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ear-worthy · 15 days

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What True-Crime Podcasts Have Taught Us About Our Criminal Justice System

The other day, I discovered a true-crime podcast about true-crime podcasts. I think that means that podcasting may have jumped the shark.

Although there are some fabulous true-crime podcasts, I am always afraid that podcasting will become the Discovery's ID Channel or HLN's Forensic Files of the audio world.

Podcasting has so much more to offer than true-crime. Everything from factual science like Science Vs to traditional entertainment like Wait Wait…Don't Tell Me! to shows for underrepresented voices like Democracy-ish.

Don't get me wrong here. I do love the true-crime genre. My personal favorites are Criminal, Killer Queens, and The Murder Sheet. My least favorite is Crime Junkie because of its derivative proclivities.

Listeners do love these true-crime podcasts. Last week, the Dateline NBC podcast began its subscription service on Apple podcasts and has exceeded all expectations.

Despite my constant whining about the exploding number of true-crime podcasts (they procreate faster than fruit flies), true-crime podcasts have identified and highlighted crucial weaknesses and a few strengths in our justice system.

What can we learn from all these true-crime podcasts? Key themes resonate in these shows repeatedly.

The police arrest, and prosecutors convict, a disturbing number of innocent people. Founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, the Innocence Project works to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate, and equitable systems of justice for everyone. The Innocence Project is inundated with requests from incarcerated people and their families.

Innocent people being arrested by the police and then prosecuted despite their innocence is a key theme of many true-crime podcasts. Depending on your source, between three and six percent of people currently in jail are innocent. That's fertile ground for true-crime podcasts. Especially since more than 2,800 people have been exonerated of crimes that they were imprisoned for in the last 30 years. That number is apparently the floating ice that hides the iceberg.

Even more disturbing is that four of every 100 people sentenced to death are innocent, but only half that number are eventually exonerated.

The six primary reasons for wrongful arrest and conviction are mistaken witness or eyewitness identification, false confession, false or misleading forensic evidence, or its misapplication, perjury or false accusation, informants, official and government misconduct, and inadequate legal defense.

Innocent people being convicted of a crime is the second most popular theme of true-crime podcasts, after unsolved cases.

Podcasts like Serial and other true-crime shows continue to demonstrate that police and prosecutors arrest and convict people who are innocent.

Why are innocent people arrested and convicted? See below.

Racism is a primary reason that people are wrongly accused and convicted.

No one knows how many innocent blacks were arrested and convicted for crimes they did not commit in the nearly 100 years of Jim Crow. Nowhere is racism more explicit than the 2019 film Just Mercy starring Michael B. Jordan as young defense attorney Bryan Stevenson who represents poor people on death row in the South. Featured is his work with Walter McMillian, a black man who had been wrongfully convicted of the murder of a young woman.

True-crime podcasts to their credit often highlight this major flaw in the justice system. For example, although blacks make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population, 49 percent of wrongful conviction exonerations involve black defendants.

The justice system also has a class prejudice.

In many cases, innocent people in jail are there because of inadequate or negligent legal counsel.

In effect, there don't have money to hire a lawyer or hire a good one. Not having a lawyer in our justice system typically leads to a plea deal (despite innocence) and then we're back to why so many innocent people are in prison.

For example, until April 2022, Maine was the only state that had no public defenders. Thanks to an exhaustive investigation by ProPublica, state lawmakers were finally pressured to secure money to hire Maine’s first public defenders. Now it will have five -- for the entire state. In January 2022, the Public Defenseless podcast with Hunter Parnell also exposed this serious legal flaw. Rich people make out much better than people with little access to expensive and time-consuming legal care. There are multiple true-crime podcasts about real-estate heir and serial killer Robert Durst. Podcasts such Jury Duty and The Jinx followed his trial and ultimate life-sentence conviction in 2021. Durst died in prison earlier this year.

Durst's case was ultimately satisfying because, for a change, a rich person didn't get away with a crime. In Durst's case, heinous, violent crimes.

True-crime podcasts can and will run their own investigations. Sometimes, their podcast even leads to identifying the perpetrator and to a conviction.

For example, the subject of Australian true-crime podcast, The Teachers Pet, Chris Dawson has recently been found guilty in the Australian Supreme Court of murdering his first wife, who vanished more than four decades ago. Hedley Thomas, an Australian journalist, investigated the case in a successful 14-episode podcast containing what he claimed was new evidence. The podcast was released in 2018 at the same time as the local police had started re-investigating Lynette Dawson’s disappearance.

Forensics is a double-edged sword: It helps to identify the guilty person with DNA, but also is not as scientifically bulletproof as crime TV shows depict

For instance, in the episode #147 of the Junk Science podcast, host Josh Dubin covered the pseudo-science of blood spatter pattern evidence. In episode 11 of the Adam Ruins Everything podcast, host Adam Conover discussed outdated forensic techniques such as bite mark analysis, with Chris Fabricant, Director of Strategic Litigation at the Innocence Project.

In the Stuff To Blow Your Mind iHeart podcast, the episode was titled, "What if bad science put you in prison for a crime you didn't commit"

In the Heartland Daily podcast, economist Roger Koppl discussed the inherent problem of the government’s monopoly on crime labs, pointing to institutional incentives for experts in a variety of fields. From fingerprint analysis to DNA matching, Koppl estimated that 20,000 individuals are wrongly convicted each year in the United States because of faulty forensic evidence.

Then we have true-crime podcasts that report how forensics science, especially DNA genealogy and public databases, have caught murderers who otherwise never be caught and convicted.

The DNA:ID podcast, for example, looks at crimes solved by genetic genealogy, and examine the connection - if any - between the victim and the killer, and why the crime occurred.

Numerous true-crime podcasts covered how the Green River Killer and Golden State Killer were finally caught with DNA evidence.

True-crime podcasts can -- and do -- offer us more of a Webb telescope view of our justice system than we've ever had before. Despite podcast networks cooking up as many true-crime podcasts as we can humanly stand, true-crime podcasts often provide several valuable services.

First, these podcasts continue to focus on the unacceptable number of innocent people serving sentences for crimes they did not commit.

Second, these podcasts remind us -- and we need the reminder -- that racism infects the core of our justice system, from police to prosecutors to penitentiaries.

Third, these podcasts highlight how rich, powerful people (those traits tend to go together) can "game" the justice system due to money, influence, and authority.

Fourth, we have to be cautious about swooning over fictional and documentary-style forensics TV shows because they can -- and do -- position forensics as somehow beyond reproach and incontrovertible evidence. DNA evidence can be subject to secondary transfer, where DNA from the accused can be transferred to someone else who carried it to the scene. Further, lab mistakes with DNA have been made and exposed by true-crime podcasts.

Unlike some TV "police" reality shows that overdramatize routine police work and reinforce racial and class stereotypes, true-crime podcasts have, for the most part, presented their audience a more balanced view of the criminal justice system.

photo of crime scene tape. In 2019, Dan Taberski and the team behind Missing Richard Simmons podcast investigated COPS — the longest running reality show in TV history — and its cultural impact on policing in America with his Running From COPS podcast. It was not a flattering portrait of the TV show, with Taberski revealing how show producers orchestrated arrests and often overruled law enforcement.

So we end this article, with a question.

Why do listeners digest so many true-crime podcasts like competitive eaters ram down hot dogs at an eating contest?

Earlier this year, Chistine Persaud of Digital Trends explained it this way: "The answer leans to part escapism, part morbid curiosity. Ironically, while true crime is rooted in fact, watching these terrible tales about events that took place decades or even just a few years ago offers a strange sense of satisfaction that maybe things are and will be OK, because, well, they could be worse."

Photo Credit: Kat Wilcox

#podcast #podcasting #true crime #law enforcement #racial justice

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rhiawriter · 3 years

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Summerhall Part 2

“You came,” Daenerys breathed.

“I did.” Jon dismounted and began lowering to his knee.

“Please don’t,” Daenerys said. He stopped. “Can we just be ourselves this week. No titles?”

Jon nodded but seemed unsure of how to proceed. Their roles were their shields against everything else that lay between them. What were they to each other without their titles?

There was a blur of white as Ghost bounded into view, sniffing and licking Dany across her cheek.

“Ghost, off,” Jon ordered. The wolf slunk back to his master’s side and sat on his haunches.

“I never could understand why people found that wolf so terrifying.” Dany wiped the wolf’s saliva off her face with a laugh.

“You’ve seen him in battle,” Jon defended his wolf’s fierceness.

“True, but off the battlefield he acts like a pup.”

“Only with you,” Jon said. Dany tried to reconcile the wolf’s boundless affection, with his master’s cool politeness.

“Would you like to walk through the hills?” Dany asked.

“Aye.” Jon tended to his horse and then the pair set out into the hills behind the ruined palace, Ghost prowling ahead of them. The sun was bright, bouncing off the piles of stone and making Summer Lake glitter. The birds sang brightly in the warm summer air.

Read the full story on AO3.

#Summerhall part 2 #jonerys #jonerys fanfic #crow flies south universe #jon snow #daenerys targaryen #asoiaf fanfiction

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drawing-way-outside-the-lines · 4 years

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Malou (’Mia Mayhem’) Jensen *Main character

Voice Claim:(Olivia Wilde) https://youtu.be/bV6cC-rUMCs?t=1m13s (Right click on links and open in new tab)

Partner(s): Dalton. Parents: None. Kids: None. Age: 37 (Year 2020) 26th of May. Height: 173cm Body type: Slim. Eye color: Light blue/gray Human: Immortal.

About: Caring, Individualistic, Generous, Passionate, Creative, Adventurous, Sarcastic, Charismatic, Clever, Compassionate, Sensitive, Freethinking, Friendly, Helpful, Sharing, Humble, Self-critical, Understanding, Witty, Open-minded, Absentminded, Emotional, Brooding, Skeptical, Stubborn, Shy, Introvert, Observant, Anxious, Cautious, Genuine, Awkward and Clumsy. ~ Straight, but loves to watch gay porn. Is borderline Asexual when it comes to straight sex. ~ Has several tattoos on her body, mainly Geeky, representing some of the fandoms she’s in. ~ Her favorite tattoo is the unicorn she has on her left hand. ~ Colors her hair electric blue. ~ Is a writer/artist. ~ Currently learning to write song lyrics/sing/play guitar. ~ Lives with her roomie, Dalton. ~ Used to attend a design school where she would sew clothes all day, now she can’t stand sewing by machine, and only does things she can sew by hand. ~ HUGE cat lover. - Has 3 of her own, Oliver, BMO and Bunny. ~ Used to be very skinny and hated when people assumed she had an eating disorder, or called her names like giraffe or spider legs, when she actually had a very large appetite and always ate a lot. ~ Always smells like burned incense and wood. ~ Hates most artificial smells, loves earthy tones. ~ Loves to collect creepy stuff. ~ Atheist. ~ Has a pretty dark sense of humor. ~ Drinks almost nothing but tea. ~ Is probably made of tea? ~ Dislikes society. ~ Flannel/tartan addict. ~ Super power = anxiety. ~ Believes in unicorns and magic. ~ Strong-willed. ~ Stomps around in big boots. ~ Once kicked a taxi cause the driver was an ass. ~ Hates when people repeatedly sticks their nose in her business. ~ Orphan. ~ Pretty good cook. ~ Fills her bed with plushies to make up for the fact she hasn't shared her bed with anyone half a decade at least. ~ Lonely. ~ Melancholic. ~ Romantic at heart though she never fully admits it. ~ Cares too much for her own good. ~ 100/10 would do anything for the people she loves. ~ Is very honest, if you can’t handle the truth, don’t ask for it. ~ Was abused physically and mentally as a child, as result she sometimes suffers from anxiety, Depression and bad nerves. ~ Can be rather pessimistic. ~ Hates freezing. ~ Uncomfortable around people. ~ Loves her friends, her cats, Rock music, chillout music, pandas, unicorns, owls, wolves, ravens, deer, bears, foxes, Deadpool, watching movies, plushies, licorice, writing, being creative in any way, light chains, grungy stuff, neon lights, Christmas, Halloween, Halloween-type decor, Hello Kitty, 90′s stuff, spearmint, finding deeper meaning in stuff around her, stickers, Anti-Heroes, collecting penis decor, spooky stuff, anything made out of raw wood, flannel, daydreaming, weird/cute/extraordinary mugs, leather wristbands, gay porn, dancing to loud music, Rick & Morty, coloring books, cozy blankets, strange backpacks, gemstones/crystals, nature and scented candles. ~ Her style changes with her mood. One day she wears bright colorful stuff with rainbows and unicorns. Next day it’s black clothes with witchy/creepy symbols/prints or dirty jeans and oversized flannel shirts. ~ Can be pretty grumpy, but it’s usually nothing more than just that. Malou’s tag Malou’s house/home Malou’s moodboard Handwriting/ask answer pic:

One Gif to describe her:

One song to describe her: Mumford & Sons - Hopeless Wanderer Personal playlist: 1. Incubus - Drive 2. D-A-D - Laugh 'n' A ½ 3. Godsmack - Serenity 4. Jack Johnson - All At Once 5. Damon Albarn – On Melancholy Hill (acoustic) 6. Tim Christensen - Whispering At The Top Of My Lungs 7. Linkin Park - Papercut 8. Nirvana - Plateau 9. Gorillaz - Tomorrow Comes Today 10. Serj Tankian - Left Of Center 11. Korn - Freak On a Leash 12. The White Stripes - Hardest Button To Button 13. Gorillaz - Aries ft. Peter Hook & Georgia 14. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Can't Stop 15. Madrugada - Sirens 16. Alabama 3 - Woke Up This Morning 17. Gorillaz - Amarillo 18. Jewel - Absence Of Fear 19. Angels and Airwaves - Secret Crowds 20. Blur - Girls And Boys 21. Gorillaz - Saturnz Barz (Spirit House) 22. Cigarettes After Sex - Sweet 23. Jewel - Deep Water 24. Jack Johnson - Sleep Through the Static 25. Damon Albarn - Lonely Press Play 26. D-A-D - Empty Heads 27. R.E.M. - Drive 28. Incubus - Promises, Promises 29. Chris Cornell - Billie Jean 30. Blur - Colin Zeal 31. Puscifer - Momma Sed 32. Heartless Bastards - Only For You 33. Gorillaz - El Mañana 34. Angels & Airwaves - Breathe 35. The Beatles - Come Together 36. 4 Non Blondes - What's Up 37. Gorillaz - Momentary Bliss ft. slowthai & Slaves 38. Norah Jones - Come Away With Me 39. Blur - Mirrorball 40. Incubus - Black Heart Inertia 41. Limp Bizkit feat. Method Man N 2 Gether Now 42. 2Pac - Changes ft. Talent 43. D-A-D - Bad Craziness 44. Nirvana - Pennyroyal Tea 45. Blur - Ong Ong 46. Angels and Airwaves - Do It For Me Now 47. Right Said Fred - What A Day For A Daydream 48. Damon Albarn - Everyday Robots 49. The Human League - I’m The Law 50. Jamiroquai - Virtual Insanity 51. Linkin Park - A Place For My Head 52. Blink -182 - Down 53. 3 Doors Down - Duck And Run 54. Alanis Morissette - Hand In My Pocket 55. Savage Garden - The Animal Song 56. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Scar Tissue 57. Incubus - Dig 58. Green Day - Basket Case 59. LP - Lost On You [Live Session] 60. D-A-D - Sleeping My Day Away 61. Bob Marley - Buffalo Soldier 62. Beth Hart - Delicious Surprise 63. Extreme - Hole Hearted 64. Paul Simon - You Can Call Me Al 65. Jack Johnson - Breakdown 66. Damon Albarn - Photographs (You Are Taking Now) 67. Sticky Fingers - Cyclone (The Village Sessions) 68. Blur - Star Shaped 69. Serj Tankian - Empty Walls 70. The Dead South - Diamond Ring 71. The Kills - U.R.A Fever 72. Godsmack - I Stand Alone 73. Queen - Bicycle Race 74. Alanis Morissette - Ironic 75. Dizzy Mizz Lizzy - Hidden War 76. Nirvana - About A Girl 77. Damon Albarn - Mr Tembo 78. Savage Garden - To The Moon & Back 79. Alannah Myles - Black Velvet 80. Jewel - Down So Long 81. Tep No - Swear Like A Sailor 82. Youssou N'Dour - 7 Seconds ft. Neneh Cherry 83. Gorillaz - Broken 84. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Road Trippin 85. Jewel - Good Day 86. Sheryl Crow - Everyday Is A Winding Road 87. Gorillaz - The Valley of The Pagans ft. Beck 88. Green Day - When I Come Around 89. Tim Christensen - Lay Down Your Arms 90. Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood 91. The Pretty Reckless - Zombie 92. Stereophonics - Maybe Tomorrow 93. Blackfield - My Gift of Silence 94. Dizzy Mizz Lizzy - Love Me a Little 95. Damon Albarn - Heavy Seas Of Love 96. The Paper Kites - Bloom 97. David Bowie - Heroes 98. The Beatles - Day Tripper 99. Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc. 100. Faithless - Mass Destruction 101. Limp Bizkit - My Generation (Uncensored) 102. Tasmin Archer - Sleeping Satellite 103. Jennifer Brown - Alive 104. Of Monsters And Men - Sloom 105. Panic! At The Disco - New Perspective 106. Limp Bizkit - Break Stuff(Explicit) 107. Blur - Lonesome Street 108. Sort Sol - Holler High 109. Jacob Lee - Demons (Philosophical Sessions) 110. Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here 111. Nina Simone Feeling Good 112. The Human League - Darkness 113. Gorillaz - Strange Timez ft. Robert Smith 114. Des'ree - I'm Kissing You 115. Meredith Brooks - What Would Happen 116. Dan Black - Symphonies ft. Kid Cudi 117. The Kills - No Wow 118. Gorillaz - Fire Flies 119. Guns N' Roses - Patience 120. Incubus - In The Company Of Wolves 121. The Dead Weather - Will There Be Enough Water 122. Hooverphonic - Mad About You (Live at Koningin Elisabethzaal 2012) 123. Blur - The Universal 124. Sort Sol - Let Your Fingers Do The Walking 125. Roy Orbison - In The Real World 126. Corey Hart - Sunglasses At Night 127. Imagine Dragons - Radioactive (Henri Pfr & Hësling Edit) (Cover By Victoria) 128. Hollow Coves - These Memories 129. Beth Hart - Favorite Things 130. Catching Flies - Quiet Nights Bonus: Yello - Oh Yeah Double Bonus: Meredith Brooks - Bitch Triple Bonus: Seal - Crazy Almost done I swear!: Wolf Larsen - If I Be Wrong Last but not least: Tim Christensen - Enjoy The Silence

#Malou Jensen #immortal #female-self-sim #ts3 #sims3 #sims 3 #simblr #simography

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tlatollotl · 5 years

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The Tula-Chichen-Tollan Connection

This was a paper I wrote for a class that essentially summarizes the book Twin Tollans: Chichén Itzá, Tula, and the epiclassic to early postclassic Mesoamerican world edited by Jeff Karl Kowalski and Cynthia Kristan-Graham. I thought I would share the paper with you all. I hope you enjoy it.

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For over century academics have squabbled over the supposed connection between the pre-Columbian Central Mexican city of Tula and the northern Yucatan city of Chichen Itza. Tula, situated in the Mexican state of Hidalgo north of present-day Mexico City, was once the center for a culture that we attribute to the Toltec, a semi-mythical and historical culture that once influenced Central Mexico. Chichen Itza is located on the limestone shelf of the Yucatan peninsula, a little over 1100 kilometers away as the crow flies from Tula, and was once the capital of a large Maya polity engaged in extensive coastal trade. Despite the distance between the two centers, academics have created an entwined mixture built upon archaeological and historical interpretations, not data, to try to link these two cities together. As a result, the Tula-Chichen-Tollan connection has created its own sort of mythos that makes understanding this connection difficult to research.

Researchers have cut down entire forests and drained seas of ink for over a century as they debated back in forth in the pages of scholarly journals and university press books over whether a connection exists between Tula and Chichen Itza, what constitutes such a connection, and how that connection formed in the past. After this century plus long debate, academics are no closer to resolving this question than when they started. How and why such a connection between Tula and Chichen Itza first began is something that many scholars have seemed to forget or ignored in their pursuit of the Tula-Chichen-Tollan connection. This paper explores the historiography of the Tula-Chichen-Tollan connection by recounting how the connection began, what sorts of evidence scholars have tried to draw upon, issues in resolving the question pertaining to a connection, and finally concluding with my own thoughts on the connection and whether it exists between Tula and Chichen Itza.

Definitions

To understand the Tula-Chichen-Tollan connection debate, we must define a number of terms in order to understand the origin and debate regarding the connection. This is necessary due to scholars over the past century using some of the same terms to mean multiple things, which only add to the confusion and general noise regarding the research of this connection. Some scholars use these terms as lines of evidence to support or refute the Tula-Chichen-Tollan connection, but these will be discussed in more detail later.

The first important term to define is tollan, a Nahuatl word that means “place of reeds,” “place of bulrushes,” or “place of cattails” (Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007: 22). Nahuatl speakers use this word to denote a densely populated settlement, what we would think of as an urban or low density urban city (Isendahl and Smith 2013). The word tollan denotes a city because the number of people in a city is as plentiful as the number of reeds, bulrushes, or cattails found near bodies of water. The Aztec glyph for tollan reflects this connotation by depicting reeds and cattails near a pool of water. Of importance to the Tula-Chichen-Tollan connection is that Tollan is the name of capital city of the Toltecs mentioned in ethnohistoric accounts recorded in the decades following the conquest of Mexico. This is a point that I will revisit later.

Tollan is often paired with the city’s name to reinforce that connotation with reeds and large numbers of people, as with the case of Tollan Tenochtitlan, one of three capitals of the Aztec Triple Alliance, and Tullam Chollan, also known by its modern name Cholula (Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007: 22-23). Both Tenochtitlan and Cholula were the two most densely populated urban centers at the time of Spanish contact in 1519. Tollan was also used in Mesoamerica as an honorific title for some centers. If a center is paired with the word tollan it is often because that place is a focus of political power, has important ancestral beginnings for a culture, and where the most prestigious of the nobility lived (Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007: 22). For example, Cholula was not only a densely urban space, but it was also a point of pilgrimage for Mixtec nobility who would travel to the city to have their septum pierced as part of a rite to ascend the throne (Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007: 22-23).

However, tollan does not need to be used as separate word and could simply be used as a prefix, either –tul or –tol, to add to other place names. For example, Tulancingo was the name for three separate centers in Hidalgo, Veracruz, and Oaxaca respectively (Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007: 22). Despite tollan being a designation for an urban center and the use of prefixes to denote urban centers, at the time of contact in 1519 there were no settlements, occupied or abandoned, that were simply named Tollan. The closest example we have is the site of Tula (Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007: 24).

Archaeologists and historians gave the name Tula to the archaeological site located next to the modern town of Tula in the Mexican state of Hidalgo. When Fray Bernardino de Sahagún began writing his Historia General in the mid-16th century, he recorded myths about a Tollan once occupied by the Toltec, the supposed civilized half of Mexica ancestry. The Mexica, one of several ethnic groups that form what we call the Aztecs, were the founders of Tenochtitlan who were once chichimecas (“dog people”) that had roamed north-central Mexico before arriving to the Basin of Mexico sometime during the Late Postclassic. To solidify their claims to power, the Mexica married into families that had Toltec ancestry, the most noble and prestigious of ancestry to be descended from. Other than recording ethnohistoric accounts from the Aztec people, Sahagún also journeyed to the town of Tula in Hidalgo. During this visit, Sahagún made clear distinctions between the prehistoric ruins that we now call Tula and the contemporary town of Tula that he visited. Sahagún recorded the prehistoric ruins of Tula as tolla (or tollan) while the contemporary town of Tula next to the ruins was recorded as tulla (or tullan). Sahagún even differentiated between the peoples, with the prehistoric peoples of tolla referred to as toltecas and the contemporary people of tulla as tultecas (Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007: 25). Despite these clear linguistic differences, the ruins near Tula were associated with the name Tula rather than Tolla. This slight difference in names contributed to the academic debate of where the Tollan of ethnohistoric accounts was located, a point that I will return to later in this paper.

As mentioned previously, Tollan was the location of the Toltec people recorded in ethnohistoric accounts. By the 20th century, however, the term Toltec could refer to one of a number of differing things including: a descendant of Teotihuacan, the ancestor of the Aztecs, the art style found at the archaeological site of Tula, a follower of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, an honorific title for an ancestor or a skilled artisan, the name of the Central Mexican warriors thought to have conquered Chichen Itza, the name of the art style that these alleged invaders introduced to the Maya of Yucatan, the name of a horizon period between the abandonment of Teotihuacan and the rise of the Aztec Triple Alliance, and the supposed ancestors of the Quiche and other highland Maya peoples (Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007: 24). As we can see, terms and their definitions matter, especially considering that not all of these things necessarily relate to one another. For the purposes of this paper, Toltec will refer primarily to the people who once occupied the archaeological site of Tula and, to a less extent, the semi-mythical and historic ancestors of the Aztecs. The use of the term Toltec to refer to both of these groups is not because we assuming the semi-mythical ancestors of the Aztecs are the same people who once occupied Tula. Instead, the use of the term for both groups reflects both archaeological and ethnohistoric naming conventions.

So far, the terms focus on Central Mexico and not the Maya. This is the result of the Tula-Chichen-Tollan connection assuming that a Central Mexican influence spread to Chichen Itza without considering other possibilities. For example, perhaps it was Chichen Itza that influenced Tula or perhaps there is something larger happening during this time period involving the participation of both Tula and Chichen Itza. This one-sidedness is a reflection of the bias and confidence scholars have in being able to characterize what is or is not Maya. For those things that are not Maya, scholars could argue those things are Toltec or Central Mexican. Important to this discuss are two terms from the Maya region: Itza and Puuc.

Itza is name of a Maya ethnic group whose ancestral home is located in the Petén Itza region of Guatemala. Sometime at the end of the Terminal Classic period, the Itza are believed to have migrated north towards Yucatan where they helped to found the city of Chichen Itza (Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007: 35). One of the ruling families of Mayapan, a later Maya city seen to be the successor of Chichen Itza, called Cocom are believed to have originated from Chichen Itza. After the abandonment of Mayapan, remnants of the Itza ethnic group returned south to the Petén Itza region where they established Nojpeten, the last Maya kingdom to fall to the Spanish in 1697 (Jones 1998).

Puuc is a term that refers to a region of Yucatan and an artistic style employed at sites within that region. The Puuc region is located in the Puuc hills south of the modern city of Merida. Within the Puuc hills are a number of large centers like Uxmal, Sayil, and Kabah. One of the ruling families of Mayapan called the Xiu are believed to have originated from Uxmal (Kowalski 2007). Together with the Cocom family, they ruled Mayapan for several centuries before the Xiu slaughtered most of the Cocom family (Jones 1998). The Xiu ancestors would have been living at Uxmal at the time of Chichen Itza’s founding.

The Beginnings

The beginning of the Tula-Chichen-Tollan connection largely began in the 19th century, but had its roots in the early colonial period shortly after the conquest of Mexico. The first person to make an explicit connection between Tula and Chichen Itza was by Désiré Charnay, a French explorer and archaeologist at the end of the 19th century and into the early 20th century. While Charnay was not the first to note similarities between some of the sculptures documented and recorded at both Tula and Chichen Itza, Charnay’s contribution lay in his more rigorous work with excavating at Tula, describing in detail the sculptures and artifacts from the site, and drawing more explicit parallels with artifacts recovered from Chichen Itza (Gillespie 2007: 93). Charnay’s objective for comparing these two sites together was not because he believed they shared a special, exclusive relationship in the past. Instead, like other 19th century anthropologists, Charnay was preoccupied with notions of race or “stocks” of people (Gillespie 2007: 90-91). Charnay viewed the Toltec of Central Mexico as a “civilized people” that were the originators of indigenous American civilization. As they spread their influence throughout Mesoamerica, the Toltec left traces of their civilizing efforts on a number of pre-Columbian cities. Tula and Chichen Itza just so happened to be the two cities that Charnay selected out of several to illustrate and support his argument.

Charnay’s work at Tula and then his travels to Chichen Itza set the stage for the Tula-Chichen-Tollan debate. Because Charnay went first to Central Mexico and then to the Yucatan seeing artifacts and architecture at Tula before Chichen Itza, Charnay created this perception that influence was spreading out from Central Mexico to the Maya. Ethnohistoric accounts of a Toltec king sailing east, a point of discussion revisited in this paper, reinforced this perception. I cannot help but speculate that if Charnay had traveled to Chichen Itza first, instead of Tula, would Charnay be more awestruck by Chichen Itza’s monumentality and beautifully carved stone buildings than Tula’s unimpressive cobble stone work? Would Charnay have argued instead that the Maya were the ones who traveled in the past spreading their influence to Central Mexico? How would that have changed the Tula-Chichen-Tollan debate? We may never be able to answer these questions, yet the chain of events started by Charnay left a long lasting and powerful ripple in Mesoamerican archaeology that we still feel today.

Following Charnay’s initial comparisons between these two pre-Columbian cities, other researchers began turning towards texts to support or refute this connection. In the decades following the conquest of Mexico, Spanish colonials began recording indigenous oral histories or adding text to indigenous codices using the Latin alphabet as a means to make sense of the newly conquered area, find avenues to convert people to Christianity, and to legitimize indigenous political and property claims (Smith 2007: 586; Matthew and Oudijk 2007). Many of these oral histories fall into the realm of semi-mythical history in that they most likely recount recent events accurately, but older events may fall into the realm of myth (Smith 2007: 590-593). From some of these ethnohistoric accounts from Central Mexico we get tales of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, the supposed ruler of Tollan and Quiche ethnohistoric accounts from southern Mexico and Guatemala recount tales of migrations into the region. However, there are issues for scholars attempting to draw from these accounts to support the Tula-Chichen-Tollan connection.

When Spanish friars first began recording these oral histories, the friars repeatedly encountered a figure named Quetzalcoatl. Since their mission was to spread Christianity to this new region, the friars began focusing their attention on Quetzalcoatl. Aztec depictions of Quetzalcoatl the deity were often in human form giving the Spanish friars the false assumption that Quetzalcoatl was a physical person rather than a deity or icon. If the friars could understand who Quetzalcoatl was, the Spanish friars could somehow use this person to help convert the indigenous people to Christianity. However, because the friars were working under the assumption that Quetzalcoatl was a man and not a deity or an icon, the friars began to conflate all the names that used Quetzalcoatl into an amalgam of a single person. The result is a mess of conflicting accounts about who Quetzalcoatl was and what deeds they accomplished (Gillespie 2007: 89).

Quetzalcoatl is not merely the Nahuatl word to denote the feathered serpent deity of Central Mexico. The Aztec used Quetzalcoatl for the name or titles of people, real or mythical, in their oral historical accounts such as Ce Acatl Quetzalcoatl, Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, and Nacxitl Quetzalcoatl. As with the variety of names and titles, so too, was there a variety of myths associated with the name Quetzalcoatl. For example, Quetzalcoatl is associated with being the last king of the Tollan dynasty, but other accounts place him to be the founder of the Tollan dynasty. Accounts differ on Quetzalcoatl’s demise, as well. Some say he traveled to the seacoast, to Tlapallan, a mythical place on the Gulf coast, or he simply traveled east. When Quetzalcoatl arrived to his destination he either sailed away, sacrificed himself to become the Morningstar, or he simply died (Gillespie 2007: 89). The conflicting details associated with Quetzalcoatl that the Spanish recorded were a result of when these accounts were written at different periods in the 16th century (Gillespie 2007: 107).

It is from these accounts that early academics began to wonder whether there was truth to Charnay’s suggestion that Tula (Tollan) and Chichen Itza relate to one another somehow. However, scholars attempting to draw from ethnohistoric accounts faced a conundrum. Western historical tradition in the 19th and early 20th century tended to treat documents as infallible and superior to archaeological information (Gillespie 2007: 106). As discussed, early colonial documents were inconsistent in the accounts and deeds of Quetzalcoatl, a person that may be more mythic than historic. Because of these conflicting accounts and the desire to draw upon historic documents, 19th century scholars lifted passages free from their contextual information to get at the “truth.” Scholars primarily drew upon later 16th century accounts influenced more by Spanish colonialism than early 16th century account in their search for historical information (Gillespie 2007: 107). The result was a “reconstructed” and “historic” account in which Quetzalcoatl was a human Toltec king of the city of Tollan located somewhere in Central Mexico. At some point during his reign, Quetzalcoatl fled Tollan for the Gulf Coast where he sailed east, presumably to Yucatan, bringing with him Toltec culture and civilization.

If these “historic events” could be gleaned or reconstructed from Central Mexican sources, academics were left asking if there was an equivalent in Maya ethnohistoric accounts. To their delight, Quiche ethnohistoric accounts do talk about their ancestors coming from Central Mexico, but these accounts, like the Chilam Balam, were written one to three centuries after the conquest of Mexico (Smith 2007: 587). As Michael Smith points out, migration is a common trope in indigenous mythic history and ethnic identity (Smith 2007: 592). It is not unusual to find other tales in other cultures of “stranger kings” who come to a region to rule a far off kingdom whether or not it was actually true. There is no reason for us to think that indigenous myths of migration are true without other lines of evidence (Beekman and Christensen 2003, 2011; Smith 2007: 593; Stone 2003).

Nonetheless, the Maya of Chichen Itza do have a Feathered Serpent deity called K’uk’ulkan. Part of the Tula-Chichen-Tollan connection is that the Toltecs brought with them a Feathered Serpent cult to Chichen Itza. This is based, in part, on the predominate Feathered Serpent imagery found in Central Mexico. However, the Feathered Serpent cult poses an issue in that it is largely associated with elite ideology. The method in which the Feathered Serpent cult expresses itself in material culture varies based on local religious, economic, and political conditions (Gillespie 2007: 102). It would be difficult to argue that the Toltec brought the Feathered Serpent cult to Yucatan unless without considering other methods of transmission. The argument concerning the transmission of the Feathered Serpent dieity becomes more complicated when you consider that friars Diego de Landa and Bartolome de Las Casas recorded in the 16th century that K’uk’ulkan originated in Yucatan and spread to the west becoming a god named “Cezalcouati” (Gillespie 2007: 90). Perhaps scholars would have latched on to this piece of knowledge had Charnay visited Chichen Itza first.

There are some interesting linguistic associations between the Feathered Serpent and the Maya that should be discussed. In the 16th century the Castillo, a radial stepped platform pyramid, located on the North Terrace at Chichen Itza was named K’uk’ulkan and was associated with a “historic” person and a deity (Gillespie 2007: 90). While this may not be unusual in the context of Charnay’s idea of the Toltec bringing culture to the Maya, there are some interesting linguistic associations that suggest an older, deeper relationship with the Feathered Serpent. In Mayan, there are a series of homophones in that these words sound similar, but mean different things. These words are kan which means “snake” or the number four, k’an which means “cross”, k’aan which means “cordage”, and ka’an which means “sky”. The Castillo itself is adorned with entwined serpents on its balustrades. The entwined serpents allude to the idea of divine cordage, which has Pre-Classic and Classic roots, and can be associated with the Mesoamerican cosmological idea of a Coatepec or Serpent Mountain. There are four stairways on the Castillo and, from above, the pyramid would look like a cross. During the spring equinox, the rising sun creates a shadow along one of the balustrades giving an illusion that a serpent is descending from the heavens down the pyramid to the carved serpent head on the ground. Within an earlier construction of the Castillo, archaeologists found a red painted jaguar throne that may be a representation of the Maize God’s creation throne. The Castillo thus represents a K’an Witz (witz meaning “mountain”) the Maya cosmological creation mountain rendered in a local Itza style by combining and expressing these different and associations in the architecture (Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007: 62).

Using textual evidence presents two very difficult problems. As mentioned already, Spanish recorded indigenous oral histories had their own agenda and intention. Oftentimes indigenous people used ethnohistoric accounts to solidify political claims in the Spanish colonial government. The other issue in using textual evidence is that none of the texts originates from the Toltec or Maya during the period in which scholars believed Tula (Tollan) and Chichen Itza were connected (Gillespie 2007: 92). These accounts are by later indigenous people and their ability to recall deeper past events is questionable (Smith 2007). For example, the later Aztec people portray the Toltecs as fantastic and exceptional metalworkers. However, when one looks at the archaeological record of Tula, the supposed capital of the Toltecs, one can see that the site of lacks substantial amounts of metal artifacts. Yet when we look at the archaeological record at Chichen Itza, which scholars argue is as Toltec as Tula, there are many more metal artifacts recovered at the site (Gillespie 2007: 100). There is also an issue in that there are no contemporary depictions of anyone with the name or designation of Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl at Tula. Though there is an Aztec carving of someone named “one reed” and associated with a feathered serpent at Cerro la Malinche in Central Mexico, this is weak evidence to establish that Quetzalcoatl the name was a real person. This discrepancy is not easily resolved when trying to argue for this strong connection between the two sites.

Another example that calls into question the usefulness of textual information is the fact that there are no Maya hieroglyphics at Chichen Itza, or any other northern Yucatan site, that recount an event in which a group of Central Mexican people arrived to Chichen Itza, by force or otherwise. There is a different instance of Central Mexicans reaching the Maya, but this instance occurred centuries prior in the Classic period between Teotihuacan and Tikal. Not only do multiple Maya sites take note of this entrada, but the Maya depict these invaders in Teotihuacan style accoutrements (Stuart 2000). Due to the lack of textual evidence recording a Toltec invasion to northern Yucatan, scholars have used artistic evidence from the art and iconography at Chichen Itza to compensate for this deficiency, despite the fact that Chichen Itza made use of hieroglyphs up until the late 9th century when the Toltec would have made their connection (Gillespie 2007: 98; Grube and Krochock 2007; Kowalski 2007). Nonetheless, some scholars still do not see this as an issue and instead try to turn to other textual evidence and the archaeological record to bolster their argument.

Continual Myth Making

Despite Charnay’s somewhat superficial comparison of artifacts and sculptures recovered from Tula and Chichen Itza and the problems associated of using a chimerical account of a possibly fictitious person named Quetzalcoatl that traveled to Yucatan bringing Toltec culture to the Maya, scholars continued to pursue the perceived connection between Tollan and Chichen Itza into the 20th century. In the 20th century, scholars shifted their focus from textual evidence toward physical evidence gathered from art studies and archaeology to answer two questions: where was Tollan and how a connection could be established using material culture between Tollan and Chichen Itza?

Today, archaeologists and art historians regard Tula as the place referenced in ethnohistoric accounts as Tollan. As previously discussed, there were many Tollans at the time of contact in 1519 including Tollan Tenochtitlan and Tullam Chollan. Further, the prefixes tol- and tul- often were used to denote an urban center, as was the case with the name Tulancingo. At the time of contact, the historic town of Tula was the only place in Central Mexico with a name closest to Tollan that did not use Tollan as a secondary name or use a prefix. However, the historic town of Tula is not the same as the current archaeological site of Tula located nearby. Despite Spanish friars like Sahagun noting a difference between the contemporary people living at Tula and the historic people that once occupied the ruins, early scholars, like Charnay, proposed that site of Tula was the Tollan of myth. The fact that reeds grew in abundance at the El Salitre Swamp near the archaeological site and town somewhat bolstered this early argument. However, reeds also grew in abundance near the Great Pyramid at Cholula and on the island shores of Tenochtitlan. However, the Otomi name for Tula, Mahmeni, means “congregation of people” mirroring the definition of the Nahuatl word Tollan (Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007: 23).

Nonetheless, early scholars were not convinced Tula could be the Tollan of myth. Teotihuacan was proposed to be the Tollan of myth that spread Toltec culture throughout Mesoamerica before the advent of radiocarbon dating could anchor local ceramic chronologies (Gillespie 2007: 94-95). It took decades before archaeologists established a chronological period between the abandonment of Teotihuacan and the rise of the Aztec Triple Alliance. Teotihuacan seemed like the leading contender with its massive size, Feathered Serpent pyramid, striking artwork, and obvious place of reverence by later Central Mexican peoples. Tula, on the other hand, was this small, minor center in a marginal environment with aesthetic shortcomings that did not match ethnohistoric accounts. George Kubler (Kubler 1984: 83 cited in Kowalksi and Kristan-Graham 2007: 53) marked in a publication, “the expression attained by the sculptors of Tula differs from that of their predecessors at Teotihuacan by their choice of deliberately harsh forms, which avoided grace and sought only aggressive asperities, gritty surfaces, and bellicose symbols”.

The critiques of Tula did not stop with comparisons to Teotihuacan. Scholars viewed the architecture of Chichen Itza to be more sophisticated and cosmopolitan than Tula. George Kubler (Kubler 1961 cited in Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007: 34) remarked that the architecture at Chichen Itza was reflective of a “creative hearth” while Tula looked like it was some kind of “frontier garrison. Jorge Acosta remarked that, “Tula has a majestic conception, but a mediocre realization” (Acosta 1956-57:76 cited in Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007: 53). Despite these critiques and the desire to establish Teotihuacan as the Tollan of myth, Tula eventually won the academic debate. Jimenez Moreno, conducting excavations at Tula, was able to demonstrate via ceramics recovered at the site that Tula postdated Teotihuacan and predated the Aztec Triple Alliance (Gillespie 2007: 97). This placement was bolstered by the chronology in the Anales de Cuauhtitlan, a Central Mexican document on the history of Central Mexico, in which the Tollan recounted in the document was referring to Tula, not Teotihuacan (Gillespie 2007: 97).

The context of shared attributes shared between the sites of Tula and Chichen Itza consist primarily of architectural and sculptural similarities found within the respective civic ceremonial centers of each site. The most common architectural features cited as evidence of a connection are the colonnaded halls, the Atlantean statues, the feathered serpent sculptures, and the Chacmool sculptures. However, Tula and Chichen Itza do not exclusively share these elements nor do these elements originate in the Terminal Classic/Epiclassic or Postclassic periods. Of these shared elements, I will focus on just the colonnaded hall for this paper.

At Tula, the primary ceremonial building of importance is Pyramid B or the Temple of Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli (“Dawn Lord”) which consists of a stepped platform with hundreds of stone columns to support a perishable roof. The equivalent structure at Chichen Itza is the Temple of the Warriors that also consists of a stepped platform with hundreds of stone columns to support a perishable roof (Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007: 60-61). Each colonnaded hall has images of warriors carved on its stone columns, though Tula does not have nearly as many carved columns as Chichen Itza’s Temple of the Warriors. Surely, this is convincing evidence of some sort of special connection between the two sites, but the differences between the two sites cannot be remedied.

First, the focus of the ceremonial centers at either site differs. The focus of Tula’s ceremonial center is on Pyramid B, but at Chichen Itza, the ceremonial center is on the Castillo. In fact, the Temple of the Warriors at Chichen Itza is located off to the side on the North Terrace and is not oriented in the same manner as Pyramid B. In addition, Tula, despite having rather large buildings for a Central Mexican Epiclassic site, lacks an equivalent to Chichen Itza’s Castillo. If the Toltec did, in fact, influence Chichen Itza from its very founding, why is the ceremonial center at Chichen Itza not focused on the Temple of the Warriors? Moreover, are colonnaded halls really that special and unique? As Kristan-Graham (2007) points out, the tradition of colonnaded halls and sunken patios predates both Tula and Chichen Itza at sites in the Bajío and north Mexico, such as La Quemada and Alta Vista in Zacatecas, during the Classic period. Why do scholars not look for sites that have a radial stepped pyramid as the focus of their ceremonial center, like the Castillo at Chichen Itza? Nielsen, Helmke, and Fenoglio (2018) proposed that the site of El Cerrito, in Queretaro, should be considered a third Tollan in the Tula-Chichen-Tollan connection. This is due, in part, to its pyramid that is reminiscent of the Castillo as well as a dearth of other related iconographic elements at the site. While El Cerrito does have a colonnaded hall of sorts, its hall differs in form to that of Pyramid B or the Temple of the Warriors.

If we continue to pick at the differences between the colonnaded halls, more of the Tula-Chichen-Tollan connection falls apart. For example, the construction of the columns between Tula and Chichen Itza also differ. At Tula, the columns are constructed with four basalt blocks held together without anything while at Chichen Itza, the columns are constructed with soft limestone cobles and held together with mortar and plaster (Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007: 57). The content of the columns also differ. Kowalski argues that the columns at the Temple of the Warriors could be seen as an outgrowth of the Classic Maya stela practice in that the individuals depicted are personalized and reflect Maya iconographic traditions in the upper and lower registers that surround the subject. The columns at the Temple of the Warriors depict different people on all four sides, not just one, which differ slightly from the Classic period stela practice (Kowalski 2007: 268-269). At Pyramid B, however, the majority of the columns were not sculpted, though they could have had their plaster painted (Kowalski 2007: 271). Of the sculpted columns recovered at Tula, the subjects are less individualized and more formalized and symmetrical much like the depictions of warriors at Teotihuacan (Kowalski 2007: 269). Even with a similar architectural form, the construction and content of the colonnaded halls between Tula and Chichen Itza differs leaving us asking what sort of connection there is between these two centers.

Concluding Thoughts

These shared attributes between Tula and Chichen Itza are woefully insufficient to represent a “site-unit” intrusion of migrants from another area settling in a new area (Gillespie 2007: 102). While scholars may not be able to explain why Tula and Chichen Itza may share some of these elements, it is unlikely to be the result of some kind of Toltec invasion or conquest of northern Yucatan during the Terminal Classic. Pasztory notes few instances in Mesoamerican where one group actually used the art style of another, different group (Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007: 56-57). That leaves us asking, what does style even mean? Atkins (1990: 155) defined style in the context of art history as the belief that artworks from a particular era share certain distinctive visual characteristics. These include not only size, material, color, and other formal elements, but also subject and content.” Priority to form over content, but for Tula and Chichen Itza it favors content over form. Despite superficial similarities, there is no unified art style between the two sites (Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007: 55).

Tula and Chichen Itza were most likely participating in the same sort of power grab that other Terminal Classic sites were engaged in after the fall of Teotihuacan, Tikal, and Calakmul. The “Toltec” warriors depicted at Chichen Itza could very well be a form of ancestral recall or “validation through history” (Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007: 57). The Itza of Chichen Itza may have depicted some of their warriors with a “Toltec Military Outfit” which is similar to the Teotihuacan military outfit with pillbox helmets, bird or butterfly pectorals, and the use of atlatls and arts (Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007: 30). Instead of Chichen Itza establishing a relationship to Tula to solidify their political power, elites at Chichen Itza may have been referencing the Teotihuacan entrada from the Classic period in both the artwork and architecture of the site. This would not be an unusual move considering the Aztecs made similar references to their supposed Toltec ancestors to legitimize their claims to the Basin of Mexico.

Does this mean that there was no movement of people to Chichen Itza? To answer that question I would say no, people most likely did travel to Chichen Itza. The city was, of course, an important trade city able to import obsidian from Central Mexico and gold from Central America. We know from stable isotope studies that people did travel around Mesoamerica as evident by the remains of people recovered at Teotihuacan that have origins in the present-day states of Veracruz and Oaxaca (Manzanilla 2015). Another example comes from the remains of an individual recovered at Lamanai, Belize that may be of West Mexican origin (White et al. 2009). People moved around in the past and that is without a doubt. However, how scholars have tried to form and bridge a connection between Tula and Chichen Itza is problematic and poorly executed. What makes matters worse is the lack of unpublished data and work to create a solid chronology for each site (Smith 2007). Until many of these issues are resolved, I am of the mind that there was no special link between Tula and Chichen Itza.

Bibliography

Acosta, Jorge R.

1956-1957 Interpretación de algunos data obtenidos en Tula relativos a la época Tolteca. Revista Mexicana de Estudios Antropológicos 14(2):75-110.

Beekman, Christopher S., and Alexander F. Christensen

2003 Controlling for doubt and uncertainty through multiple lines of evidence: A new look at the Mesoamerican Nahua migrations. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 10(2): 111-164.

2011 Power, agency, and identity: Migration and aftermath in the Mezquital area of north-central Mexico. In Rethinking Anthropological Perspectives on Migration, edited by Graciela S. Cabana and Jeffery J. Clark, pp. 147-174. University Press of Florida.

Gillespie, Susan D.

2007 Toltecs, Tula, and Chichen Itza: The Development of an Archaeological Myth. In Twin Tollans: Chichen Itza, Tula, and the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic Mesoamerican World edited by Jeff Karl Kowalski and Cynthia Kristan-Graham, pp. 85-128. Harvard University Press.

Grube, Nikolai and Ruth J. Krochock

2007 Reading Between the Lines: Hieroglyphic Texts from Chichen Itza and Its Neighbors. In Twin Tollans: Chichen Itza, Tula, and the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic Mesoamerican World edited by Jeff Karl Kowalski and Cynthia Kristan-Graham, pp. 205-250. Harvard University Press.

Isendahl, Christian, and Michael E. Smith

2011 Sustainable agrarian urbanism: the low-density cities of the Mayas and Aztecs. Cities 31: 132-143.

Jones, Grant

1998 The Conquest of the Last Maya Kingdom. Stanford University Press.

Kowalski, Jeff Karl

2007 What’s “Toltec” at Uxmal and Chichen Itza? Merging Maya and Mesoamerican Worldviews and World Systems in Classic to Early Postclassic Yucatan. In Twin Tollans: Chichen Itza, Tula, and the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic Mesoamerican World edited by Jeff Karl Kowalski and Cynthia Kristan-Graham, pp. 251-314. Harvard University Press.

Kowalski, Jeff Karl, and Cynthia Kristan-Grham

2007 Chichen Itza, Tula, and Tollan: Changing Perspectives on a Recurring Problem in Mesoamerican Archaeology and Art History. In Twin Tollans: Chichen Itza, Tula, and the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic Mesoamerican World edited by Jeff Karl Kowalski and Cynthia Kristan-Graham, pp. 13-84. Harvard University Press.

Kristan-Graham, Cynthia

2007 Structuring Identity at Tula: The Design and Symbolism of Colonnaded Halls and Sunken Plazas. In Twin Tollans: Chichen Itza, Tula, and the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic Mesoamerican World edited by Jeff Karl Kowalski and Cynthia Kristan-Graham, pp. 531-578. Harvard University Press.

Kubler, George

1961 Chichen Itza y Tula. Estudios de Cultura Maya 1: 47-80. México D.F.

1984 The Art and Architecture of Ancient America: The Mexican, Maya, and Andean Peoples (3rd ed.). The Pelican History of Art. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England.

Manzanilla, Linda R.

2015 Cooperation and tensions in multiethnic corporate societies using Teotihuacan, Central Mexico, as a case study. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112(30): 9210-9215

Matthew, Laura E., and Michel R. Oudijk (editors)

2007 Indian Conquistadors: Indigenous allies in the conquest of Mesoamerica. University of Oklahoma Press.

Nielsen, Jesper, Christophe Helmke, and Fiorella Fenoglio

2018 A Dark Horse of the Early Postclassic: The Site of El Cerrito (Queretaro, Mexico) and its Relationship to Chichen Itza and Tula. Paper presented at the 83rd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, April 13th, Washington D.C.

Smith, Michael E.

2007 Tula and Chichen Itza: Are We Asking the Right Questions? In Twin Tollans: Chichen Itza, Tula, and the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic Mesoamerican World edited by Jeff Karl Kowalski and Cynthia Kristan-Graham, pp. 579-618. Harvard University Press.

Stone, Tammy

2003 Social Identity and Ethnic Interaction in the Western Pueblos of the American Southwest. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 10(1): 31-67.

Stuart, David

2000 The arrival of Strangers. In Mesoamericas Classic Heritage: From Teotihuacan to the Aztecs edited by David Carrasco, Lindsay Jones, and Scott Sessions, pp 465-513. University Press of Colorado, Boulder.

White, Christine D., Fred J. Longstaffe, David M. Pendergast, and Jay Maxwell

2009 Cultural Embodiment and the Enigmatic Identity of the Lovers from Lamanai. In Bioarchaeology and Identity in the Americas edited by Kelly Knudson and Christopher Stojanowski, pp. 155-176. University Press of Florida.

#archaeology #arqueologia #tula #chichen itza #mesoamerica #maya #toltec #history #historia #quetzalcoatl #feathered serpent #uxmal #hidalgo #teotihuacan #aztec

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LGBTQ+ Book List

I work in a library, and I’m pretty good at finding LGBT+ books. My boyfriend @another-broken-heart-cafe , who works with me, has also found quite a few. I finally decided to make an organized list of those and any others I could think of for anyone who’s looking for these kinds of books. I’ve sorted them the best I can and separated them to make what you want as easy to find as possible. There is an adult category, a teen/YA category, and a child category. I’ve read a few of these, but not many, so there’s probably going to be mistakes. I looked up every individual book to organize them the best I could (which took a while because this list currently has 140 books, if I counted correctly). If you find a mistake, just let me know and I’ll fix it in the next update. I plan to make updates occasionally as I find more. Feel free to add on any LGBT+ books you want!

Key

# - First in a series

* - Manga

ADULT

Novels

Amberlough by Lara Elena Donnelly [Gay] # It Takes Two to Tumble by Cat Sebastian [Gay] The One by John Marrs [Gay] A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood [Gay] The Arrangement by Felice Stevens [Gay] The Intern by John S. Daniels [Gay]

She Rises by Kate Worsley [Lesbian] Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear [Lesbian] # Stray City by Chelsey Johnson [Lesbian] First Position by Melissa Brayden [Lesbian] Wishing on a Dream by Julie Cannon [Lesbian] Sidebar by Carsen Taite [Lesbian] A More Perfect Union by Carsen Taite [Lesbian] Love in the Stacks by Cara Malone [Lesbian] Falling Gracefully by Cara Malone [Lesbian] Camp Rewind by Meghan O'Brien [Lesbian] No More Pretending by Bette Hawkins [Lesbian] Built to Last by Aurora Rey [Lesbian] Summer's Cove by Aurora Rey [Lesbian] The Daughters of Palatine Hill by Phyllis T. Smith [Lesbian?]

Goddess by Kelly Gardiner [Bi/Pan/Poly?] Enigma Variations by André Aciman [Bi/Pan/Poly?] Oola by Brittany Newell [Bisexual]

Adverbs by Daniel Handler [?] Queer by William S. Burroughs [?]

Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg [Transgender, FTM] Bad Boy by Elliot Ware [Transgender, FTM] Peter Darling by Austin Chant [Transgender, FTM] For Today I Am a Boy by Kim Fu [Transgender, MTF] The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan [Transgender, MTF]

Graphic Novels & Manga

Maiden Rose by Fusanosuke Inariya [Gay] # * What Did You Eat Yesterday? by Fumi Yoshinaga [Gay] # *

Giant Days by John Allison [Lesbian] # Heavy Vinyl by Carly Usdin [Lesbian] # Paper Girls by Brian K. Vaughan [Lesbian] # Snotgirl by Bryan Lee O’Malley [Lesbian] # Bingo Love by Tee Franklin [Lesbian] Sweet Blue Flowers by Takako Shimura [Lesbian] # * After Hours by Yuhta Nishio [Lesbian] # * Bloom Into You by Nakatani Nio [Lesbian] # * Girl Friends by Milk Morinaga [Lesbian] # * Nameless Asterism by Kina Kobayashi [Lesbian] # * Eclair - A Girls' Love Anthology That Resonates in Your Heart [Lesbian] * Citrus by Saburouta [Lesbian] # * Their Story by Tan Jiu [Lesbian] # * Battle Royale: Angels’ Border [Lesbian] # *

Claudine by Riyoko Ikeda [Transgender] *

TEEN / YOUNG ADULT

Novels

Sometime After Midnight by L. Philips [Gay] Perfect Ten by L. Philips [Gay] Witch Eyes by Scott Tracey [Gay] Boomerang by Helene Dunbar [Gay] Running with Lions by Julian Winters [Gay] Been Here All Along by Sandy Hall [Gay] Marco Impossible by Hannah Moskowitz [Gay] Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz [Gay] The Dangerous Art of Blending In by Angelo Surmelis [Gay] One Man Guy by Michael Barakiva [Gay] Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg [Gay] It Looks Like this by Rafi Mittlefehldt [Gay] When Love Comes to Town by Tom Lennon [Gay] We Now Return to Regular Life by Martin Wilson [Gay] You and Me and Him by Kris Dinnison [Gay] I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson [Gay] Fan Art by Sarah Tregay [Gay] At the Edge of the Universe by Shaun David Hutchinson [Gay] Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli [Gay] Dramarama by E. Lockhart [Gay] Draw the Line by Laurent Linn [Gay] Whatever by S.J. Goslee [Gay] Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan [Gay] Weird Girl and What's His Name by Meagan Brothers [Gay] More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera [Gay] History is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera [Gay]

They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera [Gay + Bisexual] Meg & Linus by Hanna Nowinski [Gay + Lesbian] Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst [Lesbian + Bisexual] # Inkmistress by Audrey Coulthurst [Lesbian + Bisexual] The Summer I Wasn't Me by Jessica Verdi [Lesbian + Gay]

Ask the Passengers by A.S. King [Lesbian] The Apocalypse of Elena Mendoza by Shaun David Hutchinson [Lesbian] Kaleidoscope Song by Fox Benwell [Lesbian] As I Descended by Robin Talley [Lesbian] Read Me Like a Book by Liz Kessler [Lesbian] Ash by Malinda Lo [Lesbian] Huntress by Malinda Lo [Lesbian] Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit by Jaye Robin Brown [Lesbian] The Summer of Jordi Perez [Lesbian] Super Moon by H.A. Swain [Lesbian] Clancy of the Undertow by Christopher Currie [Lesbian] Nothing Happened by Molly Booth [Lesbian] The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth [Lesbian] Echo After Echo by Amy Rose Capetta [Lesbian] It's Not Like it's a Secret by Misa Sugiyura [Lesbian] If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan [Lesbian] Just Juliet by Charlotte Reagan [Lesbian] Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden [Lesbian] Lizzie by Dawn Ius [Lesbian] Get it Together, Delilah! by Erin Gough [Lesbian] About a Girl by Sarah McCarry [Lesbian] South of Sunshine by Dana Elmendorf [Lesbian]

Between the Blade and the Heart by Amanda Hocking [Bi/Pan/Poly?] Our Own Private Universe by Robin Talley [Bi/Pan/Poly?] Look Both Ways by Alison Cherry [Bi/Pan/Poly?] Little and Lion by Brandy Colbert [Bi/Pan/Poly?] How to Make a Wish by Ashley Herring Blake [Bisexual + Lesbian] Adaptation by Malinda Lo [Bisexual] # Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee [Bisexual] # Autoboyography by Christina Lauren [Bisexual]

Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky [Transgender, FTM] Dreadnought by April Daniels [Transgender, MTF] # Lily and Dunkin by Donna Gephart [Transgender, MTF] Miles Away from You by A. B. Rutledge [Transgender, MTF] If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo [Transgender, MTF] Jess, Chunk, and the Road Trip to Infinity by Kristin Elizabeth Clark [Transgender, MTF] Freakboy by Kristin Elizabeth Clark [Transgender] Symptoms of Being Human by Jeff Garvin [Genderfluid]

Let's Talk About Love by Claire Kann [Asexual + Lesbian] Tash Hearts Tolstoy by Kathryn Ormsbee [Asexual] None of the Above by I. W. Gregorio [Intersex]

Every Day by David Levithan # The Inside of Out by Jenn Marie Thorne [?]

Graphic Novels & Manga

Spinning by Tillie Walden [Lesbian] I Love This Part by Tillie Walden [Lesbian] On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden [Lesbian] Honor Girl by Maggie Thrash [Lesbian] Decelerate Blue by Adam Rapp [Lesbian] As the Crow Flies by Melanie Gillman [Lesbian] Princess Princess Ever After by Katie O'Neill [Lesbian] Hana & Hina After School [Lesbian] # * Kiss and White Lily for my Dearest Girl [Lesbian] # * Kase-san and Morning Glories by Hiromi Takashima [Lesbian] # *

Wandering Son by Takako Shimura [Transgender, FTM + MTF] # *

The Bride Was a Boy by Chii [Transgender, MTF] *

Skim by Mariko Tamaki [?] The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang [?]

CHILDREN

Novels

Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World by Ashley Herring Blake [Lesbian]

Star Crossed by Barbara Dee [Bisexual]

The Other Boy by M. G. Hennessey [Transgender, FTM] George by Alex Gino [Transgender, FTM]

Graphic Novels & Manga

Drama by Raina Telgemeier [Gay]

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 6 years

Note

What other fandoms are you familiar enough with to use as an AU prompt? Pokemon Trainer AU? Homestuck AU (they'd still probably die but at least there are lots of ways to come back to life)?

I’m not that familiar with Homestuck, definitely not enough to do an AU. I read the novelizations of the Pokemon show as a kid but never saw the show or played any of the video games. I did play the super-obscure Pokemon board game, but most of my trading cards were printed in Japanese (I had a strange childhood), so my experience there is, uh, probably not quite overlapping with everyone else’s.

Anyway, if you want list of all my fandoms… Boy howdy. I don’t think I can come up with them all. However, I can list everything that comes to mind between now and ~20 minutes from now when I have to end my procrastination break and go back to dissertating. So here it is, below the cut:

Okay, there is no way in hell I’ll be able to make an exhaustive list. But off the top of my head, the fandoms I’m most familiar/comfortable with are as follows:

Authors (as in, I’ve read all or most of their books)

Patricia Briggs

Megan Whalen Turner

Michael Crichton

Marge Piercy

Stephenie Meyer

Dean Koontz

Stephen King

Neil Gaiman

K.A. Applegate

Ernest Hemingway

Tamora Pierce

Roald Dahl

Short Stories/Anthologies

A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor

The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

I Am Legend, Richard Matheson

Dubliners, James Joyce

Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes

Who Goes There? John W. Campbell

The Man Who Bridged the Mist, Kij Johnson

Flatland, Edwin Abbott

I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream, Harlan Ellison

To Build a Fire, Jack London

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Ambrose Bier

At the Mountains of Madness/Cthulu mythos, H.P. Lovecraft

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle

The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving

The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury

Close Range: Wyoming Stories, E. Annie Proulx

The Curious Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson

Bartleby the Scrivener (and a bunch of others), Herman Melville

Books (Classics)

Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neal Hurston

The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The Secret Garden, Francis Hodgson Burnett

Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

The Secret Annex, Anne Frank

Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

East of Eden, John Steinbeck

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison

Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut

The Stranger, Albert Camus

The Call of the Wild, Jack London

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

Lord of the Flies, William Golding

Atonement, Ian McEwan

1984, George Orwell

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith

The Iliad/The Odyssey, Homer

Metamorphoses, Ovid

Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne

The Time-Machine, H.G. Wells

The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Hamlet, MacBeth, Othello, and The Taming of the Shrew, William Shakespeare

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Thomas Stoppard

Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett

Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

Books (YA SF)

Young Wizards series, Diane Duane

Redwall, Brian Jaques

The Dark is Rising sequence, Susan Cooper

The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Diana Wynne Jones

The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis

Abhorsen trilogy, Garth Nix

The Giver series, Lois Lowry

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

Uglies series, Scott Westerfeld

Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt

A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin

Song of the Lioness, Tamora Pierce

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle

Unwind, Neal Shusterman

The Maze Runner series, James Dashner

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Patricia C. Wrede

Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Louis Sachar

Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine

Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card

The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster

Coraline, Neil Gaiman

Among the Hidden, Margaret Peterson Haddix

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, Avi

Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice

Poppy series, Avi

The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd

Tithe, Holly Black

Life as We Knew It, Susan Beth Pfeffer

Blood and Chocolate, Annette Curtis Klause

Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie

The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum

Haunted, Gregory Maguire

Weetzie Bat, Francesca Lia Block

Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White

East, Edith Pattou

Z for Zachariah, Robert C. O’Brien

The Looking-Glass Wars, Frank Beddor

The Egypt Game, Zilpha Keatley Snyder

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

Homecoming, Cynthia Voigt

Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

The Landry News, Andrew Clements

Fever 1793, Laurie Halse Anderson

Bloody Jack, L.A. Meyer

The Boxcar Children, Gertrude Chandler Warner

A Certain Slant of Light, Laura Whitcomb

Generation Dead, Daniel Waters

Pendragon series, D.J. MacHale

Silverwing, Kenneth Oppel

Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Define Normal, Julie Anne Peters

Hawksong, Ameila Atwater Rhodes

Heir Apparent, Vivian Vande Velde

Running Out of Time, Margaret Peterson Haddix

The Keys to the Kingdom series, Garth Nix

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Joan Aiken

The Seer and the Sword, Victoria Hanley

My Side of the Mountain, Jean Craighead George

Daughters of the Moon series, Lynne Ewing

The Midwife’s Apprentice, Karen Cushman

Island of the Aunts, Eva Ibbotson

The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, Nancy Farmer

A Great and Terrible Beauty, Libba Bray

A School for Sorcery, E. Rose Sabin

The House with a Clock in Its Walls, John Bellairs

The Edge Chronicles, Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell

Hope was Here, Joan Bauer

Bunnicula, James Howe

Wise Child, Monica Furlong

Silent to the Bone, E.L. Konigsburg

The Twenty-One Balloons, William Pene du Bois

Dead Girls Don’t Write Letters, Gail Giles

The Supernaturalist, Eoin Colfer

Blue is for Nightmares, Laurie Faria Stolarz

Mystery of the Blue Gowned Ghost, Linda Wirkner

Wait Till Helen Comes, Mary Downing Hahn

I was a Teenage Fairy, Francesca Lia Block

City of the Beasts series, Isabelle Allende

Summerland, Michael Chabon

The Geography Club, Brent Hartinger

The Last Safe Place on Earth, Richard Peck

Liar, Justine Larbalestier

The Doll People, Ann M. Martin

The Lost Years of Merlin, T.A. Barron

Matilda Bone, Karen Cushman

Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger

The Tiger Rising, Kate DiCamillo

The Spiderwick Chronicles, Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi

In the Forests of the Night, Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

My Teacher is an Alien, Bruce Coville

The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles, Julie Andrews Edwards

Storytime, Edward Bloor

Magic Shop series, Bruce Coville

A Series of Unfortunate Events, Lemony Snicket

Veritas Project series, Frank Peretti

The Once and Future King, T.H. White

Raven’s Strike, Patricia Briggs

What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy, Gregory Maguire

The Wind Singer, William Nicholson

Sweetblood, Pete Hautman

The Trumpet of the Swan, E.B. White

Half Magic, Edward Eager

A Ring of Endless Light, Madeline L'Engle

The Heroes of Olympus, Rick Riordan

Maximum Ride series, James Patterson

The Edge on the Sword, Rebecca Tingle

World War Z, Max Brooks

Adaline Falling Star, Mary Pope Osborne

Six of Crows, Leigh Bardugo

Children of Blood and Bone, Tomi Adeyemi

Parable of the Sower series, Octavia Butler

I, Robot, Isaac Asimov

Neuomancer, William Gibson

Dune, Frank Herbert

The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Emily M. Danforth

The Martian, Andy Weir

Skeleton Man, Joseph Bruchac

Comics/Manga

Marvel 616 (most of the major titles)

Marvel 1610/Ultimates

Persepolis

This One Summer

Nimona

Death Note

Ouran High School Host Club

Vampire Knight

Emily Carroll comics

Watchmen

Fun Home

From Hell

American Born Chinese

Smile

The Eternal Smile

The Sandman

Calvin and Hobbes

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For

TV Shows

Fullmetal Alchemist

Avatar the Last Airbender

Teen Titans (2003)

Luke Cage/Jessica Jones/Iron Fist/Defenders/Daredevil/The Punisher

Agents of SHIELD/Agent Carter

Supernatural

Sherlock

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Angel/Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Firefly

American Horror Story

Ouran High School Host Club

Orange is the New Black

Black Sails

Stranger Things

Westworld

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Movies

Marvel Cinematic Universe

Jurassic Park/Lost World/Jurassic World/Lost Park?

The Breakfast Club

Cloverfield/10 Cloverfield Lane/The Cloverfield Paradox

Attack the Block

The Prestige

Moon

Ferris Bueler’s Day Off

Django Unchained/Kill Bill/Inglourious Basterds/Hateful 8/Pulp Fiction/etcetera

Primer

THX 1138/Akira/How I Live Now/Lost World/[anything I’ve named a fic after]

Star Wars

The Meg

A Quiet Place

Baby Driver

Mother!

Alien/Aliens/Prometheus

X-Men (et al.)

10 Things I Hate About You

The Lost Boys

Teen Wolf

Juno

Pirates of the Caribbean (et al.)

Die Hard

Most Disney classics: Toy Story, Mulan, Treasure Planet, Emperor’s New Groove, etc.

Most Pixar classics: Up, Wall-E, The Incredibles

The Matrix

Dark Knight trilogy

Halloween

Friday the 13th

A Nightmare on Elm Street

The Descent

Ghostbusters

Ocean’s Eight/11/12/13

King Kong

The Conjuring

Fantastic Four

Minority Report/Blade Runner/Adjustment Bureau/Total Recall

Fight Club

Spirited Away

Disturbing Behavior

The Faculty

Poets

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Marge Piercy

Thomas Hardy

Sigfried Sassoon

W. B. Yeats

Edgar Allan Poe

Ogden Nash

Margaret Atwood

Maya Angelou

Emily Dickinson

Matthew Dickman

Karen Skolfield

Kwame Alexander

Ellen Hopkins

Shel Silverstein

Musicals/Stage Plays

Les Miserables

Repo: The Genetic Opera

The Lion King

The Phantom of the Opera

Rent

The Prince of Egypt

Pippin

Into the Woods

A Chorus Line

Hairspray

Evita

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Fiddler on the Roof

Annie

Fun Home

Spring Awakening

Chicago

Cabaret

The Miser

The Importance of Being Earnest

South Pacific

Godspell

Wicked

The Wiz

The Wizard of Oz

Man of La Mancha

The Sound of Music

West Side Story

Matilda

Sweeney Todd

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Nunsense

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown/Snoopy

1776

Something Rotten

A Very Potter Musical

Babes in Toyland

Carrie: The Musical

Amadeus

Annie Get Your Gun

25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

The Final Battle

Rock of Ages

Cinderella

Moulin Rouge

Honk

Labyrinth

The Secret Garden

Reefer Madness

Bang Bang You’re Dead

NSFW

War Horse

Peter Pan

Suessical

Sister Act

The Secret Annex

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Disclaimer 1: Like a lot of people who went to high school in the American South, my education in literature is pretty shamefully lacking in a lot of areas. (As in, during our African American History unit in ninth grade we read To Kill a Mockingbird, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn… and that was it. As in, our twelfth-grade US History class, I shit you not, covered Gone With the Wind.) There were a lot of good teachers in with the *ahem* Less Woke ones (how I read Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Bluest Eye) and college definitely set me on the path to trying to find books written/published outside the WASP-ier parts of the U.S., but the overall list is still embarrassingly hegemonic.

Disclaimer 2: There are a crapton of errors — typos, misspelled names, misattributions, questionable genre classifications, etc. — in here. If you genuinely have no idea what a title is supposed to be, ask me. Otherwise, please don’t bother letting me know about my mistakes.

Disclaimer 3: I am not looking for recommendations. My Goodreads “To Read” list is already a good 700 items long, and people telling me “if you like X, then you’ll love Y!” genuinely stresses me the fuck out.

Disclaimer 4: There are no unproblematic faves on this list. I love Supernatural, and I know that Supernatural is hella misogynistic. On the flip side: I don’t love The Lord of the Rings at all, partially because LOTR is hella misogynistic, but I also don’t think that should stop anyone else from loving LOTR if they’re willing to love it and also acknowledge its flaws.

#literature #fandom #booklist #about the blogger #long post #long ass post #books #nothing to do with animorphs #Anonymous #asks

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2018halftat · 6 years

Text

2018-09-29 - Disappointment & Redemption

We camped in Amphitheater Campground above postcard picturesque Ouray CO. Nestled between high mountains in a tiny river valley, it’s packed with tourists. Riding in we sight not one but two breweries, cute motels galore and a huge public hot springs. If it weren’t for the No Vacancy signs we would have rented a room then jumped in the hot springs, turning it reddish brown with the dust from our long miles. Doubling back we find the campground where views of the valley are equally spectacular.

We awake by 8 and are moving by 10. Today’s first stop is Telluride, two track options on our GPS’s taking us there. The road starts steep up a box canyon, taking on a similar grade from yesterday, a huge drop off to the river below but thankfully few rocks. The dusty, tan road leads us past an abandoned mine or hotel, I know not what, then turns ugly. We start climbing, loose rocks everywhere. Coming around a switchback we hit a major obstacle. In front of us is a new road, recently cut, a massive rock across it with an 18” face. Our front tires are 21” tall. Imagine rolling your bicycle tire up to something only 3” shorter, the approach up hill, covered in loose everything and trying to get not only your front over it but your rear as well. This is advanced and we’re too tired from the day before. Watching a Jeep try and fail to get over it we decide to back track.

It turns out the track we are on is not the only way through and find another entrance a few miles back. We stop at the entrance to Imogen Pass, a Jeep track that gets you to telluride In only 16 miles vs 55 on the highway. Again we’re greeted with rock but it’s easily tackled if we want. A Toyota pulls up and asks us if we want to go first. I ask him how hard the road is - he says pretty easy unless you don’t like drop offs. I ask how big and his face says enough. The entrance to these roads is usually the easiest part, you have to assume it gets way, way worse. We talk it over and make the hard decision to bail and try one last track called Black Bear Pass. Confidence thinning we double back again. Coming down the hill I face hopefully the only close call I’ll have. Riding along a narrow section, sheer drop to my right, I hear it before I see it. A black Jeep comes around the corner ahead at high speed, heading directly for me. I have nowhere to go. At the last second he veers right, passing me with inches of room, never slowing. What an asshole.

We ride 35 minutes south along the Million Dollar Highway and find the last chance to take a short cut to Telluride. Crows flies from here it’s only 6.5 miles but the road up is clearly very steep. We see the obligatory 4x4 Only sign and talk it over. We agree we won’t know how bad it is until we try it and go up. We encounter no rocks but the road is slippery and getting steeper, especially the switch backs. We have to keep speed to avoid both falling down and sliding backwards. Gaining altitude quickly we don’t stop, making it half way up until Greg, in front of me, stops at a sharp left turn and starts shaking his head. The inside of the turn is a gorgeous pink and white slab of marble, the outside a deep gravelly rut. Beyond that it’s a crazy steep climb that doesn’t seem to have an end. Just trying to stop where we’re at and survey the climb I’m sliding backwards. To go any further and falls means you don’t just fall, you will slide most of the way back before you can restart the climb. I don’t have to ask Greg how he feels as it’s clear he’s not happy. It’s important to note here that we ride as a team and if one person doesn’t feel comfortable then neither of us do. We have nothing to prove here and start to turn around. It’s so steep I have to wiggle my front wheel left and right while leaning my bike uphill in order to slide my machine around.

Back at road the we air up our tires for highway speeds then start the 55 miles to Telluride on pavement. The ride is absolutely gorgeous, taking us through high mountain meadows and forest. It twists north, west then finally south into Telluride. If I thought I’d seen the most beautiful parts of Colorado yet I was wrong. Riding into telluride is like being inside a painting. The valley is deep, surrounded on all sides by massive mountains, fall colors exploding in every direction. This place is a fortress of paradise. Arriving we find a brewery for burgers and a needed beer. We’ve been sitting for almost ten minutes when I notice we are barely talking, just keeping to ourselves. I can’t say what’s going through Greg’s head but in mine it’s disappointment. We gave up on part of the TAT and it hurts. We came for adventure and decided against a part of it. It was the right choice, we weren’t ready for it but the doubt lingers. Maybe we would have been fine, maybe we could have made it easily. Others did why not us? We eat our food, gas up and carry on but I’m now depressed.

The next section is smooth flowing hard pack with gravel on top. My riding is terrible, my confidence has taken a turn for the worse and I’m doubting myself and my bike. Twenty miles outside Telluride, back on track, we come to a cross roads. The main track ahead of us on our GPS shows a turn to the left on “32 TAT Easy”. We look at each other, wonder for a minute if we should go forward then decide to click GO on the Easy track. Turning left we’re now onto what looks like a cobble stone road, hard pack embedded with rock. As we bounce around I ponder my disappointment at the earlier bails outs, about telling myself this bike is too big, too heavy and I’m not ready. Then a voice inside side me says to stop making excuses, that this day doesn’t have to end poorly, that there’s one thing i can do to save it. Screw what happened earlier and ride aggressive.

Shifting into second gear I bring the bike up to 30mph. Instead of the rock pushing me around I’m now gliding the bike over it so fast I can’t feel the road. Shifting into third gear, going even faster, attacking the turns, body moving smoothly over the bike, it now seems as if it’s weightless. In front of me I see a ditch across the road, maybe a foot deep and 3 across, filled with rocks and water. A few feet before it, instead of slowing for the approach I pull in the clutch, compress the suspension, open the throttle and let the clutch loose. The front end comes up in the air, wheelieing over the ditch. I don’t even feel the back tire touch it. I do this for three more ditches until, coming up a slight incline there a sharp right turn. Slow down? No, now I’m racing and not going to take any shit from this road. Instead I ride at full speed, pointing myself at the small embankment at the outside of the turn. At the last second I downshift, grab the rear brake, slide sideways then snap the throttle as the rear hits the bank, exploding into the now straight road in front of me. I’m not riding some heavy, hard to manage bike, I’m riding a tool that I was too afraid to use as it should be. I’m one with this bike now, screaming down the road, front end light with so much power from the rear. No more excuses, I can tear on this machine.

Greg finds me farther down the road where I’ve pulled over, smiling from my personal redemption. He’s equally happy. We decide to camp and find a massive, empty field ringed with trees to make camp for the night. After setting up tents we take a walk south towards a clearing in the woods and are treated to a view into a valley 2,000 below, cleared fields ready for fall, a gradient of red, yellow and green from the trees around. Back at camp we build a fire pit in the field from the desiccated remains of long fallen tree. It’s branches breaking easily under our boots we have enough wood to last us a night. Over a dinner of freeze dried food we talk about how well the day turned out. We both enjoyed the final road here immensely, comfortable again with our bikes and our riding. We agree that taking the hardest options isn’t always in our favor and that the smoother roads are for us.

Later, turning off our headlamps we both look up and scream with wonder as we bask under the glow of a Milky Way that had silently risen above us. It stretches across the night sky from one horizon to the other, unobstructed views in this massive field. Alone here in this little part of the universe, we are happy again.

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techcrunchappcom · 4 years

Photo

New Post has been published on http://techcrunchapp.com/mississippi-to-remove-state-flag-the-last-to-display-the-confederate-battle-emblem-cbs-news/

Mississippi to remove state flag, the last to display the Confederate battle emblem - CBS News

The Mississippi state legislature voted on Sunday to replace its state flag, the last in the nation to display the Confederate battle emblem. The removal of the flag marks the latest Confederate symbol to topple in the weeks following George Floyd’s death as activists have called for a reexamination of the racism that exists in all corners of society.

The bill passed by a vote of 91-23 in the House and 37-14 in the Senate.

The bill now goes to the desk of Governor Tate Reeves, who on Saturday morning said he would sign the legislation into law, reversing resistance to a legislature-led change to the flag. Mississippians will vote on a replacement flag in the November election. According to the legislation, the current flag design cannot be an option.

“I would guess a lot of you don’t even see that flag in the corner right there,” said Mississippi state Representative Ed Blackmon, who is black, during public comment on Saturday. “There are some of us who notice it every time we walk in here, and it’s not a good feeling.”

The state flag of Mississippi flies at the Governor’s Mansion in Jackson, Mississippi, on Friday, April 26, 2019.

Rogelio V. Solis / AP

Up until earlier this month, the majority of Mississippians favored keeping the flag, which prominently features the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. In 2001, voters decided two to one in a ballot measure to keep the flag as is, many arguing it was a nod to their ancestors who fought for Mississippi in the Civil War.

But a recent wave of influential business, religious and sports leaders condemning the flag — including the Southeastern Conference and the National Collegiate Athletic Association — prompted a change of heart. By Thursday, polling showed 55% of Mississipians wanted a change, according to the state’s chamber of commerce.

Many symbols of the Confederacy have vanished in the wake of Floyd’s death. Earlier this month, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam announced his intention to remove a towering statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from Richmond’s historic Monument Avenue. Military leaders have said they were open to renaming forts named after Confederate generals, a proposal that’s been rejected by President Trump. NASCAR announced it would prohibit the display of the Confederate flag during races and other events, writing in a statement that the flag’s presence “runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment.”

But nowhere is the Confederate flag more on display than in Mississippi, the last remaining state to include the design on its official state flag. As other Southern states have retired designs that included the symbol, Mississippi has been the lone holdout, even as institutions across the state have voluntarily pulled it down.

Following the attack on black parishioners by a white supremacist in a South Carolina church, all of Mississippi’s public universities and many cities have stopped flying the ensign. But the flag still flies in front of many public buildings, including the state capitol building and the Governor’s mansion.

Mississippians had previously been resistant to changing the flag, citing the state’s history. But activists argued the flag has been co-opted, and now is used as a symbol of white supremacy, the Jim Crow South and racism and violence that black Americans still face.

“My ancestors were beaten and traumatized, and it was under that flag,” said Jarrius Adams, 22, a political activist that advocated for the change. “There are a lot of moments when I’m not proud to be from Mississippi, but this is definitely a moment that I’m extremely proud to be from Mississippi.”

#Uncategorized

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rhiawriter · 3 years

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The Crow Flies South Series

Daenerys Targaryen, ruling from the Red Keep as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, summons Lord Commander Snow south to convince her court of the threat north of the Wall. Jon Snow navigates the court intrigues and southron politics to finally rally the force he needs to win his war against the dead.

Together, the Queen and the Lord Commander, unite the armies of Westeros to protect the realm. But beneath their partnership lies a dangerous attraction - a forbidden love that threatens to be their undoing.

A 3-Part One Shot Series

The Crow Flies South The Journey North Summerhall

Thank you @justwandering-neverlost for this wonderful moodboard you made in pre-pandemic times.

#The Crow Flies South Universe #the crow flies south #The Journey North #Summerhall #jonerys #jonerys fanfic #Jon Snow #daenerys targaryen

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auburnfamilynews · 4 years

Link

Nelson Chenault-USA TODAY Sports

Jonesy tells you what you need to know.

Record last week: 2-3-1 ATS; 4-2 Totals; 6-5-1 overall Record for the season: 62-49-1 overall

Overall it wasn’t a terrible week last week. Any week in the green is a good week, and if you’re like me and grabbed Memphis -5.5 instead of -6, then it looked even better. That late SMU 2-point conversion wasn’t officially a bad beat, but it was the 1994 Auburn/UGA of ties.

This week we have the GAME OF THE CENTURY OF THE YEAR in Alabama/LSU, a sampling from the B1G and Big 12, and some angsty games from our very own SEC. Home teams (thankfully) listed second this week. I’m also listing the SP+ pick in relation to who it thinks will cover (i.e. since it only favors Texas by 1.8 as opposed to Vegas’s 7, it says “Kansas State +1.8”).

#2 LSU @ #3 Alabama (-6.5) (O/U 63.5)

SP+ Pick: Alabama -7

Full disclosure, after picking Florida to win outright in this space last week, I went out and made a small investment in our ankle-biting neighbors to the East. In truth it was a spite-bet. I thought Florida could win, but I wanted to give myself a silver lining just in case. In true UGA fashion, they nearly won without covering, which honestly is what I expected would happen after I made that move. Why do I bring that up? I’m tempted to do the same here. There are so many reasons why LSU should win this game: LSU has an offense that can finally match Alabama’s, Tua is almost certainly not 100%, Alabama doesn’t have the world beating defense it usually does, Alabama hasn’t been challenged by anyone with a pulse to date. And yet, I feel about this game the same way I feel about Auburn going to Baton Rouge. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Two weeks ago after the LSU game I said Alabama would win this game. While I’m tempted to change it to an LSU cover, I’m going to hang on my word. Here’s the thing about this game: it doesn’t matter. It does not matter even a little bit who wins this game. In fact, if LSU loses, they’re actually in better shape to reach the playoff. They can win out, not have to play anyone who will be within a 20-point underdog of them the rest of the way, and coast into the playoff. To be honest, LSU should throw this game. Compete just enough to prove you belong, but save yourself for the rematch. Alabama 42, LSU 27 (Alabama covers; a nice little over)

Staff Picks

Dr Will: LSU 30, Alabama 27 (LSU wins outright; under) Drew: Tigas 35-31 (LSU wins outright; over) Jack: LSU 35 @ #3 Alabama 41 (Alabama wins; LSU covers; over) Ryan: Alabama 38 - LSU 35 (Alabama wins; LSU covers; over) Josh Dub: LSU 35, Alabama 34 (LSU wins outright; a very nice over) Crow: Tigers 35, Tide 29 (LSU wins outright; over by the hook) Josh Black: Alabama 38, LSU 28 (Alabama covers; over) Chief: Cajuns 31, Bama 27 (LSU wins outright; under) Nerd: Alabama 45 LSU 38 (Alabama covers; over)

#16 Kansas State @ Texas (-7) (O/U 57.5)

SP+ Pick: Kansas State +1.8

Texas has won the last two in this matchup, but only by a total of 11 points. Kansas State is a dangerous team that proved they can beat anyone in their win over Oklahoma. The downside for K-State here is that Texas is getting healthier in their secondary, and I don’t know that the Wildcats have the type of offense to exploit the Longhorns’ deficiencies on defense. I’ll take the points on the line, but the home team to win. Texas 35, K-State 31 (Texas wins; K-State covers; over)

Staff Picks

Dr Will: Texas 31, Kansas State 27 (Texas wins; K-State covers; over) Drew: 31-24 Wildcats (K-State wins outright; under by the hook) Jack: Kansas State 34 @ Texas 30 (K-State wins outright; over) Ryan: Kansas State 31 - Texas 27 (K-State wins outright; over by the hook) Josh Dub: Kansas State 41, Texas 14 (K-State wins outright; under) Crow: Horns 29, Cats 22 (Texas wins; PUSH...good luck with that; under) Josh Black: Texas 35, K-State 24 (Texas covers; a very nice over) Chief: Texas (Is Not Back) 28, Cats 24 (Texas wins; K-State covers; under) Nerd: Texas 35 Kansas State 31 (Texas wins; K-State covers; over)

#4 Penn State (-7) @ #17 Minnesota (O/U 48)

SP+ Pick: Minnesota +2

This is the kind of match-up that shows the limitations of SP+. Bill Connelly has acknowledged that there is really no good way to allow for injuries. Minnesota has faced backup quarterbacks in majority of every single conference win to date. When your opponent doesn’t have their starting QB, they’re just going to be as explosive or efficient, which is exactly what SP+ attempts to measure. Not to mention the best team Minnesota has beaten is SP+ #50 Nebraska. This Penn State team is dangerous. In the words of Jean Paul Sartre, “au revior, gopher”. Penn State 30, Minnesota 17 (Penn State covers; under)

Staff Picks

Dr Will: Penn State 27, Minnesota 17 (Penn State covers; under) Drew: Gophers 17-13 (Minnesota wins outright; under) Jack: Penn State 37 @ Minnesota 20 (Penn State covers; over) Ryan: Penn State 27 - Minny 18 (Penn State covers; under) Josh Dub: Penn State 31, Minnesota 14 (Penn State covers; under) Crow: GOPHERS 21, lions 20 (Minnesota wins outright; under) Josh Black: Penn State 28 Minnesota 13 (Penn State covers; under) Chief: Lions 28, Gophers 27 (Penn State wins; Minnesota covers; over) Nerd: Penn State 42 Minnesota 28 (Penn State covers; over)

Western Kentucky @ Arkansas (-1.5) (O/U 52.5)

SP+ Pick: WKU -1.1 (yes, SP+ favors WKU)

If desperation is a stinky cologne, Chad Morris is attracting flies. His predecessor was fired before he got to the locker room. If Arkansas loses this one, they may not let Morris get that far. WKU is coming in with a former Arkansas quarterback that Morris nudged out the door. A loss here wouldn’t just be an SEC team losing to a team it should beat on talent alone. It would be proving that you’re not properly managing a roster that wasn’t any good when you arrived.

I have to think Arkansas pulls out all the stops in this one. Either they make a statement, or Arkansas will be searching for a head coach again. If you actually bet on this, seek help. Arkansas 31, WKU 23 (Arkansas covers; over)

Staff Picks

Dr Will: Western Kentucky 28, Arkansas 21 (WKU wins outright; under) Drew: Arkansas (?) 28-24 (Arkansas covers?; under by the hook?) Jack: Western Kentucky 29 @ Arkansas 24 (WKU wins outright; over) Ryan: WKU 30 - Arkansas 17 (WKU wins outright; under) Josh Dub: Western Kentucky 21, Arkansas 15 (WKU wins outright; under) Crow: WKU 30, Ark 27 (WKU wins outright; over) Josh Black: WKU 27 Arkansas 21 (WKU wins outright; under) Chief: Hilltoppers 24, Pigs 14 (WKU wins outright; under) Nerd: Arkansas 35 Western Kentucky 27 (Arkansas covers; over)

Tennessee (-1) @ Kentucky (O/U 42.5)

SP+ Pick: Tennessee -2

Tennessee gave me one of my winners last week, doing what they should have done against a UAB team that has somehow managed to play the softest schedule in the University of Alabama system. Tennessee knows what they are; they have an identity. They’re not very good on offense, but they’re going to play tough defense and make enough plays to come out with a victory. That usually works great at home. The old saying is that “defense travels”, but so does bad offense. Kentucky is ravaged by injuries right now: Sawyer Smith might finally be well enough to play, but Lynn Bowden (the WR turned QB turned WR again) got hurt in the win over Missouri, and Ahmad “Flag”-ner is banged up as well. I think Tennessee does enough on defense to keep it ugly and pull out a close road win. Tennessee 20, Kentucky 16 (Tennessee covers; under)

Staff Picks

Dr Will: Kentucky 24, Tennessee 21 (UK wins outright; over) Drew: Vols 24-10 (Tennessee covers; under) Jack: Tennessee 27 @ Kentucky 17 (Tennessee covers; over) Ryan: Tennessee 23 - UK 17 (Tennessee covers; under) Josh Dub: Tennessee 22, Kentucky 24 (Kentucky wins outright; over) Crow: Tenn 21, UK 18 (Tennessee covers; under) Josh Black: Tennessee 24 Kentucky 20 (Tennessee covers; over) Chief: Cats 24, Vols 23 (UK wins outright; over) Nerd: Tennessee 31 Kentucky 21 (Tennessee covers; over)

Appalachian State @ South Carolina (-5.5) (O/U 51)

SP+ Pick: Appalachian State +2.1

The shine on this game took a hit with the Mountaineers rough mid-week loss to Georgia Southern last week. They ran into trouble against a team that could muddy the game up, hit them hard, and play keep-away on offense. If South Carolina knows what they’re doing, they’ll be able to do the same thing, just better. But man alive is “If South Carolina knows what they’re doing” carrying some weight in that previous sentence. I think they do enough on the line of scrimmage to cover, but let’s be careful out there. South Carolina 31, Appalachian State 23 (South Carolina covers; over)

Staff Picks

Dr Will: South Carolina 26, App State 20 (South Carolina covers; under) Drew: APPIE!!! 34-24 (A school that hates being called “Appie” or “Appy” wins outright; over) Jack: Appalachian State 23 @ South Carolina 30 (South Carolina covers; over) Ryan: App State 38 - USC 30 (ASU wins outright; over) Josh Dub: App State 24, South Carolina 28 (South Carolina wins; ASU covers; over) Crow: SCAR 21, App 20 (South Carolina wins; ASU covers; under) Josh Black: South Carolina 27 App State 21 (South Carolina covers; under) Chief: Cocks 28, Mountaineers 24 (South Carolina wins; ASU covers; over) Nerd: Appalachian State 28 South Carolina 24 (ASU wins outright; over)

from College and Magnolia - All Posts https://www.collegeandmagnolia.com/2019/11/9/20953553/staff-picks-college-football-week-11

#IFTTT #Blogger #auburn #auburn fast #wareagle #AuburnFamilyNews #war eagle #sec #football news #aubu

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lopezdorothy70-blog · 5 years

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Economic Pain Spells Trouble for Modi and BJP

The Modi-led BJP government has emulated Indira Gandhi and emasculated the economy, causing burning resentment among core supporters.

Once upon a time, not a very long time ago, the Indian economy was mired in the Hindu rate of growth. The notorious license-permit-quota raj starved the economy of oxygen, perpetuating pernicious poverty by imposing Soviet-style economics through a colonial bureaucracy. Pertinently, bureaucrats, not businessmen or entrepreneurs, decided what would be produced, which company would produce it and even when would it do so. The result was not quite an unmitigated disaster but close.

The story of Indian growth after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 is now almost a cliché. India mortgaged its gold, went with a begging bowl to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), opened up its economy and, voila, the economy boomed. Today, Indian newspapers crow incessantly about ever higher growth figures. If one were to believe them, a wave of vikas, the Indian term for development, is sweeping this ancient, time-worn land.

It is pertinent to note that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was elected in 2014 on the promise of vikas. If that promise has been fulfilled, then he should be in pole position to win the 2019 election that is now just a few months away. Yet not all is well in South Block, the fabled British-built resplendent office of the prime minister.

Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has lost elections in three states. Its chief ministers have been booted out, including Shivraj Singh Chouhan, a backward caste leader like Modi whom many have touted as a future prime minister. While the BJP is underplaying its losses, the defeat has been seismic. So much so that it has brought in reservation for supposedly poor upper castes, much like Vishwanath Pratap Singh, the politician who replaced Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister in 1989 and earned his claim to fame by reserving a percentage of government jobs and seats in universities for backward castes.

WHY IS BJP LOSING DESPITE VIKAS?

The answer might be best expressed in the words of James Carville, Bill Clinton's campaign strategist: “The economy, stupid.” As many know, there are lies, damned lies and statistics. In India's case, rosy growth figures fail to capture acute pain on the ground. Modi has dragged the economy screaming and kicking through two major disruptions.

The first disruption was demonetization that Modi declared out of the blue on November 8, 2016. The following year, the BBC asked an economic analyst to look at the data of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and called it “a failure of epic proportions.” The prime minister declared demonetization to rid the economy of black money, wealth accumulated through avoidance of taxes. No less than 99% of this money came back to the banks making a mockery of Modi's declaration. Instead of curbing the black economy, Modi's ad hoc measure sucked liquidity out of the market, wrecked small businesses and destroyed employment in the country.

Furthermore, Modi failed to reform any of the underlying causes that lead to corruption. It is a well-known secret that India's colonial-era laws and socialist-era legislation are utterly out of sync with ground realities. If these laws were truly imposed, the Indian economy might grind to a halt in a day. Modi neither repealed key outmoded laws nor reformed poorly drafted ones, ensuring that doing business in India necessitates creative interpretation, if not transgression, of the law.

If the law is an ass, the bureaucracy is worse. This colonial-era construct has always had the “sahib syndrome.” It is repressive and extractive in its DNA. It seeks to rule, not to serve. It is a very blunt instrument to achieve policy goals. During demonetization, the bureaucracy confounded citizens with repeated circulars that attained notoriety for their muddled thinking and poor drafting. It is fair to say that the Modi government has been going around in circles ever since and the economy has unsurprisingly gone for a toss.

The second disruption to the economy was the imposition of the goods and services tax (GST). Initially, this was an idea of the Indian National Congress party and Modi opposed it as chief minister of Gujarat. However, he adopted it with great gusto as prime minister and pushed it through despite much opposition. In more ways than one, the GST is a jolly good idea. However, the devil lies in the details. The GST legislation was drafted with what is often termed “gulabi English and jalebi logic” with a convoluted multiplicity of rates and filing of numerous returns. Simplicity, clarity and certainty, the hallmarks of good legislation, were conspicuous by their absence.

If poor drafting was not enough, bureaucratic bungling added to the misery of the small trader. Like Indira Gandhi, another strong prime minister and the grandmother of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Modi believes in ruling through pliant bureaucrats with no domain expertise. These worthies have imposed such strangulating red tape through the GST that small businesses are struggling to survive, if they have not already gone bankrupt.

Entrepreneurs and businessmen complain that they have spent more time proving their innocence to an inquisitorial government instead of running or growing their business. The government is simply delaying refunding small businesses the money that is theirs, creating a dire cash flow crisis that is driving them to despair. Remember, it is small and medium enterprises that provide most of the jobs in the country. Amazon, Google or Infosys hire a handful of people by comparison. And by squeezing the smaller players, Modi's bureaucrats have destroyed jobs in the country.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE IMPRESSIVE ECONOMIC FIGURES?

India's growth figures are indeed impressive and have finally nudged ahead of China's. Even if creative accounting has boosted these figures, they are still impressive. Despite the buoyant figures, there are flies in ointment.

The Indian economy has long suffered from the Lord Voldemort problem. For the few who have not read Harry Potter, Voldemort is the Dark Lord or He Who Must Not Be Named, a most fearsome archvillain. Voldemort is the reigning deity of India's black economy that some economists estimate to be as high as 62% of the GDP. To put this into perspective, agriculture and industry put together form 39% of GDP. The share of both India's central government and 29 state ones is 27% of GDP.

Historically, this informal sector has never showed up in direct taxes or other official economic data. However, its strength has been indirectly reflected through real estate prices and consumption figures for cars, white goods, gold and more. Tellingly, car sales remained subdued even during Diwali season. Indians typically buy cars during this festival of lights and companies tried to lure them with hefty discount sales. Two months ago, these did not work because of “weak buyer sentiments, higher insurance cost, vehicle price hike and liquidity crunch.”

A key unmentioned reason for declining car sales is the dire state of the black economy. When we speak to traders, businessmen and entrepreneurs, they offer the same view. They tell us that the informal sector is in deep trouble and many do not know how long they can stay afloat. Some may say this is good news in the long run. Having said that, this pressure on the informal sector is causing severe structural dislocation in the economy and causing pain to millions across the country.

Pertinently, traders have been a core support group of the BJP and could well turn against the ruling party. So could others who are struggling to find jobs or make ends meet. Additionally, exports are declining, banks are in bad shape and markets are “facing more downsides than upsides.”

Democracies tend to be unforgiving of economic pain, which spells trouble ahead for Modi and the BJP.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer's editorial policy.

The post Economic Pain Spells Trouble for Modi and BJP appeared first on Fair Observer.

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ashwinraghu · 7 years

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Continued: Eight Impressions from Albania

Journeys

I had started in the port town of Saranda, on the south West tip of the country, half an hour by boat from the Greek island of Corfu, one of only a handful of ways to enter Albania. A town of cheap mussels freshly-caught and cheaper backpacker lodges, from which there were two roads out: one snaking up the coast towards Vlore, and the other East, across hills towards Gjirokastra and Permet.

I took the route east, going first to Gjirokastra and its hillside of Ottoman-era landowner houses, the birthplace of the great Albanian historical novelist Ismail Kadare, where I spent a couple of days wandering, and then on to Permet to meet Cimi. The terrain was not insurmountable, but still it held the upper hand and told you how you had to proceed: gently, in daylight, towards the next pass, the next trough between the ranges, the next crossing where the mountains dipped. So that an as-the-crow-flies distance of 10 km would become fifty or seventy on the road, and two and a half hours or more on the unhurried buses.

Bus stations were no more than a clearing in front of a centrally-located shop or cafe, and buses advertised their route by way of the driver screaming out place names. Once the driver had hustled enough people into his seats the journey would begin along the river valley, the passengers mostly quiet but not the bus itself, which played music or videos of alternately lilting and gyrating Albanian folk music.

Flat ground is precious in this mountainous country, and our bus would soon leave the coastal plain or the valley and begin crawling up the mountainsides. Then around one of those hair-pin bends it would screech to a sudden halt at a turning. Turn around and peer out and you would find that this was where one or more mule-tracks met the road. Here one or two patiently waiting men would swing into action, unloading a crate of spinach or cherries or a sack of grain off the back of a mule or donkey, loading it up into the back of the bus or hoisting it onto the last row of seats, with instructions to the driver to unload it at a waiting mule at the next town along.

An unfamiliar sight in modern Europe maybe but familiar to me, reminiscent of the once-a-day buses that wind their way through the mountain villages and tea estates of the Western Ghats near where I grew up.

I reached Permet the afternoon before our 5-day hike was due to start. It was, looking one way, like every riverine mountain town from where treks begin: where one arrives the afternoon before, looks anxiously for shops to purchase last-minute supplies, breathes a sigh of relief to find them, looks for a more-elaborate-than-usual sitdown meal at a riverside eating house, and spends the rest of the evening in a quiet thinking of what is to come.

For five days Cimi and I walked together in the mountains and valleys around his hometown. Along the Zagoria valley, unconnected by road, on that first day to Limar, then across the mountains and down towards Permet in the valley of the Vjosa river on the second. Into a designated National Park of Macedonian-native fir trees called the Bredhi i Hotove on the third, he deftly ensuring (in spite of our liimited shared vocabulary) that we kept up a loud-enough conversation to keep the bears away. On the fourth morning along the Vjosa again on the other side of Permet, crossing an Italian-era bridge to the village of Petran, stopping at some thermal springs for a dip before a steep climb to the beautiful mountain village of Benje to spend the night. Then on the fifth day taking shepherd's-only trails across the low mountains back to where we started, Cimi expertly cowing down with the ferocious sheep-dogs that we encountered on the way.

Growing Pains

Over the next week as I made my way from village to small town to regional city to metropolis other things betrayed their familiarity too.

I had left the south for Berat, in the centre of the country. It had the feel of a regional capital and also of a past glory, with its snazzily-dressed old men out for their Xhiro - stroll - in the evenings once the sun had lessened in intensity.

By the river rose this neo-Classical building, standing taller than all others, at a scale and opulence out of place in the Albania I had seen so far:

It was home to the University of Berat. Finally! I thought, for one of the things that had begun to pique my curiosity was that I had not seen any evidence of an institutional or professional middle class of people yet. Now in Berat I would find an intellectual atmosphere that grows up around a University city: professors, artists, researchers, library cafes, students who would form the next generation of this group of people: maybe even young people in one of these cafes who could speak enough English to have an involved conversation with.

Only to be told that the University had been shut last year. Why? The reason was incomprehensible to the Danish girl sat next to me listening to the story but perfectly understandable to an Indian: a huge "pay to pass" scam had been unearthed in almost all the private universities that had mushroomed in the regional centres of Albania since the fall of Communism and the sudden rise of private enterprise. It was an open secret, but the scam had finally become too big to ignore, and a couple of years ago all these universities had been shut down. And now Berat, and small Albanian cities like it was back - at least for young people with higher ambitions - to how it used to be, and at 18 they had no option but to compete for limited places in the capital's public universities, or stay at home. Growing pains, and as I watched the young folk whiling away their time in Berat's riverside cafes I saw them differently after this.

"The News"

The long bus ride to Berat inland from the coast reminded me also of other Balkan journeys, in Croatia over the winter in a modern two-carriage train winding up from the beautiful coastal city of Split to the capital, Zagreb: six hours through a white, frozen country: fields, trees, shrubs, lakes and rivers all iced over with stalactites dangling. After skirting the beautiful Plitvice Lakes National Park we arrived in human habitation after what seemed like hours: this was the small hillside town of Knin. Amazingly my phone instantly picked up a 3G connection, so I decided to look Knin up.

“Before the Croatian War of Independence 87% of the population of the municipality and 79% of the city were Serbs. During the war, most of the non-Serb population was ethnically cleansed from Knin, while in the last days of the war the Serbs were killed or ethnically cleansed from Knin by Croatian forces”.

I closed the page shut, the train still on the platform. Gory stuff indeed, but that wasn't the only reason why I wanted to stop reading. There was something unfair about the whole business: that this town of Knin with its wrinkled old man bidding goodbye to his wife on the platform just now and its row of peculiar houses up the hill, being still associated so singularly on Wikipedia with this act of inhumanity of twenty-three years ago.

And in the smartphone age, of course, there are newer and ever more pointed ways of accessing the sort of thing that becomes news. And who wrote that article on Wikipedia? It is very difficult to imagine that it was a Knin local (of whatever stripe, Croat, Serb, or Bosniak). Who wants their own town to be committed to writing for the world to see in this way? How would a Knin local have described his town instead? That it has a beautiful Orthodox church at the top, that they once heroically resisted the Ottomans (a fairly unifying, common theme right across the Balkans I've learned), that there are two folk songs which have lines that mention the beautiful young unmarried girls of Knin? I wouldn't know, I am only guessing here, but perhaps something like this, with an addendum, in a low voice if such a thing can be represented in the cold words of a Wikipedia article, of the ethnic strife that once visited this town twenty years ago, and has now left.

It must have been for reasons such as this that I avoided reading or watching anything about Kosovo (an ethnic-Albanian majority state to Albania's north-west) during my time in Albania, even though I remembered it being briefly in the news earlier this year. The only time I heard Kosovo mentioned on this trip was a girl in a bar in Tirana, who said, "They're Albanian too, but because their communism was not as strict they're more exposed to other cultures than us. There is some great music there, You should go to Pristina and Prizren next!". I enjoyed hearing this positive impression of that country then, and when I do visit, I would much rather keep her suggested way of looking at Kosovo at the top of my mind, rather than images of past wars and present conflicts.

All Together

As we passed this riverside graveyard outside Permet I asked Cimi, "Is this a Christian cemetery or a Muslim cemetery?"

"Both", he said. "All together. We have no problem".

All through my trip there had been hints of this easy secularism and coexistence in this nominally Muslim-majority country. In the South where I spent most of my time a significant minority were Bektashis, a Sufi sect with its origins in Turkey.

Below a Bektashi shrine and mausoleum on the grounds of Gjirokastra castle. The South was dotted with these little shrines, as well as traditional Sunni masjids and orthodox churches. None of them, even in the bigger towns and even the Sunni ones during namaz, had anyone inside.

There is historical probable-cause for this: Albania's communist doctrine had banned religion, destroying mosques and churches ("One of the few good things that the Communists did", Cimi quipped), and encouraged a pan-Albanian identity. But even that does not fully explain this religious intermingling. In earlier centuries, with Ottoman conversions, when entire villages converted and re-converted to one or other Islamic or Christian sect often for purposes of protection and tax relief as much as religious calling, people were said to remember and trace back their historical clan-lineage more than their religious leanings. This too over the centuries kept religious difference at bay.

And now? Many people I spoke to, Shamsi the waiter, Cimi himself, self-identified as religiously liberal or atheist: usually spoken of just before downing a strong glass of Raki, or in describing their family: Cimi's wife is Orthodox, and his siblings' spouses fall on every side of the coin: Sunni, Bektashi, Orthodox Christian, Catholic.

They were familiar with global currents on this too, of Islamic fundamentalism around the world, and made the point of how they were flummoxed by it. And again, our limited shared vocabulary prevented a detailed discussion, but what they seemed to say was this: This is how we've always been. It is possible to be this way. In the rest of the world strange things are happening with religion. We find that odd.

Modernity

Time and again, people spoke of how they felt their country was 'backward', that 'things have to change', that there wasn't enough opportunity for them and they were forced to emigrate. It is difficult to argue that last point (remember the shut Universities up and down the country), but there is certainly modernity in Albania, modernity in its most profound sense. Take the story of Hoxha and his Bunkers:

Enver Hoxha took over as leader of Albania's one-party Communist state in 1944 and, over the next forty years, cemented his position as Supreme Leader. His brand of Totalitarian rule was too much not just for China (who broke with him in the early seventies), but even for the mother country the Soviet Union, who Hoxha condemned as deviated from the fundamentalist line. Over time he built all over Albania a series of these "spying posts", both above and below the ground, on streetcorners, hillsides, and nooks everywhere. Many of these still exist:

During the second half of his reign he built two series of underground bunkers in the capital city Tirana, one right underneath the Ministry of Defence and Parliament, and the other, more elaborate construction, complete with an underground Parliament Hall, a few miles away. They were built to withstand chemical and nuclear attack. I spent a few hours each in both, and they are masterpieces of claustrophobia, paranoia and stale air.

What is more incredible, though, is what has been made of these spaces in the years after the fall. Here is the entrance to this space, dynamited into the hillside:

What followed was a reconstruction and preservation of the highest order, encapsulating and committing to permanence and memory the worst excesses of the regime, and for the visitor without any loss of the eeriness.

Enver Hoxha's underground quarters:

The preferred holding cell for dissidents and political prisoners:

The photographs are of those who lost their lives as part of the regime's political purges. A voice called out the names of the deceased.

Political prisons and concentration camps were set up all around the country:

Dogs were trained to hunt, maim, and kill, to guard the borders:

It is difficult to capture in photos how eerie the experience was. Often it seemed inappropriate even to click pictures.

I had read about the Bunkers even while in Permet, and asked Cimi if he had ever seen it.

"No, but I have heard about it. I cannot go. It is too painful for me".

Cimi wouldn't, but many Albanians were there on the days I visited. This museum-visit was no daytime stroll, neither was it entirely academic. The young, but especially the older, had a quiet intensity as they slowly made their way through the dank corridors. Some were close to tears.

I wanted to scream out when I emerged from the bunkers into the sunlight: This is modernity! This is progressiveness! A memorial to past mistakes and madnesses that many countries and people around the world - including our own - struggle to acknowledge even happened, let alone bring out with such forthrightness and honesty for themselves and the rest of the world to see. What a towering achievement Albania's Bunkart is!

Cimi

This is Sotir, Cimi's father-in-law.

A retired schoolteacher, he lives in the beautiful mountain village of Benje. We had trekked 17 km that day to reach it. We spent the night there. All evening he kept pouring the Raki, and kept bringing out the plates of cheese and salad to go with it, and kept the folk music playing loud on his battered old tape recorder, and danced.

And below, Cimi:

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