The Mystery Behind ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ Cover Art Is Solved

Sleuths have wondered for years who made a striking cover for Madeleine L’Engle’s novel. A podcast host and a blog writer who contacted hundreds of people figured it out.

By Amanda Holpuch

Sept. 6, 2023

For certain corners of the internet, a 1976 paperback edition of Madeleine L’Engle’s novel “A Wrinkle in Time” has been the source of an enduring mystery: Who was the artist behind its spooky, glowing-green cover art?

After a few hours of research, the podcast host Amory Sivertson thought she had found the answer. She had emailed a gallery to ask if an artist it represented had made the cover and a worker said yes.

She was wrong: A day later, the gallery worker apologized for the miscommunication. It would be two months, hundreds of emails and a number of awkward cold calls before she actually found the correct name.

The mystery cover art shows a strapping centaur with delicate wings flying above a menacing green face with bright red eyes. Craggy mountains and fluffy dark clouds surround the haunting figures. The website Book Riot called the art “nightmare fuel.” The artist’s name isn’t mentioned anywhere in the book.

Ms. Sivertson thought that finding the artist’s name and giving the person credit were important for a work that is “on people’s bookshelves and in their hearts and in their memories.”

“This is one of the pieces that outlives him,” Ms. Sivertson said of the cover. “It’s just — you have to know. We have to find out who is behind it.”

The mystery reached Ms. Sivertson because she is the co-host and senior producer of the podcast “Endless Thread,” which sometimes delves into mysteries. On the show — produced by Boston’s NPR station WBUR — Ms. Sivertson and her co-host, Ben Brock Johnson, find explanations for quandaries such as Geedis, a warthog-like character that dazzled the internet, and a pile of plates dumped in the woods in Pennsylvania.

For the book art mystery, the podcast picked up where S. Elizabeth, who writes the blog Unquiet Things, had left off.

Ms. Elizabeth said she had first developed an “idle curiosity” about the artist behind the “Wrinkle in Time” cover art in 2019. In 2021 and 2022, her curiosity increased as she worked on her latest book, “The Art of Fantasy,” a compendium that comes out on Thursday.

In May, she described her search for the artist in a blog post, hoping it would generate new leads. She said that she had contacted people online who were connected to the novel, the fantasy art world and Ms. L’Engle. Ms. Elizabeth reached out to Ms. L’Engle’s granddaughter on the social media platform X to ask if she knew who created the cover, but the account responded with a shrug emoji.

Ms. Elizabeth posted about the search on Reddit, and a commenter there said the mystery would be a good fit for “Endless Thread,” so Ms. Elizabeth shared her request for help on the podcast’s subreddit.

Ms. Elizabeth didn’t have an especially deep connection to the book. When she first started looking for the cover artist, her primary memory of the novel was that the plot involved a liverwurst sandwich — “I’m a foodie,” she said — but she cares deeply about artists getting their due.

The search for an answer resonated online with many, who sent Ms. Elizabeth guesses about the artist’s identity and tips for her search.

“I think realizing that the artist was not so easily found — that just lit a fire under a lot of folks, because this book was so formative to so many people,” Ms. Elizabeth said.

People had guesses (spoiler: Some were correct https://twitter.com/wallacepolsom/status/1663664852764618752?s=20 ), but Ms. Sivertson’s hundreds of calls ultimately led to an answer. “I really was sustained by people who would write back and say, ‘I have a few ideas, let me make a few calls,’” she said.

Ms. Sivertson said these calls were “an industry coming back together,” with people who worked in publishing and illustration in the 1970s speaking with each other for the first time in decades.

In late June, she was given the correct name: Richard Bober. Mr. Bober died last year https://www.wow-art.com/richard-bober, but Ms. Sivertson was able to speak with his relatives in early July, and she said they found proof that he had made the cover art.

Ms. Elizabeth said that she wanted to burst into tears when the mystery was solved because even though Ms. Sivertson was tenacious, finding the answer had seemed like a long shot.

Ms. Elizabeth had actually seen a work by Mr. Bober before, “Lady Vampire,” which she said depicts a vampire girl who looks “like a snotty, mean girl,” with a dog looking at her adoringly. “At the time I thought, ‘This artist is so cool,’” Ms. Elizabeth recalled.

This cover art mystery appears to be solved, but Ms. Elizabeth has a long list of queries she would still like answers to, including who made a cover for the next book in Ms. L’Engle’s series: “A Wind in the Door.” Each year on social media, Ms. Elizabeth also posts a photo of a topless woman in an enormous headdress taken during what appears to be the 1920s, hoping someone will know who it is.

“Everyone has tons of guesses,” she said. “And some people are like, ‘Definitively, yes, this is that person.’ But show me the proof of it.”

URL

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/06/books/wrinkle-in-time-book-cover-artist.html

Partnering with Black Women Photographers to Amplify Black Creatives

Photo: © Edwina Hay (Flickr: eatsdirt < https://www.flickr.com/photos/eatsdirt/>)

We’re excited to officially announce our second grant in partnership with the Black Women Photographers community! <<  https://blackwomenphotographers.com/ >>With this grant we hope to help a photographer from both the Black Women Photographers and Flickr communities to further hone their photography skills.

The grant includes funds of $2,500 to be used by the recipient towards furthering their photography practice. It also includes a two-year Flickr Pro membership, as well as  a one-year SmugMug Pro membership. Ten additional recipients will each receive a one-year Flickr Pro membership and one-year SmugMug Pro membership. 

In order to be eligible for the grant you must:

Be a member of the Black Women Photographers community << https://blackwomenphotographers.com/join-the-community  >>

Submit a photo aligned with the theme of “Light in Motion” to the Black Women Photographers group on Flickr <<  https://www.flickr.com/groups/blackwomenphotographers/ >>>(Explain how to be a member of the group < < https://www.flickrhelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/4404069536532-Add-or-remove-photos-in-Flickr-groups > >)

Explain why the photo you chose stands out to you 

Be an active member on Flickr (completing the step above fulfills this requirement!)

Applications will close on October 6th, 2023. Please apply << https://blackwomenphotographers.com/smugmug-flickr  >> and spread the word before the deadline!

This grant is open to Black women and non-binary photographers who are members – new and old –  of Black Women Photographers and Flickr. The grant recipient will be selected by  BWP founder Polly Irungu<<https://www.pollyirungu.com/>>, veteran BWP and Flickr member Edwina Hay.  Flickr Community’s MacKenzie Joslin < https://www.flickr.com/photos/kenziej/  

SmugMug’s Senior Global Brand Manager & Head of Ambassador Relations Alastair Jolly https://www.flickr.com/photos/alastairjolly/

 and This Week in Photo’s Frederick Van Johnson. https://thisweekinphoto.com/author/frederick/

We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Join the community

Over the last two years, we’ve had the opportunity to work directly with Polly Irungu, founder of Black Women Photographers, as well as get to know members of the BWP community and learn more about their work. The collective’s mission is to help get Black women photographers hired and supports its members by promoting their work in an active database distributed to photo editors and art buyers. The collective also offers education and support for its members through regular programing like webinars, workshops, and portfolio reviews.

If you’re a Black woman photographer looking to connect with a larger community, you can learn more and apply to be part of Black Women Photographers. And if you’re new to Flickr, we’re here to help you get started! Check out our Flickr FAQ series and say hello in the Black Women Photographers group.

Note: The photo included in this blog post and in communications about this grant was taken by Edwina Hay, a music photographer and member of the grant panel. You can see more of her work on Flickr.

en

URL

https://blog.flickr.net/en/2023/09/06/partnering-with-black-women-photographers-to-amplify-black-creatives/

Pokemon Random colors

I chose Sudowoodo

Colored
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Sudowoodo-random-colors-color-981133324
Coloring page
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Sudowoodo-random-colors-BW-981133154
 

Pokemon Rainforest

I put a Sudowoodo in there
colored
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Sudowoodo-in-the-rainforest-Color-981132583
coloring page
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Sudowoodo-in-the-rainforest-BW-981132421
 

Francois Artblog, honoring his 5,000 more followers
colored
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/5K-francois-congrats-color-981131796
coloring page
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/5K-francois-congrats-bw-981131023

Left Hand Tutorials

I did the tutorial with my left hand

Fella

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Left-Hand-Fella-Tutorial-981129609

Grogu

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Left-Hand-Grogu-Tutorial-981129847

Rose

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Left-Hand-Rose-Tutorial-981130093

Hot Dog
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Left-Hand-HotDog-Tutorial-981130267

Cake
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Left-Hand-Cake-Tutorial-981130411

Witch
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Left-Hand-Witch-Tutorial-981130553

Raven
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Left-Hand-Raven-Tutorial-981130747

Writeup as I listened

12:10 
Secrets to writing great horror

12:12
He wrote the Kundalini equation < https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/the-kundalini-equation-1 >

originally wrote to have a best seller and increase his career. A white guy was put on a peers cover. The firms back in the day to the original publication was not willing to look at their own responsibility. 
True, the white audience in modernity is used to 

17:36 
STeven sees the potential to do something unique to him. He will rewrite a former novel and turn it into something it should had been, and he will collaborate with Tananarive in the script form. He wants to use Tananarive practical historical smoothing.

18:46 
People suggest Tananarive Due is one of the greatest horror writers alive. 

20:10 
what makes a great horror story?

22:06
What is the greatest extent, what is the most extreme moment?
There is a point where it is too much or that is not enough. A symphony of different emotions to feel the experience. Using vision boards matters.  You can feel your way before you write it. 

23:50 
Now that a cardboard treatment, and now a written treatment and ask what is the experience of this movie be.
What is the difference between action or horror movies?
In action movies, people are getting hurt in a sequence, like in horror. 
For Tananarive, the difference is the depth of characters.
For example, a horror movie about a bunch of college students on a ski trip. She can relate to college students through friends who like skiing.
Then a mercenary on a mission is on a ski lift. She can't relate to a mercenary or being on a ski lift. 

26:31 
Horror needs a relatable character who is experiencing fear, a haunted house is not enough. You need a customer who has never been in that haunted house and something goes wrong. A couple for example trying to work out their stuff and it makes the external side internal.

27:41 
Tananarive has a template. 
If she has to write a horror story and has three weeks.
->What scares you?
She uses survivor horror as that is scary to her and she has been camping, rafting. 
->How do you make the story yours? 
So more than bears, it becomes about a cult. Stephen King was a teacher growing up
->Believe in the characters
Suffered a trauma, and committed a transgression is common among writers of horror. Grief is common , the one horror no one overcomes. 

31:29 
All horror is about surviving what you are in.
Imagine Get Out if Chris wasn't in grief over the lost of his mother.
Steven makes a point, deer antlers were used as a symbol to defend himself, which is like the deer he hit in the beginning of the film.

32:37 
Tananarive, she weaponized his Grief, and by the end, he has weaponized his own grief. To make it his strength and overcome. 

34:09 
Tananative You can make "Get Out" a drama. Is Chris in love with the secret psycho white woman? 
Peele discussed Guess who is coming to dinner in the early screenplay version of "Get Out" 
< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpGmCLcqgAw >
< https://www.shadowandact.com/what-is-black-horror-the-sunken-place-professor-tananarive-due-explains > 

36:27
Peele started with social anxiety. It wasn't about phenotypical frictions, merely the frictions of the stranger among a group of friends and amplify it. 
Turn it up to 11. 
Tananarive isn't into human horror. She is triggered by Human horror and make it a journey. It is a journey of self revelation. 

37:39
Liam Neeson, eyes in the grey.
She loves that film, for not about the wolf winning but standing up. Even though many call the end a downer. The film is about who the character becomes. 

38:44 
Tananarive considers gaslighting her least favorite horror. PArents or spouses gaslighting children or spouses in her opinion is poor storytelling. Is it going to kill your character to cut on a flashlight in the dark room? She feels it is overdone. She calls it an artificial conceit. She loves Miles in the good house. Miles doesn't believe but stands by the female character. 
< https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-good-house-2 > 

40:47
You want psychological realism, nothing breaks more than when people act away from common responses. If you do not pick up a weapon going to a dark place you are an idiot.

41:36
STeven Barnes, asks is that why meetings are the best part in horror to Tananarive. 
Tananarive loves the meeting in horror.  

42:40 
Steven talks of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, people of normal intelligence with no idea what is about to happen. In alien, normal people of normal intelligence. Whereas in prometheus, they were scientist and should had known better. 

43:57
Steven, Difference between action in horror, something killing you in the dark is horror, in the light as a tiger is action. 
Horror is unknown, playing on the minds ways to whatever the truth is in the darkness. Action is more strategic, allows for knowable assessment. 
 
45:20 
Tananarive, the feeling of fear is different in action. 
Steven, it will be interesting to take a liam neeson skill set taken man into a situation where he finds himself in a situation beyond his comprehension that he realizes. 

46:42
Tananarive, war time horror is like that. ala Predator. 

47:25 
Steven, talks of Prey, the predator underestimates the human female lead. 

48:25 
Elegance usually takes years. Steven says, the best pieces of horror were not primordial, they evolved. 

49:33 
Tananarive, Think about the antagonists too. Make sure their is logic to Zombies. What is different in the way you write zombies?
< https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/devil-s-wake > 

Put your own unique spin. For example, the reason for haunting of ghost matters. 
The interaction between characters side antagonist matters. 
Steven, your god of the universe in your story
Alot of readers like the antagonist more than anybody else in the story, make it pop ,and don't repeat things. 

52:55 
September 23rd 5-8 on the east coast , 
3 hour workshop. It is 197 dollars. If you can't afford it. You can email us and ask for a lower price.
how to format screenplay, all the hacks. 
www. hollywoodloophole.com
< https://store.payloadz.com/details/2686637-other-files-arts-and-crafts-10-secrets-of-hollywood-writers-live-zoom-workshop.html > 

They want engaged people. 

Is public school as we know it ending?
Private school vouchers lost a lot of battles, but they may have won the war.

By Rachel M. Cohen@rmc031rachel.cohen@voxmedia.com  Sep 5, 2023, 7:00am EDT

A fourth grade class at Garfield Elementary School in Long Beach, California, on the first day of school on August 30, 2023. Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images

As the new school year kicks off, education advocates are bracing for continued attacks on America’s public schools. Yet despite the ongoing culture wars schools have faced in recent years, pollsters find that parents still generally like their kids’ schools, and most of the political opposition has come from those without kids in the public school system.

Cara Fitzpatrick, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and editor at Chalkbeat, is the author of The Death of Public School: How Conservatives Won the War Over Education in America, a book coming out next week that traces the history of the fight to define what “public education” means and who gets to decide. She lays out in clarifying detail the patient strategy conservatives embraced to expand their vision for schooling in America, establishing small school choice programs and then using those experiments to push the boundaries of state and federal law.

Senior policy reporter Rachel Cohen talked with Fitzpatrick about the trajectory of school vouchers as an idea and the future of public schooling in the US. Their conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Rachel Cohen
Your book does a very good job of showing how the boundaries between church and state have eroded over the last few decades, and why the legal arguments for private school vouchers have gotten stronger as a result. I think many readers will be surprised to learn all of this, so emphatically have we been taught that there’s a separation between religion and public institutions.

Cara Fitzpatrick
When I started doing the research, I thought there was going to be this very clear line between church and state, but the legal history was murkier, which is why then we’ve seen this progression of cases more recently leaning more toward the religious liberty side of things. One of the questions I often get asked is, “Well, how can you give money to a religious school?” And it’s like, “Here’s 40, 50, 70 years of case law that kind of explains it.” But if you’re not following all those cases, most people find that to be pretty confusing.

Rachel Cohen
Yeah, there’s always been a small legal window, and over time conservatives have cleaved that open wider. But we had basically been taught in schools that it was a firm, unchanging boundary.

Cara Fitzpatrick
And there have been justices on the Supreme Court who have spoken to the fact that it’s just this tricky area of law, and has been tricky for a long time. And then watching where the Court has gone recently with the Establishment Clause has been kind of wild, actually, because it’s pretty far from where they were when some of these early school voucher cases were litigated. I think it’s gone even farther than school choice advocates thought it would.

Rachel Cohen
Where would you say things are today?

Cara Fitzpatrick
I think it’s pretty clear that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has been ruling in favor of religious liberty — not just in school choice cases but in a variety of cases — and I think the window is open for it to go even further than it has. I mean, I’m really interested in where it’s going to go with the religious charter school issue that’s coming out of Oklahoma. I don’t want to predict how that will go, but I think it seems like there’s definitely some room to believe that the conservative majority might eventually sign off on that.

Rachel Cohen
Private school vouchers have been picking up steam lately, making political gains in recent years. What were some of the most surprising things you learned about the history of school vouchers, and what, if anything, about that history feels important to understanding the programs we’re seeing today?

Cara Fitzpatrick
One of the things that was interesting for me to grapple with was that in the 1950s and ’60s, segregationists in the South essentially used the idea of school vouchers to thwart Brown v. Board of Education. But then in the 1990s and 2000s, school choice advocates argued this was a civil rights issue. So I’ve been trying to sort out and make connections between those two eras.

One of the main figures in the book is Polly Williams, who was a Black state representative in Wisconsin who very much viewed vouchers as a tool of empowerment for low-income kids, and particularly low-income kids of color. Her involvement in that issue was really fascinating and kind of linked those two periods in a way. Williams had fears that vouchers would become sort of what they’ve become today: subsidies for everyone, regardless of income.

I think one of the things I really wanted to do with the book was not take a hard and fast position on school choice or on school vouchers, but give someone who might come across a headline about universal school vouchers a way to understand how we got here.

Rachel Cohen
The title of your book is The Death of Public School: How Conservatives Won the War Over Education in America. I hear you on not wanting to take a clear position on vouchers or choice, but I think conservatives may argue it’s simply a new era of public school, not the death of it. I wanted to invite you to talk more about your title.

Cara Fitzpatrick
I think the title and subtitle will please no one. But for me, I think it raises that question, right? Does this spell the end for the public school system? That’s something that I had to grapple with throughout because, even just a few years ago, it was very much a talking point from school choice advocates that choice can help drive improvements to traditional public schools. But then in the last couple of years we’ve seen some pretty aggressive attacks on public education by Republicans and the rhetoric has definitely become more extreme, referring to schools as “government indoctrination camps” and things like that. A few prominent conservative school choice advocates have pretty openly said we should really use these school culture wars to push the movement forward.

Rachel Cohen
Based on your research, do you see any sort of path for the more liberal, progressive vision of public education to mount a comeback? Is there any sort of competing strategy in the courts or politics?

Cara Fitzpatrick
It’s hard to predict. The book is landing — just coincidentally — at this moment in time when school choice is dominating the news cycle and “parental rights” are all over the place. But even just a few years ago, I remember in 2017 a couple people saying to me, “Well, aren’t school vouchers dead?”

Education can really change in a short period of time. It does feel to me like Milton Friedman’s side of the debate on the free-market vision for vouchers has really eclipsed what Polly Williams and some of the more progressive voices were about. But I think some of this may depend on how the new choice programs actually play out, including whether people take states up on these universal voucher programs.

Rachel Cohen
Is the lesson here to just stick with a political goal for 50 or 60 years and then eventually you might win?

Cara Fitzpatrick
Maybe! It is really fascinating: On vouchers, conservatives have played the long game and it seems to have worked out pretty well for them.

Rachel Cohen
There’s often this debate over whether charters or vouchers or tax credit scholarships result in better academic outcomes for students, either through competition or simply by injecting the power of “privateness” into the equation. Did your book lead you to any conclusions or clarity on those questions?

Cara Fitzpatrick
I think there’s a pretty solid amount of research at this point — not about universal vouchers, since that’s still kind of new and uncharted territory — but on some of these voucher programs that have existed for a long time. And what researchers have found is that the programs haven’t lived up to the promise of what the early advocates wanted or assumed would happen. I think there was this belief that private schools were just sort of inherently better than public schools, so if you just got more kids in private then all those kids would do better. A lot of the major research studies have shown either the same results for test scores between public and private, or actually a decline in private. And then there’s been a little bit of research on some other life outcomes that have been positive, like showing kids in some of these voucher programs are more likely to graduate.

There are a lot of studies out there, some far less rigorous than others, and I think wading through all that can be a little intimidating. What I believe and I wanted the book to show is that this debate in America is really more about values than about outcomes.

Rachel Cohen
We’re in a moment when the conservative legal movement is at its strongest on school choice and teacher unions are in a very weakened position. Can you talk about the role you saw unions play in accelerating or slowing down these policies? How much do you think it matters today that unions are in a less powerful position?

Cara Fitzpatrick
Unions were typically opponents of school choice programs, but I didn’t get into the role of specific union leaders in the book with the exception of [former American Federation of Teachers president] Albert Shanker, since he was sort of outside the mold of what a lot of union leaders were saying. But I didn’t see unions’ opposition making a huge difference for the most part. Mostly they become convenient scapegoats in the partisan conversations.

With teacher unions, what’s interesting is that a lot of their fears about where the programs would go seem to have come true. Unions warned from the start that this was not in fact going to be just a little experiment, that these programs are not going to be just limited to disadvantaged students, and now we are seeing these universal programs pass.

Unions have played pivotal roles in different places and in moments of time in blocking or slowing school choice, but ultimately I don’t think that they were necessarily going to stop all of this. They stopped some of it. A lot of voucher proposals failed. It’s just that enough of them passed to have this toehold over time.

URL
https://www.vox.com/policy/23847728/public-school-vouchers-choice-cara-fitzpatrick-book

My Replies in plain to sections of the article above in bold

"Your book does a very good job of showing how the boundaries between church and state have eroded over the last few decades"
One of the problems with the USA in its entirety is the myth of seperation of church and state. It is a false reality, that is advertised as true because the usa doesn't have one religion's potentate running things, but the collective of religions in the usa all are very dominant in their communities as influencers. Again, the jewish community in NYC has schools of failing children, look at my list of relevant posts below.

"One of the things that was interesting for me to grapple with was that in the 1950s and ’60s, segregationists in the South essentially used the idea of school vouchers to thwart Brown v. Board of Education. "
The tragedy of this point is, Black people of a certain age new this. But the problem in modernity is the modern immigrant community, even if black. They don't know this history, haven't asked, and in many countries outside the USA , the voucher to a school is a status symbol. This goes back to the problem I always have with people concerning immigration in general. Immigrants have to embrace the culture they are coming into. But the USA has this very dysfunctional idea , coming from white europeans that killed native americans, that the immigrants culture is the good and it makes the native better. When it is more functional for the native to be upheld and the immigrant molded into it. NYC is a prime example of this where immigrants culture was used and is of use to undermine people already in the usa. 

"But then in the 1990s and 2000s, school choice advocates argued this was a civil rights issue. So I’ve been trying to sort out and make connections between those two eras."
The black community , specifically the Descended of Enslaved tribe, has a huge role here. What people don't comprehend is that many Black DOSers supported vouchers back in the day as a way to get black kids into schools. They knew whites wouldn't allow merit for thier schools cause the whole point of white schools is to be for white children, so all their plans is to keep the schools and their funding to white children, so the idea was instead of attacking vouchers, put the weight on black children with the whole merit, twice as hard BS speech, and the rest is history.
Black DOSers should had opposed brown vs board of education. Focus on making black schools better financed, not pushing black children into white schools.

"One of the main figures in the book is Polly Williams, who was a Black state representative in Wisconsin who very much viewed vouchers as a tool of empowerment for low-income kids, and particularly low-income kids of color. Her involvement in that issue was really fascinating and kind of linked those two periods in a way. Williams had fears that vouchers would become sort of what they’ve become today: subsidies for everyone, regardless of income."
And the black community in places like Wisconsin , a mostly white state < 81.9% white is the average> has always been in denial about effective phenotypical legislation. Integration simply has many failures on the largest scale. Integration has worked for individuals but failed for groups but the Black DOS communities leaderhsip in majority in the usa went for it , so, bad strategy.

"Does this spell the end for the public school system? "
As in Nippon or France, Public School, meaning barely financed schools for poor kids will never go away, the largess of poor children will always exist and will need a school system for those unable to afford or fortunate. 

"But then in the last couple of years we’ve seen some pretty aggressive attacks on public education by Republicans"
The historical truth is Black Southern Republican Elected officials were the ones who pushed public school as an institution. Their idea was to merge the communities through the children but while reconstruction failed and Jim Crow was born, public schools in the south were turned into a two tier system so instead of one school for all children : indigenous, black, white together, it became tiered on various racial grounds. And that would not had been a problem if all three schools systems were financed equally, but they weren't.

" And what researchers have found is that the programs haven’t lived up to the promise of what the early advocates wanted or assumed would happen."
LINK: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/more-findings-about-school-vouchers-and-test-scores-and-they-are-still-negative/

What saddens me is years ago in early obama era,  on smiley and west an advocate of charter schools admitted this and I said this. the fact that all these new schools systems haven't generated different results exposes how many people concerning this issue, native | black | white,  are liars or have some negative agenda which clearly is unconcerned with better education. And notice I said all three groups, not merely one. I have been fortunate enough to see offline using my own eyes many black people support charters and vouchers with a clear dysfunction when it comes to better education.

"What I believe and I wanted the book to show is that this debate in America is really more about values than about outcomes."
I want to rephrase , this is not about results but about outcomes , cause based on results, the entire voucher + charter school movement has been shown to be a hoax, like a lot of things in the USA. The truth is, black individuals supported and support vouchers to get their kids access to opportunity, not to improve their educational quality. To be blunt, this is why so many college students put themselves in debt to go to ivy leagues, calculus doesn't change at the steps of MIT , but MIT has access to far far far more research, development, design, financing opportunities, that smalltown community college.

"With teacher unions, what’s interesting is that a lot of their fears about where the programs would go seem to have come true. Unions warned from the start that this was not in fact going to be just a little experiment, that these programs are not going to be just limited to disadvantaged students, and now we are seeing these universal programs pass."
Exactly, unionized teachers have been a scapegoat to all sides in the usa for a long time. THis happens because you will always find parents who want their children to be a hybrid of historical figures and when that doesn't happen, the teachers failed, not the child is human and this bolds most true for black dos parents who set the tone for parents not white european en large. Again, black parents treat education as power, as a path to betterment and that philosophy is very dysfunctional in a fiscal capitalistic community, the usa, based on wealth from genocide + slavery. But black dos parents in the usa pushed this as part of their nonviolent BS strategy and the results is here.

Relevant Post

The role of the public library is analagous to the role of the public school
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=1651&type=status

A schools story among other things
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=1757&type=status

The role of education in the USA in three parts
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=1793&type=status

Education can never satisfy all so a system for all in a intramultiracial human community  has problems
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=1818&type=status

The idea that the descended of the enslaved plus the latter freely immigrated like them can work to dual betterment side the descended of the enslaving plus the latter freely immigrated like them is a lie- and has failed in education
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=1929&type=status

Jewish Schools allowance for failure in NYC
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2064&type=status

Three Kings in the Black DOS Statian community- each had a role in education
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2199&type=status
and an amendment
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2140&type=status

Cost of Living and the need of Public School
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College Admissions
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The Intruder Film
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2422&type=status
 

Title: honey
Artist: Lisa Tillman Pritchard  < https://www.etsy.com/shop/ltpartllc1/ , https://www.tiktok.com/@ltpartllc>     
Prior post
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2430&type=status
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Title: Demise
Artist: shawn alleyne <<lines>> < Pyroglyphics Studio > OR < https://www.deviantart.com/pyroglyphics1 >    ; Rell Walk <written> ; ;Tommy Shelton <colors>  
Prior post
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Shawn Alleyne post
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Title: black gold collection 
Artist: Lisa Tillman Pritchard  < https://www.etsy.com/shop/ltpartllc1/ >    
Prior post
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Lisa Tillman Pritchard post
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Bayonetta 

Bayonetta super smash bros collab part
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Bayonetta-super-smash-collab-2023-Color-980504646
Bayonetta coloring page
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Bayonetta-super-smash-collab-2023-BW-980503498
invitation
https://www.deviantart.com/ry-spirit/journal/Big-Smash-Bros-Art-Collab-974447631
 

Week 3 writing workshop with betts

Week 3
https://richardmurrayhumblr.tumblr.com/post/727317974908878848/setting-writing-workshop-with-betts-week-3
Lindy Flops pageant
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/The-Lindy-Flops-from-Richard-Murray-980258682

More schools that forced American Indian children to assimilate revealed
By Dana Hedgpeth and Emmanuel Martinez

Ione Quigley, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe's historic preservation officer, returns to her seat after speaking during a ceremony at the U.S. Army's Carlisle Barracks, in Pennsylvania, in 2021. The site is the former home of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. (Matt Rourke/AP)

A nonprofit group has identified 115 more Indian boarding schools than has been previously reported, offering new insight into the role of religious institutions in the long-standing federal policy to eradicate Native Americans’ culture through their children.

For more than a century, generations of American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children were forced or coerced from their homes and communities and sent to live at schools where they were beaten, starved and made to abandon their Native languages and culture. The U.S. Department of the Interior announced last year that the federal government ran or supported 408 such schools in 37 states, including 21 schools in Alaska and seven in Hawaii, from 1819 to 1969.

The new list released Wednesday by the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition uses a different criteria, bringing the number of known Indian boarding schools in the country to 523 in 38 states. In addition to the federally supported schools tallied by the Interior Department, the coalition identified 115 more institutions that operated beginning in 1801, most of them run by religious groups and churches.

Reckoning of American Indian boarding schools grows

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition identified 115 more schools than the 408 federally funded schools previously recognized, bringing the known number of schools that forced Native American children to assimilate to White culture to 523 across the U.S.

The coalition scoured thousands of records scattered across the National Archives, universities, tribal offices and local historical societies to identify and map the schools as part of an effort to raise awareness about an often forgotten part of U.S. history.

“Regardless of who was complicit in running these schools, whether it was done by the federal government or a church or religious group, they both thought it was acceptable to create these schools to remove Native children from their land, strip them of their language and reprogram them under a Manifest Destiny model,” said Samuel Torres, deputy chief executive of the coalition.

Tens of thousands of American Indian children attended these schools, although no one knows the exact number. Thousands are believed to have died, the coalition said.

There are increasingly few Native elders alive to give firsthand accounts of their time at the schools. Many are now in their 70s and 80s and attended the schools in the late 1940s and ’50s. Some were physically, mentally and sexually abused. Their experiences left them deeply scarred.

< https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/08/07/indian-boarding-school-survivors-abuse-trauma/?itid=lk_inline_manual_14 > 

The coalition’s work comes amid a growing effort to expose the harmful legacy of the boarding school era on American Indian families and tribes as part of the federal government’s broader, centuries-long policies to try to eradicate Native Americans and seize their land. The reckoning has been spurred in large part, many Native leaders said, by the discovery in 2021 of roughly 200 unmarked graves of children who died at a residential school in Canada.

Fawn Sharp, president of the National Congress of American Indians — a D.C.-based lobbying group — said the findings in Canada “ignited a reawakening” of the United States’ painful history of Indian boarding schools, especially among elders who went to the institutions and never spoke about their experiences.

“We’re getting to a place where they’re starting to pass away, and we want to make sure the truth is known and the truth is told, so there’s some measure of justice because we’re all impacted as Native people,” said Sharp, who is also the vice president of the Quinault Indian Nation in Washington state.

The healing coalition partnered with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada to build a map similar to one the Canadian center did that looked into how Indigenous children in Canada were forced into residential schools.

Of the additional schools on the coalition’s list, 105 were run by missionary groups and churches. Officials at the coalition said it is difficult to tell exactly how those schools were funded because the records are held in private collections of religious missions or church groups and more research needs to be done.

Nine were opened after 1969 — beyond the time frame investigated by the Interior Department. Another operated as both a boarding school and a day school at one point, the coalition said.

The coalition’s small staff has spent the past three years locating and analyzing records on boarding schools, which are often hard to find and incomplete. Its latest work found more schools in Oklahoma — which had the most, with 95 — and Hawaii, where researchers revealed another 22, bringing that state’s total to 29.

Over the past year, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland — a member of the Pueblo of Laguna tribe whose grandparents were stolen from their homes and sent to boarding schools — has traveled the country in what her agency calls a “Road to Healing Tour.” She has visited nine tribal communities and listened to survivors and their descendants tell of experiences at boarding schools and the often traumatic impact on their lives, culture, language and customs.

Haaland’s agency published the first of two reports investigating the schools in May 2022 and found that roughly 50 percent of the federal Indian boarding schools likely received “support or involvement from a religious institution or organization, including funding, infrastructure, and personnel.” The federal government at times paid religious institutions on a “per capita basis for Indian children” to attend boarding schools run by religious groups, according to Interior’s report.

Many children never made it home. The Interior report’s initial analysis found that more than 500 Indigenous children died at 19 of the federal boarding schools but said that investigators expect the eventual number of deaths to “be in the thousands or tens of thousands.” American Indian historians said many of the children likely died of malnutrition, abuse, tuberculosis or typhoid.

Their parents often received letters long after their deaths. In some instances, families were unable to travel the long distances from their homes to claim the bodies. Many children were buried at cemeteries on or near the boarding schools’ grounds — sometimes in unmarked graves.

A second report from the Interior Department will focus on children who died at the schools and how the institutions were funded. Congress is also considering legislation that would create a commission to investigate the schools’ operations, examine church and government records and locate children’s graves.

“Federal Indian boarding school policies have impacted every Indigenous person I know,” Haaland, the nation’s first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary, said in a statement. “Some are survivors, some are descendants, but we all carry this painful legacy in our hearts and the trauma that these policies and these places have inflicted.”

The coalition also plans to release a digital archive of boarding school records later this year, allowing easier access to historians and families still searching for information about their loved ones.

“It’s going to be a paradigm shift so individuals, communities and Native nations will be able to see in a comprehensive, profound way who was responsible for running these schools,” Torres said.

Many tribes have started to investigate what happened to children lost to these schools. Some are finding answers. Tribes and communities in Nebraska, South Dakota and Utah have used ground-penetrating radar to search land surrounding boarding schools for unmarked graves.

At the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, one of the first federal boarding schools in the United States, the remains of five Native American students found at a cemetery near the school will be disinterred and returned to their families for burial this fall, according to officials from the U.S. Army, which now has a war college on the site. The students died between 1880 and 1910.

In Utah, experts and local tribes using ground-penetrating radar found 12 graves of Indian children in July on the property of the former Panguitch Indian Boarding School, which operated in the early 1900s. They are believed to be from the Paiute and other tribes.

“These children were taken from their families at very young ages, were not permitted to communicate in the only language they had ever known and were forced into manual labor to maintain the facility,” leaders of the Paiute tribes said in a joint statement when the graves were found.

The tribal leaders said, “Our hearts go out to the families of these children as we are left to consider how best to honor and memorialize their suffering.”

By Dana Hedgpeth
Dana Hedgpeth is a Washington Post reporter, working in the early morning to report on traffic, crime and other local issues. She joined The Post in 1999. She's American Indian and an enrolled member of the Haliwa-Saponi tribe of N.C. Twitter https://twitter.com/@postmetrogirl

By Emmanuel Martinez
Emmanuel Martinez is an investigative data reporter at The Washington Post, where he uses data, statistics and programming to tell stories.  Twitter https://twitter.com/@eh_mah_nwel

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/08/30/indian-boarding-schools/

Old Man and the sea for the set sail contest

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Old-Man-And-The-Sea-Set-Sail-2023-980118477

Princess candace in the kingdom of glass

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Princess-Candace-in-a-moment-in-the-Kingdom-of-Mir-980117692

Sailor Medusa Birthday Treat For Princess Tranquility
characters from Kuroshi-tenshi

Kuroshi's Sailor Medusa loves milkshakes so I figured, a great birthday treat for Princess Tranqulity, whom the sailor protects will be a milkshake: a cup and cream like Sailor MEdusa while a cookie in its embrace is like Princess Tranquility.

3D model
https://skfb.ly/oKJyp

Colored page version
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Adopt-August-2023-Submission-979394363

Coloring page version
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Adopt-August-2023-Bw-979394208

Contest from @arcencieldigitalart
https://www.deviantart.com/arcencieldigitalart/journal/OPEN-Contest-3D-Art-in-all-it-s-Forms-974532840

I used Figuro to design 
https://figuro.io/Designer

adoptables august 2023

submission
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Adopt-August-2023-Submission-979394363
coloring page
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Adopt-August-2023-Bw-979394208

The Intruder 1962

Directed by Roger Corman

Written by Charles Beaumont

Starring William Shatner

The Beautiful People

By Charles Beaumont

---

Mary was a misfit.
She didn't want to be beautiful. And she wasted time doing mad things—like eating and sleeping.

The Beautiful People

By Charles Beaumont

MARY sat quietly and watched the handsome man's legs blown off; watched further as the great ship began to crumple and break into small pieces in the middle of the blazing night. She fidgeted slightly as the men and the parts of the men came floating dreamily through the wreckage out into the awful silence. And when the meteorite shower came upon the men, gouging holes through everything, tearing flesh and ripping bones, Mary closed her eyes.

"Mother."

Mrs. Cuberle glanced up from her magazine.

"Hmm?"

"Do we have to wait much longer?"

"I don't think so. Why?"

Mary said nothing but looked at the moving wall.

"Oh, that." Mrs. Cuberle laughed[6] and shook her head. "That tired old thing. Read a magazine, Mary, like I'm doing. We've all seen that a million times."

"Does it have to be on, Mother?"

"Well, nobody seems to be watching. I don't think the doctor would mind if I switched it off."

Mrs. Cuberle rose from the couch and walked to the wall. She depressed a little button and the life went from the wall, flickering and glowing.

Mary opened her eyes.

"Honestly," Mrs. Cuberle said to a woman sitting beside her, "you'd think they'd try to get something else. We might as well go to the museum and watch the first landing on Mars. The Mayoraka Disaster—really!"

The woman replied without distracting her eyes from the magazine page. "It's the doctor's idea. Psychological."

Mrs. Cuberle opened her mouth and moved her head up and down knowingly.

"Ohhh. I should have known there was some reason. Still, who watches it?"

"The children do. Makes them think, makes them grateful or something."

"Ohhh."

"Psychological."

Mary picked up a magazine and leafed through the pages. All photographs, of women and men. Women like Mother and like the others in the room; slender, tanned, shapely, beautiful women; and men with large muscles and shiny hair. Women and men, all looking alike, all perfect and beautiful. She folded the magazine and wondered how to answer the questions that would be asked.

"Mother—"

"Gracious, what is it now! Can't you sit still for a minute?"

"But we've been here three hours."

Mrs. Cuberle sniffed.

"Do—do I really have to?"

"Now don't be silly, Mary. After those terrible things you told me, of course you do."

An olive-skinned woman in a transparent white uniform came into the reception room.

"Cuberle. Mrs. Zena Cuberle?"

"Yes."

"Doctor will see you now."

Mrs. Cuberle took Mary's hand and they walked behind the nurse down a long corridor.

A man who seemed in his middle twenties looked up from a desk. He smiled and gestured toward two adjoining chairs.

"Well—well."

"Doctor Hortel, I—"

THE doctor snapped his fingers.

"Of course, I know. Your daughter. Ha ha, I certainly do know your trouble. Get so many of them nowadays—takes up most of my time."

"You do?" asked Mrs. Cuberle. "Frankly, it had begun to upset me."

"Upset? Hmm. Not good. Not good at all. Ah, but then—if people did not get upset, we psychiatrists would be out of a job, eh? Go the way of the early M. D. But, I assure you, I need hear no more." He turned his handsome face to Mary.[7] "Little girl, how old are you?"

"Eighteen, sir."

"Oh, a real bit of impatience. It's just about time, of course. What might your name be?"

"Mary."

"Charming! And so unusual. Well now, Mary, may I say that I understand your problem—understand it thoroughly?"

Mrs. Cuberle smiled and smoothed the sequins on her blouse.

"Madam, you have no idea how many there are these days. Sometimes it preys on their minds so that it affects them physically, even mentally. Makes them act strange, say peculiar, unexpected things. One little girl I recall was so distraught she did nothing but brood all day long. Can you imagine!"

"That's what Mary does. When she finally told me, doctor, I thought she had gone—you know."

"That bad, eh? Afraid we'll have to start a re-education program, very soon, or they'll all be like this. I believe I'll suggest it to the senator day after tomorrow."

"I don't quite understand, doctor."

"Simply, Mrs. Cuberle, that the children have got to be thoroughly instructed. Thoroughly. Too much is taken for granted and childish minds somehow refuse to accept things without definite reason. Children have become far too intellectual, which, as I trust I needn't remind you, is a dangerous thing."

"Yes, but what has this to do with—"

"With Mary? Everything, of course. Mary, like half the sixteen, seventeen and eighteen year olds today, has begun to feel acutely self-conscious. She feels that her body has developed sufficiently for the Transformation—which of course it has not, not quite yet—and she cannot understand the complex reasons that compel her to wait until some future date. Mary looks at you, at the women all about her, at the pictures, and then she looks into a mirror. From pure perfection of body, face, limbs, pigmentation, carriage, stance, from simon-pure perfection, if I may be allowed the expression, she sees herself and is horrified. Isn't that so, my dear child? Of course—of course. She asks herself, why must I be hideous, unbalanced, oversize, undersize, full of revolting skin eruptions, badly schemed organically? In short, Mary is tired of being a monster and is overly anxious to achieve what almost everyone else has already achieved."

"But—" said Mrs. Cuberle.

"This much you understand, doubtless. Now, Mary, what you object to is that our society offers you, and the others like you, no convincing logic on the side of waiting until age nineteen. It is all taken for granted, and you want to know why! It is that simple. A non-technical explanation will not suffice—mercy no! The modern child wants facts, solid technical data, to satisfy her every question. And that, as you can both see, will take a good deal of reorganizing."

"But—" said Mary.

"The child is upset, nervous, tense; she acts strange, peculiar, odd, worries you and makes herself ill because it is beyond our meagre powers to put it across. I tell you, what we need is a whole new basis for learning. And, that will take[8] doing. It will take doing, Mrs. Cuberle. Now, don't you worry about Mary, and don't you worry, child. I'll prescribe some pills and—"

"No, no, doctor! You're all mixed up," cried Mrs. Cuberle.

"I beg your pardon, Madam?"

"What I mean is, you've got it wrong. Tell him, Mary, tell the doctor what you told me."

Mary shifted uneasily in the chair.

"It's that—I don't want it."

The doctor's well-proportioned jaw dropped.

"Would you please repeat that?"

"I said, I don't want the Transformation."

"D—Don't want it?"

"You see? She told me. That's why I came to you."

The doctor looked at Mary suspiciously.

"But that's impossible! I have never heard of such a thing. Little girl, you are playing a joke!"

Mary nodded negatively.

"See, doctor. What can it be?" Mrs. Cuberle rose and began to pace.

THE DOCTOR clucked his tongue and took from a small cupboard a black box covered with buttons and dials and wire.

"Oh no, you don't think—I mean, could it?"

"We shall soon see." The doctor revolved a number of dials and studied the single bulb in the center of the box. It did not flicker. He removed handles from Mary's head.

"Dear me," the doctor said, "dear me. Your daughter is perfectly sane, Mrs. Cuberle."

"Well, then what is it?"

"Perhaps she is lying. We haven't completely eliminated that factor as yet; it slips into certain organisms."

More tests. More machines and more negative results.

Mary pushed her foot in a circle on the floor. When the doctor put his hands to her shoulders, she looked up pleasantly.

"Little girl," said the handsome man, "do you actually mean to tell us that you prefer that body?"

"Yes sir."

"May I ask why."

"I like it. It's—hard to explain, but it's me and that's what I like. Not the looks, maybe, but the me."

"You can look in the mirror and see yourself, then look at—well, at your mother and be content?"

"Yes, sir." Mary thought of her reasons; fuzzy, vague, but very definitely there. Maybe she had said the reason. No. Only a part of it.

"Mrs. Cuberle," the doctor said, "I suggest that your husband have a long talk with Mary."

"My husband is dead. That affair near Ganymede, I believe. Something like that."

"Oh, splendid. Rocket man, eh? Very interesting organisms. Something always seems to happen to rocket men, in one way or another. But—I suppose we should do something." The doctor scratched his jaw. "When did she first start talking this way," he asked.

"Oh, for quite some time. I used to think it was because she was such a baby. But lately, the time getting so close and all, I thought I'd better see you."

"Of course, yes, very wise. Er—does she also do odd things?"[9]

"Well, I found her on the second level one night. She was lying on the floor and when I asked her what she was doing, she said she was trying to sleep."

Mary flinched. She was sorry, in a way, that Mother had found that out.

"To—did you say 'sleep'?"

"That's right."

"Now where could she have picked that up?"

"No idea."

"Mary, don't you know that nobody sleeps anymore? That we have an infinitely greater life-span than our poor ancestors now that the wasteful state of unconsciousness has been conquered? Child, have you actually slept? No one knows how anymore."

"No sir, but I almost did."

The doctor sighed. "But, it's unheard of! How could you begin to try to do something people have forgotten entirely about?"

"The way it was described in the book, it sounded nice, that's all." Mary was feeling very uncomfortable now. Home and no talking man in a foolish white gown....

"Book, book? Are there books at your Unit, Madam?"

"There could be—I haven't cleaned up in a while."

"That is certainly peculiar. I haven't seen a book for years. Not since '17."

Mary began to fidget and stare nervously about.

"But with the tapes, why should you try and read books—where did you get them?"

"Daddy did. He got them from his father and so did Grandpa. He said they're better than the tapes and he was right."

Mrs. Cuberle flushed.

"My husband was a little strange, Doctor Hortel. He kept those things despite everything I said.

"Dear me, I—excuse me."

The muscular, black-haired doctor walked to another cabinet and selected from the shelf a bottle. From the bottle he took two large pills and swallowed them.

"Sleep—books—doesn't want the Transformation—Mrs. Cuberle, my dear good woman, this is grave. Doesn't want the Transformation. I would appreciate it if you would change psychiatrists: I am very busy and, uh, this is somewhat specialized. I suggest Centraldome. Many fine doctors there. Goodbye."

The doctor turned and sat down in a large chair and folded his hands. Mary watched him and wondered why the simple statements should have so changed things. But the doctor did not move from the chair.

"Well!" said Mrs. Cuberle and walked quickly from the room.

The man's legs were being blown off again as they left the reception room.

MARY considered the reflection in the mirrored wall. She sat on the floor and looked at different angles of herself: profile, full-face, full length, naked, clothed. Then she took up the magazine and studied it. She sighed.

"Mirror, mirror on the wall—" The words came haltingly to her mind and from her lips. She hadn't read them, she recalled. Daddy had said them, quoted them as he put it.[10] But they too were lines from a book—"who is the fairest of—"

A picture of Mother sat upon the dresser and Mary considered this now. Looked for a long time at the slender, feminine neck. The golden skin, smooth and without blemish, without wrinkles and without age. The dark brown eyes and the thin tapers of eyebrows, the long black lashes, set evenly, so that each half of the face corresponded precisely. The half-parted-mouth, a violet tint against the gold, the white, white teeth, even, sparkling.

Mother. Beautiful, Transformed Mother. And back again to the mirror.

"—of them all...."

The image of a rather chubby girl, without lines of rhythm or grace, without perfection. Splotchy skin full of little holes, puffs in the cheeks, red eruptions on the forehead. Perspiration, shapeless hair flowing onto shapeless shoulders down a shapeless body. Like all of them, before the Transformation.

Did they all look like this, before? Did Mother, even?

Mary thought hard, trying to remember exactly what Daddy and Grandpa had said, why they said the Transformation was a bad thing, and why she believed and agreed with them so strongly. It made little sense, but they were right. They were right! And one day, she would understand completely.

Mrs. Cuberle slammed the door angrily and Mary jumped to her feet. She hadn't forgotten about it. "The way you upset Dr. Hortel. He won't even see me anymore, and these traumas are getting horrible. I'll have to get that awful Dr. Wagoner."

"Sorry—"

Mrs. Cuberle sat on the couch and crossed her legs carefully.

"What in the world were you doing on the floor?"

"Trying to sleep."

"Now, I won't hear of it! You've got to stop it! You know you're not insane. Why should you want to do such a silly thing?"

"The books. And Daddy told me about it."

"And you mustn't read those terrible things."

"Why—is there a law against them?"

"Well, no, but people tired of books when the tapes came in. You know that. The house is full of tapes; anything you want."

Mary stuck out her lower lip.

"They're no fun. All about the Wars and the colonizations."

"And I suppose books are fun?"

"Yes. They are."

"And that's where you got this idiotic notion that you don't want the Transformation, isn't it? Of course it is. Well, we'll see to that!"

MRS. CUBERLE rose quickly and took the books from the corner and from the closet and filled her arms with them. She looked everywhere in the room and gathered the old rotten volumes.

These she carried from the room and threw into the elevator. A button guided the doors shut.

"I thought you'd do that," Mary said. "That's why I hid most of the good ones. Where you'll never find them."

Mrs. Cuberle put a satin handkerchief[11] to her eyes and began to weep.

"Just look at you. Look. I don't know what I ever did to deserve this!"

"Deserve what, Mother? What am I doing that's so wrong?" Mary's mind rippled in a confused stream.

"What!" Mrs. Cuberle screamed, "What! Do you think I want people to point to you and say I'm the mother of an idiot? That's what they'll say, you'll see. Or," she looked up hopefully, "have you changed your mind?"

"No." The vague reasons, longing to be put into words.

"It doesn't hurt. They just take off a little skin and put some on and give you pills and electronic treatments and things like that. It doesn't take more than a week."

"No." The reason.

"Don't you want to be beautiful, like other people—like me? Look at your friend Shala, she's getting her Transformation next month. And she's almost pretty now."

"Mother, I don't care—"

"If it's the bones you're worried about, well, that doesn't hurt. They give you a shot and when you wake up, everything's moulded right. Everything, to suit the personality."

"I don't care, I don't care."

"But why?"

"I like me the way I am." Almost—almost exactly. But not quite. Part of it, however. Part of what Daddy and Grandpa meant.

"But you're so ugly, dear! Like Dr. Hortel said. And Mr. Willmes, at the factory. He told some people he thought you were the ugliest girl he'd ever seen. Says he'll be thankful when you have your Transformation. And what if he hears of all this, what'll happen then?"

"Daddy said I was beautiful."

"Well really, dear. You do have eyes."

"Daddy said that real beauty is only skin deep. He said a lot of things like that and when I read the books I felt the same way. I guess I don't want to look like everybody else, that's all." No, that's not it. Not at all it.

"That man had too much to do with you. You'll notice that he had his Transformation, though!"

"But he was sorry. He told me that if he had it to do over again, he'd never do it. He said for me to be stronger than he was."

"Well, I won't have it. You're not going to get away with this, young lady. After all, I am your mother."

A bulb flickered in the bathroom and Mrs. Cuberle walked uncertainly to the cabinet. She took out a little cardboard box.

"Time for lunch."

Mary nodded. That was another thing the books talked about, which the tapes did not. Lunch seemed to be something special long ago, or at least different. The books talked of strange ways of putting a load of things into the mouth and chewing these things. Enjoying them. Strange and somehow wonderful.

"And you'd better get ready for work."

"Yes, Mother."

THE office was quiet and without shadows. The walls gave off a steady luminescence, distributed the light evenly upon all the desks and[12] tables. And it was neither hot nor cold.

Mary held the ruler firmly and allowed the pen to travel down the metal edge effortlessly. The new black lines were small and accurate. She tipped her head, compared the notes beside her to the plan she was working on. She noticed the beautiful people looking at her more furtively than before, and she wondered about this as she made her lines.

A tall man rose from his desk in the rear of the office and walked down the aisle to Mary's table. He surveyed her work, allowing his eyes to travel cautiously from her face to the draft.

Mary looked around.

"Nice job," said the man.

"Thank you, Mr. Willmes."

"Dralich shouldn't have anything to complain about. That crane should hold the whole damn city."

"It's very good alloy, sir."

"Yeah. Say, kid, you got a minute?"

"Yes sir."

"Let's go into Mullinson's office."

The big handsome man led the way into a small cubby-hole of a room. He motioned to a chair and sat on the edge of one desk.

"Kid, I never was one to beat around the bush. Somebody called in little while ago, gave me some crazy story about you not wanting the Transformation."

Mary said "Oh." Daddy had said it would have to happen, some day. This must be what he meant.

"I would've told them they were way off the beam, but I wanted to talk to you first, get it straight."

"Well, sir, it's true. I don't. I want to stay this way."

The man looked at Mary and then coughed, embarrassedly.

"What the hell—excuse me, kid, but—I don't exactly get it. You, uh, you saw the psychiatrist?"

"Yes sir. I'm not insane. Dr. Hortel can tell you."

"I didn't mean anything like that. Well—" the man laughed nervously. "I don't know what to say. You're still a cub, but you do swell work. Lot of good results, lots of comments from the stations. But, Mr. Poole won't like it."

"I know. I know what you mean, Mr. Willmes. But nothing can change my mind. I want to stay this way and that's all there is to it."

"But—you'll get old before you're half through life."

Yes, she would. Old, like the Elders, wrinkled and brittle, unable to move right. Old. "It's hard to make you understand. But I don't see why it should make any difference."

"Don't go getting me wrong, now. It's not me, but, you know, I don't own Interplan. I just work here. Mr. Poole likes things running smooth and it's my job to carry it out. And soon as everybody finds out, things wouldn't run smooth. There'll be a big stink. The dames will start asking questions and talk."

"Will you accept my resignation, then, Mr. Willmes?"

"Sure you won't change your mind?"

"No sir. I decided that a long time ago. And I'm sorry now that I told Mother or anyone else. No sir, I won't change my mind."

"Well, I'm sorry, Mary. You been doing awful swell work. Couple of[13] years you could be centralled on one of the asteroids, the way you been working. But if you should change your mind, there'll always be a job for you here."

"Thank you, sir."

"No hard feelings?"

"No hard feelings."

"Okay then. You've got till March. And between you and me, I hope by then you've decided the other way."

Mary walked back down the aisle, past the rows of desks. Past the men and women. The handsome, model men and the beautiful, perfect women, perfect, all perfect, all looking alike. Looking exactly alike.

She sat down again and took up her ruler and pen.

MARY stepped into the elevator and descended several hundred feet. At the Second Level she pressed a button and the elevator stopped. The doors opened with another button and the doors to her Unit with still another.

Mrs. Cuberle sat on the floor by the T-V, disconsolate and red-eyed. Her blond hair had come slightly askew and a few strands hung over her forehead. "You don't need to tell me. No one will hire you."

Mary sat beside her mother. "If you only hadn't told Mr. Willmes in the first place—"

"Well, I thought he could beat a little sense into you."

The sounds from the T-V grew louder. Mrs. Cuberle changed channels and finally turned it off.

"What did you do today, Mother?" Mary smiled.

"Do? What can I do, now? Nobody will even come over! I told you what would happen."

"Mother!"

"They say you should be in the Circuses."

Mary went into another room. Mrs. Cuberle followed. "How are we going to live? Where does the money come from now? Just because you're stubborn on this crazy idea. Crazy crazy crazy! Can I support both of us? They'll be firing me, next!"

"Why is this happening?"

"Because of you, that's why. Nobody else on this planet has ever refused the Transformation. But you turn it down. You want to be ugly!"

Mary put her arms about her mother's shoulders. "I wish I could explain, I've tried so hard to. It isn't that I want to bother anyone, or that Daddy wanted me to. I just don't want the Transformation."

Mrs. Cuberle reached into the pockets of her blouse and got a purple pill. She swallowed the pill. When the letter dropped from the chute, Mrs. Cuberle ran to snatch it up. She read it once, silently, then smiled.

"Oh, I was afraid they wouldn't answer. But we'll see about this now!"

She gave the letter to Mary.

Mary let the paper flutter to the floor. She walked quietly to the elevator and set it for Level III. When the elevator stopped, she ran from it, crying, into her room.

She thought and remembered and tried to sort out and put together. Daddy had said it, Grandpa had, the books did. Yes, the books did.

She read until her eyes burned and her eyes burned until she could read no more. Then Mary went to sleep, softly and without realizing it, for the first time.

But the sleep was not peaceful.

"LADIES and gentlemen," said the young-looking, well groomed man, "this problem does not resolve easily. Dr. Hortel here, testifies that Mary Cuberle is definitely not insane. Drs. Monagh, Prinn and Fedders all verify this judgment. Dr. Prinn asserts that the human organism is no longer so constructed as to create and sustain such an attitude through deliberate falsehood. Further, there is positively nothing in the structure of Mary Cuberle which might suggest difficulties in Transformation. There is evidence for all these statements. And yet we are faced with this refusal. What, may I ask, is to be done?"

Mary looked at a metal table.

"We have been in session far too long, holding up far too many other pressing contingencies. The trouble on Mercury, for example. We'll have to straighten that out, somehow."

Throughout the rows of beautiful people, the mumbling increased. Mrs. Cuberle sat nervously, tapping her shoe and running a comb through her hair.

"Mary Cuberle, you have been given innumerable chances to reconsider, you know."

Mary said, "I know. But I don't want to."

The beautiful people looked at Mary and laughed. Some shook their heads.

The man threw up his hands. "Little girl, can you realize what an issue you have caused? The unrest, the wasted time? Do you fully understand what you have done? Intergalactic questions hang fire while you sit there saying the same thing over and over. Doesn't the happiness of your Mother mean anything to you?"

A slender, supple woman in a back row cried, "We want action. Do something!"

The man in the high stool raised his hand. "None of that, now. We must conform, even though the question is out of the ordinary." He leafed through a number of papers on his desk, leaned down and whispered into the ear of a strong blond man. Then he turned to Mary[15] again. "Child, for the last time. Do you reconsider? Will you accept the Transformation?"

"No."

The man shrugged his shoulders. "Very well, then. I have here a petition, signed by two thousand individuals and representing all the Stations of Earth. They have been made aware of all the facts and have submitted the petition voluntarily. It's all so unusual and I'd hoped we wouldn't have to—but the petition urges drastic measures."

The mumbling rose.

"The petition urges that you shall, upon final refusal, be forced by law to accept the Transformation. And that an act of legislature shall make this universal and binding in the future."

Mary's eyes were open, wide. She stood and paused before speaking.

"Why?" she asked, loudly.

The man passed a hand through his hair.

Another voice from the crowd, "Seems to be a lot of questions unanswered here."

And another, "Sign the petition, Senator!"

All the voices, "Sign it, sign it!"

"But why?" Mary began to cry. The voices stilled for a moment.

"Because—Because—"

"If you'd only tell me that. Tell me!"

"Why, it simply isn't being done, that's all. The greatest gift of all, and what if others should get the same idea? What would happen to us then, little girl? We'd be right back to the ugly, thin, fat, unhealthy-looking race we were ages ago! There can't be any exceptions."

"Maybe they didn't consider themselves so ugly."

The mumbling began anew.

"That isn't the point," cried the man. "You must conform!"

And the voices cried "Yes" loudly until the man took up a pen and signed the papers on his desk.

Cheers, applause, shouts.

Mrs. Cuberle patted Mary on the top of her head.

"There, now!" she said, happily, "Everything will be all right now. You'll see, Mary."

THE Transformation Parlor Covered the entire Level, sprawling with its departments. It was always filled and there was nothing to sign and no money to pay and people were always waiting in line.

But today the people stood aside. And there were still more, looking in through doors, TV cameras placed throughout the tape machines in every corner. It was filled, but not bustling as usual.

Mary walked past the people, Mother and the men in back of her, following. She looked at the people. The people were beautiful, perfect, without a single flaw.

All the beautiful people. All the ugly people, staring out from bodies that were not theirs. Walking on legs that had been made for them, laughing with manufactured voices, gesturing with shaped and fashioned arms.

Mary walked slowly, despite the prodding. In her eyes, in her eyes, was a mounting confusion; a wide, wide wonderment.

The reason was becoming less vague; the fuzzed edges were falling[16] away now. Through all the horrible months and all the horrible moments, the edges fell away. Now it was almost clear.

She looked down at her own body, then at the walls which reflected it. Flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone, all hers, made by no one, built by herself or someone she did not know. Uneven kneecaps, making two grinning cherubs when they bent, and the old familiar rubbing together of fat inner thighs. Fat, unshapely, unsystematic Mary. But Mary.

Of course. Of course! This was what Daddy meant, what Grandpa and the books meant. What they would know if they would read the books or hear the words, the good, reasonable words, the words that signified more, much more, than any of this.

The understanding heaped up with each step.

"Where are these people?" Mary asked half to herself. "What has happened to them and don't they miss themselves, these manufactured things?"

She stopped, suddenly.

"Yes! That is the reason. They have all forgotten themselves!"

A curvacious woman stepped forward and took Mary's hand. The woman's skin was tinted dark. Chipped and sculptured bone into slender rhythmic lines, electrically created carriage, stance, made, turned out.

"All right, young lady. We will begin."

They guided Mary to a large, curved leather seat.

From the top of a long silver pole a machine lowered itself. Tiny bulbs glowed to life and cells began to click. The people stared. Slowly a picture formed upon the screen in the machine. Bulbs directed at Mary, then redirected into the machine. Wheels turning, buttons ticking.

The picture was completed.

"Would you like to see it?"

Mary closed her eyes, tight.

"It's really very nice." The woman turned to the crowd. "Oh yes, there's a great deal to be salvaged; you'd be surprised. A great deal. We'll keep the nose and I don't believe the elbows will have to be altered at all."

Mrs. Cuberle looked at Mary and smiled. "Now, it isn't so bad as you thought, is it?" she said.

The beautiful people looked. Cameras turned, tapes wound.

"You'll have to excuse us now. Only the machines allowed."

Only the machines.

The people filed out.

Mary saw the rooms in the mirror. Saw things in the rooms, the faces and bodies that had been left; the woman and the machines and the old young men standing about, adjusting, readying.

Then she looked at the picture in the screen.

And screamed.

A woman of medium height stared back at her. A woman with a curved body and thin legs; silver hair, pompadoured, cut short; full sensuous lips, small breasts, flat stomach, unblemished skin.

A strange, strange woman no one had ever seen before.

The nurse began to take Mary's clothes off.

"Geoff," the woman said, "come[17] look at this, will you. Not one so bad in years. Amazing that we can keep anything at all."

The handsome man put his hands in his pockets.

"Pretty bad, all right."

"Be still, child, stop making those noises. You know perfectly well nothing is going to hurt."

"But—what will you do with me?"

"That was all explained to you."

"No, no, with me, me!"

"Oh, you mean the castoffs. The usual. I don't know exactly. Somebody takes care of it."

"I want me!" Mary cried. "Not that!" She pointed at the screen.

Straps. Clamps pulling, stretching limbs apart. The screen with the picture brought in. The men and the woman, more women now. Dr. Hortel in a corner, sitting with his legs crossed, shaking his head.

Mary began to cry above the hum of the mechanical things.

"Shhh. My gracious, such a racket! Just think about your job waiting for you, and all the friends you'll have and how nice everything will be. No more trouble now."

The big machine hurtling downward.

"Where will I find me?" Mary screamed, "when it's all over?"

A long needle slid into rough flesh and the beautiful people gathered around the table.

They turned on the big machine.

THE END

URL

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/36258/pg36258-images.html

Around The Moon In 80 Risings
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Around-The-Moon-In-80-Risings-979150152

The photomanipulation image
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Around-the-moon-in-80-risings-Submission-979149714

The vessel to the exosphere colored page
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Around-the-moon-in-80-risings-Color-979149346

The vessel to the exosphere coloring page
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Around-the-moon-in-80-risings-BW-979147374

The photomanipulation is for  @olgola photomanipulation contest
https://www.deviantart.com/olgola/journal/Photomanip-contest-Around-the-world-in-80-days-972584206

This is the stock photo 
https://www.deviantart.com/olgola/art/Waldburg-01-840455910
 

Paying Attention- Writing Workshop with Betts Week 2 
main post
https://richardmurrayhumblr.tumblr.com/post/726551617276624896/paying-attention-writing-workshop-with-betts-week
poetry
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/The-Spider-and-The-Chuki-smelled-a-certain-Coffee-978816823
stageplay
https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/Sarah-s-Part-Times-from-Richard-Murray-979135650
 

Title: the flowers that bloom
Artist: Lisa Tillman Pritchard  < https://www.etsy.com/shop/ltpartllc1/ >   
Prior post
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2418&type=status
Lisa Tillman Pritchard post
https://aalbc.com/tc/search/?&q=lisa%20tillman%20pritchard&type=core_statuses_status&quick=1&author=richardmurray&search_and_or=and&sortby=newest

Title: never fold
Artist: Lisa Tillman Pritchard  < https://www.etsy.com/shop/ltpartllc1/ >  
Prior post
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2412&type=status
Lisa Tillman Pritchard post
https://aalbc.com/tc/search/?&q=lisa%20tillman%20pritchard&type=core_statuses_status&quick=1&author=richardmurray&search_and_or=and&sortby=newest

Title: manta ray +scooter+aquarium appreciaiton
Artist: GDbee < https://gdbee.store/ >   aka Prinnay   
Prior post
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2405&type=status
GDBee Post
https://aalbc.com/tc/search/?&q=gdbee&type=core_statuses_status&quick=1&author=richardmurray&search_and_or=or&sortby=newest

KWL Live Q&A – Accessibility Tips for Authors with Wendy Reid started at noon

MY THOUGHTS AS  I LISTENED

12:02 what does accessibility mean?
The main focus on the needs and requirements for people with disabilities

12:03 How did you get involved?
She did work for the world wide web technical standards. She mostly work on epub and digital publishing. She got a lot of insight from people in disability community cause they,epub and similar,  are so important for people with disabilities.

12:05 The exercise to using the audio on her phone to navigating to her phone by audio was a challenge.
Most tools are not accessible but the disability community members have figured out workarounds
if you want to know more about accessiblity in kobo email the following
< kobo-accessibility@rakuten.com >

12:08 What is your day to day at Kobo
A lot of meetings. A lot of time researching trying to find the best way to do things. Accessibility on a tech company with a lot of different interfaces is busy. 
Another interview side wendy 
< https://www.kobo.com/blog/learn-how-kobo-makes-reading-more-accessible > 

12:12 What will you say to an author who ask with accessibility?
We all deal with accessibility or disability  issues  in life. You are planning for your future self and being inclusive of your audience.
Captions are designed for people who are hard to hear but they are a huge accessibility option 

12:15 do you know about accessibility options that authors need to be aware of, top complaints?
Image descriptions. If you are using a screen reader, and an image isn't described it is frustrating to the reader. Around NAvigation, have a really good table of contents. Name your chapters, or subsections.  Table your headings. That structure will help those who have a hard time seeing.  

12:18 How will an author know if their file is as accessible as can be?
if you are not creating the epub yourself, you can mark themself up in word. they all have accessibility checkers in them. Make sure headings are headings. Describe all images. 
Question to ask platform you distributing to, are you using that information to make epub. Are you making sure the heading 1 in word is heading 1 in epub. 
Alot of companies put disabled users to the side but one in five worldwide have a disability.

12:22 how detailed should alt text should be
There is no one way to make alt text. <She gives a great example of describing a cat> How to present a science fiction map, may be really long. The author has to decide which is best.

12:25 Epub files
It is better to make a bigger book be split into multiple files.

<one thing you guys can do is allow people to have the choice of retaining old interfaces. Some people feel better accessibility with older interfaces>

12:28 Accessibility Checker
Kobo will add it. 

12:31 How do you handle alt text in covers?
We don't have that information cause and can't do it at scale but inside your book, describe your cover. 

12:32 Can they work on fonts on covers?
Make covers readable. She has seen covers that is barely visible in small image form. Be mindful of how busy an image is. Make text stand out more. She gets complaints, try testing covers in greyscale and it is hard to see. Her father's love sending screen shots in ereader. 

Book on history of audiobook
< https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-untold-story-of-the-talking-book-3 > 
< https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/the-untold-story-of-the-talking-book-2 >

12:35 what about accessibility in audio books?
Underexplored area. Audiobooks were developed to be accessibile. Soldiers from world war 1 who lost their vision to be able to read. Two essential things: If you have images in book, describe in audio. Audiobook structure, she likes to know chapters in table of contents, not tracks.
She uses a book that came out two months ago and it had track 1 track 2 not chapters.

Audiobook format in Kobo
< https://kobowritinglife.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360059385511-How-to-Upload-Your-Audiobook-Directly-on-Kobo >  

12:40 What can authors do now in terms of metadata?
Can include in description. The summary is the best place to do that. DRM is not really accessible. Kobo is looking at implementing more accessibility formats in DRM. But DRM isn't great for accessibility. 

12:42 Is anything authors should be aware of for external links?
Put in link text. Recommend don't using link text that uses vague things. Use the alt text. 

12:44 How to make websites more accessible?
Describe all images. Describe all links. Wix or squarespace have accessibility options. You can do yourself. Ask about color palette. No highlighter color on black. Try to avoid putting text on top of book covers. Highly recommend using simple fonts, dyslexia or visually processing issues, and the most readable fonts are times new roman, helvitica, georgia, callibri. Describe book covers. 

12:48 any newsletter or email practices?
Same issues for the websites or books. Alot of design fundamentals cross into accessibility fundamentals. 

12:52 what about accessibility in social media?
 Alt text are needed for every image. Highly recommend. If a platform doesn't have it, use the caption. Alot of tiktokers use captions in videos. Apply captions for video post. Higly recommend reviewing captions for automated captions. Use the most simple captions , it is best for accessibility. They need to detect whether you have your own captions cause you get double captions at times. Youtube provide audio descriptions, consider that. 

12:57 about emoji's?
Use emoji's carefully. Every emoji has a name. use simplest, and don't open with emoji's. 

1:00 What do you think the publishing industry need to be more accessible ? 
The publshing industry in some countries, canada included, the biggest problem is funding, and going through backlist and making them more accessible.  Alt text is hard for very old books. Publishers try to figure that out. How do we make text that are visually complex , more accessible.

List of her links in comments
https://kobowritinglife.com/2023/08/03/kwl-live-qa-accessibility-tips-for-authors-with-wendy-reid/ 

Ace by DAISY – accessibility checker for EPUB < https://daisy.org/activities/software/ace/ >  
DAISY Knowledge Base, everything you need to know about coding accessible EPUBs < http://kb.daisy.org/publishing/docs/epub/ > 
Accessible Publishing Learning Network – lots of excellent resources! < https://apln.ca/ > 
WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool < https://wave.webaim.org/ > 
Colour Contrast, an easy to use colour contrast checker < https://colourcontrast.cc/ > 
Accessible Social, a resource for creating accessible social media content < https://www.accessible-social.com/ > 
Social Visual Alt Text, fun web extension for viewing alternative text on social media < https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/social-visual-alt-text/bkpbmomfemcjdeekdffmbohifpndodm > 
WordToEPUB < https://daisy.org/activities/software/wordtoepub/ > 

MY CLOSING THOUGHTS

I thought about accessibility. If accessibility was considered from the beginning of most processes it would undo alot of the schemes/scams/ aspects of entertainment/social media/wesbites or other. 
For example, I like the mandolorian show from Disney. If someone is blind and they can't see the Mandolorian maybe they have an audio read version available. So they can hear each episode absent commercials. But imagine if you are listening to an on demand film, like Godzilla,  like from TNT of the warner bros group in Discovery. Imagine you hear:"this thing killed my wife!, have you ever had bad bowels, Well try..." The commercial break is by default a terrible element. For someone who can only hear they are bound to hear a commercial where those with sight can mute and move on and come back. 
Accessibility if engineered optimally will delete many methods of commercialization in entertainment or media through electronic means.