of this development, Mr. Chief Justice, I realize that the NO’s have it. And therefore, I resign my presidency of the Senate as soon as my successor is elected." As chair of the Blue Ribbon Committee, he has recommended the prosecution of top government officials of previous administrations in relation to the Expo Pilipino centennial scam and the misuse of the funds of the Retirement and Separation Benefits Systems of the Armed Forces. He has also recommended the prosecution of certain personnel of the Land Registration Administration for involvement in faking of land titles. Recently his committee also conducted series of investigations into the allegation of Governor Luis "Chavit" Singson on jueteng scandal. As Chair of the Committee on Local Government, he has supported far-reaching amendments to further strengthen the role of local government units in national development. He has also gotten senate approval to return the police to the supervision of LGUs and has authored a law to fix the date for elections of ARMM officials. In 2004, He was reelected another term in the Senate under Koalisyong ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino placing 3rd in the election results. Five years later, he would go into a word war with the architect of Martial Law, Senator Juan Ponce Enrile as Pimentel said " "You're calling me a hypocrite, Oh My Goodness. And if we talk about hypocrisy, The biggest hypocrite is the one who fakes his ambush and then uses that as an excuse for the imposition of Martial Law." Pimentel bowed out of the senate on June 30, 2010 before that, his daughter Gwen made her attempt for the Senate run but lost. He would see his son Koko Pimentel assume his seat in 2011 before gaining a full term in 2013. He endorsed Rodrigo Duterte for his Presidential Bid to support Federalism. As a reward, He was also part of a committee that was responsible for drafting a new constitution that would have changed the form of government to federalism, but the effort has been tainted by accusations that it was a way for politicians to become more deeply entrenched in office and amass greater power.   On October 14, 2019, Pimentel was admitted to the intensive care unit of an undisclosed hospital in Metro Manila. His daughter, Gwendolyn, reported that he was experiencing difficulty in breathing due to pneumonia. A family statement described that Pimentel was "very ill". Six days later, Nene Pimentel is dead at the age of 85. During the wake in Taguig, Current and Former Senators as well as government figures paid their respects to Pimentel. Among them was Senate President Tito Sotto, Senator Bong Revilla, Francis Tolentino former Senators Heherson Alvarez, Wigberto Tañada, Jinggoy Estrada and Joey Lina, former Chief Justice Hilario Davide, Jr., former Quezon City mayor Herbert Bautista, former Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales, Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea, Congressman Edcel Lagman, former Vice President Teofisto Guingona, Jr., former Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and among others. President Rodrigo Duterte along with Senator Bong Go, who came home from Japan visited the wake of his friend who put him as OIC Vice Mayor of Davao. On Wednesday, the remains of Pimentel was brought to the Senate for the necrological rites among those who gave eulogies were former Senators Rene Saguisag, Nikki Coseteng Joey Lina, Orly Mercado. Current Senators who also gave their eulogy were Pia Cayetano, Risa Hontiveros and Senate President Tito Sotto. Among the former and current senators who attended were Ronald Dela Rosa, TV Patrol Newscaster Noli De Castro, Juan Miguel Zubiri, Sonny Angara, Wigberto Tanada, Eddie Ilarde, former Ginebra Basketball Player Robert Jaworski, and Ramon Magsaysay Jr.

(Koko Pimentel while responding to the eulogies, breaks down in tears as he remembers his father.) “We are proud that many of you consider him as your Tatay,” “It is actually a sad event. We do not want this to happen but it happened and that is life—to cope and to console ourselves to celebrate the life of our beloved departed,” “We will miss our physical interaction with Tatay, we will miss hearing the insights of our elder statesman. Nene Pimentel was my techer, I know he was yours too.  He was our father,  a father to our nation.  We thank God for his life which was  well-lived because of the love and support he got from you,” After the necrological services, his remains were brought back to his beloved hometown of Cagayan de Oro until October 25 when the remains were brought back to Heritage Park where he was interred on October 26. KRD expresses our sympathies to Senator Koko, Commissioner Gwen, Nanay Bing and the entire Pimentel Family, Salamat Tatay Nene.

2.) Sims 4 Discover University Is Coming True Last September, websites around the world posted a leak for the 8th Expansion Pack for The Sims 4 which is called "Discover University". A month later, the box art was revealed and EA confirmed that Discover University will be the 8th Expansion Pack together with the trailer. The new expansion will let your Sims enroll in college at the University of Britechester or the Foxbury Institute, as well as enjoying extracurricular activities around campus. Here are the features for the upcoming expansion pack: 1.) Financial Aid Whether your Sim chooses the hallowed halls of the University of Britechester with its focus on arts and humanities, or the cutting-edge Foxbury Institute and its science and tech slant, there’s a ton to do, see, and learn as they journey through higher education! But before they start packing their bags, doing a little research on how they’re going to pay for education is a good idea. There are tons of scholarships and grants available for both academically and athletically gifted students, as well as need-based scholarships. If your Sim has already started down their career path and wants to further their education, they may want to consider a career scholarship. You’ll be able to find out which scholarships are available for your Sims to help cover their college costs. 2.) Juggling Parenthood and Education In the trailer, a young adult Sim can be seen studying while her toddler plays with some toys beside her desk. It’s great that our Sims won’t have to choose between their children and their education. Here’s to all those hard-working college students with kids! 3.) Secret Societies Secret societies were briefly mentioned before, but this is the first time we’ve actually seen a glimpse of them in-game. According to Julia, she accidentally wound up in this secret society when she joined a study group. Could this be a hint at how to join a secret society when we get our hands on the expansion? Only time will tell! 4.) College Life Both schools offer students a variety of amenities and opportunities to live either on-campus or off. Decorating dorm rooms, hanging out with roommates, or just playing a little ping pong are only a few of the new experiences your Sims can look forward to. Need to study for a big exam? Why not join a study group at the commons? Don’t forget to squeeze in some fun After School Activities like joining the E-Sports or Soccer Team to put their skills in the spotlight or head to a spirit event at the bar dressed in their best school colors. However! While pulling pranks on the other university or doing a little painting in the park can be a lot of fun, don’t let your Sims have so much fun they forget term papers, exams, presentations, and homework. Let your Sims get too distracted and their grades will likely drop – which could lead to big problems if they’re relying on a scholarship or grant. 5.) New Careers Three new careers are specifically mentioned in the trailer: Lawyer, Engineer, and Teacher. We don’t know much about what exactly these careers will entail just yet, but if they are all active careers, this would put Discover University on par with a previous career-oriented expansion, Get To Work, which also came with three active careers. 6.) Degrees In the University of Britchester, This bastion of higher education is particularly known for molding students into smart, well-rounded Sims ready to face the world’s challenges. The University of Britechester offers a variety of degree paths for its students, including distinguished offerings strongly focused on the arts and humanities. Degrees: Biology, Computer Science, Economics, Physics, Psychology, and Villainy Distinguished Degrees: Art History, Culinary Arts, Drama, Fine Art, History, Language and Literature, and Communications What else does UBrite offer? On game day in the Britechester Spirit Corps Organization, your Sim can socialize, show off their dance moves, maybe do a keg stand, and promote Dragon pride. If they want to explore their creative side they can head to the canal by the commons for some outdoor figure painting with the Art Society. And they can socialize or go head to head with some of the university’s best and brightest in the challenging Debate Guild. In Foxbury Institute, Your Sim may want to opt for a more modern campus focused on creating innovative leaders, and the Foxbury Institute should be a great fit. This premier university boasts impressive facilities as well as both events and distinguished degree programs geared toward science and technology. Degrees: Art History, Culinary Arts, Drama, Fine Art, History, Language and Literature, and Communications Distinguished Degrees: Biology, Computer Science, Economics, Physics, Psychology, and Villainy Some of Foxbury’s great organizations and events include the Foxbury Spirit Squad, where your Sim can don the red and gold to support their school at School Spirit Day with a juice keg, juice pong, and maybe even a little streaking. When it’s time to take a break from cramming, your Sim can attend bar night with The Brainiacs honor society for a little rest and relaxation. Want your Sim to help lead the way to the inevitable robot uprising? They’ll love creating their future overlords with the Bot Savants. And if your bot has what it takes to reign supreme in the Utili-Bot Contest, head to the quad to enter and see if your Sim will be the next Bot Master! 7.) Self Expression College is all about discovering who you’re meant to be, and your Sims can really experiment with their personal style. It all starts with dorm room decor that reflects their personality. From posters to mini-fridges (for all-important midnight snacking), you can make their room perfect for studying or just hanging out. And when it comes to personal style, send them to class dressed to impress or sporting comfy sweats – it’s all up to you! 8.) Extra-Curricular Activities You know what they say about all work and no play, right? When your Sims aren’t burning the midnight oil studying for a big exam, they might want to try out some juice pong, hang out with their roommates, or maybe join school organizations like robotics, debate, or art. The campus rumor mill also claims there’s a mysterious secret society on the lookout for new members, but we wouldn’t know anything about that. 9.) Bicycles There’s so much for a new student to do! From choosing on- or off-campus housing to exploring their new alma mater via bicycle, your Sims are going to be pretty busy starting this exciting chapter in their lives. What else is on the syllabus? Just keep reading! The Sims 4 Discover University will be released on November 15 on PC and Mac through Origin and December 17, 2019, on Xbox One and PlayStation®4.

3.) CALAX Mamplasan Section Opens MOTORISTS can now use the first 10 kilometers of the Laguna segment of the Cavite-Laguna Expressway (CALAX) from the Mamplasan Toll Barrier to the Santa Rosa-Tagaytay Interchange, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) said on Wednesday. “We all know that (All Saints’ Day) is a time we all pay respects to family and friends who have passed on, and with November 1 falling on a Friday, I’m sure many of our kababayans will take advantage of the time to do some family bonding and go on a road trip. I only see benefits in opening CALAX even on a single lane basis to decongest Laguna Boulevard, Aguinaldo Highway,” Public Works Secretary Mark A. Villar said in a statement on Wednesday. “We are at 90% completion, the remaining 10% of the works are being fast- tracked while in operations, we hope to fully open before December steps in.” Mr. Villar said around 10,000 vehicles are expected to enter and exit through the two access points — Mamplasan and Sta. Rosa-Tagaytay Interchange. “This section will take 10 minutes to drive. A big cut on travel time compared to the 45 minutes it currently takes to travel Mamplasan to Sta. Rosa-Tagaytay road,” he added. The single lane on the CALAX opened on Wednesday (Oct. 30), but only until 10 p.m. In a statement, MPCALA Holdings Inc. (MPHI) President and General Manager Roberto V. Bontia said the lane will also be open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2. “For the daily access time starting November 3, we agreed with (Department of Public Works and Highways) that it will be Sunday to Thursday 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and giving extended time on weekends, Friday to Saturday 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. This will only be temporary, until the remaining works for these first subsections are completed,” he said. Mr. Bontia reminded motorists to drive safely and observe traffic rules while using the partially opened lane. “Upon issuance of the relevant certifications and permits from DPWH and Toll Regulatory Board (TRB), full access to the completed lanes and other interchanges and 24-hour commercial operations shall be possible,” he added. The entire length of CALAX project will connect the Manila-Cavite Expressway (CAVITEx) from Kawit, Cavite to the South Luzon Expressway (SLEx) at the Mamplasan Interchange in Biñan, Laguna.

[fadingpersoncollectorstuff-blog]

What will happen to my insurance rate?

"What will happen to my insurance rate?

I'm an 18 year old driver with geico and I have just been in an accident (my fault). My tires skid as I braked and I hit the stopped car in front of me. Nobody was hurt and the other car's back bumper suffered some scratches. The bumper was still intact and the only thing noticeable is the paint transfer. The police came and he offered to not involve insurance but the other person insisted so now my question is, how much will my insurance go up? Cause I've heard the geico is pretty notorious for jacking up rates alot . Thanks

BEST ANSWER:  Try this site where you can compare quotes: : http://saleinsurancequotes.xyz/index.html?src=tumblr 

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i live in kent and i am getting close to getting my full licence. I am 20 years old so i know insurance is going to be expensive no matter what car i have. I don't mind the car being second hand and i don't really want to spend over 1500. I don't care what the car looks like but i need it to be as cheap as possible to insure so like the lower insurance bands and lower tax bands. It also needs to be cheap for the MOT and any repairs that need to be done. I understand that it may be cheaper to have the car in a older persons name and me as a third person but i want to start getting my no claims bonus so its cheaper for me in the long run.

Would my parents car insurance go up if i crash?

if i crash and im on learners permit, would it go up? because i called my insurance agent and he said i dont need to be listen as a driver ill be insured. i live in california btw if that matters.""

What will happen to my insurance rate?

I'm an 18 year old driver with geico and I have just been in an accident (my fault). My tires skid as I braked and I hit the stopped car in front of me. Nobody was hurt and the other car's back bumper suffered some scratches. The bumper was still intact and the only thing noticeable is the paint transfer. The police came and he offered to not involve insurance but the other person insisted so now my question is, how much will my insurance go up? Cause I've heard the geico is pretty notorious for jacking up rates alot . Thanks

How much is AAA a month?

I have Roadside Assistance with AT&T and I pay only $2.99 a month for 4 calls every calendar year but they only cover from about 2 to 10 miles if I need a tow. I'm thinking about switching to AAA but I really don't know anything about AAA. Can anyone give me some insight on AAA? PLEASE :-)

I need health insurance I'm self-employed?

I want to get Health Insurance but I'm not sure where to start. I havnt been to a doctor in a few years. I'm 39 and in good health. Will they require a physical from a doctor?

Auto Insurance Help....?

I need insurance on my car, and i don't fully own it, my name is on the title and i finaced it so i have a lien on it....i'm only 20 so full coverage is pretty expensive! would it be possible for my dad to be able to add me to his policy?""

Will my car insurance be affected? Please help?

My friend crashed my car and she got charged with DUI, my car is totalled. I was in the passenger seat, but not driving. What will happen to my car insurance?""

Buyin a car? Insurance driving it back?

Hi i may be purchasing a car this evening. Can any1 tell me how i get it back do i need some sort of cover note? I am 19 and was a named driver on my uncles insurance on my previous car. Now don't have a car but buyin this one tonight its only 10mins drive. will i be ok or not ?

How much would car insurance cost me?

Im a 25 year old male and i just got my drivers license. What is the cheapest auto insurance i could get so i can legally drive? What rates would a person such as myself have? Good college student, no criminal history. if that matters. Thank you.""

How much more will my insurance cost go up with a careless driving ticket?

I'm 16 and totaled a 18,000$ car and the insurance company will probably have to dish out at least 30,000$ in costs for hospital bills and so on. I know I wasn't driving safe and now i'm paying for it so don't heckle me. I have Triple A insurance if that matters, I might go to another company idk.""

PLEASE ANSWER!!!!!!!! discounts on insurance?

SO IM 18 YEARS OLD, I HAVE MY LICENSE... AND I WANT TO GET A CAR SOON. PREFERBALY AN 2006 ACURA RSX COUPE (i know coupes are alot more expensive...) but i was wondering if i can get ...show more""

Insurance for surgery?

how long after i get insurance can i get surgery? i dont have insurance yet but i am planning on getting one (ppo). i am planning on getting surgery and i know that insurance will cover it, i just dont know how long i have to have my insurance for?? are there any insurance rules i need to know. any insurance agent out there help plz!""

Is this a reputable health insurance company?

Does esurance.com list reputable companies or do they list just any company? It looks like I have found a really good deal for student indemnity insurance from a company called Time. Does anyone know if this is a good company?

Where can i get cheap auto insurance in the usa?

i am in america but live in england i have a uk driving liesence but as im staying in america for a few months i decided to buy a car i wanted to know where i can find someone that would insure me for the 6 months thanks

Health insurance and ma.health?

If you are 19 and have coverage under your fathers insurance . You have no job or income and Living with grandparent because of health issues Can you still have Ma. Health to help cover medication and co-payments for doctors? Applied once and told no because they have coverage under the fathers insurance. Has applied for disability because of the medical illness. Do not know of any other insurance to help with costs.

How much would I pay for car insurance?

I am a male, 24 years old (turn 25 in july), student.... what is the cheapest car insurance you think I can get?""

Why do people think I haven't looked hard enough for affordable health insurance?

On a political blog I mentioned that as an equity partner in a law firm I paid Aetna $12,000/yr for parent-child coverage because law firms require the partners that own it to purchase their own coverage. We received the rates that companies with approx 100 employees are charged. I also paid a share of what the firm contributed to employee coverage, which came out of profits Conservatives jumped all over me for failing to shop around. I had failed to mention that we switched from Blue Cross to Aetna for cheaper rates in exchange for greater rationing, i.e., less participating doctors, higher co-pays, etc. Can somebody recommend a reliable insurer with lower rates that Aetna?""

Which car's owner will pay more for car insurance?

Car insurance costs more for cars that can accelerate faster than 10 mph per second. Which car's owner will pay more for car insurance? A. A car that accelerates from 0 to 50 mph in 4.5 seconds. B. A car that accelerates from 0 to 40 mph in 5 seconds. C. A car that accelerates from 0 to 70 mph in 9 seconds. D. A car that accelerates from 0 to 70 mph in 8.5 seconds.

Cheap Car Insurance for International Drivers License holder in Canada?

I am moving to Canada in a month's time, I have an international driving license from Pakistan, which allows me to drive in Canada for 2 months, I have searched a lot but couldn't find any company facilitating any international driver's license in Ontario. can any one help please""

Where can i find affordable life insurance for my 81 yr old granmother?

I live in Illinois, and I work for the UI, but im not sure if I can add my grandmother on my insurance...So Im trying to find somewhere that will take senior citizens, but something i ...show more""

What is the best teen driver insurance in California?

Taking driving test tomorrow and need insurance coverage for just me, 18 years old.""

How much will insurance cost for these cars?

How much will insurance cost for a 16 year old boy for the following cars. Mustang GT Mustang (V6) Toyota Tacoma Please no answers like You don't need a GT or too much for you money is not a problem for me (not that its any of your freaking business) i just would like to know.

What is the cheapest car insurance in Ohio?

What is the cheapest car insurance in Ohio?

How much money would it cost to have a 1992-1998 BMW E36 1.6l-1.8l for a 17 year old on your parents insurance?

How much money would it cost to have a 1992-1998 BMW E36 1.6l-1.8l for a 17 year old on your parents insurance?

How much is the insurance for a ford mustang?

for a teen girl driver thats 15 with a permit

What is the best lowest cost insurance for a first time driver?

ok. i just got my learners permit. i had wondered what would be the best car insurance company too look to for getting my actual license. and has the lowest monthly rate, with the best coverage. i will never get a dui since i will never drive drunk. i have never had a ticket, i have excellent credit, i do not own a home so i don't want a insurance bundle, i'm in north carolina, i drive a volvo, i have never had a wreck . so i'm looking to good driving discount minus the privacy invading snap shot from progressive. and no dui discount. and good credit discount. exc anyone know of the best insurance company to look to?""

Motorcycle insurance?

I'm just wondering how much this will cost if I get one in the future. I'm 17. I have had a car accident recently (last thanksgiving). And yes, I was at fault. I don't feel like naming my excuses... the insurance companies won't care anyway. But don't worry, no one was hurt. So anyway... what prices are we looking at if... 1. I get it now with my parents insurance? (we own four cars... I already have one) 2. I wait until I'm 18 and move out to a college dorm and have it as my only vehicle? 3. sport bike vs regular bike? 4. I wait a few years until the car accident is off my record? No lectures about safety please. just give me some numbers.""

""In the state of Georgia do you need a title for an automobile that is 24 years old, to purchase a tag.?""

I am buying a 1982 Chevrolet S-10 pickup truck, I personally know the individual I am purchasing the truck from. The title has been misplaced or lost. We are both under the impression that if a vehicle is X amount of years old you don't have to have a title to be able to purchase a tag,get insurance etc. The truck is 25 years old, if anyone has or knows the answer to my question I would be greatly appreciative.""

What will happen to my insurance rate?

I'm an 18 year old driver with geico and I have just been in an accident (my fault). My tires skid as I braked and I hit the stopped car in front of me. Nobody was hurt and the other car's back bumper suffered some scratches. The bumper was still intact and the only thing noticeable is the paint transfer. The police came and he offered to not involve insurance but the other person insisted so now my question is, how much will my insurance go up? Cause I've heard the geico is pretty notorious for jacking up rates alot . Thanks

Where can I find reasonably priced car insurance for a 17 male?

I am 16 years old, soon to be 17 and am looking for a reasonable car insurance quote. I am aware that being male and 17 both work against me in this situation, however the best quote I have found so far was with eCar at gocompare.com for 2340. I am thinking of getting a cheap 1996 Vauxhall Corsa as this has been the cheapest to insure when comparing quotes. I have tried Directline, gocompare, comparethemarket, moneysupermarket, tesco compare, insurance.co.uk, confused.com, uswitch.com, and beatthatquote.com. I really need something lower than what I have found so far, if you have any suggestions they would be greately appreciated. Thankyou.""

What is the cheapest company for a 17 year Old's car insurance in the UK?

I am 17 and looking around on sites the car insurance is around 2500 but this is too expensive for me, if I was to get car insurance I would probably drive a ford fiesta or something like that.""

How to be auto insurance agent that sells more than 1 brand of auto insurance product?

I am interested in becoming an auto insurance agent. I want to do this part time, but I don't know how to get started? I can go to school to get the degree to sell insurance, but how do you get the connections to sell the various types of insurance ?""

What is car insurance for a first time driver?

Okay i am 18 and have never had my license before and am going to be getting it at the end of this month...soon we are going to start getting insurace quotes for my car, we have been talking about what would be the best way to go about getting the cheapest insurance...so would it be best to put the car in my name but then just be added to my parents insurance and have me as the primary driver OR would it make a difference if we put the car in one of my parents name and then had me listed as the secondary driver for the car ? OR maybe you know a better way to go about this please give me all the advice you know about this! thanks""

Does car insurance really drop at age 25??

I'm in IL, and my policy renewal is Aug 18th and my 25th birthday is Aug 12th. Can I expect a savings on this renewal from State Farm in IL. No accidents, claims, nothing in 8 years. Or is it a myth that car insurance drops at 25???""

How much more will my insurance cost go up with a careless driving ticket?

I'm 16 and totaled a 18,000$ car and the insurance company will probably have to dish out at least 30,000$ in costs for hospital bills and so on. I know I wasn't driving safe and now i'm paying for it so don't heckle me. I have Triple A insurance if that matters, I might go to another company idk.""

Does the Affordable Health Care law really prevent insurance companies from denying pre-existing conditions?

They say that now, insurance companies can no longer deny insurance to people with pre -existing conditions. So what was HIPAA passed in 1996 for? This law states that insurance companies CAN NOT deny people with pre -existing conditions. The only change I see is it gets rid of the 12 month exclusion period. I had two aunts with lupus, both lived in California and had insurance, until they moved to Texas. If they could have kept their insurance, they would have, but for some odd reason liberals are against insurance across state lines. They had no problem finding insurance, they just had to be out of pocket for 12 months. HIPAA also states that if you can go six months without any medical visits, advice/procedures, insurance companies are not allowed to look further than that and must not apply the exclusion period. So did the Affordable Care Act really stop insurance companies from denying coverage for pre existing conditions, or was it ALREADY a law? http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/faqs/faq_consumer_hipaa.html""

Where can I buy rental car insurance online?

If I don't want to buy LDW or ALI offered by the rental car company, where can I buy a cheaper rental car insurance online? I tried Travel Guard, but since I am not a U.S. resident I am not eligible.""

Can anyone explain life insurance to me?

Can you insure the whole family? As if, if any of them passes away the rest get the money?""

Would a speeding ticket go to the lead insured or the owner of car?

my dad is the lead insured, my mum and i are named drivers, but my mum owns the car. Who would the speeding ticket be addressed to?""

""I'm a 20 year old girl who has just passed my driving test,whats the best small car for insurance,as I dont kn

The car will be roughly 5 or 6 years old it goes by insurance band levels WHICH i AM LOST WITH

What is the difference between term insurance and whole life insurance?

What is the difference between term insurance and whole life insurance?

How much does US health insurance cost per year?

I am considering moving with my wife and kids to Michigan for a year as part of my degree. I have a number of questions, mainly about health insurance. 1. Will my wife and I still be considered married? If not, will that affect the way we buy insurance/are treated at the hospital? 2. She is very active, with slight asthma and bad PCOS. How much (roughly) would health insurance be for her for one year? 3. I am wheelchair dependent and suffer from epilepsy. How much (really roughly) would my health insurance cost? 4. Do I buy separate health insurance for my children (aged 17 months, 1 month and 1 month)? 5. My eldest child appears to be struggling with leg movement and we are considering the possibility that she may have inherited my condition. Will treatment and tests be covered by the insurance, even though we have an idea of what it might be before buying the insurance? I know these must sound like obvious questions to US citizens, but we are not a particularly rich family, so we need to make sure that there are no big bills hiding around the corner! Thank you""

How much would insurance be on a 99;-00' mustang gt for a 17 year old?

I'm buying my first car and i'm determined to get a mustang...i'm truly working my butt off to buy it. and i was just wondering how much insurance would be on it. the car would be added to my parents policy under one of there name's, but i would be driving it. so i was just wondering how much a month i'd be looking at paying. Additional details: -eagle scout -A B student - no wrecks, tickets, anything thanks for the help!""

What is a medical insurance deductible?

What is a medical insurance deductible?

Car Insurance Cheap!!!?

Where to find really cheap car insurance?

Why would a African America have to pay more for car insurance?

Me and my friend writes for the school news paper. We did our own investigation like the local news will do sometimes.We both at two different times went to see a local and same agent for a car insurance quote . We are both the same age, No record of bad driving, No criminal record, also wanted insurance on the same car and same gender. The only different variable was race. I don't think time would of played part since it was only 1 hour apart. This offends me how the car companies can do this. I wondered why? Any information or missing links that can help us write this story?""

Why did the emergency room need auto insurance?

We slammed on brakes to avoid car running red light no collision hospital made copies of auto insurance for dh headache and sore neck why and will insurance be notified and will rates go up live in northern Minnesota

Should I change Insurance carriers?

Located in Ontario, Canada. Currently with The Personal Insurance Company. My friend got in an at fault accident while she was driving my car. Her husband said he would take of it on his insurance. He never did, they are now divorced and there is no way he is taking responsiblity for it. Result, my insurance went up $80.00 per month. This was five years ago. Recently, I moved to a new location and I have to park on the street, because of this my insurance will go up $30.00 a month. So now I have to pay $230/month. I have been driving and with the same company for over 25 years but they won't give me a break. Should I change companies, any suggestions? Thanks""

Proof of insurance issue (Houston)?

I received a ticket while visiting in Houston for not having a valid TX license and for a traffic violation. The ticket costs over $300, but I would like to take a driving class to lower the cost and avoid a points penalty. I was driving my friend's car when I got pulled over. She has insurance for her car and she was with me, but since I was driving, I got the ticket. I am currently not an any insurance policy and I need to send in the defensive driving course request with proof of insurance. Is it okay to send the insurance of her car? Please help. PS. I already took care of the license part. Thank you.""

Does the insurance company have to pay me because my car is less valuable after getting repaired?

I have a 2005 VW Jetta TDI with 112,000 miles. It was hit in the front (not my fault) and did $7,100 worth of damage. It is repaired but if I go to sell my car it will obviously be worth much less because of a bad carfax report. It's not fair to me, so the insurance company should give me about $1,000 for the lost value. I called the insurance company and they gave me the run around and said the value is the same and argued with me. What do I do to get the money?""

I want to put my niece on my car insurance?

i drive a 2001 puegoet 206 and want to include my 17 year old niece on the policy.she has a provisional licience.does anyone know what this will cost approximately

Good cheap car insureance?

need help wiht insurance for my car my car is a little ford fiesta 1.3 cheap 2 insure i no but i have 6 points :( so im gettign qoutes of artound 4000pound to insure my fiesta and im jsut wodneriing there must insuracne companys out there hu specialize in this field if no any can u let me me cheeers

How Will Obamacare affect Health Insurance premiums?

I am 35 and have applied for health insurance through Blue Cross Blue Shield. I have GERD and Anxiety. I believe Blue Cross Blue Shield will try to deny me coverage for those since I already have them. I am thinking of waiting until 2014 so that they won't be able to. But I'm curious. how will Obamacare affect the insurance premiums? If I wait that long will the premiums go up or down?

Car insurance!! help?

I'm 17 years old and live in the UK. I want to buy a chevrolet camaro 2010 v6 when I am 19 but I'm worried how much insurance I have to pay. My friend told me it's going to be more than the car, and the car cost around 30,000. Can anyone tell me which group the car belongs to and how much insurance I would need to pay? I want this to be my first car but I want another car to gain experience. Please give me a good car that would look nice for a 18 year old. I am quite tall and I don't really like small cars because it feels uncomfortable for me? please suggest a good car that would suit a tall guy. thank you""

What will happen to my insurance rate?

I'm an 18 year old driver with geico and I have just been in an accident (my fault). My tires skid as I braked and I hit the stopped car in front of me. Nobody was hurt and the other car's back bumper suffered some scratches. The bumper was still intact and the only thing noticeable is the paint transfer. The police came and he offered to not involve insurance but the other person insisted so now my question is, how much will my insurance go up? Cause I've heard the geico is pretty notorious for jacking up rates alot . Thanks

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-much-extra-car-insurance-you-have-points-your-from-altagracia"

[steliosagapitos]

                             Mihai Eminescu

     Mihai Eminescu (Romanian pronunciation: [miˈhaj emiˈnesku]; born Mihail Eminovici; 15 January 1850 Botoșani, Principality of Moldavia – 15 June 1889 Bucharest, Kingdom of Romania) was a Romantic poet, novelist and journalist, often regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. Eminescu was an active member of the Junimea literary society and worked as an editor for the newspaper Timpul ("The Time"), the official newspaper of the Conservative Party (1880–1918). His poetry was first published when he was 16 and he went to Vienna to study when he was 19. The poet's manuscripts, containing 46 volumes and approximately 14,000 pages, were offered by Titu Maiorescu as a gift to the Romanian Academy during the meeting that was held on 25 January 1902. Notable works include Luceafărul (The Vesper/The Evening Star/The Lucifer/The Daystar), Odă în metru antic (Ode in Ancient Meter), and the five Letters (Epistles/Satires). In his poems he frequently used metaphysical, mythological and historical subjects.

   His father was Gheorghe Eminovici from Călinești, a Moldavian village in Suceava county, Bucovina, which was then part of the Austrian Empire (while his father came from Banat). He crossed the border into Moldavia, settling in Ipotești, near the town of Botoșani. He married Raluca Iurașcu, an heiress of an old aristocratic Moldavian family. In a Junimea register, Eminescu wrote down his birthday date as 22 December 1849, while in the documents Cernăuți Gymnasium, where Eminescu studied, his birthday date is 14 December 1849. Nevertheless, Titu Maiorescu, in his work Eminescu and His Poems (1889) quoted N. D. Giurescu's research and adopted his conclusion regarding the date and place of Mihai Eminescu's birth, as being 15 January 1850, in Botoșani. This date resulted from several sources, amongst which there was a file of notes on christenings from the archives of the Uspenia (Domnească) Church of Botoșani; inside this file, the date of birth was "15 January 1850" and the date of christening was the 21st of the same month. The date of his birth was confirmed by the poet's elder sister, Aglae Drogli, who affirmed that the place of birth was the village of Ipotești.

Mihail (as he appears in baptismal records) or Mihai (the more common form that he used) was born in Botoșani, Moldavia. He spent his early childhood in Botoșani and Ipotești, in his parents' family home. From 1858 to 1866 he attended school in Cernăuți. He finished 4th grade as the 5th of 82 students, after which he attended two years of gymnasium.

   The first evidence of Eminescu as a writer is in 1866. In January of that year Romanian teacher Aron Pumnul died and his students in Cernăuţi published a pamphlet, Lăcrămioarele învățăceilor gimnaziaști (The Tears of the Gymnasium Students) in which a poem entitled La mormântul lui Aron Pumnul (At the Grave of Aron Pumnul) appears, signed "M. Eminovici". On 25 February his poem De-aș avea (If I Had) was published in Iosif Vulcan's literary magazine Familia in Pest. This began a steady series of published poems (and the occasional translation from German). Also, it was Iosif Vulcan, who disliked the Slavic source suffix "-ici" of the young poet's last name, that chose for him the more apparent Romanian "nom de plume" Mihai Eminescu.

In 1867, he joined Iorgu Caragiale's troupe as a clerk and prompter; the next year he transferred to Mihai Pascaly's troupe. Both of these were among the leading Romanian theatrical troupes of their day, the latter including Matei Millo and Fanny Tardini-Vlădicescu (ro). He soon settled in Bucharest, where at the end of November he became a clerk and copyist for the National Theater. Throughout this period, he continued to write and publish poems. He also paid his rent by translating hundreds of pages of a book by Heinrich Theodor Rotscher, although this never resulted in a completed work. Also at this time he began his novel Geniu pustiu (Wasted Genius), published posthumously in 1904 in an unfinished form.

On 1 April 1869, he was one of the co-founders of the "Orient" literary circle, whose interests included the gathering of Romanian folklore and documents relating to Romanian literary history. On 29 June, various members of the "Orient" group were commissioned to go to different provinces. Eminescu was assigned Moldavia. That summer, he quite by chance ran into his brother Iorgu, a military officer, in Cișmigiu Gardens, but firmly rebuffed Iorgu's attempt to get him to renew ties to his family.

Still in summer 1869, he left Pascaly's troupe and traveled to Cernăuţi and Iaşi. He renewed ties to his family; his father promised him a regular allowance to pursue studies in Vienna in the fall. As always, he continued to write and publish poetry; notably, on the occasion of the death of the former ruler of Wallachia, Barbu Dimitrie Știrbei, he published a leaflet, La moartea principelui Știrbei ("On the Death of Prince Știrbei").

   From October 1869 to 1872 Eminescu studied in Vienna. Not fulfilling the requirements to become a university student (as he did not have a baccalaureate degree), he attended lectures as a so-called "extraordinary auditor" at the Faculty of Philosophy and Law. He was active in student life, befriended Ioan Slavici, and came to know Vienna through Veronica Micle; he became a contributor to Convorbiri Literare (Literary Conversations), edited by Junimea (The Youth). The leaders of this cultural organisation, Petre P. Carp, Vasile Pogor, Theodor Rosetti, Iacob Negruzzi and Titu Maiorescu, exercised their political and cultural influence over Eminescu for the rest of his life. Impressed by one of Eminescu's poems, Venere şi Madonă (Venus and Madonna), Iacob Negruzzi, the editor of Convorbiri Literare, traveled to Vienna to meet him. Negruzzi would later write how he could pick Eminescu out of a crowd of young people in a Viennese café by his "romantic" appearance: long hair and gaze lost in thoughts.

    In 1870 Eminescu wrote three articles under the pseudonym "Varro" in Federaţiunea in Pest, on the situation of Romanians and other minorities in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He then became a journalist for the newspaper Albina (The Bee) in Pest. From 1872 to 1874 he continued as a student in Berlin, thanks to a stipend offered by Junimea.

   From 1874 to 1877 he worked as director of the Central Library in Iași, substitute teacher, school inspector for the counties of Iași and Vaslui, and editor of the newspaper Curierul de Iași (The Courier of Iaşi), all thanks to his friendship with Titu Maiorescu, the leader of Junimea and rector of the University of Iași. He continued to publish in Convorbiri Literare. He became a good friend of Ion Creangă, a writer, whom he convinced to become a writer and introduced to the Junimea literary club.

In 1877 he moved to Bucharest, where until 1883 he was first journalist, then (1880) editor-in-chief of the newspaper Timpul (The Time). During this time he wrote Scrisorile, Luceafărul, Odă în metru antic etc. Most of his notable editorial pieces belong to this period, when Romania was fighting the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 and throughout the diplomatic race that eventually brought about the international recognition of Romanian independence, but under the condition of bestowing Romanian citizenship to all subjects of Jewish faith. Eminescu opposed this and another clause of the Treaty of Berlin: Romania's having to give southern Bessarabia to Russia in exchange for Northern Dobrudja, a former Ottoman province on the Black Sea.

The 1880s were a time of crisis and deterioration in the poet's life, culminating with his death in 1889. The details of this are still debated.

From 1883 - when Eminescu's crisis and deviant behaviors became evident - until 1886, the poet was treated in Austria and Italy, by specialists that managed to put him on his feet, as testified by his good friend, writer Ioan Slavici. In 1886, Eminescu suffered a nervous breakdown and was treated by Romanian doctors, in particular Julian Bogdan and Panait Zosin. Immediately diagnosed with syphilis, after being hospitalized in a nervous diseases hospice within the Neamț Monastery, the poet is treated with mercury. Firstly, massages in Botoșani, applied by Dr. Itszak, and then in Bucharest at Dr. Alexandru A. Suțu's sanatorium, where between February–June 1889 he was injected with mercuric chloride. Professor Doctor Irinel Popescu, corresponding member of the Romanian Academy and president of the Academy of Medical Sciences of Romania, states that Eminescu died because of mercury poisoning. He also says that the poet was "treated" by a group of incompetent doctors and held in misery, which also shortened his life. Mercury was prohibited as treatment of syphilis in Western Europe in the 19th century, because of its adverse effects.

Mihai Eminescu died at 4 am, on 15 June 1889 at the Caritas Institute, a sanatorium run by Dr. Suțu and located on Plantelor Street Sector 2, Bucharest. Eminescu's last wish was a glass of milk, which the attending doctor slipped through the metallic peephole of the "cell" where he spent the last hours of his life. In response to this favor he was said to have whispered, "I'm crumbled". The next day, on 16 June 1889 he was officially declared deceased and legal papers to that effect were prepared by doctors Suțu and Petrescu, who submitted the official report. This paperwork is seen as being ambiguous, because the poet's cause of death is not clearly stated and there was no indication of any other underlying condition that may have so suddenly resulted in his death. In fact both the poet's medical file and autopsy report indicate symptoms of a mental and not physical disorder. Moreover, at the autopsy performed by Dr. Tomescu and then by Dr. Marinescu from the laboratory at Babeș-Bolyai University, the brain could not be studied, because a nurse inadvertently forgot it on an open window, where it quickly decomposed.

One of the first hypotheses that disagreed with the post mortem findings for Eminescu's cause of death was printed on 28 June 1926 in an article from the newspaper Universul. This article forwards the hypothesis that Eminescu died after another patient, Petre Poenaru, former headmaster in Craiova, hit him in the head with a board.

Dr. Vineș, the physician assigned to Eminescu at Caritas argued at that time that the poet's death was the result of an infection secondary to his head injury. Specifically, he says that the head wound was infected, turning into an erysipelas, which then spread to the face, neck, upper limbs, thorax, and abdomen. In the same report, cited by Nicolae Georgescu in his work, Eminescu târziu, Vineș states that "Eminescu's death is not due to head trauma occurred 25 days earlier and which had healed completely, but is the consequence of an older endocarditis (diagnosed by late professor N. Tomescu)".

Contemporary specialists, primarily physicians who have dealt with the Eminescu case, reject both hypotheses on the cause of death of the poet. According to them, the poet died of cardio-respiratory arrest caused by mercury poisoning. Eminescu was wrongly diagnosed and treated, aiming his removal from public life, as some eminescologists claim. Eminescu was diagnosed since 1886 by Dr. Julian Bogdan from Iași as syphilitic, paralytic and on the verge of dementia due to alcohol abuse and syphilitic gummas emerged on the brain. The same diagnosis is given by Dr. Panait Zosin, who consulted Eminescu on 6 November 1886 and wrote that patient Eminescu suffered from a "mental alienation", caused by the emergence of syphilis and worsened by alcoholism. Further research showed that the poet was not suffering from syphilis.

[sentrava]

In 2017: Highlights from the Year

At the end of every calendar year, I think the following 12 months can’t get any better, and yet they always manage to exceed expectations. Well, except for 2016; that will forever be the year that nearly did me in.

Still, 2017 started off with very little on the calendar by way of work and wound up being our most fulfilling and lucrative year ever. For 2018, we already have a solid dozen projects booked, so I can’t wait to see what this year holds!

Work

This was the first full year that SVV and I worked together full time. To clarify, he always served as my manager of sorts—well, at least from the time I started monetizing this blog about three years after its 2007 inception—but he also always had a “day job.” I was getting to the point where I was making enough between magazine writing, content projects, photography and blogging that I could pay someone a healthy salary, so it just made sense that someone was him. We also had a paid intern this summer (who we would love to bring back next!) and a VA. This year, we’re toying with the idea of bringing in more part-time subcontractors on to fill some holes.

It’s worked out better than we could ever imagine, too; having extra help has allowed me to expand my roster of anchor clients—we also have a micro-agency specializing in consulting, strategy, copywriting and other such tasks for the corporate world—and also really upped my blog partnerships.

Speaking of which, we had SO many fun content collaborations last year and I’m truly thankful to get to work with every single one of them. Among them: Google Fiber; Visit Franklin; Tru by Hilton; Oklahoma City; St. George, Utah; American Refractive Surgery Council (for LASIK); Fairmont Hotels; Visit Florida; Zappos; Mars Petcare; Grand Ole Opry; Wrangler; Blount Partnership; Savannah; Twin Creeks, Tennessee; New Orleans. I started a monthly highlights series this past year to share more about my work and track both hits and misses.

On the editorial side, I’m starting to scale back on my magazine writing for myriad reasons (mostly time and a decline in rates), but still managed to write for National Geographic, PEOPLE, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, Marriott Traveler, AAA Living and AFAR.

Travel

I estimated that I spent more than 200 nights in hotel rooms, friends’ houses and Airbnbs this year. Dang, that’s a lot! In 2018, I really hope to spend more time in the home we’ve worked so hard to rehab.

The year started off in Washington state with our beloved NVR Guys, then quickly followed with a trip to Grenada, an island nation I absolutely fell in love with and one that you should consider putting on your radar right away.

Next, in February, it was off to Florida for my birthday at Universal Orlando Resort.

It would actually be my first of two Florida jaunts in less than a month, as I headed back in early March when my BFF Lemon and I road-tripped from Georgia to South Carolina for a wedding, then down to Jacksonville, where I got to see my girls Angie and Jade (and team up with Visit Florida on a content project!).

April saw us taking visitors around Middle Tennessee before hopping a plane to Boston for a Fairmont project, then taking the train to NYC.  We also drove back to Charleston to attend the wedding of my college suitemate, as well as up to Myrtle Beach for her bachelorette weekend.

From there, we headed to Savannah, where we kicked off the month of May with a content project. That month, I also went to Utah to play in Zion National Park, then back to Orlando for the opening of Volcano Bay.

June had me sticking close(r) to home: First, to the Smokies for work, then to Knoxville for a wedding, then back to Middle Tennessee for CMT Awards and Bonnaroo. Then, I went to Knoxville again (this time for work), followed by a yoga retreat at Loretta Lynn’s Ranch.

In July, I was mostly homebound. SVV went to visit his family in California for 10 days, while I tended to the pup (and my cousin’s kids). We did bop on down to the Florida Keys for five days mid-month, but then came home in time to throw my blog an epic 10-year-old birthday party.

August was jam-packed, beginning with five days in New Orleans, then I flew to meet SVV in NYC for a wedding, then we were home for a few days before heading out to Oklahoma City for the first time. One of the biggest surprises of the year was just how much we became obsessed with OKC; it’s such a dynamic, friendly and fun place to explore!

In September, we went to Sweden—one of only two international trips we took this year—and it made me fall in love with Scandinavia all over again. When we got back to Tennessee, it was festival season in Nashville: Music City Food & Wine and then Pilgrimage the following weekend.

October took us all over the state of Tennessee—literally, we hit every major city (Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Clarksville) and several small guys in between—for our big whiskey trail project and also to Georgia (for a Hilton campaign), where we got to see Team Mayhem and Team Vagabond3.

We thought our final work trip would fall in November so headed to South Walton on an actual vacation for four nights en route to Orlando for my final project with Universal for its holiday experience. On the way back, we decided to swing through Crystal River for the night BECAUSE MANATEES. I will definitely be going back to the Florida Springs in the future, as that was just too cool.

I thought that was it for 2017, but then! Travel Mindset called and wanted to send us to another awesome Fairmont Hotel for a project at the beginning of December, this time for a Christmas campaign with their D.C. property, to which I said: count us in!

The year ended with our annual Colorado jaunt, this time a week in Breckenridge courtesy of my mom. What a way to close out a fulfilling year!

Health

I started off the year by running like mad—and completed the harrowing Jack Daniel’s Oak Barrel Half Marathon in April—and then just … stopped. Or rather, my travels picked up and I had no time to train. That’s going to change this year (as soon as it’s not 8 degrees here in Tennessee!) as I’m slated to run the Fargo half-marathon in May with Lemon.

Around the time my travels became crazy, my trainer had knee surgery and then came down with pneumonia so she was out of commission for quite a few months. This means, my weight-lifting this past year really went downhill; I’m hoping to change that starting now and get back on a weekly routine with her. Being a former college athlete, I don’t really need someone to train me, but I have no gym buddies where I live, and having an accountability partner is so clutch (plus, I just really enjoy hanging out with her, too!).

SVV got his own paddleboard (copycat!), so we were able to SUP together many of the warmer weekends we were home in summer and fall. Ella, in particular, was thrilled with this arrangement!

One thing that didn’t suffer, though, was my AcroYoga classes, which I take one day a week, then jam with friends on another. Acro is truly my fitness love—so fun! such a good team-building activity—and a damn good core workout at that.

Family

Dad is doing much better, 23 months post-stroke. Speech is still hard, but we’re seeing him get more and more words back as the months progress. He also finished his first book since the stroke (a John Lescroart novel) while on our trip. He’ll never fully recover to the point he was pre-stroke as the clot was too big by the time they got into his brain to operate, but he’ll have a comfortable (and hopefully, happy!) life.

Of course, the BIG news for the year was that my sister is pregnant! Charlotte Rose Clarey is joining our nutty clan sometime in March, and I couldn’t be more stoked to have another niece—and one just down the road at that (my two other darling nieces live some 2,500 miles away in California).

Friends

2017 was a year for friend hangs, and I love that so many projects took me to see so many of my besties! Lemon and I got to see each other a handful of times—in Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, South Carolina again, Tennessee and NYC—and Jade and I almost managed to get back on our every-other-month visitation schedule.

I saw the Mayhems several times, in both Georgia and in Tennessee. And I stayed with Angie Away at her new house in JAX; Angie, Alex and I took a trip to New Orleans together; and Alex also spent nearly two weeks in Tennessee with me for Bonnaroo, during which her lovely mother and her fiancé also joined us. It was a packed house, as another three friends from Tennessee stayed with us, in addition to an extra canine body. The best way to spend Bonnaroo, in my mind!

Of course, there’s my Nashville squad, too, and I squeeze in as many happy hours and dinners with them when I’m home and their schedules allow. I also run a media networking group that just hit four years, so I know that at least once a month I’ll get face time with that crew.

House

We continue to plug along at our house (mostly SVV), but to be honest, we’ve had so many other projects that have taken precedence, including a house he’s fixing up for my parents that’s in bad shape and the new commercial property we just bought in our backyard. So many house projects, so little time!

This past year, we did manage to finish our master bathroom (which the TODAY Show then featured!), stock up on some awesome MCM furniture, finish our fence all the way around (the only missing part is the electronic gate), build a kick-ass garden (again, all SVV) and add a few new pieces to the inside (like a custom-built island and table).

Biggest Wins

This post on why you can’t pick my brain went viral.

My guide to Savannah was my best-performing travel post of the year.

I still can’t believe I’ve been blogging for 10.5 years; I shared some lessons on this crazy journey.

I finally put together the Nashville murals post I’d been working on for years, which prompted this Google Fiber partnership.

I teamed up with Kristin Sweeting to plan a Portugal retreat for creatives next summer (there’s still time to book!).

I started a SEP at the tail-end of 2016 and have contributed to it three times thus far (as a freelancer, no one’s got my back when it comes to retirement!).

Biggest Headaches

The never-ending fight with Expedia that resulted in my family losing $10,000.

SVV bonking his noggin and having to get stitches while in Charleston.

A major destination’s PR firm stole dozens of my images, played dumb when we called them out on it, and while we are still contemplating a small-claims suit our court system makes it fairly easy for a shady company to rip off freelancers like us.

2017 by the Numbers

Blog posts written: 102

Countries visited: 3

States visited: 12

Flights taken: 33

Trips to Florida: 6

Weddings attended: 5

Books read: 14 (pathetic! I blame the news and social media)

What were your major highlights of the past 12 months? And what would you love to see more of from C&C in the coming year?

For past year-end reviews, see my recaps here: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008.

In 2017: Highlights from the Year published first on http://ift.tt/2gOZF1v