Its the height of folly to conduct an interview in the middle of a New York City sidewalk on a weekday morning. But during a stroll earlier this month along Roosevelt Islands quiet Main Street downright pastoral by Big Apple standards Lizabeth Cohen was coming in loud and clear.

Theres something very peaceful about this place, Cohen said, taking in the rows of mixed-use buildings that line the gently curving streets mile-long course. Theres all this open space, and its so much quieter than Manhattan. And [the retail] is not dominated by huge chains, like Hudson Yards is.

That as she has documented at length in a new book was by design.

Cohen, a history professor at Harvard University, whose first book, Making a New Deal, won the fields prestigious Bancroft Prize in 1991, has spent the last 14 years cataloguing the career of Ed Logue, the mastermind behind the residential enclave that sits tucked between Manhattan and Queens in the middle of the East River. Logue, who died in 2000 at the age of 79, planned Roosevelt Islands development in the late 60s and early 70s as the crown jewel of a massive state-backed housing program.

Logue, who served as the head of the New York State Urban Development Corporation, took the initiative to turn the narrow island, which had been primarily a dumping ground for unsavory city institutions like insane asylums and prisons, into what he envisioned as a utopian mixed-income community. The UDC obtained a 99-year development lease in 1969 and Logue set to work drawing up designs for the island in exacting detail.

Those plans remain the islands backbone even now that private developers have entered the scene. In 1996, Related Companies and Hudson Companies were the winners of a state bidding process for private development on the island. Since then, their nearly 2-million-square-foot Riverwalk development seven of the planned nine buildings have already been completed has added nearly 1,500 apartments to the island, some market rate and some affordable. And the $2 billion Cornell Tech campus has brought a significant new presence from an Ivy League university.

Still, the island remains an oddity of the public sector qua developer: an ever-lonelier relic of an era when governments werent shy about building big things.

Its difficult to write about Logue without yielding to the temptation to compare him with one of the most divisive figures in New York City history, master builder Robert Moses. Moses, a generation older than Logue and a fellow Yale alumnus, ran his own ambitious development agency, the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, from Randalls Island, another East River Island just a mile north of Logues domain.

Logue, in the end, succeeded on territory that eluded Moses, who had made two failed attempts to develop Roosevelt Island in the decades before Logue came to New York.

Still, Cohen said, itd be a mistake to draw too direct a line between the two men.

Logue was Robert Moses and the anti-Robert Moses all at once, Cohen quotes a former Logue colleague, Lawrence Goldman, as saying. He would think as large as Moses but unlike Moses, he was as committed to social transformation as he was to physical building.

When Cohen began researching Logues career in the early 2000s, she couldnt have foreseen the relevance her work would have for New York Citys current political moment. But the fruits of her labor a 500-plus-page biography of Logue called Saving Americas Cities that Farrar, Straus and Giroux published in October couldnt have been timelier.

Two years ago, New York Citys 421-a tax credit for housing lapsed for more than a year before being resurrected as Affordable New York, a hair-raising period of uncertainty for New York City multifamily developers that spawned renewed conversation about the governments role in promoting renter-friendly housing markets.

And this year, Albany lawmakers drew fury from New York City developers when they passed a far-reaching new housing law aimed at making it much more difficult for landlords to deregulate rent-protected buildings.

All of a sudden, the same broad questions about governments proper place in guiding housing markets that animated Logues ambitious plan for Roosevelt Island are, once again, reverberating through the halls of power.

That made a visit to Roosevelt Island with Cohen earlier this month a prime occasion to reflect on the islands example. Tracking its evolution from centrally planned community to mixed-use destination is informative most of all because it provides a case study in the strengths and weaknesses of both government planning and private development.

Theres sort of a natural check-and-balance philosophy to the place, said Alexandra Kaplan, a project manager at Hudson Companies, which since the early 2000s has joined with Related as the force behind the islands private apartment buildings. Its a true public-private partnership. Thats part of what has made it so successful.

Related and Hudson are currently at work on their eighth and ninth private residential buildings on the island, but the companies emphasize that scrupulous attention to Logues broad vision for the space if not his specifics have guided their work throughout.

Our development, at the end of the day, is additive to the original, said Frank Monterisi, a Related Companies executive. You look at Roosevelt Island and say, from the original thought, how can there be further development brought to the island to make it better?

Cohen, who during our visit to the island professed a fondness for the heavy, brutalist UDC-built multifamily properties that sprang from Logues original plan, might disagree with Monterisis assessment that Related and Hudsons buildings are a seamless fit. She grimaced at seeing that some of the developers newest construction, such as a project called Riverwalk Point, had an off-street drive for cars. Originally, Logue meant for the island to be mostly an auto-free zone.

This feels really different, doesnt it? she asked, approaching the development. Because there were no cars originally. There was no sense that youd be arriving in a vehicle. It was just going to be, Youre going to approach the building as a pedestrian.

More broadly, she suggested Logue would have been less than comfortable with the arrival of private developers in the first place, which, in bringing luxury tenants to the island alongside subsidized renters, have brought the beginnings of a class divide to the island.

Logue was very proud of the fact that Roosevelt Island was a total piece of social engineering, Cohen said. As [planners of Logues era] were watching inequality grow and boy, it was nothing then compared with today there was a confidence that government interventions in the physical environment could make a huge difference in the way people lived.

But elsewhere, Cohen was pleased to observe continuity with Logues original vision. Disembarking from the aerial tram, which connects the island to 59th Street in Manhattan, she was thrilled to notice a handful of tourists apparently setting off in the direction of Four Freedoms State Park, at the islands southern tip. The small park, which features a monument to Franklin Roosevelt, for whom Logue rechristened the island, was commissioned by Logue in 1972 but didnt open until 40 years later more than a decade after Logues death.

She was also happy to see that a handful of historic sites predating Logues plan which Logue preserved remain intact. One example is the Chapel of the Good Shepherd, a church built on the island in 1889 as a place for the almshouse denizens who lived on the island at the time to worship. Under Logues plan, the chapel was converted to a more sublunary purpose, taking on a role as a community event space. That vision was alive and well last month, when posters advertised upcoming book talks and other community meetings in the building.

This is literally an island unto itself, with its own culture, Ben Kallos, the New York City councilman who represents Roosevelt Island, told Commercial Observer. This is a small-town environment with about 12,000 residents. Everyone knows everyone.

But private development has also brought radical change, including in the form of Manhattanesque rents for market-rate units a taste of the larger citys housing market from which Logue had hoped the island could provide sanctuary. Today, for instance, rental rates for a market-rate studio in The Octagon, a private building at the islands north end, have approached $3,000 per month, according to data from StreetEasy. And two-bedroom apartments in Riverwalk Point have been leased for more than $4,800. BMWs and Range Rovers were not an uncommon sight among the cars parked near those developments entrances.

Even though were responding to market forces, were operating around some basic elements of Roosevelt Island, Hudsons Kaplan said. Were seeing a lot of families [in our developments], and thats a product of supplying really high-quality housing at a price point thats less than the Upper East Side.

Suri Kaiserer, whose firm represented Cornell Tech to island residents and local politicians during its development process, said the islands strong at times forceful community was in evidence throughout.

Those years of work were so intense, Kaiserer recalled. Its such an organized, engaged community. We couldnt just show up. We really needed to build those relationships.

At one early meeting, she added, I almost felt we were getting tomatoes thrown at us. In the end, community engagement led to significant concessions during the construction process, including an arrangement for materials to be shipped to the island by barge instead of via more disruptive trucking.

During the visit, Cohen was interested in the question of how well Logues clarion call for social and racial diversity has persevered on the island. Under Logues plan, 70 percent of the islands stock would be set aside for middle-income residents, with the balance meant to house the poor and the elderly. He also hoped to rent at least 30 percent of the islands apartments to minorities, a goal that came from his desire that no one development would be too strongly associated with a particular ethnic group.

The U.S. Supreme Courts 1978 decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke has since strictly limited governments abilities to target racial quotas that way. Thats a change thats mirrored the direction of government housing policy writ large, which has grown far less activist in the decades since Logue was in his prime.

Compared with looking back in time to when government actually built things, the current state of affairs is that government lays the groundwork and creates the framework and puts the incentives forward. The government communicates to developers, Heres what we think should happen, and asks the market to respond, Monterisi said. When you look at any place around the city, its all about public-private partnership.

In Monterisis view, developers responsiveness to incentives on Roosevelt Island has borne out as a key advantage compared with the earlier era of government-driven development, arguing that despite the coming of wealthier renters, the islands community is as strong as ever.

Theres a healthy incremental approach today, compared with when government comes in and plops something down, Monterisi said. Its a bit more of a market-based concept and a community-based concept.

Separately, Monterisi and Cohen both noted an irony in the course of the islands history. Logue had attempted to achieve diversity by means of central planning. But since the state, through its local agency, the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation, opened the enclave to more private development, the arrival of market-rate housing has made the island for better or worse more diverse than Logues state agency could have achieved on its own.

After all, Logue hadnt envisioned a Roosevelt Island outpost of an Ivy League school, but Cornell Tech has now opened shop near the islands southern tip. Nor had he planned for a ritzy indoor tennis facility, but that facility too the Roosevelt Island Racquet Club has diversified the crowd that pays the island weekly visits

The fact that theres now the university here, the market rate housing, that theres more recreation: That is still consistent with what [Logue] wanted, Cohen said.

Judging by a stroll past one of the public schools Logue built on the island, his legacy has not disappeared. Cohen noted that the kids running around in the courtyard during recess there were a diverse bunch racially at least.

The scene was a rebuke to an argument Logue heard from developer Richard Ravitch in the 1970s: that Logue had better persuade a ritzy Upper East Side private school such as Dalton to start an outpost on the island, because white families would surely never send their children to its public schools.

Cohen recalled Logans reaction: Logue basically said, Thats not my idea. And this is my island, not your island. So get off.

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Roosevelt Island Was Ed Logue's Utopia. Would He Like It Today? - Commercial Observer

Im going to say something that theater critics arent supposed to say: Lately Ive been enjoying going to the movies a lot more than going to the theater.

Theater has had a special pull for me since I got my first goosebumps seeing Annie Get Your Gun and South Pacific at the South Shore Music Circus when I was in grade school. David Wheelers Theater Company of Bostons brilliant stagings of modernist masterpieces thrilled me in college. That magnet was even stronger after I switched from television to theater criticism at the Boston Globe in the mid-90s. Lately, though, Ive been feeling that pull to be resistible.

To be fair, its not every month that four of the greatest filmmakers in the world release new films: Pedro Almodvars Pain and Glory; Bong Joon Hos Parasite; Martin Scorseses The Irishman; and Franois Ozons By the Grace of God. So it would be premature and probably inaccurate to declare a new day dawning in world cinema.

Still. All four movies deliver what Id call a peak artistic experience. What in the world is that? Its often out of this world, maybe even beyond words, a transcendental experience that leaves one weak at the knees or in awe of the artistic excellence or emotional impact of whats just been witnessed.

As the fall theater season winds down, it disappoints me that I havent had any such peak artistic experiences in Boston area theater this year. David Byrnes American Utopia at the Colonial and Cambodian Rock Band at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre came close, but American Utopia needed more of a thematic through line and the dialogue in Cambodian Rock Band was often a little too unsophisticated when it wasnt talking about genocide. There were a number of other excellent productions this season including SIX at the American Repertory Theater; Admissions at SpeakEasy Stage Company; My Fascination with Creepy Ladies by Anthem Theatre Company; The Purists and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead at the Huntington; Nixons Nixon at New Repertory Theatre.

So isnt excellence good enough? And sharing a communal experience with live actors and audiences that arent siloed into popcorn-munching easy chairs? What more do I want?

What I want not all of the time, but certainly some of the time is to see a play or musical that makes me look at the world differently when I walk out of the theater. Admissions is certainly a provocative play and nicely staged by SpeakEasy, but its debate about the pros and cons of striving for diversity doesnt tell me anything I didnt know about the issue. I often get the sense that Boston theater, unlike New York or even Berkshires theater, is so obsessed with telling stories of the moment that theyre giving short shrift to stories meant to last.

What I want not all of the time, but certainly some of the time is to see a play or musical that makes me look at the world differently when I walk out of the theater.

Will people still be talking about Admissions and SIX 50 years from now? My guess is that unlike say, A Raisin in the Sun or Caroline, or Change, these shows dont address their issues about diversity, empowerment and misogyny in a way that feels transcendent and timeless.

This year is a far cry from last fall, which was loaded: SpeakEasys Between Riverside and Crazy; A.R.T.s The Black Clown; the Huntingtons Man in the Ring; ArtsEmersons import of Measure for Measure; and the long-awaited Hamilton. If you look, for example, at Between Riverside and Crazy, Stephen Adly Guirgis' play feels absolutely of the moment in terms of how it deals with multiculturalism and economic displacement, but is also hilariously written, thoroughly transporting, empathetic, scabrous and redemptive. Not unlike Parasite. And a great SpeakEasy production to boot. If Im around in 50 years, Id get off my deathbed to see this again.

Im still thinking about the emotional and/or intellectual wallop of all of these productions a year later. This year feels more like a tap on the shoulder by contrast. Some of it can be attributed to accidents of timing, but the fact is that theaters often lead with their best in September and this year felt a little complacent.

Take another play I admired Ronan Noones one-man play the smuggler, at Boston Playwrights Theatre, with the wonderful Billy Meleady in the title role of a writer so down on his luck that he turns to a life of violence and crime. Spoken in verse, no less. I chuckled at a lot of the rhymes and had sympathy for the devilish path that the character embarked on, despite the victims in his wake.

It was a far cry, though, from how Scorsese handled Frank Sheerans (Robert De Niro) similar pragmatic immorality in The Irishman or how Bong managed the twists and turns of the central impoverished family of con artists in Parasite. In the play and the two movies were presented with a world in which the only way to live the dream, American or Korean, is through crime, betrayal and stepping on the backs of others.

But even in an amoral universe there doesnt seem like theres that much at stake in the smuggler and everything seems to be at stake in those two films, politically and personally. In all four films, really, as Pain and Glory is about finding personal redemption through art and fellowship and By the Grace of God is a deeply sophisticated, humanistic look at the courage of French victims of child abuse risking everything by standing up to the reprehensible lack of attention by the Catholic Church.

Theater should be offering more than the movies and TV, not less.

I dont mean to single out Noone's play. Im a fan of his work, including this one. But it only served to solidify my dissatisfaction with this season of Boston theater. Theater should be offering more than the movies and TV, not less. And its not about the buckets of money that someone like Scorsese can throw at a film compared to the money available to local theater. God knows there are megamillion dollar movie disasters, but there are also one-man shows that Ill never forget like the Sgn Theatre Companys one-man St. Nicholas from the 90s with Richard McElvain starring as Conor McPhersons protagonist (a theater critic no less).

I could make the same argument about television vs. theater. There was recently a play at the New Repertory Theatre called Trayf, about the conflicts between orthodox and secular Jews. It was cute enough, but not one-tenth as satisfying as an Israeli TV comedy series on Netflix, Shtisel, that dealt with the same issue.And talk about peak artistic experiences if you didnt see the HBO series,Our Boys, an Israeli-Palestinian co-creation about the murder of a Palestinian boy and the tension it creates between Orthodox and secular Israelis, get thee to HBO On Demand. Have I been as moved in a Boston theater as I have on my couch watching Allen Ginsbergs benediction in Scorseses Netflix film about Bob Dylans Rolling Thunder Revue or by Ken Burns storytelling on PBS Country Music? Not that I could remember.

I do think that Boston theater, at least since Ive been covering it, goes through cycles of moving forward and then plateauing, and that part of the current plateau has to do with obsessing about the divisive politics of the moment. That should absolutely be part of the mission of theater in general and local theater companies in general. But lets not lose the artistic forest through the political trees.

One of the undeniable peak artistic experiences in recent years was Dave Malloyand Rachel Chavkins Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 at the American Repertory Theater in 2015. A.R.T. is premiering the same teams Moby-Dick in December. And the Huntington is about to open Quixote Nuevo followed by Lynn Nottages Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat.

I hope they all kick-start the theater season. By the end of2020 I want to be eating my words and writing that local theater offers something that no other medium can match.

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Boston Theater Needs To Start Offering Something No Screen Could Match - WBUR

What is your idea of the perfect utopia for kids? Where would you want to see your younger loved ones spend their summer? Regardless of where you choose, your loved ones belong in a place where they are respected, loved, and appreciated. My idea of the perfect utopia for kids is far more than any physical place. A utopia is more of how you feel rather than where you find yourself. That utopia is Camp Uncommon.

Camp Uncommon is a camp that runs over the course of the summer and prioritizes children in elementary and middle school from impoverished neighborhoods. Camp Uncommon serves children from a number of cities such as Boston, Camden, New York, Newark, Rochester, and Troy. Camp gives children the opportunity to venture outside of their neighborhoods and connect with other kids who, in most cases, become lifelong friends. Camp Uncommon first began in the summer of 2016 at Colby College, but has since changed locations to Poyntelle, Pa.

Camp Uncommon is split up intofour different sessions to accommodate as many kids as possible.The goal this past summer was to share the experience with overone thousand kids, which is now the largestnumber of kidsthey have ever served in camp history. In previous years, they have only had about 500 kids over a span of two weeks, butthey believe so strongly in theirmission of giving children the best summer ever thatthey continue to groweachyear.

Children who attend Camp Uncommon engage in various activities throughout the course of the summer such as hiking, nature discovery, athletics, arts, and STEM courses. Alongside the various physical activities the kids take part in during their time at camp, they are also immersed in character building activities such as Discovery and Morning/Evening Summit. Discovery takes place every other day during the span of two weeks and focuses on self reflection as well other values of the day such as empathy, gratitude, wisdom, and honesty. Camp Uncommon prioritizes making kids summer enjoyable, but also insightful so they can become young leaders the following school year.

Camp Uncommonnot only benefits the kids who attend, but also helps employees with their future by building qualities needed for adulthood, college, and teaching. Most employees at Camp Uncommon are teachers themselves, or are getting involved with teaching as a career. Camp Uncommon is under Uncommon Schools so most people find themselves with an opportunity to have a career in teaching after their first or second summer with Camp Uncommon. Aside from this career opportunity, Camp Uncommon also employs high school juniors as junior counselors, which is a good way for them to gain a recommendation for college applications and a paying job for the summer.

In my own experience, Camp Uncommon has strengthened my college application, given me a new perspective on life, and has granted me with life-long connections that I cherish.My coworkers similarly believe Camp Uncommon has made a difference in their lives.

Its made me a more responsible and aware person in my professional life, said Louis Copin. Its made me more comfortable in who I am and expressing who I am no matter who is around me.

Working at Camp Uncommon has encouraged me to step out of my shell, and network with different people, which ultimately made me trust myself more and give new things a try, Tyriq Presely added.

Camp Uncommons ultimate goal is to provide the best summer for as many kids as possible every year.More information about the camp can be found on their website and Instagram page.

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How one camp is changing the lives of many - The McDaniel Free Press

In 1985, a squid from another dimension appeared in New York and killed 3 million people with a psychic blast. I feel like I have a decent idea of what that psychic blast must have felt like, because its how I feel after noting all of the Easter eggs and comic references in the fifth episode ofHBOs Watchmen series.

Here are all the Easter eggs from Episode 5, and we will update the list with any that are missing.

DOOMSDAY CLOCK ON THE RADIO

When the episode opens, we hear a snippet of a news broadcast where the anchor mentions that the Doomsday Clock has been set at one minute to midnight. The Doomsday clock is a real-life metaphor for how close humanity is to man-made global catastrophe. In the comic, it was set at this time right before Ozymandias unleashed his squid on New York, as well soon see.

A JERSEY CARNIVAL

Young Looking Glass/Wade Tillman and his fellow proselytizers are attempting to convert sinners at a carnival in Hoboken. In the graphic novel, Jon Osterman and Janey Slater visit a similar carnival in New Jersey before his transformation into Doctor Manhattan.

WHORES' DEN

The group leader calls the New York-New Jersey area a whores den, echoing Rorsarchs famous all the whores and politicians will look up and shout Save us! ...And I'll look down and whisper No, quote.

WATCHTOWER

The Watchtower is a Jehovah's Witnesses publication, but its fitting that it would feature in the Watchmen series.

THE VEIDT METHOD

One of the people Wade passes by as hes looking for someone to convert is reading what appears to be an issue of Tales of the Black Freighter, complete with an advertisement for Adrian Veidts much-promoted workout routine, The Vedit Method. This same comic appeared in the graphic novel.

PALE HORSE POSTER

Pale Horse, as well be reminded later in the episode, was the name of the band that was playing in Madison Square Garden the night of the squid attack.

KNOT TOPS AND KATIES

The group Wade ends up talking to are Knot Tops, a gang who frequently appeared in the graphic novel. Theyre known for their distinctive hairstyle and use of a drug called KT-28s, or Katies for short. One particular Knot Top is wearing a shirt that says Katies on it, which really underlines the connection.

SINATRA DRIVE

As Wade screams in the middle of the carnage, we zoom out past Sinatra Drive, a real street in Hoboken, just as Ol Blue Eyes classic New York, New York starts playing. Again, a little on-the-nose, but it works

THE SQUID

Not really an Easter egg, but theres our first live-action glimpse of the infamous squid. The 2009 Zack Snyder movie swapped the squid for an imitation of Doctor Manhattans power gone haywire.

OPPENHEIMER, THE MUSICAL

As part of the return to New York ad, we see a glimpse of a couple who have apparently just seen the hit new Broadway musical based on Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the Atomic Bomb.

PROMETHEAN CAB CO.

In the background of the Broadway shot, theres a sign for the Promethean Cab Co., which also operated in the original graphic novel.

"LITTLE FEAR OF LIGHTNING"

The title of the episode is a twist of a quote from Jules Vernes Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, If there were no thunder, men would have little fear of lightning. Presumably, it refers to Wades discovery later in the episode that the inter-dimensional squid isnt real, meaning he shouldnt really have a reason to fear lightning.

BEANS!

As Looking Glass, Wade rolls up his mask partways and eats beans straight from the can, which is extremely Rorschach-core.

AMERICAN-HERO STORY

While eating his beans, Wade watches the next episode of American Hero Story, which once again features Hooded Justice and another Minutemen-era hero, Captain Metropolis. The two were rumored to be lovers, as the show portrays.

SMILEY-OS

Back at his day job, Wade watches some kid try a new cereal with a name and logo that brings Watchmens iconic smiley face button to mind. The camera even zooms out from the button, echoing the way the first issue of the comic begins and ends with a zoom in or out from the Comedians blood-stained button.

PET CLONING AND PET KILLING

Wades ex-wife works at a lab where they clone peoples pets. Less advanced versions of this service actually exist in the real world, but in Watchmens reality, the technology stemmed from some of Veidts advances that allowed him to create Bubastis, his genetically modified Lynx. Lady Trieu further developed the technology, as seen in the previous episode. Also, the way the little puppy is unceremoniously incinerated resembles the sad way Bubastis met her end in the original comic, when she was disintegrated in Veidts attempt to stop Doctor Manhattan.

NOSTALGIA

One of Veidts many business ventures in the comic was Nostalgia, a brand of cosmetics and perfumes. The drugs Will gave to Angela share the same name, but if Veidts old Nostalgia was supposed to evoke the comfort of the past through a fondly remembered scent, the pills, which Trieu Pharmaceuticals created,are literally memories in medicinal form.

DOES IT EVER END? OF COURSE IT DOES.

At the support group, Wade contradicts Doctor Manhattans final words from the graphic novel, when he tells Vedit that Nothing ever ends. However, later conversations in the episode imply that Wade doesnt exactly believe the optimism hes selling.

TECHNICALLY, DOCTOR MANHATTAN WON VIETNAM

The United States lost the Vietnam War in the real world (although the conflict did catastrophic damage to Vietnam and many surrounding countries), but in Watchmens reality, Doctor Manhattan won the war in two months. Vietnam would eventually become a state.

STEVEN SPIELBERGS PALE HORSE

As we learn, inWatchmen's 1992, Steven Spielberg made a movie about the Dimensional Incursion Event, titled Pale Horse because of the band that was playing Madison Square Garden when the squid attacked. Its described as being black-and-white except for certain flashes of color, like a little girls red coat. This would seem to imply that, in Watchmens reality, Spielberg made Pale Horse instead of the gripping Holocaust drama Schindler's List, which is similarly in black-and-white and came out in 1993.

TOBACCO IS OUTLAWED

Just a minor detail, but apparently tobacco is outlawed in Robert Redfords America.

THE WALL OF TVS

The 7th Kavalry sit Wade in front of a wall of TVs, which is an obvious visual allusion to Veidts wall of TVs in his Antarctic lair, where he learned about the success of his gambit to unite the world against his squid invader.

WHERES THE ORIGINALITY IN THAT? NO, WERE GONNA DO SOMETHING NEW.

In October, showrunner Damon Lindelof told SYFY WIRE that he thought it would be super-duper lame to adapt the original Watchmen, and repeat all of the original graphic novels beat for TV, which is why he instead decided to create a sequel of sorts. Senator Keenes promise that the Kavalry isnt planning to just drop another squid on the world seems like a sly wink at Lindeloffs adaptation.

I LEAVE IT ENTIRELY IN YOUR HANDS

When letting Wade know that the decision to watch his video or not is his choice, he quotes the very last line of the graphic novel, when The New Frontiersmans editor Hector Godfrey tells his hapless employee Seymour that the choice of what to pull from the crank box and put in the paper is up to him. Seymour has Rorsarchs journal in front of him when Godfrey says this meaning that in both instances, the truth behind Veidts plan is about to be revealed.

UTOPIA

While telling President Redford his plan in the pre-recorded video, Veidt invites Redford to be his partner in building a Utopia. Hes almost certainly talking about the better world he wants to build, but its worth noting that in the graphic novel there was a movie theater with that name in New York right by where the squid first appeared. The theater, which was renamed New Utopia after the Dimensional Incursion Event, was probably owned my Veidt Enterprises, and showed lots of old sci-fi movies to subconsciously prime people for the idea of alien invaders.

Veidt launches himself into the sky and he suddenly appears on the surface of one of Jupiters moons. (This would appear to debunk the theory that hes on Mars with Doctor Manhattan, though it still seems likely that Doctor Manhattan has something to do with Veidts captivity). In order to write his SAVE ME! message out of the broken, frozen bodies of his deceased servants. Its similar to the moment in Tales of the Black Freighter, the graphic novels comic-within-a-comic when the protagonist uses the bloated bodies of the dead to create a buoyant life raft for himself. Its not quite as literal, but Veidts message is also a life raft of sorts.

I DID IT!

After assembling his message, Veidt throws up his hands and yells I did it! This is the same thing he says after news reports reveal his plan with the squid did, in fact, bring an end to the Cold War.

YOUR GODS ABANDONED YOU

Upon returning back to his manor estate, Vedit comes face-to-face with The Game Warden. Much of the Wardens character is still a mystery, but it seems increasingly likely that Doctor Manhattan created this facsimile of human life, as he implied he might in the final moments of the comic.

DOCTOR MANHATTAN IS HOODED JUSTICE???

Panda, who by all accounts appears to be the idiot of the Tulsa Police Department, is telling Red Scare his theory that Doctor Manhattan was Hooded Justice. That this was a real fan theory that got written up by a number of entertainment news sites is embarrassing.

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Every last Easter egg and comic reference in Episode 5 of HBO's Watchmen - SYFY WIRE

This content comes from our partnerVisit Philadelphia. Used with permission.

Philadelphia, youre blushing.

The City of Brotherly Love is one of the 25 must-visit destinations in the world in 2020, according to a phenomenal new write-up in National Geographic Traveler that hits newsstands on Friday, November 29.

Even more impressive: The city is one of only two U.S. destinations (alongside the Grand Canyon) to make the list, which is part of the publications annual Best Trips feature.

In the piece, author Johnna Rizzo reflects on Philly as a metropolis of the unexpected in the midst of an exciting reinvention, saying that Philly has changed from a city of industrial might to a city of ingenious makers.

For Rizzo, that excitement is palpable in the citys art. She draws attention to the eclectic (The Electric Street neon installation off East Passyunk Avenue, Klip Collectives holiday Deck the Hall Light Show) as well as the familiar (the LOVE sculpture, the William Penn statue on City Hall).

Elsewhere, Rizzo finds lots to love in the citys dining scene, noting that food in Americas first capital city is being reinvented at a radical clip.

Nationally acclaimed eateries like Fishtowns Suraya and South Philly Barbacoa warrant glowing mentions. So does the cheese-and-salami utopia Di Bruno Bros. and dive bar Dirty Franks. (One thing we learned: Bob Dylan was maybe once kicked off the stage at Dirty Franks.)

Rizzos exploration of the city as an American classic also finds her visiting Cherry Street Pier on the Delaware River waterfront, the Philly Typewriter store on East Passyunk Avenue, Keith Harings only in situ mural in the U.S. and Indonesian to-die-for restaurant Hardena/Waroeng Surabaya.

And The Rittenhouse, the Lokal Hotel and the Notary Hotel receive call-outs as worthy places to lay your head after a full day exploring the city.

The whole article is, of course, worth a read. (Were also admittedly a bit biased.)

Check out a sneak peek of the article on National Geographic Travelers site, then pick up a hard copy of the Best Trips edition on newsstands beginning on Friday, November 29 to read the full piece.

Ready to start planning your own epic Philadelphia adventure? We thought so. Check out Visit Philly's overnight hotel package, an easy way to start exploring the spots extolled by National Geographic and beyond.

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Philadelphia Named the Top U.S. City To Visit in 2020 - NBC 10 Philadelphia

Canadian author Margaret Atwood speaks during a press conference at the British Library to launch her new book 'The Testaments' in London, Sept. 10, 2019. | Alastair Grant / AP

Margaret Atwood, who turns 80 on November 18, 2019, has written several novels that explore dystopian situations or circumstances where people are subjected to control and violence. The most famous of these is The Handmaids Tale (1985). However, what distinguishes Atwoods work is that people resist such coercion, not just in individual acts but most successfully as part of a secret group or illicit organization. This might be considered a leitmotif of her work. We encounter such resistance not only in The Handmaids Tale, but also elsewhere, for example, in the deeply disturbing The Heart Goes Last (2015), or in her contemporary take on Shakespeares The Tempest, Hag-Seed (2016).

Oscar Wilde, in The Soul of Man Under Socialism, had this to say about hopes for a positive future:

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realization of Utopias.

Utopia, according to Wilde, is the hope of a better possible life, one where humanity will feel at home. Thinking about what will define such an ideal, and that progresses toward it, occupied writers from Thomas More to William Morris. With the Industrial Revolution and the appearance of more hidden forces at work in society at the beginning of the 19th century, the arts increasingly reflected the experience of horror, and of extreme violence over people and nature. The old, visible powers of feudal society (God, king, law) enter into an alliance with the invisible powers of capital power, and everyday life becomes a world in which the ghostly omnipresent terror of an anonymous dominating and oppressive power can break out at any time. Examples of such horror include the work of E.T.A. Hoffmann, Goyas Caprichos and Desastres de la Guerra, Schuberts Winterreise. Toward the end of the 19th century, further manifestations are Stokers Dracula and Munchs The Scream.

These visions of horror become the dystopias of the 20th and 21st centuries, many leaving little hope for liberation. Continuing wars, with their displacement of people, the ever increasing anonymity of domination and accompanying loss of control, as well as environmental disaster are all valid factors feeding into this pessimism.

The Maddaddam trilogy

Margaret Atwoods Maddaddam trilogy imagines an all but post-human world. She explores a world where the free market has led to global anarchy. A technocracy of enormous corporations has destroyed national governments, communities, the ecosystem and, finally almost extinguished life on the planet. Apart from some very few humans, there are left genetically engineered animals such as pigoons, wolvogs and rakunks, and artificially created creatures called Crakers, produced by Crake in his top-secret Paradice project.

Oryx and Crake is the first of the trilogy; Year of the Flood the second, and Maddaddam concludes it. Oryx and Crake sets the scene. The time is in the future, however, the elements making up this future have their recognizable roots in our present. The world is divided into the haves and have-nots. The haves are the corporations; their employees live in corporation compounds. They are given better lifestyles than the working-class pleebland inhabitants. The raison dtre of the companies is to produce, in competition with others, products promising eternal youth, vitality, sexual prowess, and the promise of resulting happiness: AnooYoo, HelthWyzer, OrganInc and RejoovenEsense. OrganInc created pigoons to grow organs for transplant. AnooYou is designed to prey on the phobias and void the bank accounts of the anxious and the gullible. HelthWyzer manufactures pills for profit, not for health, indeed, health is one of their last considerations. In the race for profits, they introduce viruses into their health products, to which they can then develop and sell antidotes. Wars over markets are commonplace.

The compounds are policed by private Corporation Security, CorpSeCorps, who control their populations movements, by violence and murder, if they deem it necessary. Opposition is not tolerated.

A hierarchy exists among the corporations, some being rather less successful and thereby poorer than others. The wealthiest ones still provide real food to their workers; the less successful ones seem to be sliding into the artificial food and other conditions imposed on the outside world. This setting is the profit-making class with its more or less bribed employees.

The outside world is called Pleebland (plebeian land, desolate neighborhoods, where the poor live). The pleeblands still contain cities like New New York and San Francisco and hold some attraction for the corporation employees as, while dangerous and diseased, places of entertainment and time out. Permission and passes are required to go there. This is where the poor live, those at whom the sale of products is aimed.

The story is told from the point of view of Snowman from the novels current time, with flashbacks to his past when he was still Jimmy. His best friend at the time, Glenn, is referred to as Crake, a name he picked as a character in an online game the two played, Extinctathon, controlled by the enigmatic Maddaddam.

Both characters have parents who have disappeared. Crakes father died in a car accident when Crake was very young. Crake believes his father was eliminated for objecting to the practice of introducing disease into the population in order to profit from then selling the remedy. Jimmys mother, whom the reader gets to know better, runs away from the compound and protests against their practices. Such defection is dangerous, and she knows she needs to disappear without a trace. The corporation tries to locate her, follow her surreptitious messages to Jimmy, and interrogate him occasionally regarding her whereabouts. It is likely, although not certain, that Jimmy and Crake witness her execution online.

These two people are not the only examples of resistance to corporate rule. During the coffee war, there is mention that Union dockworkers in Australia, where they still had unions, refused to unload Happicuppa cargoes. While Crakes fathers protest is an individual one, these dockworkers act in unison, and they are supported: in the United States, A Boston Coffee Party sprang up. Jimmys mother, too, has clearly joined opposition groups. When Jimmy hears from her or sees her online, she is always part of broader movements.

Crakes highly valued academic science and maths skills ensure his speedy progression in corporation hierarchy. Jimmys verbal skills land him in advertising. Eventually, Crake brings him to the most powerful RejoovenEsense corporation, in which he is a high senior operator. Jimmys job here is to run the ad campaign for BlyssPluss, a product to increase sexual performance, protect against STDs, extend youth, and function as male and female birth control to reduce global population. Secretly, Crake works on the creation of humanoids, the Children of Crake. These are grown in an artificial dome.

Jimmy and Crake both love Oryx, whom they first see in a child pornography film. She is Asian by birth and was sold, as was common practice in her village, to a white man. Her odyssey brings her to North America and Crake later hires her to be a teacher for his Crakers: to explain simple concepts and communicate with them. She also markets BlyssPluss around the world.

When the catastrophe strikes, both Crake and Oryx die violently, and Jimmy takes the Children of Crake to a safe place by the sea. Just how safe this place is, is debatable, as the environment is badly damaged and they need to seek food and other essentials for survival. The children of Crake have been programmed to live on plants only.

This first volume of the trilogy ends as first the Children of Crake, later Snowman, encounter other human survivors. Perhaps playing on a set of fossilized early human footprints discovered on the shore of Langebaan Lagood, South Africa, in 1995, here too, Snowman traces the whereabouts of the humans by following their imprints on the beach. He finds Two men, one brown, one white, a tea-colored woman. He is uncertain as to what to expect, knowing his own species, and considers different scenarios of how to relate to them. In the end, he leaves them without making himself known and returns to the Children of Crake, who he knows are nave, friendly, peaceful, and care for him.

Toward a new humanity

While Oryx and Crake (2003) is set in the Compounds, the second volume in the trilogy, The Year of the Flood (2009), is set contemporaneously in the violent and disease-ridden pleeblands. This is where the novels central female characters, Toby and Ren, live, relating the stories of their lives and individual survival of Crakes pandemic. The narrative shift from compound to pleebland is echoed in the transition from individual narrator to two narrators, from male to female, from isolation to group.

The two women had been members of a religious sect (albeit themselves not terribly religious), the pacifist and ecological Gods Gardeners, who had predicted the apocalyptic Waterless Flood brought about by environmental destruction. As they see it, Crakes pandemic is this flood. Gods Gardeners is a dropout group, which is not idealized by Atwood, but shown with its own weaknesses.

A disagreement over tactics causes Zeb to leave the pacifist Gardeners and engage in active bioterrorist opposition to the Corporations security police. As the narrative draws toward the present, surviving Gardeners are forced into hiding and are hounded by dehumanized criminals (painballers), who murder and kidnap. Echoing the ending of Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood concludes as the main characters find other survivors, including Jimmy, and the two painballers, along with their kidnap victim. They do not kill their criminal captives, but tie them up and feed them. The closing paragraph announces the arrival of Crakes Children approaching them, many people singing. Now we can see the flickering of their torches, winding towards us through the darkness of the trees.

The final book in the trilogy, Maddaddam (2013), is written from the perspective of Zeb and Toby, who were both introduced in The Year of the Flood. Their stories are told in the wake of the same biological disaster. They eventually meet up with Jimmy (from Oryx and Crake) and other survivors. Together with the Crakers, they start remaking civilization, but are still troubled by criminals. Some humans mate with the Crakers, but eventually die out. The end part of the story is told by the human-like new race. They are peace-loving and environmentally aware.

Atwoods outlook is cautiously, if thinly, optimistic for the survival of life on the planet. Despite an impending profit-driven environmental catastrophe, wars, and cynical disregard for human beings, it is the ordinary human beings who have the greatest potential for survival. Very few do survive, but they realize that continued existence can only be achieved in solidarity with one another, not in competition, rivalry, exclusion, or individualism. While the danger is by no means banished, a return to the awareness our tribal ancestors had of community is essential. And perhaps humankind will only live on in a new version of itself.

Originally posted here:

On her 80th birthday: Margaret Atwood points the way toward a new humanity - People's World

LONDON, Nov. 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- A new study reveals that whilst overly masculine behaviours in workplaces are on the way out, there is still a lot to be done by employers in supporting the needs of modern men who want to shoulder responsibilities for childcare as well as be the main provider for their family.

Research by culture change business Utopia and The Hobbs Consultancy found men's expectations of themselves have shifted. Seven in ten (71%) men report they still feel the need to be the main financial provider for their family, yet almost half - 46% - claim that it's now also their responsibility to be the primary carer to their children.

And yet, only a third of men (35%) say their workplace has a formal strategy of inclusiveness in place that helps ensure an understanding that work can have an impact from parental pressures to mental health or sickness.

Whilst progressive parenting and equality is a key step in modern relationships, workplaces are falling behind when it comes to modernising and supporting men in being all round providers to their families.

From flexible working hours and working from home to last minute childcare, parenting comes with challenges made easier with an accommodating employer.Research found one in five men (21%) say their employers actively discourage them from taking on parenting duties that may affect their work and a mere 11% report their boss is comfortable with them taking unexpected days off due to child sickness showing a distinct lack of flexibility and support.

Furthermore, both men and women face challenges in flexibility to work from home when needed with 28% of all workers claiming their employer actively discourages them from working from home.

Whilst not a typical trait of a masculine culture often associated around behaviours and personality traits such as assertiveness and competitiveness the lack of support and flexibility for men in sharing childcare responsibilities and parental leave is an issue employers need to address.

Daniele Fiandaca, Co-founder of culture change business Utopia, says: "Recent focus has been on the changes that women need to make to fit into a masculine workplace, when we should be focusing on creating more inclusive workplaces which work for all genders. Blokey banter might be dying out, but traditional masculine traits are still hindering modern businesses, and this research shows why we need to continue to work to build workplace cultures that are more effective and more inclusive for everyone."

Roxanne Hobbs, Founder at The Hobbs Consultancy, adds: "It's integral that everyone is able to be their authentic selves at work. The fact that men now feel they can't balance their careers with their families is worrying - the world is changed via conversation, and until the conversation about men and family happens, men will continue to be dragged down by a system that's inclusive in name only.

"We want to create a culture in which being a male leader is synonymous with courageous vulnerability, caregiving, empathy, and balanced mental health. We simply cannot talk about creating a difference with gender in the workplace without including men and making masculinity part of that discussion."

Notes to Editors

Utopia and The Hobbs Consultancy's Masculinity in the Workplace research was completed through market research company Opinium. The research polled a representative sample of 2,001 across the UK, between October and November 2019.

About Utopia:

Utopia is a culture change business. In a business landscape where creative thinking is the primary driver of growth, our changemakers help organisations build more purposeful, more inclusive and more entrepreneurial cultures, fit for this age of creativity. We do this by disrupting, inspiring and rewiring - from the intern to the CEO, through workshops and hacks - to create happier, inclusive, more productive workforces that deliver competitive advantage. And we've done it for businesses across the board, including Coca-Cola European Partners, D&AD, Google, Schneider Electric, Spotify and Universal Music.

To find out more, click here.

About The Hobbs Consultancy:

The Hobbs Consultancy is passionate about putting the humanity in to the workplace. We are a team of coaches, facilitators and content creators who are all passionate about transforming business through inclusion. We support individuals in showing up as their authentic selves. We support businesses in creating a culture in which people feel able to show up as themselves, where diversity of thought is valued and where people are cherished. We recognise that creating diverse and inclusive organisations is not necessarily an easy path and we help businesses to navigate this complexity, learning the skills required for everyone to be able to step into their inclusive leadership.

Original post:

BLOKEY Banter is Dying Out in the Workplace: British Men Embrace the Culture of the "Modern Man" - Yahoo Finance

ROME French Bishop Philippe Jean-Charles Jourdan has some big shoes to fill: At the age of 45, in 2005, he was appointed as the apostolic administrator of the Church in Estonia and became only the second bishop in Estonia since the Protestant Reformation.

The Catholic Church in Estonia, a country Pope Francis visited last year, is a small minority where those who belong to an institutional church are a small minority themselves: an estimated 80 percent of the population describes themselves as non-believers.

When some foreigners visit, Jourdan told Crux they say that they feel like God has disappeared, from this nation that was under Soviet rule from the Second World War until 1991.

The Soviet Union saw Archbishop Eduard Profittlich, Jourdans predecessor and second Catholic bishop since the Reformation, as a threat. He was arrested during World War II and accused of spying for the Germans and inciting hatred against the USSR by appealing to the religious feelings of the masses. He was sentenced to execution by firing squad, but he died in a Gulag in Kirov, in the northeast of European Russia.

Today, Jourdan is leading the cause for his predecessor to be declared a martyr, as he was sentenced to death due to his faith.

Crux caught up with the bishop, a member of Opus Dei, while he was in Rome last week to ordain 29 new deacons to the personal prelature. Among other things, he discussed the rapid secularization in some quarters of western Europe, saying it is true that our experience of the religious situation in Estonia could be, and with some probability will be, the experience of western Europe in the next generation.

Jourdan also said that he doesnt agree with the proposal from some circles calling for Christians to live in small communities isolated from the dangers of a post-Christian society, saying instead that a dedicated presence in the world is necessary, based on a realistic, but also hopeful vision of the society, even of a secularized society.

I find that, perhaps because of difficult circumstances, there is a latent pessimism among Christians nowadays, sometimes leading to apathy and resignation, sometimes on the contrary to an activism mixed with bitterness, the so-called bitter zeal of the spiritual literature, he said.

Crux: A year ago, Pope Francis visited Estonia. What would you say was the impact, if any, of the visit to the country?

Jourdan: Certainly, the visit of Pope Francis had a great impact in our country. Firstly, for the local Catholic Church. We saw a greater number of persons asking to know better the Church and eventually being baptized and received in the Catholic Church.

But it had an impact in society at large too. Before, for the people of our country, the Catholic Church was something very far away, in space or in time. I would say that now the average Estonian perceives the Catholic Church, and especially the Holy Father, as something much closer.

We are much more a part of the religious and social landscape. For the future of the Church in Estonia, which is slowly but steadily growing, it is very important.

You minster in a country where a majority of the population 50 percent describe themselves as non-believers. What is this like?

I would be happy if I could say that half of the Estonian population are believers. But in fact, all the surveys made about religion in Estonia indicate far less, between 20 and 25 percent, 75 to 80 percent being without religion. For that reason, sometimes foreigners visiting Estonia said to me that, by comparison to other places, our country looks like as if God had disappeared, was nowhere to be seen.

Of course, it is also due to the fact that a foreigner never knows very well the country he is visiting and tends to judge only on some appearances. But there is certainly a truth in that. Nevertheless, you find also good people everywhere, looking for a sense in their life.

For instance, I was recently in Santiago of Compostela and was told that since the beginning of the year hundreds of Estonians have come as pilgrims to Santiago, the great majority of them being probably non-Catholics or non-Christians.

In some circles of the Church, theres a lot of concern over growing secularization, but youre in a country where, due to its history, this has been the case for a long time. What would your advice be for those who minister in some of these places, like for instance, most of western Europe?

If I had a recipe against secularization, I would have published it, and of course used it long ago! It is true that our experience of the religious situation in Estonia could be, and with some probability will be, the experience of western Europe in the next generation.

But I dont agree with an idea present in some Church circles that due to the growing secularization living as a Christian in the society becomes virtually impossible, and Christians should retire in small communities, a little bit like the monasteries of the first millennium, which were like well protected sources of light in a dark age.

I dont think this would be a solution. Certainly, each one of us needs, more than ever, the support of a fervent community of Christians where people help each other, on the material as well as spiritual level. It is especially clear in a situation like ours, where every Catholic is usually the only Catholic in his or her family, and often the only Christian.

But a dedicated presence in the world is necessary, based on a realistic, but also hopeful vision of the society, even of a secularized society. I find that, perhaps because of difficult circumstances, there is a latent pessimism among Christians nowadays, sometimes leading to apathy and resignation, sometimes on the contrary to an activism mixed with bitterness, the so called bitter zeal of the spiritual literature.

Both should be avoided.

We should find our model in the first Christians, not in a new utopia fueled by fear. Despite obvious attacks against the sanctity of life and family, a secularized world is not like a new Moloch, swallowing small children.

But living in a secularized world will be certainly a purifying experience, where our former Christian society and way of life will probably be reduced to the one necessary thing Jesus spoke of in Bethania. I think that Pope Francis, thanks to the divine Providence, is preparing us to such an experience. And in the purification are already the seeds of the resurrection!

So, we should not live in a nostalgia of better times. Our time is the time prepared for us by God, and it will also revealthe fruitfulness of the grace of God.

Earlier this year, you were in Rome to deliver to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints the documents of the diocesan phase of the process of beatification for your predecessor, Archbishop Eduard Profittlich, the first bishop of Estonia after the Lutheran Reformation. He could become Estonias first saint, a martyr. What impact could this official recognition have in the countrys small Catholic community? Have you heard anything about the cause, or have you been given a possible date for his beatification?

Of course, I have heard about the cause of Archbishop Profittlich: I have been and I am very directly involved in it! The first phase, the diocesan phase, is finished, and the cause is now in Rome and advancing well. We were given a founded hope that, if things go on well, the Beatification could take place when we celebrate the 80 years of the death of Archbishop Profittlich, in 2022.

But of course, sometimes things in Rome take a lot of time, and we cannot for sure give a date with certainty. It is of course important for our small Catholic community, but also for the whole Estonian society, because it will be also, in a certain way, a recognition by the universal Church of the tragic fate of the whole Estonian people in that dark period of our history.

In any case, I recommend to the readers of this article to ask many things through the intercession of Eduard Profittlich, who is helping many people!

What brought you to Rome this time around?

I am now in Rome to ordain deacons, more than 29 members of the Prelature of Opus Dei. It is certainly for me a great joy, both personally as a member of the Work, and as a bishop, [I am] happy to bring new workers to the vineyard of the Lord.

Follow Ins San Martn on Twitter:@inesanma

Crux is dedicated to smart, wired and independent reporting on the Vatican and worldwide Catholic Church. That kind of reporting doesnt come cheap, and we need your support. You can help Crux bygiving a small amount monthly, or witha onetime gift. Please remember, Crux is a for-profit organization, so contributions are not tax-deductible.

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Estonian bishop doesn't have 'a recipe against secularization' - Crux: Covering all things Catholic

Critical Linking, a daily roundup of the most interesting bookish links from around the web is sponsored by Read Harder Journal, a reading log for tracking your books and reading outside your comfort zone!

On this, the one-year anniversary of the release of Becoming, I have compiled a list of 21 new releases from August to the years endbooks of all kinds on my reading listthat showcase what black womens literature this year is becoming, and what it has always been: essential to fully understanding the American story, the human story, and to what we are all becoming.

Challenge accepted!

The new location for Russell Books was the scene of a world record Thursday as about a thousand books were used to make a tower six metres high (19 feet, eight inches) in front of a cheering crowd.

All were copies of Guinness World Records books dating back as far as 1962.

I get so nervous watching these!

In creating space for just that, lesbian romance novels are essential, radical, and also just a fun break from the heaviness that so often coexists alongside our queerness. While some lesbian romance novels respect and recognize that heaviness in their plots, other lesbian romance novels choose to sidestep homophobia and sexism entirely, preferring to offer up a utopia in which their readers can luxuriate, if only briefly.

Below, youll find a mixture of books that do bothand that give us thoughtful, queer pleasurefreed of the male gaze and written with queer readers in mind.

Lesbian romances to love.

Go here to read the rest:

Read BECOMING? Here Are 21 More Recs: Critical Linking, November 19, 2019 - Book Riot

Express News Service

BENGALURU: The expression of revolt varies in different countries. Drug taking is a form of that revolt. The revolt of the black and white in America, anti-war, pro-war, the explosion of population right throughout the world, the undeveloped countries. And has revolt any meaning at all? And to act is necessary, to do something. Either one does, or responds adequately to the fragment of a particular breakdown, taking the political issue and throwing oneself into it, or the economic issue, or the social work, or shall one withdraw completely into ones own isolation, retire into a world of meditation, which is what is happening also. Surely all these are an indication, arent they, of approaching the problem fragmentarily? This is a human problem - as a whole, not of a particular group or a particular people, or of a particular culture.

Can one respond to this, totally, as a whole phenomenon, not a particular kind of phenomena? And is it possible to respond to this with our whole mind and heart, so that we act not in fragments but as a whole being? And I feel thats the only possible response and the only possible action, confronted as we are, with this phenomenon of degeneration. After all, degeneration takes place when one knows what to do, and not to do it. And do we know what to do? Not what to do with regard to a particular fragment, but what to do with regard to the whole structure and nature of our society and of ourselves? I dont know if you have thought about this, or if you are interested in this kind of approach. Because the house is burning - not your house or my house, but the house that man has built for millennia, where there is so much sorrow, illusion, where there is no faith in anything - quite rightly.

How is one to respond to all this? Shall one invent a new ideal, a principle, a directive? Because the old ideals, the old directives, the old morality has completely failed. So in reaction to that, one can have or intellectually conjure up a marvellous ideal, a new utopia, and work for that. And is that the answer? An ideal? A new principle? When the old ideals and old principles have completely failed? And mustnt all ideals always fail? Because theyre not real; theyre just the opposite of what actually is. So can one discard all ideals? And if you do, can one live without a directive? Ideals at least give a certain directive, as one can lay the course of ones life along that. But the ideals, as in the past, have really no meaning whatsoever, when one examines it very closely. So if you have no directive - and apparently human beings at the present state have no directive - they are driven by various issues. And being driven by propaganda, by certain structure of a particular society and culture in a certain direction is not directive at all; its just acting out of confusion. This is really a very serious question.

Original post:

Necessity of action - The New Indian Express

The tour began in San Cristobal. (External source).

SANTO DOMINGO.- The Telemicro Group reported on Monday that more than one hundred thousand people gathered at the feet of El Rey de la Bachata, Romeo Santos, last weekend, when the star of the music put to vibrate to San Juan de la Maguana, Barahona, Azua and San Cristbal with the musical download of Utopia: La Gira del Pueblo, an art show that will reach 15 provinces of the country thanks to the owner of the medium, Juan Ramn Gmez Daz.

A show with an impressive stage, never seen in the towns of the interior, an artist delivered to his audience and enjoyed with the audience every moment and every song.During the surprise factor presentations, he was the protagonist of the show that the bachatero offered for two hours, last Sunday, in the province of San Juan de la Maguana, at the Hermanos Surez baseball stadium.

This time the segment of special guests was attended by Alexandra Cabrera, who, despite arriving on stage without Ramn Rijo, known as Monchy, seduced the public by performing Light Years with Santos.

The empathy between Alexandra and The Boy of Poetry became visible immediately, the public confirmed it with their excitement. The former member of the missing duo Monchy and Alexandra came to sing for the second time, but, this time, to the rhythm of Obsession, a vintage theme that Adventure placed on the cusp of popularity, in full premiere, about ten years ago.

As if by magic, Santos reviewed one by one the 20 songs he would play in San Juan de la Maguana.Buried Love and The Demand were just some of the new pieces that intermingled subtly with Amigo or Take Me With You, classic tunes that allowed the public to embrace the first two record productions Santos released solo.

Saint John is one of you, I am prepared for anything.As shown, ask me for a song in a cappella that I dont even remember, the artist asked the public who later heard him interpreting versions of successful songs such as Sometimes I want to cry, Just for a kiss, or Teach me to forget.

To conclude the show, the people from San Juan enjoyed a final presentation of luxury, thanks to the interpretation of The Kiss I Didnt Give from the duo, together with the bachatero Kiko Rodrguez.

During the four presentations Romeo has been singing with Kiko Rodrguez and with Natti Natasha in the first three installments.Theodore Reyes joined in San Cristbal;in Azua Luis Miguel del Amargue came as a surprise, in Barahona the attraction was Frank Reyes and in San Juan de la Maguana Alexandra Cabrera.

The Tour of the people continues this weekend from this Thursday, November 21.

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It's estimated that Romeo Santos sang to more than 100 thousand people in first four concerts - Dominican Today