#my husbands hometown is smaller than my community college

[tailless-whale]

.

#have had several ppl ask why i never wanna live in a small town again #i have so many reasons #everything i like is far away #everyone knows everyone #and the biggest one is that drugs tend to be a big problem :( #my husbands hometown is smaller than my community college #theyve had 5 meth house busts in the last 5 years #i hate seeing old friends and extended family destroy themselves w meth etc when they move out of the city #like in the city ppl do coke sure #weed and mushrooms dont count imo #but coke is so expensive its hard to make it a habit #personal

[residentdormouse]

Here's one of a few asks coming to your inbox for OC Bingo!

This set of questions is in regard to your original WIP, Close to the Vale.

How did you come to choose the title, Close to the Vale?

What is your favourite thing about writing for Faith?

What kind of setting can we expect in this story?

What kind of vibe can we expect this story to give?

Give us a small blurb on each of Faith's main companions!

Give us a spoiler with no context!

🥰🥰 Thank you for the asks! 🥰🥰

(This was a ridiculous help in regards to story building, so thank you so much!)

How did you come to choose the title, Close to the Vale?

A couple reasons for this. The main one being a reference to the ‘vale of tears’ expression. This isn’t exactly a happy place for most of the characters in it. Not anymore. Their lives are painful and full of difficult tests to their will. Their paths are something they must struggle through in order to reach the other side, whatever that other side may be. The second reason is that it's the latin for ‘Farewell’. Another concept that is prevalent in this story, and one of the major sources of their anguish. Third is because I hear Vale and I think ‘Shining Vale’ (show on Starz with Greg Kinnear), and it makes me giggle.

What is your favourite thing about writing for Faith?

I haven’t written too much for her yet, but when I do, I feel it. I start off writing what I personally want to say, and I can sense her voice coming in. Usually some snarky bullshit commentary on what I’ve already typed up, and that’s all it takes. She now has control and she’s damn well saying what she wants to say. And there’s a distinct lack of filter to her that's really fun to play with. No shits are given.

What kind of setting can we expect in this story?

I set the whole of this story in the fictional town of Marsden, Pennsylvania. I wanted to get a mix of city atmosphere, with a realistic chance of being out in nature as well. The specific settings themselves will be a few different bars, mostly all of the dive variety, Faith and Paul’s condo, the Greater Marsden Community College, the nature trail on the outskirts, and [redacted].

What kind of vibe can we expect this story to give?

Overall genre wise, I’m gunning for a supernatural/mystery/suspense vibe. Heavy on the dark, lots of angst, but I’m hoping to sprinkle in a bit of comedy as well. Bittersweet moments will also be pretty common. Have to have highs to make the lows mean something more than just bleak depression. I hope for it to be touching on themes of recovery and found family. But, as I stated above, Faith takes over, and has her own plans. In addition to this, Paul is very heavily influenced by my favorite fictional character (Glen Bateman), and I’ve had him throw me some curves when I was writing fanfiction. So Hell, I may be surprised where this story goes myself.

Give us a small blurb on each of Faith's main companions!

Paul Truitt - Faith’s late fiancé. Before his passing, he was a professor at the community college. Paul was always great at finding the humor in life, and generally gave off a warm inviting presence. Despite this, he still managed to rub people the wrong way. This was of little concern to him, which usually in turn, further exacerbated matters. After his death, colleagues and acquaintances would make passing comments to themselves regarding their lack of surprise at his ultimate fate. When heard, Faith is quick to tell them to go fuck themselves. Miserable pricks.

Zachary Belman - Zach came into town with his husband on a mission to find his missing brother, Adam Belman. Growing up, the pair complimented each other well. One risks, the other plans. Book smarts to street smarts. It was a good dynamic until their parents divorced. While Zach stayed back with his mother in their smaller rural hometown a few hours away, Adam had went with his father into Marsden. The city progressively took over his personality, and pulled them further apart. Over the past year, Zach has been unable to reach him at all, and even with the wedge that had been dividing them and Adam’s tendency to go off the grid, this has gotten to worrisome territory.

Cameron Greene - Zachary’s spouse who accompanied him on his quest. While Zachary has a tendency to see the best in his brother, Cameron likes to stick to the reality. He’ll be the first to offer a helping hand, but damn, you gotta want to get yourself out of the shit first. Adam liked to roll around in it, and he ain’t got time for all that. He does however admit that he likes to watch the dumpster fire, as long as there's no risk of being burnt himself. Or inhaling toxic fumes. He has a lingering suspicion that this trip may be a bit closer to the flame than he would like.

Emma Oaks - Faith’s neighbor across the hall. Part of the city nightlife, but of a more decidedly active variety than Faith’s. Dancing, karaoke, flirting, and drinks. On various occasions, she has tried to get Faith out of the hole she has fallen, but doesn’t exactly know the right lure to use. Maybe there isn’t one. But she tries regardless. Her dog, Sphinx, will occasionally steal Faith’s mail.

Give us a spoiler with no context!

(The wording may change as I get to this section, but the moment it's from would be staying the same in essence.)

Color drained from his face as she spoke, and his mouth opened and shut like a fish out of water. Words struggled to come to him, but he eventually muttered out his question. “Where did you hear that?”

Her words were familiar to him. His words were familiar.

“Where did I hear that? Where the fuck did you hear that?!”

Under the new line of inquiry, his eyes began darting around the room. Couch, chair, window. Anywhere but her. Quickly they moved object to object, only finally coming to a stop at the end table. Hesitantly, he took a few steps towards it, and picked up the picture frame. Shaking hands were amplified as the thin object unmistakably trembled in his grasp.

“From him. Before...”

He didn't need to finish; she knew. But how did he?

#thank you for this!! #original stories #close to the vale #oc: faith lochren #ocb2023 #mouse is back on her nonsense

[recentlyheardcom]

Reddit user u/yankeevandal posed the question: "What statistically improbable thing happened to you?" The thread promptly filled with hundreds of chilling, shocking, and fascinating stories of brushes with death, eerie coincidences, and unfortunate mishaps. BuzzFeed Community users also chimed in with their own one-in-a-million stories. Here are some of the most interesting anecdotes:1."I was 8-months pregnant and putting my mother's ashes to sea. My mom had died a couple years prior on her 60th birthday, but my grandmother hadn't been ready to say goodbye then. My grandma was concerned about me being on the boat, but I insisted I'd be fine. As I dropped her ashes into the water, my own water broke. The captain rushed us back to land. My daughter was born the same day and hour as my mother had been over 60 years prior. We named her after her."—goety2."I got my tonsils out twice because they grew back. Let me tell you: Throwing up blood that runs down the back of your throat after surgery was an exorcist-level event. I’m glad the pain pills were so huge that I had to break them up into smaller, jagged bits..."—u/browngreyhound Phil Fisk / Getty Images/Image Source3."My sister's husband was taking classes at a community college in their city. He met a girl in his class who told him she was from the same small town where he and my sister (along with my parents) used to live. They talked some more, and he learned that her mom and stepfather worked at the same prison as our dad. He mentioned my dad’s name to her, and she said, 'That’s weird. That’s my stepdad’s name.' That's how we learned about my dad’s affair and his other family."—u/jmezme4."My husband and I visited our old hometown and went to a used bookstore we used to frequent. I picked up a familiar title in nostalgia and flipped it open to find a student’s school ID card. The name and photo on the ID? My husband's. Turns out his mom had donated books to that store many years before we all moved away from that area. He must have been using it as a bookmark and forgotten. It’s not so surprising considering we used to live in that area, but the ID was nearly 10 years old by the time we found it. That book was sitting on the shelf for nearly a decade, untouched, waiting for me to come along and pick it up. Bizarre."—u/misshepburn15 Georgeclerk / Getty Images5."My son died at 11 months old for two and a half minutes. I got to hold him as he took his first breaths, hold him while he took his 'last' breaths, and then got to hold him as he took his first breaths again. It’s something that, as a mother, I don’t wish on anyone. It was by far the scariest night of my life. I’ll never forget it: New Year's Eve 2007 in Fairbanks, Alaska. My son statistically was not supposed to survive the pregnancy. I nearly lost him three times in the first trimester. I started going into active labor at 20 weeks, got put on strict bed rest, and then developed preeclampsia. I also had Hyperemesis through the whole pregnancy. I couldn’t even hold down water and needed daily IV fluid and nutrition. I was 17 pounds lighter than my pre-pregnancy weight when I delivered him at 39 weeks. Because of all of that, he shouldn’t be here now.""To make things even weirder, the doctor who kept me from losing him in my pregnancy was the doctor who treated him in Alaska — at a completely different hospital, all the way across the country from where we first met. It felt like divine intervention seeing his face. I knew, deep in my soul, that my son was going to be okay. My son is a happy, healthy teenager now. I am sitting here crying thinking about that night. It definitely still feels like a gut punch when I think about it."—u/iwishiwereonabeach6."I was hit by lightning...sort of. Indirectly. Lightning hit a tree near the wellhead while I was doing dishes. It exploded the tree, fried the well, and gave me a jolt that made my metal fillings so hot, they burned my tongue. Other than that, I was fine."—u/Weedhopper24 Chester Bullock / Getty Images/500px Prime7.

"I was almost murdered in a case of mistaken identity. A guy came chasing after my car on the highway, waving his gun out the window. He eventually got in front of me, blocked my car, and stopped his car and got out. He came right up to my window, pointed the gun right at my head, looked me in the eyes, and said, 'Sorry, wrong chick,' then got back in his car and drove away. I still have no idea who he was or who the 'right chick' was."—u/notprescriptive8."Earlier this summer, I was walking in the woods with my dog, a 5-year-old, 65-pound pit/lab mix. We were on one of our usual trails, and at a narrow part of it. My dog randomly stopped, stared, and laid down. About 30 feet in front of us was a lone deer blocking the path. It just stood there staring at us for about 30 seconds. I decided to let it take its time; I was in no rush. Eventually, the lone deer ran back into the brush, and my dog and I continued on our path. When we got to where the deer was, a MASSIVE branch fell 30 feet in front of us — where we WOULD HAVE BEEN if we hadn’t stopped to wait for the deer. Once I realized that, I was so shook, and we went back the other way. I’m not a superstitious or 'everything happens for a reason' person, but when I told my mom about it, she said it was the deer 'paying it forward' because I work with animals (vet nurse).""If I was hit, I think I’d at least be dealing with some nasty hospital bills, and if my dog were hit, I hate to think about what could've happened. The whole thing broke my brain and made me feel really lucky."—thisisfine Paolo Stoppani / Getty Images/500px9."I was contacted by the FBI in regards to a criminal on the most wanted list. There were so many coincidences in our lives that the agents thought that I had to know where he was. They grilled me for a couple of hours trying to get information, but I had never heard of the guy. It was incredible since our lives seemed so connected. We lived two streets apart as kids, attended the same elementary, middle, and high schools, and were members of the same church. He was three years older than me, so we never met at school, and his family attended church during a different time slot. We both studied French at the same university. As language tutors, we worked in the same office and had the same boss and general phone number. The age difference kept us from ever meeting, and he switched from French to business before I got there.""We both did a church missionary service in the same part of France, and even lived at the same address twice. Our time in France never overlapped, and those mission apartments changed tenants every couple of months. When we both lived in Salt Lake, we lived in the same (large) apartment complex. He robbed an armored car outside of a movie theater on a Monday morning, getting away with a lot of cash and murdering the driver. I was working the overnight shift at a grocery store (from Sunday night to Monday morning) on that exact morning. The theater and the grocery store shared a parking lot. Every six months or so, the FBI checks in with me."—u/Jameseatscheese10."When I was a teenager, I picked up a hitchhiker, and then a few years later, the same guy picked me up when I was walking after I ran out of gas. Never saw him before or after those two occasions."—u/Perrin_Aybara_PL Ville Keskitalo / Getty Images/500px11."I survived two attempted kidnappings between the ages of 2 and 5. I don’t remember the first, but I remember the second time vividly."—u/Bada_Ping12."I was driving with the windows down, and my friend was riding shotgun telling me about his friend, nicknamed Bird, whose death anniversary it was. We stopped at a red light and a feather flew into the car and landed on his arm. His arm has a feather tattoo in honor of his friend."—u/cheesy-mgeezy Don Farrall / Getty Images13."While riding my bicycle on a commercial fishing pier as a kid, I lost control and rode off the edge with a 20-foot drop to exposed rocks at low tide. I tried

to stop myself going over by planting my feet on the edge of the pier, but I knew my bike was too heavy. Somehow, the bike stopped halfway over at a 45-degree angle. However, the seat was in the small of my back, preventing me from getting off. I couldn't budge it at all to get the bike back up. A fisherman finally ran over to help me, and we decided he would pull me as hard as he could, and I'd let the bike fall.""I jumped to the side as he pulled me back to the pier, and it worked. However, my bike remained there, not moving at all. When I examined what had happened, there was a piece of rebar sticking out from the edge of the pier bent upwards in an L-shape, and it passed diagonally through the spokes of my front tire and completely wedged my bike in place. It was the ONLY spot on the 300-foot-long pier with ANYTHING sticking out. I most certainly did not stop myself and my bike from going over."—u/Vandesco14."I found a dropped phone, tried my birthday as the passcode, and it unlocked."—u/LostInRVA Tatiana Meteleva / Getty Images15."When I was 16, I was driving with two of my friends on a back road. It had just started raining, which reminded us to put on our seat belts. About one minute later, the SUV hydroplaned and slid off the shoulder of the road. Being an inexperienced driver, I over-corrected, and the vehicle did a 180° in the road, then flipped over the other side and rolled three times. We landed upside down, all hanging from our seatbelts. One of my friends (who had watched too many action movies) started screaming that the car was going to explode, so we all tried to get out as quickly as possible. I remember hooking my feet on the steering wheel to get to unlatch the belt. We all slid out of our broken windows and ran back.""Thankfully, another vehicle was driving behind us and saw the whole thing. He called 911, then told us what he saw. He thought we were all dead, and we should have been! It was miraculous to survive the accident, but here’s all the 'one-in-a-million' stuff: Turns out the car flipped right between a light pole and a huge tree, only missing both by a few feet. One of my friends was missing her cell phone, which was in her hand before the accident. We found it perfectly placed in her open purse, sitting upright beside the tree. EMS arrived and checked us out at the scene. We declined going to the hospital. Police officers claimed we were lucky to be alive. Seatbelts certainly played a role in saving our lives, but the roof was completely caved in and could have killed us all, with or without seatbelts.The next day, we went to the tow truck yard to check out the car. Turns out my mom had left a box of roofing nails in the back that she was supposed to tell me to give to my stepdad, but of course forgot. They were scattered throughout the car, mostly nailed into the ceiling that had caved in. So, not only did we survive the accident mostly unscathed, we also had avoided nail shrapnel during it."—brittanymechielle16."I was hit in a crosswalk two times as a pedestrian by the same person. The incidents were four years apart and in different states."—u/Feeling_Wishbone_864 Colors Hunter - Chasseur De Coul / Getty Images17."I received my heart transplant after being on the list for only seven hours."—u/dekion10118."A traffic light fell off of its cable and directly in front of my car while I was stopped at the red light."—u/Jessers3192 Malorny / Getty Images19."A bird crapped in my mouth. I had the car door barely open while my boyfriend pumped gas and was mid-sentence when a bird flew under the awning and pooped at the perfect angle to go through the barely open door, right into my mouth. Gross."—u/TheLazyNoodle50520."I was driving to a friend's house when a huge tree fell on the road. My car passed under it as it was falling, so as soon as I could pull over, I called the emergency services and messaged my friend to say I would be late. When I got to his house, I found that his girlfriend's mum was in the car behind, and the tree fell on her car.

Luckily, she only had minor injuries, but one tree almost took us both out."—u/charlie1701 Georgeclerk / Getty Images/iStockphoto21."After losing an AirPod while skiing, I was able to find it the next run."—u/BrickOutside174022."I go to the same dentist with a woman who has the same first, middle, and last name, and same birth month and day as me. We’ve never crossed paths, but the hygienist tells me we both make them double-check the birth year every time we come in."—ambam8813 Westend61 / Getty Images/Westend6123."We moved out of our family home that my parents had lived in for about 25 years. We’d already moved out, and the new owners had moved in, but about a week later, my mum remembered that she’d left some old photo albums in the attic. She went back to collect them, and when we were looking through them, she realized that a young boy in a few photos of family friends was actually the new owner of our old home. I still find it funny that before moving any of his possessions into his new home, there were already photographs of this man as a child in his house."—u/Dragonemmafly24."I got left a written message to call a girl, and I mistakenly called another girl with the same name instead. We've been married for 14 years."—u/DrFadTastic Peter Dazeley / Getty Images25."My wife and I were on a long cross-county road trip killing time in the car by listening to comedy albums. We finished listening to a Jim Gaffigan special as we were pulling into a rest stop off of 80 in Ohio. Who do I see coming out of the bathroom at the rest stop?? Jim freakin' Gaffigan. I lived in NYC for 20 years and never ran into him, saw him perform, or knew his material, but now, I was seeing him at some random rest stop after listening to him for an hour?! For the first time in my life, I thought that we were living in a simulation, and something glitched. It was like we conjured his presence or something."—u/Prestigious_Emu_268426."I was on a train that derailed."—u/sharethebite Designbydx / Getty Images/iStockphoto27."I saw an ad on a Pepsi case at a grocery store for a text-to-win contest to see Beyoncé in concert. I figured why not, so I sent a text and was entered. A few weeks later, I got a text back from the same number that told me I won the grand prize! I ended up winning two tickets to Beyoncé’s Mrs. Carter Show world tour in Brooklyn and $500 on a Visa gift card. I used the $500 for some bus tickets and a hotel down the street from Barclays. The seats were awesome, and it's something I’ll never forget!"—u/michellemybell28."Lost a small (real) pearl earring in the snow down the street from my boyfriend-at-the-time’s house. I was adjusting a scarf, and it flung out of my ear. I was sad because my grandmother got them for me. The next spring, my boyfriend-at-the-time flicked a joint into the woods and was paranoid it didn’t go out all the way. He went to go step on it, and right next to his foot was the earring."—u/Delicious-Plantain-3 Bibica / Getty Images29."In 2006, I bought a travel guide to Costa Rica from a used bookstore to prepare for an upcoming trip. Inside the book was a copy of a shipping receipt from someone who'd ordered the book online a few years earlier. I did a double-take when I saw the shipping address on the receipt. The previous owner of the book had lived not only at my address, but IN MY SPECIFIC APARTMENT. And, presumably also took a vacation to Costa Rica, because that's usually why people buy travel guides."—u/TheCervus30."I got attacked by a robin in the morning, then attacked by a hawk three hours later. Weird day."—u/BlackberryNeon Kevin Schafer / Getty Images31."About 10 years ago, I was in Baltimore for the large east coast earthquake that resulted in damage to the Washington Monument. It was major news because the east coast rarely has earthquakes, let alone ones large enough to cause a commotion. That day, I was packing bags to take a trip back west to the Bay Area. When I landed and got back to my parents' house at about 11:30 p.

m., we were sitting, having a glass of wine, and chatting when we felt a magnitude 3 to 4 earthquake hit. Normal for the Bay. I may be one of the few people ever to experience an earthquake on two different US coasts on the same day."—u/speckledfloor32."My sister passed away in 2019, and a bunch of us went on a float trip about a year later. It was our first trip without her, so I brought a koozie that had her name on it to have a piece of her there with us. We got caught up in some branches soon after our trip started, and I lost the koozie. I was bummed. Not long after, we stopped on a beach, and my sister's daughter and I were hanging out in the middle of the river. All of a sudden, the koozie brushed my hand! It was down in the water, not floating at the top, and the water was moving so fast, the koozie should have been much farther down the river by that point. Of course, I started screaming in celebration that I found it. Still blows my mind that I found it, and there's no other explanation other than my sister made it happen!"—brikmill Photos By R A Kearton / Getty Images33."I once got into a car accident while driving home from work. I hydroplaned and got pitched off the road. My car ended up flipping over entirely, and I ended up upside-down. My airbags didn't deploy, and my car was completely totaled, but I walked away with only a few bruises and a small piece of glass in my thumb. The cops that arrived on-scene were amazed that I came out practically unscathed. They didn't even have to use the jaws of life to get me out; I just opened the door and crawled out. There was definitely a guardian angel looking out for me that day."—u/DisneyFoodie2034."My brother had his wallet stolen. At the time, my mom was working a second job at night at a gas station on the other side of town. Three obviously underage kids were trying to buy beer, and when she asked for ID, it was my brother's! She gave those kids hell, and demanded his wallet back. They threw it on the counter and ran."—wheeler6262 All Rights Belong To Dmitri Smol / Getty Images/iStockphoto35."I got hit by a car and wound up in the front passenger seat without going through a window or open door. I went through the open moonroof."—u/dstanton36.And: "I met my boyfriend on a dating website when we were both in our 40s. We are a perfect match for each other. We grew up in the same town and lived in the same town as adults. He was in the same third-grade class as my older sister. Here’s where it gets weird. Two years into the relationship, my grandmother passed away one month before her 101st birthday. I had been living in her house for about four years (to help care for her before and while she resided in a nursing home). My boyfriend’s dad attended the wake and recognized my aunt and uncle. Turns out, my grandfather’s brother was married to my boyfriend's grandfather’s sister! Our parents have mutual first cousins, but my boyfriend and I are not related by blood. We are now in the process of buying my grandparent’s house — a home his grandparents visited many times so long ago."—christym2715Absolutely. Wild. What's your one-in-a-million story? Tell us in the comments! 👀Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.

[hecohansen31]

Hello love! I’d love to request prompt 19 “Please don’t say you love me.” with Alfred from The Last Kingdom, please! 😊 I hope you have fun writing and thank you so much! 💕

WARNINGS: Mention of Inefedelity, Light Depression, Modern AU (but the biggest warnings should be Alfred being the true hoe of the show).

Finishing college was something that you had thought would be truly revelatory for you.

But now with a degree and thousand dollars of debt, you were left to go back to your hometown with nothing to do and no willingness to do anything else than lounge around on the deckchair in the back of your parents’ house.

Where you had first caught glimpse of him-

Your neighbor, Alfred.

He had been trying to get his older child, a pretty blonde girl, inside, meanwhile she insisted on wanting to continue her own camping party in the garden although she had been called to go inside to enjoy lunch with the family.

You had hidden yourself behind your glasses, but you had looked at the slender man, as he skillfully contracted with the girl for a few more minutes, finally getting her to agree to come inside, after her time had run up.

Then his eyes had moved onto the surrounding garden and the fence separating you from his house.

They had lingered on your half-naked body, since you were wearing a biking top and a pair bootie shorts.

His gaze had warmed up your body in a way that made you shiver also in the hot air of the suburban summer.

But then you had simply thought that he was the usual neighborhood pervert.

You had met him the following day at mass, your parents bringing you in hope it’d give you the willingness you had lost after college after you had finished and you had found with nothing else to do and no future in sight.

You had thought it was good to satisfy them, mostly because you didn’t want to make them question any further your behavior, knowing perfectly that they wouldn’t have properly understood what was going through you.

You had endured mass, but as you had been ready to leave, your mother had insisted on letting you meet one of the most influent people in town, and one ‘good Christian man’.

And it had been the fucking neighborhood pervert.

This time unable to spy on your conservative clothes, although his behavior was completely different, something majestically powerful in his gaze, although he looked quite smaller than the guy you were interested in.

But his presence definitely made up for it.

‘Alfred has transferred here a few months ago and he is already a blessing for this community’ commented your father cheerfully, meanwhile Alfred looked at extreme unease, although he tried to keep his gaze tight and set on your family ‘… he took after his brother, Aethelred’.

‘God might bless his soul’ commented tightly your mother as she did the cross sign, and you repeated it to have something to do with your fidgety hands.

Alfred’s gaze was definitely getting to you, although he didn’t seem to consider you in the slightest, till your mother started listing your qualities.

“… it’s good not to be the only new one in town’ tried to comment Alfred, offering you a hand that you accepted only for your father’s harsh glare in your way.

‘I am not a newbie, I was born here’ you shot back, seeing a surprised light appear in his face, although you hadn’t expected the smartass smirk he shot your way, smirking tightly at you, as you felt again that pleasurable shiver go down your spine.

Immediately caught by the mention of Alfred’s wife being brought up in the conversation.

“She hasn’t come in the city, yet, has she?” asked tightly your mother, as if it personally offended her, that the woman hadn’t deigned them worthy of meeting her.

“She hasn’t sadly” Alfred commented, although he didn’t look in the slightest like a sad husband “… the countryside is more her thing and she is trying to get everything ready for her to move in here”.

“We hope to see her soon” cut in your father, making you let out a relieved breath, but your mother tagged back, as she pushed you even more forward “… in the meanwhile if you ever need an help with the children, you might ask my daughter, (Y/N), you know she isn’t doing much these days…”.

“I’ll think about it” his reply was accompanied with a curt nod.

Which you thought was the gentle way of saying ‘mind your own business’.

But you still found yourself pushed inside of his house, after he had been called last minute for one thing at work, and he had been constantly moving around as he tried to tidy up the house, although it wasn’t in the slightest messy, and he kept apologizing to you for the short notice.

‘Don’t worry, Mr. York’ you had simply mumbled ‘… as my mother always has to point out, I don’t have much to do’.

You hadn’t even thought he’d hear you, but he seemed to as he raised his eyes to face you, with an almost incredulous look on his face, before he ducked it lightly.

‘… sorry’.

‘Don’t worry, I am used to it’ you had mumbled back, before moving to present yourself to the children, playing a bit with Aethelflaed and her dolls, as you kept an eye on the sleeping baby Edward, meanwhile Alfred got himself ready.

Eventually Alfred reappeared to give some more instructions, but your eyes immediately linked themselves to the elegant suit he was wearing, highlighting his slim body in a way that made you definitely feel things that you shouldn’t have thought in a child’s room.

So, you tried your best to avoid any dirty thought, meanwhile he told you where you could find some food and what was his number, before saluting his children with such a sweetness that you didn’t think he owned in that thigh-wound body.

The night was uneventful: Alfred’s children were well-behaved, the type that fell asleep naturally at 9 p.m. without any need for threats or praises, although Aethelflaed tried to make you indulge in a few more stories, before she was ready to finally sleep a bit, something that almost made you like the thought of more babysitting.

And Alfred’s eyes did the rest.

Soon you were a constant appearance in the house, not only when Alfred needed you, because he’d have some work things to attent, but also when he was in the house, as an help to him, meanwhile his wife was away, since life with two children could be quite difficult.

Even more when one of the two had severe health issues.

One night, Alfred was unable to sleep because of Edward’s condition, since he hadn’t slept comfortably and his breathing was unstable, although the doctor had said it wasn’t anything to worry about.

But Alfred insisted on checking him constantly.

An on your part, you were supposed to actually leave to go back home, but you didn’t feel like it.

Although you hadn’t had many shared moments, since Alfred was a man of few words, you felt like there was a strange understanding between you two.

Not to talk about a blooming attraction.

And his eyes spoke of needing you right now.

You could see in the way his eyes would follow you around the eyes, although they’d always be off of you before you could catch him, in a cat and mouse game that got you quite hot and heavy.

You knew it was wrong.

He was older.

He was married.

And he had children.

You were his babysitter, for God’s sake!

But at the same time, it just felt like the most fun you had had in years.

You were meant to leave that night, but Alfred had muttered, when he had sensed your indecision.

‘Do you have time for a drink?’.

‘I didn’t think that you had anything remotely alcoholic in this house’ you shot back, unable to stop your big mouth in pushing out a light smirk, as Alfred moved to reprimand you, softly, a light teasing in his eyes.

‘Should I be worried that my babysitter goes around the house, sticking her nose in my business’ he inquired as he got a huge bottle of red wine from a compartment in the kitchen you hadn’t noticed.

‘I don’t’ you lied, because you had actually put your nose in his room, just to understand what kind of heavenly perfume he wore, and yet your hands had found its way in his shirts wardrobe, caressing the softness of the material ‘… but I don’t think that I find anything that is even remotely scandalous in this house’.

‘You are the most scandalous thing’ and that had made you choke on the glass of wine you had been trying to gulp down in the most seductive way you knew ‘… you seriously thought that I wouldn’t have noticed it’.

‘What’ you had tried to assume a straighter pose ‘… what do you mean’.

He had smiled under the glass of wine, an enigmatic minute that had left you breathless.

‘You seriously thought I wouldn’t notice the way you look at me and rub your pretty thighs together”.

“You are a fucking pervert” you had replied tightly, trying to move away, but he gently grabbed your hand, enough to make you stop in your track.

“I might be one but believe me…” and he suddenly had been right in front of you “… you won’t stop this ‘fucking pervert’ from kissing you”.

And you hadn’t,

You hadn’t stopped him, neither, when he had undressed you, as he lowered between your legs, giving you what many fellow agemates had never given to you.

Pure ecstasy.

And from there it went downward.

You stayed over at Alfred’s, under the lie that Alfred had asked you to help him care for his children.

Your parents were unassuming of what was truly going on, they were just happy that you were finally able to smile again so brightly and had a purpose.

Nobody thought that after the children were asleep, you’d share a bed with Alfred.

And much more.

You were starting to develop feelings for Alfred.

He listened to you, without assuming that you were a simply lazy girl.

He understood your fears for your future, and he pushed you to give your best, suggesting a few solutions, even suggesting on him saying ‘a little prayer for you’.

‘… oh Gosh, aren’t you cheesy?’ you always teased him, just to see him blush, as you sneaked a soft kiss on his neck.

You shared the fact that you had always lived a life that you hadn’t wanted to live.

And it brought you closer.

Enough that to you, you were together, almost as a couple.

And the day Aelswith came back…

… it was a shock.

You waltzed inside, having a copy of the key, ready to play a bit with Aethelflaed, but there was a ‘stranger’ in the kitchen.

The woman who stood next to Alfred in the photo on his bedside table.

His wife.

Although she tried her best to appear as if she wasn’t surprised by your presence, she still shot you a harsh glare as you were simply able to mutter ‘I am the babysitter’.

‘Oh yeah’ she mumbled tightly, almost as if the words left a bad taste in her mouth ‘… we won’t need you anymore, sweetheart’.

‘But… but… Alfred’ you tried to blabber, and she simply came closer to you, grabbing the keys in your hands and turning you towards the door.

‘… don’t think that you are anything special or the first one’ she spoke in your ear, before pushing you outside.

It had then taken an entire week for you to bring yourself to meet with Alfred, and by then Aelswith’s words had just hit you too deep.

And you had reasoned with your crazy infatuation with Alfred.

He tried to attack you with the big words, he looked positively sad and when he was about to drop the ‘l-bomb’, you shut him up.

“Please don’t say you love me” it burned on your tongue as everything in you ached to instead let him go on “… it wasn’t my fairytale to start with”.

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Hello please don’t hate me and accept this other round of intros lmao

Also please plot with my babies they all need some love

BLAKE HUDSON looks an awful lot like ZAC EFRON. HE is TWENTY-SIX and while they’re CREATIVE, they have a tendency to get pretty IMPULSIVE. You’ve probably seen them around Kola listening to STRESSED OUT by TWENTY ONE PILOTS. ( val. 22. she/her. est. )

FIRST AND FOREMOST, BLAKE HUDSON HAS BEEN IN THE FOSTER SYSTEM SINCE HE WAS A KID. DOESN’T KNOW HIS PARENTS AND DOESN’T WANT TO KNOW THEM.

But, when he was around 13-14, he was adopted by a nice loving family that decided to take care of him.

It was nice while it lasted, but he soon realized his habits of going out and partying(when he was a little older ofc) were a lot to deal with, so he decided to move out.

And he ended up in a frat house, and honestly doesn’t remember what he was studying because he was always drunk or high, and like... hardcore partying all the time.

What he does know is that it’s then he discovered a passion for mixing tracks and DJing. And then he just quit college to spend all his time learning how to become a better DJ and shit. Also then he started to slowly stop using drugs until he was entirely clean, and hasn’t taken any since.

Now he’s definitely better, has a Youtube channel where he posts his stuff, and decided to move back to Kola, his hometown, since he believed being in California could help his building career.

Isn’t popular yet, but he does have a small fanbase building up.

ELENORE DUNSFORTH looks an awful lot like EMILIA CLARKE. SHE is TWENTY-SEVEN and while they’re FAIR, they have a tendency to get pretty BLUNT. You’ve probably seen them around Kola listening to NEVER GIVE UP by SIA. ( val. 22. she/her. est. )

Elenore was born the second in a somewhat wealthy family. She was raised to be fair and just to everyone, well-mannered and polite. But never was to become the heiress of their company.

But at 16, there was a terrible crash, in which her parents and older brother died, while she was the only survivor. So she was to become the heiress, but only once she turned 18.

Until then, her uncle(WC PLEASE) took over, as well as caring and protecting her. But she could also tell he was only trying to persuade her to give him the company. That was then she started to lose her politeness, or at least, depending on the situation.

At 18, once she got full reins of the company, she booted out her uncle to continue what her parents had started. She still has a lot to learn and do, but she’s being trying to make it grow, starting by buying some smaller restaurants or hotels.

But obviously, it’s not that easy and people are desperatly trying to make her fail.

EVELYN MCDONALD looks an awful lot like ELIZABETH OLSEN. SHE is TWENTY-FIVE and while they’re CHARMING, they have a tendency to get pretty MANIPULATIVE. You’ve probably seen them around Kola listening to FALL IN LINE by CHRISTINA AGUILERA&DEMI LOVATO. ( val. 22. she/her. est. )

Honestly, I haven’t fully worked out the details for her. I’m thinking only child in an average family, but then she ended up watching her father disrespect her mom and just be an ass and cheat on her so not a nice family.

Then her mom starting dating more and more assholes so that didn’t help.

Never went to college, but I can definitely see her working in a bar, either as a barmaid or even a pole dancer.

Bisexual who loves her women but also loves to destroy her men the way her father did with her mom. Overall, very good with her girlfriends but the worst with her boyfriends because she just remembers what her dad did.

Wesley’s ex, she particularly enjoys going back to him just to destroy him a little more. @shtbgs

FINLAY AINSWORTH looks an awful lot like JACK FALAHEE. HE is TWENTY-EIGHT and while they’re ELOQUENT, they have a tendency to get pretty DECEITFUL. You’ve probably seen them around Kola listening to SOBER by DEMI LOVATO. ( val. 22. she/her. est. )

Okay let me tell you something about this sad boy: both his parents were junkies, and he was a complete accident. His mother did slow down on drugs and alcohol while she was bearing him, but didn’t completely stopped. So everyone was obviously greatly surprised when he was born in great health.

But it started getting more complicated later. As a kid, he was a nice kid, actually had to mature early since both his parents were useless. But then came sophomore year and his problems started. A new kid(WC HELLO) transferred, one who was already deep in his addiction. He brought Finlay in with him, and it wasn’t long he was addicted too. And obviously, his parents didn’t seem to care.

Barely finished high school, never went to college, instead taking on small shitty jobs here and there. Honestly, anything he could get.

He ODed three times before he was forced to rehab. First few days, weeks, were hard, but he soon realized he wasn’t on a good path. Honestly, rehab was the hardest thing he did, but now he’s a 100% clean and feels so much better.

Currently waiting table in a restaurant, but is considering applying to college, although he doesn’t know which major he would like.

JANIS CRAWFORD looks an awful lot like EVANGELINE LILLY. SHE is THIRTY-SIX and while they’re RESOURCEFUL, they have a tendency to get pretty UNRELIABLE. You’ve probably seen them around Kola listening to BAD LIAR by KREWELLA. ( val. 22. she/her. est. )

A lot of Janis’ early life is pretty average. Although she was born as Mary-Elizabeth Grimes. She had a lovely family, an older sister and a younger brother, good grades, her life was perfect.

She married her college boyfriend, who was a few years older, once she graduated, even if her parents did not agree. They thought she was only marrying for his wealth, when she actually really loved him.

But then they tried to have a kid a few years later, but it didn’t work. Some tries later, still nothing. So they went to the doctors, and it was then she discovered she was infertile.

Instead, the two decided they would adopt, and raise the kid as their own. But the worker(I WILL KILL FOR THIS WC) from the adoption agency had other plans. You see, it took a very serious interest in her, as far as making advances to her. And she couldn’t deny she didn’t hate it either.

But that’s when it turned creepy: when he started saying they could just run away, change names, take the money of her husband. But she never thought he would do it. Turned out he did, when she came back to an actual crime scene in her living room, her husband’s body on the floor and the man just waiting for her.

She managed to escape to her neighbours, who called the cops and kept her safe for the time being. Of course when the cops arrived, the man was gone.

For her own safety, she decided to change name for Janis Crawford, and is only now arriving in Kola.

LIAM JONES looks an awful lot like JAI COURTNEY. HE is THIRTY and while they’re APPROACHABLE, they have a tendency to get pretty DARK. You’ve probably seen them around Kola listening to PUMPED UP KICKS by FOSTER THE PEOPLE. ( val. 22. she/her. est. )

Sad puppy, son of a military and a nurse. He never got to see his dad much until he died. Still, he was happy with his mom and his younger brother, even if she sometimes struggled to keep everything under control.

It was only them three, but he could tell it was hard for her with her job. So he decided to grow up early to help her. And for him, that meant being able to bring as much money as he could home. He started with a few small cleaning or painting jobs before moving to bigger ones.

In his junior year, he started going to underground fights, gambling on the matches. A habit that never left.

After graduating, he moved in with his high school sweetheart, but still kept on sending money to his family.

Few years later, Liam actually opened up his own underground fighting ring. It wasn’t long until it was big enough to rival any other. He started adding more to it, including gambling card games and the likes. His girlfriend knew, but she did not mind: she actually sometimes helped with it.

At 27, he became a father or a beautiful young girl. But sadly, three years later, she was killed, along with his then wife. The owner of a rival ring(WC DO I HAVE TO MENTION) was trying by all means to destroy him, and sent his lackey to do the job. What was originally planned was for them to only kidnap the two, but they went further than the orders. 

It has now been 5 months, and Liam has allied with his previous rival to find the lackeys, since they now both have something to hate together.

LILIANE “LILY” AUSTIN looks an awful lot like AISHA DEE. SHE is TWENTY-FOUR and while they’re AGREEABLE, they have a tendency to get pretty MISERABLE. You’ve probably seen them around Kola listening to DON’T TALK ABOUT IT by TOVE LO. ( val. 22. she/her. est. )

Family of 5, Lily was the youngest. They were not incredibly poor, but they weren’t rich either. Some months were harder than others.

Lily’s always tried to be the best she could, in school and socially. She was part of a few clubs and the cheer squad during high school.

She got into communication on a scholarship, and was asked to pledge to one of the sororities. It originally wasn’t her plan, but the girls seemed genuinely nice. At first, at least. Turned out they only wanted a scholarship student to raise the average of their house.

Still, despite only originally being accepted as a sister for her grades, the others started loving her for who she was and included her in their plans.

Which turned out horribly during her third year. A small group of them, 6 to be exact(WC, 4 SINCE ONE IS LILY AND ONCE IS... NOT PLAYABLE ANYMORE), took a weekend off to a cabin in the woods(always a good start for a horror story). They were drinking quite a lot, and didn’t have all their minds. They decided to go swimming, deciding to jump off the cliff and into the water. But they didn’t check how deep it was, and the first one to jump hit her head on a sharp stone. Seeing as she wasn’t responding, the girls got scared and went the secure way to the water. Only to find her dead.

Refusing to be caught for this, they buried her body deep into the woods, along with all her clothing. Of course, her disappearance went noticed, but when asked, they said she didn’t come back with them, only saying she wanted to take a small roadtrip down south.

Now, Lily works in communication for a small enterprise and lives with a lot of remorse for what she did.

MONICA HUNT looks an awful lot like FELICITY JONES. SHE is THIRTY-ONE and while they’re SWEET, they have a tendency to get pretty ABSENTMINDED. You’ve probably seen them around Kola listening to NOBODY’S HOME by AVRIL LAVIGNE. ( val. 22. she/her. est. )

Sweet, sweet child who never truly grew up. She was born two months early, and her parents always thought something was wrong with her, although no doctors diagnosed her with anything. She only grew up to be naive, a tad childish, and completely absentminded.

But Monica’s parent’s didn’t know what to do with her. She couldn’t focus on anything, never paid attention to anything. They usually had to repeat everything twice to her. They were desperate, and honestly couldn’t deal with her. And as soon as she turned 18, they were gone.

It was coming back from classes that Monica found the house emtirely empty, apart from her own things, on her birthday. She thought it was just a bad joke, and didn’t say anything for a few weeks. Lived off the food her parents left behind, and ordered pizza.

It was only when she was asked if her parents would be attending her graduation that she mentioned they’d been gone for weeks. But she 18 now, and had to take care of herself.

So she got a small job in a clothing shop, sold the house and moved to a small place with a roommate(WC GIVE HER A FRIEND).

Now she’s working as a barmaid in a club, has never been to college, and never heard of her parents.

NATALIE CALLOWAY looks an awful lot like JENNA COLEMAN. SHE is THIRTY-THREE and while they’re CARING, they have a tendency to get pretty ASSERTIVE. You’ve probably seen them around Kola listening to DARK HORSE by KATY PERRY. ( val. 22. she/her. est. )

Please welcome the queen of double-face. In a somewhat good way. She always enjoyed helping the people she loved, without telling them it was her. Any way she could, she would do it.

She was loved by most people, although some of the popular kids never enjoyed her cheerfulness. She didn’t care though.

After graduating high school, she decided to study to become a criminal investigator. Even though she ended up marrying Grayson Calloway, aka pretty much into crimes. @sinraised

But she really damn loves him like crazy, and is willing to put even her job on the line for him. AKA, without him knowing, she uses her job to kind of conceal/destroy/manipulate pieces of evidence that could trace back to him or his crime ring?

Otherwise, she just appears like a pretty normal investigator, and a very normal, loving woman in general.

She actually goes to the crime ring once in a while, and people there know she isn’t going to rat them out and she can be trusted.

REBECCA BLACKSTONE looks an awful lot like ELIZA TAYLOR. SHE is TWENTY-FOUR and while they’re CARING, they have a tendency to get pretty NAIVE. You’ve probably seen them around Kola listening to ROCKABYE by CLEAN BANDIT&SEAN PAUL&ANNE-MARIE. ( val. 22. she/her. est. ) 

Okay this one is supposed to be Hadley’s half sibling, so basically, her mom would’ve had her with a rockstar, and she never knew him. @ofadorations

She was raised alone by her mom, but saw a lot of men come in and out of her life everyday. So she never knew what it was like to have a full family.

She did alright in school, not the best grades but it satisfying enough for her mother. Still, never got to keep a relationship for more than a few weeks.

After high school, she went to study zoology, but had to stop abruptely. During a party, Rebecca got drunk and slept with some guy(WC IMAGINE THE ANGST), she doesn’t even remember who, exactly. But from that incident came another: she was pregnant.

Her mother was terribly disappointed in her, seeing as she was doing the same mistakes she did, and decided she would not help her with money anymore. So Becca stopped her studies and took on a waiting job in a restaurant. Which she came back to after her son was old enough to be left with a nanny.

She’s currently struggling a lot with money and keeping her life on tracks okay she needs someone to help her.

Also if you bring her a Bob Morley, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Thomas McDonell, or literally anyone from The 100 I will love you so much??

STEVEN BLAKE looks an awful lot like TOM HARDY. HE is THIRTY-NINE and while they’re RELIABLE, they have a tendency to get pretty ERRATIC. You’ve probably seen them around Kola listening to MR BRIGHTSIDE by THE KILLERS. ( val. 22. she/her. est. )

Okay you know the Transporter movies with Jason Statham? Well, that’s what he does.

When he was 17, his girlfriend(WC THAT WOULD BE ADORABLE) fell pregnant. For the time being, their parents helped them financially so they could just take on a part-time job while still being able to continue to study.

But as soon as they turned 18, it was over, and they obviously couldn’t go to college, not with a baby(WC OKAY THAT CHILD WOULD BE LIKE 21-ISH NOW) and barely any money. So while she went to work in restaurant, he started as a taxi driver.

And then moved on to more serious business. He carried a man once, when he was about 23, that decided he wanted only him as his driver. So from taxi driver, he turned into a more private one. He was starting to be trusted by his clients.

And then he got tasked to deliver a package, an important one. He was to not look at it under any circumstance. Word started travelling that Steven Blake was a secure and reliable deliverer and driver, so it became kind of his small underground business.

But that wasn’t safe, he saw that a few deliveries later when he was actually attacked. Not wanting to take any risks for his family, he signed for divorce, despite still being deeply in love with his wife and his kid.

Okay so obviously maybe not as much of a badass as Jason is in the movies, but still one. He knows how to fight and use guns so I wouldn’t mess with him tbh.

#fckit:intro #drug tw #alcohol tw #murder tw #death tw #child death tw #overdose tw #just tagging yall so you see

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Facebook Dating Review Reddit

Facebook’s dating app, which was announced at the corporation’s F8 Conference in May, 2018, has just rolled out to all of the U.S.For those who are currently swimming around in the dating pool.

Tinder, the largest dating app on the market right now, has about 5 million users. “In theory, given that so many people use Facebook, they could harness that population in an advantageous way. ThaiCupid website is one of the best examples of online social media and networking platforms worldwide to find the Siamese quickly. The website is easy to use and free for everyone to find other users and chat with them endlessly. However, you would need a little time to find a perfect match in the sea of profiles.

I used to find it frustrating when people blamed dating apps for how bad dating is.

Facebook’s NPE Team is testing an app called Sparked that’ll put people into a video speed dating event. The app hasn’t launched in any app stores yet but is available through the web. BookofMatches is a trustworthy internet dating website that has been working since 2002. For more than 15 years, this service makes its clients amazingly glad and fulfilled. There is something for everybody here, beginning from individuals with straight sexual direction to gays, lesbians, and transsexuals.

“What’s the alternative?” I would ask when a friend complained about the chore of swiping and starting a conversation. “Standing in a bar for six hours a night?” But I said this more often when I was in a relationship that had started on Tinder, and I say it much less often now that I’ve spent eight months back in the world of grainy boat-trip photos and “looking for the Pam to my Jim.”

People who have never used Tinder often frame it as an abundance of choice, when in reality, the experience of swiping through those hundreds of thousands of options has the effect of making every option look exactly the same. You can accrue two dozen matches named Matt in the time it takes to finish one glass of wine and throw the glass at the wall. Tinder doesn’t make it feel easy to go, as they say, “on to the next!” Tinder makes it feel like the next will be just like the last, which will be just like every other one, forever. The plentitude of fish in the proverbial sea is actually an apt metaphor, because what kind of lunatic could actually specify an individual fish they’d be interested in catching? They’re all fish.

Enter Facebook Dating, which seems to be differentiating itself at least partly on sheer numbers: Three-quarters of Americans are on Facebook. Tinder, the largest dating app on the market right now, has about 5 million users.

“In theory, given that so many people use Facebook, they could harness that population in an advantageous way,” says Kevin Lewis, a sociologist at UC San Diego who has studied both Facebook and online dating. “Will everyone sign up for it? If everyone did, this would be by far the biggest dating site there ever was.” Great, an even bigger sea.

Facebook’s motivations to get into the dating game are somewhat obvious. Analysts expect dating apps to be a $12 billion business by the end of next year. Advertising, premium accounts, and other paid features on Tinder bring in the lion’s share of revenue for its parent company, Match Group, which just reported a $498 million quarter and also owns Hinge, Plenty of Fish, Match.com, OkCupid, and dozens of smaller dating-related businesses. It’s understandable why Facebook would want a piece of that market, especially because teens and Millennials are abandoning the social network in droves.

To use Facebook Dating—and this is billed explicitly as one of the benefits—you don’t need to download another dating app. You enroll within the Facebook app, which I assume is still installed on your phone. Just kidding: Though a sizable majority of all Americans under 65 still have Facebook accounts, 44 percent of users ages 18 to 29 deleted the app from their phones in 2018. (Just imagine an army of horny 20-somethings scrubbing their furious #DeleteFacebook tweets in service of their love life.) Facebook Dating is free and doesn’t include any advertising, and the company says it never will. But it does pull users back into Facebook’s ecosystem, creating a new and very compelling reason for people—especially young people—to use an app they may have deserted.

And, of course, it could be that Facebook picked this moment to get into dating because everyone else already is. Even if thousands of Tinder bios still read, cloyingly, “Let’s lie about where we met,” conversational laziness often leads people to gesture at a stigma that isn’t really there, or express discomfort with things that they’re actually fine with—such as dating apps, and such as downloading another dating app after they’ve become jaded with the first dating app, their continued ability to return to the App Store serving as a tiny sign that their heart is still beating and they’re still looking for it.

We meet dating site. The Leading Online Dating Service - FREE Membership! Photo-Personals, Live Chat, Events, Love & Romance Newsletter, Dating & Relationship Coach and more! JOIN hundred of thousands Local & International active singles & Meet your Match - The Best Place To Click!-The best dating site. Free Dating USA. If you’re a single American looking to find new friendships and romance, you need to join this free online dating site now. So many wonderful Americans turn to our free dating site for women to help them find someone special. Covering every State, city and hometown, this safe online dating site is here for you! We Love Dates is America’s best free dating site.

The irrepressibly genteel New York Times weddings section regularlyname-checksTinder. The presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg met his husband on Hinge. The latest Pew Research Center data, from 2016, showed that 22 percent of Americans ages 25 to 34, and 27 percent of Americans ages 18 to 24, had dated online. Eighty percent of the people who had done so said it was a good way to meet someone, and 46 percent of college graduates said they could personally name someone for whom online dating had resulted in a marriage or long-term partnership. Those numbers were all drastically higher than they had been when Pew looked into the matter just three years earlier. It’s probably safe to assume that they’re even higher now. Online dating has become sufficiently mainstream to be part of the most mainstream website of all time.

If you ask Facebook, the company is getting into dating because its leaders think they can actually improve it. A recent study conducted by Edelman and commissioned by Facebook showed that 40 percent of people who currently use dating apps aren’t happy with the experience, Facebook Dating’s product manager, Charmaine Hung, told me.

“We hope that those people will give Facebook Dating a try,” she says. “We’re also hoping that people who have never tried dating apps before will try Facebook Dating because of the safety features we put in, as well as really activating your community and the interests you share with people.”

To celebrate the surprise launch of Facebook Dating in the U.S. (after a year of testing in smaller markets), Facebook invited a bunch of tech journalists and a few dozen influencers to a breakfast meeting at a hip all-cement venue more or less on the edge of the Hudson River in Manhattan. The subject of the event was kept mostly a secret until attendees were escorted to the basement, where a product manager, Nathan Sharp, gave a quick introduction to the app. He got in a quick dig at the competition by explaining that Facebook doesn’t believe in keeping “the best features behind a paywall,” and that its version of dating doesn’t involve any swiping—a reference to the baseball-card dating paradigm popularized by Tinder starting in 2012.

The message was clear: For Facebook, facilitating love is not a joke; it’s a public service.

The next point was even clearer: Facebook is aware that people are already using its products to hook up. Its executives have heard the phrase slide into the DMs. We did not get an opportunity to hear a Facebook spokesperson say this phrase aloud, but Sharp did invite the Modern Family star Sarah Hyland and the former Bachelorette contestant Wells Adams to come onstage and explain how they met: through the direct-messaging feature on Instagram.

Hyland and Adams, who are engaged, gave a 45-minute presentation explaining how one should go about inviting another person to get tacos, how to say “I love you,” how to propose marriage. (You might argue that this presentation was wildly hostile toward single people, who are having trouble finding someone to ask to get tacos—not because they are confused about how to use Facebook’s suite of networking products, but because most people just aren’t that fun to hang out with—and who, even if they aren’t exercising the muscles at this exact moment, do in fact know how to express their thoughts and feelings. Or you may not be as sensitive as I am.) When Adams and Hyland were finished talking about their perfect lives, curtains all around the room dropped to the floor, and it was revealed that the presentation area was surrounded by a ring of brand activations: a pen of puppies wearing Facebook Dating bandannas, a pop-up coffee shop serving romantic desserts, a florist giving out elaborate bouquets.

On display in the basement’s gallery section were works of art inspired by love and Facebook and famous dorm posters. Rodin’s Thinker was hunched over, pondering his options—“heart” or “X”—against a magenta backdrop. Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam was remixed in purple and pink, the pointer fingers of God himself and the first man reaching toward a Facebook Dating icon. I have to admit, this is the shit I live for. Did it tell me anything new about why Facebook is suddenly interested in operating a dating app? Not exactly, but it did tell me what Facebook thinks about daters as a cohort: that we want to live in a romantic comedy, and that we are easily charmed.

Visually, Facebook Dating is similar to Hinge, which, in its initial version, suggested matches exclusively from users’ mutual Facebook friends. (Hinge also takes a hard stance against swiping and has long advertised itself as “the relationship app,” in opposition to Tinder’s notorious hookup culture. It was acquired by Tinder’s parent company earlier this year.) Functionally, the app is also similar to Hinge—you scroll through profiles, send a like, send a message. You can see people who have already liked you—a feature that is also available on Hinge. (On Tinder, something similar requires a monthly subscription fee, which I have paid many times.) It’s not exactly groundbreaking.

“Facebook has a history of this,” Brendan Griffiths, an assistant professor of interaction design at the New School, told me, citing Instagram’s rip-off of Snapchat’s signature Stories feature in 2016. “It’s clear that they aped features (from Hinge and Tinder) pretty directly. I would say that’s where the vast majority of their inspirations come from.” (Facebook did not respond to a request for comment on these similarities.)

Griffiths does not care for Dating’s purple color scheme and calls it “pretty infantilizing.” Overall, “it doesn’t feel like they were going for anything specific other than to capture a market that they understand to be potentially valuable.”

“The purple color is awful,” echoes Barbara deWilde, executive creative director of products and design at The New York Times. “But Facebook is not known for its stunning visual design.”

Facebook Dating’s one innovative feature is called Secret Crush, and it’s what it sounds like. If you have a secret crush on any of your Facebook friends or Instagram followers, you can add them to a list of secret crushes and wait to see if they add you to theirs. The Edelman survey that Facebook commissioned found that 53 percent of online daters have a crush on someone they already know, but they’re afraid to admit it (sure), to which I say, lucky them? Having a crush is an amazing feeling, and life without a crush is an extremely boring trudge toward deadened nerves and spinal erosion.

Though the profile you set up in Facebook Dating is independent of your main Facebook profile (a smart choice, given that the Facebook profiles of most of the people I know consist of dozens of photo albums from 2009 with titles such as “seniorrrrsss” and “myrtle beach <3”), Dating is still able to suggest matches based on the information you’ve provided the main app. These could, for example, be people who belong to the same Facebook groups you do, or have attended the same events. The enterprising Facebook dater could even stage a meet-cute! Hook up sites for seniors. It would be pretty easy. You could pretend the internet wasn’t involved at all. It’s just a wingman, pointing you to the right bookstore in the right sweater, or a seltzer enthusiasts’ meet-up in the park, during the golden hour.

This is genuinely exciting for anyone overwhelmed by the randomness of other dating apps. As my colleague Ashley Fetters wrote recently, Facebook Dating is explicitly designed “to inject some of the more human aspects back into online dating through features that mimic the ways in which people used to meet-cute before the Tinder age.” Meet-cutes, though they sometimes involve flopping down in the middle of the street or walking around with a balloon stuck to your butt, do not feel as existentially degrading as sifting through thousands of photos of men with four friends and two facial expressions, followed by dozens of identical conversations about how it’s a shame that summer is over. The more time you spend on Tinder, the lower the bar gets for perceived compatibility—has listened to a song I’ve heard, works at a restaurant I’ve walked past, went to the beach one time, sure. You start looking—no more, no less—for evidence that the person exists at all.

“Everyone’s always asking, ‘Is this person real, and who is this person really?’” Hung tells me, repeating a line that was used at the press event. “In Facebook Dating, we have a lot of really unique features so you can feel confident that this person is a real person. It can help give a more authentic view of a person. We want to help you find love through what you like.” This is Facebook’s “really great superpower,” she says.

Obviously, I signed up for Facebook Dating as soon as I got home from the official launch, downloading the Facebook app onto my phone for the first time ever.

For the first week, there was literally nobody there to match with. (Understandable.) In the second, the list was short and strange, populated mainly by people named “Meme,” or “C, like the letter of the alphabet. People call me Philip.” The default geographic range was 200 miles, so many of my initial suggested matches lived in Pennsylvania or deep New Jersey, hours away from my home in New York. I was excited to open the list of suggested matches sourced specifically from events I’ve attended, thinking it not at all unreasonable to expect that at least one cutie had gone to see my friend’s band a few weeks before, or had been at the early-summer book launch at which I got so emotional, I slid off my chair (would have been a good meet-cute!). But all the suggestions were people who attended the 2017 Women’s March—half of Brooklyn?—or an apple festival in my college town three years ago, or a free Grace Potter concert in 2015.

Most of the Facebook groups I belong to are useless for dating purposes: a high-school friend’s bridal party, a space for mall food-court coffee-shop employees to trade shifts. An alumni group, my God. This is not Facebook’s fault; this is my fault. Good Facebook Dating users will first be good Facebook users—as in active Facebook users, diligently logging each time they go someplace where eligible people might be lurking, scrolling through their phone, too. If that doesn’t work, an ambitious dater could start joining more groups. It’s a better idea for how to meet people who actually move in the same real-world spaces you do, but it requires regularly documenting your real-world movements and interests on Facebook.

Relatedly, the easiest way to populate your profile is by filling it with your Instagram photos. Later this year, Facebook Dating users will be able to cross-post their Instagram Stories to their dating profiles. When I asked Hung whether part of the goal of Facebook Dating was to bring young people over from Instagram to the flagship app, she said, “We’re always looking for opportunities where we can see where people like to share. Do people like to share on Facebook? Do people like to share on Instagram? And we want to meet people where they’re already sharing. We’re really excited that we’re bringing Instagram into that.”

I don’t know what that means on a sentence level, but I think probably it’s a yes, generally.

If you’re already good at sharing, and posting, and RSVP-ing, and projecting an authentic self that’s appealing to others online, Facebook Dating might feel, as intended, like a “superpower.” But I am a bad Facebook user, and so I am a bad Facebook dater. At the end of my two-week trial, I had eight matches and two messages: One was “Hey kaitlyn,” and the other was “Sup I’m only here for hookups and memes,” with a laugh-crying emoji. The notifications showed up in my main notifications tab, next to the information that I’d been tagged in photos from my cousin’s wedding.

Even so, Facebook Dating will likely help lots of people find love, for free. Hung repeats that Facebook has no plans to monetize Dating, ever, in any way—no fees, no ads. She even seems annoyed with me for asking. “Yup, there’s no advertising in Facebook Dating, and nothing you do will be shared to advertisers,” she says. “Nothing you do on Facebook Dating will be shared to advertisers.”

The cost of an actually good, useful, dignified dating app is more activity, more engagement, more personal information. When Facebook spokespeople talk about entwining Instagram Stories and Facebook Dating, they speak energetically of how it will make profiles more “authentic”—a word that has been bled of all meaning not by Tinder, but by Instagram itself over the course of the past eight years.

Facebook Dating Review Reddit 2020

Never mind the fact that Facebook is currently the subject of an antitrust investigation; here’s another market it can enter and immediately claim a competitive edge in simply by slamming down the trump card of an unparalleled network graph. Forget that Facebook doesn’t need dating revenue, and won’t collect any; it still thinks of its users as dopey enough not to look for another motive.

Facebook Dating Review Reddit Free

“Facebook knows so much about us, not just how we self-describe,” Kevin Lewis says, trying to riddle out whether its dating experiment will succeed. Facebook has a more intimate understanding of its users than Tinder ever will. But more than 60 percent of Americans don’t trust Facebook with their personal information anymore, if they ever really did. “Facebook is a little late with this. There’s a lot of distrust these days around Facebook,” he says, going back and forth on it. “I could see this leading to a resurgence in Facebook activity and working out quite well; I could see this totally tanking. I think it’ll be one or the other.”

I don’t know—it already worked on me.

[thefeministherald]

A quorum of about 30 male trustees and three female trustees of the 1,200-student Texas seminary were present for a meeting that began Tuesday afternoon to discuss the fate of Patterson, a past president of the Southern Baptist Convention who has been revered as a giant for standing guard for decades against liberalizing changes. In recent weeks, Patterson, 75,  has come under fire for taped comments he made between 2000 and 2014 about women, including remarking on a teenage girl’s figure and saying female seminarians need to work harder to look attractive. He also said women who are abused almost always should stay with their husbands. After thousands of Southern Baptist women signed a petition calling for the seminary’s board of trustees to oust him from his position, he apologized for making comments about the teenager, but he did not apologize for his comments about abused women. The comments had resurfaced on a blog this year. The Washington Post also reported Tuesday that Patterson allegedly told a woman who said she had been raped that she should not report her allegations to the police and encouraged her to forgive her alleged assailant. The story was published as the seminary’s board was meeting. “The board also affirmed a motion stating evidence exists that Dr. Patterson has complied with reporting laws regarding assault and abuse,” Ueckert said in his statement to the press. “The seminary stands against all forms of abuse.” Ueckert also addressed the seminary’s firing of a PhD student from his $40,000-a-year job as the catering kitchen manager and the revoking of his scholarship for tweeting about the Patterson debate, telling him that he was “indiscreet” and that his decision to speak publicly about the dispute “does not exhibit conduct becoming a follower of Jesus.” Patterson had told The Post that Nathan Montgomery had “a long history,” but Ueckert disputed this, saying stated that the board has found no evidence of misconduct in his employee file. He did not address whether the student’s job or scholarship would be reinstated. Ueckert declined to take further questions from The Post. Patterson has been widely revered for his role starting in the 1970s in a conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, which claims 15 million members. During that time, he and other leaders passed resolutions that tied Southern Baptists’ commitment to the inerrancy of the Bible directly to a ban on women pastors and the teaching that women should be submissive to their husbands. He had been scheduled to deliver a high-profile sermon at the denomination’s annual meeting in Dallas next month, prompting concerns that allowing him to speak could send a bad signal about how Southern Baptists regard women. It was unclear whether he will still deliver the sermon. Patterson and his wife had planned to retire on the grounds of the “Baptist Heritage Library,” which the seminary plans to open this summer and which will house Patterson’s collections. The board passed a motion that would allow the Pattersons to retire there. R. Marie Griffith, director of the John Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University, who writes and teaches about gender and religion, said Patterson’s exit reflects a “turning point moment,” a time when a national outside movement — #MeToo, specifically — must be addressed within the huge Southern Baptist Convention. Any other time in recent decades, she said, Patterson and his wife, Dorothy, who Griffith said is her husband’s partner in crafting his ideas on gender, could have avoided repercussions for statements like the ones recently circulated. “The tide has shifted so strongly on these issues of sexual harassment and assault, all I can think is: Enough leaders knew they’d really be condemned and look terrible if they stood up for him at this point,” she said. Griffith said Patterson leaving doesn’t reflect less commitment among the younger generation of conservative male evangelicals to women submitting — but it does show they have a limit as to what that means. “There are an awful lot of people who believe in female submission but don’t counsel people to stay with abusive husbands. His view will turn out to appear extreme. I don’t think this [Patterson leaving] questions female submission to male authority but maybe it does the extreme to which Patterson and others are willing to go. That’s fallen out of favor.” Related: [‘We are shocked’: Thousands of Southern Baptist women denounce leader’s ‘objectifying’ comments, advice to abused women] Younger male evangelical leaders, she said, “are ready to say: Enough with excusing these critical issues.” They feel, she said: “If the denomination is going to thrive it really needs to start afresh.” Barry Hankins, a history professor at Baylor University, which is part of a separate Baptist convention, agreed that there has been a generational shift, with Patterson’s departure representing a turning point in Southern Baptist circles and in evangelicalism more broadly. Gradually, an older guard of leaders like Patterson and Richard Land, who led the SBC’s lobbying arm, are giving way to a younger generation of leaders, like Russell Moore, who now leads the convention’s lobbying arm, and Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. The younger generation tends to take a more modern approach to issues like gender and race and its leaders are less likely to find themselves in Patterson’s shoes, he said. Younger leaders are also less likely to adopt an attitude that conservative Christians represent a “moral majority” that should be a dominant force in politics, Hankins said. Instead, he said, they talk about a “prophetic minority,” an attitude that Christians can still find their voice as they are becoming a smaller slice of America. “The movement has passed onto a different view of how conservative evangelicalism relates to the culture,” he said. The impact of Patterson’s leaving  can not be underestimated, he said. “There is no bigger name in a Southern Baptist conservative movement that could be pressured out [of a job] than Paige Patterson,” said Hankins. Except for the board meeting, the campus seemed mostly quiet Tuesday with most students away for summer break. Most female students approached by The Post declined to be interviewed, but Sarah Reiter, 20, a sophomore music major from Cross Plains, Tex., said she was happy to talk. Reiter’s father, Kenneth, is a Southwestern Baptist graduate and the senior pastor of the First Baptist Church in her hometown. Reiter said she is torn over what Patterson said. On the one hand, she was in an emotionally abusive relationship that ended about a year ago, she said. On the other hand, her current boyfriend’s father was “doing awful things” at one time, such as using drugs, but his story wound up having a happy ending, she said. “His mother stuck around and loved his father through that,” said Reiter. “He became a Christian and was saved, and now their relationship is wonderful.” Reiter, who said she hadn’t heard much discussion among her seminary friends about the controversy, said she was willing to give Patterson the benefit of the doubt. “I don’t feel like he’s promoting abuse,” she said. “He’s not saying, ‘Men, beat your wives so they know how to trust God.’ That’s not what he’s saying.” Related: [Southern Baptist leader who advised abused women not to divorce doubles down, says he has nothing to apologize for] Another student, Sharayah Colter, who is pursuing a master’s degree in theological studies, came to the meeting — part of which was open before the closed-session began — to show support for Patterson. Her husband, Scott, a fellow student and assistant pastor at Birchman Baptist Church in Fort Worth, serves as chief of staff for Patterson. “I think people have mischaracterized him and misconstrued what he has said in the past,” Colter said. “And he’s clarified comments. So just like anybody likes to be taken at their word when they clarify what they really mean, I take him at his word when he explains what he means.” “I’m just very grateful for Dr. Patterson,” she added. “He would be one of my faith heroes, I would say.” It was hard to get a clear overall sense of sentiment within the Convention community. While some supported Patterson, others were unusually outspoken in their criticism. More than 3,200 women — most conservative evangelicals — signed a petition, a rare public display against a man in power, calling for Patterson’s ouster. Since his comments first came out, several Southern Baptist leaders tweeted that they opposed Patterson’s beliefs on abuse and divorce, but few mentioned his name. However, Thom Rainer, the president of LifeWay, the publishing division of the SBC, called Patterson out by name and said, “There is no type or level of abuse of women that is acceptable.” And Ed Stetzer, a Southern Baptist who is executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, said in a blog post that Patterson should retire. “If Paige Patterson preaches at the SBC, he will, because of his past work, get a standing ovation,” Stetzer said. “Every news story will point to that moment … and say that Southern Baptists don’t take abuse seriously. … It’s a message to women that we must not send.”

#paige patterson #metoo #southern baptist church

[dinafbrownil]

They Enrolled in Medical School To Practice Rural Medicine. What Happened?

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SALINA, Kan. — The University of Kansas School of Medicine-Salina opened in 2011 — a one-building campus in the heart of wheat country dedicated to producing the rural doctors the country needs.

Now, eight years later, the school’s first graduates are settling into their chosen practices — and locales. And those choices are cause for both hope and despair.

Of the eight graduates, just three chose to go where the shortages are most evident. Two went to small cities with populations of fewer than 50,000. And three chose the big cities of Topeka (estimated 2018 population: 125,904) and Wichita (389,255) instead.

Their decisions illustrate the challenges facing rural recruitment: the lack of small-town residencies, the preferences of spouses and the isolation that comes with practicing medicine on one’s own.

But the mission is critical: About two-thirds of the primary care health professional shortage areas designated by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration in June were in rural or partially rural areas. And it’s only getting worse.

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As more baby boomer doctors in rural areas reach retirement age, not nearly enough physicians are willing to take their place. By 2030, the New England Journal of Medicine predicts, nearly a quarter fewer rural physicians will be practicing medicine than today. Over half of rural doctors were at least 50 years old in 2017.

So Salina’s creation of a few rural physicians a year is a start, and, surprisingly, one of the country’s most promising.

Only 40 out of the nation’s more than 180 medical schools offer a rural track. The Association of American Medical Colleges ranked KU School of Medicine, which includes Salina, Wichita and Kansas City campuses, in the 96th percentile last year for producing doctors working in rural settings 10 to 15 years after graduation.

“The addition of one physician is huge,” said Dr. William Cathcart-Rake, the founding dean of the Salina campus. “One physician choosing to come may be the difference of communities surviving or dissolving.” 

The Draw Of Rural Life

By placing the new campus in Salina (population: 46,716), surrounded by small towns for at least 50 miles in every direction, the university hoped to attract and foster students who had — and would deepen — a bond to rural communities.

And, for some, it worked out pretty much as planned.

One of the school’s first graduates, Dr. Sara Ritterling Patry, lives in Hutchinson (population: 40,623). Less than an hour from Wichita, it isn’t the most rural community, but it’s small enough that she still runs into her patients at Dillons, the local grocery store.

“Just being in a smaller community like this feels like to me that I can actually get to know my patients and spend a little extra time with them,” she said.

After all, part of the allure of a rural practice is providing care womb to tomb. The doctor learns how to deliver the town’s babies, while serving as the county coroner and the public health expert all at once, said Dr. Robert Moser, the head of the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Salina and former head of the state health department.

He would know — he worked for 22 years in Tribune, Kan. (population: 742).

For another of the original Salina eight, Dr. Tyson Wisinger, that calling brought him back to his hometown of Phillipsburg (population: 2,486) after his residency. His kids will go to his old high school, where his graduating class was all of 13 people, and he’ll take care of their baseball teammates. Plus, they’ll grow up living minutes away from generations of extended family.

“I can’t have imagined a situation that could have been more rewarding,” Wisinger said.

The Rural Challenge

The Original Salina Eight

Three went the urban route:

Dr. Erik Dill decided to be a pathology specialist in more urban Wichita.

Dr. Claire Hinrichsen Groskurth, who intended to practice in a more rural area, is now in Wichita working as an OB-GYN.

Dr. Rany Gilpatrick wanted a more flexible, outpatient schedule as a pediatrician instead of the on-call in-patient life, so she works in Topeka.

Two work in smaller towns:

Dr. Sara Ritterling Patry practices internal medicine in Hutchinson, Kan., to help accommodate her husband’s farming business.

And Dr. Kayla Johnson stayed in Salina as a pediatrician. 

And the final three might as well be poster children for the movement:

Dr. Tyson Wisinger returned to his Kansas hometown of Phillipsburg to practice family medicine.

Drs. Daniel Linville and Jill Corpstein Linville married each other and were recruited to Lakin, Kan., by a rural practice to work in family medicine.

But the road to rural family medicine also includes a thing called “windshield time” — the amount of time needed to travel between clinics or head to the closest Walmart.

Then there’s figuring out just how far their patients will need to drive to get to the nearest hospital — which for Drs. Daniel Linville and Jill Corpstein Linville is a solid four hours for more advanced care from their new practice in Lakin, Kan. (population: 2,195).

Their outpost in southwestern Kansas can feel a little bit like a fishbowl. “We do life with some of our patients,” Corpstein Linville said.

Already, the Linvilles have delivered babies and handled a variety of ailments there.

The pair met and married during their four years in Salina — they jokingly call it a “full-service med school.” They completed a family medicine residency in Muncie, Ind. Then they were recruited by a rural practice that helped them avoid what Moser calls the most dreaded words in rural medicine: “solo practice.”

New doctors don’t want to practice alone, especially as they develop their sea legs, due to the strains of constantly being on call and having singular responsibility for a town. Telemedicine, where doctors can easily consult with other physicians around the country via web video or phone, is helping, as are physician assistants.

Diverging From The Path

Dr. Claire Hinrichsen Groskurth, another member of the first graduating class, always intended to return to a small town similar to where she grew up.

“The first thing that threw me off was I fell in love with surgery and OB-GYN,” she said. “Then the second thing that threw me off was marrying another doctor,” whose life goals headed in a different direction.

She’d been a member of the Scholars in Rural Health program at Kansas University that seeks out rural college students who are interested in medicine. She also had committed to the Kansas Medical Student Loan program, which promises to forgive physicians’ tuition and gives a monthly stipend if they agree to work in counties that need physicians, or in other critical capacities.

But when she realized she might specialize, she decided to take out federal loans for her final years. She had to pay back the first year of the special loan with 15% interest.

With a population under 41,000, Hutchinson, Kan., isn’t the most rural community, but it’s small enough that Ritterling Patry still runs into her patients at the local grocery store.(Aaron Patton for KHN)

Plus, her now-husband, who went to Kansas University’s Wichita campus, needed to be in a large enough city to accommodate further training to become a surgeon. So Hinrichsen Groskurth delivers babies as she thought she would — but in Wichita.

The spousal coin can flip both ways: Ritterling Patry needed to find a place that worked for her husband’s farming of corn, sorghum, soybeans and wheat. So the smaller city of Hutchinson it was.

Flaws In The Pipeline

Most medical school students come from urban areas and are destined to stay there, said Alan Morgan, the head of the National Rural Health Association. Producing doctors for the vast swaths of rural America needs to be more of a priority at every step in the education pipeline, experts said.

Many academic centers sell students on the party line that they’ll be overworked, underappreciated and underpaid, according to Dr. Mark Deutchman, director of the University of Colorado School of Medicine’s rural program. “They take people who are interested in primary care or rural and beat it out of them throughout their training,” he said.

And that kind of rhetoric often influences the opinion of their medical school peers, which those in rural health might resent.

“Small does not mean stupid,” Moser said.

Medical students everywhere should be exposed to rural options, according to Dr. Randall Longenecker, who runs Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine’s rural programs.

“If a medical student never ever goes to a rural place, they never find out,” he said. “That’s why students need to meet rural doctors who love what they do.”

The federal government recently allocated $20 million in grants to help create 27 rural residency programs — programs where newly minted doctors go for practical training before they can be fully licensed. That’s a big jump from the 92 programs now active.

For Jill Corpstein Linville, the pipeline also needs to start at more schools like Salina that are promoting rural medicine from Day One.

“So when you hear rural medicine, you know that it’s a thing and don’t kind of cringe,” she said. “You don’t think it’s someone taking care of a cow.”

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/kansas-medical-school-rural-health-care/

[sammacduffy-blog]

My Dad’s Notebooks

I recently came across my dad’s old journals. They do not resemble the notebooks talks about in his writings. I’ve found the notebooks and have secured them.

The reasons that I’m transcribing his journals is simple, he’s going missing. I need help finding him.

Anyways, here it goes:

Hello there. I’m not sure what you are expecting to find here. Hell, I’m not sure what I’ll be writing here. I already write so much in those damned notebooks. I use the word “damned” in a quite literal sense. You’ll under

Anyways, I wanted to leave something for my family. I’ve been going through a lot lately and figured that getting my thoughts out on normal paper would be a hell of a lot better than the alternative… I’m sorry, I must sound confusing. I hope that the further you read, the more it will make sense.

Where should I start? From the beginning? Sure, why not. Every story has a beginning.

I was raised a typical military brat. Spent time over in Europe and a multitude of states. My dad worked with the Air Force in Strategic Air Command. All I knew about his job what that is was classified. He once tried explaining it to me like this:

“Well, it’s like going to work every day and trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle. However, the picture is a solid color and other people keep adding more pieces or hiding them from you.”

I didn’t see him much. The only way in knew he was home was by the presence of his duffel bags. He had one packed for an out-of-country deployment and one for an in-country TDY. If both bags were by the door, I knew he was home.

Mom did her best to keep up with my brother and me. It didn’t help that she also worked a classified job, just on the DoD Civilian side of things. At least we were able to see her at nights and on weekends.

During the week days, my brother would go to day care and I would go to the base’s youth center. I was a little awkward and mostly kept to myself. I didn’t really fit any “normal” stereotype. After awhile, I got use to being alone. It got to the point that I started to worry my parents. I enjoyed being alone so much that it seemed normal to me. My parents said that I should have been spending time with kids on my own age and enjoying the very few family functions we had.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved my family. I just didn’t want to be around them.

Before my lack of social skills became too much of a problem, my dad was medically discharged from the Air Force and we moved back to my parent’s hometown. The thought was that our family down there would be able to “instill the traditional southern hospitality” in me and I would become “normal.”

Given the type of people that frequent this website, I know that you’ll find that humorous. Just finish laughing and I’ll type ahead. Heaven knows that I’m not going anywhere.

So, to appease my parents and keep from being hackled to death by my family, I became “normal.” There was a trade off, however. It seemed to be an unspoken agreement between my parents and me. I would act “normal” out in public and around my extended family and then I was allowed my alone time when we were at our house.

After the second week of being in their hometown, my mom bought me a little back notebook. She thought that I should be able to at least get my thoughts out of my head and express myself in some form.

We settled into a routine of me going to school and having a social life with friends. My parents pretended that everything was fine and I would steal away into my room every sparing moment that I could and fill notebooks full of rants, short stories, and general thoughts.

I felt comfortable writing. Just something about the pen and paper. The ink and paper didn’t judge. My favorite combination was a classic, lined Molekine hard cover journal and a Parker Jotter pen. I wrote so much that a callus developed on the side of my middle finger. Each of my writing sessions would leave my hand cramped and aching, and I loved it.

I eventually graduated high school and didn’t follow the normal crowd to university. Instead, I chose to go into public service. I went to a community college and obtained my EMT-Basic certificate and license. I worked my way up to being a Paramedic and actually enjoyed my job.

I bet you’re scratching your head. Yeah, a little more information will help.

My dad was a fire medic for our hometown before he enlisted in the Air Force. Because he went into the National Guard and not active duty straight away, they made his civilian job his military job. When it was apparent that my parents couldn’t afford a family on a firefighter’s salary, dad when active duty and we were shipped to Europe. During his transition back to the states, he was moved to SAC.

The few conversations that I did have with him, he had always talked about enjoying the fire department and wishing that he had never left.

With that, I followed in my father’s foot steps. But, I didn’t stop at just being a paramedic. I obtained my flight medic certification and when through a Tactical Combat Casualty Care course. I spent time attached to my county’s Sheriff S.W.A.T. Team. I worked with an anti-human trafficking group. I became a Critical Stress Incident Debriefer. The certifications I earned goes on for days.

It’s no secret that we see some bad things in the field and the list of fucked-up shit that I’ve seen is long and extensive.

So, for your benefit, beloved reader, I will not go into detail. Those are my demons to deal with.

Every chance I get, I put another demon into one of my precious notebooks. My hand screams with pain every time I write. It’s almost as if I can feel the pain leaving my body through the ink of my pen. The gratification of seeing that ink forever trapped on those pages is indescribable.

I do my best to keep my notebooks from my family. The atrocities that fill those pages makes the devil smile with delight. Sometimes, I can even hear him whisper over my shoulder to let the demons out.

“Oh, how beautiful if would be…” he would start. “It’s very simple and you know it.” My hands would run over the covers of my notebooks, feeling each one of them begging to be let out. His whispers would grow sweeter and more enticing each time he spoke.

Then, I would see a reflection of myself. An evil grin playing on my lips. I would snap out of it and leave my office.

My office is not very big. I live in a four bed room house and it’s the smaller of the rooms. I installed a lock on the door to keep the curious temptations of my wife and kids in check. I bought a small second hand desk and shelves. Each shelf is filled with my precious notebooks. Their spines smile at me every time I walk in the room. At last count, I had two-thousand and fifty-seven notebooks.

I do what I feel like every dutiful father and husband should. I provide for my family. I make time for my girls and wife. But, when they are all in bed, I head to my office. My wife knows where I go. She knows that if I walk into my office with a bad attitude, I always come out feeling better.

I have a routine when I enter my office. I unlock the door, step inside, shut and lock my door, and stand there in the darkness for no more than ninety seconds. It becomes too unbearable if I stay in the dark any longer. After turning on the light, I make my way to my coffee maker and make a large cup of coffee. Once it has brewed and coffee in hand, I walk over to the book shelf that holds my empty notebooks and select one. It isn’t a random choice, while all of my notebooks look that same, each notebook is different. I run my fingers over the spines and pick the one that calls to me that day. I sit down at my desk and pull out my pen. I take a sip of coffee and start to write.

My writing isn’t elegant or beautiful. It’s harsh and heavy-handed. When I start, the pages of the notebook are slowly filled. The pages make a satisfyingly crackle when I turn to write on the next page. As each page passes, the writing becomes faster. There is not change to my handwriting, my writing just becomes faster and faster. There are no breaks and I don’t go back to read them. When I finally close my notebook and slide the elastic band over the cover, my hand is aching and he is whispering in my ear. You see, the coffee isn’t for me. I just make sure the taste is suitable for him. Once I am able to stand, I take my notebook over to the shelves of full notebooks and slide it into its proper place. There is no origination to my notebooks, each one just tells me where to place it.

I wipe out the used coffee mug, place it next to the coffee maker, and unlock my door. Just before I step out of the door, I hear him say, “See you tomorrow night.”

It wasn’t a normal routine. But, it was one that allowed for my family to live happily enough. There where times that I was not able to write in my notebooks and my family could tell. One time, I tried for about a week and was almost put on anti-depressants as a result. At that point, my wife encouraged me to write every night that I was at home. My parents, however, still thought that it was unhealthy. I wish they would have just left everything alone. Things would definitely be better if they had.

I remember that day very clearly. I had gotten off of shift that morning and had taken my girls to see their aunt. My dad was suppose to get off of work a little after noon and meet us at their house so we could all spend some time together before Aunt Pam left to go back home.

Mom asked me to call dad to make sure that he knew to come home instead of going to his doctor’s appointment. (We rescheduled it for the next week.) Dad said, “Ok.” And we went back to talking like nothing was wrong.

You can see where this is going.

Last trigger warning. It’s about to get graphic.

When I couldn’t get a hold of dad and he didn’t show up for dinner, I went to his office to check on him. My heart sank as I turned the corner and saw his truck sitting in the empty parking lot. He wouldn’t answer the door and very time I called, I could hear his phone ring.

I called 911 and gave them my spill. Luckily I knew the dispatcher and the responding fire department. We were able to use a halligan tool to open the side door and we made entry.

I was the first one to find him. He was lying in the floor of the bathroom with his belt around his neck. I’ve seen too many dead bodies to know. The ashen skin, the cyanosis around his lips, and swollen tongue, I knew he had passed. All I could do was stand there, knowing that there was absolutely nothing I could do. The feeling of helplessness was overwhelming. I felt the a pair of arms wrap around me and then I was being led out of the building by my colleagues.

I sat on the bumper of the rescue truck. My face buried in my hands. No matter how hard I not to let them, the tears escaped. There wasn’t a person on scene that I didn’t know. I was brought water, offered a consoling word or two, and hugged. After what seemed an eternity, I was able to compose myself long enough to talk with a deputy and answer his questions.

After a while the dark humor took over and it was as if I were just on another scene with my co-workers. Of course, I had to step away a time or two, just to compose myself and then walk back. It was during one of my walks back that I noticed it. A set of eyes just beyond the edge of light. It was far enough back into the shadows that I couldn’t quite make out the shape, but I knew exactly what it was. It was at that time that I felt a slight touch on my should and a whisper in my ear.

“He read one.” His voice jeered. “Oh, how beautiful it was.” I couldn’t see him, but I knew that he was smiling.”

“Now is not the time to be playing fucking games.” I said in a low tone. All fear from me had gone. Nothing but anger and hatred were guiding my words.

I felt his hand move from my shoulder, almost as a startle. It was then that I realized that this was the first time that I had actually spoken to him.

“No games.” He said. All evidence of him being startled was nonexistent. “I’m only speaking truth. Go look in his office chair.”

Without saying another word to him, I walked up to the deputy and asked to look at my dad’s office chair. The deputy walked with me into dad’s office and using a gloved hand, we pushed the chair back. There is was, sitting as he said it would be.

“Anything relevant?” The deputy asked.

“Not sure. You mind?” I asked, gesturing to the notebook. The deputy shook his head and I opened the notebook. It was completely empty.

His voice returned to my ear, “Your door is no longer locked.”

#horror #story #wiriting #writers #writers on tumblr #ghost #creepypasta #creepy

[aaronsniderus]

How Single Women Can Live Out Their Retirement Dreams

Retiring as a single woman could be challenging, but it doesn’t have to be. After all, there is no reason why a single woman can’t live out her retirement dreams – as long as she plans for it.

According to insights by Schwab, 36% of women over age 65 live alone. They also mention that in the event of a divorce near retirement age, single people “may face the possibility of lower savings, higher expenses or a smaller income.”

If a single woman takes specific steps to prepare for retirement, she should be able to enjoy as many retirement benefits, if not more, as her non-single counterparts.

Below are two examples of women who are doing just that, as well as some tips on how you can get there, too.

Rosemary Clement

Photo submitted by Rosemary Clement – Taken on a recent trip to New York City. One of her former dance students invited her to sit in the grand stands at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Rosemary Clement is an incredible woman in her 80s who recently lost her husband of 67 years. Despite the personal hardships she’s endured over the past year, she still remains positive and is truly enjoying her retirement.

Rosemary explains, “My husband, Walter, would want me to have a good time and enjoy my retirement years. He wouldn’t want me to stay home and cry.” So, along with four of her friends who are also widows (she says they call themselves “The 5 Musketeers”), she regularly volunteers for various organizations in her hometown of Slidell, Louisiana.

When I asked her how she financially prepared for retirement, she said, “My father always told me to put money away for a rainy day, even if I was doing well.” Rosemary was a business owner in her hometown for 40 years. She owned a successful dance studio and then a gymnastics club, which at one point had more than 300 students enrolled. During that point in her life, she earned a high income, but she always saved. Today, she lives comfortably using income from Social Security, her nest egg and the sale from the large building that used to house her gymnastics club.

When I asked what advice she would give to other single women who might be planning for retirement, she said, “Always save, even if you’re earning a high income, and give back. Volunteering is what makes your retirement years much more fun.”

Dr. Kathleen Jones

Dr. Kathleen Jones is a newly retired professor who spent the majority of her career as at Virginia Tech. There, she was an associate professor and director of graduate studies in the department of history. Faced with her impeding retirement, Dr. Jones, in true academic style, started a blog called The Retiring Professor (https://theretiringprofessor.wordpress.com/) as way to reflect on her transition to retirement.

Dr. Jones is also a single mother who navigated the tricky waters of financially planning for her daughter’s college education while also paying off her own mortgage before retiring. That, combined with a self-described “late start” securing her academic tenure track position, means she wishes she would have saved more for retirement, despite being prepared well enough to pay the bills now. Still, she went into retirement debt-free and advises other single women to do the same: “Entering retirement unencumbered by debt has made a huge difference in adjusting to my new income structure.”

Because she is newly retired, Dr. Jones says what she currently enjoys most about retirement is “fantasizing about what I would like to do – like that trip to Germany to trace ancestral roots.” At present, she’s actually finishing the final chapter of her book free from the pressures of faculty meetings and teaching classes.

Dr. Jones also says that she has spent more time with her grandchidren “now that visits are not determined by university holidays and summers with no teaching obligations.” Of course, it’s also not surprising that as soon as she finishes writing her own book, she’s eyeing several shelves full of books she’s been meaning to read.

She is also becoming more politically active and plans to enroll in a master gardener class since gardening has been her “relief from academic stress” for years.

When I asked Dr. Jones what her advice would be to other single women who want to enjoy retirement in the future, she said, “Find a community of like-minded retired single women.” This could prove helpful when discussing tedious financial issues and provide support for everyday things, such as “needing rides to the doctor if you are not near family!”

She also encourages single women to “think of retirement as a process, not an event – a process that needs to begin years before you retire. Financial planning is part of that process but so is emotional and psychological planning.”

Tips to Plan for Your Retirement

As evidenced above, your retirement years as a single woman can look however you want. In order to fulfill your dreams of travel, homeownership or starting a business during your retirement years, it’s important to plan now.

If you want to have a happy retirement like Rosemary and Kathleen, start today by completing these steps:

Define your goals. You need to do more than put a picture of a place you want to travel on your fridge. Instead, write down extremely clear goals that you want to achieve. For example, instead of writing down “I want to retire early,” write “I want to save $1.5 million by the time I’m 45 years old.”

Create a plan. Once you know your very specific goals, you can then reverse engineer them to get there. Find out how much money you need to save for retirement and then work backward. In order to achieve that number, accounting for inflation, how much do you need to invest if the market gives you average returns? If you’re not able to save the amount you need every month, what do you have to do to get there? Do you need to change jobs, reduce your spending or try something else?

Act on it. You can set your goals and create a plan, but the real difference will come when you finally act on it. Set up your automatic savings. Make your investments, create extra income and daily remind yourself of your goals. If you get off track, don’t beat yourself up. Simply redirect and keep trying.

Ultimately, if you’re a single woman, you have every ability within you to achieve your retirement dreams. Whether you’re recently widowed like Rosemary or have spent your adult life being single like Kathleen, you can decide how you want to spend your retirement years. In order to get there, it’s important to plan and save now – starting today – so that you can enjoy your bliss-filled retirement, whenever that may be.

Are you a single woman who wants to retire early? Or, are you a single woman who is worried about having enough saved for retirement? What questions do you have about saving for your future?

The post How Single Women Can Live Out Their Retirement Dreams appeared first on ZING Blog by Quicken Loans.

from Updates About Loans https://www.quickenloans.com/blog/single-women-can-live-retirement-dreams

[mikebrackett]

How Single Women Can Live Out Their Retirement Dreams

Retiring as a single woman could be challenging, but it doesn’t have to be. After all, there is no reason why a single woman can’t live out her retirement dreams – as long as she plans for it.

According to insights by Schwab, 36% of women over age 65 live alone. They also mention that in the event of a divorce near retirement age, single people “may face the possibility of lower savings, higher expenses or a smaller income.”

If a single woman takes specific steps to prepare for retirement, she should be able to enjoy as many retirement benefits, if not more, as her non-single counterparts.

Below are two examples of women who are doing just that, as well as some tips on how you can get there, too.

Rosemary Clement

Photo submitted by Rosemary Clement – Taken on a recent trip to New York City. One of her former dance students invited her to sit in the grand stands at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Rosemary Clement is an incredible woman in her 80s who recently lost her husband of 67 years. Despite the personal hardships she’s endured over the past year, she still remains positive and is truly enjoying her retirement.

Rosemary explains, “My husband, Walter, would want me to have a good time and enjoy my retirement years. He wouldn’t want me to stay home and cry.” So, along with four of her friends who are also widows (she says they call themselves “The 5 Musketeers”), she regularly volunteers for various organizations in her hometown of Slidell, Louisiana.

When I asked her how she financially prepared for retirement, she said, “My father always told me to put money away for a rainy day, even if I was doing well.” Rosemary was a business owner in her hometown for 40 years. She owned a successful dance studio and then a gymnastics club, which at one point had more than 300 students enrolled. During that point in her life, she earned a high income, but she always saved. Today, she lives comfortably using income from Social Security, her nest egg and the sale from the large building that used to house her gymnastics club.

When I asked what advice she would give to other single women who might be planning for retirement, she said, “Always save, even if you’re earning a high income, and give back. Volunteering is what makes your retirement years much more fun.”

Dr. Kathleen Jones

Dr. Kathleen Jones is a newly retired professor who spent the majority of her career as at Virginia Tech. There, she was an associate professor and director of graduate studies in the department of history. Faced with her impeding retirement, Dr. Jones, in true academic style, started a blog called The Retiring Professor (https://theretiringprofessor.wordpress.com/) as way to reflect on her transition to retirement.

Dr. Jones is also a single mother who navigated the tricky waters of financially planning for her daughter’s college education while also paying off her own mortgage before retiring. That, combined with a self-described “late start” securing her academic tenure track position, means she wishes she would have saved more for retirement, despite being prepared well enough to pay the bills now. Still, she went into retirement debt-free and advises other single women to do the same: “Entering retirement unencumbered by debt has made a huge difference in adjusting to my new income structure.”

Because she is newly retired, Dr. Jones says what she currently enjoys most about retirement is “fantasizing about what I would like to do – like that trip to Germany to trace ancestral roots.” At present, she’s actually finishing the final chapter of her book free from the pressures of faculty meetings and teaching classes.

Dr. Jones also says that she has spent more time with her grandchidren “now that visits are not determined by university holidays and summers with no teaching obligations.” Of course, it’s also not surprising that as soon as she finishes writing her own book, she’s eyeing several shelves full of books she’s been meaning to read.

She is also becoming more politically active and plans to enroll in a master gardener class since gardening has been her “relief from academic stress” for years.

When I asked Dr. Jones what her advice would be to other single women who want to enjoy retirement in the future, she said, “Find a community of like-minded retired single women.” This could prove helpful when discussing tedious financial issues and provide support for everyday things, such as “needing rides to the doctor if you are not near family!”

She also encourages single women to “think of retirement as a process, not an event – a process that needs to begin years before you retire. Financial planning is part of that process but so is emotional and psychological planning.”

Tips to Plan for Your Retirement

As evidenced above, your retirement years as a single woman can look however you want. In order to fulfill your dreams of travel, homeownership or starting a business during your retirement years, it’s important to plan now.

If you want to have a happy retirement like Rosemary and Kathleen, start today by completing these steps:

Define your goals. You need to do more than put a picture of a place you want to travel on your fridge. Instead, write down extremely clear goals that you want to achieve. For example, instead of writing down “I want to retire early,” write “I want to save $1.5 million by the time I’m 45 years old.”

Create a plan. Once you know your very specific goals, you can then reverse engineer them to get there. Find out how much money you need to save for retirement and then work backward. In order to achieve that number, accounting for inflation, how much do you need to invest if the market gives you average returns? If you’re not able to save the amount you need every month, what do you have to do to get there? Do you need to change jobs, reduce your spending or try something else?

Act on it. You can set your goals and create a plan, but the real difference will come when you finally act on it. Set up your automatic savings. Make your investments, create extra income and daily remind yourself of your goals. If you get off track, don’t beat yourself up. Simply redirect and keep trying.

Ultimately, if you’re a single woman, you have every ability within you to achieve your retirement dreams. Whether you’re recently widowed like Rosemary or have spent your adult life being single like Kathleen, you can decide how you want to spend your retirement years. In order to get there, it’s important to plan and save now – starting today – so that you can enjoy your bliss-filled retirement, whenever that may be.

Are you a single woman who wants to retire early? Or, are you a single woman who is worried about having enough saved for retirement? What questions do you have about saving for your future?

The post How Single Women Can Live Out Their Retirement Dreams appeared first on ZING Blog by Quicken Loans.

from Updates About Loans https://www.quickenloans.com/blog/single-women-can-live-retirement-dreams

[fluorescentlightbulboftruth]

*Rhetoric as Narrative*

In this entry, I will examine the critical questions: What narrative does this artifact tell? Is the speaker using their rhetoric to lead or speak the views of the demos? What are the benefits and disadvantages of doing so?

To investigate these questions, I examined an episode of Parks and Recreation (season 7, episode 9: Pie-Mary) as my rhetorical artifact. During this season, Ben Wyatt is running for Congress. During this episode, his wife, Leslie, refuses to participate in a pie baking contest that all the candidates’ wives traditionally par take in. This causes a lot of backlash from the community because Leslie is refusing to conform to the gender role that wives must be domestic, including having good baking skills. Some of the “men’s rights” activists (self-proclaimed “male men”) even go as far as to claim Ben is being oppressed by his wife’s refusal to conform. In the attached clip, Ben gives his wife a platform to speak about her feelings towards the backlash. Leslie states, “I’m sorry that the spotlight is on me, and not Ben, because he is going to make a great congressman.” Leslie points out that a lot of the questions the media are asking about the campaign are pointless and have nothing to do with what matters – Ben’s political stances and policy ideas. She does so by asking and answering all the questions she thinks the media will ask to her over the election cycle: “‘Why did you change your hairstyle?’ I don’t know, I just thought it would look better, or my kids got gum in it. ‘Are you trying to have it all?’ That question makes no sense… ‘Do you miss your kids when you’re at work?’ Yes, of course I do. Everybody does. And ya know, sometimes I don’t.” Ben chimes in, pointing out how sexist the questions that women get are, considering nobody has ever asked them to him. When Leslie is done giving her speech, she is met with half cheers and half boos.

Palczewski, Ice, and Fritch (2012) define narratives as a story. They state that narratives are a form of rhetoric, and they are everywhere, always informing all aspects of the world in which we live. Consequentially, narratives are a way for people to make sense of their lives. Oftentimes there are narratives that an entire community shares, and these stories have the purpose of teaching cultural values. In the Parks and Recreation episode, the narrative of the Pawnee pie baking contest represents the values of the community, and this is why so many people get upset with Leslie when she declines to participate. By not entering the contest, Leslie is refusing to perpetuate the narrative that wives must be domestic, which is a strong belief upheld by most of the people in her small hometown. In addition, Leslie’s speech indicates a different narrative – that it does not actually matter what she is doing, because the people are voting for her husband, and not her. However, as can be seen by the crowd’s reaction, this is not a cultural value supported by the majority, and she is therefore not using rhetoric to speak the views of the demos. Instead, Leslie is hoping to convince the people that there are more important matters than baking, and that the election should be focused on the candidates instead of their spouses.

In addition to beliefs held by smaller communities, narratives often convey cultural beliefs perceived to be held by the country as whole. For instance, Palczewski, Ice, and Fritch (2012) discuss the narrative of the American Dream, which places value on hard work and tells citizens that if they are determined enough, they can accomplish anything. Iversen (2014) further expands upon this idea by analyzing a speech by President Obama. In his 2009 address on health care, Obama retold “Ted Kennedy’s experience of children suffering from cancer with a larger narrative of what constitutes the American character in order to persuade his audience to act in favor of the proposed reform.” In this address, Obama is appealing to a value, the “American character,” that he already knows the United States citizens care about. Public speakers are generally expected to align their rhetoric with what the demos want to hear and what will make them feel good about themselves. Speakers do this by incorporating the beliefs of the demos into their speeches, and by avoiding ideas that conflict with preexisting values of the community (Kunde 2017). However, as can be seen by Leslie’s speech, this does not always happen.

There are advantages and disadvantages of politicians and public servants like Leslie being blunt about how citizens can improve. One obvious disadvantage is that there can be serious political consequences. In Ancient Greece, if someone chose to sue someone, the equivalent of the plaintiff could be fined or even sentenced to death if the public disagreed with them (Ober 2000). Similarly, in the case of Ben Wyatt’s campaign, his wife’s disapproving speech could have resulted in his loss. Another disadvantage is that people in power are not always representing the people, and therefore the democracy of the community may be called into question. In the case of Ben Wyatt’s campaign, he is not yet elected, and therefore he does not have much influence over many changes in the community. However, if he or Leslie were in office, they could make the decision to put their personal beliefs in front of the beliefs of the majority, possibly getting rid of the pie baking contest altogether. Of course, this lack of democracy is not necessarily a bad thing. One danger of blindly following the wishes of the people in order to have a representative democracy is that the majority can be (and oftentimes is) wrong. Therefore, one advantage of speaking out against the demos is that positive change can come about when people in power question the status quo. If rhetoric is done effectively, it has the power to change people’s opinions of reality (i.e. “maybe focusing on Leslie’s pie baking skills is not really a productive civic duty”), and as a result, it can also change people’s behaviors (i.e. “maybe I should consider Ben’s platform instead of his wife’s domestic life when deciding who to vote for”). Rhetoric is not only a reflection of reality – it has the power to change reality in and of itself (Booth 2004).

In summary, the narrative of the Pawnee pie baking contest upholds the community’s value of placing women in domestic areas, and therefore Leslie’s refusal to participate in it is seen as rejection of Pawnee values. For this reason, many people were upset with Leslie. However, Leslie spoke up for herself by disagreeing with public opinion. Leslie was honest and upfront about how Pawnee Indianans could be better citizens. Of course, there should be a balance between telling people the truth and out right criticizing all of their beliefs. Although a lot of the audience probably did not change their minds after Leslie’s speech, there nevertheless needs to be someone who forces us to question the status quo, and there needs to be more people like Leslie who tell everyone what they need to hear instead of trying to appeal to them for political and personal gain.

 References

Booth, W. (2004). How many rhetorics? In The rhetoric of rhetoric (pp. 3-22). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Iversen, S. (2014). Narratives in rhetorical discourse. In: The living handbook of narratology. Hamburg: Hamburg University.

Kunde, M. (2017). Democracy and rhetoric in Athens [Powerpoint]. Retrieved from Moodle: http://moodle.augustana.edu/mod/folder/view.php?id=208894.

Ober, J. (2000). The orators. In C. Rowe and M. Schofield (Eds.), The Cambridge history of the Greek and Roman political thought (pp. 130-141). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Palczewski, C. H., Ice, R., Fritch, J. (2012). Narratives: In Rhetoric in civic life (pp. 117-146). State College, PA: Strata Publishing, Inc.

[hottytoddynews]

Veteran librarian Laura Harper has established a Government Publications Fund to give Ole Miss students access to a broader scope of information. UM photo by Bill Dabney

Veteran University of Mississippi librarian Laura Harper may have left campus, but her legacy remains in the form of a treasure trove of information older than the Titanic and far below the surface of Google.

Harper recently retired after 45 years at the J.D. Williams Library, but she continues to have such a strong desire for students to be able to access government information that she personally paid for subscriptions to databases that contain such documents as the unpublished transcripts of congressional hearings dating back to 1824, congressional research from 1830 forward and interactive, digital maps of Mississippi as early as 1867 through 1970.

“Laura’s gift will provide added depth to our already extensive collection of government information,” said Ashley Dees, research and instruction librarian and longtime co-worker of Harper’s. “Her gift highlights Laura’s longstanding commitment to providing students and the UM community with access to government information.”

The recent database subscriptions plus her previous financial support for the library’s Information Commons, Art Store, STUDIOone and Friends of the Library bring Harper’s total giving to Ole Miss to more than $150,000.

Harper takes her gift in stride.

“I thought, ‘Why not?'” she said – modest words for this “extraordinary librarian” known for her “helpfulness and her ability to find anything you’re looking for,” according to letters from colleagues who recommended Harper for the prestigious 2011 Bernadine Abbott Hoduski Founders Award, which she won.

The American Library Association’s award recognizes librarians who may not be known at the national level but have made significant contributions to the field of government documents. Other recommendations describe Harper’s work as “second to none” and laud her knowledge as “extensive.”

Those comments are all true, said Cecilia Botero, library dean.

“From my perspective, Laura’s gift to the university is the manifestation of her deep devotion to promoting access to government information and her desire to ensure that the UM community and the people of the state of Mississippi are offered the best opportunity to make use of that wealth of information,” Botero said.

So what’s available? Oliver North, Iran-Contra, the different impeachment investigations, Watergate, Supreme Court nomination hearings, and the Lincoln, Kennedy and McKinley assassinations, just for starters.

“Even the documentary, day-by-day, most detailed history and correspondence of the Civil War is there in full text,” Harper said. “All of the words in the reports are searchable – people, places, battles.

“By searching the text of hearings in the early 1950s, for instance, you can trace the rise of McCarthyism … and its fall in 1954 during the historic, 36-day live telecast of the Army McCarthy hearings, when the senator was asked by lawyer Joseph Welch, ‘Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?’ You can also type in the names of witnesses such as Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett or Will Geer to read their testimony in earlier investigations of communism in Hollywood.”

Students researching these and other topics may be tempted to turn first to Google, but they’ll be hard pressed to find the most in-depth information, Harper said.

“Government documents are by their nature a sort of difficult area, requiring a little more effort to try to research them,” she said. “You need to invest some time and get people to help you.

“I would hope that students who graduate from Ole Miss would learn to value the library and the librarians for their expertise as professionals, and that they realize they can do a better paper and learn to do their research in a more sophisticated manner if they will go and talk to a librarian.”

Harper witnessed thousands of students succeed in her tenure at Ole Miss, which included 17 years in the Reference Department, 11 library directors/deans and six chancellors.

“When a faculty member chooses to make a financial gift to the university, it speaks volumes about their commitment to the meaningful work that we do and the endearing qualities of this institution,” said Noel Wilkin, interim provost and executive vice chancellor. “For more than four decades, Laura Harper was committed to helping our students broaden their educational opportunities.

“Now, through her gift, she will continue to reach generations of students as they work to realize their educational goals through study and research. For her time and for her generous contributions, we are very grateful.”

After earning her undergraduate and master’s degrees from Louisiana State University, Harper’s first professional job as a librarian was in the public library in her hometown of Monroe, Louisiana. Then, she and her late husband moved to Oxford.

“A newlywed, I thought I would work here only two years or so and we would move on after my husband finished his doctorate,” she said. “But we stayed here when he got a job at Blue Mountain College. Later, after his death, I had the opportunity to become a department head, when the legendary Annie Mills retired as head of Government Publications.”

As the regional depository for Mississippi, Government Documents provides guidance to smaller depositories and serves the entire state. The library’s catalog provides access to almost a million volumes of government publications, 40 percent of which are available in full text online.

Before retiring, Harper moved to Technical Services, where she managed processing and cataloging of documents, as well as answered reference referrals.

“It has been a privilege to have been part of the library and the Ole Miss family for so many years,” Harper said. “I will miss being a part of the next chapter in the library’s history but hope to watch from the sidelines as a member of the Friends of the Library board.”

The Laura G. Harper Government Publications Fund is open to receive gifts from individuals and organizations; mail a check with the name of the fund noted in the memo line to the University of Mississippi Foundation, 406 University Ave., Oxford, MS 38655 or visit online at http://ift.tt/2eYc0j8keagift. For more information, contact Angela Barlow Brown, development officer for the J.D. Williams Library, at [email protected] or 662-915-3181.

By Bill Dabney

For more questions or comments email us at [email protected]. 

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The post Librarian Leaves Impressive Legacy At University appeared first on HottyToddy.com.

#hottytoddy #olemiss #oxfordms #oxford ms #mississippi #university of mississippi #the grove

[tragicbooks]

What it's like to be black when your state is 94% white.

<br>

When Cherie Buckner-Webb was 5 or 6 years old, someone burned a cross in the front yard of her Boise home.

Buckner-Webb and her family had every reason to leave the neighborhood, or even Idaho, after that. Instead, her mother turned an act of bigotry into a powerful teachable moment.

"My father would've liked to taken it and hidden it away," Buckner-Webb says, "and my mom was saying 'Put it on the front porch. We've been living here a year in this neighborhood, and they are late.'"

Boise in the spring. Photo by iStock.

Buckner-Webb is a black face in a white space. And like her mother before her, she's not going anywhere.

She is a fifth generation black Idahoan, and her family has deep roots in the state. One of her great-grandfathers even founded and built the first black church in the Boise area. Her parents were active in the community, with the NAACP chapter and other local initiatives.

But numbers don't lie: less than 1% of Idaho residents — about 13,250 people — identify as black or African-American, and Buckner-Webb recalls a childhood tinted with the hypervisibility that comes with being the only black face in the group.

"I was very well-behaved and probably because there was a small number of us," she says. "I tell the same thing to my children, 'Nobody will notice anybody that you're with, but they'll notice the one black kid in the group.'"

Image via iStock.

Buckner-Webb credits her mother for telling her the honest truth about the "the way things were."

"It was really important to her that her children had an awareness and understanding of what it is to be black and walk in the world." Buckner-Webb says. "I realized quickly that our way of being was different and unique to the kids I went to school with."

She made connections and built a lot of her community at church.

"It seemed like almost everybody black in Idaho, whether it was for the National Guard or whatever, we all met up [in church]," she says. "It had a lot to do with religion, but it had a lot to do with a place you saw people who look like you, a gathering place."

Image by iStock.

Across the country, Curtiss Reed is working on building community and gathering places for all Vermonters, but especially people of color.

Reed was living in St. Louis but working on a consulting project in Washington, D.C., when a friend invited him up to Vermont for a ski weekend in 1978.

"I found it picture postcard perfect," he says. "And six months later, I moved — relocated to Vermont."

Reed lived and worked in the Green Mountain State for five years, then spent nearly two decades traveling and working abroad. He lived and worked in France, Tunisia, Burundi, and more. But when it was time to return to the states in 2001, there was only one place Reed wanted to be: Vermont.

Vermont in the fall. Photo by iStock.

"When I was overseas, I voted absentee ballot, got the newspapers three or four weeks after the fact, paid my taxes, etc. This has always been home," he says.

But much like in Idaho, Vermont's black population is staggeringly small. There are approximately 8,100 black people (1.3% of the population) in the entire state. That's about .84 of a black person per square mile. To put it in perspective, there are approximately 52 black people per square mile in Florida. States like Vermont are blinding whiteness, and black people in these regions are truly few and far between.

Today, Reed lives in Brattleboro and is executive director of the Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity.

"We are the organization people turn to when they want to address issues of equity in the public sphere," he says. Recruiting employees and visitors of color is more than a "nice-to-have." For Vermont, it's now or never.

The state's low-birth rate and large percentage of people over 65 (17.6%) means Vermont is in desperate need of more people. Not just skilled workers to replenish the work force, but visitors to keep the state's thriving outdoor tourism industry afloat.

"Vermont's future is inextricably tied to it's ability for the state to be an attractive destination for folks of color," Reed says.

It's a snowy day in Burlington, Vermont. Photo by Jordan Silverman/Getty Images.

To build community and foster new relationships, both Buckner-Webb and Reed have tapped into local black history.

Buckner-Webb is on the board of the Idaho Black History Museum. Housed in the church founded by her great-grandfather, the building was lifted off its foundation and moved to a local park. Since 1995, guests have enjoyed exhibits, guest lectures, musical performances, and community programs.

"It's possibly the first black history museum in the Pacific Northwest," she says.

Reed partnered with the Department of Tourism to develop the Vermont African-American Heritage Trail. The route takes visitors of all ages to 20 different museums and cultural and historic sites throughout the state. The governor of Vermont even named February 2017 Vermont African-American Heritage Trail Month. After all, "Black history is Vermont history," Reed says.

A marker outside the Old Constitution House, one of many historic sites on the Vermont African-American Heritage Trail. Photo by Doug Kerr/Flickr.

For Buckner-Webb and Reed, their love for their state is more than hometown pride — it's a calling.

In 2010, after being asked off and on for more than 25 years, Buckner-Webb decided to run for state office. She didn't know if she'd have the patience to make it happen, but a friend ultimately convinced her.

"[She told me] you have some work to do. One woman can make a difference," Buckner-Webb recalls.

She filed the next day.

Buckner-Webb was elected to the Idaho House of Representatives that year and to the State Senate in 2012, 2014, and 2016. A Democrat in a conservative stronghold, she is used to standing up to adversity. And she's had decades of practice.

The Idaho Capitol. Photo by iStock.

"I'm a super-minority in a super-minority party in Idaho, so I have a lot of experience that way," she says.

Buckner-Webb is the first and only black person to be elected to the state legislature in Idaho, and she currently serves as assistant minority leader. While Buckner-Webb is used to sticking out, she'd rather have some company in the state house.

"One of my legacies I hope to leave is that there will be many more after me — or right now would be fine. With me, with me," she says with a laugh.

The amazing Senator Cherie Buckner-Webb. #WomensMarch Idaho http://pic.twitter.com/2LGDncoNGK

— LBLogic (@BostapLisa) January 21, 2017

Meanwhile, Reed travels almost every day across Vermont, reaching out to employers, community leaders, and more about the importance of recruiting, hiring, and building community for people of color.

From signal boosting resources and personal stories and planning an annual conference for leaders of color and executive and legislative leadership, to talking with police departments and local municipalities about implicit bias, Reed's work is never done.

"We spend a considerable amount of time building community by example," he says.

Being a black face in a white space is a universally specific experience that's neither all good nor bad.

I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, a college town less than three hours from Chicago and 78% white. Since college, I've lived in Tennessee, Florida, Missouri, and now Portland, Oregon. In every stop, save for my brief stint in Jacksonville, Florida, I felt out of place as a black woman. I was both hypervisible and invisible simultaneously. I'd go from being followed around a department store to being brushed off and ignored by waitstaff at dinner.

Image by iStock.

That notion of hypervisibility and invisibility are themes I noticed in both Buckner-Webb's and Reed's experiences. But like them, I also have a sense of pride and passion for the place I grew up. Madison is, for better or worse, my hometown.

For black Americans, home is not limited to certain zip codes, cities, states, or regions of the country. Though black people in majority white spaces face the additional challenge of lacking critical mass, our lived experiences aren't any less valid or "black" than anyone else's. (Did you hear that, Donald Trump?)

In fact, both Reed and Buckner-Webb said their smaller communities have their own advantages.

"My husband is from Atlanta, Georgia, and I think the opportunities to succeed might be a little bit easier [here]," Buckner-Webb says. "Probably because there's not a critical mass here to scare people. People are not comfortable with people that don't look like them, you know what I mean? It is a relatively welcoming place. There are opportunities to make your way here."

Boise, Idaho in the fall. Photo by iStock.

For Reed, Vermont's small towns foster community and collaboration in a way other regions simply can't.

"We have 251 towns in the state. They're small. On a day like today — it looks like we have about two feet of snow — you need your neighbor to help shovel, or plow, or move your car out of a ditch. I think in that case, the weather, geography, living in smaller communities really focuses people on what it means to be neighborly."

Horses dine in Putney, Vermont. Photo by iStock.

Black people helped lay the foundation for this country, and today, we are everywhere.

Whether home is Boise, Brattleboro, Portland, Chicago, or Atlanta, black people are building communities, fostering relationships, and making a difference from coast to coast. Whether invisible or hypervisible, we are here. And we will continue to live, love, and contribute to our communities for generations to come.

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[socialviralnews]

What it's like to be black when your state is 94% white.

<br>

When Cherie Buckner-Webb was 5 or 6 years old, someone burned a cross in the front yard of her Boise home.

Buckner-Webb and her family had every reason to leave the neighborhood, or even Idaho, after that. Instead, her mother turned an act of bigotry into a powerful teachable moment.

"My father would've liked to taken it and hidden it away," Buckner-Webb says, "and my mom was saying 'Put it on the front porch. We've been living here a year in this neighborhood, and they are late.'"

Boise in the spring. Photo by iStock.

Buckner-Webb is a black face in a white space. And like her mother before her, she's not going anywhere.

She is a fifth generation black Idahoan, and her family has deep roots in the state. One of her great-grandfathers even founded and built the first black church in the Boise area. Her parents were active in the community, with the NAACP chapter and other local initiatives.

But numbers don't lie: less than 1% of Idaho residents — about 13,250 people — identify as black or African-American, and Buckner-Webb recalls a childhood tinted with the hypervisibility that comes with being the only black face in the group.

"I was very well-behaved and probably because there was a small number of us," she says. "I tell the same thing to my children, 'Nobody will notice anybody that you're with, but they'll notice the one black kid in the group.'"

Image via iStock.

Buckner-Webb credits her mother for telling her the honest truth about the "the way things were."

"It was really important to her that her children had an awareness and understanding of what it is to be black and walk in the world." Buckner-Webb says. "I realized quickly that our way of being was different and unique to the kids I went to school with."

She made connections and built a lot of her community at church.

"It seemed like almost everybody black in Idaho, whether it was for the National Guard or whatever, we all met up [in church]," she says. "It had a lot to do with religion, but it had a lot to do with a place you saw people who look like you, a gathering place."

Image by iStock.

Across the country, Curtiss Reed is working on building community and gathering places for all Vermonters, but especially people of color.

Reed was living in St. Louis but working on a consulting project in Washington, D.C., when a friend invited him up to Vermont for a ski weekend in 1978.

"I found it picture postcard perfect," he says. "And six months later, I moved — relocated to Vermont."

Reed lived and worked in the Green Mountain State for five years, then spent nearly two decades traveling and working abroad. He lived and worked in France, Tunisia, Burundi, and more. But when it was time to return to the states in 2001, there was only one place Reed wanted to be: Vermont.

Vermont in the fall. Photo by iStock.

"When I was overseas, I voted absentee ballot, got the newspapers three or four weeks after the fact, paid my taxes, etc. This has always been home," he says.

But much like in Idaho, Vermont's black population is staggeringly small. There are approximately 8,100 black people (1.3% of the population) in the entire state. That's about .84 of a black person per square mile. To put it in perspective, there are approximately 52 black people per square mile in Florida. States like Vermont are blinding whiteness, and black people in these regions are truly few and far between.

Today, Reed lives in Brattleboro and is executive director of the Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity.

"We are the organization people turn to when they want to address issues of equity in the public sphere," he says. Recruiting employees and visitors of color is more than a "nice-to-have." For Vermont, it's now or never.

The state's low-birth rate and large percentage of people over 65 (17.6%) means Vermont is in desperate need of more people. Not just skilled workers to replenish the work force, but visitors to keep the state's thriving outdoor tourism industry afloat.

"Vermont's future is inextricably tied to it's ability for the state to be an attractive destination for folks of color," Reed says.

It's a snowy day in Burlington, Vermont. Photo by Jordan Silverman/Getty Images.

To build community and foster new relationships, both Buckner-Webb and Reed have tapped into local black history.

Buckner-Webb is on the board of the Idaho Black History Museum. Housed in the church founded by her great-grandfather, the building was lifted off its foundation and moved to a local park. Since 1995, guests have enjoyed exhibits, guest lectures, musical performances, and community programs.

"It's possibly the first black history museum in the Pacific Northwest," she says.

Reed partnered with the Department of Tourism to develop the Vermont African-American Heritage Trail. The route takes visitors of all ages to 20 different museums and cultural and historic sites throughout the state. The governor of Vermont even named February 2017 Vermont African-American Heritage Trail Month. After all, "Black history is Vermont history," Reed says.

A marker outside the Old Constitution House, one of many historic sites on the Vermont African-American Heritage Trail. Photo by Doug Kerr/Flickr.

For Buckner-Webb and Reed, their love for their state is more than hometown pride — it's a calling.

In 2010, after being asked off and on for more than 25 years, Buckner-Webb decided to run for state office. She didn't know if she'd have the patience to make it happen, but a friend ultimately convinced her.

"[She told me] you have some work to do. One woman can make a difference," Buckner-Webb recalls.

She filed the next day.

Buckner-Webb was elected to the Idaho House of Representatives that year and to the State Senate in 2012, 2014, and 2016. A Democrat in a conservative stronghold, she is used to standing up to adversity. And she's had decades of practice.

The Idaho Capitol. Photo by iStock.

"I'm a super-minority in a super-minority party in Idaho, so I have a lot of experience that way," she says.

Buckner-Webb is the first and only black person to be elected to the state legislature in Idaho, and she currently serves as assistant minority leader. While Buckner-Webb is used to sticking out, she'd rather have some company in the state house.

"One of my legacies I hope to leave is that there will be many more after me — or right now would be fine. With me, with me," she says with a laugh.

The amazing Senator Cherie Buckner-Webb. #WomensMarch Idaho http://pic.twitter.com/2LGDncoNGK

— LBLogic (@BostapLisa) January 21, 2017

Meanwhile, Reed travels almost every day across Vermont, reaching out to employers, community leaders, and more about the importance of recruiting, hiring, and building community for people of color.

From signal boosting resources and personal stories and planning an annual conference for leaders of color and executive and legislative leadership, to talking with police departments and local municipalities about implicit bias, Reed's work is never done.

"We spend a considerable amount of time building community by example," he says.

Being a black face in a white space is a universally specific experience that's neither all good nor bad.

I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, a college town less than three hours from Chicago and 78% white. Since college, I've lived in Tennessee, Florida, Missouri, and now Portland, Oregon. In every stop, save for my brief stint in Jacksonville, Florida, I felt out of place as a black woman. I was both hypervisible and invisible simultaneously. I'd go from being followed around a department store to being brushed off and ignored by waitstaff at dinner.

Image by iStock.

That notion of hypervisibility and invisibility are themes I noticed in both Buckner-Webb's and Reed's experiences. But like them, I also have a sense of pride and passion for the place I grew up. Madison is, for better or worse, my hometown.

For black Americans, home is not limited to certain zip codes, cities, states, or regions of the country. Though black people in majority white spaces face the additional challenge of lacking critical mass, our lived experiences aren't any less valid or "black" than anyone else's. (Did you hear that, Donald Trump?)

In fact, both Reed and Buckner-Webb said their smaller communities have their own advantages.

"My husband is from Atlanta, Georgia, and I think the opportunities to succeed might be a little bit easier [here]," Buckner-Webb says. "Probably because there's not a critical mass here to scare people. People are not comfortable with people that don't look like them, you know what I mean? It is a relatively welcoming place. There are opportunities to make your way here."

Boise, Idaho in the fall. Photo by iStock.

For Reed, Vermont's small towns foster community and collaboration in a way other regions simply can't.

"We have 251 towns in the state. They're small. On a day like today — it looks like we have about two feet of snow — you need your neighbor to help shovel, or plow, or move your car out of a ditch. I think in that case, the weather, geography, living in smaller communities really focuses people on what it means to be neighborly."

Horses dine in Putney, Vermont. Photo by iStock.

Black people helped lay the foundation for this country, and today, we are everywhere.

Whether home is Boise, Brattleboro, Portland, Chicago, or Atlanta, black people are building communities, fostering relationships, and making a difference from coast to coast. Whether invisible or hypervisible, we are here. And we will continue to live, love, and contribute to our communities for generations to come.

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