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13-reasons-ideas · 4 years

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Can’t Go Back Part 7

A/N: I had some issues with inspiration for this chapter, so it is more of a filler chapter. I hope you still like it. The next chapters will be better, I promise. It’s a shorter one. Like and reblog. As always, much love.

I was in the kitchen typing feverously on my laptop when Monty got home from practice. “Hey Addy. What are you working on?”

“College essay.” I replied, not looking up at him.

“How’s it going?”

“Fine. I have to write like three more though after this one. And my top three schools want creative writing samples.”

Monty whistled. “You know it’s only the end of October, right?”

“I know but early decisions are due by like the middle of November for Ole Miss and NYU. My safety schools are due by mid-December.”

“You could also apply for regular admission too. Save yourself the stress rash.”

“Says the boy who has athletic scholarships coming out his ass. You don’t need to make a decision until regular admissions open, at the earliest.”

“With your grades, I see no reason you wouldn’t get an academic scholarship babe.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do though. Have a little hope.”

“I’ll try. For now though, I’m going to spend as much of my free time as I can, writing essays and hounding my teachers for recommendation letters.”

“Okay then. Have you eaten yet?”

“Depends what you consider eating.”

“Food. Not dry cereal, real food.”

“Oh, then no.”

“Addison.”

I looked up at him, “Montgomery.”

“It’s almost seven.”

“Really?” I looked at the clock on my laptop and saw the time for the first time since I got home. “Oh, look at that.”

“Yeah. What do you want to eat?”

“Doesn’t matter, what did you want? I stopped at Walplex on the way home for a few things.”

He opened the fridge and examined the contents. “Was the chicken for something specific?”

“The fresh or roasted?”

“Roasted.”

“No, it was fresh when I got to the store and it was on sale, so I shredded it when we got home. What did you have in mind?”

“Chicken pot pie?”

“Even though it has vegetables?”

“There’s enough stuff in it to cover up the vegetable taste.”

“Sure. Whatever chicken we don’t use tonight can go in the freezer. Can you proofread this after dinner?”

“Of course.” He said as he grabbed one of the ziplocs of chicken. I saved my work and got up to help him. Together, we made dinner, with only the occasional snack or errant vegetable being tossed at each other. The puff pastry I had spent the entire weekend making, worked well. That went in the freezer along with the chicken at the end of the night.

The following morning went a little smoother than usual. Monty was a little less of a pain to get out of bed, so I didn’t need to call Charlie or make outrageous requests to get him up. I brought my laptop to school so I could work on my applications during my free period. “You need to give yourself a break Addy.”

“Can’t take a break. This determines my future. It determines our future, depending where I get in.”

“I suppose you’re right.” I smiled at him as we left the house, knowing the issue would be at rest for now.

We met Scott and Charlie to grab coffee from Monet’s before school. As we were waiting for our orders, Justin and Clay came in. “Oh joy. Here we go again.” Monty muttered to Charlie. They ordered and walked over to us.

“Hey Addy.”

“Hey Justin. Clay.”

“Hey.” Clay replied, awkwardly nodding to Monty and his friends.

“Something is different about you.” Justin said.

“I think it’s called, ‘I didn’t go to sleep until three thirty in the morning and had an energy drink before breakfast.’” Monty said.

“Ew.” Clay muttered, under his breath. We still heard him though.

“Not that it’s gross, but we weren’t up. I’ve been told that’s not allowed by my surgeon. She was up writing until three thirty, when I rolled over and the light woke me up.”

“Oh.” Clay blushed, embarrassed.

“College applications.” I explained.

“It’s October Addy.” Clay pointed out.

“That’s what I told her last night. Would she listen?”

“No. Of course, she wouldn’t.” Clay chuckled. I stood to the side, watching their interaction, my eyes shifting between Scott and Charlie, and Justin. They’re seeing this too, right?

“She brought her laptop with her so she can work on them more.”

“Of course, she did.”

“Okay. I have my coffee we can go now.”

“Sure.”

“Hey Addison, lunch today?” Clay asked after us.

“Okay. I’ll see you then.” I said Monty put his arm around my shoulder and we left the café.

Since we were running early again, I spent the morning with Monty’s friends. “How’s your knee today?” Mark asked.

“It’s fine. Same as yesterday.”

“How long did the doctor say you would be on crutches?”

“A few weeks. Then I can start walking and doing physical therapy. The goal is being back to training and sports by sometime between February and April.”

“That really sucks. Got any more stories for us this morning Addison?”

“Hmmm… let me think.” I adjusted my bag while I thought. My ring caught the light glimmering brightly and I smiled. I think I’m going to like this wearing my ring in public thing.

“Does he actually help you grocery shop or does he just put random stuff in the cart?” Garrison asked.

“He helps, usually. Sometimes it’s more of a ‘can we get this’ kind of help, but he helps yes. That reminds me, we need to go grocery shopping on Saturday.”

“Okay. Why?”

“My mom’s birthday dinner Sunday night? It’s on the calendar in the kitchen. Also, do you enjoy having food in the house?”

“Right, right. Do you think she would be mad if I got her another world’s best professor mug? And yes. Food is nice.”

“Mad? No. Annoyed? Probably.”

“What do you suggest I get her then?”

“A candle? Women like candles.” Aaron suggested. Monty gave him a jokingly unamused look and then looked at me.

“Trust me, I know. I made the mistake of saying she could use the joint chequing account at Bath and Body Works. The house smelled like watermelon for weeks. And almost fell over when I saw how much it cost.”

“It was watermelon lemonade or rosewater and ivy. We both agreed that one smelled bad. You left out the part where you smelled like every other candle in the store and didn’t like the ones I picked. She likes tea?”

“To go with her various world’s best professor mugs. I like the way you think.”

“You like a lot of things about me.” I rolled my eyes, leaning against his side gently.

“You guys are cute. It’s gross.” Bryce commented.

“Thanks Bryce.” I smiled brightly, really laying on the cheeriness in my tone. He merely raised his brow. The first bell rang, cutting our story time short. “I’ll see you after school babe. I love you.” I stood on my tip toes and kissed Monty, perhaps more deeply than was decent at school or around his friends. His eyes were wide but had a vaguely hungry look to them.

“I love you too.” With that, I scurried off to US government and politics.

At lunch, I walked into the cafeteria and people stared at me, not that I expected anything less. It was still rather off-putting though. Clay and Justin waved me over to their table. Alex scooted over so I could sit next to him. “How was class?” he asked, unsure of where to start our conversation. It’s not like I’m suddenly a different person Alex. I’m the same as I was before everyone knew about Monty.

“It was okay. US government was boring, but it usually is. I got a literary review back in English literature. I did better on it than I expected.”

“Addy, you usually do better than you expect.” Justin complained from across the table.

“Yes, because if I set my expectations low, then I’m not crushed when I don’t do as well. But how was class for you Alex?”

“Boring. History was boring and Coach Rick hates me so there’s that. Biology was a nightmare. We were talking about our frog dissection coming up and these two cheerleaders practically screamed when we watched the video on it.”

“Well that sounds entertaining.”

“How are your applications coming Addy?” Clay asked.

“They’re coming. It’s just kind of annoying. I need creative writing samples to send along with my essays, so I was up late writing. Nothing was flowing the way I wanted it to.”

“I know the feeling.” He muttered. Justin laughed while Alex and I just shared a look. Clearly, we were missing something. Zach came over to our table and sat down.

“Hey guys.” He greeted, pulling out his lunch.

“Hey.” I replied. I was still slightly ticked off about his comments yesterday.

“Not sitting with Monty today Addy?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. Do you want some of my crackers?”

“Uh… sure?” This is odd. He passed me the container and I took some, placing them on top of my own container. There was an awkward silence, none of us really knowing how to proceed. I braced myself when Zach opened his mouth to speak.

“So, can you tell us how meeting his parents went?”

“Sure?” I asked, confused that that was what he wanted to hear about. “It was strange. His dad doesn’t like anyone really, so it wasn’t surprising when he didn’t like me, but I wasn’t exactly expecting him to immediately not like me. Lucy liked me right away, but I’m still not sure if it’s because it was so rare for him to bring a girl home, or if she actually liked me.”

“What happened?”

“His dad, ever the charmer and wonderful husband and father, sat on his ass and stared at Monty and I while his mom made dinner. Like, I don’t think he stopped looking at us. It was so uncomfortable and definitely didn’t help my nerves. At dinner-Lucy insisted, Monty tried to keep it to coffee or something short-they asked me a lot of questions. His dad liked me even less when I said I want to be a writer.”

“They didn’t try to argue with you or anything?”

“Nope. Thankfully they didn’t. Because I might have cried if they did, I was so nervous.”

“Is his dad really as bad as everyone thinks?” Clay asked.

“Honestly Clay?”

“Yeah.”

“I think he might be worse.” My friends sat with that assessment of character for a while before we moved onto lighter topics, average high school stuff. Shortly before lunch ended, Justin suggested an… interesting idea.

“Why don’t you invite us over for dinner this weekend? They can get to know Monty better and maybe whatever weird thing happened this morning can be avoided again.” I blinked at him, unsure if he was being serious or not. He nodded at me, encouragingly.

“It would probably have to be Saturday. It’s my mom’s birthday Sunday and we are having her over for dinner. And I need to discuss it with Monty first.”

“That’s okay, right guys?” He prompted, looking around the table. My friends nodded, though seemed reluctant.

“I’ll talk to him tonight and let you know tomorrow?”

“Great.” He agreed, as the bell rang.

Oh, what have I gotten myself into now? Hopefully Monty is open to spending an evening with my friends.

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guilianafms · 4 years

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new york’s very own guiliana rasananda was spotted on broadway street in gucci marmont logo - embellished leather sandals . your resemblance to lalisa manoban is unreal . according to tmz , you just had your twenty third birthday bash . while living in nyc , you’ve been labeled as being doctrinaire , but also pragmatic . i guess being an aquarius explains that . three things that would paint a better picture of you would be the lingering scent of her perfume after she’s long gone , a fenty beauty gloss bomb as her staple to any makeup look , and the glitter of diamond encrusted jewelry on tanned skin .

hello ladies , gents , and nonbinary pals ! my name’s jin and i’m super stoked to be here ! i’ve seen this group in the tags over the years , and i decided that it was high time for me to slide in ( and now that my school’s closed .... indefinitely .... i’ve got the time ) . giuliana is fairly new so i’m still working out some kinks that may arise , but i have a pretty good idea of the direction i want her to go in ! i can’t believe that this is my first time playing lalisa in a couple of years , but since the chance arose , i decided to take it . i won’t chat too much , and i need to make a new d.iscord since i forgot the password to my old one but if anyone wants to plot , feel free to slide into my dms ( or i’ll slide into yours ! )

basic information .

FULL NAME : guiliana kanya rasananda .

NICKNAME(S) : gigi , lia , liana , ana .

BIRTHDATE + AGE : february 12th + 23 .

ZODIAC : aquarius .

HOMETOWN : new york , ny .

GENDER : cis female .

NATIONALITY : thai - american .

ETHNICITY : thai .

HEIGHT : 5′6″ .

LABEL(S) : the amaranth , the vixen , the trust fund baby , and the princess .

ROMANTIC ORIENTATION : biromantic .

SEXUAL ORIENTATION : bisexual .

LANGUAGE(S) SPOKEN : english , thai , japanese , and learning spanish .

OCCUPATION : socialite , ‘ model ’ , and youtuber / social media influencer .

POSITIVES : clear - headed , assiduous , self - reliant , pragmatic , and cosmopolitan .

NEGATIVES : disputatious , exigent , doctrinaire , selfish , and unscrupulous .

PLAYLIST : roxanne / arizona zervas , bad guy / billie eilish , body / loud luxury ft. brando , nasa / ariana grande , mother’s daughter / miley cyrus , sway with me / saweetie w. galxara , say so / doja cat , mad at me. / kiana ledé , apeshit / the carters , elastic / joey purp , watermelon sugar / harry styles , ain’t my fault / zara larsson , lemon / n.e.r.d. ft. rihanna / nice for what / drake , sugar / brockhampton , icon / jaden smith , zimzalabim / red velvet , come thru / joji , in my head / ariana grande , broke bitch / tiny meat gang , honey / lay , deserve / kris wu ft. travis scott .

biography .

let’s see if we can keep this short , am i right ladies ?

ratana saelim has humble beginnings in bangkok . her parents owned a small restaurant in their neighborhood , and they lived comfortably , but ratana still had to work hard to ensure that she got into college and could stay in college . she often did her homework behind the counter of the restaurant , and eventually went on to attend bangkok university .

she met her future husband at bangkok university , a fellow student named kamnan rasananda . he was studying business while she was studying law . in contrast to ratana , kamnan grew up in an extremely affluent home and was set to inherit his family’s company . he was a year older than ratana , and the two got married after her graduation with her master’s degree . they settled in bangkok following their wedding .

the years passed , and the couple established themselves in their respective fields . kamnan started his own business in real estate and construction , so they decided to expand out of asia and into the states . they made their home new york city , and settled easily into a multi - million dollar penthouse on the upper east side . since they were to focused on their careers , it wasn’t until they reached their mid - thirties when they had their first and only child , a daughter they named guiliana .

guiliana was a beautiful little baby who has an infectious personality while growing up . ratana and kamnan may have been busy people , but they never had an issue with putting work on pause to spend time with their daughter . the couple supported their daughter in everything that she did , and that even included when she turned fourteen and decided that she wanted to start doing youtube videos .

going through high school , guiliana had been a member of the photography and yearbook clubs , and this was at the same time that she started to truly focus on her channel . of course , her content at the time was quite cringy ( shoutout to that one song that everyone used in morning routines ) . as the years passed , she obtained the right equipment to make her content better .

by her senior year of high school , her channel grew to massive numbers . she dropped the makeup videos since she found that she was more interested in fashion than makeup , and was comfortable with sharing her personal style . she got a lot of backlash because she grew up rich and people often felt that she was ‘ flaunting ’ her lifestyle , but really , most of her clothes from the places that were often the rage at the time ( urban outfitters , brandy , etc ) with the occasional luxury piece like a purse or something .

now , she isn’t that active on youtube anymore since she’s grown into more of a socialite , but she’ll still do weekly vlogs , catching up videos , and her fashion videos . despite not being that active , her channel is still growing and has now amassed five million subscribers .

personality .

guiliana has been a part of youtube since she was a fourteen year old , so she’s been able to start ignoring the haters ! quite honestly has the most idgaf attitude towards people who have anything to say about her only showing luxury outfits and such on her channel . that’s all she knows since she grew up in that , but quite frankly she doesn’t care !

out of all of her labels , i’d say she mostly resonates with the trust fund baby . outside of her youtube channel , guiliana doesn’t do much other than spend money and sleep until eleven so don’t expect her to be out there making businesswoman moves .

don’t give her a compliment because what’s the saying ... give her an inch and she’ll take a mile ? that’s guiliana to a T ! she knows that she’s cute and her parents have only ever praised her , so she’s got something of an over inflated ego at times . she can go on and on , so please tell her ass to shut up if she starts taking it too far !

headcanons .

a born and bred new yorker , guiliana doesn’t possess a driver’s license . she gets driven around in a bentley bentayga and when her driver’s not available , she exclusively uses uber black to get around the city .

her style is pretty similar to lisa’s where one day she’s exclusively wearing streetwear , another day she’s a bit more feminine , and then sometimes she’s wearing pieces straight off the runway ! when it comes to her more feminine style i think of the youtuber kerina wang .

she’s most comfortable when she’s in her apartment . usually , she’s only wearing a lingerie set ( not the entire thing ) and lounging around . she’ll throw on a robe or something to answer the door , so just call her ahead of time .

i can’t make up my mind on how guiliana usually has her hair ( since lisa switches between long and short ) so we’ll just say that she gets extensions a lot ! currently , i love her long brown hair so click for reference here .

she has no real plans for the future ? she’s kinda of taking it day by day and enjoying her twenties while she has them . right now her main focus is her instagram and her youtube , and she has no real aspirations to do anything outside of that at the moment .

never leaves the house without wearing a pair of heels ? even when it’s cold outside , she’s wearing ankle boots with a heel or the ever elegant over - the - knee boots .

her go - to drink from starbucks is a cold brew with vanilla sweet cream . she doesn’t drink coffee with sugar .

wanted connections .

i’ll more than likely end up reblogging things into the tag i made for these , but since there’s nothing there right now , i’ll just list off some specifics that i’d love to have ! if none of these are to your taste , we could always brainstorm , work off chemistry , or let me know if there’s something that you think guiliana could fill !

i might end up sending this in to the main , but i’d love to have the fiancé that she left at the altar ! truth be told , i kind of feel as though she may have done it simply because she finally realized that things were moving too fast and she kinda of needed to pump the breaks ? she definitely didn’t do it in the best way , but it could be an interesting relationship / dynamic to explore .

she’s been in new york since forever so i just imagine there being a slew of connections stemming from that ? friendships , rivalries , and romantic connections ! idk why i love them so much , but i’d really love for her to have an ex best friend . we can determine why their friendship ended , but i really love exploring the demise of relationships .

my brain is blanking so 🤠 .

#wealthyhq:intro #shout out to the tnu / swt albums #really got me through this FNJSDBFHDS

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citylightsbooks · 4 years

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5 Questions with Megan Fernandes, Author of Good Boys

Megan Fernandes is a writer and academic living in New York City. She is the author of The Kingdom and After (Tightrope Books 2015) and the new book of poems, Good Boys (published by Tin House). Her work has been published or is forthcoming in the New Yorker, Tin House, Ploughshares, Denver Quarterly, Chicago Review, Boston Review, Rattle, Pank, the Common, Guernica, the Academy of American Poets, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency, among others. She is a poetry reader for The Rumpus and an Assistant Professor of English at Lafayette College. She holds a PhD in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an MFA in poetry from Boston University. She reads from her new book Good Boys with special guests at City Lights Bookstore on Tuesday, February 25th.

***

City Lights: If you’ve been to City Lights before, what’s your memory of the visit? If you haven’t been here before, what are you expecting?

Megan Fernandes: Of all the places I’m reading this Spring (and it’s probably not politic to say this), I am most excited to read at City Lights. I’ve never been, but I understood at a very young age that the bookstore symbolized possibility, spontaneity, digression, lostness, community, etc. As a teenager, I read a lot of Beat literature, my favorites being Dharma Bums, In the Night Café, and everything Ginsberg. I was compelled by their portraits of America’s expansiveness. And I also just think as an immigrant kid not born in the USA, the Beats gave me some sense of American geography. I went to Colorado for the first time last year and I had this memory of my first impression of Colorado as a place described in On the Road. When traveling across the country, I often have Ferlinghetti’s feverish, twitchy, carnivalesque poetics in my head. I also think in this indirect way, Beat literature shaped some of my thoughts around feminist thinking as I was conscious of my orientation as outside certain privileges of the “male, womanizing adventurer” often romanticized in Beat lit. I had to interrogate what it meant to feel intimacies with Ginsberg and Duncan who were destabilizing masculinities and cultural logics of hate.

And so what I learned from City Lights and Beat lit is really something about the relationship between myth-making and counter-culture communities. I’m understanding the truly expansive network of the movement in so much more detail right now while reading an advanced copy of a fabulous new book called The Beats: A Literary History by Steven Belletto.

What are you reading right now?

I’m reading a book called Dapper Dan: Made in Harlem, co-written by Dapper Dan himself and my good friend, Mikael Awake. It’s a history of Dapper Dan’s iconic work in fashion, of course, while being really intimate. And it’s just as much a history of his family’s internal dynamics and, through his family, New York City at large. In particular, 1970’s NYC is so vividly, brilliantly wrought in this book.

There’s this one section where Dap is at Iona College at a lecture on protohistory and the professor, a Czech immigrant, tells the class that “In order for man to have survived during those ancient times… he must have had powers that he doesn’t have now. The only people that could possibly still have these powers today are the black and brown people on the planet” and when Dap hears this, he is transfixed. He says: “This is one of the most esteemed scholars at Iona College telling a packed lecture hall that black and brown people were the only ones on the planet who still had spiritual powers. How come this was my first time hearing about that? I looked around. I was the only black student in the class. I wasn’t tired anymore. He had my full attention… I said to myself, This is what I need to know. This is how I need to formulate myself.” I’m loving how the book captures these intense moments of transformation. I love that word choice: formulate. What poetic agency is modeled in that word? I needed that word the moment I read it.

Recently, I’ve also read Samiya Bashir’s Field Theories and Edgar Kunz’s Tap Out. Samiya wrote this legitimately weird and imaginative book that feels like it’s made out of the time-space continuum. Some cosmic materiality is really showing up in that book. I remember this line: “A body. A zoo. A lovely savannah. Walls of clear, clean glass” and I’m just on a ride with the musicality of her shifting assonance. Plus, I know that writers like June Jordan and Toni Cade Bambara are operating influences/specters of the book and you can feel that energy. Edgar’s book is more narrative and quieter, but so devastating. I sort of get what makes his speakers tenderize if that makes sense. I think it’s the same phenomena that tenderizes me, too.

Some of my favorite novels of recent years includes A Questionable Shape by Bennett Sims, The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch, Sonora by Hannah Lillith Assadi, and very recently, The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead.

What book or writer do you always find yourself recommending?

I think Jean Toomer’s Cane is the most beautiful book of the 20th century. I remember just being blown away by its call and response, the repeating imagery of sun and smoke and pines. That book is so stunning. Other astounding work that I always recommend includes Mebvh McGuckian’s Captain Lavender, Anne Carson’s The Autobiography of Red, Evie Shockley’s The New Black, Franz Wright’s Walking to Martha’s Vineyard, Eleni Sikelianos’ Body Clock, Jorie Graham’s The Errancy, Bhanu Kapil’s The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, and Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann’s translations of Rilke. Those are my hard-hitters. Those books are why I became a poet.

What writers/artists/people do you find the most influential to the writing of this book and/or your writing in general?

You know, I collected poems while I was writing and editing this book. And I think those specific poems created a kind of constellation around me, almost protective, that kept me writing. Some of those poems include “The Long Recovery” by Ellen Bass, “A Matter of Balance,” by Evie Shockley, “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, “I am Not Seaworthy” by Toni Morrison, “Becoming Regardless” by Jack Spicer, “A New Bride Almost Visible in Latin” by Jack Gilbert, “To the Young Who Want to Die” by Gwendolyn Brooks and many, many others. Definitely O’Hara as well. He never leaves me. The most important poem of that little self-curated archive is Frank Bidart’s “Visions at 74” where he writes: “To love existence / is to love what is indifferent to you.” I remember reading that line and just losing it. I have been guided by so much of Bidart. And maybe my book is a little bit about how to sustain rage in the face of that which is indifferent to you, what cannot love you (both personally and abstractly). How do you sustain rage so as to not fall into despair?

I also listened to a variety of music while writing and editing. A mix between contemporary sad kid hip-hop, old school jazz and blues, gospel, 80’s bands, pop culture queens, 1970’s hypnotic modal vamp, classical Spanish guitar, electronic pop, really pretty varied. A few names that come to mind: KOTA the Friend, NoName, Vince Staples, Travis Scott, Miles Davis Quintet, Bessie Smith, Sam Cooke, The Knocks, Solange, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane, Big Mama Thornton, Miriam Makeba, Kamasi Washington, Thompson Twins, Misfits, Bowie, Talking Heads, Tears for Fears, Cher, Whitney Houston, Portishead, Goldfrapp, Memphis Slim, Dinah Washington, Alberto Iglesias, Gustavo Santaolalla, Holychild, Blood Orange, etc.

If you opened a bookstore, where would it be located, what would it be called, and what would your bestseller be?

My grandpa played violin on a ship that sailed between Tanga, Tanzania and Goa, India. I never had the chance to meet him. He died when my dad was sixteen, but I always thought about what that journey might have looked and felt like, its many hardships, but also the wonder of gazing out at the sea playing strings. For that reason, I’d love to open a bookstore that focused specifically on Indian Ocean diaspora and sold books exclusively by authors working, uncovering, or investigating the literature of that oceanic rim. I think there is something rich in thinking about books not necessarily focused on nation-statehood but thinking more about a kind of social-imaginary with a literature that is messy in its conceptualization and crosses, migrates, misses, and mythologizes across many cultures over generations. You could have sections on food, underwater exploration, piracy, long-distance intimacy, trade routes, empire, transnational feminism. I like the idea of a bookstore that is anti-genre and instead, organized by associative thinking and imagination. It would be a logistical nightmare. You would never find what you were looking for, but you might find something you didn’t know existed.

So yes, I’d vote for a little homegrown network of bookstores in India, East Africa, and actually, maybe one of them in Lisbon which is a city that has a long (and problematic) history with the Indian Ocean. I’ve spent a lot of time in Lisbon the past eight years of my life, spending time visiting family and researching the history of the Portuguese empire especially as it relates to my family history (my folks are third generation East African Portuguese colonized Indians). I have a lot of conflicting homelands which is a way of saying that there are times when I feel like I have nothing but a rootless present. That’s something I investigate in my work, that weird (a)temporality. And I’m drawn to the particular light of Lisbon which is quite unusual. I’d call the bookstore “Malaika” which means “Angel” in Swahili and is the favorite folk song of my parents who grew up in Tanzania. I like the idea of a bookstore in Lisbon with the name in Swahili run by a Goan-Canadian-American woman. That’s the world I grew up in… one of multiplicities.

#Megan Fernandas #City Lights Bookstore #Tin House Books #Good Boys

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theliberaltony · 4 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Donald Trump won the GOP nomination and then the presidency even as many prominent officials within the party opposed him. He spent much of his first two years in office struggling to get his policies enacted, with top advisers such as then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis essentially ignoring his demands. Early in his tenure, the GOP-controlled House and Senate adopted several measures, such as new sanctions on Russia, that it was clear Trump did not truly support, leaving the president looking irrelevant. At the same time, Trump was being investigated by the executive branch that he was running, in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.

Even as he was losing some fights in 2017 and 2018, though, Trump was also steadily beating back Republican resistance to his leadership. In many ways, 2019 was the culmination of that work. As we approach the end of the year, Trump is truly in charge of the party now — a fact that was powerfully illustrated last week week when every Republican member of the House opposed impeachment despite ample evidence that the president and his team tried to force the Ukrainian government to investigate the former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Let me unpack that idea by looking at power centers within the government and the broader Republican Party.

The executive branch

Trump spent the latter half of 2017 and all of 2018 gradually forcing out the more establishment Republicans who he had initially put into top jobs in his administration. That process was all but completed in 2019. He replaced Mattis, national security adviser John Bolton and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats — all of whom allowed their disagreements with Trump to become public — with people who were more likely to align his vision. One of the first moves of Robert O’Brien, the new national security adviser, was to reduce the number of non-poltical staffers working at the National Security Council, essentially an effort to prevent future anti-Trump whisberlowers.1 New Defense Secretary Mark Esper forced out Navy Secretary Richard Spicer amid tensions over Trump softening the punishments for a Navy Seal accused of war crimes in Iraq.

By far the most important personnel change was the confirmation of William Barr in February to run the Department of Justice. From downplaying Mueller’s findings before the special counsel’s report was publicly released to aggressively investigating the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, Barr is executing Trump’s agenda at DOJ in a way that Jeff Sessions never did.

Congress

The conressional GOP has become more and more aligned with Trump through two mechanisms: First, members are retiring and being replaced by more pro-Trump figures, and second, members who remain in office are increasingly aligning themselves with the president.

In 2018, 26 Republicans in the House and Senate opted to retire from politics rather than seek reelection. It was the second-biggest congressional exodus for the GOP since at least 1974. A similar trend has developed in 2019 (there are already 24 retirements) and I would expect more Republican lawmakers will head for the exits early next year. Trump isn’t the only reason that these members are retiring, but being a congressional Republican increasingly means defending whatever Trump does — and some GOP members don’t want to do that.

I haven’t comprehensively studied the comments about Trump and the voting behavior of Republicans who entered Congress in 2019 compared to the people they replaced. But looking at the broader story of what is happening in both the House and Senate suggests that the newer members are helping shift the congressional GOP closer to Trump. In Trump’s first two years, for example, then-Speaker Paul Ryan sometimes balked at the president’s demands, angering the House Freedom Caucus. But Ryan’s former No. 2, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, is now the top Republican in the House, and he’s gone from Trump skeptic to fierce loyalist. The House Republicans are now essentially one big Freedom Caucus, aligning with the president on nearly every issue.

In the Senate in 2017-2018, there were six GOP members who regularly criticized the president: Susan Collins of Maine, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Jeff Flake of Arizona, John McCain of Arizona, Lisa Murkowksi of Alaska and Ben Sasse of Nebraska. McCain resigned from the Senate and eventually died. Flake and Corker retired, and the latter was replaced by the very-pro-Trump Sen. Marsha Blackburn. Up for reelection next year and needing Republican votes to ensure he is not defeated in a GOP primary, Sasse has dialed down his criticism of the president. The Trump-skeptical wing of Senate Republicans is now really down to three people: newly elected Mitt Romney of Utah, Collins and Murkowski.

There are also significantly fewer GOP House members now than there were at the start of Trump’s tenure. So one element of the story here is that Republicans, particularly those in blue or purple areas, are losing elections in part because of Trump’s unpopularity. The 2018 midterms, for example, all but wiped out Republicans representing districts that were carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016. So the elected officials who remain are more likely to represent more conservative districts and states. And the GOP senators and representatives who are inclined to push back against Trump are more isolated as a result.

Matt Glassman, who studies Congress as a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute, argued that losing the House also in some ways strengthened the bond between congressional Republicans and the president. When congressional Republicans and Trump aren’t aligned on something, they blame their challenges on a common enemy: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“When the GOP controlled both chambers, they had to find ways to bury his Trumpy legislative agenda. Now they can just let Pelosi do that,” said Glassman.

The states

Let’s start with the governors. In 2017 and 2018, there were basically five Trump-skeptical Republican governors: Charlie Baker of Masachusetts, Larry Hogan of Maryland, John Kasich of Ohio, Brian Sandoval of Nevada and Phil Scott of Vermont. They opposed GOP efforts to repeal Obamacare — playing an important role in signaling that the party was not united on that issue, even as most congressional Republicans fell in line and backed the repeal efforts. But the Trump-skeptical gubernatorial ranks have since dropped — Kasich left office because of term limits, replaced by a Republican (Mike DeWine) who doesn’t publicly criticize Trump much. Sandoval also left because of term limits, replaced by a Democrat (Steve Sisolak.) There are also just fewer GOP governors today than there were when Trump was sworn in — the same blue wave that gave Democrats the House in the midterms also knocked several Republicans out of the top job in blue states.

We’ve also seen state Republican parties closely ally themselves with Trump in 2019. At the beginning of this year, I thought Trump might face a serious challenge in the Republican primaries. I was wrong. Former Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois and ex-Gov. William Weld of Massachusetts entered the race but never really gained any traction. But even if a real challenger had emerged, he or she would have had to overcome a huge barrier — GOP state party officials in several states have canceled caucuses and primaries to ensure that Trump doesn’t have to face any competitors in those states. Maybe the state parties would not have made those moves if Hogan or another Republican with more standing in the party were challenging the president, rather than Walsh, who served only one term in Congress, and Weld, who hasn’t held an elected office in years and last made news by running for vice president as a Libertarian.

But I tend to think that this is another example of the party bowing to Trump’s power — and that even a viable challenger would have been effectively shut out by the canceled primaries.

The courts

An alliance between the Federalist Society, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Trump has resulted in the president appointing 50 judges to appellate courts, nearly as many as Obama appointed (55) in eight years. And Trump, of course, has also made two Supreme Court appointments, with new Justice Brett Kavanaugh serving his first full year on high court in 2019.

Some of these judges, like Kavanaugh, would likely have been appointed by a President Ted Cruz or a President John Kasich. But I think it matters that more and more of Trump’s appointees are on the bench. Why? Because it’s likely that some of the cases that these judges are going to hear will be Trump-related questions that would likely not apply to a President Cruz or Kasich: Is the way that the Trump administration is trying to build additional barriers along the Mexico-U.S. border legal, considering Congress’s objections to some of this spending? Should the president have to release his tax returns? Should his aides have to testify on Capitol Hill?

These Trump-appointed judges, whatever their legal views, have some reason to be loyal to Trump, in a way that a conservative judge appointed by a president like Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush does not. Several of Trump’s appointees had questionable qualifications (according to legal experts) and might not have not been appointed by another GOP president. Trump stuck by Kavanaugh amid the sexual misconduct allegations, and Kavanaugh has said he is grateful for that support. Next summer, when the court rules on whether Trump must release his tax returns, could that gratitude color how Kavanaugh sees the case, which touches not on Trump’s policies but matters that are more about Trump personally?

Trump’s further consolidation of the GOP really matters. First, as I have written before, there is substantial conservative opposition to Trump. But it’s largely concentrated among former senior administration officials and members of Congress, as well as media figures who are on CNN and not Fox News. Trump’s GOP opponents increasingly raising their objections in spaces where they will not be heard by many GOP voters.

Secondly, if Republican members of Congress and even Trump-appointed judges are aligned with Trump, it makes it easier for Trump to cast any disagreement with him or his policy moves as simply Democrats opposing him because he’s a Republican. And the media covers partisan disputes in a less negative way for Trump than disputes that cross party lines.

Finally, the Republican Party’s near-total alignment with Trump makes it harder for GOP critics of the president to gain any traction. Romney seems to want to lead an insurgency among Republicans on Capitol Hill, but he can’t lead anything if he doesn’t have any followers. And so far, there is little indication that there’s a substantial bloc of Republicans on Capitol Hill who want to join Romney in taking on the president.

In short, it’s Trump’s Grand Old Party, now more than ever.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Perry Bacon Jr.

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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What Republicans Are Running For President This Year

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/what-republicans-are-running-for-president-this-year/

What Republicans Are Running For President This Year

The This Sounds Crazy But Hear Me Out Wild Card

GOP Senator Roy Blunt Says 2022 Will Be a Great Election Year for Republicans

Mike Lindell

Donald Trump wasnt the first celebrity businessman without any experience in elective office who got traction in a Republican presidential primary. In 2012, it was former Godfathers Pizza CEO Herman Cain. In 1996 and 2000, it was magazine publisher Steve Forbes. Back in 1940, utility executive Wendell Willkie snagged the GOP nomination.

Today, who is the most famous, politically active Republican businessman? MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. That may sound crazy, but no crazier than what we experienced in 2016.

Lindell is a leader of the bitter-enders trying to overturn the democratic results of the presidential election. He claims to have spent $1 million on legal work and Stop the Steal rallies to support Trumps delusional cause. On December 19, he tweeted out a call for Trump to impose martial law in these 7 states and get the machines/ballots! though he soon deleted the post.

He became a conservative darling in part because he heavily marketed his pillows on Fox News; in the second quarter of 2020, MyPillow was Fox Newss top advertiser, spending more than double the amount of the second-place company. But now he accuses Fox News, and its early call that Biden won Arizona, of conspiring to defeat Trump

What to watch for in 2021:While Lindell has been thinking about a Minnesota gubernatorial bid, he has managed to visit neighboring Iowa several times in 2020. Lets see which state he campaigns in more in 2021.

Filed Under:

Former Un Ambassador Nikki Haley

Haley gets a lot of buzz, and she has been actively courting attention since leaving the Trump administration almost two years ago. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump even considered pulling her in last summer to replace Vice President Mike Pence on the 2020 ticket to help with Trumps ailing numbers among women a move the husband-wife White House duo fervently denied.);

Haley moves up a notch based on consistent exposure since June, a prime speaking slot at the Republican National Convention on Monday night, and a strong showing of 11 percent support in the most-recent 2024 poll.;

The former South Carolina governor can stake claim to being popular among the world of Washington pundits and professional political types, many of whom were interviewed for this story and spoke very highly of her. But she has also been dinged by some operatives as more of a media creation than a serious contender for 2024.

Leaving the job was hard, but putting family first was more important. And I think now its about taking it a year at a time, she said earlier this year during a meeting of the Federalist Society.

William Henry Harrison Vs Martin Van Buren

Aware that Van Burens problems gave them a good chance for victory, the Whigs rejected the candidacy of Henry Clay, their most prominent leader, because of his support for the unpopular Second Bank of the United States. Instead, stealing a page from the Democratic emphasis on Andrew Jacksons military exploits, they chose William Henry Harrison, a hero of early Indian wars and the War of 1812. The Whig vice-presidential nominee was John Tyler, a onetime Democrat who had broken with Jackson over his veto of the bill rechartering the Second Bank.

Studiously avoiding divisive issues like the Bank and internal improvements, the Whigs depicted Harrison as living in a log cabin and drinking hard cider. They used slogans like Tippecanoe and Tyler too, and Van, Van, Van/Van is a used-up man, to stir voters. Harrison won by a popular vote of 1,275,612 to 1,130,033, and an electoral margin of 234 to 60. But the victory proved to be a hollow one because Harrison died one month after his inauguration. Tyler, his successor, would not accept Whig economic doctrine, and the change in presidential politics had little effect on presidential policy.

Recommended Reading: Percentage Of Americans That Are Republican

Im Running For President Because Its Time For New Leadership Because Its Time For New Energy And Its Time For A New Commitment To Make Sure That The Opportunities Getting Out There Being Able To Hear Peoples Concerns Address Them With New Ideas Has Been An Extraordinary Experience He Said

Biden thought hard about running in 2016, but he decided against it, being so soon after his son beaus death and. Running for president of the united states is an. But there is so much more to it. Joe biden opposed president reagans peace through strength that led to the fall of the berlin wall. And speaking of brand image i read the program of warren recently, and was tempted to give her a french honorary citizenship as she is trying to import.

Eight Republican 2024 Candidates Speak In Texas Next Week But Not Trump

WASHINGTON, April 30 A Republican Party event in Texas next week will hear from eight potential candidates for the partys presidential nomination in 2024, without former President Donald Trump, a source involved in the planning said on Friday.

The May 7 event at a hotel in Austin is being co-hosted by U.S. Senator John Cornyn and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, to thank donors who helped fund a voter registration drive and get-out-the-vote efforts in the state.

High-profile Republican politicians who are considering whether to seek the partys nomination in 2024 are expected to speak to the crowd of about 200 donors.

They include former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and U.S. senators Marco Rubio, Tim Scott and Rick Scott, the source said.

The event comes as Republicans wrestle with whether to try to move past Trump in the next election cycle or fall in line behind him. Trump told Fox Business Networks Maria Bartiromo on Thursday that he was 100% considering another run after losing in 2020 to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump was not invited to Texas, the source said. Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley was invited but was unable to attend, the source said.

Many Republican insiders doubt Trump will follow through on his musings about running for president in 2024, leaving a void that other party leaders will seek to fill.

Also Check: Kaine’s Lapel Pin

Notable Candidates Include Individuals Who Have Qualified To Appear On Enough State There Were 21 Candidates On The Ballot Each In Vermont And Colorado

Bush said in retrospect that the divisiveness of the primary challenge might have cost bush reelection. There are several people running for the republican nomination, but given the current president is a republican, he is the only one that matters. Notable candidates include individuals who have qualified to appear on enough state there were 21 candidates on the ballot each in vermont and colorado. While the republican and democratic nominees will be on the ballot in all states, independents must meet an array why is he running for president? Former congressmen joe walsh announces republican presidential primary challenge.

But it can be repaired by someone who can lead, and i ran for president to win and make a difference in our great country, swalwell photo: Since the current president is democrat, we already know who the democrat running for president will be . The only other person running worth mentioning is bill weld, former governor of massachusetts, who was the libertarian nominee for vp back in 2016. Other republicans have made it quite clear they dont see a path to the nomination for anyone but trump in 2020. I think that as a republican party, we have lost our way. mark sanford.

Lincoln Chafeewho Is He

The failson scion of a Rhode Island Republican family, Chafee served in the Senate as a Republican ; as governor, as an independent and then a Democrat ; and then ran for president as a Democrat in 2016.

Is he running? No. He filed papers to run for the Libertarian Party nomination on January 5, but dropped out on April 7.

Why did he want to run?

Who wanted him to run?

Could he have won the nomination? Given that he dropped his bid even without any serious rivals in the race, apparently not.

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Abortion Rights Drinking Age Drugs And More

At present, Weld is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Self-described as strongly pro-choice when it comes to abortion rights, he is also said to believe that drug use should not be considered a criminal offense. He feels the drinking age should be lowered but has not stated at what age it should be set.;

When it comes to matters of the military, Weld also draws a conservative line. He feels that America should withdraw its troops from foreign engagements and that the countrys efforts and resources should be refocused on domestic issues, in order to prosper.;According to Aljhazeera.com, Weld previously supported bans on assault weapons in the US.

Sen Elizabeth Warren D

Colorado’s only Republican governor elected within last 50 years says presidential race is over

After establishing a presidential exploratory committee just before New Year’s Day 2019, Warren officially joined the race in February with an event in Massachusetts.

“This is the fight of our lives,” the senator said. “The fight to build an America where dreams are possible, an America that works for everyone. I am in that fight all the way.”

The progressive candidate who ran against corruption and pumped out more than 50 policy proposals during her campaign, suspended her run after a lackluster finish in all four early voting states and on Super Tuesday — where she even came up short in her home state. Her best finish was in Iowa, where she came in third.

“I will not be running for president in 2020. But I guarantee I will stay in the fight for the hard-working folks across the country who’ve got the short end of the stick, over and over,” she told reporters at a media availability in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on March 5.

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Cancellation Of State Caucuses Or Primaries

The Washington Examiner reported on December 19, 2018, that the South Carolina Republican Party had not ruled out forgoing a primary contest to protect Trump from any primary challengers. Party chairman Drew McKissick stated, “Considering the fact that the entire party supports the president, we’ll end up doing what’s in the president’s best interest.” On January 24, another Washington Examiner report indicated that the Kansas Republican Party was “likely” to scrap its presidential caucus to “save resources”.

In August 2019, the Associated Press reported that the Nevada Republican Party was also contemplating canceling their caucuses, with the state party spokesman, Keith Schipper, saying it “isn’t about any kind of conspiracy theory about protecting the president;… He’s going to be the nominee;… This is about protecting resources to make sure that the president wins in Nevada and that Republicans up and down the ballot win in 2020.”

Kansas, Nevada and South Carolina’s state committees officially voted on September 7, 2019, to cancel their caucus and primary. The Arizona state Republican Party indicated two days later that it will not hold a primary. These four were joined by the Alaska state Republican party on September 21, when its central committee announced they would not hold a presidential primary.

Virginia Republicans decided to allocate delegates at the state convention.

Dwight D Eisenhower: Campaigns And Elections

The Campaign and Election of 1952:

During an extraordinary military career, Dwight D. Eisenhower had done some things that few, if any, Americans had ever experienced. But he had not done something that was extremely commonhe had never voted. Yet in 1948, many Americans hoped that the general would cast his first ballotfor himself as President. Even Harry S. Truman tried to interest Eisenhower in a run for the presidency. As the election year of 1948 approached, Truman, who became President when Franklin D. Roosevelt died in 1945, seemed to have little chance of winning a full term of his own. In a private meeting, Truman proposed that he and Eisenhower run together on the Democratic ticket, with Eisenhower as the presidential candidate and Truman in second position. Eisenhower rejected this astonishing offer and probably thought that he would never again have to consider the possibility of a run for the White House. He also spurned requests from prominent Republicans that he seek the GOP nomination for President.

Campaign Difficulties

“There was a time when I thought he would make a good President… That was my mistake.”

President Harry Truman, 1952

The Campaign and Election of 1956

The President Prevails

Read Also: What Republicans Voted To Impeach The President

Presidential Campaign And 2011 Hints At Presidential Run

In 2000, Trump for nomination as the Reform Party candidate for the but withdrew from the race in February 2000. A July 1999 poll matching him against likely Republican nominee and likely Democratic nominee showed Trump with seven percent support.

In 2011, Trump against President Barack Obama in , making his first speaking appearance at the in February 2011 and giving speeches in early primary states. In May 2011, he announced he would not run, and he endorsed in February 2012. Trump’s presidential ambitions were generally not taken seriously at the time.

Trump As A Stalking Horse

Of course, there was plenty of speculation during the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination that Trump was trying to sabotage the GOP candidates by saying outrageous things and making a mockery of the process in a bid to help Hillary Clinton win the election.

“Donald Trump is trolling the GOP,” political reporter Jonathan Allen wrote. Trump also threatened to run for president as an independent, a move many believed would siphon votes from the Republican nominee as other, similar candidates have done in the past.

Recommended Reading: How Many Americans Are Registered Republicans

Former Secretary Of State Mike Pompeo

If the 2024 election turns into a foreign policy debate, the 57-year-old Pompeo is in a strong position with his background as former secretary of state and CIA director.

During Pompeos recent speech at the Westside Conservative Club in Urbandale, Iowa, he gave a preview of some of the lines that might end up in his presidential stump speech. He said hes spent more time with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un than any other American, including basketball star Dennis Rodman, and talked about the threat he sees from China. His mention of the U.S. moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem during his tenure was met with applause.

Before serving in Trumps Cabinet, Pompeo blasted then-candidate Trump as an authoritarian. Pompeo made the remarks the day of the Kansas caucus in 2016, quoting Trump saying that if he told a soldier to commit a war crime, they would go and do it. Pompeo said the U.S. had spent 7½ years with an authoritarian president who ignored the Constitution, referencing former President Barack Obama, and we dont need four more years of that.

Pompeo served three full terms representing Kansas in the U.S. House before joining the Trump administration. He and his wife, Susan, have one child. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy and Harvard Law and served in the U.S. Army.

Donald J Trump Vs Hillary R Clinton

The 2016 election was unconventional in its level of divisiveness. Former first lady, New York Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton became the first woman to be nominated by a major party in a U.S. presidential election. Donald Trump, a New York real estate baron and reality TV star, was quick to mock fellow Republicans running for the nomination as well as his democratic opponent.

In what many political analysts considered a stunning upset, Trump, with his populist, nationalist campaign, lost the popular vote, but won the Electoral College, becoming the nations 45th president.

Popular Vote: 65,853,516 to 62,984,825 . Electoral College: 306 to 232 .

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Former South Bend Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg

Buttigieg first made a national name for himself with a bid for Democratic National Committee chair in 2017. He was the youngest candidate in the 2020 race, and could have become the first gay man to be elected president.

While he trailed many of his opponents in name recognition early on, Buttigieg argued that he could represent a generational shift in government, and speaks frequently of issues that will affect younger Americans, such as tax reform, gun control and climate change.

“I get the audacity of somebody like me talking about running for this office, but frankly it’s a leap for anybody,” Buttigieg said on ABC’s “This Week” in February. “And yet all of the people who had that job have been mortals who just bring their experience to the table. My experience is that of guiding a city through transformation, and I think a mayor at any level has the kind of executive frontline government experience and, by the way, problem-solving experience that we need more in Washington right now.”

Late on March 1, following the South Carolina primary and ahead of Super Tuesday, he said “the path has narrowed to a close” and announced that he was suspending his 2020 presidential campaign.

Trump Remains 2024 Candidate Of Choice For Most Republicans Poll Shows

How GOP retirements are making the 2022 midterm elections a Trump referendum

59% of Republican voters said they wanted Trump to play prominent role in party, but tens of thousands left after Capitol riot

If the 2024 Republican presidential primary were held today, Donald Trump would be the clear favorite to win big. That was the message from a Politico-Morning Consult poll released on Tuesday, three days after Trumps acquittal in his second impeachment trial, on a charge of inciting the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January.

Among Republican voters, 59% said they wanted Trump to play a prominent role in their party, up a whopping 18 points from the last such poll, taken in the aftermath of the Capitol riot. A slightly lower number, 54%, said they would back Trump in the primary.

Tens of thousands of Republicans left the party after the Capitol insurrection, and a majority of Americans have told other pollsters they would like to see Trump banished from politics.

Though the 45th president will be 78 by election day 2024, he will be able to run again if he chooses, having escaped being barred from office after a 57-43 Senate vote to convict with seven Republican defections but 10 votes short of the majority needed.

Mike Pences life was threatened by Trump supporters at the Capitol, as the vice-president presided over the ratification of electoral college results confirming Trumps defeat by Joe Biden. He placed second in the Politico-Morning Consult poll, with 12%.

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gmcfloppins · 6 years

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Mirror Memoirs The real Chapter Seven

Have some angst.

February 14, 1918. The birthday I spent in relative quarantine.

I lay on the bed in Mark’s family’s guest bedroom, reading a book Mr. James told me to read, called The Return of the Soldier. I guess he figured it would help me cope with what I was going through.

I hated the book. It reminded me of things I didn’t want to think about. So I lay there, in a guest bed, wearing boys clothes, and reading an expensive imported assigned book. The clothes, actually, weren’t as bad as I had expected. They couldn’t hold a candle to my dresses, but they were rather comfortable.

There was a knock on the door. “Miss Connor, your lunch.”

“Thank you,” I replied to the maid. I waited until I heard her walk away before I went to open the door and take the tray. It was a sandwich, same as it had been for the last ten days, with some sort of fruit and tea. Today, however, there was an extra plate with a cover on it.

I had a guess as to what it was, and I was hesitant to lift the cover.

A small cake, white-frosted, with a sugar rose on top.

I couldn’t stop the tears. They simply burned in my eyes until falling onto my lap.

It was a very kind gesture, but I didn’t want it. I wanted to go home. I didn’t want to spend my birthday stuck in a room, potentially very sick, away from my Papa, and Jacob, and Scott, and Eddie being across the sea. I just wanted to go home.

February 23, 1918. I had almost resigned to never leaving the room.

I never got mail from home, surprisingly. They were just across the street. School was tiring. I had nothing to do but read, and, frankly, I was bored out of my skull.

There was a knock on the door.

I sat on the bed, reading the same page for the tenth time in a row.

The knock repeated. “Talia?”

I jumped up, surprised. I hadn’t heard Jacob’s voice in over half a month. I ran over to the door as he opened it, jumping into his arms. We both fell to the floor, holding on to each other tightly.

“Damn, I missed you,” He mumbled, squeezing me. After a moment, he loosened his grip, and I pulled back. “I’m so sorry you had to stay so long.”

I stood, and he followed suit. “Is Scott…?”

“He’s been moved back to the hospital. He’s currently in quarantine, and they’re hoping he’ll get better.” He grabbed my hand. “Papa and I, by some incredible miracle, only had it for a week or so. Have you been coughing at all, Tali?”

I shook my head no as we started out of the house, and a small smile found its way onto his face.

“Good. That’s brilliant.” He waved a thank you to the maids as we left, and they nodded. “Now, Papa thinks it might be better for you to go straight home. I think that’s best, too.”

“But Scott-”

“Would kill me if I let you get sick, too.”

He took me across the street and back into my home. It smelled of ammonia all over, except for my room. The windows were wide open, letting in sunlight and a slight chill. Fresh flowers sat on my desk.

After getting changed into my own clothes, I went back downstairs. I knew the way to the hospital. It was around three when I left, and it was starting getting dark as I approached the hospital.

A nurse on her way home opened the door for me, giving me a strange look as she did so. I ignored her, making my way over to the front desk. I stood on the tips of my toes just so I could see the nurse shuffling her files around. She stopped, noticing me.

“Why, hello there, little girl,” She said, smiling over the desk at me. “What brings you here tonight?”

“I’m not a little girl, I’m eight years old! And I’m looking for my brother.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean to offend you, Miss!” Her smile grew, amused. “Who’s your brother?”

“Him name is Scott, and he’s got floppy yellow hair and glasses. Papa and Jacob said he’s really sick, but I haven’t seen him in weeks and I miss him a lot.”

I wasn’t an idiot. I knew she thought I was cute. It was wrong, but I was determined to use that to my advantage. So, as all children trying to get their way do, I summoned tears.

“He just got back from fighting, and-and…” I sniffed, wiping my eyes.

“Oh, darling, don’t cry!” The nurse rushed from behind the desk to give me a hug. “What’s your last name, dear?”

“C-connor,” I hiccuped. If I had not gotten a law degree, I might have made it on the silver screen.

She grabbed her folders, searching and mumbling frantically for Scott’s information. As soon as she had it, she walked back around the desk.

“Alright, dear,” She got down to my eye level. “Now, I’m not supposed to be doing this, but I won’t tell if you won’t.” She handed me a slip of paper. “He’s in this room. I believe it’s on the third floor. Can you find it yourself?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I wiped the rest of my tears away on my sleeve.

“Good luck, dear.” She smiled, patting my cheek gently, and went back to work as I started towards and up the stairs.

My legs were tired, but I believe I had never run faster in my life than when I ran up those stairs and through that hall on the third floor.

I skidded to a stop in front of the doorway. In the room, I could see rows of curtains and beds. I slowly walked in, pulling on a mask from a box labeled “unused”.

There were so many beds, but not all of them were occupied. In fact, half were empty. I felt the sudden urge to run, to get out as fast as I could before I got sick, too.

“Scott?” I asked, before I lost all nerve.

I heard a bed creaking in one of the curtained sections ahead of me, and I ran towards it. But the person in that section was old, dark-skinned, and wasting away.

“You’re...not Scott….” I started backing away as he looked at me.

The man nodded before bursting into a coughing fit. He turned away, covering his mouth, even though he was wearing a mask. He grabbed a handkerchief and, pulling his mask away, spat something bright red into it. He put his mask on again and turned back to me.

“I’m Mr. Comano,” He said. He stuck out his hand, but pulled back. “Sorry. Don’t want you to get sick.” He shuffled in his bed. “Yer lookin’ for Scott, huh?”

“Yes, sir.” I nodded, folding my hands behind my back.

“You must be ‘is l’il sister, then?”

I nodded again.

“Well, sorry to disappoint you, but as soon as he got here, he fell asleep. He’s been sleepin’ since. Sickness musta tired ‘im out.”

“I just want to see him.”

Mr. Comano stood. “A’right, follow me, then.” He started walking slowly, laboriously, towards the end of the curtain. “It’s just a few more rows down.”

“Alright.” I grabbed his hand as he led me. While he was startled, he didn’t pull away.

“I’m not gonna lie to ya. A soldier like Scott? His chances are slim, l’il sister. Ya just gotta keep up yer hope, though.” He looked down at me. “If you’re all smiles, he’ll be all smiles, see?”

I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Mr. Comano laughed. “I ain’t been called sir in a long time. I see no reason for you t’start now.”

I grinned under my mask.

He stopped at the end of a row. “A’right, baby. He’s right in there. He might be awake by now, but I doubt it.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Comano.” I smiled up at him, even though it was hidden by the mask. He smiled back, letting me go, and went back to his own little section.

I peeked behind the curtain, where Scott was, indeed, asleep. His glasses were on his nightstand, next to a picture of our family. I picked it up.

It was mother, holding a newborn version of me. I was asleep for that photo, and she was smiling. Papa had his arm around her, and a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. He was about twelve at that time. Scott and Jacob, ages eleven and ten, were sitting on the floor, holding teddy bears.

I bristled slightly as someone grabbed my hand, startling me.

“Sorry,” Scott whispered, slightly amused. “That is my tiny Tali, right?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

Scott pushed himself up, grunting a little in pain. “What’re you doing here?”

“I hadn’t seen you in weeks. I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

There was an awkward silence.

“Talia…” He squinted, as his glasses were still on the nightstand. “What time is it?”

“It’s about six in the evening.”

“Is Papa here?”

“No.”

Scott chuckled. “You’ll miss supper.” He grabbed my hand again. “Jeezums, I’m going to miss you.”

This grabbed my attention. “Miss me? Where are you going?”

“Oh, some smelly sanatorium.” He shrugged, swinging my hand. “I’ll be back, though. As soon as I’m well again, I’m coming home.” He smiled at me. “I’ll be back before you even miss me.”

“But….” I looked down, my fear returning. “But what if you don’t come back?”

Scott nodded slowly, thoughtfully. He leaned back against the headboard. “Hmm….” His silver, bruised-looking eyes found their way back to mine. “I guess, if I don’t come back, then I’ll owe you an apology.” He leaned towards me again, a few small, pained lines appearing under his eyes. “I love you so much, Talia. If I don’t come back, then I’m sorry that I won’t be there for you. I’m sorry I won’t be able to help you transition into the person you want to be.” He cleared his throat. “If I don’t come back, I’m so sorry I won’t be able to protect you from the people who tell you that you can’t. Believe me, you can. You can do anything you set your mind to.”

“Then you’ll get better?”

He chuckled. “I don’t know. I’m not you. I can’t do everything.”

I sniffled, a few tears burning in my eyes.

“Oh, Tali.” He pulled me close. “I can’t do everything, not like this. But if I could do anything, I would chase away your tears until forever.”

Someone ran into the long room. “Talia!” Papa shouted, running towards us. Scott pulled back quickly.

“Papa, don’t be too mad, I-” He started, but Papa scooped me up in his arms.

“What’re you doing here?” He asked, quite loudly.

I was emotional, more so than normal, on that day. I had too many things going on at once, and it all just escaped through my eyes as I sobbed in my father’s arms. I was vaguely aware of him taking me out of the hospital and putting me in the back seat of the family automobile. Mr. O’Brien drove us home, but I really didn’t want to go home.

________________________________________________________________

Tags: @beesartandstuffs

#mirror memoirs #talia connor #i think the chapter after this is the last of the majority of the angst #im sorry

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canariesrise · 7 years

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In other big news from IRL that I don’t think I’ve shared on here: on Friday I’m going to Spain and Portugal for a little over two weeks with my childhood/high school best friend and her long-time boyfriend.

I’m hella excited because on the one hand it’s like going home and at the same time, I’ve never been to Portugal. (When I lived in Spain I made it all the way to Edinburgh but didn’t get to Portugal because of course I did. It’s me.) And I haven’t been to Barcelona and Madrid since I lived in Spain 7 years ago, so it’ll be a lot of stuff, too. And going to Spain with Caitlin, getting to show her around this place that means so much to me and knowing she would like to so much, has been something I dreamed about for a long time but never really ever thought was remotely possible. For years, Caitlin was balking at the expense of getting a passport so the actual buying a plane ticket seemed remote, let alone us going together.

But it’s happening! And on top of that, I’m excited to spend time with one of my closest friends who I may see for 2 days a year on average now. And with the person who I’m guessing she’s going to marry. I’ve spent an okay amount of time with him given how little I see Caitlin, but I like the idea of getting to know him better. Having lived with Suz and C.J. before the got married turned out to be very special to me in the way that it let me get to know C.J. better. (Also I would be having these terrible days because ~enterpreneurship culture~ and would come home to C.J. mocking it at all and like A+, thank you for that.)

Anyway, I’m very excited but also rather nervous. I’m nervous first of all because I have not had the time I would have liked to prepare for this trip. Between February and May I did almost nothing except flights and AirBnBs and then once June rolled around I’ve dug in, but between shopping, making arrangements to be away, and planning, it’s a big project which has not fit in well with my garbage fire of a life. With less than a week to go, I feel okay, but I’m sad that I haven’t had more time to do planning of attractions and whatnot. I know that it’ll be okay, but I also know that people’s recommendations to just walk around and be spontaneous in European cities are just not that great in practice a lot of the time. I do have some plans and ideas, and certainly Sevilla and Granada are places I know well enough, but I’m sad that I feel like my life has prevented me from enjoying this trip as fully as I would have if I had shown up with more plans. For all that people who are not planners treat those of us who are as wet blankets, I do have more fun when things have been planned and I don’t have to make decisions or figure things out on the fly.

And I’m nervous because Caitlin and Scott seem to live pretty healthy and active (not necessarily in the sporty sense, just that they do a lot of stuff outside the house) lives, whereas I’m over here trying to, you know, be an actual human from time to time. On top of that, I’ve never fared well with the Europe to U.S. jetlag (the lost night’s sleep is a killer for my neurological conditions) and it’s going to be hot (another bad thing for my neurological conditions). So I’m concerned that we are going to be operating at drastically different levels of energy/paces/whatever. That being said, I’ve done my best to set expectations about that, being clear about my health conditions and also saying “I’m going to do my best to not let my health problems affect your experience of the trip, but they are going to happen at some point.” So I’m just trying to take comfort in the fact that I will be in a place where I feel comfortable on my own, letting them go off on their own and try to remember that if I have to set boundaries, I’m not doing that *at them* or because I’m unfun or whatever. But I haven’t traveled with Caitlin (Scott I’m less worried about because he tends to be the older, saner member of that pair. Well he’s always the older one.) and so I’m still nervous about how she’s going to react. I mean, she’s good people and won’t like get mad at me, but we also don’t spend that much time together as an adult and I think our differing abilities to get about might just be awkward.

So maybe cross your fingers that my health isn’t the total garbage fire that it can be sometimes? That would be nice.

#personal log #I'm leaving on a jet plane #for the most part I am just super excited #Spain!#*makes content noises*#also now I'm thinking about that trip I took to Edinburgh while I lived in Spain #it was one of the better trips I've ever taken #20/10 would do again #went to a ceilidh when I was still healthy enough to participate in that kind of them without dying #in a funny turn of events when I lived in Ireland I ended up at this orientation event for international students #where they had this sort of ceilidh lite #and I ended up dancing with this Spanish guy #and like you think trying to follow a ceilidh if you don't know what you're doing is hard #trying doing it in a second language #I ended up trying to translate a lot of it for him #it was not terrible effective but was hilarious

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downthatrabbitholewego · 7 years

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February 2017

This is a compilation of fics that I've read/re-read over the past month. Faves get a star ( ★ ). There is also a separate fic rec page for my favorites here, if you'd like to check that out. :)

MONTH: February, 2017 | (older lists)

▶▶ A Start by Inell Teen And Up | 1,458w Derek's acting like a jealous boyfriend. The only issue? He and Stiles aren't dating.

▶▶ An RA's Guide to Mutual Pining by alocalband Teen And Up | 2,208w "Stiles, this is the sixth time in two weeks that you've locked yourself out of your own room in the middle of the night and that Scott won’t pick up his phone to let you in." "Uh, yeah, man, tell me about it. He really needs to step up his roommate game." Derek seriously can't take this anymore.

▶▶ Candy Hearts by dragon_temeraire General | 1,133w Stiles decides that, since they're the only two single members of the pack, he and Derek should spend Valentine's Day together.

▶▶ Cute Bus Stop Guy by leslieknopeismyspiritanimal Teen And Up | 2,142w The guy gave him a curt little nod and neatly sidestepped him, continuing on his way. Stiles snuck a look over his shoulder, and yep, the rear view in those tight slacks was pretty good, too. The guy stopped at the bus stop, leaning against the sign, and Stiles sighed. It was a dreamy sigh, even he could admit that. He had a feeling he was going to become a morning person.

▶▶ Delivery Drivers: Unsung Heroes of the Restaurant Biz by DeliberateMisspelling Teen And Up | 4,756w Derek Hale is a Good Samaritan, okay? That's how he got roped into helping out Laura in the first place. Helping the attractive stranger who just literally collapsed into his arms might be more fun, though. Not that he'll ever admit it, especially since he got puked on first.

▶▶ Demanding Forever Series [1] That Stalky Thing by wangler Mature | 2,560w Derek frowns, thrown off. Teenagers are confusing. [2] Scientists Document This Stuff by wangler Explicit | 3,264w "Your arbitrary sex rules are getting really old," Stiles says, lipping at Derek's mouth like a goat at a petting zoo.

▶▶ Dog's Best Friend by otter General | 8,923w Other people might have found the name of the place off-putting. Stiles didn’t. He was actually relieved, when Scott handed him a business card that said "HALEHOUNDS" across the top, because clearly, if anybody could recognize and understand the evil that lurked within his dog’s fluffy precious body, it was these people.

▶▶ Former Employment by dragon_temeraire ★ Teen And Up | 4,023w Professor Stilinski is definitely not expecting to see his favorite porn star among the students of his Human Sexuality class.

▶▶ Help Wanted (But Not Really) by reillyblack ★ Mature | 20,525w "Stiles, I'll clear up your confusion about the position. Derek here needs someone to live with him. He's a difficult person to live with, so I won't sugarcoat that. But his responsibilities at the company right now make it impossible for him to actually take care of himself and his home. That would be your job," Laura explained. Both Stiles and Derek objected at the same time."

▶▶ Hot Like Burning by leslieknopeismyspiritanimal Teen And Up | 2,762w In which Derek is the grumpy neighborhood firefighter, and Stiles is a bit of a lovestruck idiot.

▶▶ How Awkward by stileshale N/A | 9,533w A shadow falls over him, and he blinks up to see Derek looking highly amused, pushing a stroller and shirtless. Ugh, Derek is one of those wholesome people that goes jogging on a Saturday morning. And, if that doesn’t make Stiles feel bad enough, he does it shirtless. And looks good. So good. Stiles swings round on his knees to look at the baby inside, trying not to hyperventilate. "Oh my god, you’re the cutest baby I've ever seen!" he declares, "And you were raised by wolves? You're not nearly as hairy as I would have imagined!"

▶▶ how to unsend an embarrassing text (hint: you can't) by bibliosexual General | 1,879w Laura tells him it's cowardly and unromantic to confess feelings over text, but too bad. Derek can't think of anything more terrifying than showing up on Stiles' doorstep (conveniently, the apartment right below Derek's) to tell him to his face. And Derek wants to know, okay? Has to know. He needs closure. He can't keep second-guessing every microsecond of every interaction with Stiles, trying to guess how he's feeling, and he can't keep hoping like this. He'll go insane. Stiles has been his neighbor/friend/hopeless crush for almost six months already, and Derek definitely can’t take another six.

▶▶ I Spy a Reunion by 42hrb Teen And Up | 1,088w In high school Stiles wanted a job he could brag about, too bad he can't brag about his job now.

▶▶ I won't sleep if you won't sleep by dragon_temeraire Teen And Up | 4,085w After the nogitsune, Stiles is unable to sleep. To help, he has a spell cast on him that will link him with Derek.

▶▶ Illuminated by ZainClaw Teen And Up | 5,013w "Because I'm falling in love with you and it's scaring the hell out of me."

▶▶ Like Immortality by Idday ★ Teen And Up | 4,815w Stiles and Derek, in letters, through the years.

▶▶ little spoon by bibliosexual ★ Teen And Up | 4,489w To save money while attending college in NYC, Stiles and Derek decide to rent one tiny apartment together. With one bed.

▶▶ Love So Hard, It Could Rip My Heart Out by Lapin ★ Mature | 7,554w Stiles is seventeen, and his best friend is drifting away, and his dad isn't speaking to him, so he's going to make some bad decisions. He's seventeen and he needs bad decisions to look back on when he's thirty, and nothing is a worse decision than Derek Hale. He'll let the Big Bad Wolf in, let him press Stiles down into the couch and he'll wrap his arms around him and he'll know it's a bad choice, but it's his, and Derek is here when no one else is.

▶▶ Mǣnōn by MyBeth Explicit | 9,237w Knotting. It’s a thing that exists. Like werewolves and weird lizard creatures. It’s just rated NC-17 so you don’t hear about it so much on TV. It exists and he gets it. Stiles. He’s the one that gets it.

▶▶ meat cute by bleep0bleep Teen And Up | 1,046w u should give it to ur werewolf ;) Stiles stares at his phone, because he doesn’t have a werewolf. Well, technically he has a crush on a werewolf, but that doesn't really count. He buys the steak anyways.

▶▶ No Refills by scottmcniceass Teen And Up | 6,765w Stiles spends almost every night at Winston Diner. They have the best coffee he's ever tasted, and free wifi. Of course, the only waiter ever on staff after eleven, Derek, was a piece of work. But maybe, underneath that chilly personality, Derek was the kind of person who Stiles didn't mind spending every night with, after all.

▶▶ No Refunds or Exchanges by badwolfbadwolf Mature | 18,916w Stiles is the newest deputy in the Beacon Hills Sheriff’s Department, and has maybe just been a little in love with Derek Hale since Stiles had made a fool of himself in front of him at the SD summer picnic a few years ago. Being married to him—only for the sake of not getting deported—is going to suck in new and unusual ways.

▶▶ Nonsexual Favors by sterekseason N/A | 846w Prompt: "I need a favor, and not the sexual kind."

▶▶ Not Quite A Siren, But Something Like That by lapsus_calami General | 2,891w There's a sea creature stealing all of Derek's stuff. For some reason he finds that more endearing than annoying.

▶▶ Of Glasses And Lacrosse Sticks by charlesdk Teen And Up | 6,810w "Okay, how 'bout this? One date, just one date, and if you still don't believe I'm genuinely interested in you, then I'll leave you alone for good. How does that sound?" Derek hesitated for another moment, before he sighed and said, "Fine. One date."

▶▶ One life stand by Vendelin ★ Explicit | 84,278w Stiles is used to selling himself to make ends meet. But it's getting harder to keep those ends meeting, and there's only so much of Stiles to go around. Until a too-fancy car shows up in his neighborhood, and he meets Derek Hale. All Derek wants is Stiles's time, someone to stay on his arm for events and smile for the cameras. It's the easiest job Stiles has ever had, the best-paying one he's ever had, and he's more than happy to sign up. Derek is everything and nothing Stiles expects him to be, with his tailored suits, sharp mind and his quiet way of caring. But it's just a job and Stiles never meant to fall in love.

▶▶ Orchard Lane Series [1] A Blossoming Romance by Trelkez Teen And Up | 7,533w Stiles will just have to try harder next time. No one can ignore him forever. [2] Welcoming Committee by Trelkez Teen And Up | 2,625w "I miss the days when I thought Derek was the strangest person on this block," Stiles says.

▶▶ Peeping Stiles by literaryoblivion Mature | 16,550w Stiles finds himself outside Derek's house because he just can't seem to stay away.

▶▶ quoting Rhett Butler by haleofStilesheart Teen And Up | 2,445w Stiles has a bad habit of dating complete assholes. Good thing Derek's there to knock some sense into him.

▶▶ Taking Care by LoveActually_rps Explicit | 3,413w Derek had returned from a conference where the new CEO, Mr Stiles Stilinski, took over his company in a so called meeting where all the white collared, richly clothed shareholders - assholes - voted against Derek. He hadn’t even waited for a final handshake with the new owner. He knew, he’d never be able to fake a smile when his heart was shattering into a thousand pieces. Well, they had Peter to deal with these formalities.

▶▶ the blazing bombardier by bibliosexxual N/A | 1,599w Derek fundamentally doesn’t understand people who like roller coasters.

▶▶ the roommate by bibliosexxual N/A | 1,826w Stiles' mysterious new roommate shows up right as Stiles and Scott are sliding their second tray of ginger snaps out of the oven. Stiles thought it’d be a nice way to welcome him, break the ice a little, all that. He’s also planning to make some sugar cookies in case D. Hale has less adventurous tastes. Never let it be said that Stiles Stilinski doesn’t plan ahead.

▶▶ To Be Worthy Of Hope by alocalband ★ Teen And Up | 7,482w "If you can't say the words, you're not mature enough to know what they mean," Scott tells him. Stiles throws a french fry at him. (In which Derek is secretly pining, Stiles is oblivious to both Derek’s feelings as well as his own, and any personal growth that happens in the mean time is completely reluctant.)

▶▶ We All Fall by cobrilee N/A | 815w Derek has a thing for Stiles' bed. Stiles doesn’t question it.

▶▶ We're Burning One Hell of a Something by calrissian18 Mature | 6,031w Derek's roommate has already moved in by the time he shows up. And he's taken up both sides of the room.

▶▶ Werewolf-Friendly by badwolfbadwolf ★ Explicit | 27,227w Derek is a junior in college, never could get the hang of social interaction, and is, you know, a werewolf. A werewolf and a virgin. And it isn't like anyone is banging down his door to hop on his werewolf dick, save for the few pervs who acted like he was some kind of exotic toy to be played with and experienced. So, when he sees Stiles' ad on Hot Men 4 Rent, Derek is... interested.

▶▶ You've got me slippin' and a slidin' by ElisAttack General | 3,683w Derek lives in the middle of nowhere, and is probably in love with his delivery boy.

▶▶ (Untitled Tumblr ficlet) by bibliosexxual Mature | 4,220w Prompt: Stiles tries to seduce Derek but Derek has the habit of only dating older people (Jennifer, Kate...). So he says no to Stiles and Stiles is really disappointed but by chance he keeps seeing Derek and with time Derek realizes that he may have made a mistake.

▶▶ (Untitled Tumblr ficlet) by nogitsunelichen N/A | 696w Prompt: "I thought it was a one-night stand... but now we're married..."

▶▶ (Untitled Tumblr ficlet) by sterekseason N/A | 377w Derek shows up to his first pack meeting after moving back to Beacon Hills wearing worn out jeans and a faded flannel, chest hair popping out near the top. His beard is full, his hair is longer, almost long enough for a bun, his eyes have smile lines. He's happy.

▶▶ (Untitled Tumblr ficlet) by villainny N/A | 678w Prompt: Derek is a deliveryman and Stiles ordered a hug

- - - - -

#read fics list #sterek fics #sterek fanfiction #sterek #2017 - FEBRUARY

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andrewdburton · 4 years

Text

“Playing with FIRE”, the documentary about financial independence and early retirement

In early October 2016, I flew to New York City to attend Ramit Sethi’s Forefront event, a weekend conference about entrepreneurship and excellence. As I always do when travling, I agreed to meet with a few readers and colleagues while I was in town.

One sunny morning in Madison Square Park, for instance, I sat on a bench and chatted with Travis Shakespeare. “I'm a film and television producer,” Travis told me. “But I'm also into the FIRE movement. I just got back from the chautauqua in Ecuador.”

The FIRE movement, of course, is all about financial independence and early retirement. And the chautauquas are annual gatherings for FIRE folks who want to dive deep into the subject. (I've now attended four of these myself.)

“I'm toying with the idea of creating a film about FIRE,” Travis said. We spent an hour or so talking about his vision and plans. When we parted, I never expected that we'd see each other again. I was wrong.

During the past three years, I've connected with Travis several times. (I've come to really respect and admire the man. He's a Good Guy.) And that idea he was toying with? The film about FIRE? Well, that project has come to fruition.

“Playing with FIRE” finished production earlier this year. Since June, it's been screened in theaters around the country — and the world. Today, at long last, “Playing with FIRE” is available for purchase (and rental) on various digital platforms.

iTunes ($9.99 to buy, $4.99 to rent), where the Rotten Tomatoes score is linked to the wrong film

Amazon ($9.99 to buy, $4.99 to rent)

Google ($8.99 to buy, $3.99 to rent)

Vimeo ($9.99 to buy)

To mark this occasion, I wanted to share some background on the film from my perspective. Here are a few of my thoughts on “Playing with FIRE”.

youtube

Behind the Scenes

Soon after I met Travis, he found Scott Rieckens, a San Diego film-maker with a similar idea. Scott too wanted to make a film about FIRE. They decided to collaborate. By October 2017, a year after our conversation in Madison Square Park, Travis and Scott had begun production on their project.

My first exposure to “Playing with FIRE” came in late October 2017. I was in Dallas for Fincon, the annual conference for financial media. “We're going to film a roundtable conversation about financial independence,” Scott told me by email. “I hope you can join us.”

Truthfully, I almost didn't attend the roundtable interview. Fincon is pure chaos for me, and this just seemed like more chaos. In the end, I decided to participate. I'm glad I did. I joined friends like Carl (from 1500 Days), Tanja (from Our Next Life), and Brandon (from Mad Fientist) for a couple of hours of talk about money.

True story: Despite all of the time and energy devoted to this roundtable, only a minute or so of footage from the night made it into the final film. That's too bad. It was a great discussion. I was particularly impressed with Liz from Frugalwoods, whose contributions were deep and insightful. As ambivalent as I am about her book, I am not ambivalent about Liz as a person. She's awesome.

My next exposure to “Playing with FIRE” came in February 2018. On a cold, rainy Sunday morning, the film crew visited our home here in Portland. We spent a couple of hours recording in our living room and in my writing studio, where the conversation centered on money and meaning. (Trivia: In the final version of the movie, every scene in which I appear was filmed in my writing shed.)

Over the past eighteen months, “Playing with FIRE” has been a constant part of the background of my life. I exchange email with Travis and Scott. (Kim is a fan of “Life Below Zero”, the Alaska-based reality show for which Travis is best known.) I've read the book. I've attended screenings. And last year at Get Rich Slowly, Scott shared his own experiences with making the film.

Playing with FIRE

Here's how Scott described the impetus for this project on Reddit last week:

I was a content creator for marketing/advertising firms for nearly a decade, so making content that focused on FIRE was natural for me. I was scratching an itch with this project.

I was so inspired by the folks that had shared their wealth of knowledge on finance and investing. And I remember seeing the Minimalism documentary and thinking…if the minimalism movement has a documentary, then surely FIRE would too. But to my dismay, I was mistaken. So, after some serious deliberation and reaching out to a few mentors and even a few FIRE writers and podcast hosts, I decided to dedicate myself to the idea.

Then, after an appearance on the ChooseFI podcast, my world exploded and I was able to raise money, connected with a fellow FIRE fan and director from the BBC (Travis Shakespeare), ended up with a book deal and shit got super real, really quickly.

[…]

I decided that leaning into this momentum made sense. Because the framework of FI, while painfully simple, has not been introduced to the masses and is far too important not to share.

Naturally, Reddit doesn't like the film. Or, more precisely, /r/financialindependence doesn't like the idea of the film. Those who have seen it do like it. Most redditors have not seen it…yet are happy to pass judgment anyhow.

This is Reddit in a nutshell: A bunch of people who are quick to have opinions and make judgments without having all of the information — or any of the information, actually. It's not just the FIRE forum. It's the whole site. Users are quick to assume the motives of others.

When I talk to people who have seen “Playing with FIRE”, their reaction is generally positive. It's not a film targeted at folks who are deep in the FIRE movement, folks who talk daily about saving rates and the four-percent rule. This film is targeted at people who are FI-curious, people who know that what they're doing doesn't work, but who haven't yet been exposed to the ideas of the financial independence community.

This movie is meant to introduce people to the world of FIRE. It wasn't made for the people who are already in that world.

Money and Happiness

I've seen the film four times already this year, and I'll watch it again later today. I may force my family to watch it during the holidays. While I don't think “Playing with FIRE” is perfect, there are many things I like about the film.

I like, for instance, that it ultimately isn't about Scott's journey of discovery; instead, the story is about his wife's journey of discovery. It's about Taylor wrestling with these ideas and how they apply to her life.

And I like that, really, the film isn't about money. Scott and Taylor don't embrace this movement to become millionaires. They don't “play with FIRE” in order to become rich. They explore this lifestyle in an attempt to increase their happiness, to create more meaningful lives.

There's a scene early in the film in which Scott and Taylor, who are trying to decide what to do with their future, sit down in a San Diego park to talk about what's important to them. Taylor shares the top ten things that make her happy on a weekly basis. These are things like wine, chocolate, exercise, and (especially) spending time with family.

“Any surprises?” Taylor asks Scott.

“Well, first off,” he says, “I didn't hear the beach. The beach isn't on the list? When was the last time you were on the beach?”

youtube

“Everything on that list is stuff we can do pretty much anywhere,” Scott says. He's implying that there's no reason they should be paying to live in such an expensive city when they're not deriving value from that city.

“What's going to make us happy?” Scott asks. “Because we can't lose if we keep happiness in the forefront. I really think we should [change our lives]. I think it's going to be the best thing for us…moving forward into the future.”

This is, of course, the stuff I preach day-in and day-out. This is why people ask me to fly to Portugal to speak, why they ask me to be on their podcasts, why they ask me to write for them, why they meet me for lunch. They want to me to talk about the relationship between money and purpose.

Playing with Fire tackles this subject head-on and in a real, honest way. The film isn't sensational. It isn't fake. It's simple, authentic, and open-ended. It doesn't offer pat answers. While this is in some ways unsatisfying (we want projects like this to provide answers, not create questions), it's also genuine. I like that.

Final Thoughts

Projects like “Playing with FIRE” are important. As Scott said in an email yesterday: “Each copy rented or sold is a vote for improving financial literacy and eliminating conspicuous consumption.” It's a good thing to increase awareness about smart money habits.

That's why I've embarked on a similar project of my own. I don't want to make a movie (ha!), but I am creating a ten-part, five-hour audio course to introduce people to the world of FIRE. In fact, that's where much of my time and attention will be devoted this autumn and winter. It's an exciting assignment, one that I hope will reach a lot of new people.

For now, though, “Playing with FIRE” is really the only thing of its kind, the only mainstream introduction to the ideas of financial independence and early retirement that's targeted toward a general audience (as opposed to targeted toward money nerds).

As I mentioned earlier, you can buy or rent the film from the following sources:

iTunes ($9.99 to buy, $4.99 to rent), where the Rotten Tomatoes score is linked to the wrong film

Amazon ($9.99 to buy, $4.99 to rent)

Google ($8.99 to buy, $3.99 to rent)

Vimeo ($9.99 to buy)

If you have family and friends who might be receptive to the message of this movie, you might consider sharing it with them. I intend to!

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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The Great Land Robbery

The shameful story of how 1 million black families have been ripped from their farms

By VANN R. NEWKIRK II | September Issue 2019 | The Atlantic Magazine | Posted August 14, 2019 1:48 PM ET |

I. Wiped Out

“You ever chop before?” Willena Scott-White was testing me. I sat with her in the cab of a Chevy Silverado pickup truck, swatting at the squadrons of giant, fluttering mosquitoes that had invaded the interior the last time she opened a window. I was spending the day with her family as they worked their fields just outside Ruleville, in Mississippi’s Leflore County. With her weathered brown hands, Scott-White gave me a pork sandwich wrapped in a grease-stained paper towel. I slapped my leg. Mosquitoes can bite through denim, it turns out.

Cotton sowed with planters must be chopped—thinned and weeded manually with hoes—to produce orderly rows of fluffy bolls. The work is backbreaking, and the people who do it maintain that no other job on Earth is quite as demanding. I had labored long hours over other crops, but had to admit to Scott-White, a 60-something grandmother who’d grown up chopping, that I’d never done it.

“Then you ain’t never worked,” she replied.

The fields alongside us as we drove were monotonous. With row crops, monotony is good. But as we toured 1,000 acres of land in Leflore and Bolivar Counties, straddling Route 61, Scott-White pointed out the demarcations between plots. A trio of steel silos here. A post there. A patch of scruffy wilderness in the distance. Each landmark was a reminder of the Scott legacy that she had fought to keep—or to regain—and she noted this with pride. Each one was also a reminder of an inheritance that had once been stolen.

Drive Route 61 through the Mississippi Delta and you’ll find much of the scenery exactly as it was 50 or 75 years ago. Imposing plantations and ramshackle shotgun houses still populate the countryside from Memphis to Vicksburg. Fields stretch to the horizon. The hands that dig into black Delta dirt belong to people like Willena Scott-White, African Americans who bear faces and names passed down from men and women who were owned here, who were kept here, and who chose to stay here, tending the same fields their forebears tended.

But some things have changed. Back in the day, snow-white bolls of King Cotton reigned. Now much of the land is green with soybeans. The farms and plantations are much larger—industrial operations with bioengineered plants, laser-guided tractors, and crop-dusting drones. Fewer and fewer farms are still owned by actual farmers. Investors in boardrooms throughout the country have bought hundreds of thousands of acres of premium Delta land. If you’re one of the millions of people who have a retirement account with the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association, for instance, you might even own a little bit yourself.

A war waged by deed of title has dispossessed 98 percent of black agricultural landowners in America.

TIAA is one of the largest pension firms in the United States. Together with its subsidiaries and associated funds, it has a portfolio of more than 80,000 acres in Mississippi alone, most of them in the Delta. If the fertile crescent of Arkansas is included, TIAA holds more than 130,000 acres in a strip of counties along the Mississippi River. And TIAA is not the only big corporate landlord in the region. Hancock Agricultural Investment Group manages more than 65,000 acres in what it calls the “Delta states.” The real-estate trust Farmland Partners has 30,000 acres in and around the Delta. AgriVest, a subsidiary of the Swiss bank UBS, owned 22,000 acres as of 2011. (AgriVest did not respond to a request for more recent information.)

Unlike their counterparts even two or three generations ago, black people living and working in the Delta today have been almost completely uprooted from the soil—as property owners, if not as laborers. In Washington County, Mississippi, where last February TIAA reportedly bought 50,000 acres for more than $200 million, black people make up 72 percent of the population but own only 11 percent of the farmland, in part or in full. In Tunica County, where TIAA has acquired plantations from some of the oldest farm-owning white families in the state, black people make up 77 percent of the population but own only 6 percent of the farmland. In Holmes County, the third-blackest county in the nation, black people make up about 80 percent of the population but own only 19 percent of the farmland. TIAA owns plantations there, too. In just a few years, a single company has accumulated a portfolio in the Delta almost equal to the remaining holdings of the African Americans who have lived on and shaped this land for centuries.

This is not a story about TIAA—at least not primarily. The company’s newfound dominance in the region is merely the topsoil covering a history of loss and legally sanctioned theft in which TIAA played no part. But TIAA’s position is instrumental in understanding both how the crimes of Jim Crow have been laundered by time and how the legacy of ill-gotten gains has become a structural part of American life. The land was wrested first from Native Americans, by force. It was then cleared, watered, and made productive for intensive agriculture by the labor of enslaved Africans, who after Emancipation would come to own a portion of it. Later, through a variety of means—sometimes legal, often coercive, in many cases legal and coercive, occasionally violent—farmland owned by black people came into the hands of white people. It was aggregated into larger holdings, then aggregated again, eventually attracting the interest of Wall Street.

Owners of small farms everywhere, black and white alike, have long been buffeted by larger economic forces. But what happened to black landowners in the South, and particularly in the Delta, is distinct, and was propelled not only by economic change but also by white racism and local white power. A war waged by deed of title has dispossessed 98 percent of black agricultural landowners in America. They have lost 12 million acres over the past century. But even that statement falsely consigns the losses to long-ago history. In fact, the losses mostly occurred within living memory, from the 1950s onward. Today, except for a handful of farmers like the Scotts who have been able to keep or get back some land, black people in this most productive corner of the Deep South own almost nothing of the bounty under their feet.

II. “Land Hunger”

Land has always been the main battleground of racial conflict in Mississippi. During Reconstruction, fierce resistance from the planters who had dominated antebellum society effectively killed any promise of land or protection from the Freedmen’s Bureau, forcing masses of black laborers back into de facto bondage. But the sheer size of the black population—black people were a majority in Mississippi until the 1930s—meant that thousands were able to secure tenuous footholds as landowners between Emancipation and the Great Depression.

Driven by what W. E. B. Du Bois called “land hunger” among freedmen during Reconstruction, two generations of black workers squirreled away money and went after every available and affordable plot they could, no matter how marginal or hopeless. Some found sympathetic white landowners who would sell to them. Some squatted on unused land or acquired the few homesteads available to black people. Some followed visionary leaders to all-black utopian agrarian experiments, such as Mound Bayou, in Bolivar County.

It was never much, and it was never close to just, but by the early 20th century, black people had something to hold on to. In 1900, according to the historian James C. Cobb, black landowners in Tunica County outnumbered white ones three to one. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there were 25,000 black farm operators in 1910, an increase of almost 20 percent from 1900. Black farmland in Mississippi totaled 2.2 million acres in 1910—some 14 percent of all black-owned agricultural land in the country, and the most of any state.

The foothold was never secure. From the beginning, even the most enterprising black landowners found themselves fighting a war of attrition, often fraught with legal obstacles that made passing title to future generations difficult. Bohlen Lucas, one of the few black Democratic politicians in the Delta during Reconstruction (most black politicians at the time were Republicans), was born enslaved and managed to buy a 200-acre farm from his former overseer. But, like many farmers, who often have to borrow against expected harvests to pay for equipment, supplies, and the rent or mortgage on their land, Lucas depended on credit extended by powerful lenders. In his case, credit depended specifically on white patronage, given in exchange for his help voting out the Reconstruction government—after which his patrons abandoned him. He was left with 20 acres.

In Humphreys County, Lewis Spearman avoided the pitfalls of white patronage by buying less valuable wooded tracts and grazing cattle there as he moved into cotton. But when cotton crashed in the 1880s, Spearman, over his head in debt, crashed with it.

Around the turn of the century, in Leflore County, a black farm organizer and proponent of self-sufficiency—referred to as a “notoriously bad Negro” in the local newspapers—led a black populist awakening, marching defiantly and by some accounts bringing boycotts against white merchants. White farmers responded with a posse that may have killed as many as 100 black farmers and sharecroppers along with women and children. The fate of the “bad Negro” in question, named Oliver Cromwell, is uncertain. Some sources say he escaped to Jackson, and into anonymity.

Like so many of his forebears, Ed Scott Sr., Willena Scott-White’s grandfather, acquired his land through not much more than force of will. As recorded in the thick binders of family history that Willena had brought along in the truck, and that we flipped through between stretches of work in the fields, his life had attained the gloss of folklore. He was born in 1886 in western Alabama, a generation removed from bondage. Spurred by that same land hunger, Scott took his young family to the Delta, seeking opportunities to farm his own property. He sharecropped and rented, and managed large farms for white planters, who valued his ability to run their sprawling estates. One of these men was Palmer H. Brooks, who owned a 7,000-acre plantation in Mississippi’s Leflore and Sunflower Counties. Brooks was uncommonly progressive, encouraging entrepreneurship among the black laborers on his plantation, building schools and churches for them, and providing loans. Scott was ready when Brooks decided to sell plots to black laborers, and he bought his first 100 acres.

Unlike Bohlen Lucas, Scott largely avoided politics. Unlike Lewis Spearman, he paid his debts and kept some close white allies—a necessity, since he usually rejected government assistance. And unlike Oliver Cromwell, he led his community under the rules already in place, appearing content with what he’d earned for his family in an environment of total segregation. He leveraged technical skills and a talent for management to impress sympathetic white people and disarm hostile ones. “Granddaddy always had nice vehicles,” Scott-White told me. They were a trapping of pride in a life of toil. As was true in most rural areas at the time, a new truck was not just a flashy sign of prosperity but also a sort of credit score. Wearing starched dress shirts served the same purpose, elevating Scott in certain respects—always within limits—even above some white farmers who drove into town in dirty overalls. The trucks got shinier as his holdings grew. By the time Scott died, in 1957, he had amassed more than 1,000 acres of farmland.

Scott-White guided me right up to the Quiver River, where the legend of her family began. It was a choked, green-brown gurgle of a thing, the kind of lazy waterway that one imagines to be brimming with fat, yawning catfish and snakes. “Mr. Brooks sold all of the land on the east side of this river to black folks,” Scott-White told me. She swept her arm to encompass the endless acres. “All of these were once owned by black families.”

III. The Great Dispossession

That era of black ownership, in the Delta and throughout the country, was already fading by the time Scott died. As the historian Pete Daniel recounts, half a million black-owned farms across the country failed in the 25 years after 1950. Joe Brooks, the former president of the Emergency Land Fund, a group founded in 1972 to fight the problem of dispossession, has estimated that something on the order of 6 million acres was lost by black farmers from 1950 to 1969. That’s an average of 820 acres a day—an area the size of New York’s Central Park erased with each sunset. Black-owned cotton farms in the South almost completely disappeared, diminishing from 87,000 to just over 3,000 in the 1960s alone. According to the Census of Agriculture, the racial disparity in farm acreage increased in Mississippi from 1950 to 1964, when black farmers lost almost 800,000 acres of land. An analysis for The Atlantic by a research team that included Dania Francis, at the University of Massachusetts, and Darrick Hamilton, at Ohio State, translates this land loss into a financial loss—including both property and income—of $3.7 billion to $6.6 billion in today’s dollars.

This was a silent and devastating catastrophe, one created and maintained by federal policy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal life raft for agriculture helped start the trend in 1937 with the establishment of the Farm Security Administration, an agency within the Department of Agriculture. Although the FSA ostensibly existed to help the country’s small farmers, as happened with much of the rest of the New Deal, white administrators often ignored or targeted poor black people—denying them loans and giving sharecropping work to white people. After Roosevelt’s death, in 1945, conservatives in Congress replaced the FSA with the Farmers Home Administration, or FmHA. The FmHA quickly transformed the FSA’s programs for small farmers, establishing the sinews of the loan-and-subsidy structure that undergirds American agriculture today. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy’s administration created the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, or ASCS, a complementary program to the FmHA that also provided loans to farmers. The ASCS was a federal effort—also within the Department of Agriculture—but, crucially, the members of committees doling out money and credit were elected locally, during a time when black people were prohibited from voting.

Through these programs, and through massive crop and surplus purchasing, the USDA became the safety net, price-setter, chief investor, and sole regulator for most of the farm economy in places like the Delta. The department could offer better loan terms to risky farmers than banks and other lenders, and mostly outcompeted private credit. In his book Dispossession, Daniel calls the setup “agrigovernment.” Land-grant universities pumped out both farm operators and the USDA agents who connected those operators to federal money. Large plantations ballooned into even larger industrial crop factories as small farms collapsed. The mega-farms held sway over agricultural policy, resulting in more money, at better interest rates, for the plantations themselves. At every level of agrigovernment, the leaders were white.

Major audits and investigations of the USDA have found that illegal pressures levied through its loan programs created massive transfers of wealth from black to white farmers, especially in the period just after the 1950s. In 1965, the United States Commission on Civil Rights uncovered blatant and dramatic racial differences in the level of federal investment in farmers. The commission found that in a sample of counties across the South, the FmHA provided much larger loans for small and medium-size white-owned farms, relative to net worth, than it did for similarly sized black-owned farms—evidence that racial discrimination “has served to accelerate the displacement and impoverishment of the Negro farmer.”

In Sunflower County, a man named Ted Keenan told investigators that in 1956, local banks had denied him loans after a bad crop because of his position with the NAACP, where he openly advocated for voting rights. The FmHA had denied him loans as well. Keenan described how Eugene Fisackerly, the leader of the White Citizens’ Council in Sunflower County, together with representatives of Senator James Eastland, a notorious white supremacist who maintained a large plantation there, had intimidated him into renouncing his affiliation with the NAACP and agreeing not to vote. Only then did Eastland’s man call the local FmHA agent, prompting him to reconsider Keenan’s loan.

A landmark 2001 investigation by the Associated Press into extortion, exploitation, and theft directed against black farmers uncovered more than 100 cases like Keenan’s. In the 1950s and ’60s, Norman Weathersby, a Holmes County Chevrolet dealer who enjoyed a local monopoly on trucks and heavy farm equipment, required black farmers to put up land as collateral for loans on equipment. A close friend of his, William Strider, was the local FmHA agent. Black farmers in the area claimed that the two ran a racket: Strider would slow-walk them on FmHA loans, which meant they would then default on Weathersby’s loans and lose their land to him. Strider and Weathersby were reportedly free to run this racket because black farmers were shut out by local banks.

Thousands of individual decisions by white people, enabled or motivated by greed, racism, existing laws, and market forces, all pushed in a single direction.

Analyzing the history of federal programs, the Emergency Land Fund emphasizes a key distinction. While most of the black land loss appears on its face to have been through legal mechanisms—“the tax sale; the partition sale; and the foreclosure”—it mainly stemmed from illegal pressures, including discrimination in federal and state programs, swindles by lawyers and speculators, unlawful denials of private loans, and even outright acts of violence or intimidation. Discriminatory loan servicing and loan denial by white-controlled FmHA and ASCS committees forced black farmers into foreclosure, after which their property could be purchased by wealthy landowners, almost all of whom were white. Discrimination by private lenders had the same result. Many black farmers who escaped foreclosure were defrauded by white tax assessors who set assessments too high, leading to unaffordable tax obligations. The inevitable result: tax sales, where, again, the land was purchased by wealthy white people. Black people’s lack of access to legal services complicated inheritances and put family claims to title in jeopardy. Lynchings, police brutality, and other forms of intimidation were sometimes used to dispossess black farmers, and even when land wasn’t a motivation for such actions, much of the violence left land without an owner.

In interviews with researchers from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in 1985, Henry Woodard Sr., an African American who had bought land in the 1950s in Tunica County, said he had managed to keep up for years through a combination of his own industry, small loans from the FmHA and white banks, and the rental of additional land from other hard-pressed black landowners. Then, in 1966, the activist James Meredith—whose 1962 fight to integrate Ole Miss sparked deadly riots and a wave of white backlash—embarked on the famous March Against Fear. The next planting season, Woodard recalled, his white lenders ignored him. “I sensed that it was because of this march,” he said. “And it was a lady told me—I was at the post office and she told me, she said, ‘Henry, you Negroes, y’all want to live like white folks. Y’all don’t know how white folks live. But y’all are gonna have to be on your own now.’ ”

Woodard’s story would have been familiar to countless farmers in the Delta. In Holmes County, a crucible of the voting-rights movement, a black effort to integrate the local ASCS committees was so successful that it was subject to surveillance and sabotage by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, an official agency created by Governor J. P. Coleman in 1956 to resist integration. Black landowners involved in running for the committees or organizing for votes faced fierce retaliation. In 1965, The New Republic reported that in Issaquena County, just north of Vicksburg, the “insurance of Negroes active in the ASCS elections had been canceled, loans were denied to Negroes on all crops but cotton, and ballots were not mailed to Negro wives who were co-owners of land.” Even in the decades after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, formal and informal complaints against the USDA poured out of the Delta.

These cases of dispossession can only be called theft. While the civil-rights era is remembered as a time of victories against disenfranchisement and segregation, many realities never changed. The engine of white wealth built on kleptocracy—which powered both Jim Crow and its slave-state precursor—continued to run. The black population in Mississippi declined by almost one-fifth from 1950 to 1970, as the white population increased by the exact same percentage. Farmers slipped away one by one into the night, appearing later as laborers in Chicago and Detroit. By the time black people truly gained the ballot in Mississippi, they were a clear minority, held in thrall to a white conservative supermajority.

Mass dispossession did not require a central organizing force or a grand conspiracy. Thousands of individual decisions by white people, enabled or motivated by greed, racism, existing laws, and market forces, all pushed in a single direction. But some white people undeniably would have organized it this way if they could have. The civil-rights leader Bayard Rustin reported in 1956 that documents taken from the office of Robert Patterson, one of the founding fathers of the White Citizens’ Councils, proposed a “master plan” to force hundreds of thousands of black people from Mississippi in order to reduce their potential voting power. Patterson envisioned, in Rustin’s words, “the decline of the small independent farmer” and ample doses of “economic pressure.”

An upheaval of this scale and speed—the destruction of black farming, an occupation that had defined the African American experience—might in any other context be described as a revolution, or seen as a historical fulcrum. But it came and went with little remark.

IV. The Catfish Boom

World War II transformed America in many ways. It certainly transformed a generation of southern black men. That generation included Medgar Evers, a future civil-rights martyr, assassinated while leading the Mississippi NAACP; he served in a segregated transportation company in Europe during the war. It included Willena’s father, Ed Scott Jr., who also served in a segregated transportation company. These men were less patient, more defiant, and in many ways more reckless than their fathers and grandfathers had been. They chafed under a system that forced them to relearn how to bow and scrape, as if the war had never happened. In the younger Scott’s case, wartime service sharpened his inherited land hunger, pushing him to seek more land and greater financial independence, both for himself and for his community. One of his siblings told his biographer, Julian Rankin, that the family’s deepest conviction was that “a million years from now … this land will still be Scotts’ land.”

Upon his return to the Delta, Scott continued down his father’s hard path, avoiding any interface with the FmHA and the public portions of the agrigovernment system, which by that time had spread its tendrils throughout Sunflower and Leflore Counties. He leaned on the friendships he and his father had made with local business owners and farmers, and secured credit for growing his holdings from friendly white bankers. Influenced by the civil-rights movement and its emphasis on community solidarity and activism, Scott borrowed from Oliver Cromwell’s self-sufficiency playbook too. He used his status to provide opportunities for other black farmers and laborers. “Daddy said that everyone who worked for us would always be able to eat,” Willena Scott-White told me. He made sure of more than that. Scott sent relatives’ and tenants’ children to school, paid for books, helped people open bank accounts and buy their own land. When civil-rights activists made their way down for Mississippi’s Freedom Summer, in 1964, he packed up meals and brought them to rallies.

When Scott-White thinks of her father, who died in 2015, she seems to become a young girl again. With allowances for nostalgia, she recalls a certain kind of country poorness-but-not-poverty, whereby children ran barefoot and worked from the moment they could walk, but ate well, lived in houses with solid floors and tight roofs, and went to high school and college if they showed skill. “We lived in something like a utopia,” Scott-White told me. But things changed at the tail end of the 1970s. Plummeting commodity prices forced highly leveraged farmers to seek loans wherever they could find them. Combined with the accelerating inflation of that decade, the beginnings of the farm-credit crisis made farming at scale without federal assistance impossible. Yet federal help—even then, two decades after the Civil Rights Act—was not available for most black farmers. According to a 2005 article in The Nation, “In 1984 and 1985, at the height of the farm crisis, the USDA lent a total of $1.3 billion to nearly 16,000 farmers to help them maintain their land. Only 209 of those farmers were black.”

As Rankin tells it in his biography, Catfish Dream, Scott made his first visit to an FmHA office in 1978. With the assistance of Vance Nimrod, a white man who worked with the black-owned Delta Foundation, a nonprofit promoting economic advancement for black Mississippians, Scott secured an operating loan for a season of soybeans and rice from the FmHA agent Delbert Edwards. The first time was easy—although, crucially, Nimrod accompanied him to the Leflore County office, in Greenwood. When Scott returned the next year without Nimrod, driving a shiny new truck the way his father used to, Edwards asked where Nimrod was. According to Rankin, Scott told the agent that Nimrod had only come to help secure that first loan; he wasn’t a business partner. When Edwards saw Scott’s vehicle, he seemed perplexed. “Who told you to buy a new truck?” he asked. Edwards ended up denying the requested loan amount.

At the same time, Edwards and the FmHA were moving to help local white farmers weather the storm, often by advising them to get into raising catfish. Commercial catfish farming was a relatively new industry, and it had found a home in the Delta as prices for row crops crashed and new legislation gave the USDA power and incentive to build up domestic fish farming. FmHA agents pushed white farmers to convert wide fields on the floodplain into giant catfish ponds, many of which would become contract-growing hubs for Delta Pride Catfish, a cooperative that quickly evolved into a local monopoly. The federal government poured millions of dollars into the catfish boom by way of FmHA loans, many of which were seized on by the largest white landowners, and kept those white landowners solvent. Mississippi became the catfish capital of the world in the 1970s. But the FmHA did not reach out to Scott, nor is there evidence that it supported the ambitions of any black farmers who might have wanted to get into catfish.

Scott decided to get into catfish anyway, digging eight ponds in fields where rice had grown the season before. He found his own catfish stocks and learned the ins and outs of the industry pretty much on his own. Scott finished digging his ponds in 1981, at which point, according to Rankin, Edwards of the FmHA visited the property and told him point-blank: “Don’t think I’m giving you any damn money for that dirt you’re moving.” The Mississippi FmHA would eventually compel Edwards to provide loans for Scott’s catfish operation for 1981 and 1982. But as court records show, the amount approved was far less than what white catfish farmers usually got—white farmers sometimes received double or triple the amount per acre that Scott did—and enough to stock only four of the eight ponds. (Edwards could not be reached for comment on any of the episodes recounted here.)

Scott’s Fresh Catfish opened in 1983. As a marker outside the old processing shed now indicates, it was the first catfish plant in the country owned by an African American. But discrimination doomed the enterprise before it really began. Without enough capital, Scott was never able to raise fish at the volume he needed. He claimed in court and later to Rankin that he had also been denied a chance to purchase stock in Delta Pride—a requirement to become a contract grower—because he was black. Without access to a cooperative, he had to do the processing and packaging himself, adding to the cost of his product. In 2006, Delta Pride and Country Select Catfish were combined into a new business entity, Consolidated Catfish Producers. When reached for comment, a spokesperson for Consolidated Catfish said that no employee at the new company could “definitively answer” questions about Scott or alleged discrimination against him.

Scott was in his 60s by the time his plant got off the ground. The effort took a toll. He slowly went blind. Arthritis claimed his joints. His heart began to fail. The plant limped quietly through the ’80s and then shut down. Lenders began the process of foreclosing on some of Scott’s cropland as early as 1983. In 1995, the FmHA approved a request from Scott to lease most of his remaining acres. The USDA itself had claimed most of his land by the late 1980s.

The downfall of the Scott catfish enterprise was proof of the strength and endurance of what the federal government would later state could be seen as a federally funded “conspiracy to force minority and disadvantaged farmers off their land through discriminatory loan practices.” The Scotts were not small-timers. They had the kind of work ethic and country savvy that are usually respected around the Delta. When the powers that be finally prevailed over Ed Scott Jr., they had completed something decisive, something that even today feels as if it cannot be undone.

V. Farmers in Suits

But land is never really lost, not in America. Twelve million acres of farmland in a country that has become a global breadbasket carries immense value, and the dispossessed land in the Delta is some of the most productive in America. The soil on the alluvial plain is rich. The region is warm and wet. Much of the land is perfect for industrialized agriculture.

Some white landowners, like Norman Weathersby, themselves the beneficiaries of government-funded dispossession, left land to their children. Some sold off to their peers, and others saw their land gobbled up by even larger white-owned farms. Nowadays, as fewer and fewer of the children of aging white landowners want to continue farming, more land has wound up in the hands of trusts and investors. Over the past 20 years, the real power brokers in the Delta are less likely to be good ol’ boys and more likely to be suited venture capitalists, hedge-fund managers, and agribusiness consultants who run farms with the cold precision of giant circuit boards.

One new addition to the mix is pension funds. Previously, farmland had never been a choice asset class for large-scale investing. In 1981, what was then called the General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) released a report exploring a proposal by a firm seeking pension-investment opportunities in farmland. The report essentially laughed off the prospect. The authors found that only about one dollar of every $4,429 in retirement funds was invested in farmland.

But commodity prices increased, and land values rose. In 2008, a weakened dollar forced major funds to broaden their search for hedges against inflation. “The market in agricultural land in the U.S. is currently experiencing a boom,” an industry analyst, Tom Vulcan, wrote that year. He took note of the recent entry of TIAA-CREF, which had “spent some $340 million on farmland across seven states.” TIAA, as the company is now called, would soon become the biggest pension-fund player in the agricultural real-estate game across the globe. In 2010, TIAA bought a controlling interest in Westchester Group, a major agricultural-asset manager. In 2014, it bought Nuveen, another large asset-management firm. In 2015, with Nuveen directing its overall investment strategy and Westchester and other smaller subsidiaries operating as purchasers and managers, TIAA raised $3 billion for a new global farmland-investment partnership. By the close of 2016, Nuveen’s management portfolio included nearly 2 million acres of farmland, worth close to $6 billion.

Investment in farmland has proved troublesome for TIAA in Mississippi and elsewhere. TIAA is a pension company originally set up for teachers and professors and people in the nonprofit world. It has cultivated a reputation for social responsibility: promoting environmental sustainability and respecting land rights, labor rights, and resource rights. TIAA has endorsed the United Nations–affiliated Principles for Responsible Investment, which include special provisions for investment in farmland, including specific guidelines with regard to sustainability, leasing practices, and establishing the provenance of tracts of land.

Each black farmer who left the region represented a tiny withdrawal from one side of a cosmic balance sheet and a deposit on the other side.

The company has faced pushback for its move into agriculture. In 2015, the international nonprofit Grain, which advocates for local control of farmland by small farmers, released the results of an investigation accusing TIAA’s farmland-investment arm of skirting laws limiting foreign land acquisition in its purchase of more than half a million acres in Brazil. The report found that TIAA had violated multiple UN guidelines in creating a joint venture with a Brazilian firm to invest in farmland without transparency. The Grain report alleges that when Brazil tightened laws designed to restrict foreign investment, TIAA purchased 49 percent of a Brazilian company that then acted as its proxy. According to The New York Times, TIAA and its subsidiaries also appear to have acquired land titles from Euclides de Carli, a businessman often described in Brazil as a big-time grileiro—a member of a class of landlords and land grabbers who use a mix of legitimate means, fraud, and violence to force small farmers off their land. In response to criticism of TIAA’s Brazil portfolio, Jose Minaya, then the head of private-markets asset management at TIAA, told WNYC’s The Takeaway: “We believe and know that we are in compliance with the law, and we are transparent about what we do in Brazil. From a title perspective, our standards are very focused around not displacing individuals or indigenous people, respecting land rights as well as human rights … In every property that we have acquired, we don’t just do due diligence on that property. We do due diligence on the sellers, whether it’s an individual or whether it’s an entity.”

TIAA’s land dealings have faced scrutiny in the United States as well. In 2012, the National Family Farm Coalition found that the entry into agriculture of deep-pocketed institutional investors—TIAA being an example—had made it pretty much impossible for smaller farmers to compete. Institutional investment has removed millions of acres from farmers’ hands, more or less permanently. “Pension funds not only have the power to outbid smaller, local farmers, they also have the long-term goal of retaining farmland for generations,” the report noted.

Asked about TIAA’s record, a spokesperson for Nuveen maintained that the company has built its Delta portfolio following ethical-investment guidelines: “We have a long history of investing responsibly in farmland, in keeping with our corporate values and the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI). As a long-term owner, we bring capital, professional expertise, and sustainable farming practices to each farm we own, and we are always looking to partner with expansion-minded tenants who will embrace that approach and act as good stewards of the land.” The company did not comment on the history of any individual tract in its Delta portfolio.

But even assuming that every acre under management by big corporate interests in the Delta has been acquired by way of ethical-investment principles, the nature of the mid-century dispossession and its multiple layers of legitimation raise the question of whether responsible investment in farmland there is even possible. As a people and a class, black farmers were plainly targets, but the deed histories of tax sales and foreclosures don’t reveal whether individual debtors were moved off the land because of discrimination and its legal tools.

In addition, land records are spotty in rural areas, especially records from the 1950s and ’60s, and in some cases it’s unclear exactly which records the investors used to meet internal requirements. According to Tristan Quinn-Thibodeau, a campaigner and organizer at ActionAid, an anti-poverty and food-justice nonprofit, “It’s been a struggle to get this information.” The organization has tried to follow the trails of deeds and has asked TIAA—which manages ActionAid’s own pension plan—for an analysis of the provenance of its Delta portfolio. Such an analysis has not been provided.

What we do know is that, whatever the specific lineage of each acre, Wall Street investors have found a lucrative new asset class whose origins lie in part in mass dispossession. We know that the vast majority of black farmland in the country is no longer in black hands, and that black farmers have suffered far more hardships than white farmers have. The historian Debra A. Reid points out that “between 1920 and 1997, the number of African Americans who farmed decreased by 98 percent, while white Americans who farmed declined by 66 percent.” Referring to the cases studied in their 2001 investigation, Dolores Barclay and Todd Lewan of the Associated Press observed that virtually all of the property lost by black farmers “is owned by whites or corporations.” The foundation of these portfolios was a system of plantations whose owners created the agrigovernment system and absorbed thousands of small black-owned farms into ever larger white-owned farms. America has its own grileiros, and they stand on land that was once someone else’s.

VI. A Deeper Excavation

As we drove through the patchwork remnants of the Scotts’ land, Willena Scott-White took me to the site of Scott’s Fresh Catfish. Gleaming steel silos had turned into rusting hulks. The ponds were thick with weeds and debris. The exterior walls of the plant itself had collapsed. Rusted beams lay atop ruined machinery. Fire ants and kudzu had begun nature’s reclamation.

Late in Ed Scott Jr.’s life, as he slipped into Alzheimer’s, Willena and his lawyer, Phil Fraas, fought to keep his original hopes alive. In the Pigford v. Glickman lawsuit of 1997, thousands of black farmers and their families won settlements against the USDA for discrimination that had occurred between 1981 and the end of 1996; the outlays ultimately reached a total of $2 billion. The Scotts were one of those families, and after a long battle to prove their case—with the assistance of Scott-White’s meticulous notes and family history—in 2012 the family was awarded more than $6 million in economic damages, plus almost $400,000 in other damages and debt forgiveness. The court also helped the Scotts reclaim land possessed by the department. In a 1999 ruling, Judge Paul L. Friedman of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia acknowledged that forcing the federal government to compensate black farmers would “not undo all that has been done” in centuries of government-sponsored racism. But for the Scotts, it was a start.

“The telling factor, looking at it from the long view, is that at the time of World War I there were 1 million black farmers, and in 1992 there were 18,000,” Fraas told me. The settlements stemming from Pigford cover only specific recent claims of discrimination, and none stretching back to the period of the civil-rights era, when the great bulk of black-owned farms disappeared. Most people have not pushed for any kind of deeper excavation.

Any such excavation would quickly make plain the consequences of what occurred. During my drive with Scott-White, we traveled through parts of Leflore, Sunflower, and Washington Counties, three of the counties singled out by Opportunity Insights, a Harvard University research group, as among the worst in the country in terms of a child’s prospects for upward mobility. Ten counties in the Delta are among the poorest 50 in America. According to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on all 74,000 U.S. census tracts, four tracts in the Delta are among the lowest 100 when it comes to average life expectancy. More than 30 tracts in the Delta have an average life expectancy below 70. (The national average is 79.) In some Delta counties, the infant mortality rate is more than double the nationwide rate. As if to add gratuitous insult to injury, a new analysis from ProPublica finds that, as a result of the Internal Revenue Service’s intense scrutiny of low-income taxpayers, the Delta is audited by the IRS more heavily than any other place in the country. In sum, the areas of deepest poverty and under the darkest shadow of death are the ones where dispossession was the most far-reaching.

The consequences of dispossession had long been predicted. Fannie Lou Hamer, a Sunflower County activist whose 1964 speech to a Democratic National Convention committee galvanized support for the Voting Rights Act, spoke often of the need for land reform as a precondition for true freedom. Hamer’s utopian Freedom Farm experiment stressed cooperative landownership, and she said the concentration of land in the hands of a few landowners was “at the base of our struggle for survival.” In her analysis, mass dispossession should be seen as mass extraction. Even as the U.S. government invested billions in white farmers, it continued to extract wealth from black farmers in the Delta. Each black farmer who left the region, from Reconstruction onward, represented a tiny withdrawal from one side of a cosmic balance sheet and a deposit on the other side. This dynamic would only continue, in other ways and other places, as the Great Migration brought black families to northern cities.

This cosmic balance sheet underpins the national conversation—ever more robust—about reparations for black Americans. In that conversation, given momentum in part by the publication of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “The Case for Reparations” in this magazine in 2014, I hear echoes of Mississippi. I hear echoes of Hamer, the Scotts, Henry Woodard Sr., and others who petitioned the federal government to hold itself accountable for a history of extraction that has extended well beyond enslavement. But that conversation too easily becomes technical. How do we quantify discrimination? How do we define who was discriminated against? How do we repay those people according to what has been defined and quantified? The idea of reparations sometimes seems like a problem of economic rightsizing—something for the quants and wonks to work out.

Economics is, of course, a major consideration. According to the researchers Francis and Hamilton, “The dispossession of black agricultural land resulted in the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars of black wealth. We must emphasize this estimate is conservative … Depending on multiplier effects, rates of returns, and other factors, it could reach into the trillions.” The large wealth gap between white and black families today exists in part because of this historic loss.

But money does not define every dimension of land theft. Were it not for dispossession, Mississippi today might well be a majority-black state, with a radically different political destiny. Imagine the difference in our national politics if the center of gravity of black electoral strength had remained in the South after the Voting Rights Act was passed.

Politics aside, how can reparations truly address the lives ruined, the family histories lost, the connection to the land severed? In America, land has always had a significance that exceeds its economic value. For a people who were once chattel themselves, real property has carried an almost mystical import. There’s a reason the fabled promise that spread among freedmen after the Civil War was not a check, a job, or a refundable tax credit, but 40 acres of farmland to call home. The history of the Delta suggests that any conversation about reparations might need to be more qualitative and intangible than it is. And it must consider the land.

Land hunger is ineffable, an indescribable yearning, and yet it is something that Americans, perhaps uniquely, feel and understand. That yearning tugged at me hardest as Willena Scott-White rounded out her tour of the fields, the afternoon slipping away. Out among the Scotts’ fields is a clearing with a lone, tall tree. In the clearing is a small cemetery. A handful of crooked, weathered tombstones stand sentinel. This is where Ed Scott Jr. is buried, and where some of Willena’s older siblings now rest. Willena posed for a picture beside her parents’ grave. She told me that this is where her own bones will rest after her work on Earth is done.

“This is our land,” she said.

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