The Story of Writing

The Case for the Forever Shutdown Senate Democrats actually allowing the GOP to stop funding the government is only the first step. Now they have to make the case that Trump’s government is illegitimate.

This says it pretty clearly:

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it was necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

One of many remarkable things about Solzhenitsyn's writing: after all he saw of humanity, he still believed that many people had some good in them.

This is from "Gulag Archipelago"

Dude.
That has cheese, noodles, onions, tomato (sauce), and basil - sure, it's dried and ground into powder, but it >was< (at some point) a leafy green.
Add some sour cream and mayo and you'd have what the people of Wisconsin call a salad.

I don't understand why I see things so differently. I see a health insurance industry that thinks it's entitled to charge people 1/3rd of their income for healthcare. That industry shouldn't be "fixed." It should be burned to the ground and its ashes pissed on.

In a nutshell.

He has written hundreds of fictional horror novels for younger readers. He may be best known for the Goosebumps series. Stine’s books have sold more than 400 million copies.

A color photo portrait of author R. L. Stein Source: the author's website

It is the birthday of the author who wrote,
“There are all kinds of worlds in the real world. Most people don't know that.”
U.S. author R. L. Stine was born on this day in 1943.
#WriterSky #BookSky #BOTD

The promo poster for the Broadway show "Cats." On a black background, the yellow eyes of a cat, but, instead of pupils, each eye shows a dancer.

It was on this day in 1982 that the play "Cats" opened on Broadway in New York City. The show ran for almost 18 years before closing in the year 2000.
#MusicSky #MusicalTheater #Broadway

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? The police state would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If… If. We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.

Marking the day in 1970 when Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, it's certainly instructive to look at the writing that led to his expulsion from the Soviet Union.
This passage, specifically, is relevant in the U.S. today:

#Resist

In 1970, Solzhenitsyn worried that, if he went to Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize, the Soviet Union would not allow him to return to his home. In 1973, after a French printer published Solzhenitsyn’s book Gulag Archipelago – about Soviet penitentiaries – he was formally expelled from the country. The following year, he went to Sweden and accepted the Nobel Prize.

An undated color photo of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Source: Journalism Is Not A Crime (website)

On October 8th, 1970, Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Years before this, he had been imprisoned for his criticism of Soviet rule, but was released in 1953.
#WriterSky #BookSky #Persecution #History #OTD

Staffers were detained for running a story about low morale and a lack of preparedness affecting West Germany’s military. Police searched and confiscated the magazine’s files and occupied Der Spiegel’s offices for more than a month. Eventually the nation’s federal minister of defense, Franz Josef Strauss admitted that he was responsible for the accusations and heavy-handed police tactics. The charges were summarily dropped. This incident tested post-war, democratic governance in Europe and it resulted in greater protections for freedom of the press in West Germany.

A b/w photo of public demonstrations in the city of Munich against charging Der Spiegel with treason. Source: German History in Documents and Images

On this day in 1962, German magazine Der Spiegel published an article that led to accusations of treason.
#FreedomOfThePress #History #OTD

Conversion therapy isn't "voluntary" for children when their parents are the ones deciding to do it.

Nice to see people drawing from the ✨American revolution ✨ and ✨Civil war ✨ playbooks

Stop feeding, quartering, supplying and entertaining the oppressors.

You're right. They could have.
They could have taught us that skin, eye, and hair color are the result of melanin - and that melanin has no effect on intellect or skeletal and muscle development.
But they didn't.
Americans swim in oceans of ignorance, disinformation, and outright bullshit.

Re-posting for that second graf:

She is best known for her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness and her work as an opinion columnist for The New York Times.

An undated color photo of Michelle Alexander Source: Goodreads

It is the birthday of the lawyer and professor who wrote,
“Racial caste systems do not require racial hostility or overt bigotry to thrive. They need only racial indifference.”
Activist and writer Michelle Alexander was born on this day in 1967.
#WriterSky #BookSky #Opinion #BOTD

She wrote more than 40 books, mostly historic fiction and mostly for children. Dalgliesh was also the founding editor of Scribner’s & Sons children’s book division.

An undated b/w photo portrait of author Alice Dalgliesh Source: Library Thing

It is the birthday of the author who wrote,
“What the future held for her she didn't know. Of two things only she was certain. There would be children-her own or other people's-and there would be books.”
The writer Alice Dalgliesh was born on this day in 1893.
#WriterSky #BookSky #History #BOTD

Portrait of James Whitcomb Riley 1903 John S. Sargent

The Days Gone By, 1914 James Whitcomb Riley O the days gone by! O the days gone by! The apples in the orchard, and the pathway through the rye; The chirrup of the robin, and the whistle of the quail As he piped across the meadows sweet as any nightingale; When the bloom was on the clover, and the blue was in the sky, And my happy heart brimmed over in the days gone by. In the days gone by, when my naked feet were tripped By the honey-suckle’s tangles where the water-lilies dipped, And the ripples of the river lipped the moss along the brink Where the placid-eyed and lazy-footed cattle came to drink, And the tilting snipe stood fearless of the truant’s wayward cry And the splashing of the swimmer, in the days gone by. O the days gone by! O the days gone by! The music of the laughing lip, the luster of the eye; The childish faith in fairies, and Aladdin’s magic ring— The simple, soul-reposing, glad belief in everything,— When life was like a story, holding neither sob nor sigh, In the golden olden glory of the days gone by.

It is the birthday, in 1849, of U.S. poet James Whitcomb Riley. He wrote more than 1,000 poems, including "Raggedy Man," which inspired production of the Raggedy Ann doll.
#WriterSky #Poet #History #BOTD

Damn right.
Spaceman Spiff > Ebenezer Scrooge

She wrote the novels Seola, Selma, and Atla. Smith was also the wife of Vermont’s governor, whose house was the target of a small group of Confederate soldiers who raided the Vermont town of St. Albans. The soldiers had already robbed banks and other targets in the town before reaching Smith’s house. The Governor wasn’t home, but Smith grabbed the only weapon she could find – an unloaded pistol – and opened her door to brandish the gun. The raiders fled and moved on to other targets, but Smith gathered a posse to chase them down. The rebels reached the Canadian border, though, and escaped capture in the U.S.

A painting of Ann Eliza Brainerd Smith, the wife of Gov. J. Gregory Smith and a renaissance woman acknowledged by many as “accomplished in her own right.” Source: The St. Albans Messenger | The Saint Albans Museum

It is the birthday of the novelist who stared down the northernmost raid of Confederate soldiers in the U.S. Civil War. Ann Eliza Smith was born on this day in 1819.
#BadAssWoman #WriterSky #BookSky #History #BOTD

A reckoning will come.
Not in any imagined "next" life.
Here. In our courts. And prisons.
We only need to resist and work toward an overwhelming Blue wave in the next election.

I want to see those ice agents frog marched into that reckoning.

I know nothing about this, but I'm reposting because I have "discovered" so, so, so many great stories by reading anthologies like this.

And because, if I ever manage to accumulate enough money, I want to buy this book, tell the world to leave me alone for a while, and immerse myself in its pages.

“We are home now. We marched from the park to ICE, very peaceful crowd. We were standing around ICE pushed us down, sprayed us with chemical and I was hit in the head with a projectile. This was so unprovoked. People have to know that the Feds are attacking people with NO provocation whatsoever.”

I have twins, now in their tweens. But their earlier disputes sometimes reminded me of this thing a friend in college said, "Looks like two monkeys trying to f--k a football."

It does sum up a big chunk of parenting more than one kid.

The partial nuclear test ban would have been made redundant by the 1996 comprehensive nuclear test ban – which prohibits detonating nuclear weapons for testing or military purposes. However, eight nations have not signed the comprehensive ban: China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, North Korea, and the United States.

U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy signs the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, October 7, 1963. Robert Knudsen. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

On October 7th, 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The agreement prohibited testing nuclear weapons by detonating them in the atmosphere or underwater – limiting these tests to underground.
#Nukes #Treaty #History #OTD

It recommended assisting Allied Powers, the UK, the Netherlands, and China. The memo also called for a complete embargo of trade between the U.S. and Japan. This kind of document is fairly common within the military and among intelligence operatives. The McCollum memo, though, is believed by some to be proof that U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was actively trying to lure the Japanese to attack the U.S. so the U.S. could declare war against the Axis Powers in World War Two. This is largely because, after McCollum’s eight action items, the memo includes the sentence, quote, “If, by these means, Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better.” Many, many books have been written in the attempt to describe how U.S. Naval intelligence conspired with President Roosevelt to allow – or even provoke – the Japanese attack on the fleet of U.S. war ships and sailors at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. To date – according to historians – none have been accurate.

A front page of the Hilo [Hawaii] Tribune Herald newspaper published in November 30, 1941 - just a week before Japan's naval forces bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

On this day in 1940, the McCollum memo was issued. Written by U.S. naval officer Arthur McCollum, the document outlined a plan for the U.S. to limit Japan’s ability to wage war in the Pacific.
#WW2 #Intel #History #OTD #PearlHarbor #Japan #Attack

The King’s position was outlined in that year’s Royal Proclamation and the line on the map was one of the first significant disputes between the colonists and the King. The line ran from what is now southern Georgia to Maine, often following the current Appalachian Trail. Though the proclamation rankled colonists, it has been – and continues to be – of value to the Indigenous or First Nations people of Canada because it was the first legal recognition of aboriginal title. That’s a legal term for Indigenous peoples’ land rights – even after sovereignty of that land has been claimed after invasion or conquest by another power.

This 1766 map of eastern North America reflects the "Proclamation Line" set by King George III of England. It shows a large area, west of the American colonies identified by the words "Lands Reserved for the Indians" Source: U.S. Library of Congress

On this day in 1763, England’s King George III said American colonists could not settle Indigenous land west of the Appalachian range.
#IndigenousRights #AboriginalTitle #History #OTD

This sums it up:

Hm.
That >is< weird.

"demonic sexual performances"?

for maga, that could be putting seasoning on chicken before you bake it.

Wait.

Is that... Medvedev or... Nigel Farage?