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Anyone familiar with the musings of Garance Doré, the French photographer, writer, style icon, O.G. influencer, and creative force behind Doré, knows that she doesn’t make rash decisions. Candid essays filled with introspection about her life are as much a part of her brand as her chic and easy approach to style. When the native Corsican and onetime New Yorker decided to buy a large, modern house in Mar Vista and put down more permanent roots in California, the commitment came with some surprises and serious soul-searching.
“I felt like L.A., as a city, was a woman, and she was holding me in her arms, like that Red Hot Chili Peppers song,” says Doré over a cup of tea and a plate of roasted vegetables at the Superba café, near her two-year-old house, which was in the final stages of a much-deliberated renovation just days before this photo shoot took place.
Doré is explaining how she fell in love with L.A. when she spent a month in town finishing her book, Love Style Life, at the Standard Hotel in 2014: “I woke up every morning and could see the whole city. I’d open the windows and write for a few hours. I was so happy. It’s engraved in my brain.”
After some consideration back in Manhattan, she decided that Los Angeles, specifically the west side, was the right mix of urban and wild for her changing, more relaxed outlook on life. “For me, there is a back-to-my-roots kind of thing with the beach,” she says. “It’s grounding to know I am near the water.”
At first, Doré’s vision involved a charming 1940s bungalow or an even older Craftsman with character. But as a first-time homeowner, the repairs and maintenance of an old house felt daunting, and she craved large windows to let in the sunlight and more space for her studio; her dog, Lulu; friends; and family visiting from Europe.
“Once you make this decision—to live in something more modern, built by a developer—the question is how do you add character? How do you soften the edges? They’re often cold and feel like a bachelor pad,” she says. “The house had no charm.”
After conversations with various interior designers, most of whom Doré felt were trying to push her into more expensive choices, she found her match with Sarah Sherman Samuel. Doré says that Samuel, who has a cult following of her own, understood her needs completely.
“Sarah was so open to ideas. I don’t want a decorator to shame me. I was like, ‘Dude, I can’t do that.’ They were all freaking me out with the budget. A person who is less secure would fall for it,” she says, comparing decor to personal style, noting “it doesn’t have to be expensive to be good.”
The first priority was to remove a wall that was separating the kitchen from the living room, creating an airy, loftlike first floor. Next, they replaced a tiny kitchen window to let in that light she craved. Samuel suggested two built-in sofas to flank the fireplace along one of the long walls. They have curved arms, amping up the Mediterranean beach house vibe, and thick cushions upholstered in buff pink linen. Samuel helped Doré select creamy white Moroccan rugs, a hanging basket chair from Chairish, a vintage velvet chair from Sotheby’s Home, and an impressive collection of hand-thrown ceramics, which all delivered immediate warmth and texture to the space. Two vintage Herman Miller chairs upholstered in cobalt blue bring a jolt of vibrant color.
To break up the big-box feel of the living area, Samuel created a nook for Doré’s favorite time of the day—breakfast—with a built-in banquette upholstered in striped linen and raw natural leather, anticipating that the nicks and scratches will add to its appeal. The adjacent kitchen, including the fixtures, GE Café appliances, and massive marble countertops, is completely devoid of shine.
“There’s a richness to matte finishes, like honed marble,” says Samuel, who drew from her signature palette of colors and materials, using soft white and pale peach paint, blond wood, fireclay subway tile, and loads of muted pink and earthy neutrals. Terracotta accents, such as rugs from Block Shop Textiles and handmade pendant lamps from Hand and Eye, add depth and nuance.
A few more pops of pattern and color, like a guest bathroom covered floor to ceiling in Riad El Fenn blue and white tile, and a bed upholstered in a graphic Kelly Wearstler print, create vignettes that are perfect for—you guessed it—social media.“We are natives in this Instagram world. Sarah and I, we’re always like this,” Doré says as she aims her phone’s camera lens at the low cocktail table, which is perfectly styled with books and objects. “One thing we both really understand,” says Samuel, “is that you need to be able to take pictures in your own house.”
This story was originally published in our Spring 2019 issue with the headline “Personal Space.”
The post When Garance Doré and Sarah Sherman Samuel Team Up, You Get This Easy-Chic L.A. Home appeared first on domino.
]]>Your band of mercenaries has made it to the far north, a small outpost called Frosthaven in the Frozen Wastes. What adventures await you here?
Frosthaven is a legacy-style cooperative game for 1 to 4 players, ages 14 and up, and is the sequel to Gloomhaven. The play time varies by scenario, roughly 2 hours per session but this can be affected by the number of players, the complexity of the particular scenario, and some other factors. Frosthaven was originally funded through Kickstarter in 2020, delivered to backers in late 2022 and early 2023, and is now available to purchase from Cephalofair Games, with a price tag of $250 (or more, if you want to bundle some of the extras with it). Or if you don’t mind waiting a bit longer, you can pledge $180 for the second printing of Frosthaven through the current Backerkit campaign. Frosthaven is a standalone game and you don’t need to play Gloomhaven first, though it uses a lot of the same rules, with a few new additions.
Frosthaven was designed by Isaac Childres and published by Cephalofair Games, with artwork by Francesca Baerald, David Demaret, Alexandr Elichev, and Josh T. McDowell. There’s also a host of additional names in the rulebook for developers, scenario writers, graphic design, and more—too many for me to list here.
The term “legacy game” has been around for over a decade now (starting with Risk Legacy) but I find it’s still helpful to clarify what I mean, especially if you haven’t played one yet. Legacy games are games in which you will make permanent changes to the game as you play, often as a result of decisions you make over the course of the game. Nowadays, this can include writing on or adding stickers to game components, tearing up cards, scratching off some coating to reveal hidden information, and more. In most cases, legacy games are also campaign games, which means you’re intended to play through some number of sessions before you “complete” the game—at which point the particular state of your copy of the game is the “legacy” that you and your fellow players have created, potentially unique from any other copy that has been played.
There are a lot of components in Frosthaven that are revealed as you reach certain parts of the story, stickers that are added to the map, and so on, and the element of surprise as you open an envelope or lift a flap is part of the appeal. Because of that, it’s hard to talk in detail about the game, especially the components themselves, without giving a few spoilers. That said, I’ll try to keep significant spoilers to a minimum and only share what’s really necessary for explanation—primarily I’ll show photos from the first scenario so that they’re things you’d see very early on.
Because of the hidden/unknown components, I’ll list the “known” contents of the box but will leave out some of the details. When you first open the huge box, you’ll find a big stack of cardboard to punch out, and underneath that are a few plastic trays of cards, envelopes, boxes, books, and some other materials. There’s a handy sheet that tells you how to get things sorted to some extent, though there are some things that you’ll need to further organize yourself.
Here’s what comes in the box:
First up, there are a lot of map tiles—these have notches and knobs on the edges so that they can attach to each other, jigsaw-style, and each tile is double-sided so you get different artwork for the background. They’re labeled with numbers and letters, so all of the tiles of the same shape share a number. There isn’t an organizer for these included in the base box, so they just get piled on top of the trays.
The photo above shows the plastic trays: the two on the left nest into each other (with lids); the top one includes all the various status token and damage tokens, and the larger tray has all of the overlay tiles for terrain, doors, special locations, and so on.
The tray on the top left has most of the cards: lots of event cards, battle modifier cards, and item cards. Most of these have little divider cards to separate the available and unavailable cards, but the way they’re designed is that “Available” is printed on one side and “Unavailable” is printed on the other, so you need to be careful which side you’re looking at. This tray also included all of the cards for the enemies (in that empty well on the right), but the way the game has you organize them (see below), this well ends up empty. One thing that disappointed me about the divider cards is that the tabs stick up over the height of the trays—and for storage, you’ll pile the books and tiles on top of them, which means the tabs get squashed. There was an article about how they hired a submarine engineer to get everything to fit into the box—and it’s an impressive feat, for sure, but a lot of it feels like it fits when it’s new, but isn’t designed for good storage once everything is punched out and in use.
The large tray on the bottom is intended to be left at the bottom of the box. It has the health/XP dials, large enemy cards, building cards, a bunch of sealed envelopes, and then lots of boxes. The smaller boxes along the right are miniatures for all of the player characters, and the flat boxes are the other components for each of the character classes.
Each class has its own set of components so they vary a bit, but the photo above shows is a sample. The Banner Spear is one of the starting classes (and the one I started with). Each box has a player board, a pad of character sheets, a deck of action cards and a deck of modifier cards, an initiative token, and potentially some other tokens. The Banner Spear has a lot of abilities that summon allies or banners, but some characters have none or have other types of tokens. The character itself has a corresponding miniature, but there are also cardboard tokens for each character in case you prefer to use those instead.
The bulk of the cardboard punchouts are the enemies. There are over 40 monsters, demons, guards, machines, and creatures, and there are 6 to 10 copies of most of them aside from the bosses. If you have Gloomhaven, you’ll notice that there are quite a few that you’ve seen before. Each enemy has the standee tokens, an initiative banner, and a small deck of action cards, and the setup sheet tells you to bag these up (with the included plastic baggies) and then, well, pile them all into the box, on top of the stacks of map tiles. While this does get everything to fit in the box, it’s a pretty poor system, particularly when you’re looking for specific enemies for a scenario setup. I ended up labeling all the bags with a marker and lining them up in a shoebox in alphabetical order.
There’s a large board that serves as a map—it has the Northern Coast on the top half, and then a close-up of the Frosthaven outpost on the bottom. You get a pad of campaign sheets, a few sticker sheets (which you aren’t supposed to examine too closely), an alchemy chart, a few books, and scenario flowcharts, plus a little sealed puzzle book.
In case you’re already familiar with Gloomhaven, the rules and sections that are new to Frosthaven are highlighted so you can quickly skim to find the new material. This time, in addition to the scenario book, there’s also a section book. In Gloomhaven, I noted that although you weren’t supposed to know what was on the other side of a door until you open it, it was easy to glance at the setup map and see what was coming. Now, the scenario setup shows you the whole map layout but only includes monsters in the rooms you can see at the start of a scenario, with instructions to look up a particular page in the section book when you open a door (or other events trigger). The section book is also where you’ll find timed events or sometimes the results of decisions you make.
The scenario flowcharts are large sheets that show how one scenario leads into the next. Some are linear paths, and other times there are branching paths that you’ll take depending on the outcome of a scenario. There are scenarios that will unlock after a certain amount of time has passed, and there are others that you can’t play until you’ve made enough progress in the puzzle book.
As you unlock scenarios, you open the flap on the flowchart, which reveals a sticker to put onto the board. The location coordinates are listed on the board, though it would have been nice to have it printed on the margin of the sticker too. The board itself just has the numbered circles, and when you place a sticker it will add the scenario title, as well as some more illustrations about that scenario. There will even be times when you place stickers on top of other stickers. Some stickers overlap the sections of the board that fold, and those stickers are cut into two pieces, but I’ve found that the cuts don’t always line up exactly right.
The Outpost section of the board starts with a few buildings, but the walls are incomplete and most of the outpost consists of empty lots. As you play through the campaign and build up the prosperity level of the outpost, you’ll be able to level up existing buildings and build new ones, giving you access to stronger abilities. The building stickers stack as you level them up, and it’s fun to see the little details that are added as each one is improved.
Since the core of the gameplay in Frosthaven is the same as Gloomhaven, I don’t want to get too bogged down in the mechanics here. You can read my review of Gloomhaven for a more detailed breakdown, and I’ll mostly highlight the differences here.
A quick sketch of the gameplay: each scenario has its own setup map, enemies, and various terrain features placed on the map according to the scenario book, and some have special rules as well. Each player has a hand of action cards that each have a top action and a bottom action—typically attack on the top and movement on the bottom, but this can vary greatly from character to character. On your turn, you choose two cards from your hand to play—this will determine both the initiative order for the players and give you the options for your turn. Each monster type on the board will also flip a card from their individual decks, which will determine their initiative and dictate their behavior.
When it’s your turn, you choose one of your cards to use the top action, and the other card uses the bottom action, moving around the map and (usually) attacking the enemies. Some cards—usually the more powerful actions—will be “lost” after you use them, meaning they’re unavailable for the rest of the scenario, but otherwise they go into a discard pile. If you run out of cards in your hand, you’ll have to rest to get the cards back from your discard, but you also lose a card when you rest—that means you have a limited number of turns before you have no more cards available and are exhausted, out of the scenario.
You also have a limited amount of health, which ticks down when you take damage—and, of course, if you run out of health, you’re exhausted for that scenario. You’re also allowed to lose cards to prevent damage, but that runs you out of cards sooner, so you need to maintain a careful balance between losing health and losing cards. Each scenario has its own objectives (defeat all enemies, last a set number of rounds, destroy a particular object) and loss conditions.
In each scenario, you’ll also have a battle goal—this will earn you checkmarks toward perks if you complete them, and they’re a bit like achievements: have more or less loot, kill a certain number of enemies, always move at the top speed, that sort of thing. Gloomhaven came with 24 battle goals; Frosthaven has more than double that. Perks will usually let you adjust your battle modifier deck or unlock a few other abilities.
As you earn XP, you’ll get to level up your character, which increases their starting health, gives you a perk, and lets you add a new card to your deck. (However, your hand size does not increase, so that means you’re swapping out a card for a more powerful card.) Each player has a secret personal challenge that serves as a long-term goal—if you complete the challenge, then your character retires and you start a new character.
Some of the changes are mostly variety: a few new conditions, terrain types, and a new way to gain loot that uses a deck of cards tied to the scenario itself. There are also some changes to the way line-of-sight is calculated and a few new types of actions.
One change is that the events now have seasons. Usually, at the start of each scenario, you’ll draw a road event, a bit of story that gives you some options, and then you flip the card to see the result of your choice. Now, you’ll draw either a winter road event or a summer road event, depending on the season according to your campaign sheet calendar.
The biggest change, though, is the Outpost phase. After most scenarios, your party returns to the Frosthaven Outpost. Each time this happens, you first mark off the next box in the calendar—some of these have section numbers pre-printed on them, and sometimes there will be section numbers that you’ve been instructed to add based on events or scenarios. When you reach one of these, you read that section of the book and resolve the outcome.
Then, you draw an Outpost event card (again, based on the season). Like the road events, these have a bit of story and some options to choose from, but they’re usually a different type of event that has some effect on the outpost rather than the scenario you’re about to play. They also include attacks on your outpost, which can damage or wreck your buildings, and these are resolved with a town guard deck that is similar to your character’s battle modifier deck.
Each building in your outpost has a corresponding card, and you’ll have an opportunity to use them after resolving the event. For instance, you may be able to buy resources, train soldiers, or brew potions. If a building is damaged or wrecked, you have to pay resources to repair them, and you lose their effects until they’re repaired. Upgrading a building will require you to be at a particular prosperity level, and you’re generally limited to building or upgrading one thing each Outpost phase.
Your campaign sheet also tracks things like your morale (which can be spent for repairs or extra building), your soldiers (used to boost defense during an attack), and shared resources. Just like your character can earn perks to tweak your battle modifier deck, the town guard also has perks to modify the town guard deck—though my party hasn’t gotten to that stage yet! There’s also a section at the bottom of the sheet to record when a character retires—by fulfilling their personal quest.
The Outpost phase is also when you’ll be able to craft items, buy items, brew potions, and level up characters when applicable.
Frosthaven is GeekDad Approved!
When I wrote up Gloomhaven several years ago, I was still in the middle of another campaign game so it was hard to set up a regular group to play it, and I’ll admit that I did not manage to make it very far, though I still have plans to get back to it eventually if I find the right group for it. This time around, though, I’m playing Frosthaven with two friends who did complete Gloomhaven themselves, and their enthusiasm and consistency mean we’ve already gotten further into the campaign than I did before. We’ve logged 20 sessions so far as of this writing, and I’ve even managed to retire my first character.
What I said about Gloomhaven still holds true for Frosthaven, but more so. It’s even more expensive and even bigger (both in box size and in scope). There are 137 scenarios on the flowchart, and while you won’t play all of them because some branches force you to choose one path or another, you’ll still have plenty to do. Each session takes our 3-player group between 2 and 4 hours to complete depending on the complexity, so even playing weekly I imagine this will take over a year to complete, possibly close to two. Even so, whenever we finish a scenario we’re usually itching to play more, and if I didn’t have so many other games in my queue (and, you know, other friends I also want to play games with) it would be tempting to play Frosthaven multiple times a week instead.
I think one of the key things that sets Frosthaven apart from other dungeon crawlers I’ve played is the way the cards function—picking two cards to set your initiative, and then getting to decide how to use those two cards once your turn actually comes up, gives you a couple of challenging choices while retaining some flexibility. The battle modifier cards, used instead of rolling dice, are another interesting feature. You always have the possibility of a critical fail or a critical hit in the deck, but you can modify a lot of the in-between using your perks, so you can tweak the deck to fit your play style.
I also like the way that characters retire and change out over the course of the campaign. Some quests take longer than others, but it also keeps things fresh for the players. As you play, you unlock new classes to try out, but even if you go back and play one of the previous classes, you could choose different action cards when you level up—and that’s not even considering the way you can modify the cards themselves with enhancements.
The game’s difficulty level feels nicely tuned. The scenario’s level is based on the individual levels of the characters, and that affects the monster levels, how much damage traps do, how much gold or XP you earn, and so on. We’ve found that in most scenarios we’re just eking out a victory (or just barely losing), which keeps it thrilling. There have been several times that we thought we weren’t going to make it, but then managed to scrape by, and that’s such a satisfying feeling (and keeps you coming back for more).
The Outpost is a nice addition in Frosthaven—it gives you a feeling of leveling up as a party. Will you build up your walls to add to the defense? Or maybe a boat or a sled so you can access some hard-to-reach scenarios? Or upgrade your Alchemist so you can start brewing more powerful potions? The calendar events are also a nice touch, and I always enjoy it when we’re instructed to write a number a few weeks in the future. What will it be—did our plans work out or will things come back to bite us?
If you like a bit more immersion (or if you don’t like reading out loud yourself), I highly recommend the Forteller narration app ($17.99). The app includes all of the scenarios and sections, as well as the event cards. It’s not just a narrator reading the text—there are voice actors with different accents, atmospheric background noise, and other sound effects. It really adds to the setting, and the app is fairly easy to use. You can hear the prologue above to get a sense of it.
For the gameplay, I also recommend using the free Xhaven Assistant app (iOS and Android). You can connect multiple devices so each person uses their own, or you can share a device. It automatically pulls up the monsters and loot deck based on the scenario, and once you’ve put in your characters and levels, it adjusts the difficulty level. You enter your initiative numbers into the app and hit “draw,” and it draws all of the monster cards and arranges everyone in order, so you don’t have to manually draw (and shuffle) all of the monster action cards and mess with the initiative banners. The app will also track things like the elements, your health and XP, and loot that you’ve collected, and has little pop-up messages for scenario rules like when more enemies are supposed to spawn. We use a combination of the app and the physical tokens, but it speeds up some of the setup and upkeep for the game.
Frosthaven is best suited for a group that can be consistent… and that plays well together. If you find yourselves constantly arguing any time you play a cooperative game, this may cause a little too much friction! (Though given the game’s theme, that might be appropriate behavior for a group of mercenaries.) If you’re able to get together with the same group regularly, there’s an amazing world to explore together.
Currently, Cephalofair Games is running a Backerkit campaign called “Gloomhaven Grand Festival,” which includes a host of related products: Gloomhaven second edition, the Gloomhaven Role-Playing Game, Frosthaven second printing, and various minis sets for Gloomhaven and Frosthaven. It’s a chance to get things at a slightly reduced price compared to retail, and there are lots of livestreams featuring gameplay and interviews in case you want to learn more.
To pick up a copy of Frosthaven, you can visit the Cephalofair website, or check out the “Gloomhaven Grand Festival” Backerkit campaign!
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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.
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]]>How do you buy Christmas gifts on a tight budget? These Dollar Tree gift ideas for Christmas will help you make a lot of people on your list happy this year…without spending much.
Seriously – most of these are under $10, and many of them are around $5.00.
But, you wouldn’t think so with how much your gift recipient is going to receive!
That’s the beauty of the Dollar Tree.
Let’s get started.
I am SO excited about these Dollar tree gift ideas for Christmas, that we’re just going to jump right in.
My sister dried some of her sourdough starter, then gifted it to me last year with instructions for what to do.
I finally brought it back to life after moving last month, and it’s been such a fun and rewarding journey!
You could gift someone else some of your sourdough starter, plus the items below that they’ll need (OR, just the items below if you don’t make sourdough yourself).
You’ll need:
You might want to print out one of the free sourdough guides (like this one-page sourdough guide, or this more in-depth sourdough guide) available on the internet as well, roll it up, and tie it with a bow!
Bonus: I found a really cool fiction audiobook for just $1.25 about someone making Sourdough. That could make a nice addition! You can also look in their magazines/book area for any sourdough starter niche guides. You never know.
Total Cost: $5.00 (plus tax)
Did you know you can get 100% pure essential oils at the Dollar Tree?
I sure didn’t, until I got a bit curious and found them near the candles section.
Aroma Guru Essential Oils are actually sold on Amazon for about three times the price of what you’ll find at the dollar store.
There are lots of different yoga mat spray recipes using essential oils.
You’ll need:
You can either make it ahead of time and give them the bottle with a chalk tag saying “Yoga Mat Cleaner” as the gift, OR, give them all that’s needed plus write a recipe on the chalkboard tag (if you’re using the chalkboard tags, then don’t forget the chalkboard pen or a metallic pen – Dollar Tree has that, too!).
Total Cost: $8.75 (plus tax – this cost includes the chalkboard tags and pen, that you can use with other gifts as well)
Hint: you can also put the spray bottle with cleaner in it, and microfiber cloths in a tin, and gift it like that for a little yoga mat cleaning station.
For the doggie owner and doggie lover in your life, why not make homemade treats and package them in a cute way?
Here’s my recipe:
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Mix everything together until combined (when you squeeze a bunch in your hand, it should stick together). Scoop into small mounds on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 16 minutes. Allow to cool before packaging them up.
These can be stored in the fridge for about 5 days, or kept in the freezer for longer.
You’ll find the doggie treat container in the pet section, and the scoop from the party section, FYI (the twine is in the craft section).
Total Cost: $8.75 (plus tax – cost includes the twine, scoop, and container)
Got $11.25 (plus tax)?
That’s all you’ll need to make a cute Trail Mix set from the Dollar Tree.
You’ll want to buy:
Hint: don’t forget to wash and dry the container out before putting food in it.
Mix all that together, put it in the container. Then cut a piece of twine big enough to wrap around the scoop a few times (to secure it in place), and wrap around the whole container. Tie it in a bow.
Total cost: $11.25 (plus tax)
If you show up at my door with this? I would just get the biggest smile on my face.
And that’s my wish for whoever you make this for!
You’ll want to grab:
Total cost: $7.50 (plus tax)
Did you know Dollar Trees have a movie section? I’ve found some really bad ones, and…some really cool ones.
Each is only $1.25.
I made this movie night family gift from the Dollar Tree – all for just $13.75 (plus tax).
The Dollar Tree Gift Basket includes:
Total cost: $13.75 (plus tax)
The Dollar Tree has a surprising number of sensory toys and products now.
You could make a bin for someone in your family with a child who loves these types of things, for a teacher, for a Sunday School teacher…lots of options here.
Just grab a bin or container of your choice, and then add some of the following:
I also thought the packages of Crayola Model Magic are just perfect…but they will dry in air – I love squishing them around in their original package.
Total Cost: $8.75 (plus tax)
Well, this is a bit fun…how about taking a bunch of the sample-sized, gourmet jams & spreads offered at the Dollar Tree, and putting them inside a snow globe (from their crafts section) for your gift?
I’ve got the following in there:
You can include some red tissue paper in it, or tie a pretty ribbon around it to make it more festive.
Total Cost: $7.50 (plus tax)
I am so, so excited about this one (and, would love to be on the receiving end, too!).
In the tools section, get a food grade snacklebox (this particular one in the photo has the number 5 on it).
In the crafts section, grab these classy black labels, plus a liquid chalk pen.
And of course, get some popcorn!
In the snacklebox, include popcorn toppings like:
You’ll also want a cute, reusable spoon they spoon everything out with (and a bag of unpopped kernels!).
Hint: you’ll have leftover of many of these ingredients, so you might want to grab a few more snackleboxes and labels so that you can make several of these to give out and cut your costs even more.
Total cost: $15.00 (plus tax, for 7-9 different topping options – you can always choose to just have 5 or so options, and repeat several)
For families with kids in sports, this can be a great gift because it’s a put-together box of snacks (for a night when they’re just barely having time to eat between sports).
Assemble the following:
Total Cost: around $10 (depends on what you want to include, and how many)
Have you ever heard of Stroopwafels? They’re this super yummy Danish cookie with caramel in the center.
You’re supposed to put the cookie on top of a steaming mug of something, so that the caramel gets ooey-gooey and even more delicious.
Well, they’re now at the Dollar Tree!
Go ahead and treat your recipient to a mug + Stroopwafel (one for each person in their family) to enjoy this holiday season.
Total Cost: $2.50+ (depends on how many people in a family you’re buying for)
Wow – I hope you're as inspired as I am. I had so much fun putting these Dollar Tree gift ideas for Christmas together. Not only that…but I worked on my own Christmas list in the process! Score.
The post 11 Dollar Tree Gift Ideas for Christmas (I’d Love to Receive!) appeared first on Frugal Confessions - How to Save Money.
]]>Georges Perec’s Life a User’s Manual, a marvelous specimen of the Oulipean style itself, is a work which not only confirms that the writing still has it, but also exemplifies the unquenchable thirst for the unknown to burst straight out of it like
September 6, 2017
In a vast realm of anecdotes, being nothing more than just another floor of a multi-story edifice called “Life” (not necessarily the top one, neither the floor per se – it is probably more like an alcove so obvious in its presence, that we no longer pay attention to it, a not-so-heart-stopping crawlspace supplied only with an insignificant ‘cargo’ of chilling mysteries and thrilling miseries, etc.), there is a seemingly dull one about Karl Popper, who once allegedly asked his students during a lecture: “What do scientists do?”. When being answered ”They make observations.”, he replied: “Well then, observe.”. The slightly disoriented students inquired: “What shall we observe?”. This “what” was the focal point of Popper’s argument he wanted to clinch – we cannot get involved in any kind of scientific activity (e.g., assembling a device which is then applied to make our experiment work, developing the most efficient and the least time-consuming data gathering method, choosing the adequate mode of mathematical calculation for the corresponding phenomenon and its hidden, elusive essence we hope to eventually unveil one day, etc.), unless we, for lack of a better expression, ‘obey the rules’ of the theory, which we are struggling to prove with all our scientific actions and machinations. Avoiding further philosophical babble, Austrian-born thinker claims that the theory consisting of hypotheses comes first and it is only afterwards that it ‘tells’ us an approximate way of what we shall do to falsify and reject it or to corroborate and leave it be just for the next ‘cannonade’ of falsifying experiments. Cutting to the chase: cannot do anything without a theory.
But then again what would happen, were we to lay our hands on something, which would enable us to eat a cake and have it too? What would we do, if we crossed our paths with results of visual investigations performed regardless of each and every “what” of the theory, executed without any necessity to relate to the latter, yet somehow being totally dependent upon it? How would we react whether the effects of our heedful peeps, irrespective of their parallel existence alongside theoretical assumptions, dwindled our capacity to pin down which one precedes the other, let alone immobilized our ability to tell which is which? Should not some sort of user’s manual help us out of this stubborn, quite paradoxical cul-de-sac of questions? You bet it should. If only it weren’t the thing which corroborates our ‘ouliply’ astounding doubts…
Before we focus on the aforesaid notions, let me disentangle in a bit wikipedic fashion the enigmatically sounding adverb from the previous sentence. Oulipo or, if one prefers the alternate spelling, OuLiPo, which stands for a phrase that could be roughly translated as “A Workroom For Potential Literature”, was a group of French writers and mathematicians, who aimed at paving new ways for the development of literature by implementing a highly complex set of restrictions, based on advanced mathematics, logic, topology, game theory and some skillful wordplay (lipograms, palindromes, tautograms, and so on) as a regulatory groundwork and scaffolding for the ongoing writing process. Back in the 60’s, its founding fathers – Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais – wished to impose this intellectual bondage on letters in order to show that they (the letters, not them) had not had the last word yet on their already known tendency as well as genuinely trailblazing potency to express and impress, to provoke and evoke, to baffle, shuffle, scuffle, muffle, and so on. Georges Perec’s Life a User’s Manual, a marvelous specimen of the Oulipean style itself, is a work which not only confirms that the writing still has it, but also exemplifies the unquenchable thirst for the unknown to burst straight out of it like an ink geyser, spraying out new sentences, paragraphs and passages in the wildest specters of colors, forms and shapes yet to be recognized, named and wondered upon.
Scowling skeptically at Popper’s revelations myself, it would be very unwise of me to engage in giving you hinting winks exclusively about the theory which formed Perec’s novel. It would mean that I somehow neglect the remaining ‘dimensionality’, the observable space from under the ‘surface’ of the book. On the other hand, all I should write here, which would be sufficient enough to hold back the surplus words that beg to get penned, is just one quote, a very significant one though: “Look with all your eyes, look”. Unfortunately, this sentence sounds like neglecting the theoretical negligence above. And that would be like giving a slap in the face of mathematics: multiplying two negatives does not give a positive (I don’t mind smacking it here and there from time to time, but as far as Oulipean inclination for math is concerned, it would not do any good here). Frankly, the easiest way to cut this unforeseen Gordian knot is to imagine yourself being left on a frozen lake. All you have is a pair of ice skates. Suddenly, out of the blue, an opportunity arises. Ice diving. Not beneath the frozen surface of the lake (although you have to pierce right through it), but somewhere else. You don’t know squat about it, but you can already feel the chills of excitement down your spine… So pick your skates and come with me to drill some ‘ice holes’ we can dive into. Oh, and never mind the scuba gear and other indispensable equipment. I will bring some for you. And Georgie will fetch user’s manuals, of course…
Pages. Five hundred. Their quantity controlled. Their quality breathtakingly absorbing. The ‘narrative eye’ fades in. A townhouse in cross section appears. Chapter by chapter, we move along, watching. We slide up and down the revealed interior. We glance at rooms, halls, cellars and servants’ quarters. We glimpse at the staircase and inside the boiler room. We even snoop around the lift machinery and the service entrance. Our jumps are smooth; might there be a hidden pattern to recognize? It takes a while to spot it – an auxiliary sketch is in demand. Just a brief outline, a couple of shaky lines… oh, it is a knight! So here we go: left, left and up – the staircase, second floor on the right. A prepubescent grandson of a piano tuner is sitting in front of Madame de Beaumont’s apartment. He is reading a novel about a polymath who lived at the turn of the 19th century. Splash! – we are being immediately sunken by an adventurously oneiric short story of an exceptionally exquisite literary craftsmanship. A couple of dozen pages earlier: down, down and right – a crummy kitchen of an old man called Cinoc. The oldster, whose name has precisely 20 spelling and pronouncing variations, has been employed as a self-proclaimed “word-killer”. Down through another hole! – we are being entertained by 30 examples of terms and phrases which Cinoc has gotten rid of. Not to mention the long-forgotten historic figures, those marginally worthwhile utensils and absolutely worthless encyclopedias Cinoc must have rummaged through first! Among fits of laughter, we keep wondering whether this awkward potpourri ever existed or was it just fabricated by Perec’s prodigious coining prowess? One hundred fifty pages later: right, down and down – a grandiosely decorated drawing room of an individual named Bartlebooth is opening up before us.
In this instance, appearances are not deceiving – the Englishman, one of the two most memorable figures found in the novel, possesses an equally sophisticated character. After all, to sacrifice 50 years of one’s own life for the ultimately puzzling concept is not a feat which characterizes some mindless, unimaginative, straightforward fellas. The ‘cracked ice’ here crystallizes into a detailed account of Bartlebooth’s recent problems with an obstinate art critic and the tourist companies he has been affiliated with. Let’s move on to our next random stop, this time just one floor below: left, left and down – it is Altamonts’ apartment and another finely furnished drawing room. The sixteen-year- old daughter of the hosts – Véronique – is staring at a photograph of two ballet dancers amidst their barre routine conducted by a lanky, stereotypically looking instructor. One of the girls in the picture is Véronique’s mother, whose tragic mistake and its horrid aftermath shattered her promising career as a prima ballerina over twenty five years ago. The teen has a tendency to dig in the recent history of her closest family and this particular predilection leads us to another blowhole: a painfully touching letter of Cyrille Altamont. Who is that man to Véronique, what is his letter all about, and to whom is it addressed – these are the questions, to which you all should find answers on your own. Besides, my oxygen level is getting low and I have not uttered a single word yet about perplexing perspectives and prospective perceptivities we are exposed to in the astonishing conglomerate of Perec’s “obseory”.
That’s right, “obseory” is the term, a roaring hybrid of observations and theory, for when we are straining the overwhelming state of our minds reading Life a User’s Manual, we cannot help but notice that Perec’s vertical dissection of a townhouse at 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier and our subsequent vivisection of all the flats, apartments and other rooms combined together form some kind of new floor or, even better, a groundbreaking ‘twin tower’ for our skyscraper-ish reality, where the reigning monarch is a hermaphrodite of two ‘sexes’: assumption and scrutiny. French author, with surgical precision, uses his scalpel of writing which resembles a multi-dimensional prop from an FX studio. Its blade, forged by one of the most talented blacksmiths that have ever graced this planet – Theo Constricteur, has a thin, unnoticeable groove, through which the matrix (the matri[n]ks?) of observable letters is being squirted out and splashed around. Just like Winckler, the old craftsman who lived on the sixth floor, Perec operates his cutting tool to ‘sculpt’ something of such a frenetic intensity, let alone voluminous, overbearing momentum, that it somehow exceeds every question concerning possible and impossible spatiality and temporality of descriptions within and beyond the novel, as well as eludes our ability to distinguish chronology of certain ‘observable areas’ of the book itself, when we are snuggling ourselves inside its epic ‘premises’. It is precisely during those moments, that Perec refutes Popper’s assertions so effortlessly and mercilessly (provided we are not confining ourselves exclusively to the scientific plateau), that we almost feel bad for our poor old Karl. As we are being befuddled by the charming chunks of stories, bold boulders of histories and splendid slabs of accounts, which have been saturated with countless historical and imaginary facts, objects, things, extensions and other existentialities, we expose ourselves to the riddle that even the mentioned Winckler – as sly as a fox when it comes down to hiding a hoax inside a jigsaw puzzle – would not be ashamed of.
So what is this “obseory” after all? I have my own few suspicions, but I am not even sure which could be described as the least misbegotten one. Is it this almost hyper-realistic entity or, rather, ‘wholeness’ which gives us metaphysical butterflies when we are being completely absent from the ‘as-we-know-it-ness’, due to the blend of Perec’s incarcerated letters and our decompressed percepts? Or is it this odd hypothesis (this one is clearly not trying to precede anything, I assure you!) of our sense of sight sort of ‘coming out’ of our eyes as a stream of potentiality-to-see, fusing with all that have always been outside, in front of, next to, above, beneath, across, on, in, out, behind and between (not only in the spatial mode, but also in the temporal one too), assembling new ‘compound beings’, which could be referred to on an ad hoc basis as “block-visuals”? Or maybe it is the other side (what other side?) of the language itself? When we use it in a certain self-entangled or, shall I say, self-restrained combination, it may branch out into some pristine ‘places of descriptiveness/de-scriptiveness’, dragging along and merging with common phenomena, which we have grown accustomed to ages ago. Or maybe it still would be something much more different from what we can possibly imagine, even during these rare days of our genuine seer- like insightfulness?…
I have nearly emptied my scuba tank. I suppose I will have to resurface any second now. You remain ‘under’ with Georgie. Just remember to “look with all your eyes, look”! In the end, despite my previous objections, it may be the best quote to sum up one of our approaches to the shape of Oulipean and post-Oulipean letters to come as well as to those which have already come. Who knows what other puzzles the obseory prepared for us out there and what we would discover if we stared long enough through those still bewildering spectacles of o’s, which are hiding in the very center of the verb “look”? But I will not theorize and speculate anymore. You may not take it and pop(per) off…
Amonne Purity
Whether she loves to cook, read, or relax, many creative and thoughtful gift ideas will make mom feel loved and appreciated all year round. In this post, we’ll explore some of the best Mother’s Day gift ideas that can be given throughout the year.
Time is one of the most precious gifts you can give someone, especially your mother. It’s often challenging to find time to spend together due to our busy schedules, but setting aside some time to spend with your mom can be a great way to show appreciation for everything she does.
Some ways to give the gift of time include planning a weekend getaway or a day trip to a nearby city, attending a class or workshop together, or simply setting up a weekly phone call to catch up.
If your mom lives far away, consider sending her a thoughtful gift, like a puzzle or a monthly subscription box, that can be enjoyed over time. These small gestures can make a big difference in maintaining a strong bond with your mother, even when you’re miles apart.
Regardless of your specific activity or gift, remember that the gift of time is truly priceless. It’sIt’s a chance to make lasting memories with your mom that she’ll-she’ll cherish for years to come. So, consider the gift of time next time you’re looking for a meaningful gift idea.
If your mom loves to reminisce and cherish old memories, personalized photo gifts can be perfect for Mother’sMother’s Day. From customized photo mugs to photo canvases, there are endless options. One excellent option is to create a photo book featuring all the best family memories, which can be updated yearly to include new photos and memories. Several websites and apps allow you to create personalized calendars, blankets, phone cases, and jewelry using your favorite images.
Another thoughtful photo gift idea is to create a photo collage featuring all your family members. This is a great way to remind your mom of the special bond she shares with her loved ones and will make a beautiful addition to her home decor. Personalized photo gifts can also be made at home by creating a scrapbook or DIY photo frame. You can include quotes, messages, and your favorite family moments to make it even more special.
Overall, personalized photo gifts are a timeless and thoughtful way to show your love and appreciation to your mom. She will cherish them for years and be reminded of your love whenever she looks at them.
Another great gift idea that can keep on giving is a monthly subscription box. Subscription boxes come in all shapes and sizes and can be tailored to suit your mother’smother’s interests and preferences. There’s a subscription box for just about everything, from beauty and skincare to gourmet food and wine.
For example, if your mother is an avid reader, consider signing her up for a book subscription box. This way, she’ll receive a new book every month and some fun bookish goodies. If she loves cooking, there are subscription boxes that send recipe cards and ingredients for delicious meals.
The best part about subscription boxes is that they’re often a surprise, and it’s always exciting to receive something in the mail each month. Plus, it’s an excellent way for your mother to discover new products and brands she may not have otherwise tried.
Some popular subscription boxes include FabFitFun, Birchbox, Ipsy, Blue Apron, and Hello Fresh. However, there are many others to choose from, so do your research and find one that suits your mother’smother’s interests.
Monthly subscription boxes are a unique and thoughtful gift that your mother will surely appreciate long after Mother’sMother’s Day has passed.
For moms who love getting creative, DIY crafts and projects make the perfect gift to enjoy year-round. From handmade jewelry to home decor, there are endless possibilities for what you can create. One idea is to make a personalized memory book or scrapbook filled with cherished family photos and mementos. This gift is sentimental and serves as a beautiful keepsake that mom can enjoy for years to come. Another fun DIY project is to have photos of memorable moments printed on fabric to create a hand-sewn quilt.
The best part about DIY projects is that they can be tailored to your mom’smom’s interests and personality, and they show that you put in time and effort to create a personalized gift just for her. So, let your creativity run wild and show your mom how much you appreciate her.
Being a mother is no easy feat, and caring for oneself can sometimes be overlooked. This is why gifting self-care items can be a thoughtful gesture.
Consider giving items such as a spa day gift card, aromatherapy oils, diffusers, cozy blankets, pillows, or even a book on meditation and mindfulness. These gifts can help promote relaxation, rejuvenation, and overall well-being.
Other great self-care ideas include a monthly yoga subscription, a self-massage kit, or even a set of luxurious skincare products. These gifts show that you care about the recipient’srecipient’s physical and emotional health and can encourage them to take some time out of their busy schedules to focus on themselves.
Remember, Mother’s Day is just one day of the year, but the gift of self-care can be enjoyed all year long. By giving these thoughtful gifts, you are showing your appreciation for all that the mother figure in your life does and helping her prioritize her self-care.
While traditional gifts like flowers, cards, and chocolates are always appreciated, choosing a gift that lasts throughout the year can be even more meaningful. Whether you opt for Mother’s Day gift baskets, monthly subscription boxes, or a DIY craft project, there are countless ways to show appreciation for your mom all year round. Remember, it’s not about the size or cost of the gift – it’s about the love and thought behind it. So take some time to consider what your mom would genuinely enjoy, and surprise her with a gift that will make her smile long after Mother’s Day has passed.
The post Mother’s Day Gift Ideas That Can Be Given Throughout the Year appeared first on The Fashionable Housewife.
]]>The Big Bad Wolf Book Sale Manila 2023 has arrived, bringing with it an unparalleled celebration of literature and an extraordinary shopping experience. Until July 3, book enthusiasts can indulge in unbelievable deals, incredible performances, and exciting prizes.
Unbelievable Deals:
Book lovers can expect an extensive selection of titles at jaw-dropping discounts of up to 95% off across all genres. But the incredible savings don't stop there! Students can enjoy an exclusive 5% discount on weekdays, while Metrobank credit card holders can take advantage of a remarkable 10% cashback offer. These unbeatable deals make it the perfect opportunity for bookworms to expand their collection without breaking the bank. With each passing day, the Big Bad Wolf Book Sale Manila 2023 offers new and unbelievable deals. (Please see appendix on daily deals on book titles)
BBW Price: P950 BBW Price: P540 BBW Price: P110
Regular Retail Price: P3,670 Regular Retail Price: P2,390 Regular Retail Price: P440
Unbelievable Acts:
The Big Bad Wolf Book Sale Manila 2023 is not just about shopping for books. It's a vibrant and immersive experience that showcases remarkable performances from talented bands, singers, and other performers. Attendees will be treated to captivating talks and book signings by authors and notable personalities, adding an extra layer of excitement and inspiration to the event. (Please see appendix on daily performers)
Unbelievable Prizes:
As if the book sale extravaganza wasn't enough, attendees have the chance to win unbelievable prizes. By sharing their Big Bad Wolf Book Sale Manila 2023 experience on social media with creative photos and videos using the hashtags #BBWManila2023 and #TrolleyfulOfBooks2023, participants can enter the contest to win daily vouchers worth P25,000. And for one lucky grand winner, a trolley full of books awaits, making the prize truly extraordinary.
So be sure to check out the Big Bad Wolf Book Sale Manila 2023, happening until July 3, open daily from 10 AM to 1 AM at the Forum Tent in PICC, Pasay City. Don’t forget to SCAN and REGISTER the QR Code throughout the hall to get access to the Book Sale and the unbelievable deals in store for all book lovers.
This is a MUST, do not forget! It's an event you don't want to miss—the ultimate destination for unbelievable deals, unforgettable performances, and a chance to win incredible prizes. Join us in celebrating the joy of reading and immerse yourself in an experience that will leave you spellbound.
For more information regarding Big Bad Wolf Books’ grand return to the Philippines, please visit:
Website: https://bigbadwolfbooks.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bbwbooksphilippines/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bbwbooksph/
About Big Bad Wolf Books
The Big Bad Wolf Books was founded by Andrew Yap and Jacqueline Ng in 2009 and first launched in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In the words of the company’s founders, Big Bad Wolf aims to cultivate reading habits, increase English literacy worldwide, and build a new generation of book lovers by making books more affordable and accessible to everyone.
One of the company’s best highlights is its Book Sales, which is popular among book lovers around the world. As a global reading advocacy initiative, the sales aim to encourage people of all ages to discover the joys of reading, inspire them to pursue their dreams, and, importantly, empower them with the knowledge to realize them.
Currently, Big Bad Wolf’s Book Sales have toured 15 countries and 37 cities. Among these include different cities in Asia like Malaysia, Cambodia, Manila, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Indonesia. The company has also begun branching out to book readers outside the Asia Pacific, having held book tours in Tanzania, Kenya, and the United Arab Emirates.
For more information, kindly contact:
Zot Brillo| Director of Media Relations | Centaur Marketing
Raye Sanchez | Media Relations Officer | Centaur Marketing
Appendix
Here’s the list of the unbelievable deals up to 95% off and performances you can expect at the Big Bad Wolf Book Sale Manila 2023 this coming week:
Tuesday, June 27, 2023
Unbelievable Book Titles:
Artemis Collection [7 books set] (P950)
Marvel Absolutely Everything You Need to Know (P400)
Chapter Book 128 Disney: Disney Princess Alladin: Jasmine (P110)
Illustrated Treasury of Classic Stories (P700), and Cinderella (P110)
Onsite Acts / Performances:
The Friday Brew
Daniel Cruz
Melissa Corpus
Orange District
Sunset Drama
Angel Sengco
Wednesday, June 28, 2023
Unbelievable Book Titles:
The Throne of Fire (P180)
Epic Big Nate (P600)
Chapter Book 130 Disney: Disney Princess The Little Mermaid (P110)
Snow White (P110), and Illustrated Treasury of the Brothers Grimm (P700)
Onsite Acts / Performances:
Leurrick
HAMI
Kabuwanan
Kim Tumamak
Nico Frayn
Monique SP
Renz Jomel
Paulo B.
Thursday, June 29, 2023
Unbelievable Book Titles:
X (P280)
Pinocchio (P110)
Illustrated Treasury of Princess Stories (P700)
Lightspeed: Space [Book and Model] (P250)
Chapter Book 128 Disney: Disney Princess Sleeping Beauty (P110)
Onsite Acts / Performances:
Jerry Something
NeverSeen
Soleil Misalucha
dFather & dSon
22/7
Friday, June 30, 2023
Unbelievable Book Titles:
Fifty Shades of Grey (P150)
Chapter Book 128 Disney: Disney Princess Beauty and the Beast (P110)
Street Art - Reduced Size (P300)
Alice in Wonderland (P110)
Despicable Me 3 Tin of Books (P220)
Onsite Acts / Performances:
Krizzy Clamor
Bimbo Simbulan
Gabo
Lem David
The Okay Man
Saturday, July 1, 2023
Unbelievable Book Titles:
Illustrated Treasury of Nursery Rhymes (P700)
Little Red Riding Hood (P110), Wizard of Oz (P110)
The Most Influential Women of Our Time (P500)
Masterpieces of the Earth - Reduced (P540)
Onsite Acts / Performances:
RC Seed
Virtue Lennon
Josie Angelo
Edward Anthony
Back by 9ine
Michael Kevin
Afterkol
HUNYO
Sunday, July 2, 2023
Unbelievable Book Titles:
Peter Pan (P110)
Porsche: The Story of a German Legend [Reduced Size] (P540)
Lightspeed: Awesome Planet Earth (P250)
Kids First Puzzle Bible (P190)
Activity Tubes: My Princess World (P90)
Onsite Acts / Performances:
A talk by Michelle Alignay on Supportive Self-Care: a Route to Mental Health
A talk by Marianne Mencias, author of the book Master-Mission-Mate
School Service
Mad Generic
Olkisrotom
Bullfrog Smoochie
Monday, July 3, 2023
Unbelievable Book Titles:
Star Wars Coloring Tin (P270)
Star Wars Art Therapy Coloring Book (P110)
Kids Favorite Puzzle Bible (P190)
NKJV GIft and Award Bible [Black] (P150)
NKJV Gift and Award Bible [Purple] (P150)
Onsite Acts / Performances:
Melbs, Kuya Red
Maya Manzanas
HUNYO
Midge Llado
Anwind
ForSomeReason
Talks by authors Michelle Alignay and Marianne Mencias
Vendor: Random House
Type: Puzzle
Price:
7.95
The Details:
Fast forward to summers of now and we could be prosecuted for leaving our 11-year-old home alone all day every day. And we might feel compelled to put a limit on that morning TV time lest we violate the American Academy of Pediatric’s two-hour screen time guidelines. Contrary to parenting in the ‘80s, if anything can rev up the controlling impulses in today’s parenting, it’s our kids on screens.
For those of us with kids who have aged out of the summer day camp experience, we may be staring down the barrel of summer days with endless hours of screen time with more handwringing options than Bob Barker-hosted wholesomeness . . . and the modern-day screen time battles to go with it.
If you have a teenager like my teenager, they may have refuted any semblance of a structured activity during summer. Even if they have some hours filled throughout the week, they live in the fantasy of marathon days and nights with the end all and be all of life – their friends. Yet, in the reality of summer days that do not include a full-time chauffeur, the younger teens realize they can’t drive yet and thus their freedom is not unfettered. Their friends may have sports or other activities that do in fact make them unavailable to fill up emptiness in their days. So, what will they do with all that time besides be on their phones?
Or maybe you have a school-aged kid who is in day camp but comes home ready to play video games the rest of the day “because it’s summer.” Maybe they feel it’s our penance to allow more gaming than during the school year since we have forced them into the horrors of waking up early to rush off to a day of forced outdoor play in the ninety-degree weather.
Whatever your summer screen time situation, I’m here for you to take at least some struggle out of the power struggle.
What should we actually worry about when it comes to our kids and screens? In her book, How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes, science writer Melinda Wenner Moyer devotes a chapter to this topic in which she expertly debunks misleading headlines and conclusions. Just one example comes from a 2019 study of 350,000 teens that found almost zero effect of the amount of screen time on any bad outcomes. Basically, it’s more complicated than “screen time is bad.”
I have combed through research on screen time effects on young children and could not find convincing evidence that it’s as terrible as we fear. The bottom line is that the extreme of several hours a day before age three is associated with later problems with attention and sleep, but I could not find data to substantiate fears that the average amount of time parents allow toddlers to use screens (around 2-2.5 hours a day) has a negative effect on development.
The point is, your child is an individual that by its nature, research can’t capture. The science can inform your parenting approach without dictating it.
I have a chapter in my book all about how to understand the research on screen time and social media across age groups, and how to then apply autonomy-supportive strategies to managing both in your families. I distill this chapter into several take-home tips here, but know there is a lot more information backing up these recommendations.
Here are a few guiding tips for an autonomy-supportive instead of controlling approach to managing screen time and digital-life activities in your family—for summer and the rest of the year:
1. Observe your child. What do you notice about their mood and behavior after they have been on a device for a while? Some kids are really fine. Others are more explosive (the younger they are, the more likely this is the case). Find their own sweet spot for screen time instead of following a hard and fast 2-hour rule. Different types of screen activities may have different effects – like a TV show can be calming compared to the stimulating dopamine spikes from playing competitive video games.
2. Involve your child in establishing rules. As they get older, they can participate more in setting up rules and expectations related to both screen time and screen-related activities (social media, video games). As part of this discussion, review the reasoning for having limits. Get their input – the older they are, the more they can notice and describe how they feel after “too much.” According to experts, screen time limits are most beneficial for kids under 12, so teens 12 and older will likely respond better to a more individualized and collaborative approach.
3. Be flexible. As kids age, they need less structure. Be open to supervising less to demonstrate trust in their judgment and help them learn to tune into internal limits (“I’ve had enough time on my phone”) instead of relying on you to do it for them. Ongoing discussions about what “too much” feels like can support kids in becoming more aware of their internal states.
4. Stay curious. If they falter with online and social media activities – and they will – show up with curiosity instead of punishment to help them learn from the mistake. Consequences may be an appropriate part of the learning process, but this is different from “you have lost your phone forever!”
With my kids, I work on seeing screen time as an ongoing puzzle with changing piece grooves that force us to continuously evaluate the big picture and adjust how we fit the pieces together. This helps keep me flexible instead of rigidly adhering to rules that can start to feel arbitrary when your child asks, “but why?” It’s okay if your screen time policies shift as quickly as your child’s shoe size. That’s kind of the point – to keep up with their developmental changes and needs.
As the youngest in our household, my 8-year-old needs more limits and enforcement than his sisters. We observe that TV can actually be calming for his active brain and he self-regulates well when he feels done with shows. But after finally allowing Fortnite after a year and a half of fending off his begging, he’s becoming fixated on battle royales and has a hard time stopping at the appointed time. This new challenge is generating discussions about the reason for limiting Fortnite time, which is to ensure it doesn’t interfere with other activities good for his body and brain, like playing outside and reading a book.
On the other end of the developmental spectrum, my 13-year-old and us came to an agreement that we do not track her screen time. I am not suggesting this as a widespread recommendation; this has to do particularly with her personality and our dynamic. It’s an example of regarding each child as an individual rather than a statistic in a research study. However, our non-negotiable rule is that she charges her phone in our room overnight so her sleep is protected.
With her, our barometer of “too much phone time” is how she’s functioning across areas of her life. Is she seeing friends in person, spending time outside, and doing non-phone activities in her room? How is her mood and how much is she helping around the house? Our discussions with her revolve around balance. We also integrate how the values of freedom and responsibility intersect: if she wants freedom with her phone, she needs to show responsibility in her daily life.
It's hard to imagine how eleven-year-old me would have spent my summer mornings had the internet and smart phones existed. Based on my love-hate relationship with both now, I don’t think they would have been as relaxing as watching Bob Barker greet exuberant game show contestants bedecked in outlandish costumes. But I do know that several hours of that classic 80s screen indeed helped my summer feel like summer.
For more reading about screen time and social media:
Screen Time: Is It Really That Bad?
Screen Time in a Pandemic
Social Media, Mental Health, and Teens
Expert rec! Follow parenting tech expert Devorah Heitner, author of Screentime and the upcoming Growing Up in Public, on Instagram and read her Substack for reasonable, science-based tips.
**You can pre-order my book Autonomy-Supportive Parenting: Reduce Parental Burnout and Raise Competent, Confident Children on Amazon and Bookshop.
]]>Artic gear, such as the fur-lined PARKA (to the left), is being tested by personnel at the Natick Army Labs, Boston, MA, 1940's. The Complete History of the Parka |
[TAG9] |
This cat looks like it might eat a Yorkipoo for brekky. |
Get it? He's a stick figure. Haha! |
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While on my bike ride yesterday, I stopped at The Choke Coach to eat artichoke TACOS. |
Well, the font used for the name does look bigger.... |
With all of their Indiana Jones-related releases, Funko Games is certainly setting up to make this summer one full of Indy adventures. We’ve previously played Something Wild! Indiana Jones and Indiana Jones: Throw Me the Idol! This time we were intrigued by the new Indiana Jones: Cryptic game, an escape room-style game centered around the original Indiana Jones Trilogy. Like with the other games, Funko Games was nice enough to send us a copy so that we could play and review it.
Indiana Jones: Cryptic is an escape room-style game based on the first three Indiana Jones movies with three different scenarios that are aimed at 1+ players ages 10+ and takes about 60-90 minutes to play. Each game includes a variety of puzzles as well as a series of maps to navigate through. The game has an MSRP of $34.99.
Since this game is an escape room by design, I’m going to be careful to show the pieces in a way that doesn’t truly create spoilers. Indiana Jones: Cryptic includes the following:
I loved the look of the pieces the moment that I saw them. The Adventure Envelopes are made to look like packaged bundles complete with stamps matching the adventure locations and Indy’s full name and mailing address on them. The Adventure Envelopes include Pathway Cards and other puzzle-style pieces that can be used in their adventure. The Adventure Journal reminds me of the Grail Diary from the third movie and is used to navigate your adventure.
The Expo Markers and Clear Screen are meant to be used together for taking notes and solving the Pathway Card scenarios. There’s also a Plastic Peg, Cardboard Point Coins, and an Instruction Booklet. The booklet gives an overview of the different parts of the adventure and gives good diagrams to help understand how to play.
Overall, I love the components. Some bits are playing card thickness and others make use of thicker cardboard. The details on all the pieces are lovely and fans will really love the nostalgia that they kick up.
I’m going to be careful about what pictures I show to try not to spoil the puzzles. Each adventure is divided into two parts: the Puzzle and the Pathways. Any pictures featured will include parts of the first adventure, Covenant of Raiders.
The goal of Indiana Jones: Cryptic is to solve a series of Puzzles and Pathways Challenges in order to navigate through Indy’s adventures. The more successful you are, the more Coins you earn as a meter of how successful you were.
There isn’t really a lot to setup in this game, but prepping takes just a few steps:
That’s honestly all you need to do to get started.
Puzzles
The first thing Players are faced with is a Puzzle. Like in many escape rooms, there’s a variety of puzzles each more challenging than the next. The goal of each puzzle is to come away with a one- or two-word answer that can be checked in the back of the book in the Hint and Answer Index in the Adventure Journal. The Answers and Hints for the puzzles are assigned codewords to help find them in the Index. This makes it easy to continue the scenarios without spoiling things that are yet to come which I really like.
Each Puzzle starts with taking a number of Coins. When you think you have the right answer, simply check your solution and award yourself the correct number of Coins based on how you did. In some Puzzles, you might be asked to try again if you got a wrong answer, but you’ll lose some coins. If you’re stuck, you can look up a Hint, but Hints do cause you to lose coins. Coins left over after the solution are not lost via additional Puzzles or Pathways and are added to your final score.
Pathways
The Pathway Challenges allow you to reenact key scenes from the movies. To set up a Pathway, place the Clear Screen on the correct Pathway Card, and line them up perfectly. Then find the white start dot and mark it on the Clear Screen with an Expo Marker. Remove the Clear Screen and set it side-by-side with the Pathway Card at least one Expo Marker length away. Take the number of Coins indicated.
Now, draw a Path with the Marker while avoiding certain obstacles and reaching others as the scenario describes. You may erase sections to redraw and adjust if needed. The following scenarios may come up:
Interacting with a Goal: Make an X in Black Marker. As long as that X falls in the Green area of the Solution, you succeed.
Action Tools: Draw in Red using a provided Action Tool. Trace the entire red side you are using. If the tool has two sides, you may choose either. Some scenarios may list how many times you can use the Action Tool. You can use these to Jump and across specific sections, Draw using only the Action Tool, or Hit by making branches off the path like you are throwing an object.
When you think you are done, flip the Pathway Card over, place the Clear Screen on it, and compare your results with the scoring in the Key at the back of the Journal. You will lose or keep Coins based on your accuracy. Coins left over after the solution are not lost via additional Puzzles or Pathways and are added to your final score.
Game End
At the end of the Adventure, you’ll tally up all of your coins and compare how you did against the rankings.
If you like escape rooms and you like Indiana Jones, this should be an easy choice for you. Overall, this is a well-put-together game with lots of details that fans will notice and appreciate.
The Puzzles have some nice variety and go up in challenge levels as do the Pathways. I love that the Pathways feature gives this game its own unique edge and it’s fun to reenact scenes from the movies that I grew up on. I will say that I’m not sure a group of 10-year-olds could do this on their own though. As the puzzles got a little trickier, my 12-year-old grew more impatient while my husband sorted them out the best, and that seemed to carry on to him rushing into the Pathways section, which he had started off much better at. This difficulty jump also hit when the Pathways turned into less straight lines and more curvy lines, and while we solved all of the puzzles, we lost more points in the back half of the Pathways. Those Pathways can be tricky, as you really need to look at an area, spatially orient it, and then recreate it with nothing more than that first dot for guidance. I do think we can score higher the second time we play though. As for our nine-year-old, he got more bored with the story aspect and lost patience with everything, although he did like helping with the Pathways. I certainly recommend taking your time on them and letting more than one person eye them. Also, make sure the people working in it are sitting on the same side of the table so that saying things like “move a little more away” makes more sense.
The components are solidly made and lovely franchise tributes, and they line up well with the game price point. This is one of those things I love about Funko Games; when they make tie-in games, their products tend to be tributes to the fans and not just over-glorified skin covers of preexisting games. I will note that while being familiar with the movies lets you appreciate little details, you don’t have to be a line-dropping hardcore fan to play or enjoy it.
One thing to note is that after the game is played, there’s no replayability among those who have solved things, of course. However, there are three adventures in this game, and with an MSRP of $34.99 that’s a little over $10 for each game, and entertainment-wise you’re lucky if you can get a single movie ticket for that. This game takes 60-90 minutes to play and most 60-minute escape rooms in our area start at $25 a person for that much time, so as a fun date night in, family game night at home, or cool activity night with friends, this is a pretty fair price in perspective. You can find out where to get your own copy here.
Click through to read all of “Relive Indy’s Adventures Escape Room-Style in ‘Indiana Jones: Cryptic’ From Funko Games” at GeekMom.If you value content from GeekMom, please support us via Patreon or use this link to shop at Amazon. Thanks!
Click through to read all of "GeekMom: Relive Indy’s Adventures Escape Room-Style in ‘Indiana Jones: Cryptic’ From Funko Games" at GeekDad.If you value content from GeekDad, please support us via Patreon or use this link to shop at Amazon. Thanks!
]]>Today, the hosts of our podcast How to Talk to People offer advice on making small talk, finding connection, and prioritizing friendships in a world that doesn’t always put non-romantic relationships first.
First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:
Advice, Not Homework
The title of the most recent season of The Atlantic’s How To podcast, How to Talk to People, was sort of a joke—but not entirely, the podcast’s host, Julie Beck, and its producer, Rebecca Rashid, told me recently. Talking to people is not as easy as it might sound. For instance: How does a person make small talk without fainting from awkwardness? And how can we expand our social connections in a society that’s not exactly built for meeting new people? I chatted with Julie and Becca about this season of the podcast, which wraps up next week, and about the value of focusing on the human relationships that tend to get ignored.
Isabel Fattal: Have either of you taken any advice from the podcast back to your own life? Have you met an acquaintance on a train and said, “It’s been so great talking to you. I’m going to go read my book now”?
Julie Beck: I have not been brave enough to use that line yet, but I also don’t know if the situation has arisen. I definitely feel out of my body when I’m doing small talk sometimes now. I have the meta commentary of, Am I doing a good job?
Becca Rashid: I’ve learned from the show more about boundaries for people who don’t always want to be spoken to. I’m the person striking up a conversation with everyone—at cafés I work at, the bus driver, anyone I see consistently enough.
Julie: You took us to your favorite boba shop, and as we walked in, they were like, “Becca!”
When I think about what I’ve learned, it’s less about me changing my habits than just thinking about community a little bit differently. I'm always beating myself up for not reaching out enough or not doing X, Y, or Z. I tend to think, If I was just more diligent and better and did all of these things, then we would have a beautiful, interconnected, happy community utopia. I’ve learned about balancing the reality of life and people’s different needs and competing priorities. Not everyone is going to have the same priorities as you, and that’s fine. I’ve learned to notice what you have and be grateful for that, and not always try to optimize every facet of how you approach your relationships.
Isabel: I love that, because I think, in our self-help-focused era, you can listen to a podcast like this and think, Oh, this podcast is going to help me optimize every moment of my life. It’s good to remind ourselves that’s not the point.
Julie: Right. We want to give you advice, but we don’t want to give you homework.
Isabel: Julie, after conducting 100 interviews with groups of friends for your “Friendship Files” series, you landed on the six forces that fuel friendship. Has this podcast changed your view of those six forces at all?
Julie: I do think all six forces came across in a lot of these conversations—particularly intention, being deliberate and putting effort in, and also grace, which I think is what we were just talking about in terms of “stop optimizing.” One question I had for myself is whether obligation should be added. I think that word has a really negative connotation: It’s something that you don’t want to do, something you are burdened by. But that was a big thread of conversation throughout this podcast, about how so much of friendship culture in America is designed around not putting obligations on one another.
I don’t think we ever used this, because I felt—and continue to feel, even in this moment—like a cheeseball, pretentious person. But there is a C. S. Lewis quote I really love—he wrote a letter to his friend after his wife died, and reflected on having a lot of free time he wished he didn’t have. He wrote, “One doesn’t realise in early life that the price of freedom is loneliness. To be happy one must be tied.”
I don’t actually think of all obligations as a bad thing. In some ways, the commitments that we make to our friends and our neighbors fuel our happiness.
Isabel: Is there anything else you were hoping to discuss that we didn’t get to?
Julie: Just that Becca and I really became friends while we made the podcast.
Becca: I’m a big “food is my love language” person. Julie has brought me food at work, but she’s also brought food to my house. I think that was the moment I realized we were true friends, Julie. For me, it was the reception of the food.
Related:
Listen to the full How to Talk to People series here.
Today’s News
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Explore all of our newsletters here.
Evening Read
Your Phone Is a Mindfulness Trap
By Michael Owen
“Let’s travel now to moonlit valleys blanketed with heather,” Harry Styles says to me. The pop star’s voice—just shy of songful, velvet-dry—makes it seem as if we’re at a sleepaway camp for lonely grown-ups, where he is my fetching counselor, and now it’s time for lights out.
Styles’s iambic beckoning lies within a “sleep story” in the mindfulness app Calm. Like many of its competitors, Calm has become a catchall destination for emotional well-being. In recent years, I’ve cycled through several of these platforms. Using them turns the amorphous, slightly unaccountable act of meditation into something I can accomplish, and cross off the list. That’s the forte of the modern mobile app, after all: easing the completion of a discrete task. Send an email, watch a show, order Kleenex, run at a moderate pace for 30 minutes, doomscroll yourself to sleep. There’s an app for it, and you’ll know when you’re done.
More From The Atlantic
Culture Break
Read. These nine works of serious literature will also make you laugh.
Watch. The Truman Show (available on Hulu, Prime Video, and other streaming platforms) offers powerful insight into the complicities of modern life.
Play. Try out Caleb’s Inferno, our new print-edition puzzle. It starts easy but gets devilishly hard as you descend into its depths.
P.S.
If you’ve only got time for one episode of the How to Talk to People podcast, I’d recommend this one about the two married couples who bought a home together (but, as they find themselves frequently clarifying, are not swingers).
— Isabel
Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.
]]>
Vendor: Thames&Hudson
Type: Books
Price:
11.00
Join the Drag Queens with this satisfyingly difficult join the dots puzzle book! With over 1000 dots in each picture, Jennie Edwards is on a mission to bring you on a dotty drag queen journey, through fabulous eye lashes and sensatinal hair of drag queens such as Trixie Mattel, Bimini Bon Boulash and Alyssa Edwards.
Who wrote it?
Jennie Edwards
How does it come?
Paperback, 31 x 25.5 x 1 cm, 48 pages
The 16-year-old student has an idea, but she doesn’t have the maths to support it. She does, however, have a drawing. She submits it to her tutor. He examines it, then delivers his verdict.
“This is not science,” he says. “This is story-telling.”
The scene is from Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia. The setting is an English country house in 1812. The student has been wondering why a steam engine can not re-energize itself forever, and she believes she has arrived at the answer: heat loss. And, yes, she understands the implications of a physics whose arrow of time goes in only one direction.
“So the Improved Newtonian Universe must cease and grow cold,” her tutor says. By “Newtonian universe” he means not just the cosmos but the whole clockwork kit and caboodle.
Classical physics. Cause and effect. Determinism.
“Dear me,” he adds, dryly.
The pupil has, in effect, discovered entropy. Or rather, “discovered.” She won’t get the credit for it, in part because her drawing will disappear for nearly a couple of centuries—half the play takes place in the present day, in the same room, as scholars puzzle over the drawing and other documents—and in part because all she has to show for her insight are her artwork and some inadequate equations.
But what if she had made the discovery? Would it matter that it was she who made it? Why would it, if the discovery were out there, waiting to be made? Was the discovery out there, waiting to be made?
The nature of scientific discovery, of course, has been a subject of debate at least since Plato wrote a parable about shadows on a wall. The Nature of Scientific Discovery is also the title of a volume of transcripts from an April 1973 Smithsonian Institution symposium commemorating the 500th anniversary of Copernicus’s birth. A few months ago, even before seeing Arcadia in a Broadway revival, I found myself pulling The Nature of Scientific Discovery off my bookshelf just so that I could return to a favorite passage. In a discussion of “Discovery in Art and Science,” the moderator, John U. Nef, at the time a University of Chicago emeritus professor of history, recounts an anecdote:
“I am told that Heisenberg is a very good player on the piano, by the way. He was in residence at Cambridge not too long ago and they asked him if he would play.
“He sat down at the piano and played from beginning to end Opus 111, the last sonata of Beethoven, which is an absolutely unique work. All the dons were more and more overwhelmed by this music, and there wasn’t a sound when he finished.
“Heisenberg is reported in this connection to have discussed the difference between science and art. ‘If I had never lived, someone else would probably have formulated the principle of indeterminacy. If Beethoven had never lived, no one would have written Opus 111.’”
The implication is that scientific discovery is deterministic. That even the discovery of indeterminacy is deterministic. That Plato was right: The forms are out there, waiting to be discovered. That even if what you’re discovering is the principle of uncertainty, the discovery is certain. That there is something inherently Newtonian about scientific discovery, even when the discovery is the demise of Newton’s universe.
But what of artistic creation? What of story-telling? In Arcadia, the tutor offers a distinctly minority opinion when he cautions his student not to expend too much grief on the burning of the library at Alexandria: “The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language.” This discussion comes near the end of the play. The tutor is breathing (as we know, in retrospect) a last gasp of determinism. As one of the scholars from the present day says, “We’re better at predicting events at the edge of the galaxy or inside the nucleus of an atom than whether it’ll rain on auntie’s garden party three Sundays from now.” The presence of too many variables renders an outcome unpredictable—and what could have more variables than the artistic mind at work?
Or so the argument goes. Maybe if the tutor had lived long enough to hear about chaos theory, he would have revised his interpretation of artistic creativity as deterministic. Then again, maybe not, if only because sometimes, as we all know, even chaos needs a curator.
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting the editor of the aforementioned The Nature of Scientific Discovery, the great Harvard historian of science Owen Gingerich. I mentioned that I had recently re-read the passage about Heisenberg’s reflections on his own work versus Beethoven’s Opus 111; thirty-six years after the publication of the book, Gingerich recalled the passage instantly.
Presumably it stuck in his memory because he had tried to fact-check it with Heisenberg himself. Heisenberg, Gingerich said, wrote back that he couldn’t remember if Opus 111 was what he had played on that occasion. This reply was music (if you will) to a historian’s ears: Heisenberg accepted the occasion itself as a given. The anecdote was true!
But was it factual? In addition to what music he had played, Heisenberg went on to question what scientist he had cited. In his letter to Gingerich, he wrote that he probably wouldn’t have mentioned his own work; he suggested he might have used the example of Einstein instead. For Gingerich, however, that possibility carried unpleasant complications. In Nazi Germany, saying that if Einstein had never lived someone else would have discovered relativity was anti-Semitic code. What had begun as a charming anecdote about art and science was threatening to devolve into the chaos of memory and ideology.
“So,” Gingerich concluded, “I decided to leave the quotation as Nef had said it.”
Now that’s story-telling.
* * *
Top: photo by Heidrun Löhrthe from a 2016 Sydney Opera House production of Arcadia. Middle: Beethoven’s Opus 111.
]]>Highlights is having a can’t-miss clearance sale! 📚
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For more than a week now, Reddit moderators have been using the site’s tools to protest proposed business changes. The stalemate reveals how much power the site’s users have accumulated over the years—and just how much the site depends on its moderators’ free labor.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Not a Worker, Not a Customer
If you’re looking for pictures of John Oliver, for some reason, I have a recommendation for you: The Reddit group r/pics. For the past several days, the r/pics forum, normally populated with food pictures and nature shots, has featured a steady drumbeat of photos of the comedian: John Oliver with his wife. John Oliver’s face Photoshopped onto Spider-Man’s body. John Oliver at a desk. John Oliver on his show. Indeed, the group’s moderators have forbidden users from posting anything besides John Oliver photos.
This is more than just a fun stunt (though it is pretty fun for observers). It is one of the various creative ways that Reddit moderators have used their authority in recent days to register discontent with proposed changes to Reddit’s business.
For the past 10 days, moderators of thousands of Reddit forums have been protesting the company’s plans to charge third parties to run apps on the site. Last week, nearly 9,000 forums went dark for 48 hours. Some forums remain shut down this week, and others are continuing to disrupt the normal flow of posts through the pipelines of the platform.
The trouble began after, earlier this spring, Reddit said it would start charging some other companies for Application Programming Interface (or API) access. In April, the company framed upcoming changes as an effort to ensure that it would be compensated when AI companies scraped the site’s reams of user-generated content. More recently, changes have meant that some beloved apps that make the site easier to use will be forced to shut down because of prohibitive expenses.
Reddit moderators can be forgiven for resenting changes that might make their lives harder. After all, they do a significant amount of work for free. Reddit’s users, especially power users such as moderators, contribute in a big way to the quality and growth of the platform. They lead and nurture (and police) communities that gather around various interests, such as relationships, parenting, plumbing, or weighing in on whether, in a given situation, a poster is the asshole. The relationship between Reddit and its users is unique. The company places outsize responsibility on its volunteer moderators, but as a result, they also have outsize power—which means that their coordinated actions can cause much disruption on the platform.
Moderators are not paid employees of the site. But they are not always customers, either—though Reddit has a premium tier, many users don’t pay to use the platform. Reddit, like many tech companies that provide free products, runs ads (cue the adage “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product”). Now, with its new rules, the company is attempting to monetize the content that users—and particularly moderators—have been generating for free.
By protesting the changes, moderators are reminding Reddit just how much the site needs them—and how much the moderators need third-party tools. “Many Reddit moderators rely on third-party apps in order to do their jobs,” my colleague Kaitlyn Tiffany, who reports on internet culture for The Atlantic and recently wrote a great book about online communities and fandom, reminded me this morning. “Without them, they’re rightfully concerned that their forums will be flooded with garbage.”
The API debate has exposed broader fault lines on the site, Fraser Raeburn, a historian and Reddit moderator, told me. He said that Reddit should better acknowledge “the role volunteers play within it, in terms of curating content and keeping Reddit a relatively safe and functional part of the internet.” The moderators of his forum, r/AskHistorians, have restricted posts on their forum as part of the protest. Raeburn said he hopes to see Reddit’s leaders engage constructively with questions and clarify how they will handle the disruptions that come from losing some add-ons.
So far, things have been fractious. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told NBC last week that moderators were like “landed gentry,” and suggested that he might make changes that would allow users to vote moderators out. (When I asked Reddit for comment on the recent protests, I was directed to a blog post from last week on the API updates.) For now, moderators remain powerful.
Moderated communities are what have made Reddit distinctive as a platform, and as a result, helped it last. As Kaitlyn pointed out, “Reddit’s model of empowering moderators has given the site a much longer shelf life than I think many would have thought possible 10 years ago.”
It’s not easy for a tech company to make a lot of money and make all of its users happy—especially on a platform that has an open-source ethos. For all the talk among VCs and techies about the power of community, Reddit is demonstrating how fraught the community-based model can be. Especially as Reddit eyes a potential IPO, its corporate interests and user needs may clash.
Raeburn told me he wants this resolved so that he can get back to the reason he’s on the site: talking about history. But for now, he marvels at the way that the site’s structure and culture made this type of action possible. “Reddit had to give us a degree of control over the site because they wanted us to do that work for them,” Raeburn said. “Reddit, probably inadvertently, has created the structure for protest to succeed.”
Related:
Today’s News
Dispatches
Explore all of our newsletters here.
More From The Atlantic
Culture Break
Read. “The Night Before I Leave Home,” a new poem by Elisa Gonzalez.
“my brother gets out of bed at three, having lain down / only a few hours before, and pulls on his jeans, and stubs his toe / on the bed frame”
Watch. I Think You Should Leave (streaming on Netflix) is a comedy series that reveals the absurdity of office culture.
Play. Try out Caleb’s Inferno, our new print-edition puzzle. It starts easy but gets devilishly hard as you descend into its depths.
P.S.
If you haven’t already read it, I recommend checking out Kaitlyn’s book Everything I Need I Get From You, which is about the boy band One Direction but also about how fans reshaped the internet. Come for Kaitlyn visiting the spot at the side of the road where Harry Styles threw up; stay for her analysis about how users influenced and created value for major corporations. Also, I now see Beatles fans in a new light.
— Lora
Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.
]]>The Ukrainians are making progress in their long-awaited counteroffensive. Meanwhile, the Russian president is talking like a gangster and rattling the nuclear saber—again.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
A Slow, Bloody Business
While we’re all distracted—understandably—by the spectacle of a former U.S. president under multiple criminal indictments, the war in Europe grinds on, consuming lives, burning cities, and threatening global peace. The Ukrainian counteroffensive is now clearly under way, and Kyiv’s forces are making incremental but concrete gains along the front. The Ukrainians are, for the moment, calm and confident; the Russians less so.
Ukrainian officials have been cautious in their evaluations of this early stage of the counteroffensive because they know it’s going to be a long summer. “Hot battles continue,” according to a statement from Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar, and the situation is “difficult.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has acknowledged Russian counterattacks but said yesterday that no positions have been lost, while other areas have been “liberated.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, is talking tough—which itself is a tell, a sign of how he thinks this war is going.
Putin is trying to turn up the global temperature with some swagger about nuclear weapons. This past March, Putin said that he would base Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus, close to Ukraine. Moscow and Minsk have since signed a formal agreement, and Putin now claims that the first weapons have arrived in Belarus. This may or may not be true; Putin has previously said that storage facilities for Russian warheads wouldn’t be ready until July, and the Russian military is not exactly known for getting things done ahead of time, so it’s unclear how much of this is (at this point) mere bluster. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said a few days ago that the United States does not “see any indications that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon”—which isn’t quite the same thing as saying that the weapons haven’t moved—but also that America has “no reason to adjust our own nuclear posture.”
Putin, meanwhile, said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum last week that he had no interest in returning to any conversations with the West about arms control. “We have more of these weapons than NATO countries do,” he said in answer to an interviewer’s question. “They know that, and they keep telling us to start negotiations on reductions. Well, you know, fuck ’em. As our people would say.”
CNN tried to render this Russian expression—хрен им—more gently, as “shove it,” but that’s not even close. Putin has often used this kind of gangsterish tone when he’s trying to project strength, especially to his own people in Russia. (He used similarly rough language, much to the Russian public’s delight, when speaking of what he would to do to Chechen terrorists, using a phrase that, in American Mob idiom, would basically translate as a vow “to whack them in their shithouses.”)
The leader of a nuclear-armed power sounding like Tony Soprano is alarming, but Putin is likely emphasizing Russia’s nuclear deterrent because his conventional forces have been repeatedly humiliated in combat. More to the point, although Russia still has a large military, Moscow has lost its best units and most highly trained officers and soldiers after a year of ghastly losses on the ground.
So what should we expect, and how should we think about this new phase in the war?
First, Americans especially should put aside what they know about recent U.S.-led wars such as the campaigns in Iraq: There will be no gathering on a “line of departure” followed by a massive air, armor, and infantry blitz. Nor is this like D-Day, with men storming the beaches and overwhelming enemy pillboxes. The counteroffensive had no real “beginning,” in that sense; the initial phase probably began with some tentative engagements against the Russians on the edges of Bakhmut shortly after Putin’s forces finally took what’s left of the town a few weeks ago.
Sadly, the Ukraine war is now more like World War I: Both sides have settled in along a large, static line. The Russian high command has been dreading this Ukrainian counteroffensive since last winter, and so the Russians have dug in, taking up defensive positions inside fortifications and huddling in trenches that will have to be cleared out one by one. (The Ukrainians have already released footage of their soldiers fighting in Russian trenches.) The Ukrainians must now probe, feint, and strike where they can, while trying to attack and disrupt Russian supply and reinforcements waiting in the rear, farther back from the battlefield.
Second, there will be no official “end” to the counteroffensive, either. (Well, unless Russia sues for peace, I suppose, but Putin has no apparent interest in any of that.) War is an uncertain and contingent thing; as we teach students at our senior military colleges, the enemy gets a vote on your strategy. Luck always gets a say as well. Americans are used to conflicts in which the United States deploys a large force, seizes the initiative, and keeps it for as long as we wish. The Ukrainians have no such luxury.
Although we should keep an eye on those Russian nukes (and whether Putin is really moving them), the real news in the coming weeks will be whether the Ukrainians can break through points along those Russian lines. The Russians are already engaging in savage counterattacks in an effort to blunt Ukrainian operations, and although sudden collapses and dramatic wins and losses on either side are always possible, the more likely story is one of Ukrainian progress measured by the names of small villages and the coordinates of grid squares on a map—a slower and far bloodier business.
As for Putin’s threats, the Russian president seems to be venting and showing off, which is one way to know that we are not yet in a crisis. When national leaders stop appearing in public, and both Moscow and Washington go quiet, that’s a time to worry. Putin is indulging his usual vulgar sense of humor, and though Americans, like Russians, also have some colorful local expressions, it is better for the Americans and NATO to be the resolute adults in the room, as they have been since the beginning of this criminal Russian onslaught.
Related:
Today’s News
Evening Read
The Real Lesson of The Truman Show
By Megan Garber
Truman Burbank, the unwitting star of the world’s most popular TV show, is supposed to be an everyman. The Truman Show is set in an island town, Seahaven, that evokes the prefab conformities of American suburbia. Truman is a brand in a setting that is stridently generic. Since his birth, he has navigated a world manufactured—by Christof, the creator of his show—for lucrative inoffensiveness. Everything around him exists to fulfill the primary mandate of a mass-market TV show: appealing to the widest possible audience.
The Truman Show hits a snag, though, and the problem is Truman. As he grows up, he proves himself to be less a bland everyman than someone who is quirky and restless and, in the best way, kind of a weirdo. Truman is also unusually inquisitive—a great quality for anyone who is not a piece of IP. Christof, consequently, has spent much of the show’s run trying to squelch Truman’s curiosity. He wants to be an explorer, an excited Truman tells a teacher. “You’re too late,” she replies, on cue. “There’s really nothing left to explore.”
More From The Atlantic
Culture Break
Read. Robert Gottlieb, who edited Toni Morrison, Robert Caro, and others, died last week at 92. His memoir, Avid Reader, is an account of his storied career. Check out the book, and read a remembrance of him by Cynthia Ozick.
Listen. Janelle Monáe’s newest album, The Age of Pleasure, in which joy, extremity, and cheesiness are the mood.
Play. Try out Caleb’s Inferno, our new print-edition puzzle. It starts easy but gets devilishly hard as you descend into its depths.
P.S.
Nuclear weapons are always a grim business. But I have long been fascinated by how nuclear arms and fears of nuclear war seeped so deeply into our popular culture during the Cold War. (In fact, I used to teach a course about it at Harvard Extension School.) So if you’re looking for a little light music to accompany your reading about nuclear issues—such as this article by me last year and another here by my colleague Ross Andersen—I have a playlist for you.
This list won’t include all your sentimental favorites—sorry, fans of “99 Red Balloons”; we’ve heard that one enough—but there’s some odd stuff here: Did you know that Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” was actually the flip side of a single about a nuclear war that leaves only one man and 13 women alive? (Bill sounds pretty happy about it.) And there are songs that even I didn’t realize were about nuclear war, such as “I Melt With You,” a favorite from my college days that I thought was about “melting” emotionally but, as it turns out, was about, you know, actually melting. Enjoy!
You’ll see a bit less of me in the next few weeks as I complete my last tour teaching in Harvard’s Summer School—a bittersweet milestone that rounds out 35 years of my previous career as an educator. I will be taking time this summer to work on an updated version of The Death of Expertise, in which I’ll talk about how the rejection of expertise is a problem that has gotten much worse in recent years, even before the coronavirus pandemic. (You’ll get the first peek at that in an excerpt here in The Atlantic sometime in the fall.)
—Tom
Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.
]]>The music accompanying the opening titles of the new Disney+ series The Good Mothers is a lullaby in the Calabrian dialect:
Ninna, ninna, ninna, ninna, neda The wolf eats the little lamb. Little lamb of mine, what did you do when you found yourself in the mouth of the wolf?
It is a dark and hidden message from a mother to her child before sleep. It serves as a reminder that the world is a dangerous place and your family are not always the people who will protect you. Sometimes, they are the ones who make it unsafe.
Disney’s latest contribution to the mafia genre, a six-episode TV drama series, is based on a book by British journalist Alex Perry. It’s a welcome and refreshing addition to the debate about the delicate role women play in Italian mafias.
Italian mafias are strange, fascinating organisations. They combine both highly sophisticated, modern criminal activities and money laundering scams with internal traditional values and codes that dictate behaviour to members.
The series deals specifically with the fates of three young mothers in the notorious Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta, a violent mafia that is both deeply embedded in the local community and has international reach. It is made up of more than 160 independent cosche, or clans, that exist across Calabria within a hierarchical structure. Each revolves around families with tight blood ties.
One of the innovative aspects of The Good Mothers is that it is framed as a story of “how feminism was key to bringing down Europe’s most powerful mafia”. And it is indeed an important contribution to our understanding of Italian mafias in part because it is a story about women, which is rare.
It’s incredibly difficult to research the roles women play in criminal groups because there is hardly any information available. When data does exist, it tends to adopt “a male gaze”. Most judicial or police sources are collected by men using their male values and gender assumptions, which colours the depiction of the women involved (and will inevitably pervade the narratives of those who use them).
When investigating mafias, there is a tendency to focus on the male-centric elements of operations – the leadership, the violence and the business. Accounts of women describe them either as victims of crime or as irrelevant extras.
The Good Mothers puts women at the centre of the action. Here is a detailed account of Calabrian mafia women who rebelled against the patriarchal, oppressive and violent mafia system by deciding to collaborate with the state to expose the perverse internal workings of their clans.
For one of the first times in English, we see the traumatic and painful life stories of real women – Lea Garofalo, Giuseppina Pesce and Maria Concetta Cacciola. All were born into but eventually escaped the mafia’s power.
The main theme of their testimonies is the sexism, misogyny and machismo that underpins the ‘Ndrangheta’s patriarchal framework. Gender dynamics, contradictions and power relationships are based on values such as family, honour, omertà (a code of silence), respect, violence and revenge.
Cacciola’s harrowing story illustrates how the mafia exploited her love for her children to get her to leave the witness protection programme. She then supposedly committed suicide by drinking acid in August 2011, a story no one believes. Her life represents the many dilemmas and difficulties involved in trying to extract oneself from the violent criminal underworld.
Pesce’s brave account adds complexity by underlining the way women in mafias can have agency – sexually, criminally, emotionally and socially. Pesce participated in the criminal activities of her clan, was outspoken and had an affair while her husband was in prison.
The character Anna Colace (who represents the real-life judge Alessandra Cereti) is another heroine. She is the brave anti-mafia prosecutor who takes on the mob by turning members and relatives into state witnesses. Through her investigations, she understands the power of the women in Calabrian cosche and how their desire to rebel can become a strength for the anti-mafia fight.
The Good Mothers is a genuine attempt at explaining to an international audience how these real-life women and mothers sought to break free from the coercive control of the patriarchal Calabrian mafia system. Their decision became a historic moment that forced a change in the thinking around the ‘Ndrangheta. We learned that family structure, mothers and children are key.
Unfortunately, decades on from the events this series depicts, the ‘Ndrangheta is far from dead. Maybe, we are still missing a part of the puzzle. The Good Mothers missed an opportunity to denounce, highlight and analyse the role of Garofalo, Pesce and Cacciola’s own mothers, who endorsed the patriarchal values of the violent mafia system by manipulating these young women and by trying to stop them from rebelling.
This TV series only tells part of the story because it is based on a book that was itself a reconstruction of judicial investigations and interviews. A male gaze therefore remains.
While there are nuances, women are still largely depicted as victims of the mafia male patriarchy. Absent are discussions about the male victims of the ‘Ndrangheta or the powerful and determined matriarchs who reinforce the structures that allow the ‘Ndrangheta cosche to flourish.
In the book and consequently in the TV series, the mafia’s coercive control is too often portrayed as male when to fully understand it, we must also include the other women who remain in the shadows. It is these women who are the foundation of the ‘Ndrangheta and who should not be overlooked. Mafia oppression is not only male but also female. The essence of the ‘Ndrangheta is not only the good mothers but all the mothers.
Felia Allum was a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow (2018-2022) and received funding from The Leverhulme Trust for a project on 'Women, crime and culture: transnational organised crime as an equal opportunity industry'.
]]>On the day she heard God tell her to buy a mountain, Tami Barthen already sensed that her life was on a spiritual upswing. She’d recently divorced and remarried, an improvement she attributed to following the voice of God. She’d quit traditional church and enrolled in a course on supernatural ministry, learning to attune herself to what she believed to be heavenly signs. During one worship service, a pastor had even singled her out in a prophecy: “There’s a double door opening for you,” he’d said.
But it was not until two years later, in June of 2017, that she began to understand what that could mean, a moment that came as she and her husband were trying to buy land for a retirement cabin in northwestern Pennsylvania. They’d just learned that the small piece they wanted was part of a far larger parcel—a former camp for delinquent boys comprising 350 acres of forest rising 2,000 feet high and sloping all the way down to the Allegheny River. As Tami was complaining to herself that she didn’t want a whole mountain, a thought came into her head that seemed so alien, so grandiose, that she was certain it was the voice of God.
“Yes, but I do,” the voice said.
She decided this must be the beginning of her divine assignment. She would use $950,000 of her divorce settlement to buy the mountain. She would advance the Kingdom of God in the most literal of ways, and await further instructions.
What happened next is the story of one woman’s journey into the fastest-growing segment of Christianity in the country—a movement that helped propel Donald Trump to the White House, that fueled his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, and that is becoming a radicalizing force within the more familiar Christian right.
It is called the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, a sprawling ecosystem of leaders who call themselves apostles and prophets and claim to receive direct revelations from God. Its congregations can be found in cities and towns across the country—on landscaped campuses, in old supermarkets, in the shells of defunct churches. It has global prayer networks, streaming broadcasts, books, podcasts, apps, social-media influencers, and revival tours. It has academies, including a new one where a fatigues-wearing prophet says he is training “warriors” for spiritual battle against demonic forces, which he and other leaders are identifying as people and groups associated with liberal politics. Its most prominent leaders include a Korean American apostle who spoke at a “Stop the Steal” rally prior to the January 6 insurrection and a Honduran American apostle whose megachurch was key to Trump’s evangelical outreach. Besides Trump, its political allies include school-board members, county commissioners, judges, and state legislators such as Doug Mastriano, a retired Army intelligence officer whose outsider campaign for Pennsylvania governor last year was widely ridiculed, even as he won the GOP nomination and 42 percent of the general-election vote.
The movement is seeking political power as a means to achieving a more transcendent goal: to bring under biblical authority every sphere of life, including government, schools, and culture itself, establishing not just a Christian nation, as the traditional religious right has advocated, but an actual, earthly Kingdom of God.
For that purpose, the movement has followers, each expected to play their part in a rolling end-times drama, and that is what Tami Barthen, who is 62, was trying to do.
I called her recently and explained that I was in Pennsylvania trying to understand where the movement was headed, and had found her on Facebook, where she follows several prominent prophets. She said that she was willing to meet but that I should first do three things.
One was to go see a film called Jesus Revolution, and this I did that afternoon, the 2 o’clock showing at an AMC Classic outside Harrisburg. As the lights dimmed, scenes of early-1970s California washed over the screen. What followed was the story of a real-life pastor named Chuck Smith, who opened his church to bands of drugged-out hippies who became known as “Jesus freaks,” a transformation depicted in scenes of love-dazed catharsis and sunrise ocean baptisms—young people rejecting relativism for the warm certainty of God’s one truth. The film, a full-on Hollywood production starring Kelsey Grammer and produced by an outfit called Kingdom Story Company, has earned $52 million so far.
The second thing was to visit a church in Harrisburg called Life Center, whose senior pastor had been among the original California Jesus freaks and now held the title of apostle. I arrived at a glass-and-cement former office building for the midweek evening service. In the lobby, screens showed videos of blue ocean waves. The books on display included Now Is the Time: Seven Converging Signs of the Emerging Great Awakening and It’s Our Turn Now: God’s Plan to Restore America Is Within Our Reach. The apostle was out of town, so another pastor showed visitors into the sanctuary, a 1,600-seat auditorium with no images of Jesus, no stained-glass parables, no worn hymnals, no reminders of the 2,000 years of Christian history before this. Instead, six huge screens glowed with images of spinning stars. On a stage, a praise band was blasting emotional, surging songs vaguely reminiscent of Coldplay. Rows of spotlights were shining on people who stood, hands raised, and sang mantra-like choruses about surrender, then listened to a sermon about submitting to God.
The last thing was to attend a touring event called KEY Fellowship, which stands for “Kingdom Empowering You.” So I headed to a small church in State College, Pennsylvania, the 44th city on the tour so far. On a Saturday morning, 100 or so attendees were arriving, a crowd that was mostly white but also Black, Latino, and Korean-American. They all filed through a door marked by a white flag stamped with a green pine tree and the words An Appeal to Heaven—a Revolutionary War–era banner of the sort that rioters carried into the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. “We thank you, Father, that you have chosen us,” said the woman who’d organized the event, explaining that its purpose was to “release spiritual authority” over the region. And then the releasing began. The band. The singing. The shouting: “Lord, have your dominion.” Several men stood and blew shofars, hollowed-out ram’s horns used in traditional Jewish worship, and meant in this context to warn demons and herald the gathering of a modern-day army of God. Out came maracas and tambourines. Out came long wooden staffs that people pounded against the floor. Others waved American flags, Israeli flags, more pine-tree flags. The point, I learned, was to call the Holy Spirit through the prefabricated walls of the church and into the sanctuary, all of this leading up to the moment when a local pastor, a member of the Ojibwe-Cree Nation, came to the stage.
She was there to declare the restoration of the nation’s covenant with Native American people, which, in the movement’s intricate end-times narrative, is a precondition for the establishment of the Kingdom. A sacred drum pounded. “Father, we pray for a holy experiment!” someone shouted. A white man cried. Then people began marching in circles around the room—flags, tambourines, maracas, staffs—as a final song played. “Possess the land,” the chorus went. “We will take it by force. Take it, take it.”
Once I had seen all of this, Tami said I could come.
The road to the mountain runs through the small town of Franklin, an hour or so north of Pittsburgh, then winds uphill and through the woods before branching off to a narrower road marked private. At the entrance is a Mastriano sign, left over from when Tami served as his Venango County coordinator.
“We don’t really do politics,” she was saying, riding onto the property with her husband, Kevin. “But then we heard God say, ‘You need to do this.’”
She had raised and homeschooled three children, been the dutiful wife of a wealthy Pennsylvania entrepreneur who traded metals, but as I came to learn over the next few weeks, so many new things had been happening since she started following the voice of God.
“All this is ours,” Kevin said, passing old cabins, a run-down trailer, and other buildings from the property’s former life.
“And right up here is where it all happened,” Tami said.
They parked and went over to a wooden footbridge, part of the only public path through the property. This is where they’d been walking when Tami had first seen the spot for their retirement cabin, at which point she had looked down and seen three blue interlocking circles stenciled onto the bridge, some sort of graffiti that she took as a sign.
“I said, ‘Kevin, we’re at the point of convergence,’” she recalled.
Convergence. Spiritual warfare. Demonic strongholds. These were the kinds of terms that Tami tossed off easily, and knew could make the movement seem loopy to outsiders. But they were part of a vocabulary that added up to a whole way of seeing the world, one traceable not so much to ancient times but rather to 1971.
That was when an evangelical missionary named C. Peter Wagner returned to California after spending more than a decade in Bolivia, where he had noticed churches growing explosively and where he claimed to have seen signs and wonders, healings and prophecies. A professor at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Wagner began studying what he believed were similar forces at work in the underground house-church movement in China and certain independent Christian churches in African countries, as well as Pentecostal churches in the U.S. He eventually concluded that a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit was under way across the globe—a supernatural force that would erase denominational differences, banish demonic spirits, and restore the offices of the first-century Christian Church as part of a great end-times battle. By the mid-1990s, Wagner and others were describing all of this as the New Apostolic Reformation, detailing the particulars in dozens of books.
The reformation meant recognizing new apostles—men and women believed to have God-given spiritual authority as leaders. It meant modern-day prophets—people believed to be chosen by God to receive revelations through dreams and visions and signs. It meant spiritual warfare, which was not intended to be taken metaphorically, but actually demanded the battling of demons that could possess people and territories and were so real that they could be diagrammed on maps. It meant portals: specific openings where demonic or angelic forces could enter—eyes or mouths, for instance, or geographic locations such as Azusa Street in Los Angeles, scene of a seminal early-20th-century revival. It meant the rise of the Manifest Sons of God, an elite force that would be endowed with supernatural powers for spiritual and perhaps actual warfare. Most significant, the new reformation required not just personal salvation but action to transform all of society. Christians were to reclaim the fallen Earth from Satan and advance the Kingdom of God, and this idea was not metaphorical either. The Kingdom would be a social pyramid, at the top of which was a government of godly leaders dispensing biblical laws and at the bottom of which was the full manifestation of heaven on Earth, a glorious world with no poverty, no racism, no crime, no abortion, no homosexuality, two genders, one kind of marriage, and one God: theirs.
Wagner helped convene the International Coalition of Apostles in 2000. It became the model for what remains the loosely networked structure of a movement that is both decentralized and inherently authoritarian. Apostles would lead their own ministries and churches, sometimes with the counsel of other influential apostles. The movement grew rapidly, creating its own superstars whose power came from the following they cultivated, and who were constantly adding prophecies that sought to explain how current events fit into the great end-times narrative.
Broad-brush terms like Christian nationalism and white evangelicals have tended to obscure these intricacies. NAR’s growth has also gone largely undetected in conventional surveys of American religiosity, with their old categories such as Southern Baptist and Presbyterian. It is most clearly reflected in the rise of nondenominational churches—the only category of churches that is growing in this country—though not fully, because many followers do not attend church. A recent survey by Paul Djupe of Denison University hints at its scope, finding that roughly one-quarter of Americans believe in modern-day prophets and prophecies. Those who have tracked and studied the movement for years often say it is “hiding in plain sight.”
Yet Trump-allied political strategists, such as Roger Stone, understand the power of a movement that offers the GOP a largely untapped well of new voters who are not just old and white and Bible-clinging, but also young and brown, urban and suburban, and primed to hear what the prophets have to say. Recently, Stone told one interviewer that he saw a “demonic portal” swirling over Joe Biden’s White House. “There’s a live cam where you can actually see, in real time,” Stone said. “It’s like a smudge in the sky, almost looks like a cloud that doesn’t move.”
Like Many in the movement, Tami doesn’t use the phrase New Apostolic Reformation, but she first encountered its kind of Christianity in 2015, when a friend gave her a book called Song of Songs: Divine Romance. It is part of a series called The Passion Translation, described by its author, a pastor named Brian Simmons, as a “heart-level” version of the Bible.
At the time, Tami had just extracted herself from what she described as a long and difficult marriage. She had left the traditional evangelical church she’d attended for years, where she said the pastor tended to side with her wealthy husband. She was estranged from some of her family. She was alone and at a vulnerable point in her life when she opened Simmons’s book and began reading passages such as “I am overshadowed by his love, growing in the valley,” and “Let him smother me with kisses—his Spirit-kiss divine,” and “So kind are your caresses, I drink them in like the sweetest wine!”
She had never felt so loved in her life, and she wanted more. The friend who’d given her the book attended Life Center, and Tami signed up for a conference at the church called “Open the Heavens,” where she learned more about prophecy, spiritual warfare, and the idea that she herself had a role to play in advancing the Kingdom of God, if she could discern what it was.
Among the speakers she heard was a rising apostle named Lance Wallnau, a former corporate marketer whose social-media following had grown to 2 million people after he prophesied that Donald Trump was anointed by God. Tami had voted for Trump in 2016, but her interest in Wallnau at this point had more to do with what he’d branded as “the Seven Mountains mandate,” or 7M, the imperative for Christians to build the Kingdom by taking dominion over the seven spheres of society—government, business, education, media, entertainment, family, and religion. Wallnau gives 7M courses and holds 7M conferences, and that is how Tami learned about convergence: the notion that there are moments in life when events come together to reveal one’s Kingdom mission, as Wallnau writes, “like a vortex that sucks into itself uncanny coincidences and ‘divine appointments.’”
That was exactly how Tami felt as she considered buying the mountain. Divine appointments everywhere. At Life Center, a man told her that he’d had a vision of God “pouring onto the mountain” everything she would need. Someone else shared a vision of Tami as a princess riding a horse, which she found ridiculous but also, as a woman who’d always felt under the thumb of some man, compelling. And then she herself heard the voice of God telling her what to do.
“See that?” she said now, back in the car, passing a rusted oil tank where someone had spray-painted what appeared to be a yellow Z.
“I’ll explain that later,” Tami said.
She and Kevin drove to the former camp director’s home where they now lived. Inside was a piano with a shofar and two swords on top, which Tami had bought to remind herself that she is a triumphant warrior for Christ. On a wall hung a portrait she had commissioned, which depicted her clad in medieval armor. An Appeal to Heaven flag was draped over a chair. She opened a sliding-glass door to a deck overlooking the Allegheny River, and explained what happened after she and Kevin had closed on the mountain: how they began to envision building a “Seven Mountains training center.” How that led to someone from Life Center introducing her to an apostle from the nearby city of New Castle, who visited the mountain and wrote Tami a prophecy—that what was happening was “bigger than whatever you could dream or imagine.” How he introduced her to a group of five men who claimed to be connected to anonymous Kingdom funders, and how, not long after that, the group came to the mountain, where Tami, full of nerves, presented a plan that included a lodge, a conference center, an outdoor stage, and some yurts along the river.
“The main thing they asked is whether we were Kingdom,” Tami said.
She told them that she and Kevin were Kingdom all the way; they told her that God wanted her to double the size of the project, and then told her to “add everything you can possibly dream of,” Tami recalled.
So they did—adding plans for an outdoor pistol range, an indoor pistol range, a tactical pistol range, and a rifle range, along with a paintball course, a zip line, and other recreational facilities. They printed brochures for the Allegheny River Retreat Center, which, Tami said, was now a $120 million project.
As they waited and waited for funding, the 2020 presidential election arrived. Tami again voted for Trump, this time in concert with prophets who said he was an instrument of God. She soon began listening to an influential South Carolina apostle named Dutch Sheets, who had for years advocated an end to Church-state separation and co-authored something called the “Watchman Decree,” a kind of pledge of allegiance that included the phrase “we, the Church, are God’s governing Body on the earth.” Sheets was among a core group of apostles and prophets spreading the narrative that the election had been stolen not just from Trump, but from God. He began promoting daily 15-minute YouTube prayers and decrees, which were like commandments to those in the Kingdom. He branded them “Give Him 15,” or GH15, and at their peak, some videos were getting hundreds of thousands of views.
Tami began reading Sheets’s decrees aloud at sunrise every morning, videotaping herself on the deck overlooking the Allegheny River and posting her videos to Facebook.
“Lord, we will not stop praying for the full exposure of voter fraud in the 2020 elections,” she read on November 12.
“We refuse to take our cue or instructions from the media, political parties, or other individuals,” she read on November 17. “We believe you placed President Trump in office, and we believe you promised two terms. We stand on this.”
She started receiving lots of friend requests and was getting recognized around town. She bought an Appeal to Heaven flag, which Sheets had popularized as a symbol of holy revolution. She kept seeing signs that made her wonder whether the mountain might have a specific purpose in what she was coming to see as a global spiritual battle.
One day the sign was a dove flying across the sky as she read the morning decree, and the dove feathers she found on her doorstep after that. Another day, two women who’d seen her videos showed up at her door with bottles of water from Israel, saying they needed to pour it in “strategic” places along her riverfront that God had revealed to them. Another day, Sheets himself announced that he was holding a prayer rally at the headwaters of the Allegheny River—two hours north of Tami—part of a swing-state prophecy tour as Trump challenged election results.
Tami went. And when Sheets and other apostles and prophets urged followers to convene at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, she felt God telling her to go there, too. So she and Kevin boarded a bus that a friend had chartered to Washington, D.C., where she read the daily decree, the Washington Monument in the background, as Kevin held the Appeal to Heaven flag.
“Let the battle for America’s future be turned today, in Jesus’s name,” she said. From what she described as her vantage point outside the Capitol, the big story of the day was not that a violent insurrection had occurred but rather that a movement of God was under way, another Jesus Revolution. “It was one of the best days of my life,” Tami said.
When she got back to the mountain, she kept recording the daily decrees from her deck, in front of a pink flower pot with an American flag.
“We refuse to allow hope deferred and discouragement to cripple the growth of your people in their true identity—the army you intended them to be,” she read after Joe Biden took office.
She flew to Tampa, Florida, for a stop on the “ReAwaken America” tour. She drove to another one a few hours away from her home, then watched others online, events featuring a roster of prophets alongside the headliner, retired General Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national-security adviser, who was now declaring the nation to be in a state of “spiritual war.” She always came home with a cellphone full of new contacts. She began introducing herself as “Tami Barthen, the one who bought a mountain for God.”
Occasionally she said this with a note of sarcasm, because the Kingdom funding had yet to come through, and at times she was not sure where all the signs were ultimately pointing. In those moments, she sought more prophecies.
She messaged a prophet who’d appeared on a Dutch Sheets broadcast, asking him what God might tell him about her project. “This is what I hear the Lord saying,” he wrote back. “God says this came forth from His heart and He has already orchestrated the completion.”
At a Kingdom-building conference in Oregon, she asked Nathan French, a prominent prophet, what God was telling him and recorded the answer on her iPhone: “I feel like that mountain is like Zion, and I feel like God is even saying you can name it Mount Zion … I see the Shekinah coming,” he said, using the Hebrew term for God’s presence, “the shock and awe.”
Tami had rolled her eyes at this grand new prediction, but when she got home, another sign appeared.
“The Z on the oil tank,” she said now, sitting on her porch.
It was spring. She took the Zion prophecy, which she had transcribed and printed on thick paper, and slipped it into a binder, where she archived the most meaningful ones in protective plastic covers. She was trying to figure out what it was all adding up to.
“Why was Dutch Sheets at the headwaters of the Allegheny? Why is there a Z on the oil tank? Why am I meeting all these people? There are all these pieces to the puzzle, but I don’t know what it’s supposed to be yet,” Tami said.
A new piece of the puzzle was that Trump had been indicted in New York on charges of falsifying business records related to payoffs to the adult-film actor Stormy Daniels. Tami had watched coverage on an online show called FlashPoint, which has a cable-news format, except that the news bulletins come from prophets.
“This is not just a battle against us; this is a battle against the purposes of God,” one had said about the indictment, and Tami understood this to be an escalation. A few days later, an apostle named Gary Sorensen called. He was an engineer who had been among the group claiming to represent the Kingdom funders. He was calling to invite Tami on a private spiritual-heritage tour of the Pennsylvania capitol, which was being led by one of the most powerful apostles in the state.
Tami took it as another sign, and she and Kevin drove to Harrisburg.
She was slightly nervous. The apostle was a woman named Abby Abildness, who heads a state prayer network that was part of the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, a fixture of the religious right. During the legislative session, she convened weekly prayer meetings with state legislators along with business and religious leaders. She had a ministry called Healing Tree International, which claimed representatives in 115 countries, and focused on what she described as “restoring the God-given destinies of people and nations.” She was just back from Kurdistan, where she had met with a top general in the Peshmerga, the Kurdish military. To Tami, Abildness was like a high-ranking Kingdom diplomat.
“So,” Abildness began. “The tour I do is about William Penn’s vision for what this colony would be. And it starts—if you look up, we have the words he spoke on the rotunda.”
Tami looked up at the gilded words beneath a fresco of ascending angels.
“There may be room there for such a Holy Experiment,” Abildness read. “And my God will make it the seed of a nation.”
“Wow,” Tami said.
They were the kind of words and images found in statehouses all over the country, but which Abildness understood not as historical artifacts but as divine instructions for the here and now.
They headed down a marbled hallway to the governor’s reception room.
“So this is William Penn,” Abildness said, pointing to a panel depicting Penn as a student at Oxford, before he joined the Quaker movement. “He’s sitting in his library and a light comes into the room, and he knows something supernatural is happening.”
They moved on to the Senate chamber.
“Here you are going to see a vision of what society could be if the fullness of what Penn planted came into being—a vision of society where all are recognizing the sovereign God,” Abildness said as they walked inside.
Tami looked around at scenes of kings bowing before Christ, and quotes from the Book of Revelation about mountains.
“You see here, angels are bringing messages of God down to those who would write the laws,” Abildness said.
They moved on to the House chamber.
“This is The Apotheosis,” Abildness said, referring to an epic painting that included a couple of Founding Fathers, and then she pointed to a smaller, adjacent painting, depicting Penn making a peace treaty with the Lenape people.
Tami listened as Abildness explained her interpretation: God had granted Native Americans original spiritual authority over the land; the treaty meant sharing that spiritual authority with Penn; later generations broke the covenant through their genocidal campaign against the Native Americans, and now the covenant needed to be restored in order to fulfill Penn’s original vision for a Holy Experiment. Nothing less than the entire Kingdom of God was riding on Pennsylvania.
Tami listened, thinking of something she’d always wondered about, a sacred Native American site across the river, visible from her deck, known as Indian God Rock. It is a large boulder carved with figures that academic experts believe have religious meaning. As the tour ended, she kept thinking about what it all could mean.
“People I hang with think we’re moving from a church age to a Kingdom age,” Sorensen was saying.
“It’s like, what are all these signs saying?” Tami said.
Sorensen was involved in various organizations devoted to funding and developing Kingdom projects. There was Reborne Global Trust, and New Kingdom Global, and Abundance Research Institute, among others. He told Tami not to worry about her benefactors coming through. He said $120 million was peanuts to them. He said one funder was an Australian private-wealth manager. He said others were “international benefactors,” as well as “sovereigns,” people he described as “publicly known royal and ruling families of well-known countries.”
“We are looking into establishing a Kingdom treasury,” he said, elaborating that some of the funders were setting up offshore banking accounts. “Outside the central banking system—so we can’t get cut off if we’re not voting right.”
Everything would be coming together soon, he told her.
Driving back to the mountain, Tami and Kevin listened to ElijahStreams, an online platform that launched after the 2020 election. It hosts daily shows from dozens of prominent and up-and-coming prophets, and claims more than 1 million followers.
There were so many apostles and prophets these days—the old standards like Dutch Sheets, and so many younger ones who had podcasts, apps, shows on Rumble. By now Tami followed at least a dozen of them closely, and what she had noticed was how politically involved they had become since the 2020 election and how in recent months, their visions had been getting darker.
Lance Wallnau, whom Tami thought of as fairly moderate, had spoken on Easter Sunday about hearing prophecies of “sudden deaths,” and he himself predicted that “the disciplinary hand of God” would be coming down.
Now, as she and Kevin were winding through the woods, she was listening to a young prophet from Texas named Andrew Whalen, who was being promoted on popular shows lately. He described himself as “close friends” with Dutch Sheets, and on his website, characterized the moment as a “context of war,” when “a new generation is preparing to cross over into ‘lands of inheritance’—places that Christ has given us authority to conquer.”
“I’m boiling on the inside,” he was saying, describing a dream in which he saw the angelic realm working with “earthly governments and militaries.” He continued, “I just say even today, let Operation Fury commence, God. We say let the fury of God’s wrath break forth against every evil work, against systems of demonic and satanic structure.”
Tami listened. And in the coming weeks, she kept listening as Operation Fury became a page on Whalen’s website where people could sign up to help “overthrow jezebel’s influence from our lives.” She kept listening as Trump was indicted a second time, for mishandling classified documents, and a prophet on FlashPoint described the moment as a “battle between good versus evil.”
She sometimes felt afraid when she imagined what was coming.
“It’s going to get bad. It’s going to get worse,” she said. “It’s spiritual warfare, and it’s going to come into the physical. What it’s going to look like? I don’t know. God said to show up at Jericho, and the walls came down. But there are other stories where David killed many people. All I can say is if you believe in God, you’ve got to trust him. If you’re God-fearing, you’ll be protected.”
The morning after her tour in Harrisburg, Tami went out on her deck and recorded the daily decree.
“We use the sword of our mouths just as you instructed,” she read. “The king’s decree and the decrees of the king are hereby law in this land.”
After that, she went to her office.
On her desk were bills she had to pay. On a table were towers of books she’d read about spiritual warfare, demon mapping, the seven mountains. In a file were all the prophecies she’d tried to follow, all the signs.
She thought about Operation Fury, and what Abby Abildness had said about Pennsylvania, and Indian God Rock, and as she began putting all the signs together, she had a thought that filled her with dread.
“I don’t want this job,” she said. “What if I mess up? Why me?”
She pulled out a 259-page book called The Seed of a Nation, about what William Penn envisioned as a “Holy Experiment” in the colony of Pennsylvania, opening it to the last page she had highlighted and underlined.
“See?” she said. “I only got to page 47.”
She thought that maybe the funding was not coming through because she had missed a sign. Maybe she had not been obedient enough. Maybe she, Tami Barthen, was the one delaying the whole Kingdom, and now instead of listening to the voice of God, she was listening to her own voice saying something back: “I’m sorry.”
She thought for a moment about what would happen if she let it all go, if instead of being a Christian warrior on a mountain essential to bringing about the Kingdom of God, she went back to being Tami, who had wanted the peace of a retirement cabin by the river.
“I can’t think of a Plan B,” she said, so she reminded herself of how she had gotten here.
She had been living her life, trying to pull herself out of a dark period, when she felt the love of God save her, and then heard the voice of God tell her to buy a mountain. And who was she to refuse the wishes of God?
So she had bought a mountain, 350 acres redeemed for the Kingdom. Now she would wait for word from the prophets. She reminded herself of a favorite Bible verse.
“He says, ‘Occupy until I come,’” Tami said. “Like the Bible says, ‘Thy kingdom come.’”
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Savage Raptors MC, Book 3 - A Dixie Reapers Bad Boys Romance
Motorcycle Club Romance
Date Published: June 23, 2023
Publisher: Changeling Press LLC
Casey -- It's been a year since I showed up on my dad's doorstep with my surprise, you have a daughter bomb. He took me in. Gave me the first true home and family I've ever had. But now I want more. There's been one man who's always watching over me. Maui. He's one of the club's officers, and so much older than me. To me, age is just a number. Does he feel the same? Or is he only taking care of me because I'm his President's daughter? With Maui, I want everything, but will he want someone as broken as me?
Maui -- I told myself I was too old for her. Tried to just be her friend. Then I hear her screaming in her sleep, and I realize what types of monsters she's been fighting on her own. She needs me, and I need her. Whatever it takes, Casey and her baby will be mine. But first, I need to get a little bloody because there's no way I'm letting anyone live after they've hurt my family. I'll wipe them off the face of the earth so Casey won't be scared anymore. I hope she accepts the darker side of me. Either way, she's mine and I'm hers.
WARNING: Content intended for adult readers. Maui contains darker subjects which might trigger some readers, as well as violence and bad language. Guaranteed happily ever after. No cheating. No cliffhanger.
EXCERPT
Copyright ©2023 Harley Wylde
Maui
Everyone thought Casey would be excited to celebrate her birthday. The young woman I’d been watching didn’t look like today was the least bit special. She’d been through hell. If anyone had a right to not feel like celebrating, it was her. She’d shown up at the clubhouse, seventeen and pregnant, and I knew it had been a big blow for her dad. The Pres had never mentioned having a woman, or a kid. I wondered how long it had festered inside him, hiding all the pain of losing his family.
During the time I’d spent with Casey since she arrived, I’d learned quite a bit about her. Like the fact she’d never really celebrated her birthday, wouldn’t divulge the name of the guy who’d knocked her up, and she planned to live her life for her daughter. She’d taken on a lot of responsibility, and I’d done my best to help her shoulder some of it.
Which was why I found myself on her porch, with Rebel. Atilla and Solena had sent us over with a note. Basically, we were to let her pick who she wanted to spend the day with, then give her a memorable birthday. Just not memorable enough to have Atilla threaten our lives. He’d already made sure we knew what would happen if we touched his precious daughter.
“You going to knock?” Rebel asked.
“You do it.” I was an asshole. Why did I make him knock? Because if we woke up Casey, I didn’t want to be the one at fault.
She opened the door and looked like she might drop at any second.
“Hey, guys. Did Dad send you over to get me?”
Rebel flashed her his signature grin, guaranteed to drop panties, and I fought the urge to throat punch him. Instead, I shoved my hands in my pockets and let him dig his own grave. She didn’t look ready to handle his bullshit today.
“You have a choice,” Rebel said. “The note explains it.”
He handed her the envelope. I knew what was inside. A birthday card from her dad and Solena, along with a message from each. I’d read it as they’d written it earlier. Atilla had kept things somewhat simple. You have a choice to make. I asked Rebel to take you to dinner, dancing, and make sure you had the best birthday ever.
Then there was Solena’s message, which was why I hadn’t dressed up too much before coming over. Unlike Rebel, who’d styled his hair, doused himself in cologne, and gone all out. Solena was on my side, and her message proved it. Maui is there to give you whatever you really need for your birthday. I doubt it’s a night out on the town like your dad thinks. But you should know both were threatened with death and dismemberment if they laid a hand on you.
Casey snickered after reading the card. Good. She needed to laugh more.
“So, which of us will you be spending the night with?” Rebel asked, wagging his eyebrows at her suggestively. She shook her head at his antics. If he wasn’t such a nice guy, I’d have been tempted to kick his ass right off the porch.
“I hate to disappoint you both, but…”
“You aren’t up for going out,” I said. That meant I had a better shot at spending time with her than Rebel. “When did you last sleep?”
“I sleep every night,” she muttered.
“You know what I mean,” I said. “Don’t be a smartass.”
She sighed and rubbed her hand over her face. “Becca had a fever, and she’s still having reflux. I still have to be careful if I don’t want her to throw up her food.”
“She’s eight months now, isn’t she?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’m starting to get her mashed up banana, yogurt, and other things like that. Those do better with her than the pureed baby food. Do the two of you want to come in?” Casey asked.
Rebel shook his head. Smart man. “I think I’ll head out. I hope you’ve had a happy birthday, Casey. I’ll take you out for lunch sometime soon.”
Sure he would. Over my dead body. As much as I didn’t want to be one of those asshole cavemen, when it came to Casey, all bets were off. I didn’t like how close she’d gotten with Rebel. At the same time, I knew she needed the support of everyone around her. It felt like I was caught between a rock and a hard place.
He waved as he stepped off the porch and wandered off into the night. I studied Casey, wondering if she was still okay with me going inside. She’d never turned me away, but typically I came over to help with Becca. Tonight, it would only be the two of us. I’d heard Atilla offered to babysit. Had he already picked her up? Lately, it felt like something was building between me and Casey, but I didn’t know if it was wishful thinking on my part. Casey could have any man she wanted.
For a lot of people, the age gap between us would be too much. As far as I was concerned, it was just a number. Who the hell cared? As long as it didn’t bother Casey, then I was fine with it. Her dad might take a little convincing, although he tried not to be too overbearing after not being part of her life for so long. As he often said, she’d grown up just fine without his input.
“You coming in?” she asked, taking a step back.
“Where’s Becca?” I scanned the room as I entered her tiny home. Solena had mentioned babysitting, but it didn’t mean they already had her. I’d assumed it was only Casey at home right now, but it might not be the case. If Becca was here, I wasn’t about to send her away.
“She’s sleeping at Dad’s tonight. Now I know why he took her.” She patted my arm. “I really appreciate you wanting to take me out for my birthday. I’m sorry I’m not up for it.”
“It’s your day, Casey. Which means we do whatever you want. Looks to me like you need some help around here more than you need dinner and a movie. Although, there’s no reason we can’t still do that right here.” I rolled up my shirt sleeves. She could relax while I cleaned, cooked, and prepared a special night for her.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” she asked.
“Go take a hot bath or a nap. Your choice. I’ll pick up around here and get dinner going. Any requests?” I asked.
“No. Anything is fine.” She paused before going into her room. “Solena brought over a cake this morning. We can have some for dessert. It has fruit filling and whipped frosting.”
“Already had some?” I smiled, picturing her digging into the cake. Her cheeks flushed, and she nodded. So damn cute. “Go relax. I’ll call you when dinner is ready.”
I picked up what little trash I found in the main living areas, emptied her kitchen garbage can, loaded the dishwasher, and dug through the cabinets to figure out what I’d cook. I’d just preheated the oven when my phone started vibrating in my pocket. I’d turned the ringer off, not wanting anyone to disturb my time with Casey.
Wire’s name flashed across the screen, and I knew I needed to take the call.
“Find something?” I asked. It had been months, and so far, neither he nor Lavender had dug up anything. Except they said the guy’s record was too clean, as in it had been doctored by someone.
“Maybe. We know who his closest friends were back then. They aren’t quite as clean as Casey’s ex. One is currently doing time for rape. Another left the country, and the third is still in the same town as Casey’s ex. They have a beer together at least once a week.”
“That’s all?” I asked.
“Lavender has an idea who cleaned the kid’s records. If she can get in touch with the hacker responsible, and feel him out, we might be able to put a few pieces of the puzzle together. Just don’t hold your breath.”
I whistled. “Man, you mean to tell me there’s something the two of you can’t do? I’m in shock right now.”
“Shut it, fucker. We aren’t getting any younger, and some of the fresh blood out there is nearly as good as we were at their age. Give them time, and a few might surpass us.”
“Keep me posted. It’s her eighteenth birthday today, so I’m at her place making dinner. If I don’t answer, I’ll call back when I can.”
“Understood.”
I ended the call and put my phone away before working on dinner again. I’d found bell pepper and onion in the fridge, as well as hamburger meat and shredded cheese. While Casey didn’t seem to have any taco shells, I’d found some taco bowls. I baked them in the oven while I browned the meat and veggies, seasoning it enough to add some flavor without making it too strong for Casey. Cilantro lime rice was the next thing to start. Dinner might not be fancy, but I knew it was something she liked, since I’d made it for her before. Unless she’d lied to spare my feelings. Too late to worry about it now.
Once everything was done, I set the table and called out to her.
“Casey, dinner is done.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” she said.
I hadn’t realized she’d come out of her room and gone into the bathroom until I heard the water sloshing before the sound of the tub draining. I cleared my throat and adjusted myself. The thought of her standing just one room away, and naked, had my cock’s full attention. Last thing I needed was to sport wood when she came out of there. She might very well run screaming from the house.
Since I’d never cared much for sweet tea, Casey always kept some soda stocked. She’d offered to keep beer in the fridge for the times I dropped by, but I wasn’t a big drinker. Not to mention I didn’t want to drink around Becca. My brother had driven his car off the side of a winding highway, down an embankment, and into the ocean. He’d been drunk off his ass and the accident had kept me from alcohol for a long time. I had the occasional drink with my club brothers, but it didn’t happen often.
I set out a soda for me and a glass of tea for Casey. She came to the table wearing an off-the-shoulder top and leggings. Barefoot. The woman was driving me crazy, and she wasn’t even trying.
About the Author
Harley Wylde is an International Bestselling Author of MC Romances. When Harley's writing, her motto is the hotter the better -- off-the-charts sex, commanding men, and the women who can't deny them. If you want men who talk dirty, are sexy as hell, and take what they want, then you've come to the right place. She doesn't shy away from the dangers and nastiness in the world, bringing those realities to the pages of her books, but always gives her characters a happily-ever-after and makes sure the bad guys get what they deserve.
Author’s Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook: @harleywylde
Author on Twitter: @HarleyW_Writer
Publisher on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram: @changelingpress
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]]>This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Kirsten Weiss will be awarding a $10 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.
My favorite genre to read and write is the cozy mystery—a world of charming small towns, clever amateur sleuths, and tantalizing puzzles that keep readers captivated until the final page. It all started when I picked up my first Agatha Christie, the queen of cozies.
Here are some of the secrets that make cozy mysteries so uniquely beloved among readers.
The Quaint Setting: One of the signature elements of cozy mysteries is the idyllic and picturesque setting. Whether it’s a cozy coastal town, a charming English village, or a quaint countryside, the setting becomes an integral part of the story, almost like a character itself. Readers are transported to a place where neighbors know each other, tea is always brewing, and a sense of community pervades the air.
The Amateur Sleuth: Unlike traditional mysteries, cozy mysteries feature amateur sleuths who stumble upon crimes and take it upon themselves to solve them. These relatable and endearing protagonists may be librarians, tearoom owners, Tarot readers, or even retired school teachers—ordinary people with an extraordinary knack for uncovering secrets. Their amateur status adds an extra layer of charm and authenticity to the stories.
Whodunit with a Twist: While the cozy mystery genre typically eschews graphic violence and gore, it compensates with intricate puzzle-solving and engaging plot twists. Readers are challenged to unravel the mystery alongside the amateur sleuth, sifting through clues and red herrings, until the final reveal leaves them gasping with surprise and satisfaction. Cozy mysteries are all about the intellectual thrill of putting the pieces together.
An Engaging Cast of Characters: From quirky best friends to eccentric town residents, cozy mysteries are populated with a colorful array of characters who add depth and humor to the narrative. These secondary characters often have their own secrets and quirks, creating a rich tapestry of relationships that enhances the overall storytelling experience.
Themed Coziness: Another secret ingredient of cozy mysteries is the incorporation of cozy elements that readers can’t help but fall in love with. Whether it’s the inclusion of mouthwatering recipes, tea rituals, knitting circles, book clubs, or gardening tips, cozy mysteries offer readers an escape into a world of comfort and relaxation, where everyday activities become an integral part of the narrative.
The Power of Connection: Cozy mysteries foster a sense of camaraderie and connection between the reader and the characters. As we follow the amateur sleuth on their journey, we become emotionally invested in their lives, their triumphs, and their struggles. We celebrate their victories and feel their heartache, forging a bond that keeps us coming back for more.
Whether you’re curling up on a rainy day or seeking a comforting escape from the hustle and bustle of life, cozy mysteries offer a delightful refuge where puzzles are solved, justice is served, and the human spirit triumphs.
My newest book, The Mysteries of Tarot, is experimental mystery fiction: part Tarot guidebook/part murder mystery. It’s a supplement to my Tea and Tarot cozy mystery series, which begins with Steeped in Murder. And it’s ostensibly written by Hyperion Night, the Tarot reading half of the series’ amateur detecting duo.
Happy sleuthing!
The Mysteries of Tarot: A Work of the Imagination
How to Read the Cards for Transformation
When Tarot reader Hyperion Night sent his manuscript, The Mysteries of Tarot, to a friend to edit, it was a simple guide to reading Tarot. Hyperion couldn’t anticipate that his editor’s notes would evolve into a murder mystery, or that his friend would go missing. Shockingly, the annotated manuscript eventually made its way back to Hyperion, who forwarded it to the authorities.Now this astonishing Tarot guide is available as a book. The Tarot guidebook features:
• Tarot basics―How to manage different interpretations of cards in a spread, how to read court cards, and a clear and simple method for dealing with reversals.
• Detailed card breakdowns― Keywords, flash non-fiction narratives, and a deep dive into the symbols of each of the 78 cards of the Major Arcana and Minor Arcana.
• Questions to apply to the cards for transforming your life―Insightful questions for each card to help you dig deeper into your Tarot reading practice.Bonus feature: the guidebook also includes his editor’s comments on the more esoteric and philosophical interpretations of the Tarot, as well as his notes on the baffling mystery that engulfed him.
Gain deep insight from the cards, transform yourself, and solve The Mysteries of Tarot with this work of experimental fiction that’s part Tarot guidebook, part murder mystery.
Enjoy an Excerpt
The Moon
Messages from the unconscious. Mystery. Confusion. Dreams. Illusion.
Last night, I dreamt of a departed aunt I’d had a contentious relationship with. She walked down the hallway of my apartment and sat beside me in the living room.
Suddenly I remembered she was dead and understood I was dreaming. But instead of the dream ending, like it usually does when I become aware, we talked—the kind of talk we’d never been able to have when she was alive. She apologized for some things she’d said and done and helped me understand why she’d said and done them. And her reasons weren’t awful. They made a lot of sense.
I apologized too, because I hadn’t been innocent in the turn our relationship had taken. We forgave each other. I woke up feeling lighter. Free.
The Symbols
I’m still not sure if it was “only” a lucid dream or a visitation from my relative. I don’t know if it matters. It was all very lunar, very moonlike. And not just because the Moon card can represent dreams. Moons with their waxing and waning also represents illusion and confusion, messages from the subconscious crawling up out of the muck like that lobster creeping from the water in the card. A dog and a wolf, representing the refined conscious and the more primitive subconscious, howl at the moon’s light.
And all of those things had been at play in my life. I’d created a false—or at least incomplete—story in my mind of the cause of my estrangement from my relative (illusion/confusion). But the truth bubbled up from my subconscious in last night’s dream. If it hadn’t, I’d still be carrying that burden.
What Does This Card Mean for You?
When the Moon card appears in a Tarot reading, it suggests we may not be seeing things clearly. But the truth is out there — or in there, as the case may be.
How can you bring your subconscious impulses or knowledge into conscious light? The road between the two towers in the card is long, dark, and winding. Have patience. Be brave.
Notes: The Moon
44 As to The Moon, I feel like I’m swimming in it. At first my father’s death seemed like an accident, a fall from the balcony outside his bedroom. He’s been drinking more than usual lately. But the servants swear he wasn’t drinking that night. And the balcony railing is low. He could have fallen by accident.
I keep replaying our last conversation. Had he been thinking then of taking his own life? Was that why he’d come to see me? Because he knew I’d been a failure when I’d tried my hand at self-deletion? Maybe he wanted me to talk him out of it?
I don’t understand. But I’ll try to keep up with the daily edits, where I feel I have something to add. I need to keep my mind busy. -T
About the Author:Kirsten Weiss writes laugh-out-loud, page-turning mysteries, and now a Tarot guidebook that’s a work of experimental fiction. Her heroes and heroines aren’t perfect, but they’re smart, they struggle, and they succeed. Kirsten writes in a house high on a hill in the Colorado woods and occasionally ventures out for wine and chocolate. Or for a visit to the local pie shop.
Kirsten is best known for her Wits’ End, Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum, and Tea & Tarot cozy mystery books. So if you like funny, action-packed mysteries with complicated heroines, just turn the page…
Buy the book at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Kobo, or iBooks.
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This novel, Open Heart, is another true story centering around the rise and fall of a great love. Written by Elvira Lindo, it is a work of autofiction that shifts from generational portrait of a country to moving observations of the most intimate and painful thing of all: family.
Seeing how historic events in a country affect different individuals, all in the same family and watching how they each cope with them and effect the family. Tragedy and love affects all of us depending on our personal experiences and our ability to overcome them. Open Heart is a brilliant novel that can and probably does relate to all of us.
This novel takes the reader on a sweeping journey through Spain while, at the same time, reveals insights about love in its many forms. OPEN Heart (Other Press Trade Paperback Original; is now on sale) by award-winning and enormously successful Spanish author, scriptwriter, screenwriter, and playwright, Elvira Lindo, is an intimate family novel and moving tribute to the generation that struggled to survive in Spain after the Civil War. Lindo, who has been awarded the National Prize for Children’s and Youth Literature, received the Biblioteca Breve Prize her novel Una voz tuya, also adapted into a film with great success by Ángeles González-Sinde, as well as the International Journalism Award and the Atlántida Award of the Catalan Publishers Guild, intended to turn the life of her parents into a novel in OPEN HEART. She didn’t want to write memoirs, and cleverly experiments with narrative order. Although she is the narrator, she avoids telling her family’s life as a succession of memories but instead tries to be immersed in the present that they lived. It is her voice as a child, as a teenager, as a young person, as an adult, that she employs and weaves through a polyphony of voices that constitute her inner family life. Her parents belonged to the generation of “niños de la Guerra” (the children of the War); they lived through the harsh post-war years and then the time of Spanish development. In OPEN HEART, Elvira Lindo tells the story of her parents, which is ultimately the story of an excessive love, a passionate and unstable love story forged through constant anger and reconciliation, with an entire family’s mood dependent on it.
Here, she relays the combined tragic and comic side of her family’s existence. Her father’s outsized personality, his caprices, his decisions mark the rhythms of a life characterized by drifting: after the wedding, Manuel’s job in the Dredging and Construction Company obliges him to change cities time after time, preventing him, his wife, and their children from settling down roots. Places pass by while their love disintegrates and their children grow up in a family history marked by her father’s character and the tragic illness of her mother.
A dazzling family saga, brimming with poetry and passion, OPEN HEART skillfully weaves together the private lives of individuals and major historical events in South America and Europe. It has been compared with the books that Natalia Ginzburg dedicated to her family, such as Family Lexicon and Delphine de Vigan’s Nothing Holds Back the Night. It also sings with notes of The Best Intentions, a novel that Bergman penned around his parents. Working within the family novel framework, Lindo executes what she does best, the creation of characters.
OPEN HEART: A Novel
By Elvira Lindo, Translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West
Other Press Paperback Original • ISBN: 978-1-63542-252-8
On Sale Date: April 4, 2023 • Price: $18.99
Elvira Lindo was born in Cádiz, Spain. Before becoming a fiction writer, she was a presenter, actress, and scriptwriter for television and radio. Lindo received the Atlántida Prize from the Editors Union of Catalonia and the Biblioteca Breve Prize for her novel Una palabra tuya. In addition to numerous other successful books, including the international bestselling Manolito Gafotas series, Lindo is a frequent contributor to the Spanish daily newspaper El País.
Adrian Nathan West is a writer and literary critic based in Spain. He has translated more than twenty books, among them Rainald Goetz’s Insane and Sibylle Lacan’s A Father: Puzzle.
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]]>A few weeks ago, United massively devalued its miles by increasing award rates on some flights by up to 122%.
Despite its numerous devaluations, we’ll help you get some great redemptions from the MileagePlus program. The carrier’s Star Alliance membership allows you to earn and redeem miles on partner airlines.
United MileagePlus is a 1:1 transfer partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards and Bilt Rewards, so travelers with cards like the Chase Sapphire Reserve®, the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card and the Bilt Mastercard® (see rates and fees) can easily boost their MileagePlus balances through various travel and dining purchases. That said, we generally don’t recommend transferring Chase and Bilt points to United since we value United miles at just 1.1 cents each.
However, earning United miles is just one part of the puzzle. Knowing which redemptions to target can ensure you get a solid value from your United credit card sign-up bonus.
United’s MileagePlus program is free to join and miles never expire. Even if you don’t earn or redeem miles for a while, you don’t have to worry about losing your account balance due to inactivity.
The carrier has hubs at airports in seven cities across the U.S. — Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) in New Jersey; Washington’s Dulles International Airport (IAD); Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport (ORD) in Chicago; Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH); Denver International Airport (DEN); Los Angeles International Airport (LAX); and San Francisco International Airport (SFO) — and offers service to hundreds of destinations around the world. However, as a Star Alliance member, you can earn and redeem MileagePlus miles on carriers like Lufthansa, Air New Zealand and Singapore Airlines.
Related: The best websites to search for Star Alliance award availability
The simplest way for most people to earn United miles will be by flying with the carrier or one of its Star Alliance partners and crediting the flights to your MileagePlus account.
When you book a flight through United, you’ll typically earn miles based on the ticket’s base fare, with bonuses for elite members. However, flights booked directly with partner airlines and credited to your United MileagePlus account will earn miles based on the distance flown and your booked fare class. You can view this page on United’s website for full details.
As mentioned above, United is a 1:1 transfer partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards and Bilt Rewards. That means you can transfer points to your United MileagePlus account — a process that should be completed within minutes.
Marriott Bonvoy points transfer to United at a 3:1 ratio thanks to United and Marriott’s RewardsPlus partnership. You’ll get 10,000 bonus miles for every 60,000 points transferred to United MileagePlus. Transfers from Marriott Bonvoy to United MileagePlus take around three days.
If you’re starting from scratch or looking to save up for an expensive award, consider signing up for a United credit card. You’ll have your choice among entry-level and premium cards, as well as personal and business options:
United’s cobranded cards are issued by Chase, meaning they’re subject to the 5/24 rule for new applicants.
Related: Earn up to 3,000 bonus miles when you join United MileagePlus Dining
You can qualify for United elite status by earning Premier qualifying points (PQPs) and Premier qualifying flights (PQFs). To qualify for any status, you must fly at least four United and/or United Express segments annually. Earlier this year, United deposited extra PQPs into Premier members’ accounts. By spending on your United cobranded credit card, you can also earn bonus PQPs.
There are four published tiers of United Premier elite status that offer bonus miles and other perks. All United elites get placed on the list for complimentary premier upgrades, with higher priority for upper-tier elites. United elites also get access to complimentary Economy Plus seating, though depending on your tier, that might be available only at check-in or at the time of booking.
Related: What is United Airlines elite status worth?
In 2019, United formally switched to dynamic award pricing for its own flights. In April 2020, the carrier pulled its Star Alliance partner award chart without advanced notice and increased prices on most routes by 10%.
With no award chart to reference, United is free to increase the prices on some of the most popular MileagePlus redemptions without warning. This happened in May and June 2023, when United significantly increased award rates without notice.
Related: Why I consider my United miles to be worth 5 cents apiece
There’s plenty of doom and gloom news about devaluations, decreased award availability and the stripping of benefits from award tickets. However, one positive trend over the last few years is the launch of limited-time, discounted award sales. Historically, Delta has been one of the best airlines at offering award sales, but United is making progress on that front.
Earlier this year, United offered round-trip flights to the South Pacific from just 42,000 miles to celebrate its 42nd anniversary. We hope to see more of these sales in the future.
After working hard to build your stash of miles, keep your eyes on our website for deal alerts so you can jump on the next sale and stretch your miles even farther.
Related: The ultimate guide to getting upgraded on United Airlines
United has heavily invested in its international premium experience, between Polaris lounges, taking delivery of new planes with sleek Polaris cabins and retrofitting its existing long-haul fleet. Best of all, booking United Polaris through MileagePlus is often cheaper than booking a partner airline’s business-class cabin.
Let’s look at a flight from Washington, D.C.’s Dulles International Airport (IAD) to Frankfurt Airport (FRA), a premium United route operated by its Star Alliance partner Lufthansa. A one-way business-class award on Lufthansa’s 747-8 would cost you 88,000 United MileagePlus miles. However, you may be able to book the same route on a United-operated flight for as low as 80,000 miles depending on the dynamic pricing calculator. Those 8,000 miles you save are worth $88 based on TPG’s most recent valuations.
The savings can be even more significant on other routes, like from the U.S. to South Asia. A business-class award on a Star Alliance partner can cost an extra 10,000 miles or more on these routes. Of course, this won’t always be true due to the unpredictable nature of dynamic pricing. Plus, some of United’s partners, like EVA and ANA, are worth paying a premium for. Still, these potential savings are worth keeping an eye out for.
Unfortunately, United is often stingy with its business-class award space, so you might be forced to book with a partner. However, you can use ExpertFlyer (owned by TPG’s parent company, Red Ventures) to set alerts for United and its Star Alliance partners if there’s no business-class award space on your desired date(s) of travel.
Related: Your ultimate guide to the United MileagePlus program
The excitement of snagging a “free” trip using your miles can be dampened significantly by fuel surcharges. Those extra costs that many programs will add to award tickets. Other Star Alliance programs can add hundreds of dollars in fuel surcharges to their award tickets, but you can keep some serious cash in your pocket by booking through United, as it’s one of the few programs out there that doesn’t add these.
Of course, United’s award rates are generally higher than many of its partners. While the airline technically eliminated its close-in award booking fee, you might find award rates higher for close-in travel.
However, if you can save $500 or even $1,000 in fees on a single award ticket by booking through United, it can easily be worth it. Savings like that are easy to come by if you’re looking at certain awards, like Lufthansa first class between the U.S. and Europe, where taxes from other Star Alliance frequent flyer programs can easily exceed $1,000.
Related: United’s best kept elite status secret: How to earn PQP faster with partner flights
United MileagePlus doesn’t offer an unrestricted stopover like other frequent flyer programs, but it does offer the Excursionist Perk. If used strategically, it has the potential to be even more valuable. It allows you to add a qualifying, one-way flight to a round-trip award ticket without additional miles at its most basic level. Here are the rules United lists on its website:
This perk’s simplest and most obvious use would be for a round-trip award from the U.S. to Europe or Asia. You could fly from Washington, D.C., to Frankfurt, use the Excursionist Perk for a free flight from Frankfurt to Paris, and then complete your round-trip award booking with a flight back to Washington, D.C.
In this case, you’d pay the normal award rate for a round-trip flight from the U.S. to Europe, while the leg from Frankfurt to Paris would be “free.”
Of course, you could get much more creative than this. Maybe you add an open jaw and fly back to Chicago instead of Washington.
That’s still pretty tame in the grand scheme of what’s possible with this perk. To learn about crazy routing possibilities like “the time machine” or the “Southern North America/South of Central America/North of South America/West of Everywhere Turtler,” check out TPG’s complete guide to the Excursionist Perk.
Related: How to unlock additional award availability with United Airlines
With so many United flyers using miles for travel from the United States, U.S. redemptions have been disproportionately devalued compared to the rest of the world. Some impressive non-U.S. redemptions include Melbourne Airport (MEL) to Singapore Changi Airport (SIN) for 55,000 miles in business class on Singapore Airlines, São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport (GRU) to Buenos Aires’ Ezeiza International Airport (EZE) for 27,500 miles in business class (or 38,500 miles in first class) on Swiss and Seoul to Tokyo for 8,800 miles in economy class on Asiana Airlines.
If you’re planning a trip outside of the United States, it’s worth comparing the cash price of your flight to the award price. Remember, just because you’re flying a route that United doesn’t operate doesn’t mean you can’t use your United miles.
If you’re like me, it might be worth keeping a healthy “just in case” sum of miles in my MileagePlus account for last-minute situations. A year ago, I was traveling in Belgium and had to return immediately to the United States due to a family emergency. The urgent nature of the situation meant that I needed to be on the first flight that would get me home to San Francisco.
Shopping on my phone for a flight back while en route to the Brussels airport by taxi, I found a United flight in Polaris business class for 62,800 miles connecting through Chicago. Miraculously, this flight was scheduled to depart Brussels in two hours and had the soonest arrival in San Francisco. The cash price was over $8,000.
Even with the increase in award prices for close-in bookings, this flight was a bargain and I avoided paying for an expensive last-minute paid fare.
Despite negative changes to the United MileagePlus program, plenty of high-value options remain for redeeming your miles.
Knowing which award types, cabins and routing rules to utilize can help you boost your redemption values every time. At the very least, review the Excursionist Perk to add a free second destination to your next vacation booked with United MileagePlus miles.
See Bilt Mastercard rates and fees here.
See Bilt Mastercard rewards and benefits here.
Additional reporting by Ethan Steinberg.
]]>By Natalie Eilbert / Green Bay Press-Gazette, Wisconsin Watch
Amy DeBroux described the 13 years of advocating for her daughter’s mental health as being at sea: periods of crisis followed by calm.
From 2005 to 2018, DeBroux spent hours discussing her daughter’s educational and mental health support needs. The scenes were familiar enough for DeBroux, thanks to her background in education. Normally, she would’ve sat on the same side of the table as the specialists, advocating for her students.
But the tables had quite literally turned.
Before she adopted her two children, DeBroux worked in Kaukauna and Appleton school districts, as well as a Connecticut school, for 10 years. Now, both her children needed behavioral health support, with one of her children specifically needing a tailored program following her autism diagnosis.
The team of educators — teachers, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, school psychologists — came with a list of suggestions for her child’s individualized education program, commonly referred to as an IEP. She absorbed the information as it was given, but still, she felt overwhelmed at times.
“Any parent who has a child with special needs goes through a grieving process. That vision you had for your child, what you thought your child would be, is now different,” DeBroux said. “When you actually go through that process, you’re asking so many questions: What are we going to have to do to help navigate things for our child? And how do I support myself supporting that person?”
Those questions are woven into a grim dynamic for thousands of Wisconsin families. At a time when studies indicate a desperate need for more mental health care services among Wisconsin’s children and adolescents, the number of providers is simply not where it needs to be.
As a result, the burden falls on parents and other family members, or on teachers and other school staff, none of whom likely have the necessary time or tools.
“If you have a cold, you go to the doctor right away. If you have a mental health issue, you have to fill out a form that says you’re not eating, that says you’re not sleeping. You have to wait six weeks or longer to get an appointment. And then you may get an appointment with someone who really doesn’t resonate with you,” said Linda Hall, director of Wisconsin Office of Children’s Mental Health.
The irony is that, due to a number of initiatives funded by federal pandemic relief funds, Wisconsin schools recently have increased the number of social workers, counselors and psychologists, according to the Wisconsin Office of Children’s Mental Health. The bad news? In all three categories, Wisconsin has remained far below the recommended ratios of students to mental health professionals.
The American School Counselor Association, for example, recommends one school mental health counselor for every 250 students — a ratio that is generally accepted across the country.
The latest school-counselor-to-student ratio in Wisconsin, according to data from 2021-2022, was 378 to one.
The result, for families like the DeBrouxes, is that half of Wisconsin parents had difficulty obtaining mental health services. And, perhaps no surprise, almost the same percentage of children ages 3 to 17 with mental health conditions did not receive treatment.
Further, the gains that were made with pandemic relief funds, Matt Kaemmerer, director of pupil services for Oshkosh School District said, are temporary. Grant funds cannot support the long-term hiring of mental health professionals.
“It’s really hard to hire permanent school staff members with that grant funding, because who’s going to want to come and work in the district when they don’t know if they’re going to have a position the following year?” said Kaemmerer.
DeBroux threw herself into the ring to learn as much as she could about the needs of her young children. As an educator, not only had she encountered students in various developmental stages — a knowledge that helped her forge ahead — but she also understood the jargon associated with an IEP.
Perhaps most important of all, however, was the relatability of her circumstances: She met other harried parents in the middle of similar challenges with their children.
Getting an intake and finding the right fit for a counselor proved difficult for DeBroux and her children, especially with such a slim selection of providers from which to choose in the first place. The wait times to see a pediatric psychiatrist, too, can stretch from six months to a year.
“The challenge is getting into those appointments,” DeBroux said. “That’s the most frustrating part. If you tell a doctor your child has a heart murmur, there’s not going to be a year-long wait time to get help.”
That tracks with recent data from the U.S. Department of Education in which 70% of public schools reported a dramatic jump in students seeking mental health services following the pandemic, despite nearly half of schools also saying they couldn’t effectively provide counseling support for these students. Additionally, 76% of public schools reported an increase in staff voicing concerns about their students’ showing symptoms of depression, anxiety and trauma.
For so many families, the pandemic exacerbated an already fragile situation, said Jessica Frain, school mental health consultant for the state Department of Public Instruction. Many children fell behind in school or experienced some form of stress at home. The pandemic shattered the comfort of daily routines.
But well before the pandemic, parents faced crushing medical bills following counseling sessions for their children.
Mental health disorders are the most expensive conditions to treat among children aged 5 to 17, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which found in one study that having a mental health disorder added $2,874 a year to total health care costs. And a recent poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that, of the 100 million Americans that have some kind of health care debt, 20% is owing to mental health services.
“There’s a lot of trial and error (with mental health services) and you have to set up lots of follow-up appointments,” said DeBroux. “That in itself can be very challenging for families who struggle with financial issues. It puts them at a greater disadvantage. Some parents, although they don’t like to, can do some services out of pocket, but obviously, that’s not ideal.”
The alarming needs of youths were further driven home in the latest Youth Risk Behavior Survey from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, which offered a distressing picture of what’s happening in high schools. The semi-annual state survey captures the health risks and mental health needs of students in grades 9 through 12.
In the most recent survey, from 2021, more than half of the students surveyed said they were anxious; one in three students said they felt sad or hopeless every day; one in four girls said they seriously considered suicide; and one in five students said they engaged in self-harm.
“Our kids are in trouble,” Hall said.
During the pandemic, the Wisconsin Office of Children’s Mental Health hosted a number of listening sessions to better understand what was lacking in students’ mental health. The prevailing response, according to Hall, boiled down to having a trustworthy adult with whom to have simple conversations.
That trustworthy adult, if it’s not a parent, often ends up being a teacher. But that can be an unfair load.
The overwhelming number of kids in crisis has challenged teachers’ more than ever to detect when a student needs mental health support.
Laura Jackson, executive director of student services for the Appleton School District, said the increased conversations about mental health awareness have been good, but it can leave school personnel with empathy fatigue — an inability to relate to, and care for, others as a result of emotional exhaustion and being overwhelmed by the needs.
“People in education care — that’s why they’re in this role. They care deeply about others and their success,” Jackson said. “But as people are struggling, that amount of care and compassion that you’re extending, is also exhausting.”
Some schools are finding creative solutions to address the shortage of mental health care providers. Still others are falling behind.
Jennie Garceau, executive director of student services for the Howard-Suamico School District, said it has full-time counselors at every school, including elementary school, and its larger schools have multiple full-time counselors.
Through partnerships with Connections for Mental Wellness, a Brown County behavioral health initiative that serves as a consortium for public schools, the district can enlist the help of licensed counselors from nearby agencies to support students — regardless of insurance coverage — in elementary and middle schools with greater mental health needs, Garceau said.
Howard-Suamico has also introduced a new 24/7/365 resource called Care Solace, which operates similarly to school social workers: providing counseling care coordination services for students, staff, and families completely free of charge.
School social workers, who often coordinate with families to get students the right care, are often overtaxed as they spend their days playing phone tag with parents and health providers on top of responding to student needs, Garceau said.
That’s a sentiment that extends beyond Howard-Suamico. Hall said social workers across the state are bearing the brunt of shortages, and not just in their own field. In order to coordinate with families, the right counselor needs to be available, an effort that is only growing more cumbersome.
And while school districts like Howard-Suamico are finding numerous resources, it’s a completely different story for rural schools in the state.
Kimberley Welk, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Green Bay, works with eight rural school districts in northeastern Wisconsin, including Kiel, Manitowoc, Oconto, Lena, Gresham, Tigerton, Laona, and Goodman. She said that she’s never seen higher levels of trauma throughout every district she works in, on top of rampant levels of anxiety and depression.
Welk, who runs a school-based mental health program through her family therapist center, mixes telehealth and occasional on-site visits to schools to make up for what can be a two-hour drive.
Although Welk and her team of counselors can spot such red-flag behaviors and address them, educators are finding themselves awkwardly trying to balance teaching with emotional support at levels that are unheard of, she said.
It isn’t uncommon for schools to contract with mental health providers like Welk. The dearth of providers, however, means that some schools won’t match up with the requirements set by the provider, said Rebecca Rockhill, executive director of Connections for Mental Wellness.
Connections for Mental Wellness, for example, has counselors for outside agencies in all nine school districts in Brown County, but only 24 out of 86 public schools. That’s due to there being only eight mental health providers who have the capacity to work with students in a school-based setting.
Working with students who are uninsured or one-third of students who rely on Medicaid tends to be a “tremendous income drain” for providers, Rockhill said.
Training staff to be more aware of mental health needs requires additional resources.
That’s a problem for many rural districts. Fewer staff members at rural schools have the knowledge necessary to write grants toward mental health programs that can bring in support systems like Care Solace, Hall said, which further adds to barriers to a population already struggling with isolation.
Two agencies recently declined to return to school-based counseling at the start of the 2022 school year, a result of being financially constrained. Because of this last-minute change, Rockhill said those schools had to scramble to find other therapists. Students, meanwhile, lost providers with whom they’d established trust, a foremost staple of effective talk therapy.
“We are completely taxed providing for schools right now,” Rockhill said. “We just can’t get into another school.”
Owing to her personal history, DeBroux joined NAMI Fox Valley in 2018 — “NAMI” stands for National Alliance on Mental Illness — as a parent-peer advocate and is subcontracted to work with the Little Chute Area School District and Menasha Joint School District.
She works as an advocate for parents, using her lived experiences to be an empathetic listener and compiling resources for families.
She talks every day with parents, either getting new parents “plugged in” to the system or working with recurrent parents on what’s best for their children. Stigma comes up in certain communities, DeBroux said, and she’s found that the best way to address stigma is to walk parents through her own story. That’s the key principle of peer advocacy.
“Peer advocacy is a big piece of this: Being able to share some of your story, to let people know they’re not alone,” DeBroux said. “I wish there had been a parent advocate when my family was navigating some of those things, because it can be very isolating.”
Some silver linings are slowly revealing themselves.
Universities across the state are beginning the process of embedding their school psychology graduate students into local public schools. That’s the case for UW-Madison, which is using a new $6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to recruit and train 24 new school psychology graduate students, with an emphasis on students of color, into Madison’s public schools over the course of five years.
Elsewhere, the Medical College of Wisconsin is addressing the children and adolescent psychiatry shortage by extending its psychiatry fellowship program to University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, with the hope of embedding more new professionals in the region. According to Dr. Erica Arrington, the assistant professor and program director of the fellowship, about 80% of doctors-in-training will practice in the region within which they’re trained.
As it stands, one upshot of the pandemic is that young people have an increased sense of self-awareness, gratitude and resilience, according to a Wisconsin Voices study, conducted by the Wisconsin Institute for Public Policy and Service.
Frain and Liz Krubsack, another school mental health consultant for DPI, have been working to develop a comprehensive mental health program at schools across the state. One of the components they’re working to get into more schools is universal screenings for behavioral and mental health, which can help parents and educators identify health concerns early.
Therapy, Frain said, is only one piece of the puzzle. Educating teachers and staff on how to be more literate in the field of mental health is yet another piece, as is the emphasis on trauma-informed care.
Hall, meanwhile, emphasized the power of extracurricular activities, whether that means baseball or a book club, which contributes “very much” to mental well-being, she said.
And to address many of the Hispanic students in the state who tend to be family caregivers or work after school, Hall said more schools are adopting mid-day extracurriculars.
Hall said many educators and students are thinking creatively about how to cover ground that therapists cannot reach. These include mental health curriculums, capitalizing on the power of friends to get the right mental health resources, and arming peers, educators and staff with mental health training tools.
“Schools are a great place for us to work on (mental health) literacy. Kids are much less tied to stigma about mental health than their parents,” Hall said. “We have school staff and teachers saying, ‘This is even more important than academics right now and we would like the space to be able to work on this.'”
DeBroux emphasized the power of trust in working to address mental health in children and adolescents. It’s sometimes hard to know where to start, DeBroux said, and talking to other parents with similar life experiences empowered her to use her voice.
“A lot of times, for people who are struggling with behavioral and mental health challenges, it often feels like you are the only one who is going through this crisis,” DeBroux said. “It’s oftentimes a long, ongoing process. There’s no quick fix, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t hope for recovery and a good, healthy life.”
Natalie Eilbert covers mental health issues for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. She welcomes story tips and feedback. You can reach her at neilbert@gannett.com or view her Twitter profile at @natalie_eilbert. If you or someone you know is dealing with suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or text “Hopeline” to the National Crisis Text Line at 741-741.
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This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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The post Six-Week Waits, One Counselor for Eight Rural Districts: These Are Some of the Hurdles Facing Youth Mental Health appeared first on The Good Men Project.
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There’s no way I‘m coming back.
This one thought echoed at the end of my 2021–2022 school year, and it continues to reverberate even today. That year had been the worst year of my life when it came to being in the classroom.
I didn’t have another year in me.
It wasn’t until later that I realized teaching pays incredibly well compared to a lot of other entry-level jobs, and we weren’t in any financial position to quit.
In other words, enduring another year or two or three of this job needed to happen until I found something that worked better for me.
Until I found passion.
Being passionate doesn’t start with your career. Most people aren’t passionate about their career at all.
You might meet a few people who absolutely love what they do as a hired employee, but most of us could care less about the job we have.
The truth is that passion was never meant to be found at work.
And if our passions are meant to be outside of the job we have, how do we find them? My wife and I have struggled with this these last few years, but here’s what has helped the most.
Reading has been an escape in so many ways.
When I was a kid, I’d imagine myself in the books that I’d read, becoming a superhero or riding a dragon or traveling on the Hogwarts Express. We use books to escape the very okay world around us.
But why does that stop after we become adults? Why are adults only allowed to read nonfiction and figure out who they are and how to start a business once they’re done with childhood?
That’s why BookTok has taken off so epicly. People are sick of the place they find themselves stuck in on earth and they need an escape found only inside of narrative.
Reading gives us both hobby and community. My wife started a new book series and author based on a recommendation from her friend and now her and that friend get to read and reflect together.
Can nonfiction still create that strike of lightning needed to revive passion? Yes.
I recently listened to Eric Thomas’ You Owe You on Audible and it was all the encouragement I needed to keep on writing and not give up. I owe it to myself to do so. At least, that’s what the book convinced me of.
All books shine hope, even inside of our sometimes mediocre jobs.
Sometimes escapism doesn’t work though. It’s only temporary and we need something that is a permanent fix to the fact that our boss doesn’t care about us.
I’ve found it helps to share my struggles with someone else.
This doesn’t mean just gripe and complain. It means unloading and unraveling yourself so that someone else can help you put the pieces of your puzzle together.
It goes without saying that you should only do this with someone you trust. A parent, a partner, a close friend, a therapist. But the premise is to go into the conversation saying that you’re feeling stuck and talk through possible ideas of how to get unstuck.
Often with me, when I stop writing, there’s a block outside of writing that’s stopping me. I might be feeling overwhelmed about the state of the house or disappointed in my progress or worried about a project at work.
Ultimately, it isn’t my passion that’s stopping me from pursuing it–the source lies elsewhere.
And when my wife notices me in a funk, talking through my emotions helps me regain focus and allows my passion to spring up like a shot of bamboo.
As someone in their mid-20’s, it surprises me how many people lack real passion. They just stumble through each day desperate to make it to the next in one piece.
People need to dive into hobbies that bring them back to a point of exploration and happiness.
For me, that can mean diving into my writing, but it can also mean diving into a new game with puzzles to unravel and levels to beat.
Find a hobby worth your time and create fun in your bland world.
Hobbies allow us to be the boss in our own lives. You’re in control of how much fun you have and how much energy you bring to the table.
However, hobbies come with an unexpected piece–they can sometimes be frustrating and costly.
My advice is to find something you’re interested in or always wanted to do, do some research, and start small.
For example, if you want to learn to play the guitar and you’ve never done it before, start off by renting a guitar for a fee, or buying a cheaper one.
Buying a $1,200 guitar that sits in the corner of your closet when you realize gaining calluses is a part of learning to play is a future you don’t want a part in.
Start a reasonable (and reasonably priced) hobby and when that works out, consider upgrading when it’s time.
There are a lot of people that try to turn their passion into money.
In fact, there are plenty of people on the internet who will convince you that you should be trying to make money with whatever you do on the side. I used to be one of them.
Until I realized that sometimes you just need a passion and it doesn’t need to make you money, at least in the beginning.
Making money is a natural occurrence over time. Take crocheting as an example. Some people start crocheting for fun, just to have something to do in their spare time outside of work. But maybe you crochet a hat for a family member and other family members are interested.
You realize you have a talent at this thing you’ve just been doing on the side for kicks and then, because you want to get some kind of reward for all of your hard work, you start to ask for payment. Now you crochet hats on the side and make a few hundred dollars a month.
Natural progression. Forcing this natural progression will cause you to immediately lose interest in your passion project and turn against it.
Don’t let that happen. Have fun. Let the money come later.
I’ve heard it said that passion is like a fire because it needs to be cared for in order to grow. In that case, it’s like a lot of things: a puppy, a plant, or a Tamagotchi.
Care for your passions. Don’t allow the initial spark to go out. Don’t give up on your passion because it isn’t as easy as you thought. Look for ways to care for it as if you’re growing a plant. And over time, you’ll find yourself in awe by how much it has grown.
And maybe, just maybe, you use that passion to start making a little extra cash. But if you don’t, at least you have a fire inside of you that no dull job could ever put out. And to me, that’s worth a little more than money.
…
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]]>17-Across. * High-intensity workout regimen: CROSS FIT. A Cross Pen was a classic gift for a high school graduate. A.T. Cross Company, LLC. is an American manufacturing company of writing implements, based in Providence, Rhode Island. The company was founded in 1846 and is one of the oldest pen manufacturers in the world. The company makes fountain pens, ballpoint, and rollerball pens, as well as mechanical pencils and refills.
39-Across. * Buttery choice in a bread basket: PARKER HOUSE ROLL. The Parker House Rolls are named after the Boston Parker House Hotel, where they were first served in the 1870s. According to their origin story, they were created when a disgruntled hotel baker threw a batch of unfinished rolls into an over after a fight with a guest.
The Parker Pen Company is a French manufacturer. It's a moderate-priced pen.
51-Across. * Pattern inspired by nature: ZEBRA PRINT. The Zebra pen is probably the most obscure pen in today's puzzle. Zebra is also a Japanese company. I have seen them at Walmart.
And the unifier:
64-Across. Writers' aliases, and what are found at the starts of the answers to the starred clues: PEN NAMES. Can you identify the following authors? (1) Howard Allen Frances O’Brien; (2) A. B. Barnard; (3) George Eliot; (4) Charles Lutwidge Dodgson; (5) Mary Westmacott; (6) Eric Blair; (7) William Sydney Porter (8) Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski (9) David John Moore Cornwall; and (10) Theodore Geisel
חתולה
[TAG42] |
C.C, Chris and Margaret |
Lizzie: Nathan has recently discovered his green thumb. If you read our last newsletter, you’ll remember that I had the responsibility of spritzing Nathan’s living-room seeds so that they could continue sprouting while he and Kaitlyn were away for a weekend. Well, through this process, in which I would say I played a major role, the seeds are now thriving—so much so that some of those seeds have taken up residence in Nathan and Kaitlyn’s backyard, where Nathan has built a raised wooden garden bed with his own two hands.
I’m not officially a farmer, but having been to a farmers’ market or two, I know that the beginning of summer signals an impending bounty of produce. To mark the occasion, and bring good health to Nathan’s fledgling seeds, Kait decided to host a garden party. I think the idea was that we’d nondenominationally bless the crops by eating tiny sandwiches and drinking pre-batched cocktails near them, and simultaneously honor the work of indie agriculturalists like Nathan. Whereas Claire’s Queen’s Jubilee last year was an explicitly British take on the garden party, this one was much more vegetal.
Kaitlyn: I like that Lizzie says Nathan has “discovered” his green thumb, suggesting that it’s been there all along. And maybe it has! His relationship with his first-ever set of baby plants does seem fairly instinctive and affectionate. He supplements their innate bond with hours and hours of garden YouTube. Average night in the past month: We’re watching sports or Bravo or whatever on TV; I get up from the couch to get a seltzer; then I come back and we’re watching a guy speaking very rapidly and enthusiastically about soil.
I don’t like to help in the garden. It reminds me of my first “job,” which was to move carts of potted mums from one greenhouse to another for no apparent reason. (The job title was literally “moving mums.”) But I want to be supportive, and of course I want to someday enjoy bundles of delicious, fresh vegetables. I’ve learned enough about the concept of intention-setting from Instagram to feel that it would help Nathan’s efforts if all of our friends came over and stood near the garden bed and thought, Green.
The party prep, then, was easy. All I did was think green. I made green sandwiches with tarragon mayonnaise, cucumbers, sprouts, etc. I looked up “green punch” and Martha Stewart suggested a chartreuse base—unfortunately that stuff is made by monks and they don’t make a whole lot of it, so we went to plan B, which was limoncello and basil. I texted my mom, a renowned theme-party planner and former Sunday-school teacher, and asked for some ideas. “See who can string beans the fastest,” she said. I didn’t know what this meant. She explained: “Embroidery needle, heavy thread, and a bunch of beans to stab into a string. Onto the thread.” We didn’t do that, but we did take her suggestion to make a huge dirt cake (pounds of pudding, two family-size packages of Oreos, gummy worms, you get it).
Lizzie: My contributions to the party were a batch of mojitos, banana cream pudding, and a croquet set that my parents unearthed from their basement. The mojitos were the worst part of it all because I had to juice 30 limes to get two cups of lime juice. And because I have several small wounds on my knuckles from grating my skin off with a microplane, the marathon lime-squeezing session was punctuated by searing pain. Plus, I really overshot the mark when purchasing the limes, and still have about 30 left in my apartment.
I had planned on getting to Kaitlyn’s early to help set up, but by the time I got there, the yard was already primed for a crowd: Little pyramids of sandwiches were perched on the floral-tableclothed table, next to pitchers of “cuke water” and punch, and buckets of canned drinks on ice. On the concrete part of the yard, there was a message in colorful chalk: WELCOME TO THE GARDEN. Surrounding the message like a halo were drawings of various vegetables—carrots, lettuce, broccoli, and the like. Kait explained that everyone was supposed to use the provided chalk to add their favorite vegetable to the drawing. My first thought was radishes, but they were already taken, so I drew peas, which, while not necessarily my favorite vegetable, are probably the easiest to draw.
Then Nathan showed me his seed-planting station, where guests were encouraged to select a seed from one of the four paper pouches displayed on the table (snow peas, leeks, Chinese broccoli, and serrano peppers) and plant it in one of the compartments of the black plastic plant tray. I chose leeks. The seeds looked like those charcoal bits that sometimes escape into your Brita pitcher when you replace the filter. I made a little indent in the soil and dropped three seeds in. As soon as I dropped the seeds, though, I couldn’t see them anymore, so I mostly just hoped they were safely nestled underground. If they don’t make it, I’ll never look at a leek the same way again.
Kaitlyn: Lizzie labeled her leek “Lizzie’s Leek.” I can’t wait to eat it with her.
For some additional context about the gardening aspect of the garden party, it’s important for readers to know that there was an absolutely violent flash thunderstorm the night before. Water came down the chimney. The cat panicked. Nathan bolted outside, then came back in sopping wet, hands in the air. The baby radishes had all flopped over from the force of the raindrops. There was no telling which other plants would be drowned. The past month’s work was being washed away by an act of God and there was nothing we could do except sit there and also watch the Mets lose. “Don’t tell anyone I cried about the plants,” Nathan told me. I wouldn’t do that because he obviously didn’t.
But thank goodness for the power of positive thinking. I told Nathan over and over: Nature is resilient; the plants are designed to live. I didn’t actually have any idea what I was talking about, but what do you know: In the morning, the radishes were standing back up and everything was all right. Green!
Showers had brought flowers. I’d even say that the perennials in the yard looked more lush than ever. So did the trees, which grow hard little green apples that you can supposedly eat despite the prevalence of heavy metals in Brooklyn soil. The squirrels were out and fighting loudly with one another. We had “God’s Coloring Book” on the playlist, and a big bowl of snap peas to munch on with Matt and Lizzie while we waited for our guests.
Lizzie: As people started to arrive, Nathan gathered a few of us for a tour of his crops. Small green sprouts were lined up in neat little rows inside the raised bed, punctuated by pink flowers. It looked like something out of a children’s book!
Getting to this point in his gardening journey had required Nathan to take several trips to Home Depot. He told us a story about buying approximately 400 pounds of soil there one day and accidentally loading it into the car of some unsuspecting couple (the result of a communication error with the freelance guys-with-a-van in the Home Depot parking lot). The wife said to the husband, upon seeing Nathan hauling pounds of soil into their car, “I told you to lock it.” Nathan said the couple were actually angry, which to me seems like a pretty useless reaction to a situation that’s basically slapstick comedy. It’s not like Nathan was insisting they keep his soil in there and drive him home. He said he even offered to give them a bag of his dirt as a peace offering, but they said something like “We have our own.”
Kaitlyn: Someone breaks into your car to put something into it? Cry me a river. For the past week, someone has been repeatedly breaking into our house to take things out of it. The first time they came, Nathan was insulted because they stole our friend Leo’s bike and apparently didn’t want Nathan’s. The second time, they stole Nathan’s bike. This situation is ongoing. I think we’re all just hoping that whoever has figured out how to get into our home starts to feel guilty about it, because we’re so clearly clueless and defenseless.
Anyway, Russell and his girlfriend, Molly, came with a box of cupcakes and asked me quietly whether Nathan would be open to any gardening tips, because Molly in fact runs a small farm. They didn’t want to make the offer if it would be perceived as rude. “No, no, Nathan loves to learn,” I told them. Molly produced some rare sea-plantain seeds from an island off Maine from her purse and headed over to the planting area.
I was thrilled by everyone’s commitment to the theme. Many wore outfits featuring a lemon print, and Mariya had shorts with tomatoes on them. Rachel arrived in a green silk dress—she said she was dressed as a cucumber. Stephanie came out with a big white cake that was wearing a crown of parsley. When she cut into it, it was as green as a cucumber!
Lizzie: The party was exactly what you want from a party. I flitted around from conversation to conversation, discussing all the hot topics of the day: vegetables, sweating through your shirt in the summer, Daria, “dry acupuncture,” the Vanderpump Rules reunion, “It’s Pablo-matic,” Ghia’s new mystery flavor.
For a while we also talked about teeth. Claire and I showed Brandon photos of what teeth look like under veneers (Bat Boy nubs) because he hadn’t seen them before. As the conversation drifted toward dentistry in general, Brandon said he was pro-Tend, the stylish dental boutique for young people, because he can make same-day appointments and go there at 8 p.m. We laughed at the idea of “Tend After Dark.” Ashley said she prefers her old-school dentist, where the teeth-cleaning process can be painfully thorough. Claire told us her theory of “Pangea teeth,” which is when your top teeth and bottom teeth begin their lives as, I guess, a mono-tooth, only to be broken up into the standard two rows of teeth that most humans are familiar with. As supporting evidence, she showed us how her top and bottom teeth fit together like puzzle pieces.
Galen and Claire also told a riveting story about abandoning a ski slope mid-ski because of injury, climbing back to the top, and persuading someone in charge to let them take the ski lift the wrong way, down to the bottom of the mountain. They said they were eventually permitted to do this, on the condition that a “ski ambassador” chaperone them—and not only that, but the ambassador sat between them on the lift, presumably so they wouldn’t try any funny business.
Kaitlyn: I missed the veneers conversation, but I’ve seen the photo Lizzie is talking about, and it is really scary. She shows it to people fairly often. (Does she have it saved on her phone?) The thing is, I don’t think they actually shave your teeth down that much. I think that’s just one of those fake pictures from the internet. (I’m speaking as someone with two veneers, though I don’t talk about it with Lizzie for obvious reasons.) If I had been over there while she was spreading this misinfo I might have intervened.
Honestly, most of the party was a blur for me because as host, I was obsessed entirely with everyone else’s experience. At times, I wondered whether there were enough activities. Should we have strung beans? Should we have done the Mr. Potato Head craft my mom suggested? (Stick cut-up vegetables onto a potato with toothpicks.) Or the other potato craft? (Carve shapes into a potato, creating a “stamp,” then make art with it.) But no, everyone was enjoying themselves. They loved croquet.
In the early evening, as the crowd thinned out, I was able to relax. I talked to Ashley about our upcoming trip to her hometown and she said she’ll take us to “the Ditch,” where she sat on the ground and gossiped as a teen. Can you imagine Ashley—who is always immaculate and has never forgiven me for making her sleep in an Econo Lodge eight years ago—hanging out anywhere called “the Ditch”? This cracked me up. I’m so excited to see it.
The late stage of a party is the best. You get to go around to the people who are your true favorites but who you had to let alone for most of the day because they do fine without you. Nathan was like, “Did you see? Sea-plantain seeds!” We went upstairs to check on the cat, who was snuggling with Tamar on the couch. She’d gotten back from France just 15 hours before. She was not going to fall asleep, she insisted. “I’m just sitting and watching the videos they pick out for me,” she said. “Who is ‘they’?” Nathan asked. “The government.” (I believe she was looking at her algorithm-recommended Instagram Reels.) She gave me a magnet shaped like a basket of baguettes and an Annie Ernaux book with the British cover. We took her back down to the party so she could say honestly that she hadn’t fallen asleep.
Pretty soon, the punch and the mojitos were gone, and all that was left were the cheapest bottles of wine and like two gallons of soft, warm pudding.
Lizzie: A garden party ends when everyone has eaten enough dainty sandwiches and herbal cakes and starts craving a cheeseburger. By 8 p.m., the yard had cleared out. When we left, Nathan was crouched down next to his garden, maybe checking to see if the magic of the party had resulted in any growth spurts. Or just enjoying the time alone.
On Nobody Famous: Guesting, Gossiping, and Gallivanting, a collection of Famous People letters from the past five years, is available now from Zando Projects and The Atlantic.
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— story —
publication: Forbes
story title: 7 Classic Books: to deepen your understanding of artificial intelligence
author: by Rob Toews
date: December 2019
book title: The Singularity Is Near
deck: When humans transcend biology
author: by Ray Kurzweil
year: 2005
Perhaps no book or author presents a more relentlessly optimistic view of our tech future than author Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near. Grounding his arguments in the concepts of exponential growth and accelerating returns — Kurzweil anticipates a future in which run-away machine intelligence transforms everything about the world as we know it.
He predicts this super-intelligence will enable us to control our own genetics, master nano-technology, and manipulate physical matter at will. Eventually, human + non-human intelligence will merge, transcend biology, and spread through-out the universe.
While his conclusions are startling, his approach is meticulously data-driven. As the New York Times put it: “Ray Kurzweil’s vision of our super-enhanced future is completely sane and calmly reasoned.”
The concept of the singularity has inspired generations of technologists. It has also garnered plenty of ridicule for its fantastical, utopian overtones. Kurzweil didn’t invent the idea — credit goes to legendary mathematician John von Neumann PhD in the 1950s — but he and this book have played a major role in popularizing it.
this book on Good Reads | visit
LIST by FORBES — 7 Classic Books
To deepen your understanding of artificial intelligence.
by Rob Toews
— introduction —
The computer software field of artificial (AI) has never been the subject of more attention + analysis than it is today. Almost every week, it seems a new best-selling book comes out examining the tech, business, or ethics of AI.
Yet few of the topics + debates at the center of today’s AI discourse are new. While not always recognized by commentators, artificial intelligence as a serious academic discipline dates back to the 1950s. For well over half a century, many of the world’s leading minds have devoted themselves to the pursuit of machine intelligence — and have grappled with what it would mean to succeed in that pursuit.
Much of the public discourse around AI in year 2019 has been anticipated (and influenced by) AI thought leaders — going back decades. Below is a selection of 7 classic books about intelligence:
These books have played a formative role in the development of the field of AI. Their influence continues to be felt today. For anyone seeking a deep understanding of AI’s complexities, challenges, and possibilities — they are essential reading.
— Rob Toews
book | no. 1
book title: Godel, Escher, Bach: an eternal golden braid
deck: A metaphorical fugue on minds + machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll
author: by Douglas Hofstadter PhD
year: 1979
this book on Good Reads | visit
— summary —
The book Godel, Escher, Bach is sometimes referred to as “the Bible of artificial intelligence” — but author Douglas Hofstadter PhD rejects the label.
The book’s central theme is that — through self-reference and “strange loops” — systems comprised of independently meaningless elements can acquire meaning and intelligence. Hofstader identifies versions of such recursive systems in fields as diverse as: mathematics, music, art, and computer science.
To sketch out his subtle thesis, Hofstadter takes his reader into the depths of number theory, classical music, and the computing tech stack. He employs fanciful dialogues between fictional characters in the style of author Lewis Carroll. He structures the book’s chapters, paragraphs, and sentences to embody his points about recursion.
Although Hofstadter was an unknown author at the time of its publication — Godel, Escher, Bach won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
the Atlantic | The man who would teach machines to think
book | no. 2
book title: The Society of Mind
author: by Marvin Minksy PhD
year: 1986
this book on Good Reads | visit
— summary —
Marvin Minsky PhD is one of the founding fathers of artificial intelligence. In The Society of Mind — his most famous and readable book — he lays out his perspectives on how the human mind works, and how we might build machines that simulate it.
Minsky’s over-arching thesis is that the human mind is not one coherent entity but rather a society of countless smaller “agents” — each devoted to a narrow set of tasks, functioning in synchrony to produce intelligent behavior.
Mirroring this thesis, the book is structured as 270 one-page essays. Each essay is a piece of the puzzle — as the reader progresses through the book, Minsky’s overall theory of mind emerges.
He writes at the end of the book: “What magical trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle.”
book | no. 3
book title: On Intelligence
deck: How a new understanding of the brain will lead to the creation of truly intelligent machines
author: by Jeff Hawkins
year: 2004
this book on Good Reads | visit
— summary —
In his book On Intelligence, author Jeff Hawkins posits that a single fundamental “algorithm” underlies all information processing in the human brain: a feed-forward mechanism that predicts future states.
Hawkins’ theory of intelligence has been highly influential across neuro-science, machine learning, and philosophy over the past 15 years. It has also been regularly criticized. In year 2005 Hawkins co-founded the AI start-up Numenta with Dileep George PhD to pursue these principles.
book | no. 4
book title: Alan Turing: the Enigma
deck: The persecuted genius of war-time code-breaking and the computer revolution
author: by Andrew Hodges PhD
year: 1983
this book on Good Reads | visit
— summary —
It is only a slight over-statement to say that scientist Alan Turing PhD created the computer and the field of artificial intelligence. His seminal 1936 paper — vastly ahead of its time — laid the conceptual groundwork for the entire field of digital computing. He was one of the first thinkers to take the idea of artificial intelligence seriously.
His 1950 paper — famously opens with the line “I propose to consider the question: can machines think?” — introduced the Turing test, which remains a touchstone in AI literature today.
foundation papers by by Alan Turing PhD
The 1983 book by Andrew Hodges PhD is the authoritative biography of Turing’s life. Prior to its publication, Turing’s accomplishments were not widely know — due largely to the total secrecy that for decades surrounded his war-time work on cryptography for the Allies at Bletchley Park.
Hodges’ book played a pivotal role in bringing Turing’s ideas to light and establishing him at the forefront of the pantheon of machine intelligence pioneers.
On the topic of AI, Turing made it clear where he stood. Generations ahead of his time — in words still provocative today — Turing wrote in year 1951: “It’s customary to offer a grain of comfort, in the form of a statement that some peculiarly human characteristic could never be imitated by a machine. I can’t offer such comfort. I believe no such bounds can be set.”
book | no. 6
book title: Descartes’ Error
deck: emotion, reason, and the human brain
author: by Antonio R. Damasio PhD
year: 1994
this book on Good Reads | visit
— summary —
Conventional wisdom has long held that — while the intellect is logic-based and objective — emotions make us irrational and cloud our judgment.
In his book Descartes’ Error neurologist Antonio Damasio PhD famously re-conceptualized the relationship between emotion + intellect. The book argues that emotions play an essential role in cognition + decision-making — and without them our intellectual capabilities would not be possible.
This theory of intelligence has intriguing implications for AI. Marvin Minsky PhD once said: “The question is not whether intelligent machines can have any emotions, but whether machines can be intelligent without any emotions.”
book | no. 7
book title: the Mind’s I
deck: fantasies + reflections on self + soul
editors: by Douglas Hofstadter PhD + Daniel Dennett PhD
year: 1981
this book on Good Reads | visit
— summary —
In their book the Mind’s I authors Douglas Hofstadter PhD a+ Daniel Dennett PhD examine the most fundamental of questions:
They do so through an annotated anthology of pieces from contributors as diverse as: Richard Dawkins PhD, Jorge Luis Borges, and Alan Turing PhD.
The book contains rich insights about what it would mean for a machine to think — interweaving perspectives from psychology, engineering, philosophy, and literature. But don’t expect to walk away with any straight-forward answers.
They write in the book’s preface: “We believe there are currently no easy answers to the big questions. This book is designed to provoke, disturb, and befuddle its readers.”
— featured on this list —
The classic book The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil — best-selling author, inventor, and futurist — is listed on Forbes bookshelf.
An essential read to deepen to your understanding of intelligent software + devices. Originally published in year 2005, the book remains a favorite of educators, students, theorists, government, engineers, and business strategists — who are looking ahead to our electronic future.
— notes —
AI = artificial intelligence
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