text:
namespace {

using shaderc_util::Compiler;
using ::testing::HasSubstr;
using ::testing::Eq;

// A trivial vertex shader
const char kVertexShader[] =
    "#version 140\n"
    "void main() {}";

// A shader that compiles under OpenGL compatibility profile rules,
// but not OpenGL core profile rules.
const char kOpenGLCompatibilityFragShader[] =
    R"(#version 140
       uniform highp sampler2D tex;
       void main() {
         gl_FragColor = texture2D(tex, vec2(0.0,0.0));
       })";

// A shader that compiles under OpenGL compatibility profile rules,
// but not OpenGL core profile rules, even when deducing the stage.
const char kOpenGLCompatibilityFragShaderDeducibleStage[] =
    R"(#version 140
       #pragma shader_stage(fragment)
       uniform highp sampler2D tex;
       void main() {
         gl_FragColor = texture2D(tex, vec2(0.0,0.0));
       })";

// A shader that compiles under OpenGL core profile rules.
const char kOpenGLVertexShader[] =
    R"(#version 330
       void main() { int t = gl_VertexID; })";

// A shader that compiles under OpenGL core profile rules, even when
// deducing the stage.
const char kOpenGLVertexShaderDeducibleStage[] =
    R"(#version 330
       #pragma shader_stage(vertex)
       void main() { int t = gl_VertexID; })";

// A shader that compiles under Vulkan rules.
// See the GL_KHR_vuklan_glsl extension to GLSL.
const char kVulkanVertexShader[] =
    R"(#version 310 es
       void main() { int t = gl_VertexIndex; })";

// A shader that needs valueless macro predefinition E, to be compiled
// successfully.
const std::string kValuelessPredefinitionShader =
    "#version 140\n"
    "#ifdef E\n"
    "void main(){}\n"
    "#else\n"
    "#error\n"
    "#endif";

// An HLSL vertex shader.
const char kHlslVertexShader[] =
    R"(float4 EntryPoint(uint index : SV_VERTEXID) : SV_POSITION
       { return float4(1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0); })";

// A CountingIncluder that never returns valid content for a requested
// file inclusion.
class DummyCountingIncluder : public shaderc_util::CountingIncluder {
 private:
  // Returns a pair of empty strings.
  virtual glslang::TShader::Includer::IncludeResult* include_delegate(
      const char*, glslang::TShader::Includer::IncludeType, const char*,
      size_t) override {
    return nullptr;
  }
  virtual void release_delegate(
      glslang::TShader::Includer::IncludeResult*) override {}
};

// A test fixture for compiling GLSL shaders.
class CompilerTest : public testing::Test {
 public:
  // Returns true if the given compiler successfully compiles the given shader
  // source for the given shader stage to the specified output type.  No
  // includes are permitted, and shader stage deduction falls back to an invalid
  // shader stage.
  bool SimpleCompilationSucceedsForOutputType(
      std::string source, EShLanguage stage, Compiler::OutputType output_type) {
    std::stringstream errors;
    size_t total_warnings = 0;
    size_t total_errors = 0;
    shaderc_util::GlslangInitializer initializer;
    bool result = false;
    DummyCountingIncluder dummy_includer;
    std::tie(result, std::ignore, std::ignore) = compiler_.Compile(
        source, stage, "shader", "main", dummy_stage_callback_, dummy_includer,
        Compiler::OutputType::SpirvBinary, &errors, &total_warnings,
        &total_errors, &initializer);
    errors_ = errors.str();
    return result;
  }

  // Returns the result of SimpleCompilationSucceedsForOutputType, where
  // the output type is a SPIR-V binary module.
  bool SimpleCompilationSucceeds(std::string source, EShLanguage stage) {
    return SimpleCompilationSucceedsForOutputType(
        source, stage, Compiler::OutputType::SpirvBinary);
  }

 protected:
  Compiler compiler_;
  // The error string from the most recent compilation.
  std::string errors_;
  std::function<EShLanguage(std::ostream*, const shaderc_util::string_piece&)>
      dummy_stage_callback_ =
          [](std::ostream*, const shaderc_util::string_piece&) {
            return EShLangCount;
          };
};

TEST_F(CompilerTest, SimpleVertexShaderCompilesSuccessfullyToBinary) {
  EXPECT_TRUE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kVertexShader, EShLangVertex));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, SimpleVertexShaderCompilesSuccessfullyToAssembly) {
  EXPECT_TRUE(SimpleCompilationSucceedsForOutputType(
      kVertexShader, EShLangVertex, Compiler::OutputType::SpirvAssemblyText));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, SimpleVertexShaderPreprocessesSuccessfully) {
  EXPECT_TRUE(SimpleCompilationSucceedsForOutputType(
      kVertexShader, EShLangVertex, Compiler::OutputType::PreprocessedText));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, BadVertexShaderFailsCompilation) {
  EXPECT_FALSE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(" bogus ", EShLangVertex));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, SimpleVulkanShaderCompilesWithDefaultCompilerSettings) {
  EXPECT_TRUE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kVulkanVertexShader, EShLangVertex));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, RespectTargetEnvOnOpenGLCompatibilityShader) {
  const EShLanguage stage = EShLangFragment;

  compiler_.SetTargetEnv(Compiler::TargetEnv::OpenGLCompat);
  EXPECT_TRUE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kOpenGLCompatibilityFragShader, stage));
  compiler_.SetTargetEnv(Compiler::TargetEnv::OpenGL);
  EXPECT_FALSE(
      SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kOpenGLCompatibilityFragShader, stage));
  compiler_.SetTargetEnv(Compiler::TargetEnv::Vulkan);
  EXPECT_FALSE(
      SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kOpenGLCompatibilityFragShader, stage));
  // Default compiler.
  compiler_ = Compiler();
  EXPECT_FALSE(
      SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kOpenGLCompatibilityFragShader, stage));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest,
       RespectTargetEnvOnOpenGLCompatibilityShaderWhenDeducingStage) {
  const EShLanguage stage = EShLangCount;

  compiler_.SetTargetEnv(Compiler::TargetEnv::OpenGLCompat);
  EXPECT_TRUE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(
      kOpenGLCompatibilityFragShaderDeducibleStage, stage))
      << errors_;
  compiler_.SetTargetEnv(Compiler::TargetEnv::OpenGL);
  EXPECT_FALSE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(
      kOpenGLCompatibilityFragShaderDeducibleStage, stage))
      << errors_;
  compiler_.SetTargetEnv(Compiler::TargetEnv::Vulkan);
  EXPECT_FALSE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(
      kOpenGLCompatibilityFragShaderDeducibleStage, stage))
      << errors_;
  // Default compiler.
  compiler_ = Compiler();
  EXPECT_FALSE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(
      kOpenGLCompatibilityFragShaderDeducibleStage, stage))
      << errors_;
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, RespectTargetEnvOnOpenGLShader) {
  const EShLanguage stage = EShLangVertex;

  compiler_.SetTargetEnv(Compiler::TargetEnv::OpenGLCompat);
  EXPECT_TRUE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kOpenGLVertexShader, stage));

  compiler_.SetTargetEnv(Compiler::TargetEnv::OpenGL);
  EXPECT_TRUE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kOpenGLVertexShader, stage));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, RespectTargetEnvOnOpenGLShaderWhenDeducingStage) {
  const EShLanguage stage = EShLangCount;

  compiler_.SetTargetEnv(Compiler::TargetEnv::OpenGLCompat);
  EXPECT_TRUE(
      SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kOpenGLVertexShaderDeducibleStage, stage));

  compiler_.SetTargetEnv(Compiler::TargetEnv::OpenGL);
  EXPECT_TRUE(
      SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kOpenGLVertexShaderDeducibleStage, stage));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, RespectTargetEnvOnVulkanShader) {
  compiler_.SetTargetEnv(Compiler::TargetEnv::Vulkan);
  EXPECT_TRUE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kVulkanVertexShader, EShLangVertex));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, VulkanSpecificShaderFailsUnderOpenGLCompatibilityRules) {
  compiler_.SetTargetEnv(Compiler::TargetEnv::OpenGLCompat);
  EXPECT_FALSE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kVulkanVertexShader, EShLangVertex));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, VulkanSpecificShaderFailsUnderOpenGLRules) {
  compiler_.SetTargetEnv(Compiler::TargetEnv::OpenGL);
  EXPECT_FALSE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kVulkanVertexShader, EShLangVertex));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, OpenGLCompatibilitySpecificShaderFailsUnderDefaultRules) {
  EXPECT_FALSE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kOpenGLCompatibilityFragShader,
                                         EShLangFragment));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, OpenGLSpecificShaderFailsUnderDefaultRules) {
  EXPECT_FALSE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kOpenGLVertexShader, EShLangVertex));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, OpenGLCompatibilitySpecificShaderFailsUnderVulkanRules) {
  compiler_.SetTargetEnv(Compiler::TargetEnv::Vulkan);
  EXPECT_FALSE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kOpenGLCompatibilityFragShader,
                                         EShLangFragment));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, OpenGLSpecificShaderFailsUnderVulkanRules) {
  compiler_.SetTargetEnv(Compiler::TargetEnv::Vulkan);
  EXPECT_FALSE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kOpenGLVertexShader, EShLangVertex));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, AddMacroDefinition) {
  const std::string kMinimalExpandedShader = "#version 140\nvoid E(){}";
  compiler_.AddMacroDefinition("E", 1u, "main", 4u);
  EXPECT_TRUE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kMinimalExpandedShader, EShLangVertex));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, AddValuelessMacroDefinitionNullPointer) {
  compiler_.AddMacroDefinition("E", 1u, nullptr, 100u);
  EXPECT_TRUE(
      SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kValuelessPredefinitionShader, EShLangVertex));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, AddValuelessMacroDefinitionZeroLength) {
  compiler_.AddMacroDefinition("E", 1u, "something", 0u);
  EXPECT_TRUE(
      SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kValuelessPredefinitionShader, EShLangVertex));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, AddMacroDefinitionNotNullTerminated) {
  const std::string kMinimalExpandedShader = "#version 140\nvoid E(){}";
  compiler_.AddMacroDefinition("EFGH", 1u, "mainnnnnn", 4u);
  EXPECT_TRUE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kMinimalExpandedShader, EShLangVertex));
}

// A convert-string-to-vector test case consists of 1) an input string; 2) an
// expected vector after the conversion.
struct ConvertStringToVectorTestCase {
  std::string input_str;
  std::vector<uint32_t> expected_output_vec;
};

// Test the shaderc_util::ConvertStringToVector() function. The content of the
// input string, including the null terminator, should be packed into uint32_t
// cells and stored in the returned vector of uint32_t. In case extra bytes are
// required to complete the ending uint32_t element, bytes with value 0x00
// should be used to fill the space.
using ConvertStringToVectorTestFixture =
    testing::TestWithParam<ConvertStringToVectorTestCase>;

TEST_P(ConvertStringToVectorTestFixture, VariousStringSize) {
  const ConvertStringToVectorTestCase& test_case = GetParam();
  EXPECT_EQ(test_case.expected_output_vec,
            shaderc_util::ConvertStringToVector(test_case.input_str))
      << "test_case.input_str: " << test_case.input_str << std::endl;
}

INSTANTIATE_TEST_CASE_P(
    ConvertStringToVectorTest, ConvertStringToVectorTestFixture,
    testing::ValuesIn(std::vector<ConvertStringToVectorTestCase>{
        {"", {0x00000000}},
        {"1", {0x00000031}},
        {"12", {0x00003231}},
        {"123", {0x00333231}},
        {"1234", {0x34333231, 0x00000000}},
        {"12345", {0x34333231, 0x00000035}},
        {"123456", {0x34333231, 0x00003635}},
        {"1234567", {0x34333231, 0x00373635}},
        {"12345678", {0x34333231, 0x38373635, 0x00000000}},
        {"123456789", {0x34333231, 0x38373635, 0x00000039}},
    }));

TEST_F(CompilerTest, SetSourceLanguageToGLSLSucceeds) {
  compiler_.SetSourceLanguage(Compiler::SourceLanguage::GLSL);
  EXPECT_TRUE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kVulkanVertexShader, EShLangVertex));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, SetSourceLanguageToGLSLFailsOnHLSL) {
  compiler_.SetSourceLanguage(Compiler::SourceLanguage::GLSL);
  EXPECT_FALSE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kHlslVertexShader, EShLangVertex));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, SetSourceLanguageToHLSLSucceeds) {
  compiler_.SetSourceLanguage(Compiler::SourceLanguage::HLSL);
  EXPECT_TRUE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kHlslVertexShader, EShLangVertex))
      << errors_;
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, SetSourceLanguageToHLSLFailsOnGLSL) {
  compiler_.SetSourceLanguage(Compiler::SourceLanguage::HLSL);
  EXPECT_FALSE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(kVulkanVertexShader, EShLangVertex));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, EntryPointParameterTakesEffectForHLSL) {
  compiler_.SetSourceLanguage(Compiler::SourceLanguage::HLSL);
  std::stringstream errors;
  size_t total_warnings = 0;
  size_t total_errors = 0;
  shaderc_util::GlslangInitializer initializer;
  bool result = false;
  DummyCountingIncluder dummy_includer;
  std::vector<uint32_t> words;
  std::tie(result, words, std::ignore) =
      compiler_.Compile(kHlslVertexShader, EShLangVertex, "shader",
                        "EntryPoint", dummy_stage_callback_, dummy_includer,
                        Compiler::OutputType::SpirvAssemblyText, &errors,
                        &total_warnings, &total_errors, &initializer);
  EXPECT_TRUE(result);
  std::string assembly(reinterpret_cast<char*>(words.data()));
  EXPECT_THAT(assembly,
              HasSubstr("OpEntryPoint Vertex %EntryPoint \"EntryPoint\""))
      << assembly;
}

// A test case for setting resource limits.
struct SetLimitCase {
  Compiler::Limit limit;
  int default_value;
  int value;
};

using LimitTest = testing::TestWithParam<SetLimitCase>;

TEST_P(LimitTest, Sample) {
  Compiler compiler;
  EXPECT_THAT(compiler.GetLimit(GetParam().limit),
              Eq(GetParam().default_value));
  compiler.SetLimit(GetParam().limit, GetParam().value);
  EXPECT_THAT(compiler.GetLimit(GetParam().limit), Eq(GetParam().value));
}

#define CASE(LIMIT, DEFAULT, NEW) \
  { Compiler::Limit::LIMIT, DEFAULT, NEW }
INSTANTIATE_TEST_CASE_P(
    CompilerTest, LimitTest,
    // See resources.cc for the defaults.
    testing::ValuesIn(std::vector<SetLimitCase>{
        // clang-format off
        // This is just a sampling of the possible values.
        CASE(MaxLights, 8, 99),
        CASE(MaxClipPlanes, 6, 10929),
        CASE(MaxTessControlAtomicCounters, 0, 72),
        CASE(MaxSamples, 4, 8),
        // clang-format on
    }), );
#undef CASE

// Returns a fragment shader accessing a texture with the given
// offset.
std::string ShaderWithTexOffset(int offset) {
  std::ostringstream oss;
  oss << "#version 150\n"
         "uniform sampler1D tex;\n"
         "void main() { vec4 x = textureOffset(tex, 1.0, "
      << offset << "); }\n";
  return oss.str();
}

// Ensure compilation is sensitive to limit setting.  Sample just
// two particular limits.  The default minimum texel offset is -8,
// and the default maximum texel offset is 7.
TEST_F(CompilerTest, TexelOffsetDefaults) {
  const EShLanguage stage = EShLangFragment;
  EXPECT_FALSE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(ShaderWithTexOffset(-9), stage));
  EXPECT_TRUE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(ShaderWithTexOffset(-8), stage));
  EXPECT_TRUE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(ShaderWithTexOffset(7), stage));
  EXPECT_FALSE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(ShaderWithTexOffset(8), stage));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, TexelOffsetLowerTheMinimum) {
  const EShLanguage stage = EShLangFragment;
  compiler_.SetLimit(Compiler::Limit::MinProgramTexelOffset, -99);
  EXPECT_FALSE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(ShaderWithTexOffset(-100), stage));
  EXPECT_TRUE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(ShaderWithTexOffset(-99), stage));
}

TEST_F(CompilerTest, TexelOffsetRaiseTheMaximum) {
  const EShLanguage stage = EShLangFragment;
  compiler_.SetLimit(Compiler::Limit::MaxProgramTexelOffset, 100);
  EXPECT_TRUE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(ShaderWithTexOffset(100), stage));
  EXPECT_FALSE(SimpleCompilationSucceeds(ShaderWithTexOffset(101), stage));
}

}  // anonymous namespace


A few months ago, Ricky Cain received a package from fellow Travis Country resident, Ramon Fouse. Ramon had sent Ricky a copy of his children's book, The Crooked Little Christmas Tree, and the rest was history!
Ricky not only appreciated the gesture, yet after reading he wanted to ensure he could help Ramon get the book in front of other children that would enjoy hearing the story and reading it for years to come.
The Crooked Little Christmas Tree is available on Amazon for purchase, as well as on Cain Club for free! Each free hardcopy on Cain Club will also be autographed by Ramon so long as you can pick it up from our office! Simply go to www.cainclub.com to redeem your free copy today using your account, or sign up for a free account today!
Checkout the video below Ricky and Ramon filmed in our office!


text:
10 Creepy Creatures from Scandinavian Folklore
Have you heard of any of these eerie creatures before?
Scandinavian folklore is rich with tales of mysterious creatures that have both fascinated and terrified people for countless generations. Many of the myths of Scandinavia were used as a means to explain the mysteries of the land that the native people lived in, with monsters, demons, giants and evil spirits representing the strange and the unknown. From a giant wolf to a mysterious spirit of the Black Death, listed below are ten creepy creatures from Scandinavian folklore.
10. Mylings
Ghostly Activity
During early Swedish history, it wasn't uncommon for unwanted infants to be put to death by their parents. This may sound brutal and heartless, but for many parents it was a matter of not being able to afford another mouth to feed. Other infants found their way to an early grave because they were conceived out of wedlock, or they were the result of adultery, both circumstances being extremely taboo in Swedish culture. The mothers of these unwanted children would often leave their babies deep in the forest where they wouldn't be found.
Because they weren't baptized, it was thought that these children wandered the forests, streams and hollows where they were left, waiting for unwary travelers to pass by. When they encountered these travelers, Mylings would jump on the victim's back, wailing and crying to such an extent that it could drive the victim insane.
It also wasn't uncommon for Mylings to drive their victims into the nearest burial ground. Once there, the Myling would demand that their victim dig a grave and then give them a proper burial, something that they hadn't received while living. If the victim was unsuccessful in providing an appropriate resting place, the Myling would attack the individual and kill them in a blind fury.
9. The Dokkalfar
The Dokkalfar (dark elves) of Norse mythology are considered to be some of the most frightening creatures of Scandinavian folklore. Described as having bright glowing red eyes, pale white skin and wearing steel grey armor, they were first mentioned by Snorri Sturluson in his 12th century collection of Norse poetry called The Edda. It was believed that the Dokkalfar lived in caves and other underground dwellings, as well as the deep forests where the sunlight rarely reached the ground. They were also known to reside in forgotten locations that were rumored to be haunted or cursed.
The Dokkalfar have been blamed for a wide variety of human ailments and calamities. By the 17th century, when Christianity took a firm hold in the area, dark elves were considered to be at fault for everything from diseased livestock to lightning strikes. In particular, the Dokkalfar were thought to bring about sudden paralysis in people, an affliction that came to be known as an elf-stroke.
Even bad dreams were blamed on the Dokkalfar. It was thought that when a person was having a bad dream, a dark elf was sitting on their chest, causing the bad dream to occur.
8. Níðhöggr
Mythology.Wikia
Also known as the malice-striker, Níðhöggr is a terrible serpentine creature that rests beneath the world tree Yggdrasil, chewing at its roots. As a devourer, Níðhöggr's sole intention is the destruction of the tree that contains and holds the Nine Worlds of the universe. With the destruction of the tree, the whole of the universe would fall back into chaos.
Due to his desire for chaos, Níðhöggr played a prominent role in Ragnarok, the Doom of the Gods. In the Voluspa, a prominent poem from the Poetic Edda, Níðhöggr arises from beneath Yggdrasil to lend his aid during Ragnarok, resulting in the downfall of the Gods that represent order within chaos.
Níðhöggr also rules over Náströnd, a portion of the underworld also known as "The Shore of Corpses". This is where adulterers, murderers, liars and other violent or deceitful criminals go after they've died and where Níðhöggr waits to feed on their corpses. His favorite corpses are those of fallen warriors who because of their acts of cowardice or oath-breaking are denied entry into Valhalla, the heavenly realm where brave warriors go after falling bravely in battle.
7. Pesta
Seek Ghosts
Scandinavia was devastated by the plague, with Norway losing around half of its population and Denmark losing approximately a third. People were so distraught, never knowing where the plague would strike next; that they soon began to apply sentient characteristics to the disease and Pesta was born.
Pesta is the personification of the Black Death. She assumed the form of a ravaged, frightening old woman, dressed in black rags and carrying a rake and a broom. Villagers believed that Pesta journeyed from house to house, spreading the Black Death. If she was spotted carrying her broom, it meant that everyone in the house would be swept away by the plague and all in the household would die. If she was seen carrying her rake, it meant that some would slip through Death's fingers and survive.
One story tells of a ferryman who upon arriving to pick up his fare, found that it was Pesta whom he would be carrying across the river. Realizing that his fate resided in her hands, the ferryman asked her to spare him from the plague. Pesta replied that she would not, but she told him that because of his kindness, she would make sure that he had a painless death. That night, the ferryman went home and into his bed, where he fell into a deep sleep that he never awoke from.
6. The Draugr
The Draugr are extraordinarily strong undead creatures who retain at least some of their intellect even after they've died. They reside in or near their burial sites, often guarding the burial goods left for them by their loved ones.
In Norse mythology, it's thought that the creation of a Draugr can occur due to a curse placed on the individual or because the person has a very strong will and just refuses to die. The Draugr are known for their violence and exist to torment the living, particularly those that may have wronged the Draugr while they were living. The Draugr will even appear to their enemy's livestock, taking on a rotting appearance before chasing the animals until they have literally been run to death.
If an undead creature of frightening appearance and size isn't enough, the Draugr are also thought to have uncanny magical abilities. They can shape-shift into other forms, such as a bull or a horse, but the forms that they take are all damaged in some way, usually with missing or broken limbs or appendages. One of their favorite forms is that of a cat. Once they've assumed this appearance, they make their way to their chosen victim. When this individual has gone to bed and fallen asleep, the Draugr will sit on their chest, increasing their weight until their victim can no longer breathe, resulting in their death.
Even though the Draugr may cheat death, animating their bodies in order to terrorize the living, it's only temporary. Their bodies continue to decay, even as the Draugr animate them, until eventually the body becomes too damaged and can no longer be utilized. At this point, the Draugr dies again, this time permanently.
The Norse took careful precautions to prevent dead loved ones from rising as the Draugr. A door was created in the outside wall closest to where a person died so that the corpse wouldn't have to be carried through the front door. The Norse thought that if a person was carried out through the front door they would remember how to enter the home and terrorize those within it. Some families even went so far as to drive nails into the feet of the departed to keep them from rising.
Mythical Creatures That Have Terrified Australia for…
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These Bizarre Mysteries Will Freak You Out
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Scandinavian folklore
5 Mysterious Events No One Has the Answers To
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
The Swans of Fifth Avenue : a...
The Swans of Fifth Avenue : a novel / Melanie Benjamin.
Benjamin, Melanie, 1962-
New York : Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, [2016]
Capote, Truman, > 1924-1984 > Fiction.
Paley, Babe Mortimer > Fiction.
Upper class > New York (State) > New York > Fiction.
xvii, 341 pages : illustration ; 22 cm.
Melanie Benjamin was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and attended college there. She has been an avid reader all her life and firmly believes that a lifetime of reading is the best education a writer can have.
After college Melanie married and moved to the Chicago area to raise her children, but the desire to write was always there in the background. Soon she began writing for local magazines and newspapers before venturing into fiction. As Melanie Hauser she published two contemporary novels.
Now writing as Melanie Benjamin, she's incorporated her passion for history and biography into ALICE I HAVE BEEN her first historical novel; THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MRS. TOM THUMB is her second, and was published July 2011. Her book,The Aviator's Wife, made the New York Times bestseller list in 2013. The Swans of Fifth Avenue made the iBooks best seller list in 2016.
Melanie and her family still live in the Chicago area where she enjoys writing, taking long walks, and gardening.
The Swans of Fifth Avenue [sound recording] : [a novel] / Melanie Benjamin.
by: Benjamin, Melanie, 1962-
The autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb : a novel / Melanie Benjamin.
The rogue of Fifth Avenue / Joanna Shupe.
by: Shupe, Joanna.
We could be beautiful [electronic resource (eBook)] : a novel / Swan Huntley.
by: Huntley, Swan.
Mistress of the Ritz : a novel / Melanie Benjamin.


text:
Bobby Sands mural on gable wall of Sinn Fein offices on Falls Road, Belfast./ Photo by Shermozle / Wikimedia
What is it about the revolutionary that draws our fascinated attention? Whether one calls it the North of Ireland or Northern Ireland, the Troubles continue to haunt the land and those who lived through them.
Séanna Walsh's face is impassive. That's the first thing you notice about him, after his imposing bulk of a body. It appears he has spent a long time to compose his face, to harden it, until it became hewn, glacial. Beneath it, you sense unplumbable depths. He was just sixteen years old when he went to prison for the first time in 1973, as a Volunteer in the Irish Republican Army, long before his black hair started turning ice-white. During the next twenty-five years, he'd spend over twenty years in serving three sentences, until he was finally released under the terms of the Good Friday Accords.
Still, Séanna hasn't lost his sense of humor. Our delegation of students and faculty from John Carroll University have just arrived to Belfast from America on an overnight flight, bleary-eyed, and now find ourselves at Malone Lodge Apartments hosting Séanna and his comrade Jim Gibney, prominent activists in the Republican movement, party members of Sinn Fein.
Leaning in on the rickety chair we've set up for him, Séanna asks us, "Have you had any rest yet?"
"None at all," I say, hoping the legs of the chair don't give out underneath him.
"Then you'll get some during this talk," he quips, leaning back.
We laugh, and the ghost of a smile seems to pass over his face. Perhaps he's softened a bit, since I first met him eight years before, but it's hard to tell.
Just behind him the bay window opens up, and the city is spread out below, all the way to the Black Mountain that stands at its far edge.
During the Troubles, that thirty-year descent into political violence that led to the deaths of thousands and tore the country apart, Séanna and Jim believed themselves to be revolutionaries in a war for freedom from British rule. Today, twenty years after the 1998 peace accords, even the name of this country is still contested. For the Protestant Unionists and Loyalists, we are now in Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom. For our guests, staunch Republicans, this is the North of Ireland: the last remnant of Eire still under British control. It depends on your point of view, what name you were willing to stand by, or even kill or die for. Séanna was prepared to do all three.
Now, during peacetime, the question is more mundane, and perhaps more difficult: What are you willing to live for?
Since 2011, with the assistance of Raymond Lennon, I've been coordinating study tours on the peace-building and conflict-transformation process in Northern Ireland for John Carroll University, meeting with locals who lived through the tumult of the Troubles and have come out on the other side of violence. Séanna and Jim have been stalwarts of our program, crucial inputs in a complex array of perspectives. I think of them as a pair, since every time I've met them, they've been together.
Perhaps it's because they grew up together in a Catholic enclave of Protestant East Belfast known as "the Short Strand." The little beach. The Short Strand, pronounced here as "strahned," was an island stranded in the middle of a sea of Loyalism, and those who grew up there knew what it meant to look out for your own.
Séanna's large and quiet presence fills the room. When he's handed a cup by one of the students, he frowns. "This tea is cold!"
Karly, the student, blanches, wordless, horrified. She's failed at her first job, making what they call a spot of tea. She just couldn't figure out when the electric teapot had come to a boil.
Walsh gets up and heats it up himself, mumbling a half-joke about the service around here.
In the margins of my notebook, I'm scrawling potential titles for the name of our meeting: Tea with Terrorists? Victims of IRA violence would call them murderers and worse. Séanna and Jim won't say what they have done, because, twenty years after the peace accords, they still could go to jail if those words or old crimes came to light.
I wonder what it's like to carry those secrets in the plain light of peacetime.
It's not fair to just call them terrorists. Look at them: Séanna and his gray-white hair, looking like someone's tough uncle, Jim and his piercing eyes and stylish frames, resembling a college history professor. They are like all of us, with complicated lives and reasons for what they have done or what they have failed to do.
But the truth is that I'm also a little afraid of them. I know their ferocious commitment; I can see the fierceness in their faces, and also the hurt.
How long does it take for a warrior to come home? In The Odyssey, after fighting in a decade-long war, Odysseus takes ten years to get home. In my favorite reading of the epic poem, psychiatrist Jonathan Shay proposes that the journey is a powerful allegory for the painful and circuitous route that every soldier needs to take in order to come home again. Working with veterans at the VA, many of whom struggled with PTSD and other emotional stress from combat, Shay comes to see each episode—from the poppy eaters to his long stay with Circe—as metaphors for the ways that soldiers rely on narcotics or sex to try to numb the pain.
Psychiatrist Jonathan Shay proposes that The Odyssey is a powerful allegory for the painful and circuitous route that every soldier needs to take in order to come home again.
A Republican and lifelong activist who also spent some of the Troubles in prison (despite never having been convicted), Jim Gibney is small and voluble, with intense blue eyes shining through his horn-rimmed glasses. He's the thinker, launching into his narrative of the North as a colonial problem, something that's been going on for "many centuries" but only "became armed in the last fifty years."
"I didn't like prison," Jim admits, as if embarrassed to say it in front of his friend and us. "In essence, though," he pauses, "it was education. Comradeship."
He leans forward, trying to find the words.
"I was transformed from being a boy who wouldn't have read a book to one who was a custodian of books."
When Séanna first went to prison back in 1973 for a failed bank robbery, he was no ordinary criminal seeking easy money. He was funding the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Séanna got involved in the movement when Loyalists killed his friend Patrick McGrory. Because history has a way of repeating itself here, it also happened to be in the same neighborhood that the B-Specials, a particularly vicious arm of the security forces in Northern Ireland, had murdered his grandfather fifty years earlier. All this history within arm's length of where Séanna and Patrick would have played on the streets as children.
In prison, Walsh got an education that his public schooling had never taught him—about Irish history, politics, and language. What began as anger turned into ideology.
"The British couldn't kill the fish," Séanna says, "so they tried to pollute the sea."
By age twenty, Séanna was appointed the IRA commanding officer in the Crumlin Road jail and was considered an old-timer.
As the sides entrenched, the Troubles got uglier—with all sides committing greater and more brutal acts of violence. The IRA and other paramilitary organizations on both sides of the conflict engaged in regular bombing campaigns in which civilians frequently died. They even terrorized their own communities, using kneecappings, banishment, or even disappearance to stop collaborators or criminals from interfering with the struggle. With the complete breakdown of local policing, paramilitaries functioned as law enforcement. If the person's crime were bad, they would get a "kneecapping"—that is, a bullet to the knee. But if the crime was egregious, they'd get a "six pack"—shots to both knees, ankles, and elbows. There were nearly as many kneecapping victims as there were deaths during the Troubles.
At the same time, the Shankill Butchers, a rogue gang affiliated with the Ulster Volunteer Force, terrorized Catholic neighborhoods by randomly torturing and murdering civilians in the late 1970s. Their crimes were among the most shocking of the Troubles. While the IRA could be seen as selecting its attacks against what they deemed were British military targets, the Butchers went further by randomly picking Catholics off the streets and subjecting them to the depths of human cruelty—pulling out teeth, beatings, and cutting throats all the way to the spine.
Ostensibly to restore public order, but also to break the Republican movement, the British government ended the political status of paramilitary prisoners in 1976 through the policy of Criminalization. Then, to crack down on the organizing happening in prison, the British government phased out the use of Crumlin Road jail and the open Nissen huts of Long Kesh prison, replacing them with the H-Blocks of The Maze, isolating the prisoners from one another.
If Criminalization was an attempt to delegitimize paramilitary activity, it only made the paramilitaries resist further. The IRA found new ways to organize and resist. Landing in prison a second time on weapons charges, Séanna participated in the Blanket Protest, begun in 1976 when IRA volunteer Kieran Nugent refused to wear the prison uniform given to him in the H-Block, wrapping himself instead in a blanket. By 1978 three hundred volunteers, including Séanna, had donned the blanket, refusing any accommodation.
"There was no master plan," Séanna says. "Just a young man who resisted."
The IRA prisoners were regularly beaten, even tortured, by guards who saw them as enemies of the state and a threat to their Protestant Unionist community. The No Wash Protest soon followed, when police refused the inmates a towel to dry themselves off. After a fight between an IRA volunteer and a police officer, inmates destroyed their cell furniture in protest of the beating. As a response, the guards removed all furniture, leaving only the blankets and mattresses.
The Dirty Protest had a theatrical madness to it, which makes a perverse sense, since it was either the act of men driven crazy or performance artists confronting their audience with an external representation of their condition of oppression.
The Dirty Protest ensued. Prisoners refused to leave their cells to shower or to slop their waste buckets out of the window and instead poured them under the door to flood the halls. In retaliation, the guards would push the urine back inside the cells. At some point, prisoners took to wiping their excrement on the walls of their cells. It had a theatrical madness to it, which makes a perverse sense, since it was either the act of men driven crazy or performance artists confronting their audience with an external representation of their condition of oppression. Maggots were everywhere, and the stench was overwhelming. The visiting Archbishop Tomas O Fiaich reported:
One would hardly allow an animal to remain in such conditions, let alone a human being. The stench and filth in some of the cells, with the remains of rotten food and human excreta scattered around the wall, was almost unbearable. In two of them I was unable to speak for fear of vomiting. Several prisoners complained to me of beatings, of verbal abuse, of additional punishments . . . for making complaints, and of degrading searches carried out on the most intimate parts of their naked bodies.
One film taken inside the prison shows two "blanket men" with long black hair and beards and haunted eyes, wrapped in a robelike blanket. They look like replicas of the 1970s images of Jesus. Yet in that same film, two other prisoners smile at the camera, singing or shouting something that we cannot hear. Despite the stench, the archbishop felt that the spirit of the men was high, as he noticed "Irish words, phrases and songs being shouted from cell to cell and then written on each cell wall with the remnants of toothpaste tubes."
In One Day in My Life, Republican martyr Bobby Sands writes keenly of the daily torments experienced by the prisoners:
[The prison guard] stepped beside me, still laughing, and hit me. Within a few seconds, in the midst of white flashes, I fell to the floor as blows rained upon me from every conceivable angle. I was dragged back up again to my feet and thrown like a side of bacon, face downwards on the table. Searching hands pulled at my arms and legs, spreading me like a pelt of leather. Someone had my head pulled back by the hair while some pervert began probing and poking my anus.
A detail of a Pro-Republican Mural. Photo: Adam Jones / Wikimedia
The bitter cold, the stench, the physical and psychological torture of regular beatings, anal cavity searches, and derision were a daily reality for prisoners. But Sands also wrote poignantly of throwing maggots from his cell window onto the yard below to watch the birds gather to feast: "sparrows and starlings, crows and seagulls were my constant companions . . . my only form of entertainment." He composed One Day in My Life in 1979 on bits of toilet paper that were smuggled to the outside—as were all the "comms" (communications)—in a biro pen refill case that he hid in his cheek or anus and then passed secretly to a family visitor to the prison.
Despite the violence he faced in prison, Sands remained spirited. "I am," he wrote near the end of his life, "(even after all the torture) amazed at British logic. Never in eight centuries have they succeeded in breaking the spirit of one man who refused to be broken. They have not dispirited, conquered, nor demoralised my people, nor will they ever."
When British prime minister Margaret Thatcher won election in 1979, she ratcheted up the rhetoric of Criminalization, and the prisoners fought back with a hunger strike in 1980. The strike was for political status but was called off when the prisoners thought they'd won.
Though the British made promises to change the policy in 1980, nothing changed in the prison. So after fierce debate within the Republican movement, another hunger strike began, with Bobby Sands taking the lead position. Other hunger strikers would follow, separated by one-week intervals, to ensure that the pressure would build on Britain.
While in prison, Jim Gibney, in a stroke of genius, decided to put Bobby Sands up for election to the British Parliament in Fermanagh, and a month into his hunger strike, he won. Sands would write in his final diary, begun during the hunger strike: "They won't break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then that we will see the rising of the moon."
It's the soaring rhetoric of a Romantic, a Romantic willing to kill and to die.
In advance of our meeting, Jim told Raymond—our program coordinator and a native of Belfast who appears to be on friendly terms with everyone in this country—that they didn't really want to talk about him again. Bobby Sands. I wondered if it was because it's too hard to keep talking about the past. But the redoubtable Raymond mentions him anyway, along with Séanna's association with the Republican icon and martyr who died after sixty-six days on hunger strike, protesting the lack of political status for IRA volunteers in the prison.
Séanna met Bobby in Long Kesh in 1973. He was sixteen, and Bobby was eighteen. Both were released in 1976, and they "went back into active service," as Séanna calls it. Just a month before, my students and I had been reading Bobby Sands's final diary during the hunger strike, and Séanna is mentioned in the first pages.
"The thing about Bobby," Séanna says, looking into the distance, "was that he was just an ordinary guy. What really brought about the difference was the crucible of the H Blocks," the prison constructed to house and isolate political prisoners.
Séanna pronounces the H like "haitch," one of the only ways to distinguish Catholics from Protestants. It became a way for street thugs to test a stranger, to see whether they were worthy of freedom, a beating, or worse. Quite literally, it was said that Loyalists (or was it Republicans?—the story differs depending on the speaker) would carry a piece of paper with an H on it and ask their potential victim to pronounce it. That, or say the Hail Mary. Your answer could spare or end your life.
When we first met him seven years ago, when talking about Sands, Séanna had to wipe away the wetness from his eyes, a sudden thaw, his impassivity cracked. This time he stays far from the hard part, skirting the shores, saying vaguely, "We're living with the legacy of that whole period."
After seventeen days, Sands could no longer write in his diary. He kept asking for poetry to read.
During the strike, enormous pressure came in from the outside—from the Catholic Church, from family members—but Bobby Sands held fast. He had an iron will, total commitment. After seventeen days, he could no longer write in his diary. He kept asking for poetry to read.
Thirty days, forty days, fifty days. Sixty days.
Jim was the last person to see Bobby before he died in the prison hospital, and as he recalls it, his voice softens to a whisper.
Bobby's mother and sister were around his bed when he arrived. Bobby was blind at this point, having lost his sight due to the extreme effects of starvation.
"'Is that you, Jim?' he asked. I said yes. He gave me his hand and I took it. He said, 'Tell the lads I'm hanging in there.'"
Neither of them wants to go farther.
In 1981, after Sands's death, Séanna would become the officer-in-command of the IRA prisoners. He was back in prison for a third time, arrested for possession of rockets in 1988. After the Good Friday Accords allowed for the release of prisoners, he was the IRA representative selected to read the 2005 IRA statement to announce that they had given up the armed struggle in favor of a political one. In the bluish video, you can hear birds singing and a baby crying now and then in the background as Séanna sits in front of a green flag and reads a written statement, his face drawn and his voice direct but almost flat in affect.
I kept wondering about that baby, the life outside the frame of that camera, where someone had to mind a crying child and where birds sing as if there were no war.
It's been said that if the Troubles had been fought by films, the Irish would have beaten Britain long ago. It's true that the movies depicting the Irish struggle have been enormously popular and often artful. Yet it's also true that in the films of the Troubles, the IRA often play the foil. They begin as daring radicals, whose courage and audacity seem attractive and almost mythic, but later they reveal themselves to be cruel beyond any normal human measure. I watched these films with fascination—furious at British oppression and intransigence, in awe of the commitment of the IRA, and repulsed by the lengths they would go for a United Ireland.
In the film In the Name of the Father (1993), Gerry Conlon, a petty thief, is convicted of an IRA bombing he didn't commit. Based on actual events, Conlon, his father Giuseppe, and others—known as the Guildford Four and the Maguire Seven—are swept up in a British crackdown after the Guildford pub bombing in 1974. Tortured into false confessions or railroaded by false evidence, all of them wind up in prison for many years. During the film, Conlon becomes infatuated with a fellow prisoner and IRA member, Joe McAndrew, whose charisma, political vision, and muscle seem to be the opposite of his timid milquetoast of a father. McAndrew is a man who can whisper to the baddest Loyalist prisoner that he knows where his family lives and have that man announce to all that McAndrew is all right by him.
However, Conlon's awe changes when he witnesses McAndrew nearly burn the prison warden to death in an act of pure revenge. Watching the film, the viewer is drawn in by McAndrew, with his revolutionary discipline and ability to move people to action, and then sickened by him, as Conlon is later on. The hero, it turns out, is Conlon's sweet and simpering father, whose devotion to his wife and to his cause—writing letters to his British lawyer—demonstrate the durable heroism of ordinary faith.
Even so, what is it about the revolutionary that draws our fascinated attention? Is it the profound courage and single-mindedness of commitment? The ability to stretch oneself beyond the boundaries of normal human morality?
Séanna and Jim. Who's minding whom? Every time I've met one, I've met the other, as if they were two parts of the same person. In the room with us, both men cross their legs, left over right, rhyming. When one stops speaking, the other picks up. Jim gestures with his hands—fingertips touching, then dancing, then, when he stops speaking, crossing them over his chest. When either one stops speaking, he scrolls through his phone, as if he's managing two realities at once.
Jim sets up the colonial context of Ireland, the story of eight hundred years of British oppression, the red-meat-and-potatoes narrative of Republicanism, which led to their being dragged into the "war"—their favored term for the Troubles.
So often, former paramilitaries tell their story as if they were caught in conditions that gave them no choice but to fight. Séanna picks up the thread and turns it in another direction: "I've never felt that I had no choice. I always felt that I was the author of my own destiny."
That's what draws my fascination toward the revolutionary. That, despite holding fiercely onto their narrative of victimization, they choose not to remain passive victims. That in resistance, they become captains of their fate.
Yet at what cost—not only to the victims of their violence, but also to themselves?
In college, when I first got an inkling of the Troubles, I'd been reading the poems of W. B. Yeats in class. Despite the fact that he was part of the Protestant ascendancy, Yeats loved Ireland and the romance of Irish culture and nationalism. Yet something changed in him when, on Easter Sunday in 1916, the Irish Republican Brotherhood rose up and declared a free Irish Republic, taking over the general post office in Dublin and other sites around the country. The uprising, broadly opposed even by the Irish people, was brutally crushed by the British, and nearly all the leaders were executed. The severity of punishment inflamed Irish nationalism and would lead to the War of Independence.
In his poem "Easter 1916," Yeats measures his own fascination-repulsion reaction to the Easter rebels, many of whom he knew personally, in his powerful refrain: "All changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born." Yeats saw the power of that sacrificial act of revolutionary violence, how it changed so much in his benighted Ireland. It was terrible, in both senses of the term: awe-inspiring and awful. Yet it was also beautiful.
Despite his aristocratic background (which he shared with many of the leaders of the rebellion), Yeats could see that they'd chosen to give up the "meaningless tales" that they'd shared at their social clubs to become their own story. Yet he's haunted by what they've given up in the process of their revolutionary ardor:
Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
Yeats wonders whether the rebels became stones in the living stream, forgoing their essential humanness in this violence. Such sacrifice, the sacrifices that they made to rebel—did it turn their hearts to stone? did they lose their humanity?
This is the question we cannot know, those of us who have not gone into the shadows and risked everything personally and made decisions that could lead to death. But I think of Bobby Sands feeding birds outside his prison cell window with the maggots from his own offal, and of him reading poetry while starving himself to death.
Perhaps it's not fair, director Jim Sheridan's depiction of the revolutionary in In the Name of the Father—which is, after all, the usual representation. It reflects bourgeois values. We, well-meaning liberals, pay lip service to resistance but advocate nonviolence from the safety of middle-class privilege, into which we can retreat after the end of any activism. So many of us are simply unable or unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to make radical political change.
In an interview about the film The Crying Game, a stunning film about the Troubles and the possibility of self-transformation, Sinn Fein writer and Republican activist Danny Morrison laments that the film unfairly depicts the IRA. To Morrison, no film had captured their humanity: "Why isn't there a film made which portrays the IRA as flawed . . . but still emerging at the other end with their humanity intact?" The two main characters "are depicted as psychopaths. . . . They are all fanatics. To me, that's unreal." Perhaps he's right. But there's an ache in his wondering, as if that journey back to humanity is a long one.
Morrison himself is known among Irish poetry circles for his notable meeting with Seamus Heaney on a train. In Heaney's telling, Morrison tried to hector Heaney into writing a poem for the prisoners engaging in the Dirty Protest and later the hunger strikes. Heaney refused to cave to the pressure. In "The Flight Path," Heaney writes that Morrison demanded a poem: "'When, for fuck's sake, are you going to write / Something for us?' / 'If I do write something, / Whatever it is, I'll be writing for myself,'" he replied.
Morrison remembers it differently, as a cordial encounter that ended in a handshake: "In Stepping Stones [Heaney] says that he felt he was being 'commanded,' and for that reason changed his mind.. . . I find that explanation hard to reconcile with the fact that after our conversation we parted with a handshake; he gave me his address and telephone number and agreed to read the poetry of Bobby Sands," which included criticism of artists and poets for their silence in the face of oppression and which Sinn Féin later published.
We stand in the gulf between the civilian and the warrior, between the poet and the revolutionary.
Did Heaney exaggerate his rebellion against the rebels, or did Morrison minimize the threatening impact of being approached by a member of the IRA to ask for fealty? We'll never know. We stand in the gulf between the civilian and the warrior, between the poet and the revolutionary.
Back in Belfast, sometimes Jim and Séanna's back-and-forth testimony in our little apartment room feels a little staged, as if they are performing for us. Maybe that's because they keep switching between talking and looking at their phones. There is a rote quality to it, as if they've heard everything the other has said or are acting in a play whose script is not yet completed, the script of Republicanism and its unremitting quest for a United Ireland.
As if to punctuate a previous point, Séanna lifts up his phone to us and says, "I hope you don't think I'm uneducated, scrolling through the phone. I was looking for this picture that someone posted on Facebook." He turns the screen toward us. It's a bus whose route reads "#93 Bobby Sands Street," and it's from Nantes, France.
Raymond comments on the international reach of Bobby Sands, including in Iran. Séanna picks up the idea, noting that Bobby Sands Avenue in Tehran came about when some local revolutionaries put a homemade placard over the sign for Winston Churchill Avenue. Later, the authorities made it official. The street was the site of the British embassy.
"For a while," Séanna said, glee radiating through his usually impassive face, "all correspondence to the British embassy had to be addressed to Bobby Sands Avenue." The British actually built a side street with a new name to create a new address for the embassy, just to avoid the humiliation.
(Later I'd learn that, thirty years before, during the burial of three IRA volunteers in Milltown Cemetery, a rogue Loyalist named Michael Stone attacked the funeral crowd with grenades and pistols. Shrapnel tore into Séanna, who was driven to the hospital in a funeral hearse. He'd never mentioned this attack, in all the years we'd been meeting with him.)
After a pause in the back-and-forth between Séanna and Jim, I begin my question: "You spent over twenty years in prison—"
"—Twenty-one," Séanna interrupts. As if he's counted every day. And keeps counting them.
"What was it like to be released, after such a long time? How did you manage? What was it like to be freed?"
"Have you ever read L'Étranger? The novel by Camus? That's how I felt. An outsider."
Séanna squints and looks out into the distance over Divis Mountain when he speaks. Divis means "black" in Irish, as the sun falls behind it every night.
"I felt numb. It has dulled somewhat as I've gotten older." He pauses, searching for the words. "In prison, I thought freedom was simple, was easy. It meant being out of prison. But I was naïve. Whenever I came out of prison, I was as dedicated as I was as a sixteen-year-old. But the context has changed. There is no longer an armed struggle. I traveled the length of the country to convince comrades to lay down their arms."
It helped, he said, that he had a strong wife, also a Republican, who raised two daughters while he was in prison. I wonder what they might say, about what it was like to have a husband and father whom they barely knew outside of prison, who was absent more than he was present. I wonder what his wife would say about her side of the struggle, what it was like at home.
The Republican movement had a place for him when he got out, which was critical because he couldn't get work otherwise.
In some ways, he's like the several thousand other IRA Volunteers who walked out of prison after years behind bars, blinking in the sudden light of freedom, trying to find their way in the new, post-Troubles reality. They did their national service, as it was called, but so many are the walking wounded, suffering from alcoholism and drug addiction, trying to cope with all kinds of pain. The descendants of Odysseus, not yet in Ithaka. Still trying to get home.
Tony, one of our students, begins a question: "Bobby Sands said that our children's revenge—"
"—Our revenge," Walsh corrects, almost barking, "will be the laughter of our children."
It's important for him that we get things right, that the record is clear. Twenty-one years in prison. Sixty-six days on hunger strike. Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.
Of all the words I've read and heard about Northern Ireland, these are the ones that have haunted me most. Painted prominently on the Bobby Sands mural on the Republican enclave of Falls Road, Sands's words encapsulate the paradox of the Republican struggle, a struggle that has led to much blood in the name of a free and united Ireland.
The struggle, according to Sands, was the means to create a better life for their children. So that their children wouldn't have to live the way that they had to live. Isn't that every parent's wish, that our children be spared our particular hardships? In this land, when so many suffered oppression and violence for so long, that natural parental feeling was even more pronounced. So that their faces might be free from the ice of the Troubles, to laugh or to cry, without fear of what it might mean to open up that way.
Perhaps this is why Séanna keeps moving himself, keeps telling his story—that it may be different for his children, or his children's children.
As I complete this essay, I look up Séanna online to find something I didn't know about him, something that might reveal more of his mystery.
He's on Facebook, I discover, and I click on the link.
In the profile photo, he's sitting in a plush chair, an infant wrapped in a blanket and lying wide-eyed across his arms, with a look of animal seriousness that some babies wear. Right next to them, a vivacious redheaded toddler straddles the back of a couch. He and the toddler squint similarly toward the camera. That's a squint I know, the squint of Séanna thinking, unconsciously disagreeing, with the glare of a world that never seemed to be gentle or fair or free. Yet the shapes of their mouths—it's uncanny—are nearly identical, both parting in a smile.
Philip Metres has written ten books, including Shrapnel Maps (2020) and The Sound of Listening (2018). Awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the NEA, and three Arab American Book Awards, he is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University.
More by Philip Metres
Shrapnel Maps by Philip Metres
The Sound of Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance by Philip Metres
In the Den of the Voice
Dead Storms and Literature's New Horizon: The 2020 Neustadt Prize Lecture, by Ismail Kadare


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cowboy bebop 30 day challenge, day 8: in which I have a favorite secondary/one-shot character …
"Heavy Metal Queen" is a close second favorite episodes of Cowboy Bebop. It has one of the most kickass opening sequences, music-wise, and I really like Spike in the episode. One of the funniest scenes in the entire series is when Spike joins a bar brawl because another bounty hunter bumps into him and makes him drop an egg in his lap (it doesn't sound like it would be that humorous, but OMG, it is – I've been that hungover before).
All of that aside, "Heavy Metal Queen" also features the best one-shot character in the entire show: VT.
First of all, she's badass. When the server is being sexually harassed by a group of bounty hunters, she takes things into her own hands and manages to handle the majority of them, even before Spike enters the fray. She's also well-liked by her fellow space truckers and is among the very best, running cargo the fastest anyone has ever seen (in Bebop lore, that is). She's loyal and take-charge, perfectly happy with who she is and what her capabilities are.
Second, her relationship with Spike is the driving force behind this episode. The bounty the Bebop crew is hunting dies about midway through the episode, but it doesn't even really matter. You find yourself rooting for VT and Spike to become friends, or at the very least, you're extra curious as to what VT stands for. I mean, you know you're going to find out eventually, seeing as there is a bet going on among the space truckers, but this is Bebop, so really, anything is game. (And no, I'm not going to tell you what it is; go watch the episode yourself.) When it's finally revealed, they've made peace with each other, or VT has somewhat dealt with her issues and I can imagine that they might have gone and had a beer sometime off screen.
My third point is that she gets people having discussions about sexuality and gender representation. Although I don't think the creators intended her to be viewed as such – I personally think she's just a very masculine woman, especially considering her profession – I've read that some people think she might be transgender. Cowboy Bebop later on includes a gender fluid character, so it's not like this is beyond the realm of possibility, but the fact they don't draw attention to that makes me think that people may just be projecting. Which is perfectly fine. Your head-canon can be whatever it is you want it to be, like Mark Hamill said about Luke being gay – "If he's gay to you, then he's gay." I just love that her character can cause these kinds of talks and promotes a sense of inclusiveness that a lot of U.S. TV shows could learn from.
Then of course, fourth, her cat, Zeroes, is plenty enough a reason for her to be the best damn one-shot character in Bebop history.
Art Credit: PennLive, CBR, Cowboy Bebop Wiki
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Q: Position absolute flex parent cuts the box-shadow of flex items I've encountered an issue with applying a box-shadow to a flex container, positioned absolute with flex-items having a negative margin.
For the context, I am trying to display a set of playing cards one next to another overlapping horizontally.

body {
  background-color: green;
}

.game-container {
  background-color: yellow;
  background-size: 1159px 771px;
  background-position: top;
  background-repeat: no-repeat;
  background-position: top;
  position: relative;
  height: 100vh;
}

.player-hand-1 {
  top: -172px;
  left: 50%;
  transform: translate(calc(-50% + 80px), 0);
  display: flex;
  position: absolute;
  box-shadow: 29px 33px 21px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.24);
}

.player-hand-1 img {
  margin-left: -160px;
  background: red;
  border: 1px solid white;
}

.card {
  width: 200px;
  height: 280px;
}
<!DOCTYPE html>

I've tried to add a pseudo element to the player-hand, but had no visible result.
.player-hand-1 {
  &:after {
    content: '';
    clear: both;
  }
}

I've been trying to wrap the image in another div, giving it position absolute and setting the box shadow on it.
How can I get the box-shadow to be the same width as all of the flex-items united?
I've modified my code so that it was a minimum working example.

A: Your cards are overflowing the box.
You may use filter instead : filter:drop-shadow( 29px 33px 21px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.24)); , it will draw the shadow from the visible content of the box and not only from it's real size/area it covers.
possible example:

body {
  background-color: green;
}

.game-container {
  background-color: yellow;
  background-size: 1159px 771px;
  background-position: top;
  background-repeat: no-repeat;
  background-position: top;
  position: relative;
  height: 100vh;
}

.player-hand-1 {
  top: -172px;
  left: 50%;
  transform: translate(calc(-50% + 80px), 0);
  display: flex;
  position: absolute;
  filter:drop-shadow( 29px 33px 21px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.24));
}

.player-hand-1 img {
  margin-left: -160px;
  background: red;
  border: 1px solid white;
}

.card {
  width: 200px;
  height: 280px;
}
<!DOCTYPE html>

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Adult Stem Cell Awareness
Immunomodulation
Progress in Cancer Research
Advance Scientific Research
Pioneer Awards in Cell Therapy (PACT)
Corporate Alliance
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The Healing Cell
Conference Photo Gallery
Life Lines Newsletter
The Stem for Life Foundation Cell Therapy Awareness Toolbox
Help spread the word about cell therapy. Click on the links below to access the Stem for Life Foundation's tools and resources to educate yourself and your contacts, raise awareness and engage in social media and community outreach.
WATCH AND SHARE THE SFLF'S VIDEOS
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Join the Stem for Life Foundation in support of the research development of life-saving cell therapies. Click here to donate today. You can set up a monthly contribution to help further the mission of the Stem for Life Foundation or make a one-time gift. Gifts may be made in honor or in memory of a friend or loved one or in commemoration of a special occasion, such as a birthday, anniversary, or wedding.
To Raise Awareness
Donate now to play a part in creating better medicine.
Cell therapy has the potential to end needless suffering, prolong and improve the quality of life for millions, and make a profound impact on all cultures.
The Stem for Life Foundation is firmly committed to expediting development of cell therapies that offer real hope to individuals suffering from a wide-range of life- threatening medical conditions through our innovative programming, strategic networking and partnerships, and other domestic and international initiatives.
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Help spread the word about cell therapy using these tools and resources to educate yourself and your contacts, raise awareness, and engage in local media outreach.
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As my kids are gearing up to return to school next week, I've been thinking a lot about the best essential oil blends to support their mental, physical and emotional health this school year. I've included my favorite's blends for the 5 Essential Oils for Back to School concerns below.
My kids have had a pretty good stretch avoiding the cold and flu. I give full credit to our Immune Support™ blend. A few drops on the bottom of the feet before bed both prevent the flu and help nip it in the bud. For sore throats and any breathing difficulty, the Breathe™ blend diluted and applied to the chest helps support optimal respiratory function. Our new Thymus™ blend help strengthen the immune system to ward off colds and flu. You can apply the Thymus blend directly over the thymus (in front of the heart) and lightly tap with your fingers to help stimulate optimal immune function.
Between early mornings, late nights working on homework and myriad of extracurricular activities, it seems that sleep always suffers. To ensure that you and your family are getting optimal rest, consider the Circadian Rhythm™ blend when you are too wired and tired to fall asleep or the Sleep™ blend, Calm™ blend or Lavender™ for general relaxation. All of these blends can be added to a warm bath with Epsom salt to help relax before bedtime.
I don't know about your family, but in our house homework is more dreaded then beloved. I personally find that the hardest part is often just getting started. Our Focus™ blend and Brain Boost™ blend, applied on the temples, back of the neck or just inhaled, can help kick start the concentration fest so that we spend our time actually doing, instead of complaining about, the homework. Our Attention™ blend can also be useful in grounding ADD/ADHD behavior to help optimize focus. Citrus blends like Lemon™ and Orange™ are also great for aiding in concentration and my kids and their friends really seem to enjoy the smell.
I don't know why, but the start of a school year always seems to bring up all sorts of anxieties – What if none of my friends are in my class? What if I don't like my teacher? What if the homework is too hard? My favorite blends for calming anxiety is the Calm™ blend applied over the heart. It instantly settles down worries and nerves and our Adrenal™ blend when anxiety and tension is high, either applied over the adrenals (low mid-back) or inhaled. Frankincense™ can also be great for calming feelings of overwhelm and boost mental clarity(Just apply on the base of the neck or inhale).
Every year it seems we get the dreaded email that our child's classroom has been inundated with lice. Instead of fearing the inevitable, I have learned to just fortify ourselves against it. We keep a spritz bottle with water, Lavender™ and Tea Tree™ oil by the door to spray hair and prevent against the threat of lice.
I hope these are helpful as you wade back into the school year. Please feel free to leave a comment below or share these tips and ideas with anyone who might benefit.


text:
Home / Infopedia / Imran Khan
Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan – Father of Democracy
Dr. Muhammad Amjad Saqib
Major Raja Aziz Bhatti Shaheed
Imran Khan is a Pakistani politician, former cricketer, philanthropist, cricket commentator and former chancellor of the University of Bradford. Khan played international cricket for two decades in the late twentieth century and, after retiring, entered politics. He is also founder of the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and the Namal College, Mianwali.
Date of Birth: 25 November 1952
Known for: Politics, Philanthropy and Cricket
Awards: Hilal-i-Imtiaz, Jinnah Award, The Cricket Society Wetherall Award
IK Imran Khan PTI	2015-08-19
Tags IK Imran Khan PTI
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M. M. Alam : The Legend Fighter Pilot
Muhammad Mahmood Alam know as M. M. Alam was a Pakistani fighter pilot and a …


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Connect Stripe and start getting paid through your ArtiBot automatically.
1. First thing you will want to do in your bot is go into the Conversation tab and when you click to add a question like normal, you will now see the option to "Add Payment Collector". Choose that option.
2. Now you will see the right side editor open up for the Payment Collector details. Here is where you will customize what you want to say to your visitors when asking them about payment as well as how much you want them to pay. The next thing you want to do is click the "Connect with Stripe" button to setup the payment system.
3. You will now see the area where you will connect your Stripe keys that enable the visitor to pay you directly inside the bot. If you already setup a Stripe account, you can skip to step 5. Otherwise, you can sign up from the link on this screen.
4. For new Stripe customers, you will just need to create an email address, name and password, and verify your phone number for Stripe to get started. Be sure that once you sign up you have fully setup your Stripe account. This will ensure you can use ArtiBot to collect payments right away.
Once your Stripe account is setup or if you are already a Stripe customer, you will be asked if you want to use the Stripe API or an app to connect everything. Choose the "Use the Stripe API" button.
5. You will now be in your Stripe dashboard where you can view all payments that come in, your balance and many other things. The first thing you want to do in Stripe to connect it with Artibot is "Get your API keys".
6. You'll see an option for Standard keys and Restricted keys. Both options will work, but we will walk you through using Standard keys option. If you want to setup a Restricted key, contact support so we can walk you through it and explain how it's different in more detail.
From the Standard keys section you will see Publishable key and Secret key. For Secret key click the Reveal live key token button to reveal the secret key token you need.
7. You now have the two tokens ArtiBot needs to connect with your Stripe account. First, copy the Publishable key and paste it into the Stripe Publishable Key field you see from step 3. Then copy your Secret key in Stripe and paste it into the Stripe Secret Key field from step 3. Then simply click the Connect Stripe button in Artibot.
8. Publish your bot changes once you fill out the other billing fields you want to customize in your bot. Then, congrats! Your bot can now start accepting payments from visitors on your website or anywhere else they can access your bot from.
Have other questions? Chat us or email support@artboti.ai.


The study is the only room on the top floor, separated from the rest of the house by a staircase. Benefit from peace and privacy to work from home, enjoying beautiful design features like hardwood window frames and bespoke shelving.
A bright, airy space for calm, productive home working.
Escape from your desk; see challenges from a new angle.
The study provides ample room for work and meetings.


text:
Ucommune Completes D Round Financing Securing $200 Million in Funding
Three months after announcing the completion of its last round of financing, Ucommune just released news that it smoothly completed its most recent D round of financing. Ucommune is recognized as one of the top shared office space service providers and a "unicorn" in China. Today Ucommune publicly announced that the funds raised during this D round of financing set a record for the company with a total investment amount of USD 200 million. This marks the completion of another large-scale transaction within the shared office space industry.
This D round of financing was completed with All-Star Investment Fund as the leading investor and CEC Capital as the following investor. CEC Capital served as the sole financial adviser to Ucommune during this round of financing.
Ucommune also just released data indicating that the company has over 100 thousand desks. Given that the average worker works 8 hours per day, Ucommune's clients could spend an average of 800 thousand hours per day in the shared office spaces. That amounts to almost 300 million hours per year! By integrating brick-and-mortar locations with optimized online services, Ucommune will generate value for more than just clients looking to rent office space. The company's revenues are estimated to increase by 200% year-on-year in 2018.
Since its founding, Ucommune has been committed to the creation and improvement of shared office space environments and intelligent office technology platforms. Ucommune has quickly become a leader in China's shared office space industry. Currently, Ucommune has more than 200 shared office locations in 37 cities around the world. The combined area of all Ucommune's locations is 730 thousand square meters. Fifteen thousand different medium-sized enterprises and start-ups rent office space from Ucommune.
Taking advantage of its top-notch operations, management, and product design capabilities, Ucommune has focused primarily on developing smart (IoT) office technologies and big data analytics solutions, while consolidating a once fragmented shared office space industry so as to empower its hundreds of thousands of members worldwide. Within Ucommune's innovative shared office space ecosystem, diverse groups of individuals—some members, some self-employed, and some working for enterprises—meet, interact, and network. These interactions fuel technological innovation and new forms of economic growth. By providing clients with optimized services and resources, including work environments that foster the exchange and sharing of knowledge and ideas, Ucommune has seen a significant increase in user retention rates. Ucommune has also established connections with corporate clients while developing a variety of value-added services.
Ucommune has combined its capabilities for intelligent office technology creation and office space management to optimize its shared office spaces. The company has established a full-feature service system with offerings that include comprehensive management and customization services and SaaS solutions.
Ucommune is the shared office company of choice for many Fortune 500 companies and "unicorns", including Keep, Luogic Talkshow, igetget.com, China Zhongwang, Jinri Toutiao, TikTok, Bilibili, Kuaishou, Amazon China, Horizon Robots, OYO Rooms, Sansui, and Wellcom Forefront Culture Media Group. These companies have chosen to station their employees at Ucommune's locations, and their employees are essential to the Ucommune community and work environments.
When asked about this investment opportunity, some investors participating in this D round of financing explained that Ucommune possesses market advantages and operational capabilities that are unparalleled in China. Furthermore, Ucommune is poised to create unique shared office space environments, intelligent office technologies, and platform technologies that can be marketed to cooperation partners. The investors explained that these are just a few of the assets that make this such an attractive investment opportunity.
After completing this round of financing, Ucommune will be able to accelerate its expansion plan, strengthen its R&D capabilities, continue optimizing its shared office space environments, and continue upgrading the intelligent (IoT) office technologies. By the end of 2021, Ucommune is expected to have 350 shared office locations in 40 cities around the world. The combined area of all Ucommune's locations will be 1.3 million square meters and the total number of workstations offered will reach 200 thousand. Ucommune will continue to expand its value-added service offerings for current and future clients so as to position itself as an information exchange platform that catalyzes innovation.
When asked about this round of financing, Mr. Daqing MAO, Founder and Chairman of Ucommune, said that the global shared office space market can support two competing companies. Mr. MAO explained that entrepreneurship is guided by innovation in China. The market capacity in China has been growing rapidly. This means that there is huge potential for the shared office space and intelligent office technology industries in China. The decisions of investors and the recent flows of capital can serve as evidence.
Regarding investors and the flow of capital, "I am confident that investors see that the people that work at our shared office spaces are brimming with innovative ideas and enterprising spirits. Ucommune has 100 thousand desks and hundreds of thousands of members. As we grow together, we will create a unique environment. Ucommune is a platform for these environments. This growth will generate value for years to come."
All-Star Investment Fund is focused on investment projects in China's internet and consumer industries. The fund's core management team has members from Morgan Stanley and members that have participated in the listing of Chinese tech and internet companies (i.e. Tencent and Alibaba) overseas. All-Star Investment Fund manages nearly USD 2 billion in assets, with holdings in some of China's top tech companies, including Xiaomi, Didi Chuxing, Sense Time Technology, Tujia, Manbang, and Lufax.
When asked about their investment in Ucommune, Mr. Weidong JI, Founding Partner of All-Star Investment Fund, explained that All-Star Investment Fund is optimistic about the shared office space market. Mr. JI believes that Ucommune's leadership team with Mr. MAO as the leader can lead Ucommune to become an industry innovator and leader. All-Star Investment Fund is happy to provide long-term support to Ucommune to help Ucommune to strengthen the foundation of its operations, strengthen its market position, develop its office space environments, and eventually bring its operations overseas.
CEC Capital is a leading investment bank that operates at the forefront of China's new economy. CEC Capital focuses on the TMT, consumer product, and healthcare sectors. Its headquarters is in Beijing and its branch offices are in Shanghai, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. CEC Capital has received RIA accreditation from the U.S. S.E.C. Founded in 2000, CEC Capital has worked with many well-known companies including Suning, Didi Chuxing, Xiaopeng Motors, Polybona Film Group, and Miss Fresh. In addition to its investment banking business, CEC Capital also manages an RMB fund and a USD fund.
Mr. Ran WANG, Founder and CEO of CEC Capital, says he hopes that Ucommune will become more than just the WeWork of China as it expands its operations overseas.


text:
Feeling Alone?
I recently read this quote by Robin Williams. "I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up alone, it's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel alone." ~ Robin Williams
I think when we feel most alone is when we don't feel supported or cared for by others. This quote really made me reflect on my own life and the people in it. "Are they supportive of my goals?" Then I had to ask myself "Am I supportive of their goals?" "Am I supportive of my children's goals"
For the most part I would say yes because as a coach, most people in my life come to me for support and direction, which is something I enjoy doing. But I feel it's important for me to be around people that are positive, uplifting and encourage me to achieve my goals as well. I have learned over the years that sometimes you have to ask for support from people. So, if you aren't getting the support you need and feel alone, try to ask for it and see what happens. You might also try to create a support system for yourself and surround yourself with people that enjoy the same things you do. That is why I love the running and triathlon community. There are hundreds of us out there supporting each other.
Live Happy,
Coach Lora Erickson
www.BlondeRunner.com
Need more support?
Join Team Blonde Runner (TBR) – triathlon team – Learn more
Join us at the Race For Grief event (10K run, 5K run & 2 mile walk) on Memorial Day May 26, 2014 – Learn more
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Coach Lora Erickson is an Ironman All-World athlete and certified running and triathlon coach recently competing in the Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Africa in 2018. Lora was born and raised in Colorado and was to run for the University and Utah & Utah State University where she obtained a degree in Community Health Education with duel minors in Chemistry and Nutrition. Coach Lora has a true passion for health promotion and loves to share her experiences. Learn more: About Coach Lora Erickson


David Travis over at Userfocus on how to negotiate the oft-cited objections or misunderstandings about UX research.
Market research is based on opinions. Opinions vary from person to person. It would be ludicrous for a political pollster to sample 5 people in an attempt to predict an election. And even if we take a single person, his or her opinions will change over time, depending on what's in the news, the other experiences they have, and how we phrase the question.
In contrast, user experience research is based on behaviour. Behaviour turns out to be remarkably consistent from person to person. For example, if you watch 5 people approach a door, and 4 of them attempt to pull it when the door needs to be pushed, you know there's something wrong with the design. You don't need to randomly sample 370 people to draw this conclusion. You observe that the door has a pull handle, and it's probably that that's causing the problem. So you replace the pull handle with a push panel, and see if you've fixed the problem.
User experience researchers can get away with small samples because they are looking for behavioural insights, not opinions.
Read the full piece over at Userfocus: How to tell managers they're wrong about UX research and still get hired.
Interaction and Service Designer, Writer, Lecturer, Researcher. Follow him on @apolaine.


Floyd has opened for and performed with a variety of poets and other artist such as the legendary "The Last Poets", the legendary late Gill Scott-Heron, Dahveed Nelson, Malik Yusef, singer Goapele and Maya Azucena.
project is the launch of SpokenVizions Magazine (3x National Poetry Awards Poetry Magazine of the Year) and SpokenVizions.com, where he serves as the editor and designer of the publication. Recently, he has launched SVY Magazine (SpokenVizions Youth Magazine.
Floyd Boykin Jr. is a poet, author, recording artist, musician, producer and lupus awareness advocate. He is the founder of SpokenVizions Entertainment Group, LLC and the producer of Project L.I.F.E. (learning information for existence). His primary instrument is the bass guitar, but he also plays the flute, the keyboard and a little percussion. In addition to his book "Create Me A Better Me: A Conversation About Self-Transformation", he is also the author of four poetry books: "Poetic Bliss with Lyrical Rhythms", "Bare Essence: The Soul of Me", "Waiting To Dance with Her Spirit" and "Poetry is a Goddess Walking on Earth: Volume One".
As a recording artist, he has released four studio album; "Planet Liberation", "EKLIPSE", "EARTHOLOGY"
and "W.A.R. on RedMoon7". Floyd is currently in the studio working on his fifth studio project.
He has been nominated for 2 National Poetry Awards as an artist and he has won one Spoken Word BillBoard Award.


Fanzine with lots of black and white illustrations from early in Perez's career. Limited to 600 copies.
Joe Murray: Page #24 of the portfolio section to Pérez: Accent On the First "E" published in 1977 by Omnibus. The pin-up is titled "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and features Sean Connery as Ian Fleming's James Bond, Diana Rigg as Emma Peel & Patrick Macnee as John Steed from TV's The Avengers and Michael Caine as Harry Palmer from the 1965 film The Ipcress File.
Art from 1977 - 11x17.
We'll return to our scheduled saga of my time with Star Trek in Hollywood in a couple of posts. For now, there are a couple of other things I want to talk about. One of them is the man I consider the single greatest living artist in comic books: The one and only George Perez!
Here's the wrap-around cover of the portfolio book Perez: Accent on the First E, which I ordered through the mail in high school. Click on the image to get the full effect! This early rendering of the Fantastic Four, the Silver Surfer, and Galactus demonstrates, even at the dawn of his professional career, everything that George's work is about. I still have my copy of Accent, signed by George himself. At the time I was heavily into using Prismacolor pencils and I colored some of the drawings in the book, which are mostly black-and-white pencil reproductions. I wish now I hadn't done that. It's one of those things you do when you're very young and not thinking about what you're doing.
GEORGE PEREZ has drawn just about every major Marvel and DC character at some point in his amazing career- a good friend and great talent.
Andy Mangels: So what happened then? You were going to do a DEATH SQUAD series with Bob Layton and you started on a graphic novel called DEATH TRAIN."
…As for DEATH SQUAD, I was already a pro at that point and I was doing an origins story of the DEATH SQUAD with Bob Layton for Omnibus Publishing, which had already produced the PEREZ ACCENT ON THE FIRST E book. But Omnibus never went anywhere; the PEREZ book itself, due to bad management, bad marketing, bad timing, didn't go anywhere - I assume only about 600 ever went out to any audience; it's a very rare book now. So DEATH SQUAD totally fell apart.
George Pérez honestly has make a strong impact in my life. He is the reason I draw and paint today.
In 1984 my father gave me a copy of ''Accent on the First E'' by George Perez, I was 4 years old... and since then all I do is draw aside from my real job. I traced every page of that book cover to cover, every single day when I was 5,6 years old.
As I got older I simply refused to trace knowing that George didn't trace the drawings... so I started to draw them by eye, literally mastering every detail of each page.
If you've seen this book before you'll know that it's an awesome black and white showcase book if Pérez's early art. From then on.... I would draw everything in sight.... tables, cars, faces....... everything. Trying every day to be a master at detail like George.
Today I draw and paint as a side job and it was all because of ''Accent on the First E''....that book rocked my life!
I still have it till this day along with literally thousands of other George Pérez comics and posters......and I just wanted to express my love and respect for the man's talent and what he has inspired me to do.
Well I'm happy to tell you that I met him at the New York Sci-fi and Fantasy Art Show at Madison Square Garden on the 30th of June.
Hahahaha.... like a little punk I almost cried. LOLOL picture a 22 year old at a show crying over a comic book artist. But I held it in. I let out one tear when I got home.
So I walked around the place to loosen up and found myself walking in circles to George's table over and over and over again. LOLOLOL.... what a memory. All the other artist..... I didn't even say hello to them or even ask for an autograph. It's like those people were all shadows.
Well it was a pleasure meeting George Pérez and I have the memories to enjoy forever. Or until I hopefully meet him again.


text:
Checking in with the Big Bads: Supergirl Season 3's Reign
by Dan Wickline
There have been some big changes lately in the Arrowverse having to do with the 'Big Bads" of each show. Today I'm going to do a quick pass over each to see where we are at, their motivation, their plan, and how all that is working out. We'll start off with what is usually the first show of the week, Supergirl.
Odette Annable as Samantha Arias/Reign — Photo: Michael Courtney/The CW — © 2018 The CW Network, LLC. All rights reserved.
Meet the Big Bad:
We were introduced to Samantha Arias (Odette Annable) in the first episode of the season, along with her daughter Ruby (Emma Temblay). Our first experience with her was as a mother, and she was going to a Supergirl celebration that was attacked by a guy with a stealth submarine. When Ruby is put into danger, Sam is suddenly strong enough to lift a metal scaffolding to save her. We later learn that Sam's company was just bought out by L Corp, and Lena (Katie McGrath) brought her on to run the company while Lena looked after the newly purchased CatCo. We got to know Sam for a while before more weird things started happening, and she's gotten close to Lena, Kara (Melissa Benoist), and Alex (Chyler Leigh). When we finally meet her as Reign and we realize she doesn't know about the alter ego, she becomes a tragic villain who then beats Supergirl into a coma.
Motivation:
Sam has no reason to want to hurt anyone. Reign, on the other hand, is a genetically engineered weapon. Along with her fellow Worldkillers, she has been lying dormant on Earth waiting for the day she'd be awakened. Her purpose is to rid the world of injustice, but her judgement is black and white. Many people will be her target that don't deserve it. She is ruthless and extremely powerful.
Machinations:
Reign doesn't seem to have a plan. She's more of a reactionary force at this point, but there are others that seem to want to guide her. They may be biding their time until all the Worldkillers are revealed. The city/world fears her to the point that villains are leaving town and hiding rather than face her. But she's not out patrolling on a regular basis or anything like that. There doesn't seem to be a ticking clock on her side, but as Alex and Lena try to help Sam figure out her blackouts, once Sam knows she's Reign, anything might happen.
The obvious questions involving Reign has to be: what are the plans for the Worldkillers, why were they built, and how do you stop them? But the question I'm left wondering is how much of Sam's memory gets wiped and why? When Purity (Krys Marshall) returned to being Julia Freeman, she seemed to remember what had happened enough to exchange herself for Alex. But Sam doesn't remember any of it. Does she even remember going out to see her stepmother and discovering she's an alien? You think that would've come up since if she did.
There has been a lot of buildup to Reign while dealing with side stories like Morgan Edge (Adrian Pasdar) and the return of Mon-El (Chris Wood). But with that much setup, there is going to need to be a really good payoff. We'll have to see what the nine-week hiatus does to help the writers solidify the story after the removal of executive producer Andrew Kreisberg.
Supergirl returns on April 16th at 8 p.m. ET on the CW.
Posted in: DC Universe, TV | Tagged: cw, entertainment, HRL, melissa benoist, Odette Annable, Reign, supergirl, television
About Dan Wickline
Has quietly been working at Bleeding Cool for over three years. He has written comics for Image, Top Cow, Shadowline, Avatar, IDW, Dynamite, Moonstone, Humanoids and Zenescope. He is the author of the Lucius Fogg series of novels and a published photographer.
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Hello BC readers, it's been a while. I've been off working on comics (The Freeze Vol 1 trade from Image Comics/Top Cow is in stores now…) but after
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Click here to view the resin ball challenge video or go to www.stonersunited.com/resinballchallenge to take part.
What to do if u cant hit allow your cam on firefox?
First relax, its not the end of the world the cieling isnt going to fall in, su isnt broken.
The day I brought a blade to my head.


Feminism is a way of looking at the world, where women are seen less equal to men. It is a way of classifying that there is male dominance, and it is a scheme that in the social and political context demises women (Osborne, 2001). Islamic feminism can be gathered through understanding the decree from Qur'an and hadith which defines the rights and justice for women and men. Islamic feminism is highly criticised and it is also acknowledged by a lot of people. Due to misinterpretation there is a lot of misunderstanding about what Islam says about women. Islam does show disrespect to women, but they are rather given a higher praise. For one instance according to a hadith "paradise lies at the mother's feet" (SUNNAH.COM, n.d.). That would be one of the highest praise anyone can get. This essay will look into some of the history on how feminism started, it's relation to Islam and weather there can be Islamic feminism. It will also discuss the status given to women in Islam according to the Qur'an and hadith and the inheritance of wealth. The essay will also comprise of the rights of women in Islam, the status of mothers and how a chapter in the Qur'an is specifically named in regards to women.