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A Call to Action: GMOs and Democracy/ Power and Money versus the People's Will
Unless we act quickly at the Federal level, we'll lose the possibility of labeling GMOs, perhaps forever. If we act quickly in Connecticut, we have a chance of removing the trigger clause which delays the effective date of Connecticut's GMO labeling act. Scroll down to Action Steps to learn what you can do this week, including attending the legislative hearing in Hartford on Thursday March 3, at 11:30 am. Your voice is critical!
Although getting labels on food made with GMOs won't solve most of the really serious problems with our food and agricultural systems, this is an important opportunity for consumers and citizens to begin to regain the power and control they should have.
People in 64 other countries know if their food contains GMOs. One recent poll showed that 93 percent of Americans favor labeling GMOs. Polls going back nearly two decades found more than 80 percent favor labeling. Yet despite incredible efforts by citizens and legislators over many years to pass laws or referendums, the closest we have gotten to actual labeling is Vermont's GMO labeling law which is scheduled to go into effect in a matter of months on July 1, 2016. Laws in Connecticut (the nation's first) and in Maine require other states to pass similar laws (called a trigger clause) before they take effect.
Principles of democracy are at stake in this election year. Who has power and the role of money in legislation are hot issues, thanks especially to presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
The continuing struggle to get clear and honest labels on foods that contain GMOs is a perfect example of the difficulty of democratic control in the face of enormous power and wealth. In this case, the wealthy power is the industrial food and agricultural system: Ag biotech giants, agricultural chemical makers (often one and the same), some farming, commodity and growers associations, industrial food producers, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the Snack Food Association and more. You get the idea. All of these industries have become more concentrated, wealthy and powerful in the last few decades. Find a list of those who don't want you to know what's in your food here.
The powers that be have two major arguments against labeling. One is that it will cost consumers a lot. This despite the fact that there are already extensive labeling requirements. Additionally, companies frequently print personalized labels with names, events or activities on them for marketing purposes. If most customers ask for it, companies should provide the requested information. Respectable studies say any cost for labeling would be minimal.
The other argument is against a "patchwork" of different state laws. This is actually an argument for a strong Federal GMO Labeling Law, not for the voluntary program which is proposed currently in the Senate. The folks working on state labeling laws attempt to make them similar
Ag and Food Establishment in a Tizzy
The Vermont law is the first crack in the veil of secrecy these rascals have been able to maintain. The imminent effective date of the Vermont law has this food and ag establishment in a frenzy. The Grocery Manufacturers and friends lost their lawsuit against Vermont's law. Now this establishment is desperate to get Congress to overturn the will of the people through what is known as the DARK Act (Denying Americans the Right to Know). This act would overturn current (and prohibit future) state or local labeling laws and establish a voluntary GMO labeling program at USDA. The DARK act was approved by the House last year and is now being pushed by the Ag establishment a second time in the Senate. Only the vigorous opposition of the labeling advocates stopped the DARK act in the Senate last fall. We can thank our Connecticut Senators for their strong support of labeling.
The industry has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to influence legislation through lobbying and political donations, to mislead voters leading up to referenda and in legal fees to overturn the will of the people.
The American Farm Bureau Federation, the American Feed Industry Association, the National Potato Council and the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) issued strong support for the DARK act, although they call it the Safe and Affordable Food Act.
Corn is the most widely grown GMO in this country so it is fitting that NCGA President Chip Bowling repeated often told lies about this technology. "The introduction of Roberts's proposal (the current Senate version of the DARK act) is an important first step to restoring sanity to America's food labeling laws," said Bowling, a farmer from Maryland. "GMOs are perfectly safe and America's farmers rely on this proven technology to protect our crops from insects, weeds and drought."
If any of this were true, it might be an argument to keep using GMOs, but none of it is true! There is no way to know if or prove GMOs are safe, at least not without long-term feeding trials and labeling. And far from being a proven technology, it is a failed one. Insects are becoming resistant to the Bt pesticide that some GMO crops produce in every cell. The herbicide tolerant strategy for controlling weeds is failing so badly that superweeds are a widespread problem and now our food crops are being designed to be sprayed with a mix of two herbicides, glyphosate and 2,4-D. So far none of the genetic engineering in use is for drought resistance.
The People's View
The seven state NOFA chapters and the NOFA Interstate Council have been concerned about GMOs since the mid 1990s when the first set of National Organic Standards allowed them. NOFA and its allies produced about a quarter of a million comments protesting that allowance and GMOs were and still are prohibited in organic agriculture. All of the NOFA chapters are working for GMO Labeling at the state level. The Chapters and the Council just signed on to a letter to the leaders of the Senate Agriculture Committee protesting the DARK Act.
The Environmental Working Group produced this fact sheet on GMO Labeling and the DARK Act and these ten reasons to oppose the DARK Act.
A statement from Lisa Archer, food and technology program director for Friends of the Earth called the bill a "desperate attempt by the junk food and chemical industries to keep Americans in the dark." She added "Any member of Congress that fails to see the writing on the wall and chooses to support this antiquated and undemocratic bill will find that they are on the wrong side of history."
Chef, food advocate and Food Policy Action co-founder Tom Colicchio said "Consumers should be trusted to decide their own food choices, but Senator Roberts apparently thinks Washington knows best. This is exactly the sort of crony capitalism that voters across the country are rejecting." A petition for chefs is available here.
Even the New York Times called on the Senate to reject the DARK act.
There is enough resistance, at least in the Agriculture Committee, that a hearing on the bill originally scheduled for February 25 was postponed in a partisan conflict between those who support the industry's position and the other side which is listening more to the people and is concerned about state's rights.
GMO labeling is right now a very hot button issue in the Senate, for Connecticut's Legislature and in neighboring states, especially Massachusetts and New York. If it isn't stalled, legislative movement will be swift, with high priced lobbyists in the background trying to pull the right strings to thwart the people's will. You need to stay informed in order to know when and how to act. If you want to be up to date, sign on to relevant mailing lists. However, you can let your elected representatives know any time how you feel, that you want to know what is in your food.
You can send a letter to your Senators from this site. Sign up for email alerts from Citizens for GMO Labeling here. (Scroll down for state contacts. For the Northeast, go here.)
In Connecticut, sign on to CT NOFA's alerts and Gleanings newsletter here.
To help get Connecticut's trigger clause removed, tell your state representative and senator that you want GMO labeling soon. HB 5300 has been introduced in the Children's Committee to do just that. If you can, attend the hearing on March 3 to show support. Here is the schedule for events at the Legislative Office Building:
11:00 1B Press Conference
11:30 2B Hearing begins
11:30 Atrium Ice Cream etc. (Ben & Jerry's is supplying the ice cream again and we're hoping Jerry will be able to come as well.
Whether you can attend or not, you can easily submit written testimony electronically by Thursday morning. Find out more here. Many things relating to GMOs, herbicides and labeling have changed in the past three years.
Only with continued activism will we regain the control of our food system to help create a healthy future. Speak up today!
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What Justin Fuente said after Virginia Tech lost to Georgia Tech
Dave Holcomb, Diehards
Virginia Tech fell to Georgia Tech in Justin Fuente's first season last year, but it didn't cost the Hokies a chance at winning the Coastal Division.
The division title wasn't on the line Saturday, but the Yellow Jackets once again played spoilers to the Hokies, and this time, it could really hurt Virginia Tech. Georgia Tech quarterback Taquon Marshall completed just 2 passes but threw for 140 yards and each completion ended in a touchdown.
Marshall threw an 80-yard strike to reclaim the lead late in the fourth quarter, and Georgia Tech won, 28-22.
With this loss, Virginia Tech must win-out to finish with nine victories, which might not be enough to be in a New Year's Six Bowl. That remained a goal for the Hokies even after losing last week to Miami.
Here's what Fuente said after the loss Saturday afternoon:
The post What Justin Fuente said after Virginia Tech lost to Georgia Tech appeared first on Diehards.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Note – When referring to the Black Country in the questions, it means for the areas of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall, Wolverhampton.
The five mobile camera enforcement sites, in the Black Country, with the highest number of activations during 2015/16, by number of activations and location.
The five mobile camera enforcement sites, in the Black Country, with the lowest number of activations during 2015/16, by number of activations and location.
Please state the top 5 highest speeds caught by speed cameras in the Black Country for 2015/16. Please state which roads these were on.


Executive Director Jane Segal has over 20 years experience teaching, developing curriculum and working with youth of all ages. She was a founder of Turning Heads in 2003. She holds a California Multiple Subjects Credential, a BFA from California College of Art and is a Certified Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) Instructor, a national leader in providing entrepreneurship education to low-income youth. She directs the Sewing and Fashion Design Program and is the business and entrepreneur mentor for the young women operating Sweet Dreams.
Studio manager and production mentor Dee has more than 15 years experience in retail, marketing, musical and theatrical performance. She has been sewing since she was 10 and studied pattern making at Apparel Arts Institute in San Francisco. She works at Imagiknit, the premier local yarn boutique. Dee was one of Turning Heads' first sewing instructors and she loves sharing her knowledge of color, texture and design. She keeps the studio operating smoothly and is the production mentor for the young women of Sweet Dreams.
Instructor and mentor Richard Lee is a professional designer and the principal owner of Blondie Designs. Richard has over 40 years experience in the leather and sewing industries. He began sewing at 10 and as a teenager Richard sewed leather patches on jeans, made belts and worked at a local shoe repair store. As an adult Richard designed, produced and owned a custom leather clothing company. Currently, he is an independent designer, teacher and consultant. He instructs and mentors the members of Sweet Dreams in product development, marketing and advanced sewing technique.


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Vietnam Capitals
Hanoi is the capital city of Vietnam and is located in the northern part of the country. From 1010 until 1802, the city served as the political centre of the area before Hue briefly became the imperial capital. During the French colonial period in the area, Hanoi was the administrative centre of French Indochina from 1873-1902 and the official capital of French Indochina from 1902-1954. During the Vietnamese Civil War (1954-1976), Hanoi remained the capital city of Northern Vietnam and eventually became the capital of a reunified Vietnam after the North has won the war in 1976. Hanoi lies on the banks of the Red River, and the municipality covers 3,328.9 square kilometres (1,292 square miles).
The population of the Hanoi region is currently estimated at 7.6 million people which makes it the second largest district in the country regarding population. Around 3 million of these people live in the city of Hanoi, and the remaining population lives in the surrounding areas. The population of Hanoi is growing approximately 3.5 percent per year, and this is putting added stress on the city infrastructure.
Attractions in the city are plentiful, and Hanoi is consistently ranked in the top 10 destination lists of most travel providers and reviewers. From ancient temples and monuments to modern shopping and nightlife, Hanoi has everything a tourist would want to experience in one destination. French architecture and influence on city planning are evident in Hanoi, and this provides a unique aesthetic.
The climate of Hanoi can be classified as a humid subtropical environment, and the country experiences a lot of rainfall. Summer lasts from May until August in Vietnam and is characterized by hot, humid weather and plenty of rain. Winter, from November to January, sees dry and cool weather (by national standards) with little sunshine and plenty of cloud and fog covering the city. The average temperature at any time throughout the year is 23.6 degrees Celsius (74 degrees Fahrenheit), and the most common level of humidity is 79 percent. The highest temperature ever recorded in Hanoi was 42.8 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit) during May of 1926 and the lowest ever recorded was 2.7 degrees Celsius in January of 1955.
More on Vietnam
Flags of Vietnam
Government of Vietnam
Languages of Vietnam
Vietnam's Information
Vietnamese (official), English (increasingly favored as a second language), some French, Chinese, and Khmer, mountain area languages (Mon-Khmer and Malayo-Polynesian)
Kinh (Viet) 85.7%, Tay 1.9%, Thai 1.8%, Muong 1.5%, Khmer 1.5%, Mong 1.2%, Nung 1.1%, Hoa 1%, other 4.3%
Buddhist 7.9%, Catholic 6.6%, Hoa Hao 1.7%, Cao Dai 0.9%, Protestant 0.9%, Muslim 0.1%, none 81.8% (2009 est.)
Communist state
2 September 1945 (from France)
Though it has one of the highest population densities in the world, the population is not evenly dispersed; clustering appears heaviest along the South China Sea and Gulf of Tonkin, with the Mekong Delta (in the south) and the Red River Valley (in the north) having the largest concentrations of people
Southeastern Asia, bordering the Gulf of Thailand, Gulf of Tonkin, and South China Sea, as well as China, Laos, and Cambodia
Cambodia 1,158 km, China 1,297 km, Laos 2,161 km
$595,000,000,000.00 (USD)
Its major export partners are the United States, China, and Japan.
Its main exports are clothes, shoes, electronics, and seafood.
Its major import partners are China, South Korea, and Singapore.
Its major imports include machinery and equipment, petroleum products, and steel products.
Subtropical, tempered by easterly trade winds, relatively low humidity, little seasonal temperature variation; rainy season September to November
Low, flat delta in south and north; central highlands; hilly, mountainous in far north and northwest


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As coleções do Museu Nacional do Brasil incluem uma exposição de estelas funerárias do Antigo Egito.

O status atual da coleção é desconhecido após o incêndio que destruiu o museu em 2018.

Referências

Estelas
Coleções do Museu Nacional do Brasil

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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About CLD
Doha EU Courses
Executive Legal Training
Center for Law & Development
Director of the Centre for Law and Development
Dr.Jon Truby Director
jon.truby@qu.edu.qa +974 4403-5288 Profile website
Dr.Abdelnaser Zeyad Hayajneh Professor of Law
Mr.Abdulhadi Al-Marri Ministry of Municipality and Environment
Dr.Francis Botchway Sir William Blair Chair in Alternative Dispute Resolution
Dr.Hamad Al-Saad Al-Kuwari Director of Environment Science Center
Dr.Hareb Aljabri Director of Sustainable Development Center
Ms.Najlaa Al-Mahmoud Continuing Education Office
Ms.Sara Al-Mohanadi Teaching Assistant
Affiliate of the Centre for Law and Development
An 'Affiliate' of the Centre for Law and development is an appointed academic or active researcher who contributes to the scholarly or professional output of the Centre. Centre Affiliates regularly write, research and publish in areas and upon issues that are of direct relevance to Qatar in the context of Law and Development. Affiliate members contribute to the academic life and activities of the Centre through the organization and/or leadership of seminars, workshops, conferences and other outreach and engagement initiatives.
Associates of the Centre for Law and Development
An 'Associate' of the Centre for Law and Development is an invited professional actively engaged in work and initiatives related to law and/or the economic development of Qatar. The Centre for Law and Development encouragers and supports the activities of its Associates by providing a platform and forum for the discussion, debate and dissemination of their ideas. Associate members of the Centre of Law and Development represent the long term commitment of the Centre to engage with industry and government and promote dialogue and innovative ideas.
Ms.Apoorva Ramaswamy Associate Professor Profile website
Affiliated Members
Dr.Andrew Mazen Dahdal Section Head, Economic Diversification
Profile website Download Resume
Prof.Benedict Abrahamson Chigara
ben.chigara@qu.edu.qa College of Law, Qatar University, P.O. Box 2713, Doha Ph.D. (Nottingham), LL.M. with Distinction & Best Performance Award (Hull), BA Hons. Law & Psychology (Keele), FHEA (UK), FInst.LM (London), FReachSOC. Download Resume
Dr.Faisal M. Al-Hababi Assistant Professor of Public Law at Qatar University
falhababi@qu.edu.qa (+974) 4403-6511 Building I03-713 Profile website
Dr.Ioannis Konstantinidis
Profile website
Dr.Rafael Dean Brown Assistant Professor of Legal Writing, Coordinator of Executive Legal Education
Legal Skills, Legal Writing, Legal Analysis, Litigation, Arbitration Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Legal Writing, Legal Analysis, Arbitration rbrown@qu.edu.qa 4403-7789 Profile website Prof. Rafael Dean Brown received his Juris Doctor from Case Western Reserve University School of Law and his B.A. English (magna cum laude) from Case Western Reserve University. He joined the Qatar University College of Law in 2015, where he teaches in the Legal Skills Department. He serves on the Qatar University Faculty Senate (Vice Chair of Faculty Affairs), and is an Affiliate Member of the Center for Law and Development, where he is also the Coordinator of the Executive Legal Training Program.


a little while back i did this alternate cover to deadly class (issue#1), a new book by rick remender, wesley craig, and legendary colorist Lee Loughridge. it is coming out from image comics and should be in stores by january 22nd.
and speaking of remender, i just picked up his new book with mattaeo scalera and dean white, black science and was really impressed by it. cover image by the long admired andrew robinson.
thanks to everyone who came out for my recent floating world comics delusional book release. it was great seeing all of you. so here's a picture of some of my books and prints.
this and more pictures courtesy of the most excellent andrew on his prophet sharing tumblr. i have four pieces of original art on sale there at floating world until the end of the year in a few days. go by the shop or contact jason leivian for online purchasing. there are also a bunch of prints for sale and my sketchbooks are still there for perusal until new years.
There was a nice review of Delusional in last weeks portland mercury.
2013 was a pretty decent year for me finishing up stuff. not only did i finally knock out the wrenchies for first second but i just wrapped up a young adult story i have been working on with mk reed and greg means. here is one action and swearing packed page from that 61-page story.
i also have about three weeks left of the current chapter of it will all hurt.
hopefully we will have parts 3 and 4 collected into a real comic by emerald city comic con which as you might have seen i am a special guest at. or by linework, a new local independent comic show here in portland in april 2014.
my plan now is to do a little more work on prophet, finishing that series up, then starting in january get to work my new regular gig, the ear farmer for dark horse presents. here is the as yet uncolored title page i did for that story with writer chris stevens.
and of course i will still be working on finishing up the next pop gun war too.
ok, maybe, if i am lucky, i'll see you in canada.


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Shousetsu Bang*Bang
The Reel of Rory McAllister and the Moonlit Man
Posted on April 30, 2018 by ssbb-admin
by Hyakunichisou 13 (百日草 十三)
illustrated by The Druid
Elbow on thigh and chin glumly in palm, Rory gazed into the forest gloom. Behind the cabin, from the new pile of logs that resembled a barn the way a cairn resembled a castle, came a mighty racket as of crockery colliding, and some whoops and laughter. Some of the men were at that stage of drunkenness that found everything amusing.
Rory hunched forward on the edge of the stump where he was perched. He himself had accepted a drappie of what they were pleased to call whiskey on this benighted continent, and although it was merrily dissolving his innards the way it had peeled the lining from his throat going down, it hadn't lightened his mood or dulled the throb of his knee the way he'd hoped.
To think he'd been looking forward to this evening. A chance to hear music and dance to it, perhaps to talk with someone who had read the latest installments of Mr. Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby, at the very least to eat some of the raisin baps that Mrs. Anderson had baked yesterday and forbidden them all to touch on pain of nothing but stale crusts for a week. But now dancing was out of the question, and none of the men wanted to talk of anything but Mackenzie's rebellion in any case.
Rory pulled his muffler closer around his neck and imagined the verdant, balmy spring at home. Men who'd been here half their lives laughed at him and told him he'd harden to the climate, but the longer he stayed in Upper Canada the more it seemed to leach the endurance from his Edinburgh-bred bones. Not that leaving was a choice within his reach. Clerking in a cow-shed of a general store in a wilderness made up of towering undergrowth and mud was as fair a chance as he was going to get for the foreseeable future.
Rory dropped his head into his hands and made a noise of deep frustration.
"For the love of everything holy, must you spew on the ley line? Oh, go ahead, then. Doom the household to consumption and sour milk unto seven generations, I'm sure it's nothing to me."
Rory raised his head and looked across the newly cleared plot of land at the white figure silhouetted against the trees. "What?"
The man started. "What?"
"What?" Rory said again.
"You can see me?"
The man must be as scammered as the rest of the company. "Aye, of course I can see you." Pale skin, a sleek cap of black hair; rather old-fashioned clothing, breeches and high boots and a flowing blue coat, with glints of gold at cuffs and throat and waist. Though now that Rory thought about it, it was odd that he could see the man in such detail, as though he were standing in sunlit noon. It was almost as though he were softly glowing. Rory squinted upward. It must be a trick of the moonlight.
"But I'm not even–hmm." The man tilted his head. "By any chance, were you born with a caul?"
Rory straightened. "How do you ken that?"
"It's not every soul who can see me when I'm not trying to be seen." His voice was oddly wistful, its lilt marking him as hailing from Ireland. He stepped away from the ragged line of the forest and threaded lightly between the stumps. As he came closer, the lustre around him seemed to dim; by the time he reached Rory, he was illuminated only by the blue-grey light of a waxing moon. "What would your name be?"
"Rory McAllister. And you, sir?"
"Liam will do." Uninvited, he alighted on the stump beside Rory. "You're not enjoying the company of your fellows?"
"I needed a breath of air." If it was chilly out here under the stars, at least it was free of the fug of sweaty wool, woodsmoke and spirits.
"Ah. Not one for parties?"
"I like parties well enough." He was no wallflower; books weren't sufficient company all of the time. "It's just…different from at home."
"Light's own truth, that."
"They've not even got an orchestra, just a fiddler. Well, a man with a fiddle."
"That's a different thing," Liam agreed.
"Instead of announcing dinner, they just put everything out in a jumble. People were eating slices of pie out of hand! And passing a jug of whiskey around, with no glasses in sight! With women present! A few of the women even accepted the whiskey!"
"No drawing rooms here."
"If there were, they'd be made of logs. Everything's made of logs. The store is a log pig-sty. Not literally, and they've whitewashed it inside, but it still might as well be a pig-sty."
"No castles, either," Liam said longingly.
"I think they whitewash everything so you can't see the frost on the walls seven months out of the year." The winter had been a bitter one.
"Yes, my word, the climate. One day you're a steamed pudding, and two weeks later your lips are turning blue."
"We're miles from anything. I haven't seen a paper from home less than four months out of date since I arrived. And the victuals! Day in and day out it's salt pork and bread and potatoes and beans. I haven't seen anything green since last October."
"Oh, how I long for green," Liam said. "Everything sleeps so deeply under the snow."
"And the insects."
"Territorial and cliquish."
"And the prices! I put an elbow through one of my shirts last month, and if you knew–"
Rory broke off, not with a cry so much as a sudden deficit of air. He'd been so exercised that he'd made as if to rise and pace, forgetting his knee for one regrettable instant. He banged back down onto the stump and made a wheezing noise.
"What's wrong?" Liam was in front of him now, crouching to look with concern into Rory's face.
"I twisted my leg, earlier. While we were raising the barn." A foot put wrong, exertion at the wrong moment, and he'd felt something pop gently at the side of his knee. The pain had grown, not ebbed, over the course of the following hours. He should have stopped to at least bind it, but he'd been hoping to prove that Mr. Anderson's soft city clerk was as much a man as the rest of them. More fool he.
"Let me see." Liam put his one hand on Rory's thigh, close to the knee, and hovered the other above the injury. Rory drew in breath to brace himself, but Liam didn't touch the most painful part. "I see. I could do something about that, if you wish."
"Are you a physician?"
Liam smiled. "Nothing like. But I have some little skill."
"Then, aye, please, I'd be grateful," Rory said, wondering if the man had a jar of liniment in his pocket, or some country remedy involving ash poultices or pine sap or something else close to hand. Or perhaps what Rory suspected was true, and the skill Liam spoke of needed nothing so prosaic.
Liam turned his head to look backwards into the darkened forest. "May I have your leave?"
"Aye, I already said…er…who are you talking to?"
Liam turned back and placed his hands very lightly on either side of Rory's knee. "The ones who were here before us. They've been far more generous than any of us had a right to expect, but still. I don't like to assume."
Rory felt the back of his neck prickle as he looked out into the grey-on-black of the winter forest. "Are they, uh, there now?"
"They're always there. Hush, now."
Rory closed his mouth and sat as still and silent as he could. The cloud of his breath billowed out in front of him. He could feel the warmth of Liam's hands very faintly, and a stronger warmth where Liam's shin pressed against his own. The moonlight gleamed on Liam's hair and seemed to make his coat sparkle, as if it had been sprinkled with silver dust.
Consideration of his immortal soul passed through Rory's mind and slid away with its accustomed lack of urgency. If the church was correct, Rory was already damned dozens of times over, and had been long before he allowed one of the fae folk to lay hands on him. He focused his attention on one of the nearer stumps and tried to pretend he felt nothing at the sight of a man kneeling at his feet.
After a time, Liam withdrew his hands and shook them out. "There. Best give it a few moments yet." He regained his seat beside Rory. "Tell me, then, what's a Rory McAllister doing in the land of frosted pig-sties and salt pork?"
Rory tried to sketch a brief and dignified picture of his last ten months, but he found it all tumbling out of him, how fourth sons, even fourth sons of moderately prosperous merchants, had slim prospects, and how enticing the letters his father's cousin's husband had sent back from across the sea had made the new world seem, and how everyone concerned had been well in agreement that it was past time he take his own reins, and how words like town and road and society had completely different connotations on this side of the ocean. And how he was trying his best, but everything that should be familiar here was alien, from the taste of the butter to the breath of the wind in the trees, and everything he had known seemed unbearably far away.
"…I do beg your pardon," he said, realizing uncomfortably that he'd been blethering far too intimately for far too long.
"No need to apologize. It's much the same with me. I sought new adventures, and found the rewards more complex than I had anticipated." Liam shook his head. "The streams speak strangely here, and the stones have unfamiliar memories. This place gives me odd dreams."
"Can't you just…go back?" asked Rory, unsure whether it would be rude to ask whether Liam's kind needed a ship the way Rory's did.
"It isn't so easy as that. There's a powerful lot of salt water between here and home. Crossing it nearly ended me, and it will be some time before I am strong enough to face it again. No, I fear that for the time being my fate is here."
They sat in silence for a time, shoulder to shoulder on the stump. Rory tucked his fingers into his sleeves and thought about the warmth of the bonfire. From the barn, the introductory bowing of a fiddle gilded the quiet.
"Ah, well," Liam said. "Life is both long and short, and the only recourse is to make the best of it that we can." He swung up from his seat so that he was standing in front of Rory, and extended his hand. "Will you dance with me?"
Rory flexed his knee cautiously, and found that it moved with no pain at all. He slid his hand into Liam's–it was human-warm–and then, self-consciously, glanced backwards at the house.
"No one will see us," Liam promised. Rory rose, and Liam swung him into position, both of them facing the same way as if they were to dance as part of an invisible octet, joined only at the fingertips.
It began as a familiar reel. Rory's feet knew the steps without him having to think. It could have been awkward with just the two of them, but Rory and his brothers had practiced plenty of times with only each other to make up the set. Liam's hands were sure on his as they moved, wheeling around a fixed point or forming a circle with their linked arms. Rory's knee felt as strong as it had ever been, and the exertion warmed every part of him that had grown clumsy sitting on an uncushioned stump in the early spring dark.
He wasn't sure exactly when it changed. It wasn't that he stopped hearing the music, or was no longer moving of his own accord, but somehow the steps became fiercer, the music something that vibrated in his bones rather than his ears. He spiralled and pivoted, pointed his toes and reached his hands towards the stars. From time to time he was caught in Liam's embrace, and they spun together until the spinning pulled them away. Then he revolved like a distant planet around the awareness of the other man, until the gravity of the dance brought them back into one another's orbit, shared grip steadying them as they whirled, the forces of push and pull balancing them perfectly, both together and apart.
And then came the moment when the music receded and the embrace didn't end. He and Liam stood chest to heaving chest, breaths mingling. Rory felt as giddy as if he'd downed several gulps of whiskey from Mr. MacClelland's earthenware jug. It was an effort to force his gaze from Liam's mouth to Liam's eyes, and what he saw there gave him the reckless courage to cross those few inches and press his lips to Liam's.
As a kiss it was practically chaste, until Liam made a sound in the back of his throat and suddenly it wasn't. Their mouths opened. Rory slid a hand up Liam's arm, his shoulder, into his silken hair. Their tongues met, and Rory's spare hand tensed on Liam's arm.
"Are you–do you–" Liam barely drew away enough to form words. "I did not mean the dance to compel you to this. Tell me that you don't wish this, and we stop."
It had been long months since Rory had left Edinburgh, where he knew the places that like-minded men gathered. "I wish it," he whispered, and caught Liam's mouth again with his own.
The stories made it clear that at least some of the fae were male, and Rory was gratified when Liam's arms tightened and he felt evidence of that fact as their hips pressed together. He rested a hand on Liam's side, smoothed it down his ribs to his thigh.
"I can make a place for us to go," Liam said, between kisses.
It took a few tries to disentangle themselves. Liam's fair cheeks were flushed, and Rory felt as though his skin were alight all over his body.
"This way," Liam said, taking his hand, and led him into the forest.
There was no trail here that Rory could see. Some of the trees were so large that two men could not stretch their arms around one from either side and clasp hands. Rory thought of the stumps in the MacClellands' yard, and felt briefly ashamed of his own needs for food and fuel that had led to such destruction.
"Here." Liam stopped in a spot where the ground was even. He raised his arms above his head and lowered them slowly, and an umbrella of pale silver descended around him and Rory, the size of an intimate room. "No one will see us from the outside." He moved his hands apart, palms down, and a carpet thickened under their feet. A wide bed coalesced, luxuriantly soft as high summer clouds, with turned posts at the corners spiralling up to meet the dove-grey dome above.
"I hope it suits," he said, a little shyly.
In answer, Rory pushed at the edges of Liam's coat where it gaped at his throat, and put his lips against milky skin. Liam hummed and tilted his head back. Rory worked a hand down the front of the coat, parting the golden loops and knots of the frogs that held it closed.
Underneath, Liam was bare. Rory pushed the coat off Liam's shoulders. Around Liam's neck a pendant hung, a long string of jade and amethyst beads on a golden cord. Rory trailed a finger down it, enjoying the sight of the jewels against Liam's skin, and Liam shivered as though he could feel Rory's fingers through it.
"Don't take it off," Liam breathed.
"No?" The silken tassel that ended it just grazed the waist of Liam's wine-coloured breeches. Rory moved it to brush against Liam's belly. "Is it part of your magic?"
"No." Liam moved closer, clasping Rory's thigh between his. "I just like the feel of it."
"The feel of it?" Rory ran the soft tassel up Liam's ribs to dust a nipple.
"The weight of it on my neck. The way it swings. While I'm fucking."
Rory inhaled sharply, and Liam's mouth pressed hard against his. Liam's fingers worked at Rory's scarf, wrestled off his coat, unbuttoned his waistcoat and shirt and finely knit woollen undershirt. Liam peeled him down to skin, and then sank to his knees and looked up at him.
"Will you take me? Is that something you like?"
Rory nodded, breathless. Liam unfastened the fall of Rory's trousers, then the buttons on the warm underdrawers beneath, and at last freed Rory's hard prick. He kissed the tip of it, lips and tongue gentle, and helped Rory step out of the rest of his clothes.
"You next." Rory would have been happy to spend into Liam's hot mouth, but that wasn't what Liam had asked for. He pulled Liam up to standing, and cupped the front of Liam's trousers. Liam thrust into his hand. Somehow they managed to get Liam out of his clothing, and then they were both naked as stripped saplings, but for the beads around Liam's neck and the bangles and bracelets encircling his wrists.
Liam clasped Rory's forearms and walked backwards, drawing him to the bed. When they reached it, he lay full-length and opened his arms. Rory rolled into them.
They kissed increasingly fervently, clutching at one another, legs tangled together. When Rory pushed Liam onto his back and rutted against him, Liam reached between them to take both their pricks in his hand, and Rory let out a groan that felt torn from him.
Liam thrust up against his weight. "Yes. I want you to have me now."
Rory rolled off Liam again and pushed him onto his side, then snugged up against his back. "Do you have…"
"Hmm. Yes." Liam paused, and then nudged his arse back against Rory. "I'm ready."
Rory took him slowly, so slowly that Liam muttered I'll not break and wriggled and arched his back, trying to get Rory to move faster. But this moment of intimate joining was always profound to Rory, whichever part he took, and his spirit needed time to adjust as much as his body did. When he was deep in Liam, he buried his face in the tender spot behind Liam's ear and took a breath. He'd forgotten how it felt to be this close to someone.
Liam's hand came up and over to stroke Rory's overlong hair. "Dear boy," he murmured.
Rory raised his head and kissed the back of Liam's neck. He put his hand on Liam's hip and pulled out a little, then pushed back into him again, testing how they fit together. Liam made a soft noise, and the needs of Rory's body overtook his brief introspection and pulled them both into a steady rhythm.
Aside from the cat-like point to his ears and the glow he took on in moonlight, Liam looked like an ordinary man, and felt like a man, and now he sounded like a man, specifically one who was very much enjoying being fucked. He gasped out little instructions, encouragements, endearments; he bent his upper knee further, urging Rory deeper. Rory held his arm across Liam's chest and wrapped the pendant around his hand, giving it a tug, and Liam cut off a cry as though pleasure had robbed him of voice.
"Touch yourself," Rory panted, because now he didn't want to let the cord of the pendant go, and Liam did, sparingly as though any further sensation would finish it for him, breathing harshly through an open mouth, eyelids half-closed.
That thought brought Rory himself to the peak. "I'm–I'm going to spend," he had the time to say, and did, entire body shuddering as he let go into Liam's tight heat.
Liam was shaking now, on the edge. Rory put a clumsy hand over Liam's. "Do it," he said, "I want to watch you go."
In two strokes Liam shot all over both their hands, crying out wildly. That wrung another pulse of pleasure from Rory, and they both sagged into the bed, leaning against one another as their breathing slowed.
Rory sighed against Liam's shoulder. He knew he should move, do something about the mess they'd made, but it felt like the first time he'd been warm since last August. Liam said something under his breath, and Rory suddenly felt, not slick with sweat and other things, but dry and cozy and clean. He snuggled against Liam and let his heavy eyelids fall closed.
Something jolted him out of sleep. Rory shot up to a sitting position before he was fully awake, shovelling the blankets–when had they appeared?–to one side.
"Rory! Rory, where have you got to?"
He looked frantically around. His trousers and underthings were in a heap on the floor. He seized them and tried to untangle the legs.
Liam sat up. "Who's that?"
Rory's fingers were thick on his buttons. He wrestled into his undershirt, flapping the arms as he pulled it over his head.
"Rory McAllister, if you're not here in two minutes you're walking home!" Mrs. Anderson shouted.
How late was it? How long had he spent here? Rory shook out his socks and pulled them on, hopping in the direction of his boots.
"Let her shout. I'll get you home. Eventually," Liam said, coverlet sliding down his bared chest to pool in his lap.
"Two minutes!"
"I have to go." Rory jerked on his coat. His collar was folded under. Everything felt rucked-up and out of place.
"Stay." Liam leaned forward and stretched an arm over the sheets with lithe grace.
Horses whinnied and stamped. Rory pictured them all in the clearing on the other side of the house, a procession of farmers' carts receding and leaving him behind.
"I–I can't–I have to–" The Andersons could be generous when they chose, but they didn't take well to being crossed or put to any trouble.
Liam sighed. "A kiss on parting, then."
Rory took a step towards the bed. Voices called farewells, clear through the spring night.
He turned away, to where there was no door. "Let me–"
The room whorled away like ribbons of smoke from snuffed-out candles, bed and walls and Liam too.
"–go," Rory finished. He turned in a circle. The moon had slid behind clouds. The only light was the glow from the bonfire, more visible behind the silhouette of the cabin out of the corner of his eye than when he looked straight at it.
He barked his shin on one of the stumps crossing the yard, and limped to the Andersons' wagon just as Mr. Anderson was handing his wife up onto the wagon seat.
It was an hour's journey home. Rory huddled in the corner of the open wagon, trying to keep his body's warmth from seeping away like tea through a cracked cup. The Andersons had fur robes for their knees and a heated stone at their feet; he had a few forkfuls of straw and an old horse blanket. High above, the stars were white and cold.
Rory leaned his temple against the rough slats of the wagon's side. Energy ebbed from him, leaving his soul as chilled as his body. He began to uncomfortably suspect that he'd been a dunderhead, panicking as if he were a schoolboy ashamed of a tumble. Why hadn't he taken his leave gracefully, left Liam with the kiss he'd asked for and a smile? They'd shared fellowship just as much as physical pleasure. Why couldn't he have said I've enjoyed tonight? Why couldn't he have asked Will I see you again?
"Liam," he whispered. He knew it couldn't be the fae's real name, but perhaps even thinking of him might catch his attention. "Liam, I'm sorry. I wish I could have stayed. I would have liked to talk more with you, Liam. I would have liked to dance more with you. More than dancing."
He pulled his stiffening fingers into the cuffs of his jacket, trying to hold the blanket around him with his chin. "Do you ever leave the forest, Liam? Do you ken Carter's Hamlet? There's not much to it. There's the store, and a mill, and a smithy, and two taverns. On Sundays I like to go sit by the millpond. There's a stand of willows there, and stones that Mr. Bentham cleared from his field."
The wagon jolted as it hit a deep, half-frozen rut. Rory's arms splayed to keep his balance, the meager warmth he'd hoarded dissipating like smoke blown out a window. He sighed and pulled an edge of the blanket up to cover his head like a hood. "Liam, I've gone and ruined the best evening I've had since I walked down the gangplank in Quebec and put my feet back on solid ground."
The bare branches of the trees cast moving shadows over the wagon, the narrow track of road, Rory's blanket. He let his head rest against the side of the wagon. It was late, probably near midnight now. His eyes half-shut, unfocusing. The moonlight and the shadows striped everything, a shifting mosaic of abstract angles dimming and brightening as the clouds wisped over the moon. In the opposite corner of the wagon he almost thought he saw–he almost thought he saw–
"Liam?"
Movement stilled.
"Liam, I can see you."
A moment, and then Liam solidified slowly, like ink bleeding onto paper.
Rory couldn't help the smile that spread over his face. "Good evening."
Liam sat with his back against the wagon side, knees bent and spread, hands dangling. "Is it now?"
"I'm sorry I offended you," Rory said humbly. "I would as lief have stayed, but I was startled awake, and it's a long walk back home in the dark."
"Hmph. I've come to claim what you owe me."
What did he–? Tales of the capricious fae rushed into Rory's mind.
"A kiss on parting," Liam explained, shrugging with one shoulder as though it hardly mattered at all.
"Must it be on parting?"
Liam's eyes glittered in the moving dark. "Are we meeting?"
"I fain would meet you again," Rory said. "And again. And dance with you. And more."
Liam stood and walked sure-footed across the wagon bed to stand looking down at Rory. "You've pretty words, but I don't know if I'll forgive you. It's a blow to a man's pride to have another flee from his bed so fast his shirt's on inside out."
"Is it?" Rory looked down at his waistcoat, but he couldn't see his shirt well enough to tell.
"And one sock." Liam looked into the skeletal treetops. "You have me at sixes and sevens. Why I'm not turning you into a toad, I can't fathom."
"I see you." Rory tugged at the gold-woven cuff of Liam's coat. "Will you come collect your debt?"
Liam hesitated, then knelt stiffly in front of Rory. Rory leaned forward and touched his mouth to Liam's. He let his lips open, his breath mingling with Liam's, and drew back slowly. They looked at one another.
Rory reached out and wrapped strands of Liam's fine hair around his finger. Then he kissed Liam again. This time, Liam softened, and his arm came up to rest on Rory's blanket-covered shoulder.
When their mouths parted, Rory pulled back. "Now you owe me a kiss."
"So I do." Liam inclined his head. "I'd repay it with interest, but I think even yon clods at the front of the wagon might begin to notice."
"Aye, and it's so late." Rory pretended a yawn, which turned into a real one. "If you wait until tomorrow night, or the next, there'll be even more interest to account for."
"You drive a hard bargain." Liam's lips twitched. "Carter's Hamlet, you say?"
"In the log store beside the smithy. I have a cot in the lean-to at the back. The Andersons have their own cabin down the road, so I'm quite alone at night, though I warn you that the bed's lumpy and there aren't enough blankets."
"Oh, I don't feel the cold as you do." Liam stood with the grace of a flower opening. "Until tomorrow night. Or the next."
Liam faded into the shifting moonlight, a silhouette and then a suggestion of a shape in the air, and then nothing.
Rory curled back into his corner, folding himself into the blanket again. His nose was threatening to drip with the cold. There was at least half an hour's journey left before he'd be able to climb into that narrow cot with his coat and all his spare clothing spread over it for extra warmth.
He was attempting to doze when someone said "Psst" by his ear, and he jumped.
A moonlight-pale hand appeared over the side of the wagon, wrapped around something. Rory blinked and cupped his hand under it. When he grazed Liam's fingers, they opened to release their burden into his own.
A smooth stone, just the size and shape to fit agreeably into his palm. And warm, as if it had been baked in a slow oven. Rory cradled it in his hands. The chill of the spring night receded. He tucked it into his inside-out shirt, against his heart. Long before the wagon reached Carter's Hamlet he had fallen asleep, as comfortable as though someone held him close under thick blankets, or as though the colourless moonlight were the summer sunshine of home.
Read this piece's entry in the Shousetsu Bang*Bang wiki.
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7 thoughts on "The Reel of Rory McAllister and the Moonlit Man"
Yuliares says:
Really enjoyed this – the dialogue as Rory and Liam express their homesickness flows so well, with so many shared emotions in contrast with Rory's incredibly mundane prospects on life and Liam's fae-touched existence. Their dancing together is lovely – both the artwork, and the words describing their familiar reel that turns into something a bit wilder. And such a sweet ending!
Someone Else says:
I've often thought about how brutal those Ontario (and Quebec) winters must have been to the early European settlers. They had no idea what they were getting into.
Also regarding "The ones who were here before us" it's interesting to think of Liam talking to Crow etc.
Beyondtherealm says:
Beautiful art and a beautiful story!
Mmmhmmm. This was such a nice story. I hope they can keep each other company until they're not homesick any longer.
partypaprika says:
I loved reading this! This was so enjoyable! I love that this is a meeting and connection between two people feeling like outcasts, both homesick and looking for someone to connect with. They've taken a leap of faith (and then taken another upon meeting each other) and even though things have been bumpy up until then, this is a turning point. I can imagine the two of them staying together, getting to know their new surroundings and thriving (together). A really great read!
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UPDATE: Coroner identifies 12-year-old boy killed by driver
A devastated community is hoping their prayers will pull two siblings through after they were hit by a car while leaving school.
By: Jordan Gartner
Posted at 10:46 PM, Feb 14, 2020
UPDATE FEB. 21: The Clark County coroner has identified the 12-year-old boy hit by a driver in North Las Vegas as Alexander Bush from North Las Vegas. His cause of death was blunt force injuries.
UPDATE FEB. 16: North Las Vegas police say one of the victims, a 12-year-old boy, passed away this afternoon while in the hospital with his family by his side.
Mark Kline was initially booked on the charges of fail to maintain lane, fail to give full time and attention to driving, two charges of fail to use due care around pedestrians. Since the death of one of the victims, the North Las Vegas Police Department has added the charge of vehicular manslaughter.
This is the first fatal crash in North Las Vegas for 2020.
Anyone with information in this case is urged to call the North Las Vegas Police Department at 702-633-9111 or to remain anonymous, call Crime Stoppers at 702-385-5555.
UPDATE FEB. 15: A devastated community is hoping their prayers will pull two siblings through after they were hit by a car while leaving school Friday afternoon.
A vigil was held for the siblings who are still fighting for their lives in the hospital.
"They're great kids they're smart kids," says Elizabeth Lytle-Martinez.
Lytle-Martinez taught the brother in first grade.
"I know they're going to pull through," she says.
ORIGINAL STORY: North Las Vegas police are investigating a critical crash outside of Somerset Academy near Lone Mountain and Losee roads Friday.
Police said a 9-year-old girl and 12-year-old boy were struck by a truck at that location, after initially saying the siblings were ages 13 and 14.
RELATED: Las Vegas breaking news for Feb. 14
The two were transported in critical condition to the University Medical Center with the driver of the vehicle arrested, as investigators believe distracted driving played a significant role in the cause of the collision.
Police got the call about the crash at about 3:30 p.m.
The preliminary investigation indicated a Dodge Ram pickup, driven by 47-year-old Mark Kline, was traveling eastbound on Lone Mountain Road from Losee Road.
A group of students were then crossing Lone Mountain Road in a crosswalk when the Ram failed to yield to the group and struck the two victims, according to police.
Kline was booked into the Las Vegas City Jail and is facing the following charges: failing to maintain lane, failing to give full time and attention to driving, and two charges of failing to use due care around pedestrians.
Authorities urged anyone with further information on Friday's incident to contact Crime Stoppers at 702-385-5555.


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The Catholic Inquisition: "A Medieval Holocaust!"
(Just one of their many victims)
After the Second World War, political prisoners (such as the Poles who suffered terribly in Auschwitz) would often comment, "If the Nazis didn't kill you, then the 'liberating' Russians did," for many Polish women were brutally raped and subsequently died at the hands of peasant Russian conscripts. Yet, the same can also be said of the catholic church, for this Latin monstrosity of a church would murder nearly as many people as those that died in World War II!
It should be stated that some writers now believe that the combined deaths of both world wars would be only slightly less than the massacres at the hands of the catholic church from the 4th century up until the 19th century. Several historians have offered figures of 50 million people being murdered during this period. Catholic writer John Cornwell also states how 1-10 million people were murdered during the Inquisition period alone, with 10,000 females (many under the age of ten) perishing in Germany, according to the Sunday Times, 23 August 1998. Only the Russian Darwinist dictator Joseph Stalin would come anywhere near to matching this figure, for he would exterminate around 35 million of his own people.
"The rule of Rome revived in a new form and was just as real under the popes of the 13th century as it had been under the Caesars of the 1st. It was just as oppressive, cruel and bloody under Innocent III (1198-1216) as it had been under Nero and Domitian. The reality was the same, though the forms had changed. The Caesars did not persecute the witnesses of Jesus more severely and bitterly than did the popes; Diocletian did not destroy the saints or oppose the gospel more than did the Inquisition of papal days…At the Lateran Council in 1513, after all the so-called heretics had been silenced by fire and sword, an orator, addressing the Pope, said, "The whole body of Christendom is now subject to one head, even to thee; no one now opposes, no one now objects" (Grattan Guinness, Romanism and the Reformation, p. 31).
Yet Gregory the Great, Nicholas I and even a 3rd-century synod all condemned any form of torture towards the laity (officially that is) as a violation of divine law. By the 12th century, however, the popes were in need of more money and quickly became generals, emperors, gods, and kings all rolled into one, and off they went fighting on behalf of their church to retain the wealth they already had and to seek even more, if and where possible.
Christianity was already secure in the United Kingdom long before Augustine arrived and started murdering Christians. Augustine fought very hard to replace Britain's early form of Christianity; however, such Christians would not give up their religion so easily, nor would they accept the pope as their "supreme pontiff." Many were martyred for not converting to Catholicism (Catholic Encyclopaedia, Vol. VI, p. 797).
King Henry IV passed special laws through Parliament, which allowed "heretics" to be tracked down and executed for not accepting catholicism (Thomas Armitage, History of the Baptists, Vol. 1, p. 323).
Upon Augustine's death, the following words were inscribed on his tombstone:
"Here rests the lord Augustine who…reduced king Ethelbert and his nation from the worship of idols [that's rich coming from the catholic church] to the faith [Catholicism, that should be] of Christ" (Bede, Vol. II, Chapter 3).
Bloody Mary executed 289 protestants by burning them alive at the stake. Even bishops Ridley, Latimer, and Cranmer were not exempt from dying for their faith; and Latimer's dying words to Ridley have gone down in Church history as being some of the most poignant:
"Be of good comfort Master Ridley and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England as I trust shall never be put out."
The catholic church has long stated that heretics (meaning non-submissive, non-catholics) should be killed (Catholic Encyclopaedia, Vol. VII, p. 260).
The "popular" Thomas Aquinas, also had the following to say about "heretics":
"They should be done to death" (Ethics, Vol. 1, p. 332).
The Council of Toulouse (1119 AD) affirmed that "heretics" who refused to attend mass and submit to Rome were to be punished severely (Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. V, p. 482).
Pope Urban once told his faithful:
"Go, soldiers…subdue these dastardly nations" (The World's Great Speeches, 1954, p. 69).
And Pope Leo XIII ordered all religions to be suppressed, except catholics of course (Catholic Encyclopaedia, Vol. VII, p. 216).
There were also other popes, such as Alexander IV, Julius III, Clement V, and Benedict XIV, who each personally ordered and sanctioned torture and murder of all "heretics" (Rev. R.P. Blackeny, Manual of Romish Controversy, 1851, p. 100).
So, the Inquisition took root under papal orders, but under the leadership of one Thomas de Torquemada for 15 long and very bloody years.
This group of catholic fanatical jihadists were led by the bloodthirsty Dominicans, an order that is still in existence today.
Prior to Vatican II (1961-1965), archbishops and bishops had to take the following oath:
"I will do my utmost to persecute and oppose heretics and schismatics" (Cited by Samuel W. Barnum, Romanism, As It Is, 1879, p. 275).
In total, the Inquisition functioned from 1273 to 1870 AD.
Christians informed on Christians for trivial and minor issues. Informants, in return, gracefully received indulgences (meaning 'less time suffering in purgatory' when they died). Everybody was watching one another, during this time of a catholic police state.
All public executions (whether by boiling water, sword, hanging, strangulation, beheading, or being burnt alive) were done under orders from the church and in the presence of family members.
One writer offered the following concerning a slaughter that took place in France in 1572:
"…One of the most horrific and heinous of crimes in France in 1572, by the torturing and massacre of seventy thousand Huguenots in Paris and other major cities in France. This evil crime commenced at 3 o'clock in the morning of Sunday 24th August and continued until the Tuesday morning. This has become known as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day."
After this slaughter, pope Gregory XIII was so elated at its success that he held a special mass of thanksgiving; bonfires and fireworks were also used in the celebrations.
Another writer offers the following and quite harrowing account from 1641:
"For example, in the seventeenth century (1641), the Catholics in Ireland fixed October 23 (the feast of Ignatius Loyola) as a massacre day for Christians and proceeded to kill 150,000 Protestants in one day, which is more than twice as many Catholics as were killed in armed combat fighting Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) in a year. Bible-believing Protestants were buried in the ground up to their necks till they starved; one man was forced to go to mass, after which they ripped him open and let him bleed to death. Another they sawed asunder, slit his wife's throat, dashed out the brains of his young child, and threw the corpse into a pigsty to be eaten by swine. Several Christians were stripped naked, fastened to horses by ropes placed around their middles, and dragged through bogs until they expired. Thousands were mutilated by having arms, hands, and legs cut off and by being left to bleed to death. Three hundred were drowned in one day in the county of Tyrone, and fifty or sixty were put into one house which was set on fire."
And one mustn't be allowed to forget the thirty-year war (1618-1648 AD) in Germany where 50%, that's half the country, were slaughtered by the catholic church during this horrific period of German history. For those that managed to escape alive and rebuild their lives, they then had to deal with the fact that most of their properties had been totally destroyed (Hugo Grotius, On the Laws of War and Peace, 1625).
The former catholic priest and Jesuit theologian Peter De Rosa graphically describes another such case:
"A Christian wife with child was arrested, stripped naked, her arms tied, the cords twisted painfully, transferred her to the potro, a trestle with sharp-edged rungs across it like a ladder. Her head was lower than her feet. The executioner poured water down her throat, some prisoners also had six to eight jars poured down them. Four days later this excruciating torture was repeated again in the presence of two Dominicans and one Episcopal vicar: her crime – unable to eat pork and wearing fresh undergarments on Saturday. She was released after only three years probably due to insanity" (Vicars of Christ, p. 235-237).
We then have another cruel and barbaric account, this time involving a ten-year-old girl:
"The Catholics proceeded to roast a ten-year-old girl over a fire and then killed a mother with her infant, after pursuing her into a cave in the woods" (Morland, History of the Evangelical Churches of Piedmont, p. 349).
We are once again offered another horrific account of such merciless and pointless barbarity:
"[Victims were] torn to pieces with hocks, laid on red-hot grills, rolled on broken glass, pulled apart by horses, eaten by wild beasts, whipped and starved to death."
Such incidents of cruelty as this are even acknowledged by catholics themselves. For example, in the Rhemish New Testament, we read the following concerning Revelation 17:6, 'drunken with the blood of the saints':
"Protestants foolishly expound this of Rome, because heretics are there put to death [by Rome.] But their blood is not called the blood of saints, any more than the blood of thieves or man-killers, or other malefactors; and for the shedding of it no commonwealth shall give account."
Throughout this highly controversial and torrid history of Catholicism (which lasted for over six hundred years, under orders from eighty so-called "infallible" popes), millions of innocent people had been tortured and murdered for not wishing to follow or convert to their false pagan religion.
Even Napoleon's much-hardened soldiers were sickened when they found naked and insane people imprisoned under the floorboards in catholic prisons. They were so appalled at what they found, they released these religious prisoners and blew up the Spanish monastery that had so long held them. One can easily see where the Nazis got their cruel and wicked methods from.
Some of these prisoners were Jews who refused to convert to Rome. When Napoleon's men released them and allowed them to have free worship services, they dedicated a special prayer for him. For non-Jews, the way the catholic church humiliated them was to display their badge of shame – cross symbols.
(The catholic church, or as it should be called, the church of Constantine, not only gives the real Church and Bible-believer a bad name but shamefully brings disgrace and utter contempt to the glorious and beloved name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Also one notes how due to political correctness and catholicism becoming more fashionable and mainstream, historians and spectators of world events have somewhat conveniently forgotten much of what Rome has done over the centuries. But God cannot and will not forget, or overlook all the innocent blood that Rome is guilty of shedding. One day He will summon her to give an account to Him!)
Napoleon later boxed up and shipped off to France some 3,000 crates of files which had been collated by Rome's secret police on over 100,000 people. However, some of these boxes were lost and destroyed during the dispatch to France. Some documents did find their way onto the black market, and the catholic church was forced to pay extortionately high prices to get this sensitive material back.
During the war, many of Hitler's top generals and senior officers were practising catholics. The SS was also successful in duplicating the Jesuit structure for its sadistic troops. Therefore, we shouldn't be surprised to learn that Jews persecuted during this reign of terror were not only forced by the Nazis to publicly wear yellow bonnets but also compelled to wear the Star of David for all to see.
(For the record the catholic church never excommunicated Hitler, and even after his cowardly suicide, which was a 'mortal sin' for catholics at that time, he was nevertheless still 'honoured' by receiving a full-blown blasphemous requiem mass by Pius XII. He was even reported to have said: "I am completely convinced that I am acting as the agent of God. I am now a catholic and will always remain so.")
During this period, catholic bishops, monks, and priests helped the Ustashi, with support from Archbishop Stepinac. (This 'faithful' prince of his church was later made cardinal by Pius XII). It is reported that 820,000 Serbian Greek Orthodox Christians were slaughtered by Rome.
Such atrocities are nothing new, as this article has already outlined, for we also read how catholic priests ordered the deaths of "heretics" in Krizevci, Yugoslavia. A priest called Peric said, "Kill my sister." She was Greek Orthodox.
In 1949, 49 Protestants in South America were targeted and threatened with death if they refused to attend mass and hand over their Bibles, they would face death (Christian Science Monitor, 12 Sept. 1950).
So, one must ask the question, "Where did all this religious and bigoted intolerance come from?" According to De Rosa, the pagan Roman emperor Constantine was incredibly tolerant, as we can read in a letter he sent to his eastern rival Licinius. Of course, this could be mere propaganda, but it's worth sharing nevertheless:
"We have long considered that freedom of worship should not be denied. Rather, each man's thoughts and desire should be granted him, thus enabling him to have regard for spiritual things as he himself may choose. This is why we have given orders that everyone should be allowed to have his own beliefs and worship as he wishes."
De Rosa continues to offer the following:
"It is ironic that no document in Church history, not even from the Second Vatican Council, is as tolerant, generous or wise as the Edict of Milan, composed by two bloodthirsty warriors."
The Inquisition was agreed, planned, and later initiated in the "Holy Office" of the Vatican. This institution is now called "The Congregation For The Doctrine Of Faith" and is still in operation today.
Joseph Ratzinger, the former pope, once led this office for 15 years, but only through "political means." However, some South American catholics have been involved, directly and indirectly, in destroying protestant churches (Time Magazine, 5 Oct. 1953).
We are offered the following and rather interesting statement:
"It [the Vatican] has no army and no Inquisition of its own, nor is any single kingdom in Europe willing any longer to act as its executioner. It utterly lacks the power, to persecute directly or indirectly…it is too weak politically to deft modern society by reintroducing medieval tortures, massacres, religious crusades and the auto da fe. But it is as willing as ever and awaits the opportunity only."
Post-Vatican II
Before Joseph Ratzinger became pope, he gave a speech in Spain, in which he expressed his opinion that the Inquisition was:
"Not as dark as is thought." He went on further to justify it by saying: "It fought against fanaticism" and its methods were "much more humane" than is generally appreciated (Sunday Times, 23 Aug. 1998).
Although the official bloodthirsty Inquisition has long ceased, Cromwell stated the following about a new wave of inquisition that commenced in 1903, under pope Pius X and dubbed the "black terror." This time, however, it used more indirect and subtle methods of controlling and silencing those who would dare to rebel and question their church's views and beliefs:
"Sister Lavina [Byrne] is a Roman Catholic nun, a member of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary…Byrne wrote a book published in 1994 called Women on the Altar. It modestly advocated ordination for women…copies of the book quickly sold out in Britain… at the behest of the Vatican, the press recently removed the 1,300 copies of the book it had left. It is deciding whether to incinerate or pulp them. Byrne has no idea who reported, or "delated" her book to Rome. But she believes it was the work of right-wing Catholic women in England who target women "dissidents" and bombard the Vatican with complaining letters and calls for radical action."
Cromwell again states the following about this new wave of inquisition:
"To silence the modernists, he [Pius X] established a worldwide spy and propaganda network. It was directed by a grotesque individual – clumsy, overweight, myopic, with steel-rimmed spectacles – called Umberto Benigni. A former journalist and editor, Benigni used the most up-to-date media methods, stringers, telegrams, copying machines, to collect anonymous information on Catholic priests and scholars the world over. He had a liking for secret codes and nicknames, referring to Pius X in his cables as "Mama"….at Benigni's suggestion, Pius X insisted that Catholic ordinands must take an anti-modernist oath. This involved assent to all papal teaching, both as to content and as to the "sense" in which the Vatican meant it to be understood. Such internal assent went beyond anything dreamt up even by Stalin or the worst imaginings of George Orwell. The oath survives to this day in a new but similarly encompassing formula taken by Catholic ordinands, seminary teachers and Catholic university theologians. The pernicious result of Pius X's campaign was the shackling of free and imaginative Catholic thinking, discussion and writing for the next 50 years. In the 1950s, a number of Catholic thinkers attempted to break out of the constraints imposed by Pius X, but Pius XII resumed the campaign. In an encyclical entitled "Of Human Nature," he declared that, once the pope has pronounced on a topic of faith or morals, all discussion must end, even among competent theologians."
The late catholic theologian, Bernard Haring, had the following to say about his contempt for the Vatican 'thought police':
"I would prefer Hitler's courts, to another papal interrogation. Hitler's trials were certainly more dangerous, but they were not an offence to my honour."
However, on 16 June 2004, The Times newspaper reported that the Vatican had issued a statement in which they once again tried to play down their bloodthirsty past. They claimed that out of the 125,000 known trials of suspected "heretics" in Spain, only 1% of the defendants were executed, far fewer than commonly believed. Many of the burnings at the stake were carried out by civil rather than religious tribunals.
Pope John Paul II also said:
"…that actions which had disfigured the face of the Church had to be viewed in their historical context."
To think that the "secular" powers of the day, all living in catholic controlled countries, somehow took it upon themselves to arrest, torture, and then murder innocent people, without any oversight whatsoever from the catholic church, is not only fanciful but incredibly insulting to the victims who paid the ultimate price at the hands of such barbarians. And while Rome would like to have people think that the suffering and subsequent "de-programming" that many of the victims of the Inquisition went through was for their own good, much like the way the North Koreans do to their citizens, isn't it more truthful to say that this was done primarily for one purpose? Namely, to retain power over people and not to lose their financial empire? We find exactly the same thing in Scripture with the Pharisees and their hatred of Jesus:
"If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation…Then from that day forth, they took counsel together for to put him to death" (John 11:48-53).
And according to the Protestant newspaper The English Churchman Rome was behind smuggling stolen arms back in 1999, during the Kosovan war:
"The arms were mostly Russian but included NATO arms stolen from Germany…The consignment was ordered in the name of Father Luciano Augustina, a Roman Catholic priest in Scutari…Rodney Atkinson, of Free Nations, said recently, 'The Vatican was using Caritas to provide cover for NATO and German arms smuggling to the KLA. They may also have provided Iran, the world's leading terrorist state, with the same cover in Bosnia. The Vatican's goal is a single European Catholics superstate" (Issue no. 7679, 6-13 Jan. 06.)
Sanctions should have been imposed against Rome.
With all the killings throughout the history of the Church, sometimes at the hands of the Protestant Reformers as well, all those that name the name of Christ really should have heeded the following quote:
"The Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour of souls, sent fishermen, not soldiers, for the propagation of his gospel."
Finally, may I leave the reader with one more sombre statement from Grattan Guinness:
"I have stood in that valley of Lucerna where dwelt the faithful Waldenses, those ancient Protestants who held to the pure gospel all through the dark ages, that lovely valley with its pine-clad slopes which Rome converted into a slaughterhouse. Oh, horrible massacres of gentle, unoffending, noble-minded men! Oh, horrible massacres of tender women and helpless children! Yes, ye hated them, ye hunted them, ye stuck them on spits, ye impaled them, ye hanged them, ye roasted them, ye flayed them, ye cut them in pieces, ye violated them, ye violated the women, ye violated the children, ye forced flints into them and stakes, and stuffed them with gunpowder, and blew them up and tore them asunder limb from limb, and tossed them over precipices and dashed them against the rocks; ye cut them up alive, ye dismembered them; ye racked, mutilated, burned, tortured, mangled, massacred holy men, sainted women, mothers, daughter, tender children, harmless sacrificed them in heaps, in hecatombs, turning all Spain, Italy, France, Europe, Christian Europe, into a slaughter-house, a charnel house, an Akeldama."


text:
The Secularization of Fantasy
Christian Fantasy God
I ran across an intriguing interview CNN did with fantasy writer Lev Grossman, whose novels have landed on the NYT bestseller list. I've never read anything he's written, but I perked up at the mention of him finding inspiration in Lewis, particularly The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Though Grossman attributes Lewis and others with inspiration for his novels, he takes a different approach and his "magic takes place in a more cynical, profane and darker, modern world." Based upon that, it doesn't sound like he's followed in Lewis's footsteps, but I still found his words on the fantasy genre of interest.
CNN: How do you think the fantasy genre has changed, since the Narnia books were published, even since Harry Potter?
Grossman: It's changed a lot. For one thing, Lewis and Tolkien were profoundly Christian writers. Their faith was a big part of their lives, and that comes through in what they wrote. I think fantasy has become more secular since then. Magic comes in a lot more flavors now, not just the divine.
Just look at Harry Potter: There's no Aslan, no praying. It's all wand-waving: swish and flick. It's very different from what Lewis was doing. But even since Harry Potter, a lot has changed. So many more people are reading and writing fantasy than before, and I think as a result of that, fantasy has exploded in all kinds of different directions. It's evolving at a furious rate. Writers like Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clarke, China Mieville, George R.R. Martin, Kelly Link — they're doing things with fantasy Lewis and Tolkien would never have believed were possible.
I want to see the day return where Christian writers make such a deep cultural impact that the ripples are still felt long after their deaths. I don't know what it will take exactly. Sometimes I have a sense that people think it will happen if we join in the secularization of fantasy–that if we just make our works darker and grittier and omit any hints of a spiritual thread to our stories, then we will connect with the prevailing culture. Yet Lewis and Tolkien served as inspiration to countless readers and writers, even with their faith distinctly present.
So it's not that we need to omit spiritual realities, it's that they need to be a seamless part of the whole. We need to reach new levels of creativity and excellence in craftsmanship, as the Inklings did in their time, and in so doing, set the benchmark for future generations. Easy to say, but not nearly as easy to do. I plan to explore this more in coming posts.
In the meantime, what do you think of his perspective on the secularization of fantasy? Do you see this happening?
CS Lewis / JRR Tolkien
Faith in Fantasy, Part 1
Of Fairy Tales, Fear, and Faith
August 11, 2011 - 12:00 pm · Reply
Excellent post, Sarah. The tragic trend I am seeing is that well-meaning Christian writers think they have to come down to the secular level–dark, bleak, and 'gritty'–in order to be relevant. I believe it was Ken Ham who said "Truth makes you relevant. Period." I believe a lot of the reason writers like Lewis and Tolkien were so influential is that they wrote what they believed and they stood on it. They didn't need the world's approval. They wrote what they needed and wanted to write, and they didn't compromise their standards to make their writing more 'marketable'. Whether they realize it consciously or not, people respect steadfastness and refusal to compromise. They admire that strength.
Unfortunately, many Christian writers don't understand that concept. In their desire to reach non-Christians by writing books that appeal to them, these writers are actually destroying their own testimonies by compromising their standards.
I desire to see more writers like Lewis and Tolkien, who don't feel that they need to compromise. Yes, Christians are supposed to be the anchors, the ones who don't get washed away in every passing trend. But in order to do that, we have to be willing to be an anchor. That is what makes us truly influential.
August 11, 2011 - 6:47 pm · Reply
These are some well-expressed thoughts–thanks for sharing! Some of the trends I see sadden me too, especially the trend to strip all identifiably Christian elements from fiction.
They wrote what they needed and wanted to write, and they didn't compromise their standards to make their writing more 'marketable'
Exactly! I'm of the opinion that when marketability takes precedence over story, everything suffers. That may appear in the form of trying to add "dark" elements just for the sake of story appeal to a perceived secular audience, or even to insert trite Christian content when it doesn't fit the story, in an attempt to connect with a Christian audience. I believe that people want compelling stories, naturally infused with truth, and that as we pursue excellence in storytelling with a commitment to truth, like Tolkien and Lewis did, we will see a greater impact.
Rebecca LuElla Miller
To be honest, after the initial popularity of The Lord of the Rings, in particular, there were some pretty bad Christian fantasies that approached storytelling in an entirely different way from Lewis and Tolkien. I think some reaction to that, and to the general complaint that Christian fiction was preachy, drove a lot of aspiring (and now published) writers to believe that "good fiction" didn't have something to say — it was just a story for a story's sake, or for art's sake, or for the writer's enjoyment or therapy. 😆
In other words, we stopped writing truly good fiction for the very reason that we bought a bill of goods as to what actually constitutes good fiction. When we realize that first and foremost, fiction is communication and the writer should have something to say but should learn how to do it in the context of the story, then maybe we will stop chasing the trends we see becoming popular in the general market.
Excellent article, Sarah.
Good points, Becky! I think there are some misconceptions regarding exactly how Tolkien and Lewis approached storytelling (part of tomorrow's post topic), when in reality there's much we can learn from them, especially regarding the importance of capturing truth in fiction. They had lasting impact for good reason!
That said, I've certainly come across my share of those poorly-crafted Christian fantasies, so I can understand the complaints. It's unfortunate that the side effect of these sorts of stories became to downplay the value of meaning and theme in fiction.
"When we realize that first and foremost, fiction is communication and the writer should have something to say but should learn how to do it in the context of the story, then maybe we will stop chasing the trends we see becoming popular in the general market."
I totally agree. Yet rather than discussing how we can portray meaning and spiritual concepts in a natural way to story, so many writers seem to dismiss the importance of this element, even rail against it. I've appreciated the way you have addressed many of these issues lately, particularly the importance of how we portray God in our fiction. 🙂


text:
Imagine: The Power of Fantasy
Welcome to the hallowed halls of Princess Monster Academy!
Here the future leaders of the monster world are prepared for their responsibilities.
Come walk the halls with me and view our portrait collection to learn more about some of the fascinating students who have attended our school…
"I've been thinking about fairy tales lately, and how they really don't serve us."
We are hanging out at Emily's fourth birthday party, chatting about life and our random thoughts when AJ says this. I nod my agreement, but the conversation is stalled from going further by the cry of a child or some other distraction and we don't have time to discuss it further. The party goes on and we leave the discussion, like so many after motherhood, unfinished. I don't have time to tell her that I'm concerned about the stories we tell also. That I too have been thinking that our stories are not serving us in our lives.
I have been an avid reader as long as I can remember. In fact, I have no substantial memories that pre-date my ability to read. Stories have been, at various points in my life, my escape, my salvation, my deliverance. Growing up in a dysfunctional home, I retreated into the westerns of Louis L'Amour to escape the underlying tension and inevitable explosions of my father's rage. In junior high, I hid in corners of the library reading choose your own adventure books and Sweet Valley High to escape the tormentors who bullied me. And today I escape into fantasy books to deliver me from the monotonous routines of endless laundry and meal prep that come with motherhood.
When I am reading a book, I am instantly transported to another world. Sometimes I still live half inside that world for days, which is why I love reading stories about magical worlds. The possibilities suddenly seem limitless when my mind has inhabited such a world for a few days or weeks. I love that feeling. A flickering just outside of my field of sight is suddenly a fairy. A synchronistic moment becomes magic.
Recently I attended an author event at my local library. It was wonderful to connect with other local authors and discuss the craft and business of writing. One writer came up to my table and we chatted about our work. I asked what she was working on and she said she was world building for a future sci-fi novel. What an opportunity I thought, that sci-fi and fantasty writers have. Of course, every fiction writer does world building to some degree, but in particular authors of sci-fi and fantasy have an opportunity to create without any limitations. The only rules they must pertain to are the ones that they create. Their stories do not have to be "believable" in the same way that stories set in our world do.
Lately I have been reading a whole lot of fun, escapist fantasy books. Written mainly by women, and featuring female leads as heroes, these stories let me imagine a life of great daring and adventure, without having to actually suffer the hardships of weapons training or treks through desserts. But as I plow through these stories, I have noticed a trend that seriously diminishes my enjoyment factor. These writers, who can create any world they desire, still continue to re-create patriarchy. The characters may have fantastical abilities, but the world is the same old mysoginistic, male-dominated world, in which women grow up in fear of sexual violence and slavery.
Just take a moment to really let that sink in.
If someone told you that you had the power to create a world, would your first thought be to continue re-creating a culture that de-values and debases women? A world in which rape is commonplace and women have little to no power in the institutions that run their countries?
I find it disturbing that some of our most creative writers cannot imagine equality. Because if they cannot imagine it, those who live inside the worlds that they create, then how can we?
I remember the story of how Martin Luther King Jr asked Nichelle Nichols to remain in her role as Lietenant Ohura on Star Trek. He told her that her role on that show was important to the civil rights movement because it showed a future where equality was possible. Nichols had already handed in her letter of resignation, but changed her mind when King's impassioned plea changed her thinking. She realized that black men and women saw her character as a symbol of the future they were fighting for.
In a more modern version, actress Gina Rodriguez of Jane the Virgin spoke eloquently about the difference having a Latina community positively represented on television makes when she accepted her Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV series:
"It allowed Latinas to see themselves in a beautiful light. When we look into that screen, we change the way we feel about ourselves; we change our perception of ourselves by the way art has created such a ripple effect. And if we can create an effect that shows Latinos like the investment bankers, doctors, lawyers that existed in my own home, I think that will change the way young girls and boys look at themselves. … we are dealing with a society that is diverse, that is so beautiful and human — we all need to remember that we all have the same stories and see them as such."
The stories that we tell determine our reality. The archetypes that we create imbue our collective conscious with a framework that we use to build the world. So tell me, how can we create a world in which women are equal when even the most creative and limitless among us cannot? This question troubles me.
When I wrote Princess Monsters from A to Z, I was just making a little alphabet book for girls. But I wanted that world to represent the world I wanted them to live in. So I began the book with this phrase:
I imagined a world in which girls were trained to take on a leadership role in their communities. I really hope that more authors will join me. I believe that we have a responsibility to not just our readers, but to the collective conscious.
One of my favourite fantasy writers is Canadian author Charles De Lint. In one of his novels, there exists a world entirely comprised of stories. All the worlds and characters of our stories are stitched together much like a patchwork quilt. Whenever a story falls out of favour, that part of the land and the characters die off. But the stories that are told over and over continue to thrive.
We must ask ourselves what kinds of stories we want to survive. Because AJ was right, so many of our stories are not serving us. With just a little imagination, we could create a whole new world.
Joyelle Brandt
Joyelle Brandt is the author/illustrator of Princess Monsters from A to Z. She is a passionate mama and creator, and a lover of dark chocolate, iced coffees and feathered earrings. Joyelle lives and creates from the mantra LOVE, KINDNESS, GRATITUDE.
Meet Joyelle here… www.joyellebrandt.com or on Facebook orInstagram
Finding Inspiration: Fierce Females in Graphic Novels
The Magic of Storytelling and Book Writing
Let the COWS go!
A Letter to My Son on the Eve of His 5th Birthday


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