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A Winter Romance CH. 7
The snow crunched beneath their boots as the Iron Guardians trekked along the ancient paths of Silverwood Forest, their breath misting in the crisp winter air. Silver-barked trees loomed overhead, branches frosted with delicate icicles that glittered under shafts of pale sunlight piercing the canopy.
“Watch your step, Sir Knight,” Lysandra teased, her emerald eyes sparkling with mischief as Gareth cautiously navigated a particularly slick patch of snow-covered roots. “Wouldn’t want you to fall and dent that shiny armor of yours.”
Gareth shot her a wry glance. “I’ll have you know this armor has seen me through far worse than some icy tree roots.”
“Oh really?” Lysandra arched an eyebrow, a playful smirk tugging at her lips. “Do tell. What great battles has the mighty Gareth triumphed in to scuff up that glorious suit of steel?”
He huffed a laugh, his brooding eyes softening. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Her mischievous laughter echoed through the hushed forest, almost musical against the occasional creak of frozen wood. Gareth found himself captivated by the way her fiery curls danced around her face, cheeks flushed from the cold. He quickly averted his gaze, focusing instead on the snowy path ahead as an unfamiliar warmth blossomed in his chest.
Before long, the weary group paused to make camp in a small clearing sheltered by towering evergreens. A sense of lightness hung in the air, the constant threat of danger temporarily forgotten as they gathered around a crackling fire, rubbing chilled hands and exchanging easy banter. Luckily Eadric had another barrier spell prepared for their rest. This proved to be incredibly beneficial for the Iron Guardians as it shielded them not only from the weather, but also from potential creatures nearby. Alaric retrieved the camping equipment from his bag of holding and set it down in front of Eadric, who would use his magic to assemble it in a matter of seconds.
Meanwhile Lysandra plopped down beside Gareth who had been sitting on a fallen log, bumping his shoulder with her own. “You’re awfully quiet, even for you,” she observed, cocking her head. “What’s on your mind, handsome?”
Gareth nearly choked on a mouthful of water at the unexpected endearment in front of the group. He swallowed thickly, heat rising to his face that had nothing to do with the dancing flames. “Nothing of import,” he deflected gruffly.
“Mm, if you say so.” She leaned in, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “Bet I can guess what you’re thinking about though…”
His pulse quickened at her proximity, the subtle floral scent of her hair invading his senses. “I highly doubt that,” he managed, hoping she couldn’t hear the sudden pounding of his heart.
“Oh yeah?” Mischief glinted in Lysandra’s eyes as she scooped up a handful of snow, packing it between her gloved palms. “Prove it then. I challenge you to a snowball fight, Sir Gareth. Winner gets to ask the loser one question they must answer truthfully.”
He balked, gaze flicking warily from her impish grin to the lopsided sphere of snow in her hands. Childish games were hardly befitting a paladin of his stature and skill. And yet, the temptation to let loose for just a moment, to indulge in her playful whimsy, was surprisingly strong.
“I don’t know, Lysandra, I’m not sure if—”
His protests were cut short by a face full of powdery snow as Lysandra’s snowball found its mark with deadly accuracy. She doubled over in a fit of giggles at his stunned expression, eyes wide and mouth agape.
“Oh, you just bit off more than you can chew,” Gareth growled, lips twitching with a barely restrained smile as he lunged for a mound of snow. Lysandra shrieked in delight, darting away in a flurry of red hair and flying white flakes to arm herself for the ensuing frosty battle.
As Gareth gave chase, a surprising lightness bloomed in his chest, the burdens of destiny and duty momentarily lifted. In that stolen instant of carefree joy, nothing existed but the two of them, their mingled laughter a bright melody against the ancient stillness of the winter wood…
Gareth’s first few snowballs were clumsy, his throws lacking the precision and grace of his swordsmanship. But as the battle wore on, he found his rhythm, a boyish grin spreading across his face as he ducked and weaved between the trees, retaliating with increasing accuracy.
Lysandra, nevertheless, was in her element. She moved like a true shadow walker, twirling and leaping in and out of sight in an instant, her laughter ringing out like silver bells as she effortlessly dodged Gareth’s attacks. Her own snowballs found their mark with uncanny consistency, leaving Gareth sputtering and brushing snow from his hair.
Their companions watched with amused smiles, their own spirits lifting at the sight of the usually stoic warrior and the enigmatic shadow walker engaged in such carefree play. It was a welcome respite from the weight of their quest, a reminder that even in the darkest of times, moments of light could still be found.
As the snowball fight reached its crescendo, Alaric quietly slipped away from the group, his hand reaching for the small, enchanted communication device hidden beneath his cloak. With a soft pulse of magic, the device came to life, and S’vyyra’s face shimmered into view, her expression a mix of relief and concern.
“Alaric, thank the gods. How fares your journey? Are you safe?” Her voice was tinged with worry, the strain of ruling in his absence evident in the shadows beneath her eyes.
“We are well, S’vyyra. The Treants have proven invaluable guides, and we make steady progress through the Silverwood forest.” Alaric kept his tone reassuring, not wishing to burden her further with the dangers they had already faced. “Tell me, how holds Grambondll in my absence? What is Rivlet up to?”
S’vyyra hesitated, her gaze flickering briefly to the side before meeting his once more. “The city stands strong, but the people grow restless. Whispers of unease spread like wildfire, and the council… they question, Alaric. They question the wisdom of this quest, the necessity of the king’s absence in such uncertain times.”
Alaric’s jaw tightened, a flicker of frustration passing over his features. “Do they forget so easily the threats that shadow our lands? The very purpose of this journey is to ensure Elyria’s safety, to secure the future of our kingdom.”
“I know, my love.” S’vyyra’s voice softened, her hand reaching out as if to touch his face through the shimmering magic. “And I stand by you, as always. But hurry home to me. To all of us. Grambondll needs their King… and I need my husband. Don’t worry about the council. I will show them how strong the Princess of the Under Dwergs can be when forced. Rivlet and Ithic are getting ready for Rivlet’s upcoming reconnaissance mission along the eastern coast.
Alaric’s expression gentled, his hand mirroring hers, separated by leagues yet connected by their unbreakable bond. “I will return to you, S’vyyra. I swear it. Until then, stay strong. You are the heart of Grambondll, and your strength will see our people through this trial.”
With a final, longing look, the magic faded, and S’vyyra’s image dissolved, leaving Alaric alone once more beneath the snow-laden boughs of the Silverwood forest. He took a steadying breath, squaring his shoulders beneath the weight of his responsibilities, both to his kingdom and to the quest that lay ahead.
As he turned to rejoin his companions, the sound of Lysandra’s laughter and Gareth’s gruff chuckles reached his ears, a reminder of the bonds that had been forged through their shared trials. Secure in the knowledge that he did not face them alone.
Lysandra’s eyes sparkled with mischief as she nudged Gareth’s side, her breath still coming in soft puffs of fog in the chilly air. “You put up a valiant fight, Sir Knight,” she teased, her tone light and playful. “But I think we both know who the true victor is here.”
Gareth huffed, brushing snow from the pelt covering the armor on his broad shoulders, his cheeks flushed from more than just the cold. “You caught me off guard, that’s all,” he grumbled, but the corners of his mouth twitched with the hint of a smile. “Next time, I won’t go so easy on you.”
“Easy on me?” Lysandra’s laughter rang out, clear and bright in the stillness of the forest. “Is that what you call it? I seem to recall a certain someone flailing about like a fish out of water, all while I danced circles around him.”
Eadric sat huddled by the crackling fire inside the tent, his gaze fixed on the young couple through the tent opening as they frolicked in playful flirtation. The scene stirred up long forgotten memories of a simpler time, but he pushed them aside and focused on preparing spells for the journey that lay ahead. Time seemed to slip away as he gathered his strength against the impending peril. However, they were safe at the moment and that was a much needed reprieve.
Lysandra darted closer, her hand coming to rest on Gareth’s arm, her touch light and teasing. “Face it, Gareth. You’re utterly hopeless against my charms.”
Gareth stiffened, his heart stumbling in his chest at her proximity, at the warmth of her touch even through the layers of his armor. “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he stammered, his gaze skittering away from hers, his ears burning with more than just the bite of the winter wind.
Lysandra’s smile softened, her hand sliding down to twine her fingers with his, a gesture at once intimate and comforting. “It’s alright, you know,” she murmured, her voice low and gentle, meant for his ears alone. “To feel something. To want something.” Her thumb brushed over his knuckles, a feather-light caress. “I know I do.”
Gareth’s breath caught in his throat, his heart pounding against his ribs like a caged bird seeking escape. He felt a strong sense to pull away, he should put distance between them, but he found himself rooted to the spot, transfixed by the depthless green of her eyes, the mesmerizing red wavy hair, and by the unspoken promise in her gaze as he stood there statuesque like.
“Lysandra, I…” he began, his voice rough and uncertain, but before he could find the words, the sound of Alaric’s approach broke the spell, and Lysandra placed a finger gently to his lips then stepped back, her hand slipping from his, leaving his fingers feeling cold and bereft.
“We should get some rest,” Alaric called out as he neared, his expression a mix of determination and weariness. “The path ahead is long, and we have much ground to cover before nightfall tomorrow.”
Lysandra nodded, her demeanor shifting, the playful teasing of a moment before replaced by the cool, collected focus of the skilled shadow walker. “Lead the way, Your Majesty,” she said, her tone respectful yet tinged with the barest hint of irony. “We’re right behind you.”
As dawn broke through the trees, their group marched onward, Alaric and Eadric leading the way with Gareth trailing behind, his eyes were constantly drawn to Lysandra’s enticing form. Her hips swayed gracefully in her tight leather attire, catching his attention every time they caught the light. She would shoot him sly glances over her shoulder, a mischievous smile playing on her lips. With every confident step she took, she knowingly flaunted herself for Gareth’s benefit, giving him a teasing glimpse of her curvaceous posterior as she flung her fur coat aside. And though he was fearful of what could come from growing closer to her, he couldn’t deny the warmth and hope that sparked within him whenever she was near almost doubling him over at times.
The ancient trees of Silverwood Forest stood as silent sentinels, their snow-laden boughs stretching overhead like a canopy of lace. The air was crisp and clean, carrying the faint, fresh scent of pine and the distant calls of winter birds. Snowflakes drifted down lazily from the sky, alighting on eyelashes and outstretched hands, each one a delicate, crystalline wonder.
Lysandra tilted her face upward, letting the snow kiss her cheeks and nose. “It’s like something out of a dream,” she said to herself, her voice hushed with reverence. “I never imagined a place could be so beautiful yet so dangerous.”
Gareth watched her, transfixed by the play of light and shadow across her features, the way the snowflakes clung to her hair like a crown of stars. In that moment, she seemed to him a creature of magic, a being of light and air and joy, untouchable and utterly enchanting.
As if sensing his gaze, Lysandra turned to him, her eyes bright and sparkling. “What is it?” she asked, her lips curving in a playful smile. “Do I have something on my face?”
Gareth shook his head, feeling a flush creep up his neck. “No, I just… You look… it’s just…” He trailed off, at a loss for words, and Lysandra’s smile widened.
“I look…?” she prompted, stepping closer, her boots crunching softly in the snow.
Gareth’s breath caught in his throat, as if it had been snatched away by a sudden gust of wind. He struggled to find the right words, his mind a whirl of confusion and awe. “You…you are breathtaking, Lysandra,” he stammered, his cheeks flushed with a deep shade of crimson. “I mean, not that you are ever anything less than stunning, but in this moment…you simply take my breath away.”
For a brief moment, Lysandra’s features softened and a hint of warmth entered her gaze, but then she playfully smirked, breaking the spell. “My dear Sir Gareth,” she teased with a twinkle in her eyes, “I do believe that’s the most endearing compliment you’ve ever paid me.” Her voice laced with humor and sarcasm, mimicking a posh accent for added effect.
Before Gareth could respond, a rustling in the underbrush caught their attention, and they turned to see a pair of Forest Guardians emerge from the trees, their massive forms dwarfing even the largest of the group. Their eyes glowed with an ancient, otherworldly light, and their voices, when they spoke, echoed with the timbre of ages.
“Travelers,” they intoned, their words resonating through the stillness of the forest, “you have entered the heart of Silverwood. State your purpose, and be warned: those who seek to harm this sacred place shall face the wrath of the guardians.”
Alaric stepped forward, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword, his stance confident and regal. “We come in peace,” he declared, his voice carrying through the clearing, “seeking only safe passage through your forest. We mean no harm to you or your charges.”
The guardians regarded him silently for a long moment, their gazes seeming to pierce through to his very soul, and then, slowly, they inclined their great heads. “You speak truth, young king,” they rumbled, “and your heart is pure. Pass in peace, and may the blessings of the forest go with you.”
With that, they turned and melted back into the trees, leaving only the fading echo of their words and the glimmer of snow in their wake.
As the group resumed their trek, Gareth found his thoughts turning inward, to the warmth of Lysandra’s smile and the softness of her touch, to the ache of longing that seemed to grow with every passing day. He knew it was foolish, knew that a king’s guard had no business losing his heart to a shadow walker, but as he watched her move through the forest ahead of him, graceful and strong and utterly captivating, he couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps, just perhaps, there might be a future for them beyond the bounds of duty and fate.
In the subterranean chambers beneath the Blackened Oak Tavern, Rivlet Stormwind and Ithic Ceadwy stood hunched over a map of the eastern shore, their faces lined with concentration.
“We’ll need at least 30 men for the advanced party coming with me,” Rivlet mused, tracing a finger along the coastline. We’ll also need a surplus of 200 warriors in reserve, close by. “Archers, swordsmen, and a contingent of mages.”
Ithic nodded, his brow furrowed. “Aye, and you’ll want to strike hard and fast, before they have a chance to regroup. The element of surprise will be key.”
Rivlet hummed his agreement, his gaze shifting to the roster of available troops listed on the board located on the wall. “What about Blackwood Company? They’re seasoned fighters, and they know the terrain well.”
“A good choice,” Ithic agreed, a note of approval in his voice. “And perhaps Silverleaf Battalion as well? Their archers are second to none.”
As they continued to plan and strategize, a sense of camaraderie settled over them, both born from of long years of battles and hard-won victories. They moved in easy synchronicity, anticipating each other’s thoughts, a well-oiled machine honed by time and trust.
“Do you think they’ll succeed in time?” Ithic asked quietly, his gaze fixed on the map. “Alaric and the others I mean?”
Rivlet was silent for a long moment, his expression pensive. “They have to,” he said at last, his voice low and fierce. “For the sake of Elyria, for the sake of us all, they have to.”
Ithic nodded, his own expression grim. “Then we’ll do our part to ensure they have the best possible chance. We’ll give them an army to be reckoned with, and may the gods have mercy on any who stand in their way.”
Rivlet clapped a hand on Ithic’s shoulder, a gesture of solidarity and shared purpose. “Together,” he vowed, “we’ll see this through to the end. For Elyria, and for the king.”
In that moment, in the flickering candlelight of the tavern’s hidden chambers, as two friends and comrades-in-arms planned Rivlet’s route to the eastern shore to observe what is there, to fight with all they had for the land and the people they loved, no matter the cost.
The scene shifts, the tavern’s shadowed depths giving way to the sun-drenched streets of Grambondll. S’vyyra strides through the bustling crowds, her bearing regal, her expression composed. She is every inch the queen, poised and purposeful, and yet there is a weight on her shoulders, a burden that only those closest to her can see.
She pauses at a market stall, examining a bolt of shimmering silk with a critical eye. The merchant bows low, murmuring praises and platitudes, but S’vyyra’s mind is elsewhere. She thinks of Alaric, of the dangers he faces, and her heart clenches with a fierce, aching worry.
But she cannot afford to dwell on her fears, not now. She has a kingdom to run, people to lead, and she will not falter in her duties. With a gracious nod to the merchant, she moves on, her steps carrying her through the winding streets and towards the gleaming spires of the palace.
As she walks, she takes in the sights and sounds of the city, the vibrant tapestry of life that unfolds around her. The air is filled with the scent of baking bread and the chatter of voices, the clamor of hammers and the laughter of children. This is her city, her home, and she will do whatever it takes to keep it safe.
She climbs the palace steps, her mind already racing ahead to the tasks that await her. There are meetings to attend, decisions to make, alliances to forge and strengthen. It is a daunting prospect, but S’vyyra has never been one to shy away from a challenge.
In the grand hall, she is met by a cluster of advisors and courtiers, their faces a mix of deference and expectation. S’vyyra greets them with a cool nod, her voice clear and commanding as she begins to issue instructions and delegate tasks.
And so the day wears on, a whirlwind of activity and responsibility. S’vyyra moves through it all with grace and determination, her mind sharp, her will unwavering. She may be young, she may be untested, but she is a queen in every sense of the word, and she will not let her people down.
As the sun begins to set, painting the city in shades of gold and crimson, S’vyyra finally allows herself a moment of respite. She steps out onto a balcony, her gaze drawn to the distant south eastern mountains, to the forests and valleys where Alaric and his companions now journey.
“Be safe, my love,” she whispers, her words carried away on the evening breeze. “Come back to me, to us all.”
And with that prayer, that quiet plea, S’vyyra turns back to the palace, back to the duties and challenges that await her. She is a queen, a leader, a woman of strength and courage, and she will not rest until her kingdom is secure and her beloved is home once more.
Lysandra’s laughter echoes through the snow-laden trees as she darts ahead, her footsteps light and nimble on the frozen ground. Gareth, his armor clanking softly with each step, struggles to keep pace, his brow furrowed in concentration.
“Come on, slowpoke!” Lysandra calls over her shoulder, her emerald eyes sparkling with mischief. “At this rate, we’ll never catch up to the others!”
Gareth grunts, a half-smile tugging at his lips despite himself. “Not all of us have the luxury of prancing about in leather,” he retorts, gesturing to his heavy plate armor. “Some of us have to actually protect ourselves.”
Lysandra’s laughter rings out again, a sound as bright and clear as the winter sky above. She slows her pace, allowing Gareth to draw level with her, and bumps him playfully with her shoulder.
Her honeyed voice teased him, her gaze raking over the intricate metal armor that encased his broad frame. “I must admit,” she purred, “the way it hugs your form and accentuates your chiseled physique is quite alluring.” The polished plates glinted in the light, adding an air of strength and danger to his already tempting figure.
Gareth feels a flush creep up his neck, and he looks away, suddenly fascinated by a nearby tree. Lysandra’s flirtations always leave him tongue-tied and off-balance, a fact she seems to relish.
As they trek on, the trees begin to thin, giving way to a small clearing. Lysandra stops abruptly, her head cocked to one side, listening intently.
“Do you hear that?” she whispered, her hand drifting to the knives at her belt.
Gareth strained his ears, but heard nothing save the soft whisper of the wind through the branches. He shakes his head, his hand tightening on the hilt of his sword.
“I don’t hear any-“
His words were cut off as Lysandra whirled around, her hands coming up to grab the front of his armor. Before Gareth could react, she pulled him close and pressed her lips to his in a searing kiss. Catching him off guard she swept his legs and they both tumbled down into the snow. Lysandra landing on top.
Gareth’s eyes widen in shock. Lysandra’s lips are soft and warm. A thousand thoughts raced through his mind – the impropriety of it, the risk of being caught, the sheer, overwhelming sensation.
Lysandra pulled back, her eyes sparkling with mischief as she looked down at Gareth, while on top of him in the snow. “What’s the matter, brave knight? Lost for words?”
Gareth struggled to regain his composure, his heart pounding wildly in his chest. He pushed himself up onto his elbows and tried to speak, but Lysandra silenced him pressing her index and middle fingers to his lips gently.
As they pulled away from each other, Gareth’s heart still racing as Lysandra’s delicate touch sent electric currents down his spine, a mixture of both anticipation and apprehension. “I’ve never done this before,” he blurted out nervously, his voice trembling with excitement. Lysandra met his gaze, her eyes sparkling mischievously.
But then, as quickly as it began, the moment was over. Lysandra pulls back, her eyes dancing with excitement and something else, something deeper and more intense. Gareth stands frozen, his heart pounding in his ears, his lips still tingling from her touch, his stomach in knots. “until next time lover boy.”
“I… you… what…?” he stammers, his usually sharp wit deserting him entirely.
A mischievous glint danced in Lysandra’s eyes as she leaned in closer, her lips a hairsbreadth away from Gareth’s. With a teasing grin. “Don’t worry, big boy,” she purred. “Your secret is safe with me.” Then, she kissed him once more and pulled away with a playful smirk.
Gareth’s heart raced as he struggled to find his voice. “I…I like you, Lysandra,” he managed to stammer out. “I can’t stop thinking about you since our trip started.” He blushed, looking at her expectantly. “Does this mean we’re a couple now?” he asked tentatively.
But instead of answering, Lysandra smirked then turned and ran off into the trees, her laughter echoing behind her like a siren’s song. Gareth stood frozen in place, his mind reeling and his body on fire with desire that had nothing to do with his magical armor.
“Lysandra!” he called out desperately. “Wait!”
But she was already gone, vanished into the shadows of the forest. Gareth takes a deep, shuddering breath, trying to calm the racing of his heart. He knows he should be angry, or at least annoyed, at her teasing and games. But all he can feel is a deep, aching longing, a yearning for something he cannot name. This is all new for Gareth and something he doesn’t know how to navigate.
With a grunt of frustration, Gareth sets off after Lysandra, his steps heavy and determined. He doesn’t know what this thing is between them, this dance of flirtation and denial. But he knows one thing for certain – he will follow her, to the ends of the earth if need be. Lysandra had captured the young man’s heart. It was a new experience for Gareth and he didn’t know how to handle it.
Gareth catches up to Lysandra just as they rejoin the group, the companions trudging through the snow-laden paths of the Silverwood Forest. Their eyes meet briefly, a passionate glance passing between them, a secret shared in the midst of their journey. Lysandra’s lips curve into a coy smile, her emerald eyes sparkling with mischief, while Gareth’s cheeks flush a deep crimson, his gaze darting away in a futile attempt to conceal his emotions.
Around them, the camaraderie among the Iron Guardians grows stronger as they made their way through the forest, Laughter ensues as they swap tales of past adventures, their voices a warm counterpoint to the chill of the winter air. Even Alaric, usually so stoic and reserved, cracks a rare smile at a particularly bawdy joke from Lysandra.
As they walk, Gareth finds himself gravitating towards Lysandra, drawn to her like a moth to a flame. Their shoulders brush, sending a jolt of electricity through his body, and he stumbles slightly, catching himself on a nearby tree. Lysandra’s hand shoots out to steady him, her fingers lingering on his arm a moment longer than necessary, and Gareth’s breath catches in his throat.
“Careful there, baby,” she murmurs, her voice low and sultry. “Wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself before we get to the good part.”
Gareth swallows hard, his mind racing with thoughts of what the “good part” might entail. He opens his mouth to respond, but the words stick in his throat, his tongue suddenly heavy and clumsy. Lysandra just smirks, a knowing glint in her eye, gently touching his hand before sauntering ahead, leaving Gareth to trail behind her, his heart pounding in his chest.
As the day wears on and the sun begins to dip below the horizon, Alaric calls for a halt, the group settling into a small clearing to make camp for the night. Gareth busies himself with setting up his bedroll, trying to ignore the way Lysandra’s gaze seems to linger on him from across the fire. He can feel the heat of her stare, a palpable weight on his skin, and he shifts uncomfortably, suddenly feeling too warm despite the chill of the evening air.
Alaric, meanwhile, sits apart from the group, his brow furrowed in thought as he reflects on the progress of their journey. They have come so far, faced so many challenges, and yet there is still so far to go. The weight of his responsibilities sits heavy on his shoulders, a burden he bears willingly but not easily.
And yet, as he looks around at his companions, at the bonds that have formed between them, Alaric feels a renewed sense of purpose, a determination to see their quest through to the end. They are more than just a group of adventurers now – they are a family, bound by love and loyalty, united in their cause.
Alaric’s gaze falls on Lysandra and Gareth, huddled close together by the fire, their heads bent in close conversation. He sees the way Gareth’s eyes soften when he looks at Lysandra, the way her hand lingers on his, and a small smile tugs at the corners of his mouth.
“About damn time,” he mutters to himself, shaking his head in amusement. “Maybe now they’ll stop dancing around each other like a pair of lovesick fools.” he glances over at Eadric who also notices with a wry grin.
And with that thought, Alaric settles back against his bedroll, his eyes drifting shut as he lets the sounds of the forest lull him to sleep. Tomorrow will bring new challenges, new dangers, but for now, in this moment, all is well. The Iron Guardians are together, and they will face whatever comes their way as one.
As the night wears on, Eadric drifts off into a peaceful slumber, leaving the two lovers to bask in the quiet intimacy of the night. Finally alone, Lysandra snuggles closer to Gareth next to the fading fire, a gentle smile on her face as she recalls their earlier tender moment together. “I can’t stop thinking about our day,” she whispers softly, breaking the silence between them. Gareth now nervous and never being in this situation before he wasn’t sure how to express his feelings into words.
“I see,” Lysandra says softly in his ear. “My adorable shy hero. Come here I want to show you something,” she says standing as she grabs his hand pulling him towards her tent. “There is this thing I found earlier today. I put it in my tent. Maybe you might know what to do with it.” Gareth now genuinely intrigued by this new information.
“What, what did you find?” Gareth asks with wonder.
“It’s just in there.” Lysandra says as Gareth kneels down before going into her tent.
Gareth looking in front of him confused as all that was there was a bed roll and her gear. “I don’t see it.” what does it look like?”
A mischievous grin tugged at Lysandra’s lips as she replied to Gareth, “Oh, I must have left it in my pack.” Her tone was playful and full of mischief. As Gareth crawled into the tent to look in the pack, Lysandra followed close behind him closing the tent flap behind her. Gareth was now looking in the top pouch of her pack confused as the only thing in there was some basic climbing rope and hooks. confused he turned as his eyes widened immediately in surprise and shock at the sight before him. Lysandra stood provocatively. Before he could even gather his wits, she pushed him down onto the bedroll with one swift movement. Lysandra whispered to Gareth, “Relax.” Gareth could only nod, his mind consumed with the heat and urgency of the moment.
As the first rays of dawn kissed their skin, Gareth couldn’t contain the overwhelming rush of emotions coursing through him. He gazed into Lysandra’s eyes, searching for any sign of hesitation or doubt as they lay entwined in each other’s arms, so close that their lips almost touched. The world around them seemed to fade away as they lost themselves in this moment together.
The words spilled from Gareth’s lips like a confession of the deepest kind, his voice soft and earnest. “I am in love with you, Lysandra,” he stated, each syllable carrying a weight of emotion. His heart raced as he waited for her response, hoping she could see the truth in his eyes and feel the sincerity in his words.
“Say it again pretty boy,” Lysandra purred, her lips leaving a trail of warm kisses down the curve of Gareth’s neck. He tried to form the words she wanted to hear, but the overwhelming sensation of her lips and tongue on his neck made it impossible. She stopped after a few minutes, a satisfied smirk playing on her lips.
“I’m infatuated with you, you big dork,” she chuckled, running her fingers through his hair. It was a playful statement, but there was an undeniable honesty behind it. “I suppose that makes us a thing now. As for love, play your cards right and I might.” she grinned devilishly.
Gareth couldn’t help but laugh at her teasing tone. As if their actions hadn’t already solidified their relationship status. But before he could respond, Lysandra’s hand brushed over his cheek, sending a jolt of desire straight to his core knotting up his stomach.
“we still have a few more minutes before we have to get up…” Lysandra breathed as she leaned in kissing his neck. The morning sun began to filter through the tent illuminating their entwined bodies as she left a few love bites.
Back in Grambondll, the balcony’s cool marble soothes S’vyyra’s bare feet as she leans against the ornate railing wearing one of her tunics, her gaze drawn to the distant Silverwood Mountains. The setting sun paints the sky in hues of lavender and gold, casting an ethereal glow upon the snow-capped peaks. A gentle breeze, laced with the scent of silverwood blossoms blows across the palace and the city below.
Despite the tranquility of the moment, S’vyyra’s thoughts are restless, wandering to Alaric and the Iron Guardians, traversing the treacherous landscape far beyond the city’s protective walls. She closes her eyes, picturing Alaric’s reassuring smile, the determination in his piercing blue eyes. “Stay safe, my love,” she whispers, her words carried away on the evening wind.
The weight of leadership settles upon her shoulders, a mantle she wears with grace and resolve. In Alaric’s absence, S’vyyra has risen to the challenge, navigating the intricacies of ruling a kingdom with unwavering dedication. Yet, in moments like these, when the day’s duties have been fulfilled and the palace grows quiet, her heart yearns for his return.
S’vyyra’s fingers absently trace the intricate patterns carved into the balcony railing, a testament to the craftsmanship that defines Grambondll Palace City. The city stretched out before her, a tapestry of life and energy, its streets humming with the echoes of laughter and the clatter of horse-drawn carriages. She draws strength from her people, their resilience, and their faith in the crown.
As the last rays of sunlight fade into the gathering dusk, S’vyyra straightens her posture, she knows that Alaric will stop at nothing to protect Elyria, to safeguard the realm they hold dear. And she, in turn, will stand strong, a beacon of hope and stability for her people.
With a final glance at the distant mountains, S’vyyra turned away from the balcony, her footsteps echoing on the polished marble floor as she makes her way back inside the palace. There is work to be done, decisions to be made, and a kingdom to lead. And she will do so with the same unwavering resolve that guides Alaric and his companions on their perilous journey.
For in the end, they are all bound by a common purpose, a shared love for Elyria and its people. And no matter the distance that separates them, their hearts beat as one, united in their quest to save the kingdom.
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Mystical Land of Elyria CH. 3
As days past. The Blackened Oak Guildhall loomed over the palace city of Grabondell, ancient timbers twisted as if scorched by dragon fire. Shadows clung to the eaves like cobwebs, and the air hung heavy with the scent of late summer’s dusk—hay and honeysuckle mingling with the looming promise of rain.
Guildmaster Ithic Ceadwy stood firmly at the entrance, his expression hidden by a thick beard. As Rivlet and the eight Inner Council members trotted down the cobbled street. Their horses’ hooves clattered in time with the clamor of their carriages. “Go notify Alaric and S’vyrra,” he ordered one of the guards by the entrance.
As they dismounted, securing them to the hitching posts, Alaric and S’vyrra emerged to join Ithic in greeting them. Exhaustion and worry lined the faces of Rivlet and the council members as they passed through the grand archway into the two-story tavern-style facade.
Inside, the warmth of oak timbers and crackling hearths enveloped them, a brief respite from the chill foreboding that nipped at their heels.
Ithic Ceadwy, his eyes hooded beneath a brow of weathered stone, nodded solemnly. “You speak of shadows taking form, Master Rivlet. I’ve felt their chill upon my skin in the dead of night. I have had some of my best men keeping a close eye on the terror growing by the eastern shores. No one has been able to get close enough to determine the cause of these mysterious attacks. Those who get to close to the destruction never return, and attempts to send their familiar birds have been unsuccessful. It’s as if death itself has awakened in this place.”
Unease Rippled through Rivlet and the inner council—shifted uneasily, the reality of the situation settling on them like a shroud. But King Alaric stood tall among them, whose regal bearing seemed to anchor the room. His eyes, sharp as sapphires as they cut through the icy tension.
“Indeed, Ithic,” Alaric said, his voice a resonant echo in the tavern front. “Please everyone, let us head to the lower level offices. There we will have less eyes and ears upon us. There we can discuss in greater detail our current standing on the matter.” King Alaric states as he turns walking towards the senior guild hallway leading to the archives below.
The group filtered into the main offices, their footsteps echoing off the polished marble floors as they gathered around the large meeting table. The flickering candlelight dancing across their huddled forms, brimming with anticipation.
“Friends and Council members, before any of you comment on what I am about to say, I ask that you please refrain until I am finished.” Alaric paused for a moment, letting his words sink in before continuing. “While you all were in the southern cities, S’vyrra and I uncovered something in Nightfall forest that may very well lead us to hope. To an answer leading to the fabled tale of Kaelithorne’s treasure. However, we face a puzzle locked within this ancient draconic scriptures inside this tablet. The text is from an age long past and I’m afraid we cannot find anyone to decipher its secrets. This could help us tip the scales of the unknown danger in our favor and stop it from causing anymore damage. Revealing the location of Kaelithorne’s treasure is now a matter of time whereas before it was just a child’s dream.” He stated as he gently exposed the emerald tablet from his bag, its vibrant green surface reflecting the glow of the candlelight. The intricate foreign etchings seemed alive, the patterns seemed to twist and writhe, pulsating and dancing like fire.
“Secrecy is paramount,” S’vyyra interjected, her lilting voice capturing the attention of everyone present. “We must choose the adventurers for this mission wisely, for there will undoubtedly be others who seek Kaelithorne’s treasure if this news was to get out. Even worse anyone who would use its power for darker purposes would sure be looking for it as well. If they were to get their hands on these artifacts it could be the end of Elyria and possibly the entire world.”
“Agreed,” said Ithic, his aged face creased with thought. “We will need to assemble a group of skilled adventurers who can be trusted with such a task. I will help gather a list of potential candidates for your review King.”
“Thank you, Ithic, I also may have a couple people in mind as well, but we can go into that later.” Alaric replied, clapping his friend on the shoulder. The weight of their mission hung heavy in the air, as palpable as the scent of burning wax from the candles that illuminated their faces.
Rivlet watched the king, noting the way his hand rested upon the pommel of one of his swords, a subtle reminder of the weight he carried. Not just a weapon, but the symbol of his kingdom’s hope.
“Because time is a luxury we scarce can afford currently. I have some more information to unload on all of you that might seem impulsive,” King Alaric continued, sweeping his gaze across the attentive faces. “Rivlet, council members. A lot has happened over the last few weeks, on our end and on your end as well. This may come as a great surprise, but S’vyrra, the Ordermaster for the Guild who is also Princess Thrainn of the Under Dwergs. We will be starting our courtship for marriage with the council’s consent of course. Once we have a chance to protest are courtship in front of the council I expect the members here to help sway the other ones into a quick agreeance. The faster this goes the faster we can be on our way. However, this will also benefit our kingdom and solidify a lasting union between the Elyrian government and the Under Dwergs. Bringing this land to peace with all who live here. I have plans that would benefit the use of the under Dwergs underground tunnels.”
“While I attend to the royal courtship with S’vyrra and terms for the treaty with the Under Dwergs, Rivlet and Ithic will take charge of delving into the riddles of this old language.” Alaric pauses to look at Rivlet and Ithic directly. “As S’vyrra said, Tell no one. You must keep your efforts cloaked in secrecy for now; we cannot afford the drawing of unwanted eyes.”
A hushed murmur of agreement rippled through the council members, revealing their shock and comprehension of the heavy responsibilities that lay ahead. Mixed in with this was King Alaric’s seemingly nonchalant announcement of his courtship to princess of the Under Dwergs, which added a surprising twist to the situation at hand. They new some older council members may not be to keen on the idea.
“Upon my return, once wedding vows are exchanged and celebrations dim, Ithic, S’vyrra, Rivlet and I will convene here anew. Together, we shall forge a team fit for the perils ahead. We will need all of your help in different ways. Don’t worry about how right now, as that will unfold as time passes. For now just concentrate on the tasks at hand.” Alaric’s proclamation held the promise of adventure and the perilous dance with the unknown.
“I think I can safely say that your union marks a new beginning, sire, I was almost afraid you would never marry.” said Luadha one of the councilors, her voice lilting like a melody long forgotten. “But let us hope love does not render you too soft for the journey to come.” Cracking a teasing Smile.
King Alaric’s lips twitched, a rare glimpse of amusement in the sea of stoicism. “I understand this might seem sudden and even a little impulsive. However, my resolve is strengthened by her at my side. Do not be tricked by her size. S’vyrra is no delicate flower to be sheltered from the storm, but a fierce warrior who is stronger than most that I have fought beside. In fact if it weren’t for her strength and cunning I would not be standing in front of you this day. I would have been somethings lunch in the forest.”
Guildmaster Ithic, gave a gruff nod, the corners of his mouth upturning ever so slightly. “Then let us understand what we need to concentrate on,” he declared, gesturing to the sprawling table that occupied the center of the room. Scrolls, tomes, and maps lay upon its surface, the tools of their upcoming endeavor.
“Let the whispers of the past guide us,” intoned Rivlet, his eyes glinting with the fire of challenge as he approached the table. “For in the dance of shadow and light, it is knowledge that shall serve as our most trusted blade.”
And so, with the King’s charge echoing in their ears, the council looked over ancient texts and cryptic runes, their whispers intertwining with the creak of wood and the flicker of candlelight, forging the first link in a chain that would either save their world or bind them to its doom.
The chamber of the Blackened Oak Guild hall was thick with the musky scent of ancient wood and the soft rustling of maps, as King Alaric revealed his next decree in a voice that resonated with the weight of history. “There is one more thing Rivlet, members of the inner council,” he began, “the time has come to fortify our kingdom with an allegiance forged from the very essence of our land.”
“The Blackened Oak Guild,” he continued, addressing Rivlet directly, “has proven its mettle across centuries. Henceforth, by my royal command, the Blackened Oak Guild shall be known as a specialized regiment within our military. This melding of might and mystery is unprecedented—a union not seen for three thousand years.” His words hung in the air like a sacred vow, stirring a sense of pride in the hearts of those gathered. “They will be dealing in more difficult situations where smaller more specialized teams will be able to accomplish what a normal soldier is untrained for.”
Rivlet nodded solemnly, his mind already racing with the implications. “King, we are honored. The officialization of the Guild into the military shall be expedited. Our blades, bows, magic and blood are yours to command.” The gravity of their new role settled upon each member like a mantle, heavy yet invigorating. “We should get back to the palace as soon as possible. We need to address the council and start the officiation of your courting. Once done I will help with uncovering the tablets language.”
“Good,” Alaric said, his eyes glinting with approval. “Remember, discretion remains paramount. Our enemies must not catch wind of this alliance or the tablet.”
“Understood, my king,” Rivlet replied, the weight of secrecy pressing down upon him. In his heart, he knew the fusion of their forces would be a beacon of hope amidst gathering shadows, a signal fire of unity burning against the encroaching darkness.
“Then let us proceed and head to the Royal council. By the way, Ithic will be joining us to officiate the Guild merger and his new Title, Chief Commander to the whole council.” Alaric commanded.
With a quick nod of his head, King Alaric signaled for everyone to gather and make way to the palace, while Rivlet rode ahead on horseback. The others followed behind in the carriages, including Princess S’vyrra who had changed into her regal attire. As they arrived at the palace’s inner gate, they were greeted by a group of guards and the Royal council members, all dressed in elegant white and purple robes.
“Welcome your highness, fellow council members,” Hunau, the eldest member, greeted them. But then he noticed S’vyrra and seemed surprised. “And I see we have an Underdwarf with us as well. What brings you here?”
S’vyrra stood tall and proud, dressed in fine silk and adorned with a platinum tiara decorated with rubies, jades and etched with protection spells written in her native language. She spoke in a formal tone, “I am Princess S’vyrra of the Underdwarves, and I am honored to be a guest of King Alaric.”
Alaric’s hand resting on the hilt of his sword as he began to address the greeting party. “S’vyyra will attend today’s meetings with me. Here attendance is paramount to todays discussions.” The courtiers and some of the council members exchanged uneasy glances, but dared not question their king’s command.
Hunau quickly regained his composure and bowed once again. “My apologies, your highness. Please let us settle you in before we begin our meetings.” He turned to S’vyrra. “Princess, if you would please follow me, I will show you to one of our royal guest rooms for now.”
S’vyrra spoke up in a more formal tone, “Thank you, councilor Hunau. That would be most appreciated.”
As some of the group cleaned up and changed out of their travel attire and into more formal attire for the palace, The council members adorned themselves in luxurious ceremonial robes, while the king retrieved his mighty sword Wisdom – a symbol of his unquestioned authority. Shortly after S’vyrra was escorted by two council members to the Large Council room at the lower eastern wing of the palace. The room was circular and lined in marble. The room was open to the outside with large marbled pillars separating the outside from the inside. The breeze gently blowing through as the view overlooked the center city well below from the front side.
In the grand council chambers Hunau and the rest of the Royal Council took their designated places at the large, ornately carved table. The room was adorned with rich tapestries, paintings depicting historic battles, and intricate candelabras that cast a warm glow on the polished marble floors.
“Welcome everyone,” Hunau’s voice boomed through the hall. “Master Commander Rivlet will be leading today’s precession, so please turn your attention over to him.” As all eyes turned to Rivlet, he approached with purpose towards the center of the room where Ithic, S’vyrra, and King Alaric stood tall and regal facing the council.
“Good afternoon everyone,” Rivlet began in a formal tone. “We have much to discuss today, so I will keep this brief. First on the agenda is the outcome of our trip to the southern cities. After meeting with the city leaders, we were able to address some pressing issues and ensure their continued loyalty to our kingdom. Without delving into all the details, I can confirm that our mission was a success. We now have over 1800 soldiers ready to fight from the south. With our outposts, naval fleet, Mages Guilds considered we have a total of 25,000 armed combatants on this continent. If we return outlying regiments we would have an extra 5000 added to that.
As murmurs of approval and relief rippled through the council, Rivlet continued on to the next item on the agenda. “Secondly, by direct order of the King himself, we are commissioning a new regiment known as the Blackened Oak Guild. Their leader, Ithic Ceadwy, will serve as commander of this special assignment regiment. He will report directly to the king and then secondly to the Royal Council as is the SOP (Standard operating Procedure).”
Rivlet paused for a moment before announcing the final item on the agenda. “Lastly, it is my pleasure to officiate the courtship between our beloved King Alaric and Lady S’vyrra, Princess of the Underdwarves.” A wave of excitement and chatter erupted throughout the chambers as Rivlet stepped aside and Hunau took charge of the rest of the meeting.
Hunau cleared his throat, his wise and stoic gaze sweeping over the members of the council. “As Rivlet has stated, our alliance with the southern cities stands strong and their soldiers are prepared to fight for our kingdom. Let us take a moment to congratulate our council members and King on their successful peacekeeping mission before we move forward.” The room erupted in applause and cheers, solidifying the unity and strength of their kingdom.
“Now onto the next matter at hand, the new regiment commissioned by King Alaric himself.” He paused for emphasis before continuing, “The Blackened Oak Guild will now serve as a special regiment under direct command from Commander Ithic Ceadwy.” Nods of understanding and respect followed Hunau’s words. Everyone seems to be in agreement. “Ithic please come forward for your official inception into the Elyrian Military.”
As Hunau finished his speech, all eyes turned towards Ithic who stood tall and proud in front of the council. He took a deep breath, feeling a swell of pride and responsibility wash over him. This was an honor unlike any he had ever received before.
“Thank you, Hunau,” Ithic began, his voice strong and steady. “It is my privilege to lead the Blackened Oak Guild on behalf of our kingdom and our King.” He then turned to face Alaric and bowed deeply. “I am grateful for this opportunity and will do everything in my power to serve our kingdom with honor and loyalty.”
Alaric smiled warmly at Ithic’s words before stepping forward to address the council once again. “The Blackened Oak Guild will be a highly specialized regiment, trained in covert operations and strategic espionage. Their mission will be crucial in gathering intel and executing targeted strikes against our enemies. I don’t believe I need to explain the importance or the history of this guild to anyone here. We all know our Elyrian history well enough.” The members of the council nodded in agreement, understanding the importance of such a regiment in their army. “With that being said,” Alaric then turned back to Ithic with a serious expression. “I have complete faith in your abilities as a leader, but do not hesitate to call upon myself, Rivlet or any member of this council if you require assistance.”
“I will not let you down, my sword is yours to command my King.” Ithic vowed, determination and purpose shining in his eyes.
“Then it is settled,” Hunau stated firmly. “Ithic Ceadwy kneel before the King and the Royal Council.”
After Ithic kneels, the king extends his hand forward towards Ithic. “Do you Promise to Defend the people, the court, and serve your King and Kingdom with honor and empathy? If so then take my hand and stand with us on this day forth as Commander of the Blackened Oak Special Operations Regiment for the Kingdom of Elyria.”
Ithic immediately taking the kings hand and stands facing him.
Hunau exclaims, “Ithic is now officially commissioned as commander of the “Blackened Oak Special Operations Regiment.” May they serve our kingdom with honor and bring glory to Elyria.” The council erupted into applause once again as Ithic stepped back to join S’vyrra and Rivlet’s side.
“Lastly, it is time to officiate the courtship between King Alaric and Lady S’vyrra, Princess of the Underdwarves.” The tension in the room seemed to rise as everyone awaited Hunau’s announcement. “If there is any reason why this courtship shouldn’t take place please speak up.” Once more Hunau paused scanning the Royal Council members one by one.
Hunau’s words hung in the air, the tension in the room palpable as everyone awaited a response. The council members exchanged glances, some with curiosity, others with concern. Alaric stood tall and proud, his gaze fixed on Hunau as he waited for any objections to be raised.
Hunau’s announcement filled S’vyrra with both elation and dread. As the tension in the room continued to mount, S’vyrra stole a glance at Alaric. She admired his unwavering strength and resolve, but she also saw a flicker of vulnerability in his eyes. It was then that she realized that they were not just two rulers bound by duty; they were two individuals embarking on a lifelong journey together.
Some of the members chimed in about the issues with the Underdwarve’s and the Elyrian government’s poor standing over the years and the small skirmishes they have had.
Council member Etherard Rada chimes in passionately, “For years, there had been animosity between the Underdwarves and the Elyrian government, small skirmishes breaking out anytime we build or work around the mountains which span across this continent.” She swept an arm across the room. “And now, with this proposed courtship, how will these problems improve and why should we overlook decades of past problems?” She exclaimed with ferver.
The tension in the council chamber crackled like electricity as Etherard’s words ignited a firestorm of debate. Different council members raised their concerns about past conflicts and potential future problems. S’vyrra could feel her stomach churn with anxiety, but she held onto Alaric’s steady gaze, finding comfort in his unwavering support as the battlefield of words and conflicting agendas continued.
King Alaric’s booming voice disturbed the heated arguments in the throne room. “Silence!” He bellowed, quelling the tension as he peered at his Council members. “We cannot change the past, but we can shape our future. Punishment will not be an option.” The room erupted into more protests and accusations, until the King raised his hand for silence. “Listen to me,” he continued, “we must unite with the Underdwarves as equals. That is the only way for our Kingdom to thrive. Just like we have done with all those who have joined our peaceful union. We do not and will never eradicate a species of people merely because of a small indifference. we all must keep our mind on the bigger picture. For the sake of the Kingdom and the people of Elyria.” His councilors looked at each other skeptically, but ultimately nodded in agreement. It was time to put aside old grudges and work towards a better future together.
Hunau then turned to Alaric and S’vyrra. “The decision rests on both of you now. You must prove that your love is stronger than any past grievances.” He gestured towards the gathered council members. “Do you accept this challenge?”
Alaric and S’vyrra shared a brief glance before confidently nodding their heads in unison.
“Then it is settled,” Hunau declared. “As is tradition, we will present the new couple to the people.” With a flourish of his hand, Hunau beckoned them towards the grand balcony that overlooked the sprawling cityscape of Elyria. The sun was low, casting a golden hue over the cobblestone streets and the multicolored rooftops. The Elyrian villagers, a tapestry of life and culture, gathered below in anticipation, their chatter rising like a flock of starlings taking flight. “Rivlet, I believe you are to do the honor of announcing the couple since you are in charge of todays meeting.”
Rivlet confidently took a step forward. He reached his arm out to the side and rang the large bell three times. His voice projecting with a ceremonious tone. “Citizens of Elyria! I present to you your King, Alaric, and Princess of the Underdwarve’s S’vyrra Thrainn. Let it be known that today marks the beginning of their official courtship!” With a sweeping gesture, he directed everyone’s attention to where S’vyrra stood gracefully at the King’s side, her usual warrior stance replaced by an affectionate demeanor for this special occasion.
A wave of cheers echoed through the streets, bouncing off the stone buildings and filling the air with excitement as to whom this stranger is. S’vyrra stood proudly in her traditional Underdwarf noble attire, a stark contrast to her usual guild uniform, as she offered a demure smile to the crowd. But behind her composed facade, her eyes shone with determination, showing that she was ready to not just fight alongside Alaric, but also help him rule their kingdom. As is custom, King Alaric took S’vyrra’s hand in his own as they stepped to the edge and raised it high for all to see. His thumb gently traced over the back of her hand, a small yet intimate gesture between the two rulers.
“Today marks the beginning of a new chapter for Elyria,” Alaric declared, his voice ringing clear.
The murmurs erupted into a cacophony of voices, some filled with excitement and anticipation, while others whispered in disbelief and fear. The marriage of their king to the princess of the Underdwarves was met with both wonder and trepidation, as it would bring about changes to their way of life. But for now, the cheers drowned out the doubts, and the atmosphere was electric with hope and curiosity.
Soon after the sun dropped below the city walls, painting the sky with streaks of amber and purple, Rivlet couldn’t help but feel a twinge of apprehension alongside the prevailing hope. The path ahead was fraught with peril, yet in this moment, the kingdom seemed to stand united, its faith entrusted to the King and his soon-to-be Queen.
“May their days be long and their reign prosperous,” Rivlet murmured, sharing a knowing glance with his fellow council members. They had much to prepare for, and the journey ahead would test them all. But for now, they basked in the warmth of the setting sun, the light of a shared dream illuminating the dusk.
After they entered back into the Council room. Rivlet Grabbed the rooms attention for one more moment. “king Alaric and Lady S’vyrra, please excuse us, but we must speak about the current issues facing the Kingdom. I’m sure there are more pressing matters you both must attend to as this will most likely go on into the late evening.”
“Yes, Thank you Rivlet,” King Alaric stated as he and S’vyrra departed the room headed to the main part of the Palace.
On the next morning, the grand chamber of the Elyrian Palace was a tableau of apprehension and expectancy, as if the very tapestries on the walls whispered secrets of ancient enmities and alliances. King Alaric stood at the head of the table in the great hall, his presence commanding yet fraught with the burden of history. His piercing blue eyes surveyed the assembly before him, each face reflecting the gravity of what they were about to undertake.
“Esteemed members of the Royal Council,” Alaric began, his voice resonating through the hallowed hall, “we gather here under the auspices of unity, but let us not forget the chasms that once divided our peoples. Our treaty with the Underdwarves is more than parchment and ink; it is the mending of a fractured past.”
Murmurs of assent rippled among the councilors, their nods acknowledging the long and sordid history shared with the subterranean kin, riddled with skirmishes over territory. Alaric’s hand came to rest upon the ornate hilt of his sword.
“Let us proceed with both wisdom and caution,” he concluded, casting a steely gaze across the room. “For the prosperity of Elyria hinges upon the strength of this bond and I will not see it fall apart from ignorance or greed. We must teach our people that the Underdwarves are our allies, not our enemies. There are some who still feel otherwise,” Alaric stated intrepidly.
As if summoned by the weight of the moment, the massive doors to the chamber swung open, heralding the arrival of S’vyrra’s father, the King of the Underdwarves. A stout figure clad in the rich earthen fabrics of his realm, he strode into the chamber with a resolute gait that seemed to shake the very stones beneath his feet.
“King Thrainn,” Alaric greeted, inclining his head in a gesture of respect as old grudges gave way to diplomatic cordiality.
“King Alaric,” Thrainn replied, his deep voice echoing off the chamber walls. “I come bearing the hopes of my people, entwined with the roots of the Silverwood Mountains themselves.”
The council watched as the two monarchs clasped arms, the traditional greeting belying the tension that lingered like a shadow between them. Thrainn’s gaze shifted, meeting each councilor’s eyes with a stern intensity that spoke of hard-forged trust and the unyielding stone of his homeland.
“Let us not dally with pleasantries, We do not waste time on trivial talk.” Thrainn declared, moving to take his seat. “The terms of this treaty must reflect the honor and sacrifices of our kindred spirits, lest the earth swallow our intent whole. There is much to go over before we can move forward as a people.” King Thrainn eyeing the council.
“Your daughter, S’vyrra, is a gemstone cut from the heart of your land,” Alaric said, a note of admiration softening his otherwise firm tone. “our union shall be the keystone of our Kingdoms joining.”
Thrainn’s eyes softened for a fleeting moment, pride mingling with the protective instincts of a father. “She bears the fire of the forge within her,” he acknowledged. “It is my hope that together, you will temper steel with wisdom. My S’vyrra is very headstrong and will not bend to anyone’s authority unless she is willing.”
Alaric nodded seriously, acutely aware of the shift in King Thrainn’s posture and expression. “Together, we shall forge a new era,” he declared with fierce determination. “One where our children will never know the bitterness of unnecessary conflict, but rather bask in the warmth of peace and prosperity.” His words rang out like an unbreakable oath, a promise for a brighter future. “They will have opportunities we never dreamed of,” he continued, his voice growing stronger with each word. “And we will pave the way for them, so they may stride confidently towards a better tomorrow.”
“Then let us etch these words into the annals of time,” Thrainn agreed, a rare smile creasing his weathered face. “And may the earth bear witness to our accord.”
The negotiations began in earnest, words carefully weighed like precious ore. Alaric, after he presented the stipulations he and S’vyrra decided on and gave the room to the council and King Thrainn. For the next few days the Royal Council argued while Thrainn countered with the steadfast resolve of one who had shaped the darkness into a kingdom. The air grew thick with debate, each point and counterpoint carving out the future of two nations.
As the tense meeting dragged on, animosity simmered between the members of the Royal Council and King Thrainn while King Alaric stayed stoic. Each side stubbornly clung to their own demands, unwilling to budge even an inch. The atmosphere in the chamber was thick with unease and frustration, as if a storm was brewing just beneath the surface.
As days passed and negotiations seemed futile, a sense of desperation began to take hold. Then suddenly, as if by some miraculous intervention, a compromise was found. A wave of relief swept over the council members as they rose from their seats, the clinking of armor and rustling of robes filling the chamber once more. Despite their initial disagreements, they were all united in one goal: to see the marriage between King Thrainn’s daughter and King Alaric come to fruition. It was a fragile alliance, but for now, it would have to suffice.
With cautious optimism, they knew that this day would mark the beginning of an enduring peace for their kingdoms. As King Alaric turned to King Thrainn, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of respect for his counterpart. “I believe all that’s left is details and paperwork,” he said with a smile, “our council members will prepare and send it to the other Kingdoms. You can meet with the council members when they are ready to hash out the rest of the treaty.” And with that, a new era of cooperation and understanding had begun.
Amidst the lingering twilight, the Royal Elyrian gardens unfurled like a painter’s canvas awash with hues of dusky roses and violets. The fragrance of night-blooming jasmine threaded through the air, a subtle dance between the wild and the cultivated. Strange wisps of mist curled amongst the hedgerows, tendrils of ephemeral magic that vanished when one tried to grasp them.
King Alaric strolled through the gardens with his betrothed, S’vyrra, princess of the underdwarfs. Their courtship had blossomed in this enchanting alcove, beneath the watchful gaze of both the stars above and the political schemes around them.
S’vyrra’s eyes roamed over the lavish gardens, taking in every detail with awe. “Your world is so vast,” she said softly, her emerald silk dress shimmering in the moonlight. “Don’t you ever tire of being under constant scrutiny?”
Alaric smiled, taking her hand in his. “It can be tiresome at times, but now I have someone to share the burden with.”
He had spent many hours walking through these gardens, contemplating his life as a king and the challenges that came with it. But tonight was different; tonight, he was with S’vyrra, the woman he loved.
They paused before a marble bench, its cool surface a welcome relief from the warm summer air. Alaric gestured for S’vyrra to sit beside him, their fingers intertwined. Alaric couldn’t help but feel relieved that he had found someone who understood the weight he carried. He squeezed her hand gently and smiled.
“There are many customs I wish to share with you,” he said earnestly, his eyes reflecting the pale light of the moon. For too long, he had been guarded in his dealings with others, but with her, it felt natural to be vulnerable.
S’vyrra’s curious gaze met his. “Tell me more.”
“First, there is the exchange of ancestral tokens,” Alaric reached into his tunic, revealing a small locket intricately carved with symbols. “This belonged to my ancestors,” he began, placing it around S’vyrra’s neck. “It’s a symbol of our family’s endurance.”
S’vyrra ran her fingers over the delicate carvings. “An offering?” she questioned.
“Yes,” Alaric confirmed, his hand brushing against her skin as he fastened the locket. “And a promise.”
“And what do you ask for in return?” S’vyrra questioned, her heart fluttering in anticipation.
“An offering, and a promise,” Alaric repeated, his gaze never wavering from hers. “In return, I ask for your trust and time to prove my worth.”
S’vyrra’s fingers traced the ornate patterns on the locket. “Do you trust me?” She whispered, her voice quivering with emotion. she breathed, her eyes shimmering with tears. “Your worth more than any treasure and your worth to me is immeasurable.” Leaning in closer, their lips met in a sweet and tender kiss under the glittering night sky. The stars seemed to dance in celebration of their union.
The palace was alive with the hum of negotiations, every word etching the framework of an unprecedented alliance. As the days lengthened into weeks, the council and King Thrainn, delved deep into details lining the negotiations. Voices rose and fell within the palace’s hallowed halls, each word etching the framework of an unprecedented alliance.
“Patience, my friends,” Thrainn counseled during one such session, his gravelly voice resonating with authority. “We delve not only into treaties but into the bedrock of peace.”
“Indeed,” concurred Lord Varek one of the council members, his eyes scanning the parchment before him. “But let us also remember the heart of this accord—S’vyrra and King Alaric. Their union shall be the cornerstone of our agreement.”
The culmination of tireless diplomacy arrived with the opulence of the grand dinner held in the royal court. Chandeliers cast a golden glow across faces flushed with triumph, and goblets clinked in joyous harmony. Elyria’s finest mingled with the stout but slightly shorter figures of the underdwarf delegates, their differences dissolving in shared revelry.
“Tonight marks not merely a feast, but the dawning of a new epoch,” King Alaric proclaimed, standing at the head of the table with S’vyrra at his side. “Together, we witness the weaving of two disparate threads into a single, unbreakable strand.” His voice resonated with the weight of history and hope, while his gaze lingered on S’vyrra with unveiled affection.
“Indeed,” King Thrainn echoed, raising his goblet. “To the union of our people and the love that binds them. To King Alaric and Princess S’vyrra!”
“May their days be long, and their reigns prosperous,” the assembly chorused, their voices filling the vaulted chamber.
S’vyrra, adorned in the intricate brocades and gemstones of her ancestral garb, felt every eye upon her—a princess of the underdwarfs transformed. The heavy silk of her dress whispered against her skin as she inclined her head gracefully, acknowledging the honor bestowed upon her.
“Father,” she said, turning to Thrainn with a smile that softened the stern lines of her face, “may this accord bring our people closer and as equals for the first time in the eyes of the world.”
“Your happiness is the seal upon this treaty, my child,” King Thrainn replied, his rough hand enveloping hers across the table, his eyes shimmering with unspoken emotion. “All that matters to me is your happiness and my people’s future.”
The evening unfolded with tales and songs of both cultures, weaving a tapestry rich with shared futures. Laughter rang out as jesters entertained, and musicians strummed lutes, the melodies bridging language and lineage.
King Alaric leaned closer to S’vyrra, his dark eyes gleaming with a mixture of pride and anticipation. Amidst the lively chatter and music of the banquet hall, he spoke to her in a hushed tone. “How does it feel, my dear S’vyrra, to be the harbinger of such change?”
The air was thick with tension as she admitted with a hint of fear in her voice, “Daunting, I didn’t actually think it would be this political.” The flickering candlelight reflected off her eyes, giving them a fiery glow. But then she smiled, and the warmth returned to her gaze. “But less so with you by my side.”
“Ever at your side,” he affirmed, brushing his lips against her knuckles in a chaste yet potent gesture that sent a thrill spiraling through her.
A sense of excitement hung in the air as S’vyrra suggested, “Shall we announce the wedding date?” Her voice was tinged with anticipation.
“Let us savor this moment a while longer,” Alaric proposed, his blue eyes gleaming with mirth and something deeper, something akin to wonder. “For tonight, we are but two hearts celebrating the promise of tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” she echoed softly, her heart beating rapidly as she thought about the future they would build together. It was like a symphony of hope and anticipation, playing out in her chest.
As the night wore on, the spirit of camaraderie flourished. Elyrians and underdwarfs alike mingled and laughed together, breaking down barriers that had long been upheld.
“See how they mingle,” Lord Varek observed from their table, leaning toward Alaric with an approving nod. “Like the blending of metals to create a stronger alloy.”
“Strength through unity,” Alaric agreed, his thoughts drifting to the challenges ahead. But then he caught sight of S’vyrra, radiating confidence and regal grace, and he knew that no obstacle was insurmountable.
“Come,” S’vyrra beckoned after rising from their table and extending her hand to him. “Let us join the dance.”
Together, they moved with a grace and ease that belied the weight of their titles—king and princess, soon to be husband and wife, dancing on the cusp of an era reborn. The music swelled around them, a symphony of joy and hope, as they twirled and stepped in perfect rhythm. In this moment, they were not just royal figures, but two people in love, ready to face whatever challenges lay ahead as one.
The Palace of Elyria hummed with a fervor that rivaled the buzzing of bees in the royal gardens. Servants scurried through marbled corridors, their arms laden with fabrics of gold and crimson. Master Tailor Gendrick, his keen eyes squinting critically, adjusted the drapes that would adorn the grand hall, ensuring each pleat fell with regal precision. Even the stable hands, usually resigned to the background hum of palace life, now engaged in animated discussions about the floral arrangements for the royal steeds.
“Have you seen the lilies they’ve chosen for the bridles?” chirped a young handmaid as she passed by, her cheeks flushed with excitement. “White as winter’s first frost!”
“Aye, and what of the roses?” added a gardener, carefully cradling a bundle of said lilies. “Each petal has been blessed by the High Priestess herself.”
In the midst of this orchestrated chaos, the air thrummed with whispers of anticipation and snippets of gossip. The impending union between King Alaric and S’vyrra, daughter of the Underdwarf king, had captured the hearts and imaginations of all within the palace walls.
“Could you fathom? A wedding gown stitched with threads of silver from the mines of Glimmerdark!” one servant enthused while polishing a suit of ceremonial armor until it shone like the surface of Silverwood Lake at dawn.
“Ah, but have you heard? ‘Tis rumoured that even the Emperor of Karnosea will be sending gifts of such splendor they’ll outshine the stars!” countered another servant as they deftly folded napkins into elaborate shapes befitting such a grand occasion.
Amidst the rising joy of the people, a grand carriage adorned in delicate gold filigree and etched with intricate symbols came to a stop before the majestic steps of the palace. Lady Elanora graced the ground with her presence first, followed closely by her sister, Lady Cressida. The two noble women radiated an air of regality and grace that could only come from years spent in the court.
“My dear sisters, how lovely it is to be reunited once again,” said King Alaric as he embraced his two sisters. “We have missed you dearly, Ladies,” he added.
The two ladies exchanged pleasantries with their brother and caught up on all that had happened since they last saw each other. But even as they spoke, their keen eyes scanned the surroundings.
“It seems our people are overjoyed to have us back,” said Lady Cressida with a smile.
“Welcome home, my ladies!” Rivlet greeted, bowing deeply as he approached them.
“Thank you, Councilor Rivlet,” Lady Elanora said, her voice carrying the refined lilt of faraway Karnosea. “It seems the palace is as lively as ever!”
“Indeed, the preparations have invigorated us all,” he replied, leading them inside.
S’vyrra stood upon a balcony overlooking the courtyard, observing the newcomers. She felt a flutter in her chest—not of nerves, but of burgeoning kinship. As the sisters ascended the steps towards her, she was struck by the warmth emanating from their smiles.
“Princess S’vyrra,” Lady Elanora greeted, embracing her soon-to-be sister-in-law. “How wondrous to finally meet you outside of parchment and portrait.”
“Your presence honors us, my lady,” S’vyrra responded, her eyes glinting with genuine pleasure.
“Please, call me Elanora. I’ve heard much about your courage and your spirit. And Cressida,” she gestured to her sister, “has been eager to share tales of our brother’s escapades.”
“Escapades?” S’vyrra echoed, her curiosity piqued.
“Indeed,” Lady Cressida chimed in with a mischievous grin. “Did you know that Alaric once thought himself a minstrel and serenaded the court with a lute? Only three strings attached, mind you.”
“Three strings?” S’vyrra chuckled, envisioning the solemn king in such an uncharacteristically playful scenario. “I can hardly picture it.”
“Ah, but there’s so much more to tell,” Lady Elanora said, looping her arm through S’vyrra’s. “Come, let us walk the gardens. The evening is too fine to waste on standing around.”
As they strolled, the palace’s fervent energy seemed to wrap around them like a cloak. S’vyrra found herself sharing openly with Alaric’s sisters, her heart brimming with affection for the man who had won her admiration and, ultimately, her love.
“Alaric possesses a strength that belies the gentleness in his eyes,” S’vyrra confided, her voice soft but unwavering. “He sees the potential for greatness in everyone and everything. That is why I love him.”
“Such endearing words,” Lady Elanora mused, her gaze tender. “He has indeed grown into a king worthy of legend—and now, of love.”
“Speaking of love,” Lady Cressida interjected with a playful nudge, “let’s ensure you are versed in the art of embarrassing him at opportune moments. It’s a sisterly duty, after all.”
Laughter rang out between the trio as they continued their promenade, the sunset painting the sky in hues of passion and promise. The palace, alight with preparation and joy, mirrored the radiance of the journey ahead—a union of hearts and kingdoms, woven together in the tapestry of destiny.
The golden light of late summer waned, yielding to the amethyst hues of an approaching dusk as S’vyrra and Lady Elanora rode side by side in the royal gardens. The air was redolent with the scent of ripening apples and woodsmoke—a herald of autumn’s imminent arrival. In the distance, the palace loomed, its spires catching the last of the day’s sun.
“Your understanding of our family’s lineage is impressive, S’vyrra,” Lady Elanora remarked, her tone laced with a warmth that spoke of the bond they had cultivated. “I must confess, I had not foreseen such dedication.”
“Alaric’s lineage is now mine to cherish as well,” S’vyrra replied, her emerald eyes reflecting the pride she felt. “To be woven into the tapestry of Elyria’s history is an honor I do not take lightly.”
“Nor should you,” Lady Elanora said, as their horses trotted past a row of ancient oaks. “Especially as the first underdwarf to ascend as Queen. You are a trailblazer for your people, and for ours.”
S’vyrra nodded thoughtfully, her gaze lingering on the leaves that were just beginning to trade their green attire for shades of rust and gold. “May our union be as strong as the roots of these oaks, and as enduring as the stone of my homeland.”
“Indeed,” Lady Elanora agreed. “And Alaric—how does he fare with all the pomp and expectancy? The entire kingdom buzzes like a hive about to swarm.”
“Alaric feels the weight of the treaty as much as the jubilation of our union.” S’vyrra’s voice held a note of admiration. “He balances both with the grace of a sovereign truly born to lead.”
“Ah, but let us not forget to enjoy the present, dear sister-to-be,” Lady Elanora implored, urging her mount closer to brush shoulders with S’vyrra’s steed. “For now, we ride as two souls delighting in the splendor of the world.”
“An invitation to joy I cannot refuse,” S’vyrra responded, allowing a rare smile to play upon her lips. The intimacy of the moment was not lost on her—the future queen and the sister of a king forging a kinship on their journey through the ever-shifting landscape of court life.
As they circled back toward the palace, King Alaric joined them, his horse moving with the ease of long practice. His presence seemed to stir the air itself, and S’vyrra felt her heart quicken—not from nerves, but from the solemnity of what lay ahead.
“Alaric,” she called out, her tone carrying across the expanse between them. “Even as the seasons turn and the years will pass, my commitment to you and to Elyria will remain steadfast.”
“Your words warm me more than the fires that will soon kindle in every hearth of our kingdom,” Alaric replied, a subtle smile softening his usually stoic features. “Together, we will face the chill winds and forge a future bright with promise.”
“Promise, yes,” S’vyrra mused, eyeing the horizon where the first stars of evening dared to twinkle. “Yet let us not forget the shadows that dance at the edges of our joy. There is work to be done, love to be fortified, and allies to be won over.”
“Ever the pragmatist, my queen,” Alaric noted with a touch of endearment. “Our shared vision will guide us through whatever trials may come.”
The three riders fell into a comfortable silence, the clop-clop of hooves against the cobblestone paths a rhythmic accompaniment to their thoughts. S’vyrra considered the history they were making, the alliance they were forging, and the love that bound her to Alaric—a love as deep and mysterious as the caverns of her homeland.
In those quiet moments, as twilight descended upon the kingdom of Elyria, the future seemed not a distant dream but a tangible path they were already treading—one that would lead them through the turning of the seasons, from the harvests of fall to the renewal of spring, and beyond.
The Walled City of Elyria was abuzz with a fervor that had not been seen in many generations. From the highest turrets of the palace to the cobblestone streets of the common quarters, there was an air of jubilation. The people worked tirelessly, adorning buildings with garlands of autumn leaves and vibrant flowers. Merchants hawked wedding trinkets and treats, children ran through the streets with ribbons fluttering behind them, and bards practiced ballads that would tell of the love between King Alaric and S’vyrra for centuries to come.
“Look at them,” S’vyrra said, leaning over the balcony of her chamber, watching as a group of weavers brought forth an intricate tapestry they had been commissioned to create. “Their joy is as much for this union as our own.”
“Indeed,” Alaric replied, coming to stand beside her, his hand finding hers. “They see in us a symbol of unity and hope.”
Below, the Royal council coordinated the grand procession, their voices a symphony of organized chaos. Vendors set up stalls filled with delicacies and craftsmen displayed their finest works. Banners bearing the combined crests of the Kingdom and the Underdwarfs billowed in the breeze—a sigil of a new era.
The morning of the wedding dawned crisp and clear, the sky a tapestry of pink and gold as the sun rose over Elyria. In the royal chambers, S’vyrra stood before a towering mirror, attendants fussing over her. Her gown, a masterpiece of Underdwarf craftsmanship and Elyrian elegance, shimmered with threads of silver and deep blue, reflecting her heritage and her future. Her dark hair was woven with gems that caught the light, casting prismatic patterns upon the walls.
“Never have I seen such beauty,” whispered an attendant, misty-eyed.
“Nor I,” S’vyrra replied softly, her heart swelling with the gravity of the day.
Outside, Alaric awaited her in the grand courtyard, resplendent in ceremonial armor that gleamed under the sun’s caress, his cloak flowing like a river of royal blue velvet. As he turned to greet his bride, his breath caught—the sight of her stirred in him emotions both profound and tender.
The ceremony unfolded beneath an archway of intertwined branches from the Silverwood Mountains and the caverns below Elyria, symbolizing the merging of two worlds. The Royal council stood by, watching with pride as Alaric and S’vyrra exchanged vows that transcended tradition, weaving their destinies together.
“Today,” Alaric began, his voice carrying across the gathered crowd, “we unite not just in marriage, but in purpose. Together, we shall build a kingdom where every citizen—above ground or below—shall know peace and prosperity.”
“And love,” S’vyrra added, her voice steady yet laden with emotion. “For it is love that has brought us here, and it is love that will guide our rule.”
The applause that followed was thunderous, reverberating off the city walls, as the people of Elyria celebrated the union of their king and his new queen.
As night descended, the Royal wedding gave way to festivities that filled every corner of the city. Musicians played tunes that were both haunting and exuberant, while dancers whirled in synchronized splendor. Feasts were held in every quarter, and laughter echoed into the starry skies.
In the privacy of their chambers, Alaric and S’vyrra shared a quiet moment away from the revelry. They stood at their window, looking out over the city that was now theirs to protect and cherish.
“Today,” S’vyrra murmured, her head resting against Alaric’s chest, “we danced upon the threshold of history. Tomorrow, we step over it.”
Alaric kissed the crown of her head, his heart full. “Together, my love. Always together.”
And as the first day of their joined lives came to a close, the newlyweds fell into each other’s embrace, their wedding night a gentle whisper compared to the shouts of celebration outside, a promise of all the nights and days to come.
The morning sun streamed through the stained glass of the palace, casting prismatic patterns over the spacious chambers that S’vyrra now called home. She stood at the heart of a whirlwind of silk and silver, her eyes reflecting the many hues that danced upon her skin.
“Your Highness, if I may,” a gentle voice murmured, as a young assistant approached with a velvet cloak trimmed with ermine. It was one of many hands that now fluttered about her, each poised to cater to any whim or necessity—so different from the rugged independence of the Blackened Oak Guild.
“Thank you, Elara,” S’vyrra replied, allowing the garment to be draped over her shoulders. The weight of it was not just physical; it was the mantle of her new role, heavy with expectation.
“Is it too much?” Alaric’s oldest sister, Lady Morwen, entered gracefully, her keen eyes assessing the scene. Her presence was both a comfort and a reminder of the duties S’vyrra had undertaken.
“Sometimes,” S’vyrra admitted, meeting Morwen’s gaze in the reflection of the grand mirror. “It feels like I’m being dressed for battle rather than breakfast.”
“Ah, but it is a battle, in its own right,” Morwen said with a knowing smile, moving to adjust the platinum circlet that crowned S’vyrra’s brow. “One of wits and wills. You are learning quickly, though. Elyria could not ask for a more resolute queen.”
S’vyrra’s lips curved upward, bolstered by the reassurance. “I never imagined needing assistance for every little task. As if choosing what to wear should require counsel.”
“Appearances hold power, S’vyrra. They speak before you do, and in this court, such conversations can alter fates.” Morwen’s touch was light but firm, guiding without overwhelming.
“I understand that now. It’s… draining, at times.” S’vyrra turned to face her sister-in-law directly. “But I am committed to this—to our people, to Alaric.”
“Of course you are,” Morwen agreed, her hand squeezing S’vyrra’s arm softly. “And in time, all this will become as natural to you as breathing.”
Elsewhere in the palace, King Alaric poured over maps and scrolls in his study—a room still bearing the scent of leather and ink despite the recent floral arrangements that spoke of celebration. He was assembling a team for the quest ahead, his brow furrowed in concentration.
“Adventurers of skill and discretion,” he muttered to himself, quill scratching names and potential leads onto parchment.
“Discretion might be easier found than skill, given our need for secrecy,” S’vyrra remarked, entering the room with a swish of fabric, the very picture of regal poise.
Alaric looked up, his expression softening as he regarded his wife. “You should be resting after the week we’ve had.”
“Rest? With so much at stake?” She crossed the room, pausing beside his chair. “I wish I could join you on this quest, Alaric. We’ve always fought side by side.”
He reached out, his hand capturing hers. “I know, my heart. But Elyria needs you here, guiding the council and reassuring our people. This alliance with the underdwarfs… it’s delicate.”
“Delicate?” S’vyrra’s eyes flashed with irritation. “I am no fine porcelain, Alaric. I am a warrior.”
“Which is why you will command respect here,” he insisted, his tone even but firm. “This is a different kind of battle, S’vyrra—one that requires your strength in ways the battlefield does not.”
For a moment, tension crackled between them, a stormcloud ready to burst. Then, as swiftly as it came, it dissipated. S’vyrra exhaled, the line of her shoulders relaxing.
“You’re right,” she conceded, leaning down to press a kiss to his forehead. “I suppose I am still adjusting to the idea of being Queen S’vyrra rather than S’vyrra Ordmaster of the Blackened Oak.”
“Queen S’vyrra has a rather nice ring to it,” Alaric teased, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “Though to me, you’ll always be the woman who fights with the ferocity of a dragon and loves with the warmth of the sun.”
“Flatterer,” she chided, but her smile was radiant. “Now, tell me of these adventurers. I may not wield sword alongside you, but my mind remains your sharpest weapon.”
“Indeed, it is,” Alaric agreed, spreading the map wide for her perusal.
As they bent their heads together, a partnership forged in love and sealed in purpose, S’vyrra felt the thrum of anticipation for what lay ahead. Their lives had merged like tributaries into a mighty river, and together, they would navigate its course—with all the confidence and strength that being Queen of Elyria demanded.
The sun dipped low, casting a crimson hue over the Elyrian Palace as the final day of the month-long festival approached. From every corner of the kingdom, joyous laughter and music rose, melding into a symphony of celebration for the union between King Alaric and Queen S’vyrra. The air was thick with the savory scent of roasting meats and sweet spices that wafted from the bustling market stalls lining the cobblestone streets.
“Look at them,” S’vyrra murmured beside Alaric, her hand resting lightly on the balcony’s stone railing. Her eyes sparkled with a mixture of pride and wonder as she watched her new subjects revel below. “Their happiness is our doing.”
“Indeed,” Alaric replied, his voice brimming with contentment. “Together, we’ve woven hope into the fabric of our realm.” He turned to face her, the setting sun casting his features in a warm glow. “A testament to unity and strength.”
As acrobats spun through the air, drawing gasps and cheers from the crowd, S’vyrra felt a surge of energy pulse through her veins—a combination of anticipation for the future and the weight of her new crown. She found comfort in the steadiness of Alaric’s presence, his blue eyes reflecting the same fierce determination that had first drawn her to him.
“Remember when I said I wasn’t sure if I could balance the scales of queen and warrior?” she asked, her gaze still locked on the festivities.
Alaric reached out, fingers gently tracing the line of her jaw. “I do. And you’ve proven yourself more than capable. You’ve become Elyria’s heart, beating strong and sure.”
S’vyrra leaned into his touch, allowing herself a moment of vulnerability. “It’s daunting, this mantle of power. Yet, seeing them—the people—it fuels me. It’s a responsibility I never imagined, but one I will bear with honor.”
“Your strength gives them strength,” he assured her, his lips curving into a smile. “It bolsters me as well.”
“Speaking of strength,” S’vyrra began, pulling back slightly, a playful glint in her eye. “Have you chosen the adventurers for your quest?”
“Ah, yes,” Alaric chuckled, leading her back inside their chambers where maps and scrolls lay scattered across a large oak table. “We have assembled a group as diverse and formidable as the kingdom itself. They are ready to brave any peril to protect Elyria.”
“Good,” S’vyrra said, taking her place at the table, her brow furrowing as she studied the documents. “I may be bound to the palace, but my resolve travels with you and those brave souls.”
“Queen S’vyrra,” a voice echoed from the doorway. It was Lysandra, her emerald eyes alight with mischief. “May I steal you away for a dance? The people yearn to see their monarchs partake in the merriment.”
“Of course,” S’vyrra replied, offering Alaric a knowing look. “Shall we show them how royalty celebrates?”
“Let us,” he agreed, offering her his arm as they descended the grand staircase to join their people.
The night unfolded like a tapestry of dreams. Dancers twirled in harmony, their silks whispering secrets to the wind. Minstrels played tunes that seemed to pull at the very soul, coaxing even the shyest villagers into the dance. S’vyrra moved with grace, her laughter mingling with the music as she danced among the Elyrians—her people—in a whirlwind of shared elation.
“Queen S’vyrra?” a child’s voice piped up amidst the revelry. A small boy stood before her, clutching a wooden figurine carved in the likeness of a dragon.
“Hello there,” she said, kneeling to meet his gaze. “What have you got there?”
“It’s Kaelithorne,” the boy beamed, holding out the toy. “I want to be brave like him—and like you!”
“Then you shall be,” S’vyrra promised, her heart swelling. “Keep him close, and remember that bravery lies within.”
“Thank you, Queen S’vyrra!” the boy exclaimed before dashing off into the crowd.
As the moon ascended, cloaking the kingdom in silver light, Alaric and S’vyrra stood side by side, watching the festival ebb into the quiet whispers of dawn. Their hands entwined, they shared an unspoken promise to face whatever shadows might loom beyond the Silverwood Mountains—together.
“Tomorrow, the real work begins,” Alaric said softly, his gaze fixed on the horizon.
“Let it come,” S’vyrra responded with unwavering certainty. “For tonight, let us bask in this moment of peace. Our people believe in us, in the future we will build.”
“Then let us not fail them,” Alaric vowed.
“Nor each other,” S’vyrra added, her voice steady as the earth itself.
Hope kindled in their hearts, an everlasting flame against the encroaching darkness. With the love of their people buoying them, King Alaric and Queen S’vyrra faced the future, a bastion of unity for all of Elyria.
#action #adventure #book #books #Chapter3 #Elyria #fantasy #fantasyBook #fantasyBooks #fantasySeries #kaelithorne #Mystical #MysticalLand #MysticalLandOfElyria
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Somehow I end up listening to Wrong World more each week than the previous one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDLafQ-Rg-k
Usually it's the first couple weeks that I spend a lot listening to a new song, followed by occasionally doing so. There are exceptions though, and it seems like Wrong World is one of them. And it also help that the OP itself looks really cool.
And since I'm caught up with Girls Band Cry (shocker, I know) and there's no source material for me to binge, the songs are all I have until new episodes come out. Although to be fair, I don't think I would want to read the source material even if there was one, cause the voice acting in this is so good! And these are literally the entire main cast's first roles!
#anime #GirlsBandCry #Music #JapaneseMusic #TogenashiTogeari -
Marvelous Market: Best New Comics May 20
The Absolute Universe Expands Again
Alongside a number of cool looking new indie titles, the white-hot Absolute Universe gets a new series from yet another incredible creative team in writer Pornsak Pichetshote and artist Rafael Albequerque, who was originally supposed to draw ABSOLUTE SUPERMAN before the floods in his home country of Brazil.
Hello and welcome to the Marvelous Market, my weekly guide for anyone interested in going to a comic book store today. In addition to a full list of new # 1s and new volume 1s, I’ll be giving you my top 4 recommendations in 4 categories. Like Houston legend Mike Jones rapped, “We’re still tippin’ on four-fours.” I’m going to give you the top four new comics, top four ongoing comics, the top four graphic novels, and the top 4 preorders.
The work going into this curation is made possible by readers like you. For less than the cost of a cup of coffee a month, you can help make this work possible.
New Issue # 1s
ABSOLUTE GREEN ARROW # 1
SOLICIT COPY:
WITHOUT THE TRICK ARROWS… WITHOUT THE MONEY… WITHOUT MERCY… WHAT’S LEFT IS THE ABSOLUTE HUNTER!
A serial killer is slaughtering corrupt billionaires. The only clue to their identity is the mysterious green arrows sticking out of his victims’ corpses. Executive protection specialist Dinah Lance, a.k.a. Absolute Black Canary, is one of the people tasked to uncover this murderer’s identity as she investigates her suspects… all familiar DC archers uniquely linked to a recently murdered Oliver Queen. I Know What You Did Last Summer for billionaires, Absolute Green Arrow reimagines the Emerald Archer’s mythos into a dangerous, urban horror murder-mystery by Eisner winners Pornsak Pichetshote (Dead Boy Detectives, Infidel) and Rafael Albuquerque (Detective Comics, American Vampire).
ODIN # 1
SOLICIT COPY:
Green Room meets Midsommar in JAMES TYNION’s most relentless Horror story yet! Adela will do anything for the perfect story. Including going undercover with Neo Nazi punks headed to the frozen forests of Norway under the misbegotten belief that they can summon Odin and achieve their promised white destiny. But what awaits them in the woods is far older and stranger than any of them can comprehend. And no gods are coming to answer their prayers for help. Multiple Eisner Award-winning creator JAMES TYNION IV (Exquisite Corpses), no-holds-barred writer MARGUERITE BENNETT (Witchblade), rising star artist LETIZIA CADONICI (House of Slaughter), and Eisner Award-winning colorist JORDIE BELLAIRE (Redlands) conjure a hallucinogenic horror story that leaves absolutely no taboo unbroken.
OF THE EARTH # 1
SOLICIT COPY:
Legendary artist CHARLIE ADLARD (THE WALKING DEAD) joins writers CHRIS CONDON (THAT TEXAS BLOOD) & ANDREW EHRICH, colorist PIP MARTIN (EVERYTHING DEAD & DYING), letterer HASSAN OTSMANE-ELHAOU (ASSORTED CRISIS EVENTS), and designer MIKE TIVEY (NEWS FROM THE FALLOUT) for his triumphant return to Image Comics in this neo-noir-tinged eco-horror miniseries that is Blood Simple meets John Carpenter’s The Thing.
Tabitha ‘Tabby’ Black flees a sordid life for her quiet hometown of Solitude, Texas and the comfort of her Gramma’s home where she was raised. Only home isn’t what it once was…. and neither is Gramma.
SEVEN WIVES # 1
SOLICIT COPY:
Forty-nine witnesses, seven wives, one dead husband.
On Monday, April 17, at 9:04 a.m., two police detectives are dispatched to investigate a death on a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints compound in remote Arizona. Matthew Dunn, the patriarch of the Dunn family, has been found stabbed on the pulpit of his temple, basking in the blood-soaked gaze of his savior.
Detectives Aguilar and Halwell begin the arduous task of questioning each of Matthew’s seven wives and quickly encounter a brick wall of memorized Scripture, canned platitudes, and locked lips. It becomes clear that the women’s intricately braided hair, voices with sweet affectations, and modest clothing aren’t just signs of Matthew’s brainwashing but armor they use to protect their family. But with each interrogation, the cracks begin to show — the abuse, the truth of living and surviving in this cult — and the detectives uncover the unholy gospel of Matthew Dunn.
ONGOING SERIES
ABSOLUTE FLASH # 15
SOLICIT COPY:
WHAT LURKS WITHIN S.T.A.R. LABS?! On the hunt for answers, Wally is drawn to the derelict facility of the now defunct super-science lab, S.T.A.R. LABS. But something is dwelling within the halls of this place, and the Flash is not ready for this new threat!
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN # 29
SOLICIT COPY:
BEST FR(ENEMIES)! Spider-Man’s best friend’s life shattered by a terrible accident — and Peter Parker is to blame! Is there a new villain on Spidey’s block?
LEGACY #993
G. I. JOE # 22
SOLICIT COPY:
HUNT FOR ENERGON! After the stunning conclusion to DREADNOK WAR, the Joes and Cobra are in a race to find Energon across the world. But the man known as Crystal Ball has horrifying plans for them all…
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: SHREDDER # 8
SOLICIT COPY:
The Dog Star Clan has been compromised. Cybernetic tendrils crawl out of their skin as they turn into grotesque monsters, half human and half machine. It’ll take more than the Shredder’s blades to carve the malware-riddled tech out of their flesh… but that doesn’t mean he isn’t going to try.
Trade Paperbacks, Hardcovers, and OGNs
BARRIER: THE COLLECTED EDITION TP
SOLICIT COPY:
From the Eisner Award-winning team behind The Private Eye, BARRIER is a shockingly prescient drama about violence, language, and illegal immigration…with a spectacular sci-fi twist.
When Texas rancher Liddy and Honduran immigrant Óscar collide on the U.S.–Mexico border, neither can understand the other’s words—but both are forced to rely on trust when they’re thrust into an unimaginable encounter. Told in English and Spanish without translation, Barrier is a visually stunning, genre-bending story that explores the walls we build between nations, cultures, and each other.
Collected for the first time in its original “widescreen” format—and perfectly complementing Image’s new softcover edition of THE PRIVATE EYE—this gorgeous new edition contains the entire Harvey Award-winning miniseries.
THE BOOK OF JUSKO TP
SOLICIT COPY:
The Book of Jusko showcases the very best of Joe Jusko’s decades spanning career and painted legacy.
In 1992, Joe Jusko’s Marvel Masterpieces trading card set exploded into pop culture—redefining how the world saw superheroes with raw power, larger-than-life drama, and breathtaking realism in every brushstroke. It became a cultural landmark, inspiring generations of fans, artists, and collectors.
Now—due to overwhelming demand—we’re opening the vaults to celebrate the full scope of Jusko’s legendary career. Inside you’ll discover iconic illustrations, rare and unpublished works, private commissions, trading cards, and personal archive pieces—some revealed here for the very first time.
This is the definitive collection of Joe Jusko’s art—a must-have for anyone who treasures painted comics, fantasy illustration, or fine art.
DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL vol. 1 TP
SOLICIT COPY:
The LitRPG fantasy smash hit phenomenon and New York Times bestseller, DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL, is now a graphic novel for the very first time!
The Apocalypse WILL be televised!
You know what’s worse than breaking up with your girlfriend? Getting stuck on a sadistic alien game show with her cat. Join Carl and Princess Donut as they try to survive the end of the world — or just get to the next level of a trap-filled fantasy dungeon.
With vibrant art done by Laurel Pursuit to bring action-packed battles to life, join as Carl fights his way through the dungeon in heart-speckled underwear. And of course, the grizzly scenes are only balanced with the incredibly fluffy, wide-eyed stare of its main character, Princess Donut.
A ton of heart and effort was poured in creating a series with a script and style that would both appeal to WEBTOON readers and also lovers of DCC, all while consulting author Matt Dinniman the entire way about character designs, story, — EVERYTHING! We couldn’t resist taking the apocalyptic awesomeness of the DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL WEBTOON and adapting it into the FIRST EVER graphic novel series!
Welcome, Crawler. Welcome to the Dungeon. Survival is optional. Keeping the viewers entertained is not.
This volume collects episodes 1-13 of the WEBTOON edition.
FEAR AGENT Compendium TP
SOLICIT COPY:
The entirety of The New York Times best-selling Fear Agent saga—collected in one massive compendium!
When down-and-out alien exterminator Heath Huston stumbles upon a plot to wipe out humanity, he must put down the bottle and pick up the fight– as the last surviving Fear Agent. This pulp sci-fi classic from writer Rick Remender (DEADLY CLASS, LOW) teams him with an all-star lineup of artists including Tony Moore (THE WALKING DEAD, Venom) and Jerome Opeña (SEVEN TO ETERNITY, Uncanny X-Force) across a galaxy-spanning, whiskey-soaked epic of redemption, revenge, and alien annihilation.
Collects Fear Agent #1–32 in a single 672-page volume for just
Preorders on Final Order Cutoff
A MISCHIEF OF MAGPIES # 1
SOLICIT COPY:
NEW DSTLRY SERIES DEBUT FROM SIMON SPURRIER AND MATÍAS BERGARA!
Mar has a secret. Sometimes, without warning, he falls out of the world. This would be an inconvenience if his life wasn’t already such a drag.
When he’s gone, he finds himself in an extraordinary city. A city which is also a machine, endlessly crossing a shoreless ocean. A city of two halves: the bright, bustling spires above the waves, and the beast-haunted twilight halls below. And between, clowning along the rusting beach, a troupe of anarchic magpies with all the answers but none of the questions.
Recipients of the Angoulême Sélection Officielle, GLAAD Award, and multiple Eisner Award nominations, creators Simon Spurrier and Mat as Bergara present a new fantasy masterpiece in the tradition of Coda and Step By Bloody Step, driving the comics medium into new, beautiful, baleful waters.
For fans of THE NEVERENDING STORY, ARCANE, and THE BOY AND THE HERON.
THE SHAOLIN COWBOY: STAYING A.I.LIVE # 1
SOLICIT COPY:
The Shaolin Cowboy faces an icy reception when he leaves his wasteland retreat on a mission of mercy, following the considered consul of a desert swallow and a horned toad, both endangered species. But none as endangered as the wandering ex monk becomes, once again because in this typical AMERIGUNN small town he learns euthanASIA is the new import duty on foreign imports!!!
SANFORD GREENE’S 1000 TP/HC
SOLICIT COPY:
From the Eisner winning creators of Bitter Root. Set in a modern world of aliens, warlocks, zombies, and ancient beasts, 1000 follows Dragon Son – a supreme entity who’s abandoned all creation as he struggles to return to his true Dragon form by completing one thousand acts of repentance. Son is joined by five other agents who are charged with secretly policing the world and keeping civilization from crumbling completely.
1000 first premiered as a webcomic and won the 2018 Ringo Award for Best Webcomic. This deluxe edition collects the entire run of the webcomic with additional behind the scenes content.
TERMINAL # 1
SOLICIT COPY:
THE MUST-READ SUPERHERO SERIES OF THE YEAR FROM THE DREAM TEAM OF ROBERT KIRKMAN, JOE CASEY, ANDY KUBERT, DAVID FINCH, AND ARTHUR ADAMS!
There is a secret war being waged across the world by two violent forces with superhuman abilities who blur the lines between good and evil. When Marilyn Howe’s search for her missing sister Alessandra puts her in the center of this conflict, she’ll learn that the power to save the world comes from unlocking your genetic code and giving up everything you thought you knew about yourself… if you survive the experience. Perfect for fans of INVINCIBLE and X-MEN, nothing can prepare you for the most violent and unpredictable superhero series of the year!
What did I miss?
If there are some great comics, collected or in single issues, that you think I should be reading, tell me about them! And if you do try out any of these series, let me know how you liked them, or didn’t. This is a safe space for haters. If you enjoy this service, please share this article on social media or tell someone that you know reads comics about it.
Divining Comics is brought to you by generous support from the “Best Friends of Divining Comics,” Alex Seubert.
Divining Comics is also brought to you by the support of the “Friends of Divining Comics,” Comic Book Herald.
If you would like to add your name to the list of friends, best friends, or best friends forever, support this work for less than the cost of one cup of coffee a month at patreon.com/diviningcomics. You can also leave a one-time tip/buy my zines at ko-fi.com/spikestonehand. Or, if you can’t afford to support me financially at this time, simply follow me on Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky and share my posts there.
#art #books #ComicBooks #comics #DC #dcComics #marvel #marvelComics #MarvelousMarket #NewComicDay -
Marvelous Market: Best New Comics May 20
The Absolute Universe Expands Again
Alongside a number of cool looking new indie titles, the white-hot Absolute Universe gets a new series from yet another incredible creative team in writer Pornsak Pichetshote and artist Rafael Albequerque, who was originally supposed to draw ABSOLUTE SUPERMAN before the floods in his home country of Brazil.
Hello and welcome to the Marvelous Market, my weekly guide for anyone interested in going to a comic book store today. In addition to a full list of new # 1s and new volume 1s, I’ll be giving you my top 4 recommendations in 4 categories. Like Houston legend Mike Jones rapped, “We’re still tippin’ on four-fours.” I’m going to give you the top four new comics, top four ongoing comics, the top four graphic novels, and the top 4 preorders.
The work going into this curation is made possible by readers like you. For less than the cost of a cup of coffee a month, you can help make this work possible.
New Issue # 1s
ABSOLUTE GREEN ARROW # 1
SOLICIT COPY:
WITHOUT THE TRICK ARROWS… WITHOUT THE MONEY… WITHOUT MERCY… WHAT’S LEFT IS THE ABSOLUTE HUNTER!
A serial killer is slaughtering corrupt billionaires. The only clue to their identity is the mysterious green arrows sticking out of his victims’ corpses. Executive protection specialist Dinah Lance, a.k.a. Absolute Black Canary, is one of the people tasked to uncover this murderer’s identity as she investigates her suspects… all familiar DC archers uniquely linked to a recently murdered Oliver Queen. I Know What You Did Last Summer for billionaires, Absolute Green Arrow reimagines the Emerald Archer’s mythos into a dangerous, urban horror murder-mystery by Eisner winners Pornsak Pichetshote (Dead Boy Detectives, Infidel) and Rafael Albuquerque (Detective Comics, American Vampire).
ODIN # 1
SOLICIT COPY:
Green Room meets Midsommar in JAMES TYNION’s most relentless Horror story yet! Adela will do anything for the perfect story. Including going undercover with Neo Nazi punks headed to the frozen forests of Norway under the misbegotten belief that they can summon Odin and achieve their promised white destiny. But what awaits them in the woods is far older and stranger than any of them can comprehend. And no gods are coming to answer their prayers for help. Multiple Eisner Award-winning creator JAMES TYNION IV (Exquisite Corpses), no-holds-barred writer MARGUERITE BENNETT (Witchblade), rising star artist LETIZIA CADONICI (House of Slaughter), and Eisner Award-winning colorist JORDIE BELLAIRE (Redlands) conjure a hallucinogenic horror story that leaves absolutely no taboo unbroken.
OF THE EARTH # 1
SOLICIT COPY:
Legendary artist CHARLIE ADLARD (THE WALKING DEAD) joins writers CHRIS CONDON (THAT TEXAS BLOOD) & ANDREW EHRICH, colorist PIP MARTIN (EVERYTHING DEAD & DYING), letterer HASSAN OTSMANE-ELHAOU (ASSORTED CRISIS EVENTS), and designer MIKE TIVEY (NEWS FROM THE FALLOUT) for his triumphant return to Image Comics in this neo-noir-tinged eco-horror miniseries that is Blood Simple meets John Carpenter’s The Thing.
Tabitha ‘Tabby’ Black flees a sordid life for her quiet hometown of Solitude, Texas and the comfort of her Gramma’s home where she was raised. Only home isn’t what it once was…. and neither is Gramma.
SEVEN WIVES # 1
SOLICIT COPY:
Forty-nine witnesses, seven wives, one dead husband.
On Monday, April 17, at 9:04 a.m., two police detectives are dispatched to investigate a death on a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints compound in remote Arizona. Matthew Dunn, the patriarch of the Dunn family, has been found stabbed on the pulpit of his temple, basking in the blood-soaked gaze of his savior.
Detectives Aguilar and Halwell begin the arduous task of questioning each of Matthew’s seven wives and quickly encounter a brick wall of memorized Scripture, canned platitudes, and locked lips. It becomes clear that the women’s intricately braided hair, voices with sweet affectations, and modest clothing aren’t just signs of Matthew’s brainwashing but armor they use to protect their family. But with each interrogation, the cracks begin to show — the abuse, the truth of living and surviving in this cult — and the detectives uncover the unholy gospel of Matthew Dunn.
ONGOING SERIES
ABSOLUTE FLASH # 15
SOLICIT COPY:
WHAT LURKS WITHIN S.T.A.R. LABS?! On the hunt for answers, Wally is drawn to the derelict facility of the now defunct super-science lab, S.T.A.R. LABS. But something is dwelling within the halls of this place, and the Flash is not ready for this new threat!
THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN # 29
SOLICIT COPY:
BEST FR(ENEMIES)! Spider-Man’s best friend’s life shattered by a terrible accident — and Peter Parker is to blame! Is there a new villain on Spidey’s block?
LEGACY #993
G. I. JOE # 22
SOLICIT COPY:
HUNT FOR ENERGON! After the stunning conclusion to DREADNOK WAR, the Joes and Cobra are in a race to find Energon across the world. But the man known as Crystal Ball has horrifying plans for them all…
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: SHREDDER # 8
SOLICIT COPY:
The Dog Star Clan has been compromised. Cybernetic tendrils crawl out of their skin as they turn into grotesque monsters, half human and half machine. It’ll take more than the Shredder’s blades to carve the malware-riddled tech out of their flesh… but that doesn’t mean he isn’t going to try.
Trade Paperbacks, Hardcovers, and OGNs
BARRIER: THE COLLECTED EDITION TP
SOLICIT COPY:
From the Eisner Award-winning team behind The Private Eye, BARRIER is a shockingly prescient drama about violence, language, and illegal immigration…with a spectacular sci-fi twist.
When Texas rancher Liddy and Honduran immigrant Óscar collide on the U.S.–Mexico border, neither can understand the other’s words—but both are forced to rely on trust when they’re thrust into an unimaginable encounter. Told in English and Spanish without translation, Barrier is a visually stunning, genre-bending story that explores the walls we build between nations, cultures, and each other.
Collected for the first time in its original “widescreen” format—and perfectly complementing Image’s new softcover edition of THE PRIVATE EYE—this gorgeous new edition contains the entire Harvey Award-winning miniseries.
THE BOOK OF JUSKO TP
SOLICIT COPY:
The Book of Jusko showcases the very best of Joe Jusko’s decades spanning career and painted legacy.
In 1992, Joe Jusko’s Marvel Masterpieces trading card set exploded into pop culture—redefining how the world saw superheroes with raw power, larger-than-life drama, and breathtaking realism in every brushstroke. It became a cultural landmark, inspiring generations of fans, artists, and collectors.
Now—due to overwhelming demand—we’re opening the vaults to celebrate the full scope of Jusko’s legendary career. Inside you’ll discover iconic illustrations, rare and unpublished works, private commissions, trading cards, and personal archive pieces—some revealed here for the very first time.
This is the definitive collection of Joe Jusko’s art—a must-have for anyone who treasures painted comics, fantasy illustration, or fine art.
DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL vol. 1 TP
SOLICIT COPY:
The LitRPG fantasy smash hit phenomenon and New York Times bestseller, DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL, is now a graphic novel for the very first time!
The Apocalypse WILL be televised!
You know what’s worse than breaking up with your girlfriend? Getting stuck on a sadistic alien game show with her cat. Join Carl and Princess Donut as they try to survive the end of the world — or just get to the next level of a trap-filled fantasy dungeon.
With vibrant art done by Laurel Pursuit to bring action-packed battles to life, join as Carl fights his way through the dungeon in heart-speckled underwear. And of course, the grizzly scenes are only balanced with the incredibly fluffy, wide-eyed stare of its main character, Princess Donut.
A ton of heart and effort was poured in creating a series with a script and style that would both appeal to WEBTOON readers and also lovers of DCC, all while consulting author Matt Dinniman the entire way about character designs, story, — EVERYTHING! We couldn’t resist taking the apocalyptic awesomeness of the DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL WEBTOON and adapting it into the FIRST EVER graphic novel series!
Welcome, Crawler. Welcome to the Dungeon. Survival is optional. Keeping the viewers entertained is not.
This volume collects episodes 1-13 of the WEBTOON edition.
FEAR AGENT Compendium TP
SOLICIT COPY:
The entirety of The New York Times best-selling Fear Agent saga—collected in one massive compendium!
When down-and-out alien exterminator Heath Huston stumbles upon a plot to wipe out humanity, he must put down the bottle and pick up the fight– as the last surviving Fear Agent. This pulp sci-fi classic from writer Rick Remender (DEADLY CLASS, LOW) teams him with an all-star lineup of artists including Tony Moore (THE WALKING DEAD, Venom) and Jerome Opeña (SEVEN TO ETERNITY, Uncanny X-Force) across a galaxy-spanning, whiskey-soaked epic of redemption, revenge, and alien annihilation.
Collects Fear Agent #1–32 in a single 672-page volume for just
Preorders on Final Order Cutoff
A MISCHIEF OF MAGPIES # 1
SOLICIT COPY:
NEW DSTLRY SERIES DEBUT FROM SIMON SPURRIER AND MATÍAS BERGARA!
Mar has a secret. Sometimes, without warning, he falls out of the world. This would be an inconvenience if his life wasn’t already such a drag.
When he’s gone, he finds himself in an extraordinary city. A city which is also a machine, endlessly crossing a shoreless ocean. A city of two halves: the bright, bustling spires above the waves, and the beast-haunted twilight halls below. And between, clowning along the rusting beach, a troupe of anarchic magpies with all the answers but none of the questions.
Recipients of the Angoulême Sélection Officielle, GLAAD Award, and multiple Eisner Award nominations, creators Simon Spurrier and Mat as Bergara present a new fantasy masterpiece in the tradition of Coda and Step By Bloody Step, driving the comics medium into new, beautiful, baleful waters.
For fans of THE NEVERENDING STORY, ARCANE, and THE BOY AND THE HERON.
THE SHAOLIN COWBOY: STAYING A.I.LIVE # 1
SOLICIT COPY:
The Shaolin Cowboy faces an icy reception when he leaves his wasteland retreat on a mission of mercy, following the considered consul of a desert swallow and a horned toad, both endangered species. But none as endangered as the wandering ex monk becomes, once again because in this typical AMERIGUNN small town he learns euthanASIA is the new import duty on foreign imports!!!
SANFORD GREENE’S 1000 TP/HC
SOLICIT COPY:
From the Eisner winning creators of Bitter Root. Set in a modern world of aliens, warlocks, zombies, and ancient beasts, 1000 follows Dragon Son – a supreme entity who’s abandoned all creation as he struggles to return to his true Dragon form by completing one thousand acts of repentance. Son is joined by five other agents who are charged with secretly policing the world and keeping civilization from crumbling completely.
1000 first premiered as a webcomic and won the 2018 Ringo Award for Best Webcomic. This deluxe edition collects the entire run of the webcomic with additional behind the scenes content.
TERMINAL # 1
SOLICIT COPY:
THE MUST-READ SUPERHERO SERIES OF THE YEAR FROM THE DREAM TEAM OF ROBERT KIRKMAN, JOE CASEY, ANDY KUBERT, DAVID FINCH, AND ARTHUR ADAMS!
There is a secret war being waged across the world by two violent forces with superhuman abilities who blur the lines between good and evil. When Marilyn Howe’s search for her missing sister Alessandra puts her in the center of this conflict, she’ll learn that the power to save the world comes from unlocking your genetic code and giving up everything you thought you knew about yourself… if you survive the experience. Perfect for fans of INVINCIBLE and X-MEN, nothing can prepare you for the most violent and unpredictable superhero series of the year!
What did I miss?
If there are some great comics, collected or in single issues, that you think I should be reading, tell me about them! And if you do try out any of these series, let me know how you liked them, or didn’t. This is a safe space for haters. If you enjoy this service, please share this article on social media or tell someone that you know reads comics about it.
Divining Comics is brought to you by generous support from the “Best Friends of Divining Comics,” Alex Seubert.
Divining Comics is also brought to you by the support of the “Friends of Divining Comics,” Comic Book Herald.
If you would like to add your name to the list of friends, best friends, or best friends forever, support this work for less than the cost of one cup of coffee a month at patreon.com/diviningcomics. You can also leave a one-time tip/buy my zines at ko-fi.com/spikestonehand. Or, if you can’t afford to support me financially at this time, simply follow me on Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky and share my posts there.
#art #books #ComicBooks #comics #DC #dcComics #marvel #marvelComics #MarvelousMarket #NewComicDay -
The Bad Thing 50K – Race Recap – Racing Smarter, Not Harder
I almost quit running altogether.
From 2009 to 2018, I did well in school. But I struggled to be smart when it came to running. After hitting the final straw with a torn hamstring in 2018, I took four years to fall back in love with the sport. Normally love like this would be doomed to fail and fall back into the same traps, especially since I only fell back in love as a coping mechanism.
Just a little over a year ago, I left a job I loved for greater money and career progression. For some reason, I never anticipated how much of my identity, community and love for my own self had been built around that job. So when I left, the decision naturally devastated me, and my two best friends.
About a month into the devastation, we tried to have brunch together. It went horribly wrong. Later that day I tried to find something in life that I could cling onto and remembered a dream I had in high school of becoming an ultra runner.
After a quick google search, the first race to pop up was The Bad Thing 50k, which I recognized from a book I had in high school. I decided to give myself a full year to train for the event and make sure I was ready to run the obscene distance.
Naturally, love like that would be doomed to fail and fall back into the same trap. I went too hard, too fast, without any knowledge of fuelling whatsoever, and made the Plantar Fasciitis I already had at that point explode. While cycling on the sidelines of the sport, I discovered the Golden Trail World Series and realized that ‘Trail Running’ was a thing.
It sounded perfect for me. It also sounded like what I had already done my entire running career, having grown up next to Medway Valley in London.
I started to research more and more, and The Bad Thing fell slightly off my radar as I devised my plan to get back healthy and start racing.
In my first year of competitive ultramarathon/trail running, I wanted to run the most competitive trail races in Ontario.
When devising my 2023 scheme, The Bad Thing 50k, being so late in the year, felt like somewhat of an afterthought. Sulphur Springs, being the most competitive and professionalized would be my ‘A’ race. Falling Water, being the most adjacent to my own strengths of downhill and technical trail running, would be my ‘B’ race. Tally in the Valley 6-hour, being a unique format, would be something fun I tacked into the mix. Notice anything missing? The Bad Thing remained an afterthought.
But after Sulphur Springs, it only took a few conversations with my coach Brett Hornig to forego Tally in the Valley and sign up for The Bad Thing later in the year instead, ensuring I’d have more time to focus on running my best race at Falling Water. Leading into August, everything played out as planned.
Fast forward to the months leading up to The Bad Thing, and I had a few things on my mind. Times were historically slower. Matt Farquharson had run the two fastest times (both in the 4h16-4h20 range). Together (for a few seconds), we ran 3h46 at Sulphur Springs. So something wasn’t quite aligning.
Seeing the elevation profile and the amount of road time, I wasn’t sure why times were historically slower. Was it the early start with the headlamp? Did they make you come to a complete stop at aid stations to mark your bib number? Was the trail really that ‘Bad’? I wasn’t sure, but I thought a 4-hour finish and course record could be within reach.
At the same time, I knew that I ran so hard at Falling Water (and Sulphur Springs) that my legs eventually exploded and I couldn’t really walk after either race. I knew that I had missed a few key runs in The Bad Thing block with illness, that the old hamstring hadn’t been particularly happy, and my abductor on the other side constantly knocked on the door to try and join the party.
A smarter race strategy I thought, would be to hold back a bit in the first 30k, stay strong but slower on the technical bit from 30-40k, and then hammer the final 10k on the roads. To some extent, that’s exactly what I did.
A group of us started at the front around 4:40/km pace, keeping consistent with slightly above what I intended to average. Eventually Matt Suda and I peeled away. I told him I’d take the lead when we hit the trail, using the excuse that I had the brighter headlamp.
Feeling comfortable, I got lost for the first time, thinking that a pink flag was pointing me to the left rather than the right. I quickly realized my mistake and turned back. At that time, Matt passed me. But thinking myself to be some trail technicality wizard, I hadn’t anticipated that the gap I put on Matt might have only been a few seconds. So when we hit the road, I started to stress that Matt had actually gone the wrong way himself and cut off some of the course.
It didn’t take long for me to catch up to him when we hit the next section of trail, and I told him to stay confident and politely asked that he let me by (I knew it was narrow for the next 2k or so and that I wouldn’t be able to politely pass him). He politely obliged, and I immediately wiped out on a bridge. It had been raining (possibly snowing?) for the whole race…and the two weeks leading up to the event. The conditions weren’t amazing. Not muddy. The leaves covered all that up. But the tight turns and excessive stairs were slippery, and the bridges were basically un-runnable.
Again, the worse the conditions the better for me. So I felt confident I could make a nice gap on Matt after picking myself back up from the embarrassment.
Then Matt did something I didn’t quite expect.
When we hit a flat section of the trail, he caught back up and put on a surge. He was breathing heavily so I could tell he didn’t want to overtake, but just hang on. I responded by comfortably putting on the fastest kilometre of my entire day, before easing into The Bad Thing Hill. At the top, I had to wait a bit for the bracelet and for them to take down my bib number. Maybe that perturbed me a bit and I sent it back down in what Strava thinks is the second fastest descent ever (oops).
The next bit was technical and I knew I could continue to increase my gap. But at the same time, the leaves entirely covered the trail, and the amount of white blazes and pink flags didn’t make up for that from a navigation perspective. That, combined with Matt’s flat speed, allowed him to catch back up again.
“I was just thinking of you.” I said, before we hit another technical section and I again made a little separation. The cat and mouse game continued for a while until we hit the next flat section. At that point he wasn’t breathing as heavily as before.
“Do you want to go, or stay?” I asked, thinking of Elhousine Elazzaoui from the Golden Trail circuit, who always clings onto second and stays there with the lead runner.
“I’m comfortable staying here.” He said, referring to the pace/effort. I said the same. Psychologically, I could tell that gave him the confidence to make his first big move of the day. We hit the roads at Ben Miller Inn and he took the lead for the second time in the race.I checked the watch to see that I had averaged 4:58/km across the first 25km, and was very much still on course-record pace. Meanwhile, Matt opened about thirty-seconds on me on the road, until the 100m of downhill stairs at the start of the next trail section allowed me to reduce the gap entirely. But that didn’t entirely matter, because we had reached another impasse – and one where I could not pass.
“This is going to get very interesting if you keep making moves like that on the road.” I said, before we mused about the flatness of London’s trails. Moments later, he took us 5-metres off trail, and I capitalized on the moment to pass him. At that point, I’m fairly positive that he took a break to use the washroom. I knew I was fine, and I knew that I could make enough of a gap that I likely wouldn’t see him again.
It was a dangerous decision. For all the back and forth, I likely would have chilled even more in the first half, had I not had him pushing me. So making a gap would be risky, as it would mean I’d have no one pushing me on the trails until I gave him the chance of catching back up on the road for the final 10k.
Coming so close to the aid station, it felt like the right call. AND THEN they didn’t have anything with electrolytes. Luckily, thanks to some smarts from Brett, I had a final bottle of just powder that I could fill up with water, plus two XACT Nutrition Bars and two gels (although I could only locate one!). I knew I’d be fine for the next 10k, but worried I didn’t have enough for the final 10k. I’d been doing close to 80-90g of carbohydrates per hour at the time, and knew that would tail off in the final 10k when I needed it most.
I downed some coca-cola and orange crush for the first time since childhood and made my way into the most technical bit of the course. I also figured out how to go to the washroom without slowing down, which felt like the coolest accomplishment of the day.
Since working with Brett, I’ve made an active effort to focus on the long-term rather than the short-term, and be smarter about every aspect of the sport. At Sulphur Springs, I probably would have been willing to die out there. I simply never stopped pressing on the gas.
But on this particular day, somewhere along the way, I got comfortable. I chilled out thinking I had executed everything I wanted to, and was going to get that course record. I think this is where I took it too slow, staying safe on the bits that were dangerous, hiking more of the uphills than I needed to, and taking some extra time to fuel with oranges and bananas at the 40k aid station. I had an extra gel somewhere in my pack, but I couldn’t remember where. In my deprived state of mind, I didn’t think to rid myself all of the garbage to find it.
I was too focused on what the feelings were going to be like at the end of the race and long afterward, and not focused enough on how much I actually had left in me to push. And even though it was only a few seconds here and there, I wasn’t stopping for the right things (like to find that gel rather than to eat an orange).
The 25k runners started to fuel me on, which provided a nice boost until I hit the road and prepared to hammer.
But then my heart rate immediately got high at the increased pace/effort, and I worried that I wouldn’t sustain that pace without enough carbohydrates. So I stayed comfortable until I picked up a final gel at a surprise aid station at 45k. At that point, I wanted to hammer it to the line, but wasn’t fully confident that I only had 5k to go. In my mind and the data I’d seen, the race would be closer to 52k, and the record would still be attainable (notoriously not great at math).
From 45k to 52k, I fought a battle in my mind of not wanting my hamstrings to blow up, but also wanting to lay down the hammer like my university cross-country days. I wanted to try using the washroom again without slowing down, but I also wanted to speed up faster than the last time I figured it out. I wanted to break the course record, but also wanted to walk after the race this time.
Safe to say, I had a lot of conflicting thoughts in my mind, and instead of hammering, I cruised at a pace that I probably could have held onto for several more kilometres.
That only solidified what I had been heading toward, a 52k day where I wouldn’t break Matt’s record (although we had different starting locations and I ran faster by pace, I think our days are really comparable.)
By the time I hit the river at 50k, the course record had gone. The shock of the knee-deep cold water caused my legs to buckle to a halt and the first hamstring cramps of the day. So by the time I escaped the shackles of the river, I cruised to the finish in a fashion I can’t really remember ever doing. I don’t know why, but I’ve always given an all-out effort to the line of any race I’ve ever done. Even at Falling Water, knowing I was going to finish second, I murdered myself with a 3:20/km finish – a pace I didn’t even know I had in me for flat workouts.
This time, I simply clapped for the volunteers and spectators all the way across the Halloween decorations until the line.
It resulted in a 4-hour-22-minute finish – what I amount to be the third fastest time ever (excluding the 2020 COVID year which was a significantly different course). I felt happy enough that according to our watches and Strava data, that I had run faster by pace than Matt’s two course-record times. But I still felt like I could have given more if I really wanted to break the time. Maybe I got too complacent in the second-half about how smart I had been up to that point and chilled too much. Maybe I would have benefited from one other runner to push me more in the second-half (either in front or behind).
Either way, I walked away happy with the effort, but slightly disappointed with the time, even though I won and had nothing to be truly upset about. Sometimes racing smarter isn’t always racing harder, and that will be an important lesson ahead of a big 2024!
It’s been a cool first year in the sport and I’ve learned so much that continues to set me up for long-term success. Now I just need to figure out when I can make risks in these events and when it’s safe to focus on the short-term as opposed to the long-term. This sets up an exciting 2024, where I’ll compete in my first international race since university cross country. I’m coming for you, Gorge.
Thank you again to Brett Hornig and XACT Nutrition for the support leading into this event. Thanks also to Race Huron and Jeremiah, for a really cool community feel to the event and making this day happen! & of course to Matt Suda for the push in the first half. I will be back some time in the future at the very least for the 25k, hunting down John’s new record instead.
Thanks for reading & see you soon!
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Get inspired and join my email list!
Get in touch!YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY…
Weekly Newsletter – The Magic of 2-Minute Hills
I love hill workouts in every form.
From 3-minute hills to 10-minute hills to 90-second hills, I LOVE MY HILLS.
There’s so much magic in a hill workout for trail running, as you get the muscle breakdown of all the downhills on your rest and recovery; and get to practice pushing harder in…
by Rhys DesmondMay 4, 2025May 4, 2025How I’ve become a better trail runner by running less on trails
I knew I needed to prioritize my “speed” in 2025 to get faster. But I didn’t realize how quickly we could make cosmic changes just from more of an emphasis on one thing: Road running (i.e. running economy and efficiency).
by Rhys DesmondMay 4, 2025May 4, 2025The importance of mobility work for trail runners & injury-prone athletes
As I’ve continued to endure injuries even despite the diligent attention to this piece of the puzzle, I’ve reflected on how I can make sure my mobility is properly attended to as much as my runs. Here are my best tips for prioritizing mobility, and why it’s so essential for trail runners and injury-prone athletes…
by Rhys DesmondApril 29, 2025April 29, 2025#MatthewFarquharson #MyJourney #RaceHuron #RaceRecaps #Races #Running #TheBadThing #TheBadThing50k #UltraRunning
-
The Bad Thing 50K – Race Recap – Racing Smarter, Not Harder
I almost quit running altogether.
From 2009 to 2018, I did well in school. But I struggled to be smart when it came to running. After hitting the final straw with a torn hamstring in 2018, I took four years to fall back in love with the sport. Normally love like this would be doomed to fail and fall back into the same traps, especially since I only fell back in love as a coping mechanism.
Just a little over a year ago, I left a job I loved for greater money and career progression. For some reason, I never anticipated how much of my identity, community and love for my own self had been built around that job. So when I left, the decision naturally devastated me, and my two best friends.
About a month into the devastation, we tried to have brunch together. It went horribly wrong. Later that day I tried to find something in life that I could cling onto and remembered a dream I had in high school of becoming an ultra runner.
After a quick google search, the first race to pop up was The Bad Thing 50k, which I recognized from a book I had in high school. I decided to give myself a full year to train for the event and make sure I was ready to run the obscene distance.
Naturally, love like that would be doomed to fail and fall back into the same trap. I went too hard, too fast, without any knowledge of fuelling whatsoever, and made the Plantar Fasciitis I already had at that point explode. While cycling on the sidelines of the sport, I discovered the Golden Trail World Series and realized that ‘Trail Running’ was a thing.
It sounded perfect for me. It also sounded like what I had already done my entire running career, having grown up next to Medway Valley in London.
I started to research more and more, and The Bad Thing fell slightly off my radar as I devised my plan to get back healthy and start racing.
In my first year of competitive ultramarathon/trail running, I wanted to run the most competitive trail races in Ontario.
When devising my 2023 scheme, The Bad Thing 50k, being so late in the year, felt like somewhat of an afterthought. Sulphur Springs, being the most competitive and professionalized would be my ‘A’ race. Falling Water, being the most adjacent to my own strengths of downhill and technical trail running, would be my ‘B’ race. Tally in the Valley 6-hour, being a unique format, would be something fun I tacked into the mix. Notice anything missing? The Bad Thing remained an afterthought.
But after Sulphur Springs, it only took a few conversations with my coach Brett Hornig to forego Tally in the Valley and sign up for The Bad Thing later in the year instead, ensuring I’d have more time to focus on running my best race at Falling Water. Leading into August, everything played out as planned.
Fast forward to the months leading up to The Bad Thing, and I had a few things on my mind. Times were historically slower. Matt Farquharson had run the two fastest times (both in the 4h16-4h20 range). Together (for a few seconds), we ran 3h46 at Sulphur Springs. So something wasn’t quite aligning.
Seeing the elevation profile and the amount of road time, I wasn’t sure why times were historically slower. Was it the early start with the headlamp? Did they make you come to a complete stop at aid stations to mark your bib number? Was the trail really that ‘Bad’? I wasn’t sure, but I thought a 4-hour finish and course record could be within reach.
At the same time, I knew that I ran so hard at Falling Water (and Sulphur Springs) that my legs eventually exploded and I couldn’t really walk after either race. I knew that I had missed a few key runs in The Bad Thing block with illness, that the old hamstring hadn’t been particularly happy, and my abductor on the other side constantly knocked on the door to try and join the party.
A smarter race strategy I thought, would be to hold back a bit in the first 30k, stay strong but slower on the technical bit from 30-40k, and then hammer the final 10k on the roads. To some extent, that’s exactly what I did.
A group of us started at the front around 4:40/km pace, keeping consistent with slightly above what I intended to average. Eventually Matt Suda and I peeled away. I told him I’d take the lead when we hit the trail, using the excuse that I had the brighter headlamp.
Feeling comfortable, I got lost for the first time, thinking that a pink flag was pointing me to the left rather than the right. I quickly realized my mistake and turned back. At that time, Matt passed me. But thinking myself to be some trail technicality wizard, I hadn’t anticipated that the gap I put on Matt might have only been a few seconds. So when we hit the road, I started to stress that Matt had actually gone the wrong way himself and cut off some of the course.
It didn’t take long for me to catch up to him when we hit the next section of trail, and I told him to stay confident and politely asked that he let me by (I knew it was narrow for the next 2k or so and that I wouldn’t be able to politely pass him). He politely obliged, and I immediately wiped out on a bridge. It had been raining (possibly snowing?) for the whole race…and the two weeks leading up to the event. The conditions weren’t amazing. Not muddy. The leaves covered all that up. But the tight turns and excessive stairs were slippery, and the bridges were basically un-runnable.
Again, the worse the conditions the better for me. So I felt confident I could make a nice gap on Matt after picking myself back up from the embarrassment.
Then Matt did something I didn’t quite expect.
When we hit a flat section of the trail, he caught back up and put on a surge. He was breathing heavily so I could tell he didn’t want to overtake, but just hang on. I responded by comfortably putting on the fastest kilometre of my entire day, before easing into The Bad Thing Hill. At the top, I had to wait a bit for the bracelet and for them to take down my bib number. Maybe that perturbed me a bit and I sent it back down in what Strava thinks is the second fastest descent ever (oops).
The next bit was technical and I knew I could continue to increase my gap. But at the same time, the leaves entirely covered the trail, and the amount of white blazes and pink flags didn’t make up for that from a navigation perspective. That, combined with Matt’s flat speed, allowed him to catch back up again.
“I was just thinking of you.” I said, before we hit another technical section and I again made a little separation. The cat and mouse game continued for a while until we hit the next flat section. At that point he wasn’t breathing as heavily as before.
“Do you want to go, or stay?” I asked, thinking of Elhousine Elazzaoui from the Golden Trail circuit, who always clings onto second and stays there with the lead runner.
“I’m comfortable staying here.” He said, referring to the pace/effort. I said the same. Psychologically, I could tell that gave him the confidence to make his first big move of the day. We hit the roads at Ben Miller Inn and he took the lead for the second time in the race.I checked the watch to see that I had averaged 4:58/km across the first 25km, and was very much still on course-record pace. Meanwhile, Matt opened about thirty-seconds on me on the road, until the 100m of downhill stairs at the start of the next trail section allowed me to reduce the gap entirely. But that didn’t entirely matter, because we had reached another impasse – and one where I could not pass.
“This is going to get very interesting if you keep making moves like that on the road.” I said, before we mused about the flatness of London’s trails. Moments later, he took us 5-metres off trail, and I capitalized on the moment to pass him. At that point, I’m fairly positive that he took a break to use the washroom. I knew I was fine, and I knew that I could make enough of a gap that I likely wouldn’t see him again.
It was a dangerous decision. For all the back and forth, I likely would have chilled even more in the first half, had I not had him pushing me. So making a gap would be risky, as it would mean I’d have no one pushing me on the trails until I gave him the chance of catching back up on the road for the final 10k.
Coming so close to the aid station, it felt like the right call. AND THEN they didn’t have anything with electrolytes. Luckily, thanks to some smarts from Brett, I had a final bottle of just powder that I could fill up with water, plus two XACT Nutrition Bars and two gels (although I could only locate one!). I knew I’d be fine for the next 10k, but worried I didn’t have enough for the final 10k. I’d been doing close to 80-90g of carbohydrates per hour at the time, and knew that would tail off in the final 10k when I needed it most.
I downed some coca-cola and orange crush for the first time since childhood and made my way into the most technical bit of the course. I also figured out how to go to the washroom without slowing down, which felt like the coolest accomplishment of the day.
Since working with Brett, I’ve made an active effort to focus on the long-term rather than the short-term, and be smarter about every aspect of the sport. At Sulphur Springs, I probably would have been willing to die out there. I simply never stopped pressing on the gas.
But on this particular day, somewhere along the way, I got comfortable. I chilled out thinking I had executed everything I wanted to, and was going to get that course record. I think this is where I took it too slow, staying safe on the bits that were dangerous, hiking more of the uphills than I needed to, and taking some extra time to fuel with oranges and bananas at the 40k aid station. I had an extra gel somewhere in my pack, but I couldn’t remember where. In my deprived state of mind, I didn’t think to rid myself all of the garbage to find it.
I was too focused on what the feelings were going to be like at the end of the race and long afterward, and not focused enough on how much I actually had left in me to push. And even though it was only a few seconds here and there, I wasn’t stopping for the right things (like to find that gel rather than to eat an orange).
The 25k runners started to fuel me on, which provided a nice boost until I hit the road and prepared to hammer.
But then my heart rate immediately got high at the increased pace/effort, and I worried that I wouldn’t sustain that pace without enough carbohydrates. So I stayed comfortable until I picked up a final gel at a surprise aid station at 45k. At that point, I wanted to hammer it to the line, but wasn’t fully confident that I only had 5k to go. In my mind and the data I’d seen, the race would be closer to 52k, and the record would still be attainable (notoriously not great at math).
From 45k to 52k, I fought a battle in my mind of not wanting my hamstrings to blow up, but also wanting to lay down the hammer like my university cross-country days. I wanted to try using the washroom again without slowing down, but I also wanted to speed up faster than the last time I figured it out. I wanted to break the course record, but also wanted to walk after the race this time.
Safe to say, I had a lot of conflicting thoughts in my mind, and instead of hammering, I cruised at a pace that I probably could have held onto for several more kilometres.
That only solidified what I had been heading toward, a 52k day where I wouldn’t break Matt’s record (although we had different starting locations and I ran faster by pace, I think our days are really comparable.)
By the time I hit the river at 50k, the course record had gone. The shock of the knee-deep cold water caused my legs to buckle to a halt and the first hamstring cramps of the day. So by the time I escaped the shackles of the river, I cruised to the finish in a fashion I can’t really remember ever doing. I don’t know why, but I’ve always given an all-out effort to the line of any race I’ve ever done. Even at Falling Water, knowing I was going to finish second, I murdered myself with a 3:20/km finish – a pace I didn’t even know I had in me for flat workouts.
This time, I simply clapped for the volunteers and spectators all the way across the Halloween decorations until the line.
It resulted in a 4-hour-22-minute finish – what I amount to be the third fastest time ever (excluding the 2020 COVID year which was a significantly different course). I felt happy enough that according to our watches and Strava data, that I had run faster by pace than Matt’s two course-record times. But I still felt like I could have given more if I really wanted to break the time. Maybe I got too complacent in the second-half about how smart I had been up to that point and chilled too much. Maybe I would have benefited from one other runner to push me more in the second-half (either in front or behind).
Either way, I walked away happy with the effort, but slightly disappointed with the time, even though I won and had nothing to be truly upset about. Sometimes racing smarter isn’t always racing harder, and that will be an important lesson ahead of a big 2024!
It’s been a cool first year in the sport and I’ve learned so much that continues to set me up for long-term success. Now I just need to figure out when I can make risks in these events and when it’s safe to focus on the short-term as opposed to the long-term. This sets up an exciting 2024, where I’ll compete in my first international race since university cross country. I’m coming for you, Gorge.
Thank you again to Brett Hornig and XACT Nutrition for the support leading into this event. Thanks also to Race Huron and Jeremiah, for a really cool community feel to the event and making this day happen! & of course to Matt Suda for the push in the first half. I will be back some time in the future at the very least for the 25k, hunting down John’s new record instead.
Thanks for reading & see you soon!
Enter your email address
Get inspired and join my email list!
Get in touch!YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY…
Weekly Newsletter – The Magic of 2-Minute Hills
I love hill workouts in every form.
From 3-minute hills to 10-minute hills to 90-second hills, I LOVE MY HILLS.
There’s so much magic in a hill workout for trail running, as you get the muscle breakdown of all the downhills on your rest and recovery; and get to practice pushing harder in…
by Rhys DesmondMay 4, 2025May 4, 2025How I’ve become a better trail runner by running less on trails
I knew I needed to prioritize my “speed” in 2025 to get faster. But I didn’t realize how quickly we could make cosmic changes just from more of an emphasis on one thing: Road running (i.e. running economy and efficiency).
by Rhys DesmondMay 4, 2025May 4, 2025The importance of mobility work for trail runners & injury-prone athletes
As I’ve continued to endure injuries even despite the diligent attention to this piece of the puzzle, I’ve reflected on how I can make sure my mobility is properly attended to as much as my runs. Here are my best tips for prioritizing mobility, and why it’s so essential for trail runners and injury-prone athletes…
by Rhys DesmondApril 29, 2025April 29, 2025#MatthewFarquharson #MyJourney #RaceHuron #RaceRecaps #Races #Running #TheBadThing #TheBadThing50k #UltraRunning
-
The Bad Thing 50K – Race Recap – Racing Smarter, Not Harder
I almost quit running altogether.
From 2009 to 2018, I did well in school. But I struggled to be smart when it came to running. After hitting the final straw with a torn hamstring in 2018, I took four years to fall back in love with the sport. Normally love like this would be doomed to fail and fall back into the same traps, especially since I only fell back in love as a coping mechanism.
Just a little over a year ago, I left a job I loved for greater money and career progression. For some reason, I never anticipated how much of my identity, community and love for my own self had been built around that job. So when I left, the decision naturally devastated me, and my two best friends.
About a month into the devastation, we tried to have brunch together. It went horribly wrong. Later that day I tried to find something in life that I could cling onto and remembered a dream I had in high school of becoming an ultra runner.
After a quick google search, the first race to pop up was The Bad Thing 50k, which I recognized from a book I had in high school. I decided to give myself a full year to train for the event and make sure I was ready to run the obscene distance.
Naturally, love like that would be doomed to fail and fall back into the same trap. I went too hard, too fast, without any knowledge of fuelling whatsoever, and made the Plantar Fasciitis I already had at that point explode. While cycling on the sidelines of the sport, I discovered the Golden Trail World Series and realized that ‘Trail Running’ was a thing.
It sounded perfect for me. It also sounded like what I had already done my entire running career, having grown up next to Medway Valley in London.
I started to research more and more, and The Bad Thing fell slightly off my radar as I devised my plan to get back healthy and start racing.
In my first year of competitive ultramarathon/trail running, I wanted to run the most competitive trail races in Ontario.
When devising my 2023 scheme, The Bad Thing 50k, being so late in the year, felt like somewhat of an afterthought. Sulphur Springs, being the most competitive and professionalized would be my ‘A’ race. Falling Water, being the most adjacent to my own strengths of downhill and technical trail running, would be my ‘B’ race. Tally in the Valley 6-hour, being a unique format, would be something fun I tacked into the mix. Notice anything missing? The Bad Thing remained an afterthought.
But after Sulphur Springs, it only took a few conversations with my coach Brett Hornig to forego Tally in the Valley and sign up for The Bad Thing later in the year instead, ensuring I’d have more time to focus on running my best race at Falling Water. Leading into August, everything played out as planned.
Fast forward to the months leading up to The Bad Thing, and I had a few things on my mind. Times were historically slower. Matt Farquharson had run the two fastest times (both in the 4h16-4h20 range). Together (for a few seconds), we ran 3h46 at Sulphur Springs. So something wasn’t quite aligning.
Seeing the elevation profile and the amount of road time, I wasn’t sure why times were historically slower. Was it the early start with the headlamp? Did they make you come to a complete stop at aid stations to mark your bib number? Was the trail really that ‘Bad’? I wasn’t sure, but I thought a 4-hour finish and course record could be within reach.
At the same time, I knew that I ran so hard at Falling Water (and Sulphur Springs) that my legs eventually exploded and I couldn’t really walk after either race. I knew that I had missed a few key runs in The Bad Thing block with illness, that the old hamstring hadn’t been particularly happy, and my abductor on the other side constantly knocked on the door to try and join the party.
A smarter race strategy I thought, would be to hold back a bit in the first 30k, stay strong but slower on the technical bit from 30-40k, and then hammer the final 10k on the roads. To some extent, that’s exactly what I did.
A group of us started at the front around 4:40/km pace, keeping consistent with slightly above what I intended to average. Eventually Matt Suda and I peeled away. I told him I’d take the lead when we hit the trail, using the excuse that I had the brighter headlamp.
Feeling comfortable, I got lost for the first time, thinking that a pink flag was pointing me to the left rather than the right. I quickly realized my mistake and turned back. At that time, Matt passed me. But thinking myself to be some trail technicality wizard, I hadn’t anticipated that the gap I put on Matt might have only been a few seconds. So when we hit the road, I started to stress that Matt had actually gone the wrong way himself and cut off some of the course.
It didn’t take long for me to catch up to him when we hit the next section of trail, and I told him to stay confident and politely asked that he let me by (I knew it was narrow for the next 2k or so and that I wouldn’t be able to politely pass him). He politely obliged, and I immediately wiped out on a bridge. It had been raining (possibly snowing?) for the whole race…and the two weeks leading up to the event. The conditions weren’t amazing. Not muddy. The leaves covered all that up. But the tight turns and excessive stairs were slippery, and the bridges were basically un-runnable.
Again, the worse the conditions the better for me. So I felt confident I could make a nice gap on Matt after picking myself back up from the embarrassment.
Then Matt did something I didn’t quite expect.
When we hit a flat section of the trail, he caught back up and put on a surge. He was breathing heavily so I could tell he didn’t want to overtake, but just hang on. I responded by comfortably putting on the fastest kilometre of my entire day, before easing into The Bad Thing Hill. At the top, I had to wait a bit for the bracelet and for them to take down my bib number. Maybe that perturbed me a bit and I sent it back down in what Strava thinks is the second fastest descent ever (oops).
The next bit was technical and I knew I could continue to increase my gap. But at the same time, the leaves entirely covered the trail, and the amount of white blazes and pink flags didn’t make up for that from a navigation perspective. That, combined with Matt’s flat speed, allowed him to catch back up again.
“I was just thinking of you.” I said, before we hit another technical section and I again made a little separation. The cat and mouse game continued for a while until we hit the next flat section. At that point he wasn’t breathing as heavily as before.
“Do you want to go, or stay?” I asked, thinking of Elhousine Elazzaoui from the Golden Trail circuit, who always clings onto second and stays there with the lead runner.
“I’m comfortable staying here.” He said, referring to the pace/effort. I said the same. Psychologically, I could tell that gave him the confidence to make his first big move of the day. We hit the roads at Ben Miller Inn and he took the lead for the second time in the race.I checked the watch to see that I had averaged 4:58/km across the first 25km, and was very much still on course-record pace. Meanwhile, Matt opened about thirty-seconds on me on the road, until the 100m of downhill stairs at the start of the next trail section allowed me to reduce the gap entirely. But that didn’t entirely matter, because we had reached another impasse – and one where I could not pass.
“This is going to get very interesting if you keep making moves like that on the road.” I said, before we mused about the flatness of London’s trails. Moments later, he took us 5-metres off trail, and I capitalized on the moment to pass him. At that point, I’m fairly positive that he took a break to use the washroom. I knew I was fine, and I knew that I could make enough of a gap that I likely wouldn’t see him again.
It was a dangerous decision. For all the back and forth, I likely would have chilled even more in the first half, had I not had him pushing me. So making a gap would be risky, as it would mean I’d have no one pushing me on the trails until I gave him the chance of catching back up on the road for the final 10k.
Coming so close to the aid station, it felt like the right call. AND THEN they didn’t have anything with electrolytes. Luckily, thanks to some smarts from Brett, I had a final bottle of just powder that I could fill up with water, plus two XACT Nutrition Bars and two gels (although I could only locate one!). I knew I’d be fine for the next 10k, but worried I didn’t have enough for the final 10k. I’d been doing close to 80-90g of carbohydrates per hour at the time, and knew that would tail off in the final 10k when I needed it most.
I downed some coca-cola and orange crush for the first time since childhood and made my way into the most technical bit of the course. I also figured out how to go to the washroom without slowing down, which felt like the coolest accomplishment of the day.
Since working with Brett, I’ve made an active effort to focus on the long-term rather than the short-term, and be smarter about every aspect of the sport. At Sulphur Springs, I probably would have been willing to die out there. I simply never stopped pressing on the gas.
But on this particular day, somewhere along the way, I got comfortable. I chilled out thinking I had executed everything I wanted to, and was going to get that course record. I think this is where I took it too slow, staying safe on the bits that were dangerous, hiking more of the uphills than I needed to, and taking some extra time to fuel with oranges and bananas at the 40k aid station. I had an extra gel somewhere in my pack, but I couldn’t remember where. In my deprived state of mind, I didn’t think to rid myself all of the garbage to find it.
I was too focused on what the feelings were going to be like at the end of the race and long afterward, and not focused enough on how much I actually had left in me to push. And even though it was only a few seconds here and there, I wasn’t stopping for the right things (like to find that gel rather than to eat an orange).
The 25k runners started to fuel me on, which provided a nice boost until I hit the road and prepared to hammer.
But then my heart rate immediately got high at the increased pace/effort, and I worried that I wouldn’t sustain that pace without enough carbohydrates. So I stayed comfortable until I picked up a final gel at a surprise aid station at 45k. At that point, I wanted to hammer it to the line, but wasn’t fully confident that I only had 5k to go. In my mind and the data I’d seen, the race would be closer to 52k, and the record would still be attainable (notoriously not great at math).
From 45k to 52k, I fought a battle in my mind of not wanting my hamstrings to blow up, but also wanting to lay down the hammer like my university cross-country days. I wanted to try using the washroom again without slowing down, but I also wanted to speed up faster than the last time I figured it out. I wanted to break the course record, but also wanted to walk after the race this time.
Safe to say, I had a lot of conflicting thoughts in my mind, and instead of hammering, I cruised at a pace that I probably could have held onto for several more kilometres.
That only solidified what I had been heading toward, a 52k day where I wouldn’t break Matt’s record (although we had different starting locations and I ran faster by pace, I think our days are really comparable.)
By the time I hit the river at 50k, the course record had gone. The shock of the knee-deep cold water caused my legs to buckle to a halt and the first hamstring cramps of the day. So by the time I escaped the shackles of the river, I cruised to the finish in a fashion I can’t really remember ever doing. I don’t know why, but I’ve always given an all-out effort to the line of any race I’ve ever done. Even at Falling Water, knowing I was going to finish second, I murdered myself with a 3:20/km finish – a pace I didn’t even know I had in me for flat workouts.
This time, I simply clapped for the volunteers and spectators all the way across the Halloween decorations until the line.
It resulted in a 4-hour-22-minute finish – what I amount to be the third fastest time ever (excluding the 2020 COVID year which was a significantly different course). I felt happy enough that according to our watches and Strava data, that I had run faster by pace than Matt’s two course-record times. But I still felt like I could have given more if I really wanted to break the time. Maybe I got too complacent in the second-half about how smart I had been up to that point and chilled too much. Maybe I would have benefited from one other runner to push me more in the second-half (either in front or behind).
Either way, I walked away happy with the effort, but slightly disappointed with the time, even though I won and had nothing to be truly upset about. Sometimes racing smarter isn’t always racing harder, and that will be an important lesson ahead of a big 2024!
It’s been a cool first year in the sport and I’ve learned so much that continues to set me up for long-term success. Now I just need to figure out when I can make risks in these events and when it’s safe to focus on the short-term as opposed to the long-term. This sets up an exciting 2024, where I’ll compete in my first international race since university cross country. I’m coming for you, Gorge.
Thank you again to Brett Hornig and XACT Nutrition for the support leading into this event. Thanks also to Race Huron and Jeremiah, for a really cool community feel to the event and making this day happen! & of course to Matt Suda for the push in the first half. I will be back some time in the future at the very least for the 25k, hunting down John’s new record instead.
Thanks for reading & see you soon!
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Weekly Newsletter – The Magic of 2-Minute Hills
I love hill workouts in every form.
From 3-minute hills to 10-minute hills to 90-second hills, I LOVE MY HILLS.
There’s so much magic in a hill workout for trail running, as you get the muscle breakdown of all the downhills on your rest and recovery; and get to practice pushing harder in…
by Rhys DesmondMay 4, 2025May 4, 2025How I’ve become a better trail runner by running less on trails
I knew I needed to prioritize my “speed” in 2025 to get faster. But I didn’t realize how quickly we could make cosmic changes just from more of an emphasis on one thing: Road running (i.e. running economy and efficiency).
by Rhys DesmondMay 4, 2025May 4, 2025The importance of mobility work for trail runners & injury-prone athletes
As I’ve continued to endure injuries even despite the diligent attention to this piece of the puzzle, I’ve reflected on how I can make sure my mobility is properly attended to as much as my runs. Here are my best tips for prioritizing mobility, and why it’s so essential for trail runners and injury-prone athletes…
by Rhys DesmondApril 29, 2025April 29, 2025#MatthewFarquharson #MyJourney #RaceHuron #RaceRecaps #Races #Running #TheBadThing #TheBadThing50k #UltraRunning
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The Bad Thing 50K – Race Recap – Racing Smarter, Not Harder
I almost quit running altogether.
From 2009 to 2018, I did well in school. But I struggled to be smart when it came to running. After hitting the final straw with a torn hamstring in 2018, I took four years to fall back in love with the sport. Normally love like this would be doomed to fail and fall back into the same traps, especially since I only fell back in love as a coping mechanism.
Just a little over a year ago, I left a job I loved for greater money and career progression. For some reason, I never anticipated how much of my identity, community and love for my own self had been built around that job. So when I left, the decision naturally devastated me, and my two best friends.
About a month into the devastation, we tried to have brunch together. It went horribly wrong. Later that day I tried to find something in life that I could cling onto and remembered a dream I had in high school of becoming an ultra runner.
After a quick google search, the first race to pop up was The Bad Thing 50k, which I recognized from a book I had in high school. I decided to give myself a full year to train for the event and make sure I was ready to run the obscene distance.
Naturally, love like that would be doomed to fail and fall back into the same trap. I went too hard, too fast, without any knowledge of fuelling whatsoever, and made the Plantar Fasciitis I already had at that point explode. While cycling on the sidelines of the sport, I discovered the Golden Trail World Series and realized that ‘Trail Running’ was a thing.
It sounded perfect for me. It also sounded like what I had already done my entire running career, having grown up next to Medway Valley in London.
I started to research more and more, and The Bad Thing fell slightly off my radar as I devised my plan to get back healthy and start racing.
In my first year of competitive ultramarathon/trail running, I wanted to run the most competitive trail races in Ontario.
When devising my 2023 scheme, The Bad Thing 50k, being so late in the year, felt like somewhat of an afterthought. Sulphur Springs, being the most competitive and professionalized would be my ‘A’ race. Falling Water, being the most adjacent to my own strengths of downhill and technical trail running, would be my ‘B’ race. Tally in the Valley 6-hour, being a unique format, would be something fun I tacked into the mix. Notice anything missing? The Bad Thing remained an afterthought.
But after Sulphur Springs, it only took a few conversations with my coach Brett Hornig to forego Tally in the Valley and sign up for The Bad Thing later in the year instead, ensuring I’d have more time to focus on running my best race at Falling Water. Leading into August, everything played out as planned.
Fast forward to the months leading up to The Bad Thing, and I had a few things on my mind. Times were historically slower. Matt Farquharson had run the two fastest times (both in the 4h16-4h20 range). Together (for a few seconds), we ran 3h46 at Sulphur Springs. So something wasn’t quite aligning.
Seeing the elevation profile and the amount of road time, I wasn’t sure why times were historically slower. Was it the early start with the headlamp? Did they make you come to a complete stop at aid stations to mark your bib number? Was the trail really that ‘Bad’? I wasn’t sure, but I thought a 4-hour finish and course record could be within reach.
At the same time, I knew that I ran so hard at Falling Water (and Sulphur Springs) that my legs eventually exploded and I couldn’t really walk after either race. I knew that I had missed a few key runs in The Bad Thing block with illness, that the old hamstring hadn’t been particularly happy, and my abductor on the other side constantly knocked on the door to try and join the party.
A smarter race strategy I thought, would be to hold back a bit in the first 30k, stay strong but slower on the technical bit from 30-40k, and then hammer the final 10k on the roads. To some extent, that’s exactly what I did.
A group of us started at the front around 4:40/km pace, keeping consistent with slightly above what I intended to average. Eventually Matt Suda and I peeled away. I told him I’d take the lead when we hit the trail, using the excuse that I had the brighter headlamp.
Feeling comfortable, I got lost for the first time, thinking that a pink flag was pointing me to the left rather than the right. I quickly realized my mistake and turned back. At that time, Matt passed me. But thinking myself to be some trail technicality wizard, I hadn’t anticipated that the gap I put on Matt might have only been a few seconds. So when we hit the road, I started to stress that Matt had actually gone the wrong way himself and cut off some of the course.
It didn’t take long for me to catch up to him when we hit the next section of trail, and I told him to stay confident and politely asked that he let me by (I knew it was narrow for the next 2k or so and that I wouldn’t be able to politely pass him). He politely obliged, and I immediately wiped out on a bridge. It had been raining (possibly snowing?) for the whole race…and the two weeks leading up to the event. The conditions weren’t amazing. Not muddy. The leaves covered all that up. But the tight turns and excessive stairs were slippery, and the bridges were basically un-runnable.
Again, the worse the conditions the better for me. So I felt confident I could make a nice gap on Matt after picking myself back up from the embarrassment.
Then Matt did something I didn’t quite expect.
When we hit a flat section of the trail, he caught back up and put on a surge. He was breathing heavily so I could tell he didn’t want to overtake, but just hang on. I responded by comfortably putting on the fastest kilometre of my entire day, before easing into The Bad Thing Hill. At the top, I had to wait a bit for the bracelet and for them to take down my bib number. Maybe that perturbed me a bit and I sent it back down in what Strava thinks is the second fastest descent ever (oops).
The next bit was technical and I knew I could continue to increase my gap. But at the same time, the leaves entirely covered the trail, and the amount of white blazes and pink flags didn’t make up for that from a navigation perspective. That, combined with Matt’s flat speed, allowed him to catch back up again.
“I was just thinking of you.” I said, before we hit another technical section and I again made a little separation. The cat and mouse game continued for a while until we hit the next flat section. At that point he wasn’t breathing as heavily as before.
“Do you want to go, or stay?” I asked, thinking of Elhousine Elazzaoui from the Golden Trail circuit, who always clings onto second and stays there with the lead runner.
“I’m comfortable staying here.” He said, referring to the pace/effort. I said the same. Psychologically, I could tell that gave him the confidence to make his first big move of the day. We hit the roads at Ben Miller Inn and he took the lead for the second time in the race.I checked the watch to see that I had averaged 4:58/km across the first 25km, and was very much still on course-record pace. Meanwhile, Matt opened about thirty-seconds on me on the road, until the 100m of downhill stairs at the start of the next trail section allowed me to reduce the gap entirely. But that didn’t entirely matter, because we had reached another impasse – and one where I could not pass.
“This is going to get very interesting if you keep making moves like that on the road.” I said, before we mused about the flatness of London’s trails. Moments later, he took us 5-metres off trail, and I capitalized on the moment to pass him. At that point, I’m fairly positive that he took a break to use the washroom. I knew I was fine, and I knew that I could make enough of a gap that I likely wouldn’t see him again.
It was a dangerous decision. For all the back and forth, I likely would have chilled even more in the first half, had I not had him pushing me. So making a gap would be risky, as it would mean I’d have no one pushing me on the trails until I gave him the chance of catching back up on the road for the final 10k.
Coming so close to the aid station, it felt like the right call. AND THEN they didn’t have anything with electrolytes. Luckily, thanks to some smarts from Brett, I had a final bottle of just powder that I could fill up with water, plus two XACT Nutrition Bars and two gels (although I could only locate one!). I knew I’d be fine for the next 10k, but worried I didn’t have enough for the final 10k. I’d been doing close to 80-90g of carbohydrates per hour at the time, and knew that would tail off in the final 10k when I needed it most.
I downed some coca-cola and orange crush for the first time since childhood and made my way into the most technical bit of the course. I also figured out how to go to the washroom without slowing down, which felt like the coolest accomplishment of the day.
Since working with Brett, I’ve made an active effort to focus on the long-term rather than the short-term, and be smarter about every aspect of the sport. At Sulphur Springs, I probably would have been willing to die out there. I simply never stopped pressing on the gas.
But on this particular day, somewhere along the way, I got comfortable. I chilled out thinking I had executed everything I wanted to, and was going to get that course record. I think this is where I took it too slow, staying safe on the bits that were dangerous, hiking more of the uphills than I needed to, and taking some extra time to fuel with oranges and bananas at the 40k aid station. I had an extra gel somewhere in my pack, but I couldn’t remember where. In my deprived state of mind, I didn’t think to rid myself all of the garbage to find it.
I was too focused on what the feelings were going to be like at the end of the race and long afterward, and not focused enough on how much I actually had left in me to push. And even though it was only a few seconds here and there, I wasn’t stopping for the right things (like to find that gel rather than to eat an orange).
The 25k runners started to fuel me on, which provided a nice boost until I hit the road and prepared to hammer.
But then my heart rate immediately got high at the increased pace/effort, and I worried that I wouldn’t sustain that pace without enough carbohydrates. So I stayed comfortable until I picked up a final gel at a surprise aid station at 45k. At that point, I wanted to hammer it to the line, but wasn’t fully confident that I only had 5k to go. In my mind and the data I’d seen, the race would be closer to 52k, and the record would still be attainable (notoriously not great at math).
From 45k to 52k, I fought a battle in my mind of not wanting my hamstrings to blow up, but also wanting to lay down the hammer like my university cross-country days. I wanted to try using the washroom again without slowing down, but I also wanted to speed up faster than the last time I figured it out. I wanted to break the course record, but also wanted to walk after the race this time.
Safe to say, I had a lot of conflicting thoughts in my mind, and instead of hammering, I cruised at a pace that I probably could have held onto for several more kilometres.
That only solidified what I had been heading toward, a 52k day where I wouldn’t break Matt’s record (although we had different starting locations and I ran faster by pace, I think our days are really comparable.)
By the time I hit the river at 50k, the course record had gone. The shock of the knee-deep cold water caused my legs to buckle to a halt and the first hamstring cramps of the day. So by the time I escaped the shackles of the river, I cruised to the finish in a fashion I can’t really remember ever doing. I don’t know why, but I’ve always given an all-out effort to the line of any race I’ve ever done. Even at Falling Water, knowing I was going to finish second, I murdered myself with a 3:20/km finish – a pace I didn’t even know I had in me for flat workouts.
This time, I simply clapped for the volunteers and spectators all the way across the Halloween decorations until the line.
It resulted in a 4-hour-22-minute finish – what I amount to be the third fastest time ever (excluding the 2020 COVID year which was a significantly different course). I felt happy enough that according to our watches and Strava data, that I had run faster by pace than Matt’s two course-record times. But I still felt like I could have given more if I really wanted to break the time. Maybe I got too complacent in the second-half about how smart I had been up to that point and chilled too much. Maybe I would have benefited from one other runner to push me more in the second-half (either in front or behind).
Either way, I walked away happy with the effort, but slightly disappointed with the time, even though I won and had nothing to be truly upset about. Sometimes racing smarter isn’t always racing harder, and that will be an important lesson ahead of a big 2024!
It’s been a cool first year in the sport and I’ve learned so much that continues to set me up for long-term success. Now I just need to figure out when I can make risks in these events and when it’s safe to focus on the short-term as opposed to the long-term. This sets up an exciting 2024, where I’ll compete in my first international race since university cross country. I’m coming for you, Gorge.
Thank you again to Brett Hornig and XACT Nutrition for the support leading into this event. Thanks also to Race Huron and Jeremiah, for a really cool community feel to the event and making this day happen! & of course to Matt Suda for the push in the first half. I will be back some time in the future at the very least for the 25k, hunting down John’s new record instead.
Thanks for reading & see you soon!
Enter your email address
Get inspired and join my email list!
Get in touch!YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY…
Weekly Newsletter – The Magic of 2-Minute Hills
I love hill workouts in every form.
From 3-minute hills to 10-minute hills to 90-second hills, I LOVE MY HILLS.
There’s so much magic in a hill workout for trail running, as you get the muscle breakdown of all the downhills on your rest and recovery; and get to practice pushing harder in…
by Rhys DesmondMay 4, 2025May 4, 2025How I’ve become a better trail runner by running less on trails
I knew I needed to prioritize my “speed” in 2025 to get faster. But I didn’t realize how quickly we could make cosmic changes just from more of an emphasis on one thing: Road running (i.e. running economy and efficiency).
by Rhys DesmondMay 4, 2025May 4, 2025The importance of mobility work for trail runners & injury-prone athletes
As I’ve continued to endure injuries even despite the diligent attention to this piece of the puzzle, I’ve reflected on how I can make sure my mobility is properly attended to as much as my runs. Here are my best tips for prioritizing mobility, and why it’s so essential for trail runners and injury-prone athletes…
by Rhys DesmondApril 29, 2025April 29, 2025#MatthewFarquharson #MyJourney #RaceHuron #RaceRecaps #Races #Running #TheBadThing #TheBadThing50k #UltraRunning
-
Arm the Spirit Interview With Safiya Bukhari for International Women’s Day: 1995
Interview conducted in New York City, September 27, 1992 and distributed by Arm the Spirit via e-mail for International Women’s Day 1995.
Q: The first question I have is, how did you get involved with the Black Panther Party (BPP)?
I was going to college to be a doctor. The first year in college I was just into my studies. But it was right here in Brooklyn, actually, in New York City College, and the people on campus thought that I was stuck up because I didn’t associate – I was studying a lot. And so the second year, in order to break that mode, I pledged for a sorority called Hamilton House. That same year the sorority became integrated. We elected the first Black president. And one of the projects of the sorority was to adopt underprivileged children in foreign countries. Our President that year said we didn’t have to go any further than the United States to find underprivileged children. A lot of people didn’t believe that there were hungry children that needed to be fed right here in the U.S., even in New York.
So three of us were assigned to go investigate the situation and we ended up going to Harlem to see if there were really hungry children. It was Yvonne Smallwood, Wanda Davis and myself. And the first people we ran into when we got there were the Panthers. Wanda got totally involved from the beginning; she fell in love with a Panther and joined the Party and everything. I didn’t go that route. I simply didn’t believe the things that the Panthers were saying.
About the hungry children: we went back and reported that the result was that there were a lot of people who were eating out of garbage cans, that there were indecent conditions that they were living in, etc. The next question was what to do about it. Should we start our own program or should we get involved in the things that already went on – because the Panthers already had the Free Breakfast Program. So, in essence we elected to just assign various members of our sorority to work with the free Breakfast Program. We would collect the food, we cooked the food, we would help the children with their homework, things like that, but I still didn’t believe in what the Panthers were saying. I didn’t think that the violence was happening. I didn’t think that the conspiracies were going on. I didn’t believe that the police were doing what they said they were doing, etc.
Two incidents happened that made me start to think seriously about what the ideology of the Party was and take the rhetoric of the Party seriously. With the Breakfast Program, the police started putting out rumours. The children stopped coming to the breakfast program. And I wondered why – so I found out from talking to some of the parents that the police kept telling them that we were feeding the children poisoned food – so they were stopped from bringing their children to the program and that made me angry. I mean, we were getting up at outrageous hours in the morning to take care of this before going to school – I was still going to school full-time – I was cooking the food and we were eating it right along with the children. They didn’t have a breakfast program in the schools themselves, they were not making an effort to feed the children, but they didn’t want us to feed the children. And I was incensed about that.
Then, myself and my friend Wanda were walking on 42nd Street – I still hadn’t joined the Party, that still didn’t make me angry enough to join the Party – well, there we were on 42nd Street one day and going to times Square we saw this big crowd on the corner and so we went rushing to see what was going on. A Panther was on the corner selling papers and the police were harassing him. So, believing whole-heartedly in the Constitution, I asked him what he was doing. And the police said if I didn’t stop that they were going to arrest me, too. I said he had a constitutional right to sell the papers, actually, I said he had a constitutional right to disseminate political literature, and he didn’t take that too kindly. He asked me for my ID and told me to get up against the car and that he was going to arrest me for obstructing governmental process and inciting a riot. He handcuffed me, handcuffed the Panther, handcuffed Wanda and threw us into the police car and took us down to the 14th Precinct. In the back of the car they told my friend Wanda that if she didn’t shut up – she was just running off at the mouth, calling them a bunch of names – they were going to ram the night-stick right up her. That was their behaviour and when we got to the Precinct itself they talked about holding court in the Precinct. They did a search, threw us in a holding cell and kept talking … then they had a female guard come and strip-search us and they told her she should wear gloves and make sure she washes her hands afterwards because she could catch something from touching us. It was that experience that when they let me out, I called my mother and father at home and told them I was going to join the BPP. Because of the police, I told them that the police convinced me of the legitimacy of the truth of what the Panthers were saying.
I didn’t get arrested for anything from that point on. I never got arrested for anything trivial. But my friend Wanda, she never learned not to get arrested for talking, I was with her when she got arrested for selling wolf tickets and murdermouthing the police. But to me it was much more serious than that. It was more serious because they had this authority and they had the badges and they had the guns and they abused their power. And it’s what they say and what they do that carries more weight in a court of law than what the individual does. It was that kind of corruption that made me make the decision to join the BPP.
Q: When was that?
1969.
Q: And then you worked with the Panthers in New York?
I worked with the Panthers, I worked out of the Harlem office of the BPP, from then until I went underground in 1974.
Q: Why did you go underground?
From 1969 until 1971, before the split in the BPP, I had a section. My responsibility was for organizing and politicizing that section, selling papers, organizing the various cell units and just politically educating that community. I did everything from selling papers and handing out leaflets, drug-detox work and everything else. By 1971 when the split came down, right after the split, I became in charge of Information and Communications for the East Coast Panthers. One of my responsibilities was to hold the press conferences and release communiqués from the Black Liberation Army.
And so I became a direct threat to the establishment. They thought I had the information they needed to capture BLA members. So they subpoenaed me. But even prior to this they had done a number of articles on the fact that I was the only ranking member in the Party without a felony conviction. And since I had no felony conviction, I had a license to carry arms. And I carried arms openly in public because the law allowed you to. You could carry long arms or have a Paratrooper A-1. I had an 8mm Mauser and I had these long arms whenever we had a press conference. Or I kept it at home and walked with it, carried it back and forth to the office, in a holster on the street. So the media played it up like “the Panthers with guns”, but they didn’t bother to investigate that it was licensed. When they finally got to the point that they realized I was legal, then I was the only ranking Party member without a felony conviction.
I had done my work in the community so well that I had a lot of community support and so on that level had organized my base area and also had the political astuteness to in order to play the media. They thought the fact that I had the diplomacy to play the media made me a political threat. Then in 1970/71 we started the National Committee for the defense of Political Prisoners, in response to all the arrests across the country of Panthers and BLA members. I was working with the people in prison and they put the letters that I was sending inside to the prisoners. Our political stance was very clear, we were not about reformism or anything like that. It was about revolutionary political power and how it comes to revolution, and means a qualitative change in the living conditions of the people with us, and it was not about the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People – oldest liberal Black civil rights organization in the U.S.) style politics or anything like that.
The Senate Committee in the US held hearings on the kind of political literature that was going into the prisons, so that part was a threat to them also. It was basically a lot of the political work that I was doing – back and forth to the prisons – myself and Yuri Kochiyama and many others like us. And in November 1973, myself and three other people who were part of the Harriet Tubman Brigade of the BLA were arrested for trying to break out some six members of the BLA out of the Tombs (pretrial detention prison in NYC). But the arrest was premature because even though they played it up to the media like “Great Tombs Escape Fails At The sewer”, they were not able to hold us because we weren’t doing anything. The only thing they could charge us with was third degree burglary on a sewer, which was laughed out of court. And they were very angry.
Outside the legitimate system, the Police Department put a $10,000 contract on me that I wasn’t supposed to be captured. I had gotten into the position to be killed on sight. That was outside the normal system. And inside it, I got a subpoena by the Federal government to the grand Jury – about 11 other people and myself. But the difference with my subpoena was that if I showed up at the Grand Jury I couldn’t take the Fifth Amendment and therefore for any question that I refused to answer I was facing felony contempt which carried a prison sentence.
So we discussed it, myself and Nuh (Nuh Washington – now one of the New York Three) and some other people and we decided that I shouldn’t go before the Grand Jury in April 1974, that I should go underground. And at that point I went underground with the Amistad Collective of the Black Liberation Army.
Q: In order to end the chronology – when did you get captured?
I was the unit coordinator of the Amistad Collective. So, basically I was the only female coordinator in a BLA unit. We were captured in a shoot-out in Norfolk, Virginia, on January 25, 1975. One of my co-defendants, Komposi Amistad, was killed and another one was shot in the face. For the first 30 days we were facing the electric chair for felony murder. The only reason why we got out from the electric chair is that the federal government and the Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in Virginia at that time, saying it was unconstitutional. So we didn’t have to go to trial facing the death penalty.
But the state of Virginia asked for 900 years on the paratrooper A-1 I told you about, they didn’t care that I had a federal license. It was a one day trial, my bail was set at 1 million dollars on each count – we had five counts, which came to 5 million dollars.
They told them not to touch the bail issue, they picked the jury, they had the trial and they sentenced us all in one day and took us off to prison in one day. When they had the trial they threw me out of court before they started the trial. So I understand well Mumia not being in court during his trial, because I was not in court either.
I was in a cell in the back and it was cold and it had a loud-speaker, but I didn’t hear a thing, because it was nothing but static. But they brought me back in court for the sentencing phase and I was given 40 years. The jury wanted to run the time concurrently – I got 10, 10, and 20 – because it was the minimum on all the charges. And the judge told them they couldn’t do it, it was not up to them to determine how high it ran on the term on what I got and he ran it consecutive, and he told me I had to do every day of it. I told him, his momma was going to do it. (laughs) They sent us off to prison that night.
We both went together because they sent me to the penitentiary for men where my co-defendant was, and then I was taken by caravan to the women’s institution in Richmond, Virginia, and spent the next 21 days in maximum security segregation, because they didn’t want me on the outside where the other population was.
Q: How did you get out of segregation?
According to their own rules the only reason why you are supposed to be on maximum security segregation is when you violate one of their rules. So, I hadn’t violated a rule, So, when they took me down there I asked them why I was down there and they said because they didn’t have an empty room in the quarantine hall. And I asked them for a manual of their rules. I read it all and I told them, if that’s the case, in 21 days then you don’t have to worry about the room in the quarantine. Just that either I’ll be out of maximum security segregation or you’ll be in court.
And so on the 19th day they sent this correctional officer down there who said that she would accept me on her hall. She asked me what my intentions were while I was in prison and I told here that my intention was to do two years and leave. (laughs).
And she said they were concerned about me organizing in prison recruiting for the BLA, and I told them I had no intentions to recruit because I don’t really believe in recruiting. I believe if a person is going to do anything they need to make the decision based on their own conditions. If you have to recruit them, they haven’t made a decision on their own and if they don’t make it on their own they’re susceptible to back out and say somebody forced them to do things and stuff like that. But if they make a conscious decision on their own that the want to be involved in something then they have nobody to blame for anything that happens.
So, I told her I had no intention of recruiting. And she said then that she didn’t have any problems with me being in her hall. And so on the 21st day they moved me to the building where this correctional officer was, but I wasn’t allowed to go out into general population without handcuffs on and an armed guard with me. I wasn’t allowed to go to school. I wasn’t allowed to work in the kitchen or in the laundry or any other place where the women were working because they said I was a security risk. So, the only place I could be was in the hall, on the tier, in the cottage where I was housed. For everything you had to be right there at that complex.
After the first year I had to do the psychological evaluation, so that they could determine how they should handle you. The psychologist that I had to go see decided that I didn’t have to do all those little stupid tests, putting blocks together, etc. He asked a bunch of questions and then he said that he understood my political “beliefs”; at least how determined I was and stuff like that. And then he wrote this paper talking about that I believed wholeheartedly in the movement and that I was adamant about that, but I would not be a disciplinary problem if they called me by my Islamic name and dealt with me in a respectful manner and then he called me “paranoid” (laughs) – that I believed that people were out to get me. But he did say that I had no need for rehabilitation – rehabilitate from what, anyway. So he told them that they had to call me by my Islamic name or Ms. Bukhari and there will be no problems. But if they try to deal with me in any other manner then they did have a problem with me. And that was the psychological evaluation.
Anyways, after almost two years exactly I escaped. It was New Years Eve 1976. And the escape was really for two reasons. First, was that I just believed as a prisoner of war that a prisoner of war’s responsibility is to escape. So, from the very beginning we took the position that we were prisoners of war, and at the time of our capture we were soldiers in the Black Liberation Army. We gave a name, rank and serial number only and invoked that the court had no jurisdiction to try us. Therefore on that premise alone that the prisons had no jurisdiction over us and it is our responsibility as prisoners of war to escape – on that level I escaped. And that was one of the reasons.
The other reason was – one of the reasons why I was going South in the first place prior to the capture was because I had medical problems and I needed surgery. At the time of the capture I made known to them that I needed to have a surgery. They kept telling me that when I go over to the state custody it would be handled then. When I got to the prison they told me – after the examination – that I had fibroids the size of oranges or grapefruits in my uterus and asked me how much time I had. I told them I had 40 years. They then told me to come back in 10 years. I filed suit. The court said that it was just a difference of opinion between me and the doctor about how the medical treatment should be. I had asked to be able to pay for my own medical care, to have a doctor from the outside, etc. And they said no.
The month before my escape I started haemorrhaging so bad that at the time of my escape I was wearing three big sanitary napkins at the time. And I would have to change them every 2 hours. I was having my menstrual cycle for two weeks at the time, every other week. I was just bleeding horrendously. That day, when I made the decision that I couldn’t wait any longer to get medical care I was standing up in the middle of the floor in the unit where I was housed and all of a sudden – I mean nothing special happened – I just started haemorrhaging from the vagina. And I went to the clinic hall in the institution and they gave me Urgatrade, that was a medication to control the bleeding and told me to go and put my feet up. That was the extent of it – there was no recommendation for to take me to a doctor, to the hospital or anything. I just felt that they were not concerned about my health at all.
The doctor at the institution was not qualified to deal with women. And he had been so bad that in once case for example he had diagnosed just a sore throat when a woman had cancer. This other woman had one ovary left and he told here she had tumours on her right ovary – she didn’t have any right ovary. There was no way that you could have faith in the competency of this doctor. So, when they told me about this Urgatrade for the control of the bleeding and go and put my feet up, I decided that I had to make arrangements to take care of my own medical care.
Those of us who were in the BLA and who were incarcerated, we had a secure communication channel, so that we were still involved in what we called consolidation, organizing, structuring and stuff like that. I was in charge of Area 2 of the consolidation work in the unit and for the country. And as being in charge of Area 2 I was responsible for all the consolidation work in that area around BLA and BPP members, and outside building that whole network in that area. My second was Mark Holder who was in prison at Marion; and he was responsible for that area. So, between the two of us we had the whole Southern regional area of the East Coast in terms of our organizing efforts. Even while we were in prison, mind you…
Part of the CC, the Central Committee of the BLA, were on the streets. There were also members of the CC that were in prison and some were underground.
When I made the decision to escape I notified through secure channels the Central Committee that I was making a move. I notified my area coordinator and I notified the people in the area who needed to know that I was not going to be where they thought I was going to be. The night of the actual escape, we left and we made contact with the underground, and I was out roughly two months. I was captured on February 27th, 1977, and returned to prison in Virginia and went to trial where I was my own attorney at this point in the trial.
During the course of the trial I raised the issue of inadequate medical care and I pleaded not guilty for the reason of “duress and necessity” – that in order to save my own life I had to escape because of the medical conditions. That was also a way of raising the lack of adequate medical care for the women in the prison itself. The jury was very sympathetic and in the town a lot of the correctional officers and the head nurse for the correctional facility were very sympathetic because they knew this man was not qualified; that people in the town where the prison was located would not use him for anything. The only place he could practice was in the women’s institution, because nobody would allow him to practice on them. So during the course of the trial this was brought out.
By the time the trial was over, the judge had to threaten the jury with contempt charges if they didn’t find me guilty, because he said escape is like murder. And so they found me guilty of escape and they sentenced me to the minimum time which was one year. I was already doing 40 years, so one year didn’t make a difference. And the jury stood outside the courtroom and apologized when I was going out … (laughs). The upshot of it was that I was given a choice at that point about doctors – they picked three doctors outside that were not part of the prison system. And they took me to a hospital in Richmond, Virginia, and I picked a woman doctor and we talked about it and they did the examination. By this time it was two years after going into prison, my condition had worsened to the point where they said there strings all across that had pulled my uterus, the tubes and the ovaries all together. And Wanda said – my doctors’s name was Wanda too – that she would do everything possible to save something, but it would be a major piece of surgery. The upshot was that I ended up having a hysterectomy and that I have only one ovary left – and it’s because of the malpractice of that doctor.
I suffered severe postpartum depression. For whole year I was out of it. I was still in maximum security segregation for the escape. I spent three years and 7 months in maximum security segregation – that was the longest time anyone ever did for escape; before that the maximum for escape was 6 months in maximum security segregation. I had to go to court to come out of it and the court ordered me out of it at the end of the three years and 7 months, they had to phase me out. But during the course of the trial the Warden said that I was a threat to the security of the free world if the were releasing me from maximum security segregation. For a minute there I thought I was Russian (laughs) …
Anyway, I came out of maximum security segregation in 1981. After I came out of maximum security segregation we founded a little organization in prisons called “Mothers Inside Loving Kids” for people with a long time, to try to bridge that gap between the children and so that they can keep their family and that continuity with their children going. And then I made parole in 1983, and in August 1983 I was already free.
Q: Did they give you conditions for parole?
Yeah. I wasn’t supposed to associate with anybody – I wasn’t supposed to associate with folks. I wasn’t supposed to ever have a gun in my hands again. I wasn’t supposed to associate with any BLA or Panthers or anything like that. They asked me questions like: “Do you believe in violence or would you do what you did again?” And I told them that based on the conditions – no right-thinking person believes in violence for the sake of violence. But there are certain instances when you have no alternative, when you have exhausted everything else – then you have to resort to violence. And then they asked me: “Would I deal with things the same way again?” And I told them, no, I wouldn’t do it particularly that, because one of the things that is very clear is that we haven’t done the necessary education and organizational work in the streets in order to deal with a movement in the ways that we moved then. We were young, we were idealistic and we were impatient.
We have to build a foundation. And we have to organize not just 30,000 people. This country has 240 to almost 300 million people in it. And a lot of people in the rural areas, and even in some of the major cities and in the suburbs, don’t even know anything is happening because they are not exposed to the conditions – they just don’t know about it. It’s like when we talk about Mumia’s situation – people have never even heard his name – and we are talking about a major situation.
So, the educational phase has to be so that when you move from one level to the next in the struggle, that it is understood that the people know what we are doing. And you lay the foundation to the point where you are not leading the people to a slaughter. And they talked about not being around people who were in the BLA and the BPP and convicted felons. And I told them that it isn’t possible to live in the Black community and not be around convicted felons. To say that I won’t do that I’d be lying to you.
And the other part is that these people of the BPP and the BLA are not just comrades, they are my family. And to tell me that I cannot associate with my family is something I will not accept. So I told them if you give me parole be clear about the fact that I am going to associate with my family. (laughs) And I did from day one when I was walking out of the prison. I was shocked – everyone was shocked – that I made parole. (laughs) The consistence was that the state of Virginia just wanted to get rid of me because it was costing them too much money lately.
The only times I did a law suit against them was when they pushed me to the point where I had no other choice but to file a suit against them. At the last when I left the prison in Virginia they had just written the first infraction ticket that I had since my escape. I was on work release and they had written the ticket because I went outside on the ground of the place where I worked at to sit down to eat lunch on the bench. And the woman who was in charge of the house, the workpolice, wrote the ticket – she was already crazy about the fact that I was a Muslim and she was a Christian and she thought that everybody in the house should be Christian …
And I didn’t eat pork, and how could you be Black in the South without eating pork? She was really ridiculous with “this is my house” and this is a prison. But when she gave me the ticket, she confined me to the house, and the only thing I could come out for were meals. I didn’t mind because at this point I had already made parole, I was just waiting for the date. But at the same time I didn’t like that she had denied me religious freedom.
And I filed a law suit – I told her the next time she will talk to me, talk to my lawyer. I made parole and came home and the suit was still pending. Then I got a call from the lawyer to tell me that they had settled; they had fired her, they had settled the lawsuit and I hadn’t even asked for damages … I just wanted them to tell her that this was not her house and she couldn’t run it as if it were her house and that she couldn’t dictate what religion people could be … I just wanted to tell her that. Because other women were scared to say anything because she was threatening with taking their rights and privileges and they were not ready to deal with that. And I just didn’t think that these people should get away with running their own little prisons.
Anyway, I didn’t mean for her to get fired, because she was the only Black woman in that position. But she got herself into a position that there was nothing to do but to deal with it. And anyway, they gave me money damages and fired her.
Q: Can you talk about how it was to be the only woman unit leader underground?
(laughs) Sexism is regardless of how political you are – in the United States sexism is part of the culture of the U.S. and this is a sexist society.
In the Black Liberation movement sexism is a strong factor not only because of the sexist society in America, but because of the African culture itself, sexism is there. And it’s there in the black culture, because of the denial of their manhood in the acculturation and deculturation that came with slavery and everything else. When the Black Power movement cam into being in the 60s and even through the Garveyites (Marcus Garvey – Black nationalist leader in the 20s and 30s with a strong slogan “Back to Africa”), the Garvey movement and the Nation of Islam and all that other prior to that, there was a search for their manhood. You know, “Rise up you mighty Black men”, Garvey said, or in the BPP the slogan was “Stand up to be Men” and so forth. So, in the Black Power movement and the cultural nationalist movement they were really blatant by saying that the place of women was in the kitchen or on their backs and having children for building the Nation and so on.
One of the things that had developed in the Panther Party and in the BLA – for us, the BLA came out of the BPP because no Party member was allowed to join any armed force other than the Black Liberation Army – was the whole machismo thing. But at the same time there was an organizational position that was anti-sexist. But the individuals themselves still had a lot of sexism within. The Party only existed for about 7 years … there was never time. You had a cultural thing that never did have time to be dealt with.
So you had all the “leaders”, even though Kathleen Cleaver was on the Central Committee, she was just there, a figure-head most on the CC She was Eldridge Cleaver’s wife. So her role was not as a Communications Secretary in the sense that she was viable and working ahead, having an independent voice .. . her role was that of – since she was married to Eldridge Cleaver and he was Minister of Information, she was the Communication Secretary. And women were still viewed more or less as secretaries. There were a few of us on the political front and at political stands and doing the same work. We were basically doing the same work in the BPP. There were a few of us who not only would do the same work, but we would not accept the sexism.
And in the years when I joined the party in 1969, one of the things I tried to make clear was that I did not come into the Party to become somebody’s sexual toy. That, if I wanted to do that I could do it outside of the BPP. Also, I was in my second year at college when I joined the Party – I had already made determinations. I was raised in a family of six brothers and endless uncles … and my mother was very strong. So there was always that leadership position.
And when I made the determination that I was going underground, it was a determination that was based on that I knew this was the next step, this is what I wanted to do. And I had the experience of the collectives that I worked with. First it was the Harriet Tubman Brigade – their sole responsibility was to liberate P.O.W.s, and then it was the “Wretched of the Earth” – and we still wanted the liberation of the P.O.W.s. We saw ourselves as a collective in the sense of a collective. There were no real unit coordinators in those years.
By the time the Amistad Collective came together we decided that we wanted to organize it. We wanted responsibilities and discipline whereas a lot of other units did not have that organization. We wanted to set us a pattern. We had election based on qualifications – qualification and not sexuality – did we decide on who got what position. We had political education classes and we had everything – we even had “r and r” (rest and relaxation) because we found it was necessary that you had time to rest and recuperate.
Having the responsibility of a unit coordinator was more like keeping it all together and trying to make sure that decisions were made not on an emotional basis, that we looked at everything objectively in making those decisions. And making sure that there was a distribution of the work that didn’t see the women in the cell doing the “female” work and being seen as sex objects in the cells. That didn’t develop so we were able to maintain a position in our cell that we were comrades. We were comrades, we respected each other’s individuality and each other’s capabilities and we had the discipline that we didn’t violate no drug rules and not being intoxicated while carrying out our business and stuff like that. That was a very bad part of the movement, in the underground also, that developed in this country.
We had analyzed these things prior to us forming a cell. I think, that’s one of the things that came with being a female unit coordinator – it’s because women have a practical, a more practical approach to things than men do. (laughs). And that’s what I think made our cell different. Even though I was captured and my co- defendant was captured and the other unit member was killed – our unit was made up of 8 people – no one else ever got captured that was in our unit. And the person who talked, who allowed us to be captured, was eventually dealt with, so the person was incapable to put anybody else in the position to be captured. You know, my co-defendant was captured and a woman was killed and I was captured, but 5 other people survived it and were capable of moving.
And even though I didn’t particularly like being in prison, we, we were able to do work. And during the course of the trial, we were able to educate the community. The community was the support network that we had, and even when it came down to the escapes and everything else that happened in Virginia during that time – the people were there because the unit was able to continue to do the work and put the thing together.
Q: What happened to your co-defendant?
He’s out. He’s in Chicago. Yeah, after I got out first, the work to get him out was a thing that we continued. I carried it on – because one of the things I told people is that I was out, but as long as he was in, I really wasn’t out yet, you know. And that’s the kind of cohesiveness that we maintained. Because in a lot of other cases people who were co-defendants came out and they went on about their business and forgot about their co-defendants, the people that went in with them, and I think on that end our unit set a very good example, that we didn’t just walk away from the situation.
Q: And how was it for you – you already had your child before you went underground?
Yes, she was 4 years old when I went underground. Her father was killed during the split in the party. There were two casualties directly involved in the split. That was Robert Webb and Sam Napier on the East Coast, on the New York side of the split. Robert Webb, who is my daughter’s father, had been a body guard to Huey Newton. And when the split went down, because he surfaced – he had been underground – he was a liability for them. He was ordered assassinated by crews from that end.
In retaliation, people from the outside assassinated [Sam Napier]. The fratricide was the most .. the police just sat back and laughed; their thing was they didn’t have to get Panthers, the Panthers kill each other. That was a very crucial time for a lot of us. And when we look back at it – Sam was a loss to the movement itself because he was the circulation manager of the paper. And he lived and died for the paper. And Robert was a loss – just personally he was a loss, because of our relationship, but politically he was a loss, because he knew how to put together an apparatus. He had been in the armed forces of the U.S., he had come out and he was working for the liberation of our people. He had the information and the connections in order to do it; and he had the security mind – he was Deputy Field Marshal in the BPP. Anyway, at the time just before the split, my mother had taken custody of my daughter. I let her go and stay with my mother. And when Robert came back, we had intentions at the point to go back from the underground to get Wanda, my daughter – I named her Wanda too (laughs) – and to bring her back to stay with us and then he got killed, so it was very appropriate that she stayed with my mother. So, she stayed there and I would go and see her.
Robert was dead and I was in a very insecure position. By the time 1974 came around I and I already had the $10,000 contract on me, I had the Grand Jury subpoena and I had been busted in November 1973 for the other things. So I called my mother up and I told her that I wanted her to keep my daughter. And I signed guardianship over to her. One of the things the state was trying to do was to take Panther children away from their parents because they were unfit parents, etc. I didn’t want to take a chance, so I signed legal guardianship over to my mother. And I made arrangements for her schooling and everything else, and I went underground.
When I got captured, I could still see her and I had a lot of dealings with her schooling, etc. But even at that point, when the state found out about her they tried to take her, at one point just tried to kidnap her and use her for leverage against me to make me talk while I was in prison. In a lot of cases I would just call and make sure that my mother didn’t let her go with strangers or someone. One time this woman came by the house and told my mother that she will bring toys for Wanda, she will come and visit and stuff like that, told my mother that she was one of my best friends, and I had told her that Wanda could come spend the weekend with her. And it just so happened that that particular weekend I called home and Momma told me about it, and I told her that I had never heard that woman’s name before in my life. It was incidents like these that made us decide that she could go nowhere by herself, that she had to be taken to school and be picked up from school, and she couldn’t be allowed to just have a normal life really, because they were at the point where they were using children to get information from the parents. So it was very hard to do time in prison knowing that my daughter was the target for a whole lot of things.
Q: Did she understand what was happening?
She never understood. On a lot of levels she was angry because she thought my being in prison was an abandonment of her. And then she never really understood why she had to be kept under such strict surveillance or control. And even now, I tell her now it hasn’t really changed. I mean, I will get messages where someone has seen her here or done this. There is no place that she can go that people don’t know that she is my daughter, and so she has to watch herself very carefully about what she does and where she is and stuff like that.
Q: When we first started learning about the Black Panther Party and the BLA, the only woman’s name that was mentioned was Assata and no one else. Why is that?
That’s because of the media stuff. (laughs) I think the reason why you hear so much about Assata is basically because in 1973 with the shoot-out and everything that happened, the publicity was very high. So the media when they were looking for her, they called her the “soul of the BLA” and stuff like that. It was a lot of media hype and people have a tendency to deal with the media….
You know, she has survived a lot, she has learned a lot and she has studied and she has developed.
And I think on that end too, I have a real problem with the fact that people deal with Assata and there are a lot of other people out there in exile that no one ever mentions.
And then you have a bunch of them in various places that nobody knows their names. And that really works with me, because we have a tendency to build superstars and the superstars get the play. And the soldiers in the rank and file and the workhorses, whose names were never known, they languish on their own. That is not the way you build movements, if you don’t support the people in your movements who made the sacrifices then what incentive is there to anybody else to get involved. I have a real problem with that.
You know the names of Dhoruba bin-Wahad, or Geronimo ji-Jaga Pratt and the New York Three, but all the other ones who are languishing in the prisons sit there with no attorneys, no nothing and no one knows their names. You can mention their names, and it goes in one ear and out the other. A lot of times they have no commissary, they don’t get visits, not even from their families do they get visits. But the families that weren’t involved in the struggles that they’re in prison for, they didn’t make the commitments. But the people who were involved in those struggles with them, they don’t even remember the names anymore.
Do you see anyone out there right now who is trying to rebuild the contacts with those comrades? It seems there are so many who need to come out just on the case that they’ve been involved in the struggle?
Well, that’s one of the reasons why we do the New York Three Freedom Campaign Newsletter, we mention those people every time we get information about them, where they are and their cases, what’s happening with them, we try to bring it up and build networking for different struggles around different political prisoners. We try and educate the people to get involved, educate them about the rank and file. And we try to raise not to get involved with the personality cult and deal with the whole issue of support for political prisoners rather than support for an individual political prisoner.
And even like dealing with the brothers inside right now – because it’s predominantly brothers that are inside, except for the MOVE prisoners and white anti-imperialists, there are more brothers; in the Black movement there are basically men that were involved at that time, especially Panthers and BLA members – to cross those boundaries and deal with the whole issue of political prisoners. They are pushing that now, too, that they went into prison as members of organizations and that they should be dealt with as members of organizations rather than as individuals.
There is a lot of work that has to be done – attorneys have to be found and our responsibility to ourselves is in building that foundation, because all of that is building foundations.
When you get involved in movements there should be a legal defense fund set up consistently and there. So when a bust goes down, there is an attorney available for the incarcerated comrade. There should be no question about having to raise defense money. It should be there. By the same token there should be a mechanism to liberate political prisoners. So, that if there is nothing to be won through the courts, there is an alternative already in place.
And for those that have done their time, there should be a fund or something set up for them. I know after 8 years and 8 months there was a lot of psychological damage done to myself personally in the time that I spent in prison. There has to be a mechanism set up so you have time to cool out and deprogram. Because that’s what time in prison is – it’s a time of programming. And so you have to be de-programmed. And after almost 9 years, it happened to me then … and those people who have done 15 and 17 and 20 or more years, they need it much more than I did – you know, to train them for things. And we don’t have those mechanisms in place.
So when I talk about the foundations that we need to build for the struggle I this country, we talk about the basic, elementary foundations to fill a military apparatus and a political struggle. On the political level, we need to have our own communication centres, so we don’t have to keep worrying and wondering about how we get information printed or how we are going to get this done or that done. Right now we should have the people with the necessary skills to put information out from the radio and television. And we have not pulled that together.
Q: This foundation, do you see it coming from people like yourself and people with a history in the BPP, or do you think there is that whole new generation that starts that on their own, or does the Nation of Islam do it? Who does it right now?
I don’t see it coming from the Nation of Islam. I don’t see it coming from any organised formation that is in existence at this point. Because there is a whole new level of thinking, a kind of way of thinking, that has to be developed. I think there are people within all those structures who have the innovative ideas and who have the foresight and who are capable of putting things together that are necessary and do it. But the question is whether or not they really know what they want.
There are a lot of times when we get thrown back in our community. In the years between elections our people see how bad the situation is and they get disenchanted with the elections and there comes along somebody saying all you have to do is to change the administration and things will be better. So they fall back into the same thing. Or you start off with leaders who are strong and audacious and they’re revolutionary or they mouth revolutionary slogans and then they find out that somebody offers them a piece of the pie and then they dilute their message. Like Sister Souljah recently, when she was busy talking about the need for a black army and so on, and then Bill Clinton attacked her about her statement about white people, that she said black people should have a week of killing white people. And her first thing was that she never had a gun, that she never advocated violence. Her whole spiel watered down to the point that we should build our own independent political party and with a technological approach to the situation.
So, even though I am not equating her with the revolutionary leaders, I am saying at that point where you have a voice and once you get attacked or anything like that or you get offered an entree into areas where you maintain your position and you can make a difference in what’s happening, you find out it was all about “this is the best for me at this point” and the amount of dollars, and it becomes different. I think we have a history of that. We have history of – when I made the door open for me, I am going through the door and then you forget about the other persons on the other side.
So, I really think that this new movement is going to be a mixture of people from the old school whose minds are open enough to recognize that they are not the end, that people do not have to come to them before they can move forward. They don’t have the absolute answer. Because some people who were in the Party think that if it isn’t done the way the party was doing it, then it ain’t rational. But it ain’t true. The Party made a lot of mistakes too.
A lot of us inside talked about how there was a need to find new blood. And if we don’t find that new blood and learn from our mistakes and build on them and move forward, then there is no hope for the struggle in this country. And if we continue to try to hold on to it and say: this is my struggle and nobody else can determine how and in which direction it goes, and you can’t do this without permission from me or this is my territory and you can’t walk on my territory. With that game turf mentality we are defeating our own purpose. I think, one of the things we have to do is to consolidate a lot of these organizations and we haven’t done this because egos are in the way.
Egos are a very, very large part of why we have such fragmentations in this movement and we are now moving apart, not moving further. And if you look at the heads of these organizations – they are all men and they splinter off from each other and form little groups with about 30 people in them and they speak to about the same constituency. We have to get past that.
What really gets me is that I hear the people saying that people are ready for this and people are ready for that and the same people who are ready for this and ready for that are the same people that they have been speaking to all the time and they haven’t educated anyone else. When you go outside a certain sector – you can’t even say all of Harlem knows what is going on. Just those people at that rally, or just those who listen to WLIB (NYC radio station) or just those people who call in might be ready. And they might be ready just to talk. And they are ready to do anything concrete. And then they assume just by listening to those few people that the masses are ready for armed struggle, which is not true. Because when you go out to the community, when I go to my mother’s house in Richmond Hill which is right here in Queens, I know they are not ready. But they travel in these little groups, these call these little demonstrations and these people come and they think that they are ready for armed struggle – it’s not true.
A lot of these people would not even know – if armed struggle broke out today – where would they go, how should you deal with treating the wounded, how would you deal with keeping the police from busting down the doors.
So, what you need to do is make those people find a way to take a victory out of the defeat. To turn it around and let people know that you don’t have to be a super-hero to be involved in the movement. But everyone wants people to believe that they’re such strong revolutionaries, that they never feel pain, they never cry, they never want to chuck it all and want to go up to the mountains and read a book or something. But it’s not true.
Jalil will tell you, with this New York Three case, I have been out of prison since 1983 and I have been on this case ever since, and on other cases and working on this and that. And sometimes I am going to say, I need a break, I am not going to do another day’s work on this. And I say that to them and I’m gone. And now, when I say that to them, they leave me alone for a couple of weeks and then they call back and say “are you ok now?” (laughs) Because you are human. You need to do these things in order to continue to be strong enough to handle the struggle. But we want people to believe that we are superhuman. We are not like everyone else…but we are. And we have to recognize that ourselves. And we need recharging. So, if I know that I am coming to the end of my rope, then I can take those precautions, so that I don’t fall a victim to the things that are out there.
Q: Is it really true that there has been no BLA since the 80s?
Not actually since, I would say, 1977/78. And what makes it so bad is that the government knew that. The government knew at that point that there was no political BLA happening out there, whose reason for being there was strictly to wage political and armed struggle in this country, where it was basically the military apparatus of the BPP.
I think you will get to the point where you recognize that in order to build a new movement that you have to expose the mistakes of the prior one, so that you don’t make those same mistakes again; that when you get to that point then we will be ready to move forward again.
Q: What happened to the women, I mean the other women, who were not under so much repression. Did they go back?
A lot of them got involved in community programs, community based work. A lot of us are in touch with each other when we do stuff around the different cases, etc. The women do the majority of that work from one end of the country to the other. Women are raising the children and making sure that they get the education, taking care of the families of the political prisoners, just surviving themselves, because they have been the victims of a lot of these conditions. And now they are educating the youth – in the schools, colleges, universities. So they are continuing the work through the community organizations, like homeless shelters, children’s programs, etc. And when we move from one point to the other we are in touch. And we talk about the women getting together and doing what need to be done. (laughs) We are starting to write books, we are doing more political speaking…
Q: It reminds me of a visit by a women comrade from the Tupamaros who came to the FRG in April, who described a similar development in Uruguay where the women are doing the community work and the men are mostly involved in the strategy discussions.
Because the real work is done by the women on a lot of occasions. The whole theory and sitting back and doing the armchair theory end – that ain’t giving anything to the children, it’s not educating them, that ain’t keeping them out of prison, it’s not doing that. And we have to keep our feet on the ground and keep moving and keep them alive while we build the movement.
Q: You said that you are involved with Islam. Does it interfere with your work at all?
I became a Muslim before I went into prison. I became a Muslim in 1971. It was in the Quran that said it was incumbent upon a Muslim to wage a struggle against tyranny and oppression wherever it may be found. That gave me the license to be a revolutionary and a Muslim at the same time.
And I take it to the extreme, to the extreme I think it is meant to be taken, that a true Muslim will not sit idly by and allow tyranny and oppression in whatever form to happen without waging struggle against it. So, I see no contradiction between being muslim and a revolutionary. I see a contradiction in the way that Islam is practiced in the world. I remember that when I was captured in Virginia, the Islamic community sent a representative to see me and told me that they would not support me as long as I did not veer my case from my co-defendant’s case. There was something totally wrong with them taking a position like that.
I know I came in a lot of conflict with people who thought because I was a woman and a Muslim that I shouldn’t do this and shouldn’t do that. And when someone is asking about my political beliefs and affiliations and how it’s not been according to the Quran, I refer right back to Sura 23.
Q: Well, I think in Europe we hear very little about the revolutionary writings in the Quran.
Well, that’s because they don’t want to do anything. The Muslims even here – for them it’s a way of separating themselves from society without taking on society. So they become different and say they are not governed by the laws, etc.
The worst thing that has ever happened is having four wives. It isn’t based on Islam, Islam is explained by men in the religion. And the women don’t read the Quran for themselves, so they are victimized by Islam. So, they don’t understand that the men cannot have four wives without the permission of the woman, you know. (laughs) So, if she doesn’t go along with it, it ain’t happening. That in order to have four wives, they have to be taken care of economically, psychologically, physically and spiritually. And I mean, I don’t know too many men who can deal with more than one woman and take care of her. (laughs) And that’s the case, and then there shouldn’t be four wives happening anyway. But these men get the women, put them on welfare and call themselves Muslims they have no understanding for themselves for they have never read the Quran.
Q: Do you want to add something to the interview?
Yes, I just want to reiterate the fact that everyone of us has weaknesses. So, the weakness that people fell into after the “leadership of the movement” went to prison or were wiped out – what you had left was a lot of people who could not function without organization. The organizations were destroyed, they were out there by themselves and then they got caught up in a lot of negative stuff.
Q: Actually, I have one more question. Do you feel you can work at all with what’s left of the white feminist movement or the white women’s movement? Is there any kind of working relationship or do you just say they don’t have a revolutionary program and so you can’t work with them?
It depends. I think in the beginning of the feminist movement in this country it was fairly progressive. Now the feminist movement in this country has just as many right-wing elements as you have revolutionary elements. As a matter of fact, I would say the right-wing elements outnumber the revolutionary elements in the feminist movement in the U.S.
And not just in the white feminist movement, but in the Black/Third World feminist movement also. Sometimes I think that they equate their individual issues with revolutionary struggle, which is not one and the same.
And even with the lesbian and gay community’s struggle in this country – a lot of them are just as conservative as their counterparts in the heterosexual community. And they don’t understand that the issue of sexuality itself is not a revolutionary issue. A lot of people don’t see the difference. They don’t see that that is not a revolutionary issue and that it is not an issue that you can impose and make it an issue of the Black Liberation movement.
When I address the issue of oppression based on sexuality, I make clear that oppression in and of itself, regardless of what reason you oppress people, is wrong. So, to oppress a person because of their sexuality, that in itself is something that we can’t contend to deal with.
Now, once you get past that, then it’s your personal choices. And I think that it doesn’t fall on the level of racism and it doesn’t on class oppression.
And then dealing with the feminist movement they have the question of reproductive rights or pro-choice, choice, and no choice. That is a movement by itself. On the Left, we take the position that a person’s body is their own; that there is a choice that they should make about themselves.
But when you get to the big question, you got just as many cops, female cops, and female judges, and female prosecuting attorneys and oppressive forces who are pro-choice and anything else. So, being pro-choice is not a revolutionary position. And so you can’t continue to equate and allow ourselves to be put in a position that we get dictated to by people who are in one-issue forces.
Q: Thank you for the interview.
Text taken from ATS-L Archives; e-mail Wed, 8 Mar 1995 17:22:29 -0500 (EST) from [email protected], Subject: IWD: Interview With Safiya Bukhari-Alston
More:
- Safiya: Lioness for Liberation, by Mumia Abu-Jamal
- Tribute to Safiya on her passing, from the NYC Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition
- Reminiscence of Safiya Bukhari from the Provisional Government, Republic of New Afrika
- Tributes from Assata Shakur, Nehanda Abiodun, Sally O’Brien, and Yuri Kochiyama
- Defending Kamau Sadiki, Safiya’s last project
- Safiya Bukhari, “Coming of Age: A Black Revolutionary,” Notes from a New Afrikan P.O.W. Journal, Book 7 (Spear & Shield Publications, 1979). Reprinted with updates in Joy James, ed., Imprisoned Intellectuals (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).
Page maintained by Jericho Amnesty Movement, SF Bay Area. Updated October 12, 2003
source: Jericho Movement
Attached is a zine for printing.
Letter
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#blackLiberationArmy #blackPantherParty #feminism #newAfrikna #northAmerica #safiyaBukhari #us
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Arm the Spirit Interview With Safiya Bukhari for International Women’s Day: 1995
Interview conducted in New York City, September 27, 1992 and distributed by Arm the Spirit via e-mail for International Women’s Day 1995.
Q: The first question I have is, how did you get involved with the Black Panther Party (BPP)?
I was going to college to be a doctor. The first year in college I was just into my studies. But it was right here in Brooklyn, actually, in New York City College, and the people on campus thought that I was stuck up because I didn’t associate – I was studying a lot. And so the second year, in order to break that mode, I pledged for a sorority called Hamilton House. That same year the sorority became integrated. We elected the first Black president. And one of the projects of the sorority was to adopt underprivileged children in foreign countries. Our President that year said we didn’t have to go any further than the United States to find underprivileged children. A lot of people didn’t believe that there were hungry children that needed to be fed right here in the U.S., even in New York.
So three of us were assigned to go investigate the situation and we ended up going to Harlem to see if there were really hungry children. It was Yvonne Smallwood, Wanda Davis and myself. And the first people we ran into when we got there were the Panthers. Wanda got totally involved from the beginning; she fell in love with a Panther and joined the Party and everything. I didn’t go that route. I simply didn’t believe the things that the Panthers were saying.
About the hungry children: we went back and reported that the result was that there were a lot of people who were eating out of garbage cans, that there were indecent conditions that they were living in, etc. The next question was what to do about it. Should we start our own program or should we get involved in the things that already went on – because the Panthers already had the Free Breakfast Program. So, in essence we elected to just assign various members of our sorority to work with the free Breakfast Program. We would collect the food, we cooked the food, we would help the children with their homework, things like that, but I still didn’t believe in what the Panthers were saying. I didn’t think that the violence was happening. I didn’t think that the conspiracies were going on. I didn’t believe that the police were doing what they said they were doing, etc.
Two incidents happened that made me start to think seriously about what the ideology of the Party was and take the rhetoric of the Party seriously. With the Breakfast Program, the police started putting out rumours. The children stopped coming to the breakfast program. And I wondered why – so I found out from talking to some of the parents that the police kept telling them that we were feeding the children poisoned food – so they were stopped from bringing their children to the program and that made me angry. I mean, we were getting up at outrageous hours in the morning to take care of this before going to school – I was still going to school full-time – I was cooking the food and we were eating it right along with the children. They didn’t have a breakfast program in the schools themselves, they were not making an effort to feed the children, but they didn’t want us to feed the children. And I was incensed about that.
Then, myself and my friend Wanda were walking on 42nd Street – I still hadn’t joined the Party, that still didn’t make me angry enough to join the Party – well, there we were on 42nd Street one day and going to times Square we saw this big crowd on the corner and so we went rushing to see what was going on. A Panther was on the corner selling papers and the police were harassing him. So, believing whole-heartedly in the Constitution, I asked him what he was doing. And the police said if I didn’t stop that they were going to arrest me, too. I said he had a constitutional right to sell the papers, actually, I said he had a constitutional right to disseminate political literature, and he didn’t take that too kindly. He asked me for my ID and told me to get up against the car and that he was going to arrest me for obstructing governmental process and inciting a riot. He handcuffed me, handcuffed the Panther, handcuffed Wanda and threw us into the police car and took us down to the 14th Precinct. In the back of the car they told my friend Wanda that if she didn’t shut up – she was just running off at the mouth, calling them a bunch of names – they were going to ram the night-stick right up her. That was their behaviour and when we got to the Precinct itself they talked about holding court in the Precinct. They did a search, threw us in a holding cell and kept talking … then they had a female guard come and strip-search us and they told her she should wear gloves and make sure she washes her hands afterwards because she could catch something from touching us. It was that experience that when they let me out, I called my mother and father at home and told them I was going to join the BPP. Because of the police, I told them that the police convinced me of the legitimacy of the truth of what the Panthers were saying.
I didn’t get arrested for anything from that point on. I never got arrested for anything trivial. But my friend Wanda, she never learned not to get arrested for talking, I was with her when she got arrested for selling wolf tickets and murdermouthing the police. But to me it was much more serious than that. It was more serious because they had this authority and they had the badges and they had the guns and they abused their power. And it’s what they say and what they do that carries more weight in a court of law than what the individual does. It was that kind of corruption that made me make the decision to join the BPP.
Q: When was that?
1969.
Q: And then you worked with the Panthers in New York?
I worked with the Panthers, I worked out of the Harlem office of the BPP, from then until I went underground in 1974.
Q: Why did you go underground?
From 1969 until 1971, before the split in the BPP, I had a section. My responsibility was for organizing and politicizing that section, selling papers, organizing the various cell units and just politically educating that community. I did everything from selling papers and handing out leaflets, drug-detox work and everything else. By 1971 when the split came down, right after the split, I became in charge of Information and Communications for the East Coast Panthers. One of my responsibilities was to hold the press conferences and release communiqués from the Black Liberation Army.
And so I became a direct threat to the establishment. They thought I had the information they needed to capture BLA members. So they subpoenaed me. But even prior to this they had done a number of articles on the fact that I was the only ranking member in the Party without a felony conviction. And since I had no felony conviction, I had a license to carry arms. And I carried arms openly in public because the law allowed you to. You could carry long arms or have a Paratrooper A-1. I had an 8mm Mauser and I had these long arms whenever we had a press conference. Or I kept it at home and walked with it, carried it back and forth to the office, in a holster on the street. So the media played it up like “the Panthers with guns”, but they didn’t bother to investigate that it was licensed. When they finally got to the point that they realized I was legal, then I was the only ranking Party member without a felony conviction.
I had done my work in the community so well that I had a lot of community support and so on that level had organized my base area and also had the political astuteness to in order to play the media. They thought the fact that I had the diplomacy to play the media made me a political threat. Then in 1970/71 we started the National Committee for the defense of Political Prisoners, in response to all the arrests across the country of Panthers and BLA members. I was working with the people in prison and they put the letters that I was sending inside to the prisoners. Our political stance was very clear, we were not about reformism or anything like that. It was about revolutionary political power and how it comes to revolution, and means a qualitative change in the living conditions of the people with us, and it was not about the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People – oldest liberal Black civil rights organization in the U.S.) style politics or anything like that.
The Senate Committee in the US held hearings on the kind of political literature that was going into the prisons, so that part was a threat to them also. It was basically a lot of the political work that I was doing – back and forth to the prisons – myself and Yuri Kochiyama and many others like us. And in November 1973, myself and three other people who were part of the Harriet Tubman Brigade of the BLA were arrested for trying to break out some six members of the BLA out of the Tombs (pretrial detention prison in NYC). But the arrest was premature because even though they played it up to the media like “Great Tombs Escape Fails At The sewer”, they were not able to hold us because we weren’t doing anything. The only thing they could charge us with was third degree burglary on a sewer, which was laughed out of court. And they were very angry.
Outside the legitimate system, the Police Department put a $10,000 contract on me that I wasn’t supposed to be captured. I had gotten into the position to be killed on sight. That was outside the normal system. And inside it, I got a subpoena by the Federal government to the grand Jury – about 11 other people and myself. But the difference with my subpoena was that if I showed up at the Grand Jury I couldn’t take the Fifth Amendment and therefore for any question that I refused to answer I was facing felony contempt which carried a prison sentence.
So we discussed it, myself and Nuh (Nuh Washington – now one of the New York Three) and some other people and we decided that I shouldn’t go before the Grand Jury in April 1974, that I should go underground. And at that point I went underground with the Amistad Collective of the Black Liberation Army.
Q: In order to end the chronology – when did you get captured?
I was the unit coordinator of the Amistad Collective. So, basically I was the only female coordinator in a BLA unit. We were captured in a shoot-out in Norfolk, Virginia, on January 25, 1975. One of my co-defendants, Komposi Amistad, was killed and another one was shot in the face. For the first 30 days we were facing the electric chair for felony murder. The only reason why we got out from the electric chair is that the federal government and the Supreme Court abolished the death penalty in Virginia at that time, saying it was unconstitutional. So we didn’t have to go to trial facing the death penalty.
But the state of Virginia asked for 900 years on the paratrooper A-1 I told you about, they didn’t care that I had a federal license. It was a one day trial, my bail was set at 1 million dollars on each count – we had five counts, which came to 5 million dollars.
They told them not to touch the bail issue, they picked the jury, they had the trial and they sentenced us all in one day and took us off to prison in one day. When they had the trial they threw me out of court before they started the trial. So I understand well Mumia not being in court during his trial, because I was not in court either.
I was in a cell in the back and it was cold and it had a loud-speaker, but I didn’t hear a thing, because it was nothing but static. But they brought me back in court for the sentencing phase and I was given 40 years. The jury wanted to run the time concurrently – I got 10, 10, and 20 – because it was the minimum on all the charges. And the judge told them they couldn’t do it, it was not up to them to determine how high it ran on the term on what I got and he ran it consecutive, and he told me I had to do every day of it. I told him, his momma was going to do it. (laughs) They sent us off to prison that night.
We both went together because they sent me to the penitentiary for men where my co-defendant was, and then I was taken by caravan to the women’s institution in Richmond, Virginia, and spent the next 21 days in maximum security segregation, because they didn’t want me on the outside where the other population was.
Q: How did you get out of segregation?
According to their own rules the only reason why you are supposed to be on maximum security segregation is when you violate one of their rules. So, I hadn’t violated a rule, So, when they took me down there I asked them why I was down there and they said because they didn’t have an empty room in the quarantine hall. And I asked them for a manual of their rules. I read it all and I told them, if that’s the case, in 21 days then you don’t have to worry about the room in the quarantine. Just that either I’ll be out of maximum security segregation or you’ll be in court.
And so on the 19th day they sent this correctional officer down there who said that she would accept me on her hall. She asked me what my intentions were while I was in prison and I told here that my intention was to do two years and leave. (laughs).
And she said they were concerned about me organizing in prison recruiting for the BLA, and I told them I had no intentions to recruit because I don’t really believe in recruiting. I believe if a person is going to do anything they need to make the decision based on their own conditions. If you have to recruit them, they haven’t made a decision on their own and if they don’t make it on their own they’re susceptible to back out and say somebody forced them to do things and stuff like that. But if they make a conscious decision on their own that the want to be involved in something then they have nobody to blame for anything that happens.
So, I told her I had no intention of recruiting. And she said then that she didn’t have any problems with me being in her hall. And so on the 21st day they moved me to the building where this correctional officer was, but I wasn’t allowed to go out into general population without handcuffs on and an armed guard with me. I wasn’t allowed to go to school. I wasn’t allowed to work in the kitchen or in the laundry or any other place where the women were working because they said I was a security risk. So, the only place I could be was in the hall, on the tier, in the cottage where I was housed. For everything you had to be right there at that complex.
After the first year I had to do the psychological evaluation, so that they could determine how they should handle you. The psychologist that I had to go see decided that I didn’t have to do all those little stupid tests, putting blocks together, etc. He asked a bunch of questions and then he said that he understood my political “beliefs”; at least how determined I was and stuff like that. And then he wrote this paper talking about that I believed wholeheartedly in the movement and that I was adamant about that, but I would not be a disciplinary problem if they called me by my Islamic name and dealt with me in a respectful manner and then he called me “paranoid” (laughs) – that I believed that people were out to get me. But he did say that I had no need for rehabilitation – rehabilitate from what, anyway. So he told them that they had to call me by my Islamic name or Ms. Bukhari and there will be no problems. But if they try to deal with me in any other manner then they did have a problem with me. And that was the psychological evaluation.
Anyways, after almost two years exactly I escaped. It was New Years Eve 1976. And the escape was really for two reasons. First, was that I just believed as a prisoner of war that a prisoner of war’s responsibility is to escape. So, from the very beginning we took the position that we were prisoners of war, and at the time of our capture we were soldiers in the Black Liberation Army. We gave a name, rank and serial number only and invoked that the court had no jurisdiction to try us. Therefore on that premise alone that the prisons had no jurisdiction over us and it is our responsibility as prisoners of war to escape – on that level I escaped. And that was one of the reasons.
The other reason was – one of the reasons why I was going South in the first place prior to the capture was because I had medical problems and I needed surgery. At the time of the capture I made known to them that I needed to have a surgery. They kept telling me that when I go over to the state custody it would be handled then. When I got to the prison they told me – after the examination – that I had fibroids the size of oranges or grapefruits in my uterus and asked me how much time I had. I told them I had 40 years. They then told me to come back in 10 years. I filed suit. The court said that it was just a difference of opinion between me and the doctor about how the medical treatment should be. I had asked to be able to pay for my own medical care, to have a doctor from the outside, etc. And they said no.
The month before my escape I started haemorrhaging so bad that at the time of my escape I was wearing three big sanitary napkins at the time. And I would have to change them every 2 hours. I was having my menstrual cycle for two weeks at the time, every other week. I was just bleeding horrendously. That day, when I made the decision that I couldn’t wait any longer to get medical care I was standing up in the middle of the floor in the unit where I was housed and all of a sudden – I mean nothing special happened – I just started haemorrhaging from the vagina. And I went to the clinic hall in the institution and they gave me Urgatrade, that was a medication to control the bleeding and told me to go and put my feet up. That was the extent of it – there was no recommendation for to take me to a doctor, to the hospital or anything. I just felt that they were not concerned about my health at all.
The doctor at the institution was not qualified to deal with women. And he had been so bad that in once case for example he had diagnosed just a sore throat when a woman had cancer. This other woman had one ovary left and he told here she had tumours on her right ovary – she didn’t have any right ovary. There was no way that you could have faith in the competency of this doctor. So, when they told me about this Urgatrade for the control of the bleeding and go and put my feet up, I decided that I had to make arrangements to take care of my own medical care.
Those of us who were in the BLA and who were incarcerated, we had a secure communication channel, so that we were still involved in what we called consolidation, organizing, structuring and stuff like that. I was in charge of Area 2 of the consolidation work in the unit and for the country. And as being in charge of Area 2 I was responsible for all the consolidation work in that area around BLA and BPP members, and outside building that whole network in that area. My second was Mark Holder who was in prison at Marion; and he was responsible for that area. So, between the two of us we had the whole Southern regional area of the East Coast in terms of our organizing efforts. Even while we were in prison, mind you…
Part of the CC, the Central Committee of the BLA, were on the streets. There were also members of the CC that were in prison and some were underground.
When I made the decision to escape I notified through secure channels the Central Committee that I was making a move. I notified my area coordinator and I notified the people in the area who needed to know that I was not going to be where they thought I was going to be. The night of the actual escape, we left and we made contact with the underground, and I was out roughly two months. I was captured on February 27th, 1977, and returned to prison in Virginia and went to trial where I was my own attorney at this point in the trial.
During the course of the trial I raised the issue of inadequate medical care and I pleaded not guilty for the reason of “duress and necessity” – that in order to save my own life I had to escape because of the medical conditions. That was also a way of raising the lack of adequate medical care for the women in the prison itself. The jury was very sympathetic and in the town a lot of the correctional officers and the head nurse for the correctional facility were very sympathetic because they knew this man was not qualified; that people in the town where the prison was located would not use him for anything. The only place he could practice was in the women’s institution, because nobody would allow him to practice on them. So during the course of the trial this was brought out.
By the time the trial was over, the judge had to threaten the jury with contempt charges if they didn’t find me guilty, because he said escape is like murder. And so they found me guilty of escape and they sentenced me to the minimum time which was one year. I was already doing 40 years, so one year didn’t make a difference. And the jury stood outside the courtroom and apologized when I was going out … (laughs). The upshot of it was that I was given a choice at that point about doctors – they picked three doctors outside that were not part of the prison system. And they took me to a hospital in Richmond, Virginia, and I picked a woman doctor and we talked about it and they did the examination. By this time it was two years after going into prison, my condition had worsened to the point where they said there strings all across that had pulled my uterus, the tubes and the ovaries all together. And Wanda said – my doctors’s name was Wanda too – that she would do everything possible to save something, but it would be a major piece of surgery. The upshot was that I ended up having a hysterectomy and that I have only one ovary left – and it’s because of the malpractice of that doctor.
I suffered severe postpartum depression. For whole year I was out of it. I was still in maximum security segregation for the escape. I spent three years and 7 months in maximum security segregation – that was the longest time anyone ever did for escape; before that the maximum for escape was 6 months in maximum security segregation. I had to go to court to come out of it and the court ordered me out of it at the end of the three years and 7 months, they had to phase me out. But during the course of the trial the Warden said that I was a threat to the security of the free world if the were releasing me from maximum security segregation. For a minute there I thought I was Russian (laughs) …
Anyway, I came out of maximum security segregation in 1981. After I came out of maximum security segregation we founded a little organization in prisons called “Mothers Inside Loving Kids” for people with a long time, to try to bridge that gap between the children and so that they can keep their family and that continuity with their children going. And then I made parole in 1983, and in August 1983 I was already free.
Q: Did they give you conditions for parole?
Yeah. I wasn’t supposed to associate with anybody – I wasn’t supposed to associate with folks. I wasn’t supposed to ever have a gun in my hands again. I wasn’t supposed to associate with any BLA or Panthers or anything like that. They asked me questions like: “Do you believe in violence or would you do what you did again?” And I told them that based on the conditions – no right-thinking person believes in violence for the sake of violence. But there are certain instances when you have no alternative, when you have exhausted everything else – then you have to resort to violence. And then they asked me: “Would I deal with things the same way again?” And I told them, no, I wouldn’t do it particularly that, because one of the things that is very clear is that we haven’t done the necessary education and organizational work in the streets in order to deal with a movement in the ways that we moved then. We were young, we were idealistic and we were impatient.
We have to build a foundation. And we have to organize not just 30,000 people. This country has 240 to almost 300 million people in it. And a lot of people in the rural areas, and even in some of the major cities and in the suburbs, don’t even know anything is happening because they are not exposed to the conditions – they just don’t know about it. It’s like when we talk about Mumia’s situation – people have never even heard his name – and we are talking about a major situation.
So, the educational phase has to be so that when you move from one level to the next in the struggle, that it is understood that the people know what we are doing. And you lay the foundation to the point where you are not leading the people to a slaughter. And they talked about not being around people who were in the BLA and the BPP and convicted felons. And I told them that it isn’t possible to live in the Black community and not be around convicted felons. To say that I won’t do that I’d be lying to you.
And the other part is that these people of the BPP and the BLA are not just comrades, they are my family. And to tell me that I cannot associate with my family is something I will not accept. So I told them if you give me parole be clear about the fact that I am going to associate with my family. (laughs) And I did from day one when I was walking out of the prison. I was shocked – everyone was shocked – that I made parole. (laughs) The consistence was that the state of Virginia just wanted to get rid of me because it was costing them too much money lately.
The only times I did a law suit against them was when they pushed me to the point where I had no other choice but to file a suit against them. At the last when I left the prison in Virginia they had just written the first infraction ticket that I had since my escape. I was on work release and they had written the ticket because I went outside on the ground of the place where I worked at to sit down to eat lunch on the bench. And the woman who was in charge of the house, the workpolice, wrote the ticket – she was already crazy about the fact that I was a Muslim and she was a Christian and she thought that everybody in the house should be Christian …
And I didn’t eat pork, and how could you be Black in the South without eating pork? She was really ridiculous with “this is my house” and this is a prison. But when she gave me the ticket, she confined me to the house, and the only thing I could come out for were meals. I didn’t mind because at this point I had already made parole, I was just waiting for the date. But at the same time I didn’t like that she had denied me religious freedom.
And I filed a law suit – I told her the next time she will talk to me, talk to my lawyer. I made parole and came home and the suit was still pending. Then I got a call from the lawyer to tell me that they had settled; they had fired her, they had settled the lawsuit and I hadn’t even asked for damages … I just wanted them to tell her that this was not her house and she couldn’t run it as if it were her house and that she couldn’t dictate what religion people could be … I just wanted to tell her that. Because other women were scared to say anything because she was threatening with taking their rights and privileges and they were not ready to deal with that. And I just didn’t think that these people should get away with running their own little prisons.
Anyway, I didn’t mean for her to get fired, because she was the only Black woman in that position. But she got herself into a position that there was nothing to do but to deal with it. And anyway, they gave me money damages and fired her.
Q: Can you talk about how it was to be the only woman unit leader underground?
(laughs) Sexism is regardless of how political you are – in the United States sexism is part of the culture of the U.S. and this is a sexist society.
In the Black Liberation movement sexism is a strong factor not only because of the sexist society in America, but because of the African culture itself, sexism is there. And it’s there in the black culture, because of the denial of their manhood in the acculturation and deculturation that came with slavery and everything else. When the Black Power movement cam into being in the 60s and even through the Garveyites (Marcus Garvey – Black nationalist leader in the 20s and 30s with a strong slogan “Back to Africa”), the Garvey movement and the Nation of Islam and all that other prior to that, there was a search for their manhood. You know, “Rise up you mighty Black men”, Garvey said, or in the BPP the slogan was “Stand up to be Men” and so forth. So, in the Black Power movement and the cultural nationalist movement they were really blatant by saying that the place of women was in the kitchen or on their backs and having children for building the Nation and so on.
One of the things that had developed in the Panther Party and in the BLA – for us, the BLA came out of the BPP because no Party member was allowed to join any armed force other than the Black Liberation Army – was the whole machismo thing. But at the same time there was an organizational position that was anti-sexist. But the individuals themselves still had a lot of sexism within. The Party only existed for about 7 years … there was never time. You had a cultural thing that never did have time to be dealt with.
So you had all the “leaders”, even though Kathleen Cleaver was on the Central Committee, she was just there, a figure-head most on the CC She was Eldridge Cleaver’s wife. So her role was not as a Communications Secretary in the sense that she was viable and working ahead, having an independent voice .. . her role was that of – since she was married to Eldridge Cleaver and he was Minister of Information, she was the Communication Secretary. And women were still viewed more or less as secretaries. There were a few of us on the political front and at political stands and doing the same work. We were basically doing the same work in the BPP. There were a few of us who not only would do the same work, but we would not accept the sexism.
And in the years when I joined the party in 1969, one of the things I tried to make clear was that I did not come into the Party to become somebody’s sexual toy. That, if I wanted to do that I could do it outside of the BPP. Also, I was in my second year at college when I joined the Party – I had already made determinations. I was raised in a family of six brothers and endless uncles … and my mother was very strong. So there was always that leadership position.
And when I made the determination that I was going underground, it was a determination that was based on that I knew this was the next step, this is what I wanted to do. And I had the experience of the collectives that I worked with. First it was the Harriet Tubman Brigade – their sole responsibility was to liberate P.O.W.s, and then it was the “Wretched of the Earth” – and we still wanted the liberation of the P.O.W.s. We saw ourselves as a collective in the sense of a collective. There were no real unit coordinators in those years.
By the time the Amistad Collective came together we decided that we wanted to organize it. We wanted responsibilities and discipline whereas a lot of other units did not have that organization. We wanted to set us a pattern. We had election based on qualifications – qualification and not sexuality – did we decide on who got what position. We had political education classes and we had everything – we even had “r and r” (rest and relaxation) because we found it was necessary that you had time to rest and recuperate.
Having the responsibility of a unit coordinator was more like keeping it all together and trying to make sure that decisions were made not on an emotional basis, that we looked at everything objectively in making those decisions. And making sure that there was a distribution of the work that didn’t see the women in the cell doing the “female” work and being seen as sex objects in the cells. That didn’t develop so we were able to maintain a position in our cell that we were comrades. We were comrades, we respected each other’s individuality and each other’s capabilities and we had the discipline that we didn’t violate no drug rules and not being intoxicated while carrying out our business and stuff like that. That was a very bad part of the movement, in the underground also, that developed in this country.
We had analyzed these things prior to us forming a cell. I think, that’s one of the things that came with being a female unit coordinator – it’s because women have a practical, a more practical approach to things than men do. (laughs). And that’s what I think made our cell different. Even though I was captured and my co- defendant was captured and the other unit member was killed – our unit was made up of 8 people – no one else ever got captured that was in our unit. And the person who talked, who allowed us to be captured, was eventually dealt with, so the person was incapable to put anybody else in the position to be captured. You know, my co-defendant was captured and a woman was killed and I was captured, but 5 other people survived it and were capable of moving.
And even though I didn’t particularly like being in prison, we, we were able to do work. And during the course of the trial, we were able to educate the community. The community was the support network that we had, and even when it came down to the escapes and everything else that happened in Virginia during that time – the people were there because the unit was able to continue to do the work and put the thing together.
Q: What happened to your co-defendant?
He’s out. He’s in Chicago. Yeah, after I got out first, the work to get him out was a thing that we continued. I carried it on – because one of the things I told people is that I was out, but as long as he was in, I really wasn’t out yet, you know. And that’s the kind of cohesiveness that we maintained. Because in a lot of other cases people who were co-defendants came out and they went on about their business and forgot about their co-defendants, the people that went in with them, and I think on that end our unit set a very good example, that we didn’t just walk away from the situation.
Q: And how was it for you – you already had your child before you went underground?
Yes, she was 4 years old when I went underground. Her father was killed during the split in the party. There were two casualties directly involved in the split. That was Robert Webb and Sam Napier on the East Coast, on the New York side of the split. Robert Webb, who is my daughter’s father, had been a body guard to Huey Newton. And when the split went down, because he surfaced – he had been underground – he was a liability for them. He was ordered assassinated by crews from that end.
In retaliation, people from the outside assassinated [Sam Napier]. The fratricide was the most .. the police just sat back and laughed; their thing was they didn’t have to get Panthers, the Panthers kill each other. That was a very crucial time for a lot of us. And when we look back at it – Sam was a loss to the movement itself because he was the circulation manager of the paper. And he lived and died for the paper. And Robert was a loss – just personally he was a loss, because of our relationship, but politically he was a loss, because he knew how to put together an apparatus. He had been in the armed forces of the U.S., he had come out and he was working for the liberation of our people. He had the information and the connections in order to do it; and he had the security mind – he was Deputy Field Marshal in the BPP. Anyway, at the time just before the split, my mother had taken custody of my daughter. I let her go and stay with my mother. And when Robert came back, we had intentions at the point to go back from the underground to get Wanda, my daughter – I named her Wanda too (laughs) – and to bring her back to stay with us and then he got killed, so it was very appropriate that she stayed with my mother. So, she stayed there and I would go and see her.
Robert was dead and I was in a very insecure position. By the time 1974 came around I and I already had the $10,000 contract on me, I had the Grand Jury subpoena and I had been busted in November 1973 for the other things. So I called my mother up and I told her that I wanted her to keep my daughter. And I signed guardianship over to her. One of the things the state was trying to do was to take Panther children away from their parents because they were unfit parents, etc. I didn’t want to take a chance, so I signed legal guardianship over to my mother. And I made arrangements for her schooling and everything else, and I went underground.
When I got captured, I could still see her and I had a lot of dealings with her schooling, etc. But even at that point, when the state found out about her they tried to take her, at one point just tried to kidnap her and use her for leverage against me to make me talk while I was in prison. In a lot of cases I would just call and make sure that my mother didn’t let her go with strangers or someone. One time this woman came by the house and told my mother that she will bring toys for Wanda, she will come and visit and stuff like that, told my mother that she was one of my best friends, and I had told her that Wanda could come spend the weekend with her. And it just so happened that that particular weekend I called home and Momma told me about it, and I told her that I had never heard that woman’s name before in my life. It was incidents like these that made us decide that she could go nowhere by herself, that she had to be taken to school and be picked up from school, and she couldn’t be allowed to just have a normal life really, because they were at the point where they were using children to get information from the parents. So it was very hard to do time in prison knowing that my daughter was the target for a whole lot of things.
Q: Did she understand what was happening?
She never understood. On a lot of levels she was angry because she thought my being in prison was an abandonment of her. And then she never really understood why she had to be kept under such strict surveillance or control. And even now, I tell her now it hasn’t really changed. I mean, I will get messages where someone has seen her here or done this. There is no place that she can go that people don’t know that she is my daughter, and so she has to watch herself very carefully about what she does and where she is and stuff like that.
Q: When we first started learning about the Black Panther Party and the BLA, the only woman’s name that was mentioned was Assata and no one else. Why is that?
That’s because of the media stuff. (laughs) I think the reason why you hear so much about Assata is basically because in 1973 with the shoot-out and everything that happened, the publicity was very high. So the media when they were looking for her, they called her the “soul of the BLA” and stuff like that. It was a lot of media hype and people have a tendency to deal with the media….
You know, she has survived a lot, she has learned a lot and she has studied and she has developed.
And I think on that end too, I have a real problem with the fact that people deal with Assata and there are a lot of other people out there in exile that no one ever mentions.
And then you have a bunch of them in various places that nobody knows their names. And that really works with me, because we have a tendency to build superstars and the superstars get the play. And the soldiers in the rank and file and the workhorses, whose names were never known, they languish on their own. That is not the way you build movements, if you don’t support the people in your movements who made the sacrifices then what incentive is there to anybody else to get involved. I have a real problem with that.
You know the names of Dhoruba bin-Wahad, or Geronimo ji-Jaga Pratt and the New York Three, but all the other ones who are languishing in the prisons sit there with no attorneys, no nothing and no one knows their names. You can mention their names, and it goes in one ear and out the other. A lot of times they have no commissary, they don’t get visits, not even from their families do they get visits. But the families that weren’t involved in the struggles that they’re in prison for, they didn’t make the commitments. But the people who were involved in those struggles with them, they don’t even remember the names anymore.
Do you see anyone out there right now who is trying to rebuild the contacts with those comrades? It seems there are so many who need to come out just on the case that they’ve been involved in the struggle?
Well, that’s one of the reasons why we do the New York Three Freedom Campaign Newsletter, we mention those people every time we get information about them, where they are and their cases, what’s happening with them, we try to bring it up and build networking for different struggles around different political prisoners. We try and educate the people to get involved, educate them about the rank and file. And we try to raise not to get involved with the personality cult and deal with the whole issue of support for political prisoners rather than support for an individual political prisoner.
And even like dealing with the brothers inside right now – because it’s predominantly brothers that are inside, except for the MOVE prisoners and white anti-imperialists, there are more brothers; in the Black movement there are basically men that were involved at that time, especially Panthers and BLA members – to cross those boundaries and deal with the whole issue of political prisoners. They are pushing that now, too, that they went into prison as members of organizations and that they should be dealt with as members of organizations rather than as individuals.
There is a lot of work that has to be done – attorneys have to be found and our responsibility to ourselves is in building that foundation, because all of that is building foundations.
When you get involved in movements there should be a legal defense fund set up consistently and there. So when a bust goes down, there is an attorney available for the incarcerated comrade. There should be no question about having to raise defense money. It should be there. By the same token there should be a mechanism to liberate political prisoners. So, that if there is nothing to be won through the courts, there is an alternative already in place.
And for those that have done their time, there should be a fund or something set up for them. I know after 8 years and 8 months there was a lot of psychological damage done to myself personally in the time that I spent in prison. There has to be a mechanism set up so you have time to cool out and deprogram. Because that’s what time in prison is – it’s a time of programming. And so you have to be de-programmed. And after almost 9 years, it happened to me then … and those people who have done 15 and 17 and 20 or more years, they need it much more than I did – you know, to train them for things. And we don’t have those mechanisms in place.
So when I talk about the foundations that we need to build for the struggle I this country, we talk about the basic, elementary foundations to fill a military apparatus and a political struggle. On the political level, we need to have our own communication centres, so we don’t have to keep worrying and wondering about how we get information printed or how we are going to get this done or that done. Right now we should have the people with the necessary skills to put information out from the radio and television. And we have not pulled that together.
Q: This foundation, do you see it coming from people like yourself and people with a history in the BPP, or do you think there is that whole new generation that starts that on their own, or does the Nation of Islam do it? Who does it right now?
I don’t see it coming from the Nation of Islam. I don’t see it coming from any organised formation that is in existence at this point. Because there is a whole new level of thinking, a kind of way of thinking, that has to be developed. I think there are people within all those structures who have the innovative ideas and who have the foresight and who are capable of putting things together that are necessary and do it. But the question is whether or not they really know what they want.
There are a lot of times when we get thrown back in our community. In the years between elections our people see how bad the situation is and they get disenchanted with the elections and there comes along somebody saying all you have to do is to change the administration and things will be better. So they fall back into the same thing. Or you start off with leaders who are strong and audacious and they’re revolutionary or they mouth revolutionary slogans and then they find out that somebody offers them a piece of the pie and then they dilute their message. Like Sister Souljah recently, when she was busy talking about the need for a black army and so on, and then Bill Clinton attacked her about her statement about white people, that she said black people should have a week of killing white people. And her first thing was that she never had a gun, that she never advocated violence. Her whole spiel watered down to the point that we should build our own independent political party and with a technological approach to the situation.
So, even though I am not equating her with the revolutionary leaders, I am saying at that point where you have a voice and once you get attacked or anything like that or you get offered an entree into areas where you maintain your position and you can make a difference in what’s happening, you find out it was all about “this is the best for me at this point” and the amount of dollars, and it becomes different. I think we have a history of that. We have history of – when I made the door open for me, I am going through the door and then you forget about the other persons on the other side.
So, I really think that this new movement is going to be a mixture of people from the old school whose minds are open enough to recognize that they are not the end, that people do not have to come to them before they can move forward. They don’t have the absolute answer. Because some people who were in the Party think that if it isn’t done the way the party was doing it, then it ain’t rational. But it ain’t true. The Party made a lot of mistakes too.
A lot of us inside talked about how there was a need to find new blood. And if we don’t find that new blood and learn from our mistakes and build on them and move forward, then there is no hope for the struggle in this country. And if we continue to try to hold on to it and say: this is my struggle and nobody else can determine how and in which direction it goes, and you can’t do this without permission from me or this is my territory and you can’t walk on my territory. With that game turf mentality we are defeating our own purpose. I think, one of the things we have to do is to consolidate a lot of these organizations and we haven’t done this because egos are in the way.
Egos are a very, very large part of why we have such fragmentations in this movement and we are now moving apart, not moving further. And if you look at the heads of these organizations – they are all men and they splinter off from each other and form little groups with about 30 people in them and they speak to about the same constituency. We have to get past that.
What really gets me is that I hear the people saying that people are ready for this and people are ready for that and the same people who are ready for this and ready for that are the same people that they have been speaking to all the time and they haven’t educated anyone else. When you go outside a certain sector – you can’t even say all of Harlem knows what is going on. Just those people at that rally, or just those who listen to WLIB (NYC radio station) or just those people who call in might be ready. And they might be ready just to talk. And they are ready to do anything concrete. And then they assume just by listening to those few people that the masses are ready for armed struggle, which is not true. Because when you go out to the community, when I go to my mother’s house in Richmond Hill which is right here in Queens, I know they are not ready. But they travel in these little groups, these call these little demonstrations and these people come and they think that they are ready for armed struggle – it’s not true.
A lot of these people would not even know – if armed struggle broke out today – where would they go, how should you deal with treating the wounded, how would you deal with keeping the police from busting down the doors.
So, what you need to do is make those people find a way to take a victory out of the defeat. To turn it around and let people know that you don’t have to be a super-hero to be involved in the movement. But everyone wants people to believe that they’re such strong revolutionaries, that they never feel pain, they never cry, they never want to chuck it all and want to go up to the mountains and read a book or something. But it’s not true.
Jalil will tell you, with this New York Three case, I have been out of prison since 1983 and I have been on this case ever since, and on other cases and working on this and that. And sometimes I am going to say, I need a break, I am not going to do another day’s work on this. And I say that to them and I’m gone. And now, when I say that to them, they leave me alone for a couple of weeks and then they call back and say “are you ok now?” (laughs) Because you are human. You need to do these things in order to continue to be strong enough to handle the struggle. But we want people to believe that we are superhuman. We are not like everyone else…but we are. And we have to recognize that ourselves. And we need recharging. So, if I know that I am coming to the end of my rope, then I can take those precautions, so that I don’t fall a victim to the things that are out there.
Q: Is it really true that there has been no BLA since the 80s?
Not actually since, I would say, 1977/78. And what makes it so bad is that the government knew that. The government knew at that point that there was no political BLA happening out there, whose reason for being there was strictly to wage political and armed struggle in this country, where it was basically the military apparatus of the BPP.
I think you will get to the point where you recognize that in order to build a new movement that you have to expose the mistakes of the prior one, so that you don’t make those same mistakes again; that when you get to that point then we will be ready to move forward again.
Q: What happened to the women, I mean the other women, who were not under so much repression. Did they go back?
A lot of them got involved in community programs, community based work. A lot of us are in touch with each other when we do stuff around the different cases, etc. The women do the majority of that work from one end of the country to the other. Women are raising the children and making sure that they get the education, taking care of the families of the political prisoners, just surviving themselves, because they have been the victims of a lot of these conditions. And now they are educating the youth – in the schools, colleges, universities. So they are continuing the work through the community organizations, like homeless shelters, children’s programs, etc. And when we move from one point to the other we are in touch. And we talk about the women getting together and doing what need to be done. (laughs) We are starting to write books, we are doing more political speaking…
Q: It reminds me of a visit by a women comrade from the Tupamaros who came to the FRG in April, who described a similar development in Uruguay where the women are doing the community work and the men are mostly involved in the strategy discussions.
Because the real work is done by the women on a lot of occasions. The whole theory and sitting back and doing the armchair theory end – that ain’t giving anything to the children, it’s not educating them, that ain’t keeping them out of prison, it’s not doing that. And we have to keep our feet on the ground and keep moving and keep them alive while we build the movement.
Q: You said that you are involved with Islam. Does it interfere with your work at all?
I became a Muslim before I went into prison. I became a Muslim in 1971. It was in the Quran that said it was incumbent upon a Muslim to wage a struggle against tyranny and oppression wherever it may be found. That gave me the license to be a revolutionary and a Muslim at the same time.
And I take it to the extreme, to the extreme I think it is meant to be taken, that a true Muslim will not sit idly by and allow tyranny and oppression in whatever form to happen without waging struggle against it. So, I see no contradiction between being muslim and a revolutionary. I see a contradiction in the way that Islam is practiced in the world. I remember that when I was captured in Virginia, the Islamic community sent a representative to see me and told me that they would not support me as long as I did not veer my case from my co-defendant’s case. There was something totally wrong with them taking a position like that.
I know I came in a lot of conflict with people who thought because I was a woman and a Muslim that I shouldn’t do this and shouldn’t do that. And when someone is asking about my political beliefs and affiliations and how it’s not been according to the Quran, I refer right back to Sura 23.
Q: Well, I think in Europe we hear very little about the revolutionary writings in the Quran.
Well, that’s because they don’t want to do anything. The Muslims even here – for them it’s a way of separating themselves from society without taking on society. So they become different and say they are not governed by the laws, etc.
The worst thing that has ever happened is having four wives. It isn’t based on Islam, Islam is explained by men in the religion. And the women don’t read the Quran for themselves, so they are victimized by Islam. So, they don’t understand that the men cannot have four wives without the permission of the woman, you know. (laughs) So, if she doesn’t go along with it, it ain’t happening. That in order to have four wives, they have to be taken care of economically, psychologically, physically and spiritually. And I mean, I don’t know too many men who can deal with more than one woman and take care of her. (laughs) And that’s the case, and then there shouldn’t be four wives happening anyway. But these men get the women, put them on welfare and call themselves Muslims they have no understanding for themselves for they have never read the Quran.
Q: Do you want to add something to the interview?
Yes, I just want to reiterate the fact that everyone of us has weaknesses. So, the weakness that people fell into after the “leadership of the movement” went to prison or were wiped out – what you had left was a lot of people who could not function without organization. The organizations were destroyed, they were out there by themselves and then they got caught up in a lot of negative stuff.
Q: Actually, I have one more question. Do you feel you can work at all with what’s left of the white feminist movement or the white women’s movement? Is there any kind of working relationship or do you just say they don’t have a revolutionary program and so you can’t work with them?
It depends. I think in the beginning of the feminist movement in this country it was fairly progressive. Now the feminist movement in this country has just as many right-wing elements as you have revolutionary elements. As a matter of fact, I would say the right-wing elements outnumber the revolutionary elements in the feminist movement in the U.S.
And not just in the white feminist movement, but in the Black/Third World feminist movement also. Sometimes I think that they equate their individual issues with revolutionary struggle, which is not one and the same.
And even with the lesbian and gay community’s struggle in this country – a lot of them are just as conservative as their counterparts in the heterosexual community. And they don’t understand that the issue of sexuality itself is not a revolutionary issue. A lot of people don’t see the difference. They don’t see that that is not a revolutionary issue and that it is not an issue that you can impose and make it an issue of the Black Liberation movement.
When I address the issue of oppression based on sexuality, I make clear that oppression in and of itself, regardless of what reason you oppress people, is wrong. So, to oppress a person because of their sexuality, that in itself is something that we can’t contend to deal with.
Now, once you get past that, then it’s your personal choices. And I think that it doesn’t fall on the level of racism and it doesn’t on class oppression.
And then dealing with the feminist movement they have the question of reproductive rights or pro-choice, choice, and no choice. That is a movement by itself. On the Left, we take the position that a person’s body is their own; that there is a choice that they should make about themselves.
But when you get to the big question, you got just as many cops, female cops, and female judges, and female prosecuting attorneys and oppressive forces who are pro-choice and anything else. So, being pro-choice is not a revolutionary position. And so you can’t continue to equate and allow ourselves to be put in a position that we get dictated to by people who are in one-issue forces.
Q: Thank you for the interview.
Text taken from ATS-L Archives; e-mail Wed, 8 Mar 1995 17:22:29 -0500 (EST) from [email protected], Subject: IWD: Interview With Safiya Bukhari-Alston
More:
- Safiya: Lioness for Liberation, by Mumia Abu-Jamal
- Tribute to Safiya on her passing, from the NYC Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition
- Reminiscence of Safiya Bukhari from the Provisional Government, Republic of New Afrika
- Tributes from Assata Shakur, Nehanda Abiodun, Sally O’Brien, and Yuri Kochiyama
- Defending Kamau Sadiki, Safiya’s last project
- Safiya Bukhari, “Coming of Age: A Black Revolutionary,” Notes from a New Afrikan P.O.W. Journal, Book 7 (Spear & Shield Publications, 1979). Reprinted with updates in Joy James, ed., Imprisoned Intellectuals (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).
Page maintained by Jericho Amnesty Movement, SF Bay Area. Updated October 12, 2003
source: Jericho Movement
Attached is a zine for printing.
Letter
A4https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=12747
#blackLiberationArmy #blackPantherParty #feminism #newAfrikna #northAmerica #safiyaBukhari #us
-
Agony Aunt: “Boyfriend listens to TECHNO music for sleep!” 📻
When one is about to go to sleep, one may choose to listen to relaxing noises such as whale song, rainfall, birds chirping, working class geezers belching, and TECHNO, TECHNO, TECHNO.
As there’s no limit. There’s no limit, we’ll reach for the sky, no valley too deep, no mountain too high. No, no limits etc. Unless of course you’re like today’s human female, who can’t fall asleep due to her human male husband’s noise related sleeping process.
Techno Music as a Sleep Assistant
Dear agony aunt,
I have not slept properly since November 2025. My husband… sorry, boyfriend, we’re not married… my boyfriend got a ghetto blaster for his birthday from his mates. Him and his mates have got into this trend called Techno Sleeping where they go to bed and fall asleep to the pelting sounds of techno music blasting at full volume. My boyfriend has dedicated his bedtime routine to this for six months now. Here’s the problem:
- He does not get any sleep
- I do not get any sleep
- Our neighbours do not get any sleep
- The local council has just issued us with a £5,000 fine for repeated noise disturbances
My boyfriend? He’s so dedicated to this Techno Sleeping thing and blasting out 2 Unlimited’s 1993 techno hit No Limit. He’s worried his mates think he’s “not cool” if he stops. So it’s No Limit on repeat all night from 10pm until 7am and I’m genuinely amazed I haven’t smashed his brains in with a sledgehammer or something.
And I even bought a sledgehammer for that exact purpose! I just also realised it’s murder and all that, so stopped myself. But one more night of this… ONE MORE NIGHT OF NO NO, NO NO NO NO, NO NO THERE’S NO LIMIT. There is a limit FFS and I’m one step away from it!
The submission abruptly ended there, but the women contacted us again this morning with the below update.
Well I went and did it. I got the sledgehammer. In a rage. In a sleep deprivation rage! While I was screaming like that bit in The Exorcist when her head twists around. Then I did it! I went and SMASHED his goddamn ghetto blaster! I smashed the fucker to smithereens in a rage, dragged the debris outside into the street, and BURNED the debris into the ground!!!!!!!
My boyfriend has since entered a state of shock and is now in what’s called a “fugue” dissociative state. His hair has turned white and he then entered a coma. Doctors at the hospital told me it’s acute, horrific trauma caused by me destroying his ghetto blaster in a rage.
If he cops it, they’ve told me I’ll get a manslaughter charge.
Struggling with insomnia, I remembered that bit from the Naked Gun reboot with Liam Neeson and said, “Man’s laughter?! Must have been quite the joke!” The police officers did not appreciate that joke. They all gave me stony stares and my flat is now under 24/7 surveillance to ensure I don’t destroy any other ghetto blasters.
Advice?
Thanks, Abbie
Hi there, Abbie! Well, that’s quite the pickle you’re in there. We can’t say we’ve had to deal with any specific situations like this before, you’re a true one off.
However, our learned agony aunt genius (we’re winners of Worst Agony of the Year Award in 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022, 2023, and a projected win for 2029) tells us the obvious answer. And it is this…
Don’t destroy anymore ghetto blasters.
That should do the trick, love! Unless you get his with a manslaughter charge. Maybe then you could try that Naked Gun joke on a judge and hope he has a better sense of humour than those coppers. 👍
#AgonyAunt #Boyfriend #dating #Humor #Lifestyle #relationshipAdvice #Romance #romantic #Satire #satirical #Sleep #sleepAssistant #techno -
Agony Aunt: “Boyfriend listens to TECHNO music for sleep!” 📻
When one is about to go to sleep, one may choose to listen to relaxing noises such as whale song, rainfall, birds chirping, working class geezers belching, and TECHNO, TECHNO, TECHNO.
As there’s no limit. There’s no limit, we’ll reach for the sky, no valley too deep, no mountain too high. No, no limits etc. Unless of course you’re like today’s human female, who can’t fall asleep due to her human male husband’s noise related sleeping process.
Techno Music as a Sleep Assistant
Dear agony aunt,
I have not slept properly since November 2025. My husband… sorry, boyfriend, we’re not married… my boyfriend got a ghetto blaster for his birthday from his mates. Him and his mates have got into this trend called Techno Sleeping where they go to bed and fall asleep to the pelting sounds of techno music blasting at full volume. My boyfriend has dedicated his bedtime routine to this for six months now. Here’s the problem:
- He does not get any sleep
- I do not get any sleep
- Our neighbours do not get any sleep
- The local council has just issued us with a £5,000 fine for repeated noise disturbances
My boyfriend? He’s so dedicated to this Techno Sleeping thing and blasting out 2 Unlimited’s 1993 techno hit No Limit. He’s worried his mates think he’s “not cool” if he stops. So it’s No Limit on repeat all night from 10pm until 7am and I’m genuinely amazed I haven’t smashed his brains in with a sledgehammer or something.
And I even bought a sledgehammer for that exact purpose! I just also realised it’s murder and all that, so stopped myself. But one more night of this… ONE MORE NIGHT OF NO NO, NO NO NO NO, NO NO THERE’S NO LIMIT. There is a limit FFS and I’m one step away from it!
The submission abruptly ended there, but the women contacted us again this morning with the below update.
Well I went and did it. I got the sledgehammer. In a rage. In a sleep deprivation rage! While I was screaming like that bit in The Exorcist when her head twists around. Then I did it! I went and SMASHED his goddamn ghetto blaster! I smashed the fucker to smithereens in a rage, dragged the debris outside into the street, and BURNED the debris into the ground!!!!!!!
My boyfriend has since entered a state of shock and is now in what’s called a “fugue” dissociative state. His hair has turned white and he then entered a coma. Doctors at the hospital told me it’s acute, horrific trauma caused by me destroying his ghetto blaster in a rage.
If he cops it, they’ve told me I’ll get a manslaughter charge.
Struggling with insomnia, I remembered that bit from the Naked Gun reboot with Liam Neeson and said, “Man’s laughter?! Must have been quite the joke!” The police officers did not appreciate that joke. They all gave me stony stares and my flat is now under 24/7 surveillance to ensure I don’t destroy any other ghetto blasters.
Advice?
Thanks, Abbie
Hi there, Abbie! Well, that’s quite the pickle you’re in there. We can’t say we’ve had to deal with any specific situations like this before, you’re a true one off.
However, our learned agony aunt genius (we’re winners of Worst Agony of the Year Award in 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022, 2023, and a projected win for 2029) tells us the obvious answer. And it is this…
Don’t destroy anymore ghetto blasters.
That should do the trick, love! Unless you get his with a manslaughter charge. Maybe then you could try that Naked Gun joke on a judge and hope he has a better sense of humour than those coppers. 👍
#AgonyAunt #Boyfriend #dating #Humor #Lifestyle #relationshipAdvice #Romance #romantic #Satire #satirical #Sleep #sleepAssistant #techno -
#RoyalHotel #KittyGreen #outback #toxicmasculinity
#MeToo #HarveyWeinstein #BillCosby #JimmySaville #RolfHarris and lots more of course after decades of abuse finally get exposed, caught.See also
Not cool #Coolgardie (2017)
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jun/22/i-was-crying-and-i-was-angry-hotel-coolgardies-shocking-portrait-of-sexism-in-the-outback#hotelCoolgardie #racism #sexism
And
WakeinFright (1971)
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/nov/17/wake-in-fright-director-ted-kotcheff -
#RoyalHotel #KittyGreen #outback #toxicmasculinity
#MeToo #HarveyWeinstein #BillCosby #JimmySaville #RolfHarris and lots more of course after decades of abuse finally get exposed, caught.See also
Not cool #Coolgardie (2017)
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jun/22/i-was-crying-and-i-was-angry-hotel-coolgardies-shocking-portrait-of-sexism-in-the-outback#hotelCoolgardie #racism #sexism
And
WakeinFright (1971)
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/nov/17/wake-in-fright-director-ted-kotcheff -
#RoyalHotel #KittyGreen #outback #toxicmasculinity
#MeToo #HarveyWeinstein #BillCosby #JimmySaville #RolfHarris and lots more of course after decades of abuse finally get exposed, caught.See also
Not cool #Coolgardie (2017)
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jun/22/i-was-crying-and-i-was-angry-hotel-coolgardies-shocking-portrait-of-sexism-in-the-outback#hotelCoolgardie #racism #sexism
And
WakeinFright (1971)
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/nov/17/wake-in-fright-director-ted-kotcheff -
18 Years Ago Today
18 years ago today I got down on one knee and asked the love of my life if she would marry me.
Even after all this time, I am still shocked that she said yes. I mean, I knew she was going to say yes. We had talked about it quite a bit before the moment actually came. It’s just that I had lived 37 years being solidly convinced that I was never going to find anyone and I was going to be alone forever and then suddenly here I was popping the question and getting a “yes” in return. It was fucking amazing.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/robj_1971/3505750472/in/album-72157617748412228
I don’t think we’re doing anything special to celebrate our 18th proposalversary. I’m planning on making hamburgers for dinner, which is always cool. I do tend to set off the smoke alarms when I cook burgers in the kitchen though. Cross your fingers for no issues.
Tomorrow evening we’re going to see a Star Wars movie because my childhood obsession still burns brightly and I cannot function in a world where a Star Wars movie is in the theaters and I have not seen it. Here’s to The Mandalorian and Grogu. I have remained utterly free of spoilers and reviews thus far. I just have to stay that way for about another 31 hours. Cross your fingers for no spoilers.
Yesterday I tried to use a post here to alter space and time so that my film photos would get developed, scanned, and uploaded to The Dark Room’s site. It didn’t really work. If it had the pics would have been available immediately. Instead, I got the notification overnight. It was after 1:00am, which means someone in California was putting in a late night. Your hard work is appreciated. I won’t be able to share anything until I get them downloaded, run through Apple Photos, then uploaded to Flickr. Suffice to say, my new camera works.
In closing, allow me to stand in front of the universe of the interwebs and once again declare my love for my bride, Jen. I would propose to her again in a heartbeat. I love her like crazy. Our actual wedding anniversary is a little more than a week away. Another chance to shout my love from the virtual rooftops.
Love you, sweetie.
#anniversary #marriage #proposal #StarWars #wedding -
Stellar Blight – Eventide: Synod of the Dying Stars Review
By Thus Spoke
Contact form promos are a high-risk, high-reward option when it comes to choosing a review candidate. The unsigned artist(s) behind the enthusiastic prose could be overselling an undercooked bedroom project, or understatedly presenting shockingly good music that makes you want to shake record labels and say “sign these guys, goddammit!” Stellar Blight, happily, are of the latter breed, though this fact is unsurprising. Comprised of the vocalist from Mānbryne (and Blaze of Perdition); the guitarist from Shodan; and the drummer from Owls Woods Graves, the trio have plenty of experience. With their debut, Eventide: Synod of the Dying Stars, they blend each of their primary styles: taking mystique, progressiveness, and punky energy from them, respectively, and creating a dynamic, raucous, and characterful blackened heavy metal that’s hard to forget.
Eventide is defined by its spiritedness; something that hits all the harder for the way Stellar Blight set the scene. First track “The Portent,” uses its time to create genuine anticipation for the rest of the album with a gallant melody that gives way to rolling drumbeats and chants. The smoke has barely cleared before the band launch into white-hot ripper and instant Heavy Moves Heavy frontrunner “Doves into Serpents”. This dynamic opening duo provide a taste of the flavours to come, elements and quirks that will recur over the remaining runtime. Riffs that enter with a satisfying slide and croon with assuredness (“Second Death,” “Stellar Blight”); group chants (“World Wide Woe”) and call-response lyric delivery (“Second Death”) black ‘n’ roll swagger meeting coercively snappy d-beats (“Weaponised Compassion”), and sulky black metal sway (“Maggots in Awe,” “Unsung”). Throughout it all, Stellar Blight maintain their identity, whether snarling in defiance or murmuring in brooding black moods—always consistently fierce, and with barely a shred of atmosphere anywhere in sight.
This ferocity peaks at moments on Eventide when the band pull the most electric aspects of their stylistic pool into one thrilling package. Wailing leads, soaked in a heavy metal richness, warbling alongside a tempo you feel in your bones, all three members roaring in unison and you grinning like a maniac (“Doves into Serpents,” “Second Death,” “Stellar Blight”). Or, taking it down a gear, folky—acoustic even—strumming weaving through ballad-like steadiness, chants backing up the blackened narration of a beautiful, but very trve sort of ballad (“Maggots in Awe”). And even outside of these passages, Stellar Blight sprinkles in spiky off-beats, smooth, slidy solos, and infectiously fun gang vocals into an ostensibly black metal template, much like fruit, nuts, and chocolate chips in the generously filled brownie batter of addictive heavy music they have crafted.1 It culminates in a viciousness devoid of malevolence, a brazenness entirely unpretentious, which carries the spirit, if not the letter of traditional black and heavy metal, and all while feeling fresh, thanks to Stellar Blight’s creative interpretation and execution.
If Stellar Blight could sustain their highest quality, they would be unstoppable, but as it is, they stumble a little. The overall pace literally begins to slow over the album’s back half, beyond the sinister and mournful “Maggots in Awe,” which justifies its tone change with an anthemic feel that sounds like Seth and Mānbryne mashed together. The weakest cuts, “Unsung,” and “Sisyphean Prestige,” follow back-to-back, and eat away at the exhilaration created by the prior material. Their melodies are comparatively unsubstantial, and disconcertingly major in key; the bite of the snarls weaker, and the chanting less inspiring; the tempos milder. Closer “Weaponised Compassion” makes up for some of this deficit, but it lacks the commanding presence highlights like “Stellar Blight” or “Doves into Serpents” have in droves, and its movements are less interesting versions of the better songs’ themes. There’s also instrumental “Eventide” sitting between it and “Sisyphean Prestige,” which is in itself good, and probably contains the best solo guitar of the lot, but at this point, it’s hard not to resent what feels like stalling before Stellar Blight get back on their game.
Gripes aside, there’s no denying that Stellar Blight are working with something very cool. It might need some refining, but the way they are already integrating black and heavy metal is distinctive and dynamic. With a consistent voice, the delivery of an all-around fun listening experience (even at the lower points), and two songs in contention for Heavy Moves Heavy, Eventide was a high-reward choice for me. Now we just have to wait and see what Stellar Blight do next.
Rating: Good!
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Self-Release
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: June 13th, 2025#2025 #30 #BlackMetal #BlazeOfPerdition #DeathMetal #EventideSynodOfTheDyingStars #HeavyMetal #Jun25 #Mānbryne #OwlsWoodsGraves #PolishMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfReleases #Seth #Shodan #StellarBlight
-
Stellar Blight – Eventide: Synod of the Dying Stars Review
By Thus Spoke
Contact form promos are a high-risk, high-reward option when it comes to choosing a review candidate. The unsigned artist(s) behind the enthusiastic prose could be overselling an undercooked bedroom project, or understatedly presenting shockingly good music that makes you want to shake record labels and say “sign these guys, goddammit!” Stellar Blight, happily, are of the latter breed, though this fact is unsurprising. Comprised of the vocalist from Mānbryne (and Blaze of Perdition); the guitarist from Shodan; and the drummer from Owls Woods Graves, the trio have plenty of experience. With their debut, Eventide: Synod of the Dying Stars, they blend each of their primary styles: taking mystique, progressiveness, and punky energy from them, respectively, and creating a dynamic, raucous, and characterful blackened heavy metal that’s hard to forget.
Eventide is defined by its spiritedness; something that hits all the harder for the way Stellar Blight set the scene. First track “The Portent,” uses its time to create genuine anticipation for the rest of the album with a gallant melody that gives way to rolling drumbeats and chants. The smoke has barely cleared before the band launch into white-hot ripper and instant Heavy Moves Heavy frontrunner “Doves into Serpents”. This dynamic opening duo provide a taste of the flavours to come, elements and quirks that will recur over the remaining runtime. Riffs that enter with a satisfying slide and croon with assuredness (“Second Death,” “Stellar Blight”); group chants (“World Wide Woe”) and call-response lyric delivery (“Second Death”) black ‘n’ roll swagger meeting coercively snappy d-beats (“Weaponised Compassion”), and sulky black metal sway (“Maggots in Awe,” “Unsung”). Throughout it all, Stellar Blight maintain their identity, whether snarling in defiance or murmuring in brooding black moods—always consistently fierce, and with barely a shred of atmosphere anywhere in sight.
This ferocity peaks at moments on Eventide when the band pull the most electric aspects of their stylistic pool into one thrilling package. Wailing leads, soaked in a heavy metal richness, warbling alongside a tempo you feel in your bones, all three members roaring in unison and you grinning like a maniac (“Doves into Serpents,” “Second Death,” “Stellar Blight”). Or, taking it down a gear, folky—acoustic even—strumming weaving through ballad-like steadiness, chants backing up the blackened narration of a beautiful, but very trve sort of ballad (“Maggots in Awe”). And even outside of these passages, Stellar Blight sprinkles in spiky off-beats, smooth, slidy solos, and infectiously fun gang vocals into an ostensibly black metal template, much like fruit, nuts, and chocolate chips in the generously filled brownie batter of addictive heavy music they have crafted.1 It culminates in a viciousness devoid of malevolence, a brazenness entirely unpretentious, which carries the spirit, if not the letter of traditional black and heavy metal, and all while feeling fresh, thanks to Stellar Blight’s creative interpretation and execution.
If Stellar Blight could sustain their highest quality, they would be unstoppable, but as it is, they stumble a little. The overall pace literally begins to slow over the album’s back half, beyond the sinister and mournful “Maggots in Awe,” which justifies its tone change with an anthemic feel that sounds like Seth and Mānbryne mashed together. The weakest cuts, “Unsung,” and “Sisyphean Prestige,” follow back-to-back, and eat away at the exhilaration created by the prior material. Their melodies are comparatively unsubstantial, and disconcertingly major in key; the bite of the snarls weaker, and the chanting less inspiring; the tempos milder. Closer “Weaponised Compassion” makes up for some of this deficit, but it lacks the commanding presence highlights like “Stellar Blight” or “Doves into Serpents” have in droves, and its movements are less interesting versions of the better songs’ themes. There’s also instrumental “Eventide” sitting between it and “Sisyphean Prestige,” which is in itself good, and probably contains the best solo guitar of the lot, but at this point, it’s hard not to resent what feels like stalling before Stellar Blight get back on their game.
Gripes aside, there’s no denying that Stellar Blight are working with something very cool. It might need some refining, but the way they are already integrating black and heavy metal is distinctive and dynamic. With a consistent voice, the delivery of an all-around fun listening experience (even at the lower points), and two songs in contention for Heavy Moves Heavy, Eventide was a high-reward choice for me. Now we just have to wait and see what Stellar Blight do next.
Rating: Good!
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Self-Release
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: June 13th, 2025#2025 #30 #BlackMetal #BlazeOfPerdition #DeathMetal #EventideSynodOfTheDyingStars #HeavyMetal #Jun25 #Mānbryne #OwlsWoodsGraves #PolishMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfReleases #Seth #Shodan #StellarBlight
-
Stellar Blight – Eventide: Synod of the Dying Stars Review
By Thus Spoke
Contact form promos are a high-risk, high-reward option when it comes to choosing a review candidate. The unsigned artist(s) behind the enthusiastic prose could be overselling an undercooked bedroom project, or understatedly presenting shockingly good music that makes you want to shake record labels and say “sign these guys, goddammit!” Stellar Blight, happily, are of the latter breed, though this fact is unsurprising. Comprised of the vocalist from Mānbryne (and Blaze of Perdition); the guitarist from Shodan; and the drummer from Owls Woods Graves, the trio have plenty of experience. With their debut, Eventide: Synod of the Dying Stars, they blend each of their primary styles: taking mystique, progressiveness, and punky energy from them, respectively, and creating a dynamic, raucous, and characterful blackened heavy metal that’s hard to forget.
Eventide is defined by its spiritedness; something that hits all the harder for the way Stellar Blight set the scene. First track “The Portent,” uses its time to create genuine anticipation for the rest of the album with a gallant melody that gives way to rolling drumbeats and chants. The smoke has barely cleared before the band launch into white-hot ripper and instant Heavy Moves Heavy frontrunner “Doves into Serpents”. This dynamic opening duo provide a taste of the flavours to come, elements and quirks that will recur over the remaining runtime. Riffs that enter with a satisfying slide and croon with assuredness (“Second Death,” “Stellar Blight”); group chants (“World Wide Woe”) and call-response lyric delivery (“Second Death”) black ‘n’ roll swagger meeting coercively snappy d-beats (“Weaponised Compassion”), and sulky black metal sway (“Maggots in Awe,” “Unsung”). Throughout it all, Stellar Blight maintain their identity, whether snarling in defiance or murmuring in brooding black moods—always consistently fierce, and with barely a shred of atmosphere anywhere in sight.
This ferocity peaks at moments on Eventide when the band pull the most electric aspects of their stylistic pool into one thrilling package. Wailing leads, soaked in a heavy metal richness, warbling alongside a tempo you feel in your bones, all three members roaring in unison and you grinning like a maniac (“Doves into Serpents,” “Second Death,” “Stellar Blight”). Or, taking it down a gear, folky—acoustic even—strumming weaving through ballad-like steadiness, chants backing up the blackened narration of a beautiful, but very trve sort of ballad (“Maggots in Awe”). And even outside of these passages, Stellar Blight sprinkles in spiky off-beats, smooth, slidy solos, and infectiously fun gang vocals into an ostensibly black metal template, much like fruit, nuts, and chocolate chips in the generously filled brownie batter of addictive heavy music they have crafted.1 It culminates in a viciousness devoid of malevolence, a brazenness entirely unpretentious, which carries the spirit, if not the letter of traditional black and heavy metal, and all while feeling fresh, thanks to Stellar Blight’s creative interpretation and execution.
If Stellar Blight could sustain their highest quality, they would be unstoppable, but as it is, they stumble a little. The overall pace literally begins to slow over the album’s back half, beyond the sinister and mournful “Maggots in Awe,” which justifies its tone change with an anthemic feel that sounds like Seth and Mānbryne mashed together. The weakest cuts, “Unsung,” and “Sisyphean Prestige,” follow back-to-back, and eat away at the exhilaration created by the prior material. Their melodies are comparatively unsubstantial, and disconcertingly major in key; the bite of the snarls weaker, and the chanting less inspiring; the tempos milder. Closer “Weaponised Compassion” makes up for some of this deficit, but it lacks the commanding presence highlights like “Stellar Blight” or “Doves into Serpents” have in droves, and its movements are less interesting versions of the better songs’ themes. There’s also instrumental “Eventide” sitting between it and “Sisyphean Prestige,” which is in itself good, and probably contains the best solo guitar of the lot, but at this point, it’s hard not to resent what feels like stalling before Stellar Blight get back on their game.
Gripes aside, there’s no denying that Stellar Blight are working with something very cool. It might need some refining, but the way they are already integrating black and heavy metal is distinctive and dynamic. With a consistent voice, the delivery of an all-around fun listening experience (even at the lower points), and two songs in contention for Heavy Moves Heavy, Eventide was a high-reward choice for me. Now we just have to wait and see what Stellar Blight do next.
Rating: Good!
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Self-Release
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: June 13th, 2025#2025 #30 #BlackMetal #BlazeOfPerdition #DeathMetal #EventideSynodOfTheDyingStars #HeavyMetal #Jun25 #Mānbryne #OwlsWoodsGraves #PolishMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfReleases #Seth #Shodan #StellarBlight
-
Stellar Blight – Eventide: Synod of the Dying Stars Review
By Thus Spoke
Contact form promos are a high-risk, high-reward option when it comes to choosing a review candidate. The unsigned artist(s) behind the enthusiastic prose could be overselling an undercooked bedroom project, or understatedly presenting shockingly good music that makes you want to shake record labels and say “sign these guys, goddammit!” Stellar Blight, happily, are of the latter breed, though this fact is unsurprising. Comprised of the vocalist from Mānbryne (and Blaze of Perdition); the guitarist from Shodan; and the drummer from Owls Woods Graves, the trio have plenty of experience. With their debut, Eventide: Synod of the Dying Stars, they blend each of their primary styles: taking mystique, progressiveness, and punky energy from them, respectively, and creating a dynamic, raucous, and characterful blackened heavy metal that’s hard to forget.
Eventide is defined by its spiritedness; something that hits all the harder for the way Stellar Blight set the scene. First track “The Portent,” uses its time to create genuine anticipation for the rest of the album with a gallant melody that gives way to rolling drumbeats and chants. The smoke has barely cleared before the band launch into white-hot ripper and instant Heavy Moves Heavy frontrunner “Doves into Serpents”. This dynamic opening duo provide a taste of the flavours to come, elements and quirks that will recur over the remaining runtime. Riffs that enter with a satisfying slide and croon with assuredness (“Second Death,” “Stellar Blight”); group chants (“World Wide Woe”) and call-response lyric delivery (“Second Death”) black ‘n’ roll swagger meeting coercively snappy d-beats (“Weaponised Compassion”), and sulky black metal sway (“Maggots in Awe,” “Unsung”). Throughout it all, Stellar Blight maintain their identity, whether snarling in defiance or murmuring in brooding black moods—always consistently fierce, and with barely a shred of atmosphere anywhere in sight.
This ferocity peaks at moments on Eventide when the band pull the most electric aspects of their stylistic pool into one thrilling package. Wailing leads, soaked in a heavy metal richness, warbling alongside a tempo you feel in your bones, all three members roaring in unison and you grinning like a maniac (“Doves into Serpents,” “Second Death,” “Stellar Blight”). Or, taking it down a gear, folky—acoustic even—strumming weaving through ballad-like steadiness, chants backing up the blackened narration of a beautiful, but very trve sort of ballad (“Maggots in Awe”). And even outside of these passages, Stellar Blight sprinkles in spiky off-beats, smooth, slidy solos, and infectiously fun gang vocals into an ostensibly black metal template, much like fruit, nuts, and chocolate chips in the generously filled brownie batter of addictive heavy music they have crafted.1 It culminates in a viciousness devoid of malevolence, a brazenness entirely unpretentious, which carries the spirit, if not the letter of traditional black and heavy metal, and all while feeling fresh, thanks to Stellar Blight’s creative interpretation and execution.
If Stellar Blight could sustain their highest quality, they would be unstoppable, but as it is, they stumble a little. The overall pace literally begins to slow over the album’s back half, beyond the sinister and mournful “Maggots in Awe,” which justifies its tone change with an anthemic feel that sounds like Seth and Mānbryne mashed together. The weakest cuts, “Unsung,” and “Sisyphean Prestige,” follow back-to-back, and eat away at the exhilaration created by the prior material. Their melodies are comparatively unsubstantial, and disconcertingly major in key; the bite of the snarls weaker, and the chanting less inspiring; the tempos milder. Closer “Weaponised Compassion” makes up for some of this deficit, but it lacks the commanding presence highlights like “Stellar Blight” or “Doves into Serpents” have in droves, and its movements are less interesting versions of the better songs’ themes. There’s also instrumental “Eventide” sitting between it and “Sisyphean Prestige,” which is in itself good, and probably contains the best solo guitar of the lot, but at this point, it’s hard not to resent what feels like stalling before Stellar Blight get back on their game.
Gripes aside, there’s no denying that Stellar Blight are working with something very cool. It might need some refining, but the way they are already integrating black and heavy metal is distinctive and dynamic. With a consistent voice, the delivery of an all-around fun listening experience (even at the lower points), and two songs in contention for Heavy Moves Heavy, Eventide was a high-reward choice for me. Now we just have to wait and see what Stellar Blight do next.
Rating: Good!
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Self-Release
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: June 13th, 2025#2025 #30 #BlackMetal #BlazeOfPerdition #DeathMetal #EventideSynodOfTheDyingStars #HeavyMetal #Jun25 #Mānbryne #OwlsWoodsGraves #PolishMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfReleases #Seth #Shodan #StellarBlight
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Wed. May 20, 2026: A Jumbled Day
image courtesy of Vicki Becker from PixabayWednesday, May 20, 2026
Waxing Moon
Pluto Retrograde
Cloudy and warm
Happy mid-week! Hope yours is going well.
The first obstacle of the day was that I couldn’t set the Alice scene from I WILL BE DIFFERENT at the Barbizon Hotel because it hadn’t yet opened in the year I need the scene to be set in. Nor had the Allerton, another choice. So I set it at Hotel Martha Washington instead.
It’s a really fun scene between Alice, her sister Lizzie, and the practical Shirley, talking about everything from marriage to Alice’s estrangement from her father to abortion (in the 1920’s).
I have a feeling I will add several scenes in the second draft, and then do a lot of cutting, once I decide if this will be one play or two. Once I’ve done an assembly and smoothed a few things out in the second draft, I am sending it to a couple of readers for their opinions. But that’s a few months down the line. I need to stitch together the Josephine, Alice, Milly, Amanda, and Joy sections, smooth a few things over, add years as touchstones, and see where we are. I know I will have to cut characters at some point, even with double casting. But we’re not at practical, production aspects yet. We’re at character arcs and story.
I have several possibilities for what to work on during End of Play:
–a comedy set in the Barbizon hotel;
–the one-act where the first female Pinkerton, Kate Warne, helps foil an assassination attempt on Abraham Lincoln;
–“Boom Boom Boom” a one-act I envision as running about 40 minutes for 3 characters;
–finish LAUGHTER & TURPENTINE (the Playland Painters play);
–finish CONSEQUENCES (the three-hander about emotional labor).
The parameters of E-of-P is to start a play June 1 (“pens up”) and finish it by June 30 (“pens down”). So I’d rather start fresh than work on something that’s been lurching for a bit. But I also don’t like leaving work unfinished. So we will see.
But the first draft of I WILL BE DIFFERENT is officially done! After two damn years. But every project has its own rhythm, and fortunately, I didn’t have to push this one.
Now I have to do a rough assembly and start making sense of it.
My favorite town councilor got on the ballot to run for regional rep in the state government (yes, I am one of those signatures). A neighbor stopped by last week to give me information on a Democrat who’s running to represent this region in Congress, also replacing that incumbent. While I respect the work both incumbents have done over the years, those incumbents are too entrenched, and we need more fire in those jobs.
Another aside: Mark Cuban has always been exactly what he showed by appearing with That Thing. He just fooled some people with his smoke and mirrors for a little longer, that’s all.
On a happier note, I heard from my Monthology editor that she received the edits I turned around. I will know more about the schedule sometime in July.
I got off a project proposal. It was due mid-June, but I’m happy I could get it out the door now. I also finished, polished, and sent off the LOI I hemmed and hawed about, because why not be bold? Nothing ventured, and all that. The tone is definitely bolder than I usually use. It will either intrigue them, or it won’t. But if I don’t try, I can’t achieve, so it’s worth the try.
And there was the morning, because proposals and LOIs take time.
I got my ticket sorted out for WAM’s reading of AMANI in mid-June, and accepted the invitation to the Clark opening a few days before the reading.
I got tangled in details working on the ghostwriting, and then got a panicked message from them about something that needed sorting in an earlier book. So I took care of that, and I have to look at something in the next book to make sure the same issue isn’t there.
I also heard sad news that a colleague unexpectedly died about a week ago. This is someone from the theatre world, a close friend of one of my closest friends. He’s also a good deal younger than I am. It’s completely shocking.
Of course, all of that came in right before the end of the workday, which normally wouldn’t be an issue, but I had to get out the door to yoga. I was a little scattered by the time I got to the studio.
It had rained hard earlier in the afternoon, and the walk up was muggy and buggy, not my favorite. But yoga was terrific, and I trotted back home in the cooling evening.
When I got home, I found yet another bill from Berkshire Gas that makes absolutely no sense. Why have I been kicked off balanced billing when I paid their unbalanced bills supposedly on that program on time every damn month all year? Including the outrageous “settle up” bill two months ago? Why is EVERYTHING a fight with them? Why does Berkshire Gas just throw darts at numbers scrawled on the wall every month, instead of sticking to agreements? Why are the customers expected to stick to agreements, but the company can do whatever they want? Why isn’t the DPU, whose JOB it is to keep them in line, doing something? It’s not like they don’t know, I’ve been filing the paperwork with them, and I’m sure this is partially BG’s retaliation. BG also wants me to be on autopay, but I am not giving them access to my bank account so that they can pull random amounts out anytime they want. For five years, they’ve regularly proven they can’t be trusted.
I’m losing billable hours dealing with their crap, and I’m going to start invoicing both companies for it.
And why am I getting an “invitation to apply” for a job as a biohazard technician? I hardly think that my profession as a copywriter makes me qualified. Besides, I’ve made it clear to this agency that “invitation to apply” is a load of crap. Either they contact me with an offer or they leave me alone.
Managed to get some sleep. It was warm, but not too humid. Tessa got me up at 5 this morning, and I got started on the day.
On today’s agenda: writing, ghostwriting, grocery shopping, library, errands. Since I’m at the Small Business Expo all day tomorrow and at a farewell luncheon down in Lenox on Friday, I’m doing the Thursday/Friday errands today, along with everything else that needs to get done.
It’s supposed to cool down over the next few days, and I am glad of it. I have to dig out our small cooling units this weekend, so we are ready for the incoming summer.
Back to the page. I have a lot to get done today so I can enjoy tomorrow. That includes printing up some more business cards.
#BerkshireGas #dpu #freelance #ineptBureaucracy #writing #Yoga -
Lazy Caturday Reads
Woman and Cat, by Koji Fukiya, 1936.
Good Afternoon!!
Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about Trump’s crypto dinner, where he briefly spoke to the people who had spent the most on his personal memecoin. The “gala dinner” was held at Trump’s Virginia golf club. The attendees–mostly from foreign countries–had spent their money hoping to gain “access” to Trump, but that didn’t happen, at least at this event. Trump showed up on a “military helicopter,” spoke for less than half and hour and then did his YMCA dance. Then he left again without speaking to anyone personally. And the food was terrible.
Wired: A Helicopter, Halibut, and ‘Y.M.C.A’: Inside Donald Trump’s Memecoin Dinner.
Donald Trump left the stage at his golf club near Washington, DC, on Thursday night, he pointed to the crowd, brought his index finger to his temple—as if to say: You know what’s coming—then began to dance. To the beat of “Y.M.C.A” by The Village People, Trump shimmied, gyrated, and pumped his arms above his head.
Looking on were more than 200 people who had been invited to the Trump National Golf Club for a private gala dinner. They had won their seats by purchasing large quantities of Trump’s own crypto coin—TRUMP—some holding millions of dollars’ worth….
By late afternoon, the dinner guests had started to filter through the gates of the golf club. By comparison to Trump’s previous banquets, thronging with DC insiders and members of the Silicon Valley elite, the crypto dinner attracted a mismatched collection of oddballs: independent traders rubbed shoulders with crypto executives, die-hard Trump fans, and even professional sports stars—former NBA player Lamar Odom towered overhead. A handful wore bowties in Bitcoin orange; others sported gold Trump sneakers.
Just after 7 pm, the dinner guests gathered at the window to watch Trump descend in Marine One, his presidential helicopter. A short while later, he appeared from behind a blue velvet curtain to whoops and applause from the crowd. Had they seen the helicopter, Trump asked. “Yeah, super cool!” somebody yelled….
From behind a lectern at one end of the dining room, backdropped by four US flags, Trump delivered a characteristically winding and digressive speech that sources say lasted around 25 minutes. At some point, he got round to crypto.
“We’ve got some of the smartest minds anywhere in the world right here in this room,” said Trump. “You believe in the whole crypto thing. A lot of people are starting to believe in it … This is really something that may be special—who knows, right? Who knows—but it may be special.”
For some, the dinner represented a chance to network with other deep-pocketed crypto figures, and to hear directly from Trump about his plans to bring an end to the regulatory uncertainty that crimped the industry’s expansion under Biden.
“You don’t get to meet the president easily,” Vincent Liu, chief investment officer at trading firm Kronos Research, told WIRED a few days before the dinner. “To be able to hear his message on crypto directly—I’m definitely looking forward to that.”
Woodblock print from Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s series One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (1885-1892)
No one got to meet the president, but I Wired says they also wanted to network with each other. On the general presentation and the food, served at circular tables
…each seating 10 people arrayed beneath a set of crystal chandeliers. Waiting on the chairs were gift bags containing Fight Fight Fight-themed hats and posters, and a collectible plastic card (some allege that they didn’t receive merch at their seats.) The four largest coin holders—along with two other attendees selected by raffle, sources say—received a gem-encrusted Trump gold watch.
Between mouthfuls, the attendees discussed trading and investment strategies—and Trump’s speech. “To feel his personal charisma to me was very inspiring,” says Liu. But others complained about the brevity of Trump’s appearance: After his speech, Trump had departed immediately in a golf cart bound for his helicopter. “Trump could have at least given the top people their watches himself,” says Pinto. “He didn’t.”
The food itself had left a bitter taste in the mouth, too. “It was the worst food I’ve ever had at a Trump golf course,” says Pinto, who added he left hungry. “The only good thing was bread and butter.” Another attendee described the meal as “OK, but not top-class.”
From Penn Live: Trump’s controversial crypto dinner ripped by attendee: ‘Trash.’
Donald Trump’s controversial memecoin dinner Thursday night was shrouded in secrecy, and while it still isn’t clear who all attended — the White House did not make the list public — we do have a report of how good the food was….
According to Fortune, 25-year-old Nicholas Pinto was one of those who attended. The site said he invested “more than $360,000 in Trump’s memecoin.
And for that, he told the site, the dinner that was served was “trash.”
“Walmart steak, man,” he texted Fortune.
The site said the menu for the included a “Trump organic field green salad” and an “entrée duet” of filet mignon and pan-seared halibut.
“Everybody at my table was saying the food was so of the worst they ever had,” Pinto said.
“I was hoping for Big Macs or pizza,” Pinto told Fortune. “That would have been better than the food that we were served.”
Trump is just raking in the dough as quickly as he can with the minimum effort.
The New York Times got the guest list: Who Won a Seat at Trump’s Crypto Dinner?
The invitees for President Trump’s private dinner for customers of his cryptocurrency business on Thursday included a Chinese billionaire fighting a lawsuit from U.S. regulators, a lawyer for Justice Clarence Thomas and a former basketball star, according to a guest list obtained by The New York Times and social media posts.
The dinner, at which Mr. Trump gave remarks, was an extraordinary moment in which the president leveraged his position to make money — for his crypto business and for his Virginia golf club, which hosted the event.
The event’s invited guests were not known publicly beforehand, even to each other. They were identified only by the pseudonyms they used on the electronic wallets where they kept their $TRUMP memecoins. Most had gained an invitation by becoming one of the top 220 holders of that memecoin over a certain period of time. The top 25 of those were given V.I.P. status and afforded a more intimate gathering before the dinner and an unofficial tour of the White House on Friday.
When they arrived at Mr. Trump’s club outside Washington Thursday evening, the digital world had become physical. The invitees’ names and contact information were delineated on paper lists, checked by staffers at the door. A Times reporter reviewed one of those lists, and used it to identify people who were present. Some other invitees self-identified on social media. A reporter and photographer from The Times also saw some $TRUMP crypto buyers enter and exit the White House on Friday.
Merchant’s Daughter by Mizuno Toshikata
Some top invitees:
Justin Sun, a Chinese crypto billionaire who was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for allegedly inflating the value of a cryptocurrency. Mr. Sun is a major investor in a separate crypto venture largely owned by a company tied to Mr. Trump, World Liberty Financial. After Mr. Trump took office, the S.E.C. asked a judge to put Mr. Sun’s case on hold….
Elliot Berke, a Washington attorney who has worked for congressional Republicans and Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court. The Times identified him because the invitee list included his email address at his law firm, Berke Farah. He was honored as “Republican Lawyer of the Year” in 2021 by the Republican National Lawyers Association….
Evgeny Gaevoy, the founder and chief executive of a digital-asset firm, Wintermute. The Times identified him because the list of invitees included his Wintermute email….
Anil Lulla and Yan Liberman, two co-founders of Delphi Digital, a Miami Beach firm that offers market intelligence for crypto investors. Their corporate emails were included in the list of invitees….
Cheng Lu, 32, a crypto investor from Shanghai, was observed by a Times reporter entering the White House on Friday. He said he did not have a chance to speak with Mr. Trump during the dinner on Thursday or at the Friday tour. “I just want to see President Trump,” he said.
Several more are listed at the NYT link.
Another big story today is Trump’s terrifying persecution of Harvard University. Here’s the latest:
From The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: Is Trump Trying to Destroy Harvard? The order against foreign students turns away the world’s brightest.
The Trump Administration has frozen billions in federal grants to Harvard University, threatened its tax-exempt status, and sought to dictate its curriculum and hiring. Now the government seems bent on destroying the school for the offense of fighting back. And for what purpose?
That’s how we read the Department of Homeland Security’s move Thursday to bar foreign students from attending the world-renowned institution. That’s 6,800 students, or a quarter of Harvard’s student body, whose futures are suddenly in disarray. It’s also a short-sighted attack on one of America’s great competitive strengths: Its ability to attract the world’s best and brightest.
The latest assault began when DHS demanded that Harvard turn over sundry records on its foreign students, including whether any had participated in illegal activity or left the university owing to “dangerous or violent activity or deprivation of rights.”
Some of its record requests are reasonable, but some overreached by requiring private student information. DHS also gave Harvard all of two weeks to respond. If it failed to do so, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said she would “automatically withdraw” the school’s certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. “The withdrawal will not be subject to appeal.”
The SEVP program lets non-citizens enroll at universities on student visas. DHS can bar universities from the program if they fail to comply with “recordkeeping, retention, reporting and other requirements” on foreign students. Harvard says it responded with “information required by law” within two weeks and handed over more records on May 14.
Twin Guardians, by Hawse Sumi
That didn’t satisfy Noem and she banned Harvard from enrolling international students. Harvard soon got a restraining order from a federal court.
Most of Harvard’s foreign students are enrolled in graduate programs. Many assist with scientific research and teaching undergraduate courses. Driving them out of Harvard will disrupt research projects and might cause some professors in the sciences to leave for other universities. This seems to be a goal of freezing Harvard’s research grants.
Harvard sued on Friday, and a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the student ban. The university rightly says the Administration’s actions are “clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students.”
The university seems likely to prevail on the law, but until courts settle the merits, thousands of students who have done nothing wrong will be in legal limbo. Some of them no doubt opposed the anti-Israel protests and may even hail from Israel. Why punish them? [….]
This will be terribly damaging to America’s ability to attract talented young people who bring their enterprise and intellectual capital to the U.S. Non-citizens accounted for more than half of doctoral degrees in AI-related fields in 2022. Many have gone to work at U.S. companies like Nvidia or started their own.
Clearly Trump hates Harvard, higher education, and education generally. But I’m coming to the conclusion that Trump’s goal is to destroy the U.S. in every possible way and at the same time enrich himself and his wealthy friends. He doesn’t even appear to care about the economy anymore. He wants Americans to be poor, ignorant, and isolated from the rest of the world.
The New York Times: Universities See Trump’s Harvard Move as a Threat to Them, Too.
The Trump administration’s surprising bid to end Harvard’s international enrollment put the higher education world on edge this week, looming as a larger threat against academic autonomy.
Well beyond the halls of Harvard this week, college leaders were shocked that one swift move by the federal government could eliminate their ability to serve students from abroad, a growing population that has infused their campuses with cachet and wealth.
“This is a grave moment,” Sally Kornbluth, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in a message to her campus.
More than 5,000 miles away, Wendy Hensel, the president of the University of Hawaii, said that it was “reverberating across higher education.”
President Trump has already unnerved universities this year by launching investigations, freezing grants, demanding changes in campus practices and attempting to deport international students. He has justified his punitive approach as a means to combat what he considers antisemitism. But he and his allies also have long resented a perceived liberal bias and racial diversity efforts at prestigious colleges.
The Trump administration said Thursday that it revoked Harvard’s international student certification because the university had failed to meet its demands, including a request for records of student protest activity dating back five years.
To many academics, that was a clear signal that Mr. Trump was prepared to use any federal mechanism as leverage if he did not get what he wants.
“While Harvard is the victim of the moment, it’s a warning and unprecedented attempt of a hostile federal government to erode the autonomy of all major universities in the U.S.,” said John Aubrey Douglass, a senior research fellow at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley.
Yesterday, Trump and Marco Rubio began dismantling the National Security Council.
CNN: More than 100 National Security Council staffers put on administrative leave.
The Trump administration has put more than 100 officials at the National Security Council at the White House on administrative leave on Friday as part of a restructuring under interim national security adviser and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to two US officials and another source familiar with the matter.
Woman and cat, by Toyohara Kunichika
CNN previously reported that a significant overhaul of the body in charge of coordinating the president’s foreign policy agenda was expected in the coming days, including a staff reduction and a reinforced top-down approach with decision-making concentrated at the highest levels.
An email from NSC chief of staff Brian McCormack went out around 4:20 p.m. informing those being dismissed they’d have 30 minutes to clean out their desks, according to an administration official. If they weren’t on campus, the email read, they could email an address and arrange a time to retrieve their stuff later and turn in devices.
The email subject line read: “Your return to home agency,” indicating that most of those affected were detailed to the NSC from other departments and agencies….
With this happening on a Friday afternoon before a long holiday weekend, the official called it “as unprofessional and reckless as could possibly be.”
Those put on leave include career officials, as well as political hires made during the Trump administration….
Staffed by foreign policy experts from across the US government, the NSC typically serves as a critical body for coordinating the president’s foreign policy agenda.
But under President Donald Trump, the NSC’s role has been diminished, with the overhaul expected to further reduce its importance in the White House.
Axios says they are trying to purge the “deep state.”
President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have orchestrated a vast restructuring of the National Security Council, reducing its size and transferring many of its powers to the State and Defense departments.
Why it matters: Trump’s White House sees the NSC as notoriously bureaucratic and filled with longtime officials who don’t share the president’s vision.
- A White House official involved in the planning characterized the reorganization as Trump and Rubio’s latest move against what they see as Washington’s “Deep State.”
- “The NSC is the ultimate Deep State. It’s Marco vs. the Deep State. We’re gutting the Deep State,” the official said of the move, which will cut the NSC staff to about half of its current 350 members. Those cut from the NSC will be moved to other positions in government, officials said.
- “The right-sizing of the NSC is in line with its original purpose and the president’s vision,” Rubio told Axios in a statement. “The NSC will now be better positioned to collaborate with agencies.”
Zoom in: White House officials point to an NSC structure that’s filled with committees and meetings that they say slow down decision-making and produce lots of jargon and acronyms.
There’s a lot more a the link, but I think Trump is just trying to bring every part of the government under his personal control.
Finally, I want to look at what Trump and RFK Jr. are doing with Covid-19 and Covid vaccines.
More than five years after the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in the United States, hundreds of people are still dying every week.
By Utagawa Hiroshige, 1797-1858
Last month, an average of about 350 people died each week from COVID, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
While high, the number of deaths is decreasing and is lower than the peak of 25,974 deaths recorded the week ending Jan. 9, 2021, as well as weekly deaths seen in previous spring months, CDC data shows.
Public health experts told ABC News that although the U.S. is in a much better place than it was a few years ago, COVID is still a threat to high-risk groups.
“The fact that we’re still seeing deaths just means it’s still circulating, and people are still catching it,” Dr. Tony Moody, a professor in the department of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases at Duke University Medical Center, told ABC News.
The experts said there are a few reasons why people might still be dying from the virus, including low vaccination uptake, waning immunity and not enough people accessing treatments.
Read more details at the ABC link.
So why is the government limiting access to Covid Vaccines?
Scientific American: What FDA’s Planned Limits on COVID Vaccinations Mean for Health.
Larry Saltzman has blood cancer. He’s also a retired doctor, so he knows getting covid-19 could be dangerous for him — his underlying illness puts him at high risk of serious complications and death. To avoid getting sick, he stays away from large gatherings, and he’s comforted knowing healthy people who get boosters protect him by reducing his exposure to the virus.
Until now, that is.
Vaccine opponents and skeptics in charge of federal health agencies — starting at the top with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are restricting access to covid shots that were a signature accomplishment of President Donald Trump’s first term and cost taxpayers about $13 billion to develop, produce, and distribute. The agencies are narrowing vaccination recommendations, pushing drugmakers to perform costly clinical studies, and taking other steps that will result in fewer people getting protection from a virus that still kills hundreds each week in the U.S.
“There are hundreds of thousands of people who rely on these vaccines,” said Saltzman, 71, of Sacramento, California. “For people who are immunocompromised, if there aren’t enough people vaccinated, we lose the ring that’s protecting us. We’re totally vulnerable.”
The Trump administration on May 20 rolled out tougher approval requirements for covid shots, described as a covid-19 “vaccination regulatory framework,” that could leave millions of Americans who want boosters unable to get them.
Vaccine opponents and skeptics in charge of federal health agencies — starting at the top with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are restricting access to covid shots that were a signature accomplishment of President Donald Trump’s first term and cost taxpayers about $13 billion to develop, produce, and distribute. The agencies are narrowing vaccination recommendations, pushing drugmakers to perform costly clinical studies, and taking other steps that will result in fewer people getting protection from a virus that still kills hundreds each week in the U.S.
“There are hundreds of thousands of people who rely on these vaccines,” said Saltzman, 71, of Sacramento, California. “For people who are immunocompromised, if there aren’t enough people vaccinated, we lose the ring that’s protecting us. We’re totally vulnerable.”
The Trump administration on May 20 rolled out tougher approval requirements for covid shots, described as a covid-19 “vaccination regulatory framework,” that could leave millions of Americans who want boosters unable to get them.
Read the rest at the link. You can also check out this article at Technology Review: The FDA plans to limit access to covid vaccines. Here’s why that’s not all bad.
Trump simply doesn’t care if Americans die. That’s obvious based on the way he dealt with Covid during his first term. He seems willing to let RFK Jr. do whatever he wants. So who can Americans turn to for guidance and access to vaccines and treatments?
That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?
#CovidVaccines #Covid19Deaths #CryptoCurrency #FDA #HarvardUniversity #internationalUniversityStudents #KristiNoem #NationalSecurityCouncil #NSC #RobertFKennedyJr_ #TrumpCorruption
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Lazy Caturday Reads
Woman and Cat, by Koji Fukiya, 1936.
Good Afternoon!!
Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about Trump’s crypto dinner, where he briefly spoke to the people who had spent the most on his personal memecoin. The “gala dinner” was held at Trump’s Virginia golf club. The attendees–mostly from foreign countries–had spent their money hoping to gain “access” to Trump, but that didn’t happen, at least at this event. Trump showed up on a “military helicopter,” spoke for less than half and hour and then did his YMCA dance. Then he left again without speaking to anyone personally. And the food was terrible.
Wired: A Helicopter, Halibut, and ‘Y.M.C.A’: Inside Donald Trump’s Memecoin Dinner.
Donald Trump left the stage at his golf club near Washington, DC, on Thursday night, he pointed to the crowd, brought his index finger to his temple—as if to say: You know what’s coming—then began to dance. To the beat of “Y.M.C.A” by The Village People, Trump shimmied, gyrated, and pumped his arms above his head.
Looking on were more than 200 people who had been invited to the Trump National Golf Club for a private gala dinner. They had won their seats by purchasing large quantities of Trump’s own crypto coin—TRUMP—some holding millions of dollars’ worth….
By late afternoon, the dinner guests had started to filter through the gates of the golf club. By comparison to Trump’s previous banquets, thronging with DC insiders and members of the Silicon Valley elite, the crypto dinner attracted a mismatched collection of oddballs: independent traders rubbed shoulders with crypto executives, die-hard Trump fans, and even professional sports stars—former NBA player Lamar Odom towered overhead. A handful wore bowties in Bitcoin orange; others sported gold Trump sneakers.
Just after 7 pm, the dinner guests gathered at the window to watch Trump descend in Marine One, his presidential helicopter. A short while later, he appeared from behind a blue velvet curtain to whoops and applause from the crowd. Had they seen the helicopter, Trump asked. “Yeah, super cool!” somebody yelled….
From behind a lectern at one end of the dining room, backdropped by four US flags, Trump delivered a characteristically winding and digressive speech that sources say lasted around 25 minutes. At some point, he got round to crypto.
“We’ve got some of the smartest minds anywhere in the world right here in this room,” said Trump. “You believe in the whole crypto thing. A lot of people are starting to believe in it … This is really something that may be special—who knows, right? Who knows—but it may be special.”
For some, the dinner represented a chance to network with other deep-pocketed crypto figures, and to hear directly from Trump about his plans to bring an end to the regulatory uncertainty that crimped the industry’s expansion under Biden.
“You don’t get to meet the president easily,” Vincent Liu, chief investment officer at trading firm Kronos Research, told WIRED a few days before the dinner. “To be able to hear his message on crypto directly—I’m definitely looking forward to that.”
Woodblock print from Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s series One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (1885-1892)
No one got to meet the president, but I Wired says they also wanted to network with each other. On the general presentation and the food, served at circular tables
…each seating 10 people arrayed beneath a set of crystal chandeliers. Waiting on the chairs were gift bags containing Fight Fight Fight-themed hats and posters, and a collectible plastic card (some allege that they didn’t receive merch at their seats.) The four largest coin holders—along with two other attendees selected by raffle, sources say—received a gem-encrusted Trump gold watch.
Between mouthfuls, the attendees discussed trading and investment strategies—and Trump’s speech. “To feel his personal charisma to me was very inspiring,” says Liu. But others complained about the brevity of Trump’s appearance: After his speech, Trump had departed immediately in a golf cart bound for his helicopter. “Trump could have at least given the top people their watches himself,” says Pinto. “He didn’t.”
The food itself had left a bitter taste in the mouth, too. “It was the worst food I’ve ever had at a Trump golf course,” says Pinto, who added he left hungry. “The only good thing was bread and butter.” Another attendee described the meal as “OK, but not top-class.”
From Penn Live: Trump’s controversial crypto dinner ripped by attendee: ‘Trash.’
Donald Trump’s controversial memecoin dinner Thursday night was shrouded in secrecy, and while it still isn’t clear who all attended — the White House did not make the list public — we do have a report of how good the food was….
According to Fortune, 25-year-old Nicholas Pinto was one of those who attended. The site said he invested “more than $360,000 in Trump’s memecoin.
And for that, he told the site, the dinner that was served was “trash.”
“Walmart steak, man,” he texted Fortune.
The site said the menu for the included a “Trump organic field green salad” and an “entrée duet” of filet mignon and pan-seared halibut.
“Everybody at my table was saying the food was so of the worst they ever had,” Pinto said.
“I was hoping for Big Macs or pizza,” Pinto told Fortune. “That would have been better than the food that we were served.”
Trump is just raking in the dough as quickly as he can with the minimum effort.
The New York Times got the guest list: Who Won a Seat at Trump’s Crypto Dinner?
The invitees for President Trump’s private dinner for customers of his cryptocurrency business on Thursday included a Chinese billionaire fighting a lawsuit from U.S. regulators, a lawyer for Justice Clarence Thomas and a former basketball star, according to a guest list obtained by The New York Times and social media posts.
The dinner, at which Mr. Trump gave remarks, was an extraordinary moment in which the president leveraged his position to make money — for his crypto business and for his Virginia golf club, which hosted the event.
The event’s invited guests were not known publicly beforehand, even to each other. They were identified only by the pseudonyms they used on the electronic wallets where they kept their $TRUMP memecoins. Most had gained an invitation by becoming one of the top 220 holders of that memecoin over a certain period of time. The top 25 of those were given V.I.P. status and afforded a more intimate gathering before the dinner and an unofficial tour of the White House on Friday.
When they arrived at Mr. Trump’s club outside Washington Thursday evening, the digital world had become physical. The invitees’ names and contact information were delineated on paper lists, checked by staffers at the door. A Times reporter reviewed one of those lists, and used it to identify people who were present. Some other invitees self-identified on social media. A reporter and photographer from The Times also saw some $TRUMP crypto buyers enter and exit the White House on Friday.
Merchant’s Daughter by Mizuno Toshikata
Some top invitees:
Justin Sun, a Chinese crypto billionaire who was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for allegedly inflating the value of a cryptocurrency. Mr. Sun is a major investor in a separate crypto venture largely owned by a company tied to Mr. Trump, World Liberty Financial. After Mr. Trump took office, the S.E.C. asked a judge to put Mr. Sun’s case on hold….
Elliot Berke, a Washington attorney who has worked for congressional Republicans and Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court. The Times identified him because the invitee list included his email address at his law firm, Berke Farah. He was honored as “Republican Lawyer of the Year” in 2021 by the Republican National Lawyers Association….
Evgeny Gaevoy, the founder and chief executive of a digital-asset firm, Wintermute. The Times identified him because the list of invitees included his Wintermute email….
Anil Lulla and Yan Liberman, two co-founders of Delphi Digital, a Miami Beach firm that offers market intelligence for crypto investors. Their corporate emails were included in the list of invitees….
Cheng Lu, 32, a crypto investor from Shanghai, was observed by a Times reporter entering the White House on Friday. He said he did not have a chance to speak with Mr. Trump during the dinner on Thursday or at the Friday tour. “I just want to see President Trump,” he said.
Several more are listed at the NYT link.
Another big story today is Trump’s terrifying persecution of Harvard University. Here’s the latest:
From The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: Is Trump Trying to Destroy Harvard? The order against foreign students turns away the world’s brightest.
The Trump Administration has frozen billions in federal grants to Harvard University, threatened its tax-exempt status, and sought to dictate its curriculum and hiring. Now the government seems bent on destroying the school for the offense of fighting back. And for what purpose?
That’s how we read the Department of Homeland Security’s move Thursday to bar foreign students from attending the world-renowned institution. That’s 6,800 students, or a quarter of Harvard’s student body, whose futures are suddenly in disarray. It’s also a short-sighted attack on one of America’s great competitive strengths: Its ability to attract the world’s best and brightest.
The latest assault began when DHS demanded that Harvard turn over sundry records on its foreign students, including whether any had participated in illegal activity or left the university owing to “dangerous or violent activity or deprivation of rights.”
Some of its record requests are reasonable, but some overreached by requiring private student information. DHS also gave Harvard all of two weeks to respond. If it failed to do so, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said she would “automatically withdraw” the school’s certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. “The withdrawal will not be subject to appeal.”
The SEVP program lets non-citizens enroll at universities on student visas. DHS can bar universities from the program if they fail to comply with “recordkeeping, retention, reporting and other requirements” on foreign students. Harvard says it responded with “information required by law” within two weeks and handed over more records on May 14.
Twin Guardians, by Hawse Sumi
That didn’t satisfy Noem and she banned Harvard from enrolling international students. Harvard soon got a restraining order from a federal court.
Most of Harvard’s foreign students are enrolled in graduate programs. Many assist with scientific research and teaching undergraduate courses. Driving them out of Harvard will disrupt research projects and might cause some professors in the sciences to leave for other universities. This seems to be a goal of freezing Harvard’s research grants.
Harvard sued on Friday, and a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the student ban. The university rightly says the Administration’s actions are “clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students.”
The university seems likely to prevail on the law, but until courts settle the merits, thousands of students who have done nothing wrong will be in legal limbo. Some of them no doubt opposed the anti-Israel protests and may even hail from Israel. Why punish them? [….]
This will be terribly damaging to America’s ability to attract talented young people who bring their enterprise and intellectual capital to the U.S. Non-citizens accounted for more than half of doctoral degrees in AI-related fields in 2022. Many have gone to work at U.S. companies like Nvidia or started their own.
Clearly Trump hates Harvard, higher education, and education generally. But I’m coming to the conclusion that Trump’s goal is to destroy the U.S. in every possible way and at the same time enrich himself and his wealthy friends. He doesn’t even appear to care about the economy anymore. He wants Americans to be poor, ignorant, and isolated from the rest of the world.
The New York Times: Universities See Trump’s Harvard Move as a Threat to Them, Too.
The Trump administration’s surprising bid to end Harvard’s international enrollment put the higher education world on edge this week, looming as a larger threat against academic autonomy.
Well beyond the halls of Harvard this week, college leaders were shocked that one swift move by the federal government could eliminate their ability to serve students from abroad, a growing population that has infused their campuses with cachet and wealth.
“This is a grave moment,” Sally Kornbluth, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in a message to her campus.
More than 5,000 miles away, Wendy Hensel, the president of the University of Hawaii, said that it was “reverberating across higher education.”
President Trump has already unnerved universities this year by launching investigations, freezing grants, demanding changes in campus practices and attempting to deport international students. He has justified his punitive approach as a means to combat what he considers antisemitism. But he and his allies also have long resented a perceived liberal bias and racial diversity efforts at prestigious colleges.
The Trump administration said Thursday that it revoked Harvard’s international student certification because the university had failed to meet its demands, including a request for records of student protest activity dating back five years.
To many academics, that was a clear signal that Mr. Trump was prepared to use any federal mechanism as leverage if he did not get what he wants.
“While Harvard is the victim of the moment, it’s a warning and unprecedented attempt of a hostile federal government to erode the autonomy of all major universities in the U.S.,” said John Aubrey Douglass, a senior research fellow at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley.
Yesterday, Trump and Marco Rubio began dismantling the National Security Council.
CNN: More than 100 National Security Council staffers put on administrative leave.
The Trump administration has put more than 100 officials at the National Security Council at the White House on administrative leave on Friday as part of a restructuring under interim national security adviser and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to two US officials and another source familiar with the matter.
Woman and cat, by Toyohara Kunichika
CNN previously reported that a significant overhaul of the body in charge of coordinating the president’s foreign policy agenda was expected in the coming days, including a staff reduction and a reinforced top-down approach with decision-making concentrated at the highest levels.
An email from NSC chief of staff Brian McCormack went out around 4:20 p.m. informing those being dismissed they’d have 30 minutes to clean out their desks, according to an administration official. If they weren’t on campus, the email read, they could email an address and arrange a time to retrieve their stuff later and turn in devices.
The email subject line read: “Your return to home agency,” indicating that most of those affected were detailed to the NSC from other departments and agencies….
With this happening on a Friday afternoon before a long holiday weekend, the official called it “as unprofessional and reckless as could possibly be.”
Those put on leave include career officials, as well as political hires made during the Trump administration….
Staffed by foreign policy experts from across the US government, the NSC typically serves as a critical body for coordinating the president’s foreign policy agenda.
But under President Donald Trump, the NSC’s role has been diminished, with the overhaul expected to further reduce its importance in the White House.
Axios says they are trying to purge the “deep state.”
President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have orchestrated a vast restructuring of the National Security Council, reducing its size and transferring many of its powers to the State and Defense departments.
Why it matters: Trump’s White House sees the NSC as notoriously bureaucratic and filled with longtime officials who don’t share the president’s vision.
- A White House official involved in the planning characterized the reorganization as Trump and Rubio’s latest move against what they see as Washington’s “Deep State.”
- “The NSC is the ultimate Deep State. It’s Marco vs. the Deep State. We’re gutting the Deep State,” the official said of the move, which will cut the NSC staff to about half of its current 350 members. Those cut from the NSC will be moved to other positions in government, officials said.
- “The right-sizing of the NSC is in line with its original purpose and the president’s vision,” Rubio told Axios in a statement. “The NSC will now be better positioned to collaborate with agencies.”
Zoom in: White House officials point to an NSC structure that’s filled with committees and meetings that they say slow down decision-making and produce lots of jargon and acronyms.
There’s a lot more a the link, but I think Trump is just trying to bring every part of the government under his personal control.
Finally, I want to look at what Trump and RFK Jr. are doing with Covid-19 and Covid vaccines.
More than five years after the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in the United States, hundreds of people are still dying every week.
By Utagawa Hiroshige, 1797-1858
Last month, an average of about 350 people died each week from COVID, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
While high, the number of deaths is decreasing and is lower than the peak of 25,974 deaths recorded the week ending Jan. 9, 2021, as well as weekly deaths seen in previous spring months, CDC data shows.
Public health experts told ABC News that although the U.S. is in a much better place than it was a few years ago, COVID is still a threat to high-risk groups.
“The fact that we’re still seeing deaths just means it’s still circulating, and people are still catching it,” Dr. Tony Moody, a professor in the department of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases at Duke University Medical Center, told ABC News.
The experts said there are a few reasons why people might still be dying from the virus, including low vaccination uptake, waning immunity and not enough people accessing treatments.
Read more details at the ABC link.
So why is the government limiting access to Covid Vaccines?
Scientific American: What FDA’s Planned Limits on COVID Vaccinations Mean for Health.
Larry Saltzman has blood cancer. He’s also a retired doctor, so he knows getting covid-19 could be dangerous for him — his underlying illness puts him at high risk of serious complications and death. To avoid getting sick, he stays away from large gatherings, and he’s comforted knowing healthy people who get boosters protect him by reducing his exposure to the virus.
Until now, that is.
Vaccine opponents and skeptics in charge of federal health agencies — starting at the top with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are restricting access to covid shots that were a signature accomplishment of President Donald Trump’s first term and cost taxpayers about $13 billion to develop, produce, and distribute. The agencies are narrowing vaccination recommendations, pushing drugmakers to perform costly clinical studies, and taking other steps that will result in fewer people getting protection from a virus that still kills hundreds each week in the U.S.
“There are hundreds of thousands of people who rely on these vaccines,” said Saltzman, 71, of Sacramento, California. “For people who are immunocompromised, if there aren’t enough people vaccinated, we lose the ring that’s protecting us. We’re totally vulnerable.”
The Trump administration on May 20 rolled out tougher approval requirements for covid shots, described as a covid-19 “vaccination regulatory framework,” that could leave millions of Americans who want boosters unable to get them.
Vaccine opponents and skeptics in charge of federal health agencies — starting at the top with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are restricting access to covid shots that were a signature accomplishment of President Donald Trump’s first term and cost taxpayers about $13 billion to develop, produce, and distribute. The agencies are narrowing vaccination recommendations, pushing drugmakers to perform costly clinical studies, and taking other steps that will result in fewer people getting protection from a virus that still kills hundreds each week in the U.S.
“There are hundreds of thousands of people who rely on these vaccines,” said Saltzman, 71, of Sacramento, California. “For people who are immunocompromised, if there aren’t enough people vaccinated, we lose the ring that’s protecting us. We’re totally vulnerable.”
The Trump administration on May 20 rolled out tougher approval requirements for covid shots, described as a covid-19 “vaccination regulatory framework,” that could leave millions of Americans who want boosters unable to get them.
Read the rest at the link. You can also check out this article at Technology Review: The FDA plans to limit access to covid vaccines. Here’s why that’s not all bad.
Trump simply doesn’t care if Americans die. That’s obvious based on the way he dealt with Covid during his first term. He seems willing to let RFK Jr. do whatever he wants. So who can Americans turn to for guidance and access to vaccines and treatments?
That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?
#CovidVaccines #Covid19Deaths #CryptoCurrency #FDA #HarvardUniversity #internationalUniversityStudents #KristiNoem #NationalSecurityCouncil #NSC #RobertFKennedyJr_ #TrumpCorruption
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Lazy Caturday Reads
Woman and Cat, by Koji Fukiya, 1936.
Good Afternoon!!
Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about Trump’s crypto dinner, where he briefly spoke to the people who had spent the most on his personal memecoin. The “gala dinner” was held at Trump’s Virginia golf club. The attendees–mostly from foreign countries–had spent their money hoping to gain “access” to Trump, but that didn’t happen, at least at this event. Trump showed up on a “military helicopter,” spoke for less than half and hour and then did his YMCA dance. Then he left again without speaking to anyone personally. And the food was terrible.
Wired: A Helicopter, Halibut, and ‘Y.M.C.A’: Inside Donald Trump’s Memecoin Dinner.
Donald Trump left the stage at his golf club near Washington, DC, on Thursday night, he pointed to the crowd, brought his index finger to his temple—as if to say: You know what’s coming—then began to dance. To the beat of “Y.M.C.A” by The Village People, Trump shimmied, gyrated, and pumped his arms above his head.
Looking on were more than 200 people who had been invited to the Trump National Golf Club for a private gala dinner. They had won their seats by purchasing large quantities of Trump’s own crypto coin—TRUMP—some holding millions of dollars’ worth….
By late afternoon, the dinner guests had started to filter through the gates of the golf club. By comparison to Trump’s previous banquets, thronging with DC insiders and members of the Silicon Valley elite, the crypto dinner attracted a mismatched collection of oddballs: independent traders rubbed shoulders with crypto executives, die-hard Trump fans, and even professional sports stars—former NBA player Lamar Odom towered overhead. A handful wore bowties in Bitcoin orange; others sported gold Trump sneakers.
Just after 7 pm, the dinner guests gathered at the window to watch Trump descend in Marine One, his presidential helicopter. A short while later, he appeared from behind a blue velvet curtain to whoops and applause from the crowd. Had they seen the helicopter, Trump asked. “Yeah, super cool!” somebody yelled….
From behind a lectern at one end of the dining room, backdropped by four US flags, Trump delivered a characteristically winding and digressive speech that sources say lasted around 25 minutes. At some point, he got round to crypto.
“We’ve got some of the smartest minds anywhere in the world right here in this room,” said Trump. “You believe in the whole crypto thing. A lot of people are starting to believe in it … This is really something that may be special—who knows, right? Who knows—but it may be special.”
For some, the dinner represented a chance to network with other deep-pocketed crypto figures, and to hear directly from Trump about his plans to bring an end to the regulatory uncertainty that crimped the industry’s expansion under Biden.
“You don’t get to meet the president easily,” Vincent Liu, chief investment officer at trading firm Kronos Research, told WIRED a few days before the dinner. “To be able to hear his message on crypto directly—I’m definitely looking forward to that.”
Woodblock print from Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s series One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (1885-1892)
No one got to meet the president, but I Wired says they also wanted to network with each other. On the general presentation and the food, served at circular tables
…each seating 10 people arrayed beneath a set of crystal chandeliers. Waiting on the chairs were gift bags containing Fight Fight Fight-themed hats and posters, and a collectible plastic card (some allege that they didn’t receive merch at their seats.) The four largest coin holders—along with two other attendees selected by raffle, sources say—received a gem-encrusted Trump gold watch.
Between mouthfuls, the attendees discussed trading and investment strategies—and Trump’s speech. “To feel his personal charisma to me was very inspiring,” says Liu. But others complained about the brevity of Trump’s appearance: After his speech, Trump had departed immediately in a golf cart bound for his helicopter. “Trump could have at least given the top people their watches himself,” says Pinto. “He didn’t.”
The food itself had left a bitter taste in the mouth, too. “It was the worst food I’ve ever had at a Trump golf course,” says Pinto, who added he left hungry. “The only good thing was bread and butter.” Another attendee described the meal as “OK, but not top-class.”
From Penn Live: Trump’s controversial crypto dinner ripped by attendee: ‘Trash.’
Donald Trump’s controversial memecoin dinner Thursday night was shrouded in secrecy, and while it still isn’t clear who all attended — the White House did not make the list public — we do have a report of how good the food was….
According to Fortune, 25-year-old Nicholas Pinto was one of those who attended. The site said he invested “more than $360,000 in Trump’s memecoin.
And for that, he told the site, the dinner that was served was “trash.”
“Walmart steak, man,” he texted Fortune.
The site said the menu for the included a “Trump organic field green salad” and an “entrée duet” of filet mignon and pan-seared halibut.
“Everybody at my table was saying the food was so of the worst they ever had,” Pinto said.
“I was hoping for Big Macs or pizza,” Pinto told Fortune. “That would have been better than the food that we were served.”
Trump is just raking in the dough as quickly as he can with the minimum effort.
The New York Times got the guest list: Who Won a Seat at Trump’s Crypto Dinner?
The invitees for President Trump’s private dinner for customers of his cryptocurrency business on Thursday included a Chinese billionaire fighting a lawsuit from U.S. regulators, a lawyer for Justice Clarence Thomas and a former basketball star, according to a guest list obtained by The New York Times and social media posts.
The dinner, at which Mr. Trump gave remarks, was an extraordinary moment in which the president leveraged his position to make money — for his crypto business and for his Virginia golf club, which hosted the event.
The event’s invited guests were not known publicly beforehand, even to each other. They were identified only by the pseudonyms they used on the electronic wallets where they kept their $TRUMP memecoins. Most had gained an invitation by becoming one of the top 220 holders of that memecoin over a certain period of time. The top 25 of those were given V.I.P. status and afforded a more intimate gathering before the dinner and an unofficial tour of the White House on Friday.
When they arrived at Mr. Trump’s club outside Washington Thursday evening, the digital world had become physical. The invitees’ names and contact information were delineated on paper lists, checked by staffers at the door. A Times reporter reviewed one of those lists, and used it to identify people who were present. Some other invitees self-identified on social media. A reporter and photographer from The Times also saw some $TRUMP crypto buyers enter and exit the White House on Friday.
Merchant’s Daughter by Mizuno Toshikata
Some top invitees:
Justin Sun, a Chinese crypto billionaire who was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for allegedly inflating the value of a cryptocurrency. Mr. Sun is a major investor in a separate crypto venture largely owned by a company tied to Mr. Trump, World Liberty Financial. After Mr. Trump took office, the S.E.C. asked a judge to put Mr. Sun’s case on hold….
Elliot Berke, a Washington attorney who has worked for congressional Republicans and Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court. The Times identified him because the invitee list included his email address at his law firm, Berke Farah. He was honored as “Republican Lawyer of the Year” in 2021 by the Republican National Lawyers Association….
Evgeny Gaevoy, the founder and chief executive of a digital-asset firm, Wintermute. The Times identified him because the list of invitees included his Wintermute email….
Anil Lulla and Yan Liberman, two co-founders of Delphi Digital, a Miami Beach firm that offers market intelligence for crypto investors. Their corporate emails were included in the list of invitees….
Cheng Lu, 32, a crypto investor from Shanghai, was observed by a Times reporter entering the White House on Friday. He said he did not have a chance to speak with Mr. Trump during the dinner on Thursday or at the Friday tour. “I just want to see President Trump,” he said.
Several more are listed at the NYT link.
Another big story today is Trump’s terrifying persecution of Harvard University. Here’s the latest:
From The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: Is Trump Trying to Destroy Harvard? The order against foreign students turns away the world’s brightest.
The Trump Administration has frozen billions in federal grants to Harvard University, threatened its tax-exempt status, and sought to dictate its curriculum and hiring. Now the government seems bent on destroying the school for the offense of fighting back. And for what purpose?
That’s how we read the Department of Homeland Security’s move Thursday to bar foreign students from attending the world-renowned institution. That’s 6,800 students, or a quarter of Harvard’s student body, whose futures are suddenly in disarray. It’s also a short-sighted attack on one of America’s great competitive strengths: Its ability to attract the world’s best and brightest.
The latest assault began when DHS demanded that Harvard turn over sundry records on its foreign students, including whether any had participated in illegal activity or left the university owing to “dangerous or violent activity or deprivation of rights.”
Some of its record requests are reasonable, but some overreached by requiring private student information. DHS also gave Harvard all of two weeks to respond. If it failed to do so, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said she would “automatically withdraw” the school’s certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. “The withdrawal will not be subject to appeal.”
The SEVP program lets non-citizens enroll at universities on student visas. DHS can bar universities from the program if they fail to comply with “recordkeeping, retention, reporting and other requirements” on foreign students. Harvard says it responded with “information required by law” within two weeks and handed over more records on May 14.
Twin Guardians, by Hawse Sumi
That didn’t satisfy Noem and she banned Harvard from enrolling international students. Harvard soon got a restraining order from a federal court.
Most of Harvard’s foreign students are enrolled in graduate programs. Many assist with scientific research and teaching undergraduate courses. Driving them out of Harvard will disrupt research projects and might cause some professors in the sciences to leave for other universities. This seems to be a goal of freezing Harvard’s research grants.
Harvard sued on Friday, and a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the student ban. The university rightly says the Administration’s actions are “clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students.”
The university seems likely to prevail on the law, but until courts settle the merits, thousands of students who have done nothing wrong will be in legal limbo. Some of them no doubt opposed the anti-Israel protests and may even hail from Israel. Why punish them? [….]
This will be terribly damaging to America’s ability to attract talented young people who bring their enterprise and intellectual capital to the U.S. Non-citizens accounted for more than half of doctoral degrees in AI-related fields in 2022. Many have gone to work at U.S. companies like Nvidia or started their own.
Clearly Trump hates Harvard, higher education, and education generally. But I’m coming to the conclusion that Trump’s goal is to destroy the U.S. in every possible way and at the same time enrich himself and his wealthy friends. He doesn’t even appear to care about the economy anymore. He wants Americans to be poor, ignorant, and isolated from the rest of the world.
The New York Times: Universities See Trump’s Harvard Move as a Threat to Them, Too.
The Trump administration’s surprising bid to end Harvard’s international enrollment put the higher education world on edge this week, looming as a larger threat against academic autonomy.
Well beyond the halls of Harvard this week, college leaders were shocked that one swift move by the federal government could eliminate their ability to serve students from abroad, a growing population that has infused their campuses with cachet and wealth.
“This is a grave moment,” Sally Kornbluth, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in a message to her campus.
More than 5,000 miles away, Wendy Hensel, the president of the University of Hawaii, said that it was “reverberating across higher education.”
President Trump has already unnerved universities this year by launching investigations, freezing grants, demanding changes in campus practices and attempting to deport international students. He has justified his punitive approach as a means to combat what he considers antisemitism. But he and his allies also have long resented a perceived liberal bias and racial diversity efforts at prestigious colleges.
The Trump administration said Thursday that it revoked Harvard’s international student certification because the university had failed to meet its demands, including a request for records of student protest activity dating back five years.
To many academics, that was a clear signal that Mr. Trump was prepared to use any federal mechanism as leverage if he did not get what he wants.
“While Harvard is the victim of the moment, it’s a warning and unprecedented attempt of a hostile federal government to erode the autonomy of all major universities in the U.S.,” said John Aubrey Douglass, a senior research fellow at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley.
Yesterday, Trump and Marco Rubio began dismantling the National Security Council.
CNN: More than 100 National Security Council staffers put on administrative leave.
The Trump administration has put more than 100 officials at the National Security Council at the White House on administrative leave on Friday as part of a restructuring under interim national security adviser and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to two US officials and another source familiar with the matter.
Woman and cat, by Toyohara Kunichika
CNN previously reported that a significant overhaul of the body in charge of coordinating the president’s foreign policy agenda was expected in the coming days, including a staff reduction and a reinforced top-down approach with decision-making concentrated at the highest levels.
An email from NSC chief of staff Brian McCormack went out around 4:20 p.m. informing those being dismissed they’d have 30 minutes to clean out their desks, according to an administration official. If they weren’t on campus, the email read, they could email an address and arrange a time to retrieve their stuff later and turn in devices.
The email subject line read: “Your return to home agency,” indicating that most of those affected were detailed to the NSC from other departments and agencies….
With this happening on a Friday afternoon before a long holiday weekend, the official called it “as unprofessional and reckless as could possibly be.”
Those put on leave include career officials, as well as political hires made during the Trump administration….
Staffed by foreign policy experts from across the US government, the NSC typically serves as a critical body for coordinating the president’s foreign policy agenda.
But under President Donald Trump, the NSC’s role has been diminished, with the overhaul expected to further reduce its importance in the White House.
Axios says they are trying to purge the “deep state.”
President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have orchestrated a vast restructuring of the National Security Council, reducing its size and transferring many of its powers to the State and Defense departments.
Why it matters: Trump’s White House sees the NSC as notoriously bureaucratic and filled with longtime officials who don’t share the president’s vision.
- A White House official involved in the planning characterized the reorganization as Trump and Rubio’s latest move against what they see as Washington’s “Deep State.”
- “The NSC is the ultimate Deep State. It’s Marco vs. the Deep State. We’re gutting the Deep State,” the official said of the move, which will cut the NSC staff to about half of its current 350 members. Those cut from the NSC will be moved to other positions in government, officials said.
- “The right-sizing of the NSC is in line with its original purpose and the president’s vision,” Rubio told Axios in a statement. “The NSC will now be better positioned to collaborate with agencies.”
Zoom in: White House officials point to an NSC structure that’s filled with committees and meetings that they say slow down decision-making and produce lots of jargon and acronyms.
There’s a lot more a the link, but I think Trump is just trying to bring every part of the government under his personal control.
Finally, I want to look at what Trump and RFK Jr. are doing with Covid-19 and Covid vaccines.
More than five years after the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in the United States, hundreds of people are still dying every week.
By Utagawa Hiroshige, 1797-1858
Last month, an average of about 350 people died each week from COVID, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
While high, the number of deaths is decreasing and is lower than the peak of 25,974 deaths recorded the week ending Jan. 9, 2021, as well as weekly deaths seen in previous spring months, CDC data shows.
Public health experts told ABC News that although the U.S. is in a much better place than it was a few years ago, COVID is still a threat to high-risk groups.
“The fact that we’re still seeing deaths just means it’s still circulating, and people are still catching it,” Dr. Tony Moody, a professor in the department of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases at Duke University Medical Center, told ABC News.
The experts said there are a few reasons why people might still be dying from the virus, including low vaccination uptake, waning immunity and not enough people accessing treatments.
Read more details at the ABC link.
So why is the government limiting access to Covid Vaccines?
Scientific American: What FDA’s Planned Limits on COVID Vaccinations Mean for Health.
Larry Saltzman has blood cancer. He’s also a retired doctor, so he knows getting covid-19 could be dangerous for him — his underlying illness puts him at high risk of serious complications and death. To avoid getting sick, he stays away from large gatherings, and he’s comforted knowing healthy people who get boosters protect him by reducing his exposure to the virus.
Until now, that is.
Vaccine opponents and skeptics in charge of federal health agencies — starting at the top with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are restricting access to covid shots that were a signature accomplishment of President Donald Trump’s first term and cost taxpayers about $13 billion to develop, produce, and distribute. The agencies are narrowing vaccination recommendations, pushing drugmakers to perform costly clinical studies, and taking other steps that will result in fewer people getting protection from a virus that still kills hundreds each week in the U.S.
“There are hundreds of thousands of people who rely on these vaccines,” said Saltzman, 71, of Sacramento, California. “For people who are immunocompromised, if there aren’t enough people vaccinated, we lose the ring that’s protecting us. We’re totally vulnerable.”
The Trump administration on May 20 rolled out tougher approval requirements for covid shots, described as a covid-19 “vaccination regulatory framework,” that could leave millions of Americans who want boosters unable to get them.
Vaccine opponents and skeptics in charge of federal health agencies — starting at the top with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are restricting access to covid shots that were a signature accomplishment of President Donald Trump’s first term and cost taxpayers about $13 billion to develop, produce, and distribute. The agencies are narrowing vaccination recommendations, pushing drugmakers to perform costly clinical studies, and taking other steps that will result in fewer people getting protection from a virus that still kills hundreds each week in the U.S.
“There are hundreds of thousands of people who rely on these vaccines,” said Saltzman, 71, of Sacramento, California. “For people who are immunocompromised, if there aren’t enough people vaccinated, we lose the ring that’s protecting us. We’re totally vulnerable.”
The Trump administration on May 20 rolled out tougher approval requirements for covid shots, described as a covid-19 “vaccination regulatory framework,” that could leave millions of Americans who want boosters unable to get them.
Read the rest at the link. You can also check out this article at Technology Review: The FDA plans to limit access to covid vaccines. Here’s why that’s not all bad.
Trump simply doesn’t care if Americans die. That’s obvious based on the way he dealt with Covid during his first term. He seems willing to let RFK Jr. do whatever he wants. So who can Americans turn to for guidance and access to vaccines and treatments?
That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?
#CovidVaccines #Covid19Deaths #CryptoCurrency #FDA #HarvardUniversity #internationalUniversityStudents #KristiNoem #NationalSecurityCouncil #NSC #RobertFKennedyJr_ #TrumpCorruption
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Lazy Caturday Reads
Woman and Cat, by Koji Fukiya, 1936.
Good Afternoon!!
Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about Trump’s crypto dinner, where he briefly spoke to the people who had spent the most on his personal memecoin. The “gala dinner” was held at Trump’s Virginia golf club. The attendees–mostly from foreign countries–had spent their money hoping to gain “access” to Trump, but that didn’t happen, at least at this event. Trump showed up on a “military helicopter,” spoke for less than half and hour and then did his YMCA dance. Then he left again without speaking to anyone personally. And the food was terrible.
Wired: A Helicopter, Halibut, and ‘Y.M.C.A’: Inside Donald Trump’s Memecoin Dinner.
Donald Trump left the stage at his golf club near Washington, DC, on Thursday night, he pointed to the crowd, brought his index finger to his temple—as if to say: You know what’s coming—then began to dance. To the beat of “Y.M.C.A” by The Village People, Trump shimmied, gyrated, and pumped his arms above his head.
Looking on were more than 200 people who had been invited to the Trump National Golf Club for a private gala dinner. They had won their seats by purchasing large quantities of Trump’s own crypto coin—TRUMP—some holding millions of dollars’ worth….
By late afternoon, the dinner guests had started to filter through the gates of the golf club. By comparison to Trump’s previous banquets, thronging with DC insiders and members of the Silicon Valley elite, the crypto dinner attracted a mismatched collection of oddballs: independent traders rubbed shoulders with crypto executives, die-hard Trump fans, and even professional sports stars—former NBA player Lamar Odom towered overhead. A handful wore bowties in Bitcoin orange; others sported gold Trump sneakers.
Just after 7 pm, the dinner guests gathered at the window to watch Trump descend in Marine One, his presidential helicopter. A short while later, he appeared from behind a blue velvet curtain to whoops and applause from the crowd. Had they seen the helicopter, Trump asked. “Yeah, super cool!” somebody yelled….
From behind a lectern at one end of the dining room, backdropped by four US flags, Trump delivered a characteristically winding and digressive speech that sources say lasted around 25 minutes. At some point, he got round to crypto.
“We’ve got some of the smartest minds anywhere in the world right here in this room,” said Trump. “You believe in the whole crypto thing. A lot of people are starting to believe in it … This is really something that may be special—who knows, right? Who knows—but it may be special.”
For some, the dinner represented a chance to network with other deep-pocketed crypto figures, and to hear directly from Trump about his plans to bring an end to the regulatory uncertainty that crimped the industry’s expansion under Biden.
“You don’t get to meet the president easily,” Vincent Liu, chief investment officer at trading firm Kronos Research, told WIRED a few days before the dinner. “To be able to hear his message on crypto directly—I’m definitely looking forward to that.”
Woodblock print from Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s series One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (1885-1892)
No one got to meet the president, but I Wired says they also wanted to network with each other. On the general presentation and the food, served at circular tables
…each seating 10 people arrayed beneath a set of crystal chandeliers. Waiting on the chairs were gift bags containing Fight Fight Fight-themed hats and posters, and a collectible plastic card (some allege that they didn’t receive merch at their seats.) The four largest coin holders—along with two other attendees selected by raffle, sources say—received a gem-encrusted Trump gold watch.
Between mouthfuls, the attendees discussed trading and investment strategies—and Trump’s speech. “To feel his personal charisma to me was very inspiring,” says Liu. But others complained about the brevity of Trump’s appearance: After his speech, Trump had departed immediately in a golf cart bound for his helicopter. “Trump could have at least given the top people their watches himself,” says Pinto. “He didn’t.”
The food itself had left a bitter taste in the mouth, too. “It was the worst food I’ve ever had at a Trump golf course,” says Pinto, who added he left hungry. “The only good thing was bread and butter.” Another attendee described the meal as “OK, but not top-class.”
From Penn Live: Trump’s controversial crypto dinner ripped by attendee: ‘Trash.’
Donald Trump’s controversial memecoin dinner Thursday night was shrouded in secrecy, and while it still isn’t clear who all attended — the White House did not make the list public — we do have a report of how good the food was….
According to Fortune, 25-year-old Nicholas Pinto was one of those who attended. The site said he invested “more than $360,000 in Trump’s memecoin.
And for that, he told the site, the dinner that was served was “trash.”
“Walmart steak, man,” he texted Fortune.
The site said the menu for the included a “Trump organic field green salad” and an “entrée duet” of filet mignon and pan-seared halibut.
“Everybody at my table was saying the food was so of the worst they ever had,” Pinto said.
“I was hoping for Big Macs or pizza,” Pinto told Fortune. “That would have been better than the food that we were served.”
Trump is just raking in the dough as quickly as he can with the minimum effort.
The New York Times got the guest list: Who Won a Seat at Trump’s Crypto Dinner?
The invitees for President Trump’s private dinner for customers of his cryptocurrency business on Thursday included a Chinese billionaire fighting a lawsuit from U.S. regulators, a lawyer for Justice Clarence Thomas and a former basketball star, according to a guest list obtained by The New York Times and social media posts.
The dinner, at which Mr. Trump gave remarks, was an extraordinary moment in which the president leveraged his position to make money — for his crypto business and for his Virginia golf club, which hosted the event.
The event’s invited guests were not known publicly beforehand, even to each other. They were identified only by the pseudonyms they used on the electronic wallets where they kept their $TRUMP memecoins. Most had gained an invitation by becoming one of the top 220 holders of that memecoin over a certain period of time. The top 25 of those were given V.I.P. status and afforded a more intimate gathering before the dinner and an unofficial tour of the White House on Friday.
When they arrived at Mr. Trump’s club outside Washington Thursday evening, the digital world had become physical. The invitees’ names and contact information were delineated on paper lists, checked by staffers at the door. A Times reporter reviewed one of those lists, and used it to identify people who were present. Some other invitees self-identified on social media. A reporter and photographer from The Times also saw some $TRUMP crypto buyers enter and exit the White House on Friday.
Merchant’s Daughter by Mizuno Toshikata
Some top invitees:
Justin Sun, a Chinese crypto billionaire who was sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for allegedly inflating the value of a cryptocurrency. Mr. Sun is a major investor in a separate crypto venture largely owned by a company tied to Mr. Trump, World Liberty Financial. After Mr. Trump took office, the S.E.C. asked a judge to put Mr. Sun’s case on hold….
Elliot Berke, a Washington attorney who has worked for congressional Republicans and Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court. The Times identified him because the invitee list included his email address at his law firm, Berke Farah. He was honored as “Republican Lawyer of the Year” in 2021 by the Republican National Lawyers Association….
Evgeny Gaevoy, the founder and chief executive of a digital-asset firm, Wintermute. The Times identified him because the list of invitees included his Wintermute email….
Anil Lulla and Yan Liberman, two co-founders of Delphi Digital, a Miami Beach firm that offers market intelligence for crypto investors. Their corporate emails were included in the list of invitees….
Cheng Lu, 32, a crypto investor from Shanghai, was observed by a Times reporter entering the White House on Friday. He said he did not have a chance to speak with Mr. Trump during the dinner on Thursday or at the Friday tour. “I just want to see President Trump,” he said.
Several more are listed at the NYT link.
Another big story today is Trump’s terrifying persecution of Harvard University. Here’s the latest:
From The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: Is Trump Trying to Destroy Harvard? The order against foreign students turns away the world’s brightest.
The Trump Administration has frozen billions in federal grants to Harvard University, threatened its tax-exempt status, and sought to dictate its curriculum and hiring. Now the government seems bent on destroying the school for the offense of fighting back. And for what purpose?
That’s how we read the Department of Homeland Security’s move Thursday to bar foreign students from attending the world-renowned institution. That’s 6,800 students, or a quarter of Harvard’s student body, whose futures are suddenly in disarray. It’s also a short-sighted attack on one of America’s great competitive strengths: Its ability to attract the world’s best and brightest.
The latest assault began when DHS demanded that Harvard turn over sundry records on its foreign students, including whether any had participated in illegal activity or left the university owing to “dangerous or violent activity or deprivation of rights.”
Some of its record requests are reasonable, but some overreached by requiring private student information. DHS also gave Harvard all of two weeks to respond. If it failed to do so, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said she would “automatically withdraw” the school’s certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program. “The withdrawal will not be subject to appeal.”
The SEVP program lets non-citizens enroll at universities on student visas. DHS can bar universities from the program if they fail to comply with “recordkeeping, retention, reporting and other requirements” on foreign students. Harvard says it responded with “information required by law” within two weeks and handed over more records on May 14.
Twin Guardians, by Hawse Sumi
That didn’t satisfy Noem and she banned Harvard from enrolling international students. Harvard soon got a restraining order from a federal court.
Most of Harvard’s foreign students are enrolled in graduate programs. Many assist with scientific research and teaching undergraduate courses. Driving them out of Harvard will disrupt research projects and might cause some professors in the sciences to leave for other universities. This seems to be a goal of freezing Harvard’s research grants.
Harvard sued on Friday, and a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the student ban. The university rightly says the Administration’s actions are “clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students.”
The university seems likely to prevail on the law, but until courts settle the merits, thousands of students who have done nothing wrong will be in legal limbo. Some of them no doubt opposed the anti-Israel protests and may even hail from Israel. Why punish them? [….]
This will be terribly damaging to America’s ability to attract talented young people who bring their enterprise and intellectual capital to the U.S. Non-citizens accounted for more than half of doctoral degrees in AI-related fields in 2022. Many have gone to work at U.S. companies like Nvidia or started their own.
Clearly Trump hates Harvard, higher education, and education generally. But I’m coming to the conclusion that Trump’s goal is to destroy the U.S. in every possible way and at the same time enrich himself and his wealthy friends. He doesn’t even appear to care about the economy anymore. He wants Americans to be poor, ignorant, and isolated from the rest of the world.
The New York Times: Universities See Trump’s Harvard Move as a Threat to Them, Too.
The Trump administration’s surprising bid to end Harvard’s international enrollment put the higher education world on edge this week, looming as a larger threat against academic autonomy.
Well beyond the halls of Harvard this week, college leaders were shocked that one swift move by the federal government could eliminate their ability to serve students from abroad, a growing population that has infused their campuses with cachet and wealth.
“This is a grave moment,” Sally Kornbluth, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in a message to her campus.
More than 5,000 miles away, Wendy Hensel, the president of the University of Hawaii, said that it was “reverberating across higher education.”
President Trump has already unnerved universities this year by launching investigations, freezing grants, demanding changes in campus practices and attempting to deport international students. He has justified his punitive approach as a means to combat what he considers antisemitism. But he and his allies also have long resented a perceived liberal bias and racial diversity efforts at prestigious colleges.
The Trump administration said Thursday that it revoked Harvard’s international student certification because the university had failed to meet its demands, including a request for records of student protest activity dating back five years.
To many academics, that was a clear signal that Mr. Trump was prepared to use any federal mechanism as leverage if he did not get what he wants.
“While Harvard is the victim of the moment, it’s a warning and unprecedented attempt of a hostile federal government to erode the autonomy of all major universities in the U.S.,” said John Aubrey Douglass, a senior research fellow at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley.
Yesterday, Trump and Marco Rubio began dismantling the National Security Council.
CNN: More than 100 National Security Council staffers put on administrative leave.
The Trump administration has put more than 100 officials at the National Security Council at the White House on administrative leave on Friday as part of a restructuring under interim national security adviser and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to two US officials and another source familiar with the matter.
Woman and cat, by Toyohara Kunichika
CNN previously reported that a significant overhaul of the body in charge of coordinating the president’s foreign policy agenda was expected in the coming days, including a staff reduction and a reinforced top-down approach with decision-making concentrated at the highest levels.
An email from NSC chief of staff Brian McCormack went out around 4:20 p.m. informing those being dismissed they’d have 30 minutes to clean out their desks, according to an administration official. If they weren’t on campus, the email read, they could email an address and arrange a time to retrieve their stuff later and turn in devices.
The email subject line read: “Your return to home agency,” indicating that most of those affected were detailed to the NSC from other departments and agencies….
With this happening on a Friday afternoon before a long holiday weekend, the official called it “as unprofessional and reckless as could possibly be.”
Those put on leave include career officials, as well as political hires made during the Trump administration….
Staffed by foreign policy experts from across the US government, the NSC typically serves as a critical body for coordinating the president’s foreign policy agenda.
But under President Donald Trump, the NSC’s role has been diminished, with the overhaul expected to further reduce its importance in the White House.
Axios says they are trying to purge the “deep state.”
President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have orchestrated a vast restructuring of the National Security Council, reducing its size and transferring many of its powers to the State and Defense departments.
Why it matters: Trump’s White House sees the NSC as notoriously bureaucratic and filled with longtime officials who don’t share the president’s vision.
- A White House official involved in the planning characterized the reorganization as Trump and Rubio’s latest move against what they see as Washington’s “Deep State.”
- “The NSC is the ultimate Deep State. It’s Marco vs. the Deep State. We’re gutting the Deep State,” the official said of the move, which will cut the NSC staff to about half of its current 350 members. Those cut from the NSC will be moved to other positions in government, officials said.
- “The right-sizing of the NSC is in line with its original purpose and the president’s vision,” Rubio told Axios in a statement. “The NSC will now be better positioned to collaborate with agencies.”
Zoom in: White House officials point to an NSC structure that’s filled with committees and meetings that they say slow down decision-making and produce lots of jargon and acronyms.
There’s a lot more a the link, but I think Trump is just trying to bring every part of the government under his personal control.
Finally, I want to look at what Trump and RFK Jr. are doing with Covid-19 and Covid vaccines.
More than five years after the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in the United States, hundreds of people are still dying every week.
By Utagawa Hiroshige, 1797-1858
Last month, an average of about 350 people died each week from COVID, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
While high, the number of deaths is decreasing and is lower than the peak of 25,974 deaths recorded the week ending Jan. 9, 2021, as well as weekly deaths seen in previous spring months, CDC data shows.
Public health experts told ABC News that although the U.S. is in a much better place than it was a few years ago, COVID is still a threat to high-risk groups.
“The fact that we’re still seeing deaths just means it’s still circulating, and people are still catching it,” Dr. Tony Moody, a professor in the department of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases at Duke University Medical Center, told ABC News.
The experts said there are a few reasons why people might still be dying from the virus, including low vaccination uptake, waning immunity and not enough people accessing treatments.
Read more details at the ABC link.
So why is the government limiting access to Covid Vaccines?
Scientific American: What FDA’s Planned Limits on COVID Vaccinations Mean for Health.
Larry Saltzman has blood cancer. He’s also a retired doctor, so he knows getting covid-19 could be dangerous for him — his underlying illness puts him at high risk of serious complications and death. To avoid getting sick, he stays away from large gatherings, and he’s comforted knowing healthy people who get boosters protect him by reducing his exposure to the virus.
Until now, that is.
Vaccine opponents and skeptics in charge of federal health agencies — starting at the top with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are restricting access to covid shots that were a signature accomplishment of President Donald Trump’s first term and cost taxpayers about $13 billion to develop, produce, and distribute. The agencies are narrowing vaccination recommendations, pushing drugmakers to perform costly clinical studies, and taking other steps that will result in fewer people getting protection from a virus that still kills hundreds each week in the U.S.
“There are hundreds of thousands of people who rely on these vaccines,” said Saltzman, 71, of Sacramento, California. “For people who are immunocompromised, if there aren’t enough people vaccinated, we lose the ring that’s protecting us. We’re totally vulnerable.”
The Trump administration on May 20 rolled out tougher approval requirements for covid shots, described as a covid-19 “vaccination regulatory framework,” that could leave millions of Americans who want boosters unable to get them.
Vaccine opponents and skeptics in charge of federal health agencies — starting at the top with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are restricting access to covid shots that were a signature accomplishment of President Donald Trump’s first term and cost taxpayers about $13 billion to develop, produce, and distribute. The agencies are narrowing vaccination recommendations, pushing drugmakers to perform costly clinical studies, and taking other steps that will result in fewer people getting protection from a virus that still kills hundreds each week in the U.S.
“There are hundreds of thousands of people who rely on these vaccines,” said Saltzman, 71, of Sacramento, California. “For people who are immunocompromised, if there aren’t enough people vaccinated, we lose the ring that’s protecting us. We’re totally vulnerable.”
The Trump administration on May 20 rolled out tougher approval requirements for covid shots, described as a covid-19 “vaccination regulatory framework,” that could leave millions of Americans who want boosters unable to get them.
Read the rest at the link. You can also check out this article at Technology Review: The FDA plans to limit access to covid vaccines. Here’s why that’s not all bad.
Trump simply doesn’t care if Americans die. That’s obvious based on the way he dealt with Covid during his first term. He seems willing to let RFK Jr. do whatever he wants. So who can Americans turn to for guidance and access to vaccines and treatments?
That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?
#CovidVaccines #Covid19Deaths #CryptoCurrency #FDA #HarvardUniversity #internationalUniversityStudents #KristiNoem #NationalSecurityCouncil #NSC #RobertFKennedyJr_ #TrumpCorruption
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YOUTHJUICE rating: 3 stars ⭐⭐⭐.
HEBE was supposed to give me the heebie-jeebies, but the novel stole its own thunder almost immediately. A slow horror buildup would have been ideal in the gothic horror novel youthjuice by E.K. Sathue (Penguin Random House, June 4, 2024).
Sophia is the new Creative Director for HEBE, a cosmetics company with products that work a bit too well at erasing wrinkles and scars, and a cultish, ageless CEO named Tree who says things like “Call me your True North.” Narcissist much? A motif of Hebe is that looking young and gorgeous and being a good and moral person are one and the same.
Thanks to Edelweiss Plus Above the Treeline and Penguin Random House for sending this book to me for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
Besides spoiling its own shocker, the novel suffers from overwriting with tortured metaphors, and a clumsy dual timeline. Would editors please stop insisting upon dual timelines when they are not working and just add to the readers’ confusion?
The novel nevertheless has a certain propulsion as Sophia is lured into the inner circle of the company and changes herself utterly to fit in, Devil-Wears-Prada style.1“The Devil Wears Prada” is both a 2003 novel by Lauren Weisberger and a 2006 movie starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway that I’ve probably seen five times. Sophia’s characterization could have been stronger, but I did keep reading.
I was satisfied by the ending, with comeuppance for the baddies and a thought-provoking message. Fashion horror and cosmetic horror have enormous potential as a subgenre, to say nothing of cosmetic surgery horror combined with an age-positive and body-positive message. youthjuice felt relevant personally: while I want to be Jamie Lee Curtis and be cool about aging, I found a crepe-y little fold above my right eye last week and flipped out. Despite my best intentions, I don’t wanna go there.
Reading in context:
STARDUST by Neil Gaiman (1999) is the obvious read-alike, with malicious witches who are determined to stay young.
WOMEN ROWING NORTH: NAVIGATING LIFE’S CURRENTS AND FLOURISHING AS WE AGE by Mary Pipher (Bloomsbury, 2019) is a five-star read.
Pretty much anything by Anne Lamott on aging and what she calls the “third third of life” is stellar; you can start with this essay.
What I’m reading right now:
THE DJINN WAITS A HUNDRED YEARS by Shubhnum Khan (Penguin Random House, January 9, 2024).
#youthjuice #EKSathue #horror #gothic #aging #fashion #TheDevilWearsPrada #LaurenWeisberger #Stardust #NeilGaiman #WomenRowingNorth #MaryPipher #AnneLamott
https://jillsreads.com/youthjuice/
#aging #AnneLamott #EKSathue #fashion #gothic #horror #LaurenWeisberger #MaryPipher #NeilGaiman #Stardust #TheDevilWearsPrada #WomenRowingNorth #youthjuice
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April 9, 2024YOUTHJUICE rating: 3 stars ⭐⭐⭐.
HEBE was supposed to give me the heebie-jeebies, but the novel stole its own thunder almost immediately. A slow horror buildup would have been ideal in the gothic horror novel youthjuice by E.K. Sathue (Penguin Random House, June 4, 2024).
Sophia is the new Creative Director for HEBE, a cosmetics company with products that work a bit too well at erasing wrinkles and scars, and a cultish, ageless CEO named Tree who says things like “Call me your True North.” Narcissist much? A motif of Hebe is that looking young and gorgeous and being a good and moral person are one and the same.
Thanks to Edelweiss Plus Above the Treeline and Penguin Random House for sending this book to me for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
Besides spoiling its own shocker, the novel suffers from overwriting with tortured metaphors, and a clumsy dual timeline. Would editors please stop insisting upon dual timelines when they are not working and just add to the readers’ confusion?
The novel nevertheless has a certain propulsion as Sophia is lured into the inner circle of the company and changes herself utterly to fit in, Devil-Wears-Prada style.1“The Devil Wears Prada” is both a 2003 novel by Lauren Weisberger and a 2006 movie starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway that I’ve probably seen five times. Sophia’s characterization could have been stronger, but I did keep reading.
I was satisfied by the ending, with comeuppance for the baddies and a thought-provoking message. Fashion horror and cosmetic horror have enormous potential as a subgenre, to say nothing of cosmetic surgery horror combined with an age-positive and body-positive message. youthjuice felt relevant personally: while I want to be Jamie Lee Curtis and be cool about aging, I found a crepe-y little fold above my right eye last week and flipped out. Despite my best intentions, I don’t wanna go there.
Reading in context:
STARDUST by Neil Gaiman (1999) is the obvious read-alike, with malicious witches who are determined to stay young.
WOMEN ROWING NORTH: NAVIGATING LIFE’S CURRENTS AND FLOURISHING AS WE AGE by Mary Pipher (Bloomsbury, 2019) is a five-star read.
Pretty much anything by Anne Lamott on aging and what she calls the “third third of life” is stellar; you can start with this essay.
What I’m reading right now:
THE DJINN WAITS A HUNDRED YEARS by Shubhnum Khan (Penguin Random House, January 9, 2024).
#youthjuice #EKSathue #horror #gothic #aging #fashion #TheDevilWearsPrada #LaurenWeisberger #Stardust #NeilGaiman #WomenRowingNorth #MaryPipher #AnneLamott
https://jillsreads.com/youthjuice/
#aging #AnneLamott #EKSathue #fashion #gothic #horror #LaurenWeisberger #MaryPipher #NeilGaiman #Stardust #TheDevilWearsPrada #WomenRowingNorth #youthjuice
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YOUTHJUICE rating: 3 stars ⭐⭐⭐.
HEBE was supposed to give me the heebie-jeebies, but the novel stole its own thunder almost immediately. A slow horror buildup would have been ideal in the gothic horror novel youthjuice by E.K. Sathue (Penguin Random House, June 4, 2024).
Sophia is the new Creative Director for HEBE, a cosmetics company with products that work a bit too well at erasing wrinkles and scars, and a cultish, ageless CEO named Tree who says things like “Call me your True North.” Narcissist much? A motif of Hebe is that looking young and gorgeous and being a good and moral person are one and the same.
Thanks to Edelweiss Plus Above the Treeline and Penguin Random House for sending this book to me for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
Besides spoiling its own shocker, the novel suffers from overwriting with tortured metaphors, and a clumsy dual timeline. Would editors please stop insisting upon dual timelines when they are not working and just add to the readers’ confusion?
The novel nevertheless has a certain propulsion as Sophia is lured into the inner circle of the company and changes herself utterly to fit in, Devil-Wears-Prada style.1“The Devil Wears Prada” is both a 2003 novel by Lauren Weisberger and a 2006 movie starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway that I’ve probably seen five times. Sophia’s characterization could have been stronger, but I did keep reading.
I was satisfied by the ending, with comeuppance for the baddies and a thought-provoking message. Fashion horror and cosmetic horror have enormous potential as a subgenre, to say nothing of cosmetic surgery horror combined with an age-positive and body-positive message. youthjuice felt relevant personally: while I want to be Jamie Lee Curtis and be cool about aging, I found a crepe-y little fold above my right eye last week and flipped out. Despite my best intentions, I don’t wanna go there.
Reading in context:
STARDUST by Neil Gaiman (1999) is the obvious read-alike, with malicious witches who are determined to stay young.
WOMEN ROWING NORTH: NAVIGATING LIFE’S CURRENTS AND FLOURISHING AS WE AGE by Mary Pipher (Bloomsbury, 2019) is a five-star read.
Pretty much anything by Anne Lamott on aging and what she calls the “third third of life” is stellar; you can start with this essay.
What I’m reading right now:
THE DJINN WAITS A HUNDRED YEARS by Shubhnum Khan (Penguin Random House, January 9, 2024).
#youthjuice #EKSathue #horror #gothic #aging #fashion #TheDevilWearsPrada #LaurenWeisberger #Stardust #NeilGaiman #WomenRowingNorth #MaryPipher #AnneLamott
https://jillsreads.com/youthjuice/
#aging #AnneLamott #EKSathue #fashion #gothic #horror #LaurenWeisberger #MaryPipher #NeilGaiman #Stardust #TheDevilWearsPrada #WomenRowingNorth #youthjuice
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YOUTHJUICE rating: 3 stars ⭐⭐⭐.
HEBE was supposed to give me the heebie-jeebies, but the novel stole its own thunder almost immediately. A slow horror buildup would have been ideal in the gothic horror novel youthjuice by E.K. Sathue (Penguin Random House, June 4, 2024).
Sophia is the new Creative Director for HEBE, a cosmetics company with products that work a bit too well at erasing wrinkles and scars, and a cultish, ageless CEO named Tree who says things like “Call me your True North.” Narcissist much? A motif of Hebe is that looking young and gorgeous and being a good and moral person are one and the same.
Thanks to Edelweiss Plus Above the Treeline and Penguin Random House for sending this book to me for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
Besides spoiling its own shocker, the novel suffers from overwriting with tortured metaphors, and a clumsy dual timeline. Would editors please stop insisting upon dual timelines when they are not working and just add to the readers’ confusion?
The novel nevertheless has a certain propulsion as Sophia is lured into the inner circle of the company and changes herself utterly to fit in, Devil-Wears-Prada style.1“The Devil Wears Prada” is both a 2003 novel by Lauren Weisberger and a 2006 movie starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway that I’ve probably seen five times. Sophia’s characterization could have been stronger, but I did keep reading.
I was satisfied by the ending, with comeuppance for the baddies and a thought-provoking message. Fashion horror and cosmetic horror have enormous potential as a subgenre, to say nothing of cosmetic surgery horror combined with an age-positive and body-positive message. youthjuice felt relevant personally: while I want to be Jamie Lee Curtis and be cool about aging, I found a crepe-y little fold above my right eye last week and flipped out. Despite my best intentions, I don’t wanna go there.
Reading in context:
STARDUST by Neil Gaiman (1999) is the obvious read-alike, with malicious witches who are determined to stay young.
WOMEN ROWING NORTH: NAVIGATING LIFE’S CURRENTS AND FLOURISHING AS WE AGE by Mary Pipher (Bloomsbury, 2019) is a five-star read.
Pretty much anything by Anne Lamott on aging and what she calls the “third third of life” is stellar; you can start with this essay.
What I’m reading right now:
THE DJINN WAITS A HUNDRED YEARS by Shubhnum Khan (Penguin Random House, January 9, 2024).
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https://jillsreads.com/youthjuice/
#aging #AnneLamott #EKSathue #fashion #gothic #horror #LaurenWeisberger #MaryPipher #NeilGaiman #Stardust #TheDevilWearsPrada #WomenRowingNorth #youthjuice