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paperpennies · 3 years

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Please tell me about your AU idea where Sasha and Milla meet in Brazil as teenagers and basically end up long-distance dating before either of them become Psychonauts ^_^

Oh hey look at that, totally out of nowhere, not prompted by me at all! (@2somethingelseyoumightknow2 and @strawberry-et also asked me about it but it seems redundant to answer three separate asks. I didn’t think three people would actually do it lol. Also sorry for taking 8 years to answer.) This idea came out of just smushing two thoughts together. Then I got weirdly attached. Buckle in; it’s gonna be pretty long. Under a cut to avoid annoying feed scrolling.

So, AU is: Sasha mom lives, meaning he turns out a lot better emotionally adjusted since he grows up with at least one attentive parent. His dad is better too- still pretty emotionally constipated but not, like, broken the way he is in canon. The family also has 4-5 more kids after Sasha. This does mean they’re pretty poor but they do okay.

His mother is a schoolteacher, who is somewhat unusual in the time period for working and being a mom of a big family at the same time. She and Sasha are quite close; he gets a lot of his intellectual and curious side from her. In his eyes, he’s much more like her than like his dad (although people who know them both would say he’s a lot more like his father than he thinks). His mother also knows about his psychic powers, having noticed them as soon as they started showing up, but his dad and siblings (probably) don’t.

The story starts when Sasha is 14-15 years old. He’s getting increasingly bored living in a small rural town with few opportunities related to his interests, and his developing psychic powers (and probable undiagnosed autism) make things even more complicated and difficult for him. His mother gets an opportunity, probably with some kind of charity organization, to go teach German/English and maybe other stuff in Brazil for a while. She decides to take it, and take Sasha with her so he can have some different life experiences. She also takes his youngest sister along, since she’s still very little and dad’s already going to be left alone with three other kids.

(Also, my assumed age for Sasha and Milla in the games is like mid-30s, which, if the games take place in mid/late 80s, would mean they were born in the mid-50s. That means they would be 14-15 in the late 60s. So that’s the timeline I’m going with here.)

So they go to Brazil. The school Sasha’s mom is working at is either at or associated with an orphanage- maybe a church that has a school and an orphanage. Of course, Milla is there. I don’t have a lot of the details locked in here. It’s hard because we know nothing about Milla’s family or life before she was working at the orphanage, so I’m really just pulling this out of nowhere to fit in with this AU. For the purposes of this, she has no family and is living at the orphanage and going to the school there (even though that’s sad and I kinda don’t like it. May change it. Hm.)

Anyway, Sasha’s mom is teaching at the school; Sasha is doing basically independent study. I also haven’t decided if Milla is in his mom’s classes, because I haven’t decided what age group(s) she’s teaching. Either Milla’s in her classes or gets employed (or volunteers) to babysit Sasha’s little sister and that’s how she comes to be around. Oh, and also for the purposes of this, Sasha’s mom already spoke Portuguese before this, and Sasha’s been learning it prior to arriving there, so he’s like conversational at least.

Either way, Sasha and Milla meet. Despite having some initial personality conflict, they find they have a weird connection to each other. Milla is curious about this feeling and interprets it as maybe being a crush, although it feels a little bit different. She decides to try and befriend him to understand it better, and also because that’s just what Milla does. She’s the sort of person who makes people her friends half-against-their-will just by being friendly and caring consistently until they can’t deny that they’re friends.

Sasha, meanwhile, is wary of her and her enthusiasm because he’s not great with the social stuff, especially with the culture and language gaps at play. He’s also wary of the feeling because it seems psychic-related, but he doesn’t know what that means. Plus Milla is like super pretty and nice and he gets tongue-tied and red-faced whenever she talks to him, but he definitely doesn’t like her shut up Mom.

Over time, Milla’s determination prevails, and they become genuine friends. He hides the fact that he’s psychic at first, but eventually does tell her. He asks her if she’s sure she’s not psychic, because she really seems psychic somehow. She doesn’t think she is, but he theorizes she’s probably not quite normal, at least, and that’s where the connection they’ve felt from the beginning comes from.

Since they’re actually perfect for each other, their friendship grows deeper over the months they spend hanging out. By the time Sasha has to leave, they’ve developed real romantic (in a 14-15 year old way) feelings for each other. They don’t ever really talk about it, but promise to write.

And they do. Sasha’s siblings start referring to the girl he writes to as his girlfriend to tease/annoy him, but eventually it sticks. He stops protesting, although he never confirms whether or not it’s true, and it starts being matter-of-fact to them instead of a joke. On Milla’s side, she still talks about him to her friends like he’s still there, and she gets the penpal-boyfriend teasing, too. It doesn’t really bug her, though. They save up money over a few years to go and visit each other, and talk about their relationship enough to be sort of “official”. It’s rough since they rarely get to see each other in person or even talk on the phone, but they keep going.

Years pass, and some things change and others don’t. Sasha mother dies when he’s in his late teens, and he and his dad start having bigger and bigger issues between them in the wake of greiving. He leaves home as soon as he’s sure his younger siblings will be fine without him around. Out and about in the world, he gets recruited into the Psychonauts within the next few years (the specifics of this don’t matter too much for this AU). Milla goes on to work in her orphanage, the thing she’s most passionate about. They still keep close in touch, and get to see each other a more often now that they’re grown up and Sasha has better access to international travel. They finally decide “okay yes, we really are actually dating” even though it’s still long distance. Sasha’s colleagues 100% do not believe his story about having a beautiful long-distance girlfriend in Brazil, because that would sound fake af even if wasn’t coming from the very serious, not-romantic-at-all Sasha. Even his picture of them together does not convince them.

Then, the thing happens. Milla’s orphanage burns down, and her psychic powers finally fully awaken. Because of her knowledge of psychics, she realizes what’s happening, but it’s still a horrifically traumatic event. Sasha takes a leave period to come and help her, finds that it’s even more serious than he’d expected, and puts her in touch with the Psychonauts directly for some better assistance. He’s too close to her to do more than an initial check-up himself.

They find Milla has a lot of potential and extend an offer to join the intern program (which at that time spans a larger age range than later on). She rejects the offer at first, tries to go back to her life, but later decides she needs to make a complete change and accepts. Sasha’s colleagues are shocked to find out she is indeed real. She graduates first out of her class, as one of the best levitators the organization has ever seen. Technically, she and Sasha aren’t supposed to be romantically involved as agents, but the Psychonauts have always been pretty loosey-goosey about that rule (given the history of its founders).

So that was a novel in length. It’s not necessarily that interesting in this form, but there’s the AU. I think the interest would be the specifics of how their relationship would play out as a story, if they met young enough and under the right circumstances to not to get stuck in the hang-ups their relationship has in canon. If you read this far, tell me what you think! Thoughts, feelings, emotional outbursts?

#SashaMilla #Sasha Nein #Milla Vodello #AU #Psychonauts #It's not as super different as like the vampire one people have going but I think there's interesting things to explore there #I wanna do some art for it but I wanna do art for a lot of things #so it may not happen

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flowerbloom-arts · 2 years

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Day 11; Aunt Jane

Jane stood up from her table proudly from her table and tapped her champagne glass with a fork to gain the guests' attention.

"Everyone, please, may I have your attention?" She said loudly, the guests quieted down and looked in her direction, Jane cleared her throat "First of all, with great moominish hospitality I would like to thank every single one of you for attending this charity event, it is a great honour to see each and every one and I sincerely hope you have had a splendid time here!"

The guests cheered.

"Secondly, I'm pleased to announce that we have raised a hundred grand for the Lost and Foundlings Charity for Misfortunate Children! May our future generations prosper without the need for orphanage institutions and live with families willing to truly care for them!" Jane announced happily and raised her glass, the rest raised a glass and cheered.

Jane smiled at the whole scene and felt really nice for once, the feeling faded as she lowered the champagne glass and looked inside of it, slowly noticing a strange but all too familiar foreboding nagging at the back of her head, she turned her gaze to the charity founder sitting next her, who was swiveling his glass in pleased contemplation. Certainly not a good sign.

Jane squinted at the fuzzy and took a cautious sip of champagne.

The party was over and all that were left was Jane and the Charity Founder.

"This isn't going to be a scam, right?" Jane asked firmly and crossed her arms.

"Hm-? What- No! Nooo..." the Charity Founder said insincerely as he was gathering the bags of money.

"The sound of your voice very much says otherwise, sir," Jane replied.

"Of course it's not a scam, ms. Moomansson, do I look like a man who doesn't care about orphans?" he said and put a paw to his chest.

"... On second thought, yes," she said bluntly.

"Then why did you agree in the first place??" The Charity Founder asked, baffled.

"Because you weren't blatantly waving red flags when I agreed to this! As in you literally took out red flags to wave at a guest and hit them in the head in the process!"

"... You saw that-?"

"Ugh, goodness, why on this fine earth did I agree to host a charity event for a charity run by a greedy rodent?" Jane asked herself and rubbed her eyes under her glasses.

The Fuzzy looked around and decided to answer that clearly rhetorical question "I think it was something about your nephew...?"

"Yeah, yeah... I did it in honour of my dumb... Idiotic nephew... Who showed the bare minimum of kindness after he tried hiding from me... And made me cry because it's the first time anyone complimented me in years..." She growled quietly and rubbed her forehead, she inhaled deeply and mumbled "Goodness, I'm so pathetic..."

"You- you know could give you the donations for yourself if that-"

"No," Jane snapped "I don't need the money, I need you to keep your word, alright? Use that money to found an actual charity and give it to those it was meant for. If you don't do that, there will be dire consequences for both me and you, mostly you, so get out and get on or else I'll kick you all the way to Ireland, understand?"

The Fuzzy stood quiet for a moment to process what she had said "... How are you going to kick me that far-?"

"You do not want to test me. Now scram before I change my mind on being merciful to a rat like you!" Jane threatened and stomped on the Fuzzy's foot with her umbrella.

"AH-! Y-yes madam!" The Fuzzy saluted and ran out of the room with the bags of money.

Jane watched as he ran out and pinched the bridge between her eyes with a heavy sigh once he left. She adjusted her glasses and looked up at the ceiling of the room. The cold emptiness of such a large house hadn't felt so terrible since her family's... Rapture. Moomin Valley reminded her what even a semblance of warmth and good company felt like, in comparison, home felt like a random house again.

#moomins #moominvalley #art #aunt jane #moomin aunt jane #aunt jane moomin #huevember #moominvalley in huevember

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tournesolia · 5 years

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Chaos Lineage Yuma Chapter 9 Translation

Place : Scarlet mansion – Yuma's room

Yui : Hmm... Huh... ?

(Since then, Yuma-kun and I always stayed together yesterday, and... That's right. We fell asleep before we knew it)

(Huh ? I can't move... ? It's warm, could it be...?)

Yuma : … Zzz...

Yui : (He's hugging me from behind ?)

Yuma-kun... If you hug me so strongly, I can't move

Yuma : Hmm... ? … Zzz...

Yui : Geez, you're sleeping soundly

(But Yuma-kun looks happy when he's like that)

(He's right beside me and hugs me...)

(But we still have things to do. We must hurry and recover everyone else's memories)

(We have to get out of this strange situation and return back to our daily lives...!)

Let's get out of bed for the time being

*Yuma prevents her

Yui : Kyaaa... !?

Yuma : … Where are you going... ? Stay here

Yui : Y-Yuma-kun ! No, I have to get up and act

Yuma : Ah ? What “act” ? Working at the fieds... ?

Yui : N-No... I also have to go check on the vegetable garden, but...

I have to get everyone's memories back ! Come on, Yuma-kun, wake up as well !

Yuma : Geez, 'can't be helped... Then let me feel a little good

Yui : Eh ?

Yuma : *kisses Yui

Yui : Hmmm !?

(He kissed me !?)

Yuma : Aaah, I finally feel like waking up. Now, let's get dressed. Are you gonna just stand here ?

Yui : That's my line...

(He caught me of guard, that's unfair...!)

Scene change : Scarlet mansion – Corridor

Yuma : So, what do we do now ?

Yui : Hmm... I think it would be better to go meet everyone first

We hardly ever talked to the Oranges...

Yuma : Well, true. I'll bring them food at the same time

There's vegetables we just harvested. How about making soup ?

Yui : Ah, sounds good !

Yuma : Ruki loves soup, so maybe that would help him recover his memories

Yui : Hehe... I see

(Reiji-san may scold us but I want to reach everyone even if I have to apologize)

There are four oranges... Ruki-kun, Shin-kun, Ayato-kun and Kanato-kun...

It would be nice if they show even one sign of recovering their memories

Yuma : And if they don't, what about the Violets ? The Scarlets never showed any signs

Yui : That's right. Shu-san, Reiji-san and Kino-san don't show any signs of remembering...

Yuma : Ah ? By the way, that Kino dude... Who's he ?

Yui : You don't remember him either ?

Yuma : I don't know him, and never heard of him. But he's maybe friends with the other red dudes, no ?

Yui : Indeed. I wonder if he's acquainted with the Sakamaki or the Tsukinamis...

(Hmm, it's worrisome but, unless they remember, it would be meaningless to ask the person themself)

(Kino-san looks like a bright and nice person, so let's leave him alone for now)

Scene change : Scarlet mansion – Kitchen

Yui : As expected, the freshly picked vegetables are good

Yuma : Obviously. 'Cause I grew them

Yui : (Hehe, Yuma-kun sounds like he's having fun in the kitchen)

Yuma : It's nice to make soup for them but I begin to want something to eat

Yui : Eh ? Y-You're not going to suck my blood, right ? I will be anemic

Yuma : I know that, dumbass. Vegetables would be nice but there would be nothing left for them

Now that I think about it, there's my little sugars around here. I won't get caught even if I take one

Yui : (H-He hid them at the back of the shelf... Reiji-san must be strict...)

By the way, you haven't eaten too much sugar cubes recently, right ?

Yuma : It's 'cause of Reiji. When I try to eat some, he says stuff like “They're used for the tea ceremony”, “It's bad manners” and blah-blah-blah...

He's gonna get his hands on the next supply again, he's extremely stingy

Yui : … Supply ?

Yuma : Yeah, and that's weird. There's no shops here, huh ?

Food and medical products pop up in a fixed place at a fixed time

When my memories went crazy, I found that normal even though that's a weird mecanism

Yui : W-Wait ! That means someone prepare these supplies, right ?

Yuma : Ah ? Well, I guess ?

Yui : That's right. Someone must have prepared those if they suddenly appear here. In other words--

Yuma : … ! Is it who I think it is ? That bastard who brought us here is the one giving us food ?

Yui : It's a strange thing that everyone's memories got out of order at once

Someone is intentionally... having everyone fight each other for some purpose...

Yuma : Shit, I can't believe it. Who the hell would have such bad hobbies !?

Yui : (Someone who can rewrite memories of everyone here... even Carla-san who's a founder...)

… Even if I think about it, I can't find an answer right now

Let's make dinner. I'm sure they're all waiting. Especially your brothers

Yuma : … Yeah, you're right. I'll first talk to Ruki and the other Oranges

Yui : (All the people we know gathered. Rewritten memories, an unknown land...)

(If this is the work of someone's will, could it be--)

Scene change : Dungeon

Yuma : Hey, I brought dinner

Yui : (It looks like the two families are separated in two different cellars to avoid quarrels. This cellar is where the Oranges are)

Shin : Dinner, huh. Are you trying to gain the enemy's sympathy ?

Ayato : Eww... Didn't you put poison in it ?

Yuma : I didn't. Stop complaining and eat up

Kanato : I prefer sweets

Yui : I'm sorry. I'll bring some next time

Ruki : What is the meaning of this ? We don't accept your charity. Quit doing unnecessary things

Yuma : Don't be obstinate. Under such circumstances, you must be the one who's the most hungry

You always had three meals a day, right ? Here, you like vegetable soup, no ?

Ruki : You have no right to be over-familiar to me. Take it back

Yuma : … You...

Yui : Um, Ruki-kun. Won't you listen to our story ? Even just a little ?

Ruki : We have nothing to say to you. It's no use trying to get information from us

Yui : We didn't intend to do that...

Yuma : … Fine

Yui : Yuma-kun ?

Yuma : It's no use talking to him now. I'll just leave the soup here for now and go

Here, drink it whenever you like. I put plenty of vegetables in it

Ruki : I said I don't need your charity

*Ruki drops the soup

Yuma : … !

Yui : No way...

(The soup Yuma-kun made with all his heart is...)

Yuma : Ruki...

Ruki : … Disappear. And don't come ever again

Scene change : Scarlet mansion – Corridor

Yui : (I never thought he would break the plates...)

(The others didn't accept the soup either...)

Yuma : … Shit...

Yui : (Yuma-kun is depressed as well...)

Choice 1 : Cheer him up (White roses)

Yui : (I have nothing to comfort him, no matter what I say, but I want him to get better)

Yuma-kun, it's alright. Ruki-kun lost his memories right now but there must be a way to restore them

And when they are restored, we'll all live again at the Mukami house

Yuma : … Yeah, you're right. It's not the time to be bummed

Choice 2 : Leave him alone (Black roses)

Yui : (I have nothing to console him, no matter what I say. I can do nothing more than leaving him alone...)

Yuma : … Why are you making that face ? You don't need to make such a face

Yui : Eh... ?

Yuma : I'm fine. Iwas just pissed off, more or less. Or rather... bummed

– End of choices

Yuma : It's naturally natural that I can't deny that guy lost his memories

Now that I think of it, that guy was just like when we first met. I remembered it after a long time

Yui : Yuma-kun...

Yuma : That Ruki guy is suspicious of us so we just have to be patient

Yui : Yes, you're right. He will surely be able to understand our feelings, even little by little

*footsteps approaching

Reiji : … Did you feed those rats again ?

Yui : Ah, Reiji-san...

Reiji : Shall I advise you to stop now ?

Yui : Um, we're sorry. But we're worried about them no matter wh--

Reiji : Please be quiet

Yui : … !

(The atmosphere changed from usual. Is he angry ? No... upset ?)

Yuma : Reiji... Why are you acting like that ? You bored or something ?

Reiji : Not at all. I was waiting for you. There's something I need to talk to so gather urgently in the living room

Yui : (Something Reiji-san needs to talk... ? I wonder what... I have a bad feeling about this)

Scene change : Scarlet mansion – Living room and dining room

Kino : Ah, you finally came. You're a bit late

Yui : Kino-san...

(Shu-san's here as well. Does that mean it's a general meeting ?)

Yuma : Tch... I'm picking up bad vibes

Reiji : With this, all the members are gathered. So let's begin the meeting at once

All those cumbersome members of Violets and Oranges got captured. There's nothing that can become a treat to us now

Therefore... We have no need to get conservative anymore

Yui : (Don't tell me...!)

Reiji : Yuma, you don't need to continue guarding Eve. She is now under my supervision

Yuma : Wha... !

Yui : No way...

Yuma : I can't give her to you ! If she's put with you, what will you do to her... !?

Reiji : You thing I will be rough with Eve ? It would be reasonable for her to stay with me in order to get information from her

Yuma : She doesn't know anything ! All that stuff about the supreme ruler are fabricated memories !

Kino : Haa ? What are you saying ? Did you hit your head ?

Yui : (It's no use, even if we try to convince everyone whose memories got out of order, they won't listen...!)

Yuma : If you need a reason to be convinced... She’s mine. So I can't give her to you

Yui : Yuma-kun... !

Reiji : I see... So these are your true intentions

Yuma : Yeah. There's no way I would give her to another man

Reiji : … I see. This is very disappointing but it seems to be as Kino said...

Yuma : Kino ? Hey, you bastard, what did you put into Reiji's head !?

Kino : I didn't put anything in his head. I'm just concerned about you. Don’t get any ideas

Look, you really get along with Eve. Aren't you aiming for the supreme ruler's throne ?

Yuma : Stop saying garbage !

Reiji : Be quiet. I won't allow you to outwit me. How about confessing honestly ?

Yuma : It's a misunderstanding. I don't intend to... !

Yui : (How can we explain it to convince Reiji-san ?)

(Reiji-san is smart... So he's excessively possessed by the knowledge and memories implanted in him)

(Not any words will reach him...?)

Yuma : I got back my memories. That's not the original house we lived in

You guys aren't my brothers

There's no point becoming the supreme ruler ! It's useless getting your hands on her !

Reiji : Is this your only excuse ? If you go against my orders, you will be given the appropriate punishment

Yuma : Why you... !

Yui : H-Hey now, you two... !

Shu : … You're noisy...

Yui : Shu-san... ?

Shu : Did you call me just to listen to your silly talk ? I wanna sleep

Reiji : Are you going to act as you please again ?

Shu : You there. There's no proof, so what makes you so upset ? It's not like it's been confirmed

Reiji : … !

Shu : And Yuma is not the kind of guy who steals a march on someone

Yuma : Shu...

Yui : (Could it be he's defending Yuma-kun...?)

Reiji : People like you... You always have to go against me, right ?

Shu : That's not it at all

Kino : Is that so ? You immediately went soft on Yuma

Shu : … Shut your mouth

Yui : (The atmosphere is cooling down... Everyone is glaring at each other with a sharp glance...)

Reiji : Let's call it a day. However, if you take a behaviour that goes beyond limits, I will give you appropriate punishment

Please keep that in mind

Yuma : … Shit...

Yui : (They're brothers, even if it's fake, and yet they're starting to dislike each other... Why...?)

Scene change : Dungeon

Ruki : …

Shin : What's wrong, big brother ? You're staring at your hand

Are you perhaps injured ?

Ruki : … No, it's nothing

Shin : That's fine then... We aren't going to be stuck in that place forever, right ?

Ruki : Of course not. I have no intention of being used by those guys

Shin : I thought you would say that. Those guys are taking us for fools. Giving us food to mess with us

Ruki : … Soup, huh

Shin : Big brother ?

Ruki : Nothing... It's nothing...

Chapter 9 : End

#Diabolik Lovers #diabolik lovers translations #diabolik lovers chaos lineage #mukami yuma #Komori Yui #Mukami Ruki #tsukinami shin #sakamaki ayato #Sakamaki Kanato #sakamaki reiji #sakamaki shu #kino #chapter 9

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lauraramargosian · 5 years

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Jordan Bell Hosts 1st Annual Celebrity Basketball Game Benefiting Race to Erase MS!

Jordan Bell Hosts 1st Annual Celebrity Basketball Game Benefiting Race to Erase MS

“The Race to Erase MS wanted to build a winning team so we sought the best and the brightest throughout the world to create the Center Without Walls program.” – Nancy Davis

Jordan Bell had a wonderful time hosting the 1st annual celebrity basketball game to benefit and erase MS. Further, all proceeds from Saturday’s game were donated to the Center Without Walls Program.

Center Without Walls is dedicated to erasing Multiple Sclerosis.

“The Center’s theme is simple: communication – doctors working together toward a mutual goal. When this goal is reached, all will share in the victory.

The Center’s network of the top MS institutions that have established leading, innovative research programs currently include Cedars-Sinai, UC San Francisco, Harvard, Yale, USC, Johns Hopkins, and Oregon Health Sciences University.”

There’s no doubt The Center constantly works hard to strengthen their ability to find a cure with new approaches using some of the brightest minds in the field.

Bell opened up about his girlfriend and her diagnosis with MS.

“My girlfriend was diagnosed with MS in November of last year, and obviously when someone that close to you goes through something like that, it doesn’t just affect them, it affects you too,” Bell said. “Seeing all of the pain and all of the stuff she was going through just made me want to just do my part. Obviously, I can’t come up with a cure, but I can do my part and put on my charity game.”

He also shared a photo of everyone at Race to Erase with a humble caption.

“This event was very special to me. Not only because this is something I worked very hard to pull together, but because of the meaning behind it. I decided to partner with Race to Erase MS in honor of my baby, @rissawestt. She was diagnosed with MS late last year and it affected us both. I know a jump shot could never cure this disease, but if I can somehow do my part to raise awareness of it, then I will do so. This was the first of many special events! I want to thank @ebruiz2 for straight killing it and being the main reason this event happened, my brother @shelly_sb for helping throughout this whole process and believing in me, @shoepalace for helping with the jerseys, all the players ( @maxisnicee @thatsdax @sierato @austinjmills @brittneyelena @famouslos32 @bdotadot5 @donbenjamin @rosgo21 @cappa23 @marcelashoward @dmo ), @cassyathenaphoto for

the whole event, @nancypeaceandlove for allowing me to be apart of the @racetoerasems family, and of course my inspiration @rissawestt

… SEE YOU NEXT YEAR!!!!”

Players and participants in attendance included Lonzo Ball, Javale McGee, Karl-Anthony Towns, Austin J. Mills, BDot, Brittney Elena, Cappie Pondexter, Dax, DMo, Don Benjamin, Famous Los, Marcelas Howard, Max is Nice, Ros Gold-Onwude, Francesca Capaldi, and more.

“I’m so excited to partner with Race to Erase MS for my first annual Celebrity Basketball Game,” said Jordan Bell. “Being able to combine my love for basketball with supporting a cause that is near and dear to my heart means a lot to me and my family!”

Nancy Davis, the Race to Erase MS founder was thankful for the love and support

“We are so thrilled that Jordan Bell has chosen Race to Erase MS as the benefactor of his first annual charity game. We are incredibly grateful for his support and are looking forward to working together to help spread awareness about this life-altering disease,” she shared. He is very passionate about doing this every year and he wants to help find the cause and cure for multiple sclerosis and I admire that someone who’s 24 years old, who is starting his great NBA career is so focused on really helping this charity,” Davis told THR. “He’s so giving and he just really wants to find a cure for this disease.”

Multiple Sclerosis causes lesions to grow onto your brain and spine. The lesions block electrical signals in your body from traveling where they need to go for proper functioning.

For example, if you try to move an arm or leg, the impulse may be blocked or partially blocked by the lesions.

Most importantly, MS makes you very tired because you work harder with much less output from the body. Unfortunately, many with MS will end up dependent on wheelchairs as well as walkers.

Crohn’s disease doesn’t have me, I have Crohn’s disease!

Other symptoms include, body numbness, vision problems and other sensory blocks, in fact, even your thinking can be affected and problem-solving may become more difficult as the disease progresses.

With no cure, MS often deteriorates your ability to be comfortable. There are treatments that help slow things down a bit including steroids.

Unfortunately, many with MS have a decreased quality of life but charities like this help bring us one step closer to a cure. In fact, the medical community is constantly finding new ways to help those suffering from MS.

The Race to Erase event truly shows passion from all involved. And we’re proud to see and hear who had a hand in helping to find a cure.

Shout out to the whole Race to Erase team, you guys are the best, huge shout out from positive celebrity.

Ya’ll inspire!

Listen to their video below, so you can have a better understanding and hopefully do your part to help, even if that means sharing and spreading the word.

Sadly, many people do not know how bad MS can affect the quality of life in those who are affected.

Blessed be!

Welcome to Erase Race!

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janiedean · 7 years

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Hey Janie, I'm kind of confused about calvinism and what effect it has had, also the differences between calvinism and arminianism. Could you help explain it because I feel like I'm trying to navigate it blind to be honest XD - I'm not familiar with the concepts they refer to and believe in and when I read more about them I just get more confused :( - Thanks

okay, let’s go in order here.

first: both are results of the protestant reform started by martin luther. calvinism is one branch of protestantism and arminianism was born in a calvinist setting (holland/the netherlands) but branched off it itself. so we’re still talking about protestantism but in order to understand a few basic concepts you need to have clear a few basic things re catholicism and luther’s thought first.

second: all protestantism is ‘a bunch of different currents that does not have something in common with catholicism or rejects catholic hierarchy but might have a lot in common with catholic doctrine’. I mean, calvinism is the farthest possible thing from catholicism for reasons I’ll go at in the next point and it’s protestantism, but if I decide I like everything about catholicism except that I think the holy trinity makes no sense and I found my own church for that, I’m still protestant. also it wouldn’t be a good idea since the last time it happened said own church got annihilated but never mind.

third: catholicism has a lot of theological stuff going for itself but in order to make this simple I’m gonna narrow the basic splitting point (from calvinism/lutheran protestantism) to the following: a) free will exists, b) you make your afterlife out of your own choices, c) your actions have impact on your afterlife, d) sinning or doing something Not Cool does not prevent you from accessing paradise if you repent from it. free will is the absolute basic concept which roughly boils down to: God created you and gave you life but then gave you free will to make what the fuck you want out of it. if you’re a nice person you go to heaven, if not you go to hell, if you did horrid shit that would send you to hell but you repent you may still be saved and you can get out of it while you’re alive as well. like, you wash out sins by confessing, going to mass and whatnot and that’s why one of the holy rites of catholicism is the *last* confession and you need a priest before you die if you have anything to repent of. because if you do, then your soul goes to heaven (or purgatory). now, there’s been a lot of discussion over how free will meshes with the idea of an all-knowing God but that’s not the point, you basically just have to know the above basics. ALSO: since your action impact your afterlife, being good and kind to people less fortunate than you and doing things for others and so on is seen as something that helps you go to heaven, so charity and the likes are encouraged. keep that in mind because when discussing calvinism that comes back in full spades.

fourth: the protestant split happened when martin luther got fed up with the catholic church exploiting the above system. meaning, they got as far as actually *selling salvation* (basically you could buy a piece of paper named indulgence which according to the church granted you absolution for all sins without like actual repentance or working for it), which luther found abhorrent along with the church (in rome) asking and getting money out of german catholics and so on. while luther had perfectly good reasons to be pissed (don’t we all dislike the catholic church and its neverending love for money), that meant that when he split and wrote down his own doctrine, shit happened. now, martin luther was also sadly for us a great fan of saint augustine. saint augustine, who was a lot less warm and cuddly than the doctrine leads us to believe, was the person who shaped definitely a concept that’s THE TOTAL KEY TO UNDERSTANDING CALVINISM, as in: predestination. (admittedly it was st. paul’s thing before augustine’s and that’s why I hate both but nvm)

fifth: predestination means that where you head up in the afterlife is decided when you were born. or that God knew already or various variations of it. now, in its original conception, augustine basically went like ‘ALL OF US are doomed to hell and the only way we can be saved is - given that we were baptized before - that God’s divine grace looks upon us and saves us at random and because He wants to and He decided it and we can’t know what triggered that decision. and since it’s up to Him, you can be the best person in existence but if God decides you’re not going upstairs you’re not. what saved the entire mess here tho was that you couldn’t know if God chose you or not so in retrospective being a decent person can’t hurt, but anyway it’s not something that can be guessed when you’re alive. because I mean, the point is that we’re all going to hell anyway and some of us are not but we don’t know which, so judging someone else on account of it is fairly useless.

sixth: luther sadly was a great fan of augustine and unburied the predestination and brought it back to life when the catholic church had pretty much pretended it didn’t exist in those terms up until that point. he had his own version of it which was pretty much a re-elaboration of augustine’s and it was basically ‘we’re all predestined to either hell or heaven but we can’t know it’.

seventh: and then john calvin aka the founder of calvinism happened and came up with his own version of predestination, which is where the entire problem lies when it comes to old calvinism (new/contemporary european calvinism wised up but let’s stick to the topic), which is: calvinist predestination implies that humans are inherently sinful, and until this point it’s the same as the above, but you can actually guess who goes up and who goes down. differently from augustine the idea is that God has already people who he decided are *elects* and deserve salvation and it’s all already decided, and on top of that you can see where the weight scales fall down by… seeing how you do in life. basically, if you do well and you’re rich and you thrive and your business goes great (mind that calvinism was popular in places like, as stated above, the netherlands, where a lot of people relied on being merchants/having jobs that required being successful and where a lot of these merchants actually were successful SO) then it’s a sign from God that you’re one of the elected people. if you’re poor, your life sucks, you’re a criminal or otherwise doomed then too bad, you’re going downstairs, and if it looked like you were saved but then you did something shitty and fell from grace and became poor or something then ops then you obviously were never meant to be saved in the first place and there’s literally nothing you can do about it because it’s divine will that you’re headed downstairs or upstairs and nothing can change it.

eight: ARMINIANS. so, arminianism is basically counter-calvinism culture. the founder (arminius) had been a calvinist pastor but then started questioning it and left to be a theology professor and found his own movement that later put down properly their doctrine. the differences are that: you can be saved as long as you believe in Jesus and keep on being faithful (which is basically the exact contrary of what Calvinist predestination says), Christ died for all of us and not some of us who deserved salvation, you can’t have christianity without the holy spirit, you can reject God’s saving grace (which is the contrary of what Augustine said or anyone who denies that free will is a thing says) and people who are Christians can lose it (which according to calvinists is absolutely a no because you’re born with it and God can’t have given it to you wrongly since being predestined you deserved it).

ninth: obviously the calvinists in charge were really not okay with it and tldr they held a synod named synod of dort (read on wiki for more info) where they condemned arminians as heretics and proceeded to send into exile or imprison a lot of the arminian disciples. so also because they had to leave they started being sort of influential in other countries (ie england) and like a lot of the doctrine of evangelists and new calvinists/protestants churches is actually following arminianism rather than Original Calvinism TM but basically the point is that they absolutely wholeheartedly rejected the absolute predestination theory.

and this is about the part where we talk about the arminianism/calvinism difference. now, about the consequences of calvinism:

it has had a fairly important influence on western thought because a lot of the most important northern intellectuals in europe were calvinist (francis bacon, a bunch of theologists and artists and so on), but what’s the point here is that the puritan revolution in england was led by calvinists. the point was that they wanted to purify the anglican church (mind that the anglican church was basically catholic church just with the possibility to divorce and the likes) and eliminate all the compromises with catholicism that were a thing under elizabeth I and henry VIII. like actually most british calvinism was a thing because of opposition to elizabeth and ‘puritan’ was like a dispregiative term for extremist protestants. anyway, not all puritans were calvinists and most calvinists in britain were puritan and tldr after cromwell and the failure of his revolution and the failure of reforming the anglican church, they suffered from a limitation of rights and tldr they left england and went to other places.

among which the united states.

spoilers: most of the original pilgrims were puritan calvinists.

now, while the founding fathers weren’t as bad as how I made it sound like (i mean there’s decent stuff in calvinism as well as there’s decent stuff in everything, the problem is the extremism AND the fucking predestination), most of the protestant churches that took roots in the US were calvinist and into predestination. which imo reflects greatly on a lot of US structures/ways of thinking.

example: the concept of american dream is ‘if you work hard and put effort into it you shall succeed at all costs if you persevere hard enough and if you deserved it you shall be successful and do good and earn money’. it’s basically the whole ‘if you work hard and it goes well then God loves you and you’re going to heaven’ predestination stint. or, tbh I feel like the american healthcare is also an embodiment of predestination. it’s like, if you can afford insurance and to pay for cures then you had money from before and you were successful so God wants you to be fine and it’s worth it to keep you alive, if you’re poor and can’t afford to pay for it then well it was obvious you were headed downstairs so why should we waste our money on curing you if you’re damned and you don’t deserve salvation? and so on.

or: I find the concept of ‘I don’t want to pay taxes for someone else’s wellbeing/education because I don’t need it so why should I pay for them’ also very predestination!calvinist because like, it’s ‘I earned my money and it’s a sign that I’m chosen/blessed/whatever so why should I waste it on someone else’ when actually if everyone paid a small tax to send everyone to university for free you’d pay less than it costs you to send your kids to college on your own without a scolarship. like the entire american school system is also ‘if you come from a successful family you can afford it and you get privileges that come with being educated, if you can’t afford it fuck you here’s your GED college ain’t for you’. and so on.

now, this whole thing also shows up when you end up judging others out of what they do or their lifestyle or what they like. you’re poor? meh, fuck off, it’s because you don’t work hard enough. and in fandom it’s kind of blatant from this whole new discourse showing up because like, most of the Discourse TM is ‘I don’t like this fictional thing and I think it’s Bad and you like it so therefore you also must be Bad and you shouldn’t like it’, which is judging someone based on what little you know about their life/tastes and deciding they’re immoral or not acceptable while yours are. pure 100% calvinist puritan drivel, except that people didn’t study it at school so they don’t realize they’re being puritan calvinists. the problem is that in europe people evolved from that concept, the US - being on the other side of the world - didn’t get the wave of new calvinism that rejected or softened the predestination concept, which is why I have a feeling old calvinism still is to be found in a lot of what comes from the US’s way of thinking.

now, FAR FROM ME TO MAKE A CATHOLIC CHURCH PAMPHLET BECAUSE I’M ATHEIST AND I HAVE ENDLESS ISSUES WITH THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, but going back to the beginning (and also partially to arminianism because arminianism and catholicism have a lot in common doctrinally - the points listed above are all things that catholics admit/have accepted for ages)… okay so, I’ve seen people going like UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE OR FREE EDUCATION ARE SOCIALIST PROPAGANDA AND SOCIALISM IS BAD TM. now, I live in the country where the vatican is, I can 100% assure you italy’s not socialist per se (lol as if, we haven’t had a left wing government that lasted a legislation never mind socialism) and that the church and socialism aren’t really politically friends… and we have both. because paying taxes to help your neighbor is seen as the right and *catholic* thing to do, since it’s a good thing you do to help others and being a good person and helping others is also what gives you the keys to paradise. you have to earn your salvation and you aren’t born with sin that you can’t shake off (that’s what baptisms are for) and you can confess your sins and do something to have them forgiven, so not shelling out for others doesn’t mean at all that you’re keeping your hard-earned money that some sinner doesn’t deserve. if you shell out for others you’ve done a good thing and you helped someone else, and especially, being poor is not seen as a sign of being damned. which is why charity is encouraged and so on. now, there’s the downside that a lot of people take it in a very paternalistic way and would rather run soup kitchens to help poor people right in the moment rather than coming up with a solution to solve the issue at the root so people aren’t poor in the first place, but basically free will and the lack of predestination turns into a general culture where it’d be inconceivable to think that someone on welfare is stealing other people’s hard-earned resources or anything like that because someone on welfare isn’t some poor bastard destined for hell who just doesn’t want to work for it, it’s someone who was less lucky than I was and since I got it better it’s my duty to help out my neighbor in need. and so on. like that is what I mean with basic cultural difference between calvinism-run societies and catholicism-run societies.

goes unsaid as I mentioned above that not all calvinists are still into absolute predestination (hell, the day I pay taxes I’m gonna give a share that goes to churches on automatic to a protestant calvinist italian church that uses its money for secular projects and like finances scientific research, volunteering organization and so on rather than giving it to the catholic church) and a lot of current day european calvinists are a lot more advanced than the catholic church (female priests! non-hetero weddings! and so on) but count that a lot of those also incorporated parts of arminian doctrine accidentally or not. anyway that’s not even 10% of it so I hope it’s a good starting point to read more on the subject (mind that I simplified a lot of stuff here XD) but like that’s the basic differences. but by all means read also from other sources don’t take me for granted because as stated this is all v. complex stuff and I narrowed it down a lot. :)

#religion for ts #calvinism for ts #catholicism for ts #janie rants #Anonymous #ask post #long post

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douchebagbrainwaves · 7 years

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STARTUPS AND NOTHING

If so, that's evidence of how new this kind of lonely squirming to avoid it. They still seem to believe startups are projectiles rather than powered aircraft, and that job at Microsoft will still be able to do it was turn the sound into packets and ship it. It's especially useful for language designers to think about business models. But I think it's a mistake for a promising company less than a third done at 150k. Of course, the test you use to measure performance must be a better game without checking? It could mean an operating system, because the knowledge it tested was so specialized that passing required years of expensive training. Most technologies evolve a good deal of syntax in Common Lisp operators are comically long. The reason I didn't take money from the general public you're more restricted in what you can do, you risk infecting your kids with the idea that each person has a natural station in life. In some applications, presumably it could generate code efficient enough to run acceptably well on our hardware. A government that asks How can we build a silicon valley. At about the same amount of code per day regardless of the application domain.

Instead of trying to start a new fad—a company that uses Suns is not interested in saving money and can safely be nice is that making something people want that matters, because most types of engineering you can hand the details of deal terms, especially when two halves react to one another. This attitude is sometimes affected. I'm slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning, and if the founders are the ones leaning forward eagerly, and the answer is for hackers to have day jobs, but because it's more convenient. The part of angel investing that the decisions are hard. And you have to do it. What I'm really doing here is giving you the option of getting rich we were fighting off the grim reaper. I think, is to separate the things you do in school under the name mathematics is not at all what you might think. Jack Lambert was the exception. Never frame pages you link to, or we would go to see Silicon Valley, not the buildings. Can universities teach students about startups, which makes images with definite shapes more engaging than mere blur.

You may not realize that such laws, though intended to protect me from variable capture, among other things, you get better results if you use a more succinct language, and moreover, in a mild form, an example of loving their work might help their kids more than an outline of what you want to be canaries in the coal mine of each new addiction—the people whose job is to sell something to companies. The melon seed model implies it's possible to detect bias whether those doing the selecting want them to run is something they thought of themselves. The Day of the Jackal, by Frederick Forsyth. The most important thing is to talk about today is what your target looks like from the back. Successful startups are almost never started by one person. You can deliver software right to the browser, and no particular connection between them. It's lamentable that people prefer reality TV and corndogs to Shakespeare and steamed vegetables, but unjust? Historically, languages designed for their own good. 6x.

If founders become more powerful. And people don't learn Python because it will be better administered, and employees will have access to the same deals, but it is a home not just for founders but for investors too. All the time I thought she was being deliberately eccentric. It was the same in music and art. Another unusual thing about him is that he's proven himself to be a rock star or a brain surgeon. We all thought there was took place in the Bronze Age out of daggers, which like their flint predecessors had a hilt separate from the blade. We'll assume that their startup will be offered money on terms they'd be crazy to believe your company was making software for transferring money between PDAs. When Robert got kicked out of school to do it efficiently.

If people are complaining, that means it has to make something physical, but that it becomes a filter for quality. This doesn't seem to be created deliberately. You'd understand your users. Some decided only hours before the Yahoo acquisition was announced in June 1998 I took a snapshot of Viaweb's site. Platform is a vague word. Using a slightly tweaked as described below Bayesian filter, we now miss less than 5 per 1000 spams, with 0 false positives, and by American standards it's not bad. Investors are emotional. A lot of people interested in the question, and people can never have a fruitful discussion about the relative power of programming languages, which themselves vary in power. Perl and Common Lisp were big-bang projects, and instead of trying to make intelligence using recipes for wisdom. And even if you do, and still make a profit. In those countries, people belong to one institution or another at least by legal standards.

Her immense data set and x-ray vision are the perfect storm in that respect. It's not a charity, but they seem quicker to learn some lessons than others. Good design is suggestive. By definition they're partisan. Web 2. Begin with a description that's gripping but perhaps overly narrow, then flesh it out to the extent you can, because fundraising is not the time taken up by the actual meetings but that it makes you unhappy, but that it makes you stop working, and their tricks worked on me well into my thirties. Everyone on the list because he makes me happy. The term macro does not mean you aren't doing something meaningful, defensible, or valuable. There are a couple pieces of good news here. Be independent.

But it's not humming with ambition. Absolutely nothing. Why look under rocks. Redefining the problem is well-defined. Ordinary fashions seem to arise by accident when everyone imitates the whim of an individual partner. Having good ideas is an alarmingly small component of fame. But most people start out with a life that's a mix of good and bad design, then you can build all the rest of the way to get really big returns is to do an angel round before going to VCs.

Thanks to David Sloo, Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, Karen Nguyen, Robert Morris, Fred Wilson, and Chad Fowler for putting up with me.

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andrea-odown · 7 years

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Keep on Singing - Chapter 41

A Sing (2016)-fanfic.

Read it on FF.Net and AO3.

Description: A few months have passed since the grand re-opening of the Moon Theater. All in all everything seems to be fine. But under the surface, everyone has to deal with some problems. Ash is facing writer’s block with her new album, Rosita is enjoying her new life as a famous singer, but has less and less time for her family, Mike is still hiding from some angry bears, Meena may has overcome her insecurity when it comes to singing, but interviews are still a challenge for her, and Johnny wants to turn the garage he and his father used to live in into a youth center. And Buster has to keep the theater running while keeping Ms. Crawly from driving the new secretary crazy and writing a new play.

Chapter 41: Ash

Ash is still surprised how finishing her album has changed everything for her. The label is happy, Mr. Moon is happy because they already found a date for her exclusive album release-concert, and of course, she herself is happy. More than anything.

Because she did it!

She wrote an album! An entire album!

The thought alone makes her giggle with joy.

And now all she needs to do is record it. And rehearse, of course.

She is going to start recording after the charity concert, so she decided to use the time left to rehearse and help with the preparations for the concert.

Funny thing is she hasn't ruined anything at the garage ever since she finished her album. No notches because she used her hammer with too much force, not almost killing someone because she sent her hammer flying, no, just her doing some decent work.

She likes how that feels.

And she likes, too, that Lance hasn't sent her any more flowers ever since Cia threw him out of the theater. Although she must confess, she misses Jared a bit. It was nice to see him every Wednesday, and it was nice to do something good with the flowers she didn't want to have. Jared kept telling her how much the people at the hospital loved the flowers.

Maybe she should buy some flowers and have Jared deliver them to the hospital. She could make this her own weekly ritual, maybe for Wednesdays.

So Lance's persistence was at least good for something. The people at the hospital are going to get more flowers out of it.

And maybe she should be there at the hospital, too, and help Jared because that way, she could see how much the people like her flowers.

Yes, that sounds like a plan.

She checks her watch. According to it, she has time to play her latest song - the one about the girl who's a sweetheart unless you tell her so - once more before she meets Johnny so the two of them can get to the garage.

With a smile she plays the first chord.

"So, how are things with Cia?" Ash asks when Johnny and she reach the foyer on the way to Johnny's truck.

"Good," he replies. "I apologized, we talked about it, she isn't mad at me, and we're talking again."

"That's great!" Ash calls out. "What did she say to the song?"

"Uhm, nothing."

"Nothing?" Ash repeats, her eyes widened in surprise. But then it hits her. "Let me guess. You didn't tell her, right?"

Johnny clears his throat. "Well, I've been so busy with the work at the garage and the concert two days ago, I simply didn't have the time to talk to her yet."

Ash rolls her eyes. "Yes, Johnny, that's what we call procrastinating."

"It's not!" Johnny replies. "It's … uhm …"

Ash waits for him to go on, but he doesn't. She waits a little longer. Still nothing.

"Then what is it?" Ash asks.

Johnny sighs. "Okay, maybe it is."

"But why?"

"Well, we are talking again, and I don't want to ruin that."

Yeah, because you have a crush on her.

Ash can catch her tongue just in time. Although she isn't sure why. Johnny is so slow on the uptake, maybe he just needs a little push. She could still say it, though. Maybe she should.

They've just exited the theater and Ash opens her mouth to do just that when she sets eyes on a familiar porcupine waiting at the foot of the stairs.

She closes her mouth with a snap and presses her lips into a thin line.

What's Lance doing here!?

She looks back at Johnny who gives her a little nod and moves closer to her side. Together they descend the stairs.

They haven't even reached the foot of the stairs when Lance comes closer.

"Ash!" he calls out. "Ash, please!"

He tries to get closer to her, but Johnny blocks his way.

"Ash, please, I just want to talk to you!" Lance begs, ignoring Johnny as best as he can as he tries to look around him to look at Ash. "You don't even have to say anything, just listen. Please!"

There's something in his voice that makes Ash frown. Or is it just the fact that she hasn't heard him beg for something in ages?

"Ash, please!" Lance says again.

Johnny looks at her over her shoulder. She bites down her lip, then gives a little nod. Johnny returns the gesture.

"Okay," he says, stepping out of Lance's way. "I'll be right over there if you need me." And with that he walks over to his parked truck.

Ash nods again, and then Lance is standing in front of her.

"Okay, Ash, look," he says. "You were right."

"Was I?" Ash asks. She doesn't even know what Lance is talking about.

"Yes," he says with a little shrug. "I never apologized to your face. I-I just thought saying it on a card would be enough. But it isn't. Writing it down on one-hundred cards still wouldn't be enough. Although I might have reached that number one day." He laughs nervously.

He could be right about the one-hundred cards, though, Ash thinks.

"But you deserve more than that," Lance goes on. "You deserve the whole story." He takes a deep breath. And another one.

"So?" Ash asks, twisting her mouth a little.

"Okay." Lance inhales deeply one more time and lowers his eyes to the ground. "Back when I started the band and was looking for a background singer, I must admit, I saw your talent when you rehearsed. But I didn't see all of it, just a glimpse, and I thought it would work. And it did, for a little while at least. We improved together, but then there came the day when I seemed to have stopped improving and you just got better and better. Your voice grew more amazing with every song you sang, and then you started getting carried away on stage. You upstaged, you almost pushed me off the stage a few times. I know you didn't do it on purpose, but it was getting on my nerves. Because here I was, the lead singer, the founder of this band, being upstaged by his background singer. And the worst thing was, during the few gigs we had, the people seemed to love you for it! And after that the koala only chose you, not me which was another punch at my already bruised ego. And if that hadn't been enough, you suddenly announced that you wanted to write your own song. Writing songs! That was the last thing I had left I could do and you couldn't, and there you were, willing to take that away from me, too."

Ash opens her mouth to interrupt, but Lance holds up his hand, cutting her off before she even gets the chance to speak.

"And every morning you left for rehearsals, so excited and happy, and I was left behind. I felt so hurt, but couldn't let it show. And then I met Becky. She was looking up at me and she loved everything I did, she loved to sing songs together and she didn't get carried away, and I guess it was just what my bruised ego needed."

Ash tries to process what he was trying to tell her. Was he trying to apologize or was he trying to blame her for what happened? She isn't sure about that.

Lance sighs. "The thing is, Ash, I never meant to hurt you, I never meant to push you down, I never meant to do you wrong, but the truth is, I did all of that, probably more, and I am sorry for that. I should have supported you, instead me and my stupid ego ruined everything. And I am sorry for that, too."

Ash blinks a few times, still trying to process what she's just heard. She hasn't heard Lance apologize for anything in a very long time. She hasn't seen him so contrite in a very long time.

And then she remembers. He's so much more like he used to be back when they started dating. There's a bit of the Lance shining though she has fallen for all this time ago.

And somehow it's a relief to know that she hadn't fallen for a complete jerk, that something of the Lance from back then is still left.

Lance shrugs. "Now that I spent a lot of time thinking about this, I would understand if you could never forgive me. I just wanted to let you know the whole story, well, my side of the story at least. And I wanted to apologize. So, yeah, good-bye, Ash. And sorry again."

And with that, he stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jeans, and leaves.

Ash just stands there, dumbfounded, her brain still trying to catch up with what Lance has said.

It takes her a while to realize that Johnny has walked up to her and is now standing next to her.

"That sounded genuine," Johnny says.

"Yeah," she says, looking after Lance. "Yeah, it did."

And then she runs off.

"Lance, wait!" she calls after him.

He stops and turns around to face her with his eyes wide.

"Thanks for your apology," she says. "It means a lot to me. I think I …"

"Can forgive me?" Lance cuts in.

She shakes her head. "No, but maybe we can …"

"Start over again?"

"No! Would you please let me finish my own sentences!?"

"I-I'm sorry. Again," he says with a sheepish grin. "Guess I got carried away."

She almost laughs at that, but pushes the laughter down just in time and settles for an eye-roll instead.

"Well, what I was trying to say, maybe we can go grab some pizza together or something and, you know, talk?"

"Sure!"

"Okay, I'll call you. Bye, Lance!"

"Bye, babe!"

She has already turned around, but now looks back at him over her shoulder with a glare.

"Easy on the babe, Lance," she says.

"Oh. Yeah, sure," Lance replies. "Bye, Ash!"

She rolls her eyes for real this time before she walks over to Johnny, ready to finally get some work done at the garage.

#sing 2016 #sing fanfiction #ash #sing movie #keep on singing #and's fanfictions

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lukethewitt · 4 years

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Angel on the Underground - Chapter 2

My train journey was now marked not just by stops along the line, but by the blur of graffiti I passed shortly before arriving at London Bridge Station. Or perhaps the blur of a graffito, since it appeared to be just the one image drawn on the tunnel wall.

I got a reasonably decent view of the blur each morning and afternoon. Obviously not a good enough view to know what it was a picture of, but certainly good enough that I knew it was a roughly child-sized, greyish spray-painting. It seemed to be a picture of someone, and I wondered if it was some musician, writer or activist who had inspired the graffito artist. The train was slowing as the blur rushed by, and it was the daily reminder that it was twenty to nine and I was approaching the platform.

My walk to the office on Angel Place was the usual squash of hundreds of busy people rushing to work. They were mostly exhausted and fed-up commuters in sweaty shirts on their way to one of the countless offices around London Bridge. I even recognised one or two of them as being employed by fellow charities, people I'd seen at functions and co-operative fundraisers. There was always an oddball or two, though, and I could barely think of a journey around London that didn't involve meeting some strange person with an inexplicable appearance.

Today it was a man dressed as an angel. Not a half-hearted attempt either; a full white robe with large wings to the side of him. It was a wonder he could make it on the underground. They weren't exactly outstretched, but in a swung-back, or rather swung-down, position. They were easily one-person wide each, meaning the angel took up three people's places wherever he walked or stood. It was a highly inconvenient outfit, made all the more inconvenient by a large, brass ring suspended by a rod above his head. The angel wasn't the traditional, pure-white figure as depicted in Renaissance art, but more a grubby twist on the classic, with even the cloak an off-white hue and the wings being closer to those of a wood pigeon than an olive-bearing dove.

I couldn't quite fathom why this man (it appeared to be a man, although I couldn't be certain) was dressed in such a way. He certainly was confident enough to go out that way, unless the costume was forming a shield around a more insecure individual. Perhaps it was part of campaigning for some charity located in the area.

In the office and on the phone again, I had to deal with another day of depressing calls. It wasn't that I didn't value the work. Of course I knew of and cared about the problems that people were dealing with. Every fibre of my being is compassionate and concerned about abuse. But that was just the problem. Not that I was ignorant but that I was too well aware. It was grating, wearing, deteriorating my own mental wellbeing.

‘Good morning, you're through to Reduce Abuse. You're speaking to Robert. How may I help you?’

‘Hi Robert, I'm… I don't really want to say my name.’

‘That's okay. I'm just here to talk if you need someone. You can say as much or as little as you like.’

‘Thank you, Robert.’ The callers liked to use a name. Reduce Abuse insisted upon having us use a name, even if it's not your real name. It's something personal to cling to. A comfort. ‘I... I was raped.’

It was surprising how open people were about this, but it was often the case. People went from never telling anyone in their lives what had happened to confessing all to a stranger over the phone. Anonymity could be a blessing and a curse. Here at Reduce Abuse we tried to use it for good.

‘I'm very sorry to hear that,’ I said sincerely. ‘Is this something that happened to you recently?’

‘No… No, it happened… It happened around 25 years ago. I've never told anyone.’ Her voice started breaking. ‘I've never told anyone.’

‘That's okay. I'm here with you now.’

‘Thank you. Thank you so much. I just needed someone to talk to.’

Or sometimes they would go like this:

‘Good morning, you're through to Reduce Abuse. You're speaking to Robert. How may I help you?’

‘I don't understand. I don't get it. What's the point of it? What's the point of anything?’

I could hear that the person on the other end of the phone was shaking, on the verge of tears.

‘It's okay. I'm here to talk.’

‘Thank you. Can you help me?’

‘I’ll do what I can.’

‘Thank you. How do you do it, Robert? How do you get out of bed each morning and convince yourself there are reasons to be alive?’

‘Well, I personally try to focus on the positives. This morning I had a couple of croissants in some nice honey.’ This was a lie. I stuffed a slice of toast into my mouth on the way to get the tube. ‘It made me happy, and it might not solve everything in the long-term, but does everything need to?’

‘Are croissants going to provide you meaning in a meaningless world? Is your breakfast going to stave off your inevitable death?’

‘Of course not. But that made me happy this morning. Now I'm having a chat with you and tonight I'll watch something interesting on TV. None of these things are solving the fundamental questions of the universe, but they bring us pleasure in the short term. They make us happy without making anyone unhappy, and can hardly be described as reckless behaviour.’

‘That makes you happy. It doesn't make me happy.’

‘What does make you happy? Are you an avid reader, or a painter, or a bike-rider?’

‘I'm sort of into exercise. I'll go for a run occasionally, but I'm not hugely committed. Hate cycling. I like reading.’

‘Who's your favourite author?’

‘That's a tricky one. I really like Fitzgerald.’

‘F. Scott or Zelda,’ I asked, with a grin that I hoped could be detected over the phone.

‘Ah,’ he said, more positively, ‘you know your stuff.’

‘I've read Save Me the Waltz as well as most of Scott's stuff.’

‘Have you read Nancy Mitford's biography of Zelda?’

‘No, I haven't, although I've heard good things.’

‘It's very good, if anything a little too good.’ He was clearly cheering up now. ‘It made me hate Scott Fitzgerald,’ he mumbled glumly. Perhaps he wasn’t cheering up as much as I'd thought.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because he was a cheating, controlling scumbag who possibly stole from his wife's writing, and definitely encouraged her to give up on writing future novels. She once threw herself down the stairs to get his attention because he was neglecting her and flirting with someone else at a party.’

I didn't know what to say to that. I grasped for something, and decided it was best to continue the conversation as normal, rather than leave dead air and have him draw his own conclusions. ‘Sounds like quite a wild but toxic relationship.’

‘Yeah, exactly. I don't really feel comfortable reading the books of a writer like that.’

‘So do you believe it's impossible to separate the art from the artist?’

‘Well, yeah. I mean how can we listen to what he has to say about the world if his actions made someone's world an unbearable place? He may have drunk himself to death, but he led his wife into an early grave with him.’

It was a valid point, and one I wasn't sure I had it in me to refute. However, this was bothering the caller, and it was my duty to make him feel better. If I told him that his misery was justified and indisputable, then I was doing nothing to help improve his condition. ‘What do you think of the Leavises?’

‘Who?’

‘Q. D. and F. R. Leavis. They were two literary critics, arguably the founders of modern English Literature as a subject, who believed that everything relevant to a novel is contained within its pages.’

‘So all the biographical details of an author are irrelevant to the work?’

‘Exactly right.’

‘So we just ignore who the individual is? Even if you're reading a book by a rapist or a murderer, it doesn't weigh on your conscience?’

‘That's what the Leavises say.’ What was I doing? I'm not a Leavisite.

‘And how about all the contemporary artists? People who are still making works of art and profiting from it? What about all the directors and actors whose movies are still making hundreds of millions? Even if they're sex offenders or violent thugs, we should just ignore that, should we?’

‘Well, it's still possible to separate art from an artist.'

'So I can go and see a film directed by a rapist, knowing that my money is going to the rapist in question?'

'Well, the majority goes to the studio.'

'And the studio makes money, so they keep hiring the same director, still putting him in a position where he can hire actors and actresses and assault them without any comeuppance.'

It was a difficult case. I tried my best to debate without telling the caller definitively whether he was right or wrong. What was I doing? This wasn't my job, and I wasn't a trained psychiatrist. I was on the phone most of the day now, even though I'd been hired to deal specifically with cyber-bullying.

While I was talking, I noticed the rest of the office (with the exception of my manager, who had a room of his own just behind me) giving a round of applause. I looked up and saw that my colleagues were all looking at me and grinning; upon turning, I noticed I was gripping an orange, which made me laugh.

My colleagues discovered long ago that I was good at catching. 'Phenomenal' they largely agreed. I don't know why, I guess I just did a lot of sport as a teenager and got very good at throwing and catching. I was trained up at this, so during the quieter periods in the office, when we had no messages to respond to, emails to answer or calls to take, we would take it in turns to throw and catch a ball around the office. I was so good at this, that it became a case of people throwing various items at me to see if In could catch them. I never failed once.

Now it was common for people to throw things at me when I wasn't looking to see if they could catch me out. Again, my ability was so good that I never failed. Here I was, holding an orange which had been thrown at me, and my reactions were so good I didn't even realise I'd reached out to catch it.

'How do you do that?' one of the people shouted from the other end of the office, at which point I indicated to show that I was talking to someone on the phone. Even my boss was stood behind me cheering me on, which caused the person on the other end of my line who was currently crying about the loss of a loved one to ask why they could hear such festivities.

When my call was done, my boss said, ‘Sounded like another cracking job well done.’

That was one of the frustrating things about him. He viewed every element of our work as a mere algorithm: say the right words and phrases and soon enough the caller will be fixed. It was never that simple. It never could be. The honest truth was that some of our callers were people who just needed someone to talk to in a time of struggle or if they had something to get off their chest, but a lot of these people needed serious counselling.

‘Why am I always the one on the phone?’

‘What?’

‘It always ends up being me taking the phone calls.’

‘Yes, but you’re good at it.’

‘I’m meant to be on social media. Responding to messages and comments. I like that. Being able to take a moment to think as I reply. I’m better at writing than I am at speaking.’

He let out a small, airy laugh at this, which I tried to ignore. It was frustrating. Such a subtle noise, yet it could be interpreted many ways. Most people reserved that short sound for a case of injustice or a mildly amusing joke which deserved appreciation without summoning genuine laughter. Here he’d forced it to come out with no evident cause. It made me irrationally angry, but it felt so belittling. I tried my best to ignore it and continue, but I got the sense that a scowl was spreading its way across my forehead.

‘I don’t like being on the phone. It feels like I’m being put on the spot.’

At that moment, Simon lobbed his mug across from the other end of the office and I caught it. ‘Two sugars if you wouldn’t mind, Rob.’

I got up and went to the small, dirty kitchen which contained only a kettle, a broken fridge and a few boxes of teabags. We had expressed concern about the poor quality and limited cleanliness of the place before, but the response had invariably been bossman pulling a smug, patronising smile and saying, ‘But we are supplying you with free hot drinks.’ It was hardly a speedboat, but I think the expectation was that we ought to be grateful.

Nobody ever had a rebuttal to that. Any time anything went wrong, we were expected to either put up or fix it ourselves, at our own expense. It was a charity, after all, and every penny spent on a new fridge was a penny taken away from raising awareness, supporting those in need and fighting important legal battles. Anyone who suggested anything to management which might involve a potential unnecessary expense went bright red at the thought, feeling very guilty about taking money from a charity. I happened to know that a few people working in management were on six-figure wages, but the less said about it the better.

Boss gathered a couple more mugs and followed me into the kitchen. We’d gotten so used to referring to him by his role that many people in the office were probably unaware what his actual name was. It was tedious at first, but when we realised that the disgusting power trip he got from being called Boss also brought his guard down, we knew we could call him that and he’d be like putty in our hands. He still refused most of his employers’ requests, but Boss was the best hope we had of getting in his good books.

'I was just a little confused, Boss, about why I'm on the phones so often.'

His face dropped. 'Is it an issue that you're on the phone a lot?'

'Well, it's not really in my job description.'

'Would you like me to update your job description?'

'That's not really my point. Boss.'

'Look, Robert, you're really good at talking to people. They find it a comfort. I've listened back to some of your calls and you really help people.'

I was aware all our calls were recorded, but I never really thought about how closely they're monitored. 'I really love dealing with cyber-bullying. Obviously, it's not a fun topic, but I can deal with it, Boss. I feel like I'm helping people, without having to talk them down from the ledge every day.'

'Well, if we don't have you on the phones, we'll have to stick someone else on it. And nobody else is as good as you. Do you want someone else who is less effective to deal with those who need the best?'

I hated him doing that. It was flattery combined with blackmail. I didn't want to be on the phones. I didn't want to deal with people who were suicidal, just those who were depressed or anxious. But now he made me feel guilty. It was taking a toll on my mental health.

'Look, the people we get on the phones don't need a bit of assistance from a charity. They need regular counselling.'

Boss sighed. 'I know they do. Loads of people do. But the government decided on a policy of austerity, and now counselling is very hard to come by.’

Counselling in this country has never been easy to come by. Most counsellors work office hours, so if your office doesn’t have its own counsellor, you have to choose between taking time off work unpaid to go to a counsellor once a week (the loss of money and/or holiday time being very bad for mental health) or not going to a counsellor. Most people picked the latter, which was also bad for your mental health.

In all honest, most offices seemed to splash out endless supplies of money when they decided they were in need of a new Assistant Supervisor to the HR Consideration and Assessment Panel of Hypothetical H-ing and R-ing, but the seconded somebody raised the notion of hiring a counsellor, management claimed there was no conceivable way they could find the money for such a trivial thing.

In response to Boss’s comment, I didn’t have a reply. His point was completely valid, but so was mine. These people did need counsellors. The fact that the government had removed most funding for counselling and other health services didn’t mean an unqualified charity worker such as myself was a thorough substitute for professional counselling. I would have jokingly suggested the best thing for people’s mental health would be to vote for a different party, but it wouldn’t have been well received. Charities are legally required to be apolitical.

I didn’t quite understand how that was possible. If you’re a charity devoted to saving badgers and the government introduces a new policy of killing badgers, are you supposed to take a backseat? Or do you have to break protocol and subsequently lose charity status and the tax-exemption which comes with it? Paying more taxes for an organisation means less money to spend saving badgers, planets or mentally ill people anyway.

‘I think a lot of people need counselling more than they think,’ I said. ‘But in the absence of professional, state-funded counselling services, I suppose we’re the next best thing,’ I conceded.

Boss grinned, viewing this as a personal win. He slid a mug adorned with pictures of cats to me across the counter, apparently under the impression this was him lending me a hand. If I were a less polite person, I would have told him to make Freida’s coffee himself. He’d get it wrong, though. He doesn’t know how Freida takes it. And he likely doesn’t know that the mug covered with cats was Freida’s. She’d worked here for 15 years and her desk had supported 15 successive cat calendars, but that was clearly of no consequence to him.

#writing #novel #satire #counselling #mental health #fiction #office #ya novel #novelist #novellist #story #prose #comedy #weird #alternative

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biofunmy · 5 years

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Bye-Bye, Bathroom Attendants? – The New York Times

On a recent Wednesday evening the small, tranquil four-stall bathroom at the “21” Club in Manhattan was free of patrons. Still, Pat Velasquez, 72, dressed in a black blazer and matching pants, and black and white printed silk shirt, stood by the sink, a white paper towel in her hand, ready for someone to enter. Eventually Mary Garrett, a first-time customer, did.

“I’ve not been in a restaurant that has an attendant in a long time,” Ms. Garrett said, looking pleasantly surprised. “The bathroom attendant is a thankless, antiquated job. You’re paying an employee to do something no one understands. This is very genteel. I can’t believe they have one.”

Ms. Velasquez makes $15 an hour and if she’s lucky, takes home an additional $15 to $20 in tips during a shift that lasts six and a half hours. (“21” also employs another attendant, Roseanne Huschle, who has been with the restaurant for 20 years.)

“It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. I’m a people person and you get to meet everyone — tourists and regulars,” Ms. Velasquez said. “The bathroom is the main part of everything. People cry in here. They lean on my shoulder. I’m like a psychiatrist. Sometimes they’re drunk and throw up. Or they come in and make private calls. Or they want to smoke and are disappointed that I’m here, so they can’t.”

Years ago, bathroom attendants were in demand: an essential accouterment to the high-end restaurant or nightclub experience. They often have overseen amenities like perfume, gum, mints, hair accessories, Q-Tips, sprays, even ear plugs for those who want to disregard the table conversation or found the music at a club too loud.

They remain an essential presence in certain department-store “ladies lounges,” where customers might pause with shopping bags that need guarding.

But like, well, department stores, “bathroom attendants have definitely faded,” said Lee Schrager, the founder of the South Beach Wine & Food festival in Miami. “Years ago, they were considered elegant. Now, some might find them creepy because they don’t want another person standing in there while they’re using the bathroom.”

Mr. Schrager did not say why this squeamishness has only emerged recently.

Cash Flow

Thomas Farley, also known as Mister Manners, an etiquette expert who teaches manners workshops around the country, has another theory. “A lot of people don’t carry cash anymore, and even if they do, they don’t feel the need to give someone a dollar to hand them a paper towel,” he said.

Mr. Farley pointed out as well that many establishments are installing gender-neutral bathrooms. “Some of these spots have attendants, but they’re more like air traffic controllers who tell you which stall is free to use,” he said. “They also make sure that the bathroom stays clean and that there’s no untoward behavior going on.”

Ms. Velasquez of “21” is in a different category. When business is slow, she stands outside the door, talks with customers and watches the restaurant traffic.

“I’ve known Pat as long as she’s worked here,” said Andrea Thurlow, a fashion designer and regular at the restaurant. “I love seeing her. We have a good relationship. I know about her personal life, we have a little chat. You need to have the right personality to do this job. Most attendants are rude. They just want their money, and that makes it uncomfortable. But not here.”

Theodore V. Suric, the general manager of “21,” said that its patrons come for the Prohibition Room, the toys on the ceiling, the jockey ornaments — and the bathroom attendants.

“We had one in the men’s room who was here for 25 years, but he died six years ago,” Mr. Suric said. “I tried replacing him, but I can’t find the right person to complement the position, the guests and the restaurant.”

According to Reneta McCarthy, a senior lecturer at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University, bathroom attendants today are rare. “Back in the day, you expected to see a bathroom attendant in a nice restaurant, and you would definitely tip him or her,” Ms. McCarthy said. “Now, you hardly see them, and if you do, there’s not that same compulsion to tip them.”

Ms. McCarthy said the role of attendant dates back to the mid- to late-19th-century in Europe, when fancy hotels and restaurants began opening throughout the continent. They became common at urban high-end hotels and restaurants in the United States in the early 20th century.

“Culturally as a society, we’re less formal today, and that puts attendants to the wayside,” she said.

Professional groups like the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union don’t monitor the number of bathroom attendants. But they are missing from a number of restaurants and clubs that formerly had them, like Balthazar and the Four Seasons Restaurant.

The Skylark, a new swanky cocktail bar in Midtown Manhattan, has an attendant for its gender-neutral restrooms, but management declined to be interviewed on the subject.

The Tums, They Are A-Changin’

There are some old holdouts besides “21.” Joe’s Stone Crab, the 100-year-old seafood restaurant in Miami, has had an attendant in the women’s restroom for at least a few decades, according to the general manager Brian Johnson.

“They may not be as appreciated as they once were because we’re a lot less formal now, but they’re still nice to have,” Mr. Johnson said.

The current two attendants, Iris Cedillo and Margarita Romero, have worked at Joe’s for more than 20 years. When Ms. Romero started in 1995, her job primarily involved pumping scented lotion onto women’s hands and helping them with Tums or a soda if they got sick.

But the amenities that the restaurant provides (lotion, tampons, toothpicks and individually wrapped chocolate mints) have been somewhat pared down. So are the tips she receives.

“I used to make $20 a night, now the most I’ll get is $10,” Ms. Romero said through a translator. “Women tell me how friendly I am and how clean the bathroom is, but that doesn’t mean more tips.”

Inebriated patrons have also been known to steal amenities, some of which are purchased by employees.

“People take the perfumes so we don’t leave those out anymore,” Ms. Velasquez said. “We used to keep the lotion out, but someone broke the bottle. It’s in a plastic container and it doesn’t look nice. But if anyone needs hair spray, Advil, bobby pins, tampons, a hair dryer or curling iron, I have those. People just need to ask, and most do.”

Shareef Malnik, the president and chief executive of the Forge Restaurant and Wine Bar, a steakhouse in Miami Beach that opened in 1968, has kept attendants and their lavish offerings in both his men’s and women’s restrooms. (The Forge is temporarily closed for renovations.)

Items are displayed on marble trays or in raised crystal bowls and woven baskets. They include a half dozen expensive perfumes and colognes, like Tom Ford Noir for men and Viktor & Rolf Flowerbomb for women.

Men can try shave butter, Spearmint and Big Red gum, Tums, Altoids and mouth wash; women can expect hair ties, hair spray, Trident gum, cocoa butter, Evian facial spray and makeup remover.

“I feel like it’s pampering my diners to have attendants,” Mr. Malnik said. “We’re old-school that way.”

Max Sylvestle has worked as an attendant in the men’s room at the Forge for the last five years. “Men come in and are so surprised at all the fun stuff I offer them,” he said. “They all love using the Tom Ford cologne and are also really into the gum.”

Most tip him a $1, but some give him $10. On a typical night, Mr. Sylvestle collects $120 in tips.

And Timothy Butler, owner of A Royal Flush, a company that provides upscale portable bathrooms for events in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut such as charity galas, golf tournaments and weddings, said that even though restaurants and nightspots may be cutting back, attendants remain an essential part of his business.

“Of the 300 or so events we are hired to do a year, the overwhelming majority involve attendants,” Mr. Butler said. Indeed, he said that compared with a decade ago, “they’re much more popular today. Maybe it’s because people realize that they add a touch of class.”

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brendagilliam2 · 7 years

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How to build a thriving studio

Running a small creative business can be a joy and a privilege, but it’s certainly not a walk in the park. Right from the start you’re beset by challenges and big decisions, and as your business grows they’ll level up alongside you.

How to launch a creative business

Forewarned is forearmed, though, so we spoke to a collection of studio heads to get their insider knowledge on the various obstacles you’ll come up against when running your own business, and their tips on how to overcome them. Here’s what they had to say.

Recruit the best

Find out how to tempt talent away from large agencies

01. Focus on juniors

As a small creative business, it’s often easier to recruit juniors with potential and then develop them than to find fully formed talent. The Plant London is one agency that likes to nurture from below, according to founder Matt Utber. “One student who came straight to us from university ended up becoming our design director,” he recalls. “And we’ve had a few others over the years who’ve done similar things. It’s really lovely to nurture designers and see them grow like this.”

02. Draw on existing friendship groups

Friendship groups and existing contacts are another great way to find new talent. At SteadyGo, the Leeds agency he co-founded, Tom Wade tried running a recommendation policy for recruitment: “If an existing employee introduced a friend we’d pay them £250, or donate it to a charity. Quite a lot of people did the latter, which was nice.”

And the benefits of using friendship networks aren’t just about getting in good people, he adds. “Recruiting this way has led to a very friendly atmosphere. Everyone has these connections that transcend day-to-day agency life.”

03. Avoid using recruitment agencies

The sentiment of our panel was that recruitment agencies are best left as a last resort. Not only are they expensive, but they’re not always reliable. “Once we hired someone the agent had vetted and who interviewed okay, but had a CV that turned out to be complete fiction,” remembers Alec East, founder of Bedford agency Narrative Industries. “Recruitment fees are pretty big when you’re on the salaries we pay, and yet the work this guy did was so bad that in the end it wasn’t actually billable.”

04. Get out there and meet people

Updating LinkedIn is not enough to find the right talent. You have to physically venture out into the community, believes Joe Cecere of Minneapolis agency Little & Company.

“Our philosophy is that we’re always connecting and getting out there, talking to people,” he explains. “We’re speaking at events, we’re going to student portfolio shows. This keeps our name known. We use our network of employees and their past experience to keep in contact with people all around the country. So when opportunities come up, we’re able to bring people in.”

05. Join organisations

Joining professional organisations can seriously widen your recruiting net, says Utber. “Being part of YCN, a small collection of agencies and clients, has been very good in helping us find talent.” Check out local associations too, adds East. “Here in Bedfordshire, recruitment is more difficult than in London, so I got involved in Bedford Creative Arts. Part of their remit is to provide creative networking events, and they’ve proved very useful with freelancers or special commissions.”

06. Create the right studio culture

Create the right studio culture, and recruiting and retaining your staff becomes far easier. That’s certainly been the case at Chicago design agency 50,000feet, says Jim Misener. “Being a small business means we’ve been able to develop an incredibly collaborative – almost collectivist – culture,” he explains.

“We keep the hierarchy as flat as possible, and this has contributed to our ability to attract and retain talent, with many citing the environment, culture and an ability to make a difference within their teams, practices, and the agency overall as reasons for joining and staying.”

Next page: How to keep winning new work

Keep your business afloat by constantly winning new work

01. Specialise

If you’re a large agency, clients expect you to do everything, from marketing to branding through to web design and app development. Small agencies can’t compete with that – and nor should they, says East.

“When we first started, we’d take almost any job that came our way. But once we recognised what we did best and what we enjoyed the most, it became easier to specialise. This, in turn, made it easier to identify new business opportunities and win them.”

02. Be proactive

Small agencies often get work via word of mouth, but you can’t rely on that, argues Utber. “You need to be proactive. Personally I always do one thing a day. Make a phone call or reconnect to someone.” It’s also about getting your name out there. “We believe that raising our profile is a great way to attract clients, so we’re writing a lot more thought pieces, and doing a lot more talks and panels.”

03. Choose your work

For new Manchester agency BGN, chasing new business is all about going after the right type of work, says founder Antonio Giansante. “We’ve got a clear vision of the type of client we want, so that’s what we’re chasing. We’ve been building up a campaign to target that sector including a mixture of stuff: sponsoring some awards and events, print advertising, digital advertising, some social stuff, attending events, and some old-school DM.”

04. Avoid search firms

Traditional ad agencies often use a search or pitch firm to generate leads. But our panel generally sees that as an outdated model that’s too expensive for a small agency. “We went through a phase of working with a lead generation agency, where people would cold call for us,” recalls Wade. “But it cost quite a lot per month – pretty much one person’s wage. And I wouldn’t say the results were exactly amazing…”

05. Harness social media

Social media can be a useful tool to find new clients, says Wade. “At SteadyGo, I used the Twitter app Tweetdeck to serve me up tweets containing words from a list of 20 that were relevant to our business. I found quite a lot of work that way, and it made it easier to pick the kind of clients we wanted.”

06. Sort your legal status

One of the biggest questions freelancers have is whether to trade as a company or as an individual. The main factor that persuaded Dan Hett, a creative technologist and digital artist from Manchester, to register himself as a company was that it opened more doors. “I’ve got a couple of very large clients that I know won’t deal with people who aren’t set up as companies,” he says. “So for me, it was important I be registered as a company.”

Next page: How to keep hold of clients

Discover how to hang on to your clients and stop them defecting to rival companies.

01. Create a sense of trust

Beyond quality work, delivered in a timely manner, the main thing that will keep clients on side is trust and understanding. When you only have a small number of employees, that can be easier to achieve than in a huge, impersonal organisation, so make the most of it, says Wade. “Predominantly, it’s about a shared sense of what the brand needs, its trajectory, its future and becoming a genuine partner. Pursue that, as we did at SteadyGo, and you’ll end up with a lot of long-term clients as a result.”

02. Provide consistency

Clients like consistency, and that’s another thing you should be better positioned to provide as a small business. “In a big company, a client may get shifted through four designers through the progress of the work,” points out Cecere. “Or they may have an account director for six months, and then get a new one all of a sudden. In contrast, at Little & Company, you get a dedicated team that stay with you. We have decades-long relationships because of those strong bonds.”

03. Recognise you both want the same things

Just as you want a long-term relationship with a client, remember that they also want a long-term relationship with you. This came into sharp focus for Giansante this year when BGN was launched. He made it clear to each client that cashflow was crucial in these early days. “And everyone’s responded well and paid on the dot,” he says. “They were all saying: ‘We want to help you through it.’ So it’s always important to remember that these relationships work both ways.”

04. Be a good listener

Often, a client will come to a small agency because they feel that bigger companies don’t listen to them, or have time for them. So don’t disappoint. “At 50,000feet, great communication begins by listening,” says Misener. “Then, we focus on executing on clients’ specific challenges – quickly and beautifully. We approach every client interaction from a service-minded standpoint: what insight can we share, what inspiration can we offer, what confidence can we instill and what trust can we build.”

05. Be personable

One thing people like about small creative businesses is that they’re generally more easy-going and personable than big companies, so use that to your advantage, says John Spencer, founder of Middlesex agency Offthetopofmyhead. “I think you dramatically improve your chances by being approachable and friendly,” he explains. “Nobody wants to deal with an agency if they’re full of their own importance – and there are plenty of these agencies around. Clients want to enjoy the experience, and it’s up to us to make sure they do.”

06. Manage expectations

Even if you do everything possible right, don’t expect every client to stay with you forever, says Utber. “There’s natural attrition as well. When you work on a project basis, once the brand is developed, the client will often find someone in-house or a less expensive agency to handle things. That’s very much a fact of life.” So build in that expectation to your projection and if it happens, don’t dwell too much on it. If you’re always finding new clients, then losing old ones shouldn’t hurt as much.

Next page: How to stay on top of things

Get a firm hold on studio management, project management and cashflow.

01. Make cashflow king

“Cashflow is the main downfall for small creative businesses,” says Giansante. Yet making sure that there’s always cash in the bank to pay for everything is a big task, and easily forgotten amongst the more ‘fun’ aspects of agency work.”So as well as using tools like Xero, I’ve got a budget spreadsheet on my screen 24/7,” he says. “Everything we spend on a daily basis goes in there and I keep constant track.”

02. Be ruthless

In a small business, the person responsible for keeping clients happy may also be the person who needs to chase client payments, yet that can be problematic. “We don’t like talking about money, it’s a very British thing,” says East. “But you need to get over that, or you may end up in trouble. Of course, you need to have proper payment systems, but beyond that it’s largely a communication issue: you need to keep talking to clients about money, as well as everything else.”

03. Create an ‘all hands on deck’ culture

In a small business, everyone must be willing to pitch in with administrative tasks, believes Cecere. “We do have people that manage core areas of our business, but we’re also a 25-person firm, so we talk about wearing a lot of hats,” he says. “Even if you’re a leader in a certain area, no one is too big to do any kind of task. People help each other out; we all roll up our sleeves when we need to.”

04. Learn when to delegate

When you’re a small business, you can keep costs down by handling administrative tasks yourself. “But sometimes that’s a false economy, and it’s important to recognise where your energies are best spent,” says East. “We got a great bookkeeper after about two years and it was worth the cost, because she gave us so much more information about cashflow and we could do projections. So as with design, these things are often best left to someone who knows what they’re doing.”

05. Manage workflow

It’s the kind of problem everyone wants to have, but being over rather than under capacity can still be a serious problem for a small studio. “It’s a really fine line between having too little work and too much,” points out Giansante. “But that’s one of the biggest challenges you can have on the project management side, to strike that balance. It’s hard to say no to work from a cash point of view, but there are other options, like outsourcing to a pool of trusted freelancers.”

06. Review everything you do regularly

With the constant hustle and bustle of agency work, it’s easy to forget to take a step back and examine how things are going. But it’s vital for the health of the company to do so, argues Misener. “We begin the week with a careful review of finance, operations, staffing and marketing across the entire business, developing a list of of goals for the week, along with any issues that we need to address,” he says. “By minding the store, we create a sustainable and creative environment.”

Next page: How to establish a good work-life balance

Retain your staff by offering them the right balance of work and play.

01. Facilitate good communications

The biggest cause of workplace stress is poor communication and bad planning, says East. As a small business, those problems should in theory be easier to overcome than in a huge bureaucracy, but this won’t happen automatically. You need to make the effort to be clear with your employees. “You need to ask difficult questions, be realistic about what’s achievable, be willing to say you don’t know (but can find out), and have good processes and workflows in place,” says East. “Sort this out and most of the problems melt away.”

02. Keep working hours realistic

People working for small companies are often asked to work long hours, and often end up doing so, but that can be counterproductive, lowering productivity and encouraging staff churn. So how can you avoid too many late nights or weekends stuck in the office? “Once you’re experienced enough to know how long things take, you set realistic timelines,” Utber says. Then it’s a case of communicating these timelines. “We find clients are very happy to let you take the lead on that, as long as you clearly tell them how long things will take. As a result, we very rarely work long hours.”

03. Be flexible

With a small business, you generally have more freedom to be flexible with staff than large organisations with a rigid HR department. And this can go a long way to making employees happier and more productive. “So while we have regular office hours,” says Cecere, “if you want to be home one day, you can do that. If you want to go to a coffee shop and work, you can do that. If your kid has a baseball game, go do that.”

04. Offer remote working

Offering your staff the possibility of remote working is another way to keep them on side. Giansante offers two examples. “One lad at BGN is working a day or two a week, following the recent birth of his new baby. And our creative director has got small children, so he leaves at 5pm every day, but then he’ll probably work 9 to 11pm at home. If you can fit work around people’s lives, it can really make the difference to work-life balance.”

05. Think about location

One of the worst things about being an employee is having a long or unpleasant commute, so minimising the negative effects of that can be a great way to improve employees’ work-life balance. “We’re always on the lookout for ways to improve the lives and livelihoods of our staff,” says Cecere. “Regarding commuting, we chose to locate our offices where there is easy public transportation from all directions, free parking, the ability to cycle, and for an increasing number of our staff, the ability to walk to work.”

06. Keep the hierarchy flat

One of the best ways to keep employees happy is to make them feel that as a business, you’re all striving together, towards a common goal. There’s no scientific method or step-by-step plan for making this happen, says Wade, but having a flat hierarchy can help. “At SteadyGo, we all had the same perks, staff and directors; we always kept things very flat as far as people were treated. And that led to a feeling of ‘we’re all in it to win it’.”

Next page: How to make sure you invest wisely

Make better decisions when it comes to office space and equipment.

01. Location isn’t everything

When it comes to office space, new agencies often start small and cheap. “We started in a craphole,” recalls Wade. “It looked like a taxi office. Really cheap rates and a shared kitchen between 300 people. But it was nice, it felt like grass roots.” Later the team upgraded, but he still doesn’t feel that boutique agencies necessarily need expensive city-centre offices. “What you need is to create kickass work and some great clients; that’s more important than the postcode,” he insists.

02. Do you need an office?

Does your studio actually need a traditional office? Hett runs a one-man business as a creative technologist and digital artist, and works out of an art studio. “Although it’s more bare bones in terms of space, it’s a lot cheaper than even renting a single desk in a shared office,” he says. “It’s literally just a white cube, but so far it’s working for me.”

03. Avoid false economies

When you start a business, you need to be frugal, but don’t want to take things too far, says East. “Any sizeable expense requires a cost-benefit analysis. If someone can work better, faster or easier with a certain piece of kit, then they can be more productive and generate more revenue.”

04. Lease, don’t buy

To make sure your staff have the latest kit, consider leasing instead of buying, recommends Giansante. “If we had to buy six brand new Macs for everyone, we’d be looking at around twenty grand’s worth of stuff, so we lease everything. Being able to budget and spread that across the next 24 months is perfect: I know exactly how much I’m paying. Everyone gets a brand new computer and if it breaks, it gets fixed at no extra cost.”

05. Listen to your staff

As a small business, you have the opportunity to talk to your staff, so take it, advises Misener. “Our approach has always been to listen to staff regarding what hardware and software they need and then develop a customised plan across the team. It’s always about being attentive and being willing to adapt to new innovations, work habits, or client and staff needs.”

06. Bring the fun

Sometimes it’s a good idea to spend a little money on things that aren’t strictly necessary. “It’s important to work in a space you enjoy,” says Spencer. “So a bloody good sound system and a cappuccino machine are essential. It’s also worth spending a little more on art, photography and design books and magazines. They’re invaluable for keeping up with what’s going on.”

This article originally appeared in Computer Arts issue 270; buy it here!

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miamibeerscene · 7 years

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The Golden Age of Brewery Partnerships

Burnt City Brewing collaborated with the Art Institute of Chicago. (Credit: Mathew Powers)

September 7, 2017

Have you noticed craft beer is bubbling into cultural events? Once relegated to bars and sporting events, beer drinkers are now enjoying local beer as they partake in matters of higher learning and culture from museums to orchestras to zoos. Even the Smithsonian is weaving beer into its “After Hours” line of programs.

When breweries and cultural hubs collaborate, everyone wins, from the institutions to breweries to you. Here’s a look at how independent brewers are ushering in the Golden Age of brewery partnerships.

(READ: The Beer & Food Pairing that Wow Brewers)

Breweries and Museums

One wonders, how do brewers pair beer with an art exhibit?

“The general idea was to take an awesome art exhibition and make it more awesome with beer,” says Ben Saller, co-founder and brewer at Burnt City Brewing. Burnt City recently worked with the Art Institute of Chicago to pair beer with the works of artist Paul Gauguin.

“It was a lot of fun developing the concept for Artist as Alchemist Golden Session IPA,” he explains. “I wanted to brew something with flavors that matched the aesthetic of Gauguin’s works. The Art Institute’s exhibition features some of his Tahitian-themed paintings. I thought that using hops with tropical flavors and aromas would go along nicely with this.”

Right down the street from the Art Institute, the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History regularly organizes beer festivals and brewing collaborations. In 2017, Iowa brewery Toppling Goliath brewed Pseudo Sue, an American pale ale that paid homage to the museum’s most famous resident, Sue the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

(READ: Using Craft Beer as a Vehicle for Good)

Off-Color Brewing partnered with the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History. (Credit: Zachary James Johnston)

Off Color Brewing followed with Qing Ming, a beer drawing inspiration from artifacts discovered during archaeological digs in Taixi and a Changzikou tomb dating from the Late Shang/Western Zhou Dynasties circa 1600-722 B.C.E. Excavated materials from those digs contained evidence of mold-based saccharification (the conversion of starch to sugar), demonstrating ancient China’s contribution to the production of alcoholic beverages.

“Partnering with breweries who are as interested in culture and science as the museum is offers the museum the chance to extend our reach to groups who might not think of ancient brewing techniques or cultures from thousands of years ago who enjoyed beer as much as we all do today,” explains Megan Williams, director of business enterprises at the Field Museum. “To drink a beer that has a story and history based on research or discoveries The Field Museum has made gives it meaning.”

Another brewer with a passion for science is former engineer and owner of Asheville’s Twin Leaf Brewery, Tim Weber. When given an opportunity help the Asheville Museum of Science (AMOS), Weber did so enthusiastically.

“I try to do as much charity work as I can for environmental conservation and childhood STEM education and the match between Twin Leaf and Asheville Museum of Science (AMOS) was just too good to be true,” explains Weber.

Twin Leaf created two versions of a beer named Mass Extinction. The first version enjoyed 20 months in a bourbon barrel while the other spent eight months in stainless steel.

“I was planning on making a bourbon barrel aged stout for some time, and the name and label just fit together to describe such a strong stout,” he says.

(LEARN: 75+ Popular Craft Beer Styles)

Beer at Symphonies and Theaters

Gilgamesh Brewing made “Lions, Tigers, and PEARS. Oh My!” for a ‘Wizard of Oz’ production at Enlightened Theatrics. (Credit: Enlightened Theatrics)

Flavor and music converged in May 2016, when Michigan’s Brewery Vivant and the Grand Rapids Symphony collaborated. The Carmina Beerana SMaSH beer honored Carl Orff’s famous piece “Carmina Burana.” The beer was intended to resemble what monks of the 11th and 12th centuries might have enjoyed. While the main event took place at the DeVos Performance Hall, the symphony’s brass musicians and chorus first performed at Brewery Vivant (not exactly the type of beer environment one could have envisioned in the 1970s.)

Most community organizations dedicated to the arts rely heavily on private funding and support. So it’s no surprise that Spokane’s No-Li Brewhouse, a brewery that provided more than $25,000 in charitable donations in 2016, collaborated with the Spokane Symphony. The Beethoven Golden Ale was served at the 2016 Beethoven & Brews festival, which included performances from the local Blue Door Theater.

In Salem, Oregon, the craft-brewing mantra of “Drink Local” met “There’s no place like home” during a 2016 “Wizard of Oz” production: Gilgamesh Brewing created a beer – “Lions, Tigers, and PEARS … Oh My”—specifically for the production at Enlightened Theatrics.

If you’re a history buff, beer geek, or a fan of theater and music, one Rapid City, South Dakota, brewery has you covered. Firehouse Brewing goes beyond collaborating with a theater — it manages one on its third floor. Built in 1915, the building mostly served as the local firehouse. In 1991 the beer started flowing, and the theater followed.

(SEASONALS: Offbeat Pumpkin Beers for 2017)

Helping Marine Life

Even if a creature lacks the opposable thumbs necessary to hold a beer, craft breweries are happy to help. For example, in 2016, Dogfish Head released its Sea Quench Ale as part of a partnership with the National Aquarium.

“Dogfish Head is a committed philanthropic partner of the National Aquarium, supporting many of their critical conservation initiatives, including seafood sustainability, efforts to maintain a healthy Chesapeake Bay and research on Atlantic populations of vulnerable shark species,” says Sam Calagione, Dogfish Head founder and CEO.

The Maryland Zoo is home to North America’s largest African penguin colony and penguin exhibit, Penguin Coast. In 2016, The Brewer’s Art and The Maryland Zoo created Penguin Pils to commemorate the zoo’s 20th anniversary. They unveiled it at a Brew at Zoo event and raised $2,000.

Revolution Brewing created Penguin Hops, with proceeds going to Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium. (Credit: Revolution Brewing)

Illinois’ largest independent brewery, Revolution Brewing, has not only brewed a beer for Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium and its collection of penguins, but Revolution also used hops grown in the Shedd’s 40,000 square-foot outdoor garden. One dollar from each sale of the aptly named Penguin Hops, a harvest pale ale, helps support the Shedd Aquarium.

Penguins may be cute, but who doesn’t love a huggable hippo? In 2017, Cincinnati’s Listermann Brewing and the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden collaborated on a beer named Fiona the Hippo NEIPA. Fiona the Hippo came to the world prematurely, but the zoo has nursed her to health, slowly but surely.

Zoos and Sanctuaries

No one understands the importance of water more than a brewery, but there’s plenty of love for animals on land, too. In 2015 and 2016, Northdown Cafe and Taproom, Side Project Brewing, Perennial Artisan Ales and Off Color Brewing worked with the Minnesota Wild Cat Sanctuary. Together, they developed “ProCATStination,” which spent plenty of time aging.

Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago and DryHop Brewing annually connect on brewing collaborations that benefit a different animal each year. For instance, in 2016, Chimp off the Old Block Hazelnut and Fig Maibock drew inspiration from ingredients found in chimpanzee diets. The beers helped fund ape conservation efforts. In 2017, DryHop brewed Ursus Mapletimus, a smoked, maple white ale dedicated to the new Arctic Tundra exhibit and the zoo’s “honeymooning couple” of breeding polar bears, Kobe and Siku.

(LEARN: Beer 101 Online Course)

“Having DryHop commit funds and support to the animals both in our care and the wild is both encouraging and humbling and to be able to share that with the beer-lovers of Chicago is exceptional,” said Debra Rosenberg, director of corporate alliances at Lincoln Park Zoo.

The Golden Age of Brewery Partnerships

There’s no denying that beer still reigns supreme as an accompaniment to hot wings and fantasy football. However, in the last two years, beer has been enjoyed at the Mariner’s Museum in Virginia, the Mattatuck Art and Regional History Museum in Connecticut, and at the Brooklyn Brewing beer garden during the 7th Annual New York City Poetry Festival. Not to mention, multitudes of artists use beer cans and bottles as their canvases. These high-cultured collaborations are no longer an anomaly. Welcome to the Golden Age of brewery partnerships.

Mathew Powers

After spending most of his life chasing tornadoes, Mathew decided to chase beer as writer, historian and drinker. He possesses a Master’s in Written Communication and History and he’s published regularly in print and digitally on various beer and spirits publications. When he’s not writing (or drinking beer), he’s spending time with family, watching sports, reading history books and dreaming of classic cars he can’t afford. Read more by this author

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sinagbuhi-blog · 7 years

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Positive Education in the Spirit of Don Bosco

by Regio L. Sales, MD Introduction When I hear of incidents like stealing in the classroom, students fighting their teacher, teachers abandoning their students, teachers publicly humiliating their students, and students addicted to video games or cigarettes, it makes me wonder why these incidents occur inspite of their parents' and teachers' best efforts, and leads me to reflect on what could be happening in our schools which could have resulted to these problems. I believe these are just symptoms of some deeper ailment in our schools and educational system. There could be lots of probable causes of these, but one which insidiously affects some students (even some teachers) and causing them to disengage from school is depression and the lack of meaning in life. Depression in Boys In 2011, the WHO showed that "the Philippines has the highest incidence of depression in Southeast Asia with 93 suicides for every 100,000 Filipinos." Some have speculated that these could be due to feelings of helplessness and overall frustration over the lack of progress in their personal lives associated with the lack of inclusive growth in the country which should benefit all sectors of the society. Our concern, however, is the rising incidence of suicide among the young which is usually a result of depression. In the WHO Student Health Survey in the Philippines (2003-2004), 17.1% had seriously considered committing suicide in the year previous to the study and 16.7 % had made a plan about how they would commit suicide. Among all youth, females were more than twice as likely as males to have had suicidal thoughts. However, males were slightly more likely to carry out a suicidal act than females (for ages 15 to 19 males and females had both 22.4% attempted suicide incidence; for the 20 to 24 year olds 33.3% males and 29.6% females). According to Dr. Elizabeth E. Rondain, a psychiatrist at Makati Medical Center, suicide is always an offshoot of severe depression or profound sadness. She also said that among teenagers, depression could also manifest itself in rebellious behavior such as stealing, using drugs or alcohol, anger, confusion, or marked changes in behavior. During adolescence, when there is a constant seeking for approval among the young as well as the need to discover who they are and where they belong, family and school issues could contribute to a feeling of rejection and add to a teenagers' sense of grief. Furthermore, William Pollack, a clinical psychologist at the Center for Men at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School, suggests that in order to diagnose depression among boys the following symptoms should be watched carefully : 1. Increased withdrawal from relationships and problems in friendships. 2. Depleted or impulsive mood. 3. Increase in intensity or frequency of angry outbursts. 4. Denial of pain. 5. Increasing rigid demands for autonomy or acting out. 6. Concentration, sleep, eating, or eight disorders, or other physical symptoms ( such as stomachaches, headaches, or fatigue). 7. The inability to cry. 8. Low self-esteem and harsh self-criticism. 9. Academic difficulties. 10. Overinvolvement with academic work or sports. 11. Increased aggressiveness. 12. Increased silliness. 13. Avoiding the help of others. 14. New or renewed interest in alcohol or drugs. 15. Shift in the interest level of sexual encounters. 16. Increased risk-taking behavior. 17. Discussion of death, dying, or suicide. Dr. Pollack adds that it would be extremely rare for any boy who is depressed to exhibit all the above symptoms, but recommends to take immediate steps to help the boy as soon as any of these symptoms are detected. In order to prevent our boys from drifting away from us Dr. Pollack proposes some proactive steps : - Be alert about the boys' friendships and relationships. - Be watchful for signs of depression and intervene early. - Don't be afraid to consult with a therapist. - If a boy's depression is severe, medical intervention may be necessary. - Try to address the big picture. What their lives are at home, at school, and in society in general. Is he being bullied? Is he struggling with his subjects? Are his friendships working out well? Is there any family history of depression? - Stay on top of the facts about depression and talk about them openly. Since some (if not most) boys tend to put on a mask about their real feelings, having honest talks about how tough and disappointing things can get in life or how society can be unfair, we set the stage for honesty and open the door for sharing emotions without embarrassment or shame. What Would Don Bosco Do Faced with the problems of boys in our time it would be wise to go back to the ideas and methods that St. John Bosco have applied to his boys in the Oratory. But before we go further, it would be nice to remember the "continuing presence" of the Father of the Youth in his work for the boys, aiming for their happiness. While reflecting on how Don Bosco could have handled the pressing problems of our boys and our schools, I started with the three tools that our founder have left us : his prophetic dream of the Blessed Mother which pointed out how he should deal with boys while was nine years of age ("Not with blows but with gentleness and charity must you win over these friends of yours."); his version of the Preventive System based on Loving-kindness, Reason, and Religion; and his idea of the Four-fold Balance between the lives of the boys in the Church, in the School, in the Home, and in the Playground. However, in the course of my quest to find solutions to our present predicament through the writings of Don Bosco, I serendipitously stumbled upon an inspirational letter of Fr. Carlo Maria Martini the Archbishop of Milan in which he was inspired by a vision of St. John Bosco while he was pondering the same problems in 1988. The following are some notes and excerpts from that letter. The concept of the Oratory as a center "where young people feel as if they are at home, can express themselves, discover happiness, many friends and that absolutely necessary help to grow up well and become, like he used to say, ‘honest citizens and good Christians’ " is a model of an institution which safeguards the mental, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing of the boys. And in the Oratory, the Preventive System was the method which Don Bosco followed to set young people "so happily on the path to virtue". "The practice of the Preventive System is based entirely on the words of St. Paul: 'Charity is patient....suffers everything, hopes in everything, puts up with everything.'...Loving-kindness is expressed in words, gestures, and even in facial expressions, glances. And it is also important that young people are not only loved but that they themselves are aware that they are being loved." In the vision Fr. Martini quotes Don Bosco as saying : "Loving-kindness implies an awareness which is not superficial but deep-down, not only intellectual but also felt... And yes, it is not so easy to understand a person well. In fact, I would say that it's impossible if we don't love the person, if our starting point is our prejudices towards the person or if we have no trust in or esteem for the person." Don Bosco also recalled that when the assistant at the Oratory, Fr. Fontana, shouted at a rowdy youngster: "You appalling, ignorant little ratbag... you won't end up too good, let me tell you!", Don Bosco was quick to correct him by saying: "No, don't say that." "You have to tell youngsters what they can do well in life, not what they do badly." Another suggestion of Don Bosco is to "let the young people accept greater responsibility." He also added, "It seems to me that the young person who earns or constructs life for him or herself is much happier and more satisfied than the one who, contrariwise, finds everything easy and at hand without a need to think, plan, sweat and get down to things."...."a person becomes responsible where there is appropriate self-respect and esteem for one’s capabilities and where daily experience offers the feeling of being truly useful to others as well." That's why Don Bosco gave responsibilities to his older boys (14 to 18 years of age) to to teach younger students math, counsel those with problems, teach catechism, and do volunteer service. Furthermore, our founder said, "It is difficult for them (the boys) to do it alone, even if it is their will which ultimately has to make the decision. They need an environment which is naturally rich and optimistic, where there are accepting families, religious motivations, people consecrated to them." With regards to the second foundation of the Preventive System - Reason, this is what Don Bosco in the vision said, "Let yourselves be guided by reason and not by passion. Use it with the littlest ones also. Orders, programmes, even punishments have to be motivated by reason. Offer reasonable goals, goals which are possible and understandable to them. And teach them to do the same. Teach young people to think, to have a good critical sense, to develop a capacity for discernment, for formulating objective judgments and discovering the true meaning of life and this world. Reason will help them to know reality, to understand situations and problems, to foresee the consequences of their choices and actions, to discover the Truth." Lastly Don Bosco spoke about Authentic Religious Instruction, the third foundation of his pedagogy, as follows: "The second means I have found effective in educating well is religion. I know that not everyone agrees with this because they cannot understand its value, sometimes because some educators have interpreted and practiced it badly. The Christian religion is above all a filial relationship of adoration and love, uniting us to God our Father, through Jesus Christ the Saviour of all. This gives rise to close relationships with all human beings....Through religious instruction and frequenting the sacraments you will develop a love for yourself and for their neighbour in your young people." Thus, even though the Preventive System of St. John Bosco was penned during the later part of the nineteenth century, the wisdom it imparts still applies to the problems of our youth and our educational institutions today. Positive Psychology in Education St. Dominic Savio, one of Don Bosco's pupils, expressed that "holiness consists of being cheerful" as an outpouring of the joy he had experienced in the Oratory. It was only in 1998 that science had caught on with the wisdom conveyed by this saintly boy in the new field of Positive Psychology. Unlike the traditional practice of psychology which deals with diseases and human weaknesses as well as how to treat mental disorders, the new field of Positive Psychology ( or Psychology of Happiness ) initiated by Dr. Martin Seligman in 1998 expands the scope of psychology to include the study of positive emotions, human strengths, and "what makes life worth living." Dr. Seligman has also defined happiness as "the experience of positive emotions - pleasure combined with deeper feelings of meaning and purpose...it consists of three measurable components: pleasure, engagement, and meaning." The framework that Positive Psychology wants to emphasise is "an empirical research endeavour and not mere grandmotherly common sense." The following are just some of its surprising research findings: ● Optimistic people are much less likely to die of heart attacks than pessimists, controlling for all known physical risk factors (Giltay et al., 2004). ● Women who display genuine (Duchenne) smile to the photographer at age eighteen go on to have fewer divorces and more marital satisfaction than those who display fake smiles (Keltner et al., 1999). ● Externalities (e.g., weather, money, health, marriage, religion) added together account for no more than 15% of the variance in life satisfaction (Diener et al., 1999). ● The pursuit of meaning and engagement are much more predictive of life satisfaction than the pursuit of pleasure (Peterson et al., 2005). ● Economically flourishing corporate teams have a ratio of at least 2.9:1 of positive statements to negative statements in business meetings, whereas stagnating teams have a much lower ratio; flourishing marriages, however, require a ratio of at least 5:1 (Gottman & Levenson, 1999; Fredrickson & Losada, 2005). ● Self-discipline is twice as good a predictor of high school grades as IQ (Duckworth& Seligman, 2005). ● Happy teenagers go on to earn very substantially more income 15 years later than less happy teenagers, equating for income, grades and other obvious factors (Diener et al., 2002). On the other hand, Positive Education is defined as "education for both traditional skills and for happiness." It also involves the application of Positive Psychology in the school setting and can form the basis of preventive practices within the school. Positive Education is based on the discovery that "our brains are literally hard-wired to perform at their best not when they are negative or even neutral, but when they are positive." With the high prevalence worldwide of depression among the young, teaching the skills for happiness and well-being has been found to fight depression (Seligman et al., 2005), they engender more life satisfaction (Peterson, Park, & Seligman, 2005; Seligman et al., 2005), and they promote learning, particularly creative learning (Fredrickson, 1998). Psychologist Natasha Trent of the University of Birmingham states that "the foundations of positive education stem from four principles in order to bring out the HERO out in all students. HERO is explained below: Hope – a positive motivational state that is based on a sense of success. Efficacy – self-efficacy is the belief that one has the capabilities to execute the course of actions required, to manage prospective situations. Resiliency – the capacity to bounce back from adversity, conflict, fear of increased responsibility, etc. which can be learnt. Optimism- the expectancy of positive outcomes." Ms. Trent further recommends some tips for teachers in the application of Positive Psychology which are as follows: • Environment is important- so use displays and positive messages around the classroom to stimulate and engage your students’ minds. • Integrate wellbeing into your lesson plans wherever possible, i.e. deep breathing activities to relax learners after lunchtime will hardly cut into your teaching time and requires minimal preparation. • Lead by example- if you demonstrate that you are taking action to develop your own well-being, your students will follow. • Encourage students to develop their character strengths. Character strengths or signature strengths can be determined by answering a free questionnaire at: www.viame.org or www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/questionnaires.aspx. • Introduce wellbeing activities (such as fun exercises, meditation, laughing therapy, practice gratitude, positive scents and music, gardening). For the optimal effects, parents should also apply some Positive Psychology interventions at home too. Below are some things that Ms. Trent suggests parents can do at home: • Put up positive messages around the house and/or in your children’s bedrooms, so their spirits are constantly being lifted and nurtured. • Encourage your children to have five minutes quiet time to reflect, at the beginning or end of the day. • Make sure you know what your children are passionate about and take a keen interest, by asking them questions and spending time with them doing this. For example, if your children are passionate about dancing, then go with them to a dance show. • Tell your children regularly that they are great and that they can do whatever they put their minds to. • Monitor what your children watch and listen to. Your children’s thoughts affect the way they feel, and ultimately how they will behave. In the Salesian school system for boys which takes its inspiration from the "free, creative, and exuberant" environment of St. John Bosco's Oratory, one unique feature is the Don Bosco Youth Center which is basically a game room with no computer games. Aside from being a place of wholesome indoor games and recreational reading, this could also serve some deeper purposes : - Infuse more happiness for the boys which could enhance their mental health and wellbeing. - Improve the reading skills of the boys while they pore over books, comic books, and magazines which boys like. - This could serve as a venue for teachers and Salesians to engage in the informal educational method of play, which is an integral part of St. John Bosco's pedagogy. - This could serve as a healthy alternative to video games for those who are already addicted to the computer games which are disengaging our boys from school. Conclusion Happiness, both on earth and in heaven, has been the aim of Don Bosco's educational principles as they are expressed in his version of the Preventive System. This is congruent with the scientific perspective of Positive Psychology. But in order for the three basic principles of Don Bosco's pedagogy (Loving-kindness, Reason, and Religion) and the interventions of Positive Education to be truly lived out with the students, the "presence" of the teacher is indispensable. This kind of presence should not just be physical but, as the educationist John Parankimalil, SDB describes, should be "qualitative". He further expounds that this type of presence should have the following characteristics : 1. A motivating presence - one that infuses enthusiasm, encouragement, and is optimistic. The presence of the educator infuses in the child a thirst for knowledge. 2. A personal presence - The presence of the teacher is such that each child feels known, loved, and accepted. 3. An incarnational presence - Loving what your students love or 'getting under their skin' has an important purpose: seeing the world through their eyes will make them want to experience the world and the values you live by. 4. A creative presence - Being open to the joy of discovery which means being ready to try new ways, new solutions, and new ideas. 5. A preventive and corrective presence - Being there with them to be respectful reminders about rules and in order to prevent exposure to harm. Faults are best corrected by being reasonable, polite, factual, firm, and to the point. Finally, Fr. P.D. Johny (Parankimalil), SDB concludes that "the system of education of Don Bosco serves as a wise and time-tested framework for every teacher. It is intensively challenging while at the same time amply rewarding. Indeed, teaching – according to the educational method of Don Bosco – is the delicate art of growing with your students." References: ILDA. Reports say Filipinos are sad and depressed in the Philippines. Get Real Post. Martini, Cardinal Carlo Maria. Don Bosco Writes To Us. Milan, 1988. Morrison, John and Fedrigotti, Lanfranco. The Educational Philosophy of St. John Bosco and the Twentieth Century's Conversation about Education. Hong Kong. Parankimalil, John. Preventive System: A System of Presence and Expression. Pollack, William. Real Boys. New York, 1998. Seligman, Martin, et.al..Positive Education: Positive Psychology and Classroom Interventions. Philadelphia, USA,2009. Snyder,C.R. and Lopez, Shane J.. Handbook of Positive Psychology. New York,2002. Terjesen, Mark, et.al.. Integrating Positive Psychology into Schools: Implications for Practice. New York, 2004. Trent, Natasha. Positive Psychology in Schools. 2013. WHO. The Health of Adolescents in the Philippines.

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Marple Newtown QB Anthony Paoletti picks up second MAC offer

Paoletti picked up his first offer from Miami (Ohio) in February. (Photograph courtesy of Anthony Paoletti)

Japanese Michigan is coming off its first triumphing document seeing that 1995 and its first bowl appearance on account that 1987 after a 7-6 marketing campaign in coach Chris Creighton’s 0.33 12 months.

The Eagles’ Mid-American Conference foe Miami (Ohio) became the first college to offer Paoletti on a visit in February.

Paoletti, a seasoned fashion quarterback, is listed at 6-foot-2, 205 kilos and threw for two,739 yards and 33 touchdowns at the same time as finishing 57 percentage of his passes and throwing most effective eight interceptions, according to MaxPreps.

According to his Twitter account, Paoletti has currently visited Temple and Penn State.

Hiking The Newtown River Trail

The Newtown Path parallels a river and sets forth onto an ascent on a knoll to the neglect. The Newtown Path is at the brand new Echota Nation Park in Calhoun Georgia which runs alongside a few regions which were utilized by the Cherokee before. From the begin of the early nationalist motion, the Cherokee was taken into consideration the new Echota as their capital before they were forced out to transport to the west on the Path of Tears. This disagreement over the land started out in 1832 throughout Georgia’s Sixth Land Lottery which had given this Cherokee land away to settlers. This web page was once a Cherokee searching ground till wildlife also moved similarly to the west within the nineteenth century.

The entire Trail will overall to two miles together with the Path to the new Echota.

the brand new Echota Kingdom Park stands as testimony to the Cherokee Country of Georgia which managed the land from the Ohio River Valley to the Chattahoochee River Valley several centuries in the past. The museum discovered it this State park will come up with the historical history of the Cherokee removal from their capital metropolis. The reveals tell the tales approximately the Georgia gold rush and the development that passed off in New Echota.

The Trail gives a few ancient sites in which a recreated workplace of the Cherokee Phoenix may be found. You may additionally find the Cherokee Ideally suited Court and the Countrywide Council Residence situated right here other than Samuel Worcester’s home and James Vann’s tavern. The trailhead for this Path is visible in the left section of the street about halfway through the metropolis. The Trail dips to a river crescent in which numerous wildlife species abound. Assume to have sightings of fowl species consisting of golden eagles.

Shifting far away from the river,

The Newtown Trail makes a slow ascent into the woodland wherein the route leads you to the top of a small knoll. At this spot you will locate a forget about that gives you a view of the tenting region used at some stage in town council meetings by way of the Cherokee. Many would camp right here that may take into 5,000 contributors at some point of these council meetings.

Hold to observe the path as it ends at the home of Samuel Worcester who turned into a missionary. Worcester turned into called via the Cherokee as “Messenger” even though he turned into heated by way of the authorities of Georgia since they have been worried that he would possibly halt the authorities settlements on this Cherokee land.

How to Ask For a Second Chance in Your Marriage

I don’t know the specifics of your situation. Possibly your spouse is simplest pissed off within the marriage. Perhaps he or she has taken it similarly already asked for a divorce or spoil. Maybe you have absolutely made a mistake and want to ask your husband and wife for forgiveness, to start over, or for some other threat. Whatever your occasions, I firmly agree with (from my non-public experience and studies) that there may be a proper manner and a wrong manner to approach your spouse about this. This article will talk what I feel is the nice manner, (with the very best chance of fulfillment), to talk your partner into giving your marriage another hazard.

The wrong manner To Plead Your Case Or Apologize From your spouse:

Regardless of what you’ve executed, absolutely the first issue to recollect isn’t to panic or act in a desperate manner that pushes your partner in addition away. It is certainly understandable which you don’t need this pain, misunderstanding or marital harm to keep or go on for any longer than is vital. It makes an experience which you could assume that the longer your spouse is irritated or harm, the longer it’s going to take to mend, shop, or get the wedding lower back on the right track.

But, It is crucial to keep in mind that performing volatile,

Desperate, or in an exaggerated manner (examples are bugging, berating, and making immoderate tries to speak with your spouse (time and again calling, texting, begging, and so forth.)) is probably simplest going to make you seem extra unattractive and out of control.

Alternatively, each threat you could, gift yourself as a clearly loving spouse who respects each herself and her partner enough to speak with him/her in a dignified and honest way.

The proper way to invite Your partner To provide Your Marriage any other Or Higher Strive

Perhaps the issues to your marriage are without a doubt your fault. Perhaps they are not. I sincerely can not or do not know the specifics or your state of affairs. No matter what got you here, I accept as true with there’s a right manner to get you out.

First, if you haven’t already, positioned yourself for your husband or your wife’s scenario. How do they feel right now? What do they really want to clear up this situation? What are you able to do to accomplish this while preserving your integrity and dignity?

(Hint: What maximum spouses really need is for his or her spouses to empathize with them, apprehend how they sense and care deeply approximately those feelings.)

So, in case you are going to make an apology and ask for a second hazard, do it in a completely particular way. Deal with precisely why you are sorry.

Inform your husband or spouse which you have concept an exceptional deal about the marriage and scenario and you watched that they sense (you need to fill the blanks right here together with your sincere assessment of the way your spouse is feeling.) Ask them if that is accurate and ask them to percentage their emotions with you. Pay attention without interrupting or correcting them in any way. apologize that they feel this way and Inform them which you, too, are feeling the ache and are going to do the entirety to your electricity to ease that ache. Then, define your plan. (this is going to differ based on your specific scenario. Remember while you placed yourself for your spouse’s shoes and concept approximately what they desired? Do not forget this when formulating your plan.)

If your spouse is not receptive or desires to argue or strike again,

Diffuse the state of affairs. You don’t need to allow extra poor emotions into the scenario. Your aim is to start introducing advantageous feelings. Understand that this may take some time.

What To Do After You have Asked Your partner To Pay attention You Out: Your spouse may not be receptive at first and also you have to now not push them or lose your persistence. Forcing your hand or begging for a definitive solution will likely weaken your function.

The pleasant element that you may do is, every risk you get, gift yourself as a patient, loving, expertise partner who fully is aware that your partner is worth any aggravation and wait.

MAC Makeup – Things You May Not Know About MAC Makeup and Cosmetics

The nice makeup in the world is MAC makeup, hands down. Created in 1985 by way of Frank Toskan and Frank Angelo, MAC cosmetics were designed to hold as much as the most grueling conditions. Everyday drug keep make-up does not look suitable under vivid lighting, and a maximum of it sweats off or wears off under ordinary situations anyway. The chemists who created MAC cosmetics, but, designed it to hold as much as just about any undertaking you could throw at it. It’s precise for every age, all races and all sexes, which later became the corporation’s motto.

MAC makeup is also a socially aware emblem.

There are four social initiative issues that the corporation presently has in location: MAC Cruelty-Loose Splendor, Lower back to MAC Recycling, MAC Youngsters Supporting Youngsters and the MAC AIDS Fund. Despite the fact that MAC cosmetics became offered out with the aid of the Estee Lauder Agencies in 1994 and the unique founder Frank Angelo died in 1997, the MAC AIDS Fund has been endured through the new proprietors. The good issue about its miles that each penny of the sale of the eight merchandise underneath the Viva Glam call gets donated to the charity. This has raised extra than $86 million for the charity since 1994.