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My husband wants sex, but I don't. What should I do?
My husband has made it clear that he finds me as desirable as ever and wants to continue having sex during our pregnancy. But I feel too big, tired, and unattractive to get in the mood. How can I explain this to him without hurting his feelings or making him feel deprived?
Posted: 03/06/2003 by a BabyCenter Member
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I am 26 weeks pregnant and not allowed to have sex docs orders... but yet in this case I'm the one who wants it and he is scared of hurting me or even putting me into labor but he still gets his when wants it... I don't think its fair. But for those who are more nonsexual. You still need that connection so lots of kissing and cuddling and massaging and who knows that mood may come over you outta no where... I wish you all luck thru your pregnancy trials...posted 08/28/2012 by nickemcgill
I was the same way and I kept it up until about 7 months, then I had to stop all together because it was just becoming painful most of all. He needs to understand that you're pregnant and your body is focusing on making the baby and you just aren't in the mood and probably won't be until 6 weeks after the baby is born. Offer to do other things for him though to show that you want to please him and it's nothing personalposted 02/06/2013 by ckluvsav
I'm just honest with my husband. I tell him exactly how I'm feeling, and we work it out. Sometimes he's able to change my mind, sometimes we're, uh, creative, and some days when I know we'll have time and I'm not feeling too awful I try to convince myself that I want to and cook a nice dinner and dress up a bit. In any case, he's always understanding, and I'd rather be honest than miserable.posted 01/31/2013 by a BabyCenter Member
My husband has not had a desire to have sex with me. I'm 17 weeks pregnant and I don't have a desire either. But I do get sad that he hasn't had a desire for me, I mean, he is not pregnant.posted 02/01/2013 by a BabyCenter Member
I'm at five weeks and he's already really hurting for sex, but this is our first and we tried for a year, so I'm really overprotective of my ladybits right now. I don't want to over do it, or put pressure in the wrong spot or something. I assumed this sort of fear is normal, but its still sad. I love my hubby and I want to spend some physical time together, but its just so hard to get myself to NOT shut down like fort knox you know?posted 01/26/2013 by Aourai
I haven't had a single plumet. Sex as been very constant and this baby is coming out in 4 days. there are times where I dont feel 'turned on' at first, but I always look as sex as private time between us that I can connect to him and be close tto him and in the right possitions it actually helepd my back outposted 01/17/2013 by lividrose27
I actually have the opposite issue while pregnant. My sex drive is through the roof! It's my husband who turns me down. I think it is important to make sure that you are meeting in the middle. Even if one of you isn't feeling up to being intimate, it's important that you try to make time for eachother. Otherwise you could have a partner feeling neglected and resentful. That, and since this is my third I think I can say, it will NOT get easier to have sex once the baby is born. Take advantage of the time you have together now, to the best of your ability. Good luck!posted 10/04/2012 by a BabyCenter Member
We ladies have to keep in mind that men see sex as a way to bond with us, so not having it with them would be the equivalent of them refusing to talk to us for several days or weeks. We would feel alone, depressed and very insecure. I try (and dont always get it right) to have sex with my husband once a day or at least every other day whether I want to or not and I try (my hardest) to act like I am into it...and usually I get into it if I wasn't at first. It's important that your man knows he's your man and if so, he will better understand the occasional times when you really are just too beat and h will handle that better. I think it;s also important that a man knows that most the time when he wants it, he gets it. Just good for the marriage. A sexually satisfied man can handle almost anything life throws at you guys and he will anything, including bring down the stars for you and your family b/c he knows he is loved and appreciated. Just my opinion.posted 04/17/2011 by dezaun26
sex has become nonexsistant in my life. Its not that I feel unattractive I just don't have any desire for sex at all and it's put a strain in my relationship...posted 03/28/2010 by a BabyCenter Member
Listen, I know this is tough for MOST pregnant women. This is my 5th pregnancy and I've learned from experience how important sexual intimacy is in a marriage durring pregnancy. Yes, of course theres gonna be times when you just don't feel like having sex or its too painful, etc. But there are ways to satisfy your man anyways. Trust me, he finds you attractive NO MATTER WHAT! He definately finds the changes to your body interesting and appealing (especially your breasts getting bigger). I've found it useful to just engage in foreplay like kissing, touching, etc. Mutual masturbation is useful but what seems to satisfy him best (without actually having intercourse) is oral sex. Men appreciate it when you make the effort to satisfy them in that way and find it very rewarding. You'd be surprised at how quickly you can get it over with!posted 12/02/2009 by a BabyCenter Member
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Jinhuei Enya Dai
I joined the Institute after teaching at Middlebury College Chinese Summer Program and conducting research at the University of California, Berkeley. I am a believer of Docendo Discimus and 教學相長 (jiāoxué xiāng zhăng: to teach is to learn; teaching and learning promote and enhance each other), so during my teaching career I've never stopped re-investing myself as a life-long learner and as an innovator. Since 2001, I have attended academic and professional development programs, including the Teaching Chinese Program at Ohio State University, the German-U.S.

subset: commoncrawl


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Tag Archives: Nba playoffs
It's not what you think...
What is going on here?
The Raptors just lost in a Game 7 heartbreaker to the Nets.
Last night Joey Crawford ripped the ball out of Kevin Durant's hands at the free throw line with the game on the line to correct
Highly enjoying watch for fans of basketball, or those who are enthusiasts of watching videos much longer than they initially intended to. Here's an incredibly
The Miami Heat and Indiana Pacers played a thrilling back-and-forth Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals last night. The ending, however, was a bit
The San Antonio Spurs have a rabid fan base. They also have a fan base that knows how to make themselves
Tayshaun Prince turned back the clock 10 years last night by throwing down a sick dunk over three Oklahoma City Thunder defenders. Raise your hand
The Chicago Bulls got flat-out destroyed by the Heat last night in Miami. At one point, LeBron James & Co. held a 46-point lead and
The New York Knicks avoided disaster by winning Game 2 at Madison Square Garden. Guard Iman Shumpert also took the opportunity to announce his arrival
Nate Robinson was pretty heroic last night--playing with the flu, he took to game breaks to puke. Didn't stop him and the incredibly shorthanded Bulls
Kevin Durant was pretty Durant-like last night--38 points, 8 rebounds, 6 assists, and countless "I can totally go without smiling for the next five years"
The Houston Rockets held on for a 105-103 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder to force a Game 5. The match was a bona fide
He scored some points. And then he scored some. And some more.
Dwight Howard's time in Los Angeles has been pretty awful for all involved parties. Over the weekend, news emerged that the discontented big man would
Los Angeles Times sports columnist T.J. Simers was on hand in Memphis last night to see the Memphis Grizzlies defeat his hometown Clippers in Game
It shall be written in the history books that LeBron James played his heart out and finally won an NBA Championship in a Miami Heat
I mean, it is called Beantown.
The Oklahoma City Thunder dropped the first two games of the Western Conference Finals. Then they woke up.
The Miami Heat dropped its third straight game to the Boston Celtics to move one game away from elimination tonight. Paul Pierce's clutch three-pointer 52.9
The Oklahoma City Thunder fell behind the San Antonio Spurs 2-0 in the Western Conference Finals. Since then, they're playing out-of-this-world basketball, winning three straight
Not a typographical error in the headline, but according to Sasha Andrade of the "Local 10 News Saturday Morning" on Miami ABC the Philadelphia 76ers
If the torch in the NBA's Western Conference hadn't been passed already, it definitely changed residence last night as the Oklahoma City Thunder eliminated the
Dwayne Wade, upset with a no-call on his offensive end, bulldozed Indiana Pacers guard Darren Collison from behind in the fourth quarter of
The Philadelphia 76ers became just the fifth No. 8 seed to upend a No. 1 seed in the NBA Playoffs last night, thanks
The New York Knicks lost to the Miami Heat, 87-70, at Madison Square Garden last night and now face a 3-0 series deficit.
As a society, we were doing such a good job of letting Tebowing die a natural death. And then Paul Pierce had to go ruin
New York Knicks big man Amare Stoudemire added injury to insult when he reportedly punched the glass encasing a fire extinguisher in the locker room
The Los Angeles Clippers authored the greatest comeback in the history of the NBA playoffs last night, going on a 28-3 run to
The Big Three didn't have the talent to bring that championship to South Beach this year. The ABC cameras stayed off D-Wayde and LBJ after
The MVP for best post-NBA Champion Facebook diss aimed at LeBron and his mother goes to The Custodian's fake Facebook page. Classic Brian Cardinal: "That
You know what NBA analyst Stephen A. Smith said this morning about Bron Bron and how off-the-court issues are affecting his play in the finals.
Yeah, the Bulls lost Game Four in OT to the Heat and are now trailing the series 3-1. Yeah, Derrick Rose had a chance to
We're big fans of Sir Charles in these parts, so it's going to take a lot to get us to commit blasphemy about his lack
24. That's the magic number of consecutive free throws Dirk Nowitzki threw down last night during his remarkable 48-point game against Oklahoma City. In addition
First, sorry about your loss, Celtics fans. Second, Russell Westbrook's monster tomahawk dunk in the third quarter of Oklahoma City's Game Five win over Memphis


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WHAT I'M AFTER IS TWO THINGS: What was the first concert you ever went to and what was the best concert you ever saw. They don't have to necessarily be stadium shows or anything but at least something like a few hundred people. Could be a state fair or the like with an over the hill type of band.
FIRST SHOW: OK, so I did not see the show that that poster is for but the first concert I ever went to was during Ozzy's first solo tour, for "Blizzard of Oz", in 1981 (just under six months before Randy Rhoads died in a plane crash). It was fantastic. (The concert, not Randy Rhoads dying in a plane crash). My friend won tickets on WLUP and we had 5th row seats at Poplar Creek. I luuuuv me some old Black Sabbath but other than his first solo album I never listened to any other Ozzy again. I don't feel like I'm missing much.
(Funnily enough one of my sister-in-law's first concerts was seeing Ozzy later in the same tour, in 1982, less (fewer) than one week after Ozzy bit the head off a bat in Des Moines. When he played at the Assembly Hall in Champaign he made it through two words before collapsing and being taken to the hospital. Rock and roll.)
BEST SHOW: Well, I know it could be a tough decision for a lot of people but mine is pretty clear cut. It was seeing the band Love, touring and playing their ultimate classic album "Forever Changes", in it's entirety, in Dublin in 2003. Now Love is not my favorite band or anything but the setting and the historic nature of the show increase the sentimentality and take it beyond all the others.
(I say historic because the band effectively only existed for about three years, only had three albums of note, and for a few different reasons they hardly ever played outside of L.A. Add in the fact that they went about 35 years between their glory years and their re-emergence, with the lead singer Arthur Lee having spent a number of those years in prison, and it made the news of their reuniting all the more amazing.)
I happened to be in Ireland on vacation at the time so I didn't actually go all that way just to see them but I was on the west coast of the country and drove about 4-5 hours just to see them. (Technically it wasn't "Love" but Arthur Lee who was backed by a band called "Baby Lemonade".)
Love is seriously underrated. Not only have many people never heard them but people also don't know anything about the influence they had. From the fact that Jim Morrison said he only wanted The Doors to be as big as Love (sorry, can't find a link but it's true) to the fact that the classic riff of the Syd Barrett/Pink Floyd mega-classic "Interstellar Overdrive" is based on the Love cover of Burt Bacharach's "My Little Red Book" (Which Bacharach apparently hated, but I love), (You can totally hear the similarity. "My Little Red Book" goes "dun dun dun dun dun dun-ta-da-dun dun dun-ta-da-dun-ta dun" and "Interstellar Overdrive" goes, more slowly, "dun dun dun-ta-da-dun dun dun-ta-da-dun"), to the fact that their song "7 and 7 Is", which came out in 1966, is sometimes considered to be the first punk song ever written.
Anyway, the show was completely insane. Arthur Lee was in fantastic shape, and voice, considering he was almost 60. (I saw him again at the Park West a few months later and he was not in such great condition) I expected an older crowd but the majority of the 400 or so people there were relatively young (younger than me) and they seemed to know all the words to every song from an album which came out in 1967 and were singing along very loudly.
Arthur had been released from prison not too long before this time and the song "Live and Let Live" with it's bridge "Served my time, served it well" and the last verse of "The Red Telephone" with the haunting words "I want my freedom" (starts around the 4:50 mark) repeated over and over brought chills that I can still conjure. He also ended the show with a mash-up of "Everybody's Gotta Live" and "Instant Karma".
Yeah, maybe not the finest Who album of all time and Kenny Jones is no Keith Moon but at least I can say I saw The Who in their first final farewell tour, the It's Hard tour, at the Rosemont Horizon in 1982. Got scalped tickets, 48th row main floor, $25.00)
Believe me I understand how unlikely it is to put a tribute band into a category like this but that's the way it is. One of the best shows I ever saw was a Genesis tribute band called "The Musical Box" doing the entire "Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" album. I think it was either at the Vic or the Riv, can't really remember which. I figure about 1% of people reading this are even familiar with Peter Gabriel-era Genesis. It was kind of so crazy that if all you know is Phil Collins-era Genesis you can't really imagine how crazy (and great!) it was. Luckily, you don't have to imagine it because it's right here.The show I saw (with the blessing and original costumes and slides of Genesis) was incredibly, absurdly awesome. People were freaking out it was so fucking awesome.
BONUS SECTION: Where I just tell you about smaller bands that I like that played often in the Urbana/Champaign/Savoy tri-city area:
Two of my favorite bands that played locally down here with some regularity back in the day were Chicago based bands involving Leroy Bach. (Before he went on to play with Liz Phair and Wilco (from '97-'04)). Uptighty was so fun and great. Fantastic rhythms and horns and singing. Like anywhere from 6 to 14 people on stage at any given show. (Here, lookit) Personal favorite though was a band called 5style, or 5ive Style. No singing, with Leroy on bass, John Herndon on drums, often Jeremy Jacobsen on organ/other stuff, and the coup de gras, maybe my favorite guitar player ever, Bill Dolan, who was just so ridiculous I can't describe it. (Behold) (He was also in Heroic Doses which was pretty freaking awesome. They didn't play but a few times down here but. I think they only had one album (which was on sub pop))
via f0.bcbits.com
Of course I have mentioned this before on other RRRRs but the greatest band to ever come from Urbana-Champaign is Lonely Trailer. They've been around for close to 30 years. After an extended break starting in the mid 90's or so until the early-mid 2000's they are back. Just unbelievably great. I can't find any links to do them complete justice, but here's one anyway. Ok, here's another. You maybe can't tell how great the drummer is. He is also the main singer. The drummer is the singer! I'll just say that they opened for the Pixies once and it's a crime that they haven't been able to make a living by playing music. The album pictured above (which you could listen to and/or buy here) is their new album. For me, in a good way, it sounds so remarkably similar to their older stuff that if I didn't know better I wouldn't know better. The addition of a keyboard player when they re-formed has worked out very nicely.
Of the slightly bigger name variety, probably the best show I ever saw in Champaign was The Flaming Lips at the old Blind Pig just before "Transmissions From The Satellite Heart" came out. (They played here other times as well, but you don't forget the first time you hear "When Yer Twenty-Two". LOUD.)
And one more band that used to play somewhat regularly in Champaign was the punkish/bluegrass then later more straight-up bluegrass band out of Austin, the Bad Livers. They pretty much ruled for a couple years but then refused to play at the Blind Pig anymore because the owner was a complete dickwad.
SO LET'S SEE, WHERE WAS I? Oh yeah. Now I'm fully prepared to be occasionally disheartened by some of the young whippersnappers on here who will either name some band I never heard of or possibly some band that I have heard of and it will make me feel sad, but that's ok. I can handle it. I won't judge. So, what's the first show you saw? What's your favorite show you ever saw? Tell me.


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Playing Dice With The Universe
Colonizing Purgatoryby Bill Kte'pi
Nov 04,2004
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This column is unlike previous ones in that it wasn't originally intended to be a column. Originally, the material here went into a brief series of short stories, which magazines rejected (rightfully so) because I had focused too much on worldbuilding and not enough on story -- that ancient Achilles' heel of many a science fiction writer, and one I had hoped I'd outgrown. So I toyed with the ideas for a bit and thought about turning them into a game -- but couldn't put enough material together without answering questions that I wanted to leave open-ended.
These things happen. So it's a column. A minigame. There's no system here, because I'm not intuitively a systems designer, which means when I need to be one, either I do a crap job -- like the unpublished draft of Santa's Soldiers, before Todd Downing and the rest of the Deep 7 crew redid the mechanics from the ground up -- or it takes me forever, as with the forthcoming Fierce Lullabies.
I'm leaving those questions I just mentioned unanswered. Are the beliefs of the people in this setting correct? Do they have the right idea about God? Is there a God? Is Heaven really Heaven? The setting works best, I think, when these questions have answers no more clear-cut and definitive than in our own world -- even if that seems, at first glance, to run contrary to the setting's overall feel.
So here's the pitch, kids, here's the central conceit: What if some religious claims -- the existence of the soul and the afterlife -- were empirically correct? What if we could see our souls as clearly as our shadows, and travel to the afterlife as easily as to the moon?
As far as the eye can see, the hills are lush and green with thick grass, dappled with shadows, and all I can think about is St Joseph's Day, when Father Mike's necromancy trial ended within hours of the Galilei probe landing here in Purgatory. The air is still, but the shadows keep movin. I'm afraid to listen, cause even if I don't see anything that oughta make noise, I'm pretty sure there's something to hear. The "ears" of my environment suit are turned as low as the safety controls will allow.
What I'm going to do is just keep talking, ladies and gentlemen, so if all of a sudden y'all can't hear me, either something has gone wrong here or Mission Control has cut me off. I'm not pointing fingers either way. Talking's about my best option right now.
I keep thinking about my last day in New Orleans before I got called in to train for the Enoch assignment, which wasn't called that yet. I've been back a couple times since then -- holidays, leave -- but always as a Local Celebrity, if you see what I mean. That day before the telephone call, it was my last day of anonymity. The fact that it was the day Father Mike was convicted -- and that the Church approved the release of the feed from the Galilei probe that same day -- well, I'm not allowed to comment on the coincidence of that. I know there's folks think it was all about spin control, pointing out the good of the Church in the wake of one of its own being pegged for rotten, but you gotta figure that'd be a pretty expensive gambit, right?
March 19 was St Joseph's Day and if your name ends in a vowel I guess you know what that means: the feast of St Joseph the father of Christ, patron saint of Sicily and protector of la famiglia. Now, my last name might be Duchesne, and il mio padre might be from Acadiana, but I was took in by my mama's family when I was pretty young, and them Primas came over from Missina in 1852, by way of Palermo. I was as dark-skinned as any of em, moreso than the few that caught the redhead gene, and I fit in just fine. Aunt Lil makes her own olive salad and gives ribbon-tied jars of it to the neighbors every Christmas, and every Easter she brings cassata cakes to the St Francis bake sale, with lots of chocolate and pistachios and homemade apricot jam.
They do their penance at Holy Name Sanctuarium, Father Mike's, and they kept going even after he got arrested. That's about the time I started thinking of my family as "they," I guess. It was well and good for them to stand by their padre, right? But me, I was on a career track with the Swiss Guard Exploration Bureau, and it's hard enough for an American to get ahead in the field of exploration, with all its Old Europe Catholics holding sway, and Mission Captain titles portioned out to the landless nobility. I got a world of respect for Captain Vanessa Adria, but I can't get past the newest of her titles, "Marquess of Heaven." You want to tell me that's not tempting fate, that's not hubris -- but a secular sanctuarium, that you've got a problem with?
At least New Orleans was still a Catholic city, so it wasn't near as bad as if I'd lived in M'ssippi or 'Bama. It's funny how you can have a small town inside a big city. I guess, what I've seen in movies, New York is like that too, all skyscrapers one minute and Chinatown the next. In New Orleans, everyone from somewhere else forgets we got as many Italians as anything else -- there was a time part of the French Quarter was called Little Sicily, back when the Quarter had more than daiquiris and strip clubs and those skeevy-looking sanctuariums so the tourists can wash their sins off before heading home.
I remember my grandma telling me, when I was young enough to take it at face value, that the reason the buildings are so close in cities is so you can't tell who casts a shadow: when you got that many people living in one place, you got a better chance of one of em having that taint on em, consorting with that evil, and you're best off not knowing. I believed it back then, sure as every child does I guess, at that age when you believe in ghosts and fairy cats: I believed that somewhere out there, or better yet and worse still somehow among us, were people who cast shadows. Just like animals did. Me and my friends -- mostly Jimmy Garrity, a nint'warder I knew from school, he's Jimmy G now, you go try his sandwich place and tell him Cesare Duchesne sent you -- we'd get into arguments about them, you know, about the fetches.
"Chezz," Jimmy'd ask, "do you reckon a fetch has a shadow and a soul? Or do they just have the shadow, like dogs and cats and what all?"
"Well," I'd say sometimes, "they gotta have the soul too, you know, because that's just ... scarier. Like werewolves. They're scary because they're wolves and people both. Think of how scary that'd be to see: you're looking at someone, they look normal, normal looking guy, normal looking soul, and then you look down and he's casting a shadow! It's like neckermancy, isn't it? Only worser."
"Just the shadow," I'd say other times, "it's like they were born wrong, like they were born without a soul, and so they're just like everything else in the world. Right? Having a soul, that's why we don't have shadows. You couldn't have both, it's like water being hot and cold at the same time."
I guess we weren't the only guys in the world to talk about stuff like that, but at the time of course you think you are. When you're that young, everything still seems magical, everything still seems possible. Do you remember how old you were when you stopped watching the colors of your soul change at the sanctuarium? Stopped watching the oranges and reds seep away as you wondered which sin caused which stain? I have this theory that it's around the time you reconcile guilt over masturbation with the certainty that you're going to do it anyway, but that might be a Catholic thing. I should ask Philips, he's the most vocal Protestant on the Enoch mission team --
-- ah, I was trying not to think about Philips, about the look on his face for that moment, just a moment, after his soul dissolved like sugar candy on your tongue, when the hills started to lurch at him.
On St Joseph's Day I went to Delacroix's Universal Blessed, the nondenominational sanctuarium, which will probably disappoint a lot of people and surprise others, since ever'body back home has been holding me up as this hero, this saint of the New Orleans Italian Catholics. I don't know what to tell you about that. I switched from Holy Name for the same reason a lot of people did: cause the whole thing with Father Mike, it made us uncomfterble. No two ways about it, I'm sorry. No, I didn't think he'd done it. I didn't think he was guilty, or if so, not of the whole enchilada. I mean, the affair with that woman, he copped to that, so I reckon that part was true.
But shit on toast, as we used to say, it was the first necromancy trial in America since 1808, and that one never got past the first hearing. You figure, the state bothers going that far, well maybe there's something to something, right? I guess that's what they mean by the court of public opinion. There was no denying, his soul was pure white, China white, like bones in the snow. There's only two ways to get your soul that white, and when it turns out you been sleeping with your choir leader, well, that only leaves one way, don't it? Necromancy.
Nondenominational sanctuariums. Mother Mary. When I was a boy, Aunt Lil and my grandma -- especially my grandma -- would go on about them, saying as how just cause they was a necessity didn't mean they was right. Saying as how it was like marriage, how sure it was a good thing, a necessary thing, for people to be allowed to get married without a priest -- by a justice of the peace or what have you -- but that dint mean it was a good thing to do it. Maybe the soul wouldn't know the difference -- maybe you'd come out just as clean in a nondom as you would in Holy Name or Jean Baptiste or Fatima Bless or Beth Shalom up in Gentilly. Or even one of them Buddhist sancs they started up in the 60s! Yeah, maybe your soul wouldn't know, but God?
Well, maybe God kept track different from how people did. If my grandma wasn't around, Aunt Lil would say it was like orgasms. Just cause your thing doesn't know if you're putting it somewhere you're supposed to or not, and'll finish itself off either way, dunt mean it's okay to put it any old place. And if you did, God would know.
I'd been raised with alla that, but I still went to Delacroix's, cause somehow it seemed less of a betrayal to work my sins off in a nondom than it did to go to a Baptist one or something. And if I went to another Catholic one, well, that'd just drive home the fact that it was Father Mike's place I was avoiding, I guess. I didn't think this all through consciously, you understand. But I've had plenty of time to look back on it, especially now.
Thing is, there wasn't that much difference between Delacroix's and Holy Name, and neither of them was all that different from the nameless nondom -- we just called it "the sanc" -- I went to while I was in training. You go in, and you work your sins off. You make some meals for the poor. You take a few rounds recycling the paper. You sew some buttons onto clothes. Delacroix's had a selling point in that it was part of that new Charity Community, you know -- big corporations pooling some of their non-proprietary data-crunching together and having people do it for free in the nondoms, and using whatever money got saved for "charitable efforts." Building houses and stuff.
The big difference wasn't even that the Catholic ones had the confessionals -- it was really in the decor. Nondoms don't have the crosses and the stained glass and like that -- they have televisions, motivational posters, lots of hanging plants. They don't look like church. Delacroix's looked more like a cross between a gym and a really upscale bar -- hell, they even had waitresses who'd bring you a drink or a snack while you worked, but I found that kind of distracting. Maybe if they only hired, you know, uglier waitresses ...
Point is, you know, you do your good deeds, and you watch your soul heal. You watch the color seep out of that grapefruit-sized ball of light floating over your shoulder. You work till it sparkles like somebody just scooped a cup of glow out of the stars. You do your work now, so's to spend less time in Purgatory.
That was the idea anyway, right?
I know people blame President Kennedy, God rest his soul, for "Purgatory" becoming the official-like name with the government and all, but hell, can you blame him? It ain't just cause he was Catholic, he weren't the only Catholic president. There's just no other good name for it. What else you gonna call it, Limbo? Nirvana? Maine? It's a place where you go so the fires can blast the last bits of sin off your soul, before you go on to whatever's next. You don't have to be Catholic to know that. Just happens we had a good name for it, is all.
Or that was the idea, anyway.
So I started St Joseph's Day at Delacroix's, which I know isn't a very New Orleans thing to do. Usually, you know, you dirty it up before you clean it off, if you see what I mean. Not the other way around. But me, maybe I'm finicky like that -- I shower before going to bed, too -- I never liked the idea of starting in on any kind of partying or debauchery without I whited out first.
If it tells you anything about secularism -- and me, I'm not saying it does -- the TVs at Delacroix's were broadcasting the stuff about Father Mike's trial, the speculation about whether or not he'd get the death sentence now that he was found guilty, panels of experts, shit like that. But when I took the streetcar down to Garrity's, to get one of Jimmy's poboys for lunch? TV there had the Galilei probe. Now, maybe the Delacroix's TVs switched over, too, after some whatcha call perfunctory rehashing of the Father Mike case. I can't say one way or t'other.
By time I got to Garrity's, anyway, ever'body was lookin at the TV he had up in the corner of the ceiling. I mean ever'body, I mean his niece Celia come in from the kitchen, and that boy Fredo he got cleaning the place, and the cashiers Snookie and that boy with the earrings in his nose, all of them just come out to the front there and sat down on one of them picnic tables Jimmy G has all over the place and they just were lookin at it.
So I had to look, too, because when you see that you feel like a dick if you decide you can't wait to order your poboy and Coke.
"Chezz!" Jimmy G said, in that voice where you're shouting in a whisper. "Chezz, looka!" His soul pulsed over his shoulder, as if responding to his excitement, which who knows, maybe it was. It was in pretty good shape for middle of the week -- some yellowy-purple bruises, a red splotch like a paintball wound, the usual nonspecific dirtiness you pick up over the course of an ordinary day.
The images on the TV were grainy, and just kept playing in a loop. Black and white, fuzzy, not much more than a vague sense of motion, and you could tell whatever was moving wasn't doing it too smooth. The news scrawl at the bottom said "Galilei probe damaged in landing, but landing successful."
"Shit!" I said, and got a look from Celia for it. Her soul had a compulsive shine to it, but never quite lost a green hue around the edges. "I thought it wasn't even gonna be getting there for another week?"
"Got there early," Jimmy G said with a shrug. "Cameras got thonked, though. All they got is that one ittle bit, looping over and over, wid that damn mouse wiggling his nose and stuff. But Chezz, it's Purgatory! I mean fuck all -- shut up, Celia -- we got history on the screen here."
"Don't we damn," I said. There wasn't much to see but we couldn't stop lookin, you know?
Kinda the opposite of now, where there's plenty to see and I'm doing everything I can not to look. But there's nothing for it, y'all. I look down, or straight ahead, and all's I see are shadows. I look up, and well, up is the sky. Where it meets the hills and whatever's beyond them, it looks like foaming teeth. The cycle -- what you'd call day and night anywhere on the world -- is fast here, and I've seen it go through twice but I don't think we've been here anything even close to a full day. Up from those teeth, from those jagged something-or-others, a brilliant blue is climbing the sky, and if it really is a cycle then it'll drag marble behind it, the vast cracked marble underfloor of what I have to assume is a good place to go when you die.
Behind me, the flames of Hell are setting in the crinkled-cellophane horizon of what I can only call the west. It'll be another hour before the screams are distant enough for me to risk listening, and even then I'm afraid of what else I might hear, from above and around, from everywhere.
I don't know for sure it's Heaven and Hell running through this sky, so let me put that out there to you before Mission Control starts blaring all kindsa disclaimers around. What I'm saying is that's my feeling. That's my gut. Cause when them flames is up in the sky, when the hot's beatin down on you like a wet blanket soaked in August gasoline, it ain't even the hot you're thinking on -- it's the screams, and the noises beneath the screams, and it's the devil that rises up inside you telling you all the things you forgot you did, all the things you got forgave for. When that sky presses down like a handshake, you can't think none of your good thoughts no more, and that's the plain truth so help me Jesus.
So help me Jesus.
Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know I ought to tell you my feelings on what I think is Heaven, cause I'm awful certain they're not gonna match up to the official position of the Swiss Guard Exploration Bureau, the Roman Catholic Church, or my laicized sponsor the United States government of America. So there you go, Mission Control, there is a disclaimer right there for you in my own voice and my words too. Say you happy, Jack.
But what I think on it is that it doesn't feel good when it takes its turn in the sky. It feels cold, and I don't mean like ice, although there is a settling down from it, if you see what I mean, not like a breeze but like what a breeze brings with it, when the December air gets snatched off the surface of Lake Pontchartrain. It cools you off after Hell's done set, it's true. But it feels cold like a friend you haven't seen in years cause you done bad by him and he ain't forgot. It feels cold like the woman you dint call back. It feels resentful. And that ain't something you want to feel down here in the Purgatory.
You know, that reminds me, I made a promise to one of y'all. I promised I'd look for Elijah, the mouse got sent up here with the Galilei probe, since that was a one way trip and all. I'm sorry to tell you, I haven't seen him. Maybe we touched down somewhere different. Maybe he went explorin himself. Maybe he got took up one place or t'other. But I did look.
"Purgatory can support life," that's what I remember Walter Cronkite saying on the TV, when Elijah hopped out of the probe. You could just barely make out his nose twitching at the beginning of that loop, before the video went out. "Repeat -- we have confirmed that Purgatory can support life."
"Damn," Jimmy G said, his soul bobbing a little as the tiniest spot of color floated to its surface for the profanity, and I nodded. More'n a couple of the people in Garrity's was looking at me then, you know, the ones who knew me, knew who I was. "You reckon you'll go in?" Jimmy G asked. "Reckon they'll call you?"
"Hell," I said, feeling kinda self-conscious and everything as my own little bloom of sin showed up on my just-cleaned soul. "I dunno. Who knows what they'll do. Maybe some day. Maybe one of the missions. I'uz too young to go in for the field surveys, but now, who knows. I got some years left in me."
"That boy right there," Jimmy G said to Snookie and one of the customers, a nice looking girl probably went to Loyola. "That boy's going places. He's in the Swiss Guard EB. Stands for Exploration Bureau, ladies, so he's going places for real. Probably go to Purgatory, him. Hell, probably even go to Heaven."
"Oh yeah?" the Loyola girl asked. Her soul looked slutty. I'm sorry, I know they keep on tellin us them colors ain't got no kinda correlation to anything real, but I got the old prejudices, me. When I see a soul with more red on it than anything else, well, I figure it's somebody who likes testin the mattresses. Yeah, Jimmy G was trying to get me laid, just like in high school, when he was the baseball jock and me I dint care about much except for watching Dr Morgus on the TV and reading Robert Heinlein.
"Hey Chezz," Snookie said. "What can I get for you?"
"Take me a fries and ham poboy," I said. "Lots of debris on it, if you please, and a Coke."
She smiled and saw to it, and yeah, she was one of the reasons I always had my lunch at Jimmy G's, I guess. The seafood poboys were crappy and he knew it, but the ham or the roast beef? Good enough you didn't mind a line if you kettled onto one.
Everyone was quiet again as we watched, although not a lot was happening, which I guess is how it goes with news-of-the-minute. I ate my poboy, I washed it down with the Coke, and thanked Snookie for the piece of pecan pie she brought me -- on the house, "cause it's the last one from the pie anyway," a logic I couldn't make sense of, but then, I don't run me no restaurant.
"Guess we know where Casarotto's goin," Jimmy G said in that tone of his, playful but at the same time dark, a tone I remembered from when we'uz in grade school and we'd dare each other to look in the mirror. You know, look dead-on in it instead of out the corner of our eye, like we wasn't afraid at all of catching the reflected light of our souls, no matter what we'd heard it coulda done to us.
"Now c'mon," I said, trying to sound light.
"What?" Jimmy G said. "Ain't like you're going to Holy Name any more either, or St Francis. You know as well as I do, he was a fuckin freak, a fuckin demon-consortin freak."
"Shit," I said, and everyone else was makin faces like they expected an argument to roll, so I wondered how long Jimmy'd been setting in on this line. "All we know is, you know, his soul doesn't quite seem to -- well, to work the way we think it ought."
"Uh-huh," he said. "Cause of his necromancy."
"I don't think that automatically means it's necromancy, Jimmy G, Christ almighty."
"Well, court says different now. Court says, your Father Mike's been stealing off the dead, eating off their souls, to keep his own clean. Gonna hang for it, too."
"They don't hang folks no more," Snookie said. "Gas em or something."
"Yeah, well." Jimmy G said.
"Anyway," I said. "I gotta get down the road, you know. Gotta put my offering up on the altar."
That took Jimmy off. "The public one? What about your family's?"
"Yeah, well," I said, and shrugged. He knew il mio famiglia went to Father Mike's church, and he knew I didn't, so I figured he could piece the rest together. That was the thing with Jimmy, he was from a small family -- two parents, one older brother, an aunt whose daughters he'd set me up with, and ever'body else was dead or in Texas. "Anyway."
"Happy St Joseph's, Cesare," Snookie said, and gave me a little hug.
I picked me up a muffuletta at Central Grocery, and a box of pralines, and brought em on up to St Anthony's, where they had a big ole altar set up. The way St Joseph's altars work, see, the father of the house is supposed to build one without spending any money on it -- he's supposed to go door to door, begging for the supplies and what all. I didn't have a father, me, not no more, but my uncle woulda done it if my grandfather weren't feeling up to it. But this year, well, I wasn't having much to do with them Primas, is the thing.
They done a nice job at Tony's, though: the altar was like a few tables put together, like the Holy Cross with two extra vertical parts, for to represent the Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. By the time I got there, it was already covered with candles, gold medals, fava beans, twelve whole baked redfish for the miracle of the loaves and fishes, pignolatti, and a buncha breads and cakes. My pralines and sandwich, they were pretty dwarfed in there, but that was all right. Later, at the end of the day, what would happen'd be the kids in the neighborhood or from wherever, they'd knock on the door -- shout "tupa tupa," which is, you know, Italian for "knock knock" and kinda sounds like it too -- and the priest would tell em no, they can't come in. Two more times they'd knock, and the third time, then they'd come in, and knock the altar over, breaking it and spilling the food. Whatever the kids didn't take, it went to the poor.
And me I figured, buncha kids, like I used to be? Rather get some pralines than fava beans or a salami, no matter how good that salami is, right?
And also I was thinking of Father Mike, yeah. Pralines were what he put on the altar, every year. Pralines and a muffuletta -- that's a sandwich, by the way, cold cuts and cheese and olive salad on a big round bread the size of a manhole cover. I mean, necromancer, no necromancer, I don't know, I can't explain it. I always thought there might be at least something to the Marcion heresy, that different souls taint differently. Some people are born stronger than others. Maybe some of em's better sinners. I know it ain't a good thought, but I'm saying, is necromancy any better a one?
I didn't see much more of St Joseph's Day, cause when I went home to change for the parade, I had a message flashing on the answering machine. Work. Not the local office, but the regional director's office in San Antonio.
I'd got called in. They announced it by the end of the day: Man was going to go to Purgatory, like we'd dreamed of without realizing it for time on end, like President Kennedy'd promised. I mean, some of y'all, some of y'all out there's too young to remember life before that promise, life in them early days when we was all sure we was gonna do it but had no idea how. We knew the veil could be pierced, but not what to do on t'other end.
But now, not only did we know how to get there -- wouldn't be long fore they'd have maps of the veil down at the K&B, down at the Winn-Dixie, and nice big fancy ones you could hang on your wall -- we knew we could survive there. Not for long. Not for long at all, we dint figure, not to be safe. Purgatory ain't meant for living in, after all, and someone showing up with taint on their souls, too much sin, well, they might get eat up, or hurt bad, or who knew what.
But I was martyr-class. What the Church said that meant was, I cleaned up after myself real quick, and I lived careful. My soul never took color over fifty percent, not in the time they'd been tracking it. And it never stayed dark for long. I was whatcha call fastidious. The Marcions and the like, they mighta said I was just better at sinning, like they mighta said it about Father Mike, but the Church, you know. The Church doesn't see things through that eye.
We were gonna figure it all out, that's how it felt. We was gonna figure out how the afterlife worked. How long it took for sin to be cleansed from a soul fore that soul ascent to Heaven. What sins were truly unforgivable and consigned a soul to Hell. How effective prayers for the dead were, and whether some prayers would do more good than others, jumpstart the soul's metabolism so's it'd get clean quicker. And maybe we'd finally end that debate Augustine and Galileo had across the centuries: whether Purgatory and Hell shared the same fires, or whether they was "separate but sympathetic."
We said alla that, and I think we're still figuring it out, me. I guess the details, well -- I kinda, I don't want Mission Control cuttin me off, I kinda want to keep talkin as long as I'm able. So I'll leave it to them to fill you in or not as they like it. Me, I'm just gonna sit here. Y'all pray for my crew. Wherever they are. I guess we don't know yet if prayers help, but I got a silver dime says they can't hurt.
I think them shadows hugging the hills noticed my soul's gone. It lasted longer'n the others, but longer ain't forever. They keep swarming. Moving. Ain't nothing I can see casting em, and I think maybe that's the thing of it. I just keep thinking of St Joseph's Day -- keep thinking of packing my bag while the kids down the street, the kids all over, pounded on the doors shouting "Tupa-tupa!" and being told to go away.
The marble sky pushes on overhead, rippled with cracks and fissures like the foundation of some old, old house. On the green hills, the shadows swarm and surge forth like stormwaters, and I'm wondering will I recognize mine fore it comes for me.
The visible soul
In this setting, the soul possesses the following characteristics:
Notice what isn't said here, as Chezz alludes to in the story above: the existence of a soul does not in of itself prove the existence of God, or the veracity of any one religion over another, per se (it does seem to privilege those religions which discuss the continued existence of the soul after death). Christians have as much going for them as Buddhists, Jews, atheists, Hindus, members of the Native American Church, and so on. Essentially, the existence of the soul ceases to be a religious matter: its treatment and import remain the religious focus.
There continues to be considerable debate about whether a sinful action leads directly to a corresponding stain, or whether stains are the result of accumulation. Contrary to the way things are often portrayed in this world's fiction and folklore, stains don't actually show up in immediate response to sin -- there is a lag of sorts, but it's hard to tell just how long that lag is without being able to quantify things somehow, which can't yet be done. There are quacks on the internet and handing out pamphlets at the airport, claiming they know how to "track stains," but neither science nor mainstream theology agree with them yet.
If you're not sure what the difference is, consider this analogy: if you buy a pack of gum with five dimes, did you buy two sticks of gum with each dime, or did you buy a whole pack for fifty cents? Is any individual dime in the transaction significant? Would it matter if you were paying in ten nickels, two quarters, or a mixture? Or is the only important thing the final sum? (You can tell which side of the debate the analogy favors.)
But perhaps, in fact, a white lie eventually shows up on your soul as an orange spot. Maybe a betrayal of a friend appears as a greasy green smear. Maybe the general muddiness of a soul's surface is due to its owner's misanthropy. It's certainly a theme that's popular with this world's poets.
Because the link can't be demonstrated, though, there is disagreement both between and within religions as to what constitutes a sin -- and to what extent intent is important. Unlike in the real world, however, you have a long history of "experiments" (ranging from the ridiculous to the rigorous) aimed at testing the relative morality of actions. Some critics point out the difficulty in setting up a truly effective experimental environment for this, particularly given the impossibility of infallibly demonstrating the intent of an experiment's subjects.
One place where that debate becomes more than abstract is when it comes to cleaning one's soul. A number of remedies exist for soul-cleaning, and they all seem to work -- but many will argue that some work better than others (and disagree about which those some are), while others will argue that intent is more important than deed. Whatever the case, traditional remedies include (but are not limited to):
Yes, it's "sanctuariums," not "sanctuaria," although there are well-meaning pedants who will say otherwise.
A sanctuarium is like a gym: its goal is to make convenient (and make a profit from) those activities you need to do to improve yourself. For years, sanctuariums would claim it had discovered the "most effective" methods for soul-cleaning -- in most countries which regulate the private sector, those claims have become illegal in recent years, since science has not yet managed to back them up.
Much as gyms have machines set up on which to do your exercises, sanctuariums have them set up to assist you with doing charitable works: you can do volunteer work (envelope stuffing, data entry, basic assembly, the specifics vary) in return for which the sponsoring company donates the money they would have spent to charity; you can cook meals for the homeless and hungry; sew clothes; prepare medications; and so on. Las Vegas, of course, even has drive-through sanctuariums.
Many sanctuariums are non-denominational, which for many people is code for "secular" or "atheist" -- they're places you can go and wash your sins away without needing to believe in God, or at least in any specific religion. But the major religions all have them too -- traditionally they were an adjunct to the church, synagogue, mosque, etc., but these days they're usually free-standing (but tend to retain their association with a specific church). Usually the charities supported by a denominational sanctuarium are religious organizations, missions in other countries, and so on. Catholic sanctuariums have on-site confessionals.
The tainted soul
What happens if you don't clean your soul? What happens if you just let the stains accumulate, until what once was white turns a dirty, rancid black?
At least, that seems to be the consensus. There are few cases where it's clear that the taint of a soul actually killed its possessor: but science has comfortably proven the signs of soul-sickness leading up to death, including (usually in this order):
Sluggishness, narcolepsy, insomnia, and other sleep disorders.
Breathing troubles and exacerbation of existing cardiovascular problems, if any.
Manic depression.
Birth defects in children conceived by parents with heavily tainted souls.
Deep lethargy similar to mononucleosis.
Religion and the atheist response
There are some inevitable differences in the religions of this world versus our own, but they're all nevertheless there in roughly the same way: the "religions are just multiple paths leading to the same goal" conceit which is popular in the real world is a bit more popular here, and is much more frequently the subject of actual debate, since there are nominally measurable results in the form of the cleaning of the soul, and its passage to Purgatory. If evangelical Christianity were really the only way to get to Heaven, this argument will ask, why aren't evangelical Christians the only ones able to clean their souls? (The answer given either invokes necromancy, a charge common in ancient and Medieval times -- see below for more on that -- or argues, logically enough actually, that we cannot know for certain that the cleaning of the soul is more than cosmetic.)
Despite the phrasing of the minigame's conceit -- that certain religious claims had been proven -- atheism, agnosticism, and secular indifference are alive and well here. The existence of a soul proves nothing about God; it proves nothing about the creation of the universe, or our role in it -- it is harder to get around the proposition that humans are in some way set aside from animals, but this is not a requisitely religious proposition. Likewise, although it is clear that the soul travels on to Purgatory upon the death of the body, there is as yet no proof that it brings with it any sort of awareness, any sort of sentience: in other words, pointing out that the soul moves on to somewhere else after the death of the body may be no more evidence of an afterlife existence than is the fact that the feet continue to exist after death, at least for awhile.
Deism -- broadly speaking, the idea that God created the universe but no longer interacts directly with it, and instead built in natural laws (which we discover through physics, biology, etc) so that the universe could govern itself -- is popular here as well, with many of its supporters in fact using the soul's visible tainting as evidence. A non-Deist theistic world, after all, might need a God who stuck around to examine every soul -- this one has tagged them all in advance.
Necromancy, Fetches, and other Legendry
A great many folk tales and other legends persist relating to souls. It would require a book-length work to address all of them for all the world's cultures, but in Western culture the most important ones are:
Necromancy. Necromancy is the magical art of transferring the taint of one's own soul to the passed-on souls of the dead. Technically, as we see in the story above, necromancy remains a crime, but it's one that hadn't been prosecuted in a very long time. Necromancy is considered by many to be the worst of crimes: it inflicts suffering upon the dead, who have no one to defend them, and it removes the necromancer from the natural order of things which keeps us in check.
Fetches. A fetch is a legendary creature who, like a vampire, can appear human, but is in fact supernaturally evil. The specifics vary, except that they are always identified by the fact that they possess shadows -- which is why they are rarely found during the day. In some stories, they also lack souls, like human-shaped animals; in others, they have both soul and shadow.
Witches. One of the many things it is alleged witches can do is cleanse a soul by shifting its taint elsewhere -- not to the dead, but to the soul of another. Some cultures have sin eaters who take the taint upon themselves; others have witches who can be hired or otherwise enticed to heal one person while cursing another.
The exploration of the afterlife
Although space has been explored in this world, much as in our own, this column is more interested in discussing the exploration of the afterlife. The existence of Purgatory -- a "morally neutral" realm through which all souls travel before moving on to the more hypothetical Heaven or Hell (or, perhaps, other afterlives altogether) -- has been suspected since ancient times. Aristotle claimed to have seen a soul enter it, but Galileo was the first to "pierce the veil" between this universe and another, observing differences in light, heat, and air quality through a tiny opening. Since then, our knowledge of Purgatory has expanded along with all of our other sciences.
Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, and others -- William Blake, for instance, based a poem on the idea -- all suggested that it might be possible to travel, bodily, to Purgatory (and perhaps beyond?) without needing to die first, citing the bodily ascension of Enoch, Elijah, and various saints as evidence. A pure soul might be a prerequisite, they reasoned -- one as free of taint as possible. Newton was the one to demonstrate for the first time that the place the soul disappeared to and the place Galileo discovered were one and the same.
By the late nineteenth century, what we would now consider "serious" science had made considerable in-roads into addressing the issue of where, exactly, Purgatory was -- although it was quantum physics that would eventually provide the answer preferred in the twenty-first century. Still, even before we were quite sure where they were, contact was made. Newton's unpublished notebooks include an experiment in which he claims to have sent a small quantity of mercury to Purgatory, never to see it again. Nineteenth century experimenters managed to look into Purgatory through specially modified telescopes, and beyond Purgatory to what they theorized must be Hell.
Einstein devoted a small but dense chunk of work to the physics behind it all, and in the 1930s and 1940s, while Hitler was busy amassing an army of alleged necromancers and witches to attempt a massive attack on Allied souls, a coalition of Allied scientists built the first Infernal bomb under the auspices of the ironically named Trinity project. The Infernal bomb -- or more commonly simply the Hell bomb -- siphoned a tiny amount of energy out of Hell itself and unleashed it on an Earth never built to withstand it.
The effect on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was devastating, and fear of Hell fueled the Cold War to come.
That fear sublimated the natural aggression of powerful nations and channeled it into a fierce competition between the United States and the Soviet Union to explore the afterlife. President Kennedy, the first Catholic president, signed the Swiss Guard Treaty, which set up a cooperative effort between the United States, the NATO nations, and the Vatican (to whom the Swiss Guard had long served as the only military force), and the Swiss Guard Exploration Bureau was formed.
The SGEB sent out a number of probes, testing the "veil," the barrier between ordinary space and the space of Purgatory and the afterlives. Towards the end of the twentieth century, the Galilei probe landed in Purgatory and provided Earth with a live camera feed, while releasing mice and other animals to affirm the presence of atmosphere and life-friendly temperatures and other ambient conditions.
The first manned mission followed some years later, after intensive training -- and you see, in the story, the results.
Why we're there
What are the motives for afterlife exploration?
1: Religious. Every religion that includes an afterlife is at least curious about this Purgatory, and which of their beliefs it matches up to. Purgatory itself is a Catholic-specific belief, mind you -- but it's only assumed (widely so, by westerners) that the place we call Purgatory shares the characteristics of Catholic Purgatory, by virtue of the fact that it appears to be neither Hell (as the probe saw no evidence of tormented souls, etc) nor Heaven (which everyone sort of thinks would be recognizable immediately). Protestants tend to consider this Purgatory a place souls pass through, without stopping, on their way elsewhere -- part of the tunnel rather than a subway station of its own, so to speak.
Venturing into the afterlife could answer a great many questions, ranging from the fairly tame and simple ("how long does a soul remain in Purgatory before moving elsewhere," "does every soul pass on to the afterlife") to the potentially dangerous ("is it possible to travel to Heaven," "can we knock on God's door," "can we use Hell as a prison"). There is a simple human need to know. Although some theologians and other religious folk are naturally concerned, there are others who posit that if God did not want us to explore the afterlife under any circumstances, he wouldn't make it accessible (and some say, further, that he didn't -- that this apparent Purgatory is simply an outer layer of the mortal universe, and that if the soul does travel through it, it's only because this is the access point to that which lies beyond).
2: Secular. Whether you're religious or not, and no matter what religion you belong to, something is there. You don't have to believe in the possibility of extraterrestrials to support space travel, after all. If the soul moves on to somewhere else at death, mightn't that somewhere else have resources we could use? Could definitive answers about this so-called "Purgatory" settle religious disputes -- or if nothing else, prevent new ones from arising?
The campaign
A campaign as I would run it would begin play shortly after the Enoch mission of the short story, and would revolve around PCs working for the SGEB (presumably another mission team, perhaps including people at Mission Control). What happened to the first team? Can it be avoided? Do the shadows in Purgatory belong to the dead, or are they somehow the shadows which correspond to the living? Etc., etc. -- this setting is very much in one of those positions where the more you discover, the less becomes clear.
As I see it, this wouldn't be an especially cinematic (as GURPS uses the term) campaign: the PCs would be about as competent as, say, your average real-world astronaut -- which is not to say that they aren't exceptionally competent people by our standards, but they're not a squad of Rambos and Batmen. Apollo 13 mixed with a little Alien -- tonally, that's how I'd imagine it.
If you decide that Chezz is correct and some people are "better at sinning than others" -- i.e. that some souls are slightly stain-resistant -- I'd make PCs who want this pay for it: a seven-point Merit in World of Darkness, an Advantage in GURPS, that sort of thing. Although you don't want to harp too much on the condition of PCs' souls -- they're used to them, after all -- don't let them go too long without cleaning them, either, without suffering some ill effect. People can go months without cleaning their soul, and years before dying, depending on the life they lead -- but they don't like to. You can go days without eating, too, but people usually don't, even if they're eating food they don't particularly like. The sluggishness and lethargy of soul-sickness can set in after less than a month, little enough at a time that it isn't noticeable at first (deduct from the PC's appropriate rolls without telling them, or increase the difficulty of certain actions, or whatever's best for the system you're using).� �TQo�0~^�DҒt< ���� �ek��&Ǿ$�\۵������ZF��ȃuw��ݝ������I��ŃU ���Q�Y����ir2�H��R�2.u3MF�o�ع�q]4#A`pP5�(b��������&)���b�)ⰾ���p���7(��i���<��[-2g�L#�5[f� �g��?�*rV��G��f��8��*)��s'+20�ϟ��̑F����}�KB�<7����w��S�L�\����gb�����v���m9��W��iR���ބYŜv�d�y0'p2�I_�Fc��2>#o���A� )VL[Qk�?�3�`)<�У[�(*W.��J�H �?�t�X���C�t谙��� X�:@� \0w�~LqĤ��E�����-���r�F�k���Y���j�4q� �5��A�Q6�[�A�xG� [�>��w|?( f��ХθY䝛��$�c=�_����qN�ĦoǸ>O��_�|��&���/_M�i�7�"�宥��C�Чk0d��ӷ�L�h����;T�mu�C����G��U�-!�Ul{ �h�<\�bQX.�~���"��O�2*yP���cz���!�Gg�
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text:
Apparently, Harvard is not afraid to tell Tyra no: despite how hard she tried, the business school would not allow her to attend if she didn't take up residence in their dorms. Oh, and pay no attention to the eye piece: it has something to do with "smizing" and her new book Modelland.
- Related blogs


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|Excellent - 539 reviews
From the moment you ascend the atrium steps and into the harbor front lobby, you will understand why HarbourView Inn is a special place. Instantly welcoming and gratifying, our atrium's elegant and modern design is timeless, paired with the alluring fragrance of Green Tea Lemon Grass by Air Essentials From the original artwork, the lobby fireplace, the smil...
Overall Rating - Excellent - 539 reviews
Excellent 9.0
Helpful staff at the desk provided excellent advice for restaurants and things to do.
The only thing lacking was a bar/restaurant. However, there was plenty to do nearby. Having water or other drinks more readily available would be helpful, it's hot in the Summer. The ice water and iced tea in the lobby was not always available.Perfect location for visiting the water front. Very close to all there is to do.
Okay 5.0
The location is wonderful. It's on the more 'young' side of town, but it's close to most everything.
The staff seemed a little slow and somewhat lazy. The elevator was a total joke. It would take several minutes to arrive.
|Excellent - 1032 reviews
where southern charm and hospitality started.. welcome to the Hampton Inn Charleston-Historic District. Take a trip back in time when you visit Charleston, the consummate home of true southern charm and a haven of colonial history. The Hampton Inn® hotel in Charleston-Historic District is the only antebellum hotel in the area, restored from an 1860 railroad...
Overall Rating - Excellent - 1032 reviews
Excellent 10.0
Location, setting, cleanliness and breakfast. All exceptional!Great for families, great location, accessible to everything, outdoor pool area was beautiful,
Excellent 9.0
The personality of the staff.It has a great location. The staff was very nice and helpful in all manners.
|Excellent - 325 reviews
With a stay at Market Pavilion Hotel, you'll be centrally located in Charleston, steps from Port of Charleston Cruise Terminal and minutes from Charleston Legends and Lore Ghost Theater. This 4.5-star hotel is within close proximity of Waterfront Park and Charleston Waterfront Park. Make yourself at home in one of the 70 air-conditioned rooms featuring flat-...
Overall Rating - Excellent - 325 reviews
Excellent 10.0
From the moment we pulled into valet on our first day, to the moment we checked out, this hotel and staff were top notch! The rooms are inviting, the food first class and the attention to detail impeccable. The entire staff anticipated our every need and everyone was extremely helpful and nice. A special tip of the hat to Melissa on the Conceierge level. It is obvious that she loves her job and really enjoys the guest's company. Thank you for a wonderful stay!
Excellent 10.0
This hotel really made us feel that if we needed it, someone would attend to it right away. Unexpected suprise with the concierge service with breakfast, tea and evening champagne service in parlor. John was absolutely terrific as well as Suzanne and Kelly. The really seemed to enjoy their job and talking to guests. Mike the valet jumped to help you when he way you and the alyssa and kelly at the front desk were always smiling when you needed their help. Can't say enough about the staff. Value for the money was good. Drinks were a little over the top in expense. Please ad a few lower cost alternatives at downstairs and rooftop pool. We are not cheap and realize where we were staying but their are too many alternatives near by to no have some options in price. Overall, terrific hotel that we would definately recommend and will return to in the future.
|Excellent - 1126 reviews
Belmond Charleston Place is located in the heart of Charleston's Historic Downtown District, across the street from the Market and adjacent to King Street, and within walking distance of many attractions. The Historic Downtown District offers a unique variety of cultural attractions including well preserved single-family homes, churches and buildings dating...
Overall Rating - Excellent - 1126 reviews
Excellent 9.6
- Food was especially good - Service everywhere was fabulous
- Meals cost prohibitive
Excellent 9.6
The convenience to downtown and it's choice of restaurants. The selection of stores[ especially the coffee shop] in the lobby. The amazing spa and pool area,
|Excellent - 212 reviews
With a stay at Kings Courtyard Inn, you'll be centrally located in Charleston, steps from Confederate Museum and Charleston City Market. This historic hotel is within close proximity of Circular Congregational Church and Unitarian Church. Make yourself at home in one of the 41 individually decorated guestrooms, featuring refrigerators and flat-screen televis...
Overall Rating - Excellent - 212 reviews
Good 7.0
Quaint, location. The breakfast was a nice touch. Wine tasting was good but lack of a host hurts the ambiance.
Virtually no amenities. Even getting a glass of water or a can of soda?
Excellent 9.0
The location was ideal for walking to tourist attractions and shopping as well as access to the trolley.
No complaintsThis hotel provided exactly what we wanted: ideal location; charming decor; professional, helpful and friendly staff. We were well taken care of from the moment we walked into the door until the time we left.
|Excellent - 1184 reviews
Originally opened in 1853, and renovated in 2014 this AAA Four Diamond, 214 room, full service is located in the heart of the Historic District just a short stroll from fine dining, boutique shopping and historical attractions. Guests are welcomed in lobbies of museum quality antiques and fine art. Daily concierge service, award-winning dining, and an out...
Overall Rating - Excellent - 1184 reviews
Good 6.6
Good location
Poor staff. Tried to charge me $100 for 8 place settings for the extra suite we paid for. We had paid for 5 rooms and a parlor suite and told front desk three times we needed place settings. We told no problem before I booked and the morning of the event. Then a hour before the event the banquet manager personally comes to the room and says he needs $100 before he can bring up the dishes.
Excellent 8.6
Hotel is convenient and within walking distance to every point of interest. Beautiful hotel with friendly staff.
As with a lot of nice hotels in the Charleston area, there was a big wedding party in the hotel lobby who occupied the entire area of the lobby and their one restaurant during the ceremony so it was difficult to get any food or refreshment at the hotel during that timeframe.
|Excellent - 502 reviews
Experience Charleston's past with a stay at the Embassy Suites Charleston - Historic Charleston, SC hotel. Set in the original Citadel Military College in the heart of Charleston's historic downtown and adjacent to Marion Square, this all-suite hotel is on the National Register of Historic Buildings. The hotel's architecture and design reflect the building's...
Overall Rating - Excellent - 502 reviews
Excellent 9.0
Rooms were spacious and clean. The breakfast was amazing. The hotel was walking distance from places we wanted to go.
The public area of the hotel had a consistent smell. Like an old house.
Good 8.0
Very nice remodel of the original Citadel building (ca. 1820s)Excellent breakfast buffet & happy hour.
|Good - 725 reviews
Stay Your Way at the Holiday Inn® Charleston-Riverview This amazing Charleston, SC hotel's location is perfect for business and leisure travelers looking for lodging near some of the city's best attractions, restaurants, and shopping. Whether you are looking for long days on the beach, exciting nightlife, or beautiful historic sites our hotel allows you to s...
Overall Rating - Good - 725 reviews
Okay 5.0
The location of this hotel was great! 10 miles from the beach and 2 miles to the main historic downtown area.
We visited in Aug and it was MORE humid in our room than it was outside. Our air conditioner didn't help. We took our swimsuits outside to dry in our car. Everything in our suitcase became damp and we slept in moist PJ's every night. Frustrating.
Excellent 10.0
Location is a very short drive to downtown Charleston. We stayed the night of a power outage and the staff beyond exceeded our expectations!!!
|Excellent - 1729 reviews
Located in the heart of historic downtown Charleston on Marion Square, the Francis Marion Hotel has offered gracious service and elegant accommodations since 1924. Meticulously restored, the Francis Marion combines 1920's style and grace with modern comfort and conveniences for today's sophisticated traveler all within steps of some of the cities best boutiq...
Overall Rating - Excellent - 1729 reviews
Good 8.0
The location of the Francis Marion could not have been more perfect, right in the center of downtown. Also, the staff was great, especially the concierge.
Being that it is an old historic hotel, the rooms and bathrooms are quite small. Also, because of what seemed to be an outdated air conditioning, everything in the room felt damp.Overall a good experience, although I am not sure that I would rate the Francis Marion a 4 star hotel.
Excellent 9.0
Loved the location
No poolBeautiful historic hotel and very courteous and attentive staff.
|Excellent - 529 reviews
Explore the past in Charleston, South Carolina and enjoy the present at one of the top hotels in Charleston, SC at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel & Suites Charleston-Historic District. Expect some of the largest suites among hotels in downtown Charleston, SC, complimentary WiFi in public areas and a hidden courtyard at our hotel in Charleston Enter the histo...
Overall Rating - Excellent - 529 reviews
Excellent 10.0
Old fashioned ambiance, very comfortable, well located and great cookies
Excellent 9.0
staff was helpful and friendly, rooms were spacious and location was very nice.
air conditioner leaked water onto carpet in my room creating a very wet spot. I informed the staff during checkout and they discounted my parking charge which was very nice of them.
|Good - 1077 reviews
The Days Inn Historic Charleston. Located in the Center of Historic Charleston. Across the street from the Famous Open Market. Within easy walking distance of the Historic Attractions. Walking Distance of Downtown Charleston. Walk to 40 of Charlestons Best Restaurants. Best Lounges and Entertainment in Charleston. One of 2 hotels in the District to offer FR...
Overall Rating - Good - 1077 reviews
Good 8.0
The staff. They were very friendly and helpful in pointing out local restaurants and places to visit. The bedding was also very comfortable and the location is PERFECT; you can walk easily to local attractions.
It was pretty noisy. I expected some noise from the street, but you could easily hear conversations outside your room. When the maid service came by about 10 am, you could hear them rolling carts, so was hard to sleep in. Thin walls/windows??Overall, I loved the experience. The complimentary toiletries smelled great, especially the bergamot shampoo. The room decor was appropriate to the historic look. The central location could not be better - you can easily walk to King Street to shop, the Market to browse, or the waterfront to take a ferry - plus there are many great restaurants in walking distance. I would easily recommend this place to friends.
Poor 2.0
The flower pots hanging from the balcony.
Our room smelled moldy. They didn't service our room during the day on the second day after I told them that the room smelled and the pillows and sheets were too stinky to sleep on.
|Excellent - 286 reviews
With a stay at Fulton Lane Inn, you'll be centrally located in Charleston, steps from Confederate Museum and Charleston City Market. This family-friendly hotel is within close proximity of Circular Congregational Church and Unitarian Church. Make yourself at home in one of the 36 air-conditioned rooms featuring refrigerators. Complimentary wireless Internet...
Overall Rating - Excellent - 286 reviews
Good 7.0
Centrally located in the historic district and incredibly helpful staff.
I was hoping for some comfortable seating in the room, the housekeeping staff used tons of febreeze (or something in the room) to the point that I had to request they stopped as it was difficult to breathe.Overall the location, price, and staff make this a worthwhile location.
Excellent 9.0
Very convenient, clean, staff very knowledgeable about local restaurants, tourist attractions and other things to do.
It was a small thing, the vending machine would not accept dollar bills and I had to go down to the front desk for change. I told three staff members about the problem and it wasn't corrected until the night before we checked out.Great room, great location, great staff. I enjoyed our stay, the room was very clean, great air conditioning, and while the wine and cheese tasting was of average quality it was a very nice amenity that allowed us to meet other guests and more of the staff.
|Good - 240 reviews
Overall Rating - Good - 240 reviews
Good 8.0
It was a lovely hotel, but what stays in my memory was the $12 a day parking across the street. That's a great price for downtown Charleston!
Wifi was not included in the room price.
Excellent 10.0
You can not beat the location of the Renaissance Charleston Hotel. Steps away from Kings street shopping and restaurants within minutes. We parked the car and walked everywhere. The staff was very accommodating and friendly.The minute we arrived at the hotel we were treating as if we stepped on the red carpet. The Hotel was very clean as were the rooms. This was my second visit at the Renaissance and I will definitely return in the future.
|Good - 568 reviews
If you're looking for a clean, comfortable Charleston hotel with close proximity to the area beaches, we have you covered. Our great location includes proximity to historic Charleston and area attractions, and the Charleston Cruise Terminal. Whether you're on a romantic getaway, a family trip or traveling for business, you deserve a well-appointed room in a...
Overall Rating - Good - 568 reviews
Excellent 10.0
Quiet, clean, parking close to room, good public areas, excellent breakfast. I'd seen the 'make your own waffle' machines but this was the first 'make your own pancakes' one I'd ever seen.
Coming south on US 17 the signs are a little hard to spot, especially in the afternoon with sun glaring in eyes. The first time, we drove right past. Needs pruning of nearby trees, or a sign nearer the road's edge so easily seen from the north side.
Good 8.0
Layout of the hotel and the rooms. Beds were clean.
parking was bad late at night. Rooms were dated and couch was impossibly uncomfortable.
|Good - 1461 reviews
NEW! Samsung Flat-panel TVs with 30 channels of HD programming. Easy-access Plug-and-Play feature makes it simple to connect electronics. Overlooking the beautiful Ashley River, the La Quinta Inn & Suites Charleston Riverview offers a variety of modern services and amenities while maintaining the rich historical character of its surroundings. Our hotel i...
Overall Rating - Good - 1461 reviews
Excellent 8.3
Staff is very friendly and helpful. Excellent location. Easy to take there shuttle into town.
I wish the hot water in the showers were hot. They only become warm. The a/c didn't work very well in our room, but it was adequate.
Mediocre 4.0
It was very old and had not been renovated. Bathroom was very old and dirty. The iron had burn debris on it and I asked for another one and they couldn't help me because they didn't have any housekeeping staff until 7am. They should have been able to.The parking lot was incredibly difficult to navigate in. Very old run down hotel.
Landmarks in Charleston
- Downtown Historic District (48)
- North Charleston (20)
- South Carolina Aquarium (38)
- Citadel (20)
- Charlestowne Landing (20)
- Cruise Line Terminal (51)
- The Citadel (20)
- USS Yorktown (20)
- Charleston Convention Center (20)
- Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum (20)
- Magnolia Cemetery (20)
- Confederate Museum (54)
- Charleston Old Slave Mart (51)


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Flying Fish
Lives in WA, United States
Joined on May 11, 2008
|Total: 2, showing: 1 – 2
I agree with "beep 'em." What about those of us who don't own any version of CS and want to start?
Jeff Peterman: PerL,
But the issues is how much did using Kodachrome 64 impact the final result compared to if the same photographer had used a modern high-end digital under the same conditions for the same shot. Are they any better because they were taken with Kodachrome 64 than they would have been taken with digital? If the answer is "no" because of the "noise" (grain) and lack of contrast/saturation control, the this is just an exercise in nostalgia.
You appear to be implying that these shots ARE technically better. If so, in what way?
My thoughts exactly; there's no way, looking at those images, I'd have thought wow, those must have been made on film. Some aren't even that wonderful to me; they seem self-conscious and not particularly interesting; although others are wonderful.
|Total: 2, showing: 1 – 2


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In about 2 hours time, the NHL Draft loterry, aka the John Tavares sweepstakes, will be commencing. I don't know about you, but I DO NOT WANT COLORADO TO GET HIM! God damn had enough of Sakic and then forseberg and then Hejduk and the other stars they get schooling the Canucks for the past 15 years. We do not need them to get another, nor do they deserve it. And for that matter, I hope the don't get Hedman either. So everyone pray for Colorado to be slotted 3rd or worse!
Let's also pray that the Islanders don't win him, because the kid deserves better than to be stuck in that shitshow franchise. Quite frankly I feel bad that he has to go to one of the bottom 5 teams this year. They're all awful, awful franchises. But none is worse than the Isle. So let him go to Tampa or LA or Atlanta.


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Here's the deal on tickets for the Nov. 8 and 9 "Evening With..." events, which feature two authors.
Admission to see Elizabeth Alexander and Ruth Reichl is free; you don't need a ticket. All other "Evenings With..." events cost $10 apiece.
Alexander kicks off the fair at 5 p.m. Nov. 8, followed by Margaret Atwood at 7:30 p.m. Reichl appears at 6 p.m. Nov. 9, followed by Barbara Kingsolver at 7:30 p.m. You will need the $10 tickets for Atwood and Kingsolver, which you can download starting Nov. 2 at the book fair website.


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Style Map
Daily Dispatches From The Global Scene
Far too often we find the perfect brogue, slipper, or sneaker…only to discover it's for men. Feit designers Tull and Josh Price, who recently got picked up by Dover Street Market, are aiming to change that. While their clean, simple leather shoes were originally geared toward the boys, they've just introduced a women's range that is just as (if not more!) desirable as the men's offering. Three sneaker styles—high-top, slip-on, and low-top—have sleeker, more feminine bodies and come in the brand's minimalist palette of cream, tan, and black.
It's worth noting that Feit is not mass-produced. The designers also don't use any machines. Thanks to Tull's fifteen-plus years in the footwear industry (he launched Royal Elastics in '98, which was later acquired by K-Swiss), Feit shoes are crafted with top-quality materials using highly sustainable practices. Vegetable-tanned Italian leather is hand-stitched—never glued—and designed to naturally mold to the foot over time. (In fact, they recommend you go sans socks.) Each pair is "shaped" on a form for ten days without the use of chrome or harmful chemicals. And production quantities are limited—no more than sixty pairs of any style are created at once.
In other words, shoes like these aren't easy to come by. We're already thinking about pairing the tan low-tops with crisp white jeans for a smart summer uniform.
Feit men's and women's shoes are available at Dover Street Market New York, 160 Lexington Avenue, and online at FeitDirect.com.


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Chiddy Bang - Twisted
Artist: Chiddy Bang
Producer: Xaphoon Jones
Album: Mind Your Manners EP
Avg Rating: 3.0 ( 9 total votes )
As a previously-unknown musical act rises to prominence in the game, it's only natural that speculation will begin to run rampant. Seeing the potential for misconceptions, Philly duo Chiddy Bang step in to ensure that listeners don't have anything Twisted on a freshly-released cut off their latest digital EP. As usual, Xaphoon Jones makes creative use of some nontraditional sample material, supplementing an ethereal chopped-vocal snippet (anyone ID the source?) with an electronic rhythm section. Chiddy shows the engaging, braggadocious mic presence fans have come to know and love, exuding easygoing swag as he enlightens listeners on the unexpected nature of his recent successes ("Please don't think we planned on this."), his beverage of choice ("Sippin' on Courvoisier and apple juice till I get a buzz.") and, of course, his dedication to the hustle. Now that you've been set straight, are you craving more? Featuring two new versions of the title track as well as this original cut, the Mind Your Manners EP is available today on iTunes. In addition, fans can still pick up Chiddy Bang's Booth-approved Breakfast LP wherever fine music is sold.
Listen to More: Chiddy Bang , R&B/Pop
Written by richard on 06/19/12
Parlophone Records
First DJ Booth Appearance:
"The Opposite of Adults (KIDS)" (2009)
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text:
Debra E. Confer and Kevin Eric Otto were married yesterday in Cedar Lutheran Church, Allentown.
Cynthia A. Sears was her sister's matron of honor and David Brown, the bridegroom's father, was best man.
Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Royer of Laury's Station are the bride's parents. The bridegroom is a son of Roberta Brown of Allentown. David Brown, the bridegroom's father, is a resident of Emmaus.


text:
FYI: New Editorial Team at Metaphor Bibliography
|Linguistic Field(s):
Discourse Analysis
|FYI Body:
John Benjamins Publishing is pleased to announce a new editorial
team at the online Bibliography of Metaphor and Metonymy
The new team is headed by Editors: Antonio Barcelona Sánchez
(Cordoba, Spain) and Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez (La Rioja,
The online Bibliography of Metaphor and Metonymy offers a research
tool for anyone interested in figurative language. Metaphor and
metonymy play an important role in language use in everyday life and
communication. Their study is by nature interdisciplinary. This
instrument is therefore relevant to a broad audience, including (but not
limited to) those working in linguistics, anthropology, cross-cultural
studies, communication studies, lexicology, pragmatics and discourse,
rhetoric, stylistics, artificial intelligence, philosophy, translation studies,
literary studies and cognitive sciences.
MetBib strives to cover the whole range of publications on the topic,
including articles, books, and electronic resources, from a wide variety
of countries and languages. Each publication has a full bibliographic
description and keywords, and many have abstracts. MetBib now also
provides CrossRef DOIs, where available, for easier linking to source
materials (NB. access to sources is not included and depends on
whether you/your library subscribes to a source). The bibliography is
updated annually. The current release mainly includes data from 1990
onwards, but it also includes around 600 entries from before this date.
In total, MetBib contains approx. 11,000 records.
This online bibliography has a range of options for easy searching and
smooth navigation through an advanced and stylized application, with
which users of Benjamins' Translation Studies Bibliography and
Bibliography of Pragmatics are already familiar.
The bibliography is available on a subscription basis, with stand-alone
or site licenses. For more information, follow the link ''Subscription &
Price'' in the top navigation bar.
Website: http://www.benjamins.com/online/met/
A free 90-day trial subscription is available; to apply please follow the
link ''Trial'' in the top navigation bar on the website.


text:
Robinson, Moore show they know the meaning of special
[size=18px]Robinson, Moore show they know the meaning of special[/size]
Vikings coach Mike Tice's faith in his special teams was validated Sunday when two kick returns went for touchdowns.
By Judd Zulgad, Star Tribune
Last update: November 13, 2005 at 9:03 PM
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - Through a season of a few ups and many downs, coach Mike Tice often has reserved praise for the play of the Vikings' special teams. He continually pointed to how close the return units have been to making a big play that would result in a touchdown.
But not even Tice could have expected both his kickoff and punt return teams to accomplish that feat in one game as they did Sunday in the Vikings' 24-21 victory over the New York Giants.
An 86-yard kick return by Koren Robinson opened the second half and a 71-yard punt return by Mewelde Moore later in the third quarter -- along with an interception return by Darren Sharper and a 48-yard game-winning field goal by Paul Edinger -- accounted for all of the Vikings' points.
If only for one day, it made the emphasis Tice has placed on special teams since training camp look like a stroke of genius.
"We talked [Saturday night] about our special teams being explosive, winning the battle of the special teams," said Tice, who more often than not saw things go wrong on special teams in his first three seasons. "I think we did that. ... Special teams guys really believe in what they're doing right now."
That is largely because the Vikings appear to have settled on two very capable return men in Robinson (kickoffs) and Moore (punts).
Robinson averaged a season-high 39.5 yards on four kick returns. Moore -- who had been the Vikings' starting running back since Week 3 but did not get on the field for an offensive play because of a sprained right wrist -- returned three punts for a season-high average of 29 yards.
"That was the key to the whole game," said cornerback Ralph Brown. "The defense was doing our job stopping them from scoring, but we weren't scoring any points on offense. So you look for another team to pick it up, and special teams did. It was tremendous."
Robinson's return gave the Vikings a 14-6 lead and confidence to open the second half. "They kicked the ball short," said Robinson, whose longest kick return had been 72 yards since taking over that duty in Week 3. "... I was just looking for holes. [Ciatrick] Fason went ahead of me, I just followed Fason and it opened up."
The touchdown came as no surprise to Robinson, who also had a reception of 44 yards, his longest of the season. "I felt I was going to get one this year," he said. "I wasn't going to make any guarantees, but, like I said, the 10 guys ahead of me on the kickoff return team have been doing a great job, giving me holes to run through. I knew it was just a matter of time before I broke one all the way."
Moore's touchdown made it 21-13 and showed the confidence he has developed since taking over the role of punt returner four games ago. Moore returned only four punts last year as a rookie.
"I'm comfortable back there [now]," he said. "I understand what's going on, and it's just a natural gift."
"If at first you don't succeed, parachuting is not for you"
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UPDATE 4:29pm:
The driver of the Explorer, 31-year-old Margot Santillan of Chicago, has been charged with the following:
Four females, all from Chicago, died in the crash. Three males and another female, also all from Chicago, were taken to local hospitals with various injuries ranging from non-life threatening to serious. Only Santillan and the front-seat passenger were wearing seatbelts.
UPDATE 11:42am:
Illinois State Police say the SUV was carrying eight adults when it lost control, rolled over, and crashed while speeding. Many of the passengers were not wearing seatbelts and at least three died after being thrown from the vehicle. The fourth fatal victim was in the passenger seat and wearing a seatbelt. The driver survived.
The names of the victims of the crash have not been released, but police say all had work IDs from a Chicago temporary employment agency and were on their way to the western suburbs.
Four are dead and traffic is being diverted after the driver of a silver 2003 Ford Explorer going west on Interstate 290 lost control and crashed just after 6:00 a.m. Thursday morning.
It is not currently known why the driver lost control, causing the vehicle to overturn, but the crash is under investigation by Illinois State Police. Four additional people were injured. The names and ages of the victims have not been released.
Traffic is currently being rerouted off of 290 westbound at Route 83. Drivers should expect long delays.
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Thursday, August 21, 2014
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North Country/Tri-Lakes
OSWEGO COUNTY, N.Y. -- A woman is in serious condition following a crash involving a dump truck in Oswego County.
The crash happened on Route 481 near County Route 45 in the Town of Volney around 11 a.m. Wednesday.
Troopers say Sarah Teifke, 24, didn't stop at a stop sign and was hit by a dump truck. Teifke was taken to Upstate University Hospital.
The driver of the dump truck was not injured.
The crash is still under investigation.
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From the Weather On The Ones Forecast Center, The National Weather Service Has Issued A FLASH FLOOD WARNING for the following counties: Franklin (North), Franklin (South) -- expires at 8:00PM. Caution advised for rapid rises of area waterways in heavy downpours.
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ROCHESTER, Minn. (FOX 47) -- A terrible act of vandalism has tarnished a bench dedicated to late Rochester leader, Denny Hanson.
Police say someone has ripped a giant hole in the design on the seat of the bench.
The bench was commemorated at the end of June during Rochesterfest to honor Hanson's life and his service to the community as Rochester City Council President.
Hanson passed away unexpectedly this time last year.
So far there's no word of any suspects responsible for the vandalism, but police say they're continuing the investigation.
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