Instant happiness inducers...ready set, go!
I mean, I think we can all manage these. Thoughts?
Focus on some happy, loves!
Why are memes so funny?? They are a true God send because they absolutely offer a good giggle when times are tense.I admit I enjoy the memes a LOT.
Where did these tidbits of glorious enjoyment originate from?I ought to do some research.For now I guess I'll just keep meme-messaging my peeps and bursting into fits of laughter when I find an extra good one.Or possibly tears when it's heartfelt.Memes-the new box of chocolates; just never know what you're gonna get!
Patience improver-When running errands recently it dawned on me the ease of mind when stuck waiting for something-a doctor's appointment, a friend for a meet up, while your significant other runs into a store.
Showcasing work-Or refining a hobby, whichever floats your boat.Having a digital display of your work is easier than ever and if you have something to show the world you should get to it!Life is too short not to make time for what you love to do and sharing that with the world should you wish to.
-I'm Megan, 31 years old, living in Orlando.
-I spend my days with the love of my life Hunter and our two beautiful dogters Pepper & Roni.Pep is a 13-1/2 year old lab-shepherd mix and Ro is an almost 9 year old teacup Pomeranian.And yes, the little one runs all of the house.
-Hunter and I will celebrate 10 years together this August and while engaged for five years, we are not legally married.People are very intrigued by this.
-My favorite color is glitter, my favorite cupcake is vanilla with buttercream frosting, and I believe strongly in accessorizing.
I love coming here just to write.We all need an outlet and this is mine.I'm enjoying taking 30 minutes daily to write.Whatever is on the tip of my mind is fair game for subject and however long or short is the right answer.It's divine to have this space.
Writing here centers me.I need my own creative outlet.Especially because professionally I am constantly using creativity for work projects and I'm the type of creative who needs to nurture my own to be most effective otherwise.
Any other creatives feel this too?
If I was to pick a day of the week that's my favorite I'd go with Saturday.
I love the potential of a Saturday.It comes after the pressure and ease alike of a Friday.It allows you time for catch up-be it sleep, visiting with family, or completing projects around the house or office.Saturday evenings are also nice to either get into bed early to veg out or get dolled up to go out.The possibilities are endless!
Maybe it goes back to being a 90s kid watching the TGIF line up every week.I got stay up later that night to do so, we had pizza, and quite often I had a friend staying over. Saturday back then offered so much potential as well.Hands down, Saturdays are the jam.
So I study and review a lot of different food and brands more than ever.I'm very much conscious of what I'm feeding hunter and myself.I think of the expression "Your biography becomes biology" and yet inspires me to research ways to make good healthy food.
A fave Instagramer of mine shared a recipe using these crackers as flour for healthy, bomb chicken tenders.I am so so intrigued, as is hunter.
I like Kraut and think it will be good to mix in to salads or veggie bowls for added natural flavor.
Apparently sprouted bread is better for digestion.I like the sounds of that so going to give a whirl.
Stay tuned for follow up recipes and creations.
You can't go wrong with this advice.When you come from a place of genuine, heart, mind, and body felt love, some kind of magic is projected.Let's do more of that this year.Find your love place and radiate those vibes. What's it going to hurt to give a go?
Our youngest nephew Connor just turned 5 and he's marvelous.We wanted to find a great gift idea that would be interactive and provide a fun experience versus picking out another set of Legos.
Whenever Connor comes to our house for a weekend visit we cook.Specifically, we make French toast.He knows when he wakes up that it's time for his culinary abilities and promptly lets me know--and remembers the vanilla more than I do as well.He also cooks at his house and my sister in law loves to cook so I'm excited for them to have more fun with his new gear.
We picked out an apron and chef hat and decorated it slightly to be official for Connor to lead the way for Nonner's Nachos (one of his nicknames) and Quesadilla a la Connor (actual name).Once we're done cooking, we have the proper material markers so he can decorate more his style and have his apron ready to go for when he's at home and helping Mama cook too.
Whipped up some hard boiled eggs, mixed with Greek yogurt, sliced some grape tomatoes, and a few splashes of hot sauce served with toasted white bread. Wa. La.Clean, healthy, and filling.
I like simple food and I like easy preparation for it.Bam.
The other day I got myself worked up.It was early in the morning and I got lost in thought and before I knew it I let anxiety creep in and had myself exhausted before 9am.
That's never fun.Anyone who suffers from anxiety (which to be honest everyone does in some form) struggles to understand why it happens when it does.Just as quick as it came on and I worked myself up, I talked myself down.Actually, I felt myself kick into a fight or flight feeling and forced a zen like mindset.I needed it and I knew it.I went mellow and after a little time I recognized that was just what I needed.
Self care really is a crucial aspect to life.We all need to take time to zen out, zone out, and just be.It does wonders giving ourselves the best love.As hard as we must work to make dreams happen and goals be met, it's equally as important to know how to listen to what we physically and mentally need in those times of panic or angst.
Really hoping it wakes me up for a new yoga journey.I've had spurts of yoga appreciation over the last 10 years-took a graded class in college, have attended gym sessions with a friend, followed a random DVD program--just always studying the art of it.
I just hope I do better at not analyzing my grocery list or to do items while in child's pose.Namaste!
When people, places, or things don't follow the plan, have some extra grace reserved.There truly is not that much to get heated up over and let it wreck a day.Honestly, I know we are all guilty (oh yes I am!) of getting grumpy when silly mishaps occur.But at the end of the day, is it so terrible that you can't fathom getting up in the morning?Really?
Again, I'm no innocent to losing my mind when something gets mixed up.I am however aware of it and aiming to be in tune with my attitude being affected negatively.I'm more into the "Ok, well that didn't go as...What can we do now?"
Simple is as simple does.For that, I am further grateful.
I usually feel the effects of how I treat my mind and body from the week before's treatment.I've felt like a zombie the first week of January, seemingly from the previous week's holiday food/drink/lack of sleep bender.
This meal was quick, easy, healthy, and filling.Yummmmm.....mmmm!
This is undeniably one of my absolute favorites books from childhood.And after the month of December during adulthood.
Is anyone else dragging these first few days back to real life after all the holiday fun?All the excitement and chaos is done and it's back to hustling and remembering to set alarms and meal prep?Don't get me wrong, I love routine as much as the next OCD gal, but today and yesterday I am fumbling.It's like Murphy's Law I swear.
I need to get a good, solid night of sleep.I don't sleep poorly luckily, but I feel I am not sleeping enough.I'm terrible at resting extra and even worse during this time of year.I'll get it together one of these days and realize I do better when well rested.In fact, I think that's where I'm headed.
I'm loving Panera's cleaned up ingredients for their menu options.I tried the Chipotle Melt and it was quite yummy.I got chips with it and it was, as always, delicious.Hunter's Italian was very tasty as well.


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text:
Last two chapters of the Igloo Factory
(If you happened upon this, go back to Jan. 12 and then come forward for the whole thing. Thanks.)
VACATION—LONG BEACH
"Good bye, Meyer, see you…"
--Susan Worthington
"By the way, don't get too attached to anything."
"I won't."
"Of course you will, we all do."
--exchange between Meyer T Meyer and
T. Reed Daley on a beach
(i. Vacation)
I had an odd feeling about vacation. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it was there. It reminded me of the Casio digital watch Sandy gave me for my birthday a few years ago. The watch had an hourly alarm to help me with my 'time issues'.
That's what Sandy said as she was showing me how to set the other alarms and engage the stop watch and turn on the dial light so I could see what time it was in the dark. "This will be great for you, Reed," she said, "this will help you with your time issues."
Sandy loves gadgets as much as I loathe them. There are things in our kitchen that Sandy uses all the time and I don't know the names for. There's a gizmo to shred salad and a blender to reduce anything without bones to mush in a push of a button and a utilitarian-looking thing that grinds coffee beans to three different consistencies and an electric can-opener/knife-sharpener that defies operation. I have finally conquered the Braun coffee maker—a black Nazi monolith of a contraption that reminds me of the movie 2001 and the ultimate destruction of life as I appreciate it. So long as Sandy has ground coffee beans to their proper configuration, I can make them into coffee with the Braun monstrosity. Yet, even it makes me nervous.
I prefer watches and clocks with hands and without alarms, stop-watches, reminder beeps or anything. Those watches and clocks are called 'analog' these days. For centuries, human beings simply called them watches and clocks. But when digital watches and their endlessly shifting, green and liquidy numbers came along, we needed something to call regular—may I say, 'real'?—watches. 'Analog' was the best we could come up with.
"I like my old watch," I told Sandy as she poured over the instruction booklet, creating untold havoc for me and my 'time issue'. "No one should strap something to their wrist and tie it against their pulse that requires 14 pages of instruction." I went on, "I like watches with hands."
"They're called 'analog' watches now," Sandy said, making my new Casio beep as she filled it with instructions for functions I would never use.
"And I don't have 'time issues'," I continued. "I'm just late sometimes."
She laughed. "Sometimes, Reed. That's rich."
My odd feeling about vacation was like that watch. Finally, I tossed the Casio watch across our basement and lost it. Once an hour, it would beep, since I couldn't figure out how to turn that feature off before I lost it. Whenever I was there and it beeped, I'd jump up and try to find it so I could take it down to the little stream behind our house and throw it there. But, since it only beeped once each hour, I could never get an accurate sounding. It took over a year before the beeping stopped and I felt secure with my Timex with three hands and Roman numerals.
Every so often, when I least expected it, something would go 'beep' about vacation—something I didn't understand and didn't have time to locate before it slipped away.
Beep. Meyer Tee, for some reason, wasn't coming to Buckhannon from Morgantown and driving down with us, and he wasn't, as he mostly did, bringing a friend. He was flying to Wilmington at great price and arriving the day after we got to the beach. There was some vague excuse about some research he was doing for his history professor—something like that. Just like Sandy's gadgets, it was beyond my comprehension.
Beep. And then there were the phone calls. Sandy was on the phone a lot, talking about the beach to someone, more than one someone. But she'd grow secretive if I walked into the room. She'd give me a look that indicated I had something else to do elsewhere about that time. Beep. Once I thought I heard her say something about 'the yataghan' over the phone. I asked her about that one and she smiled and shook her head at me as if I were simple.
"I was talking to Mable Cox about the 'afgan' she's making for the craft's fair in the fall," she told me. "You're still caught up in all you've been writing about. Those memories, Reed, are addling your mind a bit. You're hearing things."
Maybe, I thought, but the odd feelings endured.
Peaches didn't help things. The last few days before my vacation began, she kept asking me about Long Beach—what it was like, were there romantic spots, good restaurants, clubs to party in at night?
"Long Beach is distinctly unromantic," I told her. "Nothing happens there. All the three restaurants give you too much fried fish and their décor is 'tourist shell shop' at best. Nothing romantic. No bars or clubs on the whole island, though I have seen people sitting in their cars, drinking beer and making out in the bait shop parking lot."
"But it must be wonderful there," Peaches said. "Why do you keep going back?"
"Because it's not particularly 'wonderful', because nothing happens, because time slows down in a place like that." I was growing annoyed at her. "Why do you go on about this?"
"Oh, no reason, not really," she said, playing with her bleached hair, a sure sign she was lying. I just stared at her. "Well, if you must know," she went on, "a friend of mine is going to be there while you are. I was just, you know, curious about what it was like."
Then she let it drop.
On the drive down, Sandy was excited almost to giddiness. She kept pointing out animals in the fields through Virginia.
"Cow alert!" she'd cry, giggling, pointing to Holsteins and Guernseys along the road. She grew misty-eyed about horses and always asked, whenever we drove past sheep, if they were as stupid as people in Buckhannon said they were.
"More stupid than that," I'd say, each time.
We stopped more than usual for Sandy to go to the bathroom. We stopped at every Shell station in three states, at many of the public rest stops and at several fast food places. I began to think Sandy had a bladder infection.
And she kept playing with the air-conditioner in the car—turning it up to bone-chilling, sub-artic settings only Meyer's Air-Temp could manage and the next minute, turning it completely off. My face was chapped by temperature change before we passed Roanoke.
We spent the night in a Best Western just over the North Carolina state line. Sandy asked the desk clerk where the best restaurant in town was. I took down the directions to a new Italian place while Sandy went to the bathroom.
The desk clerk was in her 20's, with one of those round, soft, comforting faces so many black women who work in southern motels seem to have. Her Best Western nametag said YOYONYA FAYYE YANKLY. I was quite sure I'd never seen a name with seven Y's in it. I wondered if her parents had an affinity for the 25th letter of the alphabet.
"You' all on your honeymoon?" she asked, waiting for her credit card gadget to assure her electronically that we could afford our stay.
"I don't think so," I said.
Yoyonya smiled, "You're wife…she seems so excited."
"I know," I said. "It's a special vacation." I was just being polite, not wanting to embarrass Yoyanya Fayye. But, as it turned out, I was an unsuspecting minor prophet.
"I just upgraded you' all to a suite, no extra charge," she told me, smiling as brightly as all the Y's in the universe. I thanked her profusely and, much against my normal (cheap!) behavior, handed her a $20 bill.
"No, no," she said, flustered….
"Oh, yes," I said, "Oh yes." I probably did it just to see that smile once more.
The house on Long Beach was enormous and exotic. It was called "The Nautilus". There was a wonderful, professionally painted Nautilus shell sign on the road beside the house. It had five bedrooms and as many baths, two huge living areas—one off the kitchen with TV and stereo and one on the second floor with a card table, bar and Bally pinball machine that, like a Coke machine I once knew, needed no coins. The kitchen had gadgets even Sandy didn't immediately comprehend and a little refrigerator only for wines. On the ocean side, there were decks everywhere—multi-layered decks, acres of them, connected by stairways and stretching down to the surf at high tide.
The Nautilus was the kind of beach house Sandy and I had always gawked at as we walked up and down the beach from the humble two bedroom cottages we always rented. I knew Meyer was coming for two weeks and my mother, Caroline and Monica for the second week, so we needed some room. But what would Sandy and I do with this house the third week we were there alone?
When Sandy and I would walk the beach in years past, I would often wonder out loud about what kind of people stayed in houses like the Nautilus. I always assumed we weren't 'those kind' of people so I couldn't understand why Sandy had rented a house like the Nautilus.
I couldn't ask her since she was rushing around from room to room, moving much faster than usual, laughing and clapping her hands from time to time.
"Oh, yes, Reed," she said whenever we passed each other in the endless hallways or on the stairs, "This is perfect, just right."
"Isn't it too big?" I asked, mostly to myself since she had already whisked by me.
"Oh, no," she called back. "You'll see. It's a surprise."
That was it! The source of my vacation unease and angst! There was a surprise involved!
I hate surprises. I am—I have learned and come to expect—a person possessing few surprises. Even when I have made what seemed like a considerable effort—for Sandy's birthday party or Meyer Tee's Christmas present—there was apparently no mystery in what I had contrived to do.
I've even stopped asking, "Were you surprised?" That question was always answered with a laugh or words like: "Oh, Reed, it's just like you," or "Dad, you never cease not to surprise me!"
So, I've quit trying to surprise. I'd simply like the favor returned.
The next morning, Sandy left early to pick up Meyer Tee at the Wilmington Airport. She insisted on going alone.
"You stay and relax. Enjoy yourself," she said.
How could I relax imagining Sandy driving 37 miles at 28 miles an hour? I made her promise to let Meyer drive back. That made me feel a little better.
I wandered around the Nautilus for a while, discovering a Jacuzzi in the downstairs bathroom, a complex intercom system between all the rooms and a range in the kitchen that didn't have eyes—only smooth, black cooking areas. Surrounded by gadgets and surprises, I decided the only way to relax was to get out of that house. I walked half-a-mile down the beach to the Long Beach Pier and bought two six packs of icy beer—one Bud Light and the other one Corona. If I was going to have to be surprised, I was going to be suitably high for it.
By noon, I'd finished half the beer—three of each. I had a little blue and white cooler I'd bought at the Pier that kept them tolerably cold. My Midwestern frugality wouldn't allow me to drink two expensive Mexican beers in a row. As I've grown older, I've become less self-indulgent. It isn't intentional and I don't mind it.
I dozed in my beach chair with the sun directly overhead. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, but suddenly, even dozing, I realized I was in shadow. I opened my sticky eyes and found myself surrounded by people—at least five of them. Sandy and Meyer Tee I recognized. Even half-asleep and half-drunk and half blind from sun, I'd know them anywhere.
The other three confused me. One was a tall, Black man in his early 30's, with a manicured beard and a big smile. He looked a little like Ed Bradley. Then there was a tiny woman, under five feet tall, with hair that fell around her shoulders and seemed, in that light, to be almost the color of Corona beer, just a tad less golden and a little more tan. The last stranger looked terribly familiar except his face was too deeply etched with smile lines and his hair was an unnatural, metallic gray—the very gray of his eyes.
The sun was as high as the sun gets. The day was pleasantly hot—with a strong breeze off the ocean to cool my first-morning-at-the-beach sunburn. The Gulf Stream waters, getting near high tide, were lapping around my feet like warm puppies. I knew I was in North Carolina. I knew it was near the last day of August 1989. I knew all that.
But in that high-sun, fresh breeze, puppy ocean moment, I felt myself—six beers before lunch—falling backward into a black hole of Time….And there was Jerry and John Henry and Sugar. It was like sitting on the sidewalk outside the Igloo Factory in the city of Cambridge of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on this fragile earth, our island home. Flung back two decades, sitting there with my friends, I started making noises, just like I often had to entertain them back then—making people's favorite noises to pass the time of day.
The problem—the only interruption in what could have been a faithful reliving of our past—was that the noises I started making were involuntary. They were gasps and gurgles and wheezes and choking sounds.
I thought I'd swallowed the Past.
They thought I'd had a stroke.
Next thing I knew, I was on the cream white sectional sofa in the downstairs living area of the Nautilus. A huge, concerned, black face hovered over me. "He's coming around, I think," John Henry said. "I think he's going to be alright."
"Jesus, Reed," Jerry called from somewhere in the room, "don't ever do that again!"
I could hear Sandy, talking fast, probably on a phone. "No, cancel it. He's going to be okay. Just a scare. Yes…. Thank you so much…." She hung up the phone and was kneeling beside me, holding my face in her hands, kissing my forehead, my cheeks, my eyes.
"Well, Dad," I heard my son say from somewhere near, "were you surprised?"
And they all laughed.
Like swallows to Capistrano…like bats to the caves of New Mexico…like the caribou to the rim of the Artic Ocean…like a lost puppy whimpering on the front porch—Jerry and Sugar and John Henry had come to Long Beach, bearing gifts.
We were all sitting on the largest of the many decks of the Nautilus after a supper of fresh grouper, cold slaw and green beans, with cookies Jerry had brought on the plane from Boston. Darkness was falling. The sun had plunged into the Atlantic a half-hour before. There was good red wine that Sugar had brought with her from Chicago. We were all full and mellow, more than ready for night.
"We have letters and cables here," Jerry said, "from almost everybody."
"Actually, there's only one cable," John Henry said.
"But it's from Tibet," Sugar said, "from Yodel."
A cable from Yodel in Katmandu. A long letter from Krista and a precious, pencil sized, golden candle.
"Krista and Aaron have five kids," Jerry said. "All girls, all mystics."
"Pity poor Aaron," John Henry laughed.
There was a letter and video tape from Easter Island.
"Marvin Gardens' latest movie," Sugar said.
"Is it about those statues?" I asked.
"Are you kidding," John Henry answered, "it's about some endangered slug that clings to the coral reef."
"Terrific camera work," Jerry added.
"If you like salt water and slugs," John Henry replied.
"We found a lot of people," Jerry said, ignoring John Henry. "Lane and Trotter run a yogurt store in Iowa City. That ass-hole Calvin is in a Hindu monastery in Florida. He traded dope smoking for micro-biotics. Calls himself Gurukahr Lakha."
"Everyone to his own addiction," John Henry said, smiling to beat the band and lighting a Marlboro which illuminated his face in the gathering darkness.
"I found little Melanie. Remember little Melanie, Reed?" Jerry said.
"Sure, her daddy built slums."
"Get this," Jerry said, Reed knew his eyes were wide open and bright, penetrating as he spoke, but the evening has closed around them. They sat in darkness, illuminated from behind by lights of the Nautilus. "Get this, Reed, Melanie is a lawyer for HUD in Washington. Her daddy died on a sailing accident in Long Island Sound and she's got millions of dollars to contribute to low income housing projects. Don't tell me there's no such thing as irony."
"Franklin," John Henry said, "sent a letter, remember, Franklin, that basketball dude after Meyer got busted?"
Of course I remembered. I remembered everything.
"He's a professor at the School of Education at Howard University. He coaches basketball for kids who have good grades in D.C.'s junior high schools." John Henry cackled. "Grades are going up everywhere—just to be coached by Franklin."
Jerry kept handing me letters from former Wanderers on the Earth who had—somehow—settled to the ground and taken root.
"What was amazing," Jerry said, was how easy it was to find everybody. Meyer always thought when people wanderer on they just disappeared. They didn't disappear at all. They were easy to find, even after all these years."
"So Meyer was wrong about one thing," I said.
"Human to the core," Jerry replied.
We watched the stars swing around the sky and listened to the ocean wheeze and stared out at the black horizon. Somewhere on the other side of the ocean was Europe. We stained to see.
"Know who else I found?" Jerry said, "who Krista found for me?"
I shook my head in the darkness.
"That guy from West Virginia who was at Harvard Divinity School. I only met him once. He came by looking for Calvin." Jerry paused. "What was his name? Raymond?"
"Richard," I said, "Richard Lucas, the Bananaman guy."
"Right," Jerry said, "now it comes flooding back. Krista wears people out in Kentucky about the Bananaman. She's found 14 people who remember and put them in touch with Richard. They're like a Bananaman Club."
"So where is he?"
"He's an Episcopal priest in Waterbury, Connecticut. Can you imagine his accent in Connecticut?"
"Waterbury," I said, "I knew a man from Waterbury."
We sat there long into the night, bathed in darkness, in the sounds the ocean and night made, in memory.
I haven't read those letters yet. I'm saving them. I'm going to indulge myself. On the coldest night on next February, I'm going to build a big fire, open a bottle of red wine, snuggle with Sandy and read those letters. It will be—I don't know—"angelic" and "magical". Holy messengers from across the realms of time. I'm not ready for that much memory right now. I'm too misty eyed all the time as it is.
Memory, it seems to me, might just be the most precious gift we've been given. Without memory, we would be little rowboats on a stormy sea, drifting aimlessly, always in danger, never safe. Memory ties us to Life. If I were Meyer, I'd make up a Philosophy of Life out of that. But I'm not Meyer. I just remember him.
(ii. Fort Fisher Ferry)
Jerry, John Henry and Sugar spent a week with us. Meyer Tee stayed a few more days to be with my mother and Caroline and Monica for a while. That first week, it was strange to get up in the morning and see them at the table—strange and a little disconcerting. But beneath that it was good, wondrous, like being born.
Even getting the Yataghan was good.
John Henry brought it down before dinner the third night. Sugar, Sandy and Meyer were cooking. John Henry found Jerry and me on one deck or another. The green leather box was wrapped in brown paper and tied with that tick white twine I don't see much these days.
"This is yours," he said, "I'm tired of having it."
I felt the package. "It's the knife. I thought I threw it in the Charles."
"You didn't look at what was in that Cape?" Jerry asked.
"No," I said.
John Henry started laughing. He laughed a great deal. For people who spent most of their days around people dying from AIDS, John Henry and Jerry both seemed irrepressively happy. "Pay up, Jerry," John Henry almost whooped.
Jerry pulled $20 from his pocket and handed it to John Henry. "He always said you didn't look. It was our bet."
"I was there, outside the door, when it all happened," John Henry told me. "When I went in Pierce was still bleeding. He was dead but still bleeding."
"Tell him about the knife," Jerry said.
"I'm getting to it," John Henry said, "this is my story." They both laughed. I wasn't laughing yet.
"Meyer was so very calm," John Henry said, "He was all bloody and smelled to high heaven, yet he was calm…almost serene. He said we had to get rid of the Yataghan. He said you were the only person to trust to do that, but I had to keep it for a while. He put it in the box and tied it up with some bloody string from Sandy's mobile above his bed. I left it that way for years, then Jerry and I wrapped it in the brown paper and tied it again.
" 'That damn Reed can't keep a secret," is the way he said it. 'His face gives him away, we've got to make him think the knife is gone'."
"I asked him if this would keep him out of jail. 'Hell no,' he told me. 'But if this Yataghan got into a courtroom there wouldn't be a safe throat there!' That's when we came up with the plan of wrapping one of Krista's candles in the Cape and having you throw it away. I asked Meyer if you would look in the cape?"
Sugar came out to tell us dinner was almost ready, but Jerry shooed her away. "She can't handle this discussion," he told me and John Henry.
" 'Reed,' Meyer said, real incredulous," John Henry took up the story again. " 'Are we talking about the same Reed here? He'll never look, not in a million years.'"
"Meyer was right about one thing at least," Jerry said.
The story went on and on. Sandy, Sugar and Meyer started eating without us. The point was, John Henry never opened the case, not once. He had kept the knife for over 20 years, waiting for the time to pass it on to me.
"What am I supposed to do with it?" I asked.
"Don't ask me," John Henry said, "I'm rid of my Curse now. Ask Meyer."
I put the package, still unopened, under the bed in our room in the Nautilus.
The next morning we went to Fort Fisher on the Ferry, to read the will and scatter Meyer's ashes. Because Brigham and then Charity Brigham had been handling his finances for 20 years, Meyer died with a Ferry full of money. He left a million dollars to Jerry's group—Blood Ties—and another million to Holy Ghost Hospital for Hospice services. The rest, stunningly, he left evenly divided between Sandy, Meyer Tee and me—about $3 million each.
"You'll each be lucky to end up with two million, even though Brigham's lawyers found more loopholes and lawyerly tricks than you can imagine," Jerry announced. We were on the boat crossing from Southport to Fort Fisher. Meyer's instructions were that his will were to be read while in a boat.
"This is weird as shit," Meyer Tee said. He was as white as the puffy clouds that drifted in the endless Carolina blue sky. I thought he might faint or throw up and I didn't know which part he meant—the part about having to hear about our inheritances on a boat or that he was now a millionaire.
"Which part do you mean?" I asked.
"All of it. Fucking all of it!" he said.
"Don't say 'fuck'," Jerry said sternly. The he reached for a green backpack he had carried that day. "Well, that's the will," he said, "now for the ashes."
I thought my son would jump off the Ferry when Jerry pulled out a three liter Almaden Chablis bottle full of Meyer's earthly remains. "It was hard getting the ashes into this bottle," Jerry said, "but it seemed so much more appropriate than the little black box they gave me."
"Oh shit, Jerry," Meyer Tee said, "this is getting weirder and weirder."
"This is nothing," Sandy said, "You should have been around for the real thing."
She and Sugar hugged each other and laughed. They had known what was going to happen—Jerry had filled them in—and they had been enjoying Meyer Tee and me fall apart.
We took turns scattering Meyer's ashes into the wake of the Fort Fisher Ferry. We got serious enough to wonder if Jerry should say something, pray, talk to Jesus.
He thought it over. "I don't think so," Jerry said. "Why don't we just talk to Meyer?"
That's what we did. We poured him little by little into the Gulf Stream and talked to him as he swirled in the eddies and dispersed in the warm water.
"Thank you for all the money," Meyer Tee said, "and for your name. You must have been wonderfully weird to have these people love you so…." Meyer Tee is a 'guy' kind of guy and I felt a catch in my throat when I saw the tears on his face.
Sandy poured out a little Meyer and said, softly, "thank you for my life, for not giving up on me…." Her jaw tightened and tears ran down her face too. Her chin looked anything but weak like that.
John Henry poured and cried. "If I hadn't met you, you old fucker….You know the rest…."
"Don't fucking say 'fucker'," Jerry said, perfectly mimicking Meyer's voice. Then they both laughed.
By the time it was my turn to pour, we were all crying and laughing at the same time. The other people on the Ferry, few as they were, had moved to the front of the boat. They weren't sure about us. I couldn't think of anything to say, so I just listened as I poured—to the sound of the Ferry's engine, the ubiquitous call of gulls, the splashes of the sea, the sob cat sobs of Sugar behind me, waiting her turn.
Sugar emptied the bottle. "Goodbye, Meyer, see you," she said, her words sailing off into the endless blue like this:
We all laughed, hoping so.
I was the only one to notice that one of the great brown pelicans of the Carolina's shore was bobbing in the Ferry's wake when Sugar poured out the last of Meyer. As unthinkable as it was, he seemed to be watching only her.
(iii. On The Beach)
Reed is sitting in a sand chair he bought at Rose's for $8.79. Beside him, half buried in the wet sand, is a can of Miller Light wrapped in a cooler sleeve of sky blue that says on it, "UNC—I'd rather be in Chapel Hill".
But Reed would not rather be in Chapel Hill, or anywhere on the planet, on this staggeringly perfect early September afternoon. The air temperature is 85 degrees Fahrenheit. The water is 83 degrees. There is an eleven m.p.h. breeze off the Atlantic that is blowing coolly over his body.
Reed realizes, for the first time in his life, that he could always live like this. He could buy the house he and Sandy are renting for cash. The only time Reed ever took any money from his Trust Fund, managed faithfully and prosperously by his father's old partner George Josephs back in Cleveland, was to buy the house in Buckhannon for $29,000. He had called and asked "if maybe" he could afford that. Since that was about a tenth of the income the fund would make that year, George Josephs laughed and told Reed that was a real possibility. Meyer's legacy made Reed a millionaire in the two digit range. $1000 a week rentals were pocket change to him, he suddenly realized. In fact, he thought, half-dozing in the warmth of the beach, he and Sandy could live anywhere they decided to live, especially since she was rich now too, because of Meyer. Then another sleepy thought hit—he and Sandy were quite happy on the combined $37,187.54 they earned in 1988. They were upper-middle class in Buckhannon.
Back when Reed had called Mr. Josephs and asked sheepishly for $29,000, George told him that was fine.
"Thank you, Mr. Josephs," Reed told him, long distance.
"You're welcome, Thomas," Mr. Josephs replied, "and why don't you call me 'George'?"
"Alright," Reed said, worrying about the cost of the call since it was still morning and the rates hadn't dropped. "Thank you, George."
Sitting there in the wondrous heat of North Carolina, Reed thinks about all these things. But most of all he is thinking that his beer is empty and he simply doesn't have the energy to walk up to the house and get another can of Miller Light.
Just then, someone comes up on his right—out of the West since Long Beach faces South—and holds out a can of beer.
"Thought you might need this," the newcomer says. Reed looks up at him, but since he is standing in front of the setting sun, he can't see him well. But he thanks the stranger and pops open the can and takes a long drink. It is only then that he realizes the beer is a Schlitz.
Beside him, in the sand, on a matching sand chair—the one Sandy uses and Reed thought was up at the house—is a tall, extremely pale man with thinning blonde hair, even at his age, a moustache from the 60's, cut off-shorts and a tee-shirt with Chinese characters on it and an eye patch over one eye.
"Nothing like a beer in this heat," the man says, turning to face him, "though I could do with a bottle of homemade wine."
"Meyer?" Reed says, frightened, but not much.
"Didn't think I'd leave without saying goodbye, did you?" Meyer T Meyer said, opening a Schlitz. "This may be my last chance at these," he says drinking deeply, "I can't figure it out."
Surprisingly, given the circumstances, they sat in silence for a while, feeling the breeze, watching a pelican who was flying high above them, playing with the wind and air, soaring and floating and sliding from side to side.
"He's with me," Meyer said.
"Who?" Reed asks. After all this time, Meyer still confuses him.
"The bird," Meyer answers before draining a can of Schlitz, "You'll see what I mean."
The pelican sweeps across the sky, passing in front of the setting sun, playing with the air, moving above them and dipping low. His shadow on the sand is elongated, huge.
"He's with you?" Reed asks.
"Just you watch," Meyer tells him.
They sit in the sun for what may have been an hour or maybe a few minutes, neither speaking. Meyer somehow produces Schlitz whenever one of them is out of beer. They look up and down the beach. It is almost deserted because it is nearly five o'clock, what they call in North Carolina, supper time. Most everyone is inside their houses, out of the vicious late-afternoon heat, broiling shrimp, steaming corn, frying hamburgers and okra, grilling fish, baking meatloaves, renewing age-old family rituals—bonding or struggling—hungry from the heat of the day.
Besides Reed and Meyer's ghost there are only eight people in sight of them on the beach. There is a family from Athens, Ohio—a gaunt, sunburned young third grade teacher, his worried, tentative wife, their twelve year old daughter in her first two piece bathing suit and her six year old retarded brother. The family has discovered a little tidal pool where twelve fish are held captive. There are eleven minnows and one young spot. The parents are trying to get the children to examine the fish. The boy and girl are frantically trying to catch the creatures in green and yellow sand buckets because they know that unless they can get the fish back to the receding ocean, they will die.
Walking toward them from east to west, is a 78 year old white man with emphysema and heart disease. He is wearing, unaccountably, black wing-tip shoes, thin black socks, long black trousers and a ridiculous Hawaiian style shirt his daughter in law bought him in Charlotte to brighten him up. His name is Fred and he has never traveled outside of North Carolina and he has been waiting to die for a decade, ever since his wife, Dolly, passed away. When Meyer takes off, Fred will get his wish.
There are two teenagers from Gatlinburg, Tennessee floating on matching blue and yellow floats just a few feet beyond the gentle, low-tide breakers. They are being carried by the current ever eastward, slowly but inexorably. If they remained in the water long enough, the receding tide's complicated currents would carry them to the mouth of the Cape Fear River, seven miles away. But they will come to their senses long before that happens and arrive back at her parents' rented house in time for a cold dinner and a stern lecture. She is 15 and he is 16 and her parents knew this was a bad, bad idea all along, to bring a boyfriend to the beach. If they imagined the tangled passion Bonny and Carl have known on the midnight beach, Mr. and Mrs. Sloan would faint dead away.
The only other person on the beach as Meyer and Reed drink mystical Schlitz and watch the pelican circle, is a surf fisher from Grafton, West Virginia. Grafton is less than 20 miles from Buckhannon and though Harold Lee Sparks and Reed will never meet, they already know some of the same people. In fact, Harold Lee has been unfaithful to his wife of 17 years by sleeping with Peaches Calhoun, Reed's chief assistant at the Buckhannon Public Library. A Harold wades into the surf and casts his line out beyond Bonny and Carl's floats, he is thinking of Peaches, of how she arches her hips to receive him inside her. After Meyer takes off, Harold will become an evangelist for the Assembly of God Church and break off his affair with Peaches. She will mope and snap and be even more incompetent for several weeks and Reed will never know why.
"So, did you come to tell me a Profound Truth?" Reed asks Meyer's ghost, who is rapidly turning deep tan in the afternoon sun.
"No," Meyer answers. "I just dropped by to soak up some rays, drink some beer and say good-bye."
"That's all?" Reed asks, perplexed since he's never talked to a ghost on the beach, or anywhere.
"That's the whole deal," Meyer's ghost replies.
Sandpipers and gulls are gorging themselves on sand fleas and small shell fish they dig from the receding surf. Jerry and Sandy are over a mile west, walking on the beach, talking about Jerry's ministry and Sandy's art. John Henry is at Long Beach Pier, playing 8-ball for $5 a game with a long-haired, deeply tanned young man from Gastonia in an Atlanta Braves tee shirt. The boy's girlfriend is, for the first time in her life, finding a Black man attractive, alluring. John Henry is charming her as he loses every other rack on purpose so he doesn't take all the boy's money. The girl's name is Bridgett and John Henry is calling her 'Miss Bridgett' in as much of a southern accent as a kid from Boston can manage and complimenting her on her hair, which is long, sun-blonde and quite fetching.
Meyer Tee and Sugar are almost back from Wilmington, where they toured two historic houses, looked at lots of antiques and walked around the city. Meyer Tee is totally taken by Sugar since she is wearing a sundress and even at 37, her vertebrae are like the tracks of some exquisite creature in wet sand. Besides, even after three horribly failed marriages, she is an innocent as a September day in North Carolina is warm and long.
"What does your tee shirt say?" Reed asks. He noticed that Meyer's suntan had faded and he was about to somehow disappear.
"It says, 'Remember Tiannmen Square'," he says. "Aren't you up on current events?"
"You know about Tiannmen Square," Reed asks, innocently enough.
"I was there," Meyer responds. "Stood in front of a tank myself."
"You were in China?"
"I was at the 200th Anniversary of the French Revolution too," Meyer answers, passing yet another non-existent Schlitz to Reed. "It's amazing what you can do when you're dead. I could go to Alaska and back and you'd never miss me."
Reed looks at Meyer. He can almost see through him. Meyer is translucent, like frosted glass.
"I have the yataghan," Reed says. "John Henry gave it to me."
Meyer laughs and becomes solid again. "I know," he says, "took him a while."
"He's here—John Henry—and Jerry and Sugar too."
"I know," Meyer answers. He looks straight at Reed. "I know most everything. Being dead is like that." He takes a long drink of beer and burps. "Being dead isn't anything like I imagined."
"Nothing ever is," Reed says.
They sit for a while, feeling the sea breeze play over their skin, before Reed says, "Why are you still 'here'? Do you have to…you know…?"
Meyer smiles broadly. His eye is slightly glazed from beer. "You mean 'works of mercy', something like that, to atone for my sins?"
"Something like that," Reed says, embarrassed. "That's what I mean…."
"Beats me, Big Reed. I've mostly traveled around, wherever I wanted, seeing things. That's something I don't know—why I'm still here. Maybe the computer is down. Maybe it's like Motor Vehicles, backed up with paperwork and bad help." He pauses to glance up at the pelican. "But I know we'll be going soon."
"You said 'we'—you mean you and the Pelican?"
Meyer howls. "Oh, that fucker's been atoning alright. Big time." When he stops laughing, he adds, almost gently, "but it's almost over for him too…."
Reed is at a loss about what to say. He is the verbal equivalent of illiterate at that moment. He realizes, even then, that he'll spend the rest of his life thinking of questions he should have asked Meyer when he had the chance.
"About that crooked knife," Meyer says, "promise me this—you'll take it out to the end of that pier up there and feed it to the sharks. Otherwise, more throats will be cut."
"I promise," Reed says. He has, after all, become a Promise Keeper.
"I'd do it myself," Meyer muses, "but I'm not able to carry anything heavier than a six-pack and I can't walk on wood. Imagine that."
Reed imagines not being able to walk on wood, but not successfully. "No kidding," he says.
"The Dead don't 'kid'," Meyer snaps. "That's another thing I'm going to want to find out about. Someone has some explaining to do."
Reed stares at the pier in the distance. "Did you know…," he begins.
"That's the longest pier in North Carolina?" Meyer interrupts, growing annoyed. "I know shit like that, Reed. I just don't know why I can't walk on wood and I'm a little discombobulated about what's about to happen."
A moment or two later, Meyer gets up and says, "Well, got to go…."
"Already?" Reed asks. "Everyone will be back soon. Can't you wait? Stay for dinner? Have a swim?"
"Can't let them see me. Can't wait. Never hungry when you're dead. The water here is too damn warm," Meyer answers, walking toward the Atlantic.
Reed struggles from his sand chair. He is a little high on the phantom Schlitz and has reached an age when he is not graceful rising from a sand chair, even though he's in fine health. He follows Meyer's foot prints in the sand down to the water.
"Watch this," Meyer says, turning to face him. Meyer turns an electric blue and then a flame orange and then seems to disappear for a moment altogether. When he rematerializes, there is the smell of lemons and fried bacon in the air.
"Death is the ultimate trip," Meyer says, laughing. "By the way, you and Sandy will live into your early nineties and die three days apart. I won't tell you who goes first, but his name is Thomas. I'll see you then."
"What about Meyer Tee?" Reed asks, anxious and desperate to keep Meyer longer.
"My namesake," Meyer says, fully present, smiling like a sun-tanned walrus and searching the sky for the pelican. "He'll be fine. He'll live in Portugal for a while and marry there. Then he'll come back and either be a history professor at Williams or a short order cook at an International House of Pancakes in Wisconsin."
"Either?" Reed says, almost yelling, "you don't know which?"
"I'm new at being dead," Meyer says, flickering into blue and orange and nothingness again. His voice continues when he's gone like the Cheshire Cat. "Check with me in a millennium or so."
Then he is back and they are standing in the gentle low-tide surf. The water is very warm. The pelican is skimming the water ten yards or so beyond them. He dives for a fish and floats on the waves, eating.
"By the way, don't get too attached to anything," Meyer says.
"I won't," Reed promises, already lying.
Meyer lifts his eye patch. His bad eye isn't milky white anymore. It is clear and whole, the color of the sky above North Carolina and focused on Reed. "Of course you will," he says, smiling," we all do."
Meyer turns and holds out his arms. He rises twelve feet, maybe more, off the sand. Then he floats back down. He is laughing as hard as he can. "Did I tell you that damned bird is Pierce?" he says. "Remember how he hated sea-food and feared heights?"
Reed nods, remembering some of that.
"So he's had to hang around waiting for me in a series of seabird bodies. He's really pissed about it." Meyer shakes his head, "Whoever is in charge of this mess has a really nasty sense of irony."
"Oh, we're both going 'home' now," Meyer says, grinning maniacally, "whatever that means…."
Sugar and Meyer Tee are passing the Red and White, turning down to Beach Road. They both feel a shiver they don't mention. John Henry unintentionally scratches on the 8-ball. He's down $10. Jerry and Sandy turn back toward the Nautilus. They both find it suddenly hard to breathe. But none of those see Meyer's ghost take off.
Bonny and Carl, on their floats, don't see it either, though they are very close to the event. They are staring into each other's eyes, remembering stolen touches. Had they only looked up, they would have known that their relationship would end in an ugly marriage and bitter divorce and would have broken up when they got back to Tennessee.
The two school teachers from Ohio don't see Meyer ascend because he is distracted by his sunburn and she is worried about what to do about dinner. But their children turn and watch it all. Dianna, their 12 year old, begins to write poetry that night. Years later, critics will compare her to Denise Levertov and call her the "Ann Sexton of the Midwest". Sugar will buy all Dianne's thin books and admire her as she grows old.
The school teachers' son, Ralph, who has been categorized as mildly retarded his whole life, will test well above average on an IQ test in October. He will go on to graduate third in his class at Columbia Law School and be appointed to the Federal Bench before his 45th birthday.
Frank Carter, the retired baker from Raleigh, wearing the hideous Hawaiian shirt, watches Meyer go. He walks back to the house where his son and daughter-in-law are, sits on a rickety lawn chair, removes his wingtips and dies of natural causes. Meyer and Pierce will circle for a while near the sun, waiting for Frank to catch up.
Harold Sparks sees Meyer and mistakes him for a beatific vision of Jesus. He will declare himself an Evangelist and bring hundreds of people to know the Lord through his testimony and preaching. He will remain loyal to his wife and Peaches will find a new lover, after a time, Dan from the Exxon Station.
All Reed will do is follow Meyer's rapidly fading footprints back to the sand chairs, collect the empty Schlitz cans and put them in the garbage before anyone gets back to the Nautilus. By the time the trash is put out the next morning, the Schlitz cans will be gone, as if they never existed.
Then Reed will go to his room and take the Yataghan from beneath his bed, walk down to the longest pier in North Carolina and throw it to the sharks, breaking over seven centuries of Curse. Even after all that, he'll be back before anyone else gets home.
When Reed goes into the house, the red light on the phone message machine is blinking. He rewinds the tape and pushes 'play'. It's Meyer: "By the way, Big Reed, Sandy is pregnant. Don't tell her I told you. Congratulations! It's a girl and you'll either name her Caroline and call her 'Carrie' or Brumhilda and call her 'Broom', not sure which. Have a good life. By the way, the tape is already erased, Mr. Phelps."
But before all that, Reed watches Meyer rise effortlessly into the warm afternoon air. He glides and swoops and follows the pelican in a looping pattern far out over the sea. Another figure joins them and they all fly west and disappear into the sun.
The sun seems so bright it is white to Reed. So very, very white. And Forever.
(iv. Suppertime)
We were all sitting around the big table, having supper, like nothing much had happened, like Meyer hadn't ascended and Pierce hadn't been freed from his pelican body.
There was lots of steamed shrimp that Jerry bought at Bertha's Seafood earlier in the day. And there were two dozen crabs that Meyer Tee and John Henry and I had harvested just passed dawn, as the tide turned around, using rotten chicken on twine and crab nets. We ruined our sneakers in the muck and Meyer Tee and I sun burned our shoulders and noses. John Henry wore a long sleeved shirt and a wide-brimmed hat crabbing. He said African-Americans revered and respected the sun more than white boys. He was right, but we all had shrimp bites on our ankles and calves.
There was fresh field corn Sandy found at one of the roadside stands. All that was piled on the table, steaming and luscious, on top of pages from The Charlotte Observer, the best newspaper in the south. Sugar had put little bowls of melted butter around the table. We shelled shrimp and crab and dipped them in the butter. From time to time, someone broke an ear of white corn in two and rolled it in the butter. We were all drinking beer. None of it was Schlitz. Some was Miller Light and some was Corona, with limes Meyer Tee had rushed to the Red and White to buy. That was our supper. It was more than enough.
Tossing a shrimp in my mouth, I glanced around the table. Besides my mother, my sister and her girlfriend and Miss Carrie Justice, I decided I couldn't imagine a table with more people that I loved, within reaching distance, eating intently.
Then I thought of Meyer.
"Shit," I said to myself, but I accidentally said it out loud, "I forgot to ask him what he thought about the book."
"Forgot what?" Sugar said.
"Who do you mean?" Jerry asked.
"What book?" John Henry queried, breaking an ear of corn in two.
"What are you talking about?" Meyer Tee said, struggling with a crab claw.
Sandy never looked up, much less said something.
"Forget it," I said, "just thinking out loud."
And they all, except Sandy, forgot it.
"You know," I said a while later, "I realized today that I have lots of money."
No one reacted. They had all realized that long ago.
"So," I said, disappointed in their lack of reaction, "I think I'll give some of it away."
"We'll take $100,000," John Henry said, biting into corn.
"Make that a quarter of a million," Jerry said, sucking the sweet meat out of a crab leg. "Lots of folks with AIDS."
"How about $250,000 a year for four years?" I asked, feeling generous. Jerry and John Henry whooped.
"I'm going to give what Meyer gave me to Newman and other people who work with heroin addicts," Sandy said.
"All of it?" I heard myself asking, Midwestern to the core.
Sandy and everyone else laughed. "Reed, you'll still be rich. I don't even like money."
Meyer Tee washed down whatever he was eating with Corona beer and said, "I just need enough money to not have to depend on Mom and Dad, so I'll probably give lots of it away. But I think I'll take a little of the money Meyer gave me and live in Portugal for a while. I don't know why, but I want to go there."
Sugar looked at me. A kernel of corn was stuck on her front teeth. Sandy reached over and picked it off with a fingernail. "Two of my divorces have been very financially advantageous," she said. I didn't even know Sugar knew the word financially, much less advantageous, like most things in my life, I had underestimated her. "So I'm going to give some money to people who deal with runaway girls. But, before that, I might go to Portugal with Meyer Tee. I speak the language and there is something about the sky in Portugal you can never forget."
We ate for a while. It all tasted like the food of the gods, like manna—the shrimp and the crab and the corn. Even the beer was like golden mead.
Deep in the night, about half-passed sleep, Sandy nudged me awake. I was at least five beers beyond sober. The room was swimming a bit, against the tide of how our bed was swimming.
"You saw him, didn't you?" Sandy whispered. She didn't need to whisper. Our room in the enormous Nautilus was far away from any other room. It was cool from soundless central air. It was dark and you could hear the sea.
"Saw who?"
"Saw who? Don't be crazy, you saw Meyer."
"Our son?"
"No, moron, Meyer T Meyer. You forgot to ask him about the book. I remember what you said. Did you see him?"
"I guess so, after a fashion," I said, mouth full of cotton.
"I knew it!" she said, sitting up in bed, the sheet slipping and revealing her breasts and her almost concave stomach. She was as beautiful to me as the first time I ever saw her, on a rock wall, so long ago.
"Don't you understand?" she asked, urgently.
"Your breasts are so lovely," I said.
She sighed and dropped her shoulders. Her breasts dropped with them. "Are you too drunk to listen?"
I really didn't think so, though I probably was, so I told her I could listen.
"Meyer didn't care about the book," she said, extremely excited, her shoulders and breasts rising. "He only cared about 'the Promise'. And you have almost kept the Promise. That's why he showed up to you today."
"Almost?" I asked, confused.
"There is still The Parade," Sandy said. She said it like a prayer, a mantra, something Holy.
I mumbled something about the parade and she told me, "Go to sleep. When you're better we'll talk again."
I did. And we did.
I woke up at 6 a.m. Light was beginning to fill the room. Sandy was sitting on the edge of the bed, a sheet wrapped around her. I knew she's kept vigil through the night.
"Good morning, Reed," she said. "Do you remember now about the promise?"
"And about the parade? Do you understand there has to be a parade?"
"Yes," I said, and I meant it.
Alright," she said, taking my hand, "you may touch me here…and here…and here…."
It was just past 8 when I woke up again. Sandy was in the bathroom, being sick. I rushed to the door. On the way I heard the toilet flush.
She was nude, sitting on the floor, rubbing her face with a towel.
"Don't be worried, Reed," she said, beginning to laugh. "It's not the seafood. I'm just pregnant."
THE PARADE
It is an unassuming parade—nine people with instruments they don't play well; two clowns—both girls—in gypsy skirts with red dots on their cheeks, smiles painted on their mouths and fake red noses; a drum major wearing a Union Army Cape, an eye patch and a Boston Red Sox cap—and, instead of a baton, he is carrying a hockey stick; two majorettes—both skinny and old—in short skirts, support stockings and pushing IV carts along with them, but they are graceful and gay; and a juggler—a distinguished man of seventy with gray hair and a stark, Old World face.
The juggler leads the parade. He is wearing purple tights and juggling four red balls and he never drops one. Not ever. And he always smiles at children. There is a pregnant woman right behind him. She wears delicate, gold wire rim glasses, but she still squints. She moves with great care, as if she thinks she is larger than she is. She is lovely, except for her chin, which someone who did not know her might call weak.
Eight of the band members—a trombone, two flutes, a snare drum, an accordion, a trumpet, a glockenspiel and a bongo drummer who doubles on kazoo—are all Freaks. They wear sneakers and head-bands and one wears a Harpo Marx top-hat. They have many rings and bracelets and most have medallions around their necks, swinging as they march. They all—the whole troop of them—march with quick, jerky, little-kid's feet steps, moving their shoulders, enjoying themselves immensely.
The ninth band member is extremely old. He has only four teeth in his whole mouth and two of them are so yellow they could pass for gold. He is completely hairless. Not even his beard grows anymore because he is so old. He is playing a strange instrument that seems to be a car part but sounds like a banjo.
They march toward you, and already there are dogs and cats and old, hunchbacked ladies and policemen and nurses and a fish butcher and a basketball player reading a book as he dribbles. There is a little French girl and a little mountain girl, holding hands and skipping and laughing. There is a priest in shorts talking with a man who, in spite of his John's Hopkins University sweatshirt, looks a lot like Yogi Berra. There is a remarkably beautiful green-eyed woman, looking much younger than her age, holding hands with a younger man who is grinning to beat the band. There is a mother with her five mystical daughters, all carrying candles that won't blow out even in the strongest wind. There is a man, smiling broadly, carrying mountain climbing gear and giving out slices of bread to everyone along the route. There are people in strange clothes and people with no clothes and a man with half-a-face and a Freak pushing a cart with a bucket of water on it to water the flowers along the way.
There are people speaking strange languages that are all hisses and languages with no consonants and languages like bird songs. There is a little Black boy, smoking a cigarette, carrying a green leather case. There are people wearing turbans and people whose skin is the color of cocoa and coconuts and wheat growing and the midnight sky. There is a tall man who looks Native American holding hands with another man who looks in the prime of life. There are two college professors—both women—holding hands and waiting for an older woman to light a Kent. The three of them are with a lawyer, carrying his briefcase, waving at the crowd. There is a mute, pulling a small train with train cars full of bananas. There is a Black man with a huge German Shepherd walking next to a teenager in a letter man's sweater holding hands with a cheerleader. Inexplicably, the letter man is leading a buffalo who snorts and waddles and almost grins at you. There is even a bare-footed old man in a ridiculous Hawaiian shirt pointing to a pelican circling above him in the sky. People are tossing softballs around, never missing them, making astonishing catches, laughing at their luck, their skill, their magic. A cowboy is in the midst of them and everyone feels good. And there is a man, thin and pale, with a hand-held camera, making a movie of the parade.
All of them are part of the parade.
The drum major has fallen behind and is moving through the crowd toward you. He is tall and thin and has a white mustache that somehow makes him look like an albino walrus. He winks at you with his good eye and hands you something cold and heavy. Then he hurries away, back to the front of the parade with a nurse with remarkable red hair.
And there, there in the back of the parade, just after the enormous, sleepy looking dog and a cat and her three kittens—not keeping up because they keep finding remarkable things to investigate, as kittens do—just there, where you are, behind all the noise and gaiety, surrounded by a pure circle of light…surrounded by a perfectly round circle of Silence and Truth and Light…there is a young girl, no more than eleven.
She is wearing a light blue ballerina's dress and matching ballet slippers and she is beautiful—dark and frail and grave. And in her impeccable sphere of Harmony, surrounded by all the cacophony and all the mad celebration and ritual and bells and masks and marching and laughing, she dances.
She dances.
She dances and dances, slowly turning, winning your heart, making you love her although she is so terribly grave. She is as graceful as falling snow, as a swan in brown water, as the rhythms of the sea, as the smile of a joyful friend, as that touch you and I cannot understand or explain—that touch which heals and soothes and makes whole with grace alone.
And you love her. In that perfect sphere, she is the most perfect thing in the universe. And you watch her, bringing up the end of the parade, unaffected by the chaos up ahead. And you love her.
Then you realize what you are carrying, what that madman of a saint of a walrus of a drum major has given you. You are carrying the brace the young dancer must wear on her back, the brace for her spine, crooked since birth, since the womb, since conception, the brace she wears every moment she is not dancing….Dancing….Dancing….
The parade turns a corner, circles a church, and emerges into a green and open vale.
People are laughing, singing, cheering….
Doing my sums--Anthony and Ron
how things go....
The Blizzard came...sort of....
Waiting for The Blizzard
my weather junkie....
Oh, my Lord, it's getting better and better...
Posting the Igloo Factory
The joy of cabbage stalk
The Igloo Factory--Chapter Eleven
The Igloo Factory--Chapter Eight, nine and ten
The itch you can't scratch...
On my way to Killingworth this morning...
The Igloo Factory--Chapter Seven
A confession I regret already
The Igloo Factory--Chapter Six
The three worst jokes I know (and wish I didn't)
The Igloo Factory--Chapter Five
Igloo Factory--Chapter Four
"Body Pain" and a name I can't remember
The Igloo Factory--Chapter Three
Igloo Factory--Chapter Two
The Igloo Factory
Red Eye?
How I'm different from the Puli
I look at pictures....
So cold the moon
OK, I've had it with the NYPD
Another unpreached sermon

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Here We Go Again: "Godzilla vs. Kong"
The only thing Hollywood loves better than repeating itself its pitting monster against monster. With the announcement of Godzilla vs. Kong's working title and production start date, we get both.
Godzilla (2014) – image via Legendary
King Kong as seen in "Kong: Skull Island" {image via Legendary}
"In 2020, Godzilla will return again to face off against the mighty Kong from Legendary's Kong: Skull Island," Godzilla-movies.com announced.
Godzilla vs. Kong will film under the working title "APEX", which is a rather fitting title, considering each superspecies acted as the Apex predator in their respective films – Godzilla vs. Kong will be the final match-up which decides which monster is the true King of them all. We are also thrilled to share that Godzilla vs. Kong (Apex) will begin production this October!
King Kong already fought Godzilla in 1962, in King Kong vs. Godzilla, directed by Ishir? Honda. Do they need to do it again? Or does each generation need its own monster movies?
Horror Films Reflect Our Fears
Certainly, special effects have improved drastically over the the past half-century. More important than special effects are the themes behind the movies. Monster movies are more than werewolves fighting mummies. They reflect our society, our fears, our expectations. Monster movies of the '50s often dealt with McCarthyism or the Cold War.
"If science fiction is about science at all, it is not about abstract science, science in a vacuum. In the SF film, science is always related to society, and its positive and negative aspects are seen in light of their social effect," said film scholar Vivian Sobchack
Horror movies are often critically dismissed and derided as pure entertainment fodder, lacking any real substance or true cinematic value. However, beneath the thrills and scares, many genre films contain meaningful subtext and relevant socio-political commentary. Directors often use horror as an allegory for what we most fear, using monsters and supernatural elements to represent even more terrifying real life horrors.
What fears will Godzilla vs. Kong reflect? What will it tell us about ourselves?
The Legendary MonsterVerse – a Franchise of Fearsome Beasts
In addition to (or instead of) social commentary, Godzilla vs. Kong is a monster movie, a knock-em, sock-em cockfight between two terrible beasts. It's the culminating film of Legendary's franchise the MonsterVerse starting with the 2014 reboot of Godzilla, followed by Kong: Skull Island (starring Tom Hiddleston and Samuel L. Jackson), continuing with Godzilla: King of the Monsters (due to be released March 22, 2019), and finishing with Godzilla vs. Kong in 2020.
CinemaBlend asked if King Kong vs. Godzilla was a fair fight. What do you think, SCIFI.radio fans?
What Do We Know About "Godzilla vs. Kong"?
Samuel L. Jackson starred as Lt.Col. Packard in "Kong: Skull Island." {image via Legendary}
The movie starts filming in October of 2018, and is scheduled to be released May 22, 2020. It will not be a remake of the 1962 version. The director will be Adam Wingard, who previously directed Death Note. J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fame is among the writing crew, as are Terry Rossio, scriptwriter of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean films, and T. S. Nowlin who wrote The Maze Runner and co-wrote Pacific Rim: Uprising.
The only actors confirmed at the moment are Ziyi Zhang and Van Marten. Zhang was in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Warrior, and House of Flying Daggers. Her character name has not been revealed yet, but she may be Dr. Chen. Van Marten generally plays cops and federal agents: Officer Copper in Black Lightning, an FBI agent in Ant-Man and the Wasp, a Sentinel Services agent in The Gifted. He plays Dr. Chen's assistant in both Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Godzilla vs. Kong. The rest of the cast has not been announced yet (with filming not beginning until fall, they probably haven't been hired yet) but we hope to see some familiar faces from the previous movies in the MonsterVerse. Will Tom Hiddleston reprise his role as Captain James Conrad?
Thus far there have been 35 Godzilla movies and 19 King Kong movies. Do you think that's enough, or do you think we need another King Kong and Godzilla movie? Tell us your opinion in the comments section below. We want to hear from you.
Susan Macdonald
Susan Macdonald is the author of the children's book "R is for Renaissance Faire", as well as short stories in "Alternative Truths", "Swords and Sorceress #30", "Supernatural Colorado", "Barbarian Crowns", "Cat Tails""Under Western Stars", and "Knee-High Drummond and the Durango Kid". Her articles have appeared on SCIFI.radio's web site, in The Inquisitr, and in The Millington Star. She enjoys Renaissance Faires (see book above), science fiction conventions, Highland Games, and Native American pow-wows.
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Susan Macdonald is the author of the children's book "R is for Renaissance Faire", as well as short stories in "Alternative Truths", "Swords and Sorceress #30", "Supernatural Colorado", "Barbarian Crowns", "Cat Tails""Under Western Stars", and "Knee-High Drummond and the Durango Kid". Her articles have appeared on SCIFI.radio's web site, in The Inquisitr, and in The Millington Star. She enjoys Renaissance Faires (see book above), science fiction conventions, Highland Games, and Native American pow-wows.
Film Review: 'Doctor Sleep' – A Shining Sequel
NBC's MANIFEST — The Answer-Man Reviews
'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' – Three Drops in 72 Hours??
Talking With Ashley Romans, Detective Tabitha Hunter on 'NOS4A2'
Earth becomes sentient and begins eating other planets who understand us all too well whome we refuse to feed by a bunch of Elvis impersonators , but scientists create a new weapon which kills them all.
The End.but they die from catching the common cold.


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eBenefitsByDesign.com was created by Arthur A Kempton, III principal of KEMPTON FINANCIAL GRP LLC in Land O Lakes, Florida in 2003. His vision is to offer a full range of Insurance products to help and guide our seniors of Florida to make well thought out and intelligent financial decisions. Arthur A Kempton, III is a retired member of the United States Air Force having served from January 1978 until February 1998. He is a third-generation Financial Services Professional specializing in the Senior Market. His grandfather Arthur A Kempton, Sr began his career in the Financial Services career field at the Corporate offices with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in New York City in 1927. His father, Arthur A Kempton, Jr also worked in the Financial Services career field with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and retired in 1987. His brother Greg began his career with New England Financial in 1987 is currently the General Agent for One Team Financial Group, LLC a OneAmerica Financial Partner in Tampa, Florida.
We provide information and guidance to those New to Medicare, turning 65, Leaving employer or union coverage, Medicare/Medcaid or New to the area?
Served over 20-years in the United States Air Force in various positions from Logistics Superintendent, Headquarters 12th Air Force, Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona fighting the war on Narcotics in Central/South America to Superintendent 15th Logistics Group, Headquarters Pacific Air Forces Hickam AFB Hawaii. After retiring in 1998 he was employed as a Project Manager for Pacific Gateway Exchange a Long Distance Telecommunications Wholesaler in Burlingame, California. After leaving Pacific Gateway Exchange began a career in the Financial Services field with New England Financial/MetLife in Tampa, FL.
Other Products/Services We Offer: Disability Insurance, Final Expense Life Insurance, Key Man/Buy Sell Life Insurance, Planning Services for Senior's.
As a registered representative with New England Securities, Art helped his clients develop wealth accumulation strategies to protect their financial future. He is committed to providing quality service and building long-term client relationships. He is a Leader's Conference qualifier, a company honor awarded annually to those Financial Services Representatives who have successfully demonstrated the ability to attract, develop, and retain clients by helping them meet their financial security needs.
Art graduated from the University of Phoenix with a degree in Business Management. Before joining New England Financial, he worked at Pacific Gateway Exchange and is retired from the United States Air Force.


text:
Who knew? Walt Whitman was the Richard Simmons of his day
Exercise guru Richard Simmons has gone away but could the great American poet Walt Whitman replace him?
Consider, for example, this cheery Simmons-like exhortation (Whitman was a 19th-century poet much given to Simmons-like exhortation) in a long-lost and just published manifesto by Whitman called "Manly Health & Training: To Teach the Science of a Sound and Beautiful Body."
"To you, clerk, literary man, sedentary person, man of fortune, idler…UP! The world (perhaps you now look upon it with pallid and disgusted eyes) is full of zest and beauty for you, if you approach it in the right spirit!"
Or as Simmons would say: Get up and move!
It turns out Whitman was just as obsessed with the state of his body as we are. He died in 1892 at age 72 but he's been lately revived with "Manly," a collection of newspaper articles he published in a New York paper in 1858 and only recently discovered in a digital database under one of his pseudonyms.
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With tips for men on diet and exercise, grooming and dress, food and drink, dancing and sports, and the link between mental and moral health, Whitman's health opus totals nearly 47,000 words, published in February by Regan Arts. It offers new insight into Whitman's poetic preoccupation with his body, expressed in "I Sing the Body Electric" from his masterpiece, "Leaves of Grass." It also offers new clues to scholars about Whitman's thinking during a crucial but little-known period in his life.
Now Ten Speed Press is bringing out a mini, boiled-down version, "Walt Whitman's Guide to Manly Health & Training," aimed at 21st-century millennials accustomed to reading bite-sized online listicles instead of books. This version, released earlier this month, features about 75 excerpts, is just 122 pages, and is meant as a goofy gift for those who like working out and lyrical poetry.
Some of it will raise eyebrows: "A man that exhausts himself continually among women, is not fit to be, and cannot be, the father of sound and manly children." This declaration would seem to confirm the now-standard scholarly view that Whitman preferred the company of men: He is presumed to have been gay, although it wouldn't have been called that at the time.
Kenneth Price, a professor of English and expert on Walt Whitman at the University of Nebraska, says "Manly" reflects Whitman's poetic celebration of the body in "Leaves," which would set him apart as an artist and change the way American poetry was written.
"His view that the body was of crucial importance is different from that of most people of the time, who would have said the mind, heart or soul were most important. And it was where he would make his mark as a poet," Price says. "His sense that mind and body are integrated and if you neglect the body you damage the mind — that's something he's committed to."
Oddly enough, Whitman's words, though they were written 150 years ago, could pass for the content found these days in men's magazines, online or on TV:
On where to train: Not in a gym. "Places of training, and all for gymnastic exercises should be in the open air — upon the turf or sand is best. Cellars and low-roofed attics are to be condemned, especially the former."
On the best exercise: There's one thing that beats baseball, swimming, rowing, boxing or even dancing. "Walking, or some form of it, is nature's great exercise — so far ahead of all others as to make them of no account in comparison."
On fashion versus health: No contest. "No man can serve the two masters, of frivolous fashion and the attainment of robust health and physique, at the same time."
On cold baths: Regular bathing is desirable; the colder the better. "The tonic and sanitary effects of cold water are too precious to be foregone. You cannot have a manly soundness, unless the pores of the skin are kept open, and the encouragement given to…perspiration, which in a live man is thrown off in great quantities, and the free egress of which is of the utmost importance."
On beards: Hirsute Whitman was a fan. "The beard is a great sanitary protection to the throat — for the purposes of health it should always be worn, just as much as the hair of the head should be."
On feet: Pick the right socks and shoes. "The feet, too, must be kept well clothed with thin socks in summer, and woolen in winter — and washed daily."
On food: Vegetarians be gone. "Let the main part of the diet be meat, to the exclusion of all else." Also: "Chew the food well, and do not eat fast."
On alcohol: Not bad in judicious quantities: "We would rather, a little while after his dinner, a man should drink a glass of good ale or wine than one of those mixtures called 'soda,' or even a strong cup of hot coffee."
On good character and good health: They're linked. "The first requisite to a young man is that he should be well and hardy; and that from such a foundation alone, he will be more apt to become good, upright, friendly, and self-respected."
On wealth and health: They're linked. "From a money-making point of view… health is an investment that pays better than any other."
On curing "the blues": No pills necessary, just a brisk body rubdown followed by "a long and brisk walk in the open air, expanding the chest and inhaling plentiful supplies of the health-giving element — ten to one but he would be thoroughly cured of his depression, by this alone."
Maria Puente, USA TODAY


top-down: or "outside-in", that starts from external data on the market size and then estimates market share and revenues target you can achieve to then workout subsequent implications for your organisation.
This method is usually adopted by companies that have very wild ambitions and growth potential because of, for example, an innovative product or market.
The main advantage of the top-down approach is that it allows you to determine a growth path that can be explained and agreed with investors. If they agree on the growth path you forecast, they will probably agree on the valuation that results from these projections. Moreover, they will be able to measure your performance based on those specific KPIs. For these reasons, it shows a lot of potential and ambition while at the same time being trackable over time.
The first step is to estimate the size of the target market. There are several theories on this topic, among which the TAM (Total Available Market), SAM (Serviceable Available Market), SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market) approach.
For an ice-cream business, the TAM is represented by the supermarket ice-cream sector in Europe. This is the total amount of revenues a company can earn assuming that it will be able to get 100% market share.
Given the stage of the company and other reasons, the ice-cream factory only targets its home country, e.g. The Netherlands. The result is its SAM, a fraction of the total European market.
SOM is calculated by estimating how much of SAM it is able to get, e.g. 10% market share of supermarket ice-creams in The Netherlands by 10 years.
For more advise on how to estimate the market size, check out this article.
How to estimate market share?
It is very important to relate to the current market leader to estimate the future market share. If, for example, the current market leader has 5%, you most likely will not be able to get a 10% market share. If the leader is an old and established company and it was able to get only 5%, it probably means fierce competition in the industry. For the sake of having defensible projections and clear milestones in the eyes of investors, the most suitable maximum estimated market share of the example would be 5%.
Giving revenues and operating costs, the company should be able to generate an operations margin. For startup companies, this margin should be in the range between 5% and 20%, depending on the length of the horizon. Most entrepreneurs expect exponential growth in revenues and a slower growth in costs. Every investor knows that growth comes at a cost; a lot of the most successful startups still "struggle" for profitability because they are sacrificing it for the sake of growth. Setting a lower, more reasonable, target operating profitability (or EBITDA margin) shows investors that your business model is sustainable. It also leaves room to say that if the company keeps on growing at this pace, it can wave its profit and reinvest the generated in cash into the operations to grow more. Every investor will agree on sacrificing current profits for a larger sum tomorrow: profitability is an option.
Having set your target EBITDA, you will know how much costs you will have to sustain to reach your targets. You should then identify the cost categories that are most important for your business model, and apply target ratios. To do this, you can apply your own expertise, ask your network to share their experience or rely on benchmark public companies that have similar business model (they don't necessarily have to be in your same industry, similar business model is more important). Referring to them will help you defend your projections in front of investors.
When setting these proportions you should ask yourself questions such as: which proportion of your costs should be dedicated to a sales team? Which percentage to IT?
Using ratios when estimating costs is a handy system because it makes your projections easy to read and to agree with, as well as to easy change in case investors believe you should allocate more resources to a particular aspect of your business.
What is your experience with financial projections and which questions would you like an answer to? Let us know in the comments.


Juicing may be one of the known trends to lose weight lately, but that might not be the only thing your green juices can do. In fact, some health experts stated that juicing can do some serious damage to you, both physically and mentally. So before you start reaching out for another glass of your liquefied kale, you might want to first consider these juicing dangers.
1. Elevates Blood Sugar Levels. Since the fruit sugar became more concentrated in juice, it only means that drinking it will only cause a drastic increase in the body's glucose level, or also known as hyperglycaemia. However, it doesn't just end with that. Over a short span of time, it will also cause an inevitable drop in your blood sugar, more commonly known as hypoglycaemia. If this dramatic shift continues over some time, then there's a possibility that an insulin or glucose instability might occur, leading to more drastic shifts in your blood sugar level.
2. Causes Tooth Decay. Fruit juices are known to be have an extremely high natural sugar content, which if drank often, can cause as much tooth decay as candies and sodas. These juices are also believed to be highly acidic, making your teeth more susceptible to decay and erosion. To decrease your chances of experiencing these damages, experts recommend using straw when drinking to minimize direct contact between the juice and your teeth's enamel. Also, make sure that you wait for about 30 minutes before brushing your teeth to allow your teeth to return to its normal pH level.
3. Alters Your Stomach's pH Balance. Although juices work great as a supplementary drink for your diet, you shouldn't use it to replace your meals as it will only result to ulcer, leaky gut, gallstones, IBS and diverticulitis. Not only that, skipping on your starches and fibres also causes you to throw away half of the nutrients that your body needs, resulting to nutritional deficiencies and even weight gain.
4. Stresses Out Your Body. If you're using juicing as a cleansing method and not as a supplement to your diet, then you'll surely experience short-term starvation, which might elevate your cortisol and cause a significant stress response in your body. If you're already suffering from excessive stress, then this is the furthest thing from healthy for you.
5. Leads to an Eating Disorder. Other than the physical dangers, juicing can also cause some serious mental harm. A good example would be ignoring your body's natural cues of satiety, hunger and fullness, resulting to formation of patterns of disordered eating and the deregulation of your appetitive system. This is why juicing isn't recommended, especially if you are prone to experiencing disordered eating patterns.
Juicing can be a great way to lose, but only when it's done the right way. So before you start taking on various ways to lose weight and stay fit, ensure that you're doing it right and that it has lesser side effects than its health benefits.


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> Blog > Eight reasons why public country by country reporting is good for business in Europe
Eight reasons why public country by country reporting is good for business in Europe
Jasper De Meyer
topics: tax justice, capital flight
It's not just tax transparency campaigners and citizens who want public country by country reporting (CBCR). Businesses and investors are increasingly in favour too. Here's why:
1. To level the playing field between SMEs and large multinationals. SMEs frequently only operate in one country and are not able to engage in profit-shifting between tax jurisdictions to reduce their taxes, and as a consequence face a higher tax bill compared to their competitor multinationals. According to the European Commission's impact assessment, cross-border companies in the EU are estimated to pay on average 30 per cent less tax than similar firms active in only one country. Public CBCR would help to level the playing field between MNCs and SMEs, and in turn enhance SMEs' capacity to support growth and job creation.
2. To ensure investors can understand corporate tax practices and invest accordingly. A recent report by the US FACT Coalition reveals that investors are increasingly at risk due to a lack of disclosure by MNCs on tax. Access to CBCR information would help investors to make better investment decisions, allowing them to invest into firms who enhance shareholder value through sound investments, rather than firms who rely on aggressive tax-reduction strategies. Eurosif, a leading European association for sustainable and responsible investment, has said that promoting greater "disclosure of taxes paid per country increases overall corporate transparency and allows for a more detailed analysis by investors."
3. To extend transparency to all sectors of the economy. For certain sectors, including the extractives industries and the banking sector, mandatory reporting obligations on tax transparency already exist and are supported by business. In November 2015, Barclays and HSBC gave evidence before the European Parliament on CBCR, stating that implementing CBCR has not hampered their commercial interests.
4. To ensure a stable and fairer business environment for multinational companies. Tax scandals are not good for companies, and business leaders are increasingly recognising that an inability to explain their tax arrangements can negatively impact their business reputation and brand. It is for perhaps this reason that PwC's 17th Annual CEO Survey found that six out of ten CEOs (59%) agree that "multinationals should be required to publish revenue, profit and tax disclosures on a country by country basis." According to the same survey, only two out of ten surveyed CEOs (19%) opposed CBCR.
5. Because country by country reporting will not harm the competitiveness of EU firms. The costs associated with providing public CBCR information are very small, and companies will not be required to divulge commercially sensitive information (see Q&A). Lowering the fiscal pressure on SMEs, who provide 85% of jobs in the European Union, could meanwhile improve the competitiveness of our smaller firms in Europe.
6. Because many companies are already choosing to be voluntary tax transparent and this trend is set to continue. For example, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, and SEE already publicly provide some CBCR information. Moreover, given the growing public interest in the way corporates manage their tax affairs, this trend can only be expected to continue. In 2017, Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the largest of its kind in the world, set out clear expectations in new guidance to the multinational companies in which it invests, that they should pay their taxes where they generate their economic value and that they should publish their CBCR information.
7. Because tax is not too complicated to explain. Country by country reporting offers an opportunity for multinational companies to explain their tax structure to increasingly concerned EU citizens. Multinational companies can add narrative to their reports in order to give a more nuanced view to their customers on how they arrange their tax affairs. As Jane McCormick, KPMG's Global Head of Tax, wrote in her evidence to the European Parliament's Committee on tax rulings: "As with any other business practice, if companies can't explain what they are doing on tax than either they shouldn't be doing it or they need to get better at communicating."
8. Because most companies recognise the need for enhanced transparency. In September 2015, Christian Aid produced a survey of FTSE-100 companies' views on country by country reporting. The survey (to which 54 FTSE-100 MNCs responded) found that only a minority of FTSE-100 companies were clearly and unequivocally opposed to public CBCR. Based on the company responses to the Christian Aid survey, "it is clear that many FTSE-100 companies are committed to transparency in their tax affairs, and that most companies are either positively in favour of a move towards CBCR, or do not have strong objections to legislation."
To read our full Questions and Answers document on the business and investor case for public country by country reporting, please click here.
tags: country-by-country reporting,
country systems BRICS FSB IFIs responsible borrowing Annual meetings UNECE FIs aidwatch SDGs tax avoidance european parliament Eurodad G20; G20 Finance Ministers; BEPS; OECD Development debt audits transparency aidwatch loans Arabian sping


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1. The Chronicals of Vladimir Tod (8th grade bites). This is one of my favorit books. Its a vampire book anda HAVE TO READ IT!!!!!!!!!!! ITS SOOO GOOD! PLEASE READ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. Wallpaper and background images in the rekomendasi buku club tagged: books image reading pleasure vampire best awsome.
This is one of my favorit books. Its a vampire book anda HAVE TO READ IT!!!!!!!!!!! ITS SOOO GOOD! PLEASE READ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This rekomendasi buku photo might contain switer lengan panjang and kaus.


text:
Ephebopus est un genre d'araignées mygalomorphes de la famille des Theraphosidae.

Distribution
Les espèces de ce genre se rencontrent dans le Nord de l'Amérique du Sud.

Liste des espèces
Selon  :
 Ephebopus cyanognathus West & Marshall, 2000
 Ephebopus foliatus West, Marshall, Sayuri Fukushima & Bertani, 2008
 Ephebopus murinus (Walckenaer, 1837)
 Ephebopus rufescens West & Marshall, 2000
 Ephebopus uatuman Lucas, Silva & Bertani, 1992

Publication originale
 Simon, 1892 : Histoire naturelle des araignées. Paris, ,  (texte intégral).

Liens externes

Notes et références

Theraphosidae
Genre d'araignées (nom scientifique)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Restricted movement for 14 days
By Justin Zack
Tuesday, 17 Mar 2020
Public measure: The movement control order will limit congregation at religious, sport, social and cultural events.
PETALING JAYA: A movement control order will be imposed from tomorrow until the end of the month to contain the Covid-19 outbreak, says Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.
The Prime Minister announced the measure after chairing the National Security Council (NSC) last night.
"The government has decided to enact the measure, starting March 18 until March 31, throughout the whole country.
"This order is being issued under the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988 and the Police Act 1967, " he said during a special broadcast.
The measure will restrict the movement and congregation at religious, sport, social and cultural events.
While public and business premises will be closed, Muhyiddin announced that supermarkets, sundry shops and other shops which sell daily essentials will remain open.
Overseas travel for Malaysians will be restricted while those returning to the country must undergo health checks and voluntary quarantine.
Educational centres and schools, including higher learning institutions, will also be closed during this period.
The Prime Minister assured the public that essential services will continue.
These include health services, utilities such as fuel and electricity, along with the Fire and Rescue Department, police and those involved in the food supply chain.
Muhyiddin said he will chair daily NSC meetings and periodic updates will be announced to the public.
He also urged for all Malaysians to be patient during these trying times and to comply with the restrictions.
He assured the public that enough food and essentials are available, including face masks.
But at the same time, he said the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry will monitor the supply of these items.
"I realise the public might feel these actions create difficulties and hardships during their day to day lives. However, such action must be taken by the government to contain the outbreak.
"We cannot wait any longer for the situation to turn more dire. Drastic measures have to be taken immediately, " he said.
He urged the public not to panic and remain calm.
"I believe that with these measures, we will be able to contain the outbreak soon, " he said.
Muhyiddin also thanked those directly involved in combating the Covid-19 outbreak, including health officers and public servants who have been working around the clock.
"I pray that you will remain strong in performing your duties for the country to ensure public safety, " he said.
125 new cases recorded
We have enough food, assures PM
Govt to do all it can to weather storm caused by pandemic