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jeonggukingdom · 4 years

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splinters of love • day XXVII [kth]

pairing ⟶ kim taehyung x fem!Reader

summary ⟶ a collection of drabbles (one for each day of April) based on prompts by an online prompts’ generator site. Specifically ⟶ • day XXVII ↳ in which you’re having heated sex in a public space and Taehyung is failing so hard at keeping quiet that you have to forcefully silent him with your mouth.

genre ⟶ smut, a tiny sprinkle of angst

rating ⟶ 18+

word count ⟶ 1.743 words

warnings ⟶ graphic depictions of sexual intercourse, public sex, dirty talk, penetrative sex, unprotected sex, sex in a photo booth ;), taehyung having a hard time keeping his pretty mouth shut :D, unexpected ending eheh

series masterlist ⟶ here (links on mobile may not work, if you’re looking for all the works in this series, you can click on the “!splintersoflove” tag and you’ll find them all there!)

Legs of silk barely covered by a short skirt, a confident strut and a smear of red atop delectable lips that taste like honey and cherries mixed together so well it is addicting.

Taehyung licks his lips, his eyes undressing you over and over again as you walk towards him with your sultry look and that parted mouth that is now practically begging to be kissed, tasted and tortured until it’s swollen and pregnant with his taste.

His hands find your waist in an instant as you put those deadly lips of yours on top of his in a chaste kiss that does not leave him satisfied in the slightest.

His body desires you, so much so he is almost quivering with the need to touch you, feel you.

“I want you,” he whispers in your ear and you chuckle at his impatience to conceal your own and the wave of warmth that washed over you at his words.

You tilt your head to the side, offer him his neck which he promptly kisses right then and there, in the middle of the mall.

You are barely aware of the eyes of the few people walking by and even if you were, you wouldn’t care a single bit.

This is what excites you, what makes the blood rush to your stomach and honey drip towards your core until you’re salivating at the prospect of having him like this and let everybody know.

Of course, no one can ever know or your game will be over but the imagination, oh, there is no stopping that one from turning wild and picturing scenarios that would make anyone blush.

You grasp his hand then, guide him down the familiar corridor until you spot your desired hiding spot.

You’ve been doing this for months now, going out like this and claim each other in the most uncanny places and every single time you’ve left wanting more of him.

Every encounter makes you fall for him harder, makes your desire for him stronger and maybe it’s because it’s forbidden, maybe it’s because you can’t have him anytime you want but only on those special occasions. You don’t know what it is about him but what you know is that you want his lips right now and badly so.

You push him inside the photo booth and he smirks at you while dropping down the seat, his legs spread wide as a silent invitation.

“I thought we could get a little token while we’re at it, mh?” You whisper languidly in his ear and Taehyung shivers beneath you, gulps down heavily and nods his head a couple of times whilst your fingers wrap around his nape and tug on the hair a little, forcing his head a little backward so that you can place your lips on his neck and mark it with both your rouge lipstick and your eager teeth.

He grunts at the sudden attack and you smirk atop his skin while your hands move away from his hair in favour of the fabric of his pants.

Your smile widens as you easily pull them down and notice the lack of underwear underneath giving you a pretty nice view of his semi-hard cock.

“What a good boy,” you coo and Taehyung’s hands roughly grasp your t-shirt in response, his eyes boring into yours before he crushes his mouth on top of yours, lets his tongue move past your teeth to encircle your own and steal your breath away.

Those hands that can be loving at times are passionate and needy today and they forcefully grasp the edges of your skirt to lift it up so that he can marvel at your sex too.

He lets out a shaky breath as he notices your lack of underwear and how wet you’re already are, practically dripping over his thigh when he has yet to even properly lay a finger on you.

His fingers cup your bottom cheeks and you arch your back a little, push your covered tits onto his face as he forces you to rock onto his thigh, feel the muscles tighten underneath your core and excite you further.

You let out a soft whimper of ecstasy and he smirks atop your neck as he kisses and bites the skin to mimic the marks you’ve left on him and that you’ll both have to find a way to cover in the morning.

You are not supposed to do this. He is your boss and you are his secretary and any relationship between the two of you is not only forbidden but impossible and yet, here you are, kissing each other senseless in a photo booth, unable to resist the burning passion.

Your fingers wrap around his cock and he shivers beneath you, gulps down and tilts his head back as you give him a few generous pumps to work him to full erection.

With a teasing smile you turn around, you offer him the view of your naked butt and he slaps it as if on cue making you jolt and blush at the idea of someone hearing the unmistakable sound.

With trembling fingers, you put the money in, select the greatest number of pictures available and then… you sink onto his cock.

Your walls contract around him, protest at the sudden intrusion but ultimately welcome the stretch and as your mouth opens in a silent moan, the photo gets taken.

The sound makes your heart beat furiously in your chest, elicits a grunt of appreciation from Taehyung and spurs you forward.

One of his hands grasps your sides as you start rolling on top of him while the other one trails up to your head so that he can wrap your hair around his fingers, tug on them until your head is tilted backwards and the camera has a perfect view of your half-naked body and your soaking wet pussy bouncing atop his cock.

The camera shutters over and over again as you rock your body on top of his, build your high in that delicious way that makes you want to scream his name to the heavens and let anyone know he is yours and you are his but you can’t, you won’t.

Your hands find purchase on his thighs as you grind onto him harder, faster forgetting all about the pictures, the people walking outside, the prying eyes that could see you and get you arrested.

All that matters it’s him and how delicious he feels deep within you.

He softly calls your name, grunts whenever his balls hit your ass and the more you bounce on him like this, the louder he gets, the needier he gets.

“Taehyung, they will hear us,” you whimper as you keep your furious ride on top of his exquisite cock but he does not listen or maybe he simply doesn’t care now that he is deep inside of you and the pleasure is clouding all of his thoughts.

“I want to see your face,” he demands, his fingers tugging on your hair a little more, making you hiss at the slight pain.

This won’t do.

Hastily, you turn around to face him, you wrap your arms around his neck and sink onto him all in one go cutting his oxygen intake short and making him groan so loud it’s a wonder nobody has heard him.

You rock onto him faster as his onyx gaze drinks up every inch of you while his fingers explore the skin under your shirt, your naked legs, simply everything he manages to reach in the small space.

You tilt your head back as he pulls your shirt up to savour your breasts, give them at least a fraction of the attention they deserve.

As his lips wrap around one of your nipples—your bra pushed a little to the side—his hands stop on your waist and tug on your skin in a way that is bound to leave marks there in the shape of his fingers.

You sigh at the possessiveness behind the touch and he grunts as he controls your hips, forces them to an unbearable speed that has your thighs burning and your mouth running dry.

He grunts beneath you, sucks on your bud harder and then his hips start to stutter underneath you in that unmistakable way that has your mouth salivating.

His mouth releases your nipple in favour of a long moan in the shape of your name that you are forced to gulp down with your mouth.

He groans and fights your tongue as his release paints your walls white but you push it all down your throat so that only you can hear him like this, so that your secret is still intact and you keep doing this over and over again.

His orgasm keeps coming and coming and soon you are quivering on top of him, drenching his cock with your juices and he is breathing heavily on top of your mouth, lowly whispering your name like a mantra to you until you come down from your high and turn slack in his embrace.

His lips find yours again then but this time they are not passionate and ferocious, no, they are gentle and loving and you melt into the soft kiss, bask in the way his hands caress your skin in a gentle way as if to mend all the wrongs suffered up until this very moment.

The anticipation is great, the sex is mind-blowing but this, this affectionate moment that comes after is your absolute favourite while being the most hated one at the same time.

When his eyes look at you like this you’re reminded of all the way you cannot have him and reality comes crashing down, urges you to separate and leave each other behind until your next sordid encounter.

His lingering gaze betrays his own thoughts and how much they mirror yours but you do not speak a single word of it. There is no need.

What you do, instead, is lift yourself up and make yourself presentable again with a little devilish smile on your lips.

“Aren’t you curious to see the pictures?” You coo and Taehyung smirks in return while slipping his pants back on.

When your hand reaches outside to grab the photos, your fingers come back empty-handed.

You try and try again and then, it dawns on you.

“Fuck.”

#ksmutclub #ficswithluv #thekimlinenet #taehyung smut #bts smut #v smut #taehyung x reader #v x reader #bts x reader #bts ff #bts imagine #bts react #bts scenario #!splintersoflove

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crystallized-iron · 4 years

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The Inaccuracy

For Cherik Week 2020, hosted by @teamxcherik

Day 1: Space AU

AO3

***** ***** *****

Arrivals to the space colony were separated into three lines. Erik paused momentarily as his comrades presented their information at the check-in counter. He held his papers ready as he approached the man running the computer for his line. There was never a problem at previous colonies they traveled to for work, but those check-ins were all run by inferior androids running on autopilot, simply copying the information on the forms into the computers.

But this one felt different. Erik could not detect a trace of metal in the small yet pretty man that smiled at him and stated, "Identification please."

Erik handed the paperwork over. His ID card was scanned. The papers were skimmed through, all necessary information typed in.

There was something about the man that kept Erik on edge. No metal had to mean he was human. But why? Check-in counters were a dangerous place for humans to work.

As the man returned Erik's information, their fingers brushed briefly against each other. It was only a second but it was enough for the man to flinch away from Erik with a gasp.

He looked into widening bright blue eyes as the man whispered, "You are not…"

Erik glanced at the men he was traveling with. This was not good.

But then the man recovered from his shock and forced a polite smile on his face. "I do hope you enjoy your stay."

He was letting him through. Erik murmured a thank you and took his paperwork back, but before he could leave he heard the man say, “I hope no one else learns of the inaccuracy in your paperwork.”

Erik turned to him, but the man’s gaze remained on the screen in front of him. “You won’t tell anyone?”

The man glanced at him then. “No. I should, but no. Just go.”

With a nod, Erik walked away, catching up to the others.

“Everything alright, Lehnsherr?” one asked him. “You were stopped for awhile.”

“Everything is fine.”

“Did you notice the kid though?” said the second. “I swore he was one of those new androids until Lehnsherr touched him. He was too professional, too polite. He couldn’t be human.”

“You need to be professional and polite if you are going to be stationed at check-in.”

“But isn’t that why other colonies just use androids? No risk of injury then.”

“How are you certain he isn’t one?” asked the first. “Don’t the latest models have real emotions?”

“That’s just terrifying. Emotional machines. Isn’t that supposed to be a really bad idea?”

Erik shook his head. “Do not anger them and you would have nothing to worry about.”

“You think so?”

“Most living things do attack when angry, or threatened.”

“But are androids really alive?”

Erik did not reply to that, and remained quiet as the other two discussed whether androids really were living beings capable of human emotion, or simply advanced machines running on a program.

***** ***** *****

Charles logged out of the check-in computer two hours later, waiting as Emma signed in for her shift. “Is it really required for us to report all inaccurate information to the authorities?” he asked.

“Of course it is,” she told him. “That was one of the first things we were told when forced into this job.”

“Because only we would know.” Charles bit his lip, his eyes focused on his spotless shoes. Professionalism in every detail, just as ordered. “Have you ever -”

“Hush,” she stopped him. You know they have eyes and ears everywhere.

He nodded and sent back, Have you ever let someone through without reporting the inaccuracies?

Her expression softened as she looked at him. I have. It was a family.

He has no family. But that isn’t the problem.

What was?

There was a beep at the computers, signaling that another ship had docked.

Charles gave Emma a small smile. “I suppose that means I have to go now. Good luck tonight.”

“You too, Charles.” Don’t get yourself into trouble.

I know.

He left the check-in counter, and walked into the heart of the city.

The lights installed into the ceiling of the colony to produce artificial sunlight were dimmed to mimic moonlight. The city itself was illuminated by electric sweetlights along the perfectly paved roads. There was artificial turf in the one foot gap between road and sidewalk, and behind the flawless sidewalk corners stood real trees that aided in oxygen production.

Sometimes Charles wondered how much like the real Earth his home colony was. As a child, he would stare at old color photographs of the planet, amazed at the natural landscapes, the animals, streams, lakes, and rivers. Even cities on Earth were so much more natural looking than the carefully constructed environment he grew up in.

But the original Earth never felt real to him. Nor did the man from earlier, Erik Lehnsherr.

He had felt what he thought was human skin with the usual warmth and softness that flesh had, but something so vital for human life had been missing.

Erik Lehnsherr had no brain, or at least, no human brain.

As Charles walked, he began to pick up the mental voices of the men Erik Lehnsherr had arrived with and he looked into the window of a small diner. There they were, along with the mysterious Erik Lehnsherr.

What these men were doing on this colony was no longer any of his business. Why Erik’s information declared him a human when he certainly was not had nothing to do with Charles.

In fact, he should report it. Why would an android pretend to be human anyway? Erik had to be up to no good.

And then Erik’s eyes found his.

Charles swallowed and turned away from the man’s stare. He started walking. What Erik did was none of his business. It had nothing to do with him.

His walk became a jog as he rushed to his apartment building. He stopped at the door to catch his breath.

What was he doing? What if there was a sinister reason behind Erik Lehnsherr pretending to be human? He should have reported it right away! What if someone got hurt, or worse?

“Excuse me.”

Charles gasped at the voice and turned. Erik Lehnsherr had followed him home, and now stood almost near enough for Charles to touch him. “What?” Charles demanded. “I didn’t tell anyone.”

Erik stepped closer. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” There was a tremor in his own voice that Charles chose to ignore. “I was only followed all the way home.”

“I am sorry for that,” Erik told him. “I didn’t know that’s where you were going.”

“Why did you follow me?”

Closing the distance between them, Erik said, “Because you know.”

“And I already told you I won’t tell anyone.”

“I know. But I want to find out how you know. What makes you so different that you can learn the truth in an instant?”

Charles’ hand went to the door handle. “If you kill me, everyone will know.”

“I will not kill you.”

Shaking his head, Charles muttered, “I can’t tell whether you’re lying or not.”

Erik showed his hands. “Unarmed. You can check if you need.”

“You don’t need a weapon. You are built with a stronger body.”

“You are right. But killing is against the rules for all, new and old.”

Charles could feel his body shaking. He never imagined he would find himself in a position such as this. “Come on,” he said then, opening the door.

“You will allow me into your home?”

“Discussing things further out here is a terrible idea. They are always recording.”

Erik went into the building after him, the door clicking shut behind them. They went down the long corridor together, passing numbered doors. Fragments of conversations from the other side of those doors seemed to echo in the usually barren corridor.

Charles typed a code onto the keypad by his door. After hitting Enter, the door opened and they walked inside.

The light in the first room automatically came on. On the far wall were three screens measuring oxygen level, temperature, and time. An ancient model personal computer booted up at the lonely desk covered in old plates and a couple of solid color mugs. A couch sat in the middle of the room, a single book resting on one of the cushions, its place marked by a receipt.

Erik stayed by the door. Charles removed his jacket, feeling the man watching his every move. “Sit there,” he said to his guest with a point at the couch. As Erik did as was requested, Charles added, “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Do not move from that spot.”

“I do not plan to,” Erik promised, glancing at the personal computer.

Charles left for his room, quickly changing out of his uniform and into a pair of sweats and a comfortable t-shirt a size too big. He ran his fingers through his hair with a sigh. What was he doing?

He checked his uniform pocket and found what he needed. At first glance, it appeared to be a flashlight, but it had a built-in taser; just pop off the cap where the light shined from.

He held onto it as he went back out, finding Erik still on the couch, but reading the last few pages of his book. “Was I really gone that long?”

“I am a fast reader,” Erik answered. He placed the book back on the couch cushion and looked up at him. “You are armed.”

“I am.” Charles went and sat at his desk. He grabbed the mouse and clicked through a few windows, opening a recording program and clicking the button.

If anything happened to him tonight, Emma would know.

He swiveled his chair toward Erik. “Alright.”

Erik leaned into the couch. “Most are easily fooled, but you were not. Why is that?”

Charles took in the sight of the android seeming so comfortable on the furniture, wondering if it was even possible for an android to feel comfort. “I am different from others.”

“Yes you are. But how so?”

He stared into the cold gray eyes. “I am a human with telepathy.”

“Telepathy?”

“Yes. My DNA was altered while I was growing in an artificial womb. I know of two others with the same alteration, and the three of us take turns at the check-in counter.”

“To catch androids claiming to be human?”

“To catch liars, frauds, and criminals,” Charles corrected as he checked the taser. “We are supposed to report inaccuracies in information.”

Erik’s gaze dropped to the weapon in Charles’ hands. “You are very informative.”

“I give you honesty -” he popped off the cap - “you give me honesty.” Their eyes met again. “Seems fair to me.”

“I suppose it does.”

“Now.” Charles leaned closer. “Why does your paperwork say you are human?”

Erik frowned. “Again, how do you -”

“Telepathy.”

“Yes, you said that, but -”

“You don’t have a brain.”

“I do,” Erik told him.

“Not a human one.”

“No, that is true.” He actually sighed. Was that a normal thing androids did? He seemed so real but he wasn’t. “Shaw, he is the one that… well…”

“Created you?” Charles finished.

Erik nodded to him. “Yes. He filled out my paperwork. He believed I was perfection, that no one would ever guess.”

“If I did not have my power, I would probably ever know,” Charles admitted. “I would have thought…”

“Yes?”

“Don’t worry about that.” Charles pushed the thought of Erik being a beautiful man away, and then said, “But I touched your hand. I touched it and there was nothing I could feel inside of your head. It was shocking because your information stated human but that was impossible because humans have brains.”

“Once again,” Erik said, “I do have one.”

“I am not talking about a computer for a brain.”

“Human brains are simply organic computers.”

Charles groaned and leaned back in his chair. “Shut up… I should have reported you.”

Erik watched him. “Why didn’t you? You found what you call an inaccuracy in my information, but then you did nothing about it.”

“You didn’t seem to be doing anything wrong other than that, really,” Charles told him. “You are just trying to work and survive like the rest of us.”

“Do you still feel that way?”

“You followed me home. I was already doubting my decision, and then you were there and I got scared and… I don’t know.” He eyed the taser in his hands. “Is everything else the truth?”

“Yes. It is all the truth except for being human.”

“No other crimes committed?”

“None.”

“You mean that?” Charles asked, lifting his gaze to Erik’s face. “Not lying?”

“Would you be able to tell if I was?”

“I am trying to trust you, Erik.”

The ends of Erik’s mouth began to quirk upwards. “You want to trust me?”

“I need to know I did the right thing.”

“No other crimes committed.” Erik smiled, such a warm expression for a mechanical being. “Not lying.”

Charles let out a heavy breath. “I am taking your word on that. Please do not let me down.”

“I won’t.” He gestured to the computer. “Are you going to keep recording?”

Popping the cap back on the flashlight taser, Charles asked, “Are you planning on staying longer?”

“If you will allow it.” The cold gray eyes drifted over Charles. “I must say, despite the interrogation, I do enjoy being in your company, if only to admire your beauty.”

Charles stared at him, taken aback by the statement. Could androids really… Did he actually… “You don’t really mean that.”

“I am not lying. You said you want to trust me. I want that as well.”

“I am trying, but you have been lying about yourself for your entire existence. How do I know you are being honest now?”

“Because like you said, you were honest with me.” Erik moved to the cushion nearest Charles. “That does mean a lot to me.”

“Does it?”

“It does.”

Charles hesitated then said, “I don’t know you.”

“No you don’t.”

“Would you mind telling me about yourself?”

“As your evidence against me?” Erik asked.

Charles went to the computer, setting the flashlight on the desk. He stopped the recording and closed the program before turning back to Erik. “How about now?”

“Only if you would tell me more about yourself as well. Seems fair, right?”

Leaning closer, Charles said, “It does seem fair. Go ahead and start then.”

“Alright. I will start with my creator, Sebastian Shaw…”

#CherikWeek2020 #cherik #Charles Xavier #Erik Lehnsherr #Emma Frost #space au

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faithfulnews · 4 years

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Work, Play, Poetry

By Anthony Domestico

March 4, 2020

The life of the late novelist Robert Stone was filled with improbabilities. As Madison Smartt Bell puts it in his new biography, Stone, whose globe-spanning novels took on American history and the American soul, had “a taste for marijuana and alcohol (and for quaaludes and opiates).” In the 1960s, Stone was friends with Ken Kesey; you can imagine how much imbibing that entailed. While in Vietnam on a reporting trip, he experimented with heroin. (He “snorted, smoked, [and] possibly drank it on one occasion,” Bell writes.) Yet Stone lived to the ripe age of seventy-seven, writing a strong novel, Death of the Black-Haired Girl, two years before he died in 2015. “A connoisseur of women of all varieties,” Bell writes, perhaps a little too forgivingly, “Bob was far from above the occasional fling.” He had an open marriage—so open that he had a child with a family friend in the 1960s and a tempestuous affair with a younger writer three decades later. Yet he stayed with his wife Janice for fifty-five years. By Bell’s reckoning, and it seems accurate, theirs was a happy marriage.

But the most pleasant surprise, for me at least, was the decades-long friendship Stone had with Marilynne Robinson. What a literary odd couple they make: Robinson the proud Calvinist and Stone the lapsed Catholic; Robinson known best for her quiet, lovely novels about mid-century Iowa and Stone known best for his wild, prophetic novels—A Hall of Mirrors (1967), A Flag for Sunrise (1981), and others—all probing the manic brain and corrupted heart of American empire. What must the two writers have talked about? The nature of God, I’m sure. (Stone in an interview: “As a result of having been a Catholic, I’m acutely aware of the difference between a world in which there’s a God and a world in which there isn’t.”) The nature of craft, I imagine. (Stone taught at Johns Hopkins and Yale, among other places.)

Bell was friends with Stone, and his affection for his subject comes through. Writing in the first person, Bell recreates trips the two took to Haiti and conversations they had about fiction’s moral purpose. Despite this love, though, Bell doesn’t hold back, especially when it comes to the suffering brought on by Stone’s addictions. The last hundred or so pages are difficult to read, an onslaught of car crashes—Stone was a terrible driver, even when sober—narcotic dependence, increasingly frequent falls, and an attempted suicide. Stone was charismatic, everyone agrees. He was also destructive, to others occasionally and to himself consistently.

Bell is an accomplished novelist in his own right, and Child of Light, like a good work of fiction, lives through its details. Stone “huffed as much oxygen as possible in a back room of Politics and Prose” before giving a reading. David Milch, the producer of Deadwood, put Stone on the payroll at his production company to give him something to do, and some money, after a stint in rehab. Annie Dillard and Joy Williams vacationed with Stone in the 1990s. (Dillard and Stone went white-water tubing in Missoula and saw a brown bear.)

Stone’s writing offers an imaginative record of America’s political and spiritual dimensions: “That is my subject,” Stone wrote, “America and Americans.” Bell reads this wild life and lasting achievement with grace and sympathy.

Child of Light: A Biography of Robert Stone Madison Smartt Bell Doubleday, $35, 608 pp.

Baseball here is a business, and Nemens gives it to us from all angles

Robert Coover’s The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. is the best baseball novel ever written, and I won’t hear otherwise. But The Cactus League, the first novel by Paris Review editor Emily Nemens, is also very good.

If Nemens’s debut is not quite in the same league as The Universal Baseball Association, that’s partly because it’s playing a different game. Coover’s is a postmodern novel about the postmodernism of America’s pastime. (We often care less about the game itself than about its statistical representations—batting averages and win shares.) Nemens’s is a work of straightforward realism. Baseball here is a business, and Nemens gives it to us from all angles: superstar outfielders losing fortunes at the gambling table; groupies hanging out by the bullpen; agents hushing up scandals; elderly stadium organists whose stiff hands can’t hit the keys they once could.

The Cactus League takes place in Arizona during spring training. Each chapter, nine in all, follows a different figure associated with the imaginary Los Angeles Lions franchise. Most of the particulars are right. Nemens knows that Notre Dame’s baseball team is in the ACC, and she nicely skewers the increasing encroachment of hot tubs and goofy sound effects in new ballparks. A lovely small detail: Jason Goodyear, the book’s self-sabotaging superstar, gets a signature sneaker—“the first time they’d named a shoe after a ballplayer since Griffey.”

Not everything works. No fan would call a pitcher a “fastballer,” as one character does. (At least it’s not “speedballer,” à la Bruce Springsteen.) No partial owner could demand that a prominent outfielder be traded because of sexual jealousy—and then have it happen within days. (Partial owners don’t have that much power; star players don’t get traded overnight, especially when their replacement has only played college ball.) Such details wouldn’t much matter in a postmodernist romp. They do here.

But the pacing is good and the prose generally strong. Nemens refuses to engage in the romanticizing many fall into when spring comes around. Bartlett Giamatti famously and poetically said that baseball “is designed to break your heart.” After all, Giamatti rhapsodizes, “the game begins in spring…blossoms in the summer…[and] leaves you to face the fall alone.” Fair enough. But Nemens shows how baseball also breaks your heart for more prosaic reasons: because rotator cuffs fray, because spring-training towns are depressing, and because billion-dollar franchises don’t give a fig about poetry.

The Cactus League Emily Nemens Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27, 288 pp.

In baseball, there can come a point when you’ve so often been described as underrated that you cease to be underrated. Trot Nixon, for example: a decent right fielder in the early 2000s who Red Sox fans so often dubbed underrated that he became overrated. Charles Portis, the Arkansas-born novelist who was famous for being underrated and who died on February 17, never suffered this fate. There’s a certain kind of greatness that, no matter how many times we remark upon it, will always be underrecognized.

People who know Portis, whose out-of-print novels were reissued in the 1990s, probably know him as the author of True Grit. It’s a great novel, and it’s been made into two great movies. But every shaggy-dog story he wrote, every picaresque comedy of American naiveté and dreaminess, was great. His sentences display a funny, poetic, loose yet disciplined, absolutely American prose style. Since his death, fans have been passing around some of their favorite passages. Here are a few of my own. From The Dogs of the South: “I don’t believe we’ve ever had a President, unless it was tiny James Madison with his short arms, who couldn’t have handled Dupree in a fair fight.” From Masters of Atlantis: “It’s not healthy, locking yourself away in here so you can eat pies and read all these monstrous books with f’s for s’s.”

Rest in peace, Charles Portis.

The Dogs of the South and Masters of Atlantis

For decades, the poet and critic Paul Mariani has been a shining light for those interested in the Catholic imagination. We can hear Gerard Manley Hopkins, that great poet of the dark night, when Mariani laments no longer being able to see the “greengold grass, / glistening the bright skin of the copper beeches.” And we can hear Hopkins again, that great poet of the shining day, when Mariani describes “know[ing] that somewhere, now as then, the wind keeps whispering still”—the Holy Spirit moving and transfiguring always, even when we can’t sense it.

Mariani’s new work of criticism, The Mystery of It All, is a twilight book. Its epigraph, addressed to his wife of more than fifty years, begins, “Moon, old moon, dear moon, I beg you / answer when I call out to you.” Its final sentences read, “‘In His Will Is Our Peace.’ The very words I have etched into our gravestone.” In recent years, the eighty-year-old Mariani has been diagnosed and treated for brain cancer. This gives his epilogue, titled “On the Work Still to Be Done,” particular force.

Yet what is most striking about this book is how buoyant it is, how joyful is its account of a life of reading and writing. Hopkins, Stevens, Berryman, O’Connor: they’re all here, and Mariani attends both to their smallest formal decisions and their most expansive metaphysical concerns. “I have read and taught Stevens for over fifty years,” he remarks. “He is someone who never ceases to delight.” Great critics are able to turn the readerly delight they experience transitive: to explain it, yes, but also to pass it on to the reader. By this and many other standards, Mariani is a strong critic.

Here he is on Hopkins’s darkness: “All is unselved, untuned, and, just as violin or catgut strings go slack, all clear voweling lost, so do we, the words themselves as if swallowed, until ‘all is enormous dark / Drowned.’” And here he is on Hopkins’s sacramental, perceptual joy: “Look at the Welsh farmers with their horses in the countryside about him, breaking up the moist clods of earth: how the light shines upon them, catching the quartz glints, in an instant turning them into diamondlike shards of light—‘sheer plod’ itself doing this, allowing the plow and the sillion both to shine in God’s light.”

Even and especially in twilight, Mariani shows us the light.

The Mystery of It All Paul Mariani Paraclete Press, $25, 240 pp.

Even and especially in twilight, Mariani shows us the light.

Hopkins, who broke and remade form in almost everything he wrote, would have loved the poet Jericho Brown. The Tradition is Brown’s third collection of poetry. It’s also his best—the most interesting in form, the most wide-ranging in reference, the most daring in its wedding of the private and public, the spiritual and the sexual.

Brown has talked about reading T. S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent” obsessively while working on this book. Eliot’s influence can be felt in this collection’s sense of tradition speaking to, and being changed by, the present. Eliot’s ghost is here. So too are the ghosts of James Baldwin, Lucille Clifton, and Essex Hemphill.

Brown writes several poems in a new form he calls the duplex: a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues. “Though I may not be, I do feel like a bit of a mutt in the world,” Brown has said. Queer, black, and Southern, he wanted to create a form that felt as unlikely as himself. These duplexes work by repetition and reconfiguration. Here’s a snippet:

My first love drove a burgundy car. He was fast and awful, tall as my father.

Steadfast and awful, my tall father Hit hard as a hailstorm. He’d leave marks.

Light rain hits easy but leaves its own mark Like the sound of a mother weeping again.

As seen here, Brown often writes about trauma: the trauma of being a hurt child or a hurt lover; the trauma of being black in America (“I promise if you hear / Of me dead anywhere near / A cop, then that cop killed me”) and the trauma of being queer in America (“My man swears his HIV is better than mine”).

But The Tradition also gives witness to joy—in sex and language, in the traditions of black art and the black church. Brown was raised Baptist, and you can hear this legacy in his imagery and music:

Forgive me, I do not wish to sing Like Tramaine Hawkins, but Lord if I could Become the note she belts halfway into The fifth minute of “The Potter’s House”

When black vocabulary heralds home- Made belief: For any kind of havoc, there is Deliverance!

That duplex I quoted from above begins and ends with the same line: “A poem is a gesture toward home.” Brown finds a temporary home, a form of deliverance, in and through tradition in its many forms.

The Tradition Jericho Brown Copper Canyon Press, $17, 110 pp.

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gloverdominic92 · 4 years

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ruthfeiertag · 4 years

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Re-Run from 2016 “To the Letter”

The following is a post I wrote back in early 2016 — a simpler, happier time — for the Month of Letters blog. While we have left Valentine's Day 2020 behind us already, I'm re-posting this piece, in part because it's amusing and, in part, because I am concerned about the U.S. Postal Service and want to remind us all how desperately important letters can be. I hope it makes you smile.

(Also, Happy May the Fourth)

*****************

14 February, 2016 St. Valentine’s Day

My dear Ms. Bradford,

Greetings and enthusiastic wishes for a Valentine’s Day alight with loads of loving letters! I write you today not only to send greetings, but also to thank you for giving me the singular honour of writing the Valentine’s Day post — and to tell you with immense regret that I can’t possibly write such a piece.

Allow me to explain. You asked that I focus on the love-letter sections of the book I have been reading, To the Letter: A Celebration of the Lost Art of Letter Writing by Simon Garfield.* If only you had asked me for a general review of the book! In that case, I could have extolled its wit and the wide range of historical examples it provides. I would have offered up moving passages, such as the one in the introductory chapter, “The Magic of Letters,” in which Mr. Garfield writes eloquently about what we are in danger of losing:

Letters have the power to grant us a larger life. They reveal motivation and deepen understanding. They are evidential. They change lives, and they rewire history. The world used to run upon their transmission — the lubricant of human interaction and the freefall [sic] of ideas, the silent conduit of the worthy and the incidental, the time we were coming for dinner, the account of our marvelous day, the weightiest joys and sorrows of love. It must have seemed impossible that their worth would ever be taken for granted or swept aside. A world without letters would surely be a world without oxygen (p. 19),

and provided instances of the author’s humour, such as when, in an aside to his discussion of Seneca’s instructional correspondence, he gently pokes fun at academics who study epistolary matters. In this note, Mr. Garfield informs us that

Seneca’s letters were longer than the norm, ranging from 149 to 4,134 words, with an average of 955, or some 10 papyrus sheets joined on a roll. Philological scholars with time on their hands have calculated that a sheet of papyrus of approximately 9 x 11 inches contained an average of 87 words, and that a letter rarely exceeded 200 words (note, p. 55),

an observation that betrays the author’s own interest in such minutiae. He also spares not the Fathers of the Church. He points out that during the millennium when “Literacy was not encouraged among the populace” (p. 81), letter-writing declined and “theological letters are all we have.” Mr. Garfield finds these letters uninspiring and cautions his readers that we “may prefer death to the lingering torture of reading them” (p. 82).

I shall say nothing at all about Mr. Garfield’s three chapters reviewing historical advice on “How to Write the Perfect Letter,” about the heated debates regarding whether letters should mimic informal conversations, about the importance of addressing recipients as befits their stations, about where to place one’s signature, nor about how leaving wide margins was a sign of wealth and status. Epistolary silence shall envelope the fascinating descriptions of the evolution of the modern postal system; not a word will there be from my pen about the incredible fact that postage used to be paid not by the sender of a letter but by the person to whom it was addressed, nor shall I mention anything about the invention of the postage stamp, despite Mr. Garfield’s engaging description of its conception.**

But love letters! You must see how this will never do. Love letters can leave us open to terrible embarrassment. Mr. Garfield acknowledges that

Love letters catch us at a time in our lives where our marrow is jelly; but we toughen up, our souls harden, and we reread them years later with a mixture of disbelief and cringing horror, and — worst of all — level judgement. The American journalist Mignon McLaughlin had it right in 1966: ‘If you must re-read old love letters,’ she wrote in The Second Neurotics Notebook, ‘better pick a room without mirrors.’ (p. 336)

Reading the love letters of others can be almost as cheek-reddening as reading our own. Shall we really subject our LetterMo companions to such blushing?

Moreover, we all know the power of a love letter. Think how we are charmed when Hamlet, that most articulate of Shakespeare’s creations, writes awkwardly to Ophelia:

'Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love. 'O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers; I have not art to reckon my groans; but that I love thee best, O most best, believe

Adieu.

'Thine evermore, most dear lady, whilst this machine is to him, HAMLET.' (Hamlet, II. ii. 1212-20***)

And never let us forget that it is a letter, and not even an intentional love letter, but merely a letter of explanation, that finally wins Mr. Darcy the heart of Elizabeth Bennet. Do we wish to tempt our friends to deploy such power wantonly and without discretion? ****

But these are fictional examples, created strictly for our amusement or even for our edification. I really don't know whether we should intrude upon the privacy of people who actually lived — though Mr. Garfield patently feels no such compunction. He shamelessly lays out for us not only the ecstatic feelings of historical couples, he even brings up — and we’re both adults, so I’m just going to write the word straight out — SEX. I fancy you don’t believe me. Permit me, for veracity’s sake, to share some examples.

If you were to glance at page seventy-three, you would find Mr. Garfield’s account of

The letters between Marcus Aurelius and Fronto [which] track the rise and fall of a courtship from about ad 139, when Aurelius was in his late teens and his teacher in his late thirties, until about ad 148. The heart of their correspondence is ablaze with passion. ‘I am dying so for love of you,’ Aurelius writes, eliciting the response from his tutor, ‘You have made me dazed and thunderstruck by your burning love.’

All I will say is that, with all the conjugating the Romans had to learn, it’s a wonder there was time for such extra-curricular activity.

Mr. Garfield follows this Latin love affair with the tragic, even more explicit tale of Heloise and Abelard, those misfortunate, twelfth-century lovers. Theirs is another pupil-pedant passion, and Abelard writes that

‘With our lessons as our pretext we abandoned ourselves entirely to love.’ There followed ‘more kissing than teaching’ and hands that ‘strayed oftener to her bosom than the pages’ (p. 76).

The story culminates in pregnancy, a secret marriage, Abelard’s castration by Heloise’s relatives, and the retreat of both lovers into monastic life. Heloise’s love and desire for her husband remain unabated; during Mass, ‘“lewd visions of the pleasures we shared take such a hold upon my unhappy soul that my thoughts are on their wantonness instead of on my own prayers”’ (p. 78).

In a later chapter, Mr. Garfield treats us to a discussion of the romance of Napoleon and Josephine, and compares the market worth of their letters to the arguably more valuable missives of Admiral Lord Nelson. “In letters,” our author confides, “as everywhere else, sex sells: the Nelson [letter] went for Ł66,000, a fair sum but less than a quarter of a Bonaparte” (p. 192). Mr. Garfield puts before us the affaire de cœr of Emily Dickinson and her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert. He quotes ‘a letter which echoed the steamy transactions of Abelard and Heloise …: “When [the pastor] said Our Heavenly Father,” I said “Oh Darling Sue”; when he read the 100th Psalm, I kept saying your precious letter all over to myself, and Susie, when they sang … I made up words and kept singing how I loved you”’ (p. 248). **** In another letter, Dickinson breathlessly confides to Gilbert that if they were together, “we need not talk at all, our eyes would whisper for us, and your hand fast in mine, we would not ask for language” (p. 248).

To be sure, there are genuinely moving examples of great love to be found in the book. We are reminded that passionate romances need not be defined by tragedy. Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett fell in love through their letters, and their correspondence describes a “swift 20-month crescendo from endearing fandom to all-consuming craving” (p. 345). The two poets eloped and lived happily for the duration of their marriage. Browning was “the man who swept her [Barrett] away and liberated her passion” (p. 347) — and married her.

While the concerns of the famous hold a particular fascination for the masses — as Shakespeare writes, “What great ones do the less will prattle of”****** — the most touching and poignant letters are those of Chris Barker and Bessie Moore. Mr. Barker was a British signalman during the Second World War, Miss Moore an acquaintance from Mr. Barker’s time working in the Post Office. When they began to write, Ms. Moore was involved with someone named Nick, but three months into their correspondence Ms. Moore has shed Nick and is trying to persuade Mr. Barker that they are friends, and not mere acquaintances. She succeeds admirably, and soon Mr. Barker is assuring her of his interest in having “fun at a later date” while warning her “not to let me break your heart in 1946 or 47” (p. 145), and stoking her interest by wondering what she’s like “in the soft, warm, yielding, panting flesh” (p. 147). But before long Miss Moore’s unwavering admiration and epistolary dedication have complicated Mr. Barker’s desire and he is writing “I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU” (p. 202).

Miss Moore waits for her signalman throughout the war and his time as a POW. In the epilogue, we learn that they were married in October 1945 and had two sons. It is to the elder, Bernard, that we owe thanks for the preservation of their letters. The younger Mr. Barker says of his parents that “Their love for each other was so complete, always, that it was difficult for my brother and I in childhood and adolescence to relate to each of them as a single person” (p. 425). In the last letter of the war, Mr. Barker writes his by-now wife, “I can never be as good as you deserve, but I really will try very hard … We shall be collaborators, man and woman, husband and wife, lovers” (p. 426). The Barkers’ letters cannot be read without becoming involved in their growing affection and in the history Mr. Barker includes in his letters to the steadfast woman who would become his partner. The letters are tender and grateful and passionate, and we learn a great deal from them about Mr. Barker’s experiences as a signalman, about how to lay the foundation for a lasting, loving relationship, and about how thoroughly Victorian sexual mores had been trampled into the dust.

I cannot but think that you are as shocked as I am. You have not read the book and are innocent regarding its contents. I am sure, in my heart of hearts, that you didn’t understand what you were asking me to do. But I am equally sure, Ms. Bradford, that you agree these matters ought not be laid out before the Month of Letters community, that none of our letter-writers could ever have the slightest interest in reading about affairs of the heart (and of the body) of other people. Our reputation as an Internet society devoted to promoting the respectable art of epistolary composition would suffer dreadfully, and neither of us wants to be complicit in bring such a judgement to pass.

I do hope you will find it in your heart to forgive me for letting you down so. To make up for the lack of a post, I offer you a poem to run in its place instead, one more suitable for our impeccable epistolary society, to run in place of the piece I should have given you:

But For Lust Ruth Pitter

But for lust we could be friends, On each other’s necks could weep: In each other’s arms could sleep In the calm the cradle lends:

Lends awhile, and takes away. But for hunger, but for fear, Calm could be our day and year From the yellow to the grey:

From the gold to the grey hair, But for passion we could rest, But for passion we could feast On compassion everywhere.

Even in this night I know By the awful living dead, By this craving tear I shed, Somewhere, somewhere it is so.

I trust you understand my reasons for writing you this letter and do assure you that I remain

Your honoured and admiring epistolary confederate,

Ruth E. Feiertag

* Gotham Books, Penguin Group, 2014

** Those familiar with Terry Pritchett’s Going Postal will already have an inkling of the early history of stamps.

*** Open source Shakespeare, [http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/search/search-results.php], accessed 3 February 2016).

****Garfield irresponsibly provides no advice for the proper composition of a love letter. For that we must look to John Beguine of The Atlantic. His article, “A Modern Guide to the Love Letter,” reminds us to choose “100 percent cotton paper,” that may “suggest to your beloved those other cotton sheets you hope to share.” He also cautions us not to “succumb to the temptation to employ your own personal stationery imprinted with your name and address. Such handsome lettering makes identification appallingly easy for your lover’s attorney.” Beguine covers other topics such as Ink, Elegance (“Elegance prompts wit rather than comedy, sentiment rather than sentimentality” and “Long-winded elegance is oxymoronic. So length does matter, but in writing, less is more”), Salutation, Body (“even if you have a knack for them, no pornographic drawings”), Metaphors, Grammar, Complimentary Close, Signature (“If you can’t bring yourself to close without a signature, limit yourself to your first initial. And try to be illegible here. There’s no reason to make the job easier for a lawyer someday [sic]”), Delivery (“bribe whomever you must to have the letter placed directly upon the beloved’s pillow”), and Accepting an Answer. ([http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/02/a-modern-guide-to-the-love-letter/385370/])

***** One might also ponder Dickinson’s 1722 poem, “Her face was in a bed of hair”:

Her face was in a bed of hair, Like flowers in a plot — Her hand was whiter than the sperm That feeds the sacred light.

Her tongue more tender than the tune That totters in the leaves — Who hears may be incredulous, Who witnesses, believes.

****** Twelfth Night, I. I. 33. [http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/twn_1_2.html]

#Ruth Feiertag USPS SavetheUSPS #Letters #Simon Garfield #LetterWriting #USPS SavetheUSPS TotheLetter valentine's Day History

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andrewdburton · 4 years

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Love in the time of coronavirus (or: What to do when the stock market crashes)

Can you feel it? There's panic in the streets! We're in the middle of a stock market crash and the hysteria is starting again. As I write this, the S&P 500 is down six percent today — and 17.3% off its record high of 3386.15 on February 19th.

Media outlets everywhere are sharing panicked headlines.

All over the TV and internet, other financial reporters are filing similar stories. And why not? This stuff sells. It's the financial equivalent of the old reporter's adage: “If it bleeds, it leads.”

Here's the top story at USA Today at this very moment:

But here's the thing: To succeed at investing, you have to pull yourself away from the financial news. You have to ignore it. All it'll do is make you crazy.

Note: This is an updated version of the article I publish whenever the stock market crashes. I last shared it on 21 January 2016. Some comments are from previous versions of the piece.

Bad Behavior

The sad truth is that people tend to pour money into stocks during bull markets — after the stocks have been rising for some time. Speculators pile on, afraid to miss out. Then they panic and bail out after during a stock market crash. By buying high and selling low, they lose a lot.

It's often small individual investors like you and me who make these mistakes. During the Great Recession, one Get Rich Slowly reader shared the following story:

“I'm in the [financial] industry…I can tell you now that when the markets tanked during October [2008], people with less than (approximately) 100k behaved significantly different from investors with 100k+ in the market. Also, people who did not have an emergency fund behaved significantly different than those who did, generally to their own detriment.

“These actions lead me to believe that people with substantial assets tend to ride out the market and not worry about short-term fluctuations, whereas people with smaller amounts of assets lock in losses by removing assets from the market at poor times. Then, when/if they get back in, they’ve missed out on several days of big gains…

“As it was happening I was shocked by the clear income demarcation that seemed to separate rational behavior from irrational behavior. Do small investors make behavioral mistakes that keep them from becoming wealthy?“

Instead of selling during a downturn, it's better to buck the trend. Follow the advice of billionaire Warren Buffett, the world's greatest investor: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”

In his 1997 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Buffett made a brilliant analogy: “If you plan to eat hamburgers throughout your life and are not a cattle producer, should you wish for higher or lower prices for beef?” You want lower prices, of course: If you're going to eat lots of burgers over the next 30 years, you want to buy them cheap.

Buffett completes his analogy by asking, “If you expect to be a net saver during the next five years, should you hope for a higher or lower stock market during that period?”

Even though they're decades away from retirement, most investors get excited when stock prices rise (and panic when they fall). Buffett points out that this is the equivalent of rejoicing because they're paying more for hamburgers, which doesn't make any sense: “Only those who will [sell] in the near future should be happy at seeing stocks rise.” He's driving home the age-old wisdom to buy low and sell high.

Doing this can be tough. For one thing, it goes against your gut. During a stock market crash, the last thing you want to do is buy more. Besides, how do you know the market is near its peak or its bottom? The truth is you don't. The best solution is to make regular, planned investments — no matter whether the market is high or low.

Meanwhile, ignore the financial news.

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No News is Good News

The mass media is in the business of selling news, and to do that, they sensationalize it. Fueled by the over-eager reporting, irrational exuberance can quickly turn to pervasive gloom. Neither state of mind makes sense. They're both extremes that lead investors to make poor choices.

For example, I know a couple of people who “invested” in Bitcoin when it was all over the news. Now they wish they hadn't but they bought into the hype. My brother lost two homes to foreclosure and declared bankruptcy because he bought into the U.S. housing bubble during the mid 2000s.

Meanwhile, the people I know who ignore financial tend to prosper.

The May 2008 issue of the AAII Journal featured an article entitled “The Stock Market and the Media: Turn It On, But Tune It Out” in which author Dick Davis argued that daily market movement is often illogical and/or arbitrary. Except for obvious catalysts — military coups, natural disasters, the coronavirus — nobody knows what makes the market move on any given day. Short-term changes appear random. Besides, as we just learned from Warren Buffett, they aren't really relevant if you have a long-term investment horizon (which is probably the case for most of you).

To the long-term investor, daily market movements are mostly noise and filler. “What's important is repetition or the lack of it,” Davis writes. A trendline is more useful than a datapoint.

“I believe one of the worst things that can happen to a long-term investor is to be instantly and totally informed about his stock. In most cases, spot news fades into irrelevance over time…Big market moves may be inexplicable, but a long-term or dollar-cost averaging approach precludes the need for explanations.”

You can watch the daily investment news, but don't let it sway your decisions. “Focus on the long term,” Davis writes, “and you can ignore the media's distortions.”

Davis isn't the only one to believe that no news is good news. Research backs him up. In Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes (and How to Correct Them), the authors cite a Harvard study of investment habits. The results?

“Investors who received no news performed better than those who received a constant stream of information, good or bad. In fact, among investors who were trading [a volatile stock], those who remained in the dark earned more than twice as much money as those whose trades were influenced by the media.”

Though it may seem reckless to ignore financial news, the book argues that it's not: “Long-term investors need not concern themselves with yesterday's closing price or tomorrow's quarterly earnings reports.” Make your decisions based on your personal financial goals and a pre-determined investment strategy, not on whether the market jumped or dropped yesterday.

“But This Time Is Different!”

Whenever the stock market crashes, there are folks who cry, “This time is different!” This time the market won't recover. This time the economy is going to be mired in a morass for years. Or decades. Or forever. So far, “this time” has never been different.

But I'll admit: This time does feel a little different. Yes, I believe that much of this panic is just that — panic. And I expect that, overall, this downturn will mirror previous downturns. That said, the coronavirus is real. Despite the admonitions of certain self-proclaimed experts, the coronavirus is not the flu. It's far deadlier. And even when it's not fatal, it can be debilitating. (Did you know that 5% of cases in China require artificial respiration? Another 15% require oxygen therapy? That's not the flu.)

The coronavirus is having real effects on the global economy. And those effects may linger for months — or years.

Take Apple, for instance. One of the world's largest companies, Apple's profits depend on a regular product cycle, one that routinely introduces updates to existing gadgets while occasionally introducing new ones. But the coronavirus is going to delay many of its planned 2020 announcements. Plus, it's gumming up production of existing items. The bottom line? Apple's numbers are going to be a mess this year.

Apple isn't alone. The coronavirus is wreaking havoc with the global economy — and I suspect this is just the beginning.

Italy is restricting travel and canceling all public events.

The city of Austin, Texas canceled the South by Southwest festival.

Sporting events around the world have been affected. Games have been postponed or canceled. Some are being played without spectators. And even the summer Olympics — scheduled to start on July 24th — are in danger of being delayed.

Here in Portland, we've had the coronavirus for about ten days now. The first diagnosed case came from a person employed at a school just five miles from our house. This has caused panicked runs on Costco and Wal-Mart.

Yesterday, Kim and I attended two crowded events: a Broadway musical (Frozen) and a Portland Timbers soccer match. Both had light attendance. (The official Timbers stats show a max-capacity crowd of 25,218 but that's bullshit. There were empty seats all around.)

All this is to say: The coronavirus has already affected the national economy, and it's only going to get worse. Your best defense? An ongoing campaign to develop a strong personal economy.

The National Economy vs. Your Personal Economy

Obviously, the national economic situation affects our personal financial decisions to some degree.

When unemployment soars, it's important to maintain an adequate emergency savings and to limit your use of debt. When the stock market crashes, you need to understand your investment objectives, and how these relate to your risk tolerance and your investment timeline. (And when the stock market is up, you need to ask the same questions.)

Regardless the state of the national economy, ultimately you are responsible for your personal economy. A money boss is proactive, preparing for problems before they occur. When times are flush, you need to set something aside for the future. Then, when things turn dark and dismal, you'll be better shielded from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

A strong personal economy is built on personal-finance fundamentals such as these:

Clear financial goals. You need to know why you're earning and saving money. Where do you want to be in five years? Ten? How do you want to get there?

An adequate emergency fund. Experts disagree on how big an emergency fund should be. Some say six months, some say twelve, and others say three. I say it should be large enough to let you sleep at night when the economy gets rocky. (And the best time to save is before you need the money.)

Limited use of debt. If you use debt, use it wisely. A mortgage isn't a bad thing, and neither are student loans. A car loan is borderline, though, and borrowing to buy a television is foolish. Use debt only when needed. If you suspect you may lose your job or encounter some other big life change, then get rid of debt completely.

The practice of thrift. When your personal economy is good, it's easy to get lulled into complacency. You start buying organic ketchup and eating in fancy restaurants. You take bigger vacations. But if you can master the art of frugality when times are fat, you'll be better able to practice it when times are lean.

Smart investing for the future. Lastly, invest wisely. Don't let the news lead you to make emotional decisions. Buy low and sell high. If you weren't willing to sell your investments when the Dow was near 30,000, then how in the world does it make sense to sell them when the Dow is near 25,000?

The foundation of a strong personal economy is education. To become a wise investor, you must be an educated investor. And you must recognize what you can and cannot control. The national (and global) economy affects your personal economy, but ultimately all you can control are your personal finances.

I'm overly fond of this analogy, so I'll share it again: The national economy is like a river. Sometimes the water is still and deep. Sometimes the current is swift. Sometimes snags and rapids block the river. Your personal economy is like a boat on that river. Your goal is to reach the river's mouth, and to do so you have to keep the boat in working order. You have to avoid the snags and rapids, which means advance preparation. Mostly, your trip down the river is pleasant. From time to time, though, things can get hairy. If you're not careful, in fact, your boat can capsize. Through it all, the river flows in one direction — and daily, well-prepared sailors reach their destinations.

The Bottom Line

I know market downturns can be scary. But here's the thing: If this volatility makes you nervous, if it causes you to make bad decisions, then maybe you've put too much money into the stock market. Volatility is one of the fundamental features of stocks.

On average, the stock market returns 10% per year (around 7% when adjusted for inflation). But average is not normal.

Recent history is typical. The following table shows the annual return for the S&P 500 over the past twenty years (not including dividends):

The S&P 500 earned an average annualized return of 6.06% for the twenty-year period ending in 2019. But zero of these years generated stock market returns close to the average for that time span. (2007 came closest to average with a return of 3.53% — still more than 2.50% off the average.)

Short-term market movements aren’t an accurate indicator of long-term performance. What a stock or fund did last year doesn’t tell you much about what it’ll do during the next decade.

In Benjamin Graham's classic The Intelligent Investor, he writes:

“The investor with a portfolio of sound stocks should expect their prices to fluctuate and should neither be concerned by sizable declines nor become excited by sizable advances. He should always remember that market quotations are there for his convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored. He should never buy a stock because it has gone up or sell one because it has gone down. He would not be far wrong if this motto read more simply: “Never buy a stock immediately after a substantial rise or sell one immediately after a substantial drop.“

If you believe stock prices are still high, then steer clear of the market. If you think they're low, then buy. And remember: Unless you sell your stocks, you haven't lost anything at this point — it's all on paper.

During the tech bubble of the late 1990s, I was part of an investment club. My friends and I chortled with glee as we bought tech stocks (Celera Genomics, Home Grocer, Triquint Semiconductor) near the top of the market. We thought we were going to be rich. We weren't laughing so hard when the bubble popped; we closed the club and sold the stocks at huge losses. What lesson did I learn? The time to buy is when prices are low, not when they're high.

I believe that for the average long-term investor, the best course of action right now is to make regular scheduled purchases of low-cost diversified index funds.

That's what I've done in the past. If I had money to invest, that's what I'd be doing today.

Further reading: Eight years ago, my buddy J.L. Collins wrote a great article about market crashes and how to handle them. Jeremy from Go Curry Cracker has written about exposure therapy, about how repeatedly “losing” $100,000 (or more) in the stock market has desensitized him to the experience. And Mrs. Frugalwoods has a great artricle about the zen art of losing money.

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/what-to-do-when-the-stock-market-crashes/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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getotheoffer · 4 years

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This is the One plus 7T so if you followed the leaks take a promo. You've probably seen pretty much every angle of this thing but now it's officially been unveiled. This is a pretty easy phone to explain so one plus the company they have. They're sort of upper mid-range phones somewhere around five hundred six hundred dollars like One Plus 7. More Technology Information for You: 9 New future gadgets and Invention of 2020 This Best Mini Photo Printer For Your Smartphone Gallery This key finder will be the best essentials of 2020 Then they have their premium high-end flagship stuff like One Plus 7 Pro. That's closer to seven-eight hundred bucks so, this phone the One Plus 7T kind of a hard name to say out loud. it's not the seventy but it's the One Plus 7T. This phone is sort of a Frankenstein between those two groups, it's right between the Super High end and the upper mid-range. if that makes any sense so to be perfectly clear it is a really great phone for the price. which is basically the One Plus, special at this point they've continued this fascinating slow creep up in price, but when you go over this phone and everything they've combined in here. OnePlus 7T Design and Display It's pretty on point for what you're getting for $599.95 combination of things despite not being the highest end display. You know it gets pretty bright up to a thousand knits, so outdoor visibility is no problem and the teardrop not being a little smaller makes it super easy to ignore on this gigantic screen, But it's also 1080p not 1440p. The bezels are just a little bit thicker a tiny bit, as you can see and I have noticed some real off-axis color tint and rainbowing, and other consistencies like that. You'll notice on not so high-end OLED displays so, it's not the super best of the best, but it's like right underneath. It's right in between its making Sense right. They're bringing things down from the higher end phone that makes sense while keeping the sort of baseline of the mid-range. The High refresh rate I think is the most important thing that they brought down, that I just love it, some 90 Hertz some high refresh rate goodness. so that's good to see and then just the design of this phone, in general, is also a bit of a Frankenstein. you've probably noticed it by now, there's this or a blue color again although. this time it's not as matte as before it's kind of closer to like a satin, because it has more of a sheen to it. it's not really glossy like some other phones. But you definitely do still see fingerprints much more than a matte phone, so it's somewhere in between again the 7 pro is more matte than this one. some other improvements you do have the alert slider is tighter, so it's more satisfying to move between the three Positions. that's pretty sweet they brought down the high-end really precise haptic motor, that's honestly only really matched on Android by the pixel at this point. so that was great and they brought the optical fingerprint reader underneath the glass. that's also the same sensor as the one from the 7 Pro. OnePlus 7T Sound Speaker and Battery I think one of the best in any Phone under the Glass. Right now, these Speakers are also just as good as a 7 throat, they sound loud and full and there's also a bigger speaker grow up at the top. Charging is now even faster, so they're calling it to warp charge 30 Tit's still a 30-watt fast charger but thanks to improved battery chemistry. In the 3800-milliamp hour battery in this phone, it'll charge 23% faster than warp charge 30 already did, so in other words, it's silly fast and it's kind of you to know a different philosophy on battery management on one hand. This massive battery inside and all-day battery life. That was crazy fast charging just lets you have this peace of mind at any time. you're starting to get low, you can just plugin for a couple minutes and be right back up to set 80%. it's like a different kind of confidence in the battery. I don't really have a preference between the two. it would be great to have both but this one is much better. this we're charged 30 t they say we'll get you to 70% from dead in half an hour and that's awesome but I'm even more impressed by just how much you can add from plugging in for five minutes ten minutes and just giving you a massive boost for the rest of the day. so, the 7T does have a decent battery life but this is the steady compromise they make for not having the best battery life. OnePlus 7T Camera Details Of course, the gigantic camera circle on the back it's genuinely. I think the first design from one plus that doesn't feel to me like really sleek or clean like they've done triple cameras before, even but this one is very different. it’s kind of reminds me of somewhere between Motorola or the red hydrogen or you might even remember the Nokia Lumia series back in the day. so, anything is these are essentially the same exact cameras that the oneplus 7 pro, already has same standard 48megapixel standard camera same 117degree ultra-wide and then a shorter 2x telephoto zoom camera instead of a 3x, so if you're actually looking for some big camera improvements for the 7T that is not what's happening here. it's actually not like the One plus 7 pro camera was bad, it's just that it was the one part of the phone that wasn't you know best-in-class. it sorts of holding it back from being an arguably perfect phone in a way, but in a $600 phone in the Starts of 2019, this set of cameras is perfectly good. I've been taking photos and videos with it just to see if I notice any substantial differences around but there isn't anything too drastic. still very solid and daylight and a bit color fringy and soft around the edges with close up subjects and passable, but not amazing shots in less than ideal lighting. if you think about other cameras in this six-hundred-dollar price range, that's about right. Actually, right up until they start to get blown out the water by the $700 iPhone 11. you can take portrait mode shots now in telephoto or standard cameras now, which is cool. They are also enabling 4k 30fps video from the ultra-wide camera so they've heard our feedback, they are going to do that. I think them impressive improvement here is the new super macro mode so, you hit the little Flower icon in the top corner and you can get way up close to things to point five to eight centimeters away from the camera lens, which most smartphones do struggle with. if they don't have a macro mode and so with this, I was able to take some close-ups that I couldn't even get with the iPhone 11. and Then, of course, this wouldn't be a new one plus phone without really killer high-end on-paper specs. OnePlus 7T Performance Snapdragon 855+ the newest chip 8gb of ram, not 12 and 128 or 256gb of Usb 3.0 storage so, this thing is fast and it's running the latest version of Oxygen OS 10 on top of Android 10. which I think makes this the first non-pixel Android 10 phone. they're early 2 updates and performance has actually been really smooth. A lot of Android apps for other things Twitter to switch between accounts, flamingo for Twitter, TikTok, your Whatsapp, Google Photos, the Play store I mean a lot of Google apps use that hamburger menu. The screen is so big on this phone that We don't really want to reach up to the corner, with one hand to press the hamburger menu every single time. but aside from that Android 10 has been really nice really smooth as you'd expect on a new phone, with a 90 Hertz screen and all the optimizations one plus is continually working on for oxygen OS. they really show so all that for me using this phone has added up to it being a pretty solid set of trade-offs, that add up to a pretty good phone for a pretty great price. it really feels like they're taking the stuff that they learned how to do better and more efficiently from the 7 Pro and bringing it down to a more competitive price which is a great way of sell a lot of phones. now for to be perfectly clear the one plus 7 pro is still a better phone than this just because of this small bit of trade-offs. they've kept a higher quality display higher resolution not as much color fringing and things like that bigger battery-less ugly camera bump on the back. and the notch-less the screen on the front so all of that sort of adds up to a few trade-offs here. but overall this is that incremental update you expect from a t phone from one plus. with the X-Factor of that 90 Hertz display that is so hard to switch back from. so, that's the statement that the phone leaves me with is that I'm glad that one plus is doubling down on the high refresh rate stuff to really make phones feel smooth high refresh rate all the things. this is gonna be a really good buy for people who want to spend like 600 bucks on a phone. Get Oneplus 7T now-

http://getotheoffer2.blogspot.com/2020/01/oneplus-7t-review.html

#Electronics #gadget #technology #digital

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