beech grove school built around 1901

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … November 19

1889 – Clifton Webb (d.1966) was an American actor, dancer and singer born Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck in a rural part of Marion County, Indiana, which would, in 1906, become Beech Grove, a self- governing city entirely surrounded by Indianapolis. Webb's parents were Jacob Grant Hollenbeck, the son of a grocer from a multi-generational Indiana farming family, and Mabelle A. Parmelee, the daughter of a railroad conductor. In 1892, Webb's formidable mother, Mabelle, moved to New York City with her beloved "little Webb," as she called him for the remainder of her life. She dismissed questions about her husband Jacob, a ticket clerk who, like her father, worked for the Indianapolis-St. Louis Railroad, by saying, "We never speak of him. He didn't care for the theater."

Webb was in his mid-fifties when actor/director Otto Preminger chose him over the objections of 20th Century Fox chief Darryl F. Zanuck to play the classy, but evil, radio columnist Waldo Lydecker, who is obsessed with Gene Tierney's character in the 1944 film noir, Laura. His performance was showered with acclaim and made him an unlikely movie star. Despite Zanuck's original objection, Webb was immediately signed to a long-term contract with Fox. Two years later he was reunited with Tierney (with whom he shares this birthdate) in another highly praised role as the elitist Elliott Templeton in Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge (1946). He received Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for both. Webb received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role in 1949 for Sitting Pretty, the first in a three-film series of comedic Mr. Belvedere features with Webb portraying the snide and omniscient central character.

Webb's elegant taste kept him on Hollywood's best-dressed lists for decades. Even though he exhibited comically foppish mannerisms in portraying Mr. Belvedere and other movie characters, his scrupulous (read "deeply closeted, highly repressed") private life kept him free of scandal. The character of Lynn Belvedere is said to have been very close to his real life — he had an Oedipal devotion to his mother Mabelle, who was his companion and who lived with him until her death at age ninety-one. Webb's mourning for his mother continued for a year with no signs of letting up, prompting Noël Coward to remark of Webb, "It must be terrible to be orphaned at 71."

Among the many stories, once, he and Tallulah Bankhead were smitten with the same handsome Austrian army officer and vied for the uniformed stud's favors. While Tallulah did her stuff vamping him, Webb retreated for a moment, and returned with an armload of roses. To Tallulah's amusement and the officer's shock, Webb danced around the man and began pelting him with flowers. Tallulah won.

1942 – Calvin Klein, American clothing designer, born; Calvin Richard Klein was born in The Bronx to Jewish-Hungarian immigrant parents. He attended the High School of Industrial Arts and matriculated, but never graduated, from New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, receiving an honorary Doctorate at the graduation ceremony in 2003. He did his apprenticeship in 1962 at an old-line cloak-and-suit manufacturer, and spent five years designing at other New York shops. He later launched his first company with a childhood friend, Barry K. Schwartz.

Klein was one of several design leaders raised in the Jewish immigrant community in the Bronx, New York along with Robert Denning and Ralph Lauren. Cal became a protégé of the ever-so-flaming editor of Town & Country Baron de Gunzburg, through whose introductions he became the toast of the New York elite fashion scene, even before he had his first mainstream success with the launch of his first jeans line. Later, speaking in an interview with Bianca Jagger and Andy Warhol for Interview magazine, published shortly after the Baron's death, Klein said:

"He was truly the greatest inspiration of my life... he was my mentor, I was his protégé. If you talk about a person with style and true elegance — maybe I'm being a snob, but I'll tell you, there was no one like him. I used to think, boy, did he put me through hell sometimes, but boy, was I lucky. I was so lucky to have known him so well for so long."

Calvin Klein was immediately recognized for his talent after his first major showing at New York Fashion Week. Klein was hailed as the new Yves Saint-Laurent, and was noted for his clean lines.

Thirty years on, it all seemed like a surreal curiosity — when the billboard of a well-muscled young man in white briefs went up in Times Square in 1982, it stopped traffic there. The perspective which focused on the obvious bulge in the briefs caused a big controversy. It nonetheless led to the acceptability of the male form in mainstream American advertising and ushered in the era of "male as sex object" which saw a renaissance in the early 1980s. American Photographer magazine named the photo as one of "10 Pictures That Changed America." His wildly homoerotic advertisements transformed the men's fashion advertising and fashion industry.

Married twice, he has never actually come out, but he divorced his second wife in 2006, and it has been reported that he has dated gay, ex-porn star Nicholas Gruber.

Klein and Nicholas Gruber

1955 – Steven Jay Powsner (d.1995) a founder and former president of the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in Greenwich Village.

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Oceanside, L.I., he graduated from New York University in 1976 and the New York University School of Law in 1979. After working as an associate at a New York City law firm, he established his own practice in 1982, specializing in real estate.

Steven's early passion was theater, especailly muscial theater. In high school he took acting lessons at the Neighborhood Playhouse and auditioned for every play. He had chorus roles in My Fair Lady.

1974 marked the beginning of Steven's most formative years. A major part of these years was his first lover, Bruce Philip Cooper, who died of AIDS in 1987. They met when Steven was a freshman at NYU and Bruce was a freshman at Columbia. They were determined to prove society wrong by committing themselves to a permanent, long-lasting relationship, or "marriage" as Steven called it. They moved into their own apartment.

Working as a volunteer for the fledgling gay center in 1983, Steven guided the organization through a yearlong negotiation with the city to buy the former Food and Maritime Trades High School at 208 West 13th Street, which now houses the center.

Everything fell apart in 1983 when Bruce was diagnosed with AIDS. Doctors were judgmental and uncaring. Hospital workers left food outside Bruce's room, refusing to go inside. Their cleaning lady was told by another client that she would be fired if she continued to work for a person with AIDS. Steven would come home from work to find "AIDS" scrawled in large letters across his mailbox.

He took care of Bruce for four years until he died in 1987. During these four caregiving years, Steven became a very dedicated gay activist. His family offered no support around Bruce's ordeal and even scorned Steven when Bruce died because Steven included his name in Bruce's New York Times obituary.

After Bruce died Steven donated to Columbia University a large endowment, with which they established the Bruce Cooper Memorial Fellowship for graduate studies in Philosophy.

Steven met Ben Munisteri 1987 at the the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center. Ben was 22 years old, just out of college, and a modern dancer. They were commited partners until Steven's death in 1995

A few months before Steven died he won the Center's Heart of the Center award, something he had always wanted. After he died, the Center created the Annual Steven J. Powsner Volunteer Recognition Award.

Besides his work for the center, a hub of lesbian and gay life in New York, Steven left a two-and-a-half-mile mark on the city in the form of the lavender line that is painted along the Fifth Avenue route of the annual Lesbian and Gay Pride March. He paid for much of the painting of the first line in 1985.

1962 – Gottfried von Bismarck-Schönhausen (d.2007) was a member of the German House of Bismarck best known for his flamboyance and parties.Born in Uccle, Belgium, Gottfried von Bismarck-Schönhausen was the second son of Ferdinand, Prince von Bismarck and grandson of Otto, Prince von Bismarck, a diplomat at Germany's embassy in London until a feud with Third Reich foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. He was the great-great-grandson of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.

Bismarck's great uncle and namesake, Count Gottfried, was a Nazi official who allegedly became part of the famous plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. His younger sister, Vanessa Gräfin von Bismarck-Schönhausen is a public relations agent in the United States. His elder brother Carl-Eduard Graf von Bismarck-Schönhausen was a member of the German Bundestag.

Gottfried had multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies. When not clad in the lederhosen of his homeland, he cultivated an air of sophisticated complexity by appearing in women's clothes, set off by lipstick and fishnet stockings. Never concealing his homosexuality, von Bismarck continued to appear in public in various eccentric items of attire, including tall hats atop his bald Mekon-like head. At parties he would appear in exotic designer frock coats with matching trousers and emblazoned with enormous logos. Flitting from table to table at fashionable London nightclubs, he was said to be as comfortable among wealthy Eurotrash as he was on formal occasions calling for black tie.

The death of heiress Olivia Channon in Graf von Bismarck's room would disrupt his life. She was found dead from a heroin overdose in Bismarck's rooms at Christ Church College in 1986. Bismarck was charged with drug possession. He was fined £80. His father, Prince Ferdinand, recalled him to Germany for treatment at a private clinic, it was said he left Oxford so quickly that a family servant had to settle his bills with public houses, tailors and restaurants.

In August 2006, Anthony Casey, 41, fell 20 metres from Graf von Bismarck's Chelsea flat and died. Bismarck was not arrested and the police said there were no drugs found in his flat. This incident triggered speculation from the tabloid press. London's Daily Mail claimed the incident was triggered by a cocaine-fueled orgy. The coroner's report had found no alcohol in Casey's body, but did discover a significant amount of cocaine. The accusation of a 'gay orgy' was officially denied by Gottfried, though the coroner, Dr. Paul Knapman, told The Guardian that a great deal of sexual paraphernalia was discovered in the flat, including sex toys, lubricant, and a rubber tarpaulin. "In common parlance, in the early hours of the morning, there was a gay orgy going on", Dr. Knapman told the newspaper. "Nevertheless, this was conducted by consenting males in private."

On 2 July 2007 Bismarck was found dead in his almost empty £5 million flat, which was in the process of being sold. He was 44 years old at the time of his death. Sebastien Lucas, the pathologist who carried out the autopsy, said that Bismarck had been injecting cocaine on an hourly basis on the day before his death, and that Bismarck's body contained the highest level of cocaine that he had ever seen, as well as morphine; he also had liver damage, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and HIV.

1993 – Romania: Marius Aitai, Ovidiu Chetea, and Cosmin Hutanu are sentenced to up to two and a half years in prison for same-sex acts in private. Amnesty International calls for their immediate release and protests the imprisonment of 54 other people on similar charges, as well as the reportedly widespread torture and sexual abuse of persons arrested on suspicion of homosexuality.

cottonwood

Daniel drives Rosemary home from a birthday party on a Saturday night. One of her friends at school celebrated her thirteenth birthday at a roller rink. As he and Rose back out of the parking lot, Daniel chuckles and says he can’t think of anything more eighties than a birthday party at a roller rink. Rosemary rolls her eyes.

“It’s not ‘eighties,’ Daddy,” she says. “It’s just roller skating. Not everything belongs to the eighties. You know that, right?”

Daniel laughs a little harder.

“Yeah, yeah, I know that,” he says. “Hey, Little Miss Y2K. Why don’t you hook up that iPod I got you for Christmas to the cord I got in here?”

“Daddy! No!”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s my music! Don’t you think music should be private?”

“I think if music was private, we wouldn’t have anything fun to do.”

Rosemary sighs. They come to a stop light, and Daniel tightens his grip around the steering wheel. He looks toward the sky through the windshield, just a little bit.

I know, he thinks. I know what I sound like. I know who I sound like, too.

“I don’t want you to make fun of the songs I like,” Rosemary says as she sheepishly takes her lime green iPod out of her purse.

“What?” Daniel says. “Rose. I’d never make fun of you. You know that, right?”

“I guess.”

“Where’d you get an idea like that? Who’s making fun of you?”

“Well, when we had to see Uncle Charlie at Christmas, he asked me what my favorite song was. I told him it was ‘Perfect Situation.’ He told me to listen to Buddy Holly.”

“The song or the guy?”

“There’s a song?”

“Mmm-hmm. Weezer. Same band as ‘Perfect Situation.’”

Rosemary throws her hands against her face, a perfect homage to Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. Daniel smiles as the light turns green.

“Well, then, I guess it’s a good thing I kinda liked all that old stuff,” she says. “‘Peggy Sue’ and all that. It’s not bad.”

“No, it’s not,” Daniel says. “Are you gonna stop stalling and play me a song from your iPod?”

Rosemary groans but hooks up the iPod to the car, anyway.

“Fine,” she says. “This is a song I’ve been listening to a lot lately. Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’ll never make fun of you.”

Rosemary looks at him like she believes him … looks at him with eyes that look so much like his own. If Daniel wasn’t behind the wheel of this car, he might just cry looking at her.

The song begins. Some ethereal sound, the kind that teenagers seem to be really into these days. It doesn’t sound bad. Just nothing like the music he grew up with.

Good, he thinks. It doesn’t need to be like then.

He hears Rosemary lightly singing along with the lyrics.

Will you say to them when I’m gone / “I loved your son for his sturdy arms?”

Daniel lets out a long breath. He knew he’d been holding it. Just didn’t know how strange it would feel to let it go. He looks at Rosemary out of the corner of his eye. She doesn’t seem to hear what he’s thinking. Daniel almost can’t believe it. Almost six whole years since they buried Sam, and it’s like the kids barely think about him anymore. Daniel exhales again. Are they lucky not to be thinking of him all the time? Or are they selfish? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know, but before he can catch up with himself, he’s laughing.

“What’s the matter?” Rosemary asks. “You’re laughing like the Joker.”

“No, I’m not,” Daniel says. “This is just making me think of Cottonwood.”

“What’s Cottonwood?”

“Cottonwood is the place your Uncle Sam and I made up when we were … oh, a little older than you. Fifteen, I think. It’s the place we said we were going to go when it got too cold and too boring around here, back at home.”

“I thought that was Beech Grove.”

“Ah, no. That’s the place your mom and Lucy made up. They told us we weren’t allowed there. So Sam and I made our own place, and we called it Cottonwood.”

“What about Will?”

“Will was allowed in Beech Grove with the girls. Lucky bastard. Anyway, we had all these ideas for what Cottonwood was going to be like and look like … and then we found out it was just this boring city in Arizona. So kind of like Beech Grove in Indiana.”

“Yeah. Seems like it.”

They drive in almost silence with the song in between them. It sounds almost nice. Like nothing Daniel’s really used to hearing. He asks Rosemary where she heard the song, and she blushes an awkward shade of pink before she says she can’t remember. Daniel, then, takes it to mean the unspoken truth: She must have heard it in one of those videos that makes Lilly and Oliver from Hannah Montana seem like they’re a couple. He doesn’t say anything. Just smiles.

If Sam were here, poor Rose wouldn’t have to get her musical recommendations from Hannah Montana fans on the Internet. He’d teach her and the boys about micro-genres he made up, just like he did for Elenore when she was young. But he’s not here. He’s not here because he’s dead; because stupid Charlie, who makes fun of Rosemary’s musical taste in the middle of Christmas, couldn’t be bothered to get a license or remember to bring the kids’ presents to the party. And now, Daniel’s left to pick up all the pieces … to figure out where Sam would have started.

The song ends, and Daniel turns the radio back on.

“What are you doing?” Rosemary asks.

“I’m gonna teach you the first thing about Cottonwood,” Daniel says. “It has a very specific soundtrack, and you really have to listen for it.”

Rosemary grins. And in that grin, Daniel sees that Sam’s still there. That he’s still there, too.

It’s a good feeling, he thinks, to know you’re not going anywhere. It’s a good feeling to know that you live in the gleam of your daughter’s eye.

(part of @nosebleedclub january challenge -- day xxv! another busy day, another day where i’m behind)

Level 3 Teaching Assistant

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Beech Grove mayor calls for change after Texas school shooting - WISH-TV | Indianapolis News | Indiana Weather

Beech Grove mayor calls for change after Texas school shooting – WISH-TV | Indianapolis News | Indiana Weather

BEECH GROVE, Ind. (WISH) — Dennis Buckley, the mayor of Beech Grove, wants people to press their lawmakers to take action following Tuesday’s shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. In a statement released Thursday, Buckley asked the public to hold elected officials accountable for what he called “commonsense gun legislation.” “Once again, our nation stands in shock as we mourn yet…

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Hello! Do you have any christian songs and artists to recommend?

Beloved! Yes I do! Thanks for asking! Here's a lot of music I love from lots of genres.

some of my Spotify playlists:

current season playlist: advent (I'm working on organizing my Christmas playlists and will share them soon. I don't listen to Christmas music before the 24th, though.)

my in-love-with-Jesus playlist: Yeshua my beloved

my super disorganized song dump: queer Christian vibes

my leftist mix: can I interest you in some Christian Socialism

a trauma/confusion-inspired mix: weird relationship with Christianity

Contemporary Artist Recommendations

Semler—the ultimate queer Christian music icon. They've topped Christian charts multiple times, and make music about being gay, loving their wife, and finding God.

Sufjan Stevens—a classic. the ultimate "is he singing about God or his boyfriend?". has entirely too many weird Christmas songs.

LGBT choruses (compilation)—there's a lovely tradition of queer choruses—most famously The San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus. Not usually specifically Christian, but do hymns/Christian choral music.

Peter, Paul & Mary—a group I grew up with that inspired my love of folk and of justice.

Judee Sill—fun bisexual mystic folk-rock from the 70s

Trey Pearson—Christian pop artist who came out in 2016.

The Many—justice/love focused group with indie pop and gospel influences. (x)

All Sons & Daughters—more worship folk, purposefully unpolished.

Page CXVI—want to make hymns "accessible and known again." named after a page from The Magician's Nephew. (x)

Julien Baker—for my indie sad girls.

Vicky Beeching—a classic worship artist who came out in 2014

The Liturgists—part of the art collective of the same name. They also have a podcast.

Liturgical Folk—exactly what it sounds like. Absolutely lovely.

Poor Bishop Hooper—currently working on folk settings of all the Psalms. I also love their Advent/Christmas album.

Albums/Song Shoutouts

Seranade is a pop compilation by various queer artists, collected by the organization Beloved Arise.

The Mountain Goats is one of my favorite bands, and they've made a lot of work inspired/informed by Christianity. Check out their album The Life of the World to Come and their song "Cry for Judas."

The Oh Hellos' album Dear Wormwood has some great rennaissance-fair-vibes Christian bops. They did "Soldier, Poet, King," for the Tiktok-users out there.

"Maybe There's a Loving God" by Sarah Groves has gotten me through a lot of doubt-filled moments.

"Jesus! (A Communist Disco)" is exactly what it sounds like.

"She Keeps Me Warm" by Mary Lambert—which will be familiar to anyone who's heard that one gay Macklemore song—is absolutely beautiful. I don't cry on Sundays anymore. She and her wife are both Christian <3

I heard "VBS" by Lucy Dacus live, and it healed something in me. For the Vacation Bible School survivors.

Musicals/Soundtracks

I wasn't really a theater kid, but only because I was never good enough to audition... Here are some musicals and soundtracks that give me religious feelings.

Spring Awakening is a coming-of-age rock musical about teenagers discovering sex in a strict religious environment. (Warning for suicide, abortion, and sexual content.)

The Prince of Egypt is my favorite religious movie, and the soundtrack could wake me from a coma.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (soundtrack) (Broadway cast) is a great Disney movie, and has been made into a Broadway show. It's about a corrupt church and deals with sex/race/disability issues. Not perfect, but amazing for what it is, which is a kid's movie. I especially recommend the song "God Help the Outcasts." (Warning for normalized use of the word g*psy and for vague discussion of sexual violence.)

Bare is kind of a camp Catholic school musical? That's the best way I can describe it. Never went mainstream, and insanely long. Full of bops nonetheless. (Warning for drug use/overdose.)

Jesus Christ Superstar (Broadway cast) (TV cast)—the classic Andrew Lloyd Webber musical of Jesus' last week, told from the perspective of Judas. I've never enjoyed the movie, but the NBC event slapped. Widely criticized, heavily secular, and my Holy Saturday tradition. (Warnings (obviously) for suicide & torture/execution.)

Fiddler on the Roof is Jewish, not Christian, but is famous for a reason. The prayer songs feel so familiar even though I haven't really been around Jewish music—they just feel like home.

The Prom is centered around a lesbian couple trying to go to prom together. Recently made into a very cute Netflix movie. Deals with with Christian homophobia, especially "Love Thy Neighbor."

Liturgical/Classical/Choral/Hymns:

I grew up with the hymns in the 1978 Lutheran Book of Worship, and one of these days I'm gonna make a playlist of my favorites. (Here's the best one I've found.)

I also grew up around classical musicians, and there are a million pieces I could recommend, but here are my staples.

Lutheran Daily Prayer (Evening/Morning)—the daily liturgy that I'm familiar with. Simple and beautiful.

Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles are an order of nuns who never fail to make me weep.

The National Lutheran Choir does so many beautiful hymns.

Choir of King's College, Cambridge—absolutely unparalleled Christmas albums.

Music of the Passion of Jesus Christ / The London Fox Players

high church hymns (playlist)

Bach's Passions

Rachmaninoff's Vespers

Vivaldi's Gloria

Pergolesi's Stabat Mater

de Monte's Mass Si Ambulavero & Motets

Mozart's Requiem (I think this is my favorite choral piece of all time)

Alright, that's what I got for you today! Happy listening! Everyone reading: drop your recommendations in the replies! No judgement, just vibes.

<3 Johanna

freeman his entire life, Hiram Rhodes Revels was the first African American to serve in the U.S. Congress. With his moderate political orientation and oratorical skills honed from years as a preacher, Revels filled a vacant seat in the United States Senate in 1870. Just before the Senate agreed to admit a African man to its ranks on February 25, Republican Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts sized up the importance of the moment: “All men are created equal, says the great Declaration,” Sumner roared, “and now a great act attests this verity. Today we make the Declaration a reality…. The Declaration was only half established by Independence. The greatest duty remained behind. In assuring the equal rights of all we complete the work.”1

Hiram Rhodes Revels was born to free parents in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on September 27, 1827. His father worked as a Baptist preacher, and his mother was of Scottish descent. He claimed his ancestors “as far back as my knowledge extends, were free,” and, in addition to his Scottish background, he was rumored to be of mixed African and Croatan Indian lineage.2 In an era when educating black children was illegal in North Carolina, Revels attended a school taught by a free black woman and worked a few years as a barber. In 1844, he moved north to complete his education. Revels attended the Beech Grove Quaker Seminary in Liberty, Indiana, and the Darke County Seminary for African students, in Ohio. In 1845, Revels was ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. His first pastorate was likely in Richmond, Indiana, where he was elected an elder to the AME Indiana Conference in 1849.3 In the early 1850s, Revels married Phoebe A. Bass, a free black woman from Ohio, and they had six daughters.4

Revels traveled throughout the country, carrying out religious work and educating fellow African Americans in Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Although Missouri forbade free blacks to live in the state for fear they would instigate uprisings, Revels took a pastorate at an AME Church in St. Louis in 1853, noting that the law was “seldom enforced.” However, Revels later revealed he had to be careful because of restrictions on his movements. “I sedulously refrained from doing anything that would incite slaves to run away from their masters,” he recalled. “It being understood that my object was to preach the gospel to them, and improve their moral and spiritual condition even slave holders were tolerant of me.”5 Despite his cautiousness, Revels was imprisoned for preaching to the African community in 1854. Upon his release, he accepted a position with the Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Maryland, working alongside his brother, Willis Revels, also an AME pastor. Hiram Revels was the principal of a black school in Baltimore and subsequently attended Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, on a scholarship from 1855 to 1857. He was one of the few African men in the United States with at least some college education.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Revels helped recruit two African regiments from Maryland. In 1862, when African soldiers were permitted to fight, he served as the chaplain for a African regiment in campaigns in Vicksburg and Jackson, Mississippi. In 1863, Revels returned to St. Louis, where he established a freedmen’s school. At the end of hostilities, Revels served in a church in Leavenworth, Kansas. While traveling in Kansas, Revels and his family were asked to sit in the smoking car rather than the car for first–class ticket holders. Revels protested that the language in the smoking car was too coarse for his wife and children, and the conductor finally relented. Revels served in churches in Louisville, Kentucky, and New Orleans, Louisiana, before settling in Natchez, Mississippi, in 1866.

Before the Civil War, fewer than 1,000 free African Mississippians had access to a basic education. Thus, leadership from freedmen such as Revels became vital to the Republican Party for rallying the new electorate in the postwar years.7 It was through his work in education that Revels became involved in politics, taking his first elected position as a Natchez alderman in 1868. He entered politics reluctantly, fearing racial friction and interference with his religious work, but he quickly won over blacks and whites with his moderate and compassionate political opinions. In 1869, encouraged to run by a friend, future Representative John Roy Lynch, Revels won a seat in the Mississippi state senate.8 Under the newly installed Reconstruction government, Revels was one of more than 30 African Americans among the state’s 140 legislators.9 Upon his election, he wrote a friend in Leavenworth, Kansas: “We are in the midst of an exciting canvass…. I am working very hard in politics as well as in other matters. We are determined that Mississippi shall be settled on a basis of justice and political and legal equality.”10 A little–known politician, Revels attracted the attention of fellow legislators when he gave a moving prayer on the opening day of the session.

The primary task of the newly elected state senate was to fill U.S. Senate seats. In 1861, Democrat Albert Brown and future Confederate President Jefferson Davis both vacated Mississippi’s U.S. Senate seats when the state seceded from the Union.11 When their terms expired in 1865 and 1863, respectively, their seats were not filled and remained vacant. In 1870, the new Mississippi state legislature wished to elect a African man to fill the remainder of one term, due to expire in 1871 for the seat once held by Brown, but was determined to fill the other unexpired term, ending in 1875, with a white candidate.12 African legislators agreed to the deal, believing, as Revels recalled, that an election of one of their own would “be a weakening blow against color line prejudice.” The Democratic minority also endorsed the plan, hoping a African Senator would “seriously damage the Republican Party.”13 After three days and seven ballots, on January 20, 1870, the Mississippi state legislature voted 85 to 15 to seat Hiram Revels in Brown’s former seat. They chose Union General Adelbert Ames to fill Davis’s former seat.

Revels arrived in Washington at the end of January 1870, but could not present his credentials until Mississippi was readmitted to the United States on February 23. Senate Republicans sought to swear in Revels immediately afterwards, but Senate Democrats were determined to block the effort. Led by Senator Garrett Davis of Kentucky and Senator Willard Saulsbury of Delaware, the Democrats claimed Revels’s election was null and void, arguing that Mississippi was under military rule and lacked a civil government to confirm his election. Others claimed Revels was not a U.S. citizen until the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868 and was therefore ineligible to become a U.S. Senator. Senate Republicans rallied to his defense. Though Revels would not fill Davis’s seat, the symbolism of a African man’s admission to the Senate after the departure of the former President of the Confederacy was not lost on Radical Republicans. Nevada Senator James Nye underlined the significance of this event: “[Jefferson Davis] went out to establish a government whose cornerstone should be the oppression and perpetual enslavement of a race because their skin differed in color from his,” Nye declared. “Sir, what a magnificent spectacle of retributive justice is witnessed here today! In the place of that proud, defiant man, who marched out to trample under foot the Constitution and the laws of the country he had sworn to support, comes back one of that humble race whom he would have enslaved forever to take and occupy his seat upon this floor.”14 On the afternoon of February 25, the Senate voted 48 to 8 to seat Revels, who subsequently received assignments to the Committee on Education and Labor and the Committee on the District of Columbia.

Although Revels viewed himself as “a representative of the State, irrespective of color,” he also represented freedmen and, as such, received petitions from African men and women from all states.15 His sense that he represented his entire race was evident in his maiden speech, in which he spoke in favor of reinstating black legislators forced from office in Georgia. In April 1868, Georgia voters had ratified the state’s constitution, enfranchising African Americans and thus, under the terms of Congressional Reconstruction, taking a necessary step toward the state’s re–admission to the Union. In the same election, Georgians sent 29 black legislators to the state house of representatives and three to the state senate. Yet, when the legislature met in July, moderate white Republicans joined Democrats in both chambers to unseat the black members, arguing that the state constitution did not permit black officeholders. Spurred to action, black Georgians appealed to Congress for federal intervention before Georgia was readmitted to the Union. On March 16, 1870, before a packed chamber and a gallery filled with black men and women, Revels argued that the North and the Republican Party owed Georgian black legislators their support: “I remarked that I rose to plead for protection for the defenseless race that now send their delegation to the seat of Government to sue for that which this Congress alone can secure to them. And here let me say further, that the people of the North owe to the colored race a deep obligation that is no easy matter to fulfill.”16 In his speech, Revels professed his loyalty to and faith in the Republican Party, claiming, “the Republican party is not inflamed, as some would … have the country believe, against the white population of the South. Its borders are wide enough for all truly loyal men to find within them some peace and repose from the din and discord of angry faction.”17 The Georgia legislature eventually agreed to a congressional mandate reinstating the legislators as a requirement for re–entry into the Union in July 1870.18

Revels also favored universal amnesty for former Confederates, requiring only their sworn loyalty to the Union. “I am in favor of removing the disabilities of those upon whom they are imposed in the South, just as fast as they give evidence of having become loyal and being loyal,” Revels declared. “If you can find one man in the South who gives evidence that he is a loyal man, and gives that evidence in the fact that he has ceased to denounce the laws of Congress as unconstitutional, has ceased to oppose them, and respects them and favors the carrying of them out, I am in favor of removing his disabilities.”19 Revels’s support for the bill, which eventually passed, solidified his reputation as a political moderate.

Although Revels sided with Radical Republicans in opposing Ohio Senator Allen Thurman’s amendment perpetuating segregated schools in the District of Columbia, his views on social integration of blacks and whites were less sanguine than those of his colleagues. Revels clearly rejected legal separation of the races, believing it led to animosity between blacks and whites, but he did not view forced social mixing as desirable or necessary. He cited mixed–race churches in northern cities, where a congregation would worship together on Sundays but part ways for the remainder of the week. In one of his most gripping floor speeches, he said: “I find that the prejudice in this country to color is very great, and I sometimes fear that it is on the increase…. If the nation should take a step for the encouragement of this prejudice against the colored race, can they have any grounds upon which to predicate a hope that Heaven will smile upon them and prosper them?”20 As a former teacher, Revels appreciated the need to educate freed slaves, claiming, “The colored race can be built up and assisted … in acquiring property, in becoming intelligent, valuable, useful citizens, without one hair upon the head of any white man being harmed.”21 Revels believed the abolition of segregation statutes would result in less prejudice, saying, “Let lawmakers cease to make the difference, let school trustees and school boards cease to make the difference, and the people will soon forget.”22

With mixed results, Revels also promoted Black Americans’ civil rights by less conventional means. In May 1870, he startled the military establishment when he nominated black candidate Michael Howard to the U.S. Army Military Academy at West Point, long a bastion of southern white gentlemen. Revels knew Howard’s parents, former slaves, and Howard’s father had served in the state legislature. Critics claimed Revels callously and publicly humiliated the youth, who had little formal education and was not admitted to West Point, and supporters claimed the school administration’s prejudice had blocked Howard’s entrance.23 Additionally, Revels successfully appealed to the War Department on behalf of black mechanics from Baltimore who were barred from working at the U.S. Navy Yard in early 1871, an accomplishment he recalled with great pride. 24

After the expiration of his Senate term on March 3, 1871, Revels declined several patronage positions, offered by President Ulysses S. Grant at the recommendation of Senators Oliver Morton of Indiana and Zachariah Chandler of Michigan. He returned to Mississippi to become the first president of Alcorn University (formerly Oakland College), named for his political ally Governor James Alcorn. Located in Rodney, Mississippi, Alcorn University was the first land–grant school in the United States for black students.25 Revels took a leave of absence in 1873 to serve as Mississippi’s interim secretary of state after the sudden death of his friend James Lynch. During this period, Revels grew more critical of the corruption in the Republican Party, and he resigned from his position at Alcorn in 1874 to avoid being removed by his political rival and former Senate colleague, then–Mississippi Governor Adelbert Ames. Revels returned to the ministry, taking a pastorate at a church in Holly Springs, Mississippi. In the violent and controversial 1875 election campaign, he supported several Democrats. In 1876, when a U.S. Senate select committee questioned him about the well–documented fraud and violence in the previous year’s election, Revels testified that to the best of his knowledge, conditions had been relatively peaceful and he was unaware of any widespread violence. His statement was met with skepticism by many Mississippi black voters. Revels returned to his former position as president of Alcorn University in July 1876. He also edited the Southwestern Christian Advocate newspaper, the official organ of the AME Church. Revels retired in 1882 and returned to his former church in Holly Springs. He remained active in the religious community, teaching theology at Shaw University (later Rust College) in Holly Springs, Mississippi, and serving as the AME’s district superintendent. He died of a paralytic stroke in Aberdeen, Mississippi, on January 16, 1901, while attending a religious conference

Fallen Beeches

Canon FT-QL

Kodak Gold 200

7.29.2018

This is the former Beech Grove School in Tipton, Indiana, which Aly and I drove by on our way to a horn convention and had to stop for when we passed it.  While Tipton is relatively small today, with a population of only 5100, that number is slightly less than what it boasted in 1915, when it appears to have been a bustling industrial town served by two branches of the Lake Erie and Western.  The Beech Grove School seems to have been built to serve farming families on the outskirts of town, as the town had larger schools, being erected in 1914.  I found a history of sorts online, on a blog posted by a pastor now in Nashville, who claims some substantial family connections to it.

The schoolhouse he attended, Beech Grove School, took its name because it was built in front of an orchard of beech trees—a landmark dotting the flat, Indiana horizon. People could see it from miles away. Common sense had chosen the school’s name before a single brick was laid, just as it had chosen names for Cave Spring Road or Brick Church Lane...  Those trees were not part of the landscape I knew. But for one, they were all gone, and the one that did remain was, itself, mostly dead.

...

In its early years, the Beech Grove School was the only place for miles where the migrant workers and farmers could send their children for a proper education. Eventually industry took hold in the area and the little town got organized. They built a courthouse, a post office, a hospital, a bank, and a new school closer to the center of things. The old schoolhouse stayed empty until a handful of faithful families converted it into a little church, which struggled along but somehow managed to survive under one name or another all the way up until the late 1980s. When the church at last closed its doors, the schoolhouse stood vacant until my father leased it as an office for his computer business.

- source

This history includes up to 1994, when the computer business was broken into as it began going downhill.  Presumably, the lease ended after that, and the history is somewhat murky for a few years.  A comment on the post from 2016 gives a further insight into it.

I am the current owner of the little Beech Grove school house. My father owned it and passed away in June 2014. He purchased it... in 2000 I believe. He was living in there with no running plumbing until his passing.

...

It had been neglected over recent years and I am currently working with a local realtor on an interested party that would like to purchase and restore the school house. If this party does not buy the property, I am going to start giving it a face lift.

Based on the state of it in 2018, seems like the buyer may have backed out, but at least it’s been kept up to some extent.  A photo most likely from 2019/2020 shows it in about the same state, so who knows what’s happening with it now.

Since I am currently very deeply invested in Hogwarts Mystery, I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time developing my version of Jacob’s Sibling in my mind. I’m kind of proud of the character I created, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to put her out there in the character universe of Hogwarts Mystery OCs.

Now, full disclosure, I’m not an artist. I don’t have any beautiful drawings attached to give you an idea of what I’m visualizing (at least, not any I drew). More or less, this is just going to be a bunch of word vomit about the character I’m crafted, and I’ll probably go back and edit it a bunch of times as I think of more details. If it isn’t too much trouble, I’d love to hear people’s opinions of her! Thank you to anyone who reads, and I hope you like her as much as I do!

BE WARNED THAT THIS CHARACTER SHEET CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR HOGWARTS MYSTERY.

FULL NAME: Helena Winifred Bancroft.

NICKNAME: Most people call her Nellie; only her mum calls her Helena. She also occasionally gets Nel, and Jacob used to call her Pip, short for Pipsqueak. Her and Rowan also had unique nicknames for each other, with Nellie calling Rowan “smart girl” and Rowan calling Nellie “sweet girl.”

DATE OF BIRTH: March 11th. She’s a Pisces.

BLOOD STATUS: Half-blood.

FAMILY: Nellie’s family consists of her mothers, a pureblooded Auror named Juliette and a muggle school teacher named Carolyn, and her half-brother Jacob. (Juliette is mum, Carolyn is mama.) Both her and Jacob’s respective fathers were muggle men that Juliette was involved with in the past, and neither are involved in their lives. The Bancroft bloodline is matrilineal, and while not necessarily famous, prides itself on producing particularly powerful witches.

BACKGROUND: She grew up in a small coastal community, where she was an avid swimmer, frequent visitor of the beach, and overall just a total water baby. Her family was comfortable financially, but chose to live fairly humbly, and Nellie was content with that. While she occasionally played with the local muggle children, most of Nellie’s time was spent either following Jacob around like a little shadow or playing with the fairies that lived in her mama’s garden. (She spent all her time telling them how pretty they were, so they tolerated her.) Unsurprisingly, she was a bit of a loner.

HOUSE: A proud Hufflepuff, just like Jacob.

DREAM: First and foremost, to find Jacob. However, in the long term, she’d really like to own a Hippogriff sanctuary and work as a breeder (with entirely moral methods, don’t worry). They’re by far her favorite creature, and she wants to spend the rest of her life working with them.

DEEPEST SECRET: That she wonders all the time if Jacob is worth saving. Growing up, he was her best friend and her hero, and there was no one she loved more. But watching how he changed in the last year or two prior to his disappearance, and hearing some of the stories at school, she honestly wonders if the loving brother she remembers exists anymore. And if he doesn’t, is the boy he left behind someone she wants to bring back? 

She’s also been hiding a growing resentment toward her mum. While Jacob’s disappearance took a toll on them all, she sometimes feels like her mum’s put so much of her emotional energy into missing Jacob that she doesn’t have enough left to love her anymore, and she secretly hates her mum nudging her to find Jacob, even if it’s at the cost of her own happiness and safety.

...sometimes she wishes it had been Ben.

MOST TREASURED OBJECT: For years, it was her seashell locket, a gift she’d gotten from Jacob for her sixth birthday, with the little sculpture Barnaby made her for their Valentines Day date coming in at a close second. Now, it’s a spare pair of Rowan’s glasses, which Nellie had kept on hand since their first year, given how often Rowan misplaced hers.

WAND: Nellie’s first wand is ten and a half inches long, made of pear wood with a unicorn hair core. Her second, which she purchases in her fifth year, is eleven and a quarter inches, with an alder wood base and a phoenix feather core. Lastly, her third, which she gets after she graduates and keeps for the rest of her life, is ten and two thirds inches long, built from beech wood, and possesses a unicorn hair core.

PATRONUS: An African Bush Elephant.

ANIMAGUS: A Kooikerhondje dog.

BOGGART: Jacob’s corpse, shambling towards her like a zombie, sobbing about how she failed to save him.

BEST MEMORY: Jacob trying to teach her spells when he came home for his first break in his first year of Hogwarts. She would’ve only been five—they’re six years apart—so it’s a faint memory and she couldn’t do any of them anyway, but it was still happy enough to stick with her.

WORST MEMORY: The year Jacob disappeared, their mum mandated that he come home for breaks. (He’d been staying at school the past few years, but with everything that was happening, their mothers wanted to keep an eye on him.) He was on edge the entire time, bitter and aloof, and when Nellie tentatively tried to get him to play, he exploded at her about wasting his time. In that moment, his face twisted and red with rage, his tall, lanky body looming over her, Nellie didn’t recognize her brother at all, and that scared her more than anything. For the longest time, that was her worst memory.

Now, her worst memory is being in that forest grove, staring down at Rowan’s unmoving body, her gaping mouth and empty eyes. Even decades later, Nellie has dreams about it. Certainly, no memory will ever be worse than that one.

QUIDDITCH: After being trained by Skye, Nellie played as a Chaser for two seasons and a Beater for one, before retiring to a reserve chaser. There just wasn’t enough time, and she didn’t really have the competitive spirit for it. However, she remained friends with Skye, Orion, McNully, and Erika, and still enjoyed training with them to keep her skills sharp.

GREATEST STRENGTHS: Nellie is an overwhelmingly compassionate person. Her mama likes to joke that Nellie could spend all day waiting for a scoop of her favorite ice cream, and she’d still offer it to the first gloomy person she saw on the street. (Basically, if there’s a little pink heart next to a choice, that’s the one she’s making. Empathy is definitely her highest stat.) She never fails to go out of her way to help people, even if it’s to her own detriment. She just has a very warm energy, which makes it easy for people to feel safe confiding in and depending on her.

GREATEST WEAKNESS: Unfortunately, Nellie’s compassion is a bit of a double edged sword, and she can be guilty of stretching herself too far trying to please everyone and, subsequently, letting herself fall to the wayside. She’s also embarrassingly naive (a negative consequence to her desperate belief in the inherent goodness of people), and has a tendency to get a little too emotionally invested in things. She also stakes a lot of her personal value in her ability to keep others happy—if she isn’t capable of keeping those she loves safe and content, she feels she has no value at all.

APPEARANCE: In short, Nellie is about as far from intimidating as any one person can get. She never surpasses five feet tall, nor does she develop past her scrawny adolescent physique. Her face is round, with a little button nose and big ocean blue eyes. She’s covered from head to toe in freckles, and has a slight case of buck teeth with a tiny tooth gap, though nothing she considered worth getting braces over. She also has a scar on her thumb from the time her mum tried to teach her how to whittle. It didn’t go well.

However, her most defining physical characteristic is her hair. Curly and sandy blonde, she grew it long for the first fifteen years of her life, only cutting off the occasional inch to keep it healthy. It was very carefully maintained, because although Nellie doesn’t consider herself a vain girl, she loved her hair, which grew to reach her thighs at its longest. It was the only feature of hers she considered genuinely and objectively beautiful, and she prided herself on it. In the summer after her fifth year of Hogwarts, she chopped all that treasured hair off into a bob, her only reasoning being that it was more practical. It certainly had nothing to do with the fact that Rakepick had grabbed her by her exceptionally long braid when she’d tried to run to Merula’s aid in the Buried Vault. 

STYLE: Nellie dresses exactly how you’d expect a stereotypical Hufflepuff to dress. She favors bright, pleasant colors, likes embroidery and floral print, and values comfort over anything. Her current favorite outfits both involve overalls, with one consisting of denim overalls with embroidered butterflies on the chest pocket and a white t-shirt, and the other being a pair of faded overalls that she personally painted with flowers, despite being an absolutely terrible artist, and a yellow turtleneck. She pretty much always wears a pair of light weight, embroidered boots, and is never seen without her seashell locket.

VOICE: I picture her sounding similar to AnnaPantsu. There’s a reason she was able to make the choir, after all! (Even if she ultimately surrendered her spot to Merula.)

BEST SUBJECT: Unsurprisingly, Care for Magical Creatures. Her kind nature and respect for all magical beings makes her a bit of a natural. She’s also proven herself to have a knack for Divination. She’s no Seer, but she’s pretty good at deciphering omens and swears that she does sometimes see visions in crystal balls. She’s also decent at Transfiguration.

WORST SUBJECT: Anyone would suck at Potions if Snape spent the entire class glowering at them the way he does at Nellie! It’s awfully hard to focus when your professor is breathing down your neck, staring dismissively into your cauldron like you’ve already made a mistake. She also just has a really poor memory, so any class that requires her to follow a sequence of meticulous steps is going to be one she struggles with. She also has difficulty in History of Magic for a similar reason—all of those dates and names just go in one ear and out the other.

BEST FRIEND(s): Rowan. Nellie loves every member of her eclectic group of friends dearly, but Rowan was her first friend, and will always, always be her dearest. For whatever reason, they just clicked perfectly, and completely got each other. Her death changed Nellie irreversibly. For at least a year after Rowan’s death, Nellie wore the spare pair of glasses she’d kept for her everywhere. Even once she stopped, they were almost always in her bag. Nellie was eventually able to manage again, but she never really moved on.

The runner up was undoubtedly Bill. He completely adopted her as (yet another) younger sibling, and they never quite lose that closeness, even when Jacob comes back into the picture. After all, Jacob can’t replicate the experiences Nellie had with Bill. While he was doing his part to protect Nellie as best he could, and that’s admirable, it wasn’t him that was by Nellie’s side throughout every trial she faced at Hogwarts. It was Bill, and Jacob would never be able to imitate the connection that gave Bill and Nellie.

In the wake of Rowan’s death, Nellie also develops a surprisingly close friendship with Erika Rath. They’d already been developing a friendship, but Rowan’s passing was the catalyst for them growing closer. During one of her training sessions with Erika (which Erika had told her she could sit out of, given the circumstances, but Nellie insisted), Rowan’s glasses fell off, and cracked. The damage was minor and entirely fixable, but Nellie had a complete breakdown, allowing herself to cry for the first time since Rowan had died. And Erika sat there with her, holding her tight, the entire time. While the rest of her friends were tiptoeing around her, not sure what she needed and scared of saying the wrong thing, uncomfortable in the face of such overwhelming grief, Erika took everything Nellie threw at her in stride. The fits where all Nellie could do was scream and cry, the anger that had her beating her fists against the ground and snarling threats brutal enough to make her sick, the guilt that left a hollow pit in her stomach and made her wish it had been her instead. Every ugly thought, every wave of emotion, Erika stuck with Nellie through them all, keeping her grounded her during a time where she felt she could completely drift away. It’s impossible to describe the sort of bond that gives people.

WORST ENEMY: For a while, it was Emily Tyler. With Merula, at least she has qualities that Nellie can respect—her ambition, her bravery, her fierce determination—and they’ve had a few moments where it feels like some genuine bonding has occurred. She may not approve of a lot of Merula’s behavior, but at least she can sort of understand her. But Emily Tyler is just so superficial and mean spirited, and Nellie simply can’t stand her. Now, though, it’s easily Patricia Rakepick.

LOVE INTEREST: Barnaby Lee, though not at first. Nellie housed an absolutely fierce crush on Skye Parkin for a while, but it quickly became apparent that Skye didn’t return her feelings. To Skye, Nellie was like the sister she never had, and Nellie didn’t want to jeopardize that. There was also some sort of tension going on between her and Merula in their fifth year, but nothing ever came of it. After the events that transpired in the Vault, Merula decided Nellie wasn’t worth the trouble. It’s one of her biggest regrets. 

Barnaby was actually crushing on Nellie long before she had any romantic feelings for him—ever since that first duel, actually, when she completely whooped his ass while apologizing after every blow. (A scene I actually explored here.) It took a little while, but Nellie eventually fell for Barnaby’s good heart and noble nature. He may not be the brightest bulb in the box, but he never fails to make her feel cared for. He can make her laugh when nobody else can, and although she’d loathe herself if he got hurt for her sake, it honestly feels a little nice to have someone trying to protect and take care of her for once, instead of the other way around. They also both love magical creatures, so a lot of their “dates” just consist of them hanging around the Care for Magical Creatures paddock and feeding whatever they find. Random little fun fact, Nellie’s pet name for Barnaby is just to say “Barnaby dear” as though it’s one word, and it never fails to make Barnaby feel super giddy.

PETS: Whoo boy, Nellie’s pets. First and foremost, there’s Astrid, her Lesser Sooty Owl. A remarkably intelligent bird, Astrid is usually found occupying the rafters above Nellie’s head, watching over her like a worrisome mother. She usually sleeps in Nellie’s dorm, rather than the owlery, and has a habit of picking at knots in Nellie’s hair (and, surprisingly, Rowan’s as well) with her beak as though she’s trying to straighten them out. 

While she adores Nellie, Astrid is notably less fond of Klepto, her mischievous Niffler. If Astrid is like Nellie’s mother, Klepto is like an obnoxious toddler, always causing trouble and fussing for her attention. He’s remarkably clingy, enough so that Nellie’s taken to hiding him in the dorm rather than keeping him in the grasslands. (She can’t help it! He throws a fit if he can’t sleep pressed against the soles of her feet!) 

Then there’s Flora, a particularly slothful fairy who has taken to riding in the pockets of Nellie’s robes, content to spend the rest of her life being carried around and lavished with compliments and sweets. Her and Astrid have a sort of tenuous truce, since they both have a bit of a fierce streak when it comes to defending Nellie. 

There’s also a Hippogriff and a Common Welsh Green on the grounds, both of which Nellie is determined to befriend, but that’s still a bit of a work in progress at the moment.

FUN FACTS:

• Nellie ends up going grey—or white, rather—fairly early. Her hair’s almost entirely white by the time she turns thirty. She’s insecure about it for a while, then decides to just embrace it. It looks elegant, and Merlin help the person who tries to tell her otherwise.

• Given how incredibly physically affectionate Nellie is and how much she adored Rowan, it’s no surprise that she almost always kissed Rowan on the top of the head when saying goodbye. Just like she did in the forest grove, chest tight with anguish but eyes painfully dry.

• Barnaby and Nellie are married by the time they’re twenty. Maybe it’s a result of almost dying young on multiple occasions, but Nellie wasn’t keen on waiting. She didn’t want to take the risk of never getting the opportunity.

• Nellie has always wanted a big family. After how fractured hers became when Jacob disappeared, that desperate desire only increased. Fortunately, Barnaby, with his tiny, miserable family, wanted to create a large, happy one just as badly.

• On that note, they end up having five daughters: Ivy (Ravenclaw), Jade (Ravenclaw), Miri (Hufflepuff), Aurora (Slytherin), and Rowan (Hufflepuff). Many were surprised Nellie waited until her last child to name one after Rowan, but the truth was, she just wasn’t ready. She’d always known she wanted to, but it always felt too soon.

• As a frequent visitor to the Burrow, Nellie grew close with all the Weasleys. She actually babysat Ron and Ginny a far bit after she graduated Hogwarts.

• Bill and Jacob never get along. Though Bill can logically understand that Jacob was trying to protect Nellie, he can never really forgive Jacob for the distress he put Nellie through. And while Jacob understands that Nellie needed support and he wasn’t there to provide it, some part of him resents that Bill stepped into his role as Nellie’s brother.

• Although they were once close as sisters, Nellie and Skye’s friendship definitely changed for the worse in their sixth year. The drama surrounding Nellie getting trained and befriended by Erika all occurred in the month leading up to Rowan’s demise. Having Skye—someone Nellie considered a close friend—be so caught up in her own grudges and jealousy that she called off their friendship in a fit of anger not even a week after Rowan had died, while Erika—a friend she had only just started to make—acted as her rock throughout the whole grieving process, really changed Nellie’s perspective on Skye. To be fair, Skye did eventually apologize, and they picked up the pieces as best they could, but things were never the same.

• While Nellie focused more on the changes her friends went through after the events in the Buried Vault, there’s no denying that she changed as well. She hardly slept her entire sixth year. She cut off all her hair, and she jumped with every loud noise. Her naivety, one of her defining traits, withered, and left only wariness behind. She went from trusting everyone, to trusting no one. Then Rowan’s death came, and she crumbled completely. For a long time after it, she couldn’t function at all.

Thank you to @treebels​, for the lovely artwork.

beech grove school, built 1901, cataloochee valley

beech grove

When Rosemary gets her first iTunes gift card in the fall of ‘06, Sadie sits with her at the computer. She has fifteen dollars for fifteen songs, and Sadie wants to see what she’ll do. She’s eleven, twelve in February, and she’s just beginning to develop a taste in music. Sadie’s happy for her. Excited. There’s something special about the first music you choose on your own. More special than buying your first movie ticket or reading your first book outside of school. Music’s different. She’s always known that.

Right now, Rose’s taste in music seems almost entirely dictated by what she’s heard on television. The radio just doesn’t work the same way for kids today as it did for kids then (And has Sadie ever really stopped being a kid?). When the family goes on long road trips, Sadie mandates at least one hour of radio surfing (“And you must pay attention,” she always says, and the kids abide. They know why they’re doing it.). Sometimes, they catch a few gems across the airwaves. Rose just seems to prefer the cable. Sadie knows she should be glad her daughter listens to any music at all (so many of her friends’ parents drive in wretched silence, like they prefer the sound of tires rolling across the road and hockey sticks knocking into each other in their trunks). Still, when Rosemary hits the purchase button on Hannah Montana’s “Best of Both Worlds,” Sadie can’t help but cringe a little inside.

Come on, now, she hears from a voice inside herself (that does not belong to herself, except for all the ways that it does). You remember. Pop stars are always TV stars. You used to love The Monkees. Mutual symbiosis, baby!

Sadie laughs to herself. Thankfully, Rosemary doesn’t notice.

“Are you sure you want to spend that money on Hannah Montana, babe?” she asks. “I mean … a dollar’s not cheap.”

“I like Hannah Montana, Mom,” Rosemary insists. “Ooh, I have to get ‘Suddenly I See.’”

“What’s that?”

“The song they played when the girls got voted off on So You Think You Can Dance.”

Sadie sighs. At least that’s a real song.

A real song? the voice returns to ask. Oh, Sadie Lou, I thought you were better than that. All songs are real songs. Next you’re gonna say that the only real music is Mozart.

Sadie chuckles again, a little louder this time. Rosemary still doesn’t notice. She’s just playing around on the computer, buying up TV soundtracks.

“Oh, and I wanna get ‘Boston,’” she says.

“You want to buy an entire city?” Sadie asks. “I didn’t know iTunes could do that.”

“Very funny, Mom. No, it’s a song by Augustana.”

“You say that like anyone knows who Augustana is.”

“It’s just a song. It’s good. They played it on the season finale of One Tree Hill this past year. When Brooke and Lucas dance at the wedding.”

“They played Led Zeppelin in that episode – the first time I think I’ve ever heard Led Zeppelin on a TV show, by the way – and you want some other song?”

“It’s a good song, Mom. Hear, listen to the clip.”

Rosemary types in the name and hits the little play button. Sadie sits back and tries to hear what an eleven-year-old might hear.

She said I think I’ll go to Boston / I think I’ll start a new life / I think I’ll start it over / Where no one knows my name …

Sadie sighs again. Only this time, she’s not disappointed. She also doesn’t hear what an eleven-year-old might hear. She hears what she would have heard when she was about fifteen.

“Mom?” Rosemary asks. “Are you OK?”

“What?” Sadie asks. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’m great. This just … this reminds me of how I felt about Beech Grove.”

“What’s Beech Grove?”

“Not what we thought it was going to be. So, when Lucy and I were a little older than you … all our lives, really, but especially around freshman year … we wanted to run away in the wintertime. We’d always lived in cold places, but we could just never get used to it. And I was looking for places with sunshine or warmth or just the word beach in them … and I found Beech Grove. I thought it sounded marvelous.”

“So, what was wrong with it?”

“It turned out to be a small town in Indiana. Hot summers, cold winters. Same as the place we dreamt we’d be escaping.”

Rosemary laughs. Goodness, her laugh. Sadie wonders if she knows who she sounds like … who she looks like when she smiles.

“I think it was about more than the weather, though,” Sadie says. “Lucy and I … we felt like we were different. Like St. Catherine’s wasn’t the right place for us. For any of us, really. That’s why Daddy and I didn’t send you and your brothers there. I think we wanted to go some place that felt magical … because we felt magical.”

Rosemary grins, and her eyes are just like glitter. Beautiful.

“So, do you like the song?” she asks.

Sadie laughs for real this time. Rosemary notices. She laughs, too.

“Yeah,” Sadie says. “Yeah, I like the song.”

Good choice.

(part of @nosebleedclub november challenge -- day xxi!)

Class Teacher

Beech Grove Primary School are looking to employ a Class Teacher Contract Type: Please See Advert Text | Working Pattern: Full time | Salary: NQT – M6 | Advert End Date: 23/06/2023 23:59 |  http://dlvr.it/SqFDzj

The new St. Alban's Court Manor House, Nonington Kent built in 1877... now known as Beech Grove School.

The Murderess of the Grunewald (21): Secret Whitsun Holidays on Rügen (10): Sharing Joy and Suffering (6c) - Jamie’s story (I)

Hunting Lodge Granitz / Island of Rügen / North Germany by Klugschnacker  [CC BY SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)] ______________________________________________________________

Previously                                                Note: This is a very detailed chapter.

Monday, Pentecost Weekend 2020, three days after Claire's release from prison

         When they left Berlin two days ago, neither Jamie nor Claire had imagined that this weekend would have had the potential to change their lives.          That morning Jamie had awakened her again in his rude but friendly way. While Claire showered and prepared for the day, he had already set the table and prepared the breakfast. When she came into the kitchen, he was standing at the sink with his back to her. Out of nowhere, she felt the urge to feel his closeness and his warmth. Moments later, she embraced his body and leaned her head against his back. To her delight, he did not turn around immediately but stood there for some quiet moments.          "Good morning, mo ghraid," he said softly and in his voice, she could hear the smile. that must have been visible over all his face. After a moment, he cautiously turned to her and hugged her as she rested her head against his chest.

         "Well?" He asked softly. "Are you ready to face the adventures of this day?"          She looked at him, then yawned at length. He smiled with his nose curling in that unique way Claire had never seen it with anyone else.

         "If the first adventure is a strong coffee and a good breakfast, then Dr. Fraser, my answer is: Aye, sir!"          Jamie grinned again and his nose rippled again. He kissed her on her forehead and said:          "Then let us have breakfast!"                  Ninety minutes later, Claire packed the sandwiches she'd prepared after breakfast into a cooler. She also added two apples and a bag of nuts. The little black-haired dachshund, who always speculated that something was falling from the table for him, looked up at her expectantly. But this time his hopes were not fulfilled.          "Bismarck," Claire said, looking at him, "you just got a whole bowl of food. That's enough for now."          Just as she spoke the last words, she realized how nonsensical this had to sound in the ears of the dog. When was one portion of food ever sufficient for a dachshund? The little guy's stomach seemed to have the ability to expand to unimaginable sizes. She had to think of a verse from the well-known poem “Die Zufriedenheit” ("Contentedness") by the German poet Johann Martin Miller:          "The more he has, the more he wants, his complaints never remain silent."

        But before she could turn back to Bismarck, Jamie approached her:          "Are you ready, Claire? The animals are fed, the kitchen and dining room cleaned up ... "

         "Yes, our food is packed too. Do you have water bottles ... "           "Already in the car."           "Good, I'm ready too!"           Jamie had bent down and leashed Bismarck. Claire took it and handed him the cooler. She looked again into the living area, where Adso, as usual, had made himself comfortable on a sunny window sill. Then she went with Bismarck to the car and waited for Jamie, who locked the front door. Only a few moments later Bismarck was stowed in his transport box. Slowly Jamie steered the car from the parking lot in front of the house in the direction of the road.           During breakfast, they had roughly discussed the plans for the day. A tour to the hunting lodge of Granitz was the first destination on their list. But before they could visit the castle, they had to park Bismarck in a dog boardinghouse for a few hours. Dogs were not allowed to enter the castle and they did not want to leave the animal alone in the car for several hours. To Claire's delight, Jamie had chosen the route along the national park and the coast for their tour to Granitz. As the day before, they first went to Lohme and then in the direction of the Jasmund national park, then turned off in the direction of Sassnitz. After they went through Lancken and Dübnitz, they came closer to the coast every minute. They drove along Prora and turned off towards Bergen halfway along the building complex. Via Thesenvitz and Patzig they reached the town of Kartzitz and shortly thereafter the dog boardinghouse, which was very close to a small forest.           Jamie parked the car and got out. He felt a little queasy when he took the transport box with Bismarck. It was the first time he had to give away the animal for a few hours to a dog boarding house and thus to the care of people who were complete strangers. Bismarck was used to Tessa Lüttgenjohann, Ned Gowan or the Schaller couple as his ‘babysitters’. But how would he react, if he had to remain not only in a completely foreign environment but also with people who were not known to him? In Jamie, the thought rose that this experience probably resembled those of parents who left their children in kindergarten or at school for the first time. Suddenly, Jamie felt Claire's hand gently stroking his back. He had not noticed that he was still standing at the car.           "He'll be fine, Jamie. Bismarck is strong and it's only for a few hours," she said in a calm voice as she put an arm around him and gently squeezed him.           "Yes, he will."           He breathed deeply again, then he walked with the transport box in the direction of the entrance. Claire followed him.           Bismarck's accommodation turned out to be a lot simpler than Jamie had thought. At the reception, they were greeted by a staff member and completed the formalities. Then they went to a large fenced grass pitch, where already several small dogs romped around. Jamie noticed how excited Bismarck was when he heard all the other dogs yapping. After the front door of the grass field closed behind them, he put the box on the ground and took the dog out. At first, he stroked Bismarck extensively, then introduced him to the staff person, a young man named Frederick. Jamie was relieved to see that Bismarck obviously had no fear of contact. Together with Fred, he then brought Bismarck to the other little dogs and watched his dachshund begin to observe them carefully. After a light-brown dachshund came running to Bismarck and sniffed around him, the ice was broken. Now, the other dogs approached the newcomer and shortly thereafter, the animals spread all over the lawn again. Bismarck had followed them, encouraged by Jamie with a few pats. He seemed to enjoy having a little race with a black and white spiked mongrel dog, slightly taller than him. Jamie, Claire, and Frederick took the opportunity to leave the grass field.

“Dackel” by Pipsimv            After handing over Bismarck's food and discussing when they would pick up the dog, Jamie and Claire headed for Bergen and from there via Zirkow to the "Granitz Parking Lot". There they parked the car in the shade of a tree and then took the so-called "Jagdschlossexpress". For a quarter of an hour, the small shuttle drove them through the Granitzer beech grove and stopped in front of the castle. Together they entered the impressive entrance hall, which was completely clad in marble. Then they went to the reception, where they bought the tickets, stowed Jamie's backpack and Claire's bag in a locker, and then waited for the tour to begin.          With time, more and more people gathered in the entrance hall, and then a young woman in a blue suit came to greet the visitors and introduced herself as Christina, their guide. Christina told her listeners that                  "the Granitz, a hilly landscape with gentle hills, sparse forests and the huge cliffs belonged to the Lords von Putbus since 1472. The House von Putbus had been raised to the title of Reichsgrafen (Imperial Counts) in 1727. 'Reichsgraf' was a title awarded directly by the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, because the territories of these counts were subordinate directly to the Emperor. Already a year earlier, in 1726, Moritz Ulrich I von Putbus had built a two-story hunting lodge with two free-standing pavilions in a forest clearing, which he called "Solitüde". In 1730, a two-story Belvedere in half-timbered construction was built nearby, on the highest point of the Granitz, so-called Temple Mount, which is 107 m above sea level. This house was demolished in 1810 and in its place, a new observation tower in the form of a medieval castellany was planned to be built. But this project was not carried out. In 1814, at first, the hunting lodge was modernized in neo-Gothic style. Only later, in the years between 1838 and 1846, after the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation had been disbanded and the Imperial Count of Putbus had been elevated by the Swedish king to the princely state, Prince Wilhelm Malte I zu und von Putbus gave the order to build the present castle. He commissioned architect Johann Gottfried Steinmeyer of Berlin with the plans and their execution. As a model for the new building, the style of those castles, which were created during the Renaissance in northern Italy, was chosen. After its completion and for a long time beyond that, the castle became a popular holiday destination for the European aristocracy and other prominent personalities. Among the visitors of the house were the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, the Danish King Christian VIII, the German Chancellor Otto Prince von Bismarck, and the historian Johann Jacob Grümbke."

“Hunting Lodge Granitz - Entrance Hall” * Foto: Lapplaender via Wiki Media [CC BY-SA 3.0 de (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)]              Christina asked the little group to follow her. While guiding the visitors through the individual rooms, she explained that                    "the hunting lodge belonged to the family von Putbus until 1944. After Malte Ludolph Franz Eugen von und zu Putbus was imprisoned by the Nazis, the estate was taken over by them too. When the Soviet Army occupied East Germany and the land reform was carried out by the new political leadership of the GDR the family had been expropriated. The descendants of the Putbus family filed a suit after the German reunification and demanded their ancestral possessions to be returned to them. But their lawsuit was dismissed and until today the castle is owned by the state. After World War II, many home furnishings were lost or stolen. A number of works of art were brought to Berlin, where they were kept in the 'Storehouse for paintings of the Department for the Administration of Soviet Property in Germany'. In 1953, the objects were then handed over to the GDR State Museums in Berlin. In the years between 1983 an1990, the castle was extensively restored and the inventory was supplemented in the old style. Between 2011 and 2014, the castle was then renovated again for 7.9 million euros. In this context, the castle also received a new permanent exhibition, which was opened in 2014."          After this introduction, Christina pointed out that visitors could now go to the exhibition or the observation tower. As the majority of visitors flocked to the "Stags of the World" exhibit on the first floor, Jamie and Claire opted to ascent the tower. Leading her to the 38-meter high central tower, Jamie whispered:          "This tower was built according to the plans of the famous Prussian architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Originally, this was the castle hall. The tower was retrofitted."

“Hunting Lodge Granitz - staircase” * Foto: Hajotthu via Wiki Media Commons [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)]

            When they arrived at the foot of the cast-iron spiral staircase, whose posts were shaped in the form of an eagle standing on one leg, Jamie whispered:          "The self-supporting spiral staircase has 154 cast-iron steps. You can imagine how much it weighs. But their static forces are completely absorbed by the sidewalls. It has been 'clamped' into the tower, so to speak."          Slowly, they began the ascent. Once at the top of the platform, they had a wonderful panoramic view over the island. While they stood by the parapet, Jamie explained to Claire what direction they were facing. For almost fifteen minutes, they enjoyed the view in peace and made some pictures with their phones.          "The view is wonderful! And the air!"          Claire took a deep breath.          "Do you like it?" he asked.                    "Oh yes, very much," she whispered.

Panoramic view from the tower of the Granitz Hunting Lodge to the city of Binz - Foto: Gerhard Giebener / pixelio.de

         They walked on for two more stops, and when they finished the walk, he put his arms around her, pulled her close, and kissed her passionately.           "Dr. Fraser! "She said with mock indignation, "we are in public!”           "Does it worry you? Nobody knows us here!" he whispered to her with a mischievous smile.           "I thought you brought me here for the wonderful view. And now I have to say that you just wanted to seduce me!"           Jamie met her eyes. Then he whispered:                     "Do you really know me so little, Claire?"           She held his gaze and was silent for a moment. Then she said:           "I love you, Jamie."           He knew she was telling the truth.           Slowly she let her long, fine fingers slide over his cheeks. Then she kissed him gently.           "I love you too, Claire," he said as they parted.           "I know, Jamie," she replied, adding, "I just hope that ... that I do not ..."           She lowered her eyes.           "Claire, look at me," he said, gently pressing her chin up with one hand.           "Do not doubt. It will be alright. We'll make it, together."           She only nodded. Then they heard footsteps on the iron staircase and a few more visitors stepped onto the viewing platform. Slowly they went to the exit and descended to the other floors after some more visitors had arrived.

Wendeltreppe im Schloss Granitz by susanne906  

          There they visited the Marble Hall, the Knight's Hall, and various other exhibition rooms. After they had both made a detour to the toilet, they left the castle and strolled to the nearby inn, the "Old Distillery". They decided to keep their sandwiches for the afternoon. After examining the menu, they choose a wild garlic soup as an appetizer, a venison burger with goat cheese, mushrooms, and cranberries for the main course and some wine. Ninety minutes later they went to visit the Granitzhaus, which also belongs to the castle. In the former forestry, and guest house, which now houses the information center for the Biosphere Reserve Southeast Rügen, they visited an exhibition that acquaints the guests of the island with the various landscape and coastal forms of the coastal area of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Standing before some pictures, Jamie pointed out how much land and sea were interlinked in this region. When they stood in front of a map, he whispered:           "Do you see how the peninsulas and coasts are connected by a narrow strip of land, but separated from each other by the salt-marsh? There are fine sandy, wide sandy beaches, and there are rugged cliffs. At the foot of the cliffs, so-called block beaches have emerged."

“The Granitzhaus” - Foto: Derzno via Wiki Media Commons [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)]  

          Claire nodded but remained silent for most of the time. Jamie knew that her silence had nothing to do with disinterest. On the contrary. In all the time he had known her, he had observed again and again that she was especially attentive in such moments. It seemed as if she was concentrating on what was in front of her to gather as much information as possible.

          At 3:00 pm they found themselves at the shuttle bus stop and less than twenty minutes later they stopped at the parking lot where they boarded their car. After a little over an hour's drive, they reached the dog boardinghouse. Bismarck's joy knew no bounds when he saw his humans again. According to Fred, the little guy had behaved well and was always welcome again as a guest. However, when Jamie wanted to put the dachshund in the transport box, Bismarck refused to enter it. He pushed his little dachshund feet powerfully against both sides of the entrance and Jamie was unable to get him into it. Neither by persuasion nor by light nudges, treats, or gentle threats. He looked at Claire for help. She just opened her arms.

          "Come on, I'll take him on my lap during the ride and hold him."

          "You would do that?" Jamie asked, astonished.

          "Sure, why not?" Claire asked just as astonished.

          "I thought ... oh ... does not matter. Thank you!"

          He gave her the dog and Bismarck seemed to be comfortable in Claire's arms. Jamie opened the car door and let her in. As he drove the car back onto the road, he stole several glances at Claire and Bismarck. She had put a blanket on her lap so that the dog would not be troubled by the hard plastic reinforcements of the seat belt. Bismarck had pulled the blanket with his teeth and so shaped it into a round nest, as he always did when given a blanket or cloth to sleep on. After a few minutes, he had calmed down and seemed to sleep, surrounded by Claire's arms. But Jamie knew only too well that it only seemed that way. As long as they were driving, Bismarck would close his eyes and rest at the very most. Only when they would be back in their holiday home would he really start to sleep.

          They passed around the great "Jasmunder Bodden", which separates the Jasmund peninsula from the motherland of the island, and arrived half an hour later near the village of Glowe. There they parked the car and shortly thereafter they entered the dog beach, on which already a number of other dog owners were walking and playing with their protégés. After a while, Jamie and Claire found a less crowded place to sit down. They ate their sandwiches and emptied their water bottles. Bismarck was also given food and water. Then Jamie took the animal on his lap and fed him dog drops he took from his jacket pocket. While doing so, he stroked Bismarck extensively.

“Hund am Strand” by manfredrichter

          "Well, are you trying to bribe him? Do you think he will voluntarily return to the transport box after a handful of dog drops?"           "No, Claire. I'm a realist, and I've known Bismarck long enough now to know that he'll behave like a defiant kid for quite a while. He definitely enjoyed being together with the other dogs. But he wants to punish me for leaving him alone. This is his way of saying that I have to make amends. He wants to catch up with the time without me. He always did that, even if I left him with Tessa or Ned. You'll probably have to keep him on your lap for the remainder of our return journey."           And so Claire went through the same procedure again: spreading the blanket over her lap, putting the dog on it, allowing the dog to build a 'nest' out of the blanket, putting her arms around the hidden little fur monster and holding him until their destination was reached. But to Jamie's joy, she did not seem to care.           When they returned to their holiday home, they were greeted by Adso, who came to Claire, loudly meowing. Bismarck hardly paid any attention to the cat, but immediately ran to his beige dog cushion and laid down. It did not bother him that his humans scurried around him and he did not react to the cat's advances of playing with him. So Adso followed Claire, who went upstairs. When Jamie turned on the fireplace shortly afterward, he looked again at Bismarck. The animal lay on its back with all four little legs stretched out, snoring loudly.           An hour after they returned, Claire came out of the bathroom - freshly showered, in her pajamas and dressing gown. On the coffee table, she found a fresh pot of tea and a bowl of biscuits. Jamie had fed the animals and, after giving her a quick kiss on the forehead, disappeared into the bathroom. When he returned, dressed in pajamas and his dressing gown, he held a cake plate with a chocolate-colored cake on it. When he saw Claire's questioning, but enthusiastic expression, he said:           "I thought, since we already had our dinner on the beach, we could enjoy a little dessert."           "Dr. Fraser, your mind is full of good ideas!"           Apparently, not only Claire but also Adso and Bismarck were of that opinion. Both of them had smelled the cake and now moved cautiously, but determinedly, towards the coffee table. But it only took a wave of his hand and a stern look from Jamie and the dog retreated to his pillow. Claire, however, had to use a little more effort to scare Adso away. The cat grumbled to himself, then ran in the direction of the dog and began to attack it to get rid of his frustration. But Bismarck bristled Adsos attacks brusquely and finally, the cat retired to one of the chairs in the dining area.

”Tee” by Imoflow           "What's that cake?" Claire asked as Jamie put a piece of it on her plate.           "Italian almond cake. A dream."           They began to eat - silently enjoying their dessert. When Claire had finished her piece of cake, she sighed.

          "All gone  ..." she said, with heavy grief in her voice.           "Oh, you can have all the rest of the cake, if you want ..."           "Well, the whole cake would be a bit too much, but I like to take another piece."           She held out the cake plate and watched as Jamie put another piece on her plate. Although the mood was resolved, he seemed tense. She had felt that throughout the day again and again. Jamie was relaxed, humorous ... and yet there was a subliminal inner tension. She sensed that the tension was related to the conversation they wanted to have. It did not help to postpone the topic further. It would not help him. It was better to speak straight to the topic. She put her on the table and took his hand.            "Jamie, this day was beautiful. I have seen and heard so many new things. Thank you so much for making that possible."            He smiled, looking down at the floor, his head turning slightly red. He wanted to say something, but she grabbed his hand and kissed it.            "But now I want to hear more from you."            "Och, Claire, I do not know. These are not all nice things ... "            She released his hand and covered his head with both hands.                      "Says the man who had to listen to the story of my whole messed up life ..."            She kissed him gently.            "Go on, you're always brave."            She kissed her again, then released him and turned her back to her cake. Jamie took a deep breath.

“Herrenhaus” by Funki50            "You asked about my family," he began softly.                      Claire nodded.            "I already told you about the deaths of my mother and father, the deaths of my brothers, when we talked in prison. To the rest of my family, well, I ... I have no contact with them at the moment. Except for my brother-in-law, Ian. We communicate via email regularly and he comes to visit me every now and then when he has some business in Berlin. But ... I have not seen ... my sister and the children for almost four years."            Claire did not miss the grief in Jamie's eyes. She put down her plate again and put her right hand on his left.            "I think," he said, pausing for a moment, "I should tell you about that first."            She just nodded silently and squeezed his hand gently.            "After my mother’s death, my sister Janet, called Jenny by all, took on more and more tasks in our household. All of us, my father, her husband Ian and I have always been very grateful to her. It was a logical solution. Ian ran our estate, Jenny took care of the family and the big household. My dad and I worked in our law firm and lived in our townhouse. On the weekends we drove to Potsdam to spend time with the family on our estate. In this way, our family life maintained a good rhythm and stability even after the death of our mother. Ian got very involved in his work with animals and agriculture. For him, this was and is not just a job, but a kind of calling. And Jenny has been and still is a loving mother to their four children and over the years managed the big household in a truly exemplary way. Sure, she has some hired helpers. An elderly woman helps her in the kitchen and takes care of the children whenever needed. There are also two younger women who take care of the cleaning of the big house and the laundry. Otherwise, that would be impossible. Every now and then, they also have temporary help for additional work. But despite these helpers, she is the one who has to coordinate, guide and, in the end, overseeing everything. As I said, we have always been very grateful ... "            Jamie reached for his cup and took a sip of tea.                    "However, we - Ian, my father and I - eventually realized how Jenny’s behavior changed. At first, it went very slow. You could say it happened creepingly. She became ... more and more decisive. At first, we thought she just wanted to keep control of all the work .... maybe because she was afraid that she might do something wrong or not good enough. Most of the time we just took it that way ... every now and then we also joked about it. But we endured it ... We did not want to burden her with our criticism in addition to our Mother's death and the many tasks she had taken on."            Jamie reached for his cup again and took a sip of tea. Taking a deep breath, he went on:             "Perhaps …"            His eyes moved to the fireplace.            "Perhaps what?"            Claire gently stroked his hand with her thumb.            "Maybe we should not have been so considerate, maybe it was a false consideration ..."            He turned his face back to Claire, who looked at him in astonishment.            "How ... what do you mean?" she asked carefully.            "Well, her behavior became more and more determinative, more dominant, and in a way more destructive. Maybe we could have stopped that if we had mentioned it earlier. After the death of my father, that behavior even increased. It became unbearable. And above all, her behavior was not just about running the household. She also began to give Ian more and more 'good advice' for working with the animals and the staff. One could get the impression that she was convinced that without her on this estate nothing would go the right way. Well, I did not interfere because I thought that it was a problem that they had to solve as a married couple. At some point, there was a big confrontation between them. Ian later told me that he clearly put the choice before her: Either she focuses on her tasks and lets him do his job in peace or he goes back to Scotland, leaving her and the children. That has probably awakened her. Since then, she leaves him alone and spared him with her uninvited advice.            But her dominant drive then sought another way out. She also made me ‘happy’ with her unsolicited advice whenever she and Ian visited me with the children. That was mostly on my birthdays or when they went on trips to Berlin. My father had left a very clear testament: She and Ian inherited the estate with everything that went with it and a certain sum of money. I inherited the law firm and the townhouse and also a sum of money. In addition, my father's interests in a number of companies were very carefully shared between us. As for the value of the heritage, it was shared really fairly. She never complained about that either. But whenever she was in Berlin, in the house that now belonged to me alone ... she could never spare me her criticism or her advice. Once the lawn was not well enough maintained, then again she found that the winter garden was 'overburdened' with plants and urgently had to be 'emptied'. My study was too dark, but the kitchen I had renovated was too bright. And so on and so forth. I dismissed all this as one of her quirks, but I was wrong. It was not enough for her to interfere with my domestic affairs. Her addiction, wanting to manage everything and everyone, went so far that she repeatedly tried to 'make me happy with some women'. 'Coupling' would probably be the more appropriate word for this nonsense. When I forbade her to interfere with my private affairs, she said, that I ‘needed her help, because I clearly would not be able to find a wife and start a family on my own.'

           Jamie, who had become angrier with every word, shook his head. Then he buried his face in both hands. Claire, who had listened to his words with ever-increasing astonishment, wrapped his head in both hands and pulled him close.            "Jamie, you don’t have to keep talking if it is too much for you," she said softly as she gently stroked his silky locks with one hand.            He paused for a moment with his head against her chest. Then he raised his head and looked at her.            "No, Claire, I want to tell you. It is important that you know that. Since the death of our mother, Jenny teased me with the idea that I did not bring a girl home. My goodness! I was young, I did not know what I wanted to do with my life! And why should I start a relationship? Just because ‘everyone does it'? My father kept saying I should not take her words seriously, and as long as my father lived, it was only verbal taunts. But after I returned from France ... "            "You were in France?" Claire asked in surprise.            "Yes, I was able to study two semesters in Paris with the Erasmus program. I lived at my uncle Jarred’s house, who has a wine business there.            "And why did Jenny increase her taunts after your stay in Paris?"            "Well, there was this story with ... Marie-Catherine ..."

29th April >> (@VaticanNews) #PopeFrancis #Pope Francis appoints Archbishop Paul Etienne to become the Coadjutor Archbishop of Seattle, Washington (USA).

Pope Francis names new Coadjutor Archbishop for Seattle

A Coadjutor Bishop has the same functions as an Auxiliary Bishop, but he also has the automatic right to become the Diocesan Bishop upon the death or retirement.

The Holy Father chose Archbishop Paul Etienne to become the Coadjutor Archbishop of Seattle, Washington. Archbishop Etienne was, until his appointment, Archbishop of Anchorage in Alaska.

Biography

Archbishop Paul Dennis Etienne was pastor of St. Paul in Tell City, Indiana and St. Mark in St. Mark. Archbishop Etienne was born on June 15, 1959, as the second son to Paul and Kay (Voges) Etienne. Two of Bishop Etienne's brothers, Bernard and Zachary, are priests for the Diocese of Evansville, Indiana and one of his two sisters, Nicolette, is a Benedictine Sister with Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Beech Grove, Indiana. Another brother, Richard, is married and lives in Newburg, Indiana, and another sister, Angela Etienne, lives in Evansville, Indiana.

Education

He graduated from Tell City High School. Before entering college he was Manager of Siebert's Clothing Store in Tell City, Indiana. He attended Bellarmine College in Louisville, Kentucky (1983-1984), and graduated from the University of St. Thomas / St. John Vianney College Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota with a bachelor's degree in Business Administration. In 1986-1987 he served with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) as Assistant Coordinator for Papal Visits for Pope John Paul II to the United States. From 1988-1992 he attended the North American College in Rome and received a STB (Bachelor of Sacred Theology) at the Pontifical Gregorian University.

Priesthood

Archbishop Etienne was ordained a priest on June 27, 1992 for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. His first appointment was as Associate Pastor at St. Barnabas in Indianapolis and Associate Vocation Director for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. From 1994-1995 he attended the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, receiving his STL (License in Spiritual Theology).

Following assignments and appointments:

1995-1998 Vocation Director, Archdiocese of Indianapolis

Pastor, St. Anne, Jennings County; Pastor. St. Joseph, Jennings County

1998-2007 Pastor, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, New Albany, Indiana

2007-2009 Vice-Rector, Bishop Simon Bruté College Seminary, Indianapolis

2007-2008 Pastor, St. Simon, Indianapolis

2008-2009 Pastor, St. John the Evangelist, Indianapolis

2009-2016 Bishop of Cheyenne, Diocese of Cheyenne, Wyoming

2016 Archbishop of Anchorage, Archdiocese of Anchorage, Alaska

Other assignments include:

Spiritual Director, St. Meinrad School of Theology

Archdiocesan Review Board

Advisory Board, Bishop Simon Bruté College Seminary

Board of Consultors

Council of Priests

Vice-Postulator for the cause of Servant of God, Bishop Simon Bruté

Episcopacy

Bishop Etienne was the Eighth Bishop of the Diocese of Cheyenne, succeeding the Most Reverend David L. Ricken who served the Diocese of Cheyenne from September 2001 to August 2008. On October 4, 2016, he was named the Fourth Archbishop of Anchorage, Alaska.

(Biography courtesy of the Diocese of Cheyenne)

Topics

POPE FRANCIS

APPOINTMENTS

UNITED STATES

BISHOPS

29th April 2019, 12:07

On This Day: 7 Nov 1980

On This Day in 1980, “King of Cool” Steve McQueen Dies.

On November 7, 1980, actor Steve McQueen, one of Hollywood’s leading men of the 1960s and 1970s and the star of action thrillers such as Bullitt and The Towering Inferno, dies at the age of 50 in Mexico while undergoing an experimental cancer treatment. McQueen was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a type of cancer that is frequently associated with asbestos exposure, in 1979. It was later speculated that the ruggedly handsome actor, who had a penchant for fast cars and motorcycles, had been exposed to asbestos through the use of racing suits.

On March 24, 1930, in Beech Grove, Indiana, Steven McQueen was born. McQueen joined the US Marine Corps in the late 1940s after a troubled childhood that included time in a reform school. He then went on to study acting and race motorcycles. He made his feature film debut in 1956, in the film Somebody Up There Likes Me, alongside Paul Newman. McQueen went on to star in the cult classic The Blob (1958) and became well-known for his role as a bounty hunter in the CBS television series Wanted: Dead or Alive, which aired from 1958 to 1961.

During the 1960s, McQueen established a reputation for playing cool, loner heroes in films such as The Magnificent Seven (1960), directed by John Sturges and starring Yul Brynner and Charles Bronson; The Great Escape (1963), in which McQueen played a World War II soldier who makes a daring motorcycle escape from a German prison camp; and The Sand Pebbles (1966), for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. McQueen starred as a detective in one of his most popular films, 1968’s Bullitt, which featured a spectacular car chase through the streets of San Francisco. The same year, he played an elegant thief in The Thomas Crown Affair.

McQueen was one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors in the 1970s, appearing in hit films such as director Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway (1972) with Ali MacGraw, to whom McQueen was married from 1973 to 1978; Papillon (1973), with Dustin Hoffman; and The Towering Inferno (1974), with Paul Newman, William Holden, and Faye Dunaway.

McQueen travelled to Rosarito Beach, Mexico, in the summer of 1980, for an unconventional cancer treatment that included, among other things, coffee enemas and a therapy derived from apricot pips. On November 6, 1980, he underwent surgery to remove cancerous masses from his body; he died the next day. Tom Horn and The Hunter, both of which were released in 1980, were his final films.