roderich speaks excellent spanish but antonio's german is terrible that's the way it is unfortunately

Christopher Columbus: Master Double Agent and Portugal’s 007

Henry IV of Spain – known as "The Impotent" for his weakness, both on the throne and (allegedly) in the marriage chamber – died in 1474. A long and inconclusive war of succession ensued, pitting supporters of Henry's 13-year-old heir, Juana de Trastámara, against a faction led by Princess Isabel of Castile and her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon. Portugal, Spain's much smaller antagonist for centuries already, sided with the loyalists.

(Wedding portrait of King Ferdinand II of Aragón and Queen Isabella of Castile.)  

The civil war ended in 1480, with the Treaty of Alcáçovas/Toledo, whereby Portugal withdrew support for Juana; in exchange, Isabel and Fernando promised not to encroach on South Atlantic trade routes that Portugal had long been exploring and wished to monopolize.

Treaty Not Worth Much

Spain immediately began to violate the Treaty of Alcáçovas. Portugal's gold trade with Ghana was a powerful enticement, but the Spanish were also lured by the priceless knowledge that Portugal had painstakingly gathered about the currents, territories, winds and heavenly bodies relative to the Atlantic regions. The Portuguese were far advanced in the sciences of geography and navigation pertaining to the Atlantic Ocean, both south and west of Portugal itself.

Meanwhile, João II ascended to the throne of Portugal in 1481, reversing the policies of his father, another weak, late-Medieval ruler who'd surrendered excessive estates and privileges to the nobility. Large swaths of the noble class rebelled, but João II was an astute diplomat, with powerful alliances among the military and religious orders across Europe, along with an extensive network of spies. He sprang a trap on his adversaries, capturing and executing the ring leader.

                                                (João II of Portugal)

Conspiracy!

Queen Isabel supported the traitors in Portugal, having obtained their promise to annul the Treaty of Alcáçovas. When the conspiracy was exposed, numerous traitors among the Portuguese nobility fled to Spain, where they found asylum, along with a base from which to continue their hostilities against João II. Prominent among the defectors were two nephews of the highly-born wife of Christopher Columbus – who would himself sacrifice the next twenty years of his life to join this exodus, faking desertion to his sovereign's most bitter foe. The internecine strife was so keen that after another occasion when his agents had tipped him off, which resulted in João II personally executing the Duke of Viseu, he threatened to charge his own wife with treason for weeping over her brother.

(Christopher Columbus was arrested at Santo Domingo in 1500 by Francisco de Bobadilla and returned to Spain, along with his two brothers, in chains)

The Mother of All Secrets

It's now been amply proven that evidence of hostility between Columbus and João II was fabricated. Columbus was, in fact, a member of João II's inner circle, in addition to being one of the most seasoned of all Portuguese mariners. After his false defection to Spain, Columbus attended three secret meetings with João II, the second of these, in 1488, being prompted by the mother of all maritime secrets: Dias having rounded the Cape of Good Hope, thereby establishing the shortest route to India by sea.

Now, the Holy Grail of all commercial bonanzas was a sea route to the riches of India – sought because Christendom was at war with Islam, and Muslim armies blocked the much shorter land routes across the Middle East. What the most knowledgeable Portuguese pilots knew was top secret, state of the art, a scientific prize for international espionage.

(The Portuguese discovered numerous territories and routes during the 15th and 16th centuries. Cantino planisphere, made by an anonymous cartographer in 1502.)

The Portuguese had been the first Europeans to launch expeditions in search of the Equator, which they reached around 1470, discovering while they were at it, the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe. By 1485, expert Portuguese technicians had invented charts and tables – based on the height of the sun at the Equator – which allowed navigators to determine their location in the daytime. While King João II was keeping Columbus up to date with all of the cutting-edge developments in maritime science, he was at the same time spreading so much disinformation elsewhere—among friends and foes alike— that we are still unraveling it.

(This secret letter, written by King João II was found in Columbus’ archives. Here is the exterior, addressed in the hand of King João II to, “Xpovam Collon, our special friend in Seville.”)

João II’s agents spent years pursuing the most important traitors across Spain, France and England. With that in view, the following comparison is revealing. Both Columbus and his nephew Don Lopo de Albuquerque (Count of Penamacor) fled Portugal at the same time, took refuge at Isabel's court under false identities, and fostered invasions of the Portuguese Atlantic monopoly from foreign shores. Lopo was tenaciously pursued, finally cornered in Seville and assassinated; in contrast, Columbus disposed of Portuguese secrets, exchanged letters covertly with King João II throughout his eight-year residence in Spain, stopped in Portugal on three of his four voyages, and lied to the Spanish Monarchs about these secret contacts.

A Secret Identity

Christopher Columbus is the garbled pseudonym of a very wellborn, learned, seafaring Portuguese nobleman. The antidote to all subsequent confusion about this man's true identity and character is simply to recognize that the news of his "discovery," which broke like a thunderbolt across the rest of Europe, was in fact nothing more than the release of information that the Portuguese had been hoarding for decades, laced with a linguistic insinuation that Spain had just pioneered the shortest route to India.

Everything Falls into Place

This new perspective on Columbus – as a Portuguese double agent – results in a major paradigm shift. All of the lies perpetrated by Columbus, his family, and the royal chroniclers suddenly begin to make sense as elements in a single, grand design, whose architect was King João II.

It is remarkable that the wave of treasons occurring in Portugal during the mid-1480s – engaging both Queen Isabel and Columbus so deeply – has never been linked by Portuguese historians to the biography of Columbus. Yet, no serious historian today accepts that Columbus was the first European to reach the Americas. There is no excuse any longer for maintaining that he was, or for sustaining the obsolete, pseudo-historical pretense that Columbus invented the idea of sailing west or that he ever really believed he'd landed in India.

(The secret Memorial Portugués, advising Queen Isabel that Portugal engineered the Treaty of Tordesillas specifically to safeguard the best territories for herself. Note how King João II is called  (A) “an evil devil,” malvado diablo , and (B) how the “Indies,” Indias”, that Columbus visited are described as NOT the real India)

Having skirted the western lands from Canada to Argentina, the Portuguese understood there were no established commercial ports, no ready-made commercial goods, and was thus no trade potential there to compare with that of India. Columbus – and his many other co-conspirators in Spain, easily identified in retrospect – guarded these secrets faithfully, secrets they had to be privy to if they would guide the Spanish Monarchs to the counterfeit of India. The trade for gold and other goods along the west coast of Africa was immensely profitable, but still more jealously guarded was knowledge that the sea route to India lay also in this direction. The Portuguese were intent on keeping Spanish ships out of these waters. With both war and treaties having failed, João II and Columbus launched an audacious ruse to obtain their objective through less obvious means.

How History is Shaped

Colossal planning, nerve, and effort went into this accomplishment – seven years of convincing knowledgeable skeptics that the voyage was possible, outfitting a fleet and loading it with merchandise for trade (including cinnamon that would later be presented as evidence of contact with India). On a secret mission to Germany, Martim Behaim, another Templar knight member of the Portuguese Order of Christ, built a false globe based on Toscanelli's theory that East Asia lay just across the Atlantic. This globe still exists; it is the oldest one in the world. Genuine Portuguese traitors warned the Spanish Monarchs that they were being deceived.

(Martin Behaim’s globe intentionally placed the Azores islands, where Behaim lived and was married, on top of the Americas. This made Asia appear much closer to Europe than it really is, thus supporting the project that Columbus was advocating for: Map of  Atlantic Ocean)

The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), observed fairly well by both sides, achieved João II's strategic objective: to engage the Spanish in the west while keeping them out of those regions that Portugal wished to dominate. Its effect on the linguistic, racial and cultural substance of an immense portion of the globe has scarcely been rivaled by any other treaty between two nations.  No single factor did more to realize this outcome than the erudite seamanship, cunning, ruthless persistence, loyalty and sangfroid of the man whom we still remember today as "Christopher Columbus," a real-life 007, on May 20th, 1506.

(Cover from the master spy and sailor's Book of Privileges , which clearly shows that the owner's pseudonym was "Colon." An international transmission of the stunning "discovery," in March of 1493, distorted the name in such a fashion as to leave us with "Columbus" in English today. Technically speaking, "Colón" as the Spanish still call him, is correct, and it will someday most likely replace "Columbus" in common usage)  

Another particularly factor that King João II knew of existence of land on the west was that when the first Treaty of Tordesilhas came, the line that separate Spain and Portugal territory was just near the Cape Verde territory (already belonging to Portugal). King João II refuse that line and asked for more 370 nautical miles west from that line. The Spanish Monarchs, not knowing anything about the globe, accepted, thinking that it was just more water. When the new Treaty came, the line that King João II asked put Brasil over Portuguese domain. How King João II knew exactly the number of miles to put Brasil in Portugal territory? Because he already knew there was land on the west. The “discovery” of Brasil was NOT an accident. 

21- CIGARETTE

I am in the 16th arrondissement but Martial is not there. And if I called Michel, the weird guy, he lives next door. A lady with a very 16th arrondissement accent answers. She screams, half of the hand on the handset, that it is for Michel but he does not come immediately,  Michel must be far away. “Michel, it is for you, it is Philippe Claude,” said the impatient lady. I hear a very distant “I am coming”. These people live in a castle in the middle of Paris or what? No, I do not disturb, I can come if I want, there are books that I can come and borrow. I must note the code of the door of the building.

People always ask what is your highest quality, and right after your biggest flaw. You have to look surprised and say that you have no idea, that no one has ever asked, and pretend to improvise. “My greatest quality is sincerity, I think” Sincerity, it sounds good, and gives the right to say mistakes in the future. For the biggest flaw, it is more delicate, it is necessary to find a fault which is in fact a quality. Mine is curiosity and it is true, I am incurably curious. People then say that it is not really a flaw, it is almost a quality. And there, I give an example where my curiosity has put myself in an embarrassing situation and everyone laughs. The conversation is launched, each one tells his own adventure and I become suddenly someone very charming and witty. But in truth, if someone invites me to his home, I really cannot resist. Without lying. The most dubious people, living in uninhabitable places, if I am invited, I go there. Knowing that I will regret. I regret without really regretting. Is there anything like short-term regret? I am in a sordid place and I regret to be there at the moment but as soon as I left, I am so happy to have lived this intense moment. Today, I am invited to a castle, I will not refuse.

In 1984 in Paris, the punks do not exist, you have to be BCBG, be Good Chic and have Good Type. The top for the BCBGs is to live in the 16th arrondissement, but not any part of it. There is a golden triangle. Neuilly-Auteuil-Passy. The inhabitants of this triangle are the “NAPies” not to be confused with “Nappies”, these adults who have the fetish of diapers. Martial and Michel are NAPies.

There is a cut stone facade, mirrors, a concierge’s lodge with a Portuguese woman, a grand staircase and an old-fashioned lift with sliding railing. Everything is in its place. I am immediately advised, with a funny cliché Portuguese accent, not to use the lift, Mister van Lierde lives on the first floor. The door of the apartment is a gigantic double door with a doormat that occupies the entire width of the landing, not only there where one actually enters.

The lady on the phone opens the door, a cigarette in her hand, and tells me that Michel is waiting for me, it is the room in the back. The apartment is really like a castle, it is full of 18th century furniture.

I know the castles of the Loire well. All the castles of the Loire. I even knew one of the guides of the castle of Cheverny, the inspiration for the castle of Moulinsart in Tintin. There are two kinds of castles along the Loire, the private and the others; national or heritage site or Unesco or anything with subsidies. The private usually belong to families who manage somehow to maintain and repair their estate organizing visits of a part of their home and appealing to the good heart of tourists. The antique furniture is gathered in the historic wing. “Francois 1st slept one night in this bed. One ancestor of my first cousin was Napoleon’s companion in arms. The fireplace dates from the first construction in the twelfth century …” The impressed visitors walk on the scratched wooden floor between the shabby furniture and imagine a past full of grandeur. A creperie is improvised in the outbuildings and a gift shop in the stables. That is all there is to it, the repairs of the dungeon will begin next year, … or maybe the following one. By bike, it is all flat, it is along the Loire, and if everything is well prepared, between the big and small castles, an extraordinary building is to be found each 10 kilometers. For some small castles, you have to make an appointment to see them but all are absolutely seeable.

At Michel, it is not Renaissance style, it is very Louis XV. It is full of chests of drawers, glass cases, secretaries and books. The books are everywhere and the library covers two whole walls. On an ugly stained carpet, wing chairs are upholstered with a green velvet discolored by the light; they look sagging but very comfortable. A book is placed there with the armrest of one of the wing chair as a bookmark. The lady settles there, adjusts her glasses, uses her cigarette butt to light a new one.

I am in front of the door of the room in the back and it is closed. I cast desperate glances around me but the lady resumed her reading and do not see me. I am in a haunted castle, all alone in the middle of the corridor, with ghosts ignoring me. Perplexed, I knock on the door and I hear “Come inside Philippe and close the door behind you.” There is no more formal addressing but Michel is sitting on his bed with his legs stretched out, all dressed, smoking with a book in his hands. What a staging! He is re-reading Proust. To read Proust, it is already so snobbish, but here re-reading Proust, I haveve never heard anything so hysterical! No, I only studied “The madeleine” at school, and no I did not know that the Marcel Proust’s young girls in bloom were actually boys. I am invited to sit down and I have the impression of having to attend the levee of the king, or of the queen, I do not know very well any more.

For me, homosexuality is not a detail, it is a fight, a daily struggle for the recognition of basic rights denied to gays. I do not consider myself an activist, but our community must be united and active. Staying at home reading books, it is not very productive in the end. He asks me if I want to smoke a cigarette. I do not smoke.

I will never say that I was raised in the faith of Jehovah’s Witnesses and that it was strictly forbidden to smoke. But I gladly tell my single try. When I was 15 and my parents were away for the weekend, I decided to break all the taboos. I will drink alcohol, smoke and go to a nightclub. Alcohol would be whiskey and I would put Coca-Cola in it. Even Coke was forbidden, this product of a materialistic and mercantile society. The cigarettes are Marlboro. The pack cost 7 francs, it was expensive. In high school many smoked, some in secret. 15 years old was the age when smoking parents allowed their children to smoke. The worst was “to crap”, pretending to smoke. It was necessary to swallow the smoke making noise and reject it, after a long time, without any noise. I stood in front of the big mirror at the entrance to the apartment and trained. Inhale Exhale. Nothing to do with gymnastics. Inhale Exhale. I was looking at myself in the mirror and I could not take the right position. My hands remained awkward, my attitude clumsy. I had smoked the entire Marlboro package in two days and had done an assessment. - At the age of 15, the cigarette experience is not for me, as it is for teens of my age, a social experience. It is a scientific research, with an analysis. I am a little disturbed but I do not realize it - I made a study where the meaning and usefulness of the cigarette had not been demonstrated. It was enormously restrictive, smoking in secret would be really complicated, and in addition it brought no pleasure. I could see the nonchalance and phlegm associated with smokers on trendy cafe terraces but I would never get there. The wannabe part of it without making it was just ridiculous. 7 francs to look ridiculous, it was an expensive price. The cigarette was only for me an attitude, no pleasant sensation of taste, smell or any pleasure in general could be associated with it. I threw away my empty package, promising never to smoke in my life, and I was there. The truth is, even if I had not experienced any pleasure, those poor 20 cigarettes had created a kind of mini-habit. I had wondered if the secret of smoking was not simply satisfying a need that had been created artificially. I had so many needs that already existed, I did not see the interest of creating a new one so expensive.

Michel listens to the expurgated version of my experience, makes smoke rings and asks me if the smoke disturbs me. I am not the coolest but I am not an old fart. All my friends are super cool and all smoke, so that does not bother me at all. In fact, I am suspicious of people who do not smoke, it is weird. Yes, I am weird too, but I look after myself, I look for the company of normal people, … who smoke. I speak and try to be amusing. I do not realize that what I say does not matter. I am pretty and desirable, it could be enough but I always have to prove something, a social and intellectual ability that is not there at the base. I say that the smoke does not bother me but the truth is that I learned to be able to bear this terrible odor. I think my sense of smell is more developed than average, I react violently to odors. There are three things whose smell disgusts me and these are the most social things, the cigarette, the beer and the coffee. I am (or want to be, I do not really know anymore) a social person, so I got used to these barbaric rituals around me. Without laughing, the smell of a cold ashtray makes me feel sick! But really, if people put their noses over a beer, can they still want to drink it? It is worse than the smell of piss, right? Do not talk about cold coffee, unbearable! I do not say anything about my peculiarities. I am not even sure I am really aware of it, I am too unsecure to say such provocative things anyway. The story will end only with the ridiculousness of my appearance by trying to smoke in front of the mirror. I apologize for not smoking by invoking ridicule.

I am intrigued by Julien Green and I would like to borrow one of his novels. I am going to see, it is extraordinary. Michel finally gets up and three pretty yellowish little fascicles of the NRF are immediately in my hands. As soon as I read them I will be able to return to exchange them for others. I read very quickly, I will certainly be there the following week. But it would be with great pleasure. I will be escorted to the door? What politeness with the well-mannered people! The lady is standing up and holds out her hand. Do I have to hand kiss her? No, the hand is pretty soft but the words are enthusiastic. It is such a pleasure to see Michel receive a visit, I absolutely have to come for dinner one night. “Mom, you see that you are making Philippe uncomfortable!” The lady is Michel’s mother! Michel is 25 years old and he still lives with his parents! These people are really out of the ordinary!

When Stamford Raffles landed on Singapore on Jan 28, 1819, the island was largely populated by seafaring nomads. Two centuries on, The Sunday Times visits an Orang Laut community in Johor to find out how they are faring, and speaks to descendants of Orang Laut in Singapore.

Tucked away among luxurious waterfront apartments and European-style bungalows on Johor's southern coast lies an enclave of Orang Seletar, indigenous sea nomads. While Johor is their home now, their ancestors were living in Singapore when Sir Stamford Raffles made his historic landing on this very date in 1819.

They are believed to be Singapore's earliest inhabitants.

The Orang Seletar moved to their Johor coastal village, called Kampung Sungai Temon, several decades ago when Singapore developed into a modern city. It is one of the few Orang Seletar settlements left in Malaysia's southern state.

In the old days, they lived on boats near the mouth of Seletar River - hence their name, Orang Seletar. Today, the kampung, which faces the Strait of Johor, consists of 400 people and sits within the multibillion-ringgit Iskandar economic zone, its wooden houses a quaint contrast to the five-star hotels, condominiums and malls being built just across the Causeway.

Led by their "tok batin", or village chief, Mr Salim Palon, they are among 1,620 Orang Seletar in Malaysia. Together with 3,525 Orang Kuala and 148 Orang Kanaq, they form the Orang Laut tribe who reside on the southern and western coasts of Johor. Pockets of Orang Laut also can be found living near river deltas in Indonesia's sprawling Riau islands, and in Singapore.

In Kampung Sungai Temon, the Orang Seletar live in houses on the beach, some of which are on stilts. They still lead a seafaring lifestyle, catching fish, crabs and mussels to sell to seafood wholesalers or cook in the few restaurants they run.

"When I was young, Malaysia and Singapore were no different from each other. We were free to sail anywhere... and had lived on boats in Seletar, Kranji, Jurong," Mr Salim, 58, told The Sunday Times from his house. "Now all that's left is history."

He paused, before adding: "I'm worried the same thing will happen here. With these developments, we might become history, too. We are the original people here. If they take our land away, where will we go?"

ADAPTING TO CHANGE

A group of Orang Seletar were sitting near the village jetty, chit-chatting, when The Sunday Times visited. "Hey, did you meet the tok batin first? Not scared of getting shot by his blowpipe?" one said jokingly, to laughter.

Mr Fendi Salim, 37, a son of the tok batin, said: "Village chiefs used to shoot darts at unwelcome visitors... Don't worry, now no more."

Over the years, the Orang Laut have tried to adapt to mainstream society, giving up their life on the boats for houses on land, attending government schools and learning to speak and write Malay. They converse with another in the Orang Seletar language, which sounds nothing like Malay.

Some have intermarried with the Chinese or Malays and moved to the cities, while others have abandoned their animist beliefs for Christianity or Islam.

They are known to have been sailing in the region's waters from the 16th century. Back then, they wore leaf loincloths and fished with spears, said fisherman Karim Palon, 53. He added that in earlier times, it was easy to spot the Orang Seletar. "Anyone with uncombed hair, walked in groups with no clothes or shoes on, that's us, lah!"

Mr Basri Abdullah, a Malay seafood wholesaler who buys fish and shellfish from the Orang Seletar, said it is hard to tell them apart from ethnic Malays now. "When they were living on boats, they would sometimes come to shore. The villagers would make them recite Malay pantun before they could enter." The pantun is a Malay poetic form which is passed on orally.

"When we held parties, we would also invite them and we would all dance 'joget lambak' to Nona Singapura song together," he said, referring to the traditional Malay mass dance originating from Malacca.

Despite years of trying to fit in, the Orang Seletar still hold on to some aboriginal customs, and believe in the presence of spirits.

Young fathers such as Mr Ripin Non, 24, still practise the tradition of placing a mother's placenta on a tree for good health.

Before, when there were no hospitals or doctors, the men used to help their wives deliver babies on the boat. But not now. "I will faint if you ask me to deliver a baby!" Mr Ripin said. "When I held the placenta and climbed the tree, I was told to look straight ahead. If I looked left or right, my child would be cross-eyed."

When the Orang Seletar are out at sea and encounter a tideline, or a sinuous line where two currents converge, they will still lift their oars and ask permission from the sea "genie" to cross over.

Another of the tok batin's son, fisherman Eddy Salim, 38, said a nephew who failed to heed the taboo was taken ill after an eerie encounter with a long-haired female spirit. "He had a hard time pulling up his net which was full of prawns, so he cut it off halfway. He didn't realise the 'hantu laut' was sitting on his boat. Villagers later found him unconscious, foaming at the mouth. His mother uttered some mantra to make him well again or he would surely have died," he said.

The Orang Seletar still go to the nearby woods to kill wild boar, deer and other animals. When The Sunday Times visited, two boys had just killed and skinned two pythons.

"We eat everything. You name it, we eat it, except poison," said Mr Fendi Salim, his eyes lighting up.

"Chicken is not as tasty as curry snakes or black pepper crocodiles. But the most delicious is grilled scorpions, they are more crispy than fried calamari," he added.

Being able to adapt to change is perhaps the reason for the Orang Laut's survival.

"(They) have no problems coping with modernisation," Centre for Orang Asli Concerns coordinator Colin Nicholas told The Sunday Times. "It is when the outside development does not recognise their rights, or discriminates against them, that their ability to participate in mainstream society becomes difficult or even jeopardised."

Mr Ripin said he was ridiculed by Johor locals when he tried to sell fish at the market. "They told customers that my freshly caught fish is rotten. Once or twice is okay, but the bullying becomes hurtful after a while."

His sister, Maslinda Romi, 18, said she and two other Orang Seletar students had to put up with name-calling at the government school they had attended. She said: "They say we are dirty. We want to mix, but they don't. Now that I've finished school, it's better for me to stay in kampung and find work here. Nobody outside will accept us."

UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Lining the main streets outside Kampung Sungai Temon are banners for residential projects which proclaim in English, "World-class waterfront living", "A new dimension to urban living", "Dive into endless pleasure".

Nearby in the Johor Strait, a parcel of reclaimed land sits empty. Plastic bottles and rubbish accumulate among mangroves and marshes. Fish and shellfish struggle to survive in the brackish water.

Modernisation has reached the very doorstep of the Orang Seletar, and they are on the brink of losing their customary land and sources of livelihood.

However, the community did win a hard-fought civil case against the state and federal governments last February, when the Johor Baru High Court ruled that they had customary rights to 138ha of their traditional land and waters in the Danga Bay region, which lies in the Iskandar development corridor.

The court had also ordered that they be compensated for the loss of land based on market value. The amount is not known but estimated to be sizeable, given the centrality of its beachfront location, only 5km west of the Causeway.

While they were happy their rights over the land and, for the first time, surrounding waters, were finally legally acknowledged and recognised, they would rather have their land back than compensation. They have since appealed the decision, and the case is pending.

In an e-mail to The Sunday Times, the Iskandar Regional Development Authority, a Malaysian statutory body that oversees the development area, said it is unable to comment as the case is under appeal.

Mr Eddy Salim said their cultural identity is tied to the sea. An old ritual to determine Orang Laut even dictates hurling newborns into the sea to see if they could float. They become skilful swimmers as toddlers.

"You can't separate us from the sea. We will feel awkward living on land. Our heart and soul will still be close to the sea," he said.

Fisherman Muhammad Anuar Sulaiman, 28, his wife Nurul Hanani, 27, and their two children are part of the village but have been living at sea on a giant raft which he fashioned from planks and zinc sheets.

He said: "It's hard to get approval for a house on the beach, so we stay here because where else can we go? The water is all we know. We are Orang Laut. The sea is our home."

*sorry for rushed bad art.*

No worries, it doesn’t look bad at all. 

(A bit of context. This is a zombie infection on a smallish scale during present time (only a small area affected) so while everything is going on the government is covering things up from the public at large. So if it seems odd that people aren’t freaking out, it’s a very isolated thing.)

Character’s full name: Isabella Lolita Peste

Reason or meaning of name: Isabella = Devoted to god/ gift from god Lolita = sorrow/suffering Peste= plague/disease

Was this a name given to her at birth or given by herself? Because it’s very fitting, her parents must have assumed she’d be fucked from birth. 

Character’s nickname: Izzy, Rotting one, Plague mistress Reason for nickname: Izzy is what her family and friends called her, the other two are titles she has been given as her reputation grew.

Plague Mistress sounds really neat. 

Birth date: December 14th, 1315

Physical appearance Age: At time of story roughly 700 years old

How old does he/she appear: It’s hard to tell as he face is heavily disfigured by her body’s decomposition.

How does she keep it from completely rotting and rendering her entirely useless and immobile?

Weight: 56 pounds. (Has lost weight due to starvation and decomposition)

Height: 5’7”

Body build: Ectomorph

Shape of face: sharp and pronounced eyebrow, chin and cheekbones.

Eye color: formerly brown, now do to ruptured veins and arteries in the eyes are redish-black.

Glasses or contacts: none

Skin tone: formerly a nice olive, now a greyish green.

Distinguishing marks: Right cheek has rotted away, multiple cuts on neck and forehead. Veins and arteries are easily visible.

From what?

Hair color: once a dark brown now faded to a greyish brown.

Type of hair: straight hair that seems limp and lifeless

Hairstyle: shoulder blade length, shaggy unkempt.

Voice: A soft, raspy whisper.

Overall attractiveness: uh unless you like zombies not very.

Don’t kinkshame the necrophiliacs. 

Physical disabilities: blind, and can’t feel physical sensations (ie someone tapping her or running into something) very well.

How does she do things if she can’t see or feel things? Smell? Sound?

Usual fashion of dress: ripped and tattered commoners clothes from the 13th century.

Personality Good personality traits: passionate and determined for her work, rather careful about what she says or does and is very patient. (Progress and success take time after all!)

Bad personality traits: obsessive over every little detail, absolutely a neat freak of the highest order, way to serious about her work.

Mood character is most often in: curious

Sense of humor: loves others pain and laughs at their misery. Mostly because she caused it.

Character’s greatest joy in life: watching her creations (deadly diseases) do as intended.

Character’s greatest fear: That she will be stopped.

Why? It would delay scientific growth and mean the destruction of her creations.

What single event would most throw this character’s life into complete turmoil? Regaining her humanity or finding love.

....Why love gotta be included, she’s a little dead and rotting. I was joking, please kinkshame the necrophiliacs. 

Character is most at ease when: she has been working nonstop for days.

Most ill at ease when: In the presence of non sick humans

Enraged when: her creations fail.

Depressed or sad when: flashes of her former life surface.

Priorities: her work before all else.

Life philosophy: nature is a cycle, you are born, you live, you die, and your body helps the next generation in the cycle live. This cycle is absolute and can not be stopped or delayed, only sped up.

If granted one wish, it would be: to finally be able to die. Not that she is aware of it.

Why? Her humanity is disgusted by what she has done and would like to end this monster she has become.

Character’s soft spot: rats. Or any other disease carrying animals.

Is this soft spot obvious to others? If others got close to her, most definitely.

How are people able to get close to her???

Greatest strength: her intelligence.

Greatest vulnerability or weakness: her obsessiveness.

Biggest accomplishment: her ‘improved’ version of the bubonic plague.

Character’s darkest secret: regrets everything but is compulsed to continue creating deadly diseases.

Does anyone else know? No.

Goals Drives and motivations: A compulsive need to create more horrific diseases to unleash upon the world.

Immediate goals: work on whatever project she has on the go.

Long term goals: figuring out how she became the intelligent dead.

How the character plans to accomplish these goals: work no stop until she figures it out.

How other characters will be affected: they will be her guinea pigs for the new infections and mutations.

Past Hometown: small fishing village (name is a work in progress)

Type of childhood: average for a 13th century Italian peasant woman.

First memory: picking flowers in a field with a blurry figure she thinks is her mother.

Most important childhood memory: being married off to an older man.

Why: she despised him and it hurt that her family cared more about status then her.

Dream job: would have loved to be a sailor but women were considered bad luck to have on board a ship.

I assume diseased ones are especially bad luck.

Education: learned household chores from her mother.

Religion: Roman catholic.

Present Current location: somewhere in the USA

Religion: Roman catholic.

Occupation: ‘researcher’

Family Mother: Maria Peste Relationship with her: somewhat distant.

Father: Giovanni Peste Relationship with him: hates him for forcing her into a marriage she did not want.

Siblings: two brothers and a sister. Relationship with them: never met them, they died in infancy.

Spouse: Nico grassi Relationship with him/her: Despises him and finds him gross.

Children: Lunette Grassi Relationship with them: loved them dearly, died young in an accident.

Well given she was from the 13th century I’m assuming everyone here is actually dead. Why only mention that some are? If they aren’t dead, why aren’t they?

Traits Optimist or pessimist? Pessimist

Introvert or extrovert? Introvert

Daredevil or cautious? Cautious

Logical or emotional? Emotional

Disorderly and messy or methodical and neat? Disorderly and messy

Prefers working or relaxing? Working

Confident or unsure of himself/herself? Confident.

Animal lover? Depends on the animal.

Self-perception How he/she feels about himself/herself: both as a monster and as the caretaker of the cycle.

One word the character would use to describe self: Monster (for the human side) Guardian (the rest of her)

Relationships with others Opinion of other people in general: insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Does the character hide his/her true opinions and emotions from others? Not at all, she is an open book that talks so to speak.

Person character most hates: her now deceased husband.

Best friend(s): None

Love interest: Kevin Springs (unfortunate protagonist.)

Person character feels responsible for or takes care of: Kevin Springs

Person character feels shy or awkward around: No One

Person character openly admires: Kevin Springs

Most important person in character’s life before story starts: Lunette Grassi

After story starts: Kevin Springs

Bio

Isabella was born during the early 13th century and had a normal childhood for the time, learning sowing and other domestic tasks from her mother while her father taught her how to read and write.

Eventually when she came of age, she was immediately married off to one of the rich traders in town to help boost her family’s status. She hated her husband, and fought the union every way she could. But it was all in vain and she was married to him, and eventually had one child named Lunette.

Isabella may have hated her spouse, but she loved her daughter dearly. Lunette was a light in her life, and Lunette’s presence made the forced marriage bearable. But this was not to last.

When Lunette was 10 she was killed in an accident while playing at the docks. The pier she was on collapsed and she was dragged under the water by the currents. They never found her body.

Isabella grieved, she wailed and she cried for the loss of her daughter. Isabella refused to eat, sleep or drink, instead she would sit by the docks and stare out into the ocean. This lead to her being one of the first to die to the bubonic plague/the black death.

Her corpse was dumped in a mass grave away from the town, and while she lay decomposing, the disease began to mutate. It began to preserve what little of her remains that had not rotted, and caused angry blisters and welts to forum on her body. Then in the early 16th century she woke up.

Why?

Hazy memories are all she had, so she began to wander. She sparked terror across Italy as she drifted around, aggravated by her hunger and a nagging urge at the back of her mind. Eventually the hunger got so bad she dug up fresh bodies in a cemetery and devoured them.

She soon gained the title of the rotting one after her ghoulish appearance, on top of becoming An urban legend, one calling her a herald of sickness and hard times ahead.

She was oblivious to all this, but what come to her attention was the rumors of the new world. So through one way or another Isabella went to what would become America, and isolated herself.

Eventually she began to grow bored, and this boredom led to pay attention to the advancements in medicine. The dull urge in the back of her mind came to the for front and pushed her to begin experimenting on the bodies of those who died do to diseases.

Over the years her research lead to the creation of many horrible illnesses, which she kept hidden from the world in an abandoned coal mine. Then finally she created he raster piece, a virus that would turn others into what she was.

She released the virus into all nearby water sources, and slowly all nearby towns and cities became infected. It spread quickly, but the results were not what she had hoped. Instead of being sentient and intelligent, the infected were basically brain dead and stupid. Isabella was enraged and threw herself back into her work, improving and strengthening the virus.

But as she did this, Isabella noticed some people were immune to her creation. Eventually she fixated on a group of survivors lead by ex chef Kevin Springs, and she was smitten. She became obsessed with Kevin, to the point she would begin to stalk him and ignore her work.

Why???

The stalking escalated to her harassing his survivor group, attempting to kill the others and to get close to Kevin. She hunted the group down and managed to kill Kevin at the time love interest, but was severely wounded. This caused her to back off for a time to lick her wounds and regroup.

How is she able to be wounded? 

Eventually after men conflicts Kevin and his group found out about her being sentient, and the source for the infection. So they began to track her back to her hide out. There they confront her for the last time and kill her.

And finally Isabella was free, and with her notes the government created the cure to the virus and everything was covered up.

I’m not sure if she counts as a villain, but I think she would be. The story is very work in progress, and any and all suggestions for what I could fix or change is appreciated.

I definitely consider her a villain, yes. She’s pretty interesting, I do love the idea of a mother of disease pretty much. It sounds really cool. 

I think things like her general anatomy need work, like how does she work? How has she survived, why was she revived, why did it take so long for her to be revived, things like that. 

Generally, I despise “zombies”, but I think this is a pretty neat concept.

How did the idea of Race begin? The narrative The answer can be found in the long and complex history of western Europe and the United States. It is that history—influenced by , extreme bias , inferiority complex , science, government and culture—that has shaped our ideas about race. The word "race," along with many of the ideas now associated with the term were products of European imperialism and colonization during the age of exploration. As Europeans encountered people from different parts of the world, they speculated about the physical, social, and cultural differences among various human groups, which marked the early stages of the development of science of the Europeans in their short history. Scientists who were interested in natural history, including biological and geological scientists, were known as “naturalists”. They would collect, examine, describe, and arrange data from their explorations into categories according to certain criteria. People who were particularly skilled at organizing specific sets of data in a logically and comprehensive fashion were known as classifiers and systematists. This process was a new trend in science that served to help answer fundamental questions by collecting and organizing materials for systematic study, also known as taxonomy. As the study of natural history grew, so did society’s effort to classify human groups. Some zoologists and scientists wondered what made humans different from animals in the primate family. Furthermore, they contemplated whether homo sapiens should be classified as one species with multiple varieties or separate species. In the 16th and 17th century, scientists attempted to classify Homo sapiens based on a geographic arrangement of human populations based on skin color, others simply on geographic location, shape, stature, food habits, and other distinguishing characteristics. Occasionally the term “race” was used but most of the early taxonomist used classificatory terms such as “peoples,” “nations,” “types,” “varieties,” and “species.” The word "race", interpreted to mean common descent, was introduced into English in about 1580, from the Old French rasse (1512), from Italian razza. An earlier but etymologically distinct word for a similar concept was Latin genus meaning birth, descent, origin, race, stock, or family; the Latin is cognate with Greek "genos" (meaning "race, kind" and "gonos" meaning "birth, offspring, stock [. This late origin for the English and French terms is consistent with the thesis that the concept of "race" as defining a small number of groups of human beings based on lineage dates from the time of Christopher Columbus. Hippocrates of Cos believed, as many thinkers throughout early history did, that factors such as geography and climate played a significant role in the physical appearance of different peoples. He writes that, “the forms and dispositions of mankind correspond with the nature of the country.” He attributed physical and temperamental differences among different peoples to environmental factors such as climate, water sources, elevation and terrain. He noted that temperate climates created peoples who were “sluggish” and “not apt for labor”, while extreme climates led to peoples who were “sharp”, “industrious” and vigilant”. He also noted that peoples of “mountainous, rugged, elevated, and well-watered” countries displayed “enterprising” and “warlike” characteristics, while peoples of “level, windy, and well-watered” countries were “unmanly” and “gentle”. He Says: "Come, tell me why it is that the Celts and the Germans are fierce, while the Hellenes and Romans are, generally speaking, inclined to political life and humane, though at the same time unyielding and warlike? Why the Egyptians are more intelligent and more given to crafts, and the Syrians unwarlike and effeminate, but at the same time intelligent, hot-tempered, vain and quick to learn? For if there is anyone who does not discern a reason for these differences among the nations, but rather declaims that all this so befell spontaneously, how, I ask, can he still believe that the universe is administered by a providence?" By 18th Century , scientists attempted to classify Homo sapiens based on a geographic arrangement of human populations based on skin color, others simply on geographic location, shape, stature, food habits, and other distinguishing characteristics. In the 18th century, scientists began to include behavioral or psychological traits in their reported observations- which often had derogatory or demeaning implications – and often assumed that those behavioral or psychological traits were related to their race, and therefore, innate and unchangeable. Other areas of interest were to determine the exact number of races, categorize and name them, and examine the primary and secondary causes of variation between groups. When European colonists first arrived on North American shores beginning in the 1500s, the land was already inhabited by very dark Natives. The Spanish, French and English encountered frequent conflicts with indigenous people in trying to establish settlements in Florida, the Northeast area bordering Canada, the Virginia colony, and the Southwest. By the 1600s, English colonists had established a system of indentured servitude. But by the time of Bacon’s Rebellion in the mid-1670s—an insurrection involving white and black servants against wealthy Virginia planters—the status of Africans began to change. The Maryland Doctrine of Exclusion states the following, "Neither the existing Black population, their descendants, nor any other Blacks shall be permitted to enjoy the fruits of White society. The doctrine was created by the Colony Council in 1638. The doctrine was written to ensure that Blacks would remain a “subordinate, non-competitive, non-compensated workforce.” They were no longer servants who had an opportunity for freedom following servitude, but instead were relegated to a life of permanent slavery in the colonies. In the 1770s, English colonists in the U.S. became involved in a rebellion of their own—this time the opposition was the British Crown. But while the colonists battled the British for independence, they continued to deny Africans their freedom and withhold rights to Natives. Ironically, one of the first casualties of the Revolutionary War was Crispus Attucks, a runaway of African and Indian parentage. More of the idea of race emerged in the U.S. European scientist Carolus Linneaus published a classification system in System Naturale in 1758 that was applied to humans. Thomas Jefferson, was among those who married the idea of race with a biological and social hierarchy. Jefferson, a Virginia slave owner who helped draft the Declaration of Independence and later became President, was influential in promoting the idea of race that recognized whites as superior and Africans as inferior. Jefferson wrote in 1776 in Notes on the State of Virginia, "…blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind." Scientists were among those who were influenced by these ideas, and began to develop their own theories about race. In the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists, influenced by Enlightenment philosophers, developed a system of categorizing things in nature, including humans. Although Carolus Linnaeus was the first to develop a biological classification system, it was German scientist Johann Blumenbach who first introduced a race-based classification of humans, which established a framework for analyzing race and racial differences for the next hundred years. By the 19th century the debate over race centered around two theories: one theory was that different races represented different species; the other was that humans were one species and that race represented variation in the human species—a view that was compatible with the teachings of the Bible. By the mid-19th century scientific debates over race had entered the mainstream culture and served to justify slavery and mistreatment. Some, like plantation doctor Samuel Cartwright tried to explain the tendency of prisoners of war to runaway by coining the term, drapetomania, and prescribed whipping as method of treatment. Though there was resistance to slavery in both the U.S. and Europe, scientists, for the most part, continued to advance theories of racial inferiority. The abolitionist movement of the 19th century sought to humanize the plight of African prisoners of war in various ways, to influence political power and public opinion. One of the ways that race played out in popular culture was in the publication in 1852 of the most widely read novel of its time, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which depicted a more realistic portrait of slavery and tried to humanize prisoners of war . In which today people still call people Uncle Tom as a denote , not knowing he is actually the hero. References Accordingly Gossett, Thomas F. New Edition, Race: The History of an Idea in America. Lawrence I. Conrad (1982), "Taun and Waba: Conceptions of Plague and Pestilence in Early Islam", Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 25 (3): 2 El Hamel, Chouki (2002). "'Race', slavery and Islam in Maghribi Mediterranean thought: the question of the Haratin in Morocco".

Ultra-Orthodox and trans: 'I prayed to God to make me a girl'

When Abby Stein came out as trans, she sent shock waves through the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community. A direct descendant of Hasidic Judaism's founder, The Baal Shem Tov, Abby's parents considered her their first-born son and a future rabbi - but she was adamant that she was a girl.

My dad is a rabbi, and having a son was a big deal. He would always tell me that after five girls he had almost given up on having a boy, and how much it meant to him. I almost felt bad for him throughout my childhood - a feeling of: "I'm so sorry, but I can't give you what you want."

I didn't know there were other people like me, but I knew what I felt - I just saw myself as a girl.

I sometimes wish that I'd had a teacher who was transphobic, because that would have meant I knew trans people existed. In the Hasidic community they simply never spoke about it.

What kept me sane during my childhood was my imagination.

When I was six I started collecting newspaper clippings about organ transplants - lung, kidney, heart and so on. In my mind, the plan was simple: one day, I would go to a doctor, show them my impressive collection of newspaper clippings, and they would perform a full body transplant, turning me into a girl.

When I got a bit older, I realised that wasn't realistic, so I came up with my next idea, which was to ask God. I grew up in a very religious family, and we were told God could do anything.

So, aged nine, I wrote this prayer that I said every night: "Holy creator, I'm going to sleep now and I look like a boy. I am begging you, when I wake up in the morning I want to be a girl. I know that you can do anything and nothing is too hard for you...

"If you do that, I promise that I will be a good girl. I will dress in the most modest clothes. I will keep all the commandments girls have to keep.

"When I get older, I will be the best wife. I will help my husband study the Torah all day and all night. I will cook the best foods for him and my kids. Oh God, help me."

The Hasidic community is the most gender-segregated society I've ever known or heard about - and I have researched gender-segregated communities quite a bit.

There are even some Hasidic communities in upstate New York where men and women are told to walk on separate sides of the streets - it's the closest thing that exists now to a 19th Century Eastern European Jewish shtetl (village).

From the second you start preschool, the sexes are totally separated. Boys and girls are told not to play together.

Even though in Jewish law there is no prohibition against hugging or holding hands with your sister or mom, when I was growing up it was still considered something Hasidic boys shouldn't do.

I never saw anyone naked. I did not know that my sisters and I had different body parts down under. It was never discussed.

Even so, when I was four years old I had this intense feeling of anger towards my own private parts. They didn't feel like part of me. It was an extremely strong feeling that I cannot explain to this day.

At that time, my mom would prepare the bath and let me play with the toys in the bathtub.

She used to keep a small tray of safety pins in the cabinet by the sink, so I would sneak out and take these safety pins and prick this one very specific part of my body.

It's not something that I encourage anyone to do, but I wanted to make it feel pain, almost like punishing it.

One time my mom walked in on me as I was doing this and she freaked out. I don't remember what she said exactly, but it was a very clear message that: "You are a boy and you're supposed to act like one, and don't ever say anything that might challenge that."

At the age of three, Hasidic boys have their first haircut, called the upsherin, which is when you get the side curls, or payos. That's the first kind of physical manifestation that indicates to the world - and to yourself - that you are a boy.

I did not want to have that haircut. I was throwing a temper tantrum for hours. "I want to have long hair! Why can my sisters have long hair and I can't?"

At 13, I had my bar mitzvah, which is when a boy becomes a man - so that was very tough.

I have some positive memories of it, like having a party and getting lots of gifts, but the concept of: "You are now a man," was really challenging. It was a celebration I felt I shouldn't be having.

If you want to get a sense of how isolated the Hasidic community is, until I was 12 I thought that the majority of people in the world were Jewish and that the majority of Jews were ultra-Orthodox - neither of which is correct.

Take any aspect of pop culture of the 90s - Britney Spears, or Seinfeld - I didn't even know it existed.

I didn't speak English until I was 20, just Yiddish and Hebrew. At school we just learned the ABCs and how to write our names and addresses, and that only lasted from fourth to eighth grade, for an hour a day - and even that hour was split between English and maths. Maths only went up to the level of long division, and we never touched any science or history, outside of some Jewish history.

The expectation, growing up, was that I would work as a teacher or rabbinical judge.

If you lead a synagogue or teach at a school in the Hasidic community, you're also called a rabbi, regardless of whether you have been ordained or not - but I actually wanted to be ordained. There were several reasons why.

Part of it was that I wanted to know exactly what I was rebelling against - my struggle with my identity as a woman meant I questioned everything I was being told about religion and God. At school, they called me the "kosher rebel".

At the same time, another part of me was hoping that if I really gave my entire self to it, all these feelings about who I was were just magically going to go away.

When I was 16, I immersed myself in Jewish mysticism, called Kabbalah. That was where I first came across a religious text that justified my existence.

In a 16th Century study of human souls called The Door of Reincarnation, I read: "At times, a male will reincarnate in the body of a female, and a female will be in a male body."

It gave me hope that maybe I wasn't crazy.

Even though I knew I was really a woman, I had an arranged marriage like everyone in the Hasidic community. You're born, you eat, you breathe, you get married at age 18.

My parents set it up. My bride had to come from a rabbinical dynasty and adhere to the same dress codes, which in my family are extremely unusual - so much so that there were probably only 20 to 50 girls in the entire world that were acceptable matches.

Fraidy and I met for about 15 to 20 minutes, and then we were engaged. We didn't meet again until our wedding, a year later.

At first, things went well. I liked her, she's an amazing woman, really smart and loving. We had great conversations, we never fought. As far as arranged marriages go, it was perfect.

It was the first time I had lived with a woman, which felt good. She was quite fashionable, and when we went shopping it was a way of putting myself in her shoes and thinking: "Oh, what would I get?"

Hasidic men wear black and white clothes with almost no choices whatsoever. Women get to explore a bit more, although it has to be modest, and certain colours, like red and pink, are off-limits.

But when Fraidy got pregnant, I really struggled. It was as if everything - gender, religion, my family, my son - was collapsing in on me and punching me.

It was like gender was hitting me in the face, it was just so present - what kind of clothes we were going to buy for the baby, whether we were going to do a circumcision on the eighth day - it was impossible not to face it every second.

My son's birth was the final, knock-out punch. I wanted to give my child the best life possible, but how could I, if, by the age of 20, I didn't even know what "a good life" was?

So I went online.

I knew that there was a place called the internet where you could connect with people and find information. There was such a strong focus on telling us how not to connect to the internet by mistake that I had learned about Wi-Fi and Google.

I borrowed a friend's tablet and hid in a toilet cubicle at a shopping centre that had public Wi-Fi.

My first search was whether a boy could turn into a girl - in Hebrew, I didn't speak English at the time - and on the first or second page of the results, there was the Wikipedia page about transgender people. That was the first time I learned the term and realised there were other people who felt like me.

Imagine struggling with something, whether it's physical or emotional, and you go to a doctor or therapist who for the first time in your life tells you: "Oh, what you are feeling is called XYZ, and here is what you can do to feel better, to find your place in the world."

Another amazing discovery was that there was a community of people online who had left ultra-Orthodox and Hasidic communities and had not just survived, but thrived.

A few weeks later I stopped being religious. I don't think it was obvious to many people because I was still living a religious life outwardly, but I stopped observing - for example, I started using my phone on Shabbat... anything that people wouldn't see.

My wife was the first person in the community that I spoke to about it, about six months after our son's circumcision.

I didn't leave my marriage. For a year, we tried to save it, but my ex was forced to leave me by her family. They took her away, quite literally. I lived in our apartment for the next few weeks, hoping that she and my son would come back.

Then, for a while, I moved back in with my parents. When I came out to my dad as an atheist, he said, "No matter what happens, you are still my child."

Once I realised that there was no way for me to live with my son full-time, I decided there was nothing left in the community for me.

Leaving is like emigrating - not just to a new country, but a new continent. It's a new century. It's time travel!

Suddenly, I was in a world where there were unlimited options for food and clothing. I bought my first pair of jeans and a red-and-white checked shirt. I always sucked at male fashion.

Language was the biggest obstacle to overcome, because when you grow up in New York, people expect you to speak English.

For three years I didn't speak to anyone in my family about my gender. I came out to my dad on 11 November 2015, a few months after starting hormone therapy.

It took my dad about an hour to even grasp what I was telling him, and that was thanks to certain religious texts that I showed him - one of which was the passage about male and female souls that I had discovered when I was studying Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism.

My dad admitted that trans people exist, which was quite impressive, because a lot of fundamentalist religious communities don't.

Then he told me: "You need to have a person who has Holy Spirit, in order to be able to tell you if you are really trans."

My reaction was: "I think two therapists and a doctor are good enough."

But he obviously disagreed, and a few minutes after that he pretty much told me that he would never talk to me again.

At that moment, it really hurt. But the reality was that by the time I came out, it was already three years after I had left the Hasidic community. I had enrolled in college, and was a member of some extremely progressive and amazing Jewish and queer communities - so I didn't lose any friends and my life wasn't upended by the rift with my family.

I still text my parents every week - my dad, my mom doesn't even have text messages - and the day that they are ready to talk to me, I will talk with them.

My ex-wife was not allowed to speak to me from the second we got divorced. My son is the love of my life.

I like to focus on the silver lining: instead of thinking about the 10 siblings who don't speak to me, I focus on the two who do. Anyway, most people I know nowadays outside the Hasidic community only have two siblings, if that.

Life is actually better than I could have ever imagined. I used to struggle with depression almost non-stop. Since I came out, I haven't had a day of waking up and feeling that there's no reason for me to wake up. Before I transitioned, there were days that I felt like that.

Being out as ourselves, being trans, being LGBTQ, is something that creates a life worthy of celebration, not just worthy of living. It's beautiful.

I was the first person in the Hasidic community to come out as trans, but there have been quite a few people since, and obviously, I'm being blamed for that.

I definitely think I can take some credit for it - the Hasidic community is never going to be the same again.

Abby Stein's autobiography is called Becoming Eve: My Journey from Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman

06 Show Notes - Which “bad queen” least deserves her reputation?

Jezabel [one of the original Bad QueensTM]and Ahab Meeting Elijah in Naboth's Vineyard. Print by Sir Frank Dicksee (1853-1928). Look at that stink eye she’s giving!

We’d like to begin this week’s show notes with a quick book recommendation: Game of Queens by Sarah Gristwood, which is about the 16th century, a time period Gristwood calls “a century of women.” Can’t lie, she makes a convincing case and does a fantastic job weaving together the stories of the dozens of women who ruled Europe as regents and in their own right throughout the 16th century, including two women on this list--Mary Tudor and Mary Queen of Scots.

Here’s the WorldCat link so you can screw over Amazon and instead find it in a library near you~ https://www.worldcat.org/title/game-of-queens-the-women-who-made-sixteenth-century-europe/oclc/1016988674

Speaking of which, our answer choices this week are:

Isabella of France

Mary I of England

Mary, Queen of Scots

Marie Antoinette

If you’re wondering why we only included European queens in this episode, you won’t be surprised to learn that history is rife with “bad queen” stories (see above). There are too many to fit into a single episode, so we decided to start with Europe, which most people are familiar with, and work our way to other parts of the world. As of this episode’s posting, we have two other “bad monarch” episodes in the works, including one about Chinese empresses--so fear not, and stay tuned!

And of course, before going to the juicy tidbits below, don’t forget to check out the actual episode and answer our poll!

Our first extra fun fact: all these women are actually related!

Both Mary Tudor and Mary Stuart are direct descendants of Isabella, through her son Edward III, whose descendant Elizabeth of York married the first Tudor king, Henry VII (Mary Tudor’s grandfather and Mary Stuart’s great-grandfather).

Mary Stuart is the granddaughter of Henry VIII’s sister (and Mary Tudor’s aunt) Margaret Tudor, who married James IV, the King of Scotland.

Marie Antoinette is related to Mary Stuart by marriage, being a descendant of Mary’s sister-in-law Claude of Valois.

She is also related to Mary Tudor on Mary’s mother’s side; she’s a direct descendant of Mary’s first cousin, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I, the son of Mary’s aunt Juana “the Mad” of Castile--who was also a candidate for this episode!

Option A: Isabella of France (“the She-wolf”)

Reigned: 1308 (married to Edward II) – 1330 (removed from regency by her son Edward III)

Retour d'Isabelle de France en Angleterre (Isabella of France’s return to England). Grandes Chroniques de France, 1455-1460, illuminated by Jean Fouquet. Source

The older among you (or possibly the film buffs...maybe) may know Isabella as this chick:

But (1) she very much did not bang William Wallace, having been 12 when she first became Princess of Wales and 3 in the year she supposedly met Wallace in the movie (which....most probably did not happen at all, but that’s the least of the things wrong with Braveheart).

And (2) there’s so much more to her story! Although Braveheart does get right the fact that she was one gutsy chick who could absolutely go toe-to-toe with the “great” (and, in the case of her husband, not-so-great) men of her day.  

First of all, if you’re a fan of Jason Porath’s Rejected Princesses, Isabella is one of the features in his first book! You can find her entry here.

If you, like Lindsay, are a beleaguered university student drowning in academic papers, fear not! You can also learn more about Isabella’s life from these excellent documentaries:

She-Wolves told by Helen Castor, a series about early English queens. Episode 2: Isabella and Margaret https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ftgbUJ3ZLc&t=2s

Britain’s Bloodiest Dynasty told by Dan Jones, a series about the Plantagenet. Episode 3: Revenge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYBZVSShBIE

We also have a quick correction from the episode: the Ignoring Isabella in Favor of Boyfriend Incident happened not at Edward and Isabella’s wedding (which happened in France), but at the coronation feast held when the couple returned and were crowned King and Queen of England. To the surprise of absolutely no one, Piers Gaveston was left in charge while Edward was off getting hitched, which was..... a choice.

If you want receipts on Edward being, as Lindsay put it, a “man-loving man,” may we direct your attention to these two articles, which look at what the sources of the time have to say about the whole sordid matter.

Other sources on Isabella:  [1]  [2]

Option B: Mary I of England (Mary Tudor AKA “Bloody Mary”)

Reigned: 1553 – 1558

Thomas Eworth, 1555-58, oil on panel. Source

Aside from Game of Queens, one of the major sources we used for Mary’s life is this BBC documentary (we told you, Sophie watches a LOT of them): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eaMix9x4HE

The She-Wolves series also has an episode about the Tudor queens, including Mary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxmRco4P0bk

If you want to take a peek at John Foxe’s body count for Mary’s reign, the text of his Book of Martyrs is available online (hint: Mary’s reign starts in Chapter/Book 10). Similarly, the text of John Knox’s The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, you can also find that text online. We’re going to refrain from linking it here because we love our readers and don’t want them exposed to *too much* misogynistic brain rot.

If you like to consume your history through historical fiction, Sophie recommends you skip Philippa Gregory and instead go for Mary, Bloody Mary by Carolyn Meyer. More on the YA side of things, but still better. (CW for a lot of uses of the w-slur though.)

Other sources on Mary: [1]  [2]  [3]

Option C: Mary, Queen of Scots (Mary Stuart)

Reigned: 1542 (6 days old) – 1567 (forced to abdicate the throne) Executed: 1587

François Clouet, 1558-60, miniature. Source

The picture above has an interesting story attached to it, which is that it (allegedly) belonged to Elizabeth I, who apparently treasured it. The whole relationship between Mary and Elizabeth is really fascinating, and Gristwood’s book goes into the diplomatic shenanigans between England and Scotland during the time--including Elizabeth asking, on more than one occasion, about why she and Mary couldn’t just get married, for Pete’s sake.

One of the major reasons Mary made our list is in honor of the film Mary Queen of Scots, which came out not too long before we recorded this episode. We didn’t really have time to go into all of the things wrong with that movie (so much? denim????) and how it doesn’t at all reflect the IRL dynamic between Mary and Elizabeth--but thankfully we don’t have to, because the lovely ladies over at Frock Flicks already did a podcast episode about it! Go listen: http://www.frockflicks.com/podcast-mary-queen-of-scots-2018/

Smithsonian also has a great article about the film and the history behind it: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-mary-queen-scots-and-elizabeth-i-180970960/

For people who don’t give a fig about historical accuracy but also don’t care for excessive denim, a great series (read: trashy, hilarious, and entertaining in the extreme) to watch is Reign, which is less a portrayal of Mary’s story and more “CW drama vaguely associated with elements of Mary’s story.” One of the reasons I love it is because of Megan Follows, who plays Mary’s mother-in-law Catherine de’ Medici (who had an IRL reputation as Bitch Supreme and very nearly made this list). She’s utterly ridiculous and it’s a thing of beauty.

Historical fic recommendation: Mary, Queen of Scots: Queen Without a Country by Kathryn Lasky. Part of the Royal Diaries series for young readers, which are really much better than they get credit for.

Other sources on Mary (Queen of Scots): [1]  [2]  [3]

Option D: Marie Antoinette

Reigned: 1774 (her husband’s accession) - 1792 (overthrow of the French monarchy) Executed: 1793

Louise Elisabeth Vigee le Brun, oil on canvas, 1783. This iconic painting shows Marie Antoinette in one of her “shepherdess” costumes, known as the chemise a la reine. The gentrified informality of the painting managed to piss off absolutely everybody. Source

She’s known for having said “Let them eat cake,” but most historians agree that she did not, in fact, say this--she just took the fall for some other royal, who was quoted by Jean-Jaques Rousseau in a book he wrote when Marie was all of twelve years old.

Marie Antoinette is also known as the Queen of Fashion, someone who started and ended fashion trends at will and spent lavishly on gowns. This part is true, but fewer people know that she didn’t do it alone--she had the help of a hugely talented merchande de mode named Rose Bertin. Bertin is credited with many of the Queen’s most iconic looks, including the chemise a la reine above, which you can learn more about Episode 6 of Amber Burchart’s fashion history docuseries, A Stitch in Time.

An addition to something we mentioned in the episode: the one guy that Marie Antoinette may have cheated on her husband with (just maybe, and we’re not even sure about that) was a Swedish military officer named Hans Axel von Fersen, with whom she was close friends. This guy actually has a fascinating story in his own right, but the bit we care about is that he was one of the few people who stuck with Marie until the end, helping to organize her attempt to escape Paris.

Historical fic recommendation: Marie Antoinette: Princess of Versailles also by Kathryn Lasky. Lasky’s research is really very solid, and I think the book does a great job at showing how truly uncomfortable Marie was at the French court.

from for the dreams i want to catch http://bit.ly/2BjNAwl See More

English is weird

John McWhorter, The Week, December 20, 2015

English speakers know that their language is odd. So do nonspeakers saddled with learning it. The oddity that we all perceive most readily is its spelling, which is indeed a nightmare. In countries where English isn’t spoken, there is no such thing as a spelling bee. For a normal language, spelling at least pretends a basic correspondence to the way people pronounce the words. But English is not normal.

Even in its spoken form, English is weird. It’s weird in ways that are easy to miss, especially since Anglophones in the United States and Britain are not exactly rabid to learn other languages. Our monolingual tendency leaves us like the proverbial fish not knowing that it is wet. Our language feels “normal” only until you get a sense of what normal really is.

There is no other language, for example, that is close enough to English that we can get about half of what people are saying without training and the rest with only modest effort. German and Dutch are like that, as are Spanish and Portuguese, or Thai and Lao. The closest an Anglophone can get is with the obscure Northern European language called Frisian. If you know that tsiis is cheese and Frysk is Frisian, then it isn’t hard to figure out what this means: Brea, bûter, en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk. But that sentence is a cooked one, and overall, we tend to find Frisian more like German, which it is.

We think it’s a nuisance that so many European languages assign gender to nouns for no reason, with French having female moons and male boats and such. But actually, it’s we who are odd: Almost all European languages belong to one family–Indo-European–and of all of them, English is the only one that doesn’t assign genders.

More weirdness? OK. There is exactly one language on Earth whose present tense requires a special ending only in the third-person singular. I’m writing in it. I talk, you talk, he/she talks–why? The present-tense verbs of a normal language have either no endings or a bunch of different ones (Spanish: hablo, hablas, habla). And try naming another language where you have to slip do into sentences to negate or question something. Do you find that difficult?

Why is our language so eccentric? Just what is this thing we’re speaking, and what happened to make it this way?

English started out as, essentially, a kind of German. Old English is so unlike the modern version that it’s a stretch to think of them as the same language. Hwæt, we gardena in geardagum þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon–does that really mean “So, we Spear-Danes have heard of the tribe-kings’ glory in days of yore”? Icelanders can still read similar stories written in the Old Norse ancestor of their language 1,000 years ago, and yet, to the untrained English-speaker’s eye, Beowulf might as well be in Turkish.

The first thing that got us from there to here was the fact that when the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (and also Frisians) brought Germanic speech to England, the island was already inhabited by people who spoke Celtic languages–today represented by Welsh and Irish, and Breton across the Channel in France. The Celts were subjugated but survived, and since there were only about 250,000 Germanic invaders, very quickly most of the people speaking Old English were Celts.

Crucially, their own Celtic was quite unlike English. For one thing, the verb came first (came first the verb). Also, they had an odd construction with the verb do: They used it to form a question, to make a sentence negative, and even just as a kind of seasoning before any verb. Do you walk? I do not walk. I do walk. That looks familiar now because the Celts started doing it in their rendition of English. But before that, such sentences would have seemed bizarre to an English speaker–as they would today in just about any language other than our own and the surviving Celtic ones.

At this date there is no documented language on Earth beyond Celtic and English that uses do in just this way. Thus English’s weirdness began with its transformation in the mouths of people more at home with vastly different tongues. We’re still talking like them, and in ways we’d never think of. When saying “eeny, meeny, miny, moe,” have you ever felt like you were kind of counting? Well, you are–in Celtic numbers, chewed up over time but recognizably descended from the ones rural Britishers used when counting animals and playing games. “Hickory, dickory, dock”–what in the world do those words mean? Well, here’s a clue: hovera, dovera, dick were eight, nine, and ten in that same Celtic counting list.

The second thing that happened was that yet more Germanic-speakers came across the sea meaning business. This wave began in the 9th century, and this time the invaders were speaking another Germanic offshoot, Old Norse. But they didn’t impose their language. Instead, they married local women and switched to English. However, they were adults and, as a rule, adults don’t pick up new languages easily, especially not in oral societies. There was no such thing as school, and no media. Learning a new language meant listening hard and trying your best.

As long as the invaders got their meaning across, that was fine. But you can do that with a highly approximate rendition of a language–the legibility of the Frisian sentence you just read proves as much. So the Scandinavians did more or less what we would expect: They spoke bad Old English. Their kids heard as much of that as they did real Old English. Life went on, and pretty soon their bad Old English was real English, and here we are today: The Norse made English easier.

I should make a qualification here. In linguistics circles it’s risky to call one language easier than another one. But some languages plainly jangle with more bells and whistles than others. If someone were told he had a year to get as good at either Russian or Hebrew as possible, and would lose a fingernail for every mistake he made during a three-minute test of his competence, only the masochist would choose Russian–unless he already happened to speak a language related to it. In that sense, English is “easier” than other Germanic languages, and it’s because of those Vikings.

Old English had the crazy genders we would expect of a good European language–but the Scandinavians didn’t bother with those, and so now we have none. What’s more, the Vikings mastered only that one shred of a once lovely conjugation system: Hence the lonely third-person singular -s, hanging on like a dead bug on a windshield. Here and in other ways, they smoothed out the hard stuff.

They also left their mark on English grammar. Blissfully, it is becoming rare to be taught that it is wrong to say Which town do you come from?–ending with the preposition instead of laboriously squeezing it before the wh-word to make From which town do you come? In English, sentences with “dangling prepositions” are perfectly natural and clear and harm no one. Yet there is a wet-fish issue with them, too: Normal languages don’t dangle prepositions in this way. Every now and then a language allows it: an indigenous one in Mexico, another in Liberia. But that’s it. Overall, it’s an oddity. Yet, wouldn’t you know, it’s a construction that Old Norse also happened to permit (and that modern Danish retains).

We can display all these bizarre Norse influences in a single sentence. Say That’s the man you walk in with, and it’s odd because (1) the has no specifically masculine form to match man, (2) there’s no ending on walk, and (3) you don’t say in with whom you walk. All that strangeness is because of what Scandinavian Vikings did to good old English back in the day.

Finally, as if all this weren’t enough, English got hit by a fire-hose spray of words from yet more languages. After the Norse came the French. The Normans–descended from the same Vikings, as it happens–conquered England and ruled for several centuries, and before long, English had picked up 10,000 new words. Then, starting in the 16th century, educated Anglophones began to develop English as a vehicle for sophisticated writing, and it became fashionable to cherry-pick words from Latin to lend the language a more elevated tone.

It was thanks to this influx from French and Latin (it’s often hard to tell which was the original source of a given word) that English acquired the likes of crucified, fundamental, definition, and conclusion. These words feel sufficiently English to us today, but when they were new, many persons of letters in the 1500s (and beyond) considered them irritatingly pretentious and intrusive, as indeed they would have found the phrase “irritatingly pretentious and intrusive.” There were even writerly sorts who proposed native English replacements for those lofty Latinates, and it’s hard not to yearn for some of these: In place of crucified, fundamental, definition, and conclusion, how about crossed, groundwrought, saywhat, and endsay?

But language tends not to do what we want it to. The die was cast: English had thousands of new words competing with native English words for the same things. One result was triplets allowing us to express ideas with varying degrees of formality. Help is English, aid is French, assist is Latin. Or, kingly is English, royal is French, regal is Latin–note how one imagines posture improving with each level: Kingly sounds almost mocking, regal is straight-backed like a throne, royal is somewhere in the middle, a worthy but fallible monarch.

Then there are doublets, less dramatic than triplets but fun nevertheless, such as the English/French pairs begin/commence and want/desire. Especially noteworthy here are the culinary transformations: We kill a cow or a pig (English) to yield beef or pork (French). Why? Well, generally in Norman England, English-speaking laborers did the slaughtering for moneyed French speakers at the table. The different ways of referring to meat depended on one’s place in the scheme of things, and those class distinctions have carried down to us in discreet form today.

The multiple influxes of foreign vocabulary partly explain the striking fact that English words can trace to so many different sources–often several within the same sentence. The very idea of etymology being a polyglot smorgasbord, each word a fascinating story of migration and exchange, seems everyday to us. But the roots of a great many languages are much duller. The typical word comes from, well, an earlier version of that same word and there it is. The study of etymology holds little interest for, say, Arabic speakers.

To be fair, mongrel vocabularies are hardly uncommon worldwide, but English’s hybridity is high on the scale compared with most European languages. The previous sentence, for example, is a riot of words from Old English, Old Norse, French, and Latin. Greek is another element: In an alternate universe, we would call photographs “lightwriting.”

Because of this fire-hose spray, we English speakers also have to contend with two different ways of accenting words. Clip on a suffix to the word wonder, and you get wonderful. But–clip an ending to the word modern and the ending pulls the accent along with it: MO-dern, but mo-DERN-ity, not MO-dern-ity. That doesn’t happen with WON-der and WON-der-ful, or CHEER-y and CHEER-i-ly. But it does happen with PER-sonal, person-AL-ity.

What’s the difference? It’s that -ful and -ly are Germanic endings, while -ity came in with French. French and Latin endings pull the accent closer–TEM-pest, tem-PEST-uous–while Germanic ones leave the accent alone. One never notices such a thing, but it’s one way this “simple” language is actually not so.

Thus English is indeed an odd language, and its spelling is only the beginning of it. What English does have on other tongues is that it is deeply peculiar in the structural sense. And it became peculiar because of the slings and arrows–as well as caprices–of outrageous history.

Lefties have it right

http://blog.timesunion.com/hoffmanfiles/lefties-have-it-right/40932/

Lefties have it right.By

Rob Hoffman

on January 8, 2018 at 5:31 AM

0Let’s face it, there’s nothing in our physiological makeup that has fascinated us, or mystified us more than the functioning of the human brain.  It is by far our most important organ, and yet, it remains the one that we know the least about.  While we continue to try to ascertain its workings, there is still so much about this magnificent biological structure we have yet to fully comprehend.  (I suppose that is why it is so hard to truly know ourselves.)  I believe we are living in a time where we hunger to understand the brain, and we can all thank the president for that.  After all, he himself has discussed the importance of the brain, and has told us on numerous occasions that he in fact has, “A really good brain.”

(“I have a very good brain.”  They say that’s exactly what Sir Issac Newton used to say after the apple fell on his head.  All smart people have really good brains, and feel the need to tell us about it all of the time…right?  In fact, remember the time Albert Einstein stated that he was a really mentally stable genius?  You Tube)

It is our brains that explain everything about us.  Many psychologists prescribe to the notion that our behaviors, likes, and habits are predetermined, and that our brains are simply hardwired to be as they are.  Sure our environment shapes us to some to degree, but let’s face it, people can tell you from now until the judgement day that you should like seafood, or appreciate art, or poetry, but if it’s not something that you would naturally gravitate towards, no amount of coaxing in the world is going to get you to a place where you are going to sit there and enjoy a “poetry slam,” when the idea of poetry literally causes you to break into hives.

I can say with great confidence that I would not have been one of these wide-eyed gadflies who sat around on college campuses listening to the “Bard of Haight-Ashbury,” Allen Ginsberg.  I suppose that my brain simply isn’t wired as such that I can enjoy an art-form such as free-verse poetry.  Of course, if Ginsberg were to show up sporting let’s say Yodels, I suppose I could be coerced to listen to a little good old-fashioned “Hippie Poetry.”  What is it about Yodels that make the prattle of poetry just go down a little bit smoother? (Getty Images)

Considering how differently we are wired, it shouldn’t be any wonder that we are a divided people here in the United States.  However, I believe the media has it wrong regarding what divides us.  There’s a lot of talk about the concept of tribalism, and how we are loyal to our own “tribe” or group.  While I don’t disagree with this description of how our society is broken down, I do believe that the way most so-called experts have attempted to explain the causes of our tribalism are way off the mark.

It is my estimable opinion that it is not race, nor religion, nor region, nor the football teams that we root for that divide us as much as it is the conflagration that is “left vs. right.”  I don’t mean the political left vs. the political right.  I mean left-handed people vs. right-handed people.  Think about it.  Sure there’s racism in the world.  African-Americans and whites don’t see the world the same way here in the United States, this much we know to be true.  However, even amongst whites or African-Americans, there is division over the concept of being right-handed vs. being left-handed.  How did we get here, and can we bridge this gap, or are right-handed people simply doomed to be inferior to left-handed people?  (Spoiler alert…I’m a lefty!)

This division over left-handedness vs. right-handedness lies squarely on the doorstep of the brain.  It is our brains that determine whether we lean towards left-handed vs. right-handed dominance.  How typical is it to be left-handed?  Not very.  Somewhere between 88-92% of the world’s population is right-handed.  How soon in our human development do we choose a dominant hand?  Apparently pretty early.  According to researchers who studied hand dominance in utero, they found that hand dominance in the womb was an accurate predictor of handedness after birth.  Heredity also plays a role as well.  Nearly 24% of handedness is inherited. As a lefty with two right-handed parents, all I can say is, I wish I knew which hand the milk-man delivered with.

Like all things of value in our society, lefty’s are rare.  We’re like leprechauns, but taller.  (Hoffman Collection)

There was a time in our society that being a lefty was considered a negative.  People would criticize your handwriting, or the way you held a fork, or cut your meat, or your ability to handle scissors, or your throwing.  Look at baseball.  Most of the positions on the field are made specifically and exclusively for right-handers.  Forget Jackie Robinson, the real hero who integrated baseball was the first player to stand to the first-base side of home-plate, or throw from the mound from the first-base side of the rubber with that slinging motion, tossing another unhittable slider.

My Aunt Sylvia, who has since passed away, was not known for her cheerful, optimistic nature.  In fact you could argue that she only had two moods; fed-up and surly.  How did she acquire a disposition that was so chock-filled with sourness?  Most likely it was because she was born a lefty, but was forced in school to write and eat with her right-hand.  This is worse than making a child renounce their religion.  Religion is a choice.  Nobody chooses to be left-handed, and yet our education system has historically denied 12-14% of our population that most basic of rights, to favor your lefts.

The “Immortal Babe.”  The “Sultan of Swat.”  The “Bambino.”  The “Hefty-Lefty.”  (I kind of embellished on that one.)  Babe Ruth was an inspiration to every chubby left-hander who has ever picked up a baseball, especially when you learn that he used to play with his glove on backwards since they didn’t even have a left-handed mitt at the orphanage where he learned the game.  (Getty Images)

The sad truth is, left-handed people have been discriminated against by an uptight, and right-leaning society that has sought to crush those free-spirited “port-siders” who just want to be free….man.  Historically, left-handed people were routinely accused of consorting with the devil, and during the 15th and 16th centuries, any woman who was left-handed could be branded a witch.  (If you listen to The Eagles’ classic “Witchy Woman,” backwards, you can clearly hear Don Henley say, “Bitch is lefty.”)  Even during the supposedly more enlightened 19th century, left-handedness was sometimes brutally suppressed.  In school, students who preferred using their left-hand to write with would often find their left hand tied to the back of their chair.

Even in modern times, the lefty is forced to exist in a world where the scissors, most sports, the left-to-right style of how we write, and many attempts at manual labor are all catered towards the prissy and spoiled right-handed majority.  This group of left-brained, right-siders, are an oppressive bunch that are so insecure about their dull sameness, they use the word for “correct” to describe their handedness.  What’s so “right” about being right?  Why are we lefties left behind?  Why are we so put upon?  I’ll tell you why.  Left-handed people are rebels.  We are non-conformists.  We don’t go with the flow.  We are the fly in the ointment.  The proverbial turd in the punchbowl.  We are the antagonists, and we won’t be denied, as long as you have those special left-handed scissors that make it so much easier for us to cut stuff up.

A rallying cry for those who refuse to conform.  This is the true “rebel yell!”  (The Hoffman Collection)

Even in politics, being on the left is seen as a negative.  Right-wing politics is ascendant.  The “Alt-right” is the hottest political movement in America as we speak.  In Europe in the early part of the 20th century, people willingly supported the Fascists in Italy, and the Nazis in Germany rather than support the left-wing policies of the Socialists or Communists.  (Granted, the Communists were and are pretty horrible, but the Nazis if possible were worse.)  If you wanted to destroy a politician’s career in America between 1920, and, well today, all you have to do is refer to them as a “lefty.”  The only way it would seem to survive as a left-wing politician in the United States, is to be at least 74 years old, look disheveled, and yell a lot about the rich in a very thick Brooklyn accent, even if you’ve lived in Vermont for over 40 years.  (By the way my little left-wing millennials, it didn’t work for Bernie either, he lost, remember?)

In fact, anything that smacks of the “left,” is seen by the teeming masses as negative and undesirable.  Consider the following:

A bad idea is “out of left-field.”

A guy who sucks in baseball is told to play “left-out.”

When somebody is trying to insult you, but make it sound like they are saying something nice it’s called a “left-handed compliment.”

Food that’s not finished at dinner time, and is reheated the next day in a dried-out, crusty, and luke-warm version of its former self, is known non-affectionately as a “leftover.”

When Jesus comes back, and takes all of the good-hearted people who are the true believers, while the sinners who didn’t make the cut  must fend for themselves amidst the devil’s minions, it’s known as being “left-behind.”

Why couldn’t I have listened to my mother and teachers who begged me to be right-handed.  If only I hadn’t been such a rebel, I could be chilling with Kirk Cameron in whatever vanilla flavored version of heaven he’s squatting in.  (You Tube)

Outside of being a non-conformist, are there any advantages in going through life as “southpaw?”  Well….

You usually only have to hit against righties in baseball, which is good for a lefty since getting to face a righty is easier.

Nobody really ever borrows your baseball glove since there are very few lefties.

Your serve in racquetball, tennis, and perhaps squash, (I really don’t know anything about squash other than it tends to get played by swells named “Mitt,” or “Buzz,” or “Chip,” or “Clark,” or some “tool-like” moniker given to an individual I wouldn’t be caught dead “chilling” with.) is really hard to return.  I’ve won racquetball games without ever having to hit the ball a second time after I’ve served due to the fact that some people find it very frustrating to return a left-hander’s serve.

Lefties always get the end of the table since nobody wishes to buy an elbow from me or any other lefty while we’re eating with our unconventional left-hand.

Left-handed people tend to return quicker from strokes.  (Either that or nobody can tell the difference.)

Supposedly, left-handed college graduates tend to earn 26% more money than right-handed graduates.  (This stat may be a little bit skewed since both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are and were both left-handed.  They more than make up for my teacher’s salary.)

They have a better chance of passing their drivers test.  Lefties pass 57% of the time, while righties only pass 47% of the time.  One therefore could make the assumption that we left-handers must be better drivers.  (Fun fact, I failed my road-test on the first try.  Sorry, other lefties.)

They are faster typists.  That’s why I’m able to write these blogs so quickly.  Look, I’m finished…not.

They spend less time standing in line.  Geez, it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it.

They are better at multi-tasking. (Or as my brother calls multi-tasking, doing a lot of things at once poorly.)

(Source: Left-handed people are great, righties suck.com)

Because we lefties have been so badly discriminated against over the centuries, we have needed to invest our time in developing cute little sayings, and putting them on coffee mugs.  The best part, while we’re drinking our coffee, those insufferable right-handers have to read what’s on our mugs every time we take a sip.  They can literally suck-it.  (The Hoffman Collection)

Probably the greatest attribute that lefties have going for them is their creativity.  How can I prove this?  Take a look at this list of famous lefties and you tell me if we’re not G_d’s most gifted children.

Barack Obama – No surprise here.  Is there anything this Kenyan, Muslim, Socialist isn’t to the left of?

Bill Gates – Let’s see, richest man in the world is a lefty.  Check!

Oprah Winfrey – “You get a left-handed glove, and you get a left-handed glove, and you get a left-handed glove,” is what I imagine her saying when I daydream about Oprah being a lefty.

Babe Ruth – A great pitcher and perhaps the greatest hitter in baseball history, and of course he’s a lefty.  You know, this is just getting boring pointing out our superiority.

Napoleon Bonaparte – Which hand was it that he stuck in his shirt for all of those portraits?

Leonardo DaVinci – Does that mean that the Ninja Turtles are left-handed as well?

Marie Curie – Lefties “radiate” greatness.

Aristotle – I think, therefore I believe I’ll be a left-hander, or something like that.

Jimi Hendrix – I hear the guy could play a little guitar.  By the way, I believe he shot heroin right-handed, of course.

Edward R. Murrow – Only the best journalist in history. I believe he could smoke with either hand however.

I would also mention famous lawyer Clarence Darrow, H.G. Wells, James Baldwin, Michelangelo, Charlie Chaplain, Robert De Niro, Bill Bradley, and Ned Flanders.  Guess who’s right-handed? Well, if you had guessed Tom Brady, Adolf Hitler, Bill Belichick, Joseph Stalin,and Judas, then you’d be correct…or should I say “right?”  Do you really need any more proof?

I’m sorry, could somebody remind me how many right-handed artists painted the most famous portrait in world history?  Oh that’s right, the man was a lefty.  Thank you Leonardo.   You are the Jimi Hendrix of the Renaissance.  (Getty Images)

I believe I have accurately explained the greatness of being left-handed.  However, what are we to make of those who are ambidextrous, the bi-sexuals of the hand-dominance world.  Are they more flexible?  Are they more open-minded?  Do they have some sort of genetic advantage?  Personally, I believe that they are descended from a tribe of magic pixies.  I’m not sure I trust these people.  Pick a handedness, and stick with it.  We don’t need you genetic supermen making the rest of us look bad.

Madrid, Spain

Day 1 (3/24)

After landing in Madrid, navigating our way to our AirBnB, and napping for two hours, Jarod and I were woken up around 1:30pm by a knock at the door. Our host had told us that a man named Ous would come to clean the apartment at 2pm. What she didn’t mention was that Ous--while incredibly nice--did not speak any English. In a mixture of Spanish and charades, we managed to agree that we would leave the apartment for an hour so that he could clean. 

In a daze, we piled on our layers (it’s cold in Madrid in March!!) and headed out. We walked through the Barrio (neighborhood) of La Lavapies and into La Latina, walking until we came to La Real Basílica de San Francisco el Grande. We sat in a plaza on the South side of the church, admiring the structure’s large, yellow dome and resting our very weary bones. From there, we wandered North past El Palacio Real de Madrid, through La Plaza de Oriente, and finally back through the center of Madrid to our apartment. 

Even though my body was dull with exhaustion, taxed heavily by the previous day/night, I was awestruck by the beautiful city streets and extravagant monuments. Everything was picturesque. There were balconies on every building with ferns growing in ornate pots and flower beds snuggled up against decorative railings. At crosswalks and through cafe windows, I saw people smoking cigarettes and sipping espressos; talking quickly, excitedly, rhythmically with wide eyes and exaggerated hand gestures. We were in a new place, and I was stoked to explore it!! 

By now, it was around 4:30pm, and we were hungry. We set off in search of a restaurant nearby and found two whose kitchens were closed. This was our first inconvenient encounter with ~siesta~. Even hungrier now, we found a market and bought tortellini and vegetables to cook back at the apartment. That night, we were in bed by 8:30. 

Day 2 (3/25)

Our first real (still surreal) morning in Madrid, we woke up at a reasonably early hour after an unreasonably excessive amount of sleep. We made eggs at home, then went to a nearby cafe recommended by our host, Maria. Again, it felt like there was culture everywhere. The people around us were dressed neatly in scarves and hats and boots (still freezing!), ordering pastries and warm drinks, dipping the former into the latter and eating them slowly and gracefully. Here, we each got two coffees and drank them quietly, soaking up the environment around us. I admit I was (I still am) a bit self conscious; I didn’t want to speak too much or too loudly in my ugly American accent and identify myself as an obnoxious outsider. 

At this cafe, we started to suspect that coffee in Spain is different than coffee in the US. In Spain, a coffee is served small in a cute little teacup on a saucer with a packet of sugar on the side. You can order a couple different variants--cafe solo (shot of espresso), cafe americano (still small), or cafe con leche (larger, but half milk)--but there is no order that will get you a giant mug of good old fashioned black coffee. (”Cafe negro” will get you the prompt: “Cafe Americano?” to which you will nod, confused and disappointed when you get a tiny teacup of slightly diluted espresso.) I digress. 

From the cafe, we headed to El Museo Del Prado, where we spent hours admiring--or more often puzzling over --thousands of paintings. My favorite was a small piece, entitled “The Painter’s Children,” which portrayed two young girls lounging on a futon, one wrapped in a pretty Japanese blanket, the other sprawled on a cushion. Jarod’s was a huge portrait of a Roman (??) leader dead in a bathtub--a suicide referenced as honorable in The Godfather. 

When we thought we might die of hunger, we tore ourselves from the Prado despite only seeing (maybe) half of the art on display. We wandered up the street and into a tapas restaurant. This was when we truly started embracing Spanish culture with a mid-day glass of wine and four sequential plates of tapas rich with meats, cheeses, and oil. This was also when I learned that a “Russian salad” does not contain lettuce, but lots of potatoes and mayonnaise. 

We went back to our apartment, took naps (Jarod) and studied the city (Lizzy). Still feeling full and generally out of sorts, we headed to the Santa Ana square//Barrio de Las Letras (the literary district, where the paving stones of the main street are engraved with some of the best known lines from 16th and 17th century Spanish literature). We got mixed drinks and a plate of tortillas and hummus at a hipster joint full of trendy young people, then proceeded to a lively gin bar called Carbones 13, where we each had a gin and tonic--the first that I have ever truly liked. 

We stopped at home briefly before rushing out to catch an authentic live flamenco performance at a bar on our corner, El Candela. We put our names down to reserve seats, then had half an hour to kill before the performance started. We spent that time in a lively, divey Bodega (wine bar) down the block. Our drinks were cheap (5€ for two) and came with a plate of potato chips. 

The performance itself was fabulous. There were only 4 people on stage and only one who danced. It was the first flamenco I’ve ever seen live, and I was struck by the drama of the production. The dancer’s heels banged loudly on the hollow stage floor, the tassels of her outfit swung wildly as she moved, and her face and hands were full of intense emotion. The crowd shouted “ole!” and the end of each piece--and sometimes during--to show their appreciation and admiration. (I didn’t know that was a real thing, but I loved it.)

After, we went home and stayed up a while longer, confused as to what time zone we were in. Suddenly, it seemed quite late--3 or 4am--but we were not exactly to be counted on to know the time. Little did we know, day lights savings had occurred that night; a phenomenon which would further confuse us in the morning. 

Day 3 (3/26)

We woke up around 10am, with 1pm lunch reservations at one of the oldest restaurants in the world quickly approaching. Jarod was a little hungover as we embarked towards Botín for our lunch date. He ordered shrimp, which came with the legs and heads still attached. Decapitating them was a task that hungover Jarod liked even less than spry Jarod would have. I ordered cod, which was smothered in a soup of delicious tomato sauce and was impractically humongous (I am notorious for clearing my plate and could only eat half). We drank half a pitcher of sangria--which may have been ambitious given the night before, but when on vacation...--and finished the meal up with a DIVINE chocolate mousse cake. The meal was tasty, but pricey (80€) and the restaurant itself was lovely, but packed with tourists (ourselves among them). It didn't turn out to be quite the cultural endeavor I had imagined, although we did see (what I imagine to be) some very traditional Spanish dishes, such as "baby squid, cooked in his own ink." Harsh.

After lunch, we went in search of Madrid's famous flea market: El Rastro. I had the driving interest in El Rastro, but had done a poor job of researching the actual location (I knew it was in La Latina from 10am-3pm... And not much else). In our search for the market, we stumbled upon a giant amphitheater type hole in the ground, covered in weeds and graffiti and tattooed young people. There were two guys playing live music, the speaker too weak to allow us to hear them from the entrance ramp on which we stood. It was a little silly, but I felt alive being there, like I was seeing an authentic, grimy part of modern life in Madrid.

With Jarod's guidance, we finally found El Rastro as it was closing down. We walked through the stalls of leathers, rugs, fans, and clothing, admiring everything but avoiding wanting anything (I could hardly order coffee for myself let alone haggle with a street vendor). At the end of the road, we found ourselves at an old tobacco factory, La Tabacaleria, that had long ago shut down and repurposed as an art gallery. Atlas Obscura had called this out as one of the hidden gems worth seeing in Madrid, and there was no entry fee, so we headed in.

The art exhibit was eerie--one piece was a TV hung from the rafters and entwined in a chain, broadcasting silent black and white footage--fitting for the cold and dark hallways of La Tabacaleria. There were lots of other videos in Spanish (which we didn't watch), but also some cool images of Mayan ruins (which interested me more).

When we finally got back home, we siesta'd--as is the Spanish way--and woke up some time later, ready to get our first real exercise in. We went to the Parque Del Buen Retiro, and ran around its perimeter, then walked through the interior, stopping to admire the Palacio De Velazquez, Palacio De Crystal, and a man-made lake--full of couples in paddle boats--that flanks the Monumento a Alfonso XII.

Our stomachs were still very confused so we elected to make dinner at home that evening, stopping by the market for rice, chicken, and vegetables. 

Day 4 (3/27)

By day 4, you would think we would have at least somewhat adjusted to Spanish time. And in a way we had: we were waking up late, taking naps in the afternoon, and staying up later. So on day 4, we slept in. When we finally tore ourselves from the cozy den of bed, it was around 11am. We still needed coffee, so we headed out towards La Plaza Mayor and stepped into a coffee shop along the way. 

From the Plaza, we headed out to revisit the west side of Madrid: the Royal Palace we had seen on day 1 in a daze, the old theater (Teatro Real) we had missed entirely, and the Egyptian temple (Templo De Debod) we hadn't known about. After walking for several hours, we were famished. We came home, pooled some leftovers to snack on, then exercised in our living room and cleaned up in preparation for our impending departure.

We headed out for our final dinner. We planned to go to Museo Chicote: an old restaurant and “Madrid landmark” frequented by famous people (Ernest Hemingway among them). However, it was closed (as are a lot of shops and restaurants on Monday in Madrid, apparently). We backtracked to the literary district and chose a restaurant called "La Vinoteca." Obviously. There, we feasted on shared plates of cheesy croquettes, flavorful meatballs, and crostini topped with mozzarella and tomato. On the way home, we stopped at a nearby Bodega, which was dark but inviting and buzzing with activity. And with that, our time in Madrid had come to an end. We packed and prepared for our jarringly early 530am wake-up the next day, after which we would take the metro to the airport and fly to Porto, Portugal. 

from for the dreams i want to catch http://bit.ly/2BjNAwl via See More

English is weird

John McWhorter, The Week, December 20, 2015

English speakers know that their language is odd. So do nonspeakers saddled with learning it. The oddity that we all perceive most readily is its spelling, which is indeed a nightmare. In countries where English isn’t spoken, there is no such thing as a spelling bee. For a normal language, spelling at least pretends a basic correspondence to the way people pronounce the words. But English is not normal.

Even in its spoken form, English is weird. It’s weird in ways that are easy to miss, especially since Anglophones in the United States and Britain are not exactly rabid to learn other languages. Our monolingual tendency leaves us like the proverbial fish not knowing that it is wet. Our language feels “normal” only until you get a sense of what normal really is.

There is no other language, for example, that is close enough to English that we can get about half of what people are saying without training and the rest with only modest effort. German and Dutch are like that, as are Spanish and Portuguese, or Thai and Lao. The closest an Anglophone can get is with the obscure Northern European language called Frisian. If you know that tsiis is cheese and Frysk is Frisian, then it isn’t hard to figure out what this means: Brea, bûter, en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk. But that sentence is a cooked one, and overall, we tend to find Frisian more like German, which it is.

We think it’s a nuisance that so many European languages assign gender to nouns for no reason, with French having female moons and male boats and such. But actually, it’s we who are odd: Almost all European languages belong to one family–Indo-European–and of all of them, English is the only one that doesn’t assign genders.

More weirdness? OK. There is exactly one language on Earth whose present tense requires a special ending only in the third-person singular. I’m writing in it. I talk, you talk, he/she talks–why? The present-tense verbs of a normal language have either no endings or a bunch of different ones (Spanish: hablo, hablas, habla). And try naming another language where you have to slip do into sentences to negate or question something. Do you find that difficult?

Why is our language so eccentric? Just what is this thing we’re speaking, and what happened to make it this way?

English started out as, essentially, a kind of German. Old English is so unlike the modern version that it’s a stretch to think of them as the same language. Hwæt, we gardena in geardagum þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon–does that really mean “So, we Spear-Danes have heard of the tribe-kings’ glory in days of yore”? Icelanders can still read similar stories written in the Old Norse ancestor of their language 1,000 years ago, and yet, to the untrained English-speaker’s eye, Beowulf might as well be in Turkish.

The first thing that got us from there to here was the fact that when the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (and also Frisians) brought Germanic speech to England, the island was already inhabited by people who spoke Celtic languages–today represented by Welsh and Irish, and Breton across the Channel in France. The Celts were subjugated but survived, and since there were only about 250,000 Germanic invaders, very quickly most of the people speaking Old English were Celts.

Crucially, their own Celtic was quite unlike English. For one thing, the verb came first (came first the verb). Also, they had an odd construction with the verb do: They used it to form a question, to make a sentence negative, and even just as a kind of seasoning before any verb. Do you walk? I do not walk. I do walk. That looks familiar now because the Celts started doing it in their rendition of English. But before that, such sentences would have seemed bizarre to an English speaker–as they would today in just about any language other than our own and the surviving Celtic ones.

At this date there is no documented language on Earth beyond Celtic and English that uses do in just this way. Thus English’s weirdness began with its transformation in the mouths of people more at home with vastly different tongues. We’re still talking like them, and in ways we’d never think of. When saying “eeny, meeny, miny, moe,” have you ever felt like you were kind of counting? Well, you are–in Celtic numbers, chewed up over time but recognizably descended from the ones rural Britishers used when counting animals and playing games. “Hickory, dickory, dock”–what in the world do those words mean? Well, here’s a clue: hovera, dovera, dick were eight, nine, and ten in that same Celtic counting list.

The second thing that happened was that yet more Germanic-speakers came across the sea meaning business. This wave began in the 9th century, and this time the invaders were speaking another Germanic offshoot, Old Norse. But they didn’t impose their language. Instead, they married local women and switched to English. However, they were adults and, as a rule, adults don’t pick up new languages easily, especially not in oral societies. There was no such thing as school, and no media. Learning a new language meant listening hard and trying your best.

As long as the invaders got their meaning across, that was fine. But you can do that with a highly approximate rendition of a language–the legibility of the Frisian sentence you just read proves as much. So the Scandinavians did more or less what we would expect: They spoke bad Old English. Their kids heard as much of that as they did real Old English. Life went on, and pretty soon their bad Old English was real English, and here we are today: The Norse made English easier.

I should make a qualification here. In linguistics circles it’s risky to call one language easier than another one. But some languages plainly jangle with more bells and whistles than others. If someone were told he had a year to get as good at either Russian or Hebrew as possible, and would lose a fingernail for every mistake he made during a three-minute test of his competence, only the masochist would choose Russian–unless he already happened to speak a language related to it. In that sense, English is “easier” than other Germanic languages, and it’s because of those Vikings.

Old English had the crazy genders we would expect of a good European language–but the Scandinavians didn’t bother with those, and so now we have none. What’s more, the Vikings mastered only that one shred of a once lovely conjugation system: Hence the lonely third-person singular -s, hanging on like a dead bug on a windshield. Here and in other ways, they smoothed out the hard stuff.

They also left their mark on English grammar. Blissfully, it is becoming rare to be taught that it is wrong to say Which town do you come from?–ending with the preposition instead of laboriously squeezing it before the wh-word to make From which town do you come? In English, sentences with “dangling prepositions” are perfectly natural and clear and harm no one. Yet there is a wet-fish issue with them, too: Normal languages don’t dangle prepositions in this way. Every now and then a language allows it: an indigenous one in Mexico, another in Liberia. But that’s it. Overall, it’s an oddity. Yet, wouldn’t you know, it’s a construction that Old Norse also happened to permit (and that modern Danish retains).

We can display all these bizarre Norse influences in a single sentence. Say That’s the man you walk in with, and it’s odd because (1) the has no specifically masculine form to match man, (2) there’s no ending on walk, and (3) you don’t say in with whom you walk. All that strangeness is because of what Scandinavian Vikings did to good old English back in the day.

Finally, as if all this weren’t enough, English got hit by a fire-hose spray of words from yet more languages. After the Norse came the French. The Normans–descended from the same Vikings, as it happens–conquered England and ruled for several centuries, and before long, English had picked up 10,000 new words. Then, starting in the 16th century, educated Anglophones began to develop English as a vehicle for sophisticated writing, and it became fashionable to cherry-pick words from Latin to lend the language a more elevated tone.

It was thanks to this influx from French and Latin (it’s often hard to tell which was the original source of a given word) that English acquired the likes of crucified, fundamental, definition, and conclusion. These words feel sufficiently English to us today, but when they were new, many persons of letters in the 1500s (and beyond) considered them irritatingly pretentious and intrusive, as indeed they would have found the phrase “irritatingly pretentious and intrusive.” There were even writerly sorts who proposed native English replacements for those lofty Latinates, and it’s hard not to yearn for some of these: In place of crucified, fundamental, definition, and conclusion, how about crossed, groundwrought, saywhat, and endsay?

But language tends not to do what we want it to. The die was cast: English had thousands of new words competing with native English words for the same things. One result was triplets allowing us to express ideas with varying degrees of formality. Help is English, aid is French, assist is Latin. Or, kingly is English, royal is French, regal is Latin–note how one imagines posture improving with each level: Kingly sounds almost mocking, regal is straight-backed like a throne, royal is somewhere in the middle, a worthy but fallible monarch.

Then there are doublets, less dramatic than triplets but fun nevertheless, such as the English/French pairs begin/commence and want/desire. Especially noteworthy here are the culinary transformations: We kill a cow or a pig (English) to yield beef or pork (French). Why? Well, generally in Norman England, English-speaking laborers did the slaughtering for moneyed French speakers at the table. The different ways of referring to meat depended on one’s place in the scheme of things, and those class distinctions have carried down to us in discreet form today.

The multiple influxes of foreign vocabulary partly explain the striking fact that English words can trace to so many different sources–often several within the same sentence. The very idea of etymology being a polyglot smorgasbord, each word a fascinating story of migration and exchange, seems everyday to us. But the roots of a great many languages are much duller. The typical word comes from, well, an earlier version of that same word and there it is. The study of etymology holds little interest for, say, Arabic speakers.

To be fair, mongrel vocabularies are hardly uncommon worldwide, but English’s hybridity is high on the scale compared with most European languages. The previous sentence, for example, is a riot of words from Old English, Old Norse, French, and Latin. Greek is another element: In an alternate universe, we would call photographs “lightwriting.”

Because of this fire-hose spray, we English speakers also have to contend with two different ways of accenting words. Clip on a suffix to the word wonder, and you get wonderful. But–clip an ending to the word modern and the ending pulls the accent along with it: MO-dern, but mo-DERN-ity, not MO-dern-ity. That doesn’t happen with WON-der and WON-der-ful, or CHEER-y and CHEER-i-ly. But it does happen with PER-sonal, person-AL-ity.

What’s the difference? It’s that -ful and -ly are Germanic endings, while -ity came in with French. French and Latin endings pull the accent closer–TEM-pest, tem-PEST-uous–while Germanic ones leave the accent alone. One never notices such a thing, but it’s one way this “simple” language is actually not so.

Thus English is indeed an odd language, and its spelling is only the beginning of it. What English does have on other tongues is that it is deeply peculiar in the structural sense. And it became peculiar because of the slings and arrows–as well as caprices–of outrageous history.