text:
humor India Indian music music Personal vocalists: dagarel doggerel
by Warren
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Brighter Planet
Comic Verse About Indian Music, part 2
"Oral Tradition: Some Hidden Aspects — or, The Ustad's Advice."
When I was in my early days,
I fell in love with raags,
Though my mother said the singers
Sounded more like frogs.
I learned to sing the alap,
I learned to sing the cheez,
My taan became proficient,
But still it failed to please.
I asked an ancient ustad,
how to make a lovely note.
"My son," he said, "it just requires
a clearing of the throat."
"You start down in the glottis,
and gargle up some phlegm,
then bring it through your larynx
for a truly great ACC-HEM!"
"My son," he then continued,
"Your music won't be great, 'till
You can made a wad of mucus,
Stained red from years of betel."
I listened to the records
Of the pandits and ustads;
'twas true, I found: the greatest singers
Made the biggest wads.
When Bade Ghulam Ali
Throws all his weight around,
His taans, alaps, and gamaks
Produce a stirring sound.
But he's got something else, my friends,
Which modern singers lack:
A wonderfully resonating way
of going "Aaaaaaak!"
I heard the maestro Faiyaaz Khan,
who sang in days of yore:
He'd scrape his learned larynx,
and bring up more…and more.
Paluskar's hack was beautiful,
And likewise Amir Khan…
But now this great tradition,
it seems cannot go on.
The modern crowd of singers
Will stay forever small,
For though they may sing sweetly,
They cannot cough at all.
humor India Indian music music Personal: dagarel doggerel
by Warren
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Brighter Planet
An Obscure Genre: Comic Verse About Indian Classical Music, part 1.
"Intonational Variation in Oral Tradition — or, Tutti Shruti"
In bygone days in India, the emperor Akbar
Had in his court a singer who was known both near and far.
He had a wondrous repertoire, there was no doubt of that —
But every note in every raga came out slightly flat.
Because his voice was out of tune, they called him Besur Khan,
He founded a tradition, so his gayaki lives on.
For he had some disciples, and they disciples too —
And all of them sing ragas in a loud, discordant moo.
And if you ask them nowadays, "why do you sing so flat?"
They'll say, "it's our gharana."
That's all there is to that.
environment Politics: diplomacy ethics refugees South Asia sustainability
by Warren
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Year 4, Month 12, Day 31: Drink A Cup For Kindness' Sake…
Aaaaand this letter marks the official end of the Climate Letter Project. That doesn't mean I won't be writing more, but that I am freeing myself from the one-a-day demand. I'm putting that daily energy into working on the Climate Message Project, q.v. Happy New Year!
This, from the Express Tribune (Pakistan):
The head of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dr Rajendra Pachauri, called for greater cooperation between Pakistan and India when it comes to managing our joint water resources (the Indus River System), on his last visit to Pakistan. An Indian himself, he pointed out that our "culture and history has shown us that we can harmonise our actions in consonance with nature". He also called for greater cooperation in the fight against climate change.
Last week, an India-Pakistan dialogue on energy and climate change was held to discuss this very topic, hosted by the Heinrich Boll Foundation and the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad. Experts from India and Pakistan came together to explore ways in which they could jointly hold their governments accountable to what needs to be done about climate change. According to sustainable development expert, Dr Tariq Banuri, who currently teaches at the University of Utah, "the science has become more certain and climate change is more certain now… the massive floods of 2010 were not part of our history; there are changes in weather patterns. Yet, climate policy is paralysed — people just don't want to act." There is a leadership vacuum at the global level, where climate change talks have stalled over the principle of equity.
A revision of one that saw publication in Dawn a while back. December 19:
South Asia will confront enormous challenges in the next few decades as the greenhouse effect intensifies, destabilizing weather patterns and making agriculture increasingly unpredictable. Potential strategic and political impacts could easily include bitter resource conflicts and refugee movements that would dwarf the horrors of partition.
The fact that this region has historically contributed hardly anything to the industrial emissions which have precipitated the climate crisis lends these looming disasters a sad irony. Meanwhile, the nations which were major sources of carbon pollution over the past century have been insulated from the effects of their behavior by geographical serendipity.
While morality demands that the industrialized world act immediately to reduce greenhouse emissions, the countries currently bearing the brunt of this human-caused climatic disruption must both reinforce their physical infrastructure (to ensure that humanitarian emergencies are easily resolved), and their diplomatic infrastructure (to ensure peaceful resolutions to the geopolitical crises that will invariably accompany global climate change).
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes corporate irresponsibility denialists media irresponsibility Republicans
by Warren
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Year 4, Month 12, Day 30: Semolina Pilchard?
The Patriot-News (PA) runs a fine op-ed from Richard Whiteford:
Congressional legislators who deny climate change typically focus on free market economics and fail to acknowledge the destructive impacts and associated costs that we experience now from climate driven extreme weather events.
They grouse about the Obama Administration's request for a 2014 climate change budget of $11.6 billion and the expansion of government agencies to combat climate change.
While realizing that the Republican party's platform rests on smaller government and cutting government expenses to the bone, you can't help wondering why their budget fetish ignores the fact that, according to the U.S. Treasury Department, between 2011 and the first quarter of 2013 extreme weather events cost us more than $136 billion and that doesn't count the endless numbers of flood, sand storm, drought, and wild fire damages that happened since then.
Props for the man. December 17:
The oil and coal industries won't relinquish the unimaginable profits they've enjoyed for decades without a fight. Because addressing global climate change will cut into their quarterly returns, these corporations have invested heavily in conservative "institutes" and "think tanks" which routinely supply America's print and broadcast media with authoritative voices loudly denying the realities of climate science. The result? An essential public debate on the issue has been corrupted with half-truths, cherry-picked data, and outright falsehoods, stalling legislative action at a time when it is desperately needed.
Which is more likely — that activists and scientists are pooling their (very limited) resources as part of a secretive global conspiracy to advance a spurious environmental agenda, or that giant multinational corporations with a long track record of greed, mendacity and incompetence are employing wealth beyond the dreams of avarice to derail policies that would impair their profitability?
This is irresponsibility at the planetary level, and it will be justly reviled by our descendants, as they struggle to survive in the world we've made for them.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture biodiversity denialism famine farming monocropping
by Warren
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Year 4, Month 12, Day 29: Stately, Plump, Buck Mulligan…
The Port Huron Times-Herald reports on Michigan's farmers, who are getting smacked upside the head by climate change:
Tim Boring knew it wasn't a normal drought when the fields on his Stockbridge farm started to dry up during the summer of 2012.
Nobody escaped the magnitude of heat and dryness that year. Certainly not farmers.
"That drought impacted everyone," said Boring, who produces corn, soybeans and wheat at his family-owned O'Brien Farms when he isn't working his job as Michigan Soybean Promotion Committee research director. "It was certainly one of our biggest cases of severe weather lately."
The drought wiped out a variety of crops, from corn to soybeans, and sent crop prices surging. Pictures of dried up, fractured grounds, stained corn leaves and livestock agonizing under the extreme heat were inescapable.
The dry conditions finally faded away, but not before earning the mark of the worst drought in a nearly a quarter-century, according to the Michigan State University Extension.
Severe weather events such as these, some experts and farmers worry, are on the rise.
I've used this letter many times in many different guises: epistodiversity! December 15:
Michigan's farmers aren't the only ones coming face to face with climate change's troublesome realities. Extreme and unpredictable weather is disrupting planting schedules, making for increasingly uncertain harvests everywhere on Earth.
Coping with the accelerating climate crisis will require growers to change many of their ways. The era of massive monocropping is coming to an end; the potential for catastrophic crop failures from environmental disruptions or invasive pests is all too real, and highlights the importance of diversity in our agricultural system. A world-wide re-enactment of the Irish potato famine is a nightmarish thing to to contemplate.
There are countless viewpoints about the best strategies to prepare for a climatically-transformed future, but one thing's absolutely certain: we'll never successfully address the problem if we cannot admit its existence. Just like farmers in Michigan, our media figures and elected representatives must realize that the time for climate-change denial is long past.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility greed Keystone XL Tar Sands
by Warren
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Year 4, Month 12, Day 28: I Ain't Good-Lookin', Babe.
US News And World Report's Jeff Nesbit, on the Keystone XL:
Right now, there is an awful lot of dirty, heavy, crude oil sitting underground in vast areas of the Tars Sands region of Canada. The reserves of this very heavy crude oil – which is more expensive to refine and bring to market than any other type of oil – are big enough that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett once visited the region just to marvel at the untapped economic potential and money to be made there.
The only thing keeping much of this heavy, unrefined crude oil in Canada is cost. It's why TransCanada and the oil industry needs the Keystone XL pipeline. It now costs $17 a barrel to ship this oil by rail. The cost would drop to $10 a barrel if it's shipped through a pipe. That's enough of a cost differential to matter – and potentially keep much of the oil locked up in Canada if Keystone isn't built.
By some accounts, the Tar Sands reserves are as big as anything in Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. All by itself, financial analysts say, the Tar Sands could supply all of the United States' energy needs for the next 30 years if 170 billion barrels of oil are recovered. It's that big.
But should it be recovered? That's the question that no one ever asks. TransCanada, Exxon Mobil, Suncor and every other big company looking to make trillions of dollars from the Tar Sands region just assumes that the answer is…well, yes, of course. They are already making money from the Tar Sands region. They just expect to make a lot more, with a bigger profit, if the Keystone pipeline is built.
But should it be built? That's another question that no one ever really asks, largely because it runs counter to the history and notion of innovation that has defined America. People invent things, companies innovate, new industries are born, and economic winners enjoy the spoils of victory.
Yet it's a question that needs to be answered sooner rather than later now that we know, with scientific certainty, that we only have a limited amount of time in this generation – and a finite budget of carbon that we can burn globally – before we tip the earth's climate system towards an unstable and inhospitable state. The science question is settled. The economic one isn't yet.
Kill it before it kills us! December 14:
The assertion that a transcontinental pipeline will reduce the cost of Alberta's Tar Sands oil ignores several troublesome facts. Pipelines leak, and the crude intended for transport in the Keystone XL is a particularly toxic variety. Let it contaminate an aquifer en route, and the price goes up to include countless thousands of human lives.
More importantly, the CO2 emissions from the project would trigger runaway climate change an order of magnitude more severe than anything we've yet experienced. Such a planetary disaster would carry costs of Brobdingnagian proportions — damages which our trivia-obsessed political establishment seems incapable of imagining.
Let the exploitation of the Tar Sands proceed, and all of these consequences are inevitable — natural consequences of a business plan that profits from environmental destruction. We'd be better off minimizing and eventually eliminating fossil fuels from our energy economy, and leaving all that dirty crude in the ground.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes corporate irresponsibility Keystone XL Tar Sands
by Warren
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Year 4, Month 12, Day 27: Happy Day After Boxing Day!
The Edmonton Journal explores the potentials of the Tar Sands:
Alberta's oilsands reserves are a gift, blessing the province with jobs, Texas-sized bragging rights and a revenue stream most jurisdictions would envy.
But it is a gift that comes with strings.
As an ongoing Edmonton Journal series exploring the oilsands industry illustrates, some of those strings are difficult to untangle — especially persistent environmental challenges such as tailings ponds and greenhouse-gas emissions.
Let's start with tailings, which is a problem the industry has wrestled with from the beginning, but the province only started cracking down on in 2009.
Oilsands, as the name implies, is by its very nature heavy on sand. The process of breaking the bonds between oil and sand adds a host of chemicals to the equation.
For decades, the resulting tailings ponds have been a problem with a solution promised just around the corner.
Only a single 220-hectare site has been reclaimed. In the meantime, tailings ponds have blossomed from 50 square kilometres in 2005 to 176 square kilometres in 2010.
Premier Alison Redford promised a Washington, D.C., audience that tailings ponds will disappear from the Alberta landscape in the near future.
Companies are investing in research to solve the problem and there are promising projects. A viable, affordable solution could be close.
But as of this moment, there is still, despite Redford's statements, no magic bullet to the tailings problem.
There are parallels between the old problem of tailings and the newly appreciated problem of carbon dioxide emissions.
It's actually a pretty good piece. December 13:
The oil industry's sales pitch for developing the Tar Sands is full of reassurances. "There won't be any environmental damage, and if there is, we'll fix it." "CO2 emissions will be trapped and sequestered." "We need the energy to power our civilization." "Our economy needs the stimulus." "Nothing can possibly go wrong."
It'd all be very soothing, if only it were true. If only these fossil fuel companies had a track record of living up to their promises. If only their history of malfeasance, mendacity, venality, incompetence and corruption didn't give the lie to their assertions. If only our politics wasn't dominated and controlled by the financial power of these same multinational corporations.
Our society is addicted to the ostensibly cheap energy provided by oil and coal, and the platitudes of their purveyors sound disturbingly like a heavy smoker dismissing a cardiologist's warnings. We'd be better off overcoming our addictions.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes corporate irresponsibility idiots Republicans Senate Republicans sustainability Tea Party
by Warren
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Year 4, Month 12, Day 26: Sliding Down The Razor Blade Of Life
The Dallas Morning News, on the belated introduction of fossil fuel corporations to climatic reality:
Exxon Mobil used to spend millions of dollars to lobby against efforts to tax or limit carbon emissions, and even denied the existence of man-made climate change. Now, the energy giant and several other businesses are factoring the likelihood of a carbon tax into their long-range plans.
We applaud this awakening, which research group CDP North America chronicles in a recent white paper. It brings a dramatically new dynamic to efforts to restrict carbon emissions. By CDP's tally, at least 29 major companies — familiar names such as Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Walt Disney, Wells Fargo, General Electric and at least nine major energy companies — see a carbon tax in their future and are in the process now of building it into their business plans.
It's (past) time for Congress to do the same.
Several factors underlie the development of this new dynamic, not the least of which is business pragmatism. Opinion polls show strong public support for the need to act on climate change. Legal victories have given the Environmental Protection Agency a stronger hand in regulating emissions. And President Barack Obama has vowed to regulate carbon emissions from coal plants, a major step toward the U.S. meeting its promise to reduce carbon emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and 80 percent by 2050.
Exxon Mobil's transformation, the first hint of which can be traced to a speech by chairman Rex Tillerson in 2009, is particularly significant. Exxon Mobil is among the nation's most conservative companies. Its new position puts it at odds with the more conservative wing of the GOP, which denies climate change and opposes policies that would put a price on carbon.
But Exxon Mobil recognizes that fossil fuels, its lifeblood for decades, are falling out of favor around the world and that burning them probably contributes to global warming. Economists concur that establishing a price on carbon pollution would be an effective market-based incentive to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, like oil and coal, and encourage use of lower-carbon natural gas, nuclear energy and renewable energy alternatives, such as solar, wind and battery power.
When your voters are more conservative than Exxon, what are you going to do? December 12:
Republican politicians normally jump to do the bidding of their paymasters in the fossil fuel industry, so the growing readiness of big oil to embrace a tax on CO2 emissions should provide an opportunity for our profoundly dysfunctional government to move forward on policies that actually address some of our civilization's primary contributions to global climate change. But "should" is a long way from "will."
These lawmakers are trapped between a corporate rock and a demographic hard place; the tea-party zealots who are the majority of Republican primary voters are reflexively anti-science to the point that simply acknowledging the reality of climate change is electoral poison in many heavily gerrymandered Congressional districts. The result is certain: paralysis and gridlock in the face of crisis.
It's long past time for our politicians to respect the laws of physics and chemistry and their implications for humanity. A carbon tax is long overdue.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility economics EPA irresponsibility
by Warren
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Year 4, Month 12, Day 25: Stop Making My Head Hurt.
Oh, for fuck's sake. The LA Times:
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency plans to substantially reduce inspections and civil enforcement cases against industry over the next five years, arguing that focusing on the biggest polluters would be the most effective way to clean up air and water.
In a draft strategic plan, the EPA proposes to cut federal inspections by one-third from the 20,000 inspections it conducted in the last fiscal year, ended Sept. 30.
Moreover, it plans to initiate about 2,320 civil enforcement cases a year, compared with the 3,000 cases initiated last fiscal year, a 23% reduction.
The EPA said the shift for fiscal years 2014 to 2018 is not a retreat from enforcement but a more effective allocation of resources.
"From our work on the biggest enforcement cases, such as the BP Deepwater Horizon spill, to aggressively pursuing smaller cases that can reduce harmful health impacts and have the greatest environmental benefit, our enforcement work will continue to save lives and protect our environment," said Alisha Johnson, an agency spokeswoman.
Representatives from industry organizations that frequently criticize the EPA, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Mining Assn., had no comment on the proposed changes.
Well, they wouldn't, would they? Sheesh. December 11:
It's hard to find a positive spin on the news that the EPA will be cutting back on its inspections of climate polluters. "More efficient use of resources" is pretty weak tea, at a time when the urgency of the climate crisis is no longer disputed by any reasonable person. What we need is more inspections, not fewer. What we need is more funding for the EPA, and policies in place that will enable the Agency to actually fulfill its mandate to protect our environment.
The history of medicine has shown over and over that intelligent early diagnosis saves both money and lives, and this is equally true for the planet's health. Environmental inspections are essential for tracking pollution output, and are necessary both for predicting future outcomes and mitigating their impacts on society. Such superficially plausible thrift is a virtual guarantee of far costlier outcomes in the coming years.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists media irresponsibility Republican obstructionism
by Warren
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Brighter Planet
Year 4, Month 12, Day 24: If You Knew Susie Like I Knew Susie
The Akron Beacon Journal (OH) offers this perspective from Lee Thomas, former EPA head under Reagan:
During the 1980s, the United States and the world faced an urgent environmental challenge. Scientists warned strongly that chlorofluorocarbons, known as CFCs, were destroying the ozone layer. If not stopped, this would wreak havoc on public health — increasing cancer rates, cataracts and worse— and on ecosystems that are essential for agriculture and marine life. The scientists made clear: Humans caused this problem and human must fix it.
Under President Ronald Reagan's leadership, we decided to act. We engaged with the business community, environmental organizations, government officials and other nations. Less than two years after the discovery of the ozone hole over the Antarctic, many countries negotiated the Montreal Protocol to phase out the use of CFCs.
Reagan was the first head of state to endorse the treaty, and the Senate ratified it unanimously.
This isn't a history lesson: This matters right now. New international negotiations on climate just concluded this week in Warsaw, Poland. While the world still waits for true leadership, last month's global science assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned starkly: Climate change is here, it's getting worse, we're causing it, and we need to act without delay.
Make no mistake: Climate change is a threat that, once distant, has moved squarely into the present. It demands immediate attention.
In the case of the ozone layer, we can learn from our success. But don't think it was easy. Skeptical voices railed against the treaty, denying that CFCs were a problem or suggesting that adaptation was the preferred approach. Chemical and equipment manufacturers feared the costs. Those fears proved to be unfounded. Businesses soon adjusted to the new rules and identified opportunities for new products. More than a decade of economic prosperity followed the signing of the treaty, showing that American ingenuity can go a long way toward solving our nation's challenges.
A generic article merits a generic letter. December 11:
The facts are in, and have been for a long time. Why, then, is there any significant climate change denial in America? The fault lies with an egregiously irresponsible news media and the corporate interests behind them. For decades, the fossil fuel industry has invested heavily in conservative "institutes" and "think tanks" which provide a steady supply of authoritative-sounding pundits who argue for the continued over-consumption of oil and coal. Oddly, these companies continue to make historically unprecedented profits.
While the US hasn't been clobbered by climate chaos as much as some other nations, our lucky streak won't go on forever. We are already seeing impacts on American agriculture and infrastructure, and the overwhelming scientific consensus (despite the naysaying of television's unctuous talking heads) is that it's going to get significantly worse in the coming decades. Conservative politicians' irresponsible refusal to craft climate policy around facts rather than ideology is a grave disservice to their constituents and to the nation they claim to serve.
Warren Senders


text:
Laura Alberts Tasteful Options
by: Larry Collett • 0
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by: Larry Collett • 0
Established in 2002 by mother/daughter team Laura Leppert and Karen Elsey, Laura Alberts is a café and purveyor of craft beer, fine wine and gifts. The name 'Laura Alberts' comes from combining Karen's mother's name, Laura and her father's name, Albert. Laura is a Charleston native well-known for her crab dip, aged white cheddar pimento cheese, chocolate bourbon pecan pie & coconut creme pie, all of which is served regularly at the restaurant. Albert was a North Charleston policeman quite fond of Laura's cuisine.
Located on Daniel Island, 10 minutes from the heart of historic Charleston, South Carolina, we serve up true lowcountry cuisine with an innovative flair. Our wine selection is known for featuring the best of over 19 varietals in any price point. In 2009, we added a 6-tap, full-service growler station, offering a wide selection of hard-to-find craft beers available by growler, bomber, and glass. We also offer gourmet catering, dinners-to-go, corporate lunches, picnic or boating boxed lunches, and a wine club. We have a Fresh Local menu and serve Certified South Carolina grown products.
OPEN 10:00 – 6:00 Monday - Saturday
LUNCH 11:30 – 3:00 Monday- Saturday
BRUNCH 10:00 – 3:00 Saturday
DINNER 5:00 – 9:00 Wednesday
Contact Us
CATERING 843-881-4711 or firstname.lastname@example.com
QUESTIONS & COMMENTS 843-881-4711 or email@example.com
891 Island Park Drive
Daniel Island, SC 29492-7993
(we are a pink building with black awnings)
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subset: commoncrawl


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Canada's competition watchdog: we have teeth and will use them
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's competition watchdog will flex its legal muscle more forcefully from now on to get information from companies under investigation for abusive practices, the agency's interim commissioner warned on Wednesday.
The Competition Bureau, an independent law enforcement agency, has the power to obtain records or question individuals under oath in non-merger cases, but has recently been trying to get information voluntarily, said John Pecman, interim commissioner.
Pecman said that approach has not worked well because companies delay their responses, provide incomplete information, or demand the probe be dropped altogether.
"While Einstein didn't practice antitrust law, in this context, I believe the bureau must take heed of the very perceptive observation, frequently attributed to him, that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results," he said in a speech that was posted on the agency's website.
He said the agency will not be so lenient in future.
"So, going forward, the bureau's first course of action in obtaining information from the target of a formal inquiry in non-merger cases will be, for all but exceptional cases, obtaining a legally binding section 11 order from the court," he said.
In Canada's competition law, section 11 allows the Competition Bureau to force companies to turn over documents and other evidence.
Pecman did not name companies that had hindered the bureau's investigations.
The Competition Bureau has already used compulsory orders to require the Canadian branches of several foreign banks to produce records related to possible manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor). Continued...


text:
The Bedroom Community of Iceland's Valgeir Sigurðsson
Composer, producer and founder of Iceland's Bedroom Community record label, Valgeir Sigurðsson has become a lynchpin for the world of blurred boundaries that constitutes Iceland's indie rock, electronica and classical scenes. He's collaborated with Björk, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and Sigur Rós among many others, and his most recent release, "Architecture of Loss" is Q2 Music's current Album of the Week.
Sigurðsson writes the following of his playlist:
With the exception of the Reich, Feldman and the Icelandic Jórunn Viðar the music on my playlist here is mostly from the 2000's. Much of it is made by friends, I'm personally responsible for one piece and have had a hand in the works of Daníel Bjarnason, Ben Frost and Nico Muhly who all release their music via Bedroom Community, my label.
This is the music that I constantly have flowing in my system through my work as a producer and the running of the label. The music of David Lang has resonated with me ever since his amazing work was introduced to me by Nico Muhly years ago. Steve Reich, Morton Feldman, Aphex Twin and Pan Sonic have for long been an inspiration in many different ways and Vökuró by Jórunn Viðar is something I can only describe as "Icelandic to the core" — I don't know really how or why — it's one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. It's fun to remember that I recorded a version of this song many years ago with Björk for her Medulla album.
Tim Hecker is a sound manipulator from Montréal and here he's taken the church organ out of the church and probably sold his soul to the devil to make this. Finally, the Jefferson Friedman String Quartet No. 2 is wildly exciting and played so well here by the Chiara Quartet, who I had the pleasure of writing for not so long ago.
Daníel Bjarnason - Bow to String: I. "Sorrow conquers happiness" (from "Processions")
Jefferson Friedman - String Quartet No. 2: 3. Eighth Note = 180 (from "Quartets"/Chiara String Quartet)
Nico Muhly - Drones & Violin: Part I: Material in Eb (Pekka Kuusisto, violin)
David Lang - Child: Sweet Air
Steve Reich - Tehillim: III.
Jórunn Viðar - Vökuró (from "Unglingurinn í Skóginum")
Morton Feldman - Rothko Chapel: 3.
Valgeir Sigurðsson - The Crumbling (from "Architecture of Loss")
Tim Hecker - Hatred of Music II (from "Ravedeath 1972")
Pan Sonic - Arktinen/Arctic (from "Kesto")
Ben Frost & Daníel Bjarnason - Reyja (from "Sólaris")
Aphex Twin - Avril 14th (from "Drukqs")


text:
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|Final Flash Vs. Super Kamehameha!
|Tweet Topic Started: Jul 31 2006, 04:16 PM (2,102 Views)
|* Super_Vegeta
|Jul 31 2006, 04:16 PM Post #1
Welcome To Oblivion!
If it was a true fight, both opponents wanting to kill each other badly, both in there highest and stongest form, what attack would win?
Final Flash or Super Kamehameha?
Click here to join a new graphic community!
|* .Revolution
|Jul 31 2006, 04:39 PM Post #2
.: Changing Everything :.
|I guess Super Kame-Hame-Ha. Cause is the full and pure power of the fighter who uses it.
Bow down
Surrender unto me
Submit infectiously
Sanctify your demons
Click to visit my DeviatART
|* Tyro
|Jul 31 2006, 04:58 PM Post #3
|This topic and thread is to dependant on power levels. I mean, obviously, whoever has the highest power level will be the victor of this fight. Not to mention that multiple people have the Super Kamehameha and can easily beat Vegeta in his ASSj state. And considering the only "Super kamehameha" ever used was Goku at the 23rd Tenkaichi budokai, Vegeta would be the victor. However, Goku's "real kamehameha" against Chibi Boo would kill Vegeta in a second. Point is, Anyone after the Cell Games, who uses a kamehameha (besides maybe Gohan) will own Vegeta. Everyone under the Cell games, loses.
My life fell like dew
Disappears like dew
All of this world
Is dream after dream
|* Super_Vegeta
|Jul 31 2006, 05:00 PM Post #4
Welcome To Oblivion!
Hmm... I never thought about that Tyro... So, let me change it abit then, what would win out of Final Shine and Super Kamehameha?
Click here to join a new graphic community!
|Aug 1 2006, 01:56 AM Post #5
despite the fact that ss4 Vegeta had final shine in budokai 3, and ppl assume that final shine would overpower super kamehameha, this is wrong.
Vegeta never used final shine in ss4 form. Only in his base form against super 17 ONE TIME!. I say super kamehameha wins cuz it can be used in a higher form (for example as a super saiyan) its obvious that SS > base form, so i say super kamehameha still wins.
|Iced Digger
|Aug 1 2006, 02:30 AM Post #6
Jake, "Sexy" Jake
|Wouldn't it matter who actually uses it? I truly can't answer this VS.
|Aug 1 2006, 03:43 AM Post #7
yeah, its hard to speculate on how powerful specific attacks are anyways.
Let's just stick to people in the VS thread instead of energy waves n such
|* Super_Vegeta
|Aug 1 2006, 09:43 AM Post #8
Welcome To Oblivion!
|Ok, lets end this as Super Kamehameha as the victor!
Click here to join a new graphic community!
|Aug 7 2006, 04:35 AM Post #9
Pookie Powa!
|Awww, but I wanted to vote. Lol I was going to say Final Flash because if you guys remember Final Flash was huge. Remember when Vegeta fired iat Cell. Besides the name of the attack is more intimidating. Even though I love Super Kamehameha! Final Flash is an attack that would make me run behind a pebble and cry for mommy lmao.
|Oct 28 2006, 05:47 PM Post #10
|I say Final Flash Because in the Cell saga when Vegeta lets Cell go Perfict foarm and Vegeta starts to get Despret he dose the Final Flash to End cell, the Move is a cilender that is the with of a house and leaves the planet and it shows Earth and the Final Flash Beam leaving earth, its huge its massive and it takes off Perfict Cells Whole right side arm neck chunk and waist, And leaves PERFICT CELL in Aww untill he uses Piccolos move to regenarate his body the basterd.
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text:
The Washington Post
Rizzo's War (Joe Rizzo Series #1)by Lou Manfredo, Bobby Cannavale (Read by)
Rizzo's War, Lou Manfredo's stunningly authentic debut, partners a rookie detective with a seasoned veteran on his way to retirement in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
"There's no wrong, there's no right, there just is." This is the refrain of Joe Rizzo, a decades-long veteran of the NYPD, as he passes on the knowledge of his/i>
Rizzo's War, Lou Manfredo's stunningly authentic debut, partners a rookie detective with a seasoned veteran on his way to retirement in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
"There's no wrong, there's no right, there just is." This is the refrain of Joe Rizzo, a decades-long veteran of the NYPD, as he passes on the knowledge of his years of experience to his ambitious new partner, Mike McQueen, over a year of riding together as detectives in the Sixty-second Precinct in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. McQueen is fresh from the beat in Manhattan, and Bensonhurst might as well be China for how different it is. They work on several cases, some big, some small, but the lesson is always the same. Whether it's a simple robbery or an attempted assault, Rizzo's saying always seems to bear out.
When the two detectives are given the delicate task of finding and returning the runaway daughter of a city councilman, who may or may not be more interested in something his daughter has taken with her than in her safety, the situation is much more complex. By the end of Rizzo and McQueen's year together, however, McQueen is not surprised to discover that even in those more complicated cases, Rizzo is still right—there's no wrong, there's no right, there just is.
Rizzo's War is an introduction to a wonderful new voice in crime fiction in the Big Apple, ringing with authenticity, full of personality, and taut with the suspense of real, everyday life in the big city.
Editorial Reviews
The Washington Post
"Lou Manfredo gets it. As a depiction of the byzantine, politicized existence of a working American police department, Rizzo's War stands as a valuable primer. This is good police work as it actually occurs--full of flaw and compromise, absent the pristine science of television procedurals, and bearing only a vague resemblance to what any social or legal philosopher might define as justice. With all of that said, though, sometimes good police work is nearly enough." David Simon, creator of The Wire
"Lou Manfredo's debut explores the gritty, unkind streets of Brooklyn. . . . Comparable to the late Ed McBain's brilliant 87th Precinct procedurals . . . Manfredo's novel resonates with authenticity." Sun-Sentinel
"Manfredo shows us the nitty-gritty of police work. . . . It's a realistic portrait . . . a solid debut." The Washington Post
"In this engrossing debut novel, Lou Manfredo gives us a modern-day police procedural that is equally concerned with insights into character as with apprehending criminals." smartmoney.com
Product Details
- 9781427207845
- Publisher:
- Macmillan Audio
- Publication date:
- 09/29/2009
- Series:
- Joe Rizzo Series , #1
- Edition description:
- Unabridged
- Product dimensions:
- 5.20(w) x 5.70(h) x 1.40(d)
Read an Excerpt
THE FEAR ENVELOPED HER, and yet, despite it, she found herself oddly detached, being from body, as she ran frantically from the stifling grip of the subway station out into the rainy, darkened street. Her physiology now took full control, and her pupils dilated and gathered in the dim light to scan the streets, the storefronts, the randomly parked automobiles. Like a laser her vision locked on to him, indiscriminate in the distance. Her brain computed: one hundred yards away. Her legs received the computation and turned her body toward him, propelling her faster. How odd, she thought through the terror, as she watched herself from above. It was almost the flight of an inanimate object. So unlike that of a terrified young woman. When her scream came at last, it struck her deeply and primordially, and she ran even faster with the sound of it. A microsecond later the scream reached his ears and she saw his head snap around toward her. The silver object at the crest of his hat glistened in the misty streetlight, and she felt her heart leap wildly in her chest. Oh my God, she thought, a police officer, dear God, a police officer! As he stepped from the curb and started toward her, she swooned and her being suddenly came slamming back into her body from above. Her knees weakened and she faltered, stumbled, and as consciousness left her she fell heavily down, sliding into the grit and slime of the wet, cracked asphalt.
September- October
MIKE MCQUEEN sat behind the wheel of the dark gray Chevrolet Impala and listened to the hum of the idling motor. The intermittent slap- slap of the wipers and the soft sound of the rain falling on the sheet metal body were the only other sounds. The Motorola two- way on the seat beside him was silent. The smell of stale cigarettes permeated the car's interior. It was a slow September night, and he shivered against the dampness. The green digital on the dash told him it was almost one a.m. He glanced across the seat and through the passenger window. He saw his partner, Joe Rizzo, pocketing his change and about to leave the all- night grocer. He held a brown bag in his left hand. McQueen was a six- year veteran of the New York City Police Department, but on this night he felt like a first- day rookie. Six years as a uniformed officer first assigned to Manhattan's Greenwich Village, then, most recently, its Upper East Side. Sitting in the car, in the heart of the Italian- American ghetto that was Brooklyn's Bensonhurst neighborhood, he felt like an out-of-towner in a very alien environment. He had been a detective, third grade, for all of three days, and this night was to be his first field exposure, a midnight- to- eight tour with a fourteen- year detective sergeant first grade, the coffee- buying Rizzo.
Six long years of a fine, solid career, active in felony arrests, not even one civilian complaint, medals, commendations, and a file full of glowing letters from grateful citizens, and all it had gotten him was a choice assignment to a desirable East Side precinct. Then one night he left his radio car to pee in an all- night diner, heard a commotion, looked down an alleyway, and just like that, third grade detective. The gold shield handed to him just three weeks later by the major himself. If you've got to fall ass backwards into an arrest, fall into one where the lovely college roommate of the young daughter of the mayor of New York City is about to get raped by a nocturnal predator. Careerwise, it doesn't get any better than that.
McQueen was smiling at the memory when Rizzo dropped heavily into the passenger seat and slammed the door. "Damn it," Rizzo said, shifting his large body in the seat. "Can they put some fuckin' springs in these seats already?" He fished a container of coffee from the bag and passed it to Mc-Queen. They sat in silence as the B train suddenly roared by on the elevated tracks above this length of Eighty- sixth Street. McQueen watched the sparks fly from the third rail contacts and then sparkle and twirl in the rainy night air before flickering and dying away. Through the parallel slots of the overhead tracks, he watched as the twin red taillights of the last car vanished into the distance. The noise of the steel- on- steel wheels and a thousand rattling steel parts and I-beams reverberated in the train's wake. It made the deserted, rain- washed streets seem even more dismal. McQueen suddenly found himself missing Manhattan.
The grocery had been the scene of a robbery the week before, and Rizzo needed to ask the night man a few questions. McQueen wasn't quite sure if it was the coffee or the questions which had come as an afterthought. Although he had known Rizzo only two days, he suspected the older man to be somewhat less than an enthusiastic investigator. "Let's head on back to the house," Rizzo said, referring to the Sixtysecond Precinct station house, as he sipped his coffee and fished in his outer coat pocket for his Chesterfields. "I'll write up this interview and show you where to file it."
McQueen eased the car away from the curb. Rizzo insisted he drive, to get the lay of the neighborhood. McQueen felt disoriented and foolish: he wasn't even sure which way to the precinct.
Rizzo seemed to sense McQueen's discomfort. "Make a U-turn," he said, lighting the Chesterfield. "Head back up Eighty- sixth and make a left on Seventeenth Avenue." He drew on the cigarette and looked sideways at McQueen. He smiled before he spoke.
"What's the matter, kid? Missing the bright lights across the river already?" McQueen shrugged. "I guess. I just need time, that's all."
He drove slowly through the light rain. Once off Eighty- sixth Street's commercial strip, they entered a residential area comprised of detached and semi- detached older, brick homes. Mostly two stories, the occasional three- story, some with small, neat gardens or lawns in front. Many had ornate, well- kept statues, some illuminated by Hood lamps, of the Virgin Mary or Saint Anthony or Joseph. McQueen scanned the homes as he drove. The occasional window shone dimly with night- lights glowing from within. They appeared peaceful and warm, and he imagined the families inside, tucked into their beds, alarm clocks set and ready for the coming workday. Everyone safe, everything secure. That's how it always seemed. But six years had taught him what was more likely going on in some of those houses. The drunken husbands coming home and beating their wives; the junkie sons and daughters; the sickly, lonely old; the forsaken parent found dead in an apartment after the stench of decomposition had reached a neighbor and someone had dialed 911. The memories of an ex- patrol officer. As the radio crackled to life on the seat beside him, he listened with half an ear and wondered what his memories as an ex- detective would someday be.
"Six- Two unit one- seven, see the uniform C.I. Hospital ER. Assault victim, female. Copy, one- seven?"
Rizzo keyed the radio. "Copy, dispatch," he said.
"Alright, Mike. That call is ours. Straight up this way, turn left on Bay Eighth Street to the Belt Parkway. Go east a few exits and get off at Ocean Parkway. Coney Island Hospital is a block up from the Belt. Looks like it's gonna be a long night."
When they entered the hospital, it took some minutes to sort through the half dozen patrol officers milling around the emergency room. Mc-Queen found the right cop, a tall, skinny kid of about twenty- three. He glanced down at the man's name tag. "How you doing, Marino? I'm McQueen, Mike McQueen. Me and Rizzo are catching to night. What'd ya got?"
The man pulled a thick leather note binder from his rear pocket. He flipped through and found his entry, turned it to face McQueen and held out a Bic pen.
"Can you scratch it for me, Detective? No sergeant here yet." McQueen took the book and pen, and wrote the date, time, and CHRISTOPER across the bottom of the page, then scribbled his initials and shield number. He handed the book back to Marino. "What'd ya got?" he asked again.
Marino cleared his throat. "I'm not the guy from the scene, that was Willis. He got off at midnight, so he turned it to us and went home. I just got some notes here. Female caucasian, Amy Taylor, twenty- six, single, lives at Eighteen- sixty Sixty- first Street. Coming off the subway at Sixtysecond Street about eleven o'clock, twenty- three hundred, the station's got no clerk on duty after nine. She goes into one of them— what'd ya call it?—one- way turnstile things, the ones that'll only let you out, not in. Some guy jumps outa nowhere and grabs her."
At that point, Rizzo walked up. "Hey, Mike, are you okay with this for a while? My niece is a nurse here, I wanna go say hello, okay?"
Mike glanced at his partner, "Yeah, sure, okay, Joe, go ahead."
McQueen turned back to Marino, "Go on." Marino dropped his eyes back to his notes.
"So this guy pins her in the revolving door and shoves a knife in her face. Tells her he's gonna cut her bad if she don't help him."
"Help him what?"
Marino shrugged. "Who the fuck knows? Guy's got the knife in one hand and his johnson in the other. He's trying to whack off on her. Never says another word to her, just presses the knife against her throat. Anyway, somehow he drops the weapon and she gets loose, starts to run away. The guy goes after her. She comes out of the station screaming. Willis is on a foot post doing a four- to- midnight, sees her running and screaming and goes over her way. She takes a fall, faints or something, bangs up her head and swells up her knee and breaks two fingers. They got her upstairs in a room, for observation on account of the head wound."
McQueen thought for a moment. "Did Willis see the guy?" "No, never saw him." "Any description from the girl?"
"I don't know, I never even seen her. When I got here she was already upstairs."
"Okay, stick around till your sergeant shows up and cuts you loose."
"Can't you, Detective?" "Can't I what?" "Cut me loose?"
McQueen frowned and pushed a hand through his hair. "I don't know. I think I can. Do me a favor, though, wait for the sarge, okay?"
Marino shook his head and turned his lips downward. "Yeah, sure, a favor. I'll go sniff some ether or something." He walked away, his head still shaking.
McQueen looked around the brightly lit emergency room. He noticed Rizzo down the hall, leaning against a wall, talking to a bleached blond nurse who seemed to be about Rizzo's age: Gfty. McQueen walked over.
"Hey, Joe, you going to introduce me to your niece?"
Joe turned and looked at McQueen with a puzzled look, then smiled.
"Oh, no, no, turns out she's not working to night. I'm just making a new friend here, is all."
"Well, we need to go talk to the victim, this Amy Taylor." Rizzo frowned. "Is she black?"
"No, cop told me Caucasian. Why? What's the difference?"
"Kid, I know you're new here to Bensonhurst, so I'm gonna be patient. Anybody in this neighborhood named Amy Taylor is either black or some yuppie pain- in- the- ass moved here from Boston to be an artist or a dancer or a Broadway star, and she can't afford to live in Park Slope or Brooklyn Heights or across the river. This here neighborhood is all Italian, kid, everybody— cops, crooks, butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. Except for you, of course. You're the exception. By the way, did I introduce you two? This is the morning shift head nurse, Rosalie Mazzarino. Rosalie, say hello to my boy- wonder partner, Mike Mick- fuckin'-Queen."
The woman smiled and held out a hand. "Nice to meet you, Mike. Don't believe anything this guy tells you. Making new friends! I've known Joe since he was your age and chasing every nurse in the place."
She squinted at McQueen, then slipped a pair of glasses out from her hair and over her eyes. "How old are you— twelve?" Mike laughed. "I'm twenty- eight."
She twisted her mouth up and nodded her head in an approving manner. "And a third grade detective already? I'm impressed."
Rizzo laughed. "Yeah, so was the mayor. This boy's a genuine hero with the alma mater gals."
"Okay, Joe, very good. Now, can we go see the victim?" "You know, kid, I got a problem with that. I can tell you her whole story from right here. She's from Boston, she wants to be a star, and as soon as you lock up the guy raped her, she's gonna bring a complaint against you 'cause you showed no respect for the poor shit, a victim of society and all. Why don't you talk to her. I'll go see the doctor and get the rape kit and pan ties and we'll get out of here. The day tour can follow it up later this morning."
McQueen shook his head. "Wrong crime, partner. No rape, some kind of sexual assault or abuse or what ever."
"Go ahead, kid, talk to her. It'll be good experience for you. Me and Rosalie'll be in one of these linen closets when you get back. I did tell you she was the head nurse, right?"
McQueen walked away with her laughter in his ear. It was going to be a long night. Just as Joe had figured.
HE CHECKED the room number twice before entering. It was a small room with barely enough space for the two hospital beds it held. They were separated by a seriously despondent- looking curtain. The one nearest the door was empty, the mattress exposed. In the dim lighting, McQueen could see the foot of the second bed. The outline of someone's feet showed through the bedding. A faint and sterile yet vaguely unpleasant odor touched his nostrils. He waited a moment longer for his eyes to adjust to the low light, so soft after the harsh Huorescent glare of the hall. He glanced around for something to knock on to announce his presence. He settled on the foot board of the near bed and rapped gently on the cold metal.
"Hello?" he said softly. "Hello, Ms. Taylor?" The covered feet stirred. He could hear the low rustle of linens. He raised his voice a bit when he spoke again.
"Ms. Taylor? I'm Detective McQueen, police. May I see you for a moment?" A light, hidden by the curtain switched on near the head of the bed. McQueen stood and waited.
"Ms. Taylor? Hello?" The voice was sleepy, possibly sedated. It was a gentle and clear voice, yet it held a tension, an edginess. McQueen imagined that he had woken her and now the reality was hitting her. It had actually happened. No, it hadn't been a dream. He had seen it a thousand times: the burglarized, the beaten, the raped, robbed, shot, stabbed, pissed on. He had seen it.
"Detective? Did you say 'detective'? Hello? I can't see you." He stepped further into the room, slowly venturing passed the curtain.
Slow and steady, don't move fast and remember to speak softly. Get her to relax, don't freak her out. Her beauty struck him immediately. She sat, propped on two pillows, the sheet raised and folded over her breasts. Her arms lay beside her on the bed, palms down, straight out. She appeared to be clinging to the bed, steadying herself against some unseen, not possible force. Her skin was almost translucent, a soft glow emanating from it. Her wide- set eyes were liquid sapphire as they met and held his own. Her lips were full and round and sat perfectly under a narrow nose, her face framed with straight shoulder- length black hair. She wore no makeup, and an ugly purple- yellow bruise marked her left temple and part of her cheekbone.
She was the most beautiful woman McQueen had ever seen. After nearly three years of working the richest, most sophisticated square mile in the world, here, in this godforsaken corner of Brooklyn, he finds this woman. For a moment, he forgot why he had come.
"Yes? Can I help you?" she asked as he stood there. He blinked himself back and cleared his throat. He glanced down to the blank page of his note pad, just to steal an instant more before having to speak. "Yes, yes, Ms. Taylor. I'm Detective McQueen, Six- Two detective squad. I need a few minutes for some questions, if you don't mind."
She frowned, and he saw pain in her eyes. For an instant he thought his heart would break. He shook his head slightly. What the hell? What the hell was this?
"I've already spoken to two or three police officers. I've already told them what happened." Her eyes closed. "I'm very tired. My head hurts."
As her eyes opened, they welled with tears. McQueen used all his willpower not to move to her, to cradle her head, to tell her it was okay, it was all over, he was there now.
"Yeah, yeah I know that," he said instead. "But my partner and I caught the case. We'll be handling it. I need a little more information. Just a few minutes. The sooner we get started, the better chance we have of catching this guy."
She seemed to think it over as she held his gaze. When she tried to blink the tears away, they spilled down her cheeks. She made no effort to brush them away, but instead looked deeply into McQueen's eyes. Despite the steely toughness of their cold blue, she saw an empathy and warmth in his expression, and it brought her a reassuring comfort. "Alright" was all she said.
McQueen felt his body relax, and he realized he had been holding himself so tightly that his back and shoulders ached. "May I sit down?" he asked softly. "Yes, of course."
He slid the too- large- for- the- room chair to the far side of the bed and sat with his back to the windows. He heard rain rattling against the panes. The sound chilled him and made him shiver. He found himself hoping she hadn't noticed.
"I already know pretty much what happened. There's no need to go over it all, really. I just have a few questions, most of them formalities. Please don't read anything into it. I just need to know certain things. For the reports. And to help us find this guy. Okay?"
She squeezed her eyes closed again and more tears escaped. She nodded yes and reopened her eyes. He couldn't look away from them.
"This happened about eleven, eleven ten?" "Yes, about."
"You had gotten off the train at the Sixty- second Street subway station?" "Yes."
"Alone?" "Yes." "What train is that?" "The N."
"Where were you going?" "Home." "Where were you coming from?"
"My art class in Manhattan."
McQueen looked up from his notes. Art class? Rizzo's inane preamble resounded in his mind. He squinted at her and said, "You're not originally from Boston, are you?"
For the first time she smiled slightly and McQueen found it disproportionately endearing. "No, Connecticut. Do you think I sound like a Bostonian?"
He laughed. "No, no, not at all. Just something somebody said to me. Long story, pay no attention."
She smiled again, and he could see that the facial movement had caused her some pain. "A lot of you Brooklynites think anyone from out-of- town sounds like they come from Boston."
McQueen sat back in his chair and raised his eyebrows in mock indignation.
" 'Brooklynite?' You think I sound like a Brooklynite?" "Sure do."
"Well, Ms. Taylor, just so you know, I live in the city. Not Brooklyn." He kept his voice light, singsong. "Isn't Brooklyn in the city?"
"Well, yeah, geo graphically. But the city is Manhattan. I was born on Long Island, but I've lived in the city for fifteen years."
"Alright then," she said, with a pitched nod of her head.
McQueen tapped his pen on his note pad and looked at the ugly bruise on her temple. He dropped his gaze to the splinted, bandaged broken fingers of her right hand.
"How are you doing? I know you took a bad fall and had a real bad scare. But how are you doing?"
She seemed to tremble briefly, and he regretted having asked. But she met his gaze with her answer. "I'll be fine. Everything is superficial, except for the fingers, and
they'll heal. I'll be fine."
He nodded to show he believed her and that, yes, of course, she was right, she would be fine. He wondered, though, if she really would be. "Can you describe the assailant?"
"It happened very fast. I mean, it seemed to last for hours, but . . .but . . ." McQueen leaned forward and spoke more softly so she would have to focus on the sound of his voice in order to hear, focus on hearing the words and not on the memory at hand.
"What was his race?"
"He was white."
"Was he taller than you?"
"How tall are you?"
"Five- eight."
"And him?"
She thought for a moment. "Five- nine or ten."
"His hair?"
"Black. Long. Very dirty." She looked down at the sheet and ner vous ly picked at a loose thread. "It . . . it . . ."
McQueen leaned in closer, his knees against the side of the bed. He imagined what it would be like to touch her. "It what?" he asked gently. She looked up sharply with the near panic of a frightened deer in her eyes. "It smelled," she whispered. "His hair was so dirty, I could smell it." She began to sob. McQueen sat back in his chair and held his questioning for a moment. She needed time to compose herself. And he needed to find this man. Badly.
"I WANT to keep this one."
McQueen started the engine and glanced down at his wristwatch as he spoke to Rizzo. It was three in the morning, and his eyes stung with the grit of someone who had been too long awake. Rizzo shifted in the seat and adjusted his jacket. He settled in and turned to the younger detective.
"You what?" he asked absently.
"I want this one. I want to keep it. We can handle this case, Joe, and I want it."
Rizzo shook his head and frowned. "Doesn't work that way, kid. The morning shift catches and pokes around a little, does a rah- rah for the victim, and then turns the case to the day tour. You know that, that's the way it is. Let's get us back to the house, write up the reports, and grab a few zees. We'll pick up enough of our own work next day tour we pull. We don't need to grab something that isn't our problem. Okay?"
McQueen stared out the window into the falling rain on the darkened street. He didn't turn his head as he spoke.
"Joe, I'm telling you, I want this case. If you're in, Gne. If not, I go to the squad boss tomorrow and ask for the case and a partner to go with it." Now he turned to face the older man and met his eyes. "Up to you, Joe. You tell me."
Rizzo turned away and spoke into the windshield before him. He let his eyes watch McQueen's watery reaction. "Pretty rough for a fuckin' guy with three days under his belt." He sighed and turned slowly before he spoke again. "One of the cops in the ER told me this broad was a looker. So now I volunteer for extra work 'cause you got your head turned?"
McQueen shook his head. "Joe, it's not like that."
Rizzo smiled. "Mike, you're how old? Twenty- seven, twenty- eight?
It's like that, alright, it's always like that."
"Not this time. And not me. It's wrong for you to say that, Joe."
At that, Rizzo laughed aloud. "Mike," he said through a lingering chuckle, "there ain't no wrong. And there ain't no right. There just is, that's all."
Now it was McQueen who laughed. "Who told you that, a guru?" Rizzo fumbled through his jacket pockets and produced a battered and bent Chesterfield. "Sort of," he said as he lit it. "My grandfather told me that. You know where I was born?" McQueen, puzzled by the question, shook his head. "How would I know? Brooklyn?"
"Omaha- fuckin'- Nebraska, that's where. My old man was a lifer in the Air Force stationed out there. When I was nine he died, so me and my mother and big sister came back to Brooklyn to live with my grandparents. My grandfather was a first grade detective working Chinatown back then. The first night we got there, I broke down, crying to him about how wrong it was, my old man dying and all, how it wasn't right and all like that. He got down on his knees and leaned right into my face. I still remember the smell of beer and garlic sauce on his breath. He leaned right in and said, 'Kid, nothing is wrong. And nothing is right. It just is.' I never forgot that. He was dead on correct about that, I'll tell you."
McQueen drummed his fingers lightly on the wheel and scanned the mirrors. The street was empty. He pulled the Impala away from the curb and drove back toward the Belt Parkway. After they had entered the westbound lanes, Rizzo spoke again.
"Besides, Mike, this case won't even stay with the squad. Rapes go to sex crimes and get handled by the broads and the guys with master's degrees in fundamental and advanced bullshit. Can you imagine the bitch that Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug would pitch if they knew an insensitive prick like me was handling a rape?"
"Joe, both of those women are dead." Rizzo nodded. "What ever. You get my point."
"And I told you already, this isn't a rape. The guy grabbed her, threatened her with a blade, and was yanking on his own chain while he held her there. No rape. Abuse and assault, tops." For the first time since they had worked together, McQueen thought he heard a shadow of interest in Rizzo's voice when the older man next spoke.
"Blade? Whackin' off? Did the guy come?"
McQueen glanced over at his partner. "What?" He asked.
"Did the guy bust a nut, or not?"
McQueen squinted through the windshield. Had he thought to ask her that? No. No he hadn't. It simply hadn't occurred to him.
"Is that real important to this, Joe, or are you just making a case for your insensitive prick status?"
Rizzo laughed out loud, expelling a gray cloud of cigarette smoke in the process. McQueen reached for the power button and cracked his window.
"No, no, kid, really, official request. Did this asshole come?" "I don't know. I didn't ask her. Why?"
Rizzo laughed again. "Didn't want to embarrass her on the first date, eh, Mike? Understandable, but totally unacceptable detective work."
"Is this going somewhere, Joe?"
Rizzo nodded and smiled. "Yeah, it's going toward granting your rude request that we keep this one. If I catch a case I can clear up quick I always keep it. See, about four, five years ago we had some schmuck running around the precinct grabbing girls and forcing them into doorways and alleyways. Used a knife. He'd hold them there and beat off till the thing started to look like a stick of chop meat. One victim said she stared at a bank clock across the street the whole time to sort of distract herself from the intimacy of the situation, and she said the guy was hammering himself for twenty- five minutes. But he could never get the job done. Psychological, probably. Kind of a major failure at his crime of choice. Never hurt no one, physically, but one of his victims was only thirteen. She must be popping Prozac by the handful now. We caught the guy. Not me, but some guys from the squad. Turned out to be a strung- out junkie shit bag we all knew. Thing is, junkie's don't usually cross over into the sex stuff. No cash or H in it. This could be the same guy. He'd be long out by now. And except for the subway, it's his footprint. We can clear this one, Mike. You and me. I'm gonna make you look like a star, first case. The mayor will be so proud of himself for grabbing that gold shield for you, he'll probably make you the fuckin' commissioner!"
TWO DAYS later McQueen sat at his desk in the cramped detective squad room, gazing once again into the eyes of Amy Taylor. He cleared his voice before he spoke and noticed the bruise on her temple had subsided a bit and no attempt had been made to cover it with makeup. "What I'd like to do is show you some photographs. I'd like you to take a look at some suspects and tell me if one of them is the perpetrator."
Her eyes smiled at him as she spoke. "I've talked to about five police officers in the last few days, and you're the first one to say 'perpetrator."
He felt himself Hush a little. "Well," he said with a forced laugh, "it's a fairly appropriate word for what we're doing here."
"Yes, it is. It's just unsettling to actually hear it spoken. Does that make sense?"
He nodded. "I think I know what you mean."
"Good," she said with the pitched nod of her head that Mike suddenly realized he had been looking forward to seeing again. "I didn't mean it as an insult or anything. Do I look at the mug books now?"
This time McQueen's laugh was genuine. "No, those are your words now. We call it a photo array. I'll show you eight photos of men roughly matching the description you gave. You tell me if one of them is the right one."
"Alright then." She straightened herself in the chair and folded her hands in her lap. She cradled the broken right fingers in the long slender ones of her left hand. The gentleness made McQueen's head swim with, what?, grief? . . . pity? He didn't know.
When he came around to her side of the desk and spread the color photos before her, he knew immediately. She looked up at him, and the sapphires swam in tears yet again. She turned back to the photos and lightly touched one.
"Him" was all she said.
"YOU KNOW," Rizzo said, chewing on a hamburger as he spoke, "you can never overestimate the stupidity of these assholes."
It was just after nine on a Thursday night, and the two detectives sat in the Chevrolet eating their meals. The car stood backed into a slot at the rear of the Burger King's parking lot, nestled in the darkness between circles of glare from two lampposts. Three weeks had passed since the assault on Amy Taylor. McQueen turned to his partner. "Which assholes we talking about here, Joe?" he asked. In the short time he had been working with Rizzo, McQueen had developed a grudging respect for the older man. What Rizzo appeared to lack in enthusiasm, he more than made up for in experience and an ironic, grizzled sort of street smarts. McQueen had already learned much from him, and knew he was about to learn more.
"Criminals," Rizzo continued. "Skells in general. This burglary call we just took reminded me of something. Old case I handled seven, eight years ago. Jewelry store got robbed, over on Thirteenth Avenue. Me and my partner, guy named Giacalone, go over there and see the victim. Old Sicilian lived in the neighborhood forever, salt of the earth type. So me and Giacalone, we go all out for this guy. We even called for the fingerprint team, we were right on it. So we look around, talk to the guy, get the description of the perp and the gun used. We tell the old guy to sit tight and wait for the fingerprint team to show up and we'll be in touch in a couple of days. Well, the old man is so grateful, he walks us out to the car. Just as we're about to pull away, the guy says, 'You know,' he says. 'You know the guy that robbed me cased the joint first.' Imagine that? 'Cased the joint.'— Musta watched a lot of TV, this old guy. So I say to him, 'What'd ya mean, cased the joint?' And he says, 'Yeah, two days ago the same guy came in to get his watch fixed. Left it with me and everything. Even pulled out a receipt card with his name and address and phone number. Must have been just casing the place. Well, he sure fooled me."
Rizzo chuckled and bit into his burger. "So," he said through a full mouth, "old Giacalone puts the car back into park and he leans across me and says, 'You still got that receipt slip?' The old guy goes, 'Yeah, but it must be all phony. He was just trying to get a look around.' Well, me and Giacalone go back in and we get the slip. We cancel the print guys and drive out to Canarsie. And guess what? The asshole is home. We grab him and go get a warrant for the apartment. Gun, jewelry, and cash—bing- bang- boom. The guy cops to rob- three and does four to seven."
Rizzo smiled broadly at McQueen. "His girlfriend lived in the precinct and while he was visiting her, he figured he'd get his watch fixed. Then, when he sees what a mark the old guy is, he has an inspiration! See? Never overlook the obvious. Assholes."
"Yeah, well, it's a good thing," McQueen said. "I haven't run across too many geniuses working this job."
Rizzo laughed and crumpled the wrappings spread across his lap. "Amen," he said.
They sat in silence, Rizzo smoking, McQueen watching the people and cars moving around the parking lot.
"Hey, Joe," he said after awhile. "Your theory about this neighborhood is a little bit off base. For a place supposed to be all Italian, I notice a lot of Asians around. Not to mention the Russians." Rizzo waved a hand through his cigarette smoke. "Yeah, well, somebody's gotta wait the tables in the Chinese restaurants and drive car service. You still can't throw a rock without hitting a fuckin' guinea."
The Motorola crackled to life at McQueen's side. It was dispatch directing them to call the precinct. McQueen pulled the cell phone from his jacket pocket as Rizzo keyed the radio and gave a curt "ten- four." McQueen called and the desk put him through to the squad. A detective named Borrelli came on the line. McQueen's eyes narrowed and, taking a pen from his shirt, he scribbled on the back of a newspaper. He closed the phone and turned to Rizzo. "We've got him," he said softly.
Rizzo belched loudly. "Got who?"
McQueen leaned forward and started the engine. He switched on the headlights and pulled away. After three weeks in Bensonhurst, he no longer needed directions. He knew where he was going. "Flain," he said. "Peter Flain."
Rizzo reached back, pulled on his shoulder belt and buckled up. "Imagine that," he said with a faint grin. "And here we were, just a minute ago, talking about assholes. Imagine that."
MCQUEEN DROVE hard and quickly toward Eigh teenth Avenue. Traffic was light, and he carefully jumped a red signal at Bay Parkway and turned left onto Seventy- fifth Street. He accelerated to Eigh teenth Avenue and turned right. As he drove, he reHected on the investigation which was now about to unfold. It was Rizzo who had gotten it started when he recalled the prior crimes with the same pattern. He had asked around the precinct and someone remembered the name of the perp. Flain. Peter Flain. The precinct computer had spit out his last- known address in the Bronx and the name of the parole of officer assigned to the junkie ex- con. A call to the officer told them that Flain had been living in the Bronx for some years, serving out his parole without incident. He had been placed in a methadone program and was clean. Then, about three months ago, he disappeared. His parole officer checked around in the Bronx but Flain had simply vanished. The officer put a violation on Flain's parole and notified the state police, the New York Supreme Court, and NYPD headquarters. That's where it had ended as far as he was concerned.
McQueen had printed a color photo from the computer and assembled the photo array from which Amy had identified Flain. Flain had returned to the Six- Two precinct. Then Rizzo had really gone to work. He spent the better part of a four- to- midnight hitting every known junkie haunt in and around the precinct. He made it known he wanted Flain. He made it known he would not be happy with any bar, poolroom, candy store, or after- hours joint that would harbor Flain and fail to give him up with a phone call to the squad. And to night, that call had been made. McQueen swung the Chevy into the curb, killing the lights as the car rolled to a slow stop. Three storefronts down, just off the corner of Sixtyninth Street, the faded fluorescent of the Keyboard Bar shone in the night. He twisted the key to shut off the engine. As he reached for the door handle and was about to pull it open, he felt the firm, tight grasp of Rizzo's large hand on his right shoulder. He turned to face him. Rizzo's face held no sign of emotion. When he spoke, it was in a low, conversational tone. McQueen had never heard the older man enunciate more clearly.
"Kid," Rizzo began, "I know you like this girl. And I know you took her out to dinner last week. Now, we both know you shouldn't even be working this collar since you saw the victim socially. I've been working with you for four weeks now, and you're a good cop. But this here is the first bit of real shit we have to do. So let me handle it. Don't be stupid. We pinch him, read him his rights, and off he goes." Rizzo paused, his dark brown eyes in McQueen's face.
"Right?" Rizzo asked. McQueen nodded. "Just one thing, Joe."
Rizzo let his hand slide gently off McQueen's shoulder. "What?" he asked.
"I'll process it. I'll walk him through central booking. I'll do the paperwork.
Just do me one favor."
"What?" Rizzo repeated.
"I don't know any Brooklyn A.D.A.s. I need you to talk to the A.D.A. writing to night. I want this to go hard. Two top counts, 'D' felonies. Assault two and sexual abuse one. I don't want this prick copping to an 'A' misdemeanor assault or some bullshit 'E' felony. Okay?"
Rizzo smiled, and McQueen became aware of the tension that had been hidden in the older man's face only as he saw it melt away. "Sure, kid," he nodded. "I'll go down there myself and cash in a favor. No problem." He pushed his face in the direction of the bar and said, "Now let's go get him."
Rizzo entered first and walked directly to the bar. McQueen hung near the door, his back angled to the bare barroom wall. His eyes adjusted to the dimness of the large room as he scanned the half dozen drinkers scattered along its length. He noticed two empty barstools with drinks and money and cigarettes before them on the worn Formica surface. At least two people somewhere, but not visible. He glanced over at Joe Rizzo. Rizzo stood silently, his forearms resting on the bar. The bartender, a man of about sixty, slowly walked toward him.
"Hello, Andrew," McQueen heard Rizzo say. "How the hell you been?"
McQueen watched as the two men, out of earshot of the others, whispered briefly to one another. He noticed the start of nervous stirrings as the drinkers came to realize that something was suddenly different here. He saw a small envelope drop to the floor at the feet of one man. Rizzo stepped away from the bar and went back to McQueen.
He smiled. "This joint is so crooked, old Andrew over there would give up Jesus Christ Himself to keep me away from here." With a Hick of his index finger, Rizzo indicated the men's room at the very rear in the left corner.
"Our boy's in there. Ain't feeling too chipper this eve ning, according to Andrew. Flain's back on the junk, hard. He's been sucking down Cokes all night. Andrew says he's been in there for twenty minutes."
McQueen looked at the distant door. "Must have nodded off." Rizzo twisted his lips. "Or he read Andrew like a book and climbed out the fuckin' window. Let's go see."
Rizzo started toward the men's room, unbuttoning his coat with his left hand as he walked. McQueen suddenly became aware of the weight of the nine- millimeter Glock automatic belted to his own right hip. His groin broke into a sudden sweat as he realized he couldn't remember if he had chambered a round before leaving his apartment for work. He unbuttoned his coat and followed his partner. The men's room was small. A urinal hung on the wall to their left, brimming with dark urine and blackened cigarette butts. A cracked mirror hung above a blue- green stained sink. The metallic rattle of a worn, useless ventilation fan clamored. The stench of disinfectant surrendered to vomit.
A single stall stood against the wall before them. The door was closed. Feet showed from beneath it.
McQueen reached for his Glock and watched as Rizzo slipped an ancient- looking Colt revolver from under his coat. Rizzo leaned his weight back, a shoulder brushing against McQueen's chest, and heaved a heavy foot at the stress point of the stall door. He threw his weight behind it, and as the door Hew inward, he stepped deftly aside, at the same time gently shoving McQueen the other way. The door crashed against the stall occupant and Rizzo rushed forward, holding the bouncing door back with one hand, pointing the Colt with the other.
Peter Flain sat motionless on the toilet. His pants and underwear lay crumpled around his ankles. His legs were spread wide, pale and varicose, and capped by bony knees. His head hung forward on his chest. He hadn't moved. McQueen noticed his greasy, black hair. Flain's dirty gray shirt was covered with brown, foamy, blood- streaked vomit. More blood, dark and thick, ran from his nostrils and pooled in the crook of his chin. His fists were clenched. Rizzo leaned forward and, carefully avoiding the Huids, lay two fingers across the jugular. He stood erect and holstered his gun. He turned to McQueen. "Morte," he said. "The prick died on us!"
McQueen looked away from Rizzo and back to Flain. He tried to fathom what he felt, but couldn't. "Well," he said, just to hear his own voice.
Rizzo let the door swing closed on the sight of Flain. He turned to McQueen with sudden anger on his face. "You know what this means?" he said.
McQueen watched as the door swung slowly back open. He looked at Flain, but spoke to Rizzo. "It means he's dead. It's over."
Rizzo shook his head angrily. "No, no that's not what it fuckin' means. It means no conviction. No guilty plea. It means 'Investigation abated by death.' That's what it means." McQueen shook his head. "So?" he asked. "So what?"
Rizzo frowned and leaned back against the tiled wall. Some of the anger left him. "So what?" he said, now more sad than angry. "I'll tell you 'so what.' Without a conviction or a plea, we don't clear this case. We don't clear this case, we don't get credit for it. We don't clear this case, we did all this work for nothing. Fucker would have died to night anyway, with or without us bustin' our asses to hand him." They stood in silence for a moment. Then, suddenly, Rizzo brightened.
He turned to McQueen with a sly grin and spoke in a softer tone. "Unless," he said, "unless we start to get smart."
In six years on the job, McQueen had been present in other places, at other times, with other cops, when one of them had said 'Unless . . .' with just such a grin. He felt his facial muscles begin to tighten. "What, Joe? Unless what?"
"Un- less when we got here, came in the john, this guy was still alive. In acute respiratory distress. Pukin' on himself. Scared, real scared, 'cause he knew this was the Gnal overdose. And we, well, we tried to help, but we ain't doctors, right? So he knows he's gonna die and he says to us, 'I'm sorry.' And we say, 'What, Pete, sorry about what?' And he says, 'I'm sorry about that girl, that last pretty girl, in the subway. I shouldn'ta done that.' And I say to him, 'Done what, Pete, what'd you do?' And he says, 'I did like I did before, with the others, with the knife.' And then, just like that, he drops dead!"
McQueen wrinkled his forehead. "I'm not following this, Joe. How does that change anything?" Rizzo leaned closer to McQueen. "It changes everything," he whispered, holding his thumb to his Gngers and shaking his hand, palm up, at McQueen's face. "Don't you get it? It's a deathbed confession, rocksolid evidence, even admissible in court. Bang— case closed! And we're the ones who closed it. Don't you see? It's fuckin' beautiful."
McQueen looked back at the grotesque body of the dead junkie. He felt bile rising in his throat, and he swallowed it down. He shook his head slowly, his eyes still on the corpse.
"Jesus, Joe," he said, the bile searing at his throat. "Jesus Christ, Joe, that's not right. We can't do that. That's just fucking wrong!" Rizzo reddened, the anger suddenly coming back to him.
"Kid," he said, "don't make me say you owe me. Don't make me say it. I took this case on for you, remember?" But it was not the way McQueen remembered it. He looked into the older man's eyes. "Jesus, Joe," he said. Rizzo shook his head, "Jesus got nothin' to do with it."
"It's wrong, Joe," McQueen said, even as his ears Hushed red with the realization of what they were about to do. "It's just wrong."
Rizzo leaned in close, speaking more softly, directly into McQueen's ear, the sound of people approaching the men's room forcing an urgency into his voice. McQueen felt the warmth of Rizzo's breath touch him. "I told you this, kid. I already told you this. There is no right. There is no wrong."
He turned and looked down at the hideous corpse.
"There just is.
Meet the Author
Lou Manfredo served in the Brooklyn criminal justice system for twenty-five years. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and Brooklyn Noir. This is his first novel. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now lives in New Jersey with his wife.
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Obviously a first effort. That being said it was a fantastic read! I just purchased the second in the series and am looking forward to it.
Nothing new here. Predictable.
I really enjoyed this book. I never heard of the author before getting an email from B&N. A great read!!!
Joe Rizzo is a veteran NYPD detective who is partnered with 'young gun', Mike McQueen. Rizzo is to be the teacher and McQueen the wary, but willing student. Both Rizzo and McQueen have their reservations about trusting each other. Rizzo has been around enough to know there is a lot of grey area between the black and white that McQueen sees in his idealistic view. They work several different types of crimes together from burglary to murder. Their 'main' case is the missing bipolar daughter of a city councilman. As they investigate, interesting things start turning up and they learn more about the father than they wanted to know. The way they are asked to investigate is somewhat suspect too, but the rewards could be quite high. Rizzo has a savvy, somewhat jaded view, but that's what makes him so knowledgeable about the 'real' way detective work goes. The stressors on both Rizzo and McQueen, and decisions both officers wind up having to make are amazingly real and will determine how their life and jobs proceed. This is an interesting police 'procedural' book that is realistic. Very well written and intriguing throughout. Reviewed by Ashley Wintters for Suspense Magazine
Amazing! When Emmy Award winning actor Bobby Cannavale slips into character as one of New York's finest you believe you're eavesdropping. His deliveries of police-speak are true, and his narration portions are presented in a low, distinct, ultra smooth voice. When 27-year NYPD veteran Joe Rizzo is speaking Cannavale easily slips into a deeper, husky tone reflecting at times weariness of what he has seen and done or simply ennui. This narrator presents a one man show from Big Apple Streets. Rizzo's War is a bit of a surprising police debut as there are no bloody murders but rather a study of the relationship between two officers as they ride together in the Sixty-second Precinct, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Mike McQueen is a young cop with six years experience, primarily in Manhattan. He's ambitious and has risen in the ranks due to hard work and luck (saving the mayor's daughter from a potential rapist). He will spend a year riding with Rizzo and learning from him. They face every sort of crime, large, inconsequential (if there is such a crime), and tracing the runaway daughter of a city councilman. Debut author Manfredo knows of what he writes after having served as a New York State Court Officer. Knowing your subject is one thing but being able to bring it to life on paper is quite another. Manfredo has mastered that well, and we look forward to more from Rizzo who is fond of sharing his experience by saying, "There's no wrong, there's no right, there just is." Enjoy! - Gail Cooke


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Hospitality Hints is a monthly feature on our blog (this is the first one!) with some helpful hints for being hospitable in everyday life. Our hints may involve inviting people over, but not always! Most of the time, they will be about having a posture of hospitality—welcoming others into our lives. Ways to Love New Moms We don't know about y'all, but our Facebook and Instagram feeds … [Read more...]
Worship as a Spiritual Discipline
A couple of months ago I heard a worship song that I have since played over and over and over and over again (you can ask my roommate and my friends—they'll tell you). It's "Good, Good Father" by Housefires, and I think I've finally realized why I love the song so much. It's because it declares who God is. It declares His goodness to His people, and because of His goodness, we see who we are in … [Read more...]
Surprise! We All Need Jesus | Compassion International
I have a pen-pal. I know, right? Who has a pen pal these days? Well I do. Her name is Clare and she is the most adorable 10-year-old girl on the face of the planet. Ever. We don't speak the same language, but with the help of my friends at Compassion International, I'm able to write letters to Clare and maintain this special friendship from over 7,000 miles away. I am Clare's sponsor—meaning I … [Read more...]
No Such Thing as Childless | Compassion International
I'm 48 years old, single, and have never had children of my own. I've never been pregnant. This was a shock to the beautiful women I met in Uganda in late January. We were all sharing testimonies. Mine was simple. Divorced, no children, but God has been faithful. Theirs were much more difficult and heartbreaking; husbands kicking them out for only having female children, children with HIV, … [Read more...]
Keep Coming Back to the Table
A few years ago, our family decided to have our Easter lunch at my Mama's house, just like we used to do when we were growing up. Church commitments had kept my siblings, cousins, and me at our respective houses for several years in a row, but that year we determined that instead of trying to convince my Mama why she shouldn't go to any trouble for all of us, we'd just shut our collective mouths … [Read more...]
Q&A with Beth Moore [part 2]
Because it's the 20th Anniversary of LifeWay Women's partnership with Beth Moore, we thought it would be a great opportunity to ask her some questions. And we'd love to share her answers with you! This is part two of a three-part series. Click here to see Part 1. Was there a turning point in your spiritual journey? The huge turning point in my spiritual journey was at 27 when I took my … [Read more...]
Q&A with Beth Moore
Because it's the 20th Anniversary of LifeWay Women's partnership with Beth Moore, we thought it would be a great opportunity to ask her some questions. And we'd love to share her answers with you! This will be part one of a three-part series. On Marriage & Family What's your #1 marriage advice? Be willing to fall back in love again. And again. And again. And again. And … [Read more...]
Some Black and White for 50 Shades of Grey
"What are you talking about?" "Just this book we are reading." "Really? What is the book? You know I'm always reading something! Maybe I'd like it." "Uh…no, you probably wouldn't." After a pause, "It's not the kind of book we normally read, but we've heard so many people talking about it." After a moment of hesitation, my friends went on to tell me about Fifty Shades of Grey, … [Read more...]
Kingdom Hospitality: How The King's People Welcome Others
Opening your door means that there is something inside worth inviting someone in to see and experience. Opening your door means that you don't desire to keep it all for yourself but that sharing with others is a priority. True hospitality isn't only sharing with others who are like you, but also with others who need you. While we should always be ready to open our doors for traveling missionaries, … [Read more...]
One Word Resolutions for 2015
You want the skinny on resolutions? 45% of Americans usually make New Year's Resolutions and a mere 8% of us are successful in achieving our resolutions. Terrible odds, I say. Several years ago the girls in my small group taught me a new approach to resolutions. Instead of making a resolution, we chose a word for our year. While we enjoyed giving vision to our year—the year of freedom or … [Read more...]


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The Little Mermaid (Two-Disc Special Edition)
3 Recommendations
Andrea's recommendation
Allow me to clarify: I do not think little girls should watch this movie. It will give them weird body image issues (why can't I wear purple shells?) and preconceptions (fat people = evil octopus witches). THAT SAID: this movie is memorable, amusing, and sparks one's longing for an undersea world.
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carolineoncrack's recommendation
I love love LOVE this Disney cartoon. Catchy songs that I, of course, know all the words to. And I actually prefer how this story ended compared to the original fairy tale. Happy.
JustEliana's recommendation
If I had to choose an older Disney movie to call my favorite it would be this one. Scuttle is by far the best character ever.
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Young J. Edgar: Hoover, the Red Scare, and the Assault on Civil LibertiesBy Kenneth D. Ackerman
Historians seek to pinpoint when a political figure made that irreversible turn into corruption and darkness. Some chart Lyndon Johnson's descent with the "registering of the dead" election in 1948. Or Bill Clinton's first evidence of his lust for power with his Vietnam-era letter to a draft board officer indicating his dislike of the war but his willingness to fight if it will make him a future viable candidate. One of the uncanny attributes of the above figures is their ability to continue their rise, while others, moving along the same path, fall.
J. Edgar Hoover has to be one of the prime examples of what Ross MacDonald meant when he stated that "cream and bastards rise to the top." For those arguing for imperial presidencies, whether beginning with FDR or Nixon, the argument is negated when one views Hoover surviving president after president. For decades, all of Washington was cowed because of his feverish data-collecting on the corrupt practices of politicians.
Apart from the obligatory comparison of national hysterical moments with 9/11, Kenneth D. Ackerman offers the moment when Hoover began his unstoppable assent: the Palmer Raids of 1919. In this period, the U.S. was at its most vulnerable and self-conscious: vets were returning bitter and angry; liquor was being banned, and Russia, a former ally in World War I, was outlawing religion and individual liberties.
"The establishment can only take so many shocks to the system, then it has to strike back," Hoover says in Oliver Stone's Nixon. Whether he said this or not (and one must always fact-check with Stone), it nicely sums up young Hoover's attitude during the Palmer Raids. Long forgotten in all the retrospectives about poor Emma Goldman deported or cloth-capped immigrants watching their doors being kicked in is that there was a very real threat in the form of sixteen bombs wrapped in packages discovered by a postal clerk.
One gets a ringside view of how Hoover, who organized the Palmer Raids on suspected anarchists and Communists, would have reacted in the post-WWII era to the "second Red Scare" had he not the obstacles by then of liberal Supreme Court justices. Hoover emerges as one of those anal-retentive types whom the boss cannot stand to eat dinner with, but who he nevertheless delegates authority to because of the underling's monomania.
But in dwelling on civil liberties abuses and secret police types, Ackerman forgets that by 1919, Moscow gold was filtering in the coffers of the newly-formed American Communist Party. The Party itself was calling for violent overthrows and busily purging any slackers on this line out of their ranks. Overseas, Lenin was willing to provide a life-support system for the Soviet economy through the capitalistically-inclined New Economic Policy, but was feverishly executing Kronstadt sailors and intellectuals who were suddenly worried about the monster they helped create.
Nevertheless, Ackerman's book has a relevancy today and not as a handy club with which to bash the Patriot Act. Libertarians can express horror at Hoover and should always be on the lookout for monomaniacs whose lust for power cancels out all else. Whether or not Hoover wore heels is irrelevant in this case; but we should be cautious of a presidential candidate running today who certainly shares that trait of Hoover's.
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