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The problem in modernity is we approach industries as if they started today. In visual media, women from :runway models to thespians to porn stars only recently were in labor environments where their physical quality dictated their opportunities or access. And for most of the past 150 years in the usa at least, the average woman who didn't want to be a housewife or maid or secretary was in a visual media role. This is not to mention the industry of being a wife. Women may not want to hear it but being a trophy wife is a job and some women go from man to man or keep up appearances to satisfy a male lust. Many women literally hunt for men with money and their body is part of that hunt. And I conclude with the cultures throughout humanity that may not be visile online which is dominated by the usa, but exists. In the fiscally poorer places in humanity women are still living in communities where their appearance to suitors is the beginning/middle/end of their life and so in the immigration winds the culture from said places reenters on a dally basis the usa, which is an underrated reality as to why cultures reoccur in the usa that many think should be more reduced.

  Quote

But how are they ALL...as a community...treated why White New Yorkers?

We acknowledge differences among ourselves, but do Whites acknowledge our differences as far as their treatment of us?

The quick one word answer is no. But that isn't a sufficient answer. In NYC, Whites acknowledge differences among themselves. One of the problems when black people talk about how the white community treats the black is the idea that the white community is unified against us, while unified in itself. 

What is my point? 

Before that, I have seen a muslim woman with a hijab holding hands lovingly with a jewish man with the jewish cap on very happy, so.. you see instance of everything in new york, i am speaking of majority here. Plus, I will use the phenotypical adjective for religious races, though I comprehend italin or irish are not phenotypical but geographic heritage labels.

Now, what is my point. 

In NYC at the least, and I think all over, The italian doesn't like the white jew, the white jew doesn't like the irish , the irish don't like the dutch. They all are whites who treat blacks as the enemy historically in a communal sense. But they are not united, they are against each other. The proof. I don't know if you know NYC history but their is blood on the streets in NYC from all the bloodshed these communities have spilled against each other.  My point? Black groups in NYC, like White groups oppose each other, all the time. I argue, Black groups oppose each other less than white groups. The variance. White groups tend to treat all black groups the same while black groups don't tend to treat all white groups the same. But, this goes into the difference between the black community side white community in the usa. Never forget pioneer. The white community in the usa for most of its history or the european colonies that preceded actually had complete power. The black community has never in the european colonies or today, had complete power over itself, and never another community. So... the black community in the usa does have a different heritage from the white community and just because I think it is warranted to say, the native american community also had a unique heritage. Said three people's are not in the same in their heritage concerning the usa in large ways. It can't be reduced to, all humans are human, that isn't sufficient. the native american is not the whites, the whites are not the blacks, the blacks are not the native americans. yes, hybrid examples or situations occur but the majorities are not the same in key ways. 

The question is why can't a majority of black leadership in the usa, implement a cognition of said variance in their ideas or policies. I actually have an unproven thought on that. A majority of black leaders in the usa have a position of human equality, individualism as a unifier that blocks said cognition. If you are frederick douglass or martin luther king jr or barack obama and one of your principles in your mind is a human unity a human equality that is pure or at the root how can you accept or implement ideas or policies that at their core accept human disunity or human inequality? 

Now you said the following with more

  Quote

One of the reasons for this is, unlike most White people who CLAIM to be different politically and religiously....Black people actually ARE different and are SINCERE about their differences.

White people may CLAIM to be Jewish or Christian but at the end of the day they both share the same values and ethics.
A few ritualistic differences but they pretty much dress and talk the same.

Well, concerning whites if what you said is true, then the commonly called Civil War, World War I , World II, Balkans war, the troubles < which is really another round of the irish-english wars> , the current ukrainian/russian war, the january 6th incident <which can be argued is an incident in the long line of post civil war incidents between whites in the usa> where many white people have killed or harmed or threaten to harm other white people more than any other with pride or happiness are merely hoaxes or deceptions. If you do, that is fine, I don't want you to change your mind, but I oppose that view. 

Concerning Blacks, I don't think internal black friction is any different in emotion than in any human group. In india, muslims ad being burned alive by hindus. In former yugolslavis as we speak, croats and slaves are battling each other, no differently than the factions of sudan.  But I will say this, Black internal communal friction in the USA, the usa and to some extent the entire american continent, is mostly nonviolent. To me, white internal communal friction in the usa is historically quite violent, while said black friction is not. But again, that goes back to the people's heritage being different. 

Now is white internal communal unity in the USA unlike other white people? yes. Brexit didn't happen because whites of england hated black people. BRexit happened because white of england didn't want whites of eastern europe populating rural england anymore. In Italy or Spain you see many incidents of friction between catalonians and basque or sicilians and neapolitians. But in the usa, after the commonly called civil war and the end of the commonly called world war II , the white community in the usa has a greater sense of white unity. But as january 6th proved, it isn't that strong. 

I end with, you and many black people before have claimed that whites are one big happy family who unite against all others, ala the hellenistic example, while all others lack the same. but I oppose that view. I think many black people and to be blunt, black leaders like to suggest black people are more caught up in our variances than whites. but the million man march, the black community in NYC proves that assertion false for me. I think the problem is the black community in the usa has a problem getting results, and in frustration blames itself because blaming itself is easier than blaming itself aside its environment equally.  

The King Of Paradise

Storyboard film

Audio

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/the-king-of-paradise-1

Text

https://www.deviantart.com/hddeviant/art/The-King-Of-Paradise-913395528

The Hemiclitoris of the snake

Scientists finally discovered the snake clitoris, and they're 'very excited'

News

By Joanna Thompson

 published December 16, 2022

Megan Folwell stood over a female Australian death adder (Acanthophis antarcticus), armed with a scalpel. The snake was dead, donated by a venom supply company. Very carefully, Folwell, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia, made an incision near the animal's tail. She was about to go where no scientists had gone before.

"I went into it not knowing what I was going to see," Folwell told Live Science. 

Until now, no one had taken the time to look for and describe a snake's clitoris. With the exception of birds, clitorises are found in every vertebrate lineage, including snakes' closest cousins, lizards. But when Folwell went looking for literature about the organ in serpents, she came up empty-handed. "It just didn't make sense to me," she said. "I knew there had to be something going on."

So she and her team decided to investigate. Their results, published Dec. 14 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, describe the structure of the forked "hemiclitoris" in snakes for the first time.

In contrast, male snake genitalia have been well documented across a variety of species. Male snakes have a structure called a hemipenis, essentially a two-pronged penis tucked under the base of the tail (and often held inside the body until mating). Much scientific ink has been spilled over the past 200 years describing differences between hemipenes, which range in size and shape from tiny twin toothpicks to huge, elaborate organs with "a lot of spines on them and whatnot," said Richard Shine, an evolutionary biologist at Macquarie University in Australia who was not involved in the study.

Despite more than two centuries' worth of data on hemipenes, however, nobody had described an equivalent structure in female snakes. The lack of evidence caused some scientists to speculate that snake hemiclitorises might not exist at all — or that, if they did, they had been reduced to a stunted evolutionary remnant.

A lack of research around female anatomy is a troubling scientific trend. Even in humans, surprisingly little is known about the clitoris. The full structure of the organ, which includes not only the little nub at the top of the labia but also two large internal bulbs full of nerve endings, wasn't discovered until the mid-1840s. Even then, it remained relatively obscure to the medical establishment until Australian urologist Helen O'Connell's work in 2005, which showed that typical textbook depictions of the clitoris were riddled with inaccuracies. In fact, just last month, scientists counted all 10,000 nerve fibers in the human clitoris for the first time.

Data about female reproductive anatomy and behavior in nonhuman animals are even more scarce. A November analysis published in the journal Nature found that between 1970 and 2021, more than seven times as many papers were published about sperm competition in animals compared with female mate selection. A 2014 perspectives article published in the journal PLOS Biology found that about 50% of all studies of animal genitalia published between 1989 and 2013 focused exclusively on males, while 10% focused only on females. 

"If genetal evolution research only investigates the male parts, it gives a very lopsided understanding of nature," Malin Ah-King, an evolutionary biologist and gender researcher at Stockholm University in Sweden who was not involved in the new research, told Live Science. This bias has led scientists to overlook certain important aspects of female reproduction — such as the existence of entire organs.

Thanks to Folwell's efforts, we now know that hemiclitorises exist in at least nine snake species. Folwell carefully dissected preserved specimens from four snake families (Elapidae, Pythonidae, Colubridae and Viperidae) and ran them through a CT (computed tomography) scan, noting the size and shape of each hemiclitoris. She found that they varied as much as hemipenes.

"Seeing the nerve structure, it was really exciting," said Folwell, the study's first author. And in other scientists' defense, she said, the tissue that makes up snakes' hemiclitorises is quite delicate (even though, in some cases, the organ was fairly large). 

Shine described the new research as "an excellent piece of work." "It certainly convinces me that there is a structure there," he told Live Science. 

For Folwell and her team, this study is merely the start of this research. She hopes that future work will uncover a fuller picture of the hemiclitoris's evolutionary history and how it fits into snake mating behavior. "We're really very excited about all of this," she said.

URL

https://www.livescience.com/snake-clitoris-found

First evidence of hemiclitores in snakes
Megan J. Folwell, Kate L. Sanders, Patricia L. R. Brennan and Jenna M. Crowe-Riddell
Published:14 December 2022https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.1702

LOOK IN THE FIRST COMMENT FOR THE ABSTRACT

URL

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2022.1702

Regina King will play Shirley Chisholm

click read below to see my words

I will never forget one of Saint CHisholm's last sayings... I paraphrase, she said that the black community needs to focus on the financial sector in terms of moving the movement forward...

funny how that hasn't happened. But, The timeline supports why it has not.

The history of all people in the USA is older than the USA. But, what is the initial history of the Black community in the USA concerning, exclusively, the USA? 

Four groups: Enslaved/Dead in the great ocean/Free fought on the side of the colonies of britain/Free fought on the side of the british empire. 

Now the Enslaved or Dead represent over ninety percent of the Black community at the time of the founding of the USA. 

Fast forward, slavery ended circa 1865 so over ninety percent of Black people in the USA had no possible financial change of status in the USA absent a violent act towards whites. And while as enslaved people ,Black people were worked to death at gun point by White : people or terrorist or slavers or fiscal capitalist or americans or christians or jews or women or men or free individuals. Over ninety percent of Black people had zero financial possibility in the USA.

Now you will say from the end of slavery to the year two thousand and twenty two, which is the year this post was made, opportunity existed. But I quote MLK jr

MLK jr , said above, that the Black community went from over ninety percent having zero financial possibility. To , over ninety percent of Black people being dropped into a completely disadvantaged financial situation, meaning no land ownership/no knowledge of the laws of the usa/no ability to read or write in any language/no bank account. So yes, over ninety percent of Black people went from zero financial possibility by the white whip to free people. But, they were surrounded by a white community that in its individuals owned land/had knowledge of the usa/could read or write/had bank accounts. So the Black community was totally diadvantaged and never had the chance to gain land by killing others, farm land by enslaving others, earn illegal profits during a government ban, make wealth in abusing humans outside the usa. White wealth does not come from paid labor merit, it comes from slavery or genocide, murdering or enslaving others. Black people have never done that in the USA. 

Now we reach modernity and the Black community that has earned every penny in the usa through paid labor absent any favors, needs a financial era at least once like whites had multiple times. But, the problem with that need is all the ways whites had those times are now illegal. 

I concur to SHirley Chisholm, but the problem is the Black community in the USA has to do all within a legal framework that never brings great wealth to a larger community. 

So it may take a very long time for the Black community in the USA to ever have a majority financial golden moment. And just cause some may suggest the following. Tulsa wasn't a golden age. The problem with Tulsa is like the free blacks who fought on the side of the colonies, their freedom or money doesn't reflect the honest condition of the majority of black people in the usa. 
https://www.blackenterprise.com/first-look-of-regina-king-transformation-as-first-black-congresswoman-shirley-chisholm-in-new-film-shirley/

DESCRIPTION
A Climate Week NYC Virtual Event

Welcome to the live stream of:
Under Pressure at the Noho Space
Joining the panel are Ana Teresa Fernández, the artist and activist behind the Under Pressure, Cristina Gnecco, Founder of HOPE Hydration, and Whitney McGuire, Director of Sustainability for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Founder of Sustainable Brooklyn.

Uniform Resource Locator
https://automattic.space/under-pressure-live-stream/

MY THOUGHTS AS I  LISTEN

6:52 introductions 
three women, two own or manage organizations in climate organization and an female thespian who advocates.

6:54 how do you influence the environment

6:54 a panelist say art creates access and leads to agency. But I oppose. Art doesn't have the ability to influence finance that way. 

6:58 a panelist said, if you know better you do better, but that miscomprehends education. Having knowledge doesn't force your mind to certain conclusions That isn't true. 

7:00 a panelist is right about contracts, but laws to diminish the leeway of the legal system will help.

7:01 quesitonaire, how do you see culture, identity heritage playing a role in your work?

7:02 a panelist said, in usa she was in a big huge clean school and in colombia she would see someone her age in a school with trash and she asked why is one this way and one that. She blamed environmental waste instead of imperialism. The immigrant community is unwilling to criminalize the usa so tries to work around blaming the usa by changing the usa. and the global empire it centers about. 
Yes nyc waste pollutes others, but show a technology that can absord and reutlize that waste.

7:04 a panelist remembers a stench from a refinery near the beach she lived by, she felt all beaches have petroleum jelly or smell, and when she moved to san diego california, it was a shock to her. 

7:06 the same panelist, only one in three women know how to swim , less than 55 % of the population knows how to swim. the migration due to dislocation around the sealine. 

7:07 a panelist , lived next to landfills in dayton ohio, and neglected manufacturing buildings. 
At this point all three women are women who migrated as children somwhere. Said panelist said juxtaposition is needed. 
Well, her problem is the idea that the problem is ignorance. IT is control. 

7:10 the questionaire, the people most impacted are not the voices in the room. What has the challenge been like, what is missing from the climate change movement?

7:11 a panelist, said I exist in a Black fem body. She says "our society" doesn't work or fit for people like me.  The problem with the idea that you own a thing or are part of a thing that doesn't serve you is very dysfunctional. Imagine someone saying, I like to gamble but gambling is totally illegal. 

7:12 said panelist,  continues to say that trash is one of the most profitable global exports.

7:13 said panelist said fast fashion was said to pollute the planet most and she wanted to disrupt that narrative. 

7:14 odd delay,  people , especially a room of liberals always think a clapping is warranted

7:15 a panelist,  she recalls three women , with climate and emotions while two men were talking about climate and economics. She called it contrived. 

7:16 said panelist, joined two organizations where surfers taught poets how to surf while poets taught surfers how to write. Her idea is bringing access. Growing up in NYC was a benefit. 

7:17 a panelist, 80% of the world biodiversity is protected by 20% of the populace, indigenous people, and she wonders why no indigenous is in the room. well, I can tell her that indegenous people have been exited from power or influence at the heart of the usa. 

7:19 said panelist, said redistribution of wealth is key, but redistribution of wealth starts wars, no one wants to be poor or lesser than and few invite that to their children or descendents. 

7:20 said panelist asks how many of you work at a well funded organization and many in the audience raised their hand. well, shouldn't the people who fund the organizations be using their money straightly?

7:21 questionaire, name an inspiring moment

Whitney McGuire < http://www.whitneyrmcguire.com/ > 

7:21 She said her father was incarcerated and recently he called her and said he was proud and he didn't know what sustainability was . her work has changed her father's life.
She mentioned her aunt who is 78, a retired teacher, and said she is changing their direction

Cristina Gnecco < https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristina-gnecco/ > 

7:24 she heard a bunch of children who are doing things, and a 12 year old girl helped pass legislation as she was born with bad lungs. so she loves the children coming up and their activity. 

Ana Teresa Fernández < https://anateresafernandez.com/ > 

7:25 She recalls a 70 plus year old help a child surf. That gift of access with the laughter, a non violent exchange. She was captivated. Her husband spoke to her his pride to her, and he explains to neighbors what he has learned from her and he isn't artsy or environmental.

7:28 Questionaire, open to questions from the audience

question: What do you think is the most important thing in sustainability that people don't know about?

7:29 
panelist: several thousand languages will be dead in a century. so climate migration will start creating an extinction of languages. several thousand languages, obliterating a people by that. humanity loses a language every forty days. 

7:31
question: iS their an effort or should their be an effort to pull activities into a more unified approach of the various communities or individual efforts?

panelist: our technology is only a reflection of us. Technology will serve silos as long as we do. She doesn't have an answer as to why humanity is disunfiied and exhausted by the lack of unity. But how are we unifying in our own lives. 

another panelist: a great question but I wish i had a solution. Competition exists for funding. But why do we feel like we need to compete, cause their isn't a large redistribution of wealth behind sustainability. Some companies can show their is space for all in sustainability to come together and unify and they didn't pay me to say that. 

7:35 
question: equity may involve access but underserved populations have less access or more affected, with information over there isn't enough. 

panelist: I know someone who knows someone. I do alot of cross polination. Their needs to be a foundational ripping to create equity. No ministry of culture exists in the usa. 

panelist: it isn't a sustainability issue. People from underserved communities are the most artistic. The artists come from the mud. Redistributing resources to support artists is the key. the artists are their, the sustained funding is key. Yes I concur to her, can you enlargen and unbias patronage.
This is a private sector and a public sector issue. 

7:40 end

They had a wine tasting, from the wine tasting, and the one behind is a wine firm speaker to a french firm that ships wines with the lowest carbon emission. 

7:44 
they made a wave, they literally did that. 

7:09 
END

MY CLOSING THOUGHTS
Mcguire side Gnecco said the most important point. The money behind most sustainability measures is a non affecting fractional to the larger fiscal system that maintains the global financial order. I add that makes sense, cause the money in control of things isn't going to cut its own throat. I will add all three woman as many women in these scenarios speaks of change absent violence as fatiguing while the wall to overcome. The blunt truth is peace has limits. Redistributing wealth is one of the true war starters in humanity. No one wants to risk being financially poor. It is too risky. And that explains why the artists of the world are blockaded from embracing patronage or the indigenous are blockaded from being advisors.  And I will be blunt, a president named Barrack Obama once said, change you can believe in. But when he became president he presented no one with anything to believe in. Why? talking the talk isn't enough when you have large goals. Large goals require not just technology or imagination but daring behavior. 

Sustainable Brooklyn- the organization founded by Whitney Mcguire < http://www.whitneyrmcguire.com/ >  who is on the panel. 
https://www.sustainablebk.co/

COURSES
Artist Conracts series + Intellectual property 101
https://whitneymcguire.gumroad.com/l/ArtistContractsIP
Address common clauses
https://whitneymcguire.gumroad.com/l/ArtistContractsProtect
How to sustainably price your work
https://whitneymcguire.gumroad.com/l/ArtistContractsRates
Intellectual property comprehension through the fashion industry
https://whitneymcguire.gumroad.com/l/FashionIPWorkshop
How force majeure clauses impact your money
https://whitneymcguire.gumroad.com/l/GNIAK
What is the difference between patent , copyright, trademark
https://whitneymcguire.gumroad.com/l/jywMc
Comprehending the freelance isn't free law in nyc
https://whitneymcguire.gumroad.com/l/dXNNm
How to set a sustainable and profitable rate
part 1
https://whitneymcguire.gumroad.com/l/iHikC
part 2
https://whitneymcguire.gumroad.com/l/pUzjT

“Unbury the Future”: Martha Wells’ Full Speech from the 2017 World Fantasy Awards
Martha Wells
Tue Nov 7, 2017 10:00am

The convention defines “secret history” as tales which uncover an alternative history of our world with the aid of fantasy literary devices. Like alternate histories or secret tales of the occult.

A secret history might also mean a lost history, something written in a language that died with the last native speaker. It might mean something inaccessible, written in a medium too fragile to last. Like the science fiction and fantasy stories published in U.S. newspapers in the late 1800s. We know a few of those authors, like Aurelia Hadley Mohl [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fmoae ]  and Mollie Moore Davis [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mollie_Evelyn_Moore_Davis ] , but how many others were there? Those stories were proof that everybody has always been here, but the paper they were printed on has turned to dust.

We might know that C.L. Moore [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._L._Moore ] wrote for Weird Tales, but I grew up thinking she was the only one, that a woman fantasy writer from that time period was like a unicorn, there could only be one, and that she was writing for an entirely male audience. But there were plenty of other women, around a hundred in Weird Tales alone, and many of them, like Allison V. Harding [ https://tellersofweirdtales.blogspot.com/2011/05/who-was-allison-v-harding.html ] and Mary Elizabeth Counselman [ http://www.innsmouthfreepress.com/blog/summer-of-unknown-writers-mary-elizabeth-counselman/ ] , didn’t bother to conceal their identity with initials.

Weird Tales had women poets, a woman editor named Dorothy McIlwraith, women readers who had their letters printed in the magazine. There were women writing for other pulps, for the earlier Dime Novels, lots of them. Including African American Pauline Hopkins [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Hopkins ] , whose fantasy adventure novel appeared in a magazine in 1903.

These women were there, they existed. Everybody knew that, up until somehow they didn’t. We know there were LGBT and non-binary pulp writers, too, but their identities are hidden by time and the protective anonymity of pseudonyms.

Secrets are about suppression, and history is often suppressed by violence, obscured by cultural appropriation, or deliberately destroyed or altered by colonization, in a lingering kind of cultural gaslighting. Wikipedia defines “secret history” as a revisionist interpretation of either fictional or real history which is claimed to have been deliberately suppressed, forgotten, or ignored by established scholars.

That’s what I think of when I hear the words “secret histories.” Histories kept intentionally secret and histories that were quietly allowed to fade away.

The women writers, directors, and producers of early Hollywood were deliberately erased from movie history. Fifty percent of movies between 1911 and 1928 were written by women. In the 1940s there were a last few survivors at MGM, but their scripts were uncredited and they were strongly encouraged to conceal what they were working on, and not to correct the assumption that they were secretaries.

With the internet, it shouldn’t be possible for that to happen again. But we hear an echo of it every time someone on Reddit says “women just don’t write epic fantasy.”

You do the work, and you try to forget that there are people wishing you out of existence. But there are a lot of means of suppression that are more effective than wishing.

Like in 1974 when Andre Norton discovered the copyeditor on her children’s novel Lavender Green Magic had changed the three black main characters to white.

Or like in 1947, when African American writer and editor Orrin C. Evans was unable to publish more issues of All-Negro Comics [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-Negro_Comics ] because there was mysteriously no newsprint available for him to purchase.

Or like all the comics suppressed by the Comics Code Authority in 1954, which acted to effectively purge comics of people of color and of angry violent women, whether they were heroes or villains, or of any perceived challenge to the establishment. Like the publisher Entertaining Comics, which was targeted and eventually driven out of business for refusing to change a story to make a black astronaut white.

There’s an echo of that suppression when DC bans a storyline [ http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/batwoman-authors-exit-claim-dc-621274 ] where Batwoman proposes marriage to her girlfriend. And again when Marvel publishes a storyline that makes us think Captain America is a Nazi. When we’re supposed to forget that his co-creator Jack Kirby was Jewish, that he was an Army scout in World War II, that he discovered a concentration camp, that he was personally threatened by three Nazis at the New York Marvel office for creating a character to punch Hitler. (Maybe the Nazis would like to forget that when Kirby rushed downstairs to confront them, they ran away.)

There’s been an active level of suppression in movies since movies were invented. At least a white woman writer and director like Frances Marion [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Marion ] could win two Academy Awards before she was banished from history, but that wasn’t the case for her contemporary Oscar Micheaux [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Micheaux ] . An African American, Micheaux worked as a railway porter before he wrote, directed, and produced at least 40 films in the black movie industry that was entirely separate from white Hollywood.

That kind of suppression is still alive and well, and we see it when the movie about the Stonewall riots shows the resistance against police attacks through the viewpoint of young white guys and ignores Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera [ https://sites.psu.edu/womeninhistory/2016/10/23/the-unsung-heroines-of-stonewall-marsha-p-johnson-and-sylvia-rivera/ ] . Or when Ghost in the Shell features a white actress [ https://www.tor.com/2016/04/20/why-are-we-still-white-washing-characters/ ]  instead of Japanese.

We’ve forgotten Sessue Hayakawa [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sessue_Hayakawa ] , a Japanese actor who was one of the biggest stars in the silent film era of Hollywood, who was well known as a broodingly handsome heartthrob.

Sometimes history isn’t suppressed, sometimes it just drifts away. The people who lived it never expected it to be forgotten, never expected their reality to dissolve under the weight of ignorance and disbelief.

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly unburied the history of the African American women of early NASA, of Katharine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughn and the hundreds like them. They were just forgotten over the years, as the brief time when women’s work meant calculating launch and landing trajectories and programming computers passed out of memory. Like the Mercury 13 [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_13 ] , the “Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainees” in the 1960s, all pilots, all subjected to the same tests as the men. They retired, they went away, everyone forgot them.

Sometimes when they’re remembered, their contributions are minimized, like when a photo caption calls bacteriologist Dr. Ruby Hirose a “Japanese girl scientist” or labels Bertha Pallan, who was one of the first Native American women archeologists, as an “expedition secretary.” Like the photo post on Tumblr that over and over again, identified Marie Curie as a “female laboratory assistant.” Anybody can be disappeared.

We think we remember them, but then we’re told over and over again, all over the internet, that women don’t like math, can’t do science. That’s the internet that’s supposed to preserve our history, telling us we don’t exist.

Mary Jane Seacole was a Jamaican nurse who helped the wounded on the battlefields of the Crimean War, just like Florence Nightingale. Sister Rosetta Tharpe was the mother of rock and roll. Sophia Duleep Singh was a prominent suffragette in the UK. They’re all in Wikipedia, but you can’t look them up unless you remember their names.

The women who worked in the Gibson Guitar factory during WWII were deliberately erased, their existence strenuously denied, despite the evidence of a forgotten group photo that the company still would like to claim never existed.

Jackie Mitchell, seventeen years old, struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game in 1931. Her contract was almost immediately voided by the baseball commissioner. Baseball was surely too strenuous for her.

In 1994, Gregory Corso was asked, “Where are the women of the Beat Generation?” He said, “There were women, they were there, I knew them, their families put them in institutions, they were given electric shock.” Some of them survived, like Diane di Prima, and Hettie Jones.

Book burning draws too much attention. In science fiction and fantasy, in comics, in media fandom, everybody was always here, but we have been disappeared over and over again. We stumble on ourselves in old books and magazines and fanzines, fading print, grainy black and white photos, 16 millimeter film, archives of abandoned GeoCities web sites. We remember again that we were here, they were here, I saw them, I knew them.

We have to unearth that buried history. Like Rejected Princesses [ http://www.rejectedprincesses.com/ ] , by Jason Porath, which chronicles the women of history too awesome, offbeat, or awful to be animated. Or Nisi Shawl’s series the Expanded Course in the History of Black Science Fiction [ https://www.tor.com/tag/history-of-black-science-fiction/ ] . Or Malinda Lo’s LGBTQ YA By the Numbers [ https://www.malindalo.com/blog/2017/10/12/lgbtq-ya-by-the-numbers-2015-16 ] posts. Or Medieval POC [ https://twitter.com/medievalpoc?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor ] , sharing information about people of color in European art history. Like Eric Leif Davin in his book Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction. Like Cari Beauchamps’ book Without Lying Down, about the women writers, directors, and producers of early Hollywood. Like Catherine Lundoff’s series on the history of LGBT Science Fiction and Fantasy. Like Saladin Ahmed’s articles on the early history of comics or Jaime Lee Moyer’s article on the erasure of early women scientists[ http://www.jaimeleemoyer.com/we-all-know-what-they-did-to-witches/ ] . Like all the librarians and researchers and writers and archivists and fans who work to unbury our past so we have a chance to find our future.

And we have to continue to move forward toward that future in the fantasy genre, like the nominees on this year’s World Fantasy Award ballot, like all the other fantasy novels and short fiction last year that pushed the envelope a little further, or pushed it as far as it would go.

We have to break the barriers again and again, as many times as it takes, until the barriers are no more, and we can see the future our secret history promised us.

Author’s note: I’d like to thank Kate Elliott for reading an early draft of this, and for her help, inspiration, and encouragement.

Editor’s note: Martha Wells’ toastmaster speech was delivered at the World Fantasy Convention on November 5, 2017 and is reproduced here with the author’s permission; a few minor edits have been made and links have been added to the original text for additional context/clarity.

Martha Wells is a science fiction and fantasy writer, whose first novel was published in 1993. Her most recent series are The Books of the Raksura, for NightShade Books, and The Murderbot Diaries for Tor.com. Besides many fantasy novels, she has also written short stories, media tie-ins for Star Wars and Stargate Atlantis, YA fantasies, and non-fiction.

URL
https://www.tor.com/2017/11/07/unbury-the-future-martha-wells-full-speech-from-the-2017-world-fantasy-awards/

MY THOUGHT

But I think the greater question is not about presence, but action. "We" have always been here is the truth but what do "We" do when lifetimes of merit don't force "Them" to honor or treat "We" at the least equally? 
 

The problem with the film industry in the USA and Kemet

OPENING THOUGHTS

Historical fact versus Film industry goals. 

A film, with chadwick boseman before the black panther called, Gods of egypt , had only one Black god of egypt. Thoth. But, all the gods of Kemet, which the hellens< the romans called the hellens greeks, the greeks called kemet egypt> took over through the macedonian rule of hellens, are Black, all of them. So all the gods of egypt should had been Black. 

In parallel, Cleopatra is white. I didn't say she wasn't Egyptian. She spoke the native tongue. In the same way the Mamluks , who are from eastern europe, are not native to Kemet but lived most of their lives in Kemet, they called egypt, while being muslim. So, the problem is the film industry in the USA has a goal with many projects. The goal is simple. Unbind all characters from racial definition, a key to araciality. The problem is, history isn't a false thing, history is fact. Cleopatra was not black, just like the Mamluks. But this doesn't mean most people in Kemet or Egypt are white. 

But i wanted to do research and find out, who is the lawyer that filed the complaint because as always, the internet story linked to me has no citation. 

I found the following and I will end with lcosing thoughts

ARTICLES

TITLE
Egyptians complain over Netflix depiction of Cleopatra as black

CONTENT
by David Gritten
BBC News
A Netflix docudrama series that depicts Queen Cleopatra VII as a black African has sparked controversy in Egypt.

A lawyer has filed a complaint that accuses African Queens: Queen Cleopatra of violating media laws and aiming to "erase the Egyptian identity".

A top archaeologist insisted Cleopatra was "light-skinned, not black".

But the producer said "her heritage is highly debated" and the actress playing her told critics: "If you don't like the casting, don't watch the show."

Adele James made the comment in a Twitter post featuring screengrabs of abusive comments that included racist slurs.

Cleopatra was born in the Egyptian city of Alexandria in 69 BC and became the last queen of a Greek-speaking dynasty founded by Alexander the Great's Macedonian general Ptolemy.

She succeeded her father Ptolemy XII in 51 BC and ruled until her death in 30 BC. Afterwards, Egypt fell under Roman domination.

The identity of Cleopatra's mother is not known, and historians say it is possible that she, or any other female ancestor, was an indigenous Egyptian or from elsewhere in Africa.

Netflix's companion website Tudum reported in February that the choice to cast Adele James, a British actress who is of mixed race, as Cleopatra in its new documentary series was "a nod to the centuries-long conversation about the ruler's race".

Jada Pinkett Smith, the American actress who was executive producer and narrator, was meanwhile quoted as saying: "We don't often get to see or hear stories about black queens, and that was really important for me, as well as for my daughter, and just for my community to be able to know those stories because there are tons of them!"

But when the trailer was released last week many Egyptians condemned the depiction of Cleopatra.

Zahi Hawass, a prominent Egyptologist and former antiquities minister, told the al-Masry al-Youm newspaper: "This is completely fake. Cleopatra was Greek, meaning that she was light-skinned, not black."

Mr Hawass said the only rulers of Egypt known to have been black were the Kushite kings of the 25th Dynasty (747-656 BC).

"Netflix is trying to provoke confusion by spreading false and deceptive facts that the origin of the Egyptian civilisation is black," he added and called on Egyptians to take a stand against the streaming giant.

On Sunday, lawyer Mahmoud al-Semary filed a complaint with the public prosecutor demanding that he take "the necessary legal measures" and block access to Netflix's services in Egypt.

He alleged that the series included visual material and content that violated Egypt's media laws and accused Netflix of trying to "promote the Afrocentric thinking... which includes slogans and writings aimed at distorting and erasing the Egyptian identity".

Three years ago, plans for a movie about Cleopatra starring the Israeli actress Gal Gadot triggered a heated debate on social media, with some people insisting that the role should instead go to an Arab or African actress.

Gadot subsequently defended the casting decision, saying: "We were looking for a Macedonian actress that could fit Cleopatra. She wasn't there, and I was very passionate about Cleopatra."
 

URL

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-65322821

<Rough translation of the arabic to english from google translate>
TITLE
"Falsification of facts and Cleopatra was not black." Zahi Hawass comments on Netflix's latest movie

CONTENT
Zahi Hawass, former Minister of Antiquities and archaeologist, commented on the film "Cleopatra", which was revealed by Netflix yesterday, and drew criticism from public opinion in Egypt for portraying the "black" Ptolemaic queen, considering it a falsification of history.
Hawass commented in an exclusive statement to «Al-Masry Al-Youm» on the film, saying: «That is a falsification completely, Cleopatra was Greek, in the sense that she was blonde and not black», and considered that the film «falsification of facts and an attempt to attract illustrious historical names such as Queen Cleopatra, with the aim of promoting that the Egyptian civilization is black».
Hawass pointed out that there is a trend in the world in recent years led by American blacks and blacks in South America, to claim that the Egyptian civilization is originally black, stressing that «this talk has no basis at all».

The archaeologist pointed out that the black civilization has no connection with the Egyptian civilization, pointing out that the black civilization did not rule Egypt except in the twenty-fifth dynasty during the era of the Kingdom of Kush, that is, at the end of civilization. (The number of families of the Egyptian civilization is 30 families).

Hawass proved that the Egyptian civilization is different from other African civilizations, pointing out that the Egyptian temples have drawings of Egyptian kings, and the Egyptian king is depicted beating his enemies, explaining that the temples depict his enemies either «African, Nubian, Libyan or Asian, and all of them have a different shape».

Hawass continued that «Netflix is trying to create confusion to spread false and false information that the origin of the Egyptian civilization is black», and called on Hawass to take a stand against the Netflix platform.

Netflix launched a promotional advertisement for a documentary about Queen Cleopatra, directed by Jada Ninket Smith, wife of the famous American star Will Smith, and will be shown on the platform on May 10, and actress Adele James was chosen to play the role of the Ptolemaic queen.
Queen Cleopatra, the last ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty, was born in 69 BC and died in 30 BC in Alexandria.
 

URL

https://www.almasryalyoum.com/news/details/2864818

<Rough translation of the arabic to english from google translate>
TITLE
After the crisis of the movie Cleopater the brunette. Public prosecutor's complaint against Netflix demanding that the platform be banned

CONTENT
Lawyer Mahmoud Al-Samri submitted a report to the Public Prosecutor to close the Netflix platform, after the announcement of the documentary film Cleopater Al-Samra, and to take all legal measures against those in charge of this work, and against the management of the platform for its participation in this crime, and to investigate them and block its broadcast in Egypt and address all concerned authorities, especially the National Media Authority, to achieve this.
The complaint filed against Netflix stated: It was recently noted that the Netflix platform broadcasts some visual materials and content that violate the controls of media content, which we are accustomed to in Arab and Eastern societies in all countries of the Arab and Islamic region, as most of what is presented by this platform contradicts Islamic and societal values and principles, especially Egyptian.
As stated in the communication after the crisis of Cleopater's black film: The platform's management reached them to display advertising and attractive ads seen by millions in the world, and spread on their official pages documented via Facebook, recently, an invitation to watch a documentary film about Queen Cleopatra, who was of Greek origin that she is black and all the pharaohs at the time have black skin, unlike Egyptian history and civilization, to promote the thought of Afrocentric spread widely on social media, which have slogans and writings aimed at distorting and obliterating the Egyptian identity In a crude and worrying way for us as Egyptians we have a historical civilization that nations talk about over time and the issue of these owners of this thought is largely supported by large external parties to falsify the facts of the Egyptians.

The communication against Netflix continued on the Black Cleopatra Declaration: From the standpoint of preserving the Egyptian national and cultural identity among Egyptians all over the world and taking pride in it, and consolidating the spirit of belonging to the homeland, and accordingly, we ask and request you to take the necessary legal measures against this platform, and to stop displaying every work whose purpose is to obliterate and distort the Egyptian identity, by playing in the minds with attractive advertisements and films aimed at falsifying and distorting history in Egypt, and also accusing those in charge of forgery of this work jointly And assistance from the management of the platform.

At the end of his communication, Al-Samri called for taking all legal measures against those responsible for this work and against the platform's management for its participation in this crime.

URL

https://www.cairo24.com/1783644

CLOSING THOUGHTS

My first thought in closing is a question. Did Zahi Hawass or  Mohamed-El-Sayed-El-Semary file a lawsuit against gods of Egypt. Because don't tell me that the gods of Egypt were nordic ? How is that not a falsification? 

And even though, and I quote

... the world of Gods of Egypt never really existed. It is inspired by Egyptian mythology, but it makes no attempt at historical accuracy because that would be pointless — none of the events in the movie ever really happened. It is about as reality-based as Star Wars — which is not real at all ... Maybe one day if I get to make further chapters I will reveal the context of the when and where of the story. But one thing is for sure — it is not set in Ancient Egypt at all.

—Director Alex Proyas, December 2015

if Gods of Egypt can be forgiven for that then the African Queens series by Jada Pinkett Smith can be forgiven. These films are meant to make Black women of African descent feel good about themselves. These films are not meant to be documentaries. 

Now Adele James who portrays Cleopatra said, if you don't like the casting don't watch the show.  And to be fair, the lawsuit, though gaining global attention isn't for a global ban, it is for a ban in Kemet itself. Which is not unusual in film. Many governments ban films involving the history. China banned Seven Years In Tibet. This is not uncommon. 

But Hawass and James and Jada Pinkett for me, offer an interesting question about the series and casting and identity. 

The first thing I thought was, why didn't they chose Nefertiti ? 

They could had chosen Hatshepsut but she is to dominant. Hatshepsut goes into other arguments about women's role in general and Jada Pinkett probably wanted to step away from that. But Nefertiti is legendary and she has a bust that is preserved. I want you to take a look at the show poster and then Nefertiti bust.

Adele James as Cleopatra

The bust of Neferitti

Doesn't ADele James look like Nefertiti? 

Why not Nefertiti?  Why did Jada Pinkett SMith have to use Cleopatra, whom I have said countless times in AALBC is a white woman. I didn't say she wasn't egyptian and I didn't say she didn't have black blood. 

Take a look at the following image of an actor named Ty Burrell. A white man.

Said actor, Ty Burrell has an ancestor, as Black as the night. And, in his own words <you search the "finding your roots" episode, he admitted that people in his community growing up stated that in whispers about his clan>

So Cleopatra being white doesn't mean she doesn't have Black ancestors. It doesn't mean she can't claim Kemet. Charlize Theron says she is south african. She isn't XHosa or Zulu. 

The point is Cleopatra is a white woman. But being in the phenotypical ranges commonly labeled white or black doesn't define one's background or how one defines themselves. Look at the following of Fredi Washington, who played the first Peola in the first film version of Imitation of Life 

She look more like Betty Davis than Lena Horne and Lena Horne is extremely Yella. And Fredi Washington never called herself anything but Black. Hawass would call Fredi Washington light skinned. 

So I see three points, in any order. 

Phenotype in modern USA based media, film in particular but even outside ala Hamilton the play with all the white or blanco historical figures being played by negros/mullatoes/mestizoes, likes to suggest an araciality to historical figures. Anyone can play anybody is the message, in my mind at least. So, The Dagda of the Tuatha de danaan  can be played by a male or female person, kid or elder, with blue black skin and a large black afro. While... Ogun of the Yoruba Orishas can be played by a male or female person, kid or elder, with long blonde hair and snow white skin. Now the question is why? well, the USA has a problem. It's population is the most multiracial or multicultural or multiheritaged in modern humanity and is only growing more multi every day. But, alot of negativity or hatred or dislike is between the parts of the people. The USA populace doesn't have enough love  in its populace to become a family, a set of loving ones. But maybe it can be engineered to be a clan <ala the country of immigrants claim which is false to the native american or partial to enslaved black people as they were unwilling>, perhaps even better a creed<ala the shared belief in individual rights, government of elected officilals through voting, a set of laws that need to be abided and respected absent the use of arms>. Various individuals or groups of people in the USA across all racial spectrums are trying to make the USA into a clan or creed and in the arts, this has led to hamilton or this film of Cleopatra. I see two goals, the first is to deracialize historical figures to support the idea that one can be a racial stranger in a community, the usa, and be part of it instantaneously if they abide by the rules of the clan or creed. The second is to support the idea that one can idolize, be proud of, adopt someone who isn't of their race as part of their essence.   Do I artistically like this? no. I prefer historical truth. But that is only a matter of taste, it doesn't warrant a large multilog for me. Any artist knows, no work makes everybody happy, and it shouldn't. 

Phenotype outside the USA, race, is simpler but when applied to the USA media's portrayals of race, become very complicated. I have been to africa. I can tell you, many women <not most> of North Africa, today, are white women. Now, they are african. They are muslim. And they are not nordic in appearance. Many Northern African women do share the mediterranean look with Southern European women, ala why in Europe, many northern europeans would call southern europeans dark. But they are white women. But they don't see themselves as Europeans. and this is the problem with race outside the usa in comparison to in the USA. In the USA race in general is usually reduced, made simpler, rightly or wrongly. But in BRasil you have Pardo, you have the brown skinned. In African there is no one drop rule, being black doesn't equate to african in africa.  In India, people who look like my mother's father, will argue they are not black because in asia, black equates to african. In asia, the word dark is used for people who in the usa will be deemed black. So outside the USA phenotype, appearance, has other rules and when you apply the goals , the phenotypical goals,  in USA media to places outside the USA it is dysfunctional. But, part of the dysfunction doesn't merely stem from the combination of two unequals or the attempting to find a multiracial center in the USA end, but also the old rigidities of race in many places outside the USA. I live in New York City and anyone who knows latin americans knows that in their homes, the dark or black or negra members of the familia are not treated like in the disney film encanto. Rosie Perez said it best herself, that in the latin community a colorism exist deeply. So when latin americans talk about latin unity, I scoff at that because I know fully well that in their homes, in their community that unity dissolves into a rulership by whites or light skins or alveno's or blancos over everybody else, negra, zambo, indios, et cetera. And it is the same in an India or in Egypt or other North African governments. The communities under said governments have rigid inequal racial categories that are accepted as part of their essential identity. Thus El Semary talks about national Identity even though most people in Egypt if they were in Mississippi in the 1960s would be called nigger on a daily basis. while most of the wealthy in Egypt if in the same Mississippi would be deemed the White elite. Which in Egypt is how the whites treat the blacks, as an elite. 

The importance of media. Hawass is correct. Video media in modernity are the books of yore. The video is how many or most learn, rightly or wrongly. Sequentially, any historical lies in video will be treated as truth or history by many. The question is, it is dangerous. I argue it isn't. But I will explain why. Growing up as a kid my parents provided me with nonfiction or fiction by black people that allowed my perceptions of black people to exist without need of white people. I didn't need public school. I didn't need colleges or universities. I didn't need the television or some video media. Sadly , many people in modernity need an external because their parents are ignorant, they don't know. In the black community in the USA, many black people like to say that the black community doesn't know enough about itself, but the truth is, that is all communities in humanity. The reason why is simple, most communities in humanity are recovering from being completely dominated by another community in humanity and that recovery tends to be a crude or complicated thing. Rarely as smooth as in the fiction books, Sequentially, media serves a huge role, like the images on the early european christian church walls to the illiterate in europe. It doesn't convey the truth, but it conveys a message easier. 

Preproduction in the arts, is an underrated thing. What I know on the outer rim boundaries of the entertainment industry in the usa is how often arts are produced absent a lot of quality preproduction. I am not suggesting a system exist to evade negative criticism. But, I wonder about Jada Pinkett's series. Why go from Nzinga to Cleopatra. In my mind, Jada Pinkett wanted to show being African is not equal to being african. While that is the truth I would had advised her to use another.  I can see why Nefertiti was not used based on the phenotypical range. Nefertiti is black, looks black, regardless to people like Hawass saying otherwise. But, I think the one of the Kandake's, like Shanakdakhete or Amanirenas<one of my personal favorites>, or other queens of Nubia or Kush and its descendants to Sudan or Aksum, like Gudit<who I learned of doing research for this post>,  and its descendants to modern ethiopia. Hawass is correct. Cleopatra is not black. But he is incorrect in one key way. The problem with Kemet and Egypt is that the Upper Nile, the south of the land because in the nilotic world the north is where the Nile flows from which is south if you base north on the pole nearest Europe which is what most in modern humanity do, has always been in a cohabitation with the peoples south of it, whether Nubia or Kush or Aksum. In the same token, the Lower Nile, which is the one that border the modern day mediterranean, has always been in connection to Hellens/the larger Europe or Asia. So, when Hawass talks about the non Blackness of Egypt I argue the Kandake's are to the upper nile what cleopatra is to the lower nile. Female rulers representing the external communities to either half of kemet. And that kind of interpretation is needed in preproduction. It doesn't mean it will happen. But in preproduction it is rarer than people think. 

The power of negative media. The first season involved Nzinga of congo and the second involved Cleopatra. Now considering the slap from her husband to chris rock happened nearly a month after the first season with Nzinga started, it proves the power of negative media. The show from Jada Pinkett wasn't mentioned alongside the slap. The slap was mentioned as the central issue of Jada Pinkett, Will Smith, plus Chris Rock. Her series was barely mentioned if at all. The movie, Emancipation, starring Will SMith was prejudged through people's view to the actor, and Chris Rock's standup was expected and eventually did rotate around this issue, one negative moment dominated all three of their recent time. 

I conclude with a simple point. All EL Semary wants is the show banned in egypt itself. Not an issue. And neither is the depiction of Cleopatra. I already spoke of Hamilton. None of the key points advertised in the media are important.

The location of Mohamed El Sayed El Semary 

https://yellowpages.com.eg/en/profile/Mohamed-El-Sayed-El-Semary/315467

IN AMENDMENT

I finally found evidence to answer my question about gods of egypt in the post above, I didn't find a page and quit on it as I have other things to do but after @Troy asked the same question. I tried again, and read the following

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl3847128833/weekend/

Mar 2-6    -    $39,360    -    1    -    $39,360    $39,360    1
Mar 9-13    -    $14,958    -62%    1    -    $14,958    $60,950    2
Mar 16-20    -    $13,675    -8.6%    1    -    $13,675    $77,216    3

So, Gods of Egypt wasn't banned, wasn't called to be banned in Egypt. People saw it in egypt. So, this invalidates the desire of the few in Egypt to pan the cleopatra film by Jada Pinkett Smith. And what does it prove. It proves that, the issue here isn't  that the Cleopatra film in question isn't phenotypically or other racially correct, it is that, it is produced by Jada Pinkett SMith, a Black woman of the USA in the NEtflix zone, which is going to be mostly seen online in streaming. This is the true issue. Black produced and mostly on streaming not in theaters. Hawass and  EL Semary realize that most of the young in egypt, like most poor people in the usa , get film through streaming, not theaters, they are afraid of said Cleopatra's visions being displayed amongst the youth, which will get some youth to question the Europhilic-whitephilic aspects of egyptian culture that have been peddled or enforced by those in power in egypt.

REFERRING COMMENT

https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/10236-the-problem-with-the-film-industry-in-the-usa-and-kemet/?do=findComment&comment=60302

Ahsoka Tano the badass jedi superheroine we need
My Reply
Well... Disney-StarWars has made female strong characters in most of their recent work: star wars episode 7/8/9- ray who finally ends the emperors reign and stars a new era absent the sith or jedi; rogue one- the daughter of the death star engineer, absent any force, who sacrifices all and guides others to make important choices and sacrificial choices to do one good while very powerful deed;Mandalorian show- Boka Tan changes from a defeated isolated leader to a better communal leader, even getting guidance by a man plus older woman, still with great fighting skill, who succeeds in fufilling her goal of uniting her people; Book of Boba- fennec shand <I do enjoy her> survives being betrayed by a younger man and becomes the trusted second in command, while visibly more dangerous than her boss, an older m, to an independent underworld empire; Ashoka Tano- has Ashoka who: admits she was/is wrong, survive failure, is extremely skilled plus lethal, trusts others to help to a collective goal, and moves in a very non offensive way, and chooses to continue training a child, no one, not even a very experienced purely logical machine, thinks has a chance of finishing her education. And is accompanied by a green skinned female general who always seems level headed but never follows orders blindly and is very sharp minded. A female padwan with the least amount of obvious impressiveness, a sign of how self loathing moth gideon was, who is full of love, who finally accepts her mandalorian roots. With female strong villains in a grey haired witch who is strong and in charge, but not flashy, while a young female warrior dedicated to a master but with a honest cruel streak. So the writers at the Star WArs section of disney have been working on female strong characters from the Stars wars films for a while, and they seem to be getting better with age. And the quality of male characters to the writers credit don't seem to be getting worse but are staying with them. I think the problem with the hans solo movie or the obi wan kinobi show was the male leads. 

https://aliciamccalla.com/blogs/blog/ahsoka-tano-the-badass-jedi-superheroine-we-need

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/

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

'I depict mundane images because the life of a Black woman is just like any other': Billie Zangewa on anatomy, Kusama and celebrating imperfections
The South African artist tells us about her favourite books, music and artists on the A brush with… podcast

Billie Zangewa.
Photo: Andrew Thomas Berry. © Art basel

Billie Zangewa, Domestic Scene (2016). Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin

Billie Zangewa on... her fascination with the human form

"When I was at art school I loved life drawing. My son once asked me: 'Mom, how come when you do bodies, you can see the bones and muscles?'. And I replied: 'When I was at university I was completely thrilled by that little bit of science in art.' We would draw bones by themselves, under flesh, and then muscles by themselves and then under the flesh. So that really stuck with me and now when I look at the human form, I'm always seeing the nuance of the light and the protruding shapes that are coming from inside the body."

Billlie Zangewa's Serious, 2021.
Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London

... why she depicts mundane images in her work

"I knew from my childhood that being Black and female was going to be a very difficult journey for me. And that a lot of people were going to project their fantasies and desires onto me and that they would not see me as a person, they wouldn't be able to empathise with my daily struggles, or even to understand that I had feelings. That is one of the reasons why I choose to depict such mundane daily images, because what I am trying to say is that a Black woman is just like any other person. We go through the same routine every day, we go through the same struggles. We're all human."

... her favourite contemporary artist

"Yayoi Kusama is incredible—I honestly don't think that anybody can equal her.There are lots of brilliant artists, but I think she in particular has an incredible focus and her work just gels together. She doesn't seem like she's going off over there and then going in a different direction. It always seems like she's expanding on a theme, and I think that's what makes her really incredible."

Installation view of Billie Zangewa: Flesh and Blood at Lehmann Maupin, Seoul.
Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London

... the process behind her cut out silk works

"Those kind of uneven, even edges are really works speaking to each other. So I would have cut out a piece [of silk] for a previous work, which would have created a negative space. [...] But it's only until the work reveals itself to me that I think that piece of fabric is going to be perfect for what I'm trying to say. So I do keep it quite spontaneous. I'm not trying to force any thing into anything. I really enjoy those irregular edges because it speaks to society and to individuals, about how we have wounds, scars and certain thought patterns that don't serve us well. I'm speaking to everyone's combination of the perfect and the imperfect."

• For the full interview with the artist, listen to our podcast, A brush with... Billie Zangewa < https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/11/17/a-brush-with-billie-zangewa > , which is available on the usual podcast platforms. < https://plinkhq.com/i/1525997434?to=page > A brush with… series 7 runs from 17 November-15 December 2021, with episodes released on Wednesdays. This episode is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects. 

• Billie Zangewa: Running Water < https://www.lehmannmaupin.com/exhibitions/billie-zangewa3 > , Lehmann Maupin London, until 8 January 2022; Flesh and Blood < https://www.lehmannmaupin.com/exhibitions/billie-zangewa2 > , Lehmann Maupin Seoul, from 18 November-15 January 2022; Thread for a Web Begun < https://www.moadsf.org/exhibition/billie-zangewa-thread-for-a-web-begun/> , Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, until 27 February. 
 

The following is my neutral reply to a reply to my words appended after.

science just means knowledge. 

Using my own linguistic style, I will say, Researchers , who are able to be concurred to or refuted by others, suggest based on their studies that bias, communal positions based on interpreting race, has no genetic source.  

I concur that biases , like linking intelligence or emotional quality to a racial factor like phenotype or gender,  are not genetically based most of the time.

Yes, one can argue that downs syndrome, which is a known, publicly known,  genetically derived condition with symptoms of mental inaptitude or uncommon difficulty does at the least prove genetics has instances where it influences intelligence, but the genomes which tend to be variant in those with downs syndrome do not occur bounded to the presence of other genetic markers for gender or phenotype or other, at least to my knowledge.

Yes, one can argue that women during pregnancy, which is a genetically based condition < men if healthy can not get pregnant whereas a woman who is healthy can> , have a long history of recorded emotional swings but like downs syndrome, it isn't bounded to the presence of other genomes. 

I will speak for myself. 

I am not being dishonest, I have said no lie, or betrayed my thinking. Nor have I spoken illogically, absent a structured reason,  or ignorantly, meaning absent knowledge. 

And as this is the African American Literature Book Club, I think a greater point is being missed. The most important point of the trilog and that is use of words, especially in the black community of the usa.

In literature, the use of words is logically the most important aspect of literature, not culturally or heritagewise but logically. That is why the word gay doesn't mean happy anymore for most people in the anglophone. 

To me, as I said before, I didn't explain myself to get anyone else to change. I explained myself cause I felt it was warranted as functional reasoning that needs to be emitted, and not silent. I don't think any conflict exist between the three in the trilog. All explained themselves, and I said what Troy said makes sense, is logical,  based on the  elemental parts. But my elemental parts are other. It doesn't make me right or the other two  wrong., or them right and me wrong. We have two different definitions of race that have no middle point and in my eyes, none of us have a reason to utilize the other, unless we as individuals want to. 

But, Troy, a member of this group, asserted at the end, that I , or anyone else, shouldn't have a different use of words than websters or majority users. And I oppose that 100%. Just because websters has decided on a definition doesn't make it irrefutable , regardless of how many people are taught it or are indoctrinated to it. 

And this goes into the black community. If one hundred black people live in a room and 99 say things one way and have a different mind to the room, why should the one be uncomfortable because they are alone. Some speak of individualism quite often in the black community in the usa, yet they often suggest in parallel that individualism should give into communalism when one is not comfortable, defined as opposed to a majority. 

And yes, I reject more than one word in websters. As a poet I study words and I have found heavy levels of misuse in words. So much so I do it often myself, cause the USA environment has made common a lot of incorrect word usages. I will love to have a chance to work on a dictionary for a less known or used  language. I wish Black people in the USA had not thrown away our many dialects for .... websters. 

I nearly hate the blanc  french but I have always been a fan of the following. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Académie_Française

Why? I think the french are correct in the maintenance of language. In the same way the architects of timbuktu are correct in making buildings where aspects to their maintenance or  repair is part of their final structure.  Every language should have some organization to manage it to be within itself. American English is a terrible language in that way. It is unorganized, muddled, and ugly in the allowance of atemporal disjunction. 

The USA thought about it 

http://www.languagepolicy.net/archives/Adams.htm

The continental congress logic wasn't flawed. From the beginning they realized, that having language be fluid opened up allowances in expression, which allows for the composite nation speech point.

Composite nation from frederick douglass

 But Adams was correct. Language dictates the populace. When you look at the usa today and the individual liberty of it, it can be argued that the freedom of language plus the lack of management of language is a key to its populace's makeup. American English is looking to be mixed , so to speak. 

But it is interesting that so many Black people in my creative circle, writers especially, are willing to suggest my use of words is false based not on anything official, but merely majority use, absent any management. I suggest a managed and researched language is best in any community, or you end up talking muddle. 

John Adams penned this proposal while on a diplomatic mission to Europe during the Revolutionary War. Formally entitled "A Letter to the President of Congress," it was dispatched from Amsterdam on September 5, 1780.

As eloquence is cultivated with more care in free republics than in other governments, it has been found by constant experience that such republics have produced the greatest purity, copiousness, and perfection of language. It is not to be disputed that the form of government has an influence upon language, and language in its turn influences not only the form of government, but the temper, the sentiments, and manners of the people. The admirable models which have been transmitted through the world, and continued down to these days, so as to form an essential part of the education of mankind from generation to generation, by those two ancient towns, Athens and Rome, would be sufficient, without any other argument, to show the United States the importance to their liberty, prosperity, and glory, of an early attention to the subject of eloquence and language.

Most of the nations of Europe have thought it necessary to establish by public authority institutions for fixing and improving their proper languages. I need not mention the academies in France, Spain, and Italy, their learned labors, nor their great success. But it is very remarkable, that although many learned and ingenious men in England have from age to age projected similar institutions for correcting and improving the English tongue, yet the government have never found time to interpose in any manner; so that to this day there is no grammar nor dictionary extant of the English language which has the least public authority; and it is only very lately, that a tolerable dictionary has been published, even by a private person, and there is not yet a passable grammar enterprised by any individual.

The honor of forming the first public institution for refining, correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English language, I hope is reserved for congress; they have every motive than can possibly influence a public assembly to undertake it. It will have a happy effect upon the union of the States to have a public standard for all persons in every part of the continent to appeal to, both for the signification and pronunciation of the language. The constitutions of all the States in the Union are so democratical that eloquence will become the instrument for recommending men to their fellow-citizens, and the principal means of advancement through the various ranks and offices of society.

In the last century, Latin was the universal language of Europe. Correspondence among the learned, and indeed among merchants and men of business, and the conversation of strangers and travellers, was generally carried on in that dead language. In the present century, Latin has been generally laid aside, and French has been substituted in its place, but has not yet become universally established, and, according to present appearances, it is not probable that it will. English is destined to be the next and succeeding centuries more generally the language of the world than Latin was in the last or French is in the present age. The reason of this is obvious, because the increasing population in America, and their universal connection and correspondence with all nations will, aided by the influence of England in the world, whether great or small, force their language into general use, in spite of all the obstacles that may be thrown in their way, if any such there should be.

It is not necessary to enlarge further, to show the motives which the people of America have to turn their thoughts early to this subject; they will naturally occur to congress in a much greater detail than I have time to hint at. I would therefore submit to the consideration of congress the expediency and policy of erecting by their authority a society under the name of "the American Academy for refining, improving, and ascertaining the English Language." The authority of congress is necessary to give such a society reputation, influence, and authority through all the States and with other nations. The number of members of which it shall consist, the manner of appointing those members, whether each State shall have a certain number of members and the power of appointing them, or whether congress shall have a certain number of members and the power of appointing them, or whether congress shall appoint them, whether after the first appointment the society itself shall fill up vacancies, these and other questions will easily be determined by congress.

It will be necessary that the society should have a library consisting of a complete collection of all writings concerning languages of every sort, ancient and modern. They must have some officers and some other expenses which will make some small funds indispensably necessary. Upon a recommendations from congress, there is no doubt but the legislature of every State in the confederation would readily pass a law making such a society a body politic, enable it to sue and be sued, and to hold an estate, real or personal, of a limited value in that State.

ORIGINAL REPLY

CONTENT OF COMMENT

I can not tell you how many writing groups I have been part of where the following came up side my fellow crafters of words. Even as a child. 

But here we go again. Websters is wrong.  PEople are misusing the word, it is that simple. And I go one further. Webster's and many dictionaries in all earnest puts too much weight on figurative evaluations in words. I don't care if 99 percent of people use a word a certain way. 99% are simply using it wrongly. 

Racism/Bias/Prejudice are not as defined in websters.

And I will use the definition you gave to support my point.

You said

  Quote

1 : a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
From Merriam Webster:

 
also : behavior or attitudes that reflect and foster this belief : racial discrimination or prejudice

First, a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits. 

well how does your websters define race

  Quote

any one of the groups that humans are often divided into based on physical traits regarded as common among people of shared ancestry

That isn't race:) Troy, that isn't race. Race isn't a divider of humanity. Race isn't bounded to physical traits. Race is any classification scheme that can be applied on humanity by humans. 

Me , you, Schtrumpf, Nahomie Osaka are human beings, children of earth. That is the shared ancestry.  The fact that three of us are male and one is female. Three of us are black and one is white. One has recent asian lineage and three don't. One speaks japanese , three don't. All speak english.  These are not dividers, it is merely a classification scheme. 

So websters definition of race is false. Which makes sense cause their definition of racism is false. 

What divides human beings are rules or policies, not racism. The train track didn't divide towns because black people side non blacks don't share the same shades of skin. Non blacks power+ policies made the train track divide, and it was the bias in their use of power or creation of policies, not racism. 

No point in going further because the primary explanation to the word is false by webster. 

A classification scheme isn't even a belief. it is a tool.  But when webster placed race as webster defines it their definition is totally flawed. 

Race is a classification scheme applied on any grouping. 

When humans say, lions and tigers are cats that is racism. 

Racism is actions to define race. 

When humans make a book describing cats that is racism. 

Bias is making an opinion on a race

When humans say black cats are evil, that is bias. 

When humans say the pig can not be eaten, that is bias

When humans say the cow can not be eaten, that is bias

humans calling another human black is racism. 

humans calling another human stupid cause their black is bias

humans calling another human woman is racism

humans calling another human foolish cause their woman is bias

humans calling another human old is racism

humans calling another human weak cause their old is bias

humans calling another human christian is racism

humans calling another human fanatics cause their christian is bias

Now, having preached , I apologize again, I already know most folk don't use the words the way I do. I know. And I know you troy or others will continue to use words as you have. I comprehend 100%. But your wrong. that is what I will conclude on. it is that simple. Use words better, trust me, it matters. 

Parabens O Rei, the King, O perola Negra, the Black Pearl

Pele

title: the legend pele
artist:  abualbara69
https://www.deviantart.com/abualbara69/art/The-Legend-Pele-863420736

title: Pele art
artist:  niezamcomic
https://www.deviantart.com/niezamcomic/art/Pele-Art-733993470

title: legends  <pele with his best mate, saint garrincha>
artist: eurofoxx
https://www.deviantart.com/eurofoxx/art/Legends-52576900

She makes a number of points that are not contiguous.

1) colleges admission process- Some of you may know history but the tragedy of the history of colleges is no college in the usa started as a public institution. I rephrase, most colleges start as race based organizations on whatever racial parameters the creators and financiers of the college set. So my first point is separating colleges started with racial entry rules, against colleges started as a truly public educational institution.

If I start and finance a college for black people, as I define them, exclusively and a white person, as I define them,  wants to join, shouldn't my school be allowed to block this person no matter what?

Forcing a college to find someone to join their school who fits the scholastic  racial requirements but not the financial or phenotypical racial requirements is what affirmative action is in the usa. The idea is to force only scholastic entry requirements but schools are financed. 

If a christian finances a school for christians only shouldn't a muslim be banned from joining no matter what? 

If a woman finances a school for women only, shouldn't a male be banned from joining no matter what? 

2) coming from being raised in majority black towns/communities in the usa and being into majority white educational institutions explains how some want to use integration. A smart person from a black town should be able to go to a historical black college since many of them were started in the 1800s. But, what is the point? The point of the black going to the ivy league isn't about education, it is about communal integration. The idea is, in an environment where the phenotypical + financial race is not their own, the black fiscally poor student will intermingle side the rich white and potentially integrate into rich white society in some way or form. The problem is the pretense of educational betterment is deleted with this point. The idea that harvard is this elite place educationally isn't why the affirmative action is needed, cause harvard isn't. The truth that harvard is a communal zone for the financially wealthy or powerful who are usually white is why affirmative action is needed, cause through harvard maybe the halls of power or channels of business ownership may change through the communal connection.

Why have so many Black people put so much effort in non black schools but then complain about non black schools being communally resistant to them? 

Do black people who go to Ivy LEague schools hate Historical Black Colleges?

3) The universality of affirmative action creates incongruent scenarios.  In Mississippi an all white elementary school had  affirmative action placed upon it so seats for black children were made. BUT, is any all white elementary school the equivalent to harvard? Harvard is a place for adults , truly of the greatest financial wealth. But is the all white elementary school the place of financial wealth or adults? The answer is no. Jefferson Davis elementary school in Mississippi isn't Harvard and too many all white educational institutions are more like jefferson davis elementary in mississippi, all white but not a hall of power or financial influence, and far from harvard or exeter.

4) Coming from being raised in majority black towns/communities in the usa and being into majority non black educational institutions puts black individuals in communities of disbelief. Of course among black people, a black child that has a talent or skill is merely praised. but around non blacks, it is questioned. All communities do this. White men can jump? It happens. Humans like to be in their own subgroups, their own kinds, ala Anita in west side story. The problem is why do people not raise their children to know this? I don't like when any person doesn't realize being the only other in a room will yield to being treated as unwanted, that makes perfect sense.

5) Black women in particular's rant about white inheritance. Yes, black women, white people are rarely like Mrs. PArkington.  < https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2371&type=status > who cut their descendants from the money if they don't earn or unwarrant it. but that is part of why you get money. And I argue in the black community many black people have developed an inverted sense of wealth through bloodline. Whites usually get money and believe it to be for their next generations no matter what, to make their life easier/lazier no matter what. But many black people seem to have this meritocracy idea in inheritance which is at best ideal for the usa that never was or will be, but at worst is a detriment to black growth. Yes, rich whites built harvard/yale/stanford/massachusetts instittue of technology/colombia , they built the museusm in new york city, shouldn't their children have a free ride in the institution that wouldn't exist if not for their forebears. 

Again, if I started and financed a school, and after I am dead, shouldn't my descendants have free admittance in the school? I built the damn school, if one spot is open shouldn't my descendant have the seat over any other, black or white or with better grades? 

6) and Yes, the whole point of the white community in the usa or the british colonies before it is, money talks. Yes, the descendants of the genocidal murderers to Native Americans + Enslavers to Blacks reap the rewards. That is fiscal capitalism. That is the usa. The USA isn't about equality, isn't about fairness, isn't about helping the weak or unopportune. It is about benefiting for self over others through their pain for your own benefit. And maintaining the benefits you earned for your descendants over the descendents of those you murdered or abused. Yes, that is the USA.

Why is it so many black people don't know this? 

Why do so many black people in the usa sound ignorant/stupid/dumb/foolish to what I said in point 6)? 

@africanheritagecity HBCUs MATTER! @attorneycrump • Exactly. The misconception that affirmative action meant unqualified people have been admitted into college solely because of their race was never true and is quite frankly an ignorant interpretation. Thank you @joyannreid for setting the record straight and sharing your truth! #andthisiswhyweshouldgotohbcus #hbcusmatter #blackexcellence ♬ original sound - African Heritage City

The USA wasn't started to be a place of fairness or equality or any similar positives and it can't change to be those. 

Black people have wasted a lot of time trying to make the USA what it will never be

phantom lady 1944 - portrait of ella raines - photography alamy

Column: How profit-driven turmoil at Turner Classic Movies placed a vast cultural heritage at risk

Michael Hiltzik

June 29, 2023

It wasn't that long ago that the cause of film preservation and film history seemed to be on a roll. Multiple cable channels such as American Movie Classics, Bravo and Encore were devoted to classic films from the 1930s through the 1980s. When streaming supplanted scheduled cable programming, FilmStruck offered viewers a huge library of classics from the libraries of Warner Bros. and other studios.

Through it all Turner Classic Movies, or TCM, was the much-admired king. The channel was founded in 1994 by entrepreneur Ted Turner to show the library of MGM classic films he had acquired. It evolved to not only screen classic films but also curate its offerings, providing historical commentaries and interviews presented by knowledgeable hosts.

All those other services have either disappeared or been repurposed away from classic films. Until a couple of weeks ago, TCM appeared to be one of the sole survivors in the classic movie landscape.

Bruce Goldstein, Film Forum

But on June 20, David Zaslav, chief executive of TCM's new owner, Warner Bros. Discovery, swung the ax. Layoffs wiped out the network's entire top management, including some figures who had been its leaders for decades. TCM was placed under the supervision of an executive whose other responsibilities included the Adult Swim channel and Cartoon Network.

The sense of dismay and betrayal that swept across Hollywood was almost indescribable. Film stars and character actors known to millions of fans took to social media to condemn the move. Film directors Steven Spielberg, Paul Thomas Anderson and Martin Scorsese reached out to Zaslav to urge him to back off, advice he seems to have taken, partially.

The turmoil at TCM points to more than a single company's effort to squeeze as much profit as possible from a single asset. It reflects the impulse by the corporate stewards of America's immense film history to view that culture strictly in commercial terms.

"Whether Mr. Zaslav planned to or not, he has inherited an American cultural treasure that he is responsible for safeguarding," film historian Alan K. Rode, a director of the Film Noir Foundation, told me. "But he's also trying to run a business that's over $40 billion in debt. I don't know how you square that circle."

This is not a new conundrum. Almost all artifacts of film history are squirreled away in studios' vaults, where they've been subject to the vicissitudes of corporate accounting and the ebb and flow of mergers and acquisitions.

Occasionally, when they're encouraged by cultural fashions or the appearance of new technologies, the studios have burrowed into their film libraries to assess their marketability and try to untangle ownership rights.

Some 700 historic Paramount Studios productions, for example, are assumed to be nestled in the vaults of Universal Pictures, which inherited Paramount’s 1930s and 1940s film archive from its forebear MCA, which acquired the collection in 1958. (Universal was later absorbed by NBC and is now a division of the entertainment conglomerate Comcast.)

The studios don't repurpose their libraries wholesale. Converting old films to digital formats to be screened online or on cable, or shown in theaters equipped with digital projectors, is an expensive and complicated process. Only films thought to have commercial potential get the favored treatment. Most of the others remain largely inaccessible to the public.

Warner Bros., now absorbed into Warner Bros. Discovery, was long considered the best steward of its cultural hoard. Its Warner Archives division was the industry gold standard in the care and marketing of the past. Under division head George Feltenstein, now the Warner library historian, Warner put thousands of titles, including TV series, on sale as made-to-order DVDs and established a subscription video streaming service that has since been incorporated into the company's Max streaming service.

Choosing which films to market as DVDs or Blu-ray discs was sometimes an easy call, sometimes a challenge, Feltenstein told me in 2015. “There always will be a place on the retail shelf for ‘Casablanca,’ ‘King Kong’ or ‘Citizen Kane,’” he said. But others required finer judgments or innovative marketing. Warner Bros. still offers DVDs and Blu-rays from its classic and contemporary libraries for sale.

Classic-film cable and streaming services have tended to have short half-lives. Consider the fate of FilmStruck, which launched as the subscription-based streaming arm of Turner Classic Movies in November 2016 with an inventory of 500 films, including 200 from the classic movie library of the Criterion Collection. FilmStruck quickly became what Esquire termed "the new go-to movie destination for serious movie buffs."

Two years later, FilmStruck was dead, slain by Warner Bros.' new owner, AT&T, which couldn't wait for the service to grow beyond its base of 100,000 subscribers and reach profitability. For AT&T, as I wrote then, "mass subscribership and profits are the ballgame," patience be damned.

Other networks that had been founded to cultivate an audience of film fans suffered a similar fate. American Movie Classics was founded in 1984 as a premium cable channel to air classic films uncut and commercial-free. It even sponsored an annual film festival to raise money for film preservation. In 2002 it was rebranded as AMC and refocused on prestige TV. AMC produced "Breaking Bad" and "Mad Men," among other series — good TV, certainly, but not classic films.

AMC's sister channel, Bravo, was launched in 1980 to present classic foreign and independent films. After NBC bought it in 2002, it was turned into a showcase for reality series.

Yet audience interest in classic movies and film history continued to grow. "Ten years ago, I felt that we were in kind of a golden age of appreciation of film classics and appreciation, and TCM was a huge part of that," says Bruce Goldstein, the founding repertory artistic director of Film Forum, a New York repertory house. "Now it seems to be falling apart."

TCM and the Criterion Channel remain the go-to streaming destinations for classics. Netflix, am*zon Prime and other networks have minimal classic libraries and no learned curation.

On the surface, there is no great mystery about why Warner Bros. Discovery and Zaslav might want to draw in their financial horns a bit. The company is laboring under a crippling debt load of more than $49 billion, most of it resulting from the 2022 merger that brought together the cable programming company Discovery and the WarnerMedia division of AT&T, itself the product of AT&T's 2016 takeover of Time Warner.

Given the combined companies' loss of $7.4 billion on revenue of $33.8 billion last year, plainly something had to give. The question being asked by cultural historians, cinephiles and plain ordinary film fans is why TCM had to be part of the bloodletting. It was reportedly profitable, if not hugely so, but by any measure not a significant factor on the merged company's profit-and-loss landscape.

That low profile in corporate terms could be TCM's salvation. As my colleague Stephen Battaglio reported, an outcry in the film industry, including by Spielberg, Anderson and Scorsese, has prompted Zaslav to reassess the bludgeoning he visited upon TCM.

The network's longtime programming chief, Charles Tabesh, who had been fired, will stay on, TCM says. Spielberg, Anderson and Scorsese will have a voice on TCM's curation and scheduling. TCM's classic film festival, held annually in Hollywood, will continue. In a move aimed at quelling outrage in the industry, the network will report directly to Warner Bros. Pictures Group co-heads Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy.

Those developments generated an optimistic joint statement from Spielberg, Anderson and Scorsese: “We have already begun working on ideas with Mike and Pam, both true film enthusiasts who share a passion and reverence for classic cinema that is the hallmark of the TCM community," the directors said.

It's impossible to overstate the reverence that film historians and preservationists, and fans, have felt for TCM.

"They are the keepers of the flame," says Foster Hirsch, a professor of film at Brooklyn College and member of the Film Noir Foundation board. "They're an enormous resource for scholars and writers and fans of all ages. To start tampering with the brand or to view it in terms of marketing and data exclusively is horrifying. It's an assault on our common culture."

Among TCM's virtues is its eclectic approach. "They didn't show only well-known masterpieces," Hirsch says. "They showed obscure films, some which aren't good, they showed films for almost all tastes, different genres. From an artistic or historical point of view it isn't broken. There was no reason to 'fix' it."

The network has also been an almost unique portal introducing new generations to film culture. "It's been an essential part of people's film education, especially people of my generation," says Jon Dieringer, 37, founder of Screen Slate, a film culture website. "I grew up watching Turner Classic Movies."

Yet how assiduously Warner Bros. Discovery will follow through on its stated commitment to TCM's mission remains open to question, as does whether the network can retain its stature in the cinephile community. The confidence that the network's fans had in its staff and hosts and their ability to provide a curated approach to film history has been deeply shaken.

Many in the film community are hoping that TCM may have suffered nothing more serious than a near-death experience. Whether that's so won't be known for some time. Everyone will be watching, but experience suggests that when public companies pledge to treat the cultural assets under their control as more than generators of cash and profits, it's wise to expect the worst.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/column-profit-driven-turmoil-turner-120049275.html

Too many classic films remain buried in studios’ vaults

BY MICHAEL HILTZIKBUSINESS COLUMNIST 

OCT. 23, 2015 5:48 PM PT

Will McKinley, a New York film writer, is dying to get his hands on a copy of “Alias Nick Beal,” a 1949 film noir starring Ray Milland as a satanic gangster. For classic film blogger Nora Fiore, the Grail might be “The Wild Party” (1929), the first talkie to star 1920’s “It” girl Clara Bow, directed by the pioneering female director Dorothy Arzner. Film critic Leonard Maltin says he’d like to score a viewing of “Hotel Haywire,” a 1937 screwball comedy written by the great comic director Preston Sturges.

Produced by Paramount Studios, these are all among 700 titles assumed to be nestled in the vaults of Universal Pictures, which inherited Paramount’s 1930s and 1940s film archive from its forebear MCA, which acquired the collection in 1958. They’re frustratingly near at hand but out of reach of film fans and cinephiles.

Like most of the other major studios, Universal is grappling with the challenging economics of making more of this hoard accessible to the public on DVD, video on demand or streaming video. Studios have come to realize that there’s not only marketable value in the films, but publicity value in performing as responsible stewards of cultural assets.

I would have to break the law to see that film.

— Cinephile Nora Fiore, of a 1932 classic locked in a studio vault

No studio recognizes these values better than Warner Bros., whose Warner Archives division is the industry gold standard in the care and marketing of the past. The studio sells some 2,300 titles, including TV series, as made-to-order DVDs and offers its own archival video streaming service for a subscription fee of up to $9.99 a month.

The manufacturing-on-demand service, launched in March 2009 with 150 titles, has proved “far more successful than we even dreamed,” says George Feltenstein, a veteran home video executive who heads the division. “I thought that all the studios would follow in our footsteps, but nobody has been as comprehensive as we’ve been.”

Other major studios have dipped their toes into this market, if gingerly. Paramount last year stocked a free YouTube channel with 91 of its own titles, mostly post-1949. This month 20th Century Fox announced that as part of its 100th anniversary this year, it would release 100 remastered classic films, including silents, to buy or rent for high-definition streaming — “enough to make any classic film fan weep with joy,” McKinley wrote on his blog. Sony last year introduced a free cable channel, get.tv, to screen films from its Columbia Pictures archive, though it’s only spottily available and often preempted by cable operators.

Universal offers some manufacture-on-demand titles via am*zon as its Universal Vault Series and announced in May that it would restore 15 of its silent films as part of its 2012 centennial celebration. Curiously, Universal, owned by the cable giant Comcast, is one of the only majors without a dedicated cable channel or Internet streaming service for its archive. Universal spokesperson Cindy Gardner maintains that the studio is working on ways to improve: “Stay tuned.”

Film buffs and historians have easier access to more classic films than ever before. But that only whets their appetite for important — but perhaps forgotten — films.

The 1932 Paramount World War I drama “Broken Lullaby,” Fiore says, might provoke a reexamination of the career of its director, the master of graceful comedy Ernst Lubitsch. But a version that crept onto YouTube a few years ago was taken down at the insistence of Universal. “I would have to break the law to see that film,” laments Fiore, who blogs on classic films in the guise of the Nitrate Diva.

“The studios seem to be sitting on a lot of films, but they’re limited by budget and by their projected return on investment,” says Alan Rode, a director of the Film Noir Foundation. “But it’s not like you open a valve and films come gushing out. If they can’t realize a profit on it, they’re not going to do it.”

Adding to the challenge is that some of the major studios have become subsidiaries of large corporations, and not consistently huge profit centers. For example, Paramount last year contributed about 26% of the $13.8 billion in revenue of its parent, Viacom, but its $205 million in operating profit paled next to the $2.4 billion net income recorded by the whole corporation.

Converting a film title for digital release can be costly, especially under the watchful eye of cinephiles who demand high quality. Some black-and-white titles can be digitized for $40,000 or less, says Jan-Christopher Horak, director of the UCLA Film & Television Archive — with 350,000 titles, the second-largest in the U.S. after only the Library of Congress.

But the price rises exponentially for color, especially for important restoration. UCLA spent about three years and $1.5 million in donated funds on its heroic restoration and digital transfer of the Technicolor classic “The Red Shoes,” a 1948 backstage ballet drama revered for its beauty.

That means that when deciding which titles to prepare for digital release, archive managers must walk a tightrope between serving their audience and protecting the bottom line. Some classics are easy calls. “There always will be a place on the retail shelf for ‘Casablanca,’ ‘King Kong’ or ‘Citizen Kane,’” says Warner’s Feltenstein. But finer judgments are required for what Feltenstein calls “the deeper part of the library.”

“My job is to monetize that content, make it available to the largest number of people possible and do so profitably,” Feltenstein told me. To gauge demand, Feltenstein’s staff keeps lines open with film enthusiasts and historians via Facebook, Twitter, a free weekly podcast and other outreach. “They literally ask us, ‘What do you want to see?’” Fiore says.

That gives them a window into values that others might miss. Take B-movie westerns made in the 1940s and 1950s that landed in the Warners vault. To Allied Artists and Lorimar, their producers, “these films were worthless and they said it’s OK to let them rot,” Feltenstein says. Instead, Warner Archives packaged them into DVD collections, “and they’ve all been nicely profitable.”

Feltenstein says Warners is releasing 30 more titles to its manufacturing-on-demand library every month. “It’s growing precipitously and there’s no end in sight.” Universal’s Gardner says there’s “real momentum” at her studio behind “making our titles more available than ever before.”

But there’s always more beckoning over the horizon. “The good news is that every studio is actively engaged in taking care of its library,” Maltin says. “That’s a big improvement over 20 or 25 years ago. But access is the final frontier.”

[UPDATE: Nell Minow, whose excellent blog on film can be found at Movie Mom and who is a fan of “Alias Nick Beal,” reports that the title character, played by Ray Milland, is more than merely a “satanic gangster” as we describe him above--he’s Satan.]

Michael Hiltzik’s column appears every Sunday. His new book is “Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention That Launched the Military-Industrial Complex.” Read his blog every day at latimes.com/business/hiltzik, reach him at mhiltzik@latimes.com, check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @hiltzikm on Twitter.

https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-20151025-column.html

It's called war sweetie:) well said. People forget the USA was made from war. The native american was slaughtered by the colonial settlers who then made the usa's first thirteen states. But while the history books don't suggest war, that was war. I think the woman king handled slavery well. But I will explain, they showed that the institution of slavery was bigger than the Agoji warriors. Glory doesn't deal with the civil war any better than The Woman King dealt with the Slave Trade. 
hahaha chicken, can't crawl for your country:) 
Exactly, well, the question isn't will all humans regardless of phenotype go to see movies with all black people. Most films , including all white ones, lose money. Do the white producers, who produce most films connected to the usa, want to lost money on the all black films that do not become Black PAnther or The Woman King. 
Great mentioning the credits content.

The Woman King Search
https://aalbc.com/tc/search/?&q=the woman king&type=core_statuses_status&quick=1&author=richardmurray&search_and_or=and&sortby=relevancy
 

First act, a set of educators, i think college are helping a colleague leave but they all have an affinity to this colleague, a curiosity about his nature. I concur with Bixby, real human beings are not alarmist and in this select case, all of these are seasoned educators used to slowly thinking about something, so they wouldn't call the cops or paddy wagon immediately. 

Why did I not guess the black leather jacket would call someone from outside first. I thought it would be billingly's character the physics or chemistry professor.

Second act, a female teacher loves him, reminds me of that twilight zone , Long Live Walter JAmeson, by the dead early Charles Beaumont, but extended.

I love Crude demonstration , hilarious, I am not superman. Loving Tony Todd's acting. 

27:34 first seeing the ocean

28:42 he studied with the buddha, and i loved the earlier birth of the vampire myth

29:06 the first betrayal of character, leather jacket should had considered he think of being outed. Considering he called someone he is either biding time or betraying himself.

29:38 ahh well done, he was expecting, 

30:31 i wish i had been here from the beginning, I concur:) 

32:16 he survived the bubonic plague, typhoid , smallpox

32:53 good point, being immortal in a cage isn't desired

33:33 black leather is wrong, common sense isn't insulted by an immortal being, common sense accepts tthe unique is plausible even if it can't not be explained.

35:19 true Tony todd, but time is also the most precious thing in existence.

35:52 exactly, the second is a human construct. an algorithmic truth, not assessed from nature.

36:27 funny moment. slow movie but for those who like to overthink and like dialog fun

37:21 is he lucky? that is the point of the story

39:41 exactly, he is outside most of humanity yet still human, a minority of one

41:46 I love that he didn't go into his past wives or children by the invasive psychiatrist

42:50 good point, the one great chaotic moment is the "immortal man" chose to even do this. I comprehend the writer's point. It is a random idea in one of many lives. But I must admit, my long lived characters wouldn't do this, unless they wish to be caught or have their cycle of lives undone.

43:07 he didn't think of these people's feelings before he told them ahhh, i disagree bixby.

43:37 the psychiatrist, white haired is trying to pull off a guilt trip, i bet he was diagnosed to die soon

44:50 ahh i knew it was a tragedy, the psychiatrist wife died yesterday
I love it, permit me to be infantile by myself. 

46:58 my first wedding funny charades

47:54 this movie clearly couldn't make it in theaters.

48:48 love his answer to 1292 ad

50:04 funny, about the primitive tribe in new guinea:)

51:03 the older woman is a hard core christian

51:47 no way skipping the biblical figure, and now he wants to call it a night, this is what you get when you ask those who study knowledge about a person who has lived longer than common

53:10 he is jesus hahaha! 

53:24 sit down edith, i know 

54:16 yes, sit down edith, lovely honesity from the biologist about his kin

54:41 tony todd, modern, that's good:)

55:29 ahh he is espousing the old belief that jesus learned buddhist ways. it makes sense historically in one way. Buddhism is older than the roman empire, and from the travelers, who were common at that time, labeled magi, who traveled freely in the roman empire because of the might of the roman empire... ok.

56:41 exactly, Tony Todd, christianity was born from the multiracial roman empire. 

58:26 good point, buddha /jesus/the christian god, may not be happy 

59:04 you can tell this was written on bixby's deathbed, a great mortuary story. I wonder what I will write in my last moments.

59:35 hhahaha, the psychiatrist came back:) haha soul saved:) 

1:00:00 nice bridge, we don't need to reintroduce the old topics for the psychiatrist, his shame on leaving.

1:00:53 great joke, nothing unusual in the path of the psychiatrist until the day he met a caveman who thought himself jesus

1:01:46 piety is the mistake they bring to the lessons haha, he is on a roll, Bixby is enjoying himself in his last days

1:03:10 thank you biologist, people make to light the influence of drugs, no, if he is taking a drug it isn't making him go up or down be violent or peaceful, it isn't changing him at all

1:04:20 thank you tony todd, i don't blame you, stay calm and relax.

1:04:55 exactly, psychiatrist, or the modern mythologies of MLKjr or Adolf Hitler

1:07:42 Its funny , in a group called african american literary book club, do you know how many black members suggest the usa will be forever? why is that? why is it, black people who knows kemet has all other human communities by thousands of years will be bested by the usa? what are blacks in the usa afraid of?.... 

1:08:20 how do you know?  I don't smell it. 
exactly, you know when it will rain , all humans do. 

1:09:20 etymology, this does happen. words matter.

1:10:25 good acting, they are all trapped by this story of their colleague

1:11:00 if edith says you aren't jesus one more time

1:11:56 edith have broken down , the psychiatrist had to shed light

1:12:49 the psychiatrist is wrong, he doesn't demand the truth, he demands the lie to keep peace

1:13:44 he is bluffing, well done, he is giving them safety

1:14:22 easy tonny todd:) he want to kill him

1:15:44 it ends safe, well done bixby, he lets the thinkers get off easy

1:16:25 exactly , the woman who lives him is right. 

1:17:59 edith knows. she will leave it

1:18:14 Tony Todd, a latitude in what we call reality... anything is possible
I am going to watch star trek. and yes, good move tony todd
Drop me a line whenever

1:19:34 the psychiatrist found out
easy psychiatrist , the break down. ahh well done, Bixby, ahh the psychiatrist was a man he knew. 

1;21:45 exactly, he never saw his own child again.

1:22:34 yes, let her decide

hahaha, great hook, who knows, let the viewer decide.

IN CONCLUSION
Ok, this movie was fun, but not for the general audience. Alittle careless of him, but that is part of John's humanity, humans even long living one's will make mistakes. 
I know this is an aside, but i love the credits , they are large enough to see and slow enough to follow, many movies have very uncaring or cheap credits.

I say, this is a well constructed example of someone long lived revealing themselves in a paraspontaneous way.

Just thoughtfulness.

I didn't time index from the begining cause I was watching it side relatives , we do those things in our home, but I am glad my relatives went to watch other things as I could write more specifically and i forgot some points early on:) 

Malenga Mulendema 

Creator of Supa Team 4

My Reply to her replies to the questions posed to Malenga Mulendema

0:12 What is the project that you pitched to the Story Lab?
Triggerfish is a firm in south africa, I think white owned, that was given opportunity by netflix to be an animation studio for their animation project in africa. 
Triggerish invited artist from africa, gardless of phenotype, to submit and Malenga was selected. 
her pitchline is four black teenage girls saving the world on a budget, not a premise I will think of but ok.

0:30 Why did you chose that story?
Well, as always I have a problem when people don't speak properly. She said, as a girl she liked watching cartoons absent stating all the cartoons were made outside africa. Araciality in assessing the genesis of art is a sin. Yes, a black girl from Zambia, didn't see cartoons made by black people or zambians  or involve black characters cause most cartoons in the market were made by whites of european or asian descent who made characters that are white of european or asian descent. No artist has to consider all groups in humanity in their art. 
I am happy she has the opportunity to have her creative vision. The four different types of young females will definitely attract an audience. She wants characters that showcase how the majority in the african continent, under governments that do not promote industry aside a wealthy minority that accept the usa/european imposed system of being a king in all but name  happily to evade responsibility to their larger community how they utilize their wealthy, have to figure out how to use resources that are scarce or foreign to come up with solutions. 

0:53 Why do you think your project was chosen?
Oh my fellow artists, very few have the honesty to admit, pure luck. She talks about how her story stayed true to something or has universal themes. hogwash, she got lucky. She was the only story triggerfish saw that stayed true to something or had universal themes, hogwash. She got lucky. Why do artists throughout history keep suggesting commercial opportunity is based on creative merit. It isn't. She was selected because she got lucky. ... I am hapyp for her luck, and hope she gets luckier, but all this, commercial meritocracy crap I hear many artists utter all the time is a lie. Creative assessment has artistic merits. Commercial opportunity is a thing of luck.

1:10 Describe the process once accepted in Story Lab?
Funny how Walt Disney was fired from the firm he worked at that stole his character and he decided to start his own firm and do as he pleased, and he got lucky and succeeded. While now, people from Disney are guiding people all over the world on how to get into animation without telling them to start their own business and create as long as you can, hopefully getting lucky.

1:43 How did the Project evolve during development?
It is called preproduction. But she is correct, the word refinement is best. Though remember, producers can demand things, ala Kevin Smith and the pitch to superman.

2:06 What was your main challenge during development?
The fact that she felt she didn't believe she belonged explains one thing, she never would had started her own animation studio or tried to make animations like walt disney who started the walt disney company. 
Not believing in yourself is devastating for any artist.

2:32 What was your main takeaway from the development process?
Well, she says you can always make better, but I don't like that language. 
Is any artists fully satisfied with a finished work? no. Butsaying you can always make better suggest a project is never finished, this isn't true. 
I prefer to say, I can always gain experience, not make things better. As you gain experience you grow.

2:47 Any advice for anyone wanting to create an animated series?
The one answer that showed wisdom from beginning to end, make the show you want to see.

3:07 Where are you now with the project?
3:21 What are the next steps?
This interview is behind. Supa Team 4 is coming out July 20th 2023
say Congrats folks!!

TRANSCRIPT
 

0:00

[Music]

0:06

my name is Mulenga me and Emma and

0:08

America from Lusaka Zambia

0:13

okay so the product has admitted to

0:15

trigger 50-lap competition is code my

0:17

Mac a super foe and it's an animated TV

0:20

series set in Lusaka Zambia about 4

0:22

African girls who are recruited to a

0:24

former secret agents low-budget

0:26

operation so basically they are saving

0:28

the world but on a budget

0:32

if the growing up I used to love to

0:34

watch a lot of cartoons so I'd never see

0:36

myself represented in any way so in my

0:38

Mackay super 4 I get to see myself on

0:41

screen and I get to see my city or the

0:43

context that I live in represented in a

0:45

way only cartoons can and this show also

0:47

shows how Africans are resourceful or

0:51

innovative

0:55

okay I think this show was selected

0:58

because it does a good balance of

1:00

staying true to what specific to to the

1:02

store in terms of the carat and the

1:03

location but it still has those

1:05

universal themes that anybody anywhere

1:06

in the world can relate

1:12

so why is the project

1:14

cept it in two-story lab I got the

1:16

opportunity to go to triggerfish and

1:17

attend the workshop so we had Pilar

1:19

lissandra a screenwriting consultant who

1:21

took us into different topics on spin

1:25

writing and we also had worked a

1:28

workshop with Aaron rose from Disney who

1:30

basically just told us a lot of

1:31

information about how to bring an

1:33

animated TV series to screen as I got

1:36

the opportunity to go to Disney World

1:37

and learn from different different

1:39

departments about bringing an animated

1:40

TV series to screen

1:44

so the project didn't change in a major

1:48

way but what happened is a lot of things

1:50

we're refined in the concept the

1:51

characters the story itself and and the

1:56

episodes that were written as well were

1:57

also refined so the overall project has

2:00

just been going through like a series of

2:02

refining

2:06

so my main challenge during the

2:09

development process was convincing

2:11

myself that I sort of belonged to this

2:13

animation world because it was very new

2:15

to me but I relied on the fact that at

2:18

least I understood story and story felt

2:21

like the foundation to everything so

2:22

every time I felt like I was going into

2:25

a panic I just remembered that okay I

2:27

have an understanding of story and

2:28

everything felt a little bit easier

2:34

my main takeaway from the development

2:36

process is that you can always you know

2:39

make your story better and you can

2:41

always make your characters better so

2:43

just keep working at at your story your

2:45

concept and your characters

2:50

my advice to anybody trying to create an

2:53

animated TV series is to create a TV

2:55

series that you yourself want to see

2:57

because once you think of something that

2:59

you want to see you in television you

3:01

become more invested and more

3:02

enthusiastic about about the story and

3:05

the show itself

3:09

so at the moment we are reworking the

3:12

pitch Bible and trying to get a pile of

3:15

script done and also we're trying to

3:17

create an animatic for the project

3:23

at the moment we've signed development

3:26

deal with kake entertainment a global

3:28

distributor and licensing agent and we

3:31

have deal with the major broadcaster

3:34

[Music]

English (auto-generated)

AllFrom Triggerfish Animation StudioAnimated filmsRelatedRecently uploadedWatched

The director Ryan Coogler on the set of “Wakanda Forever.” Does he want to direct more “Black Panther” movies? “I’ll do it as long as folks will have me.”Credit...Annette Brown/Marvel

The ‘Black Panther’ Sequel That Never Was

Writer-director Ryan Coogler and co-screenwriter Joe Robert Cole reveal the original plot for “Wakanda Forever” and discuss working in the Marvel universe.

By Reggie Ugwu

The “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” screenwriters Ryan Coogler and Joe Robert Cole are just coming up for air. A month after release, the much anticipated follow-up to the original “Black Panther” (2018) is well situated, still screening at more than 3,000 theaters heading into the holiday weekend. The film has received mostly positive reviews from critics and holds the year’s second-highest performance at the box office, after “Top Gun: Maverick.” To date, it has grossed more than $420 million domestically and nearly $800 million overall.

Things could have gone much differently.

“This film was difficult in ways that only the people who made it would know,” Coogler said in a recent interview. “There are things we put in there that felt revolutionary, that challenged the definition of having ‘a good time’ in a movie like this.”

The death of Chadwick Boseman, who played the title role in the original film — a noble but untested leader of the fictional African promised land Wakanda — forced a radical reimagining of the franchise. Coogler and Cole had recently sent Boseman a completed first draft of the script when the actor succumbed to a secret bout with colon cancer.

Their eventual rewrite opened with the death of Boseman’s character, T’Challa, turning the $250 million superhero film that followed into what can be fairly described as an extended meditation on grief and recovery.

In a recent joint conversation over video, the screenwriters discussed their original vision for a “Black Panther” sequel, how they addressed the loss of Boseman, and balancing the demands of their story with those of the broader Marvel Cinematic Universe.

These are edited — and spoiler-filled — excerpts from the conversation.

What was it like collaborating this time?

RYAN COOGLER Last time we went back and forth. Joe had already started when I came on. I think I tried to go for a draft, but I was taking too long and so he jumped in. Then we would get notes from the studio, and we would just kind of divide and conquer. On the second one, we were doing it over the pandemic, so we couldn’t meet up. But Final Draft [the screenwriting software] came out with this update where we could both work in the script at the same time. It was an amazing feature. Very productive, very fun.

JOE ROBERT COLE It allowed us to bridge that feeling of being in a room and just spitballing ideas.

COOGLER Then we took that hit, bro, when Chad passed. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I didn’t know how we were going to pull ourselves up and figure it out. Thank God for Joe and the collaborative process, man. It would’ve been impossible for me to write this thing on my own.

In the initial draft of the script, before Chadwick’s death, how were you looking at the story? What were the challenges?

COOGLER It was, “What are we going to do about the Blip?” [In Marvel’s “Avengers: Infinity War,” T’Challa is one of billions of people who suddenly vanish, only to be brought back by the Avengers five years later.] That was the challenge. It was absolutely nothing like what we made. It was going to be a father-son story from the perspective of a father, because the first movie had been a father-son story from the perspective of the sons.

In the script, T’Challa was a dad who’d had this forced five-year absence from his son’s life. The first scene was an animated sequence. You hear Nakia [T’Challa’s love interest, played by Lupita Nyong’o] talking to Toussaint [the couple’s child, introduced in “Wakanda Forever” in a post-credits sequence]. She says, “Tell me what you know about your father.” You realize that he doesn’t know his dad was the Black Panther. He’s never met him, and Nakia is remarried to a Haitian dude. Then, we cut to reality and it’s the night that everybody comes back from the Blip. You see T’Challa meet the kid for the first time.

Then it cuts ahead three years and he’s essentially co-parenting. We had some crazy scenes in there for Chad, man. Our code name for the movie was “Summer Break,” and the movie was about a summer that the kid spends with his dad. For his eighth birthday, they do a ritual where they go out into the bush and have to live off the land. But something happens and T’Challa has to go save the world with his son on his hip. That was the movie.

Was Namor, the leader of the undersea nation Talokan in “Wakanda Forever,” still the villain?

COOGLER Yeah. But it was a combination. Val [the C.I.A. director, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus] was much more active. It was basically a three-way conflict between Wakanda, the U.S. and Talokan. But it was all mostly from the child’s perspective.

In the new version, the opening scene is T’Challa’s death. Why did you decide to start there?

COLE Just practically, everyone was going to be waiting to see how we dealt with it, so doing it right up front made sense. In terms of the characters, we needed to introduce a different version of Shuri [T’Challa’s sister, played by Letitia Wright]. We’re showing the moment that she becomes a different person than the person we met. She’s the smartest person in the world, but she can’t save her brother. What does that do to you?

COOGLER We wanted to have an emotionally intelligent conversation. It’s about the transformative quality of grief and trauma. There’s this expectation with emotional trauma that you just need time. “Oh, give them a couple weeks off; they’ll come back to work and get back to it.” But that person is completely different in some ways. You just don’t see it because the change isn’t visible.

T’Challa’s death is attributed to an illness, but it seems sudden and inexplicable, which profoundly unsettles Shuri. Why did you make that choice?

COOGLER We wanted to keep it simple. At the end of the day, what mattered is that she had a self-expectation of being able to be solve it and she failed. And we didn’t want her to have anywhere to displace her anger. If somebody else would’ve taken T’Challa out, Shuri would’ve looked for that person. We wanted it to be a situation where the only place to go was internal.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s character has appeared in other Marvel properties and is being set up as a major antagonist in the studio’s future projects, including the “Thunderbolts” movie due in 2024. Is it challenging to incorporate characters or story lines from the broader Marvel Cinematic Universe?

COLE Ryan will have a different perspective as the director, but I’ve never had a conversation where I was asked to incorporate something that didn’t feel organic. The dynamic of the U.S. being an instigator and Western powers being an instigator, that always existed. It wasn’t, “Oh, we need to find a reason to make this character exist.” It was, “Oh, this is already in here and there’s this wonderful actress available.” It always starts from the story and the ideas.

COOGLER Yeah, nobody was shoehorned in or asked to be put into the movie or anything like that. Actually, in this version, [Louis-Dreyfus’s role] was pared back in order to make space for dealing with T’Challa’s death. And we had Val in there before she even appeared in any of the other movies, before “Black Widow” and [the series] “Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” People assume that we were told to put her in, but she was there from the beginning.

Ryan, what’s your appetite to tell more stories in the world of Wakanda?

COOGLER I feel blessed that I have the opportunity to work on these movies, bro. When I got asked to do the first one, it was like a moving train. I thank God every day that I was able to jump on it and meet these people, these actors, and to meet Chadwick during some of the last years of his life. I’ll do it as long as folks will have me. But I think it’s bigger than just me or Joe. Between the first and second movie, we made $2 billion at the box office, which is what matters the most to corporations. So I hope that it continues, man. I hope people are still making movies about Wakanda long after we’re gone.

Reggie Ugwu is a pop culture reporter covering a range of subjects, including film, television, music and internet culture. Before joining The Times in 2017, he was a reporter for BuzzFeed News and Billboard magazine. @uugwuu

URL : https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/23/arts/ryan-coogler-black-panther-wakanda-forever.html

Jacobs-Jenkins, far left, on the “Kindred” set during filming. “In honoring Octavia’s book, I’m trying to find new things to talk about,” he said.Credit...Tina Rowden/FX

‘Kindred’ Creator Wants Viewers to ‘Question Their Assumptions’

In his TV adaptation of the Octavia Butler novel, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins changed parts of the story but kept the author’s focus on “making the familial political.”

By Salamishah Tillet

Dec. 26, 2022

“If a ‘Kindred’ movie is ever made, I wouldn’t be involved,” Octavia Butler wrote in a letter in 2000. “It won’t be my movie, and I suspect it won’t look much like my book.”

It was yet another Butler prediction that was mostly on target, though she was wrong about the format. Adapted by the playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins for FX on Hulu, “Kindred” is neither a film nor a completely faithful interpretation of the novel. But it comes at a time when there is more interest in Butler’s body of work than ever before, and in how her prolific writing, mainly science fiction novels, continues to resonate with our world more than 15 years after her death.

“Kindred” is Butler’s most well-known and often-taught novel. Published in 1979, it tells the story of Dana Franklin, a 26-year-old African American writer who repeatedly and unexpectedly travels from 1976 to a mid-19th-century plantation in Maryland. Each time Dana arrives in the past, she finds herself saving the life of Rufus Weylin, her white slaveholding ancestor; she returns to the present only when her own life is at risk.

In a 1988 interview with the literary critic Larry McCaffery, Butler said that “Kindred,” with its blend of genres, periods and antebellum histories, was informed by ideological debates she had during college in the 1960s, about the extent to which slaves should have rebelled against their masters.

Knowing this, Jacobs-Jenkins sought to capture those tensions while updating the story to convey the complexity of our post-Obama racial reality. A lifelong Butler fan, he wanted to turn “Kindred” into a television series as far back as 2010, when he debuted his first full-length play, “Neighbors,” at the Public Theater.

The drama was well regarded, but it was Jacobs-Jenkins’s 2014 Obie-award-winning play, “An Octoroon,” that established him as one of America’s most exciting young playwrights. A satirical adaptation of Dion Boucicault’s “The Octoroon,” a 19th-century melodrama about the tragic love story between a European-educated white plantation owner and the play’s titular character, an enslaved woman, the play inspired critical raves and hot ticket sales. In his review for The New York Times, Ben Brantley wrote that its success “seemed to confirm the reputation of its author as one of this country’s most original and illuminating writers about race.”

Even then, Jacobs-Jenkins remained committed to “Kindred.” In 2015, he persuaded Courtney Lee-Mitchell, the rights holder of the novel, that it should be a television series and not a movie as previously imagined by other potential producers and even by Butler herself. The decision to stretch the story over multiple seasons has drawn some criticism. (All eight episodes of Season 1 are available on Hulu, but the series has not yet been renewed.)

Nevertheless, Jacobs-Jenkins hopes that his expansion of the novel’s universe encourages more people to discover Butler’s writing for themselves.

“After watching this, I want people to question their assumptions about what they think they know about history, about themselves,” he said. “I want them to read Octavia’s work.”

In a video interview earlier this month, Jacobs-Jenkins talked about his introduction to Butler’s writing, the motivations behind some of his changes to her story and why he thinks television and theaters need even more stories about slavery. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.

When did you first come in contact with “Kindred”?

My relationship with Butler preceded my engagement with “Kindred.” I was one of those kids reading Stephen King on the playground for no good reason, and Ray Bradbury’s novels were important transitional objects for me too. I was like 12 or 13 when I had a babysitter who went to Howard, who was a Black nerd, too. She told me, “You should read Octavia Butler.” So I started with her Patternist series. And when I got to college, I read her on an African American studies syllabus and remember thinking, Oh, this person I read for fun is important academically. That is also when I learned of “Kindred,” which was oddly one of my later introductions to her work.

Before, when I was reading her, it felt very much still like a secret; it felt good to be a part of that weird underground. And now, she’s been mainstreamed in this gigantic way.

How did this adaptation come about?

Slavery is the material of my creative life. I remember becoming obsessed with the visual work of Kara Walker, Glenn Ligon and Kerry James Marshall and wondered why they were so ahead of theater. So back then, I said, I’m going to deep-dive these people, and I’m going to write a play based on my deep dive. I just inhaled whatever their discourse was and tried to translate it into a theater space. And the truth is, my creative life is also ultimately guided by fandom on some level, and I remember rereading “Kindred” in 2010 and thinking, This is a TV show. It was a eureka moment.

I immediately started figuring out how to get the rights. It had been under option since 1979 because people kept trying to make a movie out of it. And I was like, It’s not a movie. Because the whole book is about the experience of time’s passage and watching people transform, witnessing their development, growth, decay and shift of their allegiances. It took six years for me to get the rights, and then my task became trying to translate it and ultimately peel back the layers for people.

Speaking of time passages, her novel was set in 1976 to coincide with the bicentennial year of the Declaration of Independence. Why did you set the series in 2016?

Along the way, I became very friendly with Merrilee Heifetz, Butler’s literary executor and her lifelong agent. One of the things she said to me was, “Octavia would’ve wanted you to make this for now.” So I took that to heart. I think 2016 was that last gasp of naïveté about how we had processed the legacies of this racial regime that the country’s founded on. Do you remember the day after Obama was elected, suddenly, there was a discussion of a phrase called post-race? I remember asking, “What is that?” I also think because people did not see the results of the 2016 [presidential] election coming, we suddenly felt like we were backsliding as a country. “Kindred” was the ultimate metaphor for that, too.

Another surprising change was your inclusion of her mother as a major character. What inspired that story line?

Merrilee also told me that Octavia referred to this book as one she never quite cracked. That interested me because this is her most widely read and known book, and that also sent me to her archives, which had just been cataloged at the Huntington Library.

I read every draft of “Kindred,” and there are ones in which she experimented with this mother figure. In her canon, she’s obsessed with mothers. I don’t want to be psychoanalyzing another artist, but her relationship with her mother was very complicated. Merrilee told me once that she would say, “Octavia, I want you to write a memoir.” And she would say, “I’ve already written a memoir; it’s called ‘Kindred.’”

Unlike many other contemporary representations of enslaved people in television and film, Dana is not by herself. She has a community in each of her periods to help her. Why was this important to portray?

I think Octavia was obsessed with family. I mean, it’s called “Kindred,” and it is about making the familial political. My approach was to always think of what she was doing and try to echo or expand on that universe — I took all my cues from her, except for setting it in 2016. At the same time, she was always trying to understand why tribalism exists, why genes are so varied as a concept, how they’re weaponized to oppress people and what oppression ultimately is rooted in.

Dana has to make some hard choices for herself and often risks the lives of other enslaved African Americans to ensure that she continues to exist in the present. How did you approach bringing her moral ambiguity to the screen?

That’s an essential part of the book, and I think that’s what makes Dana interesting. Most folks are not participating in active insurrection but are fighting in small ways to maintain their agency. This is driven home in Dana, who says to herself: “Wait a minute, to ensure my existence, I have become someone who might destroy or erase the existences of countless people. I want to be perceived as good, and I want to think that my goodness will rub off on Rufus too.” But playing both sides isn’t how justice happens. You wind up being morally compromised in all your actions if you are still thinking about yourself. That’s the interesting challenge she has to negotiate.

Why did you think a multi-season arc was best for this story versus adapting it as a single-season limited series?

I just didn’t think you could do this book in eight hours. It’s about being with people over time and really feeling these tectonic shifts in their personhood. I thought the idea of squeezing in six different actors for Rufus would have felt like a party trick. I’m sure that someone out there could have made that thing, but I just really wanted to give us the fullest canvas I could to tell the story.

Do you ever worry that audiences will grow weary of stories on slavery?

There is this interesting quota that we all want to put on stories about slavery, and I think that question is often asked only of Black creatives. There are a thousand shows on the air about rich white families doing evil sympathetically, and no one puts a quota on that. I think it’s interesting that there’s this desire to police any storytelling about a creative’s history. I mean, this is my history and my family history.

I also think people are worried, afraid of, or sick of the tropes and stereotypes that come with this work and are waiting for the familiar scene in which some female enslaved person is raped or someone is tied to a pole or a tree and whipped. But in honoring Octavia’s book, I’m trying to find new things to talk about. We should never stop telling these stories, especially when people try to erase them from history books.

Salamishah Tillet is a contributing critic at large for The Times and a professor at Rutgers University. She won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2022, for columns examining race and Black perspectives as the arts and entertainment world responded to the Black Lives Matter moment with new works. @salamishah

URL : https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/26/arts/television/kindred-branden-jacobs-jenkins-octavia-butler.html

OMELETO

My thoughts
I watched this... this is lovely this is lovely ... I will be blunt, the black community globally has a problem. It has been oppressed for hundreds of years and has gained a majority 
URL
https://youtu.be/ab8IUtHG1iA

Marvin Gaye 1983 Interview

paraphrases

One can't have hits if one isn't commercial

I won't have any credibility unless I am on top

People don't comprehend record artist like painters 

I am awfully afraid of getting there, looks like only one way from there

So if I have to do sex so they can listen to social topics 

Worst rock bottom moment in the last seven years when i tried to commit suicide by an overdose of cocaine

I was in love with my wife at my time, and I couldn't handle the rejection... I thought I was king of the world now I am prince

I never played with the other kids when I was little.

One can never be a fine artist if one hasn't lived and experienced life's negatives. 

I look upon the motown days as times I wouldn't pay a million dollars for but I also would pay a million dollars to have the experience again.

I would like to start with motown again but i would like to write the script different to be a little happier.

I hate those human feelings, I like the feelings of an artist

The last time Lou Rawls won one he gave me a smile, it gave me chills , I told my wife i would tackle him and grab the award

In music, disk jockeys, feel free to edit and tamper... in fact its the reason why I left motown and asked berry gordy to release me. my last album was tampered with horribly and .. is hwy i asked to be released. 

I'd rather never have a hit than for my music to be touched

It's taken about a few years, about 400 or so , for white america to come to the point where they feel rhythm and blues... or rhythm and pop , these categories kill me too, is acceptable

There was a time you couldn't bring a soul record into the home in white america

It all started in the rock and roll era when elvis and everybody was taken after chuck berry it slowly started to change

Basically it is a white artist doing the same thing a black artist is doing but it is acceptable when a white artist, with black artist it is raw

let's take reggae for instance, bob marley is very interesting, he has taken his roots music, but bob marley is intelligent enough, or was , god bless him and i love him, he took the roots music and was smart enough to incorporate some of the western music. 

And he took the rawness from it so it can be accepted by other nationalities.

After a while there will be no categories, music will be music

There are those who want to hold on to the last vestiges of their prejudices, meaning , a little thing, like winning an american music award and winning in all categories and then you watch the television the next day and who won the pop category dah dha dha dah and they will not show who won the soul category. we will not admit that. I am a rhythm and blues artist and soul artist and black singer, it doesn't take anything from my humanity

Marvin gaye won in the soul category, other artist take my work and can be announced as winners in their categories , why can't I be announced. That's not very nice

I want to say the ted turner news agency out of atlanta showed the r and b winners.I just thought i wanted to share that, good man.

Maybe a far right station in ohio. 
URL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L63XR2hFgpg

IN AMENDMENT

Marvin Gaye stated his success with sexual healing was a sort of revenge. And it made me think about so many different types of artists who have said similar in my memory. Artists who came back to the top always speak of the people, whose names can't be mentioned or will not be mentioned, that basically knocked down or didn't support when they were down, and I wonder how to end that aspect of entertainment culture.
I am not ignorant, I comprehend the commonality, but I also realize, something in the USA keeps it alive. Is it the fiscal capitalism? the greed of people is so pure when one stops making money they are treated as if they never did. IS it the yes culture to success? People who can't  stand you are trained in USA culture to act like loving friends till they can finally kick you without penalty. I wonder.

IN AMENDMENT PART 2

In some ways he is right. Pop music, which is short for popular music, which at its roots means, music of the people, is the last label, cause modern music labeled pop contains hybrids of many musical styles, so that day is coming where the way in which music is advertised or approached will require a major linguistical shift.

IN AMENDMENT PART 3

Marvin Gaye said reaching the top only has one destination from there, going down, his transcendence is the only out. I wish it would had not been forced.

Octavia Tried To Tell Us XXIV: KINDRED Goes Hollywood

Some thoughts on making black male characters impotent in film and the use of black literature in film as an adaptation

In the discussion between Tananarive Due side Monica Coleman many excellent points were made but two I want to focus on.

First, I thought of Denzel Washington's career and the only three earliest films I can think where he wasn't married already or physically unable to fornicate <the bone collector> was the mighty quinn , mo better blues, plus devil in a blue dress. 
In devil in a blue dress he has various interest from various females, so the only normal for a male lead of a certain age. 
In mighty quinn, he desires a single mom whom he knew before the baby. 
And in Mo Better Blues he ignores the woman he has known for a while for a stylized woman but when he falls, he goes to the women waiting for him:) I know poor lauren bacall in Bright Leaf. Few women in my view matched patricia neal's "villainous" in this film
So I concur it is rare for black males in hollywood <white financed film> historically

Second, I thought on Tananarive Due's thoughts on adaptations. 
From Oscar Michaeux to Ousmane Sembene to Julie Dash many Black filmmakers are used to writing their own work to be filmed. and white filmmakers created a heritage of using white literature to make films that have black characters, ala Uncle Remus or Porgy and Bess. 
It is rarest for films to be adapted from black literature absent the black writer being the black director. 
Sequentially, a the goal by denzel to adapt all of august wilson's works into films, while a start, needs a greatr follow up of adaptions by black literary work from the 1800s.                                               

URL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=178amUHLmRA&feature=emb_imp_woyt
IN AMENDMENT 
A great scene in 12 years a slave is when the white wife of fastbender the slaveowner demands lupita nyongo's slave be sold and fastbender says with a reality that the two panelist support as real, that patsy is his best earner, she can't go, but fastbender in his expression also shows, how his slave master would love to put his white wife out in the field after her demand, displaying from his vantage point she is merely one step from the enslaved.

prior post
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2182&type=status

Juneteenth 2023 review

This Juneteenth 2023 I asked the larger community to come up with a unique cultural tradition and none came forth. 

White people say : 1949-1973 displacement programs removed over a million people and two thirds were black. 

Name an idea for a unique Juneteenth celebration
https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/10318-juneteenth-2023-name-an-idea-for-a-unique-celebration/

Most Black Leaders didn't advocate for reparations even though most Black people wanted and that made the usa, but it came with a negative price for Black people
https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/10327-most-black-leaders-didnt-advocate-for-reparations-even-though-most-black-people-wanted-and-that-made-the-usa-but-it-came-with-a-negative-price-for-black-people/

Movement to return land taken from Black and Indigenous people in the U.S. gains momentum
Jun 9, 2023 6:35 PM EDT
As cities and states across the country consider various forms of reparations, California has led the way in returning land to the descendants of the dispossessed. This includes African Americans and Native Americans. But as Stephanie Sy reports, the wealth, the community and the opportunities lost are not easily recovered.

Read the Full Transcript
Amna Nawaz:

As cities and states across the country consider various forms of reparations, California has led the way in returning land to the descendants of the dispossessed. That includes African Americans and Native Americans.

But, as Stephanie Sy reports, the wealth, the community and the opportunities lost are not easily recovered.

Stephanie Sy:

The story of Bruce's Beach is a story about what could and should have been.

Over 100 years ago, an industrious Black woman in Southern California dreamt of owning a beach resort, but was refused whenever she tried. Willa Bruce eventually acquired land in Manhattan Beach, telling The Los Angeles Times in 1912: "I own this land, and I'm going to keep it."

She and her husband, Charles, built a lodge, a place where Black vacationers could enjoy a stay at the beach.

Patricia Bruce-Carter, Relative of Bruce Family: They were having a beautiful time, and they built it to share, because whenever people came to California, they wanted them to have somewhere to go.

Kavon Ward, Founder, Where Is My Land:

When I think about Charles and Willa Bruce, I think about entrepreneurs, I think about Black excellence, I think about community.

George Fatheree III, Attorney For Bruce Family:

The reality is, the Bruces and their patrons were wealthy.

Stephanie Sy:

A stately photo of the Bruces on their wedding day, decked out in finery, foretold the makings of a power couple. The display of Black success outraged the white neighbors and powers that be, says attorney George Fatheree.

George Fatheree III:

In the light of harassment, intimidation, violence, their business just got more and more successful, and until the city of Manhattan Beach hatched a scheme to take the property via a racially motivated eminent domain.

Stephanie Sy:

The Bruces' dream was stolen, their property essentially seized for a pittance in compensation, and only after they sued.

Kavon Ward:

This is it, I would say from right here to maybe this building here.

Stephanie Sy:

Community activist Kavon Ward first learned of the Bruces a few years after she moved to Manhattan Beach in 2017.

Kavon Ward:

This country often tells us that — Black people, that we're lazy, or we don't work hard enough, or all we have to do is pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. And here we are in the 19-teens and the 1920s, and this Black couple did exactly that, only to have their land stolen and to die as cooks in someone else's kitchen, when they had this whole beachfront resort here.

Stephanie Sy:

Ward began campaigning for the land to be returned to the descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce during the summer of 2020.

Less than two years later, she succeeded, with the help of Fatheree.

George Fatheree III:

For a century, our government at every level has enacted policies to dispossess Black people of the right to own property and create wealth. And what was so powerful about the return of the property of the Bruce family is, we see a path forward to finally counter some of those false narratives.

Stephanie Sy:

As unique and complex as the Bruce's Beach land back deal is, it does offer a path forward for other groups that might seek a return of land, not least of which are the original inhabitants of Los Angeles.

Before Spanish missionaries arrived, the Tongva roamed a 4,000-square-mile swathe of Southern California called Tovaangar stretching from the coast to the mountains.

Samantha Morales-Johnson, Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Land Conservancy:

We have been very systematically erased. We were enslaved. We have gone through about three waves of genocide.

Stephanie Sy:

Twenty-seven-year-old Samantha Morales-Johnson recently became the land return coordinator for a Tongva conservancy, a job she could only have dreamed of as a child.

Samantha Morales-Johnson:

This land was returned, which I was not expecting in my lifetime, let alone my grandfather's.

Stephanie Sy:

The one-acre property in Altadena was transferred last year by a Jewish landowner whose own family faced displacement and oppression.

Johnson said the protests that erupted after the police killing of George Floyd raised the nation's consciousness.

Samantha Morales-Johnson:

I think it made people more aware of all of the injustices that happen in America.

Stephanie Sy:

When Johnson was growing up, council meetings and holiday parties were held in a borrowed space.

Samantha Morales-Johnson:

I think it was a converted taco restaurant with, like, a little parking lot. There was no earth to even grow anything in that concrete building.

Stephanie Sy:

The Altadena property, which overlooks a scenic canyon, marks the first time in nearly 200 years the Tongva have legally owned land to use as they wish.

So, this is the white sage.

Samantha Morales-Johnson:

This is the white sage. This is the only place where we can plant all Native trees with full sovereignty and Native plants with full sovereignty.

Stephanie Sy:

Work is under way to remove the overgrown invasive species that were planted here. The old resilient oaks will remain. Eventually, the site will host tribal gatherings and offer educational programs.

Samantha Morales-Johnson:

So, the beautiful thing about this land is that there is a lot of hope for restoration even underneath all of the mess that we have.

Stephanie Sy:

So-called land back agreements are still rare. Other recent examples include the purchase of nearly two square miles of land for $4.5 million by the Esselen Tribe in Central California.

And the city of Oakland recently returned five acres of a local park to the East Bay Ohlone Tribe. In L.A., different Tongva groups are looking for more opportunities to reacquire land.

Angie Behrns, Founder, Gabrielino/Tongva, Springs Foundation:

It's not really just about the land. It's preserving what's left of our land.

Stephanie Sy:

Long before the land back movement had gained traction, Angie Behrns, now 86, fought to lease this two-acre property in West L.A. It was the early 1990s, and the Kuruvungna Springs, which had been the site of a Tongva village, had fallen into neglect.

A small museum on the land shows the journey.

Angie Behrns:

When I stood at that gate and saw this area, I was so upset. I couldn't believe it. That's an archaeological and a historical society.

Stephanie Sy:

The Los Angeles Unified School District, which owns the land and built a high school next to the springs, agreed to lease the site for $1 a year.

Bob Ramirez, President, Gabrielino/Tongva Springs Foundation:

This is the medicine garden we have, which has many varieties of medicinal plants.

Stephanie Sy:

The president of the Gabrielino/Tongva Springs Foundation, Bob Ramirez, says the land is now abundant with Native plants and pristine drinking water.

Bob Ramirez:

Would you like to try some?

Stephanie Sy:

Yes, I would like to try some.

Bob Ramirez:

Yes.

Stephanie Sy:

Now is the time for the land to be returned, Behrns says.

Angie Behrns:

This is a sacred site. This is our place of worship. You have your temples. You have your churches. And what do we have?

Stephanie Sy:

But Ramirez says the "we" is debatable.

Bob Ramirez:

And there may be other people that say, well, wait a minute, if you're going to get that land, well, what about me? So it becomes contentious, I think.

How do you compensate this group and neglect somebody else? Is that fair? Is that just?

Stephanie Sy:

What is fair and just is also in dispute at Bruce's Beach.

Patricia Bruce-Carter, a distant relative of Charles Bruce, was at the ceremony in 2022 when county officials return the land to the Bruces' direct descendants. She thinks about what could have been if the land had remained in the family's hands all along.

Patricia Bruce-Carter:

I'm sure, at this time, there would have been multiple hotels and beachfront properties, and, I mean, just living the life.

Stephanie Sy:

A lifeguard administration center and parking lot stand where the Bruces' resort did. The descendants' lawyer, George Fatheree, says it would not be easy to develop.

And so less, than a year after the land was returned, the four recipients of the land decided to sell it back to the county for nearly $20 million.

George Fatheree III:

As an attorney, my responsibility is to advocate in the interests of my clients. As a citizen, as an — and as an African American citizen,I think that's an important question.

Who are the benefactors of restitution? Who should be the benefactors of reparations?

Stephanie Sy:

After her work getting the Bruces their land back, this is not the outcome community activist Kavon Ward wanted.

Kavon Ward:

I wanted to see strong, young Black entrepreneurs like Charles and Willa Bruce take up space here and be able to build and develop here, like the Bruces once we're able to do.

Community is what got the land back. So, yes, the family won, but the community did not.

Stephanie Sy:

The work, Ward says, will continue, the reckoning far from over.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Stephanie Sy in Los Angeles.

URL
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/movement-to-return-land-taken-from-black-and-indigenous-people-in-the-u-s-gains-momentum

The War Between The States
https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/10332-the-war-between-the-states/

Cornell West and the problem with Third Parties
https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/10336-cornell-west-the-peoples-party-and-the-problem-with-third-parties-in-the-usa/

How a shipping error poisoned Michigan
https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2347&type=status

Work from Lilac Phoenix

I end with this paraphrase from Brenda stevenson < https://www.drbrendastevenson.com/ > from a PBS segment below, and a postparaphrase reply.  

It's a strange dance that we have with race in the USA. We come forward with many steps,, twirl around, and we are going in the opposite direction. So, this continues to happen. But I think everyone had to own up to the fact that we live in a racialized society. The ways in which we find ourselves or define ourselves as being American, in part, is to have digested some of that racism. So, no group is- does not have it. No group does not act on it. And we have to understand that and we have to have some real hard discussions with ourselves, our families, our communities, and with other communities about how we fit into this dynamic of race within our society. Do we perptuate racism, stereotypes, et cetera, or are we actively trying to recognize that we hold some of that within ourselves and that we act on it and we need to eliminate it, or at least get it to a level where we can all act towards one another with respect, dignity and equality? But it's very very difficult. It is bound in the roots of American society. And once you eat of the tree of the USA , it becomes part of you. 

For Juneteenth I have pondered freedom and the black community in the usa, and after various multilog side black people in various places I realize many, not necessarily most, but many black people are in denial about our village. The denial is through their preaching, and when I said preaching, I don't mean from a pulpit but in their desire for multilog that is inevitably dysfunctional. 
I repeat, when the usa was started three tribes in the black village in the usa existed. Enslaved to whites/Free fighting side whites against the usa being created/Free fighting side whites supporting the usa being created. 
Based on Sister Stevenson's quote, whenever a black person demands all black people in the usa are bettered for being in the usa, or nonviolence must occur in the black community, they are denying the internal reality all black people should know but don't because of the black tribes in the usa one common trait. NEarly all are filled with people afraid to admit the friction in the black community in the usa  based on the three original black tribes. 
Most free black people fought against creating the usa, and again after the colonies freed themselves against the usa hoping britian take over. That means most free blacks didn't accept the usa's constitution of any aspect of the usa culturally that so many blacks in the usa today say all blacks do or need to. 
And moreover, when the black community , as James Baldwin said of his father's religious community, has most who hate whites with a silent impotent passion. having black people who want to live with or comfort or find peace to whites or non blacks talk about why most blacks aren't engaged is a sign of their denial. 
The black community in the usa, has never done the hard work of reaching in itself, even while the whites watch and accept what its majority wants doesn't suit the desire its minority, that is in most positions of leadership want. 
Black people in the usa are individually freer in the usa than ever before. But, the Black Village communal desire isn't to be statian and most black leaders know it, and they don't know how to handle it, except to try and preach it away or hope some black person in the usa is born who can fit the usa's multiracial maze with their nonviolent, integrationist mantra while acquire or have the resources to guide the majority of black people with what black leadership in the usa usually doesn't have, opportunity, not talk.