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This is a blog about a novel in progress and all the blood sweat and research that go along with it. The novel is set in the beginning of the Gold Rush in San Francisco. All manner of strange and horrible events transpire investigated by our intrepid, clever, heroine. The author will share places to see and explore that teach and inspire about the history of the novel along with the nitty gritty of pounding out the paragraphs.
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A CHANGE OF MIND…So this post is long overdue and probably no surprise to anyone who has been keeping track of things here at Evangeline central. The more I learn about early San Francisco history – and believe me I thought I knew a lot before this little quest – the more I want to shift gears ahead … Continue reading "A CHANGE OF MIND…" The post A CHANGE OF MIND… appeared first on The Mysterious World Of...
So this post is long overdue and probably no surprise to anyone who has been keeping track of things here at Evangeline central. The more I learn about early San Francisco history – and believe me I thought I knew a lot before this little quest – the more I want to shift gears ahead a decade or so.
It’s not so much that the land or the people aren’t interesting prior to the era I’m feeling pulled to like a hunk of iron to an industrial strength magnet. It’s that her story just fits so much more cleanly into the time and place that San Francisco was at the start of the Gold Rush. Yep, I had been planning all this time to tell a story of pre Gold Rush San Fran. But the landscape of lawless insanity at the start of the Gold Rush is just screaming for Evangeline’s story.
I kind of thought when we went on the Barbary Coast Tour that we’d hear a little more about Yerba Buena, the place San Francisco was before it was San Francisco and even more about San Francisco before the Gold Rush hit. We did hear some stories and they were interesting. But it became rapidly apparent that San Francisco wasn’t born until the Gold Rush.
Yerba Buena was a sleepy little seaside hamlet. Home to a few hundred people for decades. Even after it was claimed for the United States and the name officially changed to San Francisco, the population stayed pretty much the same and there wasn’t much of a town square to plant a flag in. Don’t ask about streets.
Then they found gold. It was like the city happened in a black out drunk episode. All you remember is the first drink. And you wake up the next morning with a monster headache and a house crammed full of people you don’t know passed out on your furniture. Yeah and it just gets worse, or better depending on if it’s your house or if you’re enjoying the show.
A book was recommended as further reading about the area and the time period while we were on the Barbary Coast Walking Tour. The Barbary Coast An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld by Herbert Asbury written in 1933. Based on newspaper reports, memoirs, and diaries of the time, it has proved to be a juicy read.
So, yep, I’m redirecting Evangeline’s story to 1849. The year of the Gold Rush. She’ll have been in town about a year by then, just before all hell breaks loose in the best kind of way. I think it’s a good move.
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WAR/POLITICS&EVANGELINE
So I’m still thinking about how to work those political ideas into Evangeline’s story. It makes more and more sense. She wants so much to be what her father is, a respected member of a shrouded league of mystic champions. But what are champions without a fight? It is an idea to play with. Certainly … Continue reading "WAR/POLITICS&EVANGELINE" The post WAR/POLITICS&EVANGELINE appeared first on The Mysterious World Of...
So I’m still thinking about how to work those political ideas into Evangeline’s story. It makes more and more sense. She wants so much to be what her father is, a respected member of a shrouded league of mystic champions. But what are champions without a fight? It is an idea to play with. Certainly you can’t paint every soldier with the same brush however, or even each with the same thickness. There are no absolutes in anything – not even the evils of war, politics, or greed.
Still, I am liking the idea more and more. It is exciting to find interesting flaws with which to layer the “heroes”. Just as exciting as it is to find honorable qualities to build into the “villains”.
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PART OF OUR STORY AND HERS
George Orwell wrote “It does not matter if the war is not real. For when it is, victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, but it is meant to be continuous. The essential fact of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labor. The hierarchy of society … Continue reading "PART OF OUR STORY AND HERS" The post PART OF OUR STORY AND HERS appeared first on The Mysterious World Of...
George Orwell wrote
“It does not matter if the war is not real. For when it is, victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, but it is meant to be continuous.
The essential fact of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labor. The hierarchy of society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance.
The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects, and its object is not victory over Eurasia, or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.”
Faulkner wrote
“…no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.”
The more I learn about the insidious nature of power and politics in the here and now, the more I want to incorporate some aspects into Evangeline’s story so that I can say something about them. And they even make sense organically as I ponder the details of her world and the issues her story has always had in them to begin with.
Our political machine runs on warfare. Pure and simple. If you do the research and run the numbers there really isn’t any other conclusion. And the question is: how do we extricate our economy and the bones of our society from that big, dependable, obscene Duracell battery? What do we boycott, protest, petition, who do we vote for to stop the gears? And if we could stop them, what do we put in their place? That’s the really horrific thought. Do we even know what to replace a murderous economy with?
The last time America fought a relatively clean war (in terms of economic interest) was probably the War of Independence – and even that involved taxation. We live in ugly times. It is important now more than ever that we make a point of talking about what disturbs us. Change will never happen without shedding light on the infected corners. Talk about the ugliness in whatever your chosen media. If you don’t, who will?
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TELL THEM ITS NOT OK
RIGHT so tis the season still so lets keep going…Just to spur a few of us to the booths… I was scrolling through recent online news/media stuff and stopped on the Megyn Kelly ‘blackface’ incident because “hello” why? and what was she thinking? Turns out she thought like this a lot. If you google her, … Continue reading "TELL THEM ITS NOT OK" The post TELL THEM ITS NOT OK appeared first on The Mysterious World Of...
RIGHT so tis the season still so lets keep going…Just to spur a few of us to the booths…
I was scrolling through recent online news/media stuff and stopped on the Megyn Kelly ‘blackface’ incident because “hello” why? and what was she thinking?
Turns out she thought like this a lot. If you google her, you can scratch the surface like a cheap gift card and find rabid racist with the first nail twitch. Anyway, she struck me as such an easily digestible, Walmart brand, public figure that her kind of political think substance should be examined during this voting period. Here is a great link to a page that explores her greatest hits of freakishly incendiary on-air statements.
And if you don’t think those are a call to arms for white supremacists (I won’t dignify them with the term alt right) then you have your head so far up your ass there’s no coming back out.
I also found an article by Roxanne Jones at CNN online that went on to show how this leads to another disturbing trend in today’s racial tensions. All of these have been seen on Youtube recently and if you haven’t seen them you really should.
The article talks about Kelly and her comments but goes on to discuss the increasing trend in harassment of African Americans for just being or doing things any white person would be able to do without question. Here’s the text from the article that struck home with me most deeply.
“We all know them by now thanks to social media, which has shamed these over-zealous white people for falsely accusing innocent blacks of wrongdoing.We know them as “Permit Patty,” a.k.a. Alison Ettel in San Francisco, who called police in July on an 8-year-old girl who was selling water bottles as part of a school fundraiser, or New York’s “Cornerstore Caroline,” a.k.a. Teresa Klein, who recently accused a 9-year-old boy of sexual assault and called the police. Ettel later resigned from her job, and in Klein’s case, the store’s video later showed the boy’s backpack had accidentally grazed her.
Mowing lawns, taking a nap in a dorm, sitting in Starbucks, trying to enter your apartment after a long day at work — it’s alarming the rate at which whites have used police to try and intimidate black people for simply being in their space. It’s no wonder Kelly feels empowered to reveal her racist opinions on national television.At Yale, Starbucks and everywhere else, being black in America really is this hardAt Yale, Starbucks and everywhere else, being black in America really is this hard.
Sadly, these offenses are felt almost daily for black folks, even me. My former business partner and neighbor recently felt free to throw out the N-word with his friends while we were at work. Then he laughed about it when a guy standing nearby pointed out that I was in earshot. Like Megyn Kelly, he too later apologized. But I had already seen his true face.
I get that underground racists feel emboldened by a President who declares on national TV, “Absolutely I am a nationalist.” They think they can now push the boundaries of what it means to be a racist. They think they can redefine the meaning of racism by arguing that they don’t believe in being PC — which to me means that they want to be free to deny the humanity and equality of others who are not like them.
What they don’t get is that we will not allow the clocks to be turned back to a time when the only thing right was white.
Too much blood has been shed in the fight for equality. It’s a new day. And this time, the voices for equality are amplified. More Americans across every demographic believe in their own inalienable right to justice and equality.
We don’t believe in political correctness, either. Not the type that says we have to be silent and do nothing in the face of your hatred. No. We are fighting back. We are organizing, using social media to ostracize blatant acts of racism. And we will hold accountable anyone who uses hate to try and demean us and deny our equality.”
So, again, I want to say this. Having read all of these articles and watched all of these clips. Please think carefully about what is happening out there and understand that you CANNOT afford NOT to VOTE this season. There is a pervasive atmosphere of “it’s OK to do this shit” out there since the last election. Since the last crappy voter turn out. We have to change that.
Really…?
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USE YOUR VOTE!!!
This is not what I want to use my page for but it is so important that I am going to use it for this one time only. Voting Day is racing up to meet us and I want to make a plea here to say VOTE. Get out and VOTE like your life depended … Continue reading "USE YOUR VOTE!!!" The post USE YOUR VOTE!!! appeared first on The Mysterious World Of...
This is not what I want to use my page for but it is so important that I am going to use it for this one time only.
Voting Day is racing up to meet us and I want to make a plea here to say VOTE. Get out and VOTE like your life depended on it people. Because is does. It is the only way you can make your voice heard ouside of protests and it is the most meaningful way. Don’t say you’ve got more important things to do. Don’t say your vote doesn’t matter because it’s all going to be buisness as usual no matter what you do. Do it. Do it because if you don’t you’ve done nothing. And doing nothing makes you part of the problem. It ensures that NOTHING will happen. It garantees that NOTHING with happen. Do it so that something might happen.
I keep trying to convince my husband that voting is the only way to make change happen. He keeps insisting that no matter who we vote for, they will break their promises either through disinterest or inability to work together in bipartisanship. He insists that all politicians are in it to “suck from the government titty” to be vulgar – but his phrase. In other words, he thinks that they all just want the prestige and financial security afforded by the position. We have wild arguments about this where I try to convince him that to believe this and choose not to vote is to do nothing and garantee that nothing changes for the better. He votes under duress at this argument but it makes me sooooo tired. 
angry
and sad
, Mostly depressed. I don’t think there’s an emoticon for that. Jesus why is it so hard to motivate people to try to make a difference on even the TINIEST level?
This happens mostly with Liberals or maybe I should just call them people who despirately need change in their government – the poorly represented: low income, middle class, blue collar households, people who can’t afford personally financed health insurance, people who’s mortgages eat up most of their paychecks, racially profiled people who are 2nd generation Americans, African Americans who exercise their right to peacefully protest and are labeled traitors to their country, those who protest white supremacy and are labeled angry violent mobs. WHY? I do not get this at all. These are the people that need numbers more than any others. Conservatives flood the booths in waves like salmon swimming upstream. What the hell with “Liberals”? Why is it that when Voting Season rolls around they go limp like a guy in a Viagra add?
Go vote. It is your RIGHT in this country! Don’t throw that away. Don’t make that meaningless like some dirty rag you can’t use. In some places dictators just roll into office, no votes involved. In some places, people are physically chased away from voting booths. You have it so easy in most cases – voter supression is another story. All you have to do is take a moment out of your day to choose the people YOU want to represent you in Congress in the hope that they will do what they say they will. Even if they don’t, you’ve done something. And SOMETHING is always better than NOTHING.
Why do I have to spend time explaining or making this plea? This is America. We should all understand this. We should all grip this one inalienable right like a warrior clenches a spear. We fought so hard for it. From the founding fathers to everyone who had to pry it loose for themselves afterwards. Don’t piss all over that prize now! Wield it like the weapon it can be.
Just VOTE.
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So Sorry…
I was going to put this at the start of the Mission Dolores post but it seemed sort of confusing so I’m making it a separate thing. Apologies for the wait. I just began a new job. It’s been a bit of an upheaval despite my expectations to the contrary (yeah it’s just a transfer … Continue reading "So Sorry…" The post So Sorry… appeared first on The Mysterious World Of...
I was going to put this at the start of the Mission Dolores post but it seemed sort of confusing so I’m making it a separate thing. Apologies for the wait. I just began a new job. It’s been a bit of an upheaval despite my expectations to the contrary (yeah it’s just a transfer but bigger department, different town, blah blah blah, yadda, yadda). The good news is that I’m closer to home so the commute is wayyyy shorter. So, more time to write and blog. Yay!! Goodness abounds. Anyway, on with the show.
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