text:
Daniel Part Two - Chapter Four
Chapter Four - A Game Daniel didn't move, couldn't move. And as long as Kingsley stood there watching him, he wouldn't move. But he listened. He heard a man's voice, low and stern, a voice he hadn't heard since that one perfect week with Eleanor. Then he heard her laugh again. That laugh, so joyous and lusty…it floated up the stairs and passed through him, chilling him to the core.
The voices retreated and Kingsley raised his hand, beckoning Daniel to follow him in silence. At the next landing they stopped and waited. From their post on the landing he and Kingsley could stay hidden in the shadows and still see into the townhouse's private drawing room.
Eleanor…she looked as beautiful now as the day he first saw her. She'd pulled her hair back into a messy ponytail and fussed with it while He seemingly instructed her in something happening on the chessboard that sat on the table between them.
Even from a distance Daniel could make out the radiant happiness shining in her eyes as she feigned luxurious, yawning boredom. He reached out and snapped his fingers in her face and she instantly sat up straighter. With reluctance Daniel dragged his eyes from her to gaze at Him, a man he once considered a friend but now, since losing her, thought of as a rival. He hated himself for the bitterness he harbored in his heart toward Eleanor's owner. But no amount of reasoning and rationalizing could help him swallow the bitter pill that remained lodged in his throat since the moment he asked her to stay with him and she said, "No."
"He's a priest," Daniel said in a voice so soft he doubted Kingsley heard.
"How can she be that happy with him?" Looking at her face, her eyes, he had no doubt he looked at a woman completely and utterly in love. "He can't marry her. Can't give her children…not without getting excommunicated."
"She loves him. And he her. And if there was any way to break them apart, I would have found it by now."
Daniel heard a note of something in Kingsley's voice, a note of bitterness that matched his own. Together they stared at the couple in drawing room—the tall man in all black—handsome, distinguished, with a face a decade younger than his thirty-nine years and eyes centuries older. And her—black hair, black and green eyes, full lips—lips designed for acts more intimate than simply kissing other lips. She wore girlish white pajamas and a white leather collar around her neck.
Daniel noted that while his own eyes studied every line and curve of Eleanor, Kingsley's gaze focused elsewhere, onto the face of the man who owned her, onto the face of Kingsley's best, and some would say only, friend.
The sight of them together, so contented, briefly overwhelmed him. Closing his eyes, Daniel found himself hurtled into the past, further than he wanted to go.
How he'd even gotten dressed that morning remained a mystery. In front of a mirror he stood knotting his tie with fingers that functioned from muscle memory alone.
"I'm burying my wife today," was the refrain that echoed through his mind. "I'm a widower at thirty-four…and I don't know why."
He must have spoken the words aloud because he heard an answer from the door to his and Maggie's bedroom.
"I'm certain it will come of no consolation to you, but I don't know why either."
Daniel turned around and saw six feet four inches of impeccably blond priestliness coming toward him.
"Actually, it is a consolation."
The priest studied Daniel with kind, searching eyes. Kingsley had come by earlier with a gift from his medicine cabinet and the combination of the tranquilizer and the shock were the only two forces keeping Daniel vertical.
"I won't insult you by asking you how you are," the priest said. "I will only ask you what I can do to help you today."
Daniel remembered that rush of gratitude that with this man, this priest he didn't have to dissemble. He could tell him anything, confess any secret and it would be absolved.
"If I asked you to kill me, would you?"
The priest smiled.
"I'm a Jesuit. We're pacifists. And while I disagree with the Magesterium on more than a few issues, I am generally opposed to mercy killings. Anything else?"
"Yes. Maybe. I don't think I could stand it…" Daniel paused and tried to put his words in order. "If anyone touches me today or talks to me, I won't make it. And I have to get through this. For her."
The priest clasped his well-manicured hands in front of him at the wrist. Daniel didn't recall ever seeing the Priest of the Underground in his cassock before. He usually wore only his clerics. In the floor length black garment he appeared even more intimidating than usual, like a being from an ancient world.
"Keep everyone away from you then?" the priest asked.
Again Daniel nodded. Or tried to. His body and mind seemed to be working independently of each other.
"That I can certainly do."
For the next two hours Daniel stared straight ahead—he heard nothing, saw no one but for a blur of black behind him hovering like a dark angel.
Only at the graveside did Daniel come back to awareness again. He stood staring down at the coffin as friends and family made their way back to their cars. Even the minister and his own parents finally gave up waiting on him and walked away. Only the dark angel remained—not speaking, not consoling, merely present.
"My wife is in a box in the ground," he said more to himself than the priest at his side. "I should be in it with her."
A long silence stood between them. Daniel sensed the priest weighing his words.
"Only Kingsley knows this," the priest began, "but I now have someone in my life. Her name is Eleanor."
"Pretty name."
"She hates it. So of course that's what I call her."
Daniel discovered he could still smile.
"Of course."
"If something ever happened to my Eleanor…" He paused and took a breath. "There would be no hole, no chasm, no canyon deep enough to contain my grief."
No hole…no chasm…no canyon deep enough…Daniel felt the truth, the rightness of those words in his soul.
"I'm lost." His unblinking eyes began to water. "I don't know what to do."
"What do you want to do?"
"Dig a hole deep enough for my grief, bury myself in it, close my eyes and not open them for a very long time."
"Then do it."
Daniel turned his head and met the priest's eyes—eyes the color and strength of steel.
"What if I can't ever dig myself out again?"
"Do you trust me, Daniel?"
Daniel didn't answer for a moment. He respected the priest certainly. He'd never met a more intelligent or erudite man. But the priest easily qualified as the most notorious sadist in the Underground. Only one or two of the strongest, most well-trained female masochists ever braved an evening alone with him. He wondered about this Eleanor of his. She must be someone just like him—cold, hard, stern, and unbreakable.
Did he trust the priest? Daniel recalled when another sadist in Kingsley's circle once ignored a submissive's safe word and broken the young man's wrist and nose. Kingsley and the priest had sequestered themselves with the sadist at one of Kingsley's clubs. Daniel and Maggie had been there that night. The man's screams had been so bestial, so plaintive that Daniel had nearly intervened. But Maggie was as vicious in a courtroom as she could be submissive in a bedroom. She'd been submitting since age seventeen and loathed bad Dominants more than anything. That night she'd put her foot down with him for a change.
"He needs to know what it's like to be on the receiving end of no mercy." Maggie turned The Ouch back around on Daniel. "Let it go."
He'd let it go. Admittedly a big part of him wanted to be in that room meting out fierce justice of his own. The thought of any Dominant taking advantage of a submissive in bondage and actually harming him or her infuriated him to the point of near blind rage.
When Daniel finally answered the priest he spoke with complete sincerity.
"You scare the shit out of me. But yes, I trust you."
The priest didn't seem the least surprised by either statement.
"Then go," he said. "Dig your hole and crawl inside it. If you can't find your way out again, we'll send someone to dig you out."
And for three years he hadn't been able to dig his way out of the hole of grief he'd fallen into. For three years he didn't set one foot off their Big House property. But the priest had kept his promise and sent his own property to him, his own Eleanor, his own heart.
"God, I'm such an asshole," Daniel said to Kingsley. "I can't believe I tried to take her from him. After everything he did for me. After what she did for me."
"And what did she do for you?" Kingsley asked, a hint of amused voyeurism in the question.
"She saved my life, King. I would have died in that house. I did die in it."
In the drawing room Eleanor had a chess piece in her hand. He pointed to a square on the board but she shook her head. Knowing Him, He was attempting to teach her the finer points of some obscure strategy. Knowing her, she was playing by suicide rules trying to lose on purpose to end the game quicker. Again He snapped his fingers in her face. Again she shook her head. Daniel heard him release an exasperated sigh. He reached for the chess piece but she popped it into her mouth.
"Merde…not again…" Kingsley sighed.
Daniel only watched as He reached out and pinched her nose closed. The battle of wills began. With her mouth closed and her nose pinched, Eleanor had no hope of winning this fight. The need to breathe would eventually overcome her willful refusal to play the game by His rules.
A minute passed. Eleanor clenched her eyes shut. The priest held out His hand, tapped under her chin, and she gave in and spit the piece into His palm.
"Merci mon Dieu," Kingsley breathed.
Kingsley looked at Daniel.
"Last time she swallowed it."
"By accident?" Daniel winced. That couldn't have been pleasant—going down or coming out.
"On purpose, bien sûr."
Daniel raised his hand and covered his mouth. He had to or he would have laughed so loudly the entire house would have heard him.
He remembered the night he and Eleanor had played a game of their own. But not chess—poker. Strip poker. And that night too she'd played by suicide rules and ended up naked but for her little white lacy panties after three hands.
"Hit me," she said, rolling onto her stomach, her bare legs in the air and nothing on her from the waist up but a smile.
"This is poker," he reminded her as he picked up the cards and shuffled them. "Not Blackjack."
Every evening they spent in the living room by his fireplace talking, fucking, sometimes both at the same time.
"Poker? I don't even know her."
Daniel reached out and flicked the end of her nose.
"Behave yourself."
"Oh fine." She threw a few cards down. "Hit me."
"Poker," he repeated. "Not Blackjack."
Eleanor looked up at him through the veil of her wavy black hair.
"Maybe I'm not talking about the game."
Daniel nearly dropped the cards.
"You do realize we've only known each other for a few days," he reminded her.
She shrugged her shoulders, her soft, pale shoulders he'd bruised with bites and rough kisses just a few hours earlier.
"You've fucked me more times than I can count, ordered me around, made me call you Sir…but still you haven't hit me. You know you want to...Sir."
She flipped onto her back and looked up at him. Was there anything in the world more beautiful than a woman's naked breasts bathed in the light of a fireplace? Especially Eleanor's breasts by his fireplace?
"I take inflicting pain very seriously," he said even though everything in him ached to tie her to his bed and paint her pale skin bright red with welts. "That's a lot of trust. Do you really trust me that much? After only a few days?"
"No, I don't." She reached her arms out and slipped a hand under his pants leg and caressed his calf. "But I trust him. And he trusts you. After all, I'm not submitting to you this week. I'm submitting to him."
"Answer this question—how long did you know him before he beat you the first time?" Daniel asked.
Eleanor groaned melodramatically.
"Yes, I forgot. You don't want to talk about him."
She nodded as she sat up.
"Can you at least answer me in sign language?"
Eleanor reached out and took the deck of cards from him. She flipped through the cards and found a five of clubs.
"Five years?" Daniel asked and she nodded again. "Five years. Not a few days," he said pointedly. "How old were you went you two met?"
Eleanor sorted through the cards again and held up two.
"You were fifty-one?" Daniel asked.
Rolling her eyes, Eleanor reversed her hands.
"Fifteen? You met him when you were fifteen. When did you two have sex the first time?"
She exhaled through her nose as she dug through more cards and pulled out a ten of spades and a ten of diamonds.
"You were twenty? So he waited five years not only to hit you but to have sex with you. And you're ready for that with me after a few days?"
She nodded eagerly.
Daniel looked down at the cards scattered about.
"Are you really happy with him?" he asked, not quite sure where that question came from.
She sighed heavily as if she'd been asked and had answered that question a thousand times before.
"Everyone thinks because he's so quiet and serious…"
"Not to mention six-four and a sadist-"
"That he's this."
She held up the Kings of Clubs who grasped a sword in each hand. "But he isn't. Not with me. With me he's…"
She dug through all the cards until she had a full suite.
On the floor between them she arrayed the cards.
All Hearts.
"And who are you?" Daniel swallowed hard, her devotion to her owner a painful reminder of how close he and Maggie had been. Would he ever have that again? "Her?"
He picked up the Queen of Hearts.
"Oh hell no." She reached him and grabbed the card box. "This is me."
She held up The Joker.
"Is that because you're funny or because you're Gotham's worst nightmare?"
"That's for me to know and you to find out. In the meantime, how about a little game of…"
She picked up two cards. One a six of clubs, the other a nine of spades.
Daniel glared at her.
"Now I am going to beat you. Now."
He grabbed her wrist and dragged her to her feet. In less than a minute he had her in the bedroom with her back pressed to the bedpost. He devoured her mouth, her soft lips even as his fingers dug into her hips. With a ruthless shove he pushed her onto the floor. He didn't even have to give her the order. She opened his pants open and took him deep in her mouth in seconds.
As he tangled his fingers in her hair, he tried to fight the fear that once he started beating her he wouldn't be able to rein himself in. He and Maggie had been lovers for a month before he let himself slap her the during sex. But her reaction had been so intensely erotic that the very next day he'd invested in an arsenal of S&M gear, an arsenal of S&M gear that had touched no one's skin but Maggie's. And now he would use it on someone else.
Before he came, he pulled away and dragged Eleanor up to her feet again. He threw open a cabinet in his bedroom where he and Maggie stored the gear and took out a flogger, bondage cuffs, and snap hooks. He returned to the bed, wrenched Eleanor's wrists behind her back and buckled the cuffs on.
"Tell me your safe word," he demanded, knowing he sounded angry when inside he fought off the fear he'd go too far.
"Doesn't matter," she said and he felt her body go slack as she surrendered herself into his hands. "You won't hear it."
He'd almost laughed out loud then.
"That tough, are you?"
"No, Sir. That well-trained."
And God, she had been. He'd seen other submissives cry at the very first fall of the lash, saw them struggle, heard them squeal as if the leather cords ripped their skin open instead of just reddening their sensitive backs with mere welts. But Eleanor stood still, kept her body loose and slack and breathed through the pain like a pro. Of course, what her owner did to her probably paled in comparison to the mild beating he inflicted on her. But her willing submission to the pain, to him, the trust she showed letting him bind her to the bedpost…
He dropped the flogger, pressed his chest to her back, pushed into her hard and deep. Her wetness, her heat enveloped him. For over three years he'd been celibate. Tonight he wanted, needed to make up for lost time.
Right before coming he wrenched himself away from her, picked up the flogger and beat her again. Harder this time, hard enough she finally let out a real grunt of pain. And that sound hit him harder than his flogger hit her. Again he thrust into her and felt he the layers of dirt that three years under the ground grieving Maggie had built up around him finally starting to fall away. With every brutal thrust he came more back to life, more back to himself again.
Finally he released her from her bonds and let her fall to the floor. In an instant he was on her and in her like an animal. Nothing could have stopped him then, nothing could have slowed him down. The one tiny part of his brain that remained rational as he fucked her with every thing in him thanked God she hadn't told him her safe word. Had she uttered it he would have had to live with the guilt that he didn't stop.
After he came for the fourth time he tried crawling off her, found he didn't have the energy, and merely collapsed onto her prone body. He started to apologize for going too far, for losing control. But once again he heard that laugh. That incredibly erotic laugh. Homer, he decided then and there, had gotten all it wrong. The Sirens of lore were singers. The real Siren's song was a laugh.
"What?" he asked, kissing the back of her shoulder.
"Now that," she said stretching out underneath him, seemingly fully content to let him stay inside her all night, "was poker."
Daniel remembered laughing out loud at that. God, the girl even made bad puns during sex. The laugh stayed with him all the way back to the stairs, to where he stood next to Kingsley.
In the drawing room, Eleanor's eyes widened and she turned her face toward the shadows on the landing. Daniel took a step back deeper in the darkness.
Kingsley beckoned him back upstairs and Daniel wrenched his eyes from Eleanor. If she saw him…if He saw him, it wouldn't be good. Maybe eventually he could see Eleanor without wanting to drag her to him and beat and fuck the memory of any other man out of her head. Maybe someday…but not today.
At the top of the stairs Daniel turned his back to Kingsley just long enough to catch his breath.
"Can I get you anything?" Kingsley prompted. "Perhaps a member of my Imperial Collection could take your mind off le prêtre's petite amie."
Daniel turned around, grabbed Kingsley by the throat and shoved him hard and fast into the wall.
"I'm not in a great mood right now so you'll just have to forgive me," Daniel nearly growled the words. "One of these days, Kingsley, you're actually going to care about a woman instead of collecting them like vases. If Anya ends up getting hurt because of this stupid fucking sex auction of yours, I'll show you and the priest downstairs what real sadism looks like. Comprenez-vous?"
Kingsley stared him down. Daniel knew that for all his devil-may-care airs, Kingsley might easily qualify as one of the more dangerous men in the city, if not the country. But when Daniel looked into his eyes, he saw the tiniest shred of fear. Daniel grinned.
"Je comprends," Kingsley said.
Daniel relinquished his hold on Kingsley's neck and stepped back.
Once more Kingsley had cause to straighten his crumpled cravat.
"Now I'm leaving," Daniel said and headed toward the front stairs. "I'm going to go have dinner. I'm going to go to my apartment. And I'm not going to think about you or Eleanor or Him or this world you've sucked me back into."
Kingsley raised his eyebrow at him.
"If I recall, it is you who knocked on my door, Daniel."
"Yes, and once this auction is over, I'll never knock again. I'll stick around long enough to make sure Anya survives this without getting destroyed. Then I'm gone."
Daniel started down the hall.
"It was a test, mon ami."
Even as he spun around to face Kingsley, Daniel regretted the decision.
"What was a test? No. Excuse me. Quoi?"
Kingsley glared at him. Nothing irritated him more than someone sarcastically wielding French back at him.
"That week together—you and Elle. It was a test."
Daniel glared back and Kingsley laughed his infuriating French laugh.
"Lest you think he sent her to you out of some great affection for you." Kingsley strolled toward him. "And lest you hate yourself for trying to take her from him after he did you such a service…He sent her to you as a test."
"And let me guess—I failed."
"You were not the one being tested, Daniel. She was. And she passed."
The cold hard truth of the statement hit Daniel hard in the stomach and harder even lower. He wanted to answer, wanted to say something to deny it. But he had no words. She could have had him—someone rich, someone single, someone free. She could have had someone who could have married her, given her children, a life in the open…and yet she'd walked away from it all and chosen Him instead. Instead of a wife she was the mistress of priest. Instead of children, she had secrets. Instead of Daniel, she had Him.
"And I know this," Kingsley continued, "because I was the first test."
Daniel inhaled sharply. If he was a masochist he might have enjoyed all this pain.
"Let her go," Kingsley said. "She's gone. She's with him. She might as well not exist."
Daniel took one second to imagine punching Kingsley's handsome face into an unrecognizable pulp of flesh.
"Took me six weeks to fall in love with Maggie, and I fell for Eleanor in six days. The fact that she's downstairs eating chess pieces for His attention is proof of two things--I did let her go....and I shouldn't have."
He didn't wait for Kingsley to speak again. Furious at himself for letting Eleanor get to him after all this time, he fled Kingsley's townhouse, grabbed a taxi and gave the driver all the cash he had in his wallet and the order to just drive until the money ran out.
Two hours later the driver dropped him off in front of his building. Hungry, tired, and still angry, Daniel made eye contact with no one as he entered the elevator and headed up to his penthouse apartment. He'd change clothes the second he got home. Change clothes, go for a run, get some of this tension out.
Stalking through his apartment, he pulled his shirt off on the way to his bedroom. In the doorway he paused when he found a naked girl kneeling with his back to him on his bed.
Long black hair, voluptuous body…Now where had he seen that before?
"Irina—how did you get in here?" he asked, not entirely displeased to see the beautiful Russian again.
The girl turned her head and gave him a wicked grin.
"Did you miss me?"
Daniel's heart exploded in his chest.
"Oh God…Eleanor?"
To be continued...
Read the Prequel to Daniel Part Two: SEVEN DAY LOAN
Preorder your copy of THE SIREN: THE SIREN


text:
Nov. 14, 2013
The No. 19-ranked University of Michigan volleyball team continues its road trip this week with two matches. The Maize and Blue plays at Iowa on Friday night (Nov. 15) at 7 p.m. CST at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Michigan then is at No. 9 Nebraska on Saturday night (Nov. 16) at 7:30 p.m. CST at the Devaney Center. This week, junior/sophomore Olivia Reed and freshman Abby Cole answer the five questions, including talking about adjusting class schedules to collegiate volleyball.
Olivia Reed
Q: What has been your favorite volleyball moment in your time at U-M?
A: It was definitely making it to the Final Four but in that process, when we played Stanford, that was the highlight of the run. It was just the excitement. We had been the underdog the whole tournament and playing them again. I think we're always excited to play Stanford now.
Q: You're in the Ross School of Business. How has that been and how has it gone balancing school work and volleyball?
A: It's been a challenge but definitely a rewarding one. I feel like at times it's hard to schedule multiple group projects, but so far, everyone has been very understanding. You definitely need to have good time management but overall it's been a great time.
Q: How would you describe this year's team?
A: I would say this year's team is a fighting team. Every day, we come in and work hard. We take each match one at a time and try to improve each and every day.
Q: Do you have any superstitions or pre-match routines?
A: Not really. I'm not a huge superstitious person. I have to say during the game, Lexi Erwin and I have to fist bump coming out of every timeout.
Q: What was your favorite part about the Brazil trip?
A: I think this is probably everyone's but the food. I loved everything, especially the steak. I ate a lot more red meat than I ever did in my life. I was all very good, especially the pizza bar.
Abby Cole
Abby Cole
Q: What are the biggest differences between high school and college volleyball?
A: Definitely how much is expected of you with everything like school, volleyball, and just the time management. The speed of the game also is a lot faster.
Q: How have you adjusted to classes while competing in volleyball at a high level?
A: It's been tough. At first I thought it was really easy and that it was going well, and then I hit a point where I realized that I have to put so much more time into my studies. It's just a lot different than high school, because I have classes twice a week rather than every day, and my teachers aren't on me because I'm one out of 300 in a lecture hall. It's hard to get used to.
Q: How have the upperclassmen helped out the freshman and their adjustment to college volleyball?
A: They've been super welcoming and really helpful, whether it's been offering to take us grocery shopping or giving us rides anywhere. The most access I have to transportation is my bike, which will only get me so far. We've had a hard time having to rely on them, because we don't like asking for rides and not being able to really repay them. They've been so generous and really welcoming to us.
Q: When did you initially have interest in attending Michigan?
A: I've grown up a Michigan fan. Throughout my whole life I've gone to Michigan football and basketball games because my dad grew up in Ann Arbor and my grandparents still live here. Coming into the recruiting process, I wanted to be open-minded and unbiased, and pick the school that was the best fit for me. The summer going into junior year of high school I narrowed it down to five schools, Michigan being one of them. I went on a couple of visits and it turns out that Michigan was the best fit for me. It's fun because I have pictures of me in Michigan cheerleading outfits when I was two, and it's just meant to be.
Q: You hear about how strong the Big Ten is in volleyball. Going through it for the first time, how strong is the league and did it live up to expectations?
A: From the outside, I always looked at it and thought, "I'm going to be playing in the Big Ten!" It's awesome, and now I'm living it. It's wild, really fun, and exciting, but it's tough. There's never an easy night, but I think we can hang with all of these teams.
Previous Q&A: Lindsey Lerg (Nov. 6)
» Learn about Michigan volleyball ticket opportunities for the 2017 season.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The second graders in Frederick, CO are recieving postcards from the U.S. and abroad and attaching them to a large map in the hall. Why?
Revised geography guidelines and a lack of social studies textbooks left [teacher Theresa] Rudolph searching for a way to teach the curriculum in a fun and interactive way. She immediately thought of the postcard project, which she developed while teaching in Seattle.
A kindergarten class used the map to learn about where they live, while a fourth-grade teacher talked to students about countries outside of the United States, using the postcards to illustrate cultural differences in other countries, she said.
Kathleen Weessies, Vice-Chair of the American Library Association's Map and Geospatial Information Round Table (MAGIRT) announces:
MAGIRT members have been hard at work creating an online resource guide for the geospatial librarianship world. The information is free for you to use on topics ranging from geospatial data, geospatial technologies, a professional development toolkit, and recent MAGIRT activities on these subjects. Check it out at http://magirt.ala.libguides.com/resources
MAGIRT contracted with the popular LibGuides platform by Springshare. The goal is for this guide to be useful to the profession. We invite your input and your proposals for future MAGIRT Libguides, because it is you that will make it the best resource it can be.
- ALA Connect via @MAGIRT
At University of the Fraser Valley (British Columbia, CA) GIS is being used to document stories of land taken from First Nations and how to help get it back.
[Geography professor Dr. Ken] Brealey, for example, sets up his part of the program by discussing ways western mapping has been used to take away indigenous lands and resources in the past and then shows students how maps can be used today to get some of those things back.
Using geographic information systems (GIS) software, students learn to turn people's stories about their experiences on the land into maps that can be used to establish land claims.
"By putting individual map biographies together into a digital database, you can come up with a fairly thorough and expansive and, in some cases, exceedingly impressive visual record of land-use and occupancy by the people that mapped that stuff and also what they know or have learned from their parents and their grandparents and their great-great-grandparents."


text:
Our big announcement on the Trump-Russia scandal.
What makes a food trend? In his new book, The Tastemakers: Why We're Crazy for Cupcakes but Fed Up With Fondue, out May 27, journalist David Sax sets out to discover the hidden forces behind our diets. From a cupcake stop on the Sex and the City tour in New York to the board rooms of the McCormick spice company to the apple orchards of Ontario, Sax talks to the people who decide which foods become popular and when. Along the way, he learns that few fads spread on their own. Most are the result of well orchestrated marketing plans—like how the pork industry engineered the bacon trend to help sell less popular pig parts. I spoke to Sax about the Chipotle-fication of Indian food, how Sex and the City made cupcakes sexy, and how the dawn of the HIV/AIDS epidemic hastened the demise of the fondue-party era.
Mother Jones: Your book opens on a Sex and the City tour bus. Why?
David Sax: The book opens on this Sex and the City hotspots tour, which has been running in New York for ten years or so. They stop at the Plaza Hotel, they go by Tiffany's, they show clips on the bus. The halfway point of the tour is in the West Village, kitty corner from Magnolia Bakery. Most of the people on the tour went right for Magnolia. It was this edible icon of the show and everything it stood for. That encapsulated so much about the cupcake trend. There were people from Sweden, Australia, Middle America. They all wanted to go to Magnolia because this place was the shrine that symbolized so much more than a little cake.
MJ: So is Sex and the City responsible for the cupcake trend?
DS: That was the tipping point. That imparted the cupcake with something entirely above and beyond. It was no longer just about, this is a delicious thing and you should have it. It was about this is a symbol of femininity, sexually liberalized, capitalist feminism. This is the stiletto, the cosmo, the Rabbit vibrator equivalent. It gave cupcakes a storyline. It changed their identity. This is not a child's treat anymore. This is, 'You go girl. You get your cupcake.' The Virginia Slim of the 21st century.
MJ: So that's one way a food trend can happen, through pop culture. But the way you tell it, the story of bacon was completely different.
DS: This was an industry-driven trend. It was the result of a concerted effort by the pork industry to revive this cut of meat—pork belly, which is what you make bacon out of—that had been so demonized in the 1980s by the low-fat, low-cholesterol diet trend that was so incredibly popular. They spent money to get pork producers and smokehouses to develop round, pre-cooked slices of bacon that would fit on a hamburger, so then they could go to Burger King and Wendy's and be like, listen, here is the money to help you to develop new burgers. We really want you to try them with bacon. The fast food companies are always looking for something else to sell. So the bacon trend—unlike most trends, which trickle down because chefs are doing it, or some cool bakery in New York is doing it, and it works its way down through Cheesecake Factory to TGI Fridays and Costco—it started in fast food and worked its way up to something that chefs were tossing with Brussels sprouts. And then it hit its cultural moment.
The coffee trend is another example. There is a Swedish tradition of a coffee break called fika in the afternoon. Maxwell House was looking to increase coffee consumption in the '30s and '40s, and they happened upon this thing that they put in their ads and marketing. It became such a big thing that it was in union contracts. And that triggered the growth of coffee consumption.
MJ: You also write about how McCormick decides which spices to push.
DS: It's this process that they go through every year, where their flavor forecasters send out surveys to a bunch of chefs. What things are you using in your kitchen? And then they go to the salespeople and ask, What's selling? What do we need to sell more of? What are different statistics do we need to consider? Is there more travel to certain countries? More immigration from certain countries? And McCormick uses that forecast and they distil it down to 10 flavor combinations. And they go to their different clients—like Coca-Cola and McDonald's—and they're like, we think that sweet chili is going to be the new spice, and here are three things that we've devised that we think will work well for you, so here's a sweet heat chili barbecue sauce for your burgers, or here's a spice rub of sweet chili from your chicken wings.
MJ: What's a recent example of that?
DS: The toasted and smoked line of spices. You will see it on your supermarket shelf, but you will also see it in dishes in a lot of mainstream chain restaurants. Now, it's kind of a chicken and egg—they don't just come up with these things out of thin air. They are taking cues from what's going on in the culinary world. In a way it's reactive. They are reflecting back the culture.
MJ: You also cite the example of how McCormick took a spike in bell jar sales as a sign that Americans were ready for more pickling spices.
DS: Those random statistics—it's like, bell jar sales, why would that affect anything? But it shows an uptick in a type of behavior that can then be distilled down into taste, and where our taste is going.
KB: How about the effort to make Indian food into the next Chipotle? You write about these people who own Indian restaurant empires, and some of the challenges they face.
DS: I think it happens with all cultural foods that are trying to break into mainstream North American culture. You've seen it with the success of Japanese food and sushi. Thai food is another great example. So for years, trend forecasters have been predicting that this is the year that Indian food is going to hit, this is going to be big. It never has crossed that threshold. It's a very difficult process, changing how people perceive something from very foreign and exotic to something that is increasingly everyday. With Indian food entrepreneurs who have been trying all these different ways of doing it for decades—fine dining, quick service, buffet style, and now the Chipotle-fication of Indian—they're all just trying to find a format that can click, where people are all of a sudden like, I'll try that. Chipotle is a great example. It's this distilled Mexican format that people perceive as higher quality and more authentic than Taco Bell. It has opened up Mexican in this amazing way in North America and elsewhere as well.
MJ: You also write about how the specialty food industry's annual awards can be really influential in helping a specific product make it into the mainstream.
DS: Whether it's a restaurant group or Whole Foods supermarket, they are looking for something that will excite their clients. There are innumerable entrepreneurs starting out and trying to sell things that they are cooking or importing. The Sofi Awards is this industry award night that is geared toward the buyers of specialty foods. And specialty foods, well, we think, okay it appears at Dean & Deluca or whatever, whoop de do. But what happens nowadays is that that stuff moves from there to Whole Foods to Costco and Walmart very quickly. It used to take ten years, but now it's practically overnight. Those awards, as cheesy as they seem, they do push the needle.
MJ: The last chapter in your book is about how a food trend dies.
DS: Food trends fade for a couple reasons: they're no longer relevant. The excitement and sexiness around a cupcake is what kept it going from city to city and country to country. It symbolized this sexy, independent womanhood, it symbolized wealth, North American sophistication. But after a certain amount of time, it loses that. Its energy dissipates.
The fondue thing: It wasn't that fondue tasted worse after time or that fondue parties were any less fun. But there were a couple things that happened. The fondue party—the social event that was at the core of that trend—that lost its appeal. It was less interesting and less new. But also: People started going out to restaurants to dine, and staying at home to eat melted cheese in your living room was no longer something that people wanted to do. I think the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic—when it first broke and people really didn't know what was happening—they knew people were dying and that you could transfer this between people but they didn't know how it happened. That idea of sharing food was really terrifying. I remember when SARS hit Toronto. Nobody would go to Chinatown, because people were like, oh, it's coming from China. But also because people were like, this is food that everybody shares. Those big news events can really have an effect.
So is fondue dead? It's lying low now, but does that mean it can't come back in some sort of way? It might. If someone does some sort of hot pot. Like a [San Francisco restaurant] Mission Chinese kind of hot pot restaurant. Would that start reviving interest? Most likely. And it would transfer to the home and to other places, and a couple years down the line you get hot pot at the Cheesecake Factory.


text:
A High Court jury is entitled to have serious doubts about Carol Braithwaite's defence and still find her not guilty, her lawyer said.
Braithwaite is on trial in the High Court at Auckland for making untrue statements in a prospectus of National Finance 2000.
According to the Crown, there were ten material untruths in the document, an allegation Braithwaite now accepts.
She is defending the charge on the basis that she believed, at the time, the prospectus was correct.
In his closing submissions this afternoon, Braithwaite's lawyer Quentin Duff said the defence only needed to prove it was "more likely than not" that she believed the statements were true and that she had reasonable grounds for that belief.
The jury was allowed to have "serious doubts" about the defence and find her not guilty, Duff said.
Duff went on to say that Braithwaite was in the dark and had information kept from her before she signed the prospectus.
"When everything is a mess and you're in the dark, how much information is really available to you?" he asked.
Earlier in the Crown's closing address, prosecutor John Dixon queried if Braithwaite had even read the prospectus properly and had understood it.
"She wasn't qualified in the first place, (she had) never been a director of a company, never seen a prospectus before," he said.
Dixon said even if Richie McCaw puts his name to a finance company prospectus, it "doesn't change the reality" of what he would be required to do as a director.
Yesterday when giving evidence Braithwaite said she took comfort from the fact the prospectus was prepared by a chartered accountant and that a barrister was on the board of directors with her.
If there were issues with the company, she assumed others would bring them up.
Dixon said directors needed to be independent and put in place systems to monitor management.
"You can't just take their word," he said.
"She said she didn't know any better, that may be, but it's not a defence...she didn't do anything, she just had blind faith in others."
National Finance went into receivership in 2006, owing investors $21 million. Some investors have recovered 49c in the dollar.
National Finance boss Trevor Ludlow - and Braithwaite's former de facto partner - is serving a sentence of six years and four months after being convicted of charges laid by the Serious Fraud Office and the Financial Markets Authority. He was found guilty last July of defrauding investors of an estimated $3.5 million.
Both Ludlow and Braithwaite are banned from being company directors until next April.
National Finance accountant John Gray pleaded guilty to theft and false accounting charges in the Auckland District Court in 2010 and was sentenced to nine months' home detention.


text:
Forests & Land Use
For too long, decisions affecting our environment and communities have been made in corporate boardrooms far from home resulting in clear-cut logging, mining and oil and gas development that have had devastating effects on land and water.
West Coast Environmental Law seeks to transform the way rights and responsibilities about land use are understood in BC –creating new legal mechanisms for resource tenures (licences) and land use decision-making that are more democratic, sustainable and just.
We work to reform resource and environmental decision-making to incorporate:
- Ecosystem-based management.
- Cumulative impact assessment.
- Climate change impacts mitigation and adaptation.
- Recognition and respect of Aboriginal Title and Rights.
- Meaningful public participation.
Together with our allies, we have had an impact. For example:
- In the wake of our Forest Solutions for Sustainable Communities initiative which advanced citizen-driven solutions to the softwood lumber dispute the provincial government took back approximately 20 per cent of timber rights in BC for redistribution to First Nations, communities and small businesses.
- West Coast Environmental Law was one of the principal drafters of the Forest Stewardship Council BC Regional Standards for Forest Management. These rigorous standards assure consumers that certified wood they purchase from BC comes from forests managed to stringent ecological and social standards.
- We were part of the team that negotiated amendments to the Park Act to create a new "Conservancy" designation that provides strong environmental protection while respecting Aboriginal Title and Rights.
- First Nations land use planning - Developing land use plans can be a powerful way for a First Nation to communicate their indigenous laws, which embody environmental stewardship, and the wisdom of their Elders in order to protect the lands and resources of their territory and eventually transform mainstream laws as well.
- Forests and climate change - Handled correctly, new laws and policies that harness market forces to address climate change have the potential to both dramatically reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases and help native species of plants and animals survive and adapt.
- Forest certification - Forest certification harnesses market power to change forest management by promoting products that use wood harvested in an ecologically and socially responsible manner.
- Tenure reform - Control over the vast majority of British Columbia's land base is held by timber, mining and other resource companies through various forms of tenure (leases, licences etc.). British Columbia's laws about resource tenure have been in place since before the term climate change had even been coined – they are antiquated and are a major barrier to conservation and self-determination in BC.
For all West Coast publications related to our Forests and Land Use program, please click here.


text:
Photos courtesy of LAPL. Credit: Jeff Robbins
A few weeks before Artist Josef Silhavy presented his distinguished oil portrait of Thomas Jefferson to the President and Executive Vice President of the Jefferson Savings Bank in Van Nuys, the Red Valentine Liquor Store at 6735 Sepulveda Blvd. was held up and robbed of $25 on Halloween Night 1963.
Goateed and white-shirted Raymond Carpenter was arrested, along with his accomplice Ronald Lee Ellmers. Both men were AWOL from Fort Ord, a US Army post on Monterey Bay, CA, which closed in 1994.
The Red Valentine Liquor Store was also the scene of a shooting on June 11, 1951.
To our modern eyes, accustomed to seeing oversized vaca negras in black, XXL shirts emerge from every televised car chase, these criminals of a half-century ago are lithe, fit and neatly groomed.
If they were young, alive and looked like that today, they might be sitting at Starbucks working on their blog. Or perhaps mixing mash at MacLeod Ale.


text:
Daily Checklist
Uncommon Goods Gift Certificate
80 points/$
(80 points/$ = 5.00% cashback)
coupons & deals May 2017 for Uncommon Goods Gift Certificat
Get 5.00% cash back at Uncommon Goods Gift Certificate when you start your shopping at Memolink. 5.00% cash back will be awarded in the form of 80 points per dollar and can be redeemed for cash or gift cards online on Memolink.com.
No Uncommon Goods Gift Certificate coupon code needed. Click "use coupon" to activate.
No Uncommon Goods Gift Certificate coupon code needed. Click "use coupon" to activate.
use coupon
Coupon Code: None Needed | Expires: Ongoing
About Uncommon Goods Gift Cer...
|Uncommon Goods - Find Anything But Ordinary. They have worked hard to build an online marketplace offering creatively designed, high-quality merchandise at affordable prices. They are combining the treasures of a specialty boutique, the great finds of a craft show, discoveries from a faraway bazaar, along with some enduring classics. UncommonGoods offers an exciting selection of products for the home, as well as an assortment of distinctive personal accessories, with more categories to follow. Shopping with them is a true exploration of the different. You will receive 80 points for every dollar you spend. Your points will be awarded within 35 - 45 days following a valid purchase. Memolink gets paid when you shop online and we share that with you in the form of points for cashback.
See special terms & disclaimers
My Stores
Special Terms & Disclaimers
|Only coupons found directly on Memolink.com are eligible for points. If you use coupons from this store that is not on Memolink.com, or from any other store or website, you may not receive Memolink points for your purchase. If the store emails you directly, and it does not come from Memolink.com, you will also not receive points for your purchase. You must go through Memolink.com or an email that Memolink.com sends you directly to earn points for your purchase.


text:
Victims killed in Onslow County head-on crash identified
RICHLANDS, ONSLOW COUNTY - Investigators have released the names of the victims killed in an Onslow County head-on crash Friday afternoon.
According to the Highway Patrol, Sherry Ellis, 43, of Rocky Mount, was driving her blue Kia northbound on Highway 258, near A.I. Taylor Road, when her car crossed the center line and hit a Ford Explorer head-on. Edward Johnson, 73, of Franklin, Va., and his dog were inside that S.U.V., investigators said. The wreck happened at about 2:30 p.m. Friday.
Both Ellis and Johnson were killed, troopers said. In addition, the passenger in the Kia, Bobbie Jo Bateman, 43, Rocky Mount, was taken to a hospital in Wilmington.
Johnson's dog did survive the crash, according to investigators.
Troopers said alcohol and speed were not factors.
Friday's double-fatal wreck happened at the same place where a New River Marine was killed less than two weeks before.
On April 22, Christopher Jonas Navarro, 18, lost control of his car and hit a culvert in a ditch, ejecting him, trooper said. He died at the scene, just two weeks before his 19th birthday.
Elaine Shepard lives in the area where the wrecks happened. She told NewsChannel 12 that the road has a deadly reputation.
"It was devastating because it brought back memories of the accident that happened here in 1977," said Shepard. "In 1977, there were five marines; they came around the curve, that same curve. Four of them died, one did live. But the front of the car was split in half. The front of it kept going, hit our vehicles, and then two more bounced out and went through my trailer at that time.
"We've seen so many deadly accidents People need to slow down, watch the road, watch for other drivers, [and] be prepared to stop because this is a busy road."