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englandsgray · 3 years

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Sherlolly Self-Interviews 2020

Well hi 👋

Ignoring the internal image of Gilderoy Lockheart smiling smugly while flashbulbs pop and saying ‘In my autobiography, Magical Me...’ 🙈😆 I shall take the opportunity of this lovely event to introduce myself as a writer of Sherlolly fanfiction on AO3...

I am English and somewhere over 30. I watched the show as it aired, and lost my heart as quickly to Molly Hooper as to Sherlock Holmes. The kiss is British television history. Series 4 is my favourite. Moriarty on the beach is life. The Holmes brothers break my heart every time.

I am extremely lucky to have been provided some questions to answer here by @ohaine and @mybrainrots - huge, huge love and thanks to these two lovelies, and not just for this. I admire you both so much as writers, and your support means the world to me ❤️ Thanks too, to @sherlollyappreciationweek!

Where did you begin to write, and have you written for other fandoms? I wrote my first fanfic when I was eleven years old - a 100 page ramble about The Monkees. Oh yes. Then in 2018, I fell for the characters of the Disney Pixar film Cars and began writing and publishing. So far so random! Writing in this fandom sprang from binge-watching all four series of Sherlock during lockdown. I remembered reading Louise Brealey talking about being disappointed Molly didn’t get chance to ‘roundly kick Sherlock’s arse’ and agreeing with her wholeheartedly. That, over a few weeks, turned into my first fic - Who You Really Are.

You’re a recent (and welcome!) arrival to the Sherlolly ship, and I was wondering if writing in an established, less active than it used to be fandom has been a challenge? Thank you, firstly. My experience of this fandom has been incredibly positive - the sense of welcome has been wonderful. I will admit I was terrified posting the first fic - there are hundreds of times more stories posted daily in the Sherlock fandom as in the one I had some experience of. But I needn’t have worried, it’s been a blast. I will also admit, that it’s no small thing to be surrounded by such brilliant writing and the long-standing passion which goes with it. But I find that inspiring in itself, and I’m very glad to be here - how supportive the fandom are makes me feel like I always have been!

What’s your favourite place and way to write? My aesthetic is Lin-Manuel Miranda in his in-law’s laundry room 🤣 I wrote my first ten-thousand words on the notes app on my phone before my other half told me to stop being ridiculous! I switch between the laptop, my phone and longhand (I’m a sucker for a nice notepad and a Uni-Ball Eye) and, more often than not, not sat up properly at a table.

Since you’ve (done something I’ve never managed successfully and) written a novella length fic... how did you organise/keep track of all the details and where you wanted the story to go? Did you outline/plot in advance? First of all - I would love to see a novella length fic from you @mybrainrots! The final scene of Who You Really Are came to me very early on and I knew I wanted the fic to fit within TFP - a lot of it takes place in the timeframe of the final montage. At first, it was going to be much more about Sherlock’s relationship with the ideas of sentiment and love (the phrase ‘I’m not sentimental about you, I love you,’ haunted me for a while) and I spent some time researching the psychology and playing with scenes from throughout the series - one of my favourites I didn’t go on to use was inspired by the final scene of THoB. Using scenes from the canon gave an automatic structure, and I was always aiming for the final one I wrote early on - the two of them on the beach (everything is about the beach, with me!) As I went along and started, inevitably, to slow down, I mapped out the chapters with a short note of what I wanted to be in each, then would add notes or phrases as they came to me - often emailed from my phone! I had to force myself through a tricky section set in Baker Street at one point, but it came together in the end. I did plot The Pathologist’s Skeletons on paper first, as I found with a casefic which remains a WIP, that I can get confused and lose focus when it comes to details and how to reveal them in a way which stays paced and interesting. I’ll certainly do that from now on with longer stories and cases. How did you keep up enthusiasm for the work? I want to write an original novel, so I am forcing myself to work through the knotty bits and blocks as a learning experience. Not everything is destined to be finished or finessed, of course, but I’m finding this process is building my confidence that I can overcome problems and slow periods. I also find I know when I need some external inspiration - some of my favourite scenes have come to me while out walking the dog or sitting on the beach. I’ve also been inspired by books or other series or things going on in the world, as we all are, and sometimes that’s pushed me on. Plus, of course, I’m a newbie - I’m very much in the honeymoon period of my writing, even though I’ve loved Sherlock for ten years! (Ten years! Bonkers.)

You’ve got a knack for writing Sherlock’s thoughts and capturing his voice. That said, which character do you find easiest to write? Which is the hardest? Thank you so much. I absolutely love writing Sherlock and Mycroft, and I’m sure that’s because they suit my somewhat over-the-top writing style! I find Molly and her POV really difficult. I want the scenes I write from her perspective to sound completely different to Sherlock, but that means writing in a style which doesn’t come as naturally to me. I’m a long way off happy with that at the moment, but I’m enjoying the challenge.

Is there a scene or character that specifically inspired you to start writing Sherlolly? The whole of TFP, but especially from the moment Sherlock arrives at Musgrave onwards. I am desperate to see what a Sherlock Holmes who has been reacquainted with his own heart would look like. I find his emotionality in those final scenes hugely compelling (Mycroft’s office is one of my favourite moments from across all four series) and, as I have always believed in him and Molly, I practically jumped up back in May after watching it and said ‘right, where’s my notebook?!’.

There’s a lovely peaceful, quiet feeling to your fic ‘We’re All Right At The Moment’. Can you tell us what inspired it and if you’ve thought of doing the backstory that goes with it? Thank you! Like everyone, I would go back to January of this year and start again in a heartbeat, but I am hugely fortunate to be able to say that I have a lot to be grateful to the UK lockdowns for. I might never have begun writing in this fandom otherwise, for one, and I have had a brilliant time so far and met some lovely people. Honestly, I don’t feel able to do any sort of justice in my writing to what has happened in the world in any broader sense than drawing on my own experiences of staying at home and enjoying my family. This particular super-short fic sees Molly cutting Sherlock’s hair at home in Baker Street. I wrote it in the evening after I had cut my other half’s hair and had been reminding myself that despite how horribly worried I was - and still am - about everything, we were all right in that moment, and to focus on that as much as possible. I wanted to try to capture that, if for no reason other than to look back on this entire experience and remember something lovely, so I am so pleased to hear you felt the fic did that. It was only after I finished it and reread it, that I realised it is ambiguous as to whether Molly is worried about Sherlock contracting the virus, or whether she is remembering him being treated for it... As I say, I don’t think I could write more about these extraordinary circumstances - perhaps it’s just too close at the moment - so I don’t plan on extending it. But you know how it is, the plot bunnies hop where they will...

Do you have a Sherlolly music playlist? What are your top five favs from the list? Here’s a run down of (6 🙊) songs I have been getting emotional over in the last little while, leading my brain to assign their significance to my favourite couple...

Kissing You - Des’Ree - It’s so 90′s, it’s a bit cheesy, it’s oddly disturbing. It helped me write A Request, Made Properly, and that gave me an excuse to have Sherlock kiss Molly in the snow.

How Long Will I Love You? - Ellie Goulding - part of the playlist, but also in remembrance of a friend who passed away recently. Life is very short, love is forever.

High and Dry - Jamie Cullum - It’s made me emotional for a very long time. The original is my partner’s version of choice, this is mine.

Think About You - Delta Goodrem - Okay, this one isn’t emotional, and it’s not my usual vibe! Blame the zoom exercise class I do! But oh my goodness, it’s Molly. Bless her.

Blinded By Your Grace (P.T.2. F.T. MNEK) - Stormzy - One of the best ever, I reckon. Spent an awful lot of time thinking about angels and demons, grace and what it takes to save someone, while writing my latest - The Pathologist’s Skeletons. This has been in my head most of the (blimmin’) time!

Love Me Like You Do - Ellie Goulding - I didn’t know I was a fan of Ellie until I wrote this list... I don’t subscribe to the theory that the love Molly wants or that which Sherlock has to offer is any lesser because it isn’t ‘normal’ or expected. I don’t think romantic entanglement would come easy to either of them. But it’s still love and it would be beautiful.

Thank you so much for reading. Thanks and love to @ohaine and @mybrainrots. And thank you @sherlollyappreciationweek for the event and for everything you do ❤️

Feel like I should sign off with a quote from the show...

“You’re not a puzzle-solver, you never have been. You’re a drama queen!” Dr John Watson (Moffat & Gatiss) 2014 😜

A fav fic of mine by @mybrainrots

https://archiveofourown.org/works/7563193

A fav fic of mine by @ohaine

https://archiveofourown.org/works/10562904

My stuff:

https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnglandsGray/works

#sherlolly #sherlollyselfinterview20 #sherlock #sherlockbbc #writing #fanfic #ao3 #ao3 author #read on ao3

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moodboardinthecloud · 4 years

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Your ‘Surge Capacity’ Is Depleted — It’s Why You Feel Awful

Here’s how to pull yourself out of despair and live your life

Tara Haelle

Aug 16·13 min read

https://elemental.medium.com/your-surge-capacity-is-depleted-it-s-why-you-feel-awful-de285d542f4c

Itwas the end of the world as we knew it, and I felt fine. That’s almost exactly what I told my psychiatrist at my March 16 appointment, a few days after our children’s school district extended spring break because of the coronavirus. I said the same at my April 27 appointment, several weeks after our state’s stay-at-home order.

Yes, it was exhausting having a kindergartener and fourth grader doing impromptu distance learning while I was barely keeping up with work. And it was frustrating to be stuck home nonstop, scrambling to get in grocery delivery orders before slots filled up, and tracking down toilet paper. But I was still doing well because I thrive in high-stress emergency situations. It’s exhilarating for my ADHD brain. As just one example, when my husband and I were stranded in Peru during an 8.0-magnitude earthquake that killed thousands, we walked around with a first aid kit helping who we could and tracking down water and food. Then I went out with my camera to document the devastation as a photojournalist and interview Peruvians in my broken Spanish for my hometown paper.

Now we were in a pandemic, and I’m a science journalist who has written about infectious disease and medical research for nearly a decade. I was on fire, cranking out stories, explaining epidemiological concepts in my social networks, trying to help everyone around me make sense of the frightening circumstances of a pandemic and the anxiety surrounding the virus.

I knew it wouldn’t last. It never does. But even knowing I would eventually crash, I didn’t appreciate how hard the crash would be, or how long it would last, or how hard it would be to try to get back up over and over again, or what getting up even looked like.

Psychiatrist and habit change specialist Dr. Jud Brewer explains how anxiety masquerades as helpfulelemental.medium.com

How to Live When Your Mind Is Governed by Fear

In those early months, I, along with most of the rest of the country, was using “surge capacity” to operate, as Ann Masten, PhD, a psychologist and professor of child development at the University of Minnesota, calls it. Surge capacity is a collection of adaptive systems — mental and physical — that humans draw on for short-term survival in acutely stressful situations, such as natural disasters. But natural disasters occur over a short period, even if recovery is long. Pandemics are different — the disaster itself stretches out indefinitely.

“The pandemic has demonstrated both what we can do with surge capacity and the limits of surge capacity,” says Masten. When it’s depleted, it has to be renewed. But what happens when you struggle to renew it because the emergency phase has now become chronic?

By my May 26 psychiatrist appointment, I wasn’t doing so hot. I couldn’t get any work done. I’d grown sick of Zoom meetups. It was exhausting and impossible to think with the kids around all day. I felt trapped in a home that felt as much a prison as a haven. I tried to conjure the motivation to check email, outline a story, or review interview notes, but I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t make myself do anything — work, housework, exercise, play with the kids — for that whole week.

Or the next.

I know depression, but this wasn’t quite that. It was, as I’d soon describe in an emotional post in a social media group of professional colleagues, an “anxiety-tainted depression mixed with ennui that I can’t kick,” along with a complete inability to concentrate. I spoke with my therapist, tweaked medication dosages, went outside daily for fresh air and sunlight, tried to force myself to do some physical activity, and even gave myself permission to mope for a few weeks. We were in a pandemic, after all, and I had already accepted in March that life would not be “normal” for at least a year or two. But I still couldn’t work, couldn’t focus, hadn’t adjusted. Shouldn’t I be used to this by now?

“Why do you think you should be used to this by now? We’re all beginners at this,” Masten told me. “This is a once in a lifetime experience. It’s expecting a lot to think we’d be managing this really well.”

It wasn’t until my social media post elicited similar responses from dozens of high-achieving, competent, impressive women I professionally admire that I realized I wasn’t in the minority. My experience was a universal and deeply human one.

An unprecedented disaster

While the phrase “adjusting to the new normal” has been repeated endlessly since March, it’s easier said than done. How do you adjust to an ever-changing situation where the “new normal” is indefinite uncertainty?

“This is an unprecedented disaster for most of us that is profound in its impact on our daily lives,” says Masten. But it’s different from a hurricane or tornado where you can look outside and see the damage. The destruction is, for most people, invisible and ongoing. So many systems aren’t working as they normally do right now, which means radical shifts in work, school, and home life that almost none of us have experience with. Even those who have worked in disaster recovery or served in the military are facing a different kind of uncertainty right now.

Americans are faced with more risk than ever. Understanding how the brain navigates this new reality can build…elemental.medium.com

Life Is Now a Game of Risk. Here’s How Your Brain Is Processing It.

“I think we maybe underestimate how severe the adversity is and that people may be experiencing a normal reaction to a pretty severe and ongoing, unfolding, cascading disaster,” Masten says. “It’s important to recognize that it’s normal in a situation of great uncertainty and chronic stress to get exhausted and to feel ups and downs, to feel like you’re depleted or experience periods of burnout.”

Research on disaster and trauma focuses primarily on what’s helpful for people during the recovery period, but we’re not close to recovery yet. People can use their surge capacity for acute periods, but when dire circumstances drag on, Masten says, “you have to adopt a different style of coping.”

“How do you adjust to an ever-changing situation where the ‘new normal’ is indefinite uncertainty?”

Understanding ambiguous loss

It’s not surprising that, as a lifelong overachiever, I’ve felt particularly despondent and adrift as the months have dragged on, says Pauline Boss, PhD, a family therapist and professor emeritus of social sciences at the University of Minnesota who specializes in “ambiguous loss.”

“It’s harder for high achievers,” she says. “The more accustomed you are to solving problems, to getting things done, to having a routine, the harder it will be on you because none of that is possible right now. You get feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, and those aren’t good.”

That’s similar to how Michael Maddaus, MD, a professor of thoracic surgery at the University of Minnesota, felt when he became addicted to prescription narcotics after undergoing several surgeries. Now recovered and a motivational speaker who promotes the idea of a “resilience bank account,” Maddaus had always been a fast-moving high achiever — until he couldn’t be.

“I realized that my personal operating system, though it had led to tremendous success, had failed me on a more personal level,” he says. “I had to figure out a different way of contending with life.”

That mindset is an especially American one, Boss says.

“Our culture is very solution-oriented, which is a good way of thinking for many things,” she says. “It’s partly responsible for getting a man on the moon and a rover on Mars and all the things we’ve done in this country that are wonderful. But it’s a very destructive way of thinking when you’re faced with a problem that has no solution, at least for a while.”

That means reckoning with what’s called ambiguous loss: any loss that’s unclear and lacks a resolution. It can be physical, such as a missing person or the loss of a limb or organ, or psychological, such as a family member with dementia or a serious addiction.

“In this case, it is a loss of a way of life, of the ability to meet up with your friends and extended family,” Boss says. “It is perhaps a loss of trust in our government. It’s the loss of our freedom to move about in our daily life as we used to.” It’s also the loss of high-quality education, or the overall educational experience we’re used to, given school closures, modified openings and virtual schooling. It’s the loss of rituals, such weddings, graduations, and funerals, and even lesser “rituals,” such as going to gym. One of the toughest losses for me to adapt to is no longer doing my research and writing in coffee shops as I’ve done for most of my life, dating back to junior high.

“These were all things we were attached to and fond of, and they’re gone right now, so the loss is ambiguous. It’s not a death, but it’s a major, major loss,” says Boss. “What we used to have has been taken away from us.”

Just as painful are losses that may result from the intersection of the pandemic and the already tense political division in the country. For many people, issues related to Covid-19 have become the last straw in ending relationships, whether it’s a family member refusing to wear a mask, a friend promoting the latest conspiracy theory, or a co-worker insisting Covid-19 deaths are exaggerated.

Ambiguous loss elicits the same experiences of grief as a more tangible loss — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — but managing it often requires a bit of creativity.

A winding, uncharted path to coping in a pandemic

While there isn’t a handbook for functioning during a pandemic, Masten, Boss, and Maddaus offered some wisdom for meandering our way through this.

Accept that life is different right now

Maddaus’ approach involves radical acceptance. “It’s a shitty time, it’s hard,” he says. “You have to accept that in your bones and be okay with this as a tough day, with ‘that’s the way it is,’ and accept that as a baseline.”

But that acceptance doesn’t mean giving up, he says. It means not resisting or fighting reality so that you can apply your energy elsewhere. “It allows you to step into a more spacious mental space that allows you to do things that are constructive instead of being mired in a state of psychological self torment.”

Expect less from yourself

Most of us have heard for most of our lives to expect more from ourselves in some way or another. Now we must give ourselves permission to do the opposite. “We have to expect less of ourselves, and we have to replenish more,” Masten says. “I think we’re in a period of a lot of self discovery: Where do I get my energy? What kind of down time do I need? That’s all shifted right now, and it may take some reflection and self discovery to find out what rhythms of life do I need right now?”

She says people are having to live their lives without the support of so many systems that have partly or fully broken down, whether it’s schools, hospitals, churches, family support, or other systems that we relied on. We need to recognize that we’re grieving multiple losses while managing the ongoing impact of trauma and uncertainty. The malaise so many of us feel, a sort of disinterested boredom, is common in research on burnout, Masten says. But other emotions accompany it: disappointment, anger, grief, sadness, exhaustion, stress, fear, anxiety — and no one can function at full capacity with all that going on.

Recognize the different aspects of grief

The familiar “stages” of grief don’t actually occur in linear stages, Boss says, but denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance are all major concepts in facing loss. Plenty of people are in denial: denying the virus is real, or that the numbers of cases or deaths are as high as reported, or that masks really help reduce disease transmission.

Anger is evident everywhere: anger at those in denial, anger in the race demonstrations, anger at those not physically distancing or wearing masks, and even anger at those who wear masks or require them. The bargaining, Boss says, is mostly with scientists we hope will develop a vaccine quickly. The depression is obvious, but acceptance… “I haven’t accepted any of this,” Boss says. “I don’t know about you.”

Sometimes acceptance means “saying we’re going to have a good time in spite of this,” Boss says, such as when my family drove an hour outside the city to get far enough from light pollution to look for the comet NEOWISE. But it can also mean accepting that we cannot change the situation right now.

“We can kick and scream and be angry, or we can feel the other side of it, with no motivation, difficulty focusing, lethargy,” Boss says, “or we can take the middle way and just have a couple days where you feel like doing nothing and you embrace the losses and sadness you’re feeling right now, and then the next day, do something that has an element of achievement to it.”

“Our new normal is always feeling a little off balance, like trying to stand in a dinghy on rough seas, and not knowing when the storm will pass.”

Experiment with “both-and” thinking

This approach may not work for everyone, but Boss says there’s an alternative to binary thinking that many people find helpful in dealing with ambiguous loss. She calls it “both-and” thinking, and sometimes it means embracing a bit of the irrational.

For the families of soldiers missing in action in Vietnam that Boss studied early in her career, or the family members of victims of plane crashes where the bodies aren’t recovered, this type of thinking means thinking: “He is both living and maybe not. She is probably dead but maybe not.”

“If you stay in the rational when nothing else is rational, like right now, then you’ll just stress yourself more,” she says. “What I say with ambiguous loss is the situation is crazy, not the person. The situation is pathological, not the person.”

An analogous approach during the pandemic might be, “This is terrible and many people are dying, and this is also a time for our families to come closer together,” Boss says. On a more personal level, “I’m highly competent, and right now I’m flowing with the tide day-to-day.”

It’s a bit of a Schrödinger’s existence, but when you can’t change the situation, “the only thing you can change is your perception of it,” she says.

Of course, that doesn’t mean denying the existence of the pandemic or the coronavirus. As Maddaus says, “You have to face reality.” But how we frame that reality mentally can help us cope with it.

Look for activities, new and old, that continue to fulfill you

Lots of coping advice has focused on “self-care,” but one of the frustrating ironies of the pandemic is that so many of our self-care activities have also been taken away: pedicures, massages, coffee with friends, a visit to the amusement park, a kickboxing class, swimming in the local pool — these activities remain unsafe in much of the country. So we have to get creative with self-care when we’re least motivated to get creative.

“When we’re forced to rethink our options and broaden out what we think of as self-care, sometimes that constraint opens new ways of living and thinking,” Masten says. “We don’t have a lot of control over the global pandemic but we do over our daily lives. You can focus on plans for the future and what’s meaningful in life.”

For me, since I missed eating in restaurants and was tired of our same old dinners, I began subscribing to a meal-kit service. I hate cooking, but the meal kits were easy, and I was motivated by the chance to eat something that tasted more like what I’d order in a restaurant without having to invest energy in looking through recipes or ordering the right ingredients.

Okay, I’ve also been playing a lot of Animal Crossing, but Maddaus explains why it makes sense that creative activities like cooking, gardening, painting, house projects — or even building your own imaginary island out of pixels — can be fulfilling right now. He references the book The Molecule of More, which explores how dopamine influences our experiences and happiness, in describing the types of activities most likely to bring us joy.

“There are two ways the brain deals with the world: the future and things we need to go after, and the here and now, seeing things and touching things,” Maddaus says. “Rather than being at the mercy of what’s going on, we can use the elements of our natural reward system and construct things to do that are good no matter what.”

Those kinds of activities have a planning element and a here-and-now experience element. For Maddaus, for example, it was simply replacing all the showerheads and lightbulbs in the house. “It’s a silly thing, but it made me feel good,” he says.

Focus on maintaining and strengthening important relationships

The biggest protective factors for facing adversity and building resilience are social support and remaining connected to people, Masten says. That includes helping others, even when we’re feeling depleted ourselves.

“Helping others is one of those win-win strategies of taking action because we’re all feeling a sense of helplessness and loss of control about what’s going on with this pandemic, but when you take action with other people, you can control what you’re doing,” she says. Helping others could include checking in on family friends or buying groceries for an elderly neighbor.

Begin slowly building your resilience bank account

Maddaus’ idea of a resilience bank account is gradually building into your life regular practices that promote resilience and provide a fallback when life gets tough. Though it would obviously be nice to have a fat account already, he says it’s never too late to start. The areas he specifically advocates focusing on are sleep, nutrition, exercise, meditation, self-compassion, gratitude, connection, and saying no.

“Start really small and work your way up,” he says. “If you do a little bit every day, it starts to add up and you get momentum, and even if you miss a day, then start again. We have to be gentle with ourselves and keep on, begin again.”

After spending an hour on the phone with each of these experts, I felt refreshed and inspired. I can do this! I was excited about writing this article and sharing what I’d learned.

And then it took me two weeks to start the article and another week to finish it — even though I wanted to write it. But now, I could cut myself a little more slack for taking so much longer than I might have a few months ago. I might have intellectually accepted back in March that the next two years (or more?) are going to be nothing like normal, and not even predictable in how they won’t be normal. But cognitively recognizing and accepting that fact and emotionally incorporating that reality into everyday life aren’t the same. Our new normal is always feeling a little off balance, like trying to stand in a dinghy on rough seas, and not knowing when the storm will pass. But humans can get better at anything with practice, so at least I now have some ideas for working on my sea legs.

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juniorformulamotorsport · 5 years

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Sunday 15th September 2019 – Boppard, Schloss Rheinfels, Illkirch

After an excellent, and beautifully presented, breakfast at the Landgasthof Eiserner Ritter, which made us regret what we’d had for dinner the night before even more, we packed up ready to move on.

It was a glorious day, and we had a plan to start by visiting the centre of Boppard and then, if we had time, moving on to the nearby Schloss Rheinfels before we headed to our first destination in Alsace, and AirBnB in Illkirch-Graffenstaden, just outside Strasbourg.

We parked up at the railway station, which is close to the middle of town, and where we couldn’t argue with the graffitti, which translated to “Wine in principle” – seemed like a fair statement to us. The station also offered free parking under cover, at least on a Sunday anyway, which meant we’d come back to a cool car rather than an oven. Having found our way in, we then picked our way into town past the old city walls.

As in Oberwesel, the railway line runs right next to them, and from there a number of underpasses lead you into the town centre, past some rather odd sights…

It was around 10am and very quiet on the side streets. We walked past interesting – but closed – shops and businesses, including one selling the most odd fish (I think that’s what they were).

We also met a friendly, though not very helpful, local.

We could hear music in the distance, and so we headed towards it, finding ourselves on the riverside, where a local brass band was putting on a concert. Apparently this is a regular thing on September Sunday mornings, and quite a few people were already sitting around in the sun, enjoying the music.

We had also located the municipal museum, which is housed in the former Electoral castle, which was altered numerous times over the centuries, and which was fascinating both in terms of the actual building, and in terms of the history it related. First, something about the town itself. Just as with Oberwesel, there’s been a settlement on the site for a very long time (the earliest traces of occupation go back around 13,000 years) but the first real remnants that the visitor can see are Roman, probably replacing the Celts again. In the mid 3rd century the Romans had to evacuate their territory on the right bank of the Rhine and secure the river as their border. During the rule of Valentinian I a Roman castrum, the Römerkastell Boppard, was built and the Roman troops finally left the area in 405, when they were withdrawn to defend their home base. In 643 Boppard was recorded as a Frankish royal estate and a Merovingian state administrative centre.

It was thus a free imperial city (until 1309), which meant kings turned up to stay at the Royal Estate on a frequent basis. Then in 1309 Heinrich VII pledged Boppard to his brother, Archbishop Baldwin of Trier. The locals however, were having none of that, and they set up their own council, triggering a siege, after which Boppard finally became part of the Electorate of Trier, and Baldwin extended the castle, giving work to the locals both in the administration and the construction “sectors”. Despite this, the locals still weren’t happy, and so they turned to the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, who took their side against the Elector. Maximilian freed Boppard from Electoral jurisdiction and tolls, but then had to reverse the decision, which kicked off the Boppard War in 1497. The Elector of Trier sent an army of 12,000 to sort it out, and the resistance of the townsfolk promptly crumbled.

After that Boppard seemed to get in the way of a number of armies, losing a fair whack of its population during the Thirty Years’ War, when the town was occupied by Swedish troops (1632). During the Nine Years’ War the French attacked but were beaten off, but they came back during the War of the Polish Succession. Just to add to the fun, in 1794 French Revolutionary troops occupied the town and stayed for 20 years. As if that wasn’t enough, after Napoleon was defeated in 1814, Boppard was governed by the Imperial and Royal Austrian and Royal Bavarian joint Landesadministrationskommission for a very short period, before it was handed to Prussia as a result of the Congress of Vienna. It’s a miracle that anyone in the place had any idea where they belonged. That can, however, also be said for many places along the Rhine, as we would find out in the coming days.

As the museum was still closed (it was due to open at 11) we stopped off for a coffee at the first open café we could find, the Café Zeitgeist, which was rather lovely and provided an excellent cappuccino.

The owners reckon they are occupying the oldest surviving half-timbered house in the town, and as it dates from 1519 I’m not going to argue with them. It’s been modernised and given a lot of love since then.

After we’d finished, the museum was open, so we popped in and nosed around, surprising ourselves by stumbling across a bit of history we should have known about given our interests, but that had somehow passed us by. That being the story of Richard of Cornwall, the second son of King John, nominal Count of Poitou, Earl of Conrwall and – and this is the significant bit with regards to Boppard – King of Germany from 1257. He seems to have made a great deal of money and managed to become one of the wealthiest men in Europe at the time, and was clearly much more politically astute than his father. He presumably became even richer after he joined the Barons’ Crusade, where “he achieved success as a negotiator for the release of prisoners” and presumably was amply rewarded for it. The whole “King of Germany” thing was less than straightforward too, which shouldn’t surprise anyone I suppose. Only 4 of the 7 Electors originally supported Richard, though the fact that he had powerful relatives finally swung things in his favour, that along with bribes amounting to 28,000 marks anyway! He was crowned “King of the Romans” in Aachen on 27th May 1257 by Konrad von Hochstaden, Archbishop of Cologne. He made only four brief visits to Germany between 1257 and 1269 but one of those seems o have been to Boppard. I think it unlikely he stopped off here though.

Also of interest in the museum was a section all about the inventor of bentwood furniture, Michael Thonet, who was born and worked locally before going off to Vienna and becoming massively successful. The collection is substantial, and well displayed, and made me think about how such items are made for the first time. They’re also lovely, elegant, with beautiful curving shapes that make you want to touch them. It was also a pleasure being allowed to take photographs (without flash), something we found was common pretty much everywhere we went over the time we were away.

Just to add to tour enjoyment, there were also some entertaining portraits of composers from a variety of eras, by Michael Aptiz, another local. His exhibition, CHROMOFONIE, was fabulous. I especially liked Beethoven, though he also went modern with Bob Dylan, that work appearing on one of the staircases. He also creates stunning landscapes, some of which are also in the museum.

We also discovered you could get up into the tower of the castle from inside the museum, and although it wasn’t especially high, it did offer some excellent views up and down the river, and across the rooftops of the town. The tower also contained the remains of a small chapel, which had obviously been gloriously frescoed in its day.

Afterwards we figured we’d stop for another drink, this time at the eccentrically decorated Café and Bistro 60s, where we drank coffee and spotted – and then had to identify – a weirdly wonderful hummingbird hawk moth (macroglossum stellatarum), something I’d certainly never seen before, and that was moving too fast for me to get a photo of. They seem to be rather fond of geraniums. They weren’t at all interested in my coffee.

After coffee we decided we’d like to visit another of the town’s main attractions, Saint Severus’ Church, described as “one of the finest examples of late Romanesque church architecture in the Rhineland”. It stands on the site of the Roman military bath houses, and is visible from all over town with its white washed paired towers pointing up to the heavens. We were also told that “the webbed vaulting in the nave is unique in Romanesque architecture” and “the richness of the colours and decorative patterns is unmatched in the Middle Rhine region”. It had a lot to live up to; it didn’t disappoint. We’re really not used to richly decorated churches in England, given that most decoration was stripped away in the English Civil War, if it had survived the Reformation in the first place. Some of the churches we saw on this trip were mind-bendingly glorious in their vivid designs and colours.

As a throwback to its earliest history, there are Roman gravestones on display, but you could probably miss them if you let the interior overwhelm you, something it is determined to do at every turn.

We swung back through the town centre, stopped and bought a box of wine, and then reunited ourselves with the car, and headed one stop further along the riverside, and stopped at Sankt Goar, another ludicrously pretty town in the UNESCO World Heritage site. As with everywhere else along the Rhine Valley, Sankt Goar was already settled in Roman times, but takes its name from Goar of Aquitaine, a monk, who arrived in the reign of King Childebert I (511-538). He started out as a hermit, but then became a missionary, well known for his great hospitality, particularly towards the Rhine boatmen. He built a chapel and a hospice, and after his death it became a pilgrimage site, and the town developed from there, especially after King Pepin the Younger transferred the hospice and chapel to the Abbot of Prüm Abbey as a personal benefice. There is a claim that Charlemagne built a church over the site of the original hermitage, but then most places in the region make that sort of claim. It later came under the protection of the Counts of Katzenelnbogen, with Count Diether V building the structure we’d come to see, the massively monumental Burg Rheinfels.

Later the castle would be fought over by Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Darmstadt. which saw Burg Rheinfels and Sankt Goar besieged for several weeks in the summer of 1626 with help of Imperial troops. It was an argument that would continue for some decades, and probably only really stopped in the early 1700s. In 1711, after an inheritance dispute, Landgrave William of Hesse-Wanfried was awarded the Landgraviate of Hesse-Rheinfels and the Emperor transferred the castle to him in 1718. In 1731, Christian of Hessen-Wanfried (known since 1711 as Hessen-Eschwege) inherited the Landgraviate of Hesse-Rheinfels along with the castle and the castle was ceded to Hesse-Kassel in 1735. In 1755, after Christian’s death, the Landgraviate passed to the Landgraviate of Hesse-Rotenburg, in 1794, the castle was given up to French Revolutionary troops without a fight, and in 1796 and 1797, great parts of it were blown up.

And that’s how it remains to this day, despite a tentative plan by Wilhelm II to recreate it in an effort to promote German civilization. It didn’t happen and Wilhelm turned his attention to another castle in the region, but now in France, Haut Koenigsbourg, of which more another time. I think it’s fair to say that none of this stops you getting a good idea of just how intimidating it must have been in its heyday. It also commands the landscape for some distance, looming over the river and vineyards far below.

There is a small museum in the former chapel which detailed the history of the complex, and a downstairs room that seemed to be “we found all this lot lying around the castle and have to put it somewhere” which was diverting if not terribly informative!

With time running out – we needed to get on our way to Illkirch-Graffenstaden by 3pm at the latest and anyway our car parking stay was going to run out slightly before that – we figured we’d better get something to eat or we’d be very hungry by the time we could sort dinner out. We scooted into the restaurant on the other side of the entrance way and completely failed to get a table outside on the terrace. We settled slightly grumpily at an indoor table and looked enviously out of the nearest glass door where two people and a dog could be seen dining. We figured they were also on the main terrace, but then they got up and left, so I stuck my head outside and realised that there was what was in effect a tiny balcony all on its own overlooking the valley. We didn’t need a second invitation and threw ourselves out there, figuring that in this case possession was definitely 9/10ths of the law!

We ordered a flammkuchen each (in effect a very thin based local version of pizza topped with creme fraiche and whatever else the chef fancies if they’re being avant garde or with bacon and onions if they’re being traditionalist), one with feta cheese and peppers and one with wild mushrooms and bacon.

They were big but we were quite prepared to wrap any leftovers up and take them with us – it would save having to go and look for a restaurant open on a Sunday evening in France later on.

Enjoyed with a glass of local wine each, we settled in to enjoy our view, while remaining shaded from the frankly ferocious sun. Neither of us could manage more than half of the flammkuchen so we duly packed the spare up and stashed it in my bag.

We left the Rhine with plans to come back starting to percolate in my brain, especially now we knew about the Schloss Rheinfels Hotel! There followed a rather longer drive than I’d have hoped for as we found the main route from where we were towards Strasbourg was a single lane each way and was full of all sorts of annoyingly slow traffic. We arrived at one minute past the appointed hour and then had to faff around trying to contact our AirBnB landlady, but we eventually got in and got settled, unpacking for our three night stay on the edge of Strasbourg.

Travel 2019 – Alsace and Baden, Day 3, Boppard, Schloss Rheinfels, Illkirch Sunday 15th September 2019 - Boppard, Schloss Rheinfels, Illkirch After an excellent, and beautifully presented, breakfast at the…

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yeomangamer · 6 years

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Dusty Skirmishes Chapter 1

Summary: In the WEST more territory means more power. The REPUBLIC sent settlers with promises of provisions, hoping to expand their land. As the Civil War broke out, The IMPERIAL COMPANY promised to double those provisions to anyone willing to give over the rights to their land. But as the years go by, what was the Wild West is shrinking as civilization bleeds from the east. In the new state of ALDERAAN, the city of SCARIF has annexed several small towns and villages nearby, most recently the small village of JAKKU. In the nearby TATOOINE, Sheriff LUKE SKYWALKER and Mayor ACKBAR worry their dusty town is next.

A/N: Doing something different, hope it works out. Please check out the Ao3/FFN versions for full authors notes

Leia couldn’t find the mayor anywhere. She had been given leave early from her job at the mayor’s office that day--which had frustrated her enough. Only for her to not, first, find her brother at their small shared home or in his office. She had checked the saloon and the town meeting hall where she found that the mayor was also missing. This was very suspicious, and unlike her brother. Though Luke wasn’t the most open man, he didn’t believe in keeping the goings on as sheriff a secret. Especially now, after receiving the news of Jakku’s annexation, Leia felt secrecy wasn’t going to get them anywhere.

She checked the bank next, poking her head into the open door only to take it out quickly when she saw who was inside. A voice called her back in as she turned away: “Can I help you, Miss Organa?”

She turned back to face Threepio, the town’s banker, and stepped into the building.

“Mr. Threepio, sorry to bother you, but have you seen the sheriff or the mayor?” She asked, taking her wide-brimmed hat off and holding it to her chest.

“Thought you had them both on a tight lease.” The voice belonged to the very man Leia had tried to avoid seeing. Two men stood at the other end of the counter, one filling out a form. They were covered from head to toe in cotton and leather, as well as dust of course. Everything west of the Dagobah River was covered in dust, especially in Tattooine. There wasn’t a door in town closed all day and night, except the town meeting hall and her brother’s office. With such infrequent rain, the townspeople had never felt the need to shy from any kind of weather except the occasional dust storm. Leia remembered girls in school back east who had squealed and shrieked at dirt, lifting their skirts up at the mention. If only they could see her now with the dust on her boots, dust on her skirts, dust in her hair, and--she was sure--even dust in her teeth.

“Mr. Solo, Mr. Chewbacca, a pleasure as always,” she said to the two men. Upbringing and decorum in this situation dictated that she not say what she actually thought when at the sight of these two men. Which was, in fact, the complete opposite of what she had said.

The cowboy tipped his hat slightly, leaning on the counter with a smirk. “Ma’am.” The Indian at his side also bowed his head slightly, but any other movements were imperceptible by the buffalo fur poncho he wore.

“Haven’t seen a cattle train in months. What brings you two gentlemen to Tatooine?” Cowboys in town meant yet another thing Leia would have to worry about, as if the news about Jakku wasn’t enough.

Mr. Solo seemed to finish whatever he was doing and brought his paperwork to Threepio. “Business.”

Leia narrowed her eyes and tried not to curl her lip. “What business would bring you here?”

Threepio stamped his document and handed it back to him. “None of yours, sweetheart. Nice to see you.” Mr. Solo walked past Leia with no more than a tip of his hat, Chewie on his heels shortly after. She watched them both walk away, chewing on the past few minutes.

“What did they want, Threepio?” she asked, finally.

“I’m afraid that’s confidential, ma’am.” Threepio had always been a stickler for the rules, and normally Leia agreed with him, but these were desperate times... Leia leaned over the counter and grabbed the receipt for Han’s paperwork. She got one good look at it before Threepio grabbed it back out of her hand.

“He opened an account?” Threepio shoved the receipt into a drawer and started to give her some sort of lecture, but she was barely listening. Han Solo had always been a drifter; he was a steer driver for Jabba the Hutt. He only stopped in town to wet his whistle at Mos Eisley’s Saloon or harrass Luke with general cowboy tomfoolery. If he’d opened an account, it must mean he planned on staying in town for a long period of time. Town law stated that a bank deposit was necessary to start a tab at Mos Eisley’s or the hotel. It was to discourage drifters from drinking the town dry and leaving with the next cattle train.

Threepio had gone on as Leia pondered this revelation. “It is generally expected that a level of decency be upheld in this business. After all, things aren’t what they used to be for good reason. You can’t just point a gun at a teller and expect the sheriff not to be called.”

Leia nodded at Threepio’s comment, but two figures caught her attention as they walked up the main street past the bank. She dashed away as Threepio kept talking, catching up next to Luke as she fit her hat back on her head.

“Afternoon,” Luke said to her, tipping his own hat and the Mayor extended her the same greeting.

“What are we to do?” she asked, not wasting any time with pleasantries.

“Well, the mayor and I were just about to get a drink over at Mos Eisley’s. You’re welcome to join us, Leia.”

“No, I mean about Scarif.”

Luke sighed, but kept walking. “I reckon you heard the news about Jakku then.”

She nodded. “You know what that means, don’t you? Jakku is a scrap a land with nobody and nothing in it, but the area has gotta be 30 parsecs across. They’re trying to acquire more territory to gain more power in the state legislature.”

“They haven’t been the first, have they? There was the Imperial Company’s death squad coming at us last year, trying to take our land out from under us,” Mayor Ackbar reminded them, huffing as sweat dripped down his red face. He had never been the most athletic of men.

“We took care of them then, didn’t we?” Leia asked, as they passed the barbers.

“Then they had at least 20 hired guns coming at us,” Luke huffed. He needed no reminder of the events that occurred over a year ago. “Things are different now, the folks over in Scarif are using bureaucracy and in that crapshoot you can’t just point a gun at someone who don’t like you. That don’t hold up in a court of law.” He sounded firm, and she knew he had thought long and hard about this.

“I wasn’t suggesting we point a gun at anyone.” A sharp gust of wind kicked up a cloud of dust, and the trio leaned their hats into the cloud to shield what they could of their faces.

“Then what’re you suggesting, Leia?” Ackbar had always stood up for her, always believed in her. When the denizens of the town had expressed distaste in a woman being so close to him, he’d asked if anyone with more experience in secretarial work could come forward, they could have her job. Between finishing school and private tutors, there were few men even east of the Dagobah River as qualified as Leia. He had faith in her, and she hoped not to let him down.

“Beat them at their own game somehow.” Luke stopped then to look at her. She brushed what little dust she could off the front of her dress and cleared her throat.

“It isn’t just our little town against the elements and the raiders anymore. Alderaan’s transition from territory to state should mean that the state should take care of us. And if we don’t want to be a part of the city of Scarif, we shouldn’t have to be.”

“So, you’re suggesting we go up to the capital and ask all pleasant-like to not be annexed pleased?” Luke asked.

She knew he didn’t mean to denigrate her, but his words were still harsh. “No, but there has to be some recourse through the government. We just have to find it.”

Luke nodded in understanding. “I’ll chew that cud for a while, we’ll think of something.” They continued to Mos Eisley’s. The player piano always played the same tune at Mos Eisley’s, but in a town such as Tatooine, everyone still did their best to keep it wound up and in good condition. It played the same tune it always had as the trio entered the saloon. Luke ordered whiskey for the three of them, and the bartender whistled in acknowledgement. Leia hung her hat on the small hatrack by the door, smoothing down her pinned back hair as she took a seat next to her brother at the bar.

Several people approached Luke, asking if he’d heard about Jakku. Luke answered yes he had heard about it, that it was a crying shame, and not to worry about the town.

“But what if we’re next?” Wedge Antilles asked, clearly concerned. “First those Imperial thugs last year, and now Scarif itching at our border? What’ll we do, Luke?”

“Luke’ll take care of ‘em, just like he did with those Imperial bastards.” The voice came from the other side of the crowd, Kes Dameron most likely, but Leia couldn’t see.

Luke shook his head. “This ain’t the same kind of fight, folks. And don’t nobody be worried about annexation until I says so. Got it?”

That seemed to pacify most everyone in the saloon, they soon returned to light conversation and dispersed. Leia went back to her drink. Someone was now standing at her elbow, and she could smell cows.

“Didn’t think this was your kind of place, sweetheart.”

She took a sip of the watered down whiskey, still not looking at him. “And what kind of place did you picture me in, Mr. Solo? All the good flophouses are back east.”

“What’s a girl like you doing west of the Dagobah River anyway? Got lost on the way to a dinner party?”

She only smiled, finally looking at him. “I should ask you a similar question.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Oh? Picturin’ me at a dinner party?”

She scoffed. “As if they’d let you in the door. No, what I want to know is why you opened a bank account here? Our town charm finally convincing you to settle down?”

“Spyin’ on me, sweetheart?”

Leia took another drink. “See, you’re wrong, Mr. Solo, about what you said in the bank. Anything that happens in this town is my business. And if you want to continue living in this town, I suggest you get comfortable with that.”

“Who says I wanna live here?”

Leia shrugged. “I have no idea, Mr. Solo. The nearest brothel isn’t for another 8 miles or so. WE don’t have the best saloons or ties with the Hutts. And yet you opened an account here.”

“Guess they don’t teach you to not be nosy at fancy grammar schools. Came into some money. Wanted to make sure it’s kept safe.”

Leia tossed back the rest of her drink. “Liar.”

His smirk fell. “How-”

“There are plenty of banks in Scarif with better protection and nobody would question some scruffy-looking steer herder putting money in there.”

“Now you wait just a moment-”

The swinging doors to the saloon burst open, hitting the wall with a smack as someone ran in and straight to Luke. “Sheriff! Sheriff! There’s a wagon seen coming towards town!”

“Who is it?” Luke asked.

“No idea!”

Luke slid off his stool, and set his hat back on his head. “Leia, go home. Wedge, Ezra, let’s go.” He headed out the door at a fast pace with the two men in toe. Leia also slid off her stool, running after them, her skirts balled up in her fists.

“He said to head home, sweetheart!” Mr. Solo’s voice called out behind her.

She heard his footsteps behind her, and only raised her skirts higher to run faster. By the time she had caught up to the trio in front of her, they had reached the wagon in the center of town. It was pulled by two horses that bucked and kicked at the cart.

“Stay back, Leia!” Mr. Solo spit at her as she slowed to a stop and he hurried to help calm the horses down.

Holding the reins of the horses was a young woman, no more than Leia’s age, in a white cotton nightgown and shawl. Her hair was long and not tied back. She looked as though she had just gotten out of bed. Her cries and tears were furious as Leia climbed the side of the cart to help her down. Some of the wives had come out and one produced a cotton quilt to wrap the hysterical woman in.

“It’s alright, you’re alright,” the women told her, rubbing the stranger’s arms and back.

“What happened to you?” Leia asked, but the woman only babbled and cried.

The horses had calmed down now, and the men were slowly coming around to take a look at the lady they’d saved.

“We should get her to Doc Madine.” It was Luke who spoke.

“C’mon.” Leia took the woman in her arms and she ushered her to the Doctor’s house with Luke shortly behind.

“You’re sure it was the Imperial Company?” Luke asked, thumbing his own arm. He stood on the opposite side of the small room, Leia sat next to her, a concerned look on her face.

The young woman nodded, holding the mug of coffee in her hands. She had changed into one of Leia’s spare gowns, and had calmed down shortly after entering the doctor’s house. The doctor had checked over her briefly, and told them she was fine, just shaken up. He’d left them alone and the young woman told them her story. She was Jyn Erso, the daughter of a wealthy man who owned a plantation less than 50 parsecs away from town. She thought her father must’ve gotten on the wrong side of the Imperial Company, because they had come last night. Her mother had woken her up in the middle of the night and instructed her to grab as much as she could carry and put it in the wagon. Soon her mother put her in the wagon too, and told her to ride until they sent word for her.

“But how are they going to find me all the way out here? How will they know where to send the message?” she asked, sobbing again.

Leia rubbed her back as she looked at Luke. He was sure she was thinking the same thing as him, that it would be very unlikely the Erso’s would be able to send any sort of message now.

“You can stay with us as long as you’d like,” Luke told her. “Forever if it suits you. We’ll be able to find you some work in town. We could even arrange a wedding, if you’re looking for that sort. Maybe we’ll be able to send a party out to check out what might be happening to your house.”

There was a knock at the door, and Luke peered out and then opened it fully. It was Ackbar.

“Forgive the intrusion, but the men found something in the wagon I thought the two of you might be interested in this.” Ackbar held out five books to Luke, who took them in his hands Leia appeared at his elbow to take one in her hands.

“Books?” he asked. “Why might we be interested in books?”

Leia took one and turned it over in her hands. It was brand-new, freshly bound, with only a thin coating of dust from the road, none inside. Luke could barely remember the last time he’d seen something so clean.

“‘State laws’?” Leia asked, reading the spine. “They’re law books for the state of Alderaan.”

“My father got those from the governor himself,” Jyn said. “I didn’t even remember taking them.” She sniffled. “Why are they going through my things?”

“I asked my men to take your things to my office, and they’ll be locked away and safe there.” Luke showed her one of the five volumes. “Have you read these?”

She shook her head, taking one and opening it. “No, I- I never even paid any mind to them before now. Why?”

“We could sure use someone who knows about state law right now,” Luke said.

“What do you need to know?”

The twins looked at each other before looking back. Leia spoke first. “A city near our borders is threatening annexation of our town. We don’t want that to happen. If there was a law regarding that…”

Jyn flipped through the pages. “I’ll find it for you.”

“You don’t have to-”

“Please, it’s the least I can do for helping me.”

“You have no idea how much of a favor that is to us, ma’am,” Luke said. “I should go and make sure all your stuff is alright, hope you feel better, ma’am. Leia, put her in the spare room and don’t wait up for me.” He hoped she would listen this time, it was getting too late for her to be running around town like she did.

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wookihoon · 6 years

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special gifts

— requested?: yes

— group: pentagon

— characters: Yeo Changgu + Y/N

— genre: fluff

— message: o god this is literally 7262 years late I’m sorry. Also I’m sorry if it’s corny af.

————————

It was your last period of the school day and as usual, you were bored. You didn’t enjoy going to school much; the only reason you did was to see your crush Changgu. You moved to your school last month, and you were completely unfamiliar with the city itself. Changgu, being the class president, helped you get used to how the school works, and told you about the city. You thanked him immensely that day and when you got home from your first day at the new school, a wave of emotions came over you while thinking about Changgu. Did you already have feelings for someone that you just met?

“Y/N! How many times have I told you not to lay your head on the desk? Wake up and identify which section of the timeline goes along with the statement I’ve written on the board,” your teacher commanded you in an annoyed tone. History was your weakest subject, and it seriously did not help that your teacher had a bone to pick with you since the first week you arrived at the school. One of the friends you’ve made informed you that the teacher had bad experience in a business, which was the same one your father works for. It didn’t take long for you to connect the dots.

You got up from your seat and attempted to blurt something out.

“B-battle of the Somme?” you tried your best not to sound completely unknowing. Unfortunately, you didn’t get the answer correct.

“No, it’s the Battle of Amiens. You can’t even get a simple question like that right?” your teacher said in frustration while rolling her eyes. The rest of the class snickered with each other and whispered things in their ears. You sat back down in shame while your friend tried to comfort you.

“Y/N doesn’t have brains or looks. They’ll totally be a failure when they grow up!” a bully shouted while pointing at you laughing. The rest of the class agreed until Mr. class president scolded them.

“Kids, stop being rude towards them! You haven’t even given that person a chance. Please be kinder.” He asserted.

“Oh, look at Changgu trying to defend them. You like them huh? You should like a pretty person like me.” one of the girls replied. He rolled his eyes and the teacher had to reinforce the students to get back to class work.

Nonetheless, were disappointed in yourself, but there were only ten minutes left in class and just wanted to get it over with.

You anticipated for the bell the ring, signaling your release from school. When you heard the sound of it, you couldn’t be more relieved. You bolted right out of your seat to get out of there, when about half way down the hall you heard a familiar voice calling for you.

“Y/N!” You left this in class.” a boy called out, none other than Changgu. You turned around and saw him with one of your folders for class.

“Oh, I didn’t even realize I had left this. Thank you.” You told him.

“I also wanted to say I’m sorry about those punks in class. They’re really a burden.” Changgu told you in a quieter tone.

“They all seem to gang up with each other to insult me, no?” You asked, wondering why they would be considered a burden for anyone else but yourself.

“Those kids just do what they think is cool to act tough. I’ve seen how they act before. They’re just wimps.” He tried to convince you.

“I really wish they’d stop.” You sighed.

“Me too.” Changgu replied. “Mind if I walk you to your home?”

“I wouldn’t mind at all.” You grinned. You two started to walk down the sidewalk in the busy city. It was a cloudy day, which you absolutely adored. You didn’t bring your umbrella because the weather forecast on your cellphone said there’d be little chance of rain. To your luck, it began to rain.

“I knew I should have brought my umbrella.” you groaned. Changgu flashed a toothy grin when he heard this and pulled out one of his own umbrellas from his bag.

“We can share.” he positioned he umbrella so it was covering the both of you. You subtly blushed at this action, especially since it was from your crush.

“Thank you.” you said. Not much later, Changgu noticed a small cart that you two were approaching and stopped you.

“Would you like a bracelet?” He inquired while looking over at the cutely built pink cart.

“Sure, I’d like that!” You gleefully replied.

He brought you over to investigate what was available to buy. He eyed a red flower bracelet because he remembered that you said your favorite color was red when you first introduced yourself to the class.

“Y/N, how about this?” Changgu motioned over to the bracelet. You couldn’t deny that it was very nicely crafted.

“Oh, I love that!” You buzzed. “Could you get it for me?”

“Of course I can.” he smiled. Changgu asked for the bracelet from the employee working the cart. The both of you didn’t notice that he was grinning at you two the whole time until you looked up.

“High school sweethearts huh?” The old man reckoned. On the inside you were bubbling up at the fact that someone thought you and Changgu were dating, but you reminded yourself in reality that you guys were just classmates. Changgu was about to say something until you spoke up first.

“Nope, just classmates.” You assured.

“I’m sure you kids will be soon, I can see the chemistry.” The man said while ringing up the order for the bracelet. Changgu was silently smiling while receiving the bag with the bracelet in it.

“Thank you sir.” said you and Changgu in unison. You two continued to walk to your home. You talked about small things such as the art that was hung in the school hallways and an update for a mobile app that you both favored.

Before you knew it, you and him arrived at your apartment complex. It was a bit disappointing that you had arrived so quickly, but at the same time you just wanted to rest. You thanked him while he handed you the bag containing your red flower bracelet.

“By the way, meet me at the courtyard at school tomorrow. I need to show you around to something else too.” Changgu stated. You were a bit confused because you knew the whole school by now, but went with it anyway. You thanked him once again and trailed off into your home. Quickly, you finished your one assignment and fell asleep.

When you woke up, the first thing you thought about was meeting up with Changgu. You made to sure hastily finish your morning routine so you could arrive at school earlier. Your mother noticed you in a rush and inquired why.

“I just need to drop something off for class. I’m alright mom.” You babbled while quickly having the last bite of your cereal. You said goodbye to each other as you walked on the door. You speedily arrived at school, heading to the courtyard where you could already see Changgu sitting on a bench.

“Changgu?” You mumbled. He looked up and instantly was happy.

“Y/N! I’m glad you’re here. Let me show you a new addition to the school.” He beamed. Changgu picked up his bag and motioned for you to follow him. He brought you to the small empty area around the corner of the main school building and then stopped. You were confused as there was really nothing to be shown. Changgu began to open to bag and pulled out a small box. You wondered what was in there.

He puffed and began talking. “Y/N, I hope this isn’t awkward but I went to that cart very early this morning and stopped by to get you this.” He opened the box to reveal a small necklace with a golden heart. You were astonished by how kind of an action it was.

He continued, “I wanted to get you this to show you how much I like you. Yes, I mean it in a romantic way. I think you are very attractive and I want to protect you. If you don’t feel the same, I hope you still like my gift.” He sweated, But you were even more nervous. You couldn’t believe you just heard what you did.

“I like you a lot Changgu.” You blurt out, not realizing how blunt it sound. You covered your mouth out of embarrassment, but Changgu thought it was very cute.

“Thank you for sharing the same feelings.” He told you. He took a step forward to place the necklace around your neck.

“That’s pretty on you.” He whispered. You thanked him.

“Shall we get going to class?” He asked while extending out his hand for you to hold.

“I think we should.” You replied as you took his hand.

On the way to class you asked him why couldn’t just ask to meet up with him instead of saying that he had to bring you to a new place.

“Well I actually did, right? I brought you to my heart.” You giggled in response to his corny answer.

Maybe school just got better for you.

#pentagon scenarios #pentagon imagines #changgu scenarios #kpop scenarios #changgu imagines #kpop imagines #yeo changgu scenarios #yeoone scenarios #yeoone imagines

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breathinwordsbreathoutknowledge · 3 years

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Merafong’s Theatre Griot, a master of the craft!

By: Morena Maboe

Recently I had the liberty of sitting down with a gentleman making serious strides in the theatre industry, and as a custodian of arts, sports and culture in Merafong I could not let such talent, consistency and shear tenacity go unrecognized and undocumented. Thabo “Mahavater” Ramaine of Mythology arts foundation is a formidable force to be reckoned with. As I sat down with him, taking all of this down, I saw what remarkable human beings we could all be, by just being passionate with what we do regardless of the obstacles we face.

Thabo’s story with the arts started way back in the year 2000 when he started doing gumboots dancing as an introduction to introduce himself into the arts, in the following year he joined a dance crew that was doing Sbotjwa and drama named Mazibuye Theatre productions based in Khutsong, this is where he also got his acting influence. With Mazibuye, Thabo or “Mahavatar” as he is mysteriously known by his fans and disciples, went on to compete in the North West Cultural Calabash, which was the first competitive theatre and dance festival he attended. The crew went on to compete in the Achimotar Festival that was hosted in Zamdela in Sasolburg, for two years in a row. T, in the same place they also took part in the Bill Cosby arts Festival, here the focus for Thabo was more on Theatre and perfecting the craft. They won the first trophy in the preliminary rounds and also went on to win the ultimate trophy in the finals.

As part of the festival, they had a social which was separated from theatre, named the candlelight poetry session, where each crew had to pick one group member to recite a poem that is not from their original plays. Mahavatar was the lucky guy, but despite trying hard he could only jot down 4 lines, when he got to the stage he dropped 4 lines. Unaware that in poetry there is a category for a 4 stanza poems, he went on to write more of those and his writing skill improved.

Mahavatar went on to join a group named T.K Cultural group and after that Simunye Cultural group, which influenced his love for dancing, they did categories ranging from street dance, Sbotjwa and gumboots dancing.

Upon joining what S’thibo terms as “the best school” in Joburg when it comes to theatre, the Afrika Cultural Centre (A.C.C) in Newtown, falling in the ever so capable hands of Benjy Francis, the Khutsong raised lad fall in love with a new style of dancing termed as contemporary.

His first professional production was done in 2008, at the A.C.C. written by renowned play writer Zakes Mofokeng produced and directed by Benjy Francis named “the Train”. Other plays he took part in include “The Vicious circle” by Benjy Francis which was part of the annual student production at A.C.C, “the calling” written & directed by Sello Modisadife, “Visions” also by Modisadife and “The Cult” played at the Cultural Calabash also from the same writer. Upon leaving at A.C.C he played in a production while residing in Soweto, Protea North called “Sa Mme”. Thabo later learned was selected to go for training in Denmark but he had already returned home and had phone problems, so he could not be reached.

When he explains it he describes contemporary as breaking the rules of classical ballet but still keeping to the underlying philosophy of classical ballet dancing, however he was more fascinated by the feeling that came with contemporary style of dance. Under the mentorship of Benjyi Francis, he became more aware of the physical side of theatre, which includes basic techniques, understanding how the body moves and blending that with self-expression. On a second level, in he came in contact with the depth that came with theatre that is using your imagination and feelings. This is where he transitioned as an actor and also developed his own signature style.

Mahavatar’s recent work include Komeng by the legendary Sello Maake Ka-Ncube that they played in all 9 provinces for a period of 8 months in 2018. After auditioning at the Market Theater in November of 2018, hosted by the Luthando Arts Academy, he played in Amawethu dance theatre production in 2019 produced by Luyanda Sediya. One of the highlights of S’thibo’s career was playing in “Buwa” a musical written by the iconic South African composer and musician Caiphas Semenya in 1986 about the injustices of apartheid. Directed by Sello Maake Ka-Ncube and music director Tshepo Mngoma the music extravaganza celebrated Mr Semenya’s 80th birthday in style at the Market Theatre. Mahavatar exclaims that the experience was great as he got a chance to work with some of the best actors and musicians in the country, the likes of Sipho “Hotsticks” Mabuza, Zwai Bala and the legendary Tshepo Tshola, ‘the experience was great because once you work with the greats it means you are great, and you catch impartations from observing how they do things, how they produce and to see the whole process’ Thabo explained.

He played a pivotal role in the play because of the character he was portraying. Thabo played Paulus De Villiers, the minister of Defence during the apartheid era, from the National Party (NP) government, he had to portray a hardcore apartheid white man role, played in a Boar accent. The play takes setting in a conference room scene. Thabo explains that he had to bring his A-game as the show reeked in audiences from across the country, including the likes of politician Julius Malema, it was sold out three days before the actual musical.

Mahavatar’s own productions include the award winning “Mount Havilla” piece which won both Best Actor award and Best Production, in 2015 and 2016 respectively, at the Spear Arts Festival hosted in Ekhurhuleni. Thabo says the play was inspired by the journey of spiritual growth, it came from also reading and researching a lot about different spiritual leaders and being introduced to meditation and dealing with himself. He also started writing about the key to self-transcendence and spiritual searching everywhere only to find the key within yourself. The path to “Mount Havila” is not to be taken as a physical journey but a raw metaphor, its abstract theater mixed with experimental theater.

His Own productions

In 2017 he produced a play called “Black Smith” which started out as a one man show, he later decided to franchise and create and extended version of the paly and called it “the Archives” which was a 4 hander piece that was set in nice library setting. He performed it in 2018, there was more demand for it outside of Merafong. He was approached by The Archives center in Krugersdorp to render the play there, at the center people around the Gauteng area can track their family lineage, and it also keeps records and archives from apartheid land dispositions, upon opening Gauteng Premier, David Makhura was quoted saying “The facility will help us preserve societal memorabilia of historical value of Gauteng and its people. It will store official public documents that are 20 years or older from various entities including government, NGOs, and learning and research institutions. This will eliminate cases of distorted history told by different people from different angles,” The center has been in operation since 2017 and has already received records and information from departments like the Sedibeng District Municipality, Emfuleni Municipality, City of Johannesburg, Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Transport, Sport, Arts and Culture, and Recreation https://krugersdorpnews.co.za/368190/new-archives-centre-will-keep-our-history-safe/ As a result he had to display an industrial theater piece that was more educational .

Mahavatar went on to write “The Proposal”, which he feels is very different from his signature style of theater. The play was about the plight against Gender Based Violence, the lack of ‘mental hygiene’ from guys. In the play he portrays this guy that uses a marriage proposal to control his woman and keep them obedient, traits he learned from his father. The piece aims to focus more on men, the journey to violence, how men perceive themselves and their emotional intelligence. Tackles how we can cleanse ourselves and to redefine ourselves, standing up to our demons as men.

Beyond Clandestine which Mahavatar explained as meaning an “inner core truth” is a YouTube film series that was born during the corona lockdown with all the news and conspiracy theories and seeing people’s response, also seeing how the systems has us under their thrall and manipulates us. In the series the lead actor goes on a journey to uncover the truth beyond what we are given and uses a militant approach, but later realizes there are other ways to fight the system.

After completing a 6 weeks course in filming in Cape Town, he used his skills to produce these series, set up in his garage is a large green screen which is used to create the location in the background of the videos, and he uses Computer generated images (C.G.I) to edit and not an actual tangible location. With the training budget from the company he is currently working for he did this digital film, the vision with this project going forward is to grow, cast more actors, gather more resources and take the work mainstream while creating a profile. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzywGzaMWgk

The production of the Nomads was not planned, it was a default film born from the 48 hour film project 2020. It is an adrenalin race for who can produce a film in 48 hours with the given directives from the competition hosts. You are provided with certain elements that you should add in your film, like a prop, a character name, and a line that must be said somewhere in the film from 2 genres either a silent film or action. They were nominated for best costume, best produced film, best musical composition as the music used in the film was self-produced by them, and lastly best cinematography. All this work that was to be produced in 48 hours was submitted 12 hours before deadline meeting all requirements.

It was screened at Sterkinekor Theater at mall of Africa on the 23rd of October 2020 to a full house. They plan to reshoot for a 2021 screening, with the aim to later merge it with “Beyond Clandestine”

Beyond Clandestine, an “inner core truth”

Mahavatar aims to finish season 1 of “Beyond Clandestine” with episode six, and start season 2 with a bit more resources. In theater he plans to do “The Archives” and a new version of Mount Havila done in a musical fashion named “Lere la Moya”.

The Nomads; a “race for time” film

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junker-town · 4 years

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Why the PGA Tour needs to regain control of the plot at The Players

Photo by Ben Jared/PGA TOUR

With a massive new rights deal announced and the No. 1 player in the world defending it against a wealthy competitor, the PGA Tour tries to regain control of the plot at TPC Sawgrass.

There may be no major sports league that better avoids powerful rogue waves of negative PR better than the PGA Tour. They keep a firm grip on the narrative as a league full of class acts with “miles of first row seats” where everyone can come and Live Under Par. There are occasional nuisances from inquiring golf media types and black eyes from one of their incorrigible independent contractors, but those heal quickly. There’s rarely a scandal or threat that consumes the league’s story for an extended period of time. They do not lose their hold on the routine.

The start of 2020 has been different. The Tour’s members are not on the same page on several significant issues, which collectively threaten the entire structure of the pro game. The most prominent threat was (and is) the Premier Golf League, still just a concept, but one that would poach the top players from the PGA Tour. The proposal would give those top stars some equity stake in the league as captains of a team playing in a series of worldwide events against other teams. The group is backed by Saudi money that has seemed intent on buying its way into the game by offering some of these marquee names, like Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, millions of dollars to make the leap.

The PGL thinks it can compliment or co-exist with the established PGA Tour, but Tour commissioner Jay Monahan came out unequivocally after this upstart concept (six years in the making) went public, and said a pro could not be a member of the PGA Tour if he were to join the PGL. There have been different experiments or ideas that have come up over the years, but the PGL is a real threat backed by real cash and with preparations, down to minor operational details, already done. If successful, it would hollow out the PGA Tour in a dramatic way, maybe even ending its viability altogether, which is why some of the game’s top players have had their temperatures taken on it by the press since this became major public news in late January.

The existential threat of the PGL also added an element of apprehension to what was supposed to be a media rights deal victory lap. The Tour opened up the bidding for a new deal last year, almost two years before the current deals expire, in order to get ahead of NFL negotiations that would (allegedly) leave the networks destitute. Those deals were reportedly targeted for the end of 2019. The details have slowly trickled out this year, with news that the legacy TV networks would likely be involved again and that the PGA Tour might be taking control of on-site production. But with the possibility of top stars leaving for a PGL, what exactly would the networks be buying for billions of dollars? And setting aside the panicked cries of “state run media,” what exactly would a PGA Tour controlled production look like? Even if it was in pursuit of a guaranteed pot of billions at the end, these became big questions with a level of uncertainty and change we’re not used to with this operation.

And then there is the matter of the equipment that impacts the pro game. There’s been a belief for years that a day of reckoning was coming for the new generation of juiced golf equipment that’s obsoleting the game’s best courses and “dumbing down” the skills once required to be the best. The long-awaited Distance Insights Report from the governing bodies on both sides of the Atlantic, the USGA and the R&A, dropped in early February and came out with the strongest language to date that something must be done. The PGA Tour has been against any kind of rolling back of equipment in the past, but the report seemed to signal that’s now a likely course. At the Tour level, a rollback will become a bitter battle with equipment companies that pay the Tour’s players gobs of cash and spend plenty of ad dollars with the Tour itself arguing against it.

The Tour has not provided an official position on the latest distance report — it’s been a busy quarter — but its players have been all over the map responding to the report’s findings and insights. Some think any change to the status quo would be punitive to the new modern “athlete” hitting the ball 400 yards while others, including the No. 1 player in the world, have welcomed a bifurcation that would roll it back for the pros while letting amateurs hacking it around your local muni still have the metal-bat juiced stuff. Whatever the final course of action, the distance report has added another element of uncertainty on a subject that could dramatically change the game at the pro level.

These are a lot of significant movements under the foundations of the professional game, and it’s left the Tour with not only an existential threat but also internecine disagreement that it’s not used to wrangling with. The Players Championship this week is the Tour’s biggest event of the season. It’s their major, held at their headquarters, and with what feels like infinite resources and marketing dollars pumped into making it as “big” — this is the industry term now apparently used to talk about a tournament that is significant but not considered a major — as possible.

A month ago, as the Tour wrapped up its West Coast swing, it felt like this Players week could be an awkward, even, morose return to the PGA Tour’s home. Now it feels like a massive opportunity to wipe out some of that uncertainty and regain control of a plot that felt like it was getting lost.

If you’re a Live Under Par loyalist, here are a few developments to have you feeling better about things.

The deal is done

The rights deal is done and announced. Given current events and the day’s news climate, the big reveal and rollout maybe (probably ... definitely) should have been canceled. Commissioner Jay Monahan was in an exceedingly awkward and tough spot on CNBC Monday morning trying to crowbar the news in between markets crumbling and coronavirus spreading. It was probably not the rollout he expected, but that will be forgotten while the cash coming in from the deal won’t. The new arrangement is reportedly a 70 percent increase over the last contract, more than $700 million annually over a nine-year deal. Woods is not at The Players this week, but networks went through negotiations under no illusion that he’ll be a fixture on Tour for this full decade. There were also almost certainly protections added should the Tour’s stars flee to a PGL. And the money still rushed in at a 70-percent increase. The deal is done and the players have it settled there will be a massive influx of cash coming to its member-run tour.

Shiny new tech to show the future

This week will be a look into the future with every shot by every player in the field shown via TV and streaming on PGA Tour Live. The Tour has been aggressive in pursuing this capability, which Augusta National rolled out at last year’s Masters. There will be some hiccups, but in working with NBC’, it will be a nice show of force and display potential future plans to chop up and sell specific player feeds to different constituencies around the world (and gambling outfits) from one main, massive Tour-controlled media hub at the Tour’s HQ. It’s an impressive undertaking and something to celebrate and feel good about if you’re the Tour and NBC.

An anti-PGL gladiator

Rory McIlroy, the No. 1 player in the world and maybe the most marketable non-Woods star, has come out strongly against the Premier Golf League when others refused to do so. Woods gave a non-answer at Riviera, Phil Mickelson seems like he’s ready to jump for an end-of-career windfall and Adam Scott called the proposed concept “fantastic.” Many other stars are or have been rumored to be interested in the proposal.

Then there’s McIlroy, who took his initial “I’m out” critique from two weeks ago even further last week at Bay Hill. McIlroy said of the PGL that he “didn’t like where the money was coming from,” a direct reference to the Saudi backing.

"I didn't really like where the money was coming from" Rory, you absolute boy.pic.twitter.com/9PVVkvpBY8

— The Club (@TheClub) March 5, 2020

His other critiques about being required to play 18 events per year or losing his independent contractor status could be negotiated with this PGL group, in theory. More money and greater equity stake could be thrown at McIlroy, in theory. Even McIlroy said two weeks ago that he was against it until he couldn’t be, invoking a hypothetical in which all of his peers at the top of the world rankings had defected and so he too had to join. Much of the proposal could be malleable as they attempt to push it across the goal line. The money, and where it “comes from,” is the least flexible. This will almost certainly be a Saudi-backed venture. And with that comes the wave of derision and critique that has flowed ever since the Saudis debuted on the world golf stage with a Euro Tour event last year while daily headlines focused on journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s butchering on KSA orders.

Despite McIlroy’s opposition, the PGL is not dead. But no one, either for or against the PGL, has spoken in the strong terms that McIlroy has so far. And he comes to The Players as the defending champion, its marquee star, No. 1 in the world, and having just denounced the most inflexible, least negotiable aspect of the PGL. That has to have commissioner Monahan feeling slightly less terrified than a month ago on the West Coast swing.

A good place to show its core product

The Tour is not close to solving the distance problem, and it’s not necessarily their problem to address. But TPC Sawgrass can inhibit some of those outrageous distances that make other courses feel obsolete. There are different styles of winners hitting all manner of entertaining shots at this championship. The obscene amounts of marketing lard around The Players can be a turnoff, but at the core, it produces a great golf product for TV. So forget about all the brand slogans and just watch the actual golf, which is something the Tour can lose sight of in its rush to slather us in some new marketing narrative about itself.

Maybe the PGA Tour has felt like they’ve had this all the way. The rights deal was always going to get done. An upstart challenger, no matter how much cash they have, is not going to easily overthrow decades of the established order. This can all change rapidly — maybe a group of would-be PGL players decides to even start a fire from inside the HQ tent this week. But there was a fear that The Players could be a morose homecoming. As the week starts, it feels more like the league regaining control of its story.

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andrewuttaro · 4 years

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New Look Sabres: GM 47 - VGK - Razzle Dazzle

4-2 Win

Razzle dazzle, as the performers call it, is something the Buffalo Sabres have lacked as of late. By as of late I mean the last decade or so. Vegas Golden Knights fans have had more fun in the last three years than any Buffalo Sabres fan has had since American Idol was still relevant. When the Knights play there is a certain performance to it that has entertained their fans from day one in this league. They really don’t know our heartbreak, eh? I don’t need to regurgitate the same tired narrative about the Knights. However I do think there is a connection here worth noting. The most charitable expansion rules in NHL history allowed Vegas to come on in an instant, as if the whole Casino-laden Strip came alive all at once. The Buffalo Sabres however shut all the lights down starting in 2013. When we tried to fire them back up in 2015, 2016 and 2017 it didn’t work at all. We hired a new electrician. That new electrician has not gotten the whole thing to light up again yet so we Casino denizens are not happy. Unlike his predecessor however he’s gotten the whole thing to spark on for a brief time before going off again in 2018 and 2019. It looks like he’s finding the right connections in that circuit box. I’d even venture to say he’s already demonstrated he knows what he’s doing more than the last electrician. Okay, I’ve squeezed all the usefulness out of that metaphor. I think Jason Botterill is turning this team on in flashes now but will soon light it up permanently. That’s the meaning of the metaphor if you’re not one for allusions. Back to the Sabres reality in January 2020. The game in Detroit on Sunday was damn near a must-win. Even out-of-market observers speculated a loss to the league worse Red Wings would be a death certificate, but this club opened the casket like the undertaker! Okay, so they were so bad in the second period in that game it was just about shameful; but they won, and they did it by a margin of 5-1 on the backs of not one, not two, but three guys who have made clear they want off this team. Does winning solve everything? No. But it can go a long way to sating the fans for a time.

The first period was one of the better 20-minute blocks of hockey you’ll see from Buffalo this season. While scoring chances were relatively even, every other metric really wasn’t. Since I’ve already dropped one meandering metaphor today I’ll just give you the simplest part here: The Sabres dominated the shots 13-4. Rasmus Dahlin’s revival after the November concussion was fully realized in this game. At one point he dangled around two defenders and almost got the early lead all his own. Marty Biron gushed over it in the intermission and I think he spoke for a lot of us. The problem with the fantastic first was the home team couldn’t convert a goal or two. The pendulum swung back even again in the middle frame. The Golden Knights took over the shooting early and a somewhat haphazardous rush yielded a Chandler Stephenson shot on Linus Ullmark that did not go in. The puck did however bounce around and at some point hit Tomas Nosek who got credited for it trickling over the goal line. Ralph Krueger almost challenged it but it ended up standing. The first blood being drawn by the visitors would’ve stung more had an interference call not given the Sabres a powerplay shortly thereafter. The weirdest thing about this game was that they scored with the man advantage! Kyle Okposo got a slot pass from Sam Reinhart and lasered it in past Marc-Andre Flurey. The Sabres get a powerplay goal… IN THIS ECONOMY? Tighten your belt because before the period was out there was another powerplay goal. It was the last minute of play in the second and Vegas got called for too many men on the ice. The embarrassing penalty is the glee of Rob Ray who really savored counting the extra Knights on the ice. Gotta love simple math. This time it was Sam Reinhart getting a pass in the slot from Rasmus Ristolainen. A quick shot from Reinhart beat M.A.C. top shelf. It was one of those last-minute stingers that feels nice to be on the dealing side every once and a while. Jack Eichel cashed in with an assist on that 2-1 goal extending his new point streak to eight games. We’ll just have to stop keeping track of those streaks I suppose. But there was more to come from Jack Eichel in this game.

Reilly Smith gave Vegas their equalizer early in the third period. The period quickly got interesting, Johan Larsson got dirty and before you know it this game really felt like a race. Remember when I said the Sabres lack razzle dazzle lately? Well approximately 150% of the razzle dazzle that does emanate from this team originates with Jack Eichel. It happened again. He got the puck way back in the defensive zone and skates in on the Knights zone 2-on-1 with Zemgus Girgensons. Even Girgensons was shocked with how the play ended. Eichel went all the way in on Flurey and shot it high short side. It was another thing of beauty and Captain Jack razzle dazzle put Buffalo up 3-2. Fun but simple stat from @MikeKellyNHL: Jack Eichel ranks number one in the league with end-to-end rushes this season with 114. If he gets away from you it will probably end in something pretty. This game had its moments as the Knights pushed back but when Curtis Lazar tapped the insurance goal all the way down ice there was a tangible feeling of relief. The Knights aren’t exactly a force to be reckoned with this season, but a win would’ve put them in the top spot in the Pacific Division. After getting a must-win against Detroit, having this kinda game against a truly competitive team was something it’s clear we needed. This one ended 4-2 Buffalo. But more than that we got a good old fashion radio presser with the guy we all seem to want to burn at the stake right now: Jason Botterill.

Yes the old pregame interview at 716 yielded some interesting responses from the GM. There we’re two quotes I want to bring your attention to for different reasons. Firstly: “We’re not an elite team by any means. Should we be in the conversation for playoffs? Yes.” Secondly: “We want to make trades. We want to add to our group. People ask if we’re waiting for the deadline. We’re not waiting for the deadline. We’re trying to proceed with some things that haven’t materialized.” I’d be ok if you wrote off quote 1 as entirely fan service to stave off the Punt Theory that the Front Office was planning on punting this season for this summer’s cap relief. If you do take it at face value however its worth noting that just like last season they think they have a roster that can make the playoffs. That could be both an explanation for why there were so few subtractions and an explanation for why Ralph Krueger is stubbornly pushing through the roster rotation strategy that is frustrating the likes of Colin Miller and Zach Bogosian. If you prefer not to believe punt theory that’s a compelling reason to cheer for this squad as it exists now whether or not a trade or a few come before the deadline. That brings us to quote 2: Trades. The FO is probably looking at this roster as close to enough, but they are looking at multiple trades. Do note his phrasing points to multiple irons in the oven for Botterill. He’s not waiting for the deadline. He’s also revealing that there have been multiple trades that haven’t materialized yet. What could they be: Ristolainen, a second line center, a top six winger, McCabe, Hutton? He’s trying everyone and I get the sense he’s been trying since he hit a wall with Risto way back in July. One way you can interpret that is that he now looks desperate among the community of GMs and will be forced to wait until the deadline as they will. I can’t really rebut that argument but let’s not run the guy out of town like he hasn’t been doing his job as a General Manager.

One guy on that interview, Jeremy White of WGR550, put the postgame analysis of last night’s battle in good perspective. If Buffalo can get back into the playoff race it will be because of performances like this. Lots of saves mixed in with a powerplay that gets the goals they can’t 5 on 5. Jeremy is right but unfortunately I think simple math makes getting back into that race this month pretty much impossible. There are four games left this month and two and a half weeks left of said month. The Sabres have a bye-week next week. Even with the other teams going on their bye-weeks I wouldn’t expect our boys in the blue and gold to be sitting in a playoff spot by February 1st. After that however its truly off to the races. For now we have to come in off the ledge with this team and take it one game at a time. Dallas and Nashville tomorrow and Saturday respectively will be tests similar to the Knights. Win. Win like you did against Vegas and go into that bye week with the good taste of a four-game winning streak. It’s a somewhat tall order but for all this team’s flaws I think they could do it. Like, comment and share this blog to help a blogger out. I have some new work going up on Southtownstickets.com soon so keep an eye out for that. I’m excited about the Sabres after this win. Let’s Go Buffalo!

Thanks for Reading.

P.S. As excited as this win may make me I have been enjoying third division offseason domestic soccer more the last couple weeks so… yeah… that little winning streak would help an awful lot for me.

#buffalo sabres #hockey #blog #nhl

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blackbridesmaiddresses1 · 4 years

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moodboardinthecloud · 4 years

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Your ‘Surge Capacity’ Is Depleted — It’s Why You Feel Awful

Here’s how to pull yourself out of despair and live your life

Tara Haelle

Aug 16·13 min read

Psychiatrist and habit change specialist Dr. Jud Brewer explains how anxiety masquerades as helpfulelemental.medium.com

How to Live When Your Mind Is Governed by Fear

Or the next.

An unprecedented disaster

Americans are faced with more risk than ever. Understanding how the brain navigates this new reality can build…elemental.medium.com

Life Is Now a Game of Risk. Here’s How Your Brain Is Processing It.

“How do you adjust to an ever-changing situation where the ‘new normal’ is indefinite uncertainty?”

Understanding ambiguous loss

That mindset is an especially American one, Boss says.

Ambiguous loss elicits the same experiences of grief as a more tangible loss — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — but managing it often requires a bit of creativity.

A winding, uncharted path to coping in a pandemic

While there isn’t a handbook for functioning during a pandemic, Masten, Boss, and Maddaus offered some wisdom for meandering our way through this.

Accept that life is different right now

Expect less from yourself

Recognize the different aspects of grief

“Our new normal is always feeling a little off balance, like trying to stand in a dinghy on rough seas, and not knowing when the storm will pass.”

Experiment with “both-and” thinking

It’s a bit of a Schrödinger’s existence, but when you can’t change the situation, “the only thing you can change is your perception of it,” she says.

Look for activities, new and old, that continue to fulfill you

Focus on maintaining and strengthening important relationships

Begin slowly building your resilience bank account

After spending an hour on the phone with each of these experts, I felt refreshed and inspired. I can do this! I was excited about writing this article and sharing what I’d learned.

This story has been translated into Portuguese, which you can read here.

WRITTEN BY

Tara Haelle

Tara Haelle is a science journalist, public speaker, and author of Vaccination Investigation and The Informed Parent. Follow her at @tarahaelle.

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tipsoctopus · 5 years

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Nonchalant, brilliant magic: Is former Chelsea man the most under-rated talent in PL history?

Each week on Football FanCast we will be celebrating those special breed who lit up the Premier League with their unique brand of utter genius. This time out we pay homage to an under-appreciated bombshell who made the best even better.

A strong argument could be made that Eidur Gudjohnsen was, is, and will always be the most under-rated talent of the Premier League era.

In his first full season as a starter at Chelsea he and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink shared 48 goals between them across all competitions, the Icelander a rumbustious front man who seemed destined to score a hatful a season for the duration of his career before going down as a striking legend. Soon after, though, Jose Mourinho rocked up to the Bridge and converted him to a more withdrawn role. There he got even better.

In his six seasons in west London he won the league twice, once so emphatically that some of their records still stand today. Then it was off to Barcelona and perhaps it was only at this point that we Brits began to appreciate just what we had under our very nose.

He ran riot with Lionel Messi. In 2005/06 he was a pivotal figure as Blaugrana secured a famous treble. His highly successful spell in La Liga also incidentally made him one of the very few players to be under the charge of both Mourinho and Pep Guardiola, cherished by each coaching giant.

This is the 22nd celebration of a slice of genius and never before has it been so difficult to define a nominee’s best attributes. Gudjohnsen was great in the air and had a sublime touch. He was direct and powerful. He was cute and clever. He was clinical and unselfish. He was, in short, that rare breed who could do a bit of everything and most of it very, very well indeed.

Such footballing polyglotism explains how the blonde bombshell adapted so well to the physical demands of English ferocity while excelling too within the technical environs of Spain. For the former, his learning curve came at Bolton where he soon established himself as a force to be reckoned with playing alongside the mighty Dean Holdsworth under Big Sam’s Lancastrian revolution.

While on the subject of striking partners let’s pause for a moment and consider some of Gudjohnsen’s over 22 years in the game. At PSV as a teen there was Ronaldo, the original and best. There was also Messi, Ronaldinho, Crespo, Eto’o, Drogba, Zola, and Henry and incredibly too Gudjohnsen’s own father, who made his international farewell making way for a young Eidur in 1996.

All of them he made better with his high calibre movement and high intensity running.

After Barcelona his itinerant ways made him a great quiz question. Which player went from Camp Nou to Monaco to Spurs to Stoke? Well, it’s easy when you know the answer, obviously.

Our focus here though remains at the Bridge, a decision that the player himself would probably approve of. Recently he said of his time in Blue: “I just felt great. I was young, fresh, enjoying my football; Chelsea was definitely the time where I felt like I was getting the best out of myself.” Nowhere was this more apparent than against Leeds United, at home on January 28th 2003.

Five months before Roman Abramovich’s fortunes utterly changed the club’s landscape and seven months deep into Claudio Ranieri’s final season Chelsea were experiencing a so-so campaign and probably could have done without the visit of Viduka, Kewell and co. A week earlier Manchester United had beaten them at Old Trafford. A week later Spurs held them at home. This was a testing period that would ultimately shape their months to come.

Things got even more testing when Kewell countered and scored early on and when the away side easily withstood toiling pressure until the hour mark the natives were understandably getting restless.

Then it happened. The magic. The nonchalant, brilliant magic.

Frank Lampard foraged down Chelsea’s right taking opposition players along for the ride before floating in a seemingly benign delivery. It was head height, which was obviously a positive. The downside was that Gudjohnsen – the only attacker in the box – was a good few feet ahead of the ball.

Unperturbed, the Icelander turned and scampered several tiny steps away from Paul Robinson in goal. He adjusted his footing, his stronger right planted into the earth. Then he took flight.

In stark terms, stripping it of all of its beauty, it was a bicycle kick; a perfectly executed over-head volley that thundered past Robinson from shortish range. But it was so much more than that.

It was extravagant. It was pure flipping poetry. There are goals of this ilk where the player is mere inches off the ground. Here Gudjohnsen soared and even then he needed to fully extend his leg, straight and true, to connect. It deserved strings playing over the top of it which sadly it didn’t get. It deserved admiration from a master and this it did get. As the striker ran to his adoring public he was caught and held by Gianfranco Zola. The look he gives says it all. The little marvel marvels.

A strong argument could be made that Eidur Gudjohnsen was, is, and will always be the most under-rated talent of the Premier League era. That’s on us. Zola, Ronaldo and Messi meanwhile knew just how special he was.

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1nkyl0re · 6 years

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ENTRY #0 - 2/20/2018

Around 12:oo pm or at least im assuming.

I started to write out a goal plan. Something to try to stick to for a time. I don’t know why i did this, my life if full of misfortunes, that i alone don’t bother to haggle with. Im not one to complain about how unfair things are. I simple accept that its my fault.

Money stolen … my fault

Being scammed despite not having money to scam for…. My fault.

Being tried for threatening a teacher despite the teacher not being in the room at the time … MY FAULT ! !

You get the picture, yea?

Anyhow i started planning it out into phases. But not the whole thing, just some of it to get started you know, starting at phase#0.

And i know that sounds weird because who starts a phase at zero, but this is me were talking about.

Anyway about time i finish i go to bed at like 1:56 pm. No doubt i was going to be stupid tired in the morning or worst falling asleep in school or so i assumed.

Phase zero was to commence tomorrow. You probably wonder what it was, basically i’m going to make sure that my media is cleared of or on break to be sure i don’t get distracted. Even though there’s really no point but i guess i just want to fill obligated like a secretary or something… that’s a girl thing right? Or can a guy be one too, what do they even do anyway, never mind i'm getting off track. Aside from that first thing, im also to keep track using a journal like i'm doing right now. Better digital then something that can get lost…

I woke up around 6:00 am… i wanted to wait 7:24 am so i can get my shit and go but i eventually got bored and just got out of bed, a shame really. I tried to pass the time walked around, had me 2 cup, 3 cups,4 cups of tea… maybe five.

And had me some pretzels filled with sourdough, i prefer the ones with cheese. Then i went back to my room trying to organize my desktop. And only then did the alarm go off. So then i got my stuff.

My 2 laptops, pencils, my bag and a pair of scissors and not for the reason you think… i mean i wasn’t planning on stabbing anyone…

YET

Anyway i headed out walking to the stop, bus is already there but waits patiently this time around. My brother didn’t make it oddly enough. I closed my eyes, but not like sleeping more like meditating. I opened my eyes just around the time when the bus pulled into the school lot, doing such a thing could mean something but im not completely sure.

Getting off the bus i headed inside for some breakfast. Breakfast pizza and chocolate milk. The pizza basically had everything except the sauce, so bread, cheese, and sausage but no sauce, a lot of people say that chocolate milk is just spoiled milk but with sugar added.

It sounded bad at first until i learned you can drink spoiled milk without getting sick.

I learned from a show called “adam ruins everything” yes you know the one. Apparently the expiration date tells you not when things spoil but when the company thinks it would be best to eat. Also it turns out that there are no government regulations that have to do this they just simply do it.

Back to the task at hand first period was physical science. I ate my pizza on the way there and had my milk in class. Im not sure what we were suppose to be doing i wasn’t paying attention,

I started puting my phase into action but of corse i wasn’t going to wast my time with a bunch of media because im not popular like that, not even on instagram where i have 70 followers.

I started by saying that everything would be on hold and that i would do a journal in addition but i got lazy halfway and just said i was doing a journal. I did this for

Wattpad, penana,youtube, deviantart, tumblr and facebook

Afterwards i started my jornal, aside from this i was picked to create two contest and i still have to see the end result im going to enter it, because there is no way that i am missing the chance to earn a potential 30 points. Probably like 30 cents in real world currency but it's worth it.

Anyway i kept writing and avoided doing any work in class. The teacher was pleased that i stayed awake but not so much that work didn’t get done. I told him that i’d do it next time, that was the plan after all. Today i had decided today would be a day i wouldn’t do work.

Anyway fasting forward i went to my next class i guess you could call it business management. But again i wasn’t working today. But the teacher knows that its typical of me to not doing work, but she still checks on me at least once. I told her that i wasn’t doing any work today in exchange for my plan to get my shit together and that was the end of it. Class soon ended.

The day was now halfway over. I only have four classes a day but the time is extended. Recently we had a two day break so today is actually wednesday. We have A days and B days on certain days we go to certain classes so its kind of like this:

M,T,W,TH,F = A,B,A,B,A OR A,B,A,B,B

You get it yea? No?

Well i can’t help you there.

Anyway next class.

The next class was U.S. history. The teacher was… well i don’t recall his name but i think he had a jamaican accent and could speak some weird language i couldn’t identify it, maybe russian, i'm not sure. I think we’re talking about the great depression or something at this point i’ve finally caught up with my writing. And I’m probably going to be writing threw the whole day like this.

The time is currently 11:38:45

We’re suppose to be reading something from the book I’m not sure but bookwork is kind of beneath me so i don’t really bother with it. A friend of mine is in this class called dimond i don’t think that’s her real name but whatever, she’s really smart but allurgic to alot of food like ketchup or so i think…

We started watching a video on the great depression. Im starting to get the picture that the great depression is not about depression but about going broke. The lunch bell rang but it wasn’t for my class…

Im starting to get hungry hopefully we’ll be going soon…

Its lunch time, we headed out at : 12:13 pm

For lunch i had pizza and fries, but no one likes the pizza because of the dough its made with plus the pizza doesn’t seem to have enough sauce along with it i had two milks, after i finished i went to the bathroom to take a leak, a found a bottle or paint and decided i could make use of it before i thought about pouring it down the toilet to clog it. But paint desolves in water so i didn’t think it would work maybe i can draw pentagrams in the bathroom stall or something, along with a phone number from a hooker saying “ call for a good time” fuck i don’t know.

Oddly enough just as i planned on not doing anywork i ended up doing work and now, well I’m done now and it looks like were going to leave any moments now it’s now 1:03 pm.

Next class will be spanish but i don’t do language classes, they’re a waste of time for me really. A free time class really. Then after that we go home. I downloaded the blender application with is for making 3d things so i’ll probably mess around with that for a bit.

I reckon i should ended here…

Well there goes the bell

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thesparklyenthusiaststudent-blog · 7 years

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Why A Rich, Orderly Himalayan State Has India’s Highest Suicide Rate

Here in Jorethang, a border town 70 km south-west from the state capital, Gangtok, Babita, a Nepali migrant who grew up with her father and step-mother in a Darjeeling tea estate, was 16 when, during a trip home to meet her mother, a stalker raped her.

“I was so little, what did I know about the law,” said Babita, a slender, feisty woman who dropped out after grade X. “I couldn’t take it anymore and asked the guy to marry me.”

Babita’s husband, a drug user and peddler, has physically abused her almost every day since then.

In 2006, she began abusing pharmaceutical drugs. “Life has been hard. When I can’t hurt others, I hurt myself,” Babita said, showing me the cuts on her left wrist. She tried committing suicide several times by hanging herself, overdosing on drugs, and even brutally hurting herself with a knife once.

“God kept me alive,” she said.

Not everyone is lucky enough to survive. Bishal Sherpa, a former drug user and outreach worker at the Hope Foundation, a Jorethang-based NGO, shared the story of his younger brother, Vicky, also a drug user, who hung himself in 2015.

The dark, hidden side of India’s golden state

Drugs. Suicide. Attempts at suicide.

These are not stories India associates with the northeastern, landlocked former monarchy of Sikkim, often termed the golden state for its run of progress after its integration into India in 1975. With just over 600,000 people, Sikkim is India’s least populated state and the smallest after Goa.

Sikkim is India’s third-richest state (after Delhi and Chandigarh), by per capita income. Its literacy rate is India’s seventh highest. In 2008, it was declared India’s first open defecation-free state. In 2016, it became the country’s first and only organic state, and it topped a 2016 nationwide survey on states with the best working conditions for women.

These achievements hide stories like those of Babita and Vicky. Behind the state’s prosperity and cleanliness, we found a state awash in drugs and suicides.

Despite all-round progress, Sikkim’s suicide rate was 37.5 per 100,000 people in 2015. That’s not just more than triple the Indian average of 10.6 but way above the global average of 11.4. Sikkim’s unemployment rate is also India’s second highest (after Tripura), more than three times the national average of 5%, and the state reports widespread drug abuse.

There are 1,026 injecting users registered by the National AIDS Control Organisation, but most drug users in Sikkim abuse drugs orally, and with a government that treats drug-addiction purely as a law-and-order problem, violating its own rehabilitation laws in the process, there is, currently, no stemming the tide.

A social worker in Gangtok (who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his association with a government project) acknowledged the lack of data. By his reckoning, and that of other social workers, at least seven of 10 teenagers in Sikkim abuse pharmaceutical drugs.

Are drug use and unemployment related? They appear to be.

27% of Sikkimese who committed suicide were unemployed

A fifth of the world’s suicides were related to unemployment, and suicides increased nine-fold after the global economic crisis in 2008, according to this 2015 study. The link between unemployment and suicides in Sikkim appears strong.

More than 27% of those who committed suicide in Sikkim in 2014 (67 of 244 suicides) were unemployed, according to 2014 National Crime Records Bureau data.

Punjab and Manipur, states with rising literacy without jobs, have a high rate of drug abuse, as IndiaSpend has previously reported. Sikkim is now one of three states struggling with drugs caused by unmet aspirations.

Suicide was the leading cause of death in India, occurring most frequently among educated young adults in the country’s most rapidly developing states, such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu, according to this 2012 study, which used data from a 2010 cause-of-death survey.

“The most obvious explanation is that the distance you fall when you hit the ground of reality is greater when your aspirations have been built up by opportunities that in reality don’t exist,” one of the researchers said in this interview to The Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper.

The findings of this study offer insight into the crisis in Sikkim, where between 2006 and 2015, suicide was found to be most common in the 21-30 age group. The high expectations and vulnerabilities of those born after the state’s merger with India in 1975 have resulted in them turning to drugs and suicide, said Kunal Kishore, a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) official.

“Sikkim opened up very recently to the outside world, but it has focused on speedy economic development at the cost of its people,” he said. “The state has neglected social aspects in the process.”

‘When I was growing up, I thought my life would be beautiful’

Prashant Sharma once hoped to become a pilot.

The son of a former army officer, in the 1990s he was studying in a good government school in a small town in East Sikkim district.

“When I was growing up, I thought my life would be beautiful,” said Sharma, 33, an executive member of the Indian Drug Users Forum and coordinator for the Hepatitis Coalition of Sikkim (HepCos).

He was first introduced to pharmaceutical pills in the eighth standard. Most students received little attention and abusing drugs was common. The habit was fuelled further when his parents separated. When Sharma went to rehab and tried to give up drugs, he found no support from the society or government programmes and no job opportunities.

“I was seeing all these social and cultural changes in the state. There was widespread development,” said Sharma. “People now have more expectations, but these have not been met, so you begin to look for an escape.”

While there are similarities between Sikkim and other states with high suicide rates and drug abuse, said Nancy Palmu Chankapa, a clinical psychologist in Gangtok, stressing it wasn’t possible, yet, to pin a single reason for the state’s high suicide rate. Several cases that she has dealt with have been related to family problems, alcohol abuse, mental illness, and extra-marital affairs.

My investigations–focussed on the link between drug abuse and suicide–across South and East Sikkim districts show that suicide and drug abuse were indeed linked. Several young addicts spoke of the pressure of unmet expectations.

I spoke to about 15 former and current drug users in Sikkim, all of whom began abusing pharmaceutical pills as teenagers, and were suicidal at some point in their lives. Pharmaceuticals are the key to Sikkim’s drug problem.

Why abuse of pharma drugs is common in Sikkim

A few meters from Babita’s home in Jorethang runs the river Rangeet. Police officers stand guard here because across the river and past a dense forest lies West Bengal. Jorethang residents can cross over by foot or by boat to buy cheap, easily available pharmaceutical drugs.

Most Sikkimese drug users choose cheap pharmaceuticals instead of deadlier options, such as heroin. India is the third largest producer of pharmaceuticals in the world and some of this is diverted for drug abuse.

There are little data on the subject, but according to this 2011 UNODC study, many drug users in the country have shifted from narcotics to pharmaceutical abuse.

The medicines prone to abuse include codeine-based cough syrups, spasmo-proxyvon (SP), a pain killer that India banned in 2013 for containing an opioid, and Nitrosun (N10), a hypnotic drug used to treat insomnia, anxiety and epilepsy. These drugs, although unavailable over the counter in Sikkim, can be easily bought across the state, into which they filter from West Bengal. Siliguri, about 116 km south of Gangtok, remains the main transit point.

While Sikkim has a history of alcohol abuse and the use of cannabis, drug abuse in Sikkim has only increased substantially over the last five years since large pharmaceutical companies moved base to the state to take advantage of a 10-year tax exemption, said Kishore. There are now about 15 such companies in the state. This has led to increased diversion of legal pharmaceuticals to the illicit market.

But Sikkim’s larger problem is that the government almost entirely ignores the state’s drug problem.

Why drug abuse often leads to suicide in Sikkim

Health worker Sherpa cannot forget the last time he saw his brother Vicky at the Namchi district hospital. Vicky was on oxygen but still gasping for breath.

“The doctor barely checked him, did not even change his oxygen cylinder. He would have lived if they had treated him right,” Sherpa said, his voice shaking. A case of suicide was registered with the police, but Sherpa has yet to get a post-mortem report or death certificate, despite repeated requests.

Sikkim’s otherwise progressive outlook on social and civic reforms does not extend to dealing with drug abuse. It treats the problem purely as a law-and-order issue.

In India, between 2004 and 2014, suicides connected to drug abuse exceeded those related to dowry, poverty and financial issues, according to this 2014 Hindustan Times report. At least 25,426 people committed suicide due to drug- and addiction-related problems over this period.

The Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985, criminalises drug use, but a 2014 amendment provides for pharmacological options for treatment of drug dependence. A distinction is now also made between users, peddlers and smugglers; sentencing depends on the type and quantity of drug seized.

The NDPS Act allows for states to have their own drug policy. In 2016, Nagaland released its own drug policy, which emphasised education and awareness. Punjab has a separate fund for detoxification and rehabilitation, but the state’s war on drugs is more a war on addicts, this 2016 Indian Express investigation revealed.

Sikkim was amongst the first states to draft a drug policy but its act, the Sikkim Anti-Drugs Act (SADA), 2006, makes no distinction between drug users and peddlers. It criminalises drug use, imprisons addicts for small crimes and offers little help in rehabilitation or recovery. The state’s public health system too is indifferent to the health issues faced by drug users.

Under SADA, a drug user can be fined upto Rs 10,000 and be disqualified from applying for government jobs. A state government employee booked under the Act is liable to be imprisoned for up to six months, dismissed and pay a higher fine, up to Rs 20,000. The Act empowers designated officers to enter, search, seize and arrest without any warrant or authorisation.

“Drug users cannot really be imprisoned, but usually they double up as small-time peddlers to make some money. So, when someone is found with substance, police officers add other sections and put them in jail,” said Khilburna Gurung, senior superintendent of police at the Central Jail in Gangtok. “Unless the law is amended, this will keep happening.”

On its Facebook page, the Sikkim Police, which launched a “special drive against drugs” in March 2016, regularly posts photos of those caught with pharmaceuticals booked under SADA.

Despite law, Sikkim says it does not fund care of drug users

“As per the UN international drug conventions on drug control, of which India is a signatory, SADA is harsh, and does not support the health and human rights of drug users who need treatment,” said Kishore, the UNODC official. “Drug users as well as smugglers and mafia are being tried under the same sections of the law here, which is similar to what is happening in Philippines.”

There are no government funds for the education, treatment, aftercare, rehabilitation and social reintegration of addicts, the state’s department of healthcare said in a right-to-information reply to a query filed by HepCos. Under SADA, these programmes are supposed to be running.

The state’s attitude has pushed drug abusers further into the shadows. “By criminalising users, Sikkim has failed to handle the issue with sensitivity. As a result, there is no awareness and drug users are discriminated which often pushes them onto the streets, to sex work, and suicide,” said Kishore.

Long imprisonment affects chances of rehab

Having lost his parents as a child, Rajesh, a driver, lived with his brother’s family. He has not seen them in three years.

“In the long time that I’ve been here, I’ve seen so many people who were arrested under SADA get bailed,” he said in an interview at the central jail. “But I am poor and unfortunate.”

Gurung, the police officer, admitted that those who were rich and well connected often got bail within a few days for being arrested for drug offences, while those who were poor and partly educated stayed in jail, even if innocent. On average, Gurung said, the central jail usually has 25 to 35 inmates held under SADA.

After a meeting organised by the Sikkim State Legal Service Authority (SLSA) in 2016, officials and civil society members decided that inmates should receive medical counselling while in jail. More than 30 sessions have been conducted since September 2016, said Gurung, but these sessions have not been of significant benefit, according to feedback he received.

Rajesh, who has attended all the sessions, said he would rather have received counselling prior to being convicted or after being released. “How will society accept me now?” he said. “I am a criminal to them.”

Prakash (name changed), 24, was sent to Jagriti Integrated Rehabilitation Centre for Addicts (JIRCA) in Gangtok for a four-month recovery treatment after being arrested under SADA. His brother-in-law, a police officer, ensured he wasn’t sent to prison, said Prakash.

“About 10 of my friends got worse after they served prison sentences, four of them tried to kill themselves,” said Prakash, a college dropout who once helped his family run a dairy shop. “I have tried committing suicide in the past. If they had put me in jail, I wouldn’t have given up drugs, but staying here has helped me.”

Help centres are out of medicines, bandages

In addition to JIRCA, there are about seven other rehabilitation centres in Sikkim. Robin Rai, who works as a counsellor in one of the rehabs, is also a staff at the 24×7 Crisis Centre, a suicide prevention helpline run by the NGO Drishya Foundation and funded by the state government. The centre is run out of the psychiatric ward of the government-run Sir Thudop Namgyal Memorial (STNM) Hospital in Gangtok.

Started in April 2015, the helpline has received more than 120 calls so far, but Rai admitted that receiving calls from drug users is rare. Callers usually have marital or relationship problems, are dealing with a chronic illness, or are troubled by unemployment.

Rai, 39, took to pharmaceutical drugs as a teenager and then struggled for over 15 years to give up the habit, a struggle that pushed him to failed suicide attempts. “In most instances here, drug overdose deaths are not accidental but suicide cases,” said Rai. “But there is so much stigma around them that these cases go unreported.”

A large number of drug users that Rai has counselled in the rehab have been suicidal, and yet the only times when drug users were brought into the crisis centre in STNM hospital–four times as Rai recalled–were as emergency cases, after they were found by their families.

In a section of Majigaon, a locality in Jorethang, known as ward no 3 and 4, and clustered with one-room shanties that house around 2,500, I saw empty strips of pharmaceuticals littered across the area. A 15-year-old boy, who admitted to regularly consuming marijuana, told me that almost every resident there abused drugs.

A drug peddler told me her son killed himself when in his 20s.

Although the area has a high concentration of vulnerable drug users, when I visited, there was no naloxone available to treat overdoses and no bandages or medicines for abscesses, bacterial skin infections that form when drug addicts use infected needles or inject insoluble components.

Women users face particular discrimination

“When I can’t sleep, I write,” Babita said, pulling out a diary and flipping the pages to show me poems written in Nepali.

Babita is literate and vocal, an active supporter of the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha, a local political party. She has big dreams for her children. As for herself, she counts herself lucky for not being pushed to sex work for money.

About 9.8% women in Sikkim (of 150 participants) were injecting drug users, according to this 2015 UNODC study. It includes the case study of a 32-year-old drug user who was made to forcibly have sexual intercourse with strangers for money by her husband. Fear of discrimination and stigma kept her from seeking help from the police. She was depressed and suicidal, and said there were many others like her.

Most female drug users are either divorced or in unhappy marriages, said Rinzing Bhutia, a research-team member of the UNODC study.

“When I went to rehab in 2005, after six years of abusing prescription drugs, there were four other girls my age. But today, I am the only one who’s fine,” said Bhutia. “Two of them went missing and their families never even inquired. One was most likely trafficked, and another lost her sanity after she was sexually harassed and shamed. I had a good counsellor who kept in touch with me regularly and made sure I didn’t give up. I got lucky.”

Three rehabilitation centres in Sikkim accept women, Bhutia said, but many women who get dropped off at the centres by husbands or families are never taken back by them and fall back to drugs.

“The government wants Sikkim to be known as a pollution-free, disease-free state. But I work with young men and women every day, and they are constantly struggling,” Bhutia said. “Sikkim will lose its people if it doesn’t act now.”

Some names have been changed to protect the identity of sources.

(Santoshini is an independent journalist based in Assam, reporting on human rights, development, and gender issues. She was also the 2016 Bitch Media Writing Fellow in Reproductive Rights & Justice.)

[Source : http://www.indiaspend.com]

#himalaya #indian journalism #online journalism india #state

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planarchaosproject · 7 years

Text

Planar Chaos: Ignitions

Conflux

Jace Marthel felt the ground beneath him start to quake. The animals of Bant had been restless the last few days and made themselves scarce. Aven soldiers had increased their patrols of the skies. Everyone had felt the storm that was on the horizon. A darkness loomed, threatening to swallow Bant, but nobody could put their finger on what it was exactly. All anyone could do was prepare.

Preparation was something the denizens of Bant did well. The upper castes, the Blessed, Sighted, and Sigiled, directed the Mortar caste to begin fortifying their cities under the guidance of the Celebrant angels tasked with protecting all mortals of Bant. It was to this lower caste that Jace Marthel had belonged before winning the sigil of an angel named Nadia, elevating his caste. As a member of the sigiled, further great deeds were expected of him.

He'd only earned his first sigil yesterday. A strange beast had been rampaging through the town he inhabited on the outer edges of Bant and rather than run he stood firm, singlehandedly slaying the creature with an ax. By the time Nadia had arrived, the beast was dead and Jace Marthel was gravely wounded. Inside a house mere feet away were several families huddled in terror.

"You will not die today, hero," Nadia said softly, kneeling over the prone body of the newly christened hero. "Your soul will not join with meta-sigils and grant me a new sister. Be healed."

She laid her hands on his wounds, erasing them from his body. They might as well have never existed. Jace Marthel reached out to the divine being before him and she took his hand, pressing something into it. "I grant you my sigil," she whispered. She planted a kiss on his brow and rose to rejoin her sisters in their neverending battle to protect the order of Bant.

As he stared at the storm rolling ever closer, Jace Marthel gripped his precious sigil tightly in his hand. It might have been the edge of the world crumbling away and revealed the darkness beyond Bant's kingdoms, a darkness that not even the Court of Orderly Contemplation, the seven highest angels in existence, could stand against. The supreme angel Asha, who had been gone from Bant for thousands of years, might not even be able to protect the kingdoms now.

Jace Marthel set his brow in a look of determination. He was Sigiled now. He had to live up to what Nadia saw in him. No matter what dark forces came out of that storm, he would be ready. He hefted his ax and stood outside the gates of his town with the other Sigiled. The kingdom of Valeron would not fall. They hadn't fallen when Jhess sent in spies to aid in naval campaigns against the coastal kingdom. They hadn't crumbled under the pressure of the inner three kingdoms of Akrasa, Eos, and Topa.

"Ready for a real battle, Marthel?" One of the other Sigiled, a woman named Eledhara, elbowed Marthel in the ribs. She was decked out in sigils from a number of angels, some from entire flights. Jace Marthel thought he even saw one from the Amesha, the group of angels that represented the honor and justice of Bant. "You'll need something more than that ax, I reckon."

"I'll be fine." He glanced up at the sky to see Nadia leading a small group of angels as well as some Aven soldiers. A scout frantically flew up from the west, almost falling out of the air as it tried to catch its breath. Jace Marthel had never been particularly good at determining the gender of an Aven from a distance. He did, however, see Nadia's expression turn grim. He wondered what could possibly cause an angel to scowl so? It almost hurt him to see her beautiful face marred by a frown. Every being on Bant admitted the sublime beauty of the angels even if they typically were not attracted to humanoid women. Jace Marthel was no different.

As the storm rolled ever closer, he felt something strange in his chest. It was almost a tightness, but he wasn't afraid. Nadia was with him, how could he be? Electricity seemed to fill the air, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Did the other Sigiled feel this? Could he even tell?

Nadia floated down to stand beside him, slipping her hand into his and giving it a reassuring squeeze. "You have strengths, Jace Marthel, strengths that make you a special kind of hero. Use them." Her voice was barely above a whisper but it roared in his ears. He heard the blood pounding through his veins and every breath of every being standing around him. The only spot of silence was Nadia. She needed no breath, no blood, no protection from the darkness that crept closer and closer to the kingdom of Valeron.

Marthel saw something moving in the roiling storm. He counted five heads on serpentine necks. The creature was gargantuan, monstrous even. He'd never seen anything like it. The beast instinctively filled him with fear. It was something he couldn't comprehend, couldn't understand, and yet he also felt a strange sort of familiarity. There were aspects to that being on the horizon that resonated with Jace Marthel but he couldn't put a name to them. He couldn't even say whether he'd felt them before, he just knew they were there inside of him. This had to be the special strength to which Nadia referred.

He embraced it. He let the feelings fill his body from head to toe. His skin tingled and his muscles began to burn with the effort of holding himself in place. He felt something calling him away to a world far from Bant and far from the impending doom. All he could hear was Nadia's voice imploring him to use his gifts. Jace Marthel closed his eyes and let the voice carry him through time and space. Bant fell away around him and he tumbled head over heels through the void before landing on solid ground.

It was colder here. A light snow had just begun to fall. Jace Marthel found himself surrounded by animal skin tents and feral warriors wearing furs. They all were staring at him with confused expressions. One, a man with rippling muscles, long black hair, and a cloak made from a massive brown bear moved to the front and knelt by Jace Marthel.

"Who are you, and why are you here?"

"Where is here?" Marthel replied. His head had begun to pound and he raised a hand to the point on his scalp where the pulsing pain originated. It came away bloody.

"You are in the camp of the Temur. I am Surrak, Khan of this clan. Now, you will tell us who you are and why you are here or I will tear your limbs off."

"My name is Jace Marthel, and I really don't know why I'm here. I remember a storm, a battle was about to begin, and there was this creature with five heads. And an angel..."

"You would try to deceive me? You're a spy of the Sultai, aren't you? Or worse, from those scheming Jeskai sitting high and mighty on their mountain?"

"The who and the what now?"

"Surrak," a woman came forward wearing strange garments. Her hat was similar to a large bowl with sharpened teeth decorating the brim. They hung over her face and seemed to be from a different beast than the one supplying the curving tusks positioned atop the hat. "He tells the truth."

"What makes you certain, mystic?"

"We of the Rattleclaw understand the flow of Tarkir's mana better than most. The mana flowing around him is not of the other clans." The Rattleclaw Mystic knelt beside Jace Marthel and reached out a hand. "You have much to learn if you are to survive with us, Jace Marthel. But now you must rest."

"Thank you," he replied.

"That head wound will take some time to heal. Once you are well, we can teach you to hunt so you may feed the clan as the clan feeds you." The mystic helped him to his feet and led him towards a nearby tent. "I would have you tell me of the place you came from and of this being you called an angel. We don't have anything by that name here."

Marthel wondered if he should tell this woman about Nadia at all. He didn't know where he even was, but he knew it wasn't Bant. It was another world entirely. There were tales of a hero of Bant, Elspeth Tirel, who went away for extended periods of time. Nobody knew where. Some said she was looking for Asha in other worlds in order to bring the angelic queen home. Jace Marthel hadn't believed in those other worlds, but now he found himself in one. Perhaps these people didn't know that any other world existed. He resolved to keep his mouth shut for now.

"I'm not sure. I think it was just this injury making me say strange things."

"Perhaps. But your mana is undoubtedly different. You feel like a mixture between ourselves, the Jeskai, and the Abzan."

"I don't know," he insisted.

"Rest, then, Jace Marthel. Perhaps you will recall more when you are healed."

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